First Black President? Not Good Enough For ASU

Someone once told me an easy way to sense BS.

"Do you know why it doesn't make sense?" he said to me. "Because it isn't true."

This will do nothing but p*ss you off, and I'm sorry to have to share it, but I've had an ab-so-lute gutful of organizations that do the little weasel dance to avoid looking like they wanted to have President Barack Obama speak.

First it was the pained fretting of Catholic priests who moaned about President Obama (and I'm going to use that name repeatedly if it makes some people cry so much) speaking at Notre Dame which was painted as being all principled and stuff but actually had more than the whiff of hypocrisy about it.

I didn't think anyone could top the childishness of that move. But ASU did.

Arizona State University has invited President Obama to deliver the commencement address on May 13th. It's tradition (and, I understand, the "done" thing) to award the commencement speaker with an honorary degree.

As of this writing, according to and broken by the Politico, ASU has decided not to award the country's first black President an honorary degree. He just hasn't worked hard enough yet, you see:

The university decided against awarding Obama the degree because it is customarily awarded for “lifetime achievement,” ASU spokeswoman Sharon Keeler told POLITICO.

“It’s normally awarded to someone who has been in their field for some time,” she said. “Considering that the president is at the beginning of his presidency, his body of work is just beginning.”

***BOGGLE***

A man of Barack Obama's stature and achievements hasn't rated the honor yet?

This is like refusing to call Neil Armstrong the first man on the moon because he hasn't done it twice yet.

If this man hasn't rated your respect yet, he never will. And ASU doesn't even have the courage to come up with a reason based on a solid debating point. At least Notre Dame did that. And they gave him an honorary degree.

WTF, ASU? Neocons on the board? Fear of a black planet? What? And you actually announced that and expected it not to look like weasel words and embarrass you? Are your PR people on vacation or payyy-ote or something?

There's buzz out that they're reconsidering. Thats as maybe. Damage is already done though. Well played, Asinine State University, well played.

A Completely Tasteless and Insensitive Statement About The Nature Of Desperation These Days

Making the below is wrong and tasteless and sad and I apologize in advance, but the moment I saw the story on the news I couldn't get it out of my head.

It's wrong, and once again, I apologize:

I am a rotten person.

Update: they got the dude in northern Cali.

Republicans On Pretty Much Everything: "We Must Have Tax Cuts"

It's been beat pretty much to death on The POJ, but it was said of the news today that State Senator Brian Boquist (R-Reading From A List Of Talking Points) of Polk County said Republicans had great ideas on how to get Oregon's economy turning over again.

So, I thought "hey! Any idea that The POJ has the guts to announce as being from teh Republicans has got to be a game-changer!"

Well, you can all go home again. Clear out the auditorium:

Tax cuts. Withholding tax cuts. Tax credits for remodeling your home (should go over like a shot with renters and people who have low incomes). Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts.

Let's set the scene: let's say that, due to a revolution in science, it was found that, instead of four billion years in the future, the Sun was going to enter its red-giant phase, scouring all the Earth of live, in only four years. You can picture the headlines now:

REPUBLICANS ON SUN GOING NOVA; WE MUST HAVE MORE TAX CUTS

They're all like big, fleshy Teddy Ruxipins that only have one tape. It's the answer to everything.

To save everyone a step from here on out, please review the following comic I stumbled on today. It should explain everything about the Republican response to the economy, AIDS, poverty, scoliosis, tooth decay ...

(Image hotlinked from the Big Fat Whale site:
click here to embiggen)

Can Someone Again Explain To Me Why a 51-Year Old Woman Had To Go To Jail Over A Bike Light?

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the one that just doesn't get it.

By now, we've all been 'round the roses in the bizarre case of Freedom Child, the 51-year-old woman who had to go to jail over not putting her bike-light on. I've read the news articles, I've read Steve Duin's column today, and I just don't get it.

It's particularly hard for people like me. You see, quite contrary to the straw-man pre-mis-conception of the lefty that the conservative witling lets themselves be convinced exists and cuddles so close to their breast to keep them enraged.

I like the cops! I adore law and order. My father was a prison guard and he was in the National Guard. In my family, until you knew what was going on, the only proper response to a man in blue was Yes, officer!.

When me and my wife watch COPS, we root for the uniform.

So, I'm looking over the facts as we've been allowed to see them ... the unmarked car coming up to a woman, hassling her, and then the physical confrontation. Even if you don't buy the fact that Freedom Child didn't understand the men were police before they physically restrained her, even though, as Duin reported in his column:

Child testified Dorn and Harris never identified
themselves as police on that dark and lonely night; the
officers insisted they did so fairly quickly. Yet if
we're weighing everyone's relationship with the
truth, the officers never mentioned the unmarked car in the
arrest report and each claimed he popped on the
"overhead" lights so Child could see they were in
uniform.

There were no overhead lights in the car.

Even if you don't think Freedom Child was being straight with us about not knowing they were the cops, you've got to wonder what's going on here. It's really starting to look like the two officers are being given a pass. The revelations that Duin shares with us in his column give the strong impression that the citizen was being treated as the enemy here in a system that is still unwilling to admit it went over the line and made a mistake.

But I'm willing to admit I'm wrong. I've always–seriously–always ready to give the man and woman in the uniform the benefit of the doubt (you'll have to give me the benefit of the doubt on this, people ... it's easy for someone writing an anonymous blog to say whatever sh*t they want and claim sincerity, and I realise that. I'm being straight-up with you here).

So why should I believe that what happened to Freedom Child should have happened to her? Is running a woman that you spooked the heck out of into jail really a justified use of my tax money?

Or, what am I getting wrong here?

And don't bore me with the well, you never know what a person's going to do argument. I know that one. If there were an epidemic of fifty-something female bike-riders luring police into situations where they look all harmless and busting a cap in the cop's ass, then you'd have a point. But there isn't. So you don't.

I hope our Portland Police officers strive to be above reproach. I doubt they're 100% successful–after all, they're human beings. But was this trip necessary?

Mother Nature Hates Governor Teleprompter

March 22nd, 2009, 10:30 pm; Mount Redoubt in Alaska erupts.

(This was actually a photo of the 1990 eruption)

February 25th, 2009: Bobby "Teleprompter" Jindal, Governor of Louisana, criticizes necessary spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, saying:

It includes $300 million
to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail
projects, such as a “magnetic levitation” line from Las Vegas to
Disneyland, and $140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.”

Wikipedia, on Mount Redoubt:

The 1989 eruption is also notable for being the first ever volcanic eruption to be successfully predicted by the method of long-period seismic events developed by Swiss/American volcanologist Bernard Chouet.

Ah ... so that is what it's good for, that rascally volcano monitoring.

Quod erat demonstrandum, baby.

They Only Wound Up Galting Themselves Over

Hey, Conservative Blogosphere, How's that "Going Galt" Working out for you?

Apparently, not so well according Hilzroy @ the Washington Monthly:

None of the people Dr. Helen interviews is actually Going Galt. More to the point, neither is Dr. Helen. She claims to be "mulling over ways that she can "go Galt". Allow me to help her
out (along with Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, et al.) To Go Galt, she should:

(a) Identify those things that she does that are genuinely creative and productive. If there aren't any, then the fact that it will be difficult for her to Go Galt is the least of her problems. 

(b) Refuse to do those things in any way that allows society at large, as opposed to a small circle of like-minded individualists, to benefit from them.

It really is that simple. If she and the other bloggers who are calling on people to "Go Galt" don't do this, the only explanations are that they don't have the guts to do what they are encouraging others to do, or that they recognize that nothing they do counts as creative or
productive, or that they just aren't thinking about what they write.

Read the whole thing (seriously, it's important) and read the comments too. They're some of the most thoughtful comments I've ever seen to a post.

They use that word a lot, the conservative bloggers. But we're pretty sure it does not mean what they think it means.

We Like The Timbers ... But We're Not So Sure About This

We've been following PDX's journey toward MLS as far as our easily-glazed eyes will let us go.

We'll admit, we're confused. And I definitely don't want to kill the buzz of any Timbers fan (who I am, kinda–I attend games as the budget and time will allow).

But the rush toward giving the Timber's owner what he wants and the way which it's all going down so swimmingly just make me think of deals made out of sight. And since the Portland New Town (you know, the condo district otherwise known by the name of SoWa) concept has worked out so well, there should just kind of be a lot more public cirucumspection, and there just doesn't seem to be.

I'm just sayin'.

Oh, Go Galt Yourself

Just caught whiff of this. Us Orygonian bumpkins and bumpkinettes may not have heard of this, but this sounds like the silliest, selfishest, most self-indugingest thing since the other week when that risible "teabagging" party trend (link rated R for adult situation) that happened because Santelli belched something resembling a thought (It would be helpful to note that CNBC's Rick Santellin not only Hates You (tm) but is a buffoon as well, though unlike Jim Cramer, he's not even funny).

It's called going Galt.

As someone once said, assume I'm an Objectivist, and assume I'm a dunce ... but I repeat myself. Now, we all know (even if we don't Rand around) that John Galt is the pivotal character in Atlas Shrugged. He is the ubermensch upon whom withdrawing the creative contribution causes the entire Earth to spin into the sun (or cause another Thin Man movie to be made, or something like that). If you buy into Objectivism, the "men of ability" (not you) are the people who actually make the world go round, and if they decide to stop contributing, then the whole fabric of society unravels and the whole place starts to look like sections of Detroit we've heard about recently.

Now that the rabble (if you're reading this and you wonder who the rabble might be, it's you, Sparky) have begun to actually demand that government work for them instead of on them, the Masters of the Universe (if you wonder if you are one, then it's a dead sure thing you aren't) have decided that they're just going to take their ball and go home.

Balloon Juice has a pretty good summary here:

Much html code has been spilled about the wingnut obsession with “going Galt” in order to avoid paying a 39% marginal rate on income over 250K a year. Matt Yglesias points out that we’d probably be better off if a lot of wealthy Americans went Galt, the Washington Independent has a nice run-down of the whole movement (oh, it resembles a certain sort of movement, if you follow me–ed), if it can be called that, and commenters all over point out that John Galt would never have worked as a dentist, represented people from Bakersfield, or slept with Glenn Reynolds.

Take that lese majeste, you little people. Once you all pipe down, we're getting you a shorter chain.

Problem is, those self-styled Galters don't really resemble John Galt much at all. Once again, if you buy into such Random philosophy and you think that the world won't go unless a creative elite does anything, most of the those who want to go Galting around don't really produce anything that society can't do with out. Conservative bloggers? Investment managers? Commentators? Michelle freaking Malkin?

We'll, they'll show us, you see. They'll go off to the gulch and hope we all Galt ourselves off a cliff.

I hope their little feelings won't get too hurt when they find out the world kind of works better without them.

I kind of hope they Galt off along with the horse they rode in on. We'll all be better off.

Mom always said there'd be people like that there, too, also.

The Oregonian: Dropping Comics? Did We Say That?

The Oregonian can cut staff, merge the Monday Metro into Section A, give sections goofy names like "How We Live" (apparently "Living" was too vague), and nobody complains.

Threaten to dump comics, though, and the villagers line up with torches in front of 1320 Southwest Broadway:

The response: more than 9,500 votes in our comics survey, almost 1,000 e-mails and about 400 letters. Your votes and your letters reaffirmed the importance comics have in the newspaper and how much you depend on them for a few moments of levity in these difficult times. Thanks to all who participated, and thanks for the heartfelt and thoughtful responses.

For now, we're not changing a thing.

For my money, the good news is that Portlanders showed taste in voting up Pickles, Cul-de-Sac, Bizarro, and Non Sequitur. We are baffled that fewer people liked Ziggy and Cathy than Close To Home, which, in our books, is far and away the worst-drawn and least funny comic in synidication today. While we aren't surprised that Ziggy and Cathy scored low, we were surprised they scored that low, and we don't understand why so few people like Edison Lee ... it's like Pearls Before Swine with you guys.

Anyhow, it occurred to me that they could have saved themselves some strife. After all, every time they've vouchsafed rethinking the funny pages, they've always had the villagers at the door and near-riot conditions in Portland.

Well, you know what they say about people who don't learn from history. I'd also remind that the second time 'round history repeats itself, it's as farce ... which would be appropriate.

I'll let P.Bhat, Tha Oregonian's editor, have the last word:

And if we ever bring this up again, just feed us to the crocs in "Pearls Before Swine."

Consider it done.

The rest of you: Just be thankful this isn't the Post-Intelligencer.

You See? I Told You Twitter Makes You Stupid.

"It Books"? Publishing a dead-tree collection of tweets, fahgawdsake?

Put a fork in us. We're done.

Doesn't seem a fair exchange for losing a respectable non-fiction imprint, but what do I know? Mom always said there'd be days like this.

Would Salt Blessed by An Episcopalian Be "Christian Rock"?

Get ready for the greatest idea in religious spices since Lot's Wife looked back:

Retired barber Joe Godlewski says that when television chefs recommended kosher salt in recipes, he wondered, "What the heck's the matter with Christian salt?"

By next week, his trademarked Blessed Christians Salt will be available from seasonings manufacturer Ingredients Corporation of America. It's sea salt that's been blessed by an Episcopal priest.

Success in America happens when preparation meets opportunity meets a brain that's inhaled way too much fumes from that blue antiseptic fluid for way too long. Of course there was someone ready and willing to make a buck off it. Bless you, ICA.

Also, wouldn't an Episcopal blessing make the salt even blander?

Fortunately for the sake of brain, someone went off an asked an actual Rabbi (who's all Jewish and stuff) about it:

He says coarse-grained kosher salt is named for the way in which it was traditionally used -- to draw blood from freshly butchered meat, because Jewish law prohibits consuming blood.

Salt is naturally kosher, you see. And Kosher has to do with food purity, not "non-Christianness". But I think I'm preaching to the choir here.

Disclaimer: I'm actually a Christian. But if this is what passes as Christian thought in America today, I'm officially embarrassed.