In two weeks, what will probably be the last chance for George Bush to change the dynamic of the Presidential election will occur in New York City, the site of the Republican Convention. Since John Kerry clinched his party's nomination in March, there has been a steady, relentless trend in the national polls giving him between a two and seven point lead, a trend that hardened after his convention last month. Kerry not only leads Bush in every state captured by Al Gore in 2000, he continues to lead in almost every "purple" state that Bush narrowly carried last time, such as Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, Arkansas and Missouri. In fact, Kerry is practically tied with the President in a number of states that cannot reasonably be considered part of the Democratic base, including North Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado, Arizona and Virginia; unless the situation on the ground changes, Kerry may well capture over 400 electoral votes, something that has been accomplished by a Democrat only once in the last 60 years, as well as sweeping the Democrats into power in both houses of Congress.

Of course, the first Tuesday in November is an eternity away, and the polls can shift dramatically from now until the polls open, so Kerry supporters should feel far from complacent. Because of his unpopularity, Bush as an excellent chance to get what eluded Kerry, a significant post-convention bounce, and at least temporarily alter the dynamics of the race. Whether that bounce has any durability, though, may have been hurt by the President's sluggish performance on the campaign trail since Kerry was nominated. Instead of providing the electorate with a compelling reason to stay the course, Bush's campaign has been diverted rather foolishly by ephemera such as the attacks on Kerry's Vietnam service, and the pointless negativity of last week's speech by Dick Cheney on the subject of "sensitivity" in foreign policy, a charge that ended up becoming a public relations disaster when it turned out the President had used the exact same word. At a time when he should be building up his positives leading into a make-or-break convention, and holding off the attacks until September, Bush is only reaffirming why much of Christendom views him as being one of the biggest a-holes on the planet.

A case in point is the latest blogospheric obsession, the allegations raised by some of Bush's supporters that Kerry's war record was not all that it seemed. While this issue may resonate with the armchair warriors, envious of Kerry's willingness to sacrifice for his country even when he didn't approve of the policy, it simply isn't an important issue for people concerned about whether they will have a job next year, or if their sons and daughters are going to be sent to die on some ideologue's crusade. And even if every charge made by the "Swift Boat" vets was plausible (and as shown here and here, there is a good reason why the recovered memory of "witnesses" some 35 years after the fact tends to be less reliable than contemporareneous accounts of the same incidents), one is still left with the reality that John Kerry went to Vietnam, while most of his counterparts didn't. Focusing on Kerry's service, even in the most negative manner possible, still leads to a comparison with Bush's history during that period, and that is comparison that cannot help but benefit the Senator from Massachusetts; hence, the polls taken over the last two weeks have seen a strengthening of Kerry's lead, rather than any perceptible movement towards the President.

Even more pathetic has been the intense focus over whether Kerry ever set foot in Cambodia back in the day. For those of you who don't spend every waking moment on the internet, the controversy stems from a number of references Kerry made over the years to having assisted the CIA in drop-offs on the Mekong River. At one point 20 years ago, Kerry had claimed that he had done so on Christmas Eve, 1968, when apparently he was off by a month. When compared with some of the "misstatements" made by Presidents over the years, from Reagan claiming on several occasions to having helped liberate concentration camps when he was "in uniform" during WW2, to Clinton's initial denial that he had a sexual relationship with an intern, to some of Bush's more ignoble efforts (from "hitting the trifecta" to his recent boast that like Senator McCain, he had once been a bomber pilot), the allegations against Kerry are pretty trivial, even if it had been proven that he was never in Cambodia, and had always known he had never been there. The exaggerated boasts of a soldier, like a politician's use of hyperbole to make a point, are pretty much discounted by the public anyway, and not surprisingly, the issue seems destined to remain with the purview of the tinfoil hat brigade.

So the Republicans, frustrated that there issue hasn't developed any traction in the media outside of the broadsheets owned by Rupert Murdoch and Rev. Moon, counter that this is yet another example of that diabolical conspiracy known as the lib'rul media, which supposedly wants Kerry to win. Instapundit, among others, has compared the coverage of Kerry's adventures in Vietnam with the media's interest in Bush's shirking of duty in the Texas A.N.G., ignoring the fact that four years ago, the media showed almost no interest in that subject, and didn't this year until the head of the DNC made it an issue.

Back in 2000, it was Gore who was being hounded mercilessly, for claims that he never made (such as inventing the Internet), and for places he never lived at (such as a luxury hotel in D.C.). Quite often, those attacks came straight out of GOP press releases, and the "journalists" who covered the campaign for the major newspapers and networks pretty much published them verbatim. Since the only Republicans to comment on the Swiftboat Vets' allegations (Senators McCain, Warner and Hegel) have repudiated them, it is perhaps not surprising there has been a lack of interest in such warmed-over smears by reporters, many of whom seemed to have been shamed by how they covered the campaign four years ago.

Or maybe it's just that we're living in the post-9/11 world, and we all just want to take this election a little more seriously this time. The last-second articles in the LA Times last October on the Gropinator, which were far better documented, actually seemed to help Arnold with swing-voters, and these attacks have certainly not helped the Republicans take down Kerry. As I said, there is still some time to go before the election, and Kerry's campaign will have to pick up its game when it comes to responding to Republican attacks, but for the time being, it's looking good....

U.S.A [PR] 93, U.S.A. 74: The Americans sprinted out to a 22-point halftime lead, then held on when the NBA'ers made a furious second-half comeback to win their first game in the Olympics. Carlos Arroyo led the way with 24 points, whose team received the following praise from the defeated point guard, Allan Iverson: "They play the game the way it's supposed to be played...It's not about athletics. That's the game the way Karl Malone and John Stockton play it. It's good for kids to see how the game is supposed to be played." We will have to step up our game significantly by Tuesday, though, when we play Lithuania, while the mainlanders have to hope they don't get bullied off the court when they play the host team from Greece.

Another Bush Flip-flop: It appears we're not "turning the corner" after all.

The Politics of Hate: Well, this is a shock: the man behind the "Swift Boat" allegations has turned out to be a bigot who has spent a little too much time posting his anti-papist and anti-Muslim views on a white supremacist hate site. Jerry Corsi, co-author of the latest chickenblogger manifesto, Unfit for Command, was quoted making the following witicisms last year on freerepublic.com:

"'Islam is a peaceful religion -- just as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered and the infidels are killed.' In another entry, he says: 'So this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the lawyers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that's probably about it.'...(I)n a March posting, Corsi discussed Kerry's faith, writing: 'After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judaism? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?'" (above quotes courtesy of the Associated Press)

Wink, wink.

The Bush campaign, which no doubt hoped that it could skate into the convention without having its own side constantly remind the public that John Kerry served in Vietnam, and certainly not wishing to be implicitly attacking the credibility of the decorations other veterans have earned over the years, reacted angrily to the absurd notion that they had anything to do with the controversial ads or their politically extreme auteur (btw, who knew that anyone in this country still used the word "buggered"?). Masochistically, the wingnuts have begun to obsess over whether Kerry actually entered Cambodia (as he has said several times, including a coy allusion written in his battlefield journal in 1968 [see bottom paragraph]) during his tour of duty, or was merely on the border; either way, it's a distinction that cannot fail to make Kerry's battlefield exploits seem more intriguing to swing voters. It seems Kerry has the same good political fortune in the enemies he has drawn that Clinton had back in '92. [links via Atrios (who has more on the partisan insights of Mr. Corsi) and Kevin Drum]

In what has to be considered a death knell for the prosecution, the accuser of Kobe Bryant has filed a civil action seeking mucho dinero. Since an obvious defense is always going to be that the alleged victim is trying to scam money from the NBA star, the filing of the civil action before trial all but concedes that point. In addition, the civil complaint publicly regurgitates, in graphic detail, the act in question, openly defying the gag order issued by the court. We can assume the prosecution will drop this in a matter of days.

As far as the civil case against Bryant, I have felt all along that this would be the more preferable arena for both sides. Because the sole issue of consequence from now on will be money, the Laker star can either settle or not settle, depending on how much he can afford to spend, without any further erosion of his public image or having to register as a sex offender (not to mention the threat of prison). His attorneys can also delve more freely into the plaintiff's past than they could in a criminal case (as, of course, can her attorney). On the other hand, the plaintiff can build a case against Bryant based on simple assault, without any of the baggage that a rape charge entails before a jury; the fact that she had sex with another man hours later, while material in defense of a charge that her injuries were caused by Bryant, is now less important, merely a factor that may or may not be weighed by a jury if it awards damages. And, of course, the burden of proof is a lot easier to sustain in civil court.

U.S. 76, Serbia-Montenegro 60: Do you believe in miracles !?! For the second straight game, our motley collection of the well-fed and the underachieving overcame a hostile crowd, and stunned defending World Champion (and 4 1/2 point favorite) S&M on its home court. Tim Duncan's 16 points led the way for the scrappy Americans. Team U.S.A. jumped out to a quick lead against the over-confident Serbs, who apparently thought all they had to do to overawe the competition was have Bodiroga and Radocevic show up. Fat chance. Bring on Turkey !!

Now that's what I call a "baby bounce": 32k new jobs !! I think the conventional wisdom has been that Bush will go into the election with a growing economy, albeit one with tepid growth. The employment figures over the last three months indicate that another recession/jobless "recovery" is on the horizon (if we're not already there), so that assumption will have to be revised. Expect to see more bogus ads of the "Swiftboat" variety from the Bush camp if the economy continues its Triple Salchow into the toilet.

Why Dennis Prager should not be allowed near children....

It was one year ago tonight that my sister added a new generation to my family. Happy Birthday, Charlie !!

I'm with the President on this issue....

U.S. 80, Germany 77: One day after getting blown-out by Italy, the lightly-regarded Americans came back to upset another former member of the Axis Powers on a last-second half-court shot by Allen Iverson. Relying on such elaborate trickery as "passing to the open player", shooting "high-percentage shots", and "moving without the ball", the over-confident Germans, who almost qualified for the Olympics, were unable to put the U.S. away, and finally succumbed to the scrappy Dream Teamers. Making the victory even sweeter is the fact that all but one of the players on Team U.S.A. play in our own domestic professional league, the "N.B.A.", which may finally earn the credibility it deserves to put it on a par with established leagues in Europe, Asia and South America. Iverson, in particular, was impressive behind the three-point arc, leading some to favorably compare him to Italian star Gianluca Basile.

Italy 95, U.S. 78: You had to figure that Giacomo Galanda would give Tim Duncan a hard time today. Olympic basketball is really the only time an American can feel comfortable rooting against the U.S.

Excellent (as always) Krugman column, on TV coverage of last week's convention, and how the success of Fox News has come to color the political coverage of other networks, including CNN. Kerry's so-called "Baby Bounce" fits in with this type of "journalism"; take an outlying poll (Gallup) that shows Kerry losing ground, ignore the half-dozen other surveys that show the reverse (including, more importantly, the state-by-state polls that show Kerry pulling out to a sizeable Electoral College lead), remove the election from its context as a sharply divided battle between two implacable adversaries (did anyone seriously believe Kerry was going to leave the convention with a twenty-point lead?), and you have what Eric Alterman has called a successful case of "working the ref" by the GOP. Media whores, indeed....

You ever read an obituary in which the most surprising aspect of the story was that the deceased had still been alive just a few days ago. Well, who knew that it took until last week for the last Tammany Hall puppetmaster, Carmine de Sapio, to join the Church Triumphant.

Anyone with questions why Paul DePodesta traded away his all-star catcher, top set-up man and starting right fielder for Brad Penny, Hee Seop Choi and a top minor league prospect in the middle of a pennant race would be well-advised to note the ages of the players traded and the players acquired, and, especially, the discrepancy in the on-base percentage between Choi and both Paul Lo Duca and Juan Encarnacion. Lo Duca was a fan and media favorite, whose solid defensive play and hustle had allowed DodgerNation to get over the loss of his more illustrious predecessor, but his play in the second half the last few seasons had left a lot to be desired, and his defensive numbers were declining precipitously.

Night of the Living Kerry:  That was a nice piece of oratory tonight.  Of course, the Big Guy had me at "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty."  This was a good round, maybe a critical round in the fight; let's see how strong a finisher he is.  Choosing to frame his speech around issues that Bush has been perceived to be strong, national security and social values, is a cagy maneuver, and his use of the time-honored GOP line about how the Federal Government should exercise the same discretion towards its budget as the average American family must have been a punch to the kidneys of Karl Rove.

I had heard awhile back that the Bushies were going to upstage Night of the Living Kerry by announcing the capture of Bin Laden (as it turns out, the Pakistanis did capture someone today), but this stunt reeks of desperation.

I have watched about an hour of live coverage from the Convention so far, mainly the speeches of Bill Clinton (one of the best he's given) and Barack Obama (terrific content, but I have a feeling that the buzz was over how well it went over to a live audience; on TV, his flat delivery made him seem more like a good motivational speaker than the second coming of WJB).  What can I say, it's been a slow news week...actual substantive contributions from the blogosphere can be found at WaMo and Reason, which have avoided the sort of treacly cheerleading and navelgazing that typify most of the other credentialed bloggers at the Fleet Center. 

Who said no news would happen at the Democratic Convention.  It turns out "Atrios" is a 32-year old econ prof at Bryn Mawr named Duncan Black.  TalkLeft has the candid photo...and he's definitely not Sidney Blumenthal.

Like most Angelenos, I tend to believe that the baseball season doesn't start until sometime after the Lakers' playoff run has ended, so it took me until the end of July to see my first game of the year at Chavez Ravine. Largest crowd ever for a regular season game at Dodger Stadium last night, and perhaps the loudest, most rambunctious group of fans I can remember since the early-80's, we saw the home team defeat the Padres, 3-2, on a walk-off home run in the ninth by Adrian Beltre. Most impressive was the fact that hardly any of the fans left early; being able to time our exits for the most apt point before the final out has always been a matter of pride for the locals, a symbolic act that placed the fan in control of his fate, not the team, but the fact that the Dodgers have perhaps the most dominating closer in the history of the game has reversed the equation. The whole point of going the last few seasons has been for the anticipation of seeing Mr. Game Over himself, Eric Gagne, so the natural order of things has been thrown askew; now, we have to stay til the ninth inning.

Another factor in the behaviour of the fans might well be the fact that we have access to two forms of rapid transit (the Red Line and the Gold Line) that have stops near the stadium. Both lines offer shuttles on Friday night that take you right to the Stadium, so the convenience of not having to fight the traffic (or pay for parking) now exists if you live in Pasadena, Hollywood, or the East Valley. Tickets have always been ridiculously cheap for games, so the fans tend to be less upscale than Lakers, and the crowd in the upper levels of the stadium (where I sat) is demographically similar to what you might get at a Magic Johnson theatre on a Saturday night. The ever-present transistor radio is now more likely to blare Jaime Jarrin than Vin Scully, an unqualified cultural blessing for those of us who eagerly yearn for the day when the Anglo minority can finally assimilate into the melting pot that is Southern California.

The decision tonight to permit the defense to introduce evidence that the accuser of Kobe Bryant had engaged in sexual activities with other men in the seventy-two hours prior to her medical exam, including a partner in the brief period after her encounter with the Laker franchise player, should bring this matter to a head in the next few days.  The judge's decision is the correct one, and further attempts by the prosecution to beat this dead horse have more in common with pre-1965 attitudes concerning miscegenation than any desire to seek justice.   

The controversy over Sandy Berger took another turn this morning after White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan admitted that the White House counsel's office was informed of the pending criminal investigation into Berger just before it was leaked to the press on Monday.  With the investigation pretty much dead in the water (the FBI hasn't even bothered to interview the "target", and reportedly has no plans to do so), this should probably go from being a comedy of errors starring an absent-minded bureaucrat, to yet another example of the Bush White House leaking confidential and/or classified information to the media for base political ends.

The Arabian Candidate:  Another excellent Krugman column, on how Al Qaeda was able to get the Supreme Court to select their sleeper candidate for President four years ago.  And yes, if he hadn't been dead two years, I could see James Gregory playing W in the movie.

Any doubt that Kerry didn't receive a boost from the nomination of John Edwards should be cast aside by the results of this poll, which shows him now leading the President in...Arizona (!) What's next, a poll that shows him within single digits in Texas? [link via Daily Kos]

My annual three-week bout of semi-casual interest in cycling being nearly at an end, can someone tell me why the hell Jan Ullrich is considered to be a "rival" to Lance Armstrong. The two of them aren't the Ali-Frazier of cycling; more like the Ali-Quarry (or even Frazier-Ellis) of their sport. Oy, I gotta wait eight f****** weeks til football starts....

Simonizing Berger:  I'm not a mystery writer, but my instincts as an occasional reader of John Grisham novels (not to mention the pamphlets of Lyndon LaRouche) tell me that there may be several explanations for Sandy Berger's "absconding" copies of classified documents from the National Archives:

1. The documents in question detail the nefarious role that he and other Arabists within the State Department played in the Oil for Food Scandal;
2. He was attempting to cover up John Kerry's actions in fomenting anti-Semitic attacks in Paris;
3. His notes proved conclusively that a collaborative relationship existed before 9/11 between the four most evil men on the planet: Bill Clinton, Yassir Arafat, Osama bin Laden, and of course, Joseph Wilson;
4. It's the Mullahs, Stupid; and/or
5. He's  objectively pro-fascist, desperately trying to hide the green light he gave Saddam for the Mass Graves.

Or, as Uncle Ho used to say back when I was a radical at Berkeley, L'enfer, c'est les autres.

In what might well be an historic first, a sitting governor has used the phrase, "girly men" to attack his political opponents.  I guess that's what happens when you elect a man to that position who's more juiced than Barry Bonds.  At some point, Ahnolt Ziffel's shtick starts to wear thin; behind his Teutonic accent and mannerisms, he's little more than a Chamber-of-Commerce sockpuppet.  It's no wonder that State Senate leader John Burton called his bluff on this one.  With George Bush running at the top of the ticket this November, the Governor has very little influence to pressure recalcitrant members of the Democratic Caucus.
 
The source of the Governor's irritation is the unwillingness of the Democrats in the State Legislature to repeal a bill passed late in Gray Davis' tenure, which gave workers the right to sue their employers for workplace violations.  This is perhaps the biggest issue being pressed by the business lobby at the moment, and as one might expect, exaggerated claims about its impact abound on the Right (before it passed last year, the public was warned that it would allow workers to sue if the font size of an office posting was the wrong size, a myth that I took great pains to discredit).  It has held up passage of the budget two weeks past the legal deadline, and has provided yet another reminder to voters that the biggest problem in Sacramento isn't the term-limited, interchangeable hacks who hold office, but the system that makes responsible budgeting impossible.   Schwarzenegger has yet to show he's even remotely interested in doing anything other than playing the symbolic role of "Governor", so any chance of real reform will have to be put off til 2006, when presumably he goes back to groping extras on the Terminator 4 set.

Joseph Wilson Is Evil !! The silliest, most overblown attack on any blog this year (so far).

Farewell, Big Diesel.

The Law of Unintended Consequences: Kausfiles questions the reasoning of those who have evidenced paranoia about the "K Street Project", the effort by the Republican leadership in Congress to coerce lobbyists and law firms to hire exclusively from their partisan ranks. No doubt, to be a Democratic staffer on the Hill, hoping for a plum job representing the haves after the obligatory tenure of public service, the last ten years must have been a very traumatic time. Hopefully, it will be a radicalizing experience.

Although I'm bothered by the thuggish, jackbootish tactics of Grover Norquist, et al., this hasn't been an issue at the top of my agenda, for the simple reason that it just signifies how I would expect fascists to act when they take power. Listen people, Tom DeLay is the House Majority Leader, the Vice President is incapable of having a civil conversation on the floor of the Senate, and the President is arguably the most unlikable jerk ever to hold high office. They are now hinting, appropos of nothing, that the November election might have to be suspended in the event of a terrorist "attack". They just took us to war under false pretenses, at a sacrifice of a thousand men and women, and their domestic platform is nothing more than millionaire tax cuts, queer bashing, and arsenic dumping. How else would you expect these people to act?

Of course, another reason I could care less about this issue is that K Street represents the largest impediment to a progressive agenda being enacted in this country. Such policies can only be pursued if the corporate lobby is brought to its knees first, something that won't happen if former liberal staffers are working on K Street in significant numbers. What Norquist and Santorum have inadvertantly done is begin the destruction of that bipartisan coalition in Washington, the result of which shall push the center of gravity further to the left than they could have ever envisioned.

Enablers and co-dependents....

If you're going to argue that the selection of John Edwards has failed to produce a bounce, it would be helpful to provide some actual numbers from the past as a point of comparison. Since no one else has....

Until 1976, Vice Presidents were usually picked by the nominee during the week of the convention, often after the candidate had been formally nominated. Since the nomination was typically not decided until the delegates had their say, it made sense not to jump the gun. In '76, however, Ronald Reagan, trailing Gerald Ford in the delegate race, threw a Hail Mary, nominating Senator Richard Schweiker to be his running mate several weeks beforehand, then attempted to use the convention floor to force Ford to do the same. He failed, in a precursor of the nomination battle that was to follow, but the practice of picking a Veep well before the convention soon caught on.

The next time it happened was in 1984, when Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate a month before the convention. Selecting a woman was an unprecedented move, and such farsightedness in recognizing the existence of the "gender gap" has been fruitful for Democrats since then, but the selection caused barely a ripple in the polls. At the ensuing convention, Mondale did receive a nice bounce, but he lost anyway.

In 1988, Michael Dukakis waited until early-July to pick Lloyd Bentsen. That pick also produced a small bounce in the pre-convention polls, albeit a bounce in favor of George Bush (Dukakis picked up a much larger boost at the convention itself in late-July). When it came time for Bush to pick a nominee, his choice of Dan Quayle came in the middle of the Convention. It is safe to say that the selection of Quayle was one of the most disastrous political moves of the 20th Century, and in reaction, the American People ended up giving 41 one of the largest post-convention bounces in history.

After that, the Vice Presidential nominee was always picked well before the formal nomination process was completed, so pollsters can detect a bounce from the Veep selection as distinct from any bounce accruing from the convention itself. In each instance, the nomination of the Vice President had an almost neglible impact on the polls, while the convention itself produced a significant impact. Clinton opting for Al Gore in 1992 hardly nudged the polls at all; Gore's history-making selection of Joe Lieberman had even less of an impact. And if Dole and Bush (43) were aided by the nomination of party warhorses for the number two slot, it wasn't immediately apparent in the overnight polls.

This time, the consensus is that Kerry has picked up 2-3 points or so in the polls since he chose John Edwards (that is to say, he's gone from being tied to being about 5 points up). The White House spin machine has been quite aggressive in painting this as insignificant, and continue to act as if polls which include Ralph Nader as a "candidate" have any intellectual honesty whatsoever. In fact, a pre-convention bounce of five points, in a race in which Kerry had either trailed or been tied, is massively significant, and the state-by-state trends right now are quite favorable to the Democratic nominee. He continues to out-perform Gore in the so-called "Purple States" (states won by either Gore or Bush by <5%), and has caused a number of "Red States" to be thrown into doubt, including North Carolina, Virginia and Arizona. The cool, composed Edwards compares favorably on the stump with the vulgarian loose cannon from Wyoming, and he may have already changed the dynamic of this race.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what NBA Finals were the critics of the proposed Shaq-to-Miami trade watching last month? The Lakers were thoroughly out-classed and out-hustled by the younger, stronger Pistons, and came within a last-second Kobe three-bomb from having been swept in humiliating fashion. The question isn't whether this trade decimates the Lakers, and starts a rebuilding cycle; after the Finals, the Lakers had no choice but to rebuild. Old, slow teams don't get better with time, particularly one with as dysfunctional a lineup as the Lakers had last season. If they had done nothing but kept the nucleus together, they would have seen the Lakers grow further and further from being a championship team, unable to fend off younger rivals in San Antonio, Houston, and Minnesota, much less the budding dynasty being built in the Motor City.

Faced with the choice of either losing Kobe or Shaq, the front office wisely opted to trade the older player of declining skills and health.
Moreover, the trade makes sense even if Kobe signs with the Clippers next week, or, even more unlikely, is sent to jail for that joke rap in Colorado. Without Kobe, the Lakers can make an immediate play in the free agent market, and begin setting up for the inevitable run in 2007 at Yao Ming. Of course, with Kobe, the addition of Odom, Butler and Grant gives the Lakers more depth than they had last season, when it seemed like any injury to the Four Tenors put the team into a slump, and signals a return to the "Showtime" style demanded by the fans.

In any event, the team had two options: they could either start playing for the future, or they could have simply allowed the current team to atrophy over the next few seasons. The Lakers have always taken a certain pride in not hanging the banners of divisional and conference championship seasons in the rafters of the home arena; being an also-ran was something not to be celebrated by the franchise. Having that attitude always reassured the fans that simply making the playoffs, or even going to the championship, wasn't good enough. Hats off to Mitch Kupchak for no longer postponing the inevitable, and for realizing that the status quo was not going to bring any more titles to L.A.

Just in time for the upcoming Julie Delpy opus: a Countess Bathory action figure. [Link via Luke Thompson]

It's Rose Mary Woods' fault: Records that could have provided a more thorough explanation of what it was George Bush was doing in late-1972 when he had priorities other than serving as a member of the TANG were mysteriously "destroyed" in the mid-'90's during a microfiche salvaging expedition by the Defense Department. A sinister force, no doubt....

The New Republic reports that the Bushies have been pressuring the Pakistani government to produce Osama bin Laden, or some other high-profile terrorist, before the November election, with the preferable period being the first three days of the Democratic Convention later this month. [link via Kevin Drum]

A few months back I was e-mailed an invitation to apply for a credential to attend the 2004 Democratic Convention. Since I haven't actively participated in partisan politics in over a decade, I have to admit the offer didn't intrigue me; I mean, who the hell wants to spend four days in Boston during the summertime. The type of blogger who would get all moist over attending is probably already in the pocket of Terry McAuliffe, so I could hardly see how the party would benefit from my presence. And, convention or no, I'm not that hard up to get laid.

But I guess the real problem I have is the same one any serious journalist would have about attending: its lack of importance. At one time, delegates attending a party convention were prepared to advocate policy and enact a platform, even if they weren't choosing the next President and Vice President. The last time the outcome was in doubt going into the convention was 1980, and now, the festivities are little more than infomercials, ratifying decisions that were made many months earlier. Why go to something I'm not planning on watching in the first place?

Kerry picks Edwards: I don't know why exactly he so impresses the pundits; Kerry kicked his ass in the primaries, just as easily as he did Howard Dean and General Clarke. Even with him on the ticket, his home state comes into play only if there is a huge national wave in Kerry's favor; the only states Kerry really needs to focus on in Deliverance Country is Florida and Arkansas. He is also a Senator, like Kerry, so the ticket doesn't exactly play to an anti-insider message. And he made his fortune as an "ambulance chaser"; he was quite good at it, but I can just hear that meme being spread amongst the talk radio brownshirts.

He does bring something to the party, though. His optimism plays well against Cheney, just as Kerry's seriousness plays well against Bush. He's charismatic on the stump, a trait that no doubt led to some his multi-million dollar wins before North Carolina juries. Tort lawyers are perhaps the best defenders of the rights of the little guy out there, which is why the powerful hate them so. His lack of political experience will be a wash; Bush had even less experience in foreign policy last time, and I doubt the GOP really wants to spotlight that. It can be safely predicted that he will do a better job as a candidate than Joe Lieberman.

Maria Sharapova may well become the Tiger Woods of tennis, someone whose success catches the interest of casual sports fans and creates an alternative storyline (as in, who won? and how did Maria do?) to every tournament she plays in. Her dominating performance this morning in winning Wimbledon was reminiscent of one of Tiger's Majors: an efficient, methodical pasting of the best the sport had to offer that could only leave one in awe.

It is almost sad how quickly Anna Kornikova is going to be forgotten....

Eric Alterman raises an interesting point about Michael Moore: why are media critics more aggressive in fact-checking F9/11 than the various "misstatements" of the Bush Administration? BTW, for an interesting compendium of said falsehoods, check out this Congressional report on same.

I figured this sort of argument was inevitable: right wing moral relativism, in the form of a defense of Dick Cheney's dropping the f-bomb last week. As I wrote at the time, I was less outraged at the shocking fact that the Vice President swears than the fact that he was so unapologetic about it later. And when you have someone as sycophantic as Charles Krauthammer defending you, it's no wonder that the Bushies are so clueless when it comes to the way normal folks perceive them.

That Krauthammer is unable to distinguish between the angry use of the f-word by someone cut off on the 405, or a coach arguing a bad call, and its use by someone who is arguably the most powerful man in the country, who holds the positions of both Vice President and President of the Senate, on the hallowed floor of Congress, uttered within the context of a debate on a matter of public interest, is remarkable. Besides the fact that the odds are nil that the same justification would have been made if the recipient of the vulgarity had been Dick Cheney or Arik Sharon, it goes to show how one-sided the calls for civility in our public discourse have been. That it should not be surprising that this sort of conduct can be defended, in much the same way Southern slaveholders defended the caning of Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate by Preston Brooks more than a century ago. The breakdown in civility back then led to the Civil War; I only hope that there are still enough people of good will on both sides of the fence, who recognize that some sanctified arenas, such as a courtroom or the floor of Congress, should encourage polite, reasoned debate, and that f-bombs should be reserved for barroom quarrels between drunks.

Maria Sharapova: She's prettier, smarter, plays better tennis, and has more class than Anna K: What's not to love?

Idiot Son Update: Perugia club owner Luciano Gaucci denounced his team after it lost a home-and-home series with Fiorentina, relegating the team to the minor leagues (Italian Serie B). Promising that he would purge the players he deemed unworthy to play professional soccer at the highest level, he vowed that the only players who could be assured of employment next season were Italian superstar Fabrizio Ravanelli, and, of course, our old friend Saadi Ghaddafi. Apparently the one game he played this season must have made more of an impression on the boss than his frequent "injuries", carousing and positive drug tests.

Admittedly, I did not anticipate the impact Fahrenheit 9/11 would have on me after seeing it this morning. I've learned to take much of what Michael Moore says with a grain of salt, and his snarky humor usually undercuts his message. One didn't exit the theatre after Roger & Me wanting to overthrow capitalism. His newest film, however, stays with you long after you leave the cineplex. It must be experienced with a group of people to be understood, something that I can't recall saying about any recent film. There are two types of people in the world, Blondie: those who've seen the film, and those who haven't. Discussing the film with people who haven't seen Fahrenheit 9/11 yet, either because they hate Moore or hate his politics (or both), is like trying to have a discussion about sex with a priest; he may have some interesting thoughts on the subject, but he just hasn't been there.

The importance of seeing this film came back to me when re-reading the post below about Mr. Hitchens. When I first read his "review", I couldn't wholly comprehend the intensity of his hatred for Michael Moore, or fathom what could have been the source of his animus. Most of the piece consisted of nothing more than a string of clever insults about Moore, but almost nothing to justify them at a substantive level. Hitchens, however, had seen the film; at the time, I hadn't. After spending two hours in a packed Woodland Hills theatre Sunday morning, I got it. I understood.

This was, by no means, a perfect film. The first half hour is spent regurgitating standard lefty claims about Florida and the 2000 election, and drawing broad (and I believe unsupportable) claims about Bush's ties with the Saudis. And some of Moore's annoying personal tics make their unwelcome appearance in this film. Yes, politicians get pampered by make-up artists before they go on camera, and if we're before the unblinking eye long enough, all of us will reveal some pretty gross examples of our humanity. Let he who is without sin lick the first comb. And anyone who remembers John Ashcroft's defeat in his 2000 Senate bid knows that he handled an impossible situation with enormous class (unlike the Republicans after the Wellstone Memorial), and pretending that the voters were voting for a corpse in that election when it was clear that they were picking the very-much-alive widow of his opponent is not a high point. One can acknowledge the occasional acts of decency in our opponents and still disagree with the Patriot Act.

Where the film picks up steam, and becomes a powerful indictment of our nation's leadership, comes when Moore gets out of the way, and simply focuses on the actual reasoning used to justify attacking Iraq last year. For someone who, in good faith, supported the Bush Administration and their policies, viewing Fahrenheit 9/11 must be comparable to what it was like for some French career civil servant to see The Sorrow and the Pity thirty years ago, and then be forced to justify what he did in WWII. Even if one served the Vichy government with what started out being only the best of intentions, that famous documentary shoved the issue of collaboration right in your face. You either did some soulsearching, or you lashed out at the messenger.

Here, Hitchens lashes out. There can be no way anyone watching the last half-hour of F9/11 can not be moved by the patriotism of the least-privileged (whom Hitchens patronizingly refers to as "duskier than others"), or not be angered that their sacrifice was so arrogantly and mendaciously exploited by our government. Hitchens disingenuously asks whether the use of proxies, and the anti-draft riots, would have meant that Moore believes the Civil War should never have been fought, ignoring the fact that slaves, unlike WMD's, actually existed. He has nothing to say to the friends and family of the dead, other than que sera, sera. But as Hitchens admits at the end of his piece, "'fact-checking' is beside the point."

U.S. Transfers "Sovereignty" to New Iraqi Government: Thank God we don't have to worry about that anymore. No doubt, General Thieu Prime Minister Allawi will provide legitimacy. Maybe Senator Aiken was right.

Any possibility that Ralph Nader would be anything more than an asterisk in the November election was probably eliminated this afternoon, with the decision of the Green Party not to endorse his candidacy for President. Enthusiasm for his efforts seems pretty much limited to GOP financiers looking to hobble the Kerry campaign, he has yet to qualify for the ballot in a single state, and only the Reform Party, the quasi-independent movement started by Ross Perot but now coopted by Lenora Felani, offers any possibility that he could be a spoiler. Couldn't have happened to a nicer man.

I can't pretend I'm outraged at the fact that Dick Cheney dropped an F-Bomb on Senator Patrick Leahy the other day; people lose their cool from time to time, and a choice epithet was well within the vocabulary of Harry Truman, to name just one example. But his refusal to apologize for his public vulgarity only goes to show what a genuinely classless bunch this crowd really is. Big time.

Prof. Johnson uncovers classified secrets from the British Army at a Potomac bar this afternoon, to wit, that the war was about oil, that American tactics in Iraq have only exacerbated the problems there, and that David Beckham is a "wanker". And for that, he gets stuck with the tab?

One of the more noisome tendencies of the political blogosphere is the transformation of every disagreement into evidence of moral or psychological defects in your adversaries, so it should come as no surprise that Christopher Hitchens has become a popular writer among my more hawkish brethren. Like Westbrook Pegler, H.L. Mencken, and other controversialists, his focus is on the personal insult, the utter dehumanization of his ideological foes, rather than the reasoned brief of the advocate. Nowhere does this approach get played to greater effect than in his oft-cited review of Michael Moore’s award-winning documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11.

Even the review’s title, “Unfairenheit 9/11: The Lies of Michael Moore”, promises much more than is ultimately justified by his criticism. Rather than critique the film, Hitchens is only interested in the ad hominem attack on his adversary, so he sidelines any attempt at a rational defense of the President’s post-9/11 policies in favor of making snide comparisons to Leni Riefenstahl. For a review that is ostensibly about the “lies” of the filmmaker, he introduces precious little evidence of deceit, and he provides nothing to suggest that Moore deliberately or recklessly falsified material within the film. To Hitchens, accusations of mendacity serve the same purpose as Charles Krauthammer’s frequent diagnoses of mental illness in his opponents: it takes the place of reasoned debate, since the hard work amassing facts to buttress your side of an argument is always going to be more time-consuming than being able to allege that your opponent is somehow beyond the pale.

Most of the review consists of nothing more than attacks on the character of Michael Moore and others in the anti-war camp. Moore is called a “silly and shady man”, and “one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture”, while his movie is slammed as “dishonest and demagogic”, “a piece of crap”, “an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing”, “a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness”, and “a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of ‘dissenting’ bravery.”

Biting, witty comments, no doubt, when presented as the opinion of the reviewer, but Hitchens provides no factual basis from the movie to support any of those calumnies, except to suggest that Moore had argued in a debate several years earlier that Osama Bin Laden should have been considered innocent until proven guilty, and that somehow means that Moore’s argument about not using enough manpower to finish the job in Afghanistan is discredited. He takes issue with Moore’s claim that Iraq had never attacked the U.S., but can only argue in rebuttal that Saddam gave sanctuary to Abu Nidal, and that American P.O.W.’s were mistreated during the first Gulf War, neither of which amounts to a causus belli this time around, and, in light of the revelations at Abu Ghraib, not exactly a well-timed argument. And as I noted a couple of days ago, the review culminates with a laughably ironic attack on Moore's use of Orwell, which only goes to show how insular Hitchens' world has now become.

At one point, he all but accuses Moore of doing the filmic equivalent of using ellipses to omit inconvenient passages from the works he’s citing, but one looks in vain for anything to back up that charge. He alleges that Moore does not “make the smallest effort to be objective”, nor “does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer”, all of which supposedly amounts to a betrayal of the craft on Moore’s part. But Hitchens earlier notes that he himself was the auteur of several documentaries, on subjects as varied as Mother Theresa and Bill Clinton, and anyone who remembers those works knows that Hitchens did not spend much time being fair to his targets. One would look in vain to find any part of his polemic against President Clinton that challenges the often-contradictory stories of Gennifer Flowers or Juanita Broaderick, or that mentions the fact that Kathleen Willey was thoroughly discredited in her testimony before the Starr Inquest (but you will find him disparaging Clinton's attempts to attack terrorism as "wag the dog" efforts to distract the public). And if the cop murdered by Rickey Ray Rector had a name and family, Hitchens isn't going to disclose that to the reader.

Good documentaries are often biased, subjective films, where the documentarian plays the same role as a prosecutor, ably marshalling the evidence in a one-sided manner to support his case. The viewer plays the role of a grand juror, examining the evidence to decide whether sufficient grounds exist for an indictment. Great films such as Heart and Minds, The Sorrow and the Pity, and, of course, Roger & Me, did not back away from taking a stand, nor, I assume, does Fahrenheit 9/11. As in the case of a prosecutor, calling a documentarian a “liar” is a crippling charge, since it is aimed at discrediting the entire case-in-chief by sowing seeds of distrust in the advocate; that is one of the reasons so many on the Right have made that charge against Michael Moore (and it should be noted, Moore is not afraid of making similar frivolous charges against his adversaries, as seen here). Claiming that the prosecutor has only presented an arguable, subjective case isn’t discrediting, since, as members of the jury, we already expect that to happen. If Bush’s allies want to dampen the box office this weekend, they will have to do better than that.

Sad to say, but the standards to qualify for being the William Hung or the Richard Hatch of the legal profession are higher than what the Bush Administration requires to be nominated for the Federal Court of Appeals. [link via TalkLeft, w/props to Molly for her tip]

Why doesn't a story like this ever get published in the papers? What liberal media, indeed....

As if this off-season hasn't already been a nightmare for Laker fans, comes word today that Gary Payton has agreed to a contract extension. I suppose that was an inevitable result of the team firing Phil Jackson last week; Payton was like a passing quarterback forced to run the wishbone last season, so once the Pistons' defense exposed the Triangle as the outdated, high maintenance offense that it is, someone was bound to feel that the Glove was thereby vindicated, and, as it turns out, that someone was Mitch Kupchak.

Department of Unintentional Irony (or why Mr. Samgrass would be well-advised not to write columns referring to African-American soldiers as "dusky" while he's hammered):

A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence.

--Christopher Hitchens, only a few lines after comparing Michael Moore to Leni Riefenstahl, reviewing "Fahrenheit 9-11".

Watching Clinton's interview on 60 Minutes last night made me realize how little has changed the last four years, at least in terms of political spin. With the Big Dog, it was trying to parse the meaning of the word "is" before the Starr Inquest, over the critical issue of whether he was involved with an intern. Now, it's a new crowd trying to salvage some measure of dignity before the country by claiming that, at the very least, Saddam had "connections", or "ties" to Al Qaeda, as opposed to the two parties actually collaborating together in the trenches before 9-11. Just as Prime Minister Blair was able to change the subject from his government's reckless use of false claims about Iraq's WMD's by attacking the BBC's use of the term, "sexing up", so too are Cheney and the Bushies by asserting that what matters most is not that the Iraqi government was working hand-in-glove with Bin Laden, but that they had at least a tangential relationship with Al Qaeda.

Somehow, I don't think the American people would have backed a war with Iraq if they had known that Hussein's people had spoken with OBL's on a couple occasions, but had not collaborated on terrorist attacks against the U.S.; in fact, by that standard, it could be argued that Al Qaeda had much stronger "connections" to the Bush Administration than it did to Saddam, since the President was friendly with the Bin Laden family, and the U.S. provided much of the funding received by the Mujhadeen in the '80's. Certainly, as far as real "ties" with Al Qaeda are concerned, there was a far greater circumstantial case to be made against the "friendly" governments of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, but we didn't go to war with those countries.

The whole point of the war, according to the Bushies, was that Saddam was an imminent threat, and that he was an ally of the people who attacked us on September 11. The war was sold to the American People has a front in the larger war against terrorism. But now we're hearing that the war was really about something else, like changing the political dynamic of the Middle East, or "liberating" the Iraqi people, or, now, that Saddam, or one of his Ba'athist associates, had met on occasion with representatives of Bin Laden. If our spy services were doing their job, I would hope that we would have also met with representatives of Bin Laden on occasion, if only to gather intel or suborn a potential asset. I'm sure Jenkins' Foot or the assasination of the Archduke will factor in at some point with these people, but for now, the rationalization of hundreds of American(and thousands of Iraqi) deaths because of a few low-level meetings between Iraq and Al Qaeda seems like a cruel joke.

I think this is the jesuitical destinction Cheney was trying to make.

Let the recriminations start....

The next week is going to drive the wingnuts crazy. Next week's publication of Bill Clinton's memoirs, concurrent with the release of two much-hyped movies on recent times ("The Hunting of the President" and "Fahrenheit 9/11"), is going to create a Perfect Storm of Republican Circlef--kery. If there has been one thing that has motivated the Far Right the last three years, it has been its desire to undo everything that the American People loved about the Big Dog, to pretend the eight brutal years of peace and prosperity never happened. Al Gore "lost" the 2000 election, in large part because he believed that spin, and perceived an hostility to Clinton that the public didn't share. It is safe to say that the public has become rather resistant to those efforts, or at least that percentage of the public that isn't waiting for the Assumption to occur the day after the election. The best thing for Kerry to do the next week (come to think of it, this is always good advice) is to lay back, let the wind take his sails, and ride on Bubba's coattails.

The one mark on Clinton's record, of course, was his impeachment by the House Republicans. His lies under oath may not have technically met the legal standard for perjury, but they reflected a character flaw in the man, a belief that he could talk his way out of (and into) anything. His subsequent fine in the Paula Jones case, together with his disbarment in Arkansas, were appropriate punishments for his civil transgressions. Yet the public still backed him, creating a firewall that prevented the Senate from taking the charges seriously, and he easily beat back the coup attempt. That victory was the high mark of his Administration, as much a defining moment for the country as September 11: after that, we would judge public figures by what they could do, not what kind of person they were.

In the end, given a choice between Clinton and his critics on the right and left, they chose Clinton, not because he was a saint, but because they knew he was better than his adversaries. Clinton liked people, didn't pretend to possess any divine authority, and the people, at first grudgingly, but by the end enthusiastically (when he left office, he, not Reagan, had the highest approval ratings of any President), liked him back.

I have oil rigs !!

Detroit 100, Lakers 87: That was truly an asswhupping. Anyway, a hearty and sincere congrats to Elden Campbell, an underrated player who was a media whipping boy when he played for the Lakers, for finally getting an overdue ring, and a tip of the cap to my many pals and booze buddies from Michigan on their good fortune, as well as for their patience the last three years when our hockey and college football teams seemed to be dominating them in big games.

And here's a scary thought: in routing the Lakers, the Pistons had to carry a piece of dead weight on their bench named Darko Milicic, the "Human Victory Cigar", whom they drafted with the second pick in last year's NBA Draft. En route to the championship, the only point he scored in the playoffs was in the first round, against Milwaukee. The player chosen right after Milicic, by the Denver Nuggets, was Carmelo Anthony, who scored almost as many points in a single game (41) as Milicic did the entire season (48). Think Larry Brown could have found a way for Anthony to fit into his team?

Sometime after midnight Eastern time tomorrow, the city of Detroit will begin celebrating a well-deserved NBA championship (and last night's game was the coup de grace; it was easily the best Laker performance of the Finals, with Shaq being unstoppable for most of the game, and Payton finally starting to show signs of his rumored All-Star form, and it still wasn't enough). Whether the ensuing party in the Motor City will vindicate Jimmy Kimmel's humorous (if cliched) comments remains to be seen, but the controversy that followed from his remarks at halftime of Game 2 reveals a remarkable double standard, and points out one of the aspects of life in Los Angeles that I absolutely cherish: our ability to take a joke, even if it's about the Lakers.

Kimmel, as you may have heard by now, went on the ABC halftime show and paid tribute to Detroit, in effect remarking that should the Pistons win the title, their fans would be well-advised not to pattern their celebration after the annual "Hell Night" (as they did after the Tigers' World Series win in 1984), since the city wasn't worth it. Ouch. As Kimmel himself later noted, Laker fans have quite a margin on the rest of the country when it comes to turning over cars following championships this century. In addition, Kimmel is a comedian, and the whole point of his late-night show is to make people laugh, sometimes uncomfortably.

Of course, the thick-skinned people of Detroit had a fit, with the local ABC affiliate protesting, the network itself pulling his show off the air that night, and angry denunciations filled the local papers. The sports pages, which only a week earlier had noted the sudden bandwagoning for the Pistons taking place in "HockeyTown, U.S.A.", took offense.

What makes this controversy so silly is that what Kimmel said is comparatively banal when juxtaposed with the standard insults made about Los Angeles, its residents and its fans. Over the years, local residents have come to accept such a national outpouring of hate with a degree of sang froid. In fact, most Angelenos take pride in certain parts of the stereotype, such as our studied desire to leave games early, which we view as a testament to our knowledge of when a game is truly "over", as well as to the high standards we demand from our entertainment. Other parts of the stereotype are much more troublesome, such as the conflation of our local culture with that of "Hollywood"; the loaded terms that are used to describe us in East Coast newspapers would not have been out-of-place in the Volkischer Beobachter seventy years ago, with barely a wink and a nudge necessary. Of course, actors and rappers make up a small but noticeable percentage of fans, but why Jack Nicholson or Dyan Cannon are not considered to be "real" sports fans, while veeps of automobile companies and corporate lawyers in Detroit are, is a mystery few out here can fathom.

Perhaps the one part of the Laker fan stereotype that most amuses and bemuses me is the notion that somehow we are all "fair weather fans". Whether Angelenos would continue to support the Lakers should the team put together a string of losing seasons is a potentiality not yet tested under laboratory conditions, but we do know from the attendance of both the Dodgers, Angels and Kings that local fans are pretty loyal, win or lose. I mean, how many years do the Dodgers have to draw three million paying customers without making the playoffs before we conclude that maybe someone out here does pay allegiance to the home team? And the only way to explain why the Raiders remain so popular locally, even after Al Davis deserted us after the Northridge Earthquake, is the notion (one which I don't happen to share) that our loyalty is not something to be given lightly, or given up lightly.

And, as I said before, we take the insults in stride, and why not. Earthquakes, traffic jams, ridiculous housing prices, and the occasional urban unpleasantness aside, we live in Paradise, and we know it. The Lakers are one of the few unifying factors in this area, perhaps the only thing that cuts across racial, ethnic, sexual, class and occupational boundaries, but they are Los Angeles. Anyone who is a sports fan in these parts will concur: the Dodgers, Angels, Kings, Clippers and Ducks all have their local followings, but it's the Lakers that define what being an Angeleno is. The other teams you follow because you come from these parts, but the Lakers are the team you root for in order to become part of our community; in much the same way an immigrant learns the English language as the first step towards becoming an American, someone who moves to Los Angeles pays allegiance to the Lakers. And regardless of what happens tomorrow, I ain't leaving.

Ralph Wiley, a prolific writer and fixture on ESPN and Sports Illustrated, died suddenly today at 52. In one of his last columns, he became one of the only writers in America to predict the pending Detriot upset in the NBA Finals; ironically, he died at home watching the player intros to last night's decisive Game 4.

Detroit 88, Lakers 80: Unless we see a collapse unlike any before in the history of the NBA, the Pistons will be the next NBA champions. The Lakers actually played a pretty tough game tonight, particularly Payton, who finally showed up in four games into the series, but a combination of some questionable fourth quarter calls (incl. a phantom foul on GP at the six minute mark, with the Pistons up by six) and some cold outside shooting doomed the Lakers to an insurmountable deficit.

Detroit 88, Lakers 68: If the Lakers were a stock, this would be the perfect time to buy. In one week, they have gone from being prohibitive favorites to washed-up prima donnas, and they are still one game away from snatching back the home court advantage. Two one-sided losses, including the debacle on Thursday, will do much to diminish one's standing with the public. Yet this has been a fairly routine part of their season. It's hard to believe now, but the Lakers looked even worse in their two losses to San Antonio, and their collective effort in the two defeats in Minnesota was equally atrocious. Each time, they came back inspired, just as they did in Game 2 of this series.

If the series somehow does head back to L.A., fans might harken back to one of the bleaker moments in Laker history, when the team lost in seven to Boston in 1984. In that series, the Lakers went in as the underdog, then pulled away late to win Game 1 in Boston. After being outplayed for most of Game 2, they made a late run to take a lead, and seemingly had the series in the bag, especially after 85% free throw shooter Kevin McHale missed a pair with less than twenty seconds left and the Celtics down by two. But after a timeout, James Worthy threw a dreadful pass that was picked off by Gerald Henderson, who hit a lay-up to tie. The Lakers had the ball for the final shot, but their star, Magic Johnson, inexplicably dribbled out the clock, and they went on to lose in overtime.

And of course, in Game 3, the Lakers blew out the Celtics, and had seemingly regained control of the series, only to have McHale cheapshot Kurt Rambis in Game 4, and change the entire tone of the rivalry. In any event, the Pistons should win this series, especially with the Mailman and the Fisher King hurt, but the Lakers have already overcome enough self-inflicted adversity to get to the Finals. Anything less than two more complete defensive efforts by Detroit, and the Lakers will give Jackson his ninth title.

After a week of relentless hagiography, and genuinely classless and buffoonish antics by the media and my fellow citizens, I would be remiss if I didn't point out how genuinely moving the private ceremony at the Reagan Library was this evening. I had managed to avoid most of the remembrances the past week, busy as I was with work and Finals, but I did catch the sunset memorial. Anyone who has ever lost a family member or friend (and I would assume that would encompass almost everyone reading this post) can appreciate the dignity and charm the Reagan children revealed in their eulogies for their father. I delivered the eulogy for my late father, and it was one of the most difficult "performances" of my life; drafting and rehearsing the speech took a lot out of me, and knowing that I helped other people get a sense of who my dad really was still fills me with a sense of accomplishment. Hearing the recollections, and sharing the grief, of those who actually knew the man as a father and family member, rather than some stock political character, enables those of us who didn't share his views an opportunity to pay our respects as well.

Lakers 99, Detriot 91 [O.T.]: In defending Tom Lasorda from second-guessing following his decision to pitch to Jack Clark rather than Andy Van Slyke in Game 6 of the 1985 NLCS, Bill James once wrote that it is always easier to take the test after you know the answers. This morning, Larry Brown's decision to not foul any of the Lakers in the final fifteen seconds has raised hackles in every newspaper, radio show and barstool in the country, and the criticism is equally unfair.

The reasoning of Brown's attackers goes something like this: fouling a player immediately sends him to the line to shoot two, and the Pistons maintain the lead for at least two possessions. Much has been said about the supposed "unwritten rule" that teams never intentionally foul a player when that team is ahead by more than two points at the end of the game. What that obscures is the context of that decision. Even for a great player like Kobe Bryant, the likelihood of hitting a trey is ordinarily close to 33%; during the playoffs, when the opposing defense is, almost by definition, tougher, that percentage dips into the mid-to-high twenties.

On the other hand, Bryant is an 85% free throw shooter, so sending him to the line is a likely two-point gift. In order to have fouled Bryant before he was in the act of shooting would have required Rip Hamilton to have been almost on top of him by the time he got the ball, so the probable result in that situation would have been to stop the clock with about nine seconds to play (any hesitation on Hamilton's part in getting over to Bryant would have resulted in a shot attempt, sending Kobe to the line for three frees and a chance to tie, or even a chance for a four-point play). If he makes both free throws, the lead is one, Pistons' ball, but plenty of time to foul or cause a turnover. The Lakers still get another chance to tie or win the game. And that assumes Kobe makes both shots; if he misses the second, the Lakers happen to have the most dominant inside player in the game poised to get an offensive board and put-back, and you're looking at the same situation all over again.

And that, of course, assumes that Bryant gets fouled before he can get off a shot. But what if the Pistons had fouled O'Neal when he caught the in-bounds pass, twenty feet from the basket. Shaq gave up the ball almost immediately, so any attempt at playing Hack-a-Shaq would have been risky; if he had been fouled a millisecond after passing the ball to Walton, the Pistons would have been called for an intentional foul, sending Shaq to the line and giving the Lakers the ball out of bounds. Even with the Lakers' star's proclivity for inept free throw shooting, that would not have been a worthwhile risk for the Pistons.

So under the circumstances, Brown made the right call. The clock is the greatest ally for the team that's ahead in that situation. Each additional possession increases the chances for disaster, so the last thing a coach wants to do is stop the clock. Ten days ago, the Lakers had turned a nine-point deficit in Minnesota into a two-point deficit in the final ten seconds, using a maddening diet of threes and time outs. Playing for their lives, it is safe to say that the Lakers would have pulled out all the stops again in the final seconds, even with no timeouts remaining, had Detroit chosen to foul early. Only seconds earlier, when the Lakers were down by six, Bryant had bricked a wide-open three, and his fourth quarter shooting percentage from outside during the playoffs was mediocre, to say the least. By contesting Bryant but not fouling him, the odds were heavily in the Pistons' favor that he would miss, and the game (and series) would be over. It just didn't work out that way.

The first poll to be released since the death of former President Reagan shows John Kerry moving out to a six-point lead over George Bush. According to Gallup, perhaps the most surprising aspect is that Kerry is within four points of Bush in the so-called "Red States", ie., states that the President won last time by more than five points. [link via Atrios]

The first draft of history: Juan Cole has an excellent recounting of Ronald Reagan's legacy, here. For all the talk of how Reagan, unlike the current occupant of the White House, was an optimist who could unite the public, not enough has been said this weekend about what a small, narrowminded hack he could be at times. His civil rights record, in particular, was dreadful; not only did he oppose the major legislation Congress passed during the 1960's, he infamously fought the extension of the Voting Rights Act during his Presidency, and attempted to extend tax breaks to segregated colleges such as Bob Jones U. His campaign for the Presidency in 1976 was based largely on attacking a fictitious "welfare queen" (wink, wink), an issue which encapsulated wedge politics during that era. The riots that ensued from the Rodney King trial in 1992 were an indirect result of Reagan's policies.

Perhaps his most significant political legacy was that the Republican Party became an unapologetically white movement during his administration, a triumph of Kevin Phillips' "Southern Strategy". When asked about the perception among many African-Americans that he was a bigot, he would defensively reply that, far from being a racist, he had always been a supporter of civil rights: in fact, back in the day when he recreated baseball games in Iowa, he claimed that he frequently pontificated against the color line from the broadcasting booth. It was perhaps a symptom of how obsequious the media was during that period that no one believed him, yet no one called him on that laughable assertion. He deserves enormous credit for joining with Gorbachev to end the Cold War; by treating the Soviet leader as a man that the West could do business with, he went against his own party, as well as many of the neo-conservatives that now dominate the current regime. But his domestic policies damaged the country irreparably, leading to the divisions that afflict us today.

Detroit 87, Lakers 75: I have a feeling that the Lakers might need a couple of games to wake up in this series. Maybe Kobe needs to be falsely accused of murder....

CNN is reporting that Ronald Reagan passed away this morning. Having lost a grandfather to Alzheimer's, I can only express my sympathy to his family and loved ones at the travail they have gone through, and hope that his end came peacefully. There will be plenty of time later to discuss his legacy.

Remember when a number of pundits predicted that l'affaire Plame was so "over" after her photograph was published in Vanity Fair? If the President has to hire an outside counsel, it's gotten serious.

Some interesting factoids about Jennifer Hawkins, the newly-crowned Miss Universe 2004:

1. Last year, she finished third in the prestigious Bartercard Miss Indy 2003 pageant. If, for whatever reason, Bartercard Miss Indy 2003 and the first runner-up are unable to fulfill their obligations, Miss Hawkins would become the first woman in history to hold both titles simultaneously;
2. She was only selected to be "Miss Australia" last month by a Sydney modeling agency, thereby beating out last night, among others, Miss U.S.A., who was forced to compete in various pageants since last summer to earn her trip to Quito, Ecuador;
3. Her "original costume" was denounced by her hometown media as "unpatriotic", "boring", panicky and "universally, a disaster". Despite those props from her homies, she finished third in that segment, propelling her to the upset win;
4. By winning the crown, she became the first contestant outside of Latin America to win since 2000, and the first Miss Universe since 2002 to prevail without telling Miss Spain that she looked fat in her swimsuit just before she went on camera;
5. The new Miss Universe (on the right) has been quoted as saying that her ideal man is a bald, shlubby, 40-something left-of-center attorney who likes to down "a pint or two".

Accountability, then and now: GA Cerny has an apt post about how a different Republican leader acted sixty years ago.

A post about nothing: You ever had one of those days, when you set your mind to work on some big project, only to have your efforts come up completely empty. I spent yesterday chasing down a story that turned out to built on gossamer and string, concerning a throwaway remark made during the early panel at the AFI Saturday night, the one that involved the "Industry".

Allegedly, according to the panelists, a favorite film director of mine had worked "non-union" on one of his films, which, ironically, was a film about union organizing. I didn't get there until afterwards, so I had no way of knowing the context of what was said, and since the only person blogging that panel to have quoted that remark was either unable or unwilling to assist me when questioned, I decided to do my own factchecking. I had some free post-holiday time, and a jones to do some real, honest-to-goodness "journalism", like my hero, Matt Welch, so I dug into the story.

As the various journalism scandals of the past decade have taught us, from Judith Miller and Jeffrey Gerth to Jack Kelley and Jayson Blair, from the NY Times of coverage of Whitewater and Wen Ho Lee to the fictional stories about Al Gore claiming to have invented the Internet, people make s*** up all the time, and if you get suckered into believing something because someone in a position of authority says its true, you deserve everything else that happens. Gossip is fun to read, but it is often enough untrue (as this scathing piece, written by the "John Kerry Intern", attests), so it's always good to have a circumstantial basis for your story, as well as an eyewitness or three.

Since the person involved was, as I mentioned earlier, a film director, there would be one easy way to determine whether he was using non-union personnel on the shoot in question. I checked IMDB.com, and examined the various credits to find someone whose lack of experience prior to the movie would indicate that the crew member did not have a union card. No luck: each of the people I checked had extensive backgrounds at their positions. A newspaper column made mention of the same director's use of non-union personnel on a later film, but the context was different, it alluded to an interview over fifteen years old (which the article paraphrased from), and there was no explanation as to what his transgression was. I found no other websites that had even a tangential reference to the allegation, nor did I uncover any usenet groups that had bandied about the subject. If this was a Hollywood scandal, it doesn't appear to have generated much heat.

Finally, I asked my brother, who when he isn't running the hippest music club in town, is a Teamster organizer, whether the director in question had a bad rep when it came to such things. He pointed out that while it wouldn't surprise him to learn that an independent filmmaker, working on a tight budget, had been allowed to skirt union requirements, sometimes even with the tacit consent of the union, he really didn't know the answer (he wasn't involved with craft unions), but that if I really wanted to know, all I had to do was check for any grievances the affected unions would have filed back then. QED, if there were no grievances filed, then the parties probably had a pre-existing arrangement that allowed the director in question to skirt the rules.

That sounds like it might be hard work and heavy research, SO SCREW THAT. I'm not a journalist; I don't even have a library card, much less a subscription to NEXIS, so others will have to do the heavy lifting if they want the truth. Since I couldn't discredit the story after a thorough review of Google, and a ten-minute chat with my brother, each of the above subjects, from the director involved to the gossips who spread the story, shall remain nameless, but anyone who wants to uncover the details can easily do so. I'm a blogger, and not really a very good one at that, but at least I have enough self-respect not to gossip, nor to blindly post something based solely on how well I know my source. But if you ever want to know what I write about when I have absolutely nothing to write about, feel free to permalink this story.

This being Memorial Day and all, I have a question that probably has relevance only to my fellow SoCals: are Dodger Dogs still sold at supermarkets? I'm quite sure that none of the local (ie., Sherman Oaks/Woodland Hills) stores have them...please let me know !!!

"Armed Liberal" has a new nom de guerre....

The American Cinema Foundation hosted its annual blogger panel at the AFI last night, affirming the notion that Los Angeles is to the blogosphere what Tobacco Road is to college basketball. Ninety minutes spent listening to the views and brainfarts of Matt Welch, Mickey Kaus, Charles Johnson, Roger Simon, "Moxie", and Kevin Drum, before a packed but non-violent crowd of my fellow pundit wannabees, trolls and derelicts, is always a great way to spend a Saturday night, especially with the Lakers tanking the way they did. More politically diverse than last year's panel, ranging from center-left to "little green-eyed monsters", but (sadly) with less input from those non-political sites that I feel represent the future of this medium, the focus was on the motivation of the panelists in using the blogging format to get out their message. Since each of the bloggers used a different path to get where they are, it served only to reinforce the point that if you want a lot of hits, you need to spend a lot of free time before a computer terminal. Local Mean Girl "Cecile" blogged the festivities in real time with exceeding precocity. Others attending included Cathy Seipp, Luke Ford, Emmanuelle Richard, Martin Devon, "Boi from Troy" and Amy Alkon.

Then afterwards, no blogapalooza could be complete without the after-party salon at the home of the eminent voice of Reason, Mr. Welch, and his lovely wife. The gorgeous "Moxie" enthralled the guests well into the wee hours with her wit and beauty, although she seemed to go out of her way to skewer a hypothetical loser as being the "bald, fat guy from high school". I guess I'm not her type; it's amazing how a woman can intuit that without ever visiting this site.

Mr. Samgrass to the defense: Christopher Hitchens continues the saddest descent into irrelevance since Ramsey Clark by defending Ahmad Chalabi. None of this would be happening if Rickey Ray Rector was still alive !! [link via GA Cerny]

French actress Julie Delpy is profiled in this week's LA City Beat. She is a gorgeous woman who can't act worth crap, sort of like a Gallic version of Kate Beckinsale, but she did star in two of the most unintentionally hilarious movies of the late 20th Century, "Beatrice" and "Killing Zoe". She's also identified as a "writer-director" in the article, no doubt covering herself for that time five years from now when the date on her birth certificate unofficially ends her acting career.

UPDATE: As it turns out, Mlle. Delpy may have a very interesting career ahead of her, if this script is any indication. Following in the footsteps of Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, and Jon Favreau, she is slated to write, direct and star in this film, based on the life of Countess Erzebet Bathory, a beautiful sixteenth century Hungarian noblewoman whose hobby was torturing and eviscerating the bodies of young virgins, supposedly in a desperate attempt to remain eternally beautiful (it's a true story, and I'm already kicking myself for not including her in this article).

The film's producer insists that this won't just be another horror film out of the Hammer Film genre: "Usually they've linked (Bathory) to vampirism and all sorts of nonsense. Julie has written a serious movie that tells this in both historical and political terms." One way in which the blonde auteur addresses the "historical and political" significance of the infamous Countess, who is thought to have murdered over 600 young women, is through exploring the deeply spiritual ends she was pursuing, such as the ambivalence she feels as she prays to the Virgin Mary:

"Am I doing the right thing? Perhaps the blood is not helping my skin so much. I have been having rashes of late. Probably some unclean blood. But still I feel something is missing in my life."

What woman couldn't relate? I am so there on opening night !!

If there's any validity to this story, the only question left to decide in Eagle, Colorado will be how much money the taxpayers have to fork over to Kobe Bean Bryant for his pain and suffering. Prosecutors should not be in the business of bringing criminal charges to prove a point, or to show they can.

It shouldn't surprise anyone, but the latest Field Poll has Kerry beating Bush in California by 15 points. The poll also finds that Kerry has built a 40-point lead among Latinos, while the candidates are essentially even amongst everyone else (see this post for the paramount significance of the Latino vote for Democratic candidates). Kerry not only is blowing out the President in liberal strongholds like San Francisco and LA Counties, he also a significant lead in the Republican-leaning Central Valley, and a tiny lead in Orange and San Diego Counties(!)

The person elected President by the American people speaks:

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.

He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

(snip)

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name.

President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States.

--Al Gore, 5-26-2004

Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant: Morgue records from Baghdad and three outlying provinces indicate that over 5,500 Iraqi civilians have been killed since President Bush declared major hostilities at an end last May. That figure does not include deaths from areas such as Fallujah and Najaf, nor does it encompass the vast majority of insurgent deaths, which typically do not get handled by the morgue, and it constitutes a dramatic increase from the pre-war statistics.

It is becoming quite evident that the electorate needs to send a loud and conclusive message to the people who have gotten us into this mess. Ultimately, responsibility must rest with the moron who was entrusted with supreme power in this country, but failed to exercise it with any sense of discretion or accountability. The news this week that Ahmad Chalabi, the man who was the focus of our post-war Iraqi policy, was in fact little more than a grifter in bed with the Iranian mullahcracy, is even more depressing when one realizes that the President will hold no one accountable for that fiasco, just as he has held no one accountable for Abu Ghraib, for the non-existence of WMD's, and for the inattention to planning for the post-Saddam era in Iraq.

These people must not simply be defeated in the polling booth this November; they must be thoroughly and eternally discredited. As Rome did to Carthage twenty-two centuries ago, salt must sown into the decrepit remains of neo-conservatism, so that no one from this Administration can ever obtain gainful employment in the corridors of power again. The Republican Party must be forced to purge this ideology forthwith, or face the consequences of being in the political wilderness for the next three decades.