Hell Today

CBS has let me down

2006-11-07T09:34:00.000-08:00

ABC and NBC I didn't have high hopes for anyway, because they are corporate-whore suckups who say whatever they think will appeal most to the perceived stupidity of their audiences, but CBS often seems to be slightly more resistant to following the (R) party line in its programming. Last night, however, did CBS bother with a story on Republican robo-calling, the hottest political topic on the Internet, on its evening news? Well, no. I guess they were afraid they might offend somebody. Of course, they can have "CSI-Miami" showing a young man getting decapitated, running the scene over and over again from different angles as if to ask, "Is there anything we can do that will make people gag more than our last utterly repulsive episode?" But telling the American public that their ruling party is trying to cheat them, to fool them, to lie to them once again in order to influence their votes? No, no, that might upset someone.

Here's a rundown and some further comments from The Carpetbagger Report on coverage (in other words, lack thereof) on the network news last night:

* ABC World News Tonight devoted two minutes to a "Polls Show That The GOP Is Catching Up" story, which is dubious enough, and made no mention of the robo-calls.

* CBS Evening News devoted two minutes to a "Polls Show GOP Closing Gap; Democrats Nervous" story (and two a half minutes to a story about the USS Intrepid getting stuck at port), but not a word about the calls.

* NBC Nightly News devoted nearly four minutes to a "New Polls Suggest Election Is Tightening In Favor Of GOP" story (and two full minutes on the "Borat" movie), but neglected to mention the robo-call story at all.

So, getting back to Kevin's original question, "[I]s the mainstream media even going to bother reporting on the saturation robo-calling currently being funded and coordinated by the National Republican Congressional Committee?," the answer, apparently, is no.

If recent history is any guide, the media will trumpet the results of a poll next week showing that Americans, by and large, never heard about the robo-call controversy, and news outlets will express amazement at the results.

Here's hoping that there are enough American voters today who got the word on exactly who was making those phone calls.

Best spam ever.

2006-10-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

Subject line: "Be 18th again"

That should sell the Viagra.

It's news to me that I'm either an atheist or a communist, but...

2006-06-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

Ann Coulter was on Leno last night promoting her book "Godless" and assuring America that liberals have no religion outside of liberalism. I also note that Power Slime has been dredging up ancient ties between certain members of the Democratic Party and the CPUSA. You see where this is going, don't you? The new Enemies of America = liberals and their "Godless Communism."

If the choice is between between "Godless Communism" and worshipping Ann Coulter's god, whatever demon from Hell that might be, I'll have to go with being a godless Communist.

Happy 666!

2006-06-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

In honor of today's date, I was hoping that the evening news would carry the live ceremony with Bush, Rumsfeld, and CondoLIEzza, where they suddenly ripped off their outer skins and revealed the horrendous monsters lurking beneath. Sadly, our mainstream media failed to carry this event, so here are some photos that were sneaked out by a participant in the ceremony:

Condi
Rummy
Chimp

I AM SUCH A DORK

2005-12-03T17:54:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday I woke up with a song from La Sonora Dinamita playing in my head; in fact, I woke up actually singing the lyrics. I hadn't listened to this band in months, but I played a bunch of their songs right then and there at 6:30 in the morning.

So tonight, Saturday, I come home from the store and what do I hear coming from my neighbor's house, 3 doors down -- a party, with Sonora Dinamita music, really loud. I thought there was a live band because someone was commenting/DJing into a microphone. I was like, oh, I have to hear a little bit of this music live, even though I don't know the people having the party. But being the absurdly shy person that I am, I didn't want to go over by myself so I called up my neighbor G. across the street and asked her if she'd like to crash the party with me. We walked over and met another neighbor on the way, and he told us it was just recorded music. I felt like a dork. But oh well, I got to hear one of my favorite bands nice and loud, if not live, and it's always good to hang out and gab for a few minutes with my neighbors.

Here's a nice song with Lucho Argaín (R.I.P.) singing...

El Lagunero

I think it's time to get out and hear some live music. Soon.

Christian sex lives

2005-05-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

I've been browsing through blogs of the On-Line Rightwing Coalition of Lunatics and making up snarky mean names to call them on my Bloglines blogroll. Thus Little Green Footballs becomes "Little Green Penises," Red State Rant becomes "Meth Ate My Brain," etc., etc.

My favorite so far is one written by a little lady who I've labeled "Suzie Suckup." Not only does she give *way* TMI -- Lady, do you realize that there are now EVIL SEXUALLY ACTIVE LIBERAL COMMIE LESBIAN MUZZIE COLLEGE-EDUMACATED ELITIST ATHEIST WITCHES ALL OVER THE WORLD who know that YOUR HUSBAND IS SEEING A UROLOGIST ABOUT A VASECTOMY? -- but she also seems to be engaging in a relationship with multiple partners:

So, we have been waiting on the Harley to come in since my Dear Husbands return.

So, tell me, is polyandry a new bonus given to Army Wives? Are we really *that* desperate to recruit new people for our armed forces? And how many Dear Husbands does this woman have?

Ay, these Christians!

I have worms!

2005-05-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

Yes, there are earthworms in the compost I'm making out in the back yard. The gardening is coming along very slowly, but right now there are a bunch of flowers (gazanias, poppies, stocks, geraniums, lilies, bougainvillea, miniature roses, camelias), a few lettuce and tomato seedlings, and some scarlet pimpernel. Cheeto and Baby are spending their time stalking blue birds, hiding from blue birds, and getting chased back into the house by blue birds. I always know where the cats are because the warning chirping is nonstop. Those birds even chased away a squirrel the other day. It's a menagerie around here.

Leina and her friend and I went to hear John Kerry speak at a rally for Antonio Villaraigosa in Van Nuys this past Saturday. I'll have some nice pictures to post on line if Leina ever gets around to sending/uploading copies! The funniest part was when Kerry was speaking and his mike went dead. Someone in the crowd started up with "Oh, say can you see," and everyone started singing the National Anthem. Meanwhile, the big group of Republican protesters kept yelling abusive comments, almost all the way through the song. Really patriotic, guys!

I have tons of work.

If you want some good commentary, go read Digby. And I like SuperNanny, too.

This is crazy

2005-03-26T19:22:00.000-08:00

Pinellas Park police came close to having a showdown with Jeb Bush's state police posse. Hats off to these brave police officers, and to hell with Jeb Bush for being willing to endanger the lives of both state and local police for the sake of furthering his political agenda.

Salinas continues progress to feudalism

2005-03-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

Salinas lost its only library a few weeks ago. Now 100 teachers are about to be laid off. Makes sense to me -- we wouldn't want our peasants to get too much book-learning!

Twisted Christianity

2005-03-07T18:36:00.000-08:00

Do you care about the 10 Commandments case?

Tom Engelhardt:

If the commandants are indeed to be green-lighted for our official landscape, however, let's at least remember that Christianity did not exist when the commandments were given. It might then seem more consistent to go with the Hebrew version rather than any modified Christian version adopted thousands of years after Moses lived. Since the Catholic Church predates the Protestant Reformation, it would again make more sense to go with the Catholic version than later revisions.

It is just this kind of theological debate which has been responsible for massacres carried out in the name of religion over thousands of years. It was, in fact, the mindless slaughter resulting from King Charles' efforts to impose the Church of England's prayer book on Calvinist Scots in the 17th century which played an important role in convincing the founding fathers to choose a secular form of government clearly separating church and state. They were not the first to recognize the wisdom in that approach. Jesus Christ, after all, advised his followers to render unto Caesar what was Caesar's due and unto God that which was due God.

William Thatcher Dowell:

In the United States as in the Middle East, the core of this Puritanism stems from a nostalgia for an imaginary past – in our case, a belief that the U.S. was a wonderful place when it was peopled mostly by pioneers who came from good northern European stock, who knew right from wrong, and weren't afraid to back up their beliefs with a gun, or by going to war, if they needed to.

The founding fathers, of course, had a very different vision. They had seen the damage caused by the arcane disputes which triggered the religious wars of the seventeenth century. They preferred the ideas of the secular enlightenment, which instead of forcing men to accept the religious interpretations of other men, provided the space and security for each man to seek God in his own way.

The rest here.

Bill Kurtis and George Ryan

2005-02-23T16:08:00.000-08:00

Sasha Abramsky of The American Prospect interviews Bill Kurtis of Cold Case Files about his change of heart on the death penalty:

Explain to me where you were, intellectually, on the death penalty when you really started looking at the issue in detail.

I believed in it, being a lawyer and trained in the system; but that meant I was really on the edge, as most people are. I just assumed it worked, that the guilty were punished and the innocent went free. When I began looking into it and seeing the shocking numbers [of wrongfully convicted individuals] coming out, I changed. Not overnight. We started doing a two-hour special, “Death Penalty on Trial,” and I came upon two things. One was a quote by [Supreme Court Justice] Thurgood Marshall, in which he said, “If people knew what went on in death penalty trials, they’d be against it.” And the second was James Liebman’s study. [Professor Liebman, of Columbia University, headed a study looking at the number of death penalty cases identified as having serious flaws over the decades.]

Former Illinois governor George Ryan, like Kurtis, was a supporter of capital punishment until he dug a bit deeper into how the legal system works for people accused of capital crimes. His last days in office, during which he had to make a decision about whether or not to grant clemency to death row prisoners, are documented in the excellent Deadline, directed by Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson and now out on video. Check it out.

Oh, dear.

2005-02-22T03:34:00.000-08:00

Scott Ritter says US attack on Iran planned for June

Home

2005-02-21T10:58:00.000-08:00

A quick note. Leina's surgery went well and she's doing fine. We had 5 days together, which was quite lovely. Now I'm back in L.A. and have much to catch up on, so this is probably it until sometime next week.

Politics and Music

2005-02-07T20:05:00.000-08:00

Hey, did you go to the calendar page and hear "Bella Ciao"? I had never heard the song before a couple of weeks ago, but now I'm all driving around singing it. Then it's Kortatu with "Xu Atrapatu Arte" (sp?) and other stuff from bad, bad boy Fermin Muguruza. And anything I can find from Troika.

See, when you get all pissed off at really, truly bad things going on, you start feeling emotionally drawn to the people who are siding with you, against the people doing the evil, and then you become not quite so critical of extreme positions taken by your allies. For example: I like The Unseen. No, I love The Unseen. I love their sound, their energy, their shows. As to their politics, I think they're shaky, and I'm drawn to the band more by their emotion and anger than by their "anarchist" politics. But when Bush got sworn into office, I found myself not quite so offended by their lyrics, "Goodbye America, fuck you America," as I normally would have been. I find myself understanding how "America," as defined by its current insane "leaders," might not quite apply to, or appeal to, or be understood by or followed by people who thought they were Americans but who are completely left out of this "America."

What is America now? What is it to the people who live within its borders? Do ya'll care about America beyond its mountains and beaches and forests and fruited plains, all of those pretty tourist points, to the point of caring about the *freedom* [and I might add *freedom from religious monarchy*] that created us as a nation?

Tort Reform

2005-02-07T19:42:00.000-08:00

Years ago, I worked for about a year and a half for a law firm that handled insurance defense cases. From that short job experience, I can tell you this: yes, oh hell yes, there are some stupid, frivolous, idiotic lawsuits, and they waste everybody's time, energy, and money. But will putting a cap on awards put a stop to frivolous lawsuits? I don't think so.

First, at least here in California, the courts have a process to weed out multiple violators, individuals who file lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, and I'm going to tell you what the Clerk's Office word for those lawsuits is as soon as it gets from the tip of my tongue to my brain ["nuisance"? "annoyance"? "pernicious"? "pesky"?(?!)]. Well, the tip-of-tongue-to-brain connection seems to be a bit rusty. Anyway, the extremely frivolous are sometimes halted in their tracks by being required to prove before a judge that they have a prima facie case before they even get to the next step of bugging the crap out of the lawyers for the people they are suing.

Second, caps on awards aren't going to stop anyone from filing lawsuits. Many cases are filed which have absolutely no chance of ever going to trial, of which the public is never even aware, and which have relatively small payouts. Let me give you a hypothetical case based on a composite of real cases that I observed, and please bear in mind that it's not even close to being as f*ing ridiculous as the real ones were:

Suppose I go to my local gas station and I park at a gas pump where the person's car before me had a tiny, tiny oil leak and left a tiny, tiny bit of oil behind. I see that teeny, tiny drop of oil. I say to myself, "Hey, baby, let's get rich on this!" I stagger into the gas station, hand on "injured" back, screaming for an ambulance because I slipped on the drop of oil and fell and injured my back and can never work again. I sue the gas station because they didn't clean up the oil left behind by the car in front of me. It's ridiculous, because the gas station attendants can't clean things up instantaneously and are not at fault, and also I'm lying about the whole thing anyway. But the people I'm suing are going to pay a couple thousand dollars to settle the lawsuit, because if they took it to trial it would cost 5 times that amount. Way more. Not in damages, but in the cost of the trial itself.

Is a cap on jury-awarded damages going to put an end to this kind of crap? Use your head. Use your calculator.

Third, most damage awards are overturned anyway and do not end up costing the insured/insurers as much as the jury awarded to the plaintiff. So if you're counting jury awards as a cost of insurance, don't look at the award; look at what actually gets paid out.

Fourth: read this article, which is what got me onto this subject in the first place. Look, when you hear insurers complaining about having to pay out large awards, could you maybe ask them to take a little responsibility for allowing practitioners like this to keep practicing in the first place? Like, could somebody have said, "Gee, Dr. Scheffey, you've been sued 59 times. FIFTY. NINE. TIMES. That's so far beyond the average that I'm afraid we just can't cover someone with a risk like yours"? Well, no. We'd rather keep insuring Dr. Scheffey and then complain when we have a lot of lawsuits. But hey, if Our Dear Leader promises that we can keep insuring Dr. Scheffey, and not have to pay out too much money even when lots of people die and lots of people sue, then let's go for it! Go Bush! Tort reform now! Who cares who dies and who pays? The Far Right Credo: "I've Got Mine, To Hell With You."

Political Labels

2005-02-04T18:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I had meant to try to tie in the previous little bit with a discussion about political labeling, but I'm not quite that adept at organizing my thoughts into coherent speech. So I'll limit this one to a short comment.

Most of us who are anywhere to the left of Limbaugh are alarmed, dismayed, distressed, angered, sickened, enraged, and just plain pissed off by the actions of the Bush administration, and so it's tempting to label the president and his rightwing supporters with the most insulting, unpleasant word we can think of: "fascist." This label may fit somewhat, but I'm convinced that the ultimate goal of Bush and Cohorts is something that goes further back in time than fascism. What these evil people are planning on, and will possibly achieve if certain dumbass Democrats don't wake up and really start fighting, is religious monarchy. This is why I sometimes refer to Bush as "Charlemagne." He's not trying to be Hitler, but only because Hitler failed. Bush wants to be Emperor Of The World.

Serfdom, anyone? Holy wars? "Holy American Empire"?

----
Update: Matt Stoller is getting there.

Labels

2005-02-04T18:19:00.000-08:00

Leina and I went out on Wednesday for a late birthday dinner and night out. She has her hair in a red mohawk. My hair is currently blue. So the waitress at Black Angus goes, "Are you guys mods or rockers?" That cracked me up. I told her I don't have enough fashion sense to ever be a mod. The waitress goes, "I don't, either. I buy my clothes at Costco." Which is thumbs up for her.

Later, we went to the local drag king show (which was really entertaining and fun and not campy as I had expected), and again we got labeled. One of the performers was doing a Marilyn Manson lip sync, and he told us beforehand that he was glad to have some "rockers" in the audience.

That's fine. I don't mind the label. But labels can also be limiting and lead to not being able to see and understand anything without filtering it through our small, narrow screen of what we already know of the world. We all have this problem. Being human means having a brain that helps us organize incoming data by automatically attempting to put things into categories. I think it's good to challenge that brain once in a while and step outside the line, enlarge the schema, enlarge your world.

So go to a drag king show.

Coronation day

2005-01-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

In honor of the coronation of the Lord Of The Lies today, I bring this gift of music:

Link to song

Fits, no?

Iraq My Love

2005-01-15T20:50:00.000-08:00

Personal vs. political.

I'm not sure what I want to do with this blog yet. I'd planned on writing only about political events, of which our horrid Iraq invasion dominates over everything else, but sometimes personal events become the focus of one's life. So here you go.

I drove down to San Diego last night because Leina was in the emergency room again for the second time within a week. She's going to have her gallbladder taken out, but in the meantime the gallstone pain has become extremely bad, and she was hoping to be admitted for surgery last night. There are, however, no surgeons available until early next week, so she's still going to have to wait a few days. So we're back to waiting.

After this ER visit and one several months ago at Olive View, my observation of emergency rooms, for those of you who watch "ER" and might be curious as to what it's like in real life, is that patients in real life are treated with much more respect and attention than is shown on TV. The ER nurses are incredibly intelligent and attentive, and even doctors, who from my life experience in general are most adept at listening to the sound of their own voices, do take a few extra minutes in the ER to listen to a patient and answer questions.

A few months ago, I was impressed, even awed, at the skill of the doctor or psychiatric nurse -- I'm not sure which because we were separated by hanging curtains between ER beds and I never saw either party -- at Olive View Medical Center who lightened -- no -- lessened, dimished, relieved, alleviated -- the fear of a patient who had checked into the hospital trying to "detox" from alcohol addiction. I was sitting about four feet away during the conversation, and I wish I could give you what I heard verbatim, because I was awestruck at the empathy, understanding, and competence of the nurse/doctor, and I thought, if I ever had to go through any kind of scary experience in an emergency room, I would wish to have someone like this nurse/doctor at my side to allay my fears.

Unlike "ER," patients in real-life emergency rooms are not dismissed as body parts.

Like "ER," the doctors talk too much. All doctors talk too much. They need to learn to listen. Perhaps all doctors-in-training should serve a few months in the Olive View emergency room to learn the art of listening.

Hell-o again!

2005-01-15T20:28:00.000-08:00

I am not a prolific writer.

I am not even that big a talker.

So you should know that the impetus to my starting this blog was that of John McMullen starting *his* blog, and my little copycat self padding softly and stealthily behind in his footsteps.

John Mac has a huge amount of common sense, a respectable amount of "street" smarts, and so many years of computer knowledge that he has had to escape many times from kidnappers seeking his genetic lines for the latest generation of Mentats*.

He always has something interesting to say, and your life will be diminished by not hearing his thoughts.

So go here, and come back and say hello to me after you have spent 500 years following all the ideas you found on John Mac's blog.

[*] Heheh, I just read "Dune" for the first time :)

Scolding Ms. Teachout

2005-01-15T19:15:00.000-08:00

On Zephyr Teachout's comments, here's the bit that bothers me:

On Dean's campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean.

Is she implying that Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong would have otherwise said mean, nasty things about Howard Dean? That's highly unlikely. Ms. Teachout should consider the impact of her words more carefully before sharing her thoughts with the world -- unless, of course, she is herself being paid by Karl Rove, in which case she's doing a bang-up job of creating dissension among Democrats.

As far as consulting -- Is someone paid as a "consultant" for the purpose of influencing what that person (Moulitsas or Armstrong) says, or for the purpose of asking that person for his or her best ideas to help create a winning campaign, including constructive criticism? As I understand the word "consulting," and as both bloggers themselves have described, it was the latter: they were paid to continue with what they were already doing, which was writing about Dean and other candidates, and sharing their ideas with the Dean campaign on how the candidate could best present himself and his ideas. In other words, they were hired to give advice and assistance directed towards the Dean campaign, and not to serve, as in the case of Armstrong Williams, as hired mouthpieces for statements directed at their audiences.

If anything is learned from this minor but interesting mini-scandal, it should be from the aspect of the candidate as well as from the aspect of the blogger. Perhaps a candidate's people should consider possible future interpretations of their actions, and how any paid position should be described and defined, before offering money to their supporters. Yo, Zephyr?

Scolding God

2005-01-09T19:29:00.000-08:00

(Written a couple of weeks ago)

A sad day. Leina's Grandma Grace, her dad's mom, passed away today. She was the bedrock of her whole huge family and they are going to be lost and in pain without her.

I hate death. I hate it. The only compensation is that death never wins, not for one second, over life. Think about it. The very nanosecond that death occurs, new life is created by the very act of death. Life always -- always -- wins over death. So fuck you, death.

So I had a little talk with God about this.

I said, look, you know, this death thing really sucks. Why do you inflict it on us? Why did you give us life if you're just going to take it away? I mean, I can understand why plants have to die: they decay, they form new soil, and new plants are able to grow. But it doesn't work that way with people. You don't need us to die in order to grow new anything. So why don't you stop doing this to us? You've changed your mind before when you did something mean to us. Why don't you stop making us die?

So God goes, well, look at what would happen if you didn't have death. You'd have so many people on earth that there wouldn't be room for anybody. You know, I tried to help you out with this overpopulation problem, first by making some people gay and then with birth control pills back in the 50s, but you people just don't seem to take a hint.

I said, yeah, but it's not like you ever talk to us directly and just say what's on your mind. Like, every time we try to guess what the hell you want, we have to figure out all these contradictory riddles from dusty old two-million-year-old books. So why don't you come down here and give us a hand and talk to us once in a while?

God says, I had enough of that crap when I did the Jesus schtick. After that I decided to retire and let you all figure things out on your own.

So I go, and you've been bored ever since, haven't you?

God was quiet for a minute, and then he goes, well, you know, maybe I could use something new to do with my time. I'll think about it.
.........

Anyway, I hope Grace, who is in heaven, will put some pressure on Jesus, Zeus, whoever is running this crazy universe, to show a little kindness to the human race. Look at Grace! She never did anything mean or evil to anyone in her life! Why don't you be more like her, you Insane Rulers of the Universe?

Religion of the day

2004-12-11T09:46:00.000-08:00

God is all the energy/life force of the universe.

All energy needs fuel.

We are quite tasty.

Here's an article...

2004-12-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

... and a song to go with it...

Peter Galbraith, Operation Save Face

More Coche Bomba

Beatitude of the day

2004-12-01T16:49:00.000-08:00

Blessed are the people of Alabama who have to put up with shit coming from an asshole like this:

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."

Ken Baker's response:

Ken Baker, a board member of Equality Alabama, a gay rights organization, said Allen was "attempting to become the George Wallace of homosexuality."

If we're going to ban "gay" literature from the library, why don't we just go ahead and ban *all* displays of cultural creativity: music, dance, art, writing, sculpture? Oh, duh. Those *are* the sissy things that the Christian Taliban would like to eliminate, aren't they? Onward, Christian Spartans! "Hup, two, three, four! Nothing matters but the war!"

Mosul: Serial Killer On The Loose?

2004-11-26T03:17:00.000-08:00

Residents of Mosul are a bit on edge after reading this breaking news story from AP (November 26, 2004):

U.S. forces found 13 more bodies in and around the northern city of Mosul, the military said Friday, bringing to 35 the number of corpses discovered in the past week in the area shaken by an insurgent uprising.

My God! So many people murdered in one community in one week! Thirty-five people!

But we shouldn't get too upset at hearing about the 54 Americans and couple thousand Fallujah residents who died last week, right? Also from AP, same date (November 26, 2004):

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - More than 2,000 people have been killed so far in the U.S.-Iraqi operation against the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, an Iraqi official said Thursday.

Not to worry. American officials have assured residents in Mosul that all casualties in Fallujah were evil foreign insurgents and that civilians in Mosul have nothing to fear from the upcoming American onslaught unless they are a) in a hospital, b) women, children, or elderly, or c) males between the ages of 12 and 82.

HELL-0

2004-11-26T03:13:00.000-08:00

More later.