Author: NewMexiKen

On the other hand

A Republican candidate for the South Carolina Senate wants “Confederate Southern Americans” declared a minority group entitled to the same protections as blacks and Hispanics. “Confederate Southern Americans are a separate and distinct people,” said Ron Wilson. “Confederate Southern Americans are tired of being the ‘whipping boy’ for the rest of the country.” Wilson says states have the right to secede from the union, though he does not think secession is necessary at this time.

Bad week for…
Southern men, as the state of Virginia began an ad campaign to dissuade men from sleeping with underage girls. Billboards and bar napkins will bear such messages as “Isn’t she a little young?” and “Sex with a minor, don’t go there.”

Both items from The Week Newsletter

The ‘Topes

NewMexiKen posted this item on the Albquerque Isotopes baseball team after attending a game last August. The AAA team is affiliated with the World Champion Florida Marlins.

Isotopes.gifThe Isotopes get their name from the Simpsons. According to the Simpsons Episode Guide, in “Hungry, Hungry, Homer”:

Homer becomes a Good Samaritan after seeing the benefit of helping people. When he attempts to get Lenny a refund on his Springfield Isotopes season tickets, Homer discovers that the baseball team’s new owner, Duff Beer, plans to move the team to Albuquerque. Homer tries to rally the town in protest, however, no one believes his allegation. To expose Duff’s plan, he stages a hunger strike by chaining himself to a light pole near the stadium. Days later, the Duff Corporation deems Homer their ballpark attraction. They unchain him and tempt his cravings with an Isotope Dog Supreme. Before eating it, Homer realizes that the Southwestern ingredients on the hot dog prove that the team is moving to Albuquerque.

Actually the Isotopes moved here from Calgary, where they were the Cannons.

It’s not too late for the grownup Republicans

Brad DeLong has a suggestion:

It’s not too late for the grownup Republicans to act. There’s still time for the House and Senate Republican caucuses to go to Bush and force his and Cheney’s resignations. Then Hastert and Stevens can decline the job, and the presidential succession passes to Colin Powell.

This then gets us a president who:

  1. is a Republican.
  2. certainly does not have a smaller chance of winning in November than George W. Bush.
  3. would in all probability be good at the job.

It’s what would have already happened to any political leader in a parliamentary system. It’s what the grownup Republicans owe the country. And it may well be to the partisan political advantage of the Republican Party to close down the current Clown Show as quickly as possible.

The first film critic…

to win the Pulitizer Prize for distinguished criticism, Roger Ebert, is 62 today. His name at birth was Reinhold Timme.

NewMexiKen particularly likes Ebert’s reviews of what he calls the Great Movies. There’s now close to 200 of them.

“Every great film should seem new every time you see it.”

Timing is everything

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times:

There was an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO in February in which Larry David, the show’s star, creator and executive producer, took a lady of the evening to a Dodger game so he could use the carpool lane on the freeway.

Footage shot at Dodger Stadium for that show, The Times and other media outlets reported recently, exonerated Juan Catalan, who had been charged with murder.

Outtakes, viewed by Catalan’s attorney, showed that Catalan, as he had maintained, was at the Dodger game last May at the time he was accused of committing the murder of a 16-year-old girl in Sun Valley.

As a result, a judge set Catalan free.

Said David: “I’m quitting the show to devote the rest of my life to freeing those unjustly incarcerated.”

Glow in the dark

NewMexiKen had a Cardiolite stress test. That’s a test where they inject you with radioactive isotopes to provide an image of your heart.

The test went OK, but I’m having trouble dealing with the side-effects of the nuclear medicine. I have a yearning to see the Albuquerque Isotopes minor league baseball team. I am now my own night light. And I’m finding the microwave sexually attractive.

The decisive Day is come

Or so Abigail Adams wrote to husband John the day after the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was fought on this date in 1775. The first major battle of the American Revolutionary War, it was fought more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.

After the action at Lexington and Concord in April (Paul Revere’s ride), the reinforced British were camped in Boston. The Massachusetts Committee of Safety decided to contain the British by occupying the heights of Charlestown north of Boston (and Dorchester south of it). The militiamen, however, did not have artillery to defend the heights once occupied.

By the morning of June 17, some 1,200 Americans were entrenched on Breed’s Hill in Charlestown — not Bunker Hill, which would have been a better choice. Reinforcements increased the number to 1,500 by afternoon. They were bombarded by British cannon shooting uphill and without much effect. Some 2,200 British troops attacked the fortified position around 3:30 — uphill, carrying 125 pound knapsacks. The first two assaults were thrown back, but the third succeeded as American gun powder ran out.

Though the British took the hill, they suffered more than 1,000 casualties — “The dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold.” American losses were less than 500.

The Battle of Bunker Hill encouraged the colonies. It proved that American forces could inflict heavy losses on the British.

An American officer, William Prescott, is said to have ordered during the battle, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

The Massachusetts Historical Society has an excellent web site relating to the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Ron Padgett…

was born on this date in 1942. Padgett’s web site tells his story, beginning with:

Ron Padgett was born in 1942 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he attended public schools. His father was primarily a bootlegger who also traded cars, his mother primarily a housewife who also helped with the bootlegging. Around the age of 13, young Ron began scribbling his thoughts and poems in spiral notebooks. This practice followed hard on the heels of his having read, for the first time, “serious” literature.

Padgett is the author of many collections of poetry including Great Balls of Fire (1969), Tulsa Kid (1979) and You Never Know (2002). The following poem, “Album,” is from You Never Know:

The mental pictures I have of my parents and grandparents and my childhood are beginning to break up into small fragments and get blown away from me into empty space, and the same wind is sucking me toward it ever so gently, so gently as not even to raise a hair on my head (though the truth is that there are very few of them to be raised). I’m starting to take the idea of death as the end of life somewhat harder than before. I used to wonder why people seemed to think that life is tragic or sad. Isn’t it also comic and funny? And beyond all that, isn’t it amazing and marvelous? Yes, but only if you have it. And I am starting not to have it. The pictures are disintegrating, as if their molecules were saying, “I’ve had enough,” ready to go somewhere else and form a new configuration. They betray us, those molecules, we who have loved them. They treat us like dirt.

Link and poem via The Writer’s Almanac.

Rating the Presidents

C-Span had a panel of historians and other observers rate the presidents in 1999. The 41 presidents were evaluated on Public Persuasion, Moral Authority, Relations With Congress, Crisis Leadership, International Relations, Vision/Setting Agenda, Economic Management, Administrative Skills, Pursued Equal Justice For All, and Performance Within Context of Times. Select from the results for each of the categories or view the overall results.

The same survey was also conducted among C-SPAN viewers.

Lincoln, Washington and the Roosevelts (FDR and Teddy) topped both surveys.

NewMexiKen

There were 4,776 visits to NewMexiKen in the first half of June. Our goal this month is 10,000, so we’re all going to have to do a little better these next two weeks.

Top three search items so far:

  • Ron Howard’s brother
  • When will gmail be available
  • Rating the presidents