In October of 1995, walking with my brother and my mother in Seattle.  I bring up a lawsuit brought against (depressingly enough) Disney for Jim Henson Productions from Hormel Foods, as my oft-worn shirt at the time would tell you were the producers of Spam.  At issue was a Muppet character for the up-coming ABC show, Spam.  Interestingly enough with regards to the copyright issue at hand, within its legal documents Hormel accused Disney of defaming its fine project — something I imagine would pale against what would come a couple years’ down the road when the word Spam would come to be synonomous with Penis Pumps, scams centraled around deposed African governments, and computer viruses.  The felt character for the Muppet equivalent of “Here’s Lucy” is the least of Hormel’s concerns.

And so I say, “But appeals are expected.”  And so my brother responds, “Ah.  So It’s Not over yet.”
To which, a stranger overhears and says the lop-sided score for the Mariners — Indians game, which would push them out of the playoffs.  It was, indeed, Over Now.  And the Stranger wanted us all to push aside the silly notion that it wasn’t.

Saturday, after a great build-up for the Portland Trailblazers team — a tad overdone, I’d say — the Houston Rockets hammered the Trailblazers.  This brought a couple of thoughts to mind.  #1:  I am reminded why the Rockets were the last team the Blazers would have wanted to face.  #2:  After every loss to a good team through the season, I would mutter to disappointed Blazer fan “The team’s not there yet.”  There weren’t too many surprises through the season — the team won what I’d become accustomed for them to win, and they lost what I’d become accustomed for them to lose.  #3:  I may just be forced to contract expectations back to what I’d thought through the season:  win a couple games in the playoff, come back next season.  I”d wish the Hornets would have made a free throw in their final game of the season so the Blazers might have a better match-up, but watching grown men throw balls in hoops and rooting for them to do it better than another assortment of grown men throwing balls into hoops doesn’t always bring the desired conclusions.

The term “socialism” increasingly being accepted by many Americans and not having any punch as a line of political attack…

… We move on to “Fascism”.

“Rhetorically, Republicans are having a very hard time finding something that raises the consciousness of the average voter,” said Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who recently lost a bid to became national party chairman.
Workaday labels like “big spender” and “liberal” have lost their punch, and last fall, Senator John McCain of Arizona and Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska gained little traction during the presidential campaign by linking Mr. Obama’s agenda to socialism.
So Mr. Anuzis has turned to provocation with a purpose. He calls the president’s domestic agenda “economic fascism.”
“We’ve so overused the word ‘socialism’ that it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago,” Mr. Anuzis said. “Fascism — everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.”

This man, this man who would be the RNC Chairman but lost the vote to Michael Steele, may want to be careful.  The Republicans’ use of the word “Socialism” as a slur against something that strictly speaking ain’t socialism has, polls show, turned Americans toward “Socialism”, of some stripe or other.  If they move on to “Fascism”, it stands to reason, Americans will cease to think of that as a bad thing.  That’s not something I much want to see happen.

Of course, this is Fascism with carefully marked clarifications.:

The practical question for Republicans is how best to reach political independents, 60 percent of whom now approve of Mr. Obama’s job performance. As his policies sink in, said William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, “I think ‘big-government-liberalism’ is good enough.”
Mr. Anuzis remains unconvinced. He notes that he does not call Mr. Obama himself a “fascist.” Rather, he applies the “economic fascism” label to government tax and regulatory policies that seek, in the words of one magazine’s definition he cites, “to achieve the utopian socialist ideal.”
“It’s politically very incorrect only because we’re not used to it,” concluded Mr. Anuzis, who recently joined American Solutions for Winning the Future, a group led by Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker. But he acknowledged, “You’ve got to be careful using the term ‘economic fascism’ in the right way, so it doesn’t come off as extreme.”

Seeing that nobody is attempting to “achieve the utopian socialist ideal”, I guess that makes Obama not a Fascist, by Anizus’s definition.  The problem comes in with that strange belief that changing the regulatory process to affect a better outcome or a better process seems to be inflated in Anizus’s mind to “Utopia”.  Utopia always seems to be defined downward.

I’ve referred to Dick Cheney as Fascist from time to time, and probably will in the future.  It’s an item of invective, and Dick Durbin explained why I’ll toss it out as an item of invective a few years’ back.  Time will tell if Anizus can stick to his “Economic Fascism”.  I suggest he drop it.  Go back to “Socialism”, or some blur around with liberal and big – spending.   Eventually it’ll become invective-working again.

Title notwithstanding, naturally I’d seen nine of the ten videos here — never much bothered to look for Prescott Bush and don’t see that he adds much.  I gather Vanity Fair should have just cut to the chase and ran “Top 10 Nixon videos” — limit “Nixon tape” material to, oh, three perhaps?

The lyrics, as I listen to this, to a 1972 campaign jingle.  Study  them.  There will be a test at the end.

Reaching Out
To Find the Way
To Make Tomorrow
A Brighter Day
Making Dreams
Reality
More Than Ever Nixon Now For You and Me
Nixon Now
Nixon Now
He’s Made the Differerence
He’s Shown Us How
Nixon Now
Nixon Now
More than Ever
Nixon Now
Mister America, Nixon Now
Lead You Now
Across the Sea
Making Friends where Foes Used to Be
Giving ALL to Humanity
More than Ever Nixon Now for You and Me
Nixon Now
Nixon Now
He’s made the difference
He’s shown us how.
Nixon Now
Nixon Now
More than ever Nixon Now
Mister America, Nixon Now
Nixon Now
Nixon Now
He’s made the difference
He’s Shown Us How
Nixon Now
Nixon Now
More than ever, Nixon Now
Nixon Now
Nixon Now
Mister America, Nixon Now.

TEST:

Question #1:  What phrase am I least certain about in terms of accuracy?
Question #2:  According to the song, how has Richard Nixon “made the difference”?
Question #3:  How much of himself did Nixon give to humanity?
Question #4:  Does the fact that Nixon stuck in a campaign ad montage image of him smiling with Brezhnev complement or undermind Newt Gingrich’s attack on Obama meeting Hugo Chavez that American presidents never “smiled” when greeting Russian dictators?  (Likewise, how does Newt Gingrich’s line square with the line in the jingle: “Making Friends where Foes Used to Be“?)
Question #5:  What song did you immediately look up to on youtube to clear “Nixon Now” out of your head?

In case you missed it, Georte Will wrote an editorial where he excoriated blue jeans (and denim), and video games.  I do not believe I have much to add that other people who are actually read have not said.  George ill’s politics can be best be described as a mix of “Tory Conservative” and “Baseball Fetishism”.  The Toryism leads him to a rigid class structure where he is upset about the upper classes slumming it down to what should be worn exclusively by laborers, and he sees Barbarians at the gate sneaking denim into golf courses.  The Baseball Fetishism would have Will, if pressed, arguring that this is the worst sight since the advent of the Designated Hitter.

I would think his conservatism would allow for jeans.  It’s sturdy and long-lasting, a good thing for a wasteful government to keep in mind, right?  It also is something that “has its place” and thus neatly separates tasks — rules of order, his Toryism ought to love that.  All this being said, apparently George Will doesn’t want the government to enforce his desired dress code — he just wants societal shaming.  I don’t know who will be joining in his distanced “tsk tsk”ing snobbery — I am pretty sure even if I wore what conformed to his standards (granting that I somehow escape his viewing of me as a ‘commoner’), I’d still be too uncouth for his tastes.

In the same article bemoaning the denim Barbarians at the Gates, he goes on to a broadside against video game players.  Time for someone to write “George Will Hates My Hobby, but at least my Cat Still Loves Me.”

Seventy-five percent of American “gamers” — people who play video games — are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote.

Interesting to note that our nation’s engineers and computer programmers (and, hell, internationally as well) herald out of this bunch of “Adult-o-lescents”.  They strike me as a fairly conservative lot — though they tend to hold true to the dictates of “Global Warming”.  Still, I suppose the electricity they use increases our “carbon footprint”, which might make them amenable to Will’s Climate Change Skepticism.

Well…

It is probably a mistake to make too much of the commentary of Michael Savage.  To get a good guage of a follower of Republican talking points, the best radio host to turn to is Sean Hannity — the impossibly blandest and most notably unnotable of the lot.  To get a possible writer of Republican talking points, the name is Rush Limbaugh.

Of course, that is why Savage and, in the current era of Obama Mr. Glen Beck, are the most pervsely entertaining and listenable of this bunch.  This might be an indictment of what I can take, and perhaps I should lay off all such junk.

I have always meant to engage in a “Hannity Project”.  Tune in for a random single minute for one week and report what he says.  The point of the “Hannity Project” is shown in the manner that the last two times I flicked past him and held for several seconds, I heard roughly the same thing — and, bizarrely enough, the two names of Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright were interjected into roughly the same run-on sentence about how Obama is governing from the far left, turning the nation socialism, and betraying his moderate presidential campaign.

Regarding Mr. Savage — and with this particular item of invective I have a theory that this item goes more or less across the board.  The man Savage was in a tizzy about the Department of Homeland Security’s report on the threat of violence from “Right Wing Extremism”.  It is a sign of an emerging gestapo from the Obama Administration.  It was timed specifically to intimidate the Tea-Partiers.  Governor Napolitano is emerging as a new Janet Reno, and a new Waco is just around the corner.

The reason I can single out Mr. Savage for hypocrisy is I can recall right off the top of my mind an item of vitrol he spewed against Quakers.  As you may recall in the previous administration, there was a report that Quaker and Vegan groups were being monitored.  Savage’s response was a sort of predictable ranting about how Left-wing Extremists hide behind Quaker and Vegan groups, and such organizations are not spiffy clean.

It’s also pretty damned clear that these definers of “Movement Conservative” opinion are not much bothered by, say, the NSA’s monitoring of a member of congress.  (And behold the incoherence of the free republic posters.  To add my own possible incoherence: they won’t care unless it turns out to be Bachman.)  I may well mention that looking at an old conservative magazine from 1956 (as I am want to do), I saw a survey of dream presidential wishes which was topped off with Jay Edgar Hoover.

There probably shouldn’t be a “Department of Homeland Security” — such a department came into being because the public demanded some action and this manuevering of boxes was the easiest salvo.  As it were, it is charged with spitting out administrative documents about the possibility of right-wing extremist violence on one hand and left-wing extremist violence on the other.  The clearest example of domestic right-wing violence through the past two decades is Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, and the report on right-wing extremism largely copies his profile.  The result is probably a bit dumb, though it is where they can draw the conclusion of “recruit from former military ranks”, an item which is especially grating to various people.  I actually can’t think of what constitutes domestic left-wing terrorism (apparently, as that columnist states, some property damage inflicted by extremist Earth Liberation Fronters, and a few items of computer hacking).  I am amenable to the categorization of Ted Kaczynski as a left-wing nutcase.  Given him as idiosyncratic more than anything else, such that we conjure up more threatening possibilities from a re-emerged Militia Movement than hermits living in the woods, the Report on Left Wing Extremism looks like it is stuck bouncing about the “Black Blocks” of your average mass war protest — “Re-create ’68”?  Really?  Though, to be sure, I guess such report has to mention Something, and if you paint a picture of a politically motivated act of violence from the left, I guess it would come from an “Anarchist”.  There was a bizarre protest movement which sought a nostalgic rush toward a riotous Democratic convention.  Interesting movement, that.

Well, at least they’re more threatening than the Quaker bake sale movement.

Incidentally, Pat Robertson called the writer of the report “gay.”  Really!

An Oklahoma businessman bought the Seattle Sonics and moved it to Oklahoma City.  The Seahawks had a miserable season last year and look likely to have another one next year.  The Mariners are off to a good start — we’ll see how long it lasts — after a string of bad seasons, though here at least Mariners fans can relive some nostalgia glory with Griffey back in the line-up.  Also notable is that the state’s two major college football teams wound their way to the state rivalry game with the question of who would get a single conference victory for the season on the line.  Apparently soccer is doing well, such as that is — well enough to convince Portland’s crappy city government to chase the thing down and hand money over to some schmuck named Paulson, son of another Paulson you may have heard about.

Not good for Seattle sports fan.  But, from all this gloom here is something.  The city of Seattle is about to get a new sports team.

This is embarrassing on various levels, and particularly troubling on one.

The Lingerie League began as a television programming gimmick by a Hollywood production company, Horizon Productions, in 2004 as a pay-per-view rival to the halftime show at the Superbowl, the championship final of American football.

It now has ten teams, most run as franchises, with names such as Chicago Bliss, Atlanta Steam, Dallas Desire, Phoenix Scorch and San Diego Seduction. The league will make its professional debut next spring, with players earning starting salaries in the region of $40,000 ( and match schedules that mirror those of the mainstream National Football League.

Trials for prospective players in Seattle last week attracted scores of scantily clad candidates – and a number of enthusiastic workers from a building site.

“They’ve been on a two-hour lunch break since 10am,” observed Christine Merklinghaus, who was at the trials.

When asked by a television reporter what she thought the allure would be for spectators, one girl said: “Probably half-naked women playing football.”

All press conference to this thing runs about like that.  I generically want to ask any woman participating in this a sort of “What are you doing?” and any man watching it the same thing.  (You know, the Internet is full of hot and cold running porn, right?)  It is enough of a joke that I’m almost tempted to follow it as a stats geek, and report which player has the best qb rating, etc.

But all that is besides the point.  The real problem with this thing comes right about here.  I’d hope this is something of a ruse:

“These girls take it very seriously. They aren’t going to be just skipping round the field worrying about breaking their fingernails, they’re going to be worrying about breaking their necks,” Kyle Bolin, spokesman for the Lingerie League, said.

Google this, and you’ll see what they’re wearing while “seriously” playing football.  Or, you know — you can take a look through the Victoria’s Secret catalouge.  It would be better if this were essentially fake, and if the real thrill were something along the lines of the woman posing their chests upward every chance they could.  The problem is that if they’re actually playing full contact football, the injury rate would have to be roughly 100 percent, wouldn’t it?

I saw this man wearing a red t-shirt emblazened with the words “BEAT LA”.  This shirt is an item of absurdity.  It is either getting too far ahead of oneself, or not going far enough.  Round One of the playoffs is Against Houston.  Round two is against LA.  The Finals (Round 4) would probably be against Cleveland.  The shirt ought to either read “Beat Houston” or “Beat Cleveland.”

If you were watching the NBA on Monday from the vantage point of a Portland Trailblazers fan, you had your eye on four games matching the teams in the standing about where your team sat against three bad teams and one okay team.  So Houston throttled the okay team of New Orleans.  The Portland Trailblazers’ victory over Oklahoma City demonstrated the underlying truth of the Onion parody — score at half-time: 62 to 31.  I think that columnist who wrote that Oklahoma City’s future was brighter than the Blazers gave the Blazers a chip on their shoulders toward a team that, whatever the future may herald, is at the moment not good.

Sacramento, the team with the worst record in the league, teased it out before Denver finally pulled ahead to nab the division title.  It was wishful thinking to hope that Sacramento could pull that one out.  Meanwhile, a moment of exasperation came with the Warriors versus the Spurs: with one second left in the game, the Spurs hit the game winning three point.  Which would be alright, except that the shot clock had expired.  The consolation for the irritated Blazers fan, eyeing the home court magic number: the Spurs would have probably won in overtime anyway.

With those games settled, Wednesday came around and there was three games Blazer fan had reason to watch.  The opimum outcome would have been that the Spurs lost to the Hornets and the Rockets lost to the Mavericks, ensuring that a Blazers victory get the team a three-seed against the Hornets.  The worst outcome was the Rockets losing and the Spurs winning — ensuing a match-up with the Rockets, who present match-up problems for the Blazers.  Which is what happened.  And how did that scenario happen?

Hornets up by 3.  And Damned if James Posey for the Hornets didn’t miss his 2 free throws.  Make either, and the game is over — Blazers to play Portland to move up the seedings to play the Hornets and avoid Houston.  Posey missed both.  Spurs threw in 3 pointer, won in overtime.  So, off of one missed free throw (either one), Hornets cost the Blazers a play off seeding — and pushed the road into LA up a round. Damned Hornets.  Then again, that was a demonstration of why they would have wanted to play the Hornets in the playoffs in the first place.  Also, perhaps it might have worked out well for the Hornets — if they thought they had a better shot against Denver than the Blazers.  (Probably a 50 – 50 proposition: the Blazers probably have both more up-side and more down-side on this one.)

But, hey.  Compare them to the 1977 Championship team, and they may have the perfect route to improve as the playoffs continue.  Emerge from the series against Houston, and you’ll come out a better team for it.  Then comes the Lakers.  Reading between the lines, the Blazers finally have the Lakers’ attention.  You can’t really call it a “rivalry” as of yet, sure — the Blazers fans chant “BEAT LA!” (parochial: small city versus big city.  See shirt at the top of this blog entry.  Suppose the Blazers do make it to the Finals against Cleveland, or even merely beat the Lakers.  Will there be a “Beat Denver”, “Beat San Antonio”, or “Beat Cleveland” or “Beat Boston”?), and they always defeat the Lakers win they play in Portland.  But that’s been the equivalent of a buzzing mosquito.  It’s finally mattering enough for the Lakers to pay any attention.  Hence, Phil Jackson doesn’t bother coming to Portland that last game, cites a re-play on the Jumbo Tron of the hard foul from the last game with “Portland is like that”, and explains the losing streak in Portland as coming because it’s a dreary place with a lot of sad people in the stands.  And hence a quick search through the LA Times shows up — well, look it up yourself… it’s kind of interesting.

If I had to guess, the Blazers win the series against the Rockets.  The home court is everything here.  And the Lakers defeat the Blazers in six games.  Do the math, and you’ll find that means the Lakers do indeed win in Portland, finally.  I suppose this is slightly disappointing in the realm of “optics”, both for ending a good streak of home victories and because the post-season record between Portland and LA is not too good:  Clyde Drexler dribbles away a victory in the early 1990s, and that seventh game fourth quarter meltdown of 2000.  Then again, these things have to switch over –unexpectedly — at some point, and Mr. “ZenMaster” seems to be concentrating his “Zen” tricks on the Blazers.  In a dozen years, it is hoped that the Blazers will be roughly where the Spurs are right now: probably ending their spell as an elite team, but standing there with four championships in the past decade.

Bear in mind, I am a complete Homer and will cease to have any interest in the NBA playoffs once the Blazers fall out of the playoffs, as the nation awaits that inevitable Lebron Cleveland versus Kobe LA match-up.  If that sounds both parochial and absurd, I’ll state for the record:  Spectator sports is ridiculous anyways.

Former Exorcist and Prominent Volcano Skeptic Bobby Jindal is “writing” a book.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has agreed to a book deal with a conservative publishing house — fueling more “will-he, won’t-he” thoughts about whether he’ll run for president in 2012.

The Republican governor told the Times-Picayune of New Orleans that the book, which will focus on his life and policy stances, is tentatively scheduled to be released next year by Regnery Publishing in Washington. The contract has not yet been signed, and Jindal said he didn’t know how much money he would make from the deal.

Florida writer Peter Schweizer, who has previously authored books about the Bush family and former President Ronald Reagan, will be a co-author on the book.

And by “Peter Schweizer will be a co-author of the book”, it means “Peter Schweizer will write the book.”  And by “write”, it means whatever the term it is that describes the process that produces this peculiar genre of campaign fodder templates.  But grab one and have him sign it when he’s out shaking your baby and kissing your hand for 2012.

Did I mention he performed an exorcism?  Honestly, if he just expands on this piece, it would probably bring his book up to “Dreams of My Father” level in terms of captivation.  (I’m sure there will be a chapter about it, right?  Right next to the chapter on the wasteful project that is “Volcano Monitoring”, whatever that is.)