Arguably, not as cool as making Baseball's 3,000 Hits Club, but, hey, I played mostly stickball as a kid, and only one year of organized baseball (in which, for some inexplicable reason, I got beaned a lot)
Hmmm ... If I do about five, or six, post, per-day, I might be able to rack up another thousand before years' end ...
We'll have to wait and see on that ...
Meanwhile, let's toss out some tips-of-the-cap to Barry Crimmins, Michael Stickings, Sean Collins, and a boatload of others, who have assisted, tagged, linked, promoted, pushed, or otherwise helped me along the way.
And, to our subscribers, and readers, of The Garlic ...
You knew he was getting on in years, you saw reports of some illness, yet, it was still a gut punch to hear the news that legendary CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite has passed away today, at the age of 92.
Mr. Cronkite anchored the “CBS Evening News” from 1962 to 1981, at a time when television became the dominant medium of the United States. He figuratively held the hand of the American public during the civil rights movement, the space race, the Vietnam war, and the impeachment of Richard Nixon. During his tenure, network newscasts were expanded to 30 minutes from 15.
“It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite,” Sean McManus, the president of CBS News, said in a statement. “More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments.”
It's hard to describe what he meant, how enormous he was.
Even as a young child, I was a news junkie, and grew up watching Walter Cronkite, night-after-night, for nearly 20-years.
It's like arguing about ballplayers, of different generations.
You had to be there, live it, feel it, have be part of your life, to fully understand, and appreciate, the impact this one man had on this country.
As much as you could say Cronkite worked for "The Man", as part of the establishment, you knew that he was the "real deal", that he would give it to you straight, his ending nightly signature "And that's the way it is ... " but one indication of this.
Perhaps covering wars, both World War II (he, as a young reporter, covered the Normandy Invasion), and later, Vietnam, finely tuned his "bullshit" meter.
As the TET offensive continued into February, the anchorman for the CBS evening news, Walter Cronkite, traveled to Vietnam and filed several reports. Upon his return, Cronkite took an unprecedented step of presenting his "editorial opinion" at the end of the news broadcast on February 27th. "For it seems now more certain than ever," Cronkite said, "that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." After watching Cronkite's broadcast, LBJ was quoted as saying. "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America."
Think any of the lightweights since Cronkite carried that kind of cred?
Brad Friedman, over on his Brad Blog, talks of a chance meeting with Cronkite, at FAO Schwarz toy store in New York City, in the late 1980's (after Cronkite had retired from CBS) and notes;
Not a particularly insightful story, other than for me, at that time in my life, I felt as if I had been in the presence of greatness. It was certainly the highlight of my holidays that year. He will be missed. So will the once-great American news corp which he left, and which left all of us, too long ago.
he will be missed. hell, he was missed when he retired in the 80's. now we've got david schuster and chris wallace as elder statesman in the news? god help us.
I don't think I am the only person, that wishes Walter Cronkite would be broadcasting the news forever ...
An incredible, gigantic giant has left us this evening.
God Bless you, Walter Cronkite ... Thank you for sharing your life with us ...
We have, on numerous occasions, tagged (linked), or included in our Bonus Riffs, the blog "Attytood", written by Philadelphia Daily News Senior Writer, Will Bunch.
Often informative, witty, hysterical, prescient, thoughtful, on-the-money, it is, simple, some darn good writing.
Yesterday, was the 30th Anniversary of what became known as President Jimmy Carter's Malaise Speech, not that what it was titled (The "Crisis of Confidence" Speech), which had to do with our energy policies, among other things.
Bunch takes a look back at it, in his post "The speech that could have saved America", noting "Too bad. I think you can make a strong case that America would be a better place if we had only listened that night."
Here's a snip;
I think a number of enormously positive things would have happened if the alternative energy research -- gutted by Reagan, who in the ultimate act of symbolism even ripped out the solar panels that Carter had installed on the roof of the White House -- and other conservation programs had continued. For one thing, U.S. consumers would have pocketed more of the cash that we instead borrowed from China, and innovation in fields like wind and solar power would have created thousands of new jobs. More importantly, our foreign policy would not be ruled by the need to dominate in the Middle East, and regardless of whether or not you think the 2003 Iraq invasion was all about oil, I think we can agree it never would have happened if the United States wasn't importing 70 percent of its oil, which is a lot MORE than 1977 levels.
On July 15 — 30 years ago today — at 10 p.m., President Carter and 100 million people finally faced each other across that familiar Oval Office desk. What they saw and heard was unlike any moment they had experienced from their 39th president. Speaking with rare force, with inflections flowing from meanings he felt deeply, Jimmy Carter called for the “most massive peacetime commitment” in our history to develop alternative fuels.
Contrary to later spin, the speech was extremely popular. The White House was flooded with positive calls. Viewers polled while watching found that the speech inspired them as it unfolded.
Well, we all know how things turned out on that front, and Bunch isn't shy about laying it the feet of Bonzo's former partner, our union-busting 40th President, Ronald Reagan.
The iPhone has applications for almost everything, from helping people to choose the best wine for a meal to locating supermarkets in Holland. Now there is one to help them to stay chaste until marriage.
For just 59p, consumers can download an application that allows them to take a purity pledge and then display a silver ring on their phone to prove their commitment to abstinence.
[snip]
"We are preaching to the converted, and we're going for people who wouldn't buy a ring. The app is not the be-all-and-end-all of purity pledges: it's an entry point."
In the US, around 8m people have taken a purity pledge; in the UK, the figure is around 250,000. The country is regularly described as the teenage pregancy capital of Europe, and last week it was revealed that a £6m campaign to cut teenage pregnancies had failed, leading to an increase, rather than a drop, in the number of girls getting pregnant.
Despite these statistics, Bennett thinks the purity ring app "might take off".
Henry Bennett, Island Wall Entertainment's director may want to work on his interview skills, and not refer to an Abstinence product as an "entry point".
The result, a paper published in the British Medical Journal shows, is that abstinence programmes are "associated with an increase in the number of pregnancies among partners of young male participants". You read that right: abstinence training increases the rate of teenage pregnancy.
I don't know I shouldn't be surprised that there's a iPhone "purity ring" application - after all, I'm all too familiar with the various ways virginity fetish reveals itself. But this still managed to skeeve me.
[snip]
As we all know, however, the only thing virginity pledges are more likely to make teens follow through will is oral, anal, and unprotected sex. As someone replied to me about the app on Twitter, "Girls who download it are less likely to practice safe texting."
If Bennett is really concerned, and sincere, about Teen Abstinence, than keep "Purity Ring" in play ...
Otherwise, fire up the marketing machines for the iButtfuck, or iBlowjob application, and he'll make a killin' on it
If it had been at Bailout Park (Citi Field), there could have been charges of conflict-of-interest
What has us posting about this today (aside from the Flying Monkeys of the Right Wing Freak Show calling Obama a "sissy" for the way he threw the ball), was a Tweet discovered early this morning, from Greg Mitchell (@GregMitch);
NYT says Obama's toss tonite wasn't so hot but "he was pitching on 1,371 days’ rest." Everyone knows you need to go every 5th day.
Most amusing!
A good friend informed us that it is not a tradition to have the President make the first toss, the last time this was done for the All Star Game was in 1976, then-President Gerald Ford doing the honors (and, no, he didn’t bean himself).
If we use the benchmark, say, of "The World According To Garp", this is going to be a long, very rich, very loving marriage.
As you may recall, while out house-shopping, a lightweight plane comes crashing into the house Garp, and wife, were looking at, to which Garp squeals with excitement that they must buy it, for what are the odds of a plane hitting the house again?
Martha Stewart recommends that to "get the blossoms to the wallflowers", the bride should stand "on a balcony, the top of a staircase or a chair". But at this particular wedding in the Tuscan countryside, it was decided to make what proved to be an imprudent break with tradition.
Pensieri was entrusted with the bouquet so that he could cast it dashingly into the outstretched arms of the unmarried female guests as the plane swooped by.
According to Italian news agency reports, however, the flowers disappeared into the tail rotor, causing an explosion in the motor and pitching the ultra-light into a dive. After just missing a hostel in which some 50 young people were gathered, the aircraft plunged to earth in a wood.
[snip]
Isidoro Pensieri, 44, was today recovering at a hospital in Pisa from serious facial and head injuries and two broken legs, sustained when the ultra-light aircraft in which he was travelling crashed near a restaurant at which a wedding reception was being held.
Yikes!
This is one wedding, both the bride, groom, and everybody in attendance won't have trouble remembering.
Something tells me, if Garp was attending the wedding, he would rush to the alter and marry the girl himself.
I’m also not aware as to whether such cases are taken seriously in Saudi Arabia, though it appears at first glance that it is. Here in the United States, there are a number of people who believe in angels, demons, etc., and believe it or not, lawsuits are filed against such creatures. These are, obviously, routinely dismissed. My personal favorite lawsuit of this kind is Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, in which a suit against Satan was denied on the grounds of lack of personal jurisdiction and failure to provide instructions to serve process. Funny as that is, this opinion is now routinely cited in judicial opinions regarding jurisdiction and I read it on two separate occasions in law school.
While, over on PrawfsBlawg, Dave Fagundes expresses optimism that new law will emerge;
The mind boggles at the legal difficulties raised by the case. How will the family serve process on the genie? If the genie fails to show up in court, and the family gets a default judgment, how will they collect? (Presumably the genie can use his magical powers to conjure up plenty of cash to satisfy the judgment.) Or does the suit seek injunctive relief? This case represents good news for legal academics, too. The field of genie law is significantly under-written (no articles on Westlaw based on a very cursory search), so the lawsuit should provide lots of fodder for novel scholarship.
And, we had to give ourselves a slap-upside-the-head this morning.
With the avalanche of new news, and reports, detailing the lawbreaking, and illegal activities, of The Bush Grindhouse, the PartyofNoicans, and Flying Monkeys of the Right Wing Freak Show are frantically stroking their tiny violins, that any investigation, let alone prosecution, of the dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds, would be damaging to the country, that it is just partisan politics by the liberal Democrats, and just avoid all realism whatsoever.
So yesterday, on MSNBC, they had a segment that included Marcy Wheeler, aka Emptywheel, from Firedoglake.com, pitted against Townhall Flying Monkey Matt Lewis, discussing this this weekends' CIA news, of how, at the direction of Shadow President Dick Cheney, Congress was left in the dark as to certain programs the spooks were undertaking.
And, right near the end of the segment, in a calm, factual tone, Marcy spoke what just about the entire world knows, the hypocracy of the PartyofNocians, and Right Wing Freak Show, pointing out how Bill Clinton was hounded, and, impeached (by the Newt Gingrich-led House) for a blow job.
“Your idea is that after investigating Bill Clinton for a blow job for like five years, we shouldn’t investigate the huge, grossly illegal things that were done under the past administration, only because Alberto Gonzales was too much in the back pocket of Dick Cheney to do it while he was still in office.”
As Jane Hamsher later pointed out, it's pretty effin' comical that after weeks of making tea bagger jokes, the hosts felt compelled to apologize for Marcy's "outburst." Screw that. Blowjob is a word in the dictionary. It made perfect sense in context. And it's not on the fabled 7 dirty words list.
Oh don't worry, this doesn't even count for a warm-up.
The cacophony is building up, and it will be deafening, especially as more, and more, shit comes out (on top of what's already been shaken loose) on the whole gang of them - Bush, Cheney, Libby, Addington, Yoo, Gonzales, et. all.
There's been barrels-and-barrels of ink (or bits of type) used up on the death of newspapers, how it will wipe out journalism.
They, perhaps, begrudgingly, put their content on-line (not, in all cases, necessary well), with the rumbles of charging people to read said content (The NYT did that, stopped it, and now may be rebuilding the firewall), which, invariably drops the numbers of readers (as was the case, with the NYT, numerous bloggers posted all, or most, of the NYT Op-ED Columnists, so those that didn't pay the ransom could stay caught up).
Now, this may too simple.
Perhaps the newspapers should stay as newspapers, even on-line.
This was done a few years ago, by a high-tech pub, whose name I can't recall.
You had the on-line experience of turning the pages, you could click a specific article, enlarge it, etc.
While I haven't researched it for this post, I believe the technical ability to do this is there, or, wouldn't be all that arduous to ramp up.
Newspapers could layout the paper on-line, as in print, make the same ads as in print interactive, linked ... In other words, combine the best of both worlds, and they would likely see their circulation stay stable, or, actually increase.
If they continue to print the paper, possibly, they could boost advertising prices, being said advertiser would be getting double exposure (and, a measurable hit rate, via the on-line edition).
Charging for the on-line content may work for some specific, niche-oriented pubs, but something like the NYT, and other daily papers, there's so many ways on-line, so many places to get information (and places that aren't charging for it), that it is unlikely to sustain itself, at least, regarding major, or breaking, news.
What newspapers need to do is stop acting like the last blacksmiths, and harness-makers, in town, complaining about all the Model T's riding around the streets.
Get a glove, get in the game ...
There's a lot more dances left on this card, the band will play on, and we will likely see a number of attempts and iterations, some messy and jumbled, before this all settles down.
As we all know, this is the day marking "the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution."
If there's a party in your area, then get to partying!
- A family in Saudi Arabia has taken a genie to court, alleging theft and harassment, according to local media.
The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper.
An investigation was under way, local court officials said.
[snip]
The family, which has lived in the same house near the holy city of Medina for 15 years, said it became aware of the spirit in the past two years.
"We began hearing strange noises," the head of the family, who requested anonymity, told Al-Watan. "In the beginning, we didn't take it seriously, but after that, stranger things started happening and the children got really scared when the genie began throwing stones."
The genie -- or genies -- had demands: “A woman spoke to me first, and then a man. They said we should get out of the house,” said the family member, adding that his clan fled their home near the city of Medina.
A genie with demands ...
Something tells me there's a story, behind the story, here.
Hmmm ...
Use the ol' "Genie haunting my house" to get out of a mortgage, or back rent? ... A bad business deal? ... A less than bulging marriage dowry?
Maybe, it's just that they live next door to a drunk.
Or, perhaps, these people are related to the Palins, and are stark-raving lunatics
It was an accident waiting to happen -- an open sewer and a 15-year-old girl who was texting while she walked.
Alexa Longueira, a high school sophomore, was walking along Victory Boulevard near Travis Avenue on Staten Island Wednesday evening when she felt the earth move and was plunged into smelly darkness.
She said the manhole she fell in to was left open and unattended with no warning signs or orange cones. She said two workers with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection failed to secure the area as they prepared to flush the sewer.
The high school sophomore has a case. While she was negligent in texting and walking, the courts have previously ruled that cities must anticipate inattentive people or people with disabilities who may not see an open manhole or ditch. In Fletcher v. City of Aberdeen (1959), the city workers failed to put back barriers around an open hole and the court found that the city had to anticipate such individuals who cannot see such a danger. Likewise, Robinson v. Pioche, Bayerque & Co. (1855), a court found that the inebriation of an individual was not a defense for a city. In a statement that may fit this teenager’s case, the court held that “a drunken man is as much entitled to a safe street as a sober one, and much more in need of it.”
And, yes, the family is practicing shouting out "Show Me The Money".
Longueira said she was helped out of the five-foot deep sewer by an apologetic DEP worker.
She went to the hospital and the city opened an investigation, issuing the following statement:
"We regret that this happened and wish the young woman a speedy recovery."
The Longueira family wants more than get well wishes. They may sue. Alexa's mother, Kim, said: "It could have been an elderly person, a mother pushing a stroller. It could have been anyone."
Alexa lost one of her sneakers in the sewer. She does not want it back.
The girl's mother said Alexa will see more doctors next week to get an MRI and check for damage to her spine.
And for bonus points, here’s the kicker. She falls into a five foot deep sewer in an accident traumatic enough that she lost one of her shoes in the process. Yet she managed to keep hold of the phone.
There's new commercial waiting to be screened.
All those Verizon people crammed into the sewer, girl disheveled, only one sneaker on, looking up, through the open manhole to blue skies, shouting "Can you hear me now?", the geeky glasses guy giving her a "thumbs up".
