07/19/2010 archive

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP well stays shut despite ‘seepage’

AFP

2 hrs 17 mins ago

Joan Walsh discusses the Tea Party Federation leader’s expulsion of racist Mark Williams But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t denounce him. Plus: “What if the Tea Party was black?”

Credit where it’s due: Just days after insisting there are no racists in the Tea Party movement, Tea Party Federation leader David Webb told CBS’s “Face the Nation” today that Mark Williams and his Tea Party Express had been expelled from the group. Last seen trying to start a sponsors’ boycott of MSNBC’s “Hardball” because of Chris Matthews’s tough reporting on the Tea Party, Webb was apparently appalled by Williams’s blatantly racist Letter to President Lincoln from “Colored People” signed by “Precious Ben Jealous,” asking Lincoln to repeal emancipation because “coloreds” had it better under slavery, not having to look for a job and such. Webb called the letter “offensive.”

You know what’s sad, though? On CNN, also this morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell couldn’t even muster the judgment that Webb showed. “I am not interested in getting into that debate,” McConnell told Candy Crowley. What a wuss. Remember that the next time someone tries to tell you the GOP is the party of Lincoln.

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Finally, I sent this video around Friday night. You may already have seen it. A lot of people, including author Tim Wise, have asked the interesting question: What if the Tea Party was black? At minimum, it’s pretty clear that its gun-toting and violent rhetoric against the president would probably not be going over terribly well, especially with law enforcement (think the Old Black Panthers carrying guns into the State Capitol in Sacramento). It’s an interesting argument, but this video puts images and music behind it, and, well, I think it’s powerful. Probably not going to change the minds of hardened Tea Partiers or Obama haters, but it should find a wider audience:

It’s a very good country for the rich man. Chauffeurs, servants, big houses. The question is, who is suffering? The common man.

This is the tax policy that DC elites, Republicans and Democrats, want to see adopted.

I on the other hand favor moderate, mainstream, FDR tax rates of 90% on marginal income; and if corporations have the right to speak like individuals they have the right to be taxed like them too.

Who wants to be long on a July weekend anyway sucker?

1 Moody’s downgrades Ireland debt rating

AFP

2 hrs 2 mins ago

Ireland has gladly adopted a strong austerity policy.  This is what happens.

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

I suppose I should try to avoid  any sentence that starts- “What really happened yesterday…” especially when it comes to Le Tour because I really don’t have any special insight except that which comes from watching each stage about 16 times in preference to the crap that normally infests my TV, particularly the Sunday Morning Beltway Bozo Shows.

It is a shame that I will take to my grave that I ever thought they made me better informed and worse that my persistent addiction infected my parents who have yet to recover.

But back to professional bicycle racing which, even with doping, is so much more legitimate than Wrestling, Roller Derby, or Politics.

Yesterday’s subtext is that Astana, Alberto Contador’s team, is going to try and drop every other contender by pushing the Peloton.  Schleck and Saxo Bank are keeping up so far, but Lance and Team Radio Shack have nothing to race for but pride.  My prediction is that unless Saxo Bank puts an a move (which will be quite difficult if Astana stays aggressive), Contador leaves the Pyrenees seconds behind and counts on a blistering Time Trial the penultimate stage Saturday.

Or there could be flaming hunks of twisted metal, that’s why you watch anyway isn’t it?

Stage 15, Pamiers to Bagnères-de-Luchon, is 117 miles ending with a Kute Kuddly Kitty Kat Klimb.  If Astana is serious, and there is no reason to believe they aren’t, the Peloton will again be 10 or more minutes ahead of its expected pace before that final climb even begins.

On this day in 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C. More startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been “dead” for nearly 2,000 years.

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Several scholars, including Englishman Thomas Young made progress with the initial hieroglyphics analysis of the Rosetta Stone. French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832), who had taught himself ancient languages, ultimately cracked the code and deciphered the hieroglyphics using his knowledge of Greek as a guide. Hieroglyphics used pictures to represent objects, sounds and groups of sounds. Once the Rosetta Stone inscriptions were translated, the language and culture of ancient Egypt was suddenly open to scientists as never before.

The Rosetta Stone has been housed at the British Museum in London since 1802, except for a brief period during World War I. At that time, museum officials moved it to a separate underground location, along with other irreplaceable items from the museum’s collection, to protect in from the threat of bombs.

• AMC– The Mummy.
• ESPN– Phillies @ Cubs.
• E!– Independence Day
• ABC Family– Revenge of the Bridesmaids
• History– Ice Road Truckers (premier), Top Shot
• Nick– Adventures in Babysitting
• TBS– Shrek the Third
• Turner Classic– Beauty and the Beast
• Discovery– Powering the Future, Mythbusters
• Toon– Children’s Hospital

Later-

• Turner Classic– King Kong, Hunchback of Notre Dame
• Adult Swim– Boondocks : “Mr. Medicinal”, Squidbillies  : “America: Why I Love Her”, Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole : “Heal Hitler”, Moral Orel : “Omnipresence”

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP hopes cap can stay on for good

by Allen Johnson, AFP

Sun Jul 18, 3:53 pm ET