Ugly

It sure is an excruciatingly ugly process by which we choose our president in this country.

Those Who Attacked America on 9/11

Liberman is always wrong.

LIEBERMAN: That’s why Senator Graham and I are introducing a resolution recognizing the strategic success that the surge has achieved in a central front — the central front of the war on terror against the enemies who attacked America on 9/11/01, and expressing our thanks to our troops who’ve made that success possible.

Really unbelievable.

(via ThinkProgress)

Didn't He Lose?

It can't be said enough.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I also don't get Harold Ford's angle. Why is he giving Obama advice? Didn't he lose?

(I corrected a couple typos, FYI)

Target Panic

I feel like kottke posting this, but there's a fascinating article in the NYTimes.com on an affliction called "target panic" that sometimes strikes professional archers:

Target panic, as the condition is known, causes crack shots to suddenly lose control of their bows, and their composure. Mysteriously, sufferers start releasing the bow the instant they see the target, sabotaging any chance of a gold-medal shot. Others freeze up and can’t release at all. Target panic is akin to the “yips” in baseball and golf, when accomplished athletes can no longer make a simple throw to first base or stroke an easy putt.

I had this happen to me in high school baseball. Three years in, I stopped being able to throw the baseball for a while. It would just fly out of my hand in a random direction - for me, I started becoming hyper-conscious of the timing and coordination by which each individual finger released the baseball.

Uh got bettah.

What They Stand For

Incredibly clear chart at the washingtonpost.com, apparently based on analysis by "the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution."

Canada News

This is, as they say, some fucked up shit.

(What language today, huh?)

No Win

Don't even worry about what they think. Defend yourself, but recognize that you're fucked if you do, fucked if you don't.

...And I Think You're A...

Everyone's sick of the phone-call-spoof joke that never ends over at Real Dan Lyons.

Lying Idiot

John Aravosis catches Reuters beginning a news article with "Al Gore, long mocked as an exaggerating bore, seems certain to land a lead role at the Democratic National Convention..." and asks:

Excuse me? Yes, Gore was mocked by Republicans in 2000, who falsely tried to paint him as a liar and a bore. But I didn't realize that Republican slurs against Democratic candidates were now the new required epithet to use any time we refer to those nominees in the future. Does Reuters plan on referring to George Bush as "George Bush, long mocked as a lying idiot" or Ronald Reagan as "long mocked as a bumbling dolt"?

Weirdos

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon:

There are Very Simple Rules when it comes to covering presidential candidates.  Republicans are always good people who happen to wander away from their mores because of the icky demands of campaigning, Democrats are always probably weirdos who are just trying to hide it long enough to get to the White House.  It’s an instinct that comes from the internalization of being the Librul Media and the externalization of Oh Shit, We Can’t Be The Liberal Media.  The easiest way to do it is to show that you have a Republican friend, that you can look past your alleged ideology and partisan ties and find something good and honorable in the other side.

Gore-Al

This may well be the funniest Onion article of all time: Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet:

Al Gore—or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al—placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity's hubristic folly.

Swank-style

That Grant Swank is one sick fuck:

When it comes to illegals, the Pope preaches to his clergy that they are to be tolerant toward illegals. He leans over backwards to be sweet. Yet is not the Pope supposed to be schooled in Scripture, the biblical morality? Where is his definition of the God of the Bible?

The God of the Bible is the eternal balance between mercy and justice. Therefore, this God does not overbend for mercy while ignoring justice. These two divine attributes are kept in perfect tandem.

Illegals must be held accountable in a civilized culture. That crime cannot be overlooked any more than incest or murder or thievery. Yet it is overlooked by the countless illegal defenders. It is tolerance that is so very sick it could destroy our Republic.

Zombie Narratives

Atrios:

While Obama's consumption of orange juice at breakfast was proof he was deeply out of touch with normal America, John McCain's $500 shoes are further proof that he is indeed a man of the people with whom most people would want to BBQ with. Except they wouldn't.

These zombie narratives (Democrats are out of touch, effete, elitist, and Republicans are rugged men of the people) are so ingrained that no amount of facts or reality can stop the bobbleheads from repeating them.

Outrage

The right - and the McCain Campaign across the board - is never outraged at anything in particular. Their face is constantly splattered with Outrage, from somewhere or other.

The outrage is like a puppet show they'll keep running, and they just need sawdust to fill the puppets.

We should never assume that the outrage will not go away. Hitting it head-on may alter the details of the outrage, but they will be pushing outrage about Obama until the election - and hopefully for years afterwards.

It will be a constant in these months. There is no making peace, reaching high-ground with this scum.

Strike Technique

I love this use of the rhetorical strike tag from Christopher Orr:

Yesterday, the McCain campaign continued its longstanding efforts to frame Obama as inexperienced, a
flip flopper, unpatriotic, a German national, unsupportive of the troops
insufficiently committed to manned space exploration.

The Story

It really is all about calling Obama uppity, isn't it?

"Arrogant"

"Audacity"

Nobody Does It Better

The Onion: Obama, Clinton, McCain Join Forces To Form Nightmare Ticket

Rocky & Bullwinkle

tristero:

I can learn far more about politics by watching old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons than I can from Maureen Dowd

Extension

NYTimes.com Editorial:

Many voters are wondering whether a McCain presidency would be an extension of Mr. Bush’s two disastrous terms. If the way Mr. McCain is running his campaign these days is an indication, Americans don’t have to wait until next January for the answer to that one.

High-Concept

Kevin Drum:

This is just getting embarrassing. Is McCain running for president of the United States or is he trying out for a part in some high-concept wacky political comedy?

Also liked in that post: "tax jihadist wing of the GOP"

So Fucking Special

Krauthammer is the latest to connect Obama to Hitler. Nod nod wink, of course.

Active Steps to Conceal

For all those who say they were just "regular" gifts...NYTimes.com:

Not only did Mr. Stevens fail to report the items on his Senate financial disclosure form, as required, but he took active steps to conceal the receipt of the goods and services, the indictment says.

Emission

I really love Phil Plait:

Any matter above the temperature of absolute zero (about -273 Celsius) will emit light. The amount of light it gives off, and more importantly the wavelength of that light, depends on the temperature. The warmer the object, the shorter the wavelength.

Cold objects emit radio waves. Extremely hot objects emit ultraviolet light, or X-rays. At a very narrow of temperatures, hot objects will emit visible light (wavelengths from roughly 300 nanometers to about 700 nm).

Stuff I kinda knew but wasn't totally sure of - put so simply and clearly.

Pushing

The rightwing seems to be celebrating the glory of cops pushing to the ground people they don't agree with.

Also, the New York Post:

CRITICAL MENACE
One of those cycling anarchists apparently was shoved off his bike by a cop in Times Square Friday night - but it could have been worse. Given the traffic havoc that Critical Mass regularly provokes, he might've been hit by a bus.

Now the cop is in trouble, and Critical Mass - which hates cars, and so makes a point to create monthly traffic jams all over New York, just for the hell of it - is in full chortle.
It was bound to happen, of course.

Over the last four years, the activists have aggressively fought the NYPD's attempts to keep the streets safe.

It looks like one thing led to another Friday, and the unidentified officer seemingly pushed a Critical Mass rider to the ground as the group snaked through Times Square.

Nobody was hurt.

My bold.

Reading List

Knoxville News Sentinel on Tennessee Church shooter:

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

All my snarkiness aside, though, I think Kullervo says it the best:

My thoughts and prayers are with the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, especially the families and friends of Gregory McKendry, Jr. and Linda Praeger.  It chilled my blood to read that the shooter first tried to get backstage where the children were.

Packing Heat

Commenter atheling from Malkin's coverage of the Tennessee church shooting:

Ya know, because of nutcases like this, I have started packing heat when I go to church. I don’t tell anyone in my parish about it, but I am prepared for the event that if some evil bastard attempts to do the same, he will get a head full of lead in return.

In the tragedy, Jim Adkisson shot 8 at a children's play at a Universalist Church, killing, two. according to a 4-page letter he wrote detailing his plans (and relayed to the NY Times by the Knoxville Police Department), he "was motivated by a hatred for liberals and homosexuals."

Rightwing blogs seem unable to address the topic today, confused by where to point their hate. I follow way too many of these places, and none has mentioned it in any way beyond this solitary Malkin post, even through their daddy Fox News is acknowledging this motivation.

Disappointed

Michael D at Balloon Juice:

The difference between McCain and Obama: Troops are disappointed when Obama doesn’t visit.

Kathryn Jean Lopez scrapes bottom.

Golfer Pity

Giuliani's son kicked off team, sues Duke:

DURHAM - Andrew Giuliani, son of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has sued Duke University, saying the school breached a $200,000 contract with him by kicking him off the golf team.
Giuliani, a rising senior at Duke, filed suit in federal court in Greensboro.

Duke University officials said in a statement that they would "vigorously defend this lawsuit."

"Duke's coaches and student athletes are held to the highest standards, which include a strong commitment to fairness for all participants in our sports programs," Michael J. Schoenfeld, Duke's vice president for public affairs and government relations, said in a statement.

The complaint, drawn up by Robert Ekstrand, a lawyer representing some of the members of the 2006 Duke lacrosse team, outlines strife between Giuliani and O.D. Vincent, the head golf coach. Vincent came on board after the spring 2007 death of Rod Myers, the coach who recruited Giuliani in high school.

As an aspiring pro golfer in high school, Giuliani was promised life-time access to Duke's state-of-the-art training facilities if he came to Duke and paid $200,000 in tuition and fees, the suit claims.

"Things changed when O.D. Vincent took over," the lawsuit says.

No comment.

Cornered

With things looking so terribly bleak for the McCain camp this week (when did the surge start? 200,00+ to see Obama in Berlin? 66% BO vs 23% JM approval among Hispanics?), I'm fascinated by what terrible cornered-animal shit's going to come out of their side in the next couple of weeks.

Hi

I love merlin mann...



I'll take a box!

Nobody Like McCain

Hahahahahahahaha. And also HA:

(CNN) -- From cyberspace to college campuses, many young conservatives are worried that Sen. John McCain is not appealing to their generation.


Sen. John McCain says he knows how important young voters are.

At a town hall meeting in Ohio this month, a student told McCain that Republicans were a dying breed on his campus.

"I understand the challenge I have, and I understand that this election is really all about the people of your generation," McCain said.

Many young Republicans said Sen. Barack Obama -- the 46-year-old junior senator from Illinois -- is inspiring voters their age, but McCain -- the 71-year-old senator who has been in office since the early '80s -- is not.

Eric Pearlmutter, a member of the Young Republicans at the University of Southern California, said the roaring enthusiasm that follows Obama is missing among conservatives his age.

"We try to get people out to our college Republican meetings, but ... we can't seem to draw the same kind of vocal support," he said.

And, lastly, HA!

Pearlmutter said he cringed when McCain admitted he doesn't use e-mail. Obama, however, is frequently seen with Blackberry in hand.

Additionally, Pearlmutter pointed out that the images used in McCain's campaign -- such as a message about small businesses showing a barber shop with a traditional red and blue poll -- hardly connect to the younger generation.

"Well when you see the Main Street barber shop image, you think of 1950s America -- an entrepreneur, a Silicon Valley guy would definitely make him more attractive," he said.

This One Time, at Band Camp

Glenn Reynolds hears that Obama made a quick three-point shot in front of the troops, but proclaims "that's not so cool."

My high-school friend Steve Proffitt once made a more than full-court shot...

You fuckers are ridiculous.

(via Roy, who has more)

Steinly

Ever-expanding asshole Ben Stein is calling Obama Hitler.

"Powering"

How's FOX News taking Obama's big speech in Germany? The one with the largest ever crowd that has gathered to hear him speak estimated at 100,000 before he even started speaking?

Their home page:



Update: Obama's speech drew over 200,000 people, according to a Berlin police spokesman.

The balcony is closed

Incredible piece from Roger Ebert saying goodbye to his beloved show of 33 years:

Now the time has come to awake from my daydream. That's all history--treasured history, but past and gone, all the same. I remember what Gene said to me in that dressing room before the Carson Show: "Roger, we're a couple of kids from the Midwest. We don't belong here."

And that youtube video is great, too. But watch it after you read Roger's piece, so you make sure you understand that it doesn't reveal a "dark side" between them or something, but rather the reality of two lifelong friends.

Cyber and Control

Super-smart-dude Ed Felten notes Obama's plan to establish a "National Cyber Advisor," and uses the occasion to consider the background of the word (an old Greek word meaning "(roughly) one who guides a boat, such as a pilot of rudder operator").

He notes the ironic switch of meaning when Gibson coined it in Neuromancer to mean the "space" where network group interactions occur:

The odd thing about this usage is that the Internet lacks the kind of central control system that is the subject matter of cybernetics. Gibson knew this — his vision of the Net was decentralized and chaotic — be he liked the term anyway.

Ed goes on to discuss how the meaning of "control" is becoming more and more relevant in the concept of "cyberspace."

On A Rig

John Cole summarizes:

While Obama is speaking to an international audience, McCain will be dodging a hurricane to stand on the symbol of big oil, where he can presumably tell the American people that if we start looking for more oil offshore, in ten years when McCain is 82 we might be able to start producing enough to lower the price of gas a nickel.

Ants win.

Solvency Crisis

Ta-Nehisi asks his commenters to explain a few things about the Fannie Mac and Freddie Mae situation, and I listen in, cuz I don't know shit about that stuff.

It's a pity the death of IndyMac became just a "Schumer To Blame?"-fest instead of an opportunity for American citizens (like me) to learn how our economy is structured.

Reminder

Time Magazine:

It's also unwise to underestimate the hunger of the media for an exciting race. If Obama emerges as a big front-runner, it's a good bet that the press will air more of McCain's attacks.

That's how it works. The article is a good dose of reality from Michael Grunwald.

In politics, anything's possible.

[...]

That doesn't mean that anything's probable. The media will try to preserve the illusion of a toss-up; you'll keep seeing "Obama Leads, But Voters Have Concerns" headlines. But when Democrats are winning blood-red congressional districts in Mississippi and Louisiana, when the Republican president is down to 28 percent, when the economy is tanking and world affairs keep breaking Obama's way, it shouldn't be heresy to recognize that McCain needs an improbable series of breaks. Analysts get paid to analyze, and cable news has airtime to fill, so pundits have an incentive to make politics seem complicated. In the end, though, it's usually pretty simple. Everyone seems to agree that 2008 is a change election. Which of these guys looks like change?

You're Mistaken, You Actually Like It

From an expected upcoming marketing blitz for Vista from Microsoft.



Good luck with that. Customers love to be told that their distaste for a product is because they're ignorant.

Beijing 2008 Preparations

Another awesome set from The Big Picture, this one on preparations in Beijing for the Olympics.


(photo REUTERS/Reinhard Krause)

Why would anyone care what Guliani thinks? Didn't he come in 6th or something?

"We have one president at a time"

What an ego, right?:

"I'm looking forward to seeing what the situation on the ground is," Obama said. "I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense, both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad of, you know, what the most, their biggest concerns are. And I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they've been doing."

Asked if he would have tough talk for the leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama said he was "more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking."

"I think it is very important to recognize that I'm going over there as a U.S. senator. We have one president at a time, so it's the president's job to deliver those messages," Obama said.

All these egotism charges are such hopped up bullshit. If they really objected to "egotism," they'd have a lot more appropriate targets.

Pat's Still Crazy

Pat Buchanan:

Put glasses on him, and Barack could play Malcolm X in the movies.

Wiggle Room

Say what you will about them, but you can do a whole lot with $60 billion of annual revenue.

Whose Side?

The Obama campaign apparently created an iPhone webapp.

But it looks like something's amiss. Here's a screenshot from 5pm ET, July 17th:



That smear ad, "paid for by John McCain 2008," is coming from a Google Ad set on the page. Either this is a fake Obama promo, and in fact a McCain page, or the coder made very bad choices on the kind of ads to include on the page. Or perhaps the ad campaign - or the page itself - has been hijacked?

Mysterious. I'll keep an eye out.

Coverage

Jealous much?

"Blogs for John McCain:

If there was ever any doubt as to the utter lack of fairness of the News Media in covering this campaign, it is about to be swept away. On Barack Obama's upcoming overseas trip, he will be followed around by all three major news network anchors at some point on the trip! Get ready for wall-to-wall nonstop coverage of Obama's every move and prounouncement, in stark contrast to the media's ho-hum coverage of John McCain's overseas trips.

And, to help me end the streak of just posting stuff I think is idiotic, here's digby making great sense:

I would expect the coverage of this trip to be positive, barring some sort of mistake. Clearly all the celebrity journos want to make themselves part of the story and bask in Obama's glow. But they are likely to overdue it and turn it into a sideshow, which may or may not end up being good for Obama in the long run. The downside of them overdoing the fawning is that the right will swing into high gear working the refs and will demand retribution. The boyz and gurlz will feel just terrible about being so unfair.

It would almost always be better to have a serious, professional press corps on trips like this instead of a bunch of preening TV stars. But since we don't have such a thing at least they seem to be using their shallow narcissism to promote the good guys as well as themselves for once. It's the best you can do.

Otherworldly

Gabriel at Ace of Spades is usin' his noodle:

I suspect that we'll look back on this year as the tipping point when the theory of anthropogenic global warming begins to go the way of the dodo.

Yes, I'm sure we will. Let's talk in 2012.

Aside from the mountain of contradictory scientific data, the theory was just too convenient. People want to believe that they are the most important things on the planet. Like the old geocentric model of the universe, anthropogenic global warming places humans at the center of everything.

Yes, climate scientists are like the Catholic Church during the Renaissance.

Days of Yore

Hoffmania, on Obama's $52 million raised in June:

In the 70s, that could by eight bionic men with enough left over for four pretty nice houses on the beach for them to live in.

Tinfoil

I wonder...

Could it be that Bush will start to make some minor steps towards positions that are more aligned with positions that Obama takes, just so the Right can say that Obama is like Bush?

I gotta get off this stuff.

Apple FUD

NYTimes.com:

Customers of Amazon’s new store will be able to start watching any of 40,000 movies and television programs immediately after ordering them because they stream, just like programs on a cable video-on-demand service. That is different from most Internet video stores, like Apple iTunes and the original incarnation of Amazon’s video store, which require users to endure lengthy waits as video files are downloaded to their hard drives.

That's just plain false. Has writer Brad Stone ever used iTunes?

Four Layers of "Tabs"

From a video presentation of the new XBOX 360 Interface...the selected "Game Library" is the 4th subselection on this page:

My Xbox 360 --> Games Library --> Games --> Game Library



And then there are four additional subactions you can do on it. Hmm.

Insanity

I'm really starting to agree:

OK, I can’t take it anymore. The layers of sheer insanity on display at all of these right-wing blogs is really getting me down, to the point where satirizing them becomes nothing more than a joyless, reflexive compulsion. It seems that every time I come up with some ridiculous new way to lampoon these crazy fools, they somehow manage to write something that make Hunter Thompson’s infamous mescaline-and-ether binges look positively tame. Life is horrible.

This mode is starting to kill me. I need more chelicerates on this website.

Democrat

The John McCain Official Blog has a post called "Another Democrat for McCain."

This big "Democrat" switching sides? Michael O'Hanlon, "Democratic defense analyst at the Brookings Institution," and perennial Iraq-is-Going-Swimmingly op-ed writer.

Sunshine

The Poorman's answer to the New Yorker cover:

Now please go play in the sunshine

Change Course

The Official John McCain 2008 blog has brought me more eyerolls than anywhere else. Today:

Obama has made clear that he will never change course on Iraq, no matter the facts on the ground

Right. The McCain Campaign is criticizing Obama for not changing course on Iraq.

Different Covers

Many opinions on the New Yorker cover.

Brad at Sadly, No!, thinks it's good satire.

Well yeah, the fact that a lot of people are completely fucking stupid is a big problem in this country. But that isn’t something that the New Yorker can fix by printing different covers.

To Each

How about this? I won't make fun of you waiting in line to see Bon Jovi, and you don't make fun of iPhone fanatics, k?

At the head of the line at the East 72nd Street entrance were a Staten Island couple, Joe Nielsen, 52, and his wife, Cathy Griffin, 48, who had been there since 7 p.m. Friday, 25 hours before Bon Jovi was supposed to start rocking. A few spots behind them was Melissa Wolfenbarger, 30, a teacher from California who, after getting the group’s frontman, Jon Bon Jovi, to autograph her back in 2005, did what any die-hard fan would do: She had his signature tattooed onto her body.

Ms. Wolfenbarger waited in line with her friend Jennifer Farrell, a Bon Jovi fan who is no less dedicated. “I named my daughter after him,” Ms. Farrell said of her 2-year-old, Alyssa Jovie Farrell.

Ms. Farrell, 31, an administrative assistant from Long Island who said her biggest thrill was getting kissed on the lips by Mr. Bon Jovi as he sang “Bed of Roses” during a 2005 concert in New Jersey, had her father to thank for their choice spots in line. Her father, Mike Sekosky, 58, had arrived at 3 a.m.

More Skills

Obama:

“I said something the other day down in Georgia, and the Republicans jumped on this. I said, you know, absolutely immigrants need to learn English, but we also need to learn foreign languages,” he said Friday.

Obama told the crowd that this is one of the problems with politics today.

“This is an example of some of the problems we get into when somebody attacks you for saying the truth, which is we should want children with more knowledge. We should want our children to have more skills. There’s nothing wrong with that! It’s a good thing,” he said.

Unnerving To Say the Least

Totally fucked story coming from Slashdot:

"Hackers are deluging web users with malware-laden spam claiming that World War III has started following a US invasion of Iran. Security experts warned [yesterday] that spam emails with subject lines including 'Third World War has begun,' '20000 US Soldiers in Iran,' and 'US Army crossed Iran's borders' have been intercepted. The emails contain links to a malicious webpage that displays what appears to be a video player showing the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion."

(apparently the story actually comes from ITNews, which is running really slowly right now)

No More

I love not only John Cole's proposed list of banned phrases for the election season, but also his proposed punishment:

At any rate, the list of bannable terms from early is growing. The following should be banned post election 2008, if at all possible. Anyone who uses them should have their nuts cut out:

1.) flip-flop
2.) throw under the bus
3.) Sister Souljah moment
4.) slap in the face
5.) but how will it play in Scranton? (or whatever city that is supposed to signify middle America).
6.) Middle America
7.) “Elitist,” when what you actually mean is able to read at a fourth grade level or higher
8.) homeland
9.) “He’s comfortable in his own skin”
10. “Would like to have a beer with him.”
11.) practicing partisan politics or practicing politics as usual
12.) Maverick
13.) Ethnic cleansing
14.) “rock star” to refer to anyone not engaged in the actual playing of actual music.
15.) “give them the tools they need.”
16.) “played the x card” (where x = race, gender, whatever)
17.) white working class and “Reagan Democrats,” who now consist of Geraldine Ferraro and the 6 folks running the 400 sockpuppets at NoQuarter
18.) Adding the ‘-gate’ suffix to any scandal (or, as it is most of the time, non-scandals)
19.) “commander in chief” threshold
20.) stab in the back
21.) family values

I was going to say the other day that my eyes are going to be bruised from all the rolling they'll be doing in the next four months.

NYT Materialism Day

Lord I hate the NYTimes lifestyle articles. From today...

Rooms to Stop the Young From Straying
A solution for parents "who don't want their children to roam," just buy them lots of shit. Yeah, the more stuff you buy your kids, the better home life they will have. An impeccable strategy.

“The battle lines are drawn,” Mr. Tobias said. “There are the parents that allow liquor under their roof and the parents that don’t. That’s what we’re up against.” In an era when “everyone’s texting and kids from both public and private schools in a five-town radius know what’s going on,” he added, “it’s very difficult to know every parent — or kid, for that matter.” For parents determined to stay on top of their children’s social lives, a rec room, fitted out with a movie theater, a Ping-Pong table and a video game area, seemed an ideal solution.

Love Your Sunglasses (Should I Know You?)
It's fun to buy expensive stuff, and now sunglasses are expensive, too!

To see for themselves, shoppers can peer into six full-length mirrors around the store, the better to coordinate their eyewear and their entire outfit. This is what appealed to Olivia Munoz, who was scrutinizing her image from head to toe recently while trying on the wares. “I’m beginning to love sunglasses as much as I love shoes and bags and jewelry,” said Ms. Munoz, 21, a student at the University of Mississippi. She added somewhat sheepishly, as if to justify her splurge, “It’s going to be my birthday.”

Don't Be Afraid

I'm sure looking forward to the fact that now that we know that Iran is faking photos to make themselves look all extra tough militarily, that everyone's gonna settle down a bit and slow the ratcheting up all the war talk cuz they're just puffing up their chest like a sage grouse.



Right?

*** Update ***

PZ Meyers makes this point less obtusely than I:

If the right wing wants to fuel more hysteria to incite war with Iran, though, it seems like a mistake on their part to emphasize that one quarter of their weaponry are digital confabulations.

Random Files

Fair enough:

Auntie TUAW's note: we would recommend you wait for the "official release" of the 2.0 firmware; it's not a good idea to go poking around on Apple's servers and download random files for installs.

Parallelism in Journamalism

These stories both came out today, the first at CNN:




...the second at the NYTimes:

Presidential Candidate

McCain's been saying some dumb shit about economics of late.

Kevin Drum calls it McCain's "Grandpa Simpson approach to economics."

Them

And now video.

Really funny, you fuckhead. Killing "them?"

McCain is running as fast I he can towards the politician style of "I don't know much, but I know I love this country."

John McCain: "Maybe that's a way of killing them"

I found it at Eschaton, but this is too good not to requote:

McCain was also asked about an Associated Press report indicating that exports to Iran have increased largely on the basis of cigarette sales, to which he quipped:

McCain's Response: Maybe that's a way of killing them.

Will Get Fooled Again

Aravosis, on Jonah Goldberg's Op-Ed in the LA Times where he calls Obama "the black presidential candidate" and says he want to bring back "slavery":

How many times [do] the Los Angeles Times and New York Times need to cringe at something these conservatives have written before they realize that these guys don't practice journalism, they practice Limbaughism. They're literary shock jocks. Their "columns" are nothing more than political performance art. It's all about being vulgar and getting attention, all at the expense of their victim, their newspaper, and their own credibility.

John Cole, on the same op-ed:

I give up. I can’t keep up with them.

Magic

Kevin Drum:

[W]hat's a Republican to do these days? They're supposed to be fiscal conservatives, which means they have to pretend to love balanced budgets. So McCain does. Raising taxes is, however, verboten by party fiat, which leaves an aspiring GOP president only two choices: (a) reducing spending and (b) magic. Unfortunately for our hero, proposing actual, concrete budget cuts of any substance is political suicide and he knows it. This leaves magic as the only alternative.

I Have Been to Iraq 8 Times

This doesn't even sound like a real human:

SEN. MCCAIN [in a radio interview]: Well, I think you know that I opposed the failed strategy of the Bush administration. I argued for the strategy that is succeeding.

I have been to Iraq 8 times. I know the situation on the ground.

I predicted we would succeed and we are succeeding. And, we are winning. That victory is fragile, it can be reversed.

Sen. Obama opposed the surge. He said it would fail. He still is saying that it would fail.

Now, last Thursday or Friday, it seemed for a while there he was agreeing with the surge, then maybe he’s not. So, I’m glad he’s going to Iraq for the second time. He hasn’t been there in 900 days. I’m glad, for the first time, he’s going to sit down with General Petraeus--for the first time, a sit-down briefing, if you can believe that. And, I hope that he will reach a position.

I don’t know what position, because he’s been all over the map, calling for immediate withdrawals, back in the primaries to now saying you know--so it’s hard to know. I hope that he’ll go over there and get the kind of information he needs that he hasn’t requested in the past...

But, have no doubt what my position was when I called for additional troops, it was a very unpopular thing to do and many people said my campaign was dead and I said I’d rather lose a campaign then lose a war.

He said it would fail, it has succeeded. [The] American people should take notice of that.

So, I’ll see what he has to say when he gets back from his visit to Iraq. And, I’m sure he’ll be impressed with a sit down with one of the greatest generals that America has ever produced, General David Petraeus.

(spoken, so my own paragraph breaks)

Rachel Has Patience

Joe Scarborough's such a dick.

Seitan Tacos

IMG_0963, originally uploaded by cricketheron.

From a place called 100% Natural in Playa Del Carmen

Pentagon: We Will Use You As We Wish

Wow! Maliki tells the US to set a timetable to leave, and the Pentagon says no.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - In a rebuff to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Pentagon said Monday that any timetable for a US withdrawal from Iraq would depend on conditions on the ground there.

It's all out in the open now. The US is saying we have the stronger forces so we are telling you that we are going to keep parts of our Army in your country in order to strategically enforce our interests.

The world is one big chessboard with no borders to this administration.

Agree To vs. Demand

The AP headline read

Iraq says may agree to timetable for U.S. withdrawal

That sounds like the US has proposed leaving, and Iraq is considering agreeing to it. But the article reads:

"Today, we are looking at the necessity of terminating the foreign presence on Iraqi lands and restoring full sovereignty," Maliki told Arab ambassadors in blunt remarks during an official visit to Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.

"One of the two basic topics is either to have a memorandum of understanding for the departure of forces or a memorandum of understanding to set a timetable for the presence of the forces, so that we know (their presence) will end in a specific time."

Let's restate that headline:

Iraq says may demand timetable for U.S. withdrawal

An Excerpt

Jesus' General: We hold these truths to be self-evident:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

Etc.

Well, Ya Know About Crocs?

Nobody knows how McCain plans to balance the budget by the end of his first term, as he now claims he will do.

John Cole presented this quote from the McCain campaign:

The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit.

As quoted in the New York Times, however, McCain believes the perfect way to explain how everything will get better is to just let Crocs be Crocs!

“Five years ago, the outdoor footwear company, Crocs, was started by a couple of entrepreneurs with a great idea, ingenuity and drive,’’ he plans to say, according to excerpts of his speech. “This former small business now employs 600 people in Colorado alone, and sells over 50 percent of its products in 90 countries around the world. Building barriers to Crocs or any American company’s access to foreign markets will have a devastating effect on our economy and jobs, and the prosperity of American families.’’

Alrighty!

Toy

Anger:

The best trained, best equipped army in the history of the world and you thought it was just your fucking toy to play around with, you incompetent half-wits? That these astonishing people were your little bauble? May you be drowned in the shit of history, post-haste. May your every contribution to this world be denied by all right-thinking people everywhere, forever. Happy fucking fourth of July.

Right Underneath

John Cole:

In other words, the transfer of authority to Rove hack Steve Schmidt is a clear sign of where Mr. Straight Talk intends to go with his campaign. It is right there in front of you, mainstream media. Right underneath your nose. When the hit pieces come down from all the “independent” groups, will you make the connection? Or will you just lament that poor John McCain can’t control everyone and everything.

Or will you even notice?

Invisible Candidate

John McCain 2008 Official Blog reprints the Wall Street Journal's July 2 editorial:

Bush's Third Term
We're beginning to understand why Barack Obama keeps protesting so vigorously against the prospect of "George Bush's third term." Maybe he's worried that someone will notice that he's the candidate who's running for it.

Besides my comment of hahahahahahahahaha, I also note that in the whole article, McCain's name is mentioned only once. This whole "invisible candidate" approach is in line with the McCain campaign's overall strategy.

McCain Likes the Bush Veterans

Similarity to Bush? Nah:

...Mr. McCain, responding to Republican concerns that his candidacy was faltering, put Steve Schmidt in charge of day-to-day operations...

Mr. Schmidt is a veteran of President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and he worked closely with Karl Rove, who was Mr. Bush’s political adviser.

Sweet. Let me keep reading.

Mr. Schmidt’s elevation is the latest sign of increasing influence of veterans of Mr. Rove’s campaign efforts in the McCain operation. Nicolle Wallace, who was communications director for Mr. Bush in the 2004 campaign and in his White House, has joined the campaign as a senior adviser, and will travel with Mr. McCain every other week. Greg Jenkins, another veteran of Mr. Rove’s operation, has joined the McCain communications operation.

Mr. Jenkins is a former Fox News producer and a director of Mr. Bush’s presidential advance team that set up political events.

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Jackpot

EA is publishing a new game called "Dead Space," and has a promotional sweepstakes where they're giving away 100 DVDs they apparently watched for inspiration. Not a bad set.

The Dead Space™ team has watched a ton of Horror and Science Fiction films while making Dead Space, and now they want to pass their collection on to you!

[...]

Titles are: Alien, The Thing, Aliens, The Abyss, Blade Runner, Saw, Sunshine, Event Horizon, Alien vs Predator, Evil Dead, Predator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Scanners, Logan's Run, Hostel, eXistenZ, Cube, Pitch Black, Seven, Battlestar Galactica Mini Series, The Running Man, Total Recall, Jeepers Creepers, War of the Worlds (Spielberg), Hellraiser, Planet of the Apes, I-Robot, Soylent Green, The Adromeda Strain, They Live, Metropolis (1926), 12 Monkeys, Serenity, City of Lost Children, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Iron Giant, Descent, Total Recall, Solaris (1972), Slaughterhouse Five (1973), Re-Animator, The Time Machine (1960), Nightmare on Elm Street, Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Friday the 13th, Bad Taste, Dune, Dead Alive, Night of the Living Dead, Pan's Labyrinth, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, Phantasm, The Hills Have Eyes, Basket Case, Le Dernier Combat, Ichi the Killer, Creepshow, The Fog, Halloween, The Orphanage, The Others, Halloween 2, Inferno, Psycho, The Birds, Oldboy, The Audition, 28 Days Later, The Exorcist, Gozu, The Eye, A Tale of Two Sisters, The Changeling, Stephen King's IT, The Omen (1976), Freaks, Haute Tension, The Shining, Deep Rising, Minority Report, Terminator, Suspiria, Exorcist, The Brood, Altered States, Session 9, Jacob's Ladder, Mouth of Madness, The Sixth Sense, Ju-On, House of 1000 Corpses, The Ring, Saw 2, Saw 3, Acacia, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Amityville Horror (1979), Poltergeist

Articulate

ARGGH! Can't stay away from teh internetz. More idiocy EVERYWHERE. The floodgates are really open now.


Could this be the new "Michael Moore is fat?"

Dominic Lawson says Obama is "articulate". And concludes:

Those who actually supported Obama during this [primary] process now divide neatly, if unevenly, into two groups. The first, smaller, group is full of buyer's remorse. The blogosphere is hissing like a catherine wheel with their anger with Obama, obviously, but above all with themselves. The second, much bigger group, continues to buy Obama's story. They argue that everything and anything is justified if it helps to get a Democrat back in the White House; some of them add that "of course" Obama doesn't believe any of the things he is now saying to woo the "redneck states" and that once in the White House he will revert to his "true beliefs".

To this group we must address a simple question. How do you know what Obama really believes in, other than his own destiny – and, of course, his conscience?

This is all so fucking manufactured - and yet I will admit that the great roiling force of this spreading and growing bullshit is so powerful it is somewhat terrifying. Like the early scenes of a zombie movie as you start to realize the madness that is growing under your very nose.

Which is not to say that we're in the "early" stages of a problem, both in the US and in the international results...but that the response to Obama, the shifting of the narrative, is arising so suddenly in all directions. It is so venomous in so many ways and I marvel at the ferocity of the cornered animal that is the entire body of Bush apologists.

FULL OF STUPID

INTERNET IS FULL OF STUPID TODAY - CAN'T SPEAK!

CNN Political Ticker:

(CNN) — Is Obama ditching his signature fist bump?

According to Tuesday's press pool report, the Illinois senator refused to bump fists with a boy as he was touring the Eastside Community Ministry in Zanesville, Ohio.

As the boy outstretched his first, Obama said no and added, "If I start that …"

His voice then trailed off.

---

I was asking for it here, but Tom Kovach at RenewAmerica:

The book was hacked
Beginning in February of this year, until yesterday, I have been working on a book about Bible prophecy and the signs of the End Times. Recently, I foolishly released a preview of my work in a column. Late yesterday evening, 90 pages of book turned into gobbledygook on my computer. Mere coincidence?

---

And, for good measure, a bonus RenewAmerica column from everyone's favorite crazy fucking loon, the one and only nuttier-than-Noonan, Grant Swank:

Obama will persecute evangelicals
B. Hussein Obama has it in for America's evangelicals. That is evident in his anathema of evangelical leader Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family.

Evangelicals stand at the direct opposite of B. Hussein's creed. He is a moral relativist. That is, for B. Hussein there are no moral absolutes.

To state it in other terms, B. Hussein defines morality by "situation ethics." That twosome was quite popular among liberals a few years ago; the term has since faded out as a frequency. However, it means that the specific situation governs the ethic of that situation.

For example, if a female concludes that her situation would be better served by slaying her womb infant, then her ethic is pure in having an abortion. There is no biblical absolute standing in her way.

Consequently, B. Hussein who believes in situation ethics supports killing womb babies. He is a prime celebrity among abortion enthusiasts. He goes so far as to aggressively support post-birth abortion.

Yeah. Obama "aggressively support[s] post-birth abortion."

---

John McCain 2008 - Official Blog:

This past weekend, Barack Obama’s campaign surrogate Gen. Wesley Clark attacked the military service record of John McCain. Despite Barack Obama’s repeated claims that he will be running a different kind of campaign, it is clear that he and his surrogates have failed to deliver.

[...]

Now, after repeated, shameless attacks on John McCain’s military service, Senator Obama has failed to personally repudiate them. Once again, Senator Obama has failed to fulfill his promise of change. Sadly, Senator Obama has seemingly been seduced by the politics as usual, the selfish politics of anything goes.

John McCain wants this campaign to be about the issues – a campaign that focuses on real solutions to the challenges facing our country. Unfortunately, Senator Obama and his campaign surrogates seem unwilling to engage in that conversation.

Really, John? This is your endorsed position on this issue? This is the how you'd like to be understood and remembered?

---

I gotta lay off the internet for a while.

Italics and Flames

You know the 3G iPhones are gonna be speedy, cuz their AT&T logo has both italics and flames.

Ya Think?

Quinnipiac University:

Sen. Joseph Lieberman gets a 45 - 43 percent approval, down from 52 - 35 percent March 27 and his lowest score ever.

"Sen. Lieberman's approval rating has dropped below 50 percent for the first time in 14 years of polling, with nearly two-thirds of Democrats giving him low marks, probably because he is campaigning for Sen. John McCain," Dr. Schwartz said.

I'm more disturbed about the flip side, that 26% of CT Democrats still approve of Lieberman, while he's campaigning for the Republican for President! What does a warmongerer have to do to get thrown out of office around here?

Battle Against

It's this kind of clear and strong writing that makes me love Glenn Greenwald:

One of the primary reasons that blogs emerged over the last seven years was as a reaction to, an attempt to battle against, exactly this narrative which the media propagated and Democratic institutions embraced -- that it is the duty of every Democrat to repudiate and attack their own base; that the truly pernicious elements are on the "Far Left", whose values must be rejected, while the Far Right is entitled to profound respect and accommodation; that "Strength" in National Security is determined by agreement with GOP policies, which is where "the Center" is found; that Seriousness is demonstrated by contempt for the liberal masses; that every Democrat must apologize for any statement over which Republicans feign offense.

Put it on a t-shirt.