42 years ago today.

Not that anyone bothers anymore.  Still, CNN does have room for the death of an ugly dog.

Compare and contrast:

Virginia man convicted today of conspiring to assassinate the president.

… since they keep getting out by snicking their bats against their legs as the ball sails lightly by.

Smaller legs would work, too, I suppose.  Or smaller bats, although there are moments that hardly seems possible.

To my eyes, watching Nine’s coverage on the satellite dish, Lara looked to be called out even though his bat never touched the ball.  I thought the same thing with Chanderpaul for a while yesterday, at least until Nine’s cameras dissected the incident as if it was Dealey Plaza in 1963.

Incidentally, to fellow Americans who’ve never seen televised cricket’s
intense Zapruder film-like study of imperceptible movements of bat,
ball, and pad, it’s like Oliver Stone’s sporting wet dream: replays at forty times
regular speed, microphones stashed in the stumps, and tiny cameras
seemingly everywhere but the wicketkeeper’s protective groin box.

And they probably have plans for that.

With all this coverage, you do get remarkable close-ups.  After 20-odd days of the Ashes,
I could probably recite Ricky Ponting’s dental work.  And for anyone
with a fetish for men’s calves, cricket on TV would qualify as porn.

So every time there’s a close call — which is about every two minutes when Shane Warne is bowling, notable by his frantic screaming as if his testicles are coming unspooled
— we spend most of the next 119 seconds repeatedly watching the shadow
of a seamed leather ball as it passes a piece of willow, synched up to
an onscreen oscilloscope thing (the "Snicko"), watching
waveforms and listening to the "fatness" of the sound.  Is it
bat-then-pad?  Or pad-then-bat?  There!  There, I tell you!

There’s a bowler on the knoll!  Back and to the left!  Back and to the left!

And then the 120th second clicks over, and Shane’s nuts start coming
unspooled again, and one of Nine’s directors cues up the next video inquisition.

This is fantastic.  My favorite sport now, I swear.

Still, the West Indians do seem to be getting pretty harsh calls.  If
the umpires were from Texas, somebody would be getting the Chair.

No
slight against Oz, of course. 
Fun to see Hussey and Hodge going so well.  You get the feeling
Symonds would dive across a spilled case of thumbtacks to stop a ball through
the covers, just to stay on the squad.  Marvelous to watch.

And I do think if Shane Warne tossed up his lunch, it would swerve six inches to the right in the air and then ricochet three feet to the left.

One of the Windies would be out, caught behind.

You’d still hear Gilchrist saying "nice, Shane, nice!" even while toweling himself off.

PS — with a bit of luck, as of yesterday it turns out I might make the South Africa test at the SCG come January.  Excited the way I was watching the Indians when I was a boy.

For Aussie readers, that would be the Cleveland Indians.  Who made the current Windies look like worldbeaters.

My Indians used to hit their legs with the bats sometimes, too.  And they were playing baseball.

Once he’s done accusing people of lying, what will Bush accuse his opponents of next?
Binge-drinking until their 40th birthdays
205   28.7%
Having 36 percent approval ratings
191   26.8%
Appointing flunkies to important government offices
179   25.1%
Covering up leaks of CIA operatives by their own staffs
139   19.5%

Just curious: given tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths and hundreds of thousands of lives shattered by this unnecessary war, how the bloody hell does Dick Cheney sleep?

New poll at left.

The Murtha Moment is now widely discussed in both the mainstream and
alternative press as possibly a moment when the Iraq war debate
fundamentally changed.

Bullshit.

Here’s one small example of why.

Yesterday, CNN’s Kyra Phillips led this "debate" (read down in the transcript) discussing the Murtha Moment.

As you by now expect, the "debate" did not include any voices from the anti-war side.  The leftish part of the debate (if that word even
applies) was taken by a highly-decorated Vietnam vet who articulately
pointed out the obvious fact that the war has no specific objective,
other than the wish to eliminate terrorism in a generalized sense.  At
his side was a nervous young soldier who agreed.

The "left" in this debate had special credibility, in the conventional mindset, only — only — because it had worn the uniform.

Thus, opposition to the war in this country only counts
for anything when it comes from people who have already been vocal
supporters of an irrational war based on obvious lies resulting in
inevitable mass killing.  That’s
why Murtha matters as well, of course.  The message is repeated and
ongoing.  And all of this just reinforces the notion that militarism in and of itself is a good and credible thing.

What about the people who were right all along?  What about the ten
million people who marched in the streets of cities all over the world
before this shit ever started?  No credibility.  Obviously.

Would Martin Luther King have a place in the discussion?  No.  Would
Jesus, whom millions of people who support incredible levels of
violence flatter themselves by pretending to worship?  No.  Of course
not.  He’s a god and all, but he’s nobody to actually listen to.

Half the country still supports torture, folks.  Half.  Even though it
doesn’t work, and security experts are most vocally opposed.

Think about what that means.  About our respect for human life.  Our
respect for the most basic morality.  Our respect even for the value of
knowledge and reason itself.

It’s nice that a lot of people are starting to realize that this specific war at this specific time is not working out specifically the way a specific set of liars and criminals promised.  That’s good.  Obviously.

But surveys have limits.  What’s not made clear by increasing
opposition is the thinking (if the word applies) behind it.  In most
surveys, someone who now
thinks, for example, "what’s wrong with these ingrates?  Fine, we
should have just bombed the place flat to begin with.  Screw ’em" will show up as "opposed" exactly the
same way Pope John Paul II would have, if he were still alive.

Considering the uninformed willingness of many of the war’s early ardent supporters — many of whom very likely couldn’t find Iraq on a map,
remember — is it really so likely that suddenly millions now have an
improved understanding of the differences between Salafists and Shiites?

Please.

This ain’t that.

There are still numerous fundamental and false assumptions at the
riverbed of the American mainstream.  These are nowhere near changing. 
Washington’s foreign policy is still inherently presumed "good," meant
only for the welfare of the affected peoples, despite a complex
historical record.  Military spending, no matter how wasteful, no
matter what else gets cut to pay for the waste, inherently makes
America "stronger," because "strength" is defined by our ability to
project our will upon others, not by the health and welfare of our
people.  Each war occurs in isolation from all past events; Bush’s
support for the Taliban, Rumsfeld’s handshake with Saddam, CIA support
for the fundamentalists who morphed into Al-Qaeda have nothing to do
with our current situation.  History itself is worse than useless; not
only are there no lessons to learn, but simply knowing it and pointing
it out still frequently brands one as unAmerican.

Let’s return to a moment near the end of yesterday’s Iraq "debate," in
which the pro-war side — another former soldier, of course — used a
demonstrable falsehood to summarize his position, of all things:

Who is "they" here?  September 11 had nothing to do with Iraq.  We’re four years
after the event here.  The White House stopped lying about this one
years ago.  Now they’re only lying about ever having lied about it. 
That’s, like, two lies ago.

Anybody still regurgitating this nonsense should be shouted down and slapped in the forehead with a transcript of Bush’s own admission almost three goddam years ago.

But Kyra Phillips, betraying the smug incompetence we’ve come to expect
from American "news" people, didn’t comment on or apparently even notice
the complete falsity of the fundamental argument.  (Of course, this isn’t her
fault.  It isn’t her job.  CNN doesn’t produce "news."  It produces an
audience, which it sells to its advertisers.  Kyra’s job is to maintain
and stimulate that audience, nothing more.  Same as Nancy Grace, host
of the Kidnapped White Women Parade, aka 58 Minutes Hate.)

Instead, Phillips concluded not with facts or clarification, but with masturbation so pure it could have come from a lab:

I can remember when you had to buy a magazine to see a woman touching herself like that.

A debate with no left side?  A commitment to militarism as the cover
charge for admission?  Long-debunked rubbish being cited as the basis
for argument, and treated as equal to truth?

I think we have seen that before.

We still see it, and all of the false assumptions involved, every day.  Murtha or no.

Let’s not kid ourselves.  Next war, everybody’s right back on the bandwagon.