Last week, Stephen Colbert, who often pretends to be outraged, seemed genuinely peeved about the Republican Party — now lost and leaderless — embracing Oxycontin addict Rush Limbaugh as its de facto primary thinker and voice.
Month: February 2009
Obama’s first press conference
Yes, Obama’s answers go on for too long, and he repeats himself a lot, but he’ll get the hang of it. I think he’s got the right temperament for the job, which I first noticed when he handled the Jeremiah Wright controversy.
Obama plays both the good cop and bad cop roles. If his first gesture of forgiveness is ignored (as with Wright), or his willingness to compromise (as with Republican senators fighting the economic package) is refused, then Obama gets tough. Yet he doesn’t cop the blatant “my way or the highway” style of Bush and Cheney.
Cheney should shut up about Obama not being up to handling terrorist threats. He’s lucky he isn’t having his ass hauled into the World Court in Holland for war crimes. Cheney once infamously told Senator Patrick Leahy to “go f–k yourself,” and now Leahy is calling for an investigation of how we were led into invading a country that didn’t attack us, nor posed any threat to us.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-truth10-2009feb10,0,4555508.story
Leahy said, “I don’t want to embarrass anybody. I don’t want to punish anybody. I just want the truth to come out so this never happens again.” He may not want to embarrass or punish anybody, but I sure as Hell hope that happens.
Hey, here’s something that’s good for a laugh. The Libertarians at the Cato Institute put this ad, signed by about 200 college professors (don’t know if they’re all really economists), in some newspapers on Monday, including The Boston Globe.
How can these guys be so smart, yet be so stupid? Easy. Because they’re viewing things from an extreme ideology. Hoover didn’t spend anything to halt the slide into Depression. Where did they come up with that? He didn’t do anything and things got very bad. That’s the point! Obama doesn’t want to wait, he wants to get moving now, while the money can do some good.
FDR got in office and he spent money and created jobs, but it wasn’t enough. Not until World War II came along. So it was, in the end, massive government spending that got America out of the Depression. But keep in mind, Cato kooks, that we’ve already been in a war, and that’s a big part of the reason why we’re in so much trouble. The coffers were drained before the brokers, the bankers, and the auto makers came begging.
The Bush/Cheney administration is the closest the Cato Institute will ever have to a Presidency in tune with their view of how government should be run. If they don’t like the way Bush handled things, then they’re looking for the same thing Communists want — a system that can never exist according the doctrine they hold so dearly.
Vino bargain
A neighbor/friend/co-worker turned Carol and I on to an exceptionally good wine at a reasonable price — $6. He found it at Trader Joe’s (not all TJ stores sell beer and wine). It’s Black Mountain Vineyard, 2005, a California Merlot.
It’s smooth and, for a Merlot, strong. The 2005 is ready to drink now, but the 2006 needs a year to mellow, and who knows if it’ll turn out to be as good?
Relax and float downstreaming
Netflix has a real winner with its Watch Instantly service, now that it uses the Xbox 360 as a set top box. With my FiOS Internet bandwidth of 20 Mbps — better than any other home Internet service — it wouldn’t be wise for Netflix to send HD content at its 19 Mbps maximum, as is seen with FiOS TV, so compression artifacts are apparent. SD material also has more noise than DVD, but it looks good enough, it plays smoothly, and being able to watch old Star Trek episodes on demand is something I’ve long wished for. Right now season 1 is online. I recorded a bit of “Shore Leave” off of the projection screen with my digital camera. Keep in mind the picture is about 70 inches diagonal.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/FEB/ShoreLeave.flv 480 360]
And just for fun, here’s the same AVI source file converted to MP4 format instead of FLV. The contrast and color in MP4 more accurately reflect what the Panasonic PT-AX200U put on the movie screen, and it handles fast changes between frames much better than FLV, but you’ll need Adobe Flash 9 or higher to watch it.
[MEDIA=21]
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares
As my friend Samjay knows from our lunchtime conversations at work, I’m not big on watching regular TV — gotta blog and run, y’know? — especially so-called reality shows that have little bearing on reality, because the scenarios are artificial and staged.
But there’s one reality show that has caught my fancy in a big way, for weekend viewing. It’s on BBC America and it’s called Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
As he struggles to save failing restaurants, Gordon Ramsay confronts disaster after disaster, and he’s as much a psychologist and therapist as he is a chef and restaurateur, dishing out more tough love than food. I give Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares my absolute highest recommendation. Go to the link and watch the preview videos, and I hope your cable service has BBC America.
LeVeille back on the nightbeat
The Boston Globe finally has a feature article about the return of WBZ AM 1030’s previously laid off overnight man, Steve LeVeille.
http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2009/02/08/this_time_the_listeners_were_heard/
Another departure from WBZ, but a permanent one, is longtime sports announcer Gil Santos, who retired at the end of January. Last week LeVeille, basking in the well-deserved glory of his triumphant return to Boston’s airwaves, saluted Santos.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/FEB/LeVeille.mp3]