why dave bergman is neat

senate luminary (cough, cough) joe biden (as in 'biden his time till he can lose another presidential primary') offered this nugget of golden wisdom on the senate's recent non-decision on john bolton:

"The vote we're about to take is not, is not about John Bolton, the vote is about taking a stand," Biden said.

mark steyn chimes in (pun intended) on the pop music fiasco at gitmo. i include the first three paragraphs, the third mostly because i, in fact, got a gal in kalamazoo.

Been following the latest horrifying stories from what Amnesty International calls the “gulag of our time”? John Kass of The Chicago Tribune was outraged by the news that records by Christina Aguilera had been played at Guantanamo at full volume in order to soften up detainees. He thought they should have used “Dance, Ballerina, Dance” by Vaughn Monroe, over and over and over.

Well, readers had plenty of suggestions of their own, and so the Tribune’s website put together a list of “Interro-Tunes” — the most effective songs for aural intimidation, mood music for jolting your jihadi. A lot were the usual suspects - like the Captain and Tennille’s blamelessly goofy “Muskrat Love”, which, as I recall, put the Queen to sleep at a White House gala, though the Duke of Edinburgh sat agog all the way to the end. Someone suggested Bob Dylan’s “Everybody Must Get Stoned”, which even on a single hearing sounds like it’s being played over and over. I don’t know what Mr Kass has against “Ballerina”, which is very pleasant in the Nat “King” Cole version. But he seems to think one burst of “Dance, ballerina, dance/And do your pirouette in rhythm with your aching heart” will have the Islamists howling for the off-switch and singing like canaries to the Feds. Who knows? I sang “Ballerina” myself once on the radio long ago, and, if it will discombobulate the inmates, I’m willing to dust off my arrangement and fly down to Guantanamo, if necessary dressed liked Christina Aguilera. If they want an encore, I’ll do my special culturally sensitive version of that Stevie Wonder classic, “My Sharia Amour”.

By now, one or two readers may be frothing indignantly, “That’s not funny! Bush’s torture camp at Guantanamo is the gulag of our time, if not of all time.” But that’s the point. The world divides into those who feel the atrocities at Gitmo “must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others” (in the widely quoted words of Senator Dick Durbin), and the rest of us, for whom the more we hear the specifics of the “atrocities” the funnier they are. They bear the same relation to the gulags (15-30 million dead), the Nazi camps (nine million dead) and the killing fields of Cambodia (two million dead) as Mel Brooks‚ “Springtime For Hitler” does to the original. Nobody complained at Auschwitz that the guards were playing the 78s of The Merry Widow (the Fuhrer’s favorite operetta) with the volume knob too high. When that old KGB hand Yuri Andropov succeeded Brezhnev as the big guy in the Kremlin, he was reported in the western press to be a big Glenn Miller fan. But to the best of my knowledge no-one suggested he was in the basement of the Lubyanka torturing the inmates with “I Got A Gal In Kalamazoo”.

(Lv M.)

well, that was awesome. perhaps the best game i've seen the pistons play this go-around.

yesterday i mentioned a little something about sen. dick durbin and his long, strange trip into the ethereal regions of hyperbole and, well, lying. i gather he doesn't intend to apologize. for this ridiculous move, he will perhaps come under some fire in the US.

but al jazeera sure loves it!

so he's got that going for him.

which is nice.

(LvM.)

UPDATE: thanks to DMac over at CV for the link! i don't know how classical values readers will think the seeg and the '84 tigers stack up to things classically- or values-oriented, but i'm willing to keep an open mind if you are. and be sure to check out DMac's pun in the title to his post--i know i can always count on dennis for a good pun.

and by the way--the tigers just finished SWEEPING the san diego padres, their opponent in the 1984 world series. go tigers!

the pistons looked in the first two games of the NBA finals like george w. bush in the first couple presidential debates last year. but last night they came to play.

it was sweet!

ben wallace, following two games of struggling, sported the fierce fro last night and TORE IT UP, and after the game he was asked about it:

Q: Did your wife choose to let the afro fly tonight?

Wallace: Yep. That’s what she said. She said let your hair down and go out there and play some basketball, or else you can’t eat.

ha! that's awesome!

given that i too have rather long hair with some fro potential and a cool wife-to-be, i can only hope that the lovely lady will help pull me out of a slump in similar fashion.

also, here's a game. see how many instances of words with
'-believable' or '-believably' you can find in this post-game exchange with coach larry brown.

Q. What changed tonight from the first two games?

COACH LARRY BROWN: Well, I think we figured out how hard we have to play. You know, their energy has been incredible, and I don't think we realized we were in the Finals against a great team that's unbelievably well coached. I really believe Ben started us off, he gets a dunk and a three point play and a steal and he had
five blocks in the first quarter. I think that really gave us a lift.

And then, you know, just before the end of the third quarter we got an unbelievable run, McDyess and Lindsey, and from then on, we just played at an unbelievably high level.

You know, it's one game. Now that game is over. I think our guys have unbelievable respect for them and realize it's going to take our very best to make this a competitive series.

ok. let's see how you did!

Q. What changed tonight from the first two games?

COACH LARRY BROWN: Well, I think we figured out how hard we have to play. You know, their energy has been incredible, and I don't think we realized we were in the Finals against a great team that's unbelievably well coached. I really believe Ben started us off, he gets a dunk and a three point play and a steal and he had five blocks in the first quarter. I think that really gave us a lift.

And then, you know, just before the end of the third quarter we got an unbelievable run, McDyess and Lindsey, and from then on, we just played at an unbelievably high level.

You know, it's one game. Now that game is over. I think our guys have unbelievable respect for them and realize it's going to take our very best to make this a competitive series.

UPDATE: more here--apparently this isn't the first time chanda has threatened to send ben to bed with no supper:

"She does it all the time," he said Wednesday. "She locked me in the closet once, too. ... It is what it is: a partnership. She gives the speech, I get the win. ... I guess we're even."

the whole article is worth reading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: ok, here's one more. it's good too.

sen. dick durbin apparently has come completely unhinged. recently he castigated american treatment of prisoners, comparing the captors to nazis, soviets, and pol pot. can you guess why? any conjectures as to what heinous acts the evil americans were engaging in?

you guessed it! they played with climate control via the air conditioner and made detainees listen to RAP MUSIC!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

here are durbin's own words, stranger, indeed, than fiction.

On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. ..... On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

somebody get me dick durbin on the phone. i don't even HAVE air conditioning, and my apartment has been scorching for the last several days. perhaps he could pol pot-ize my landlord on the senate floor and get the whole nation aware of my own private gulag, and i'll finally see some relief. i'll even let him know that last year the people across the street used to play REALLY LOUD MUSIC WITH IMPUNITY!!!

that should get him on my side.

p.s. you can read more from durbin's remarks here (LvAT.)

watching the pistons the last two games has been like a protracted exercise in self-immolation.

i find watching the news to be a similar experience; it just doesn't last as long.

so in case you live in an underground tunnel, michael jackson was acquitted on all counts today. i was a little off on my prediction--i guessed that he would get convicted of providing alcohol to a minor to, you know, show they mean business in california, and that he would be free and clear on all the others.

but that prediction was still closer than the outcome i forecast for game 2 of the NBA finals. c'est la vie.

and another story you might not have heard (move to edge of seats now)--katie holmes has decided to convert to scientology because of the beliefs of her new flame, tom 'yes, i WILL jump on that couch, oprah' cruise. she was a catholic up to this point, but it seems that tom must have been enough to compel her to change allegiance from mater ecclesia to father hubbard.

so that's the up-to-date news for the minute.

feeling burned?

i don't enjoy seeing the pistons get demolished.

but i DO enjoy reading mark steyn (LvM).

"We don't want nobody to get on the bandwagon now," Wallace said, serving as playful Team Megaphone. "The only ones that believe in us are the ones that go to The Palace every night. I don't want people coming out of the woodwork to say, 'Hey, I'm a Detroit fan, I've been with them all season.' We don't want none of that."

it looks (or, rather, feels) like the 3 Hs have returned to this neck of the woods for the summer: hazy, hot, and humid. i heard that it's supposed to get up to 96 today. i think it was already 75 at 9 a.m. this morning. i guess it serves me right for complaining it wasn't warm enough in recent weeks.

on my way to school this morning, i caught most of 'sultans of swing'. mark knopfler's guitar-playing on that song is so SMOOTH. he even makes the AC/DC-type licks at the end sound as laid-back and chill as...as...i don't know, other mark knopfler songs.

in other news, it turns out howard dean is not very bright. (LvM.)

finally, the tigers scored an 8-4 victory over the dodgers last night.

yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes!

so the tigers won the sixth game out of seven tonight against the first-place baltimore orioles. i suppose i could provide a link to some sort of post-game report.

anyway.

ok, fine. i will. here. happy?

this win brings them up to .500. according to the article linked above, this is the first time since september 8, 2000, that they have been at .500 this late in the season.

in other news, jerry seinfeld was just talking about plato and the platonic relationship in the episode called 'the stake out' (season 1, episode 3).

i think i reached a point of existential despair while watching the pistons tonight.

on the other hand, while i was driving home after school today classic rock 102.9 MGK played a track off of live bullet during the 5:00 attitude adjustment. 'katmandu'--there seems to me to be an allusion to shakespeare in it. any guesses?

'you've been through all of f. scott fitzgerald's books; you're very well read, it's well known'.

that's what the other bob just said on the stereo.

almost time for seinfeld.

love and cookies.

UPDATE: not that the heat needed much extra help to win last night, but i think they definitely got it from the officials. the always-verbose rasheed wallace had this to say, supported by larry brown:

"You had to see that. It was just so blatant," Wallace said of the officiating. "I am going to find out who knows about basketball by reading your stories and seeing your reports tomorrow.

"We are going to win Game 6 because there will be good people out there reffing. They (the NBA) want a Game 7 'cause there's no other series. Y'all can't see that, then you're crazy."

Brown, who picked up a technical foul, stuck up for Wallace.

"He didn't get to play," Brown said. "I mean, three offensive fouls, that's tough. I don't know how he could've played in a game like that. He fouls out in 22 minutes in Game 4 and he's got five fouls tonight -- it's hard."

i think they're right; the officiating was dismal last night, though i don't know if the outcome would have been different had the officiating been. at any rate, it means damon jones should stop his whining, especially since he says he's not crying about the officiating while he's, well, crying about the officating:

Perhaps the officials overheard Damon Jones mini-rant after the Heat shootaround Thursday.

Jones, discussing the Pistons' defense particularly on Dwyane Wade, felt the officials might have forgotten some of the new rules emphasis.

"Everyone says they (Pistons) are a great defensive team, which they are," Jones said. "But there were rules changes put in at the start of the year that don't allow the defender to impede the offensive man's progress. And just watching the game over and over again, they're doing some impeding of his progress.

"Is that being called? Am I am sitting here, crying about officiating? Never. But at some point in time, something is going to have to be done about that. Because he's been aggressive all year long, all playoff long, and him not getting to free throw line as frequent as he's done all year is a problem."

Note to Jones: Wade shot 10 free throws in Game 4. He has shot 40 free throws in the four games. He shot eight free throws in 27 minutes Thursday.

The referees are blowing the whistle, thank you.