GOP to Gore: Drop Dead

Albert Gore, fresh from his prodigal-son return to Washington, is now getting the boot from D.C. Republicans for his proposed Live Earth concert. Gore is planning to sponsor several concerts all across the world in the spirit of Bob Geldof's Live 8 shows two years earlier, but his plans to hold the U.S. concert in Washington on the Capitol grounds have been stopped by congressional Republicans, who claim the concert is too controversial, political and partisan to be held on there. Too political and partisan for Capitol Hill?? And how could a concert urging people to do something about global warming by considered controversial? Who would think that the need to combat global warming is an issue with any controversy?

Oh right, Chief Blue Meanie James Inhofe, Republican senator from Oklahoma (motto: "Enjoy the wide open spaces between our ears!") who continues to insist that global warming is a hoax.

What a prick.

Gore is restaging the U.S. concert in Philadelphia. Hopefully, the right of free speech as defined in the Bill of Rights will be more respected in the city where the United States was created.

Heaven Can Wait

Warren Beatty turns seventy today. :-)

Rappin' Rove

Whatever you do, dear readers, please do yourselves a favor and don't watch any footage from this year's edition of the always insufferable White House Press Correspondents' Dinner, where the Washington political media and media elite break bread together and make fools of themselves every year. This year found Karl Rove rapping!

It was even worse than watching Peter Frampton act.

(The Rove footage must be on YouTube by now.)

Mess America

American men love beautiful women. Well, except for the baseball perverts. ;-) I love beautiful women. I have a Blogger site devoted to beautiful women, or at least women I find beautiful. What American men don't love so much anymore is beautiful women strutting down a cheesy runway in even cheesier evening gowns and singing show tunes or doing ventriloquist acts. Which explains the plight of the Miss America pageant.

Country Music Television, the cable channel that picked up the pageant when ABC dropped it in 2004, itself dropped the pageant after ratings for the reinvented annual event failed to improve, or at least failed to meet CMT's expectations. The Miss America pageant's directors did everything they could to modernize the event - even moving it to Las Vegas! - and bring it into the twenty-first century, although that doesn't explain why they'd allow it to be shown on a cable channel watched by folks who enjoy Larry the Cable Guy. And yet it still can't make it.

My advice to Art McMaster, the dude who runs this show - call it a day. ( So long already, Artie!) No one likes beauty pageants anymore, at least not the ones run by people less savvy than Donald Trump. The Miss America pageant is as dated as chrome-trimmed kitchen tables and auto tailfins. Bert Parks is dead, and the Miss America crown should rest in peace with him. If you're so hot on continuing this production, Art, your best bet is to run it on public access television in Enid, Oklahoma. Hey, Miss Oklahoma keeps winning these days anyway.

Flickr Prickr

I just had a humbling experience on Flickr. Tonight I added a comment and a tag to a picture that I thought I hadn't commented on or tagged before. What happened was that I had commented on and tagged the picture, but the person who posted the picture had disapproved of my eariler comment and tag for reasons unknown (they weren't derogatory in the slightest!) and removed them. He removed the comment and tag I added tonight and subsequently sent me a Flickr e-mail asking me not to do it again and promising to report me to the Flickr administrators if I did. I wrote back apologizing, explaining that I was unaware of his disapproval or of the fact that I had already left a comment and tag on his photo, and I assured him I wouldn't do it again.

The e-mail never reached him. He blocked me.

There's just no pleasing people.  :-(

Iran Away

If one needs any reason why the United States should not negotiate with Iran over the future of Iraq, then by all means look at what's going on between the United Kingdom and Iran over the issue of British sailors captured by Iranian authorities. Although the Brits have ample evidence that they were in Iraqi territorial waters and that the Iranians made a mistake, Iran refuses to admit to any mistakes and is once again insisting that it's always right. Right now both the British and the Iranians are trying to find a diplomatic solution without actually talking to each other, and the Brits have followed Eddie Cochran's advice and taken their problem to the United Nations.

Iran will always find a way to be on the winning end even when they are wrong. Bear in mind that Iran faced a brief hostage crisis of its own in 1980, when anti-Khomeini activists in London seized the Iranian embassy there. The Brits quickly put a stop to it, refusing to allow such a thing to happen on U.K. soil, and Iran claimed a moral victory - even as the Iranian government was holding 52 Americans hostage in our (now former) embassy in Tehran and humiliating us by ignoring international law. Okay, we kind of asked for it by supporting a monarch - the Shah - that his own people detested, but even a holy man like the Ayatollah Khomeini should have understood that two wrongs don't make a right. But then he didn't think taking 52 Americans hostage was wrong to begin with. And our sins of the past certainly gave him an excuse for his reasoning.

Even after the United States cut ties with Iran, other Western countries kept diplomatic relations with the Iranians, thinking they had no quarrel with them. These countries, the United Kingdom included, forgot that Iran is so hostile to the West in general, the Islamic republic will jump at any opportunity, no matter how contrived, to create geopolitical theater that aggrandizes their revolution at the West's expense. So why should the British deal with them directly anymore?

By the way, a semantic note is in order. The 1979-81 hostage seizure is referred to sometimes as the "Iranian hostage crisis." Dude, the hostages weren't Iranian - they were Americans!

Bush-League Policies

Both the House and the Senate have set out blueprints for withdrawal from Iraq before the end of next year. Although George W. Bush has the votes necessary to sustain his inevitable veto, it's become all too clear to anyone with half a brain (so you can see why Bush doesn't get it!) that this war is unwinnable for the United States. But then, the Bushes have always denied that wars aren't winnable. Remember George the Elder's insistence that we could win a nuclear conflict?

Also, Bush had the Only Two-and-a-Half (formerly Big Three) U.S. automakers at the White House the other day with new automobile models that are able to burn E85 - a fuel that is 85 percent corn ethanol and 15 percent gasoline - that is designed to lessen our dependence on foreign oil and increase our dependence on Archer Daniels Midland and other evil agribusinesses. Gosh, isn't there anyone in Washington who's not afraid to call for more public transit?

Elton!

He's sixty today, folks!

Happy birthday, Elton John! :-)

Elton At Sixty

Would you believe Elton John turns sixty tomorrow? And he's celebrating in big style, performing a concert at New York's Madison Square Garden, one of his favorite venues. Elton is hardly the wild rocker he was back when Nixon was president, but his experience as a musician and a performer over the past several decades have made him one of the most versatile and esteemed performers in rock. As a result, he's lasted much better than some of his peers from the seventies, though we should also give his lyricist Bernie Taupin credit for that as well. In fact, some would say ( and have said) that as Elvis was to the fifties, and as the Beatles were to the sixties, Elton John was to the seventies - the decade's greatest star.

Here's something else to consider. Elvis had become a washed-up crooner by the time he died in 1977. The Beatles's partnership ended when the sixties did. Elton John is, as he and Bernie would put it, still standing.

Albert Gore, Prodigal Son

Former Vice President Albert Gore returned to Washington this past week like a conquering hero, even if the Supreme Court gave the Presidency to a conquering fool. Gore was back to testify before House and Senate committees on global warming, and he pushed hard for both chambers to act on legislation to combat the problem now. Republicans, ticked off about all the attention on an issue many of them prefer to ignore (honorable exception: John McCain) tried to laugh off Gore's dire warnings about the environment as paranoid alarmism, took him to task but failed to ruffle his fathers. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the Republican lawmaker who declared global warming to be a hoax, even tried to usurp Senate Environment Committee chair Barbara Boxer's authority, Inhofe having chaired the committee in the last Congress, and made a bigger fool out of himself than he usually does.

There are suggestions that Gore may be using his new-found respectability to run for President again, but he insists he's not, despite that he beats out John Edwards for third place among Democratic presidential candidates in some polls. Personally, I don't think he wants to run again. I think Gore believes he can do more for the environment as a private citizen than as President.

There are those who insist Gore could have won the 2000 presidential election handily if he had campaigned on this issue. I doubt it; I don't think Americans were ready to give up the oil-dependent suburban living pattern that our over-reliance on fossil fuels makes possible. In fact, they still may not be. Although a majority of Americans want something done about global warming, how many are ready to give up their Chevrolet Tahoes for Honda Fits, pay more for electricity generated by wind power, and live in smaller houses? How many of them are ready to give up their cars and suburban houses entirely, move back to the cities, and share public transportation with poor people? Not much, I bet.

Spine

The Democrats in the House of Representatives finally showed some backbone, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi scored her first major victory, by passing a bill requiring George W. Bush to withdraw from Iraq by September 2008 and to provide progress reports (as if what we're doing in Iraq can actually be called progress) between now and then. Bush responded with a threat to veto any bill regarding funding for the Iraq War, noting that it would be sustained, as it passed by only the barest majority in the House (218 members, including two Republicans), but it shows the tide is turning back toward checks and balances and that Bush can't rely on a docile Congress to let him do his dirty work. Bush, as is common with an alcoholic, is in denial about this. :-O

Late-Night Jinx

David Letterman's show must be cursed. Letterman himself was forced to go home Tuesday with a bad stomach virus (causing guest Adam Sandler to substitute as the host), and yesterday Calvert De Forrest, best known as the character Larry "Bud" Melman from the show's NBC days, died. R.I.P. :-(

Bad News For the Edwardses

Presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth announced today that Elizabeth's breast cancer not only had returned, it's spread to her rib bone. What rotten luck. The incredible thing about this is that the Edwardses are taking this bad news as well as humanly possible. They're looking on the bright side; although it's not curable, it is treatable, and Elizabeth Edwards says she can manage it with regular chemotherapy treatments, and the family is going ahead with John's presidential campaign. Some political commentators said that the way Edwards and his wife have taken this news reveal him to be a man of great character and integrity that could actually help his campaign.

You have to hand it to Elizabeth Edwards to be so optimistic in the face of all of this bad news. If I had cancer, beat it back, and was told it had returned, I wouldn't even be half as optimistic. It makes me ask why not.

One Blow After Another . . .

It's been a rocky few weeks, but now it's going to get rockier. Even as I'm working at this civil engineering firm I mentioned earlier, which requires a long commute, the "Check Engine" light on my car went on after the engine began struggling at idle. I need to get checked right away before it goes idle for good, and meanwhile my mommy has to drive me to work!

I feel powerless because I am. :-(

March Madness

A day or two after springlike temperatures, the American Northeast is going through a winter storm just short of the official start of spring. I have hope that I can get my life together once winter is over, but right now I doubt if winter is ever going to be over. :-(

War Stories

Between Karl Rove possibly getting invloved with leaking Valerie Plame's identity and Karl Rove implicated in the White House's power grab by replacing U.S. Attorneys who investigated Republicans aggressively and not investigating Democrats all that much, it's a wonder Rove will survive at all. But then, when you have Scooter Libby and Alberto Gonzales to take the fall for you, maybe it's no surprise that Rove has managed to keep his day job.

Meanwhile, today marks an unsettling milestone. We are three days away from the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Bear in mind that Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House three days short of the fourth anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter. In other words, as of tomorrow, the Iraq War will have lasted longer than the U.S. Civil War. And the conflict in Iraq has also become a civil war, one in which we're merely along for the ride.

When I Wanted To Be a Highway Engineer (Really)

So what am I doing with myself now? I'm currently temping at a civil engineering firm where they design mass transit systems, libraries, other public works, and yes, highways.

This is ironic, as when I was a kid in the late seventies, I wanted to be a highway designer and work at a civil engineering firm. The only part of my dream that didn't come true was that I'm not designing highways.

I had spent a lot of time on the road in my father's car when I was little, and I fell in love with the lure of the asphalt ribbons that crossed the land - where they went, how fast you could go on them, how they were built. I especially thought on- and off-ramps were cool to ride on. As fate would have it, I was also a "map geek" when I was a kid,  collecting road map, always taking out my father's U.S. road atlas as well, and following the lines through the fifty states, fantasizing all kinds of road trips I'd take one day. I developed all kinds of ideas for new expressways that could be built. My ideas included:

*State turnpikes for Colorado and Wyoming:

*A "Keystone State Parkway," that is, a Garden State Parkway clone in western Pennsylvania, developed from existing bypasses;

*An expressway connecting Camden, New Jersey to the Betsy Ross Bridge between southern New Jersey and Philadelphia farther up the Delaware River, using an island in the river as a right of way;

*A partial restoration of U.S. Route 66;

*A vehicular tunnel from Delaware to New Jersey, south of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and;

*Two expressways across Manhattan, one connecting the Lincoln and Midtown tunnels, the other connecting the Holland Tunnel and Williamsburg Bridge.

I even drew maps my ideas. When I told my father this, he told me, "So, you want to become another Robert Moses!" Who? He explained that Robert Moses was the great highway builder of New York City and New York State.

So why didn't I become a highway designer? Three reasons: First of all, it was stupid. Second of all, my ideas were stupid. (A Wyoming Turnpike?) Thirdly, I was stupid. Because becoming another Robert Moses would have meant becoming the devil . . . just like Robert Moses. Moses's urban highway projects in New York City, from the Grand Central Parkway to the Cross Bronx Expressway, destroyed the vitality of several neighborhoods and was partially responsible for the decline of the quality of life in New York and the ugly suburbanization of Long Island. As fate would have it, he actually planned expressways for Manhattan to connect the very bridges and tunnels I mentioned, with one exception - his planned expressway for Lower Manhattan would have connected the Holland Tunnel with the Manhattan, not the Williamsburg, Bridge. Those expressways were in fact two of his rare defeats; public opposition was to both projects was too great for Moses to proceed. And for good reason; both highways would have destroyed such vital neighborhoods as Soho, now a flourishing artsy district, and Lower Midtown.

One other thing: Moses designed these unbuilt highways as elevated ones; I imagined highways that would slice below grade. Never mind all the electrical lines, phone lines, sewer lines, and subways that would have been disrupted by such a project. I'd been impressed by Interstate 280 in East Orange, New Jersey, and how it sliced under that city through a giant concrete moat. Then I actually saw what that highway did to East Orange. Let me clue you in: You know you're from New Jersey when you realize that "east" and "orange," when put together in a sentence, are the two scariest words in the English language.

Oh yeah, I also thought an expressway through Midtown would connect the New Jersey Turnpike with the Long Island Expressway to make it easier people from New Jersey and Long Island to get from one region to another. Since when is Manhattan simply some place to go through to get from New Jersey to Long Island??

So, yes, I'm glad I never became a highway designer. There aren't enough New Jerseyans with vacation homes in the Hamptons to justify a Midtown Manhattan expressway. In fact, I'm for more mass transit, and I believe our highway network is too damn big and should not be expanded. My only regret is that I actually wasted time drawing maps of my ideas that I could have spent reading a good book . . . like Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

By the way, with the population of the West expanding as it is, a Colorado Turnpike might actually happen. :-O

News Of the Weird

When George W. Bush visits a Mayan temple in Mexico during his tour of Latin America, Mayan priests plan to purify it afterwords. Presumably, to get rid of the sulphur. :-O

Meanwhile, former lawyer and U.S. Senator and actor Fred Thompson - who got into acting by playing himself in the Sissy Spacek legal drama Marie - is thinking of running for President, while Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel is thinking of thinking of running. Or something to that effect.

You can't make this stuff up, folks. . . . :-D

Broadcast News Stories

NBC, which has been in a ratings slump for nearly three years and has had only limited success in correcting the situation, has at least had one bright side in the form of its ratings for its weeknightly newscast, but recently Brian Williams has been sliding in the ratings at the expense of ABC's Charles Gibson. Williams is still in the lead, but if he loses more momentum to the staid Gibson, maybe the Not Broadcasting Competently network should just fold the tent and liquidate its assets.

At least, in the news department, NBC - and ABC, for that matter - are far ahead of CBS, whose once heralded newscast has gone the way of other esteemed American institutions, like General Motors. Since taking over in September, Katie Couric has seen her ratings drop after some morbid curiosity in her style and formatting - the same kind of morbid curiosity that car crashes inspire - and the network has taken action. CBS hopes to bring in new staff to pump up Couric's ratings and credibility, yet the Big Eye refuses to admit they made a mistake by hiring her in the first place. Americans have made it clear that, while they don't mind seeing America's ex-sweetheart get an on-air colonoscopy, they have no interest in getting the latest news from Iraq through her.

Oh well, I still like "How I Met Your Mother" anyway.

Daylight Between the Ears

Daylight Savings Time begins three weeks earlier in the United States this week, and, like other acts of Congress in the past several years, this one is annoying the rest of the world. It seems that most countries prefer to wait until April to set their clocks ahead one hour, which means that international flights and transoceanic communications affecting these United States will be all screwed up for the next three weeks. The act was passed as part of an energy bill to increase energy savings - although it doesn't matter that we get an extra hour of daylight earlier in the year when so many office buildings keep their lights on practically all day long anyway - without asking folks to make sacrifices, like taking mass transit or buying smaller houses. But since global warming may cause spring to start before the vernal equinox in the near future, why not? :-p

Ironically, high temperatures for next weekend are expected to only get up to 33 degrees in the New York area. :-O

The law will be revisited in 2009 after a two-year trial period. By then we'll certainly have a record on how much damage this does to the clocks in our computers.

Sorry, Scooter

Scooter Libby was found guilty today of lying about what he knew about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. At last, this sordid affair is over, although Libby thinks he can get a new trial and no one was ever charged with outing Joseph Wilson's wife. I think we've learned a few things from this scandal. First, it's bad to lie about issues related to national security. Secondly, you shouldn't cover up anything to protect anyone, especially if you work in the Administration.

Thirdly, Valerie Plame is hot.

(Sorry, couldn't resist the triple!)

Bad Legacies

One of the biggest surprises of recent days was Al Sharpton finding out that his great-grandfather was owned by an ancestor of the late segregationist U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Sharpton has publicly stated that he couldn't possibly think of anything that would trouble him more. So, he'd rather have thought that his ancestor was owned by, say, Jefferson Davis, who was known for being a benevolent master? Dude, it's still slavery! It's bad no matter who owned Sharpton's great-grandfather!

Slavery is treated as ancient history in this country, and by our standards, it is; we're such a young country, anything that happened before 1865 is ancient. But when you consider that we're still only three generations removed from it after 142 years, and when you realize that the racism, intolerance, and mistrust that slavery promoted still affects this country, you have to understand that it is still an issue that Americans have to deal with. Black Americans are criticized for complaining about the present and blaming it on the past, but what happened long ago can and does still affect our behavior and our attitudes today. Ask the Germans, who still have to deal with the legacy of the Holocaust.

Walter Reed's Ghost Has Something To Say

Given what's been going on at the Army hospital outside Washington these days, rumor has it that a seance was conducted in a Georgetown rowhouse. Walter Reed came back from the dead, with important message about that Army medical center bearing his name. . . .

He wants his name removed from it! :-O

An Accurate First Impression

I thought I'd revisit my comments about my Britgirl pal Therisa Barber from July, when I first met her. Here's what I wrote:

"The woman I'm writing about is an aspiring dancer and an enterprising young woman named Therisa Barber, and she's easily one of the sweetest women I've ever met, not just in my travels and travails as a writer, but possibly in my whole life. She's a very ebullient performer, and listening to her talk about her street performing character was as entertaining as watching her perform in character. She's both a lovely person and a lovely woman." 

Now go back and read what I wrote on Wednesday.

Sometimes first impressions are lasting . . .