Your Musical Interlude, Part XXI

Teenage Fanclub channelling Big Star and Badfinger. What's not to like?

Scum Bag Chavez Alert Of The Week

Head over to the Blue Crab for the latest crime of the lefty fave Hugo Chavez:

Hollywood actors flock over to see him. Some accept cash from the proto-dictator. Some scions of American political dynasties accept more money from him, supposedly for the poor. Some American "activists" just swap a bit of spit with him. But have any of the steady string of visitors asked (T)Hugo Chavez how he supplements his income? Being a glad-handing financier of Hollywood movies and activist vote-buying schemes costs money, you know. And what better way to do it than by smuggling and trading in "blood diamonds?"

But his heart is in the right place!!!!

That's Just Spiffy

There is no God.

Al Gore, UN Panel share Nobel for Peace

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s climate change panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it.

In a related development the Nobel committee also posthumously honored Trofim Denisovich Lysenko for his "ground breaking" work in agriculture, and Georg Ernst Stahl for his work solving the mysteries of phlogiston.

Alright...they didn't really do that, but they might as well have.

Your Musical Interlude, Part XX

Everyone polka!!!!!!!!

(Yes, that means you!)

Your Musical Interlude, Part XIX

"You Mean The Naval Academy Is Part Of The Navy?"

From the "How dumb do you have to be" file:

One has to wonder what kind of journalists the storied Columbia School of Journalism intends to produce. If the column published this month by Idris Leppla ten days ago for the Columbia Spectator gives any hint, we can expect novices of the obvious who infantilize the people who serve as their subjects. This time she uses her brother, who applied to and entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis, apparently without Idris and her mother realizing it meant joining the Navy

The whole piece is well worth reading.

Chavez Hearts Hitler

Who is still supporting this guy, aside from Hollywood fascists: Venezuela's Chavez May Take Over Schools

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to close or take over any private school that refuses to submit to the oversight of his socialist government as it develops a new curriculum and textbooks.

"Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants," said Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.

All schools, public and private, must admit state inspectors and submit to the government's new educational system, or be closed and nationalized, with the state taking responsibility for the education of their children, Chavez said.

A new curriculum will be ready by the end of this school year, and Other Top Headlines Photos new textbooks are being developed to help educate "the new citizen," said Chavez's brother and education minister Adan Chavez, who joined him a televised ceremony at the opening of a public school in the eastern town of El Tigre.

The president's opponents accuse him of aiming to indoctrinate young Venezuelans with socialist ideology. But the education minister said the aim is to develop "critical thinking," not to impose a single way of thought.

I love the employment of trendy jargon imported directly from U.S. schools of education. It sort of brings the whole thing full circle.

Next week we will probably see the launching of the "Chavez Youth" movement.

Happy Constitution Day!

Gotta love the "contract clause" and everything else that came with it.

Your Musical Interlude, Part XVIII

Better late than never. That is especially true when the track is a John Wesley Harding number.

I Don't Know How They Do It

I read a lot of blogs where the authors are more than gainfully employed, and I have to say I don't know how they manage to blog so much, stay employed, and (often times) stay married. Lord knows, given the week I've had so far, if I had given the Iconic Midwest half of the time I did over the summer I'd be having some serious difficulties. (As it is now I'm blogging this in a spare 15 minutes before I go teach my next class.)

It must be said, I've never been noted for the stellar manner in which I budget my time (I watch baseball for crying out loud), but even without that particular personal defect I'd be failing to keep this place interesting.

In the meantime, I'm waiting to hit my groove. It could happen any year now.

That Shrinking Feeling

Here is raising things to another level: Bin Laden branded `virtually impotent'

Seemingly taunting Osama bin Laden, President Bush's homeland security adviser said Sunday the fugitive al-Qaida leader is "virtually impotent" beyond his ability to hide away and spread anti-American propaganda.

The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.

Ahead of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes, White House aide Frances Fragos Townsend made a clear attempt to diminish the influence — or the perception — of the man who masterminded those attacks.

"This is about the best he can do," Townsend said of bin Laden. "This is a man on a run, from a cave, who's virtually impotent other than these tapes."
In appearance on two Sunday talk shows, she used the "virtually impotent" reference both times, suggesting the language was chosen with careful purpose.

"We know that al-Qaida is still determined to attack, and we take it seriously," Townsend said. "But this tape appears to be nothing more than threats. It's propaganda on their part."

Hmmm...I'm not sure what the point of this was exactly. Maybe someone thinks having a Western woman belittle bin Laden will get him so angry he will make a mistake (just like Galahad suggested in regards to the killer rabbit in Monty Python and The Holy Grail), but it doesn't seem likely. I guess the Bush admin felt they should respond to the bin Laden video in some manner...but I can't say this inspiring stuff.

Your Musical Interlude, Part XVII

Low-fi goodness. Notice the rhythmic distortion caused by someone tapping along with the beat...or at least trying to play air drums.

Political Entertainment

Some house races take on a life of their own and become fun for even casual political junkies to follow. A good example of this can be seen in Massachusetts. Tsongas widow faces pilot's brother

The brother of a pilot hijacked during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks launched his general election campaign for Congress Wednesday with a sharp attack on his opponent, the widow of one-time presidential candidate Paul Tsongas.

Niki Tsongas won Tuesday's Democratic primary in the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Martin Meehan, who is resigning to become chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

On the Republican side, Jim Ogonowski, whose brother was captain of American Airlines Flight 11, one of two hijacked planes flown into the World Trade Center in 2001, easily won his party's nomination.

"Niki's a nice person. I like her. I know she means well, but let's face it, she presents more of the same tired Washington that continues to fail us," Ogonowski told supporters at his campaign headquarters. "She is wrong on the issues and she is not right for this district."

Tsongas, meanwhile, pledged to end the war in Iraq and "send a message to the White House." in the Oct. 16 special election.

"In the end, this election will be a referendum on the Bush administration, and I represent the Democratic voice and the alternate view," Tsongas said. The 5th District seat has been in Democratic hands since her husband won it in 1974.

It will be fascinating to watch this unfold. Paul Tsongas was my type of Democrat, although it doesn't seem that Niki styles herself as being anything like her late husband.

The lover of political theater in me appreciates the attempt to label sending another Democrat to Congress from this district for the 18th election in a row as the "alternate view."

The word "audacious" comes to mind.

Heh

Shocked I am. Shocked! Democratic donor a no show at hearing

Disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was a wanted man again after he failed to show up for a court date Wednesday and a judge issued a new warrant for his arrest.

Hsu, whose criminal past has roiled the campaigns of top presidential candidates, was scheduled to ask a judge to cut in half the $2 million bail he posted last week when he turned himself in after spending 15 years on the lam from a felony theft conviction.

Instead, San Mateo Superior Court Judge Robert Foiles ordered Hsu's bail forfeited to the county and issued a new arrest warrant. If Hsu is arrested again, he will be jailed without bail this time.

Hsu, a Hong Kong native, was also supposed to turn over his passport Wednesday. Hsu's prominent Silicon Valley criminal defense attorney Jim Brosnahan said Hsu failed to give the passport to the legal team on Monday.

"Mr. Hsu is not here and we do not know where Mr. Hsu is," Brosnahan said outside court.

Convicted felon? Check.

Convicted felon on the lam? Check.

Friend of the Clintons? Check.

No one will be praying harder for a Clinton victory next November than one Norman Hsu.

Maybe Marc Rich can give Hsu pointers on the best Swiss chalets to rent in the meantime.

Madness

Welcome to a Brave New World: Is carbon-offsetting just eco-enslavement?

If you thought that the era of British bigwigs keeping Indians as personal servants came to an end with the fall of the Raj in 1947, then you must have had a rude awakening last week.

In a feature about carbon offsetting in The Times (London), it was revealed that the leader of the UK Conservative Party, David Cameron, offsets his carbon emissions by effectively keeping brown people in a state of bondage. Whenever he takes a flight to some foreign destination, Cameron donates to a carbon-offsetting company that encourages people in the developing world to ditch modern methods of farming in favour of using their more eco-friendly manpower to plough the land. So Cameron can fly around the world with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that, thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over double, are working by hand rather than using machines that emit carbon.

Welcome to the era of eco-enslavement.

The details of this carbon-offsetting scheme are disturbing. Cameron offsets his flights by donating to Climate Care. The latest wheeze of this carbon-offsetting company is to provide ‘treadle pumps’ to poor rural families in India so that they can get water on to their land without having to use polluting diesel power. Made from bamboo, plastic and steel, the treadle pumps work like ‘step machines in a gym’, according to some reports, where poor family members step on the pedals for hours in order to draw up groundwater which is used to irrigate farmland. These pumps were abolished in British prisons a century ago. It seems that what was considered an unacceptable form of punishment for British criminals in the past is looked upon as a positive eco-alternative to machinery for Indian peasants today.

What might once have been referred to as ‘back-breaking labour’ is now spun as ‘human energy’. According to Climate Care, the use of labour-intensive treadle pumps, rather than labour-saving diesel-powered pumps, saves 0.65 tonnes of carbon a year per farming family. And well-off Westerners - including Cameron, and Prince Charles, Land Rover and the Cooperative Bank, who are also clients of Climate Care - can purchase this saved carbon in order to continue living the high life without becoming consumed by eco-guilt. They effectively salve their moral consciences by paying poor people to live the harsh simple life on their behalf.

Climate Care celebrates the fact that it encourages the Indian poor to use their own bodies rather than machines to irrigate the land. Its website declares: ‘Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself. With some lateral thinking, and some simple materials, energy solutions can often be found which replace fossil fuels with muscle-power.’ To show that muscle power is preferable to machine power, the Climate Care website features a cartoon illustration of smiling naked villagers pedalling on a treadle pump next to a small house that has an energy-efficient light bulb and a stove made from ‘local materials at minimal cost’. Climate Care points out that even children can use treadle pumps: ‘One person - man, woman or even child - can operate the pump by manipulating his/her body weight on two treadles and by holding a bamboo or wooden frame for support.’

Feeling guilty about your two-week break in Barbados, when you flew thousands of miles and lived it up with cocktails on sunlit beaches? Well, offset that guilt by sponsoring eco-friendly child labour in the developing world! Let an eight-year-old peasant pedal away your eco-remorse…

The whole piece (and there is much more to it) is a worthwhile read.

I'm starting to think the entire environmental movement is becoming nothing more than the not-so-disguised imperialism of the 21st century.