Power - to make the multitudes run squealing in terror!

Just sent off to the Oregonian:

Dear Mr. Caldwell,

Like so many of your readers I avoid reading columns by David Reinhard as a general rule. Please understand it has nothing to do with Reinhard's political affiliation. There are many fine conservative columnists including George Will and Debra Saunders who put forth valid, intellectually honest arguments advocating the conservative position on the issues of the day.

No, the problem with Mr. Reinhard is that is writing is always predictably pedestrian and completely without nuance. Reinhard writes his columns as if he's playing a game a scrabble with the text of the daily G.O.P. blast-fax. Add an adjective here, move a sentence around there and voila! Send this baby to print. For most of us it's simply easier to skip Reinhard and go directly to the source.

Against my better judgement I opened my morning paper and decided to give Reinhard yet another chance. Maybe I was missing something in those hundreds of other columns I've read. Maybe he wasn't as intellectually squishy as I remember.

In reading today's column imagine my surprise to find out that Reinhard is not only just as bad but, surprisingly, has actually regressed in his skills as a columnist. I had to read through the column twice just to confirm that Mr. Reinhard was indeed making-fun of a twelve-year-old boy. A new low for someone like Mr. Reinhard who regularly feeds on the bottom.

The Living section of the Oregonian allows for annual voting on the comics pages where readers are allowed to choose which strips the paper will run and which strips they should drop. I would like to suggest you provide this same opportunity for the readers of the Oregonian's Forum section. I realize this would mean David Reinhard would quickly be out of a job, but a bright guy like himself would surely be able to land on his feet. Or pull himself up by his bootstraps or what ever.

I would hope that you will take my suggestion in consideration,

Sincerely,

Dean Vernon Wormer

I understand. But if we don't use your device against Godzilla, what are we going to do?

Matt's spot on of course. When the President says "So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," he's playing a rhetorical game that goes something like this--

We will prevent Iran from deploying a nuclear weapon.

To...

We will prevent Iran from knowing how to make a nuclear weapon.

To...

We will prevent Iran from watching the movies "War Games," "The Day After," "Terminator 2" or any other films that contain depictions of nuclear weapons.

To...

We will prevent Iran.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Okay, so McCoy has been cast and it looks like the rumors about Scotty had been premature. I'm actually pretty surprised/ happy about who they got for the parts.

That's right: Simon Pegg and Karl Urban.

Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.

A belated congrats to Al Gore on the Nobel Peace prize. I'd also like to thank right-wingers for pointing out that a prize given for the advancement of peace is liberal and everything.

In the last few years they've attacked the Academy Awards, Purple Heart medals, Medal of Valor and now the Nobel. I'd say the only thing that would be off limits would probably be boy-scout merit badges but the word on the street is they have some "potentially negative" information about one that Graeme Frost was awarded before his accident. Supposedly he only walked 3 little old ladies across the street and not the 4 he'd initially claimed to win the badge.

Sigh.

Some men dedicate their lives to science. Some men dedicate their lives to politics. I'm dedicating my life to understanding you.

Random musings on my trip to Florida-

The Express tickets for theme parks are criminally cool. I never had to wait over five minutes to get on a ride. It allowed me to do everything I wanted in one day.

At Universal's Islands of Adventure I was shocked to see Captain America alive. I was sure I'd heard he'd recently taken a bullet. Also - check out the bods on Wolverine and Storm. They didn't look like they'd been fighting anything, least of all calories. Meow!

I used to read the "Blondie" comic strip and as I recall the Dagwood looked more like the sign outside the restaurant...

...than the actual sandwich.

Stupid shark. I went on the ride twice and he attacked the boat both times.

Echoes of 911 always seem to come up. We were told this is the reason we couldn't get any closer to the shuttle Discovery than this.

No, Dean, you can't drive the Shuttle Transportation Vehicle and no, it doesn't do a "wheelie."

The Reflective Wall for Fallen Astronauts is one of the most beautiful memorials I think I've ever seen.

We were able to shoot a manned Apollo rocket around the moon without Microsoft Windows. Just saying...

Workers as the Kennedy Space Center don't appreciate the joke where you ask to see Major Nelson's office so you can check the pencil-holder for Jeannie.

It's just a little sad that the Space Center has such a "history museum" vibe to it. They show the video of John Kennedy proclaiming we were going to the moon and it's hard not to get choked up.

Then you realize that our greatest achievement was over 30 years ago with the moon landings. It's sort of like Lewis and Clark came out the Northwest, proclaimed it terrific, then nobody followed or built on their accomplishments. We don't seem to want to do things anymore because, as Kennedy said, "they're hard."

Man, it's so hot you could fry an egg on my face.

Off to the land of the hanging chad. See you in a couple of days.

Crazy, am I? We'll see whether I'm crazy or not.

If you've followed the dust-up over 12-year-old Graeme Frost and the rabid Malkinite swarm attacking his family for his daring to speak up for SCHIP, you're probably shaking your head over the whole thing much the same as I am. Is there a step beyond self-parody? Because it appears the conservative dregs of the blogo-sphere may have finally reached it.

Let's set aside for the moment the vicious, brownshirt-esque behavior by these "citizen journalists" and their repulsive cheerleaders in Malkin, Limbaugh, etc. just for the moment. The progressive net has already done a fine job of cataloging their inanity. Jackassases, the lot of 'em.

No, what I really find stunning about the whole affair is the complete and utter lack of logic behind the attack. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to be gained by attacking this kid and his family. Indeed; for all intensive purposes they set their cause back with their actions.

The bottom line is that it didn't matter whether the Democrats put a personal face on SCHIP in the form of a twelve-year-old boy because the greater truth, the enormous, obese truth sitting on the face of the body-politic and singing "greater truths are here to stay" is that the system of private insurance in the United States is fucked-up beyond recognition. Broken. Pining for the fjords. And the vast majority of Americans know this.

It doesn't matter if we make $45,000, or $145,000, the reality is that all of us outside of the very, very rich are one accident away from financial disaster due to the insane costs of healthcare in America and regardless of what kind of insurance we have. THAT'S why SCHIP is a popular program whether or not we personally qualify. There for the grace of God go I.

These Freeper sociopaths aren't just out of the mainstream. They're out of their minds.

God, why do you hate me?

Not only do I pray for our troops to "win," but I also pray that Chris Wallace finally raises enough money to pay for that obstructive cranialcolonectomy surgery he so urgently needs.

He used to bring beautiful women here... eat fine meals, drink fine wine, listen to music... but it always ended with screaming.

If this is true it could finally be the Lovecraft movie fans have been hoping for. "At the Mountains of Madness" set in 1939 directed by Guillermo Del Toro? That is all kinds of sweet.

Only don't tell me you're innocent. Because it insults my intelligence and makes me very angry.

When Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991 he held a short press conference which I was lucky enough to catch. As the conference started Marshall worked his way slowly up to the microphone leaning heavily on a cane like some aging Yoda, ready to impart final wisdom learned during the course of his incredible life. I especially remember one exchange with a reporter because one of the big stories of the day have brought it to mind.

QUESTION (6/28/91): Do you think President Bush has any kind of an obligation to name a minority justice in your place?

MARSHALL: I don't think that that should be a ploy, and I don't think it should be used as an excuse one way or the other.

QUESTION: An excuse for what, Justice?

MARSHALL: Doing wrong. I mean for picking the wrong Negro and saying, "I'm picking him because he is a Negro." I am opposed to that. My dad told me way back that you can't use race. For example, there's no difference between a white snake and black snake; they'll both bite. So I don't want to use race as an excuse.

President George Herbert Walker Bush went on to appoint Clarence Thomas to Marshall's seat. Marshall, who by then had passed, seemed to have predicted what was to come.

One of the things I learned growing up admiring the Civil Rights movement and the giants like Marshall and Martin Luther King is the idea that the content of one's character was the sole arbitrator of one kind of person you ultimately turned out to be. The superficial is just that, the color of one's skin meaningless towards gaging moral character. Conversely: when it comes to snakes they come in all colors and they'll all bite.

If one travelled back to 1991 and watched first hand the Anita Hill/ Clarence Thomas confirmation brouhaha he seems so eager to revisit in his new book one might find oneself confused. Here are two outstanding and, by all accounts, principled African-American professionals both thrust into the spotlight at the same time who shared wildly divergent views of what had taken place between them.

An objective eye on the proceedings might lead one to conclude that the allegations of harassment and the questions of Thomas' fitness to sit on the court for life might be ultimately inconclusive. How could we tell who was telling the truth? Wouldn't it be impossible to judge who was the more credible of the two?

It might if the whole mess hadn't been preceded by Thomas' actual (now largely overshadowed) confirmation hearings in which he lied, obfuscated and completely distanced himself from a lifetime of outspoken fringe conservative views.

Thomas wants to over simplify all of this by claiming his critics opposed him almost entirely because of his views on abortion. This isn't a very realistic take on his part. It wasn't his views on abortion per se that so enraged those of us who watched his confirmation questioning, it was his willingness to openly and brazenly lie about his views on abortion that so angered his detractors. Remember; this was a man who was in law school at the time of the Roe v. Wade ruling who testified under oath during his confirmation hearings that he "cannot recall engaging in discussions on that issue" at the time. Right.

By the time Anita Hill was reluctantly dragged into the spotlight (after being ignored by Democratic Senators I might add) Thomas had already fully demonstrated the true content of his character. He was a man that was willing to do or say anything in order to win a seat on the Supreme Court. He was a man without principles. He was a man unfit to take the place of Thurgood Marshall.

Thomas could do us all a favor and spare us the righteous indignation and all the drudging up of the past. He's lucky he's on the Supreme Court. By any fair estimation he doesn't belong.