Old FURIOUS nads! by The One True b!X

Just what does Barbara Ehrenreich have to say (disclaimer: she’s a stated Obama supporter) about Hillary’s religion problem?

The Family avoids the word Christian but worship Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the “meek.” They believe that, in mass societies, it’s only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God’s “dominion” on earth. Insofar as the Family has a consistent philosophy, it’s all about power – cultivating it, building it, and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or “cells.” “We work with power where we can,” Doug Coe has said, and “build new power where we can’t.”

Perhaps a philosophy that’s “all about power” might explain the campaign tactics which (finally) have led to superdelegates speaking up and warning the Clinton campaign that the “calculated, desperate-to-win” antics likely will cost her their support.

The first bit of casting news is out for Dollhouse, and it includes Tahmoh Penikett. That would be Helo from Battlestar Galactica, whose final season begins in a little over a week. The three other actors whose casting is known so far as near-unknowns.

As the campaign of Hillary Clinton tries to make continuing political hay out of Obama’s former pastor, perhaps it’s time (as pointed out by Middle Earth Journal) to revisit Hillary’s religious problem (one actually raised, recently, by the mainstream media): Belonging to a secretive and generally right-wing and fundamentalist group in Washington DC.

Before the Boston Red Sox go to Oakland to finish up their season-opening series against the Athletics (they split the first two, played in Japan), they travel to Los Angeles to play three exhibition games against the Dodgers.

So what? They will be playing one of the games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, under most peculiar circumstances, as explained by The New York Times.

The foul pole stands only 201 feet down the left-field line. A 60-foot-high net snickers beside it, ready to entice hitters and tickle the necks of two laughably cramped left fielders.

…

“This is what they’re going to see,” Charles Steinberg, the Dodgers’ executive vice president for marketing and public relations, said last weekend as he surveyed the ridiculously tall net in left and the misshapen field’s other goofiness. “They’re going to walk in and be like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

…

But the Red Sox may feel more at home than the Dodgers — even if Red Sox Nation does not outnumber Dodgers fans, which some have predicted given the reigning champions’ booming popularity. The Coliseum is in many ways an exaggerated version of Fenway Park, with a tall-but-close left-field fence and far deeper dimensions in right.

“We pulled the left-field netting as tight as possible so that balls will bounce off it kind of like the Green Monster,” Rosenberg of the Dodgers said. “But we didn’t want to pull it too tight and be like a vertical trampoline.”

For those who have access to it, NESN will be broadcasting Saturday’s game. Unless you get to be there, that will be your opportunity to witness this particular baseball spectacle.

According to a new Gallup poll, 19% of Obama supporters and 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for McCain if their candidate is not the Democratic nominee.

While the fact that about one-fifth of Obama’s supporters would throw their party under a bus in the general election is extraordinarily shameful, the fact that nearly one-third (nearly one-third!) of Hillary’s would do the same is a little mind-blowing. And there’s no one but Hillary herself to blame for it.

I’ve little doubt that a fair number of Obama supporters simply do not like Hillary, and rightly or wrongly have a decade or more of experience from which to draw that personal opinion. It’s unlikely that very many within that shameful 19% of his supporters would throw the election to McCain simply because of anything Obama has said about his Democratic opponent.

But when it comes to the mind-numbing one-third of Hillary’s supporters who would throw the election to McCain, they don’t have a decade or more of experience from which to draw their personal opinion of Obama. Mostly what they have are the lies and deceptions about him told by Hillary herself and her campaign. In essence, nearly one-third of her supporters have become the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh’s “dittoheads”, swallowing whole anything she says which tarnishes Obama, puffs up herself, or (because we can’t forget this part) touts John McCain.

Voters in both camps — Obama’s 19% and Clinton’s 28% — need to grow up. For those supporters of Obama, it needs to be recognized that even if you don’t believe Clinton will right the nation’s course dramatically enough for you, she certainly won’t maintain the direction we’re in, and at full throttle, the way McCain will. I don’t like her either. Sometimes rather dramatically so. But come November, if she is the Democratic nominee, I will vote for her.

But for those supporters of Clinton, it’s time to recognize the degree to which their candidate has been going out of her way to destroy her Democratic opponent’s credibility. There simply is not enough difference between Clinton and Obama (beyond the former’s reprehensible campaign tactics) to justify throwing the general election to McCain. Your candidate of choice, in her petulant sense of entitlement to the presidency, has been needlessly undermining the other viable Democratic candidate in this race (and the one who is winning, no less). You would reject such tactics if used by Republicans, and you need to reject them when used by your candidate. If only just far enough to get it into your heads that when push comes to shove, the point in November will be to stop John McCain.

Everyone just grow the fuck up already. Unless you really do want to endure another four — or even eight — years of the policies of George W. Bush. In the end, that is the one thing, the only thing, that matters in this election.

For those who remain unclear as to the depths of depravity to which Hillary Clinton will sink in order to deliver unto herself the Presidency to which she believes she is entitled, witness the latest evidence. She’s (in essence) conspiring with Richard Mellon Scaife to pimp her own spin on the story of Obama’s former pastor. Scaife, of course, “was the nerve center of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” which embattled her and her husband for years.

“NASA rescinded a directive Tuesday that would have forced millions of dollars in cuts from the popular Mars rover program,” reports the Los Angeles Times, “saying the budget reductions had not been cleared with NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.”

“NASA Administrator Michael Griffin did not review the letter, sent by James Green, who leads the agency’s planetary science division,” reports the Associated Press. “‘Dr. Griffin did not know beforehand that Dr. Green sent the letter, nor did Dr. Green obtain explicit approval from Dr. Griffin to send the letter,’ [NASA spokesman Dwayne] Brown said.”

“NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown said yesterday that Griffin was surprised to learn that the rover mission had been targeted for drastic cutback, and that he opposed the idea,” reports The Washington Post. “[Y]esterday NASA released a statement that said: ‘This letter was not coordinated with the administrator’s office and is in the process of being rescinded. The administrator has unequivocally stated that no rover will be turned off.’”

The latest word today is that the space agency “has rescinded a letter that recommended budget cuts in the Mars Rover program”. Those cuts, according to those involved with the rover program, would have forced one rover into an indefinite “hibernation” and the other to curtail its science activities.

Yes. It’s true. I stayed up to listen to the beginning of baseball season. But, not to worry. I’m only staying up to listen to the first inning of the game. Then I’m going to bed and leaving the audio playing in the background while I sleep.

Addendum: So I managed to hear the first two innings (one before going to bed and one after, but before falling asleep), and then wake up briefly during the tenth to hear the end. In other words, I got to hear the always-lingering disaster that can be Daisuke Matzusaka, and I got to hear us win in extra innings.