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You know, I'm a big fan of the guy, but c'mon. This is just gushy. And the dude doesn't look like he can curl 70 pounds in each hand.
Also, I'd like to lay claim to the title of this post as being an Internet first. And we here at First Draft now own that. If you'd like to use it, you owe us. Big.
Who is your hero/heroine?
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Thanks to BlakNo1.
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Tupac H. Christ. Even by WSJ op-ed standards, this is one stupid fucking article.
There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war.
That's because you're a fucking idiot with only three functioning neurons.
Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.
And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.
George W. Bush is Batman? Really? And these people say that we on the left have a hero-worship problem with Obama?
Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?
You conservative dickwads are really grasping at straws, aren't you? Look, fucknugget: black-and-white morality is a fantasy. Thus, it can only exist in fantastical stories. When you try to put things in real-world terms, shit gets fuzzy really fast.
And did you actually see any of these fucking movies? Batman and Spider-Man are constantly agonizing over the morality of their situations. To call these "conservative" movies is just ridiculous. But, then again, ridiculousness is a hallmark of the American right-wing. Also, take a look at this sentence:
Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand.
Again, did you see the same movie I did? Everybody in Gotham City fucking LOVES Batman. There are a bunch of copycat Bat-people running around trying to do the same thing. And George W. Bush isn't vilified for confronting terrorists. It's more likely that he's vilified for failing to capture Osama bin Laden, running around shitting his pants during the worst terrorist attack on American soil, fucking up two wars, destroying the economy, dicking around while a whole city drowned, alienating the rest of the world, and generally being the Worst President Ever.
If Bush actually did something to confront terrorists, I'd be the first one to cheer for him. But that would have required doing the right thing in Afghanistan, and not embarking on the bizarre and wasteful invasion of Iraq. Which, you know, made the whole terrorist problem much, much worse.
Does this douchebag really believe the shit he's spewing?
Fuck this. It's Friday, and it's damn near shot-thirty. All you peeps have a good evening.
No, really, even the liberal New Republic says so:
Reporters are grumbling more and more that the campaign is acting like the Prom Queen. They gripe that it is "arrogant" and "control[ling]," and the campaign's own belief that Obama is poised to make history isn't endearing, either. The press certainly helped Obama get so far so fast; the question is, how far can he get if his campaign alienates them?
Fuck me blind, I thought it would take at least until Obama was actually elected for all the shit that was okay for Bush to become magically out of bounds. Looks like TNR is getting a jump on things.
Via Romenesko.
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Michael asks after this very funny compare and contrast.
No, no questions
Also, anytime my spam filter wants to stop shunting everything straight into "bulk," that'd be awesome.
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Our neighbor who watched the beasties while we were away. I don't think they missed us much:
WHO ARE YOU AGAIN? WHERE'S THAT NICE BOY WHO LET US DO WHATEVER WE WANTED?
I FLUFF MY TAIL IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION!
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To everybody who came out to Mad River Grille last night to the reading. It was a little like my wedding; I kept saying "Oh hiiiiiiiiiii, thank you for coming, so good to see you, what are you up to OMG SO AND SO'S LEAVING I NEED TO GO TELL HIM SOMETHING" and then I looked up and it was four hours later, everyone was gone, I was a little drunk and feeling very guilty for not talking to anybody enough. Actually, it was a lot like my wedding. But seriously, the turnout was awesome, and your support -- for me and this big story about a little newspaper -- is just one of the things about the Internets that knocks me back every time.
Mr. A was too busy gladhanding to be the papparazzo this time, but I am told the handsome and talented Spork who came all the way into town will have pictures eventually. Just a rumor. Based on the GIANT CAMERA he was carrying around.
I continue to heart NY muchly. We're getting LA scheduled for this fall, so once I have a place and time all you West Coast peeps will know it. Because if there's anything better than an evening with the Internet, I don't know what it is.
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The Rising Tide III conference will be held August 22-24 in New Orleans. John Barry, the author of Rising Tide, will be the keynote speaker.
From WaPo:
The pedestrian who was struck by syndicated political columnist and television pundit Robert D. Novak remained in the hospital today but was sitting up in bed and conversing with a relative and social workers.
After the traffic incident yesterday, police misspelled the pedestrian's name and gave the wrong birth year for him. He is 86-year-old Don Clifford Liljenquist, who has no fixed address. Most recently he has been living at the Emery School Shelter on Lincoln Road NE. He declined through a family member to be interviewed.
Activist and NOLA blogger Karen Gadbois has a post up today related to a growing scandal in New Orleans. Now you may be thinking, oh another Katrina scandal, but I ask you ...Please Go read what Karen has to say and Look at the photos of Miss Dolores and you will see why this matters.
Now that you are back I'm going to ask a bit more. Below is a brief description of what this scandal involves but I really hope you will follow and read the links to the important work being done by these NOLA bloggers.
Last month irrregularities were first found by Gadbois in a program called the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership or NOAH. Blogger E at We Could Be Famous blog also began to look into this with a series of posts. (Link - scroll to bottom for first) Both bloggers have had numerous important posts on this and this week WWL took up the story. Jeffrey at Library Chronicles offers this primer on what is involved and has occurred:
Yesterday afternoon, the Mayor escalated the controversy over the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corporation (NOAH) by taking the extraordinary step of holding a press conference to angrily refute the content of the previous evening's WWLTV report which alleged that NOAH may have misused federal community development block grant funds.
The agency's mission is to gut and clean up blighted or flood damaged property belonging to senior and low-income residents. In the report, Lee Zurik takes a look at a list of homes NOAH had been charged with remediating. Zurik's findings are similar to Karen Gadbois' which reveal homes on the list that are owned by shadowy LLCs, or by absentee landlords, or by other city agencies, in other words, various entities other than "seniors and low income residents". Some of the properties on NOAH's the list were not touched. Others appear not to exist at all.
The irregularities first came to light when Karen noticed this house on the city's Imminent Health Threat Demolition list. A brand new sign advertised the fact that it had been gutted by NOAH... just in time to be demolished with a different pool of federal funds provided by FEMA. And so folks started asking questions. E over at We Could Be Famous immediately asked 1) Who are the contractors involved in doing the remediation work? and 2) Can we call them? The results were mixed...
There is much more and I hope you'll read the rest because though this may be a city run program it is using federal funds and thus involves all of us. Nagin may not want attention brought to this fearing it will hurt the city's recovery, which may well be one outcome, but what recovery is there in contractors apparently being paid and work not being done? What recovery was there for Miss Dolores? And how many others? If the Mayor didn't want our attention he should have paid more attention to his program. It is as Gadbois says--No Transparency, No Recovery. Nagin needs to stop complaining and offer that transparency.....Now.
Governor Doyle met with FEMA head David Paulison yesterday:
He says he asked Paulison to have FEMA reimburse local governments up to 90% of their costs for repairing damage to public facilities. FEMA already has agreed to reimburse local governments up to 75% of those expenses.
The governor also asked Paulison to skip inspecting 89 homes still underwater and declare them eligible for buyout.
Yes there are still homes underwater and FEMA will not inspect them until the water recedes and that could take months ......
"I've put up with this for a month. Nobody's done anything," said one homeowner. "This water's going to be here in January. These homes will never be open," said Gene Dischler.
SNIP
After the 1993 floods which also hit the Prairie View community, the water didn't recede until November. "This flood is 500 times worse," said Dischler.
FEMA's top officer in WI "admitted FEMA has never dealt with this situation before."
The new minimum is less than the inflation-adjusted 1997 level of $7.02, and far below the inflation-adjusted level of $10.06 from 40 years ago, according to a Labor Department inflation calculator.
A full-time worker who earned the $2.90-an-hour minimum wage in 1979 earned enough to pull a family of three out of poverty. That same family would fall nearly $4,000 below the poverty threshold today because the minimum wage hasn't kept pace with inflation.
It's like the Universe spit up a Kharma hairball. Hit and Run Novakula gets nabbed by a cyclist and Katrina-never-hurt-an-oil-rig-McCain had to cancel his Drill Drill Drill Tour due to a hurricane and an oil spill.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Let's close it out with Mr. Lennon and let's all shine on...
It's the 40th anniversary of the Office Cubicle this month.
The cubicle celebrates its 40th birthday this month. A party is unlikely.
What's to celebrate? The cubicle office system is one of the most derided realities of modern work life.
True dat...just ask this guy:
Office Worker Goes Absolutely Insane - Watch more free videos
BTW--No cubicles were truly harmed...video is a fake
From The Corner:
McCain Tomorrow [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
He'll be on an oil rig tomorrow, actually, something Rush suggested on his show Monday.
What a wonderful opportunity to make their point. One moment......Following that link is this:
The campaign has been discussing having McCain visit an offshore oil rig during his visit, but it's not certain whether that is still on the agenda. A campaign aide would only say that McCain is planning to do "an event in the region" Thursday.
Storms forecast for the area might cause the rig visit to be canceled and another event substituted.
Ooops and this:
It's also possible that the campaign would not want to have McCain highlighting his support for increased drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf at a time officials are dealing with a spill of an estimated 9,000 barrels of diesel fuel into the Mississippi River.
More on that oil spill here
And at the Times Picayune
UPDATE: Apparently now the whole trip to NOLA is canceled:
“The meeting with Governor Jindal has been postponed and we are cancelling the trip to the rig due to weather," said spokesman MIchael Goldfarb.
McCain will now fly from Pennsylvania to Ohio. He had originally planned to fly tonight from Pennsylvania to New Orleans to be staged there for morning departure to the rig.
No, really. Optimistic Freeper is optimistic:
We’ll have to wait and see. But I think McCain will win bigger than the polls are showing right now.
DOGPILE!
That depends on who makes the least number of serious mistakes. Obama is capable of campaigning in 57 states, while McCAin can have a public attack of apoplexy.---
Fine. McCain wins. McCain pushes for and gets amnesty.
Destroys America and the GOP. Great win.
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I think almost anyone but that jackass McCain could blow Obama out of the water. But with McCain as the candidate, it’s going to be a damned close race to the bottom, to see which of them the voters will dislike more next November.
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Gee, I’d like to think that McCain could win. But I doubt it. The electorate has changed. We live in an age of narcissism. This is the most self-indulgent generation in history. They want it and they want it now and witout effort. The Dalai Bama will give them all without any effort at all.
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No rational person would trust McCain’s utterances regarding SCOTUS nominees. And the islamofascist thing is getting old, given the crap that’s going down here in the USA. Not to imply it is not a danger. It is. But as long as Al-Qaida and the Taliban have safe havens, nothing will change. Americans will just keep dying to maintain something less than a stalemate.
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McCain is severely underperforming Bush, consistently behind in OH, CO, VA, NM, IA, and NV in poll after poll. Right now he looks like he would be lucky to get about 230 EVs. Talk of a landslide is very premature. Even in PA, which all Freepers thought was a lost cause for Obama after the bitter comments, McCain is behind by double digits.
Let's wait until he pulls even in the polls, or at least in one poll.
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Meeting the needs of people without cars or those with special needs, such as the disabled and poor, is especially important, White said. "It really is an Achilles' heel in local emergency plans and response capabilities," he said.
Three years later and I guess much of America is in the same boat as metro New Orleans was in 8/05....though they did evacuate 90% of their population.
Bush when supposedly unplugged:
It is uncertain, there’s no question about it.
Wall Street got drunk, it got drunk, (it’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off your tv cameras.) It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up, and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments.
Flip that Prop.....
And now we got a housing issue, not in Houston, and evidently, not in Dallas, because Laura was over there trying to buy a house today. (laugher.. Crawford!)
I like Crawford, unfortunately after eight years of asking her to sacrifice, I’m now no longer the decision maker. She’ll be deciding, thanks for the suggestion! I suggest you don’t yell it out when she’s here. Later, telling her “Hey honey, we’ve been on government pay now for 14 years... so go slow!"
It’s uh.. caused me to lose my train of thought. Anyway.
IMO. Robert Novak hit a pedestrian and a cyclist chased him down....
The bicyclist was David Bono, a partner at Harkins Cunningham, who was on his usual bike commute to work at 1700 K St. N.W. when he saw the accident happen.
As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said a "black Corvette convertible with top closed plowed into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed onto the windshield.”
Bono said the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a "Walk" signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and then Novak made a right into the service lane of K Street. “The car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said.
He chased Novak half a block down K St., finally caught up with him and then put his bike in front of the car to block him and called 911. Traffic immediately backed up, horns blared, and commuters finally went into reverse to allow Novak to pull over.
Novak said he didn't see the pedestrian....Riiiiight
I'm just gonna mail them a copy of my book. I kept starting to write a response, something about how refreshing it is to have employers who don't view lying to you as "Tuesday," or who don't openly steal from the company and then patronize you when you get pissed about it, something about how awesome that is, but I keep getting distracted by having said it a thousand times already.
Plus "Fire the fucking consultants and burn the focus group reports and turn your fucking police scanners back on" is such an uncivil thing to say.
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Awww. Poor Huggy Bear. He's jealous of all the press attention that Obama has been getting. Well, be careful, national media. Hell hath no fury like McCain scorned--or even mildly perturbed. Just ask his current wife, who McCain called a "cunt" in public.
But hell, he must be rubbing off on his advisers.
Mr. McCain’s comments were mild compared with the bleak mood and frustration on the part of his advisers, who have taken to referring to Mr. Obama sarcastically as “The One” and railing against the large amount of coverage Mr. Obama is receiving compared with Mr. McCain.
“There is nothing you can do about it,” said an acerbic Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, while standing at the back of a modest crowd assembled to hear Mr. McCain speak at a picnic in South Portland, Me. “ ‘The One’ went to Europe and homage must be paid.”
Whaaa! Lookatmelookatmelookatme!
But wait! Maybe he can still rally his media base! Nothing brings people together like a shared sense of hardship, right?
Late last night, the McCain campaign kept it up when aides handed out luggage tags to the traveling press that read “McCain Press Corps: JV Squad, ‘Left Behind to Report in America.’ ” The words were translated into French on the opposite side.
Ooooooh. Crafty. For a fucking eighth-grader, you fucking dipshits. Also, why does the McCain campaign hate America? Isn't reporting from The Greatest Country Ever In The Universe the bestest thing ever?
Finally, check out this stunning strategy.
Mr. McCain’s strategy during Mr. Obama’s weeklong tour of Kabul, Baghdad, London, Paris and Berlin is to hit at Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as too green to be commander-in-chief — he has had “no military experience whatsoever,” Mr. McCain told reporters
No military experience makes for a bad commander-in-chief, huh? I see. Could you please inform the following two gentlemen that they were terrible presidents, then?
It's not like either of those two guys have memorials in Washington, D.C. or anything. Nope. That's what a lack of military experience will get you.
Such as being in the airport, and having to watch "American Morning." Kill me now. We've had Glenn Beck on, to comment on the Middle East peace situation and Obama's meeting with Abbas, and for about two minutes he was given uninterrupted access to foam about how "you don't meet with people who want to kill you. Hezbollah is evil. Al-Qaeda is evil. You don't negotiate with evil." He continued in this vein for a while, then said the Iranians were running the West Bank and wanted to "run all the Jews into the sea and kill them." Who would want to negotiate with people like that, he asked. Who indeed.
Meanwhile our lovely hostess, who had very nice hair, just stood there in front of her monitor of Beck talking, saying absolutely zip. No question, no challenge, no "you are fucking crazy and have no idea what you're talking about," nothing.
The Internet is killing journalism, every day, all the time. Bloggers, writing about stuff online! Anyone can do it! Why, they might actually be wrong about stuff, and there's no fact checkers! No standards!
If I don't make it to NY tonight, it'll be because I'm in the airport infirmary after putting my fist through a wall TV.
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You'll probably get a kick out of this.
I have a dear friend who just told me that some schmuck at work has started harassing her. You know, in the sexual way.
Now, that's fucking stupid enough, but it gets dumber. He's a manager (not directly her boss, but a manager).
Okay, that's really amping up the stupid. But wait! It goes to eleven:
My friend is the human resources rep.
Now, dear readers, we have entered the realm of epic, epic fail.
Or, in my friend's words:
Honest to god, I thought people knew better than that. Or at least, if you wanna harass somebody, maybe you choose someone besides the human resource rep?
Yeah, you'd think.
So, do any of you have any similar stories to share? Of harassment, or epic fail, or both? Leave 'em in the comments.
I think we need a site category for "general dumbassery" and "get off my lawn:"
Johnny Depp once had "Winona Forever" tattooed on his shoulder but changed it to "Wino Forever" when his relationship with Winona Ryder turned out to last somewhat short of "forever." Angelina Jolie once sported the name "Billy Bob," for Billy Bob Thornton, but, since she began a relationship with Brad Pitt, has had it replaced with the global coordinates of her children's birthplaces. She is also emblazoned with the legend "Know Your Rights." The British writer Simon Mills likens that to a sign hung in small-claims court.David Beckham has turned his body into a billboard of Hebrew, Chinese and Hindi characters, not to mention a semi-nude representation of his wife. Victoria Beckham, the aforementioned semi-nude, is graffitied with Roman numerals and Hebrew lettering. As for the conspicuously tattooed Amy Winehouse, her lyrics bespeak an intelligence that someday -- if she has a someday -- will cause her to wonder why she never gave that day a thought.
Celebrities! Getting tattoos of which Richard Cohen does not approve! Good Lord, whatever shall we do!
But wait, it's not just Richard wanting to imagine Angelina Jolie's gloriously demarcated body and David Beckham's unbelievably sculpted ass (drifts off into happy daydream on both counts). He's got a larger issue to explore:
The permanence of the moment -- the conviction that now is forever -- explains what has happened to the American economy. We are, as a people, deeply in debt. We are, as a nation, deeply in debt. The average American household owes more than its yearly income. We save almost nothing (0.4 percent of disposable income) and spend almost everything (99.6 percent of disposable income) in the hope that tomorrow will be a lot like today. We bought homes we could not afford and took out mortgages we could not pay and whipped out the plastic on everything else. Debts would be due in the future, but, with any luck, the future would remain in the future.Here and there the occasional scold warned that all this was unsustainable. Social Security is underfunded. The government ought to -- just occasionally -- balance its books. But for a long time, the unsustainable seemed sustainable. The immutable rules were mutable. Virtually the entire political establishment insisted that tomorrow would never come. Republicans joined with Democrats in never calling in a loan. Who says bipartisanship is dead? Not when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility.
Wait ... what? We're in debt because Angelina Jolie has hot tattoos? I know, I know, metaphor, but ... shitty metaphor, okay?
Back in the olden days, tattoos MEANT SOMETHING:
I recall a tiny scandal of some years back when it was alleged that George Shultz, then secretary of state, had a tattoo of a tiger on the nether reaches of his body. This was credible because Shultz had gone to Princeton, where such tattooing was once customary for undergrads, although not, I hope, for the faculty. (I am thinking now of Einstein.) I also know a Navy man who had a bicep done in World War II, not that it stopped him from becoming executive editor of The Post. I withhold his name out of consideration for his family.But the tattoos of today are not minor affairs or miniatures placed on the body where only an intimate or an internist would see them. Today's are gargantuan, inevitably tacky, gauche and ugly. They bear little relationship to the skin that they're on. They don't represent an indelible experience or membership in some sort of group but an assertion that today's whim will be tomorrow's joy.
You know, I really hate selfish nostalgia. Really, really, really hate it. The good old days always sucked for somebody, you were never as awesome as you think you were (and the people who don't go around yelling about how awesome they are were more awesome than they know), and on balance, stuff now sucks about as much as it's ever sucked. I'm not happy about global warming and gas prices and clothes that only last one season but I'm crazy about the Internet and that my hypothetical children will be able to marry whoever they like. We're all doing the best we can.
I have decades' worth of photos of me wearing clothes that now look like costumes. My hair has been long and then longer and then short. My lapels have been wide, then wider, then narrow. I have written awful columns I once thought were brilliant and embraced ideas I now think are foolish. Nothing is forever.
So, wait. Is impermanence bad, then, or good? I thought we were saying Brangelina needed to stop inking and start thinking? WTF?
Jesus, the entire commentary: remember back when you were young, and you didn't suck? I swear, some of these guys, I just want to send them a Hallmark or something: IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO STOP BEING A GINORMOUS DOUCHEBAG. It's like they think there was a timestamp on being awesome, and now it's all over, so might as well make it the fault of the world, time itself, or people today who just aren't as great as they were in their distant youth. This kind of excuse-making drives me crazy. Once and for all, Richard, if you're not who you wanted to be when you grew up, last I checked you were still breathing, so quit making excuses for why you suck and try not sucking for a while.
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Check out this new t-shirt from Dirty Coast
America's reaction to the deflation of the housing/credit bubble, and to the Bush Administration and the Federal Reserve's attempts to sustain the economy by eviscerating the dollar's value (and freeing the inflation genie) has been, essentially: Gas Prices are TOO HIGH because environmentalists won't let us drill more!
While your tax dollars are bailing out reckless Wall St. firms and providing an unlimited backstop to cover Freddie's fannie, the talking heads are telling you to direct your anger at those who ... oppose oil drilling!
It's madness. It's blind madness.
I'm a big fan of the Canadian TV show "Holmes on Homes." Now Mike Holmes, the "home-remediation superhero," is in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward for the summer:
"Make It Right, " in fact, is both Holmes' personal (and personally trademarked) motto as well as the reason for his summer-long job-site residency in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward.
When Brad Pitt announced his Make It Right Foundation's efforts to restore housing in the Lower 9th, Holmes' people called to inquire about the organization's use of the slogan, which is, after all, tattooed on Holmes' brawny right gun.
"We heard of the Make it Right Foundation coming out, with Brad Pitt, " said Holmes, before work commenced on a recent morning. "We were excited about it and we wanted to let them know we had a trademark on that. 'What are your intentions?' It was communication. It wasn't, 'You can't use it, ' or 'We're suing.' I would never do that.
"I wanted to get to know what they were doing here. So we started communicating to the point where I was so impressed with Brad Pitt himself . . . It was his idea, it was his push, it was his own time and actually some of his own money.
"We said, 'Well, we can help.' That's what started this."
The plan is to build one of the Pitt group's sustainable green homes from scratch, and oversee the construction of two others. A two-hour TV special and several hour-long "Holmes on Homes" episodes will be shot at the same time (stateside air dates currently uncertain).
But by sending their biggest stars across the globe to interview Obama, ABC, CBS and NBC have reinforced the notion that the Democrat is getting an easy ride.
A reply in pictoral form:
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Oh for fuck's sake, Harold Ford:
I only caught a bit of the Great Orange Satan/Harold Ford lunchtime discussion at Netroots Nation, but at one point he was chastizing all of us dirty fucking hippies for wasting time worrying about inconsequential things like FISA when people in the country were worried about their jobs, gas prices, health care, etc.
A corollary to the anti-intellectual argument of the past half-century has been the idea that only pussies care about our civil liberties, because they can afford to: Chardonnay futures are never going to crash, and the French will just keep sending us their Brie in order to make us gay. "You just give a fuck about our Constitution because you're all employed and shit, probably at a university full of liberals" is a lameass deflection and a way to try to make people who, last I read our "what do you do for a living" thread here, come from all over and got here a million differen ways, feel bad for raising an uncomfortable question.
Political attention is not a bowl of sugar. I am perfectly capable of figuring out that I do not want my phone illegally tapped and then in the next breath getting pissed off because it cost 45 bucks to fill up the Saturn of Love on Saturday. There's not room for only one issue, this isn't the newspaper where you're making space decisions, this is the inside of your head and pace Mr. Conan Doyle, but it's not an attic, it does expand. You can fit FISA and the shit economy in there at the same time and be angry about both.
That's not what Ford is actually saying, though. What he's actually saying is something along the lines of "Oh yeah, what about THIS?!" and if it wasn't the economy, it'd be the war, or anything, really, in order to distract from the fact that he and his pals were on the wrong side of the issue, and so have to make it out like we suck for even giving a shit about how wrong they were.
Schmuck.
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Before the flood and after the flood: That is the demarcation that defines life in Cedar Rapids today. Much of what existed before the river swelled 20 feet above flood stage is gone for good. Cedar Rapids' citizens are gradually abandoning the idea that their city will ever be the same.More than 2,000 homes in the flood plain likely will never be rebuilt. The Summit View mobile home park on the west side of town is one of several swelling with flood refugees who are moving in, probably for good.
A district of warehouses, offices and small manufacturers along the riverbank likely will lose many of the 818 businesses that flooded. A fragile economic revival, rare for a rural Midwestern city the size of Cedar Rapids (population 120,000), is at risk.
And all the while, Cedar Rapids knows that it will be competing for state and federal funds with dozens of other Iowa towns and cities that also were flooded.
The wait for information unnerves homeowners. Debbie Benson spent a hot morning last week tearing down walls and removing debris from her 88-year-old mother's home, which flooded up to the second floor.
"Nobody can move back in here," said Benson, waving her arm at a neighborhood in which each house is fronted by a parkway overflowing with waterlogged furniture, demolished plaster, toys, appliances and the detritus of life.
Frustration mounts
Flooded residents are complaining that information about buyouts and relief programs is slow in coming. Across the street from Benson, a neighbor has spray-painted across the siding of his home his frustration at the deliberate progress: "To: Cedar Rapids City Council & Mayor: Let us Move On."
The neighbor scrawled out other beefs too, against the gawkers and looters who followed the receding waters.
"This is Still My Home. Stay Out," was scrawled across the front of his screened-in porch. And, on the garage door: "Where's the Police When You Need Them?"
At times, crowds of flood tourists were so large that residents could not get to the parkways to dump the ruined contents of their homes.
A few nights ago, looters stripped parts from a sports car that sat in the neighbor's garage—perhaps prompting the spray-painting spree.
To all the ports of call and all the ships at sea: AMERICA IS UNMERCIFULLY FUCKED, PLEASE SEND SHOVELS.
A.
To everyone I've done this to about Galactica.
Imagine, for example, that you are at a party. Someone says, "OMG, have you seen Firefly?" And then you say, "Yeah, I watched it. I thought it was pretty-" and they're already off and running, talking about how great it was, and then other people come over, and they all circle jerk about how fantastic the show is and OMG LETS QUOTE LINES AND SING VERSE AFTER VERSE OF THAT SONG ABOUT JAYNE BEING A HERO BECAUSE UR NOT A TROO FAN UNLESS YOU HAVE IT MEMORIZED!!!11!!!1! And you're kind of like, "Yeah, um, it's a good show," but now you're subjected to endless fangurl/boi squeeing.Alternately, having not seen it, when they say, "OMG, have you seen Firefly," and you said, "No, I haven't, I'm really not intere-" and they're off and running with "OMG YOU HAVE TO SEE IT I WILL LOAN YOU MY DVDS IF YOU SWEAR ON A STACK OF BIBLES YOU WILL TREAT THEM BETTER THAN YOUR OWN CHILDREN." And you're kind of like, "I have lived my life this long without seeing it and feel no gaping void in my soul, so thanks, but no thanks."
Because I get it. I do. This is how I feel about the Beatles, The Sopranos, and Jesus.
A.
Obama speaks to the troops. Racist Freepi are racist:
What’s MOST noticeable in the picture...You mean the larger than normal number of black troops or the pissed off expressions everone's wearing?
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I don’t mean this derogatory but the composition looks like the kitchen staff. Mr. Obama...Watch out for tomatoes!!!
Well, as long as you don't MEAN it that way ...
I'd have to agree with you. I'm sure these fine soldiers would much rather be preparing food for their fellow troops.
A.
to First Draft
