Sorry Garlic Fans, the day got consumed by duties on the homefront, and, by this evening, no energy to be creative (or even muster half the juice to do something of note).
So, we will leave you with a classic, from Les McCann.
One that will also serve as a "Shout-Out" to David Brooks
Enjoy!
Les McCann - With These Hands
11 July 2008... On The Garlic
A Remark You Made
11 July 2007... On The Garlic
"Anyway, look, nobody has accused me of being Shakespeare, you know?"
Top Ten Cloves: Other Things DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff Feels In His Gut
11 July 2006... On The Garlic
Have Head-Butt, Will Travel - Mr. Zizou Goes To Washington; World Cup Golden Ball Winner Wooed By Bush Team; Likely Will Be Assigned To Bolton at U.N.
11July 2005.. On The Garlic
London Bombings Force Blair To Name Own Axis of Evil; Bush Upset; May Sue In International Court To Force Name Change
IOC Dumps Baseball; Fewer HR's and Little Scandal Potential; New MLB Ban On Steroids Limits PR Effort of Games, IOC TV Time
Top Ten Cloves: What Will Happen To The Europe Union Without A Constitution
Oh man, this could only have happened on a Friday.
If the Sanford, Ensign, Palin, and Jackson circuses weren't enough for you, than enter, stage right, David Brooks, Rightwing Freak Show columnist for the NYT, seemingly (more on this below), with a bit of a buzz on, being interviewed on cable news.
David Brooks says a Republican senator groped his thigh at a dinner party
Whoa!
A Republican Senator with his hand on David Brooks' inner thigh?
Now, with that specific identification, one name that jumps out first is Larry Craig.
I mean, you can put together little, milquetoast, Wally Cox-like Brooks, either being intimidated, or, perhaps, excited, by big, burly, Larry "Wide-Stance" Craig feeling him up, maybe fantasizing hearing (later, of course) "You bad boy ... You naughty, boy ... You nasty, bad, naughty boy"
John Cole, at Balloon Juice, is hoping that it is "John Kyl or John Cornyn", while Libby Spencer, on her The Impolitic, is having a hard time containing herself - "It would be irresponsible not to speculate"
And, doesn't Brooks seem a bit too giddy?
Even host Nora O'Donnell sensed something amiss;
O’DONNELL: Can I ask one other question David? Do you think, what about female or women politicians? Are they dignified and are there examples of when they have not? Or does it tend to be the men who less dignified?
BROOKS: Yeah, I think that’s mostly a matter of genetics. I do think that…I do think there’s loneliness.
O’DONNELL: That was just a softball, David, and you really hit it very well.
BROOKS: Yeah, I wish I could think of sort of St. Bernards, sloppy women who are licking their aides, but but no, I can’t think of any.
HARWOOD: I’m not going there.
O’DONNELL: Did you have a couple drinks at lunch, David? I mean, this is clearly.
BROOKS: No, you’ve hit me…I’m trying not to be too dignified and stuffy.
PBS's Lehrer Admits Brooks "Body Language" Skills "Creeps Me Out" ... Reveals Uncomfortable With Columnist "Staring At Me" On-Set; Alludes "Toe-Tapping" Also Involved
News Item: Google developing a PC operating system that would compete with Windows
10. Based on one specific inquiry, Google Chrome OS will work in Argentina
9. Google tried to develop Sarah Palin version, but the OS kept quitting on them
8. May be a delay, in getting your computer to "invite" you to use operating system
7. Other users of Google Chrome OS can use Google Earth to read your computer screen
6. Google Chrome OS will be Twitter-Friendly, so Gmail on it limited to 140 characters, per email
5. Some super application is bound to make its way into the vernacular - "Can suck the chrome off a Google Operating System"
4. Google Chrome OS is so promising, Senator John Ensign's mother is going to buy it, and give to his ex-mistress as a gift
3. With built-in Google Flu Tracker, Chrome OS let's you know when you are sick
2. New feature on boot-up: "I'm Feeling Lucky"
1. To gain market-share, Google issuing a special edition Michael Jackson Chrome OS, that will run endlessly, and come with automated Diprivan dispenser
Bonus Links
Elise Ackerman: Google's Chrome OS a direct shot across Microsoft's bow
Michael Arrington - Google Chrome: Redefining The Operating System
Joe Trippi: Google announces netbook OS. What next?
MG Siegler: Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It’s Made of Chrome
Google: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
10 July 2008... On The Garlic
Top Ten Cloves: Other Ways President Bush Could Have Dissed The G8 Summit
Retro Garlic: Tupperware Lady and Map Maker Team Up
10 July 2007... On The Garlic
MLB All-Star Game ... Get Your Handy Baseball Primer, Right Here!
Introducing The Reaction!
10 July 2006... On The Garlic
Developing Story – Santorum Channeling Dead Pols; Santorum: “I See Dead Politicians!”
Aides Talk Of “Wild Ranting”; Fear Strain Of Up-Hill Campaign Taking Toll On Embattled Senator
Top Ten Cloves: Ways White House Will Go About Naming President Bush’s New Diplomacy 
9 July 2008... On The Garlic
It Will, At The Family's Request, Be A Closed Casket
9 July 2007... On The Garlic
Oxymoron of the Day: Karl Rove at an Idea Festival
For All We Know, Maybe Scooter Did Throw A Hissy Fit ... The Results - The Garlic's Weekly Poll
9 July 2006... On The Garlic
Weekend Special - Sautéed Cloves 9 July 2006
Poll Results ... The Ball's In Robert's Court ... The Garlic Poll July 2 - July 8 ... New Poll - End of Cowboy Diplomacy
It's 2009, right, not 1959?
Somebody forget to change the calendar at The Valley Club, in Huntingdon Valley, PA.
And for that, we have to fiddle around, move a few things, to squeeze them into The Garlic's Ignorant Dolts roster.
Here's some of the headlines, so far, this evening;
60 Black Kids Booted from Philly Pool For Being Black — Speak Out
Racist Outrage of the Day (Year?)
Guess Chlorine Can’t Kill Those Germs
Philadelphia private swim club forces out black children
This is 2009, this is the north, this is America, and this is what it looks like
The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers' first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.But, wait, it gets worse ...
"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."
The next day the club told the camp director that the camp's membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.
The explanation they got was either dishearteningly honest or poorly worded.Whoa, he didn't say that, did he?
"There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.
The Valley Club has been a staple in the Huntingdon Valley community, since it's chartering in 1954!
We continue to carry on that tradition by staying engaged with many of the events happening around Lower Moreland and the surrounding communities.
We missed out, chiefly due to events here on the homefront, the entire brouhaha, death snake dance of the Washington Post firing writer extraordinaire Dan Froomkin (often linked here on The Garlic).
It was a doozy, with the WAPO being egged and toilet-papered by a better part of the blogosphere.
Here's Paul Krugman;
Thus we still live in an era in which you have to have been wrong to be respectable. You’re not considered serious about national security unless you were for invading Iraq; you’re not considered a serious political analyst unless you spent the last 3 years of the Bush administration predicting a Republican comeback; you’re not considered a serious economic analyst unless you dismissed the idea that the Bush Boom, such as it was, rested on a housing bubble.Glen Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, dday, Jane Hamsher, The Raw Story, and Down With Tyranny all wailed on the WAPO, in similar fashion.
That’s why the firing of Dan Froomkin now makes a perverse sort of sense. As long as the right was in power, he was in effect the Post’s designated moonbat, someone who attracted readers but didn’t threaten the self-esteem of the self-perceived serious people at the paper. But now he looks like someone who was right when the serious people were wrong — and that means he has to go.
In yet another sign of how online media outlets are strengthening as their older establishment predecessors are struggling to survive, The Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin to be its Washington Bureau Chief and regular columnist/blogger. Froomkin will oversee a staff of four five reporters and an Assistant Editor, guide The Huffington Post's Washington reporting, and write at least two posts per week to be featured on its main page and Politics page. I learned last night of the hiring and spoke to both Arianna Huffington and Froomkin this morning.
[snip]
While this pairing is, in some ways, a natural one (even the Post Ombudsman suggested that "Web sites like The Huffington Post or Politico would seem a perfect fit"), there are also potential sources of tension. As a practitioner of what he calls "accountability journalism" -- "explaining how Washington works; pulling no punches" -- Froomkin has been a vehement critic of the Obama administration for the last several months, while The Huffington Post frequently trumpeted (some might say "cheerleading") the Obama campaign and even his presidency (though it has become mildly more critical of Obama in recent months; its screaming, red headline today: "White House May Cave on Public Option"). Will Froomkin's harsh criticisms of Obama alienate an Obama-loving HuffPost readership?
And given the central importance of Arianna Huffington's personal relationships with key media figures and those in power, will Froomkin's unrestrained criticisms of many of those same people undermine a key aspect of The Huffington Post's business and promotional strategies? Both Huffington and Froomkin insist that he will have full editorial freedom, though that commitment is often more easily embraced in theory than in practice.
Oh, we couldn't resist this one ...
Yesterday, we did a post on Robert McNamara's death ("He Should Have Stuck To Making Cars"), and, included in the Updated Bonus Links, Joseph Galloway's "Commentary: Galloway on McNamara: Reading an obit with great pleasure", which tells the tale of ... Well ... A particular ferry ride taken by McNamara.
Late last night, Spencer Ackerman (who was also in our Bonus Links) posted, pointing to Galloway's piece.
Typically, I might highlight a quote, but in this case, much better if you go read it yourselves ... It's short, and, most amusing ...
To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever
We have to give our buddy, author and consultant Rick Maurer (@rickmaurer2), a H/T for this one ...
Hyundai, Who's Laughing Now?
Morning Edition, July 7, 2009 · In the early 1990s, Hyundai's image was so bad, the brand served as an insult in a Hollywood movie.
The film was Glengarry Glen Ross — David Mamet's tale of a down and out real estate office. Alec Baldwin plays a highly-paid, corporate heavy.
In once scene, he humiliates one of the agents he's come to fire: "You drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an $80,000 BMW."
That was one of the cleaner titles we came up for this post ...
Pretty amazing, that there are xenophobes protecting the urinals of America's ballparks
On Yankee Stadium Restroom Dispute, the City Settles
New York City will pay $10,001 to settle a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Queens man who was ejected from the old Yankee Stadium last August after trying to use the bathroom during the playing of “God Bless America.” In addition, the team has publicly declared that it has no policy prohibiting fans from moving about during the playing of the patriotic song, which the team began playing during games after 9/11.Gee, thanks Yankee Management, and the City of New York ...
[snip]
But in a stipulation [pdf] as part of the settlement of the lawsuit against the team and the city, the Yankees declared “that they have no policy or practice at the new Yankee Stadium that imposes any restrictions on fans wishing to move about the Stadium during the playing of ‘God Bless America’ to do not also apply during the rest of the game.” The team also said it had no intention of instituting such a policy.
7 July 2008... On The Garlic
This Was Too Surreal ...
7 July 2006... On The Garlic
Breaking News! Lieberman Pledges To Support “Whichever Party Elects Me”; Post-Debate Bombshell - Lieberman Announces Plan C – Will Run In All 50 States; Hires Nader For ‘Underdog” Experience; Pledges To Support “Whichever Party Elects Me”
Top Ten Cloves: Issues For Tom Delay With Having To Stay On Ballot In November
7 July 2005... On The Garlic
Miller Sticks To Guns, Jailed For Not Naming Source; "His Way" Hogan Places Writer With Other Special Cases He's Sentenced
London Wins Olympic Bid, But With A Catch; IOC Names Switzerland As Games Official Food Host
Top Ten Cloves: Ways Senate Will Ignore Special Interest Groups Over Court Pick
I heard someone, on television, I believe, say that he was our generations' Donald Rumsfeld.
Not quite.
Rumsfeld was far more evil and sadistic, however, equally incompetent
Robert McNamara died today, age 93, the Big Cheese of the Vietnam War, both Kennedy's, and Johnson's Secretary of Defense, the architect of our pouring troops into the needless war.
I don't have a lot to offer.
He came close to making my life hell.
I registered for the draft, nearly a year after I was mandated to, and only because my parents were aghast I hadn't, my WWII Navy veteran father driving me to the draft office.
I sweated it out for a year, before the Selective Service Draft was ended (while I researched Canada at the local library).
We had four guys from the neighborhood come home in body bags (all under the age of 22), and more-than-a-handful returned as junkies, more fucked up than when they left (which, for a few, that was truly unfathomable - and frightening)
No tears flowing on this one.
Will Bunch, over on Attytood, has a great post up;
Robert McNamara died today at age 93. As Secretary of Defense for Presidents John F. Kennedy and more notably Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s, it was McNamara who oversaw America's tragic military buildup in Vietnam. That made McNamara -- right up until today's news -- a vivid anti-icon to those Baby Boomers who opposed the war -- and I think you can make the case that his death is that of the most historical significance of the slew of recent "celebrity" passings, no matter how many millions of people are gathering outside the Staples Center to remember the Gloved One.He should have stuck to making cars ...
[snip]
Regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, it's hard not to imagine there wasn't some higher purpose to McNamara's longevity. You could argue that it was a cosmic punishment, of sorts, to live so many years with the searing memories of so many who died so horrifically because of his misguided decisions from the comforts of his big desk at the Pentagon. Or you argue that he was still here in the early 2000s as a kind of a warped prophet, a flesh-and-blood monument to the folly of militarism. If that is true, then the fact that America refused to pay any attention is Robert McNamara's greatest tragedy of all.
Bee Balls!
No, nothing like that, not an apiary version of "Hung", or anything like that.
More along the lines of violence, the self-defense kind.
Last week, we learned of ants taking over the world, so, this week, it's the attack option of honeybees, versus their predator, the hornet.
Honeybee mobs overpower hornets
Japanese honeybees form "bee balls" - mobbing and smothering the predators.Those Argentinian Ants better watch out ...
This has previously been referred to as "heat-balling", but a study has now shown that carbon dioxide also plays a role in its lethal effectiveness.
In the journal Naturwissenschaften, the scientists describe how hornets are killed within 10 minutes when they are trapped inside a ball of bees.
Japanese giant hornets, which can be up to 5cm long, are voracious predators that can devastate bees' nests and consume their larvae.
But, if the bees spot their attacker in time, they mount a powerful defence in the form of a bee ball. This study found that the heat inside the bee ball alone was not enough to reliably kill the hornets.
[snip]
His team recreated experimental bee balls and took direct measurements from inside them.
They anaesthetised giant hornets and fixed them to the tip either of a thermometer probe, or the inlet of a gas detector.
Once the hornets recovered from their anaesthesia, the probes were touched to the bees' nest.
"The bee ball formed (around the hornet) immediately," said Dr Sakamoto.
[snip]
As the temperature inside the ball increased to more than 45C, the carbon dioxide level also rose sharply.
In a parallel experiment, the scientists found that in an atmosphere relatively high in carbon dioxide, the temperature at which hornets could survive for 10 minutes was lowered.
"So we concluded that carbon dioxide produced inside the bee ball by the honeybees is a major factor, together with temperature, involved in the bees' defence."
6 July 2008... On The Garlic
Oil That Is, Black Gold, Tehran Tea ...
Rice Auditioning For New Role of Aricept Spokesperson
Top Ten Cloves: Ways Google Can Provide Better Day Care
6 July 2007... On The Garlic
Let's Hear It For The Quid Pro Quo ... New Garlic Song - Hush Little Libby
Of Blackboards, Chalk and Legacies ... The Constitutional Crises Continues
6 July 2005... On The Garlic
Cheney Emerging As Next Justice Pick By Bush Feared; VP On Vetting Panel; Nearly Same Situation But Now Has Residency Established
Rove Said To Be "Under Pressure" Over Leak Accusation; Key Bush Strategist Shows "Erratic Behavior" As Critics, Press Call For Admission
Top Ten Cloves: Other Things Jacques Chirac Thinks of England and Finland
Well, good thing we did our posting early morning, yesterday, as the afternoon got taken over by events on the homefront.
We had to get The Aunt up to the hospital early afternoon, which ended up to be an extended ER visit, and turned into their admitting her for the night, for treatment and monitoring.
Today, up until early evening, was a all-day-hospital visit, more than half of it, waiting for the discharge orders and paperwork.
She's home and resting comfortably.
That all adds up to virtually zero energy left to do anything creative, including putting into shape a handful of partially-prepared posts sitting in the files.
So, we will get off a small riff, on Mommy Moose, and growing-infamous, pedal-to-the-metal, whining press conference on Friday.
We searched for a bit, to come up with a tune The Wasilla Whiz Kid could use, as, more-or-less, a theme song, or soundtrack, for her virtual meltdown (as well as cover our own weekend).
And, we think we found it, an old war horse, the lyrics playing, rather nicely, in-sync, to the soon-to-be-ex-Governor.
It's the Willie Nelson chestnut, "Crazy", performed with Mr. & Mrs. Elvis Costello
Diana Krall, Elvis Costello & Willie Nelson - Crazy (Live)
Oh No!
I'm calling Sarah Palin crazy!
I might be sued!
5 July 2008... On The Garlic
So Nice ... The Very Last Moments of Jesse Helms
5 July 2006... On The Garlic
Garlic Exclusive! 1st Draft Of Coulter’s Plagiarism Response; Coulter Speaks (Sort Of)
Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reasons For North Korea To Run Missile Tests
5 July 2005... On The Garlic
Conservatives Threaten Taco Bell Boycott, Justice Weekends; Economic Message To Bush If Gonzales Placed On High Court
Founder of Earth Day, Gaylord A. Nelson, Dead at 89; Mother Earth To Offer "Volcanic Salute To A Great Friend"
Live 8 Concerts Generate Over 26 Million Text Messages; Over 24-Million Exchanged About "The Blond In Front of The London Stage"
Top Ten Cloves: Most Surprising Things NASA Discovers With Deep Impact and Comet Tempel 1 
Even before the Paris attacks, the Clown Car Candidates had already unleashed a torrent of racist, homphobic, and xenophobic remarks. ...
