This Wednesday is Blogroll Amnesty Day

The twitter hashtag #blogroll should allow us all to check out each other's posts. We do miss you, Jonathan Swift. (Click the link to see the history and background of B.A.D.)

And feel free to steal the video and post it to your own blog. xxx

Rudy Guiliani's new name - Mister Short Term Memory (VIDEO MASHUP)

except for 9/11, of course.

Driftglass and Blue Gal (PODCAST #3)

We respond to reader letters (thank you!!!) about how (and if) to keep the political "faith". We recorded this BEFORE Obama addressed the GOP Congress Critters. Enjoy!

Re the SOTU

Did anyone else think Obama was speaking to a Congress that doesn't exist?


With apologies to Antigonish:

POTUS enjoined, on the air
A responsible Congress who wasn’t there.
They won't be there again today,
No matter what he'll do or say.


P.S. If you think you're going to have time to hate Obama for his inaction today, just wait. Liz Cheney is about to open her mouth again in 3...2...

Preview of tonight's SOTU photoshop open thread

for the big blog, which incidentally is on a new server and is way faster now.

Arrivederci! I'm off to Davos!

If by "Davos" you mean the upstairs of my messy house. I wonder if Arianna Huffington ever had to clean up after three kids. (Above, not my kids. But close. Middle child is into "food experiments." And my executive compensation and per diem for this trip? Don't get me started.)

Also working on the podcast for this Friday, topic: How or if to keep the [political] faith. Some good letters from listeners have come in, we'll be sharing those. Enjoy (?) the SOTU or at least try not to drink too much. xo

Congratulations, Mister Tristan

Who takes me at my word that blogging for twenty one days straight he gets some linky love.

Absolutely!

It's a long distance runners blog with some bits of politics thrown in. Akabini take note! xo

The podcast is now available on I-Tunes

Those who wish to subscribe via iTunes the link is here.

The direct download and rss feed, and what will be a long list of podcasts (we hope) starting with last week's is here.

Paging Jonathan Swift

When I caught this image on the internets and the commenters were all saying just how adorable it was and I just didn't think so. Then I thought making it into this lolcat would make it better and it didn't.

It's even less funny on mornings when I wake up to radio news about "food insecurity," and the fact that most monthly food stamp benefits get spent in the first three days of the month. It's the 26th of the month, and this is 'the hungry week,' folks. Would it stretch the food dollar if your forty-four dollars per month per person food stamp allotment was distributed as eleven dollars weekly? Really.

Two dots that I have not seen connected yet: the severe state of "food insecurity" in Alabama and Mississippi, and the fact that

"Two states continue to apply their sales tax fully to food purchased for home consumption without providing any offsetting relief for low- and moderate-income families. They are Alabama and Mississippi."

Duh. So let's pretend I'm still stupid enough to live in Birmingham, Alabama. If I got my forty-four dollars a month per person for food stamps, I'd have to pay 4 percent sales tax on my food to the state, plus 2 percent county sales tax, plus 3 percent to the city of Hoover, which, like the vacuum for which it is named, has annexed every parking lot with a grocery store attached to it.

I was actually shocked to see that the sales tax in Hoover has gone up to three percent. Trust me when I tell you, there are very few other places to shop in metro Birmingham.

NINE PERCENT of my food stamp money would be CUT from my benefit BY THE GOVERNMENT with no way to recover that.

Don't tell me I'm coming up against my own tax and spend liberalism. You wanna tax clothes at the mall? Food court lattes? Go ahead. Taxing the hungry for their FOOD is sinful.

________________

In other economic news I don't want to write about, Nicholas Kristof reports the heartwarming story of a family that sold their house and gave a really large and generous portion of their ownings to hungry people around the world. This is a really great lesson for all of us, but while reading this I had a nagging question in the back of my head:

"Wow, they were able to sell their huge crazy-overpriced house?"

It also bugs me that we poor people are reminded of starving people in Haiti as if that will get us to forget that the inequity of income in the US.

Excluding capital gains, the richest one percent [of people in the United States] claimed 17.4 percent of all pre-tax income in 2005, more than double what that figure was in the 1970s. This is the greatest concentration of income since 1936, when the richest one percent received 17.6 percent of total income.

I can understand poor people in America bowing their heads in gratitude and giving to the much poorer and devastated people of Haiti.

I question how much of those ten dollar Red Cross cell-phone bill add-ons will still be being paid off with interest, on Americans' credit card bills, this Christmas, when much of the Haitian devastation will be forgotten, and people use those same generous phones to vote for the American Idol finalist.

Also, I can't understand why the populism on the right is getting all the media attention. Oh yeah, right wing populism and bread and circuses meet the needs of corporate-owned media.

And people at salon last night were laughing that they feel my kick in their ass on days they don't post. Heh.

Please help me caption this photoshop. I'm at a loss.

I called this one "not ready for his NOH8 close up" because I couldn't figure out how to seamlessly put duct tape over his mouth. But I think my readers can do better. Leave a caption in comments and bonus: here at Blue Gal you don't have to keep it clean, necessarily. Clean ones that make me laugh will probably get a mention at the big blog when I use it at Open Thread, though.

UPDATE: My college friend Lee S. wins, via Facebook:

Six pack of Coors Light, $4.99.
Shorts made in Malaysian sweatshop from Walmart, $2.99.
Having the Supreme Court kill campaign finance reform, Priceless.


Salon at 9 Eastern, after I re-acquaint myself with my imaginary boyfriend, who's back in a new episode tonight...

"Leadership Down" [Hare Reid] (PHOTOSHOP)

The State of the Union Address we'd like to see...

Driftglass and Blue Gal (PODCAST #2)

For those of you who just want the rss feed, it's

http://www.buzzsprout.com/229.rss

Thanks to my five year old for bringing us on, and thank YOU for listening!

Michelle Malkin's silence on the grenade launcher thief. Doesn't she care about terrorism?

And the Right Wing Militia guy apparently went shopping for Oklahoma City-type explosives. In an unrelated but very sad note, the jury will also determine if he raped his seven year old daughter.

Sure wish Michelle Malkin and the rest of the GOP infrastructure, who were so freaked out by the Homeland Security report on right wing nutjobs last April, would keep us safe from these terrorists!

What if a member of ACORN did it, Michelle? Would you publish his home phone number? Again?

She and the right wingers who exploded over that report owe everyone at Department of Homeland Security an apology. And yet, there is no counting the number of crickets you can hear at her place over this closely-averted terrorist supply line disaster.



And if he had blown up a federal building, under Obama's watch? Who would you blame for that?


PS to show that I'm more than willing to air Democrats' dirty laundry: John Edwards. DUDE, we didn't need Maury Povich to know you were the father, but getting an aide to STEAL A WET DIAPER for DNA evidence? Claaassy. And nevermind, you totally deserve to be out of politics forever, but so does David Vitter. I take it Edwards never wore the diaper.

How much would YOU pay to say F-U to the GOP?

Would you buy THAT for a dollar?



Let me make it clear, I don't endorse or copy this kind of behavior. It's like watching someone light their own farts. I would never do it or allow my children to do it. But hey, someone in Minneapolis (and I'd be checking Franni Franken's Visa Card statements if I were you, Drudge) contributed one dollar last night to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the name of "F*CK YOU."

Okay, not funny.

By the estimates of several of my big blog colleagues, the thank you ad from the Committee was up at their website's sidebar for at least 23 minutes.

That's funny.

h/t Intoxination, who has the whole screenshot.

My Butt's Wet!

Whew. The sidewalk and stairs leading to my driveway this morning had just enough salt on them to be ice-free. Step on to the driveway and bam, right on my generous ass. So I get out some more salt and prepare a safe path for my three kids to get to the car for the ride to school.

"Mom's icy wet butt" would make a great name for a band, by the way.

So I get the kids all coated up and send them out to the car. You can guess what happened: Junior Dude decided to go skating. Bam. I NEED NEW PANTS!

He changes pants, I get the ice scraped off the car, drive to school and the gas light goes on.

This is how progressives feel this morning.

We did everything right. Took the fall, sacrificed single payer and Kucinich and Dodd and Dean and Edwards (still love Dean, btw, he told Rachel last night one of our alternatives is expanding Medicare through reconciliation). We salted the driveway for Obama, helped to get him elected, voted for him, hoped.

We scraped the windows, did a fifty state strategy and a 60 seat majority.

Bam.

And now we're out of gas. Somebody is going to have to refuel the base over here or this car's not going anywhere. And goddammit Rahm Emmanuel owes us a pair of dry pants.

More on this at Friday's podcast: I'm doing some administrative stuff (including an opening theme) for that today.

Keep the faith, watch out for Monkey Mind, and bow heads and open wallets for Haiti. This too shall pass.

Is It Me, or has Left Wing Blogging Gone Completely High School?

'Cuz if it weren't for Doctor Zaius and a couple other class cut-ups, I'd quit yearbook all together.



Love on Balloon Juice (a typically excellent post here) and Rumproast for fighting the good fight. Yeah, I'm siding with those stoners in the AV room, though the class presidents always get the 'most likely to succeed' mumbo-jumbo. Sigh.

And yeah, Markos totally looks like Pedro. That surprised me, too.

UPDATE: Zaius declares war in the cafeteria.

Talking to children about Haiti and other tragedies

I agree with this commenter at a remembrance of Public Television's Mister Rogers:

My favorite memory of Mr. Rogers is the way he responded to children’s emotional needs during tragedies such as the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11. He advised parents and teachers to focus on showing kids the rescuers and other people who were demonstrating kindness and trying to save others. He wanted kids to understand that although bad things will sometimes happen, there are always people ready to help, ready to make the world right again. In short, he planted faith.

The Fred Rogers PDF on talking to children in times of disaster is still online. Highly recommended.

I've also had an opportunity this weekend to talk to my children about Martin Luther King, who was not a perfect person but who made a big difference in the history of our country. People tried to stop him and he was even killed for trying to change things, but he still worked hard to make a difference.

Having kids means you take things to their simple elements, which can be really helpful to all of us as adults, too.

Salon tonight, 9 Eastern at http://tinychat.com/n8kh. It's just typing chat, and it's often very fun. Hope to see you there. First timers are always warmly welcomed!

My entries for The New Yorker 2010 "Eustace Tilly" contest

The New Yorker is holding a contest to re-model their icon Eustace Tilly for a chance to provide free content and traffic generation to their site to show off your artistic talents at a national level. There's no prize except if you win, your artwork will be part of a featured slideshow on their site. Then as soon as you enter your art is at the gallery at their site anyway. Hm.

Still, as a photoshop exercise it's actually kind of fun and BG recommended. If you enter or just make one for fun let us know in comments...



I had no idea before this weekend that the purple butterfly was a symbol of Lupus Awareness. Of course, even though it's not Lupus, House MD has done a lot to increase Lupus awareness himself.



Orly Taitz holds up her monacle to that document she says does not exist. The New Yorker frequently plays with the letter 'O' in their covers, I thought the seal of Hawaii made a good fit.

PS You do have to register at the New Yorker site to enter or comment.

Saturday Song

I'm going through old songs for ideas for an intro to the podcast. This is very blog-oriented, I think. I tried out the Bill O'Reilly "we'll do it live" remixes and was turned off--don't really want Bill O introducing the show.

I'd also like it to have an olde tyme radio feel while still being kinda hip. Any suggestions?

Driftglass and Blue Gal talk about politics (PODCAST)

A lil' sumpin the amazing blogger Driftglass and I have been meaning to do for a while - podcast! (your player might say it's 43 minutes long, yii!, but it's only 23 and DG really brings it.)

We've got some of the technical kinks worked out and we'll be working on a title, intro, format etc. as the year goes on. Thanks for listening and for any feedback you might have.

And YES we will be able to have other bloggers on as guests, provided you have a skype account and we can work out some other minor issues. Can't wait to do that.

Driftglass is suggesting we call this show "F%#@%#^%@ it, we'll do it live" radio.

You know the Church has failed...

...when the Jester must remind us of scripture.

For those of you following along in the pew, Brother Stewart reads from:

Psalms 34:8

Isaiah 41: 10

Psalms 71:20

and Isaiah 54:10

Creepiest TV moment in all of history - Glenn Beck reads his journal to Sarah Palin

I usually don't post plain ol' video from other sources, but gawd. I just had to share. Video originally found at Gawker.

I was sorely tempted this morning when I realized that the more I watch Sarah Palin, the less I identify myself as a "Christian." If "Christian" means you can completely ignore Truth, capital T, in exchange for ideology, count me out.

But then I had a quiet, prayerful moment with my Lord and Savior and I felt much better:

Rush Limbaugh says Haiti produces "zilch, zero, nada."

As a commenter at C&L pointed out, "I'm awaiting the karma." (Rush's, ahem, "comment" is at Media Matters, of course.)

Awesome comment of the day.

Wait til they find out Obama is paid 400k a year by the taxpayers and HE IS SHAMELESSLY SHILLING FOR HIS PLAN!

- John Cole at Balloon Juice, worth the click if you watch the liberal blogs




Taking the rest of the day off to be quiet and clean my yarn studio, part two. I tweeted some fellow knitters (who were kvetching about having too much yarn) my old saw:

No one ever told Van Gogh he had too many colors of paint. Yarn is your palette. That said, don't lose sight of your artistic vision: get rid of anything that you don't have a plan for or that doesn't inspire you.

I think that applies to bloggers, too. You don't have to post on everything all the time, and sometimes listening is more important than typing. My prayers and a couple of my dollars go to Haiti today.

Happy Birthday, Sherry of After the Bridge!

So I really wanted to do something special for Sherry, because she is a very devoted reader and commenter to this blog. Since I know she appreciates my writing and um, humor, I wrote this especially for her. Please go to her blog and wish her a very happy day!

I wanted to make a blog cake for Sherry. I knew trying to slice a cake on the internet would get really messy, and would interrupt my morning Scotch, so I went with cupcakes, and of course they had to be Hello Kitty cupcakes, cuz they're so fucking cute.

I searched on Google for Hello Kitty cupcake ideas and holy shit I could have taken the whole morning just to browse the endless stream of freakish Asian cute sugar overload. 210,000 hits in .24 seconds? Fuck me. And even if you're making these for a three year old, get over it: every one of them looked like shit. We have lots of Hello Kitty items cluttering up my fucking house, so I cut out a Hello Kitty (head only, DECAPITATION, PERFECT!) from my Hello, Kitty! social events calendar, fuck you very much. I tried to find one that was the size of a muffin-size cake top, so I could just paste it on a vending machine muffin, but I failed, so I dug out the Hello Kitty Shrinky Dinks kit and baked one in my Hello Kitty toaster oven, too small to stick my head in, but whatever.

One website suggested I purchase white fondant (Sure.), roll this out and with a sharp knife cut 39 (forever, Sherry!) Hello Kitty heads out. They also suggested I use mini M&M's (split in half to get the oblong shape, beyotch) for the eyes and nose. I am also supposed to dye some of the fondant pink and use a flower shape cutter to put by her ear. For the centre of the flower, I'm supposed to have 39 yellow mini M&Ms available, fucking A!

After assembling these, I am to wake up and realize I had spent two hours with mother fucking FONDANT. What the hell was I thinking? So then I made the cupcakes (just basic chocolate cake mix, because hey, why go over the top at this point?) and iced them with canned icing, dyed pink from the blood streaming from my eyes. I put my imaginary fondant Hello Kitty heads on top of the cupcakes, and finally gave up and just used Sharpie pen for the whiskers. Fuck it.

They looked like shit and because of the Sharpie Pen, school paste, and blood they were completely inedible. I had to set fire to them, but that made them look like a kind of cool art installation, you know, Hello Kitty Cupcakes of Death. Perfect!

Happy Birthday Sherry and much love!

Sarah Palin Show? @dirtycommie wins the prize.

Under[pants] statement of the day

Like I don't tell my own kids this three hundred times a day:

“...if everyone behaves, there won’t be any problems.”

-- Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority spokesman Joe Pesaturo, commenting on the "No Pants on the T" event held yesterday. (h/t Mountjoy at MPS)


__________________

In related news: People who take the train over the Rocky Mountains in January and complain about being delayed should have their pants taken away from them.

__________________

Once you're pant-less, "Anyone can be better served by having more sex." Thank you, Captain Obvious!

__________________

Things that DON'T make my photoshop fingers itch: Rod Blagojevich saying he's blacker than Obama. Well, maybe a little tingle:



__________________

Salon tonight. Happy Monday!


.

Forgive them, Spaghetti Monster?

[Edited because some readers misinterpreted my meaning. - BG]

I am a little tired of those progressives (PUMAs and Kos commenters who never had a blog of their own in particular) who say Obama has betrayed progressivism, but so many of them didn't vote for him actually and many who say they are 'signing up' to oppose him or fight the White House or whatever have never been "in support" of the President on anything anyhow.

John Cole says it better than I could:

I want my reality-based community back. Where did you all go? Or, to paraphrase commenter Cleek ... “Show me on the doll where Rahm touched you.” Please come back. I liked working WITH you.

Except that even Cole has to admit that a great many of the comrades who have dissolved into screaming meanies (or more likely, simply disappeared with their abandoned blogs altogether) were not exactly deep intellectual contributors. I've warned about this many times. The Blog world party is a very different place when the "fuck you Bush" bong pipe is no longer lit. Some people weren't at the party for anything else, and have nothing to contribute now.

People who are still mad because their "turn" to run the country got "taken away from them" are eerily similar to those screaming about, well, "wanting their country back."

Who, ever, in the history of the universe, thought politics was fair? LOTS of people.

If we ever take a really good hard look in the mirror, we'll see that we progressives are horribly moralizing and unforgiving "condemn them all to hell" bunch, especially among our own. And we're up against the GOP Christianists who have no problem whatsoever saying "we're not perfect, just forgiven" and as far as our sins go, Jesus paid for that.

Sexual escapades by men are based in patriarchy. Unforgivable in progressive circles, but in conservative circles where God is Male and often White? Not so much. So John Edwards's political career is over whereas Vitter and Ensign are still in the Senate. Vitter is likely to be re-elected. Not perfect but forgiven? Progressives don't do that. Being a Republican/Christian and cheating on your wife is being a bad person and because we're not perfect, is forgiven. Being a Democrat and cheating on your wife is being a bad feminist/humanist/progressive and is not forgivable.

The great secret of progressive politics is, we cut off our limbs in the name of political purity far more often than our opponents.

I don't forgive Democrats who voted against real healthcare reform. But many of them are ready to vote with me on other issues and I'm going to have to support their efforts then. You work with the Democrats you've got, push hard from the Left, and realize that change is a pisser and takes time. The status quo, a dull and easily manipulated electorate, and the beltway insidership of both parties and the corporate media, are the main foe.

Believe me when I tell you, I have tried to live on an island where I am morally right all the time. I never tried The Island of Political Correctness. It may be kind of crowded there, but with all the bridges burned, it's terribly isolated and ineffective.

Incidentally, good luck with your reputation recovery, Elliot Spitzer, you former Hillary delegate leader, you.

Saturday Song: Remembering the Typewriter

From the YouTube description:

"Too Marvelous for Words" musical number from the film "Ready, Willing, and Able" (1937) with Ruby Keeler and Lee Dixon. The chorus girl keys are brilliant!!

The Late Elvis Presley, and David Bowie, have the same birthday today.

Andy K at C&L pointed out to me. The King Who Fell To Earth?

Personally? The best porn I've watched all week.

How much of a geek am I? I am writing up the pattern for that Google Chrome page with the unraveling window (five needles not four, picked up from the outside and decreased inward, natch) as I write this, it looks like it I'm guessing the YARN they used might be Brown Sheep Naturespun Worsted.

The parts not unravelling are actually embroidery over double crochet, which makes creating the "open window" for the unraveled part that much easier. The unraveled part is actually garter in the round, k1 row p1 row, to match the texture of the crochet, I imagine. Bet that was version two when they figured out reverse stockinette didn't have enough texture.

Major points off for the knitter in the YouTube not actually holding needles, but I guess with the free tour you're often deprived of a money shot.

Sorry if your not into the yarn thing. Like all pornography, it either gets you off or it doesn't. Yeah.

If you are reading this at Blue Gal, this is not about you.

A good new year's resolution from the very good "The Pledge Not to Suck at the Internet":

"After one year of commenting on other people's work without producing any of my own, I will produce some work and allow others to comment on it. I am allowed to then lash out at my commenters, but I acknowledge that that polemic will become my only well-known work."

I was visiting another blog, not this one, I swear, and there was this long drawn out comment about the commenter and how they "felt" about the post and the issue and how it related to their childhood and marriage (oh no, I am not making that up).

Everyone who comments HERE knows this already, but if you lurk here and comment like that elsewhere because you fear my rapier wit (smart kid) allow me to provide some guidelines that might help other bloggers. Bloggers who get that kind of comment are free to cut and paste with attribution, as usual:

COMMENT GUIDELINES

Don't talk about yourself, your psyche, your personality type, your astrological sign, or your pets. Post that stuff to your own blog. And if it relates to one of my posts give me a link. That's how it's done.

It's weird that what looks fine on a blog post looks self-absorbed in a comment at someone else's place. It's like the party guest I had once who wanted to "share" her exercise routine with her fellow guests. At my party. Yeah. Don't get me started.

Basically? If you comment includes a first person pronoun, maybe you shouldn't. You actually have more to add to the conversation than that, you know. It's just drawing attention where I'm sure you don't mean to, whereas comments that are NOT about you and your psyche and NOT about how you relate to your peers and NOT about how you are deeper than they are actually say a LOT about YOU in a POSITIVE way. Intelligent comments that are NOT about YOU actually lead people to want to find out about you and your psyche so then they go to your blog, see?

Confessionals at a blog that is not your own is just plain tacky. Well written confessionals and personal rants of every stripe at your own blog will bring you readers, friends, fans, and wannabes. Write your own blog. Get your own damn blog. And thank you.

We Need More Retirements in the Congress, Not Less

I certainly understand the collective whine coming from us progressives over the "loss" of Senators Dodd and Dorgen. But look, both of them have birthdays in May: Dodd will be 66 and Dorgan 68. When are these guys supposed to retire?

We've got the oldest US Senate in the history of forever. Forty-eight US Senators are over sixty-five, and twenty-seven of those are over seventy.

I don't want anyone to think I'm being ageist here, though I actually think it's an ageist thing on the part of boomers to keep these (pardon the expression) fossils in office. One always feels younger if the leadership of your country is older than you. A large part of the susceptibility of seniors to distrust Obama has to do with him being in his forties, I'm sure.

And why would a body of (mostly) men who continue to get Federal Employee health insurance see the urgency of a Medicare buy-in for people under sixty five? Hell, Senator Grassley (running for re-election and he'll be 78 in September) told a constituent flat-out last June that if he wanted a good deal on health insurance he should become an employee of the federal government. No, really:



I think we need more members of Congress to retire.

Sure, like a lot of progressives I would miss Bernie Sanders (68) and Jay Rockefeller (72) and Barbara Boxer (69). But I certainly don't think there aren't progressive candidates available to run and serve in their place.

The Democrats in particular should be ashamed for needing to wheel Robert Byrd (ninty-effing-two) into the chamber late Christmas Eve for a sixtieth vote. If Joe Lieberman (67) can fake-filibuster without actually lifting a finger or pulling out a cot, Byrd should be able to vote "aye" from home.

The argument for incumbency benefits only the two political parties and the advertising reps and consultants who make running for office a million dollar business. Screw them and their self-preservation. As Chris Dodd said yesterday, "None of us is irreplaceable. None of us are indispensible. Those who think otherwise, are dangerous."

The Nation Magazine is issuing a Platinum Visa card?

Look, I don't begrudge any liberal institution the right to fund themselves however they can, nor do I think any of us progressives can afford NOT to put whatever money we are able to spend towards causes we support.

But I still think The Nation Magazine Platinum Visa Card, which is apparently a real thing, is a hilarious oxymoron.

And it made my photoshop fingers, which always take things to their logical conclusion, itch.

The Karl Marx Mastercard:

The Che Guevara Visa:

And my personal favorite, the Emma Goldman mugshot Discover Card ("The Card with Payback tm")

Memo to The Nation, kudos or just remarkable good timing for waiting until credit card reform took place.

A hilarious video for the birthers!

I made this video back in July, and I can't BUH-lieve it's still relevant. But now the two headed snake is eating itself (via C&L, who smartly links to the cached page so as not to give a birther site additional traffic). Here's just one comment from a birther about the horrible Fox News conspiracy to silence birther "truth":

Beck had to go to Fox from CNN. Fox must have made him sign a contract that he would not mention the ineligibility of BHO. Hannity, probably same thing. Where would Beck go if he wasn’t at Fox? Not that it matters to me, but I think he can’t talk about this. Several of his subs over the holidays did mention it. I don’t really think Beck or Hannity are solidly conservative. You can’t compartmentalize when it comes to freedom and liberty.

The person to “get to” is Savage. He often mentions how bho is ineligible, but he needs to start mocking the others for not mentioning it. It may be possible to reach Rush, but not sure.

So if you're 'solidly conservative,' you have to be a birther. This is like a mentally ill person screaming the sky is green: the media's only apparent option is to debate and argue with him about the color of the sky, but you can't address the issue that the person you're talking to is CRAZY. And then the crazy person starts arguing with the media about their attempt to "silence" him? The only thing Fox can do is walk away and hope no one notices that the inmates of the asylum are their core audience.

I still don't understand how the birthers can place Obama's nativity in a place where his mother's vagina was not. There is no evidence, in fact, there is a lot of proof, that she was in Hawaii for nearly all of the 1960's. They're called birthers but they have no concept of how that event takes place.

This 'solidly conservative birthers' versus Fox/Rush/Beck would be really fun to watch if it weren't so pathetic.

Breaking: Brit Hume's Christmas Gift Bag for Tiger

A warm welcome to folks coming here from USA Today:

The golf ball rosary.

Really, there are no words.

Brit Hume, who as you know won my never-ending "thank you for being you" award for labeling Michelle Obama as "possibly an arch-liberal," now thinks out loud that Tiger Woods should convert to Christianity, because that religion offers the best deal to get out of Hell free.

I was really bothered by Countdown last night, though, because to address this issue Keith Olbermann had on Dan Savage, who is a terrific writer on sex advice and gay issues. He also apparently has theology training, but admits he is not a Christian. But what bothers me is that Savage asked Keith "where are the liberal Christians speaking out against this?" Savage is absolutely right that Brit Hume is insulting Christianity and Christians by offering Tiger Woods an "easy" way to get his mojo back.



There are lots of liberal Christians who would likely "speak out" on this, if Keith Olbermann wanted to pick up the phone. Olbermann has had on his show in the past Reverend C. Welton Gaddy and Reverend Barry Lynn. There are people at Street Prophets he could have called, or he could have pissed off the street prophets and called Jim Wallis. Olbermann, if it is a particularly slow news night and he needed to fill in a few minutes, could probably have signed Reverend Jesse Jackson to come on in and recite a few couplets on the occasion:

That twice married Mister Hume
About Tiger's soul should not presume
We all know every Christian falls
When their clubs decide where they drop their balls.

One of, certainly not the only, reasons the right has "hijacked" Christianity is that their antics make for much better television than reasonable people's.

Really, Mister Olbermann, there's no reason for Dan Savage to ask you "where are the liberal Christians on this" when those very Christians are listed in your intern's Rolodex.


Rosary and statue from here.

My 2500th Post.

Well you young whippersnappers, back when I started blogging, 2500 posts ago, there was no twitter, no tinychat, no i-phones, no Flip Cams.

What there was, remains: the ability to post my writing and some interesting photos (I'm much better at the photoshopping now) and the daily push to write something.

And what has been added are some amazing friends, colleagues, and readers. And you all mean so much to me. Thank you.

I remember when I was a teenager and I told my dad I wanted to be a writer. "Just remember my dear, you are easily amused."

And I remember thinking, not back-talking my Dad, but still: "Yes. I think that's the one essential thing."

Life while writing this blog hasn't always been easy, but it has been rewarding. I love this Q&A between a young writer and Garrison Keillor. What do you do as a humor writer when life gets really hard? I leave you with his answer.



And here's to the next 2,500 posts. Love, Fran/BG

Salon Tonight, but no Weblog Awards this year.

Weblog awards have been cancelled, either due to lack of money (haven't they heard of asking for Paypal donations?) or lack of technological prowess (ahem). I won't pass judgment, except to say the quitting seemed very Wasilla-by-the-lake to me.

And yes, I did look forward to competing mano-a-maniac with Pammy Atlas. I won't link to her, you know, but here is a post by her from today, cut and pasted in its entirety:

That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger ........ Obama's going to damn near kill us. Man up, America. Every free thinking, liberty loving, self reliant, rugged individual must rise up to destroy our in-house enemy - the leftist/Islamic alliance.

I mean, I REALLY looked forward to going up against that in the Weblog Awards. Really.

Really really really.

Oh well.

UPDATE: (h/t Suburban Guerilla) The Koufax Awards are re-emerging. No chance for a match up with Pammy there, though.

Salon tonight 9 Eastern. Hope to see you there.

A Day at the Race [War]

A birth certificate from Africa? I love you. There, I said it!

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'Don't be crazy, Captain! You neocons can't be seen benefitting from birther-mania! Get her out of here until this whole thing blows over!

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Neo-comics? Something is terribly wrong here!


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Saturday Song - The Edison Museum by TMBG

They Might Be Giants.

Here's one to ADD to the lexicon.

Lake Superior State University's Word Banishment Committee has issued its list of words to be banned in 2010 (staycation, sexting, maverick) and so has Driftglass (monetize, proactive, center/right). May I humbly ask that the blogs do whatever they can to promote the use of the following phrase of art in 2010?

...you are being shagged by the rare parrot.

Because.




I expect this to have a defined political meaning by month's end, people. That is all.

If your New Year's Resolution is to write and blog more.

Take it from the blog queen, you can do it! To paraphrase Imaginary Boyfriend II, 'I am blogger, and so can you!'

Here's what you do: Take a page out of my book. I'll hit 2500 total posts four days or less from now, yay! Be inspired by the fabulous Phydeau Speaks, who posted for 775 days in a row. (I'm too busy writing to go back and count the last time I skipped.)

You don't have to start out with these kind of crazy long-term goals. It's better not to. Do what all those motivational speakers say will develop a habit: post every day for three weeks, until the 21st of this month. Start today. Write something.

'Digby-Atrios-FDL-Blue Gal says' posts with no additional writing from you, DO NOT COUNT. Write about the snowflakes on your window in light of the individuality of each person you met today. Write about what your hopes are for your unborn great-grandchildren. Write about the time your parents came to visit you and all of a sudden you realized they were insecure, distracted, less-than-perfect adult humans just like you.

Write about how torn you are about Rush Limbaugh versus Oprah Winfrey and which "passing" would leave more dull-faced morans roaming the streets desperate for someone to tell them what to think. And how we all will be living our best life once they are gone.

Write a play in the style of Kafka from the standpoint of Rahm Emmanuel's missing finger.

When you've written 21 posts in a row, write me. I'd love to celebrate you with a link to my blog.

Happy New Year.