Road Trip: Democratic National Convention Edition

/in /by

lake-superior.jpgIt’s that time of year again where I go off grid for a period of time and people resign or other momentous stuff happens while I’m away from the Toobz.

I’ll be leaving Friday evening for a road trip with mr. emptywheel and McCaffrey the MilleniaLab, up over the top of Lake Superior, through South Dakota so mr. emptywheel can see Abraham Lincoln in a rock, and from there down to Denver for the Convention (and to visit my family, some of whom live there). I can’t promise you mr. emptywheel will let me check on the Toobz until I get to Denver a week from tomorrow, though perhaps if I go into withdrawal I’ll liveblog Wall Drug for you (you think Wall Drug has wifi??). And McCaffrey the MilleniaLab, who was named after Eddie McCaffrey of the Denver Broncos, is hoping to be able to see Barack Obama accept the nomination in Mile High.

It’s bound to be a particularly momentous absence, as Calculated Risk will also be gone from the Toobz for some of the same dates as I’ll be gone–and when he goes off  grid, banks tend to fail. Obviously, one of the things I’ll be missing is the announcement of Obama’s Veep (and no, I didn’t sign up to get a text as soon as it’s announced), but who knows, maybe we’ll be lucky and another high level Bushie will resign to spend more time with his family.

In the meantime, bmaz will have the keys (yes, to the blog and to the liquor cabinet, you lushes), and I’ve instructed him he can do with those keys as he sees fit–so behave! You don’t want him to key your car. We’ll also have a few posts from another surprise guest poster next week, so you’ll be in great hands while I’m gone.

Anyone have any tips for must-see things along the way?

(Photo of Lake Superior Provincial Park, where I plan to do a day hike on Saturday, by loimere.) 

To Favre Or Not To Favre, That Is the EW Trash Talk Question

/in , /by

National Favre League – Marcy has been pimping me to do up a Favre post ever since the first rumors came out of his waffliness months ago. Who am I to deny the hostess with the mostess? I chalk it up to the fact that the only thing the Lions have done in the off season is give Kevin Jones (a good running back when healthy) to the Bears for nothing in free agency. But not to worry, Roidney is still pumped up and Tom is still sitting pretty for the Pats. And yes, I still think the Pats are the class of the league.

But, let’s face it, the only thing that is important in the NFL right now is Brett Favre. He is like Britney with no panties. I am not going to waste time with a bunch of links, you folks know the deal. My own take was totally on the Packer’s side initially, and still, on balance, probably is. But it is also clear that, irrespective of what has happened and who caused it, they really do not want him back. Given that, and that I do think they pressured him for an answer before he was ready this winter/spring (not that such was unreasonable necessarily, just a fact), and given that they do not want him, I think they do owe him to let him play somewhere else. Take him back and let him be Brett Favre or let him go; but get on with it. It is not just a business decision; no matter what, he has earned more than that. That is my opinion, what is yours? Chat up any and all other football, college or pro, that you got.

MLB – The second half of the season is upon us. What a killer All Star Game; for once. A fitting farewell to Yankee Stadium. I know you Sawx fans are prowling around, what say you? Personally, I still think, that as big of a giant jerk as he is, there is something about Schilling. He is gone, and I think the Sawx will be, at least for this year, too. They will go far, but no ring. My Diamondbacks started out like gangbusters, then just went bust. I think they are going to regroup, hang on in Read more →

Mourning The Loss Of A Giant Recently Passed – Sunset Musings II

/69 Comments/in , , , /by

PrickyDespite the wall to wall coverage, not just on NBC and MSNBC, but all the networks, the hand wringing, the eulogizing, the lionization, the body lying in state at the Kennedy Center, and the funeral worthy of royalty, not enough has been said about the recent passing of a giant. Probably because all that bleating was about Saint Tim of Russert. I am talking about a different giant. A giant in my own family has passed. Granpa Pricky.

Granpa Pricky was our 24 foot tall saguaro cactus that majestically guarded the east entrance to Casa de bmaz since at least several decades before Casa de bmaz was built, and our house is almost fifty years old. Just woke up one morning and there it was, keeled over into the road. Saguaros are truly Pricky 1grand and majestic entities, standing tall as the guardians of the Sonoran desert. Granpa Pricky was not just a centurion, he was a home as well. There are now a couple of homeless woodpeckers. Actually these peckars don’t even peck wood that much. They like to perch on my chimney and wail on the metal vent cover on the top. Sounds like a freaking machine gun or jackhammer in the house. Very annoying. Metalpeckers.

At any rate, an autopsy was conducted. Any and all of these photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

The whitish material in the center is very squishy. There is simply a ton of moisture in saguaros. And we don’t even have the cacti on drip systems; all they get is rain water, and it does not rain that much here. It is kind of fibrousPricky 3 pulp like stuff. People trying to survive in the desert desperate for water cut up that pulp and put chunks in their mouth to suck the water (and there is a lot) out. The cactus does produce a red, bulbous, pretty sweet fruit that is fully edible and not bad. Granpa Pricky died on June 5. Here is a photo just taken of the same cross section depicted above.

Note how the pulp is shrinking as opposed to the outer shell and especially the spine. The spine is the circle of dowel like looking things in the middle. When you tap on the outer surface of the pulp, which has hardened, you can tell from the sound that Read more →

The Sun Always Rises

/134 Comments/in , /by

The sun always dawns a new day, and so it has again. The day after a disappointing yesterday. Possibly we get so wrapped up in all the swirling malevolence and scorched trail of destruction by the Administration that is Cheney/Bush, the ravenous corporate robber plunderers, and the feeble enabling Democratic Leadersheep, that we forget that there is still a whole lot that is good, that still maintains, and that is worth feeling warm and fuzzy about and fighting for. Let’s all remember that it does maintain and, as Roberto Benigni would say, Life Is Beautiful.

Marcy is going to take a couple of days off to chill, do some gardening, and have a couple of pints of Beamish with Mr. Wheel. Good, she deserves it. She puts absolutely a ton of heart and effort into both this blog and the common effort as a whole. I probably don’t have to tell you this, but she does a heck of a lot more than you see on the surface, and we are all better for it. And I can tell you, in fact, I think you all personally know from your own passion, that the constant battle seeps inside of you and can consume a great deal of your soul along the way. Disappointment burns, and sometimes you just need to step back so you can realize the tremendous value and beauty of all that you are fighting for.

So, I will be minding the store for the weekend. Marcy may drop by, she may not, but trust me she knows we are all here; and I assure you she is having some much needed fun (and pulling weeds from the yard is way fun!), is working on some great stuff, and will be back Monday and raring to go. In the meantime, I will put up some substantive posts here and there and all here should feel free to use this post, and any this weekend, as a free floating discussion forum on whatever is of interest. If there is anything uniquely significant, then we will deal with that too.

Lastly, several people turned off their cloaking devices and delurked in the last couple of days to say hi and relate their thoughts. That is a good thing. If you are smart enough, and passionate enough, to read this Read more →

Don’t Tell Your Momma, Tell Obama

/206 Comments/in , /by

Well, we got Mr. Obama’s reply to all of us. Everybody has a lot to say to Mr. Obama. Here is the place. Now is the time. Trash talk is allowed. I heard the Lakers, er Celtics just won something. Also heard Curt Schilling is done, how the Sawx gonna win without him? And hey circus freak, the French Grand Prix is this weekend. Migny-Cours is the track? Chat away.

EW’s Trash Talk – Agony In Defeat Edition

/24 Comments/in , , /by

There is a lot going on out there, so consider this a somewhat open thread to yammer at will.

The first item of business is the passing of Jim McKay.

He was host of ABC’s influential "Wide World of Sports" for more than 40 years, starting in 1961. The weekend series introduced viewers to all manner of strange, compelling and far-flung sports events. The show provided an international reach long before exotic backdrops became a staple of sports television.

McKay provided the famous voice-over that accompanied the opening in which viewers were reminded of the show’s mission ("spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports") and what lay ahead ("the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat").

McKay — understated, dignified and with a clear eye for detail — covered 12 Olympics, but none more memorably than the Summer Games in Munich, Germany. He was the anchor when events turned grim with the news that Palestinian terrorists kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes. It was left to McKay to tell Americans when a commando raid to rescue the athletes ended in tragedy.

"They’re all gone," McKay said.
…
McKay was the first sportscaster to win an Emmy Award. He won 12, the last in 1988. ABC calculated that McKay traveled some 41/2 million miles to work events. He covered more than 100 different sports in 40 countries. In 2002, McKay received the International Olympic Committee’s highest honor — the Olympic Order.

McKay was simply an outstanding journalist and reporter. Not just for sports, but of any kind; he was that good. His work will live long, and we have all prospered from it. Thanks for all the thrills of victory and the agonies of defeat Jim, vaya con dios.

Now one of Jim McKay’s greatest loves was thoroughbred horse racing, particularly the triple crown races.

McKay’s first television broadcast assignment was a horse race at Pimlico in 1947. It was the start of a love affair — horse racing captivated him like nothing else.

"There are few things in sport as exciting or beautiful as two strong thoroughbreds, neck and neck, charging toward the finish," he once said.

Today is the Belmont Stakes and Big Brown is going for the triple crown. There hasn’t been a triple crown winner in thirty years, and Big Brown is a hell of a horse in what is seen as a weak field. Lets see if he can make Read more →

Burma Shave – Bush Busts Out A Compassion Beard

/77 Comments/in , , /by

This is shaping up to be a monumental week with important news flying in like a furious wind from every direction, from the primary election battle, to all of the various political scandals, to diplomatic agendas, the Iraq war that has taken a shockingly deadly turn for the worse on all fronts with little notice by the distracted and weary public, to, of course, the economy. Saddle up cowboys and cowgirls, it could be a rough ride. Oh yes, and Marcy will be back soon, rested and ready herself.

The first blow to land for the week did not fly in like a furious wind, it was a furious wind. Specifically a typhoon that blew a path of waste and destruction through the already destitute and oppressed tinderbox that is currently known as Myanmar, and was formerly known as Burma.

The cyclone and storm surge that tore through Myanmar’s Irrawaddy delta killed at least 15,000 people and left 30,000 missing, officials said on Tuesday, warning the toll could rise in low-lying, remote villages.
…
Giving the first detailed account of the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh, Foreign Minister Nyan Win said on state television 10,000 people had died just in Bogalay, a town 90 km (50 miles) southwest of Yangon.

After a meeting with Myanmar’s ambassador to Bangkok, Thai Foreign Minister Noppadol Pattama said he had been told 30,000 people were missing after Saturday’s devastating storm.
…
The total left homeless by the 190 km (120 miles) per hour winds and 12 foot (3.5 meter) storm surge is in the several hundred thousands, United Nations aid officials say.

The scale of the disaster in the military-ruled southeast Asian nation drew a rare acceptance of outside help from the diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned such approaches in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

If there are words sufficient to describe the desperate plight of the people of Myanmar, then they surely escape me. It does add a degree of relative perspective to the mere struggles of democracy we labor on here daily. The random vagaries and inequalities of the human condition on this planet are both stunning and stark; but for a virtually indecipherable molecular difference in a couple of genetic alleles, there may go you or I. Very sobering. I will leave substantive analysis of what, if anything, can be done for these Read more →

EW’s Famous Football Trash Talk* – What The Puck Edition

/49 Comments/in , , /by


Are you ready for some football? Hot damn, I am. And guess what, there really is football to talk about. And lots of other things too, but let’s start off with the gridiron. Hey, did you notice that the asterisk is still in the title? Of course it is, because Spygate is the gift that keeps on giving for the New England Patriots. Thank god that FISA stuff seems to be wrapping up, because the ole Scottish Haggis is gonna be needing the legislative time and resources to question Matt Walsh and get to the bottom of Belichick’s torture tapes.

Alright, lets get down to business. The 2008 NFL Entry Draft is beginning as this post is going up. Michigan offensive lineman Jake Long has already been signed by the Fish, and Howie Long’s spawn is reportedly set to be taken at number two by the Rams. Then the crapshoot begins. What needs does your team have, who do you like to fill them, and what else is up on the pigskin front? I understand the Patriots are torn between this guy and this guy.

Don’t tell Marcy, but there are actually sports other than football. In fact, I understand that, up in Canada, they play something called hockey; and not just any hockey understand you, they are currently in Playoff Hockey for the cherished Stanley Cup. The Cup has to be the coolest trophy in all of sports, every winning player gets his name etched onto it for eternity. And it goes fun places during the year as each player on the winning team gets to cart it around wherever he wants. I hear tell it goes to a lot of pubs, and a few cathouses too. I don’t know diddly squat about hockey, but in honor of our fine feathered friends in the Great White North, Ishmael, Skdadl, and all the others, I thought we ought to give a shout out to Stanley Cup Playoffs, thus the "What The Puck" part of the title to this post.

Due to the surprising response I got the last time, I will also trot out F1 for your consideration. This weekend is Round four of the circus, the Spanish GP from Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. Kimi Raikkonen is on pole, having beaten out Fernando Alonso in literally the last second of qualifying. Read more →

What To Get Teh Woman Who Knows Everything

/55 Comments/in , , /by

I am probably going to get in deep doo doo for this, but, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm". I have thought about doing this since Marcy took off for vacation, but have been hesitating because I wasn’t sure about letting the cat out of the bag as to her birthday. But, what da ya know, Looseheadprop has freed that kitty in her latest post at FDL (very nice post and timeline she did I might add, so take a gander at it).

At any rate, Friday is our intrepid leader Marcy’s birthday. I am here to tell you, keeping this here car known as the Emptywheel blog well maintained, full of fuel and on the road is more work than it looks like. Marcy not only does that consistently day in and day out, she does it with a style, grace, competence and consistency that is unmatched in the blogosphere. The effort she leads here is not only informational and enjoyable reading, it is of demonstrated importance in the effort to expose and repair all of that which is currently broken in our government. Quite frankly, I think you all know this better than I can put into words anyway.

So, in light of the foregoing, I am going to suggest that we have a little fundraising effort for the one that makes all of this possible here. I feel a little goofy doing this, but, you know, I can’t think of any more valuable or worthwhile endeavors. So, if you have a couple of extra Euros, please contribute to keeping this the finest forum in the toobz. You folks are the greatest readers and participants anywhere. Thank you.

Who Let The Dogs Out? The Hounds Of Hatfill and the Federal Rules of Evidence

/21 Comments/in , , , , , /by

On Marcy’s most recent Hatfill post, I made a mostly flippant comment on the dogs in the Hatfill case:

What if Hatfill is just a pig and leaves pizza crusts around everywhere he goes and the dogs are smelling that? What are the customary industry standards for certification of anthrax sniffing dogs anyway; and who sets and regulates them? Or is this just some “wonder mammal” like Lassie or Flipper or something? Was there video of the searches with the wonder dogs? Because there sure should have been. Or are these yet more video items of evidence that have been “misplaced”? What was the nature of the dog’s response? Did it emit a “plaintiff wail” like Nicole Simpson’s Akita? (Great trivia: Nicole’s Akita was named “Kato” too). I don’t see how the dog(s) here meet any evidentiary standards for admissibility or reliance by a court.

Despite it being mostly in jest, that comment had what I consider to be a critical, if not the critical, point in it. From what it appears, the only bit of "evidence" (and I use that descriptor loosely here, and in the generic sense, because I don’t think there was any proper evidence at all) against Hatfill that served as the basis for identifying him was that the dogs had alerted.

We all saw, in the tragic case of the late Richard Jewell, the horrendous and deleterious effects of a defective identification on an individual for an infamous crime. It is simply unconscionable to hang such a collar on someone without substantial credible hard evidence. And, quite frankly, the aura and implications of the anthrax case were, and are, far worse that the Atlanta Olympic park bombing. An entire nation was brought to a standstill and was trembling from a terrorist act that was capable of being repeated anywhere, at any time, in the country via the mail. So the United States government better have a pretty strong case before it implicates someone such as Hatfill in such a crime.

What substantial and credible hard evidence was the identification of Hatfill based on? Well, as has been previously discussed, he had worked in the bio-agent/anthrax field, had the technical expertise and, according to profilers, the personality to do the anthrax deed. The government indicates that he may be one of 50 or fewer people who had the skills to do it and had access to the strain. Then you add in allegations of violence in his past and ties to South African apartheid militias, and you can certainly understand why he was being looked at. While such information is not all entirely innocuous background, it is certainly nothing more than circumstantial and does not inculpate Hatfill; the only alleged link of Hatfill to the actual crime with the anthrax letters, at least that we are aware of to date, was the dogs. That’s it; there is nothing else. What are the standards for admissibility of dog scent Read more →

image_print