A Grand Illusion

Orishas are playing Bayfront Park on Oct. 6.

For the Things Don’t Change file: Charles Dickens describing the House of Representatives in American Notes:

I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is, that every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are the dragon’s teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness; aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind;, and artful suppressions of all tis good influences; such things as these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and most unblushing form, stared out from every corner of the crowded hall.

(crosslisted with Humanizing The Vacuum)

Remember when people served at the pleasure of the president? Not Tony Snow. He serves at the pleasure of the president until he can’t make due with his $160,000 salary anymore.

“I’ve already made it clear I’m not going to be able to go the distance, but that’s primarily for financial reasons,” Snow said on conservative radio program “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”

“I’ve told people when my money runs out, then I’ve got to go.”

You have to wonder how in the world this administration dares question anyone’s patriotism.

Russia’s getting back in the game.

MOSCOW – President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he had ordered the military to resume regular long-range flights of strategic bombers, news agencies reported, returning to a practice that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Speaking as Russian and Chinese forces held major war games exercises for the first time on Russian territory, Putin said a halt in long-range bombers’ flights after the Soviet collapse had affected Russia’s security as other nations had continued such missions — an oblique reference to the United States.

More here.

The Red Bulls’ Jozy Altidore has a great post over at the NYT’s soccer blog on the subtle, underapreciated strengths of David Beckham’s as well as his limitations in promoting the MLS.

He’s not a guy who’s going to break you down on the dribble with a bunch of moves like Ronaldinho. But he’s going to hit a good cross 9 out of 10 times. And if there’s a free kick near the area you better start biting your nails because he’s going to whip it in. He’s not really a flashy player, but when it’s his turn, he steps up and does the job.

I think it’s easy for people to underestimate him as a player. I think people want to see a flashy-type player who scores flashy-type goals and makes flashy-type moves. They are always the best and are very hard to find. But I think the guys who play it simple are best.

That’s absolutely true. Beckham’s not as entertaining to watch as Ronaldinho or Zidane, but he’s a player that can turn a game around by mastering the basic skills. I totally agree with Altidore, the fact that he doesn’t show off on the pitch and shows off a little too much off it, is the reason why he’s often dismissed and underestimated as a player. Well, that and the fact that he can’t do shit with his left leg, which Altidore doesn’t mentioned. (But he makes up for it, and then some, with the right.)

Altidore is right again on the degree to which Beckham will help expand the MLS,

I think, for sure, he will put people in the seats, for sure. We’ve already seen it in every city he goes to, it’s sold out. In terms of really elevating the game, one player can’t elevate every team. He can elevate his team, but as for all the others, they are still the same. Maybe when they play against Los Angeles the stakes are a little higher, but really it’s all the same — one player can’t change the whole league. He can help it, but there’s 12 other teams and he can only do so much. But I think it’s great to have a name like that in the league. It gives us exposure, brings more money, it benefits nearly everybody in the process.

Beckham will help the MLS tremendously, but don’t for a second think he’s the Christ figure of American soccer. At one point, the novelty will wear off and people will grow weary of his dominance on the league. What the MLS needs is another marquis player, who’s already had a stellar career in Europe, someone like a Zidane or a Ronaldo, for a juicy rivalry which will keep seats filled long enough to establish a growing fan base.

And now, I leave you with the artist at work.

From Bloomberg:

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) — A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas, U.S. officials said.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

And these people are running a war? Clemenceau must be turning in his grave.

It is a sad, self-fulfilling prophecy when two respected scholars from two of the country’s top universities can’t give talks on the book they’ve coauthored because it is “too controversial.”

A Grand Illusion, one of the oldest–though not most frequently updated–Miami blogs, turns three today. You can read my inaugural post here, a pissed off reaction to Chavez winning the 2004 referendum.

Today is a great day for Bolivarian movements. According to The New York Times, Chavez won the revocatory referendum. Chavez, in true Bolivarian fashion, gave a speech clad in ridiculous red—the representative color of his retrograde movement and a horrible color for a dress shirt—in which he cited the old Roman adage, “vox populi vox Dei.” If this is indeed true, God is some sort of asshole and he surely hates Venezuelans.

On other news, today, as searching for normalcy reminds us with a video, is the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death.

If you’re ever trying to elude cops chasing you ’cause they suspect you’re driving drunk, remember not to leave any evidence behind:

A man in Orange County suspected of driving drunk was captured Tuesday night after he jumped out of a vehicle and ran from officers still holding a beer in his hand, according to the sheriff’s deputies.

Local 6 has more, including video.

Looks like the rumors were right.

Woody Allen on Ingmar Bergman:

I’ve said it before to people who have a romanticized view of the artist and hold creation sacred: In the end, your art doesn’t save you. No matter what sublime works you fabricate (and Bergman gave us a menu of amazing movie masterpieces) they don’t shield you from the fateful knocking at the door that interrupted the knight and his friends at the end of “The Seventh Seal.” And so, on a summer’s day in July, Bergman, the great cinematic poet of mortality, couldn’t prolong his own inevitable checkmate, and the finest filmmaker of my lifetime was gone.

I have joked about art being the intellectual’s Catholicism, that is, a wishful belief in an afterlife. Better than to live on in the hearts and minds of the public is to live on in one’s apartment, is how I put it. And certainly Bergman’s movies will live on and will be viewed at museums and on TV and sold on DVDs, but knowing him, this was meager compensation, and I am sure he would have been only too glad to barter each one of his films for an additional year of life.

The NYT has more.

A story moved by the AP late last night confirms what anyone who’s ever seen a picture of Lincoln could already discern, there was something seriously wrong with his face.

CHICAGO – Artists, sculptors and photographers knew Abraham Lincoln’s face had a good side. Now it’s confirmed by science. Laser scans of two life masks, made from plaster casts of Lincoln’s face, reveal the 16th president’s unusual degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study.

The left side of Lincoln’s face was much smaller than the right, an aberration called cranial facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments — including smallpox, heart illness and depression — that modern doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln.

Nobody was more aware of this than Lincoln, who often poked fun at his own lack of physical beauty. One of these jokes is one of my favorite Lincoln anecdotes:

Abraham Lincoln was once accused of being two-faced. “If I were two-faced,” he retorted, “would I be wearing this one?”