Ted Stevens

I don't think it can be said better than an elated Alaskan woman when asked what she thought about Sen. Stevens being indicted:

"They got Stevens?!? Rock on!!!"

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

Young Gore sets out for his new home, where the sky is clear, the water is clean, and there are no Republicans.

EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.

"I tried to warn them, but the Elders of this planet would not listen," said Gore, who in 2000 was nearly banished to a featureless realm of nonexistence for promoting his unpopular message. "They called me foolish and laughed at my predictions. Yet even now, the Midwest is flooded, the ice caps are melting, and the cities are rocked with tremors, just as I foretold. Fools! Why didn't they heed me before it was too late?"

Al Gore—or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al—placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity's hubristic folly.

more...

Gotta love the Onion.

The New Yorker Cover

I thought it was funny. Dissecting a joke always sucks the life out of it but in all the brouhaha I haven't heard anyone with quite my views on this drawing so I'll throw these points at you:

1. It's the cover of The New Yorker for Pete's sake! The cover is for the readers of The New Yorker. It is not meant for the drooling, humorless morons "the media" think make up the vast majority of Americans.

2. Though a lot of Americans may be drooling, humorless morons, I don't think it's a majority by any means. If you pay any attention to politics you are aware that the Fox Noise/Limbaugh/Savage propaganda machine has gone to great lengths to paint Obama as a radical, fundamentalist, jihadist, muslim foreigner and his wife as a radical, black power, black panther, weatherman underground woman. Therefore the kind of people that understand the world around them could see this image as a joke and those that don't see it as a joke probably believe that stuff in the first place.

3. If "the media" hadn't gone frothing mad over this cover the only people that would have seen it would have been the kind of people mentioned in point #1 or the type of people that go into book stores or look at the magazines in the little area of the magazine rack where you would find The New Yorker, not over by the babes on motorcycles section. Most American people don't go into book stores or read at all. One would hope that those that do read could get the sarcastic gesture.

4. "The media" is incapable of balance or perspective and they should all be fired and should go back to journalism school. And we should jail the frothing heads (Limbaugh, Chris Matthews, etc.) that insisted on stressing Obama's middle name every time they said his name and who "accidently" call him "Osasma" at least once per show. Those people are enemies of America and should be stripped of their citizenship and deported to Pakistan.

Legacy Inspector

"My surge! My troop surge is working!!"
"We can add that without your initial arrogant stupidity no surge would have been necessary."

CEO Madness

Check out this chart listing the 100 highest paid executives.

Note that number two raked in over 25 million dollars while running a company with $19 million in profits.


"Hi! I got stinking rich while causing the value of your retirement savings to collapse!"

Numbers six and seven are the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collecting over $14 million each while losing $2 billion and $3.1 billion respectively. Closer examination shows that ten of the 100 top-paid executives worked for these two companies.

Looking at the amount all these people get paid makes me really angry because I know that there are hundreds if not thousands of workers under each of these people that are getting screwed one way or another and in many cases (like the health related and financial companies) there are millions of Americans being bankrupted or left destitute due to their practices. When the revolution comes their gated communities will not keep them safe.

McCain, Feel the Excitement!

via Harper's Magazine via Democracy Underground

Dance Around the World

If you don't smile watching this just go into your bedroom, lay down, and wait for death because you are a miserable robot of a person.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Irony

Rainbow Party

I haven't watched television for at least seven years. Sure, I watch tv at friends' houses, while visiting family, or in the obnoxious public place with television. I also watch shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report online and some great shows like Deadwood on DVD, but I don't sit and watch the television for a few hours in the evenings like I did way back. I've missed out on Reality TV and it doesn't bother me. I haven't seen The Jerry Springer Show since the mid-90's and I think my world is a better place for it. And I've never watched Oprah.

Imagine my surprise when I'm told of this thing called a "rainbow party" that was described on Oprah. My first thought was, "This sounds like the kind of ridiculous crap my friends made up in early high school. Shit so stupid that only people who had not had sex would think it could possibly be a real thing." Then I heard it had been on Oprah so I did a quick Google search and sure enough, the richest woman in history is no smarter than a pubescent high school kid.

Is this what America has become? I don't for a second believe this is a common practice if it ever occurs. Seriously, do you remember any boy from your high school days that was well liked enough to get head from multiple girls at the same time in a deliberate manner? That hardly even happens in porn, much less real life. But apparently this kind of hysterical crap can get on Oprah and then enter the collective subconscious... of the people that watch television.

Some people are having sex sometimes and most people aren't. That's as true for kids as adults except that kids that are having sex are probably having more of it than the adults that are... having sex. This may bother a lot of adults (a lot) and they will then tend to believe that kids are actually throwing "rainbow parties" as opposed to making them up and then pretending they know someone that had one or threw one.

Sometimes I'm convinced that the world really needs a super fast and powerful virus to knock down the population just to keep us from becoming a world of blithering, television soaked idiots.

If Today's Congress Presided During Watergate

Force Ministries

"Christians" with guns. Helping the meek to inherit the earth.

Being A Veteran Does Not Qualify You to be President

I've been listening to the noise around General Wesley Clark's answer to a quasi-statement made by Bob Schieffer:

SCHIEFFER: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean --

CLARK: Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

SCHIEFFER: Really?

There's been a huge reaction to this, including Obama denouncing the statement (shameful, in my opinion). I've got a simple question: What did he say wrong?

There are hundreds of Viet Nam era veterans that were shot down and captured. There were many more that were captured during ground combat. Some of them sleep under bridges around here (despite what Bill O'Reilly may believe). Being a soldier is not a qualification for being President (see George W. Bush). Being a jet pilot who was shot down and captured may be an incredibly exceptional experience, much like walking on the moon or climbing Everest but if it were an essential qualification for becoming President we would not have had any of our Presidents.

McCain may have qualities that make him a good candidate for President of this country. I can't figure out what these are since he represents a way of thinking that has sunk our country deep into debt, mired us in stupid wars that either should never have begun or should have been carried through before we started the stupid fucking war we shouldn't be in in the first place. And there's the abortion thing, the taxes thing, and the fact he may drop dead at any moment thing. But despite all that, his war experiences are part of his past that obviously doesn't connect with his present as he has decided to advocate torture and the withholding of habeus corpus.

It seems odd to me that the "media" should go so easy on Senator McCain. Could those barbecues and intimate press conditions be causing some "bias" amongst the "media?" "Enquiring minds" want to know.

We Got tha Funk

Saw Parliament tonight on the waterfront for free. Despite a late start and a three minute PA outage they brought the house down. Perhaps one of the trippiest things ever, the fireworks started while Parliament was still playing and after a few minutes they cut Parliament from the mains and piped in the patriotic selections (kind of marching band stuff) but the P-Funk kept on keepin' on. I was off to the side of the stage (I'm sure they kicked ass up front) but still heard how they were actually playing along with and echoing the patriotic marching band shit while doing old Parliament shit over the top. I heard "America the Beautiful" on full distortion lead guitar at one point. Great crowd with lots of hands in the air, waving like they just don't care.

Toe Jam

Found here.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

President Bush will seek to comfort victims of his presidency as they try to make sense of the destruction he has caused.


Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

From The Onion.

New Camera

So I finally closed my eyes and jumped and bought a Nikon D-80 with two VR lenses. I've wanted this camera for a few years and was surprised at how "affordable" the camera with two lenses and extras was (compared to how much I'd imagined). So let's just say I feel like I've moved from a horse and buggy to an F-16. Not a bare backed horse to begin with and not an F-22 to end with... but a very large leap. Here are some pictures I've taken with it. Some are taken with the Nikon 18mm-55mm VR DX lense while others are taken with the 70mm-300mm VR lense. The "VR" = "vibration reduction" which is some kind of internal motion thing in the lense that holds the image steady. It's pretty amazing, especially in the full telephoto mode allowing hand-held shots in medium to low light at 300mm. I think they have binoculars with that technology as well. I want a pair! So I love the camera and lenses and here's some of what I've gotten so far: