New Pics

It has been a while since I've added any pictures here, so let's take a look at some recent stuff. Some of these need a lot of cropping and some Photoshop work but some of them I'm really proud of, enjoy.

2 years ago today

Katrina made landfall. Shrub wishes Nawlins a happy anniversary. Here's a timeline of that day. I remember that despite the fact "no one could have predicted..." my fellow commenters at Daily Kos (commonly referred to as Kossacks) were offering assistance days before landfall. 8/29/05 - never forget that on this date Republicans allowed one of the most beloved cities in the country to be devastated and still haven't mobilized to repair it.

And, OMG, the stupid, it burns, it burns us it does.

Top 10 Gonzales moments

Although, they are missing my favorite, when he says something like, "I have now been made aware that I do recall that." I'm going to have to do some digging to find the actual quote.

It's official

Any Republican that espouses "Family Values" to mean anti-gay is more likely to be a closet case. Can we just start laughing at them now when they bring this shit up?

Have to admit, I'm pretty freaked out about this.

Peter and I were watching the Sevilla-Getafe game when Antonio Puerte fell to his knees, his teammates rushed to his side and reached into his mouth to prevent him from swallowing his tongue. Eventually he got up and walked off the field to the locker room. But apparently he collapsed again in the locker room and was rushed to the hospital. He died Tuesday. It freaked Peter and I out so much that we stopped watching the game. And it's still freaking me out now. I've never seen someone die. And while I know that that streak will eventually have to end I'm unhappy and scared of when it will. And someday it will be me. Bummer.

Sorry for the downer, on a somewhat lighter note, after Puerte collapsed and left the field Peter and I looked over at each other and I know we had the same thought. We were both suddenly very afraid of our own tongues.

Is this thing on?

I think I'm down to like 2 readers (Hi Mom and Dad!) and I've never had commenters. Sigh.

Endless Cummer

Wonkette keeps track of all the summer's sex scandals.

Remember it's not (usually) the sex that is the problem but the hypocrisy.

A bloggers response to Michael Skube

You may remember my rant about the Skube piece in the LA Times here. And now here is an "official" blogger response.

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary ::shaking head::

Would you just shut the f*** up?

The correct response should be, "If there is another terrorist attack it will prove that the Failed Bu$h Administration^TM is in fact a failure and doesn't seem to really care about stopping terrorism and would give a huge boost to the Democratic party as the party that will actually do the correct things to stop terrorism." Duh. Was that so hard?

And this guy has 3 Pulitzers?

Suck on this, indeed.

He's such a wanker he has his own unit of measure named after him, a Friedman Unit is six months. Why are we still listening to him?

People are funny

And I think I will be adding their site to my "Goofy" RSS Yahoo feed page.

2 years ago today

Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas, six days later it would make landfall for the third time (after crossing Florida and then glancing off southeastern Louisiana) along the Louisiana/Mississippi border. As we all know, New Orleans was devastated and despite days of warning the Failed Bu$h Administration^TM did little to nothing for roughly the next 4 days. The really scary part - Katrina had been downgraded to only a Category 3 storm when it made its final landfall.

I Miss New Orleans
The Aftermath Numbers

And the area is still devastated. See this and this and this.

You know, thinking about all the incompetence of the Failed Bu$h Administration^TM leads me to wonder if it really isn't incompetence but deliberately done. Maybe the idea is for government to screw up so badly that everyone wants it replaced with private sector solutions. I know on a number of occasions I've thought, "Well, if they're not going to do it right, why don't I get a bunch of people together and we'll do it ourselves." I'm not the only one.

Edwards - Still my guy.

Read the full speech at the end of the post. That's good, powerful, populist, progressive stuff. Here is what I took from the speech:

1) The centrist/DLC way does not work and will be abandoned.
2) Corporations currently run this country, this will end.
3) Money quote: "We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other."
4) Need public financing of campaigns
5) Create true universal health care.
6) Implement caps on greenhouse gases without nuclear power or liquefied coal but with true renewable energy sources.
7) Strengthen unions
8) Raise minimum wage
9) Cut lower and middle class taxes, "Let's restore fairness to our tax code by insisting on a simple principle -- nobody in the middle class should pay higher taxes on the money they make from hard work than the wealthiest pay on the money they make from their investments."
10) End the war in Iraq, "We should immediately withdraw 40-50,000 combat troops immediately and have the rest out in about a year."

Like I said previously, Edwards is not prefect, there are some things on which we disagree but on most things we strongly agree. Obama could still ultimately win my support but he needs to get as fired up as Edwards and take off the gloves and direct his attacks at someone other than Hillary. How about an Obama/Edwards ticket?

I saw history tonight

Jaime Moreno scored goal 109 to take the most MLS goals spot. Too bad it was on a penalty kick. When's he going to score one in the run of play again?

They can't even win their own arguments

Start here or if you want to just jump right into the idiocy, go here. The op-ed in the LA Times by Skube is yet another grenade lobbed by the Corporate Media^TM at the blogging community. Unfortunately, for them, it bounces off... something... and lands at their own feet, but luckily, for them, they were too stupid to even pull the pin.

So, we start at the beginning:

clipped from www.latimes.com

The late Christopher Lasch once wrote that public affairs generally and journalism in particular suffered not from too little information but from entirely too much. What was needed, he argued, was robust debate.

Ok, let's ignore the little/much information problem and concentrate on debate:

clipped from www.latimes.com

The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an unbecoming hatred of enemies real and imagined.

I would call that debate. So, already in the first two paragraphs Skube has contradicted his own argument. Journalism is really all about promoting debate and blogs are nothing more than debate. If both of those are true then blogs are a vital, in fact, the most vital part, of the media today. Well done sir. Moving on.

clipped from www.latimes.com

And to think most bloggers are doing all this on the side. "No man but a blockhead," the stubbornly sensible Samuel Johnson said, "ever wrote but for money." Yet here are people, whole brigades of them, happy to write for free.

Unless you whore yourself you can not be a Very Serious Person^TM. Awesome argument. Next.

clipped from www.latimes.com

Some [bloggers] reject the label "journalist," associating it with what they contemptuously call MSM (mainstream media); just as many, if not more, consider themselves a new kind of "citizen journalist" dedicated to broader democratization.

Is "citizen journalist" supposed to be an insult? Is broader democratization bad? Enquiring minds want to know. Next.

clipped from www.latimes.com

To the contrary, he [Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of Daily Kos wrote, "we are representatives of the mainstream, and the country is embracing what we're selling."

Are you scared?

clipped from www.latimes.com

There is at least some reason for activists like Moulitsas to see themselves as the new wave. Last year, the California 6th District Court of Appeal gave bloggers the legal victory they wanted when it ruled that they were protected under the state's reporter shield law. Other, more symbolic victories have come their way too. In 2004, bloggers were awarded press credentials to the Democratic National Convention. And earlier this month in Chicago, at a convention sponsored by Daily Kos, a procession of Democratic presidential hopefuls offered full salutes, knowing that bloggers are busy little bees in organizing political support and fundraising.

Oh, yes, you are scared. Boo! Next.

clipped from www.latimes.com

"What democracy requires," Lasch wrote in "The Lost Art of Argument," "is vigorous public debate, not information. Of course, it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can only be generated by debate. We do not know what we need until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy."

I love it. So, according to the quote Skube supplies democracy requires debate prompted by the information provided by journalists. No shit Sherlock. Bloggers are saying that you Very Serious Journalists^TM aren't asking the right questions, or in most cases, any questions. you are absolutely right. Next.

clipped from www.latimes.com

He [1960's NY Times reporter Claude Sitton] recounted the time in Philadelphia, Miss., when "a few rednecks -- drunk, shotguns in the back of their truck -- showed up at the Holiday Inn where Fleming and I were staying." The locals invited the big-city reporters -- Sitton from the Times, Fleming from Newsweek -- to come out and see the farm. "I told 'em, 'Look, you shoot us and there'll be a dozen more just like us in the morning. You going to shoot them too?' "

So, serious journalism is measured by how many death threats you get? Well then, shit, liberal bloggers are super journalists. See this earlier post about Ava, a 16 year blogger in Alabama. 'Nuff said. Next and finally.

clipped from www.latimes.com

n our time, the Washington Post's reporting, in late 2005, of the CIA's secret overseas prisons and its painstaking reports this year on problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center -- both of which won Pulitzer Prizes -- were not exercises in armchair commentary.

Nor, apparently, are these exercises in Very Serious Reporting^TM and this really invalidates EVERYTHING he said previously about serious journalism. The Walter Reed stories did not win a Pulitzer in 2005... or ever. Wasn't even freaking nominated! I...I...I don't even know what to say.


Muhahahah! Wait, this op-ed is a plant, right? This is really some blogger pulling the wool over our eyes, right? Some blogger intentionally making the Corporate Media^TM look like stupid jackasses, right? No, really, ok. Well, good job anyway.

You know, maybe I just don't understand Skube's rapier wit and superior logic, after all, I'm just a stupid blogger, a "citizen journalist", one of the unclean masses. Or maybe I could write for the LA Times on my fucking coffee break. Just saying, Corporate Media^TM, if you want a fight at least stop punching yourselves in the face. Otherwise, we're just going to get bored, wander off and take your girl/boy.

Don't believe the hype

On a different blog my Mom made a comment about Clinton being unelectable (Congratulations Mom, did you know you are officially a blogger? You've written a post and commented on another one, welcome. See us bloggers aren't scary at all, we are you). I just wanted to point out that this is a completely false talking point coming from the Republicans. Check out these poll numbers. Only in Alabama does she lose to Ghouliani and Lazy Fred and even there she has made HUGE inroads. If Clinton is our weakest candidate in red states any of the top three Dems will destroy any Repub opposition.

Leaves on the sidewalk

Haven't posted any pics in a while. Enjoy.

Interesting - Vaunted Boroughs

Was checking out Eschaton came across this post which led me to this graph. Some interesting data here. Completely unsurprised that DC has the lowest fuel consumption per capita. Despite how much I personally complain about WMATA and Metro in particular DC has great public transpo, could be better, yes, but still great.

New York is second, I bet, take out NYC and that drops to the lower third.

Then there are some weird things.
Big states and little states are not distributed based on size. 5 of the top 10 are big to medium-big states (NV, AZ, CA, OR, WA), see state size rankings here. 5 of the bottom 10 are also big to medium-big (MO, ND, SD, OK, WY). Here's where it gets really weird, fuel consumption does not correspond to population density, although no wonder DC is first, the next closest state, New Jersey is 9x less populated. (As an aside, I'm a little leery of the website that population density links to. "Demographia is "pro-choice" with respect to urban development.
People should have the freedom to live and work where and how they like.", could very well be a pro-sprawl statement).

What does it all mean? I don't know, but there's a lot to study here.

About effing time!

You Must Read This! It's an editorial in the NY Times written by a group of non-commissioned officers in Iraq. For me, this is the first money quote:

clipped from www.nytimes.com

The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Why do I highlight this? Because it points out very distinctly the problems I have with the Corporate Media. To put it nicely the Corporate Media has been an ardent cheerleader in the Iraq Adventure^TM and since I'm not feeling nice I will also call it what it is. They have whored themselves out to this failed administration and time and time again have carried their water.

In the next money quote, this group goes after our failed administration:

clipped from www.nytimes.com

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

And this:

clipped from www.nytimes.com

Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Have we seen any of the Serious People in Washington^TM say things like this? No. In fact they are all beating the drum (at least right now) of "The Surge^TM is working!" Which is wrong, not even nuanced wrong but just false. The Corporate media is not to be trusted with, well, much of anything really.

Finally, there is this:

clipped from www.nytimes.com

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation.

Why hasn't this aspect improved? Why haven't we made a priority of getting basic services online? It doesn't take a rocket scientist or even a college degree to see that while the Iraqi people were probably pretty happy to get rid of Hussein they probably also had a fairly rational expectation that getting rid of him would make their lives better not worse. But really no one should be surprised by this failed administration's ability to get anything done, if you are surprised I have one word for you... Katrina.

Write your congressman and senators. The time to impeach came about years ago and it is almost too late.

[UPDATE] I imagine those who don't understand my dislike for the Corporate Media will bring up the fact that I am quoting from an editorial in a Corporate Media newspaper. Yes, you are right and I'm not going to say that we need to get rid of the Corporate Media, they do things and have access to things that no blogger can do or has (yet). But here are the real problems: 1) Too little, too late. Where the fuck have they been for the past 8 years? 2) This editorial was not written by anyone from the Corporate Media.