L.A.'s best, most fearless sportswriter (and arguably the Times' best columnist, now that Hiltzik was made to disappear), is profiled here. To wit, on witnessing a meeting between John Wooden and Mr. October:

It's the Yankees' turn after he leaves the Angels, but first the media grab him, Wooden surprising them with an unsolicited defense of A-Rod.

"It's unjustified criticism because of the money he's making," he tells reporters — many of them from New York.

Reggie Jackson interrupts the confab to let everyone know he's Reggie Jackson, while referring to Wooden as the "Wizard," a name Wooden detests. Jackson mentions something about young women and angels, somehow concluding "Wooden is our angel," and there's never a cameraman around when you'd like to freeze the look of horror on someone's face.

(link via Deadspin)

It's not Pat Boone introducing Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd to a bemused America (ie., the "Holy Grail" of 60's TV rock), but it will have to do:

There is one silver lining on this story: we're free to go back to accusing the parents again.

A man identifying himself as a HUD official announced that the Bush Administration would reverse its policies, and begin to focus on providing affordable housing and relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Alas, it was but a cruel hoax....

One of things I was wondering about when I was posting about "Jumpergate" (here and here, with a related post here) is why someone had never examined the issue of how important a "star" really is in determining the box office for a film. If one wanted to figure out the importance of casting a specific name for a movie, there are a lot of numbers in the public domain that can be examined to make an accurate determination, so why doesn't Hollywood have its own version of Bill James, or a studio have a top executive like Billy Beane? Since there's so much more cash floating around motion pictures than there is with Major League Baseball, you'd think that this sort of numbers-crunching would be absolutely de rigueur. To put it another way, how can studios justify not performing that sort of analysis to the shareholders of their corporate patrons?

Well, it turns out that someone has looked behind the numbers, according to the New York Times, and come to some conclusions that may be highly unsettling to Hollywood agents:

Anita Elberse, an associate professor at the Harvard Business School, tried to measure the average effect of a star by analyzing casting announcements on the price of stocks on the Hollywood Exchange, a simulated market where hundreds of thousands of users trade stocks in individual movies based on their expected box-office revenue. Prices on this exchange have been found to be fairly good predictors of a film’s box-office success.

Ms. Elberse found, for instance, that the announcement in 2002 that Mr. Cruise had dropped out of Cold Mountain — he had been expected to play the lead — reduced the movie’s expected gross by $10 million. The announcement that Mr. Cruise was in talks to play a leading role in The Last Samurai lifted the movie’s expected gross by $28 million.

Combing through 12,000 casting announcements between November of 2001 and December of 2004, related to 600 movie stars and 500 movies, Ms. Elberse found stars, on average, were worth $3 million in theatrical revenue.

Still, Ms. Elberse and other academics suspect that the box-office power of movie stars might be somewhat of a mirage. Ms. Elberse found that, even when casting announcements had an impact on the expected financial outcome of a given film, they had no discernible effect on the share price of the media companies that owned the movie studio — indicating that the participation of a star had no impact on the expected profitability of the studio.

Moreover, even if a star-studded movie does well, it does not necessarily mean that the stars are causing higher ticket sales. In fact, it seems to move the other way around: stars select what they believe are promising projects. And studios prefer to put stars in movies that they expect to be a success.

“Movies with stars are successful not because of the star, but because the star chooses projects that people tend to like,” said Arthur S. De Vany, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of California, Irvine, who has written extensively about the economics of moviemaking. “It’s a movie that makes a star.” (emphasis added)

Since the $3 million in added revenue is often less than what the star is actually paid, the impact of a Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts is usually a wash. A far less expensive performer, when cast in the same role, will turn out to be much more profitable. Sounds like Moneyball to me....

I was at a party at the guy's abode last night, and didn't hear a word about this getting published this morning. Since Shaq was so kind to invite me, I may have to nominate him for a Pulitzer Prize.

Glenn Greenwald points out some more embarassing moments from the annals of conservative online punditry...like pullings the wings off a butterfly.

I haven't read James Lileks in awhile, so I have to admit this passage, in an otherwise banal whinefest on "performance art" grabbed me:

Of course, one could make the case that the greatest threats to the freedoms of the West are posed by the head-choppers, plane-exploders, their many merry supporters, and the nuke-seeking state that supports them.

But don't expect the artists to make the case.

(snip)

The artists seem more concerned with a culture that won't let gays marry than one that won't let them live. (link via Instapundit)

Well, since you put it that way, if by "freedoms of the West," we're talking about basic civil liberties, due process, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, etc., well, no, the "head choppers," "plane exploders," et al., are clearly not the "greatest threat" to those liberties, not here in America, nor anywhere in any western democracy. Unlike the real fascists we were fighting in the '40's, terrorists do not pose an existential threat to our country. Al Qaeda can blow up planes to its heart's content, and even deliver the occasional nuke to one of the great cities in our Blue States, and still not threaten our right to self-government or our devotion to the Bill of Rights. It has been our own government that has seen fit to threaten those liberties, often without even a modiucum of a rationale towards fighting terrorists.

As terrible as September 11 was, it still resulted in less than half the number of dead Americans than at the Battle of Iwo Jima, fighting over "less than eight square miles," in a war that really did determine the survival of the "freedoms of the West." Of course, back then, those who saw the battle against the Axis Powers as a twilight struggle in the defense of freedom were too busy enlisting in the armed forces to be refighting the culture wars of the 1960's in the media.

And as far as whether artists in the West should care more about homophobia here than the persecution of gays in the Middle East, well, I guess artists are just funny that way, caring more about what's going on in their own backyard than somewhere else. We should care about both, for we are our brother's keeper and all that, but artists, as public citizens, can do a lot more to fight battles here than abroad.

I wonder how many of these suckers endorsed St. Joseph of Ingratius in the primary.

A Dingo Ate My Baby !!! Here's a list of movies that would be in turnaround if we lived in a just universe. My fave: Titanic II: Two Titanics.

Que sera, sera: Heathers 2? Apparently....

Greatest Johnny Cash cover ever !!!

Salon's TV maven, and Blue Devil Fanatic, Heather Havrilesky, notes what has been an obvious trend for some time, that what's on TV is generally smarter and better for you than what gets screened in movie houses, but provides enough examples to convince even the most jaded of film geeks. The cineplex is in the same position today that the drive-in was fifteen years ago, and the bricks-and-mortor record store was five years ago, a technologically obsolete mode of technology that services an increasingly narrower and narrower group. Because of the competition provided by thousands of cable and network channels, television offers more choices, is more willing to take risks on unknown talent, and has more time to develop storylines and characters than even the best films, all of which are crippled by the two-hour straightjacket.

Five will get you ten that Tom Cruise being fired yesterday has more to do with a multinational corporation deciding that it could no longer justify paying any film star $12 million a picture than for any bizarre behavior the Scientology acolyte has been accused recently. The beginning of the end for motion pictures occurred the day AMPAS relented on the screener ban; when the core constituency of the film industry realized they could cast an informed vote on the best movies of a year based on what they viewed on their DVD player, rather than hauling their lazy asses to Westwood, the jig was clearly up.

Cat Stevens covered this song on the Rushmore soundtrack, but the original version is by far the best. Unfortunately, either the audio is a split-second behind the video, or this is a really bad lip-sinc:

50-49-1: That is a not-unlikely partisan breakdown in the Senate that we might see the morning of November 8, 2006, should the Democrats pick 5-6 seats. With the one independent (Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who will probably breeze to victory) certain to vote with the Democrats, this margin would make control of the Senate dependent on the whims of one Senator. Right now, the focus has been on Joseph Lieberman, who continues to hold a narrow lead in the polls running as an "independent Democrat," potentially holding the tiebreaking vote.

But has anyone considered the possibility that Chuck Hagel of Nebraska might be a more likely fly in the ointment? Hagel is clearly estranged from the GOP on a whole host of issues, ranging from the Iraq War to his lukewarm support for some of Bush's more extreme nominees, and has evidenced an intent to run for the Oval Office in 2008, possibly as an independent. In fact, he has been far more likely to buck his party on important issues than Lieberman has with the Democrats, and he wouldn't be as far out of the Democratic mainstream as his Nebraska colleague, Ben Nelson. Is anyone in the Democratic leadership on the Hill putting out any feelers, just in case they need his vote? If not, why not?

Roky Lives: With the recent untimely demise of Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee, it is fitting that tribute be paid to this legend while he still walks amongst us:

Did you know that my three-year old nephew, Charles Ruderman, calls Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", "Drums"? Of course you didn't; you weren't able to go with him yesterday to Disneyland....

Children really need to be taught to appreciate the sacrifices their elders make when they go to the so-called Happiest Place on Earth, as to what an absolutely hellish experience it is for those of us older than twelve. Having lived in LA my whole life (so far), the routine of going to Disneyland everytime some relative visits from out of town, or everytime a toddler needs to be amused, is quite mundane. The admission price of just under $60 a head gets you into an amusement park that is jammed, end-to-end, with people, and a grand total of one halfway decent roller coaster (Space Mountain, which is a classic ride more for the fact that it's totally in the dark than anything else).

On a typical summer day, every ride worth going on, either for nostalgia's sake (Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion) or for its kitsch value (The Jungle Cruise, a ride so steeped in racial stereotypes that its core audience seems to be the College Republicans, if one were to take it seriously), will have a line at least forty-five minutes long. In fact, the lines everywhere, from the ticket window to the admissions entrance to the "restaurant" serving a greasy fried chicken patty and fries, are frustratingly long. After fifty years, Disney does not have a clue as to handle crowds. Locals have long ago picked Knots Berry Farm or Magic Mountain as the place to spend a day after their thirteenth birthday.

So the only redeeming aspect of Disneyland is the shared impact it has on the wee ones. For my nephew, it was as if he was getting on the rides for the first time, and obviously, it wasn't the same rides I would have picked. Hearing him sing along to "It's a Small World", or accompanying him on Winnie the Pooh's Wild Adventure (twice), makes it almost seem like the sixty dollars was well spent.

A bit of a let down, this: Snakes on a Plane barely finished atop the weekend's box office, and that included an extra night of receipts from their late-night Thursday, lets-screen-this-before-any-critic-can-report-what-a-pathetic-piece-of-tripe-this-is. Since the reviews haven't been that bad, the distributors may have been too clever by half.

One of the great underrated (and underappreciated) bands of all-time. Bruce Springsteen, an unabashed admirer, never sounded better when he and his band rocked like this:


Sadly, the lead singer, Mike Smith, has been in failing health of late, and the band's music is very difficult to find.

Fuego?!? Speaking of this video, did you know that there was supposed to be an Asia reunion tour (with an accompanying CD) back in 2000? Damn that Geoff Downs...



...but now they've reconciled, and the kickoff for the reunion will be August 29, in Rochester !!!

With Lieberman taking a comfortable lead in the initial post-primary polls, the important question becomes whether he would vote with the Democratic caucus when the next Senate convenes in 2007. This whole notion of whether progressives should mau-mau the party leadership to strip him of his seniority really would be comical were the consequences not so enormous. Who cares if he attends a committee hearing the rest of the year, or what his place is in the pecking order right now.

If the Democrats take six seats this November from the GOP, then of course whoever wins the general election, Lamont or Lieberman, should be embraced by the party's leadership in the Senate. If we don't, or if the Democrats pick up seven or more seats, and Lieberman wins, then we can tell him to screw himself, and tell him to caucus with the other side. But lets get a majority before we start to act all vindictive and everything.

Luke Y. Thompson's review of Snakes on a Plane is up, and he (kinda) likes it:

David R. Ellis' directing skills aren't as evident here as they were in FINAL DESTINATION 2 (the best film in the FD series), but he has the same sense of humor, and he also has Sam Jackson, who elevates this above the direct-to-DVD level it might otherwise be. His acting is more subtle than some may notice; the build-up to that signature line is just as important as the line itself, and the way he gets just slightly more exasperated every time a new thing goes wrong is very well done. At the same time, Jackson is very much in danger of disappearing completely into caricature, blurring the line in people's minds between himself and the Dave Chappelle impersonation of him, in much the same way that, say Dana Carvey and George Bush Senior are inextricably intertwined in the memories of those who saw both back in the day. I fear that if and when Jackson decides to make an Oscar-bait film again, we'll be unable to see him as anything but the muthafuckin' snakes guy.

(snip)

Make no mistake, SNAKES ON A PLANE is basically a Sci-Fi channel movie original with better-than-usual actors and a slightly naughtier sense of humor. It never takes itself seriously, and neither should you. But I've always enjoyed and respected this kind of thing...so much the better that larger audiences seem to get the joke now too.

Actually, I don't think Samuel Jackson gives a snake's ass whether he's becoming a self-caricature, at least going by the interviews he's done this week, and if he's never again considered for another Oscar, well, that will be fine, so long as his paycheck doesn't bounce. You have to hand it to the producers of this film for so perfectly reading the zeitgeist the past few months. There may have been other films that used the Internet to shape itself for its paying audience, but none has done it so well as Snakes on a Plane.

This weekend, one of the few international sporting events for which an American can comfortably support the rest of the planet, the World Basketball Championships, begins in Japan. Dave Zirin writes in the Nation about how longtime GOP fundraisers Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski are exploiting some of our crippled soldiers as a motivational gimmick to "bind" our latest version of the Dream Team together. Real Americans should root for Puerto Rico. [link via Tapped, which takes the opposite view]

From the conservative blog Balloon Juice, on l'affaire Macaca:

I feel duly obligated as a blog owner to weigh in on the George Allen ‘Macaca’ affair. To be honest, I had heard that Allen had said something stupid, and I really didn’t pay any attention to it because, well, let’s face it- the last few years I have grown accustomed to elected Republicans saying something stupid.

--John Cole

Greatest Dylan Cover EVER !!!!



But what really sells this performance is the oh-so-funky dance.

I can't believe this former despot was still alive, as of yesterday. It's like finding out that Ian Smith is still with us....

Divisions within the Republican base? What's George Allen to do?

This is an appropriately trippy version of this song, circa 1967, from the Ed Sullivan Show:

I can't say for certain that this was not a joke, but I have a feeling he was dead serious. It's the equivalent of those jackasses in the lefty blogosphere whose clever contribution to the topic of race involves posting photoshopped pictures of their adversaries in blackface. How is this different from the Latino immigrants who waved the Mexican flag at pro-immigration rallies?

The Famous Guy Force Field: Michael Totten, a blogger who actually practices journalism, reports from Northern Israel.

Farewell, Sploid.

Jumpergate, Part Deux: Now comes word that yet another of the stars of this film is getting the axe. According to the Melbourne Herald Sun (by way of IMDB), Teresa Palmer, who was to play the love interest in the movie, has also been canned, in favor of a "star" to be determined later (probably Hillary Duff or Mischa Barton). Unlike Tom Sturridge, who was ousted weeks ago, Palmer has hired legal guns, and is apparently not going to go without a fight. Of course, as an ingenue, the clock is already working against her.

It would be one thing if these changes were being made because the director, Doug Liman, decided that he had made a mistake in casting, and that the talent he picked originally wasn't good enough, or that the stars were such prima donnas or party hounds that they were impossible to work with, or even that the actors he really wanted to work with all along had just become available. These firings would have still been arbitrary and cruel, but at least they would have been consistent with whatever artistic vision of creating a good movie the director might have.

But that is apparently not the case here. These people are being ditched because they are relative nobodies who need to be replaced by "names" (preferably, North American names) to cover the asses of the producers. And again, this is after filming had already started on the project, and the actors involved had already made a commitment of time and emotion to the endeavor.

But in the end, as far as the bottom line is concerned, it will make no difference. As I noted yesterday, Hayden Christensen's only non-Star Wars film made less than $3 million, and that was a good film. Mischa Barton's only significant movie to date as an adult, The OH in Ohio, has grossed less than $260,000 in limited release. The Lord of the Rings trilogy had no major names or stars in the lead roles at the time it came out (unless you consider Sir Ian to have been a star at that time), and it became one of the biggest hits of all time. Same with the first Star Wars movie. To paraphrase Chris Rock from the Oscars a few years back, there are just a few stars, like Tom Cruise (boy, is that dated) or Sean Connery, whom people will actually pay to see, and then there's everyone else, from Jude Law and Heath Ledger to Dustin Diamond and Pauly Short, who moviegoers don't give a rat's ass about; all they want from that fungible class of "everyone else" is a good performance.

Canning someone you cast in a movie because they're not famous enough is not only a shitty thing to do, it makes no sense from a box office standpoint. It will probably make the movie less enjoyable for movie fans. It's bad business. No wonder the movies suck.

UPDATE: Well, perhaps Jumper will suck less. Teresa Palmer remains in the cast.

UPDATE [10/16]: And now she's gone....

Damascene Rage: Kevin Drum makes a solid point, whilst riffing on a Josh Marshall post:

And just recently I've been thinking about what a genuinely profound story this is, one that the mainstream media ought to be more interested in. Instead of writing incessantly about "angry bloggers," they ought to be asking why so many mild-mannered moderate liberals have become so radicalized during George Bush's tenure. It deserves attention beyond the level of cliches and slogans.

The inability to acknowledge this phenomenum is what has doomed Joe Lieberman to what appears to be political oblivion. Other than the Iraq War, there doesn't seem to be a single issue that has riled the lefty blogosphere in any substantive sense. Frustration over the obsequiousness of the nominal opposition in our country, as manifested in a timid punditocracy and "centrist" Democratic leadership in Congress, seems to have created a rage on the left that has typically been the province of right wing talk radio and sites like LGF. Lieberman is certainly not the most conservative Democratic Senator (he's not even the most rightward Democrat running for reelection in a Blue State this year), but he got caught on the wrong side of history.

Words I never thought I would see in the same sentence: "George Bush", "read", and "Albert Camus."

It's official: George Allen is a racist jerk.

Vanity Fare: Sorry for the Hollywood theme today, children, but I thought I would share one of my pet peeves, the absolutely sorry state of what amounts to "journalism" in the Business of Show. To wit, this story, appearing in the Hollywood Reporter last Friday, about a casting change on a film:

Hayden Christensen will star in "Jumper," a big-budget thriller being directed by Doug Liman, whose credits include "Swingers," "The Bourne Identity" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

The film's production company, Regency Enterprises, has partnered with 20th Century Fox to finance the production, which sources say is budgeted in the $100 million range.

Christensen's casting jump-starts the production, which was to have begun shooting earlier this summer but had been running idle. Christensen replaces Tom Sturridge in the lead role of David; during preproduction, a decision was made to go with a more prominent actor. Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Bell and Teresa Palmer remain with the project.

First, if this casting change had been made "preproduction", wouldn't it have been worthwhile to check to see that it was actually being made "preproduction", and not after filming had already started on the project? A simple Google search would have informed the "journalists" that, in fact, filming had already begun on Jumper earlier this summer, with the original star.

Second, isn't the real story here not that Hayden Christensen is going to get another opportunity to ruin a big-budget film, but that the director's first choice for the role was dumped (after filming had begun, mind you) in order for him to get the part. "A more prominent actor?" C'mon, this isn't Orlando Bloom or Leonardo DiCaprio we're talking about here; this is Hayden Freaking Christensen. The other big film he did besides Clones and Sith, Shattered Glass, made a grand total of $3 million in domestic gross, and he was actually quite good in that. If Mr. Liman, the director, wanted the move, what does that say about his habits in preparation for making movies? (hey, kids, lets shoot a film, and we'll decide who the star is as we go along) And if he didn't, doesn't this make him look like the studio's bitch?

Third, what was Mr. Sturridge's reaction to all this? Was he disappointed? Relieved to be out of that hellhole? Considering that his father is also a director*, will there be consequences down the line for such contemptible treatment of the lad? But in the article, we're left to speculate, since it doesn't appear that the writers in question bothered to even attempt contacting him.

Those are obvious questions, and it rankles me no end that there aren't people out there who are willing to go beyond the studio's press releases, and try to give their readers an accurate view as to what's happening on a movie set. You'd think simple human curiosity would do the trick, or at least an aversion to always being lied to.

*And his mother is the Blogmuse, pictured top right.

Do you realize that since he was so brutally insulted by Chris Rock at the Oscars last year, no movie featuring Jude Law has seen the light of day? I guess Clive Owen has now taken on the mantle of being the British star who will appear in anything for money. And there's even better news coming out of England...but sad news stateside, as an Oscar-winning actress' career comes to an end today.

Religion of Peace...and Progeny: Did you know that Brooke Shields is a lineal descendent of Mohammed, allegedly. So am I, for that matter, and so are you, if you are of European ancestry. Just don't tell Charles Johnson....

Another pundit sees fit to blame the "McGovernites" for the defeat of St. Joseph. Thomas Edsall writes in the New Republic:

In a quick and dirty analysis of the difference between the Lamont and Lieberman voters based on income, education, and other demographic data from across Connecticut, Ken Strasma of Strategic Telemetry found that Lamont's strongest support came from areas with high housing values, voters with college or graduate degrees, and parents with children in private schools. Lieberman's votes, in contrast, came from the cities, renters, blue-collar and service-sector workers, and those receiving Social Security benefits.

There is nothing wrong with upscale liberals or downscale renters; a vote is a vote. The problem for the Democrats is (and has been for more than a quarter century) that liberal elites are disproportionately powerful in primaries--where they turn out in much higher numbers--and in the operations of the party itself. In presidential campaigns, these voters have nominated a succession of losers, including George McGovern, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. The power of this wing of the party is easy to see in battles against Republican Supreme Court nominees, when Democratic opposition concentrates on such issues as abortion and sexual privacy to the virtual exclusion of questions of business versus labor, tort law, and the power of the state to regulate corporate activity.

With all due respect, I'm not sure that's an accurate breakdown of the votes. The exit poll done by CBS/New York Times showed almost no divergence in the vote based on income; Lieberman barely won among those who made less than $50k, and Lamont barely won above that total. Lamont did win a clear majority of votes, according to the exit poll, among those two "elitist" voting blocs, union members and African-Americans. Lieberman won among Catholic and Jewish voters, and among voters who never attended college. There was no gender gap to speak of. In short, this was a fairly typical intramural battle between two Democrats, and not some bellweather repudiation by Brie-snorting elites against the working class.

How would you like to be the campaign staffer that wrangled this celebrity endorsement? At the very least, it should quiet any talk about Mel Gibson not being a conservative....

A good analysis of the effects of artificial testosterone on an athlete. The consensus seems to be that a one-off boost (such as what Floyd Landis has been accused of) will do nothing to improve performance, since the body's response is to produce less of the hormone, thereby negating the immediate benefit; for artificial testosterone to improve athletic performance, it needs to be taken frequently over a period of time.

Shorter Jacob Weisberg*:

However bad the war may be, don't punish its cheerleaders.

There is something truly pathetic about anyone having to use the George McGovern card on a 21st Century election. Putting aside the fact that you can't use a thirty-year old election to predict anything about what will happen this year, or in 2008 or 2010, no more than one could have plausibly attacked FDR and the New Deal in the 1932 Election simply because William Jennings Bryan had failed running on a similar platform in 1896. As Mark Schmitt pointed out earlier this week, the post-McGovern Democratic Party had to battle the notion not just that they were too dovish, but the fact that American involvement in Vietnam had been started by Democrats. Anti-war Democrats may have been distrusted by the public at-large, but it was the party hawks, the Scoop Jackson/Hubert Humphrey wing of the party, that were completely discredited by the disaster in Vietnam.

Obviously, the ongoing debacle in the Persian Gulf cannot be tied to the party that has been out of power this decade. One can hardly say that the party doves, those who have always seen this adventure as folly, will be discredited; the public has an annoying tendency of not distrusting people who were right from the start. It will be a long time before any Republican President is going to be able to rally the people behind another discretionary war, notwithstanding the ingrained hawkishness of Americans. More likely, we'll see a resurgence of isolationism within conservative ranks, and the Paleo-Con v. Neo-Con battle will make the party divisions the Democrats sustained after 1968 seem tame indeed.

*with proper credit to Elton Beard, of course.

Lieberman Concedes !! But only for tonight...huge turnout provided the difference. Kos finally gets a real notch on his belt. There will be intense pressure on the Senator to act graciously in defeat in the next few days; I doubt that he's gonna hold most of the 48% of the Dems he got tonight.

UPDATE: Marc Cooper says it best about the Senator's independent run:

I already heard KOS on Air America hyperventilating against this move, mumbling something about some request he plans to make to Harry Reid to expel Lieberman from the Democratic caucus.

I have to scratch my head and wonder what makes some people so phobic about democracy. What is ever gained by restricting access to the ballot? I've already written about how I think Lieberman is a putz. And I'm pleased he lost. But moaning and bitching about him running as an independent seems ridiculous to me.

The way you keep people from gaining elected office is by beating them in elections -- not by keeping them off the ballot. That is, if you believe in democracy or unless you are Fidel Castro.

Beating St. Joseph in the general election will send an even stronger signal about the public's anger over the war, since it won't just be a rejection from Democrats, but from Independents and Republicans as well. And it's going to happen. Bring It On !!

Election day in Connecticut. One thing that interested me about yesterday's poll was the class breakdown. Lamont, the more progressive of the two candidates, is routing Lieberman among wealthy and upper-middle income voters, while the incumbent has a slight lead with voters of below-average incomes. Since people with means tend to be more likely to vote than people without, that's a good sign for the challenger, although I'm somewhat skeptical about the Democrats appealing to Luxury Box Liberals as our way out of the political wilderness.

Another sad loss for the Left Coast. There's fast food, and then there's In n' Out. You always get a good, fresh burger and fries, and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you're being served by people not being paid a peon's wage.

Do I detect a note of sarcasm? From two recent court decisions, concerning the perfect law our Congress passed last year:

"During hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, evidently testimony was received suggesting that BAPCPA (the Bankruptcy Abuse Protection and Consumer Protection Act) was perfect." S. 256 Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feb. 10, 2005

--In re TCR of Denver, LLC, 338 B.R. 494, 498 (Bankr.D.Ct. 2006)

"It has been reported that a "technical amendments" bill is in the works to fix various glitches in BAPCPA, notwithstanding Congressional testimony that it was so perfect that not a word need be changed."

--In re McNabb, 326 B.R. 785, 791 (Bankr. D.Ariz. 2005) It's been sort of a pet hobby of bankruptcy judges, trying to figure out the most poorly drafted, idiotic and/or bizarre passage in the law, and throwing it back into the face of its hubristic supporters. Shows what happens when you let the bottom third of our nation's law schools band together to draft laws in our nation's Capitol.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, in his own words. For all the Beltway claims that this challenge is motivated from some "elitist" contempt by progressive and liberal bloggers, Ned Lamont wouldn't even be close if St. Joseph hadn't been so conspicuously contemptuous of the party base during his Senate tenure. This isn't about making bogus claims that Lieberman is a "vichy Democrat", or that his vote to invoke cloture on the Bankruptcy Bill meant that he secretly supported the measure, for example. It's about his unwillingness to use his bully pulpit to take the battle to the Republicans.

51-45: Lamont's lead is cut in half in less than a week. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this poll is the gender gap: the challenger has a comfortable, thirteen point leed with men, but Lieberman is keeping this close by tying Lamont among women. So much for the Alito cloture vote having any importance...six points is the trigger, I think. If St. Joseph finishes within this margin, then I think he claims Joementum and runs through November (and probably wins). Anything worse, and he has to look in the mirror and salvage some dignity from the rout by conceding.

Three major Hollywood players, including Steven Spielberg, are backing Ahnolt in his reelection bid in a big, big way. Even more significantly, the three previously opposed the recall effort that brought Schwarzenegger to power in the first place, and had been high profile supporters of Gray Davis.

Lefty blogs need to call a moratorium on the use of Photoshop. It's sleazy and unethical to doctor a photo when you're posting on something unimportant (eg., a photo "showing" an SC cheerleader "celebrating" a Texas touchdown in the last Rose Bowl), so why should it be tolerated in the context of political advocacy over life-and-death issues? And while we're at it, let's vow never to make a point by putting the likeness of an adversary in blackface. Amos & Andy has been off the air for fifty years, and those for whom that is still a visceral image are collecting Social Security. The rest of us just think that the person who creates such a caricature is a jackass.

Arthur Lee, 1945-2006: A giant in our local music scene, Lee influenced both the psychedelic and punk generations. His group, Love, had only two hit singles, but both were classics that sound as fresh today as they did forty years ago: "My Little Red Book", a Burt Bacharach composition which was a huge hit in Los Angeles and on the West Coast, and "7 and 7 Is", their biggest national hit, and for decades a staple for any self-respecting garage band. He hit on hard times, and for awhile he was probably the most famous person to be serving time under California's Three Strikes law. In recent years, he toured Europe with Love, performing songs from their seminal 1967 album, Forever Changes, before calling it quits last year upon the onset of leukemia, which took his life yesterday. Requiescat in pacem.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus has his own tribute, here.

The normally reliable Stuart Rothenberg, on one possible consequence of a Ned Lamont victory:

Some Democrats fear that a three-way contest could encourage Republicans to find a way to force their nominee out of the race and replace him with a much more serious Senate candidate. But a Lamont victory would not seriously threaten the Democrats’ hold on that seat unless the Republicans were to find a stronger nominee.

Lamont’s victory, however, would not be without its downside for Democrats, since it would only embolden the crazies in the party, a consideration not lost on other Democratic elected officials and strategists.

Lieberman’s defeat is likely to add to the partisanship and bitterness that divides the country and Capitol Hill, and to generate more media attention to grassroots bomb-throwers who, down the road, are likely to make the party less appealing to swing voters and moderates. (emphasis added)

Last time I checked, it was the "crazies" in the party that unquestioningly supported the Bush Administration's policies in the Middle East. After three years of abject failure and lowered national prestige, those in the Democratic Party who continue to back the Neocons' Grand Adventure are certainly more nuts than anything Little Green Firedogs might be blogging about this week.

54-41: That's the lead Ned Lamont now has over Senator Joe Lieberman in the race to be the Democratic Senate nominee in Connecticut. It's become increasingly clear that St. Joseph's announcement that he would run as an independent should he lose on Tuesday was the dumbest of a series of really stupid tactical moves in this campaign. He seemed churlish and contemptuous of the voters within his party when he made that announcement, and his support cratered; even voters who were skeptical of Lamont now had a free pass in the primary to vote their conscience on the Iraq War, since the incumbent would still be on the ballot in November. But a rout next week will thoroughly discredit any independent run, and make it more likely that the GOP will try to find a more credible standardbearer for November, further cutting Lieberman's base. [link via Daily Kos]

From Media Matters, a new low for the Far Right (at least for this week): a LaRouchite smear against George Soros begins to worm its way into the "mainstream." And from Andrew Sullivan, a compare-and-contrast posting on partners-in-bigotry Mel Gibson and Ann Coulter:

Coulter has condemned all Muslims and all gays in ways that pander to the basest prejudices against them. She used the term "fag" on cable television recently. She has publicly argued for killing Muslims in the Middle East indiscriminately. She does all this stone-cold sober and means not a word of it. Gibson, on the other hand, clearly deep down believes that the Jews are evil, that they are responsible for all the wars in the world, and his hatred for gay men is well-documented. Both Coulter and Gibson have made a fortune catering to bigotry. But one is sincere; and one is completely cynical.

I don't know about that; is there any reason to believe Coulter's hate isn't as sincere and real as Mad Max's? I know there has been some under-the-table gossip about Coulter and a certain openly lesbian right wing talk radio hostess, but Sullivan doesn't appear to be alluding to that.

Send In The Clown: Who is the genius in the Lamont campaign who thought this association was a good idea? Was Mike Tyson not available?

Wikiality: Stephen Colbert actually did edit several pages on Wikipedia last night on his show, as he said he would.

Sugar-t**s Feminism:

Christian women — especially Catholics — know what pop culture thinks of their role: subservient; unworthy; barefoot and pregnant; seen but not heard. Consider, in contrast, the words of the current pope: "In transforming culture so that it supports life, women occupy a place, in thought and action, which is unique and decisive. It depends on them to promote a 'new feminism' which rejects the temptation of imitating models of 'male domination,' in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society, and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation." Mel Gibson gets that genius.

(snip)

...Mel Gibson's understanding of women and his articulation of their unique mission could have remarkable repercussions. This new — or old, inasmuch as it is natural and commonsensical — kind of feminism, a focus on the different contributions of men and women and the different ways they live their missions, should make us all rethink how we live and love.

- Kathryn-Jean Lopez, National Revew Online (12/2/03) [link via Andrew Sullivan]

Ahnolt's first treaty !! Not bad, either. Stem cell research, now greenhouse gasses; why don't we just cut out the middleman and declare ourselves independent.

When I read this column, a panoply of trite cliches and stereotypes that were stale when England still had a good soccer team, I went slackjawed for about a minute. Can you imagine a similar column about a P.M.'s trip to Ireland or Israel. [link via LA Observed]

The world's worst lefty blogger goes after the world's worst columnist. Hilarity ensues...I guess we should all be relieved that Sirota doesn't use the word "Establishment" at all, and only uses the word "elite" four times, but simply using a dictionary would have helped. First of all, Thomas Friedman is neither a "scion" nor an "heir" to a multi-billion dollar fortune. His wife is. It's her family that has the dough, not his; since he has no legal expectancy of receiving a dollar of that fortune through any future probate proceeding, he's not an heir, and since he is not a blood relative of his wife's family, he's not a scion.

Secondly, the attack on Friedman suggests that because support for Free Trade, job outsourcing, etc., supposedly benefits only the wealthy, and since he is "...an heir to a multi-billion-dollar business empire," that means his opinion is inherently tainted on the subject. I happen to agree that Mr. Friedman is a bit of a loon, but that's because he's usually wrong about what he writes, not the fact that he married into a family that made its fortune in real estate. If we were to impose the strictest trade barriers imaginable, and if we were to criminalize the practice of outsourcing jobs to the Third World, Friedman's in-laws would still be just as wealthy. Their investment is in land, not WalMart.

Atrios is my friend: A list of the Democratic Senators who so courageously went to the matt defending the interests of Visa and AmEx last year: Baucus(MT), Bayh(IN), Biden(DE), Bingaman(NM), Byrd(WV), Carper(DE), Conrad(ND), Inouye(HI), Johnson(SD), Kohl(WI), Landrieu(LA), Lincoln(AR), Nelson (FL), Nelson(NE), Pryor(AR), Reid(NV), Salazar(CO), and Stabenow(MI).

Again, bold means they're up for reelection in November, and blue means they're from a state carried by Democrats in each of the last four elections. I've also italicized the names of those Heirs to FDR and JFK who last week voted to criminalize the assistance of minors crossing a state border to obtain a legal abortion.

Funny how the same names appear on both lists, and Lieberman doesn't appear on either.

UPDATE: But he does appear on this list, of Democratic Senators who voted to invoke cloture on the nomination of Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court: Akaka (HI), Baucus (MT), Bingaman (NM), Byrd (WV), Cantwell (WA), Carper (DE), Conrad (ND), Dorgan (ND), Inouye (HI), Johnson (SD), Kohl (WI), Landrieu (LA), Lieberman (CT), Lincoln (AR), Nelson (FL), Nelson (NE), Pryor (AR), Rockefeller (WV), and Salazar (CO). Again, the italicized names are those Senators who voted the wrong way on the other two issues (abortion and bankruptcy). There are eleven Democrats who fit that category, including two Blue State Senators up for reelection this November, and none of them are named Joseph.

UPDATE [II]: Mark Schmitt, writing an early post-mortem for the junior Senator from the Nutmeg State, issues this howler:

...Lamont supporters actually aren’t ideologues. They aren’t looking for the party to be more liberal on traditional dimensions. They’re looking for it to be more of a party. They want to put issues on the table that don’t have an interest group behind them - like Lieberman’s support for the bankruptcy bill -- because they are part of a broader vision. And I think that’s what blows the mind of the traditional Dems. They can handle a challenge from the left, on predictable, narrow-constituency terms. But where do these other issues come from? These are “elitist insurgents,” as Broder puts it - since when do they care about bankruptcy? What if all of a sudden you couldn’t count on Democratic women just because you said that right things about choice - what if they started to vote on the whole range of issues that affect women’s economic and personal opportunities?

But caring about bankruptcy, even if you’re not teetering on the brink of it or a bankruptcy lawyer yourself, is part of a vision of a just society.

The problem with that example is Lieberman voted against the bankruptcy bill last year, as my list above shows. He may have voted in favor of cloture beforehand, but since the bill had the support of seventeen other Democratic Senators, and had been debated, in one form or another, for some six years, voting in favor of finally ending debate on the matter was certainly defensible (unlike the Alito vote, which dealt with a judicial nomination only two months old, and which had the support of only four Democrats). With less than 30 Democrats in support of the bill, the cloture vote simply wasn't very important; the horses had already left the barn, if you will. Saying Lieberman "supported" the bankruptcy bill is not unlike the frequent refrain of the chickenhawks claiming that those who opposed the Iraq War were "supporting" Saddam.

.12: Apparently, it doesn't take a lot of booze to make Mel Gibson a raging, out-of-control neo-Nazi.

In making a defensible argument that Joe Lieberman should not be blamed for voting for cloture before he voted against the nomination of Samuel Alito, Dan Gerstein makes this indefensible point:

Up until this session of Congress, the filibuster was not even considered a fringe option for blocking Supreme Court nominees. With one notable exception, the case of Abe Fortas in 1968, the tactic had never been invoked to block a Supreme Court nomination. According to the official account by the Senate historian, Fortas was not torpedoed because of his ideology, but because of serious ethical issues.

(snip)

That all changed last year with the Roberts and Alito nominations. Some in the Democratic family decided that Bush's high court appointments had to be blocked by any means necessary, and the threat of a filibuster based purely on ideology was openly discussed. This of course prompted the whole showdown over the so-called "nuclear option, with Republicans threatening to change the Senate rules to permanently bar the use of filibuster for Supreme Court nominations if Democrats used the tactic against John Roberts or Alito.

Lieberman and other moderate Democrats then worked with the reasonable elements of the Senate Republican caucus -- the so-called gang of 14 -- to craft an agreement that would protect the right of the minority to filibuster court nominees in the future in extreme circumstances. That was his great sin -- finding a compromise with Republicans that helped Democrats, by preserving the precedent that had been followed for the entire history of the filibuster.

If Lieberman had supported the filibuster, it would not have changed the outcome at all. It would have, though, threatened the agreement he had made, which at the moment was the only thing standing in the way of the nuclear option being triggered and the filibuster being eliminated completely as a check and balance in Supreme Court nominations.

If Lieberman and the other members of the Gang of 14 had broken their word and backed the filibuster, it may have derailed the Alito nomination temporarily. But it would have had disastrous consequences, setting in motion a chain of events that ultimately would have resulted not only in the end of the filibuster as we know it, but in Alito getting on the bench in the end once the Senate rules were changed. Talk about a pyrrhic victory.

Besides totally mischaracterizing the Strom Thurmond-led movement to derail the Fortas nomination, which focused specifically on his high court rulings in favor of civil rights and limitations on the power of the state in criminal investigations, and ignoring the use of the filibuster against Clinton's nominees, Gerstein completely misses the point about why Lieberman's vote for cloture has infuriated so many Democrats. For Democrats, the "triggering of the Nuclear Option" wasn't a worse case scenario, to be avoided at any and all costs. It was, rather, the desired outcome, ending once and for all the noxious barrier to progressive legislation that the threat of a filibuster had blocked for so many years. The Gang of 14's pact ended up giving the Republicans everything they desired without having to make a politically unpopular vote, while maintaining the filibuster for a time when they are no longer hold the majority.

And even if Alito had ultimately been confirmed, Democrats would have had the satisfaction of having fought the President, tooth and nail, on the slogan it has used to rally its supporters in every Congressional election in the past 25 years when the GOP has controlled the Presidency: do we want the Republicans to be able to rubber-stamp the judicial picks that President Reagan or Bush makes. It would have been a sign that the Democrats were going to start to fight back, and not take it anymore.

Gerstein is correct that Lieberman's vote for cloture should not be viewed as one that assured the ascension of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, not when nearly half of his fellow Democrats followed suit, and not when the lefty blogosphere cared more about the apostacy of a Washington Post ombudswoman than the Alito nomination in the weeks leading up to the vote. If there had been a more concerted effort to rally "netroots" opposition to oppose the nomination, rather than a last-second, half-hearted circle jerk the weekend before, we might have been spared a cloture vote even coming up.

Scoop: In the just-released Woody Allen movie, Ian McShane based his character, a dissolute, recently-deceased journalist, on a certain "old British hack who you tolerate in this country."

After a month of the most oppressive, Global Warming-Affirmation of a heat wave I've ever experienced, comes this blessed day. It's 78 degrees in the Valley this afternoon, with just the right touch of humidity. A humid 78 degrees is the constant temperature in Heaven, I believe....

In the area of "better late than never" comes this tidbit, about an attempt to impeach U.S. District Judge Manuel Real. Judge Real consistently appears on the local list of Ten Worst Judges, and almost every attorney who appears in Federal Court on a consistent basis has a horror story about the man. As the Times Op-Ed suggests, this is the sort of thing that would be unnecessary if judges policed themselves, and/or if there was some reasonable limitation on the duration of time they could spend on the court.

I'm not saying that this is an open-and-shut case of sockpuppetry, but still, don't commit any prosecutable offenses in the judicial district surrounding LAX if you value your freedom.

As you might have been able to tell, I'm not the biggest fan of the lefty blogosphere's obsession with Joe Lieberman. There are other Democratic Senators whose voting records are clearly worse than Lieberman's, but who manage to receive a free pass from the commentariat, and the attempt to create an anti-abortion record for St. Joseph sometimes borders on the absurd. He may have voted the wrong way on My Big Issue at the beginning of the year (voting to end debate on the Alito Nomination), but then again, so did allmost half the Democratic caucus, including Daniel Akaka, who is embroiled in his own tough primary battle. His opponent, Ned Lamont, has yet to build a case for why anyone should vote for him (as opposed to voting against Lieberman). And the denunciations, eight years after the fact, of his courageous (but hardly lonely, among Senate Democrats) refusal to exonerate President Clinton for his sleazy betrayal of the charge the American People gave him, discredits the bloggers who make the argument.

But this posting by the Bull Moose exemplifies all the reasons why Ned Lamont must win. In denouncing "Joephobia" by a mythical loony left, Mr. Wittman loses all credibility in building a case for the junior Senator from the Nutmeg State. Contrary to his argument, Lieberman is being challenged not because of a "deep and obsessive loathing" of the Senator, but because a significant percentage of rank-and-file Democrats in that state no longer believe that he is representative of their views on the pivotal issue of the day, the ongoing wars in the Middle East. Wittman claims, sans supporting links, that:

The real passion of the left is the loathing of the President of the United States. The left's beef with Joe is that he believes that there should be some limits on political attacks on the Commander-in-Chief during wartime. However, it is an honorable tradition - exemplified by the late Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg - that politics should stop at the water's edge when the country is confronted with a hostile, aggressive enemy.

The Bush Administration should absolutely be subjected to tough accountability and scrutiny. It has made many grievous errors in this war. The Bushies have too often divided the country. But, should we lose all perspective? Radical Jihadism poses an existential threat to liberal civilization. And there should be some semblance of bi-partisan unity against this clear and present danger.

Contrary to Wittman's brief, there is a nearly universal and multipartisan consensus on dealing with "Radical Jihadism" or "Islamofascism" or "pan-Arabic terrorism", or whatever it is we're calling it this week. Defeating terrorism, preventing a repeat of 9/11, and allowing democratic pluralism to ultimately flourish are goals shared by almost every thinking person in the Republic. The parties may disagree about the means to do so, but not the ends.

It is not that Lieberman believes that "there should be some limits on political attacks on the President during wartime" that has so outraged the Democrats of Connecticut. It is that he has been too often silent when it comes to subjecting the President "...to tough accountability and scrutiny." On almost every aspect of the ongoing debacle in Iraq, Lieberman has been a not-so-silent partner of this Administration, from the decisions and rationale to go to war in the first place to the barbaric treatment of captured prisoners.

During WWII and the early stages of the Cold War, subjecting Democratic Presidents to such scrutiny was certainly not a task shied away from by Wittman's paragon, Senator Arthur Vandenberg. But then again, men like Vandenberg and Robert Taft considered themselves to be part of a Loyal Opposition, members of a coequal branch of government with its own duties and responsibilities. Lieberman, on the other hand, has seemed to be more interested with being every Beltway pundit's favorite "reasonable Democrat," a Cabinet Secretary without portfolio for the Bushies.

Even more offensive, though, is the accusation that the intra-party challenge to Lieberman is based on anti-Semitism:

The degree of left hatred toward Joe sometimes betrays something deeper. One can see it on the threads on left wing web sites where they routinely refer to "Holy Joe" and charge him with dual loyalty to Israel. Anti-Semitism will often not speak its name directly, but there is a distinct undercurrent that may explain some of the irrational venom.

Anti-Semitism is certainly not a primary factor driving the opposition to Joe. But, it is there. If you seek hostility to Jews and Israel, you will find it in the same left wing blogosphere that spreads the vile venom against Lieberman.

And according to Wittman, the Socialism of Fools is apparently not limited to Gentiles:

And it means little that some of Lieberman's critics are themselves Jewish. For over three decades, the Moose has witnessed the phenomena when Jews on the left and decent leftists turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism for the "good of the greater cause." The New Left had in its ranks many Jews who were silent or even abetted this evil.

As support for this malicious accusation, Wittman cites a commenter at HuffPost, and nothing else. The argument, of course, is absurd. It is no more anti-Semitic to oppose Joe Lieberman than it is racist to oppose Al Sharpton. One can only hope that this ludicrous charge will help undermine the argument in other areas; for too long, the frivolous use of the "anti-Semitic" (or "self-hating", depending on the mother of the accused) trope has prevented any sort of rational debate in this country about Middle East policy, in much the same way that the ugly use of the term "racist" mars our ability to debate issues like welfare reform and immigration.

To put it another way, is it anti-Native Hawaiian for Ed Case to be challenging Senator Akaka? Was it wrong for Dale Bumpers to challenge William Fulbright in the Democratic Senate primary in Arkansas back in 1974? Or for Lloyd Bentsen to throw his hat in the ring in Texas against Ralph Yarborough in 1970? Of course not. If a Senator loses touch with his constituents, he will eventually have to pay the price, and the same thing is true when he consistently battles the mainstream of his own party's rank-and-file. No one has a God-given right to hold the exalted position of U.S. Senator, not even when you're the punditocracy's Favorite Democrat.

YBK, THE SEQUEL: Foreclosure activity (ie., foreclosures and notice of default) in California has more than doubled in the second quarter of this year. Although that is a slight decline from the first quarter, and California remains below the national norm in terms of foreclosures, these are frightening numbers, particularly when you combine this with skyrocketing energy costs and the percentage of adjustable-rate mortgages homeowners have in this state. More foreclosures will lead to declining home values, which will diminish the net worth of property owners, making it harder to borrow and invest, leading to more defaults and bankruptcies, as people desperately try to use the last remaining resort to keeping their homes.

Oh, and have I mentioned they changed the bankruptcy laws last year....

Hope everyone had a Happy 25th of July yesterday !!

Kos, on Ohio '04:

In 2004, there was — there were a lot of claims that there was fraud in Ohio. And for several months, people, you know, kept talking about how George Bush stole the election in Ohio. And after enough of that, I thought, 'OK, the evidence isn't there. This is being counterproductive at this point. If you have new evidence that would indicate that, then by all means, you know, share.' But the same discredited, so-called facts were regurgitated over and over again, and finally I got tired of that. I thought it was destructive. I also banned that type of diary.

And I think, in a case like that, what the problem wasn't necessarily people saying that the election was stolen. It's they were making claims that it was voter-box stealing, when in fact, I think a really strong case can be made that enough people were disenfranchised in Ohio that perhaps that was the margin of victory for George Bush. And instead of focusing on the, on the real problems in the electoral system, such as ballot-box access, having people put in felon voter rolls when they were not felons, not enough boxes in poor neighborhoods, in Democratic-leaning neighborhoods while out in the suburbs, there can be an in-and-out voting in 15 minutes.

Those are real problems. And people are still fixated on, you know, the boxes — the black boxes were stolen. That, I thought, took the focus away. And then actually de-legitimize actual conversations on voter rights issues that actually, you know, voter right violations that happened in Ohio.

Read the whole interview, from "Nightline".

Blame It On Beckham? [link via Ezra Klein]

FYI: Democratic Senators who voted in favor of criminalizing assistance to minors who cross state lines to obtain a legal abortion without parental consent: Bayh (IN), Byrd (WV), Carper (DE), Conrad (ND), Dorgan (ND), Inouye (HI), Johnson (SD), Kohl (WI), Landrieu (LA), Nelson (NE), Nelson (FL), Pryor (AR), Reid (NV), and Salazar (CO).

Bold means they are up for reelection in November, blue means they represent a state carried by Democrats in the past two Presidential elections.

Incidentally, Lieberman voted against the measure.

Pizzagasm: Why eating 'za is like casual sex....

The Samgrass Chronicles: Last month, I attended a local media function and met an English writer who was acquainted with Christopher Hitchens. He told me that Hitchens would bring a bottle of "Evian water" to his public speaking engagements, the "water" actually being an Evian bottle filled with straight vodka, and that as the debate would progress, it would be easy to spot him becoming more and more intoxicated. Here, Hitchens' "fake but accurate" defense of the Niger Forgeries this morning seems to be influenced by a generous helping of Smirnoff, washed down with a couple o' shots of Jagermeister.

Summer in L.A.: Hell is...a humid 118 degrees...with the air conditioning on the fritz.

Odds & Ends: Charles Pierce reminds us of a Senate primary where an incumbent critical of his own party was sacked by the voters...and the Media cheered from the sidelines. And has a prominent liberal blogger/author been caught sockpuppetting? Patterico builds a circumstantial case, here and here, while the blogger in question denies the charge, here.

Another reason to like Tour de France champion Floyd Landis...

[UPDATE (8/6/06)]: Retracted. Please disregard.

Sticking it to The Man: Did you know David Sirota has a book out? It's not like he ever mentions it on his website...or at HuffPost, where he puts up the same posts for people too lazy to visit his blog. Or that he uses the term "The Establishment" fourteen times in this post?

Ned Lamont not only has a comfortable lead among Connecticut Democrats, he is now dead even with all Nutmeg State voters, this poll finds.

Atrios links approvingly to this bit of unsubtle homophobia:

Randy Andy still seems to be having trouble figuring out if he's Roy Cohn or Oscar Wilde -- persecutor or persecuted. He's not alone: These days it seems like half of Right Blogistan is busy hurling accusations of betrayal and cowardice at the other half, while that other half is trying hard to ignore the many times it fired those same charges across the DMZ into Left Blogistan.
Well, let me help you out, Andy. To paraphrase Grady, the ghostly caretaker from The Shining: You're Roy Cohn. You've always been Roy Cohn. You may have managed to stuff your slime down your own memory hole, but you can't erase the electronic traces of it, which reveal that you aimed your little Wildean bon mot at Susan Sontag, Nom Chomsky, Michael Moore and Eric Alterman -- none of whom sympathized, immediately or later, with Al Qaeda, except in the diseased tissue of your own shrunken brain.

For whatever reason, Andrew Sullivan seems to turn the Kewl Kidz of the lefty blogosphere into W.A.T.B's. Over-the-top rhetoric that would make Ann Coulter blush always seems to find its way into attacks on someone who has recently become the blogosphere's most eloquent opponent of Bushism.

But I forgot: he once said nasty things about liberals in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. BFD.

Lance Who? With only a formality stage tomorrow, Floyd Landis is set to become the third American to win the only international competition Americans still do well in, the Tour de France. His comeback Thursday from eight minutes down is the stuff legends are made....

Dinosaur Rock:

I've really been saddened, in fact, by how often, when I drill down into anti-Lamonter motivations, I find their ideological and electoral motivations mere sandrock obscuring a core rage at this affront to tradition and orderly succession. I didn't believe this even a few months ago, but I've been forced to conclude that what scares folks about Lamont is that he represents an assault on privilege -- Joe Lieberman's, to be sure, but also theirs, no matter what sector of politics they currently represent.

In some ways, Lieberman is the canary in their coal mine, and if his sanctimonious song stops, so too may all of theirs. They never reacted this way to the Club for Growth primaries, or the Unions' promise to work against Melissa Bean, or NARAL's threats to primary Casey, because they were comfortable with the role and global motivations of those groups -- they were part of the structure, and they sought only to make it work better for them, not substantively challenge its mechanisms. The bloggers, however, are different, more unpredictable, less obviously invested in the perpetuation of this fine political system we have. And so they represent not a challenge to Joe Lieberman, but a challenge to the establishment as a whole. And that's why the establishment as a whole is howling.

--Ezra Klein

In fact, I bet if you look at ten or twenty of the most important political battles in the history of Western democracies, you'll find that most of them occurred within the same party, rather than in the actual battle for power itself. I'm reminded of what the Establishment forty years ago was saying when Eugene McCarthy had the audacity to challenge a sitting President for his party's nomination, in defiance of whatever conventional wisdom at the time said about how someone gets elected to that office. McCarthy was also a fairly undistinguished politician, like Lamont little more than a cipher, and his "followers" were motivated more by a desire to defeat LBJ than to bless the Republic with their candidate's ascension to power. LBJ didn't take the threat seriously until it was too late, and his career ended forthwith.

Little Green Firedogs (Pt. 2): On Bill Clinton's decision to campaign for St. Joseph:

Big Dog may not have taken it personally when Lieberman stabbed us all in the back with his speech on the floor of the Senate during the impeachment hearings, but many of us did. Loyalty to machine politics runs deep.

"Stabbed us all in the back?????" Of all the reasons one should support Ned Lamont, the fact that his opponent attacked President Clinton for lying under oath about an affair with an office underling should be way, way down on the list.

Hey, I love Elvis, thought he was the best President of the last half-century, hated Ken Starr and his GOP masters in Congress, and strenuously opposed the impeachment of the President. The entire matter was a ginned-up attempt to nail a politician they hated, and should be correctly regarded as one of the most distateful periods in American political history. Thanks to the GOP, the use of the impeachment mechanism to remove a President will be seen as a partisan stunt for a long time to come, something that a Congressional majority does to register its displeasure with a President of the opposing party.

But anyone who is so morally abtuse as to regard Clinton's behavior during the Lewinsky Affair as appropriate, not worthy of censure, really has a hollow core. In the autumn of '98, Clinton didn't do anything to earn our loyalty with his boorishness and dishonesty, so how can anyone other than his most obsequious retainers feel that Lieberman "stabbed us all in the back." Fighting for liberal principles doesn't entail putting on our collective kneepads everytime a Democrat is under attack for his sleazy transgressions.

It's a shame that the ratings for this year's Tour de France are in the toilet, because this year is the first time in awhile that there's actually a competition for the title, and an American might actually win it again.

Meltdown: Matt Stoller has a good exegesis of the shocking collapse of the Lieberman incumbency. Whoever said that this was like watching your standard-issue incompetent Democratic campaign consultant, but from the outside, really nailed it.

Garbo Talks: For those of you who've wondered what an Exchaton post might look like if he bothered to make an argument more substantive than "Wankers", "W.AT.B." or "Thread Away", this morning's local paper of record has an op-ed slice of Prof. Black, about the primary campaign against Joe Lieberman, that's well worth reading.

He hits all the right notes ("Lieberman's problem isn't bloggers, it's the voters of Connecticut, who seem to be increasingly tired of his support for some very uncivil policies, including federal intervention into the Terri Schiavo case, the administration's operations at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay and, yes, that disastrous invasion of Iraq"), eschews trite idioms (no reference to the "netroots"), and avoids even a semblance of the seething rage that has proven so cancerous to the progressive blogosphere. However, the lack of any positive reason for why the Republic needs Ned Lamont in the U.S. Senate is telling. Has there ever been a cipher with so devoted a cohort of loyal supporters as the Cable King? If Ned Lamont were running against Ben Nelson, a Democratic Senator whose record is quite a bit more conservative than Holy Joe's, would Lamont's "voice" and "vision" be as needed? Would anyone care?

Somalia 1, Rwanda 0: Absolutely my last soccer post for awhile.

In the wake of the unfolding tragedy in Lebanon, it's comforting to know that there are still people in the blogosphere who can post something so utterly and confoundingly clueless. Holy shit, indeed....

Bush Works Blue: Actually, the really embarassing thing is his eating with his mouth open. A classless, vulgarian buffoon.

UPDATE: Omigod. I remember how perturbed the British were twenty-five years ago when President Carter gave the Queen Mother a peck on the cheek. Now we've sunk to the level of having a President who's giving an unwanted neck message in public to the German Chancellor, just on the heels of dropping a vulgarity in the presence of the Prime Minister of Great Britain. And that's the level of respect he gives to the world leaders who are his allies. I'm now wondering how it would effect my license to practice law if I turned in my passport....

Man Bites Dog: Blogger admits that he doesn't post about a subject because he doesn't know enough about it to make a worthwhile contribution. Jeez, it's never stopped me from posting on bankruptcy law....

Booted: Arena out as U.S. coach. No word on his replacement. I guess tying the World Champs only gets you so far.

The Midas Touch: What if you gave a dinner for campaign contributors, and no one showed up? It takes a special guest of honor to scare away the fat cats.... [link via Daily Kos]

Howard Owens is back, blogging up a storm in Kern County.

Solid Earth & Gold: I haven't mentioned her recently, but the World's Most Soulful Yooperchick, Annette Summersett, finally has her new C.D. out. Buy it now.

Memo to the Opposite Sex: This isn't sexy. Straight men don't find this to be an attractive look, and we don't respect women who pursue this course; in fact, we pity them. You cannot have a fulfilling, long-term relationship with those men who are attracted, since it's just as likely they are going to be prowling junior high schools looking for their next catch. For the love of Kobe, please don't do this to yourself. [link via Kausfiles]

17 Million: That's the number of people who saw the World Cup Final in the U.S. on ABC and Univision Sunday afternoon. That's a higher number than averaged seeing the 2006 NBA Finals, three times higher than the viewership for the 7th Game of the Stanley Cup playoffs, and as high as the average for the 2005 World Series and NCAA Hoops Final, except those games were aired in prime time, and involved American teams. Its ratings were much higher than the final round of the Masters. It was seen by more Americans than saw this season's final episodes of 24 and Alias, combined...take that, Frank Deford.

Zizou apologizes, sort of, for his boneheaded loss of composure Sunday. He gets some props from, of all people, Paul Zimmerman (aka "Dr. Z"), SI's longtime football writer, here. Two other takes, based on the unsupported assumption that Zidane was the target of a racist jibe (something he hasn't claimed, yet), are here and here. It should also be pointed out for the record that Zidane's ancestry is not Arabic, it's Berber.

Italy 1, France 1 [P.K.-Ital. 5, Fra. 3]: The best World Cup final in twenty years, marred by an act of unforgivable idiocy by the game's best player in the final minutes of overtime.

Where to? For me, it's Over/Under in Santa Monica, which I seem to recall having a decided pro-Azzurri tilt....