First, overdue thanks to Chuck F. for his $50 donation! Sorry about the delay - been up to my oxters in work. I've made great progress on the seven minute long second sequence of my animated film. It's two-thirds complete, and should be finished within a couple of weeks. That will be the half-way point of the film. Fifteen minutes down, fifteen to go. Peak cartoon.
I've been wondering what happened to Clay Bennett, whose cartoons stopped appearing on the Christian Science Monitor a while ago. Clay emailed to let me know that he's now working for the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Tennessee! Needless to say, we've got some catching up to do!
Every time I saw a car towing a motorboat this holiday weekend, I wondered what was going through the head of the towee. Did they have a sense that darkness was falling on their careers in motor sports? Did they have an inkling that an oil-and-gas crisis is upon us and just not give a shit? Or were they just going through the motions, following some implacable rote programming induced by, say, forty-odd years of TV addiction and a diet based on corn-syrup byproducts?
The holiday to me was a creepy hiatus from an ever more desperate reality overtaking the nation like a miasma. Meanwhile, the mainstream media's ongoing narrative has gotten stuck in the moronic groove of "drill drill drill." The belief of people like Larry Kudlow of CNBC and uber-mega-idiot John Stossel of ABC-News is that we could go back to $1.50 gasoline if only congress would open the offshore exploration areas and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This view is just plain erroneous. Nothing we get out of these regions will come close to offsetting the ongoing depletion of worldwide oil resources, or even arresting our own losses.
LA Times article on suburban ghost towns. I scanned through the comments that followed the article, and found this gem:
Image, not just crack houses but crack suburbs. Whole tracks of houses where gangs and crime can thrive. Even worse, imagine terror cells taking over whole housing tracks. Scary.
Posted by: Bob Smythe | July 02, 2008 at 12:50 PM
Bob, what's scary is that there are so many people like you, who apparently think that the piece of pop-culture detritus known as "24" is a documentary. NOTE: 24 is grade-A Goebbels bullshit, and anyone dumb enough to think that those stories are in any way credible should lose the following:
* Their right to vote.
* Their drivers licence.
* Their reproductive organs.
You can keep your passports though, assuming you have them. Might do you no harm to get out more. Try the Colombian Jungle: room and board are free, for up to six years.
This is the standard of oil reporting in the MSM: Glenn Beck, conservative commentator, wants to drill in ANWAR so he can get a Flat Screen TV. (NOTE: he tells us that he's a "long term" planner!) Yeah, Glenn. I'm in awe of your vision! No need to mention the restoration of the rail network, localisation of food production, transitioning from fossil-fuel fertilisers to organic farming. Nah. WIDDLE BABY WANTS HIS TOYS!
As oil breaks into the mid 140s, CNN continues to abrogate its journalistic duties with dreck like this: Who to blame for the price of oil? That's the way - find scapegoats. Surely WE can't be to blame - the ones who've pumped the reserves like Bejesus, as if a finite resource was going to last forever. I could spend an hour or three trying to express my contempt for this disgraceful dreck, but I've got work to do.
Earlier this month girls at a further education college were reprimanded for wolf-whistling at builders.
Officials at West Kent College in Tonbridge, Kent, warned pupils the behaviour was "totally unacceptable," and said any student caught harassing the contractors would face disciplinary action.
Yeesh, guys. Grow a pair! Payback's a bitch, eh?
After Joe Bageant, my favourite good old boy is Fred Reed. Marrying Up.
I used to think that Bush would be like President Stillson in the movie "The Dead Zone". Goodness, how the last seven and a half years have flown by. Don't forget though, President Hairy-knuckles does have a few months left, so he still may achieve his Divine Mission of bringing Jesus back to Earth on an ICBM. If not, waiting in the wings, is John McNasty:
McCain has a secret reputation as a man with a ferocious, unpredictable temper. He is a man who has a knack for pursuing vendettas against those he thinks have slighted him, even if they are lowly aides.
The list of worrying incidents is long. In 1995 he ended up almost physically scuffling with aged Senator Strom Thurmond on the Senate floor. And, according to some accounts, in 2006 he had a fight with Arizona congressman Rick Renzi, throwing blows in a scrap whose details have only recently been detailed in Schecter's book. Schecter unearthed another unpleasant incident from 1992 in which McCain, tired after a long day's campaign, reacted badly to his wife Cindy teasing him about his baldness. 'At least I don't plaster on the make-up like a trollop, you c*nt,' McCain snapped in front of eyewitnesses. Schecter says he has three sources for the story. McCain's campaign have denied it.
Such public outbursts, and many other private ones, have concerned people even in his own party. Former New Hampshire Republican Senator Robert Smith publicly voiced his concerns, once saying McCain's temper ' ... would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger'. That sentiment was echoed by Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran, who told a Boston newspaper: 'The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.'
Cute. Christopher Hitchens (previously a member of the human race) wants to help Iraq by sending them books for their Universities. Books. Books, books, books. Hmm. Books. Yes. Lots and lots of books, to help lure the "White Man's Burden" into the Western Sphere. Books. Books. Books. Lots. Books. Why does this bother me?
Oh yes.
Now I remember...
BECAUSE THE US DESTROYED THE NATIONAL LIBRARY IN BAGHDAD IN 2003!
To be fair to Hitch, maybe he was sleeping off a few bottles of Pinot Gris at the time, so he might have missed the event first time around. Given the fact that he was one of the cheerleaders for the war, you'd think he'd have made an effort to keep up with events in realtime. Guess not.
Now I like a drink as much as the next man, ahem, but friends, if I ever do a Hitchens, you have my full permission, NAY - my demand - for an intervention.
What is it with being a chickenhawk? Is there a "leave brain outside door" requirement? Try Con Coughlin from The Daily Telegraph, who chides the BBC for failing to report - wait for it - "good news" in Iraq. What is the good news?
The news that the Iraqi government is opening its oil fields for development by international companies should be an occasion for rejoicing.
Iraq has the second largest known oil reserves in the world - and only about one third of the country has been properly surveyed. At a time when the world is desperately short of oil, and prices have hit an all-time high, Iraq could help alleviate the pressure on the West's hard-pressed economies.
Well, at least the moonbats are finally admitting the obvious: that the war was all about oil and control of reserves. Right? WRONG!
This is the same BBC, don't forget, that spent years saying that Britain went to war over Saddam's WMD. Despite all the furore of the Hutton investigation - which disproved that particular canard and heaped the greatest humiliation on the BBC in its entire history - the BBC now says Britain went to war over Iraq's oil.
Make your mind up, you BBC producers and correspondents. Was it WMD, or was it oil? And while we're at it, is Iraq still in the grip of "a full-blown civil war", as John Humphys never tires of informing his Today programme listeners?
So Con, you're saying that the "good news" is that WE GOT THEIR OIL! - but that the war wasn't about oil? To read Con (well-named, no?) you'd think the BBC started the bloody war, not those criminals in Washington and Downing Street. Then he delivers le bon mot...
We all like a good argument, but let's have one based on hard facts, not on assumptions and woolly-minded liberal thinking.
I'd like to draw a cartoon about this bear of little brain, but some things are beyond parody these days...unless you're Steve Bell!
The authoritarian personality does not want to give orders, their personality type wants to take orders. People with this type of personality seek conformity, security, stability. They become anxious and insecure when events or circumstances upset their previously existing world view. They are very intolerant of any divergence from what they consider to be the normal (which is usually conceptualized in terms of their religion, race, history, nationality, culture, language, etc.) They tend to be very superstitious and lend credence to folktales or interpretations of history that fit their preexisting definitions of reality (thus the Founding Fathers of the US are conceptualized of as supporters of white nationalism.) They think in extremely stereotyped ways about minorities, women, homosexuals, etc. They are thus very dualistic- the world is conceived in terms of absolute right (their way) Vs. absolute wrong (the "other" whether African American, liberal, intellectual, feminist, etc.)
OMG! Iran is building nukes! A vicious dictator with Nukes (who isn't an Israeli!) ATTACK! ATTACK! WAR! KILL! DESTROY! Oh wait - maybe not...recall the missiles!
But the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word “gay” in the articles with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.
The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.
That means — you guessed it — the track star was renamed “Tyson Homosexual.” The headline on the piece read, “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.”
If you want to edit "Democratic Party" to "Democrat Party" you really should do it by hand. It's much more accurate. See, whenever I encounter the words "Right wing Republicans" I get to replace it with "Fascists", "Idiots", "Moonbats", "Goose-steppers", "Brownshirts", "Six-fingered knuckle-draggers", "Hitler lovers", "Falangist F*cknuts", "no-neck KKK troglodytes", etc. Much more creative.
And yes, I'm aware of the irony of using a stereotypical description of right wingers, having criticised them for same. Thing is, they deserve it.
...the civilian in charge of a Worcester police station's surveillance team was suspended after detectives found, among one day's footage, a 20-minute sequence of close-ups of a woman's cleavage and backside as she walked oblivious through the streets. Whether the woman ever discovered she was the star of a kind of pervert Truman Show is not recorded. But the offending monitor escaped with a warning and was - unbelievably - back in post within weeks.
From next year the new Independent Safeguarding Authority will require any adult who come into contact with children or vulnerable adults either through their work or in voluntary groups to be vetted.
But Prof Furedi's report, Licensed to Hug, highlighted examples of when adult-child relationships were distorted by the need for CRB checks already being required by schools and other organisations.
In one example, a woman could not kiss her daughter goodbye on a school trip because she had not been vetted.
You parents MAKE ME SICK. You should all be torn apart by a lynch mob, and, God willing, one day you will be.
How did the UK fall so far, so fast? We could blame it on "New Labour", or Tony Blair - but let us not forget that Margaret Thatcher described "New Labour" as her "greatest achievement". Enter Steve Bell:
Keep breathing, Maggie, keep breathing. There's a special place in Hell awaiting thee. Oh yes, there is.
Taking a laptop through a US airport? Be prepared to hand it over for 2 weeks. Note: enough time for them to be thorough, and find everything you've ever done on that machine - including recover files that you "deleted".
Beautiful artwork of London Flooded. Images taken by submerged CCTV cameras, no doubt.
Here's a great George Carlin clip. It starts out sounding like a "normal" routine, and then turns into something very different. You're watching an audience being mugged - you can hear the phase change in their reaction when he drops the payload. Marvellous.
Thousands of Navajo have developed lung cancer, kidney disease and other serious illnesses linked to uranium mining — which has supplied the U.S. government with material for nuclear weapons and power plants from the 1940s through the ’80s. (Agencies such as the World Health Organization have documented the severe health effects of uranium exposure.)
Uranium mining in the United States came to a near halt in the early ’90s because of low uranium prices, related largely to the cooling of the arms race and public disillusionment with nuclear power. But now, thanks to skyrocketing oil prices and renewed interest in nuclear energy, companies are once again planning to mine uranium in and around Navajo land.
