slapnose.com

Anyone catch Bush's press conference last night? I didn't, because, you know, I can't bear to look at the man, but I caught some updates on the late news, Nightline, and all over the Internets today.

The big (non-) news was about his Social Security gutting plan, as Bush gave some brand new deceptions a whirl.

Some highlights:

Bush's first new spin was a plan "where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off," which many news outlets have reported today as his offering to "only cut benefits for the wealthy." The problem is that his definition of wealthy may be a bit different than yours. Do you make more than $20,000 a year? You're stinkin' rich! Your benefits will be cut - oh boy will they be cut - because clearly your pimpin' ass can easily afford it.

The cleverness here is making it sound like low-income workers benefits will grow under his plan. In fact, people who make under $20,000 will simply be the only people not to have their benefits cut. See how that works? Well crafted.

As Think Progress points out, when Bush was selling us his tax cut program, he defined low income as anything below $100,000 a year.

Why, I just don't know how to feel now? Am I rich or poor? I guess I'm poor enough to get screwed by the tax cuts, but rich enough to get screwed by the Social Security cuts. I imagine most of you are right there with me.

Onward..

Responding to the widespread antipathy to his private/personal investment accounts (for some reason, people don't trust the stock market), Bush offered to give people the option to invest their money in Treasury bonds, which, he said, "are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government."

Gee, seems like only a couple of weeks ago that Bush was trotting out a filing cabinet as a prop and declaring, "There is no trust fund, just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay."

And what are the IOUs he's talking about? Why, they're U.S. Treasury bonds, of course!

I'm confused again! Are Treasury bonds crap or what? Oh, Mr. President, you've got me so befuddled...

UPDATE :: For those of you with glaze-over-proof eyes and a taste for numbers and graphs, here's a detailed analysis of "Progressive Price Indexing", as Bush's new plan is called, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Paul Shirley of the Phoenix Suns has his very own blog, called "Road Ramblings." Very interesting insight into what it's like to be a professional athlete. Particularly an intelligent, funny professional athlete.

He seems to see most of the crap surrounding the sport for what it is: crap. If he wrote 'crap' though, it would probably be replaced by [something], as his blog is censored by the league with the use of brackets. It adds to the humor as he tried to describe things without G-rated language.

From his March 23 entry..

Good stuff.

Holy crap.

The ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D - NY), released a statement describing her confrontation with the Committee Chair.

Seriously, does it not disturb anyone that the most powerful nation on earth is run by 4th-graders? What in THE HELL is the matter with these people?

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, the original writer of the doctored amendments, is not happy...

Sure, what the hell, let them write the speeches. At this point, maybe we should just give 'em the keys. They'll run the whole thing off a cliff in like 8 months.

Oh, media, how do you suck? Here's one way...

From the Daily Show the other night. Watch for the second part of this "Gay Watch" segment, about the Texas law prohibiting homosexuals from raising foster children.

Watch Clip.

This is where we live now. CNN, the "most trusted name in news," doesn't think it's appropriate to point out blatant lies on the air. Instead, the anchors will chitty-chat about it during the break. I feel so, what is it, informed? No... Nauseated! That's it.

Eric Alterman has a truly alarming rundown of the Bush Administration's war against the truth in this week's Nation, or maybe it's last week's. I subscribe to it, so I get it a week late. Makes sense.

In any case, if you're like me and sufficiently paranoid, there's nothing here you don't already know. But if you're not like me and you think the First Amendment gives us a free press, you could use some paranoia, so read this.

Really, it's not funny. It's scary. A little funny maybe.

Just in time! A week after the legislation was defeated.

Audio of this morning's NPR interview with Gates here

Via Defective Yeti...

These are my URL ABCs:

• A is for apple.com - i never had a fetish before. it disturbs me.
• B is for bloglines.com/myblogs - so many blogs, so little worth reading...
• C is for clubcontour.com - cheap happy hour! now we're getting somewhere. $2 calamari!
• D is for dangillmor.typepad.com - I have no idea who this is.
• E is for enigmarelle.com - makers of URLwell, handy link getter-back-to-laterer.
• F is for fedex.com - tracking packages. so useless, so irresistable.
• G is for gmail.com - indeed.
• H is for htmldog.com - sounds more interesting than it is. no, wait, it doesn't sound interesting either.
• I is for insidemacgames.com - i don't remember ever going to this, but the location bar don't lie.
• J is for jewishyirishy.com - my friend laurel.
• K is for kuow.org - my girlfriend works here.
• L is for livepage.apple.com - the browser starts on this page. i'm surprised i haven't changed that.
• M is for media.thestranger.com/ads/stranger/admin/ - oh! the ad server! exciting!
• N is for news.google.com - all the news that's fit to google.
• O is for opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=95000429 - worst. columnist. ever.
• P is for portlandmercury.com - the stranger's sister paper.
• Q is for qmail.org/man/man5/dot-qmail.html - nothing to say about this.
• R is for ranchero.com - not sauce, software.
• S is for slapnose.com - me. me me me.
• T is for thestranger.com - work.
• U is for upsidedownhippo.com - freelance project. how'd that get into my work browser?
• V is for votos.de/FEET_ME/ - pictures of rock stars' feet
• W is for washingtonmonthly.com - i also like this blog
• X is for nothing. i've never been to a site that started with x
• Y is for or y
• Z is for ziplinq.com - retractable cables are just the best.

Bias warning: I totally have a little crush on Sarah Vowell. I once saw her read at the New York Public Library, and after I asked her if she knew that Gansevoort Street (she had mentioned walking there in her talk) in Chelsea was named after Herman Melville's grandfather. She did. Cool, huh?

***

Assassination Vacation is great! Really, really great.

You want more?

Fine.

Assassination Vacation follows Vowell's journey across the country -- from a speck of an island in the Gulf of Mexico to a Klingitt village in Alaska -- tracing the stories of the assassinations of three presidents: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. In telling these big (Lincoln) and small (Garfield) stories, Vowell manages to take in quite a swath of American History, all told with a distinctive humor and style. This is the way history should be taught. It's about the stories, people. Enough already with the dates and mind-numbing chronologies. Vowell tells these histories as if she knows the people involved, which gives the reader the distinct impression that it's possible to know them.

A great thing about reading books written by people you hear on the radio is that you can hear their voices in your head. Their particular rhythm and tone -- in Vowell's case a kind of nasal auditory sneer, but in a good way -- adds a nice familiarity and warmth to the text. Of course, this is reinforced by the fact that this book is as much about Vowell as it is about Lincoln. It's memoir mixed with history mixed with satire, and I like it.

Did I mention that I liked it?

Here's what I didn't like: I didn't like feeling like I wish I had written it. I didn't like noting that Liz and I had been to many of the same places on our Travelin' Van trip (even the Dry Tortugas, and nobody's been there), but we didn't write a book, though we meant to. I didn't like my job while I was reading this book.

See, this review is as much about me as it is about the book. See the parallels? Eerie.

While Assassination Vacation is about the past, Vowell's storytelling is rooted firmly in the present. She constantly throws in little jabs at the current administration, noting that she has to avert her eyes from the White House while touring Washington and pointing out the scary similarities between the imperialist fervor of the McKinley administration with our current world-domination agenda. What's not to love?

The best thing about Vowell, though, is that at bottom, she genuinely loves this country. That couldn't sound cheesier, but it's true. She is an honest patriot, not a jingoistic flag-waving nutball, but someone who can see all the cracks and flaws in our facade, but whose passion for the great experiment in democracy is not diminished. She knows this country was built, and continues to be built, on a giant pile of dead bodies, but that's history for you. It is, as she says, "one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between." But that's no reason not to be optimistic. Or at least fondly reminiscent.

I did find one typo, so it's not all raves.

So what's the spin going to be on this.. It's the last gasp of the fleeing, desparate, terrorists? Better there than here? All the liberals' fault? Judges? Jane Fonda?

Stay tuned..

This is Good -> Matthew Baldwin is Hero of the Year.

President Bush pretended to pressure Crown Prince Abdullah in Crawford today, the two acting like they're not practically in the same family.

Bush sought to allay Americans fears that he wasn't doing anything about soaring gas prices by meeting with a close family associate in the oil business and pretending to disagree with him.

The President added, "Heh."

Josh Marshall is keeping good tabs on all the media outlets that have picked up this "the Democrats call it the 'nuclear option'" bullshit. This morning on NPR they said it. It's everywhere. It's really pissing me off.

These media companies know damn well that the term "nuclear option" is not an invention of the Democrats, nor was it, until recently, used only by Democrats. In fact, the term was coined by former majority leader Trent Lott.

The Republican noise machine has so successfully muddied the waters on this that now some people are referring to what the Democrats would do in response to the nuclear option as "the nuclear option."

It's really sad when every media outlet from coast to coast just picks up this garbage without question. The Republicans invented the term, they're the ones threatening to "go nuclear," but now this violent, destructive imagery has been successfully pinned entirely on the opposition. It's a magnificent lie. Conservatives did some polls, discovered that the term elicited a negative response, so they switched to "the constitutional option." In a world that made any sense, a move so pathetically transparent would be highlighted by the media. But this is not that world.

Keep watching Talking Points Memo to see how amazingly fast this lie is spreading.

Unbelievable.

Oh, to hell with it. Who wants to move to New Zealand?

It's great when Republicans accuse Democrats of being partisan, and when George W. Bush demands that his political appointments, the "people's business," not be held up by "politics." Then they turn around and restrict attendance at a telecom conference based on political contributions.

The quote from Trent Duffy is unbelievable. There will be a policy discussion, and "call them nutty," they think it's totally reasonable to exclude anyone who didn't support the president's reelection. Because, really, the 49% of the population that those people represent have no place in the discussion over the regulation of bandwidth.

This amounts to an Enemies List. This is really fucked up.

As Atrios notes, can you imagine what the response would have been if Clinton had done something like this? Sure, it's a tired comparison, but that's only because it keeps happening.

Via Kevin Drum and Atrios.

Is there really anyone in the country who still thinks Tom DeLay isn't dirty?

What DeLay and his handlers are trying to do with this is not to deny that the expenses were paid by lobbyists, but just play dumb. Tom DeLay himself, they say, "has always believed and continues to believe" that the expenses were paid by a non-profit group.

The evidence continues to mount that DeLay did in fact personally know who was paying his expenses, but the best part is that he "continues to believe" it. Even though there are credit card receipts showing that expenses were paid by Abramoff and his associates, DeLay still is under the impression that the National Center for Public Policy Research paid for the trip.

So I guess the question now is whether DeLay is just lying, or completely delusional.

Today is "Justice Sunday," when a group of religious fanatics will stage what Frank Rich rightly calls a "high-tech lynching in prime time."

The Senate Majority leader, Dr. Bill Frist, will be addressing the gathering by videotape, apparently thinking that not actually showing up will protect him from association with a group that literally seeks to take over the court system by any means necessary.

Think I'm exagerrating? Think again.

So many things going on here. Primarily, people like Dobson and Perkins and those they claim to represent are explicitly saying that they basically own conservative lawmakers. This is not the way our democracy works. While politicians should most certainly keep in mind the will of their constituents, they do not owe them fealty. What Perkins and Dobson have in mind is more along the lines of Tammany Hall and other blatantly corrupt political systems. Once elected, legislators do not owe allegiance to those groups who "got them there."

Something else in the above text, something that pisses me off but good. The LA Times attributes the term "nuclear option" to the Democrats. This is bullshit. That term has been used by both parties for years, and it is only in the past few weeks that the Republican NewSpeak machine has determined that it doesn't poll well and has switched that party to the more legal sounding "constitutional option." The Times shamefully just picked up this canard and went with it.

And then Frist's spokesperson says that he doesn't support these ideas, yet he is appearing at their rally tonight, which expressly promotes the same ideas.

Be afraid.

Via Digby.

UPDATE :: Talk Left points out that the Family Research Council wasn't always so steadfastly anti-filibuster. In fact, when it suited their agenda, they were downright supportive, as was the case when they defended the filibuster against gay ambassadorial nominee James Hormel a few years ago. In 1998, a FRC official had this to say about that:

Sheesh.

Josh Marshall notes
that Senator Rick "Maddog" Santorum has introduced a bill that would prevent the government from making meteorological data available to the public for free (as it has been here).

The justification? Having this information available free and without ads cuts into the profits of the Weather Channel and AccuWeather.

As Josh points out, the data distributed by NOAA and other government agencies is ours; we paid for it. Our tax dollars paid for every one of the satellites and other gizmos that enable us to have such an amazing handle on our weather. The data that the Weather Channel and AccuWeather sell mostly comes from the government. But they want to sell it back to us.

Josh:

More from the Palm Beach Post.

Listen, dickhead, simply making it illegal for the National Weather Service to share the information it collects with the public does not mean they will stop "producing forecasts of 'warm and sunny'". Forecasting nice weather is sort of part of the science of predicting bad weather. He seems to be implying that the Weather Service, once freed from the drudgery of forecasting the weather can focus their energy only on those situations when dangerous weather activity is happening. Presumably they'll find out that a hurricane is coming by paying a subscription fee to The Weather Channel. They'll be alerted when something is brewing and they can fire up all the expensive machines then.

It's clearly not necessary to say this, because Barry Myers is obviously just a liar, but exposing the data on the web is not a major expense once the data has been collected. No money will be saved by this bill, it's only purpose is to generate profits for these companies.

Bill Frist is getting criticism from the very people he means to stir into a frothy religious bloodlust.

Good good. See, not all religious people are certifiably insane, just the ones running the country. It's really way past time for the multitude of "real" religious folks in this country to stand up to these crazies.

The story The Stranger reported yesterday about Microsoft caving to gay-haters (post) has been picked up far and wide (The New York Times), but it's too late.

The bill was defeated today in the Washington Senate, again.

Hey Microsoft! Fuck you!

Excellent.

Lovely.

The Stranger (full disclosure - I totally run the place) exposes the latest reason to hate Microsoft.

Out here in Washington (somewhere between California and Canada), some form of legislation proposing to add gays to the list of groups protected from discrimination has been proposed, and defeated, for 29 years in a row. For several years, Microsoft has publicly supported the legislation, in keeping with their very progressive corporate policies on homosexuality.

Not this year.

It seems that a "mega-church" preacher by the name of Ken Hutcherson managed to get a meeting with Microsoft top brass, during which he threatened a national bigot boycott of the company if they supported the bill again this year. Shockingly, Microsoft agreed and changed their position on the bill to "neutral," a move that some say could kill the bill's chances of passage.

Naturally, the company's official line is that they are merely reevaluating how and when they will take a position on social issues, and the meeting with Huthcherson was just some kind of crazy coincidence.

From an email sent to The Stranger by a Microsoft spokesperson: "This year we made the decision to focus our resources and efforts on a limited number of issues that most closely align with our business objectives and directly affect our industry."

Uh-huh.

The weird thing about this story is the boycott threat itself. Is Microsoft really worried that Evangelical Christians across the country are going to suddenly switch to Linux? As a near global monopoly, I don't see what they're scared of, short of bad publicity. And that's probably all it is. And that's scary.

Far-right whackos like Hutcherson think that the re-installation of George Bush in November gives them the power to run around threatening to unleash the religious block on anyone who would dare oppose their plan to drag us all back to the 18th century.

John at Americablog is sufficiently pissed about this, and offers many links and email addresses to folks at Microsoft (scroll to the bottom). Sent them a note, tell them they vastly misplayed this one.

Then go buy a Mac.

Shameful.

UPDATE :: It's worth noting that Ken Hutcherson is a black man, yet he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge any parallels between gay rights and the civil rights movement. It just makes the whole thing worse. Someone whose people have been, and continue to be, terribly discriminated against advocating discrimination against others. Truly sad.

A reader who knows members of Hutcherson's church (Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, WA) writes in with this observation: "I have never met such ridiculous and homophobic people in my life."

Sounds about right.

Bush took time out from the Social Security Road Show to urge Congress to "put aside politics" and just rubber-stamp his nominations already.

This silly talking point about "politics" is just dumb. Asking politicians to stop their politickin' is like asking a dog to stop licking his ass. He can't help it, it's part of being a dog.

Nah, that's no good. Colorful, but not so accurate. It's like asking a police officer if he could please just get the job done without wasting time with all that police work.

The Senate's refusal to rush Bolton's nomination through is perfectly legitimate. It's their job. The reason the vote has been delayed is that several Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee have expressed serious reservations about his being the right man for the job. The President, of course, has never done anything that wasn't the exact right decision at the exact right time, so these Senators are obviously working with Osama.

For more on Bolton and the history of long debates over the appointment of previous U.N. ambassadors, see American Progress' rundown.

And then there's this:

John Kerry has issued a video message today, apparently broadcasting from deep within the Death Star, concerning the recent behavior of Tom DeLay and Bill Frist.

DeLay, of course, is just a scumbag. Frist is going around accusing Democrats of fighting a war on people of faith.

Kerry is pretty stiff and pretty boring, but he's right. These are important times. Pay attention.

Speaking of the rapid erosion of our democracy... Liz and I went to see Ira Glass give a talk last night. He spoke about the recent changes in FCC decency rules. Since the recent "Bono decision," broadcasters can be fined up to half a million dollars for uttering the word "fuck" on the airwaves in any context. The fine can be levied against every station that airs the material, not only the broadcaster. Glass played a portion of a David Sedaris piece about a giant turd, aired about 5 years ago. He noted that if they were to air that piece now on the 500 stations that carry This American Life, the fines could reach a quarter of a billion dollars, far more than the fines levied against all the multinational banks involved in the Enron scandal combined.

For talking about a shit. Not even using the word shit, just talking about poop.

The whole thing is based on the ludicrous notion that hearing these words, or even being exposed to these ideas, "damages children" though sociological studies have found this to be completely ridiculous (see this book), while no one, anywhere, ever, has ever shown that it does actually damage anyone.

The same studies have found that nearly all children already know these words, and they learn them from their parents. Further, they use them in exactly the same ways that adults use them -- for emphasis, when angry, and in other emotional ways.

Think about it.. The FCC's stance on this is actually saying that when you hear the phrase "Fucking Awesome!" you will invariably think of crass, loveless sexual intercourse.

It's patently absurd to anyone with a shred of sense, and yet these are the rules that now govern the public airwaves. Glass pointed out that NPR shows such as his and Fresh Air have recently had to cut words like "pissed" (as in, "he was pissed") and "suck" (as in "that sucks") just to be safe.

It may seem like a trivial issue, but it isn't. Death by a thousand tiny cuts.

President Bush signed the new bankruptcy law today, making it much harder for people crippled by medical costs to get a fresh start.

He made some hilarious statements during the signing ceremony. I mean, the guy was on fire.

Ha ha ha! Man! That's priceless!

For the record, not that it's relevant or anything, but the national debt has risen by $2.2 trillion since Bush took office. And he's cutting taxes.

Bush wasn't done, though. The laughs kept coming...

Oh, mercy... Stop it, Mr. President! You're killing me!

Strangely, the President failed to take advantage of the sure-fire laugh lines about how the credit card companies had been campaigning for this bill for years and how the Republicans in Congress (and many Democrats) steadfastly refused to close the massive loopholes in bankruptcy laws used by the rich.

That would have had them rolling in the aisles.

Hopefully this will be the last thing I have to say about the damn pope for a while. Stupid pope.

Turns out ole' Ratty was part of the group who ordered U.S. bishops to deny communion to abortion rights supporters, including then-candidate John Kerry, calling such support a "grave sin."

Strangely, the letter didn't mention the death penalty, which one of the other candidates in the 2004 race is really quite fond of.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany has benighted himself Pope Benedict the sixteenth (that's the XVIth for you Romans). I was hoping for a freaky new pope name - Bobby I or Sanchez or Dweezil X or something - but what can you do.. Traditions die hard for these yahoos, as evidenced by the chimney smoke communication system (but not by the cell phone jammers installed in the Sistine Chapel, that's new).

The headline should really be whatever the Latin for "You have a pope" is, instead of "We have a pope," since I don't have no pope, never did - but it's hard to find good Latin dictionaries on the internets.

"Oo-yay ave-hay a-way ope-pay."

That's as close as I can get without trying.

Anyway, new pope. Now can we stop talking about popes for another 25 years or so?

UPDATE :: Habetis Papam - Thanks to John for the Latin primer.

It's really great to see that TIME magazine has decided to put the person who said this on their cover:

I hate to give the piece of shit any space on this site - posting that picture made me throw up in my mouth a little - but one more thing must be pointed out.

From the ass-kissing story in TIME:

That would be, of course, because the "reporter" didn't actually do any reporting. Googling her name isn't reporting, you dimwit.

Think Progress offers the reporter a leg-up with a quick list of about a dozen outright errors, among thousands.

Why do Republicans hate our veterans?

Remember this the next time you see one of those yellow "Support Our Troops" ribbons next to a Bush/Cheney 04 sticker.

This time, they're determined to oppose a vaccine that could prevent the majority of deaths from cervical cancer.

So there you go. Preventing thousands of women from dying of cervical cancer is to be opposed because it involves a virus that is spread by sexual contact.

In light of this, there is no reason to expect a different reaction should someone develop an AIDS vaccine. Giving the vaccine might just make people think they can have sex withouth risk of death, so it must be opposed by these lunatics.

In other words, potential deadly consequences to sexual activity are just fine with them. Desirable, even.

Via The Light of Reason.

An ad for the event in which the Senate majority leader will particpating next weekend.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we ask all witnesses in trials to swear to tell the truth with their hand on the BIBLE and "so help them god"?

Make no mistake, these people fully intent to remake this country as a Christian - a fundamentalist Christian - state.

They must be stopped.

Via Daily Kos.

This is the worst kind of bullshit. Senator Frist is going to join a group that's specific aim is to perpetuate the myth that conservatives have some kind of a monopoly on faith. Democrats, as everyone knows, are all godless hedonists. He knows very well, as does everyone else involved in this, that this is ridiculous.

The irony, of course, is that if their faith is in fact true, they're all going to hell. I love that part.

This is the kind of insane paranoia with which the Senate majority leader is associating himself.

Look, this shows a complete lack of understanding of what "religious freedom" means. I've never heard of a liberal judge, or anyone, trying to restrict Christians' right to practice their religion. What is consistently opposed by judges and courts on both sides of the political spectrum is the imposition of one particular religion on the population.

Erecting a monument to the ten commandments on public property is not an expression of religious freedom, it is a form of religious oppression. Is it so hard for these people to imagine being in the minority? If a religion other than their own was dominant, would they argue for the right for the majority to place monuments to their religion all over the public square? Of course not.

This kind of thing depresses me more than just about anything else these days. The political winds change, and will change again, but the country's freewheeling descent into a theocracy is frankly terrifying.

This is not because I hate religion or I have any problem with Christians being Christians. The problem is that these people are NOT Christians. If Jesus were to come back right now and see what's being done in his name, he would never stop throwing up.

What Rep. Sensenbrenner fails to mention, of course, is that there are very few "fraudulent, abusive or opportunistic" bankruptcy claims. Or that this "cascade" of claims hasn't cost the banking industry a dime, they're making record profits. Nor does he mention that there is no consideration of legislation to curb the predatory and usurious practices of that industry to get people into debt in the first place. Nor the lack of health care that pushes so many working families into bankruptcy as soon as someone gets sick.

No, the real crime to Rep. Sensenbrenner and too many of his colleagues is that magnificently wealthy multinational banks occasionally don't get paid back.

Bastards.

This is good news, but it's not enough. The FCC didn't say what form the disclosures must take, leaving the door open to non-disclosure disclosures. Senators Frank Lautenberg (D - NJ) and John Kerry (D - Loserville) have introduced an amendment to some completely unrelated bill making the requirements more stringent.

The independent Government Accounting Office had previously said that the administration had broken the law by using federal money to fund propaganda.

Shockingly, the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget disagreed with that finding.

Via The Nation's Daily Outrage, a rundown of criticisms leveled at Tom DeLay and his responses. See if you notice a pattern.

paranoia
n.
1. A psychotic disorder characterized by systematized delusions, especially of persecution or grandeur, in the absence of other personality disorders.

But mostly just too little. How this qualifies as an apology is beyond me.

Nice. So, he's sorry, but he still will use the federal budget to manipulate the court system. Take a civics class, asshole.

DeLay evaded numerous questions, referring reporters instead to the scholarly tome, "Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America."

Lovely. Sounds like a very even-handed critique.

Once again, I'm speechless. Give it up, douche-bag, you're done. Piss right the fuck off.

Hey, some actual good news about legislation regarding your personal information.

Some car manufacturers have begun to install "black boxes" in vehicles without telling you. The boxes record all kinds of stuff - whether you're wearing a seat belt, how fast you're going, etc. North Dakota, in a sadly rare example of protecting citizens from corporations, has ruled that the data in that black box belongs to the car owner.

Good.

Explanation for the throngs of people (okay two) who wrote in confused: It doesn't mean anything, I just liked the picture. I didn't hurt my nose, I just had some kind of weird face cleaning tape on it (it's like a porcupine!), and the book Don't Think of an Elephant (recommended) was sitting on my desk.

See how much less fun it is with an explanation?

Watch this video clip of William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, on MSNBC's Scarborough Country demanding that gay people apologize to the everyone else for unleashing AIDS.

Wow. This guy is totally gay.

We can assume that the "civil rights" in the name of his group refers only to Catholics' civil rights. Straight Catholics, that is.

Wasn't there some big gay child-raping thing with the Catholic church a while back? I seem to remember something...

You'd think something so factually absurd would at least warrant a cursory challenge. Here's what Joe Scarborough had to say:

SCARBOROUGH: All right. Bill Donahue, we'll have to leave it there.

And the debate rages on...

Via Media Matters for America.

Seem like every time you turn around these days, George Bush is saying something about how the economy is growing. He loves to say that. You'll ask him about massive intelligence failures in the buildup to the Iraq War and he'll start prattling on about how the economy is getting better.

I try to avoid hearing him speak myself, but I've still heard him say this kind of thing over and over again.

What he fails to mention, however, is exactly who the economy is growing for. Here's a hint: It's not you.

Not only are corporate profits up, but CEO compensation is, like, crazy.

Ah, so his spokesman is saying 1) This isn't new lawbreaking, this stuff has already been covered, so it should presumably be ignored, and 2) the contentions are "unfairly vague."

Here's the more specific version: HE BROKE THE LAW. LOTS OF TIMES.

Oh my god.

Seriously, what is the matter with this guy? He should be locked up for everyone's protection.

Now what he really means here is that judicial independence does not equal judicial independence. Judicial independence, in DeLay's view, equals judicial subservience.

Right. It's not the mark of a mature society to take stock of what the great bulk of civilized humanity is up to. We should by all means completely ignore those terrorist-loving cheese-eaters and rule by the word of GOD, by god. You know, like Iran.

This goes along with that whole "judicial independence" thing. Separation of powers, meaning whichever branches are controlled by Republicans get all the power.

Ha ha ha ha. Damn! Ignoring the will of the people? The balls on this guy are simply tremendous. Why don't we tell the "people" what most of the Republican backed legislation is really about, Tom? See what their will is then. Or if you weren't allowed to call it the Healthy Forest Initiative, if you had to call it what it is, the Cut Down the Forests and Give All the Money to Your Friends Initiative, what then? How about that change in bankruptcy law you guys rammed through last month? Was that the will of the people?

Oh, and by the way, in the Schiavo case, the people were on the courts' side.

And now it gets really scary.

I don't even know what to say in response to that. Help? If you haven't called your representatives about this, Do it now. Call them twice.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, the following head-exploding words came out to Tom DeLay's mouth.

Serious and rational discussion. Tom DeLay said that. People of good will. DeLay again. He's pure evil.

As for the matter of clarifying the proper role of the courts, that liberal hippie Chief Justice Rehnquist had this to say..

(All quotes from this article)

Really, call and complain. Enough is enough.

Frank Rich, brilliant as always.

The whole thing.

Google Maps new satellite image view is sure fun. Everybody's been posting neat pictures, and since I'm drunk and bored, I'm no exception.

Some favorites I've come across...

St. Louis Arch

My High School

Canyonlands

Mt. St. Helens

Where I Am Now

Niagara Falls

Some Airplanes in the Desert

Salt Evaporation Pools

You may have heard that Senate Republicans are threatening to invoke "the nuclear option" to prevent Democrats from opposing President Bush's judicial nominees. You've probably heard that this is not something we want to happen, or could deduce that from its name.

Here's a nice and simple explanation of how this procedural trickery works and what it would accomplish, from the Progress Report, with help from the People for the American Way.

So, basically, Republicans are trying to change a 200 year old rule in the Senate by exploiting a technicality in the rules. Does that seem right to you?

They justify this insanity by claiming that Democrats are unfairly blocking President Bush's nominations, thus making it hard to fill the federal courts with right-wing nutjobs. This is, of course, a load of crap. In fact, during his first term President Bush sent 214 nominees to the Senate, Democrats filibustered only 10. From 1995-2000, Senate Republicans blocked 35% of Clinton's nominees. (Source 1, Source 2)

The role of Congress in the judicial nomination process is to advise and consent. Republicans would like to ignore the "consent" part and just have Congress rubber-stamp every nomination. As usual, their shortsightedness and arrogance is extraordinary. They truly believe that they will forever be the majority, and if they get away with this kind of thing, they may just be.

First, here's a nice little summary of the trouble DeLay is in, from the LA Times.

My favorite line: "The rebukes were unanimous, but DeLay said they were politically motivated."

Republicans, naturally, insist that all this is just a political trick of some kind, Democrats have somehow caused all of this to happen.

DeLay, for his part, is just running around accusing everyone he sees as being part of some vast conspiracy to make him appear to be an unethical scumbag.

On CNN yesterday he called it "just another seedy attempt by the liberal media to embarrass me."

Many Republican lawmakers are standing up to defend DeLay. Roy Blunt of Missouri had this to say: "The things that Tom has been criticized about in one way or another every member of Congress could be criticized about."

Hey! That's awesome! You know what? Maybe all of you lying ass sons of bitches should be indicted then! What the hell is the matter with you?

It's no wonder Republican members are rallying to DeLay's side, as they've been publicly threatened with loss of major support if they don't...

As for the grand conspiracy against DeLay, Nancy Pelosi, that paragon of liberal attack dog politics herself, weighed in...

Whoa there! Take it easy, you wild-eyed, angry liberal!

UPDATE :: Here's a nice roundup of editorials from around the country on DeLay. Summary: He's not so popular.

Senator John Conyn (R - TX) on the floor of the Senate today..

Video clip of his statement.

Wow. In light of the reaction Tom DeLay's recent threats have received, this guy either has some serious balls, or is just a monumental idiot.

I'm sure he'd like us to think it's the former, but it's not.

What, exactly, is he hoping to accomplish by "wondering" in the Senate whether there is some relationship between judicial opinions he disagrees with and judges and their families being threatened with violence and/or actually killed?

It's all carefully phrased as an analysis and not a direct provocation to violence, but it still amounts to a tacit justification and a thinly veiled threat.

One would expect that our leaders, mere weeks after a judge's husband and mother were murdered, would stake out firm ground on the side of the judges over the murderers, but not Senator Cornyn. He can sort of see where they're coming from. He could have made perfectly clear that, while we may disagree with some decisions made by the courts, there is absolutely no excuse for threats or violence against judges. We are a nation of laws. But he didn't say that, did he?

It reminds me of nothing more than the mob offering protection to the neighborhood businesses.

"We're not saying you gotta pay us the money, see, but let's just say that this other guy -- you remember Angelo? -- he didn't pay, and one day he turns up a little bit dead. That's all I'm gonna say. Capisce?"

Yglesias:

Naturally, this is new territory for the good doctor. That is to say, he's full of shit.

Less than a month ago...

NASA has succeeded in creating a robotic James Spader head.

Video Clip.

Here's another, longer and very strange clip of a female robot head named "Eva" talking to some people.

Freakin' me out.

Via Cool Gov

From the horse's ass.. err, mouth.

Lessee...

Here.

And here...

It also seems that someone is fudging his poll numbers for him..

More to come! This is going to be fun.

You know if Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney thinks your statements are out of line, you've really gone too far.

Via Think Progress.

The pope is dead.

So is chicken magnate Frank Purdue.

I'm not much for popes, but as far as popes go, this guy was sort of alright. At least he stood up to George Bush over Iraq and apologized for the crusades and the holocaust. It is interesting to watch all the coverage on the TV and consider how anti-Catholic this country was only 40 years ago or so. Seems all about the Catholic now.

It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.

You may have read how Tom DeLay said on Thursday that "the time will come for the men responsible" for the death of Terri Schiavo "to answer for their behavior," a remark that has been widely interpreted as a thinly veiled threat against federal judges.

So far, DeLay has refused to apologize or clarify exactly what he meant.

New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg thinks DeLay's statement may amount to a felony, violating a law which states: "'Whoever threatens to assault.... or murder, a United States judge... with intent to retaliate against such… judge.... on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished [by up to six years in prison]."

I'm not sure if his statement was specific enough as to violate that law, but maybe we should let a judge or a jury decide. There is no doubt, though, that what he said was irresponsible and displayed a truly alarming lack of respect for the judiciary branch from a member of Congress.

Again, I can't wait to see this guy go to jail. It really seems like it's only a matter of time.

I love this headline..

Global Flock Prepares for the Loss of Its Shepherd

The pope will be dead any minute now, and Catholics worldwide won't have anyone to tell them what to think or do, at least until the next guy is installed in some kind of secret process.

The Times has an interesting graphic showing what happens in the nine days, called the Novendiales, following a pope's death.

My favorite part is on day 1, when the Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, or camerlengo, "may or may not follow the traditional practice of tapping the pope's forehead with a silver mallet." What's up with that?

Anyway, as it was with Terri Schiavo, I don't quite understand all the grief from the devoutly religious, primarily because according to their beliefs, death for the super godly isn't a bad thing. The pope is going to be with Jesus now, right? Isn't it "god's will"? Why pray for his earthly suffering to continue as long as possible? Let him go.

Bye bye, pope. I hardly knew ye. Scratch that, I didn't know ye at all.

UPDATE : As pointed out by Laurel and seconded via email by Frank of Luxembourg, the whole silver hammer thing must be the same thing referenced in the Beatles' song "Maxwell's Silver Hammer."

iCopulate

Google Gulp!

podShave and podShve Lady

That's it, I'm done. As you were.