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?

Finally, we’re getting an American version of “Triumph of the Will” (link from Atrios) :

Trapped on the other side of the country aboard Air Force One, the President has lost his cool: “If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I’ll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!”
. . .
Was this George W. Bush’s moment of resolve on Sept. 11, 2001? Well, not exactly. Actually, the scene took place this month, on a Toronto sound stage.

The histrionics, filmed for a two-hour television movie to be broadcast this September, are as close as you can get to an official White House account of its activities at the outset of the war on terrorism.

Written and produced by a White House insider with the close co-operation of Mr. Bush and his top officials, the movie The Big Dance represents an unusually close merger of Washington’s ambitions with the Hollywood entertainment machinery.

A copy of the script obtained by The Globe and Mail reveals a prime-time drama starring a nearly infallible, heroic president with little or no dissension in his ranks and a penchant for delivering articulate, stirring, off-the-cuff addresses to colleagues.
. . .
Lionel Chetwynd, the film’s creator, sees nothing untoward about his role as the semi-official White House apologist in Hollywood. For him, having a well-connected Republican create the movie was a way to get the official message around what he sees as an entertainment industry packed with liberals and Democratic party supporters.
. . .
Mr. Chetwynd’s script is based on lengthy interviews with Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove, top aide Andy Card, retiring White House press aide Ari Fleischer, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Republican officials in the White House and the Pentagon. He says that every scene and line of dialogue was described to him by an insider or taken from credible reports.

Yet compared with other journalistic accounts of the period, the movie is clearly an effort to reconstruct Mr. Bush as a determined and principled military leader. The public image of Mr. Bush ?— who avoided military service in Vietnam and who has often been derided as a doe-eyed naif on satirical TV shows ?— is a key concern to White House communications officials, many of them friends of Mr. Chetwynd.

I guess the embedded reporters program was so successful that they’ve launched an embedded entertainer program as well. It’s amazing that conservatives effectively control all three branches of our government, but are still able to use the “liberal media” myth to portray themselves as some sort of oppressed minority that’s being treated unfairly. For a more honest account of Bush’s activities on 9/11, check out this site.

Speaking of drugs, the party that brought us the ad campaign that links marijuana sales and terrorism now have a new plan :

Texas approved one of the nation’s most sweeping abortion “counseling” laws Wednesday, requiring doctors, among other things, to warn women that abortion might lead to breast cancer — a correlation that does not exist, according to the American Cancer Society and federal researchers.
. . .
“They don’t care what science says,” said Claudia D. Stravato, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. “It’s like talking to the Flat Earth Society.”

The bill’s author, state Rep. Frank Corte Jr., a San Antonio-area Republican, said he called the bill the “Women’s Right to Know Act.”
. . .
Finally, the law requires doctors to offer women information warning them of the possibility that abortion can increase the risk of breast cancer. Only Mississippi and Minnesota have similar laws on the books.

In February, the National Cancer Institute — the federal government’s cancer research organization — asked more than 100 of the world’s experts to review more than 30 studies that have been conducted and attempt to resolve the issue. Their conclusion: Having an abortion “does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.”
. . .
The trouble is that among the vast majority of physicians, it’s not disputed, said Dr. Bernard Rosenfeld, a Houston physician who performs abortions. “There is absolutely no medical validity to this,” Rosenfeld said Wednesday night. “Nobody seriously believes this.”

It’s disgusting to think that the anti-abortion crusaders are willing to resort to terrifying women into not having abortions. Maybe we should push for a “Voters Right to Know Act” which requires pre-election counseling to possible voters that makes them aware of the links between voting for Republicans and being a heartless asshole.

Did you guys know that drug dealers in Kansas are expected to pay taxes on the drugs they sell? This isn’t a joke :

The fact that dealing marijuana and controlled substances is illegal does not exempt it from taxation. Therefore drug dealers are required by law to purchase drug tax stamps.

The drug tax is due as soon as the dealer takes possession of the marijuana or controlled substance. Payment of the drug tax will purchase the drug tax stamps. Attach the stamp to the marijuana and/or controlled substance immediately after receiving the substance. The stamps are valid for 3 months. Drugs seized without stamps or having expired stamps may result in criminal or civil penalties which may include fines, seizure of property or liens against real estate.

But it gets even weirder. Check out the rates :

Drug tax assessment:
10 grams of cocaine x $200 per gram = $2,000
Penalty: $2,000 x 100% = $2,000
Total Liability: $2,000 + $2,000 = $4,000

What are the tax rates for marijuana?

Pursuant to K.S.A. 79-5202, the tax rates are:
Processed $3.50 per gram
Wet Plant $0.40 per gram
Dry Plant $0.90 per gram

What are the tax rates for controlled substances?

Pursuant to K.S.A. 79-5202, the tax rates are:
If customarily sold by weight (cocaine, methamphetamine, etc.) $200 per gram
If customarily sold by Dosage Unit (pills, etc.) $2,000 per 50 units

Does it strike anyone as a little hypocritical that the government would put itself in a position to profit off something that it’s actually campaigning against? It seems to me that if a program like this were successful, it would be in the government’s best interest to encourage illegal drug sales.

“Corporate inversion”? Is that what they call it now? The last time I checked they it was called “tax-motivated expatriation”. Of course if you or I did it, they’d call it “tax evasion” and we’d end up in jail :

Companies that reduced their U.S. tax bill by incorporating overseas did $1 billion worth of business with the federal government last year, an Associated Press computer analysis of federal contracts showed.
. . .
“It’s outrageous that we would do business with these folks,” said Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., who has introduced legislation to continue taxing companies that move their headquarters overseas. “They are shirking their citizenship.”

The process is known as corporate inversion: A company moves its headquarters sometimes nothing more than a post office box to a low-tax enclave such as Bermuda or the Cayman Islands while leaving its operations and employees in the United States.

The senate twice has passed legislation to prevent the new Homeland Security Department from doing business with companies that relocate overseas, but both times the provision was removed from the final bill by House Republican leaders.

Where’s the Republican’s faux patriotism now? Does their love of country only extend to renaming food? I guess it makes sense that the politicians who rally behind the confederate flag would come to the defense of corporations who are willing to renounce their country in order to save a few bucks.

Am I the only one who feels like Americans care more about this…

On behalf of millions very concern voters, I am appealing to Matt [Drudge] to look into the votes. All across the America, people are voicing distraught by the fact that no one could get thru on Clay’s #. I also heard that text messaging thru AT&T also was not working right. When calling Clay’s #, you got a consistent busy signal or a weird message from the operator. I have spoken to many Ruben fans and had ask how voting was for them. They are telling me that they “had no problems getting thru”.

…than this?

Kweisi Mfume, NAACP President & CEO, said the lawsuit is part of an effort to “restore justice to the thousands of black and other voters who were denied the right to have their vote counted on November 7, 2000.” Mfume said: “There was evidence of massive voter disenfranchisement of people of color during the presidential election. The election in Florida was conducted in a manner which was unfair, illegal, immoral and unsenate.”

Starting on Election Day, the NAACP national and Florida offices, as well as many other civil rights organizations, received calls from black voters and others who had been turned away from the polls or had trouble casting their ballots. Civil rights lawyers were immediately sent to Florida to interview witnesses and on November 11, 2000, the NAACP held a hearing in Miami to highlight the extent of the violations of state and federal law.