Sad.

But I guess we're lucky that Will Arnett is in about forty movies coming out.

For real.

...And probably not safe for work.

[via monster]

I've been laid up with flu for an inordinate amount of time. Apologies to those who have tried to get in touch with me...

Have you seen it yet?



[via monster]

God I love this guy.

Simply too awesome to delete any.

March 23, 2006 -- White House insiders report that an influential group of extreme right-wing gay Latino power brokers has been given almost total control over U.S. foreign and business policy decisions affecting Latin America. A number of members of the Young Hispanic Republican Association report that they have been sexually preyed upon by members of the influential Latino power brokers after accepting administration appointments, including positions on the White House staff.

The gay Latino group, led by an individual nicknamed "El Padrino" (the godfather) and which has close ties, including gay relationships, with top GOP officials in the Republican National Committee, Small Business Administration, the Department of State, State of Texas, and Executive Office of the President, has been tasked with ensuring that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez does not successfully bid on the sale of Univision, the largest Spanish language TV network in North America. Senior White House officials have provided hundreds of millions of dollars, through CIA and State Department conduits, to the Latino group to ensure that Chavez does not gain control of Univision.

The group has also prevailed upon the government of Panama and particularly senior gay members of the Panamanian government, to ensure that President Martin Torrijos backs out of a regional energy treaty signed between Panama, Venezuela, and Colombia. The deal would see Panama's transisthmian Petroterminales de Panama (PTP) pipeline between Puerto Armuelles on the Pacific to Chiriqui Grande on the Caribbean reverse its flow from east to west to permit the export of Venezuelan oil to China. However, since the Panamanian government only owns a 30 percent stake in the pipeline, the GOP Latino power brokers have applied pressure on a New York-based family-owned firm that owns 60 percent of the pipeline to sink the deal. The law firm that represents the interests of the New York family is reportedly owned by the family of the Panamanian ambassador to the United States and Panama's ambassador to the United Nations. Ten percent of the pipeline is owned by a shadowy Swiss-based firm, the shares of which are held by anonymous parties, that is reportedly connected to the CIA and senior members of the Panamanian government.

The other part of the Venezuelan-Colombian-Panamanian deal that is being targeted by the GOP Latino group for cancellation is a natural gas pipeline from Colombia through Panama and Central America to southern Mexico.

Katin Vasquez, Panama's Economy and Finance Minister and a former Panama Canal Commissioner, is also being lobbied heavily by GOP-connected Wachovia to ensure the bank gets the contract to handle the funding for the $7 billion Panama Canal Expansion Project. The canal expansion is tied to the fact that with the increased use of supertankers, which cannot currently transit the canal, the canal must be quickly expanded to handle what are known as "Post-Panamax" vessels. "Panamax" is standard code for the maximum size vessel that can currently transit the canal. With the thirty-day advance payment requirement, Panama could easily issue bonds to finance the expansion. However, the gay Latino group tied to the Bush administration is using its influence with senior Panamanian government officials, sweetened with cash payments, to ensure that Wachovia gets the financing and Halliburton/Kellogg, Brown & Root gets the lion's share of construction contracts for the canal's expansion.

Vasquez has reportedly been flown to North Carolina in Wachovia's private corporate jet for golf outings. However, observers point out that Panama does not require Wachovia's involvement in the canal expansion project since the canal is a virtual cash cow. Ships are required to pay thirty days in advance prior to transiting the canal.

The gay Latino group reportedly has particularly close ties to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her public diplomacy assistant Karen Hughes. Interestingly, Hughes is the daughter of Maj. Gen. Harold Parfitt, the last U.S. Governor of the Panama Canal Zone.

The GOP group has also been tasked by the White House to work on reversing the leftist tide that is sweeping Latin America. Currently, the Bush administration can only count on three Latin American nations to fully carry out U.S. policy: El Salvador, Panama, and Colombia. With pro-Chavez leftist victories likely in Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Peru, the GOP Latino powerbrokers are expected to use their influence to generate support for pro-U.S. right-wing political leaders and parties.

Huh?

Ben Domenech's scalp:



It's only a matter of time.

Even more than the moooslims!

Waah. Guess I can't be President.

[hat tip to bigd]

Watch this and tell me that Laura Ingraham didn't go to the salon between her appearances on the Today Show and O'Reilly.

She looks...darker.

All this great face time with the biggies? She's gotta look good, y'know.

Just a reminder of how far we've come along.

MORE: This actually is one of the more illuminating things pointed out to me in a while. Do take a look.

First, this is a great place to pick up chicks, if one were so inclined. Holy moley.

Second, I have just purchased a record player on ebay! Replacing the one that I left behind in Minneapolis when I moved. Three years ago.

This is too long.

Third, Belle & Sebastian were superb last night at the Concourse in San Francisco.

He's never been to Vegas.

This guy is a fuckstain.

And he's a corrupt, racist fuckstain, too.

This article is just too good not to quote at length.

President Bush had a senior moment midway through his news conference yesterday. Referring to an earlier question from the Los Angeles Times' Jim Gerstenzang, who has covered much of Bush's presidency, Bush looked at the veteran correspondent -- and forgot his name.

"Back, to, uh, this man's question right here," he said, and then he looked down at his seating chart for a refresher before adding: "This man being Jim."

"Sorry, Jim," the president said after everybody had a chuckle at his expense. "I got a lot on my mind these days."

That he does. Bush's presidency is in trouble, his approval ratings are in the 30s, Iraq is approaching civil war, and congressional Republicans are in open rebellion. But Bush has maintained his equanimity. He may be a lame duck, but he seems to be enjoying his swim.

He identified Terry Hunt, the Associated Press's veteran White House correspondent, as the generic "AP Person." He accused New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller of sleeping through his speech Monday in Cleveland. After USA Today's David Jackson interrupted a Bush non-answer, the president queried: "Now, what is your follow-up yell?"

And he made a show of reading from his stage directions. Rambling his way through a question about interest rates, Bush paused to confess, "I'm kind of stalling for time here." Checking his seating chart before calling on a questioner, he confided, "They've told me what to say." After announcing that "there's going to be a P-5," the president translated his own jargon: "That's diplomatic sloganeering."

Whether it's the strain of the office, the weight of international crises, or simply his old Delta Kappa Epsilon roots showing, Bush has been President Punchy of late. In Cleveland on Monday, he said there were 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions about Iraq, then called on an unsuspecting Dick Keil, a Bloomberg News reporter. "I think 16 -- is that right, Stretch, 16?" Bush inquired, using the nickname he assigned Keil. "I like to, like, reverse roles sometimes," the president explained.

When an audience member prefaced a question by saying, "I'm 100 percent behind your fight against terrorism," Bush interrupted: "Why don't you just leave it at that." And he was suspicious of a man who introduced himself as Jose Feliciano, by chance the name of the blind singer and guitarist.

"No," the president challenged.

"Yes," the other Feliciano maintained.

"It's like the time I called a guy and said, 'Hey, this is George Bush calling.' He said, 'Come on, quit kidding me, man.' "

Whoa.

Watch this video and tell me this man wouldn't be a fantastic POTUS.

The President of Venezuela takes a big **** in the President of the United States' *****.

Holy cow.

As if the subject line wasn't enough for an immediate click, T begins:

Hey!

Everyone's gotta wear clothes.

And if you don't, you can get arrested.

T be keepin' it real.

Then it's on to a totally surreal 80s fashion show, super-hott dancing models, all narrated by a robotic-sounding T.

I loves me some youtube.

I wish we could set up a fund to send the Schiavo Ramones dude to all Republican events from now until the end of the year.

Are you with me?

I guess we have to find him first.

It is a moral obligation of citizenship in a democracy.

MORE: Here's the same story summarized nicely.

"Seona Dancing" was Ricky Gervais' 80s new wave band.

Here he is!





They were huge in the Phillipines, apparently.

Much more here, including song downloads!

[via tanya]

Welcome to the new America.

UPDATE: More here.

Jeez, the knives are really out for this guy.

You could almost feel sorry for him if he weren't such a fucking asshole.

Give everyone acid.

Here's the video of British troops experimentally dosed with LSD, apparently in the forties or fifties.

It's good.

[via monster]

A weekend in Tahoe with friends.

Salto's first snowboarding lesson? Not too bad.

And, as for gambling, an hour plus of blackjack nets Salto +7 dollars. Quit while you're ahead, says Salto!

And the peeps were okay too.

With an icky cold.

Give my blogroll some love.

Surprise! Belle & Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch on Fresh Air today!

MORE: This is where I mention that I drove twenty-plus hours to see them the first time they came to the US. In 1997. This is my dork cred.

Tomorrow's the big Dem primary in this highly-contested race.

Go Ciro!

MORE: Good summary of the race here. It's an interesting one.

Whoa.

UPDATE: Scrubbed from youtube.

Fuck NBC. I can't watch it on their jonks because I'm not using Internet Explorer or running some version of Windows or something. You could, though, if you wanted to. And you should, even if the NBC people are dumb.

So google SNL and go watch it there. And then take a big s**t in NBC's m***h.

All I really want to see is Jon and PSH's acceptance of Best Actor.

That's about four minutes of the 3+ hours.

*sigh*

MORE: Read Digby.

UPDATE: I've been forced to break into the whiskey at 6:51 PST.

DAMN YOU EARLY OSCARS!

A FURTHER UPDATE: A whiskey-soaked Salto reports that he was satisfied with PSH's acceptance, and would like to note that Brokeback's monumental loss was because of fear of the American Taliban/fundie community.

And that is all.

EVEN MORE: My favorite actor won an Oscar. Finally. How wonderful. Just want to put it on the record.

AND, HONESTLY: How classy was Clooney? Awesome stuff.

OMG, EVEN MORE: Here's what PSH said:

Hoffman's performance nimbly straddles the magnetic qualities of raconteur Capote and the effete, off-putting egoism of the gay author.

"Wow, I'm in a category with some great, great, great actors, fantastic actors, and I'm overwhelmed. Really overwhelmed," said Hoffman, who asked the Oscar audience to congratulate his mother for bringing up four children alone.

"We're at the party, mom," Hoffman said. "Be proud mom, because I'm proud of you."

Classy, classy stuff.

Good to know that the South Dakotan fundies who are trying to ban abortion have a heart.

That little tag, however (see below), may not be enough, if you are among the 21% of Americans with passports and want to see the world.

You could pose as a Canadian.

If that offends the conscience, though, someone should be selling a simple tee, no words in any language, of Bush's face with a red circle and line through it. That would be clear enough. I've looked, though, and can't quite find anything perfect.

This isn't bad, but may not be understandable to people with non-Roman alphabet systems. So that's out.

Someone find me what I'm looking for. Looking at all of these crappy t-shirts at cafepress is giving me a migraine.

UPDATE: Ooh ooh! We have a winner!

I was preparing for an international trip, and I thought, "what can I do tell as many people as possible in other countries that many Americans vehemently disagree with the policies of our own government?" So I made this shirt, and various wonderful people translated it into all of the official UN languages, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Russian. Buy one for your own international travels. A domestic version (US$16), without English, is also available for those who want to make a statement, but not to monolingual locals. Gender-specific text for female and male shirts.

Here.

As Mr. Bush had lunch with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the capital, New Delhi, tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out in Azad Maidan, a field here made famous by Gandhi's civil disobedience protests against British rule.

The current protest, called by Muslim organizations and leftist political parties, was largely peaceful, but bristling with an anti-American rage that is not often displayed in India.

The demonstrators shouted slogans against Mr. Bush. In one section of the field, a crowd gathered to burn an American flag. The crowd began beating the flaming flag. Then a young man lifted a boy named Shoaib over the fire and instructed him to urinate on it. He did, bemused by all the attention. He said he was in third grade.

Nearby, a few dozen men stood under a banner declaring, "We are ready to become suicide bomber." It is a sentiment rarely expressed openly in India, which has had domestic terrorism over the years but whose citizens have not seemed to be attracted to the current global terrorist networks.

"Suppose Bush is here," said Sajid Khan, 25, a student. "I will suicide bomb to Bush. If we could get a visa, we would go there and fight."

Crowd estimates varied from 250,000 to 700,000, according to the city police and a protest organizer — or from 10 percent to 25 percent of the Muslim population of Mumbai (also known as Bombay).

In many parts of the world, it'll take a generation or more before you can travel, openly, as an American.

Thanks, fuckers.

UPDATE: A reader writes in to email to remind us of that French-language tag by some US company that says

Gently hand wash with lukewarm water and mild soap, do not machine dry, do not bleach, do not iron, we are sorry that our president is an idiot, we didn't vote for him.

More next post.

Because Homeland Security will be notified.

Walter Soehnge is a retired Texas schoolteacher who traveled north with his wife, Deana, saw summer change to fall in Rhode Island and decided this was a place to stay for a while.

So the Soehnges live in Scituate now and Walter sometimes has breakfast at the Gentleman Farmer in Scituate Village, where he has passed the test and become a regular despite an accent that is definitely not local.

And it was there, at his usual table last week, that he told me that he was "madder than a panther with kerosene on his tail."

He says things like that. Texas does leave its mark on a man.

What got him so upset might seem trivial to some people who have learned to accept small infringements on their freedom as just part of the way things are in this age of terror-fed paranoia. It's that "everything changed after 9/11" thing.

But not Walter.

"We're a product of the '60s," he said. "We believe government should be way away from us in that regard."

He was referring to the recent decision by him and his wife to be responsible, to do the kind of thing that just about anyone would say makes good, solid financial sense.

They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable.

And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs.

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

"When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

It's apparently part of something called the Bank Privacy Act.

This is not cool. Fascism is creeping along. And that's what it does. It creeps.

[via BigD]

It's at the Red Vic in a week and I guarantee* it'll be good.

See here if you doubt me.

(Also go see Good Night and Good Luck)

*Because the nutjobs hate it.

Ayn Rand (really Alissa Rosenbaum) was a fascist. And her books are fascist propaganda.

So you people who put Atlas Shrugged on the book part of your online profiles? You are automatically ix-nayed. It's a sign of complete retardation.

Especially if you profess that you're a liberal.

Repeat after me: Ayn Rand was a fascist. Ayn Rand was a fascist.

Now read TBogg.

UPDATE: More on Rand here and here.

Originally from here.



Civic Center is awfully clever.

Big D takes the BART to and from Libel Arm daily.

But I'm a little worried about Loud Pork Carmelisation, which was supposed to be the name of my no-wave side project. Guess I'll have to think of something new.

[via Boing Boing]

UPDATE: Oh dear. Hope I don't get sued.

He's going 'late Friday' for a one-night visit.

Watch the news. The people of Pakistan are gonna go absolutely nuts. They hate our unelected dictator even more than they hate their own.

If you watch too much TV, you might have noticed the WB'sUPN's Veronica Mars' shout-out to ABC's Lost, on VM's Season 2 Episode 11:

At the end of the episode, the numbers at the bottom of the fortune cookie that Veronica sticks to her mirror are:

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.

Nice.

UPDATE: Huge nerds abound.

And while I can't recommend Veronica Mars unreservedly, I can so recommend Lost. A very good show.

Further, I've never taken a screencap from my bittorrent thievery before. Nice, huh?

Bert!

Bwah-ha-haaaaaaaaaaaaaa!