Internal Monologue

From Slate.com . Click image to enlarge. OK, this has always puzzled me: in Doonesbury , they often talk about "Walden College". Walden is clearly supposed to be Yale . That's where Trudeau started writing Doonesbury , and there are numerous Yale-specific references (e.g. "Harvard of south central Connecticut" in the strip above). But in the Doonesbury universe, Walden is a total slacker school, as this series of strips indicates . Though Harvardians might see nothing wrong with this, I was under the impression that in the real world my alma mater still had some cachet. Of course, maybe Trudeau just decided that there's a lot more comedic potential in a dis-accredited slacker school. Clearly he's using Walden's plight to satirize certain lax attitudes towards academic achievement. But it just seems very strange, because I suspect Yale is filled with the exact opposite kinds of people from those depicted attending Walden. At least it was when I was ...

From the NYT via nyceve on DailyKos : In a stark departure from past practice, the American Cancer Society plans to devote its entire $15 million advertising budget this year not to smoking cessation or colorectal screening but to the consequences of inadequate health coverage. The campaign was born of the group’s frustration that cancer rates are not dropping as rapidly as hoped, and of recent research linking a lack of insurance to delays in detecting malignancies. Though the advertisements are nonpartisan and pointedly avoid specific prescriptions, they are intended to intensify the political focus on an issue that is already receiving considerable attention from presidential candidates in both parties. The society’s advertisements are unique, say experts in both philanthropy and advertising, in that disease-fighting charities traditionally limit their public appeals to narrower aspects of prevention or education. But the leaders of several such organizations, including the...

This is pretty funny : A U.S. military plane carrying a U.S. congressional delegation came under fire this week while taking off from Baghdad airport, forcing the crew to take evasive action, the military said on Friday. No one on board the C-130 aircraft was hurt during the "surface-to-air" attack on Thursday, it said. "The aircrew dispensed flares as a defensive countermeasure and conducted standard evasive maneuvers," the military said in a statement, adding the plane completed its flight. The statement did not say who was among the congressional delegation nor specify the type of surface-to-air fire. OK, the fact that people are getting shot at isn't funny. What's funny is that the Republicans are already trying to put a positive spin on this : Sen. James M. Inhofe [R-Oklahoma] says terrorists' attempt to shoot down the C-130 military transport plane carrying him and other lawmakers in Iraq demonstrated the progress of the U.S. military cam...

Crooks and Liars has the story from the Des Moines Registe r : A Polk County judge on Thursday struck down Iowa's law banning gay marriage. The ruling by Judge Robert Hanson concluded that the state's prohibition on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and he ordered the Polk County recorder to issue marriage licenses to six gay couples. "This is kind of the American Dream," said plaintiff Jen BarbouRoske, of Iowa City. "I'm still feeling kind of shaky. It's pure elation, I just cannot believe it." Kos reacted yesterday: This will be appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, and who knows where it'll go from there. But this is Iowa. Just a bit over four months from the caucuses. This is now an issue in the presidential campaign. As Todd over at MyDD says, the GOP will trip over itself blasting "activist judges" blah blah blah. But on our side, how will they react? Our candidates should embrace it. They'll be too chickenshit to do...

Image from Neverwinter Nights 2 Vault The reason Internal Monologue has been lagging of late is that my spare time is going into a new computer game: Neverwinter Nights 2 . I'm playing a warlock, which isn't the greatest character to play, at least at the level I'm at (9). My warlock is totally overshadowed by the sorcerer in the party.

TPM compiles a "highlight reel" of Gonzales' most ridiculous testimony :

Just in case you're tired of all the Republican sex scandals, here's a change of pace for you: in Iran, you don't have to have sex with a prostitute or plead guilty to soliciting sex with a man in an airport bathroom to provoke puritanical outrage. Both Khatami and Ahmadinejad have recently been caught on camera actually touching a woman (HT: TPM ). There's a YouTube video of Khatami actually shaking hands with a woman that has hard-liners riled and Khatami claiming the video is fake: Looks real to me. But Iranian center-leftists aren't the only ones with indecency problems. Back in May, this picture of Ahmadinejad kissing his elderly former teacher's gloved hand had Iranian right-wingers condemning him for indecency (regular Iranians seem more concerned about unemployment, inflation, and high gas prices): Image from Foreign Policy 's blog

People seem to be coming up with a lot of this sort of thing : If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says he resigns , can we believe him? Related paradox: the likely forthcoming, "I Don't Recall": A Memoir. One more: Can (soon-to-be-former) Attorney General Alberto Gonzales make a rock so big that even he can't pretend it isn't there? Discuss.

Gonzales has resigned : WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales , whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, announced his resignation in Washington today, declaring that he had “lived the American dream” by being able to lead the Justice Department. But apparently Gonzales does not remember if he's resigned : Washington, Aug. 27 (crAP) -- Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, five minutes after having submitted his resignation to President George W. Bush, was asked by a passer-by whether the rumor was true that he had resigned. "I have no memory of having submitted such a letter or of having any conversation with the President about anything at all," Mr. Gonzales replied. The former Attorney General immediately returned to his office at the Department of Justice, though he could not remember what he was supposed to do there. Now the battle begins over his replacement. Senate Dems: please insist (...

In this post , Digby argues that Bush's disastrous response to hurricane Katrina was not incompetence, but in fact a deliberate (and successful) attempt by Karl Rove to push Louisiana into the Republican column: Louisiana has been a swing state for some time, in which Democrats were dependent on the black majority in the state's largest city to win. It was not lost on Rove that all of those poor New Orleans African Americans --- and their children --- being dispersed throughout the nation could only be good for Republicans. As of now, only about 66% have returned , not enough to keep the state swinging (in more ways than one.) It looks very likely that the state will have a Republican Governor and two Republican Senators in 2008. Experts in the area estimate that the congressional delegation advantage for Republicans will be five to one by 2012. There is little doubt that the Katrina diaspora finally turned the state blood red. Kanye West famously blurted out "Bush doesn...

A couple of DailyKos diaries: one from occams hatchet about what a racket the Iraq occupation has been for certain corporations : I have long believed that the invasion and occupation of Iraq represented, not the signal failure of the BushCheney administration, but rather the successful realization of the right wing corporatocracy's greatest fantasy: The redirection of a huge portion of the United States treasury to the pockets of Big Business, conducted with the active support and full power of the federal government and almost completely unfettered by oversight of any kind whatsoever. And another quotes from an AP story on Forbes.com about how those who attempt to expose corruption in Iraq procurement end up getting punished: One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted. Or worse. For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was impriso...

This is Quinn with his uncle Miguel back in May. This is Quinn on a ride at Children's Fairyland on Sarah's birthday back in July.

Kevin Drum looks at the numbers and it doesn't look like even the military aspect of the moderate troop increase dubbed "the surge" is working: June/July 2006 June/July 2007 Iraqi Military and Police Killed 349 429 Up 23% Multiple Fatality Bombings 110 82 Down 25% # Killed in Mult. Fatality Bombings 885 1,053 Up 19% Iraqi Civilians Killed (All violent causes) 6,739 5,300 Hard to say 1 U.S. Troop Fatalities 104 187 Up 80% U.S. Troops Wounded 983 1,423 Up 45% Size of Insurgency 20,000+ ~70,000 2 Up ~250% Attacks on Oil and Gas Pipelines 8 14 (3) Up 75% 1 Methodology changed dramatically between 2006 and 2007, so numbers are highly suspect. 2 Number is for March 2007. 3 Numbers are for June only. No July numbers are available. (HT: rubber hose ) Of course, the political reconciliation that was the whole point of the surge is nowhere in sight either. The force and endurance of the delusion of "progress" is tru...

Eddie, left, poses with Guy Fullerton, who interviewed him after he won the championship. I wasn't in the D&D Minis constructed championship this year, but I wanted to congratulate Eddie on his great victory. His family had to sacrifice to make it to GenCon (including selling some of their minis collection!), so I'm glad he had a great experience. I've played Eddie in a local tournament (in fact, I think it was the one where he qualified for Gen Con), and I seem to remember him beating me. I was heartened when I saw his warband: I played a Werewolf Lord, a Large Black Dragon, a Large Shadow Dragon, the Thrall of Blackrazor, and four Orc Warriors. It's the sort of thing I would play: Chaotic Evil, non-gimmicky, with very powerful, cost-efficient pieces. I'm glad the Thrall of Blackrazor made an appearance, because it's a personal favorite of mine. And it was designed by 2005's champion, so there's nice symbolism there. Maybe the 2009 champion will us...

T he faithful make their pilgrimage. Yes, there are that many gamers in one place. It's not always that crowded. Image from Drammattex's GenCon Indy 2007 photoblog . I have been asked on occasion why GenCon Indy is so special. Couldn't I just go to a local convention or some other convention that had a more convenient time? The answer is no, of course. But I've always had difficulty explaining to non-games why that particular event is so important. Here's a little writeup from Drammattex that tries to capture what it's like: If you haven't been to Gen Con before, it's a little bit Disneyland and a little bit Christmas. Even the most jaded of us gamers can't help it. We stream into that exhibit hall at 10 A.M. like a dam that's sprung a leak. When they open for the first time, the doors to the exhibit hall are picture frames allowing us only glimpses at the world beyond their borders. We can see a little: sellers and demonstrators making last min...

From Reason.com : Forget about lying on annual federal drug use surveys . Researchers at the Oregon State University and the University Washington have figured out a better way to track a community's use of illicit recreational drugs--check their sewage for drug residues. The press release describing the work says: Public health officials may soon be able to flush out more accurate estimates on illegal drug use in communities across the country thanks to screening test described here today at the 234 th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. The test doesn’t screen people, it seeks out evidence of illicit drug abuse in drug residues and metabolites excreted in urine and flushed toward municipal sewage treatment plants. ... Via Sullivan . How long will it be before food manufacturers put "tracer" chemicals in their products so they can do "market research" by examining the sewage coming from various neighborho...

A long overdue change in direction for Cuba policy : Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is leaping into the long-running Cuba debate by calling for the U.S. to ease restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit the island or send money home. Obama's campaign said Monday that, if elected, the Illinois senator would lift restrictions imposed by the Bush administration and allow Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives more frequently, as well as ease limits on the amount of money they can send to their families. HT: viralvoice on DailyKos , who comments: This will be lots of fun to follow in the coming days. The "conventional wisdom" machine will go ballistic (again). The right-wingers will bare their teeth. The DINO liberals will loose a few of theirs. Biden will likely go against Obama but watch Dodd and Richardson, they know better, oh, yeah, this could be interesting. Senator Clinton will have to decide: Is she in or is she out? Or will she just ob...

Glenn Greenwald : The dominant ideology of the Community is, in fact, so enamored of war that there is no such thing as placing oneself outside of the mainstream of the Community through excessive warmongering . As I said the other day, there is no such thing in the Community as "unserious war advocacy"; that term is an oxymoron. That is why you can travel as far along the spectrum as possible, arrive at the most extremist neoconservative point, and still be comfortably within the acceptable range of Serious Community Views. Kristol's partner, Fred Kagan, is a revered member of the Community. Rudy Giuliani knows that he can hire as his top foreign policy advisor an outright psychopath like Norman Podhoretz and not be deemed unserious because the Community takes Seriously all war advocacy. That is its nature, its ideology, its identity. Argue for the U.S. to start a war now with Iran and you are Serious; but argue that we should take off the table nuclear weapons when a...

The beholder gets yet another new look in the upcoming 4th edition. Image from WotC , of course. The huge news at GenCon that came out is that the 4th Edition of D&D is coming out in May 2008. ( Player's Handbook in May, Monster Manual in June, Dungeon Master's Guide in July). I didn't attend the announcement presentation (links here ), but seeing the YouTube video of it I don't think it was done well. I could have given a much better speech than those guys. And the information was vague. I liked the ideas they talked about, but I want details! I did get some interesting info from Rob Heinsoo (the 4th edition lead designer) about 4th edition. I was doing the Dungeon Delve demo at the Wizards of the Coast booth so I could get my black-robed Raistlin promo repaint mini, and they were short-staffed, so Rob subbed in to DM. Now this was a 3.5 edition demo, but Rob had been playing 4th edition for quite some time so I was able to gather a few tidbits from rules slip-up...

Image from RPGnet More than you ever wanted to know about defeating the Gargantuan Blue Dragon . Summary & analysis of my battles at GenCon can be found towards the bottom of that page.

Here's Michael Skube, someone who obviously doesn't know anything about the blogosphere, writing about it on the opinion pages of the LA Times : 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. And not just write. Many of the most active bloggers -- Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Micah Marshall and the contributors to the Huffington Post -- are insistent partisans in political debate. Emphasis added. Um, dude, Sullivan, Yglesias, and Marshall are some of the few bloggers who actually do make a living at blogging, or at least get paid substantially for it. To imply otherwise reveals a pretty astonishing ignorance. Heck, even Internal Monologue generates a wee bit of ad revenue: I'm up to about $147 over the life of the blog, and I actually received about $122 of it ...

WARNING: OVERLY-RIGID BODY ALIGNMENT WILL CAUSE SUBMERGED MERMAID TO BASH YOU ON THE SIDE OF THE HEAD WITH A GLOWING BASEBALL BAT. (Image from the same pool, of course.) Alternate interpretation: DO NOT REPLACE YOUR LEFT ARM WITH A FAUCET BEFORE HURLING YOURSELF UPON THE STALAGMITES .

WARNING: SUPER-GLUING YOUR FOREHEAD TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OBSERVATION PLATFORM WILL RESULT IN TRIPLE LIGHTING STIKES TO THE NECK AND LOSS OF YOUR LEFT ARM AND LEG. (Image seen on the edge of the pool on the 9th floor of the Sheraton here in downtown Indianapolis. When you're climbing out, it looks like this; those outside the pool see it right-side up.) An alternate interpretation: WARNING: ONE-ARMED ZOMBIES SHOULD NOT LEAP BALLETICALLY ABOVE THE CLOUDS, OR THEIR HEADS WILL IMPACT UPON THE ELECTRIFIED METAL PLATE.

I defeated the Gargantuan Blue Dragon with a 500 point warband. I did have luck on my side, as the Dragon missed many of its rolls against the invisibility of my warband. But since the dice were against me yesterday, I don't feel too bad. It was extremely close. I think I would revise my warband for future bouts, but I did get immense satisfaction from my hard-fought victory.

Here we are at RAM. Why would you name a beer "Buttface Ale?"

Well, I played against the Gargantuan Blue Dragon twice, and lost both times. But I could only use a 450-point warband, becasue someone beat the dragon earlier in the day. So there was no shame in defeat. The first match was very close. In the second match, only two of my six Mordenkainen's Swords got through, despite having a 75% chance each. So I conceded. I wil try again tomorrow. I did win a game of Settlers of Catan, though. And I played in the Dungeon Delve and my group had a perfect record over three sessions: all monsters slain, no character deaths. I haven't even seen the exhibit hall yet. Now we're hanging out in our room. Perhaps later we'll play some DEFCON. OK. we did play DEFCON. It was fun!

Here's Stacey's new tattoo. Don't slap her on the back, it's still tender!

Quinn in his swing, with his usual drool puddle on his shirt.

I'm here. Thanks to Grishnash, I have Net access. I'll try to post some pictures later.

Looks like it (HT: Mad Latinist). I'll find out soon . Discussion is beginning . Here's a press release : August 16, 2007 (Renton, WA) – Whether you storm a mad wizard's tower every week or haven't delved into a dungeon since you had a mullet and a mean pair of parachute pants, one thing is certain - millions of D&D players worldwide have anticipated the coming of 4th Edition for many years. Today, Wizards of the Coast confirms that the new edition will launch in May 2008 with the release of the D&D Player's Handbook . A pop culture icon, Dungeons & Dragons is the #1 tabletop roleplaying game in the world, and is revered by legions of gamers of all ages. The 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons game includes elements familiar to current D&D players, including illustrated rulebooks and pre-painted plastic miniatures. Also releasing next year will be new web-based tools and online community forums through the brand-new Dungeons & Dragons Insid...

GenCon Indy approaches, and so I'm not posting much. I hear D&D co-creator Gary Gygax will be at the convention this year. If I run into him, I want him to autograph one of the most ridiculous pieces of gaming weirdness ever to make it into a mainstream AD&D publication. I'm speaking, of course, about the infamous random prostitute generation table in the 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide . That book included a random encounter table for cities; "Harlot" is one of the entries. Here is the Harlot entry, reproduced in facsimile for your delectation: Sadly, subsequent editions of the Dungeon Master's Guide lack such useful prompts to the imagination. Dungeon Masters are now forced to improvise descriptions of harlots, should such be encountered by an adventuring party. Unless, of course, the Dungeon Master owns a copy of the 1st Edition DMG or is lucky enough to see this blog post. In the interest of fairness and gender equality, this table should be...

This is rich. Here's Dick Cheney himself: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. But of course, on September 11, 2001, a bunch o...

The Onion can be cruel: Ben Affleck Hoping Jason Bourne Has Sidekick In Next Movie LOS ANGELES—Affleck envisioned the sidekick as being taller and slightly beefier the Bourne, and who would always look out for his best friend.

Digby on Robert Frank's new book: We hear a lot about income inequality these days and if you're like me, you probably wonder, other than the fundamental unfairness of it all, why this matters. After all, life isn't fair, get back to work and stop lallygagging. As it turns out it matters a great deal, and that sense of dissatisfaction and anxiety so many of us feel is a direct result of the conspicuous consumption of the fabulously wealthy overclass trickling down through society and making it necessary for people to constantly buy more, even as they are earning the same. According to Frank, it's not just keeping up with the Joneses or class envy or any of the other things that people usually attribute to those who live beyond their means. It's a natural, human response to the context in which they live. Frank makes a compelling case that measuring yourself against your neighbors, co-workers or whatever, isn't just a matter of "keeping score." It'...

Worth reading : Discussions of the utility of the conflict always took a backseat to the perceived moral righteousness of it. Yes we were attacked. Yes that gave us the "right" to do "something" and perhaps something which involved civilian casualties. But, ultimately, we must look back and ask: what did we achieve? At what cost (to us and to others)? Was there a better way? As has been the case for some many things these past years the choices were never "nothing" or "Pony plan." The choices were always "nothing" or "George Bush's plan." The failure to comprehend that simple fact has prevented members of our very serious crowd of pundits from listening to or admitting to the validity of criticism of so many things. Years later, opponents of the Iraq invasion are almost entirely absent from our mainstream our discourse even though they were the ones who were pointing out what was going wrong in real time even as the Weekly...

Remember when I posted about this WWII guide for American soldiers in Iraq (that link is a PDF to the whole thing)? University of Chicago Press is publishing it , and I guess it's selling well: Perhaps even more shocking than the book's discovery has been its success. Re-published just a few weeks ago and selling for $10 a copy, the book is already in its second printing and the press is planning for at least a third printing and probably more, a feat for any academic publisher more accustomed to narrow-interest academic and reference books. Too bad it didn't sell well before the invasion: The book includes an updated foreword from Lt. Col. John A. Nagl, who served in Iraq with the 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division. He writes about wishing he read the book before going to Iraq's Al Anbar province in 2003. "Some of the guidance in this little book is eerie to anyone who has fought in Iraq recently," he wrote in the introduction. "It is almost imp...

The Wall Street Journal , despite being owned by Rupert Murdoch, has the story: Karl Rove, President Bush's longtime political adviser, is resigning as White House deputy chief of staff effective Aug. 31, and returning to Texas, marking a turning point for the Bush presidency. Mr. Rove's departure removes one of the White House's most polarizing figures, and perhaps signals the effective end of the lame duck administration's role in shaping major domestic policy decisions. Mr. Rove revealed his plans in an interview with Paul Gigot, editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. ( See related commentary .) HT: Georgia10 on DailyKos Good riddance, but don't start thinking that this gets you out of any subpoenas, Mr. Rove. You still have a lot to answer for.

There's a very BAD idea that might appear on a California Ballot initiative soon: California would award its electoral votes for president by congressional district, instead of all-or-nothing . Why is this bad? Because it would give the Republicans about 20 more electoral votes, making it very hard for the Democrats to take the White House in 2008. (HT: this D ailyKos diary from SemDem .) The only way I would support this is if California got together with a bunch of traditionally Republican states (for presidential elections, i.e. Texas) and passed this kind of reform all at the same time, with contingency language to the effect that the by-district electoral vote allotment only happens in California if it happens in these other states, too. Of course, the Republicans pushing this measure in California are not pushing similar measures in Texas or other "red" states. The Democrats are pushing a similar measure in North Carolina, but it wouldn't balance out the Califor...

I just got a very good deal on this Acer laptop from Best Buy, but the purchasing experience was a nightmare. I bought a floor demo model, and they couldn't get it out of the locked rack. They were trying all sorts of different keys, and when they finally unlocked it, the alarm went off. Then they had to wipe the Best Buy"attract mode" advertising stuff off it, which prevented me from taking it home last night. Today when I went to get it, they couldn't find the accessories: battery, power cord, manual, Windows license, etc. After about 45 minutes of their searching, I got so fed up (Quinn was with me and getting restless) that I told them I wanted to return it. Then a different clerk looked and found the stuff right away: It was in a bag labeled "Compaq" and the first clerk overlooked it. Overall, it was a parade of incompetence, delay, and annoyance. But now I got my new machine, and I'm getting it set up, so I might not be posting as much. Great pri...

...here are two items to excite your prurient interest. Don't worry, like all Internal Monologue items having to do with the topic of sex, there's a thin veneer of sociological interest, political import, or artistic pretention you can use as a fig leaf to cover up your lurid fascination with sexual behavior. Item one: A performance artist recreates rape scenes from movies using herself and a multi-thousand dollar sex doll made to look just like her . Both she and the doll dress like the victim, but she plays the aggressor and the doll plays the victim. She also dressed herself and the doll in matching bride outfits and "married" the doll in Vegas. Here's one of the tamer pictures of the pair: I don't really know what to make of this person's work. It's certainly creepy and interesting. But I certainly wouldn't say I "get it" or anything. (HT: Amanda Marcotte on Pandagon , who isn't quite sure what to say about it either.) Item #2: H...

Image from phoenixgamesonline.com My first gaming store, Phoenix Games on Lake Street in Minneapolis, is closing and moving entirely online. Apparently, the block is being redeveloped, and Neil isn't interested in paying the assessments. I had been shopping there since the early 80's, when it was called Little Tin Soldier, and Neil was just an employee. Maybe I'll see him at GenCon Indy next week. Thanks to Pablo for tipping me off on this sad and momentous occurrence. I sort of feel the same way as when I heard that DUNGEON and DRAGON magazines were ceasing publication . Phoenix Games' website will apparently be overhauled within the week, and I look forward to visiting the virtual version of one of my childhood haunts. But it is sad, sad, sad, to know that it will no longer be there on Lake Street. Next week at GenCon, when I'm throwing my 20-sided dice, I'll wonder which of them were purchased there, years and years ago.

There's a guy with a blog who claims to be Mitt Romney's illegitimate son . He tells awful stories about his dad . Atrios linked to him. But I can't find any confirmation as to whether this person is actually who he says he is. Is it all a joke? Some Giuliani supporter on a lark? Reading the few posts on the blog, a real sense of resentment and anger comes through. But it's so extreme I have a hard time believing it. I guess I doubt it's for real. But it's well done enough that I got taken in.

Not only does he rescue children from school buses, he disses Bush : Hernandez declines Bush photo: Somebody who saves 50 kids from a school bus teetering on the edge of a collapsed highway is a bona fide hero, and Jeremy Hernandez deserves the media attention -- and the $15,000 scholarship he's being offered to finish his automotive repair program at Dunwoody Institute. But it seems he draws the line somewhere, according to Molly Schwartz, communications director for Pillsbury United Communities, where Hernandez works as a gym coordinator. When asked by a White House staffer to appear in a presidential photo op, Schwartz told the New York Times, his answer was simple: " He was just, like, 'Nope.' " He decided to go fishing in Northern Minnesota instead.

This weeks Economist is all about how the American right wing and the Republicans are in deep trouble. Here's one article . It's about time. If only Congressional Democrats opposed Bush more resolutely.

There's a ridiculous meme being spammed by the right-wing noise machine: The new Franken-meme goes like this: War critics in general -- not just the Dynamic Duo from Brookings -- are now "conceding" that real, honest-to-God military progress is being made in Iraq. This is of course bullshit, as the TPM article I link to above illustrates. How did this start? The New York Times foolishly allowed a couple of war cheerleaders to bill themselves as "war critics" when writing a pro-surge editorial. Then all the right-wingers and media establishment folks leaped on it and flogged it as some sort of major wave of Iraq optimism sweeping over us folks who think the whole thing is a colossal clusterfuck. Greenwald discussed this in detail a while ago. I'm posting this because I know many of my readers don't follow the blogosphere, and so might be deceived by all the coordinated bullshit spray hitting our media. There is no wave of optimism among occupation c...

Here's a stark illustration of the difficulties the McCain campaign is facing: Iowa Republicans apparently prefer Obama to McCain : But the poll also gauged support among registered Iowa Republicans, whether they’re planning to participate in the caucuses or not. And that’s where it gets ugly. The changes among Republican voters since March are dramatic. Romney is now the preferred candidate at 21.8 percent — double his March support. Giuliani’s support, 10 percent, decreased by almost 8.5 percent. McCain’s support has collapsed in Iowa. His support among registered Republicans dropped from 14.4 percent in March to 1.8 percent in July-August. UI political scientists note that McCain has been passed in popularity not only by former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who earned 5.2 percent support, but also by a Democratic challenger, Obama , who is supported by 6.7 percent of Republicans. No other candidate received more than 3 percent support. (emphasis added) Think about that for a m...

Image of The Doors from Wikipedia "The doors are closing; please stand clear of the doors." This warning gets played on BART trains all the time. When ever I hear it, I picture The Doors "closing", i.e. getting closer, perhaps walking four abreast down the platform in a menacing fashion. People hurry to "stand clear of The Doors", scurrying out of the way. All manage to do so, except for one unfortunate old lady who is too slow and gets pushed onto the tracks by keyboardist Ray Manzarek (third from the left in the sunglasses) and dies horribly on the electric rails, the hideous crackling of her flesh accompanied by the opening strains of " Riders on the Storm ". Maybe you, too, will now think of this whenever you hear "The Doors are closing...please stand clear of The Doors." I suppose this post is a sister of this one , in that it involves re-interpreting the ubiquitous safety messages our society constantly throws at us in a more amus...

Image of Han and Greedo's pre-shooting conversation found here . I don't know what made me think of this. But here it is: Han shot first . Star Wars fans probably already know about this whole controversy. For those of you who don't, here it is in the nutshell: In the original theatrical release of Star Wars: A New Hope , Han blows Greedo away before Greedo shoots at him. In the 1990's, when the special editions came out, an addle-brained Lucas decided that this made Han look cold-blooded. So Lucas re-edited the scene to have Greedo shoot Han and miss (from across a table!) and then Han shoots him. It is so much better with Han shooting first. Han isn't a nice guy, at least not at the beginning of A New Hope . That's the whole point of his character: he's a foil to all the moralizing do-gooders in the Rebel Alliance. (I find a Han's cynical, mercenary perspective is sorely missed in episodes 1-3.) He's one of Luke's fist contacts with the rough...

click on image to go to the actual timeline The number of times we've heard how "the next few months" in Iraq are "critical" is really astounding. To illustrate the magnitude of this phenomenon, the folks at The Center for American Progress have put together a nice visual timeline illustrating just how often we've been fed this line. Go take a look. Then listen to what the war supporters are asking America to do: give the project more time to succeed. Ugh.

Yes, that seems to be what happened. From KVUE's website : In the early hours of May 13, 2006, Cassandra said she was raped by three men at a party at Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, N.C. [...] Six months after the alleged assault, the Air Force charged Cassandra and the three men with indecent acts. And it gave the men accused of the sexual assault immunity to testify against Cassandra, which they accepted . “When you have a change of command, when you have your first leaders, and over time they switch out. So the people that know her are not there now. So they see a different person than other people might have seen, and when you have that change you might have a different attitude,” Jesse Hernandez said. (Emphasis added.) If this is true, the culture of our military is really fucked up. I found this via Feministing . The Houston Chronicle has a story on this as well. Let's hope someone comes to their senses. But then, the...

HT: Mad Latinist via email. Mad Latinist is posting in Latin at the moment, and despite his urgings I still don't make much of an effort to figure out what he's saying.

Take a famous Escher image, Realtivity ... ...and shoot it with a LEGO-izing ray : Lots more of this sort of thing on Andrew Lipson's LEGO page .

Shoot your brow-mounted spike into the head of the supplicant, and then, after growing a new one, escape with your child via gondola. (This pair of visual warning icons is printed on the side of the small inflatable pool we have in our yard.)

"Your time has come," says Oscar the Cat. This is from a "perspective" in the New England Journal of Medicine (which is, like, a totally prestigious journal). Here's the postscript to " A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat ": Since he was adopted by staff members as a kitten, Oscar the Cat has had an uncanny ability to predict when residents are about to die. Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families. Oscar has also provided companionship to those who would otherwise have died alone. For his work, he is highly regarded by the physicians and staff at Steere House and by the families of the residents whom he serves . (HT: t4toby at Donkey Pu...

Clinton and Obama at Yearly Kos. Image from SantaFeNewMexican.com . A friend of a friend of mine, Paul Hogarth , was at the Hillary Clinton breakout session at YearlyKos and did a lengthy post about it on DailyKos. He titled it: " Yearly Kos Has Endangered Hillary's Nomination ". An excerpt: With 1,500 delegates at Yearly Kos, I only met two Hillary Clinton supporters. She is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and is hoping to get it by inevitability. But this doesn’t mean the blogosphere is “out of touch,” although blogger demographics clearly work against her. Hillary’s lead in the polls comes from a higher name recognition, and a strategic muddling of her position on Iraq so that progressives don’t hate her. Hillary was the biggest loser in the Convention’s Debate, as she defended taking money from Washington lobbyists and argued that we are now “safer” than on 9/11. While Iraq never came up in her break-out session, that’s because only ...

Some white American sketch comedy artists (including a veteran of The Fifth Humour , my college sketch comedy group, as the host) attempt to capture the spirit of a weird Japanese talent contest: Video: Monkey Pancake Funny Show