salto mortale

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

This might be an un-PC question, but do I really have to respect religious people?

Because not only are theirs beliefs stupid, they are harmful as well. This quote from a Washington lobbyist on the religious right, regarding why global warming cannot be real and isn't really an issue, illustrates the problem fairly well:

"Is God really going to let the Earth burn up?"


Fucking Christ.

via Think Progress



THIS ONE'S FOR THE LAWYERS

At least four GOP candidates for the Alabama supreme court have stated some version of:

State supreme court judges should not follow obviously wrong decisions simply because they are `precedents,'
Repeat after me: AAAAHHHHHRRRRGGGHH!!

"State supreme courts may decline to follow bad U.S. Supreme Court precedents because those decisions bind only the parties to the particular case," he wrote.
What the fuck?! That may be true of Bush v. Gore, but generally, no.

Another candidate, Henry P. "Hank" Fowler, a member of Parker's staff, said conservative judges must stop surrendering to liberal Supreme Court opinions "without a word of protest." And lawyer Ben Hand said judges "can't just break the law and then point to the guy down the street in the black robe and say, `He told me to.'"
Huh? Are GOP candidates for the Alabama supreme court chosen for their ability to spew utter nonsense and drivel? First, with the Prez's appointments, I doubt we have to worry about "liberal Supreme Court opinions." Second, if "the guy down the street in the black robe" is a US Supreme Court Justice, and has "told you to" by striking down a law, then you are not breaking said law when you follow that precedent.

Fuckwits.

[via Americablog]



THE BANNED CARTOON COLLECTION


restored for Historical and Educational purposes



a horrendous, jumbled, incoherent mess

Glenn Greenwald says:

More than anything else, our foriegn policy is just a horrendous, jumbled, incoherent mess -- actions in search of some post hoc, unifying rationale. We embrace the worst tyrants in China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt; act with hostility to numerous democratically elected governments that we dislike; and then preach to the world that all of our actions, including our militarily aggressive ones, are geared toward the goal of spreading democracy and freedom around the world.

There are good, convincing, legitimate reasons why we should maintain alliances with undemocratic countries which nonetheless promote U.S. interests (including, for instance, a country's cooperation in tracking Al Qaeda activities, as Libya's intelligence service provides). Virtually every country makes its foreign policy decisions based on that self-interested calculus. But we are a country which has now loudly proclaimed that everything we do -- including invading soveriegn countries -- is justified by our need to bring democracy to the world. Once a country makes that the proclaimed centerpiece of its foriegn policy, acting in direct contradiction to it achieves nothing other than the destruction of national credibility and the failure of every claimed foreign policy objective.


Glenn is just a little bit late on this one. The US cannot act in direct contradiction to its proclaimed foreign policy goal of bringing democracy to the world. That is because by the new definition, anything the US does is "bringing democracy." Look it up:

de·moc·ra·cy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-mkr-s)n. pl. de·moc·ra·cies
1. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
2. A political or social unit that has such a government.
3. The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.
4. Majority rule.
5. The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.
6. Any damn thing the USA wants it to mean.

Thus, for example, what is massacring civilians at Haditha? It is bringing "democracy."

See? Very simple.



BIGOTS

Drudge's latest:

Dem Chair Dean Compares Gay Marriage Opponents To Bigots...
I'll do one better: ARE bigots. There is no rational reason to prevent gay marriage, or some civil analogue that provide all the same legal rights and privileges.

I understand that your religion may have its own quaint superstitions or idiosyncrasies, most or all of which are completely irrelevant to modern life. And if you want to live that way, that's fine by me. If your religion requires you to fuck a melon, then fuck the shit out of it, I say. But keep me out of it. Don't use your religion as an argument to legally require me to fuck a melon, you sick melon-fucker.


Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Shooting us down in the streets

The past few years of living under the Bush regime has led to some strange political bedfellows. One example is former Trotskyist Christopher Hitchens* allying himself with the warmongers in the Bush camp. More interesting to me is the case of Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and Editor at The Wall Street Journal and National Review, defecting to the left and writing for Alexander Cockburn's Counterpunch. The Bush regime appears to have radicalized former Reaganite Roberts so much that he sounds more Chomskyish than Chomsky. The Right can keep Hitchens. I'm cool with having the somewhat hyperbolic Roberts on our side:


The criminal Bush Regime has now murdered more Iraqis than Saddam Hussen. The Bush Regime is also responsible for 20,000 US casualties (dead, maimed for life, and wounded).
Bush damns the "axis of evil." But who has the "axis of evil" attacked? Iran has attacked no one. North Korea has attacked no country for more than a half century. Iraq attacked Kuiwait a decade and a half ago, apparently after securing permission from the US ambassador.

. . .

Where does the danger to the world reside? In Iran, a small religious country where the family is intact and the government is constrained by religious authority and ancient traditions, or in the US where propaganda rules and the powerful executive branch has removed itself from accountability by breaking the constitutional restraints on its power?

. . .

Americans think that they are the salt of the earth. The hubris that comes from this self-righteous belief makes Americans blind to the evil of their leaders. How can American leaders be evil when Americans are so good and so wonderful?

. . .

Wasn't it evil for the US to bomb Iraq for a decade and to embargo medicines for children?
When US Secretary of State M. Albright was asked if she thought an embargo that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was justified, she replied, "yes."

The former terrible tyrant ruler of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, is on trial for killing 150 people. The US government murdered 500,000 Iraqi children prior to Bush's invasion. When the US government murders people, whether Serbs, Branch Davidians at Waco, or Iraqi women and children, it is "collateral damage." But we put Saddam Hussein on trial for putting down rebellions.

Gentle reader, do you believe that the Bush Regime will not shoot you down in the streets if you have a rebellion?


*Shamefully, I must disclose that I used to be a big Christopher Hitchens fan. The folly of youth....



a comprehensive visual map that merges various timelines of musical, technological, economical & political trends.




GRAND THEFT YOUR SOUL!

I wonder if Left Behind: Eternal Forces will let you fuck prostitutes minister to the wayward.

I'd imagine there's a mission in which you and your fellow Christian Soldiers must transfer a child molesting priest to another parish while protecting him from evil, godless law enforcement officers trying to bring him to secular justice. Don't they understand that he is judged by a Higher Power? One that has apparently sentenced him to time served?



Chavez for President

Hugo Chavez's program of providing discounted heating oil to poor neighborhoods in the US seems to be winning some hearts and minds. A resident of Philadelphia that is a recipient of the discounted oil met with Chavez. She said:

"All I had heard about Chavez was that he was a dictator," Santiago, 38, said after returning to Philadelphia. "The man is far from that. He's a really warm person. I wanted to bring him home and stick him in the White House."


I think I'd prefer Chavez in the White House to Mr. Danger myself.

(Hi, NSA!)


Monday, May 29, 2006

What next? Are you going to tell me there is no santa clause?

In honor of this Memorial Day, Fire Dog Lake points out that there is no "war on terror."



the downward spiral: ventura. schwartzenegger. and now the nuge.

In an interview with The Independent, draft dodging chickenhawk Ted Nugent has announced his intention to run for Governor of Michigan in 2010. I don't really have much to add in the way of commentary about the interview, since The Nuge is basically his own punchline. Some favorite interview moments:

[Ted Nugent] explains his political philosophy which, as I understand it, is based on extending the death penalty to a far wider range of crimes than homicide, then arming any survivors to the teeth.

...

"I say if somebody robs you, shoot 'em. I'd like all thieves killed. And all rapists. And carjackers. No more graffiti. No more...snatch-pursing."

...

He went to Fallujah in May 2004, as part of a tour with the USO....
"And I visited Saddam Hussein's master war room. It was a glorious moment. It looked like something out of Star Wars. I saw his gold toilet. I shit in his bidet."
In Iraq, he says, he was allowed the opportunity to man automatic weapons. "Our failure," he tells me, "has been not to Nagasaki them."

...

Just to set the mood, he fires the .22 out of the open cab window.... He fires at a Styrofoam bear using his weapon of choice, a traditional bow and arrow. "Straight through the heart... dead bear," says Ted, as his heavily pitted target submits to yet another onslaught. "Both lungs... dead bear." The arrows, which he makes himself, keep flying. "Dead bear... dead bear... dead bear."

...

"I saw the riding crop. A lot. I felt it, I think, just once. But corporal punishment is real good. It teaches dogs not to shit on the couch."

"It didn't stop you urinating on that nun."

"These are legends."

"You've described that incident for publication."

"I was in Jesuit School. When we peed, the nuns would stand behind, checking on us. I had an erection one time and I peed all over the wall. I was inclined to turn round and tell the nun 'I'm just peeing here.' I didn't....Neither did I poke my erect penis through a map of West Virginia - did you read that?"

"No."

...

"You want to know how to get peace, love and understanding?" he replies. "Who doesn't know this? The Ku-Klux-Klan? The Black Panthers? Child rapists? How do you get peace, love and understanding? First of all you have to find all the bad people. Then," Nugent adds, "you kill them."


Please, Michigan voters, don't elect this man. Please.

via Jesus' General.



QUACKERY

This is clearly ten kinds of bullshit.

I was going to discuss all the nutty shit that used to pass for science in the Soviet Union, and I'm guessing still goes on over there. But then I remembered that we here in the U.S. are still pretty retarded. The Pentagon's classified budget includes untold millions for "antimatter weapons, psychics and telepathy, [and] a "nuclear hand grenade" that may cost billions and seems certain to fail." The National Institutes of Health has a center dedicated to "complementary and alternative medicine," which seems to promote every bit of pseudo-science churned out by half-wits.

Homeopathy is my favorite bit of this nonsense. One of the kooky ideas behind homeopathy is the Law of Infinitesimals (note the misuse of the word "law"), the hypothesis that the smaller the concentration of a drug, the greater the effect. As a result, many homeopathic "cures" are extremely diluted. Some medicines are so diluted that in order to ensure getting one molecule of the effective ingredient, you would need to take a dose larger than the known universe.

The best thing you can say about homeopathy is that at least the water or sugar pills you're taking won't kill you. Unfortunately, people die because they forego real treatment. And god knows how much money we waste on research grants for this crap. This is money better spent fixing rich men's horses.


Sunday, May 28, 2006

HEY, YOU GOT SCIENCE IN MY -TOLOGY!

Did they build the Super Power Center using only the power of their minds?

Ron Pollack, rich asshole who had nothing better to do with $5 million dollars than give it to this crackpot project, has a handful of service completions, probably representing another shitload of money better spent elsewhere.

Look up the completions of your favorite Hollywood nutjob. Everyone's favorite psycho, Tom Cruise, née Mapother, only has a listing for something called, "STUDENT HAT COURSE," which is apparently like remedial Scientology studies.


Saturday, May 27, 2006

ETHAN OUT

I'm leaving home for a month for various travels. Blogging will be only occasional (like it's not anyway).

You will be in good hands. The soft, delicate hands of monster, BigD, cravenidoru, and jps3, to be exact.

Salto's really gotten better with their addition. Thank you, bloggers.


Friday, May 26, 2006

AN ENRON DIVIDED

Via Drudge, the AP has this story, "Enron Verdict Divides Former Employees," which begins:

After hearing Thursday that Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling had just been convicted of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, former employees' reactions ranged from elation to satisfaction to indifference.
From elation to indifference? Do they really sound that divided?

"They were convicted! I am elated!"

"Fuck you! I'm indifferent!"

A brawl ensues.



Nuclear Energy. Yesterday's Answer.

Aahhhhh, the '70s. Disco. Bell bottoms. My birth. And our very own dictator in power in Iran, the Shah. Times were different then. Simpler. We* actually wanted Iran to have nuclear reactors, and used the Shah as our glamorous ad man. Here is a classic ad from that bygone era:



* "we" as in US power companies.

via MRZine



Sultan's Dowry Problem

Also referred to as "the bachelor's problem", "the secretary problem", and "the wife selection problem", this problem was originally posed by Martin Gardner in his Mathematical Recreations column in the February 1960 issue of The Scientific American and is a well-studied optimization problem,
A sultan has granted a commoner a chance to marry one of his daughters. The commoner will be presented with the daughters one at a time and, when each daughter is presented, the commoner will be told the daughter's dowry (which is fixed in advance). Upon being presented with a daughter, the commoner must immediately decide whether to accept or reject her (he is not allowed to return to a previously rejected daughter). However, the sultan will allow the marriage to take place only if the commoner picks the daughter with the overall highest dowry. Then what is the commoner's best strategy, assuming he knows nothing about the distribution of dowries?
Analysis here.



WHEREIN I SEE THE LIGHT

With Jefferson looking like an amazing fucking crook, it was easy for me to say, "Fuck that guy! Neither he nor any of those other goddamn criminals should be able to hide illegality in their offices. Hastert can lick my taint." It was so easy that I did in fact say those very things. But FDL sets me straight, as is so often the case.

And I didn't even consider the political aspect of a high-profile raid of a Democratic Congressperson's office in the wake of non-stop Republican corruption scandals. Fuck. I'm like a babe in the woods.



Kenny Boy

In honor of the recent convictions of dirtbags Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay and Jefferey Skilling (hurray!), here is a letter from Kenny Boy's good buddy George W. Bush, apparently wishing him a happy 55th birthday:



"Wow!"

(hat tip to Dependable Renegade)



Another quick piece of legal advice

If you are being tried for assault, don't slap your defense lawyer in front of potential jurors during jury selection.



LAY WITH DOGS, YOU GET FLEAS



Thursday, May 25, 2006

WHAT PROGRESS?

Luckily, I don't watch this piece of shit, so I was spared yet another fucked up Asian stereotype on prime time television.

But it's not all bad news! In Korea, the National Police Agency (NPA) is now allowing multiracial people to become police officers. Great! What progress! Oh, except for this part:
The NPA will also encourage biracial people [. . .] to apply as riot police.
I'm not feeling a lot of altruism here.

[via Mixed Media Watch]



THE ETERNAL QUESTION

If some dumb gay bitch with a war-criminal father writes a book and no one reads it, um, does it, um, actually exist?

Or something.



MORE BRITISH FUCKWITS

An Asian man proposed on the new Apple Store's webcam. But the article wonders if "...he doesn't in fact have a fiancée at all, and is in reality a US-passport-hungry Chinese web dissident looking for fast-track up-the-aisle asylum action before Yahoo! and Google catch up with him." HA! Get it? Because he's Asian, so he must be an asylum seeking alien! Oh dear, I fear my sides have split.

[via Angry Asian Man]



I LOVE THE INTERNETS

Lots of hits today from a Dutch bodybuilding forum.



Shinichi Maruoka's "Children like playing from ancient times"

2005 Bologna Children’s Book Fair



the 4th amendment, cocaine, and your rectum

via matt taibbi, here is an object lesson on what NOT to do when pulled over by the cops:

Semin-hole

In a story that almost defies commentary, seven-foot Florida State basketball recruit Jon Kreft was arrested last week on drug-and-traffic charges after he was caught hiding marijuana in his car and cocaine in his rectum.

The outline of the case is as follows: Kreft was pulled over for a traffic stop. Officers observed him reaching under the seat of the car. He consented to a search, and the officers found marijuana under the seat. Kreft then volunteered to police that he had “something else” — at which point he bent over and spread his buttocks, and a baggie with 1.7 grams of coke fell out.

My question here is, who was doing the coke with Kreft? And did he or she know where he was keeping it?


please remember kids, never consent to a search by the cops, because if you do so, you waive your fourth amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. if they are asking for your consent to search, it means they do not have enough evidence to do so without your consent. it is ok to say "no" to a cop that asks if she can search your car. and, most importantly, if you have a teener of coke shoved up your ass, don't volunteer that info to the cops.



OH, DENNIS!




SCHADENFREUDE

Goddamn, I love it when rich people go to jail.

[Updated link]


Wednesday, May 24, 2006

COLORBOX


"Use the LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to move the color at the top of the page. Press the DOWN arrow key to drop it.

When a color is dropped, its color is added to the colors in adjacent squares, using the additive color system (color theory). There is a color key for reference below.

Make WHITE SQUARES for points."



OUR FIFTH

Another blogger coming on.

Watch carefully.



*SIGH*




PROOF: GOD EXISTS!

There are more cogent and insightful commentaries floating around on Greenwald's post than I could ever hope to write. It is well worth a read. But this passage makes me wonder:
For all the talk of the weakened and impotent presidency and the split among Republicans, it is still virtually always the case that the President gets what he wants, and does so without much difficulty.
Why does this happen? People who fucking hate him roll over for a belly-rub? The only possible explanation is that he sold his soul to Satan. In fact, this is the best evidence I have ever seen for the existence of God. How else can such a complete screw up live such a charmed life? Can we pool a few souls on the left to cancel out his mojo?



Oliver Byrne's "The First Six Books of The Elements of Euclid"



"In which coloured diagrams and symbols are used instead of letters for greater ease of learners."



R. Buckminster Fuller's "Synergetics"


"Please do not refrain from reading this book because you have become suspicious that a comprehensive inventory of discovery precludes further discovery."



NAMASTE, AND GOOD LUCK

4815162342I haven't been this excited about a night of teevee since probably the Twin Peaks era.

Tonight is the season finale of Lost, ABC's complex and enigmatic island adventure.

Either you're into it or you haven't been watching and have no idea what's going on. For those of you falling into the latter category, ABC will rerun an episode consisting entirely of gentle explanations and clips just before the two-hour finale at 9pm.

If you're into it, and interested in speculating about what's going on, I recommend this thread (from a Lost forum). It's the most intelligent and interesting Lost debate I've seen online.

MSNBC has a collection of ten questions that Lost needs to answer. Soon.

And I reveal my favorite Lostie here.



cartograms

2004 elections
tourism profit
toy imports



Duniya Main Logo Ko from Apna Desh



Tuesday, May 23, 2006

GEEK OUT

Let me be a complete dorkus malorkus for a second. If the producers of The Sopranos turn Preacher into an HBO series, I may achieve a four hour orgasm.



I'M NOT BITTER

A post to prove that I'm not a bitter old goat.

I told a friend in Spain that bored rich kids invariably went to Prague. When a bored rich kid subsequently told her that she was going to Prague, my friend almost plotzed.

A few years ago, I heard that Dubrovnik was the new Prague. It's a lovely city, part of Croatia's Dalmatian coast. Home of what strikes me as an odd webcam, as well as Europe's oldest pharmacy, still in operation since 1317.

After you've walked the walls of the old city, take a ferry to the island of Korcula, apparently the birthplace of Marco Polo. If you like it, consider permanent residence. Spend some time in the small town of Lumbarda and sample the local wine, Grk. Drink a lot of it to soothe the pain of trying to say words in which the only vowel is an R.

You don't have to do or see cultural things, or "hillbilly shit" as my father would likely call it. There are other ways of getting some local flavor.

There are a few tips on getting around here. My tip is to rent the smallest car possible, if you are renting a car. In smaller towns, the streets are not wide enough to accomodate some cars. Locals know which cars will fit down which streets. In the alternative, get the insurance and fuck it up good.

They say that Croatian women are the most beautiful women in Europe. I read that in a Croatian Airlines in-flight magazine, so it might not have been the most impartial source.

I'm partial to Croatia myself, and not just because the English translation of the most commonly used profanity is, "I fuck your god." It turns out that BigD is HOTT in Croatia. Croatian ladies love the BigD. Picture the hottest guy you can imagine. In Croatia, that guy turns gay and blows me. That's how hot I am. (Unless the guy you pictured is already gay. In which case, he just blows me. But I'm still HOTT.)



THIS IS NOT AN ENDORSEMENT




FREE YOUR MEDIA

The free flow of data wins again.



I CAN'T COMPLAIN

There's nothing wrong with this anymore. We've established that Godwin's Law is defunct. Oh, there was once a time when that sort of thing would be considered offensive. Perhaps those were better days. But that was before the Republicans went apeshit. Now, it's not just okay to repeatedly say REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER, but encouraged. (Only a ♥ because there's no ascii character for fellatio.)



TOO QUIET

Nothing going on?


Monday, May 22, 2006

Visualizing Positive Definite Matrices




THE CORPORATE SURVEILLANCE STATE II

Wired follows up on its previous report from its whistleblower, reiterating that AT&T are fuckers.

In 2003 AT&T built "secret rooms" hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

They know everything. I predict that there will not be as much outrage as there should be.



PEOPLE ARE STUPID



Anyone who gives a shit about an injured horse oughtta have their right to vote revoked.

This country is retarded.



THE CORPORATE SURVEILLANCE STATE

Verizon needed 44 pages to not-answer a Maine state inquiry about NSA domestic phone mining. Yeah, I'm sure they're innocent.

The frightening thing, though, is this:
In a 44-page response to the Maine Public Utilities Commission today, Verizon refused to confirm or deny cooperation in the illegal National Security Agency program, arguing that the Public Utilities Commission lacks the authority to investigate whether Verizon has provided NSA access to its customer records and its switching machines in Maine. Verizon further asserted a "state secrets privilege.” The state secrets privilege, when properly invoked, permits the government to block disclosure of particular documents that would cause harm to national security.

“We were surpised to see Verizon make the state secrets argument because only the government, not private entities, can assert that privilege,” said Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. “Use of the state secrets argument indicates that Verizon lawyers may have worked closely with federal government lawyers in drafting a response to the PUC. Both the PUC and Senators Collins and Snowe should proceed with a thorough investigation of Verizon’s actions.
More:
“I’m dumbfounded that this corporation is trying to hide behind the federal government’s state secret privilege,” said James Cowie, MCLU member and lead complainant in complaint case Docket No. 2006-274. “Verizon’s response reads like it came from the government, instead of our local telephone company. I hope Senators Snowe and Collins would be concerned about this as well.”
Then you throw in news like this, today, and well, we're screwed. Really.


Sunday, May 21, 2006

BUT I'M A REPUBLICAN! I DON'T NEED KNOWLEDGE!

Republicans don't just revel in ignorance, but insist on it.

[via Pharyngula]



COPY FREELY

I love having the ability to make backups of my discs, for archival purposes, of course. Discs that I have purchased and legally own, of course. I don't actually copy discs, but I just love the fact that I can.

Designing copy protection has to be one of the most thankless jobs in the new economy. Everyone hates you, and everything you do is completely and utterly pointless.

The whole point of intellectual property protection is to promote the creation of intellectual property for the good of society. Rewarding artists and programmers is a means to that end, not an end in itself. And I sure as fuck don't care about fuckers like the record labels. Especially when many, if not all, of their traditional functions are provided free over the internet.

I don't know what a perfect, or even a better intellectual property regime for the digital age would look like. But it seems to me that there must be a better way to do it than squeezing away the rights of the people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the system. Don't you hate that you don't actually own any of your digital media? They've created a system in which you only own things free and clear if you steal them. And they wonder why piracy is king?


Saturday, May 20, 2006

LORDI WINS!




LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!

The Mexican foreign secretary can call the French ambassador and fucking howl with laughter. Or not, considering the fact that neither of these guys has any idea who O'Reilly is. I wish I didn't.


Friday, May 19, 2006

CAT TANK!




MIRACLES OF MODERN SCIENCE

Do you think they told this guy they were going to do this before they put him under anesthesia?

Actually tho, this is pretty cool.



BRITONS CAN BE DUMBSHITS, TOO

It's not just people in the United States who are completely retarded when it comes to race. It's hard to remember that sometimes, what with the whole REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER thing.



BUT MY MAGIC 8-BALL SAID SO!

I can see how you would think I'm wrong when you make the mistake of looking at reliable, scientific sources.

[via Pharyngula]



UM, TWO PARTS?

Yikes:

The 52-year-old Tioga-Nicetown man, who we are identifying only by his first name of Howard, arrived home late Wednesday, hours after his wife allegedly tore off two parts of his genitalia with her bare hands.
I wonder what two parts? Why are they hiding the ball on this one?



THANKS, REPUBLICAN SENATE!

I have always associated speaking more than one language with intelligence. I've always been a little ashamed that I don't speak any other languages. So I want to thank the Senate for turning my vices into virtues. If they could just get on to endorsing excessive drinking, obesity, sloth, video game playing, pornography, and near-constant masturbation, I might be in the running for Time's Man of the Year.



WHERE'S JIMMY?

So, are they going to find him? Anyone know what the odds are?


Thursday, May 18, 2006

YE OLDE CHILDE OF PRIVILEGE

Tony Blair's kid finished an internship with David Dreier, but quit two weeks into his internship with Jane Harman. The official story is that he needed to finish some school shit before going on to Harvard or Yale for post-grad nonsense. But Mary Ann Akers of Roll Call says that he got pissy because they actually wanted him to work, y'know, like all the other interns.

If he goes to Yale, maybe he'll return to England, run a few businesses into the ground, get bailed out by Saudi princes, and succeed his father as PM. Farfetched, I know, but stranger things have happened.



MORE OF THE SAME

Orcinus is always fucking amazing, as the kids say. Unfortunately, frequently too long and interesting to read while trying to look productive. But today he draws attention to the cyclical nature of racist rhetoric:

MEN FROM CHINA come here to do LAUNDRY WORK. The Chinese Empire contains 600,000,000 (six hundred millions) inhabitants.

The supply of these men is inexhaustible.

Every one doing this work takes BREAD from the mouths of OUR WOMEN.

So many have come of late, that to keep at work, they are obliged to cut prices.


It does sound familiar, doesn't it?



HUH?

People this out of touch are our leaders? How out of touch am I that this surprises me?


Wednesday, May 17, 2006

O'REILLY UBER ALLES

What a motherfucker. He is a gigantic sack of shit. He's 6'4", so we're talking a lot of shit here.

When this fear-mongering asshole rants about "the browning of America" and the end of "white privilege," when he decries liberals who want to change the "white power structure," he is openly appealing to racism.

I honestly don't have the words. Anything I try to say comes out as, "What the FUCK?" But really, what is this supposed to accomplish? It alienates EVERYONE who isn't white, and most (I hope it's most) white folks on top of that.

The Republican party died in 2006. The corpse will twitch for a few years, but that's just the build up of gases and the gnawing of vermin. From now on, anyone who votes Republican is a necrophiliac fucking the festering, bloated remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

That said, if the Democrats manage to pull an Ashcroft this November, I will be extremely pissed.

Remember: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER



WHERE'S MY LETTER?

The delay between the news of telco/NSA fuckery and their denials... Were their Negroponte Letters held up in the mail?

There's lots of shit I want to lie about. How do I get me one o' them letters?



WHAT'S A DEFICIT?

This is an excellent use of tax dollars. It's not like we're fighting a war with not enough troops and equipment or anything. Just goes to show, the closer the brown people are, the more the Republicans hate them.

Remember: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER



BREEDERS

When I saw this, I thought it was a joke. It's a new day in America.



BLOW. HARD.

I must admit that I had never watched O'Reilly, except for clips on other shows or the internet. And I guess that's still true. But watching this, I now understand just how brilliantly dead-on Colbert's character is.



REAP WHAT YOU SOW

If the corruption investigation is so onerous, why didn't you think of that when you were rutting with prostitutes and selling our democracy for a pittance?



HECK OF A JOB, BUSHIE?

What does this mean? Rove actually said, "We're doing a heck of a job," when discussing illegal immigration. He isn't that stupid, is he? He's cruel, vindictive, and short sighted, but I don't think he's stupid. He knows very well what that phrase has come to mean. Is he just fatigued and distracted? Or is he subtly trying to tell wayward members of his party that they're really fucking the whole thing up? Probably the first, now that I think on it. Subtlety just isn't his bag.


Tuesday, May 16, 2006

FEAR ITSELF, MY ASS

A short list of things that we should all fear:
  1. NaXis
  2. Simple, undetectable voting fraud
  3. Zombies



I Can't Stand Myself






KUDOS TO THE DECIDER

At least we know that he decided on the right man for the (Snow) job.



THE BEST THING EVER

Is this story.

And the corresponding video.
Mr Goma said his interview was "very short", but he was prepared to return to the airwaves and was "happy to speak about any situation".

He added that next time he would insist upon "preparing myself".
In a just world, this incident would entrench Guy Goma as a semi-celebrity commentator about totally random shit. He would just appear on the networks every so often. Sunday talk shows, etc. Oh dear.


Monday, May 15, 2006

THE GLOVES ARE OFF

If racist Republicans (redundant?) start out by praising Hitler's accomplishments, that throws Godwin's Law right out, yes?

REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER :: REPUBLICANS ♥ HITLER

It rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? I'm going to say it as much as possible. Join me, won't you?



CORRECTION

Unlike the Decider, BigD can admit when he's wrong. John Aravosis has found the quote of the year:
The official said [it] was wrong to suggest that ABC News phone calls were being “tracked.”

“Think of it more as backtracking,” said a senior federal official.



THEY NEED TWEEZERS TO TAKE A SQUIRT

Breaking news from the BBC is that Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are greedy and have teenie weenie peenies. "The Smartest Guys in the Room" documents some excellent examples of Enron's strip club and eXtreme sport overcompensation.

I hadn't heard this bit o' news:
They suffered a blow last week when the judge ruled that jurors could find the men guilty of deliberately avoiding knowledge of massive fraud.

Known as the "ostrich instruction", because it refers to a person sticking their head in the sand, the ruling means prosecutors can present a lower burden of proof to be successful.
With the amazing amount of crazy illegal shit Fastow was juggling, I'd be surprised if these two eunuchs are acquitted.



Dammit Ethan, that chick was in Niagra Falls, right?

Seriously.

This is a bummer.

Here I was thinking Ethan was the man, getting that hot Federal indictment action.

(Don't worry Ethan, I still think you're the man, but next time I want to see photos and panites or I'm not gonna buy that you aren't Anthony Micheal Hall.)



The Smirking Texas Dutch Boy Has Run Out Of Fingers

Again from Wingnut Central. In case you're curious how the 31% feels about the Bush immigartion talking points today.

"For crying out loud! Does everyone have to be so negative? General discussion has been replaced by apocalypsic predictions. Reasonable posters are leaving this forum in droves, only the kooks and tinfoilers are left."

Of course the poster seems to mistakenly think that the terms kook and tinfoiler are somehow different from Freeper to begin with. It's like someone standing up at a Flat Earth Society meeting and say "Don't be so negative. It's scaring off all of the sensible people who believe the Earth is flat."

My birthday seems to come everyday lately. Now if only someone could get around to confirming the validity of Ethan's blogged about orgasm. Was there a real lady in the room? Or is she unwittnessed and living in the Niagra Falls area. Cause I need to know if it's true before I pop... er... eh... the champagne.

I read Free Republic so you don't have to.



FIT ME FOR A TINFOIL HAT

What does it say about the state of the world that this sounds entirely plausible to me?
And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States …linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting records.



NOT GOOD

We should really leave this sort of thing to the Republicans. They're much better at it.



IF I DON'T BELIEVE IT, IT DOESN'T EXIST




I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS

If this is true, it won't matter how many nicknames he gives the people in the press corps. There'll be no more free rides for the Decider. They're going to be pissed, and rightly so. Too bad Scotty won't be fielding the questions on this one.



AC


Awesome Color album on Ecstatic Peace next month. Tour with Sonic Youth, etc this summer. Interview with Allison here.



crowd control


Scientists are warming up to the idea of harnessing groups of people for distributed problem-solving. The idea of emergent solutions in human, biological, and artificial systems is by no means new. Nor is emergent behavior in human, biological, and artificial systems. I do not usually recommend biologically-inspired engineering since it is responsible for ill-advised studies by people approaching science through backyard metaphors. However, this next wave of approaches exploits natural behavior for more than just pedagogical purposes. I blame the physicists.


Sunday, May 14, 2006</