Yesterday, I reported on the upcoming demise of a large portion of South Florida's populace at the hands of giant swine. In previous entries, I've pointed out the upcoming invasion of giant rats, as well as the homicidal tendencies of sting rays.

Today, hell has broken loose. The animals are everywhere, sending omens, attacking people and just generally being a nuisance. Nature is pissed. Which, naturally, leaves me asking, "Why?"

What have we done to earn the merciless wrath of Mother Nature? Why has she sent her minions out to send portents of doom, as when the first albino barking deer in recorded history gave birth to the second albino barking deer in recorded history?

And if they're not sending such dire signals, they're attacking us outright. Even beloved Florida governor Charlie Crist is not immune. The good governor is currently nursing a spider bite from the infamous brown recluse. Ever seen a brown recluse victim, ace? It looks like a harmless mosquito bite at first. But after a few days, the area around the bite starts turning purplish, like a bruise, and then black. Finally, the skin starts simply rotting off the bone. Necrosis. Living death. Charlie Crist is part zombie now — or at least he was, before they cut a large chunk out of his leg, to prevent the necrotic growth from spreading.

Currently visiting Israel, Crist said that his nurse was less than enthusiastic. "She said, 'I think you are going to die,' " Crist said. "I said, 'Thanks. That's a great way to start a trip.'"

Ho ho! Good to see the governor can keep a sense of humor, even in the face of turning into a member of the undead. These little brown recluse spiders are a damned horrorshow. Weird that the governor was apparently bitten in Marathon, though. The brown recluse is not native to these lands:

Brown Recluse Range Map
Dark Shaded Area = Brown Recluse Range
Light Shaded Area = Range of other recluse species

In any case, I deeply sympathize with the governor. At one time, I had a fairly mild case of arachnophobia, which stemmed from a time in my young childhood when I was assaulted by a tarantula on the California-Mexico border. After that, I couldn't stand to be around the little eight-legged bastards. I had to have someone else kill them for me when I spotted them indoors. Total fear. And then I moved to Missouri for college. Have another look at that map, ace. In the God-forsaken state of Missouri, where the summers are blistering, the winters are a struggle to survive and fall and spring last five days a piece, the brown recluse spider is about as common as your average garden spider. They are everywhere. I lived in a house in Columbia with a roommate who was something of an amateur horticulturist. Plants all over the house. And that meant bugs. And that meant spiders. Immersion therapy. I learned to overcome my fear of spiders quickly when I had to kill half a dozen of the little hellspawn in my own garage every morning, each one of them capable of turning me into something out of Night of the Living Dead.

But enough of that. I got off on a very lengthy and personal tangent. We were talking about Mother Nature's attacks on the human race. I should point out that some of us are doing our part. In London yesterday, Yoko Ono ate a dog. Take that!

Of course, this all ignores the "whys" of the situation. The most obvious one is that this is all self-defense. NASA reports that we are a mere decade away from permanent, irreversable climate change, a tipping point that will eventually cause catastrophic destruction on a global scale. And what do we do, instead of trying to solve the problem? Why, we go back to the beginning of our abandonment of environmental policy. We actually entertain the notion of a conservative, half-bright actor becoming President of the United States.

My God. Have we truly come full circle? Is the fat really in the fire? Or is there someone out there who takes the upcoming destruction of the Earth seriously enough to implement major, widespread changes in an effort to save us from ourselves? I mean, how many years did I say we have left?

Right, 10. Thanks Al. Hey, Al, by the way...

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After the mean stupidity of the Iraq War Funding Bill, I had to curl up and wallow for a few days. Mea culpa for the lack of posts. And besides, it's really not as bad as I made out.

As far as I'm concerned, the Democratic Party itself can shrivel to the size of its collective cojones. Wither on the vine. Go gently into that good night. Hell, we could stand to see the destruction of either/or political party at this point. Neither of them represents what they're supposed to. The Democrats are not liberals — they're center-left and center-right opportunists who prey on/pray for the ignorance of the electorate to keep them in power. The Republicans, meanwhile, are some sort of unholy alliance of corporo-fascists and religio-crazies, bent on squeezing the last few vapors of blood from the rock of the American Dream, or else doing their best to usher in the Final Days, depending on which wing of the party one talks to. But nevertheless, there are still a few people up on the Hill that I could get behind and not feel like I have to take a shower.

The roll call vote for the Senate in regards to the Iraq Funding Bill included 14 nays, any of whom could, on the surface of that vote, be a decent, God-fearing human being who wants to bring our boys home before one more of them gets his head blown off for no reason at all.

Boxer (D-CA)
Burr (R-NC)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Dodd (D-CT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Obama (D-IL)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

The immediately obvious point is that the Nays include three of the most conservative voices in the Senate — Enzi, Burr and Coburn. Their nay votes came due to their problems with some of the pork in the bill — $17 billion worth — that had nothing to do with the war. Which is all well and good, but the cynic in me says that if this had been a close vote, none of these three would have voted in the negative. Additionally, Obama and Clinton waited until the very last minute to put in their votes, which leaves me wondering whether they would have voted yes if it had been close as well — my gut instinct is to say both of them would have. Clinton can reliably be depended on to do the opportuniwstic thing, and Obama seems to be sinking deeper and deeper into the role of business-as-usual politician, from his previous incarnation as Everything to Everyone, myself included.

The rest of the senators on that list are righteous men and women, any of whom I would be proud to support in 2008. Note that none of them are from my state, including Democrat Bill Nelson. Christ, what a bitch of a situation. I mean, we can reliably depend on Martinez to vote whichever way the GOP apparatchiks tell him to, but Nelson? Then again, when's the last time the Democrats could count on his vote in a contentious ballot? Other than abortion rights, I can't think of a single issue in which Sen. Nelson is reliably Democratic. On some, free trade for example, he's not just in bed with the enemy, he's even brought a riding crop and a ball gag. It's that kinky.

We were speaking of Sen. Obama, though, and how he loses his luster day by day. That includes today, seeing as Obama's universal health care plan is pretty much DOA. Conservative voters are aghast at the idea of universal health care, and liberals have already dismissed Obama's plan as a giveaway to the insurance industry, since it uses state funds to supplement insurance companies, rather than giving them amiss and creating a single-payer system, insurance companies be damned.

Moving over to the House, the war funding bill was considered in two parts. The first added all the pork — and passed 348-73, with 12 abstentions. The second was on funding the war itself. It passed 280-142 with 11 abstentions. Of those 142 brave souls who voted against funding this war, 140 were Democrats. They included my own representative, Ron Klein. Kudos to him. I had been debating running for Congress on a Power to the People ticket if he didn't vote against the war, but I'll hold off now. I'm sure my aborted congressional run would have caused Rep. Klein many sleepless nights.

And enough of politics anyway. There's plenty more going on worth noting. Memorial Weekend in the 305 went off without much of a hitch, just a couple people killed in front of David's Cafe II. Terrible, terrible. I met the son of David's Cafe's owner, Adrian, a couple months ago, hanging out with the young jetset crowd of South Beach. There I was, in Alan Roth's restaurant, O Asian Grill, with Roth and a whole horde of the scions of fabulously, shockingly wealthy Miami families. Roth himself is the grandson of a vice mayor of Miami Beach. I remember being taken by how normal everyone was. Adrian in particular. Sure, there were the occasional lines like "Nah, I'm gonna be in Aspen next week" to remind you of who you were with, but everyone was just congenial, decent people — not at all what you expect among South Beach, especially among the Young and Rich of South Beach. They have a reputation, undeserved apparently, for having the sort of aristocratic mien of the Hellfire Club — crazy, uber-rich 18th Century folks who held wild orgies and got their giggles by tearing through the streets and gang-raping peasant girls. But not Adrian, and not Alan. They seemed like a few of the Good Ones.

In any case, Memorial Weekend revelers weren't the only ones being shot this weekend. Near Montgomery, Ala., an 11 year-old boy shot and killed a 1,060-pound hog. This is true. There is photographic evidence:

Now, the death of a mammoth, seemingly prehistoric, porcine beast would be news in and of itself, but the horrible truth is that this is the third such animal killed in the South in recent years. Back in January, a hunter named William Corsey shot and killed a pig of about equal size. And, in 2004, there was this:

The late, great Hogzilla

Both of the previous kills were in Georgia. It's become clear now that the South, especially Alabama and Georgia, is being overrun by Giant Swine. A new, gargantuan species that perhaps feeds on toxic waste and greed. Soon, the terrible, tusked bastards will spread to Mississippi and, God help us, Florida. That will be the end of us, here in South Florida. We will tolerate many things, including hurricanes, alligators and random shootings in front of places that serve ridiculously good Cuban food, but one thing that the urban populace of South Florida will not be able to stand is a greed-powered giant swine lumbering down Broward Boulevard, uprooting the trees and tossing the Toyota Priuses (Prii?) aside like so many truffles. Can you smell them yet, ace? Nature's closing in. I mentioned some months ago about the giant rat problem in the Keys. And now, from the north come pigs the size of school buses. They'll be everywhere soon, ace, goring the local gentry and rutting in the nightclubs. Not even President Obama's healthcare plan will save us then.

I, for one, welcome our new porcine overlords. (Flee while you can!)

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1) Goodling. She was promised immunity as long as she told the truth. A vicious effort to make sure that every "I don't recall" can be accounted for should now begin, and she should be held accountable if it can be proven that she was lying at any one of the umpteen million times she said "I don't recall" when testifying before Congress today. Of course, given the goddamned jackals that pass for Democrats in the Congress, this will never happen.

2) Bush declassifies intelligence that Osama wanted to form an Iraq in al-Qaeda in 2005. Um ... doesn't this just prove that the Iraq War has created terrorism, rather than fight it? Nice going, George. Good effort. Now, why in the name of all that is decent is this assertion about Osama being played up like some sort of magnificent trump card that Bush has cast at a suddenly mewling, terror-cowed public? This is nothing. This is worse than nothing, it confirms everything the president's critics have said all along. God damn it, I feel like Will Farrell in Zoolander when he points out that all of Ben Stiller's looks are the same. Doesn't anyone else see the obvious? How the hell can I be the only one?

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!

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The Democrats, inexplicably still spineless after winning both houses in Congress in 2006, gave the president everything he wanted in a war spending bill yesterday. The vote hasn't taken place yet, but it's expected to pass. Today, the front of the New York Times looked like this:

Pictures of tragedy and bloodshed, and right next to them, a story on the Democrats' inability to end this meatgrinder horrorshow. With their shameless capitulation to the weakened powers that be, the Democrats have taken partial ownership of this stupidity in the Middle East. It is theirs, now, with all the political and ethical repercussions that entails.

Upon hearing of the Democrats' disgusting moral turpitude last night, after first grinding my teeth a bit, I recalled the scene in The Godfather in which Michael Corleone explains his father's business practices to his fiancee:

MICHAEL: Well, when Johnny was first starting out, he was signed to this personal service contract with a big band leader. And as his career got better and better, he wanted to get out of it. Now, Johnny is my father's godson. And my father went to see this band leader, and he offered him $10,000 to let Johnny go. But the band leader said no. So the next day, my father went to see him; only this time with Luca Brasi. And within an hour, he signed a release, for a certified check for $1,000.

KAY: How'd he do that?

MICHAEL: My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

KAY: What was that?

MICHAEL: Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains -- or his signature -- would be on the contract. ... That's a true story.

Perhaps we've reached that point with the Democratic Congress. Those who voted the Democrats in need to step back and say, "What have they done for us?" The truth is, not that much. All the campaign promises — a minimum wage raise, an end to the Iraq War, congressional ethics reform ... none of it has come to pass. Sure, they've passed a few bills around, but the Republicans have shafted every one, either through the president's veto or the Senate's filibusters or threats of filibusters.

And fine, sure, that's all well and good. That's politics. The great fuck-around in which everything starts to get done but nothing ever does. I understand that.

But what has gotten done? A secret trade deal between Bush and Democratic leaders, giving the president the freedom to enter into whatever bruising corporate-friendly deals he wants, with only minimal concessions to labor and the environment, none of which are apparently actually enforceable.

An immigration reform bill that is nearly identical to the one Bush has touted since his re-election.

And now, a war funding bill that supplies no mandatory timetables, just benchmarks for the Iraqi government that Bush can ignore — and that he most assuredly will.

In other words, we who voted in the new Democratic majority have gotten nothing we were promised. At the same time, Bush has gotten every major policy initiative he has called for since Democrats took control.

It's time to either demand signatures or else splatter some brains. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I have been pragmatic up to this point because I figured that a Democratic congress, even one that included more-moderate voices, would at least be able to protect us from Bush's depravity, even if they couldn't pass progressive legislation. Obviously, they are incapable even of halting Republican policy, much less putting forward their own.

No more. No more support for these backstabbing Judas swine who betray their base with a kiss. We, the people, need to demand accountability. Either the Democrats get onboard with what they profess to be their own policy — including an end to the Iraq War — or absolutely zero support for these scum-sucking, craven bastards in 2008. This is not a simple matter of politics. People — our people — are dying in Iraq, fistfuls of them everyday, for absolutely no reason at all. They are dying for a mistake. And by kowtowing to the blood-drenched fiend in the White House, Congress is now complicit in their deaths. Up until now, I have been an adamant supporter of our elected Democrats because I believed in what they said, and I judged them to be the lesser of two evils. Well, the lesser of two evils is still evil. Fuck them.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Huge speculation about the possibility of Gore entering the race over the last few days. I still haven't ruled it out as a possibility, though there are signs both for and against. The main sign for his stepping into the race is the carefully laid out press events over the past few months. First the movie, now the book and, coming in July, the massive concert to Save The Earth.

Live Earth may be a bit of an exercise in stupidity and self-promotion — after all, it's not as though we need to raise awareness of global climate change — but it should be good at what it does. Which is to say, while everyone's already aware of global climate change, most people aren't thinking too heavily about our former vice president. If Gore jumps into the race, then, it will be after July 7.

And if we here in Florida have our way, that will not leave him much time.

Charlie Crist signed the bill yesterday to move the Florida primary up to January 29. If Gore hops in about a month after Live Earth, that gives him just about five months to run roughshod over Clinton, Obama, Edwards and the other would-be kings of the Democratic primary. Generally speaking, Gore will probably be capable of beating most of them within an inch of their lives after July.

But Gore only seems to reap publicity in short bouts. For example, while the whole conservative media world was tearing Jimmy Carter apart yesterday for having the temerity to suggest that Bush's presidency may be the worst we've seen (hardly the first time that dark possibility has been raised), Gore's speech from yesterday promoting his book went largely unnoticed, which was shocking given that said speech more or less called for Bush's impeachment, and in no uncertain terms called the president a lying, lawbreaking, malicious swine. But then, Gore's book apparently casts Bush in the same light. And why not? The president's lawbreaking, lying and malignant ways are all well-documented matters of public record at this point. The fact that he and his whole motley crew haven't been dragged through the streets of Washington to the Capitol to be impeached, then strapped to a train's cow catcher and ridden down the rails to Crawford can only be explained by a sort of collective spinelessness on the part of Congress. A willful ignorance of the mood of the people, a fear of the unknown.

And Al? Well, Al knows better than that. He's seen impeachment up close. Right, Al?

Yup

So don't worry about Al for now, ace. But keep a check on him as that book stays on the bestseller list and bandfuls of rockstar weirdos sign up to "give something back" "for the children" at the Live Earth event. When all's said and done, Al Gore may be running the presidential campaign of the future — we don't need traditional political campaigns anymore. We need only a series of media events. A movie, a book, a concert, a man, a plan, a canal. Panama.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some quick thoughts on last night's debate —

As with the first GOP debate, I think Huckabee probably gained the most — especially when he took that cheap shot at John Edwards. I mean, really now. Haven't we heard enough about the guy's hair?

And, sure, the audience cheered when Giuliani rebuked Ron Paul for having the temerity to suggest that, you know, maybe the terrorists were angry with us for some reason before they went and flew a couple planes into the World Trade Center. But if that really helped Giuliani, how come in all the online polls on MSNBC and Fox, the voters declared Ron Paul the winner of the debate?

I don't think that cachet will stick — Paul's a bit of a loon, and his libertarian ideas (especially the civil libertarian ones that will gain the approval of a lot of liberals) will sink him once GOP primary voters learn more about the guy. But for now, Ron Paul is the GOP's Mike Gravel. He's that crazy guy that makes the debates worth watching.

All in all, I think Giuliani didn't help himself with his outburst. Sadly for Giuliani, like McCain, his time has past. I think we'll see a serious upswing in Mitt Romney's percentages as the months wear on. One interesting note on this — campaign season has officially begun here in South Florida. This morning, I saw my first presidential campaign commercial. It was for Romney. After the usual platitudes about eviscerating taxes (like GOP donors need any more money in their pockets), the commercial ended with Romney saying "I can't wait to get my hands on Washington." There was a certain gleam in his eye as he said this that freaked me the hell out.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Both of the tidbits in my blog entry from yesterday have gone on to greater depth. For starters, the good Rev. Falwell has gone on to his great "reward." Anything I have to say about him will be covered in the eulogy I wrote on him, which will be in next week's City Link. Check it out then.

As for the other, the idea that World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz's head is on the chopping block, ABC news is now reporting that Wolfowitz will resign this afternoon.

The soon-to-be-shitcanned

Truth to tell, global finance is not my area of expertise. I honestly have no idea how good a job Wolfowitz did at the bank. I do know that, on its surface, the reason he's resigning (which, in Washington terms, is more or less the same as being fired) — that he helped his girlfriend get a better job with a higher salary — seems like an obvious conflict of interest on its surface. And I wouldn't count on Wolfowitz to be able to take on the staggering problem of third-world debt relief. He's not exactly a brilliant guy when it comes to predicting future trends:

"There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
— Wolfowitz, on Iraq, March 27, 2003

"We are treating the Iraqi prisoners extremely well. In fact I think they get good food and shelter and they're free from the horrible commanders they used to work for. I think most of them are much happier, frankly."
— Wolfowitz, March 23, 2003

"I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years."
— Wolfowitz, on Iraq, Feb. 28, 2003, $500 billion and 4-1/2 years ago

Of course, all those incredibly stupid quotes are really just excuses to justify the concept of pre-emptive war that Wolfowitz has long upheld — a concept that sounds uncomfortably like the concept of aggressive war, which was cited at the Nuremburg Trials as the worst crime of the Nazis. Not that I'm comparing Wolfowitz or his cronies to Nazis — they're still not even close on the evil-o-meter — but it does show what sort of horrific things even the most reasonable of people can justify to themselves when they get scared. And I think, in the final summation, that's really always been Wolfowitz's problem. He's a tremendously frightened man.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Rev. Jerry Falwell arrived at Lynchburg General Hospital today around noon after being found unresponsive in his office.

Given that I loathe just about everything this guy stands for, and given his current position, which may involve anything up to and including death, I'll refrain from further comment.

In other breaking news, the White House has announced that "nothing is off the table" when it comes to World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz. Given that this phrase has formerly been used by this administration to offer the possibility of nuking Iran, we can assume that Wolfowitz may be fired in the next couple days — especially given the recent memo that was leaked to the press, in which Wolfowitz said of his detractors at the bank, "If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too." Nice.

More on both these things throughout the day, I'm sure.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Committee today over Sen. Martinez's multiple violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act. I mentioned said violations last month, but this is the first time any serious action has been taken against the senator. "The violations committed by Martinez for Senate are unprecedented in both size and scope,” CREW executive director Melanie Sloan said. “Basically, Mel Martinez broke the law in order to win an election. Now, years later, he is a sitting Senator and the chairman of the Republican National Committee. A failure by the FEC to severely sanction the Martinez for Senate campaign committee will demonstrate that violating the law pays.”

Ouch.

Mel Martinez — your senator and mine, Florida

And where was the senator while CREW was preparing its complaint? Why, at a $1,500-a-plate dinner, of course!

As the chairman of the RNC, it's Martinez's job (you know, his actual job, not that trivial "senator" stuff) to organize fetes like last night's in Chicago, which featured multiple examples of Bush's famed verbal idiocies. But perhaps the most spectacularly asinine thing out of this bloodthirsty monster's mouth was, "I believe that the government ought to trust in the judgement of ordinary citizens." I about fell out of my chair when I read that. Given that the vast majority of this country no longer supports Bush's little imperialist excursion in Iraq, what the hell is he talking about with that quote?

As for Martinez, these violations of the FECA, and CREW's attention to them, may be the thing that finally brings down our do-nothing senator. I predicted a while back that Martinez wouldn't survive re-election and, although I based that on an extremely flimsy premise, it looks like I could be right after all. That's assuming the Democrats can find a viable alternative, of course — hardly a fait accompli.

Of course, it hardly matters to me. I said a long time ago, "With a gun to my head and a right-wing Republican at the trigger, I would still not vote for Mel Martinez," and this slick, cigar-sucking swine hasn't given me any reason to change my mind.

On an entirely different subject, sweet Jesus, anyone catch A.G. A.G.'s testimony before the House yesterday? I was at work, of course, but I Tivoed it. (Yes, I Tivo House Committee hearings. That's how I roll.) He can't remember who compiled the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired, but at the same time, he's sure that Karl Rove didn't do it. WHAT? My head just about exploded watching that. Look, A.G.A.G., you can either not know who did it, or you can know that someone didn't do it, but how is it that you know both? If you know that Rove didn't do it, then ipso facto, you must know who did write the list. Which is it, ya jagoff?

Of course, I don't expect A.G.A.G. to address such inconsistencies. He's beyond that now. Bush has said the man's untouchable, and you could tell by the man's blase attitude that he knew it. He didn't give a damn what Congress had to say, which leads me to one undeniable conclusion — he should be thrown out be force. If Congress doesn't impeach this idiot, tar him, feather him, stick him in a giant slingshot and shoot him back to Texas, it's doing all of us a disservice.

Memo From A.G.A.G.: "Go fuck yourself, Congress. You too, America."

On still another subject, this is my 200th post here at Doomed Generation. I'd give myself a pat on the back, but I really don't deserve one, since the blog's been around for about 400 days. I suppose posting every other day isn't a bad average, but it's hardly the sort of average you can put out and expect to retain a decent readership. So, if you're still reading this, thank you. You rule.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today's New York Times includes a story headlined "The Role of an F.B.I. Informer Draws Praise as Well as Questions About Legitimacy." That story speculates on the fine line between sting and entrapment.

I borrowed that last sentence, the bit about the fine line, from the subhead of a Sept 2, 2006 story in the Washington Post: "FBI Role in Terror Probe Questioned." That story, written by hoary Post reporter Walter Pincus — of recent fame over his outing of Ari Fleischer as one of the Plame leakers — goes through the same reservations as the NY Times article, only in discussing the May 24, 2006 arrest of the Miami 7 in Liberty City for very similar reasons to the New Jersey 6.

And so it goes.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't usually comment on this sort of thing, but y'all read that Paris Hilton get-out-of-jail petition? Written by a fan of hers, one Joshua Capone, it reads in part, "She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives."

Wow. Just how masochistic and self-loathing do you have to be to sign that garbage, much less write it? Paris Hilton gives your life worth? Seriously? Good God. Like I said, I don't talk about celebrity trash all that much (I leave that to the blog of a City Linker who's much more well-informed on the subject), but this just makes my skin crawl.

Judge Michael Sauer, for the good of the nation, don't make Paris Hilton spend 45 days in jail. Make it 45 years. Please. I know it seems harsh, but it's no harsher than three-strike laws that send a man to prison for life for stealing a few Disney videos for his kids. And unlike that case, this one serves a real benefit to society. With Paris locked away behind bars, these brainwashed people who have sacrificed their lives in the vain pursuit of Paris Hilton's mythos can be free to actually do something constructive. Maybe open a nightclub, release an album, start a clothing line, or something.

So come on, Judge Sauer. Do it for the children.

Throw Away The Key

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes, the spirit just doesn't move you to write, even when there's such delicious things to write about. Like the Republican debacle ... er ... debate a few days back, in which all 10 candidates invoked Saint Reagan and Brownback, Huckabee and Tancredo all claimed that they don't believe in evolution.

I really don't understand the hagiography around Reagan. The Reagan Myth nicely illustrates what a horrific turd of a presidency the Reagan administration was. Note the 110 comments after Cherie Miner's piece, many of them adding to Miner's littany of Reagan's misdeeds. But in the end, I guess you can't blame the GOP candidates for comparing themselves to him. What other relatively recent GOP president can they idolize? Nixon? Poppy, the one-termer? Our current Caligula? Clearly, Reagan's the only option. And in a way, even I can agree with it. After all, when Reagan made the mistake of getting us involved in a protracted civil war in the Middle East and got a bunch of Marines killed, he did the smart thing and brought the troops home. But that's neither here nor there, ace, and it hardly makes up for the Rape of the American Dream that is the Reagan legacy.

Hey, speaking of GOP idiocy, remember back in the 1990s when the Republican Congress shit a brick over the Clintons having top fundraisers over to the White House for state functions? Apparently, that's no longer a big deal.

But the best bit about the Queen's visit had to be when the president flubbed his mentioning of the Her Majesty's last visit, accidentally saying "1776" before quickly correcting himself with "1976." He then actually winked at the Queen. Check it out:

And, her "we are not amused" reaction:

Odd that the cable news so breathlessly reported Mickey Rooney's faux pas in kissing the Queen's hand, but failed to mention the wink. In their defense, though, they certainly didn't let Bush's remark go by unnoticed. And actually, it was a pretty funny moment, whether or not the Crowned One agreed.

Of course, the other big news right now is the F-5 tornado out in Kansas. Hellacious. I was living out in Missouri when the town I was in got hit by a much smaller twister, and even that was no fun. The freight train noise, the easy splintering of thick trees, the sheer randomness of the destruction — everything you see those horrified tornadoo survivors talking about on the news — is all true.

Kansas' governor, Democrat Kathleen Sebelius (seriously, Kansas has a Democratic governor. She's pretty popular too.), complained that clean-up was going to be difficult, since the National Guard was mostly over in Iraq, and that further disasters would be, well, disastrous because of that. Out in Washington, Tony Snow snarked, "If you don't request it, you're not going to get it."

Lovely. Except, of course, that Governor Sebelius had mentioned the shortages to the president last year when he visited Topeka. It's business as usual in D. C. The old adage apocryphally attributed to Lenin says it best, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Let me state upfront that I've never set foot on Digg, del.icio.us, or any other massive, user-generated content site. I liken it to walking into a room full of people all screaminig their heads off and trying to shout over them. But a funny thing happened out in Geekland last night.

I'm not quite up on all this l33t haX0r stuff, but apparently, someone posted a way to unlock the encryption on HD-DVDs on Digg.com, allowing people to copy the content on these discs. The site got a cease and desist, and took it down. Then began a scorched earth campaign of user posts, moderator deletes and administrator bannings. One user called it "The L.A. Riots of the Internet."

After a massive popular uprising, in which the aforementioned hack was posted by hundreds of users and tens of thousands more posted stories supporting the posting as a question of "free speech" having nothing to do with intellectual property, one of the site's administrators posted the hack himself, said the site would acquiesce to the will of its users, and commanded whomever was at the other end of the cease and desist order to do their worst.

OK, so, a bunch of meaningless shouting and gnashing of teeth by a bunch of 30-somethings who live in their moms' basements, right?

Not quite. If Digg keeps butting heads with what will eventually become a consortium of every major HD-DVD producer in the country as the companies unite to smite down this upstart the way the RIAA did Napster, this could be the most important Internet freedom debate since the shutting down of that music-sharing site. And just think, if Digg goes down, all those users will have to go to Slashdot or something. Fate worse than death.

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes, it's May 1, and you know what that means, my fellow Americans! Er ... anyone? I'll give you a hint — it's a holiday.

...

...

No, it's not May Day, you freakin' commies. It's Loyalty Day! The holiday got its start back in the 1950s, to serve as a counterpoint to the aforementioned pinko holiday celebrated on the same day. It fell out of favor at about the same time as Joe McCarthy, but President Bush brought it back with an official proclamation on May 1, 2003.

Yes, four years ago today, Bush issued that proclamation. Incidentally, that's the same day that this happened:

How could a suit like this possibly bomb?

So, what with it being Loyalty Day and all, I'll try to refrain from tearing apart the president, his asinine "Mission Accomplished" PR Stunt of four years ago, his breathtaking ineptitude since then, the criminality of his administration, the utter disregard for anything even remotely appearing to be the rule of law, and so on.

I won't get into the Democratic debate of last week, since those people are traitors. I took notes, but that was ultimately pointless since there was no clear winner. Obama spoke haltingly, almost stuttering several times, Richardson looked lost and confused, Hillary did much better than I thought she would, but only Gravel proved memorable — a good thing since noone knew him beforehand.

Lookin' Good, senator

Speaking of Gravel looking good, I think he looked better with the moustache:

Lookin' better, senator

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes! I also won't be talking about the scandal du jour, the D.C. prostitution ring that has ensnared at least one Bush administration official. Of course, I'll mainly be avoiding this story because Great American Sean Hannity has already said anything I could say, and done it better, when he defended prostitution on his show last night. I don't have a link yet, but essentially, Sean said "What if they were really going to this service because they were lonely and needed someone to talk to?" Just astounding. But given that statement, I can certainly understand Sean defending whores, can't you?

Anyway, as I said, this is Loyalty Day, so no more talk of how far we've gone down the rabbithole, or how impossible it is to climb back out again. Besides, here in Florida, we face a far more dangerous menace than traitors, terrorists or Republicans. Yeah, you guessed it, ace — COSTUMED SUPERVILLAINS!!

Just a few weeks ago up in Melbourne, police arrested Captain America when the supposed superhero, while at a bar, cajoled a woman into touching his privates. They also booked this "defender of the American way" on marijuana possession charges, among other crimes. It also turned out that the good captain had a burrito stuffed down his pants. I am not making any of this up.

Now, just yesterday in Daytona Beach, a man in a purple wizard outfit abandoned a toddler at Denny's. No, I'm not making this up either.

I think you see where this is going, ace. We put up with a lot of shit down here in the Dickhead of America, but I'll be damned if we have to fight off costumed supervillains, no matter how petty their crimes. Governor Crist and the Florida state congress need to drop all these suddenly irrelevant issues like property taxes and get on this issue now! Before long, we'll all be either innocent bystanders or else pawns in their nefarious plots of supervillainy.

Then again, this could bring much-needed jobs to the local economy. Anyone ever read Hench? Soon, the exciting, high-powered world of supervillain henchman will be only a phone call away. ... Or at the very least, a phone call, a ride across town while wearing a blindfold and then an oath of unfailing loyalty.

Get on the bus now, ace. Get in at the ground floor. Supervillainy is the new real estate. And like property values, this bubble is sure to burst ... especially if confronted by Bubble Man. Savvy?

Muahahaha!

Ah well. I suppose it's only fitting that we're beset by costumed supervillains on this day of all days, right George?

I

Don't

Know

What

You're

Talking

About

Posted by Dan Sweeney at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)