Dodger Stadium is Almost Empty

From Bill Plaschke, at Los Angeles Times, "It Can't Get Much Worse at Dodger Stadium":

I have reached rock bottom, and it is a hot bleacher in section 314 in the right-field pavilion of Dodger Stadium.

I am sitting here Wednesday afternoon introducing myself to everyone else in this giant section.

All six of them.

"It's sad," says Jose Haro.

"It's lonely," says Javier Casillas.

In a season of bad, it's the worst. The crowd at this midday game between the Dodgers and San Diego Padres appears to be the smallest in a season of empty.

It's the smallest crowd I've seen in my 23 years of following the Dodgers. It might be the smallest crowd in the 49-year history of Dodger Stadium.

The official attendance is 27,767, the second-lowest of the season, but that accounts for the number of tickets sold, not the number of actual people in seats.

This is surely the worst. This is surely not even close. Eleven sections are completely vacant. Most of the pavilion sections are in single digits. The left-field corner section, previously known as Mannywood, is Deadwood, inhabited by precisely 20 people.

More at that top link.

Well, it'd be a different experience, that's for sure.

'For All We Know'

If you clicked through at the Sheri Donovan interview the other day, recall she confesses that she's got The Carpenters on her iPod, but "don't worry, I won't play them on The Sound."

Actually, I wouldn't mind hearing The Carpenters once in a while. I had a crush on Karen Carpenter when I was a kid:

United Nations Bias Against Israel

Via Theo Spark, "Video: Understanding UN Bias Against Israel -- Invite to Durban 3 Protest, NYC, Sept 21":

Venus Williams Withdraws From U.S. Open

At NYT, "An Ailing Venus Williams Exits."

Venus Williams departed the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Wednesday with downcast eyes, staring at an uncertain future after revealing she had received a diagnosis of Sjogren’s Syndrome, an autoimmune disease that causes fatigue and joint pain.

Williams, who missed the hardcourt season with what had been described as a viral illness, withdrew from the United States Open minutes before she was due on court at Arthur Ashe Stadium for her second-round match against No. 22 Sabine Lisicki .

Williams, 31, was unseeded for the first time since 1997, when she advanced to the final in her Open debut. Appearing in her 13th Open, she had pulled the curtain back on a game that looked robust, if a tad rusty, in her 6-4, 6-3 victory over Vesna Dolonts on Monday. She had aspired to become the first Open women’s singles champion over 30 since Martina Navratilova in 1987.

This women is a history-making trailblazer. I've admired her for a long time. Continue reading at the link. This story's kinda sad.

The Invasion of Poland, September 1, 1939

I posted on this last September:

Fresh-Faced Reporters ... You Think?

I'm looking at this New York Times story, which has a pictures of Lindsey Boerma of National Journal, and I'm thinking this young lady might as well be sitting in one of my American government classes. Shoot, she looks like she could be hanging out at the mall with my oldest son on the weekends! Makes you kinda get nostalgic for David Broder. Sheesh!

See: "Covering 2012, Youths on the Bus."

For decades, campaign buses were populated by hotshots, some of whom covered politics for decades, from Walter Mears to David S. Broder to Jules Witcover. It was a glamorous club, captured and skewered in Timothy Crouse’s best-selling “The Boys on the Bus,” about the 1972 campaign.

Now, more and more, because of budget cutbacks, those once coveted jobs are being filled by brand new journalists at a fraction of the salary. It is not so glamorous anymore.

For these reporters the 2012 campaign is both the assignment of a lifetime and the kind of experience that is tying their stomachs in knots. Three of them are just out of college. One just got engaged. And none of them seem quite sure what to expect from more than a year on the road.

“We hear all this stuff, all this advice,” said Rebecca Kaplan, 23, who is giving up her apartment in Washington’s Chinatown for the duration of the campaign. “But I don’t think we’ll fully realize what’s going on until we get out there.”

And see The Other McCain, "A Special Kind of Stupid." (At Memeorandum).

Libyan National Transitional Council

That's the first I've seen of that term, at the description from this video at Telegraph UK:

Also, "Libya: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi vows to continue the war and retake Tripoli."

See also New York Times, "Son Denies Rebels’ Claim That Qaddafi Is Cornered":

TRIPOLI, Libya — A top official of Libya’s transitional government said Wednesday that its fighters had cornered Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in a desert redoubt 150 miles from the capital and were exhorting him to give up, in what would bring a sense of finality to the prolonged uprising that routed him and his family from Tripoli a week ago.

But one of Colonel Qaddafi’s fugitive sons, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, threw a new if improbable taunt at the rebels even as they said they had closed in on his father, vowing in an audio statement that loyalists would never surrender and insisting that “victory will be near.”

“Our leadership is fine,” he said in the statement broadcast on the Al Rai television channel of Syria and other Arab broadcasting outlets. “We are drinking tea and coffee.”

Seif al-Islam gave no indication in the statement of his precise whereabouts except that he was in a Tripoli suburb, and it was not clear if his remarks had been prerecorded. But the statement itself raised the possibility of more fighting and underscored the ability of the Qaddafis to frustrate the alliance of rebel forces that has become the effective government of Libya.

Maybe folks should hold off on this talk of a "transitional council." You gotta get that old council out before you can transition a new one.

There Are No Coincidences in Presidential Politics

From Chris Cillizza, at Washington Post, "Coincidences don’t happen in presidential politics. Ever" (via Memeorandum):

There are no coincidences in presidential politics.

Strategists spend hours poring over every word a president utters, every policy position he takes and every state he visits, a level of attention to detail that makes happenstance virtually nonexistent.

And so, when the White House announced today that President Obama would deliver his much-anticipated jobs speech on Sept. 7 at 8 pm — the exact same day and time that the 2012 Republican candidates are scheduled to debate in California — the idea that the timing was purely coincidental was, well, far-fetched.

It’s clear that this White House saw an opportunity to drive a major — and direct — contrast between President Obama and his potential Republican rivals and took it.

Keep reading.

Petty and small sounds about right.

Also at Lonely Conservative, "Obama Calls for Joint Session of Congress for New Economic Plan Speech, On Same Night as GOP Debate," and Legal Insurrection, "Just say No to Obama Joint Session of Congress campaign speech."

UPDATE: At NYT, "Obama Reschedules Economy Speech at Boehner’s Request":

President Obama acquiesced to a request from Speaker John A. Boehner on Wednesday to move the date of his proposed address to a joint session of Congress to Thursday Sept. 8, after Mr. Boehner all but rejected Mr. Obama’s request to speak next Wednesday.

Solyndra

Solyndra, the Northern California solar panel manufacturer, has filed for bankruptcy and will cease business operation. The firm received $535 million from the Obama administration's Energy Department as part of the big stimulus push during the first year of the Obama interregnum. See LAT, "Solar panel firm Solyndra to cease operations," and Pirate's Cove, "Solyndra, Maker Of Solar Panels, Ceases Operations, Lays Off 1,110."

And from Ed Morrissey, "Solyndra shuts its doors" (at Memeorandum):

At one time, Solyndra was the poster child for Barack Obama’s promise of a green-jobs explosion. Today, the solar-energy technology manufacturer a poster child for the failure of his stimulus, his green-jobs push, and social engineering in general. Solyndra abruptly shut its doors today and declared bankruptcy, two years after getting over a half-billion dollars from the Obama administration’s Porkulus...

Solyndra's failure is a devastating indictment against President Barack Obama and his administration's disastrous social engineering of industrial economics. I can't wait to see campaign ads next year featuring Obama touring Solyndra with BANKRUPT overlaid on screen, along with a voice-over hammering the sheer stupidity of the "green jobs" agenda.

Democrat Congressional Leadership Has No Comment on Rep. Andre Carson's 'Hanging on a Tree' Allegations Against the Tea Party

At Washington Examiner, "Reid, Pelosi silent on 'Jim Crow' accusations" (via Memeorandum).

Democratic Congressional leadership remains silent about a Democratic congressman's claim that Tea Party members of Congress would "like to see [black Americans] hanging on a tree."

The top-ranking Democrats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives - Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. Dick Durbin, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., - have not responded to The Washington Examiner's requests for comment on this issue. They have not supported or contradicted, or even acknowledged, the accusation leveled by Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., that their Tea Party colleagues in Congress would like to see Carson murdered.

Repeated efforts to contact Minority Leader Pelosi about her caucus-member's claim produced no response, except that The Examiner was told that her press secretary would respond "at his discretion."

Well, they want us to go "straight to Hell," so I'm not surprised.

Also at The Blog Prof, "The 'New Civility'(Cont'd): Congressional Black Caucus: Racist Tea Party Wants Black Americans ‘Hanging On a Tree’."

'I Didn't Change. The World Changed'

From Daniel Henninger, at Wall Street Journal, "In an interview, Dick Cheney says 'It's important to have people at the helm who are prepared to be unpopular'."

I think Dick Cheney's been the rock of American public life for the last 10 years. He's unruffled in his convictions, more impressive as he got older.

RELATED: The left's revulsion of the former V.P. is picking up over at Memeorandum. See especially, ABC News, "Former Powell Chief of Staff: Cheney “Fears Being Tried as a War Criminal”." And click through at Memeorandum for Conor Friedersdorf's attack on Cheney. Friedersdorf's an airhead.

9/11, Ten Years After: The Costs of Security — More Domestic Surveillance

Continuing my blogging on the Los Angeles Times' September 11 series, see: "A key Sept. 11 legacy: more domestic surveillance."

PREVIOUSLY: "9/11, Ten Years After: The Costs of Security — Has All the Spending Paid Off?"

More on Larry Derfner

See the reaction from readers at Jerusalem Post, "Firing a ‘Post’ columnist – the pros and cons." The responses are compelling and surprisingly compassionate. No doubt folks crave a full airing of opinions, although I think the one line of criticism worthy of even deeper consideration is the idea that Derfner had stopped making reasoned arguments and had become basically an attack dog against everything he hated. If so, perhaps Jerusalem Post might have waited until the controversy died down and then quietly given Derfner notice that his brand of invective commentary was no longer in tune with the expectations of quality writing at the publication. As I noted on Monday, what's bothersome is not so much Derfner's views, but that they were so well accepted on the anti-Israel left. That is, progressive widely endorse the idea that Israeli civilians deserve to die. That thought seems alone to be beyond rational discourse, and perhaps to the realm of simply terrorist agitation. Even the New York Times offers a super sympathetic report on Derfner, "Israeli Columnist Is Fired for Writing That Palestinian Terrorism Is ‘Justified’." Checking the essay one finds a link to Dimi Reider despicable essay (cited at my entry on Monday) offering massive historical lies to justify Derfner's commentary. I know it's the Times, but some reporters are still doing a good job, and I normally enjoy Robert Mackey's blogging at The Lede. He fell short on this one though, omitting some of the more heated criticism of Derfner's perfidy.

And see Barry Rubin's comments, "Larry Derfner Should Be Debated, Not Fired." Rubin says it's not left or right but truth versus lies (to which I disagree, with reference, for example, to the comments at New York Times, where again we see how entrenched is leftist progressive anti-Semitic bloodlust). That said, Rubin's right: Derfner shouldn't have been fired over this.

BONUS: Check Camera's post, and follow the links for additional commentary, "Larry Derfner Will Not Be Rattling The Cage Anymore at the Jerusalem Post."

NewsBusted: 'Obama's job disapproval rate has hit a record high'

Via Theo Spark:

Video Rip-Off 'Who Likes White People?' Continues Viral Distribution Despite Debunking

I haven't posted on this yet. Robert Stacy McCain has some copyright issues he's been dealing with, over a video clip of Michele Bachmann he made weeks ago in Iowa. Some idiot progressive thief stole the video and edited to make it appear that Congresswoman Bachmann had made racist comments. Just tonight Robert reports that gay rights extremist Perez Hilton posted the clip, and this is after the smear's been widely debunked. See: "No Honor Among Thieves, No Curiosity Among Journalists: Perez Hilton Re-Pirates Video, CBS News Repeats Smear."

CBS News also picked the purloined video as the top viral video of the week. Read all about it The Other McCain.

Jane Jamison of Uncoverage.net Has Died

I like her blog. There are so many out there that sometimes a blog has to really make an impact before gaining attention, and Uncoverage.net is one of those. See Robert Stacy McCain for the details: "Jane Jamison, R.I.P." And John Hawkins has more: "Jane Jamison From Uncoverage Has Passed Away."

Please join me in a prayer for Jane, and for her friends and family.

AP Interview With Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani

It's getting close to the 10-year anniversary, so expect lots of 9/11 coverage across the media-sphere over the next couple of weeks. See "AP Interview: Post-9/11 politics of Rudy Giuliani" (via Memeorandum).

'Take Me to the River'

Heard it during yesterday morning's drive time, at The Sound LA:

7:02 - She Talks To Angels by Black Crowes

7:08 - Who'll Stop The Rain by CCR

7:18 - Wonderous Stories by Yes

7:21 - Let 'em In by Paul Mccartney

7:26 - Take Me To The River by Talking Heads

7:32 - Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix

7:35 - In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins

7:49 - Space Oddity by David Bowie

7:53 - Black Dog by Led Zeppelin

7:58 - Don't Stop by Fleetwood Mac

I'll be back for more blogging tonight!

Bob Belvedere's Got Your Rule 5 Fix

See: "Rule 5 News: 26 August 2011 A.D."

Drew Barrymore is fabulous, by the way.

Hugs and Thanks to Maggie Thornton

Maggie picked my piece on teaching the Gettysburg Address: "Donald Douglas: A Professor Teaching Real Political History."

And from the comments there:

In today’s American world, this professor is a gem!

Well, thank you!!

More at Maggie's Notebook.

Also, a warm appreciation goes to Gator Doug: "The DaleyGator supports our friend, Donald Douglas."

I get by with a little help from my friends.