Nobody 720

Sunday, November 25, 2007
Nobody # 720

Nobody Asked Me But:

"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world. RFK, Indianapolis, 4/4/68<<<

What better place to start than to tame the savageness that has become the essence of American politics? What can you and I do? We can support the candidates for office who best reflect our political and personal philosophy, AND who do so with humility and courtesy and respect. One can be strong and tough without being savage.<<<

Here is your question from last week and my answer to it: Looking back on all the great TV series finales over the years, which show do you believe had the best final episode?

Four quickly come to mind: “Mary Tyler Moore,” “M*A*S*H*,” “The Sopranos” AND “Everwood.” “The Sopranos” ended with delightful ambiguity, while “M*A*S*H*” and “Everwood” did just the opposite. Their story lines came together with positive conclusions. I have especially warm feelings about “Everwood.” From its fairy tale beginning, when Andy, America’s best heart transplant surgeon, arrives in Everwood to practice family medicine – for free - the program warmed my heart. That its conclusion was also a fairy tale, with love winning all around and Amy producing a Ferris wheel for Ephram in his front yard, seemed totally fitting.

But my choice is “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” It was one of the first television shows to bring closure in its last episode, and it did so with beauty and grace.

Remember that night in 1977? The entire news staff, with the exception of inept anchorman Ted Baxter, has been fired. In the final moments Mary, Lou, Murray, Ted, his wife, Georgette, and Sue Ann mass together in a teary group hug and, as they leave, Mary looks back over the newsroom and then, for the last time, turns out the lights. Exit perfect.<<<

DOWN: Republican politicians on Iraq, for claiming that - “Only we can save you from the consequences of our own disaster.” You have to admit that this is a little perverse.<<<

DOWN and DOWN again: Rudy Giuliani for his failure, as shown by the two quotes below, to be true to himself.

“I believe in the woman’s right to choose”…. but I will appoint judges who don’t.”

“I believe in gun control”…. but I will appoint judges who don’t.”<<<

DOWN: Congress for offering immunity to telephone companies in return for their cooperation with the government's wiretapping program. It is like being given a help the government invade privacy and get out of jail free card.<<<

UP: David Brooks - who recently wrote, “I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less.”

There is humility in accepting the fact that my computer knows more than I do. But there is also great power, because, at least for now, I remain the keeper of the keyboard.

And shouldn’t the real revolution in education be in changing our curriculum to reading and writing and ‘rithmatic AND Google?<<<

DOWN: Still another year of having this turkey on the White House lawn.

Ups - that's not Bush.

UP: UCLA. Here’s what Andy Katz of ESPN had to say after their great comeback win over Michigan State Tuesday.

“Now, imagine what UCLA will be like when it is healthy. If it resembles anything close to the team that played with the passion and purpose of the second half, then the Bruins should be on their way to making a third-straight Final Four appearance. Yes, it may be only November, but clearly the Bruins have April on their mind.” Like their coach, this Bruin team is talented and tough and, also like their coach, they are at the head of their class.

What I like about this team:

1. Character – they are all great young men – the kind I would want Emily to marry (in 14 years or so).
2. Toughness – they leave it all on the floor.
3. Unselfishness – They are all about team.
4. The way Love and Mata-Real can jump and bump.

What I like about Ben Howland: 1

. He recruits for the above.
2. His teams at UCLA have consistently played above their ability level.<<<

DOWN: Another Bruin injury. Alfred Aboya suffered a fracture below his right eye during the Bruins’ easy win over Yale on Friday. He will miss from 2 weeks to a month and a half, depending on the severity of his injury.<<<

Hello everyone. I’m Jim Turner and I’m an addict - again.

But I’m taking the cure. As soon as I finish writing this, I am heading to South Korea’s Jump Up Internet Rescue School, which is like a boot camp for the young (and me) to cure our addiction to cyberspace.

And did you know that South Korea is perhaps the most wired nation on earth. 90% of their homes connect to cheap, high-speed broadband.

I can’t match some of the other addicts at JUISC who spend seventeen hours a day on line, but that is only because I have to share the computer with my wife.

(I think I will skip the obstacles courses and sign up for the therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming.)<<<

FYI

THE TOP 10 FATTEST CITIES: 2006's 10 Fattest Cities are (with their 2005 ranking in parenthesis):

1 Chicago (5) 2
Las Vegas (9)
3 Los Angeles (21 fittest)
4 Dallas (6)
5 Houston (1)
6 Memphis, Tenn. (4)
7 Long Beach, Calif. (20)
8 El Paso, Texas (11)
9 Kansas City, Mo. (18)
10 Mesa, Ariz. (15)

THE TOP 10 FITTEST CITIES 2006's 10 Fittest Cities (with their 2005 ranking in parenthesis):

1 Baltimore (25 fattest)
2 Honolulu (2)
3 Virginia Beach, Va. (12)
4 Tucson, Ariz.
5 Milwaukee (15)
6 Colorado Springs, Colo. (3)
7 San Francisco (4)
8 Seattle (1)
9 Louisville-Jefferson, Ky. (not ranked)
10 Boston (11)<<<

While not a savage, our next president must be both a warrior and a peacemaker. Which begs a question about each of my favorites:

Can Barack be a warrior?

Can Hillary be a peacemaker?<<<

Didn’t I see this in a science fiction movie– robots seeking independence from their programs and programmers?

Only this time it is not a movie and the robots are mechanical cockroaches. Scientists placed them in groups of real roaches to study the nasties from within. But 39% of the robots rebelled and despite being programmed to prefer a lighter shelter, joined the cockroaches under the darker one.<<<

Here are your participation questions for next week:

Suppose that right now, you could be at your favorite vacation spot reading your favorite book, listening to your favorite CD and eating your favorite food. What would your choices be in each if these categories?

And

If you could take a ride on anything in the world, what would you most want to ride?<<<

A very happy birthday tomorrow to my son Greg - pictured here with Ben.<<<

Nobody 719

Sunday, November 18, 2007
Nobody # 719

Nobody Asked Me But:

What Man May Learn, What Man May Do
by Robert Louis Stevenson.

What man may learn, what man may do,
Of right or wrong of false or true,
While, skipper-like, his course he steers
Through nine and twenty mingled years,
Half misconceived and half forgot,
So much I know and practise not.

Old are the words of wisdom, old
The counsels of the wise and bold:
To close the ears, to check the tongue,
To keep the pining spirit young;
To act the right, to say the true,
And to be kind whate'er you do.

Thus we across the modern stage
Follow the wise of every age;
And, as oaks grow and rivers run
Unchanged in the unchanging sun,
So the eternal march of man
Goes forth on an eternal plan.

Make that fifty-three and twenty for me, but the poet’s message, except for checking the tongue, hits close to home.<<<

Blogging the Bible.

In the 6th chapter of Genesis, I find a God that I can get behind – fallible and prone to anger, just like me.

5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

Or to put it another way:

Well the Lord looked down from His window in the sky
and said I created man but I don't remember why
Nothin' but fightin' since creation day
I'll send a little water and I'll wash'em all away

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord
And he landed high and dry

But this does leave me with a couple of questions. Why was He going to kill the animals too? I mean some of them even mate for life.

And why the flood? Forty days and forty nights? I mean God must have a more efficient way of killing sinners, be they animal or man. Come to think of it, the big drenching doesn’t even work. Sometimes it rains for forty days and forty nights in Seattle and nobody dies. They just hang out at Starbucks.<<<

Life does follow art – or is it vice versa?

I recently read the very excellent “The Abstinence Teacher” by Tom Perrotta. In it a born-again religious group, objecting to the sex education program in the local school district, pressures them into changing to an abstinence curriculum. Teaching abstinence always reminds me of the boy in the dike story without the happy ending.

But it’s not just in fiction that Far Wrong Christianity is putting a move on our schools. And it’s not just in Dorothy’s Kansas either, although the ignorance vs. science battle still rages there.

It is happening eighty miles north of my computer in “beautiful” Bakersfield. The Kern County High School District has voted to display the phrase "In God We Trust" on the walls of more than 2,300 classrooms, school libraries, administrative offices and the board's meeting room.

"We're not going to accept the agenda of some radical leftists who want to expunge God from public dialogue," said Chad Vegas, an evangelical pastor who sits on the board.

By radical leftists I guess he means the Framers who wrote the First Amendment.

Perrotta’s sex ed teacher, Ruth, nails it when she says she feels like she is “living in a horror movie. ... ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’ or something. You never knew who they were going to get to next.”<<<

SEE THE “RIGHTERS” CARRY THEIR CRUSADE INTO NATIONAL POLITICS.

"It's the ultimate life issue,” said Rick Scarborough, president of the Texas-based conservative Christian group Vision America. ''If radical Islam succeeds in its ultimate goals, Christianity ceases to exist.''

Of Course IF the sun burns out soon, Christianity also ceases to exist?

Don’t hold your breath waiting for either to happen.<<<

HOOKED ON BOOKS

I just finished a novel in which the CIA plays an important part. It started me thinking about why our spy group screws up so much. I believe it is because the job becomes more important than the mission, so that rather than dealing in truth they tell the higher ups what they want to hear.<<<

From the book I am currently listening to - David Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter: America And The Korean War.”

In WW II, Douglas MacArthur thought that Japan must be using white pilots because Asians (“Orientals”) could not be so successful.

MacArthur also called Truman “that Jew in the White House” and referred to Roosevelt as Roosenfeldt.

Which begs the question: CAN AN AMERICAN BIGOT BE AN AMERICAN HERO?<<<

LIST, I LOVE LISTS

After seeing the excellent “Gone Baby Gone” recently I started thinking back of my favorite films of the 21st century. Here are my top five in no particular order:
“The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy” – 2001/03
“Mystic River” - 2003
“Lost In Translation” – 2003
“Million Dollar Baby” - 2004
“Letters From Iwo Jima” - 2006

Is it not incredible that three of the five were directed by Clint Eastwood? Rowdy Yates, you’ve come a long way.

Just missing the cut were “Road To Perdition” and “Good Night, Good Luck.”<<< A

nd as much as I dislike him personally, is there currently a finer lead actor than Russell Crowe?<<<

“Gone Baby Gone” asks the question - are the rights of motherhood absolute if the mother is an incorrigible waster?

I can answer that. NO! Once a child is born, parenting ceases to be a right and becomes a privilege. Or, at least in a moral society, it should.<<<

UP: Barack - In Thursday’s debate, when Wolf Blitzer ask Obama for a yes or no answer to the question of whether American security is more important than human rights, Barack answered that it was a false choice.

He’s right. We can have both. The North would have won the Civil War without Lincoln choosing to suspend the Constitutional right of habeas corpus. We would have defeated Japan without FDR’s decision to inter Japanese Americans. So too can we defeat terrorism without the Patriot Act.<<<

DOWN: Hillary- Her response to the same question was - "The first obligation is to protect and defend America."

That sounds right, but dig a little deeper. Suppose George II believed that the only way to protect and defend was to suspend the election of 2008 and stay in office. Would this be an act of duty or one of treason?<<<

UP: Hillary - From a Time magazine blog on a recent debate – “The most remarkable thing about it was that whatever she's taking for that cold, it seems to have lowered her voice an octave and slowed her speech by half. She sounded vaguely high.”

Vaguely high? Perhaps that is the best way to get through this debate-a- week season. You go girl!<<<

Down: The Baseball Writers of America, for their mistaken choice of C. C. Sabathia for the Cy Young Award. Sabathia had a great season but Josh Beckett’s was better.

UP: The 99 Cent Store for the originality of their ads and for giving Joe Torre a lifetime deal he can’t refuse.

ON BONDS AND BASEBALL

Separated at birth: Barry Bonds and Bud Selig are a matched pair. Both are arrogant SOB's. Bonds probably broke the law, (I will keep the probably until he is convicted) and Selig thinks he is Mr. Baseball and can convict without a trial.

And, incidentally, wasn't "Bud" a bit ethics-lite in the way he secured his job as Commissioner?<<<

What is the difference between Barry Bonds and President Bush?

One of them gets indicted for lying, the other one doesn’t.<<<

What’s in a name? As you can see by the chart, the commonality of names is rapidly changing.<<<

Here is your homework for the week. Should you decide to answer, this question will self-destruct in 60 seconds.

Looking back on all the great TV series finales over the years, which show do you believe had the best final episode?<<<

Nobody 718

Sunday, November 11, 2007
Nobody # 718

Nobody Asked Me But:

Did you know:

That according to The Center for Media and Public Affairs, between January 1 and October 10, — the president and his aides were the subject of 1,245 late-night jokes compared to 749 for Democrats?


What was it that Lincoln said: “I have to laugh or I would cry.”<<<

In today’s Nobody, I am going to quote extensively from the October 30 column that David Brooks wrote for the New York Times. I do this because it rings true to me. After his words, I will add a few comments of my own on the subject, which he calls “the happiness gap.”

BROOKS:

Some elections are defined by the gap between the rich and the poor. Others are defined by the gap between the left and the right. But this election will be shaped by the gap within individual voters themselves — the gap between their private optimism and their public gloom.

Researchers from Pew found that 65 percent of Americans are satisfied over all with their own lives — one of the highest rates of personal satisfaction in the world today.

On the other hand, Americans are overwhelmingly pessimistic about their public institutions. That same Pew survey found that only 25 percent of Americans are satisfied with the state of their nation. That 40-point gap between private and public happiness is the fourth-largest gap in the world — behind only Israel, Mexico and Brazil.

This happiness gap between the private and the public creates a treacherous political vortex. On the one hand, it means voters are desperate for change. On the other hand, they don’t want a change that will upset the lives they have built for themselves.

More than that, the happiness gap provides a lesson in what people want from their government in 2007. The polling — and I, for one, believe people are pretty sensible when it comes to evaluating their own lives — suggests that people are not personally miserable or downtrodden.

But they also feel that their neighborhood happiness is threatened by global problems that are beyond their power to control: terrorism, rising health care costs, looming public debt, illegal immigration, global warming and the rise of China and India. They regard these looming problems the way people used to think about crime — as alien intrusions into their private tranquility. And government seems to be doing nothing about them.

These voters don’t believe government can lift their standard of living or lead a moral revival. They want a federal government that will focus on a few macro threats — terrorism, health care costs, energy, entitlement debt and immigration — and stay out of the intimate realms of life. They want a night watchman government that patrols the neighborhood without entering their homes.

This is not liberalism, which inserts itself into the crannies of life. It’s not conservatism, suspicious of federal power. It’s a gimlet-eyed federalism — strong government with sharply defined tasks.

If one were to advise a candidate about the happiness gap, you’d say: first, don’t try to be inspiring or rely on the pure power of authenticity. In these cynical days, voters are not interested in uplift.

Second, don’t propose any program that will interfere with the way voters are currently organizing their lives. They don’t want you there.

Third, don’t expect people to cast votes according to their income. Democrats do as well among top earners as Republicans. People are more interested in repairing the nation’s health than in boosting their personal bottom line.

Fourth, offer voters a few big proposals (and strategies to implement them) that respond to global threats. Repeat those proposals at every event and forget about everything else.

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt could launch the New Deal because voters wanted to change the country and their own lives. But today, people want the government to change so their own lives can stay the same. Voters don’t want to be transformed; they want to be defended.

These words are so wise that they need no amplification from me. The election of 2008 will be won by the candidate who, with honesty and clarity, offers the best solutions to the macro threats listed in the seventh paragraph above. If no one does that, it will be business as usual with people voting for the lesser of evils, and American government will remain, except in times of immediate crisis, an object of distain and irrelevancy to the American people.<<<

Too late for Halloween, too good to save for next year:

Online bookseller abebooks.com released the results of a poll of the customers on the question of the scariest characters in literature. Any surprises here? Any suggestions for change?

1. Big Brother from 1984 by George Orwell
2. Hannibal Lecter from the novels by Thomas Harris
3. Pennywise the clown from It by Stephen King
4. Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
5. Count Dracula from Bram Stoker's Dracula
6. Annie Wilkes from Misery by Stephen King
7. The demon from The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
8. Patrick Bateman from American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
9. Bill Sykes from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
10 Voldemort from the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling

I would move Dracula to number 2, the Exorcist demon to 3 and Lord Voldemort to 4. (although I would not mention him by name) The rest I would just drop down in their same order to 5-10.

The two pictures, one of a store and the other of a window decoration of a San Francisco house overlooking the marina capture the spirit of Halloween.<<<

SEA FOOD DIET Yesterday I had turkey, dressing, 2 kinds of potatoes, gravy, Harris Ranch short ribs with rice, 4 kinds of sausage with two kinds of mustard, chip and dip, Parisian chocolate cake and coffee cake. And that was just for lunch!

Gelson’s celebrated the 10th anniversary of their Northridge store by having an open house with all of the above, and we, mostly I, took full advantage.<<<

Our enemy is al Qaeda so we war against Iraq. Pakistan has the bomb, in fact many bombs, as well as bases for terrorists so “we” consider a war against Iran. Bush and his bunch need a lesson in “know your enemy.” Any volunteers?

If so, here’s what you are up against – a singing president who forgets the tune. For example: Just one week ago last Thursday, our President was singing his song about freedom: "We are standing with those who yearn for liberty."

By Monday he had changed his tune to “Stand By Your Man.”

Stand by your man
The tyrant in Pakistan
Will help us achieve our plan
Faster than liberty can.

(with apologies to lyricists everywhere – jt)<<<

JIM’S WISDOM (a name, not a claim) - SPORTS SECTION

UP/Down - The Bruins game against Portland State. They won easily, but 10 minutes of good basketball and 30 minutes of slop isn’t worth an UP.

UP: Kevin Love – Made his regular season Bruin debut with a double/double: 22 points and 13 rebounds. “Who could ask for anything more.”

UP: Calvin Henry of Mercer College who beat USC yesterday 96-81 - "Coach told us, “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard."

Apparently there is no D in USC.

UP: LA Times headline writer for this, after a big win over the Jazz:

“Lakers are stressed for success.”

UP: From stressed to dressed – Here’s Hale’s Gilbert Arenas dressed to the nines.

UP: Former Bruin great Baron Davis for the quote of the week:

"We should have a banner up there: the only team to make the tournament without a coach.”

In 2002, the Iraq war resolution passed by 77 to 23. In 2007, Kyl-Lieberman (authorizing military actions against Iran) passed by 76 to 22. Hillary voted for both.

I can forgive the first, but the second comes under the “fool me once, fool me twice” rule and is very difficult to forgive.

And, by the way, someone should tell the Taliban that the war in Afghanistan is over and we won.<<<

BUSH VS. NIXON

Last week, for the first time in history 50% of the people responding to a Gallup Poll said they strongly disapprove of the president. This broke the record of 48% who strongly disapproved of Nixon just before the impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.<<<

PAT ROBERTSON ENDORSES GIULIANI

Pat Robertson hates adulterers:

"How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?" (among others)

Why does Pat Robertson like Rudy?<<<

Nobody 717

Sunday, November 4, 2007
Nobody # 717

Nobody Asked Me But:

“Romance is difference.” – John Updike

Delights of the road:

Let’s see. Where to start? Well, since we made the trip primarily to see and hear Richard Russo (picture) and have him sign “Bridge Of Sighs,” his first novel in 6 years, the signings seem like a good beginning. Russo won the Pulitzer Prize for “Empire Falls” and is the author of many other outstanding books including “Nobody’s Fool,” “Risk Pool” and “Straight Man.”

We saw him twice, Friday night in Danville and Saturday night in Corte Madera. It was a double treat. He was great both times – personable, friendly, interesting and funny. He read from different sections of “Sighs’” each evening, and the very large audiences (over 125 Friday and more than 100 Saturday) asked intelligent questions. One obvious one was repeated. How did he like the Paul Newman, Bruce Willis movie made from “Nobody’s Fool” and the HBO special from “Empire falls” – also with Paul Newman and staring Ed Harris?

He replied that Hollywood had treated him well. He thought Robert Benton’s screenplay of “Fool” was perfect and that, although he was drafted into writing the screen play for “Falls,” he was given great support by the actors and director. Harris and others even requested that he put back in a few parts of the novel that he had cut.

Other delights – small towns

It was our first visit to both Pleasanton, where we stayed, and to Danville. Pleasanton is the older and has a naming sign above its main street. It also hosts an annual high school band parade and contest, which was going on last Saturday as we left. We stayed on Main Street at The Rose Hotel. (picture)Our room was, when adjusted for price, (neither cheap, nor hugely expensive) one of our neatest ever. Just down the street was an incredible bakery and across from the hotel a Mexican restaurant that served the best Chile Verde that I have ever eaten. And I have eaten lots of Chile Verde. But enough! My editor thinks I write too much about food.

As much as we liked Pleasanton, we liked Danville (two pictures)even more. So much, in fact, that as we were leaving Barb pondered the question of if we had discovered it 15 years ago, would we have had the courage to move there? It also had a great downtown as well as an upscale, water-centered small shopping area on the outskirts.

Our third stop was an on-the-way visit to Berkeley – shoes for Barb, Cody’s great bookstore for me and a cheese roll for both of us.

Then it was on to Marin, as wonderful as ever. We stayed at a new and nice place in Mill Valley. (picture) That night’s signing was our first visit ever to Book Passage. (picture) Visiting two GREAT independent bookstores in one day was too much for me to handle. I went wild. How wild? I bought as many books as Barb did pairs of shoes. That’s really wild!

On Sunday we returned to some of our favorite places in Marin to Christmas shop in small stores. But first we revisited the best small grocery store in our world, the Woodland Market in Kentfield. I have written about it before in Nobody. All the produce is marked for place of origin, etc.

While there I wanted to take a leak (picture right) but decided against it.

Bradley Ogden was born in the same small Michigan town as my mother, Traverse City. He was executive chef at the Compton Place Hotel until he opened one of America’s finest restaurants, the Lark Creek Inn in Larkspur. Since then he has opened seven restaurants including his latest at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

One of the seven, the casual Yankee Pier, is just a half-block from The Lark Creek Inn. It was there we ate Sunday night in a much-anticipated return visit. The restaurant was everything we remembered and more. My dinner - flatiron steak, celery root mashed potatoes and kale – was delicious, as was Barb’s beer-battered shrimp. His signature clam chowder was the best I have had west of New England, and the equal of any there. And his super-signature butterscotch pudding was everything we remembered and more. Perhaps the more was because this time, rather than share, we each ordered our own and left the place somewhere between satisfied and satiated.

Our final stop was a quick one – at Taylor’s Refresher in the San Francisco Ferry Building for lunch. It was a shame to limit one of our favorite cities to such a short stop, but will we do it justice when we return next spring.

Ok, there is food again, so despite the warning from my editor that I may lose my viewers, here is my best food list. I have already covered the best meal, so now, my best tastes – in order:

The Chile Verde sauce - Emilios.
My espresso malt at Taylor’s Refresher – a close second to Fosselman’s.
The cheese roll in Berkeley. (this is # one on my editor’s list).
The butterscotch pudding at Yankee Pier.
The blueberry cream cheese roll at the bakery in Plesanton. (My editor’s raspberry, hazelnut muffin from the same bakery was # 2 for her)

A time out:

Call me stupid, but I do not understand how Cypress, that special voice directing us from Barb’s GPS system, can find her and our way through every town in the western world but get so lost on every return to LA. It’s true. On our way back we had to listen to her constant protests and insistence that we were going far astray, and all because we knew the way better than she.

The best summary of our trip is a return to the Updike quote – “Romance is difference.”

“If Mukasey is not clear about whether the methods used constitute torture, he should experience them and then give an opinion.” - Ronald Sederoff (From a blog response in the LA Times)

The question is simple:

Does the president’s authority to defend the nation trump his obligation to obey the law?

The answer is equally simple:

NO

Until the otherwise highly qualified Judge Mukasey can state that unequivocally, he should not be the Attorney General of the United States.

As we were all taught:

1. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.

2. The Constitution delegates the law-making power, including that of providing “for the common defense” to the legislative branch.

3. The Supreme Court, not the president, decides when Congress exceeds its authority.

We have a president out of control. Let us all rejoice that not even such a man dares challenge our democratic tradition that subjects him to the will of the people every four years.<<<

And while on the subject of our scary leader, I see that he recently warned Cuba that the U.S. will not accept a political transition in which power changes from one Castro brother to another.

Who does our nutzo president think he is to dictate government succession to an independent neighbor?

It is my understanding that Bush will try to resurrect Batiste so that the Cuban exiles in Miami can return to once again walk on carpets made out of the poor.

And while on the subject of the supernatural, is it true that our President plans to reincarnate as a dictator somewhere?<<<

Even as American causalities in Iraq are a surcharge we pay (seemingly willingly) for Saudi “friendship” and the resulting cheaper prices at the gas pump, so too are they a price we pay for allowing the war to be prolonged so that American business can keep raking in corrupt dollars under the accepting eye of our government.<<<

JIM’S WISDOM (a name, not a claim) SPORTS SPECIAL

UP: The Dodgers for hiring Joe Torre.

DOWN: San Diego Padres General Manager Kevin Towers for saying - "A good manager is probably worth a game or two.”

That’s just plain crazy. A good manager is worth at least a dozen games a season, maybe more.

UP: Arron Affalo. On Thursday, the former Bruin was the first rookie to start for the Pistons in 20 years.

Here’s Piston coach Flip Saunders on AA: "Arron Afflalo, you know what you're going to get. He plays as hard as anybody in this league, and I think he's got a chance to be a lock-down type of defender. He plays extremely physical. People are going to love watching him play, and he's going to be a guy that's going to play because of his defensive ability and he's not afraid to take shots."
UP: Kevin Love who was everything Bruin fans hoped he would be in their first exhibition game Friday night. His double-double made for a great debut.

UP: The whole Bruin team for looking as good as their number 2 ranking (or better) as they opened their (exhibition) season with an 111-61 win over Azusa pacific last night.

WAY UP: Lorenzo Mata-Real for being so gracious about the possibility of starting his senior season on the bench. He was the first to stand and applaud when Kevin Love scored his first points.

WAY, WAY DOWN: Injuries. On the first play of the exhibition season Darren Collison sprained his knee and in practice yesterday, Mike Roll, who looked primed to have a breakout season, hurt his foot. Thankfully Darren’s wasn’t serious and he will miss only a couple of games. Roll wasn’t so lucky. It looks like he will be out for at least a month.

This team has the potential to be outstanding – if only injuries don’t get in the way.<<<

Mitt, (oh how I hope that he is the Republican nominee), Romney, while recently campaigning in a New Hampshire diner, sat down with two gray-haired women in a booth and pointed to a creamy drink on the table. “Is this a malt or is this a milkshake?” he asked.

“It’s a frappe,” one of the women replied.

This guy is the former governor of Massachusetts and he doesn’t know that milkshakes are frappes in New England? Heck, I know that, but, of course, I am something of an expert in the shake/malt field.

A moment later, the conversation turned from frappes to health care, and he asked, “Is it O.K. here in New Hampshire?”

“I live in Vermont,” one of the women responded.

“I live in Massachusetts,” the other said.<<<