Categorical Aperitif

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 8:59 PM 1 comments

No, not the Mexican-American guitarist, the Spanish-American philosopher. "Those who cannot remember the past get an exciting opportunity to repeat it."

If America's tombstone can have embedded video, this should be on it.

// posted by nash @ 8:35 PM 0 comments

This is for last Friday. The tastelessness, however, is timeless.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 8:27 PM 0 comments

I hadn't realized that Paul Newman was on Nixon's enemies list. Nineteenth, no less.

He sometimes teamed with his wife and fellow Oscar winner, Joanne Woodward, with whom he had one of Hollywood's rare long-term marriages. ''I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?'' Newman told Playboy magazine when asked if he was tempted to stray. They wed in 1958, around the same time they both appeared in ''The Long Hot Summer,'' and Newman directed her in several films, including ''Rachel, Rachel'' and ''The Glass Menagerie.''

With his strong, classically handsome face and piercing blue eyes, Newman was a heartthrob just as likely to play against his looks, becoming a favorite with critics for his convincing portrayals of rebels, tough guys and losers. ''I was always a character actor,'' he once said. ''I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.''

Newman had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favor of civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on President Nixon's ''enemies list,'' one of the actor's proudest achievements, he liked to say.

// posted by nash @ 8:04 PM 0 comments

This is true: I'm catching up on some DRFBing, so I was randomly scanning Flickr pages earlier this morning. I ran across this picture of a lonely pasta and salad lunch sitting as if abandoned out in the wilderness, and for some reason (does anyone really understand how this works?) I thought of a church picnic and how surprised the church picnickers might be if something besides themselves was suddenly raptured up into the sky. Then I thought about what odd thing might be missing from the picture, and then I thought of Newman's Own salad dressing (I particularly recommend the Parmesan & Roasted Garlic). And since I found the idea of bottles of a handsome pinko actor's charity business salad dressing being raptured up into the sky reasonably funny, I thought, okay, there's my idea for this one. And then, about half an hour later, I got an email telling me that Paul Newman had died. Yep.

This is for last Thursday, but the appreciation is for all time. Rest in peace, Paul Newman.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 11:14 AM 1 comments

Matt Taibbi is back with a bravura piece on Sarah Palin. Read read read.

AlterNet also has both halves of the instantly infamous Palin-Couric interview if you haven't seen it yet.

And if you can bear to watch.

// posted by nash @ 11:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 8:04 AM 1 comments

Naomi Wolf ties together the sudden rise and careful handling of Sarah Palin, her family's disrespect for law (not to mention her disrespect for truth), her running mate's advanced age and lengthy medical history, the preemptive arrests and harassment of journalists at the RNC, and the general trajectory of Bush-Cheney's America so far into a chilling bundle. This is the sort of stuff that I'd have scoffingly dismissed a few years ago. Part of me still does, but I'm not sure I can trust that part anymore; I worry that a lot of him is just wishful thinking masquerading as healthy skepticism. A few years ago, I didn't think we'd be living in an America of manufactured war, secret prisons, signing statements, cheerleading for torture, extravagant executive-branch powers, degradation of civil liberties, etc. either:

What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years.[I'm skeptical about this particular claim—nash.] I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way [sic] of choice and lies.

Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot is very much worth a read. You can find a distillation here. Read it NOW if you haven't.

// posted by nash @ 7:00 AM 4 comments

Imagine my surprise at what turned up on page one of today's results. And now, Categorical Aperitif proudly presents Book Inscription From a Happier Future:

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 7:16 PM 0 comments

Yesterday's Democracy Now! with Bernie Sanders, Dean Baker, and Robert Scheer is one of the best segments I've yet heard on the Paulson-ChimpCo bailout swindle:

DEAN BAKER: Yeah, well, as I said, this is really just an incredible—we want it to be punitive. If Henry Paulson doesn’t want it to be punitive, that’s telling us, from the word go, he is not the guy to run this. This is not supposed to be a giveaway. You know, these are the richest people in the whole country. And if it’s not punitive, what we’re telling them is just, you know, “Go out, run your banks in a reckless manner”—because that’s what they did; they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t run their banks in a reckless manner—“pay yourself $30, $40, $50 million a year in compensation. Then, when you get in trouble, go running to the government, and we’ll just hand you hundreds of billions of more.”

If this isn’t punitive, if this isn’t really painful for them to come to the government, then we’ve messed up with the bailout. They don’t have to do it. Again, you know, if your business is good, if you could get by without the bailout, wonderful, don’t come talk to us, don’t—you don’t need the money. But if you’re going to get a handout, it’s going to be punitive. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

// posted by nash @ 6:56 PM 0 comments

My friend jules will probably be the only person who gets this, but what the hell. I've had this movie on the mind lately.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:36 PM 2 comments

The good Jonathan Schwarz has contact information for those who want to write or call their Congressional overlords about stopping the $700 billion Paulson-ChimpCo bailout swindle in its tracks. Here's my contribution; feel free to borrow/adapt if you think it's worthwhile:

Dear [insert appropriate legislator name here],

I am writing to add my voice in disapproval of Treasury Secretary Paulson's proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan and to ask that you not support this measure. At a time when the government supposedly struggles to find adequate money for health care, veterans' benefits, education, infrastructure improvements, etc., it is simply unconscionable to advocate such a massive redistribution of wealth with so little accountability and so few strings attached.

Cooler heads, and more honest brokers, can devise a better plan to deal with the current crisis. The Bush Administration's desire to rush the Paulson plan through is suspicious, to say the least, given the administration's track record when it comes to other matters of grave public importance (war, civil liberties, human rights, separation of powers, and emergency management, to name a few).

Please stand up for the American people and reject the administration's shameless bailout plan. Better solutions can be found; the legislative branch must not allow itself to be stampeded again into a reckless course of action that weakens America and makes a mockery of age-old standards of justice and responsibility. Please do not support the Paulson plan.

Respectfully,

[your name here]

// posted by nash @ 8:57 AM 0 comments

Truthout passes along an excerpt from the forthcoming Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch’s Assault on America’s Fundamental Rights, the last book by Molly Ivins (and my, it did me more good than I can say to see her byline this morning) and Louis Dubose. And I for one am grateful.

It means something more specific in the story's context, but "It was chickenshit" might serve in the future as my favorite three-word description of the ChimpCo years.

// posted by nash @ 7:06 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 10:28 AM 1 comments

Lacking cable, I have been forced to wonder how outlets like CNBC have been handling the economic crisis. Apparently, their default response is to seek safety in numbers—of nattering econopundits. It's like some late capitalist cargo cult: If we festoon ourselves with enough talking heads, the evil spirits will be intimidated and go elsewhere.

I'm guessing that CNBC won't be talking to William Greider on the ChimpCo bailout proposal ("a historic swindle of the American public") anytime soon.

// posted by nash @ 9:57 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:02 AM 0 comments

Just released from Free Press:

Charges Against Journalists at RNC Dropped; Questions Remain

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Local authorities in St. Paul announced today that they will not prosecute journalists who were arrested on misdemeanor charges during the Republican National Convention earlier this month.

"This is an important first step, but many questions remain," said Nancy Doyle Brown from Twin Cities Media Alliance. "We still need answers about why and how journalists got swept up in these arrests in the first place. And more than anything else, we need to ensure that this never happens again. We’ll never know how many important stories never got told because their authors were behind bars, not in the streets."

Nearly two dozen reporters were arrested during the four-day event, including Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and two of her producers, Associated Press reporters, student journalists, and local TV photographers, among others. Other journalists were pepper-sprayed, and reporters with I-Witness were held at gunpoint during a "pre-emptive" police raid aimed at disrupting protesters. The press release from St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman's office noted that the city's attorney will use a "broad definition and verification to identify journalists who were caught up in mass arrests during the convention."

// posted by nash @ 8:09 AM 1 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 8:09 AM 0 comments

Patricia J. Williams has my favorite comparison yet for Sarah Palin: she's like one of those banal yet calculated, unapologetically repetitive yet attention-getting Warhol paintings.

As someone who was trained in advertising, Warhol had mastered many of the tools of expert propagandists. One such device is prosopopeia, a rather literary term for what happens when the Pillsbury Doughboy persuades you to buy a bread product by giggling so charmingly after that poke to his puffy little tummy. Prosopopeia is the personification of an abstraction. As theorist Barbara Johnson says in her book Persons and Things, "A speaking thing can sell itself; if the purchaser responds to the speech of the object, he or she feels uninfluenced by human manipulation and therefore somehow not duped. We are supposed not to notice how absurd it is to be addressed by the Maalox Max bottle, or Mr. Clean, or Mrs. Butterworth."

It is in precisely this sense that Warhol's portraits are calculated disguises, masks that artfully undermine the specificity of his subjects and render them theatrically populist images. There is, for example, a wonderful Warhol self-portrait, now on exhibit at Ohio State's Wexner Center for the Arts, in which he wears white face makeup, a woman's wig, eyeliner and bright red lipstick. He is to Kabuki femininity what Sarah Palin is to Kabuki Republican masculinity: iconic, self-proclaiming, yet concealed. That this is literally the case is underscored by the invisible and advance authorship of "her" acceptance speech. Imagine that speech as it lay waiting for just the right someone to deliver it. Imagine the accents and intonations of the tryouts they must have had: what gun-toting, warmongering, polar-bear extinguishing, creationist, antiabortionist man could have gotten away with it?

"How do you sell a box of poison?" they must have wondered. Dress it up in drag, they obviously concluded.

// posted by nash @ 8:09 AM 0 comments

I missed yesterday; here's a threefer by way of apology.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 8:09 AM 0 comments

When government steps in to help Capital, why, that's just giving the old Invisible Hand a hand.

S.E.C. Issues Temporary Ban on Short-Selling

Treasury to Guarantee Money Market Mutual Funds

Vast Bailout by U.S. Proposed in Bid to Stem Financial Crisis

It seems like just yesterday they were telling us that Government Is Not the Answer®. Of course, if they had been honest and added —Except When The Owning Class Needs Help, then their side wouldn't have won so many elections. So I guess there's a kind of cheap, nasty, petty, venal, hypocritical logic to the last thirty years after all.

// posted by nash @ 8:09 AM 1 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 2:39 PM 1 comments

With all this talk of government takeovers of the financial industry in the air, I was put in mind of an interesting corner of the blogosphere that I stumbled across a while back and have been meaning to mention: A Soviet Poster a Day. It's a site devoted to, well, Soviet posters. The "a day" part hasn't exactly been true for a while, but the "Soviet poster" part definitely is. You don't have to be a communist (I'm not) to enjoy the bold graphics, the startling combinations of text and image—the artistry of propaganda. And it isn't all propaganda. Perusing the tags there, the name "Dziga Vertov" caught my eye. The link took me to this:

Nash-Bob says check it out, comrade.

// posted by nash @ 9:22 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 6:30 AM 1 comments

Michael Moore has an announcement—about this:

Free for download on September 23—hey, that's Bruce Springsteen's birthday—and in stores come October.

// posted by nash @ 6:15 AM 0 comments

Has this ever happened to you?

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:52 PM 0 comments

Mmmm. Rancid.

And Sarah Palin is the distilled essence of wingnut. She has it all. She is dishonest. She is a religious nut. She is incurious. She is anti-science. She is inexperienced. She abuses her authority. She hides behind executive privilege. She is a big spender. She works from the gut and places a greater value on instinct than knowledge.

And most dangerous of all, she is supremely self-confident to the point of not recognizing how ill-equipped she is to lead the country.

// posted by nash @ 9:48 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 3:30 PM 0 comments

The Houston Chronicle has six minutes' worth of video of flooding in Galveston, taken by a Coast Guard HU-25 jet this afternoon. Damn.

P.S. Here's what one of those jets looks like flying over your house:

// posted by nash @ 8:02 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 8:00 PM 0 comments

Good news from WunderBlog:

Galveston is not destroyed
Although Ike caused heavy damage by flooding Galveston with a 12-foot storm surge, the city escaped destruction thanks to its 15.6-foot sea wall (the wall was built 17 feet high, but has since subsided about 2 feet). The surge was able to flow into Galveston Bay and flood the city from behind, but the wall prevented a head-on battering by the surge from the ocean side. Galveston was fortunate that Ike hit the city head-on, rather than just to the south. Ike's highest storm surge occurred about 50 miles to the northeast of Galveston, over a lightly-populated stretch of coast. Galveston was also lucky that Ike did not have another 12-24 hours over water. In the 12 hours prior to landfall, Ike's central pressure dropped 6 mb, and the storm began to rapidly organize and form a new eyewall. If Ike had had another 12-24 hours to complete this process, it would have been a Category 4 hurricane with 135-145 mph winds that likely would have destroyed Galveston. The GFDL model was consistently advertising this possibility, and it wasn't far off the mark. It was not clear to me until late last night that Ike would not destroy Galveston and kill thousands of people. Other hurricane scientists I conversed with yesterday were of the same opinion.

Best wishes to all again, and I hope that the post-Ike reports include more pleasant surprises like those in Dr. Jeff Masters' missive above.

// posted by nash @ 4:47 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 3:09 PM 0 comments

Only a week ago, we here in Florida were watching Ike with some trepidation; now, my thoughts go out to all the people in Texas and Louisiana who are in this thing's path. The warnings from the Galveston NWS office are really quite scary:

Maximum water levels forecast:

Gulf-facing coastline west of Sargent... 4 to 7 feet

Shoreline of Matagorda Bay... 3 to 5 feet

Gulf-facing coastline from Sargent to San Luis Pass... 8 to 14 feet

Galveston Island... ... 14 to 17 feet

Bolivar Peninsula... 17 to 20 feet

Shoreline of Galveston Bay... 15 to 22 feet

Life threatening inundation likely near the immediate coast and Bayshore areas!

Neighborhoods that are affected by the storm surge... and possibly entire coastal communities... will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide. Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family one or two story homes face the possibility of death. Many residences of average construction directly on the coast will be destroyed. Widespread and devastating personal property damage is likely elsewhere. Vehicles left behind will likely be swept away. Numerous roads will be swamped... some may be washed away by the water. Entire flood prone coastal communities will be cutoff. Water levels may exceed 9 feet for more than a mile inland. Coastal residents in multi-story facilities risk being cutoff. Conditions will be worsened by battering waves closer to the coast. Such waves will exacerbate property damage... with massive destruction of homes... including those of block construction. Damage from beach erosion could take years to repair.

NOAA's experimental storm surge forecast is calling for a 10% chance that the storm tide from Ike will reach 27-30 feet on the south and east sides of Houston. The exact track of Ike is key in determining if Galveston's 17-foot sea wall gets overtopped, flooding the city. A slight wobble 30 miles to the north of Galveston would put the city into offshore winds from Ike, possibly saving it from inundation. The situation is grim for Port Arthur, Texas, on the Louisiana border. The expected storm surge of 15-20 feet will overtop the city's seawall by six feet, resulting in flooding of the city and a number of major oil refineries. Expect a significant tightening of gas supplies in coming months, due to extensive damage to the oil refineries in the Houston and Port Arthur area.

// posted by nash @ 12:28 PM 0 comments

For yesterday, when I just didn't feel like it.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 12:16 PM 0 comments

He's been on hiatus, but the good Generik recently popped back into the blogosphere to share some awesome, awesome, awesome news. Check it out!

Congrats and best wishes to all involved, my friend.

// posted by nash @ 9:13 AM 1 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:10 AM 0 comments

Roy Edroso's expeditions into Wingnuttia routinely produce all sorts of interesting ideological artifacts, but this one from Roger L. Simon really caught my eye:

It was the rebirth of Frank Capra for our times - Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington. This woman [Sarah Palin] is a star and a star of the American kind we have not seen for years. She really is born live from a Capra movie, from the days Hollywood told stories about the greatness of our country. I don’t agree with her about everything but so what? I don’t agree with anybody about everything except, luckily for me, my wife. But Sarah Palin is a force of nature. Like a Jimmy Stewart character channeled by Claudette Colbert.

Ye gods, these people. To say such things about Sarah Palin and mean them, you have to be either ignorant (of her mounting record of mendacity and venality) or idiotic (and not in the nice Dostoevsky way). To say such things about Sarah Palin but not mean them, you have to be a shameless hack yourself. Ignorant, idiotic, or ignoble: Why does it so often come down to one of the above with these people?

// posted by nash @ 8:40 AM 1 comments

For yesterday.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 8:24 AM 0 comments

The Large Hadron Collider is up and running!

Poor Superconducting Super Collider. While the Large Hadron Collider is ramping up to make Higgs bosons, you're starring in Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. *sniff*

// posted by nash @ 8:10 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 10:20 PM 0 comments

Oops, sorry, I forgot: Government control of industries is only socialism—which, my right-wing friends have always lectured me, is a bad idea which never works and is doomed to fail, so it's a good thing we helped out with coups in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Venezuela, etc. so those poor confused people wouldn't, you know, try constructing sane, humane alternatives to oligarchy or anything—when rich people don't like it. How silly of me.

Financial markets soared and mortgages rates fell today after Sunday's government takeover of housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but shares in the two companies lost almost all their value.

[...]

Stocks rallied in response to the plan. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 2.58 percent to 11,510.74. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index rose more than 2 percent to 1,267.79. Leading the rally were home builders, banks and other companies whose fortunes are closely linked to the general health of the housing market.

// posted by nash @ 9:25 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 7:33 PM 1 comments

"We need change, all right," declared former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, "change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington - throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

The automatism with which some of these people recite talking points really is astounding. I'm starting to wonder how many big-name Republican politicos could actually pass the Turing Test.

// posted by nash @ 7:18 PM 0 comments

I'm glad it's not just me noticing the resemblance.

// posted by nash @ 7:11 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 1:15 PM 0 comments

Today's "Say What?" at the Doonesbury Daily Dose has that line from Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland that's been making the rounds:

Just from what little I've seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity.

1. They're a member links a plural subject and verb (they are) with a singular complement (a member). Try They're members.
2. They are members of an individual does not make sense, whether the individual be "elitist-class" or otherwise. You seem to be tangling up They are members of an elitist class with They are elitist individuals. Perhaps you are trying to cram too many slurs into one sentence. It would be advisable to focus on clearly communicating one slur at a time, at least until you have had more practice handling sophisticated thoughts. This is what teachers usually recommend for elementary students, and there's no reason it can't work for you, too.
3. The last part adds an extra layer of confusion. Is it the Obamas who think that they (themselves) are uppity? Is it their class that thinks that they (the Obamas) are uppity? Does their class think that it itself is uppity? The pronoun references here are really a mess. If I remember my racist slurs correctly, it's usually someone other than the black people thinking that the black people are uppity; if this is what you mean, then you could easily both clarify and shorten the slur by just using the adjective uppity. You could also shorten the bulky elitist-class individuals to just elitists. What do you think?
4. It would also be helpful to add a subject and verb that go better with the long introductory phrase. Something like I think that or They seem to be would be appropriate.

1. Just from what little I've seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, I think that they're members of an uppity elitist class.
2. Just from what little I've seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, I think that they're uppity members of an elitist class.
3. Just from what little I've seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they seem to be uppity elitist-class individuals.
4. Just from what little I've seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they seem to be uppity elitists.

// posted by nash @ 12:07 PM 0 comments

For yesterday.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 12:03 PM 0 comments

Sorry, I was busy with my uncle most of the day yesterday. But he finally got the cast off his right hand, and he's doing much better. He seemed tired but none the worse for wear, even after several hours out running around in the winds off of Tropical Storm Hanna as she finally whooshed by on her way to the Carolinas.

I finally had a chance to see this. Even if The Daily Show did nothing but rub the noses of people like Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly in their own foul hypocritical droppings—well, it would still be a hoot to watch.

// posted by nash @ 11:45 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 9:42 AM 0 comments

C&L has the transcript of Governor Mooseburger's speech last night and has already obligingly nailed three of the false claims repeated in it: that she rejected earmarks, that she opposed the notorious "Bridge to Nowhere," and that she heroically gave oil company profits back to the people of Alaska. (Why is this normal in Alaska but COMMUNISM! everywhere else?) Reading through her speech, I wasn't struck by those so much as by these remarks:

It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves.

With their usual certitude, they told us that all was lost—there was no hope for this candidate who said that he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war.

Creeping Agnewism seems to be in these people's genes, I swear.

// posted by nash @ 9:16 AM 0 comments

I'm not used to seeing the mainstreamiest of mainstream journalists stand up for, well, journalism in the face of St. McMaverick's rising ire like this:

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

Or who hasn't paid attention to McCain's long-charmed history with the press.

// posted by nash @ 8:37 AM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 10:52 AM 0 comments

As the mooseburgers continue to hit the fan regarding the seemingly bizarre selection of seemingly unvetted Sarah Palin to be John McCain's soul running mate, inveterate right-watcher Max Blumenthal offers the best explanation of McCain's choice so far—"best" in the sense that it makes the McCain campaign's decision-making look like the result of something other than impulse or incompetence, anyway:

Last week, while the media focused almost obsessively on the DNC's spectacle in Denver, the country's most influential conservatives met quietly at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis to get to know Sarah Palin. The assembled were members of the Council for National Policy, an ultra-secretive cabal that networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.

[...]

The members of the Council for National Policy are the hidden hand behind McCain's Palin pick. With her selection, the Republican nominee is suddenly -- and unexpectedly -- assured of the support of a movement that once opposed his candidacy with all its might. Case in point: while [Focus on the Family chairman James] Dobson once said he could "never" vote for McCain, he issued a statement last week hailing Palin as an "outstanding" choice. If Dobson's enthusiasm for Palin is any indication, he may soon emerge from his bunker in Colorado Springs to endorse McCain, providing the Republican nominee with the support of the Christian right's single most influential figure.

// posted by nash @ 10:08 AM 1 comments

Here's for tomorrow since I may be offline then.

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 3:16 PM 1 comments

I've been checking out the NOLA.com hurricane blog, and so far, there's no news of failing levees or widespread flooding. There are, however, some alarming photos and videos of water overtopping flood walls, a little at a time:

VIDEO: Water laps over Industrial Canal

I used to work with a guy who was fascinated by images of "the sublime" (a feeling of awe, fear, or even horror inspired by intimations of our smallness in the face of nature and the universe). I think that this might qualify.

// posted by nash @ 2:54 PM 0 comments

Labels: Daily Random Flickr Blogging

// posted by nash @ 10:47 AM 0 comments

Of all the sad talking points offered to justify McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as running mate, the saddest has to be the one proferred by profundities like Cindy McCain and Steve Doocy: Palin has foreign policy experience because her state is closest to Russia. Oh, and Michael Barone adds a nice twist:

Foreign policy experience? Well, Alaska is the only state with a border with Russia. And it is the only state with territory, in the Aleutian Islands, occupied by the enemy in World War II.

(Six degrees moment: My dad served in the Aleutians, at the air base that was miraculously carved out on Adak Island. Among his memorabilia are pictures of the place, which looks even more rocky, barren, and windswept in black and white. One I remember in particular: a shot of a bunch of tents, with an inscription on the back noting that, shortly after the picture was taken, an out-of-control B-25 skidded off the runway and plowed through the tents, killing one of my dad's comrades—a kid barely out of his teens. Such was life for "The Greatest Generation." I wonder whether my dad ever crossed paths with the young Charlton Heston, who apparently served on B-25s in the Aleutians. Anyway.)

I would just like to point out that, by the McCain-Doocy-Barone criterion, the El Pasoans who made Manos: The Hands of Fate have at least as much foreign policy cred as Sarah Palin.

For that matter, why not Vice President Torgo?

He's at least slightly less monstrous and repellent than Dick Cheney, and he's already learned at the feet of The Master. The campaign ads practically write themselves.

Torgo: He'll take care of the place if The Master goes away.

// posted by nash @ 9:30 AM 0 comments