Did anyone else watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip last night? What did you think of it?
Mr. Shakes and I loved it. Great writing, clever premise, and what an amazing cast. I can’t remember the last time I so enjoyed a series premiere that much. It was probably Freaks and Geeks, which promptly got cancelled, like most shows I like.
Btw, I can’t imagine NBC airing this show two years ago.
Stu-Stu-Studio
Arrrr, Mateys!
| Your Pirate Name Is... |
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"Ahoy! Check out my booty!"
"Outraged, embarrassed, and disgusted"
Responding to the New York Times coverage of the heinous mistreatment of Maher Arar, a Canadian computer engineer who was "seized on Sept. 26, 2002, after he landed at Kennedy Airport in New York on his way home from a holiday in Tunisia," then removed to Syria "where he says he was held for 10 months in a tiny cell and beaten repeatedly with a metal cable," only to be "freed in October 2003, after Syrian officials concluded that he had no connection to terrorism and returned him to Canada," Glenn Greenwald says, bluntly, "Here is the 'moral authority' of the U.S. under the Bush administration."
[O]n top of operating secret torture gulags in Eastern Europe, we also kidnap people, charge them with no crime, give them no opportunity to defend themselves, deny them contact with their consulate in violation of international treaties (as the Canadian report complained about), send them off to be tortured for months, and then when it turns out that they are completely inncoent, we block them from obtaining compensation in our courts because our Government claims that national security would be jeopardized if they were held accountable for their behavior.I can't. And frankly, my freedom is worth nothing to me if it must come at such a steep price.
How can you be an American citizen and not be completely outraged, embarrassed, and disgusted by this conduct?
Bush and his supporters are nothing more than lazy thieves, who erroneously substitute what they steal from others as their spoils. They steal the liberties of others and claim it makes them more free. They withhold the right of marriage from others and claim it makes their marriages sacred. They marginalize the religious practices of others and claim it makes theirs right and just. They legislate control over others' bodies and choices and claim it makes them the protectors of life. They demonize and scapegoat and disenfranchise, only to claim that the resulting privilege they enjoy is a result of their innate superiority.
They achieve nothing on their own merits. Only in their zero-sum game where they make the rules do they win, and only because they compare their own fortunes to those whom they have stripped of their basic rights and freedoms.
Yes, I'm outraged and embarrassed and disgusted. And I'm tired to my very bones of living in a nation run by pathetic, thieving bullies.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
McCain not torturey enough for conservatives
The WaPo reports that presumed GOP presidential candidate John McCain's stance on terrorism may alienate conservative Republican voters.
[S]ome prominent conservatives are branding him a disloyal Republican and an unreliable conservative because of his assertiveness on the detainee issue.Justin Gardner at The Moderate Voice sums it up rather succinctly: "McCain is hearing it from the Republican base over the torture amendment. They want torture. He doesn't."
The senator's actions "are blocking our ability to gain from terrorist captives the vital information we need," said a front-page editorial Saturday in the Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., the largest newspaper in the state with the first presidential primary. Conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh said Friday that opposition to Bush's approach "is going to go down as the event that will result in us getting hit again, and if we do, and if McCain, et al., prevail, I can tell you where fingers are going to be pointed."
More hate in '08!
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
The Bush Base: Brains of mush; hearts of stone.
Pam Spaulding is a brave woman. She regularly delves into the muck at the Free Republic to see that the Freeper response is to various issues, which inevitably yields a collection of gross lunacy that makes one contemplate whether most of the traffic to the Free Republic emanates from asylums for the criminally insane. Having been reading The Blend for two years now, almost nothing in Pam's regularly culled Freepi twaddle manages to surprise me anymore, but I was particularly disgusted by what she found in response to a wholly inoffensive story about coming out to one's kids which aired on KNBC-4 in Los Angeles.
Within two comments, the rabid nutwits had already invoked bestiality—"Next, 'How to tell your children you're into beastiality" and "How to tell your children you're a Democrat.'"—and it only went downhill from there.
"Here's how: Hi, kiddies. I value my own sexual fulfillment more than I value your health and happiness, or the personal integrity involved in keeping my marital vows to your [choose one: mother/father/whatever]. Sh*t happens, and this is just the beginning of yours. I love you, though, just not enough to sacrifice anything for you. Efficient, accurate — how hard is that?"
"First, you shouldn't have gotten married in the first place, you sick f*@#@. Second, wait until they are at least 18 to tell them. Third, live the rest of your life ashamed at your deception to your spouse all those years. Fourth, just because you are gay, doesn't give you any special license to break any other rules of decency. Fifth, now go whine in a corner by yourself about how straight people hate you."
"Start carrying an ...Equal Rights for Sodomites...sign."
"Show thwm [sic] your AIDS report."
"The simple answer to these is the same as the answer to the original question: In your suicide note."
Pam's got more—if you can stomach it—at the link.
This is the ugly face of the Bush base, the 35% or so who support him no matter what, because national security, the economy, education, jobs, all pale by comparison in importance to harassing and marginalizing People Who Aren't Like Them—an endeavor which Bush is ever too happy to indulge, because, you know, he's a Uniter.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
KO Knocks Another One Out of the Park
Keith Olbermann is a hero. Simple as that.
He was all fired up about this statement of President Bush’s: “It is unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.”
And KO let him have it.
The President of the United States owes this country an apology. It will not be offered, of course. He does not realize its necessity.There’s much, much more. Crooks and Liars has the full transcript and the video.
…Of course it’s acceptable to think that there’s "any kind of comparison." And in this particular debate, it is not only acceptable, it is obviously necessary. Some will think that our actions at Abu Ghraib, or in Guantanamo, or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, are all too comparable to the actions of the extremists. Some will think that there is no similarity, or, if there is one, it is to the slightest and most unavoidable of degrees.
What all of us will agree on, is that we have the right — we have the duty — to think about the comparison. And, most importantly, that the other guy, whose opinion about this we cannot fathom, has exactly the same right as we do: to think — and say — what his mind and his heart and his conscience tell him, is right.
All of us agree about that.
Except, it seems, this President.
With increasing rage, he and his administration have begun to tell us, we are not permitted to disagree with them, that we cannot be right. That Colin Powell cannot be right. And then there was that one, most awful phrase.
In four simple words last Friday, the President brought into sharp focus what has been only vaguely clear these past five-and-a-half years - the way the terrain at night is perceptible only during an angry flash of lightning, and then, a second later, all again is dark.
"It’s unacceptable to think…" he said. It is never unacceptable… to think.
And when a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from its context… he takes us toward a new and fearful path — one heretofore the realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.
That flash of lightning freezes at the distant horizon, and we can just make out a world in which authority can actually suggest it has become unacceptable to think. hus the lightning flash reveals not merely a President we have already seen, the one who believes he has a monopoly on current truth.
It now shows us a President who has decided that of all our commanders-in-chief, ever… he, alone, has had the knowledge necessary to alter and re-shape our inalienable rights. This is a frightening, and a dangerous, delusion, Mr. President.
Question of the Day
What film did you really not expect to like, because of its genre or the actors or some other reason that made it seem unappealing, and then ended up absolutely loving, to your surprise?
A Dose of Simple Juice
Even when I sort of agree with the premise behind something Bush says, I still disagree with the way he says it, because he is a total fuckwit simpleton who is incapable of seeing anything in more than one dimension:
"The simple act of teaching a child to read or an adult to read has the capacity to transform nations and yield the peace we all want," the president said at the White House Conference on Global Literacy being hosted in New York by the first lady. "You can't realize the blessings of liberty if you can't read a ballot."Literacy alone does not, in fact, have the capacity to transform nations or “yield peace.” Literacy is integral to the type of education that is a foundation of free and egalitarian societies, rooted in widespread opportunity and active political participation, but literacy in and of itself is only as valuable as the material one is reading. I don’t know what the literacy rate in Nazi Germany was, but I’m guessing it was pretty high. Of course, when you’re largely reading extremist, anti-Semitic propaganda, all that spectacular literacy isn’t going to transform a nation into a paragon of peace-yielding.
And what bloody nerve to go on about reading a ballot being the key to realizing the blessings of liberty. How about having your ballot be fucking counted? While GOP operatives are off preparing to exploit every loophole in the Voting Rights Act come November to suppress voters who are likely to vote for Democrats, their douche of a leader is warbling about the blessings of liberty realized in reading a ballot. Give me a break.
"You can't have prosperity unless people can read. It's just as simple as that," Bush said. "To be a productive worker you have to be able to read the manual."Deep Thoughts by George Bush. What a genius. Maybe he ought to take his own advice and stop wasting his time (and ours) with this ridiculous rubbish and go read his job manual, so he can start being a productive worker.
Caption This Photo
Winner and First Runner-Up of the 2006 Sad Monkey Competition.
(Actual Caption: President Bush meets with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi during bilateral meetings related to the United Nations General Assembly in New York Monday, Sept. 18, 2006.—AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Holiday’s End
I just got back from dropping off our house guests at the coach station. They’re on their way to O’Hare now, and will soon be making their way over the Atlantic back to Scotland.
Mr. Shakes and M have been best mates for years and years, since they met working at a Costco’s-like store, collecting shopping carts, while they were at university. They couldn’t look more different, although they’re approximately the same size and shape. Mr. Shakes is ginger-haired, pale-skinned, green-eyed, and freckled, and M is dark-haired with an olive complexion and brown eyes. Yesterday, they were asked by a cashier if they are brothers. It seems laughable, considering their disparate appearances, but their mannerisms and speech patterns are so similar; one of them will come forth with some smart-arsed comment to be met with a loud, belly laugh from the other, and their eyes both twinkle devilishly. I can understand why someone might think they were brothers, because they are two peas in a pod, if ever there were a pair who could be called so.
It should be no surprise then, I guess, that N (M’s girlfriend) and I are quite alike. We’ve come to look forward to the nights when the boys go out, so we can stay in together with a bottle (or three) of pinot grigio and scare ourselves with one of the creepfests we both love, like 28 Days Later, or moon over a romance like Love, Actually. And there’s always at least one afternoon when we’ve got to get into our jammies and put on the DVDs of Sex and the City. The boys roll their eyes and go play video games—and it’s fine with N and me, because, in a splendid twist of fate, we get on brilliantly, too.
And when the four of us are all together, we talk about anything and everything under the sun, and we tell stories, and we laugh until the tears fall from our eyes. And we lament the ocean that normally lies between us.
Ten days can feel like a very long time to have visitors in one’s home, but M&N are perfect houseguests along with being wonderful friends. I never longed to have my house back or despaired for a moment’s peace. Instead, the house now feels empty and quiet, and I am sad that they’re gone.
Starting off the Week with a Jolt
What tbogg said.
If these people seriously can't see what's wrong with "worshipping to a picture of President Bush," they really are beyond the capacity of rational thinking.
FDA finally catches up on potential spinach hazard
When the E. coli tainted spinach story broke last week, I said this:
What's not immediately clear is why loose or unbagged spinach hasn't been included in the FDA warning. I suspect that many people will make the cognitive leap and just exclude all spinach, bagged or loose, from their diets for a long while. I know I will.
And now the Food and Drug Administration has finally figured it out. Wonder why it took so long?
FDA to consumers: Don't eat ANY fresh spinachThe Food and Drug Administration said Monday consumers should not eat any fresh spinach as investigators look for the source of E. coli bacteria that has sickened at least 109 people.
The initial FDA advisory late last week focused on bagged spinach.
Dr. Robert Brackett of the FDA told CNN, "We've expanded the warning actually to all of the fresh spinach. That's because we learned that some of the companies that produced the consumer bag spinach also produced larger food-service size.
This is less than reassuring. Did the FDA really not consider that unbagged spinach might also be suspect? Brackett's explanation - "uh, yeah, we just now found that out" - makes you wonder about the decision-making processes of the folks who are supposed to be monitoring our nation's food supply.
(I yam what I cross-post...)
Mo’ Caca
Did anyone catch George Allen on Meet the Press this morning? Wow—he is a Total Asshole. I mean, not only is he a dissembling, talking point-spewing Republibot, but he is a complete lightweight, who doesn’t seem to have the barest capacity to form his own thoughts about anything.
He also referred to the Geneva Conventions as “the Geneva Convention,” as if it were an annual sales meeting of Swiss watch hand wholesalers. At one point, he said: “The Geneva Convention is very important, and I don’t want to set a precedent that we change the Geneva Convention and then other countries will change theirs.”
Does George Allen, a US Senator, have any idea what the fuck the Geneva Conventions are? Listening to him, the Geneva “Convention” is something America created for itself, as did other countries, and we “change” it according to our own whims, as opposed to its being international protocol to which countries either do or do not adhere. What a boob. I look forward to Senator Allen’s proposal to amend America’s Geneva Convention to include a ban on picking on people for using ethnic slurs.
Normally, I don’t condone violence, but…
When Susan Kuhnhausen returned home from work one day earlier this month, she encountered an intruder wielding a claw hammer. After a struggle, the 51-year-old nurse fended off her attacker by strangling him with her bare hands.Right on, sister.
Neighbors praised the woman for her bravery, and investigators said they believed the dead man — Edward Dalton Haffey — was burglarizing Kuhnhausen's home. But after an investigation, police now say the intruder Kuhnhausen strangled was apparently a hit man hired by her estranged husband — Michael James Kuhnhausen Sr. — to kill her.
The 58-year-old husband was taken into custody Thursday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder.
The Virtual Bar Is Open
So give us a drink
And make it quick
Or else I'm gonna be sick
All over
Your frankly vulgar
Red pullover...
Have a drink.
Leave a link.
Tell us what you think.
Caption This Photo
President Bush listens to a reporter's question as he holds a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington Friday Sept. 15, 2006. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Phobic Nation
President Bush, this morning:
It's a dangerous world. I wish it wasn't that way. I wish I could tell the American people, don't worry about it, they're not coming again. But they are coming again.Although I could actually write an entire (and rather lengthy) post on how Bush’s “Terror Rhetoric” is beginning to sound more and more like he’s concerned about an invasion by a hostile race of extraterrestrials, instead I’m going to focus for just a moment on the notion that because another terrorist strike is, quite possibly, inevitable, the president doesn’t feel he can tell the American people not to worry. You see, I believe that it’s eminently possible to both feel despairingly certain that the terrorists “are coming again” and not to worry about it.
At least not actively. There are different ways to “worry” about something. Abstract concern is both healthy and inevitable, not to mention integral to the heightened vigilance that outlines self-preservation. “Worry” in such an abstract form is familiar to all of us; we worry about disease, accidents, aging, the health and safety of our loved ones. That kind of worry generally makes us more careful, less reckless—but it doesn’t debilitate us. In fact, when our worries consume us as individuals and fundamentally alter our lives, when we cease to function normally because of the fear such worry generates, they are no longer worries, but phobias, indicative of an irrationally disproportionate response to a perceived threat. The president wants us all to be actively anxious and, thusly, perpetually fearful—a phobic nation, paralyzed and compliant.
We hear, over and over and over, that 9/11 “changed everything.” And so it did, in the sense that America grew up that day, joining the ranks of much of the rest of the world, where terrorist attacks within one’s own borders are one of many things about which to worry. But that worry elsewhere is responsible. It acknowledges that terrorism, ugly and contemptible and unfair, may be inevitable, that governments, no matter how competent, may not be able to prevent every attack, and that life must go on without its breadth being limited by an incapacitating phobia that terrorism, like war and droughts and hunger and disease and terrible, unjust accidents for no reason, may one day raise its hideous head again and look us square in the eyes once more.
Yes. They’re coming again. Here, in Britain, in Iraq, in Indonesia, in Spain… They will come again. And worrying about it will not stop them.
We are not to be indifferent, or complacent. We are, instead, to operate from a position of strength, where we can effectively address those factors over which we have control that contribute to the rise of terrorism. A phobic nation is never safe—not from terrorists, not from its government when trading on fear, and not from its own people. We are to be willing to accept the risk, acknowledge the reality, and live bold lives in freedom, refusing to succumb to being terrorized.
Mr. President, I know it's a dangerous world. I wish it wasn't that way, too. But, even though they're coming again, I will not worry about it, not the way you want me to. Not the way that makes me forget you were warned and did nothing to protect me, that makes me forget you started a war of choice which has made us less safe, that makes me forget you will steal our freedoms under the guise of protecting them, that makes me forget everything but my fear. Mr. President, I refuse to be terrorized by anyone. Including you.
Because Fridays are for Stuff Like This
I built a little empire
Out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class...
But they've overcome their shyness; now they're calling me "Your Highness,"
And a world screams,"Kiss me, Son of God!"
I destroyed the bond of friendship and respect
Between the only people left, who'd even look me in the eye...
Now I laugh and make a fortune
off the same ones that I torture,
And a world screams,"Kiss me, Son of God!"
I look like Jesus,
so they say...
But Mister Jesus is very far away...Now you're the only one here, who can tell me if it's true
That you love me,
And I love me...
I built a little empire, out of some crazy garbage
called the blood of the exploited working class,But they've overcome their shyness
Now they're calling me "Your Highness,"
And a world screams,
"Kiss me,"
"Son of God."(With apologies to They Might Be Giants. Particle Man, Particle Man, doin' the things a cross-post can...)
