Non sequitur

The headline on Andrew Malcolm's LA Times blog post on Obama's speech last night was pretty amusing: "There's a pipe spewing a gazillion globs of oil into the gulf, so let's build more windmills". As non sequiturs go, it brought to mind the kid who, when asked what he thought of the fair responded "I like turtles!":

As the more cynical among us have come to expect, the President used the crisis to push for green energy solutions which are not yet fully developed nor will produce sufficient energy at a reasonable cost. But last night was not the time for such a speech. As Malcolm points out:

Instead, Obama was like a Harvard-trained nurse talking vacation to a new patient bleeding all over the ER floor. Hello, could we please stop the blood flow here before we discuss the long-term recovery?

We know, Mr. President. You want to move the country to alternative energy sources...we get it already. But how about dealing with and actually resolving the crisis at hand? We'll be happy to hear your take on solar and wind energy after oil stops gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and the crap is mopped up.

Watch the World Cup, you racists!

From The Nation by way of NPR, über-enlightened opinionator Dave Zirin explains why righty wingnuts hate soccer...it's because they're racists, of course:

Among adults, the sport is also growing because people from Latin America, Africa, and the West Indies have brought their love of the beautiful game to an increasingly multicultural United States. As sports journalist Simon Kuper wrote very adroitly in his book Soccer Against the Enemy, "When we say Americans don't play soccer we are thinking of the big white people who live in the suburbs. Tens of millions of Hispanic Americans [and other nationalities] do play, and watch and read about soccer." In other words, Beck rejects soccer because his idealized "real America" - in all its monochromatic glory – rejects it as well. To be clear, I know a lot of folks who can't stand soccer. It's simply a matter of taste. But for Beck it's a lot more than, "Gee. It's kind of boring." Instead it's, "Look out whitey! Felipe Melo's gonna get your mama!"

Makes sense. So instead of soccer, racist Americans would much prefer to tune

in to baseball and American football, sports clearly dominated by all-white, all-American players. Oh, wait...

But that's just the NFL! Major League Baseball is nothing but white guys! Oh, wait...

And David "Big Papi" Ortiz is from Dominican Republic. He's a twofer! Not shown here are Hideki Okajima, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Junichi Tazawa, all from Japan.

Ace makes some great points about why soccer hasn't exactly caught fire here as a spectator sport.

How to plug the damn hole

This oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is, to say the least, horrendous. The environmental impact to wildlife and the coastal ecosystem is sure to last for decades to come, not to mention the economic impact on coastal residents. We're now approaching Day 50, and oil continues to spew into the ocean, so here's my inexpert, wholly uninformed idea on how to stop it.

First, construct a form and drop it so that it surrounds the wellhead (or whatever it's called). This would need to be a little bit higher than the "plumbing" from which the oil is now pouring.

Next, lower a pipe roughly the same diameter as the size of the leak directly over the opening, and just start dumping dry concrete inside the form until it completely fills the form. Yes, concrete will set underwater.

Let the tankers queue up to capture the oil.

Obviously this is an over-simplification of what would be needed, but seriously...how difficult would it be?

The mask slips

On the occasion of Helen Thomas' abrupt retirement from her perch in the White House press room, I suppose it's only right to offer her our gratitude. Without her jarring expression of her opinion of Jews in Israel, we might still be laboring under the assumption that the Left is every bit as tolerant and unbigoted as they claim to be.

In case you missed it, here's what Helen Thomas had to say about Israeli Jews in Israel:

Earlier today I caught this tweet from a liberal on Twitter, @Shoq:

I was stunned. I shouldn't have been, but I was. I've long known that Lefties are mostly hostile to the policies of the state of Israel, but not necessarily to Israeli Jews. Yet here was a pretty popular Lefty on Twitter (he's got well north of 8000 followers) agreeing that we all might be better off if Israeli Jews were forced back into the Diaspora.

Yeah, I know...that's one guy. So I checked Daily Kos and came across this post from a barely-literate subscriber, who of course blames the evil Jews at AIPAC for Helen Thomas' downfall:

Whether you believe her statements or not, Thomas knows that saying things like that in public would come with the risk of dealing with a mob like Henry and all using the chances they can get to rid of her once and for all. Especially when AIPAC always hovering around. There just seemed like there was no way she was going to survive this one.

Still though, thank you DC Stenography society of stupidity for going after an 89 year respected wonderful journalist instead of doing your job and calling out your other colleagues who said controversial cringe like things about Muslims over the years.

So, that's two guys, plus the zillion or so commenters on the post. I'm sorry, but looking for more support for these sentiments is just too depressing because there's too much of it out there.