Monday, July 26, 2010

Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad

Musical monday #151

Posted: 26 Jul 2010 04:36 AM PDT

Every week Elie and I switch off hosting Musical Monday. Check out the sesquicentennial (whatever that is) at Elie's. Anyway you know the drill, identify the lyrics, figure out the theme and no Googling. Have fun!

1) And see that twinkle in your eyes
2) The air's electric, sparklin' power, loaded, loaded
3) were gonna chug-a-lug and shout.
4) It was a night with Daddy G.
5) ... 25 dollars and pieces of silver
6) Just another lonely boy in town,
7) ... can leave you feeling just like a ghost?
8) It's your chance to wake up and plan another brand new day.
9) And I've always been a patient man, but my patience has reached its end
10) Got to get some peace in my mind.
11) Those gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh.
12) Sky rockets in flight.
13) Should I try to do some more
14) No one owns a piece of my time
15) Work day passes like molasses in wintertime, but it's July.
16) Sadly ecstatic, that their heroes are news.
17) Heavenly shades of night are falling
18) When the sun goes down, and the clouds all frown,
19) In the room where you do what you don't confess
20) Thoughts they cannot defend,
21) The stars are winkin' above
22) Well I swear we were doin' eighty
23) Pumping like a fugitive in cover from the night
24) One more time for all the old times.
25) Shake the town with the windows down

Here are the answers for Musical Monday #149. I thought of the theme as "revenge," but I think that Yitz's "comeuppance" might have been a better answer.

1) He's tearin' you apart, oh every every day
Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin - Journey
2) She put on dark glasses and long sleeved blouses
Goodbye, Earl - Dixie Chicks
3) It's only when your poison spreads
Living well is the best revenge - R.E.M.
4) That's dangerous driving baby, The policeman said.
Vengeance - Carly Simon
5) You're gonna choke on it too
I can see for miles - The Who
6) They found him underneath a train
Janie's got a gun - Aerosmith
7) She said "Home, James," and he hit the gas
Dark Lady - Cher
8) sit down I got some bad news that's gonna hurt
The night the lights went out in Georgia - Vicki Lawrence, Reba McEntire
9) When I first found out I hurt all over
Angel in your arms - Hot
10) Johnny jumped up and he hit him,
Judy's turn to cry - Lesley Gore
11) It's time for a few small repairs she said
Sunny came home - Shawn Colvin
12) Everything you own in the box to the left
Irreplaceable - Beyonce
13) Right now, he's probably buying her some fruity little drink
Before he cheats - Carrie Underwood
14) Patty Hearst heard the burst
Roland the headless Thompson gunner - Warren Zevon
15) I've got two miles till, he makes bail
Gunpowder and Lead - Miranda Lambert
16) Ha! I just found me a brand new box of matches yeah
These boots are made for walking - Nancy Sinatra
17) A Siamese cat of a girl
Under my thumb - Rolling Stones
18) With the wife of a jealous man
Bad bad Leroy Brown - Jim Croce
19) As she spells out regret in perfect time
She's got the rhythm and I got the blues - Alan Jackson
20) The doctor came in stinking of gin
Rocky Raccoon - The Beatles

Two positive developments from iran

Posted: 26 Jul 2010 03:58 AM PDT

I've recently been following some developments on the Iranian front. There appears to be another effect the most recent round of sanctions have had on Iran - Sanctions Slow Development of Natural Gas Field in Iran

Threatened by tougher international and U.S. penalties that target the financing of oil projects and technical support for Iran's energy sector, Western firms such as Shell, Total and Halliburton have pulled out of the development of the South Pars gas field. South Pars is the Iranian portion of a natural gas reservoir about two miles below the Persian Gulf between Iran and Qatar. The reservoir is the world's largest gas field, covering 3,745 square miles and containing an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of gas. About 38 percent of it lies below Iran's territorial waters.

On Saturday, the engineering and construction arm of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Khatam ol-Anbia, which is also under new U.N. and U.S. sanctions, unexpectedly withdrew from two key gas refinery projects. It also refrained from bidding on the three final parts of the South Pars gas field, said Mohammad Hassan Mousavizadeh, a technical adviser to the state-owned Pars Oil and Gas Co.

"In the present circumstances, it is possible that continued activity . . . will endanger national resources," Khatam ol-Anbia said in a statement after the pullout.

However Daniel Pipes, in a recent interview doubts whether sanctions would have an effect. (via memeorandum)

I don't think so. I don't think sanctions have any value beyond window dressing. I don't think agreements have any value. I don't think threats have any value. It boils down to whether we accept the Iranian nuclear program or we destroy it.

(Israel Matzav focuses on a different aspect of the interview. Perhaps the most controversial suggestion made by Dr. Pipes.)

In addition Michael Ledeen believes that the Iranian regime has lost a measure of control:

Moreover, in the city of Zahedan -- where the murderous suicide attacks took place last week (the best coverage, as usual, was from Banafsheh, who was first with the pictures of the killers) -- the Revolutionary Guards control things during the day, but once night falls, anti-regime forces, many of them armed, take to the streets. In short, the people have lost their fear. The regime may very well arrest them, beat them, torture them, and kill them, but it is getting more and more difficult to control them.

Very few news stories noticed the two most significant aspects of the bombing at the Zahedan mosque. The first was the regime's panicky reaction: at first they announced, correctly, that the attack had been carried out by Balouch fighters. Then they realized that this was bad for the regime, since they had bragged for some time that the Revolutionary Guards had shut down all possibility of protest, following last year's devastating suicide bombing of a big RG meeting in the region. So they quickly changed their story, reverting to the party line that anything bad in Iran is the fault of the Satanic forces embodied in the United States and Israel.

The second key feature of the attack in Zahedan was the day on which it occurred: it was Pasdar day, the occasion of celebrating the great strength and virtue of the Revolutionary Guards. Supreme leader Ali Khamenei himself had delivered the official tribute that very morning in the capital. The suicide bombing showed that the regime is not in control of the situation, and that the people have not accepted its authority.

These two items are positive developments. (I'm not meaning to applaud the death of innocents.) The degree to which they are helpful are not at all clear.

Crossposted on Yourish.

How did bob schieffer get his job again?

Posted: 26 Jul 2010 03:58 AM PDT

Bob Schieffer (via memeorandum) tells us What New Media Can Learn From Old Media:

Last week, we saw what can happen when it's done the other way.

A partisan blogger with an agenda - not a journalist - put the heavily edited, totally out of context, now infamous sound bite of Shirley Sherrod on the Internet. Some of the cable folk picked up the story, and demanded the woman's ouster.

No calls to those involved, no checking of any kind - just throw it out there and leave it to the woman to defend herself.

First of all, I think that what actually happened, omitting the adjectives, was in what Instapundit characterized as the comment of the week at Reason.

My take:

(1) Breitbart was aiming at the NAACP as a reaction to yet another baseless Tea Party racism charge. Boy, did he hit his target. Sherrod was purely incidental.

(2) Breitbart succeeded in making the NAACP look racist, succeeded in provoking them into making an unfounded charge of racism themselves, and succeeded in stampeding the whole lefty racism industry into suddenly pontificating about the need for context and the horribleness of unfounded charges of racism.

I would say Breitbart has, once again, achieved all his objectives.

Breitbart, of course, was demonstrating that the NAACP, which had called the Tea Parties "racist" had some racist tendencies itself. This was what he gleaned from the reactions to Sherrod's admission that she had not adequately helped a white farmer because of his skin color.

(In fairness, I should point out that Scheiffer appears to have treated the tea parties fairly. Though I would characterize them as libertarian not right wing as Schieffer did.)

But what's really fascinating about Schieffer's dig at the new media here is because of how he got his job as anchor of the CBS Evening News.

A partisan journalist with an agenda - not a blogger - put the heavily edited, totally out of context, now infamous document on "60 minutes." Some of the news organizations picked up the story, and demanded the President's ouster.

No significant checking of any kind - just throw it out there and leave it to the bloggers to reveal the truth.

Et tu, Bob?
Posted by Soccer Dad at 10:26 PM

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