you will never

 


look at a duck the same way

via

quote for Sarah Palin Day

"Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much."

Peter Ustinov*




* Ustinov did not say this about Palin, but I thought it worked pretty good.

two years and still counting...unfortunately

Well, folks, it's the 1st anniversary of Sarah Palin Day!

How's that working for ya, America?

Seriously, a year ago when I pre-posted this, it was supposed to be a joke. Now I'm not so sure. Can you imagine the disaster if this woman actually made it to the White House? George Bush would look like a compassionate genius in comparison.



Addendum: Here's a thought: had John McCain actually won the election, Sarah McCain would most certainly have been muzzled by his administration (or at least controlled better). Now she's a loose cannon in the GOP.

meh

that's all I got today.

hey, guess what?

Today is National Go Topless Day.

You know, while the current craze for bacon is certainly a terrific way to stick it to the islamic Man, wouldnt everyone getting to play shirts or skins work better?

friday night at the movies

Note: NSFW (duh)

via

hmmmm

So, teapartiers dont want government to have power over them, apparently because they feel that it is corrupt and run by "special interests". So they propose to do away with as much of it as they can (except, apparently, the parts that enforce denial of civil rights to certain groups and the part that drops bombs). I'm curious who they DO want to have the power, because if they remove the government from various places of power, someone will fill that vacuum. Or do they imagine that the Individual will be able to stand up to a Collective such as a large and powerful corporation?

linkage

- Republican Philosophy: If it's promoted by the other side, then it must be bad. Seriously, the Democrats need to come out in favor of more things that everyone needs, just to make Republicans oppose them.

- The Nietzsche Family Circus. Dunno why it works, but work it does.

- Imagine this, if you will: A Conservative cabal conspires in voting fraud. Okay, so it's Digg, but is anyone really surprised that they're gaming a system? (via)

- That damned hippie Einstein!

- "We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing". sigh...

- Giant Puppets in Berlin!

- Tiny house! Honestly, though, what are these folks doing that most people didnt do a couple hundred years ago? I mean, aside from doing it in a much more pleasant and modern manner. (via)

- a business jargon translator (via)

- A Republican who gets it. It cost him his job, but hey, he gets it. The article also contains a pretty good alternative to cap-and-trade (which is a lousy compromise idea anyway).

yep

quote for the day

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Thomas Paine

flip-flop

Yes, there are a lot of excellent points in the discussion, but at the same time I'm rather bothered by it. Where were these guys two years ago? Where were they four years ago? Or six? Or eight? Were these points not equally valid then? It's perfectly understandable to call for smaller government, less military spending and more transparency. But any Republican who does so today needs to be about two years old to have any credibility. I wish that I could guarantee that when Republicans again control the government (in a manner in which they actually hold the reins, that is, not the way they currently control it) these sentiments will still be voiced by right-wingers, but I know that they will not. They will not even be held to account for their 180 degree reversal.

(via Kel)

quote for the day

As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.

Good for Obama. The flap over this community center has been ridiculous. I really want to know; is this a free nation? Or not? Do we actually follow the constitution, or merely pay it lip service?* Here's what Greg Sargent says about Obama's statement:

The right is engaged in a concerted effort to make it politically toxic to stand up for the rights of Muslims -- and to simultaneously insinuate that Obama is on "their" side, and not on ours. This dispute fits the bill perfectly.

He is not criticising Obama, by the way. I quote him to ask this question: Why, when the Right speaks, do we (and by "we", I mean the "we" of "conventional wisdom") treat their statements as facts which must be proven false, usually with extensive documentation (often from "non-biased" or even conservative sources), which is even then ignored by both the Right (which is hardly surprising) and the CW "We"**? Have we given up even the semblance of innocent until proven guilty? Why dont we have anyone on the Left who has the ability to wrest the power to frame an issue away from those on the Right? Is it because of media ownership? Obama looked like he might have been the one to do so, but has either failed to do so, given up, or was never interested in doing so in the first place.
As long as issues continue to be framed in such a way that even obvious lies are treated as truth, without question (or even the kind of "what the fuck?" incredulousness which so many statements from the Right seem to deserve these days), we will continue to have rancor.


* Duh! Lip service! Hello, Bush years continued on after with little Change™.
** Does that make sense? It works in my head, but I dont know whether it survives in the real world.

big brother is us!

Oh look, more voluntary self-tracking!

friday funny

why?

You know why the Republicans are going to gain Congressional seats this November? It ain't because the Tea Party is sweeping the imagination of the nation.
It's because the real election battle, when the nation is pretty much split down the middle (as it is), is to get your side more excited than the other side, so excited that you actually get out and vote. In 2006 and 2008, Republicans, though they would never admit it, were uninspired because it was pretty obvious what 6 years of GOP control of the nation had led to. Democrats were quite aware of it also, and, by the presidential election, were all pumped to get rid of neo-conservative rule and replace it with something more sensible, or at least something more friendly to the ordinary people.
Huh.
After the performance of the last two years, not only by the spineless Democrats in the capital, but also the thoroughly uninspiring actions of the White House, I would predict that for this election Democrats will respond with a resounding "meh", staying home in droves and handing control over to Republicans any place where the contest is close. After all, when a vote for a Democrat is so watered down by that side's kowtowing to the (currently) minority party, why bother?
Pushing the "D" button may be the lesser of two evils, but it doesnt seem to be very much less. If the only difference when someone shoots you is the size of the bullet, does it really matter who you choose to pull the trigger? When the outcome is practically the same anyway, why go to the effort of voting.

Oh, and for the record, let me also say, Fuck you, Robert Gibbs.

addendum: I'm not the only one who thinks this way, only they think it with more detail to back themselves up. (via)

and to prove I got nothin' to say lately...

Yeah, it's another video. Sorry, it amused me.

via Pooby.

I give up

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Man, I hope that we're going to get a return of the angry, pre-election Jon Stewart, because he seriously rocked. And as for giving up, yeah, I can understand that. It was one thing when it was the Republicans fucking the nation over; they were the "bad guys", and I was a member of the opposition. Now, the "good guys" have won, and yet the screw-job continues unabated. Guess which party being in power is more demoralizing?

a legacy, perhaps

Okay, so, five years ago today, I finally got up a "real" post for this blog. Yes, the blog was begun in May, but five ago today is when it actually came alive.

If by "alive" you mean spewing vitriol at the powers that had been (and, let's face it, still pretty much are). Five years of being pissed off at the government, five years of trying to add my bucketful to the "rising tide". I'm sick of it all, now.
Not the blogging, just the spewing.
Unfortunately, without the bile, I dont seem to have all that much to say. I keep on with this partially out of habit, partially because I'd hate to "abandon" my internet friends that I've made while engaging in all this rather meaningess rambling, partially because while I've run out will to oppose both the opposition and "my" side, I think there are things to be said, still. I dont know what, exactly, but something.

Or maybe I just like the idea of carrying this thing on for the rest of my life. The idea that this could be something that my grandchildren, or even their grandchildren could look at, and get something of an idea of what life was like "in the olden days". I like the idea that anyone make a record for posterity, accessable not just by ones kin digging though a box in the attic, but anyone, anywhere, curious about what life was in the second half of the first decade of the new millenia.
And beyond, I hope.

saturday matinee

linkage

- an interesting post about race and America.

- Did you know there was a Coffee Party? (via) (Official Site here)

- Hey, John Bohner's right! The America he grew up in is dead. But I'm pretty sure it wasnt Obama who killed it.

- Adventures in Urban Farming.

- I was going to pull a good quote from Matthew B. Crawford's excellent book "Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquery Into The Value Of Work", but transcripting is a lot of work, so instead I'll just use someone else's work.

- There's often a fine line between satire and real-life behavior, so fine that sometimes it's hard to tell whether something is one or the other.

- We know the game is rigged, but how do we respond to it? (via)

- The tenets of Dieselpunk culture.

- Getting your own Ansel Adams print the "easy" way. Or not.

- Gardening? Piss on it! (We may need to).

- Are Americans the best damn buggy whips money can buy? (via)

- a proposal that would really solve the world's deficit problems, possibly without raising taxes (maybe even lowering them). It will never, ever happen, of course.


(via)

quote for the day

"The optimist says 'This is the best of all possible worlds.', and the pessimist agrees with him."

how cool is this?

Now if only the poor bastards werent stuck in a small pool miles from the ocean.

via

quote for the day

"A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's Punk?'. So I kick over a garbage can and say 'That's punk!'. So he kicks over a garbage can and says 'That's Punk?', and I say 'No that's trendy!"

Billie Joe Armstrong

hmmmmmm

Here's a question related to the Gibbs flap: Did Obama deliberately allow Gibbs to insult his base in order to lower moral so that the GOP would win this fall, followed by (inevitably, I think) overplaying their hands in typical neocon draconian fashion, plunging the nation deeper into depression, resulting in a large Democratic victory in 2012?
It's that old 3-dimensional chess question, again, isnt it?
No, I'm giving too much credit to Obama, and certainly to the Democrats. Still, it'd be interesting to see what the Republicans would do if they were to regain a majority. Nothing good, I'm sure.

it's soooo simple

Read my animated lips.

via Spoonfighter