Bada Bing!

Just as no two snowflakes are alike, no two Web search engines are alike. First, there was Archie (1990), then came Gopher (1991), and they were followed in the 1990s by: Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, and AltaVista. Yahoo! emerged in 1994. By 2000, the king of the mountain for Web searching was Google. On June 1, 2009, Microsoft's MSN Search (which never was a hit for Web searching) was relaunched as Bing and we have the latest Texas Death Match: Google v. Bing. This blog supplies a link to a site that does side-by-side comparisons of the two search tools. As Sonny Corleone said in "Godfather I": "Bada bing!" If this is a (fair & balanced) struggle for survival, so be it.

[x Time]
Can Microsoft's Bing Take A Bite Out Of Google?
By Tom McNichol

Tag Cloud of the following article

account algorithm announced applications bing bite business categories challenge chrome company competitor cool different employees engine fall farecast feature google group hopes inexpensive market microsoft million obama online operating page plans popular product really results search secret share system technology territory travel useless users video week windows work yahoo year

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In the world of online search, there's Google and there's everyone else.

The undisputed Sultan of Search, a company whose name has become a verb, Google currently accounts for about 65% of all online searches in the U.S, according to comScore Inc. But Google's comfortable dominance may be in for its most serious challenge in years with the debut of Bing, Microsoft's new search engine. Launched in June with a marketing and advertising blitz that reportedly cost Microsoft $80 million, Bing has come out of the gate strong, adding two percentage points to Microsoft's 8.4% search share in its first week of operation.

That share will soon get a huge boost with this week's announcement of a search and advertising partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo. If the deal goes through next year as planned, a combined Microsoft/Yahoo platform would account for about 28% of online searches in the U.S., all of them run through Bing's underlying technology.

Google isn't exactly quaking in its boots, but for the first time in years the search giant is hearing footsteps. According to one Google insider, the week Bing launched many employees at the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters could be seen punching queries into Bing to see how the results compared with Google's. (There's now a website that will do a side-by-side comparison for you: http://www.bing-vs-google.com/.)

Inside the Googleplex, employees were particularly interested in getting a sense of Bing's search algorithm. The algorithm is a search engine's secret sauce, the complex set of instructions that determine which search results are retuned and in what order. Google's algorithm is a trade secret, one guarded as jealously as the recipe for Coca Cola.

What they might have discovered by now is that Bing represents something Google hasn't faced in a long time: a well-designed and carefully thought-out search rival backed by a competitor with very deep pockets. "In some ways, the search experience with Bing is better than Google's," says Craig Stoltz, a web consultant and author of the blog Web2.0h...Really?. "It seems like Bing returns shorter, more valuable results. Google returns million of results, but a lot of them are pretty useless. That's a way that Google as a tool is vulnerable."

A Google spokesperson declined to comment on Bing, much as an incumbent prefers not to debate an upstart challenger. In a statement, Google said: "We have many competitors, and we take them all seriously." In other words, Google this, Bing.

Microsoft isn't quite so coy about the competition. Google was the target from day one. "When we developed Bing, we said, 'Okay, let's really understand the market leader,'" says Danielle Tiedt, general manager of Microsoft's Online Audience Business Group. "What are they doing well, what are they not doing well, and how can we differentiate ourselves?"

Bing has received surprisingly good reviews from critics, considering that complaining about Microsoft products is an armchair sport for bloggers. Bing, described by Microsoft as a "Decision Engine," targets four major categories of search: shopping, local, travel and health. Bing's home page is sumptuously colorful, displaying a different, richly detailed photograph every day. It's a deliberate attempt to distinguish Bing from Google's minimalist look.

Bing's search results are presented somewhat differently than Google's. A Bing results page has two components: a left-hand navigation panel that lets users click on related or recent searches, and a center panel that groups the search results into what Bing deems are logical categories. Search for "Obama," for example, and you'll see results grouped into categories such as Obama news, Obama issues, Obama facts and Obama biography. Google does have a type of categorization in its "related searches" feature, but it's not nearly as prominent as what Bing does. Bing also has a handy video preview feature where you can hover your cursor over a video thumbnail and see highlights from the video play automatically.

One area where Bing hopes to distinguish itself from Google is in travel searches. As anyone knows who has done a Google search for "inexpensive new york hotel" or "cheap air fare to london," the results are often close to useless, a jumble of promotional sites and lists that point to other lists. Bing hopes to trump Google in travel with its Farecast technology, designed to locate the cheapest flights and hotels based on recent trends. Farecast charts the peaks and valleys of airfares and room rates for a particular itinerary over the course of several months, and predicts what prices are likely to be in the near future. Users can then decide whether to buy now or wait for prices to fall. (A study by an independent auditing company found that Farecast's predictions were 74.5% accurate, and that travelers purchasing two plane tickets saved an average of $55 on airfare.)

One detail that's missing from Bing's home page is any mention of Microsoft. (There are small tabs that link to MSN and Windows Live, but they're easy to miss). Omitting Microsoft's name is no accident — it's an effective way of positioning Bing as a cool new search engine rather than a site sponsored by a gigantic corporation that's often seen as the antithesis of cool.

Microsoft's renewed commitment to search is only the latest example of Google and Microsoft invading each others' territory. Shortly after Bing's debut, Google announced a new operating system called Chrome, meant to take a bite out of Microsoft's Windows franchise. The Chrome OS, scheduled to be rolled out in the fall, is designed to run on netbooks, the small, inexpensive laptops that have surged in popularity. By tying the Chrome OS to popular applications like Gmail, Google Chat and Picassa, Google hopes to give Microsoft a run for its money in the operating system market, just as Microsoft hopes Bing will do in the search business.

As for Microsoft, even the world's largest and most powerful software company can't afford to cede territory. In July, Microsoft reported its worst fiscal year since the company went public in 1986, with annual revenue from the company's flagship Windows product declining for the first time ever. In the fall, Microsoft will release a new operating system, Windows 7, to rescue the tepidly received Windows Vista.

All of which makes Bing an important rearguard action for Microsoft, a way to make Google sweat about the search space while Microsoft defends its operating system market. Microsoft plans to spend 5% to 10% of its operating income on search over the next five years, a war chest that works out to about $10 billion per year.

Taking on Google has long been a losing proposition. but Bing, combined with Microsoft's search alliance with Yahoo, changes the contest. As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put it when announcing the Yahoo deal, his company can now "swing for the fences in search." Suddenly, search has become — bing! — a whole new ballgame. Ω

[Tom McNichol is a San Francisco writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on NPR's "All Things Considered." He is the author of Barking at Prozac (1996) and AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War (2006).]

Copyright © 2009 Time, Inc.

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Why Doesn't Texas Technique Chanticleer Kent Hance Go Whole Hog In Faculty Recruiting?

What stop with Gonzo? Texas Technique could import the drug cartel honchos from Mexico to teach management, Serbian warlords to teach population control studies, and Eric Rudolph (on furlough from the SuperMax) to teach beginning chemistry. The possibilities are endless (and priceless). If this is (fair & balanced) masked shame, so be it.

[x NotionsCapital]
Professor Gonzales
By Mike Licht

[Click on image to enlarge.]

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actor alberto american angelo appointment attorney branch brings commute concerned congress contemporary costs counsel court criminal department executive exiled extra-judicial facebook far federal general gonzales hance hispanic house human international issues law lecture member month mr offered paid political science stone subject teach tech testify texas titled university waiting white

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Disgraced former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will receive extra-judicial punishment next month when he is exiled to remote Lubbock, Texas. In a questionable choice of correctional employment, he will be allowed contact with young Americans as a faculty member at Texas Tech University.

While waiting to testify in Federal Court, at the International Criminal Court, and before Congress for his actions as White House Counsel and Attorney General, Mr. Gonzales will teach a junior-level Political Science course, “Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch” and lecture to impressionable youngsters on campus. He will also be paid to entice unsuspecting Hispanic American teens to enroll at Lubbock and at the TTU System campus of Angelo State University in San Angelo.

“Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch” indeed. Inspectors General of five U.S. intelligence agencies just released a report detailing how Mr. Gonzales, as White House counsel, told the Department of Justice to take a hike. Human rights advocates are also concerned about Mr. Gonzales’ legal justification of torture and other violations of international and U.S. law.

The academic qualifications of Alberto Gonzales to teach Political Science? An undergraduate degree in the subject.

Mr. Gonzales was offered the teaching appointment by Texas Tech chancellor Kent Hance, best know outside Texas as the good ol’ boy played by actor Paul Rae in the Oliver Stone film "W."

Not all Tech students are thrilled by this appointment. An editorial in the Daily Toreador is titled “Gonzales hiring brings criticism to Texas Tech,” and two TT Facebook groups oppose his appoinment.

Mr. Gonzales will be paid a mere $100,000, which will not go far. He will need every penny to commute to his trials and hearings. Roundtrip Lubbock-DC airfare is more than $400; travel to and from The Hague (site of the International Criminal Court) costs over $2,000. Ω

[Mike Licht is a Writer/Editor at the NotionsCapital blog in Washington DC. Licht holds degrees in English from SUNY-Buffalo (BA) and The University of Texas at Austin (MA).]

Copyright © 2009 NotionsCapital

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Cheeseburger In Paradise, Er, Athens? Texas?

This blogger is a sucker for a Top 50 List of any sort. So, strike off #2 — The Counter Burger at a hole-in-the-wall in west Austin. Ditto for #12 — The Chop-House Burger at a (fairly) nearby sports bar (many flat-screen TV sets). Today, your intrepid blogger went downtown and met #30 — The Half Ass Burger. So far, the TM burger barometer has been accurate. If this is (fair & balanced) gluttony, so be it.

PS: Never forget, boys and girls: ketchup on burgers, mustard on hot dogs, and mayo on BLT sandwiches. Commit no condiment sacrilege!

[x Texas Monthly]
Texas Monthly Ranks 50 Best Hamburgers In Texas
By Patricia Sharpe (and 30 associates)

In a story accompanying the hamburger list, senior editor Gary Cartwright, through his extensive research, set out to prove that the world’s first hamburger was served in Athens, Texas, despite the fact that three other towns take credit for inventing the hamburger: New Haven, Connecticut; the Village of Hamburg, New York; and Seymour, Wisconsin. “The documentary evidence supporting this claim is strong,” Cartwright says.

Texas Monthly’s 50 BEST HAMBURGERS IN TEXAS:

1. The Grape, Dallas, Classic Cheeseburger


2. Counter Café, Austin, Counter Burger


3. Alamo Springs Café, Fredericksburg, Cheeseburger (With Green Chiles on a Jalapeno-Cheese Bun)


4. Toro Burger Bar, El Paso, Toro Burger


5. The Cove, San Antonio, Texas Burger


6. The Porch, Dallas, The Stodg


7. Perini Ranch Steakhouse, Buffalo Gap, Hamburger Steak on a Bun


8. Dutch’s, Fort Worth, Bacon and Bleu Cheese Burger


9. Beck’s Prime, Houston, Bacon Cheeseburger


10. Orlando’s, Lubbock, Cheeseburger in Paradise


11. White Buffalo Bar, Gage Hotel, Marathon, Buffalo Burger


12. Cover 3, Austin, Chop-House Burger (With Cheese and Bacon)


13. Burger Fresh, Conroe, 1/2 Pound Hamburger


14. Burger Tex II, Austin, Bulgogi Burger


15. Twisted Root Burger Co., Dallas, Hamburger


16. Max’s Wine Dive, Austin, Houston, Kobe Beef Burger


17. Love Shack, Fort Worth, Dirty Love Burger


18. Fatty’s Burgers & More, San Antonio, Ref Burger


19. MoMak’s Backyard Malts & Burgers, San Antonio, MoMak Classic Burger


20. Kelly’s Eastside, Plano, Southwestern Burger


21. Big’z Burger Joint, San Antonio, Big’z Famous No. 1


22. Chicken Oil Co., Bryan, Snuffy Burger


23. Café Michael Burger, Galveston, Tiki Burger


24. Burgers, Fries and Cherry Pies, Midland, The French Connection Burger


25. Mockingbird Bistro, Houston, American Kobe Beef Burger


26. Parkside, Austin, Cheeseburger


27. Black Sheep Lodge, Austin, Black Buffalo Burger


28. Miss Hattie’s Café and Saloon, San Angelo, Miss Hattie Burger


29. Mel’s Country Café, Tomball, Double Hamburger


30. Roaring Fork, Austin, Half Ass Burger


31. Gene’s Tasty Burger, Wichita Falls, Frisco Burger


32. Cliff Café, Dallas, Brie and Granny Smith Burger


33. Bracken Store Café, San Antonio, Bean and Frito Burger


34. Sam’s Deli Diner, Houston, Hamburger


35. Dry Creek Café, Houston, The Regular (With Asadero Cheese)


36. Hamburger Store, Jefferson, Build-Your-Own Burger


37. Mighty Fine, Austin, Hamburger


38. Roadhouse, Bastrop, Jalapeno Cream Cheese Burger


39. Lankford Grocery and Market, Houston, Old-Fashioned Hamburger


40. Classics Burgers and “Moore,” Kerrville, Cheeseburger


41. Koffee Kup Family Restaurant, Hico, Jalapeno Cream Cheese Burger


42. Hruska’s Store and Bakery, Ellinger, Cheeseburger


43. Rosco’s Burger Inn, El Paso, Rosco Burger


44. Port Aransas Brewing Company, Port Aransas, Stopher Burger


45. Goode Company Hamburgers and Taqueria, Houston, Mesquite Burger


46. Snuffer’s Restaurant and Bar, Dallas, Green Chile Swissburger


47. Fred’s Texas Café, Fort Worth, Diablo Burger


48. Speedy’s Burger, Houston, Hamburguesa Mexicana


49. Gourmet Burger Grill, San Antonio, Hamburger


50. Jakes, Dallas, #1 Jakes Special

_________________________
The World's First Hamburger
By Gary Cartwright

Tag Cloud of the following article

according account article athens aunt beef burger cafe called ciddy claim clint concession county courthouse cutlets dallas dave davis didn eating fair family fletch fletcher friend grandfather hamburger invent later letter louis midway miller murchison patty prove sandwich seymour story things tolbert told took uncle vendor wanda world wrote york

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For more than a quarter of a century, Athens, Texas, has been boasting that the world’s first hamburgers were created in the late 1880’s at a small cafe on the Henderson County courthouse square run by a man known as Uncle Fletcher Davis. According to legend, Uncle Fletch took his sandwich to the 1904 World’s Fair, in St. Louis. There it was dubbed “hamburger,” a term apparently coined in derision by St. Louis citizens of Teutonic extraction who viewed as barbaric the culinary practice, native to Hamburg, Germany, of devouring large handfuls of ground beef, sometimes raw. The documentary evidence supporting this claim is strong: An article filed from the World’s Fair by a reporter for the New York Tribune described a sandwich called a hamburger, made by an unknown vendor. Nevertheless, a few other towns have tried to take credit for inventing the burger — most notably Seymour, Wisconsin; New Haven, Connecticut; and the Village of Hamburg, New York. The Athens claim has appeared more legit, partly because it received the stamp of approval from the McDonald’s Hamburger University, whose distinguished patty historians concluded that the true inventor of their cash cow was an unknown food vendor at the 1904 World’s Fair, and partly because it was based on years of detective work by the late Dallas Morning News columnist Frank X. Tolbert. Tolbert was something of a windbag, but he was a dogged researcher and usually got his facts right. Recent reports suggest, however, that Tolbert may have flubbed this one. Or maybe he was tricked. I decided to check it out.

Curiously, one of Tolbert’s main sources was Clint Murchison Jr., the droll, irrepressible multimillionaire sportsman who founded the Dallas Cowboys. Murchison prided himself on being a world-class practical joker; one hot Dallas summer, while a friend was away vacationing on someone’s yacht, Murchison had a crew dismantle the friend’s garden wall and hoist a 24-foot cruiser into his swimming pool.

He was also a down-home gourmet and spoke with authority when he assured Tolbert that the authentic birthplace of the hamburger was Athens, the ancestral home of the Murchison clan. Clint told Tolbert that his grandfather, banker John Murchison, had vivid memories of eating a delicious but unnamed ground-meat sandwich in the late 1880’s at the cafe across from the courthouse and next door to Murchison’s First National Bank. Grandfather Murchison didn’t remember the owner’s name, only that everyone called him Old Dave.

In 1974 Clint got a letter from his son Robert, who was studying at Yale, that included an article from the New York Times reporting the imminent closing of a New Haven landmark called Louis Lunch, which was characterized as “the birthplace of the American hamburger.” According to the article, the blessed event took place in 1900. Fearful that “if we let the Yankees get away claiming the invention of hamburgers, they’ll be going after chili next,” Murchison sprang into action. He sent Tolbert a photo of the 1904 World’s Fair midway, taken from his family archives: Someone — ostensibly Grandfather Murchison — had drawn an arrow to “Dave’s hamburger stand.” But who was Dave? Tolbert spent the next few weeks looking for the answer.

Kindree Miller, a fifth-generation potter from Athens, told him that Old Dave was the nickname given to Miller’s uncle, Fletcher Davis. Davis was also a potter, and he had moved from Webster Groves, Missouri, to Athens in the 1880’s to work for Miller’s father. He married Miller’s mother’s sister, Recilla “Ciddy” Allison, and they became known to family and friends as Uncle Fletch and Aunt Ciddy. When the pottery business slowed down a few years later, Uncle Fletch opened a little lunch counter on the courthouse square. “I remember eating what was later called a hamburger at Uncle Fletch’s cafe before I even started in the first grade,” Miller told Tolbert. When he was ten his parents took him to the 1904 fair. They stayed with Uncle Fletch and Aunt Ciddy for two weeks and ate hamburgers almost every day at Fletch’s concession booth, which was just across the midway from an exhibit featuring Geronimo and other famous warriors.

After the fair closed, Uncle Fletch went back to his trade of firing pots and never grilled another burger except at family picnics and company parties. Athens forgot about burgers and concentrated instead on being the black-eyed pea capital of the world—until 1983, when Tolbert wrote his definitive column.

His conclusions were backed up by serious flaws in the other towns’ claims. Despite what the Times story said, it seems that what Louis Lassen had served at his New Haven lunch wagon was a memorable steak sandwich and not a ground beef hamburger. The Seymour, Wisconsin, claim is based on a tale about a character called “Hamburger Charlie” Nagreen who sold meatballs from an ox cart at the Outagamie County Fair in 1885. Observing that meatballs were difficult to eat while walking, Nagreen hit on the idea of serving them flattened between two slices of bread. Voilà! Based on this ad hoc meatball sandwich, Seymour claims to be the “home of the hamburger.” Hamburg’s contention must also be viewed with skepticism. According to this story, the hamburger was invented by two brothers from Akron, Ohio, who traveled a circuit of fairs and race meetings selling pork-sausage sandwiches. In the summer of 1885, as they were setting up their concession stand at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, they realized they were short of pork sausage patties. In a bind, they substituted beef patties. Thus did the laws of supply and demand temporarily create “the Hamburg sandwich.”

Athens’s title looked secure. But then, in 2007, a writer named Josh Ozersky, a.k.a. “Mr. Cutlets,” wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times Web site that shot holes in Tolbert’s account. Mr. Cutlets is also the online food editor for New York magazine and the author of Hamburgers: A Cultural History, and he had some shocking things to report. He explained that a painstaking search of the New York Tribune archives had failed to turn up any dispatch filed from the 1904 World’s Fair concerning a hamburger. More damning still, Mr. Cutlets wrote that Fletcher Davis hadn’t even been on the Fair’s concession list, concluding that there was “no documentary evidence for Texas’ claim at all.”

And so, in mid-May, I took a trip to Athens to meet with Uncle Fletch’s grandnephew, Jim Allison, of Eustace, and two of his cousins, Harvey Allison, of Dallas, and Wanda Sheram, of Athens. We met at the Lake Athens Marina Restaurant, which several folks assured me made the best hamburgers in town. Harvey and Wanda brought along family archives to prove their direct lineage to the first hamburger. They wore white T-shirts embossed with a portrait of Uncle Fletch, identified as “inventor of the hamburger sandwich.”

The first thing out of their mouths was “Tolbert got a lot of things wrong.” Like what? “Well,” Wanda said, “Uncle Fletch died in 1940, not 1941.” Anything else? She opened one of the two family scrapbooks and continued, “We know that there’s no newspaper account of him cooking hamburgers until he married Aunt Ciddy, in 1896.” That would have been at least ten years after the date that Uncle Fletch was supposed to have opened his cafe on the square. One family document purports to show that Uncle Fletch arrived in Athens in the 1880’s, but neither Harvey nor Wanda has ever seen it, and they insist that he didn’t get there until 1894. Again, that date clashed with Tolbert’s timeline.

“You’re telling me he didn’t invent the hamburger?” I asked.

“Oh, no, of course he did,” Wanda said indignantly. “We’ve got a book of vendor’s tickets to prove he cooked at the World’s Fair.” On close inspection, however, I saw that the vendor’s tickets issued to Fletcher Davis identified him as “a pottery turner” representing W. S. Ceramics Co. at the Fair’s Palace of Mines and Metallurgy. Nothing about hamburgers. When I asked Wanda to explain, she speculated that Uncle Fletch had used his ceramics pass to get in the door, but that he had traveled to St. Louis with the express intention of selling his hamburger sandwich on the midway. The conversation was cut short when Judy Gould, who with her husband, Peter Gould, owns the Marina Restaurant, brought my burger. It was everything they had promised — a hot, juicy beef patty on a buttered, toasted bun with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, and lots of yellow mustard. I was too busy enjoying my burger to say for sure, but I think Uncle Fletch’s kin ordered catfish.

For several days after my visit to Athens, I puzzled over the contradictions. All things considered, I concluded, Athens’s claim is as good and maybe better than any of the others. Eyewitnesses like Grandfather Murchison and Kindree Miller and scholars like Tolbert and the Hamburger University researchers lend credence to this version of the story. But how to account for the discrepancies? This bothered me until I remembered a particularly wacky passage in a letter that Clint wrote to Robert in which Clint tells a story later repeated by Tolbert. It seems that when the reporter for the New York Tribune asked Old Dave about his creation, Dave said the sandwich was his idea but the recipe for the side order of fried potatoes came from a friend in Paris. Dave meant Paris, Texas, of course, but the reporter got confused and — according to Clint’s letter — wrote that hamburgers were best served with “French fried potatoes.”

I can’t prove it, but I suspect that some of Tolbert’s tale about Uncle Fletch and his adventures in grilling is a prime example of Classic Clint in action. I can just see that impish smile and hear his soft chuckle. “French-fried potatoes” — that’s a good one! Ω

[Gary Cartwright received his B.A. in journalism from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. He has had a distinguished career as a newspaper reporter and as a freelance writer, contributing stories to such national publications as Harper’s, Life, and Esquire. Cartwright has written several books, including Blood Will Tell (1978); Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter (1982); Dirty Dealing (1984); and Galveston: A History of the Island (1991). Cartwright as been on the Texas Monthly staff since 1982.]

Copyright &$169; 2009 Emmis Publishing

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Only In The Land O'The Free & The Home O'The Brave!

Meeet the Congressional Birthers here. Read about the schism among the Dumbos and assorted Righty wingnuts on the issue President Obama's citizenship here. Not only are the Birthers paranoid, but they have prompted dissociative identity disorder among the Rightwingnuts. First, the Birthers froth at the mouth over the citizenship of the POTUS, then they vote for (or abstain without opposing) a resolution recognizing the 50th anniversary of Hawaiian statehood as well as Hawaii's claim that Barack Hussein Obama II is a native son of the Aloha State. What's a poor Birther to do? Even the Crown Princess of the Congressional Rightwingnuts, Michelle Bachman (R-MN) voted FOR the resolution! If this is (fair & balanced) delusional behavior, so be it.

[x Salon]
The War Room:An Anti-Birther Resolution In Congress?
By Alex Koppelman

Tag Cloud of the following article

abercrombie absence alex bachmann bill birth birthers birthplace block brought candidates co-sponsor commemorates congress congressional criticized decided democrat describes evening floor hawaii house indeed introduce jam legislation means measures neil noted obama pass political postpone procedure quorum reject rep reported republican resolution rules sargent scheduled seems support suspension used votes

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It would make some political sense for congressional Democrats to start pressing their Republican colleagues on the birthers. If Republicans don't reject the conspiracy theories about President Obama's birthplace outright, their opponents can use it to paint them as extremists; if they do reject them, they might have a problem with their base.

Greg Sargent reported Monday that one House Democrat, Hawaii's Neil Abercrombie, was doing just that. Abercrombie, Sargent wrote, "is going to introduce a resolution on the House floor today that seems designed to put House GOPers who are flirting with birtherism in a jam.... [The resolution] commemorates the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. But here’s the rub, his spokesman tells me: It describes Hawaii as Barack Obama’s birthplace."

The resolution wasn't really intended to jam up the House Republicans, or to rebuke the birthers, though. (The implied slam at the birthers was a side benefit, but not the primary purpose by any means.) Besides, the resolution was actually introduced last month — it just happened to be brought to the floor on Monday. And one of the bill's co-sponsors, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., is to be a co-sponsor of the "birther bill" that would require future presidential candidates to furnish a birth certificate.

The way the resolution was brought to the floor, under a procedure known as suspension of the rules, also indicated that it wasn't meant as a political maneuver. The procedure is generally used for measures unlikely to cause any controversy, and means that the amount of debate on the bill is limited, as is the number of amendments that can be added, but means that two-thirds of the House must vote in favor in order for the legislation to pass. Fifteen other measures were brought to the House floor under the same procedure Monday.

On Monday afternoon, it seemed that one House Republican, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, had indeed moved to support the birthers, as liberal blog Think Progress reported that she blocked the bill.

This time, though, Bachmann was being criticized unfairly. She did indeed block a vote on the resolution, noting the absence of a quorum, but that move wasn't about Abercrombie's resolution specifically. She was just playing her part. The House had already decided to postpone the votes on all of the resolutions being considered under a suspension of the rules until Monday evening. Bachmann noted the absence of a quorum for several other non-controversial pieces of legislation so that those votes, too, could be postponed until the scheduled time.

In fact, as a spokeswoman for Bachmann told Salon — and C-SPAN video of the congresswoman's remarks on the House floor confirmed — Bachmann supports the resolution.

After the postponement, on Monday evening the resolution passed — unanimously. Bachmann was one of the "yea" votes.

[Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for the online magazine Salon. He runs Salon's political blog, War Room. Formerly the media critic for another online magazine, Dragonfire, Alex is a contributing editor at Smith Magazine and has written for New York Magazine and the Huffington Post, among others. Alex has appeared on MSNBC, CNN Headline News and Fox News, and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.]

Copyright © 2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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Hell = Canadian Health Care?

The best panel in today's "This Modern World" is the third (top right) with the colloquy between the Dumbo opponent of health care reform and Sparky the Wonder Penguin. The Dumbo says: "I certainly don't want my tax dollars to be used for something I oppose." Ol' Spark replies: "Gosh, what a good point! Now, let's talk about the Iraq War, Guantanamo, and the Goldman Sachs bailouts! ...For starters." Yes, indeed, Sparky — those are just starters because there is the matter of TAX-SUPPORTED torture and war crimes and on and on. If this is (fair & balanced) denunciation of Dumbo stupidity, so be it.

[x Salon]
This Modern World — "Accountants Making Health Care Decisions?"
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

Click on image to enlarge. Ω

Tom Tomorrow/Dan Perkins

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow". His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Salon and Working for Change. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly.

Perkins, a long time resident of Brooklyn, New York, currently lives in Connecticut. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002.

When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political weblog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001.]

Copyright © 2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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Copyright © 2009 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves

Meet A REAL Republican Woman

The new chair of the Texas State Board of Education is Gail Lowe of Lampassas, TX. It could be worse, Governor Goodhair chose Lowe over a sister dingbat on the SBOE, Cynthia Dunbar. Lowe was chosen because she was a True Republican Woman with a smiling face; Dunbar has a more intense demeanor. So, here we go: the new SBOE chair wants to Christianize the curriculum and, while she's at it, make that curriculum lily-white. Ben Sargent gets it exactly right: white Protestant privilege gets its due. If this is (fair & balanced) wrong-headedness, so be it.

[x Austin Fishwrap]
Texas State Board of Edudcation — July 2009
By Ben Sargent

Click on image to enlarge.

[Ben Sargent drew editorial cartoons regularly for the Austin American-Statesman (1974-2009). Sargent now contributes a cartoon to the Sunday editorial page. His cartoons are also distributed nationally by Universal Press Syndicate. Sargent was born in Amarillo, Texas, into a newspaper family. He learned the printing trade from age twelve and started working for the local daily as a proof runner at fourteen. He attended Amarillo College and received a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1970. Sargent won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1982. He has also received awards from Women in Communications, Inc., Common Cause of Texas, and Cox Newspapers. He is the author of Texas Statehouse Blues (1980) and Big Brother Blues (1984).]

Copyright © 2009 Ben Sargent/Austin American-Statesman
_______________
[x TEA]








Gail Lowe (R)
11 Chris Avenue
Lampasas, TX 76550
(512) 556-6262
(512) 936-4319 FAX
sboesupport@tea.state.tx.us

January 1, 2009 - January 1, 2013

Gail Lowe was elected to the State Board of Education in November 2002 and re-elected in 2004 and 2008. Governor Rick Perry appointed Lowe chair of the board on July 10, 2009. She will serve in that capacity through February 1, 2011. She currently serves on the Committee on School Finance/Permanent School Fund. Previously, Lowe was vice chair of the board's Committee on Planning and later chaired the Committee on School Initiatives.

Prior to her election to the State Board of Education, Lowe served on the Lampasas Independent School District Board of Trustees, as well as district and campus site-based decision-making committees. She has been a longtime classroom volunteer, working primarily with elementary schoolchildren who have fallen behind in their reading and math skills.

Lowe is a co-publisher of the semi-weekly newspaper, the Lampasas Dispatch Record. She is a member of various regional and national newspaper organizations and serves as vice president/treasurer for Hill Country Publishing Co. Inc. Lowe is also an honorary member of Delta Kappa Gamma.

She has been active in civic affairs as a charter member of the Lampasas Republican Women and a business member of the Lampasas County Chamber of Commerce. Lowe is a member of Friends of Lampasas Public Library and is involved with New Covenant Church, where she serves on the financial review board. In 2005, she was named Conservative of the Year by the non-partisan Lampasas County Conservative Club.

Lowe attended the University of Alabama from 1975-1977. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from Louisiana State University in 1978.

She and her husband have three children who have been educated in Lampasas public schools.

As a member of the State Board of Education, Lowe represents the counties of Archer, Bosque, Brown, Clay, Comanche, Cooke, Coryell, Denton, Eastland, Erath, Grayson, Hamilton, Hill, Hood, Jack, Lampasas, McLennan, Mills, Montague, Palo Pinto, Somervell, Stephens, Wichita, Wise, and Young, as well as parts of Bell County. Ω

Copyright © 2009 Texas Education Agency (TEA)

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Copyright © 2009 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves

Look Out Mrs. Kelso! This Blog Is Gonna Be Critical Of Your Old Man (Again)

About a month ago (June 23, 2009), this blogger posted a "humor column" written by the Austin Fishwrap's resident redneck "humor columnist," John Kelso. The introduction to that Kelso "humor column" roused the ire of Mrs. Kelso. See her comment at the end of that blog entry. While this blogger is not interested in another urological competition with Mrs. Kelso, it is still this blogger's nature to rush in where angels fear to tread. In today's "humor column," Faux Redneck Kelso made light of Roe v. Wade, which — since 1973 — has made abortion less than a laughing matter in the Land O'The Free and The Home O'The Brave, thanks to the anti-abortion killers of Dr. George Tiller, Dr. Barnett Slepian, Robert Sanderson (clinic security guard), Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols (clinic receptionists), Dr. John Britton and James Barrett (clinic security guard), and Dr. David Gunn. Of course, it goes without saying that the killers and their anti-abortion sympathizers find no humor in abortion, either. In an earlier column this week, that also wasn't very funny, Kelso proclaimed that he was saved from many lapses in good taste by his editors. Perhaps Mrs. Kelso also has tamed the loutish humor from time to time. However, in the case of today's "humor column," Kelso went over the line with the Aggie joke about Roe v. Wade and where were the editors? Where was Mrs. Kelso? The silence is deafening. If this is a (fair & balanced) criticism of an undescended sense of humor, so be it.

[x Austin Fishwrap]
Want Answers From Sotomayor? Ask The Right Questions
By John Kelso

Tag Cloud of the following article

abortion answer audience besides better bronx confirmation constitution court cowboys cruise cuisine details fascinating franken funniest garage going hearings john keep law leaves leg mention mosquito night organ paper pavilion pope questions rarely really river sauce scare senate six sonia sotomayor started supreme think thought throw truly wanted watch windbags

created at TagCrowd.com

The trouble with the Supreme Court confirmation hearings? The Senate folks doing the grilling rarely ask the right questions, many of which the candidate isn't going to answer anyway.

Even Dick Cheney and the home waterboard kit he keeps in his garage couldn't get Judge Sonia Sotomayor's opinion on abortion during these hearings. So, what you're left with is a chorus of windbags, each trying to out-pipe organ the next.

This makes for boring TV. I mean, what do you advertise for $19.95 on a show like this? Certainly not the Bass-o-matic. Besides, it leaves people knowing less about the nominee than they did before the show started.

So, here are some of the questions our senators should have been asking Sotomayor, if they'd really wanted to scare out some fascinating details about her:

You're from the Bronx, so you tell me: How'd that Bronx Cheer thing get started?

Were there ever any plans to attend the Great Texas Mosquito Festival this weekend in Clute, and if so, were you fixing to enter the mosquito legs contest under the large pavilion?

So, who's your favorite Beatle?

If you had to, would you leg wrestle House Minority Leader John Boehner for this job?

Critical cuisine question: Do you truly believe there is any such thing as a chicken fajita?

Paper or plastic, or did you bring your own bag?

Does the Constitution mention Al Franken?

Do you know the one about Roe v. Wade being an Aggie river cruise choice to get to the other side?

Have you ever thought about putting the duck quack ring on your cell phone?

Do you think 9 o'clock in the morning is too early to start a tailgate party?

What's the funniest thing you've ever put ketchup on?

Do you go to NASCAR just to watch the wrecks?

Ever had an itch to be a barrel racer?

Harvard Law, huh? When you pick up The New Yorker, do you look at the cartoons, or do you actually read the articles?

How 'bout them Cowboys?

Here's a biggie. Good barbecue: sauce, or no sauce?

When you check into a motel, like me, is the ice machine the first thing you go looking for?

Do you think Dallas really does look better from a DC-9 at night?

When you're riding the Superman at Six Flags, do you throw your arms in the air, or do you keep them in the car?

And finally, would you rather have an audience with the pope or be part of the audience at Willie Nelson's picnic? Ω

[Downeaster (Maine-native) John Kelso has worked for the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman as a humor columnist since 1977. Before coming to Austin, Kelso worked at several newspapers: The Manchester (NH) Union-Leader; The Boonville (MO) Daily News; The Palm Beach (FL) Post, and the Racine (WI.) Journal Times. Kelso has been a general assignment reporter, a copy editor, a sports editor, and an outdoor writer. As a pretend-redneck, Kelso is all gimme cap and no double-wide. His redneck-shtik appears thrice weekly: Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays in the Austin Fishwrap.]

Copyright © 2009 Austin American-Statesman

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Copyright © 2009 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves

Today's Most Trusted News Anchor Is Jonathan S. Leibowitz?

Just think: if the birth certificate showed that the son of Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Dunham had been named Baruch Hosea Obama because his father was not only black, but Jewish! The Birthers and their anti-Semite companions in paranoid delusion would have the double whammy: The POTUS is not only a foreign-born black man, but he's a Jew, too! However, this is not to be because the State of Hawaii birth certificate shows the name of the POTUS to be Barack Hussein Obama II. No doubt that there will be a splinter group of deluded Dumbos who fixate on the "missing" Roman numeral. Uh, oh. Muslims and Jews don't use Roman numerals in male names! Barack Hussein Obama II is neither Muslim nor Jew! What is a deluded paranoid wacko to do? In the meantime, ponder the case of Jon Stewart and the tradition using "on-air" names. As Dana Hall wrote in Billboard nearly a decade ago:

What's in a name? For an on-air personality, a lot. Although there is nothing wrong with using the name your parents gave you, there are a number of reasons why many [on-air personalities]... choose not to.

In his first broadcast gig, Walter Cronkite was known as Walter Wilcox and now Cronkite's heir as the most trusted news anchor, Jonathan Stewart Leibowitz, is better known as Jon Stewart. If this is (fair & balanced) accomodation to anti-Semitism, so be it.

[x Slate]
An Open Letter To Jon Stewart: Bring Back Leibowitz!
By Ron Rosenbaum

Tag Cloud of the following article

although anti-semitism authenticity author business called celebrity change dark different dylan era fact fan father feel fun getting going jerry jewish jews jon kirk leibowitz letter magazine making moment mother name nation open pass point political recall ron ronald rosenbaum savant sense skin something stewart talent think took tv ugly

created at TagCrowd.com

Dear Jon Stewart,

You probably don't recall, but I was one of your earliest, most enthusiastic media admirers. I wrote a column nearly a decade ago, shortly after you took over The Daily Show, when you were still struggling for recognition of your genius, before the massive media love-in that took a while to develop. My column then took the form of an open letter to David Letterman, about how his show was getting tired and how he ought to get Jon Stewart to replace him. (I like open letters.) I talked about how much I loved the perfect pitch of your TV "newsmagazine" parodies but most of all how I was blown away by your astonishing quickness of wit, most evident in the unscripted interviews. I called you "an idiot savant" of comedy. (That was a compliment—ignore the idiot part, focus on the savant.)

So please know I'm writing as an admirer, someone who thinks you have the courage as well as comedic smarts to take the simple but radical step I'm going to suggest.

I want you to change your name. Back to Leibowitz. Stewart is just so 20^th-century, a relic of that dark age when Jews in show biz changed their names because they feared "real Americans" wouldn't accept the originals.

It's not as if you're trying to hide your Jewishness in your TV persona. As the Jewish magazine Moment put it:

As his star has risen, Stewart, born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, has also become an ambassador of Jewishness. Dispensing Jewish humor like a tic, Stewart's impish grin, self-deprecating punch lines and jokey cultural references are a staple of the show. He has referred to himself as "Jewey Von Jewstein" and cracked wise on Jewish noses, circumcision, anti-Semites ... and his grandma at Passover.

It's almost as if the Leibowitz in you is trying desperately to escape from behind the mask of the Stewart. So why not set it free? Change the name back?

At this point, it wouldn't hurt you. It would only help you: Most of your fans would see it as a touching gesture. And you'd no doubt get lots of comedic mileage out of it. I'm sure that you could milk the buildup and get a good-natured laugh out of the audience every time you used Leibowitz or pretended to get confused.

And, on a more serious note, it would represent the end of a shabby, antiquated era, pronouncing that aspect of anti-Semitism now (hopefully) dead and gone. It might even make it easier for young comedians, actors, and rock stars to resist the temptation to try to "pass." (Although, frankly, I hope that Gene Simmons of Kiss keeps his origins hidden from those who don't know about them.) It could be an important cultural moment.

Don't you think it's about time for Jews to reject the rejection of their ancestry and the WASP-ification of their names? Not just you, but all Jews in show business, indeed all Jews in business business. The practice might once have served a purpose, back in the '20s and '30s, when it was insisted upon by powerful but fearful Hollywood movie moguls who wanted Jewish talent but were afraid of Jewish names seeming un-American to the mass of the populace who, it's probably true at that time, suffered from a low-grade case of anti-Semitism. Or nativist hostility to foreign names in general. So Issur Danielovitch Demsky became Kirk Douglas. (You could have gone with Kirk Leibowitz.)

It's strange, isn't it? Shouldn't that era be long over? And yet it persists, diminished somewhat. In fact, you're one of the last to feel the need to do it. I mean, it pains me to say this, given how I feel about the man, but … Jerry Seinfeld. It hurts me, anyway, as the nation's leading anti-Seinfeldian, that he gets credit for exploiting a watered-down version of his ethnicity by retaining his identifiable Jewish last name. "The Jerry Stone Show"? Would sink like one. (Although, come to think of it: George playing an "Italian"? With those parents? What's up with that? A kind of retro "quota"? Would making him a Jew, too, have been one Jew too many?)

You might ask: Why do I bring this whole thing up now? I was wondering that myself. I thought it might have something to do with Bob Dylan changing his name from Zimmerman back in the early '60s, since I'm working on a book for Yale University Press' "Jewish Lives" series on Dylan and religion and one crux of the Dylan mystery is whether Dylan would have become Dylan—despite all that talent—if he'd remained Zimmerman.

But, actually, I think I started thinking about your last name because of Michael Jackson. Because since his death, I've been focusing for the first time—staring in amazement, really—at images of his whiter-than-white face.

I guess you could make the case that Michael just happened to think he looked better that way, that there's no need to introduce theories about racial pathology, or the oppressed internalizing the aesthetic values of the oppressor, into the discussion. He had every right to make himself look white if he felt like it.

But it's hard to believe that his decision to change his skin from black to white wasn't a reaction to racism, to seeing the ugly way people with dark skin were treated even by members of his own race with lighter skin. Well, you can say that feeling, that attitude, belongs to a sad time that has thankfully passed.

At this point, wouldn't changing your name be just an honorable thing to do as well as a long-overdue symbolic celebration of the passing of the age of "passing"? I will admit I have a personal interest in this matter since I have a recognizably Jewish name. I want to tell you two quick stories about my mother and father. My mother couldn't get a teaching job during the Depression, and in order to get any regular secretarial work, she felt she had to change her name in Morgenstern-to-Morningstar fashion. No, it wasn't Dachau-style anti-Semitism she was reacting to; it was more "gentleman's agreement"-style, country-club anti-Semitism, but there was something ugly about the necessity of the change, nonetheless.

I also have a very touching memory of my father, who, when I first started getting published in national magazines, made a point of telling me that it meant a lot to him that I didn't change my name. I have to admit I was a little shocked, because the possibility hadn't occurred to me, but he was in the product of an era in which Jews regularly changed or modified their names to make them less obtrusively Jewish, and he was glad I didn't feel his name was a burden of some kind.

In fact, I did modify my name slightly: My given name is Ronald, not Ron. (My mother for some reason was a fan of the British actor Ronald Coleman, who as I dimly recall played stuffy aristos.) Never feeling like a "Ronald," I called myself Ron from my very first byline.

My father's attitude contained elements of pride and protectiveness reflective of another era, right?

And yet there it still is: Jon Stewart. A faint but unnecessary relic of anti-Semitism. You know, Jon, the treatment of Jewish names is often a barometer of that social disease. I consulted one of the foremost scholars of anti-Semitism, Robert Wistrich, the author of a forthcoming history of it called A Lethal Obsession. He pointed out that "[i]n 1938 the Nazi government obliged all German Jews to add an additional name (Israel for men and Sarah for women) to mark them off from the rest of the population. It was one more way of signaling the end of Jewish emancipation." And, Wistrich added, even now in very different circumstances, name changing of a different sort "reflects a latent Jewish insecurity and sense of vulnerability which is far from having disappeared." So you shouldn't feel bad about having done it, Jon. But it is a good time to change it.

So I think you should take your old name back. And then I think you could start a movement, asking other name-changers in show business to join you in getting back to their roots.

Now, you have every right to wonder why I'm singling you out like this. I think it has something to do with what I like most about your show, which is that you, like the best satirists, focus on making fun of those who put up a false front. Not that Stewart is false in any malign sense of the word. (It was your middle name—well, Stuart was!) But that it's a kind of mask, and you spend most of your time making fun of the pretentious masks that politicians, celebrities, and big shots adopt.

You're all three now—a politician, a celebrity, and a big shot—in the sense that you have remarkable influence politically. In fact, pols and political writers often establish their identities in their appearances on your show because you have a way of exposing their authentic selves however inauthentic the "authenticity" is. They either pass or fail the Jon Stewart authenticity test. And now we learn from a new poll that you're the new Cronkite, the nation's most trusted news source. All the more reason not to use a name that doesn't completely pass the Jon Stewart authenticity test, does it right?

I think you know what I'm talking about, and I think it would be great on so many levels if you changed your name, officially, on your show. Or tell us why you've chosen not to. (I bet Slate would give you a slot to do so as well.) But I have a feeling that deep down inside you want to do it.

In fact, you've inspired me. I'm going to change my name to make it more authentic.

Yours truly,
Lance Rosenbaum Ω

[Ron Rosenbaum graduated from Yale University in 1968 and won a Carnegie Fellowship to attend Yale's graduate program in English Literature, though he dropped out after taking one course. He wrote for the The Village Voice for several years, leaving in 1975 after which he wrote for Esquire, Harper's, High Times, Vanity Fair, New York Times Magazine, and Slate. Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare Wars (2004) and Explaining Hitler (1998).]

Copyright © 2009 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co.

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