Not running.
Maybe shouldn't have saved that $40+ million after all, eh?
H/T Shaker Sari.
More SOTU
Great catch by Jessica:
From last night's State of the Union address:And a keen observation from Mustang Bobby:
"In all we do, we must remember that the best health care decisions are made not by government and insurance companies, but by patients and their doctors."
Unless, of course, you have a vagina.
[I]t was interesting to note what wasn't in the president's State of the Union address last night.My, how quickly things change.
- Where was the call for the ban on gay marriage?
- Where was the call for the flag-burning amendment?
- Where was the ususal right-wing dog-whistle about the "culture of life" and the call to ban abortion?
I'm sure James Dobson and the Talibangelistas were wondering that, too.
Freshman Congresswoman Michele Bachmann makes a move on the president. (Via Atrios.)
And John McCain offers the smartest commentary I've seen him deliver in years.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Here's Webb's response, in case you haven't seen it yet.
Shakespeare’s Sister Theater Presents…
Episode 76: "Banger? I don't even know 'er."
Story and Graphics by: Shakespeare's Sister
When last we left our fearless Superbloggers, The Pink Petulance had just rescued Dr. Zero from the evil clutches of Jabba the Raymond, who had caught Zero infiltrating Nal Exxon in search of evidence against Darth Cheney.
"What happened to you, anyway?" Dr. Zero asked. "I thought you were right behind me."
"I was until some dirty little droid started playing grabass with me, and I turned to junk him," said The Pink Petulance. "When I turned back around, you were gone."
"Well, thanks for coming back for me!" said Dr. Zero. "What happened with that droid, anyway?"
"Where do you think the new Spudmobile Icemaker came from?" said The Pink Petulance. "Pour me a supermartini, Zero."
Just as the superbloggers arrived at the Fortress of Snarkitude, the Superphone started to ring.
"Could you be a dear?" said Dr. Zero. "I’m refreshing our drinkies."
The Pink Petulance grabbed the phone. "You have reached Superheadquarters. The Superbloggers can't come to the phone right now, so please leave a message after the beep."Three seconds of silence passed.
"The Pink Petulance? Dr. Zero? Are you there? Hello? Is this a recording? What the hell…?"
Yes, it was SuperKos, calling our Superblogger heroes to give them their Superblogger orders, which they would follow without question, as all Superbloggers do.
"Beep," said The Pink Petulance.
"Dagnabbit, Pink Petulance!" yelled SuperKos.
The Pink Petulance snickered. "Whuzzup, SuperKos?" Dr. Zero arrived with drinks. "Wait, hold on—I'm putting you on superspeaker… Okay, go."
"I'm afraid there's serious trouble afoot in Queerovia," SuperKos said. "I'd take care of it myself, but, well, since you two spend so much time there already—""Just give it to us straight," barked Dr. Zero, winking at The Pink Petulance. She snorted supermartini out her nose.
"A rogue homonaut has been captured and reprogrammed by the League of Bigotude," explained SuperKos. "You've got to find The Donnietron 6000 immediately and destroy him before he enters the region and begins to destroy everything in his path with ear-piercing, gay-hating Christ Rock."
"We're on it!" said The Pink Petulance.
"Over and ou—" Dr. Zero cut himself off and grinned devilishly.
Three seconds of silence passed.
"Dr. Zero?" SuperKos asked. "Pink Petulance? You still there? Hello?"
"Beep," said The Pink Petulance.
"I hate you guys." SuperKos slammed down the phone.
"To the Spudmobile!" Dr. Zero exclaimed.
Waiting at the glowing pink gates of Queerovia, the Donnietron 6000 met the Superbloggers upon their arrival. "I knew you'd be sent for me," he said.
"We should have snuck 'round the back way," Dr. Zero muttered.
"To enter Queerovia, there's no backdoor," the Donnietron 6000 said.
"Uh, yes there is!" Dr. Zero laughed. He turned to The Pink Petulance, who was snorting supermartini out her nose again. "No backdoor to Queerovia!" The Superbloggers howled with laughter.
"I meant… I meant… no backdoor to enter Heterostan!" the Donnietron 6000 stuttered.
"Uh, yes there is!" The Pink Petulance snorted. She waggled her fat, fuzzy, pink arse at the Donnietron 6000.
"Pink Petulance, I never noticed how much your butt looked like two Planet Limpwrists stuck together," Dr. Zero said.
"Uncanny, isn't it?" said The Pink Petulance. "But nevermind that!" She turned back to the Donnietron 6000. "So, you loathsome erstwhile homonaut—are we going to do this the easy way, or the hard way?"
"What's the easy way?" the Donnietron 6000 asked.
"You hand over the guitar voluntarily—" Dr. Zero started.
"—and we take you in for deprogramming," added The Pink Petulance. "A little Madonna, Project Runway—"
"—and jerking off to International Male, and you'll be good as new," finished Dr. Zero.
The Donnietron 6000 blanched. "I guess it's gonna have to be the hard way."
Dr. Zero and The Pink Petulance snickered.
"Fine!" said The Pink Petulance, regaining her composure. "Get your group Evening Service ready. It's going to be a Battle of the Bands."
The Donnietron 6000 took the stage with Evening Service, to perform their classic, "The Bible Says." "Righteous man, get on your knees; there lies no virtue in sodomy!" sang The Donnietron 6000.
Dr. Zero and The Pink Petulance began to giggle. "Yeah, righteous man—get on your knees!" Dr. Zero chortled.
"You filthy sinners should just let me be…'cause Jesus my savior’s the only man for me!" belted The Donnietron 6000.
"Famous last Ted Haggards—I mean, words," said The Pink Petulance.
"God hates a fag! God hates a fag!" The Donnietron 6000 warbled endlessly, glaring at the Superbloggers, desperate to render them powerless with his excruciatingly silly hate anthem. The Pink Petulance and Dr. Zero just stared at him, slack-jawed and bored, neither possessing the merest trace of the self-loathing required for The Donnietron 6000's second-hand programming to take hold. "God hates a fag! God hates a fag!"
Finally, Dr. Zero had had enough, and unplugged Evening Service's mics and amps. "You're done, chumps. Now it's our turn."
"Get ready to have your pussies rocked, bitchez!" said The Pink Petulance, taking her place at the mini-moog.
Dr. Zero slung his accordion over his shoulder. "We are Feminazi Cooter—and we're here to destroy you."
Feminazi Cooter launched into "Birdhouse in Your Soul," the first song in what was to be a magnificent set of the Greatest Shit Evah Written—but by the time The Pink Petulance was crooning "There's a picture opposite me of my primitive ancestry, which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free," gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transfolk, drag kings, drag queens, gender-benders, straight allies, and queers of every shade, tint, and description were marching out of the pink gate of Queerovia, waving their freak flags and singing along.
"Got room for one more?"
The Pink Petulance turned to see her bloggrrl Pam Spaulding, donning a Feminazi Cooter t-shirt and hauling a drum kit. "Fucking right we do!" said The Pink Petulance. Pam joined the Superbloggers onstage, instantly making them even hotter.
The Donnietron 6000 was powerless against the onslaught of brazen pride and self-satisfaction. "I'm helpless against your unabashed rejection of Christofascism!" the hapless homonaut cried.
"You've got two choices, Donnietron," said Dr. Zero. "You can either head for The Manhole Club, heart of Queerovia, for reprogramming and drinkies, or The Pink Petulance and I will take you to Closet Confinement for a sentence to be determined by the Ninth Circuit Court—and you know how those activist bitchez love the gays. So what's it gonna be?"
"It's your call," said The Pink Petulance—and the Superbloggers waited while The Donnietron 6000 considered his options…
"I think The Donnietron 6000 will be real happy at Manhole," said The Pink Petulance.
"Me, too," agreed Dr. Zero. "Manny Manhole's the best deprogrammer in the biz."
"Totally. With a little luck and a lotta lube, we've seen the last of him!"
"Ho ho ho!" they laughed.
Tune in next time, true believers, when Dr. Zero and The Pink Petulance take on THE TANCREDO TORNADO!!!
(Previous adventures: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three.)
SOTU
Mmm…transcripty.
The best part of Bush's address was how efficiently it made use of his stump speech from the 2000 campaign. I mean, sure they had to write some shit about Iraq, but all the rest of it was pretty much a bunch of crap Bush thinks someone should do something about, and, by gum, maybe he's just the guy to do it! In other words, quite literally the same tired old baloney he's been serving up since 1999, back when he was auditioning for the job. Six years in, and he's still fixin' to solve these here problems. Yippee.
This dude mocking the president may genuinely be more enlightening than the actual president at this point. (Via C&L.)
Moving on to the highlight of the evening… Jim Webb's rebuttal (video & transcript) was excellent, and, in addition to some truly stellar content ("These Presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way."), it also provided us with what Atrios has deemed Your Moment of Gloat: "Senator Jim Webb is giving the Democratic response to the SOTU this evening. George Allen won't even be at the SOTU tonight."
Fucking gorgeous, that.
Meanwhile, unless my parents, Mr. Shakes, and I are all crazy (which is always a distinct possibility), NBC's Brian Williams introduced Jim Webb as "the Republican Senator" who would be giving the Democratic rebuttal. Annoying. How much are they paying him to be so stupid? I hope John Amato can find video of this for me—and of Bush copping a feel off Pelosi. Perv.
Your thoughts?
Question of the Day
What are you doing tonight instead of watching the SOTU? Mr. Shakes and I are going over to my parents, where we'll have some dinner and probably watch re-runs of "The Rockford Files." And I bet we'll all know precisely as much about the actual state of our union after that as we would if we watched Bush's address.
If you are watching the SOTU, why? Just read last year's.
Basically, this is an open SOTU thread. Have at it...
Please Don't Again With the Hittings Hurt
(It helps if you say the headline in a Jerry Lewis voice.)
After their amazing chutzpah in proposing a Minority Bill of Rights (you remember, the one Hastert completely ignored when Pelosi suggested it in 2004?), the Repubicans continue their "Please don't treat us as we treated you" wheedling.
I hope the Democrats pants them, and drag their butts around the football field a few times.GOP pollster Frank Luntz has been advising conservative Republicans for years on how to exploit language to smear Dems and win elections. It was Luntz, for example, who teamed up with Newt Gingrich to shape the Contract with America in 1994.And now, Luntz has taken to the pages of the Huffington Post to offer the left some advice: don’t act like his Republican clients.
I am not in the habit of offering partisan linguistic advice to Democrats. But in the genuine spirit of bipartisanship - seriously - I thought this is the perfect time to convey a simple point to the still-euphoric faces of Democrat activists: Don’t twist the knife. […]
Democracy is at its best when its practioners use language to unite and explain rather than divide and attack…. We need an intelligent debate, not a sound-bite contest.
Silly elephants.
Uh Oh
The chattering heads are chattering about whether Cheney will resign in the wake of the Libby trial. The fact that this is even being discussed is so not good that it almost makes the likelihood of its actually happening irrelevant.
Almost.
This administration is dead in the water. Except there's a war to be run, and they're fixin' to escalate it. I don't think it's possible to overestimate the urgency with which we need to remove these jackholes.
Obama's skin causes IQs to drop sharply, wankery to rise
Enough is enough.
I have tried mightily to get through the gray winter landscape (if not farther) without commenting on the political wankery surrounding the skin color of Barack Obama - for the love of God, Montressor, the election is nearly two years away! - but the smug mindlessness of Mickey Kaus is just a bridge too far. Kaus ignores the better judgment of friends in order to fill column inches in Slate with this thought-free drivel: the newcomer Obama obviously doesn't appeal to blacks because Hillary Clinton - a long-time ally of African Americans and a known quantity in the public mind for fifteen years outdid him (and the unmentioned John Edwards) in an ABC/WaPo poll. Setting aside Kaus' evident deductive weaknesses - drawing logical inferences is apparently not his strong suit - the pundit's astonishment that the black electorate wasn't immediately and inexorably drawn to Obama's bright shiny ethnicity like worker bees to nectar is self-indicting. What was that George Bush once said about the soft bigotry of low expectations? Kaus has got that by the truckload.
If only Mickey Kaus was the only pundit desperate to say stupid things about Barack Obama's epidermis! Alas, the field here is as crowded as that of presidential hopefuls. The most notable loudmouth on this matter remains professional curmudgeon Stanley Crouch, who hasn't been this bizarre on a racial matter since he practically labeled cross-dating African American women as race traitors. When it comes to Obama, however, the situation for Crouch is a wee bit different: why, Obama isn't even a member of the race at all. He apparently hasn't suffered enough, having endured only "some light versions of typical racial stereotypes," though Crouch doesn't stop there. If you follow the columnist's attempt at logic, Obama is disqualified from official black Americanness because his father was a black Kenyan - practically a native of Switzerland - while his mother had the misfortune of being "of white U.S. stock."
And that, ladies and gentleman, bars the doorway to genuineness. So much for quaint notions such as the content of one's character. On a related note, future immigrants hopeful of joining our little club need not apply.
There is some detectable irony in Crouch's racial standards being indistinguishable from those of Southern racists of the Jim Crow days - spiteful and irrational blood-fraction standards, eventually reduced to the infamous "one-drop rule". You might wonder if Crouch sees that for himself - but by this point, it's frankly hard to bring oneself to care what Crouch thinks.
There are reasons to be skeptical about an Obama candidacy, let alone an Obama presidency, valid reasons that are light years from the discussions pundits would have us engage in. We may never get to consider them, however, so long as uncritical bloviating and racial paranoia comprise what passes for public discourse.
It's distressingly clear from the matter of Barack Obama and the race obsession of his most vocal detractors that America does indeed have a race problem, and it can be reduced to this: Talking about race seems to make us stupid. You would think that the cure for that would be identical to what Nat Hentoff once prescribed for the treatment for hate speech - that is, more speech - but you'll have to forgive me if recent events have left me feeling that the cure is at least as bad these days as the disease.
(Cross-posted.)Wow.
Here's the story (as taken from the AP):
January 22, 2007 -- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson took the first step yesterday toward an expected White House run in 2008 as he seeks to become the first Hispanic president.
Richardson said he believes the U.S. is ready for either a female, black or Hispanic chief executive.
"But I wouldn't run as a Hispanic candidate. I would run as an American, proud to be Hispanic, proud of my heritage," he said in an interview.
And here's the New York Post headline:
N.M. GOV THROWS SOMBRERO INTO RINGI repeat: Wow.
(Energy Dome tip to Steve, who says, "I wonder how long it will be before the headline of a Post story on Obama includes the words 'spear' and 'chuck.'")
*Snicker* I Just Said "Faggot" on the Teevee!
Go watch this.
Watch Beck's face when he says "naughty name."
Listen to the snickers when his guest "jokingly" dances around the slur.
Reel from this:
BECK: Do you know that “The New York Times” wouldn’t even print — I mean, we can say the word. We`re having an adult conversation here. Wouldn’t even print the word “fagot.” (sic)
GLOVER: Right.
BECK: Wouldn’t print it. I find that amazing.
Yeah, it's amazing that the New York Times would resist printing a slur, isn't it? anyway, it's not like anyone would be hurt by this... it's all just a joke! It's funny! Come on! Why is this even a controversy?
You know what's even funnier? People that watch stuff like this on television, and feel completely justified in physically attacking and murdering LGBTQ people! That's hilarious!
Hmm
The plasma used in transfusions will soon come almost exclusively from men.
[B]lood banks are beginning to separate out women's plasma — the liquid part of blood — in an effort to fight a mysterious lung injury that has become the nation's leading risk from transfusions.TRALI kills about 15 people annually, out of 150 or so whose specific circumstances converge in that "horrible coincidence." And the antibodies specific to women who have been pregnant are not TRALI's only trigger; if they were, "the lung ailment would be common, too. Instead it's rare, occurring about once per 5,000 units of transfused blood products. Something has to 'prime' the lungs to be susceptible." So, it's conceivably possible at some point to isolate the priming factors and deal with those so women's plasma can still be used in transfusions.
…No one knows exactly what causes TRALI ["transfusion-related acute lung injury"]. But certain immune cells carried by women who have been pregnant are emerging as a chief culprit, cells called antibodies that mothers-to-be produce in reaction to their fetus' foreign father cells.
The antibodies do no harm to mother, baby or the vast majority of people who encounter them in a transfusion. To get TRALI requires what Celso Bianco of America's Blood Centers calls "a horrible coincidence" in which the transfusion recipient has white blood cells that just happen to recognize and clash with the donor's antibodies.
But in the meantime, men's plasma only. Scientists are worried that women will hear this and feel they don't need to donate blood anymore, but I can't help thinking of the plasma center my aunt used to manage, which was disproportionately populated with low income women who were selling their plasma to feed themselves and their kids. You can't sell your blood, you see; only your plasma.
Bloggers are stupid and irresponsible.
Unless, of course, they're actually, say, Time's Washington bureau chief writing for Time's new blog—in which case, they're super smart and full o' integrity.
What mythical beast are you?
You're a gryphon.
You're very powerful without needing to brag about it.
Creativity is one of your strong suits.
Your outward personality may change drastically according to your mood, which is not always a good thing.
You're a loyal guardian when you choose to be and you're aligned towards *good*.
Yeah, so I'm not only Hannibal Lecter-like, but I've a touch of the schiz as well. Rock.
No worries, though. I use my mad powerz 4 good.
Take the quiz.
Which famous feline are you?
You're the Cheshire Cat.
Your mysterious aura and your penchant for riddles keep your friends guessing.
You dislike staying too long in any one place.
Your advice is always sound, if somewhat enigmatic.
The sum total of this is that people are always following you and you just WANT TO GET AWAY!
WTF? That sounds a lot less like the Cheshire Cat than like Hannibal Lecter. You are hounded by a feisty FBI agent. You would like to eat a man's liver with fava beans and nice Chianti. Wev.
Take the quiz. Via Chet.
"To enter heaven, there's no backdoor."
Pam thinks this video is "so campy it has to be a joke," and I've got to agree. There's no way this guy is for real. But how scary is it that it's become so hard to tell parody from reality, that there's even a possibility he is for real?! Cripes.
Oscar Noms
Here they are. I haven't seen jack this year. I suck.
As many Shakers (ahem, Oddjob) will be happy to hear, Little Miss Sunshine has been nominated for Best Picture, with its wee star, Abigail Breslin, nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and Alan Arkin nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
And An Inconvenient Truth has been nominated for Best Doc, as was Jesus Camp, which of course features erstwhile super-evangelical Ted Haggard (clip here).
Fainting Couch Alert!
Somebody get me the smelling salts, because I'm swooning with shock. Senator Barack Obama didn't attend a madrassa after all—and CNN came to this stunning conclusion via something called "investigating."
CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.Huh.
He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.
"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."
Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.
"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."
Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. …"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."
Bush Bounce
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
"Bush’s overall approval rating has fallen to just 28 percent, a new low, while more than twice as many (64 percent) disapprove of the way he's handling his job."
