I went to IKEA on my lunch break. As I was in line to check out, I heard a siren start going off. Since I seem to hear this sound every time I go to any store at a mall, I just figured some clerk forgot to remove a security tag.

After a few seconds of beeping, an employee with a bull horn started running around yelling “Everybody at the front of a line grab a flag! Wave it high! Somebody is going to get their purchases for free!”

Suddenly everyone who was in the middle of checking out had an American flag and was waving it like crazy. The crowd of people who were previously just trying to buy their stuff and leave were now an excited audience full of giggles and chatter.

“I’m going to spin the big wheel! Whatever aisle number it lands on is the winner!”, said Mr. Bullhorn (I don’t know if that’s his real name). At this point, the hundred or so people in the “audience” become dead quiet, completely entranced by the “big wheel”.

“Aisle Eighteen is the winner!” The crowd went nuts. Everyone started clapping and whistling. Some guy, who was jumping up and down so much you’d think he was on “Let’s Make A Deal”, just won $270 worth of particleboard and orange plastic.

Rather than concentrate on how strange it was that a checkout line turned into a game show, I could help but think “Why the hell are they waving an American flag at a Swedish furniture store? When did the American flag stop being a sacred icon behind which all Americans can stand and start being a way for giggling consumers who want free furniture to identify themselves to Mr. Bullhorn?”

Why is the left always being put in a position to defend Michael Moore? His work obviously contains a few factual errors, but his main points still retain their validity. As Kevin Mattson pointed out in an article about “The Perils of Michael Moore” :

These complaints about Moore’s work often have more to do with politics than a commitment to factual accuracy. It was Forbes magazine that documented the errors of Bowling for Columbine, and I doubt its editors show a similar interest in, say, the errors of Republican Party spokespeople. Besides, Moore’s critics fail to recognize how much he gets right. In Bowling for Columbine, for instance, he depicts local news shows overplaying random acts of violence and thus sparking unwarranted fear. He shows the underbelly of welfare reform in which poorer workers are moving off the rolls into low-wage jobs. TV Nation documented depressed towns desperately recruiting new prisons as a means of economic revitalization and, in another episode, went after a wealthy Connecticut town that barred nonresidents from its beaches. In The Awful Truth, he portrayed fundamentalist protestors holding signs promising that “fags” will “burn in hell.” Nothing factually wrong here.

As Mattson says later in the article, the problems many people have with Moore are with his technique of “confrontation as a means to get the attention of the powerful”, not his politics. So what should the left do about the fact that our most vocal proponent has an admittedly sloppy and crude style? Many on the left are ready to write him off completely. Dr. Frank makes an interesting point :

Yet sincere leftists, I believe, would be ill-advised to take the devil’s bargain which Mattson (none too seriously) hints at: accept Moore, warts and all, as your dumbed-down, massively popular, entertainment industry-certified mascot, in return for a shot at the hearts and minds of his legions of fans. “Sure,” these earnest, non-dumbed-down leftists might say, “Moore’s an inane, embarrassing, untrustworthy, cartoonish buffoon, but at least he’s our inane, embarrassing, untrustworthy, cartoonish buffoon.” There’s not much of a future there, I’d say.

That may be true, but nobody elected Michael Moore as the unofficial leader of the left. Just because he’s the most visible leftist in the mainstream doesn’t mean he epitomizes liberals any more than Ann Coulter does conservatives. He’s popular with the mainstream for the same reasons Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are popular : He’s an entertaining pain in the ass.

But where’s the mainstream outrage about O’Reilly and Limbaugh? They also distort facts and present their biased opinions in a confrontational (and often unchallenged) forum. Where O’Reilly and Limbaugh (and Hannity and Savage…) have had hundreds of hours to present their opinions in the last year, Michael Moore has had two. Nobody on the left has been given the luxury of having a forum to present their views in this way. The closest we’ve had was Phil Donahue, but MSNBC made sure to cancel him before the war started (despite the fact that his show was the highest rated on the network).

The reason conservatives aren’t constantly jumping to the defense of O’Reilly and Limbaugh is that they realize their time is better spent denouncing liberals. Unlike the left, the right realizes that infighting is only going to weaken their cause.

Whenever confronted with a complaint about Michael Moore, liberals would gain a lot more ground if they accepted and shrugged off his weaknesses while reiterating and strengthening his points. For example, there’s been plenty of complaints that Michael Moore staged the bank scene at the beginning of “Bowling for Columbine” (a charge he denies), that people seem to forget how absurd it is that we live in a country so obsessed with guns that banks are giving them away! Regardless of where the gun is handed to a customer, it’s still crazy.

I miss the good ol’ days when the American public would get mad when they were lied to :

The Baghdad bunker which the United States said it bombed on the opening night of the Iraq war in a bid to kill Saddam Hussein never existed, CBS Evening News reported Wednesday.

The network quoted a U.S. Army colonel in charge of inspecting key sites in Baghdad as saying no trace of a bunker or of bodies had been found at the site on the southern outskirts of the Iraqi capital, known as Dora Farms.
. . .
Shortly after the attack, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters: “There’s no question but that the strike on that leadership headquarters was successful. We have photographs of what took place. The question is, what was in there?”

I’m sure this is just another “matter of emphasis”. In this case they chose to emphasize bullshit over the truth.

For those of you interested, I’ll be a guest tonight on my friend Ross’s radio show Theme Party from 9PM-11PM PST (Midnight-2AM EST). For those of you who read through the comments here, you’ll recognize Ross as the guy who occasionally lapses into unintelligible slang, but usually has something good to say. I’ll be around throughout the show and will probably pick out a short set of songs. If you’re going to be sitting in front of your computer on a Friday night (I’m soo sorry…), you can listen to the show at killradio.org.

You know when you’ve become desensitized to violence when you read something like this and the only thing going through your mind is what a pain in the ass your drive home from work is going to be :

A man perched in an apartment overlooking the Golden State Freeway in Glendale opened fire this afternoon on motorists and police officers, prompting officials to shut down two freeways.
. . .
At around 11:10 a.m., authorities received reports of a man firing shots from an apartment on Paula Avenue toward the Golden State Freeway across the freeway from Griffith Park.

When police approached, the suspect allegedly fired upon officers. Glendale SWAT officers using an armored vehicle rescued at least one person from the building and were trying to evacuate others, a Glendale police spokesman said.

The Golden State Freeway was shut in both directions between Western Avenue on the north and Colorado Street on the south The Ventura Freeway was closed at the Golden State Freeway.

You’d think that a violent standoff a few blocks away from my apartment would provoke some sort of emotion. Jeez, I suck….

Its bad enough that Bush’s tax cut is screwing the poor, it looks like he covered up the fact that we’re all getting screwed in the long run :

In the midst of negotiating a steep tax cuts package, the US government shelved a report that showed the United States faces future federal budget deficits of more than 44.2 trillion dollars.

President George W. Bush’s administration chose to keep the findings — commissioned by then-Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill — out of the 2004 annual budget report, published in February, London’s Financial Times reported.

The newspaper desribed the study as “the most comprehensive assessment of how the US government is at risk of being overwhelmed by the ‘baby boom’ generation’s future healthcare and retirement costs.”

The Financial Times hinted that the decision not to publish the report may have been because the White House was campaigning for a massive tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits.

The study, according to the same source, said that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or both are unavoidable if the US is to meet benefit promises to future generations.

“It estimates that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase,” the Financial Times said.

Wow. A 66% tax increase?! I hope the senate candidates are paying attention.

On a slightly related note, Salon has a laundry list of better ways to spend the $330 billion dollars that were given to the rich :

Amount needed to provide health insurance for all 9.2 million currently uninsured children for one year: $13 billion

Amount needed to provide health insurance for all 41.2 million uninsured Americans, including children, for one year: $98 billion

Amount needed to close state budget gaps across the country: $78 billion

Amount needed to end homelessness for chronically homeless people within 10 years: $1.3 billion per year to create and sustain 150,000 units of permanent supportive housing

Cost of USDA testing of 12,500 cattle samples for mad cow disease, in addition to homeland security measures such as physical security upgrades at lab facilities and background investigation of workers: $21.7 million

Estimated homeland security costs for full support of state and local emergency personnel in their efforts to prevent and respond to acts of terrorism for three years: $12 billion

Cost of compensating federal employees called to active duty in the uniformed services or National Guard for the difference between their civilian and military pay: $89 million over the 2004-2008 period

Estimated cost of spending for countermeasures against smallpox, anthrax, botulinum toxin, plague and Ebola under Project BioShield: $5.6 billion between 2004 and 2013

Personally, I’d rather bail out the states, help the homeless, provide universal health care, and increase funding for homeland security than give a bunch of money to the rich, but that’s just me…

The Republicans have screwed the poor again :

A last-minute revision by House and senate leaders in the tax bill that President Bush signed today will prevent millions of minimum-wage families from receiving the increased child credit that is in the measure, say Congressional officials and outside groups.

Most taxpayers will receive a $400-a-child check in the mail this summer as a result of the law, which raises the child tax credit, to $1,000 from $600. It had been clear from the beginning that the wealthiest families would not receive the credit, which is intended to phase out at high incomes.

But after studying the bill approved on Friday, liberal and child advocacy groups discovered that a different group of families would also not benefit from the $400 increase ? families who make just above the minimum wage.

Because of the formula for calculating the credit, most families with incomes from $10,500 to $26,625 will not benefit. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group, says those families include 11.9 million children, or one of every six children under 17.

How can any resonable person look at this and not realize the utter contempt the Republican party has for poor people? The fact that they’d remove a provision that would greatly improve life for extremely poor people in order to make room for more tax cuts for the rich just shows how soulless these bastards can be. How the hell can they sleep at night when 16% of American children are living at or below the poverty level?

The number of black youths living in extreme poverty is at its highest level in the 23 years that such statistics have been kept, according to a report released Wednesday.

More than 932,000 blacks under age 18 are in that category, a 50 percent increase from the 622,000 classified that way in 1999, according to a Children’s Defense Fund analysis of Census Bureau data.

The advocacy group described children as living in extreme poverty if their family had an after-tax income below half the federal poverty threshold. The after-tax income includes the value of food stamps, subsidized school lunches and housing benefits.

For a family of three in 2001, the most recent year available, the poverty threshold was measured at $14,128, so the income level indicating extreme poverty for that size family would be a maximum of $7,064 a year.
. . .
J. Lawrence Aber, the center’s director, said extreme poverty has far more severe effects than mere poverty. Children living in extreme poverty enter school less ready to learn and have higher rates of illness, more social and emotional problems, and greater difficulty with language development.

The richest country in the world shouldn’t have these kinds of problems.

The 76th Annual Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee is on right now! They’re showing some earlier rounds right now, but the main event will begin at 10AM pacific. For those of you who aren’t spelling bee geeks like me, there was a great article in Salon a few years ago that does an adequate job explaining the Spelling Bee’s appeal :

The capsule summaries of TV Guide tend not to include morsels such as, “After spending three months attempting to memorize the dictionary, Mary misspells lassitude and is sent back to Kansas with only a commemorative watch.” But perhaps they should. As the ESPN ratings attest, that is apparently what we want to see.

Because while the official purpose of the bee may be to determine the nation’s absolute best prepubescent speller, that winning moment only comprises 15 seconds of actual TV viewing. If ESPN wanted to, it could air the last half-hour of the bee and still provide a suspenseful buildup to the winning word, the resulting tears of happiness and the presentation of the engraved loving cup. But instead, that final 15 seconds is preceded by two hours, 29 minutes and 45 seconds of watching kids fail.
. . .
The great thing about all this failure is that it is occurring on a human scale. These kids aren’t screwing up at something spectacular, something we could never even hope to bungle, like scoring the Stanley Cup’s decisive goal or outmotoring Mario Andretti. They’re failing at something most of us botch regularly. When we watch Duane Karcher from Saginaw, Mich., flub the “o” in pergelisol and pinch his features into the facial equivalent of a fist, we are united with Duane and every adult and child watching with us who had no chance of getting it right, either. And, like Duane, we probably don’t know what the word means.

If you’re still not convinced the spelling bee is the most entertaining thing on television, then I highly recommend the Academy Award-nominated documentary “Spellbound”. Or better yet, tape the spelling bee now and invite some friends over to watch it Saturday night (that’s what I do).

Jesus, this is weird:

May 29, 2003 | SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — A man shouting threats used two sharpened wooden stakes to try to force his way into the cockpit of a domestic Australian flight Thursday, stabbing two flight attendants before he was overwhelmed by the crew and fellow passengers, the government said.

Transportation Minister John Anderson described the man as “less than stable” and said the attack did not appear linked to terrorism. The plane returned to its departure city of Melbourne, where it landed safely and the Qantas attendants were hospitalized with stab wounds.

“Although it looks premeditated, it doesn’t look like it was an act of terrorism,” Anderson told a news conference.

However Anderson also said the man “seemed to be intent upon trying to force a nasty outcome, and if you call an attempt to, as I understand it, to crash an aircraft, you might call that a hijacking, but he was not able to do so.”

So, yeah … a distraught fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” unable to deal with the series’ end? I can relate. It was a very good show.

At least he didn’t try to light his shoe on fire. That’s all I’m saying.

You’d think after a while I’d stop being so shocked about crap like this happening :

Trying to decide whether to sentence a convicted killer to die, jurors Ridawn Yantis Cummings and Lana Eaton-Ochoa scoured the Bible for passages pertaining to the death penalty.

The jury eventually sentenced Robert Harlan to death after the 1995 trial. But a judge on Friday threw out the sentence, saying jurors improperly relied on the “eye for an eye” teachings of the Bible.
. . .
“If any case merits the death penalty, there cannot be serious debate about this case being that case,” Vigil wrote. “The death penalty, however, must be imposed in a constitutional manner…. Jury resort to biblical code has no place in a constitutional death penalty proceeding.”

Harlan had appealed, arguing that the Bible is not part of Colorado law.

All 12 jurors testified earlier this year at a hearing on the appeal. Several jurors, including Eaton-Ochoa, said they wrote down references from the Bible on note cards, brought the cards into the deliberation room and read them aloud.

Among the Bible passages was Leviticus 24:20, which reads, “fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him.”

Since the jurors seemed so keen on using Leviticus to determine the outcome of a murder trial, would they have delivered a “Not Guilty” verdict if the victim was a priest’s slutty daughter or a fortune teller?