Fresh Loaf

One of the key figures in the rise of the conservative movement in the United States has died.

When I was a bored child, deprived of cable television by my cruel, cruel parents, I loved watching William F. Buckley Jr. on “Firing Line.” It aired on PBS — the same PBS that Buckley’s political allies have been trying to destroy for the past quarter century. Ha!

I don’t think I had a concept of what conservative or liberal meant (I think I was 7 or 8 when I watched the show regularly), but I was a big fan of his mannerisms. Basically, I thought he was cool.

Now that I’m an adult (legally, at least), I disagree with most of Buckley’s political views, but admire that he created a forum where smart people could debate without shouting.

I love arguing. I hate shouting.

Here’s Buckley debating Noam Chomsky on “Firing Line” in 1969.

Part one:

Part two:

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Hillary Clinton hasn’t been able to stop Barack Obama with “35 years of experience,” “Ready on day one,” “He’s a cokehead,” “He’s the new Jesse Jackson,” “He’s stirring up false hopes,” “He’s all talk,” “Change you can Xerox” or any other of her approaches to voters.

So yesterday, with just eight days to go until must-win contests in Ohio and Texas, Clinton played her last card — the “Barack Obama isn’t really American” card.

If you have an ounce of doubt in your mind about the inspiration and source of this week’s Obama costume drama, read this post on The New Republic and watch the accompanying video. It features Clinton supporter Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, insinuating that Obama is a foreigner — three times.

One of the more interesting parts of this story to me is that it puts good people who support Clinton in the position of having to defend their candidate’s naked appeal to bigotry.

Some, like JerryT at Blog For Democracy, are honest and upset:

I’ve rationalized quite a bit of crap to justify my support of Sen. Clinton, but I am running out of excuses.

Some, like MelGX and Phlange, are positively Baghdad Bob-like in their refusal to acknowledge the obvious:

“I don’t think it matters who sent it out.”

“Can we just agree to hold off on accusing HRC of doing this until proven guilty??! Thought this was the land of Innocent Until Proven Guilty.”

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From Politico:

President George Bush has chosen Southern Methodist University in Dallas as the site of his presidential library, officials familiar with the decision said.

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In an ideal world, John McCain’s marital life would be of no concern to the public. Then again, in an ideal world, he wouldn’t stick idiotic, hypocritical crap like this on the “issues” page of his campaign website:

Protecting Marriage

The family represents the foundation of Western Civilization and civil society and John McCain believes the institution of marriage is a union between one man and one woman. It is only this definition that sufficiently recognizes the vital and unique role played by mothers and fathers in the raising of children, and the role of the family in shaping, stabilizing, and strengthening communities and our nation.

The fact that such language is part of his campaign platform makes his private life fair game for nitpickers. You can’t be a protector of marriage and a lobbyist-schtupper at the same time.

Add in the fact that McCain wrote letters to government regulators on behalf of his alleged paramour’s clients, plus his recent pander to the Republican Party’s pro-torture wing, and my longstanding respect for him as a person of integrity has all but vanished in recent days.

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Joshua Micah Marshall of the blog Talking Points Memo has won a Polk Award, one of journalism’s highest honors.

From Editor & Publisher:

• Joshua M. Marshall, editor and publisher of Talking Points Memo, who wins The Polk Award for Legal Reporting.

“His site, www.talkingpointsmemo.com, led the news media coverage of the politically motivated dismissals of United States attorneys across the country. Noting a similarity between firings in Arkansas and California, Marshall (with staff reporter-bloggers Paul Kiel and Justin Rood) connected the dots and found a pattern of federal prosecutors being forced from office for failing to do the Bush Administration’s bidding.”

I think it’s well-deserved and I hope it inspires other independent bloggers to pursue news as well as commentary.

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Move over Gandhi, Audie Murphy, and Lech Walesa. — this is true courage.

“The decision and the courage it takes to remove something when there’s pressure on the business — like the sandwiches — is emblematic that we’re going to build for the long-term and get back to the roots and the core of our heritage, which is the leading roaster of specialty coffee in the world.”

— Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz, on the company’s decision to stop selling sandwiches.

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I’m celebrating Sen. John McCain’s victory in Florida last night.

With the win, McCain seemingly has a lock on the Republican presidential nomination. This means that, of the three remaining candidates (McCain, Clinton, Obama) with a realistic shot at the White House, not one supports the Bush policy of torturing prisoners or detaining them in perpetuity without access to courts.

Two of the Bush administration’s most shameful, profoundly un-American policies will end in January 2009.

It’s not everything, but it’s something.

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The Initiative to Protect Jekyll Island will meet Thursday, Jan. 31, 7-9 p.m., at the Maloof Auditorium in Decatur to discuss the Linger Longer project that is raising a lot of questions about the future of the coastal Georgia getaway.

Visit the group’s website here to find out just what’s at stake. For more information about the Linger Longer project, click here for the developer’s take.

Details about the meeting, pulled from an e-mail release, can be found after the jump.

(more…)

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We’re known for having some of the best cattle semen in the world.

– Rick Weiss of the Washington Post speaking on KCRW & PRI news talk program “To The Point” about American cattle semen’s stellar reputation around the world. If you’re listening to the podcast, it’s at 48:40.

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DINNER AT THE FESTHALLE IN HELEN: It was the wurst of times.

On Saturday, I grabbed my passport and some Euros before jumping into the family Volkswagen and heading north. My destination, Helen – North Georgia’s very own German alpine village.

The reason for my visit was Oktoberfest, which draws so many people to the town that Helen’s führers leaders have conveniently extended it into November.

There are two Oktoberfests. There’s the daytime Oktoberfest of families and bikers shopping for fudge and “Not Sober Fest” T-shirts. It’s Dahlonega-meets-Underground and I could do without it.

Then, there’s nighttime Oktoberfest – a cheerful, easygoing, family-friendly party at the town Festhalle fueled by beer, bratwurst, knockwurst, bockwurst, and danceable oompah music courtesy of the Dan Witucki Trio – all four of them.

Das ist kitsch, certainly, but the spirit is warm and communal in a way most bars or even neighborhood festivals aren’t to me. It was a bit like a happy wedding reception.

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This might come a little late, but amid all the obituaries for and tributes to late Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (Salon.com said he “may have been the 20th century’s greatest artist”), there has also been a resurgence of interest in “De Düva,” a hilarious black-and-white Bergman parody from 1968 that stars Madeline Kahn and George Coe (the latter also directed it). It’s about 15 minutes long, and you can find it not only on this blog but also at Slate.com here.

Perhaps people have been remembering “De Düva” so fondly because it harks back to a time when heavy, highbrow foreign-language cinema had enough of a following that you could make a parody of it and enough people would get the joke to make it worth doing. It’s hard to imagine someone doing a similar spoof of, say, Iranian cinema today.

I can’t help but wonder: Years from now, when George Lucas becomes “one with the Force,” as one might put it, will there be a sudden resurgence of affection for “Hardware Wars“?

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Let’s see if I get this. Sunni insurgents in Iraq are often the allies of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. So, what does the Bush crime cartel do? Why, it’s giving arms to those very same militias in order for them to fight al-Qaeda (which, it’s worth remembering, wasn’t in Iraq until GWB invited it via his deceit-propelled war of conquest). What will happen to those arms? Yep, they’ll end up killing Shiite Iraqis — and American soldiers.

The Bushies’ justification, by the way, was that it had had some success with the program in Anbar province. They must have neglected to read the reports that the anti-al-Qaeda alliance in Anbar was crumbling.

If that isn’t sufficient to make you slap your forehead this Monday morning — and I swear I’m not inventing this — it appears the military considered developing a “gay bomb.” No, not the sort of bomb the religious fruitcakes would want — one that would kill gays — but one that would turn enemy soldiers into sex-crazed homosexuals.

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Medical literature reports, from time to time, patients with spiders nesting in their ears, and in May in Albany, Ore., Dr. David Irvine said that he chased a spider the size of a pencil eraser from the ear of 9-year-old Jesse Courtney (and then recovered a dead spider from his other ear.) Jesse thought the whole thing was cool and showed off the spiders in school. In a 1993 News of the Weird story, a British machinist with bad earaches was found to have a pregnant spider living in his ear, but he told a reporter afterward that he had grown fond of the spider and intended to keep her as a pet.

© 2007 Chuck Shepherd

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It was only three months ago that News of the Weird reported that a man vandalizing a church cemetery in Lilburn, Ga., by knocking over gravestones had one fall on him, crushing his leg and causing him to wail for two hours in the middle of the night before he was rescued. On May 6, at Calumet Park Cemetery in Merrillville, Ind., Michael Schreiber, 22, couldn’t wail because he was unconscious, with two broken legs, the victim of a half-ton gravestone that fell on him after he had knocked 14 over.
© 2007 Chuck Shepherd

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Jewelry store thieves sometimes swallow their stash at the scene to facilitate their getaway, but police now routinely wait out such suspects, monitoring the toilets until the “evidence” passes naturally (most recently reported in News of the Weird in 2001). Police in Canton, Ohio, arrested four men in March 2007, reasonably certain that one of them had swallowed a 2-carat ring worth about $30,000. After sifting through the toilets, police recovered the ring the next day, with the store’s price tag still on it.
© 2007 Chuck Shepherd

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1) The Des Moines, Iowa, woman who was the victim in December of an Iowa Methodist Medical Center policy on disposal of amputated body parts (the woman wanted to take her toe with her): Gladys Goose.
2) The 41-year-old woman charged with assault in February, in a suburb of Tampa, Fla., after she allegedly grabbed a high-heeled shoe and smacked her boyfriend in the head several times: Kari Barefoot.
3) The name dog breeders apparently give to the increasingly common crossbreed of a shih tzu with a bulldog (according to a March story in London’s Guardian): bullshih.
© 2007 Chuck Shepherd

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