"You can't be a perfectly lubricated weather vane on the important issues of the day."—Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, on Mitt Romney's flip-floppery.
That is also, for the record, what she said.
Quote of the Day
Herman Cain's Campaign is a Real Thing in the Real World
Herman Cain is making stuff on the interwebs. America, I give you the current Republican front-runner:
[Transcript Follows]
There's an opening sequence that suggests the projectionist is loading the YouTube video. A cowboy on a horse rides towards the camera to generic twangy music. On screen, we see that “THERE WAS A TIME IN AMERICA WHEN A MAN WAS A MAN... “ Then the video cuts to the sheriff taking some government-paid leave.
“AND A HORSE WAS A HORSE...” [Go to hell, postmodernist eurotrash!]
Then a deputy/government employee chugs whiskey. “AND A MAN ON A HORSE WAS JUST A MAN ON A HORSE...” We see that the cowboy is carrying yellow flowers, so that's probably a BFD. [This is just like Blazing Saddles, only if it had been directed by Andrew Breibart.]
A few taxpayers stroll by, disgusted by the lazy government workers.
“UNLESS HE CARRIED EXTRANEOUS COMMA BIG FONT FOR EMPHASIS YELLOW FLOWERS” [But not roses. And certainly not bread.]
Women scurry away from the cowboy, as he comments on their chicken. I think this is supposed to be sexy. Presumably there's some kind of joke here? I don't hang out in sports bars, so I don't really get the reference.
“Cock-a-doodle-do, Ma'am”
[Wow, this dude harasses women, but he's also a gentleman and holy non-sequitur what the hell is going on, we're forty-five seconds into this garbage already.]
“CTV [Isn't that Canadian?] PRESENTS: HE CARRIED YELLOW FLOWERS”
Cowboy ass shot.
Cowboy using rope shot.
Cowboy wearing moon boots while not really bow-legged shot.
The cowboy knocks on the door, because apparently having women scurry away from you is code for “Yes, please come into my cabin.”
The drunken sheriff mocks the man's gay looking flowers. Also, they are YELLOW flowers.
'Hey look at me, the Montana Territory is paying me to get pissed on my 3-hour lunch break!'
Daaaamn! One of the men accuses our hero of being “as yellow as those flowers there.”
Witty rejoinder: “Why does it always have to be about color, what are you guys, liberals?” [Did you notice one of the guys was black? Did you?!? He's such a reverse racist.]
The reverse-racist responds that he's a “card carrying” liberal [Hey, remember Dukakis?], and spits on our hero's moonboot.
A fight breaks out, and the opening chords of a Monkees song plays in the background for some reason.
In perhaps the video's most Brechtian moment, a Hollywood director in baggy pants yells cut, and everything stops.
A conventionally attractive young woman offers the cowboy a watermelon-mango margarita, because all actors are homos who sip fruity drinks like little girls. Because she's a lady, the dude gives her shit about wanting a straw. Then he threatens to fire her.
A woman praises the man and does his girly makeup, but he cuts the dumb bitch down to size.
As it turns out, the actor is Nick Searcy. [You know, the guy who played Tom Hanks's friend in Cast Away? No, not the volleyball.]
Nick Searcy levels with us. He's not a tough guy because he says catch phrases like “hope” and “change.” [Would those be catch words?] He also doesn't have a fancy teleprompter like those rich-ass community organizers, just fyi.
Then, over 140 seconds into this train wreck, Nick Searcy tells us about Herman Cain. He's a real thing in the real world. He urges us to “get real” and vote for Cain, as dudes beat each other up in the background.
Herman Cain and Nick Searcy are sexy, apparently. OMG IS THIS CAMPAIGN VIDEO HITTING ON ME?
Cowboy Searcy urges the public not to get distracted by trivial things this election season, all while joking with his Hollywood director. Then he gets so distracted while threatening a liberal that he forgets his line.
And then Herman Cain smirks at us for some reason. [Probably because he knows you aren't getting the last three-and-a-half minutes of your life back.]
As Cain fades out, Cowboy Searcy hits on a lady by yelling “nice chicken, honey!” Then he gives us a wink and a thumbs up as he goes into the cabin, presumably to have some sort of freaky Dadaist sex.
THE END
Canadian Women Take Soccer Gold at Pan Am Games
Alright, this is Caitie the football* fan here, and Caitie the Canuck too, saying "Go Canada Go" to our talented women's team. Shockingly turfed out of the World Cup this summer in no uncertain terms, a big surprise coming after our second Gold Cup championship in 2010, this didn't look like it was going to be much of a year for Karina LeBlanc and the women footballers of Canada.
But then they sent half of the World Cup team to the Pan Am Games, a competition open to nations up and down the Americas, athletes from anywhere between Ellesmere Island and Tierra del Fuego. The US team didn't attend, and Brasil were without their stellar forward and five-time World Player of the Year, Marta, but in Thursday night's final in Guadalajara, Mexico, the Canadian goalkeeper (LeBlanc) stopped two penalties by Brasil's shooters, while the Canadians put all theirs into the net, for a 4-3 victory in the shootout.
The game had looked a disaster for Canada early, giving up a goal only four minutes in, but control went back and forth before Christine Sinclair (Canada's all-time top scorer, with 117 goals in 163 appearances, as of June 30 this year) managed to finally head home a corner taken by fierce terrier/midfielder Diana Matheson (another long-time veteran of the Canadian team - all 5'0.25" of her) in the 88th minute. Two 15-minute periods of extra time settled nothing, though both sides had chances, leading to the penalty shootout.
Speaking personally as a goalkeeper, I understand LeBlanc's statement that she enjoys shootouts. I hate them as a fan, hate the tension and the irrelevance to the game, but as a player, they thrill me. The only championship my current team won, for several years, was a cup competition in which we endured two penalty shootouts - the semi-final and the final. In both - I swear this is literally true, every word - I saved all five of my opponents' shots, and scored the only one of five for us. Best two games I ever played, stopping ten penalties. Time used to be that when stopping penalties, the strategy for keepers was to guess-and-leap, hoping you'd got the right direction. Some keepers, and I'm among them, have come more recently to the conclusion that, in fact, they're the easiest shots keepers ever face, in some ways. Consider: you know when it's coming, who's taking it, there's no one else in the way, and you don't have to worry about a rebound (as the ball is dead when it ceases forward motion in shootouts). Every advantage is mine.
Well, except for the 24-foot wide net, with the crossbar eight feet up. But other than that...
Anyway, big congratulations to the Canadian women's team for their stellar success throughout the tournament, almost completely unnoticed by our national media - five games in seven days! What a grueling schedule.
* AKA soccer, for you folk who think a game where only a very few people ever touch the ball with their feet should be called "football": see NFL/gridiron, CFL-Canadian style, et c.. :)
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by a spoon. (There is no spoon!)
Recommended Reading:
Happy Fourth Blogiversary to Shaker Moderator Scott Madin!
Jos: Girl Scouts of Colorado Support Transgender Youth
Resistance: "At last, honors for the first black Marines."
Latoya: [TW for rape culture and gender essentialism] Because Amber Cole Is Just a Kid and Boys Learn to Be Boys
Adrienne: [TW for racism and appropriation] Open Letter to the PocaHotties and Indian Warriors This Halloween
Jorge: [TW for racism and racist violence] Teen Accused in James Anderson's Killing Linked to Other Hate Crimes
[Trigger warning for homophobia and anti-gay violence] I have been closely following news about the murder of Stuart Walker, a gay man who was murdered in Scotland, not just because I have gay family in Scotland, and not just because I regularly write about homophobic violence, but because of the multiple rumors surrounding the killing, including a teen girl gang originally being sought and the rape accusations against the victim by a convicted rapist. So much fuckery. So much to be deconstructed, I don't even know where to begin. See Andy here and here.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Wank Swap: S1 E1
Airing at 2200 GMT:
The grim specter of zombie Andrew Mellon returns to haunt Germany.
[Zombie Andrew Mellon stands in front of the
Brandenburg Gate moaning "You owe me your braaaaainnnz!"]
Meanwhile...
While visiting southern Indiana, German Chancellor Angela Merkel finds a surprising inspiration for future economic policy.
[Angela Merkel stands in front of a Waffle House,
thinking "Maybe I'll chunk it."]
Previously.
An Observation
It occurs to me that many things in this culture might be very different if we referred to women and men not as "opposite sexes," but complementary ones.
Not disparate and mutually exclusive constructs, not pieces of a binary opposition, not foes who do battle, but bookends, in between which exist a spectrum of experience and presentation.
Occupy Everywhere & Economic News Round-Up
Occupy Oakland protestor and veteran Scott Olsen holds a banner at a protest
before he was injured (TW for image at link). [Keith Shannon photo; via.]
The Guardian—Occupy Oakland protester Scott Olsen awake ahead of brain surgery:
Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran who suffered serious head injuries after being hit by a projectile fired by police during the Occupy Oakland protests, has woken up and is lucid as he awaits surgery, hospital officials and family members have said.Dahlia Lithwick at Slate—Occupy the No-Spin Zone: One of the best things about Occupy Wall Street is the way it confuses and ignores the shrill pundit class: "Think, for just a moment, about the irony. We are the most media-saturated 24-hour-cable-soaked culture in the world, and yet around the country, on Facebook and at protests, people are holding up cardboard signs, the way protesters in ancient Sumeria might have done when demonstrating against a rise in the price of figs. And why is that? Because they very wisely don't trust television cameras and microphones to get it right anymore. Because a media constructed around the illusion of false equivalencies, screaming pundits, and manufactured crises fails to capture who we are and what we value."
Olsen, a 24-year-old former US Marine, was struck in the head during anti-Wall Street protests on Tuesday night. He has been upgraded from critical to fair condition.
Olsen "responded with a very large smile" to a visit from his parents, Highland General hospital spokesman Warren Lyons said. "He's able to understand what's going on. He's able to write and hear but has a little difficulty with his speech," Lyons said.
Politico—Occupy to march on NYC banks: "Occupy Wall Street protesters will march to five banks in Manhattan on Friday and deliver thousands of letters to the companies—in the form of a 'mass paper airplane throwing.' ... Thousands of letters that were submitted to occupytheboardroom.org will be folded into paper airplanes, and at some of the banks, protesters will execute a 'mass paper airplane throwing event,' after which the planes will be collected in a large mailbag and left in the lobbies of the banks."
Google—What search trends tell us about Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party: "Search interest for [Occupy Wall Street] jumped ahead of the [Tea Party] on September 24, and hasn't looked back. In a historical context, when viewing the snapshot of their nascent birth, we can see the peak of [Occupy Wall Street] has slightly more interest in American than searches for the [Tea Party] did during the groups peak in 2009."
Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch—Pat Robertson: Christians Should Oppose Occupy Wall Street: "On The 700 Club [yesterday], Pat Robertson told a questioner that Christians should not be involved in the economic justice movement Occupy Wall Street. Robertson dubbed the protests 'atavistic' and a 'rebellion' with 'no purpose' behind it. The televangelist even warned that the movement 'could be used for radicals who want to destroy this nation.' While Occupy Wall Street tackles issues of inequality and avarice in the financial system, Robertson alleged that it has nothing to do with Christian virtues of righteousness and fighting oppression. This wouldn't be the first time Robertson chastised Occupy Wall Street. He previously called the protestors 'nuts' and 'clowns' who are being used by President Obama to 'revolt'."
Speaking of Obama and his alleged revolution against Big Money (lulz)...
New York Times—Obama Backers Tied to Lobbies Raise Millions: "Despite a pledge not to take money from lobbyists, President Obama has relied on prominent supporters who are active in the lobbying industry to raise millions of dollars for his re-election bid. At least 15 of Mr. Obama's 'bundlers'—supporters who contribute their own money to his campaign and solicit it from others—are involved in lobbying for Washington consulting shops or private companies. They have raised more than $5 million so far for the campaign. Because the bundlers are not registered as lobbyists with the Senate, the Obama campaign has managed to avoid running afoul of its self-imposed ban on taking money from lobbyists."
Meanwhile, in Europe...
Paul Krugman in the New York Times—The Path Not Taken: "Financial markets are cheering the deal that emerged from Brussels early Thursday morning. Indeed, relative to what could have happened—an acrimonious failure to agree on anything—the fact that European leaders agreed on something, however vague the details and however inadequate it may prove, is a positive development. But it's worth stepping back to look at the larger picture, namely the abject failure of an economic doctrine—a doctrine that has inflicted huge damage both in Europe and in the United States. The doctrine in question amounts to the assertion that, in the aftermath of a financial crisis, banks must be bailed out but the general public must pay the price."
And in related news...
Corynne McSherry at the Electronic Frontier Foundation—Disastrous IP Legislation Is Back—And It's Worse Than Ever: "As with its Senate-side evil sister, PROTECT-IP, SOPA would require service providers to 'disappear' certain websites, endangering Internet security and sending a troubling message to the world: it's okay to interfere with the Internet, even effectively blacklisting entire domains, as long as you do it in the name of IP enforcement. Of course blacklisting entire domains can mean turning off thousands of underlying websites that may have done nothing wrong. And in what has to be an ironic touch, the very first clause of SOPA states that it shall not be 'construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech.' As if that little recitation could prevent the obvious constitutional problem in what the statute actually does."
They're coming after our ability to connect and organize, folks.
Question of the Day
By what part of your current self do you think your younger self would be pleasantly surprised?
Photo of the Day
Yes, this is obviously going to be Dudley's Halloween costume.
[H/T to every single humanoid in the multiverse, and my thanks to each and every one of you for sending it along!]
Multidisciplinary Genius
Hey, remember our friend David Barton, whose very smart ideas about education we were just discussing yesterday...? Well, it turns out he's a genius about feminism, too.
On a Believers Voice of Victory episode that aired today, David Barton told televangelist Kenneth Copeland that women are most elevated in a society that has "conformed to the Scriptures." Citing Religious Right activist Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Barton said that the Bible is actually the basis of women's rights, while in "Islam" and secular societies like France and "the Norwegian countries," women have fewer rights and less respect.Oh, he's also a ninth degree black belt geography master. FYI.
Hobbity
Do you want to see a neat little video of the gentlemen who played Sam, Frodo, Merry, and Pippin hanging out together, made in conjunction with Empire magazine's LOTR 10th anniversary issue? Of course you do, because you're a nerd. Go look at it!
True Fact 1: The first book(s) that Iain and I ever talked about was Lord of the Rings, and the first movie we ever saw in the theater together was The Fellowship of the Rings.
True Fact 2: We own at seven different Lord of the Rings board games, and a Lord of the Rings chess set.
True Fact 3: We are hardcore nerds no doy.
Daily Dose of Cute
This video does not even do justice to how hilariously pathetic Dudley was being the other night, but I tried to capture and convey the desperate angst as best as I could.
Agony Antler: Dudley has an antler tragedy, but, luckily, I am able to save the day with my human problem-solving skills and opposable thumbery.
Text Onscreen: I bought the dogs a pair of naturally shed elk antlers to chew on… [picture of two sections of elk antler] It was a HIGH VALUE TREAT, so Dudley immediately grabbed his and ran down the hall with it to the office, where he takes all HIGH VALUE TREATS. [retrospective video of Dudley taking a pig's ear from me and running down the hall with it] But, pretty soon, there was an evident problem… [video of Zelda chewing contentedly on her antler; I pan to the left, and Dudley is lying pitiably on the floor with no antler. I say, "Dudley, where's yours? Where's your antler? Where did you put it?" He looks miserable. "Are you pathetic?" I ask.] Yes. Very pathetic. [video of Dudley lying with his face right next to Zelda, staring at her while she chews contentedly on her antler, which she has not immediately lost like a glaikit] I went to the office to look for it. I looked all over and couldn't find it. I looked in the guest room, the bathroom, the loft…no sign of it. Dudley continued to look pathetic. [video of Dudley looking pathetic beside Zelda] I finally thought to look under the bookshelf that's right next to Dudley's bed in the office. And there it was. [picture of the antler placed to show that's there's just exactly enough room for it to slide under the bookshelf] I returned Dudley's antler to him, and the world was a just and joyful place once again. [video of Zelda and Dudley lying on their beds in the office, chewing happily on their antlers; video of Dudley resting on his bed, holding onto his antler with one paw] The End. [picture of Dudz and Zelly together on one bed labeled "Two Dogs!"]He literally must have run into the office with it, dropped it, and watched it skid under the bookshelf instantly, lol. He is SUCH a hapless goofball.
Sure.
In case you missed it, DeLorean is back, with an electric engine natch. For $90,000, why not buy two?
[DeLorean 2: This Time it's Environmentalable*]
*FYI, that's a photo of the planned 2014 DeLorean, not the 1982 model.
An Observation
It is amazing to me how many companies, in the year 2011, will not talk to me even if both Iain's and my names are on the account.
Number of the Day
Zero: The amount of credibility megapastor Joel Osteen has on the subject of gay people's lives—or any subject, for that matter, with the possible exceptions of "How to Gain Notoriety and Wealth by Exploiting Bigotry in the Name of the Lord" and "I Am a Shameless Fartsack."
Quote of the Day
"What Shannon and Casey are seeking is the same treatment that their straight counterparts, who are legally married, receive every day without question and take for granted."—Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, who is organizing a lawsuit brought by Massachusetts Army National Guard Major Shannon McLaughlin, 41, her wife, Casey, 34, five other troops, and two career Army and Navy veterans, who are "challenging the constitutionality of the federal ban on gay marriage and federal policy that define a spouse as a person of the opposite sex."
This was the inevitable result once Don't Ask Don't Tell was rescinded, because now DOMA prevents spouses of legally married gay servicemembers from accessing benefits provided to spouses of married straight servicemembers by the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs, including "military identification cards, access to bases, recreational programs, spousal support groups and burial rights at national cemeteries." Maj. Shannon McLaughlin, for example, is able to enroll their 10-month-old twins in her military-provided healthcare plan, but is not allowed to add her wife Casey, who instead has to pay about $700 monthly for her own healthcare coverage, despite the fact they are Massachusetts residents who are legally married in their state.
This patchwork of rights and access is unsustainable. It's only a matter of time before the US federal government is forced to recognize same-sex marriage, and soon thereafter the entire house of bigoted cards will crumble. Heh heh heh.
FYI
Hillary Clinton has been thinking about the limits of might and the advantages of cooperation for a very long time. She's also been thinking about how to leverage and maximize diffuse power, and the value of negotiation and alliances, for a very long time. Basically, she is very smart and competent. And probably a little under-utilized and marginalized, even though her personal experience makes her uniquely qualified as a leader and statesperson for this moment in history. But she does her job damn well anyway, because that's how Hils rolls.
This is all nooz.
