Good news, indeed

Good News!

Gay marriage is now legal in my soon-to-be home state! Of course, I am not gay and believe marriage to be the silliest of social institutions, so the impact of this decision on me is negligible. But this is the rare thing in this world that is not about me! And as it concerns the promotion of social equality, this is GREAT!

Also, Keith Olbermann is back! I find him and his program, first on MSNBC and now on Current, whatever that is (Al Gore something liberal something), to be utterly compelling. Even if I don't always agree with the content of what he is saying (and I agree with the content of what he says more often than anyone else with a comparably large platform), the way he says it is so irresistibly poetic that it is great to listen to anyways. Here is Keith on this story:

Cold Summer

Ya, I finally finished reading The God Delusion and, ya, it took me a while to get through it. So what? I'd say I'm a pretty fucking fluent when it comes to reading, but this book forced me (my brain, mostly) to truly comprehend what Dawkins was writing, sentence by sentence. Nonetheless, I recommend all to give it a read if you haven't already.

I know O'Reilly is an easy target for any debate, but I found the following bit nonetheless amusing:

Wow!

So, I posted an interview of Jon Stewart on Chris Wallace's show on the network that shall not be named (Harry Potter, nerds), on a day that I will tentatively call yesterday. It was kind of weird, and didn't make a lot of sense, but there were a couple of points that Jon Stewart made well, and others he didn't, like always. HOWEVER, I just now saw the unedited version of the interview, and, guess what? It makes so much more sense! It is a good reminder of two things:

1) Fox News is straight-up, hardcore propaganda.

2) They are bad at that job! The propaganda at Fox News is so thoroughly cheap and unconvincing that it could not possibly exist and be successful in any comparably socially-advanced nation in the world. Politically conservative Americans should be alerted to this fact more than any other. Heads up, Red-heads! Fox News thinks you are all a bunch of dummies, and watching their network only proves the theory!

(Side note: It just dawned on me that the color of the Republican party in this country is red. Irony!)

Unedited interview:

Last Bit Of Weiner

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I'm less interested in the partisan aspects of this scandal than the media angle, because the fact that partisan politics have reached a fever pitch, and that Republicans are better at playing the game, is old news and boring. But the way this played out in the media was utterly fascinating to me, for some of the reasons Maddow points out in the above video. I don't believe that this was the intent, but the crass questions that that ambassador of Howard Stern's was shouting out were as perfect as they were inappropriate, precisely because they gave direct voice to the subtext of the entire line of questioning throughout this absurd spectacle, and revealed that spectacle itself to be wholly inappropriate.

Honestly, can anyone watch the video and listen to the questions being asked of Anthony Weiner and feel anything but sympathy for him and revulsion at the members of the media present? Do they feel proud of themselves now that they have successfully shamed and destroyed the career of a man who was "guilty" of engaging fully legal, commonplace, and nonsexual activity? Are they themselves capable of feeling shame or hypocrisy?

A lot of the criticism with pretensions toward enlightened understanding claims to be unconcerned with the lascivious acts and more troubled by the fact that he initially lied about those acts. But is there any more harmless, understandable form of lying? Weiner lied to save himself and those close to him embarrassment. How does that at all reflect on him as a politician? It only means he is a human being, with normal human responses.

Even worse is the criticism coming from those who audaciously claim to be offended for the sake of Weiner's wife, as if they have any idea what she knew about this beforehand, how she feels about it, or what their marital agreement entails. The people giving voice to this opinion, who pursued Weiner and put pressure on him to resign on these grounds, were so obviously acting directly and unambiguously against anyone close to Anthony Weiner, as, if they were really concerned for the wellbeing of his wife, the kindest thing to do would clearly have been to stop talking about this whole mess and let it be what it indisputably should: a private matter.

This whole thing proves a point Jon Stewart made well on Fox News this morning: the so-called liberal bias of the mainstream media does not actually exist. Rather, the media is heavily biased towards sensationalism and laziness.

FRIED CEREAL anyone?

SICK BROTHER

sick bro.

Michelle Bachmann: Candidate For President

"Literally, if we took away the minimum wage—if conceivably it was gone—we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."

"I was wondering, if most employers are already doing this anyway, isn’t minimum wage really just superfluous? Why do we even have one?"

"If raising the minimum wage to $7.00 an hour is a good idea, that why dont we just raise it to $20.00 an hour, that must be even better."

"If we allow businesses to be prosperous and accrue capital, they’ll be giving their employees more than they can even begin to imagine. But when we continue to tie cement blocks on businesses (like the minimum wage) and constrain them, they can actually do less than their employees."

"No one that I know disagrees with natural selection — that you can take various breeds of dogs ... breed them, you get different kinds of dogs," she said. "It's just a fact of life. ... Where there's controversy is (at the question) 'Where do we say that a cell became a blade of grass, which became a starfish, which became a cat, which became a donkey, which became a human being?' There’s a real lack of evidence from change from actual species to a different type of species. That's where it's difficult to prove."

"I had high heels on and I just couldn't stand anymore. I was not in the bushes."

"Many teenagers that come in should be paying the employer because of broken dishes or whatever occurs during that period of time. But you know what? After six months, that teenager is going to be a fabulous employee and is going to go on a trajectory where he's going to be making so much money, we'll be borrowing money from him."

In Case You Don't Watch Parks & Rec

Ron Swanson is a very funny character. Parks and Recreation is a pretty good sitcom. Community and 30 Rock are better.

YIIIIKES

As if we needed another reason to be paranoid:

"A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

"Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

"In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful."

(via NYT)

This is particularly scary since I also write critical things about the administration on a VERY influential blog. Jk, lol. But seriously, as we get further away from the Bush Administration (in time, not policy) it just keeps looking worse, as is to be expected. The sheer number of our most important laws and checks that were blatantly disregarded is utterly massive, and the fact that none of them are being prosecuted or even given much attention in mainstream venues should answer any lingering questions over whether the rule of law is anything but empty rhetoric. When they are brought to light, it is in lightly worded pieces like this one, constructed in a way that leaves you inclined to shake you head and hiss a couple of tsks before taking another bite of your doughnut and throwing the paper away when you go back to work. No one cares anymore. The very concept of the rule of law is now an antiquated relic of a bygone era, deemed not fit for the "challenges of the 21st century." But, you know, the Bible is still a reliable moral compass.

In other news that I was just alerted to, the War on Drugs turns 40 this year! That's pretty old! It should get cancer or something!

we made a puppet show

this is episode 3

Just the Best Sloth Video Ever

Meet the sloths from Lucy Cooke on Vimeo.

Why Are We Still In Libya?

This, maybe?

The relationship between Gaddafi and the U.S. oil industry as a whole was odd. In 2004, President George W. Bush unexpectedly lifted economic sanctions on Libya in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. There was a burst of optimism among American oil executives eager to return to the Libyan oil fields they had been forced to abandon two decades earlier. . . .

Yet even before armed conflict drove the U.S. companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms. He sought big bonus payments up front. Moreover, upset that he was not getting more U.S. government respect and recognition for his earlier concessions, he pressured the oil companies to influence U.S. policies. . . .

When Gaddafi made his deal with Bush in 2004, he had hoped that returning foreign oil companies would help boost Libya’s output . . . The U.S. government also encouraged American oil companies to go back to Libya. . . .

The companies needed little encouragement. Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves -- 43.6 billion barrels -- outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects. . . . Throughout this time, oil prices kept rising, whetting the appetite for greater supplies of Libya's unusually "sweet" and "light," or high-quality, crude oil.

By the time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited in 2008, U.S. joint ventures accounted for 510,000 of Libya's 1.7 million barrels a day of production, a State Department cable said. . . .

But all was not well. By November 2007, a State Department cable noted "growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism." It noted that in his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi said: "Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money." His son made similar remarks in 2007.

Oil companies had been forced to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names, the cable said. . . .

via Washington Post and Glenn Greenwald

Or maybe, as was the obvious case in Iraq which no one could ever possibly question, we're staying and waging war (illegally) solely to fight for the dignity of Libyan women? President Obama sure is quiet these days. Luckily everyone is nice and distracted by Anthony Weiner's penis.

See this movie...

...and then we'll talk.

Just a Very Good Essay

First, there was a very bad essay written in the Wall Street Journal about Young Adult Lit being "too dark" these days, which proves that the Wall Street Journal should probably just steer clear of writing about literature.

In response, Sherman Alexie wrote a defense of exactly this type of literature that the writer for WSJ so loathes and Alexie himself writes very well. It is one of the best essays in defense of a genre of literature I have ever read. Here's a taste:

"So when I read Meghan Cox Gurdon’s complaints about the “depravity” and “hideously distorted portrayals” of contemporary young adult literature, I laughed at her condescension.

"Does Ms. Gurdon honestly believe that a sexually explicit YA novel might somehow traumatize a teen mother? Does she believe that a YA novel about murder and rape will somehow shock a teenager whose life has been damaged by murder and rape? Does she believe a dystopian novel will frighten a kid who already lives in hell?"

"When some cultural critics fret about the “ever-more-appalling” YA books, they aren’t trying to protect African-American teens forced to walk through metal detectors on their way into school. Or Mexican-American teens enduring the culturally schizophrenic life of being American citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Or Native American teens growing up on Third World reservations. Or poor white kids trying to survive the meth-hazed trailer parks. They aren’t trying to protect the poor from poverty. Or victims from rapists.

No, they are simply trying to protect their privileged notions of what literature is and should be. They are trying to protect privileged children."

In other words: Go back to eating cake and leave the rest of us alone.

I Wish This Was My Movie Theater

Poor Weiner

World's best sex advice columnist and secularly sainted progenitor of the amazing It Gets Better Project, which serves as a positive referendum on the value of the entire internet, singlehandedly canceling out hundreds of celebrity gossip sites and right-wing blogs to bring the scales closer to balanced (though this obviously does more than any noble cause ever could in that respect), shares his very good thoughts on the scandal currently swirling like a tornado around Rep. Anthony Weiner.

To paraphrase his thoughts and mine: Who the fuck cares? Yeah, it was stupid of him to mistakenly tweet a picture of his semi-erect but nonetheless underwear-bound junk publicly instead of privately, but in a political world with its priorities this out of wack - where things like politicians engaging in clandestine internet flirtations and whatever stupid thing fell out of Sarah Palin's mouth this week are treated with more importance than things like the illegal war currently being conducted or the ever-worsening record of the Obama administration on civil liberties and the defense thereof (though this is heartening) - the real import of these things and the amount of coverage that they get are wildly disparate. It's just a real shame that this is most likely going to end Weiner's chances of being mayor of New York City. I would have voted for him.

While we're on the topic of Dan Savage related things, have you ever wondered if you are a sociopath, or are otherwise incapable of feeling? Your reaction to this video should provide a somewhat conclusive answer:

Cake Police 3.0

I went ahead and skipped 2.0 to make this next-level internet hotspot

gif attack