For your Monday perusal

From the Sunday Washington Post: where Bush went wrong. Also an extremely interesting interview with Kerry.

These are funny. (Found via the reasonably brillant Columbine. Scroll down on that page for the answer to what Bismarck said. And don't feel bad; I didn't know it either.)

Memorials

60 Minutes ran pictures of all 800 people who have been killed in Iraq. It took 11 minutes, they said. It seemed shorter, actually. They ran them across the screen pretty fast, too, or it would have taken even longer. They scrolled across, right to left. Almost all very young, almost all male. My husband was trying to count and he thought there were 15 women. And one of those forbidden pictures of a flag-draped coffin was at the beginning and the end. And they used that Samuel Barber piece - you know, the one from Platoon - that's become like the modern version of "Taps" - I wonder what Barber would think if he knew how that piece is used these days.

Incidentally, Pat Boone says 60 Minutes and CBS are traitors. Because, you know, they dared to talk about Abu Ghraib, instead of waiting patiently for the administration to do something about it, like they should have. And so it's all their fault.

How about Klingon?

The Chronicle of Higher Education found it necessary to add this caveat to the instructions for their upcoming online chat on Tolkien Scholarship:

Questions and comments about the legacy of Tolkien and the world of Tolkien scholarship are welcome. We would prefer, however, that you not submit them in Elvish, Dwarvish, Entish, Orcish, or any other imaginary language.

Found via MaudNewton.com

More tinkering

I changed the template - I liked the one with the dark background, but you could barely read the links. They needed to be a lighter color, but I'm not tinkering with the template. That seems to me to be asking for trouble! (If you haven't figured it out by now - and I imagine most of the people reading this are coming from my journal, so you probably have - I am no html guru. I barely know html at all, and I just don't feel comfortable messing around with things like templates.) Anyway, I do like the new one - it's just a different-colored version of the same one, as you can see.

Incidentally, in case some of you guys who complain about me not updating are reading, I signed up for AlphaBytes (I'll add a link to it when I figure out where it is!) so I should be updating regularly again, at least for June. And at least for a while afterwards, if I get in the groove like I did for Holidailies.

The right speech

OK, here is Gore's speech from this week. (Apparently there were other people linking to the wrong speech! Imagine that.) The other one is still a good speech too,though. Gore is so much more interesting when he's not a candidate.

More bad news for the administration

Kerry is trouncing Bush in battleground states.

------------------------------------

I'm just now getting around to reading Al Gore's speech. (Apparently "just now" is even more true than I thought - it says it was in February. I didn't realize that; I've heard it mentioned so many times in the last few days I thought it was something new! I guess that's that blogging thing again. The same stuff goes round and round...)

I tell you what, though, this describes the whole Bush administration to a tee:

...as I tried to interpret what was driving these various policies, certain common features became obvious and a clear pattern emerged: in every case there was a determined disinterest in the facts; an inflexible insistence on carrying out preconceived policies regardless of the evidence concerning what might work and what clearly would not; a consistent bias favoring the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the broader public interest; and a marked tendency to develop policies in secret, avoid accountability to the public, the Congress or the Press; and a disturbing willingness to misrepresent the true nature of the policy involved.

One more thing

Regarding my post about the terrorist warning yesterday: no less a source than Newsweek is unconvinced that there was really a good reason for issuing that warning at all. Well, other than distracting us from thinking about Iraq. Hmmm.

No comment.

The Washington Post reports that the administration is planning for large cuts in domestic spending if Bush is reelected.

I know some people don't like to register, so here's the first couple of paragraphs. The emphasis is mine.

The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if President Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include spending cuts for virtually all agencies in charge of domestic programs, including education, homeland security and others that the president backed in this campaign year.

Administration officials had dismissed the significance of the proposed cuts when they surfaced in February as part of an internal White House budget office computer printout. At the time, officials said the cuts were based on a formula and did not accurately reflect administration policy. But a May 19 White House budget memorandum obtained by The Washington Post said that agencies should assume the spending levels in that printout when they prepare their fiscal 2006 budgets this summer.

Link found via Wonkette.

Oh, great.

The terrorists want to attack us again. (Surprise!)

You know, honestly, I would not go to a high-profile thing like a political convention or the Super Bowl any more because of this. I wouldn't enjoy it because I'd be obsessing about whether I was going to get blown up any minute. I worried right up until the Super Bowl in Houston was over this winter - I shouldn't have seen Sum of All Fears because that whole thing about the Super Bowl stuck with me way too vividly (oddly enough, in the book it didn't bother me nearly as much) and I was just sure Reliant Stadium was just going to go up in dust and here I am not far away with the winter prevailing winds blowing right this way. And the thing is, it's not really a completely unreasonable fear these days.

Now we have the All-Star game this summer, too, but it's not quite as high-profile, and besides, I like baseball more than I like football. I might make an exception for that one, in the unlikely event that I was able to get tickets.

Just so I'll remember

I changed my description so it just has the Shakespeare quote in it (who knew where that phrase came from? I sure didn't) but I want to save the description I had on here originally, in all its goofy grouchiness.

Why the name? Because I liked it. Because I like to ask why. However, I wouldn't come here expecting answers if I were you.

Somebody tell the administration about this

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

That's Theodore Roosevelt, in 1918. Courtesy of The Poor Man.

That word

fas·cism n. often Fascism
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

(from Dictionary.com)

I've been avoiding this word. I don't like it, and back when I was in college, in the late 70s/early 80s, I used to think that people were prone to throw it around much too lightly.

But it's been coming up a lot online lately. It was first called to my attention, I think, on Utopia with Cheese a while back (except I haven't figured out what thread it was in). It's been on my mind ever since, really. And then today Patrick Nielsen Hayden linked to this piece by journalist David Neiwert. From there I found a link to this much longer Neiwert piece. I still haven't finished reading it, but if you're interested in the subject, it's definitely worth reading.

The inevitable lightbulb joke

From Daily Kos:

How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to replace a lightbulb?
The Answer is SEVEN:

one to deny that a lightbulb needs to be replaced

one to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who has questions about the lightbulb,

one to blame the previous administration for the need of a new lightbulb,

one to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of lightbulbs,

one to get together with Vice President Cheney and figure out how to pay Halliburton Industries one million dollars for a lightbulb,

one to arrange a photo-op session showing Bush changing the lightbulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag,

and finally one to explain to Bush the difference between screwing a lightbulb and screwing the country.

Wishing

This is absolutely hysterically funny. It's a speech given by author Bruce Sterling at Microsoft - which doesn't sound that funny, does it? and actually I barely even know who this guy is - but still, read it, it's great.

And hey, he may have just sold a book, because he's now on my amazon wish list. Or at least he has a 50% chance or so that I will eventually buy the book, because I'm an amazon junkie and that's about what percentage of my wishlist I estimate I'll eventually buy. And incidentally, I noticed the other day that my wishlist has now hit 200 items. Two hundred, people. It's kind of scary. Classics and poetry vying for space with romance novels and quilting books and Calphalon.

Oh, and I found that link above via the great people at boingboing.net. Which I only remember to check because it's on my Nibelung ring. (I love my Nibelung ring.)

Also, I should say that the title of this entry, in my mind, refers to that old 80s song. Anybody remember that? I think it might have been Flock of Seagulls. I am having this 80s nostalgia thing lately. If I could go back to 1983 and have it not be the Reagan administration, I would totally do it. Actually I might could even live with the Reagan administration - it's certainly not any worse than what we got now, is it?

On reading back, I really should change the title to "Saturday night drunk blogging" but then the last paragraph wouldn't make any sense, would it? So I'm sticking with what I got.

{Insert Bush joke here}

A couple of Bush-related items: SFGate's Mark Morford on whether Bush is as dumb as he pretends to be, and General Wes Clark (from Washington Monthly) on Middle-East strategy. Good Friday reading, if a little depressing. But then isn't everything these days?

Let America Be America

It's rumored that the above is going to be Kerry's campaign slogan. I don't remember ever having read this poem by Langston Hughes before, but if those are the notes Kerry intends to strike, it sounds about damn perfect to me.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Edited to add that I think I left a word off that slogan - it's supposed to be "Let America Be America Again." Which does make more sense, really.

Money, money, money

Interesting story on campaign spending so far. Bush has now spent $126 million to Kerry's $87 million. I didn't realize - probably I wasn't paying attention back months ago when all this came up - that they each go back to getting public money after the conventions. Since the Democratic convention is a month earlier than the Republican one, Kerry has to make his $75 million in public money last longer. And of course there are more restrictions on raising private money during that time, too.

I used to be a political junkie back years ago. But then I've spent the last 10 or 15 years being pretty much apolitical, so I'm having to re-educate myself on all of this stuff. I guess that's easier than if I'd never known it in the first place, though!

Next up: book burning!

This story is bad enough on its own, but what really gets me is the bit at the bottom:

Writers and editors who have spent years translating essays, films, poems, scientific articles and books by Iranian, North Korean and Sudanese authors have been warned not to do so by the U.S. Treasury Department under penalty of fine and imprisonment. Publishers and film producers are not allowed to edit works authored by writers in those nations. The Bush administration contends doing so has the effect of trading with the enemy, despite a 1988 law that exempts published materials from sanction under trade rules.

Every day it gets worse. I was waffling about linking to this because something about its tone bothers me - it seems a little over-the-top. But every day I find out about some new outrage committed by this administration, and I don't know if any editorial can get more over-the-top than what Bush is doing.

Goodnight, my Angel

The last episode of Angel is about to start. I am sad. It's the last show left that I watch regularly that's not a cop show. Also the last Joss Whedon show left on the air. (Although presumably there will be more someday, as soon as he gets through mucking around with the Firefly movie - and X-Men.) Angel hasn't been anything to get really excited about this year, but it's still better than 75% of what's out there. I'll miss the boys.

Home and away

Over at The Usual Suspects we were discussing the perfect game, and we came up with the interesting fact that apparently it was a fluke that Johnson's perfect game and Jason Schmidt's one-hitter last night were both on the road. Only of 5 of the 15 perfect games since 1900 (including Johnson's) were on the road. Furthermore, I did a rough count based on this list of no-hitters and came up with almost exactly the same proportions: only 77 of 225 no-hitters in the history of MLB were on the road.

Perfect

Randy Johnson just threw a perfect game against Atlanta, becoming the oldest man in history to do it, and only the 17th in major league history. Only seventeen, in well over a hundred years. That's amazing.

I was tipped off by my friend who's a Braves fan and was able to watch the final couple of outs. I think the catcher was more excited than Randy was.

Oh, dear.

Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn has denied tax-exempt status to a Unitarian church because it "does not have one system of belief."

How stupid can you get? And to think I was considering voting for this woman if - as is widely rumored - she runs for governor in the next few years.

(Found via Electrolite, who considers it evidence that Texas should be "sawed off the mainland and pushed out to sea.")

Hard to say you're sorry

Scalzi links to a Wall Street Journal story about the financial value of an apology. Sort of heartwarming, actually.

Those wacky musicians.

Chris Martin has no idea why he and Gwyneth decided to name their child Apple.

More trees, less Bush

OK, I'll proclaim my political leanings right up front, because these are some damn funny t-shirts.

Goodbye Felix

Tony Randall has died. He was 84.

Hello.

Why I am I here? I don't quite know. What am I going to do with this weblog? I don't really know that either. We'll see how it develops.