Move Over, LeBron!

Seems NBA players aren’t the only ones who can sell sports shoes…

Democrat Texas State Senator Wendy Davis wore a pair of sneaks during her 12 hour epic filibuster attempt last week to shut down Rethugly efforts to stop abortion in Texas.

Since then, those sneaks have been the hottest sport shoes on Amazon!

Wendy Davis’ Filibuster Shoes Provoke Passionate Amazon Reviews

Who knew a filibuster is actually a great form of product placement?

The Mizuno Women’s Wave Rider 16 running shoe, worn by Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) during her epic filibuster earlier this week, have become a symbol of the pro-choice position, at least if recent Amazon reviews are any indication. (They also were the best-selling shoe on Amazon on Friday)

The shoe’s Amazon page has been bombarded by the site’s users, creating an online forum for people to celebrate or deride the Texas state senator. (Davis wore the shoes during an 11-hour filibuster that in large part prevented the Texas state Senate from passing one of the harshest anti-abortion bills in the country.)

 

Geez, I can just see Speaker Boehner now, schlepping a pair of venerable Chuck Taylors…

 

Bill Maher Hits Supreme Court Voting Rights Racism On the Head

Maher does it again…

The New and Improved…Jim Crow.

 

For The George Zimmerman Defense…Race

Kind of hard to escape the last few days evisceration of the first prosecution witness in the Trayvon Martin murder case by the media.  And the role race has played in that.

Rachel Jeantel can’t read cursive. That’s the main takeaway from the fourth day of the George Zimmerman trial: Jeantel, the heavyset, snappy prosecution witness who was on the phone with her friend Trayvon Martin minutes before he died, cannot read script handwriting. Defense attorney Don West underlined that fact for the benefit of the jury, the general public, and everyone else looking for an excuse to dismiss her testimony.

Given the extent to which Jeantel’s demeanor was covered on television and in news articles, you’d be excused for thinking—as Jezebel’s Callie Beusman put it—that she was the one on trial. Over the past couple of days, Jeantel has recounted that Martin told her he was being followed by a “creepy-ass cracker” who, it seems, then proceeded to attack him. Pundits, meanwhile, have made snickering observations that have had little to do with the substance of her testimony. They’ve criticized Jeantel’s weight, her attitude, her manner of dress, and her mumbling, inarticulate answers to West’s questions. These observations are generally framed as discussions of her credibility and how she’ll be received by the jury. But they’re also an excuse to point and laugh at a poor, black teenager who comes from an America that we’d rather not acknowledge exists.

The media has consistently treated Jeantel as if she were some sassy alien life-form. TheNew York Daily News story about yesterday’s proceedings focused on Jeantel-as-sideshow, calling the cursive story an “especially cringe-worthy moment,” and noting that, “[a]t one point, the key prosecution witness blurted out, ‘That’s retarded, Sir’ in response to West’s suggestion that Martin attacked Zimmerman.” On Piers Morgan Tonight, Morgan repeated the phrase “creepy-ass cracker” as if it were some inscrutable bit of baby talk. The day before, panelist Jayne Weintraub disdainfully asserted that “it’s really not about this young woman’s … credibility, because her credibility, it’s a wash whatever her testimony is. Yes, she was a difficult witness. She was impossible.”…

Racial and socioeconomic stereotypes play differently in different contexts. The statements and mannerisms that make Jeantel a laughingstock now might have made her a viral video star outside the courtroom. As I was watching Jeantel’s testimony and the subsequent reaction, I couldn’t help thinking about Aisha Harris’ Slate piece from Mayabout the “fairly recent trend of ‘hilarious’ black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a ‘colorful’ style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class.” Charles Ramsey, Antoine Dodson, Sweet Brown—these people caught white America’s attention in part because they so blatantly violated normative behavior. If Jeantel would’ve been filmed saying “That’s retarded, sir” to some reporter on the streets outside her house, the Internet might well be singing her praises. Black people are celebrated when they play the fool in the proper setting.

 

The Mack Truck That Hit Paula Deen

Have to say I’ve certainly enjoyed cooking up a Paula Deen recipe or two. Most of her food is guaranteed to send you heart doctor into apoplexy over your sky high cholesterol…

But it was so damn good!

 

Paula is authentic deep South. Unfortunately for some folks that carries a lot of racial baggage. Some of that baggage is in the form of using distasteful racial epithets in common conversation between folks sharing the same background. Usually anymore when there is nobody else around to overhear.

Now, Paula – like myself is old enough to have lived through some of those bad old days of segregation. Led by racist and segregationist Democrats and Dixiecrats making a last stand at the schoolhouse door, folks from her world tried to stop folks from my world from having equal rights.. Attacking and abusing Civil Rights workers at the Lunch Counters. At the worst, even murdering them as they drove down back country roads. There are those who followed those very same Dixiecrats to the Republican Party, where that type of racism was made safe by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan for their kind as amply demonstrated even today.

And then there are a lot more Southern  folks who left those ignorant attitudes with the times- even though they seldom to be quite enough in the majority to get elected…

Decent people seldom do anymore.

So…Paula has said some racist things. And judging from how quickly the companies who were partners in her business empire are scrambling  for the door – there is a lot more “bad acting” that hasn’t hit the presses that they are afraid will be uncovered.

But in the scale of things…Whose racism has done more damage t America, Paula and her well used butter dish and southern fried sympathies…

Or the 4 racist thugs in robes and their Uncle Tom sitting the highest court?

Now…Don’t gt me wrong. I don’t feel sorry for Paula. But the reason has a lot less to do with her racism and a lot more to do with a lack of professionalism. Professionalism?

Yeh. When you run a multi-million dollar business – You don’t get to make an ass of yourself like Dan Cathy of Chick Fil A – without some hurt coming down from some pissed customers…And partners who know what it takes to run a business and don’t want to be hit by the shrapnel of an idiot imploding.

Obviously Chick Fil A agrees with Mr Cathy’s lack of professionalism because he is still there.

Since in Paula’s case she is the company, Paula is going to have to suffer the consequences.

 

 

 

Standing Tall – Texas Senator Wendy Davis

Another Progressive standing up for her beliefs -Texas Democrat Senator Wendy Davis staged an 11 hour filibuster last night bringing the Rethugly Senate to it’s knees in trying to pass the most restrictive anti-abortion legislation in the country…

So…When we’ve got folks with this kind of grit willing to stand up against Rethugly evil…

WTF can’t President Obama and Senator Harry Reid kick some Rethugly ass?

They can start by filling every single Federal Court Judicial vacancy, and dropping the nuclear option on Rethugly intransigence tying up the judicial appointments.

 

Tammy Duckworth Hammers a Fraud!

At least the woman progressives are being real in terms of standing up for their principles. In this one, during a Congressional Hearing on companies which benefit from Small Business Set Asides for disabled Veterans (In tax hack Darrel Issa’s Committee no less), Tammy unloads on a guy who has fraudulently represented himself as a disabled vet to take advantage of the program…

 

 

NSA Exposer..The Right, or Wrong Thing?

Interesting group of polls…

Nothing like a real scandal to cut through the conservative artificial bullshit on Bengazi and the IRS going after conservative tax cheats. That hissing sound of a giant conservative yellow backed scandal rubber duck deflating in the harbor…

Issa Got a Boat With a Hole in it! King Got a Boat With a Hole in it! McCain got a Boat With a Hole in It!

And one of the interesting things abut a real scandal, that has to do with real rights, and the real Constitution, and real laws is…

It doesn’t break 90 Republican 90% Democrat anymore…Now does it?

Now… To be honest – I think this guy has done the country a lot of damage…

But then…So did the Patriot Act.

 

Hurricanes, Tornados, and Uh-Oh Derechos!

No…That isn’t Doritos.

Wave cloud pattern of a Derecho

Survived two of these things. Once on the water when I saw it coming 10-12 miles away across the river and figured I couldn’t outrun it looking at the movement of the lead cloud. Had just enough time to get the bow into it, drop and set the hook, and get the hatches battened (boater talk for make like a big anchored cork) before getting hit with the first 70 MPH gust, which sustained for a good 10-15 minutes. Because the tide was slack, there were no real waves to fight as the wind was blowing everything flat or into spray. Lots of “knock downs” that day of guys not watching the weather who got caught with their sails up, and guys in the power boats who hadn’t quite figured out that a planing hull, which uses air to lift…

Does some real squirrely things when the air perpendicular to the boat (not the direction the boat happily travels) is moving under the boat faster than you can go.

Why you keep the nose into the waves –

And just in case that “Cruise Ship” is going to save your non-nautical ass in the middle of the ocean –

The second was last year here in the Washington DC area, where it came across the beltway like a freight train making the vegetation look like it went through the world’s largest wood chipper… With the prediction of potential for a Derecho type storm from the Ohio Valley on east… Might be a good day to bunker up.

 

 

The MuaveSkins?

Should have known this was going to be a major issue this year when one of my “proto-dates” launched into a tirade about never taking her to a Redskins Game…

That was before I told her I wasn’t the owner of Seasons Tickets even.

Sometimes “it is written” when relationships will be unexpectedly (at least to some folks) short.

Now I see Dan Snyder is again courting disaster – pulling failure, yet once again out of a hot hand…

Its in the Bag, Dan!

Top Republican Messaging Firm To Hold Football Focus Group About Whether Redskins Should Change Name

“It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear,” Luntz Global, the premier strategy shop run by Republican messaging guru Frank Luntz, boasts at the top of its web site. And Luntz Global is interested in figuring out what National Football League fans are hearing.

Luntz Global, which has worked on behalf of the NFL and other sports leagues during labor disputes in recent years, is conducting a football focus group in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 13, where it will pay participants $100 to share their opinions about the current state of America’s most popular professional sports league and the Washington Redskins, the NFL franchise embroiled in controversy and a federal trademark lawsuit involving its name.

An email survey meant to judge the interest and eligibility of potential participants includes multiple questions about the NFL generally, including how many games they watch and attend. It also asks about their “overall opinion of the NFL right now,” their “overall opinion of the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell,” and what they perceive as the “greatest problem or challenge facing the NFL today.”

Excuse me…But isn’t that like the same folks who told Romney…”Its in the bag?”

The Washington Red Tails is beginning to look like a great fall back position.

 

The Computer Goes Round…

Some of my supercomputer buddies out there from back in the day would correctly identify the massive machine below as a Cray 2. The mega azz-kicking rocket propelled computer of it’s generation. The difference between it and the Cray 1 is they got rid of the “window seats” and upped the computational horsepower on the order of megaflops… Got to “play” with one of these once…actually about 12 CPU seconds…which is all it took to process a computation that took a small campus of building size IBM General Processing Machines (AKA Mainframes) a year to do.

The other pic? The new Apple Mac-Pro.

What goes round comes round.

Now don’t get me wrong here, the Apple is no Cray…And the Cray certainly “ain’t” no Apple, as it’s sole function in life was to move massive numbers from Bucket “A” to Bucket “B” after performing whatever mathematical gyrations questing scientists and mathematicians far above this poor boy’s head could come up with…

Back in the day I belonged to a group of rather nondescript guys “of limited notoriety” who usually got the call shortly after the customer plugged one of those things in, taking down the power or a small city…

“Oh, you actually wanted that to work?”

Little round machines…Indeed.

About the only thing that hasn’t changed is the price.

Cray 2 Towers

Apple Mac Pro

 

A “Liberal Edumencation”…Indeed

You know if I was George Zimmerman’s lawyers, I’d be looking for 12 of these EW Jackson freakshows!

“Innocent! That Kneegrow was armed and dangerous with that candy bar, suh!”

The question though becomes – in an American Constellation, containing the stars of accomplished black Republicans of greater and lesser lights and brilliant stars like Condoleeza Rice, and General Colin Powell, and to a somewhat lesser extent ex-Congressman J.C. Watts…

Which now includes the shiny-new minted Senator-ex Congressman from South Carolina Tim Scott (and no – I don’t agree with Mr Scott politically, but I respect the way the guys is actually trying to do his job representing the people of his state unlike former Congressman, former felon, Alan West’s constant posturing for the recruiting poster for Lawn Jockeys)…

WTF would anyone be running a Jockey Suited Buckdancer like mis-Action Jackson?

I mean – it sure as hell isn’t to attract Minority voters.

And,if this is for the benefit of “de Republican white folks in the Old Dominion” – isn’t there a whole generation of kids who paid for that little mistake in “Intelligent Design” when those same folks shut down all the schools in one of the counties for 5 years so they couldn’t integrate?

And besides the fact that the guy (supposedly a Harvard Law School Graduate) is too stupid to hire and editor (I’m a blogger – can’t afford no editor!) for his book to get rid of the misspellings…

There is this video with the Space Fairy…Miss Cleo where are you?