Saturday, January 30, 2010

They Got Nuthin'

"Yesterday I said that the GOP remains just as intellectually bankrupt and unimaginative as ever, but I need to amend that in light of Pence’s comments. If possible, the GOP has somehow managed to become even worse than it was in previous years. How else can you explain the desperate bid to reframe tax credits for small business as a job-killing measure? It is tax credits similar to these that the Republicans normally advocate as a matter of course, and it was this sort of thing that Republicans were demanding more of last year during the debate over the stimulus bill. Instead of recognizing this and trying to claim that the administration has adopted one of his party’s solutions, Pence is reduced to the absurdity of claiming that possible tax reduction on businesses that hire new employees is some revival of the dreaded Carter years."
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010/01/29/mike-pence-republican-man-of-ideas/

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Activist Judges

Emptywheel » Supreme Court Unleashes Corporate Campaign Cash In Citizen’s United Decision

Just when health insurance reform tubes under the creator/destroyers Democraps, Chief Justice John Roberts brings fascism to us once and for all.

This is horrible, people...

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Heh

These came from the annual "Dark and Stormy Night" competition. Actual


analogies and metaphors found in high school essays:



1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently

compressed by a Thigh Master.



2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like

underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.



3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy

who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those

boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high

schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of

those boxes with a pinhole in it.



4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was

room-temperature Canadian beef.



5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just

before it throws up.



6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.



7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.



8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because

of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a

formerly surcharge-free ATM.



9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling

ball wouldn't.



10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled

with vegetable soup.



11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie,

surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy

comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.



12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.



13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry

them in hot grease.



14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the

grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left

Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19

p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.



15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that

resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.



16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had

also never met.



17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East

River.



18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only

one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.



19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.



20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,

this plan just might work.



21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating

for a while.



22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a

real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or

something.



23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg

behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.



24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with

power tools.



25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if

she were a garbage truck backing up.



26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any

pH cleanser.



27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Bill Maher: Stop the Abuse: It's Time to Break Up With Your Big Bank

Bill Maher: Stop the Abuse: It's Time to Break Up With Your Big Bank

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Turns out the Devil really does wear Prada
see more Political Pictures

Heritage Foundation Covers Up Its Opportunistic Hopes in Haiti - governmentality

Heritage Foundation Covers Up Its Opportunistic Hopes in Haiti - governmentality

Yikes, Pat...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59NCduEhkBM

Drug Addict Limpballs Speaks Again

Speaking on his radio show Wednesday, Limbaugh said the earthquake has played into Obama’s hands, allowing the president to look “compassionate” and “humanitarian” while at the same time bolstering his standing in both the “light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.”
He added: “We've already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

Hmmm. I thought he pretty much had the black community sewn up at the 2008 election. Using a natural disaster for political purposes? That's the specialty of your party, Rush.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Holiday Movie Review

The mailbag includes Netfix arrivals on an almost daily basis, and most of the time that's just fine with us. During the extended school Christmas vacation time for my husband results in us indulging in a visit to The Only Movie Theater in Pueblo to see an early showing of some cinema treat. Earlier this year it was 'The Hangover" a truly funny movie we shared with one other theater patron. This break it was "Invictus" and last week, "It's Complicated".

Now, I love me some Morgan Freeman. For years I'm been saying he deserved an Oscar - for Best Actor, not just Best Supporting, so I was looking forward to seeing what has been touted as most likely a long-deserved nomination for him. A great story highlighting the true story of a most amazing man. Could. Not. Miss. Except it did.

Everyone in the business will argue with me, but what a poorly made film. Halfway through I realized I was bored, watching the three scenes where Freeman, as Mandela, shakes hands with every man on the team. Then I started focusing on Freeman's paralyzed left hand, trying to ignore it like the elephant in the living room. I started to wonder which was worse - the direction or editing. After an hour of boredom at the inability for these people to tell a story with any dramatic action, I got angry. I turned to my husband as the credits started to roll and remarked "whoever directed this crap should be shot" when Clint Eastwood's name appeared as said villain. My mouth fell open. Clint? The guy who's good at directing? Yikes. Awful job.

Which brings us to the next Pueblo Theater adventure, "It's Complicated". The crowd laughed so loudly at some of the lines I couldn't hear the payoffs. What a delightful film, full of older, weathered, some paunchy actors who look just me. With Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin (Alec - if my husband should pass away in the next 25 years, call me) and Steve Martin, what's not to like? I loved that a romantic comedy was made with people over the age of 50 and the other viewers might have agreed as the theater was nicely close to full in the middle of the afternoon.

Alec Baldwin looks at Meryl's character with such love and longing (I'm not kidding, Alec, call me) it was touching and wonderful to think he wants to see this woman naked and she's not Megan Fox.

Parade of Roses 2010

The Rose Bowl Parade reminds me of the best of my time in Pasadena. The bleachers along California Ave. get set up right after Thanksgiving, reservations for New Year's Eve dinner (two seatings, fixed menu) at Monahan's Irish Pub on Lake started rolling in around Halloween. Parade-goers begin camping out on Colorado and adjacent streets December 20th. Exiting after my first New Year's Eve waitress shift about 3 a.m. found me immediately jumping left and right to avoid stepping on the limps and torsos of the bodies in sleeping bags packed together on the sidewalk directly outside the front door. Wandering down toward to Colorado to take a look, the street was teeming with people waiting out the next three hours partying, drinking, yelling, laughing, in and out of the various store fronts that all had kept their doors open to sell coffee and donuts along with their usual mom and pop stock in trade. Sidewalks, street pavement and lampposts were fair game for partiers. Cops on foot and horseback. It was hard to believe many couples and entire families were sleeping through the action. And there was a stabbing, but just one.

The next day, or rather five hours later, I rolled out of bed to straggle to the Carl's Jr. on Colorado a block away, ordering a breakfast pastry and coffee to consume seated on the sidewalk in relative solitude as I was two miles from the start of the parade and the crowds on the bleachers at the Norton Simon Museum.  Grand Marshall James Stewart was rolling by in the Official Grand Marshall Vehicle.  Several hours later the last of the bands were marching through, although several of the members passed out mid-step. I moved onto the park where the floats were on display, and at 12:30 or so they were admirable in the laborious work involved in pasting every daisy petal and iris stamen onto cardboard but the floats were fading fast. As in drooping and falling apart, the memory of a two-day marathon of sleepless volunteers pasting right up until netowrk time fading with the daisies.

The Rose Bowl Parade this year brought back fond memories (albeit via HDTV in Southern Colorado) and delivered some comedy gold. First off was the TelePrompter-driven narrative delivered by Nancy Somebody and everyone's favorite yo-yo dieter weatherman, Al Roker. He cheerfully announced the Ohio State School for the Blind Marching Band, each unsighted band member marching along accompanied by a sighted person at their elbow, insuring the tuba player marched in a straight line and avoided any horse poop form the previous six-member Blackfoot Horse Brigade of Greater Bozeman.

Next, Nancy What's-her-name read the TelePrompter script of the untimely and sad death of a dead person in somber, sympathetic tones as an official car motored past containing the waving and smiling family of the dead person whose death allowed the family access to a Tournament of Roses Rose Bowl Parade official car.

Good times.

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