Categorical Aperitif

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

In other news, I have to drive 20.3 miles if I want to see Sicko on opening day. Oh, the nearby corporate conglomomegatheaters have plenty of room for Fantastic Four and Bruce Willis and Spider-Man and Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean and—oh my God, is that really Nancy Drew I see? Ye gods. Nope, no place nearby is opening Sicko 'til next week. Meanwhile, Michael Moore was on The Daily Show the other night and mentioned that he'd been all set to do a whole hour with Larry King—but was bumped for Paris Hilton. There's an anecdote that kind of defines the whole corporate media problem in a nutshell, huh? It looks like King is scheduled to have Moore on tonight, but hey, who knows what Lindsay Lohan or Courtney Love might get up to in the meantime?

Moore is also scheduled for NOW tonight. Definitely a more reliable booking.

P.S. CNN poll: "Which Michael Moore film is your favorite?" The last option, "He's too biased for me," is scoring right around 33%. One third, one third...where have I see that before?

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

And here's today's daily. Today.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Oops—I did a weekly yesterday but forgot to do a daily yesterday. So here's yesterday's daily today. For what it's worth.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

As I was thinking about this week's RFBing, I couldn't get my mind off of Kevin Drum's request (h/t The Carpetbagger Report) for help with mockery of the mind-bogglingly dumb last line of this mind-bogglingly dumb anti-Gore piece by Emily Yoffe. It is indeed a head-scratcher:

But just because something can be plotted on an X and Y axis does not make it the whole truth.

What plotting something on an X and Y axis has to do with anything is not terribly clear, but then neither is the rest of Yoffe's careless, pointless screed (I think the Howler has her pegged). My best guess is that "plotting something on an X and Y axis" is meant to be a trope for nerdiness, so Yoffe is basically ending her piece in a time-honored kewl kid way by calling Gore a nerd. Ooooh, devastating put-down. Anyway, this is what happens when you fixate on a particularly idiotic piece of punditry while you randomly Flickr blog:

Labels: Random Flickr Blogging

Bonus: Because how often will you see THIS?

Bonus bonus: Help me out with this one:

Add suggestions if you've got 'em.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

So Howie "The Ho" Kurtz can't wait to flog an MSNBC report that shows that—gasp!—125 of 144 journalists gave money to Democrats, thereby giving Michael Medved a chance to wave his hanky in dismay and wail "oh, the liberal bias." Never mind

• that the study covers less than one percent of journalists in the country,
• that the study includes many journos who cover fashion, sports, etc. rather than political news,
• that a handful of hardly liberal corporate interests actually own the mainstream media,
• that the mainstream media's political coverage routinely slants in a pro-Republican direction,
• that the Sunday TV chatfests routinely slant in a pro-Republican direction,
• etc., etc., etc.

Any excuse to read that "liberal media" script is a good one, huh, Howie?

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

The Merriam-Webster Word of the Day for June 24, 2007 is

roorback \ROOR-back\ noun
: a defamatory falsehood published for political effect

Example sentence: "The attacks on my character are nothing but roorbacks drummed up by my opponent," insisted the candidate.

Did you know?
If you think dirty politics are new, think again. In the midst of the 1844 presidential campaign between James K. Polk and Henry Clay, a letter was published in a newspaper in Ithaca, New York, claiming that a reputable witness (one Baron von Roorback) had, while traveling in Tennessee, come across 43 slaves owned by Polk and branded with his initials. The letter caused an uproar that threatened to derail Polk's campaign until it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax supposedly perpetrated by the opposing party. Baron von Roorback didn't even exist. The incident proved a political boomerang; Polk won the election and the name "roorback" became a byword for political dirty tricks.

Roorback: it was the Swiftboating of its day.

Bonus: The Python fans out there will understand why I couldn't resist this one.

P.S. There are some wonderfully Pythonesque anecdotes in that little article about the woefully underappreciated Hazel Pethig:

"Once, the team asked for a polar bear costume for a sketch, which was very difficult to get hold of, and we couldn't hire one. So we had to use a gorilla suit instead. They were very good about it, but it was clear they'd have preferred the polar bear."

(...)

The most uncooperative of the group has, nevertheless, always been John Cleese. "Squeezing John into costume was difficult for me. He didn't like wearing costumes, and he didn't like wearing beards and moustaches. [On Python,] he used to puff himself up like a bullfrog so his costumes wouldn't fit. He'd say 'Look, I can't wear it, it doesn't fit.' I had to pummel him until he fit into the costume."

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

I'm in the habit of listening to Democracy Now! pretty much every weekday—or rather, since it's not on the radio at the most convenient time here, I'm in the habit of downloading it and listening to it as I exercise. This can come in quite handy if you lift weights, let me tell you: Amy Goodman and company routinely dredge up stories that conjure up a visceral rage that can help one shatter a bench-press plateau to smithereens. I distinctly remember, for example, cursing and howling my way through extra reps as I listened to these reports on guestworker abuse, full of gems like this:

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Mexican guestworkers in Louisiana labor, hired by Redd Properties in Sulphur, Louisiana, Saket Soni?

SAKET SONI [head of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice]: Yeah. Redd Properties is a real estate group owned by a local real estate mogul named Matt Redd. Matt Redd’s case is very interesting. Matt Redd went off and started Louisiana Labor, LLC, which is a little shelter company that is the formal employer of the workers.

Matt then went to Mexico. He, himself, became a recruiter. He went to Mexico, recruited workers, promised them that for $400 they would be transported to Louisiana in airplanes -- charged them $400 for airfare. When he received the $400, he then packed the Mexican workers into vans like sardines and confiscated their passports and essentially trafficked them across the border to Louisiana.

Once they were in Louisiana, through LA Labor, they then lived in buildings owned by Redd Properties, sequestered, ten or twelve people to a little house, and Matt Redd then leased them out for a profit to businesses across the Calcasieu Parish, including car washes, restaurants, casinos and a prominent local fabrication shop. So the workers essentially had no other choice.

It is good to have heavy chunks of metal to move around when you listen to stuff like this, I can testify.

Anyway, this weekend I finally listened to last Thursday's broadcast, and I highly recommend it to anyone who needs either a dose of muscle-fueling outrage or a renewed sense of hope. There's an excellent speech by Michael Moore (transcript included), who is just beginning what promises to be an awesome round of agitation ahead of the release of Sicko, his new film about the American "health care" industry, and there's testimony from some Sicko interviewees about some of the horrible things they've witnessed—or done. Moore's speech is the hope-inducing part; the testimonies are the outrage-fueling part:

AMY GOODMAN: Dawnelle Keyes daughter died in 1993. Andy Bales of the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles testified on how hospitals dump patients on Skid Row.

ANDY BALES: Unlike some unfortunate souls who are dumped or dropped off on Skid Row, I worked my whole life to end up on Skid Row, and I finally made it. I want to make sure no human being is left on the streets of Skid Row. Three years ago, my predecessors found that a woman had been dropped off by a hospital. She walked in with an IV in her arm, sat down in our guest area and died 10 minutes later from pneumonia. We set up what is now called a hospital dump cam out in front of the building. And in the fall of 2005, we had a gentleman show up in a gurney, having seizures and the hospital attempted to drop him off, but the captain of the police force, Andy Smith, happened to be at our place in a meeting, he ran down, intervened, made the man – the ambulance driver - put him back in the ambulance and sent him back to the hospital. Shortly after that, in December, an undocumented day laborer showed up covered in blood. He’d just been released from a hospital in Arcadia, brought all the way to downtown Skid Row, walked in, we took him back to our guest area and shortly thereafter, he became so ill from the beating he had taken right before he went to the hospital, that we had to call the medics and haul him back to the hospital. He stayed there for several days.

That was publicized. I think eleven hospitals were documented as doing drop-offs. It was somewhat publicized. But in March of 2006, I was standing outside with the moms from the Mission, waiting for their kids to return. Their bus had been in an accident, so I was out much later than I normally would have been. I couldn't believe my eyes as the cab pulled up and did a u-turn. And a little lady in a nightgown stepped out of the back of the cab, unassisted, was given no directions to our door. She's several hundred feet from our door. She started walking northward on San Pedro to some of the meanest streets in the United States. Fortunately, I was there. I called the Captain, Andy Smith. I sent a staff person to rescue the lady that I later found out was Carol Reyes. Hospital document showed she had high blood pressure, a low-grade fever, had dementia so bad that she didn't know time or place. Yet she was brought 20 miles to be dropped off on to the meanest street of our city.

Every good thing that happened to Carol Reyes after it hit the national and world news, every good thing that happened to her could have happened had she been treated like a human being in the first place. She was given a checkup by a social worker and doctors. She was deemed not to be competent. She was given a public guardian. She was given a lawyer. She was put into a group home. Today, she's being cared for in a wonderful way. But, every one of those good steps could have been done in the first place rather than after she made the national news.

Unfortunately, there have been over 35 hospital drop-offs since Carroll Reyes made the news. One man, a paraplegic, dropped off without a wheelchair without a walker, dropped himself out of the van onto the curb with his clothes in his mouth and colostomy bag ruptured. Fortunately, one good thing that came out of this was that twelve homeless witnesses stepped forward and said enough is enough. No more of this kind of treatment for human beings.

I would like to just share a scripture from the Old Testament. As the Jewish people were heading back to set up their city, they received instruction from God through the prophet of Isaiah. It says I’ll take joy in Jerusalem, take delight in my people. No more sounds of weeping in the city, no cries of anguish, no more babies dying in the cradle or old people who don't enjoy a full lifetime. 100th birthdays will be considered normal. Anything less will seem like a cheat. I want to steal an idea from Michael: That we need to move away from the “pull yourself up from the bootstraps”, winner-take-all, me-centered society and move to a we-centered society. That is why I am here to encourage you today. Thank you.

No, thank YOU. If America finally manages to shake off the "free market," maximizing-profits-is-all-that-matters siren song that has lured it toward the civilizational rocks for the past 30 years or so and finally embraces the kind of sane, humane, single-payer healthcare system enjoyed by, oh, most other industrialized democracies in the world, it will be because of people like you—and Michael Moore, who will be dishonored in his own time (the usual suspects will remind us that he is "fat," a "propagandist," etc., never mind their own legions of tubby whores) but who, I am more and more confident, will go down in history as a kind of culture hero for our odd, media-saturated times. Moore certainly seems charged up for this battle—and now, with Bush/Cheney's poll numbers in the tank and a majority of the country disenchanted with the plutocracy's record on Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, Katrina, etc., might be the perfect time to wage it.

Listen, read, and/or watch. And let's pack the theaters on June 29.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

I was thinking about this post by RFB inventor Tom Hilton as I perused the results for this week's number. Tom is right: rather than let the media get away with painting Fred Thompson as the simple, guileless, aw-shucks, down-home good-old-boy that he pretends to be, let's hang the fact that for much of his adult life he's been a slick, well-connected big-bucks skirt-chasing Washington lobbyist around his neck like a big Glenfiddich-reeking albatross. Ah say, ah say, that's Lobbyist Fred Thompson yer talkin' about, son </leghorn>.

Labels: Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

Just because I'm doing daily installments doesn't mean I can't do weekly installments, too.

Random Flickr Blogging explained here; photos originally uploaded by kay661212, MGoBlue, thestreetnetwork, pterjan, and edditainment.

Bonus: Once nice thing about randomly Flickring is that, as you do, you often run across some great photos. Here's a couple of bird shots from this week's Flickrings that I really, really liked.

Shuttle launch tonight! Hopefully. I've got an elderly aunt in town from up north until tomorrow morning; I'm not sure, but I think this is her first chance to see one of these things other than on TV, so let's hope the weather and technology cooperate.

Labels: Random Flickr Blogging

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging