“You Must Be, My Lucky (All-) Star...”

Soooooo Not The Tale Of “The Natural”...But It Does Involve A Shady Lady, Temptation, Faith, and a Hotel Room. Oh Wait...

What with the vicissitudes of the extended rollercoaster of a political season, I haven't had much opportunity to indulge much writing on one of my favorite things in the whole wide world—Baseball.

I fell in love with the game 37 years ago, on a July 13th afternoon. It was a Tuesday. I remember that because Tuesday was always a light work-day at my Dad's job and I knew I could spend that day in particular at his restaurant, running behind him like some annoying little Black “Mini-Me”. It was the afternoon of the mid-summer classic—Baseball's All-Star Game, and my semi-apathy towards the sport was instantly replaced by a sense of awe and wonder when the Oakland A's young superstar Reggie Jackson launched one of the hardest hit, most majestic home runs you've ever seen—off an offering by the Pirates' mercurial All-Star hurler Dock Ellis. Seeing Jackson's Superman-esque blast, as he set the new standard for what a slugger looked like—the boozy-looking, flabby free-swingers of the Ted Kluszewski mold would now become anachronisms—I was hooked. His A's in their gaudy green and gold togs would become my first favorite team—but I could never keep up with their exploits the way I wanted to, as the west coast scores even in the early 1970's would be delayed a day or so in the papers and televised sports reports.

So, I shifted my allegiance eastward, to the team of my father's since he saw their Negro League namesakes play at the same hallowed Bronx ballyard—The New York Yankees.

Yes, I became a Yankee fan when they were at their worst, and you could buy a walk-up ticket at the Stadium into the third inning and by the fifth, have the place so empty you could walk down to the field level and hand Duke Sims his Racing Form in the on-deck circle—no sweat . It was the CBS-owned / about-to-be-handed-off-to Steinbrenner early 1970's. (CBS fucked up EVERYTHING they gobbled up during that wave of 70's super-conglomeratization—Fender Guitars, anyone? Gabriel Toys?) And oh, what an embarrassment they were then. A collection of cast-offs, half-talents, wash-outs and a few gems they got lucky with thanks to the still-sane few in management who were still player-developing amidst all the collected hardball detritus.

I remember those horrible Yankee teams well. Manned by the dazzlingly dull Horace Clarke, and the wannabe slugger Duke Sims, and an aging, partied-the-hell-out Ron Swoboda.

And I remember the nadir of those Yankee years—1973, when crappy Yankee pitchers Fritz Petersen and Mike Kekich got all “Ice Storm-y” and swung harder at home than they ever did at the plate in the pre-Designated Hitter days. They swapped wives and families,'cause hey...it was the seventies, ma-a-a-a-a-a-n, and that's what you did, right?

Well...fucking, no, That's what a decided minority in the population played around at doing, but none so publicly and stupidly as these two Yankee fuck-ups. It ended badly of course, as Fritz's wife liked her switch, and Mike's couldn't get-down with the whole funky, bell-bottomed swap-er-oonie, and he was left ass-out when the “arrangement” ended. (Fritz wound up marrying Mike's wife—Um...oh snap?) But it was a dark day for fans of the team, as the ugly bedroom peccadilloes were splashed across the back pages of all the city's tabloids—the Daily News's in-house scold and grump Dick Young had a spittle-flecked day as he went into full-on Archie Bunker mode and used the incident to rail about everything that was wrong in the world at that awful, afro-ed, libertine moment in time. Being a Yankee fan, but thankfully a young one, I kind of pish-poshed the whole thing as silly, and kept on steppin', blindly supporting my pinstripes as the they stumbled around a couple more years as the league's dumping ground for drunks, skunks, and once-talented-but-now-washed-up bums.

I note all of this—right up to the Kekich/Petersen PR bed-shit for my beloved team (My God, if there was sports-talk radio or an ESPN around then....sheeee-iiittt!), because for me over the years as a Yankee fan, that was just about the depth of private bedroom ugly enveloping the team in a public sense. Flat-out dumb-assery played out by a couple of ridiculously naive man-boys in tight double-knits that embarrassed them mainly, and the team second—but no less nastily.

Well, helloooooooo 2008! Thirty-five years later, and sordid tales of “big sticks”, “bounding balls”, and...“yick!”...messy slides-in dominate the news again about...my team. Not quite wife-swapping. Just sloppy, public wife-dissing in favor of...what? Not the mysterious, murderous “Harriet Bird” from Bernard Malamud's “The Natural”, but a corny, ersatz digital era version of the same. With a lot more mileage, and a boatload less mystery about her. Not that I'd expect the mega-talented, but tragically head-cased Yankee star Alex Rodriguez to be savvy enough to pick up on that sort of thing.

'Cause this is about more than just “Physical Attraction” here.

“Borderline” behavior such as this, that is.

You see, for all his macho, there's a bit of the naif in him...which is what's gotten his ass in dutch.here. Yes, we know he's not “Like A Virgin” stumbling headlong into the arms of some “Beautiful Stranger” or something., but still...

Okay...fun's fun “Everybody”. Let's get “Into The Groove” here and look at this tabloid-y mess.

With “Madge” holding our hand or course...'cause we're all soaking in it now...and it ain't diswashing liquid, kids. Bleah.

Everything about an élite pro athlete's life — the nine-figure contract, the 20,000-sq.-ft. home, the beauteous gluteus maximus and, yes, sometimes even the 12-lawyer divorce — is a brawny spectacle. But the breakup of New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez and his wife Cynthia is surely one for the record books, with its allegations of a starry love pentagon and brainwashing via a rabbi. The relationship that appears to have helped unravel the six-year Rodriguez marriage involves no mere Vegas stripper or D-list country star. This couple is fighting about the only woman on earth who can top A-Rod in both net worth and push-ups — Madonna.

Cynthia Rodriguez filed for divorce Monday, with her lawyers claiming that "Alex has emotionally abandoned his wife and children" and that the marriage "is irretrievably broken because of the husband's extramarital affairs and marital misconduct." While Madonna's name isn't mentioned in the petition, Earle Lilly, Cynthia's divorce attorney, told TMZ, "Madonna was the last straw."

Lilly later clarified to PEOPLE magazine that he was not claiming sexual infidelity by the Material Girl and Major League boy, but rather "an affair of the heart." Dodd Romero, Rodriguez's former trainer and godfather to his children, told Good Morning America that Madonna has "brainwashed" the ballplayer with teachings of Kabbalah, the form of Jewish mysticism she practices. "Something has pulled him away from his strong family values and has caused him to search and look for something that really isn't out there," Romero said. (For pro athletes, chatty former trainers pose the same threat that chatty ex-nannies do to actors: they often see their bosses at their worst, and share it.)

Come on, man. Madonna?

Madonna?

I mean, Goddamn...that is sooooooooo 1998. Shit, it's damn near sooooooooo 1988.

Madonna?

Yes, somewhere in the great orange and blue box seats in the sky, I know Steve is laughing his ass off over this All-Star calibre of Yankee drama stupid. As well he should. Beyond his “F' the effing Yankees” mantra (and you should see how he and I used to go at it in our back-channel baseball e-mails—hooooo boy!), this is one of local baseball's most juicy little scandal-ismos to come down the pike in a a while. It isn't quite as kooky-fuck as the Kekich/Petersen “Freaky Friday” bit, but it ranks up there with some of the others. Like the recent shitty, 3:11 a.m. trash-canning of Mets manager (And New York's first Black MLB manager) Willie Randolph last month that re-exposed the long-known and creepy fissures in the team from Flushing, or the infamous Howie Spira spying-on-Dave-Winfield incident the got George Steinbrenner a well-deserved, forced time-out in the eighties.

(But of course, a “head” like me can go back to antics like the juvenile David Cone Mets bullpen “Onanism” bit, or the Yanks' Luis Polonia fucking up with an underage girl who lied to him about her actual “yout”. And of course, the one that freaked me out as a child of the Civil Rights era—Met great Cleon Jones getting busted en flagranté de-fucking-lecto by the cops in a “love” van down south with an jailbait White girl (very “Black Snake Moan”, dontchaknow...), a stash of drugs, and being summarily bounced from the team for said indiscretion. I always imagined the van's doors being flung open, and a cloud of reefer smoke pouring out along with the gutteral strains of The Chakachas' “Jungle Fever”)

What makes A-Rod's incident so head-shakingly dumb is how it only serves to bake hard into people's minds what a grasping, insecure goofball he is. Especially when you look fifty feet to his left and see his peer and evil twin in super-stardom, one Derek Sanderson Jeter playing shortstop.

If you spend any time out in New York City once the sun goes down, and maybe get to know a party person or two, you eventually come to know that Mr. Jeter is one of the town's greatest Lotharios since the days of a sober Joe Willie Namath, his panty hose and his infamous men's club “Bachelor's III”. Jeter has been linked over the years to a veritable “Who's Who” of bodacious babe-a-licious-ness , spanning the likes of Mariah Carey (whose ill-conceived attempt to publicly play off the relationship's still going on after it had ended led to the unfortunate coining of the phrase “Jetering”, the process by which one openly dispels an ended relationship's faked continuance at a public gathering), Jordana Brewster, Both voluptuous Jessicas—Alba and Biel, Scarlett Johanssen, Miss Universe Lara Dutta, Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima and a favorite chocolate kiss of mine, actress Gabrielle Union, amongst a raft of others, less famous but off-the-chain “hawt” (as the kids say) nonetheless.

The most you've probably heard about these relationships is that they existed (save for the Carey end-game drama which she inanely prompted). You don't hear about wild canoodling, or stripper bars, slap-fights or other embarrassing peccadilloes involving him and the various women in his life. Why is that? It's because for all of his tom-catting about, he's remarkably discreet and un-messy in the way he conducts his life. They don't go to Page Six about him, and he doesn't give 'em cause to. When you're comfortable in your own skin and operate from a base of confidence, you tend to run your ship with an even keel. That's a manifestation of his whole personality, which flows through his whole “game”—on-field and off. I get the feeling that A-Rod cuts his eye those fifty feet leftward these days and probably hates/respects/is awed by him more than ever.

(SHOWN BELOW: DEREK JETER'S MADDENING ROGUE'S GALLERY OF CONTENTMENT—CLICK FOR LARGER)



You see...for all his mighty ability—and make no mistake, Alex Rodriguez is one of the seven or eight best all-around players in baseball today (including Tampa Bay's B.J. Upton, the Marlins' Henley Ramirez, Philly's Jimmy Rollins, the M's Ichiro, Detroit's Miguel Cabrera, and a few others), he is a flat-out mess of a person in his head.

In an ironic, but not unheard of twist, either the Gods, the Fates (or maybe even...Satan?) smiled down and gave Alex Emmanuel Rodriguez an otherworldly combination of positives to build a life from—stunning physical looks, off-the-charts marketable talent, a ridiculously affable personality and a nimble, cognitive mind. With all of that, he is still an emotional basket-case, unlike other like-gifted big-name personalities like George Clooney, Tom Brady and the aforementioned Jeter. Rodriguez' infield mate isn't a perfect person by any means, but what demons may haunt him do so well beyond our view. A-Rod's psyche-spawned spectres however, tear at him before our very eyes. For example, the man's got Daddy/abandonent issues to beat the band. His father Victor, a talented ballplayer in the Dominican Republic booked back to New York when Alex was nine years old and the marital split-up was kept from young Alex ostensibly to shield him from heartbreak, but he went on for years deluded, thinking that Daddy was merely “away” for a while. You can imagine how that kind of over-kid gloving can addle a person, no matter how talented. It's the sort of thing that when eventually discovered by a child, can easily trigger the obvious approval / validation junkie issues Rodriguez exhibits today. With all he has going for him, there's a Cecil Fielder-sized hole in his soul. Coming up with such fanfare with the Mariners in 1994, the young star dazzled everyone—until he came up for free agency six years later and signed a salary-structure busting contract with Texas that vociferously pissed off the mellow, and seemingly betrayed Pacific Northwesterners unexpectedly to no end. It also engendered ill will from baseball fans in many small-market cities as he became the poster child (rightly or wrongly) for excess in the game. Quite a blow for an “approval / validation junkie”. He's been a superficial statistical wunderkind and a grasping, mind-fucked enigma ever since.

He saw his best buddy (and talent lesser—let's be honest) Jeter rack up World Series ring, after ring, after ring, after ring, and while hated for his NY success, be acknowledged as the intangible-stuffed baseball magician of the age. Hated but respected, alá Michael Jordan, while A-Rod himself was just...well, fucking hated. So, he overplayed the affability card to get the love he craved from fans and the media and it never worked. He marketed himself on the outside package of perfection, and took a wife to buttress that palatable, “Joe-Perfect”, “I-can-sell-whatever” image—even though he was clearly not ready for that level of commitment or personal responsibility. He shtupped about like so many of his baseball brethren—on the road eighty-one plus days a season with chickies galore, all too willing to serve it up to even hundred-thousand-aire bench-riders—imagine the amount of ego-swelling (and everything else-swelling) ass a mega-star stud like him could bag?

But again...it was never about the sex, really. It was all about that gaping hole in his soul. Let's keep it real fellas...when we fuck around illicitly, it's due to a combination of three things really:

1.) Validation of self-worth—“I need to know they still want me!”

2.) Because we can—“It's nice to know I can still do it!”

3.) The thrill of the risk / danger involved—“Real men can get away with this—I wanna be a real man!”

Sex itself is easy to get. Gift of gab, a bit of personality, and lacking that—money to spare'll get you your share. Validation and a settling of internal turmoil are harder things to procure, and A-Rod's quest has clearly been dominated by those latter vesperous grails. But anyone who's watched Alex Rodriguez over the years with any kind of closeness could also see there was a deeper searching in this strangely yearning, superficial “man with it all”. A searching for the self-satisfied, seeming completeness constantly on display by the placid, settled, actual “man with it all” standing fifty feet to his left—one-hundred and sixty two times every year with that shit-eating semi-smirk permanently pasted on his mug. Goddammit to hell, how do I get me some...of...that?

Doesn't know how—the poor schmuck. So he fills his life beyond the ballpark with messy grab-assery. A cocktail waitress here, a stripper there. Nothin' classy. Just “empty calories” for a hungry soul.

Enter the relationship equivalent of Olestra, good ol' “Madge” Ciccone.

Madonna's made a career of collecting and discarding a string of men—a lot of them emotionally boys, actually—who've either had a certain something to offer to enhance her image or career. To further her music career (Jellybean Benitez), to secure Hollywood cred (Sean Penn and Warren Beatty), to get her the desired “exotic” baby (Carlos León), or to simply burnish her vaunted “I can get 'em while they're hot” status as a man-catcher par excellence (Jose Canséco and Dennis Rodman at their 90's supernova-fame hottest ). As the years have worn on and her desire has shifted towards a quest for stability and centered-ness, she settled down with director Guy Ritchie and had her second child Rocco, semi-scandalously adopted what some would call a “boutique” baby with little David from Malawi, and perhaps most interestingly, threw over her Catholicism for the Judaic mysticism of Kabbalah for added gravitas.

Mama got peace. Mama got soul. Mama's got it all, now. Family, success, her own odd version of that beatific Jeter-esque look of completeness, and she was willing to share that “secret” (“Lose insecurity now—Ask me how!”) with anyone willing to ask.

Except...unknown to the myopic, questing slugger, time was also passing Mama by on the front she'd staked out from her just ripened-fruit days as a “Material Girl” to her cougar-ish “Beautiful Stranger” December bloom. And it just so also happens that—oh yeah—it can't do anything but help to put a sort-of fading one-time sexpot back on the “Hoochie-Mama” front burner than to snag a hard-to-get dude of the minute. Or at least, appear to have.

Take A-Rod's searching stupid, mix with Madonna's crafty sense of timing and ability to exploit—garnish with the 21st century / 24-hour paparazzi age and you have a silly, exploding scandal that works in favor of a master of media manipulation (Madge) and tarnishes the clutchy dope. (Guess the hell who?)

It's a cocktail of sordidness served alongside a heaping plate of “What-the-fuck?” in Ms. Alex Rodriguez—his wife Cynthia. And Ms. Cynthia is not the typical “baseball wife” in that she is not defined by or is subservient to the relationship to her famous ballplaying husband. That's a thing that's expected from an MLB significant other, and I can speak from a level of intimacy on this—as I dated a woman who I would remain friends with for years after she married an MLB All-Star and one-time free agent superstar. The shit she was supposed to just “deal with” (and hubby damn sure pressed the envelope famously in NY—no further comment...) was unconscionable. Cynthia Rodriguez is not that kind of baseball wife. She's a daughter of a supremely prominent South Florida family, went to the best schools there and nabbed a Master's Degree in Psychology—she would also teach said subject in schools, and use her expertise to help the grasping A-Rod through a slew of issues in his life—actually brokering the desperately craved reunion between he and his dad, and mackadociously enough, stepping in to fix the negotiations the slugger's agent Scott Boras broke between he and the Yankees when they nearly let him walk in a fit of pique. She's one smart, tough and connected cookie...and it seems that A-Rod in his emotional “walkabout” of an adulthood ultimately craves that kind of woman.

Trouble is, he apparently craved more than one of 'em as evidenced by his open sniffing around the equally no-bullshit Madonna.

But Cynthia Rodriguez is no Goddamn piker and A-Rod picked the wrong woman to dick over publicly.

So of course the woman who helped negotiate your quarter-of-a-billion-dollar contract isn't gonna take your overactive, high school-jock libido bullshit lying down.

She's gonna jet her ass over to Paris and crash at Lenny Kravitz's villa, 'cause you see...she knows people too.

And yes, she's gonna melt that fucking AmEx card down to its base petroleum elements with a $100,000 spree—which is an ass-whippin' you'll just have to take.

Because for all of your bicep-flexing, longball-bashing might A-Rod? It's clear you're kind of weak in the ol' security / confidence arenas.

And I say this as the BIGGEST of Yankee fans ever. I can love the team, and cheer like a madman when you fire off a mortar like you did against Toronto off the foul pole up at Rogers Centre Saturday, but as a guy...a REAL GUY? You leave some shit to be desired on the personal tip. And you were messy, silly and stupid in mucking around with a stone, self-interested operator like Madonna. How in the hell did you expect that to turn out? Her “E” Inside Story's on once a month, knucklehead. And did you notice we're not talking about her husband Guy Ritchie in all of this? Wanna know why? Because when it comes to Madonna and a some dude, that's what it's always going to be about—Madonna...and some dude. You're in her orbit, man. Be you a flash-in-the-pan director husband, or a quarter billion-dollar compensated sports super-duper-star.

Get it?

Now...it's time for you to start growing the fuck up, and start handling your business tidy-like. You've probably scuttled the marriage irreparably, and guess what? You don't have Madonna, either. Lose-lose, brother. That quest for peace or completeness? Yeah, well...there are ways of going about getting to that—but the hope here is that you've learned that dipping your wick in allegedly mystical, magical punanny will not get your ass “clear”.

Understand?

Now, I fully grasp that this transgression will not stop the ladies from loving you. Mrs. LM and my softball team-mate “Y” will fight off all comers for the loins of the chiseled A-Rod. But you need to get a bit more experience in the maturity department in dealing with the ladies, Alex. Date as many as you want like your “buddy” Jeet, but please...at least try to be a touch more discreet, and here's a thought—maybe classier in terms of who you choose, and how you comport yourself. Okay? Great. Do it.

And lastly, for God's sake...will you once and for all stop trying to pull that Goddamned outside breaking ball? It ends up a weak grounder to short nine times out of ten!

There's more...

We Fact Check the Left, Too!

CounterPunch describes itself:

Here at CounterPunch we have many friends and all the right enemies. And, guaranteed, you'll never see any of us on the pundit line up at MSNBC. We try to stay beyond the pale.

Someone I know described CounterPunch's Cockburn (that's pronounced "coe-burn" for those of you who are still stuck in the locker room) as 'fallen off the far left edge'. We here at GNB have a tendency to, shall we say, concentrate upon the peccadilloes of "The Right" or "The GOP", or "The NeoCons". But this post is presented as evidence that we write about the knuckle-dragging-left-my-brain-at-home-stupidity of "The Left" as well.

At CounterPunch, Ismael Hossein-Zadeh writes about problems with the theory of Peak Oil. Interestingly, he gets it pretty much all wrong. Let's see how!

Peak oil theory is based on a number of assumptions and omissions that make it less than reliable. To begin with, it discounts or disregards the fact that energy-saving technologies have drastically improved (and will continue to further improve) the efficiency of oil consumption. Evidence shows that, for example, “over a period of five years (1994-99), U.S. GDP expanded over 20 percent while oil usage rose by only nine percent. Before the 1973 oil shock, the ratio was about one to one.”[4]

This is absolutely irrelevant to Peak Oil theory. Peak Oil says nothing about oil consumption.

Second, Peak Oil theory pays scant attention to the drastically enabling new technologies that have made (and will continue to make) possible discovery and extraction of oil reserves that were inaccessible only a short time ago. One of the results of the more efficient means of research and development has been a far higher success rate in finding new oil fields. The success rate has risen in twenty years from less than 70 percent to over 80 percent. Computers have helped to reduce the number of dry holes. Horizontal drilling has boosted extraction. Another important development has been deep-water offshore drilling, which the new technologies now permit. Good examples are the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and more recently, the promising offshore oil fields of West Africa.[5]

Also irrelevant to Peak Oil theory. Peak Oil talks about the rate of extraction and how it follows a normal curve. Peak Oil theory says nothing about exploration.

Third, Peak Oil theory also pays short shrift to what is sometimes called non-conventional oil. These include Canada's giant reserves of extra-heavy bitumen that can be processed to produce conventional oil. Although this was originally considered cost inefficient, experts working in this area now claim that they have brought down the cost from over $20 a barrel to $8 per barrel. Similar developments are taking place in Venezuela. It is thanks to developments like these that since 1970, world oil reserves have more than doubled, despite the extraction of hundreds of millions of barrels.[6]

Irrelevant to Peak Oil theory. Peak Oil theory is about the rate of extraction, not about the form of the oil. If unconventional fields like tar sands and oil shale become a significant part of the actual extraction market, then we'll have more data (and more oil). In the meantime, Peak Oil theory talks about what it knows: extraction of oil from any given field follows a generally normal distribution over time.

Fourth, Peak Oil thesis pays insufficient attention to energy sources other than oil. These include solar, wind, non-food bio-fuel, and nuclear energies. They also include natural gas. Gas is now about 25 percent of energy demand worldwide. It is estimated that by 2050 it will be the main source of energy in the world. A number of American, European, and Japanese firms have and are investing heavily in developing fuel cells for cars and other vehicles that would significantly reduce gasoline consumption.[7]

Irrelevant to Peak Oil theory. Peak Oil theory is about the extraction of oil. It says nothing about alternative forms of energy. It also says nothing about the rate of consumption of energy or even oil.

Fifth, proponents of Peak Oil tend to exaggerate the impact of the increased oil demand coming from China and India on both the amount and the price of oil in global markets. The alleged disparity between supply and demand is said to be due to the rapidly growing demand coming from China and India. But that rapid growth in demand is largely offset by a number of counterbalancing factors. These include slower growth in U.S. demand due to its slower economic growth, efficient energy utilization in industrially advanced countries, and increases in oil production by OPEC, Russia, and other oil producing countries.

What any proponents of Peak Oil theory say about demand has nothing to do with Peak Oil. Demand has nothing to do with Peak Oil. Peak Oil has to do with the available rate of extraction of oil from known fields.

At this point, one wonders why we're bothering to continue reading Mr. Hossein-Zadeh, since he either:

1. knows nothing about Peak Oil theory; or
2. knows but is willing to deceive his readers

Peak Oil is about the extraction of oil from known fields. It takes advantage of the observation that oil extraction volume from a field follows a known distribution: low at the beginning to high in the middle and low at the end. By looking at known volume of extraction of fields, it's possible to predict where/when the peak (maximum) extraction value will occur. It's not quite exact, and large new finds would make a difference, but the essential correctness of the idea was established when King Hubbert accurately predicted peak flow in the US. His 1956 paper offered two scenarios for US production, the second of which came true when US extraction peaked in 1970.

Peak Oil is not about oil consumption, oil exploration, or oil alternatives. If oil extraction technology improves, generally it allows us access to new oil supplies not previously economically extractable. If that happens, Peak Oil theory allows for a modification of the expected peak. Peak Oil is about adding together the know profiles of extraction for existing known sources of oil and getting a realistic picture of when oil extraction will peak. It worked for US fields, it will work for the rest of the world as well.

...

This has led to a steady rise in crude oil inventories over the last two years, “resulting in US crude oil inventories that are now higher than at any time in the previous eight years. The large influx of speculative investment into oil futures has led to a situation where we have both high supplies of crude oil and high crude oil prices. . . . In fact, during this period global supplies have exceeded demand, according to the US Department of Energy.”[10]

This appears to be flat-out wrong. A "not-so". This Week In Petroleum (Crude Oil Section) at the EIA has something to say about that:
This graph shows US Crude Oil stocks over roughly the last year. The blue band is the average range, and you'll notice that the weekly run over the last couple of months has been sharply down toward the bottom of the band. It's quite clear that last August, US crude oil stocks were considerably higher (above 325M bbls) than they are now (below 300M bbls). According to the data table, on 2008.07.04 the US has 293.9M bbls, and that on 2007.07.07, the US had 352.6M bbls.
This graph tells us that we currently have about 19 days of oil, down from about 23 days in 2007.

The fact that the skyrocketing oil prices of late have been accompanied by a surplus in global oil markets was also brought to the attention of President George W. Bush by Saudi officials when he asked them during a recent trip to the kingdom to increase production in order to stem the rising prices. Saudi officials reminded the President that “there is plenty of oil on the market. Iran has put some 30 million barrels of oil that it can't sell into floating storage. ‘If we produced more oil, it wouldn't find buyers,’ says the Saudi source. It wouldn't affect the price at all."[11]

This one's interesting. It's almost certainly a real quote (although, given the truthiness of the rest of the article, who knows?), but the fact of the matter is that most Saudi excess capacity is "sour" oil -- petroleum with a whole lot of sulfur in it. Prices quoted for oil are almost always for the most desirable variety, generally "light, sweet crude". Sour crude goes for less and is less desired. As Time tells us:

The extra 500,000 barrels they plan to start shipping next month will likely be heavy, "sour" (sulphur-rich) crude, which most Saudi fields produce. Sour crude is far more difficult to market globally than light, sweet crude, because it needs a lot more refining to meet the environmental standards of the industrialized world."The Saudis would discount it further, because refiners don't want it," says Harry Tchilinguirian, senior oil analyst in London for BNP Paribas.

In other words, the Saudis could extract more oil, but that oil would be undesirable because of its sulfur content. So the quote is probably right -- if you want milk, and a store without milk offers to sell you motor oil, you probably won't buy it.

Mr. Hossein-Zadeh "teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa." I hope he's more professional as a professor then he is as a Peak Oil critic.

And I worry about his students.

[20080711 11:21 PDT Updated to correct misspelling of 'sulfur' as 'sulpher'. My bad.]

There's more...

Palpitations...And No Pride To Speak Of.

To Everything There Is A Season...

I had something else in mind in my dealing with this subject again—this indelicate matter of loose and insensitive words about the spectre of assassination that hovers over the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama.

The focus was going to be on the macabre little bit of snuff humor snarked out at an NRA convention late last week by the alleged GOP wordsmith par excellence, Mike Huckabee. It was to be a rumination on comedy and how said craft is really best left to the professionals. There was going to be a tie-in of Randi Rhodes' odious statements while amateurishly prowling a stand-up stage in San Francisco. There was to be a treatise on the meaning of words and context, and how professionals whose stocks in trade are words should know better.

It was going to be titled “Comedy Is Not Pretty”, borrowing from the old Steve Martin-ism. I even had a plan to explain in detail why playing around with that subject (assassination of Blacks who would dare ascend to power) is a dangerous game when you consider recent (in my lifetime) American history and its sorry record of using violence to silence Black folks who are on the verge of making a difference.

And yes...I was going to refer to the piece written here post-the sea-changing Iowa Democratic primary results, “Pride and Palpitations”, where I opined how on that politically startling night, my thoughts and the thoughts of many African Americans turned to fearful musings on the safety of the then-nascent candidate Barack Obama.

The plan was to have a little bit fun at ol' Huckabee's expense while highlighting the serious nature of his gallows humor over the subject that is discussed in hushed tones 'round the Beltway and in the pundit circles. But...today intruded. There will be little whimsy here as today's unfortunate verbal diarrhea spew just crowds humor into a corner and then kicks at it with hob-nailed boots.

In fact, let's go back a few months ago to the aforementioned “Pride” piece for a little foreshadowing on today's “events” shall we?

Let's go there...

I watched the end of Obama's speech—still sniper-checking a bit, and silently imploring him to “move around a little...make it difficult for 'em”. But then, it was done. The crowd roared, he hugged Michelle, confetti fell, and I imagine upstairs in their suite McFadden and Whitehead's “Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now” was heard at least once.

I relaxed for the first time in many minutes, finishing my drink and looking at the post-speech coverage of Olbermann trying not to laugh at the shit-scared White man writ large, Chris Matthews sitting next to him, all darting eyes and afraid of what is on the horizon. My wife rolled over and said simply “Whew! He made it. Thank God. Mmmmmkay, g'night.”

Which was the signal for me to leave for the front room.

And as I walked there, I reviewed my emotions of the night. Shock. Disbelief. Pride...and then muscle-tensing fear when I realized where this was all headed...now. I sat down to watch the continuing coverage and saw the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson review Obama's speech glowingly, and then...he cited the feeling he had when watching the hopeful, ”new day” swelling of popularity when Bobby Kennedy was running, and he was almost aglow when he mentioned that campaign. But then, he brought it down a bit in the next breath—quickly, and probably because he'd just thought of exactly what I'd thought right after he mentioned it.

Namely, how RFK's campaign tragically ended. (New 5/23/08 emphasis, mine—LM)

Now, let me close by saying that I don't mean to be a killjoy about what last night may have meant. In spite of my having not formally chosen a candidate I really feel strongly positive about, I'll be damned if I didn't feel something soul-deep special when they announced that Obama had won Iowa handily, and at that moment he geared up to speak, things did seem for a time like the climax to a crazy, pre-waking lottery-hit dream. I felt deliriously good about progressives in general when they gave the voting numbers for the caucus—Dems doubling the turnout damn near from '04, and tripling the GOP's mouth breathers in-state.

But I want you to understand what that nervousness and yes, I'll say it—fear was about as Barack Obama thanked his supporters and urged them onward. I don't know if you'll ever really understand it and why it comes so quickly to the fore for Black folks. I guess, you need only to look at not distant, but recent American history and how deadly cruel it has been to Black people on the cusp of busting a door wide open. In my lifetime, Malcolm X was cut down. Medgar Evers was blown away. Martin Luther King's flame was sniper's bullet snuffed. Never mind all the back-room, black-bag shit the U.S. government ran on folks who stood tough locally like Chicago's Fred Hampton and others.

We have developed an unfortunate Pavlovian response to the repeated sight of our best and brightest being blown away like so many dandelion bits in the wind.

We have our moments of pride, and then...then, those uncontrollable palpitations. Worrying about when the ax will fall. Or the grenade. Or the bullet's sharp crack, the diving security and guests, and the inevitable cut to a shocked newsroom.

Dave Chappelle used to have segment on his show featuring Paul Mooney called “Ask a Black Dude”. Well, I won't wait for you to ask, I'm just telling you what goes on. What went on...in my house, and I would assume hundreds of thousands of households like mine, where recent history's bloody spectre hovers in a tattered 60's sack-cut suit and skinny tie. He hovers and points at today's goings on.

“There”, he moans. “There,” as his dusty hand notes the television and all the happiness on the screen. He doesn't smile. he doesn't blink. He just says “There,” as he crooks a bony finger. And up Black America's collective spine, goes his chill.

He was there in Iowa too. I know Barack and Michelle saw him. But maybe the kids didn't. And I'm guessing that Barack and Michelle fought like hell to push him out of sight eventually.

Dropped balloons and confetti on him. Drowned his “There.” out with McFadden and Whitehead, or Curtis' “Move On Up” or some such blaring counter to that hollow moan.

I hope to God they did. 'Cause that'll make them the lucky ones. Unlike the rest of us.

There were a few pats on the back for that post—and more than a few “How dare you mention so horrible a thing and taint so glorious a moment!” comments here and at other sites that linked to it.

Why indeed, would I dare resurrect history's “bloody spectre” of the coward's ultimate weapon against upsetting change—cold blooded murder? Because you will note in the original piece, I was dealing with an emotional response—one keyed into my African American DNA almost as deeply as my shade of brown or kink in hair. Belittle it if you wish (and you'd be a snake to do so, but hey...), that response, that reaction...that fear is well founded. In my lifetime, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton were all snuffed out like candles a hurricane has touched, just at the moments they were on the verges of coming into their own as leaders—as human beings—bent on contributing to the world in ways beyond what they had been. It isn't a thing to be joked about by insensitive people playing to crowds stocked with people who would have no problem with murderous violence as a solution to politics that perturb them. Mike Huckabee's groan-inducing, anti-comedy stylings before the blunderbuss bunch was sickening. The sort of thing that were I to cross paths with him, I'd have to fight spitting on him.

Why? Well, let's ask a different question and a more probing one—“Why the goof about Obama in particular getting shot? A man who was a thousand miles away—literally and position-wise from that assemblage of over-compensating man-children?

Because the idea of Obama's physical safety's being in jeopardy is NOT just something Black folk who've been around a while talk about. You can bet your bottom dollar that it's something folks in the beltway set and media chattering classes discuss sotto vocé behind closed doors, because of the obvious similarities in tensions and personalities to America's last time of great upheaval when you consider the historical perspective. What Huckabee did however had as much to do with an earnest discussion of the situation as a visit to a brothel has to do with a search for true and everlasting love. He was bringing an ugly tale, not discussed flippantly among decent folk, and tried to make a crowd-pleasing joke about it...and in so doing bombed like the Bikini Atoll, circa 1945. The “joke“ (while giving a speech before the NRA, Huckabee and the assembled heard a loud noise from backstage, prompting Huckabee to crack wise that the loud bang was Barack Obama diving to the floor because of a brandished weapon) was in exceptionally poor taste, considering a.) the reactionary “Yahoo element” he was playing to (and who he felt comfortable enough with to chuckle about that with), and b.) because of the known-to-everyone brutal and frightening history of what he was joking about could NEVER BE FUNNY coming from the likes of him. It was a thunderclap and lightning strike into an oil refinery level of “gaffe”, and in spite of his apology, the idea that he would joke thusly gave us all a peek into the soul of this so-called “Man of God”—where we found spiders, vermin and a dank, rotten sociopathic core.

And let's be clear—joking about this country's recent history of “quick-lynching” Black folks who scan as being “on the move” is just that—sociopathic behavior. It's not a taboo subject to discuss...but again, as with everything, context IS everything. When I wrote about it here in February, it was in terms of an emotional response to eerily familiar visuals and an equally eerie vibe about the personalities involved. It was a gut reading., based on a community's collective pain. And it was painful to lay out there—but, it was cathartic in a way. A release of demons that haunted me and so many others. That's what that discussion was about. A sharing, and a release. Nothing more to it.

Which leads us to Senator Clinton's little discussion before the Sioux Falls Argus Leader editorial board from yesterday.

Here's the video of that, via TPM:



Now, aside from the extreme, poor-mouth exaggeration and favor-currying spin of her “People have been trying to push me out of this since Iowa” schtick, there is the truly disturbing self-aggrandizement that's got tongues a' wagging—namely her invocation of the tragic and abrupt ending of Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 primary run late in the campaign season as a reasoning for the dogged continuance of her own campaign here some forty years later.

It's not the first time she's mounted that ghost horse of a reason—on at least two other occasions in recent months, she's re-conjured that awful time, albeit in less gut-punch wording—as a reason for the campaign to push into the summer.

But timing and context is everything. Keith Olbermann noted last night that in the previous incantations of this mantra, the language was softened—the campaign's sudden end noted, without the hard word “assassination” being thrown out there. At those times, the election math was ugly, but nowhere near as dire as now. Again, context is everything. Things one may say while sitting in a coffee shop sipping away while nibbling biscotti, are going to come out and probably scan one way. They may be frank. Perhaps off-the-cuff. But even with that, there may be a veneer of earnestness in a more relaxed atmosphere allows for a generous reading and granting of a benefit of the doubt. But the things that same person may say while hanging on for dear life from a steep cliff by a small branch over the side, are probably going to sound more than a bit different. The language may be ramped up because of the emotion of the moment. Impending doom is a powerful catalyst. People have been known to move two-ton cars with their bare hands to save a life, or cut off their own trapped limb to escape a certain death. Desperation is a metamorphic force. And, I said this about it too:

“Desperation is the flashing, trembling hand that snatches away the veil of false propriety.”

Desperation.

If you think for so much as a second that Senator Clinton's campaign is NOT in a desperation mode, you either can't do math, or still wait for reindeer hoofbeats on your roof on Christmas Eve. You've heard the delegate news, and hear of the daily padding of super-delegates onto the Obama side of the ledger, lead-bricking the scale further his way. You've also heard the reasoning mounted (occasionally by her own campaign staff) that her side is holding out for “something big and unexpected to happen” to blunt the Obama momentum that'd allow her to swoop in and claim the nomination.

I want you to roll that last statement around in your head for a second, and then roll around yesterday's words from the Senator again.

And one more time, please.

Now, this isn't a Huckabee situation, where he's making a malicious joke about tragedy. For all his supposed affability, he was reveling in being a mean-spirited, hollow-hearted jerk. Sen. Clinton's comment was something else. Not outright malice in an open hoping for tragedy that would allow her to claim a long-sought prize, but an unveiling of an indisputable, craven opportunism that does little else but lower her. When it is known that you're basically waiting around for trouble to befall your opponent and you then speak of the worst of the worst possible scenarios occurring—a tragedy so freighted with historical baggage that you would benefit from—I. Do. Not. Care. How. You. Slice. It...

That's abominable.

Don't spin me with after-the-fact ass-covering about how it was “about the month and calendar”, and not the incident itself. The assassination of RFK—which I am old enough to remember it's soul-numbing effect so close on the heels of MLK's murder—isn't about a Goddamned date. It's about one of the nails in the casket of hope. It's about a reaction to in-country upheaval. It's a major signpost along a highway of evil, America-altering deeds. And don't piss on our legs and tell us it's morning dew with the canard about this being about duty and safeguarding the party should unforseen problems arise. This isn't 1865 when news sometimes took weeks or months to reach people and quick decisions in tragic times were truly difficult. This isn't even 1968, when as far as we'd come, it was still difficult to turn on a dime when problems arose. It's the height of disingenuousness to play as some final bulwark against democracy's fall when one is being so obviously self-serving. Where was Senator Clinton in the real fight for democracy during the 2000 recount? Or the recent FISA battles for Americans rights to privacy? Where pray tell was she in these fights that did not serve to directly benefit her? Now we're supposed to take at face value a faux-courageous stand as the super-ultra-mega country-saving fallback should things fall apart in a primary election? A primary election she's fought tooth, nail and molecule for?

People who support Senator Clinton have of late taken Keith Olbermann to task for his hard words toward her when she has transgressed. I've noted his hard line too, and as a regular viewer, I remember when it came into stark relief. It was when she began playing the “fear card” in the Bushian manner as a reason to consider her for the office of Commander-In-Chief. It unleashed something in him, and rightfully so. For the better part of six years we have all railed against the flashing of that card by President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and their various mindless talking-head minions as a way of cowing and bending the populace to their self-benefiting way of thinking. To see Hillary Clinton resort to that same awful manipulation is borderline heart-breaking, and indisputably maddening. It set Olbermann off—and a large swath of people who otherwise respected her. Include me in that group who the “fear card” antagonizes.

This “Remembering what happened to RFK is why you shouldn't look past me” talking point is more “fear card” playing. And the extra-juicy tossing about of the “assassination” language is just jaw-droppingly insensitive, considering again the particulars involved. Add in the supremely weak defense in her “apology” and by her supporters about the statement being more about the Kennedys than an unnamed other candidate and we descend lower still. You would think that the Kennedy family probably has enough heartache on their collective plates right now with the sad anniversaries of RFK's murder and JFK Jr.'s untimely death looming, and the real-time pain from the dire prognosis of the family's patriarch Sen. Ted Kennedy that second-hand flogging of the family's tragic history wouldn't be something to worry about from a friend. But sure as hell, it unfortunately is. And it's a disgusting and insulting dodge from what the words were really about...

...Vulture politics.

Spare me the talk about fatigue. I've let slide other ill-formed and ill-thought out statements that offended before. Same with the debilitating rigors of “the trail”—both candidates are busting their asses, and it seems that the one who'll supposedly be ready for the all-important “3 a.m. call” is the one constantly goofing up because of a lack of rest. I have been fair, and forgiving about a lot here, but this is a line-step I will not forgive. Senator Clinton has spent the better part of two decades as a player on the world stage, and is no neophyte in the talking point game. You want to say that message command and control has broken down as the campaign is floundering? Okay. Say it. Let the distracted surrogates take the heat for their verbal gaffes. But these words still came from her mouth. Her mind. The mouth and mind of the person trying to get elected president, and no one else. A smart person. A savvy person. A person who should know better and I think did. Desperate times call for desperate measure, and the inside voice that roars within but common sense suppresses got free and said its piece for all to hear. I don't think for a second that her words were a call to the lunatic / hyper-activist fringe to “clear the way” for her.

What it was, was an ugly play for votes based on an appeal to people's darkest internal fears about America's shameful legacy of political violence. And using the obvious target—Obama—as a stalking horse for stoking that fear is such a prestige diminishing act that I almost pity her as much as I'm incensed at her over it.

Almost.

I wrote on the subject based on emotion. She conjured the subject based on raw opportunism. If you can see the difference between the two, you can understand the anger and disgust she's rightfully engendered. While politics isn't “beanbag”, it shouldn't be the ear scene in “Reservoir Dogs” either, especially if you want to call yourself a progressive. “To everything there is a season”, the Bible says. This was NOT the season for those words. She rubbed raw a scar on our collective soul as Americans that hasn't yet healed—and she didn't do it to inform or examine. She did it to justify her present personal ambition.

“To justify her present personal ambition.”

As “off-the-chain” as this world is these days, the last thing needed is people we supposedly trust to be level-headed to dump gasoline over the fires of crazy—especially if it has nothing to do with principle or belief, and everything to do with furthering their own selfish desires. This campaign is ending on a wave of sludge-topped ugliness and it is frankly depressing. Its “bitter end” has been written about here twice in recent days. And every time I think a few days have gone by where we might see a glimmer of a light of decency at the end of the tunnel, a side valve opens up and in pours more festering sewage.

This was sewage.

No. Let me re-phrase that. It was not sewage. It was just plain, old shit.

Senator Clinton knew what it was when she haltingly said it, and even moreso in her ashen-faced faux-apology, delivered ironically in the liquor aisle of a South Dakota store. MSNBC analyst Chuck Todd noted her demeanor as she spoke, saying:

“She looked pained, like someone who realized she may have just destroyed all the goodwill she spent so long trying to build up.”

He was right. And here's a picture from moments after her “thousand-yard-stare” mea culpa-lite:




















(AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

It's quite telling, really. Almost funereal, and rightfully so. In battling so hard to stave off an ending she had every right within reason as a candidate to delay, she may well have hastened it with her own unthinking, selfish and frankly ghoulish words. That sad picture looks an awful lot like one of a person with palpitations...and no pride left to speak of.

There's more...

I Am Your Riot-starter!

Singin' 'Bout “Hot Hate In The Summertime...”

It would appear that a certain OxyContin-ed, sex-touring, um...poorly-circulated someone's, ohhhh I dunno...just a wee bit desperate over November's GOP electoral prospects, wouldn't you say?

I mean, when you're hoping for public mayhem to spark “the base” to vote for your party's dishwater-tepid standard-bearer, wellllll...

Via ABC-7 Qenver:

Rush Limbaugh 'Dreaming' Of Riots In Denver

Talk Show Host Wants America To See Actions Of 'Far Left'

DENVER— Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments that appear to call for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.

“Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don't elect Democrats,” Limbaugh said during Wednesday's radio broadcast. He then went on to say that's the best thing that could happen to the country.

--------------------------------------------

Several callers called in to the radio show to denounce Limbaugh's comments, when he later stated, “I am not inspiring or inciting riots, I am dreaming of riots in Denver.”

Meanwhile, Melissa at Shakesville picks up Rush's flop-sweat and feces-stained ball, and spikes it in his hate-swollen face

All Spin Zone's Richard Blair wonders. given that inciting riot is a crime, "How is it that a GOP attack dog frontman can call for riots in the streets of Denver during the Democratic National Convention, and not be currently residing in a jail cell someplace?" while Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper says, "Anyone who would call for riots in an American city has clearly lost their bearings." That's polite.

--------------------------------------------

That guy is so full of shit he's like a walking compost heap. It's amazing there aren't glorious sunflowers growing out of every orifice.

Rush's Armageddonal wet dream hits on a couple of pathologies at once.

One: He's still pretty damned wan insofar as his ability to conjure any warmth for the-candidate-who-lucked-out-and-survived-the-GOP--primaries-and-is-now-the-de-facto-nominee and knows “the base” is equally “eh” on him as well. McCain on his own inspires about as much feel-good-ism as a four-alarm orphanage fire. So, if you don't get the hoped-for Al-Qaeda attack (and they have been hoping for another one of those pretty much since Sept. 12th 2001) that'd give wingnuts that something to rally around like a flaming...something, you “pray” for the next best thing—civil fucking unrest. It's the old “law n' order” fallback used by the likes of Tricky Dick Nixon, Reagan and scores of governors and legislators (NY's Rudy Giuliani and Nelson Rockefeller come to mind immediately)—except, in the case of Nixon and Reagan (while California governor), they exploited recent, actual instances of America's streets flaming up. Limbaugh is cravenly and desperately staking his guy's election on a prayer for riots, mayhem and death that aren't anywhere near happening. But it's what's needed to insure a republican victory, right?

That should tell you everything you need to know about the GOP's power-brokers internal thinking about their '08 electoral chances.

There's nothing good to say about John McCain as a candidate. And because of that—there being no tangible positive there to move folks to the polls to pull the lever for him, an external catalyst is needed. Riots, motherfucker! Flames and busted glass. Spectres of sweaty, dusky hordes carting appliances down smoke-filled thoroughfares get wingnuts harder than times in '29, as fear—the thing that drives them 24-7—could be the one thing that brings enough of them out of their Bush-malaise hidey-holes to vote.

But make no mistake, Rush isn't just talking about things going buck-willy in Denver alone. This pharmaceutically-addled demagogue will take shit blowing up anywhere he can get it—preferably with people of color at the center of the unrest. It's why he's also been stoking the fires over the anger about the Sean Bell verdict. Anything that gets melanin-filled people angry enough to be public with their anger is good-to-go for him. Because all that does is remind the most fearful and race-struck of potential voters about just what that fella from Illinois is and effectively dog-whistles—no...fucking screams like Sam Kinison “By God, you don't want one 'a them TV-stealin nigras up in th' White House, do ya?”

That's what he's/they're left with. I await the photoshop of Obama sitting in Huey Newton's wicker chair with a black leather jacket and beret. Ungowah!

And the second pathology ol' Rush is evidencing here is plain, old shit-stirring. As the GOP's candidate gives him and his listeners nothing to sing about and thus is probably a ratings drag in this election season, he has to spark interest in his show somehow. Fuck red meat—statements like his “riot prayer” is “heart-still-beating, animal-flesh-still-on-the-hoof” for those still inclined to dig on his terrestrial radio hate-schtick. As the faithful busy themselves with other things, conceding a GOP loss, they're not listening to him, not fattening his ratings, and thus, not fattening his coffers. Silly, crazy shit like “the riot prayer” is also said to bring the drifting, lapsed Rushistas back to the ray-did-io and back into the white-sheeted and sooty-handed “activist” fold. Does the bastard believe what he's saying? Yes. But he also realizes that spicing it up with fifty extra shakes of coarse-ground crazy is good for the bottom line as well. Cha-ching, ditto-heads. Fill his ample pockets with barely-earned coin while you scratch your head to figure how to afford enough gas to get back and forth to work this month.

Cha-ching, bitches,

And that's what it's about ya'll. Fear and greed. The two things that have ended every great society of the past that dared take them from the bosom to the blood within. I'd like to say that I'm amazed that people who are the first to squawk about the hot words of folks who are actually being done wrong, have no problem and are rarely censured for their thermonuclear words as they sup at the table of privilege. Fallwell. Robertson. And al the rest, right down to ol' Rushie. I'd love to say I'm amazed...but I'm not. And neither should you be. Remember, this is a place where there are hundreds of thousands, if not several million people who rationalize the acts of Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph as being based on some sort of response to oppression and tyranny.

But I'm glad to see that Limbaugh isn't actually inciting anything with his words. He's merely “praying” I mean...if a blogger were to “pray” that Rush be involved in a fiery auto wreck, with his broken body sprawled alongside the road with flames licking at his paralyzed form, and said blogger was to come upon him there and opt to toss stray kindling, papers and the contents of a vodka bottle on Rush rather than urinate on him to douse the blaze, what would be wrong with that? It would simply be a harmless prayer, right? Not an active desire that a terrible, painful fate befall him or anything. What's the harm in a heartfelt prayer?

We should all “pray” for Rush. Not incite anything, mind you.

Just...pray

Bow your head...and pray on something for the man.

Can't hurt.

P.S. Click on the “album” art at the top of the post for extra song-title goodness!)

There's more...

Television For Dummies

This Graphic Is NOT Photoshoped...And That Is A Goddamned Shame.

It was around twenty-four years ago when I found I could no longer read “Ebony” magazine. This was not a small change in my African American life as cold-turkeying so ubiquitous a cultural signifier as “Ebony” was not something I did lightly. Every barber shop I patronized, every doctor's office I waited in, and relative's home I found myself sitting before a coffee table at had a small stack of “Black America's 'Life' Magazine” sitting there asking to be read.

What did it for me? It was a half-assed music review published in their “arts and culture” section. The subject? A Duke Ellington compilation wherein the “author” exposed himself as a sad. blithering idiot. The piece in its dealing with Ellington tried to seem oh-so-Jazz-literate with anecdotal mentions of other Jazzmenof note, and the name of the legendary Charles Mingus was tossed into the review. I say tossed in because it was as if it was a funky undergarment tossed from across a room into a hamper-full of soiled clothes. Mingus...was described in the piece...as a giant of the trombone. A giant of the Goddamned trombone? Jazz' inarguable master of the bass gets twisted as a trombone wizard! I thought I was hallucinating. How in the holy hell could America's pre-eminent Black magazine get a fact like that wrong?

Imagine Rolling Stone screwing up and dubbing Led Zepellin's Jimmy Page in an article as Rock's “giant of the accordion”, or The Who's Keith Moon as a “cowbell colossus” (No one needs that much cowbell...). You'd ultimately lose faith in any journal that would make so grievous, and so cyanotically stupid an error. I stopped reading Ebony right after they let the Mingus gaffe get through. If I couldn't trust them on basic history, I damn sure couldn't trust them on anything else—be the something as trifling as the veracity of their “Top 25 Bachelorettes” credentials, or whether Freddie Jackson's 1.1 million dollar rec room had a rear-projection or a plasma screen TV in it—much less anything of historical import. They had jumped the shark—badly—and landed square in Jabberjaw's mouth with that careless piece of “journalism”. I never looked back.

Flash forward to April of 2008, and a major broadcast news network runs a story, a mocking report ridiculing a party's inability to get a hand on historical source material for a story when they themselves—Fox News—goof so badly covering said story that it goes beyond a mere “Bed Shit” and moves to being the dreaded and awe-inspiring “Duplex Shit”, where the poop is so toxically stupid that it eats through the bedding, the boxspring and then the floor to the floor below.

Via Digby and Crooks & Liars:

Turns out the Rhodes Scholars over at “Fox and Friends” think Abraham Lincoln debated Frederick Douglass in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Of course it was Stephen Douglas. Something tells me Frederick would have had a tough time winning a Senate seat back then. Just a thought.

------------------------------------------

“Rather than spending time mocking their intern, Clayton might have recognized that was Frederick Douglass, the 19th-century African abolitionist leader who certainly wasn’t running for any Senate seat.”

The graphic atop this post is from Dan Abram's “Verdict” show's covering his competition's stupidity. The C&L link has the actual brain-atrophying video as proof.

Here is a picture of the man who Lincoln actually debated—the considerably-less “melanated” Illinois politician Stephen A. Douglas.

Now, in an alternate universe where logic and common sense carry weight, Fox's rank ass-hattery in reporting on a key event in American political history would turn them into a laughingstock for the ages, and drive listeners away out of sheer embarrassment at being identified as viewers. But this isn't that universe, folks, and the network's viewer base—and I don't care who this offends in my saying it—breathes, eats, and sweats stupid 24/7-365.

So the next time someone...anyone tries to fob off that three-lettered conglomeration of half-wits and drooling water-heads as anything resembling a news organization, you make sure to point 'em to this site's, Digby's or C&L's links on this story. Odds are the fool will mutter something defensive like, “Well...didn't Frederick Douglass want to debate Lincoln, too? Huh?” But say it anyway. And say it to every person who ever mentions FOX, positively or negatively. It's as emblematic of what their place is all about as Bill O'Reilly's “falafel” and should be hung around their neck just as roughly and with as much derision.

And we shall dub them henceforth, “The Anti-History Channel”.

I mean, who signs off on shit over there at water-on-the-brain central? Not just high-falutin' historical background stuff, but simple, common things you'd...I dunno, accidentally absorb in between snores in first-period history or civics class?

It doesn't matter really though, does it? The “News” appellation after the word “Fox” is just there for shits and giggles, isn't it? Like the prefix “Dr.” in front of ol' glory-gobbling Phil's name, right? It's a joke. A silly, billion dollar-billing, policy-shaping, media megalopolis of a joke.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Much like the following graphics depicting additional possible Fox News research department/fact-check screw-ups. If they can fuck up Lincoln-Douglas, it wouldn't surprise me for a second that they could screw up these historical touchpoints.

Historical touchpoints. like..

...say, the prosecution, conviction and subsequent execution of alleged cold-war espionagers Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. One could easily see the brilliantines over there smirking and winging it on that well-known, easy-to-research story—and making a gaffe like this:



Scoff if you will. This is who you're dealing with. Duh. Drool.

Hey, they could do a breathless election-juicing follow-up on The Axis of Evil. How could they screw that up?

Ask a stupid question...



I should really stop this. Irony is dead, and one of these'll actually happen. Then Lord Cthulhu will descend from the heavens and crush the earth in his sinewy tentacles just to put the universe back in order...or something like that.

And to stop them from ever “reporting” on something as seminal to American history as the Revolutionary War's famed “Battle of Bunker Hill”.



“We Distort. You Deride.”

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Dogs Lick Themselves, Water Is Wet, Oh Yeah...And The Sun Can Be Hot.

Lost The Bet On When It Would End, But Hey...Nobody's Perfect...

From the department of “Who didn't see this coming?”...

Nearly three and half years after they swapped “I dos” at their corporate-sponsored wedding, Star Jones and Al Reynolds are calling it quits. The National Enquirer reports the legal diva sent Al his walking papers a month ago.

A rep for Jones says the report is false, but the Enquirer goes on to say, “They hadn’t been seeing eye to eye for months and had already spent a great deal of time apart,” a friend of the couple told the Enquirer. “Finally, Star decided it was over. She told Al at the end of January that he had 30 days to get his act together or ‘get out.”

The Enquirer spoke to another insider who confirmed the breakup and revealed Star’s intention to make it permanent. “Star is planning to divorce Al.” As for reason behind the split, the source added, “I think Star felt Al had spent their marriage riding her success while she did all the heavy lifting.”

The MSNBC report from above is pretty kind and steers away from the delicious, gossipy luridness of what was going down—or rather...NOT going down between the endsville-headed pair. The 'round-the-way, hard-core grime can be found in other places...

As tempting as it is for Pollyanna Jones to turn all of this heartache into a refreshing batch of divorceade, the New Star, a persona refined on her short-lived Court TV talk show, would never seek to pair the end of her marriage with crass sponsorships. Much to media and trial-watchers' chagrin, there will therefore be no free samples of Cinnabon, Herbal Essences, and OUT magazine distributed during custody hearings over the fate of the couple's only child, their much fussed-upon maltese, Pinky.

I freely admit to being in a circle of friends who casually took bets on how long the marriage would last. My number was eighteen months. Turns out Star and Al lasted a little more than twice that.

Yes...a lot of Black folks had money on when this square-wheeled “Le Car” of a marriage would wind up in a ditch belching smoke and flames.

Now, why do I focus on this salacious little story? Well, number one, my lower right jaw feels like Smokin' Joe Frazier's been blasting left hooks into it all day. (Mmmmmmmmmm. Gum surgery...) and a gossip tidbit is easier on the brain to write on than politics and all that. And two, it's a tawdry tale a lot of folks I roll with had been shaking their heads over even before the marriage took place.

It was a real-life season of “Flavor of Love” embarrassingly playing out for all the world to see. The kind of thing that average, working-stiff Black folks cringe at because of the stupidity's public spectacle. Good old American racial myopia brings that guilt in Black folks on. Against common sense, we get the feeling that the race as a whole is judged based on the spectacular flame-outs of our celebrities. We're looked at through the O.J.-violent-n*gger prism—when we're not being cast through the 24-hour clown persona of a Flavor Flav. The Bill O'Reilly “Where's my mother-fuckin' iced tea?” ramble comes from ancient stereotypes, but just as much from the crack-infused, Tourette's-ravings of the unplugged and unhinged Whitney Houston we discovered via her “reality” show.

Urrrrrrrgh.

So yes, we cringe when the more prominent folks in “the community” proudly and loudly shit the bed for all the world to see. People who you think would be intelligent enough to make better choices or just have the common sense God gave a gnat. Star's nuptial flame-out was especially ugly as it was just another one in a long line of “WTF were they thinking?” public relationship gaffes that give folks cover to demean us as fucking idiots as a whole when our so-called prominent folk self-implode.

My friend “T” calls this strain of the problem “The D.A.D. Syndrome”. “D.A.D.” standing for “Dumb Ass Diva.

“Fucking Judy Garland...she couldn't see Vincente Minnelli didn't bat exclusively for her team? Then that Mark (Herron) dude. The guy was living with his lover when Judy met him, and when they broke up, he went back to living with a dude, Hel-o-o-o-o-o-o! Dumb! Then Liza, her daughter hooks up with Peter Allen? “I Go To Rio?” You think she'd have learned, but I guess it's hereditary because 25 years later, who's she down the aisle with—David Gest! David-fucking-Gest? These are supposed to be smart women! I mean, look at Terry McMillan. A writer. Got her finger on the pulse and whatnot. Speakin' to the inner hurt sisters feel. And she hooks up with a dude who everybody was tellin' her was absolutely not the right man for her—then immortalized the mess of a relationship in a movie! 'Your man is gay! Your man is gay!' 'La-la-la-la-laaaaa! I can't hear you!' Look what happened—the shit was true. Right down to his gaming homegirl outta her money. Now Star comes along...with big, gay Al! And everybody's telling her tacky ass, 'Your man is gay! Your man is gay! Trust me on this—I slept with him and my name is Ralph!' Does she listen? After Terry's hell? She's a former prosecutor, right? Smart woman, right? Bzzzzzzzzt! Nope! Marries him, trashed her rep on “the View” with her tacky-ass 'Hook me up sponsors!' wedding to the bum. Now look at her. A laughing-stock. A total laughing-stock behind this...shit. She knew better. Everybody with a brain knew better. Still...

Our talk went on to the “whys” of these situations. Why make such obvious and clearly destructive relationship choices? I know that deep down, everybody just wants someone to love them. That's as old as time immemorial. But you don't pick an over-the-top loser to be that love provider, do you? Unless as “T” said, you have deep, deep self esteem issues and subconsciously insist on being perceived by others as the one in the relationship who is the more committed, the more loving one.

The W.H. Auden poem “The More Loving One” popped into my head when I thought about that idea. I used to see it posted in subway cars all the time for the city's “Poetry In Motion” campaign, and the words stuck with me...

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

It's a crazy power-play. A way to as Jerry Seinfeld put it to maintain “Hand”—as in the upper hand in a relationship. You pick a loser who doesn't love you and is incapable of loving you as much as you love him, because in the end, they make you look good. Steadman. Jonathan. Al.

I know it. Behind every proud and preening macho man is a scared little boy for whom women are still in many ways a dark and scary mystery. There was a lot of that in me. And it manifested itself in the choices I made in mates. I didn't go for the sane and sedate types who were easy to live with—no. My choices were the most difficult and high-maintenance types possible. The more ornery the diva the better. Temperamental singers. Mercurial performers. Batshit actresses. Not the sane ones in those already tough fields, but the most glamorous, attractive and damn-near certifiable of the lot. I nearly married an opera singer for whom a falling pencil was an avalanche of rocks that kept her awake. Who would not talk to me but wrote long, elaborate notes on audition or performance days lest her voice be abused by asking me to pass the honey or some such trifle. Who had a meltdown because a particular hair scrunchie of hers was missing and the outfit she was wearing to a newspaper interview absolutely required it.

Yeah, I got the subway to 72nd Street to Love Pharmacy to get the particular scrunchie. But dammit, she was mine. I was proving my mettle by dealing with the demanding one's whims. I was “the more loving one”.

My pathological desire for people who I knew were no good for me even extended to pop culture. On the TV show “Girlfriends” I was smitten with the selfish, creepy and mean “Toni Childs” as played by Jill Marie Jones. On Will & Grace, it was the drunken, doped-up, rambunctious she-devil Karen as played by the yummy Megan Mullally who floated my boat big time.

Lord love a mess.

We often make the choices we make for reasons. We're not necessarily always unwitting dupes of crafty Svengalis out to steal our love. I know I wasn't. And people much smarter and more successful than me do the same silly stuff in very public forums. This is about control and wanting to be known as “the good person” in the relationship. Now granted, my choices weren't quite as extreme as Terry's and Star's—picking, and in essence buying someone who wasn't pre-disposed to be into 'em any-damn-way. My paramours were women who were massively difficult (and who I admittedly got a charge out of trying to “tame”.)—not posers who were gaming me for a payday while living double lives “across the fence”. But in the end, I wanted the same sort of thing Terry and Star wanted—Seinfeldian “Hand”. I spent some time in therapy dealing with that issue, and my therapist—no crafty “Dr. Melfi”, he—didn't take long before noting and calling me on my “pattern” and strongly suggested that I train my sights on partners who were not quite so “selfishly intense”.

“Try a regular person for once.— he said. “There are pretty and intelligent women out there who won't scream at you and throw hairbrushes through aquariums at you. You may even find you'll like them.”

He was right.

How, if I could get help for my latent relationship stupid, (inexpensive help too, in spite of his 'round-the-corner-from Carnegie-Hall-office) is it possible that these bold and dynamic (not that that makes them great people, mind you) women can't seem to get their inner “Partner-ometer™” calibrated better? As “T” would later say “The 'D' can't be that good, can it? I mean, damn!”

My friend “S” won the circle's bet on the marriage's length. She figured on three years—with the last year lived mostly apart. Pretty damned close. Down to the living apart. She missed on her guess that Star would catch Al in bed with the cable guy, or the pool boy, or an “I'll show you!” Steadman Graham.

At least...I hope she missed.

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