Just a little piece of news

Blah blah blah hope you had a good memorial day blah blah congressional recess blah blah social security blah ste cells blah Cruise'Holmes blah blah oh yeah! DEEP THROAT IS W. MARK FELT!

That's right folks: it's official. Woodward & Bernstein have confirmed it. W. Mark Felt, now 91, was Deep Throat. He was an assistant director (like A.D. Skinner, for you X-philers) of the FBI. And he was Deep Throat. Wow.

The cracks, they are a-showing?

Could it be possible? Azulita was asking the other day if this whole 'mod squad' senate thing was a corner that we turned. I'm too pessimistic to think that things might really get better, but maybe maybe maybe. It seems like they're beginning to break ranks.
It doesn't mean that they won't all kiss and make up next week, but it is beginning to look like a real trend. I mean, Pat Buchanan has turned on them, fer chrissakes. The thing is, Karl 'Turdblossom' Rove has that whole theory of invincibility - if you just seem invincible and inevitable, people will believe it. So a lot of their power is based on their image of power (if that makes sense). That's why they're so obsessed with loyalty. So these tiny fissures may be mnore important symbolically than they are practically. It sure as hell makes me happy.

Kitty Killer

Kitty Killer
Originally uploaded by blue girl.

Momiqua was wondering about all this cat killing talk, so here is the Bill Frist story. (cribbed from elsewhere - I didn't call his office - this is just a blog after all)

Frist acknowledged in a 1989 book that he killed cats while a medical student at Harvard Medical School in the 1970s. His office said it had no record on how many cats died. Frist disclosed that he went to animal shelters and pretended to adopt the cats, telling shelter personnel he intended to keep them as pets. Instead he used them to sharpen his surgical skills, killing them in the process.

Azulita and I agreed that when he runs for preznit the only campaign we need is endless pictures of cute kitties.

Blech.

Republican fuzzy math

So we know Reid definitely had all but two votes on his side, and needed two of the four remaining moderate Republicans to vote with him too. That's to say, 44 Dems + 1 Jeffords :) + 4 Repubs + (2 more Repubs?)= 51 votes. (In case you didn't know, :) is a highly sophisticated mathematical function.) There are only six Republicans in that equation, but seven of them signed the agreement. Then I saw Susan Collins (R-ME) on tv talkin bout how a bunch of her colleagues were coming up to her being like "oh thank you so much, i'm so glad you did that, thank god we don't have to have the vote, etc." Wth. But moreover, couldn't those seven senators who signed the agreement have just said they would protect the filibuster against the nuclear option from the beginning? No, you say? Because their own party would turn against them and splash them all over the media and blogs as traitors? Well that seems to be happening anyway. But I have a feeling that there were a lot more Republican senators there, lurking, wanting to protect the f'buster, but too spineless to say so. They must've been really scared to alienate their rabid evangelical constituents. And they all heaved a huge sigh of relief last night.

Harry Reid is so my hero, and his website is really cool. The Senate Dems are awesome. Now please keep Brown, Owen and Myers out of the courts!

Detente

YES!
They might tell you that the dems had to suck more up, that they blinked first, but don't you believe it. Harry Reid is a beast. The dems had nothing to work with - and now they have the opportunity to filibuster a supreme court nominee. Yeah the ones getting in are pieces of shit, but the super duper stinky pieces of shit are out. The thing to remember if you get bitter is that we had nothing to bargain with. We are outnumbered. The threat of shutting down senate business was a pretty crappy threat - it would've turned on us right quick. Recall when the GOP shut down the guvmint (you know, so they had to have the unpaid interns doing a lot of work...in the oval office...) and how that backfired on them. Going nuclear and blocking all business would have had the same effect on us.

James Dobson/Bill Kitty Killer Frist bet the house on this one. And the interesting thing is that even thought they got a lot of their scummy judges through, they didn't win the house. So they lost. It's sort of bizarro world, but they went for all or nothing, and so when they got only some, it's defeat.

And extraordinary measures? Do you think that any asshole that Bush nominates for the court won't be kissing cousins with satan? I think we can find some extraordinary.
I am so relieved.

It's coming

The nuclear option is coming, and soon. It is really, really important that we all get off our asses/couches/knoll office chairs and do what we can about this. It ain't sexy, it ain't even that interesting, it doesn't involve Lindsey Lohan's weight, but it will affect the next 20 or so years of your life. For a rundown of what to do (in between panic and self-medication) check out Daily Kos.
All hands on deck, full speed ahead, whatever. Fight fight fight. This one is for keeps, kids.

Damn

You gotta admire the balls of the NY Times printing this article on the front page so soon after the Newsweek bullshit. Seems like they're sort of saying up yours! to the White House. God fucking love 'em.
Internets are whispering that the reason the White House made such a big deal over the koran in the toilet business is that they knew a bigger, much worse story was going to break soon and they wanted a distraction/diversion/pre-discrediting.
Oh - spoiler alert - don't read the article if you've got a weak stomach. It isn't pretty.

Predictions

As I was saying a while ago, the terror alert thing is fucked up. In spare time I have been trying to put together an archive of when the terror level has been raised and what the big news stories and what the preznit's approval ratings were at the time. The information is interestingly difficult to come by. Not in a 'it's all hidden' way, but in a '3 hours+ on google has not given me exactly what I wanted' and I think that qualifies as somewhat hard.
Anyway, looking around all this (and I will put it all in shiny chart form or something when I'm done) and then reading today's Note has me thinking. Congressional approval is at the lowest level since 1994 (when that Gingrich bloke was able to take over). Chimpy has not been able to get his shit through (Social Security, Bolton, Judges, Schiavo etc.) in the way that he wants. He may still get it all through, mind you, but not in a force of nature inevitable way that he likes. North Korea has turned into WWIII potential on his watch. Also Iran. And Iraq. Not going too well.
Sounds to me like it's time for a major terrorist alert. So I'm just putting my little 2 cents in here - some kind of vague terrorist alert or threat level raised situation in the next month. The sheep are getting restless and need to be made afraid again. Otherwise they may remember they have rights.
On that subject, I'm excited for The Power of Nightmares, a documentary by Adam Curtis about the political uses of fear. Look for it.

Crooks and Liars

This video (scroll down a bit), one George Galloway MP for Bethnal Green, RULES THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. Go. Watch it. I command you.
He just blows the weak-ass oil-for-food scandal right out of the water.

More Sex!

Now let's be clear here - I'm not saying being gay is pervy. So the point I made below about how all far-right morals asshats seem to be pervs is different from the point Frank Rich is making here. But it strikes at the same basic issue - insane christo-fascist right wing moralizers who are trying to turn our country into a theocracy are hiding some pretty big things about their sex lives. It would be unbelievably funny if it weren't so, well, scary.
Oh - also there's that guy (a republican congressman?) who says he had sex with donkeys. And that it's normal and you're some sort of blue-state elitest if you think there's something weird about that. I'll catch that link and put it up when I find it.
Please please please please someone find proof that Karl Rove is not just gay but that he, I don't know, has sex with black same-sex kittens or something.

Of Course

Do you rememebr back before the election? There were all these terror alerts? And how anytime Kerry would kick a little Chimpy ass debate-style or something we'd be all excitied. Like, we might win this shit! And when there was all that bad news about Iraq, and the economy, and it was looking good for our guy? Remember that?

And then remember how the damn terror alerts would somehow be amped up whenever Kerry got a little ahead? And we were like, those bastards are just raising the terror alert level to fuck with people. But even while we were saying that, we sort of were kidding because it's a big deal to be all, "the government is lying and using this system just to scare the crap out of people and get re-elected," even if you think that might be based in truth. But still, it was sort of a joke.

NOT.

Oh. OK. Apparently it was just to scare the shit out of people and get those shitheads re-elected. Cuz, like, Tom Ridge didn't want to raise them.

You get the feeling that when people quit this administration they're like birds being let out of cages? Because they all start to sing.

WWACD?

(What Would Ann Coulter Do?)
Now this is just crazy time. Republicans are pervs! Honestly, how many crazy pervy sex scandals do we need to have before someone wakes up and realizes that apparently family values=forced sex?
So this Hager guy, who was an ass to begin with seems to want more ass. The man anally raped his wife! For YEARS. And then he wrote a book called As Jesus Cared for Women. Hello? What the hell?
And Bolton, as I hope you are all aware now, forced his wife to go to orgies at Plato's Retreat. Which should really put th fear in a bunch of 70's swingers - what if you had anonymous sex with John Bolton? Ewwww! That moustache!
Look, I know that it's the new millenium and all, but we need to go back and read some Foucault. Remember the whole thing about the Victorians and how repressing sexuality makes it come back all stronger and more scary? Well, I think we have some examples here.
Now please, someone find proof that James Dobson is a paedophile...

Terminological Inexactitude

aka BALD-FACED LIES.

And OH MY GOD SUCH RAGE. Honestly, that has GOT to be illegal and even if it's not I think my head might explode.

This local news station did a segment on "the Santiago Solution"-- aka private accounts-- accompanied by much stock footage of smiling, productive Chileans who allegedly use them-- and it was nothing short of propaganda. To further prove me right, it's posted on the Cato Institute Web site, which apparently owns the socialsecurity.org domain. By the way, I wouldn't mind if some of my tax dollars went to securing web site domains to avoid such mishaps and untruths as www.whitehouse.net, among others.

And in case you had any remaining doubts, IT JUST SHOWED UP ON PAX TV!

You KNEW this was coming

I would say this comes as a shock, but really it doesn't. Yup, that whole #3 business sounded fishy. Let's see whether it actually gets reported.

Just Sayin'

I'm thinking about the church in the post below (follow the link). I'm listening to this guy David Richardson from East Waynesville, NC. He was a member of that church, one of its council of elders, or whatever it's called. And what he was sayinng was so completely and exactly the exact thing that you would say if you wanted the curch to lose its tax-exempt status, it was weird. If you read some of the IRS and tax-lawyer types who posted on Kos (yeah - Kos has so many readers that no matter what specialty you need, someone's bound to have it) about this story, they all said the same thing: that the only way to lost the tax-exempt status is if a church campaigns for a particular candidate or tries to influence an election. And that's exactly what this guy was saying. That back during the election the pastor told them they had to vote for Bush or repent, and that this week they had a special meeting where the pastor said that anyone who was not willing to pledge to vote as he told them was out, and that it was to be a political church from now on.
I don't know, it just fit so exactly. And the station that first aired the story was a Sinclair channel. I just wonder. It just weird. Like, Karl Rove weird.
I think this is going to be bad, somehow.

Awsome!

America! Fuck yeah!
(Otherwise known as: where are we going and why is it so hot in this handbasket?)
Sorry this thread might take a while to load.

This is not good news

A follow-up to an earlier post - looks like Chappelle's show might be out for a while. The only thing that gives me hope is that whomever posted this doesn't even know how to spell 'Chappelle' and therefore may not be that reliable. Please. I hope.

I love Ajai Raj

Oh man do I fucking heart him! (Also, look at his pic. He's sorta cute in a long haired way. I mean, I would look a lot shittier in a mug shot than he does.) Anyway, he's the guy at UT Austin that said bad things to Ann Coulter. And he is my hero.

I hate CNN

This is related to azulita's post below. The other day (maybe even the same day!) I was watching Headline News. Why? Well, I used to find it soothing. Apparently they have changed the format a little, and instead of the non-stop 25 minute repeating cycle, there are occasional "shows" which suck. So yesterday (or maybe the day before) I was watching something with some idiotic name ("Prime News NOW!!?) and they spent 20 fucking minutes talking about the runa-fucking-way bride. Oh they had interviews with people in Georgia about whether she should pay for the search, they had comments from viewers, they had an attorney talking about how the bride was in seclusion while writing a statement, they had polls about whether her fiance should take her back, it was a regular runaway bride fucking extravaganza.

Then, just before a commercial break, they had a little "in other news today..." bit. Well in other news, we captured the al-Queda #3 dude. [btw: I've heard that he wasn't really the #3 guy, that he sorta got 'promoted' when he was captured. Since I've never heard of this guy and then once they got him he was the 3rd most important person in the whole organization, I suspect a bit of truth to this.] OK, now I understand that an ADULT WOMAN going on a bus trip and NOT TELLING ANYONE is, like, incredibly important for every damn person in the entire country, but, um, HELLO.

CNN is truly pathetic. If it weren't for Anderson Cooper's funny little triangular face and the greatnessthat is Ms. Amanpour, I would just write the whole damn network off.

I hate life

What the fuck. What the fucking fuck. What the hell are we supposed to do now? Hmmm. Maybe this has somethng to do with the post below?
Shock, anger, denial. I am going through many stages of grief right now.

I hate the drug war

Not in the least because it makes me occasionally agree with the American Enterprise Institute and that can't be good. $4 billion a year, eh? Good thing there aren't any, you know, children with no medical care or anything in this country.

CCNd is nigh

As I was watching Lou Dobbs last night trying to catch a glimpse of dadzulito in a report (he didn't make it on), I experienced the horrifying displeasure of a report about what to do in the event of a "nookular" (AS THE REPORTER BITCH KEPT SAYING) attack.

They actually had. a. report. about. what to do. in a nookular attack. She kept saying "we should emphasize that we have no reason to think this is actually going to happen any time soon" but in case it does, some government bullshit-machine says we should find shelter and avoid the radiation or something. But then some other nookular physicist guys say there ain't shit you can do (yeah, duh, okay, I knew that!). And apparently nookular radiation clouds are shaped like cigars. Not sure how the mushroom cloud fits in with that. So, in the unlikely event of such an attack, try not to be wherever it takes place.

Thanks, lame-ass correspondent bitch whose name I don't remember!

Holy ignorance, Batman!

We already knew that 20% of Americans think End of Days will happen in our lifetime, so maybe this shouldn't be surprising, but it still is:

"A Gallup poll last year showed that only 28 percent of Americans accept the theory of evolution, while 48 percent adhere to creationism - the belief that an intelligent being is responsible for the creation of the earth and its inhabitants." (cbs.com)

I can't believe a 20-point spread of Americans believe in creationism over evolution. That is so bugged out. Who are all these Democrats and moderate Repubs (who make up at least 28%.. more like 60?) who don't know we come from monkeys?! What is the big deal people??

I think we should start a website devoted to JP2 that we can advertise on all the religious-right sites, where we have all his quotes and whatnot on the Iraq war and on how there's too much evidence of evolution for it just to be a theory!!! (So bad-ass)

The pollsters should add another option, that God created the universe but we still evolved. There's nothing contradictory about that. It's not like you have to be atheist to understand evolution. People want to be so pig-headed, sheesh!

Lime Kitty

Cats: Beware of Lime Football Helmets, originally uploaded by rickvug.

In case you're one of the 6 people left on earth who hasn't seen the lime kitty, behold.

Tonight, as I have endlessly pimped, is Veronica Mars. All operations have come to a halt and the BBD HQ is being prepared for the event (i.e. I am planning on sweeping under the couch). What I can promise you is that in a little over a week's time it will all be over and we will be back to our snarky bloggy selves.

In the meantime I have been thinking about the evangelizing spirit. What is it about some things (V. Mars e.g.) or some people (me) that we need to spread the word? Is this due to a hole in my spiritual life? Is it a way if getting attention? Is it a public service because we truly want others to be happy?

And which products develop cults? Apple computer is something I have been preaching for a very long time, and is the classic model of cultish devotion. We actually speak of converting people to macs. (Speaking of which, iMacs just got a speed bump and I hear I'm getting a Tiger in the family soon.) Prius owners are apparently like this. And TiVo users. (Also btw: TiVo will change your life - it's true.) Instead of guarding their coolness, people in these consumer cults want to spread the gospel. Is it becuase they are all borderline technologies that need more adherents to survive? Is it because people see something of themselves in the product? Is it becuase all we're out here doing is looking for other people to connect with, no matter how fleetingly?

I don't know the answer, but I do know that if I figure out the secret I will be very, very rich.