Andy Ihnatko explains that Hillary, with the loan to her own campaign, is now akin to a vanity author: publishing a book that nobody wants, simply as an ego exercise. (Not to be confused with self-publishing, because that's a lot different).
But the Vanity authors insist that they’re writing their own checks because the massive Publishing Machine is unfair and elitist and out of touch with American tastes and needs and damn them for denying the public their chance to see what you can do.
It’s a fab delusion. It makes the whole house smell like an apple pie is baking somewhere. That’s one of the reasons why most people go that route in the first place.
Yesterday everyone found out that Hillary Clinton wrote a $6,400,000 check to her own campaign to keep it afloat until the next round of primaries.
In my mind, Hillary Clinton has become a Vanity Candidate.
She can’t convince a crucial legion of people to like her campaign enough to keep it moving forward to the next step. Like many authors, she got through some of the hurdles, but as the obstacles got progressively higher and harder, she found fewer and fewer people willing to skin their knees and cut their hands scrambling to get over them. To the contrary, her greatest allies are now reaching for the Bactine and the Band-Aids and muttering about needing to get home to paint the children or vacuum a sick relative.
[From Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA) » Vanity Prez]
[snipped bit about Al Gore]
Hillary had that same opportunity for a display of greatness, a chance to plant an arrow in the ground that marked the moment when she truly came into her own as a national politician. Withdrawing from the race and committing her supporters and resources to Obama wouldn’t have been as conceding an election that she had already actually won by popular vote, but it still would have been hot stuff. She could have come back in eight years, even stronger than before.
But nope, she let the opportunity slide right on past her. She wrote the check and increased the rhetoric. She’s proven that in its current form, her campaign is a vanity production. A campaign based not on service but on ego, and a bad sports cliche: I can win, no matter the odds or the cost; I just have to prove that I want it a little more than the other guy.
She can’t change the numbers, so she’ll try to change the math. If she can’t change the math, she’ll try to change the process. And if she can’t change the process…well, God help any Obama supporter if she runs some numbers on how she’d fare against a Republican incumbent in 2012 and likes what she sees.
Which is a pretty big damned shame. Obama’s candidacy has the national authority and support of a new Neil Gaiman novel. Obama isn’t just in Barnes & Noble…he’s on the end-cap, with a special display including a life-sized cutout of the man with a button in his nose you press to hear one of eleven sayings.
John McCain, thy middle name is corruption, no matter what the Washington media would have us believe.
PRESCOTT, Ariz. -- Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers.
Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.
When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal.
The Audubon Society described the exchange as the largest in Arizona history. The swap involved more than 55,000 acres of land in all, including rare expanses of desert woodland and pronghorn antelope habitat. The deal had support from many local officials and the Arizona Republic newspaper for its expansion of the Prescott National Forest. But it brought an outcry from some Arizona environmentalists when it was proposed in 2002, partly because it went through Congress rather than a process that allowed more citizen input.
Although the bill called for the two parcels to be of equal value, a federal forestry official told a congressional committee that he was concerned that "the public would not receive fair value" for its land. A formal appraisal has not yet begun. A town official opposed to the swap said other Yavapai Ranch land sold nine years ago for about $2,000 per acre, while some of the prime commercial land near a parcel that the developers will get has brought as much as $120,000 per acre.
[Click to read more details of McCain Pushed Land Swap That Benefits Backer - washingtonpost.com]
Sounds like the Maverick label applies to following Senate ethic rules too (i.e., McCain feels he has no need to follow what the rules dictate, especially when a donor gets free cheese as a result)
At the Clinton El Stop, Green/Pink Line.
Just a step away BW
BW version accentuates the diagonals.
Just a step away
I like the colors of this version though.
click to embiggen, and to vote if you have a flickr account.
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Roger Ebert and the role of film critic in the age of Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb
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jeez, what a serial liar. I know politicians are bad, but give it up lady.
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Cool. I have a Canon camera I can try this on
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I've had a Yahoo Pipe a long time for this, but here's another way to get the Glenngary Glenn Ross Youtube leads
(click image to embiggen). Misleading Congress is an impeachable offense.
Is this enough a reason to get a Blu Ray disc player? GTA IV and Neil Young's mythical and vast musical archive too?
[Neil] Young said he tried to do the project on DVD, but users couldn't watch the high-resolution video and listen to the music at the same time. With Java and Blu-ray, the content can be updated and offer the best viewing and listening experience, as well as great navigation and design. "Storage is the only limit," Young said, and recommended the Sony's PlayStation 3 as the best way to view his project. Users will be able to download any archival materials, which are automatically assigned to their place in a chronological time line, Young said.
[snip]
Larry Johnson, of Shakey Films (which works on all of Young's films), said Young had the concept for his latest project on paper 15 years ago. About two years ago, they put the footage all together and waited for the Blu-ray HD-DVD fight to end.
"We are cramming the disc full with every feature we can," Young said.
They started off envisioning it to be something like a video game, a "3D tumbling experience through time," he said. "You could see the history of the world and other great performances through time. It would be a nice thing to do. Hopefully we will get this approach done, but by the time we are halfway through, it will morph."
"The recording business as we know it is changing. As an artist I try to remove myself from the business," Young said. "I steer myself away from that...the commerce of distributing music will work itself out."
He added: "We are trying to give them quality whether they want it or not. You can degrade it as much as you want, we just don't want our name on it." People are taking music and doing whatever they want with it, he said. "The laws don't matter. These are people in their bedroom doing what they want. It's the new radio."
Young said you can't be "scared or paranoid about trying to survive." Sure, when the digital revolution came along, it was "like getting hit with icepicks." Now, he said, the ice is tiny, maybe a little like snow.
That said, he's clearly not a fan of MP3 quality: "Putting on a headphone and listening to MP3 is like hell," he said.
Of course, digital and multitrack recordings in the '80s didn't sound so great either. The sound was shallow, he said. Now, he said, audio quality is climbing, though he still makes all his recordings in analog. "I plan to dumb my analog to the higher level so masses can enjoy it," he said.
[From Neil Young rocks JavaOne | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com]
The AP adds
Rocker Neil Young plans to release his entire music archive on Blu-ray discs, a sign that the discs' capabilities are building appeal among musicians as well as movie studios.
[snip]
The first installment of Young's archive will cover the years 1963 to 1972 and will be released as a 10-disc set this fall on Reprise/Warner Bros. Records.
Young said the archives will be released chronologically and include some previously unreleased songs, videos, handwritten manuscripts and other memorabilia, in addition to the high-resolution audio that Blu-ray technology is known for.
Fans can download more content like songs, photos and tour information directly to the Blu-ray discs as the content becomes available.
"Johnny B. Goode: His Complete '50s Chess Recordings" (Chuck Berry)
Can't go wrong picking up some Chuck Berry, iffen you don't already have some. The blueprint of a thousand songs is chorded on these tracks, and even fifty years later, they still sound good.
Chuck Berry didn't invent rock and roll, but he may very well have invented rock'n'roll. His songs fueled and inspired the likes of Buddy Holly, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Who, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, and just about anybody in his wake who picked up an electric guitar. In the invaluable rock doc Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll, we watch in awe has Berry puts Keith Richards in his place with just a single angry glare, and watch in double-awe as Richards takes it. After all, the Stones guitarist, like countless other musicians of his generation, knows he owes virtually everything to Berry, and has admitted as much, so he gives deference where deference is due.
Berry's as worthy of hagiography as any rock legend, but he's not yet ready for a eulogy. In fact, Berry's 50-plus year career has been marked by one constant-- forward motion. Indeed, Berry's far too stubborn a man to ever give inertia the chance to slow him down, and he still spends a considerable amount of time on stage for an octogenarian. As far as the studio goes, however, Berry hasn't released a new album since 1979, and even then his songwriting had been in steady decline since the early 60s. His last (and sole number one!) hit, a live version of the juvenile novelty "My Ding-a-Ling", was released in 1972.
One perverse but still appropriate way to view Berry's erratic (or non-existent) output over the past three or so decades is as further validation of the enduring strength of the first decade of his recording career, especially the productive, world-changing last five years of the 1950s collected on the self-explanatory Johnny B. Goode: His Complete '50s Chess Recordings. It was on Chicago's Chess imprint that Berry would change the blueprint of popular music, and it's on this 4xCD collection that we can revisit the fruits of his labor.
[Click to read more of Chuck Berry: Johnny B. Goode: His Complete '50s Chess Recordings: Pitchfork Record Review]
If you want a smaller sampler of Berry, check out the Great 28.
See Ya Later Katman, whoever the hell you are
Elvis Presley and Katman have left the Alley, originally uploaded by swanksalot. Another portion of this mural
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/2452459080/
I hope Roger Ebert lives a long life. I never liked his television show (TV sucks as a medium for nuance, to be honest), and he writes for a shit newspaper (The Sun-Times is probably the 7th best paper available in Chicago), but his film reviews are clever, and now he's expanding his scope on a relatively new medium, his blog. To wit, how would you write a fictional movie about the the 2008 Presidential election?
But where is the story? Hearing for the first time notes of exhaustion and discouragement in Clinton's voice, I wondered what it had been like for her, month after month, state after state, pumping out the same policies, the same optimism, while she was running on empty. Hotel after hotel, early morning show after late-night show, schools, union meetings, church events, potluck dinners, being introduced by the local clone of the Chairman of Today's Event. For Obama, it was the same, with the difference that for most of the time he seemed to be winning, which must have been a consolation.
The problem with a screenplay based on these events is that there would be a merciless sameness. Where is the drama in the story of a game of 48 innings? Each mini-climax, from "Hillary's tears" to the Rev. Wright's display at the National Press Club, was hopefully examined to see if it might "change the direction of the campaign," and it never did, it only prolonged the suffering of that day's CNN "panel." When Wolf Blitzer got out of bed in the morning, were his hand and arm already extended, so that the clipboard had only to be inserted by an aide?
The ideal primary movie was Warren Beatty's "Bulworth" (1998) [Netflix]. There were other good films too, like Mike Nichols' "Primary Colors," (1998) [Netflix] based on a roman a clef about Hillary and Bill. Barry Levinson's "Wag the Dog" (1987) [Netflix], involved Clintonesque moments, had a screenplay by David Mamet, gave a phrase to the language, and was the best of the lot. But "Bulworth" was the ideal, because it had a cut-off point made of drama, not election days. Beatty plays a candidate sick onto death of uttering the same cliches. He takes out a contract on his own life, assuring that he will be assassinated in three days. That gives him the freedom to say exactly what's on his mind--what he, and any sensible person, might be thinking while pretending to believe their own platitudes.
That gave you suspense, comedy, some poignant private moments, and even a possible romance (with the newcomer Halle Berry). It was about transgression, not repetition. But the primary campaign that's now concluding has been a Groundhog loop, with no cut-off except for a victory, at which point the contest itself becomes yesterday's news.
[From Roger Ebert's Journal: Hillary and Bill: The movie]
I remember liking Bob Roberts too [Netflix], a campaign told from the other side of the aisle, but it has been numerous years since I've seen it (or any of these films, actually)
Ron Hansen of the Arizona Republic notes that Senator John McCain's record as a maverick going against the GOP actually only occurs in special situations, namely when the issue at hand has a slim chance of passage. If the GOP needs McCains vote, he will nearly always toe the party line.
Paul Waldman addsThe presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period. On one of those occasions, Republicans could still have won if Vice President Dick Cheney had cast a tie-breaking vote.
The numbers are based on a review of Senate roll-call votes since 1999 that ended in a tie or were settled by one vote. The closest votes in that period included momentous, partisan-charged legislation, such as President Bush's tax cuts. More often, they were procedural votes on deal-breaking amendments to bills that would otherwise pass.
They partly reflect how rarely Senate votes come down to a single person, even though the chamber has been narrowly divided on party lines most of the past decade. But the votes also suggest that when McCain broke from Republicans, others often joined him, keeping the votes from being so close.
It's no accident that this is coming from the Arizona Republic. While the Republic is generally considered a pretty conservative paper, they have tangled with McCain a great deal over the years, mostly because they haven't been particularly inclined to simply repeat over and over that he's a StraightTalkingMaverickReformer. As a consequence, McCain has always acted as though he pretty much hates their guts. (In 2000, he wouldn't even let the Republic's reporter have a seat on the Straight Talk Express. So while the national media were whooping it up on board the party bus, she had to follow along in a rental car. And this is the largest paper in his home state.)
One thing I've noticed lately is that there are a bunch of Chicago reporters (like Lynn Sweet and Jim Warren, for instance) who have become regulars on cable TV, presumably because they know a lot about Barack Obama. But the reporters who have known John McCain the longest and know him the best -- the ones from Arizona -- are nowhere to be seen. Why do you think that is?
[From TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect]
Is primary season over yet?
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some above my head (my programming skills long dormant), but still a very interesting read. This isn't the first page, btw.
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Da Mare: "it's a remarkable Picture of Dorian Gray-like reveal of the mayor, his face contorted into a snarl, a sneering mask of contempt towards anyone who would dare to dissent from his judgment."
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hmmm, really? And how hard would it be to say where this building is located? Even the name would be good. Don't they have editors at Northwestern? Sloppy, sloppy.
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"© swanksalot" Wonder whatever happened to this woman (beaten by her boyfriend)
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" Jefferson Street between Monroe and Van Buren became honorary "The Godfather of House Music" Frankie Knuckles Way, near the site of the Warehouse, a club where Knuckles was DJ between 1977 and 1982."
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apparently still moving along, several years late
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She can't win, yet she can't seem to quit. Would it really hurt her ego that much to concede now?
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Nice Obama remix with the classic Apple logo
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" what Jesse Jackson wanted in order to end his quest for the nomination was a proportional representation primary system that would give him or another African-American a chance of winning a race in the future. Obama supporters should thank Jackson for p
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Dianne Feinstein as VP? Hope not.
1. This evening we reflect upon the difficulties of the day [original song]
2. The woman was given an agreeable assessment as to the value of her jewelry [original song]
3. The departure of my child prompted me to locate an alternative living space. [original song]
4. A response to your futile inquiry remains unobtainable.[original song]
5. My mother came to an end due to lack of mental assistance. [original song]
6. The regular arrival of fowl in your immediate proximity is baffling. [original song]
7. A thoughtful exit is compulsory, happily inform the felon.[original song]
8. My morning ablutions are preceded by worship. [original song]
9. My ancestry makes me embarrassed of rude misdemeanors. [original song]
10. I wager you were surprised by the exposure of your mischievous blueprint. [original song]
11. Michael's slenderness is to blame for my brain exploding. Hello! [original song]
12. An invitation to a well-stocked arsenal joyfully defeats mimicry. [original song]
Somewhere in Fulton Market, on the way to Wishbone
Outdoor Gallery, originally uploaded by swanksalot. Impromptu gallery hanging, wall, West Loop. Artist unknown.
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"the Microsoft offer increased the value of Yahoo! Inc. by more than $7 billion and decreased the value of Microsoft Corporation by almost $33 billion."
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my area used to be a lot worse, especially west
I may be guilty of a bit of Indiana bashing even though I should know better since I've lived in rural areas (Texas and Ontario, for those keeping track): there is always a blend of people in any region; reducing complicated political differences into a Red-Blue divide serves nobody. Lauren Bruce defends her state from the clueless political reporters:
Hoosiers have been in the national spotlight over the past few weeks, and I’ve noted that many disparaging stereotypes make it into the national media coverage of my fair state -- stereotypes that reinforce the myth of a beer-drinking, pickup-driving Republican stronghold that is hopelessly out of touch with coastal progressivism. As a life-long Indiana resident, I personally vouch for blue veins running through this state and throughout the Midwest, a fact frequently ignored in favor of maintaining the awestruck-hillbilly myth. If reporters and pundits took a look past the stereotypes, they’d see that Indiana is a lot more complex and important than they think it is.
Despite the portrayal of my home state as a white wasteland, Indiana has a long, compelling history of competing ideas and interests. Yes, it was a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan, but it also had several integral stops on the Underground Railroad. The state housed some of the first utopian societies in the United States, and boasts an internationally known center for modern Quaker society. Indiana was home to Eugene Debs, Socialist Party presidential candidate in the early 1900s and one of the founders of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World. Today the work force is heavily based in manufacturing, more so than in agriculture, and as such is heavily unionized. Where Indiana was once largely a white state infamous for its “sundown towns,” the African American and Latino populations are growing exponentially, and within the last decade the university in my backyard hosted among the largest percentages of foreign students in the United States. But somehow, whenever an outsider writes about Indiana, it's all corn, religion, white supremacists, pickup trucks, and, goddamn it, basketball.
[Click to read more Dispatches From Flyover Country | The American Prospect]
This Milfs is unlike many of the other MILFs found so frequently on Eric Kaldenberg's laptop. When Milfs was a child, there was only June Cleaver with a pearl necklace and heels, and even her sexuality was kept in the closet. Or was that the Beaver?
Marci Milfs went to Urban Outfitters to find clothes for her teenage son.
She was surprised to find sexually charged books that she believes have no place in a clothing store for teens and young adults.
"Porn for Women" (Cambridge Women's Pornography Cooperative)On one end of the spectrum was "Porn for Women," a photo book showing men doing housework. On the other was "Pornogami: A Guide to the Ancient Art of Paper-Folding for Adults," a guide for making anatomically correct artwork.
"Pornogami: A Guide to the Ancient Art of Paper-Folding for Adults" (Master Sugoi)"When I saw it, I was shocked," Milfs said.
[From HeraldNet: Mom appalled at racy books in store for teens at Alderwood mall]
Shocked I tell you, shocked that corporations use sexuality to sell products.
Milfs even tried to involve the state attorney general in her futile and frisky crusade to expose nudity in the mall and in stores around the country:Smith said her staff brought the issue to the attention of the state attorney general's office, but the state office declined to act against the retailer.(h/t, yet again. I think I should send Chuck Shepherd a percentage of my daily google earnings - which translates into a penny or two. Hmmm, how do you split a ha'pence?)
From the Department of Give Me a Break…
You'll never look at, or reach into, an airline seat-back pocket the same after reading this.
Besides being a repository for magazines, newspapers, books, iPods and air-sickness bags, seatback pockets get stuffed with all kinds of disgusting trash, from toenail clippings to mushy meals.
One reason frequent fliers and flight attendants perceive an increase in offensive behavior may be the decline in air service -- customers seek retaliation for late flights, snippy workers, lost baggage and unavailable upgrades.
"Increasingly, passengers are certain that the airlines are not on their side and actually don't care anything about them," said Irwin Sarason, a University of Washington psychologist in Seattle who has studied passenger behavior. "In that kind of environment, it isn't too surprising that people will not exercise the restraints they normally would."
…
The detritus problem is exacerbated by the fact that most airplanes are only lightly cleaned between each flight. Airlines say planes get a more thorough cleaning overnight and a "deep cleaning" scheduled about every 30 days. In many cases, seat-back pockets aren't thoroughly checked until overnight cleaning crews work over a cabin. "Flight attendants will clean things they see sticking out of seat pockets in between flights, but the deep-down cleaning is reserved for later," says Philip Gee, a US Airways Group Inc. spokesman. At several airlines, including Southwest Airlines Co., flight attendants handle most of the cleanup between flights. AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines have cleaning crews pick up trash, fold blankets and replenish supplies between flights. United says its crews brush off seats and replace headsets, too, between flights.
[From The Middle Seat - WSJ.com, by Scott McCartney]
That's bad enough, disgusting even, but this complaint made me laugh. Eric Kaldenberg is obviously not a member of the Mile High Club:
Eric Kaldenberg, a Phoenix regional sales manager, was on a flight home from Las Vegas in March with a passionate couple in first class who were anything but discreet.
"It was pretty disgusting," Mr. Kaldenberg said. He says he and other first-class passengers complained to flight attendants, but no action was taken. He wrote to US Airways, which offered a form-letter apology and voucher for a discount on a future ticket, along with a suggestion that he could have asked to be reseated if the couple bothered him. "I regret your discomfort when observing inappropriate behavior of another passenger," US Airways' Customer Relations office said in the letter. His second complaint drew an apologetic phone call from a customer-service supervisor, he says. US Airways' Mr. Gee says the suggestion that Mr. Kaldenberg should be reseated "probably wasn't the correct response." The flight attendant involved "should have talked to the couple," he said.
How prudish is this guy? Complaining at the time of the activity wasn't enough, nor was writing an angry letter once he got home. He complained a third time, and probably contacted Scott McCartney so that Kaldenberg's sexual revulsion could be put on record at the Wall Street Journal.
The pornography business is a multi-billion dollar sector of the economy because so many folks do want to watch other people get it on. I mean, what is this guy's problem - did fluids get splashed onto his face? I can't say I've ever been offended by watching two happy people make out, even if the petting got a little heavy. Maybe I'm just sympathetic because D & I almost got arrested in a park near the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan: we were kissing, passionately, with our clothes on, and a disapproving soccer mom called the police on her cellphone to report our "lewd" conduct. Feh.
Indiana can be a scary place. Many US States are big enough to have a rural/urban divide, but Indiana also has more than its fair share of guys like the Nazi sympathizer, Tony Zirkle. Liberals often accuse Republicans of wholesale borrowing from the fascist playbooks (with varying degrees of accuracy), but this dude isn't even disputing it. In fact, it is one of his campaign platforms. The Republican party hasn't expelled Zirkle, probably because there is a good chance he'll win. I wonder what his record as prosecutor was? What sort of cases did he bring of questionable merit?
On the face of it, Tony Zirkle looks like the perfect candidate for Congress: He attended the Naval Academy, he has a degree from Georgetown, and he went on to be a top prosecutor in Indiana, crusading against Internet pornography.
There’s only one problem — or maybe more than one, as far as the Indiana Republican Party is concerned.
Zirkle, who is seeking the GOP nomination for the state’s 2nd Congressional District, believes — among other things — that whites are victims of a "genocide," that the races should be segregated into different states and that pornography is a Jewish plot against women.
[snip]
The personal-injury lawyer says he’s running for Congress to combat "the genocide of the white race" that pornography is causing — an "unholy pornocaust" against white Christian women.
"We now have a small army of male black porn stars that are sifting through five, ten, fifteen thousand women," he said. "One man can now genocide the wombs of thousands of women," infecting them with sexually transmitted diseases that leave them barren.
He calls it "Porn mule womb slaughter . . . the most effective weapon of mass destruction."
In an interview, Zirkle told FOXNews.com he doesn't think he is too far out of the Republican mainstream. He believes the solution to STDs and out-of-wedlock births is to separate blacks and whites into segregated states, but he says that's fully in the tradition of the party.
"The original Republican party" felt the same way, he said. "Abraham Lincoln called for African-Americans to be deported back to Africa." [From The Indiana Congressional Candidate the GOP Wishes Would Go Away - Politics | Republican Party | Democratic Party | Political Spectrum]
In 2006, Zirkle captured 30 percent of the primary vote, so his views aren't out of line with a large percentage of the residents of his district. Scary. Yet, I'd still be ecstatic if the US allowed multiparty governments, like in Europe. Never going to happen, but watching Congress would be a lot more fun if fringe wingnuts like Zirkle were part of the coalition.
For the record, Zirkle claims he isn't really a Nazi, he just likes their dental plan:
Zirkle, said he "just spoke off the top of [his] head" at the Nazi gathering, where he addressed the crowd in front of a giant portrait of Hitler. He insisted he had no prior connections to the group and that he’s not a member of the Nazi party.
"What most people don’t know about me is that I’m the father of three beautiful Jewish Christian children," he said, explaining that his wife had converted from Judaism to Christianity. "I’m obviously not going to be out for gassing innocent Jews."
Yet he blames Jews for much of the plight of white women in America. "The massive number of Jews in the [pornography] industry basically brag about it," he said, asserting that "most of the early porn stars were Jewish men."
Well, for sure, Zirkle and his supporters and sympathizers are not voting for Obama, nor Clinton for that matter.
Crooks and Liars has video footage of Zirkle celebrating Hitler's 119th birthday at a convention in Chicago
"Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing" (H.L. Mencken)
This webzine (née blog) has been boring recently, I blame the never-ending election cycle which is rapidly becoming excruciatingly boring even to political junkies like myself.
"The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal."[From H. L. Mencken]
How do we solve this? Only Belushi knows
Really baffles my mind how many sex scandals the GOP is capable of getting caught up in. Don't they learn? And nobody would even care about the added frisson of male prostitutes if the Republicans hadn't turned sexuality into an evil, and placed gay sex at the top of the crucify-able offenses.
Bruce Barclay's political career hung in the balance. The Republican commissioner of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, had been accused of rape -- by a man, no less -- and the police were bearing down. Barclay's lawyer issued a strong denial ("This accusation of rape is ludicrous It will be defended forever and is wrong."). But it was clear things were looking pretty dicey. Until... vindication! Well, sort of.
On March 31st, police, investigating the allegation of rape by the 20-year old Marshall McCurdy, obtained a warrant to search Barclay's home. They didn't find evidence of rape. But they did find videotapes of hundreds of sexual encounters with men that Barclay had filmed on high-tech surveillance cameras. The cameras were hidden inside AM/FM radios, motion detectors and intercom speaker systems, among other places. There was also one at his business office.
[From TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | All Muck is Local: Sex and Lots and Lots of Videotape]
From now one, I'm assuming that all Republican Family Value types are closeted homosexuals. Though to be fair to this Barclay figure, I don't know if he was an active gay basher, or just went along for the ride so as to weild political power. In any case, Mr. Barclay had an enormous sex drive - the cameras were less than two years old.
Police say the sexual encounters were videotaped without the knowledge of the participants, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed Tuesday with Magisterial District Judge Susan Day. Court documents say cameras were installed in January of 2007. [snip] During an interview with Barclay, Henneman said he “admitted to using the cameras to record sexual encounters.” Police say Barclay saved between 100 and 500 encounters on his computer system.and apparently, the reason Karl Rove has never been prosecuted for illicitly taping George Bush, there is no sound (or sound removed)
Laws involving videotaping individuals without their knowledge can differ based on a number of circumstances that may be involved in a particular instance. According to Cumberland District Attorney David Freed, a major distinction between what is considered a felony and what is considered a misdemeanor is whether or not the footage contains sound. “The distinction is made with the interception of oral communication and video,” Freed said. “If it does contain sound, it is a wire tap violation, and that is considered a felony of the third degree. If it is just video, it is considered a third-degree misdemeanor if there is only one violation or a second-degree misdemeanor if there is more than one, and there’s usually more than one.”Oh wait, nobody is talking about Jeff Gannon here.
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Michael Dell has always been a Republican putz
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"McCain's wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'
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Whoa. A step up towards joining the human race to be called Darth Vader. I don't know how to respond to that
(click to embiggen)
Sun Like a Drug, originally uploaded by swanksalot. sun reflecting on steel waste in a decaying dumpster
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"Foto 1-06-2004 por swanksalot", really older than that, perhaps 5-2-2001?
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(Picture from Swanksalot, via Flickr)
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eiiii, caramba! Glow-in-the-dark personal lubricants? Yikes
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MTR and Handbrake are your best bets
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"CIOs have long had objections to Macs, and those still apply" Not me, I have objections to having a Windows machine in my company.
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Ooops, not on the list after all. Tons of morons left comments though.
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Goldberg is just a putz, a journalist without moxie, a patsy for the Establishment. Another reason not to subscribe to The Atlantic
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click image to embiggen
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All blogs are not created equally, that is the utter truth.
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Another definition of religion. I'm not as into sports as this dude, but I appreciate the sentiment, and can see how it applies to other human endeavors
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"s journalism dedicated to lies because a couple of pretty famous writers made up stories? Are books dedicated to murderous anti-semitism because Hitler wrote ”Mein Kampf?“ Is music dedicated to demeaning women because Flo-Rida sang “Low?”
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"So, I did what I always do … I wrote. In this case I wrote a long, long, long letter to Bob Costas"
Burt Natarus is back on the Chicago scene, doing what he did for 20 years - serve as lobbyist for developers. He's getting paid more than previously, I assume…
But after being spotted toting a briefcase in the City Hall lobby this week, Natarus said he was not just making a social visit. He waved off a question about what he is seeking from city officials, noting only that a year has passed since he left office so he is now free to lobby for whomever he wants to represent.
Sure enough, a check of city's lobbyist registry reveals that Natarus is registered to clout for Zweig Inc. and Scott Rosenzweig. According to Zweig Inc.’s website, the firm is a "Chicago real estate developer specializing in providing retail services to inner city and urban areas."
The news will come as little surprise to critics among Natarus' former constituents in the downtown ward. As an alderman, Natarus raised huge amounts of campaign cash from real estate interests with a stake in his ward, much like many of his council colleagues. In unseating Natarus, Brendan Reilly alleged that Natarus often sided with those developers against the wishes of residents.
[From Clout Street - local political coverage | Chicago Tribune | Blog]
Alleged is too mild a word, Reilly demonstrated with facts might be better. Reilly has been oodles better than Natarus, in many respects