Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Black Harvest
We've been drinking perfectly separated Black and Tans, Half and Halfs, and Patriots (if you don't know what those are, check the website linked above for recipes) for over a week now.
Tonight, we invented our own recipe. We call it the Black Harvest. The lower half is Blue Moon's Harvest Moon pumpkin ale, and the top half is Guinness. And it is delicious. The pumpkin spices of the Harvest Moon provide a very nice texture to the smooth Guinness taste.
I declare it an Orange and Black, Halloween success!
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Good News! Well, Not For Jude Law...
Branagh, who continues in his role as Donmar West End artistic associate, has had to withdraw because of commitments to the forthcoming feature film Thor, a project he’s recently undertaken.
But I Drink While I'm Online...
But:
Does drinking alcohol shrink your brain? - CNN.com
Do I win or lose?
Trick question. Anyone reading this loses, obviously.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Yes. Yes. Yes.
As I've said, Palin's lies are not like most political lies. They are not spin or vagueness or misdirection or clever use of words. They are simply statements that what has been empirically shown to be true is false, or vice-versa. They are denials of basic reality. They are a function of some kind of psychological detachment from reality. She either has a serious psychiatric problem or her mindset makes Bush's funamentalist psyche seem positively flexible. In either case, her presence on the ticket simply makes a vote for McCain unacceptable. She should be a deal-breaker for any rational person.
Very Astute...
Obama? He lollops along with a calm smile and a physical fluency that is hard to mock or copy. If he were a boxer, he’d be the kind who keeps moving but hangs back. He waits for his opponents to take a swing, ducks and comes back into the game. He sticks to a game plan and rarely deviates. And he waits for his opponent to make an error. Watching his autumn fight with McCain reminds me of the Wile E Coyote and Road Runner cartoons. Every elaborate attempt to blow Obama up leaves his opponents with sooty faces and a trail of smoke rising from the tops of their heads.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Dangerous Bullshit...
This is the sort of desperate bullshit that could very well inspire some white trash nutjob to try something deadly.
They should be ashamed.
Oh wait. They're douchebags with no shame. I forgot.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars on AMC? Hell, Yes!
"This fits in with our bigger vision of wanting series that feel like cinematic one-hour movies," said Christina Wayne, senior vp original series and miniseries at AMC. "We're always looking for big genres but to do them in slightly different ways so they feel fresh and new," she added, noting as examples the network's Western mini "Broken Trail" and crime-themed series "Breaking Bad."
Jeremy Elice, vp original programming series, added that the project will be character-driven. "It's not the spectacle of sci-fi that you typically see," he said.
Friday, October 03, 2008
I Guess They Didn't Watch The Debate...
The girlfriend told deputies that her boyfriend wanted to get intimate, but she just wanted to go to sleep. When she refused, he became irate.
Authorities said the girlfriend went to a spare bedroom, and several minutes later she heard two gunshots. She told deputies her boyfriend came into her room and threatened her. He then stumbled into the kitchen before falling into the oven, knocking himself unconscious.
And In Other News...
"The fact a 7-year-old can wreak so much havoc in such a short time, it's unbelievable. In my day he'd get a big boot up the arse," centre director Rex Neindorf told Reuters by phone.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
I Need A Beer. Now.
Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is "dialed in" to the McCain campaign. Rove's protégé Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.
What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.
And Now My Paranoia Is Really Gaining Ground...
Last week, when I got the letter from Robert Greenwald talking about John McCain's refusal to release his medical records to fair scrutiny, the fact that there are 1,000 pages of them (I create medical records for a living, 1,000 pages is EXTREME), and the news that he has had malignant melanoma, deep primaries with removal of lymph nodes, my immediate thought was "Then he's dying." If he were to be elected, he'd have an almost 2 out of 3 chance of having a recurrence if he doesn't have one already. This is not the kind of cancer you count on escaping from. This is not Stage II, as it has been reported: Stage II by definition does not have lymph node involvement. By definition, it must be either Stage III or Stage IV.
This Really Doesn't Look Good, Does It?
It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.
Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from “Insurrection Act” to “Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act.” The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition”—and such “condition” is not defined or limited.
These new pretexts are even more expansive than they appear. FEMA proclaims the equivalent of a natural disaster when bad snowstorms occur, and Congress routinely proclaims a natural disaster (and awards more farm subsidies) when there is a shortfall of rain in states with upcoming elections. A terrorist “incident” could be something as stupid as the flashing toys scattered around Boston last fall.
The new law also empowers the president to commandeer the National Guard of one state to send to another state for up to 365 days. Bush could send the Alabama National Guard to suppress antiwar protests in Boston. Or the next president could send the New York National Guard to disarm the residents of Mississippi if they resisted a federal law that prohibited private ownership of semiautomatic weapons. Governors’ control of the National Guard can be trumped with a simple presidential declaration.
It's Probably Nothing, Right?
UPDATE: As this commenter notes, the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act somewhat limited the scope of the powers granted by the 2007 Act detailed above (mostly to address constitutional concerns by limiting the President's powers to deploy the military to suppress disorder that threatens constitutional rights), but President Bush, when signing that 2008 Act into law, issued a signing statement which, though vague, seems to declare that he does not recognize those new limitations.
UPDATE II:
There's no need to start manufacturing all sorts of scare scenarios about Bush canceling elections or the imminent declaration of martial law or anything of that sort. None of that is going to happen with a single brigade and it's unlikely in the extreme that they'd be announcing these deployments if they had activated any such plans. The point is that the deployment is a very dangerous precedent, quite possibly illegal, and a radical abandonment of an important democratic safeguard. As always with first steps of this sort, the danger lies in how the power can be abused in the future.
The Posse Whatitatus Act? Shut Up, Commies!
It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.
But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.