simple

good
bad

who is my ostrich?

This one-two punch has me looking for an ostrich to adopt. I think it will be my father. I already tried with other friends and family and it is basically impossible. I might have one other friend who might go for it, but it will take longer.

EDIT: Updated so that "two" actually has a different link than "one" which helps make sense of the whole ostrich thing.

paulp on McCain the liar

It has been a while since I cited paulp, probably because he hasn't posted much lately and when he does it is usually a bunch of words I don't even know, but I figured I'd mention this post that talks about the McCain bullshit that I've commented on.

The rational response to someone who lies like this is to drum them out of politics. Would you personally associate with someone who lied to your face like that? Why? Why do we have lower standards for the highest office in the nation than we do for who we'd go to dinner with? It's irrelevant that mccain is not the frontrunner. The point is that we so thoroughly expect to be lied to that it's barely an impediment.

David Brin has written some about this, such as in this predictions registry article. Today I am less concerned with a predictions registry (although such a thing would be extremely useful) than I am with a straightforward statement registry. A simple web site that catalogs every public statement made by every public official of any note, and which shines a light on all the lies and self-contradictions. I don't know what good I think it would do, because in general people clearly don't care that they are constantly being lied to. But like I said, if there is to be any hope at all, something has to be done to bring accountability to government.

As a good example of how far gone we are, consider the read the bills act. This is an attempt to get congress to know what laws they are passing. Seriously, that's what it is. And yet it's laughable. It will never, ever happen. What kind of government do we have if our legislators do not even have time to find out what laws they are passing? I don't know, but it's sure as hell not a representative government. The american revolution began over far smaller indignities that we face today.

80,000 to 1

I'm guessing that the following parlay is highly unlikely but I'll give it a shot anyway. What are the odds that:

(1) Someone who reads this (2) thinks that Fox News is a respectable news outlet, (3) clicks on this link, (4) reads the entire thing, (5) agrees that Gibson is full of shit, (6) is then open to the possibility that the entire network functions that way, and (7) exercises this kind of critical thinking in the future to form the proper conclusion that Fox News is nothing but a Republican propaganda network.

Seems like an impossible parlay but I'll put it out there anyway.

Championships!

Let there be BEARD!

More McCain straight up lying

Just like last time, John McCain directly lies about things he said. This is pathetic.

American Idol, sorry

I want to write about American Idol. Deal with it.

Phil Stacey - Every single week I manage to forget that this guy always surprises me with how good he sounds. He consistently nails the vocals, and his Police song tonight sounded excellent. The problem is that he's such a Gollum. Totally creeps me out to look at this guy.

Lakisha Jones - She's the other one who always surprises me with how good she sounds, except in her case I'm expecting her to sound good but she sounds amazing. That said, I never remember her performance, just that I thought it was good. I was about to write that maybe I just can't root for a large unattractive girl, but I really like Jordin (large) and Melinda (unattractive) so I think it is just something about Lakisha that doesn't do it for me.

Cousin Jordin Sparks - Obviously I have to root for my cousin, but I really enjoy her performances. Her voice is amazing and she's got great personality on stage. The judges can't say a word to her without mentioning that she's so good for being 17, but she's good for being any age. The only time she comes off young is when she talks; she comes off like a young girl trying to sound mature. But I'll cut her some slack on that. Go Cuz!

Melinda Doolittle- Honestly this girl is just better than everyone else, and I don't even think it is close. You'll notice that I haven't said anything yet about how people will actually do in the contest, because I have no idea what America is going to do, given that they keep voting for Sanjaya. But if this was truly a singing competition as the judges love to say (and not a voting competition as some British pop star from the 60s pointed out on a recent episode), the contest would be over and Melinda would be the winner. We'll see how she actually does.

Sanjaya Malakar - From the first auditions, the girls have been so much better than the guys. Six of the final seven girls were better than all of the remaining guys. Of those 6, Melinda, Lakisha, Jordin, and Gina are still alive (Stephanie and Sabrina are out). Haley is still in it, and while she isn't as good as those four, she's still better than all the guys except Blake. I mention all that when I bring up Sanjaya because I hope Sanjay makes the top 5. I'd rather see him perform than everyone else except for Beatbox Blake, Melinda, Cousin Jordin, and Gina. The reason I like to see him perform is because he is a breathtaking disaster on stage. He's like a train wreck mixed with a partial-birth abortion, and the flesh-melting pain of his awkwardness is magnified by his bizarre hair. Top notch entertainment. Keep voting for this weirdo, America!

Blake Lewis - The crooked-mouth beatbox dude is by far the most interesting guy on the show. He's so unique, and he picks songs that are challenging and manages to pull them off in ways that nobody else on the show could. He seems like he's a very talented musician too, not just a good singer. I always look forward to his performances and it will be a long time before I think he'll be the one deserving to be voted off.

Chris Richardson - For me this guy is like Blake Lite, except less interesting. The judges always like him more than I do, sometimes showering him with praise that I just never understand. I've never really liked male performers with the soft voices, so maybe he's just not my style. Where Blake is totally unique, Chris goes with a similar style but more mainstream. He just seems like a mediocre pop performer at best. Any time he gets knocked out is fine with me because I worry that he might be stealing votes that would otherwise go to Blake.

Chris Sligh - Nobody has fallen so far in my graces than this guy. I loved him all through auditions when he seemed like a jolly, goofy guy that didn't take himself serious but could sing his ass off. Then early in the top 24 he picked a little fight with Simon and made it clear that he actually does take himself very seriously, isn't that funny, and plus he went to fundamentalism Christian Bob Jones University (only stupid stuff like that gets a Fox News link from me). His Sting song tonight was terrible, so I hope we don't have to see this tub next week.

Gina Glocksen - Gina has been my favorite girl for a while, probably because I dig the red streak in her hair and the alternative piercings. The whole grunge rocker chick thing is cool, and definitely a contrast to the styles of everyone else on the show, which I hope helps get her enough votes to at least make the top 4. She's improving every week which is good to see.

Haley Scarnato - I wasn't happy that Haley made the top 12 over Sabrina Sloan, but I've actually kind of enjoy her performances. I guess it helps that she's a cute girl with great legs, but there is some kind of authenticity to her, even when she kind of botches a song. One of the strangest moments of the season was after she totally bombed some performance and was visibly shaken and almost begged the audience to give her another chance. Especially given that I (unreasonably) blamed her for knocking out Sabrina who I liked so much better, I was surprised to find myself rooting for her not to lose that week. I don't think she has any chance to win at all, she's just not nearly as good as the rest of the ladies, but I hope she makes it at least another few weeks.

actual google searches that people used to get here

pirates specializes in roast beef sandwiches

"j.j. redick" cock

growing beards

mymomishot

doyle brunson milk cookies

more interesting stuff today

That was so much fun that I'm going to do it again. Actually the real reason I'm linkdumping all over my blog is because my gmail isn't working so I can't just email this shit to people. I imagine that they are grateful for this change of venue.

Let's start with a few stories about how completely pathetic the mainstream media is. Glenn Greenwald had a field day yesterday with two posts on Chris Matthews and his Sunday panel of pathetic asshats who giggled nonstop about the US Attorney scandal. Following up on that theme is a strong criticism of David Broder, who cautions Democrats that it would be politically unwise to investigate the Bush administration's conduct with the scandal.

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people? We've got information that strongly suggests executive branch was using its clout to pressure the Justice Department into partisan politically motivated prosecution, and these media fuckheads just laugh about it like it is a cute little joke and then urge those nasty Democrats not to take anything too seriously and actually investigate. This is just mind-blowing to me. None of these people give a shit about anything but preserving their own power. And it could be the case that those in Congress who are pushing these investigates are doing it for their own partisan political reasons too (though I have no reason to think so), but that doesn't mean they shouldn't do it. For fuck's sake James Madison thought that dismissing qualified public servants was grounds for Presidential impeachment, but David Broder says investigating the Bush administration is oh such a bad idea for Democrats. WHO GIVES A FUCK IF IT IS GOOD OR BAD FOR A POLITICAL PARTY? It is good for the fucking country to have inappropriate and possibly criminal behavior exposed and dealt with.

Moving on to other areas of media worthlessness, here's a good piece today from the Daily Howler, which is my new blog obsession. These guys cut through the bullshit in a way that makes it look easy. Today's link continues their recent (well as recently as I've been reading which is about 2 weeks) of the media's burning hatred of Al Gore and their absolute failure to engage in responsible reporting on the global warming issue. I'd strongly recommend browsing through their incomparable archives.

Think Progress offers an amusing picture of Republican hypocrisy and characteristically authoritarian self-blindness, at the expense of Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee. This dummy blasts the investigation into the attorney firings as partisan grandstanding and supports the Bush Administration's refusal as a right of executive privilege, meanwhile Smith is trying to get President Clinton to come testify about Presidental pardons. (It is possible that Clinton used pardons inappropriately, but the obvious contradiction in regards to executive privilege is glaring, plus it is going to be tough to argue that his mission is nonpartisan but the attorney firing is political grandstanding.)

And to finish up on a lighter note, this guy rules.

Interesting stuff today

I'm going to have to acknowledge the harsh reality that "links adspar likes" was a pretty worthless meme. It was kind of like those Conan O'Brien featurettes that always have the most literal names that aren't funny at all. At least he used to do that. I haven't watched him in years. Yeah, but that's what they were like. And Conan and I both have huge heads, so we have at least those two things in common.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I've seen a bunch of interesting stuff this morning that I thought I'd share.

First up was this piece by digby, contrasting today's understanding of impeachment with the views of the founding fathers. Here is James Madison on impeachment:

...let us consider the restraints he will feel after he [the president]is placed in that elevated station. It is to be remarked that the power in this case will not consist so much in continuing a bad man in office, as in the danger of displacing a good one. Perhaps the great danger, as has been observed, of abuse in the executive power, lies in the improper continuance of bad men in office. But the power we contend for will not enable him to do this; for if an unworthy man be continued in office by an unworthy president, the house of representatives can at any time impeach him, and the senate can remove him, whether the president chuses or not. The danger then consists merely in this: the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be im-peachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.

"Mal-administration"... "wanton removal of meritorious officers"... "abuse of power"... raise your hand if this sounds like anyone you know. This wanton US Attorney scandal alone ought to be enough to bring that bastard down.

Next up, courtesy of PZ, is the God Simulator. Start as an eternal, omnipotent deity and see what happens!

Here's a new story about how global warming is probably going to fuck us over in ways we haven't even really considered yet. But Republicans will still loudly deny anything is happening.

And rounding it out, here is the NitPicker condemning yet another Republican corruption scandal:

So, while it's good to see Congress finally chipping away at the crust surrounding the Bushies warm, gooey center of corruption, it's important to make clear that this isn't simply a rogue, incompetent administration. This is a rogue, incompetent administration which is, nevertheless, following the exact recipes Republicans have written over the last thirty years. Americans need to understand that, in one sense, Bush hasn't failed. He implemented core Republican principles and they failed. And they always will.

"War on Terror" = stupid stupid stupid

Here's some international flavor for Dave:

A recent BBC poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries that sought respondents' assessments of the role of states in international affairs resulted in Israel, Iran and the United States being rated (in that order) as the states with "the most negative influence on the world." Alas, for some that is the new axis of evil!

The rest of that editorial is right on point. Read it!


This is good too.

Steroids

I might as well use some of this late-night contemplation on a totally worthless topic: professional sports. After reading this article I think I'm going to have a tough time renewing my NFL Season Ticket subscription. It isn't that I have any moral problem with grown men making risky decisions about what chemicals they ingest, and it isn't that superhuman freaks crashing into each is boring (quite the contrary), but I just don't think I want to support that perverse system with my $200. These guys are taking decades off their life to be achieve wealth and fame by amusing people with their unnatural physical prowess. Something about all of it is just pathetic and sad.

getting out of the house and more school thoughts

Today the Smithsonian was showing some of the winners from the 2006 Wildscreen Festival, so Kira and I went to check it out. We watched 3 of the films, including the one on my primate obsession, the bonobo.

As I try to get myself geared up to apply to go to grad school, I think I'm narrowing my interests down into two main areas. I'm interested in the kind of psychology research Robert Altemeyer does, particularly into authoritarianism, and I'm interested in something around the anthropology/primatology area, where I'm especially fascinated by the potential for insights into human evolution from study of the bonobos. Both seem to combine my natural attraction to the topics and an element of urgency to the research.

To elaborate a bit more, my interest in Altemeyer's research is well expressed by this description of him that I've seen on some of his papers:

Bob Altemeyer is associate professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba. He does research on authoritarianism, prejudice, dogmatism, love, and the impolite topics of religion, politics, and sex.

I have to be honest, I would love to be able to put "he does research on impolite topics" every single place my name is written. So that's my personal attraction to the area, and the urgency of the research should be obvious to anyone who's been paying much attention to my blog over the last few months. Basically, authoritarianism has become a devastating political force in this country, causing tremendous damage here and around the world. The more we understand it, the better we can fight it. And the sooner the better.

And my interest in bonobos is about my longstanding fascination with evolution in general, human evolution in particular, and probably evolutionary psychology as well. Reading Robert Wright's books about evolutionary psychology and then Steven Pinker's books really opened my mind back up after years of intellectual dormancy. I'm having trouble deciding exactly what to think about evolutionary psychology (I get the impression that lots of biologists scoff at it pretty hard), but I know that I'm totally sold on the human mind as a biological adaptation and I know that whatever I do I want to have some scientific rigor. Anyway, I imagine there's enough there to be studied to satisfy a lifetime of curiosity, and I think I could be quite happy trying to learn more in this niche for a long, long time. The element of urgency to this is that bonobos are dangerously close to extinction and their habitat is threatened by a raging genocidal civil war in the Congo. Our opportunity to learn about them could be almost gone.

Speaking of getting out of my house and trying to learn something, last weekend I went to see James Randi as the featured speaker at a National Capital Area Skeptics 20th anniversary celebration. That was an entertaining and enjoyable event. His James Randi Educational Foundation does good work and deserves more than this brief mention.

Cheney is from Iran

clearly

My blog life is complete

One of my personal blog heros, PZ Myers, pimped Man Beard Blog today.

Traffic spiked:




Celebrate by growing a beard and sending your picture to MAN BEARD BLOG!

Update:

Using Digg to Pass the Read The Bills Act (RTBA) in 3 Easy Steps.

No group is better positioned to place the right kind of pressure on our representatives than Diggers. It's our destiny to start making a difference in the way things are run, and I propose we get the ball rolling.



read more | digg story

[I posted this directly from my newly made digg account. I don't really know if digg is cool or not, but i support the Read the Bills Act, so I figured I'd give this a try.]

my (first) entry

in the contest:

You go, Gore!

Gore said:

“The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say, well I read a science fiction novel that tells me it’s not a problem. If the crib’s on fire, you don’t speculate that the baby is flame-retardant. You take action. The planet has a fever.”

Awesome.

Zinn interview

Howard Zinn is awesome. Here is an interview with Zinn by one of my favorite bloggers.

TD: Let me turn to another issue you certainly wrote about in the 60s, war crimes. But "war crimes" was the last charge to arrive in the mainstream in those years and the first to depart. We've certainly experienced many crimes in the last few years, from Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to Afghanistan. I wonder why, as a concept, it sticks so poorly with Americans?

Zinn: It does seem like a hard concept -- war crimes, war criminals -- to catch on here. There's a willingness to say the leadership is wrong, but it's a great jump from there to saying that the leadership is vicious. Unfortunately, in American culture, there's still a kind of monarchical idea that the President, the people up there, are very special people and while they may make mistakes, they couldn't be criminals. Even after the public had turned against the Vietnam War, there was no widespread talk about Johnson, [Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara, and the rest of them being war criminals. And I think it has to do with an American culture of deference to the President and his men -- beyond which people refuse to think.

TD: How does an American culture of exceptionalism play into this?

Zinn: I would guess that a very large number of Americans against the war in Vietnam still believed in the essential goodness of this country. They thought of Vietnam as an aberration. Only a minority in the antiwar movement saw it as part of a continuous policy of imperialism and expansion. I think that's true today as well. It's very hard for Americans to let go of the idea that we're an especially good nation. It's comforting to know that, even though we do wrong things from time to time, these are just individual aberrations. I think it takes a great deal of political consciousness to extend the criticism of a particular policy or a particular war to a general negative appraisal of the country and its history. It strikes too close to something Americans seem to need to hold onto.

Of course, there's an element that's right in this as well -- in that there are principles for which the United States presumably stands that are good. It's just that people confuse the principles with the policies -- and so long as they can keep those principles in their heads (justice for all, equality, and so on), they are very reluctant to accept the fact that they have been crassly, consistently violated. This is the only way I can account for the stopping short when it comes to looking at the President and the people around him as war criminals.

Read the Bills

An aspect of the U.S. Attorney scandal that needs to be aggressively highlighted, but won't be, is that the Bush administration was able to slip a measure into the reauthorization of the Patriot Act allowing the Attorney General to appoint "interim" federal prosecutors to indefinite terms, effectively bypassing the checks-and-balances provided by the Senate confirmation process. The desire to create an unaccountable authoritarian executive branch has long been an obvious characteristic of the Bush administration, and it isn't the least bit surprising that they'd take every opportunity to enhance their own power. That is an important aspect of the story that should be noted, but what I want to highlight here is the broken mess of a process that allows a law to be passed without Congress actually knowing what it says. These are our elected representatives, who are supposed to be looking out for our best interests, and they're voting on laws that have drastic effects to the country without even knowing what they say. How is this acceptable to anyone? How is the media not making this a featured story every day?

You might notice I put a small banner on the right sidebar featuring the Read the Bills Act. I strongly urge you to visit the site, read the material, and support their efforts. They have an easy system to let you directly email your Representative and Senators, and they appreciate small donations. The main provisions of the Read the Bills Act include:

• Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate.
  
  
• Every member of the House and Senate must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has attentively either personally read, or heard read, the complete bill to be voted on.
  
  
• Every old law coming up for renewal under the sunset provisions must also be read according to the same rules that apply to new bills.
  
  
• Every bill to be voted on must be published on the Internet at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give public notice of the date when a vote will be held on that bill.
  
  
• Passage of a bill that does not abide by these provisions will render the measure null and void, and establish grounds for the law to be challenged in court.
  
  
• Congress cannot waive these requirements.

These are laws that absolutely everyone should support, regardless of your personal politics.

the list of bullshit

1.) The offensive foul call against DJ Strawberry that changed the end of the Maryland game today. Not that the Terps played very well, but they deserved a fair shot at the end, and the defender looked to be moving. You can't call a questionable charge in the last minute of a close game.

2.) This couple getting kicked out of an IHOP for a quick kiss on the cheek. Fuck those facist bigotards.

3.) Anyone who doesn't love MAN BEARD BLOG. A haiku in honor of MBB:

Brambles of whiskers
Adorn his rugged visage
Fellate him or die

Support the troops

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain and Democratic Presidential Candidate Barrack Obama both recently made comments about the wasted lives of our soldiers in Iraq, and both were heavily criticized by their opposing parties and forced to make an apology. Setting aside the glaring hypocrisy of both parties on this issue, what I want to know is why the hell their comments were regarded as controversial at all.

Inevitably the bullshit answer has something to do with "supporting the troops." Because absolutely every discussion about the war has to include that phrase. Anyone who criticizes the war is instantly smeared as unsupportive of the troops by war-supporters, to the point where now every war critic has to jump through rhetorical hoops of making sure every paragraph includes a sentence in "support of our brave men and women fighting in the war."

How do we accept this complete bullshit? How fucking stupid are we? How can someone advocate sending under-prepared Americans to fight and die in a needless voluntary war and then be taken seriously when they question if someone who wants to bring those Americans out of harm's way "supports" those Americans? How can we not collectively rise up in outrage when this administration talks about supporting the troops while they ignore the wounded soldiers whose bodies and minds have been broken by this disastrous war? What the fuck is going on?

Thank the flying spaghetti monster that someone finally clearly articulated this issue. (This is a brilliant article that deserves a better and more serious sounding introduction than that.) All this "support the troops" is just pathetic rhetoric, intentionally designed to tug on the last emotional string of a public that is otherwise opposed to the war, that string being the lives of the people fighting it. The average American doesn't know a whole lot about Iraq, generally wants to avoid war, and strongly believes they should support the troops. That is an equation that is ripe for the exact cynical and manipulation we're seeing: powerful authority figures suggesting without elaboration that certain arguments in a seemingly complex situation reduce to anti-troop arguments.

Put another way, American troops in Iraq, or heading for Iraq, and the American dead from the Iraq War are now hostage to, and the only effective excuse for, Bush administration policy; and American politicians and the public are being held hostage by the idea that the troops must be supported (and funded) above all else, no matter how wasteful or repugnant or counterproductive or destructive or dangerous you may consider the war in Iraq.

The President expressed this particularly vividly in response to the following question at his recent news conference:

"[i]f you're one of those Americans that thinks you've made a terrible mistake [in Iraq], that it's destined to end badly, what do you do? If they speak out, are they by definition undermining the troops?"

Bush replied, in part:

"I said early in my comment… somebody who doesn't agree with my policy is just as patriotic a person as I am. Your question is valid. Can somebody say, we disagree with your tactics or strategy, but we support the military -- absolutely, sure. But what's going to be interesting is if they don't provide the flexibility and support for our troops that are there to enforce the strategy that David Petraeus, the general on the ground, thinks is necessary to accomplish the mission."

This is hot-button blackmail. Little could be more painful than a parent, any parent, outliving a child, or believing that a child had his or her life cut off at a young age and in vain. To use such natural parental emotions, as well as those that come from having your children (or siblings or wife or husband) away at war and in constant danger of injury or death, is the last refuge of a political scoundrel. It amounts to mobilizing the prestige of anxious or grieving parents in a program of national emotional blackmail. It effectively musters support for the President's ongoing Iraq policy by separating the military from the war it is fighting and by declaring non-support for the war taboo, if you act on it.

So just stick a magnetic yellow ribbon on your gas-chuggling SUV and sleep easy knowing you're supporting our troops!

Pete Stark steps up

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) recently "came out of the closet," "outing himself" (There are many parallels between prejudices against atheists and homosexuals, something I've seen noted by Richard Dawkins, among others. Contrast the tone of that link to this one from a San Francisco paper.) as a non-theist. He's the first member of Congress ever to publicly make such a declaration.

Here's a nice celebration of this significant event by Sam Harris. The American Humanist Association took out an ad in the Washington Post to congratulate Stark.

And here's an insane response from the Christian Seniors Association, a group that says that "the liberals in Congress want to throttle any school child who bows his or her head in prayer" and that liberals are "bullies who are so determined to use the power of government to silence prayer and every other religious expression of free speech." It is completely appropriate that lamentation that there is an atheist Congressman is accompanied by such idiotic nonsense.

There's plenty more backwards stupidity (and I should note that when I mention "nonsense" and "stupidity" in this context I'm not referring to their religion, but to their arguments) from Christians:

"It is unfortunate in a society that is going down the path of godlessness and making right wrong and wrong right, that we continue down this path by celebrating one member of Congress who denies that God exists altogether," Concerned Women for America Director of Legislative Relations Mike Mears told Cybercast News Service.

"The founding fathers ... founded this country on godly principles," Mears said. "Fifty-one of the 56 signers [of the Declaration of Independence] had a Christian worldview and [Stark] wants to change that and celebrate - basically - godlessness."

Perhaps George Bush the elder will now suggest that Pete Stark should not be considered a citizen or a patriot.

something you can do

http://filibusterforpeace.org/index.html

yeah

Yeah, it is disgusting to see all these Republican scandals popping like infected zits all around us. We got Walter Reed, Attorney purges, now some broken pumps in New Orleans, and who knows what else.

Perfect:

I’d like to suggest that the conservative approach to governance can be summarized in the following equation:

where

Or, in the vulgate:

Conservative governance = no planning + privatization + insider looting = disaster to the power of an acute clusterfuck, where insider looting is the alpha and omega of Republican policy.

all lies all the time (updated)

More stories are coming out showing how the Bush Administration lies about just about everything they do.

Justice Department: Liars (liars!) about FBI abuse of power
Attorney General: Liar about politically-driven attorney purge
White House: Liars about Bush's history of undermining global warming science

Plus there was the whole Libby trial, illustrating how Cheney was obsessed with attacking the credibility of someone who dared dispute the lies about Iraq's non-existant WMD program.

UPDATE: Nice! My boy Greenwald comes through with a post on exactly this topic, and relates it to the extremist authoritarianism that characterizes this administration and the Republican Party in general:

Lying to Congress is what this administration generally -- and the DOJ specifically -- has done continuously....

None of these acts occur in isolation. They are all part of the broader view of the Bush administration that the President's power cannot be constrained by the law or by the Congress. They believe they have the right to lie to Congress about their behavior, even though lying to Congress is, as Atrios noted today, a felony...

It's so vital to note that this Republican belief in the right to lie to Congress has deep roots back in the Reagan administration and, even before that, in the Nixon administration...

Of course, the reason that lying to Congress is a felony is because Congress is composed of the representatives of the American people, and when executive branch officials lie to Congress, they are lying to the country. They subvert the entire constitutional order by preventing the American people from exercising overisight over the executive branch through their representatives in Congress, and it turns the President into an unchecked, unaccountable ruler.

The cats

ssshhh

883 hands played in 5 hours of play in 2007, mostly 1-on-1 hold'em, exclusively one-tabling. Poker is more fun this way.

Conservatives Without Conscience

In Conservatives Without Conscience, John Dean writes:

Clearly the most serious threat from terrorists is that they obtain a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). But we face another very serious threat: namely, that our own government terrorizes us so much that we are willing to give up the ideals of democracy in exchange for reducing our fear. This threat to democracy seems well understood by Osama bin Laden and his troops. I have noted in the past, and I believe even more strongly today, that "the real danger posed by terrorism for our democracy is not that they can defeat us with physical or military force," rather "terrorism present its real threat in provoking democratic regimes to embrace and employ authoritarian measures that (1) weaken the fabric of democracy; (2) discredit the government domestically as well as internationally; (3) alienate segments of the population from their government, thereby pushing more people to support (passively, if not outright actively) the terrorist organizations and their causes; and (4) undermine the government's claim to the moral high ground in the battle against the terrorists, while gaining legitimacy for the latter." This is precisely what is happening in America today, as Bush and Cheney are being sucker punched by Osama bin Laden. Authoritarianism is everywhere in the federal government, not because Bush and Cheney do not realize what they are doing, but because they are authoritarians, and they are doing what authoritarians do. In the process they have weakened the fabric of democracy, discredited the American government as never before in the eyes of the world, caused people to wonder if the terrorists have a legitimate complaint, and taken the United States far from the moral high ground in refusing to abide by basic international law.

He goes on to note that despite the Bush administration's constant reliance on the politics of fear-mongering, they've done remarkably little to actually address the threat of terrorism.

Glenn at his best today

Blind Faith in the Bush Administration

What Happened to the Padilla Interrogation Videos?

Oprah is officially an asshole

Oprah pwn3d by Randi

Backwards regulations

A compelling story from Brice Lord. The punchline is that politicians and corporate interests managed to take advantage of environment concerns to pass a law purporting be environmentally friendly that actually has the opposite effect.

YAY America!!

milestone!

See For Yourself passed 30,000 hits today. I wonder how many of those were me...

heathen coins

Godless coins are worth 50X their face value! Too bad that doesn't work for my usual methods.

Top Badass Movies

3/7/07 - Why are all these special notes in different colors? Oh well, can't stop now I guess. I saw 300 last night, and based on that one viewing I'm going to have to slide it into the #3 slot.


6/2 - I rented and watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I don't usually like older movies, but I did enjoy this one. But maybe I don't have a sense of historical perspective because I don't think this movie is worthy of adding to the badass list. The only character that was anywhere close to a true badass was Angel Eyes. Clint Eastwood has some badass moments, but he also has some other moments that destroy any hope of him being a true badass.



5/11/06 - Special Note:

Today "NostalgiaDrag@gmail.com" chimed in to this thread with one of the all time great comments on this silly blog. I don't know who that is, but a Google search of that email address reveals 2 other top notch contributions he has made to society: Urban Dictionary definitions of badassdom and IBS. To quote Walter Sobchak: "not exactly a lightweight." This is a man who deserves to be taken seriously and respected.

Aside from his remarkable reputation, his contribution was excellent for 2 main reasons.

First, he clearly has put a lot of thought into his own list of top badass movies. And since he seems to be the internet's foremost authority on badassdom, his list should be given its due attention. And so here it is.

NostalgiaDrag's True Badass List

1. Sin City
2. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
3. For a Few Dollars More
4. Reservoir Dogs
5. Pulp Fiction
6. Payback
7. Tombstone
8. Kill Bill
9. Boondock Saints
10. Fistful of Dollars.

I haven't seen #2, 3, or 10, but that will have to change soon.

The second reason his contribution was excellent was the brief but powerful comment at the end:

"Sin City easily ranks at #1. Hell, Marv's story alone would qualify this movie at #1. If anyone disagrees with this list they can die."

His point about Sin City is absolutely right, and his closing remark is truly in keeping with the badass spirit.

I should also note that his list brings attention to the glaring omission of Pulp Fiction from my own badass list up til now, in spite it being #3 on my favorite movies of all time.

Thanks and kudos to Nostalgia Drag, and without further ado, onto my latest revision of this list.

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Similar to the "action" genre, these are my favorite movies where the clear intention of the movie is simply to be badass. Kill Bill, Bourne and Die Hard movies count together. T2, Batman Begins, and Underworld stand alone from sequels/prequels/relateds.

1. Sin City
   
2. Pulp Fiction
   
3. 300
   
4. Kill Bill
   
5. Tombstone
   
6. Payback
   
7. Terminator 2: Judgement Day
   
8. Die Hard
   
9. Gladiator
   
10. Boondock Saints
    
11. Bourne
    
12. Underworld
    
13. Batman Begins
    
14. The Rock
    

Honorable Mention: Blade, Con Air

Noteworthy Exclusions:

Bond - I have mostly only seen the Brosnan Bond movies, in which Bond is more about being suave and sneaky than a straight up badass. I'm told that Connery was more of a badass, but I haven't seen much of his.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - I enjoyed the movie, but I don't think it is worthy of this list, because only one character, Angel Eyes, was anywhere close to a true badass, and the main character (Clint Eastwood), despite having badass moments, was not a true badass.

And I haven't seen these suggested inclusions:

• Rocky
• Dirty Harry
• Scarface
• For a Few Dollars More
• Fistful of Dollars

Technorati tags:
movies
badass

300 badasses

I'm going to have to make room on the Badass Movie list for 300. Man Beard Blog has the review.

watch it burn

I have to agree with Arthur: "Christ, what contemptible pigs make up the D.C. political class."

It is more important to them to avoid an ugly debate in Congress than do whatever it takes to get out of A REAL WAR WHERE REAL PEOPLE ARE GETTING FUCKING KILLED. Jesus fucking forbid that we have some raised voices in our sacred halls; it is way more important to avoid unpleasantness than to bring our soldiers home from a war that we can't win where our very presence actually makes things worse every day. We can't talk about impeaching the law-breaking liars who started the illegal war, because that might impede our ability to advance our precious Democratic Agenda! What could possibly be on that fucking agenda that is more important?

I fucking hate everyone.

A.)

Vice President Dick Cheney describes the Bush administration's doctrine on dealing with terrorism:

“ If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response."

B.)

NASA Can't Pay for Killer Asteroid Hunt:

NASA officials say the space agency is capable of finding nearly all the asteroids that might pose a devastating hit to Earth, but there isn't enough money to pay for the task so it won't get done.

The cost to find at least 90 percent of the 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets by 2020 would be about $1 billion, according to a report NASA will release later this week. The report was previewed Monday at a Planetary Defense Conference in Washington.

I'm sure the precise percentage is the only difference.

I have a secret!

ps - there is no such thing as Jesus!! (just thought you'd want to know)

CUBAN!

I like it when people make stand for what is right.

Top Movies

My favorite movies of all time, which combines my opinion of their artistic merit, entertainment value, and other vague personal preferences. Sequels all count together except where noted. As this changes, or if I expand the list, I'll bump it up.

1. Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny
   
2. American Beauty
3. Lord of the Rings Trilogy
4. Pulp Fiction
5. The Royal Tenenbaums
6. The Godfather Trilogy
7. Kill Bill Volumes
8. Rounders
9. Goodwill Hunting
10. Fight Club
11. Almost Famous
12. The Big Lebowski
13. Tombstone
14. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
15. The Shawshank Redemption
16. Wallstreet
17. American History X
18. Seven
19. Goodfellas
20. The Princess Bride
21. The Matrix (only the 1st)
22. Gangs of New York
23. The Silence of the Lambs (only this one)
24. The Lion King

Honorable Mention: Indiana Jones, Casino, LA Confidential, Rushmore

Idiots in charge

This column is as good as it gets when it comes to laying out in plain language exactly how stupid the Iraq situation is. And he wrote it in April of 2003. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld are such fucking idiots.

failure all around

http://greenmountaindaily.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=995

What it means to support Republicans

This article by Glenn Greenwald expresses quite articulately what the Republican Party is all about these days. There was a time when it meant something else (I'd love to see a party devoted to limited government and fiscal restraint, which Bush/Cheney and their rubber-stamp Congress absolutely destroyed) but those days are gone. The heart of Republicanism is Ann Coulter. It is disgusting. And Glenn exposes one of their primary rhetorical devises, one that is mind-bogglingly effective - which is to express outrage at superficial things from liberals while the core of their conservative identities are infinitely more disturbing. "Hypocrisy" doesn't even begin to do it justice.

Glenn's article refers to a few "scandals" that you may or may not be aware of, so I'll quickly sum up. The first is that Edwards hired a pair of bloggers for his campaign who in their own blogging prior to their hiring had said "controversial" things. Some conservatives raised a stink about how they had used bad words (the horror!! bloggers using naughty words!!) and the media actually covered it as some kind of Edwards scandal. That story was dying down when suddenly the President of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue raises a stink about how those bloggers were "anti-Catholic" and hateful and vulgar and somehow the story got new life again, in spite of the raving hypocrisy of Donohue (who has said some of the most hateful and disgusting and religiously-bigoted things you can imagine). The other "scandal" he mentioned is that various conservative voices raised a huge fuss about how a few anonymous commenters on liberal blogs (meaning literally anyone in the world could have anonymously posted a comment, not that the author of the blog said it) expressed regrets that Cheney hadn't died in the recent attack on the base where he was staying. Meanwhile prominent, mainstream voices (not random internet people who could be literally anyone and certainly weren't prominent figures) like Coulter and Limbaugh routinely spew the most vile and bigoted stuff imaginable.

In case there was any doubt, major media is silent on Coulter's garbage.

State of the Blog

Recently a good friend of mine told me that he doesn't read this blog any more because it is all politics now. I looked over my recent archives and indeed I have been relentlessly pursuing what I would more broadly call religipoliticosocial commentary. I don't have any strong feelings about his comment, meaning it didn't offend me or sadden me, but I've been trying to figure out if I want to try to change anything here, not for his sake but for mine. I've enjoyed that a situation has developed here where a small group of friends read what I write and often chime in and discuss things. It is nice building a little community around a few ideas. But would it be better to build a larger community by being more diverse with my content?

For the most part I write about topics that interest me, and more specifically topics that inspire me to want to write. I've been consumed with, and motivated to write by, religipoliticosocial things lately, which I realize is a polarizing area of discourse since I avoided it like the plague for years. Now though I think that the topics I've been digging into are very very important, not always to me personally in a direct and tangible way (today anyway), but in some other way that is hard to neatly fit into the structure of this sentence or paragraph or entry. I guess for now the way I'll put it is that I'm trying to be a better person, which I realize seems to have the awkward implication that not being interested in these topics makes one a lesser person. But it isn't really the case that I think it is wrong or irresponsible for someone to recoil from this stuff, just that for me personally I'd feel like I would be violating something if I didn't go where I'm going.

That nebulous italicized something is going to take more effort to write about than I feel like making right now. But to the point of the post, this is a good time to take stock and reevaluate the direction of this blog, because that something is leading me to a turning point too. I guess before I get more specific on that, I'd be curious to see what other people think. Of course the few of you left reading this have an obvious selection bias so I might not reasonably expect anyone who has endured months of this stuff to suggest I change direction now. But it is my impression that open-mindedness and broad curiosity is a common trait of the kinds of people who would come this far in the first place, so I don't imagine a change it likely to be met with howls of protest either.