Latte Diablo

Here's someone who needs to get over it...

From Promo Magazine (link):

An Ohio woman was offended by one of hundreds of comments submitted by customers and celebrities that appear on the cups as part of Starbuck’s The Way I See It program. The program is meant to spark discussion and get people thinking about a variety of topics, including religion, the company said.

The offending quote reads, "Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure."

The comment was made by Bill Scheel, a Starbucks customer from London, Ontario, who describes himself as a "modern day nobody."

The Ohio woman, Michelle Incanno, told news outlets that she would not return to Starbucks.

This story dovetails nicely with a funny bit on McSweeny's titled "REJECTED SUBMISSIONS FOR STARBUCKS The Way I See It" (link).

Some of my favorites:

Boobs, hooters, headlights, funbags, party girls; society has made great strides, but in the matter of synonyms for breasts, it really doesn't get any better than tits. Viva tits!
- - - -
Usually with one eye closed, trying like hell to get a double rum and Coke for last call. That's the way I see it. Got a problem with that?
- - - -
This coffee tastes like poop. Burnt poop.
- - - -
If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, make sure you get the money they owe from before you set them free.
- - - -
A clandestine collaboration between Eli Lilly, the federal government, and Starbucks to put Prozac in the coffee? Did you hear anything about that? You're right, it's probably bullshit. You finished reading the Entertainment section yet?

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41 Cents

In honor of the new U.S. Postal Service rates going into effect today, I found this very funny scene from a Seinfeld episode called "The Junk Mail."

Kramer, over Newman's strong objections, goes to the post office and attempts to cancel his mail service:

Postal Employee: "May I help you?"

Kramer: "Yeah, I'd like to cancel my mail."

Postal Employee: "Certainly. How long would you like us to hold it?"

Kramer: "Oh, no, no. I don't think you get me. I want out, permanently."

Newman: "I'll handle this, Violet. Why don't you take your three hour break? Oh, calm down, everyone. No one's canceling any mail."

Kramer: "Oh, yes, I am."

Newman: "What about your bills?"

Kramer: "The bank can pay 'em."

Newman: "The bank. What about your cards and letters?"

Kramer: "E-mail, telephones, fax machines. Fedex, telex, telegrams, holograms."

Newman: "All right, it's true! Of course nobody needs mail. What do you think, you're so clever for figuring that out? But you don't know the half of what goes on here. So just walk away, Kramer. I beg of you."

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Canadian or Red

Interesting Stanley Cup esoterica -- Since 1926, when it was established that contention for the Stanley Cup took place solely between NHL teams, in championship playoff years that ended in "7" the winner has either been a Canadian team OR the Detroit Red Wings.

Stanley Cup Winners (link)

• 1926-27 Ottawa Senators
• 1936-37 Detroit Red Wings
• 1946-47 Toronto Maple Leafs
• 1956-57 Montreal Canadiens
• 1966-67 Toronto Maple Leafs
• 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens
• 1986-87 Edmonton Oilers
• 1996-97 Detroit Red Wings

This supports my contention that the Wings are a "team of destiny" (link). Unless, of course, the Senators knock off the Sabres.

GO BUFFALO!!

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Fair is Fair

I hate to say this but my favorite poverty pimp, Al Sharpton, is getting a bad rap over his statement supposedly demeaning the Mormon religion:

As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don’t worry, that’s a temporary situation.

Rev Al made the statement during a surprisingly civil debate over religion with one of my favorite columnists, Christoper Hitchens. The event is summarized in the New York Times political blog (link).

Hitchens has a new book out unambiguously titled: "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (link). While I don't share his atheistic worldview, Hitchens is very eloquent in making his argument against religion and religious institutions.

If you watch the debate (link), Hitchens seems to be winning most of the points.

The controversial remark by Sharpton was a response to a reference by Hitchens to "one of the Republican candidates" who belonged to the Mormon faith which, Hitchens went on to say, had supported segregation until 1965. Hitchens never named Romney by name, only by his faith. Sharpton was trying to respond in kind.

In THAT context, Sharpton's remark isn't as bad as it originally sounded.

Frankly, a lot of the people playing "gotcha" with Sharpton now (because of his role in the Imus firing) are giving Hitchens somewhat of a pass. I can only guess that because Hitchens is one of the strongest voices in support for the Iraq war, Conservatives are reluctant take him on for his anti-religious views. Of course, I could be wrong, but the silence from the right in response to Hitchens' book is curious.

My main problem with Hitchens on religion is that his conviction that there is NO God is just as unproven and therefore based on "faith" as any theistic view to the contrary.

One strong point made by Sharpton to Hitchens during the debate was this:

We are sitting in a room that because of lights, we assume that there is electricity in the building. Electricity can light the room or burn it down; it does not mean electricity does not exist because it burns a building down, or that it is inherently wicked. Clearly people have misused God, as they have misused other things that are possibly positive, but its existence is not in any way proved or disproved by you giving me a long diatribe on those that have mishandled and misused God.

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Cuba Libre 9/11

That big fat lying piece of crap (and I mean that in a good way), Michael Moore filmed part of "Sicko", his new schlocumentary trashing the American health care system, in Cuba.

According to this AP story (link):

In February, Moore took about 10 ailing workers from the Ground Zero rescue effort in Manhattan for treatment in Cuba, said a person working with the filmmaker on the release of "Sicko." The person requested anonymity because Moore's attorneys had not yet determined how to respond.
....
At last September's Toronto International Film Festival, Moore previewed footage shot for "Sicko," presenting stories of personal health-care nightmares. One scene showed a woman who was denied payment for an ambulance ride after a head-on collision because it was not preapproved.

First of all, let's assume the incident in the "preview" of Moore's flick is true (a BIG assumption with this fat ass). If American "red tape" is a problem, a socialist/communist bureaucracy is NOT a solution.

More importantly, I'm sure that the Cuban government bent over backwards to be helpful to Moore and his delegation as a way to embarass the U.S.

Last year, I had the opportunity to talk to a Canadian citizen who had just returned from a trip to Cuba. For ALL the talk about how "great" things are down there, she observed people living in squalor. And, propaganda aside, the average cuban she met told her, in whispered tones, that they were deathly afraid of the Castro regime.

I don't expect that perspective to appear anywhere in "Sicko" -- making Moore either an colosial idiot or an American-hate spewing liar.

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Forget it Jake, It's Chinatown

This AP story on the GOP's criticisms of Nancy Pelosi's water project (link), reminded me of the plot of Chinatown (link).

Pelosi's project was part of the $15 billion Water Resources Development Act that passed the House April 19 by 394-25 and pays for hundreds of projects around the country. Pelosi's measure would authorize $25 million to improve San Francisco port areas, and also would put some areas off limits to navigation so cruise ships could dock.

Her investor husband gets rental income from four buildings in a nearby commercial district.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said that she added the projects to the bill at the request of the Port of San Francisco and that her husband's holdings were not a consideration. It's ''speculative at best'' that they would benefit, Hammill said.

Ya know, Nancy Pelosi and Faye Dunaway sorta look alike. If I close my eyes, I can hear Pelosi saying: "She's my sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter..."

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Team of Destiny!!

After watching the Wings win Game 5 against the Sharks, I have to say that they've impressed me as this year's "Team of Destiny."

This doesn't mean that they're the "best" team. Certainly their average age (what is it...57?) would disqualify them for that.

But I think Nabokov coughing up the puck and self-destructing while Hasek seems to be solidifying his game is a significant sign that the hockey gods have lined up the planets in their favor.

I'm in!
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Caption THIS!

The New Yorker magazine, which I find unreadable, is known for their cartoons. There was a great Seinfeld episode which centered around how obscure, pretentious, and unfunny these cartoons are.

Well, I stumbled across this weekly online contest where New Yorker readers can compete for prizes by captioning a blank cartoon. (link)

Here are two of my entries:

"We gave him a choice, fight a man eating tiger on a filing cabinet OR read one issue of the New Yorker cover to cover. "

"Next week instead playing "Human Whack a Mole" and hitting them on the head with a huge mallet, I'm going to make them read a copy of the New Yorker. "

I wonder if I'll win?

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Happy May Day

I had to chuckle at this Mercury News (link) article on Coachella (link), an annual music festival held in Indio, California last weekend.

The description of Rage Against the Machine's performance brought a special May Day tear to my eye:

Stomping, shouting into his microphone, grabbing his curly hair and inciting the audience to "keep fighting," de la Rocha powered through songs ranging from the bass heavy "Bulls on Parade" to the anthem "Killing in the Name."

He also railed against the war in Iraq and likened Bush administration officials to Nazi war criminals.

"This current administration is no exception. They should be tried and hung and shot," he said. Drummer Brad Wilk, bassist Tim Commerford and guitarist Tom Morello, who wore a hat with the word "UNITY" on it, completed the lineup.

"They changed my life. They made me a liberal," said sweat-drenched history teacher Rafael Ramon, 25, who had waited in a crowd packed shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the stage all day.

How nice, this "sweat-drenched" Ramon guy is a history teacher. BTW, where can I get me a "UNITY" hat?
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Slam Dunk

Ever the wordsmith, Christopher Hitchens calls George Tenet's new book a "sniveling" "self-justifying" and a "disgrace."

A Loser's History (link)

...Tenet informed the Senate armed services committee that: "We believe that Saddam never abandoned his nuclear weapons program." It is a little bit late for him to pose as if Iraq was a threat concocted in some crepuscular corner of the vice president's office. And it's pathetic for him to say, even in the feeble way that he chooses to phrase it, that "there was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat." (Emphasis added.) There had been a very serious debate over the course of at least three preceding administrations, whether Tenet "knew" of it or not. (He was only an intelligence specialist, after all.) As for his bawling and sobbing claim that faced with crisis in Iraq, "the administration's message was: Don't blame us. George Tenet and the CIA got us into this mess," I can say, as one who has attended about a thousand postmortems on Iraq in Washington, that I have never, ever, not once heard a single partisan of the administration say anything of the kind. The White House may have thought that it could count on the CIA to resent some sort of solidity in a crisis but, as Sept. 11 had already proved, more fool the White House.

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Separated At Birth?

I feel horrible about this, but the first thing I thought when I saw a picture of Phil Spector (the record producer who's on trial for murder - link) was how much he looks like Lynne Cheney (wife of Dick Cheney).

I'm sorry.

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Listen Loud - Listen Proud

The music snobs at Rock and Roll Daily put together a list of the "25 Undisputed Guilty Pleasure Bands."

An inordinately high number of my favorites are on it (Rush, ELO, Journey, ABBA, Foreigner, the Monkees, STYX, Eddie Money, R.E.O, Lionel Richie, Air Supply, Hall and Oates).

I'm surprised that Duran Duran, didn't turn up (since I like them too). Actually, I'm a fan of almost ANYTHING from the '80.

So, Rock and Roll Daily can stuff it! (link)

Rolling Stone’s List of the 25 Undisputed Guilty Pleasure Bands Those of you who proudly listen to Rush at top volume in your car all summer long, (ie thereby displaying the total lack of guilty in your pleasure), take note:? Rush come in at Number One on our official list of the Rock’s Undisputed Guilty Pleasure Bands. Like the rest of the acts on our list (which you helped put together), we love them to death, and can never forgive ourselves. The full list:
1. Rush
2. E.L.O.
3. Journey
4. ABBA
5. Chicago
6. Boston
7. Foreigner
8. Bread
9. Bon Jovi
10. New Edition
11. The Monkees
12. Motley Crue
13. STYX
14. Eddie Money
15. Simply Red
16. Kelly Clarkson
17. America
18. Wham
19. R.E.O. Speedwagon
20. Poison
21. Lionel Richie
22. Kansas
23. Air Supply
24. Hall & Oates
25. Britney Spears

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Consensus Is Not Fact

In further celebration of "Earth Day", here's an article from Dr. Timothy Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project and a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. He was of of the very first Canadians to get a Ph.D. in Climatology.

Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts? (link)

...Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global warming became the
consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

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Boycott Google

The search engine Google is celebrating "Earth Day" today with a special home page graphic.

I've always been slightly annoyed that Google never puts up special graphics for religious holidays such as Easter, Passover, Ramadan, etc. BUT today they honor the "faith-based" idea of global warming with a picture of melting glacier.

How nice.

From now on I'm ONLY using Yahoo (yeah right, as if...).

Manny Lopez had a great "Earth Day" column in the Detroit News this morning. (link)

In celebration of Earth Day today, I test drove an SUV and pulled my 1966 Mustang out of storage.

I'd have done it earlier, but the frost and snow we've endured since spring started a month ago made it a bit inconvenient to do so -- and that's the truth. Remind me again how imminent the global warming threat is in Michigan.

...

How about instead Environmental Defense, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and all the Armageddon activists get together and put their money where their collective mouth is?

Chrysler is for sale. So is Delphi. Buy 'em. Expose the global conspiracy that the Big Three are allegedly part of by taking control of one of these companies and putting these hidden technologies into mass production.

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The Paper of Record?

On April 11th, Ray Cooper, the Attorney General for North Carolina, declared the three former Duke lacrosse players as "innocent" of rape charges brought against them last year. Cooper went on to state that Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong is guilty of "a rush to accuse." (link)

The New York Times published an editorial slamming Don Imus over his Rutger's "joke" directed at another group of "innocent" college athletes, but issued NO correction for the negative story it ran on the Duke players a while back. (link)

An August 25, 2006 Times story concluded: (link)

By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks. But an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong'scase, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury.
...
In several important areas, the full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense.

Exactly what evidence did the Times reporters review that was so convincing? Interesting question, since, as it now turns out, NONE existed.

This story from the so-called "paper of record" was somewhat harmful for the Duke players in the court of public opinion. I ran a fairly broad search on the Times website for some sort of apology, correction, update or mea culpa on this.

Nada.

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Paglia in the Spring

For her April Salon column, Camille Paglia answers questions sent in from her readers (link).

I find it hard to argue with most of what she has to say. Highlights below:

George W

Bush's swerve away from his father's preppy patrician style has ended up, as you note, as a hammy caricature of B-movie clichés about the folksy, plain-talking Westerner. His Texas accent has bizarrely gotten more pronounced since he's lived in Washington -- a defense mechanism of reverse snobbery.

I think Bush genuinely wanted to challenge and critique the establishment assumptions of his heritage and Ivy League education, but he lacked the verbal skills to do so. And his problems were compounded by his ineptitude in making top appointments. He got not sound counsel but fantasy and folly from Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney -- whose presence from the start signaled Bush's slack and even masochistic deferral to his father's administration.

Iraq

"Victory"-- a word constantly on President Bush's hopeful lips -- cannot be achieved in an amorphous insurgency or in a vast land with indefensible borders that is splintered among ancient sects and tribes. There is no distinct enemy, only a welter of saboteurs hiding among the population, whose loyalties cannot be assessed by a foreign force embarrassingly lacking elementary knowledge of local culture and languages. Our troops are being asked to convert, pacify and reconstruct even while waging war and hence are constantly being put in exposed positions where they can be killed or maimed with simple roadside devices.

Gun Control

As a Salon columnist (dating back to the founding of Salon in 1995), I have tried to provide a forum for defenders of the Second Amendment to make their case. The Northeastern major media, which remain heavily liberal, rarely permit these voices to be heard.

I do not own guns and have no interest in them. (Swords, those Homeric and chivalric emblems, have always attracted me more.) But as a libertarian, I read the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights as granting to private citizens the right to bear arms against the potential abuses of a government turned tyrannous. Furthermore, should police authority evaporate after a cataclysm of storm, flood, earthquake or terrorism, citizens have a right to defend their families and property against criminals and looters. If food and water are in short supply over a protracted period, expect predators and violence.

The horrendous problem of illegal guns now rampant among the urban underclass cannot be solved by depriving all American citizens of their Second Amendment rights. Major cities must address their internal problems, which include improving public education and vocational training, creating job-rich public works projects, and instituting on-the-street neighborhood policing. The major media, concentrated in their metropolises, should stop extrapolating their local issues to the nation as a whole.

Global Warming

... I am a skeptic about what is currently called global warming. I have been highly suspicious for years about the political agenda that has slowly accrued around this issue. As a lapsed Catholic, I detest dogma in any area. Too many of my fellow Democrats seem peculiarly credulous at the moment, as if, having ground down organized religion into nonjudgmental, feel-good therapy, they are hungry for visions of apocalypse. From my perspective, virtually all of the major claims about global warming and its causes still remain to be proved.

Climate change, keyed to solar cycles, is built into Earth's system. Cooling and warming will go on forever. Slowly rising sea levels will at some point doubtless flood lower Manhattan and seaside houses everywhere from Cape Cod to Florida -- as happened to Native American encampments on those very shores. Human habitation is always fragile and provisional. People will migrate for the hills, as they have always done.

Who is impious enough to believe that Earth's contours are permanent? Our eyes are simply too slow to see the shift of tectonic plates that has raised the Himalayas and is dangling Los Angeles over an unstable fault.

Ann Coulter

My problem with Ann Coulter is not the subjects she tackles, which are always substantive, but her carelessness of research and argumentation. She has frankly admitted that she now writes her books as if they were e-mails to her friends. I like her boldness and vigor, but I see no excuse for such indifference to craftsmanship.

Ideas, whether of the right or the left, deserve respect. But Coulter increasingly treats them like throwaway lines. The rapier thrust of true wit is not the bump-de-dump of a bad joke. But evidently Coulter can no longer tell the difference.

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Grin and Bear It

This is for real. What a hoot. (link)

Nappy Headed Ho Teddy Bear - $17.99

Show Your Support For Imus And Free Speech!! Get your very own "Nappy Headed Ho" Shirts Now! SUPPORT THE I-MAN!!!

Our plush bear is a cutie in his own message-bearing t-shirt and festive red ribbon. He’s a great gift for Valentine’s Day, baby showers, birthdays, get well-wishes, a pair of wedding bears, or any reason you dream up. Put a smile on someone’s face. Just grin and bear it! Soft plush fur 11 inches tall Red bow and t-shirt included.

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Jason Whitlock on Imus

Of all the blather regarding the Imus firing (the execs at MSNBC look like a bunch of spineless cowards) Jason Whitlock, of the Kansas City Star, has one of the most insightful perspectives:

"Imus isn’t the real bad guy"
http://www.kansascity.com/182/v-print/story/66339.html

Here's a sample:

I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage. But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

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Imus in the Moanin...

If there's anything worse than a personality who refuses to apologize for making a controversial remark (like Ann Coulter or Bill Maher who don't even understand why some people MAY be upset), it's when a celebrity is so clearly desperate to save their career that they grovel on the national stage for redemption.

This is the case with Don Imus.

It's fine and proper for Imus to meet with the Rutgers University women's basketball team and apologize. He should have JUST done that. But for him to beg forgiveness from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson the way he has is pathetic. The new name for his show should be "I-WUSS in the Morning."

Frankly, I don't understand why politicians and journalists have fawned all over Imus anyway. His show is marginally funny (despite all of the in-studio yukking), his ratings have never been respectable, and he's been making ill-informed, stupid, derogatory remarks against people for years.

I'm fine with his two week suspension. True be told, were he to be fired, I wouldn't miss his show at all. Imus and Keith Olbermann's shows are the bookends of mediocrity in the MSNBC lineup. I say, lose both of them and put Chris Matthews on in the morning and Joe Scarborough at night (or vice versa).

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Hitchens on Iraq

Christopher Hitchens (no right-winger) strongly defends his suport of the Iraq war on it's the fourth anniversary.

So, Mr. Hitchens, Weren't You Wrong About Iraq?

Selected passages below:

Should it not have been known by Western intelligence that Iraq had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?

The entire record of UNSCOM until that date had shown a determination on the part of the Iraqi dictatorship to build dummy facilities to deceive inspectors, to refuse to allow scientists to be interviewed without coercion, to conceal chemical and biological deposits, and to search the black market for materiel that would breach the sanctions. The defection of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law, the Kamel brothers, had shown that this policy was even more systematic than had even been suspected. Moreover, Iraq did not account for—has in fact never accounted for—a number of the items that it admitted under pressure to possessing after the Kamel defection. We still do not know what happened to this weaponry. This is partly why all Western intelligence agencies, including French and German ones quite uninfluenced by Ahmad Chalabi, believed that Iraq had actual or latent programs for the production of WMD. Would it have been preferable to accept Saddam Hussein's word for it and to allow him the chance to re-equip once more once the sanctions had further decayed?

....

Was the terror connection not exaggerated?

Not by much. The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had scted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. The action was undertaken not to punish the last attack—that had been done in Afghanistan—but to forestall the next one.

....

So, you seriously mean to say that we would not be living in a better or safer world if the coalition forces had turned around and sailed or flown home in the spring of 2003?

That's exactly what I mean to say.

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