Blacksburg: The World Reacts (and Seems to Offer Karaoke Advice)

The world gave a lot of attention and sympathy to the USA yesterday, which is always extraodinary. Look at the names of the countries below and think of how many young people in those countries died yesterday (take the Philippines, for example). American youth and American youth culture are still loved around the world. I'll write more about this soon.
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REUTERS
Massacre sparks foreign criticism of U.S. gun culture
By Michael Perry
Tuesday April 17, 2007

Foreign politicians and media attacked America's "gun culture" on Tuesday after a gunman killed 32 people in the country's worst shooting rampage.

Prime Minister John Howard said tough Australian legislation introduced after a mass shooting in Tasmania in 1996 had prevented the U.S. gun culture emerging in his country.

The Australians subsequently imposed laws banning almost all types of semi-automatic weapons.

"We showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country," said Howard, extending sympathies to the families of the victims at Virginia Tech university.

The attacker killed himself in a classroom after opening fire on students and staff in an apparently premeditated massacre on Monday morning.

The gunman was an Asian male who was a student at the university and a dormitory resident, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger told CNN. His name was not released.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also expressed their sympathies. Iran, at loggerheads with the United States over its nuclear program, spoke out against the killings.

"Iran condemns the killing of Virginia university students and expresses its condolences to the families of victims and the American nation," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in a statement, which was faxed to Reuters.

"AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE"

European newspapers saw a grim inevitability about the shootings, given the right to bear arms which is enshrined in America's constitution. In Italy, the Leftist Il Manifesto newspaper said the shooting was "as American as apple pie."

More than 30,000 people die from gunshot wounds in the United States annually and there are more guns in private hands than in any other country. But a powerful gun lobby and support for gun ownership have largely thwarted attempts to tighten controls.

"It would be vain to hope that even so destructive a crime as this will cool the American ardor for guns," the Independent newspaper said in a commentary.

Gerard Baker, a columnist for The Times newspaper, feared worse was yet to come: "The truth is that only an optimist would imagine Virginia Tech will hold the new record for very long."

France's Le Monde newspaper said such episodes frequently disfigure the "American dream."

"The ... slaughter forces American society to once again examine itself, its violence, the obsession with guns of part of its population, the troubles of its youth, subjected to the double tyranny of abundance and competition," it wrote.

Campaigners in other countries where gun ownership is common expressed fears of a similar massacre.

Nandy Pacheco, head of the Philippines anti-gun lobby, Gunless Society, said he feared it could happen there.

"Not a day passes without a gun-related incident happening (in the Philippines). You hear it on radio, see it on TV and read it in newspapers," he said.

Gun ownership is commonplace in the Philippines, from housewives worried about burglary to politicians fearful of assassination. There are around 1.1 million guns, and police estimate that around 30 percent of them are unlicensed.

Shootings over trivial incidents are commonplace. A few years ago several fatal karaoke bar shootouts were sparked by poor renditions of Frank Sinatra's "My Way."

(Additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Paris, Phil Stewart in Rome and Kate Kelland and Parisa Hafezi in London)

America Has a Gun Crisis and a Masculinity Crisis

A glock .22 pistol, similar to one of the weapons used in the Virginia Tech massacre. Photo by Flickr user

Timothy N. Bass

used under a Creative Commons license

There are over 200 million handguns in the USA, owned by at least 60 million households and individuals, both law-abiding and not. And as one of my favorite teachers, Sut Jhally explained last decade, we have a serious masculinity crisis

. Those two facts together creates an explosive mix.

Another young male went on an armedrampage today. It has happened in high schools, universities, and workplaces. It has happened on trains, in shopping malls and restaurants. And it will happen again and again.

UPDATE, 14:40EDT: The death toll at Virginia Tech has been revised to 33, including the gunman. This means that today's massacre is the worst mass shooting in US history, easily surpassing U Texas Austin in 1966 and Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, TX in 1991.

VT is an ACC school, a major university, and this will change that campus forever. We have to go way back in US history to find the last time so many people were shot on US soil outside of the Civil or Revolutionary wars. And I think that event is the massacre at Wounded Knee. Remember Kent State? It saddens me to say that this is far, far worse in terms of the number of people directly affected.

Now this is slightly off-topic, but imagine an event like this occurring every day in the United States. That's what life is like in Iraq, a much smaller country, where more ordinary civilians know victims of events like these.

America, we have a problem. Now what are we going to do about it besides listen to politicians lecture us about it? We rank with Thailand, Slovakia, Colombia, and South Africa as having some of the highest rates of gun homicides. It is despicable. And massacres by citizens as opposed to gangs or police seems to be an American phenomenon. We're supposed to be better than that.

Jon Stewart Rips Nancy Grace Over The Duke Case Fiasco

Last Thursday, Jon Stewart was absolutely brilliant (well, he usually is). I love his anger. Here, he gives Nancy Grace a long-overdue smackdown. This is as good as a Media Matters essay, just with more humor.

Nancy Grace took a convenient vacation day on Wednesday, when the charges were dropped. She will never apologize to the three boys who were charged. This simply highlights how she has no respect for our legal system or the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' at all. She's entertaining as hell. But she is not a legal scholar or even a decent journalist. She's what I call a raving 'victims rights' fanatic run amok. And never mind she launched her media career by capitalizing on (and embelishing) the murder of her fiance in 1979.

Fox News Blast: Next Week, Somebody Dies!

If Paul Verhoven produced the news, he'd have a blonde babe narrate scenes of destruction and carnage. What? Fox created a segment like that already? It's not as graphic as Paul would like, but it's a step in that direction. It's called, the Fox News Blast.

Fox News Blast is featured as a content provider on You Tube. I never heard of this, but apparently it started sometime last year. "The Blast" is not to be confused with the famous "Fox News Alert," which started as a way to announce catastrophes and abducted children on their cable network, but now is abused to cover celebrity news as well, as shown in the Robert Greenwald documentary Outfoxed.

Well, The Blast is adrenaline-fueled action and entertainment, pure and simple. They even featured a video of Taliban executing a foreign translator and the execution of a drug cartel member by rogue Mexican police that is deemed to graphic for viewing over a corporate firewall.

Sunbeam Television (owner of Fox 7 in Miami, and WHDH 7 and CW 56 in Boston) is a pioneer in sensationalist coverage of events and local crime. There was a race to bottom during the 1990s to see which local newscast could 'bleed' the most. It is possible that Fox has kick-started another race to capitalize on viral and mobile video (they offer these clips on AT&T and Amp'd mobile phone services). If CNN and MSNBC start doing this, we've crossed another threshold.

Cheney: "Willing to Bet" The Democrats Will Back-down

So the Democrats are in their last throes? They will simply have to drop the withdrawal timetable and the performance benchmarks from their Iraq/Afghanistan funding bill? The Democrats must not back-down, especially when a man with a horrific batting average is predicting that they will fail. That should only encourage them to fight harder.

But these are the Democrats. I can't expect a successful stand, unless all of them (minus Lieberman) are committed to the battle.

Felipe Massa Wins The Bahrain Grand Prix

He needed a win to keep up with his teammate, Kimi Raikonnen in the points, and today he got it. Ferrari's 25 year-old Brazilian driver, Felipe Massa, has won his first race of the year in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Fernando Alonso finished fifth. Kimi Raikonnen finished third. BMW's Nick Heidfeld finished fourth, so his pursuit of the Drivers Championship is not yet futile. But up-front, there is a 3-way tie for the Drivers Championship between Alonso, Raikonnen, and Lewis Hamilton, who finished on the podium for the third straight race. No F1 driver has ever started his career with three straight podiums. Is his first victory imminent? The teams pack-up and go to Europe for 4 weeks of testing and refinement. Next race is Barcelona on May 13th.

Condoleezza Rice Says She's Glad Imus is Fired. Whatever.

She's glad there was a consequence for Imus' words, but there will never be a consequence for hers. Shouldn't she be drinking with the President at Camp David? It's the weekend, already.

The irony here is that she has said far worse things than he has. Don't lies that result in thousands of violent deaths count? Doesn't lying to congress count? I would think so.

I'm shocked the press asked her for her opinion. Just because she is a black woman, who personally witnessed the implementation of desegration, doesn't mean that she has anything of value to add to the Imus conversation. She belongs in The Hague, but has a plush job waiting for her at Stamford University in 2009.

Let's keep things on-topic and on-message. The White House has "lost" 5 million e-mails, as if they are suddenly using pre-1991 technology. Jeffrey Feldman of the Huffington Post writes that here is no excuse for it. And we need to get to the bottom of it, and find out who ordered it, STAT.

Wolfowitz's Girlfriend Says She's The Victim

Shaha Riza seems to think that the scandal revolves around her move to the US State Department. It doesn't. The scandal is her promotion at the World Bank and her remaining on the payroll long after she left. It isn't a US State Department scandal, it is a World Bank scandal.

It's as if she took a page out of the New York Yankees spin playbook (I'll explain in a sec). She's claiming victim status. But she is not claiming to be a victim of the World Bank promotion and pension. No, she is only talking about the fact that she was forced to take a position at the US State Department in order to lesson the appearance of a conflict of interest with Wolfowitz as the head of the World Bank. And as we now know, she was promoted just before her transfer to State, and given an excessive pay raise at the insistence of Wolfowitz. It was a raise that exceeded the Bank's annual salary increase limit. And she has remained on the payroll nearly 2 years after leaving the World Bank. That's the scandal. Focus on that, please. The tidbit about taking a job over at State is what we might call a 'hangout,' hence the name of this blog. She's no fool. At least she tries to spin us off the main issue, as she has a background in communications.

But for a moment, let's take her at face value. She is claiming that accepting a new job while collecting paychecks from the old job was more than a little inconvenience? She was mistreated and harmed? Awwwwww.

And I love this: No one can explain what she does for 'Federation for the Future.' Of course not. You think the girlfriend of the grand architect of the Iraq invasion would have a real job?

This is not an exact analogy, but -

Remember when the Yankees had a game postponed against Tampa Bay, because the Rays were delayed by a Florida hurricane in September 2004. They practically begged Major League Baseball to record the game as a forfeit by Tampa. And in their defense, Suzyn Waldman of the propaganda TV network known as YES exclaimed that the Yankees had suffered as a result of Tampa's no-show. They "had already showered," she yelled. Those showers must have hurt bad.

Just like that World bank "pension" of over $190K per year hurt Ms. Riza.

Laura and George Bush's Tax Returns Show: They Are Just Like Us

Yes, you can have a beer with him, all right.

W is a regular joe!

Almost no one in the MSM will tell you that a very distant (14th) cousin of his is the Queen of England.

Almost no one in the MSM will tell you that he is reportedly worth $20 Million (or about the same as John Kerry without his wife).

And of course, no one will remind you that his wealth has depended on his father's name and the saving grace of Saudi investors and members of the Saudi royal family.

At least the MSM will report that the salary of the President of the US is currently $400,000, which was doubled when Clinton left office. (On second thought, do we want Americans to know the worst president ever makes twice what Bill Clinton took home from US taxpayers?).

But other than that, he fucks-up the language, clears brush on his Crawford ranch, drinks beer with Condi while watching college football at Camp David (and one time fell flat on his face doing so), and that makes him just like any other American Idiot. You wanted a President made in your own image, Middle America, and you got him. He's just a little wealthier than you.

Weekend Plans: Going to the Movies

Apparently the new Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie parodies the classic intermission reel above. That might be worth a look. But isn't the point of ATHF to get stoned at home? I am a huge Mooninites fan, I admit.

Anyone going to the movies this weekend? It's going to rain and sleet in the northeast all day Sunday. Hit the multiplex! Hollywood needs your cash America! I'm going to the movies, but its a free Saturday morning screening of Fracture, the new Anthony Hopkins / Ryan Gosling thriller. Hopkins reprises Hannibal Lecter and Gosling will draw hordes of female fans. I'm not excited because the domestic trailer gave away the twist. But it's a free screening. It will get me out of the house, and I can bring a big scone and cafe americano to the theater. I won't complain.

Might I suggest Grindhouse for the rest of you? I am shocked this movie is not doing well. It has everything a sleazy action picture should have. The kids might complain that it doesn't use many CGI effects, but that is the bloody point.

White House: e-mails Sent Through RNC Servers (gwb43.com) Might Have Been Lost. Senator Leahy: Hell No!

This White House disclosure relates to both the firings of the US Attorneys and the alleged Hatch Act violation at the GSA:

The RNC Servers purge e-mails more than 30 days old? Even if that's true, these messages cannot be permanently lost.

Chairman Waxman, you know what to do. Nail down the RNCs IT guys (or their outsourced IT service providers) and get to the bottom of this, pronto. Those e-mails cannot be "lost."

From the Washington Post

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the use of outside accounts, issued a statement saying that the White House disclosure is "a remarkable admission that raises serious legal and security issues," adding: "The White House has an obligation to disclose all the information it has."

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Update, 12:19 EDT

Patrick Leahy is calling the White House on its bullshit. He is going to do exactly what I suggested in an earlier post:

"You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."

"It's like the famous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes. They're there."

I suddenly had a flashback of Donald Rumsfeld telling the press that, "We know where the weapons of mass destruction are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." But I think something will be found this time.

If the NSA can retrieve your e-mails or my e-mails, then you can be damn sure Congress can go back and retrieve all the gwb43.com e-mails that have been sent and received during the last two years. There are at least two scandals with trails through that domain.

And are the White House staffers so fucking stupid that they think using a non-Federal e-mail account is going to hide their digital trail? Next time, use walkie talkies, landlines, or smoke signals, or meet in a parking garage or movie theater for your orders (and whatever else you give each other). Dear Fucking God, these people are so incompetent they can't even get scandal-related communications right. Ollie North should have been a lesson that in running covert operations at home or abroad, you must never use electronic mail of any kind.

OK, I'm being harsh. I'm glad they used e-mail or else we wouldn't be able to push these investigations forward. And the SEC could tell us all about the many Wall Street analysts who openly admitted that their equities research articles were bullshit, in writing, on their company's Exchange servers. So the Private Sector has far more incompetence and wrongdoing. I'm not losing sight of that.

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Update, 15:05 EDT

Holy Fuck. Maybe I was right to be harsh. The White House has been deliberately violating the Presidential Records Act since for at least four years. And has 'lost' over 5 million e-mails from the whitehouse.gov domain. Refer to my profanity above. Not only is the White House staff stupid, but they are criminals. Every fucking one of them.

Dude! Thursday Morning Gore

Taiwanese veterinarian Chang Po-yu thought he had successfully tranquilized a zoo Crocodile. When he reached out to remove the tranquilizer dart from the croc, the croc reached out to remove his left forearm. Fortunately, the limb was successfully reattached (vascular surgery and bone grafting have come a long way). This ruined Chang's day, but considering how fast crocodiles can run, this could have been a lot worse.

So the reptile was too drugged to run, but not too tipsy to rip an arm off. Lesson learned.

Bombing in the Green Zone, Sarafiya Bridge Destroyed

Two major attacks today in Baghdad. One inside the Parliment building in the Green Zone. Attacks inside the Green Zone are rare. The other destroyed a bridge accross the Tigris in Northern baghdad. The Bridge had been built by the British either just before or after WWI. It was destroyed Thursday afternoon by a truck bomb. At least 10 were killed in that incident.

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Update, 14:12 EDT:
The death toll at the Parliment has been revised to 8.

Robert Gates: Army Tours to be Extended to 15 Months in Iraq & Afghanistan

I actually thought the tours were already more than a year. But this makes it official, effective immediately.

Now I'm not naive enough to think that this will turn more Americans against the occupation of Iraq. But I do think that those Americans who stop and think about this will realize that extending tours is another sign that Bush is breaking our army. He's breaking it. Watch Joe Biden address this during a brilliant moment of rage from March 14th:

Update: I was right.
"Some units had already been extended beyond 12 months by varying amounts. The new policy will make deployments more equitable and more predictable for soldiers and for their families, Gates said."

Predictable? If you mean that families now know to lower their expectations of seeing their loved ones soon, then yes, it makes things more predictable. The comments at the BBC are piling up, and the families posting comments sound pretty damn pissed.

Diftglass Does it Again!

Another brilliant post. This time, he fully explains why the proposed Blogger's Code of Conduct should be shot down with extreme prejudice.

Live Blogging the Red Sox Home Opener

I finally used 'The Google' to look-up the first Red Sox game I ever watched on television. It was opening day, April 4th 1977 at Fenway Park. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and a little warmer than today. I watched the game at a friend's house, in a paneled entertainment room complete with a brown, woven plaid sofa and a bean bag chair. Boston hosted Cleveland, and lost a heartbreaker 5-4.

I distinctly remember the introduction of the team to the Fenway Faithful as voiced by Sherm Feller. I remember cheers for Jim Rice and Dewey Evans, and plenty of boos for manager Don Zimmer. And there was something about it that drew me in. It would be another 3 years before I knew the rules of baseball, but somehow I felt like this was something I could consider 'mine,' just like the fans on TV did. I had found a place where I could belong. OK, that's bullshit, but I became a fan. By 1988 I was reading Sox stats daily.

I've got time to kill before the first pitch, so I'm going to try a few tangents.

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I applied my assimilation into baseball to other sports, notably Cricket, Soccer, and auto racing. And the assimilation process was similar in some respects, as the more I learned about each sport, the more I loved it. Unlike baseball, however, I couldn't claim to have a local team or local sports hero. I was coming-in from well outside the sport's local area.

Cricket is not supposed to be part of my world. Drinking wine while eating cake, and wearing a checkered, woven dress shirt and a pink tie while sitting in a members-only grandstand is not really me. Even eating a meat pie, drinking ale, writing down stats on a scoring sheet, and reading a newspaper in the public grandstand is not really me. Celebrating Victorian colonialism is not me either. And yet, I felt that if I gave it a chance, I could find a lot to love in the sport, and I did. Since it is played year-round, Cricket has satisfied my craving for hardball sports when baseball is not in-season. And when I discovered I could see the sport in a more contemporary way, through the lens of the old colonies like Jamaica and India, I loved it even more. I can't wait to see it live again in any of the 5 continents in which it is played.

Soccer drew me in for its universal, global appeal. The nationalism, the broad appeal to girls, boys, men, and women, and the different playing styles in each region on Earth are all good. Soccer has the most fit athletes in the world, with high stamina and incredibly low body fat (compared to Cricket where a beer belly is OK). It is the first professional sport, from the nation that helped give us the industrial revolution and the modern workday. Such a new, mechanized world needed a modern form of entertainment, and since late 19th century, soccer has been it. In 1993, the English Premiership was re-organized and re-marketed, and I somehow noticed while using the pre-browser Internet. I gravitated towards Newcastle United for their history, distinctive uniforms, big stadium, drunk fans, and Geordie culture, which is like a blend of urban Scotland and hard-core industrial England. It also helped that they were not Manchester United, as I am not a bandwagoner. And since I tried hard not to be an uninformed American, the more soccer I exposed myself to, the more worldly I think I became. I'd have to go back over 200 years to find ancestors in northern Scotland or central Ireland, but I feel that English and Scottish soccer are an ethnic and cultural 'fit' for me. One of many joys is standing for 2 hours, singing songs, drinking pints, and eating meat pies, in front of a 42" plasma TV with 20 English blokes (or Scottish lads) you hardly know.

Auto racing....far more strange. It is the most expensive sport in the world, requiring obscene amounts of corporate sponsorship. Like any sport is has many rules (it actually has the most rules of any sport). It has 7 flags that mean 7 different things. It involves elements of physics like aerodynamics, downforce, torque, temperature, friction and traction. It has the whole playboy / sex fantasy culture of winning a race, getting a trophy, kissing the girl in a Lycra dress, and then spraying her with champagne (and if you're a young Mario Andretti, you take her home too). It involves travel to a different city or country every week (where each stop brings a new trailer full of girls). It is seen live by more people worldwide than any other sport, except soccer and baseball. It is particularly popular in Mexico, the USA, France, England, Germany, Italy, Australia, and Japan. But since I wanted to absorb it all, I ended up liking the kind of racing most of the world likes - road racing, with twists, turns, bumps and elevation changes.

Race car drivers are like Jedi Knights. They have superhuman reflexes. They are fearless. They only want to win. And the best ones have this aura about them, like they have the greatest job in the world, and if they were to die, they would say it was all worth it. They can't inspire more than a few people to become drivers themselves (compared to say, Arnold Palmer, who helped inspire middle class white Americans to play golf in the millions). Most come from upper-middle-class and wealthy families, and get into kart racing at an early age. Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Finland, and Spain have produced the most talented drivers in the last four decades. Despite the many egos, my favorite driver ever is the most humble, friendly, and nice guy in the sport - Jackie Stewart. He won many races. He won the F1 World Championship twice. He was gracious in many defeats. He made millions. He advocated safety and the death toll dramatically dropped ever since he retired in 1973. He got the tall blonde 40 years ago, and has remained married to Lady Helen ever since. I don't believe in role models. But I believe in Sir Jackie.

And after years of knowing the famous names and watching only the biggest races, I finally got into auto racing full-time on September 15h, 2001. Still reeling from a near-death experience, I watched the Champ Car race from Germany in which Alex Zanardi (another nice driver and quite a colorful character) lost his lower legs in a horrific crash. And instead of being frightened away, I was drawn-in. Now I can't miss a race on TV, especially if it is an open wheel race like Champ Car or Formula One.

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We've got Jeff Weaver and the Mariners visiting Josh Beckett and the Red Sox at sunny, friendly Fenway! I can't do play-by play, but I can do updates....

14:09 Josh Beckett strikes-out Ichiro Suzuki. It's on.

14:13 It's a 1-2-3 inning for Beckett. Boston's turn to bat.

14:20 Julio Lugo walks, Kevin Youkilis singles. Sox have 2 men on and no one out.

14:24 David Ortiz makes contact. It's a single. Bases are loaded. Here comes Manny Ramirez. You up against it now, Mr. Weaver.

14:27 Manny makes contact! It's a single. Lugo scores. Boston takes a 1-0 lead and the bases are loaded.

Pinch me. This is a dreamy home opener so far.

14:31 JD Drew pops it up. Sacrifice fly. Youkilis scores. Sox up 2-0.

14:34 Jason Varitek walks. Bases are loaded again. 2 out.

This is what the Sox since 1998 do best - get the opponent's pitch count really high from the start. Weaver is just missing the strike zone an awful lot, filling the counts.

14:38 Full count to Coco Crisp. 2 out. Bases loaded. And a hit! Ground-rule double. Ortiz and Lowell score. Sox up 4-0. End of the 1st.

14:47 Another 1-2-3 inning for Josh Beckett

14:51 Lugo doubles, Youkilis doubles. Sox score again. 5-nil Sox.

14:59 JD Drew homers! Youkilis scores. Sox up 7-0. End of the second inning.

15:06 First test for Josh Beckett. Two in scoring position. No one out.

15:06 Jose Lopez grounds out. Kenji Johjima scores. Mariners are on the board.

15:08 Josh Becket strikes-out Ichiro Suzuki again. Impressive.

Pitching change: Jake Woods replaces Jeff Weaver.

15:17 Dustin Pedoria walks. Jason Varitek moves to second. Here comes Lugo, and he singles. Varitek scores. Boston up 8-1. End of the third inning.

15:29 Josh Becket loves 1-2-3 innings. Sox up again.

15:34 JD Drew hits again with Manny on first. Fielding error means everyone is safe. Sox threaten again.

15:35 Mike Lowell doubles. Manny scores. JD Drew to third. Sox up 9-1.

15:36 Jason Varitek singles deep to center. JD Drew and Mike Lowell score. Sox now up 11-1. Had enough, Seattle? Who's your daddy?

We were waiting for this performance by the Sox. Their bats are alive today. They are hitting like it's 2004.

15:41 Julio Lugo is up. Two out. Coco on first. He is intentionally walked. Julio Lugo is one hot lead-off guy. He's 2-2 today. And he was just walked like he was Johnny Damon in his prime. It's up to you Youkie...

15:43 Youklis at the plate. Two out. Full count. And the inning ends with a fly out. 11 runs off of 11 hits. End of the fourth inning.

15:44 A fourth 1-2-3 inning for Josh Beckett! Just seven pitches. He's going to go 8 full innings at this pace.

Pitching change: Brandon Morrow replaces Jake Woods.

15:52 David Ortiz walks to start the bottom of the fifth. The Sox are going to score again. Mas! Mas! Deseamos más runs.

15:56 Eric Hinske walks. And here comes....Willy Mo Pena? I assume JD Drew is okay and Terry is just giving Willy a chance to hit one. Willy is intentionally walked! No wait, 3 balls and then he is hit by a pitch. Oh my. Someone is a quitter. Brandon?

15:59 Mike Lowell. Nobody out. Bases loaded. And contact! Double play ball, but Ortiz scores. Sox up 12-1.

16:02 Jason Varitek doubles! Hinske scores. Sox up 13-1. Um, they have scored in every inning of the ballgame. Sweet. End of the fifth inning.

16:10 A fifth 1-2-3 inning for Josh Beckett! Two strikeouts this frame (Suzuki and Beltre - yet again)! Only two hits given-up in the game. Can you say 'gem'?

Pitching change: Julio Mateo replaces Brandon Morrow.

16:15 Kevin Youkilis doubles. Can the Sox score in a sixth consecutive inning?

16:17 Doug Mirabelli pinch hits for David Ortiz. Smart move. He strikes out. End of the sixth inning. Sox post their first goose egg on the scoreboard today. Everyone can relax now. We got this win in the bag.

16:25 Make this a sixth 1-2-3 inning! Josh Beckett is on cruise control. This is All Star stuff today. He has eight strikeouts, and no walks. That's Pedro quality. The fans must be standing, cheering him on. One more inning, Josh.

Pitching change: Chris Reitsma replaces Julio Mateo.

16:34 Mike Lowell hits a sacrifice fly with Eric Hinske on second. Sox up 14-1.

Pitching change: Brendan Donnelly replaces Josh Beckett. Take a bow, Josh.

We're done here. The Sox have come home. Red Sox 14, Mariners 3.

GSA Scandals Update: Doan to be Investigated

Image ripped from Crooks and Liars.

Justin Roos of ABC News Blogs reports that

the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) has opened an investigation of the alleged Hatch Act violation within the GSA. The OSC is an independent investigative agency that is designed to protect whisleblowers and identify what they call Prohibited Personnel Practices (PPP). (Isn't bureaucracy grand?). But what's interesting is that the OSC also looks for violations of the Hatch Act, the very law Ms. Lauita A Doan is suspected to have broken this past January. Doan's office is cooperating. I can only hope this eventually gets escalated to the DOJ.

A lot of dots are being connected by investigative journalists and members of of Waxman's committee, showing that the Hatch Act may have been violated throughout Bush's presidency, and they weren't just honest mistakes. According to Justin Ross, some of the violations are explained in a book from last year, One Party Country, by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten. According to their investigation, the White House political office has presented GOP party strategy within several agencies, not just the GSA. As Henry Waxman suspected, this might be a pattern. Arrogance and hubris are no excuse for not knowing about the Hatch Act.

I am speculating here, but based on what I have read so far, there are fundamental laws which the GSA needs to follow in its processes, such as Federal Contract Compliance (probably their most critical), the Patriot Act, the No FEAR Act (whistleblower protection), the Freedom of Information Act, and the Hatch Act, to name a few.

Monica Goodling: The Incompetent Baby Lawyer

Dahlia Lithwick of The Washington Post and Johnathan Last of the Philadelphia Inquirer have researched Monica Goodling, the latest Alberto Gonzales aide to resign. They have found that she is many things. Not only is she a junior lawyer who assisted in selecting which US Attorneys to terminate (and possibly obstructed justice in doing so). Not only did she probably assist in lying to congress. But she also represents a perfectly legal but disturbing effort by small evangelical colleges to fill the Federal Government with evangelical Christians. And wouldn't you know, most students who graduate from the schools mentioned in the articles are registered Republicans. The slowly-rising Christian Nationalist theocracy continues to be revealed by journalists like who know how to use 'The Google.'

Alberto Gonzales Resignantion Watch

He will testify to the Senate Judicial Committee on Tuesday April 17th. Assuming he keeps the Bush / Wall Street tradition of taking care of bad news on a Friday evening, do we think he will resign on Friday April 20th? The pressure is mounting on him to resign earlier, but he will get the green-light after he testifies.

It must suck knowing your ass is out the door, but you have to delay it as long as possible to buy the White House a few more crisis-free weekends. I mean, he has no hope of saving his job. It's not as if his testimony will save his ass.

Now the Gonzo narrative from the White House goes like this: He is preparing for his April 17th appearance like it is a heavyweight bout (The 17th will be the 68th anniversary of Joe Lewis' defeat of Jack Roper to defend his title, by the way). The White House is going to let him go down swinging and with some dignity. But make no mistake, Pat Leahy, Ted Kennedy, and Russ Feingold are going to tear his head off (Feinstein and Schumer seem to be poised to do the same, but they have to prove to me that they can bring it in the big game). Have your TIVOs ready.

Gonzo is going down. No, it is not fair. It's several senators against one. It will be a public assfuck. But these are the rules they live by and die by in the beltway. It's like wiseguys who get whacked. They knew the risks long before they entered the game.

Update, 4/20/2007, 10:19 EDT: I stand corrected. Feinstein, Schumer and former USA Sheldon Whitehouse stole the show. They get cold beers from us. I totally underestimated Whitehouse. He is a sniper. He linked the firings of the USAs to the unprecedented, expanded relationship between the White House and the DOJ. Karl Rove really did want the DOJ to serve at the pleasure of His Majesty. Whitehouse has the evidence. Amazing.

Pope Benedict XVI: "Nothing Positive Comes From Iraq"

File this under: Another opinion that contradicts the Administration's story.

Now the Pope is not a scholar, military expert, diplomat, or government official. He is the head of the Church I used to belong to before I woke-up and became an Athesist. His words today will be ignored by the USA and those who continue to support and defend King George. But I find it interesting how the interpretation of his words could be taken to mean more than one thing.

Does he mean that no positive news comes from Iraq? Laura the Librarian says that much good news is overwhelemed by a peaky daily bombing. Otherwise, the news is great!

Does he mean that tangible items and people leaving Iraq are not good? That doesn't sound right. That could insult the troops!

Does he mean that no good has come as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq? That must be it.

These damn Italians need to know their place and shut the hell up. History will be the judge, not them.