Presumptuous

Here's what I think about the media all calling Obama "presumptuous":

"Presumptuous" is LYING about the candidate and thinking that no-one going to notice.

"Presumptuous" is being part of the Keating 5 scandal and then claiming that you're are a maverick straight shooter. (per euphronius. Pace.)

Thinking that a confident Obama is presumptuous for thinking and acting like he may have a leg up on this soulless zombie scumbag is just slanderous; it's a lie and it's a racist lie, too.

Uppity Negro narrative taking hold :

Nothing worse than an uppity Negro.

How dare a black man say he has “good odds” to win the presidency.

How dare a black man say he has good odds, period...

Read the rest here.

The End of the Monte Cristo Sandwich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennigan%27s

On July 29, 2008, the web site of WBBM-AM news radio (Chicago) reported that the Bennigan's chain had closed due to bankruptcy. The website cites calls to several area Bennigan's locations in which managers and employees told reporters that the closings were company-wide, having been informed by their own supervisors early on the morning of July 29, 2008. There are reports of shutdowns in Chicago [1], New Jersey [2], North Texas. Florida, and Colorado [3] Later that day, sister station WBBM-TV reported on its web site that only company-owned stores were closing, and that franchised locations remain open. [4]

Other reports indicate that the massive shutdown only remains within the national borders of the United States, allowing international locations to remain open.

The Wall Street Journal reports [5] that both Bennigan's and Steak and Ale have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and have shut down. According to the news report, they are not expected to reopen...
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http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/food/1079580,bennigans072908.article

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=96673&provider=top

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121734771456393641.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

Under arrest?

FYI - somebody in Iowa tried a citizens arrest of Rove last week. And there's a $5K bounty on Condi's head in Aukland for a citizens arrest. Rummy got run out of France last october.

Someone's going to wind up in the dock, and soon.
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Lying, or Stupid?

Mostly lying, I think...

Salon War Room:

Andrew Klavan's Op-Ed in today's Wall Street Journal, "What Bush and Batman Have in Common." :
"There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past..."

And I wrote:

Like all of Bush's fans...

Wrong on all of the facts and phenomenally stupid.

The character of Batman sacrifices himself body and soul to seek justice, every single night. He takes personal responsibility for his actions.

The concept of sacrifice for the greater good is at best unknown amonst the Bushists. Personal responsibility is treated with an even greater contempt.

~

Walkabout

Holden Caulfield decides to take a break...

On Not Being Nice

One of my online heroes, Sinfonian, stirs up a hornet's nest over at Daily Kos...

Why I didn't go to Netroots Nation

I for one am tired of treating our piss-poor congressional leadership with kid gloves, like their shit doesn't stink. The fact is, Code Pink and those like them are right -- impeachment not only should be on the table, the hearings should have been underway for weeks or months by now. The Speaker has utterly failed to justify the faith that I, and so many of my progressive friends, placed in her upon her ascension to that lofty position. And now her apologists at Daily Kos still say that we have to be nice?

What he said.

Into the future...

Guess what? No catfish for you next year:

LELAND, Miss. — Catfish farmers across the South, unable to cope with the soaring cost of corn and soybean feed, are draining their ponds.

“It’s a dead business,” said John Dillard, who pioneered the commercial farming of catfish in the late 1960s. Last year Dillard & Company raised 11 million fish. Next year it will raise none. People can eat imported fish, Mr. Dillard said, just as they use imported oil.

As for his 55 employees? “Those jobs are gone.”

One Step Closer...

They come one step closer every fucking day:

Summary: On The McLaughlin Group, John McLaughlin said: "Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?"

They couldn't use the word "Oreo" any more than they did in that discussion, and pretend they were anything but howler monkeys.
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On Steampunk

From a discussion over at Eschaton...

doncjesuis : [goes to look up "steampunk" in an alternative dictionary]

"Steampunk" is a fun aesthetic to play around with, esp. in visual fiction. It does make the assumptions that:

1) your power sources are sufficiently efficient to be useful,
2) you have sufficient cheap labor to create all of the attendant fripperies, and
3) you have sufficient capital to put it all together.

Check out Girl Genius for some good steampunk / gaslamp fun.

"Steampunk" in real life I tend to group with cosplay, SCA/RenFaire, and our poor, misguided, beloved Goth children.
~
geor3ge : Well, I got that completely wrong.

[throws out coal-powerd Marshall stack]

Figuring out how to drive a " coal-powerd Marshall stack" is utterly steampunk.
~

Hesiod : Question of the day: Was Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang steampunk?

Good question - a mad scientist, an impractical yet operative invention, British (Victorian) empire - yep, I think so!
~

Selma Blair, and Oh Yeah...Hellboy 2

Well, I'm glad to hear that Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008) is getting great reviews! Here's a couple of clips from A.O. Scott's review at the New York Times:

Like Bogey, but With a Really Big Fist
By A. O. SCOTT

Mr. Perlman, painted bright red and outfitted with sawed-off horns and an extra-large fist, is happy to ignore the trappings of digital-era cinematic splendor and act like the cigar-chomping hero of an old black-and-white B picture. The script (and the comics by Mike Mignola that are the movies’ source) may identify the character as a demon exiled from the underworld, but as a movie archetype Hellboy is more like the gruff sergeant or the cynical gumshoe, with a soft heart, naturally, beating under the hard shell. In Mr. Perlman’s performance you catch glimpses of Bogey and Lee Marvin and hints of Robert Mitchum and George Kennedy, all blended with devilish glee and disarmingly sexy sincerity.

It's got to be one helluva performance to get compared to Bogey, Lee Marvin, and Mitchum all in the same sentence!

Of course, there is promotion like crazy for this, and this pic has been in my head all week:

Selma Blair on The Tonight Show looking FANTASTIC! I don't know where to look: Her eyes, her face, that dress (WOW!), or those crazy sexy shoes!

More of these pics (and rude comments too!) over at The Bastardly - So I thought I'd share that with you.

Evil for Evil's Sake

It's a well established fact that Dick Cheney is trying to destroy the world. I would suppose that it's just a matter of course that he and the other Bushists are making sure to take out school children along the way:

School Children Thrown Under The (Private) Bus:

One of the things that the Bush administration is breaking now is public transportation for school children. Why? So that private businesses like the owner of Greyhound Bus Lines can open up new lines of business offering more expensive private bus service to school districts.

The Federal Transit Administration last month closed its comment period on a new regulation that will cut off federal funding for bus routes that it believes primarily exist to get children to and from school. Under the new rules, a school system could subsidize a child's bus ride on public transit, but a public bus system could not significantly order its routes or schedules for the convenience of these children...

"Strength through bowing..."

My response to Glenn Greenwald's "Democrats' strategy: Strength through bowing" :

You're absolutely right...

I AM going to vote for Obama in the general election. That's because I will DROP A CONCRETE BLOCK ON MY OWN FOOT before I ever vote for a Republican for anything.

Besides that - I will never give another dime to his campaign or to the Democratic Party. I just contributed to the EFF to continue this fight and I'm forwarding the letter to Obama and the DNC to let them know that this is a contribution that they didn't get.

I will support ActBlue and I will work to put everyone who supported this corrupt and craven bill out of business.

-- Meander61

Mark Twain, On Congress

http://www.twainquotes.com/Congress.html

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar


"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can."
- What Is Man?

"...the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes." - Letter fragment, 1891

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." - Mark Twain, a Biography

Good Morning, all.

Final passage of the FISA bill

Greenwald:

UPDATE VI: Cloture on the bill just passed 72-26. Obama voted in favor of cloture along with all Republicans. Hillary Clinton voted against cloture.

After the cloture vote, the Senate just approved final passage of the FISA bill, by a vote of 69-28. Obama voted with all Republicans for the bill. Hillary Clinton voted against it.

Democrats voting in favor of final passage of the FISA bill: Bayh - Carper - Casey - Conrad - Dorgan - Feinstein - Innuoye - Kohl - Landrieu - Lincoln - McCaskill - Mukulski - Nelson (Neb.) - Nelson (Fla.) - Obama - Pryor - Rockefeller - Salazar - Webb - Whitehouse.

Democrats voting against final passage of the FISA bill: Akaka - Biden - Bingaman - Boxer - Brown - Cantwell - Cardin - Clinton - Dodd - Dorgan - Durbin - Feingold - Harkin - Kerry - Leahy - Levin - Lautenberg - Murray - Reed - Reid - Sanders - Schumer - Stabenow - Tester - Wyden.

To say that I'm bitterly disappointed is an understatement.
~

O Fortuna

ht Moonbootica

"I felt quite sorry for it. Perhaps I should have left it there and given it a good home.

"In spite of being stuck in a rather crappy slot on this turn of the wheel, Roland discovers an unexpected benefit to his one good deed in his last life..."

They have jokes

Atrios reports:

GOP club accused of racism for Obama web banner:
A banner slogan on the Pemberton Republican Club's Web site that said, "Obama loves America like O.J. loved Nicole," disappeared yesterday after local Democrats alleged racist campaign tactics.

The Web master, Ed Kuck, a recently elected Republican County committeeman, said he had seen the slogan on an Internet site and copied it onto the club's Web page about a month ago as "a joke."

Ha. Ha. Ha. Fucker.

Let's try this: "Republicans are convicted thieves, murderers, felons, and pedophiles!"

It's funny because it's true!

Right up there with McCain joking about killing Iranians - Funny, right?

Crushes: Jennifer Tilly

I was in a mood to talk about Miss Jennifer today....

From IMDB:

An actress who always attracts audiences' attention, Jennifer Tilly is by turns funny, sexy, compassionate, compelling and often all at once...

Trivia:

In 2005, won the Ladies-Only No Limit Texas Hold 'Em event at the World Series of Poker, becoming the first celebrity to win an open (as opposed to celebrity-only) WSOP tournament and earn a World Series bracelet. She beat out exactly 600 other women to take the championship.

Personal Quotes

"A way you can get really good abs in film is you get your makeup artist to paint shadows--faux washboard. But if you see me in a movie and I have great abs, it means I have a great body double."

"I have to tell you, I'm not like Demi Moore, where the tears trickle prettily down my cheeks. My whole face screws up and it's like, 'Oh please, get a room.' [on why she never chooses roles that involve crying]"

Some of my favorite pics:

July 4 2008

A Black man, Barack Obama, is the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States.

Jesse Helms is dead. That he burns in hell, eternally, would be too fond a wish.

The Preamble:



Kirk's Version:



The words must apply to EVERYONE or they mean NOTHING.

Kylie Minogue receives OBE

Kylie Minogue receives OBE

LONDON (Reuters) - Kylie Minogue, the former soap actress who become one of the world's most famous female recording artists, was honored for her services to music on Thursday.

A beaming Minogue, who recently overcame breast cancer, received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) from Prince Charles, who was standing in for the Queen Elizabeth at the ceremony at Buckingham Palace...

...Earlier this year, Minogue received one of France's top cultural awards when she was made a Chevalier dans l'ordre des Arts et Lettres (Knight of Arts and Letters) for "the cultural pleasure she has given French people."

This is seriously cute.

Coffee is Important

Coffee is important!

The meaning of Starbucks

The coffee company announces plans to close 600 stores, while simultaneously watering down its primary house brew. As if we needed any more evidence that the economy is in the dregs

Andrew Leonard [2008-07-02]

Starbucks may not have the BEST coffee, but it's damn sure better than what we used to get before they came around - What is Chock Full O Nuts made of, anyway? The only place you ever could get an espresso or a cappucino when I was growing up in New York was down in the Village or Little Italy.

Folgers and Maxwell House never had a French Roast or a Columbian Supreme back in the the day - that's the Starbucks influence.

There simply aren't enough of the others around to make a difference at any given place or moment, so until there's a different coffeehouse pulling espresso on every block that pays health insurance for part-time employees, I'm pulling for Starbucks.

Oh, and please note - a "cup of coffee" at Starbucks only costs a buck-fifty...two bucks ($1.95) for the venti, or large. Y'all might want to lay off the caramel and the whipped cream. That's not a coffee, it's a milkshake.

Crushes: Daisy Fuentes

Daisy Fuentes @ Hellboy II: The Golden Army Premiere

I still remember Daisy from MTV's House of Style - there's a show they need to bring back!