Linkmeister

College Football

Today the 2008 college football season begins, so it's time for my annual shout-out to FanBlogs, which is an indispensable resource for gridiron enthusiasts.

For the etymologists: gridiron has multiple definitions, and according to the Online Etymology Dictionary its origin is "c.1330, griderne, alteration (by association with iron) of gridire (c.1290), a variant of gridil (see griddle). Confusion of "l" and "r" was common in Norman dialect." It's unclear when the word began to be applied to a football field, although it's evident that the yard markers and hash marks make up a pattern similar to the definition "A flat framework of parallel metal bars used for broiling meat or fish."

Republican problem solving

Don't like the facts? Change the counting method!

In an article from the Dallas Morning News which discusses Texas's high number of citizens who have no health insurance, a McCain adviser says:

. . .the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved." (Emphasis mine)

Jeepers. "We don't like what the numbers tell us, so we need to redefine what the numbers are." If that's not the perfect example of the Republican thought process, somebody find me a better one.

Kerry at the 2008 DNC

If you didn't see and hear this, take 15 minutes to do so. Holy smokes. Had he given speeches like this (okay, and fought back against the Swift Boat Liars sooner) he might have won the 2004 election. Fire and brimstone, this was.

An excerpt:

To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let’s compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.

Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you’re against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself.

[snip]

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When we called for a timetable to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, John McCain called it “cut and run.” But today, even President Bush has seen the light. He and Prime Minister Maliki agree on – guess what? – a timetable.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? The McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again and again. And they know they will lose on the issues. So, the candidate who once promised a “contest of ideas,” now has nothing left but personal attacks. How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first.

Full text here.

Please explain

Given that the missile defense system doesn't yet work, and given that we have very little leverage with Russia at the moment, and given that we need Russia to help us put pressure on Iran's nuclear ambitions among other things, why do we continue to push the deployment of that defense system in Poland?

Hillary speaks to the Convention

If you somehow missed Hillary Clinton's speech to the Democratic National Convention last night, here it is:

She nailed it. If there are any of her fans who didn't get the message that they should support Obama, they're unreachable.

I had a few favorite lines, including these:

"It makes a lot of sense that next week John McCain and George Bush will be together in the Twin Cities, because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart."

"No way. No how. No McCain."

Is our media too young?

Amidst all this blather about the Clintons being divisive and demanding time to speak at the Democratic Convention, Eric Boehlert reminds us that runners-up nearly always get the opportunity to speak at their party's convention, and that sometimes (gasp!) their names are even placed in nomination.

At the Democratic National Convention in 1992, Jerry Brown, who finished a very distant second to the party's nominee, had his name placed into nomination and addressed the assembled convention. After seconding his own nomination (true story), Brown delivered a fiery speech that thrilled his unruly supporters inside Madison Square Garden.

[snip]

Four years earlier, the Democratic convention in Atlanta witnessed even more tumult from the second-place finisher when Jesse Jackson, furious at being passed over for the vice-presidential slot by the party's nominee, Michael Dukakis (who failed to call Jackson and tell him the VP news), threatened to withhold his delegates' support from the party's nominee.

From the lack of historical knowledge displayed by the political media, one would think its average age was 24 and its members all just graduated from third-tier J-schools.

As the headline of Boehlert's column says, "Hillary Clinton speaks at convention. The press concocts a story."

Ted Kennedy

A nice catch from Kagro X over at Kos:

When was the last time a Democratic convention keynote* speaker was played off the stage by a song written by a current Democratic Member of Congress?

Sen. Ted Kennedy leaves the stage to Rep. John Hall's "Still the One."

Here's his speech:

It was vintage Ted Kennedy, brain cancer or not. He closed:

Yes, we are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I've seen it. I've lived it. And we can do it again.

There is a new wave of change all around us, and if we set our compass true, we will reach our destination -- not merely victory for our party, but renewal for our nation.

And this November the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans, so with Barack Obama and for you and for me, our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.

* Kennedy wasn't the keynote speaker; Michelle Obama was. A small mistake.

A wonderful world indeed

Aside from the message, which is excellent, you gotta love using a Sam Cooke song to make a point. I sure hope they got their permissions straight!

Woohoo Waipio!

The youngsters did it!

Ahem. "Waipi'o scored in every inning to whip Mexcio, 12-3, today to win the Little League World Series championship in South Williamsport, Pa."

Perhaps we can forgive the typesetter's spelling error in his or her excitement.

Heh. He or she corrected it in the subsequent article.

Obama picks Biden

Ok, so Biden's been in Washington for 30 years. But he's grounded enough to take the train home to Delaware every night. His wife is a community college teacher. He's an acknowledged foreign policy wonk. Unlike many of my fellow liberal blogospherians, I'm not gonna complain about his votes for various things I haven't liked; he's probably voted for just as many I have liked in all his time in the Senate.

Some of my colleagues on the left side of the political spectrum are grumbling about the choice. Let me remind them of a phrase that Al Davis often uses: "Just Win, Baby."

I can live with Biden as long as we win.

Joy in Waipio!

Jeepers. The Waipio Little Leaguers scored six runs in the top of the sixth and blanked the Lake Charles kids in the bottom of the inning to win the US Little League Championship.

They were down 5-1 going into the sixth, but got a string of hits to get close. The tying run scored on an infield single, which was a charitable call -- it should have been an error. The first baseman knocked it down but couldn't find it behind him and the hitter reached first.

They go on to play Mexico tomorrow for the World Championship.

Veepstakes

The national press corps is composed of idiots. They have camped out on Senators Bayh and Biden's streets, hoping they'll divine something about Senator Obama's VP pick from watching those guys. On Washington Week this evening Dan Balz's Blackberry was placed prominently on the table in front of the panel (which was in Denver in front of a live audience) in anticipation of the famous Obama text message. I've gotten a "Breaking News" update from one of my local TV stations telling me that the AP reports it's Biden, and now the New York Times has run a multi-paragraph story saying it's Biden.

This after days of pundits telling us that vice-presidential picks are usually meaningless; the last one which was made to balance a ticket was JFK's pick of LBJ in 1960.

Um. If you think it's meaningless, why are you camping on prospective picks' lawns?

Idiots.

An omen for November?

Hawai'i has Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for President, and now it's got Brian Clay as Olympics Decathlon champ.

I hope Clay's victory is translatable to an Obama one in November.

Moore's Law

I once paid $5,000 for a 13.2MB hard drive the size of a medium pizza for an IBM S/34 mini-computer. Later I paid $400 for a 40MB external hard drive for a Mac Plus.

Today I paid $11 for a 2GB USB Flash Drive.