MetroRail anagrams, FOX screenshots, and conservative idiots

Ethan has the Houston light rail train station names in anagram here. Boing Boing has dozens more cities treated similarly.

These FOX screenshots capture the majesty of their propaganda. The real outrage is that this is the most watched cable television "news" in the United States; 2-to-1 over CNN.

And the Top Ten Conservative Idiots once more features the President of the United States with this lede:

It's hard to believe that just one week after the vice president of the United States shot a man in the face, an even bigger story would come along. But here it is: last week the Bush administration approved the sale of the operations of twenty-one major American ports to Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates.

He's number one. He's number one...

Curt Gowdy, Don Knotts, and Darren McGavin

They say they come in threes; these television icons -- to me -- all passed away this past week.

I remember Curt Gowdy from the Game of the Week broadcasts in the '60s. This was the only baseball you could find to watch at the time. About the same time I was becoming a Astros fan and listening to Gene Elston (congratulations to him on receiving the Ford Frick award this week) and Loel Passe ("breezed 'im one mo' time") on the radio, I was watching Gowdy and Tony Kubek on the tube. He also did the World Series as well as some of the first Super Bowl telecasts. The ones I clearly recall were III -- which was the seminal moment for Joe Willie Namath and the AFL -- and V, which was the first one the Dallas Cowboys played in (they lost, on a last-second field goal to the Colts, which nearly made me kick in the screen). Gowdy was just as famous for being a Red Sox broadcaster and for The American Sportsman, but to me he'll always be baseball on Saturday afternoons.

Speaking of firsts, the first thing my family ever saw on our new console color television was Don Knotts and "The Incredible Mr. Limpet". I believe it must have been 1965, since the movie premiered in '64.

And if you watch the Sci-Fi Channel you can still catch episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which made McGavin famous to me long before A Christmas Story, the "major award", and "you'll shoot your eye out". Those old Night Stalkers look awfully cheesy now, but at the time I was just short of terrified once a week by them.

RIP to three good men.

Moneyshot Quotes: Conservatives ready to cut and run from Iraq, port storm rages, and Jeff Bagwell arrives in Florida

Rush Limbaugh says we can't win (.mp3), Bill O'Reilly says we need to "hand everything over to the Iraqis as fast as humanly possible", and Wiiliam F. Buckley says we must "acknowledge defeat".

This is what Howard Dean was saying months ago, wasn't it? Yet he was vilified.

The Port Storm isn't subsiding. Bush digs in his heels, and the Republicans prepare to throw him, and the deal with Dubai, over the side. Since we're assembling Moneyshot Quotes, here's two more:

Thomas Kean, head of the 9/11 Commission:

"It shouldn't have happened, it never should have happened," Kean said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

The quicker the Bush administration can get out of the deal, the better, he said. "There's no question that two of the 9/11 hijackers came from there and money was laundered through there," Kean said.

President Bush, making sense for once:

"This deal wouldn't go forward if we were concerned about the security for the United States of America."

And finally, unrelated to any of the preceding, Jeff Bagwell had this to say about his disagreement with Astros management over whether he can still play:

"I understand the business side of baseball. If I cannot play baseball this year, and I am physically unable to play with the Houston Astros, trust me, I want them to collect as much insurance as possible. I'll write the letter. That's not an issue for me. But I just want the chance to see if I can play."

My one editorial comment for the day: Bagwell is the best player the Houston Astros have ever had, and I sincerely hope Drayton McLane won't piss in his brain again.

Meet fifty Texas Democratic candidates at once

The Harris County Democratic Party and more than 20 social clubs are joining together for a Primary Kickoff and Roundup Rally in Houston on Saturday, February 25. The event will showcase the party's candidates just before the primary elections.

Among the speakers will be Chris Bell, Bob Gammage, Barbara Radnofsky, and David Van Os, and there will be over fifty other candidates for federal, state, and county offices in attendance. You'll have the opportunity to meet them all.

It's at Drexler's Barbecue in downtown Houston from 5-8 pm and is sponsored by the following:

* 1960 Democrats
* I-10 East Democrats
* Area 5 Democrats
* Battleground Democrats
* Bay Area New Democrats (BAND)
* Bellaire Democrats
* Braeswood Democrats
* Democracy for Houston
* Fort Bend Area Democrats
* Greater Heights Democratic Club
* Harris County Democrats
* Harris County Democratic Party
* Harris County Young Democrats
* Katy Area New Democratic Organization (KANDO)
* Kingwood Democrats
* Meyerland Democrats
* Northwest Crossing Area Democrats
* Oil Patch Democrats
* River Oaks Area Democratic Women
* San Jacinto Democratic Veterans Brigade
* Sharpstown Democrats
* Texas Progressive Populist Caucus
* West Houston Democratic Club
* West University Area Democratic Club

The cost is $5.00 and recommendations are highly recommended. RSVP to kellen dot wilson at sbcglobal dot net .

Skilling and Lay get thrown under the bus again

This week it was the former managing director of investor relations and corporate secretary:

The spotlight was largely on former Enron Chairman Ken Lay today as a former company executive accused him of repeatedly misrepresenting the company's financial health to investors, analysts and even employees.

Paula Rieker ... told jurors that in one case she even corrected Lay and he still continued to misrepresent the truth about Enron's retail business. ...

"I told Mr. Lay a significant amount of the earnings came from the sale of stock by Enron Energy Services and not from core activities," Rieker said, meaning it was one-time revenue that did not indicate EES was strong. She said Lay did not change his pitch. ...

She said she was "very bothered" by the company decision to continue to make EES look like a growth story in 2001 by shifting its losses to the more profitable trading division. She said when she complained, her boss (Mark) Koenig (who has previously testified for the prosecution) said "'You may not agree with it, but your job is to deliver the company message.'"

Rieker said she saw Lay mislead analysts by pretending not to know the name of the financial deal called Raptor that was unwound at a $1 billion hit to shareholders equity. She said Lay also misled analysts about why the company stopped charting the future contract value of the retail division.

...

One of the most dramatic moments of the day may have been one of the least significant legally.

Lay isn't charged with insider trading or with stealing from the company as it went into its death spiral. But prosecutor (John) Hueston showed a timeline including troubles at Enron in October and November 2001 that contrasted the company's ills with Lay's drawing millions out in cash.

While the timeline focused on things like the pension plan closing to employees who wanted to move stock, the cancellation of the holiday party, the failure of the Dynegy merger, it also showed Lay withdrawing $1 million here or $2.5 million there in cash from a revolving loan account with the company approved by the board in better times.

Lay withdrew $1 million the day the Dynegy deal died, which was the last hope of keeping Enron out of bankruptcy court. Lay's lawyer Bruce Collins asked Rieker on cross-examination if that amount wasn't just a drop in the bucket when hundreds of millions of dollars were being called in by Enron creditors at the same time but she said "No sir."

Rieker recalled for jurors how in February 2002 the board of directors was presented with a report that included Lay's stock sales for 2001, the year the company came apart.

"I learned that Mr. Lay had been selling stock back to the company in return for cash in excess of $70 million," she said. When Hueston asked about how the board of directors reacted, Lay's lawyer objected several times.

"They were outraged," Rieker finally answered.

Asked if she could recall what any specific board member reaction, Rieker said, "John Duncan exclaimed that 'Mr. Lay was using Enron as a damn ATM machine.'" By the time Rieker repeated that, because of an objection in mid-sentence, it appeared every juror was taking notes.

Rieker also bolstered some of the testimony given by Koenig about Skilling's involvement in altering earnings reports before they were made public.

She said she understood that in January 2000 and again July 2000 that Skilling ordered that earnings per share be increased. In January, she said it was done virtually overnight when they realized analysts were estimating earnings at 31 cents, rather than the 30 cents Enron almost reported.

In July 2000, she said, her boss told her Skilling ordered the earnings be raised a couple cents over the 32 cents they had planned. She said analysts and investors were told it was strong underlying performance that caused the hike to 34 cents.

The truth, she said, "would have really hurt the credibility of Enron and it would have hurt the stock price."

I took a bit more than the usual liberty with that excerpt because it reflects so clearly the simply bottomless hubris of Kenny and Jeffrey. Besides the usual "what made these men think they could get away with this" has to be "what did they think their former underlings were going to say once they had made a plea deal with the Feds"?

It's really too bad they can't get life in prison, isn't it ?

(I'm not a death penalty advocate.)

What it will be like ordering a pizza in 2010

Click here and turn your speakers up (it's work-safe).

Primary Endorsements

Vince Leibowitz and Charles Kuffner and Greg Wythe and Eddie Rodriguez have posted theirs; mine follow (in the contested races) :

US Senate -- Barbara Ann Radnofsky

Governor -- Chris Bell

Lt. Governor -- Ben Z Grant

Agriculture Commissioner -- Hank Gilbert

US Congress, 1st -- no preference

US Congress, 7th -- Jim Henley and David Murff both earn my endorsement. The constituents of the Seventh Congressional District would be well served by either man.

US Congress, 10th -- Ted Ankrum

US Congress, 28th -- Ciro Rodriguez

Texas House, District 140 -- no preference

Texas House, District 146: Borris Miles

Texas House, District 147 -- Garnet Coleman

And it's not a contested primary, but you all ought to know who I support for Texas Attorney General by now. I'll add links to other blogland endorsements as I find them, and if anyone wants me to explain my picks, ask me in the comments.

Update: Stace Medellin adds his dos centavos. Nate chimes in. LFT and Cincinnatus have some pointed remarks on the governor's race, from opposite perspectives.

Update: I really should revise my "no preference' in CD-01 to recommend whom you should not vote for, and that is Roger Owen. He is apparently an unmitigated homophobe and more than a little flaky, and isn't worthy of support.

Update (2/22): Abram gets up on his soapbox. Fred injects the truth serum. Just Another Matt gives us his.

Pot Luck (contains no gamebird)

I'm going to mosh a few random unconnected items together into a sheperd's-pie of a post:

-- NBA All-Star-weekend in Houston concludes with the basketball game this evening, and the bacchanalia got so out of control around the Galleria yesterday that HPD closed several exits on the 610 Loop and likewise blocked cars from entering at-capacity parking garages until the revelers unclotted.

"The revelers" is probably an understatement. This was entourages in fleets of stretch limos gridlocking intersections at every single restaurant, club, luxury high-rise condo and entrance to Neiman Marcus.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, and lasting deep into the evening.

(In the interest of full disclosure, the two Houston Chronicle reporters on this story -- fresh off the debutante beat -- also implicate marauding President's Day shoppers in the traffic jam.)

-- Mardi Gras is a bit of a letdown this year, both in N'Awlins and in Galveston (there because of the Crescent City's downsizing, here because of unusually cold weather for February).

-- Dick Cheney's gunshot victim, upon release from the Corpus Christi hospital where he spent the past week, apologized for all the trouble he's caused the Vice President. The birdshot pellets lodged in Harry Whittington's heart and liver, each through their representatives, also issued statements of regret for the incident.

In other news, asbestosis victims offered Halliburton a heartfelt mea culpa for breathing on the job.

-- Early voting in Texas begins tomorrow and continues (almost) all the way to March 7. A spirited Democratic primary up and down ballot features several contested races, the most focus being on the two candidates for Governor, Chris Bell and Bob Gammage. Latest poll numbers here. If there happens to be a runoff -- incumbent Republican Rick MoFo'n Goodhair has a handful of erstwhile challengers, including this kook from his right (go look; he's got a picture of a bloody baby on the home page) -- then the Kinkster and Grandma (pronounced 'Gran-Maw') have to wait another thirty days before collecting signatures.

Regarding the Dems, the Chronic snorts itself awake for a moment, then rolls over and snores loudly.

-- Cindy Sheehan will have a tea party for Barbara Bush -- the GranMaw, not the hottie -- here in Houston tomorrow also.

Update (2/21): More on the Galleria shopping orgy here. Untold by the Chronic in any report were the rumors of shopping mall security squaring off on limosine drivers refusing to move, steadfastly unwilling to inconvenience their VIPs. Police had to intervene (allegedly). And Lyn has pictures of Cindty Sheehan in Babs Bush's backyard yesterday.

On replacing Cheney with Condi

I've been thinking this same thing for quite awhile now, and Burt Levine beat me to the pixels with it (FWIW, Burt is a local Republican who has the ability to find common ground with Democrats. This came in an e-mail and I may be able to add a link to the entire piece in an update) :

I suspect what they're thinking and not saying is, If Dick Cheney weren't vice president, who'd be a good vice president? They're thinking, At some time down the road we may wind up thinking about a new plan. And one night over drinks at a barbecue in McLean one top guy will turn to another top guy and say, "Under the never permeable and never porous Dome of Silence, tell me . . . wouldn't you like to replace Cheney?" Why would they be thinking about this? It's not the shooting incident itself, it's that Dick Cheney has been the administration's hate magnet for five years now. Halliburton, energy meetings, Libby, Plamegate.

...

Cheney has always said he has no aim to run. Bush may feel in time that he has reason to want to put in a new vice president in order to pick a successor who'll presumably have an edge in the primaries--he's the sitting vice president, and Republicans still respect primogeniture. They will tend to make the common-sense assumption that a man or woman who's been vice president for, say, a year and a half, is a man or woman who already knows the top job. Every president since 1960 has been a governor or vice president. Currently the Republican Governor of California is ineliigible because he is not a born American, the Republican Governor of Texas would be two Texans in a row and the Republican Governor of Florida is too liberal to win the nomination from the southern conservatives that choose the nominee and the Republican Governor of Florida would be two Bushes in a row and America is a republic, not a royalty run nation.

Anyway, the new man or woman will get a honeymoon, which means he won't be fully hated by the time the 2008 primaries begin.

This new vice president would, however, have to be very popular in the party, or the party wouldn't buy it. Replacing Cheney would be chancy. The new veep would have to get through the Senate, which has at this point at least three likely contenders for the nomination, at least two of whom who would not, presumably, be amused. The current secretary of state has succeeded through two senate confirmations already.

People wouldn't like it . . . unless they liked it. How could they be persuaded to like it?

It would have to be a man or woman wildly popular in the party and the press. And it would have to be a decision made by Dick Cheney. If he didn't want to do it he wouldn't have to. If he were pressed--Dick, we gotta pull your plug or we're going to lose in '08 and see all our efforts undone--he might make the decision himself. He'd have to step down on his own. He's just been through a trauma, and he can't be liking his job as much now as he did three years ago. No one on the downside of a second term does, hate magnet or not.

I've thought for what seems like a long time that Dick would have another heart attack -- rather than give them to his friends -- and fade to black (figuratively speaking), paving the way for The Chosen One, 2008. John McCain has been sucking up to Bush since 2004 and badly wants the Pope's blessing, but he won't get it for two reasons: One, the fundies can't abide him, and two, the governor of Arizona is a Democrat.

So my hunch is that if Condi moves up, you could see an independent McCain run for the White House in 2008 -- a scenario not altogether dissimilar from our gubernatorial contest here in Deep-In-The-Hearta this year.

No hunches from here yet on our 2008 candidate, the above scenario notwithstanding.

Update: Burt e-mails me to say that he got the idea from this RCP posting, which was inspired by the indomitable Peggy Noonan and also Tony Blankley. Burt, you gotta start hangin' out with a better crowd. And congratulations on your new gig with Councilman MJ Khan (the city of Houston's first Muslim-American council member now has a Jewish staffer. How about that.)

Six Degrees of Dick and Whit (includes LBJ and both Bushes)

NoItAll, at ITPT:

Katharine Armstrong was appointed to the TPW Board by George Bush, who appointed Dick Cheney to find him a Vice President. Katharine told Dick to go appoint himself. Bush said okay, since she owns the second or third largest private ranch in the U.S. – a ranch particulary owned by her distant cousin Rep. Kleberg, served ably by young staffer Lyndon B. Johnson, until the young LBJ got cozy with the Brown Brothers, who formed the precursor to Halliburton, which Dick Cheney ran for a while, until he appointed himself Vice President.

Today’s Austin American-Statesman quotes UT Board of Regents Chairman James Huffines, who was the Appointments Secretary during the second (Bill) Clements Administration. Who was Appointments Secretary in the first Clements Administration: Katharine’s dad Tobin Armstrong, who was married to former Ambassador to Great Britian Anne Armstrong, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, who chose President Bush’s dad (also named George Bush) to be his Vice President.

Yet the Bush, Brown, Armstrong, and Johnson families seem to have no relation to Kevin Bacon. Unless you believe White House Press Secretary Scott McClennan’s dad’s book published last year that LBJ killed JFK – while officing in the building owned by Harry Whittington.

Cheney got a gun.

Whole world's come undone.

(Thanks to johntarheel76 in the comments at BOR for the Aerosmith riff.)

The primary wars are heating up also. Tim McCann with Chris Bell's campaign has responded to the near-constant online assault on their guy with this post on his blog. David Murff grew tired of taking potshots from Jim Henley and released this, which instantly drew more fire from Henley supporters.

Twenty-two days to Election Day, and everyone ought to buckle their chinstraps.

Update: Rico Politico went ahead and did the whole song.

The Grammys last week were great

In fact, I had something less than halfway written and then I read Bartcop's take and decided I'd crib it:

Madonna opened the show and she never disappoints. She was all legs and she looked like a teenager up there.

U2 was next with Vertigo, and they always deliver.

Mary J. Blige came out and sang One, and this time, unlike New Orleans, she was free to bust loose and give us her version of the song. Nice.

Kelly Clarkson, and then Ellen introduced Paul McCartney with "This man doesn't need an introduction..." and walked off. Paul did some boring new song, then a blistering Helter Skelter, reminding us that he didn't stab anybody.

Mariah was next, and she was the first big highlight. She sang with more grit and emotion that I've seen from her before, and at the end she went up and hit those notes in that dogs-only area. Damn, can anybody else in the building do that? I don't think so...

Keith Urban and Faith Hill had to follow that -- too bad.

Worse yet was the tribute to Sly Stone. Too many people onstage, not enough hours of rehearsal -- it was a mess. Eventually Sly came out with his white mohawk, which was stunning, but either Sly doesn't sing anymore or they had a world of microphone problems.

I was hoping for a Thankyou Falettinme Be Mice elf, but no. Sly mumbled a few lines then waved goodbye to the crowd and left. The band looked at each other with an "I don't know" look on their faces.

Springsteen did Devils & Dust, like he'd made his own deal at the Crossroads. I kept hearing Dylan -- that's a compliment, Bruce. He closed with a terse "Bring 'em home," which left the censors unprepared to cut his message of peace.

Then Kanye reminded the crowd why the word "show" is in "show business." Golddigger was Shirley the most infectious song of this past year...

Herbie and Christina did Leon, and I said to Mrs. Bart, "Christina has more torch, but Mariah more range than Montana."

Winding down, they seemed to have a Richard Pryor tribute ready to roll, but maybe they were late because they just blew right past Richard. Seems like everybody forgot Richard. SNL could hardly be bothered, Dave was too busy, Leno did 30 seconds, but I guess Richard died when people were busy with other things -- that's sad.

Then they closed with the massive jam to New Orleans and Wilson Pickett.

Still, I thought it was a night of highlights. I was surprised. So often these shows can totally suck.

I thought Christina Aguilera and Herbie Hancock were a little better than Bart thinks, but other than that he's on the money. After Paul said, "This is my first Grammy performance, and I'd like to rock a little," and they lit into Helter Skelter, I was blown. All I could think of was that the song -- together with some '60's-strength LSD -- made Charlie Manson kill people, and how that old man McCartney could still go.

And the whole Sly and the Family Stone thing was just odd.

But I've made sure to catch the Grammys for the last several years because there's always some surprises and it usually knocks your socks off. This year was no exception.