ROCK AND ROLL SHOW OFFS:
FRANK ZAPPA AND STEVE VAI

I recently found yet another fantastic clip on Youtube, and I figured I'd better post it sooner rather than later, assuming that the popular video website is eventually going to have pull its best stuff due to various lawsuits, if they don't cut some fantastic deals first.

Anyway, the clip is taken from Video from Hell, FZ's promotional video for his tour supporting the album Jazz from Hell back in the mid 80s. I saw it years ago when I was an undergrad at UT and barely remember it. That is, I barely remember it except for this particular live performance, which has taken on near-icon status in the section of my brain reserved for Frank Zappa worship. The studio version of the song, "Stevie's Spanking" from the 1984 album Them or Us, is typical Zappa fare, a simple but infectious groove, lots of ornamentation, with naughty, near-obscene lyrics, all serving as an excuse for long and complex guitar solos. The "Live duet version" played at a 1982 concert in Rome, however, does away with the lyrics entirely and just goes for the jam.

And what a jam it is! It opens with about twenty seconds of FZ guitar fanfare, essentially musically introducing then wunderkind Steve Vai's solo, approximately two minutes of sheer guitar virtuosity. They hit the hook and then go into Zappa's solo, which isn't as good as Vai's, and certainly isn't the best I've ever heard from FZ, but still pretty great nonetheless. Ultimately, none of that matters one way or the other because those first two solos are only the warm up for the duet. Three minutes into Zappa's guitar meanderings, he steps over into Vai's spotlight and the two play together for the rest of the eight minute song. And lemme tell ya, it's fucking magic.

It's so weird that what first attracted me to Zappa when I was a kid were his funny lyrics and bizarre compositions. Of course, I still love those aspects of his work, but what's kept me with him for so many years is the incredible playing on every single song he's ever done. Eat your heart out, Eric Clapton. Bite me, Jimmy Page. Take some heroin, Duane Allman. Go to hell, Randy Rhodes. Zappa and his crew were always better than everybody. If you consider yourself a rock music fan at all, you simply must go check out this performance of "Stevie's Spanking."

Click here to rock the fuck out.



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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Frankie



Phil



Paz



Sammy



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging!

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HOMELAND SECURITY KEYSTONE COPS

From the Houston Chronicle:

Officer demands apology in airport case

A TSA report obtained by the Houston Chronicle appears to blame Reece for the incident, which began when screeners at a checkpoint asked Bataineh whether he had a laptop computer in a computer bag.

Bataineh shook his head, but an X-ray machine operator detected a laptop and alarm clock with a nine-volt battery taped to it. They also said Bataineh was wearing shoes that they suspected had been "gutted out."

"The shoes had been tampered with and there were all the components of (a bomb) except the explosive itself," according to the report.

Instead of detaining Bataineh or calling the FBI as they could have and should have done according to security officials, a TSA official asked Reece to investigate.

Reece examined the shoes and found no reason for concern, then put the battery in the clock and found that it functioned properly, according to Hoffman.

Reece found no reason to detain Bataineh and allowed him to enter the boarding area over the protests of screeners, according to the report.

Click here for the rest.

This is classic Bush stuff. Fail, without even following your own procedures, and then blame someone else. Fortunately, people, even patriotic cops, aren't falling for that ploy much these days. Still, this story is disturbing, if only because it reinforces what a joke homeland security is under the Bush administration. They swore to protect us, but all the agencies charged with doing so appear to be in total disarray. The chemical plants are still wide open. The borders are still wide open. And FEMA...well, nuff said on that.

What is Bush doing to protect us from terrorists?

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E. coli strain found in cows near spinach field

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Investigators still do not know how the feces could have contaminated the spinach implicated in the bacterial outbreak. They also do not know if the ranch used manure from the cattle to fertilize its fields. Nor is there evidence that livestock entered the spinach fields on the ranch. However, wild pigs roamed the property, they said.

"There's lots of wildlife and lots of potential for breakdown in the fencing," Reilly told reporters.

The strain of pathogenic E. coli O157:H7 was found in three cattle fecal samples collected at the ranch, one of four under investigation, the officials said. It matched the strain found in sick patients and in bags of recalled spinach.

Investigators continue to look at irrigation water and the hygiene of farm workers as potential sources of the bacteria.

Click here for the rest.

An AlterNet article I read a couple of weeks ago, for which I cannot seem to find the link at the moment, speculated on exactly this cause. However, the writer was willing to go where this AP writer is unwilling to go. That is, he suggested a cause: cattle waste doesn't simply drop on the ground these days; it's held in massive cesspools that tend to spring leaks fairly regularly. The idea is that the leaks were absorbed into the water table. That water was then used to irrigate the spinach, and, bang, we have an E coli outbreak. No matter how you look at this, it's the result of a lax regulatory environment in Washington. I suppose it's nice and all that modern agri-giants are making lots of money, but that's no cure for the couple of hundred people sickened by E coli, or for the three people killed. Ultimately, greed, and nothing else, made this happen.

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FAREWELL MADONNA

Okay, I'm really sad right now because I just got off the phone with my mom who told me the details about how she put her dog Madonna to sleep today, so this is the only post I'm making tonight. Madonna was old, fourteen, and it was definitely time for her to go. She had been suffering from repeated strokes for the last couple of years, and, really, it was amazing that she had been doing so well for so long under the circumstances. I mean, that girl just kept bouncing back, almost like a cat with nine lives. But her luck finally ran out, no bouncing back this time, and my parents had to make what I believe to be one of the hardest decisions a person can make, euthanizing a loved one. So now she's buried in same backyard in which I played as a child.

I only lived with her for a couple of short spans in the early and then late 90s when I had boomeranged back home to take stock of my life, and she was a great comfort to me in my depressions. I grew to love her very quickly. My cats Giskard and Alec, on the other hand, hated her, of course, which was a drag because all Madonna ever wanted to do with them was hang out--the two felines terrorized the dog, despite her size and strength advantage. I did my best to keep them apart. She and I went for countless walks on the Kingwood bike trails of my childhood; she would always go into a tripped out frenzy whenever I grabbed the leash and said the word "walk."

I always walked her whenever I visited later--I allowed myself the vanity of thinking that she liked my walks better than anybody else's; she sure did act like it, but I know that she was really always my mother's dog. I am really going to miss her presence next time I'm home. The house just won't be the same without her.

Damn, I'm missing her right now even though I haven't seen her since August. The poor girl.


Me and a fairly young Madonna back in the early or mid 90s


A more mature Madonna for the new millenium

Farewell, Madonna. The world has lost a wonderful being.

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An Open Letter to James Dobson

From God's Politics courtesy of AlterNet:

You see, I'm an evangelical Christian, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. As you know, we share a common Nazarene heritage that introduced both of us to a relationship with Jesus Christ, nurtured us in the development of our faith, and educated us through their colleges.

And

But somewhere along the way, I fear you have lost your way. Your message of hope has turned into a message of partisan politics. Instead of words of encouragement, your words seem to continually blame someone else for the problems of the world.

I just read your words that were posted on your Web site on Friday about the Foley scandal, and I must say I was very disappointed, but not surprised. While thankfully you did condemn the acts of Rep. Foley, you spent the majority of your time attacking "the liberal media," the Democratic party, and gay people, who according to your thinking are the real problem in America.

Unfortunately, I don't think your statement rings true for millions of evangelical Christians, who believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures ... inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation (Church of the Nazarene Manual). Your statement comes across as the same kind of partisan rhetoric that you claim to be fighting. More hubris than humility. More politics than principle.

Click here for the rest.

I've been wondering for years when something like this was going to happen. The minister who wrote this letter is, like Dobson, a fundamentalist: I'm sure that he doesn't have the influence or power that Dobson has, but the fact that this has been written at all is significant. The problem facing fundamentalists today is that they don't really seriously advocate or adhere to the most central principles advanced by their Lord, you know, love, forgiveness, tolerance, compassion for the poor, refraining from judgment, that sort of thing. I'm not sure why all these people have essentially warped Jesus into his exact opposite--perhaps the strange bedfellow alliance with the cutthroat capitalists of the GOP bears the most responsibility. But, once the change was complete, it was only a matter of time before one of them actually read the Bible and noticed what was going on. That is, the seeds of fundamentalism's destruction were there from the beginning of the movement back in the 70s. The harshness of fundamentalism is simply incompatible with the teachings of Jesus, and therefore, anti-Christian. Finally, it looks like these people are waking up.

I sure hope this becomes a movement.

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What the Amish Are Teaching America

From AlterNet:

When the Amish were suddenly pierced by violence, how did they respond?

The evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to process their grief with each other and mental health counselors. As of that evening, three little girls were dead. Eight were hospitalized in critical condition. (One more girl has died since.) According to reports by counselors who attended the grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight, is that OK? But one question they asked might surprise us outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts' family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish, it seems, don't automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption.

Meanwhile, the United States culture from which the Amish are isolated is moving in the other direction -- increasingly exacting revenge for crimes and punishing violence with more violence. In 26 states and at the federal level, there are "three strikes" laws in place. Conviction for three felonies in a row now warrants a life sentence, even for the most minor crimes. For instance, Leandro Andrade is serving a life sentence, his final crime involving the theft of nine children's videos -- including "Cinderella" and "Free Willy" -- from a Kmart. Similarly, in many states and at the federal level, possession of even small amounts of drugs trigger mandatory minimum sentences of extreme duration. In New York, Elaine Bartlett was just released from prison, serving a 20-year sentence for possessing only four ounces of cocaine. This is in addition to the 60 people who were executed in the United States in 2005, among the more than a thousand killed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. And the president of the United States is still actively seeking authority to torture and abuse alleged terrorists, whom he consistently dehumanizes as rats to be "smoked from their holes," even without evidence of their guilt.

Click here for the rest.

Our supposed Christian nation seems to greatly prefer the wrathful God of the Old Testament to the forgiving and loving God of the New Testament. I remember being taught in Southern Baptist Sunday school many years ago when I was a teenager that Jesus came not only to save our souls, but to free humanity from the strict and harsh laws that had bound his children for centuries before. In other words, Christ's messages of peace and tolerance supercede the violent code that came before him. Of course, I'm certainly no Christian in any religious sense these days, but I do find myself as an adult to be an adherent to much of the philosophy espoused in the Gospels: "love your neighbor as yourself." It's absolutely wonderful to see that the Amish take such words seriously; it is extraordinarily disheartening to know that most American Christians do not.

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WASHINGTON STATE HIGH SCHOOL
CANCELS ANTI-GAY BASHING PLAY

From KIMA TV courtesy of Orcinus:

Prescott and several drama club students decided to do the Laramie Project last month at the start of the school year. It's a play about the aftermath of a young Laramie, Wyoming man brutally murdered by two men for being gay.

But soon after, controversy erupted in the high school's community with students, their parents and even staff.

"When I read the play I didn't have a similar reaction," said Lee Maras, principal of Davis High School. "But the ones I did talk to didn't even want to read it, didn't even want to look at it - just felt it was inappropriate for our school."

Click here for the rest.

Since when is opposition to brutality controversial? Only when you hate the victims of such violence, I suppose. I've never seen The Laramie Project, but it has a great reputation--they even did it here at LSU a few years back, and everyone involved seemed to have a great experience with it. My understanding is that there's really nothing controversial about it; it's not even particularly pro-gay. But producing it at a high school, one of the final frontiers of rampant American homophobia, creates a situation such that public education's true purposes become obvious.

If this school was really concerned with education, there would simply be no question about performing the play, controversy be damned. But the job of public school administrators is to make sure that the wheels of the authority indoctrination machine keep moving while making it appear as though children are learning. Because the quasi-governmental nature of the school system makes everybody with a cause think they have a say in what's happening in the schools, a big part of keeping the machine functioning is playing public relations games. This school's principal sounds genuinely sympathetic to the play's message, but his job dictates that he keep all controversies minimal: consequently, PR trumps educational concerns, and that's okay because authority indoctrination, schools' main thrust, not only doesn't suffer, it is actually enhanced by arbitrarily ordering these thespians around.

This is all no surprise to me, especially after my six years inside the machine as a theater teacher, myself. Still sucks, though.

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"...and President Bush's private
mood has blackened accordingly."

From the New York Daily News via AlterNet:

First Lady Laura Bush, who is even more in demand than her husband on the political stump this cycle, also was telling aides she thought the tide had finally turned.

Now, however, friends, aides and close political allies tell the Daily News Bush is furious with his own side for helping create a political downdraft that has blunted his momentum and endangered GOP prospects for keeping control of Congress next month.

Some of his anger is directed at former aides who helped Watergate journalist Bob Woodward paint a lurid portrait of a dysfunctional, chaotic administration in his new book, "State of Denial."

In the obsessively private Bush clan, talking out of school is the ultimate act of disloyalty, and Bush feels betrayed from within.

And

Bush has complained, these sources said, that the scandal torpedoes furious GOP efforts to reenergize a dispirited political base - especially Christian conservatives.

"There's steam coming out of his ears over the Foley thing," someone who talks to the President regularly said. "The base is starting to get turned off again."

Click here for the rest.

It's hard for me to get past the Bush archetype in my brain, you know, the one established fairly early on in his first administration, after 9/11: the guy who doesn't read newspapers, who's seemingly invulnerable to criticism, if only because he's too stupid or oblivious to understand. But that storyline comes from years ago. What's been happening in his primate skull since the war in Iraq turned sour? How's he really been dealing with the bashing he took after FEMA's failure in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Haven't his chronically bad approval ratings rattled him a bit? I'm afraid that most people really don't know.

I've heard rumors that he's started drinking again, always a very bad thing for a recovering alcoholic to do. Personally, I think Bush should start boning up on Louis XVI's final days; maybe he'll find some enlightening info.

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Criticizing Cheney to His Face Is Assault?

From the Progressive:

“I didn’t even know he was in town,” Howards says. “He was walking through the area shaking hands. Initially, I walked past him. Then I said to myself, ‘I can’t in good conscience let this opportunity pass by.’ So I approached him, I got about two feet away, and I said in a very calm tone of voice, ‘Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible.’ And then I walked away.”

Howards says he knew the Administration has a “history of making problems” for people who protest its policies, so he wanted to leave off at that.

But the Secret Service did not take kindly to his comment.“About ten minutes later, I came back through the mall with my eight-year-old son in tow,” Howards recalls, “and this Secret Service man came out of the shadows, and his exact words were, ‘Did you assault the Vice President?’”

Click here for the rest.

Well, this kind of bullshit is now pretty much par for the course. Republicans have been harrassing and intimidating their critics for years now--don't forget how the White House capitalized on the Plame leak in order to punish former Ambasador Joseph Wilson for daring to debunk the Niger-Iraq uranium connection. The article explains how this guy who criticized Veep Cheney to his face was arrested for it, in front of his kid, at a public shopping mall. Fortunately, the "assault" charges were eventually dismissed, and Howards is now suing the agent who cuffed him, but, needless to say, no American citizen should have to put up with this crap.

Especially from a guy who shot his best friend in the face.

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We Had Abortions

From Ms. Magazine via AlterNet:

At the time of the original Ms. petition, illegal abortions were causing untold suffering in the United States, especially for poor women who had to resort to unsafe self-induced or back-alley abortions. Today, in the developing nations, approximately 70,000 women and girls die each year from botched and unsafe abortions. Another 500,000 needless maternal deaths occur. Most of this suffering and loss could be prevented. U.S. international family-planning policies contribute to the death toll: first, by conditioning U.S. aid on a global gag rule that prevents medical workers from even giving out information on abortion (let alone providing the service); second, by withholding or providing inadequate funds; and finally, by funding "abstinence-only" rather than comprehensive sex education.

We are now starting a new petition, beginning with the names of some of the original 1972 signers. They signed "to save lives and to spare other women the pain of socially imposed guilt." Their purpose was "to repeal archaic and inhuman laws." They recognized that because of the "social stigma still wrongly attached to abortion" many would not be able to sign publicly. But they invited all women to sign-"to help eliminate the stigma."

Click here for the rest.

Okay, this is great. It reminds me of the "I had an abortion" t-shirts that have been available for a couple of years now. There needs to be much more activism along these lines. While I applaud the numerous efforts across the country and over the years to keep abortions rights, or what I like to think of as the right, for all Americans, both men and women alike, to control one's own body, on the books and an important part of civil and human rights in general, the sad truth is that the war of ideas is being lost. There are enormous pockets around the country, Baytown, Texas, for instance, where the conventional wisdom is that abortion is a horrible, awful thing. When I was teaching in Baytown, I was aghast at first about how many teenaged girls, seemingly the overwhelming majority, were pro-life. Later, I accepted it as reality, which made it only slightly less disturbing, and had little success in persuading people that women couldn't truly be equal in our culture unless they had complete control of their bodies. In short, the "immorality" of abortion is fast becoming a dominant idea, and there's no way to combat that when abortion rights supporters squeamishly hide behind euphemisms like "pro-life," when women who have had abortions feel too stigmatized to freely speak about it. The bottom line here is that abortion is good when freely chosen--of course, birth control is better, but I'll save that talk for another post. For now, I have to say that Ms. is kicking ass.

You go, girls!

I'm probably going to be slapped for saying that someday.

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AMERICA LOVES THE COCK

From AlterNet:

Let's Face It, Penises Dominate American Politics

Thank God for Mark Foley.

It proves that the American people still care about something.

It happens to be penises. But still.

They care about who talks about them, who plays with them, who covers them up, who uncovers them, who covers up the uncovering of them.

Even Jon Stewart put the big penis cover-up ahead of the fact that this government just passed a law that says that George Bush can say, "Hey you, you're an enemy combatant, "and once he says that they can whisk you away.

And

Anything else, in between penises, is just marking time. Fail to get bin Laden, who cares? Discover proof that the administration made up stories so they could have their war in Iraq, no big deal, not even news, according to the New York Times. Best estimate is that US bombs and artillery killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, it would be rude to mention it. Then there's all that money that disappeared. Paul Bremer blew through twenty billion (yes, Billion) dollars that was supposed to be held in trust for the Iraqi people and there's no records and nothing to show for it. After that was gone, the occupation authorities blew through another twenty billion that was supposed to go for the reconstruction of Iraq. Let's not ask where the money went -- no major media outlet has.

If you're in the cable news business, you're happy. This is the first really good penis since Bill's.

Click here for the rest.

Well, it's not fair to say that America loves the cock, although many individual Americans do, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that in the personal realm: it's more like politicians, pundits, and reporters love the cock. They love the cock so much that it drowns out everything else, especially important political and economic issues, with big huge wads and wads of steaming hot semen.

To be honest, if the American people suddenly decided to start sexually objectifying men instead of women, demanding that the seemingly endless media display of breasts be replaced with a seemingly endless media display of penises, things here in the US might become really interesting. Maybe men might become more concerned with something besides dominating the people around them. Maybe men would finally decide to make love, not war.

Actually, that would probably drive lots of American men stark raving mad.

But that's not what this is about at all. The political and journalistic classes aren't really obsessed with penises. They just don't want to talk about the issues that are important to real people's lives because that would make obvious how our current political arrangements favor them and the wealthy elite for whom they work, but nobody else really. Penis talk is simply a sick substitute for political discussion. Nobody really cared that Bill Clinton was getting it on with Monica Lewinsky, but they needed something to pretend that they were doing their jobs, and striking out with Whitewater and a bajillion other bogus scandals, blowjobs did the trick nicely. And that's what's happening right now with this Foley scandal. Sure, there's definitely an issue there, but, ultimately it pales when compared to everything else.

But the Democrats, like the Republicans, are far more comfortable being outraged about penises than torture. Sick fucks, if you ask me.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
TEXAS BEATS ARCH RIVAL OKLAHOMA, LSU LOSES

From the AP via ESPN:

Frosh QB plays like a vet as Horns handle Sooners

Now, it's the No. 14 Sooners who are finding ways to lose -- like having their best player give up on a loose ball near his end zone with the game still on the line in the fourth quarter.

Adrian Peterson thought the ball bouncing off his hands meant an incomplete pass, not a fumbled lateral. Texas cornerback Aaron Ross wasn't sure, but scooped it up and scored just in case, and wound up with the touchdown that sealed a 28-10 victory Saturday in the 101st edition of the Red River rivalry.

And

Ross' first interception with more than seven minutes began an exodus of Oklahoma fans. The rest began heading out when Paul Thompson -- who was 15-of-27 for 209 yards -- was picked off by Ross again, drawing chants of "Poor Sooners" from the Longhorns fans.

Click here for the rest.

Heh. "Poor Sooners" indeed. God I love this. I just love beating Oklahoma. By the way, here's an old joke: why doesn't Texas fall into the Gulf of Mexico? Because Oklahoma sucks! Ha! And suck is what the Sooners did today at the Cotton Bowl. They sucked in spades. Sucked, sucked, sucked. Well, okay, they played just well enough to make it worth watching for the average football fan--they even had a three point lead at halftime. Other than that, however, they just sucked. I guess it's not going to be Bob Stoops' year to win the national championship. Or the Big 12. Or even the division. Again. Ha! When Peterson dropped that ball that Ross returned for a TD, they all looked like the bunch of big, dumb Okies they are.

And now Texas has the inside track to win the conference. Again.

Hook 'em 'Horns!


Texas coach Mack Brown is dunked after Texas beat Oklahoma 28-10 in their football game, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2006, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Meanwhile, in Florida...again from the AP via ESPN:

Tebow, Gators dominate LSU, 6-0 for first time since '96

Backup quarterback Tim Tebow threw two touchdown passes, including one on a play that could have came from basketball coach Billy Donovan's playbook, and ran for a score to give the fifth-ranked Gators a 23-10 win against No. 9 LSU on Saturday.

And

LSU's quarterback has had better days. Russell finished 24-of-41 for 228 yards with a touchdown. But he also had four turnovers.

Click here for the rest.

I'm lucky these two games were on at the same time. Defaulting to my real team, Texas, meant that I didn't have to watch my current school get its clock cleaned by what appears to be an extraordinarily good Florida team. LSU had a total of five turnovers, equaling OU's number in that category, and, like OU, they lost. I'm traditional on interception and fumble philosophy: if you turn the ball over five times, you don't deserve to win. Not that I wanted them to lose, mind you, it's just that losing is the only outcome possible when you can't seem to hold onto the ball.

What really bums me is that the know-it-all sports radio blowhards here in Baton Rouge were already highly critical of LSU coach Les Miles, who I consider to be pretty damned good, in the weeks following the Auburn, loss and I'm sure this loss is going to send them into chattering hysterics. Miles, I think, just needs another couple of years to get it going--remember, former coach Nick Sabin was unable to repeat his disputed National Championship run during his last year here, and lost a couple of big games he was supposed to win; Miles was given a good program, but it was not completely without problems, and he needs some more time to fine tune the Tigers to his own style. Goddamned radio fuckers, fucking calling him out for running the damned ball on first down. "This ain't the Big 12, yuck, yuck," they said. Stupid bayou trash motherfuckers. Got live crawfish infesting their brains, if you ask me.

Anyway, the Tigers need to deal with the turnover issue, for sure, but they'd better not fire Miles after only two seasons. Nothing like disharmony in a college town where they expect you to win the national championship every damned year.

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ON THE OTHER HAND...

From ABC News courtesy of Eschaton:

Three More Former Pages Accuse
Foley of Online Sexual Approaches

"I was seventeen years old and just returned to [my home state] when Foley began to e-mail me, asking if I had ever seen my page roommates naked and how big their penises were," said the page in the 2002 class.

The former page also said Foley told him that if he happened to be in Washington, D.C., he could stay at Foley's home if he "would engage in oral sex" with Foley.

And

The page said Foley maintained e-mail contact with him even after he started college and arranged a sexual liaison after the page had turned 18.

Click here for the rest.

Well, this appears to be the serious solicitation that seemed to be missing from the im's and emails reported earlier in the week. At this point, I don't think a criminal investigation of Foley is out of line, nor are demands for the resignations of Republican Congressional leaders who acted to hush all this up.

I mean, this new information, along with the fact that he's been doing this for eleven years and has yet to be actually accused by a victim, also indicates that Foley was careful to some extent about actual attempts to hook up, waiting as he did for this one page to turn eighteen, which suggests that he was trying to stay away, at least as far as having sex is concerned, from the underage boys with whom he was corresponding. Maybe he was grooming these kids to be potential future sex partners, but it seems certain that he was attempting to set up liasions, one way or the other. It's not unreasonable to imagine that this particular dirty old man was up to something more than simply being a dirty old man. I'm not sure about specific legalities here, or what constitutes probable cause for an investigation of statutory rape, but "come to my place for oral sex" strikes me as being much better than the old "I thought I smelled marijuana" line cops use to justify searching hippies' cars.

So, okay, I am now officially ready to jump into the feeding frenzy.

Nonetheless, I still stand behind everything I've said about the Foley scandal thus far. The issue of Republican hypocrisy is extraordinarily big, and I'm afraid that what I believe to be a major key to discrediting the Conservative Movement overall is being lost in the stampede to unseat the Congressional leadership. Also, the Democrats went for the jugular on this way too quickly, making great use of, and thereby legitimizing, the conservative and fundamentalist continuing crusade to drive mainstream American culture into hysterics over sex crimes and sex in general: the words "predator" and "molester" were being thrown about by Democrats, as well as the corporate news media, well before they had any real reason to use them--strengthening anti-sex hysteria can only come back to haunt the so-called liberal party. Finally, it's quite disgusting that this, a trashy sex scandal, is the only issue about which Democrats feel moved to display brazen and righteous indignation. As if torture, illegal wiretapping, illegal invasion, election tampering, environmental destruction, coddling the rich while screwing the poor, failure to protect us from terrorists, a seemingly infinite number of lies, and on and on, wasn't enough.

This Foley scandal, however it ends up, has taught me a great deal about how politics in this country actually work, and I already thought I knew a lot. I didn't think it was possible, but I think I'm becoming even more cynical.

CODA: If you still think I'm foolish for being cautious about calling Foley a "predator" or "child molester" for some quick and cheap political gain, check out these two Wikipedia articles here and here about a couple of enormous scandals from years gone by that ended up being totally bogus. And that's just two; there have been and will be many more. It's always good to withhold judgment, especially when nobody else is.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Paz



Frankie



Sammy



Phil



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging!

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Outrage as Misdirection: The Real Scandal Isn't Foley

From Smirking Chimp courtesy of AlterNet:

It's a sad commentary on the state of American democracy, on the instincts of the American citizenry, and on the standards and judgment of the American newsmedia that the unsavory advances of a pathetic Forida congressman can have the nation in high dudgeon, while the ramming through of a patently illegal piece of legislation undermining a crucial 13th century civil liberty (habeas corpus), and the Fourth and Eighth Amendments of the constitution, and the secret planning for an illegal and catastrophic attack on Iran, both merit almost no complaint or mention.

Far be it from me to complain if Rep. Mark Foley's sexual obsession with teenage boys ends up sinking Republican hopes for hanging onto the House and Senate. But how sad that it would be if it is this, and the coverup of his crimes by the Republican leadership, that undoes the Bush administration, when its real crimes are of such grandeur and seriousness?

And

At least the Foley saga makes it clear why the farcical impeachment of Bill Clinton for his extramarital escapade moved forward through the House to a Senate trial, while George Bush, whose crimes far exceed those of any president before him, including Richard Nixon, and place the whole American experiment in jeopardy, has not even faced censure, much less a bill of impeachment.

Democratic Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid should be ashamed of themselves for leaping so boldly to the attack over Foley's crime and the Republican leadership's cover-up, while continuing to assert that there will be no effort to impeach the president for his own crimes even if they manage, with Foley's assistance, to wrest control of the House November 8.

Click here for the rest.

And there you have it. Due to the entertainment and ratings focus of the news media, not to mention the careerist and power-seeking behavior of politicians from both parties, public discourse in the US has degenerated so much that issues are completely irrelevant: political debate today, and for some years now in fact, is only in terms of sex and bullshit. I mean, it's nice to see the Democrats pull up their sleeves and come out swinging, but it is remarkable that they waited for years until they had a sex scandal as good as Bill and Monica to get to work. It's as though this Foley scandal is the only thing they feel safe going balls-to-the-walls about, which leads me to think that the left-wing emotion driving this is actually coming from a Democratic sense of utter impotence on everything else. Of course, that impotence is self-imposed. They could have been, and should have been, applying the same sense of outrage to...well...you name it--the GOP has given us plenty to scream about over the years. But no, it all has to be about sex and trash.

I'm really starting to become sickened by how the left is dealing with this Foley scandal.

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GOING AFTER FAHRENHEIT 451

From KTRK TV courtesy Crooks and Liars:

Parent files complaint about
book assigned as student reading

Two weeks ago at Caney Creek High School, a tenth grade English class was given "Fahrenheit 451" as a reading assignment. But Diana Verm stopped after a few pages. She said she was offended by "the cussing in it and the burning of the Bible."

Diana complained to her father. She was given an alternate reading assignment, but her dad is pushing the issue. It is ironic in the truest sense that a fictional book on book banning is now the target of a request to remove it from school curriculum.

"With God's name in vain being in there, that's the number one reason," said Diana's father Alton Verm. "There's no reason for it being read."

The school has appointed a committee to review Verm's objections. But students are now circulating a petition in support of the book. They plan to wear t-shirts on Friday voicing their opinions.

Click here for the rest.

Okay, I don't think there's any danger of this book actually being banned, but I think this story is important to note if only to observe how utterly stupid these fundamentalist types can be. It's also a pretty sad testament to how our public schools, far more concerned with instilling the great American values of obedience and authority, are apparently unable to instill the importance free speech within our democracy to their students. I mean, yeah, most people probably have some kind of notion in their heads that free speech is important, but when push comes to shove, the concept is meaningless to vast sectors of our population.

Come on: how could anyone want to ban a book about how horrible book banning is? I suppose it's easy to people who absolutely reject the Enlightenment principles upon which our country was founded. Sadly, there seem to be more and more of these idiots coming out of the woodwork every day. As usual, I'm afraid for America's future.

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Amish turn the other cheek in wake of slayings

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

In just about any other community, a deadly school shooting would have brought demands from civic leaders for tighter gun laws and better security, and the victims' loved ones would have lashed out at the gunman's family or threatened to sue.

But that's not the Amish way.

As they struggle with the slayings of five of their children in a one-room schoolhouse, the Amish in this Lancaster County village are turning the other cheek, urging forgiveness of the killer and quietly accepting what comes their way as God's will.

"They know their children are going to heaven. They know their children are innocent ... and they know that they will join them in death," said Gertrude Huntington, a Michigan researcher and expert on children in Amish society.

"The hurt is very great," Huntington said. "But they don't balance the hurt with hate."

Click here for the rest.

Of course, it's just horrible when this sort of thing happens anywhere, and I always wince a bit more these days, myself, since my six year stint in the public schools as a teacher, but this one's got me particularly down. While I think the Amish, with their technophobic and insular ways, and their cultural austerity, are a bit nutty, I also have great admiration for them. They are true pacifists, shunning violence as acceptable behavior under any circumstances. Their communities are very close knit, with mutual support, which gives each of them a sense of personal meaning, value, and purpose. Simply put, they're just good people, showing us all a thing or two about how human beings ought to treat each other. That is, the Amish, unlike so many other American Christians, take Christ's most central principles seriously--they really do seem to love their neighbors as themselves. My god, so many American Christians, so many Americans in general, would be filled with rage and hate and a strong desire for revenge of some sort at this point, but these people have already forgiven the killer and reached out to his family.

God forbid I'm ever put into their current circumstances. I can only hope that I have the inner moral strength to follow their example.

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Gingrich: Dems' sex scandals are worse

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that Democratic sex scandals have been far worse than the suggestive Internet messages sent to teenage congressional pages by former Rep. Mark Foley.

Gingrich said Democrats have wanted to punish their offenders less than the GOP.

"What we don't have to do is allow our friends on the left to lecture us on morality," Gingrich said at a party fundraiser in Greenville. "There's a certain stench of hypocrisy.

Click here for the rest.

Obviously, this is pretty lame rhetoric, and doesn't even come close to qualifying as what I used to call when teaching public speaking back in Baytown an "argument." Especially when coming from a man who dumped his wife, while she was in the hospital being treated for cancer, for a another woman, whom he later divorced after she caught him having an affair. Regardless of the spin here, former GOP Representative Mark Foley sent suggestive emails and IMs to several boys under the age of eighteen, which were then covered up by the Republican House leadership.

However, the big blowhard tub-of-lard with helmet-hair who once served as Speaker of the House offers Democrats a valuble lesson if you kind of squint and read between the lines: moral indignation and judgment in the political sphere, especially about sex, is a dangerous game to play, which, I'm hoping, conservatives everywhere are beginning to figure out. Democrats, meanwhile, have their heads so far up their asses on this that they're talking through their necks.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, Foley's cyber-talk was pretty sleazy and creepy, and probably a firing offense if uttered by anyone in any sort of senior/subordinate relationship with these kids: you know, teacher/student, coach/athlete, manager/employee, that sort of thing. But Foley wasn't their boss or coach, and he had no direct control over their fates. Certainly his behavior is worth some sort of reprimand, but the Democrats and corporate media are calling the guy a "predator" without any evidence at all to support it. Instead of seizing on the real issue here, Republican hypocricy on issues of homosexuality and sex in general, and pretty much all pet conservative issues for that matter, the stinking donkey party is playing right into the hands of the sexual alarmists of the right wing. In other words, the Dems are going balls-to-the-wall for some short term political gain, but totally bolstering the conservative sex freak out position in the long run.

This is dumb, dumb, dumb, and I fear there'll be hell to pay sometime soon. Doesn't anybody remember what they did to Clinton? The Democrats need to calm down, take a long breath, and ask themselves if this is really worth it. They really are playing with fire.

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JET'S "PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS"
SHOWS CLASSIC ROCK IS ALIVE, WELL, AND NEW

I've just gotta take a momentary break from the media frenzy over what's shaping up to be yet another depressing and wrong-headed political-sexual witch hunt, and focus on something uplifting.

I've been seeing their t-shirts on the kids here and there for a couple of years now, at one point even mistaking the band's logo for having something to do with Joan Jett--yeah, yeah, I'm getting old and out of touch. I even heard, and liked to some extent, their hit tune from a couple of years back, the one riffing on that Iggy Pop song used in the film Trainspotting. Of course, I've really had no idea who they are or what they're about until earlier this evening when I saw them play their new single on Leno. Needless to say, I really dug what I saw. Jet fucking rocks.

According to this Wikipedia article, these Australian lads are something of a classic rock revivalist band, heavily relying on the Beatles and the Stones, but also treating the entire classic rock genre as their own little tool box, successfully merging the signature sounds of artists as diverse as the Who and T. Rex--"to the sound of old T-Rex - who's next?" Along with that, says the article, has come a pounding from rock critics, who have blasted Jet for, I guess, daring to play in an old style--that is, they appear to be too derivative for serious music guys who know more about music than me. I swear to god, if critics today were writing about Beethoven when he was composing, they'd be blasting him for deciding to work in the Viennese classical style, which had been around for decades beforehand; "you're ripping off Mozart," they'd exclaim. Well, fuck 'em. The problem with classic rock is that so-called classic rock stations play the same 250 or so songs ad nauseam: the genre itself still has buttloads of unexplored territory.

And kids today know that. Jet is extraordinarily popular, I understand, with the teen and twenty-something set. It's too damned bad that the American music industry appears to share the critics' view on classic rock, which is probably why we have to import bands like Jet and the Vines from overseas, instead of looking to the countless good bands here in the States doing the same kind of material.

Anyway, here's a link to the video for Jet's "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is." Check it out, 'cause it's great.


Classic rock gets a much needed shot in the arm.

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THE STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE OF THE MONTH IS...



Dr. McCoy, Mr. Scott, and Admiral Kirk!

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Congressional Report Finds Convicted Lobbyist
Had Contact With Karl Rove, Ken Mehlman

From ABC News courtesy of AlterNet:

The report from the Republican-led House Government Affairs Committee stated that Abramoff had as many as 485 contacts with the White House, and prime among his lobbying targets was former White House political director Ken Mehlman, and Bush's adviser Karl Rove.

Of those 485 contacts, 345 were described as meetings or other in-person contacts; 71 were described as phone conversations and 69 were e-mail exchanges.

The records detailed in the recent report span from Jan. 2001 to Mar. 2004.

And

After Abramoff pled guilty to illegal lobbying, officials at the White House said they barely new him and all they knew was what they read in the papers.

Click here for the rest.

What with the release of the NIE data showing that the Iraq war actually causes more terrorism, the release of the damning Woodward book about the Bush administration, and the Foley gay lust scandal, it's been a big week in terms of GOP wildfires, and I fear that the above linked story is going to end up being lost in all the smoke. But this is big. It definitively links the White House to the Abramoff lobbying scandal, which has already put several Republicans behind bars. Even bigger, we've now caught the White House red handed in a big fucking lie, nothing blurry about this, no way to blame it on "bad intelligence" or liberals or whatever the scapegoat of the day is.

I mean, I was already pretty sure that Abramoff's tentacles reached the Oval Office, given his clout among Republicans, but this proves it. How much more of this will it take to convince the die-hards that the Conservative Movement is kaput?

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THERE'S NOTHING LIKE A SEX SCANDAL FOR
INSPIRING OVERBLOWN MORAL OUTRAGE

I do my best here at Real Art to completely ignore internet political gossip guy Matt Drudge in the vain hope that it might make him go away. No such luck, of course; I think we're definitely stuck with him for a while, which sucks because he drives me completely batty. It's not that he's conservative, which I can deal with, and besides, relative to other right-wing bloggers and radio hosts, he's not even really off the spectrum in terms of extremism. What gets me about Drudge is that he's a whiney and arrogant little shit who brings out whatever dregs of jock remain within me from years ago. That is, I'd love to beat the shit out of him, and I'm sure I could, even though I haven't been in a fistfight since sixth grade. The smarmy little fuck has it coming.

Anyway, I have to admit that, even though I've only been to his site once or twice, I do occasionally listen to his radio show, and his reaction to what the left is calling "Predatorgate," the scandal over the coverup of former Florida GOP Congressman Mark Foley's creepy sexual emails sent to underage male Congressional pages, again made me want to give him a swirly. The long and short of it all is that he's doing a complete reversal of his well known moral outrage over Clinton's trysts with Monica Lewinsky, and essentially blaming the boy pages for...what?...entrapping Foley, I guess. I mean, he didn't come right out and say it, but he gave listeners everything they needed to come to the conclusion. And by "listeners," I mean what I assume to be his usual moronic radio fans--he actually doesn't give any reason to blame the kids, but that's how he was structuring his argument, if you want to call such pseudo-intellectual tripe an "argument."

Crooks and Liars has some audio clips of Drudge's bullshit here. It's pretty amazing, especially when factoring in how he was so much a part of the feeding frenzy over Bill and Monica. Like I said, complete reversal.

On the other hand, which is just so typical of both sides in this country, nobody on the left side of the blogosphere is even mentioning the fact that, among all his squirrely spewing, Drudge raised a couple of good points, which makes me want to beat his sniveling ass all the more. Anyway, Mr. Internet Pussy observed that Foley never actually did anything short of sending out some creepy emails. He never touched any of these guys. He never even seriously solicited them. Republican Speaker of the House Hastert was probably right when he described the correspondence as "inappropriate," but, as far as I can tell, there was nothing illegal about it. Drudge even went a step further and declared that the age of consent in the District of Columbia is 16, so, even if Foley did hook up with any of these boys, he broke no law as long as it took place in Washington.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying what Foley did was somehow right or good or that he shouldn't have resigned his seat. What I am saying is that this is very quickly turning into a political witch hunt. Both liberals and conservatives are calling for investigations and want Foley, and anybody who hushed up his sexual utterances, behind bars. That's seriously fucked up. I feel pretty certain that when all the dust settles, nobody's going to jail at all because nobody broke any laws.

The real story here is Republican hypocricy, which is quite a big deal in and of itself. Foley was a gay elected official in an anti-gay party, who has voted multiple times for anti-gay bills, and whose very gay emails to teenaged boys were covered up by anti-gay party leaders in order to keep his seat "safe." In other words, the Republican Party isn't really anti-gay in any philosophical sense: bashing the queers is only something they do in order to get all those fundamentalist and homophobic votes--when push comes to shove, they really don't give a shit who's screwing who; all they care about is power. Do I need to connect the dots? Conservatism is a lie. Conservative leaders just don't care about conservative principles. It's all a facade to get votes.

That's pretty big news, and for the life of me, I just can't figure out why liberals are being so fucking stupid by jumping on the anti-sex hysteria wagon long ago created and still largely controlled by the forces of American Puritanism. Ultimately, it's counterproductive, not to mention anti-liberal. Why isn't the real story good enough?

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Bob Woodward: Bush Misleads On Iraq

Earlier this evening, investigative journalist Bob Woodward related the major details of his third Bush book State of Denial to 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace. Real Art readers might recall that I have nothing but loathing for the onetime Watergate good guy reporter because he ultimately came to represent everything that's gone wrong with the corporate news media, arrogance, deference to conservatives, insider thinking, and extreme closeness to the officials and stories they cover. Woodward's a real pig, and his first two books on our President were, according to all reasonable reports, nothing but mindless ejaculations of man-love and bullshit.

But now it appears that he's lost his taste for Presidential semen; the new book sounds like a hit job. 'Bout time, too. If the interview is indicative of the book's major themes, it doesn't really sound like I need to read it. Most of what he has to say has been said countless times in the foreign and left-wing press for several years now: Bush has no idea what's going on, and is fiercely resistant to anyone who tries to get him to face reality, including his own father. We already know that. What is important, however, is not the book itself, but the guy who wrote it. Woodward has so much respect and credibility in press and Washington circles that it is impossible to think that his switching sides isn't the equivalent of a nuke going off. I think we are in the middle of witnessing a vast change in the conventional wisdom. Like I said, 'bout time.

On the other hand, there was one little bit in the interview that interested me greatly.

From 60 Minutes:

Cheney stunned Woodward by revealing that a frequent advisor to the Bush White House is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served Presidents Nixon and Ford during the Vietnam War.

"He’s back," Woodward says. "In fact, Henry Kissinger is almost like a member of the family. If he’s in town, he can call up and if the president’s free, he’ll see him."

Woodward recorded his on-the-record interview with Cheney, and here’s what the vice president said about Henry Kissinger’s clout: "Of the outside people that I talk to in this job I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than just about anybody else. He just comes by and I guess at least once a month," Cheney tells Woodward. "I sit down with him."

Asked whether the president also meets with Kissinger, Cheney told Woodward, "Yes. Absolutely."

The vice president also acknowledged that President Bush is a big fan of Kissinger.

"Now, what’s Kissinger’s advice? In Iraq, he declared very simply: 'Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.' This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again. Because in his view the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will. That we didn’t stick to it," Woodward says.

He says Kissinger is telling the president to stick to it, stay the course. "It’s right out of the Kissinger playbook," Woodward says.

Click here for the rest.

Kissinger is, of course, quite a brilliant and educated man. But any fool knows that brilliance and education in no way innoculate an individual against common stupidity. That is, Henry's ideas about global strategy and American use of military power were thoroughly discredited over thirty years ago--he never figured out that a third world nation, if it is determined enough, is fully capable of bringing a super power to its knees by creative use of guerilla warfare. But now this fool has the President's ear, and he's telling him that we can and must win an unwinnable war. And our damn-fool President believes him, which means that we're definitely not leaving as long as Bush occupies the Oval Office.

Of course, we already knew that, even before we knew about Kissinger bringing some pseudo-intellectuality to the "stay the course" plan. Nonetheless, it's depressing.

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FOX NEWS TV RATINGS TAKE A NOSEDIVE

From the AP via Yahoo courtesy of AlterNet:

Slumping Fox celebrates 10th anniversary

Fox News Channel will mark its 10th anniversary this week in an unusual position: knocked back on its heels. The network is in the midst of its first-ever ratings slump. Cable news' most stable lineup is being juggled. And the blow-up over President Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace suggests that Democrats are attacking Fox because they perceive the same vulnerability in the network as they do in the Bush administration.

And

But the years of explosive growth have ended at Fox. Viewership over the first eight months of the year was down 5 percent compared to 2005, with a steeper 13 percent decline in prime-time, according to Nielsen Media Research. For 12 straight months, Fox's prime-time audience has been smaller than the year before. Meanwhile, CNN viewership inched up 5 percent this year through August. On a typical day this year, Fox's audience is 845,000 while CNN's is 466,000.

"It's hard," Ailes said, "to win the Super Bowl every year."

Click here for the rest.

While I don't want to start celebrating Fox's demise too early, I can't help but get some satisfaction over this. As Fox chief Roger Ailes observes in the article, they're still in first place, all day long, by very comfortable margins, but this is the first time in propaganda network's history that they've lost ground in terms of audience numbers. The obvious conclusion to make is that because Americans are getting sick of Republicans, they're also getting sick of the GOP's biggest media cheerleader. I think it's safe to say that Fox is going to continue to be a news media player for years to come simply because some thirty percent of the US electorate really does believe that "fair and balanced" isn't a bald faced lie, and that the terrorists really do "hate our freedom." Other Americans, however, who were freaked out by 9/11 and then comforted by the artificial testosterone spewing forth from the orifices of Fox's colorful cast of demagogues, have slowly come, after witnessing countless bigtime Republican blunders that not even Fox could successfully spin positively, to their senses. That's a good thing.

You know, if the weak-kneed Democrats are unable to take Congress in November, it might not be such a bad thing: two more years of self-destructive Republican rule may be just what it takes to permanently discredit the Conservative Movement. That would be an even better thing.

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REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS COVER UP
COLLEAGUE'S HOT GAY LUST FOR UNDERAGE BOYS

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

G.O.P. Aides Knew in Late ’05 of E-Mail

Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday.

The exchanges began with what Republicans now describe as an “overfriendly” e-mail message from Mr. Foley to the unidentified teenager.

But news reports about the exchanges led to the disclosure of e-mail correspondence with other former pages in which the discussions became more and more sexually explicit. Shortly after he was confronted by ABC News on Friday about the subject, Mr. Foley, who represented a south Florida district, resigned from the House.

And

Among those who became aware earlier this year of the fall 2005 communications between Mr. Foley and the 16-year-old page, who worked for Representative Rodney Alexander, Republican of Louisiana, were Representative John A. Boehner, the majority leader, and Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Mr. Reynolds said in a statement Saturday that he had also personally raised the issue with Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.

Click here for the rest.

I don't really know what the legal ramifications are for this, or even if it amounts to anything worse than a simple case of sexual harassment, but I do know that I'm really starting to wonder if elected Republicans honestly believe what they say they believe. Of course, I know that there are millions of American citizens who identify themselves as Republican and steadfastly support what we traditionally understand as conservative principles: small government, low taxes, less spending, Christian sexuality, that sort of thing. But the last five years of GOP rule have brought us much bigger government, higher taxes for average Americans relative to taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and much more federal spending. Add to that all the lobbying and pay-for-vote scandals that have been rocking Washington for months now. Mix in tales of fundamentalist Christian Tom DeLay's drunken hot tub parties, and GOP porn star Mary Carey's stories about how many Republicans have hit on her at Republican events. And now this business about covering up Foley's underage gay internet sex shenanigans.

It's hard enough being subjected for years to all this right-wing bullshit spewing out of D.C., but the possibility that they don't even believe their own rhetoric may be just too much for me to bear. These guys are the biggest liars in history.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
BLOWOUT WEEKEND II: TEXAS, LSU AGAIN
DEFEAT VASTLY OVERMATCHED OPPONENTS

From the AP via ESPN:

Texas torments Sam Houston
with Sooner showdown looming

Sam Houston State was little more than a scrimmage for No. 7 Texas. Bring on Oklahoma.

Colt McCoy passed for two touchdowns, Henry Melton ran for two more and the Longhorns emptied their bench and still piled up the points on Division I-AA Sam Houston State in a 56-3 win Saturday night.

Next up, the rival Sooners who won five straight over Texas before the Longhorns ended the losing streak last season in their run to the national championship.

While thousands of fans left early, many who stayed to the end chanted "Beat OU!" as the Longhorns left the field.

"I've been waiting for this moment," McCoy said. "My whole life."

The Longhorns first had to dispatch an overmatched opponent in a game that was as one-sided as expected. Sam Houston State was Texas' first I-AA opponent since 1992 and the Longhorns (4-1) made quick work of the Bearkats (2-2).

Texas led 42-0 by halftime and scored more than 50 points for the third time this season.

Click here for the rest.

Jeez, when the article talks more about next week's opponent than this week's, you know there's something a bit off. Of course, I too am looking forward to UT/OU next weekend, which will obviously be a real game. Not that I have anything against Sam Houston State: they have a good theater department, an excellent criminal justice degree program, a funny mascot, and a decent football team. For I-AA football, that is. All of which brings me to this question: would somebody tell me why the hell Texas played these guys? It's just as well that it wasn't on TV; I watched what I'm sure was a much more interesting matchup instead, Florida versus Alabama.

Anyway, beat OU!

Again. from the AP via ESPN:

Russell's career day leads No. 9 LSU over Miss. State

Russell threw for a career-best 330 yards and matched a school record with 14 consecutive completions Saturday as No. 9 LSU beat the Bulldogs 48-17 in a game delayed when lightning sent spectators scurrying for cover.

After the storm passed, the junior quarterback returned and ended up completing 18 of 20 passes, including three for touchdowns.

The career day for Russell was by design. LSU coach Les Miles said he and his staff favored a pass-heavy attack after scouting Mississippi State's defense on film.

"We felt like we had advantages down the field throwing," Miles said. "If the defense gives us opportunities in the air, we're certainly going to take them. ... [Russell] is a pretty special quarterback."

LSU (4-1, 1-1 SEC) led 35-0 early in the second quarter, prompting thousands of fans to leave at halftime. A 52-minute delay while a thunderstorm rolled through further emptied the stands in the third quarter, when the score was 35-3.

Click here for the rest.

Well, obviously, this was much more interesting than the Texas game, if only because Mississippi State is a bona fide I-A team, and a conference opponent, to boot. But then, "to boot" is exactly what the Tigers did to the Bulldogs' collective butt. I only watched the second half of this one, which was on CBS here in Baton Rouge, because of the annoying 11:30 a.m. kickoff time. Thankfully, the in-stadium announcer, who was really only about six blocks away from where I slept the morning and early afternoon away, woke me up in time to catch me some LSU football. Which wasn't really all that exciting given the Tigers' 30 odd point lead when I finally switched on the tube. Ah well, as I said last week about UT beating Iowa State, at least it's a conference win.

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