Kids Visit Margaritaville

From The Smoking Gun — Virginia grade schoolers accidentally served alcohol at lunch.

Volcano

Mount St. Helens has become restless: “processes are underway that have significant likelihood of culminating in hazardous volcanic activity but … evidence does not indicate that a life- or property-threatening event is imminent.”

Here’s a live view.

He’ll do

Via Wonkette, Kerry Haters for Kerry.

Don’t ever forget. It’s not about Kerry. It’s about it not being Bush.

Best line of the day, so far

“[A] presidential campaign conducted with schoolyard taunts.”

— James Wolcott

It’s the birthday

… of Deborah Kerr. The six-time Oscar nominee for Best Actress is 83 today.

… of Angie Dickinson. “Pepper” is 73 today.

… of Johnny Mathis. Chances are the singer is 69 today.

… of Barry Williams. Greg Brady is 50 today.

James Dean was killed on this date in 1955.

[Dean] and his mechanic, Rolf Wuetherich, were traveling in Dean’s new Porsche Spyder 550, which he planned to race that afternoon in Salinas. Dean had traded in his Porsche Speedster just nine days earlier, purchasing the Spyder for $6,900 and naming it “Little Bastard.”

From JamesDean.com.

Truman Capote …

was born in New Orleans on this date in 1924. The Writer’s Almanac tells us:

Even as a child, Capote wanted to become famous. He moved with his mother to New York City and applied to the prestigious Trinity School. He was given an IQ test as an entrance exam, and he scored 215, the highest in the school’s history. Capote said, “I was having 50 perceptions a minute to everyone else’s five. I always felt nobody was going to understand me, going to understand what I felt about things. I guess that’s why I started writing.” One day he read a news release about the murder of a family in western Kansas, and he decided to write about it. He moved to Holcomb, Kansas with his friend Harper Lee, and became attached to the community as it recovered from the crime. Capote compiled over 6,000 pages of notes on the crime, 80% of which he threw away. Eventually, he wrote his most famous work, In Cold Blood (1966), about the murders. He got to know the two murderers well and worked for many years to have their death sentences reduced. When the two men were hanged, Capote became physically ill. In Cold Blood introduced a new genre, the “non-fiction novel.” Capote received nearly two million dollars for text and movie rights.

Capote craved fame and spent much of his life socializing. He was an unassuming figure—small and with a high lisping voice. But he was a lively storyteller, and an expert charmer. George Plimpton said, “He knew he had to sing for his supper but, my God, what a song it was!”

Names of interest to Florida

Karl
Lisa
Matthew
Nicole
Otto
Paula
Richard
Shary
Tomas
Virginie
Walter

These are the remaining names for this year’s Atlantic hurricane season.

Law & Order

NewMexiKen is certain that Dennis Farina is a fine actor and all-around good fellow, and I really should give him a chance, but I miss Briscoe.

Besides, Law & Order missed a sure thing when they didn’t hire Kelsey Grammer to play Dr. Frasier Crane, the district attorney’s new house shrink.

Kerry is a little like Frasier

“Problems at Kerry debate prep: They keep trying to tell him he doesn’t talk like a regular average Joe and he said, ‘Au contraire!”‘

— Jay Leno

NewMexiKen

Visit often today folks. It looks like we have an outside chance at 15,000 visits and 60,000 pages in September!

Private Craft Rockets Past Edge of Space

A spacecraft that looks just like something out of Flash Gordon. Can Dale Arden and Emperor Ming be real?

Completing the first leg of a quest for a $10 million prize, a test pilot took a privately financed plane past the cusp of space on Wednesday morning in a flight that had equal measures of white-knuckle moments and triumph.

The rocket ship left the ground at 7:10 a.m. and reached a height unofficially reported at 337,500 feet (63.9 miles), well above its 328,000-foot goal set by the X Prize. That goal altitude, 100 kilometers above the Earth, is an arbitrary but widely accepted definition for the border of space. By 8:34, the squid-shaped craft had glided safely back to the runway.

But the best news of all, the pilot, Michael W. Melvill, is 63-years-old.

A New-Style Indian Village Rises From the Dust

Informative and interesting article in The New York Times on housing development on Winnebago Indian Reservation (Nebraska).

In mid-September the National American Indian Housing Council released a report on the health risks that overcrowded housing on reservations poses to children, including infectious diseases and breathing problems from tobacco smoke. A report last year by the federal Commission on Civil Rights cited an immediate need for 200,000 housing units for Indian families.

In Winnebago about one-third of households are overcrowded, including the home of David and Robin Redhorn. They live in town with their three children in a house they share with Mrs. Redhorn’s sister, her husband and their child. “There’s about eight of us,” Mr. Redhorn said. “It’s kind of crowded, but we’re managing.”

In October the Redhorn family will become the second to move to Ho-Chunk Village. With guidance from a 40-hour home buyer course offered by the housing authority, Mr. Redhorn, who works at the Heritage Food Store in town, paid off overdue debts to improve his credit record, which qualified him for financial assistance.

All Winnebago families are eligible for $15,000 in down payment assistance from Ho-Chunk Inc.’s nonprofit arm for houses on the reservation if they complete the course. Families earning $45,200 or less may qualify for an additional $5,000 from the housing authority.

“We’ll have a three-bedroom house, a full basement with a two-car garage, central air and central heat,” Mr. Redhorn said. “And a fireplace so we can have a real Christmas. I’m kind of fired up about this.”

Money for the Porsche

The Powerball prize this Saturday is $151 Million (that’s $83.2 million cash). Serious money.

The Rolex of sports cars

Pulitzer winner Dan Neil writes this week about the Porsche 911. Go read it, after all how many auto columnists begin with a discussion of Ezra Pound.

It’s fair to say I hadn’t thought of Pound since the moment I put down my pencil in graduate school — until I climbed into the cockpit of the redesigned Porsche 911 Carrera S. There, atop the richly upholstered dash, was a handsome stopwatch-style chronometer. Want to test yourself on a favorite piece of road? Tap a wand on the steering column and the instrument’s sweep-second hand and digital readout begin to march forward with unappeasable accuracy. Now you can time exactly how long it takes to lose your license.

The chronometer is a little bit of genius, design as metaphor. If you had to choose an image to capture the soul of the Porsche 911 — a car with thousands of road-racing victories to its credit, a car that virtually owns the production-based classes at Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring — that image wouldn’t be a wheel, or an engine or even the raring black stallion on the Porsche escutcheon. It would be a stopwatch.

Oh, and if you have $92,355, it’s a helluva car.

Paper quips

From Sideline Chatter:

• Steve Schrader of the Detroit Free Press, after Tony Siragusa, Fox Sports’ corpulent sideline reporter, called Lions QB Joey Harrington a “champagne and caviar” kind of guy: “Not that we’ve ever met him, but Tony looks like he might be a beer and pretzels, meat and potatoes, biscuits and gravy, chicken and dumplings, turkey and dressing, surf and turf, pizza and pasta, nachos and wings, chips and dip, macaroni and cheese, cake and ice cream kind of guy.”

• CBS’s David Letterman, with a special announcement for Britney Spears fans: “There will be no wedding on Saturday. It’s a bye week.”

Questions for the debate

Altercation has a series of reader-suggested questions. NewMexiKen’s favorite:

Question: Mr. President, you have accused John Kerry of not supporting the troops because he did not vote in favor of the funding bill that contained funds for basic soldier gear such as body armor. My question is who sent them into battle without that equipment in the first place?

My new best friends

Here.

Tough love

Dear Abby,

I recently read your column advising grandparents on “tough love” for grandparents to give misbehaving grandchildren, whose own parents let them run wild. I have followed your advice, and enclosed a picture demonstrating my technique when my grandson just won’t behave while I’m babysitting for his parents. They have told me not to spank him, so I just take him for a ride, and he usually calms down afterward.

Sign me,

Tough Love Grandpa

Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire

Jerry Lee Lewis is 69 today.

Survival

From the September Outside, The Top Wilderness Survival Stories.

Call us rubberneckers, but who can resist the panic, terror, and inspiration of a good survival tale? We combed through vast libraries of lore to find ten more unforgettable, nearly unbelievable great escapes. Brace yourself.

Get on my Big Wheel and leave

Via Eric Alterman, Zachary Maxwell has a message for George W. Bush.

Fair is as fair does

“John Kerry said that you can’t have fair and free elections in a place where there’s no rule of law. President Bush said, ‘Oh yeah, what if your brother’s governor of that state?’”

“Republicans are now saying that Dan Rather should lose his job because he misled the country with bogus information. Which is odd because the Democrats are saying the exact same thing about President Bush.”

— Jay Leno

Best line of the day, so far

“If God did choose George Bush, it wasn’t to lead us. It was to test us.”

Comment last May at Eschaton

Coming soon to cable

Grandpa (aka NewMexiKen): What do cows do for a good time?

3-year-old grandson: They go to the moo-vies.

Samuel Adams

The Writer’s Almanac has a nice piece on America’s premier patriot. (You can listen to Garrison Keillor here [RealAudio].)

It’s the birthday of statesman and patriot Samuel Adams, born in Boston, Massachusetts (1722). As a young man, he tried to go into business for himself with some money his father had given him, but the business failed and he lost everything. He got a job as a tax collector, but he failed to collect any taxes and his accounting books were a mess. It wasn’t until the British passed the Sugar Act of 1764 that he found his purpose in life. He was one of the first members of the colonies to speak out against taxation without representation and one of the first people to argue for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain. He was the leader of the American radicals, and he was almost maniacal in his pursuit of American independence. He organized riots and wrote propaganda, describing the British as murderers and slave drivers. Adams said, “Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason,” and he had a genius for stirring up feelings. In one speech he said, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace … Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” He was so influential in his opposition to the British that British soldiers tried to arrest him, but he and John Hancock hid in a farmhouse and weren’t found. He went on to become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and participated in the Continental Congress. He said, “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

And a damn fine beer.

New kid on the block

Great cover on Sunday’s The New York Times Magazine. R.W. Apple Jr., The New York Times (10 presidential campaigns). Jack Germond, The Baltimore Sun (12 presidential campaigns). Ana Marie Cox, Wonkette.com (first presidential campaign, but 430,000 weekly page views).

Never bored

Ralph had this story he got from a friend:

Several of my former co-workers have asked what retired people, like me, do to make their days interesting.

I went to the store the other day. I was only in there for about 5 minutes. When I came out there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.

I went up to him and said, “Come on, buddy, how about giving a senior a break?”

He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi.

He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires.

So I called him a piece of shit. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket.

This went on for about 20 minutes.. the more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

I didn’t give a damn. My car was parked around the corner.

I try to have a little fun each day now that I’m retired. It’s important at my age.

Sounds like fun.

Hey morons!
(maybe they think we are ALL morons)

The election, editorial cartoon style. Take a look.

Link via Josh Marshall.

Best line of the day, so far

“Don Rumsfeld said yesterday that elections in “three-quarters or four-fifths of” Iraq might be good enough.

“In other words, run the place on Florida rules.”

— Josh Marshall

Lord, I’m tired of the reign of pipsqueaks, aren’t you?

Charles Pierce writing at Altercation:

Riddle me this: if I forge a letter from U.S. Grant in which are described the events at Appomattox, and I sell it to someone, and I get caught and tried for fraud, and they prove that the document is fake, does that mean the Civil War never really ended?

Hey morons!
(that’s who the Republicans think reside in Arkansas and West Virginia)

Report in The New York Times — Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible

The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass mailings to residents of two states warning that “liberals” seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings were part of its effort to mobilize religious voters for President Bush.

The mailings include images of the Bible labeled “banned” and of a gay marriage proposal labeled “allowed.” A mailing to Arkansas residents warns: “This will be Arkansas if you don’t vote.” A similar mailing was sent to West Virginians.

It’s the birthday

… of Jim Henson. The creator of the Muppets was born on this date in 1936.

… of Jim McKay. The Wide World of Sports host is 83.

… of Joseph Kennedy II. Robert Kennedy’s son is 52.

Eva Cassidy

NewMexiKen hasn’t written about Eva Cassidy for new visitors. Here’s what I had to say in August last year.

Eva Cassidy was a singer from Bowie, Maryland, near Washington, who died of melanoma in 1996. She was 33. Click here and here and here to read about Eva.

I first heard Eva’s CD Imagine one evening last October at Tower Records in DC. I bought it then and three more CDs since. Her eighth album, American Tune is due out August 12th. [I have it, too.]

According to reports, Boston DJ Robin Young was able to get Sting to listen to Eva’s rendition of “Fields of Gold”. “She has him on camera saying that he was quite territorial about that song, arrogant even, only to be brought to tears by her totally different vocal interpretation.”

Eva Cassidy owns “Over the Rainbow” and “Fever”.

Well, actually Eva shares ownership of “Over the Rainbow” with Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.

The Freeway Blogger …

has some good new signs.

No saved person left behind

The following is from Bill Moyers’ speech at the Society of Professional Journalists national convention on September 11, 2004:

How do we explain the possibility that a close election in November could turn on several million good and decent citizens who believe in the Rapture Index? That’s what I said – the Rapture Index; google it and you will understand why the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series which have earned multi-millions of dollars for their co-authors who earlier this year completed a triumphant tour of the Bible Belt whose buckle holds in place George W. Bush’s armor of the Lord. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the l9th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative millions of people believe to be literally true.

According to this narrative, Jesus will return to earth only when certain conditions are met: when Israel has been established as a state; when Israel then occupies the rest of its “biblical lands;” when the third temple has been rebuilt on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques; and, then, when legions of the Antichrist attack Israel. This will trigger a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon during which all the Jews who have not converted will be burned. Then the Messiah returns to earth. The Rapture occurs once the big battle begins. True believers” will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation which follow.

I’m not making this up. We’re reported on these people for our weekly broadcast on PBS, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you that they feel called to help bring the Rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That’s why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It’s why they have staged confrontations at the old temple site in Jerusalem. It’s why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the 9th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels “which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released “to slay the third part of men.’ As the British writer George Monbiot has pointed out, for these people the Middle East is not a foreign policy issue, it’s a biblical scenario, a matter of personal belief. A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed; if there’s a conflagration there, they come out winners on the far side of tribulation, inside the pearly gates, in celestial splendor, supping on ambrosia to the accompaniment of harps plucked by angels.

One estimate puts these people at about l5% of the electorate. Most are likely to vote Republican; they are part of the core of George W. Bush’s base support. He knows who they are and what they want. When the President asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, over one hundred thousand angry Christian fundamentalists barraged the White House with emails and Mr. Bush never mentioned the matter again. Not coincidentally, the administration recently put itself solidly behind Ariel Sharon’s expansions of settlements on the West Banks. In George Monbiot’s analysis, the President stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli expansion into the West Bank than he stands to lose by restraining it. “He would be mad to listen to these people, but he would also be mad not to.” No wonder Karl Rove walks around the West Wing whistling “Onward Christian Soldiers.” He knows how many votes he is likely to get from these pious folk who believe that the Rapture Index now stands at 144 — just one point below the critical threshold at which point the prophecy is fulfilled, the whole thing blows, the sky is filled with floating naked bodies, and the true believers wind up at the right hand of God. With no regret for those left behind.

The whole speech is well-worth your time.

On-going investigation

From Juanita:

The story isn’t that Tom DeLay didn’t get indicted. The story is that everyone he knows, or has ever had lunch with, did.

Nah, I’m just kidding. Not everyone.

However, if you were to draw a triangle of love, trust, and dependence around Tom, all three corners of it are facing the distinct possibility of life in prison with a roommate not of their own choosing. Plus, with all the corporations indicted, Tom can’t shop anywhere, eat out, make a phone call, turn on a light, or drink those little rum umbrella drinks without raising eyebrows from here to Washington, Dee Cee.

Jim Ellis, a snippy man who runs DeLay’s Americans for a Republican Majority PAC (ARMPAC), John Colyandro, the executive director of DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), and Warren Robold, a DeLay fundraiser, were all indicted on several counts of FeLony DeLay DeVotion.

The Senior Investigative Congressional Correspondent at the beauty shop called Tom DeLay’s office to get his response on all his best friends and closest aides getting indicted on more counts than they’ve got toes. Tom’s official reply was, “Oink. Oink oink. Oink, oink oink oink. Squish, spattle. Oink!”

No. I’m just kidding again. What Tom truly did say was much worse than that. They indict three of his closest friends and Tom’s reaction is, I promise I’m not making this up, his reaction is, “This just emphasizes what I’ve said all along — that this investigation isn’t about me.” He really said that. You can look it up.

Go read the rest.

A year ago

NewMexiKen excerpted Mark Twain on juries a year ago. It’s from Roughing It and worth reading again for its continued timeliness. An excerpt from the excerpt:

The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligence and probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh, with him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon mere hearsay, he is worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance and stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than in theirs.

What’s going through my mind

Hey kids, this is Elmo’s new song
I say, hey kids, sing and dance along
E-L-M-O
E-L-M-O

(To the music of Y-M-C-A)

Today should be a holiday

It’s the birthday of John Coltrane (1926) and Ray Charles (1930).

Refuting the pessimists

Juan Cole has a must read if you care to have some perspective about Iraq as it is today, If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?. Some excerpts:

What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?

What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target “safe houses” of “criminal gangs”, but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial over on the Mall? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?

Juan Cole is a Professor of History at the University of Michigan.