PunkAssBlog
Three Bulls!
Brendan Nyhan
Just-Nick
Stark Ranting
Cloyce’s Coffee Klatsch
Moments in Time
ChezLark
Konagod
Friday Blogrollin'
PunkAssBlog
Three Bulls!
Brendan Nyhan
Just-Nick
Stark Ranting
Cloyce’s Coffee Klatsch
Moments in Time
ChezLark
Konagod
A Tale of Two Headlines
I spotted this on Yahoo earlier:
The story about Hispanic teens notes that in addition to being at higher risk for suicide, Hispanic teens are also more likely to use coke, heroin, X, and meth, and are less likely to use condoms. Dr. Glenn Flores from the Medical College of Wisconsin said, “We really don’t understand this phenomenon as well as we should.”
Huh. Well, maybe it has something to do with our president using primarily Hispanic undocumented immigrants as a political football, and conservatives calling for a fence to keep Hispanics out of the country, and racists standing along the border, spouting off into any camera they can find their intent to shoot illegals on sight. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I believe if I were a Hispanic teen, I’d find the constant drum of anti-Hispanic sentiment among the ruling political party in my home country fairly fucking depressing.
Kids tend to internalize that kind of thing. It hurts them. Not that the family-values-moral-majority-protect-the-children GOP gives a shit.
Question of the Day
What’s the strangest baby name you’ve ever heard?
There are, of course, lots of bizarre celebrity baby names, but I’ve heard a few out here in the boonies far away from Hollywood, too. The looniest was a couple who gave birth to fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, and named them Narley Dude and Dude Narley. Now, aside from the fact that “gnarly” was the word for which I believe they were searching, they also had the spectacular idea of giving the girl the first name Dude.
Another nutty one was the unfortunate son of a classmate of mine. Said classmate was telling my girlfriend and I about his new son, during the course of which conversation he revealed the lad had been named Pfrank. “It’s P-F-R-A-N-K.” Why the P, we wondered. He explained, “I thought it would be cool to spell it like phone.” Phone is spelled with a ph, not a pf, I pointed out. For a moment, his face froze, then collapsed into a frown. “Damn!” he sputtered.
Why the hell not?
So, the GOP sucks, the Dems suck, the electoral college sucks, and the party-line Congressional districting that all but guarantees 99% of incumbents reelection sucks. I’m thinking, let’s just scrap this whole thing and go back to a monarchy. Don’t get me wrong; I want a modern monarchy like Britain, where there’s a parliamentary democracy underlying it, but the whole head of state and head of government being one and the same thing sucks, too, so I say let’s kick the presidency to the curb and get us a prime minister and a royal family.
Just to prove I’ve really thought this thing through, I’ve even selected the new American royal family:
In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m only kidding. I just wanted a reason to show that lovely picture of the Jolie-Pitts. They sold that shit for like $4 million, and it’s all going to charity. I love them—and not because I’m a starfucker. I’ve just really admired Jolie’s UN ambassadorship and million-dollars-at-a-time donations and various other humanitarian stuff for years. She’s tres cool.
You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a crazy fucker in America
Or a dead puppy:
A woman angry that her new puppy had died pushed her way into a dog breeder's home and repeatedly hit her on the head with the dead Chihuahua, authorities said…Yeesh.
The breeder wrestled the woman out of her house to the front porch, where the woman then hit the breeder over the head numerous times with the dead puppy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, citing police.
As the woman drove away, she waved the dead puppy out of the car's sunroof and yelled threats at the breeder, police said.
Failure, Failure Everywhere!
In one of John Hughes’ lesser (but no less fantabulous) classics, Some Kind of Wonderful, there’s a scene during the climactic party at rich asshole Hardy Jenns’ house in which Duncan the Awesome Punk (played by woefully underrated Elias Koteas) storms in and makes a mockery of Hardy and his collection of pants-wetting friends, who are all talk and no balls when it comes right down to brass knuckles. Our ginger-haired hero Keith, upon taking his leave, says to Hardy, “You’re over,” and we just know that Hardy will never reek of gorilla testosterone again.
Wait a second. I’m getting the lord of the rich asshole chickenhawks confused with Bill Frist.
It’s an easy mistake to make, considering that Frist and his own collection of rich asshole chickenhawks are totally over, too.
Senators voted Thursday to reject a Republican effort to abolish taxes on inherited estates during an election year with control of Congress at stake.I'm here to kick your ass, and you know it, and everybody here knows it, and above all, you deserve it. In fact, I think it's safe to say that this party is about to become a historical fact.
GOP leaders had pushed senators to permanently eliminate the estate tax, which disappears in 2010 under President Bush's first tax cut, but rears up again a year later.
A 57-41 vote fell three votes short of advancing the bill. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the Senate will vote again this year on a tax that opponents call the "death tax."
"Getting rid of the death tax is just too important an issue to give up so easily," he said.
If only, Duncan. If only.
Caption This Photo
Reached for comment, Senator Rick Santorum was quoted as saying,
Allergy-Free Cats
Toast, are you paying attention?!
US scientists claimed to have bred the world's first hypoallergenic kitten, opening the doors and arms of millions of pet lovers for whom cuddling a cat has, until now, been a curse.$4,000 is a lot of money. But, you know what? I got this guy for $50 at the local animal shelter—and I’d pay $4,000 in a heartbeat (had I it to pay) to get him back.
At 4,000 dollars a head, the allergy-free felines don't come cheap.
But the biotechnology firm behind the project believes sensitive owners will happily fork out extra for the chance to have a cat that doesn't leave them wheezing and sneezing.
Good News for a Change
The FDA has approved Gardasil for use as a vaccine against cervical cancer. Of course, it’s only approved “for use in girls and women ages 9 to 26,” so I guess my 32-year-old cervix is shit outta luck.
1984
MPAA Hates the Baby Jesus
Movie rated PG for all the creepy Jesus stuff. (Love that headline.) The Baptist-backed film Facing the Giants has been issued a PG-rating by the MPAA for "thematic elements" about which it believes parents might want to know. Because said elements are overtly evangelical themes, the distributors--and the wingnutosphere--are up in arms about the PG rating. They don’t consider it a reasonable possibility that, say, Jewish parents might be aghast at taking their children to a movie marketed as a sports film a la Hoosiers, only to be delivered scenes like the following:
[T]he scene that caught the MPAA's attention may have been the chat between football coach Grant Taylor — played by Alex Kendrick — and a rich brat named Matt Prader. The coach says that he needs to stop bad-mouthing his bossy father and get right with God.Facing the Giants “includes waves of answered prayers, a medical miracle, a mysterious silver-haired mystic who delivers a message from God and a bench-warmer who kicks a 51-yard field goal to win the big game when his handicapped father pulls himself out of a wheelchair and stands under the goal post to inspire his son's faith. There's a prayer-driven gust of wind in there, too.” Made by two brothers, who are the "associate pastors of media" at megachurch Sherwood Baptist in Albany, GA (which also owns its own cable channel), the film was made for $100,000 with local volunteers playing the roles and “a small crew of tech professionals.” Clearly, it was designed to be essentially a propaganda piece pimping the lord, which is fair enough, but then its makers shouldn’t get their panties in a wad when the MPAA treats it thusly. Although PG ratings are usually given to warn parents of strong language, brief nudity, etc., it literally means “Parental Guidance suggested,” which is hardly an unfair recommendation about a Christian homily put to film but not marketed that way. I suspect the same rating would be issued if the film were made by an Islamic group trying to sneak a sermon in through the back door.
The boy replies: "You really believe in all that honoring God and following Jesus stuff? ... Well, I ain't trying to be disrespectful, but not everybody believes in that."
The coach replies: "Matt, nobody's forcing anything on you. Following Jesus Christ is the decision that you're going to have to make for yourself. You may not want to accept it, because it'll change your life. You'll never be the same."
Some taking issue with the rating seem to feel the MPAA is being ridiculously arbitrary. I don’t agree, but let’s say for a moment that the assertion is correct. Well, welcome to the MPAA, which still regards expressions of homosexuality as more explicit than their hetero counterpart (although they’ve eased up on that in recent years), lesbianism more acceptable than sexuality expressed between two men, and female nudity less sacred than male nudity. If they can be abritrarily restrictive or lenient toward gays and women, then they can be completely nonsensical about proselytizing, too. Welcome to the world where images of dicks are spellbindingly shocking, but boobies are good, clean fun!
Quote of the Day
“This Haditha story, this Haditha incident, whatever, this is it folks, this is the final big push on behalf of the Democratic Party, the American left, and the Drive-By Media to destroy our effort to win the war in Iraq. That’s what Haditha represents — and they are going about it gleefully. They are ecstatic about it… Folks, let me just put it in graphic terms. It is going to be a gang rape. There is going to be a gang rape by the Democratic Party, the American left and the Drive-By Media, to finally take us out in the war against Iraq. Make no bones about it.”—Rush Limbaugh
Wow. I’m offended as a war dissenter, a lefty, an American in whose name this war of “liberation” is being fought whether I like it or not, a rape victim, and a person with a functioning brain. Bravo, Rushbo, you bloviating pile of horseshit.
White House Getting It From All Sides
VA Data Theft:
“Lawmakers from both parties called on the Bush administration yesterday for money and accountability in a widening data-security breach now encompassing nearly all active-duty military, Guard, and Reserve members.
In the Senate, Democrats renewed their criticism of Veteran Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson and demanded his ouster following the agency's disclosure Tuesday that personal information for 2.2 million military personnel -- not just 50,000, as initially believed -- was stolen from a VA employee May 3.
‘It's amazing. Such incompetence is worse than anything I've ever seen in six administrations,’ Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said during a news briefing. ‘At some point, this administration has got to stop saying we'll hire or appoint political cronies, but we'll actually appoint somebody who knows how to make the government work.’”
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Specter Blasts Cheney’s Obstructionism on Eavesdropping Investigation:
“In a letter to Mr. Cheney that the senator released to the news media, Mr. Specter said the vice president had cut him out of discussions with all the other Republicans on his own committee about oversight of the administration's eavesdropping programs, a subject on which Mr. Specter has often been at odds with the White House…
‘I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some point,’ Mr. Specter wrote. ‘This was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republican senators caucus lunch yesterday and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions en route from the buffet to my table.’”
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CIA Financing of Somali Warlords:
“A covert effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to finance Somali warlords has drawn sharp criticism from American government officials who say the campaign has thwarted counterterrorism efforts inside Somalia and empowered the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize…
Indeed, some of the experts point to the American effort to finance the warlords as one of the factors that led to the resurgence of Islamic militias in the country. They argue that American support for secular warlords, who joined together under the banner of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, may have helped to unnerve the Islamic militias and prompted them to launch pre-emptive strikes. The Islamic militias have been routing the warlords, and on Monday they claimed to have taken control of most of the Somali capital.
‘This has blown up in our face, frankly,’ said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization with extensive field experience in Somalia.”
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Even the President’s Dad is in on the action:
“Former President George H.W. Bush waged a secret campaign over several months early this year to remove Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The elder Bush went so far as to recruit Rumsfeld's potential replacement, personally asking a retired four-star general if he would accept the position, a reliable source close to the general told me. But the former president's effort failed, apparently rebuffed by the current president. When seven retired generals who had been commanders in Iraq demanded Rumsfeld's resignation in April, the younger Bush leapt to his defense. ‘I'm the decider and I decide what's best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain,’ he said. His endorsement of Rumsfeld was a rebuke not only to the generals but also to his father.”
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Worst. Administration. Ever.
Recommended Reading
The Courage of Lieutenant Watada: “When Lieutenant Ehren Watada's Army unit from Fort Lewis, WA leaves for Mosul in northern Iraq this month, he will not be among them. The 28-year-old Army officer will formally refuse today to ship out when his unit deploys to Iraq… The young officer, who attempted to resign his commission in January -- his request was denied -- is not eligible for conscientious-objector status as he does not object to all wars, just the one the Bush administration is conducting in Iraq.”
Go read the whole thing.
Predictably, Xenophobia Warrior Princess has a post up labeling him a “deserter, not a ‘dissenter’” with all sorts of comments from her wingnut readers, and has posted a picture of him labeled “The face of a deserter.” I’m not giving her a link, because if your blood pressure reacts the way mine did when I saw it, I don’t want to be responsible for your ill health.
al-Zarqawi Killed
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist for his role in the insurgency, “was eliminated” last night, “when US warplanes dropped 500-pound bombs on his isolated safehouse.”
Al-Zarqawi and several aides, including spiritual adviser Sheik Abdul Rahman, were killed Wednesday evening in a remote area 30 miles from Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, officials said…Steve Benen, posting at Political Animal, notes: “Iraqi and U.S. officials agreed that his death would not necessarily stem the violence and insurgency -- and as if to prove the point, an explosion ripped through a busy outdoor market in Baghdad just a few hours after Zarqawi's killing was announced. Regardless, when a dangerous terrorist can no longer wreak havoc, it's good news.” And then he goes on to remind us that Bush could have taken out al-Zarqawi four years ago, before he was responsible for 700 terrorist killings in Iraq, but didn’t.
The announcement about al-Zarqawi's death came six days after he issued an audiotape on the Internet, railing against Shiites in Iraq and saying militias were raping women and killing Sunnis. He urged the community to fight back…
Al-Zarqawi is believed to have beheaded two Americans — Nicholas Berg of West Chester, Pa., and Eugene Armstrong, formerly of Hillsdale, Mich. — prompting supporters to dub him "the slaughtering sheik."
NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.Benen adds: “This NBC report was later confirmed by the Wall Street Journal and Australian journalists who got on-the-record comments from the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit. So, while it's no doubt good news that Zarqawi is no more, it's worth remembering that Bush wasn't willing to hit this known al-Qaeda terrorist in a known location based on air-tight intelligence before the war even began.” Indeed.
That’s the way it is with the Bush administration. Every good deed has a shit-streaked lining.
Suspected Shenanigans in Special Election
Yesterday, when I posted about an ethically-challenged lobbyist winning the special election in California to replace Duke “Hookergate” Cunningham, Spudsy said, cheekily, “So... I'm assuming Diebold voting machines were in use?”
Well, guess what.
The [Diebold] voting machines used in Tuesday's election were sent home with volunteer poll workers the night before the election, according to the San Diego County Registrar of Voters office today. As well, The BRAD BLOG has received reports that in some cases, poll workers may have had the machines alone at their houses, unsupervised, for a week or even two prior to Tuesday's election…There’s more at the link.
The New York Times quoted three different computer scientists and security experts who reviewed the newly revealed flaws in San Diego's touch-screen voting systems as "astounding" and "the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system"…
The most vulnerable voting machines ever created and used in an American election were given to random, volunteer poll workers in San Diego to keep in their houses overnight to do with as they please. The systems were "guarded" by little more than a thin strip of plastic "tamper tape" over some, but not all, of each machines' dozens of vulnerable physical access points.
A spokesperson this morning from the San Diego Registrar of Voters office confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that "Yes, the machines were sent home with poll workers the night before the election."
The point Brad is making is not specifically to challenge the outcome of this election so much as to raise important questions about the process and point out that, unless these concerns are addressed, we’re looking at a future in which the validity of every single election is questionable. “Is this what we want in our American elections? Questions about the validity of every single race from here on out? Because that is precisely where we are now at. So now who is going to do anything about it?”
What I find particularly frustrating about this state of affairs is that, until we are guaranteed fair and honest elections, nothing that we do every day matters a whit. Not bloggers, not activists, not candidates. We can write, raise money, raise awareness, protest. We can slowly but surely convince a majority of the American electorate that the GOP is bad for them and bad for the country. But if we can’t depend on fair elections, none of it matters.
This should be the Dems’ #1 priority. I really cannot fathom why it isn’t.
Question of the Day
A couple of times recently, Mr. Shakes and I have sat down to watch a movie that one of us loved loved loved as a kid and that the other hadn't seen, only to realize that a film once adored in childhood was actually utter crap.
Most hold up well. Both of us loved Goonies as kids, and the Indiana Jones trilogy, and, of course, Star Wars et al, all of which are still loads of fun to watch today, among others.
Are there any movies you loved as a kid that have lost their luster when viewed through adult eyes? Any that you loved then and still do?
