Nyet Doesn't Always Work

Russia appears to be a few decades behind America on sexual harassment law...

The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia's history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.

She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.

"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.

Empirically, the last statement is stupid. Legally, it's asinine. And as a moral matter, it's revolting.

With that being said, perhaps we can send Mike Gravel to harass the judge.

Maybe This Is Why We're Tired of Him

I know Obama's trying to run a different kind of campaign, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess his political advisors will tell him to change his tune when answering a question from a seven year old...

“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.”

Yeah, there's some things I'd like to change about my country (for example, I'd really like to see Michael Bolton's albums destroyed). But if a seven year old asks me this question, I think I'd say that I love my country, want to make it a better place and can't wait to for an opportunity to get to work doing that.

My guess is that Obama meant all of those things. But the supposedly brilliant natural politician failed to say them. This lends credence to the view being spoken in plenty of places that Obama's brilliance with a teleprompter is not matched when he's speaking extemporaneously. To be fair, everyone screws up occassionally. But it will be intriguing to see how much coverage Obama's rhetorical screwups will get in the coming months. Will the right be the only ones pointing them out?

Meanwhile, maybe this is part of the reason for the Messiah Fatigue. I'm sure part of it is that the adulatory press coverage gets tiresome -- but I'm also certain people get turned off when a politician tells a seven year old the country's future sucks unless he gets elected. Yeah, I know that's not exactly what he said -- but it's a fair interpretation, and when you're responding to a seven year old, your response needs to be direct enough that it can't be interpreted that way. That is, if you're a brilliant politician whose supporters believe you're the Chosen One.

Gravel Gets Dirty

It was pretty clear Mike Gravel was kooky from watching his Presidential campaign. But it's hard to believe he's this crazy...

Former Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel was caught on tape last week telling a crowd in Washington, D.C., that they should harass a federal prosecutor who helped bring criminal contempt charges against a Palestinian activist.

In the tape, Gravel can be heard telling people to pressure Gordon Kromberg, an assistant U.S. attorney in the eastern district of Virginia, to drop the charges against Sami Al-Arian.

“Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is, picket him all the time,” Gravel said, in an audio tape obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism and provided to FOX News.

“Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time.”

Find out where his kids go to school? Seriously, who the hell says something that stupid and irresponsible? Oh, wait, there's more:

Gravel told FOX News that he doesn’t want people to break the law and that he personally wouldn’t do the things he’s recommended — but that it could be an effective way to change the behavior of U.S. officials.

“How do you deal with this kind of an injustice? I wouldn’t protest. I don’t believe in protesting. I think it demonstrates the failure of representative government. My answer to that problem is, I want to empower you as a lawmaker. … Don’t rely on your elected officials,” the former senator said.

You want to know how otherwise reasonable people end up defending terrorist tactics? Gravel's logic is the start of that slippery slope. You know, if Barack Obama was interested in a true Sister Souljah moment, condemning Gravel would be an easy way to appeal to centrists.

Obama = Cheney?

I knew Barack Obama was supposedly related to Dick Cheney. I didn't know they thought alike on energy policy...

Democratic candidate Barack Obama criticized Republican John McCain on Tuesday for taking a page out of "the Cheney playbook" on energy, overlooking his own support of oil-friendly policies that the unpopular vice president helped to craft.

Vice President Dick Cheney, a former oilman, early in the Bush administration helped draft an energy policy that Obama asserted is biased in favor of tax breaks and favorable treatment for big oil. Obama's remarks were an attempt to capitalize on Cheney's unpopularity.

"President Bush, he had an energy policy. He turned to Dick Cheney and he said, 'Cheney, go take care of this,'" Obama said. "Cheney met with renewable-energy folks once and oil and gas (executives) 40 times. McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook."

In stumping Tuesday in this key battleground state, Obama sought to link the troubled economy with Republican policies and offer his own energy plan in contrast. He has tried to cast McCain as more concerned about oil company profits and drilling than an overall energy strategy.

However, Obama himself voted for a 2005 energy bill backed by Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production, a measure Cheney played a major role in developing. McCain opposed the bill on grounds it included billions in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry.

The Obama campaign has said the Illinois senator supported the legislation because it included huge investments in renewable energy.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, said, "Barack Obama is opposed to offshore drilling and is also opposed to admitting that he voted for the same corporate giveaways for Big Oil that he's campaigning against today."

At this point, Paris Hilton may be the candidate with the best energy policy (thanks to K-Mac for pointing this one out to me). Of course, McCain is already claiming she stole his energy policy, so I'm not sure who actually came up with it.

Of course, the more important question and answer was buried further down in the article...

In a question-and-answer session, Obama was asked if he would support term limits for members of Congress by a questioner who noted that many senators were elderly.

"I've got colleagues in the Senate who are doing absolutely outstanding work, and they're well into their 70s," Obama said. He praised ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as one.

"I'm generally not in favor of term limits," he said. "Nobody is term-limiting the lobbyists or the slick operators walking around the halls of Congress. I believe in one form of term limits. They're called elections."

Absolutely outstanding work? By Congress? This is the same Congress that has an approval rating that rivals O.J.'s popularity, and Obama thinks he has colleagues doing "absolutely outstanding work"? Out of respect for Ted Kennedy's health problems, I'm going to stay far away from a pointed comment about him, but how can anyone characterize the 70-year olds in the Senate as doing outstanding work? I thought Obama's big selling point was his judgment -- in this case, his judgment stinks.

By the way, here's the fact of the day that I found amazing -- we have 26 Senators that are 70 years of age or older, and 44 who will be 65 or older by the end of the year. I don't have a problem with that, because I generally think we force people to retire too early in other industries. My problem is that these guys seem to serve forever. I believe in elections as a form of term limits as well, but if they were the only form of term limits, we wouldn't have Presidents limited to two terms.

Great Quote of the Day

In the midst of a post about why Obama's idea of an energy rebate is no great shakes, Megan McArdle closes with the best observation of the week...

The American tax code is already such a bloated compendium of malfunctioning parts working at cross purposes that economists have a hard time figuring out what the hell its effects are. We should fight the expansion of this crepuscular behemoth by any means necessary.

Seriously, those two sentences combine tremendous insight with obvious disgust while adding the word crepuscular to my vocabulary. You can't ask for much more from a blog.

Random Movie Quote of the Day

Like all American males, I love being able to quote ad nauseum from popular movies. I figured I should share whenever a random quote pops into my head.

This only comes up because of a lunchtime conversation, but it's a great quote from Wedding Crashers...

Jeremy Grey: Oh, that's terrific! Why don't you just feed me to the lions? Step on my head when I am drowning.

John Beckwith: What?

Jeremy Grey: What do you mean "what"? What a great friend. John. This is completely against the rules. You have a wedding and a reception to seal the deal. Period. There's no overtime.

John Beckwith: No overtime. Yeah, well what about the Chang wedding three years ago. 2am, you drag me fifty miles to watch you and some chick play Mah-Jongg with her grandmother? In a retirement home.

Jeremy Grey: Completely different situation. She was a very, very family-oriented girl. And very into her grandmother.

John Beckwith: Yeah.

Jeremy Grey: That was my first Asian!

Granted, the line is offensive and objectifies women. I am offended and plan to stop laughing at this line, after I see the movie ten more times (which should occur by mid-October, thanks to TBS and TNT's regular rotation of the flick).

This has been your Random Movie Quote of the Day.

Yeah, This Will Help Hillary's Case to be Veep

Geez, Bill, are you bitter?

Bill Clinton regrets some things he said - and didn't say - on the campaign trail. But there's one thing he still can't utter: Barack Obama is ready to be President.

"You can argue that nobody is ready to be President," the former President told ABC News.

"You can argue that even if you've been vice president for eight years, that no one can be fully ready for the pressures of the office," Clinton said Monday during a visit to Rwanda. That's probably not what Team Obama wanted to hear from the former commander in chief, whose role in Obama's election push and at the Democratic National Convention remains in flux.

Team Obama has said Clinton will be an asset, but so far he and the Illinois senator have spoken only once, by phone, since the primaries ended - a fact that has peeved some Obama supporters.

Perhaps Clinton will be asset to Obama, if he stays in Rwanda and courts the key demographic of foreigners who can't vote in the election. After all, Obama seems to have been making a push for the non-voters in France and Germany recently -- why can't he deploy key surrgates to other countires to continue this push? I hear John Edwards has volunteered to do voter outreach with the Swedish bikini team.

The Sky is Falling, Again

Oil prices are dropping... which means bad news, apparently...

Oil prices are falling sharply, and that's good news. But not nearly as good as you might think.

No doubt the drop, down to $120 by mid-day Monday, gives strapped consumers relief at the gas pump. Prices have dropped below $4 a gallon and could be headed toward $3.50, going by trading in wholesale futures markets. Any decline will be welcomed by Americans struggling under the burden of falling house prices, rising layoffs and stagnant wages.

But falling oil prices also suggest that the recession the U.S. has so far avoided is well on its way, as consumers pull back from the spending spree that drove economic growth earlier this decade. A weakening economy will mean more layoffs, further pressuring already reduced spending.

"There is no doubt that with gasoline prices dipping below $3.90 a gallon we have a bit of a reprieve on the energy front," Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg wrote in a report Monday, "but the reality is that this is a chicken and egg game because the decline is reflecting the consumer recession."

So we've avoided the recession, but the recession is now coming, which is proven by the lower gas prices at the pump. If the gas prices were higher, I guess that would be a good thing, because we wouldn't be in a recession. I'm sure the media would report it that way, too.

The rest of the article continues to inform us that prices are dropping because of lower demand. Who says the media doesn't understand basic economics?

Their Own Worst Enemy

In case you're wondering, the Dems have their own theories on whom John McCain will select as a running mate. By doing this, they're vetting the candidates for McCain. Once again, the DNC tries to shoot itself in the foot.

Under McCain-Feingold, does McCain need to report this as an in-kind campaign contribution?

25 Years of Philly Sports Hell: The Worst Moments, Parts VI-XXV

The latest in a series of of soul-cleansing moments for Philadelphia sports fans as we complete a 25 year cycle of unmatched sports futility. For a full explanation of this series, look here.

Hey, I have a life. Who knew?

It's been almost seven months without a post on a blog I once promised to update three times a day. Much has changed -- for example, Hillary Clinton was a Presidential front-runner, as was Mitt Romney. Britney Spears was still struggling with her life (um... yeah, I guess that hasn't changed). Tony Romo was still dating Jessica Simpson (okay, I guess that hasn't changed either). And John Edwards' alleged affair wasn't being covered by big media outlets (sigh... I give up). I think three people noticed that I hadn't posted in several months (of course, that would triple the daily readership of the blog).

I guess the more things change... the more they stay the same. Which is why I still don't have a Philly sports title to celebrate. [By the way, the Philadelphia Soul winning a title doesn't count. Granted, if the dam breaks and Philly sports teams celebrate multiple titles in the next few years, the Soul will likely take credit for breaking the curse. So will I, by claiming that I exorcised the demons by writing this series of blog posts. All I want is a seat in a float in the parade.]

But I should have published the full list of moments, just to get them out of the way. Other than the ones that have been detailed in great glory, here's the rest of the list, in no particular order, of the most painful Philly sports moments of the last twenty-five years. Yes, I'm aware that other websites have run their own version of the list, but mine is more heartfelt and painful, not to mention written far too late to get linked by mainstream blogs. Also, this list is personal, so don't expect anything about St. Joe's basketball to appear on the list -- the diseased pigeon-rat mascot can die right now, as far as I'm concerned. And in light of the fact that I didn't write a piece about each one, there are random observations about each item on the list.

So here we go...

1. The 2004 NFC Title Game: Carolina 14, Eagles 3. The legend of 4th-and-26 would be much more important if the Eagles had won this game and made the Super Bowl, which would have meant tons of Freddie Mitchell appearances. So count this as a disguised blessing.

2. Smarty Jones loses the Belmont. Because he's from Philly, he finished second, making it as tortuously close as he could.

3. Flyers lose the 2004 Eastern Conference Finals to Tampa Bay. This further contributed to my irrational hatred of sports teams from Tampa.

4. Johnny Dawkins tears his ACL. He went to Duke. That pretty much guarantees a pro career marked by injury or disappointment. Yes, I'm worried about Elton Brand.

5. Duke shuts down Mark Macon and #1 Temple in the Elite Eight. This was the first time Billy King, who tormented Macon in that game, screwed Philly sports fans. His later tenure as Sixers GM was just the cherry on the sundae.

6. The 2003 NFC Title Game: Tampa 27, Eagles 10. I continue to refuse to discuss this game. Ever.

7. Sixers trade Moses and the #1 pick for Ruland, Hinson and crap. Actually, it wasn't crap -- they also got the right to pay for several of Ruland's knee surgeries.

8. Jerome Brown dies before the 1992 season. RIP, Jerome.

9. McNabb breaks his leg against the Cardinals, regular season 2002. A healthy McNabb means the 2003 NFC Title Game (which I won't discuss) ends differently.

10. 1987 Stanley Cup Finals Game 7: Edmonton 3, Flyers 1. Probably the closest any Philly sports team was to a title in the 25 years. Unfortunately, they had to play one of the greatest dynasties in NHL history, when that team was at the peak of its powers.

11. Phillies trade Curt Schilling for Padilla, Figueroa, Lee and Daal. Curt has three titles since then for two different teams. I have the Philadelphia Soul.

12. Eagles draft Mike Mamula instead of Warren Sapp. Sapp is headed for the Hall of Fame and won a Super Bowl with Tampa. Mamula is probably headed to 7-11 to get a Slurpee.

13. Lakers 4, Sixers 1 in the 2001 NBA Finals. I think Shaq has had a weight problem ever since he ate Dikembe during this series.

14. UNC beats Villanova by one point in the 2005 NCAA Sweet Sixteen. Up yours, Raftery -- it was a friggin' foul.

15. The Cowboys beat the Eagles 34-10 in the NFC divisional playoff in January 1993. The last appearance of Reggie in an Eagles uniform. RIP, big guy.

16. Billy Wagner surrenders a key homer to Craig Biggio, September 2005. The Astros won the game and won the wild-card over the Phillies by one game, then went to the World Series. This is one reason I don't miss Billy Wagner closing games for the Phillies, and why Mets fans generally look like they're drunk with fear when Wagner enters the game. Well, other than the fact that they are drunk.

17. The 2005 Super Bowl. 'Nuf said.

18. Flyers get torched in the 1997 Finals, 4-0. Eric Lindros wasn't concussed at the time, but he acted like it.

19. Westbrook tears a tricep against the Redskins in the regular season finale, 2003. With a healthy Westbrook, Carolina is roadkill in the NFC Title Game three weeks later.

20. The Phillies lose the 1983 World Series. 4 games to 1, to kick off the title drought in style. At least the team didn't trade away a future Hall of Famer like Ryne Sandberg while building the aging roster that lost this Series. Oh, wait...

Wow, after writing that, I feel much worse. I'm glad I didn't write the whole list in detail, because I might have needed medication afterwards.

Here's a promise -- when we win a title, I will go back and find a positive about every moment on this list, even the 2003 NFC Title Game (which I refuse to discuss). Until then, be prepared for more bitching. Hey, we're champs in that department.