MSNBC blacklists Kos: A tale of murder, Twitter, and media double standards

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Did you know that in 2001, around the time Chandra Levy, an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, disappeared and media attention focused on Democratic Rep. Gary Condit, with whom Levy, who was from Condit's district, had had an affair, there was another serious incident, if one that received far less attention, involving a young woman, one Lori Klausutis, who worked for then-Rep. Joe Scarborough, now a big-shot MSNBC host?

I didn't either, until I read about Markos "Kos" Moulitsas being blacklisted from MSNBC.

It's still not clear what happened, but the 28-year-old Klausutis died at Scarborough's office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The mystery surrounds how she died, and if anyone else was involved. Conspiracy theories abound that Scarborough himself was involved, but nothing, it seems, has ever come of them. Kos wrote about the incident back in 2005.

Well, as Kos writes, Scarborough was all over the Joe Sestak "scandal" (the allegation that the White House offered Sestak a job to keep him from challenging Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter in this year's Pennsylvania Senate race. (Sestak challenged and won the nomination.) Scarborough accused the media of neglecting to give the story, such as it was one, its due. In response, Kos tweeted: "Like story of a certain dead intern..." Scarborough fired back, accusing Kos of having "a long history of spreading lies" and of calling him a murderer. Kos replied that he had never called Scarborough a murder, noting that the issue was "media hypocrisy": "But he was Dem. You aren't."

Maybe there's nothing to the conspiracy theories, but Kos certainly wasn't pushing them. Rather, all he did was bring up the lack of media coverage of Klausutis's death. But that was enough to send Scarborough over the edge, and the upshot is that Kos has been blacklisted from MSNBC. As MSNBC head Phil Griffin put it in a statement reprinted (in full) by Kos:

Yes, after I became aware of the ugly cheap shot  you  took at Joe on Twitter, I asked the teams to take a break from booking you on our shows for a while. I found the comments to be in poor taste, and utterly uncalled for in a civil discourse.

I'm hoping this will be only temporary and that the situation can be resolved in a mature fashion, but until then I just don't know how one could reasonably expect to be welcomed onto our network while publicly antagonizing one of our hosts at the same time.

The DailyKos community has been among the most supportive of MSNBC, and we continue to appreciate that support.

Well, a lot of people antagonize MSNBC hosts. Are you not welcome on the network if you've ever criticized Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann? And, again, it's not like Kos called Scarborough a murderer. All he did was bring up a subject that Scarborough finds uncomfortable, one for obvious reasons he would rather consign forever to the dustbin of his own sordid past, far away from prying eyes.

What Kos is getting at here is that there appears to be a double standard, just as there was with the coverage of Levy/Klausutis, one driven by partisanship and ideology. And it's all about the media giving conservatives a free pass. It may not be clear-cut, and there may be exceptions to it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

Meanwhile, the Kos-Scarborough flare-up probably could have been handled more maturely, but it's really only Kos's first tweet that went a bit too far (if anything, he could have been more tactful). After that, it was Scarborough who lost it, throwing a "temper tantrum" and complaining to his boss (who "lets Scarborough call the shots" and so who was bound to side with his low-rated morning host).

Regardless, it's pretty stupid for MSNBC to blacklist a major progressive voice and new media icon like Markos Moulitsas. It would do well to rethink its priorities, and to think through its double standards.

How rich

By Mustang Bobby

The latest trend in electoral campaigns is the super-rich running as an outsider. We're seeing it here in Florida with Rick Scott, a conservative who made a pile by running Columbia/HCA healthcare -- and dodging fraud charges -- running for governor, and Jeff Greene, another billionaire with some questionable dealings in his past, running in the Democratic primary for the Senate. Elsewhere we have Carly Fiorina, who was once the CEO of HP, running for the Senate in California along side Meg Whitman, who used to be the president of e-Bay, trying to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger. They're all over the place, including Wisconsin, where Sen. Russ Feingold, perhaps the most outspoken liberal in the United States Senate, has to run ads touting his conservative endorsements in his race to win re-election against Ron Johnson, who is -- you guessed it -- rolling in it and with the backing of the Tea Party.

Hey, this is America and anyone with enough lungpower and connections can run for any office they want. But it's interesting to see not only are the super-rich getting involved in politics, they're doing their best to try to portray themselves as just like you and me. Of course, they're not. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted, "The rich are different from you and me." To which Ernest Hemingway is said to have retorted, "Yes, they have more money." (The retort is a misquote, but it still rings true.) The idea of a rich person running for office -- usually for the first time -- as an outsider and just plain folks is one of those paradoxes that makes politics in America the maddeningly fascinating game that it has come to be.

Americans have a love/hate relationship with the wealthy. We admire them for their enterprise and their drive to accumulate massive sums of money, perhaps envisioning that somehow, some way, it could happen to us, and yet we hate them for their palatial homes and fancy boats and cars and $1,000 bottles of wine. We think that they have the secrets of success and we want it for ourselves, and yet we sneer at anything about them that hints at elitism, and love seeing them acting like one of us, which explains the booming business in celebrity gossip ("Look! Brad Pitt buys food at a grocery store!") That's why the super-rich running for office go to such pains to portray themselves as ordinary folks. That's why Sarah Palin can talk about being a hockey mom and going huntin' and trappin' and collect $100,000 and fly first class to deliver the talk about being just like you. That's why Rick Scott and Jeff Greene go around Florida trying to make it look like they're out there for the little guy, creating jobs and getting to work for us. They'll do anything to show that while they're rich, they're not elitists. Elitism is a charge that only works in the third person; we're rich, and that's great, but they are elites. Boo hiss. (Steve M. has a primer on the difference between being rich and being elitist.)

Of course the reality is that if you're rich in America, you're not an outsider. You worked the system, you know the people in power in places where knowing them helped you get rich. There's nothing wrong with that; that's how America is supposed to work. But let's not kid ourselves; no one running for office who is financing their own campaign with the couple of million bucks of loose change that fell out of their pockets can truly call themselves an outsider no matter how many beat-up pick-up trucks they drive or how many ads they film talking to farmers or ranchers or people of color. The only reason that it works is because they know that the people watching the ads are all thinking, "Hey, that could be me" in the same way they think that wearing Calvin Klein underwear will turn them into a well-muscled hunk or eating NutriSystem will turn them into a skinny runway model. And it works.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

The missing story

By Carl 

Today is the fifth anniversary of the London transit bombings.

Naturally, the British papers are full of references.

Oddly, the only references in American media are from the Voice of America and some short wire service pieces. Interesting particularly when you consider the Queen was visiting just yesterday, on the eve of the anniversary, and visited our ground zero.

I say "oddly" because what England suffered that day is what America is only now starting to see: home-grown terrorism. First British and now American citizens attacking their countrymen.

In America, though, those attacks could be militant Islamists, or militant right-wingers. There's the dirty little secret of the American media. This is a third-rail story possibly because if they were to report it fully, they'd have to report on the activities of the Eric Rudolphs in this nation: angry white men with grudges.

This would also require exploring why those angry white men are so angry, and here's the real story: they're angry because they feel their own country is against them.

It's easy to poo-poo those complaints. After all, old white men still have it the easiest in this nation. They're living longer, they have drugs to prevent erectile dysfunction which means they can have sex longer, they make the lion's share of money in this country, own the lion's share of property.

The problem with the easy answer here is, it's the wrong answer. It's not that angry white men are wrong to be angry. It's wrong that they're angry because they're white.

The real problem stems from the fact that society has put aside, for the most part, the racial divides. Instead, the problem lies within economic classes. So the angry white man has more in common with the working class black man or woman, or white woman for that matter, than he has in common with the concentration of wealth that has occurred over the past thirty years.

In the hands of rich (and not angry) white men. The United States has spent thirty years assisting those who need no assistance, at the expense of transmogrifying a thriving middle class into a society of poor and indebted. When you consider the fact that several tens of millions of Americans owe to banks and credit card companies more than the total value of their assets (i.e. are functionally bankrupt) and that two-income families, almost unheard of in 1980, are now the norm, it's no wonder that working class white men are angry, and that middle-class white men are not far behind. Who wants to live like that, knowing that a catastrophic illness, or a divorce, or a fire could wipe you out and force you to live on the streets?

That's not a fantasy. That's a reality, and that reality builds another reality where terrorism might be the blonde German-American frustrated that his wife left him holding the bag. In a dog-eat-dog world, the losing dog is going to look mighty tasty.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Suing Arizona

By Capt. Fogg

Years ago, returning from a visit to El Paso, we were booming along a lonely Texas road in my old Corvette, enjoying the breathtaking desert scenery on the way to Carlesbad, New Mexico. Seeing something on the side of the road a long way ahead, I backed off on the throttle and coasted down to something resembling the speed limit. "Damn" I said to myself as I saw a uniformed officer getting out of his car to flag me down. I thought perhaps I'd been snagged by an airplane and was going to get a ticket, but no, the very polite officer simply asked me where I was going and where I'd come from. "And you ma'am?" he said to my uncustomarily silent wife. "He wants to hear your accent, dear. Say something."

It was really no surprise. Returning from a number of trips abroad, someone from the government hanging around the baggage claim always has managed to inquire as to where she was born or something like that -- just to hear her speak. I'm used to being embarrassed by and for my country and its undying suspicion of non-European genetics. Now of course, in Arizona, the State we usually passed through on the way to visit her brother, a retired US Army Colonel, she would be required to furnish proof of citizenship to any officer who used any pretext to stop us. My home state is hell bent to emulate them.

That's not the sad or the unexpected part of the story. That would be the fact that a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. national poll conducted a month ago showed 57 percent of Americans support Arizona's unconstitutional power grab, an attempt that if it had been backed by Democrats would surely be compared with Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin and Ted Nugent's favorite, Mao Zedong. Perhaps we can blame a lack of respect for citizens of foreign birth or for citizens with certain ethnic backgrounds or the appearance of it. Perhaps we can blame the smug attitude that "I'm blond, so what do I care?" Instead they're already trashing Obama for what they would have trashed him for had he supported it. 

The American people must wonder whether the Obama administration is really committed to securing the border when it sues a state that is simply trying to protect its people by enforcing immigration law, 

said Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain in a joint statement, as though any bad and illegal measure was justified by a legitimate problem. Representative Lamar Smith, Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (Republicans all) piled on with the same arguments and attacks on Obama with all the enthusiasm of an 8th grade football team in response to the Justice Department's decision to sue.

Whether these gentlefolk really are so concerned with a real, but already decreasing problem or whether as usual, they're just trying to sabotage the Democrats even if it sinks the ship of state is impossible to tell, but of course I suspect the latter.

I do have to ask whether 57% of Americans would support the Federal Government's efforts in other important respects by allowing small town police to stop anyone and demand tax returns of anyone who appears too wealthy? I have to ask why the Tea Bag twits get away with insisting we're losing our freedom while supporting the loss. I don't have to get an answer however and I'm sure I won't. I'm also sure that nothing will ever induce me to visit that state again.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Hot, humid, exhausting -- plus, thoughts on the World Cup, the British Monarchy, and a few other things

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Toronto is an unpleasant place to be when it's this hot and this humid, and I'm sure it's the same for many of you suffering through this heatwave in the U.S. northeast and central Canada.

I'll be back to blogging tomorrow... er, later today, as it's already past 1 am. I'm just too tired to write anything.

So stay tuned for more from me and the team.

But first, a few thoughts:

-- I'm really looking forward to Germany-Spain tomorrow. That, to me, is the final. (Sorry, Holland.) And I, who has long rooted against our two-time World War enemy of the last century, can hardly believe that I'm rooting for Germany. What an exciting team. And it helps that it's a genuinely multicultural team that reflects the new Germany and that has incurred the wrathful opposition of the neo-Nazi far right. For some reason I can really get behind a German team filled with Turks, Poles, and Brazilians.

-- The Queen (Elizabeth II, that is) was in Toronto yesterday, at Queen's Park of all places. I'm a Democrat in U.S. politics, but I'm definitely a republican up here. I'd like to see the monarchy abolished in Canada. It's pathetic to see so many Canadians on their knees, so grateful that she came to visit us on our birthday, so thankful that she seems to care about us, as if she blesses us with her presence, as if her very appearance here proves our worthiness. Sorry, but I don't care to be her "subject," and I think this country needs its own head of state, and not just a governor general who acts as the Queen's representative. If Britain wants to keep the monarchy, fine, and, as a British citizen as well as a Canadian one, I suppose I support keeping the monarchy there, but we need to move on. (Yes, the Queen is deeply popular with many Canadians, and it's not clear what could replace the monarchy (an elected "president," as in Germany?), but today's Canada -- diverse, cosmopolitan -- doesn't need her anymore, if it ever really did, and much of the popularity is directed at her personally, not at the institution.)

-- How hilarious, in a sad sort of way, is this? A BP offshore oil drilling board game from the '70s, featuring "hazard cards" that read, "Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1million." Really, you can't make this shit up. (I wonder if Dr. Evil came up with the $1 million figure.)

-- John McCain, you have clearly become a hollow shell of a human being. And that's putting it nicely. Have you absolutely no self-respect left at all?

-- Washingon v. Arizona over the latter's draconian anti-immigrant law? Arizona will lose. And rightly so.

-- Sign already, LeBron. Somewhere. Please.

-- Just got my seat assignment for Roger Waters' The Wall in Buffalo in October. Thirteenth row! Awesome. I can't even begin to express my excitement. (Yes, I'm seeing him here in Toronto, too.)

Alright, enough. Good night.

Bye Bye Miss American Pie

By Distributorcap

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not religious, that I do not believe in any sort of afterlife and that if there was a God, he would have found another planet to oversee a long time ago.

But in that mix of atheism, agnosticism, apathy and doubt, I do believe that a society (as opposed to just one person) is judged by how it treats the various members of that said society. Being that no society since the dawn of civilization (a term used very loosely) has even been so homogeneous to include just the privileged - that judgment will almost always manifest itself in how the weakest are acknowledged and cared for.

"Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members."
-- Pearl S. Buck, My Several Worlds [1954].

"A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization."
-- Samuel Johnson, Boswell: Life of Johnson

"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities."
-- John E.E. Dalberg, Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity [1877].

"...the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped."
-- last speech of Hubert H. Humphrey [November 1977]

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man"
-- Mahatma Gandhi 

The above quotes highlight five groups from which any society will be ultimately be judged based on how they are treated and integrated (in no particular order):

1. Children
2. Elderly
3. Sick & Handicapped
4. Needy & Poor
5. Animals

Somewhere in the past 234 years we have come to believe that anyone who was weak and could not stand up for themselves was really a just a parasite and cancer on society. (I will go out on a limb at date the inception of that philosophy to January 20, 1981).

As spokesperson from the any of the 5 groups above will tell you - America in 2010 has failed or is failing on all five. If you are a rich white person with good health - you probably do not have a lot to complain about. But based on how our business, spiritual and political leaders have acted during the past 30 years, Judgment Day is not looking like a July 4th Celebration.

Again, anyone who knows me knows how cynical I have become about this great American Society. I have some very strong doubts about this country's long-term survival as a union of 50 states. The glue that holds a society together - a common bond for the good of all its citizens, a national purpose to better the entire society, and a way for those on the outside to be welcome on the inside - has come undone.

As things turned sour, instead of looking to ourselves for solutions (which ultimately means acknowledging mistakes), many Americans began to turn its back on the 5 groups above. The most hated group in the US today is not minorities, not immigrants, not gays, not Palin-worshippers, not atheists, and not doves - but the poor (although a disproportionate amount of the poor are minorities and immigrants).

The anger toward health care reform, the hateful talk about those collecting unemployment insurance, the indifference towards the ecological disaster in the gulf (the only disaster talked incessantly about on the right is the economic disaster, not the ecological), the trauma in passing S-CHIP, the resentment at immigrants (legal as well as legal), privitization talk about Social Security, the continuing choice of guns over butter - all prove beyond a shadow of a doubt how much this country hates poor people.

After all poor people are nothing more than a drain on society. For every dollar they contribute, they are pulling $3-$4 dollar out of the our pockets. The government is nothing more than a cash register for the needy. These are people who do nothing and would rather lie around watching American Idol than earn $7.15 an hour flipping burgers or unpacking crap made in China. Hard-luck stories or event beyond their control (like shipping jobs over to China to make the crap they don't want to unpack) mean nothing. Anyone on the government dole is a tumor that needs a strong dose of chemo.

If you read between the lines of Beck, Palin, Hannity, Limbaugh and especially the teabaggers - shipping these leaches off to a place like Poorschwitz would make this a better place - there would ultimately be more for society's most productive members.

Since hating the poor is not socially acceptable, Palin and the teabaggers have disguised their hate towards society's bloodsuckers with resentment towards groups that have virtually no voice and practically zero allies - immigrants, animals and the infirmed.

I really wonder how long any society can stay together when the commonality is rejection and hate as opposed to inclusion and betterment. And exactly who are Palin and Limbaugh going to hate when they get rid of the poor.

With the mass mainstream media continuing to drive the narrative that paranoia is the panacea ("how can the world hate us? but since the world does hate us, we just have to destroy everything that is making our lives so miserable) sure as I am sitting at this kepboard - you can expect that the threads that hold America together will continue to come undone - and the 5 groups that reside near the bottom of the ladder will suffer the most.

Why did I pick 1/20/81 as the day the music died?

"What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, [are there] by choice."
-- Ronald Reagan [1984]

Have a little tea with Ted

By Capt. Fogg 

Ted Nugent -- Where do I begin? Where does it end?

Obama is not only spitting on the Constitution, but the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. It's hard to see the evidence and it's hard to know why he was silent about the unprecedented abuses during the Bush administration, unless we conclude that he's either psychotic, or a lying son of a bitch. The former seems certain, but of course much of it could also be attributable to ignorance. That he believes all Americans are commanded to worship Yahweh alone and keep a Kosher household and that the government is remiss in not enforcing this, can only be attributed to insanity - if indeed he believes or is even aware of anything he says.

I confess that I can't find any way to fit that old Golden Rule thing into the equation but for the fact that he's treating our basic institutions with extreme contempt while asking for something different than a government of laws and not of mobs for himself and his fellow tea heads. He certainly can't be saying that we shouldn't invade other countries or bomb civilians or overthrow elected governments because we don't want it done to us, because his favorite presidents are as famous for it as he is in being silent about them. Again, only rank insanity balances that equation.

With the Mao Zedong fan club in the White House, a clueless, rookie president hellbent on spending like a maniac as unprecedented debt piles up all around him, and every other imaginable indicator of an America turned upside-down, it comes as no surprise that this insane level of madness has metastasized into a Supreme Court where the Bill of Rights is being trashed by clueless, dangerously insulated old people intentionally disconnected from the real world, 

he says to Insanity Hannity about the dissenting vote on the Chicago handgun ban. I suppose he thinks Obama appointed those judges and that this hasn't been a contentious issue for a lifetime or two. But who knows what he thinks or if he thinks when he wraps himself in the flag and spews his tea at us. Surely it isn't often or deeply since he claims that Martin Luther King is his mentor and yet he's fond of shooting machine guns in his back yard.

Certainly it's more than hyperbole and more than just ignorance to call the administration a Mao Zedong fan club, certainly it's more than mere hypocrisy to blame Obama for trying to do what FDR did to ease the Depression and to ignore the fact that each and every Republican administration, at least from Reagan onwards, has set new levels of government size, expense, corruption, spending and borrowing while the Democrats haven't. But this is Ted speaking: Ted the flag waving teabagger who claimed to have been clean and sober all his life when talking to the Fox mob but to have dodged the draft by smoking Meth when talking to Rolling Stone -- and then tells us that he was lying to them but telling us the truth.

This is Ted blaming Obama for going after his massive arsenal of weapons when he didn't and the Court for banning them when it didn't. This is Ted telling us he is the will of the people, free elections and a majority vote to the contrary. This is the devil in a cowboy hat. This is horseshit wrapped up in a flag like some foul taco. This is just the failure they warned our founding fathers about.

Indeed, where do we begin with the Ted Nugent story when Ted Nugent himself says he's a liar and an addict and doesn't know MLK from Chuck Manson or Mao Zedong from a wishy-washy middle of the road conservative? I don't know. I don't know where the teabag story ends either but it certainly doesn't end in a free, democratic country.



(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Barry Wong

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The hate for immigrants in Arizona continues:

Ratcheting up the debate over immigration in his state, a candidate for the Arizona utilities commission is threatening to cut off power and gas to illegal immigrants if he's elected.

"It is not a right. It is a service," Barry Wong, candidate for the Arizona Corporation Commission, told The Arizona Republic.

The Republican candidate argues that the policy would be a cost-saving measure for consumers.

Though it would cost money for power companies to check immigration status, he said it would ultimately save money because power companies would not have to build new plants to serve the illegal immigrant community, presumably passing on that savings to consumers. His plan, if elected to the five-person commission, would be to require utilities to check immigration status.

"There is a cost ratepayers shouldn't have to bear because of the illegal immigrant population," he said, while acknowledging the idea would probably attract "criticism about human-rights violations."

Um, yes. It would. And understandably so. So why is this idiot recommending it?

Though Arizona has drawn praise and criticism alike from all corners of the country for its new law making illegal immigration a state crime, support was hard to come by for Wong's proposal.

None of the other candidates for the commission would endorse his idea. The CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry also blasted Wong in a column in the Republic, accusing him of trying to "score cheap political points" while marking a "new low" in the state's immigration debate.

"To deny someone access to electricity based on his or her immigration status is not only a wrongheaded policy proposal, it's just cruel," Glenn Hamer wrote, calling the candidate's economic argument "absurd." 

It's certainly absurd, it's certainly cruel, it's certainly about scoring political points, and it's certainly one among many lows.

The argument, of course, is that these are illegal immigrants who shouldn't be in the U.S. in the first place. But it would be exceedingly difficult for power companies to identify who is documented and who isn't, and, lest we forget, we're talking not just about illegal immigrants here but about the children of illegal immigrants. The children would suffer, but so too would the sick and the elderly. It's a service, yes, not a right, but, broadly, it is a right not to be treated cruelly. This is simply no way, no humane way, no compassionate way, no effective way, to address the problem -- to the extent that you look at it that way -- of undocumented immigration into the U.S.

Thankfully, for now, it looks like Wong -- who might want to look into how Chinese immigrants, his own ancestors, were treated -- is on his own here. Even in Arizona, it seems, some ideas are just a little too crazy.

NASA aims to reach out to Muslim world, but what about space exploration?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Conservatives are making a big deal of Byron York's report at the Washington Examiner on NASA's new mission to reach out to the Muslim world:

In a far-reaching restatement of goals for the nation's space agency, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says President Obama has ordered him to pursue three new objectives: to "re-inspire children" to study science and math, to "expand our international relationships," and to "reach out to the Muslim world." Of those three goals, Bolden said in a recent interview with al-Jazeera, the mission to reach out to Muslims is "perhaps foremost," because it will help Islamic nations "feel good" about their scientific accomplishments.

In the same interview, Bolden also said the United States, which first sent men to the moon in 1969, is no longer capable of reaching beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations.

Bolden made the statements during a recent trip to the Middle East. He told al-Jazeera that in the wake of the president's speech in Cairo last year, the American space agency is now pursuing "a new beginning of the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world."

On one hand, I don't see much of a problem here. NASA focuses on space exploration, of course, but it also has an educative purpose, or mission. Assuming that Bolden is telling the truth here -- and I have no reason to think he isn't, though I wonder if he might not have been emphasizing certain points in reaching out to a largely Muslim audience -- the president wants to see the agency engage positively with the Muslim world in order to highlight its scientific achievements and to bring it closer to the U.S. In other words, NASA would contribute to diplomatic efforts to forge bonds between the U.S. and the Muslim world while seeking to strengthen the latter's commitment to science.

And it is this last point that is key. It was science, after all, that liberated the West from the shackles of Dark Ages and Medieval Christianity and that continues to withstand efforts by religious fundamentalists, including Christians, to undo centuries of progress and return to theocratic ignorance and oppression. What Obama understands is that the Muslim world needs more science, that it needs to be reminded of its own glorious scientific past and encouraged to free itself from its own self-imposed bondage.

To that end, perhaps NASA can help. Engagement would likely bring much greater international cooperation in general and perhaps, just perhaps, significant progress and modernization in the Muslim world.

On the other hand, the new mission seems rather silly, and beyond NASA's traditional purpose. As my conservative friend Ed Morrissey puts it:

The problem Byron uncovers goes farther than just the Muslim outreach, though. NASA has always inspired children and even bolstered international relations, but not because that was its mission. It did those things by pursuing solid goals of exploration of space, which is why Congress funds the agency. Those esteem-boosters came as a secondary result of actual achievement, not as an end in itself. The Obama administration wants to turn this over onto its head by making NASA a bureaucracy dedicated to self-esteem which might at some point have a goal that has to do with exploration of space.

This is a recipe for failure on an expensive scale. Congress needs to either get the White House to redefine its mission for NASA or cut off its funds until the self-esteem party is canceled.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "self-esteem party" -- again, Bolden's comments were directed at a Muslim audience and were likely meant as an expression of respect directed at Muslims' sense of prideful self-identity -- but I think Ed's right that NASA might just be overstepping its bounds here. The focus really should be on working towards actual achievements in the area of space exploration, such as a manned mission to Mars or a near-Earth asteroid, not on being an organ of foreign policy and making Muslim countries "feel good."

Outreach here on Earth has a place, of course, and it's true that the U.S. can't go it alone in space, but NASA would do well to go back to what it does best, which is exploring new frontiers in space. And while the U.S. can and perhaps should support science in the Muslim world with the goal of modernization and perhaps liberalization, Obama would do well to get NASA back on track.

Just how crazy is Sharron Angle? (4)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(You can find the first three parts of this ongoing series here, here and here.)

Just how crazy is she? So crazy that her people are trying to hide just how crazy by erasing her history of craziness:

Sharron Angle has resorted to an unusual maneuver to counter Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's attacks on her past quotes and positions, the Reid campaign has announced: A cease-and-desist letter, demanding that Reid no longer republish Angle's previous campaign website.

The short version of the story is as follows: After the former state Rep won Nevada's Republican Senate primary, Angle's campaign took down most of its website, and later replaced it with a relaunched version that in some ways toned down her right-wing rhetoric. But Internet pages are rarely ever forgotten -- the Reid campaign saved the old version, and put up a website called "The Real Sharron Angle," reproducing the old content.

Then, they say, the Angle campaign sent them a cease-and-desist letter, claiming misuse of copyrighted materials in the reposting of the old website -- which was, of course, being posted for the purposes of ridiculing Angle. The Reid campaign has in fact taken down the site, rerouting visitors to another website that goes after Angle's positions, "Sharron's Underground Bunker."

I'm not exactly an expert in copyright law, and she (and her campaign) may have a good case here. The Reid campaign, after all, has taken down the website that included verbatim content taken from her website. While this will perhaps be fought out in the courts, I agree with the Reid campaign: "While we do not necessarily agree with the Angle campaign's assertions, a point is made," said one campaign official. "Sharron Angle is hiding her views from Nevada voters."

To be fair, Angle's campaign is sane enough to realize that it has to whitewash her craziness out of existence, or at least to try to hide written evidence of her craziness from public view. Playing to the far right during the campaign, that is, directly appealing to the far right that controls the Republican Party at the grassroots level, as well as increasingly at the state and national levels, and doing so successfully, the campaign is retreating to, well, not to the center, nor even to the center-right, where the few remaining sane Republicans remain, but to the somewhat less far right. Even in Nevada, where a certain amount of political craziness sells, and even in a time of anti-incumbent bias, it's really the only way, barring a complete Reid collapse, which is possible given his unpopularity, for Angle to pull this off.

Regardless of what the Reid campaign posts and is allowed to post online, though, it is essential that the truth about Sharron Angle be known, and that Nevada voters know who and what she really is. So go ahead and check out Sharron Angle's Underground Bunker.

Angle can run from the truth, and her campaign can try to rewrite her history, but her craziness is there for all to see.

The Odd Couple

By Capt. Fogg

No, not Felix and Oscar, but Joe and John: Lieberman and McCain. Putative Democrat and the Republican quondam candidate. Often appearing to be on the same side, their opinions drive us to confusion and not to any conclusion.

The right wing outrage machine has been like a chorus of vuvuzelas, blaring accusations that the classified rules of engagement instituted by General McChrystal on his own initiative were in fact forced on him by president Obama and his opposition, despite his sworn public testimony to the contrary, was the reason he was relieved of command. I suspect Joe Lieberman agrees, although I know he knows better.

The policy of trying to reduce the heavy civilian casualties so as to give the US less of the appearance of an invading horde bent on its own objectives and with no concern for innocent life or limb, is misguided says Lieberman; as though to say we shouldn't be concerned to appear as liberators with the best interests of Afghanistan at heart. We shouldn't care that people whose children we've cavalierly blown to hell aren't going to try to make our efforts any easier and so he's advising General Petraeus to shoot first and ask questions later. It's hurting our morale, says he as though 9 years of getting nowhere can be blamed on being the kind of nation we're supposed to be and more importantly as though it were president Obama's fault for worrying too much about worthless Muslim lives.

Perhaps John McCain's statement that even another ten years of war may not be too much to ask of our country, fits with Lieberman's disinterest in having the country we tell ourselves we're helping on our side. Ten more years of shooting up innocent families at weddings, on the streets, in their cars and in their homes will likely draw us into many more decades of war, and that McCain thinks this war is self justifying if not actually morally or functionally satisfying is not beyond conjecture. Another ten years, another 3, 4, 5 trillion dollars and who knows how many more dead: economic and moral collapse -- that should make the country crazy and enough to elect another Republican.

Pretty clever, and to think I thought McCain was an idiot.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Around the world: Poland, Mexico, Japan, and Nepal

By Michael J.W. Stickings

With the U.S. celebrating its independence over the weekend, let's begin the week with a quick look at some interesting international stories (something we haven't done in quite some time):

1) Poland: Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski has moved ahead of Jaroslaw Kaczynski in what is a very close run-off presidential election -- at last check, it's 52.6 to 47.4. (The first round was held last month, but no candidate won 50% of the vote.) The election, needless to say, is taking place in the shadow of the plane crash, in April, that killed then-President Lech Kaczynski and many of the country's top political and military leaders.

2) Mexico: The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the socialist-cum-centrist de facto "state party" that controlled the country for over 70 years (under a few different names) -- until the center-right National Action Party (PAN) won the presidency in 2000 under Vicente Fox (and then again in 2006 under Felipe Calderón, when it also won pluralitis in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate) -- looked to make major gains in yesterday's local elections, including most of the 12 gubernatorial races, positioning it well ahead of the 2012 presidential election. (The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the other of the three major parties, has also been strong, with Andrés Manuel López Obrador running a close second to Calderón in '06. It heads the Coalition for the Good of All, a left-wing coalition that won more Chamber seats than the PRI's Alliance for Mexico coalition in '06.)

3) Japan: The world of sumo wrestling has been brought low by a series of scandals involving drugs, match-fixing, and gangsters, and now the Japan Sumo Association has banned a top wrestler for life for gambling on baseball -- yes, baseball -- and for paying off a gangster who blackmailed him. This doesn't appear to be a Pete Rose situation, but, scandals piling up, a sport steeped in tradition appears to be unravelling.

4) Nepal: If you're looking for a black market in small arms, why not try Thamel, Kathmandu's central tourist district? "Most tourists spend at least a day here before heading out into the country to go trekking or rafting. But in recent years, the cafes selling banana pancakes and vegetarian food have been joined by strip bars and dance clubs, many of them employing underage girls who have been trafficked into the capital from the countryside." Sounds charming.

Okay, that's it for now.

Independence Day 2010

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I meant to post something earlier today, but it was a relaxing day full of soccer tournaments and pool-side barbeques with friends -- well, one of each, actually -- and I'm just now sitting down at the computer, with an eye on Halos-Royals on ESPN (which we get here on TSN). So it was a busy Fourth of July for me, even here in Canada, three days after our own national birthday celebration.

I want to wish a very happy Fourth of July to all my American friends and family, to my wonderful American co-bloggers and contributors, to my American friends throughout the blogosphere, and of course to all of our American readers.

As a subject of Her Majesty the Queen -- I'm British as well as Canadian -- my feelings on this day are, as you might expect, somewhat mixed. But we're past all that, aren't we? No hard feelings? Besides, I really do love America -- I wouldn't spend so much time writing about it if I didn't care.

Anyway, I hope you've all had a great day. Be safe out there.

-- Michael

Why I hate the World Cup

By Capt. Fogg

For the same reason I dislike the Olympics, of course and I dislike the Olympics for the same reasons I dislike McDonalds and Coca Cola and Nike and all the other rapacious multinational corporations that milk humanity like a herd of cattle while pretending it's a noble endeavour. Hosting this event costs huge amounts of money and it doesn't necessarily repay the investment, at least not to those out of whose hide it comes. With the hordes of foreign visitors being herded away from local vendors selling local food and African products; with long-time venues for those vendors being reserved for large, foreign sponsors, McDonalds and Coke will get the lion's share and the locals will have to forage like jackals for the leavings.

Will South Africa be a better place for South Africans after the noise stops and the clean-up begins? Does history hinge on whether or not a bunch of ball kickers from the Netherlands beat their counterparts from Uruguay and will international relations be more peaceful or tolerant because of anything that happens here? Will any of it matter ten minutes after it's all over? I have a hard time believing that the health or the wealth or the education of South Africans will see a benefit commensurate with all the noise and expense. Even the infernal Vuvuzelas are made in China.

It's true, I have little taste for watching men running around kicking things or for the feral screams of crazed viewers blowing into noisemakers as though anything happening in the arena was of any consequence whatever unless it was to the already huge profits of Nike or the sellers of beer and cigarettes -- or plastic horns. I have a greater distaste for the mass purveyors of opiates, even the real and quiet ones.

Panis et circenses, bread and circuses; it's a tried and true way to calm the animals in the feed lots and holding pens; to pacify the proletarii and the slaves while the emperors and the senators grew fatter. Gooooooooooooooal!

(Cross posted from Human voices)

The Glorious Fourth

By Mustang Bobby.

When I was a kid I was very outgoing in putting up displays for the holidays -- Memorial Day, Christmas, the Fourth of July -- I liked the flags, the lights, the stuff. It was cool to make a big splash. But as I grew up I grew out of it, and today I don't go much for things like that. I don't have a flag to fly on national holidays, and the most I'll do for Christmas is a wreath on the door because it has good memories and the scent of pine is rare in subtropical Florida.

I suppose it has something to do with my Quaker notions of shunning iconography -- outward symbols can't show how you truly feel about something on the inside, and more often than not they are used to make up for the lack of a true belief. This is also true of patriotism: waving the flag -- or wrapping yourself in it -- is a poor and false measure of how you truly feel about your country.

There's an old saying that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. As Benjamin Franklin noted, no country had ever been formed because of an idea. But when the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1776 and passed the resolution embodied in the Declaration of Independence, that was what was being done. To create a nation not based on geographical boundaries, property, tribalism, or religion, but on the idea of forming a new government to replace the present form because the rulers were incompetent, uncaring, and cruel. The American Revolution wasn't so much a rebellion as it was a cry for attention. Most of the Declaration is a punch-list, if you will, of grievances both petty and grand against the Crown, and once the revolution was over and the new government was formed, the Constitution contained many remedies to prevent the slights and injuries inflicted under colonialism: the Bill of Rights is a direct response to many of the complaints listed in the Declaration.

But the Declaration of Independence goes beyond complaints. Its preamble is a mission statement. It proclaims our goals and what we hope to achieve. No nation had ever done that before, and to this day we are still struggling to achieve life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness goes on with no sign of let-up.

That is the true glory of America. Not that we complain -- and we do -- but that we work to fix those complaints. To put them right. To make things better than they were. To give hope to people who feel that they have no voice, and to assure that regardless of who they are, where they come from, what they look like, who they love, or what they believe, there will be room for them to grow, do, and become whatever it is that they have the capacity to be. It's a simple idea, but the simplest ideas often have the most powerful impact.

This nation has achieved many great things. We've inspired other nations and drawn millions to our shores not to just escape their own country but to participate in what we're doing. And we've made mistakes. We've blundered and fumbled and bullied and injured. We've treated some of our own citizens with contempt, and shown the same kind of disregard for the rights of others that we enumerated in our own Declaration of Independence. We have been guilty of arrogance and hypocrisy. But these are all human traits, and we are, after all, human. The goal of government is to rise above humanity, and the goal of humanity is to strive for perfection. So if we stumble on the road to that goal, it is only because we are moving forward.

I love this country not for what it is but for what it could be. In my own way I show my patriotism not by waving a flag from my front porch but by working to make things work in our system and by adding to the discussion that will bring forth ideas to improve our lives and call into question the ideas of others. It is all a part of what makes the simple idea of life, liberty, and that elusive happiness so compelling and so inspiring, and what makes me very proud to be a part of this grand experiment.

Go forth!

(Originally posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof on July 4, 2005.)

Truth in Comics

By Creature


If it's Sunday, it's Truth in Comics.

Say Goodbye to Hollywood

by Distributorcap

I was watching a few old movies this past week and got inspired, since I cannot remember the last time I actually went to a movie theatre.

Some of my favorites - what did I leave out? (qualified as American films 1930-1970)

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"Well, if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan." -- Republican National Committee Chairman and anti-war activist, Michael Steele.

I'm assuming he didn't clear this statement with President John McCain first.

Pork and politics, Harry Reid and the NRA

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to RedState's Erick Erickson -- while it pains me to link to him, I must concede that he does have good connections on the right -- the National Rifle Association (NRA) may endorse Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid over Republican challenger Sharron Angle in Nevada's Senate race.

But why? Is Sharron Angle too crazy even for the crazy gun nuts at the NRA? Is that it?

No.

While the NRA's exemption from the Disclose Act may be part of it, the real reason may be all about pork:

It turns out, Reid secured a $61 million earmark for a gun range in Clark County, Nevada.

NRA members were recently treated to a three-page spread in the American Rifleman about a visit to Nevada by Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox to "thank" Reid for the earmark. The article even includes a cliché picture of Reid cutting a ribbon with a gigantic pair of scissors. (Every good porker has his own giant pair of gold earmark scissors.) More here.

Here is a video of the event from Reid's youtube site.

At 3:25, you can hear LaPierre touting Reid's record on guns saying, "I also want to thank you, Senator, for your support every day for the Second Amendment and for the rights of American gun owners."

The American Rifleman article also commends Reid's Second Amendment record noting, "His dedication to this project is just one of the ways Sen. Reid has demonstrated his support for gun owners and the Second Amendment."

What's more, according to The Weekly Standard, "[t]he NRA is frightened by the possibility that Harry Reid would be replaced by an anti-gun Democrat as majority leader. 'Truthfully, the two individuals vying for majority leader should Harry Reid lose are the two most rabidly anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment senators in Washington, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin,' Cox said. 'Does that give concern to NRA members and gun owners all over America? Absolutely, it does.'"

The Standard reports that the NRA hasn't yet "decided on an endorsement," but clearly the organization realizes that Reid can do a lot more for it than Angle ever could and that it's not so bad to have a pro-gun Democrat in charge. Cox exaggerates about Schumer and Durbin -- really, they're more "rabidly anti-gun" than anyone else in the Senate? -- but he's right that Reid is better for the NRA and its members than the likely alternatives.

All of which should be a reminder to Democrats that Harry Reid, however much they may want him to beat Angle, isn't exactly the most admirable guy around. I understand that you have to be solidly pro-gun to win a state-wide race in Nevada, if not to win there at all, but Reid isn't just that, he also seems to be the NRA's main Democrat in Washington, a powerful senator who is obviously more than willing to use his influence to help and protect the NRA.

Politics can be ugly, to be sure, and sometimes you have to make deals with the devil. And Reid is nothing if not politically savvy. But at what point is enough enough? Well, maybe Reid hasn't crossed the line just yet. As Erickson notes:

Reid has not supported the Second Amendment "every day." Or ever.

Reid has a lifetime rating of "F" from Gun Owners of America (who Ron Paul once called "the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington"). GOA is actively supporting the 100% pro-gun Republican nominee, Sharron Angle, in her campaign to unseat Harry Reid.

Indeed, Reid has a "longstanding hostility to guns and the Second Amendment."

The truth is somewhere in between. Reid is generally pro-gun, but he's not a pro-gun extremist like Angle, Paul, and the GOA -- and Erickson himself, of course. In that world, the NRA isn't pure enough, and isn't extremist enough in its opposition to any and all gun control, even if it understands Washington well enough to take a more nuanced, and more rationally self-interested, view of the Nevada Senate race.

Go ahead and vote for Reid in November, but, with the NRA at his side, endorsement or no, you might still want to hold your nose.

Waterboarding is torture except when the U.S. government says it isn't and The New York Times and other major newspapers obediently stop calling it torture

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm a day late getting to this -- thanks, Canada Day! -- but an extremely important study was released the other day showing that the mainstream media, including large outlets like The New York Times, essentially caved in to the government, that is, to the Bush-Cheney administration, when it came to reporting on waterboarding as torture:

Is waterboarding torture? If you picked up a major U.S. newspaper before 2004, the answer would likely be yes, according to a new Harvard University study.

But in the post-9/11 world, when the practice of immobilizing and virtually drowning detainees became a politically charged issue, that straightforward definition grew murky. The study, conducted by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, examined coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and found a noticeable shift in language concerning waterboarding.

"From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture," the study noted. But the study found that things changed in the years when "war on terror" became part of the American lexicon.

The New York Times defined waterboarding as torture, or effectively implied that it was, 81.5 percent of the time in articles until 2004, the study found. But during 2002-2008 — when the George W. Bush White House made a concerted effort to normalize harsh interrogation methods for use on terror detainees — the Times "called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles." That’s 1.4 percent of the time.

The study also noted a disparity in how newspapers defined waterboarding when the United States employed the practice versus its use by other nations — in the latter instance, newspapers more readily called the practice torture.

So much, it would seem, for journalistic independence and integrity -- to the extent that the media had much left anyway. Given how the media establishment operates, after all, this is hardly all that surprising.

Andrew Sullivan is justifiably furious: 

But it is not an opinion that waterboarding is torture; it is a fact, recognized by everyone on the planet as such - and by the NYT in its news pages as such - for centuries. What we have here is an admission that the NYT did change its own established position to accommodate the Cheneyite right.

So their journalism is dictated by whatever any government says. In any dispute, their view is not: what is true? But: how can we preserve our access to the political right and not lose pro-torture readers? If you want a locus classicus for why the legacy media has collapsed, look no further.

*****

This is not editing. It is surrender. It is not journalism; it is acquiescence to propaganda. It strikes me as much more egregious a failing than, say, the Jayson Blair scandal. Because it reaches to the very top, was a conscious decision and reveals the empty moral center in the most important newspaper in the country.

When historians look back and try to understand how the US came to be a country that legitimizes torture, the New York Times will be seen to have played an important role in euphemizing it, enabling it, and entrenching it. The evidence shows conclusively that there is not a shred of argument behind the dramatic shift in 2002 - just plain cowardice.

In my view, the people who made that decision should resign. They have revealed that they are nothing but straws in the wind - in a time when moral clarity and courage were most needed.

Extremely well put. And I agree.

For more, see Steve Benen and, of course, Glenn Greenwald, who had a fantastic post on Wednesday responding to the study. As he correctly points out, such "compliant behavior makes overtly state-controlled media unnecessary."

It's great, and essential to any liberal democracy, to have freedom of the press. But what if the press doesn't want to be free?

Google to cover health benefit "tax" on same-sex employees

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've never heard of this odd little company called "Google," but I applaud it enthusiastically for supporting its same-sex employees:

[Yesterday], Google [began] covering a cost that gay and lesbian employees must pay when their partners receive domestic partner health benefits, largely to compensate them for an extra tax that heterosexual married couples do not pay. The increase [is] retroactive to the beginning of the year.

*****

Google is not the first company to make up for the extra tax. At least a few large employers already do. But benefits experts say Google's move could inspire its Silicon Valley competitors to follow suit, because they compete for the same talent.

Under federal law, employer-provided health benefits for domestic partners are counted as taxable income, if the partner is not considered a dependent. The tax owed is based on the value of the partner's coverage paid by the employer.

On average, employees with domestic partners will pay about $1,069 more a year in taxes than a married employee with the same coverage, according to a 2007 report by M. V. Lee Badgett, director of the Williams Institute, a research group that studies sexual orientation policy issues.

So Google is essentially going to cover those costs, putting same-sex couples on an even footing with heterosexual employees whose spouses and families receive health benefits.

Google is only doing what's right, given the injustice of federal law. The struggle continues to legalize same-sex marriage, but, in the meantime, this is just the sort of thing that needs to be done to ensure, as far as possible, that gay and lesbian couple are treated fairly.

As for Google, I've just discovered that it's actually a fairly large and well-known company, and that a lot of people use its services. Huh. Well then. Who knew? You learn something new every day out here on the information superhighway, don't you?

To support what Google is doing for its same-sex employees, I shall now go and check out the company's so-called "search engine." It sounds like a wild ride. Have any of you used it before?

Candidate for worst human being in the world: Mel Gibson

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's hardly breaking news that Mel Gibson is a racist, anti-Semitic thug, among other things, but now we have another piece of evidence to add to the ever-growing pile:

In one of the most explosive, racist and vile outbursts by a celebrity ever caught on tape, Mel Gibson told the mother of his love child that the way she was dressed would get her "raped by a pack of n***ers," RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively.

It's a shocking and blockbuster development in the couple's bitter legal battle, and Mel's disgusting words are on audio tape. His racist, misogynist statement is one of the secrets lurking in his war with his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva.

RadarOnline.com has heard the tape, which also includes Mel telling Oksana he will burn down her home.

Charming.

**********

I just realized we haven't done a new entry in this series in some time. In fact, this is just the third. Mel joins Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson.

Which is pretty much the right company for him.

UI extension fails again in Senate

By Creature

I'm starting to think Ben Nelson wants his party to fail. Life must have been easier for this turncoat when the Dems were not in control. Bush tax cuts, anyone?

Canada Day 2010

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Happy Birthday, Canada!!!

We're 143 years old today.

To all my Canadian friends and family, have a safe and happy day. And to everyone else, to all of you from around the world, take a bit of time today to think of us. This is pretty wonderful country.

I posted this clip three years ago and I'll post it again. It's one of the most stirring renditions of our national anthem I've ever heard, sung by the fans at Edmonton's Rexall Place before Game 3 of the NHL Western Conference playoff series between the Oilers and the Anaheim Ducks on May 23, 2006 (the Oilers won the series in five games before losing to the Carolina Hurricanes in the finals, 4-3).

It was also stirring when, during the round-robin men's curling match between Canada (skipped by the great Kevin Martin) and Great Britain (skipped by David Murdoch) at the Vancouver Olympics this year, the crowd broke into O Canada. It was a great match in Draw 8, on Saturday evening, February 8, the best match of the tournament. Even though it wasn't a match to decide a medal, it was incredibly tense, not least because of the rivalry that had developed between these two rinks over the past few years, and not least because both rinks are so good. Britain stole one in the 8th to take a 6-5 lead, but Martin led Canada back with some incredible shots, picking up two in the 10th to win 7-6. Canada went on to win the gold, undefeated. Britain lost a tiebreaker to Sweden and finished 5th, well below where it belonged.

You can find the O Canada clip here -- CTV, the host broadcaster, apparently doesn't allow it to be embedded, which is a shame. It was one of the most glorious moments of the Olympics.

Still with the Olympics, if you missed it, check out this wonderful video essay by Stephen Brunt, our finest sportswriter and commentator (writing for The Globe and Mail and appearing regularly on radio and TV), on what the Olympics meant to Canada. (It's introduced by Brian Williams, the main studio host for CTV.) It's brilliant, it's magnificent, it's beautiful, it's moving, and, as far as I'm concerned, it's still right on even now, months later. And, amazingly, it was done before our historic gold-medal men's hockey win, the singular triumph that really brought this country together. (I originally posted the clip here, with additional commentary.)