Four years ago.

Is it safe to ignore every threatening thing the CIA claims? I'm beginning to think so.

DU

For those who’ve been in law enforcement or associated with it in Los Angeles long enough are more than familiar with attorney Stephen Yagman. In this week’s LA CITYBEAT, are the extremely detailed last rights of an attorney reviled by many and probably lauded by some as he was sentenced on tax evasion and bankruptcy charges in federal court.

Josh

The KFI nation lived up to its Know Nothing reputation--hey, Eloise in SanTana: still railing about Mexican kids stealing and Mexicans husbands learning to lie from their wives?--but I also received many calls and emails from Latinos and gabachos thanking me to providing a different view on the Reconquista than what KFI hosts usually offer. More importantly, I received calls and emails on all types of questions--the lines were lit up all night, and I received at least 100 emails in those three hours.

It was a refreshing break from that station's unrelenting hostility toward perhaps one third of the population it supposedly broadcasts to.

DU

Stephen King once said that a dedication in the beginning of a book shows that the author "gets it," that he understood that writing was an act of will that you can't do without others helping you along the way. This was how it was with the bar exam -- I couldn't have done it without my friends, co-workers and family encouraging me, and I thank them for everything. I'd also like to thank my agent, who saw an unknown kid and took a chance, and well as Weinstein brothers for making this a possibility.

DU

Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

"Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN," Luisa writes. "I was asked to submit questions including "lighthearted/fun" questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance."

So the Most Trusted Name In News ditched a prescient, topical comment highly relevant to the swing-state voters of Nevada for some insultingly shallow "fun" question?

Your average television drama has more respect for its audience than these "journalists."

DU

We are embracing the term predator, which connotes strength and opportunity. After all, the American Eagle is a predator.

“I had more cash for two weeks—until the loan fees caught up with me.”

Sam F. Sanders
Houston, Texas

This is one elaborate joke.

DU

Quizzed by CNN about whether he has ever used steroids, pro wrestler John Cena quickly responded, "Absolutely not!" -- then offered nearly three minutes of follow up. But when CNN made its edit to their special, "Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling," Cena's response was replaced with: "People conceive things because performance enhancing drugs have got the spotlight. It's a hot thing to talk about. I can't tell you that I haven't, but you'll never be able to prove that I have."

Needless to say, the folks at World Wrestling Entertainment are pissed! They've posted the original, unedited video on their official website, along with the following response:

You can break the rules -- but only if the ref doesn't see it.

DU

The little guy, of course, usually loses, and if he does win its often because he's no longer Small, but Big. At which point he becomes the Red Sox -- no longer lovable losers but aloof winners.

And what if the little guy stays Little? Should they finally get their wish -- the Kurds are independent! Quebec is free of their cruel Canadian masters! -- you end up with a mass of small nations, led by inexperienced men and afraid of the neighborhood bullies.

Let's take a look around Russia's neighborhood:

A piece in The New York Times today demonstrates that a growing general grasp of the new hard geopolitics on the Eurasian dual continent, driven by economics -- in particular oil and natural gas -- rather than the traditional movement of armies.

In the story, Adam Ellick writes that "Russian power is rapidly returning to the Baltics, only this time the weapons are oil and money, not tanks."

"...the Baltic states want it both ways. They want NATO and European Union protection from possible Russian aggression, but also the cheap fuel and pipeline tariffs they get as a channel for Russia's energy.

But, like the rest of Europe, they will have to fend for themselves.

In sum, the three small Baltic nations currently benefit from oil pipelines from Russia that pass through them on its way to western Europe -- they collect tariffs along the way, and fear Russian plans to build bigger pipelines far to the south that would bypass them. They wish to stay in the good graces of Russia while whining to Europe whenever Russian haX0rs show up. Russian money is beginning to trump European help, and now the Baltic nations, sentimentalized at the end of the Cold War for their brave resistance to a crumbling Soviet superpower, are again under Russian influence.

You feel bad, sure, but what can we do? You can't unmake the geographic fact that the Baltics are the tiny neighbors of a gigantic Russia, anymore than we can magically force China to leave the small, landlocked Tibet or let the Kurd's powerful, numerous neighbors to simply let them be. Usually the lion eats the lamb, biblical parables notwithstanding. America can only do so much.

Not a pleasant thought, but a truthful one.

DU

]]> daniel 2007-11-12T10:17:08-08:00 http://www.themechanicaleye.com/archives/2007/11/check_out_the_g.html A sneak preview on the guided tour of the upcoming George W. Bush Presidential Library:

Inside this room is a real section of the World Trade Center, which collapsed on September 11, 2001, after it was attacked by cowards.

Using a special chemical process, the library is able to keep this section of the World Trade Center burning and producing thick, acrid smoke forever.

The cost of admission will be classified - just give your wallet or purse to the friendly cashiers in front and they'll take out the appropriate amount of money.

DU

]]> daniel 2007-11-08T15:40:12-08:00 http://www.themechanicaleye.com/archives/2007/11/dont_mess_with.html L.A. CityBeat has a scoop on the firing (and subsequent re-hiring) of Erwin Chemerinsky by the budding U.C. Irvine Law School, and boy does it make the O.C. look provincial:

One of the new tidbits to come to light is the advice [to Chancellor Michael Drake] offered by Associate Justice W. F. Rylaarsdam of the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana, who implies in an Aug. 30 letter that it will be hard to raise money if Erwin gets the job. “I am concerned that he is the wrong person for a law school in Orange County. I do not know to what extent the new law school will look to the Orange County business community for support. If such support is contemplated, however, the selection committee should realize that Professor Chemerinsky and the faculty he would be inclined to recruit would not be well received by that community.”

That is, that boy just ain't our type. Chemerinsky might have literally written the book on American constitutional law and will attract mountains of prestige and goodwill to the county's most prestigious university, but it might upset local concerns, so let's get a Harriet Miers type, shall we?

It literally took a national outcry to defeat this kind of short-sighted thinking.

DU

]]> daniel 2007-11-08T12:02:29-08:00 http://www.themechanicaleye.com/archives/2007/11/juiciful.html Sadly, the people of South Carolina have been deprived of a powerful voice in the 2008 primaries:

On the campaign trail recently, Colbert said, "I promise, if elected, I will crush the state of Georgia. ... Our peaches are more numerous than Georgia's. They are more juiciful."

The Colbert Nation will have to draft him as an independent. So it shall be.

DU

]]> daniel 2007-11-02T15:49:57-08:00 http://www.themechanicaleye.com/archives/2007/10/invasion.html Illegal immigrants are seriously the scapegoat du jour with independents, at least according to the James Carville/Bob Shrum outfit Democracy Corps (report here). Democrats are concerned with trivial thing like the Iraq War, while the big issue with the self-described non-partisans are "unprotected borders." Admittedly, its losers like Bob Shrum making these claims, but the numbers he puts up sound depressingly plausible.

This issue attracts more windbaggery than intelligence-- immigration peaked in 2000, but you wouldn't know that if you just paid attention to the Minutemen. That is what gives me hope -- the more often solid data comes out and is publicized, the less people will panic about hordes of Mexicans stealing their jerbs.

And if ifs and buts were candies and nuts...

DU

]]> daniel 2007-10-31T11:10:39-08:00 http://www.themechanicaleye.com/archives/2007/10/sheriffblogging.html I don't usually talk on about goings-on in my locality, but this is way to rich to ignore:

Christine Hanley at the Los Angeles Times is reporting late night that Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona... "has been indicted on federal corruption charges stemming from a lengthy investigation into allegations that he misused his office for financial gain."

He was famous in OC (and nowhere else) as "America's Sheriff," a moniker Larry King gave him after the OC Sheriff's Department captured a child-killer whose crime gained national prominence. Local OC Weekly reporter R. Scott Moxley has been following the guy for years. Now America's Sheriff has to deal with federal charges that he was caught giving local Corona del Mar sleazebag Don Haidl, son of convicted rapist Gregory Haidl (more on the trial here), placement as an assistant sheriff while accepting favors and money.

This is one OC story I'd like a TV show out of!

DU

]]> daniel 2007-10-30T13:05:41-08:00 http://www.themechanicaleye.com/archives/2007/10/because_hes_wor.html Since every day in Baghdad is nice and sunny (and has been since March 2003), the Bush administration is pressing into action a name near and dear to every Iraq expert: Ahmad Chalabi. He'll now be in charge of pressuring the Iraqi government into providing electricity and other basic services to the nation.

After all, that's the only thing the Iraqi government lacks: conviction. They're not properly motivated!

Michael "Heck of a Job" Brown was briefly considered for this position, but declined the offer.

DU

]]> daniel 2007-10-29T07:57:57-08:00 http://www.themechanicaleye.com/archives/2007/10/glorious_glorio.html After several months of harassing a private in Iraq who wrote a few allegedly false war stories of the kind that wouldn't get much attention at a bar, John Cole at Balloon Juice noticed that a lot of self-appointed "Citizen Journalists" are calling it quits:

Are we as a public not lucky to have such magnanimous loudmouths controlling our discourse? After months of slobbering at the smell, feigning outrage, penning column after self-promoting column baying at the indecency of it all, our wise and noble Emanuel (himself a young man) has decided to let it all go.

Beauchamp, it seems, has paid his debt to Emanuel. I am sure the Baghdad diarist will be thrilled to learn this.

Oh boy, this needs some backstory. Beauchamp, an Army private and aspiring writer, wrote anonymously as the "Baghdad Diarist" for The New Republic before he was outed by enterprising conservative bloggers who didn't like his stories casting American troops in a negative light. Stories included a Humvee that tried to run over a dog and a fellow soldier who picked up a child's scalp from a mass grave and wore it as a cap. One story -- about terrorists cutting off a boy's tongue for befriending Americans -- didn't cast Americans as villains, so it got ignored. Beauchamp's articles admittedly had a lurid tone that sounded less journalistic and a bit more like, well, a story for a magazine.

The Army investigated the stories, but its not clear it what it uncovered and what it verified -- Matt Drudge had documents he touted as reports incriminating Beachamp, but he took down almost as fast as he posted them, and what he had appeared inconclusive. Throughout all this, several "prominent" political blogs on the right grew obsessed with the story, since it showed the American media's intense dislike of the troops, America, freedom, Jesus, and cheeseburgers. Or something.

If you don't recall any of this, that's probably very good. Most of the people furiously pounding their keyboards over this non-story don't notice how no one else seems to care either. All of the alleged stories pale to the some of the very real atrocities and stories that filter out of Iraq, from the present and into the future. As Roy Edroso puts it:

You have to remember that next to nobody reads our stupid blogs or listens to our stupid podcasts and watches our stupid vlogs. Our framings and formulations are intramural sport on the junior varsity level. What people might read or see or hear is a credentialed buffoon like Glenn Beck, who is probably very happy to hear that somebody in the "new media" supports his bullshit and may thus feel empowered -- fuck the advertisers! the real people get me! -- to step it up.

A lot of bloggers posting our way through the 21st century lack this perspective -- a lot of them think they're striking a blow for this or that cause while looking like little kids wrestling at the park. Sure, its amusing, but not for very long, and its just something to gawk at on your way to work or to the gym or grocery store.

DU

]]> daniel 2007-10-26T09:44:12-08:00