Robot Monkeys

Oliver Stone joins hostage rescue team

Via CNN

On Thursday, dozens of priests and cleaners were scrubbing the [Church of the Nativity] ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in early January. Thousands of tourists visited the church this week for Christmas celebrations.

But the clean-up turned ugly after some of the Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church’s section, touching off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians.

Classy. Truly the actions of men of peace, and not say, a common street gang.

I’ve said it before. The “Holy” Land only attracts the craziest of the crazies. Screw ‘em. If they want to fight and blow themselves up over some stupid rock that some knight in the 4th century decided was whatever because he wanted to out do the other knights that were “discovering” relics. Thus we have two Golgothas, and implausibly too many relics from the execution of some guy of minor contemporary importance.

Israel should just put a roof on that wall they’re building and rename the whole place the Thunderdome.

This one’s a two-fer.

So I went to see my uncle play in his band. During a lull in the music, the lead guitarist decides to tell jokes.

“I wrote a new song. It’s called, ‘She Broke My Heart, So I Broke Her Jaw.”

Alas, there really wasn’t such a song. That title does blow away my country song title, “Hard Drinkin’ Woman.”

He followed this “joke” with, “What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing! You already told her twice!”

Ahh, domestic violence. Fun for half the family.

Damn. That’s redneck for even Southern Illinois.

Seen at San Jose International Airport, terminal A. December 21, 2007.

It seems that someone has taken the parable of the "thief" a little too close to heart.

There once was gathering of great masters where they all brought their impressive works to display. A man came to show and approached the guard at the door. "I am a thief, " he declared. "I will come here every day for a week and steal one thing, and you will not be able to stop me."

The man entered the show, and at the end of the day went to leave. The guard stopped him, since the man was admitted thief, and searched him, yet he found nothing. The guard searched the show, and found nothing missing. With nothing missing, the guard had little choice but to let the man go on his way.

The next day, the man returned and declared, “Yesterday was very good day. I stole of something of great value, and you were not able to stop me, just like I said. Today, I will steal something of even greater value.” Again, when the man went to leave, the guard searched him and found nothing, and again the masters said that nothing was missing.

This continued for the entire week. On the last day, before the guard let the man go, he asked him. “Nothing appears to be missing, yet every day you said you stole something of value. You must tell me sir. What did you steal?” The man smiled, and said, “I stole ideas.”

From Wired’s Top Vaporware of 2007

A commenter on our 2000 Vaporware awards joked that Van Halen would reunite with David Lee Roth and release a new album before Duke Nukem Forever hits the shelves. Ironically, the re-formed band plans to head into the studio in just a few months. Reader Tiberian Fiend, who pointed this out to us, says, “Old jokes become sad reality as development on Duke Nukem Forever trudges on….”

See you next year, boys.

[emphasis added]

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No word on if when you washout, you get the t-shirt.

GOP

Huckabee wins in Iowa. Romney wins in New Hampshire because he’s a New Englander, but Huckabee has all the buzz. Huckabee wins the confederacy, and thus the nomination.

Giuliani? Never places above third.

Dems

Don’t know. Whoever wins Iowa gets the buzz, and cascades across the entire nation. Just like in 2004, rural Iowans pick the nominee. Since I have to predict something, uh… Obama in a tight one. Edwards won’t take the veep position two elections in a row. Hillary won’t take veep either. Like on the GOP side, the veep is no one in the race.

If Hillary manages to coast by on name recognition to the nominee, Obama is the veep.

Take away: Huckabee is the real deal, and could easily win the presidency.

So what’s up with Huckabee? I heard a Huckabee speech on NPR recently, and it came off as a populist message.

He talked about healthcare and creating a a system that covers more people and emphasizes prevention more than just intervention. (He blamed the fact health insurance is provided through employers and that for preventive medicine to become profitable for insureres you have to stay 8 years with them, but people change jobs (and thus insurance companies) before then so there’s no profit motive for one insurer to essentially lower costs for a competitor.)

He talked about energy independence as a national security imperative.

It was a positive message. Nothing divisive. Sure, he’s a conservative and so there would be policy differences, but I got the impression that we agreed with on the problems and the goals.

Of course he supports a national sales tax that is just a backdoor way of eliminating taxes on corporations, cutting taxes on the wealthy, and imposing a regressive income tax. That’s bullshit. He also said he didn’t believe in evolution, which makes my skin crawl, but even his answer that boiled down to “I can’t believe in something that eliminates god” struck me as a widespread belief. He just never bothered to try to shoe-horn evolution into religion, like a lot of people that want to avoid the issue.

So the knocks against him for me is “supports crackpot tax policy, that won’t happen” and “fear of him trying to ‘teach the controversy’ over evolution.”

The talking heads are making this big deal that he represents the born-agains usurping the leadership of the gop from the corporatists if he gets the nomination, but is that true? Sure he’s not the corporatists’ candidate, but he doesn’t strike me as Falwell or Dobson either.

So what am I missing?

Well, I guess that answers Trent Reznor’s question.

Today Lieberman Endorsed McCain. I’m not surprised that Lieberman endorsed a Republican. Lieberman has been siding with the Republicans for years now. He lost the primary in his own state because of it, and then had to run as an independent to keep his job. (Why on Earth the people of Connecticut voted for him I don’t know. Habit?) I was surprised that it was McCain and not Giuliani. Supposably McCain asked for the endorsement after the two of them visited Iraq.

But let’s get to the meat of the endorsement. That McCain can bring the country together. McCain is someone I used to respect. I liked 2000 McCain. 2008 McCain is a disappointment. In 2000, McCain famously said this about the religious zealots of the GOP:

Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and a few Washington leaders of the pro-life movement call me an unacceptable presidential candidate [...]They distort my pro-life positions and smear the reputations of my supporters. Why? Because I don’t pander to them. [...] I am a Reagan Republican who will defeat Al Gore. Unfortunately, Gov. Bush is a Pat Robertson Republican who will lose to Al Gore.

Of course, he was right, but more importantly McCain learned that the zealots are what make up the party. McCain wants to be president, and since 2006 or so, he’s begun to pander to them. He speaks at “agent of intollerance” Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. He hits the war drum, saying everything is going swell in Iraq. If only he could put his experiences in Vietnam behind him, he might be able to even say he supports torture. It’s this disappointing panderer that Lieberman has endorsed.

Lieberman says that we need to “break through the reflexive partisanship that is poisoning our politics today and stopping us from getting anything done in Washington.” I agree. 2000 McCain might have been able to do that. 2008 McCain would like to, but can’t without alienating the GOP base.

I’d like to think Obama could bring the country together, but in my heart of hearts I don’t think he’ll be able to. Obama will be sabotaged from the beginning. Already we have the Republicans playing the Southern Strategy saying “Barack HUSSEIN Obama” at ever opportunity in an effort to:

1. Imply that he’s a Muslim
2. Imply that he’s some sort of Islamic terrorist sleeper agent
3. Conflate “Obama” and “Osama” and him with Saddam Hussein
4. Tap into some well of latent racism

If Obama became president, or any Democrat, I fully expect the Republicans to pull the same tricks they’ve pulled for 15 years, filibuster every Democratic sponsored bill, clamor for investigations into minor “issues.” It’s sabotage and slash and burn all over again.

Now under Clinton, the GOP got exactly what they wanted out the “scandals.” The expiration of the independent counsel statute. The Republicans never liked that law. It has the unfortunate problem of not allowing the president to investigate himself. So the GOP call for an special prosecutor to investigate everything Clinton did, including whether or not he washed his hands after going to the bathroom. Then when the independent counsel law is set for renewal, they say, “Oh man. Look. This law is really used for political witch hunts. We should get rid of it,” and of course the Democrats agreed because it was used by the Republicans for witch hunts. The law expires, and now we have widespread criminal activity in the White House and no way to investigate it.

Bravo. Bravo.

But who am I kidding. Even if the independent counsel statute still existed, the Dems wouldn’t call for it. They’re too busy not wanting to look soft on torture.