Eleven planets?
Yup.
Makes my head explode, too.
For future reference (in case you get on a game show), they are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Eris.
"My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants". That’s the mnemonic device.
Last night, and I didn’t watch it. It was probably the most important one for Hillary and Obama, especially Hillary.
Man, there were twenty of those things on the Dem side, and I don’t think I saw a single one. I don’t know. I think they are too canned. And the questions that get asked — they tend to be "gotcha" questions, or invitations to get one candidate to diss another candidate. Yawn.
Apparently that’s what Russert tried to pull last night. He tried to get Obama to answer for Farrakhan’s support of the Obama campaign. Pretty dumb. Since when is Obama supposed to answer for the views of one of his supporters? Obama doesn’t pick his supporters; his supporters pick him.
Bizarre.
Drum’s wrap-up is pretty typical of what I’ve read:
Seriously, though, can someone please put a sock in Tim Russert? I didn’t even see the entire exchange, but his badgering of Obama on the Louis Farrakhan issue was pretty wretched. It was maybe legitimate to bring it up in the first place, but to keep at it well after Obama had made his position crystal clear was beyond the pale.
Nor did Hillary cover herself with glory on this question, with her inane "denounce" vs. "reject" comeback. Obama’s response Fine, if it will make you happy, then I denounce and reject Farrakhan was dexterous and smooth.
Overall, I thought Clinton did about as well as she could have on the attack front, but it just wasn’t enough. Obama seemed the better, more grounded debater tonight. For example, when Hillary made the point that although Obama’s 2002 anti-war speech was all well and good, once he was actually in the Senate he ended up voting the same way she did, I was nodding along. It’s a legitimate point. But Obama’s answer was pretty good:
It was not a matter of, well, here is the initial decision, but since then we’ve voted the same way. Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out. The question is, who’s making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch? And the fact is that Senator Clinton often says that she is ready on day one, but in fact she was ready to give in to George Bush on day one on this critical issue.
Clinton and Obama are too skilled for either one to ever land a knockout blow in these things, but I’d give tonight’s debate to Obama on points. Whether voters who are tuning in for the first time feel the same way, I couldn’t say.
I am republishing a portion from an earlier post (written in September 2006):
February 26, 1993
I was a third-year law student at NYU in 1993. As any third-year law student will tell you, a 3L’s focus in the second semester is not so much on completing law school and passing law school exams, but preparing for the impending bar exam.
Throughout law school, I clerked part-time at the law firm of Slotnick & Baker, a small "boutique" law firm specializing in high-profile criminal defense cases. The firm consisted of 4 lawyers, me, a paralegal, and a secretary. I had worked there since 1987 (I started as a paralegal).
A few weeks earlier, I had informed the senior partner Barry Slotnick that it was my intention to cut back on my time with the firm during my second semester, so I could focus on BarBri bar exam preparation courses. So I was there only once or twice a week.
I was not supposed to work on February 26, 1993. But I made an unscheduled visit to the law office, mostly to tie up some loose ends.
Slotnick & Baker at that time was located at 225 Broadway, just diagonal from the World Trade Center towers. Pictured here is 225 Broadway on 9/11/01 (it’s the tall building on the right side of the photo — one of the Twin Towers behind it is collapsing).
Every day when I was employed there, I took the subway to work. I typically would get off at the WTC stop, and come up to the street through the underground concourse mall two stories below the entire WTC complex.
I only planned to be at the firm for only a few hours on February 26. I had just finished a class that morning, and I had another one sometime in the early afternoon. I was just going in to get a few things, grab some lunch, and go back to school.
Nadia was glad to see me. She was the paralegal there, having replaced me a few years earlier when I moved up to "law clerk". A few days earlier, she had been given an actual office with an actual window. She no longer had to work in the law library, sitting at a long desk. "Come see my office," she said. "I’ve decorated it."
I was happy to oblige. Her office, in fact, was my old office (or one of them, I should say). It was full of girly Nadia-things, as I expected. We did our usual amount of chit-chat and flirting. I looked out her window from the 22nd floor, which faces south.
"Nice view," I said sarcastically.
"At least I have a view now", Nadia smiled.
We chatted a few minutes more about various things. Office gossip. Nadia’s second job as a tour guide for Big Apple NYC Bus Tours. More flirting.
Suddenly, the building shook. The window, which I was leaning against, rattled. And a large bang.
"Bangs" are not uncommon in New York. Usually, it’s a sanitation vehicle slamming down one of those large green industrial trash bins. But this is something different.
"Whoa", I said.
Nadia giggled (because that’s what she does).
We speculated as to what it might be, but seeing nothing from her window, we quickly forgot about it. And ten minutes later, I was saying "so long" and venturing out of the office to get lunch somewhere in the WTC concourse, and eventually return to NYU up in the Village.
As soon as I stepped outside 225 Broadway, I heard the sirens. I turned the corner and headed toward the WTC and that’s when I saw the flashing lights. I connected it to the blast I heard ten to fifteen minutes ago. My initial reaction was one of annoyance: will this prevent me from getting lunch in the WTC concourse?
Then I wondered if there might have been a subway accident — a collision of trains perhaps — which might explain the bang we heard.
I hovered for several minutes, inching my way closer to what appeared to be the center of attention at the foot of the towers. Others on the street were craning their necks upward, and so — like a lemming — I did, too.
I was almost at the base of the towers, on the plaza (which was surprisingly devoid of people), when I saw them: two women coming out one of the doors on the east side of the North Tower. They were holding each other and looking very fatigued. One of them was covered in soot and coughing.
The explosion, as we know now, was a bomb set off in one of the underground parking garages by an al Qaeda terrorist bent on causing one of the towers to collapse. He grossly underestimated the strength of the building. However, smoke from the explosion had poured up through the tower’s interior, and cut off power inside. Just as they would eight years later, workers were evacuating the building — sometimes through smoke — by stairwell.
I went to the women and asked if they were okay. One of them — the sooty one — asked for water. I said I didn’t have any, but I said I would take them to where I had seen emergency vehicles minutes before. And the three of us walked. They asked me what had happened. I said I didn’t know, even though I suspected it had something to do with that "bang" I heard half an hour ago.
As we walked around the base of the building toward the west side. A fireman saw us approaching and helped the stricken woman to a paramedic vehicle, her friend in tow. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another fireman looking up, and I looked up as well. There was a plume of smoke coming from one of the high floors in the tower.
Just then, I head a scuffle and looked over to see a man in a gray business suit collapse to the ground. I assumed he was another worker in the office, although (from the glimpse of him I caught) he didn’t appear to be covered in soot. Several firemen and policemen quickly went to his aid.
Apart from me, there were a few other civilians in the immediate area. I heard a policeman instructing them to move back several blocks. He was concerned about falling glass from the upper floors plummeting down to the streets below. Not needing a hint, I left the scene and made my way to the subway, looking back over my shoulder to watch the events. On my way, I ran into a few other people looking for medical attention, and I directed them to the emergency workers.
I arrived at the subway entrance, where a policeman said that they were closing the subway. This meant that I would have to walk several city blocks uptown to get to the next station.
I doubted that the subways were running, so walking to another station didn’t make much sense. With nothing else to do, I stayed around for a while (behind police barricades) watching what I could.
About 20 minutes later, I happened to see an empty cab, which I hailed. I took it to NYU, just in time for class. The cabbie said he heard it was a bomb on the upper floor (he was wrong, it was in the underground garage).
Six people died that day, and over one thousand were injured, in the first largely forgotten al Qaeda attack on American soil.
**********************
Post script:
Pictures:
One of the right wing’s favorite anti-immigrant claims is that immigrants are dangerous and commit high levels of crime.
A new report by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, however, finds that these claims are baseless:
“In California, as in the rest of the nation, immigrants … have extremely low rates of criminal activity,” said Kristin Butcher, a co-author of the report, “Crime, Corrections and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do With It?”
Available data, the report’s authors said, “suggest that long-standing fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are unjustified.”
Starting with the fact that immigrants make up 35 percent of the state’s adult population but only 17 percent of its prisoners, researchers said they discovered several “striking” findings.
When by my solitary hearth I sit,
When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.
Whene’er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon’s bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moon-beams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof.
Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!
Whene’er the fate of those I hold most dear
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,
O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer;
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head!
Should e’er unhappy love my bosom pain,
From cruel parents, or relentless fair;
O let me think it is not quite in vain
To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head!
In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country’s honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom’s shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed—
Beneath thy pinions canopy my head!
Let me not see the patriot’s high bequest,
Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppress’d,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glitterings!
And as, in sparkling majesty, a star
Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud;
Brightening the half veil’d face of heaven afar:
So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud,
Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,
Waving thy silver pinions o’er my head.
It’s a promotion for an Australian bank. Enter your name, and these kittens will sing you a song.
From a Salon interview with author Amy Sullivan ("The Party Faithful"), a Christian evangelical who is a Democrat:
You’re pro-choice. Does that interfere with being an evangelical?
Well, I don’t like the [pro-choice] label. I guess the reason I wrote about abortion the way I did in the book is because I have serious moral concerns about abortion, but I don’t believe that it should be illegal. And that puts me in the vast majority of Americans. But unfortunately, there’s no label for us.
There is a label for people who have serious moral concerns about abortion, but who believe that women have the right to decide what to do with their bodies. It’s called "pro-choice". That’s what "pro-choice" means.
"Pro-choice" isn’t a euphamism for — I don’t know — mandating abortions. It doesn’t mean that one has to view abortions as "moral". It just means that each woman gets to make those moral decisions, not the government.
I run into this a lot — people who say, "Well, I’m pro-life. I think abortions are immoral and wrong. But I don’t think they should be made illegal, and that women should be sent to jail for it." Those people, although they can’t bring themselves to admit it (probably because they feel they will be demonized), are pro-choice.
Pro-choice and pro-life are not opposites. One can be both. In fact, like Amy Sullivan says, most people probably are.
UPDATE: Kevin Drum ponders the Amy Sullivan interview and adds this:
In the rest of the interview, she basically suggests that about 60% of the evangelical community is politically conservative and won’t ever vote for a Democrat. But the other 40% will, and those 40% are worth trying to appeal to. And one way to appeal to them is to acknowledge their moral qualms about abortion even if you don’t happen to share them yourself. Like this guy:
I think that the American people struggle with two principles: There’s the principle that a fetus is not just an appendage, it’s potential life. I think people recognize that there’s a moral element to that. They also believe that women should have some control over their bodies and themselves and there is a privacy element to making those decisions.
I don’t think people take the issue lightly. A lot of people have arrived in the view that I’ve arrived at, which is that there is a moral implication to these issues, but that the women involved are in the best position to make that determination. And I don’t think they make it lightly.
That’s Barack Obama, likely the next Democratic candidate for the presidency. All he’s doing is acknowledging the moral dimension of abortion, while remaining solidly in favor of abortion choice, reducing unwanted pregnancies, and encouraging responsible sexual behavior.
UPDATE: More of the same, from Shakesville:
Here’s the thing: I agree that pro-choicers need to develop a dialog with people who consider themselves pro-life, but really could be convinced that abortion should remain legal.
But the way to do that is not by saying, "Well, pro-choice doesn’t describe me, because abortion is all icky and stuff." The way to do that is to focus on the term, "pro-choice."
As it seems to need to be said over and over and over again, pro-choice is not the same as pro-abortion. I know many, many people who personally would not have abortions, but nevertheless believe it should absolutely be legal for those who would. Pro-choice means believing that women should have the right to make their own moral decisions on abortion, even if you disagree with those decisions.
I, like many people, have my own personal opinions on when abortion is right and when it is wrong. I just don’t believe my views should be translated into government control. If I was a woman, I might even have the opportunity to act on those opinions — or find that they’ve changed once the situation wasn’t a hypothetical anymore.
That’s the essence of choice — saying that you trust women to decide. Sullivan can have "serious moral concerns" about abortion all she wants to. She can voice them, explain why she feels that way.
That’s a pro-choice position. The way to convince those fence-sitting evangelicals is not to say, "Well, I’m not pro-choice like those angry feminists are." The way to convince them is to say, "I have my problems with abortion, too. But I’m still pro-choice, because I think it’s a choice that’s up to a woman based on her morality, her religion, her situation." People who are willing to come over to the pro-choice side are going to be receptive to that message. People who are not receptive to that message are going to stay Republican. Let them.
Yup.
I understand that many on the right really really really hate Islam — the entire religion — simply because of the extremist element within that religion contain some terribly bad people.
But you have to wonder about a winger who is do dedicated to his anti-Islamic beliefs that he says he will commit suicide as a sign of protest against Islam, and the liberals who (in his mind) allows it to prosper.
A hardcore right wing blogger named Ronald Barbour did just that. From his final post, dated Feb. 19:
I understand the ______ building is more than 150 feet tall. At the time of my last recon I noticed easy access to the roof that would allow someone to leap to their death to the parking lot below. I’m not an expert in these matters, but if I recall from my physics classes in college at 100 feet a falling object reaches a speed of about 100 MPH. This means that the falling man would hit the pavement at a speed great enough to cause instant death. I understand that over the years since the construction of this building several persons have died by jumping from this structure.
I plan to make such a leap. I do this in memory of the several hundred victims on 9/11 who jumped off the World Trade Center as a means of avoiding burning to death, and the over 3,000 American soldiers killed fighting Islamofascism in Iraq and Afghanistan. A parallel reason is a protest against the American Left and the Democrat Party who have stabbed the Armed Forces in the back in the early stages of what is shaping up to be The Third World War.
***
What I did is not suicide. It is the action of a patriot and idealist who loves God and Country, and who makes a very public statement as a warning of a New Dark Age that looks America straight in the face armed with a hideous ideology that makes the German Nazis or Russian Communists look like bleeding heart liberals. I hope my fellow Countrymen will rally once gain in the defense of liberty no matter how long and hard the struggle.
Here’s his obit.
P.S. It’s important to note that this person probably was not particularly balanced. After all, according to a reprint of a Florida Today article on his blog, Barbour spent time in federal prison for attempting to assassinate Bill Clinton. (Barbour claimed he was framed).
As a brunette (age 36):
As a blonde (age 46):
The above simlulated photos were created by a company of experts specializing in "age art". Typically, they are hired as forensic specialists to create pictures of missing children as they would look like several years later.
But for giggles and grins, they applied their skills to Britney.
LITHIA – A Lithia family says a cuddly, programmable Elmo doll revealed its dark side yesterday after fresh batteries were installed.
Instead of singing songs or reciting the favorite color of its 2-year-old owner, James Bowman, the doll started making death threats, the family says.
With a squeeze of its fuzzy belly, the Sesame Street character now says, in a sing-song voice, "Kill James." "It’s not something that really you would think would ever come out of a toy," said Melissa Bowman, James’ mother. "But once I heard, I was just kind of distraught."
The Elmo Knows Your Name doll, which connects to a computer to learn certain phases and names, recently ran out of battery power, Bowman said.
About an hour after she put new ones in, "I noticed exactly what it was saying," Bowman said. "And my son was repeating exactly what it was saying."
According to Drudge:
With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a “dressed” Barack Obama.
The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya. The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa.
“Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?” questioned one campaign staffer, in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.
This is a "wink and nod" tactic of the Clinton campaign, and I don’t think anyone except the most extremely ignorant voter is going to buy it. A sheer sign of desparation.
Even Rick Moran, one of the most conservative on the conservative blogosphere, ain’t having none of it:
It embarrasses me to no end to see fellow conservatives who actually believe that Barack Obama is some kind of “Manchurian Candidate” sent by Muslims to undermine American society. Or that Obama is a closet Muslim just waiting to take power before unmasking himself. Or perhaps most bizarrely, since Obama was born to a Muslim father, he is a Muslim whether he wants to be or not and that Muslims elsewhere will not let him forget his heritage.
***
Most of this idiocy takes place in comment sections of blogs and conservative boards where new Vince Foster murder theories still generate excitement. Occassionally, one of these stories goes mainstream and for a brief period, conservative are made to look like paranoid loons who believe Barack Obama is a cross between the anti-Christ and Osama bin Laden’s long lost brother.
Well, today conservative stupidity regarding Obama and his supposed ties to Islam hit paydirt – as in generating a ten on the laugh-o-meter. Evidently, the probable next president of the United States was caught in flagrante dilecto, dressed to the nines in what appears to be some kind of native garb (probably Kenyan) and with a (gasp!) turban on his head. To some of my unschooled, ignorant conservative friends, this is further proof that if we elect Obama president, there will be a department of Sharia Affairs.
***
…the idea that Obama in traditional Kenyan garb proves he’s some kind of closet Muslim or Islamic sympathizer is absurd. Kenya is 70% Christian and only 10% Muslim. To extrapolate that Obama’s dress denotes anything other than acknowledging his birthright not to mention playing the gracious guest by donning the clothing of his hosts is irrational, stupid, ignorant, and totally without foundation.
***
I would say to my conservative friends who continue to insist that this is a rich vein to mine that you are so off base as to be a laughingstock. Just because my middle name is David doesn’t mean I’m a Jew despite a long, illustrious connection of that name to the history and faith of the Hebrews. Hence, this nonsense about Obama’s middle name being “proof” that he is a Muslim has got to stop. There’s no evidence that name was given to him for any other reason except the given one – it was his father’s middle name as well.
Nor does Obama dressing up in local garb make him a Kenyan elder or a shadow Muslim. The fact that he is wearing a traditional headress is irrelevant to what he believes. When Calvin Coolidge was photographed wearing a Lakotan headdress, no one came out and said Coolidge was a devotee of The Great Spirit. Politicians wear all sorts of funny hats and clothes. It’s part of Americana. For Obama to be singled out for honoring his hosts by dressing in traditional garb is the height of stupidity and my conservative bretheren should be ashamed of themselves.
I really wish this meme would stop. There is so much else to criticize Obama for that to start tilting at windmills by claiming he’s a danger to our Judeo-Christian society is a waste of time, effort, and resources. I would imagine the candidate himself rather than being hurt by these accusations probably gets a good laugh out of them, so silly they are and so revealing of the stupidity that permeates a large subset of the right.
Get a grip, friends.
As even Drudge himself notes, political leaders often dress in the garb of the people they are visiting. It "means" nothing.
UPDATE: Obama, naturally, has called the circulation of the photo by the Clinton campaign "divisive". The Clinton campaign response as follows:
Enough.
If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.
This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry.
We will not be distracted.
Interesting.
Here was the Clinton campaign’s chance to deny that they were circulating the photo. They didn’t.
Instead, they send the nonsensical message: "Circulation of the photo by us is not devisive nor an attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today. But saying that we’re being divisive by circulating the photo is an attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting the coountry today".
OTHER OBAMA-RELATED THOUGHTS: Count me among the many who have concerns about Obama being assassinated. They did it to John, Bobbie, Martin, and Malcolm…..
And certainly the photos of him in non-Western garb have the potential to set off the most unstable elements of our society….
"Capitalism"
I’ll let Yglesius explain:
Conservatives have been all over Barack Obama (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here) for telling the following anecdote during last night’s debate:
You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon," he said. "Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.
Basically, as you can see if you check the conservative blogs above, that story can’t possibly be true, and the fact that Obama would say it reflects either his dishonesty or else his gross ignorance of military matters. Alternatively, you can read Jake Tapper who got in touch with the Captain in question: "Short answer: He backs up Obama’s story." The story itself is, as Tapper says, pretty interesting and worth checking out on its own merits. Obama’s conservative critics will, I’m sure, be taking note of this additional reporting.
UPDATE: Phil Carter has an excellent post following up on some of these issues. Bottom line:
In light of my experience in Iraq, Sen. Obama’s comments last night are eminently believable. Sen. Obama is also absolutely right to use this anecdote as a critique of the administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq. It is incontrovertible that the war in Iraq diverted scarce military resources (manpower, equipment, etc.) from Afghanistan to Iraq. The cost for that diversion was paid by America’s sons and daughters, and our Afghan brethren, who continue to fight in Afghanistan against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We owe our troops better.
Well said.
