December 2008 archive

Well, now we finaly know where Dick Cheney has been hanging out in his undisclosed location all these years.  

IRAQ!

You see, after the events of 9/11, the Bush Administration decided that they needed a place for the President and / or Vice President to slink away to in times of national danger, or in case of a hang nail.  

IRAQ!

If you were an al Queda type, looking to kick some serious AZZ on the leadership of the US of A, where is the last place you would expect to find them?  C’mon…you know the truth.

IRAQ!

Some people believe this to be the first music video:

Ricky Nelson:  Travelin’ Man

Ben E. King:  Stand by Me

#1 HERE

#2 HERE

Ok, today’s Math may need a little brain power.

As in “PULL YOUR REPTILIAN & LIMBIC BRAINS OUT OF YOUR ASS, AND USE YOUR CEREBRAL CORTEX.”

* There are actual numbers to back me up on this, but you know, in the interest of keeping it simple, and the fact that I, as a middle aged housewife with no education typing away with my first cup of coffee, have no interest in googling numbers AT ALL, am going to suggest if you don’t get the overall premise, Google may or may not be able to help you anyway. So have at it. I have run-on sentences to write.

Fear reflex is a good thing. It makes you duck when your kid hits a good hard fastball right back at your head when you pitch to him, and you only catch it peripherally too late because you are looking at your flowerbed over his shoulder thinking you should be weeding.

That’s what the lower function in your brains are for. They are NOT meant to be your primary data functioning unit.

So, using your cerebral cortex, the best reaction in such a case would be to realize you are becoming as ADD as the rest of America, choose to focus on your kid and the game, rationalize that your child is only young once, think, “FUCK THOSE WEEDS” and PLAY WITH HIM.

Were you to process this, keeping that REPTILIAN BRAIN to the forefront, you would instead think baseball evil, and your child under suspicion of trying to kill you. You would tell your husband for your own safety to ground him to his room forever, and watch his every word and move. Then you would start being suspicious of every one of those Motherfucking OUT TO GET you little bastards in America wearing baseball hats.

Lets Do The Math on THE WAR ON TERROR, shall we?

Blaming Others For Your Failures   Making Sure You Take No Responsibility

Report Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders



By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER

Published: December 13, 2008

BAGHDAD – An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag – particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army – the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

Views on Auto Aid Fall On North-South Divide

Tennessee’s Nonunion Workers Bristle At Bailout Talk for Detroit’s Big Three

By Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 14, 2008; Page A01

SMYRNA, Tenn., Dec. 13 — People in this small town surrounding one of Nissan’s busiest U.S. car plants have followed the news of the auto bailout with particular interest.

Namely, they wonder, what about us?

Nissan is a Japanese automaker, but the Altimas, Maximas and Pathfinders that roll out of the factory are built by locals who are “Americans too,” they like to point out. And just like the other automakers, Nissan is inflicting some of the economic pain on its employees, cutting shifts and pay.

USA

Stimulus Package To First Pay for Routine Repairs



By Alec MacGillis and Michael D. Shear

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, December 14, 2008; Page A01

President-elect  Barack Obama calls it “the largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.” New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg compares it to the New Deal — when workers built hundreds of bridges, dams and parkways — while saying it could help close the gap with China, where he recently traveled on a Shanghai train at 267 mph.

Most of the infrastructure spending being proposed for the massive stimulus package that Obama and congressional Democrats are readying, however, is not exactly the stuff of history, but destined for routine projects that have been on the to-do lists of state highway departments for years. Oklahoma wants to repave stretches of Interstates 35 and 40 and build “cable barriers” to keep wayward cars from crossing medians. New Jersey wants to repaint 88 bridges and restore Route 35 from Toms River to Mantoloking. Scottsdale, Ariz., wants to widen 1.5 miles of Scottsdale Road.

What puts me on this track is the recent announcement by NBC that they’re going to cut back on their programming from 22 hours of prime time a week to a Faux/CW like 17 by having Jay Leno cover 10 pm Monday to Friday.

Now not all my predictions come true, but I think this a horrible move, doomed to failure, and not just because I find Leno’s product inferior.

Back in the day I critically watched the Jay vs. Dave wars and Dave has at least the virtue of being funny and Leno not so much.  More than that, the original reason that The Tonight Show moved to Los Angeles was so that they could more easily book guests from the West Coast branch of the Film and Television industry.  No offense meant California (well maybe a little) but 99.99% of those people turn out to be vapid airheads who unscripted can’t put a complete sentence together and won’t talk about anything except their latest project and who they’re fucking, and that badly and incoherently.

Maybe it’s the price you pay for all the sunshine.

Not that David’s guests are that much better.  Intellectual rigor is not something you can expect from the media elite as a cursory perusal of Huffington Post will convince you.  Actors tend to be shallow self centered morons with no sense of shame, including News Actors (not really many reporters around any more).

And now we’re getting to the crux of the problem which is that the format is boring.  At least Rachel Ray and Martha Stewart cook, but most talk shows talk too much.  Who cares?  Jay, there’s a reason people go to sleep after the monologue and it’s not just because they’re old or have to get up in the morning.

Then there’s the repetitive nature of all of it.  Remember what happened to Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?  American Idol, Survivor, Deal or No Deal, CSI, Law and Order, they’re all the same all the time.  Nothing new ever happens.

They’ve just given up.

Even such a culture cannibalizing snooze fest as Happy Days seems like an innovative concept by comparison.  Instead of recycling nostalgia for 30 years ago we recycle it from last week.

My friends we are approaching peak TV.  Channel after channel is filled with stuff I’ve already seen or don’t want to watch in the first place.  And it’s a fundamental failure of the business model; they sell eyeballs and not only are they losing them by droves, but nobody is willing to pay for them anymore.

Their response is to downsize.  Cut the cost of production, worship efficiency, and stifle creativity.

This is a self reinforcing death spiral of deflation and depression.  If your product sucks make more of it cheaper, supply side entertainment.

That’s enough for now, but I expect I will revisit this subject.

Sunday Talk Talk Talk

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – I Love Rock N Roll

That old game, I played it in grade school.  A circle of chairs, say 10 chairs, for 11 people.

And the music starts, and we all walk in a circle around the chairs.  Until the music stops.  Then we dash about to sit on one of the chairs and thereby claim it.  We can sit!  We have a chair!  Ha!

There’s one person left standing.  They do not get a chair and are out of the game.

This goes on, subtracting a chair each time, until there is one chair left.  As the music starts, two people walk in a circle around the chair and when the music stops, well, we have a winner!  Someone gets the chair!  And all the rest are left out.

It’s a pretty strange game, come to think of it.  Though if I recall, it was kind of fun, too.

I was playing with my grandson tonight.  He is two and even though he is still talking in his own made up language we seem to understand each other completely.  He had a plastic sword and I was going to dub him a Knight by tapping each of his shoulders.  He didn’t understand but when I assumed the position by getting down on one knee he did the same thing.  He did so and then I anointed him with the full status of Knight of the Realm.  He then relapsed into contemporary TeeVee land and proceeded to smite me with said very same sword.  I then elevated myself to the status of wizard and everybody knows mere swords can not touch a wizard.

But personal diversions aside I call your attention to the coming Satanic event billed as the “wonderous” transition to digital TeeVee.