Anything New Under The Sun?

Over a month away, huh? Well, how 'bout a good one to get things rolling around here again?

Over the last month and a half there have been several cases of Right-wing Republican-types bursting out of the closet in the most unintentional and hilarious ways. This sent what had been about a once-a-month trend skyward, forcing Republicans everywhere to pour on the hetero and dig even deeper into their roster of tough-guy/daddy-save-us types. Hell, just look at the ever-manlier--and apparently great-smelling--Fred Thompson, who's running for the GOP presidential nomination.

A brief recap of the most recent GOP sexual oopsies: Well, there was that Senator from Idaho getting busted for cruising an airport bathroom. Pure comedy. And who could forget the Florida campaign chairman who's fear of black men sent him into a public toilet in search of carnal knowledge of... a black man? There was also a more tragic outcome to a couple of these transgressions. A high-level state Republican staffer with very close ties to K-Street criminal, Jack Abrhamoff, was murdered in a gay love triangle gone bad in--ahem-- Orlando. And just this weekend a Republican prosecutor from--where else?-- Florida committed suicide after being brought up on charges for trying to rent a 5-year-old girl for certain acts from an undercover federal agent over the internet. So, that last one aint exactly closeted homosexual activity, but it fits the theme of Republican repression and hypocrisy so well, it deserves to hop on for the ride.

So, of course this all leads up to today's item in the booming news beat I'll coin, "Right Wing Moral Hypocrisy on Parade".

Moralist, bible thumping, GOP advocate, Baptist minister, Michael Aldridge was found dead in his Alabama home this weekend. The official cause of death? An errant auto erotic undertaking. Now, normally, that would only get a mild chuckle, partially from the unintentional suicide part (death by jerking off is always a funny item) and partially at the mild hypocrisy of the situation. Buuut, as his bad luck would have it, that's only the first layer of this tasty taco.

Ya see... um. Well, the thing is... Ah, hell. Why not just read the police report provided by The Smoking Gun?

Go ahead. Read it again.

That's right. Not one, but two scuba suits. And he apparently hog-tied himself. And there was a condom'd dildo hanging out of his butt. Wow. How far gone do you need to be to where one rubber wet-suit just doesn't cut it for you anymore? Jeeesh.

Anyhoo, the always rollicking Sadly No! has more on the story and a lively free-for-all in the comments section. Go have a look!

Damn, it's good to be back.

Paging Dr. Jung

An excellent read on The Mahablog dissects Bush's bizarre allusions to Vietnam in his recent speech. Historians freaked and the opposition howled, but it seems the Preznit is painting with strokes much broader than most of us have realized. Maha traces this allegorical rhetoric within the Right Wing back to WWII and the British response to the German threat. And even illuminates the terrain by recounting a Star Trek episode of all things.

Very, very interesting.

Read: The Power of (Right Wing) Myth.

Full Speed Ahead

Little posting on here as the summer days drain like sands through the hourglass. And there will be even less posting until about mid-September, cuz me and Mrs. Delano will be out of town to be officially wed (and subsequently party our pants off).

The wedding planning and work-related craziness has left me with little free time for blog posting. For that, I apologize and offer this tasty morsel that will have to tide you over until I get back to Chicago, tanned, rested and, yes, married.

Bush and Co. have finally been nabbed for attempting to turn the Federal Government into a subsidiary of the GOP. Not exactly news for those of us who've been paying attention, but it now seems some folk have dug up some pretty damning evidence. And to whom does the finger of blame for the most part point? Why the recently flown-the-coop Karl Rove, of course.

Read

The Washington Post's take:

'How Rove Directed Federal Assets for GOP Gains'
The Liberty Papers' take:

'Karl Rove Directed Government Funds For Political Gain'.

Rotten To The Core

Just when it seems that the Bush administration and their Republican enablers can't get any more corrupt or any more vile, new information surfaces and this gang is cast down even further into some new level of stinking rot. Can we consider these fucks anything less than Satanic at this point?

(Via the great Cursor.org, who incidentally, need you help.)

Item 1: Apparently the numero uno US construction contractor building the US Embassy in Bagdhad (a complex rumored to be larger than the Vatican) has been using slave labor.

"I believe these men were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work at the U.S. Embassy,"a witness tells the House Oversight Committee, adding "I've read the State Department Inspector General's report on the construction of the embassy. Mr. Chairman, it's not worth the paper it's printed on." More on 'charges of human trafficking.'

Item #2: As new information is leaked about the death of post-9/11 US Army enlistment poster-boy, Pat Tillman (the poor fella who walked away from the NFL only to be killed by his own unit in Afghanistan), it turns out that in the days before his death, not only was he about to go public as a major anti-war figure, but by all accounts it now appears his death was an assassination, not an accident.

Documents obtained by the AP in response to a FOIA request, note medical examiners' suspicions that Pat Tillman was killed deliberately by his own men, something that his mother, who remains harshly critical of the investigation, has long suggested may have been the case.

Power Grab? What Power Grab?

Via Crooks & Liars:

Democratic Member Of House Homeland Security Committee Denied Access To Portions Of Presidential Directive

From the article:

...As a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure "bubbleroom'' in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.

On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED. "I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack,'' DeFazio said...

My Next Album Cover

Had I a record coming out, I would beg, borrow, steal, murder to get the cash together to buy this picture by nature and landscape photographer Ladislav Kamarad.


Were I to spend about a minute and a half on it and name the band after myself, it might look something like this:


**UPDATE**

It just occurred to me that my new imaginary album cover looks a lot like this record from The Fucking Champs:


Ah well.

The Free Market : The Ultimate Problem Solver

(Or, Semi-Coherant Rant About America's Hyper-Capitalist Economy)

It's one of the main tenets of those who champion the free market as the ultimate righter-of-wrongs, healer-of-wounds, and servant of humanity-- customer service. It's the manifestation of their belief that the corporation is controlled by the citizens (the old "speak with your wallet" adage). Unfortunately, even in the face of massive deregulation across the business spectrum, this belief looks far better on paper than it works out in real life.

The plainest evidence of this is seen in the presentations of the massive anti-Wal Mart-ization movement and, on a slightly more conceptual level, by the anti-globalization movement. And those are only a couple of specifics. Just look at the blowback from the global warming hoopla. The vast majority of independent scientists across the globe are practically in hysterics about the toll humankind's massive carbon emissions have begun to take on the biosphere. And who stands against this science? A far, far smaller number of scientists who, as becomes clearer the deeper you dig, are represented by various think-tanks and PAC's who all have ties to manufacturing and production lobbyists.

Care to connect those dots? That's right, the good ol', god-like free market that works so wonderfully in our favor, in theory anyway, is also working, for... well, to take the thing to it's logical conclusion, is working for our extinction. Not exactly a god I'd like to worship.

Well... to turn from the macro to the micro, give this story a read: Sprint ditches customers who complain too much.

How does that story apply to the failure of today's hyper-capitalist free market? I mean, these schlubs can always go sign with a rival network, right?

Well , they can certainly switch cell phone providers... for now anyway. The same unchecked free-market force that's allowed the mass media environment to become homogenized to the point that you can count the number of companies behind America's major news outlets on one hand can also be seen in the dwindling number of cell phone service providers the public has to choose from.

As these companies buy each other out and conglomerate again and again, our choices as consumers dwindles as well. And as we saw from the uncritical, uninterested media in the run-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, homogeny breeds complicity, which breeds apathy, which, in turn, breeds decay.

And that is the ultimate result of the unchecked, hyper-capitalism so many deluded American trumpet so loudly these days--decay.

Anti-Science Friday

OK, so we all got a huge laugh out of the Flat Earth Society koo-koo-krazies a couple weeks ago, right? Well, today, the vaunted Science Blogs site gives us a look at Overwhelming Evidence, a site dedicated to, uh, to... well, apparently dedicated to the intellectual heavy lifting of conflating science and religion. And wouldn't ya know it, anything with a whiff of off-kilter scientific verbiage has attracted a gaggle of ID proponents. (And like the Flat Earth, it can only spell fun after you realize just how goddamn nuts this gang is.)

Today's case revolves around a company's claim to have built a perpetual motion machine (which failed completely at its first public outing... surprise, surprise). The debate, er, diatribe revolves around some hilarious misinterpretations of the laws of thermodynamics, raising the dead, and the wicked dogma of the leftist science-elite. Don't worry a bit if you're unfamiliar with the science behind the laws of Thermodynamics (entropy and all that fun stuff), cuz, you're still way ahead of the brainiacs at Overwhelming Evidence.

Oh, and be sure to read the comments on the Science Blogs page. Golden.

From one of the resident PhDummies at Overwhelming Evidence:

Let me explain: Such acts [Jesus' bringin' ol' Laz back from the dead] would have required a great deal of energy brought in from apparently nowhere. The laws of thermodynamics as Hawkings understand them say this can never happen. In hawking's world-view reviving the dead is impossible because a long-dead body contains a great deal more entropy than a healthy living body. On the other hand, well documented evidence says these miricales [sic] happened. As scientists we must follow this evidence wherever it leads.

Read, "Yet another example of credulity begetting credulity".

(Via the mighty Boing Boing.)

Sleep Deeper

Oftentimes over the past six years (though decidedly less of late), we of similar opinion note how Emporer President Bush lives in a bubble; an insular world where critics and their criticism are constantly shieldled from the predisdent's perception. It's why he rarely speaks off the cuff and why he almost never takes uncanned Q&A. It was why Jeff Gannon was planted in the press pool and why we smiled so wide when Stephen Colbert got Bush's goat at a press club dinner. It's why they created "free speech zones" at presedential events and why, to even attend a presidential speech, you are forced to sign a loyalty oath to the president.

We bitched and moaned and cried about these rank and unAmerican actions taken by the American government against the American people. But the so-called "liberal" media could have cared less. Their complicity was duly noted and we've been left to, for the most part, preach to the converted in light-circulation magazines and on (increasingly less) obscure political blogs.

Will any of this change with the release last week of "Presidential Advance Manual" a document obtained by the ACLU in a lawsuit against presidential staffers? Well, no one's holding their breath, but chalk it up as yet another straw on the tired camel's back.

Sez the ACLU:

The lawsuit names as plaintiffs Jeff and Nicole Rank, who were arrested at a Fourth of July presidential appearance at the West Virginia State Capitol because they were wearing T-shirts critical of the president, and Alex Young and Leslie Weise, Denver residents who were thrown out of a town hall meeting with President Bush because they had an anti-war bumper sticker on their car.

The heavily redacted manual illustrates the gameplan for shielding the president and the complicit media from any dissenting or derogatory positions taken, quite leagally, by American citizens in the public sphere. It's just as predictably sickening as one would expect from this sickening administration. And whatsmore: it highlights exactly what we've claimed all along. Yet agian, we've been right from day one and all the talking heads and barking dogs have been dead wrong.

From the Dept. of Great Big Surprises

Wow. The sleazy criminality of the ruling thugs in the Republican party has officially breached the levies.

Today #43 commuted the prison sentence of federal criminal I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Bush White House intimate, Libby was convicted (by a Republican prosecutor and Republican judge, no less) for lying to authorities and obstructing justice in an investigation looking into the outing of an undercover CIA agent for political retribution.

Libby had only today been ordered to report to prison immediately and no stay of time would be awarded. The $250,000 fine and two years of probation remain intact, however. Though, apparently, it's fully within the bounds of the law for Libby's defense fund to pay the fine. So, it's quite safe to assume he'll incur very little financial duress from the sentence. And how 'bout that probation? Good golly. Ouch. That wrist must be hurting after a slap like that.

Gotta love it. One set of laws for them and another for the rest of us. I mean, last week it was the VP claiming he wasn't a branch of the government at all (and therefore able to operate his office in TOTAL secrecy) and now this. America, these guys are f'ing laughing at you. And laughing all the way to the bank.

Bush and Co: putting the "Con" back in Neocon.

Oh, and be sure to keep a look out for the full pardon, sure to come on January, 19 2009.

2007 NBA Draft

(Photo grabbed from Blog-a-Bull, who likely grabbed it elsewhere.)

Wow. What a night it was for us Gator fans. 3 from the back-to-back champs went in the first ten picks. Al Horford went to Atlanta with the third overall pick and Corey Brewer went to Minnesota with the seventh. Those of us in Chicago were thrilled to land the colorful Joakim Noah with the ninth pick. And it's not just a thrill for the Gator fans here; Bulls fans have been raving about the pick, elated about his speed, size and heart.

The Bulls still need to make a trade or two to pick up a serious scoring threat (Kobe, anyone?), but even if they jettison a few names, this fall's Bulls will be one of the fastest, tallest teams out there and a true defensive powerhouse.

Round two saw Chris Richard join Corey Brewer in Minnesota and Taurean Green join the number one overall pick from the team the Gators steamrolled to pick up their second national championship, the towering Greg Oden out in Portland.

As for draft coverage Yahoo has a great Winner and Loser run-down and ESPN columnist Bill Simmons offers his predictably excellent and hilarious draft blog.

A Tree Grows In SOCTUS

Dear Leader George Bush's stocking of the Superme Court of the United States with far-right idealogues is really starting to pay off.
Oh joy.

From Crooks & Liars:

In one full term, this Court has severely curbed local efforts to promote racial diversity in schools, upheld a right-wing ban on a necessary medical procedure for women, curbed students’ free speech rights, crippled Congress’ ability to keep corporate money out of political advertising, prevented taxpayers from challenging the constitutionality of Bush’s faith-based initiatives, made it almost impossible for women to prevail on claims of longterm sex discrimination . . . and they’re just getting started.

Road Apples, Romney Style

This is insane. Therefore you oughta read it.

That it's about the behavior of a Republican presidential candidate means you must read it.

Romney's Shaggy Dog Story.

(And be sure to read the comments... full of yuks.)

BushCo and 9/11 : BFF

Yet again, a Bush administration top dog can't pass up a chance to hold the specter of 9-11 over the heads of Americans. The swine.

This time, though, they did it over the bodies of 9 South Carolina firemen who recently died in a warehouse fire. The fucking swine.

O'Neal Compton has the rundown.

Friday Roundup

Another crazy week here. Isn't summertime supposed to be all relaxing and slow? Even in the workplace?

In any event, posting will be light next week too as I'm headed to Miami for some decidedly somber business. Then it's up to Orlando for some visiting and other business. Orlando folk, gimme a call, eh?

In the meantime, filmmaker, firebrand, lightning rod, provocateur, etc, etc, Michael Moore has a new film out soon. Sicko is about his inspection of America's fundamentally, pervertedly flawed health care system. Something I've had an ongoing, intimate experience with since 2002, my happy-go-lucky cancer year. I'm looking forward to seeing the film, for sure, but as with any of Moore's projects, I'll be bringing a grain of salt along. In fact I'll bring the whole shaker.

The Nation magazine has a great article on Sicko. Why not read it?

Friday Roundup

No posts this week, guess it was a busy one.

Well, on to today's roundup:

• More here on how the wannabe terrorist boobs the feds keep busting (and the administration keeps hyping) are little more than schmucks with more pipe dreams than pipe bombs (yea, I used that phrase last week, I like it). This time security technology expert Bruce Schneier shines the light of reason on what is never presented to the American public without a heavy dose of frothy fear-mongering. Sez he, "There is a real threat of terrorism. And while I'm all in favor of the terrorists' continuing incompetence, I know that some will prove more capable. We need real security that doesn't require us to guess the tactic or the target: intelligence and investigation -- the very things that caught all these terrorist wannabes -- and emergency response. But the "war on terror" rhetoric is more politics than rationality. We shouldn't let the politics of fear make us less safe."
• The legendary and notorious Yes Men have struck again with typically insightful and hilarious results. This time at Calgary's Gas and Oil Exposition. (If you hasn't seen the film on these guys... rent it now!)
• And on a slightly more depressing note, ever wonder how all that outsourcing of labor and manufacturing is gonna affect the American economy over the long haul? I mean, of course, how it will affect normal plebeians like you or I, not our corporate masters or the guy passed out at the bus stop in a puddle of his own (hopefully) vomit. Well, economists aren't too keen on the way things have played out and warn that, basically, China's got America's proverbial balls in the proverbial vice. And they could turn the crank anytime they please. Global Research's Richard C. Cook has the run-down.
• And if that isn't depressing enough for you, try this website. Apparently there are a good number of people who believe the Earth is flat. It's not a joke, sadly enough. So, maybe this isn't so much depressing as it is hilarious. But the Q&A page employs a rationale so akin to the modern anti-Darwin, creationist movement's rationale, that it's guaranteed to depress you again once you remember just how big and just how stupid the Creationist movement in America is.
• And finally, not one to leave you on too depressing a note, I got blogger and friend Patrick Hughes' new book, Diary of Indignities, in the mail this week. If you've enjoyed his blog, Bad News Hughes, well, you won't find a whole lot particularly new here. But you will revisit a multitude of painful humiliations anew and find that, even though you know the stories this time around, they're still awfully goddamned funny.

Friday Roundup

• I'd meant to mention this a few weeks ago, but things have been mighty busy on this end... the rP00P blog is back! Get your music fix. Have some laughs... and apparently see a picture of me during a not-so-open mic night at the Art Institute Museum last month. Dig the backing band.
• The Existentialist Cowboy is also back after some time off. And, again, this is something I've been meaning to mention for the past few weeks. Today's excellent post dissects the vitriol and finger-pointing emanating from the modern GOP. Or as the cowboy himself puts it, "What we are witnessing from outside America's increasingly radical, imperialist party is the ugly puss that oozes from an open sore: Republicanism, desperately seeking scapegoats."
• Everyone's favorite smartass lefty blog, Sadly No!, continue the hilarious feather rustling of right-wing simp blogger, Ace of Spades. Previous posts-turned-spats revealed ol' Ace's puzzling take on women parts. Specifically, that he finds vaginas icky and they, for some reason, to him, resemble an assemblage of "play-doh and bacon." Today's post investigates Ace's particularly cock-eyed take on modern feminism.
• It's been a while, so why not check in with one of the greatest, funniest sites in the intertoobs, Engrish.com?
• And finally, I've somehow managed to keep my head above water over at Chicago's finest food blog, Drive Thru. And despite being ungodly busy lately, I found the time to post a couple articles this week. If you're so inclined, just look for my byline.

Summer Art Fun

Photographer Merideth Allen has authored a series of photographs that I find hilarious, beautiful and oddly compelling. The series, "Melting Ice Pops," is comprised of pictures of melting popsicles against summertime-y scenery. The popsicles are the cartoon-face variety you get from an ice cream truck or the helados cart. I would love to own a few of these prints.

(Via the mighty Boing Boing.)

Another Half-Baked Terror Plot Herocially Foiled

Another kooky, ill-considered "terror plot" was thwarted this week. And wouldn't you know, all signs once again point to the plot being more pipe dream than pipe bomb. Sound familiar?

Hell, even the reporter from Fox News called the plot, "impossible to carry out."

But of course the Bush administration and their apologists never let little things like facts mess up some good fear mongering. Thusly, pundits and politicians around the nation wasted no time in filing another notch in the bedpost, as they unsurprisingly hailed this latest bust as at once a justification of their "extraordinary" techniques... and, curiously, at the same time, a reason to continue to expand the legal reach of those techniques.

Attytood brings the goods. From his post:

Look, here's what you need to know about the JFK Four (one suspect is still at large.)They were yet another band of ne'er-do-wells with a homegrown hatred forthe U.S. They had no terror training or know-how, no links to Osama bin Laden,al-Qaeda, or the big-bucks funding mechanisms of the kind that carried outreal terror on 9/11. Their driving force in this plot of "unthinkable devastation"was a government informant, a twice-convicted drug dealer eager towin a lighter sentence. Aside from the most important aspect that their plan was not feasible, they also had no explosives to carry it out.

People who think that violence and bloodshed are an answer to anything are indeed danger to a civil society, so unless the facts are radically different than what's been reported so far, we should have praise for law enforcement, including the NYPD and the FBI, for not letting this kind of nonsense get very far. It shows yet again that the law-enforcement approach to fighting this type of threat -- so ridiculed when John Kerry dared even mention it in 2004 -- remains the one that in most cases works best. That said, the plot was not exactly the biggest thing going on the world right now.

***UPDATE***

Tonight, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann aired a piece about the "nexus of politics and terror," in which the Bush administration's calculated use of these so-called terror busts is chronicled. How they have been used to put political feathers in the president's cap is scrutinized.

Crooks and Liars hosts the video. WATCH IT.

Endless War For Endless ______?

Profit, I guess.

Sooooo, lessee what's in the news today.

Bush Administration Calls for Permanent US Bases in Iraq

In the words of the late, great Gomer Pyle, "Surprise, surprise, surprise."