What They Said

It's been awhile since I've written anything here, particularly anything of any length. I don't wish for my absence to imply that I now believe that with Bush out of the White House all is right with the world. In fact, quite the opposite is true. My worst fears about Obama have actually been surpassed, as he has largely adopted some of Bush's worst practices when it comes to preventive dentention, military commissions, abuse of the "state secrets" doctrine and attempts to squelch, both here and abroad, evidence of his predecessor's torture regime, etc. We got a hint that this might be coming last year during the campaign when he reversed his position on retroactive FISA immunity for the telecoms. A "constitutional scholar" Obama may be, but he's no civil libertarian. I could rant here almost daily about these things, but I don't, partly because even during the flushest of times I've never had more than a dozen readers here and, at least as importantly, because Glenn Greenwald, Digby, and yes, Andrew Sullivan, already have this all pretty well covered. So go there to keep up on the latest on the civil liberties catastrophe that the Obama administration has become.

Obama Losing Control at the Pentagon

Between "pentagon sources" and the press trumpeting Obama's proposed 8% increase in defense spending as a 10% decrease and Gates mutely standing by while Petraeus launches a PR blitz to override the sixteen month Iraq withdrawal timetable that Obama ran on, I've got to wonder about the supposed advantages of keeping Gates on as Secretary of Defense. Surely the PR hit Obama would take for sacking him can't be worse than the lack of authority he suffers by letting the pentagon run roughshod over him.

Eat This, Buzz Lightyear

Riding the people mover through the SFO terminal on my way to baggage claim after returning from a week in Kauai, I was in kind of a post vacation funk when something caught my eye that completely lifted my spirits. When I got off the people mover I called my girl friend to come back with me to look at this!

That's just one part of one of the most fantastic toys I had as a child, the Fireball XL5 Space City playset. In addition to that rocket, which has a detachable nose section and opening side doors to expose the transport bay, the set came with people, gas storage tanks, a launchable rocket, personal space vehicles (car and motorcycle-like), and so much more. For a kid of the sixties, before we had actually landed on the moon, this was a great toy, a great way to let the imagination soar out of my bedroom. Thanks to the SFO Airport Museum for bringing those memories back.

Posted Without Comment

The Abu Ghraib Play Set is Next

Betcha can't wait to get your kids and grandkids Playmobil's Security Check Point toy.

The Amazon customer reviews for this are priceless.

Via The Washington Monthly.

Asshat Update

On the Armstrong and Getty radio show this morning, one of the interchangeable asshats commenting after an audio clip in which Barack Obama noted that his intelligence team would not continue Bush administration policies that had tarnished the agency, said, "I don't know what he's talking about. I wish I did, but I don't."

Really, now. Here's a man who for a number of years has co-hosted a morning radio talk show, discussing salient issues of the day, and he is unaware, or wants us for some reason to believe that he is unaware, that Barack Obama, the president elect of the United States of America, disapproves of the torture regime of the Bush Administration. It's not really important to me which is true, that he doesn't know of this or that he's pretending not to know of this. He is, as I've repeatedly said, an asshat. What I wonder is why any of his listeners would give somebody, who by this example is either abysmally ignorant or willfully misleading to his listeners, any credibility at all.

Good News Everyone!

Joe Starkey, the execrable long time play-by-play announcer for the Forty-Niners, is being replaced by Ted Robinson. In recent years I've found that I can't stand more than a minute or so of Starkey per week, so this means that I will once again be able to listen to the game broadcasts. A typical Starkey play call would include the mention that a pass had been thrown downfield, but would usually leave out such information as to whom the pass was intended, how far downfield it had been thrown, and whether or not it had been completed. I have been amazed for years that somebody so obviously incompetent could have retained such a visible job for so long. You could blame it on the York family's infamous inablility to distinguish talent from the lack thereof, but Starkey's presence and lack of discernable talent on 49er broadcasts is a holdover from the Debartolo era.

Ted Robinson isn't the second coming of Bill King, but he's at least competent and easy to listen to. I caught him on a broadcast a couple of weeks ago and was pleased to have some sense of what was happening on the field.

More on Starkey's retirement, from SFWeekly.com.

Name Dropping

I never see celebrities, of any kind, anywhere, but...

Last Saturday night my girlfriend and I were having dinner at Carmen's Burger Bar in Santa Rosa when she mentioned that a guy who had just come in and was joining the party at the table over my right shoulder looked like a professional musician. Not any particular professional musician that she recognized, but he just had that look. At first glance I saw only the back of a smallish man dressed in fancy denim with long curly hair. With my second glance I caught his profile and told her, "oh, that's Jack Blades." We didn't pester him, but my girlfriend told me that he seemed to be regaling his table with rock star stories throughout their meal. How cool would that be, to spend an evening with a rock star listening to tales of the studio and road?

Last night I went to the Palette Art Cafe in Healdsburg, a small place that seats about 40, to listen to the Khalil Shaheed Quartet. Toward the end of his first set, Shaheed introduced the thin young man sitting in front as Julian Lage, who joined Shaheed for the second set. I'd seen Lage perform a couple of times before, both solo and with Gary Burton, and was kind of indifferent to him. I could see that he was an excellent guitarist, but was unmoved by how and what he played. Last night, playing with that band, though, I thought he really shined.

Now I can go back to another 49 years without seeing any celebrities.