Take this short quiz and perhaps surprise yourself. Or forward it to a confused friend who doesn’t know what he/she really is.
Bloom where you are planted, people.
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Seriously?
Again, comments anyone? More and more frequently lately, I find myself at a loss for words.
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I went to see Toy Story 3 on Monday with my kids. (Who am I kidding? I would have gone by myself if I had to.) The movie was, of course, delightful. I laughed, I cried, I cried some more.
The biggest surprise of the movie was a line delivered by none other than Mattel icon, Barbie. During an intense scene while perched on the precipice of the trash chute in which the good toys face off with the evil teddy bear character and his brainwashed cohorts , Barbie yells at the nefarious Lots O Hugs bear:
“Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force!”
Wow. Did I hear that right? Barbie just articulated the argument against tyranny and for liberty on the big screen!
I knew I loved those Pixar flicks. More on this at Free Frank Warner.
Next question: Did that nut Tom Hanks know about this controversial script before agreeing to voice Sheriff Woody?
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I don’t think I’ll be able to eat for days…
"She saved her pants for evidence..."
The allegation that Al Gore sexually assaulted a woman in a Portland, Ore., hotel room nearly four years ago has dealt a serious blow to the former vice president’s story that he and wife Tipper simply “grew apart” after 40 years of marriage.
The police report of the masseuse’s complaint is 73 pages long and extremely detailed. According to the document, she got a call from the front desk of the trendy Hotel Lucia on the night of Oct. 24, 2006. The hotel had a special guest. Could she come at 10:30 p.m.?
She went to Gore’s room carrying a folding massage table and other equipment. Gore, whom she had never met, greeted her with a warm embrace. “The hug went on a bit long, and I was taken just a bit aback by it,” the masseuse told police. But she went along because Gore “was a VIP and a powerful individual and the Hotel Lucia had made it clear to me by inference that they were giving him ‘the royal treatment.’”
Gore said he was tired from travel and described in detail the massage he wanted. It included work on the adductor muscles, which are on the inside of the thighs. “I mentally noted that a request for adductor work is a bit unusual,” the masseuse told police, because it can be “a precursor to inappropriate behavior by a male client.”
Gore also requested work on his abdomen. When that began, “He became somewhat vocal with muffled moans, etc.,” the masseuse recounted. Gore then “demand[ed] that I go lower.” When she remained focused on a “safe, nonsexual” area, Gore grew “angry, becoming verbally sharp and loud.”
The masseuse asked Gore what he wanted. “He grabbed my right hand, shoved it down under the sheet to his pubic hair area, my fingers brushing against his penis,” she recalled, “and said to me, ‘There!’ in a very sharp, loud, angry-sounding tone.” When she pulled back, Gore “angrily raged” and “bellowed” at her.
Then, abruptly, the former vice president changed tone. It was “as though he had very suddenly switched personalities,” she recalled, “and began in a pleading tone, pleading for release of his second chakra there.”
“Chakra,” in Gore’s new-agey jargon, refers to the body’s “energy centers,” which the masseuse interpreted as having a specific meaning. “This was yet another euphemism for sexual activity he was requesting,” she told police, “put cleverly as though it were a spiritual request or something.”
She wanted to end the session, but Gore “wrapped me in an inescapable embrace” and “caressed my back and buttocks and breasts.” She tried to get away — in the process calling Gore a “crazed sex poodle” — but the former vice president was too strong for her.
A little later, she said, Gore produced a bottle of brandy and mentioned there were condoms in the “treat box” provided by the hotel. “He then forced an open mouth kiss on me,” she said.
At that moment, the masseuse brought up Gore’s long marriage. “How do you rectify this with your wife?” she asked. That brought on another “quick shift” in Gore’s mood. “I never saw anybody’s moods just go like this,” the masseuse told police, snapping her fingers.
The accuser said Gore maneuvered her into the bedroom. His iPod docking station was there, he told her, and he wanted her to listen to “Dear Mr. President,” a lachrymose attack on George W. Bush by the singer Pink.
“As soon as he had it playing, he turned to me and immediately flipped me flat on my back and threw his whole body face down over atop of me,” she said. “I was just shocked at his craziness.”
“He pleaded, grabbed me, engulfed me in embrace, tongue kissed me, massaged me, groped by breasts and painfully squeezed my nipples through my clothing, pressed his pelvis against mine, rubbed my buttocks with his hands and fingers and rubbed himself against my crotch, saying, ‘You know you want to do it.’”
Finally she got away. Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her “to just suck it up; otherwise, the world’s going to be destroyed from global warming.”
She got a lawyer and made an appointment to talk with authorities. She canceled and did not tell police until January 2009 and even then did not press charges.
In 2007, a Portland paper learned what had happened. Gore’s lawyers called the story “absolutely false,” and it wasn’t published.
Now the National Enquirer has made the police report public. And Gore’s family-man image will never be the same.
So, to reiterate, on the word of Gore’s lawyers that the story was “absolutely false” the Portland paper didn’t publish this story in 2007. Now that’s hard hitting journalism.
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The Current List
Morning Bell: Obama’s Oil Spill To-Do List
Full details at link.
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Trent Lott…er…Kay Hagan must go.
by Ben Howe | Red State | 6.29.2010
Trent LottKay Hagan either meant whatheshe said, orheshe didn’t. In either case, ifLottHagan does not resign voluntarilyas Senate majority leaderfrom the Senate Armed Services Committee,hisherRepublicanDemocratic colleagues should firehimher.At the
100th birthday party for retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond on Dec. 5, Lottdiscovery that Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia had passed away,Lott noted that his home state of Mississippi had voted for Thurmond when he ran for president in 1948Hagan noted that Senator Byrd was a devoted public servant, skillful orator and champion of the chamber.“We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead,” Lott continued, “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.Soon after I was elected, I had the privilege of presiding over the Senate with Senator Byrd on the floor,” Hagan continued, “I told him of my deep admiration for his service.”
ThurmondByrd,then the governor of South Carolinathe Senator from West Virginia, wasthe candidate of the Dixiecrat Partya member of the Ku Klux Klan, whose sole reason for being was to preserve segregation. So more than a few people wonder what“problems”“service”LottHagan had in mind thatheshe thoughtwould have been averted had Thurmond been elected in 1948were so worthy of admiration? Blacks not being allowed in public schools? Blacks voting being taken away? Blacks not being allowed to buyinga home inLott’sHagan’s neighborhood?“Any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong,”
President BushRush Limbaugh said yesterday. “Recent comments by Sen.LottHagan do not reflect the spirit of our country.”I don’t believe
LottHagan is a bigot who longs for the “good old days” when blacks in the South were denied civil rights. I thinkheshe went overboard in an oleaginous tribute to a remarkable man who long ago (at least in public) repented of his segregationist ways.But I’m not entirely sure.
The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., reported this week that in 1980 Lott, a member of the House of Representatives at the time, had made a very similar remark at a campaign event at which Thurmond spoke. And Lott did get his start in politics as an aide to Sen. James Eastland, D-Miss., arguably the biggest racist in Congress at that time.
And Doug Thompson, in his web log, The Rant, quotes two former Senate staffers who said they have heard Lott utter racial slurs in private.Senator Byrd was openly racist and uttered racist slurs as a matter of policy when he was a member in good standing with the Ku Klux Klan.The only possible defense for
LottHagan — thatheshe is an idiot, not a bigot — is an insufficient reason to keephimher ina leadership positionthe committee.
It was conservative webloggers like Thompson who first expressedNo one has expressed indignation overLott’sHagan’s remark.Reporters for mainstream journals largely overlooked
it in their accounts of the birthday party for Thurmondher press statement today., but Glenn Harlan Reynolds(www.instapundit.com) and Andrew Sullivan(www.andrewsullivan.com) immediately called for Lott’s head, swiftly to be joined by David Frum and Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online, and Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard.Seriously, like barely anyone has said anything about it.
LottHagan madehisher remark on aThursdayMonday.After Reynolds, Sullivan et al. had been banging on him over the weekend,No one has really said a word, least of all Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the rest of the usual suspects.joined in the criticism the following Monday.Some have noted more than a little hypocrisy in the
belatednon-existent outragebeing expressedby Jackson and Sharpton. In an interview with Fox News on March 4, 2001, Sen. Robert Byrd spoke of “white [epithet deleted].” This passed with barely a word of criticism from black leaders.because he’s a Democrat. On Oct. 22 of this year, Bill Clinton traveled to Fayetteville, Ark., for a dedication of a statue to the late Sen. William Fulbright, D-Ark., the Vietnam War dove who was also a rabid segregationist. Again, not a peep from Jackson or Sharpton.once again most likely a result of Clinton’s standing as a Democrat.But what Byrd and Clinton said can be distinguished from what
LottHagan said. Byrd issued a prompt and abject apology. “The phrase dates back to my boyhood, and has no place in today’s society,” he said. “As for my language, I had no intention of casting aspersions on anyone else’s race.” And of course his affiliation with the KKK in no way affected the legitimacy of this statement given his standing as a Democrat.Compared with what Byrd said,
Lott’s apology has been lameHagan’s admiration seems misplaced.And Clinton praised Fulbright the man without giving the appearance of endorsing Fulbright’s noxious views on race
.which gives him a total free pass.
Trent LottKay Hagan is a niceguygal. There is no other way to explain whyhe in a leadership positionshe is a Democrat in a traditionally Red State. It certainly isn’t competence.When last Lott was majority leader, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., routinely ate his lunch.It’s a harsh punishment to lose one’s job because of what I hope and pray was a stupid but innocent remark, misconstrued.
But it is better that
LottHagan suffer for whatheshe said than that theRepublicanDemocratic Party be tainted because of whatheshe said.P.S. Mocked article located here.
I can think of better reasons to say buh-bye to Kay Hagan, but this will do.
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I’m Sure Bobby Jindal Feels More Reassured Already
Jim Geraghty | Morning Jolt – NRO | 6.30.2010
A minor Gulf disaster averted: “‘We are going to stay until this thing is taken care of,’ [Vice President Joe] Biden said. . . . Biden was speaking in New Orleans during his first visit to the area since the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, setting in motion the events that have led to millions of gallons of oil being leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. He seemed impressed by the efforts underway at a downtown command post, the first stop on his New Orleans itinerary. Biden was greeted just after 10 a.m. at Armstrong International Airport by Gov. Bobby Jindal and Rep. Joseph Cao, then traveled by motorcade to the unified command center in a Poydras Street office building.”
The “minor Gulf disaster” that was avoided? That Biden didn’t express surprise to Jindal that the governor wasn’t working at a 7-11. Then again, Jindal doesn’t have the “slight Indian accent” that then-Senator Biden declared to be a prerequisite to working at the convenience-store chain.
I’m so relieved that the White House is taking care of business.
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Day 68: Why isn’t the A-Whale in the Gulf yet?
Ed Morrissey | Hot Air Blog | 6.27.2010
The A-Whale bills itself as the largest open-water oil skimmer in the world, and it’s at least very impressive. Originally an oil and ore tanker, the ship’s owners recently refitted the ship to do exactly the kind of work that the US so desperately needs in the Gulf of Mexico, and to do it on a vastly larger scale than current operations can handle. According to the ship’s project manager, the entire American effort in 66 days has skimmed off 600,000 barrels of oil. The ship’s owners claim that A-Whale can skim 500,000 barrels a day.
So where is the A-Whale now? In the Gulf? Not yet. It’s on its way there after being tied to a dock in Norfolk, Virginia, and won’t be allowed to join the cleanup effort until the Coast Guard and the EPA figure out whether it meets their standards (h/t Deb Singer on Twitter):
After making a brief stop in Norfolk for refueling, U.S. Coast Guard inspections and an all-out publicity blitz intended to drum up public support, a giant tanker billed as the world’s largest oil skimming vessel set sail Friday for the Gulf of Mexico where it hopes to assist in the oil-cleanup effort.
The Taiwanese-owned, Liberian-flagged ship dubbed the “A Whale” stands 10 stories high, stretches 1,115 feet in length and has a nearly 200-foot beam. It displaces more water than an aircraft carrier. …
But a number of hurdles stand in his way. TMT officials said the company does not yet have government approval to assist in the cleanup or a contract with BP to perform the work.
That’s part of the reason the ship was tied to pier at the Virginia Port Authority’s Norfolk International Terminals Friday morning. TMT and its public-relations agency invited scores of media, elected officials and maritime industry executives to an hour-long presentation about how the ship could provide an immediate boost to clean-up efforts in the Gulf.
TMT also paid to fly in Edward Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University, to get a look at the massive skimmer.
Overton blasted BP and the federal government for a lack of effort and coordination in their dual oil-spill response and made a plea to the government to allow the A Whale to join the cleanup operation.
To be clear, the A-Whale has not yet been tested on the scale needed in this cleanup. Limited testing, the ship’s owners say, have proven the concept of their new skimming technique. They have already begun plans for a B-Whale to do the same work, but until someone gets the ship into the game, no one will know for certain whether it can operate at the full, advertised capacity.
However, the answer to that should be so what? We badly need increased skimming capacity. Even if this ship only ever gets one load of oil skimmed, that’s a potential 500,000 barrels of oil out of the Gulf, or an advance of 66 days at present rate. While the Coast Guard needs to ensure seaworthiness, the EPA’s regulatory hurdles are in this case ridiculous. We’re already in the worst-case scenario. Even if the A-Whale doesn’t skim a single barrel of oil, they can hardly make the situation worse than it is right now.
This, by the way, is Day 68 of the Gulf crisis. The A-Whale didn’t get refitted on Day 66; this work had to have been done over months, if not years. Shouldn’t the government have known about the existence of this ship two months ago, and been working on certifying it immediately? The A-Whale shouldn’t have had to stop at Norfolk at all to get the nation’s attention, but should have been hired to steam directly to the Gulf and get to work immediately. It’s indicative of a crisis management team that is spending more time worrying about regulations and red tape than cleaning up the mess, just as we saw with Packgen’s boom.
I’m certainly feeling confident in our government’s desire and ability to clean up this mess. How about you?
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Avertible Catastrophe
by Lawrence Solomon | Financial Post | 6.26.2010
Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.
The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. “Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour,” Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.
To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn’t capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana’s marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.
The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company’s expense. “If there’s a country that’s experienced with building dikes and managing water, it’s the Netherlands,” says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.
In sharp contrast to Dutch preparedness before the fact and the Dutch instinct to dive into action once an emergency becomes apparent, witness the American reaction to the Dutch offer of help. The U.S. government responded with “Thanks but no thanks,” remarked Visser, despite BP’s desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer –the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge. Even after the U.S. refused, the Dutch kept their vessels on standby, hoping the Americans would come round. By May 5, the U.S. had not come round. To the contrary, the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment –unlike the U.S., Europe has robust fleets of Oil Spill Response Vessels that sail circles around their make-shift U.S. counterparts.
Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.
When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, “We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water–the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that.” In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls “crazy.”
The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer — but only partly. Because the U.S. didn’t want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.
A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work. “Given the fact that there is so much oil on a daily basis coming in, you do not have that much time to protect the marshlands,” he says, perplexed that the U.S. government could be so focussed on side issues with the entire Gulf Coast hanging in the balance.
Then again, perhaps he should not be all that perplexed at the American tolerance for turning an accident into a catastrophe. When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident occurred off the coast of Alaska in 1989, a Dutch team with clean-up equipment flew in to Anchorage airport to offer their help. To their amazement, they were rebuffed and told to go home with their equipment. The Exxon Valdez became the biggest oil spill disaster in U.S. history–until the BP Gulf spill.
- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers.
Hat tip: Tammy Bruce.
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