First Comp, First Trophy

The Ridley Raider Band performed in its first marching band competition on Saturday, Sept. 25, garnering a darn good 77.75 score. We were unopposed in our size class, so we got the trophy by default, but that score indicates a solid performance.

The season ahead looks very promising.

Oh--and Ridley's football team won that night, too, despite the absence of the band. That makes the football team record 4 and 0 overall, 3 and 0 league.

For more about the Ridley Raider Band, check this out; for more about marching band competition in general, try here.

Jesus Christ, Superman--NOT!

Despite earlier reporting that had James Caviezel all but sleeping in the red-and-blue tights, it now seems that that may have been wishful-thinking on the part of somebody.

The following is from Walter Scott's "Personality Parade" in Parade magazine yesterday:

"The closest James...has come to playing a cartoon hero is a project he's considering titled M, based on a French comic-book series.....

Scott essentially says Caviezel has never even been approached about playing the Man of Steel.

An Apology

Sorry that so much of the blog has been political in recent days.

Maybe when the election is over we can get back to comics and other "real-world" stuff!

CBS Won't Vouch for Memos

--but, at least for this mild-mannered reporter, questions remain.

Here's what the AP is reporting:

"We should not have used them," CBS News President Andrew Heyward said. "That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."

CBS also said it was commissioning an independent panel to review the incident, and would announce the name of the participants shortly.

....

"We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry," [Rather] said. "It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism."

....

Rather this weekend interviewed Bill Burkett, a retired Texas National Guard official who has been mentioned as a possible source for the documents. His interview was to be broadcast on "CBS Evening News" on Monday.

CBS said Burkett acknowledged he provided the documents and said he deliberately misled a CBS producer, giving her a false account of their origin to protect a promise of confidentiality to a source.

So--what are my questions:

• Who was Burkett's "source"?
• Why did that source cobble these things together?
• Do these still fairly represent the thought processes of Killian at the time, as some have suggested they do?
• Why were "Buckhead" and the other wing-nuts so quick at being able to denounce them as fakes (IOW, did some of them have inside knowledge that they were "unreliable")?

The answers await...and probably will not be known until after the election.

GIs Told: Re-Up or It's Iraq for You

According to the Rocky Mountain News, soldiers at Fort Carson have been given something of an ultimatum--re-enlist with your current unit or you are more than likely going to be transferred to a unit headed for Iraq...where you'll be stuck for a minimum of a year.

Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum - re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.

Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday, said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity.

.....

The form, if signed, would bind the soldier to the 3rd Brigade until Dec. 31, 2007. The two soldiers said they were told that those who did not sign would be transferred out of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

....

"They told us if we don't re-enlist, then we'd have to be reassigned. And where we're most needed is in units that are going back to Iraq in the next couple of months. So if you think you're getting out, you're not," he said.

The brigade's presentation outraged many soldiers who are close to fulfilling their obligation and are looking forward to civilian life, the sergeant said.

Gee, and the Pentagon insists that Kerry's announcement of their "secret plan" to expand the forces in Iraq after the election is wrong.

GOP Claims Dems Plan to Ban Bibles

Yes, that headline is accurate and not an exaggeration. The AP reports:

Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November.

The literature shows a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "ALLOWED." The mailing tells West Virginians to "vote Republican to protect our families" and defeat the "liberal agenda."

What's more, the RNC isn't even attempting to deny it's their work:

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Friday that he wasn't aware of the mailing, but said it could be the work of the RNC. "It wouldn't surprise me if we were mailing voters on the issue of same-sex marriage," Gillespie said.

Same-sex marriage may be a legitimate issue in this campaign--although it shouldn't be--but banning the Bible is not. The only people even suggesting such a thing is possible are the GOP operatives who turned out this despicable mailing.

What do you think are the chances that Dubya will denounce this? Yeah, that's what I think, too.

"Shocked, shocked" once again

The LA Times reports:

It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service — a highly technical explanation posted within hours of airtime citing proportional spacing and font styles.

But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Times has found.

Yes, that's right, the mysterious "Buckhead"--who challenged the authenticity of the TANG memos within four hours of CBS airing its story--is a Republican operative. Gee, whoda thunk it?

Reached by telephone today, MacDougald, 46, confirmed that he is Buckhead, but declined to answer questions about his political background or how he knew so much about the CBS documents so fast.

"You can ask the questions but I'm not going to answer them," he told The Times. "I'm just going to stick to doing no interviews."

Think that might be because we'll find out stuff MacDougald wants kept hidden? Like maybe he had a hand in getting the dubious memos made and into CBS's hands in the first place? Or, alternatively, that he knows they're real and can actually provide a provenance trail?

And, of course, the RNC continues to deny knowing anything about any of this. Yeah, right.

Ridley 20, 'Haven 3

Let me explain:

I've never really been a football fan; never even attended a football game at any level--high school, college, pro--until my elder son began to play in Ridley High's marching band. I've now become a Ridley football fan.

One of our arch rivals over the past six years has been Strath Haven High. 'Haven had--until last week--not been beaten in a regular season game for the past 74 games! Another Central League team, Conestoga, narrowly beat them last week.

Tonight, we handed them their second defeat in a row...and more than a defeat, a rout. We held them to a single field goal, while we scored three touchdowns plus a couple of point-after kicks for a score of 20 to 3.

It was a wild game...both crowds were geared up, both bands played almost constantly. At the end, the Ridley fans stormed the field as our band played "Nah Nah Hey Hey Goodbye"--something I hadn't heard us play in several years.

Next week, the band has its first competition of the season. I'll report on that, too.

Not to Mention All Those Penny Jars at Home....

This is short, so I'll quote the entire AP piece here:

Cheney: Economic stats miss eBay sales

Associated Press

Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.

"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."

San Jose, Calif.-based EBay Inc. is an Internet auction site where anyone can sell just about anything, including clothing, cell phones, jewelry, memorabilia, trinkets and automobiles.

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney's comments show how "out of touch" he and President Bush are with the economy.

"If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at
lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking," Edwards said in a statement.

"Out of touch" puts it mildly. "Off the wall" is a better description. The amount of money changing hands on e-Bay, or all of the various cyber auction sites combined, is an eyedropper in the sea of this economy. Might as well include the relative pittances I and others make with through the Google Adsense program on sites like this one.

If Cheney thinks including those figures in the official economic forecasts would help the Bush campaign, he should go right ahead. But the difference between 0 and 1/1000 of one percent is statistically meaningless.

The Electoral College--why we need it

Unlike most liberal Democrats, I am a firm believer in the Electoral College. I think a nationwide popular vote count for president in a close election would be a recipe for disaster. (The Gore Bush difference in 2000 was only one-half of one percent nationally; want to go through Florida 2000 on a nation-wide basis?)

I won't go into all my arguments here--I'll simply direct you to Tony Isabella's message board, where a fascinating discussion of the EC is taking place. Look for the thread called "GOP mayor/elector may vote against Bush".

A Failure of Courage?

Edward Wasserman's column in today's Philadelphia Inquirer takes the news media to task for its failure to stand up to right-wing criticism:

News then becomes a negotiation - not a negotiation among discordant pictures of reality, as it always is, but an abject negotiation with a loud and bullying sliver of the audience. News of great significance becomes not an honest attempt to reflect genuinely contradictory realities, but a daily bargaining session with an increasingly factionalized public, a corrupted process in which elements of the news become offerings - payments really - in a kind of intellectual extortion.

There was a time when newspapers called a lie a lie, when a public official who spoke an untruth was challenged to back up his statement, and the paper supplied--in its news pages, not just editorial or commentary--the documentation to show that his lies were exactly that.

Today, newspapers (and all other media) deal instead in "on the one hand, on the other hand" journalism, in which the lie and the response to the lie are treated as of equal value, when it is no longer said, "This is the truth." The only truth now is that someone said something--whether that something is verity or not is beside the point.

This is not journalism, it is merely record-keeping, a variation of the kind of transcript kept in a trial. It simply records what people say, not whether what they say is truthful or even if it makes any sense.

A Visit to Muppet Labs....

Two Muppets named top scientists

EXETER, England (Reuters) -- Muppets Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker defeated Dr. Strangelove, Dana Scully of "X Files" fame and Star Trek's Mr. Spock to be voted Britain's favorite screen scientists. They beat their closest rival by a margin of 2 to 1 and won 33 percentof the 43,000 votes cast in an Internet poll published in Monday.

Spock came in a distance second with 15 percent followed by The Doctor, from Dr Who, who garnered 13 percent. Scully, the only woman in thepoll, came in sixth.

"They are accessible, humorous and occasionally blow each other up,"said Roland Jackson, of the British Association for the Advancement ofScience (BA). The balding, white-coated Honeydew and flame-haired, bulging-eyed Beaker created an array of crazy gadgets on the popular television show. "They're the kind of scientists you would like to be but never quite dared to," said Alan Slater, a scientist at the University of Exeter in southwestern England.

The poll, sponsored by the BA and the BBC cult television website gave the public five weeks to choose their favorite scientist from a shortlist of 10 that included Dr. Evil from the film "Austin Powers," Dr. Frankenstein, Frank N. Furter, of the "Rocky Horror Show Picture Show," Dr. Emmett Brown, of the film "Back to the Future" and Q of James Bond fame. Results of the poll were announced at the start of the week-long BA science conference here.

Asking the right questions

My buddy, Jack Curtin, has an interesting list of questions over on his political blog, The Great Disconnect.

Here's a sample:

Is there anybody--and thankfully this question isn't clouded with issues about heroism or morality--who truly believes that Dick Cheney is an inspiring and courageous leader?

Anybody?

Is there anybody who doesn't think that Zell Miller is, in addition to being a quisling and, y'know, a flip-flopper extraordinaire, insane?

Anybody?

I'm a middle-aged, unrepentant liberal child of the Viet Nam era. Jack is even older--and more unrepentant than I am. His blog should be required reading.

Too Wide a Net?

For all of you who think that the protestors in NYC this week were treated well--because the broadcast and cable news media didn't tell you otherwise (or much of anything about them)--maybe this article from the Philadelphia Inquirer will change your minds.

(Even the Inky--usually a good source--seems to be "hiding" this story, if only inadvertantly. It's not among the stories listed on its "Election 2004" page and I had to "sign in" to get the online version, as opposed to most of the other convention coverage which is open to all.)

"I didn't even know about the protest," said office worker Salter, who was released shortly after 2 p.m. and greeted by cheers from the crowd at Collect Pond Park. "They closed off streets and took everyone in. You cannot do that. You cannot say 'there's a lot of people in the street' and round them up."

Civil rights attorneys have accused the city of deliberately and indiscriminately rounding up large numbers of protesters by corralling them with orange plastic netting or blocking off streets, then detaining them for days to keep them from protesting again. They said a similar tactic was used in Philadelphia during the 2000 Republican National Convention.

...

Yesterday, a new group joined the crowd at Collect Pond Park - protester parents demanding to know what the police have done with their children.

They called their children the "disappeared" - scooped up while protesting throughout the city and detained for more than 40 hours.

"I've been trying to find him for two days," said Connie Steensman, a management consultant from Manhattan, of her 17-year-old son, Richard Prins. When she called for information, she said, she was told the protesters would be held until George Bush left New York.

The "disappeared"--that used to be a term we only applied to people arrested in banana republics.

Early Halloween?

Thanks to my wife for pointing out this site to me.

I'm not sure what the point of it all is, but hey....

Required Reading

No, I'm not handing out assignments, here.

But an interesting discussion has come up regarding required summer reading for school students on rec.arts.comics.strips, in regard to this week's (8/30-9/4) storyline in the strip, Zits, by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman.

So here's my question: If you have kids of middle school/junior high or high school age--or if you are in that category--did they have required summer reading, and what was it?

E-mail me with an answer.

Jesus Christ, Superman?

According to imdb, actor Jim Caviezel, best-known for his role as Jesus in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and previously seen in the title role of The Count of Monte Cristo, is all but signed to play the Man of Steel in the forthcoming film, currently planned to be directed by X-Men's Brian Singer.

As noted in the imdb story:

...according to respected comic book author Mark Miller, Caviezel's participation is all but guaranteed. He writes, "You remember I told you to relax about Superman? That a very, very trusted and experienced director we'd all love was coming over? That everything would be fine? Well, my same good buddy has informed me that Jim Caviezel is officially the new man of steel and what a perfect choice he is. Expect an announcement shortly."

All I can say is: Nothing is definite in Hollywood until papers are signed (and maybe not even then), and I hope this story is wrong.

Nothing against Caviezel as an actor, but I think casting any recognizable movie star as Superman is a huge mistake. The role requires such an incredible suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience that anything that yanks them out of the movie--like the sense of "Hey, that's Jim Caviezel!" or worse, "Hey, that's Jesus!"--destroys it.

There are immensely recognizable actors who have stepped into superhero roles without that problem. Michael Keaton made it work in the first two Batman films--but he was all-but unrecognizable under the mask anyway. The film flopped at the box office, but Alec Baldwin was an admirable Shadow...and again, makeup hid his features when in costume. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen made Professor X and Magneto into flesh-and-blood people in the two X-Men films so far, despite their instant recognizability--but I doubt Caviezel is in their class as an actor. And neither Xavier nor Magneto have to wear that incredibly iconic suit.

Will Caviezel be Kal-el? Boy, I hope not.