A direct quote from President Pick-Up Sticks:

And we've got a great weapon on our side, and that is freedom and liberty.

Yes, I agree, this is true, but when you hear the words come out of his mouth, given especially that they weren't delivered in any context related to what is actually occurring in the world today, there's an extraordinary shame associated with their complete lack of meaning whatsoever.

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Allow me.

Condi, Nero. Nero, Condi.

Playing the piano while the world burns.

(Photo courtesy of Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog.)

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It's hot here in Philadelphia, again and still, and it's not going to get any better until at least the middle of next week, and nobody I know, especially a certain bulldog named Mildred, is very happy about it.

Hence the obvious panting.

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From Opinion Journal:

Why does President Bush refer in public to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as "Condi"? Did Dwight Eisenhower call his Secretary of State "Johnny"? Did Jimmy Carter call his "Eddie," or Bill Clinton call his "Maddy," or Richard Nixon call his "Willie" or "Hank"? What are the implications of such informality?

I know it is small, but in a way such things are never small. To me it seems a part of the rhetorical childishness of the age, the faux egalitarianism of the era.

The author?

Margaret Noonan.

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The U.S. Olympic Committee today decided that when it comes to the 2016 Summer Olympics, Philadelphia just doesn't cut it.

You know, what's hardest to bear about this decision is that the USOC by fiat lumped this city together with Houston. Houston, for crying out loud.

That's just cruel.

And, by the way, aren't we all getting a little tired of Los Angeles?

[Post-publication addendum (July 27): It looks like even Angelenos are tired of the Olympics. Go to the Los Angeles Times web site and see how far you have to scroll down on the main sports page to find mention of the USOC's decision. Here in Philadelphia, we wear our failures on the front page.]

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John Mack, Cleveland: oboist, instructor, and camp counselor, 1927-2006

Mack was an oboist for, in order, the New Orleans Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, and, most important, for the Cleveland Orchestra.

As for his technique, James R. Oestreich writes in the New York Times obituary:

Mr. Mack in his long prime played with a big, round tone that seemed to defy the finicky nature of his instrument, which draws its sound from fragile bamboo reeds, painstakingly carved and bound, and is prone to a ducklike nasality.

"Ducklike nasality." That sounds about right. Tell me about it. Tell my family about it. For me the whole oboe thing was a misguided experiment, best resolved when I switched to the clarinet and saxophone.

Mack also taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and founded the John Mack Oboe Camp, Little Switzerland, N.C.

Oboe camp. What's that like? Oestreich writes:

In a setting combining rigorous instruction with quaint amusements, Mr. Mack would regale the youngsters with tales about his own beloved mentor, Marcel Tabuteau, who retired from the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1954 and died in 1966. The perennial groaner, always eagerly awaited, was the tale of Mr. Tabuteau’s amazement in childhood at seeing a turkey dance to music. The method, in brief (which was hardly the way Mr. Mack told it), was to put the bird on a metal floor and light a flame underneath.

(Hold your fire, Peta, I'm just quoting the text.)

Now over to you, Mad Kane, you oboist/attorney/comedian/writer/blogger, you.

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Dan Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who blogs at Blinq, had a good catch with a post earlier today, "Not a Hipster in Sight," which turned into a well-deserved rag on the (non-union -- Hiss!) McClatchy Newspaper company.

McClatchy, it turns out, sent a reporter, one John Bordsen, to Philadelphia to write an article about the upcoming sequel in the Rocky series -- Haven't seen a single one of them myself, by the way. -- without benefit of even a decent map.

Mr. Bordsen's piece is laughable. My favorite bit is this one:

Friday morning in downtown Philadelphia, and suits with cell phones clog the 17th Street subway station.

I'm not sure (nor was Mr. Rubin) what line, if any, Bordsen was riding that allowed him to begin his journey at 17th Street, as neither the Market-Frankford line nor the Broad Street subway has a stop or a station at that location. Nor, even, do the trolleys, also known here as the "subway-surface lines," stop there, what with the system's gap between 15th and 19th Streets.

More humorous though, is Bordsen's remark about "suits with cell phones." This guy was riding an entirely and completely different train than I ride two or three times daily. Suits? On the El? I'm about as close as you get to a "suit" on the El, and that's only because I wear a starched shirt every day. More commonly seen: Too-long denim shorts and pockmarked tank tops in bizarre florescent shades, paired with knee-high tube socks and ten-dollar-a-pair "athletic shoes," polished white. And then there are the men.

I liked this one, too:

The raised and sleek downtown is behind you; below are tar-topped roofs of increasingly desperate neighborhoods.

Yo, buddy, wait a second. "Increasingly desperate"? That's my neighborhood you traversed when your train cruised through the Berks station. Haven't you heard Fishtown is the "up and coming" neighborhood in Philadelphia? There are a lot of artists moving into the area! Or so they tell me. Frankly, though, all I see are hipsters with hobbies. Hipsters with hobbies and plenty of pretense. And so, with that in mind, I will forgive you.

Rubin rightly takes Bordsen to task for calling the Huntingdon station "Huntington," but lets the reporter slide for leaving the train at "Dauphin Street," when he really meant York-Dauphin, but that's just me picking a nit or two.

Worst of all, after I finished reading Bordsen's article, it wasn't entirely clear to me whether the reporter understood that while the Rocky films used this city's Kensington neighborhood as a backdrop, that the majority of the story occurred, in that oh-so-fictional way, in South Philadelphia.

Bordsen did get one very important thing right. In the notes at the end of the article, under the heading, "If You Go," he wrote: "If you go, go during the day."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

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It's two days later, or after the "fact," and yet this editorial, "More Than a Cease-Fire Needed," from Friday's New York Times, is still bothering me.

The editors write, in relevant and ridiculous part:

Israeli officials, with strong backing from Washington, are saying privately that it could take days or even weeks more of pounding to destroy Hezbollah’s huge missile stocks, cut off its supply lines from Syria and Iran, and prove to the Lebanese people the high cost of sheltering the terrorist group. [Emphasis added.]

What the hell is that? "The Lebanese people" are, what, to blame? They -- including, encompassing, the proverbial man and woman on the street just trying to feed the family in a country battered about like a volleyball for the past 30 years -- deserve everything they've been getting at the end of American-supplied arms essentially donated to the Israeli army? This is like blaming protestants of Ulster for "sheltering" the Irish Republican Army. Incredible.

Later in the same editorial, the Times team offers this:

The resolution should mandate the return of Israel’s kidnapped soldiers and, finally, pledge major international contributions to help Lebanon rebuild from the destruction of the last week and bolster its weak democratic government.

Glad to hear that, I guess, since I -- naively -- hadn't thought that we, meaning Americans, would be picking up the tab for this obscene, grotesque, criminal, and seemingly endless series of Bush-administration endorsed attacks in which the distinctions between Hezbollah terrorists and innocent civilians seem to matter almost nothing whatsoever.

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From someone else this might be incredible, but from Peggy Noonan, it's par for the course:

During the past week's heat wave--it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday--I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not? If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous? What exactly are the dangers? Is global warming as dangerous as, say, global cooling would be? Are we better off with an Earth that is getting hotter or, what with the modern realities of heating homes and offices, and the world energy crisis, and the need to conserve, does global heating have, in fact, some potential side benefits, and can those benefits be broadened and deepened? Also, if global warning is real, what must--must--the inhabitants of the Earth do to meet its challenges? And then what should they do to meet them?

This is breathtaking in its dishonesty.

The truth is that "the world's greatest scientists" regularly "gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, [and] study meteorological patterns and temperature histories," and have been doing so for years. And contrary to Noonan's assertion, they indeed have "come to a believable conclusion on these questions." Just because she disagrees with the consensus or finds it too confusing to follow doesn't make it any less real.

Leave it to Noonan, though, to descend proudly from dishonesty into obscenity.

She goes on to allege that her dreamy must-have major confab of people in white lab coats and thick eyeglasses cannot and will not occur "[b]ecause science too, like other great institutions, is poisoned by politics. Scientists have ideologies. They are politicized." She continues:

All too many of them could be expected to enter this work not as seekers for truth but agents for a point of view who are eager to use whatever data can be agreed upon to buttress their point of view.

And so, in the end, every report from every group of scientists is treated as a political document. And no one knows what to believe. So no consensus on what to do can emerge.

Translation: And so, now that Al Gore has his movie out there and people are paying attention to him and its message, it's high time my political allies, my employer, and I turn the tables on the politicization of the so-called global warming issue and blame the scientists for hiding their agendas, since, after all, they started it.

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The Gray Lady Goes Darker [*]
Well, there it is, in the New York Times, for the first time ever I'm told, the word that would never appear at this site, out of the mouth of President Potty Mouth. To be honest, I'm less surprised to learn he said it -- what with the tensions of war, and it is yet another Arab-Israeli war, and all that -- than I was to see the Times print it.

It's Not Just Lieberman [*]
Sen. Lieberman isn't the only lawmaker from Connecticut facing, seemingly proudly and defiantly, an anti-war candidate. And David Lightman of the Hartford Courant reports in "Shays' Focus On Iraq Lets Farrell Fire Away": "Chris Shays is happy to make his re-election race a referendum on the Iraq war." Well, good for him. And good for his opponent, Diane Farrell too.

Over to the Dark Side [*]
A brief item by Andrew Ross Sorkin in the New York Times reveals: "The former editor in chief of Time Inc., Norman Pearlstine, will join the Carlyle Group, the private equity group, as a senior adviser on media and telecommunications acquisitions." Pull quote: "He is expected to help find media deals for Carlyle, perhaps in the newspaper industry. Asked if he had formulated a view on whether newspapers were attractive, Mr. Pearlstine said, 'I think it’s a little early.'"

The Lieberman Problem
Duncan Black of Eschaton has an outstanding op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times, "Why the Left Is Furious at Lieberman." Let's listen in a bit:

For too long [Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.)] has defined his image by distancing himself from other Democrats, cozying up to right-wing media figures and, at key moments, directing his criticisms at members of his own party instead of at the Republicans in power. […]

Lieberman has a long history of providing cover for the worst of Republican actions while enthusiastically serving as his own party's scold. […]

Lieberman looks happiest when playing a "Fox News Democrat," as he did in a February appearance on Sean Hannity's radio program, during which the two exchanged compliments and expressions of friendship and Hannity offered to campaign for him. The senator seems to enjoy Sunday talk shows more than actually doing his job. […]

Lieberman's relationship with the Democratic Party has been one of convenience, not principle, as was proved definitively in late June when he declared his intention to run as an independent if he loses the Aug. 8 primary. […]

Lieberman's problem isn't bloggers, it's the voters of Connecticut, who seem to be increasingly tired of his support for some very uncivil policies, including federal intervention into the Terri Schiavo case, the administration's operations at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay and, yes, that disastrous invasion of Iraq.

It doesn't get much clearer than that.

They're Coming for the Kids
Also in the L.A. Times, columnist Joel Stein writes about the threat to petting zoos in "The Terrorists Hate Our Baby Animals."

[* Note: Additional items may be posted to "Political Notes" after initial publication but only on the day of publication, excluding post-publication addenda. Such items, when posted, are designated by an asterisk.]

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No Game [*]
Former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, have filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington against Vice President Dick Cheney and his former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, and presidential adviser Karl Rove. CNN says the suit accuses "them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career." No word yet whether Robert D. Novak or Judith Miller have been named in the suit. Or Matt Cooper. Or Bob Woodward.

What It's All About [*]
Eric Alterman writes in his latest "Liberal Media" column in The Nation ("The 'Times' Is Us," posted today on the web site from the July 31 issue): The right wing's attacks on the New York Times "constitute another front in the Bush (& Co.) war on the press. And once again many members of the media have enlisted as apparatchiks in undermining their own putative profession, preferring ideology to independence and access to accountability."

Fallback Position [*]
When you can't think of anything new or intelligent to say, just do what Jonah does: lash out at "the anger." Because, as you know, it's never about policies, only the process.

New Wrinkle
The Hartford Courant reports on a new wrinkle in the Connecticut U.S. Senate race:

Gov. M. Jodi Rell and GOP State Chairman George Gallo publicly urged fellow Republican Alan Schlesinger to reconsider his candidacy for U.S. Senate after learning Wednesday that he gambled at the Foxwoods Resorts Casino under an assumed name while an elected official in the 1990s.

Mr. Schlesinger is having none of it.

[* Note: Additional items may be posted to "Political Notes" after initial publication but only on the day of publication, excluding post-publication addenda. Such items, when posted, are designated by an asterisk.]

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Musician Pete Doherty, speaking about his "right and wrong, up and down" relationship with model Kate Moss:

"I love her bones, I always will."

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