For those of you who haven’t been to the gym the cardio machines are upstairs.  On one side you have the stationary bikes, on the other the treadmills.  For some reason I can get MSNBC on the treadmill side but not Fox News.  On the bike side I get Fox, but not MSNBC.  Read into that whatever you can.

I had been watching Maddow and while I thought her treatment of the Palin family feud was gentle and tactful, I’m pretty much bored with the whole topic.  Wake me up if I-got-off-on-a-technicality-and-I’m-righteous-about-it Ted Stephens actually follows through on his threat to run against her.  So I decided to switch to the bike and treated myself to a slobbering love fest between Sean Hannity and Dick Morris.  They were ranting about Obama’s trip and how Europe is socialist and doesn’t value individual initiative, is culturally and economically stagnant, tries to make everything equal – everything you got from your Republican friend in the ninth grade when debated socialism and politics in general.  As usual there were more generalized pronouncements than facts to chew on, conclusions spouted as if they are self-evident.  Morris may be good at what he does, but he’s no intellectual heavyweight and Hannity is, well, Hannity.

So they drifted into a discussion about North Korea.  Although the missile test failed in both the second and third phases the pair thought we should take it seriously as a threat and when they got to Obama’s response it got interesting.

Remember the foreign policy debate in 2004?  The first debate, which caused Kerry to catch up briefly in the polls.  But there was one point in the debate where I actually side with Bush.  Kerry was calling for direct talks between the US and PRK.  It makes sense, except that there was already a summit of sorts in progress – the so-called “Six Nation Talks.”  Bush didn’t want to undermine them by by-passing that process, and the irony is that Bush’s foreign policy position in that instance was more classically liberal than Kerry’s; the premise being that the U.S. is not the center of the world and collaborative regionalism should be promoted as a model for keeping individual nations accountable to their neighbors.  Would that Bush had pushed a similar policy in the Middle East.

So here was Morris confirming my characterization by dismissing the six-nation talks, with Hannity nodding, as a liberal pipedream and suggesting that the only way to get North Korea to back down is to arm Japan with nukes (why not South Korea?).  You know, I don’t consider myself an expert on foreign policy, but I do occassionally recognize the stupidity of a proposal, and that one doesn’t even make sense.  But that’s beside the point.  The Right is now framing the six-nation talks as a liberal pipedream.  Think Carter the “choirboy” as opposed to the definitiveness of George W. Bush who…. armed Japan?

Anyway, I don’t even ask why Morris and Hannity were silent on the subject 4 and a half years ago.  But I’ll be curious to see if the Republican leadership takes that route.  I think they’ll probably keep quiet, focus on the trees, and ignore the forest.

Hannity, meanwhile, will never forgive the drubbing.

….

As the next big Ponzi scheme crook being brought up to the chopping block, Alan Sanford isn’t taking it well.  He’s suffering folks.  Take the link and prepare for the tears.  Some of the trials and tribulations he’s endured:

*He lamented how the charges had deprived him of being listed by Forbes as the 405th wealthiest person in the world.

*He complained about being forced to fly commercial after the government seized his fleet of private jets. (“They make you take your shoes off and everything, it’s terrible.)

*And he reasoned: “I’m the maverick rich Texan where they can put the moose head on the wall. And that’s the only reason they went after me.” Because rich Texans always get a raw deal.

(sniff).  Something’s in my eye.  Excuse me.

….

Okay, here’s Bob Dylan in an interview commenting on Obama.

Well, a number of things. He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage – cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.

Maybe some of you older sixties types can explain all that to me.  Then maybe you can explain the lyrics to Desolation Row.  I know, I know…. I had to be there to “feel it.”

Feel it again.  This clip is from 1966.

….

Frost and Nixon is playing in Garberville this week.  I’m hoping to see it on Thursday night.  Heard good things, but are we ever going to run out of material on Nixon?  I think he’s been depicted in more movies than any other president, including Lincoln and Washington.  When are they going to do a movie about Millard Fillmore?