The current joke of the week award goes to Los Angeles Galaxy forward Landon Donovan*.
(*-the name Landon Donovan comes from the Latin for "If you need four goals from the penalty spot against Guam, I'm your man but don't expect me to show up at all against anyone half way decent.")
Landycakes, as he is derisively referred to, came out in the press this week and declared that his club were the "giants" of Major League Soccer.
This came after Donovan's side were humiliated by Toronto FC for only the Canadian team's second away win in its two-year history.
Here are the last three overall regular season finishes for the 'giants' of MLS...
2007: 11th of 13
2006: 9th of 12
2005: 9th of 12
This year, they are tearing it up at tied for 10th of 13.
Though in fairness to Donovan, being in Los Angeles has probably afflicted him with Lalasitis. One site describes the pathology as: a chronic infectious disease, caused by a excessive hyperbole, delusions of grandeur, and cognitive dissonance, usually verbal in origin but often congenital, and affecting almost any club or team in MLS that Alexi Lalas is General Manager of [presently, the Los Angeles Galaxy]. In fact the disease was named after footballer, Alexi Lalas. Symptoms first appear in brain, mouth, genitals, and nerves.
Lalas has declared Los Angeles as MLS' 'Superclub.'
As great as he is at self-promotion, it's too bad that he's a crap at his actual job. The last two teams he's general managed have been garbage. The previous one left town during his tenure.
I fully expect hype machines Donovan and Lalas to be hired consultants on the new Phoenix Cardinals' 'giants of the NFL' campaign.
Or by ESPN.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
World's most prominent pro-war and pro-peace advocates meet
So I see there is going to be a meeting between President Bush and one of the most prominent critics of the Iraq Aggression in particular and US imperialism in general. I know Bush is far too arrogant to open his mind to anyone, let alone the world's most influential Christian. But I still wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall there...
Monday, April 14, 2008
Ralph Nader to visit Glens Falls
The Tri-County Greens, Adirondack Almanack and Matt Funiciello all report that presidential candidate Ralph Nader will be visiting Glens Falls later this month, surely the only one to do so this year.
Nader will be in town on Saturday April 26. There will be a dinner fundraiser at 6 PM followed by an appearance at the Charles R. Wood Theater. The Wood Theater event will feature a showing of the excellent documentary 'Awake From Your Slumber,' which will start at 8 PM. The film will be followed by a question and answer period with the citizen activist. Click here for more details on both events.
While he doesn't offer empty rhetoric nor is he a corporate tool nor does he support an ad infinitum Occupation of Iraq, Nader will almost certainly be the only candidate on the presidential ballot who's actually taken a strong and correct stand the most important issues facing this country, in stark contrast to the major parties.
He argues in favor of:
-a single-payer, Canadian-style, private delivery, public health insurance system
-cutting the bloated, wasteful military budget, cutting off the corporate welfare kings - and using the savings to rebuild the nation's infrastructure
-cracking down on corporate crime
-reversing U.S. policy in the Middle East and ending the military and corporate occupation in Iraq
...issues that have widespread support in this country, particularly (but not exclusively) among self-described liberals and progressives.
And he notes that Sens. Obama and Clinton, to say nothing of McCain, are all on the wrong side of these issues. And he wonders why so many self-described liberals and progressives will yet again vote for a candidate who's on the wrong side of issues they themselves claim to consider so important.
Many Americans agree with Nader's agenda. The question becomes will such people vote for someone who will advance what they believe in or harm their interests. How can the progressive agenda ever be implemented if progressives refuse to even consider voting for one?
Nader will be in town on Saturday April 26. There will be a dinner fundraiser at 6 PM followed by an appearance at the Charles R. Wood Theater. The Wood Theater event will feature a showing of the excellent documentary 'Awake From Your Slumber,' which will start at 8 PM. The film will be followed by a question and answer period with the citizen activist. Click here for more details on both events.
While he doesn't offer empty rhetoric nor is he a corporate tool nor does he support an ad infinitum Occupation of Iraq, Nader will almost certainly be the only candidate on the presidential ballot who's actually taken a strong and correct stand the most important issues facing this country, in stark contrast to the major parties.
He argues in favor of:
-a single-payer, Canadian-style, private delivery, public health insurance system
-cutting the bloated, wasteful military budget, cutting off the corporate welfare kings - and using the savings to rebuild the nation's infrastructure
-cracking down on corporate crime
-reversing U.S. policy in the Middle East and ending the military and corporate occupation in Iraq
...issues that have widespread support in this country, particularly (but not exclusively) among self-described liberals and progressives.
And he notes that Sens. Obama and Clinton, to say nothing of McCain, are all on the wrong side of these issues. And he wonders why so many self-described liberals and progressives will yet again vote for a candidate who's on the wrong side of issues they themselves claim to consider so important.
Many Americans agree with Nader's agenda. The question becomes will such people vote for someone who will advance what they believe in or harm their interests. How can the progressive agenda ever be implemented if progressives refuse to even consider voting for one?
Memory refresher of the week
"The reason (President Bush's tactic) works so well now is that you have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death." -Candidate Clinton, Sept. 1991.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Odds and ends (pt. 2)
Note: Continued from previous entry
KNOWLEDGE IS... DUMBERER: A good book review in The New York Times explains how American society is not merely apathetic to logic and knowledge in the political process but downright hostile. This op-ed in The Washington Post also bemoans the dumbing down of society.
FREE TUITION FOR NNYers?: A local legislator from New York's northwestern St. Lawrence County is pushing an intriguing proposal to provide significant tuition assistance for all students in the county provided they attend one of the county's several four-year colleges. He hope to get funding via the state lottery which is now a slush fund for the general coffers but originally conceived as a way of better funding education. Good luck with that!
THE POLITICS OF FEAR: Spencer Ackerman has a great column urging Democrats to take a stand against the politics of fear. The Republicans have set the fear-mongering agenda and Democrats will only succeed if they change the paradigm. He points out that Obama has been fairly vocal in this regard, although he's been not nearly bold enough in opposing either militarism in general or Iraq in particular where it most counts: funding and timetables. To no one's surprise, Hillary "I'm not sure if I'm a hawk or a dove today... let me check the polls first" Clinton has been worthless in this regard.
MUSCULAR MEDIA: It's not much of a secret that advertising and the media contributes to poor body image among many girls. Now research suggests that it does the same for many boys too.
SIMPSONS BAD FOR KIDS, BAYWATCH GOOD: You might not think busybody conservative Christian groups in the US would found any common cause with the Bolivarian revolutionary Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela... but you'd be wrong.
HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS OUR ELECTIONS: You may have heard about the very excellent book How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. Well it turns out that they also may explain US elections. It's not an entirely new theory that in the US, "soccer" types tend to be more diplomatic, internationalist and likely to vote Democratic or left-wing while "gridiron" types (sometimes referred to by the more accurate term throwball) tend to be more forceful, parochial and like to vote Republican or right-wing. Definitely not surprising considering the nature of each sport, but interesting nonetheless.
THE RISKS OF LOWERING CRIME: North Country Public Radio has a long piece on something I want to explore in more detail myself at some point: how decreasing crime is harming communities in northern New York. The dependency of many North Country communities on the prison-industrial complex was always going to be risky. When you pin your future on something the rest of society wants to eliminate... although this shows the economic desperation many Adirondacks' communities face.
JOHNNY FOREIGNER: One potential way to spur economic development in this region might be more foreigners. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York offers this analysis of the foreign-born population in upstate New York. It concludes that foreigners contribute to the region’s human capital in important ways. This population boasts a greater concentration of college graduates than either the region’s native-born population or immigrants downstate... the more highly educated appear to be entering skilled occupations—in medicine, science, and research particularly—that complement those of native-born residents. Of course, a lot depends on how upstate New York is defined. But one thing is clear. Whether it's Bosnians in Utica or Eastern Europeans in Lake George's tourist industry or Mexicans and Central Americans on the dairy farms of northern New York or in the horse stables of Saratoga, upstate is certainly seeing an increase in cultural diversity.
ON MY CHRISTMAS LIST: Guess whose gonig to bye one of these shirts' off there back's!
KNOWLEDGE IS... DUMBERER: A good book review in The New York Times explains how American society is not merely apathetic to logic and knowledge in the political process but downright hostile. This op-ed in The Washington Post also bemoans the dumbing down of society.
FREE TUITION FOR NNYers?: A local legislator from New York's northwestern St. Lawrence County is pushing an intriguing proposal to provide significant tuition assistance for all students in the county provided they attend one of the county's several four-year colleges. He hope to get funding via the state lottery which is now a slush fund for the general coffers but originally conceived as a way of better funding education. Good luck with that!
THE POLITICS OF FEAR: Spencer Ackerman has a great column urging Democrats to take a stand against the politics of fear. The Republicans have set the fear-mongering agenda and Democrats will only succeed if they change the paradigm. He points out that Obama has been fairly vocal in this regard, although he's been not nearly bold enough in opposing either militarism in general or Iraq in particular where it most counts: funding and timetables. To no one's surprise, Hillary "I'm not sure if I'm a hawk or a dove today... let me check the polls first" Clinton has been worthless in this regard.
MUSCULAR MEDIA: It's not much of a secret that advertising and the media contributes to poor body image among many girls. Now research suggests that it does the same for many boys too.
SIMPSONS BAD FOR KIDS, BAYWATCH GOOD: You might not think busybody conservative Christian groups in the US would found any common cause with the Bolivarian revolutionary Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela... but you'd be wrong.
HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS OUR ELECTIONS: You may have heard about the very excellent book How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. Well it turns out that they also may explain US elections. It's not an entirely new theory that in the US, "soccer" types tend to be more diplomatic, internationalist and likely to vote Democratic or left-wing while "gridiron" types (sometimes referred to by the more accurate term throwball) tend to be more forceful, parochial and like to vote Republican or right-wing. Definitely not surprising considering the nature of each sport, but interesting nonetheless.
THE RISKS OF LOWERING CRIME: North Country Public Radio has a long piece on something I want to explore in more detail myself at some point: how decreasing crime is harming communities in northern New York. The dependency of many North Country communities on the prison-industrial complex was always going to be risky. When you pin your future on something the rest of society wants to eliminate... although this shows the economic desperation many Adirondacks' communities face.
JOHNNY FOREIGNER: One potential way to spur economic development in this region might be more foreigners. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York offers this analysis of the foreign-born population in upstate New York. It concludes that foreigners contribute to the region’s human capital in important ways. This population boasts a greater concentration of college graduates than either the region’s native-born population or immigrants downstate... the more highly educated appear to be entering skilled occupations—in medicine, science, and research particularly—that complement those of native-born residents. Of course, a lot depends on how upstate New York is defined. But one thing is clear. Whether it's Bosnians in Utica or Eastern Europeans in Lake George's tourist industry or Mexicans and Central Americans on the dairy farms of northern New York or in the horse stables of Saratoga, upstate is certainly seeing an increase in cultural diversity.
ON MY CHRISTMAS LIST: Guess whose gonig to bye one of these shirts' off there back's!
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Odds and ends (pt. 1)
This is the periodic odds and ends entry I write when my bookmark of articles to blog about gets too long...
RACE AND ECONOMICS: In the wake of Sen. Barack Obama's much-discussed speech on skin color, Shankar Vedantam wrote a fanastic op-ed piece in the Washington Post about the topic. He points out that while many whites feel that black complaints about inequality are rooted in past injustices, the most troubling inequalities are in the present. The average black person in America is 447 percent more likely to be imprisoned than the average white person, and 521 percent more likely to be murdered. Blacks earn 60 cents to the dollar compared with whites who have the same education levels and marital status. The black poverty rate is nearly twice the white poverty rate. Blacks tend to die five years earlier than whites; the infant mortality rate among black babies is nearly 1 1/2 times the rate among white babies. And because of long-standing patterns of inheritance, blacks and whites begin life with substantial disparities in family wealth.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING: WAMC Northeast Public Radio had a story on the problem of human trafficking in New York's Hudson Valley.
CENSORSHIP: In another skirmish in the Bush administration's ongoing battle against science and knowledge (a part of its wider war against reality), a US Agency for International Development-funded organization is now blocking searches on the word 'abortion' from its massive database. It's one thing to ban government funding for abortions themselves. But to use funding to intimidate medical organizations into banning any discussion of the practice is pretty brazen, even by the standards of the day.
CAFFEINE ADDICTS UNITE!: You know how some coffee-addicted people get crazy when they don't get there daily fix? Turns out there might be a medical reason why.
HEROIC RAPISTS: This op-ed piece originally from The Los Angeles Times illuminates the rather disturbing statistic that female US soldiers are more likely to be raped by a 'comrade' than killed by enemy fire in Iraq. Doctors at a Veterans' clinic in West Los Angeles reported that 41 percent of their patients were victims of sexual assault and 29 percent raped... while serving in the US military. Could someone please remind me how gays would ruin the military...
HOW PREDICTABLE IS CONFLICT?: Can computers predict wars? A Radio Netherlands report explores the matter.
HILLARY'S WAL-MART YEARS (cont.): Sen. Hillary Clinton has based her campaign against Barack Obama on her supposed edge in experience. The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity has a closer look at the much-touted experience of a woman that blue collar unions are inexplicably falling over themselves to endorse.
HYBRIDS IN THE MOUNTAINS: Adirondack Almanack blog hosts a good discussion (both in the original essay and in the comments) of hybrid cars and their use in the Adirondacks.
TOP TEN SIGNS OF THE IMMINENT APOCALYPSE: Number seven.
RACE AND ECONOMICS: In the wake of Sen. Barack Obama's much-discussed speech on skin color, Shankar Vedantam wrote a fanastic op-ed piece in the Washington Post about the topic. He points out that while many whites feel that black complaints about inequality are rooted in past injustices, the most troubling inequalities are in the present. The average black person in America is 447 percent more likely to be imprisoned than the average white person, and 521 percent more likely to be murdered. Blacks earn 60 cents to the dollar compared with whites who have the same education levels and marital status. The black poverty rate is nearly twice the white poverty rate. Blacks tend to die five years earlier than whites; the infant mortality rate among black babies is nearly 1 1/2 times the rate among white babies. And because of long-standing patterns of inheritance, blacks and whites begin life with substantial disparities in family wealth.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING: WAMC Northeast Public Radio had a story on the problem of human trafficking in New York's Hudson Valley.
CENSORSHIP: In another skirmish in the Bush administration's ongoing battle against science and knowledge (a part of its wider war against reality), a US Agency for International Development-funded organization is now blocking searches on the word 'abortion' from its massive database. It's one thing to ban government funding for abortions themselves. But to use funding to intimidate medical organizations into banning any discussion of the practice is pretty brazen, even by the standards of the day.
CAFFEINE ADDICTS UNITE!: You know how some coffee-addicted people get crazy when they don't get there daily fix? Turns out there might be a medical reason why.
HEROIC RAPISTS: This op-ed piece originally from The Los Angeles Times illuminates the rather disturbing statistic that female US soldiers are more likely to be raped by a 'comrade' than killed by enemy fire in Iraq. Doctors at a Veterans' clinic in West Los Angeles reported that 41 percent of their patients were victims of sexual assault and 29 percent raped... while serving in the US military. Could someone please remind me how gays would ruin the military...
HOW PREDICTABLE IS CONFLICT?: Can computers predict wars? A Radio Netherlands report explores the matter.
HILLARY'S WAL-MART YEARS (cont.): Sen. Hillary Clinton has based her campaign against Barack Obama on her supposed edge in experience. The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity has a closer look at the much-touted experience of a woman that blue collar unions are inexplicably falling over themselves to endorse.
HYBRIDS IN THE MOUNTAINS: Adirondack Almanack blog hosts a good discussion (both in the original essay and in the comments) of hybrid cars and their use in the Adirondacks.
TOP TEN SIGNS OF THE IMMINENT APOCALYPSE: Number seven.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Dr. King's real agenda was controversial... and remains so
When a great many Americans think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated 40 years ago last week, they associate him almost exclusively with efforts to bring down the apartheid-esque Jim Crow laws. The struggle to end government-imposed racism.
Many Americans are simply aware of this because the establishment wants his legacy to begin and end with the "I have a dream" speech. The standard modern narrative of King is "He won civil rights for blacks and then he was killed. The end." He was made into a secular saint based on this narrow view which is now, thankfully, uncontroversial.
The reason for this historical revisionism is because the agenda of King and his colleagues was much broader than legal equality for blacks, which was important but only a first step. King's goals were fundamentally about human dignity and the war against the poor.
In the later years of his life, he displayed this by his strong opposition to the US Aggression in Vietnam. An Aggresion of which poor and working class people, both American and Vietnamese, were bearing the human cost almost exclusively. The situation is little different in today's Aggression. So King is reduced to his "I Have a Dream" speech to make sure the masses don't draw any parallels.
King is a person whose anti-establishment agenda has been whitewashed by the establishment so they could bask in the reflected glory of something saccharinized. Much has been done to Muhammad Ali.
And let's not forget that the whole reason King was in Memphis on that fateful April 1968 day was to fight a form of oppression against darker-skinned human beings that may not have been state-mandated but was no less nefarious.
A good supplement is this piece from The Los Angeles Times. It points out King's increasing frustration with white America. A white America that expected blacks to lick their boots in gratitude after they were promoted from third-class citizens to second-class.
And after state segregation started to be dismantled, some of the greatest hostility toward blacks was found as much in the north as in the much reviled south.
The LAT notes: After the grand victories of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, King turned his attention to poverty, economic injustice and class inequality. King argued that those "legislative and judicial victories did very little to improve" Northern ghettos or to "penetrate the lower depths of Negro deprivation." In a frank assessment of the civil rights movement, King said the changes that came about from 1955 to 1965 "were at best surface changes" that were "limited mainly to the Negro middle class." In seeking to end black poverty, King told his staff in 1966 that blacks "are now making demands that will cost the nation something. ... You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then."
In other words, non-southern whites may have had no problem in blacks gaining equal de jure political rights, because northern blacks largely had that anyways. Nothing changed. But once blacks started to demand a humane wage or move into 'white' neighborhoods or 'infiltrate' white schools, northern whites wouldn't be so calm and King knew it.
Much of the social tension of the 70s, from fair housing laws to busing, bore ought King's predictions.
Many Americans are simply aware of this because the establishment wants his legacy to begin and end with the "I have a dream" speech. The standard modern narrative of King is "He won civil rights for blacks and then he was killed. The end." He was made into a secular saint based on this narrow view which is now, thankfully, uncontroversial.
The reason for this historical revisionism is because the agenda of King and his colleagues was much broader than legal equality for blacks, which was important but only a first step. King's goals were fundamentally about human dignity and the war against the poor.
In the later years of his life, he displayed this by his strong opposition to the US Aggression in Vietnam. An Aggresion of which poor and working class people, both American and Vietnamese, were bearing the human cost almost exclusively. The situation is little different in today's Aggression. So King is reduced to his "I Have a Dream" speech to make sure the masses don't draw any parallels.
King is a person whose anti-establishment agenda has been whitewashed by the establishment so they could bask in the reflected glory of something saccharinized. Much has been done to Muhammad Ali.
And let's not forget that the whole reason King was in Memphis on that fateful April 1968 day was to fight a form of oppression against darker-skinned human beings that may not have been state-mandated but was no less nefarious.
A good supplement is this piece from The Los Angeles Times. It points out King's increasing frustration with white America. A white America that expected blacks to lick their boots in gratitude after they were promoted from third-class citizens to second-class.
And after state segregation started to be dismantled, some of the greatest hostility toward blacks was found as much in the north as in the much reviled south.
The LAT notes: After the grand victories of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, King turned his attention to poverty, economic injustice and class inequality. King argued that those "legislative and judicial victories did very little to improve" Northern ghettos or to "penetrate the lower depths of Negro deprivation." In a frank assessment of the civil rights movement, King said the changes that came about from 1955 to 1965 "were at best surface changes" that were "limited mainly to the Negro middle class." In seeking to end black poverty, King told his staff in 1966 that blacks "are now making demands that will cost the nation something. ... You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then."
In other words, non-southern whites may have had no problem in blacks gaining equal de jure political rights, because northern blacks largely had that anyways. Nothing changed. But once blacks started to demand a humane wage or move into 'white' neighborhoods or 'infiltrate' white schools, northern whites wouldn't be so calm and King knew it.
Much of the social tension of the 70s, from fair housing laws to busing, bore ought King's predictions.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Olympian shame
Isn't ironic that a regime that murders its own citizens among the countless other ways it wages war against its own people has decided to take extraordinary measures to protect fire...
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