The Heretik rounds up posts on our national Fortunate Son, and adds his own poetic summary that I really recommend.
Coturnix has a great round-up of lots of stuff being written on evolution and intelligent design. (You’ve definitely got to read this, if nothing else.) It’s kind of half a carnival, half a salon—it’s a carnalon.
And the media bias salon that was spinning around hasn’t ended just yet. Mannion’s still threatening a part three, and in case you missed it all, or any of the good stuff that happened over the weekend, let me bring you up to speed…
Start with Paul’s post here and Digby here. Then read Mannion here and here. Then me here, and Ezra here and here, and then back to me here. And also check out Avedon Carol here.
If I missed anyone, let me know in comments. I’m sure there are blogs linking to one of these pieces that I just haven’t seen.
Salons
Double Yuck
Frank Rich is disgusted, and rightfully so, about the lack of leadership being offered from … well … anyone, on Iraq. Out of the entire column, however, this passage in particular stood out to me:
If there's a moment that could stand for the Democrats' irrelevance it came on July 14, the day Americans woke up to learn of the suicide bomber in Baghdad who killed as many as 27 people, nearly all of them children gathered around American troops. In Washington that day, the presumptive presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a press conference vowing to protect American children from the fantasy violence of video games.
Ouch.
Mencken said, “Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right...” At the moment, it seems neither is particularly dependent upon the other to showcase its inefficacy, nor its self-interested avarice, traits with both parties share, if nothing else. Sure, they snipe at each other, but it’s not even necessary, so manifestly obvious are their flaws, and sure, one party is hell and gone worse for most Americans than the other, but even with such a grave disparity, the better of the two struggles to make headway in winning back congressional seats, so disarrayed is their message as they run ever more quickly and desperately to their right, as if hoping to win by becoming just as bad as their opponents.
The two parties are a collective stinkfest, and the presupposed frontrunners, John McCain (who, in case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t like) and the aforementioned Hillary Clinton, don’t stand to change the directions their parties are headed, as McCain increasingly panders to wingnuts and Clinton veers rightward to protect the children. Rumor has it that Chuck Hagel is considering an independent bid in 2008, and although I don’t give much credibility to that rumor, the fact that it can be even be floated at all is an indication of how widespread the dissatisfaction with both parties really is.
I don’t know what it’s going to take to get a viable and thriving third party in this country. I like the Greens, and I wouldn’t hesitate to vote for a Green candidate if given the opportunity, but they’re such a mess I can’t even get emails returned from my state’s Green party. And, honestly, I think they’re going to struggle until Ralph Nader goes the way of the dodo, because each time he pulls some new crackpot shit, there are going to be people who feel a creeping heat under their collars that reminds them of 2000, and it isn’t fading from their memories whose ticket he was on.
I read awhile ago about a burgeoning labor party in New York, which sounded quite good, but they seemed to be toiling for cash and support, too. It just seems like the two parties are so entrenched that it’s almost impossible to encroach an iota on their well-marked territory. I recall Mr. Furious telling me about having spoken to someone who worked inside Perot’s campaign, and how the two major parties worked together to try to crush him, while running their own separate campaigns against each other as well. If two parties with all the power will and can destroy any viable opposition, we’re not living in much of a democracy.
Campaign finance reform, shortened election cycles, blah blah blah. None of it matters if the political parties care more about power than they do about people.
Fortunate Sons Don’t Like Grieving Mothers
Amanda Marcotte, commenting on the coincidence of listening to Sleater Kinney’s cover of “Fortunate Son” as she read Atrios’ post about Gov. Mitt Romney’s agitated discomfort with being asked if his sons were planning to enlist, notes that:
Cindy Sheehan standing in the Texas heat outside of Bush's gorgeous, expensive and oh-so-comfortable ranch is a perfect symbol of [the class issues that allow war to happen]. War is not possible unless you have internal class warfare. War is not possible unless the rich and powerful feel free to demand the lives of the common people be sacrificed with the same ease you lose a pawn in a game of chess…Of course, it’s even more complex than that for the former flyboy, isn’t it? The simple random accident of fate that guaranteed Bush would never find himself a bereaved parent is the same little ray of providence that ensured he was never going to be the soldier being grieved, either. And if I had to guess what bothers Bush most about Cindy Sheehan’s vigil, it’s not that he could have been her had things been different—it’s that he never, ever could have been her son with things as they are.
I think that the reason that Bush won't come out of hiding and tell Cindy Sheehan the truth about why her son died in Iraq is because the honest answer is so fucking evil. Casey Sheehan died because he's not a fortunate son…
[B]ut for a simple random accident of fate, he is the man cowering inside the mansion instead of the bereaved parent standing outside it demanding justice.
Though his handlers have done their best to conceal the truth about whether Bush fulfilled his commitment to the Texas Air National Guard, for which he applied during the height of the Vietnam War, twelve days away from losing his student deferment, there’s no doubt that his family’s position and connections secured him his spot, safely away from the horrors of the war raging half a world away. There was no waiting list for this Fortunate Son, and no dependence on the military as a means to a better life. He was, after all, losing his student deferment because he had just graduated from Yale. The Texas Air National Guard was not going to help pay for his education, or provide him with marketable skills that might be turned into a good career, or be the answer to a lack of health insurance, or any of the reasons that the military is appealing for many Unfortunate Sons. It wasn’t even about a chance to serve his country honorably; it was about the chance to serve without risking his life.
Bush has been lying about, explaining, defending, and justifying his service record ever since. It’s a thorn in his side that refuses to yield no matter how he tugs on it, which is, in the end, a small price to pay compared to his cohorts who returned from the war he avoided with devastating injuries, of both the physical and psychological sorts, or never returned at all. And having launched a war that with each day draws more comparisons to the war from which he hid, the specter of his cowardly, privileged history haunts him, drawing ever nearer. And now a mother of one of the sons who died in his war darkens his very doorstep. As his limo passes by protesters holding pictures of Casey Sheehan, is he really thinking about how fortunate he is not to be Cindy, or instead about the bitter irony of escaping a fate like Casey’s only to condemn another generation? Or does he just see the trickles of sweat running down their brows from standing in the hot Texas sun, and ask his driver to turn up the air conditioning, as he turns away and closes his eyes?
(The Heretik has more, too.)
Media Bias: One More Random Thought
I keep meaning to mention this, and then promptly forgetting. I honestly don’t know if it’s a result of bias toward Bush or just resounding stupidity—namely the media having lost all perspective on what their role in the public discourse is meant to be. The gist is that Time magazine knowingly and deliberately avoided seeking a waiver of confidentiality from Karl Rove to hold up reporter Matthew Cooper’s testimony until after the election, at least in part because “Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year.”
The irony, of course, is that maintaining secrecy on such a big issue made them part of the conspiracy to protect a possible criminal in the highest levels of government, which seems to me to be a bigger issue than being part of an explosive story. Jerks.
(Thank to RJ Eskow for the reminder to mention this.)
Weekend Morrissey Blogging
For KB, who knows the pleasure of Bona Drag on a summer day.
There are some bad people on the rise
There are some bad people on the rise
They're saving their own skins by
Ruining other people's lives
Bad, bad people on the rise
Young married couple in debt—ever felt had?
Young married couple in debt—ever felt had?
Oh, the government scheme
Designed to kill your dream.
Oh mum, oh dad.
Once poor, always poor,
La la la la la,
Interesting drug,
The one that you took;
Tell the truth—it really helped you,
An interesting drug.
The one that you took,
God, it really, really helped you.
You wonder why we're only half-ashamed?
Because enough is too much…
...and look around...
...can you blame us?
Can you blame us?
Weird
This is another really strange story (hat tip to The Disenchanted Forest):
COLEMAN, Texas -- A Texas farmer may have found what some would call a "chupacabra," a legendary animal known for sucking the blood out of goats.
Reggie Lagow set a trap last week after a number of his chickens and turkeys were killed.
What he found in his trap was a mix between a hairless dog, a rat and a kangaroo.
The mystery animal has been sent to Texas Parks and Wildlife in hopes of determining what it is.
A picture of the animal caught by Lagow.
I looked up “chupacabra” out of curiosity, since I’d never heard of it before (Wikipedia), and I have to admit, I’m certainly not convinced this thing is one. I’d be interested to find out what it is, though. It looks like the offspring of a greyhound and a chihuahua with a bad case of the mange. Very bizarre indeed.
The More Things Change…
Mr. Shakes and I watched George Carlin’s What Am I Doing in New Jersey? today, which was recorded in 1988. He was riffing on the Reagan administration and the “moral majority” that helped elect them, and I swear if he replaced the names, he could do the exact same material today and no one would be the wiser. All the same stuff—lawbreakers in the administration, trying to control people’s sex lives, the hypocrisy of pro-lifers who are also pro-war and pro-death penalty, anti-gay bullshit, etc.
You can go back and read Mencken and find a lot of the same crap, too—and he died in like 1956 or something. I don’t know whether to feel better that we've managed to get through it before without the world ending, or whether to feel depressed that nothing’s really changed.
Either way...same shit, different president.
Salon-a-Thon: Media Bias
Mannion and Ezra are both right and wrong. Mannion, the observer, sees a press who had it in for Clinton, and Ezra, the wonk, sees a press who rightfully turned the stupid actions of a president into news stories that sell. They aren’t, as they first appear, contrasting theories of what happened. What’s missing is the connecting piece between the two that Shakes, the anthropologist, can’t help but see—human nature, that confounding and unshakable thing that makes a term like “media bias” not a theory, but an inevitable and intractable fact. The media are, in the end, just people, and people are not objective, even if the press is meant to be.
It’s not only just possible, but likely, that the media covering Clinton, who, as noted in Ezra’s piece, were Clinton supporters to the man, were frustrated by a successful president who undermined his ability to effectively do his job because he couldn’t keep it in his pants, who handed the “family values” crowd a scandal on a silver platter. There were none too few voters who were incensed by exactly that—who felt betrayed—and the members of the media are voters, too. If they had it in for Clinton more than Ezra suggests, their reasons may have been more personal than Mannion suggests.
I said in my piece yesterday about Froomkin’s report on the media BBQ at the Bush ranch, in which it was reported that “a small handful watched askance as the rest fawned over Bush, following him around in packs every time he moved,” that the media has a crush on Bush, “and damnit if crushes don’t turn a person into a fool faster than just about anything else.” And I think the same applies to their coverage of Clinton. Ezra notes, for example, that “Klein was a sycophant till he became disillusioned by Clinton's brazen adultery;” sycophancy is, in the end, little more than an overwhelming crush. Mannion notes, for example, that the press regarded the Clintons as undeserving of “all the success they’d enjoyed at ages younger than too many of the reporters covering them and too close to the ages of all the rest of them;” jealousy is just another shade of crush. And if crushes can turn a person into a fool, a crush betrayed can turn a person ugly.
Attributing loftier motives to the media, or reducing their motives simply to writing what sells, isn’t necessarily wrong; it’s just that they’re all part and parcel of the same notion—that the media are compromised by their own feelings, because they are humans, not objectivity robots. Neither being disappointed by a president one believed in, nor being invited to a president’s house for dinner, is a small thing for a single person. We tend to ignore the potential effects of such things on the media, because “the media” is a faceless, abstract thing, but it’s comprised of individuals. Failing to acknowledge that “the media was invited to the president’s house” and “Joe from the Daily Rag was invited to the president’s house” are two very different things, especially if you’re Joe, is ignoring human nature to the detriment of this exploration.
The media are further compromised in the current political climate because they’re faced with an administration which repeatedly exhibits such wanton contempt for the truth, that genuine objectivity would often require calling the president, a member of his cabinet, and/or a close advisor a liar. (This brings us to Ezra’s second piece.) Giving ample time, as Ezra suggests, to “everything going wrong in the country, they're certainly not buying the spin on Iraq, they're certainly not glossing over gas prices,” isn’t really the point. Ample time only matters if the time given produces something closely resembling reality, something genuinely objective, and the media has (repeatedly) mistaken objectivity for giving equal time to opposing sides, sans critique, irrespective of how fallacious one side may be. This tendency manifests itself most evidently in coverage of wedge issues like gay marriage and intelligent design, which weren’t mentioned in Ezra’s piece.
To wit, a recent AP story contained the following paragraph:
The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation. Nearly all scientists dismiss it as a scientific theory, and critics say it's nothing more than religion masquerading as science.Two big problems here:
1. Identifying intelligent design as a “theory,” while also referring to the theory of evolution in the same story, is, if I’m generous, bad application of language as theory is used in its scientific sense (“a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers”) in regard to evolution and in its layman’s sense (a proposed but unverified explanation) in regard to intelligent design. If I’m not generous, it’s a cynical attempt to imbue both sides of the debate with equal viability. While both sides have a right to their arguments, the suggestion that both are correct in their assertions their beliefs belong in a science class is sheer claptrap.
2. An intellectually honest statement about scientists’ critique of intelligent design would be: All credible scientists dismiss it as scientific theory. Not “nearly all scientists.” Any scientist who recognizes intelligent design as a scientific theory, considering it hasn’t meant the minimum requirements for being categorized thusly, is utterly lacking in integrity. The suggestion that there are respected scientists within the scientific community who recognize intelligent design as a scientific theory is misleading at best and outright bullshit at worst.
This is exactly the kind of nonsense (favoring the Bush administration) that can be found in the news regularly, the kind of spin as part of an attempt to appear objective that prompted Paul Krugman to note:
If Bush said the earth is flat, of course Fox News would say "Yes, the earth is flat, and anyone who says different is unpatriotic." And mainstream media would have stories with the headline: "Shape of Earth: Views Differ;" and would at most report that some Democrats say that it's round.You can take out the partisan references, replacing “Bush” with “The Flat Earth Society” and “Democrats” with “scientists,” and you’re not far off from the AP paragraph I excerpted above. Hard to say that Krugman’s mistaken.
Ezra’s not wrong that liberals need to be more savvy when it comes to the media, but his suggestion that “they're not sucking particularly bad right now. They're just being their general, bumbling selves. We have to stop wishing they'd rise up, shake off their shackles, and do our jobs for us,” isn’t entirely right, either. Expecting that the media report accurately isn’t the same as expecting them to do our jobs for us. I don’t think it’s remotely unreasonable to expect that a non-scientific philosophy be identified thusly. It isn’t our job to correct the record of every news story that contains such lapses in either good reporting or good judgment.
(And, as an aside, the media are worse than they used to be; there was a time not so long ago that a lunatic like Pat Robertson would not have been a guest on a show like Hardball, but instead resoundingly ignored as the fringe nutzoid that he is. It seems these days that no amount of wingnut conservative vitriol can discredit someone so thoroughly that they cannot be used as a counterpoint to even a highly regarded liberal—an insult to liberals, apart from anything else.)
As commenter Greg VA and Mannion point out, story content is only one symptom of media bias, the other being what gets reported with regularity. Greg says, “The bias has less to do with the content on any individual story, but a pattern of what gets reported and how much attention it gets.” Mannion flushes it out further in comments, noting:
There have been months and months at a time when the coverage has been pretty much all negative---not because of Liberal bias---but because just reporting the facts on what he's doing reflects badly on him. He's just not doing a good job. But those periods have always come to an end to be replaced by coverage that is practically hagiographic and those periods have tended to last longer and to have had the effect of making people almost forget his mistakes and failures. He keeps getting another chance.Spot on. In the end, they can’t give up their crush. He hasn’t betrayed them; he has them around for dinner.
Ezra says that because Americans “don't think Iraq is going well, they don't like Bush's plan for Social Security, they don't think he's doing anything on health care, they don't think he's helping the economy, they don't, in fact, think he's doing a good job on anything at all,” it suggests that the press has done reasonably well with its reporting. I’m just not so sure it’s causation, rather than correlation.
Murders and ice cream sales always go up at the same time, but it’s not because ice cream evokes murderous rages, or because murderers reward themselves with a scoop of vanilla. It’s because of heat. When it’s hot, people want ice cream. When it’s hot, tempers are shorter.
It isn’t heat, however, that links the media’s Bush bias and American’s waning support. It’s that he’s throwing a party while the country falls to pieces. The press, indulging their ardor, think that’s just swell. The rest of us think it stinks.
(Crossposted at Ezra's.)
Oh No, Please Don’t Let Me Die in a Shithouse
That’s what I’d be saying if the following happened to me, because I would be fighting off a massive heart attack:
A man is facing charges after police said they pulled him from a tank under a women's toilet that was filled with human waste.Seriously, I cannot even imagine the terror of going into an outhouse (that alone is terrifying enough), looking down the crapper, and seeing a fucking face looking back! This actually happened in June, but I just heard about it on the radio today, and the guy was telling the story from the girl’s perspective, and when he got to the part about seeing the dude’s face, I nearly screamed. That is severely creepy.
Police said that Gary Moody, 45, was under a log cabin outhouse off the Kancamagas Highway in Albany.
"You can draw your own conclusions as to the conditions we encountered," said Capt. John Hebert, of the Carroll County Sheriff's Department.
Police said that they got a call from the parents of a teenage girl who said that when she went to use the facilities, she saw Moody's face staring back at her from the hole.
Moody was hosed off before police cuffed him.
Police said they don't know how long Moody was in the tank, but they said the door to it was locked, which means he must have gone in through the toilet. They said they don't know why he was there.Guh. I’m probably going out on a limb here, but I’m going to guess…oh, I don’t know…a scat fetish?
Someone called into the show and said that her brother was an area cop and he had recently been on a call where they had to pull a guy out of an outhouse in a public park. He was wearing only pantyhose and claimed he had dropped his watch and was looking for it. Gak.
I didn’t really need one more reason to never use an outhouse, but I’m going to add “may be perverts in the shit tank” right to the top of the list.
Our Pathetic Press
On Wednesday, Paul wrote about our chickenshit press being terrified of criticizing the president, even in spite of the nine gazillion reasons he’s a miserable failure, at least half of which Paul listed, illustrating how truly inexplicable it is that they continue to extol someone who is manifestly undeserving of praise. Why? Paul wanted to know, and rightly so. Why, oh, why is the media so afraid of this man? Poor, dear Spudsy—I could feel the reverberations of his frustrated head-banging session from 30 miles away. I banged back to let him know I felt his pain—kind of like smoke signals for bewildered liberals. But I couldn’t answer his question.
Mannion set to work on answering it, though, and has posted Parts One and Two of what will be at least a three-part series. He’s kind of thinking that it’s not that the press is afraid—although that may be part of it—as much as that, once they committed to championing Bush, they decided they’d better stick with him, come hell or high gas prices, lest they be obliged to admit they were wrong. Mannion thinks it all started in 1992, with a fella you may have heard of, called Bill Clinton. (Hop on over to his juke joint and follow the path he neatly clears.)
I’ll be honest—I hadn’t the foggiest clue why our press is so enamored with Bush. It made not the slightest bit of sense to me. They’re afraid…they’re stubborn…any explanation seemed as viable as the next (although I tended to bestow particular favor upon the “remember who they work for” rationale). Still, none of it really ever really seemed to provide a truly satisfactory answer. Until I read this:
About 50 members of the White House press corps accepted President Bush's invitation last night to come over to his house in Crawford, eat his food, drink his booze, hang around the pool and schmooze with him -- while promising not to tell anyone what he said afterward.You with me so far? Reporters are getting rewarded for doing their jobs. And rewarded pretty finely, at that, eating dinner poolside and discussing “the antiwar protests, the twins, sports, and Bush's summer reading list” with the president. (Yeah, I believe that last one is bullshit, too.) I’m thinking “conflicts of interest” might have made an interesting topic of conversation; it’s certainly something the pres and the press have in common.
It's something of a Bush tradition, a way of saying thank you to journalists for whom an extended stay in the Crawford area is anything but a vacation.
…I'm told that several reporters expressed squeamishness about last night's event, particularly as the press-pool vans drove by antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan's "Camp Casey" site. And later, a small handful watched askance as the rest fawned over Bush, following him around in packs every time he moved.Now this makes sense to me. They’re not scared of him, or afraid to admit errors, or anything even marginally more complex than starfucking—the same kind of underserved hero worship that can be found in any high school anywhere in America. Bush is the popular bully, and the White House Press Corps is a collection of kids who are desperate to be cool by association. Heck, he even gives them nicknames. So captivated by the opportunity to be liked by the popular kid, they’ve failed to notice he’s not all that popular anymore. They’re each like the one guy who remains friends with the former high school football star long after graduation, still telling stories about his decades-old touchdowns in the local bar and defending him against criticism, even as he’s hauled off in handcuffs after knocking his wife around. It’s not fear, or contempt, or wanting access—it’s just plan old-fashioned awe. It has everything to do with his simply being president, and not a thing to do with whether he’s any damn good at it.
They’ve got a crush on him, and damnit if crushes don’t turn a person into a fool faster than just about anything else.
No Virgins For You
Guess what 18-year-old suicide bomber Hasib Hussain, who blew up the No. 30 bus as part of the coordinated July 7 attack on London, was doing just before he offed himself, taking 13 innocent people with him?
Eating at McDonald’s.
This just goes to show you how fucking stupid these people are. No matter what specific foreign policy of Britain’s and/or America’s he so passionately opposed that he believed it warranted blowing himself up and killing bystanders in process, I can guaran-fucking-tee ya that it had something to do with imperialism, of which cultural hegemony is an integral part. You know—things like McDonald’s. What an absolute plonking asshole.
Evil, stupid, and fired up on religion all in the same brain sure makes an interesting cocktail, doesn’t it?
How Low Can He Go?
If that picture of Douche McCain with his arms wrapped around Dear Leader, clinging to him like shit to a shoe tread and longing, so desperately longing, to be cradled with pure, unsullied manlove, isn’t enough to make you projectile vomit your entire intestinal track, this ought to do the trick—brave maverick McCain, after opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment seeking to ban gay marriage, has pulled the old switcheroo and endorsed the Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment. Said the filthy turncoat, “I believe that the institution of marriage should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman… The Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment would allow the people of Arizona to decide on the definition of marriage in our state. I wholeheartedly support the Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment and I hope that the voters in Arizona choose to support it as well.”
Now, admittedly, McCain’s opposition to the FMA was based not on any love he had for the LGBT community, but because he felt it was “antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans…[and] usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them.” (In other words, he stole a page out of the Democrats’ playbook and punted.) But now, just over a year later, his home state has decided it needs to confront this “problem,” and so he’s happy to throw gays to his sun-roasted wingnut constituents for their frenzied feral bacchanal. Not a trace of irony, nor a moment’s hesitation, nor the merest, passing flicker of recognition is to be found in his countenance as he plows forward with an endorsement that suggests even if a national marriage amendment isn’t part of the core philosophy of Republicans, bigotry and hatred are.
Any moderate Republicans who had hopes that he might restore their party to some level of respectability are, I’m afraid, shit outta luck. McCain has found his national audience, and it’s the lowest common denominator.
(Thanks to eRobin for the image and Pam for the press release link.)
FOX and their knuckle-dragging viewers
Just go read this post over at Tom Tomorrow's. Can we label FOX and The Bush Administration "Terrists" for the incredible amount of fear, violence, destruction and racism they've created, fostered and encouraged in this country?
I expect Loftus will be asked to resign soon. Just watch me hold my breath.
UPDATE: The Rude Pundit, as always, has more.
(One banana, two banana, three banana, cross-post. By the way, my "review" of last night's DEVO show is here.)
You people are animals!!
So, apparently, the London Zoo has a new exhibit.
A bunch of people.
You know, humans.
LONDON (AFP) - London Zoo unveiled a new exhibition -- eight humans prowling around wearing little more than fig leaves to cover their modesty.
The "Human Zoo" is intended to show the basic nature of human beings as they frolick throughout the August bank holiday weekend.
"We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man's place in the planet's ecosystem," London Zoo said.
Man, oh man... can you imagine if they tried this in the U.S.? First, there would be "think of the children" screaming about their "clothing," (actually, the people in the picture look like they're dressed fine to me... nothing you wouldn't see at a beach or campground) and then, how dare they suggest that Man is a plague species? We're God's special favorites! We have to trash the planet so Jebus will come back and make everything all better!
Spiro, selected from dozens of hopefuls in an Internet competition, said he was excited by the prospect of monkeying around on the zoo's Bear Mountain.
"I'm a veterinary student so the idea of working for a zoo was something that appealed to me.
"I thought it would be fun and interesting because I'm an outdoorsy kind of person," he said.
Uh, sure, "Spiro."
Part of me thinks this is just a huge prank. But a bigger part of me hopes it's not. I do so love glorious, public mindfucks. And if anything, maybe it will help spread concern about animal treatment in zoos.
The people in the picture look like they're acting like monkeys, which I'm sure will drive the ID Creationist people nuts.
Good! Eat bananas and fling your poo, I say!
(We've got a cross-post for sale... Magilla Gorilla for sale..)
Locusts!!
Good god—lol:
…I caught the following headline on Yahoo News – “Robertson Apologizes for Chavez Remarks (AP).”Go read Driftglass. Fucking hilarious. All I’m going to say is that it took a sincere amount of restraint to not excerpt the last three paragraphs here, but that would just ruin the surprise. Drinks aside as you read, friends.
A gentle silence like unto the wee hours before Christmas morning falls over Castle Driftglass as I drop what I'm doing and go chase that down. Because , I gotta admit, I got pretty excited when I read this for, if true, it would be practically the first time in living memory that any one of the American Taliban who run the GOP had ever apologized...for anything. Swaggart and Bakker jump to mind, but only because of the maudlin velocity with which they hit the pavement.
And those were because it was about sex, which means that, if true, Robertson would have broken the First Commandment of Wingnuttery: Never, ever, ever apologize for anything where you penis isn’t a co-conspirator.
My Head’s Gonna Explode
Now the White House fuckos are denying that Bush is on vacation!
The White House seems to be a little defensive about President Bush's summer vacation. According to the San Bernardino Sun, a spokesman insisted "the reason that Bush is in Crawford, Texas, is due to the renovation of the West Wing of the White House."Deep breaths. Serenity now.
Said the spokesman: "He's operating on a full schedule; he's just doing it from the ranch instead of from the White House. The only week he had officially off was this last week."
Okay, first of all, that dude’s on vacation, okay? In fact, he’s been on vacation since 2000, near as I can tell, or permanently out to lunch, anyway. I don’t know who in blazes is really running this joint, but if it ain’t Dubya the Halfwit, he’s at least tasked with the job of pretending to be president—and he hasn’t even been doing that lately. Don’t give me some cockamamie story about how he’s operating on his full schedule of desperately trying to look competent and comfortable while maintaining the awkward posture required to hide the wire running up his back, because I’ve barely seen a picture of that guy in a suit in weeks. It’s all playing golf in ugly polo shirts and blowing by protestors in his limo, probably being held down by Rummy as he tries to moon them. He’s on vacation, we all know it, so shut up. Is there anything you won’t lie about?
On another note of irritation that’s making my eye twitch, why on earth is the West Wing being renovated? Massive deficit, tough economy, can’t afford to properly outfit our soldiers…unless the West Wing is about to collapse, it doesn’t need renovating. Cripes.
The Numb and The Restless
Even Bush's diehard fans are getting irritated and antsy. Ouch.
(Hat tip Oddjob.)
McCain Stinks
After Paul’s earlier post, I’ve just been stewing about how much I despise John McCain. And you know why I have so little love for this brave war hero who has honorably served his country as both a soldier and a senator? Because he’s not serving it honorably anymore. He’s become the worst kind of opportunistic, disingenuous, politicking bastard, and I’m mad that he betrayed my faith in him as one of the few Republicans who seemed to have a modicum of integrity. Of all people, John McCain should be screaming from the rooftops about what folly this war is. Of all people, he should be unequivocally condemning the travesties at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Of all people, he should care that the America we love, the America for which he risked his life and gave up years as a POW, is slipping away. But he’s no more vehement than a lot of people, and less so than plenty others.
And now he’s decided the road to the presidency is paved with pandering to the slimy fucks who care so little for this country’s future that they’d compromise an entire generation of its people by diluting their educations with what can be deemed, at best, an alternative but nonscientific philosophy of the origins of humankind, and, at worst, utter hogwash. Leadership isn’t caving to the whims of those who screech the loudest, but instead having the guts and the tenacity to tell them they’re wrong when what they want isn’t good for the rest of us.
Anyone who still thinks this jagoff's a maverick after the bootlicking he gave Bush during the last election is living in cloud cuckoo land. His alleged independent streak came to a screeching halt as it collided with the stumbling zombie corpse of his credibility the moment he stood in New Hampshire with his arm around the shoulders of the man whose operatives called his wife a junky and his adopted daughter illegitimate. He may have been honorable and brave once upon a time, but he’s not anymore.
