Persistance defined

Things to do when you’re 62:

KEY WEST, Fla. — Looking dazed and sunburned, U.S. endurance swimmer Diana Nyad walked on to the Key West shore Monday, becoming the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the help of a shark cage.

It was Nyad’s fifth try to complete the approximately 110-mile swim. She tried three times in 2011 and 2012. She had also tried in 1978.

Honestly, how did he get elected in the first place?

Some things are not like other things

Using prostitutes. Check. Cheating on your wife. Check. Hitting on women employees. Check. Doing any of that while President. Yeah, check. Sexting pictures of your penis while calling yourself Carlos Danger. Huh?

One of these is not like the others.

Now, we know that boys will be boys – always have, always will. We almost bestow a sort of cultural acceptance on very bad behavior, especially when teh sex is involved.

Except when it’s icky. Really really icky.

It can’t be stopped: there’s a new one every day of the week

I usually try to stay away from these kinds of stories but honestly . . . to me, today, these two no longer look like outliers. From the always amusing and sometimes squirm-worthy Dependable Renegade, where mockery of the stupid is an art form:

• The Safety Net – North Carolina (motto: “We’re Number 45!”) has cut unemployment benefits so far that they are disqualified from a federal compensation program for the long-term jobless. The changes go into effect Sunday for North Carolina, which has the country’s fifth-worst jobless rate.
•  Free Speech! – Xristian Xrazie Pennsylvania Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Satan’s Hollow) decided that allowing sodomite colleagues to speak on the floor of the legislature about DOMA was a bridge too far: [he said] “I did not believe that as a member of that body that I should allow someone to make comments such as he was preparing to make that ultimately were just open rebellion against what the word of God has said, what God has said, and just open rebellion against God’s law.”

Okeydokee.

please please please please . . .. oh dear Elvis, please

Let this be so. Please.

Donald Trump has spent more than $1 million on electoral research for a potential presidential run in 2016.

I have to detox and it’s Wayne LaPierre’s fault

Teh stupid out there is wearing me down right now. The lure of this machine in my lap is in hiding or so faint I can’t even hear it.

Not surfing. Not bookmarking. Not posting (maybe some easy stuff). I will avert my eyes and hope for a refresh – I will define success as expelling (or at least containing) knee-jerk, reactive outrage that these days rises too quickly, too often and causes me to make rude noises.

BUT BUT BUT . . . in lighter news: Whatever Works will soon be handing out spare keys to two friends who’ve shown some interest in co-blogging.

They’re both male. They’re both actors. One is 18 and a bit bent and quite liberal. The other is 40, very bent, and very very conservative. Both are fun. And smart. And I like them a lot. And if we pull this off, I hope you do too.

(Hellooooo, Orhan . . . your key still works, if you want to, ya’ know . . . )

An impartial jury for Boston bomber? Not possible.

Whatever the final outcome of our usual silly round-robin of indignity about which set of laws to use when prosecuting the surviving Boston bomber, whatever that outcome, one thing seems obvious to me.

After nine full days (so far!) of near full-time television coverage of the event, prosecutors will not be able to seat an impartial trial jury.

 

Please no. (updated)

UPDATE: Engle and his team were indeed captured and held for five days. They were released this morning. Their captors were apparently Assad loyalists.

Yeah,, but did you know . . .

Upworthy is a new shared site. I really don’t know how it works, but I like it a lot. The stuff that pops up there takes a bit of a sideways look at “content that is as fun to share as a FAIL video of some idiot surfing off his roof.”

But, they add:

. . . we believe the things that matter in the world don’t have to be boring and guilt-inducing. And the addictive stuff we love doesn’t have to be completely without substance.

Here’s something important from over there that’s rarely  mentioned outside the usual wonky sites. Nice to see it somewhere younger people might visit:

We already know that 90 percent of the media is controlled by six companies, 37 banks have been consolidated into four, 307 types of corn have been reduced to 12, and these 10 companies own practically everything else. What’s next?

Subscribe. It’s fun.

Michelle comes to a logical conclusion.

First, RIP Gore Vidal, perhaps the last of this country’s ‘public intellectuals’: where are the likes of Buckley, Hitchens, Vidal? A brilliant mind, a brilliant wit, painfully honest and deeply patriotic –  and a wonderful writer.

Here’s Michelle Bachmann today telling her Gore Vidal story:

“It’s very interesting because I had been a Democrats — and I’d actually worked on Jimmy Carter’s campaign. And I was reading a novel by Gore Vidal, and when I was reading it he was mocking the Founding Fathers. And all of a sudden it just occurred to me: I set the book down on my lap, I looked out the window of a train I was riding in, and I thought to myself, ‘I don’t think I’m a Democrat. I think I really am a Republican.’ Because the Founding Fathers were not the characters that I saw Gore Vidal portraying in his novel.”

For the good Congresswoman, that apparently passes for actual reasoning.

We can’t fix ourselves, but we can mourn ourselves

Along with John Stewart, the venerable parody publication The Onion knows how to get right into the rotten, bankrupt heart of some stories – as they’ve done in this case, pointing to the real horror of yet another gun massacre.

WASHINGTON—Americans across the nation confirmed today that, unfortunately, due to their extreme familiarity with the type of tragedy that occurred in a Colorado movie theater last night, they sadly know exactly how the events following the horrific shooting of 12 people will unfold.

While admitting they “absolutely hate” the fact they have this knowledge, the nation’s 300 million citizens told reporters they can pinpoint down to the hour when the first candlelight vigil will be held, roughly how many people will attend, how many times the county sheriff will address the media in the coming weeks, and when the town-wide memorial service will be held.

Additionally, sources nationwide took no pleasure in confirming that some sort of video recording, written material, or disturbing photographs made by the shooter will be surfacing in about an hour or two.

“I hate to say it, but we as Americans are basically experts at this kind of thing by now,” said 45-year-old market analyst Jared Gerson, adding that the number of media images of Aurora, CO citizens crying and looking shocked is “pretty much right in line with where it usually is at this point.” “The calls not to politicize the tragedy should be starting in an hour, but by 1:30 p.m. tomorrow the issue will have been politicized. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if the shooter’s high school classmate is interviewed within 45 minutes. . . .

. . . “Oh, and here’s another thing I hate I know,” Brennen continued, “In exactly two weeks this will all be over and it will be like it never happened.

It goes on. In the same issue (today’s), they also bring us this story,

NRA: ‘Please Try To Remember All The Wonderful Things Guns Do For Us Every Day’

“While the events of last night are truly tragic, I sincerely hope that no one at any point forgets how truly terrific guns are, and how they enrich all of our lives on a regular basis,” said NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, adding that the nation’s citizens must open up their hearts in this time of mourning and realize how simply unlivable a life without gun ownership would be.

Aurora. Shit. Again.

TBogg tweets for me.

So Mike, could we have a few words on Penn State and the Catholic Church maybe?

In case you don’t already know, the Boy Scouts have stood up again for god, flag and country and said no damn gays here. No way. 

On his radio show yesterday, Mike Huckabee spelled out in no uncertain terms that he believes the policy is “right” because it protects boys from abuse. He welcomed a call from a listener who had been abused by his scout leader, and Huckabee agreed that part of the definition of “homosexual” is molesting children . . .

Story here.

As for the kid in the picture, that’s Eagle Scout Eric Jones.

He said his troop is like family to him. While both his parents and fellow troop members accepted him, Jones was forced to cut ties with the Boy Scouts of America because of a century-old policy about homosexuality.

 

It’s okay if you’re Saudi Arabia

From Jonathan Turley’s blog. More at BBC.

Let the fittest survive . . . and get rich. USA! USA! USA!

An interesting graph from a column in the venerable Journal of the America Medical Association (JAMA) : it details who is covered by Medicaid, the program Paul Ryan described as “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency”.

The largest group covered by Medicaid by far is children. The second biggest group, adults, contains large numbers of pregnant women. Medicaid covers about 40% of births in the United States. The third largest group includes people who are blind or disabled. That leaves what are known as dual eligibles. Those are elderly people who are so poor that they receive both Medicaid and Medicare benefits.

If I’m reading this chart correctly, while children constitute the largest constituency, the blind/disabled receive the most dollars.

(link is from a Paul Krugman column)

Thanks for getting rid of the nukes Senator, but we won’t need you anymore

So the Tea Party and Dick Armey and Karl Rove and all the Koch money and the poor souls who think they’re well served by being ground troops for this crowd did it, they got rid of Lugar. He just wasn’t pure enough.

A Lugar loss marks a sea change in both Indiana and Washington, where Lugar  has long played the role of Republican wise man, a sober internationalist who  could reach across the aisle to solve difficult problems.

In today’s political climate, however, Lugar’s bipartisan leanings were part  of his undoing — and the defeat of the man Richard Nixon once called “America’s  mayor” when he led Indianapolis will send chills down the spines of fellow GOP  incumbents seeking reelection in states where a conservative insurrection is  possible.

Speechless. Simply speechless.

In Aurora, Colorado, D’Avonte Meadows, 6-year-old boy at Sable Elementary School was suspended for sexual harassment and disrupting other students. How can a six-year-old boy sexually harass someone? He told a girl “I’m sexy and I know it,” a line from a popular song.

If you can stand it, more here.

Do I really have to give kudos to Bill Kristol? Do I?

Yes. I do.

Yesterday, Mittens the Romneybot waded into the middle of the Chinese dissident situation while the ground was still moving beneath the feet of those involved and attacked the president, saying it was “a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration.” This, while the drama was still unfolding.

A few hours later Bill Kristol, that most irritating of neocons, that most obsequious and annoying of little men, one who never ever imagined a mid-East war he couldn’t love, was on FOX News.  And here’s what he said:

KRISTOL: I’m happy to be critical of the Obama administration as anyone is, but I think this is fast moving story. And if I were advising Governor Romney, I’d say you don’t need to get in the middle of this story . . .

There is no need to butt into a fast moving story when the secretary of state is in Beijing with delicate negotiations and say it’s a day  of shame for the Obama administration. Hillary Clinton is waking up right now. Let’s see if she can pull this off in the next 12 hours or so.

She did. By this morning, the State Dept announced a deal with Beijing to allow Chen to study in the US. I’m sure China knows there’d be no upside for them were they to dig in on this one.

Some kid tasted dog in 1967 and now America is doomed

So let us set the stage:

• Mitt Romney puts a canine on the roof of the car for a family trip
• a lot of people make fun of him for it
• which pisses off conservatives who now have to find an equivalent sin hidden in Obama’s murky past
• so they look and they look until finally someone thinks to read one of the president’s biographical books, and lo
• there they find the weapon. And they toss it back. And it is good.

Here it is:

In his book Dreams of My Father, Obama tells of being a six-year-old learning about a new and unfamiliar culture after his family’s move to Indonesia:

The children of farmers, servants and low-level bureaucrats had become my best friends, and together we ran the streets morning and night, hustling odd jobs, catching crickets, battling swift kites with razor-sharp lines — the loser watched his kite soar off with the wind, and knew that somewhere other children had formed a long, wobbly train, their heads toward the sky, waiting for their prize to land. With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chili peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share. That’s how things were, one long adventure, the bounty of a young boy’s life. …

Did you catch it? It’s in there all right. Obama ate your dog.

Ah, but did Hitler diddle little boys?

From a recent homily by Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria (unfortunate name that):

[some governments] “tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches . . . Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services and health care . . . In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda – now seems intent on following a similar path.”

So . . . comprehensive health care / ethic cleansing and genocide . . . not very different actually.

 

Step aside Mitt: hand the Etch-A-Sketch to Alan West

Joe McCarthy and some dumb Congress critter

Alan West, (R-from my embarrassed State of Florida) is on this weeks’ media menu (from which he will disappear until he says the next stupid thing). On CNN, he was asked about Ted Nugent’s comments (that would be the ones Nugent is ‘talking to’ the Secret Service about today):

“I don’t think the Motor City Madman has any ill will toward the President of United States of America.”

Our troops mugged for the camera – with body parts of Afghans

Here we are, again, and I am horrified, ashamed, embarrassed for my country. Our enemies won’t blame war-weary American soldiers. They’ll blame us – you and me.

The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan’s Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse’s severed legs.

A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs.

Every one of these ghoulish acts committed by American troops are committed in our name.

How should they be punished? Dishonorable discharge? Military prison? Or shall they be charged with “providing aid and comfort to the enemy”- and tried for treason? What does a nation do to these men? How do we stop it?

I haven’t posted the duration lately; now seems appropriate.  Today is the 171st day of the eleventh year of our war in Afghanistan.

LET ME ADD: In a comment below, JR reminds me of how damanged some of these troops are. He is right; I should have included that. Some are sent back two, three, four times . . . if their humanity freys at the edges, that’s on us too.

Ted Nugent speaks and I ask what is he waiting for?

No need to set up your death-by-cop, Ted. You have plenty of guns: just go ahead and instead of pointing yer weapon at a president (that’s what it sounds like you’d like to do) just turn it around and do yourself and save the rest of us the trouble.

“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year,” Nugent said, according to a video posted on YouTube by the NRA. “If you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house in this vile, evil America hated administration, I don’t even know what you’re made out of.”

Yeah, sure, he’s talking about about the voting booth. Sure.

If you dance in public, you’re not a serious person. Unless you’re a man.

This photo from the Summit of the Americas will no doubt be titillating to viewers of  FOX News tomorrow. (They’ve never been able to shut down those visions of Clintonish sugarplums dancing in their heads.) The randy Telegraph (UK) kicked off the next! big! thing! with this headline (this really is the headline):

Is Hillary Clinton becoming an embarrassment as Secretary of State?  

That’s the headline; here’s the sin:

Unbloggiest ever

Six posts in the last six days – sparse (and one was a Friday oldie, published with a single click so it hardly counts). Very very sparse.

I conclude therefore that I am very very unbloggy.

(In other news, it’s reported that a member of the British House of Lords thinks Bush and Obama are bad guys and has offered a bounty of ten million pounds to get the two. Can it be worse? Yeah, he announced it during a visit to Pakistan. I must say that was quite bold of His Lordship.)

Dear newsmedia: George Zimmerman is not charged with killing a black teenager; he is charged with killing a teenager

Just heard it again on a radio news broadcast: “George Zimmerman has been taken into custody and been charged with the murder of a black teenager.” That’s what the news reader said – pet peeve of mine.

There may well be racial overtones to this crime, and there are valid reasons to suspect that there are, but Zimmerman is not being charged on those grounds. Zimmerman is being charged with murder, quite serious enough on its own. But  the real defendant in this trial will be the State of Florida and its insane  “Stand Your Ground” law.

So is the racial aspect a matter of concern? You bet it is. But I think the larger threat is to all of us; it is another wound to our tradition of common law.

The Supreme Court just upheld strip searches for unpaid parking fines, so I shudder to think what will happen if a challenge to this Florida law makes its way to that gorgeous white temple to justice. I figure the NRA will get there first.

It’s too easy. Really.

 

Hey! The Three Amigos are back in business . . .

Well, two of them anyway. McCain and Lieberman are on the ground again – smiling at Syrians, assuring them that our Presdient doesn’t know what he’s doing – and of course saying there’s no war they couldn’t love.

Lindsay had to wash his hair I think.

Yeah, but how’d the book tour do Newt?

The debate fun is over.

I hear that the pudgy ethically-challenged, three-times-married, removed-from-office-by-his-own-party “candidate” for the GOP nomination is maybe not running anymore.

Santorum’s gone too.

Take to the fainting couches! Obama criticized the Court!

(Apologies to someone – I grabbed this Daily Kos link from a blogfriend and have now lost track. So whoever put this up before me, thanks. Nice catch.)

Sen Mitch McConnell now:

“The president crossed a dangerous line this week,” read McConnell’s prepared remarks. “And anyone who cares about liberty needs to call him out on it. The independence of the court must be defended.” […]

So, some ‘reporters’ decided to visit the way back machine to see just where this ‘line’ not to be crossed falls.

Candidate Ronald Reagan then:

… campaigning in Birmingham, Ala., Thursday, Reagan blasted the court’s most recent abortion ruling as “an abuse of power as bad as the transgression of Watergate and the bribery on Capitol Hill.” …

Reagan administration then:

Attorney General William French Smith accused the federal courts of “constitutionally dubious and unwise intrusions upon the legislative domain,” and vowed to oppose such “subjective judicial policymaking.” […]

President George W. Bush then:

For the judiciary, resisting this temptation is particularly important, because it’s the only branch that is unelected and whose officers serve for life. Unfortunately, some judges give in to temptation and make law instead of interpreting. Such judicial lawlessness is a threat to our democracy—and it needs to stop.

And oh yeah, the good Senator had few words back then too (about the Schiavo case):

MCCONNELL: I don’t know. These are findings of fact that presumably the court, had it looked at it de novo from the beginning, which is what we granted the federal courts the authority to do, could have taken into account

[Between the lines – the Court overstepped ‘what we granted the federal courts the authority to do’?].

(there’s more at the link from lesser lights.)