mcgees.org

Joy to the world, no more death penalty in Kansas.

You can sponsor Planned Parenthood by donating a dollar for every protester outside a clinic. Just like a charity marathon. As they say, “Even Our Protesters Support Planned Parenthood”. (Smug jerks. But it’s kind of funny.)

Well, Tavis Smiley has not renewed his contract and his show is going off NPR. I don’t know where I’ll get daily information about the reparations movement now. Or where I’ll get to hear every issue under the sun framed in terms of race, from politics and culture to diet and entertainment. Or hear people justifiably angered by discriminatory assumptions, but who in turn assume everyone listening is a conservative Christian. Or hear Tavis tailor his accent and vocabulary to match each guest’s, giving the impression that he has no real accent or vocabulary of his own. And I’ll miss the experience of feeling racist because I think he and his program are full of shit. But I think I’ll learn to cope.

sorryeverybody.  We tried.

Cartograms give more realistic election data than geographic maps, and most states are purple anyway (this is really good — if you follow only one link on this page, make this it.)  More on cartograms, and one of the world that will lead you to the conclusion that, as a first-order approximation, the whole world is Asia.

Scotland will now fine you £3,600 ($7,700) for smoking in public. How times are changed since I was there three and a half years ago, when you couldn’t escape the smoke to, as it were, save your life.

A Briton’s guide to crashing the U.S. presidential elections.

What a mess for Billy Connolly. I’m reserving judgment on his Ken Bigley comments until someone produces an audio recording. But it cannot be fun to be him right now.

(OK, I know I’m posting a lot, but it’s because my ear is feeling better.)

I heard Ralph Nader on the CBC yesterday. Man, I hate when that happens. I end up wanting to cry myself to sleep because he doesn’t get to be president. He’s not even in the ballot in California.

His comments on the presidential debates included the sentiment that not enough of the foreign policy discussion was on the topic of global infectious diseases and environmental regulations, and not enough of the domestic discussion was on universal health care, and altogether too much time was spent on terror and Iraq.

I saw Bowling for Columbine for the first time today. It’s in my top ten or twenty favorite films of all time. Michael Moore is a big guy, but his balls are outsized even for his frame. The portion where he stands up to Charlton Heston was really uncomfortable. I have no idea how he did it.

Tom Mauser is my new personal hero.

Pearl Jam. Queensrÿche, unplugged. Mudhoney headlining with David Cross. And all proceeds to help fund progressive political causes. Interested? Only catch is they’re on weeknights in Seattle, which is a long way from L.A. But if you’re in the area, go.  And let me know how it was.

I walked to the cashier’s office. It was a Friday, and on Friday the Americans go on safari, so they were queueing up for money. Kenyans were queueing up for money as well.

The lady who was banking the money spotted me. Her name was Lucy. She said to jump the queue. I got the money and went back to my office. All those people I left in the queue died, including the cashier.

I watched Outfoxed today. Aargh. What a frustrating movie. It left me in a sour mood for the rest of the day. I have, however, come to the conclusion that Bill O’Reilly either needs to be somewhere where he can be taken care of and receive regular shots, or he needs to be somewhere where he can be taken care of and shot regularly.

A gem:

Perhaps an analogy would be appropriate:

There is a competent and an incompetent way to rob a bank. You can either plan ahead, consider the worst-case scenario, and get in and out without too much trouble. Or you can dream about your successes, not consider difficult possibilities, and have the result be a violent, bloody mess.

Robbing a bank is still wrong, but pointing out that the robbers royally screwed up isn’t an endorsement of the rightness or wrongness of the act itself.

John Kerry: “I’m running for President to make the country we love safer, stronger, and more secure. I’m asking every American to be a Citizen Soldier…”

Oh, shut up.  Like what we need is another president who sees everything as a military conflict.

And try this: “John Kerry has the vision to create a new Manhattan Project to make America independent of Middle East oil in 10 years by creating alternative fuels like ethanol and making cars more efficient.”

Great, use the terminology of nuclear weaponry to discuss green ititiatives.

“John Ashcroft has launched an all-out assault on individual rights, allowing for a wholesale invasion of attorney-client conversations, e-mails and telephone calls. Immediately after the election, John Kerry will name a new Attorney General whose name is not John Ashcroft.  We will also fight to protect women’s rights, civil rights and workers rights and enforce anti-trust laws.”

Yeah, you know, that other stuff when we get around to it.  The important thing is just to have someone not named John Ashcroft.

“John Kerry supports expanding our nation’s hate crime law. He supports efforts to provide equal justice for all victims of hate violence, regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, gender or disability.”

A step-by-step analysis of the actual points, rather than the sloppy writing, on which I disagree with Kerry will have to wait until I have more time, but the author structures this paragraph as if B follows from A, which it most certainly does not. If anything they are incompatible, as “equal justice” is completely at odds with “special sentences for certain crimes”.

During a group visit to Mt. Rushmore … we encountered … a white-robed, shaven-headed Hari Krishna with his literature. This was not in patriotic keeping of the site and everyone of our 26-persons was offended. … I am not critical of other religions, but [Mt. Rushmore] is not a proper place for propaganda. (emphasis added)  — H. R. Fischer

I’ve come up with a new delicacy.  It consists of french fries, gravy, and Beluga caviar.

I’m calling it Vladimir Poutine.

Here’s a fantastic interview with Maynard James Keenan by, of all people, Kurt Loder.

You have got to be kidding me.  They really presented a gold-plated money clip to the people who filed past Reagan’s sealed casket at the Presidential Library?  Seriously.  Not a David Cross routine.  Real life.  I’m not making this up.  A gold-plated money clip.

Good to know that you didn’t have to be there to get one, though.  Follow the link above to buy one on eBay.  Greed Is Good®, right?

My workplace in Thousand Oaks closed early today, as the only route of egress was the motorcade route. We’d have been locked in a research facility with a jammed soda machine and only sputtering chambers and broadband connections to entertain us.  Sounds like an Fox sitcom premise, when you think about it.

The motorcade was scheduled for evening, but at 11:30 a.m. people were lining Lynn Road (I swear I am still not making this up) with padded folding chairs, sunglasses, tacky beach visors, and red Igloo coolers of Diet Coke. When I left, I saw more of the same, along with hordes of miniature people born during Clinton administrations I and II — and someone had thoughtfully gone through and placed red, white, and blue helium balloons around the route.  It was packed like Disneyland on the Fourth of July weekend. Northbound 101 was jammed with cars for miles; driving past I felt like Judd Hirsch in Independence Day, hauntingly feeling like I was somehow going the wrong way.  Southbound 101 was accessorized with hovering military helicopters armed with fucking missiles.  For real.  This is still real life.

October 25, 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis: Intruder in Duluth

At around midnight on October 25, a guard at the Duluth Sector Direction Center saw a figure climbing the security fence. He shot at

it, and activated the “sabotage alarm.” This automatically set off sabotage alarms at all bases in the area. At Volk Field, Wisconsin,

the alarm was wrongly wired, and the Klaxon sounded which ordered nuclear armed F-106A interceptors to take off. The pilots knew there

would be no practice alert drills while DEFCON 3 was in force, and they believed World War III had started.

Immediate communication with Duluth showed there was an error. By this time aircraft were starting down the runway. A car raced

from command center and successfully signaled the aircraft to stop.  The original intruder was a bear.

— Alan F. Philips, 20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War.

Also see the Wikipedia for a man who should have statues in every major world city: Stanislav Petrov, the man who prevented World War III.

Could the Bush Administration stand up against the combined forces of Howard Dean, John Edwards, John Kerry, Hulk Hogan, Mr. T, Christopher Reeve, Howard Stern, Michael Moore, Rosie O’Donell, Jessica Lynch, Fat Ass He-Man, and Jesus Christ?  I didn’t think so.

The FCC Song (MP3), by Eric Idle:

Here’s a little number I wrote the other day while out duck hunting with a judge

quack

Fuck you very much the FCC

Fuck you very much for fining me

Five thousand bucks a fuck so I’m really out of luck

Thats more than Heidi Fliess was charging me.

So fuck you very much the FCC

For proving that free speech just isn’t free

Clear Channel’s a dear channel

So Howard Stern must go

Attorney General Ashcroft doesn’t like strong words and so

He’s charging twice as much as all the drugs for Rush Limbo

so Fuck you all so very much

So fuck you very much dear Mr. Bush

For heroically sitting on your tush

For Halliburton, Enron, all the companies who fail

Lets send them a clear signal and stick Martha straight in jail

She’s an uppity rich bitch, but at least she isn’t male

So fuck you all so very much

So fuck you dickhead Mr. Cheney too.

Fuck you and fuck everything you do.

Your pace maker must be fake

You haven’t got a heart

As far as I’m concerned your just a pasty faced old fart

And as for Condolezza she an intellectual tart

So fuck you all so very much

So fuck you very much the EPA

For giving all Alaska’s oil away

It really is a bummer

When I can’t fill my Hummer

The ozone’s a no go zone now that Arnold’s here to say,

“The nuclear winter games are going to take place in LA”

So fuck you all so very much

So what the planet fails

Lets save the great white males

And fuck you all so very much

quack

This is hardly a new sentiment, but as far as I’m concerned, Clear Channel can go fuck itself.

What do you think Kenneth Starr’s position on the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance is?  Ready to be surprised?

Well, you won’t be:

As the Cold War was unfolding, Congress added the words “under God” as a more complete and decidedly relevant statement of the nation’s political philosophy. … [I]t will rightly be said that schoolchildren will doubtless feel peer pressure to participate in an exercise in which they (or their parents) emphatically disagree … [but the] answer is not to abolish the exercise itself.

He knows that night like his hand.

He knows every move he made.

Late shift, the bell that rang, a time card won’t fade.

10:05 his truck pulled home.

10:05 he climbed his stair, about the time he was accused of being there.

But I’m not the man.

He goes free as I wait on the row for the man to test the rope he’ll slip around my throat…

And silence me.

On the day he was tried no witnesses testified.

Nothing but evidence, not hard to falsify.

His own confession was a prosecutor’s prize,

Made up of fear, of rage and of outright lies.

But I’m not the man.

He goes free as the candle vigil glows, as they burn my clothes.

As the crowd cries, “Hang him slow!”; and I feel my blood go cold, he goes free.

“Bad Catholic!  Bad catholic!” scolds the Vatican, hitting Catholic politicians on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.  “No human flesh for you!”

If they’re going to be dicks about it, excommunicate the guy and deal with the fallout. But the Pope’s not going to do that. He’s just going to let Arinze grandstand, because maintaining theocratic PNTR with Africa is too important to Rome these days. Africa is too big a market a market to ignore. There’s talk of an African as the next pope, with Arinze (Nigerian) at the top of the list. This will yank the Catholic church viciously to the right, undoing any little reform that can be credited to the current administration. No, better to keep the membership rolls flush. Support the Nigerian church as it teaches that watching porn gives you AIDS.

Nigeria is one of the most religiously screwed-up places in the world.  Boys’ eyes are being plucked out for use in witchcraft, and Sharia law is sentencing women to death by stoning for adultery. The climate offers a great chance for the Catholic church to be a moderating, modernizing, progressive force. But that’s not going to happen. The Catholic church will respond to religious radicalism with — surprise! — more religious radicalism. They can disagree with abortion; that’s fine, even though I disagree with it. But they’re not just doing that. They are shunning American politicians for their views, while American clergymen abuse over 10,000 children.

Thursday’s New York Times misidentified GOP Senate candidate Pete Coors as a Ku Klux Klan member who murdered a black sharecropper.

The Coors campaign found the error “so outrageous it’s kind of funny,” said spokeswoman Cinamon Watson.

“It could have been worse,” she joked. “Pete could have been identified as John Kerry.”

Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News

This boggles the mind.  This is supposed to be funny? The official spokesman of a Republican saying that it’s better to be seen as a Klan member then a Democratic senator and presidential nominee?

The San Gabriel Valley in Perspective, or, Why You Shouldn’t Feel Sorry for How Much the Wedding in Father of the Bride Cost

Here is a comparison of median household incomes in the San Gabriel Valley, where I live:

Yes, that’s almost a factor of four range, and yes, San Marino (where Steve Martin and family live in Father of the Bride) is twice its nearest competitor.  All of these towns are are close enough to drive to

for a movie (not that San Marino has any theaters) or a meal (San Marino has exactly twelve restaurants, each located on one of only two streets.) To help visualize the towns, El Monte and Rosemead are pretty grimy, Alhambra is beginning to see a renaissance since the rebuilding of its downtown, Monrovia is fiercely small-town America and has some turn of the (last) century homes, South Pas and Arcadia have nice, big, new homes, Sierra Madre is a nice foothills community with a charming downtown, San Marino is clannish, conservative, and opulent, and the rest are fairly basic L.A. suburbs.

For comparison, Los Angeles proper (across its communities, including inner-city areas and the San Fernando Valley) has a median household income of $36,687, right near the bottom.

My choices for radio among my presets on the ride home:

1. KCLU: Pledge drive, and I lose the station as soon as I leave Thousand Oaks.
2. KCRW: Electronica.
3. KPCC: Pledge drive, and as I’ve noted twice before I’ve contributed and I’m tired of being scolded. They alternated this with Tavis Smiley, whose show makes me cringe.
4. KPFK: This is Pacifica.  They had Black Panther women on the program.  More on this after the list.
5. KUSC: Unpleasant flute music.
6. Air America: Today’s it’s launch, but I couldn’t receive the station (1580 AM).

I ended up listening to the Black Panthers. They were highly articulate, but they were espousing really militant stuff, talking about how it was fortunate some of their leaders “didn’t have to kill people” and referring to race riots as “rebellions” (which I’ll admit deserves a bit more thought.) At least one of the women was talking about her expatriation to Cuba and the Soviet Union, which makes perfect sense as both Castro and Brezhnev were African black power enthusiasts with absolutely no ulterior motives in encouraging seditious Americans.

More Hollywood donations:

• Ben Affleck: $2,000 to Wesley Clark
• Chris Carter: $1,000 to John Edwards
• Robert DeNiro: $2,000 each to to Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, and John Kerry
• David Paymer: $500 to Wesley Clark
• Ben Stein: $1,000 to George Bush