The Garlic: 08/23/2009

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Where Did We See This Before?

Seems that The Washington Post is giving Stephen Hayes a run for his money, of being the Chief Cheney Fluffer, with an enormo article today, essentially, endorsing the Shadow President's view that torture is good.

But it is the Politico article that has rung bells for me;

The story -- which seems sure to provoke an intense reaction from the many critics of President Bush's interrogation policies, and comes just before Dick Cheney's appearance, taped Friday, on Fox News Sunday ...

Hmmm ...

I guess with Little Timmy Russert gone, MTP isn't quite the friendly place for Shadow President Cheney to go promote his propaganda (not that David Gregory would, necessarily, do anything different in making Cheney as comfortable as he could, tossing big, ol' Russert-like softballs).

Now granted, the Politico piece notes the interview was taped on Friday.

You have to figure that Shadow President Cheney has his sources, if not given an advance copy outright, so it will be interesting to see how much of it Cheney quotes, or, coincidentally, states in similar, if not the exact same language.

Not as sharp as the old NYT/Judy Miller days, but, you have to figure, not actually still being in power, they have to work a little harder to pull those strings.

And, Little Timmy Russert must be smiling in his grave.

Bonus Links

Greg Sargent - Stephen Hayes: Cheney Himself Didn’t Actually Torture. So There!

DougJ: Post goes pro-torture

Emptywheel: The WaPo Declares Itself Unable to Find the Truth

Melvin A. Goodman - Exposed: The WPost’s One-Sided Account of Torture and Abuse

This Date ... On The Garlic

29 August 2008... On The Garlic

McCain VP Confusion; Staff Had Canadian Actress Sarah Polley In Dayton Hotel For Three Days

29 August 2007... On The Garlic

Breaking News! Another Bombshell - Craig To Enter Rehab; Cites Suffering From 'Restroom Leg Syndrome'

29 August 2006... On The Garlic

More Than A Few Cloves ... The Garlic Special - Hurricane Katrina Redux

Friday, August 28, 2009

New Ignorant Dolt: Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins

Or, better yet, Congress's "Great White Dope".

That being Kansas Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins, for bursting through to grab the Ignorant Dolt Crown and Sceptre.

We go to the local Kansas paper for the call;

Jenkins' remark raises eyebrows

"Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope," Jenkins said to the crowd. "I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington."

[snip]

The phrase "great white hope" is frequently tied to racist attitudes permeating the United States when heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson fought in the early 1900s. Reaction to the first black man to reign as champion was intense enough to build support for a campaign to find a white fighter capable of reclaiming the title from Johnson.

[snip]

Mary Geiger, a spokeswoman for Jenkins, said the reference to a great white hope wasn't meant to denote a preference by Jenkins for politicians of a particular "race, creed or any background." Jenkins was expressing faith fellow GOP representatives in the House would be key players in returning Republicans to a leadership role in Washington, Geiger said.

"There may be some misunderstanding there when she talked about the great white hope," Geiger said. "What she meant by it is they have a bright future. They're bright lights within the party."

Sorry, there Representative Jenkins (and Mary Geiger).

If you meant to reference the young, "bright lights" PartyofNoicans, then you would have said something like "we have some young bright lights in the PartyofNoicans"

There is no other context to "Great White Hope";

The phrase "great white hope" is frequently tied to racist attitudes permeating the United States when heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson fought in the early 1900s. Reaction to the first black man to reign as champion was intense enough to build support for a campaign to find a white fighter capable of reclaiming the title from Johnson.

If you don't want to go back to Jack Johnson, just go back to the early 1980's, and the Larry Holmes - Gerry Cooney fight;

Holmes successfully defended the WBC belt 17 times until December 11, 1983, when he voluntarily relinquished that title for the championship of the new International Boxing Federation. In 1982, Holmes gained some measure of notoriety when he fought Gerry Cooney, a white boxer who many thought had a chance to unseat Holmes. A lot of racial tension was involved with this fight, with Cooney considered "the great white hope" and the best white heavyweight since Rocky Marciano. During the prefight introductions, Holmes was announced first and Cooney second. Although champions are traditionally announced second Holmes himself had been introduced second when he won the title from Ken Norton. Despite bitterness and racial tension among fans of both fighters, the two became friends. In the 1990s, a movie called The Great White Hype starring Damon Wayans and Peter Berg was loosely based on the Holmes-Cooney fight. Holmes defeated Cooney by TKO in the 13th round.

We're fairly confident, that in referring to Gerry Cooney as the "great white hope", the boxing world wasn't articulating they thought Cooney was one of boxing's "young bright lights".

Ignorant Doltness of this level, the stupidity to say it, and then, the extra dollop of stupidity, to try to spin a different meaning on it ...

This should disqualify Jenkins for any elected office, at any level, including grade school government.

Let it be known, with our growing roster of Ignorant Dolts, Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins is one of our young, bright lights of Ignorant Dolts.

We can only look forward to more incredible denseness coming from her.

Bonus Ignorant Dolt Lynn Jenkins Riffs

Logan Murphy: KS Republican Lynn Jenkins Says GOP Struggling To Find "Great White Hope" To Take On Obama

Ta-Nehisi Coates: GOP In Search Of A "Great White Hope"

Colby Hall: Health Care Debate Gets Racial With “Great White Hope” Comment

Matthew Yglesias: GOP Member of Congress Looking for “Great White Hope” to Tackle Obama

Bonus Bonus

Hmmm ...

Wonder if Ignorant Dolt Jenkins will be putting this on her iPod?

Miles Davis - A Tribute to Jack Johnson(Remix)

Good Parody ...

This thing has been making the rounds today, from the Onion News Network.

It pretty funny, and remarkably, watching it, brings to mind watching almost any cable news show, (and in particular, Faux News).

Check it out.

Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

This Date ... On The Garlic

28 August 2008... On The Garlic

Here's Where Time Magazine Screwed Up

"You're Not Big Enough To Do This To Rocco ... I Kill You ..."

28 August 2007... On The Garlic

This Is Just Too, Too Rich ...

Top Ten Cloves: Things About Admitting You Have A Wide Stance

28 August 2006... On The Garlic

Breaking News! President Calls Hurricanes Meteorological-Fascists; With Katrina Anniversary Comes Bush Move To Push Hurricane Season Back; Cites Potential To “Disrupt Too Many Vacations”; Reaffirms War, Adjusting To Win Against Powerful Storms

Top Ten Cloves: Things Overheard At The Emmy’s Last Night

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Happy 100th, Prez!

No, we won't be a dolt, and leave you hanging, sitting there, reading this, thinking "Okay, what President would have been 100-years-old today?"

This guy was never elected.

Check that.

He was, perhaps, unanimously acclaimed as the coolest cat on the planet.

The original hipster.

The Prez we speak of, and herald today, is Jazz giant Lester Young.

Many of my friends know, one of my biggest laments in life is that I don’t wake up in the morning with the ability to play the tenor saxophone like Lester Young (if I could play it at all, that is).

Man, Prez just beat it to death ... A monster player, paid his dues in the Basie Band, and swung with the best of them.

From All About Jazz;

Lester “Prez” Young was one of the giants of the tenor saxophone. He was the greatest improviser between Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong of the 1920s and Charlie Parker in the 1940s. From the beginning, he set out to be different: He had his own lingo; In the Forties, he grew his hair out. The other tenor players held their saxophones upright in front of them, so Young held his out to the side, kind of like a flute (see picture above). Then, there was the way he played: Hawkins played around harmonic runs. He played flurries of notes and had a HUGE tone that the other tenor players of the day emulated. Young used a softer tone that resulted In a soft, light sound (if you didn't know better, you would think the two were playing different instruments). Young used less notes and slurred notes together, creating more melodic solos. He played the ordinary in an extraordinary way, using a lot of subtleties to produce music that Billie Holiday said flips you out of your seat with surprise.

And, lest you think that it is only our opinion about Lester Young being the "coolest cat on the planet";

From Jamie Katz, in 'Smithsonian Magazine';

Like many of Young’s phrases—musical and verbal—the comment was both deft and shrouded. He was known for speaking a private language, some of which has entered the American lexicon. The expression “that’s cool” was probably coined by him, as were “bread” (for money), “You dig?” and such colorful sayings as “I feel a draft”—code for prejudice and hostility in the air. He also wore sunglasses in nightclubs, sported a crushed black porkpie hat and tilted his saxophone at a high angle “like a canoeist about to plunge his paddle into the water,” as the New Yorker’s Whitney Balliett put it. Rolling Stone later pronounced Prez “quite likely the hippest dude that ever lived.”

And, Wikipedia;

Young was viewed as an eccentric by those he chose to exclude from his circle (those he did not trust). He did so by creating his own language that his friends could understand, that might baffle outsiders. Those on the outside viewed it as a rococo and often inscrutable personal slang, famously referring to a narcotics detective or policeman as a "Bob Crosby" (referring to Bob and Bing Crosby if multiple police officers were present), a rehearsal as a "molly trolley", and an instrumentalist's keys or fingers as his "people". He dressed distinctively, especially in his trademark pork pie hat. When he played saxophone, particularly in his younger days, he would sometimes hold the horn off to the right side at a near-horizontal angle, like a flute. Joop Visser believes that it was Lester's residence in the stuffy Reno Club with the Count Basie Band that caused this idiosyncrasy, as by holding it that way it was the only way Lester could keep his tenor sax from knocking into someone else's instrument. He is considered by many to be an early hipster, predating Slim Gaillard and Dizzy Gillespie.

This here isn't the rendition we were looking for, but it is one of our favorites.

Billie Holiday / Lester Young - This Year's Kisses

It was Billie Holliday who dubbed Lester Young "Prez";

Since the days of Joe "King" Oliver, jazz has bestowed lofty titles upon its ace practitioners. Bessie Smith graduated from "Queen of the Blues" to "Empress of the Blues," Benny Goodman was proclaimed "King of Swing", there was a "Duke" Ellington, a "Count" Basie, and Lester Young was dubbed Prez (short for president, a title given to him by Billie Holiday). "We called my mother 'the Duchess,'" Holiday said in a 1959 interview, "so he [Lester Young] named me 'Lady Day' and I called him 'Prez'--we were the royal family."[3] It has been suggested that Young was called "Prez" long before meeting her, but there is no evidence of that.

If I had a time machine, probably, the first place I would go back to, is the era of Lester Young.

What a gas it would have been to be around him.

Go now, and dig his music.

Happy B'Day Prez!

Lester Young - Lester Leaps In

Lester Young - Jitterbug Jam

Lester Young & Teddy Wilson - All of Me

Almost Like Being In Love - Lester Young With the Oscar Peterson Trio

Bonus Bonus

The Pork Pie Hat.

Charles Mingus (speaking of Jazz giants), wrote this tune for Lester Young.

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat-Charles Mingus

(And, Joni Mitchell - Yes, that Joni Mitchell - wrote lyrics for it, that you can check out HERE)

This Date ... On The Garlic

27 August 2008... On The Garlic

Barry Crimmins Returns ... With An Admission!

Was Tweety Covering Morning Jokes' Back?

For Live Convention Blogging, Check Out Bob Cesca!

Now This Was A Speech!

27 August 2007... On The Garlic

"He aggressively and successfully pursued public corruption ..."

27 August 2006... On The Garlic

Weekend Special - Sautéed Cloves

We Don’t Have To Show You No Court Order ... The Results - The Garlic's Weekly Poll

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Well ... There's THAT Part of The Legacy, Too ...

If almost right on cue.

In the waning, dull, Dog Days of August, and, somewhat ironically, in the middle of the molten hot Healthcare battle, Senator Ted Kennedy has passed away, ending his fight against brain cancer.

There'll be lots of paychecks and other perks, to interrupt the vacations of the masses of babbling heads, to rush into the nearest cable studio (or, if they are heavy-duty talking heads, they might have the weight to do a remote) and start blathering away, from the headline stories, to insider anecdotes, ending, of course, with whispers during the wall-to-wall coverage of the upcoming funeral.

Local news here in Boston will even surpass all that.

Yes, he was the "Liberal Lion", and did a lot of good things during his time in the Senate (perhaps SCHIPS, and burying Bork among the top)

But one thing won't get mentioned, or, if it does, ever so briefly, a blink, and then, used as a launching point to herald some tale of pulling himself off the floor and rising to great heights.

We speak, of, naturally, Chappaquiddick, and the unfortunate death of Mary Jo Kopechne.

And that brings us to one of the greatest satires in history, run by the National Lampoon, back in 1972.

Riffing off a Volkswagen ad of that time, they put this out there;

From Wikipedia;

The case resulted in much satire of Kennedy, including a National Lampoon page showing a floating Volkswagen Beetle with the remark that Kennedy would have been elected president had he been driving a Beetle that night; this satire resulted in legal action by Volkswagen, claiming unauthorized use of its trademark.

(You can go HERE, to see both, the original VW ad, and the satirical one)

In today's corporate-owned media, I don't know if there is a publication out there that would have the balls to do something like that today.

Bonus Links

Senator Kennedy from Cindy Sheehan

Jack Newfield: The Senate's Fighting Liberal

Martin F. Nolan: Kennedy dead at 77 ...Liberal lion of the Senate, symbol of family dynasty succumbs to brain cancer

Joan Walsh: Ted Kennedy's last battle

And, a "Must-Read", from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, over on The Moderate Voice;

Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne

Go Girl Go!

While, invariably, the Little League World Series almost routinely, each year, generates a heartwarming, or tear-inducing, story, and this year is no different.

Except that history, perhaps a bit dubiously, was made;

Game-Winning Hit by 13-Year-Old Girl Could Be a First

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) — Katie Reyes hit a two-run single in the top of the sixth to help Vancouver, British Columbia, rally for a wild 14-13 victory Tuesday over Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany, in the Little League World Series.

The Little League president, Stephen Keener, and other longtime tournament officials said they could not recall a girl having the winning hit before in a World Series game.

“I was excited. I was shaking,” Reyes, 13, said about going to the plate for her big hit. She finished with three hits and three runs batted in.

Playing first, Reyes also caught the last out. She joined her happy teammates jumping on the mound after Canada won its last game of the series. Both teams had already been eliminated entering Tuesday.

WOW!

All this time, decades, and it's only the first time a girl has gotten a winning hit?

Does that have to do with girls not being into playing Little League, or nitwit coaches across the land, holding on to yesteryear, believing girls don't belong in baseball?

ESPN, which posts a video of it, has more;

Fifteen girls have played in the series since 1984, when Victoria Roche of Brussels, Belgium, became the first female to play in South Williamsport.

Reyes wasn't the only girl playing at the series this year -- Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, had 13-year-old Bryn Stonehouse playing first base, too.

The only other time there were two girls in the series in the same year was 2004

Well, anyway ...

Hats Off to Katie Reyes!

Go Girl Go!

Bonus Link

Here's a good background piece, from the Toronto Globe and Mail, on Katie Reyes;

Canadian 'girl that delivers' takes on the World Series

There's Hope For The Honeybees!

There's been a puzzling mystery the past few years, that being, the disappearance, death, of honeybees.

Who killed the honeybees?

Suddenly, the Bees Are Simply Vanishing

Why the Honey Bees are Dying

Now, if this trend continues, there could be a profound impact on our ecology, and economy, even to the point of life-and-death, for some.

But, just this week, a ray of hope has cracked through;

New clue found to disappearing honey bees

Researchers have a new clue to the collapse of honey bee colonies across the country — damage to the bees' internal "factories" that produce proteins. Theories about the cause of bee colony collapse have included viruses, mites, pesticides and fungi.

The new study of sick bees disclosed fragments of ribosomal RNA in their gut, an indication of damage to the ribosomes, which make proteins necessary for life, according to a study in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[snip]

The sick bees suffered an unusually high number of infections with viruses that attack the ribosome, the researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported.

[snip]

The researchers said the varroa mite, which was accidentally introduced to the U.S. in 1986, is a carrier of picorna-like viruses that damage the ribosomes.

Lert's hope this pans out.

Then again, the bees, or, a certain bred of them, may be fighting back, which we wrote about recently;

Now It's The Honeybees!

Buck up there, honeybees ...

About That Goose-Egg Yesterday ...

Good Afternoon Garlic Fans

Yeah, we rung up a goose-egg yesterday, with no posting, unfortunately.

We got snagged yesterday by a Trojan (Windows Protection Suite), that while only a mid-level threat, it was most insidious, as it continually (even while running scans to eliminate it), would pop up with dire warnings that our computer was infected and, to "click here" to activate the protection.

Which of course, was their own product.

A few of the usual tools we employ for such didn't do the job, so we searched it out and found one that worked (we ended up using SuperAntiSpyware).

So, for, roughly, 10-hours, we were consumed with scanning, taking 2-3-hours, per scan

By the time all was well, it was late evening, and we were in no mood to be creative, or just about, anything else.

We're back today with some posts and, hopefully, will remain unencumbered, the rest of the week

As always, many thanks for visiting, and reading, The Garlic

Peace
JTD

This Date ... On The Garlic

26 August 2008... On The Garlic

Cindy McCain - What I Did On My Summer Vacation ...

Mas Que Nada ... McCain Goes Pow Pow Pow - Again! ...Or: Donate To John McCain, and Be Included In The Telling of His Next POW-POW-POW Story

Get A Shovel! ... Olbermann Disses Scarborough, On-Air

26 August 2007... On The Garlic

Defending Martin Lewis ... It's Satire, Stupid!

More Sad News ... The Passing of Lloyd The Dog

26 August 2006... On The Garlic

Weeding The Garlic Patch - New Garlic Weekend Feature

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

This Date ... On The Garlic

25 August 2008... On The Garlic

Hey Wolfson! ... Here's What The Clintons Need To Do!

Some More Donuts, There, Mr. Halperin?

They Call Me "Mister Glass"

Monday, August 24, 2009

Anger Gumbo

I'm just angry that New Orleans, which did not bring about its own disaster, is watching a second consecutive president trash his glib promises to "rebuild it better".

[snip]

Obama's remarks about New Orleans during the campaign were anodyne boilerplate, and what he's giving us now is more of the same. He won't even do the obligatory photo-op in the city on 8/29; he told the Times-Picayune he'll come down "before the end of the year". He didn't say which year.

Apparently, it isn't only the War Crimes of the Bush Grindhouse that President Obama is putting in the rear view mirror.

It seems that the City of New Orleans, also, is not in the forward-looking view.

So writes, in a great post, Harry Shearer today, telling his tale of lobbying on behalf of the still-devastated city, how he, reluctantly, used his connections to reach inside the Obama White House, only to get nothing.

Playing the Inside Game -- A Cautionary Tale

Any regular reader of my stuff here knows I've been relentless in calling for first the Bush administration and lately the current group to get serious about addressing the problems of what nearly destroyed New Orleans -- namely, the twin challenges of (a) reversing the man-caused destruction of the coastal wetlands which reduce the severity of oncoming hurricanes and (b) rebuilding the tattered federally-built "hurricane protection system" which failed so disastrously four years ago this Saturday. After I started noticing the absence of any public words (let alone actions) on this subject from the new administration, several commenters here criticized me for, in essence, just running my mouth. "You're a celebrity," they mis-advised me, "go talk directly to the White House about it, like Brad Pitt." I thought I should start my Pitt emulation slowly at first, maybe by wooing Angelina Jolie, but after a couple of weeks, I took the challenge to play the inside game. I haven't written about it until now, because I wanted to see how it would play out before drawing conclusions.

I don't want to provide any additional snips, as it is well-worth reading the entire post.

We're coming up on the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina all but wiping out New Orleans, and it looks like we may have to pin to the new President, the not-flattering moniker of "Heck of a job there, Obama ..."

He's leaving the residents of New Orleans to having to cling a little longer to the "Hope" and "Change" thing.

Go read Harry Shearer's "Playing the Inside Game -- A Cautionary Tale"

Bonus Link

More Than A Few Cloves ... The Garlic Special - Hurricane Katrina Redux

Can't Wait To See The Super Bowl Ad On This One!

This one, we'll have to wait awhile, to see how it plays out.

Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.Com, is looking to make (pun intended) his next killing;

Out of print ... Monster.com made its name by putting help-wanted ads online. And now its founder sees untapped potential in widening the audience for death notices, too

Taylor, the founder of the online career site that became Monster.com, raised $32 million in venture capital funding for Eons. The company filled its Charlestown offices with about 60 staffers, who focused on building an online community for people over the age of 50 with features such as a 40-question quiz that aimed to estimate one’s longevity and supply advice about healthy living.

But three years after the glitzy launch party, just 12 people remain on the payroll at Eons, and the site’s traffic has been shrinking. Taylor is now hoping that Tributes.com, a spinoff from Eons, might do better than the original site. It offers news about notable personalities who’ve died, and sells online obituaries (they prefer the term “tributes’’) to grieving families via a network of funeral homes. Just as Monster grew to a $1.3 billion company by putting a section of newspaper classifieds online - the help-wanted ads - Taylor plans to do the same for death notices, though this time, he faces competition from a big rival.

[snip]

The site tries to build traffic by creating online memorials for departed celebrities such as Paul Newman and Michael Jackson. It also has information from the Social Security Administration about more than 80 million deceased Americans. But its revenue comes from individuals who pay for online obits that can include unlimited text about the deceased, along with photos, videos, and music.

Yes, you too can live for infinity, out on the World Wide Web!

(We touched on this, back in April - After Death, No Reason For The Spam To Stop)

Not only that, but if you go out to Tributes.Com, you can set up your very on "Celebrity Alert"

Oh yeah, death is going to be big bucks.

It's definitely not your father's funeral home any longer.

Now, we will have to wait until next January, for the Super Bowl, to see if Taylor copies his success of Monster.Com, for Tributes.Com, with some clever, witty television spot.

Maybe they can come up with a combo - Someone dies while searching Monster.Com for a job, so the segue to the deceased's Tribute.Com page, perhaps offering a deal if you sign up for both services.

Bonus Links

Monster.com Super Bowl Ad

Legendary Ads ... Some ads suck, but these are an art form. Or at least funny

Kellogg Grades 2009 Super Bowl Ads, Monster.com Gets A+