Having failed to find a Presidential candidate conservative enough to please the wingnuts, the GOP is looking to resort to their other surefire election winner : voting for some famous dude. Since it worked for Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Bono, the Republican starfuckers are setting their sights on a new celebrity, Fred Thompson. Here’s what his ads should look like :

On a side note, have you guys noticed that everything with the “As Seen on TV” logo tends to look cool in ads, but ends up being an overpriced piece of junk that doesn’t work as well as advertised?

I’m not a fan of Andrew Sullivan, but I’ve gotta admit that when he’s good, he’s really good.

The phrase “Verschärfte Vernehmung” is German for “enhanced interrogation”. Other translations include “intensified interrogation” or “sharpened interrogation”. It’s a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their “enhanced interrogation techniques” would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.
. . .
Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture – “enhanced interrogation techniques” – is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Speaking of drawing a nonexistent line between “torture” and “verschärfte vernehmung”, here are some of the men who want to be President :

If this doesn’t make you like (or at least, respect) the new Star Wars movies, nothing will :

“Dictators always start out saying they’re gonna help the little guy.”

Words to live by.

It’s interesting to see how stories converge. For example, yesterday Cindy Sheehan posted her “resignation letter as the ‘face’ of the American anti-war movement” :

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

First of all, good for her. Many Democrats have been incredibly hypocritical lately when it comes to the war. Cindy Sheehan doesn’t deserve a lot of the flak that she’s received from either side of the aisle. Her loyalty is to the anti-war movement, not any particular party, so kudos to her for avoiding the pressure to become a Democratic partisan.

Having said that, you can count me among those whose opinion of Cindy Sheehan has soured considerably since the “Camp Casey” protests. It all goes back to when she appeared alongside Hugo Chavez and praised him for “supporting life and peace” :

If Sheehan is sincere when she says “when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart”, then I seriously question her judgment. Did/Does she know anything about Chavez beyond the fact that he’s a fellow Bush-basher? When this first happened, I wrote a couple of posts bashing Sheehan for her appearance with (military coup leader) Chavez. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re leader in a movement that criticizes the President, aligning yourself with someone who made it a crime to criticize the President is the very height of hypocrisy. If Sheehan tried to set up a “Camp Casey” in Caracas, she’d be thrown in jail.

Last year, I concluded my last Chavez post by writing :

We could argue about this stuff endlessly, but let me just end by saying that Chavez’s friendship with Fidel Castro doesn’t inspire me to give him the benefit of the doubt. When you’re passing laws restricting press freedom while hanging out with a guy who’s got a long history of jailing dissidents, the idea that an oppressive policy is the result of some accidentally vague wording is pretty hard to swallow. The more likely explanation is that Chavez wants to hold onto power and is willing to trample over the rights of anyone who gets in the way of that goal, but as long as he says the right things and bashes George Bush, I’m sure all of these criticisms are just recycled propaganda, right?

Just this year, we’ve seen Chavez granted the power to rule by decree (would you trust George Bush with this power?), worked towards state control of energy and telecommunications, threatened to take over Venezuela’s banks, and over the weekend has shut down a media outlet critical of the government (a move Human Rights Watch calls “a serious blow to freedom of expression”). Chavez’s defenders will endlessly bring up the specter of the 2002 coup attempt to defend some truly indefensible policies, but despotic power-grabs are the antithesis of democracy.

A typical day in Hollywood :

Movie Exec 1 : Okay people, Shrek 3 is coming out soon, so we need to start work on another one of those animated movies so we can get the trailer attached.

Movie Exec 2 : A farting troll!

Movie Exec 3 : A nose-picking goblin!

Movie Exec 4 : I’ll get Chris Tucker’s agent on the phone to see if he wants to read for the trash-talkin’ sidekick.

Movie Exec 5 : …and we can end it all with a cover of “Daydream Believer”.

ALL : Perfect!

Movie Exec 1 : NOO!! We’ve got to come up with something original here. We need to step outside the box and come up with the next big thing.

Movie Exec 4 : How about…penguins?

Movie Exec 3 : And they surf!

Movie Exec 5 : Cowabunga, dude!

ALL : HAHAHAHAH!!!

Movie Exec 2 : I think I can get James Woods and Jeff Bridges!

Movie Exec 5 : …and we can end it all with a 13-year old Green Day song!

Movie Exec 1 : Perfect! People love penguins. You’ve got a green light as long as you call it Surf’s Up and make sure it’s out in time for summer vacation.

Maybe for the sequel, they can make a movie about a ragtag group of anthropomorphic animals from that invades the world of humans. That’s only been done 5 or 6 times recently.

Four almost four years now, the beach near Santa Monica pier has been the home to “Arlington West”, a tribute to the American soldiers killed in Iraq. Yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice a rather poorly-placed bit of oceanfront tomfoolery distracting from the memorial :

Though you can’t make it out in this grainy camera-phone photo, there’s a sign in front of the bubble machine to let tourists know that they’re in the “Slime Zone”. Classy.

It looks like the United States isn’t the only country with government officials making critical decisions regarding the internet without understanding it :

A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like “Web site” in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet.

Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.

“The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a Web site is,” he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.

Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms “Web site” and “forum.” An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: “I haven’t quite grasped the concepts.”

Haven’t grasped the concept? Here’s a Cliff’s Notes version :

That’s all you really need to know about the internet. :-)

That phrase should be familiar to our CEO President and should be repeated every time the subject of a “war czar” comes up. Is the job of overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan something you’re too busy to do, Mr. President? Do we need to reorganize your priorities so you aren’t distracted by less important things? Perhaps we should hire a “photo-ops with boy scout troops” czar to take some of the Presidential busy-work off your plate. That way you don’t have to waste our time and money trying to hire a middle-man that will only serve as a bottleneck between our troops and their Commander-in-Chief. If you really need someone else to take over some of the responsibilities of you and the Secretary of Defense, then give us a good explanation of why you’re unable to adequately do your job and why adding another layer of bureaucracy will make things better.

Jerry Falwell has died. Tammy Faye, who has suffered from cancer for almost ten years, is doing so poorly that she’s unlikely to live much longer. On her website she wrote “I am down weight wise to 65 pounds, and look like a scarecrow. I need God’s miracle to swallow.” These two giants of televangelism, whose paths have crossed in the past, seemed to have differing interpretations of what it meant to be a “Christian”. From Falwell’s obituary :

Falwell has found himself at the center of several controversies, such as the one sparked by his comments two days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which he seemed to blame “abortionists,” gays, lesbians, the ACLU and People for American Way for causing the attacks, saying they “helped this happen.”

From Tammy Faye’s Wikipedia entry :

During the PTL shows, she provided a sentimental touch to stories and loved to sing. In a move that sharply distinguished her from other televangelists, she showed a more tolerant attitude when it came to homosexuals, and she featured people living with AIDS on PTL, urging her viewers to follow Christ and show sympathy and pray for the sick.

I know whose death I’ll be mourning more.

Trying to avoid spoilers on the front page, but a couple thoughts :

1) We all knew it would happen eventually, but I never thought it would happen like that. Damn.

2) Is it just me or did this episode and the episode of Entourage that followed it have the exact same ending? Different location and actor, but the similarities are uncanny.

One of the great works of philosophy that has always grated on my nerves is Rene Descartes “Meditations on First Philosophy”. His proof of God’s existence is ridiculous :

There only remains, therefore, the idea of God, in which I must consider whether there is anything that cannot be supposed to originate with myself. By the name God, I understand a substance infinite, [eternal, immutable], independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which I myself, and every other thing that exists, if any such there be, were created. But these properties are so great and excellent, that the more attentively I consider them the less I feel persuaded that the idea I have of them owes its origin to myself alone And thus it is absolutely necessary to conclude, from all that I have before said, that God exists.

There’s no way I could come up with the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful being, so God must have planted the idea there himself. To me, this has always seemed like the foundation for all of those cheezy books sold in Christian bookstores in which a scientist or journalist offers conclusive “proof” that God exists and is the creator of everything we see (as if blind faith were something that you can argue your way into or out of).

Fast forward 366 years and there’s an even more powerful argument to prove the existence of God from former sitcom star Kirk Cameron :

“Darwin said in order to prove evolution, which is the #1 alternative to God, you’ve gotta be able to prove transitional forms. One animal transitioning into another. And all through the fossil record and life, we don’t find one of these…a croco-duck.”

Nice try Descartes, but with the croco-duck and finding out that bananas are an “atheist’s nightmare”, I’m finally convinced. Amen.

Quick question for you American Idol watchers out there. Looking at guest mentor Barry Gibb…

…does he look more like Dr. Zaius (I believe this is a yearbook photo)…



…or the Geico caveman?



I’m leaning more towards the caveman, but I’ll never turn down an opportunity to post a photo of Dr. Zaius.

You know what really bugs me? When people smugly pat themselves on the back for being “politically incorrect” as if being an asshole somehow makes you more intellectually honest. The biggest offender is the “Politically Incorrect Guide” series that has given us the conservative spin on American history, women, Darwinsim, Islam, science, the South, and capitalism, all with the promise that these new guides are giving readers an antidote to the liberal bias found in well, everything apparently. According to Amazon, the next installment of this series will be out this November as “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible”. If you’re releasing a conservative book about the Bible, are you really being “politically incorrect”??

With the teachings of Jesus being used to justify pretty much every line item on the Republican party’s platform, it seems to me that the conservative interpretation of the Bible is the one that people have to tiptoe around. If you wanted to publish a guide to the Bible that’s truly “politically incorrect”, you should start by pointing out that Jesus said more about hypocrisy, wealth, and greed than abortion or homosexuality. Point out that contrary to the fundies who insist that the United States is a “Christian nation” and that the Ten Commandments are the “moral foundation of American law”, Jesus never repeated all ten of the commandments in the gospels. In fact, Jesus had just one commandment “That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”

So if you really want to be “politically incorrect”, you should stick it to the political conservatives who favor a tax code that rewards the rich, an inefficient medical system that leaves millions of people at risk, and a brand of “family values” that divides families and tries to keep people from loving each other. Any interpretation of the Bible they offer that would justify their greed, xenophobia, heartlessness is a self-indulgent perversion of the teachings of Jesus. To say otherwise would just reek of political correctness.

Is Glenn Reynolds being willfully obtuse here or does he really think this is a decent analogy?

ANDREW SULLIVAN ASKS: “If gun rights are civil rights, why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they own one?”…But I’ll turn the question around: If abortion is a civil right, why would anyone object to having a newspaper publish a searchable database of people who’ve had one?

Ummmm…I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that there have been dozens of violent attacks by abortion opponents, including shootings, bombings, arson, and a stabbing.

Wanna know one of my favorite things about L.A.? The fires.

A fire broke out in Griffith Park today above the Greek Theater and fire officials were trying to determine its size and source.

Large amounts of smoke were reported below the observatory about 1 p.m.

Authorities said the fire had burned 15 acres east of the Greek Theater near the Hollywood sign. Scores of firefighters from the L.A. city and county fire departments were fighting the blaze from the ground and air. No homes were threatened.

The view outside my office :

Normally there’s a hill there.

This one’s better than the one a couple of months ago that burned the neighboring hills, but not quite as good as the one from a year and a half ago that scorched the Burbank hills. And it can’t hold a candle to the wildfires from a few years ago that covered everything in Los Angeles with a thin layer of ash. That was an awesome fire.

UPDATE : For those worried about the fire, it’s mostly contained now, not threatening any homes, and…

Visitors at the zoo have been evacuated but zookeepers, and maintenance crews and public safety officers, as well as the zoo director, remain on the scene to keep watch over the animals and the premises, said spokesman Jason Jacobs.

“So far the animals are faring fine,” Jacobs said. “I haven’t heard any reports of anything going wrong.”