As Dick Cheney becomes more and more unraveled, maybe it’s time to start speculating about who Bush’s running mate might be. NewMexiKen has come up with a few possibilities:
From Time:
Although there are no plans to raise the threat level from yellow to orange, a senior Justice Department official says, “there’s very serious intelligence that’s corroborated, that’s multiple sourced, that indicates that al-Qaeda is intent on hitting us and hitting us hard this year.” The official concedes, however, that “we don’t have specific information.”
Along with this now familiar general warning, the FBI has introduced the specter of a new terrorism threat: booby-trapped beer coolers. A lightly classified bulletin sent to 18,000 state and local agencies last week advised local authorities to look out for plastic-foam containers, inner tubes and other waterborne flotsam commonly seen around marinas that could be rigged to blow up on contact. Also, the bulletin warned, terrorists might attach bombs to buoys. FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials say no such devices have actually been discovered, nor is there any current intelligence that terrorists are hatching plots involving floating bombs.
My god, take a cooler and an almanac to the beach and you’re in big trouble.
Link via Eschaton.
Jon Stewart on Larry King discussing John Edwards as possible vice presidential candidate:
Yes. I hate to see a boy like that’s heart crushed when he gets to be the vice president and he realizes he has to tell Senators to f-off. That is actually a vice presidential duty within the constitution.
From the Albuquerque Tribune:
In Albuquerque, Mayor Martin Chavez and his wife, Margaret Aragon de Chavez, have kept any disagreement private since filing for divorce this month.
But in Boston, at a dinner for the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting Friday, a disagreement over crossing a picket line caught the attention of protesters and reporters.
Mayors arriving at the event faced a gauntlet of hundreds of jeering, chanting police officers and other city employees trying to embarrass Boston Mayor Thomas Menino over pending contracts with city unions.
Picketers chanted “Don’t go in!” and “Shame on you!” as buses ferried mayors and their families to the red-carpet event at the Boston Public Library.
Chavez, a Democrat, walked past protesters with his wife and daughter saying, “We’re going in. Tom Menino is a great friend and a great Democrat.”
But then Aragon de Chavez and their 13-year-old daughter, Martinique Chavez, pulled aside metal barricades and joined the union protesters, sparking cheers from the crowd. She was handed a Boston Fire Department T-shirt and a sign.
“There were all these union firefighters and police looking at all the people going into this extravagant party,” Aragon de Chavez said in a phone interview. “And they were saying `Don’t go in, don’t go in.’ I was raised in a blue-collar family. I looked into their eyes and I couldn’t do it. . . .
“I wasn’t trying to draw attention to myself. It just reminded me of my upbringing.”
Aragon de Chavez said her husband went into the dinner and that she encouraged Martinique to go in as well. But her daughter also decided not to cross the line of protesters.
Without knowing the issues in the Boston dispute, it still occurs to NewMexiKen that the wrong Chávez is mayor.
Link via Metaquerque.
From William Powers in the National Journal, The Church of Best-Sellers:
More and more, the coverage of these massive cultural events is like absurd comic theater. Act 1: Long before publication, the media announce that the book in question will be simply huge, The Biggest Thing In Years, and the drumbeat continues right up to the day of release. Act 2: The public, eager to participate in this foreordained historic moment, dutifully lines up to buy the important tome. Act 3: The media marvel at the popular frenzy, as if it had happened quite spontaneously and they had nothing to do with it.
Link via Bookslut.
According to this report from ABC News, The Finger has been with us since Greek tragedy.
Link via Dave Barry.
The Daytona Cubs give away an unusual item to the first 500 fans.
In another unique promotion by the Daytona Cubs, Friday night will be the first ever jock-strap give-away at Jackie Robinson Ballpark. The first 500 fans through the gates, will receive a FREE atheltic supporter courtesy of your Daytona Cubs.
Link via Dave Barry.
NewMexiKen read Edward P. Jones’s The Known World this past week. The novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize and that The Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley called “the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years” is — obviously — excellent and I highly recommend it. It’s available in soft cover.
Set in Virginia in the decades before the Civil War, the novel’s primary characters are members of the extended Townsend family, including slaves owned by the freed-Black Townsends. This mix makes for a rich and complex tapestry of racial-relations — black, mulatto, white and Indian. Indeed, more than any one individual, it is slavery that is the main character. As Yardley wrote:
More than anything else, Jones is concerned with the relationship between master and slave, and with the wholly unexpected permutations this acquires when both master and slave are black. Jones cuts right to the core when he writes: “Henry had always said that he wanted to be a better master than any white man he had ever known. He did not understand that the kind of world he wanted to create was doomed before he had even spoken the first syllable of the word master.” A master is a master is a master, and it doesn’t matter whether the master is white or black.
Ralph tells us the Western Shoshone Get Screwed in Nevada.
The Western Shoshone Land Distribution bill passed Congress today [Friday]. It effectively steals the land of the Western Shoshone, paying pennies on the dollar to close out land claims…
died on this date in 1829.
Smithson’s will left the bulk of his estate to his nephew, Henry James Hungerford. But should his nephew die without children—legitimate or illegitimate—a contingency clause stated that the estate would go to “the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge…”
Source: The Smithsonian Institution
The nephew did indeed die without children and in 1838 approximately $500,000 in gold was brought to the United States. After a decade of indecision and debate about how best to carry out the bequest, the Smithsonian Institution was created by Act of Congress (1846).
An aside: According to the Smithsonian:
Senator John C. Calhoun opposed acceptance of the Smithson bequest, largely on the grounds that to do so on behalf of the entire nation would abridge states’ rights. He maintained that Congress had no authority to accept the gift. He also asserted that it would be “beneath [U.S.] dignity to accept presents from anyone.”
Go read the whole column by Sally Jenkins on the “run-amok investigation of U.S. track and field athletes,” Due Process? Not For Track Stars. An excerpt:
Here is an example of the kind of job USADA is doing in its inquiry into Jones’s ties to BALCO. Several weeks ago, Jones met with a trio of USADA officials, including Madden. They presented her with a calendar that purported to be her BALCO doping schedule. It bore several notations and the initials MJ.
“That’s not my calendar,” she said.
“Then why does it have your sprint times on it?”
Jones replied evenly, “If those are my sprint times, then I just shattered the world record by a second.”
The sprint times on the calendar could not have been those of Jones, or of any woman. They were too fast. The USADA representatives didn’t even recognize the difference between the sprint times of a male and a female.
You get an uneasy feeling from watching USADA’s bumbling zealots. You get the feeling they’d waive the U.S. Constitution if they could — which is a pretty unsettling thing to feel about an organization that is funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars and a grant from the White House.
Jenkins points out that while taking performance enhancers may be cheating, it isn’t a crime. Leaking grand jury testimony is, however, and that has happened in this case.
The world’s most eco-friendly ice-cream freezer — from Popular Science.
The eighth grade final exam from Salina, Kansas, 1895.
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