Last night was Neil Diamond night on Idol (WOOHOO!) and each contestant got to sing two songs. The plan, originally, was that the judges wouldn’t comment on the first round of songs and instead give a more complete critique after the second song of both.

After everyone performed the first round, Ryan brought all the contestants out onto the stage and asked the judges what they thought.

Remember… At this point, they’ve only performed one song.

Video below…

(Video replaced with Youtube vid for easiness sake; if it disappears, I’ll make other plans)

I don’t know what was going on with her, but not only did she get wrong the number of songs, she had a complete set of harsh criticism to go along with the second song Castro never performed!

Wow. Just wow.

I could see if she just said “Oh, I meant my second critique, not the second song,” but she did herself no favors when she said, “I thought you sang twice!”

Cringeworthy.

A Maury County woman has been charged with reckless homicide for what her attorney says was the accidental asphyxiation of her husband after he consented to be bound and gagged.

“The whole family is upset with what occurred,” Samuel Patterson, an attorney representing 25-year-old Rebecca Bargy, told Columbia newspaper The Daily Herald. “We stand by the fact that this was an accident.”

According to the arrest warrant, Rebecca Bargy placed duct tape over James Bargy’s mouth and eyes, put a ball gag in his mouth and then tied a bandage around his head, leaving only his nostrils showing.

She also tied his hands and legs behind his back. She then left him for 20 hours.

“Apparently, this was not the first time it had happened,” Maury County Sheriff’s Detective Anthony Bailey said of the bondage.

Oopsies.

I swear, it isn’t pick on Jeff week, but sometimes I just can’t help myself

In one of his recent posts, he said the following:

If IDs for voter are required then whatever state is requiring them needs to take all of the steps necessary to make getting an ID insanely painless. That’s not the case where I live and I doubt it’s the case in many states. Going down to the Department of Motor Vehicles is a big giant pain in the ass. It costs money and time. If the process of getting an ID continues to be hard it will stop people from voting. The cost right now is essentially a small poll tax. Requiring IDs for voting also puts us on the path to having a national ID card. Another thing I think is a bad idea.

Okay… To wit, from today’s New York Times, here’s Indiana’s law:

The Indiana law, adopted by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2005 without a single Democratic vote, is regarded as the strictest in the country. It requires a voter to present a photograph as part of an unexpired document issued either by Indiana or the federal government, a requirement that in most cases can be satisfied only by a current driver’s license or a passport. The state’s motor vehicle agency provides a free photo ID card for people who do not drive, but obtaining it requires a “primary document” like an original birth certificate or a passport.

Would-be voters without proper identification may cast a provisional ballot that will be counted only if they appear within 10 days at a county clerk’s office and present acceptable photo identification or, alternatively, swear either that they are indigent or that they have a religious objection to being photographed.

Seems like they’ve taken everything into account in making sure that the poor people who show up to vote, can. I had a discussion about this once with some Canadian friends of mine, and I was told that it’s laughable that we don’t have ID requirements for our elections because they do. In a very common sense way, my very liberal Canadian friend told me outright that it makes sense to make sure that a person who’s casting a ballot is actually a person who’s allowed to do so.

I tend to agree.

While I understand Jeff’s point (that this will make voting harder for some people), I don’t see that as more important than keeping dead people from voting, as an example (Google it; it happens a lot more regularly than you think and has been investigated by various metropolitan news outlets over the past few years). That to me makes making the process slightly more difficult worthwhile.

The idea that a government-issued photo ID is a luxury is laughable. You can’t do anything in this country without a government ID, so it’s not outrageous to say that most people probably already have some form of government issued state or federal ID. If you live in NYC, for example, and you’re so poor that you need benefits, guess what? Your benefit card has your photo on it. So does your military ID.

In Indiana, you have to validate your identity before you get your card, which means you have to have a birth certificate or a passport (or, contrary to the story in the Times, approximately 10 other forms of proof) , and if you can’t afford a card, they give you one as long as you can prove who you are! Oh, and if you don’t qualify for the free one, the card is $13 and $10 if you’re a senior. This isn’t a poll tax, and it isn’t a way of keeping the poor out of the voting booth. It’s a way of maintaining the integrity of our elections.

It would be interesting to see a few interviews with people who are so poor that they can’t afford to get a $13 ID card. I’d be willing to bet they live pretty well and have no problem spending $10 on Burger King or some other wasteful shit. I’ve seen it first hand; in my neighborhood, there’s a Pathmark store, and at the Pathmark, people dressed better than me use their EBT cards to buy food.

Yeah, they don’t all do that, but if they’re that poor, they probably get the card for nothing making this a moot point anyway.

Completely notwithstanding his deadpan delivery, he gets the damn thing completely wrong. What the hell was he looking at when this happened?

12 minutes of the most aggravating footage you’ll ever see in your life.

I’ve been to a few Critical Masses myself and I can say, with all certainty, that this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, but it is the first time this much of it was captured in this much detail.

via Glass Bead Collective

Wright says criticism is attack on black church

By NEDRA PICKLER – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a defiant appearance before the Washington media, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright said Monday that criticism surrounding his fiery sermons is an attack on the black church and rejected those who have labeled him unpatriotic.

“I served six years in the military,” Barack Obama’s longtime pastor said. “Does that make me patriotic? How many years did (Vice President Dick) Cheney serve?”

Serving in the military isn’t an automatic get out of jail free card, sir. I don’t care if you served 22 tours in Vietnam, when you come back and talk shit, it’s unpatriotic. Dick Cheney’s lack of service is irrelevant to the words that you shat out of your mouth.

Wright spoke at the National Press Club before the Washington media and a supportive audience of black church leaders beginning a two-day symposium.

He said the black church tradition is not bombastic or controversial, but different and misunderstood by the “dominant culture” in the United States.

If that isn’t racism veiled by “analysis” I don’t know what is.

He said his Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has a long history of liberating the oppressed by feeding the hungry, supporting recovery for the addicted and helping senior citizens in need. He said congregants have fought in the military, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“My goddaughter’s unit just arrived in Iraq this week while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service while sending over 4,000 American boys and girls to die over a lie,” he said.

Blah blah fucking blah. Your Goddaughter joined the military. She wasn’t drafted. If she gets sent to war, it’s because she chose to be there. That’s the price you pay for your military service. You know it going in, sir, as I’m sure she did.

Unless she’s a moron, and since I’ll assume you won’t say she’s a moron, let’s leave it at “she knew what she was getting into.”

Wright said he hopes the controversy will have a positive outcome and spark an honest dialogue about race in America. Wright says black church traditions are still “invisible” to many Americans, as they have been throughout the country’s history.

Oh yes. An honest dialogue. Just don’t mention the pastor’s remarks. Or his past remarks. Or buy his DVD’s. Let’s have an honest discussion!

He said he hopes “the most recent attack on the black church — it is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright — it’s an attack on the black church,” he said to applause, “just might mean that the reality of the African-American church will no longer be invisible.”

Actually, no, it’s a criticism of you. Honestly, I don’t give a fuck about the color of the dopes that sit in the pews taking all your crap in.

Videos clips of Wright’s sermons, circulated widely on television and the Internet, knocked Obama’s presidential campaign off-stride. The Illinois Democrat distanced himself from the comments of Wright, whom he has known for 20 years.

In a sermon days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Wright said “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan and “supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans.”

Asked about some of the comments after the terrorist attacks, Wright challenged the reporter questioning him.

“Have you heard the whole sermon? No? The whole sermon?” he responded. When the reporter shook her head, he said, “That nullifies that question.”

In what context are your remarks acceptable, sir? So far, I’ve seen the sermon in question by many sites trying to provide context, and I don’t see how the context given changes the quotes excerpted. I really wish someone could help me there.

He said criticism comes from people who only have heard sound bites playing repeatedly on television and have never listened to his entire sermons.

Wrong.

Wright said he’s told Obama that if he is elected in November and is inaugurated in January, “I’m coming after you.” He said that’s because his differences are not with the American people, but U.S. policies.

“Whether he gets elected or not, I’m still going to have to be answerable to God on November 5 and January 21,” Wright said.

I’d pay to see that. Something tells me he’ll clam up the minute a black man takes the reins.

Via WaPo

INDIANAPOLIS — Sen. Barack Obama weighed in today on the acquittals of New York City police detectives charged in fatally shooting an unarmed black Queens man, Sean Bell, saying he believed that the verdict needed to be respected and urging those who disagreed with it not to resort to violence. That would be “completely unacceptable and counterproductive,” Obama said.

“Well, look, obviously there was a tragedy in New York. I said at the time, without benefit of all the facts before me, that it looked like a possible case of excessive force. The judge has made his ruling, and we’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down,” he said in response to a question at a gas station in Indianapolis, where he was holding a news conference.

“The most important thing for people who are concerned about that shooting is to figure out how do we come together and assure those kinds of tragedies don’t happen again,” he continued. … “Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and counterproductive.”

The verdict, which has touched off a storm of protest in New York, arrives at a delicate time in the campaign for Obama. After his loss to Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary, some Democrats are quietly worrying whether Obama’s difficulty in winning over working-class white voters could pose a problem for the party if he is the nominee.

A. Good on him, kind of, for not pretending to be the Official Spokeman of Black People^tm.

B. Why is the white vote so important, but the almost monolithic black vote not? Black voters are way more polarized than white voters and moreso than women, so why is that not the story?

Well, the good news for the ghetto trash throughout the city is now they have the excuse they need to hate the “pigs.” They welcomed the verdict from the courthouse steps with chants of “KKK” and a few scuffles as the civilized oppressed citizens of this city made the most of the fact that they had a few hours of getting away with anything they did in the name of being traumatized.

You could feel this coming from miles away. The Bell / Paultre-Bell family did a great job of poisoning the city with their outrage. Before a single word in the case was even heard, the city had already decided the guilt of the officers. Apparently, a lot of shots = guilty. Forget the situation. Forget the horrid neighborhood. Forget the fact that one detective was hit by a car that was used to flee and may have been used as a deadly weapon. Forget that Saint Sean Bell was a known problem with a record of drug dealing and weapon possession. Forget that he didn’t put his hands up when ordered by police. Forget that he was legally intoxicated.

Forget all that.

Cops shot someone.

Cops are wrong.

The race-baiters and anti-police contingent are all outraged over this. The news media is back to shoving microphones in the face of Al Sharpton, famous advocate for Tawanna Brawley whose lie about a police detective was amplified by Sharpton again and again until Brawley confessed that it was indeed false. As a result, Al Sharpton was ordered to pay civil damages to Steven Pagones; damages of which he has not received one single cent.

So now idiots are marching in the streets demanding justice. Police are being called racist pigs, and the justice system is being mocked. In the minds of those marching, justice isn’t justice. Justice is a conviction.

In fact, just look at this tripe:

In New York City it seems that cops can do anything without any repercussions.

That’s what the attitude is in this city from the minority “community.” Anything short of a conviction is a failure. Apparently, a justice system that doesn’t just summarily convict all police officers who are tried (well, all cops who are tried; if a minority in this city is convicted in a high profile case, that’s not justice).

The person quoted above mentions Bell and Amadou Diallo; another cause celebre among “the police are pigs” movement. Amadou Diallo, an African Immigrant who never bothered to learn English was shot in the vestibule of his apartment building. Police asked him to freeze and put his hands up. Instead of following instructions, the man put his hand in his back pocket and turned around. At that point, he was shot 47 times. The item he pulled out of his pocket in the dark was a wallet, and apparently, police are meant to assume every person going into their pocket is trying to get ID and not freezing when told means you just don’t speak enough languages.

I’ve had my run ins with the NYPD in the past. I wast at a Critical Mass that was an utter mess and the police spent most of the time harassing riders. I was harassed for stopping and taking photographs of the NYC Subway, something I used to do on a regular basis. Make no mistake, I’m not some mouthpiece for the NYPD, but when you watch your city fall apart because a few racist “community leaders” manage to fire up the masses and turn them all against the NYPD in the name of justice, it tends to rile you up.

The NYPD isn’t perfect, but the people baiting the city into riots over this decision have really picked the wrong horse to throw their saddle on.

Protest photograph by Jason DeCrow of the AP

Beth and I and some of the family went to the 2008 Tarrytown Rubber Ducky Derby.

A good time was had by all and it was an absolutely beautiful day.

Yet another reason to love it…

What a load of crap. Talk about making something out of nothing…

Within hours of Ms. Smithson’s performance, which was hailed by one “American Idol” judge as one of the best of the night, questions were being raised online about the song. On one thread on the show’s official Web site, AmericanIdol.com, a viewer warned shortly after the performance that Ms. Smithson’s choice of the song would put her in danger of elimination.

Diane Winston, who holds the Knight chair in media and religion at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, said that while “Jesus Christ Superstar” had largely faded from public discussion over the years, the film “always had this tinge of disrepute about it because its picture of Jesus was so unsettling to many people.”

While it is true that Simon went ga-ga over that mess of a performance, Beth and I were pretty much nonplussed. She was shrieky, loud, and obnoxious, and frankly she deserved to go home.

This has nothing to do with blasphemy, it isn’t the first time she was at the bottom of the feeding trough, and frankly she wasn’t going to win anyway, so can we stop building controversy where there isn’t one?

Source

So we’ve heard a lot recently about the mortage meltdown and how poor innocent families are being shoved out of their homes by big evil banks and predatory lenders. That’s the story line we’ve come to know and love and, in reality, it’s gotten very little resistance in the media.

So little resistance has it gotten that even politicians are taking up the cause-celebre and trying to figure out a way to “bail out” all these unfortunate souls and keep them from losing their precious homes.

Let’s see how genuine they are. The New York Times had a fascinating article today about a group of people who, and I’m only guessing this, those “bail ‘em out” folks wouldn’t probably be interested in helping out at all.

GREENWICH, Conn. — This wooded town of roughly 60,000 on Long Island Sound — home to dozens of hedge funds, many millionaires and more than a few billionaires — is one of the wealthiest enclaves in the country. But even Greenwich is not immune to the wave of home foreclosures sweeping the nation.

On Stanwich Road, for example, a house worth $2.6 million is close to going on the block. On Hettiefred Road, the owner of a 2,720-square-foot, four-bedroom colonial featuring a luxury kitchen, swimming pool and tennis court, has been threatened with foreclosure for months. Several dozen other owners in Greenwich have received foreclosure notices this year.

But there is a difference from most other communities. Auctioning off such homes is a far greater challenge here than elsewhere, as affluent but cash-squeezed owners often find ways to delay losing their homes, sometimes by coming up with just enough to make last-minute payments avoiding a final sale — for a while, anyway.

Just ask John Thygerson, who parked his Jeep sport utility vehicle in front of the empty house on Hettiefred Road on the flawless spring day last Saturday.

As a foreclosure auctioneer, he was scheduled — for the third time since January — to sell the house. But the owner, a construction business owner who has fallen on hard times, made a last-minute mortgage payment and the foreclosure was postponed yet again.

So Mr. Thygerson was there to shoo prospective buyers off the property, nod at inquisitive neighbors and stake out a new spot for a fourth set of foreclosure signs after the first three had been mysteriously torn down.

“We never had a case that had gone through three separate sales attempts,” he said, still dazed that the auction failed to take place. “Greenwich being Greenwich, foreclosures are a rare occurrence.”

Rare, perhaps, but not unheard-of, as the housing industry collapse starts to claim victims among the affluent. Personal traumas like business reversal, illness and divorce play a role. There’s no real pattern, with people as diverse as builders, restaurateurs and poker players at risk of losing their homes.

The town, which typically has about half a dozen foreclosure notices each month, recorded 34 filings in January, according to RealtyTrac.

Wow. A sixfold increase in foreclosure filings in one month.

So the question is, do we bail these folks out too? I mean, the egalitarian in me is all about helping out those less fortunate, so how do we justify not helping these folks out?

Oh right. We just say “Well, they make enough.”

I’m not saying we should bail anyone out, but how do you decide who deserves a bailout and who doesn’t? Obviously if the standard is that you bail out those who can’t afford their homes, a lot of people in this article who own houses like the one at the top of this post do, indeed, qualify.

Something to think about.

Holy sweet Jesus, could you imagine what would’ve happened if Hasselback had said “that’s a very black way to look at it?”

Apparently it’s “very white” think you shouldn’t vote for the gender or race of a candidate.

Well spank my ass and call me whitey!

In the debate before the Pennsylvania primary, Senator Hillary Clinton stood in front of an audience in a state she desperately needed to win to stay alive in the election and told the crowd that if Iran were to attack Israel, that would incur a massive retaliation from the United States. On Monday, April 21, she appeared on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown and was asked to clarify. When she did, she didn’t hedge any words or soften what she said. She flatly told Olbermann, on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, that “their use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States.”

Can you imagine Barack Obama saying the same thing? I for one couldn’t.

Throughout her tenure as Senator, Hillary Clinton has never shied away from tough national security decisions. She voted for both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which were good votes based on the information we had at the time the decisions were made. As far as Iraq goes, she has never once denied her voting, but she has admitted that her vote, based on current information, was probably a mistake but that she doesn’t regret making it. She’s also said that she’s not against the war, but against the half-assed way it’s being run.

I completely and totally agree, and think that Iraq was something we could’ve been out of years ago if we were as worried about the lives of our soldiers as we were about not looking like we’re beating up on a much weaker country, but that’s another story for another day.

In August of 2007, Hillary Clinton along with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Congressman Peter King, and Senator Charles Schumer vocally and continually complained that the money given to New York for anti-terrorism initiatives was ridiculous. In numerous press releases and speeches, Clinton continually pounded home the fact that cities like Houston and Long Beach were getting more money, while DC and New York City were being cut by 40%. While her arguments didn’t bear fruit, her passion for getting the job done and correcting the stupidity of those in charge should be an indicator of the kind of President she would be.

The last point is a more subtle one. Recently, Hillary Clinton ran an ad that dared to use the face of Osama bin Laden. Judging by the reactions, you would think that the ad equated Obama with bin Laden. Here’s the ad that stirred up the most recent dose of righteous outrage.

Did you see that flash of Osama bin Laden? That sent Obama’s supporters over the edge. Here’s Obama’s spokesperson:

When Senator Clinton voted with President Bush to authorize the war in Iraq, she made a tragically bad decision that diverted our military from the terrorists who attacked us, and allowed Osama bin Laden to escape and regenerate his terrorist network. It’s ironic that she would borrow the President’s tactics in her own campaign and invoke bin Laden to score political points. We already have a President who plays the politics of fear, and we don’t need another.

That’s the response. The ad was demonstrating the situations past and the present President have had to face. Gas prices, economic issues, global unrest, and a threat of terrorism that, despite your interpretation of its level of severity, exists no matter what. Instead, we have the Obama campaign going absolutely crazy because someone dared to bring up Osama bin Laden in a half-second clip in an ad.

Their reaction demonstrates one thing to me: That Osama bin Laden, while most likely still at large, is nothing more than a political punchline for them. Despite the very real threat of his mere existence, the Obama campaign has chosen to yet again call any questioning of Obama and how he would handle tough situations “divisive” and “politics of fear.”

That’s all well and good, Barack, but in the end, terrorism is still an issue that needs to be dealt with. Osama bin Laden and a radicalizing Middle East are not merely political poitns for an ad, but the reality of the world in 2008. Judging by the reaction and the sidestepping of the point, I’d say the Obama camp doesn’t even acknowledge that terrorism is something for us to even be concerned about. You’ll understand if I don’t put much confidence in a president who thinks that way.

Hillary Clinton is the right person to lead this country. She understands what it means to protect both this country and its allies and has had to actually make the tough decisions that Barack Obama was able to comfortably sit in Illinois being able to ignore. Remember that for all his talk about opposition to the war, he never actually had to vote on it in his entire career. He never knew what it was like to have 80% of his electorate telling him that they wanted something, and despite that 80%, he says he wouldn’t have voted for the Iraq war anyway.

He’d dismiss you and your concerns, because he knows what’s best for you.

I know what’s best for me, and I know what’s best for this country, and a strong experienced leader who’s had to make decisions and didn’t just vote “present” is exactly that: what’s best for the country.

I was laughing my ass off…

via Gizmodo

From the NY Times:

There is, it turns out, a great deal more than yogurt in those costly white cups.

The ingredients list for Original Pinkberry has 23 items. Skim milk and nonfat yogurt are listed first, then three kinds of sugar: sucrose, fructose and dextrose. Fructose and maltodextrin, another ingredient, are both laboratory-produced ingredients extracted from corn syrup.

The list includes at least five additives defined by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as emulsifiers (propylene glycol esters, lactoglycerides, sodium acid pyrophosphate, mono- and diglycerides); four acidifiers (magnesium oxide, calcium fumarate, citric acid, sodium citrate); tocopherol, a natural preservative; and two ingredients — starch and maltodextrin — that were characterized as fillers by Dr. Gary A. Reineccius, a professor in the department of food science and nutrition at the University of Minnesota and an expert in food additives.

Some of them can be characterized as natural, while others are clearly not, he said.

“Isn’t it amazing how many additives it takes to make something taste natural?” Dr. Reineccius said.

Indeed.

It’s okay, though. It’s trendy. Fallout = nill.

The idea of getting an inexpensive laptop into the hands of all the poor people of the world is a good one. By itself, there’s no reason to not like the idea, and the opportunities it would open up for people. In the real world, however, the project has been put off, delayed, changed, and so on.

At this point, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the OLPC XO is dead. How could such a promising idea turn into such a huge failure?

1. It took too long to get into people’s hands.

2. When it did get into people’s hands, it wasn’t at the $100 price point that was originally hyped.

3. Nick Negroponte and his people believed the open-source zealots and went with an open-source operating system that’s just a joke beyond all comprehension of the term. It’s non-standard, and provides no real analog to the Mac / Linux (with a desktop manager) / Windows metaphor that the rest of the world is used to. In a nutshell, it provides a nice introduction to computers for people that don’t have one, but provides no real world marketable skills to the people using it.

Unfortunately for the OLPC group, they realized this too late because Intel and Microsoft partnered up on the Classmate PC, and that will be the final death knell for the OLPC. While the OLPC group seems to be leaning toward maybe opening up to other operating systems other than it’s silly included OS, Intel is already out making deals and while I don’t relish the idea of kids only learning Windows, it is a Windows world in which we live, like it or not.

The OLPC failed because the Cory Doctorows of the world got to Negroponte, plain and simple.

When it finally goes away, no one is going to miss it.