About your president...

post from AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth on 12 May 2007 04:20:00 PM. © AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. A nice synopsis of the walking embarrassment that is our president.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/116238796/about-your-president.html

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A Good Walk Spoiled

post from The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks! on 12 May 2007 04:04:00 PM. © The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

"Golf is a good walk spoiled."
Mark Twain

I've somehow reached middle age without taking up golf. I don't see the appeal of doing something so damnably difficult for recreation, but there you go - "different strokes for different folks" as they say.

When she was younger, I took the Omnipotent Daughter to mini-golf a handful of times. Aside from breaking a window in the miniature Dutch windmill with an errant putt, not much good came of it.

I also allowed co-workers to drag me to a golf scramble in mid-February on the frigid, blustery plains of Ohio. We shivered and played with an orange ball so we could find it in the snow. My slow pace kept everyone waiting way too long and several of us missed the next week of work with severe colds.

Golf at Goose

My only "real" game came in Goose Bay, Labrador. Braving swarms of mosquitoes and black flies, a friend and I borrowed a putter and a driver and went to play the now-defunct course on the Canadian Forces Base where we were staying. We got an idea of just how challenging the course would be on the first hole.

We teed off from a 12' round slab of cement covered in moldy Astroturf. It was equipped with a permanent steel tee jutting up in the middle. Our first shot was down a long "fairway" choked in weeds and sporting hundreds of pine tree stumps cleared for the second coming of Arnold Palmer. On the left was a large water hazard about the size of Lake Michigan. A moose grazed in the reeds along the shore.

Because I'd always heard it in the movies, I yelled FORE! and smacked the ball as hard as I could with my borrowed putter. "Nice shot," my friend said as my ball caromed off a granite boulder.

Mind the Moose

He lost his first shot in the lake after it bounced off a 2-ton moose ass. "Can I have a do-over on that," he asked?

"Yes. Please. That moose looks a little pissed."

We merrily chased the balls down the fairway, chopping and hacking as we went. We covered our huge divots by pushing knee-high weeds over them. Occasionally, we lost our balls in the rough (no pun intended). It was hard to tell where the fairway ended and the rough began. So, we agreed that when a ball went far enough into the head high weeds that you couldn't see the other golfer, it was officially in the rough.

If you had to call for a wilderness guide, it was a two-stroke penalty.

A Little Juice

After an hour, we arrived at the Hole 1 putting green. It rose about 4 inches above the veld on a square concrete slab covered in the best Astroturf the Canadians could provide. My friend putted first.

"Guess I'm going to have to give this a little juice to get over that lip on the green," he said as he thwacked the ball with his driver. And thwack he did - so hard the ball struck the concrete lip and rebounded into his forehead with a solid POCK.

"Nasty break on that one," he said. "Be careful."

I prepared my putt by yanking a handful of reeds out of the ground and throwing them professionally in the air to test the wind. They fell with a thud because I'd neglected to shake the muck off them before casting them aloft.

"Hmm, looks pretty calm," I said knowledgeably.

The Ungloved One

I lined myself up and wiggled my ass as I'd seen professionals do. I was confident I'd make the putt. There were no windmills with broken windows to block my way. I only wished I had one of those single gloves the pros wear - maybe a rhinestone one like Michael Jackson's.

I wasted six strokes before getting up onto the elevated green. When my friend's ball joined mine, we wasted another five strokes playing croquet and knocking each other's ball away from the hole.

Eventually, I managed to accidentally hit my ball into the iron pipe hole and it disappeared into the bowels of the earth. My friend's ball also disappeared, although we did hear his gurgle when it hit water a few feet down.

We'd played one hole. It took close to two hours. We tied at 60 strokes each and felt quite proud of our accomplishment. As we drank the celebratory beers we carried on our pockets and slapped at the huge insects sucking us dry. We wondered what par was for the hole. We looked for the sign, but it was laying in the grass, apparently shredded by a passing bear.

"Good game," my friend said.

"Yeah, same to you," I replied. "Maybe we can go on tour next year."

The Poobah is a featured contributor at Bring It On!
Tech Tags: memoir humor golf omnipotent+poobah

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http://omnipotentpoobah.blogspot.com/2007/05/good-walk-spoiled.html

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Wont Get NAFTAd Again

post from Firedoglake on 12 May 2007 04:00:36 PM. © Firedoglake

Nobody expected that the days of K Street lobbyists writing legislation would end with Democratic control of Congress, but it's hard to know what the extent of the damage is with regard the new trade bill because the details of the bill are an[...]

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http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/12/wont-get-naftad-again/

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Strange But Sweet Polling Treat

post from Ezra Klein on 12 May 2007 03:59:00 PM. © Ezra Klein

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf On May 2, SurveyUSA released some interesting single-state head-to-head primary polls featuring Clinton, Obama, and Edwards against Rudy Giuliani. Unfortunately, SUSA has recently become resistant to putting all their data on[...]

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http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/strange_but_swe.html

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Midday Open Thread

post from Daily Kos on 12 May 2007 03:50:13 PM. © Daily Kos

The right has hammered Harry Reid for saying the Iraq war is lost, and Thursday Tony Snow claimed that recent polling shows fewer people agreeing with Reid. Mystery Pollster examines this claim, finding different results for polls asking whether the U.S. "is losing" the Iraq war vs. if the war "is lost."

At Calitics, dday made the case that Ken Calvert (R-CA), John Doolittle's replacement on the House Appropriations Committee, is just as corrupt as Doolittle; later the same day he was surprised to find conservatives going after Calvert. Complete with discussion of who might challenge Calvert in 2008.

This from Talking Points Memo is hilarious: On the excuses Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-0H) is making about a very nice new house he's paying the mortgage on but which is officially owned by a company that's contributed to his campaigns, TPM says,

First, just because a newspaper reporter was able to eventually connect the dots doesn't make the deal "transparent."

Second, "pretty much" aboveboard?

The New York Times takes a look at the growth of earmarks for religious groups.

A New York Times analysis shows that the number of earmarks for religious organizations, while small compared with the overall number, have increased sharply in recent years. From 1989 to January 2007, Congress approved almost 900 earmarks for religious groups, totaling more than $318 million, with more than half of them granted in the Congressional session that included the 2004 presidential election. By contrast, the same analysis showed fewer than 60 earmarks for faith-based groups in the Congressional session that covered 1997 and 1998.

Changes in food stamp, WIC, and farmers market programs could hurt small farmers - or help them, depending on the upcoming farm bill.

Political violence kills at least 27 in Pakistan.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/116190687/178

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Anti-Spyware Bill Advances in House

post from TalkLeft on 12 May 2007 03:50:00 PM. © TalkLeft

Within the next few weeks, Congress is expected to vote on a bill that would require your consent before spyware and adware programs are installed on your computer.

Meant to protect Internet users from unknowing transmission of their personal information via spyware programs, the Spy Act bans the most commonly known techniques used by malware and adware brokers, such as the use of keystroke-logging programs or installation of software without gaining approval via a clearly stated EULA (end user licensing agreement). The bill further establishes requirements for legitimate distributors of spyware-like programs to gain end user consent and build their applications such that they can be easily identified and removed from computers. ...
The bill specifically requires that consumers receive a "clear and conspicuous notice" prior to the installation of any tracking program and includes provisions to bar unfair or deceptive behavior such as computer hijacking, phishing, and the display of any browser ads that can't be closed.

If you value your privacy or your right to control the contents of your own computer, let your representative know you support this bill.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TalkleftThePoliticsOfCrime/~3/116190946/261

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NBC: FBI investigating Gov. Gibbons (R-NV).

post from Think Progress on 12 May 2007 03:41:00 PM. © Think Progress

NBC News reports that former congressman and current Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) is being investigated by the FBI for potentially receiving “a fancy vacation and perhaps other lucrative benefits” from defense contractor Warren Trepp in exchange for “multi-million-dollar government contracts.”Sources close to the investigation say a key focus is a lavish week-long Caribbean cruise in [...]

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http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/12/nbc-fbi-investigating-gov-gibbons-r-nv/

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Seems Like Haloscan is Back

Chat away.

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http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_06_archive.html#4403987439985596950

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Killing Civilians

It's good to see a headline recognizing this reality:

Civilian Deaths Undermine Allies’ War on Taliban

From the story:

What angers Afghans are not just the bombings, but also the raids of homes, the shootings of civilians in the streets and at checkpoints, and the failure to address those issues over the five years of war. Afghan patience is wearing dangerously thin, officials warn.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TalkleftThePoliticsOfCrime/~3/116180110/023

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Lou Dobbs' Leprosy Watch

With the national Anxiety Indicator at near-panic levels and so much to worry about, contracting leprosy from illegal aliens is not likely to be in anyone?s top ten.

But not to fear, Lou Dobbs has our backs. The CNN anchor, now a pillar of CBS as well, is keeping a sharp eye out for all the dangers posed by border crossers, even if his work is not appreciated by everyone in the media.

On 60 Minutes last Sunday, new colleague Lesley Stahl had pointed questions about Dobbs? leprosy statistics, but America?s Protector did not back down and, later in the week, counterattacked on what CNN calls his ?newscast.?

To the appalling disfigurement leprosy inflicts on its victims, add to the disease?s toll the toxic effect it can have on thin-skinned anchormen.

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http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2007/05/lou-dobbs-leprosy-watch.html