Newt is not making any nuevo amigos

Not even officially in the race for president and Newt Gingrich is out speechifying and not making any new friends in the process. For a few years after he was no longer in a position of power, he seemed almost human. But now that he's considering tossing his hat into the ring, the old Newt we loved to hate is back and as dicky as ever. This time, he's letting the true colors of his southern racism show ever so brilliantly. We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto Anyone who knows me either personally or through reading this blog knows that I'm not one of these dogmatic PC liberals. I'm not for giving special rights to illegal immigrants. I don't want them getting drivers licenses or receiving any other benefits that tax paying citizens get because they are not paying into the system. But that doesn't mean I want to kick them out of the country either. And I do think that it's a really good idea that everybody who lives and works in this country really ought to learn English. But since there is a significant number of people in this country who are less than fluent, and as we are supposedly a country founded on equality (fact that those founding principles were conceived while slavery was a perfectly acceptable practice notwithstanding) then we need to accommodate these people while strongly urging them to become fluent English speakers. What bothers me the most is that this sort of talk really only has one purpose, to excite the ugliest elements of the republican base. This is the Nixonian "southern strategy." Appeal to the racists with talk like this as well as talk of "states rights" which is a code word for being down with the confederacy when spoken by republicans (since they have demonstrated abundantly that they are quite against states rights to pass legislation that they disagree with). I actually hope Newt jumps into the ring and goes all the way in the primaries because if this is any indication, he will show mainstream America the absolute ugliest side of the republican party. Of course, that could come back and bite me in the ass if the electorate gets as ugly as they did in the last couple of presidential elections. Americans are an unpredictable and fickle bunch.

Don't You Know There's a Street Named After You?

I usually quite enjoy it when Fidel Castro rips into Bush. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of dictators whether they be on the left or the right. But I do enjoy it when leaders of other countries blast our idiot in chief, regardless if they are better leaders or worse. In fact, it's almost even better when it's a worse leader talking about how bad Bush is. This time is different. This time it's just plain stupid. Apparently Bush has been talking about bio-fuels like ethanol lately, despite his close ties to the oil industry and the Saudi royal family. While I don't like 99.99% of what that lying sack of shit has to say and I don't trust his motives one bit, I do like any talk about moving away from a petroleum based system. So this cigar chomping ZZ Top beard having asshat has to come along and bash the one slightly decent thing Bush has ever said in his entire life? "The sinister idea of converting food into combustible was definitively established as the economic line of the foreign policy of the United States," he writes. The Cuban leader also notes that Cuba has also experimented with extracting ethanol from sugarcane. “But if rich nations decide to import huge amounts of traditional food crops such as corn from developing countries to help meet their energy needs, it could have disastrous consequences for the world's poor,” Castro writes. What a huge crock! We don't have to import a damn thing to make bio-fuel. We've got massive grain surpluses, to the point where our government is paying farmers not to grow things. The supply outweighs the demand to the point where there are farm subsidies that drive the libertarians crazy enough to want to take over a whole state of their own. And let's take it a step further than any republican would and put industrial hemp into the equation. We could be off foreign oil and we wouldn't need to cut down another tree to make paper. If we stop buying oil from the Middle East, we take a good chunk of money and power out of the hands of theocratic Muslim dictators. We wouldn't have to lie our way into wars in countries that have oil. And best of all, Dick Cheney's friends would need to find themselves new jobs. So Fidel, try to remember that there are good things to bash Bush about and stupid things to bash him about, and try to know the difference between them. Thanks.

The Emperor Fiddles as Rome Burns

So there was another White House Correspondents Dinner. And without the benefit of a brutal roasting at the hands of Steven Colbert, Bush got to make light of his miserable failures and come off as a swell guy. "A year ago my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice president had shot someone," President Bush said Wednesday night during the annual gathering. "Ah," he said, "those were the good ol' days." How about joking around about all the people who are dying because you lied to us about Iraq? And if that wasn't bad enough, we've got the architect of the last 6 years of national embarrassment rapping in an improv routine. If you can stomach it, here's the MC Rove video. The upside of a rapping Karl Rove is that perhaps this can set off a rap war between the White House and Suge Knight and somebody might bust a cap in somebody's ass.

McCain's MySpace pwned!

It was only a matter of time before campaigning on MySpace would bite a candidate in the ass. The John McCain campaign learned the hard way what happens when you tangle with MySpace geeks. After using a third party MySpace template without giving credit, the uncredited creator added a little something something to McCain's MySpace.

Speaking of Unremarkable Anuses...

This time it's not about Anna Nicole's autopsy. This time I'm talking about the current batch of republicans, about as unremarkable bunch of assholes that ever was. I stumbled upon this op-ed in the Washington Post that pretty much spells it all out. During last year's congressional campaigns, Republicans spent a good deal of time and money predicting that if the Democrats won, Congress would become one big partisan fishing expedition led by zealots such as Henry Waxman. The Republicans' message didn't really impress the public, and apparently it didn't reach the president and his underlings, either. Since the election, they have continued merrily along with their mission to politicize every governmental function and agency as if their allies still controlled Congress, as if the election hadn't happened. Clearly, they had grown accustomed to the Congress of the past six years, whose oversight policy towards the administration was "Anything Goes." But their total and apparently ongoing inability to shift gears once the Democrats had taken control -- with an oversight policy that could be summarized as "You Did WHAT?" -- is mind-boggling. Democrats such as Waxman clearly had planned to hold hearings on the administration's hitherto-unexamined follies of the past six years. Instead, the most high-profile investigations they're conducting concern administration follies of the past five months, since they won the election. I wish watching the administrations house of cards crumbling would bring me more pleasure. I really relished the idea that a day would come when somebody finally started holding these bastards accountable. I guess the fact that people are still dying every day because of Bush's goddamn takes away a little bit of the joy I expected to feel by seeing these spoiled brats no longer being able to get their way all the time. This administration and their unchecked ways has left a stink on this country that is going to take a lot more than a slim majority to wash it away.

I'd Like a Second Opinion on This

So they've released Anna Nicole's autopsy results. It should come as no surprise to anyone that she had a cocktail of drugs in her system. The surprise is on line 2 of page 4:

God Save Me From Your Followers!

I saw one of the scariest movies I've ever seen this weekend. In it, these people were indoctrinating their children at a very young age to turn our democracy into full fledged theocracy. I know, the premise doesn't sound as scary as horror classics like Dawn of the Dead or Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the originals!). While there were some really creepy kids in this movie, they didn't send the same kind of chills down my spine as that freaky little dead girl in The Ring. But what made this movie scarier than any of those was that this was a documentary. I watched in horror as the children were urged to lay their hands on a cardboard cut out of George Bush and praise him like some kind of messiah. I listened in a state of shock while a woman said that Islam has kids willing to blow themselves up for Allah and she wants the same for Christian kids. I just laughed at Ted Haggard for obvious reasons. The movie was Jesus Camp, and I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks that evangelicals are just some harmless loonies. I plan on a much lengthier post on the dangers of dominionism at some point in the future, but for now, just watch this and be afraid. Be very afraid.

When Directors Attack

Having half-assedly directed a movie, I know how difficult it can be dealing with actors and actresses. But I never had a fit like David O. Russel on the set of I Heart Huckabees... Apparently David O. Russel is famous for being really abusive to his cast, including getting into a fist fight with George Clooney. I really enjoy his movies, but this will definitely make me look at them a little bit differently. Here's more... If you enjoyed those, you might also enjoy the prank phonecalls that Richard and Sal put together with these clips for the Howard Stern Show.

This sounds familiar...

So it was pretty much inevitable that secret identity of the guy who is responsible for the brilliant 1984 Hillary ad would be blown. His story reminds me of part of my own. While not directly employed by the Obama campaign, Philip De Vellis did work for a consultant that was working for the Obama campaign. He whipped up the ad one afternoon on his Mac and uploaded it without anybody from his employers or the campaign knowing about it and let it loose on YouTube. One million hits, lots of media, and the loss of a job ensued. It really puts the MP3 that almost got me fired from the DNC to shame. This was just a bunch of clips put to some cheesy beats that I put together and planned on renaming it to something a lot of people would want to download and put it on Napster. I was told that if it got out, somebody could connect it back to me, it would be a press disaster and I would be fired. I didn't post it until I no longer worked there. It was definitely nothing worth getting fired over. The Hillary 1984 ad is the sort of thing worth getting fired over. And if there's a campaign that is willing to think different, they'd be smart to hire this guy to work behind the scenes and unofficially, if only he could be a bit more discreet about it next time.

Politics Are About to Get Even Dumber

You're running for office and want to get the youth interested in your campaign. Doing a Q&A on MTV or playing sax on a talk show is so 1992. Having a blog is so 2004. Today's candidates need to use the same strategy that Dane Cook turned his mediocre comedy into a huge hit. That's right folks, get ready for politics even more dumbed down than usual, now on MySpace! Can you just imagine the kind of comments that people are going to leave for their least favorite candidate? All of the poorly photoshopped images, all the bad mixes of lower case and caps, all the tacky blinkies, all the "creative" spelling, and all of the annoying polls and questionaires that make MySpace the most annoying place on the internet are going to collide headfirst with the ugly world of national politics and neither will be the same again.

Vote Different

Much has been said about how viral internet video could affect this election cycle what with everyday citizens able to put out their own political ads without being held accountable by any law that limits what political organizations can put in their ads. It also allows the people to say or insinuate the sort of harsh things that an official campaign would be blasted for saying or insinuating. It's not too pleasant when it's the person you support who is being trashed, but it's wonderful when done to the people who are running against them. So whoever remixed this Mac ad for Barak Obabma, my hat is off to you. But watch out, Hillary is trying to find out who you are so she can try to order a hit.

Over 1000 Radicals March on Washington

When Bush decided to go to war with Iraq, before it became obvious that the reasons he gave were a complete and total lie, the usual anti-war protesters came out and protested while much of mainstream America did nothing and tens of right wing crazies from groups like Free Republic and Protest Warrior came out for a counter protest. Four years have passed and things are remarkably different. Nobody greeted our troops as liberators with flowers and ticker tape parades. There were no WMDs found. One of the few secular states of the Middle East has degenerated into a civil war between various sects of Islam jockeying for control. Over 3000 of our brave troops have died for absolutely nothing. Now the majority of this country has joined the majority of the rest of the world in realizing that Bush's war in Iraq is a huge disastrous mistake, and as the support for the war wanes amongst mainstream Americans and even some Republicans, there are still a few who for some unexplainable reason still cling to the idea that there's something in Bush's fuckup of a war that is worth our kids dying over every day. And at least one thousand of these out of the mainstream radicals showed up to DC the Saturday to drape themselves in the flag, attack the patriotism of those who want to stop our troops from being killed for no damn good reason at all, and to show their support for a failure of a president and to continue his policy of worthless bloodshed based on lies and manipulations. But I'll give credit where credit is due. It's the first time the pro-war crowd managed to break the 4-digit mark. Why such a large turnout this time? It's sheer desperation. The rest of the country has woken up from their post 9-11 stupor and are realizing what has been the result of their inaction, so the last few people who cling to the notion that this war was a good idea have to get organized and give it one last try.

Every cloud has a silver lining

The circus surrounding Anna Nicole Smith's death and ensuing legal nightmare between possible baby daddies is a trash-a-liscious tale with a cast of characters straight out of an early John Waters movie. Yet still it's a tragic tale for all of those involved. But something good has finally come out of it. Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband and one of many possible Anna Nicole baby daddies, the supposed "prince" of something or other, is suing Fox News' most obnoxious right wing mouthpiece, Bill O'Reilly. Since you can't sue somebody just for being a loudmouthed lying douchebag propagandist, the "prince" is suing Falafel-boy for slander. "Look, this guy's a fraud," O'Reilly said, according to a transcript of the show posted on the network's Web site. "We know he's a fraud. But let's -- what I want to talk about is -- he's done. His credibility is -- is finished." Since the show aired, von Anhalt said people give him dirty looks when he goes to the grocery store. "They say, 'Look, here comes the fraud,"' he said. "I get lots of e-mails from people bad-mouthing me. It's very embarrassing." How is this royal supposed to rule now when he can't even go to the grocery store without being heckled by his loyal subjects? And I just love the idea of a prince going grocery shopping in the first place. Royalty sure ain't what it used to be. And I don't see why he's suing O'Reilly when his crown gives him the power to order up a public flogging or several years in a dank dungeon for him. What's the point of being a prince if you have to go through the same courts as the masses, just to deal with some unruly peon?

9/11 Planned by Ron Jeremy?

So it only took a few years, but they couldn't find bin Laden and had to beat the confession out of somebody else. You know somebody is getting fired for not being able to beat this confession out in time for those midterm elections, but how much you want to bet that this guy's execution will be held live from the Republican convention and be hosted by Bill O'Reilly? But in all seriousness, besides the fact that the way this confession was gotten is suspect to say the least, and despite the massive circle jerk we can expect to see in the right wing blogosphere about this where they use this as evidence that torture is just fine and dandy, it's a good thing to bring a fundamentalist shitheel like this to justice. This little assclown with his 70's cop 'stache decided to kill a whole lot of Americans all in the name of his invisible friend in the sky. But the joke's on him when he finds out that after dedicating his life to killing people for his stupid religion that there are no virgins waiting for him when he dies. And all the ugly politics aside, I hope this helps bring some closure to those who lost their loved ones because of this jerkoff and his buddies.

Pouring Gas on the Fire!

There's nothing that riles up right wing bloggers quite as much as when somebody makes comparisons between the indefensible administration which they even still to this day attempt to defend, and Nazi Germany. They think the fact that Bush's body count is so significantly lower than Hitler's means that there can't be any other comparisons. But is genocide really the only thing that Germany did during those dark years? Hardly. There were many elements that led up to that which have some current parallels. So, in case the righties aren't too busy defending the latest White House scandals, here's something they can foam at the mouth about... Before the current administration, it had always been easy to condemn the "good Germans" who did nothing while Jews, Gypsies and others were rounded up for extermination. One likes to believe that one will be different, will harbour Anne Frank in one's secret annex, smuggle people across the border, defy the authorities who do evil. Those we scornfully call good Germans merely did little while the mouth of hell opened up. I now know the way that everyday life can be so absorbing, survival so demanding, that it seems impossible to do more on top of it or to drop the routine altogether and begin a totally different life. There is the garden to be watered, the aged parent in crisis, the deadline looming; but there are also the crimes against humanity waiting to be stopped. Ordinary obligations tug one way even when extraordinary ones tug the other way. The Bush administration is by no means the Third Reich, but it produced an extraordinary time that made extraordinary demands on US citizens, demands that some of us rose to - and too many did not. I'm not sure if I have personally done enough to stop this administration that has run amok. I voted against them. I protested. I blogged. I worked for a nonprofit organization that used a non-political approach to improve our world. I even tried to make a political comedy film (see links in the right column) blasting them, though my distaste for the entire political system turned it into one big cynicism-fest blasting everybody involved in politics. Eventually I just had to flee Washington, head to the left coast, start a family and spend more time worrying about day to day life than the mess that these people have made of our country and the world. Is it enough? We'll just have to see what happens in the next couple of years.

Haliburton pulls a Michael Jackson

Remember right after Michael Jackson somehow managed to not be convicted of molesting that kid and he decided maybe it was best to move out of the country, first settling in Bahrain? Probably not a bad move for a wealthy guy with a lot of baggage and problems back home. Well in this era of corporate personhood, the corporation we all love to hate is doing the same thing. Haliburton is moving its headquarters to Dubai, and not without some members of congress sounding the WTF alarm over it. "The CEO of Halliburton has decided to leave this country to move his offices to Dubai because he says it is 'a great business center.' That is a bizarre announcement," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee. Dorgan, who said he would seek hearings on the move, added: "I want to know, is Halliburton trying to run away from bad publicity on their contracts? Are they trying to run away from the obligation to pay U.S. taxes? Or are they trying to set up a corporate presence in Dubai so that they can avoid the restrictions that currently exist on doing business with prohibited countries like Iran?" They need to get together with Michael Jackson fast. With all these mean people saying such mean things about them and their god given right to plunder the people and the planet for maximum profits, they need a catchy pop song to tell these people to leave them alone.

Found Photos - Summer Vacation 1978

I love found items like photos and letters. There's something so cool about taking a random glimpse into somebody else's life with no context to go with it. There's a great magazine called Found which chronicles things people find and send to them. And then there's the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players who put found slideshows to music. Every now and then I find something and post it here. Last week I found some photos from a vacation in July of 1978. The pictures are all dated with notes on the back. They start in Sacramento, CA and end in Nebraska, with stops in Nevada and Utah. That's all I know about them. The fun part is trying to make up stories to go with them. So click below to take a look and then post your thoughts on who these people are and what was going on in their lives at the time in the comments. And there's an archive of things that I've found and scanned here.

And now for something completely different...

After yesterday's heated discussions of national and world politics, I'd like to change things up a bit and post a little something interesting that I surfed upon last night. Back in the 90's, they would give a talk show out to just about anyone. I've never heard of Jane Whitney before or after she had a show, but she had managed to score the last ever interview with punk/shock rock legend, G.G. Allin. Here's the first part: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Hate vs Respect and the Problems with Fundamentalism

This post is the culmination of my thoughts brought on by a discussion I've been having with Wally over at the WTF blog and on the comments of my previous post. Wally says that one of the good things that Bush has done is gotten the rest of the world to hate us. I tend to disagree. While he is looking at it from the perspective of strength, I tend to see it differently. Yes, the US is a superpower and countries lower down on the totem pole have some resentment to being pushed around by some other country. But there's a right way and a wrong way to handle this situation which I will illustrate in an analogy about my old job. I had this boss who at first seemed like a kindly old grandfatherly type of guy, so I respected him and worked very hard for him without giving a second thought to the fact that he was in charge and making all the money while I was just some lowly worker bee. But it turned out that he had some serious issues with paranoia and anger, and the more times he treated me badly, wrongly accusing me of taking too many breaks, having no integrity, trying to take advantage of him, etc, the less respect I had for him. And as his bad treatment increased, the lack of respect turned to outright hate and I started resenting the fact that a douche like this was making all of this money from my labor while treating his workers like shit. And once I hated him, I didn't care one bit about what he had to say and what kind of job I did for him. The quality of my work tanked. My work ethic tanked. Every time he turned his back I was either slacking off or trying to plot against him in some way. Was that right on my part? Absolutely not. The thing about hate is that it clouds your judgment. Not to get all geeky, but George Lucas was on to something with his whole bit about how anger and hate are the path to the dark side. So when we bring this analogy back into reality, we've got this country acting as a boss to a bunch of smaller and lesser countries, and when we act arrogantly toward them, other countries and groups begin to lose their respect. The more rational ones will just stop cooperating with us, while the less rational ones who have gone all the way toward hating us do stupid things like attack us and our interests. The point is that if we're going to be the boss, it's much better for everybody's interests to be respected than hated. Now back to Wally, while his heart seems to be in the right place, I feel that he has let his absolute hatred toward the entire Islamic world cloud his judgment. I'm not one of those liberals who makes excuses for Islam. Once I saw the reaction to the Danish Mohammad cartoons, I pretty much gave up any idea that there was any part of that religion that was the slightest bit reasonable. Yet I don't share the view that the entirety of the Islamic world wants to destroy the USA and Israel. I'm not a big fan of any religion. I tend to think of them as a set of mythology and rules originally written by primitive societies to explain the unexplained and to keep the masses in line. I think that the people who get involved with religion are basically good people, but since they are putting their faith into something outside of themselves, they are easily manipulated by those that are running the religion. This can be said of followers of anything. The problem with Islam today, as well as evangelical fundamentalist Christianity, various fundamentalists sects of Judaism and other lesser known religions and cults, is that these religions are being run by people who are obsessed with power and who want to force their beliefs and rules down the throats of everybody. They want a theocratic society with laws based on their interpretations of these ancient and out of context scripts. Just looking at the Taliban and other Islamic theocracies is a perfect illustration of what an absolute Orwellian nightmare that would be. The enemy is not the people who blindly follow these leaders. The enemy is fundamentalism and theocracy. I don't know how to go about fighting this enemy, but I know that nuking entire populations of mostly innocent people certainly is not the answer.

We'll take what we can get

Well looks like Scooter Libby just got handed a guilty verdict. In the grand scheme of things, it's not really much. Given the massive loss of life that has been a direct result of the lies and manipulations of this administration and the extremist ideologues and corporate interests who pull their strings, one perjury bust for an adviser isn't really all that exciting. If they had to nail an advisor to a wall, at least Karl Rove would have given we in the opposition a little bit more satisfaction. But since the democrats don't have enough of a majority to pull off the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney and Rove managed to escape from yet another bit of questionable ethics unscathed, this is the best we're going to get. And when you think of it, it's better than the impeachment of a president over a lie about sex. This is a lie about the serious underhandedness of an administration. This is a lie about playing politics with the lives of people working in our national service because they told the truth. I hope Scooter at least gets to see some prison time before the inevitable pardon he'll get before Bush leaves office. Imagine the sort of time a guy with a name like Scooter will have in the joint!

Like YouTube, but worse

Do you like watching videos online, but instead of people dancing on treadmills and creating fountains from Diet Coke and Mentos, there are videos showing how the banana is proof of intelligent design and how to disguise right wing religious extremism in the language of today's youth? Then you want to head right on over to GodTube, watch some videos and get your praise on.

Like Father Like Daughter

We are almost completely settled in to the new place. Anybody who knows me personally knows that I've got a pretty massive vinyl collection, much of which was procured by the fine art of bin diving, spending hours and hours going through bins of crappy records at thrift stores, yard sales and used record stores to find the few good ones for low prices. In the new place, I decided to separate the records between ones I'm likely to play on a regular basis and others that can get buried at the bottom of our closet. So when I saw Stella digging through one of the crates like a little bin diver in training, I had to snap this pic.

OMFG The Ox!

I somehow stumbled upon this while aimlessly surfing YouTube. It's a video from 1978 of The Who playing Won't Get Fooled Again, but the video and audio is just of John Entwistle. I knew this guy was a monster bassist, but when it's stripped down to just him you can really see just how completely amazing he was. His bass lines are like solos, kind of like the bass equivalent to Keith Moon's drumming, which makes the two of them together one of the sickest rhythm sections in rock and roll. I could go on and on about this, but you've just got to see it for yourself.

Top 10 Reasons McCain Would be a Lousy President

The John McCain who announced his candidacy on Letterman the other night in a vain attempt for some hipster cred is not the same supposedly "independent" John McCain from the 2000 elections. This is a guy who has sold out every ounce of integrity he might have once had. The John McCain of 2000 was fun to watch. He had a fighting spirit and wasn't afraid to speak his mind, even if it might piss some people off. He didn't want anything to do with the lunatic fringe religious right wackjobs. He sure as hell didn't think George W. Bush had what it takes to lead this country. This year's model McCain can't say enough great things about Bush, even vigorously supporting the idiotic "stay the course" mentality of this blunder of a war in Iraq. He's kissing the ass of people like Jerry Falwell, trying to let the evangelical loonies know that he'll help them with their theocratic agenda. He's marching lock-step with the republican neocon machine, hardly the beloved "maverick" of a few years ago. If he can pull off the nomination, the dems will have a lot of fun with him. Not only can they run a viciously personal and ugly campaign against him, judging by the way he treats Bush after being the victim of a smear campaign in the 2000 primaries, he'll be the democrats' best friend after he loses. There's no top 10 list here. I just wanted a reference to his Letterman appearance. But the number 1 reason he'd be a lousy president is that he's just another freakin' republican enabler of the current miserable failure in chief.