don't see this
latest comments:
Head over here to throw Ginny Schrader some money. Jim Greenwood, a moderate GOP from the 8th district in PA, just cashed in his chips yesterday, making this seat a perfect pickup in a district that went for Gore by 5%. Schrader already raised $14K in a few hours yesterday after the announcement. So help keep it up!
Armstrong won the stage convincingly today, by enough time to snag the yellow jersey before tomorrow's time trial up Alpe d'Huez. He gets to start last, so be sure to watch the fireworks if you can tomorrow morning.
I don't normally like the New Yorker. But this account of the Cheney/Leahy smackdown is priceless.
Clarifying a discussion I had with Brad over the weekend, there are now 920 US military casualties in Iraq. Not including other coalition partners or contractors, etc.
John Edward's brother is wanted in Colorado. Read the article, then see if this is a better headline:
10 Year-old Charges On Relative of Democrat Mentioned Again For No Reason!
There. Perspective is nice, isn't it?
Went ape today. Busted out over two minutes over Ullrich. Armstrong and Basso won the stage after blowing everyone off. Tomorrow the fun in the mountains continues...
This is hilarious. Quite possibly one of the funniest flash animations I've ever seen. Go check it out!
Somewhere, Woodie Guthrie is smiling.
Sometimes, someone comes up with a concept so blindingly obvious one wonders why it wasn't thought of earlier. Ruben Bolling's latest is a great example:
Well put, Ruben.
Last week, Fabrizio McLaughlin and Associates, a GOP polling firm, released a strategy memo based on their recent Battleground State Survey that reveals undecided voters "are currently poised to break away from President Bush and to John Kerry."
Among the reasons:
- They are more than twice as likely to see things headed down the wrong track as compared to voters overall.
- They give President Bush a net negative job approval rating.
- A solid majority sees the Country as being worse off than they were 4 years ago.
- They are significantly more pessimistic about the current state of the nation’s economy.
- They are significantly more likely to favor the federal government doing more as opposed to doing less.
The conclusion: "Clearly, if these undecided voters were leaning any harder against the door of the Kerry camp, they would crash right through it."
Be sure to check out the other memo too. Thanks, Taegan!
werkz advice: skip it.
So I watched the last thirty minutes of '21 Grams' last night. The reason I didn't see it all in one shot was that it was boring. Really boring. Fans of Amores Perros (myself among them) are treated to intertwining storylines that are all sleep inducing. You don't even see the car accident! A total waste of space.
It's a clear, cool blue sky morning. Instant good mood resulting.
So I'm moving all the stories to the front page, at least for when they are originally published. This means all reviews/advice columns/news items will be on the front page at first. Also, I'm adding guest reviewers to the site, and eventually (coding item #3) they'll be able to add/modify their own article and comment on existing articles as well. But I'm a long way from there at the moment. However...everything big needs to start small, so here we go:
Check out Dwight's new review!
p.s. a nice side effect is that i can finally group the blog posting by categories under the "news" section which is how they were originally intended ot work. yay!
“Exclamations at the meeting descended into vituperative (e.g., Congresswoman [Carolyn] Kilpatrick’s [D-Mich.] tawdry, anatomical comment yelled loud enough so the press could hear it outside) and ending with the obscene racist epithet repeated twice by Yale Law School alumnus Congressman Melvin Watt of North Carolina,” Nader wrote Cummings.
As reported by The Hill, Kilpatrick told Nader to “get your ass out” at the June 22 meeting.
Um, describing the statement "get your ass out" as a "tawdry, anatomical comment" seems overblown. And Nader is an overblown ass. So it fits. Go CBC!
werkz advice: go see it today!
"Super Size Me" is one of the best—and certainly (with the exception of _Cane Toads: An Unnatural History_) funniest—documentaries I’ve ever seen. Most people know the gist of the film: a man eats nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 straight days. But the success of the film lies in how it goes about its business. The director/star Morgan Spurlock is charismatic and likeable—from the moment he steps in front of the camera and addresses it, you feel yourself immediately warming to both him and his project. And when the opening credits role, appropriately, to Queen’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls,” you’re hooked.
The film is indeed shocking and effective—there’s no faking the surprise and concern on Spurlock’s medical advisers’ faces as they watch his downward slide. Similarly, there’s delicious humor in Spurlock’s discovery that more kindergarteners recognize Ronald McDonald (or even Wendy) than George Washington or Jesus. What’s especially nice is that Spurlock’s argument is about more than McDonald’s; it’s about the American relationship to food and fitness in general. So he does more than not eat; he also tries to exercise only as much as the “average American,” and he explores fast food’s marketing, its intrusion into school systems, and a whole range of related social issues. McDonald’s is only a symbol of a larger problem—a symbol that they have eagerly set themselves up to become. Occasionally Spurlock seems less then objective, but you forgive him for it (as you might not Michael Moore) because you can literally see the damage that is being done to him—he has an immediate and personal stake in the movie. The end result is a funny convincing, and moving picture that—after you finish laughing—will make you think seriously about not just what you eat, but how you live in general.
A quick postscript:
Sadly, the backlash against this movie has already begun. I was infuriated to stumble across a recent episode of _20/20_ and see John Stossel trying to dismantle the film. Of course he was skeptical, and of course he found people who lost weight eating McDonald’s. But his counterargument was disingenuous, because one of his examples ate only salads, and the other worked out two hours a day. Stossel is purposefully ignoring the larger attack of Spurlock’s film—the American culture and attitudes of which McDonald’s is emblematic, not McDonald’s itself—and he seems oblivious to anything resembling nuance.
Moreover, why attack this film? McDonald’s doesn’t need the help; it has armies of PR people, and advertises daily on almost every network. Does John Stossel and _20/20_ really need to weigh in? A more conspiracy-minded critic would suggest pressure from _20/20_’s advertisers, but I blame sheer thoughtlessness and opportunism: It’s easy to pick on a small-budget labor of love.
The unplugged telephone is a nice detail.
Happy Bastille Day!
And congrats to Richard Virenque! He won every climb on a day that belonged to France.
Okay, I've got a new review to throw up, but I want to do three things beforehand to alter the system itself. All require some coding changes on my part, and the last item is fairly intense. With any luck, I'll have the first two changes and the review up during my lunch break.
Until then, check out the dastardly fox memos Wonkette scored. A sample:
2004-04-06, John Moody
From: John Moody
Date: 4/6/2004
The events in Iraq Tuesday are going to be the top story, unless and until something else (or worse) happens. Err on the side of doing too much Iraq rather than not enough. Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of US lives and asking out loud why are we there?
Um, yeah. The "easy" trap. Right.