Yao-za

It's so f***ed I can't believe it
If there's a way I wish we'd see it
How could it work just can't conceive it
Oh what a mess it's best to leave it


-- Dinosaur Jr., "Freak Scene"

So right after I posted this, Yao breaks a leg. Then The Truth went down, T-Mac made a comeback but still has a bad sacroiliac, and AK-47 impersonated Rocky Balboa. J-Smooth caught a hernia, The Answer couldn't catch a flight to snowed-in Denver, and nearly everybody else in the NBA caught the flu.

Ron Artest has sore knees. Ray Allen has a new baby. Saddam is going to be hanged any day now.

Oh wait, he's not in the Association ...

"I am a Ford, not a Lincoln"

Nobody failed to get the joke.

Here's some from the WaPo on the passing of Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States and the only one never elected:

In the 2 1/2 years of his presidency, Ford ended the U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, helped mediate a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Egypt, signed the Helsinki human rights convention with the Soviet Union and traveled to Vladivostok in the Soviet Far East to sign an arms limitation agreement with Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet president. Ford also sent the Marines to free the crew of the Mayaguez, a U.S. merchant vessel that was captured by Cambodian communists.

On the domestic front, he faced some of the most difficult economic conditions since the Great Depression, with the inflation rate approaching 12 percent. Chronic energy shortages and price increases produced long lines and angry citizens at gas pumps. In the field of civil rights, the sense of optimism that had characterized the 1960s had been replaced by an increasing sense of alienation, particularly in inner cities. The new president also faced a political landscape in which Democrats held large majorities in both the House and the Senate.

What I remember Ford for was the "WIN" buttons he advocated for the nation. He wore one pinned to himself. WIN stood for "Whip Inflation Now."

This of course demonstrated Ford's understanding of monetary policy. Even my dad -- no financial whiz himself -- laughed at the idiocy of a lapel button helping the nation's economic ills.

More excerpts from the NYT:

He was a man more fundamental than flashy, more immutable than immodest. He served undefeated through 13 elections to the House of Representatives and rose to be its Republican leader, yet in 25 years in Congress he did not write a major piece of legislation. He was overwhelmingly confirmed as vice president, the first to be appointed under the 25th Amendment, yet he owed his selection by Nixon to the likelihood that he would prove inoffensive in the job.

The Warren Commission. Ford is at right.

Ford's presidency was an extension of his own political personality: reactive rather than activist, instinctive instead of intellectual, humanistic but within the fiscal limits of conservative dogma.

(Jerald) terHorst, the biographer, puzzled over the seeming contradiction between the president's personal and professional philosophies: "The problem with him — he doesn't like to be kidded about it — but the fact is, this guy would, if he saw a schoolkid in front of the White House who needed clothing, if he was the right size, he'd give him the shirt off his back, literally. Then he'd go right in the White House and veto the school lunch bill."

John Hersey, after spending a week in close observation of the president, wrote in The New York Times Magazine of April 20, 1975: "What is it in him? Is it an inability to extend compassion far beyond the faces directly in view? Is it a failure of imagination? Is it something obdurate he was born with, alongside the energy and serenity?"

Chief of staff Dick Cheney and Ford '76 chairman James Baker with the president (announcing his bid for re-election from the golf course). Again, a personal aside:

Ford ran for election in 1976, narrowly defeating a vigorous primary challenge from former California governor Ronald Reagan. During the election season in 1975 Reagan gave a speech at a dinner restaurant in Beaumont, Texas where I worked as a busboy. I had been promoted to waiter solely for the occasion since we were short-staffed, and just minutes prior to the event we all struck for an extra .25 an hour (management caved to our demands). I was 16 years old, an active Optimist Club oratorical contest participant, and as the old actor addressed the two hundred attendees for 45 minutes, I stood at the back of the room and listened, enrapt.

The room was completely still. No one coughed, not one fork clinked against a plate.

That was the night I became a Republican. Reagan fell short of the nomination of course, but my first presidential ballot was cast in 1976 for Jerry Ford.



Rumsfeld, Ford, Cheney. From the AP:

When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York's Nelson Rockefeller and California's Ronald Reagan.

"Personal factors enter into such a decision," Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. "I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of them, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.

"We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district," Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn't: he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.

And this:

While Ford had not sought the job, he came to relish it. He had once told Congress that even if he succeeded Nixon he would not run for president in 1976. Within weeks of taking the oath, he changed his mind.

He was undaunted even after the two attempts on his life in September 1975. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a 26-year-old follower of Charles Manson, was arrested after she aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford on Sept. 5 in Sacramento, Calif. A Secret Service agent grabbed her and Ford was unharmed.

Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old political activist, was arrested in San Francisco after she fired a gun at the president. Again, Ford was unhurt.

And this:

In office, Ford's living tastes were modest. When he became vice president, he chose to remain in the same Alexandria, Va., home — unpretentious except for a swimming pool — that he shared with his family as a congressman.

After leaving the White House, however, he took up residence in the desert resort of Rancho Mirage, picked up $1 million for his memoir and another $1 million in a five-year NBC television contract, and served on a number of corporate boards. By 1987, he was on eight such boards, at fees up to $30,000 a year, and was consulting for others, at fees up to $100,000. After criticism, he cut back on such activity.

Ford was also the subject of parody for his clumsiness, both physical and verbal. Chevy Chase made his initial fame by portraying the president as a chronic stumblebum on 'Saturday Night Live'. LBJ described the House minority leader as unable "to chew gum and walk at the same time", a phrase that entered pop culture as the generic description of an idiot.

But Ford very likely was the perfect man for the job in August of 1974, when the United States was suffering its most extreme constitutional crisis. Even Ford's pardon of Nixon, which cost him re-election, was viewed in hindsight as the tonic for the nation's psychological ills.

Godspeed to Gerald Ford and prayers of condolences to all of his family.

"If you strike the king, you must kill him"

The Speaker of the Texas House gets a challenger. Muse and many others led with the news that broke on Christmas Eve.

Rick Casey has these insights:

There is a consensus that if the vote for House speaker were secret, no plotting would be necessary. Craddick would be a former speaker soon after the session opens Jan. 9. But it is a record vote. And nobody wants to take a chance on publicly opposing Craddick unless it's clear he will lose.

The speaker not only can deny opponents any meaningful committee assignments, he can also make sure none of their pet legislation sees the light of day. So, as the saying goes, if you're going to plot against the king, you'd better bloody well kill him.

Tom Craddick became the first Republican speaker in Texas history, replacing Pete Laney when the GOP became the majority in 2003. Since that time his tenure has been pocked with controversy: record state budget deficits, corrosive political machinations regarding congressional redistricting, an inability to find a solution to public school financing -- the list goes on. But what really has him in trouble is his iron-fisted rule. Casey again, also with the whip count:

"Craddick is very good at breaking arms," said one House member. "That's why if it's going to pop, it has to be at the last minute, when spouses are present and many of the members have their children sitting in their laps. The only time you can neutralize the speaker is when it's done in front of a thousand people."

...

Needed are enough Republicans — 10 or more moderates and conservatives — to join the overwhelming majority of the House's 69 Democrats to deny Craddick the 76 votes he needs for re-election.

Why would Republicans do that? What has Craddick done? Here are some of the things that are cited:

• He failed at what is considered the first job of a speaker: to protect his members. When the state Republican Party ran polls to see how vulnerable some moderate Republicans were, Craddick did nothing to stop it. Then San Antonio billionaire James Leininger spent more than $2.5 million to target five moderate Republicans in the primary because they had voted against school vouchers. Leininger-backed candidates won two of the five races.

Craddick gave lip service to supporting the incumbents, but it is widely believed he could have sent signals that such a bald attack on incumbents was not considered civilized behavior and would make it harder for Leininger to get a hearing next session.

• He pressured members to vote "against their districts" on key issues. One technique: his lieutenants would gather around members who voted wrong and suggest that their button had malfunctioned. Not-so-subtle threats of, among other things, well-funded opposition in the next primary were sometimes conveyed.

Among Republicans who lost to Democrats or more moderate Republicans were Kent Gruesendorf, who chaired the education committee, Houston's Martha Wong, who lost partly because of her votes on children's health insurance, Todd Baxter and Toby Goodman.

"Tom has been one of the best Democratic organizers we've had in a long time," said one Democratic member. He noted that the Republican margin in the House has shrunk by half in the four years since Craddick was elected speaker.

• Craddick's relentless drive in 2003 to champion Tom DeLay's mid-decade congressional redistricting destroyed a long-standing bipartisan culture in the Legislature. Members on both sides of the aisle have talked about a decidedly unpleasant loss of collegiality. "It's not fun anymore," said one member. "It's mean."

The speaker's most recent legal dilemma comes by way of a judge's order that he produce an appointments calendar from his campaign office to determine whether it contains references to state business -- a no-no in Texas.

Neither Governor MoFo nor Lite Gov. Dewface are pals with Craddick. In fact, the only friends he seems to have are corporate lobbyists. Indeed, there are few Speakers that have avoided corruption scandals just in my lifetime (Laney is exceptionally noted, serving at a time when the Texas was going from blue to red and he was forced to work with rabidly partisan conservatives). Gus Mutscher, Bill Clayton, Gib Lewis -- again, the list is lengthy. They seem to get fouled by one-party rule and lengthy terms, though Craddick has gone bad in record time.

I'll be in the gallery in the Capitol on January 9, watching to see if the Republicans can kill the king.

Papa's truly got a brand new bag

His music was sweaty and complex, disciplined and wild, lusty and socially conscious. Beyond his dozens of hits, Mr. Brown forged an entire musical idiom that is now a foundation of pop worldwide. ...

(His) stage moves -- the spins, the quick shuffles, the knee-drops, the splits -- were imitated by performers who tried to match his stamina, from Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson, and were admired by the many more who could not. Mr. Brown was a political force, especially during the 1960s; his 1968 song “Say It Loud -- I’m Black and I’m Proud” changed America’s racial vocabulary. He was never politically predictable; in 1972 he endorsed the re-election of Richard M. Nixon. ...

Brown was born May 3, 1933, in a one-room shack in Barnwell, S.C. As he would later tell it, midwives thought he was stillborn, but his body stayed warm, and he was revived. When his parents separated four years later, he was left in the care of his aunt Honey, who ran a brothel in Augusta, Ga. As a boy he earned pennies buck-dancing for soldiers; he also picked cotton and shined shoes. He was dismissed from school because his clothes were too ragged. ...

Amid the civil rights ferment of the 1960s Brown used his fame and music for social messages. He released “Don’t Be a Dropout” in 1966 and met with Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to promote a stay-in-school initiative. Two years later “Say It Loud -- I’m Black and I’m Proud” insisted, “We won’t quit movin’ until we get what we deserve.”

When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, Brown was due to perform in Boston. Instead of canceling his show, he had it televised. Boston was spared the riots that took place in other cities. “Don’t just react in a way that’s going to destroy your community,” he urged.

Heaven, like Earth, is never going to be the same now that the Godfather of Soul is performing there.

Update (12/28): Brown lies in state at the Apollo. HouStoned has the wrap.

Landover Baptist interviews Mrs. Joel Osteen

An excerpt:

After 72 hours of unsuccessfully attempting to decipher a secret message to al-Qaeda, the Department of Homeland Security released to the public today an audio-taped telephone conversation between Mrs. Harry (Heather) Hardwick, of Landover Baptist Church, and Mrs. Joel (Victoria) Osteen, of some church in Texas. The government had secretly wiretapped the December 20, 2005 exchange pursuant to the Patriot Act based on officials’ well-founded belief that Mrs. Osteen’s outburst aboard a Continental jet earlier in the day constituted a terrorist threat by a couple with suspected al-Qaeda ties. ...

Heather: ... Apparently, there remains a patchwork of folks who still believe in those obscure New Testament verses that say we should give our money to the poor -- or, at the very least, not take money from the poor to make ourselves rich. They obviously don’t understand contemporary Christian capitalism.

Victoria: It chaps my hide, Heather! Joel has worked his rump off, wining and dining book publishers and construction investors. We built the largest church in the country so we could be rich and fam---

Heather: Second largest, dear. I know it’s tempting to exclude Landover Baptist from the list, given that churches like yours aren’t even remotely in the same league in terms of size or quality. You can, however, claim to be the nation’s largest non-denominational church with a non-message.

Victoria: Pardon me?

Heather: Let’s face facts, love. You have a large following because your hubbie doesn’t preach anything that could be deemed even remotely controversial to anyone. I loved his leap into network television when Larry King asked his opinion on abortion and homosexuality, and he refused even to condemn those vile acts, responding with a line typically reserved for hair stylists and florists: “I don’t go there.” He even refused to affirm that only Christians will go to Heaven. Some may call that blasphemy, but I refuse to judge, particularly since I rarely have occasion to travel to abandoned sports arenas in Texas to do my worshipping.

Victoria: We have a positive message, Heather. We teach people that as long as they love God and have faith in themselves, they can lead the best life possible now.

Heather: While that kind of line may work in Susan Powter infomercials and dime store psychology books principally sold in rural Wal-Marts, it is hardly enough to sustain an operation as ostentatiously gargantuan as yours. Since your so-called message is little more than the opening minute of an Oprah special, you have to ensure that your congregation worships and idolizes you. There can be no more slip-ups, Vi!

Victoria: But many opinion leaders have backslid in their private lives, and their followers forgave them.

Heather: That is because they committed to definite positions, hon. Because a man of God like Rush Limbaugh condemns everyone who isn’t a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, wealthy, heterosexual male, he can become a hillbilly heroin/hydrocodone addict and his fans don’t mind, because they love his message of hate and animosity too much to abandon him, no matter what his indiscretions. When Brothers Falwell and Robertson say something utterly ridiculous (which is a fairly regular event), we overlook it because these devout leaders condemn everyone who isn’t like us.

Victoria: But we want to embrace everyone, Heather.

Heather: That’s apparent, Vickie. To ensure that as many people as possible join your “Church of the Generic Message,” you stand for nothing substantive, thereby making certain you don’t alienate anyone (except people wise enough to recognize the absence of substance). To accomplish this in the long-term, you must make yourselves so loveable and beyond reproach that people embrace you despite your complete lack of ideology. Pulling a Leona Helmsley on a commercial airplane just won’t cut it.

Christmas Eve-Eve drive-by blogging

Since we'll all be busy living our lives offline for the next few days, here are some tide-me-overs ...

-- In Oaxaca Mexico, they're taking time off from the recent strife to celebrate Noche de Rábanos; Night of the Radishes. Do NOT miss seeing the pictures.

-- "Flogs", blogs that are actually promotional campaigns for products, stores, even opinion influence, are lately all the rage. They happen to be a violation of federal law, specifically the Federal Trade Commission guidelines protecting consumers against misleading information.

-- Yesterday's holiday weekend document dump included the admission that the Department of Homeland Security violated the Privacy Act -- back in 2004 when it was first caught by the GAO -- by collecting too much information from US airline passengers.

Do you feel safer yet?

-- It appears that a US president did have bin Laden in his gunsights, as the ABC docu-drama "Path to 9/11" revealed, but the president was Bush and not Clinton.

-- I give our local paper a hard time, but they have some interesting news up lately (these links will be good for a week or two before the Chron moves them into the pay-per-view archives) ...

• The Selective Service System is testing its military draft machinery for the first time since 1998.
• Accenture didn't exactly get fired from their state contract, but they lost a lot of it. For essentially shitty performance. You may know Accenture as the former Andersen Consulting, of the now-defunct Arthur Andersen accounting firm (the biggest loser in the Enron affair).
• Texas gained almost 600,000 new residents this year. That is nearly the sum of one Congressional district. About 160,000 came from Louisiana alone. One word: Katrina.
• Loren Steffy reminds us that the cost of our employer-provided health insurance isn't just a financial one.
• On September 11, 1977, Bing Crosby and David Bowie sang the duet Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy for a Christmas TV special. Bing died of a heart attack a month later. But the song nearly didn't happen because Ziggy Stardust hated Little Drummer Boy and didn't want to sing it.

-- Barack Obama isn't considered by many African-Americans as "one of us". A startling and somewhat fascinating opinion here (from a white boy's POV, anyway) . I don't know whether this is insightful deconstruction or a destructive whisper campaign. I cannot imagine that this sort of thing would keep anyone from voting for him, but I would still be interested in the responses to this article from African-American readers of this blog.

The Great Wall lays down the smack

Our man just keeps on improving, his game and his English.



Tip of the backwards cap to HouStoned.

Fox News to surge forces in War on Christmas

"FNC will present a three hour primetime O’Reilly Factor Christmas Marathon beginning on Monday, December 25th at 8PM EST," a Fox News release states. Also, Shoutin' Sean Hannity will host a one-hour special, "A Nashville New Year", starring several of country music's leading Republican freaks.

Under the President's directive to "go shopping more", Orally will no doubt release some casualty figures related to victory, such as ...

-- the number of credit card accounts maxed out

-- the percentages of parking lot capacities at shopping malls around the country during the week before Christmas, and

-- a panel of pundits predicting the amount of the next rise in interest rates by the Fed due to inflation fears.

The day after (the trade, the election, the rest)

-- So after the Philadelphia 76ers swapped their malcontent superstar to the Denver Nuggets yesterday, it appears that Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony might be headed for a *ahem* rocky relationship. The league's two leading scorers forced to share the ball? The Answer, the perpetual adolescent -- rebellious, sullen -- suddenly recast as thirty-something sage and imparter of been-there, done-that wisdom to Melo?

"A.I. will love it there for the next 14 games," one Eastern Conference official laughed on Tuesday afternoon, a reference to the suspension Anthony is serving for fighting in Madison Square Garden last week.

Carmelo will return to the court on January 20 in Houston against the Rockets, and the problems could start as soon as he takes the floor with Iverson that night. That's when the question first gets asked: "Whose team is this?" In these selfish times, the answer is probably not "ours". The dynamic of Carmelo Anthony and the Nuggets changed dramatically last Saturday night in New York; Anthony showed himself to be a flawed young man with that sucker punch, an error in emotional judgment compounded with the way he swung and started running back on defense in a sight never seen before in his basketball career.

Just a guess, but I don't think Melo is going to like fitting into A.I.'s game. This was Carmelo Anthony's ball and his team until he gave Iverson the opening to take it away.

-- The runoff in HD-29 will be between two Republicans. Anthony Di Novo and his gang of volunteers -- including Hal, muse, and K-T (multiple postings from the field at each of those locations)-- worked hard, but the blue wave was turned back by the Texas red levee again.

Perhaps some of these conservatives can be dispatched to New Orleans to help with flood control. That is, if they don't choose to help serve their President in Iraq.

-- Judith Regan, the book publisher who green-lighted OJ Simpson's "If I Did It", was fired by HarperCollins over the weekend. You may recall her previous co-starring role as the girlfriend of slimy former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik. She seems perfectly suited for a position in the Trump organization counseling wayward girls, don't you think? Second chances and all?

-- If Fidel Castro is reported to be dead sooner or later, officials fear a mass exodus from Cuba. Even here in Houston they are preparing for it.

Preparations are underway for the traditional Cuban celebration of Noche Buena in my father-in-law's household. About ten of us with Cuban and Salvadoran roots will gather and celebrate. Here's a good description of the celebration, complete with the roast pig.

Knicker-boxers (and other news)

I hope it was worth it. The sucker-punch that Carmelo Anthony threw -- after which, it should be noted, he vanished to the opposite end of the court as quick as if he was on a fast break -- has cost him a significant portion of his reputation and season. I'm all for sticking up for your teammates, but if there's a proper way to go about it, his actions would have to be the complete opposite. The league's leading scorer on a less-than-average team now gets to sit and watch for a tad over 25% of his team's remaining games. Way to go, Melo.

Fights in basketball used to be as common as they still are in hockey, as HouStoned reminds.

-- Today is Election Day in HD-29, the statehouse district covering a few counties south of Houston. Lots of mi compadres have been covering the race to replace deceased representative Glenda Dawson. The Democratic candidate -- he lost to Dawson in November -- is Dr. Anthony DiNovo and he could move on to a runoff in January with one of the three Republicans vying for the job. Pearland is a GOP-freaky place, so to steal a seat away from them here would be schweet. It's all about today's turnout.

-- This news is nothing short of huge for diabetes sufferers, of which I am one. If it turns out that an injection of pepper juice cures it, Big Pharma is going to be pissed.

-- These are the rules of presidential primary season blogging.

-- Eugene Robinson:

Here's an idea: Let's send more U.S. troops to Iraq. The generals say it's way too late to even think about resurrecting Colin Powell's "overwhelming force" doctrine, so let's send over a modest "surge" in troop strength that has almost no chance of making any difference -- except in the casualty count. Oh, and let's not give these soldiers and Marines any sort of well-defined mission. Let's just send them out into the bloody chaos of Baghdad and the deadly badlands of Anbar province with orders not to come back until they "get the job done."

I don't know about you, but that strikes me as a terrible idea, arguably the worst imaginable "way forward" in Iraq. So of course this seems to be where George W. Bush is headed.

Yes, that's about right.

-- Like Dick Cheney's shooting (and Dick Cheney's health, and Dick Cheney's still-undisclosed location), the White House kept Laura Bush's cancer a secret at long as they possibly could. Note to the First Lady: now would be a good time to stop smoking.

-- The administration, presumably under the direction of its new Defense Secretary, is sending another aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. This is meant to send a message to Iran. It has no other intention, so go back to watching American Idol.

-- You didn't miss the Sunday Funnies, did you?

TIME's Person of the Year? ME!

And you, too.

To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn't make enough PlayStation3s.

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.

And we are so ready for it. We're ready to balance our diet of predigested news with raw feeds from Baghdad and Boston and Beijing. You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos -- those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms -- than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.

Congratulations, you wild-eyed rebel.

Basketsprawl

Things erupted when the rookie Mardy Collins committed a flagrant foul on the Nuggets’ J. R. Smith, who was going for a layup. In seconds, Nate Robinson and Smith appeared to tackle each other, and a scrum formed behind the baseline.

Anthony then punched Collins in the face, sending Collins to the floor and escalating the fight.

Several other players also threw punches, and Anthony is almost certain to draw a suspension from the league. The Knicks’ Jared Jeffries had to be restrained as he chased Anthony. Several players, coaches and security guards ran onto the court trying to end the fight.

With all 10 players who were playing at the time of the fight ejected, the game was delayed for several minutes as the three referees tried to sort out what had happened.

Another black eye (pun intended) for the NBA.