According to Fox News, liberal Holland is out of control and drug addicts have run amok, particularly in Amsterdam. One resident of the capital city of the Netherlands begs to differ.
But despite appearances, is Amsterdam in fact a cesspool of decadence and despair? Maybe Karen Damen knows…
The 911 call to the Cambridge, MA Police makes it clear that the caller was acting at the request of someone else, and she said nothing at all about race until she was asked by the police dispatcher. It sounds as though the dispatcher said, “Are they White, Black or Hispanic?” Listen starting at 2:00 into the audio clip.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JUL/911call.mp3]This gives her a lot of credibility when she says that she did not speak with Sergeant Crowley at the scene, contrary to his filed report.
And the recording of Crowley’s radio calls does nothing to substantiate his claim that Professor Gates was loud and abusive.
The big loser in all of this is Obama. He’s lost the backing of cops nationwide, and he’s handed the Right the ammo they needed to question who Sonia Sotomayor will empathize with once she’s seated on the Supreme Court.
Eric and I are doing something we haven’t done in a long time. We’re going to Fenway Park to watch a Red Sox game. I think the last time we went the seats were about $75, but now they’re $125. We’ll be back there on August 5 with Carol to see Paul McCartney. Those seats are $100, but fees bring the total up to about $115. The field seats for the show — which don’t exist for a baseball game, of course — are $200.
Well, the Sox lost to the Orioles, 6-2, but mercifully it was a short game, especially because we got sunburned. I’d like to point out two photos that I took. First, in the background of this one is the Prudential Building, commonly called “The Pru,” making it a must for Prue Bury if she ever visits Boston…
… and the big Budweiser sign makes me want to point out that the King of Beers now belongs to a company in tiny Belgium. The present King of Belgians is Albert II.
I would suppose that the first thought for some Americans when hearing “Gates” and “Harvard” in the same breath would be to think, “Didn’t Bill Gates drop out of Harvard?” But the talk of the town today is the imbroglio surrounding the arrest last week of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. The disorderly conduct charge was quickly dropped. The arrest report is available at The Smoking Gun.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html
This story is such a big deal here in greater Boston that I’ll weigh in with a few points.
I would be remiss if I didn’t note that passing of Peter Asher’s musical partner Gordon Waller. They had a solid string of hits in the 60’s. I’ve grabbed two of their tunes from 1967 off of an old piece of groovy vinyl I own, both composed by Mike Leander and Charlie Mills. I’m fairly sure Peter produced these singles.
First the slighty risqué “Lady Godiva”…
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JUL/LadyGodiva.mp3]… and “Knight In Rusty Armour”
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/JUL/KnightInRustyArmour.mp3]The talk show “On Point” on Boston’s NPR station WBUR has a must-hear hour on Goldman Sachs & Co.. The springboard is investigative reporter Matt Taibbi’s exposé, “The Great American Bubble Machine.”
[audio:http://www.bu.edu/wbur/storage/2009/07/onpoint_0721_1.mp3]
(Note: I’m hot-linking this audio from ‘BUR, and it isn’t on my server, so it may disappear.)
Taibbi rips apart the understandably defensive, but ludicrous, arguments put forth by Goldman Sachs consultant Charles Ellis, who claims to be outraged by the excesses of the market — yet he insists the blame lies with government regulators and complicit consumers, but not the banks. I feel that Ellis and his ilk deserve to be treated with ridicule, condescension and derision.
Taibbi also tears into President Obama, for paying lip-service to an end of lobbyist influence and bonus-driven business as usual on Wall Street. I’m becoming increasingly disappointed with Obama for what he isn’t doing, in contrast to Bush, who I hated for what he was doing.
