Eastern Promises

Definately one of the better films I've caught in the theater this year (including Children of Men in that count, so that's high praise). Easily the best and most accurate portrayal of the Russian mob (vory v zokonye) committed to film, with a good (but not perfect) understanding of the language of tattoos, the nuance of relationships and symbolism, and the vory code vs. its wolfish nature. No gun use at all in the entire film, which is a pleasant surprise, until you see the knives come out - when Viggo Mortensen is naked.

Go see it.

Even Chuckles Can't Beat These

And you thought your college drinking stories were hardcore...you ain't got anything on Europeans and colonials!

No Surprise...

But well worth watching. I feel the bile rising right now...

Finally...a Mate for Chuckles

The wiggling is hypnotic...

A Joke in Primetime



For those of you who didn't watch the Republican debate, in which Brownback was booed for supporting constitutional "protection of marriage" amendments and Guiliani was booed for his support of Gitmo because otherwise "we could only release these people into the streets of New York and Los Angeles" (?!!?!?!), it was pretty classic.

The last part of the video is spoofing Sean Hannity scrambling and eventually speaking against his own network when he saw poll results saying Ron Paul won the debate - Hannity claimed the poll must have been hacked, and did his own "scientific" survey of undecided "randomly chosen" voters that claimed his candidate won the debate instead.

Regardless, this video holds true without the specifics. Oh, and the bunny is supposed to be Kolmes (Faux's "liberal" commentator, AKA network punching bag).

"Drop Your Weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."

Apparently, the rise of the machines has begun, and we have failed to prove our innate superiority to these semi-automonous death machines:

But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.

By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.

Drones are big business nowadays, what with America's growing distaste for throwing our soldiers into the meatgrinder of pointless wars of aggression. Even Roomba (you know the guys who make the cute little robot vacuum?) is getting into the act with the deadly-cute KillBot. Let the bilking of the American taxpayer begin!

Dick Jones would be proud.

A Modest Proposal

So lately, there's been a lot of chatter that the subprime mortgage crisis may lead the world economy to move away from a dollar standard toward the decidedly-more cyberpunk Euro or even yuan standards. There's no doubt that the war and massive debts being incurred by our government is deflating the value of a dollar both economically and as valued by other nations.

Many fiscal conservatives argue that this problem is due to the Federal Reserve, which is allowed to print money to maintain the economy; but printing money causes it to be less rare, which leads to inflation and thus devalues all money. They suggest we return to the Gold Standard, which was voted out in favor of fiat currency in the United States over 90 years ago, and with good reason. A gold standard demands that a person can change their money to gold, which ties our economy entirely to our ability as a nation to mine gold. Switching back to this standard would have disastrous limiting effects to our economy, particularly on the international circuit, both because we've sold much of our gold to China already, and because it would likely to cut the individual value of a dollar by 1/10th or more, screwing everyone.

But the idea of having a standard to limit inflation isn't necessarily a bad notion. The problem with the gold standard is gold's rarity, particularly in the States - so what if we used something that was much more common in the US, and even less so in other countries? And that's when it hit me - the Body Fat Standard.

Think about it! America is frequently noted as being the most obese nation in the world, especially compared to Europe and China, which are the ones giving us the most economic trouble. If we were to change the standard to body fat, we could reclaim our position as the world's economic leader. There are many advantages to the Body Fat Standard:

• It's a resource that's readily available - No trouble digging up fat here in the States!
  
• It restores the old order - as the fattest nation on Earth, Americans will also naturally be the wealthiest.
  
• It changes the paradigm of the "fat American" on its head - Like the days of the Renaissance, thick men and full figured women will be automatically understood to be better-fed and thus...better...than skinny people (take THAT, Etheopia!).
  
• It make lazy people produce - Self-employment can be considered sitting around stuffing your face all day.
  
• It removes the stigma of being overweight - Fat people will no longer have to provide lame excuses for their body weight such as being "big boned" - now, they can just say "I'm an entrepreneur."

So there you have it. All your Ron Paul supporters, I hope you're paying attention - THIS is the solution to America's economic woes.

Lou Dobbs is Off His Rocker

So, for those of you who don't know who Lou Dobbs is, he's CNN's chief anti-establishment pundit who has made his career around attacking immigration in the United States. Anyone who drifts even close to allowing "amnesty" to undocumented workers in the United States is righteously flamed by Dobbs. He's a one-issue commentator, but that doesn't stop him from beating that drum over and over and OVER again.

So in today's Dobb's screed, he stated that "George W. Bush is a one-world neo-liberal." WTF? The man who chose unilateral action over UN approval; the man who came to define "neo-CON", is now both one world and neo-liberal? But of course, it comes down to one issue:

"President Bush has pressed hard for the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the first step toward a North American Union that will threaten our sovereignty. This administration has permitted American businesses to hire illegal aliens, encouraged the invasion of 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and has given Mexico and corporate America dominion over our borders and our immigration policy" and;

"A vote is likely in the weeks ahead, and this Democratic-controlled Senate is the same institution whose leadership sought passage of the disastrous comprehensive immigration overhaul legislation."

Sure, I hate the president just as much as Dobbs (or the next guy) but does it always have to be about assaults on our sovreignty? We are a nation of immigrants, and while I favor clarifying and cleaning up immigration law, I don't think dedicating all our law resources to kicking any undocumented worker out of the States is addressing the root cause or going to fix the problem. Punish companies who exploit undocumented laborers, offer an path to citizenship for undocumented workers (because that will secure rights for them and ensure the tax money is coming in for the gov't - good for everyone) and most importantly ABANDON THE XENOPHOBIC, ISOLATIONIST MENTALITY IN THE FACE OF GLOBALISM that characterizes both the Bush adminsistration and Dobbs himself.

Welcome to the twenty-first century Lou.

"I Learned It From Watching YOU!"

Anybody remember those old mid-80's War-on-Drugs after-school-special commercials, where Dad confronts his kid his stash of pot, and asks him where did he get mixed up with that stuff?

Well, you have to wonder why the hell the Administration is suprised the Kremlin is behaving badly. Their reaction is laugh out loud funny.

My only response: "Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle."

And Now For Something Slightly Different...


Find out what Heroes character you are at LiquidGeneration.com!

March of the Brownshirts

"This Friday, prepare to witness to the cutest, most touching film ever made about fascist goosestepping neo-con demon-whores ever to hit the big screen...."

March of the Brownshirts!

"Laugh yourself anti-Semetic as you hear Ann Coulter tell a Jewish commentator Christians are perfected Jews on live television!"

"And remember to shore up those borders...AGAINST HILARITY...as Lynne Cheney insists the terror bombings of England and Madrid and throughout Iraq don't count because they don't attack American interests!"

"Move over to the side, boys, because the GIRLS are back in town...and BROWN! So affit the red armband, slick your hair, trim your mustaches, and get a rocking good Zeig Heil! ready for the release of MARCH OF THE BROWNSHIRTS! Coming this fall from FOX Broadcasting!"

Hillary and the School of Hard Knocks

Since the Times tends to strip its articles out of circulation pretty quick, I'm going to steal this for posterity. In short, I wonder this - if she can't learn from something she categorized as a "mistake" (authorizing W's war in Iraq) and she thinks Cheney doesn't have the time or guts to abuse an opportunity to attack Iran, how can she call Barack Obama naive?

October 10, 2007
Bomb, Bomb Iran
By MAUREEN DOWD

Up until now, she has displayed remarkable imperturbability — gliding along with the help of good lighting, a hearty guffaw and a clever husband.

But on Sunday in New Hampton, Iowa, Hillary lost her cool at last. Sparring with a voter on Iran, she sounded defensive and paranoid.

A Democrat, Randall Rolph, asked Senator Clinton why he should back her when she did not learn her lesson after voting to authorize W. to use force in Iraq. He did not understand how she could have voted yea to urge W. to label Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, possibly setting the stage for more Cheney chicanery.

Hillary said that “labeling them a terrorist organization gives us the authority to impose sanctions on their leadership. ...I consider that part of a very robust diplomatic effort.”

Fearful that her questioner was an enemy spy creeping into her perfect little world, she suggested that he had been put up to the question and did not have his information right.

“I take exception,” Mr. Rolph insisted. “This is my own research. ... I’m offended that you would suggest that.”

Hillary apologized and said that she had been asked “the very same question in three other places.” She explained that she had signed on to a rewritten version of the amendment that did not, as he claimed, give a green light for combat.

In the original “sense of Senate on Iran” document, sponsored by Joe Lieberman and the Republican Jon Kyl last month, there was a paragraph that supported “the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence and military instruments, in support of the policy with respect to” Iran. That original draft, called “tantamount to a declaration of war” and “Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream” by Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, was softened.

Even so, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd voted no, and Barack Obama would have voted no if he had voted.

If you know the dingbat vice president is agitating for a conflict with Iran, if you know that Condi is chasing after Cheney with a butterfly net on Iran and Syria, if you know you can’t believe anything this administration says, why vote to give them more backing on their dysfunctional Middle East policy?

The schism in the administration is deepening in a way that should alarm Hillary. Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper report in today’s Times that Cheney and his hawks are arguing that the Israeli intelligence about Syria’s nascent nuclear capabilities that led to last month’s Israeli strike on Syria was credible and should dictate a harsher policy toward Syria and North Korea, while Condi, Bob Gates and calmer heads “did not believe the intelligence presented so far merits any change in the American diplomatic approach.”

Hillary’s hawkish Iran vote was an ill-advised move, especially given her private view that Cheney is untrustworthy and given Sy Hersh’s New Yorker report claiming that Cheney had pushed to devise a plan to attack the Revolutionary Guard facilities in Iran.

She made a course correction on Oct. 1, co-sponsoring legislation introduced by Mr. Webb to prohibit the use of funds for military operations against Iran without explicit Congressional authorization.

Her opponents have sounded the fool-me-once-shame-on-you, fool-me-twice-shame-on-me drumbeat. Obama chided Hillary for her willingness “to once again extend to the president the benefit of the doubt.” John Edwards wondered if in “six months from now he goes to war in Iran, are we going to hear her once again say if only I had known then what I know now?”

When Hillary voted to let W. use force in Iraq, she didn’t even read the intelligence estimate. She wasn’t trying to do the right thing. She was trying to do the opportunistic thing. She felt she could not run for president, as a woman, if she played the peacenik.

By throwing in with Joe Lieberman and the conservative hawks on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard issue, she once more overcompensated in a cynical way. She’d like to paint Obama as the weak reed who wants to cozy up to dictators, while she’s the one who will play tough. It was odd, given her success in the debates conveying the sense that she is the manliest candidate among the Democrats, that she felt the need to man-up on Iran.

But maybe she knows that Rudy will hurl thunderbolts at her, as he did in the debate yesterday, suggesting that she doesn’t have the guts to use a military option to stop Iran from going nuclear.

Voters seem more concerned with Hillary’s political expediency — which the vote underscored — than with her ability to be manly.

Her camp seems to think her vote was a safe one because W. and Cheney do not have the time or support to bomb Iran, and that Bob Gates can stop it. But she may be underestimating W. and Cheney. She should be at least as paranoid about that pair as she was about an Iowa Democrat.

Know Your Mercenary Armies



Call me an optimist, but the administration may finally be thinking straight about our use of mercs in Iraq. We'll see...

That Explains What Happened to Him...

Remember back in the 2000, when John McCain seemed both moderate and sane? Ever wonder what the hell happened? I think I found the answer:

"I have a glass of ethanol every morning before breakfast, but I still don’t support the subsidies, and I don’t think we need them” - John McCain speaking in Dearborn, MI (link).

Yeeeeeeargh!

Imagine that generic scream that was used in Doom and shows up in commercials all the time - yeah, that's what I've sounded like lately....

Good news - I've been promoted! My department at work has been consolidated with another group, and my boss has moved up, which put me into the role as the manager of web publishing and support (essentially, the webmaster). No title change (at my request - web content manager is a lucrative title, as it turns out), but a boost in pay, responsibility and what not has really put a crimp on my time. Over the last few weeks, I've had to engage in a week of usability testing on a web tool, manage a week of lightning fast revisions to the tool, then run a week of 2 hour training sessions to introduce the campus to what it *might* look like. This is the first week I've had where I'm not run ragged every day I come home...just *most* of the days. Still, I'm going to be much better off at work than I have in a long time (in many ways) and things are going really well.

Other good news - The Xbox showed up at my house last Wednesday. After all that stupid drama and confusion and wasted time, it turned out that MS had indeed replaced my console, invalidated the old serial, and was sending it back. Why he told me it was in Mexico, that my number was registered elsewhere, or that I had to explain to him customer service for his own company (and that I was right) will remain forever a mystery.

So, like a good little drone I ran out and picked up Halo 3, which is confusing as a campaign (it's a true sequel in that it has not back story to ease you in, and is DEEPLY entrenched in its own mythology) and somewhat frustrating as a multiplayer experience for a guy used to games like Rainbow 6 Vegas which have no bunny hopping, magic grenade throwing, or melee attacks. Still like R6 better, but I'm finding co-op and team multiplayer H3 with good people to be quite a bit of fun. Now if I can finally find a game that's not in the damn Snowbound map...

One of H3's coolest features is the theater (along with the Forge dynamic map editor), which you can do some really cool things to make and share videos. Plus, moments like this are not lost in the mists of time: