What's your favorite song whose title is a question?
(Here's a list to help you get started, if you need it.)
I'm extremely fond of REM's track "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" despite [TW for violence] the incident whence comes the title.
Question of the Day
News from Shakes Manor
Saturday night. The living room. Dinnertime. Present are: Liss, Iain, Misty, Kenny Blogginz, Red Sonja, and Karate Monkey. We are having a conversation about the Sheen family.
Liss: Hey, remember when Emilio Estevez was married to Paula Abdul? Good times!
Everyone Else: No. What? When the fuck was that? Fucking lint trap! [And other variations on this theme. Everyone is laughing, and rightfully so.]
Iain: Emilio Estevez and Paula Abdul don't even remember that.
KBlogz: No one remembers that!
Liss: I do! I celebrate their anniversary every year. [Makes this face.]
Everyone Else: LOL!
These two people were totes married in the 90s.
Daily Dose o' Cute
Video Description: Dudley experiences snow for the first time, looking around curiously and then spending part of his walk with me sniffing in footprints making sure the grass is still under there! Also footage of Iain and Dudley coming back from a walk. When Dudz is cold, he gets totes frisky and playful, and I've discovered his favorite cold weather activity is running around me in mad circles, partly to get warm and partly because OMG IT'S SO FUN!!! (Yes, he has a winter coat, care of Aunt RedSonja and Uncle KarateMoney, but will not do any poop business whilst wearing it.) Iain and I comment on how cold and cute he is, and Iain tells me that Dudley got excited as soon as he saw me. Dudley tries to "shake off the cold," while Iain knocks the snow off his shoes.
Olivia, lapsitting.
Dudley, couchnapping.
Matilda, copycatting.
Sophie, pianoperching.
Also Seen
Grafitto on the restroom wall at Red Emma's reading "Stop rape... Don't do it." Yeah, that sounds about right.
And More WikiLeaks
[Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault charges.]
United States Attorney General Eric Holder said earlier today that the US Justice Dept. will pursue "significant" legal action against Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief.
"National security of the United States has been put at risk," Holder said. "The lives of people who work for the American people have been put at risk. The American people themselves have been put at risk by these actions that I believe are arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful in any way. We are doing everything that we can."Meanwhile, as regards the sexual assault charge Assange faces in Sweden, I'll direct you over to Jill, who's got a good post on the matter.
Also: CNN is reporting as breaking news that Assange's attorney says his client is "making arrangements to meet with British police regarding" the Swedish warrant.
Pulling these two stories together reminds me of something I've been meaning to note re: Assange. Although I've been broadly "on his side" in terms of the document leaking thus far, he strikes me as the kind of guy whose idea of boundaries is very different than mine, in many things. I frankly expect that it is only a matter of time before he goes too far, that it has been mostly coincidence I have not yet grimaced with dismay at his choices re: document leaking; thus, rightly or wrongly, am I reluctant to mount much of a vociferous defense on his behalf, as I fully expect I would come to regret it.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of the upcoming Misty O'Misty memoir Fuck, It's Cold!
Recommended Reading:
Today is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. See Veronica, Renee, and GimliGirl.
Andy: There's Now a Snowball's Chance in Hell 'DADT' Will be Repealed
Shark-Fu: You've got to be fucking kidding me...
[TW for violence, transphobia] Jonathan: Trans Woman Assaulted at Kohl's
[TW for racism] Resistance: What "Anti-Racist" Means
Leave your links in comments...
Dr. Drew: You May Be a Heroin Addict, But at Least You're Not FAT!
[Trigger warning for fat hatred, sexual violence, medical malfeasance.]
Have I ever mentioned that I hate Dr. Drew Pinsky…? Maybe once or twice. Anyway…
A new season of the truly loathsome Celebrity Rehab just started, and it was literally an instantaneous clusterfuck. In the first episode, Janice Dickinson was sexually harassed/groped by another patient, Jason Davis, and, as is typical of Celebrity Rehab, the perpetrator was not asked to leave.
And then there was world class fat-hater Dr. Drew, during Davis' intake session, effectively saying that it's better to be a heroin addict than to be fat (start at 1:04):
Pinsky: Jason, sir. How you feeling?There isn't enough NOPE in the world for this asshole.
Davis: Good.
Pinsky: Good, okay. So, Jason—you're diabetic, is that right?
Davis: Type 2.
Pinsky: Type 2. Have you lost some weight?
Davis: Hundred and fifty pounds.
Pinsky: You've lost a hundred and fifty pounds?! Good for you! How'd you lose the weight?
Davis: Heroin.
Pinsky: Heroin. [with a wry grin] I'm not so sure I'd recommend it, but I'm glad you lost the weight. [chuckles]
Meanwhile, Back in the States
After Francisco "Quico" Canseco beat Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Tex.) as part of the Republican wave on Nov. 2, the tea party favorite declared: "It's going to be a new day in Washington."But, hey, IOKIYITTP (It's OK if You're in the Tea Party).
Two weeks later, Canseco was in the heart of Washington for a $1,000-a-head fundraiser at the Capitol Hill Club. The event--hosted by Reps. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) and Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.)--was aimed at paying off more than $1.1 million in campaign debts racked up by Canseco, much of it from his own pocket.
After winning election with an anti-Washington battle cry, Canseco and other incoming Republican freshmen have rapidly embraced the capital's culture of big-money fundraisers, according to new campaign-finance reports and other records.
Andrew Theodore, an Alexandria, Va., consultant who raises money for Benishek and nine other GOP freshmen, said the need to pay off debt is particularly acute this year. "This is the biggest freshman class we've had in a while, and as a result you just see more debt out there," he said.Same as it ever was.
Theodore also scoffed at the idea that accepting money from corporate PACs and lobbyists is at odds with the anti-Washington message of the 2010 class.
"These guys ran against Washington, but they ran against the bad parts of Washington--the bloated bureaucracy and Nancy Pelosi's agenda," he said. "That's not a contradiction to take money from a trade group or corporation that represents free-enterprise principles."
More WikiLeaks
The latest leaked document to garner outrage at WikiLeaks is a "long list of key facilities around the world that the US describes as vital to its national security."
BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says this is probably the most controversial document yet from the Wikileaks organisation."An unhelpful development" is a really good way of describing it, IMO. The release of this list doesn't strike me as quite warranting profound alarm, if only because most of the sites on the list would be evident targets for disruption even if they hadn't been officially sanctioned by this document as important to US interests. And terrorists aren't stupid. "World Trade Center" didn't need to be on a list to be a target.
...The geographical range of the document on installations is extraordinary, our correspondent says.
If the US sees itself as waging a "global war on terror" then this represents a global directory of the key installations and facilities - many of them medical or industrial - that are seen as being of vital importance to Washington.
...The critical question is whether this really is a listing of potential targets that might be of use to a terrorist, our correspondent says.
The cable contains a simple listing. In many cases towns are noted as the location but not actual street addresses, although this is unlikely to stop anyone with access to the internet from locating them.
There are also no details of security measures at any of the listed sites.
What the list might do is to prompt potential attackers to look at a broader range of targets, especially given that the US authorities classify them as being so important.
It is not perhaps a major security breach, but many governments may see it as an unhelpful development, our correspondent says.
On the other hand, it doesn't seem particularly necessary to hand this list to people who might be interested in causing maximum chaos and/or destruction, nor particularly scandalous if the document had been kept concealed.
So. Unhelpful development. Yeah.
Meanwhile, the New York Times has the latest on the campaign to keep WikiLeaks leakin'.
Newt vs. Krug
In the red corner, Newt Gingrich: Let the nation's foxes decide what to do with the henhouse.
In the blue corner, Paul Krugman: Let's NOT Make a Deal.
Ding!
Seen
"Have a blessed and safe holiday season."
You heard it here first, Shakers: Now even CHRISTIAN CHURCHES have declared War on Christmas!!!!
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Trigger warning for disablism, gender essentialism, gender policing.]
Six things men say that signal trouble.
I am particularly fond of the first "Story Highlight" bulletpoint (which you know I love anyway): "There's a limit to how much a woman can tolerate seemingly unmanly behaviors."
So much lolsob.
You Scratch Our Back, We'll Deign to Care about Unemployed Workers
The Senate is reportedly close to a deal that will extend expired unemployment benefits. Republicans negotiated a compromise that will garner their votes to keep unemployed workers from falling off the edge in exchange for extending the Bush tax cuts, even to the wealthiest USians.
Democratic Senators first proposed excluding tax cuts for people making over $250,000, which Republicans shot down. They then proposed excluding tax cuts for people making over $1 million, which Republicans also shot down.
So in order to provide a safety net to working people, Democrats had to agree to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the nation, even as the national debt continues to explode.
Senator and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry called out this bullshit for what it is:
"I hope Americans will understand how craven and empty and hollow and contradictory the Republican position is," veteran Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, told CNN.In other news, 100,000 more workers just got laid off from the bootstrap factory.
..."What we've seen is a Republican Party that's absolutely prepared to deny unemployment insurance to people who have been laid off, who can't pay their bills, who want to, you know, put food on the table for their families," Kerry said. "They (Republicans) have said, "No, we're willing to hold that hostage so we can give the wealthiest people in the country a bonus tax cut."
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
