Gordon Smith is a big flip-flopper, and everyone knows it

The news today is that Oregon senator Gordon "weathervane" Smith has decided to throw caution and political sensibilities to the wind and defend departing GOP senator Trent Lott's inane comments about Strom Thurmond. You remember that moment from a few year's back, when Lott said that had the rest of the country followed Mississippi's lead in voting for Thurmond for president in 1948, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years." (Those problems, presumably, having something to do with uppity members of certain races getting uppity and thinking they deserved certain rights under our Constitution.)

Today, however, Gordon Smith got up on the Senate floor and said the following about his good buddy Trent's racist comments:

"I watched over international news as his words were misconstrued, words which we had heard him utter many times in his big warm-heartedness trying to make one of our colleagues, Strom Thurmond, feel good at 100 years old. We knew what he meant. But the wolfpack of the press circled around him, sensed blood in the water, and the exigencies of politics caused a great injustice..."

The only problem here is that Gordo's got himself a teeny tiny memory, forgetting that his initial response back in 2002 was not so generous:

"However they were intended, Senator Lott's words were offensive and I was deeply dismayed to hear of them," Smith said in a brief statement. "His statement goes against everything I and the people of Oregon believe in."

Oh yeah, and then three days later, when Lott stepped down as majority leader, Smith said he was glad that he had resigned. Sigh. It's become quite the pattern for Smith. Say one thing one day, get a bucket of praise from The Oregonian and other naiive media outlets, and then turn around and say/do the opposite. Let's see if someone in the local media actually has the guts to call him on it this time.

In bold strategy, Clemens attempts to distract attention from steroid report with new absurd hairstyle

It's a risky gambit, but if anyone has the chops to distract the public from an incrimination steroid report by featuring an absurd yes-I'm-a-45-year-old-man-with-a-receeding-hairline-but-I-can-
still-get-frosted-tips hairstyle, it's Roger Clemens.

Reaction to the Mitchell Report

This is the room of people who were surprised to hear that Roger Clemens has been taking buttloads of steroids.

Stupid online polls, KGW (Portland, OR) edition

There's been some unsettling talk in recent days that Oregon might be heading for something of a recession--leading economic indicators (payrolls, etc.) are down, and a group of economists from the University of Oregon apparently think there is a substantial risk to the state's economy. So, naturally, into the breach storms one of my least favorite dispensers of the local news, KGW.com, who asks its viewers to answer this highly relevant poll question:


Now, here's what I don't get: why the specificity? Why the "yes, my job would probably be at risk"? Isn't it possible to be worried about the economy even if one's job isn't at risk? I mean, I *think* my job could probably survive a not-too-nasty recession, but I still don't really relish the thought of having one. That is to say, my job would survive, but other things--the jobs of my friends, restaurants in my neighborhoods, the budget for local schools--could take a substantial hit. Why not simply write "yes, I'm concerned about the impact of a recession"?

Actually, the reason is pretty simple: the "no" answer--"I feel secure"--is much more general, and it could very well be that they wrote the poll in such a way as to generate a happy news story--more people are optimistic than pessimistic. The current results have the "no's" in the lead by about 10 points, so I could be on to something.

The disturbing implication, of course, is that they understand that people are unable to think about national politics in a way that does not intimately involve them. According to this view, the only reason you'd be concerned about a recession is if your job was threatened.

Or, it could be that I'm simply overanalyzing something that an intern wrote in about two minutes. ¡Viva blogging!

Japanese baseball player to provide millions of American teenagers* with stupid joke for the next decade

Sports Illustrated reports today that a famous Japanese baseball player plans to follow the lead of guys like Ichiro and Matsui and play ball in the United States. Where Ichiro and Matsui lack that "ha ha, you have a funny name!11!!!!" quality, however, this guy has it in spades:

NAGOYA, Japan (AP) -- Japanese outfielder Kosuke Fukudome told the Chunichi Dragons he will not return next season, saying he wants to make a move to the major leagues.

Fukudome? Oh, good lord.

*"teenager," it should be noted, is a category that also includes every Sportscenter anchor.

Idiot of the Week: Mike Huckabee Edition

It's easy to pick on poor Mike Huckabee: sure, he used to be fat and still walks like a fat guy, and he thinks he's pretty nifty for having a toupee'd fool like Chuck Norris as his biggest celebrity endorsement, and he's got one of the most redneck last names in American political history. However, just when you feel like maybe the guy's a little bit more than a wisecracking redneck southern governor with zero foreign policy experience and a domestic policy team made up of three high school interns and his illegal-weapon packing son, he goes and says something stupid. Witness this luncacy:

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee refused to retract a statement he made in 1992 calling for the isolation of AIDS patients.

Responding to an Associated Press questionnaire, Huckabee said steps should be taken to "isolate the carriers of this plague" during his failed run for a U.S. Senate seat from Arkansas 15 years ago.

He said he probably would not make the same statement today because of what is known about how HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is transmitted.

"I had simply made the point -- and I still believe this today -- that in the late '80s and early '90s, when we didn't know as much as we do now about AIDS, we were acting more out of political correctness than we were about the normal public health protocols that we would have acted," Huckabee told Fox News on Sunday.

First of all, OF COURSE he said this to Fox News. Second of all, he acts as though the only rational course of action in the 1980s was to segregate people with AIDS. I remember way back when (certainly earlier than 1992, when Huckabee said this) that people were saying that you could not get AIDS from casual, incidental contact with someone who had AIDS. His comment may not have been radical in 1983, but by 1992 there was substantial evidence to the contrary.

What this shows, of course, is that the George W. Bush-inspired Republican Party has inherited its master's inability/refusal to admit a mistake. What Huckabee should say in this instance is: "Look, I made a mistake--I was wrong, and I admit it." Instead, he chooses the coward's way out, and tries to blame his ultra-conservative (and mistaken) views on the prevailing public sentiment at the time.

Finally, this shows the danger in ignoring science, as the Republican party tries to do time and time again. Whether it is the Bush administration ignoring science on global warming, or conservative Christians ignoring science on AIDS (to say nothing about the failure of "abstinence-only education," Huckabee's absurd comments show what can happen when you ignore the actual research on an issue in favor of pandering to the worst elements in the voting public.

Really? Socks?

Sigh. You know you're getting older when you actually contemplate ASKING FOR socks for Christmas rather than running from the room in horror upon unwrapping a package of them. Yikes. What has happened to me? Whatever happened to that kid who was so thrilled to get Laser Tag and assorted wacky toys of the 80s? He grew up, I guess, and became a lame sock lover.

KGW news produces least helpful story in internet history

Ok, a questions: if you were issuing a news story talking about the release of a sketch of a guy who is alleged to have attacked a local college student, what is the ONE piece of information you'd want to include with the story? Exactly--a copy of the sketch. One additional question: take a guess at what single piece of information was NOT included in KGW.com's story about the attacker? Exactly--a copy of the sketch. Sheesh.

I know the whole gradually-moving-stories-to-the-internet thing is tricky and complicated, but is it too much to ask local news stations to provide graphics in stories like this one? KGW is notoriously bad in this respect (KATU has the sketch, for example); I think they must have some sort of automated system that just puts copy on the website without bothering to ensure that all the relevant information is included.

Barack Obama the latest to recognize India's growing power

This video doesn't approach the navel-gazing intensity of a Mike Gravel campaign spot, but it does illustrate the crossover potential of Barack Obama going Bollywood. Set to a stirring techno beat and featuring multi-colored elephants, cleverly edited footage of Obama speaking Hindi, and clips of the big man himself getting funky, this is sure to lock up the crucial Indian-American vote that is so important in early primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

This is why Australia is much, much cooler than the U.S.

We here at Pregnant Cornbread would like to offer our congratulations to the new environment minister for the Australian government, Peter Garrett, lead singer of seminal 80s rock band Midnight Oil. Seriously, how cool is that? We've got crap celebrities in politics, and the Aussies have got freaking Peter Garrett.

On a personal note, this is really thrilling news: I practically worshipped Midnight Oil when I was younger man, and they were in fact the first rock concert I attended (if you don't count the "Mama's and the Papa's" reunion show I saw at the San Diego Wild Animal Park when I was 6). When I was in high school I wrote a fan letter to the band, and their manager wrote me back a TWO PAGE letter, responding to points in my letter, talking about the group, etc. Crazy. So, anyway, this is just completely nifty news, and my hat is off to Peter Garrett, member of Parliament since 2004, and now minister for the environment.

Cool.

Breaking News: Mitt Romney would not appoint a Mormon to the Cabinet if elected President

It's news of a somewhat unsurprising variety that Willard "Mitt" Romney, former Governor of Taxachusetts and a guy who appointed a judge who subsequently released a prisoner who subsequently murdered some people (what, seriously, is this like a requirement of governors of Massachusetts?), has come out and apparently admitted that he would not appoint a Muslim to the cabinet if he was elected President. Now, as usual, Mitt ducks the real reason for this ("I'm a Republican, what do you think?" would be the correct answer) and instead comes up with the laughably sloppy explanation “based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population.”

So, Mitt is on record as believing that a group's members should only be allowed to hold a cabinet-level position if they amount to a given percentage of the US population?

Interestingly enough, there are apparently between 6 and 7 million Muslims in the United States. (Admittedly, this is a difficult number to quantify.) According to Mitt Romney, this is not a sufficient percentage to give someone any authority within the executive branch. By the same token, however, there are 5.5 million Mormons in the United States.

Thus, by his own words, we can conclude that Mitt Romney would not appoint a Mormon to the cabinet. Sheesh, what a bigot.

Oprah's favorite fridge: Are you kidding me with this stuff?

Let's see: in America, we've got a problem with obesity. People eat too much food, watch too much TV, and get too little exercise. With that in mind, the geniuses at the LG Corporation have come up with the item guaranteed to get people off their couches, and into the...kitchen. Yes, you got it--it's a fridge with a built-in TV/DVD! Yay! Honestly, I don't even know what to say about this. Have we truly fallen this far as a culture (note: anytime anyone begins a sentence like that, the answer is always going to be "yes") that we have to literally have a TV in front of us at all times? Are we incapable of thinking for ourselves during that crucial 2 minute segment of our day when we get up from the TV during a commercial to go into the kitchen to get something out of the fridge?

Even more depressing is that National Arbiter of Good Taste and Sensibility Oprah Winfrey has named this fridge one of her "Favorite Things" for 2007, so it's guaranteed to get a big boost in sales for the holiday season. At a mere $3,800, why not buy two? You could even put one in your living room, so that your couch-to-fridge time is lessened. If you can put it a few steps from the couch, it might even be possible to NEVER be away from the TV. At such bargain basement prices, you could also locate one in your bedroom. With the superb picture of the built-in DVD, late-night snacks have never been so entertaining!



America: Worst. Superpower. Ever.

My least favorite bit of journalistic laziness

I have a sense that the technology of the day gives rise to certain instances of public laziness, and I cannot help but feel as though I have a sacred duty to correct this. Or, more accurately, to write things describing how much hatred I feel in my heart for their usage. When I was growing up in the 1980s, it was routine for people--usually my peers, at occasions like high school graduations--to begin their speeches with the cliched saying, "Webster's defines ______ as..." That ______ was usually something like "success" or "graduation" or whatever. It was annoying, trite, and everything else.

However, now that we've entered a day and age in which we can comfortably leave things like dictionaries and encyclopedias behind on the dust-covered bookshelves of bygone era, we have to confront glaring new instances of cliches working themselves like boring beetles into the prose of journalists.

My least favorite example of this is when writers cite the number of Google hits a give phrase returns as an example of the cache that term holds in the public consciousness. Even though I usually enjoy his writing, Slate.com's Tim Noah is today's exemplar of this annoying tendency. In an article on the credulity of CNN's Larrry King, he writes,

Then again, this is the same Larry King who regularly plays host on Larry King Live to psychics, mediums, and UFO enthusiasts; who peppered his former USA Today column with insights like "The revamped Beverly Hills Hotel is just beautiful" and "Aren't those Save the Children ties the prettiest around?"; and who, when his name is paired on Google with the word credulous, yields 73,800 hits.

Ok, a few things. First of all, that's factually wrong. I googled "Larry King credulous," and came back with 10,700 hits.

Second of all--and, yes, I know I'm taking what is essentially a throw away comment by Noah and writing way too much about it...but isn't that the entire point of blogging?--that's not how Google searches work. All searching for a combination of words does (unless you put the entire phrase in quotation marks, which is not what Noah did) is find any page on which all those words occurs. If I write something like the following sentence, "Larry King's show on CNN is one of the best I've ever seen, and nobody, from my lovely wife to my credulous, moronic neighbor, believes otherwise," it will show up (perhaps as soon as this afternoon) in a Google search for "Larry King credulous."

Here's an example of how much utility you can really get from using Google as a sounding board for the cultural zeitgeist. If I google my name and the phrase "dating Mandy Moore," I wind up with 69,300 hits. ("Dating Beyoncé Knowles" yields only 16,300 hits--sorry, Beyoncé!) Holy cow! If I google my name and the phrase "impregnated Salma Hayek," I get 10,800 hits. Yow! If I google my name and "hit 714 home runs," I get over 250,000 hits. And, since I clearly am not dating Mandy Moore, have not impregnated Salma Hayek, and am not Babe Ruth, there are clearly limits to this business of calculating our culture's fevered intensity for information (although clearly many people are interested in the identity of people who have impregnated Salma Hayek) by arriving at the number of Google hits for whatever particular phrase floats your boat.

Next up, a fascinating rant in which I express my disgust for people who write/say "jive" when they mean "jibe." Fun!

Fred Thompson is stealing his act from Bartles & Jaymes

Big time Hollywood Fred Thompson, former Laziest Senator of All Time (R-TN) and current candidate for president from the Party-That-Hates-Actors-Until-They-Run-As-Republicans party, has released a new down-home, folksy advertisement for the tee vee in which he aw shucks his way into the hearts of anti-immigrant voters across the country. Or New Hampshire, whatever. Watching it, though, I couldn't help but be reminded of some other folksy, down home characters from the TV who wanted to do nothing more than offer up some refreshment: the pitchmen from those classic Bartles & Jaymes winecooler ads in the 80s. So, for the benefit of humanity, here's Fred's ad, followed by the dearly departed Bartles & Jaymes guys.





It's exactly the same! The same speech patterns, the same mannerisms, even the same "thanks for your support" ending, more or less. The only difference, of course, is that one commercial is attempting to sell us a shoddily produced, sickly sweet product that only appeals to the young and ignorant, and the other is advertising a wine cooler.

Turnabout is fair play, aka, A-Rod gets his

Is there any justice more poetic than Alex Rodriguez, who acted like a total jerk by upstaging the final game of the World Series to announce he was bolting from his contract with the Yankees, getting knocked off the top of the sports pages on the day he announces his new contract with the Yankees by the story of Barry Bonds' indictment?

Will George W. Bush commute Barry Bonds' sentence if he's found guilty?

Yesterday, the guy with the biggest head this side of Tim Russert, Barry Bonds, was indicted by a federal grand jury of five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, coincidentally, the same charges faced by Dick Cheney's erstwhile chief of staff, Scooter Libby. However, after Libby's conviction, Bush commuted his sentence. Here's how CNN described it at the time

President Bush on Monday spared I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from prison, commuting the former White House aide's 30-month prison term.

A conviction remains on Scooter Libby's record, and he must still pay a $250,000 fine.

The prison time was imposed after a federal court convicted Libby of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators in the probe of the leak of the name of a CIA operative.

...

In a written statement commuting the prison sentence, issued hours after Monday's ruling, Bush called the sentence "excessive," and suggested that Libby will pay a big enough price for his conviction.

Ok, fair enough. Libby was found guilty on four counts, and was sentenced to a 30 month prison term. So that sets the bar at what Bush considers to be unfair and excessive for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Now let's turn our attention to Barry Bonds. Here's how Michael McCann of Sports Illustrated describes the charges against Bonds.

However a conviction would be described, Bonds would face up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of three perjury charges, and 10 years and a $250,000 fine for an obstruction of justice charge. He would be facing serious time.

Ok, so we've got Libby sentenced to 30 months for perjury and obstruction of justice, and Bonds facing a potential 35 years in prison for the same charges. Leaving aside for the moment the greater question of whether a guy who took steroids should get a longer prison sentence than a guy who conspired to leak the identity of a covert CIA operative and then cover it up, I think it's a fair question: if Bonds is found guilty and sentenced to more than 30 months in prison, would George Bush support commuting his sentence?

Out of touch liberal president increases federal regulations and ignores flyover country

Oh, excuse me. That's what the headline would be if a Democratic president had proposed the REGULATIONS that President Bush proposed this morning in an effort to improve congestion at our nation's airports. Take it away, ABC News:

Hoping to alleviate a chaotic holiday travel season, the White House announced Thursday that the military would open air space for commercial airlines over the five day holiday period.

"The U.S. military is going to make more air space available for civilian airliners this holiday season by opening up a Thanksgiving express lane," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Additionally, Perino said compensation to passengers bumped from overbooked flights would double the previous compensation, currently $400 or $800, depending on the extent of the inconvenience.

Well, let's talk about this "Thanksgiving express lane!" I live in Portland, OR, and love the idea of improved air space between me and my wife's family in San Diego, or between me and my brother in New York. Certainly these regulations extend to those of us out West, right, Mr. President?!?

These openings concern mainly the East Coast Navy airspace off the Virginia Capes and Jacksonville, Fla., and will occur only during Thanksgiving weekend, from Wednesday, Nov. 21 to the morning of Monday, Nov. 26.

Oh. Of course, if it was a Democrat proposing this, you can bet that he or she would be excoriated for ignoring the needs and wishes of the good folks in "flyover" country, and would be heavily criticized for focusing only on the East Coast (pssst: where all the liberals live).

But since it is a Republican president, the article does not mention that these policies are new REGULATIONS (a word the President himself used in his talk this morning), instead labeling the policies as "assistance" (which they no doubt are, which is kind of the whole point about regulations) for travelers.

FEMA "rap for kids" really goes off the rails

Hey, kids--you know what's hip? RAP MUSIC! That's right! It's the thing that those crazy, wacky teenagers are doing, what with the crazy pants and the big boomboxes and the hipping and the hopping. And do you know what else is really cool? Rapping about public policy! Thankfully, the "hep cats" down at the Federal Emergency Management Authority, aka FEMA, aka FEMA 2000, aka Femaster Jay, aka Lucious Lightfoot FEMAboobimo, have put out a pretty dope rap to explain to the kids just what it is that makes managing emergencies such a gas. Check out these "phat" lyrics:

Disaster . . . it can happen anywhere,
But we've got a few tips, so you can be prepared
For floods, tornadoes, or even a 'quake,
You've got to be ready - so your heart don't break.
Disaster prep is your responsibility
And mitigation is important to our agency.

Wait, wha? Miti-what? Is it me, or does that last line veer from "lame, trite rhymes about emergencies" to "weird wonky stuff that nobody really cares about?" And, man, it goes off the rails FAST. I can almost picture the board meeting, wherein some "square" upper management guy was like "ahem, well, the rap music my kids listen to talks only about "hos" and "bitches" and "getting in some buster's grill." Shouldn't we have something in here about our important work with mitigation, especially as it relates to certain public-private ventures we have established with various community stakeholders?"

Finally, here's the "wack" graphics they use for the page. Far out, daddy-o! Because nothing--and I mean nothing--says "cool" as much as putting a "z" at the end of a word that normally has an "s" at the end of it. That's crazy!

Hey, Latvia--SUCK IT!!!!

That's right, bitches. So this big impressive healthcare study came out, comparing how various countries are doing at making sure that babies born don't go on to die soon thereafter, and guess what? We smoked your asses! That's right! Boo ya! Y'all thought you were sick stuff, but you just got thrown down by the good old US of A. LOL, Loserz!!! That'll teach you suckers--next time you try to roll, keep it down in your own league. Yeah, you heard me--stick to Lithuania and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and some of the other 'stans. Ummm hmmm. Tell Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis to quit trying to run with the big dogs like George W! Maybe he should try to compete with someone like First Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko of Belarus--that's more his style.

Wait, what's that? You don't believe me? Ok, fine, check this for yourself, fools. Here's the list right here.

Group A
- Japan 1.8 deaths per 1,000 live births
Group B
- Czech Rep 2 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Finland 2 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Iceland 2 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Norway 2 deaths per 1,000 live births
Group C
- Austria 3 deaths per 1,000 live births
- France 3 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Germany 3 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Israel 3 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Italy 3 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Luxembourg 3 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Portugal 3 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Slovenia 3 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Spain 3 deaths per 1,000 live births
Group D
- Australia 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Belgium 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Canada 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Denmark 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Estonia 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Greece 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Ireland 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Lithuania 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Netherlands 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- New Zealand 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Switzerland 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
- United Kingdom 4 deaths per 1,000 live births
Group E
- Hungary 5 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Malta 5 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Poland 5 deaths per 1,000 live births
- Slovakia 5 deaths per 1,000 live births
- USA - 5 deaths per 1,000 live births
Group F
- Latvia 6 deaths per 1,000 live births

Yeah, that's right. Check the scoreboard, baby. You got schooled. You even got your own Group--Group F, for Failure. Meanwhile we're rolling up in Group E, for Exceptional. That's right. Us, Hungary, Malta, Poland (don't forget about them), and Slofreakinvakia. Game on.

Britney's brilliant lawyer tactic #547: Piss off the guy hearing your case

I won't bore you with the trials and tribulations of Ms. Britney Spears nee Alexander nee Federline, but the latest story about how she's allegedly "ducking drug tests" has one of the most brilliant legal tactics I've ever encountered. The basic idea of the story is this: Britney was ordered by the court to submit to random drug tests. She has been called 14 times, and had only gone to the lab to take the test 8 of those times. Federline's lawyer sees much skullduggery here, whereas Britney's lawyer says that the girl just missed the calls because she was asleep or in the midst of a Cheetoh-induced stupor. But here's where the story gets kind of awesome:

Spears has been called to the laboratory 14 times, but has failed to respond to eight of those calls, Federline attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan told Superior Court Commissioner Scott Gordon Thursday morning.
...
Spears lawyer Anne Kiley argued the previous court order was unconstitutional and Spears didn't respond to the lab phone calls within an hour, as ordered by the court, because she was sleeping. Kiley asked that Spears be given six hours to respond to the laboratory phone requests.
...
Gordon said time wasn't the problem, noting Spears has lost telephone numbers and changed her telephone numbers. The commissioner then noted he has to wake up at 7:30 a.m. each morning.

Kiley interrupted: "You're not a pop star with a No. 1 album."

Oh, snap! OH NO SHE DI'INT!!!! Seriously, is this a smart tactic? I didn't go to law school, so I'm not familiar with the ins and outs and assorted intricacies of our legal system, but is it really a clever move to (a) interrupt the judge (or "court commissioner," whatever) and point out the fact that he's not a pop star with a Number 1 album? (And, technically, neither is Britney.)

It must be said, however, that this "with all due respect, sir, you're not a..." tactic is one that will not work for Federline's lawyer, unless the "seriously, though, Mr. Court Commissioner, you're not an unemployed, highly fertile, and frequently stoned backup dancer" move seems like a good one.