In case you hadn’t seen it at every other blog, George Bush’s Frankenstein-ian backrub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel is hilarious. And her raction pretty much sums up how I feel about every aspect of his presidency these days.

What the hell are you doing? Stop trying to help and just go away.

Have you ever hard a band for the first time and instantly thought “Oh my god, this is one of my favorite bands and I’ve never heard them.” That’s sorta the way I felt last week when I saw Belle and Sebastian at the Hollywood Bowl. Since then I’ve listened to them non-stop. I gave them an obligatory listen a few years back and concluded that they were just another sad-bastard band. My bad. They’re more like a perfect mix off Love, the Left Banke, and the Zombies.

What great music have I been missing out on?

I tend to shy away from commenting on Israel for pretty much the same reasons mentioned by Kevin, but with the escalating violence (and rising Rapture Index), I can’t help but look at this as an enormous test of the President’s ability to lead. Will the President use his leverage with Israel to try to force a cease-fire? Is he strong-willed enough to ignore the pro-Israel partisans on the right and avoid being dragged into this mess? Can he diplomatically engage Tehran and Damascus to keep them from joining the conflict (assuming they aren’t already involved)? Trying to calm the tensions would be a difficult task for a great leader, so it’s a damn shame we’re stuck with a mediocre one. Let’s just hope somebody else will step up to the plate.

Another war fueled by longstanding ethnic tensions has errupted in the Middle East. When I see the destruction on television and think about the enmity between the Arab world and Israel, I can’t help but wonder if this conflict could end up being a catalyst for the next world war, with every nation expected to eventually chose sides. I haven’t been following it too closely because, to be honest, the whole thing kinda freaks me out.

For some of America’s evangelical extremists, however, a bloody, drawn-out war in the Middle East is a cause for celebration (via C&L) :

“For the first time in my Christian walk, I have no doubts that the day of the Lords appearing is upon us. I have never felt this way before, I have a joy that bubbles up every-time I think of him, for I know this is truly the time I have waited for so long. Am I alone in feeling guilty about the human suffering like my joy at his appearing some how fuels the evil I see everywhere. If it were not for the souls that hang in the balance and the horror that stalks man daily on this earth, my joy would be complete.”
. . .
“How can we not be excited, our redeemer cometh. We should pray always for the lost. But he is coming. Amen Amen ever so come lord Jesus.”
. . .
“Ready, waiting and excited here! Still telling others whenever possible that the rapture could take place at any time because this world is in such a big MESS and evidently it goes through one ear and right out the other.”
. . .
“I am excited beyond words that the struggle of this life may be over soon and I can finally be FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!”
. . .
“I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what’s going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, Ohappyday, like in your screen name , it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!”
. . .
“Lets keep the excitement going!!!!!”
. . .
“Days like today it’s all I want. Other days because of others I want one more. But what a privilege to be apart of the rapture. I can hardly wait!!”

As my wife said, “they sound like they’re ready to put on Nike’s and drink some Kool-Aid.”

From CatsThatLookLikeHitler.com

I love the internet.

James Byrd had it bad, but at least he wasn’t a rich white man who died of natural causes :

“I am glad to have known Ken Lay and glad that he was willing to reach down and touch people like me,” said the Rev. William Lawson, pastor emeritus of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. “Ken was a rich and powerful man, and he could have limited his association to people who were likewise rich and powerful.”
. . .
Lawson likened Lay to James Byrd, a black man who was dragged to death in a racially motivated murder near Jasper eight years ago.

“Ken Lay was neither black nor poor, as James Byrd was, but I’m angry because Ken was the victim of a lynching,” said Lawson, who predicted that history will vindicate Lay.

For those of you who might be making the same mistaken comparison as Rev. Lawson, here’s a couple of pictures that might clear things up for you :

On the left is a photo of Kenneth Lay in handcuffs being led to the courtroom where he was being given his constitutional right to a fair trial for crimes he was alleged to have committed. On the right is a pair of black corpses hanging from a tree surrounded by a crowd of racist white people who seem to have viewed their senseless murders as little more than an excuse for a social gathering. Kenneth Lay died at his Aspen vacation home after having a heart attack. James Byrd died on a Jasper, Texas road after being dragged from a pickup truck until his head and right arm were ripped off.

If I’m ever on a reality show (which isn’t likely to happen since I fall into that rare 1% of Americans who don’t want to look like a dumbass on national TV), let me make it clear that I plan to be one who reminds everybody that “this is a competition” and that I didn’t “come here to make friends”. Either that or I’ll just be the personality-free chump who gets axed from the show early because he doesn’t piss the other contestants off enough to please the producers.

Also, why do I keep watching this shit? Except Project Runway, which is awesome.

Billmon’s got a depressing point about Al Gore’s movie :

But there is something tragic, even a little pathetic, about Gore’s stubborn faith in the ability of facts and reasoned argument to save the world. The scenes of him schlepping through airports – alone, laptop in hand, on his way to yet another city to show his slides to another room full of college students or environmental activists – hit the edge of bathos. They make Al look too much like Willy Loman. “Attention must be paid to this man.”

This is the Al Gore the Washington political press corps never seemed to grow tired of mocking: The earnest wonk who takes serious ideas seriously, and assumes his audience does, too. Up on stage, in front of such an audience, Al is clearly in his element. He’s articulate, funny, even endearing – as when he rides an accordion lift to the top of the viewing screen to illustrate the soaring rate of increase in atmospheric CO2. It’s a reminder that Al’s at his best when he’s being himself, instead of imitating Bill Clinton’s folksiness (which only made him look like Salieri next to Clinton’s Mozart) or playing the know-it-all bully of his first presidential debate with Bush.

But in our increasingly debased political and cultural climate, just letting Al Gore be Al Gore isn’t commercially viable, not even in an art house documentary. Which I suppose is why the filmmakers felt compelled to weave in Gore’s by-now familiar psychodramas – the same teary-eyed stories he used to tell (or exploit, depending on your point of view) in his political speeches.
. . .
Like Gore’s campaign handlers, the makers of AIT apparently felt the need to “humanize” his message, instead of letting the science speak for itself. But to me it only highlighted the long odds against what Gore is trying to do, which is to speak the language of reason to an increasingly irrational, post-Enlightenment world.

I hate to think that it’s come to this, but it really does feel like the notion of making a making a cogent argument using logic and unquestionable facts seems…naive.

If you wanted to remind the world that 2+2=4, these days you might have to deal with the Arithmetic Study Society who insists that there’s growing evidence among mathematicians that 2+2=5. We don’t know for sure yet, they’ll tell us, so until we’ve got all the facts, the brainless media will do their best to play the centrist role and think that saying 2+2=4½ is a responsible position. After all, they can’t uphold their journalistic duty to avoid objectivity if they choose sides in political battles.

Of course, this just enables the biggest problem of them all : the intellectual laziness of the American public. People want to feel smart, but they don’t want to do all the work of figuring out exactly why they think the way they do. This is the key to the “attack your opponent’s strength” political technique that’s worked so well over the last few election cycles. Supporters of draft-dodger Bush attacked war hero Kerry’s military record, GOP fluffer Lieberman insists that challenger Lamont voted like a Republican, etc. Rather than look into these allegations to see if they hold any water, the public just brushes them aside conceding that both sides are bad. The whole point of Swiftboating is to dillute your weaknesses, not hurt your opponent, but the media never bothers to point this out because they’re as intellectually bankrupt as they public they’re supposed to be informing. So when people cling to the simplest explanation and find themselves in agreement with the conventional wisdom jackasses on Hardball, they feel like geniuses for it and the underlying problem only grows worse.

So count me with Billmon. I’d love to think that An Inconvenient Truth will change things, but we really are in an era in which the “truth” is continually up for interpretation. Even the title of the film subtly acknowledges this. Why worry about AN inconvenient truth when there are other truths out there that are more satisfying?

(Via Cartoon Brew)

Michael Kinsley has a great article at Slate about the absurdity of the stem-cell debate.

In any particular case, fertility clinics try to produce more embryos than they intend to implant. Then—like the Yale admissions office (only more accurately)—they pick and choose among the candidates, looking for qualities that make for a better human being. If you don’t get into Yale, you have to attend a different college. If the fertility clinic rejects you, you get flushed away—or maybe frozen until the day you can be discarded without controversy.

And fate isn’t much kinder to the embryos that make this first cut. Usually several of them are implanted in the hope that one will survive. Or, to put it another way, in the hope that all but one will not survive. And fertility doctors do their ruthless best to make these hopes come true.

In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps—with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think otherwise.
. . .
The better point—the killer point, if you’ll pardon the expression—is that if embryos are human beings, the routine practices of fertility clinics are far worse—both in numbers and in criminal intent—than stem-cell research. And yet no one objects, or objects very loudly. President Bush actually praised the work of fertility clinics in his first speech announcing restrictions on stem cells.

He should really push the point a bit further. If embryos are human beings, then there’s a good chance that fertility clinics are responsible for as many “murders” as abortion clinics.

An additional irony is that for all the praise that fertility clinics get from “pro-lifers” like President Bush, in-vitro fertilization often leads to actual abortions. That’s what Kinsley meant when he wrote that doctors perform fertility treatments “in the hope that all but one will not survive”. Remember that lady who had septuplets a few years back? That’s what happened to her. After getting a bunch of test-tube babies implanted, she decided that she couldn’t “play God” and abort the weaker embryos like her doctor had counseled her to do, but that her religion required her to deliver her lab-produced litter of children. The remarkable thing about her story wasn’t that she got pregnant, but that she was stupid enough to try to keep all seven and lucky enough that none of them died.

But I guess we’re supposed to respect the sincere beliefs of those who consider embryos to be human beings, right?

Nevertheless, abortion opponents deserve respect for more than just their right to hold and express an opinion we disagree with. Excluding, of course, the small minority who believe that their righteousness puts them above the law, sincere right-to-lifers deserve respect as that rarity in modern American politics: a strong interest group defending the interest of someone other than themselves.

Or so I always thought—until the arrival of stem cells. Moral sincerity is not impressive if it depends on willful ignorance and indifference to logic.

Just like marriage “defenders” don’t seem to care much about divorce, if abortion opponents want credit for their supposed moral clarity, then they need to be a little more consistent.

Like Tom said earlier, go read Glenn Greenwald’s piece about the terror-inciting tactics of the right wing. For me, this is the most chilling part of the post :

This weekend, prominent neoconservative David Horowitz proclaimed that the United States is fighting a war and “the aggressors in this war are Democrats, liberals and leftists.” In particular, he cited the now infamous NYT Travel section article on Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld’s vacation homes as evidence that the employees of the NYT are among the enemies in this war, and he then linked to and recommended as a “proposal for action” this post from his associate, Front Page contributor Rocco DiPippo. The post which Horowitz recommended was entitled “Where Does Punch Sulzberger Live?” and this is what it said:

I issue a call to the blogosphere to begin finding and publicly listing the addresses of all New York Times reporters and editors. Posting pictures of their residences, along with details of any security measures in place to protect the properties and their owners (such as location of security cameras and on-site security details) should also be published.

DiPippo published the home address of NYT Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, along with directions to his home, and linked to a post by right-wing blogger Dan Riehl which contained directions to Sulzberger’s home along with photographers of it. In a now-deleted post, DiPippo also published the home address of Linda Spillers, the NYT photographer who took the photograph of Don Rumsfeld’s vacation home (with Rumsfeld’s express permission), and he urged everyone to go (presumably to the home address he provided) and confront Spillers about her actions.

In an update, Greenwald links to the Supreme Court’s 1982 NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware and notes “I do not believe that the despicable statements referenced in this post can or should be grounds for criminal or civil liability…The point is that these statements are despicable and dangerous, not illegal.” While I respect his adherence to the First Amendment, I believe the conduct of Horowitz, DiPippo, and their fellow thugs have more in common with their tactical brethren American Coalition of Life Activists. The ACLA as you may recall made headlines with their website “The Nuremberg Files” in which they posted the names and addresses of abortion providers. Just last month the Supreme Court refused to hear the final appeal by the ACLA, essentially upholding the 199 Oregon District Court decision that concluded :

I conclude from my independent review of the evidence produced at trial that plaintiffs have proven by clear and convincing evidence that each defendant, acting independently and as a co-conspirator, prepared, published and disseminated the “Deadly Dozen” Poster, the Poster of Dr. Robert Crist and the “Nuremberg Files” with specific intent and malice in a blatant and illegal communication of true threats to kill, assault or do bodily harm to each of the plaintiffs and with the specific intent to interfere with or intimidate the plaintiffs from engaging in legal medical practices and procedures.[1]

I totally reject the defendants’ attempts to justify their actions as an expression of opinion or as a legitimate and lawful exercise of free speech in order to dissuade the plaintiffs from engaging in providing abortion services.

The law requires a higher level of scrutiny and proof for an injunction involving speech than for an award of damages for violation of a statute. [See Madsen v. Women's Health Center, 512 U.S., 753 (1994). I find the actions of the defendants in preparing, publishing and disseminating these true threats objectively and subjectively[2] were not protected speech under the First Amendment.
. . .
For purposes of this Order and Preliminary Injunction, I consider a person to make a “true threat” when the person makes a statement that, in context, a reasonable listener would interpret as communicating a serious expression of an intent to inflict or cause serious harm on or to the listener (objective); and the speaker intended that the statement be taken as a threat that would serve to place the listener in fear for his or her personal safety, regardless of whether the speaker actually intended to carry out the threat (subjective).

That last part decribing a “true threat” from the footnotes of the opinion is especially important in that it decribes the threshold that must be crossed in order for unpopular speech to no longer be covered by the First Amendment. The “true threat” test was also discussed in the recent Supreme Court ruling that cross-burning by the Ku Klux Klan isn’t a constitutionally protected form of speech. (PDF)

“True threats” encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. See Watts v. United States, supra, at 708 (“political hyberbole” is not a true threat); R. A. V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U. S., at 388. The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats “protect[s] individuals from the fear of violence” and “from the disruption that fear engenders,” in addition to protecting people “from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.” Ibid. Intimidation in the constitutionally proscribable sense of the word is a type of true threat, where a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death. Respondents do not contest that some cross burnings fit within this meaning of intimidating speech, and rightly so. As noted in Part II, supra, the history of cross burning in this country shows that cross burning is often intimidating, intended to create a pervasive fear in victims that they are a target of violence.

By posting the personal information NYT employees, the right-wing blogosphere is engaging in the exact same conduct as “The Nuremberg Files” (which resulted in a $5 million judgement against the ACLA). This isn’t political speech we’re talking about here. The right-wing bloggers are targeting their percieved enemies through implied threats of violence. The First Amendment gives us tremendous leeway when it comes to expressing unpopular and reprehensible ideas, but it doesn’t give you the right to incite terror.

Partisan gerrymandering is wrong. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court disagrees. Since the GOP has been given the green light to continue disenfranchising Democratic voters, shouldn’t the Democrats fight fire with fire to at least undo the damage the Republicans are doing? You’d think so, but Democrats don’t want sink to their level. Kudos for taking the high road guys, but when are you going to realize that it leads straight to Loserville? If you want to insist that everybody play fair, I suggest using Republican dirty tricks to force the changes you want. Redistrict yourselves into a majority and make your first order of business to pass legislation making Delay-style partisan gerrymanders illegal. After the GOP getting a taste of their own medicine, I bet you could get bipartisan support for it too.

Another reason why I love Nintendo. Best birthday gift ever.

Since Republicans are opposed to universal healthcare and Democrats are too cowardly to stand behind a social program that has saved countless lives in just about every industrialized nation but our own, this post is pretty much moot. Nevertheless, let’s pretend that the egomaniacs in Washington D.C. actually cared about the fact that poor Americans are dying of preventable diseases every damn day and that there was a spirited election-year debate on this crisis. If that was the case, here’s the political ad I’d like to see :

Operator : 911, what’s your emergency?

Caller : I need an ambulance for 321 Evergreen Terrace! I think my grandpa has had a heart attack.

Operator : Okay, is he conscious?

Caller : No, he just fell down. Please hurry, he’s not moving.

Operator : Alright, before I send help I need to get a little more information. What’s your household’s annual income?

Caller : What?!

Operator : I just need to know how much money you make.

Caller : I don’t know. Maybe twenty thousand a year. We need help! My grandfather is dying.

Operator : Oh…I’m sorry. I’m not going to be able to send anyone. We’re only able to help people who can afford our services.

[Cut to flatlining EKG machine]

Voice Over : Is this the future of American healthcare? Millions of Americans suffer from preventable diseases every day because they can’t afford health insurance. Call your Senator and let them know that nobody should deserves to die because they’re too poor to go to the doctor.

But like I said, this is just a moot point. Poor people can’t afford a lobbyist to stand up for them, so the chances of either party making an issue of this is virtually nil.

Do you think George Bush will be attending Kenny Boy’s funeral? Also, is there any chance the State of California could get a lien on the Lay estate to try to get some of our money back?