There Are Dogs, and There Are Dogs, and There Are Dogs

The Good: "They spent months in an Iraqi war zone cementing a special bond. But after more than a month of being apart, Marine Maj. Brian Dennis began to worry if Nubs the dog would still remember him, especially in a new place like San Diego.

Their reunion early Saturday at Camp Pendleton clearly showed otherwise. The 2-year-old old dog, named for his two nubby ears, drenched Dennis' face with doggie kisses and said hello with excited whimpers.

'You remember that, huh?' Dennis said as he rubbed the dog's head."

Source: SignOnSanDiego

The Bad: "This week, however, Senator Clinton put a pistol to the head of her own campaign and put it out of its mathematical misery. Matthew Yglesias quotes Hillary saying in a speech earlier this week:

'I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.'

That sounds terrible. (If you'd like, you can read the original speech at Senator Clinton's campaign site). But join me as we flashback 1996 and then return to this week."



Source: Daily Kos

The Ugly: "America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. ... We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude? ... Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?"

Source: Pat Buchanen's Blog

Of Junkies with Guitars

There are few pleasures more sublime than turning on the radio at the precise moment that the first few bars of one of your favorite songs start playing.

Mourning Iraq

Yesterday was the five-year anniversary of the War in Iraq, a war which Donald Rumsfeld once estimated may last for six days; indeed, on May 1, 2003 the president himself declared that the war was effectively over and won.

I guess the citizens of an occupied sovereign nation insurgents didn't get the memo.

Since we invaded Iraq, approximately 4,000 American soldiers have died needlessly, violently, tragically, as a result; estimates of the number of Iraqis killed since the beginning of the invasion vary from the appalling to the grotesque.

Yesterday, a reporter had the temerity to point out to Darth President Cheney that two-thirds of American people believe that the war is not worth fighting. Cheney's response was precisely one word in length:

"So?"

Watch it for yourself:



The traditional fifth year anniversary gift is wood. It seems a fitting material.

Make Puppies, Not War

When Delilah was seven months years old, my husband and I adopted her. While she was delightful and small and furry and warm, we've always wondered what she must have looked like when she was even smaller.

Today, Google image search helps answer that question. Just, you know, pretend it doesn't say "Jill" in the corner.

Beyond Putting Food on Your Family

Barack Obama's campaign has recently been surrounded by controversy over what many view as incendiary preaching on the part of his pastor, which you presumably already know since you do not live under a rock. Today Obama delivered a speech in response, addressing not only the present situation but also larger issues of race in American society. I can only imagine where the country would be today if we'd received this sort of immediate and bracingly honest response to potential crises from our president over the past seven years (as opposed to, say, grammatically butchered lies). Take half an hour and watch the whole thing. It's worth the time.



Here's a link to full text of the speech, and here's link to my favorite response, pointing out that the guy actually wrote the damn thing himself — something no president or presidential candidate has done since 1969.

1969!

Be still my geeky heart.

Why I Like the Stuff I Like

While I lazily and confessedly use the Fellow Travelers link in my sidebar as something of a makeshift self-serving set of bookmarks, I thought I'd take a moment to explain why they're worth checking out for the rest of you who wander through here occasionally.

Daily Kos — I'm a big proponent of tossing the myth of objective journalism out the window and returning to the days of owning one's lens and reporting accordingly. And that's what Kossacks do.

Go Fug Yourself — Because thongkinis are never okay.

Open Left — A less cool Daily Kos, but still worth an occasional browse.

Slightly Perfervid — A friend's insightful and often amusing blog asserting that happiness and neuroses are not mutually exclusive.

The Futon Critic — This site is pretty much the only way I can keep track of what is airing when, since there's about as much consistency and logic to network airing schedules these days as there is to Bush's position on FISA.

The Huffington Post — Sort of like The Drudge Report, but with way more bloggers and way fewer trojan horses.

The Mean Bean — A friend's fledgling vegetarian blog. Lots of awesome recipes for people who are more microwave than Martha.

United Hollywood — Because if there's one thing I love more than pop culture, it's organized labor. Wait, strike that, reverse it. Or not. Doesn't matter; UH has both.

Do you write or read an awesome blog I don't know about (*cough*ProjectRunway*cough*)? Let me know!

Five Things Not To Do in Making a Best Picture

1. Kill your protagonist three fourths of the way through.

2. Kill your your protagonist off-handedly and off-screen.

3. Forget to use music until the closing credits.

4. Sprinkle in gratuitous dog corpses every twenty minutes.

5. Give the bad guy a bowl hair cut.

Don't get me wrong. The fate/coin/sociopath motif was cool, the closing scene was brilliant, and the Coen brothers remain hilarious. But There Will Be Blood was so very robbed.

Practice Violent Acts of Random

This morning on the way to work I had the delightful experience of getting stuck behind a gigantic tree-trimming truck. When I finally found a hole in the traffic to my left and pulled around the guy, I was struck by the message stenciled onto the side of the vehicle: "Jesus won't cut you down."

I understand that perhaps in the 1400's "won't chop you to bits" may indeed have played well as a selling point for proselytizers, but I suspect that most modernites want a little more from their lord and savior these days than a promise to abstain from dismemberment.

There Is a Specter Haunting Laughter Shrapnel

So, I appear to be a bit of a commie, having scored a -9.75 on Political Compass' economic continuum (-10 being the greatest possible left-leaning score). My merrily Marxist -9.75 is paired with a -8.36 on the Libertarian/Authoritarian scale, which means that I literally make Gandhi look conservative.

I just need some pasty, tea-fed troops to lie down in front of, I guess.

The Political Compass' U.S. primaries page is also worth a look. This bit made me laugh:

"While Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel are depicted on the extreme left in an American context, they would simply be mainstream social democrats within the wider political landscape of Europe. Similarly, Hillary Clinton is popularly perceived as a leftist in the United States while in any other western democracy her record is that of a moderate conservative."

Sadly, the only candidate even in the same time zone as my clearly insane level of leftyness is Ralph Nader; meanwhile, Mitt Romney is a fascist.

Up in Smoke

A new study on life expectancy has found that educated Americans are likely to live an average of seven years longer than their less bookish counterparts. Much to my surprise, this discrepancy is not accounted for by the fact that stupid people are more likely to walk in front of moving vehicles. Rather, the study found, less educated people are more likely to smoke cigarettes and hence have higher rates of emphysema and lung cancer, dragging their mean life expectancy down significantly. Walking in front a car strikes me as cheaper and likely less painful, but whatever.

Still, I imagine Darwin would be somewhat amused.