Tuesday, May 31, 2011

There Oughta Be A Law?  There Is!

The Flag Code.

Sleepwalking Towards Bethlehem:
Neither Bang Nor Whimper, Just A Gurgle As The Body Consumes Itself

Essentially over, no matter how it happens, but let's face it: Commodity speculators adding to their millions is much more important than human lives.
The average price of staple foods will more than double in the next 20 years, leading to an unprecedented reversal in human development, Oxfam has warned.

The world's poorest people, who spend up to 80% of their income on food, will be hit hardest according to the charity. It said the world is entering an era of permanent food crisis, which is likely to be accompanied by political unrest and will require radical reform of the international food system.

Research to be published on Wednesday forecasts international prices of staples such as maize could rise by as much as 180% by 2030, with half of that rise due to the impacts of climate change.

After decades of steady decline in the number of hungry people around the world, the numbers are rapidly increasing as demand outpaces food production. The average growth rate in agricultural yields has almost halved since 1990 and is set to decline to a fraction of 1% in the next decade.

A devastating combination of factors – climate change, depleting natural resources, a global scramble for land and water, the rush to turn food into biofuels, a growing global population, and changing diets – have created the conditions for an increase in deep poverty.

"We are sleepwalking towards an age of avoidable crisis," Oxfam's chief executive, Barbara Stocking, said. "One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone. The food system must be overhauled."

Oxfam called on the prime minister, David Cameron, and other G20 leaders to agree new rules to govern food markets. It wants greater regulation of commodities markets to contain volatility in prices.

It said global food reserves must be urgently increased and western governments must end biofuels policies that divert food to fuel for cars. It attacked excessive corporate concentration in the food sector, particularly in grain trading and in seed and agrochemicals.

The Oxfam report followed warnings from the UN last week that food prices are likely to hit new highs in the next few weeks, triggering unrest in developing countries. The average global price of cereals jumped by 71% to a new record in the year to April last month.

Drought in the major crop-growing areas of Europe and intense rain and tornadoes in the US have led to fears of shortfalls in this year's crops.

The World Bank warned last month that rising food prices have pushed 44 million people into poverty since last June.
If intelligent life exists anywhere (Based on what we know of this planet, not bloody likely.) at least they'll get a few good laughs from examining the historical & archaeological record of what will soon be a planet of cockroaches & speculators fighting to the death for the remaining organic compounds.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Big Damn Surprise:
You're (Still) Being Lied To (Again)

Fucking sheep:
If you've long suspected that the "mahi-mahi" on your plate may really be yellowtail, you now have science on your side: Researchers with the non-profit group Oceana have harnessed the power of forensic science to confirm that as much as half of all seafood sold in the U.S. is mislabeled.

"Results from our DNA lab show that about half the time the fish you are eating is not the species listed on the menu," said DNA tester William Gergits. The group accuses the industry of "seafood fraud," and is calling on the federal government to step in to more tightly regulate fisheries and related businesses.

Oceana's announcement follows a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommending improvements to government oversight of imported fish.

Oceana dispatched scientists to check over a thousand fish samples across the country, and found what it calls "disturbingly widespread" fraud.

Yesterday's BBQ Today

Beat the crowds:
Limo ride.
Windy day.
Two-person job.
Conclusion: Charcoaled stuff better than results previously obtained w/ the old rusted out propane grill.

Mickey D, WTF?

Shot yesterday: THE FLAG isn't supposed to be flown at half-staff on Memorial Day, or the day before, & we're certain the deaths of Gil Scott-Heron or the other recently croaked celeb have not been declared national days of mourning, so what 's the deal?
We do know damn well that no other flag is to be displayed above THE FLAG , half-staff or no. (Note which pole is highest!) Especially not the MacDonald's flag, f'r cryin' out loud! Why does this franchiser hate America, & would we be justified in burning his or her dump down?

Memorial Day Reminder

Memorial Day: It's for those killed in war!

The hell w/ living veterans, they have a day in November.

Stop It!

Not funny any more.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Rite Of Spring

98th Anniversary of the debut. Didn't know/remember/connect that the Théâtre des Champs-élysées, where the controversy & outrage happened, was the same venue where we saw The Who crank through Tommy in 1970.

Here's TintinCarlEsa-Peka Salonen leading a few bars of The Rite.

Today's Item

Another fucking prowl car parked in front of another fucking Ralphs. Will anything even slightly interesting, let alone novel, ever happen again?

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Mystery Box

We wanted to flip the switch & see if anything blew up, but restrained ourself, as there were too many cops around. (Even one, of course, being entirely too many.)

Same For "Chicago" Pizza

Give up on the "New York" or "New York-style" crap already. If the collective we wanted it, we'd fucking well go to New York City, wouldn't we? (As if there's any actual difference in any foodstuffs in this homogenized & post-regional nation.)

Palin/Bullwinkle 2012?

Ward and his partner, Alex Anderson, owed the creation of Bullwinkle to a strange dream — and a used car dealer.

Anderson had dreamt he attended a poker party with a "stupid moose who was doing card tricks," he told author Scott. "I woke up feeling embarrassed. I thought, 'You've been working too hard.'"

But he and Ward realized this could be a rich comical character. What to call it, though? They simply adapted the name of a car dealer — Clarence Bullwinkel — that they found humorous.
And now, the rest of the story.

The Telebision Will Not Be Revolutionary

From Black Ark Nuggets on YouTube.
RIP 5/27/11, America's TRUE poet laureate.

Morbidity Report

Matters of the heart:
BRISBANE, Australia — Margo Dydek, a 7-foot-2 former WNBA player who led the league in blocks nine times, died yesterday at 37 after being placed in a medically induced coma following a heart attack a week ago.

Her death was confirmed by Cathy Roberts of the Northside Wizards in the Queensland Basketball League, where Ms. Dydek was the coach.

Ms. Dydek, who was pregnant with her third child, suffered the heart attack on May 19 and collapsed at her home in Brisbane. Roberts said that Ms. Dydek was at an early stage in her pregnancy and that the child had also died.
At 7' 2" we'll assume Marfan's syndrome, but yow.

Even worse: Testing for heart trouble will kill you:
He was 7 ½ years old, sitting in his room, riveted to his family’s portable radio and wearing his little plastic baseball glove. It was 1962, and Dana Brand was listening to the Mets’ inaugural game, and so began a love affair that would last until his death on Wednesday at 56.

[...]

He died of a pulmonary embolism at a hospital in Danbury, Conn., his wife, Sheila Fisher, said. He had taken a stress test, which showed a healthy heart, she said, and then died suddenly.

Friday, May 27, 2011

CBC Local Action News Wrap

When we were gallivanting about town a few days ago & snapped the MacArthur Park pix down there, we also encountered the tail end of a march near the LAUSD's HQ, which dovetails w/ this horrid item.
Last night, the Canadian radio broadcast, "As It Happens," featured a remarkable story about what's going on in Los Angeles public schools, as officials grapple with a budget crisis. Librarians -- more specifically, teacher-librarians, are being escorted to the basement of an administration building, where they are made to sit on lawn chairs while being interrogated by school district lawyers who are seeking to prove that the librarians don't actually qualify as teachers. From the "As It Happens" Web site:
Teacher-Librarians in Los Angeles are under threat.

The Los Angeles Unified School District wants to lay off eighty-five middle- and high-school teacher librarians to reduce costs. As a result, school librarians across L.A. are being interrogated by lawyers working for the School District to see if their qualifications are up to scratch.

Laura Graff, a teacher librarian at LA's Sun Valley High School, has been on the receiving end of one of these questionings. We reached her in Los Angeles, California.
That description hardly does justice to the process that Graff recounts, which she characterized as very adversarial. Graff said that her job requires both a teaching certificate and a library science degree, and suggested that administrators themselves have their eyes on the teacher-librarian jobs, saying they want to replace libraries with some sort of high-tech schemes.

Hmmm...The librarians in the public school systems that nurtured me taught me pretty much how to do the job I do now. They taught me how to research, how to cross-reference sources, and guided me to books that encouraged me to dream. We really wouldn't want that for the children of L.A., now, would we?

Well worth a listen; archived on the show's Web site in Part 2 of the program.

By Adele M. Stan | Sourced from AlterNet

Posted at May 26, 2011, 4:15 pm

Fucking shit. We don't think it's going too far to use the "Nazis" tag for this one. (Redundant, maybe, as "administrators" are Nazis; stop deluding yourselves.)

The teachers were protesting cuts in arts curriculum, we believe.
FOX reporter. Couldn't find any coverage on the "myFOXla" site.
Not sure what their deal was.
In the "free-speech" pen. Fucking pigs.
If the camera had focused on these three instead of gawd-knows-what in the background, this would've been the greatest picture of humans we've ever taken.

Also On The Fascism Front

The attacks follow disastrous election performances by the British National party, leading analysts to warn that some of its supporters may be turning their backs on electoral politics to focus on more violent street confrontations.

"The threat is that as far-right activists decide the electoral path is no longer possible ... we will see more aggressive street-based groups linking up and a rise in racially and politically motivated violence," said Nick Lowles from Searchlight.

Anti-racist campaigners said the attack in Barking appeared to be well organised and targeted. The group "appeared out of nowhere" as people were gathering in the foyer and had lookouts stationed outside as the assault continued.

"All of a sudden about 20 men and one woman came running across the car park screaming E-E-EDL," said Beverley, who did not want to give her second name in case of reprisals. "We rushed to lock the glass door ... but they didn't break stride, they just ran at it and smashed into it. They were head-butting it, kicking it, throwing things at it."

The reinforced glass came away in chunks, which were hurled at the unionists and anti-racist campaigners trapped in the foyer. Beverley said: "They were crazed on the other side of this glass wall ... They started ripping pieces of glass off and frisbeeing them at us through the holes and then they started hurling rocks at us."
Get a gun or 50 & learn how to use them before it's too late.

Franco Not Dead?

A convenient thing from The Daily Beast.

T. G. I. F.

Melting In The Sun

The item directly below occurred in MacArthur Park, re-named for the fascist.Once known as Westlake Park.
Long shot w/ the boom box.
No more paddle boats.
No idea why. (Aeration, maybe?)

Synchronicity

We snapped these a few days ago:
Sloth, however (Just kidding: 'Twas existential agony, & the dull.) allowed someone to beat us to the big story. At least we shot better illustrations!

Helping A Brother Out

Close personal acquaintance Brother Brick (Looking petty good here at 52 secs. in, to the left of the "two-time Grammy winner & not speaking. Down a few lbs. since Xmas, we think.) forwards this plea for hits:
My friend Leslie at KPPC asked me to pass this around to drive up their hits.....

And yes I know the stupid little fuck of an intern* got me in his shot instead of the two time Grammy winner next to me who's like, ya know, actually speaking.

*"Stupid little fuck of an intern" is an actual journalism term, like "hot little blonde of a TV reporter" or "where's the free booze".
So click it! Thank you. (Note: KPCC is the "good" NPR station in Los Angeles: All talk, as opposed to the NPR outfit in Santa Monica that devotes much of its air-time to playing crummy pseudo-lounge music for the terminally hip.)

Fully meaningless disclosure: The Leslie mentioned (a mere acquaintance) used to live in the same bldg. we did in the '90s.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

EXT DAY: Signage, Dullness

Bodies

Forced to watch CNN during the re-run of Chris Matthews's Soft-Brain show on MSNBC (no ball game on) & CNN's big issue (over two programs now) is that a bunch of stupid hicks (How did these people survive?) are whining about the bodies of the dead, & their inability to get into a morgue & stare at the corpses, bury them & yada yada.

A CLUE: DEAD, YOU MORONS! DOESN'T MATTER ANY MORE!! "CLOSURE," OUR ASS!!!

Your gawd kills your friends & family, yet there is nothing more important to you unspeakably shallow, empty assholes then getting them buried according to the bullshit of the one who killed them? Why even bother w/ interment? They'll be raptured before you know it anyway, right, sheep?

Shame on CNN for exploiting these sorry fucks, & making a mountain from a pile of rubble.

Also hearing that these people are so fucking stupid that they have mis-identified their own (they thought) dead.

Christ, gawd, do it right next time! Don't leave a single moron living!!

Sarah's Shitmobile On the Move

"Fundamental Restoration of America." "One Nation Tour." Can't wait for the blather & spew.

The Duke

We were unaware (quite possibly because we did not care) that Marion Morrison (Jimbo Morrison's real father) was often co-billed w/ a horse named "Duke."
A "devil horse" at that. More movie posters, some w/ both "Dukes."

And for our Canadian friends:
A Great North American!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Musical Youth

At last explained: Why your musical tastes suck, bite, blow, eat & chew. (Lame musical taste also proves you are an awful human being.)
“Fourteen is a sort of magic age for the development of musical tastes,” says Daniel J. Levitin, a professor of psychology and the director of the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University. “Pubertal growth hormones make everything we’re experiencing, including music, seem very important. We’re just reaching a point in our cognitive development when we’re developing our own tastes. And musical tastes become a badge of identity.”

Biography seems to bear this out. When Robert Zimmerman (the future Bob Dylan) turned 14 as a freshman at Hibbing High School in Minnesota, Elvis Presley was releasing his early records, including “Mystery Train,” and Mr. Dylan discovered a way to channel his gestating creativity and ambition. “When I first heard Elvis’s voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody, and nobody was going to be my boss,” Mr. Dylan once said. “Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.”
Whatever you say, Bob.

What? Oh, our musical taste was formed around 1962, by Phil Spector productions & "oldies." We were one precocious little bastard.

The (At Least) $200,000.00 Woman

Ladies, don't sell yourselves short. Look at this woman, & all she's accomplished for herself:
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
We found this photo in TIME's list of what Callista may have scored. TIME types it's a "pre-2005" image. Indeed. And the hairstyle is a pre-1965 one. That is, one popular well before (this wk.'s) Mrs. Gingrich's 1966 birth.

The NYT item from which we grabbed the top photo is yesterday's news, & does not get into the ethical implications that are under consideration in today's news cycle.

And, Matthews makes a funny."Hummin'" indeed.

Are You A Real Princess?

Straight outta the e-mail, & not the spam folder.
Dear Webmaster,

My name is Sherry, and my company Topspot-Promotions represents online sport sites in various domains. We are looking at reputable* sites to offer them profitable opportunities to help promote some of my clients sites.

We would like to know if you are interested in working with us on this. For further details please don't hesitate to contact me.

Cheers,
Sherry Williams
Advertising Consultant
Business Development Department
Make fun of some jock for throwing the finger at another moron & one gets this sort of scammery.

Webmaster? Isn't that a porno term? Because (among other functions) we're the Managing Director of Emerging Digital Technologies around here, not the webmaster.)

*?.

Boondoggle

Good word, aptly illustrated
The question is whether Congress will just slash money arbitrarily, the salami-slicing that Gates fears, or whether it—and the team that Gates' presumptive successor, Leon Panetta, puts together—will restore the art of military-budget analysis.

Gates did a fair bit of this in his time. He halted the F-22 not just because it was an expensive Cold War relic but because his analysts noticed that the Air Force's justification for continuing to build more planes was deeply flawed.

At the time, the Air Force already had 183 of these planes. Its senior officers wanted to build a total of 387. Yet their case for this expansion, laid out in internal briefing books, assumed that the United States would someday fight two wars simultaneously against two foes with just as much air power as we have. It also assumed that a large percentage of the F-22s would be in routine maintenance depots when the wars started—i.e., that the two foes would coordinate a surprise attack.

The unstated implication was that if the attacks did not come as a surprise, and if we therefore had more of the F-22s online and ready to go, we wouldn't need quite so many planes to begin with. And if we were willing to let go of the premise that two comparably powerful nations (a resurgent Russia and a much more powerful China?) would go to war against us simultaneously, the 183 F-22s that we already had—in addition to the many other planes in the arsenal—would be plenty.
in a Slate item on DefSec Robert Gates getting out again, & future defense spending. We doubt the colossal waste, fraud & abuse that is the so-called defense (& spying on Americans & everybody else) budget will ever be stopped or even significantly reduced; any reductions will probably be done by Congressional bullshit artists chirping that they've "cut defense expenditures yada %," w/o mention of the side effects.
Rather than take the easy way out and "salami slice" a certain percentage of all costs off the top, a technique sure to leave a "hollowed-out" force (plenty of troops and weapons but too little money for operations, maintenance, or training), Gates said the Congress, the president, and the American people must make conscious choices of what military missions to forgo and what level of risk to accept.

It's a good point, and I think it's also Gates' way of saying that he's relieved to be leaving this job—not just for all the reasons that he's mentioned or implied already (he's tired, he's been at this for longer than he'd intended, he hates Washington, he yearns to retire to his two nice houses in the Pacific Northwest), but also because he's reached the end of his comfort zone when it comes to slashing the defense budget.
Bring on the machetes!

Cultural Hegemony

Hundreds Still Missing

OzarksFirst advises:
About 1,500 Joplin residents are still listed as missing.
Three days later, it's not as if the missing are just crashing at a friend's house & forgot to call. 1,500 from a burg of around 50,000.

That would put it atop the Wiki for population reduction.

Fucking grim.

Driving & Bitching

Stolen, of course.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

EXT DAY: Westlake

80+ yrs. in the sun.

Why We've Heard of Pawlenty

Pawlenty, then the governor of Minnesota—he'd survived a close re-election campaign, partly because his opponent exploded and called a reporter a "Republican whore"
We did not know that. (Were voters offended by the redundancy of the statement?) But it figures. No one could imagine he was elected on his own whatever it is he has.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Sunday, May 22, 2011

L.A. Late Night Trippin'

Pavlov Dep't.

Devoted fans
The scenes I witnessed at the opening of the new Apple store in London's Covent Garden were more like an evangelical prayer meeting than a chance to buy a phone or a laptop.

The strangeness began a couple of hours before the doors opened to the public. Inside the store, glassy-eyed staff were whipped up into a frenzy of excitement, jumping up and down, clapping and shouting.
Apple employeesApple staff encouraged the hysteria at the new store opening in Covent Garden

When the doors finally opened, they hysterically "high-fived" and cheered hundreds of delirious customers flooding in through the doors for hours on end.

And what did those customers - some who'd travelled from as far away as the US and China and slept on the pavement for the privilege - find when they finally got inside?

Well, all the same stuff as in the Apple store half a mile away on Regent Street. No special offers, no free gifts (a few t-shirts were handed out), no exclusive products. Now that's devotion.

I searched high and low for answers. The Bishop of Buckingham - who reads his Bible on an iPad - explained to me the similarities between Apple and a religion.

And when a team of neuroscientists with an MRI scanner took a look inside the brain of an Apple fanatic it seemed the bishop was on to something.

The results suggested that Apple was actually stimulating the same parts of the brain as religious imagery does in people of faith.
FUCKING SHEEP.

Almost Heaving

Crap. Sunday night, & we'd love to sit here, watch telebision & relax for just once in our life. (Too much to ask?)

Alas, the morons are at it again; we must rise to the defense of our fair city & smite yet another cretin from Crackerville, to wit, one Don Surber of West Virginia (Where or whatever that is.) a man who gives Jim Hoft a pretty good run for the titles of both Stupidest Man on the Internet w/ An Audience, & Ugliest Person on the Internet Who Has Chosen To Reveal His or Her Face, Ever!

We suppose cable tee vee (if not electricity) is a recent addition to the cultural life of West Virginia; Mr. Surber may have been watching just a few too many police procedurals & thinking he knew something as a result. Not so:
There is something screwy going on in Los Angeles and maybe the media in Los Angeles should demand straight answers.

UPDATE: Shortly before 9 PM Eastern, the Los Angeles Times updated its initial report: “LAPD officials publicly identified the suspect as 31-year-old Giovanni Ramirez. Ramirez was booked for assault with a deadly weapon and is being held on $1 million bail. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, speaking at a news conference, declined to name the suspect, saying his identity will be made public when he is booked Sunday evening.”

Bull.

I don’t buy that excuse. It’s Los Angeles where politicians get a Gold Card to handle their parking tickets.
Would it be too much to wonder why & for what that's an "excuse?" Does Don really think something's going on here, & selectively quoted accordingly, or is he just simple, & gets extra worried about events that don't transpire quite as they do in his stories on the telly?

Because there's no excuse for Don to have missed this in the very Times item to which he linked.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, speaking at a news conference, declined to name the suspect, saying his identity will be made public when he is booked Sunday evening.

Several police sources confirmed the identity of suspect to the Los Angeles Times. The Times is not identifying the 31-year-old man at the request of senior Los Angeles Police Department officials, who said it could compromise a fast-moving search for the second assailant and the woman who drove the men away from the stadium.
It is obviously going to be more difficult than we thought to determine which object, Surber or Hoft, is the denser.

Not To Worry

Hugh Hewitt advises all is well & set in the Republican arena. Prepare for the clash of the titans: Romney vs. Pawlenty!

(Still in the wings, but oiled up & ready to go: Palin & Perry, who "have both been governors, and governors know how to plan." Insightful, isn't he?)

Hedging the bet (as emphasized):
Only Palin and Texas Governor Rick Perry remain question marks, and there are good reasons for both of them to pass, including the fact that Romney and Pawlenty have launched very well designed campaigns that will not easily be pushed aside. They have both been governors, and governors know how to plan. Palin and Perry know this and know Pawlenty and Romney well. 2016 is out there and both of them would be viable candidates if President Obama rallies and hangs on.

It is a strong GOP field with plenty of executive experience to contrast to the in-over-his-head Obama. "It's the economy, stupid" Carville used to say as his much denigrated candidate geared up to take on a sitting president. So it remains. I don't think the field is going to expand, and Team Obama has certainly been acting as though the GOP nominee is already in the lists.
"In the lists." See the feudalism inherent in these bastards?

Hewitt's photo line-up:
Note which of the three suit, white shirt & tie-sporting pols above is at least looking in the camera, & has a Holy Flag Pin™ instead of a microphone on his lapel.

Local Action Threat Level Up-Date

We're not a large-amygdala conservative paranoid, nor an urban scaredy-cat, but if anyone needs to reach us, we'll be right here inside the bunker, as it appears there is a maniac w/ a shotgun on the loose around here.
Los Angeles police are trying to determine whether there is link between Sunday's slaying of MTV music coordinator Gabriel Aron Ben-Meir and a series of shotgun robberies and a homicide over the last two weeks.

LAPD sources said the robber had struck at least eight times in the last two weeks, using a shotgun during street and business robberies in the Mid-City, Southwest L.A. and Wilshire areas. The robber also is responsible for a slaying a week ago, police believe.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, stressed that detectives had not made a positive link but considered it a solid lead. A division of the LAPD was on tactical alert Tuesday night looking for the robbery suspect.
A division of the LAPD on "tactical alert" means one's chance of being plugged by a trigger-happy cop are way up, because if it's not the Metro Squad it's the Shoot Innocent Suspects unit.
The SIS was formed in 1965 as a surveillance unit to apprehend robbers and burglars. The SIS developed a practice of standing by during criminal activities, when individuals were being victimized by armed robbers or others, and then apprehending the suspects as they left the scene.

The SIS, which typically has about twenty members, killed twenty-eight suspects between 1965 and 1992, an extraordinarily high number.

In defending the unit's methods, then-commander of the SIS, Capt. Dennis Conte explained, "Public safety is a concern, but we have to look beyond that because if we arrest someone for attempt [sic], the likelihood ofa conviction is not great."

The SIS reportedly does not inform local police units about its activities, adding to the danger and confusion at the scene of crimes.
A person's life is worth nothing on these mean streets.

NOTE: Should have been published 17 May 2011 @ 0446PDT. We've no idea what the hell happened.

The Field Narrows

One enters, one leaves. POLITICO obtains the e-mail.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said early Sunday that he won’t run for president because of family considerations, narrowing the field in the race for the GOP nomination.

“In the end, I was able to resolve every competing consideration but one,” Daniels said, disclosing his decision in an e-mail to supporters. “The interests and wishes of my family, is the most important consideration of all. If I have disappointed you, I will always be sorry.”

The e-mail, sent by the governor through Eric Holcomb, the Indiana Republican Party chairman and one of Daniels’ closest advisers, was confirmed by another aide close to Daniels on the condition of anonymity to avoid publicly pre-empting the governor’s announcement.

“The counsel and encouragement I received from important citizens like you caused me to think very deeply about becoming a national candidate,” Daniels said in the middle-of-the-night message.

“If you feel that this was a non-courageous or unpatriotic decision, I understand and will not attempt to persuade you otherwise,” he added. “I only hope that you will accept my sincerity in the judgment I reached.”

Daniels had been considering a bid for months, pressured by many in the establishment wing of the party hungering for a conservative with a strong fiscal record to get into the race. He never sounded particularly enthused about a national run, and always pointed back to his family — his wife and four daughters — as the primary consideration.

As he weighed a bid, the spotlight shown on his unusual marital history as well.

His wife, Cheri, filed for divorce in 1993 and moved to California to remarry, leaving him to raise their four daughters in Indiana. She later divorced, and she and Daniels reconciled and remarried in 1997.

He didn’t mention those details in the e-mail.

It ended: “Many thanks for your help and input during this period of reflection. Please stay in touch if you see ways in which an obscure Midwestern governor might make a constructive contribution to the rebuilding of our economy and our Republic.”
Surprised we hadn't previously made the connection between his call for a "truce" in the Kulturkampf & his non-standard marital life. (Not really. We're much too elitist & coastal to grasp these obvious, common sense things the peasants do.)

Compare the sanitized version. And the picture found there.
Indiana First Lady Cheri Daniels walks in front of her husband, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, before speaking at a Republican Party fundraiser in Indianapolis, Thursday, May 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
Really, for which of these two would you vote?

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Now That It's Safe To Mock

(No gloating though. We desperately wanted those fuckers to disappear from the face of the earth.)Tl;dw:Huh? Does it have the Oedipal parts?Oh, wait, it's the soundtrack 45.

Not inspired by this, which we just read:
By late afternoon, a small crowd had gathered in front of Camping's Oakland headquarters. There were atheists blowing up balloons in human form, which were released into the sky just after 6 p.m. in a mockery of the rapture. Someone played a CD of "The End" by the Doors, amid much laughter.

There were also Christians, like James Bynum, a 45-year-old deacon at Calvary Baptist Church in Milpitas, holding signs that declared Harold Camping a false prophet. He said he was there to comfort disillusioned believers.

"Harold Camping will never hand out poisoned Kool-Aid," Bynum said. "It's not that kind of a cult. But he has set up a system that will destroy some people's lives."
Humanoid balloons, funny. A guy there to prey on the vicitims in their moment of need & doubt, typical.

Saturday Night Boogie 'Til You Puke
Double Play!

The deal is, we were going to use the Eric Clapton show bidnis version down there to note that Phil Collins is not completely evil (although the soft, limp & banal dullness he exudes is hardly a force for good) or at least does a tolerable Ginger Baker impression, but this was in the suggestions sidebar, & it only seemed fair, even if a two-fer does violate the laws of naturedisc jockeying.

Why Reactionaries Are Humorless

The ultimate takeaway of McGraw’s paper was that the evolutionary purpose of laughter and amusement is to “signal to the world that a violation is indeed OK.” Building on the work of behavioral neurologist V. S. Ramachandran, McGraw believes that laughter developed as an instinctual way to signal that a threat is actually a false alarm—say, that a rustle in the bushes is the wind, not a saber-toothed tiger. “Organisms that could separate benign violations from real threats benefited greatly,” McGraw says.
Photo: Andrew Hetherington
Matches well w/ recent findings that a larger "fear center" leads to (over) reaction & fear, leaving chicken-shit conservatives too scared to laugh & unable to perceive actual threat levels.

Why we steal: We pulled just what The Daily Beast Dish pulled, but whichever flunky pulled it may not have been allowed to come to the obvious conclusion. That's funny.

Pop Culture Beat

 Patton Oswalt by MJMcKean
This is why The Rapture won't happen.

Evolution Of A Movement

From REDSTATE.com Advocacy:
This week we are taking a major step forward in the evolution of the Tea Party movement.

Combining the efforts of our Washington Liaison, Donna Keene, with an incredible new petition tool, TheTeaParty.net is preparing to work with conservative leaders in Washington to start taking action on specific pieces of legislation, including stopping the implementation of Obamacare, the debt ceiling, and more!

[...]

Projects like these are critical to the future of the Tea Party movement, but to fully fund these efforts we need your continued financial support. Our critics in the left and in the liberal media continue to push the narrative that the Tea Party is no longer a factor. They are trying to destroy our movement by making people think that we are irrelevant. We cannot let that happen! Projects that allow us to petition congress and access Conservative leadership will force even the most liberal political commentators to admit that the Tea Party is still a GROWING political powerhouse. Please click HERE to help us keep the momentum!

The Dream Is Over

Meanwhile, in South Carolina:
Columbia Tea Party chairman Allen Olson expected as many as 2,000 would have attended Thursday’s rally had Trump been there. But The Donald, a favorite of many who attended the group’s Tax Day rally with U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., elected to not run and dropped the rally from his schedule.
About 30 ignorant crackers showed up. Keep evolving!

EXTRA, EXTRA (1555PDT):

Last month, things went much better!
Only 300 people (including a horde of Palmetto political operatives) attended the event in downtown Columbia, S.C. – which is a generous estimate in our book. That attendance figure – confirmed by other media outlets – amounts to less than one-tenth the size of multiple crowds that have gathered at the S.C. State House in recent years in support of parental choice.

It’s also roughly a tenth the size of the crowd that attended this same event in 2009.

Even Hipper Than A Food Truck

A food trailer.
Appears legal, too.

WARNING: Kim Fowley Waxing Poetic

Other creeps too.How'd Rodney get so old looking? Not as if he ever goes in the sun. (To be even-handed, we'll let you know how we look in six yrs.)

And: You don't know what the damn hell you'll find on YouTube.

Macho Madness

At laist, a YouTube compilation of the late wrestler.We miss Mean Gene too. (Gene is not dead, just retired.)

Friday, May 20, 2011

Sports Beat

Los Angeles professional teams could not possibly care any less what the peasantry may or may not think of them. (This is in line w/ Just Another Blog™ policy as well.)

The Lakers wrapped up their season on a high noteearly, flagrantly clotheslining people& referring to a ref by a "homophobic slur," as they're calling it these days. And they lost like a bunch of fucking losers.

(It's been a while, but in the third pro sport still practiced locally, the Kings & Ducks sucked.)

Now the Dodgers, whose owners have been setting a bad example for the kids (Not that Laker owner Buss is any prize as a role-model, but the Lakers have won a championship or two since the former Brooklyn Bums last got lucky in 1988.) for some time now, have a new controversy, as recent streaker (but more recent slumpee) Andre Ethier made one of those attack of Tourette's Syndrome-style signals employed in the game toward a photog during batting practice or something.
Ethier can go both ways.
Will he get anything from Easton for getting their gloves & wristband all over the media?

How Can We Miss Her If ...
Sixteen Months? Really?

Something (Already mercifully forgotten — no, damnit, it's back! This reminded us of how La Paglia would listen admiringly to Rush Limbaugh, & share her admiration w/ her Salon fans.) brought Camille Paglia to mind, & said mind realized we hadn't seen or heard hide nor hair of Ms. Paglia for some time. You can imagine how curious we are about her opinion of, you know, stuff, lately.

A moment's stalking revealed she's been off the Internet radar of her own volition &, although she promised to return, no such luck!

From 20 January 2010:
Greetings, Salon readers!

Many thanks for your kind queries about my missing column. I am very grateful for your interest and support.

I have gone on hiatus from Salon to focus on my current project for Pantheon Books — a study of the visual arts intended as a companion book to "Break, Blow, Burn" (which was on poetry).

I took a similar hiatus to complete "Break, Blow, Burn." Even a monthly column is very costly in time and energy (at least at the epic Cecil B. DeMille level that I aim for). Please be aware that, unlike most columnists in the United States, I have a day job — as a full-time college teacher.

Naturally, I am bursting with opinions about the new year’s political firestorms and natural cataclysms, but that will have to wait. I will return to Salon this fall,
[Fall 2010. Heh indeed. — Ed.] after my book has gone into production.

Best wishes,

Camille Paglia
How's all that working out for you, Camille? We'll be glad to give you Tucker Carlson's digits if the typing-for-a-living thing isn't really happening for you right now.

On The Streets

Note funny looking & mostly U.S.-made autos; hookers on Sunset.So meaningless & disconnected it's as if we were responsible.

Man Bites Dog: Homo-Hater Called Nazi ... By Republican!

Not only that, the hater who called patriot homophobe & Metal Mad Man Bradlee Dean a Nazi (more or less, we're taking a little reactionary license w/ the headline, Jim Hoft-style) is the same guy who invited him to deliver the imprecation of the day to the Minnesota House.
According to those present, Dean, who has suggested he approves of the death penalty for gay people on a radio show, was accusatory toward Democrats and insulting to people who do not believe in Jesus.

"I know this is a non-denominational prayer in this Chamber and it’s not about the Baptists and it’s not about the Catholics alone or the Lutherans or the Wesleyans. Or the Presbyterians the evangelicals or any other denomination but rather the head of the denomination and his name is Jesus. As every President up until 2008 has acknowledged. And we pray it. In Jesus’ name," he said.
Jesus.
House officials said that the guest chaplains are suggested by members and are advised to be non-denominational and inclusionary.

Rep. Ernie Leidiger, R-Mayer, arranged the guest pastor's visit, but said he was unaware of Dean's view of homosexuality, calling it "radical thinking – that kind of thinking, I think back to Nazi Germany… I don’t agree with that.”

Saying he should have done a better job of "screening" Dean, he explained his rationale for inviting the pastor:
I met him about six months ago and what I saw was a good presentation about bringing the Constitution back into the schools. A few months after that one of his people called and said we’d like to have Bradley come on and do the prayer in the morning … And I said I’m not really sure how we get that scheduled up here, so call the clerk’s office. My input was, I’d seen his presentation, he does a good job of talking to students, talking about the Constitution, talking about we need to understand how our country was formed, how important it was to know about the Founding Fathers …Little did I know there’s another side of him, which, by the way, I just learned today… I didn’t realize he was that controversial a figure. I’ve never listened to him on the radio.
Another side of the same asshole coin. We've about had it w/ this Constitution & its attendant hate-filled bullshit. Knock it the hell off, reactionaries!

LATER (1849PDT): Someone who gives a shit (or is paid enough to appear to give a shit) has provided links.