Category: Uncategorized

« President Gore spoke today ». The President compared the wiretapping of Martin Luther King to the broad surveillance now imposed on Americans by the Boy Emperor: ‘Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt…

Today: « Visit. Remember. Think. »

With the crush of having three graduate courses which have four months worth of work squeezed into just over a month, I don’t have much time for blogging. But this three-day weekend is helping me out. Grad school is intense, with lots of tedious work and pretentious snarkery, but I still have straight As and…

We went to see Brokeback Mountain last weekend. It was … all the superlatives that have been said about it: beautiful, moving, heartbreaking, terrific performances, lived up to the hype, etc. etc. etc. I was a trifle detached about it, however, I have to admit. See, I’m really sick of the American macho man who…

Added to the blogroll tonight: « Knottyboy », aka I Bet After Sex He Smokes a Ham. All the way from Etna, Wyoming, ladies and gentlemen. A sample: ‘I saw it. After months of hoopla I saw it…Brokeback Mountain. Now don’t get me wrong, the sexually charged scenes were intense, raw and beautiful. And Ang Lee did…

Apparently, one of the words to make the annual Lake Superior State Banished Words List is “blog” (and, according to the list, all of “its variations, including blogger, blogged, blogging, blogosphere”). The reasoning behind the banishment is unclear — except that, again according to the list, “[m]any who nominated it were unsure of the meaning,”…

« Impeachment. Removal. Treason Trial. Jail. Now. ».

It’s been a long month ….. working on various projects at the library, including a set of pages about the 2005 election cycle, fighting asthma, hibernating with the onset of what was an earlier onslaught of winter weather than usual. Steve has been fighting asthma and bronchitis, and he’s been snowed under with a heavy…

« Meet George W. Bush »; he can’t catch a break, even from « an old comic book character ». Now, « meet Deborah Davis ». And « meet Al-Jazeera ». And finally, « meet Frank Rich », who sums it all up rather nicely.

Joining my rather long blogroll is a fascinating read: « Rational Revolution ». Highly recommended. Check it out.

“How amazing is it that we live in an empire that impeaches presidents over legal consensual sex acts but not over illegal wars which kill hundreds of thousands of people?” Just keep piling up « the evidence » baby, maybe we’ll have an impeachment yet: ‘Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World…

Wow. Winter’s back. And it’s already Thanksgiving! Where did the year go?

“… it’s impeachment time and then let’s replace the dipsticks with a bipartisan McCain and Murtha combination, acknowledging the even division in the electorate.” Everybody needs to take note of this rather extraordinary thing that has happened: the Iraqi government that our Empire installed has called for our legions to be withdrawn and declared that…

I love this! ‘… I thought he sought the privacy of rain, the one time no one was likely to be out and he was left to the intimacy of drops touching every leaf and tree in the woods and the easy muttering of drip and runoff, the shine of pools behind grass dams. He…

Comments are working again, thank goodness. Fire away.

Commenting is broken at the moment. Something in the CSS of the new skin. Will be back later today.

“The fact that government is secretly tracking my life and sharing that information with private corporations in a completely unaccountable way shows me that America has crossed over into a fascist twilight of sorts.” « Here’s » something interesting that needs to be more widely read than it will be: ‘The FBI now issues more than 30,000…

Dear UM Undergraduates, I’ve accepted that it’s part of the social landscape now for you to walk into a wing of a library that is supposed to be used for study and instead use it as an open-air forum for your cell phone conversations, and I’ve accepted that some of you don’t care what you…

From our « Clueless Department »: ‘Delta Air Lines Inc. will likely ask its pilots union to extend an agreement to recall retired pilots to prevent staffing shortages as it ambitiously expands its international service while operating under bankruptcy protection, chief executive Gerald Grinstein said Tuesday. Grinstein made the comments after a news conference set up to…

“These weren’t the works of psychopaths — they were people fighting against something intolerable that many of us know is there, but hasn’t been named yet.” « The Kinder, Gentler American Empire »: ‘… it’s a fairly powerful event to find a decent-sized book that does nothing but articulate a series of truths about the American Life…

“As with most of the Mayberry Machiavellians’ schemes, this is yet another one that is coming unraveled.” Great national hero and former darling of the fascists, Pat Tillman, has, gasp the horror, been « outed as a Noam Chomsky lover » — and boy is Ann Coulter ever pissed: ‘“I don’t believe it,” seethed Ann Coulter. Her…

“I wanna go supersonic before I die and time’s a-wastin’!” Finally, « some visionary thinking », which has been in major short supply here in the 21st century: ‘Barely two years since the last Concordes were retired, Airbus, the European aircraft consortium, is looking at plans for a new generation of supersonic passenger jets. The manufacturer, in…

Dear Fascist Michigan Voters-For-Prop-2: « Screw. You. »: ‘A Michigan judge ruled on Tuesday that a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage does not prevent the state from offering health insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of state workers. Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk said health care benefits are benefits of employment, not marriage. Twenty-two same-sex couples…

« Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl = Despicable Low Lifes »: ‘Federal troops aren’t the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions’ legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had…

« Bill Maher has a message for the Failed Boy Emperor »: ‘You’ve performed so poorly I’m surprised that you haven’t given yourself a medal. You’re a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we’ve lost…

‘I’ll send my sons if he sends his daughters. Put those two drunk bitches on a plane and let them go fight. At least I know my sons would be getting some on the way.’ —Comedian Damon Wayans, quoted by the New York Daily News, on the conditions for the Emperor to send Wayans’ sons…

I think Cornel West « perfectly sums up the state of the Empire »: ‘What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: ‘You are on your own’. Well, they really were on their own for five…

In among all of the commentary and images over the past few days about Katrina, I’ve noticed a recurring strain along the following lines: the people who remained in New Orleans during and after the hurricane were too stupid, lazy, or both to leave; and nobody who lived in a place like New Orleans (either…

On top of all the shameful and outrageous things we’ve seen this week, comes « this »: ‘House Speaker Dennis Hastert dropped a bombshell on flood-ravaged New Orleans on Thursday by suggesting that it isn’t sensible to rebuild the city. “It doesn’t make sense to me,” Hastert told the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago in editions published…

My friend phoned late last night (Wednesday) — he and his dog got out of New Orleans okay. Here is a list of « FEMA-approved relief organizations » if you are interested in donating to the effort to save the glorious city of New Orleans, which from the looks of things is descending into unimaginable…

I have a dear and old friend who lives in New Orleans. He has lived in the French Quarter for the past few years. He loves New Orleans, and he has always sounded profoundly at home there. I have never had the fortune of visiting, but his stories about being there have always made the…

« Oops! Our Bad. »: ‘The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad. The United States no longer…

Looks like the undergrads are starting to stream back into town … a sure sign summer is coming to an end after the zenith (if you can term it that) of Art Fair. No tidal wave yet — I walked home from campus this evening and the neighborhoods around East University and Packard are still…

    « 30-Jul-05: Burns Park Beagle ».

« Just another day in Florida »: ‘A mobile home belonging to a gay couple was torched and an offensive epithet was spray-painted on the front steps, authorities said. Paul Day, 25, and Christopher Robertson, 23, returned home from errands Monday to find their house in Kings Manor Mobile Home Park in Lakeland burned and the words…

Those of you who voted for the Fascists in the last election need to understand that a vote for Bush was a vote for « this »: ‘In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon,…

As always, it’s smell-a-rat time; « what are the Mayberry Machiavellis trying to hide THIS time? »; ‘Citing privacy and precedent, the Bush administration indicated Sunday it does not intend to release all memos and other documents written by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts when he worked for two Republican presidents. … Fred D. Thompson, the former…

Asquared AirBeagle is back … now powered by WordPress, which does some truly awesome things, such as the weather report you see in the sidebar and the new ‘Subscribe to Comments’ feature, which allows you, the commentor, to receive notification if someone replies to your comment. Cool beans. I also added PhotoStack to handle the…

I fixed a few things and added some nifty features (WordPress is wonderful), so if you’ve had troubles reading or commenting on anything the last week or so, try again. You can now subscribe to comment threads; you’ll get an e-mail if someone replies to a comment you leave here. Thanks for reading!

Awwwww.

Excuse me, but I’m angry. God damn the Emperor. Damn him to hell:     « More »

While we’re all tied up in knots over suicidal nuts with explosives who kill 50 people at a time, « somebody else is talking about nuking millions of Americans »: ‘China is willing to use nuclear weapons against the United States if it is attacked in a conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said last…

It simply doesn’t get any more clichéd than « this »: ‘Victor Edward Willis, the original policeman and lead singer from the Village People, had a chance to find out firsthand this week after he was arrested when police discovered a gun and drugs in his car during a traffic stop in Daly City, California. Willis was…

I imported the old entries successfully from TextPattern, but I’ve lost a few trackbacks and comments. If yours was one of them, I do apologize. And I’m working on the link thing. Like the new look?

Textpattern is … causing me some frustrations lately. So I’m switching to « WordPress ». Things will be very higgledy-piggledy for a little while. Thanks for bearing with me. Links will be back as soon as possible.

Awwwww.

There’s « wickedness afoot in God’s country ». Go. Sign the petition.

Yep, there was hail, albeit briefly. That thunderstorm we had this evening around 5.00 lasted about 45 minutes or so and was quite a fierce one. I stood in the entryway of Hatcher for about ten minutes and the rain disspiated for about ten minutes … then the real storm let loose, with major lightning,…

Me? I’m good. Survived the first two weeks of grad school, albeit with plenty of pain. Looks like I’ll survive the rest too, so it’s not been a bad week. Today: Hail.