LA LA LA LA LA . . . . .

I'm in vacation mode, so there's not much to complain about. Well there is much to complain about. Race relation topics are abounding. I could talk about the Gates case, but it's much too simple. The cop did everything right, until he arrested a man for being loud in his own home during the day. That's not a crime.

I could talk about my friend Dr. Monica Crowley. I saw her the other night on O'Reilly and they were discussing President Obama's speech to the NAACP. It struck me as odd that they were discussing it a week after it happened, but many thing on the O'Reilly show strike me as odd. Dr. Crowley thought that the President had made a fine speech, but, and with her there's always a but, she went on to tell us all about the problems that the African-American community had with it. Like she has any clue as to what the African-American community has to say about anything.

But like I said I'm in vacation mode. A special friend of mine has a special reason to need to spend some fun time in the sun, so we're going to spend the next 8 days in and around Venice Beach.

But I will leave you with an ironic tale. I'm a huge White Sox fan, and I rarely miss a midweek afternoon game. There's nothing better than taking off work and having some beers and watching White Sox baseball. But, because of the aforementioned vacation, I really needed to get some things done at the office. So I gave my tickets to a friend.

As it turns out, Mark Buehrle pitched the eighteenth perfect game in MLB history. I was a little upset that I missed it. My friend, who had had a relationship gone bad with Mr. Buehrle, was upset that she was there. We were probably the only two people in the world who were hoping that he would give up a hit.

Off to LA LA Land!

We've Come A Long Way, Baby!

For the past few weeks I've heard a lot of commentators discussing Judge Sotomayor's racist attitudes. Outstide of some dumb blonds on Fox, it's mostly been white males. The discriminatory practices of Judge Sotomayor and her ilk is tearing at the fabric of this country. Mike Barnicle said that the country has had enough after decades of these practices. Pat Buchanan has been going ballistic, and was put down very well by Rachel Maddow the other night. Good for her.

But an event occurred last week that was just recently reported that puts quite well the state of racial equality in this country. Harvard professor Henry Gates, Jr. was arrested for disorderly conduct. He was in his home at the time having just "broken in" because of a problem with his locks. A passer-by had seen Professor Gates and another black man trying to gain access to the house and called police.

So for all the white male whiners who are concerned that their fellow white males are being denied access to jobs across the country, like the New Haven firefighters, I think you need to take a step back and look at the situation a little closer. The playing field has not been sufficiently leveled.

Though I guess we should all be proud of the progress we've made. If you think about it, if Professor Gates had tried this 40 years ago, the cops would have shot first and asked questions later.

At my wits end - no catchy title

I feel that my education has been wasted. I was reading a piece in the business section on MSN.com that stated that there have been 6.5 million jobs lost since the recession started in December of 2007. Now I know that knowledge of economics is not a prerequisite for writing for MSN.com/Money, and it's been quite a few years since I studied the topic in B-school, but a recession is 2 or more consecutive quarters of zero or negative growth in GDP.

The fourth quarter of 2007 showed a 2.3% growth, followed by an increase of 3.5% in the first quarter of 2008, with subsequent quarterly increases of 4.1% and 3.4% before tumbling 5.8% in the fourth quarter. So I'm really thinking that the recession started closer to December, 2008. And I think the job loss has been smaller in the last eight months.

But it got me thinking as to why this writer would create his own version of economics. Is he trying to blame the Bush Administration for a recession? The job losses in early 2008 can be blamed on their economic polices without rewriting economic policy. Is he trying to ease criticism on Obama? That might be, as every Fox talking head is now saying that Obama owns the economy, the budget deficit (even though the budget year started under GWB), and oddly enough the entire national debt. But then the economic knowledge of Fox News, to say nothing of the Bush Administration, would make the guy at MSN.com/Money look like a Nobel laureate.

Or as someone said on Morning Joe today, the tar is starting to stick to Obama. Just to show that Pat Buchanan is not the only racist on MSNBC.

Rest in Peace Michael Jackson

Never was a big fan. I liked some of the stuff he did with his brothers when I was 12, but not a big fan of his solo work, except maybe the song about the rat. But I am hoping he will rest in peace, and then the news channels can cover something else. Because of the almost non-stop coverage I was forced to watch a lot of Fox last night. And my head still hurts.

O'Reilly was kind of funny. He had a segment where Steve Doocy and some blonde played a version of Name That Tune. It wasn't the blonde from the Fox and Friends show. Though she had a doozy, or would that be doocy, of a comment the other day. Talking about Obama's visit to Russia she mentioned that we need to improve our relations with them, as they have more influence on the world scene than they've ever had. She may be too young to remember the Cold War, but you would think that she'd have at least heard of it.

Anyway, Doocy and the other blonde had no clue as to song names. The blonde got indignant that The Doors' song LA Woman wasn't LA Woman. She claimed to have every Doors recording and know every song. O'Reilly claims that he does a mean Jim Morrison. It was freaky.

Speaking of Russia's influence on the world, Hannity had Haley Barbour, who is seriously being talked about as Presidential timber. Yeah! But he was talking about how we can't have any more of these arms treaties and how Reagan brought down the Soviet Union by building up arms. Do any of these people read history books. Who initiated the INF agreement which led to START?

Hannity several times was bashing the President for not recognizing the fact that we are the sole super power in the world. Combining this with his bashing Obama for not speaking out more on the situation in Iran, and his bashing of the handling of the Uighurs being released from Guantanamo now makes for an interesting confluence of events.

The Uighurs, an Islamic people, are revolting against the Chinese. I wonder who Sean will be asking Obama to rail against? I guess it doesn't matter, as we are the lone super power in the world. China being bigger, more populous, having an incredibly larger standing army, being a major economic power, especially when it comes to our imports and the subsequent ownership of our national debt, and having nuclear capabilities is obviously not a super power.

We have thousands of nuclear warheads, Sean would probably say. He's not quite aware that it doesn't take thousands to put a pretty big dent in the world as we know it. He, like all the neo-cons still think that our armed forces are the most powerful around. Given the commitments we have in the Middle East, I think we might have a tough time proving that to the Chinese.

Anyway, can we let Jackson rest in peace so I can get some unfair and unbalanced news?

And to my good friend Joe Scarborough, you need some new news writers. Not only to avoid your insanely funny, funny stupid not funny ha ha, discussion of the story you tried to report on Al Gore (Mika you need to know the difference between the text of a speech and a news report about the speech) but you really need someone to know that there is no such word as Iceburg.