Bolton For President?

Chris Matthews can hardly contain his laughter at the idea that former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton might make a run for the presidency in 2012:


Bolton is a far right ideologue so Matthews is right to scoff at the idea that he could have any kind of shot at the presidency but he ignores the elephant... I mean, walrus in the room: Bolton's never gonna live in the White House as long as he keeps sporting that 'stache. Americans haven't elected a president with facial hair in 100 years and I don't see it happening anytime soon. Hell, Jon Stewart couldn't even keep his goatee for more than a couple of weeks and he's not even in politics. It's a sad fact that being too tall, too fat, too bald, too different looking automatically disqualifies anyone from that office. Democracy can be really stupid sometimes.

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Picture Of The Day

The cover of Sarah Palin's second and newest book, coming out this November. Now I'm no marketing genius but I think they should have put a big American flag up behind her. I mean, how else are people going to know how totally patriotic she is and stuff? Except for the flag on her sweater, the two flags on her wrist and the word "flag" in the book's subtitle, of course. Do you think she could have chosen a more awkward position for her wrist or what? Can ya see 'em? Can ya see 'em?! Flags! Buy my book, 'cause flags!

Jon Stewart's Goatee

A lot of people are talking shit but I like it. Now maybe my perceptions are somewhat colored by the fact that I'm such a big fan of The Daily Show or because I myself am also beardily-challenged, hence leaving the goatee as my only outlet for facial hair expression (what I wouldn't give to be able to grow a pair of really kick-ass Wolverine mutton chops...) but I'm siding with Stewart on this one. It gives him a kind of elder statesman of the fake news vibe, plus I thought Wyatt Cenac's "Tony Stark" jab the other day was pure beardist gold.

In Which I Catch O'Reilly Lying About The ACLU

So I spent a slacktacular day relaxing and watching crappy TV on my couch yesterday and I ended up watching a repeat of The O'Reilly Factor from Friday in which Bill was addressing the French government approving the draft of a bill that would prevent Muslim women from wearing hijabs in public. He almost seemed to approve of the bill in the face of a theoretical suicide bomber using a veil during an attack in France (I do not and I agree with his rather intelligent guest British political commentator Imogen Lloyd Webber in opposing it by saying that "the minute you start discriminating is the minute you start radicalizing" and that "You can't let one radical destroy or let us compromise our core democratic values") but during the course of his discussion about religious rights and freedom of expression with Webber I heard him say something that didn't sound quite right to me:

WEBBER: As far as the French go, and I think we should be very worried about it, because it's going to affect all of us in the West, and I think French have made a massive mistake by doing it. The French is a very secular society. So for instance in 2004, they banned all religious symbols in schools, including crucifixes. The crucifixes and head scarves. Now, that's not a very British or a very American thing to do. I cannot see any American going with that.

O'REILLY: We can't have crucifixes in our public schools here.

WEBBER: But wearing crucifixes to school--

O'REILLY: Yes, they tried. The ACLU tried, but they -- that was a freedom of expression issue.

That last line caught my ear for two reasons: 1) I know how much O'Reilly likes to just make up stuff about people he doesn't like and that he really doesn't like the ACLU and 2) it didn't sound like something the ACLU would do. Despite the efforts of O'Reilly and many others on the political right to paint that organization as a group of crazed, ideological left-wing zealots the ACLU, while obviously a liberal organization, is mostly just a bunch of lawyers and lobbyists who care about and help others fight for personal rights and civil liberties. I myself may not always agree with them or their stance on certain issues but for the most part I think they do good work, so I was pretty sure that they wouldn't try to get the wearing of crucifixes banned in American public schools and guess what? They hadn't.

After using the Google to search high and low across the vast expanse of the Interwebs I wasn't able to locate one anecdote or article that could verify O'Reilly's claim on this count. I did however find two interesting things pertaining to this issue. The first is this article from a couple of years ago about an Oregon high school that actually did ban students from wearing crucifixes:

Never did Jaime Salazar imagine that wearing a rosarylike crucifix to school would provoke a national stir.

But when the 14-year-old and his 16-year-old friend Marco Castro were suspended recently for refusing to remove the religious beads because they were “gang-related,” it thrust Oregon into the headlines and has triggered questions over the evolving role of rosaries in religion, fashion and street gangs.

Now as a staunch advocate for free speech rights I of course think that the school was wrong to do this but guess who else did too? That's right, the ACLU:

David Fidanque, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon says educators should proceed with caution. Their intentions may be valid, but they run the risk of violating students’ rights, he said.

“When it comes to restricting any form of expression, school officials have a pretty high bar to cross,” he said. “They better have very specific evidence that’s more than just a hunch.”

So not only did O'Reilly just completely make up a story about the ACLU that never happened, but the story he made up is the exact opposite of what actually did happen here in reality. Tall, loud and stupid is no way to go through life, Bill. The other entertaining tidbit I came across was the concluding line from this delightfully ironic post about the exact same story I just quoted above on a right-wing political blog called Moonbattery.com (for those not in the know, in the political blogosphere people on the right call supposed crazies on the left "moonbats" and people on the left call supposed crazies on the right "wingnuts"):

The smart gangs will adopt the star and crescent as a symbol. No educrats could ban that without risking the wrath of the ACLU.

This website gets more hits than mine on several orders of magnitude every day. This is why Bill O'Reilly has the highest ratings of any show on cable news, it's why Sarah Palin almost found herself a heartbeat away from the presidency and it's why a certain segment of Wingnuttia will always be impervious to arguments couched in logic or sanity.

Super Sexy CPR

For educational purposes, of course:


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Clip From Iron Man 2

I can't tell you how much I want to be Tony Stark:


I don't know which technology I love more: that which keeps one's tux from wrinkling within the Iron Man armor or the fact that the helmet leaves enough room to maintain a perfectly coiffed dome. Have I mentioned how much I want to be Tony Stark?

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CSI: The Birth Of An Internet Meme

Per a previous post in which I admitted that this is my current favorite Internet meme comes this compilation of overacting sunglass donning greatness:


Bonus memeship: Create your own CSI sunglass coolness in any situation with this handy clickable link. And I dare you not to smile and think of me every time you hit it.

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Oscar Facts

I'm not watching the Academy Awards this year because... well, because I never watch them. I find the ceremony to be long, cheesy and fairly boring. Plus, most of the movies I dig never win awards anyway. So in lieu of commentary or predictions I'll leave you with some Oscar trivia you might find interesting:

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Pre-Quake San Francisco, Circa 1905

I've spent a lot of time in The City, so this was kind of surreal to watch:

The first track from Airs' Moon Safari album, accompanied by scenes from a video shot from a streetcar traveling down Market Street in San Francisco in 1905. Before the earthquake/fire of 1906 destroyed the area. Remarkable footage of the turn of the century lifestyles in California.

The leaps that technology has taken since then amaze me: we're now sharing film shot more than a century ago instantaneously on our world wide web. Yet we've also taken a step backwards in some respects: from the looks of this video, I would imagine that the hat industry has taken some big hits in the last 105 years:


(hat tip: Intrepid Californio)

Picture Of The Day

Sarah Palin, Photoshopped without her coiffure, makeup and trademark glasses. You can check out several others and roll over them with your mouse cursor to compare the before and after shots here. This is what Todd Palin wakes up to every morning. Suddenly she's not quite so intriguing, is she?

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Patton Oswalt Hates "Christmas Shoes"

I've never actually heard this song before but comedian Patton Oswalt deconstructs it masterfully. The laughter this produces is all the Christmas spirit I need:


You can listen to more of Oswalt's stuff here and here.

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Enter The Kramer

For the hardcore Seinfeld fans: Every Kramer entrance ever in chronological order:


Watching them this way really gives one an appreciation for the diversity of his shirts, doesn't it?

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Picture Of The Day II

I've just found my new favorite T-shirt.

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80's Video Dating Winners

Videos like this one make me extremely glad that I was too young to have had a "cool" haircut, clothes and mustache during the eighties. Enjoy, ladies:

Wow. And who would have guessed that having fun was so popular? Of course just once I'd like to see the truly daring yet dour individual who laid it on the line and admitted that they actually don't like to have fun. Chicks dig honesty, right?

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Safe For Work Porn

This is hilarious. It's totally not safe for work but it's hilarious:


Apparently it's an advertisement for an Italian clothing line, and a damn innovative one at that. Also, strap yourselves in because it's going to be a video kind of day.

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Women In Bikinis Reading Star Wars Scripts

If you're asking "Why?" you and I obviously live on two different worlds:


I saw some real passion there and these girls are definitely quite talented. OK, "talented". It's just so cute when they try to pronounce "auxiliary" though, isn't it?

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Picture Of The Day

Does the guy in the picture above look familiar? Back in the mid-eighties some thought that someday he might:

In its August 1985 issue, Ebony magazine ran a "Portraits of the Stars" feature in which it commissioned an artist to create portraits of how various black celebrities might look in the year 2000 (a date which was then still a good fourteen years in the future). Ebony's collection of artificially aged notables included Muhammad Ali, Billy Dee Williams, Kim Fields, Jayne Kennedy, Magic Johnson, Emmanuel Lewis, Debbie Allen, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and, as the lead-off to the article, Michael Jackson. Jackson, who was 27 years old at the time, was pictured (as shown above) as the artist anticipated the popular singer might look in the year 2000 (when he would have been 41 years old): "He will have aged gracefully and will have a handsome, more mature look."

Now obviously this particular prediction did not come to pass but when I saw this picture for the first time without the attached explanation the first thought going through my head (and I swear that this is the truth) was, "Damn, that guy looks like Michael Jackson and Billy Dee Williams had a kid and then dressed him in some of Don Johnson's old clothes from Miami Vice!"

Picture Of The Day

The print "Iron mask or the Bill Cosby sweater" by Felix Jackson, Jr. You can check out his other stuff at his site.

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Why They Hate Us

Because of spoiled little cunts like this:

Oh, I'm sorry. Are you upset that I used the verboten word "cunt" in referring to this adolescent waste of space? Well, too fucking bad. I calls 'em as I sees 'em, and this little bitch is a spoiled cunt. USA, USA, right? Right!? Jesus...

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Maher's New Rules

This was a good one. He really has the Republicans' number:


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