So today is our daughter's fourth birthday--another very exciting day here in our house. She opened up her gifts this morning and much merriment was had. There was one present, however, that made the hubs and I alternately laugh and say WTF. My mom sent her a dress up set that came with a dress, a shawl, clip-on earrings, a flip cell phone that plays Beethoven, and this:
Not just a small dog AND a purse, nooooo--a small dog that came IN the purse to carry around. This incredibly stupid fad is now for kids! Ugh.
Some fun photo sharing!
I found this picture last night when I went looking for her baby pictures:
Easter 2004, 14 months old. I look lumpy because I'm 6 months pregnant.
It made me laugh because we still get that look from her and I imagine I will see it a lot when she's a teenager.
it's bad enough when they're real
LOL
Michael Medved is totally nutz:
Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her.First of all, I love how it's axiomatic that fat = unattractive.
Secondly, I love how attraction between (assumed) good-looking men and a fatty "can only operate in one direction." Yeah, a hot dude getting a hard-on for a fat chick is totally unheard of! Having always been fat, and having never dated anyone who was a "chubby chaser," I know there are plenty of straight men who are attracted to a wide arrange of body types. Not everyone is attracted to every size and shape, but the presumption that most people are only attracted to people who conform to one specific type is just silly.
Thirdly, I love the presupposition that fat chicks and gay dudes automatically want to fuck NBA players, and that NBA players are so insecure that even if someone to whom they weren't attracted was in their vicinity, they couldn't begin to function. In fact, I just love the entire idea of straight men who are made uncomfortable by the mere presence of someone wanting to fuck them whom they don't want to fuck. All I can say is that these assholes would crumple if they had to spend a week as a woman, getting chatted up, having their space invaded, being subjected to unwanted touching, and all other manner of unsubtle displays of attraction by, well, them. It's precisely the kind of drooling, moronic Neanderthals who proffer asinine arguments like this one that have the least compunction about aggressive horniness—which is, I suppose, why they can't imagine that there exist people who, even if they are attracted to someone, don't feel compelled to practically hump his or her leg to show it.
Finally, go fuck yourself, Medved. Fat chicks and gay dudes have been smeared by better adversaries than you, friend. You'll have to do better than "You've got cooties!" if you want to penetrate these tough old hides, you daft weenie.
(H/T to Cernig.)
Retreat Poodle
Bush loses Blair: "Prime Minister Tony Blair will announce on Wednesday a new timetable for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, with 1,500 to return home in several weeks, the BBC reported. Blair will also tell the House of Commons during his regular weekly appearance that a total of about 3,000 British soldiers will have left southern Iraq by the end of 2007, if the security there is sufficient, the British Broadcasting Corp. said, quoting government officials who weren't further identified."
If the security there is sufficient sounds like a damn big if to me. I can't imagine how that's going to be measured, but wev. If all goes to plan and those 3,000 UK soldiers are out by the end of the year, that's almost 50% of all British troops.
In what has to be one of the most hilarious, mendacious, and deluded bits of spin ever, "Bush said Britain's troop cutbacks were 'a sign of success' in Iraq." Uh huh. Pop the champagne, bitchez.
Why?
I'm not a partisan, in the sense that I think everything any one party does is good or everything any one party does is bad. I've been totally fed up with the Republican Party for years now, but, if I'm honest, I spent at least as much time (and probably more) being irritated with the Democratic Party as I do being happy with them. Practically, this means I almost never expect the GOP to do something with which I agree, and rarely expect the Dems to do something with which I agree. All that said, there are still times when I'm utterly flabbergasted by how stark the differences between the two parties can be—most often when there's some issue to which the answer seems so bloody obvious I can't believe there's a partisan divide.
Take the response to the revelations about the appalling conditions in which our wounded veterans have been living.
Almost as disappointing as the expose, however, has been the relatively partisan nature of the response. Democrats, disgusted by the deplorable treatment for the troops, reacted immediately to address the problem and prevent it from happening again. Republicans, perhaps worried that the scandal reflects poorly on the Bush administration, have been unusually quiet.I don't know why, either. It doesn't seem to make the least bit of sense to me—not from a human perspective, and not from a political perspective. There's clearly a correct way to respond to this issue, and silent inaction ain't it. What on earth can the GOP be thinking?
For their part, Dems got to work.Several lawmakers are taking action to improve the conditions and care for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Long considered a premier military medical facility, it is now under fire after The Washington Post reported last weekend that parts of the hospital have suffered from extreme neglect.In addition, Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates today demanding an inspector general’s investigation into living conditions for the returning soldiers at Walter Reed.
Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) are sponsoring legislation to improve the lives of recovering veterans at Walter Reed, while Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a cosponsor of the Obama-McCaskill legislation, said that he would explore ways to direct new funds to Walter Reed and make immediate improvements to its veteran housing.
Meanwhile, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) wrote a letter yesterday to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates demanding information on the current state of Walter Reed’s outpatient facilities. She also asked him to explain how conditions were allowed to deteriorate.
As of now, no congressional Republicans have joined Dems on the issue. I don’t know why.
Meanwhile, when asked if the White House wanted to be on record "with a more emphatic expression of amazement and upset" about the issue, Tony Snow replied, bluntly, "No." They've said they're outraged; what else can they do?
Yeesh.
Wow
Just wow.
In a press roundtable at the National Press Club tonight, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow led a discussion with White House correspondents about the impact of the internet on their respective jobs. Their conclusion? They don't like being challenged by blogs.There's video at the link.
NBC News' David Gregory bemoaned how political coverage has "become so polarized in this country…because it's the internet and the blogs that have really used this White House press conferences to somehow support positions out in America, political views." Tony Snow admitted he sometimes reads blogs ("I'll occasionally punch it up") only to find "wonderful, imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out."
Newsweek's White House correspondent Richard Wolffe added, "[Bloggers] want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. … It's not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender."
I honestly can't believe how pathetic this whole display was. (Aside from one woman, who wasn't identified in the clip and says off-camera that she's all for blogs because she's all for the First Amendment—a comment Tony Snow quickly interrupts and stampedes past.) If journalists honestly believe that their singular role is to "ask questions and get information," without pushing for the truth, then why do we even need journalists at the White House press conferences? Why can't Tony Snow just say whatever he wants to say into the camera and deliver White House spin directly to the American people with no middleman? Obviously journalists know they have a bigger role to fill than collectors of information, and surely they're vaguely aware that their reticence in actually filling that role lo these past six years is the main reason they've been so roundly criticized by bloggers.
The thing that just kills me is the way Snow and friends here discuss bloggers as if they're somehow separate from being American citizens. It's "the internet and the blogs that have really used this White House press conferences to somehow support positions out in America, political views" says Gregory, as if the American people had never thought to regard White House press conferences with critical and partisan eyes before the emergence of the blogosphere. Give me a damn break. When will these people realize that "the internet and the blogs" only gave a more public and participatory voice to people who were already politically active? Yes, I'm sure millions of people all just magically become politically active, rather than large numbers of already politically active folks simply having found a new tool to organize. "Get with me," says the program.
Snow shows the depth of his ignorance once again when he references the alleged "generational divide" between, presumably, folks like himself and Gregory and the digital hoi polloi. But David Gregory is 36, placing him firmly in my generation, and Tony Snow is 51, placing him firmly in the generation of the average Shakes reader, based on a survey done last year.
Ultimately, the thing that most deeply disgusts me is that so many members of the media affect the position that there's something so special and elite and important and complicated about being a journalist that the average blogger couldn't possibly do it, couldn't possibly hold a candle to them. (Even though many of us are also journalists.) But then when they're criticized for not doing a better job (which is an understatement, considering the catastrophic due diligence failure that was the media's performance leading up to the war), they hold up their hands and give us the old "Hey, wait a minute; we're just collectors of information, people!" routine. They want respect, but no responsibility—and they cloak this preening, unearned entitlement behind the pretense that this is the way it's always been.
And it's a story that just might fly if there weren't remnants of real journalism still obstinately hanging around.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
from Sesame Street
This song, which I hadn't heard outside of my own
humming since I was a wee kid, still gets stuck in
my head once every couple of months.
Question of the Day
I just received the worst email fishing spam ever in my inbox. Ostensibly from Comcast, it read: "Dear Member: We apologize if u had any trouble accessing our services." Followed, of course, by the typical request for my info. Who, I wonder, is more deeply, irrevocably moronic—the person who writes a spam email posing as an inquiry from a major corporation using the abbreviative vernacular of instant and text messaging, or the person who falls for it?
That's rhetorical, natch. The actual QotD is: What's the dumbest spam email you've ever received?
We know Waveflux's answer, methinks...
In Other News, Chris Rock Uses the N-Word
Under the eyeroll-inducing headline "Double Standard?" the WSJ Washington Wire reports:
Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden took a pounding recently for an interview in which he praised primary rival Barack Obama, an African-American, as "articulate," among other things. Critics argued that Biden's use of the term suggested that it was unusual for African-Americans to be articulate.Short answer: No, it's not a double standard—although kudos for the attempt to pretend this isn't the equivalent of an ignorant-ass cracker whining, "Why can black people use the n-word but I can't?"
But over the holiday weekend, Biden got some company in that phrasing from an especially credible source on the subject of racial sensitivity: NAACP President Bruce Gordon. In an interview on CNN, Gordon criticized the news media for relying too heavily on former presidential candidates Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for assessments of the views of African-Americans.
Gordon ascribed that reliance to the fact that "Al and Jesse are bright, articulate, compelling personalities. They've both run for president, so they've created a presence for themselves, and the media gets lazy and simply picks them because they always have."
Longer answer: Though there quite certainly may have been critics who argued "that Biden's use of the term suggested that it was unusual for African-Americans to be articulate," most thinking people with a passing familiarity with history recognized that the use of "articulate" in the context constructed by Biden is generally a dog whistle intended to mean "white-sounding." That was the real rub. The understood definition of "articulate" in this milieu necessarily excludes "black-sounding" men like Jackson and Sharpton, even though they are inarguably articulate by its unloaded, straightforward definition.
When Gordon uses the term to refer to Jackson and Sharpton, he's undermining the dog whistle, restoring the word to its original meaning without the racial baggage. And for anyone who's incapable of wrapping his or her head around that distinction, then try this one instead: Words just don't always mean the same thing no matter who's saying them. If Dave Chappelle calls Mos Def one sick nigger, it's a compliment. If George Allen does it, not so much.
Caption This Photo
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney arrives at Haneda airport
in Tokyo February 20, 2007. REUTERS/Toshiyuki Aizawa
Oy Cubed
Court rules against Guantanamo detainees: "Guantanamo Bay detainees may not challenge their detention in U.S. courts, a federal appeals court said Tuesday in a ruling upholding a key provision of a law at the center of President Bush’s anti-terrorism plan. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that civilian courts no longer have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding foreigners. Barring prisoners from the U.S. court system was a key provision in the Military Commissions Act, which Bush pushed through Congress last year to set up a system to prosecute terrorism suspects." This will undoubtedly find its way to the Supreme Court.
Breaking—Al Sadr's Office Attacked: Cernig's got the scoop; I share his curiosity about "whether we will see new claims of Iranian meddling after this," since the report mentions a confiscation of documents.
Bush was aware of conditions at Walter Reed: Says Tony Snow, "[T]he president certainly has been aware of the conditions in the wards where he has visited." I suspect, however, the claim is simply that Bush never visited Building 18.
Inside the red envelope
Ever wonder what it's like to work for Netflix? It's not nearly as glamorous as you might think.
After working at Netflix for a while, it starts to get boring and it really brings your emotion down since there's not many interactions with your fellow coworkers, like for me, sometimes I feel really shitty after shipping for about three and a half hours and that's why I try to do many talking, walking during our breaks. We can talk during shipping cause our manager don't mind and we can talk very, very little during rental return cause we need to concentrate on inspecting the DVDs at a fast pace. After every hour for rental return and for shipping, we do stretches. Each one of us take turns saying the type of stretches and doing the counting. After all that crap, we get to go home and then be sleeping early at night and do all the sameting (sic) over again, YAY!!!!!
On the other hand, your job isn't exactly a path to stardom either, eh? Read a firsthand account of life at the shipping center, posted at Hacking Netflix.
(Cross-posted.)
Shaker Gourmet
Our recipe this week comes from Dina:
Butternut Bruschetta
1 med butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed
3-4 portabello mushroom caps, wiped clean and diced
1 bulb garlic
olive oil (or canola/veg/cooking spray)
salt & pepper
2 oz goat cheese
Italian or French bread baguette
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Slice off very tip of garlic bulb so you can see the tops of the cloves, but leave the entire bulb intact/unpeeled; place on top of a sheet of aluminum foil, drizzle with 1 Tbsp oil, sprinkle w/s&p, and wrap loosely in foil.
In a flat roasting pan/baking sheet lined w/aluminum foil and rubbed w/oil, lay the squash on one half and mushroom on other; place wrapped garlic smack in the middle.
Place pan in preheated oven and roast for 30-40 minutes until everything's softened and cooked through.
While roasting, slice bread into rounds about 1/2-inch thick and lightly toast in toaster (or in oven with squash & 'shroom to conserve energy).
Remove roasting pan from oven and let cool 10 minutes, being sure to unwrap garlic otherwise it'll be too hot to handle.In a med bowl, squeeze out as many garlic cloves as you like and smash 'em up w/a fork until smooth; add goat cheese and about 1/3 of the roasted squash and continue mixing well. Salt & pepper again to taste, if you wish.
Spread mixture onto each slice of bread, then top with equal parts remainingsquash & mushroom.
That sounds soooooo good!
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me: shakergourmet (at) gmail.com
Congratulations…
…to Steven Goldstein and Daniel Gross, the first couple to be joined in civil union in New Jersey.
Now when are you two going to give me some grandchildren?
Cheney
Cheney: "Figuring out how much influence Cheney has is a longtime Washington parlor game—but the answer is ultimately unknowable, given that almost all of his advice is offered privately, and both the president and his No. 2 zealously guard the details."
Cheney: "In the fall of 2003, as a federal criminal probe was just getting underway to determine who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, the then-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, sought out Cheney to explain to his boss his side of the story. … At the time that Libby offered his explanation to Cheney, the vice president already had reason to know that Libby's account to him was untrue, according to sources familiar with still-secret grand jury testimony and evidence in the CIA leak probe, as well as testimony made public during Libby's trial over the past three weeks in federal court. Yet, according to Libby's own grand jury testimony, which was made public during his trial in federal court, Cheney did nothing to discourage Libby from telling that story to the FBI and the federal grand jury. Moreover, Cheney encouraged then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan to publicly defend Libby, according to other testimony and evidence made public during Libby's trial."
Cheney: "The evidence in the trial shows Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Libby, his former chief of staff, countermanding and even occasionally misleading colleagues at the highest levels of Mr. Bush’s inner circle as the two pursued their own goal of clearing the vice president’s name in connection with flawed intelligence used in the case for war."
Cheney: "Delivering speeches throughout the [Pacific] region, Cheney will arrive Tuesday in Japan, which has supported the U.S. effort in Iraq but whose defense minister recently criticized the invasion of Iraq as 'wrong.' He will close the trip Feb. 25 in Australia, whose prime minister is one of Bush's staunchest allies in the war. The vice president plans a rally for U.S. troops and a speech aboard the Yokosuka, Japan-based USS Kitty Hawk, the oldest U.S. Navy ship in service. He will have another rally at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam en route to Australia. … Despite some of Cheney's predictions about the U.S. mission in Iraq having been proved wrong—most notably his assertion in May 2005 that the insurgency was in its 'last throes'—he has retained his stature within the administration."
Creature says, "I have never despised a government official more," and I'm inclined to agree.
Teachers Are Worse Than Al Qaeda
SEAN HANNITY: Alright, let me ask you. Because, you — when you said about the Department of Education — you want to abolish it — when you said that the teachers unions is more dangerous to this country in the long term –
NEAL BOORTZ: In the long term, yeah.
HANNITY: Than al Qaeda.
BOORTZ: Right. Look, Al Qaeda, they could bring in a nuke into this country and kill 100,000 people with a well-placed nuke somewhere. Ok. We would recover from that. It would be a terrible tragedy, but the teachers unions in this country can destroy a generation.
HANNITY: They are.
BOORTZ: Well, they are destroying a generation.
HANNITY: They are ruining our school system.
BOORTZ: They’re much more dangerous. We worry about al Qaeda and we should. But at the same time let’s not let the teachers union skate.
HANNITY: They destroyed our school system, and we don’t do anything. The parents — why there aren’t people rising up against it is unbelievable.
Regardless of how you feel about the Liberal or Conservative "bias" in classrooms, this is just a completely absurd statement to make, and Hannity just rolls right along with it. I'm sure Boortz is basing this on some sort of evolution/sex education/liberal propaganda strawman, but this is completely out of line. Infuriatingly, neither one of these men will face the slightest repercussions for saying something so outrageous, other than a statement from the NEA. The thing that annoys me the most about this statement is that you can apply it to simply anything:
Video games are more dangerous to our country than terrorists.
Television is more dangerous to our country than terrorists.
Pornography is more dangerous to our country than terrorists.
...and as long as it's a "controversial" bugaboo that's supposedly causing all the problems, you can just make this statement, not provide a lick of evidence, and the bobbleheads will agree. But you have to be some sort of award-winning jackass to come out and say "teachers are worse than al Qaeda." The cowards won't even have a spokesperson from the NEA on the show to debate bigmouth Boortz.
I've got a new one: Fox News is more dangerous to our country than al Qaeda.
Further Evidence That I'm a Really a Gay Dude
You are Oscar Wilde Charming and Witty. You are incredibly popular because of your wry and satirical sense of humor. You are also incredibly talented at writing, and pushing the conventional boundaries of your society. Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com |
