Funny Flight

BBC7 is airing Flight of the Conchords, a screamingly funny rendering of the London exploits of one of New Zealand's two or three best acoustic folk comedy duos, namely Flight of the Conchords. Funny songs and funny stories, aired originally on Radio 4 not long ago.

It's free! Check the BBC Radio Player - Audio on Demand late every Monday (the files stay up for 7 days afterwards) for the next six weeks.

One of the best recent comedies on BBC radio.

You may have seen Flight of the Conchords playing their songs live in person, on HBO, or in other television venues. Funny guys. Also, you may wonder why a New Zealander is doing Outback Steak House commercials in the US. Gotta keep the livestock in bling, probably.

B-a-a-h!

Quagwalk: That's Been the Plan All Along!

Cheney speaks!

Interview Dick Cheney, NBC, "Meet the Press," Transcript for March 16, 2003: "MR. RUSSERT: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators."

He qualifies it a little in the remaining answer, but it's pretty clear that on the eve of the war, Cheney and his administration are either not thinking one bit about insurgency and civil war (which would be incompetent), or if they're thinking about it, they're hiding the likelihood of an insurgency from the American people (which would be misleading and dishonest, though not technically a bald-faced lie--more like a pellet-in-the-face lie).

Such is the hard-won reputation of Bush and his administration as either incompetents, liars, or idiots. It's one or the other, but one just can't be sure.

As it turns out, Bush's true plan, revealed in his press conference today, is for his successors to clean up his mess. And since he now claims the following:

Secondly, I am confident -- or I believe I'm optimistic -- we'll succeed. If not, I'd pull our troops out. If I didn't believe we had a plan for victory, I wouldn't leave our people in harm's way. And that's important for the woman to understand.

I guess whatever he does is his "plan," no matter how half-assed and wrong it is proven to be, and over and over our soldiers are buffetted by events that Bush can't even comprehend.

Reuters AlertNet - Swedish foreign minister resigns over cartoons

I don't know Swedish laws or mores, but just from what's in this Reuters dispatch, I'm glad this woman lost her job:

Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds quit on Tuesday after a row over the closure of a Web site with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, embarrassing Prime Minister Goran Persson six months ahead of elections.

[....]

But she was forced to resign when it was revealed this week that she had not given full information about her role in the closure of a site belonging to a far-right political party which published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad offensive to Muslims.

Idiocy is a global phenomenon.

Bush: One-Way Loyalty

I've long said that Bush's reputation for loyalty is undeserved -- he demands loyalty but does not return it.

Nice to see that even some relatively honest conservatives believe it too. From Bruce Bartlett, writing to Andrew Sullivan.

I disagree with your characterization of Bush as being famously loyal — a view so widely stated that you can be excused for repeating it. Bush is loyal ONLY to toadies, suck-ups and sycophants. Anyone who shows an ounce of independence — or loyalty to the country above loyalty to him — is punished or dispensed with. You mention Paul O'Neill, but a better example is Larry Lindsey. [....] As I say in my book, loyalty with Bush is strictly a one-way street: total loyalty is demanded, but none is ever really offered in return.

This has been apparent for years. Too bad it wasn't written by Sullivan or any other conserva-blogger when it would have mattered.

Typically, Sullivan misses the point. Bush is disloyal to others, and there are enforcers to make life miserable for those who are not totally loyal to him. Sullivan thinks Bush is a "nice guy." I'm sure Shinsecki, Lindsey, O'Neill,et al don't think the bullshit that happened to them is "nice."

Sullivan really is a tool.

Don't forget that Bush has kept Karl Rove, who loves to slime opponents -- including falsely insiuating pedophilia (how does one do that nicely?) in a Alabama judgeship race, that GW Bush was an enforcer for his father, and that Bush was a protege of Lee Atwater, another classic republican slimer (who tried to repent on his deathbed).

You know him by the company he keeps for decades. Not a nice guy.

Straw Man Bush

From the Associated Press:
Bush Using Straw-Man Arguments in Speeches

When the president starts a sentence with "some say" or offers up what "some in Washington" believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.

The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position.

He typically then says he "strongly disagrees" — conveniently knocking down a straw man of his own making.

Bush routinely is criticized for dressing up events with a too-rosy glow. But experts in political speech say the straw man device, in which the president makes himself appear entirely reasonable by contrast to supposed "critics," is just as problematic.

AP notices this only about six years too late.

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit: Not only a Hack, but Diametrically Wrong

Glenn Reynolds, amazingly a Law Professor at University of Tennesse, warblogger, and now author of a book about blogging, wrote the following a while back-in April 2003 when many had died but GW Bush was still riding high:

Yeah, there has been a lot of pro-war gloating. And I guess that Dawn Olsen's cautionary advice about gloating is appropriate. So maybe we shouldn't rub in just how wrong, and morally corrupt the antiwar case was. Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a "quagmire" were wrong -- again! -- how efforts at moral equivalence were obscenely wrong -- again! -- how the antiwar folks are still, far too often, trying to move the goalposts rather than admit their error -- again -- and how an awful lot of the very same people who spoke lugubriously about "civilian casualties" now seem almost disappointed that there weren't more -- again -- and how many people who spoke darkly about the Arab Street and citizens rising up against American "liberators" were proven wrong -- again -- as the liberators were seen as just that by the people they were liberating. And I suppose we shouldn't stress so much that the antiwar folks were really just defending the interests of French oil companies and Russian arms-deal creditors. It's probably a bad idea to keep rubbing that point in over and over again.

Nah.

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit and somehow a law professor, wrote that in April 2003.

Bush screwed up abjectly despite Reynold's pom-pom waving. Too bad people had to die in the many thousands despite Reynolds' cheerleading.

Of course, Glenn did not sign up to die in IED or mortar fire. Glenn just wanted to InstaEnjoy the InstaWar he was InstaCheering for.

Yay! That was so good in 2003! Yay!

I wonder who is now, in 2006, moving the goalposts from Glenn's Instapundit's emphatic triumphalism of 2003.

Reynolds is a libertarian, so he says. Read the above and sniff out his magnificent libertarianism.

Discourse like Reynold's has made the term "Libertarian" kind of like "psychic:" It mainly denotes a pathetic form of bullshitting.

Schmibertarian!

Explanation for Hiatus

The blog has been a bit slow recently. We've been burned out and exhausted.

Surely just a couple more five-week long vacations at the ranch and Bush will no longer be an incompetent, lying idiot.




Source: Pew Poll Mar 15, 2006

HTML / Text version, which Blogger had difficulty accepting despite my labor texting and HTMLing that image, resides here. Thanks and links will be appreciated.

Some Comment

Searching for something else on IMDB, I ran across the most evocative comment I've seen there recently. It's for the movie Brilliant (2004), with Ereka Eleniak and Bruce Boxleitner. I'll reproduce the comment in full below -- I won't be surprised if it disappears from IMDB.

Hopefully it never gets released, 21 December 2005
1/10 rating
Author: magwell-1 from A remote cabin in the wilderness

I was a crew member of this film. Apart from the fact that the crew were ripped off for our last week's salary and had to endure the daily wrath of a psychotic director, I can only say that the film doesn't deserve to see the light of day and should be left to rot in a vault for eternity. Yes, it's a hack job all the way, so be thankful that it currently sits in limbo, unreleased, due to the fact that producer, Bill Mariani owes money to suppliers and crew members all over town. How they managed to lure Erika Eleniak and Bruce Boxleitner into appearing is a mystery. Mariani probably burned them as well. By the way, ignore the credit for Carmelo Caruna as one of the "producers" of this film. He was just a front for Mariani so suppliers wouldn't go after him for debts owed from the last film he produced, the equally awful Samhain.

It could be false, but I tend to believe it. If so, can't blame the guy for venting a bit.

Chris Matthews: Idiot and Jerk

Thanks to the people who set up Open Letter To Chris Matthews.

Matthews is not outright Foxian, but he's even worse in a way. Everyone knows the people on Fox are already in the tank for the Republicans. Matthews may fool some dolts into thinking he's actually fair and balanced.

I used to be able to stomach the guy. He was always dimwitted and shallow as a petri dish, but he'd at least occasionally have someone on who wouldn't just parrot the same bullshit.

Then I just got tired of him:

• having right-wingers such as Pat Buchanan or Byron York on at the same panel as impartial reporters, so the wingers could spin the hell out of whatever the reporters said, and it could pass unrebutted.
  
• being too stupid to catch the details of whatever topic he was dealing with. If it is more complicated than his gut could interpret, he is lost.
  
• downplaying the Abramoff scandal and trying to make it seem that Delay and Abramoff were just doing what Democrats were doing. That really pissed me off. He's apparently still pulling that idiocy.
  
• being so singularly obsessed with Hillary Clinton, and always negatively. He treats her as an object of derision both for herself and as a facet of the Democratis party. which he obviously doesn't like either. He's really got a hardon for Hillary -- it got so I couldn't watch the show without him bringing her up in all kinds of ridiculous associations. I don't want her to be the nominee in 2008, but I manage to spend whole weeks without thinking of Hillary Clinton. Matthews can't manage that.
  

All that and many other things finally got me to turn him off. I used to like to watch Matthews to lead into Olbermann. But no more. I turn off the TV or watch CNN (Blitzer isn't much better but at least he's not bloviating idiotically about politics all the time) rather than listen to Matthews' hydrocephalic obsessions.

Matthews really is borderline retarded. I could deal with that if he weren't an asshole on top of it.

Texting The Iraq War

Iraqi Invasion: A Text Misadventure

Oval Office

You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you.

There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of the room and there is a full-length mirror upon the wall.

It's hilarious.

The Crisco Caper, Redux

Ministers Consecrate Alito Hearing Room

Wow. "Consecrating" and anointing with oil a room in the Hart Building to be used for Alito's hearing.

Of course, that freakish troll Pat Mahoney -- of Operatoin Rescue and the Terri Schiavo idiocy -- is involved.

It gives me a chance to quote a relevant poem.

Pointy Birds

Oh pointy birds
Pointy pointy
Anoint my head
Anointy Nointy.

Funny Sad

Rough paraphrase of John Dean on Al Franken's radio show just now.

"If Nixon had Bush's lawyers, they would have taken the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and said it gave him authority to break into the Watergate."

It would be funny if it weren't true.

Bill "Sixty Percent" O'Reilly

Sixty Percent: Sounds good to me.

Thanks, Waas.

As for video referred to, check here.

Blithering Idiocy at CNN

Joe Klein a fool? His recent hire removes all doubt.

CNN signs Bill Bennett as an analyst.

Bill Bennett's main fall from grace is his stunningly voracious gambling --his quasi-racist recent comment is just icing on the cake.

The Abramoff scandal, repeatedly called the largest corruption case in DC in decades, involves to a great extent Indian tribes and casinos.

One thing that Dems should point out is the hypocrisy of Christtian conservatives like Ralph Reed supporting gambling by lobbying for these groups. I'm sure there are other aspects of casino gambling that will be important too.

Of course, personal relations among those on the panel with Bennett will likely mute those comments.

So CNN will cripple itself in covering one of the great corruption scandals in history.

Idiots.

Daily Kos: Scared

Daily Kos: Scared:

If we are relying on George W. Bush to protect the US, then God help us.

I won't rely on him to protect the United States.

Protecting his poll numbers? He'll try to do that.

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: More High-Quality Thought From National Review's Electronic Archives

Did you know that in the pages of National Review Martin Luther King was a really lousy public speaker?

True, dat.

And they haven't improved by picking up Jonah Goldberg.

Carrying on the distinguished history.

Public Domain Movie Torrents

http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/ has scores of movies for download via Bit Torrent. For those so inclined, they offer alternate rendering formatted for Ipod or other handhelds, as well as standard renderings (Mainly Divx).

I can't vouch that every movie there is public domain, but the ones I checked apparently are. A few movies not from the early part of the century are included, and I'm sure many of them have interesting reasons for being Public Domain (like Plan 9 from Outer Space or Night of the Living Dead).

Archive.org has quite a few movies no longer under copyright control, too -- including many of these. But the highly seeded torrents here can give you a pretty impressive download speed.

To give you an idea of the selection, here are the ten top seeded films at PublicDomainTorrents.com:

Metropolis.avi
Plan_9_From_Outer_Space.avi
Night_of_the_Living_Dead.avi
Nosferatu.avi
Buster_Keaton1.avi
The_Little_Shop_of_Horrors.avi
Buster_Keaton2.avi
Superman_Festival.avi
Santa_Claus_Conquers_the_Martians.avi
flash_gordon_ep01.avi
The_Memphis_Belle.avi
Betty_Boop_My_Friend_the_Monkey.avi
Prehistoric_Women.avi
Tom_and_Jerry_Festival.avi
Sherlock_Holmes_A_Study_in_Scarlet350.avi
Metropolis700.avi
Keystone_Cops_Festival.avi
Betty_Boop_Rhythm_on_the_Reservation.avi
Voyage_to_the_Planet_of_Prehistoric_Women.avi
Buster_Keaton1.mp4

The site holds many more movies, too. There are many good movies there, a lot of schlocky kitch, and a few great movies,too--such as Metropolis and some of the Keaton movies.

For those who don't know about BitTorrent technology, find out about it here. You're realling missing something if you don't have it, particularly if you're on broadband. My current preferred client, for what it's worth, is Azureus.

Does This Thing Still Work?

"Hey, Ahmad, maybe you could get the United States to invade Iraq to restore democracy."

Seen Here

War on Jews?

Wow, this seems pretty blatant to me:

During the debate, Democratic members asked the Republican author of the resolution, Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-VA), if she would permit the symbols of Chanukah and other holidays to be included in the protection of the resolution -- and she refused.

Protect Christmas, which is not actually under attack, and refuse to protect Chanukah.

You Jews are on your own. Watch your crystal.

Scissors, pocket knives, clippers -- OK by me

Since republicans seem to paint Democrats as crazy inhuman idiots, I figure I should occasionally point out that the caricature they paint of us is idiotic.

I have no problem with small scissors, pocket knives, and clippers being allowed on planes. I have lost at least a couple well-loved pocket knives to TSA screening at airports.

Plan to Allow Scissors on Planes Opposed

Not by me! I don't oppose these things being brought on board, and I'm about as strong a Democrat as can be imagined.

I'd prefer they were scanning checked baggage more thoroughly, if all things were equal. But the pilot door is strengthened now, so a Swiss Army Knife isn't about to break through it and kill the plane's captain.