Your Internal Revenue Service: making it less hard out here since 1953

In anticipation of the legalization and taxation of sex worker income, the IRS has released some preliminary federal tax compliance guidelines:


PIMPS

Vehicles: The purchase price of your business vehicle is not deductible as an operating expense unless a smaller, more modest vehicle such as a Corolla or a Dodge Neon is also maintained separately for personal use. Maintenance expenses (oil change, tune-ups, tire rotations) are deductible, as are rims (up to $750 per wheel), whitewalls, custom Louis Vuitton upholstery, and daily detailing.

Clothing: Clothes are generally not deductible unless they directly relate to the performance of your job. Allowed deductions include capes, fur-trimmed hats, and canes topped with ornaments designed to intimidate other industry professionals of a similar stature. Shoes are also deductible if they are constructed and purchased for the express purpose of placing up the posterior of recalcitrant hos.

Entertainment: Meals (including alcohol) and entertainment expenses for clients are allowable with proper receipts. Alcohol expenses outside of the “malt liquor” and “Cristal” categories must be accompanied by documentation justifying their consumption.

HOS

Gifts: All cash income received must be declared, even if your pimp tells that it is a gift and not to tell the other girls, who are all just jealous bitches and you are his favorite. Non-cash gifts received, including rabbit fur jackets, semi-precious jewelry, and silk nail-wrap gift certificates must all be declared if their estimated value exceeds $50. Gifts or cash given to individuals outside of the industry, such as baby-daddies who are NOT also your pimp, are not deductible under any circumstances.

Clothes: Skirts, dresses and shorts are deductible if the inseam does not exceed 2 inches. Shoes or boots with clear plastic heels or platforms exceeding 5 inches are also deductible. Due to the sartorial longevity of tube tops, their purchase price is not deductible, however, their value may be depreciated over 20 years or the life of the garment, whichever is shorter.

Grooming: All salon services are deductible, including: manicures, pedicures, acrylic nails, waxing, weaves, and hair dyeing, provided the hair color is not a naturally occurring one.


For more information, consult a tax professional.

I'd have to make "get off the phone and pay attention you stupid fucking idiot" the default setting

I'd love one of these, but I think it'd be a really bad idea for me to have one:

I can't imagine why this isn't headline news in this country

They'll stop fighting if promise to go home!

So let's go home!

Is there any reason now why we can't? I'm sure BushCo will come up with one.

Guardian Unlimited:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Eleven Sunni insurgent groups have offered an immediate halt to all attacks - including those on American troops - if the United States agrees to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq in two years, insurgent and government officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

He's not the president you're looking for

Jedi Bush.

Good news for Tom Cruise!

The Right Reverend James Falwell preaching at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia:

And don't, don't ever be proud of sin. You know, you almost got to be a homosexual to be recognized in the entertainment industry anymore.

I hope this doesn't mean that Britney Spears is gay. Because even I am just not down with that. And I'm pretty sure the gays don't want her, either.

Ellen [Degeneres], and all the rest. I love them, pray for their souls, but they're immoral. And the Hollywood scene -- five and eight and 10 marriages -- not something to be emulated.

Virginians must be emulating Californians pretty well, because their divorce rate is higher than ours. Also higher than CA: Kansas, Utah, Montana, Missouri, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Alaska, Mississippi, Kentucky, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Alabama, Indiana, Wyoming, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Republicans: 2, Voting Rights Act: 0

Serves us right for taking the act for granted.

So, the Supreme Court has basically ruled that whoever controls any particular state legislature can re-draw the district map at will. Redistricting does not have to follow a census or any other event which reveals population information. And the bar for what constitutes gerrymandering has been set pretty fucking high.

So the party in power stays in power. Nice. Good work, SCOTUS.

Buried deep in the NYTimes article on the ruling is this little nugget:

Last December, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales acknowledged that the professional staff of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division had also considered the plan to be in violation of the act.

To clarify, "professional staff" means non-political appointees, or "the people who know what the fuck they're talking about."

In a memorandum, the six lawyers and two analysts in the voting rights section unanimously concluded that "the proposed plan reduces the level of minority voting strength." They were overruled by the top officials in the department.

"Top officials" means Bush lackeys, or "the people who've sold their soul for a government pension and a once-a-year handshake from the assclown-in-chief."

That's funny, 'cause I always thought he was a BLOW-hard.

(rimshot)

Contribute your own Rush Limbaugh joke here.

What if Vikkitikkitavi were a South Park character?

Go here to make your own.

So a gay son is better than no daughter at all?

Ah, women and their subtle immune system responses!

Or you could just not drive a fuckin' tank to work, ya selfish prick

NYTimes takes a look at geoengineering:

The plans and proposed studies are part of a controversial field known as geoengineering, which means rearranging the earth's environment on a large scale to suit human needs and promote habitability. Dr. Cicerone, an atmospheric chemist, will detail his arguments in favor of geoengineering studies in the August issue of the journal Climatic Change.

Some of the proposals shown above include giant floating discs in the oceans, gazillions of tiny reflecting lenses orbiting the earth, thousands of square miles of reflective white plastic mulch over desert areas (take note, Bostonians!), and the world's largest Mr. Mister, that would help increase cloud production at sea.

Another proposal is to build the world's largest reflective sunshade, much like what you put inside your car windsheild, and launch it into orbit.

I'm not kidding.

Maybe we could even get one featuring Tweety or the Tazmanian Devil. I love me some Taz, y'all.

And since we're on the subject, I should mention that I hope to soon publish my own scientific paper on global warming.

It's my theory that this whole mess has been caused by reflective automotive sunshades.

Think about it. We're reflecting into our atmosphere heat that formerly was absorbed by our vinyl or leather car seats and ultimately, our behinds. So instead of that solar energy contributing to buttock-localized kinetic thermo-dynamic weightloss, it's going back up into the atmosphere and melting our glaciers and such.

The result is global warming. Well, that and a big hit for Sir Mix-a-Lot.

I play a streetwise pimp with a hybrid pimpmobile

Futurama has always felt free to mock the Gorester, probably because his daughter used to work on the show.

Clear cutting reaches White House lawn

Let's see Bush try to deny his involvement in that timber company now.

(pic from LATimes)

Dreamy!

Check it. Tonight. Al Gore on Letterman, Springsteen on Conan.

We're talking both halves of the Vikkitikkitavi sandwich there, bitches.















And don't "Ew!" me. Who the fuck is on your list, motherfucker?

My favorite part? O'Brien appears to be too stupid to notice that Springsteen just called her an idiot.

Soledad O'Brien makes my flesh crawl. Watch her try to boogie woogie the king of rock-n-roll (transcript below via Think Progress):

O’BRIEN: In 2004 you came out very strongly in support of John Kerry and performed with him - your fellow guitarist, I think is how you introduced him to the crowd. And some people gave you a lot of flack for being a musician who took a political stand. I remember…

SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah, they should let Ann Coulter do it instead.

O’BRIEN: There is a whole school of thought, as you well know, that says that musicians – I mean you see it with the Dixie Chicks - you know, go play your music and stop.

SPRINGSTEEN: Well, if you turn it on, present company included, the idiots rambling on on cable television on any given night of the week, and you’re saying that musicians shouldn’t speak up? It’s insane. It’s funny.

O’BRIEN: As a musician though, I’d be curious to know if there is a concern that you start talking about politics, you came out at one point and said, I think in USA Today listen, the country would be better off if George Bush were replaced as President. Is there a worry where you start getting political and you could alienate your audience?

SPRINGSTEEN: Well that’s called common sense. I don’t even see that as politics at this point. So I mean that’s, you know, you can get me started, I’ll be glad to go. […] You don’t take a country like the United States into a major war on circumstantial evidence. You lose your job for that. That’s my opinion, and I have no problem voicing it. And some people like it and some people boo ya, you know?

Where the hell is Matt?

Something about this video makes me smile.


(via Video Dog)

Jim Crow alive and well in the Party of Lincoln

Republican house members block renewal of the Voting Rights Act.

Yes, that Voting Rights Act.

Things I love about Boston #5

FENWAY!!!!

Yes, Wrigley Field is beautiful. The Friendly Confines is my first love. And I loved Comiskey, too, before they tore it down and built the world's largest holiday cookie tin that is New Comiskey - ah, sorry, I meant US Cellular Field, ya fucking sellout no-dick dicks.

But from its dim brick underbelly to its manual outfield scoreboard, it's hard to beat Fenway. On my way in through the turnstile, I heard this guy behind me say to his buddy "Those turnstiles are wicked tight. Good thing I don't have a lahge penis."

Yeah!

And look at this random picture of fans entering Yawkey Way:

It's like they won't be let into the park without their game gear. These are fuckin' FANS, baby.

Sure, sometimes their devotion manifests itself in embarassing ways, like...oh...

...this Red Sox visor and Red Sox scrunchie-festooned couple, for example.

Although those items can at least be thrown away and regretted in the coming years. Okay, it's unlikely they will be, but it's at least a possibility. The guy with the Red Sox logo tattoo sitting next to us is gonna have a more difficult time of it.

But hey, when the night is warm and the beer is cold, and the Sox are pounding that Green Monster like another double's all they'll ever need in this cruel cruel world, ya can't nitpick shit like that. You can only sit back and enjoy, and realize that there's no better place on earth than where you are, right now.

(And yes, the pic was taken at our seats, bitches. Jealous?)

Things that make me feel ambivalent about Boston #3

You can't swing a dead cat in that town without hitting one of these:

What is UP with that? And the thing is, people act like the coffee there is GOOD, when in fact it is sour funky hot dog water.

Sorry, Bostonians, but that is some nasty shit.

And the most heinous offense of all:

Dunkin' Donuts at Fenway? Fenway?

Coffee and donuts at the ball game is just wrong.

Spooney will demonstrate, below, some appropriate ball park fare:

And you don't have to have beer and pizza. You can have beer and a hot dog. Or beer and Italian sausage. Or beer and peanuts or beer and a pretzel if you're not that hungry.

So get a grip. And when you need coffee, drink Starbucks like every other person on the fuckin' planet for fuck's sake.

Things I love about Boston #4

Bostonians must find the sight of bare dirt really offensive, because they are like the mulch capital of the world. There is mulch EVERYWHERE there.

As you can see above, they mulch under fences next to the highway. They mulch around telephone and light poles. They mulch any bare strip or corner of any yard or median anywhere.

If you lived in Boston, and you had a shovel and a couple of tons of mulch to sell, you'd be sitting in the fabled catbird seat, that's for sure.

Things that make me feel ambivalent about Boston #2

They've brought in that heinous "Cows on Parade" fundraising "art" project that plagued Chicago several years ago.


Man, I just hate those fuckin' cows.

Things I love about Boston #3

In LA, clams figure prominently in the dogma of the Church of Scientology and are the source of engrams, or negative mental pictures that limit our personal growth.

In Boston, clams are steamahs, and they're wicked good at The Barking Crab.

Things that make me feel ambivalent about Boston #1

So this guy cuts the line to get on the boat for the whale watching cruise. And then when several people who have been standing in the hot sun for 30 minutes object, he tries to say he was there all along. And when that doesn't fly, he shrugs and says, "Ah, what difference does it make?!"

Well, buddy, where I come from, it makes a big difference. Courtesy makes a big difference.

And so, big line-cuttin' man, in order to mitigate my feelings of helplessness and annoyance on that day, I hereby post a picture of you and your girlfriend with the unfortunate shorts on my blog, and I invite all my readers to heap scorn and ridicule upon you both:



Go ahead, readers. I'll get it started: Nice shorts.

Things I love about Boston #2

A t-shirt vendor downtown was selling a shirt with a picture of Johnny Damon and the following legend:

Looks like Jesus
Talks like Judas
Hits like Mary

Things I love about Boston #1

President CYA

Sounds like Ron Suskind's new book about terror intelligence, The One Percent Doctrine, is a must-read:

Tenet and his loyalists also settle a few scores with the White House here. The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Three months later, with bin Laden holed up in the Afghan mountain redoubt of Tora Bora, the CIA official managing the Afghanistan campaign, Henry A. Crumpton (now the State Department's counterterrorism chief), brought a detailed map to Bush and Cheney. White House accounts have long insisted that Bush had every reason to believe that Pakistan's army and pro-U.S. Afghan militias had bin Laden cornered and that there was no reason to commit large numbers of U.S. troops to get him. But Crumpton's message in the Oval Office, as told through Suskind, was blunt: The surrogate forces were "definitely not" up to the job, and "we're going to lose our prey if we're not careful."

Suskind's portrait of Tenet, respectful but far from adulatory, depicts a man compromised by "insecurity and gratitude" to a president who chose not to fire him after 9/11. "At that point, George Tenet would do anything his President asked," Suskind writes.

Love that dirty water!

I'll in Boston playing the live version of Meet the Parents with Spooney for a few days.

In this version, I am Ben Stiller. Only female. And taller. But with no options or points.

Return to posting on the 21st.

Le Rive Gauche, NoHo

I live in North Hollywood, CA. Specifically, I live in the "NoHo Arts District," which is a completely legitimate and viable arts district, damn it, and not just some developer's scam to dress up a disheveled old whore of a neighborhood.

There is, like, art everywhere where I live! In fact, I had to clean some art off my garage door this very morning! Personally, I use Orange-Sol art remover, but there are a lot of products out there now that you can use to counter those incorrigible artists with their bold conceptual re-imaginings of "defacing" and "private property."

Oh, and last month, my neighbor's car became part of a large installation that inspired residents to re-examine their notions of "ownership" and "car stereos" and "glass that isn't broken."

I can't tell you what a thrill it is every morning to walk out of my house and know that my bourgeois non-art instincts will be challenged right there on my doorstep! Or, sometimes, right there at the street corner - the street corner where artists gather and engage in works of rhythmic verbal art so jarring that they make your teeth rattle!

I feel lucky. Lucky to be a part of art history in the making. And so I gladly offer up my belongings, AND my property value, for use by my beloved, scandalous, avant-guard neighborhood artistes.

Turns out, Daryl Hannah CAN get arrested in Hollywood

Power to the people. Bitches.

(via People)

How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?

Tony Snow: Is this going to be a standup fight, sir, or another bug hunt?

Dan Bartlett: You maybe haven't been keeping up on current events but we just got our asses kicked, pal! Game over, man! Game over!

Pave paradise and put up a parking lot

Shame on the City of Los Angeles for "selling" these people's farmland back to that greedy pig, and for allowing the evictions to be carried out.

And shame, shame, shame on Ralph Horowitz. A curse on his name and all his business ventures and every bit of his fucking money.

Our Town

James Cameron, one of the few black men to ever survive a lynching, died Sunday at age 92 in Milwaukee.

Two men, friends of James's, were successfully murdered by a lynch mob on the night of August 7, 1930 in Marion, Indiana.

My hometown.

That remote, idyllic, albeit conservative little town where I grew up.

You may have seen the photo taken of the lynching, as it is a famous one, due to the horrifying juxtaposition of the dead bodies hanging above, and the party-like atmosphere of the crowd beneath.

It was one of the last public lynchings north of the Mason Dixon line. And no one is quite sure how it was that James survived. He was dragged from the jailhouse after his friends were already mangled and dead. The way he remembers it, a voice of unearthly origin stayed the hands of those putting the noose around his neck. Eyewitness accounts vary as to exactly who did address the crowd that night, but someone, possibly the sheriff, caused the mob to allow James to return to the jailhouse.

Later, James opened a museum dedicated to the victims of lynchings in the US. He had apparently attempted many times to buy the old abandoned Marion jailhouse in order to house his museum there, but he was resisted by governmental and commercial interests in Marion. No one in Marion wants to remember or talk about the lynching.

And no one was ever convicted of the lynchings, in spite of the hundreds of witnesses present. Seventy-five years later, many remain afraid of reprisal.

I'm reading a really wonderful book written by a former Marion resident about the effect this event has had upon my old hometown. I guess that's part of the reason that seeing his obituary this morning really stunned me: I feel so immersed in all of the events of that night. Also, it seems to me right now that all politics are somehow emblematic of the politics of my hometown. How I feel about my country right now is how I feel about my hometown.

There were places in Marion I loved. Like the shallow spot in the Mississinewa river up the county road from Indian Village where we kids used to go and ride the rapids in our underwear. And the farmer with the friendly horse who would feed from your hand and run along the fence as you rode by on your bike. And of course the general store in Jalapa where we bought penny candy and Push-ups. We played outside every day until the sun went down. We were unsupervised, but we looked out for one another. It was the kind of life every parent wants for their kid, and yet.

And yet.

No black child could have had that same life in Marion. And I cannot think of the sweet days of my childhood without also thinking of that.

Even in my day, in the 60s and 70s, Marion was also a harsh, bigoted, small-minded, mean little town full of blacks and whites that hated and feared each other.

So the rural idyll came with a big heaping dose of bitterness and injustice and the feeling that you just couldn't change anything, no matter how hard you tried. Gradually, unless you wanted to belong to the hate club, or you were just too poor to get out, you decided that you couldn't stomach Marion, Indiana anymore. And you said goodbye for good.

Like I did.

But it's not like I never think about what I lost. I think about it.

I think about it all the time.

P.S. I will say this: the local newspaper published James Cameron's obituary. That's something.

Answer: C

Does the rhythm method kill embryos?

Luc Bovens, a philosopher at the London School of Economics, argues in the Journal of Medical Ethics that couples who try to prevent pregnancy by avoiding sex during the woman's most fertile time of month may be more likely to produce embryos that do not develop or implant in the womb.

If this is correct, he writes, then "millions of rhythm method cycles per year globally depend for their success on massive embryonic death."

Uh-oh. It seems as though all those "pro-life" pinheads are about to be confronted with the reality that their preferred method of birth control is as deadly to embryos as normal birth control pills, Plan B, and stem cell research.

Oh my god, y'all, however will they resolve this massive conflict between their principles, and the harsh realities of their lives?

Will they:

A: With the help of their clergy and political leaders, gradually come to a more sophisticated view of life and abortion that takes into account the very real needs and desires of those lives already in this world that would be affected by any particular pregnancy and decide that, all things considered, it really would be the height of hypocrisy to try and dictate that kind of decision to anyone?

or

B: Completely change their position on birth control, advocating barrier methods such as condoms and diaphragms, and encouraging birth control distribution and education among teenagers, the poor, and those in underdeveloped nations?

or

C: Stick their fingers in their ears and say "Nah-nah-nah-nah. I can't hear you. "Nah-nah-nah-nah."?

Maybe the editor was confused by the graphic?

I can't think of why else the NYTimes would put a feature story on the obstacles to a first female US presidency in the freakin SUNDAY STYLES SECTION.

Maybe Simon & Schuster should have examined their target demographic a little better

Mary Cheney's book about her life as the gay daughter of the dark overlord is tanking.

Because how many Log Cabin Republicans can there be? Their website says "thousands."

Ooooh. Thousands.

Split among "68 local chapters."

Ooooh. 68 chapters. That's almost as many as right-wing black man Alan Keyes has.

Of course, Alan does have the advantage of adding a great big scoop of crazy to the mix of his own personal brand of hypocrisy.

So anyways, once all of the Log Cabin Repubs buy Mary's book, who's left? Because any self-respecting gay isn't going to pay to read the life story of a two-faced liar who claims her father really really respects her even though she wasn't allowed to stand on the platform with him at the the last GOP convention.

And most straight Republicans don't like admitting that queers exist and have lives and stuff, let alone supporting their ass-fucking/carpet-munching lifestyles by buying their books.

Wow, Simon & Schuster, how'd you miss that call? I hear you're not even going to get your $1 million advance back. That's a shame.

Killing you is killing myself. But, you know, I'm pretty tired of both of us.

On the 3 suicides committed by Gitmo prisoners this last Saturday (link added):

"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed," Admiral Harris said. "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

Oh, be careful Admiral. You don't want to venture into Westmoreland:

"The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient."

It makes it easier to do what we wish with people, believing that they don't value life the same way we do.

It makes it a lot easier.

A present for all of you who keep emailing me articles about you-know-who

I almost didn't read this post because I am just fucking sick of that cunt Coulter. But this is the smartest thing I've ever read about her:

A good thing came from watching Ann Coulter on Hannity and Colmes. I'd been rereading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy had been described twice as a person of "consequence," someone not approachable by those of normal status. I realized listening to Coulter, that she is not merely a mad woman.

Indeed, she is actually a reflection of a superior way of thinking that permeates much of what is now America's leadership. By describing the widows of 9-11 as enjoying a claim to fame based on the deaths of their husbands, as if this horror is somehow a less viable means of gaining attention for a cause than being born into a wealthy family with major connections, Coulter is mouthing the view of the hateful arm of the Republican Party. Their agenda is power and greed; their insignia is despicable condescension.

"How do we know their husbands weren't going to divorce these harpies?" is the language of a myopic, vile person who divides the world into people of consequence and people of inconsequence no matter the depths of their suffering. This is the antithesis of what America is supposed to stand for, no matter one's political party.

See what I mean? She's nailed it exactly.

Look, you can jazz it up all you want...

...but it's still fucking Ohio.


(via Fark)

These kids today

Their priorities are all outta whack.

Oedipus, schmoedipus

Did 41 try to oust Rumsfeld behind 43's back? Sidney Blumenthal for Salon (registration required):

Former President George H.W. Bush waged a secret campaign over several months early this year to remove Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The elder Bush went so far as to recruit Rumsfeld's potential replacement, personally asking a
retired four-star general if he would accept the position, a reliable source close to the general told me. But the former president's effort failed, apparently rebuffed by the current president. When seven retired generals who had been commanders in Iraq demanded Rumsfeld's resignation in April, the younger Bush leapt to his defense. "I'm the decider and I decide what's best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain," he said. His endorsement of Rumsfeld was a rebuke not only to the generals but also to his father.

The elder Bush's intervention was an extraordinary attempt to rescue simultaneously his son, the family legacy and the country. The current president had previously rejected entreaties from party establishment figures to revamp his administration with new appointments. There was no one left to approach him except his father. This effort to pluck George W. from his troubles is the latest episode in a recurrent drama -- from the drunken young man challenging his father to go "mano a mano," to the father pulling strings to get the son into the Texas Air National Guard and helping salvage his finances from George W.'s mismanagement of Harken Energy. For the father, parental responsibility never ends. But for the son, rebellion continues. When journalist Bob Woodward asked George W. Bush if he had consulted his father before invading Iraq, he replied, "He is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to."

It seems to me that if 41 had had his way, 43 would have been Jeb. I think it was Barbara who pushed W into politics, partly to settle a score the old bitch had with then-governor of Texas Ann Richards, and partly, maybe, to prove to her husband that her beloved first born had the stuff.

Oh, if she'd only let him pursue his life's ambition - to become the baseball commissioner - at that point instead.

(Salon - registration required)

How nice would it be to have a president who only TELLS jokes?

For those of you who didn't see Al Gore on Leno last night, allow me to paraphrase the following exchange:

Leno: So now that you're a big film star, has your life changed at all?

Gore: Well, Lindsey Lohan and I aren't speaking.

Leno: Really, why?

Gore: She knows what she did.

Didn't those fuckers see Black Hawk Down?

NYT:

A covert effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to finance Somali warlords has drawn sharp criticism from American government officials who say the campaign has thwarted counterterrorism efforts inside Somalia and empowered the same Islamic groups it was intended to marginalize.

Somalia warlords? Yeah, they're our friends. Just like the Afghan warlords who fought the Soviets were our friends.

When is our foreign policy going to reflect a mature and long-range view of the world? I swear my dog does a better job of planning for the future than these guys.

Buster sez: "Empowering Somali warlords will come back to bite you in the ass."

"The iPod was not developed by Baptists in Waco, Texas. There may be a reason for this."

I tried to link to this great post from True Ancestor yesterday, but all hell was breaking loose here in Blogspot.

Congress thinks Army Corps of Engineers doing a heckuva job

No, this is not a story from The Onion:

LAST WEEK the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers admitted responsibility for much of the destruction of New Orleans. It was not true, as the Corps initially had claimed, that its defenses failed because Congress had authorized only Category 3 protection, with the result that Hurricane Katrina overtopped the city's floodwalls. Rather, Katrina was no stronger than a Category 2 storm by the time it came ashore, and many of the floodwalls let water in because they collapsed, not because they weren't high enough. As the Corps' own inquiry found, the agency committed numerous mistakes of design: Its network of pumps, walls and levees was "a system in name only"; it failed to take into account the gradual sinking of the local soil; it closed its ears when people pointed out these problems. The result was a national tragedy.

You might think that the Corps' mea culpa would fuel efforts to reform the agency. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) are pushing a measure that would do just that, requiring that future Corps proposals be subject to technical review by an independent agency. But the stronger current in Congress goes in the opposite direction. A measure urged by Louisiana senators and written by Sens. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) would loosen oversight of the Corps. Billions of dollars may be spent in ways that ignore the most basic lessons from Katrina.

Geez, you'd think they'd be discussing what they fuck they are going to do with a government entity so poorly run that it kills people, and how many homes we are going to rebuild at the expense of the federal government in order to try and make it up to the residents of New Orleans who lives were ruined by the mind-boggling ineptitude of the USACE.

"We hate fags" amendment fails to gain 2/3 majority needed to continue

Senators who are little too good at sticking it to the homosexuals, IF you know what I mean:

Robert Byrd, Ben Nelson, Lamar Alexander, Wayne Allard, George Allen, Robert Bennett, Kit Bond, Sam Brownback, Jim Bunning, Conrad Burns, Richard Burr, Saxby Chambliss, Tom Coburn, William Cochran, Norm Coleman, John Cornyn, Larry Craig, Michael Crapo, Jim DeMint, Mike DeWine, Elizabeth Dole, Pete Domenici, John Ensign, Michael Enzi, Bill Frist, Lindsey Graham, Charles Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Kay Bailey Hutchison, James Inhofe, Johnny Isakson, Jon Kyl, Trent Lott, Richard Lugar, Mel Martinez, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Roberts, Rick Santorum, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, Gordon Smith, Ted Stevens, Jim Talent, Craig Thomas, John Thune, David Vitter, George Voinovich, John Warner



(via WaPo's awesome user-friendly congressional vote database)

And then they all graduated and became Republicans...

...who always vote for the politician who'll give them the biggest tax cut and fuck the consequences. They all married girls from their sister sorority; girls whose biggest regret in life is that they bared their breasts for the Girls Gone Wild Spring Break 2 camera crew, but didn't make the video. Then they got jobs in investment firms, bought houses in the last decent white suburb of the city, hired illegal Guatemalan nannies to raise their three kids while their wives studied for the real estate exam and their portfolios prospered due to investments in American companies who no longer employ any American workers.

But first, before any of that, they made this video.

Oh, and by the way

(Ceiling Cat via Scanner)

American Music

Thanks to the generosity of JD, Spooney and I and several other friends were lucky enough to see Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band (all 18 of them!) last night at the Greek.

You must go see them on this tour. Or at least pick up the album. But you really should go if you can, especially if:
you like rock-n-roll, or
you like country & western, or
you like Mississippi blues, or
you like Chicago electric blues, or
you like folk, or
you like Dixieland, or
you like roots music, or
you like bluegrass, or
you like zydeco, or
you like...ah, well, there was a kind of a klezmer thing going on a bit too, believe it or not.

It was the most raucous, joyful, sorrowful, foot-stompin, ass-shakin party you have ever been to, and you sure as hell don’t want it to end. But thanks to Bruce’s legendary staying power, it comes pretty damn close to not ending.

It's the kind of concert you remember for the rest of your life. Just how good it made you feel, and how great it sounded, and how everyone all around you all felt exactly the same way.

Your god is an asshole

Focus on the Family, a Christian/political organization dedicated to fucking things up for everyone who isn't them, is placing ads targeting potentially gay-friendly senators in red and purple states.

These ads claim "The reality is that homosexual marriages intentionally create motherless families or fatherless families. And a compassionate society would not deliberately deny a child a mother or a father."

Yeah, I know. The fact that these tools for Jesus would invoke "compassion" at the same time they deny the humanity of a whole class of people...it really defies even the most rudimentary notions of civilization.

To say nothing of the Golden Rule.

They should be ashamed of themselves and their sorry excuse for a god. I've been a sinner my whole life and I never did anything that bad. Shame on them all.

6.6.06

See the Beast cavort by the lake of fire.

Mekka Lekka Hi Mekka Hiney Ho

Adult Swim has acquired the rights to Pee-Wee's Playhouse, and will begin airing episodes July 10.

Your wish is granted. Love live Jambi!

C'mon, why don't they just call it the "We Hate Fags" amendment?

So are the Democrats just going to let them kick our ass on this heinous, petty, reprehensible excuse of an issue every election year in perpetuity throughout the universe?

I'd say the odds are pretty good on that.

GWB, today:

The union of a man and woman in marriage is the most enduring and important human institution. For ages, in every culture, human beings have understood that marriage is critical to the well-being of families. And because families pass along values and shape character, marriage is also critical to the health of society. Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them. And changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure.

You want a bet with longer odds? How about "Will the press ever call Bush on the fact that the American public does not share his priorities?"

Because, contrary to what the president told us this morning, gay marriage doesn't even make the list of what Americans are concerned about.

And yes, I'm talking to you, Malkin

Via Salon.

Puddles of drool, bitch.

You see why we hate you?

On the June 1st episode of Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room, senior national correspondent John Roberts said this:

ROBERTS: Yeah. I mean, there is nothing to suggest, Wolf, that even though they have agreed on a set of sanctions that anything is going to get past the U.N. Security Council. Don't forget, there has been a resolution on sanctions against North Korea because of its nuclear program that's been languishing for three years. And then, of course, there is the issue, if they do get sanctions leveled against Iraq -- leveled against Iran, are they going to work? Don't forget, Iraq endured 11 years of sanctions, and, you know, we still had to go to war to get rid of what it was that they had.

And Wolfie said this:

BLITZER: Good point, John. Thank you very much.

Oh, yes, John, excellent point. And well recognized by you, Wolf. Excellent point, indeed. That is, if by "excellent" you mean "a huge steaming load," and if by "point" you mean "horseshit."

Motherfucking snake on a plane!

Seriously. Snake. On a plane.


Seriously.

Cannonball!

Ingeniousity brought to you by Don't Be That Guy Films:

Things you CAN'T do when you're NOT in a pool


via (Video Dog)

Don't cry for Elizabeth Vargas

Bitch.

Army Corp of Engineers to New Orleans: our bad

AP:

A contrite U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took responsibility Thursday for the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and said the levees failed because they were built in a disjointed fashion using outdated data.

"This is the first time that the Corps has had to stand up and say, `We've had a catastrophic failure,'" Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the Corps chief, said as the agency issued a 6,000-page-plus report on the disaster on Day 1 of the new hurricane season.

You want a conspiracy theory?

Now, here's a conspiracy theory. And it's all true, what they did. The only fact that has never been established is to what extent it was a conspiracy.

(via HuffPo)

Just go

Saw An Inconvenient Truth last night at the best movie theatre ever, The Arclight in Hollywood.

Okay, so I'll cop to being a huge Al Gore groupie. But even I had some trepidation, reinforced by several reviewers, that the film was going to be a one-sided leftie snorglefest.

It's not. And here's a couple of other things it isn't:

1) It isn't a film about global warming. It is a film about Al Gore traveling the world trying to get his message out about global warming via this slide show. If you can't distinguish between the two, then yes, you are going to walk out of this movie second-guessing how the science should have been presented.

2) It isn't a big sloppy valentine to Al Gore.

In a kind of replay of the 2000 election, some reveiwers refuse to take Gore or the filmakers at their word about anything, not even his own personal feelings, and have approached the off-stage footage of Gore as if it's some kind of Machievellian campaign manuever. They take issue with scenes of Gore looking overly "somber" in airports and limos like he's presenting some kind of false image of himself.

Jesus Christ, can't the man go through airport security looking dour without it being a pose?!

Also, the film quite rightly touches on Gore's reasons for taking on the issue of global warming. And the skeptical little reviewers are quite welcome to believe them or not. You can believe that his sister's death had absolutely nothing to do with his reexamination of his political stances, but for pete's sake grant the guy that his heart is in the right place on this one issue, willya? He is Al Gore, after all, and there are more lucrative gigs available to him than schlepping to China to explain CO2 emissions to a roomful of sullen-looking students.

What the film is, is stunning, and frightening. And yes, you do realize that we have been complacent too long, and we have let our leaders slide for too long. But, as Al points out, we were able to reverse the growth of the hole in our ozone layer by passing legislation and making changes to our lifestyles, and we can do the same again with global warming.

It's not too late, he says. But it may soon be.