Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush..... Former President George W. Bush.....
My decidedly old school recommendation wishlist for the new administration. I look forward with wonder and delight (and probable amazement) to President Obama's actual choices.
Agriculture: Kathleen Sibelius
Attorney General: Robert Kennedy, Jr.
Commerce: Michael Bloomberg
Defense: Wesley Clark (when he becomes eligible)
Director of National Intelligence: Jane Harman
Education: Graham Spanier
Energy: Amory Lovins
EPA: Al Gore
FEMA: Douglas Wilder
Health & Human Services: Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg
Joy! shipmate--joy! (Pleas'd to my Soul at death I cry;) Our life is closed--our life begins; The long, long anchorage we leave, The ship is clear at last--she leaps! She swiftly courses from the shore; Joy! shipmate--joy!
Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency is nothing less than a history-marking event, regardless of how it turns out. For those of us who attended Catholic school in the 1960s, however, the campaign is not entirely unfamiliar.
If you were attending Catholic school at that time, you could subscribe to a comic book called Treasure Chest. As you might imagine, given the time and the audience, there were lots of “educational “and “inspirational” stories in Treasure Chest. As an adult, I would probably find these stories stupid or offensive, or both…if I remembered them. Fortunately, the stories I remember are the ones that slipped in under the radar. There was a series about kids living on a space station that I remember liking, and there was 1976: Pettigrew For President..
From what I’ve been able to put together so far, 1976: Pettigrew For President ran for 10 chapters in 1964. Treasure Chest came out every two weeks, so the story played out over roughly half a school year. The title character was Gov. Timothy Pettigrew, who was running for his party’s presidential nomination in that exotic future year of 1976. I would’ve been in fifth grade when the series ran, but my parents were already wondering how much longer would I be reading those weird funnybooks.
It probably took me a couple of chapters before I realized that there was something strange about “Pettigrew.” We would never see the governor’s face. We would hear his voice as part of a telephone conversation, but, if he was in the room, his head would always be blocked by something, or someone. I knew that the strip’s creators were building up to something, but I don’t think I had any theories about what it was. So I was definitely surprised when, on the last page of the story, as he accepts his party’s nomination, Tim Pettigrew is revealed to be African-American.
I know: to an adult, this all sounds heavy-handed, at best. To a fifth-grader, though, it was anything but, even though we never find out if the governor was elected president. For what it’s worth, there’s a similar reveal in “Judgment Day,” a story that appeared in one of the classic EC science fiction comics. In this story, a man from Earth comes to Cybrinia, a planet where humans had deposited a colony of super-intelligent robots sometime in the distant past. The visitor was to evaluate the culture the robots had developed, to see if Cybrinia was worthy for inclusion in the Galactic Republic.
While many aspects of the cybernetic culture are positive, the Earthman quickly discovers that the robots with orange skins are discriminating against the robots with blue skins. This disqualifies the Cybrinians for membership in the Republic. Throughout the story, the human visitor wears a spacesuit that obscures his face. In the last panel, though, he takes his helmet off and “the instrument lights made the beads of perspiration on his dark skin twinkle like distant stars.”
“Judgment Day” first appeared in 1953, but I first read it in Tales Of the Incredible, a paperback reprint which came out in 1965 (and is sitting beside my computer right now).
Someone named Bob Wundrock—another survivor of the Catholic School system, I’m guessing—has posted some pages from 1976: Pettigrew For President on YouTube. They confirm another memory I had of the series—Pettigrew actually looks a bit like Obama—and they provide some plot points that I’d forgotten.
Pettigrew’s major opponent for the nomination is the ominously-named Senator Oilengass. The governor picks Oilengass to as his vice president , but a typo adds some unintentional humor to the invitation. The word balloon reads: “Senator, will you run as vice-president with me? I’d be proud to have you?”
Go ahead, look at it again. I’ll wait.
Even in fifth grade, I was far enough into comics that I was looking at credit boxes and noticing artists’ signatures. So it registered on me at the time that 1976: Pettigrew For President was drawn by Joe Sinnott. Sinnott is probably best known as Jack Kirby’s inker on the Fantastic Four comic, but he was providing both pencils and inks here.
As for the writer, I still don’t know much about him. He appears to be someone named Barry Reese, but that’s all I’ve been able to find out. For the record, “Judgment Day” was drawn by Joe Orlando. I haven’t been able to find a writing credit for this story either, but stories in the classic EC comics are usually credited to Al Feldstein.
1776:Pettigrew For President may have been an indicator of the liberal trends in the Catholic Church at the time. Or it may have just slipped in under the radar. In either case, the so-called real world is finally catching up to it.
After yesterday’s ominous news that North American permafrost (and presumably European and Asian, as well) stores 60% more greenhouse gases than we thought, here’s another siren announcing that we are rushing full speed ahead towards a climatic tipping point:
Scientists are reporting that the extent of sea ice in the Arctic is at the second lowest point on record. Currently ice covers 2.03 million square miles; last year's sea ice coverage, 1.59 million square miles, set the record. In the past ten years Arctic sea ice has declined 10 percent.
Given the seriousness of the situation, I’ll let the scientists speak for themselves:
We Are Watching the Tipping Point Happen
Mark Serreze, a scientist from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado was quoted by Reuters:
No matter where we stand at the end of the melt season it’s just reinforcing this notion that Arctic Ice is in its death spiral.
Serreze also told the AP that:
We could very well be in that quick slide downward in terms of passing a tipping point. It’s tipping now. We’re seeing it happen now.
Climate Change Happening More Quickly Than Models Have Predicted
The same article quoted NASA ice scientist Jaw Zwally as saying that within 5-10 years the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer. He added that this also means that:
Climate warming is also coming larger and faster than the models are predicting and nobody’s really taken into account that change yet.
As a commenter pointed out in my post on permafrost from yesterday, this is really the sort of news that should be on the front page of every newspaper, at the top of the broadcast of every nightly news service. I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment.
It's hard to not sound shrill with this: Climate change is happening more quickly than we thought in the Arctic and the frozen soils in the region contain a lot more stored carbon than the models used so far. Unless we get a handle on this now (yesterday would've been even better) global warming could very well overtake our efforts to slow it. That's not to say that we should throw in the towel (as no doubt some people will think) but rather is another sign that we have to redouble our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a global level.
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) — "Star Trek" star George Takei is ready to "live long and prosper" with his partner of 21 years.
Takei will marry 54-year-old Brad Altman on September 14th in Los Angeles.
The 71-year-old actor, known for his role as Sulu on the "Star Trek" sci-fi TV series, was the first to pay $70 for a marriage license in West Hollywood early Tuesday. The marriage license is good for 90 days.
Takei was jubilant, saying "it's going to be the only day like this in our lives and it is the only day like this in the history of America."
He told reporters and a swelling crowd outside the West Hollywood city auditorium "may equality live long and prosper."
The California Supreme Court has legalized same-sex marriage.
I saw George Carlin live only once. It wasn't his finest moment.
He spent a long time--what seemed like a half hour or more--playing with the microphone cord and waiting, perhaps, for creative lightning to strike. Or maybe he was waiting for the drugs to kick in. Or wear off. That was a long time ago, for both of us.
As you probably know already, Carlin died on June 22, of heart failure. He was 71.
Most of the news stories that I've seen today are leading with his involvement in the landmark obscenity case stemming from his routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." I don't want to devalue that in any way (and I see that handdrummer has already posted about it) but I want to talk about the other way Carlin used language, to point out the absurdities in daily life. Most of the lines I'm going to use here are paraphrases, and I apologize for that in advance.
I'm not a sports guy and I'll never be one, but one of my favorite Carlin monologues is when he explained how baseball was pastoral and football was technological. It shows how something that looks like a trifle actually says something very real about the world. In baseball, you make an error. Everybody makes errors. In football, you pay a penalty. Football has to be played in a set time period. A baseball game can go on forever.
Carlin talked about how we all grow up to expect certain phrases to go together. You're probably not going to deposit your savings in Arnie's National Bank. And you're probably not going to hang out at the First National Bar and Grill.
I probably shouldn't admit this, but I remember a few of Carlin's earliest appearances on television, before his beard and his anger grew. He did a character he called the Hippy Dippy Weatherman, who delivered playful lines like: There was a freak accident out on Route 295 today. Two freaks in a VW hit three freaks in a van."
And wouldn't he have loved the phrase "heart failure"? I'm sorry, you failed. We're going to have to hold your aorta back a year.
As much fun as it is to recall punchlines, George Carlin did more than tell jokes. He had a way of looking at the world. And that's why he'll be remembered.
Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits
Times have changed since Carlin made these words famous.
Piss is said on regular TV with a growing frequency.
Shit crops up in dialog on the cable channels regularly.
Fuck was immortalized by HBO's Deadwood.
Few rap songs exist that don't use MotherFucker.
Cocksucker is still a bit outre, though it does sneak an appearance into a movie or comedy routine on occasion.
And Tits, well Tits is as Carlin said, cute.
That leaves Cunt as the lone holdout, the one that still can offend even the staunchist free speech advocate. And that is more because its meaning has shifted from being denotive of a part of a woman's anatomy to being a hateful derogatory term for that woman in general.
I think Carlin would choose a different set of words today.
When one of Texas’s richest oil men bets big on wind energy, it gets attention. Yesterday NPR’s Living on Earth broadcast an interview with Mr. Pickens, who shared the salient facts about his planned wind project:
It will be the largest in the world, he reckons, at 4,000 megawatts
It will provide enough power for 1,300,000 homes
It’s a $10 billion dollar project from which he plans a 15%-25% profit
Asked why he is investing in wind now, Pickens replied:
“For a number of years I’ve watched the wind turbines develop — and I feel like it’s time for it. I think that oil has peaked at 85 million barrels in the world. We’ve got to develop other forms of energy — wind, I think solar will be next, and I hope I’m still around to be in the solar deal.” (Pickens is 80 years old.
But what if Congress doesn’t vote to extend the wind Production Tax Credit?
“Well, I think they’ll vote on it. They’ll either do that or they’ll give some kind of carbon credit because, the wind has to be developed in the United States. We’re now importing 72 percent of the oil we use every day. I think everybody can see that we’re gonna break the country if we pay 700 billion dollars a year for, uh, imported oil……I’ve got a good team of people that are knowledgeable in wind energy, and I don’t worry about it. I think it’s a good project, and it’ll do well and we’ll make money. And it’ll help the country.”
Look at Pickens’s bio on Wikipedia. He grew up poor but worked hard. He became a geologist in the 50’s, which “were difficult times for the oil industry and petroleum geologists.” He stuck at it and obviously his bet on oil paid off; Pickens is worth $3 billion now. But he’s moving on — to wind. Find out more about this story in the current issue of Fast Company.
NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first time that a spacecraft has imaged the final descent of another spacecraft onto a planetary body.
From a distance of about 310 kilometers (193 miles) above the surface of the Red Planet, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed its HiRISE obliquely toward Phoenix shortly after it opened its parachute while descending through the Martian atmosphere. The image reveals an apparent 10-meter-wide (30-foot-wide) parachute fully inflated. The bright pixels below the parachute show a dangling Phoenix. The image faintly detects the chords attaching the backshell and parachute. The surroundings look dark, but corresponds to the fully illuminated Martian surface, which is much darker than the parachute and backshell.
Phoenix released its parachute at an altitude of about 12.6 kilometers (7.8 miles) and a velocity of 1.7 times the speed of sound.
The HiRISE, acquired this image on May 25, 2008, at 4:36 p.m. Pacific Time (7:36 p.m. Eastern Time). It is a highly oblique view of the Martian surface, 26 degrees above the horizon, or 64 degrees from the normal straight-down imaging of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image has a scale of 0.76 meters per pixel.
This image has been brightened to show the patterned surface of Mars in the background.
HFS!!!!! what a picture..... Now if John Carter would just ride by,,,,,,,,
Memorial Day reminds us to support the troops in the best way possible by BRINGING THEM HOME NOW!!!
Do not be misled.
This war is about oil.
It is about once again having the poor die to grow the wealth of the rich.
The powerful have cynically chosen to kill the weak to gather a few dollars more.
We need to stand tall and not back down.
The troops are being misused, mistreated and mislaid by those in power.
We must not forget their sacrifice and we must honor their service.
Bring them Home Now!
Support the New GI Bill.
And never forget the fools who chose money over their precious lives.
(I found this poem on a public poetry site. It expresses its truth so much better than I can.)
______________________________________________
The Patriot Game by kendall thomas
~I am the grass that covers all And sucks summer through their teeth~
I come to his grave beneath its bright pennon, but I do not wonder why he went. I know. It is because he was young and didn’t believe that old men lie. That’s why young men die.
I stand by his grave and want to hold his hand once more, as I did when he was a child, to stare into his eyes and to see his smile. But that can never be, for the game is done.
I do not wonder why he went. I know. Because he heard the siren call and believed it was Liberty that called. And being young and naive, he wanted to fight for Victory and Glory- but only the mountebanks have won.
I cannot speak to him; for he no longer hears; so I whisper to the grass which covers all young men and sucks summer through their teeth: It is not your fault for having gone. It is ours who kept silent and let you go for fear of drawing attention to ourselves. It is to parents who would not say “No more; not this one, you evil bastards! ”
But all are cowards when ‘Liberty’ raises her flaming sword, and the wealthy, like jaded whores, get richer off the blood that young men pour. And we pretend on Memorial Day that some great deed was done. But I stand above this grave and know that nothing’s won.
One smile again from my dead son would cancel out all the bombs that madmen have ever flung. But the game is done.
Ah, how little I must have valued those trusting arms around my neck when he was young.
No more kisses for your daddy now. No more my warm, soft son.
by Pablo Neruda Translated, from the Spanish, by Alfred Yankauer
My dog has died. I buried him in the garden next to a rusted old machine.
Some day I'll join him right there, but now he's gone with his shaggy coat, his bad manners and his cold nose, and I, the materialist, who never believed in any promised heaven in the sky for any human being, I believe in a heaven I'll never enter. Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom where my dog waits for my arrival waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth, of having lost a companion who was never servile. His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine withholding its authority, was the friendship of a star, aloof, with no more intimacy than was called for, with no exaggerations: he never climbed all over my clothes filling me full of his hair or his mange, he never rubbed up against my knee like other dogs obsessed with sex.
No, my dog used to gaze at me, paying me the attention I need, the attention required to make a vain person like me understand that, being a dog, he was wasting time, but, with those eyes so much purer than mine, he'd keep on gazing at me with a look that reserved for me alone all his sweet and shaggy life, always near me, never troubling me, and asking nothing.
Ai, how many times have I envied his tail as we walked together on the shores of the sea in the lonely winter of Isla Negra where the wintering birds filled the sky and my hairy dog was jumping about full of the voltage of the sea's movement: my wandering dog, sniffing away with his golden tail held high, face to face with the ocean's spray.
Joyful, joyful, joyful, as only dogs know how to be happy with only the autonomy of their shameless spirit.
There are no good-byes for my dog who has died, and we don't now and never did lie to each other.
So now he's gone and I buried him, and that's all there is to it.
On 5 February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the United Nations Security Council to present the United States’ case for disarming Saddam Hussein. Among the many fabulous details conveyed by the general that day, Powell warned that
our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.
Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly 5 times the size of Manhattan.
Let me remind you that, of the 122 millimeter chemical warheads that the U.N. inspectors found recently, this discovery could very well be, as has been noted, the tip of the submerged iceberg.
The question before us, all my friends, is when will we see the rest of the submerged iceberg?
Powell has since described the speech as a "blot" on his record and the "lowest point in my life."
Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind.
As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its famous "Doomsday Clock" two minutes closer to midnight.
The concept timepiece, devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, now stands at five minutes to the hour.
The clock was first featured by the magazine 60 years ago, shortly after the US dropped its A-bombs on Japan.
Not since the darkest days of the Cold War has the Bulletin, which covers global security issues, felt the need to place the minute hand so close to midnight. (more)
A listing, with photos, of the 3000 plus American service personel who have died so far in Iraq.
Do your duty. Call up the dead from your state. Memorize their faces. Salute them for their sacrifice. Do not forget them in the coming years.
From Pennsylvania:
144 lives, 141 men, 3 women.
Ages 19 to 51.
Mainly Army. Some Marines. A few Navy.
Mostly they come from small dead or dying ex-industrial burghs scattered all over the state. Strangely, none are from the rich suburbs of Philly or Pittsburgh.
Many of these brave and wonderful people were probably looking for the way out of poverty so gloriously promised by the lying ass recruiters. They didn't live long enough to find those promises turning to ash in their mouths.
And for what in the end? So that a psychopathic narcisistic loser could show the world that his dick was bigger than his Daddy's?
Sadly, there are not many websites large enough to post the pictures of the half a million Iraqis who have died as a result of our "Liberation.
Not that anyone would make the effort to do so in any case.
Sometime this week (most likely Tuesday) visitor number 10,000 will click on to this humble blog. Whether by intent or confusion, whether a visit from our regular reader(sic) or simply some poor soul lost in the mighty blogosphere, we welcome you. Pull up a chair, spit on the rug and call the cat a bastard if you wish.
When I started this little island of egotism, I really expected nothing. And, with apologies to Dr. FrankNFurter, I have received it in abundance. With a new blog being born every second or so, many, many of them don't even get the minimal traffic we do here. It's just that at times it is hard to maintain regular activity in the face of such overwhelming indifference. Carping aside, I'd like to thank some of the folks who make blogging worthwhile to me. Without my minimalist effort here I would never have become blog-interested enough to find:
ae still striving to save the world from her post on arsepoetica
fellow geographer/historian Eric illuminating the world on alterdestiny
the magnificent Corndog himself of Corndogmatic fame, lover of things odd and musical
my journalistic hero Diane and her always thoughtful Dee's Diversion
magnificent grumbler doghouse riley at Bats Left Throws Right
Chris Clarke and Zeke following that Creek Running North forever
Fred First sharing his wonderful life in Floyd, Va. on Fragments from Floyd
Patrick and Teresa Making Light with the best commenting team on the web
Herr Professor Berube taking my head for a postmodern spin yet again
My ArchPoet Dave leading the way on the Via Negativa
John Scalzi saying Whatever he wants
A special shout out goes to my blogging compatriot, Kolchak, without whom precious little real writing would occur hereabouts. Many thanks for your support, Bill., and keep writing those columns
Afterall, I still know where the manuscript with a stake through its heart is buried. Thank you all. It's been a great honor to be allowed out of this dark musty corner of Blogistan to comment on your superb blogs, fools that you folks may be to associate with this cursed anarchist, this sordid malcontent, this Wob. Most of all, Thanks for All the Fish!
