[Wo]Man’s Best Friend

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Loyal-Dog.html

 

Pretty crazy!  I love dogs.  That is all.

Geoooorgggiiiaa and Yuzhnaya Ossetiya onnnn my Miiinnnddd

I feel compelled to comment a bit on the situation happening between Georgia and Russia for a number of reasons. While living in (and kinda loving) Russia, I was lucky enough to be able to delve into Georgian culture a bit. Notably, this happened while I was in Sochi, famous for being the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics – and Chechnya’s next door neighbor. This is a view from the top of Mount Ahun, where the downhill events will be held in 2014. Georgia is the set of mountains off in the distance, a little to the right of the center of the picture. In unrelated news, here is a photo of Georgian snacks being sold at a Sochi market, which also specialized in overwhelming cuteness. I would have to say that Georgia is one of my favorite cultures, if that’s something one can judge…

Quote of the Day; August 12th, 2008

From the esteemed Attorney General Michael Mukasey:

Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.

So if you ever violate the law and are caught by the police, just remind them that the highest ranking law enforcement official in the United States said that not every violation of the law is a crime! You have his permission to use your discretion! Oh wait, you don’t….only shills for the Bush Administration do, when faced with such violations by other Bush shills. See the full article here. Essentially, Mukasey is refusing to prosecute D.O.J. staffers who violated the law during the despicable politicization of the DOJ hiring and firing process.

Ratko Mladic, ICTY’s #1 At-large Bosnian Serb War Criminal, Found in US Disguised as Orlando Bloom

I’m working on writing up my analysis of the Georgian conflict at the moment (it’s taking all day honestly), but i absolutely had to post this article from the NYT about Orlando Bloom taking a slightly-less-beaten path to stardom by starring in a film about the Bosnian Serbs’ siege of Sarajevo from 1992-1995. How uplifting.

The idea of creating art from a massacre isn’t what bothers me about this news, in fact. It’s Orlando Bloom’s … lack of eloquence:

“Hopefully, we can get this movie to be made at the end of this year. To come here and shoot would be just wonderful,” he said.

WHAT?! Orlando, don’t say you’re excited about shit like that, or you’re gonna get extradited. Personally, I would recommend giving talks about alternative medicine to the community…

A Word on Deliberateness

Care of Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:

During the (Clinton) campaign there was a lot of clucking about whether the campaign’s message just accidentally stumbled on to charged words and associations. And now we can see what was obvious at the time — that the people in charge of the message weren’t sloppy and unlucky but rather what you would expect, professionals following a detailed plan.

Now how about Sen. McCain? You see his ads lining Obama up with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, a new ad with the tagline “hot chicks dig Obama” (yes, those are the actual words in McCain’s ad) and countless montages of Obama as pop music sensation. How do you think McCain’s memos read?

Only the deeply naive or the deliberately oblivious — which regrettably includes the greater number of the people covering the campaign — don’t know the answer to that question.

 

Campaigns spend too much time and money meticulously crafting campaign messages for anyone to view McCain’s (or Obama’s) ads as coincidentally suggestive of Obama’s way with young blonde women.

Olympic Balladeer’s Voice Was Dubbed

Unfortunate, but not surprising (care of the Times):

BEIJING — Pigtailed and smiling, Lin Miaoke, age 9, stood in a red dress and white shoes during last Friday’s Olympic opening ceremonies and performed “Ode to the Motherland” in what would become one of the evening’s most indelible images: a lone child, fireworks blazing overhead, singing a patriotic ballad before an estimated one billion viewers.

Except that she was not really singing.

Her proud father, Lin Hui, who only learned of her singing role 15 minutes before the ceremonies began, watched on television and noticed “that the voice was a little different from hers.” On Tuesday, Mr. Lin said in a telephone interview that he had assumed “the difference might be caused by the acoustics.”

Acoustics had nothing to do with it. Under pressure from the highest levels of the ruling Communist Party to find the perfect face and voice, the ceremony’s production team concluded the only solution was to use two girls instead of one. Miaoke, a third grader, was judged cute and appealing but “not suitable” as a singer. Another girl, Yang Peiyi, 7, was judged the best singer but not as cute. So when Miaoke opened her mouth to sing, the voice that was actually heard was a recording of Peiyi.

And it is unclear if Miaoke even knew.

Morning News; August 12th, 2008

1) Heilman and the rest of the Mets bullpen blew a four-run lead (and a superb start by Pedro) to fall to the Pirates 7-5. The Yankees just plain suck. The post last night (still anon, but my guess is it was B-crat) covered some of the Olympic news. One thing I’d like to add is that the Men’s gymnastics team, devastated by injuries and expected to place outside the medals, got Bronze.

2) Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says he has ordered a halt to the country’s military operations in Georgia. Fighting continues.

3) Former Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson, apparently still riding the Wambulance, recently declared that had the Edwards affair been revealed prior to the Iowa caucus, “I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee.” No one cares Howie. Stop dwelling.

4) Oddly, all of the cities in Georgia have disappeared on Google Maps. Let me know if you have any insight into the matter. I don’t even know if they’ve disapeared so much as were never there. My guess is that because of the military action, Google didn’t want to be used for strategic planning (though I doubt Russia, at least, used the Googles to plan its military campaigns).

5) Bob Herbert joins the mystified chorus of people (myself included) crying out against the ridiculous debate over offshore drilling.

6) And finally, much to the relief of the b-crat, Running can slow the aging process. Unfortunately for both the trader and legal eagle, platooning at catcher has found to have no such benefit.

Quote of the Night; August 12th, 2008

Wise words from President Bush, in regards to the recent Russian invasion of Georgia:

Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state…. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century…. We have no doubts about it. This is a deliberate attempt to destroy an entire country and change the regime.

The lesson, everybody, is that in the 21st century, it is unacceptable to destroy a country and change the regime (I wonder if anyone told him).

Team America makes France look silly

If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and check out the men’s 4×100m Freestyle relay final, held Sunday night in Beijing.  The U.S. quartet of Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones, Jason Lezak swam a world record 3:08.24 to defeat a heavily favored French team.

Leading up to the race, French star and former 100m free world record holder Alain Bernard publicly announced his team had come to “smash” the Americans.  He proceeded to get passed on a sparkling anchor leg by Lezak, who in so doing regelated the Frenchie to the fitting status of former world record holder.

The dominance of the Americans in the pool has continued tonight, with the U.S. claiming 7 medals in 4 finals. Among the highlights:

• Phelps won his 3rd gold in three attempts these games, dominating the 200 free in a world record 1:42.96. 
• Natalie Coughlin claimed gold in the 100 backstroke.
• Aaron Peirsol and Matt Grevers went 1-2 in the men’s 100 backstroke.

Keep ‘em coming.

SILive Post of the Day; August 11th, July 2008

Following my post of a link to the most recent McCain campaign ad, someone responded by writing:

Insulting to women – implying that they only like him because he is “hot”. I don’t see at as race-baiting though.

I only post this quote to set-up the punch line:

Hey, women do enough to insult their gender every day. Pick up a newspaper.

They need no help. I’d buy the race angle before i bought the sexist one. Btw not everyone in this country feels the need to have a person of any minority lead us( choosing minority for minority sake is not a reason) It’s why it’s called majority rules, get over it.

It is an interesting, if unintended, play upon the words “minority” and “majority.” I won’t say anything about choosing a minority for minority’s sake other than that it seems to me that most of the people I’ve encountered like Obama for his policies and his consistent opposition to the largest foreign policy blunder in decades. The issue of “getting over” majority rules is more interesting. When it comes down to it, we are not so much a country concerned solely with the majority. If we were, notions like civil liberties and the electoral college would be meaningless in the United States. The former is concerned with the rights of, gasp, the minority, in the face of an indifferent if not hostile majority. The latter addressed the concern that pure majoritarian politics would obscure the interests of certain, less populous regions. That is, both of these institutions recognized that there are interests outside, indeed greater than, the revered Majority. Given these historical concerns, it may be somewhat difficult to get over “majority rules” when it seems to me that the poster seeks to ignore, if not disparage, the black candidate because he is part of the minority.

I will defer to Kate on the issue of Women.