Why do they still keep calling him Senator?

98 senators voted on the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment today that would have taken telecom immunity for past warrant-less wiretaps out of the FISA bill.

Two senators did not vote.

  1. Ted Kennedy, recuperating from brain surgery
  2. John McCain

Senators Obama and Clinton voted for the amendment, along with 30 others.  66 voted against.

Update: Actually McCain was the only senator absent all day today.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts walked triumphantly into the Senate on Wednesday for the first time since learning that he had brain cancer, hoping to provide Democrats with the crucial, single vote that they need to reverse a cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors.

The Caucus

Update 2: Here are the 28 U.S. senators who took their oath to defend the Constitution seriously and voted against the bill itself.

Akaka, Biden, Bingaman, Boxer, Brown, Byrd, Cantwell, Cardin, Clinton, Dodd, Dorgan, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Kerry, Klobuchar, Lautenburg, Leahy, Levin, Menendez, Murray, Reed, Reid, Sanders, Schumer, Stabenow, Tester, Wyden.

Thank you Senator Bingaman.

How many things can you find wrong with this paragraph?

“I just don’t drive as much,” said Herman Heaton, a 72-year-old retired lumber mill worker, leaning against a Chevy Silverado pickup that now costs him $80 to fill up. “We don’t go to Mobile as much as we used to for shopping.” Heaton said he now spends about $600 a month on gas, about 10 percent of his income and about double what he spent last year.

The above from an MSNBC story.

A retired lumber mill worker in Alabama has an income of $72,000 a year?

He’s buying, roughly, 150 gallons of gas a month? Even figuring just 10 miles a gallon, what’s a retired 72-year-old doing driving 18,000 miles a year?

He says he “just don’t drive as much,” but he also is said to be spending double on gas when gas has gone up just 33%.

Close call

English and American troops under British Major General Edward Braddock were routed by French and Indian forces near Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) on this date in 1755. The leading colonial officer, George Washington, had two horses shot out from under him, his coat torn by bullets and his hat shot off, but — as you may have heard — he survived.

McCain = Bush = Offensive

A 61-year-old librarian was ticketed (her court date is July 23rd), escorted off a public plaza outside a McCain town hall meeting, and threatened with arrest for carrying a sign that read “McCain=Bush.”   (Hey, it’s a free country – you ought to be able to be arrested for anything, so long as it’s not hurting other people, right?) 
 
You really have to watch the two-minute video.  I love what she asks at the end:  “Why is [the sign] offensive? Why would Republicans who voted for Bush find it offensive?”
 
I suppose it would be gilding the lily to note that when the grotesquely unchristian Reverend Phelps holds up signs reading “God Hates Fags” outside funeral services, he is not ticketed, forced to leave, or threatened with arrest.  (Nor, in America, should he be.)

Andrew Tobias

This took place in Denver.

Correction

A front-page picture caption on June 26 describing an 11-month-old boy whose legs were in casts stated that his legs were broken and that his mother said the injuries were caused by an episode of state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe. After the picture and an accompanying article that also described the injuries were published, The New York Times took the boy to a medical clinic in Harare for help. When the casts were removed, medical workers there discovered the boy had club feet. Doctors said on Monday that X-rays of the baby’s legs showed no evidence of bone fractures.

The mother subsequently admitted that she had exaggerated injuries she said had been sustained by the boy during an attack by governing party militia. …

Corrections – NYTimes.com has a bit more.

Losers

The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election.

Suspicions about Sen. Obama’s true motives have been building over the past few weeks, but not until today have the bloggers called him out for betraying the Democratic Party’s losing tradition.

The Borowitz Report .com

How Many of You Expect to Die?

“How many of you expect to die?” she asked.

The audience fell silent, laughed nervously and only then, looking one to the other, slowly raised their hands.

“Would you prefer to be old when it happens?” she then asked.

This time the response was swift and sure, given the alternative.

Then Dr. Lynn, who describes herself as an “old person in training,” offered three options to the room. Who would choose cancer as the way to go? Just a few. Chronic heart failure, or emphysema? A few more.

“So all the rest of you are up for frailty and dementia?” Dr. Lynn asked.

The New Old Age blog

According to Dr. Lynn, cancer takes about 20% of seniors, peaking around age 65; heart and lung failure, about 25% peaking around age 75; and old age about 40%, peaking around age 85.

Life’s a bitch, then you die.

Overrated, as nearly all Yankee players are

Sports Illustrated recently published the results of a poll taken among 495 major-league baseball players. The question was “Who is the most overrated player in baseball?” and the winner, with 10 percent of the vote, was Derek Jeter. Barry Zito – he’s not overrated, just overpaid – came in second, followed by J.D. Drew, Alex Rodriguez and Kevin Youkilis. Rounding out the top 10 were David Wright, Mark Prior, Andruw Jones, Curt Schilling and Juan Pierre.

Paper Cuts

David Kelly has more, including his list of the all-time most overrated.

Best line of the day, so far

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Atrios quoting the United States Constitution, Amendment 4, which I will remind you all federal office holders are sworn to “support and defend … against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind

This year, the world is expected to burn through some thirty-one billion barrels of oil, six billion tons of coal, and a hundred trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The combustion of these fossil fuels will produce, in aggregate, some four hundred quadrillion B.T.U.s of energy. It will also yield around thirty billion tons of carbon dioxide. Next year, global consumption of fossil fuels is expected to grow by about two per cent, meaning that emissions will rise by more than half a billion tons, and the following year consumption is expected to grow by yet another two per cent.

When carbon dioxide is released into the air, about a third ends up, in relatively short order, in the oceans. (CO2 dissolves in water to form a weak acid; this is the cause of the phenomenon known as “ocean acidification.”) A quarter is absorbed by terrestrial ecosystems—no one is quite sure exactly how or where—and the rest remains in the atmosphere. If current trends in emissions continue, then sometime within the next four or five decades the chemistry of the oceans will have been altered to such a degree that many marine organisms—including reef-building corals—will be pushed toward extinction. Meanwhile, atmospheric CO2 levels are projected to reach five hundred and fifty parts per million—twice pre-industrial levels—virtually guaranteeing an eventual global temperature increase of three or more degrees. The consequences of this warming are difficult to predict in detail, but even broad, conservative estimates are terrifying: at least fifteen and possibly as many as thirty per cent of the planet’s plant and animal species will be threatened; sea levels will rise by several feet; yields of crops like wheat and corn will decline significantly in a number of areas where they are now grown as staples; regions that depend on glacial runoff or seasonal snowmelt—currently home to more than a billion people—will face severe water shortages; and what now counts as a hundred-year drought will occur in some parts of the world as frequently as once a decade.

Elizabeth Kolbert summing up in a report on alternatives in the current New Yorker.

Utter Depravity

So, to recap, a program designed to lower fuel prices so that rich people can continue to drive at discount prices wherever they damned well please in huge, mobile living rooms is raising the price of food so high that poor people can no longer afford to eat. The effect of that program is demonstrated in a report, but the report is not published because the powers-that-be would rather let poor people continue to starve than embarrass the leading proponent of the program.

And here we are: we’d rather starve poor people than give up our big cars. Remind me again about what a good country the United States is.

Functional Ambivalent

There’s more.

Leroy Robert Paige

Stachel PaigeBaseball Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige was born 102 years ago today. A huge star in the Negro Leagues, Paige began pitching in 1926 and was the oldest major league rookie ever when he joined the Cleveland Indians at age 42. Paige pitched in his last major league game in 1965 (at age 59).

In the barnstorming days, he pitched perhaps 2,500 games, completed 55 no-hitters and performed before crowds estimated at 10 million persons in the United States, the Caribbean and Central America. He once started 29 games in one month in Bismarck, N.D., and he said later that he won 104 of the 105 games he pitched in 1934.

By the time Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 as the first black player in the majors, Mr. Paige was past 40. But Bill Veeck, the impresario of the Cleveland club, signed him to a contract the following summer, and he promptly drew crowds of 72,000 in his first game and 78,000 in his third game. (The New York Times)

Paige first published his Rules for Staying Young in 1953. This version is from his autobiography published in 1962, Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever.

  1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
  2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
  3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
  4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society — the social ramble ain’t restful.
  5. Avoid running at all times.
  6. And don’t look back — something might be gaining on you.

The Albuquerque McDonald’s Coffee Case

Stella Liebeck was a 79-year-old Albuquerque resident when she bought some McDonald’s coffee in 1992. She bought it at a drive-thru, but the car was parked (she was a passenger) when the accident took place. She spilled the entire cup onto her lap. She was hospitalized for 10 days. McDonald’s originally offered her $800 toward her $11,000 medical bills.

This, from a article by Joshua Green at The Washington Monthly, provides some facts to offset the folklore surrounding the infamous McDonald’s coffee lawsuit. It was first posted here four years ago today.

To persuade the public that frivolous personal injury suits have brought on a crisis, advocates of change religiously invoke cases like the elderly woman who spilled coffee on herself and won a $2.9 million jury verdict against McDonald’s. . . . As Roger Williams University torts professor Carl Bogus explains in his book, Why Lawsuits Are Good for America, the woman who spilled her McDonald’s coffee had to undergo a skin graft, spend weeks in the hospital, and offered to settle for $10,000 (McDonald’s refused). She only sued as a last resort—the epitome of conscientious use of the legal system. Her original award of $2.9 million was later reduced by a judge, as most such judgements are, to $480,000, and she wound up settling for even less. To prevent other suits, McDonald’s, which had previously ignored more than 700 similar complaints, stopped serving near-boiling coffee, as did its competitors.

Pinetop Perkins

95 today and still making music.

Pinetop will be appearing this Saturday at the Mont Tremblant, Quebec, Blues Festival. Next week he’ll be at the Master Musicians Festival in Somerset, Kentucky. August 1st and 2nd at Notodden Blues Festival in Notodden, Norway.

David McCullough

Historian and author David McCullough is 75 today. His works include some of the best—and best-selling—biographies ever, Truman and John Adams, and the more recent miliary history 1776.

NewMexiKen thought this excerpt from an interview McCullough did with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole was interesting:

McCullough: There are certain books that I like very much. Reveille in Washington. I love Barbara Tuchman’s work, particularly The Proud Tower. Paul Horgan’s biography of Archbishop Lamy is a masterpiece. Wallace Stegner’s book on John Wesley Powell I’m fond of.

I like some of the present-day people: Robert Caro’s first volume on Lyndon Johnson was brilliant. I care for some of the best of the Civil War writing: Shelby Foote, for example, and Bruce Catton’s The Stillness at Appomattox. It was Catton’s Stillness at Appomattox that started me reading about the Civil War, and then on to people like Tuchman and others. There is a wonderful book called The Reason Why, about the Charge of the Light Brigade–and biographies–Henri Troyat’s Tolstoy, for example.

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber. I’m very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down. To hold the reader’s attention, you have to bring the person who’s reading the book inside the experience of the time: What was it like to have been alive then? What were these people like as human beings?

When I did Truman, I had no idea what woods I was venturing into. Had I known it was going to take me ten years, I never would have done it. In retrospect, I’m delighted now that I didn’t know.

I love all sides of the work but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. There have been times when a book was taking year after year—not with this one so much, but with The Path Between the Seas—when I’d come down to Washington to do research in the National Archives, hoping I wouldn’t find anything new because it could set me back another year or two.

By the same token, to open up a box of the death certificates kept by the French at the hospital in Ancon, at Panama City and to read the personal details of those who died—their names, their age, where they came from, height, color of eyes—was a connection with the reality of them, the mortal tale of that undertaking, that one can never find by doing the conventional kind of research with microfilm or Xeroxed copies.

McCullough also says this: “You stand in front of one of those great paintings or you pick up Samuel Johnson’s essays or Francis Parkman’s works on the French and Indian War, and it’s humbling. But it also is affirming in the sense that you realize that you’re working in a great tradition.”