Category Archives: Current Events

E.J. Tells it like it is!

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I have been struggling with how, and whether, to address the shameful series of decisions recent of the Supreme Court. The fears of reasonable people everywhere that the 2000 appointment of Bush to the presidency would lead to a jaundiced court have come true in a stark and dreadful way. E.J. Dionne, Jr. has hit the nail on the head in his column today:

If another conservative replaces a member of the court’s
moderate-to-liberal bloc, the country will be set on a conservative
course for the next decade or more, locking in today’s politics at the
very moment when the electorate is running out of patience with the
right.
That’s why a majority of senators should warn Bush now that they will not take up his nominee unless he strictly construes the Constitution’s provision that he appoint justices with “the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” The rule should be: If the advice isn’t taken, there will be no consent.
And if conservatives claim to believe the president is owed deference on his court appointees, they will be — I choose this word deliberately — lying. In 2005 conservatives had no problem blocking Bush’s appointment of Harriet Miers because they could not count on her to be a strong voice for their legal causes. They revealed that their view of judicial battles is not about principle but power. When they went after Miers, conservatives lost the deference argument.
E. J. Dionne Jr. – Not One More Roberts or Alito – washingtonpost.com

Sanity in the UK

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By way of /. and The Register, we today find this beacon of sanity from the British government, in response to an electronic petition on the topic of “Creation Science” and “Intelligent Design”:

The Government is aware that a number of concerns have been raised in the media and elsewhere as to whether creationism and intelligent design have a place in science lessons. The Government is clear that creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science. The science programmes of study set out the legal requirements of the science National Curriculum. They focus on the nature of science as a subject discipline, including what constitutes scientific evidence and how this is established. Students learn about scientific theories as established bodies of scientific knowledge with extensive supporting evidence, and how evidence can form the basis for experimentation to test hypotheses. In this context, the Government would expect teachers to answer pupils’ questions about creationism, intelligent design, and other religious beliefs within this scientific framework.
nocrescied – epetition response

Pawn is already feeling better about his decision to move back to the UK!

Manufactured Landscapes

Nickel Tailings #34

A film following photographer Edward Burtynsky through the making of his recent project Manufactured Landscapes opens today in New York. This is director Jennifer Baichwal’s second documentary covering a photographer. She also directed The True Meaning of Pictures on Shelby Lee Adams‘ Appalachia. The word invariably used to describe this film is haunting… and indeed it is. I look forward to seeing how she has covered Burtynsky.
Heading East’s Raul Gutierrez

The photos, and the film, treat the massive disruption to our environment being created in the developing world as it goes about taking care of the dirty work which we in the developed world no longer care to see bespoiling our own frontiers.

These Things Snowball

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Pawn’s old buddy Dave has some interesting comments to make about Congressman WIlliam Jefferson’s indictment over at the 100 Word Rant:

They found 90 thousand bucks in Bill Jefferson’s freezer. That’s slightly less than Bob Byrd’s maid normally finds between the sofa cushions. A 90 grand tip would be an insult to Dubya after giving some Halliburton exec’s wingtips one of his forked-tongue shoeshines. All Congressmen are traditionally assumed to be utterly corruptible, so why go after the gentleman from Louisiana? Let’s just say the reason starts with “n” and rhymes with “we grow.” While I have yet to peruse the entire 16-count indictment against “Dollar Bill” Jefferson, I’m pretty sure I’ll find the word uppity in there somewhere.
100 word rant: these things snowball

You tell ’em, Dave!

Rags to Riches

I was all set to write a speculative piece, wondering how long before people started to project the Rags to Riches victory in today’s Belmont Stakes as a metaphor for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential race, but I’m already too late for that. Here are some examples. First, from The Huffington Post, (2 hours ago):

Rags to Riches, despite having the historical odds stacked against her, is considered both exceptional and a real threat to her male counterparts. It is tempting to draw comparisons to Hillary Clinton’s status as the lone female presidential candidate
Glynnis MacNicol: It’s a Horse Race! – Politics on The Huffington Post

Or here, from Newsday (37 minutes ago):

“It makes sense to me,” said Diane Wells, 61, who was wearing a white straw cowboy hat. “It’s like a lot of women are going to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
Though not the same type of pioneer as Clinton, Rags to Riches was bucking some significant history when she became the first Filly to win Belmont in 102 years. The last filly to win the race was hotwalkerTanya in 1905. The only other female champion was Tanya, who won it in 1867.
The Belmont scene: Feminine mystique | Newsday.com

Oh well, it’s off to the races!

A Good Day Not To Work At Starbucks

The  Long and Winding Road

In 13,728 Stores

Over a span of 329,472 Hours

Or 19,768,320 Minutes

10 Million Customers were aurally assaulted, so ABC News told us last night, in their reporting on the full frontal marketeering perpetrated by Starbucks yesterday. As has been well reported on, blogged on, etc., Starbucks has released the first album on their new “Hear” music label; Paul McCartney’s latest, “Memory Almost Full.”

Pawn is a fan of McCartney — The first real rock-n-roll album I purchased was “Let It Be” on its original Christmas release, oh so many years ago. But this is going too far. We fear the day when other marketeers decide to start their own labels and assault their customers, and employees, with non-stop repeating loops of aging rock stars.

Yesterday Pawn read the June 4th profile, in The New Yorker Magazine, of McCartney. A very good piece. Here is an interesting excerpt:

His new record includes a song called “That Was Me,” an upbeat rock tune on which he demonstrates that his voice is still capable of startling clarity and range. The song contains a verse about his Beatle days: “That was me / Seathing cobwebs / Under contract / In the celler / On TV / That was me!” I mentioned that the song seems to express amazement at the life he has led.

“That’s exactly it, I am amazed,” he said. “How could I not be? Unless I just totally blocked it off. There were four people in the Beatles, and I was one of them. There were two people in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, and I was one of them. I mean, right there, that’s enough for anyone’s life. And there was one guy who wrote ‘Yesterday,’ and I was him. One guy who wrote ‘Let It Be,’ ‘Fool on the Hill,’ ‘Lady Madonna’ — and I was him, too. All of these things would be enough for anyone’s life. So to be involved in all of them is pretty surprising. And you have to pinch yourself. That’s what that song is about.”

You’ve gotta love how he can brag and not seem immodest at the same time. How rare it is to hear someone speak proudly, and yet reverently, about their own accomplishments, and not come off sounding like they’re full of themselves.

Just to make this complete, reading this at a Chinese restaurant, as I got to these paragraphs, the song “Hey Jude” came on the Muzak!

That’s just freaky!

Rip van Winkelski

This just in on the wires:

A 65-year-old railwayman who fell into a coma following an accident in communist Poland regained consciousness 19 years later to find democracy and a market economy, Polish media reported on Saturday…
“When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol lines were everywhere,” Grzebski told TVN24, describing his recollections of the communist system’s economic collapse.
“Now I see people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin.”
Democracy stuns Polish coma man – CNN.com

How’d he know they were cell phones?

Same as it ever was

zarqawi-thompson.jpgMore stale NY Times headlines. These from May 31, 2007:

Jihadist Groups Fill a Palestinian Power Vacuum

The story, of course, is as the headline describes. This is the second paragraph, about a raid on a Gaza Internet cafe:

“The gunmen tied their hands, then forced them to stand at the stairs while they broke all the screens, and then the server and the television and the photcopier,” said the owner, Hamad, of the attack a few months ago. “Then they burned all 36 computers.”

Stir in G.O.P. As Ex-Senator Moves to Run

This story is about Fred Thompson deciding to decide toenter the Presidential race as the conservative’s conservative. Mr. Thompson, notably, took every oportunity he had to vote in support of Internet censorship, for the CDA in 1995 and COPA in 1998. Both have since been struck by the Supreme Court.

So, in a way, the two stories are remarkably similar. An insurgent force, percieving a power vacuum on the extreme religious conservative side, rush in to try to grab power.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Why not to be in Napoli

Paul Cezanne - Old Woman with Rosary

This from the New York Times, yesterday, in a story about the problem of full landfills in Naples, Italy (emphasis mine):

As the piles rose and the stench spread, 100 or more refuse fires burned some nights — one of many trash related protests that included, inevitably, mothers clutching rosaries on railroad tracks.

We like this aura of inevitability to mothers clutching rosaries on railroad tracks, but must admit to being somehwat baffled by it.

In praise of the also-ran

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Every election cycle brings with it the loonies, the flakes, the also-rans. This is no exception. It makes life easier for us who comment, as they tend to cast light on the inconvenient truths that leading candidates would prefer be left covered up.

A recent example is Ron Paul, perennial candidate, Republican congressman from Texas. As has been widely reported, he provided much fodder when, during the second Republican Presidential debate, he commented of Al Queada that “They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years… We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us,”

While he may have been slightly off the mark he was close: al Queada was more upset about our permanent placement of military bases in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi government’s choice to rely on the US for protection instead of hiring al Queada themselves. Of course, Rudy flew into a rage and excoriated Paul for his temerity to suggest that there might be a cause. We don’t know how Rudy explains it happening, unless he just buys wholesale W’s contention of unremitting evil.

An interesting side effect of the whole affair has been the spectacle of seasoned political and foreign affairs punditry being forced to grudgingly admit that Paul is closer to the truth than Rudy. Now we have Ron Paul coming back to take another crack at the media circus brass ring with a press conference at which he proposed a reading list for Rudy G. Alongside him the former CIA al Queada desk chief, Michael Sheuer. Here is Paul’s reading list (as per The Times):

  • “Blowback” by Chalmers Johnston
  • “Dying to Win” by Robert A. Pape
  • “Imperial Hubris” by Michael Sheuer
  • The 9/11 Commission Report

Rudy’s team responded with a classic non-response, “Mayor Giuliani said it best – it is extraordinary and reckless to claim that the United States invited the attacks on September 11th… And to further declare Rudy Giuliani needs to be educated on September 11th when millions of people around the world saw him dealing with these terrorist attacks firsthand is just as absurd.”

This is like the kid caught in a fight on a playground; “And why did Tommy hit you?” “I dunno.” “Did you provoke him?” “No, Ma’m. I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ I was just sittin’ there. Honest I was.” Even worse, the second part, that he was in New York so he doesn’t need to be educated — is just patently absurd. Just because he handled the aftermath of the attacks doesn’t make him a specialist on why they happened in the first place.

But enough of that. Mr. Paul has now decided to join forces with Sens. Byrd and Clinton in promoting rescinding the original use of force authorization:

Mr. Paul also announced today his plans to introduce legislation that would sunset the use of force authorization in Iraq after six months. He said “basically I would support” a similar measure sponsored by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Robert Byrd that would set Oct. 11, 2007 but noted that his legislation would give Congress more time to take action. David All, the founder of a Republican consulting firm specializing in “modern media strategies,” and Jerome Armstrong, a liberal blogger at the influential MyDD, were there to film Mr. Paul for the next episode of “Under the Dome,” their politics show on YouTube. They asked viewers whether they’d prefer to see the Texas congressman or Mike Gravel, an underdog Democratic candidate, and Mr. Paul won handily, the net gurus said. The web video is available here.
Paul Offers Giuliani a Few Policy Tips – The Caucus – Politics – New York Times Blog

Let’s hope that Mike Gravel, the former Senator from Alaska has a similar effect on the Democratic side.

UPDATE:  See the comment, below, from Gravel’s campaign.