Cal wins 6th in a row, 75-66 over Arizona; moves into a tie for first in Pac-10

The California Golden Bears continued on their recent run last night, defeating another one of their nemeses, the Arizona Wildcats, 75-66 in Berkeley last night. Arizona has recently had Cal's number, and while this Arizona team is not as strong as in past years, Arizona is still a team that seemed to have their way with Cal. As such, it was an important win both from the standpoint of the Pac-10 standings (they are now tied with UCLA in first place), as well as from a mental standpoint. The Bears played well, and while a team more of a killer instinct might have stretched it out to a 15 to 20 point win, the Bears were mentally strong enough to respond to every Arizona run with one of their own. Cal now, in a sense, controls their own destiny; if they win out (unlikely, I know, but fun to dream about ), they will win the regular season Pac-10 title.

Some more catching up…

Another hodge-podge post…

• What good could be done with 1.6 billion dollars? Hmm… Probably a lot more good than spending it on PR for terrible policies.
• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has a great post at dailykos.com on the Republican Culture of Corruption.
• How Greenpeace and public outcry prevented a toxic French warship from being sent to India to be torn apart (where due to lax/nonexistent worker protection laws, the waste would have harmed many).
• Peter Daou has a challenge for everyone who claims that the traditional media has a liberal bias… PROVE IT. Peter goes on to list in great detail exactly how the traditional media actually has a Republican bias.
• More great work from Glenn Greenwald on the illegal warrantless NSA wiretapping here and here.

Political Ideology

Glenn Greenwald explores the question of whether the supporters of the current president have a political ideology or not. One of the great articles I have read recently, and it really points to where we are in today's political discourse… it's really not about conservative or liberal or left or right, but basicallly, do you blindly support the current administration? Glenn also follows up with a response to many criticisms of his piece. In a funny bit of irony, many of the criticisms, especially from so-called conservatives, reinforce exactly what his first column said.

Links Galore (or, catching up on the news from the past week)

Posts Galore today… missed a chance to post some stuff I thought was pretty important… gonna post it all now.

• One of the more pressing issues around right now… health-care, and making sure everyone is covered. Here's a post at dailykos.com explaining why single-payer health care is a good thing.

• Avian bird flu continues to spread… Is the US prepared, and are you?

• Ahh, those republicans… When one of your own is under indictment for money laundering and has been admonished for using the department of Homeland Security to track political enemies, why not put him on the House Appropriations committee? I mean, I'm sure he's learned his lesson, right?

• A retired top CIA official states that the "administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made."

• Now that Samuel Alito will be our next Supreme Court Justice, South Dakota moves to ban ALL abortions. I'm sure they don't know anything that Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chafee, or any of the other Republicans who vowed to reject anyone who wouldn't uphold Roe v. Wade doesn't know. In fact, I'm sure they don't know anything more than anyone who voted against Cloture on Alito knows, do they?

• Dick Cheney is called out on both his misstatements about the economy as well as his statements on the power of the executive. More on his having shot someone over the weekend in a later post.

• We also now know that Scooter Libby is saying that his superiors (remember, he worked for Dick Cheney; who might his superiors be?) "authorized" him to reveal classified information in order to discredit political opponents and prop up the case for invading Iraq.

• More nonsense from the preznit on the so-called "War on Terror". A key quote from the article (by Larry Johnson), something you'll never hear from dubya:
  

  The facts are indisputable. Since the U.S. invaded Iraq in March of 2003, international terrorist attacks in which people have been killed and injured have almost quadrupled. The number of countries hit by lethal attacks has also increased to unprecedented levels.

• Brownie Strikes Back! Former Fema chief Michael "Brownie" Brown lets the administration have it.

• One take on the Muslim Cartoon Controversy in Europe, and what it says about the acceptance of outsiders in Europe.

• A fantastic article about "scandal fatigue", and the failure of the opposition to hammer home any of the scandals that the current administration is party to.

Vegeterian Cooking Blog

Here's a pretty cool-looking blog on vegetarian cooking… Hopefully someday I'll get back into cooking! Another great blog on cooking and food more generally is here. The concept of Community Supported Agriculture mentioned in this post seems very cool!

The first gig of the Eagles…

One of my favorite bands is the Eagles, and over at the Fastlane (probably the best Eagles fansite out there), there's a great article about the Eagles' first ever gig back in 1972… Amazingly, it was an unpaid gig where they played at the request of Jackson Browne (one of the most amazing singer-songwriters out there).

Cal defeats Stanfurd, 65-62!

In probably their most important game of the season to date, the Cal men's basketball team defeated arch-rival Stanfurd last night, 65-62. It was a tight, hard-fought game, in which both teams were at less than full strength (the 'furd's Matt Haryasz was suffering from lingering vision problems resulting from a poke in the eye last weekend @ OSU, while Cal was missing 3 of it's top 8 players in Rod Benson, Martin Smith, and starter Omar Wilkes). Coming into the game, both teams were tied for second in the Pac-10, one game behind UCLA. However, the game was critical for both teams, since neither has a particularly strong out-of-conference resume (although Cal at 6-3 OOC is much better than 'furd's 4-4 OOC). Cal now sits in sole possession of second place, with 4 of its last 6 regular season games at home. Their chances for an at-large berth into the NCAA tournament are getting better, although a strong finish is still needed. The Bears were led by Leon Powe's career-high 32 points and Ayinde Ubaka's 18.

"The Price of Being Brown in America"

While everyone knows about Cindy Sheehan being arrested for wearing a t-shirt at the State of the Union (an action that has been expressly permitted by Supreme Court Rulings, even in the Capitol), a lesser known detention from the State of the Union was the one of an Indian man (but a naturalized US citizen), a guest of Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings.

Cal BB and FB notes…

So the men's basketball team played probably their best game of the season in defeating Oregon State, 69-52. The Bears stormed out to 21-2 lead midway through the first half and were never really threatened the rest of the way. If Cal can come out with this kind of intensity and effort every game, they should be competitive in every game the rest of the season and win most of them. A key point to remember, though, is what happened after their last 3-game winning streak. Cal had swept USC and UCLA (ranked highly) on the road and defeated Oregon at home. In came an Oregon State team that was struggling in the conference, and they pretty much had their with the Golden Bears. In this case, Cal swept UW (ranked highly) and WSU at home, and demolished Oregon State. They go into Eugene to play a struggling and disheartened Oregon team on Saturday… a classic "trap" game, i.e. a game in which Cal may play with low intensity, assuming they can just show up and win, and may let Oregon steal the game. The Bears need to remember the OSU loss (and Coach Braun must ensure as best he can that the players are up for the game) and come out strong.

In other Cal news, Jeff Tedford has hired Mike Dunbar, who was serving as the offensive coordinator at Northwestern University, as offensive coordinator. Dunbar replaces George Cortez, Cal's OC since Tedford arrived in 2002, who lef to pursue other interests. Dunbar has much experience with the spread offense, and while Cal won't go to a spread offense exclusively, look for Cal's offense next year to incorporate the spread and the shotgun with the Tedford's existing offense.

Orwellian Naming

There's a great post over at TPMCafe asking the question of why Republicans feel they have to name the laws they pass and initiatives they pursue in such false and obfuscating ways. It's as if they are afraid to tell the public what the laws and initiatives really are (giveaways to big business and Corporate America), because they know they would have no support for those initiatives. I'd also encourage you to read the second comment (the one by NickDoe); it really expands on the point the original author makes.

UPDATE: As another example, a sitting bankruptcy judge blasts Congress for the grossly mis-named "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act" passed last year.