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.