Blog Note

Nevermind. The site is still hosed and keeps collapsing like a flan in a cupboard. It’s only up because I’m rebooting the server, but it will just keep crashing. So just head on over to the old site until we get sorted.

As you can see, we’re back up. (The list of posts from the hurricane party over at the old blogspot blog is below, in case you missed anything.)

Our server was hacked; it should be functioning properly again (touch wood), but if we go down again, then it’s back to the blogspot blog. We’re in the process of upgrading, so things might be dodgy for a couple of days, and I’m sorry about that. Stick with us. It’s all a bit of whack-a-mole at the moment, but, if there’s any plus side, it’s that we’re learning how to combat everything that can be thrown at us.

Onward…

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels

Hurricane Party Round-Up

Here’s what you missed during the hurricane party…

Melissa: Two More Examples of Why We Need Federal Marriage Equality NOW

Melissa: “Lighten Up”

Jeff: Shorter Jules Crittenden

Mustang Bobby: Captain America, the Perv

Space Cowboy: Don’t Flatter Yourself, Dick

Melissa: Caption This Photo

Brynn: A third example of why we need federal marriage equality NOW

Jeff: Liveblogging the Debate

Melissa: Question of the Day

Mustang Bobby: The Heart of a Chickenhawk

Kathy: George W. Bush is the Founders’ Worst Nightmare

Misty: Wedded Bliss

I Get Mail

From: [Name and Email Redacted]

Subject: You’re a dumb bitch

Thank you for making the dummying down of America complete – so much easier to laugh at you all this way.

There’s apparently no room for drooling idiots in your family – you unilaterally get all the credit.

When god (notice the small g) realizes what a mistake she made in creating you, I wonder if she’ll finally abort you?

I’d like to note that, despite Name Redacted’s opinion that I am a dumb bitch, he sent this email to me from his work email. I now know his full name, where he works, and that he was sending harassing emails from work, presumably during work hours. That means, if I were the sort of nasty person who would do such a thing, I could quite easily just forward his email to his employer and ask if they share his estimation of me, if the email were, say, transmitting an official company policy, or if I should consider their employee’s opinion his alone.

So, who’s the real dumb bitch here?

Soon, Rape Won’t Exist at All—Not the Act, Mind You; Just the Word

Part Seven in an Ongoing Series: Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Part Five. Part Six.

Reuters does a 240-word story (including headline) on Moroccan UN peacekeepers in the Ivory Coast being suspended “amid sex abuse charges,” including “having sex with a large number of underage girls,” which is at best statutory rape. Guess what word never appears once?

Shocking, I know.

Soldiers who are found guilty of “having sex with” underage girls and/or “sexual exploitation” will be “sent back home” as punishment. Where, presumably, they will be free to “have sex with” and “sexually exploit” other women.

The conflict in Cote d’Ivoire saw rape widely used as a weapon by both sides.

Heckuva Job, Brownie

Surely assuaging concerns in D.C. that he wouldn’t be as useful a tool as his predecessor Tony Blair, new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has evidently decided to prove his mettle as a fearless lapdog by being as belligerent as his Beltway masters:

[Brown, holding his first Downing Street press conference,] said Monday that tougher sanctions are likely against Iran over its contested nuclear program and declined to reject outright the prospect of future military action.

…”I’m not one who is going forward to say we rule out any particular form of action,” Brown said, asked if he would rule out options for future military action against Iran.

…He said Britain would “take whatever measures are necessary to strengthen the sanctions regime in the future.”

The US and the UK continue to fear that “Tehran is using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to produce atomic weapons,” and Iran has not quelled those fears as they’ve now twice rejected UN Security Council resolutions “requiring it to halt uranium enrichment work.” On the other hand, the “International Atomic Energy Agency said this month that Iran has scaled back its uranium enrichment program, signaling a possible willingness from Tehran to resolve the international deadlock,” so perhaps now would be a good time to engage some of that famous British diplomacy instead of barking about tougher sanctions and issuing veiled threats about military action, which will necessarily be viewed through the lens of Britain’s alliance with the US, where the administration is presumed to want war in Iran as a follow-up to their grand Iraq adventure.

I don’t give Ahmadinejad, who’s clearly crazier than a shithouse rat, the benefit of the doubt for a second, nor Ali Khamenei, who’s sane but a tyrannical bully, but I’m getting extremely tired of a foreign policy that’s got all the nuance of a dick-measuring contest. I’d really appreciate it if we could can the fucking bravado and start behaving like grown-ups for awhile.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

3rd Rock from the Sun

Caption This Photo

“I’ve actually got to talk to these losers?!”

I Have Met Two Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and They Are Named Chuck and Larry

Currently on Yahoo’s front page:

Adam Sandler: My accountant just came in his pants. I am nonetheless slightly ashamed.

Daniel Radcliffe: You’ve got to be fecking kidding me.

Melissa McEwan: I weep for the future, Shakers.

[The story says Harry may edge Chuck and Larry by weekend’s end. Let us dare to hope… BTW: I’m not much of a Potter fan, but I’ve seen all the films because Mr. Shakes is mental for the books. IMO, the new film, which we saw last night with Mama and Papa Shakes and one of my oldest friends, JWM, all of whom are also mental for the books, is the best film so far by a long shot. It’s the darkest and the most expressly political, with Voldemort’s reconstitution a pitch-perfect anthropomorphization of creeping fascism, abetted by the legislated conservatism of Professor Umbridge, who seeks to squelch anything she deems “progress just for progress’ sake.”]

Pinkie Needs a Home

Shaker Jaclyn, who is a regular foster mom to animals in need of adoption, has just taken in a new ward, Pinkie. Pinkie needs a good home, and there’s information about Pinkie, and how you can adopt her, below the fold.

Am I cute or what?

RIP Tammy Faye

Tammy Faye Messner has died after her third bout with cancer. She was 65.

I was a great fan and admirer of Tammy Faye, and I am profoundly sad that she’s gone, though also relieved. When she appeared on Larry King’s show, in what was to be her final interview, on Thursday night (Part One, Part Two, Part Three), she was clearly in a lot of pain and had dropped down to 65 pounds. She died the very next morning.

Below is a post I published back in August 2005, about my enduring fondness for the inimitable Tammy Faye.

Stay Classy, Mitt

Via TMZ.

Recommended Reading

Dave Neiwert busts out the facts in response to the odious O’Reilly’s latest diarrheic spewage of false equivalency.

Also, John Amato’s got video of O’Reilly’s attempt at “balance.”

I have a recommendation for Bill O’Reilly: If he wants bloggers to stop being so hateful, he should stop giving us so much to hate.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

TFIF, Shakers! Belly up to the bar and name your poison.

Quote of the Day

“He’s a good man; we’re gonna get him some new legs.”–President Bush, introducing an Iraq veteran who’d lost his legs in the war. [H/T to Mamajane in comments.]

“I gots a doggie!”

The Curious Incident of the Man in the Justice System

Huh: “Roy Lynn Oakley, 65, of Roane County, Tenn., was arrested in January after he allegedly tried to sell the sensitive material to undercover FBI agents, officials said. None of the data made it out of the country or was transmitted to criminal or terrorist groups, officials said.”

Not for lack of trying on Oakley’s part, though, obviously.

The thing is, Oakley wasn’t immediately whisked away to Gitmo and wasn’t denied an attorney. Yesterday, he pleaded not guilty to “charges that he stole classified information about enriching uranium to sell to foreign governments.” And there’s been shockingly little news about this case, considering a contract employee at a nuclear site was trying to sell info that could make possible the proverbial “dirty bomb” or “suitcase nuke” about which we’ve been hearing so much lo these past few years.

Maybe the hush-hushedness has to do with the fact that Oakley was employed by Bechtel, the largest engineering corp. in the US and a favorite of the Bush administration, who awarded Bechtel a $680 million reconstruction contract in Iraq and the no-bid contract to provide “temporary housing” for Katrina relief efforts in NOLA. Or maybe the hush-hushedness has to do with the fact that Bechtel was employed by Oak Ridge, the Energy Department’s largest science and energy laboratory. Or maybe it’s just because Oakley looks like this, so he couldn’t possibly be subjected to the sort of treatment, or the suspension of rights, we reserve for the real terrorists.

WebCrash 2007

I ask you: How much does The Onion rule?

(Thanks to Petulant for the heads-up.)

Friday Blogwhoring

Sock it to me, Shakers!

I’ve got only one Friday Blogrollin’ this week: Zuzu, formerly of Feministe, has started her own blog, Kindly Póg Mo Thóin. So stop on by and say hi to Zuzu!

Recommended Reading:

Steven Reynolds: Radical Right Wing Christian Cleric Uses, Cons Prostitute

BlondeSense Liz: Tucker Makes Me Throw Up In My Mouth

Elle, PhD: Don’t Call Us Out of Name

Lauredhel: Keiko Fukuda

Michael Stickings: The Common Cause of Bush and al Qaeda

Happy Blogiversary…

…to Seeing the Forest, celebrating five years of forest-seeing!

I’m Curious…

In comments, our esteemed colleague Norbizness reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to mention about what Todd has dubbed “the new Adam Sandler homophobic spectacle I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.” First, here’s the trailer, for anyone who’s not yet seen it: