The New Road

Miguel Rodriguez

Score one for Facebook. For years I've been trying on and off to find an old friend of mine from my University of Miami days, Miguel Rodriguez, on the Interwebz. Seriously, the name Miguel Rodriguez is like the Spanish version of Joe Smith, so Googling was a needle in a haystack. This morning though, problem solved, Miguel hooked up with me through Facebook. Nice kid, nice wife, nice tats!

Magic Negro-gate Keeps Going

Please, oh please, let this magic negro thing run and run. Every day it goes the red slash on this map:

The red indicates who thinks this song is funny. If that's the only people the RNC wants to go after, great!

I really find it amusing when I hear pillhead fans try to use his drug-addled logic to try and defend him and the song. In this particular clip a Coulter wannabe yells that she is only defending Limbaugh, not the song. Ranting on about how it's some absurdity on an absurdity or whatever. Who cares. Limbaugh knows as much about comedy as he does about government, absolutely nothing. If you have to explain a joke it's not funny.

Yes, I would like at some point to see a strong RNC to actually provide some counterpoint. But in the meantime I think it's a great idea for the RNC to rid itself of this cancer of bigots and bigotry. Start fresh; dump Limbaugh and Hannity, clean house of these jokers who think that racial slurs are still funny.

Gran Torino

On the spur of the moment I went out to see Gran Torino tonight. It's a solid movie that has a lot to say and says it all very effectively. The personal interplay between the central characters is excellent, though the acting by the Mung kids is stilted, though that could be intentional. It certainly improved by the end.

One big drawback came as Clint himself decided to sing over the credits. Bad, bad, bad idea. Clint's voice is weak and raspy. The lyrics were sappy and horrible. It was just a crying shame to spoil what was otherwise an Oscar contender with a really ham-handed move right at the end.

Oh, and for all you codgers looking to go to the movie to get redemption for being a nasty old coot, please, don't. Though the movie goes to lengths to say that Clint's kids are spoiled rotten with an endless sense of entitlement, believe me, there are two sides to that story. And being on the other end of an endless cranky and angry old codger is no fun. Even if you don't expect anything in return.

Barack The Magic Negro

This "Barack The Magic Negro" story is great. I would love to see it play and play and play. This is exactly what the country and the Republican party need to cleanse itself of this bar racist blood forever. It's very clear to anyone who listens to Limbaugh and Hannity that they are overt racists. Let's call them on it, have it out, and let the Republican party stand up for alternative ideals and not be the party of white people.

Employer Funded Healthcare

The most important thing to get done in the next four years is the fix healthcare. I'm not sure how we get there, but it's vital for us as country to have a healthy and well-educated workforce. Which is why it seems odd to me, and always has seemed odd to me, that medical insurance is somehow wrapped up in employment contracts. Why should employers have to deal with this? Why should the unemployed turn into the uninsured? What does having a job have to do with having a doctor?

Coupling medical insurance to a job creates a vicious cycle. You lose your job, you lose your insurance. Your stressed out, you get sick. You get sick you can't get healthy because you don't have insurance. You can't get healthy, you can't get a job.

It's all about economics to me. Righties talk about how horrible it is to have companies like GM pay for employee health care. I agree. But what's the choice? The right wing provides no other options. Unless you want individuals to pay for their insurance directly, where the prices of insurance are astronomical. McCain's plan was to get rid of employer funded insurance and stick you with the bill, but give you a $5,000 credit. Oh great. Do the math. $5K for any modern plan that covers even a reasonably sized family is just a drop in the bucket.

We need to move towards universal coverage. That would reduce costs for companies, create a healthy workforce, and reduce insurance and medical costs across the board.

Rick Warren

I agree with President-elect Obama and his choice of Rick Warren to give a portion of the Inauguration. We have to come together as a country. And, as always, that means the left has to reach out to the right. Are we ever going to get the Sean Hannity fans? Of course not. But we can get a bunch of middle-of-the-road "Sunday go to meeting" types with just this type of overture.

I want the left/right wars over. And if this Rick Warren thing helps move that ball, so much the better. We can't build a successful country at each others throats. We have tried that for the last eight years and look at where it's gotten us.

Speaking of Sean Hannity, I love how he continues to say that he wishes Obama success while continuing his anti-Obama rhetoric unabated. I listen to a little of his mean spirited rant yesterday and found myself trying to figure out if this were a pre-election show that was being repeated. Nope. It was his daily three hours of radio hate. Where he spent every minute of it bringing up Reverend Wright, Father Flager, etc. etc.

You know what's funny, I was going to write "Where he spent every minute of it trying to..." but I couldn't finish the sentence. I honestly don't know what Hannity is trying to accomplish here. It's like he is a skipping record just hopping back to the pre-election rants over and over again without rhyme or reason.

That being said, I wouldn't know where to go if I were Hannity either. His entire philosophy was just handed it's hat and shown the door. The economy is collapsing. The Iraq war is lost. And what's more his white power rants probably helped put the first black President in office. Which if I were him, would be a huge slap in the face.

Of course, I'm not him, so I'm overjoyed. And I'm having a lot of fun periodically checking in on the right wing radio spin only to find them in continuous meltdown and playing to the nuttiest of their nutty base.

Speaking of which, I tuned into the pillhead a couple of days ago only to hear a caller talk seriously about putting a lead shield around his TV to keep his viewing habits from the little white vans that patrol his neighborhood. All the while with pillhead sputtering approval. Is this all they have left? Psycho wingnuts? Seriously?

AC360: Battle Of Falluja

I was surfing TV-style last night and found some on-demand stations up in the DirecTV 1200 range that I hadn't seen before. I looked around the CNN on-demand content and found "Battle Of Falluja", which was really a documentary called "Anvil of God".

I know righties want to believe that Fox News has the market cornered on pro-US propaganda. Not so fast my friends. This was a commercial free hour (45 minutes) of non-stop pro-war spin.

When I think of Falluja a few things come to mind:

• It was a battle started over contractors who shouldn't have been there, were under-prepared and under-armored.
• It was clear to anyone paying attention that the election of 2004 was a thumbs up or down vote on Fallujah, and the people of Falluja lost, big time.
• This is the battle where the White House, and Bush in particular, wanted the gloves taken off, and take them off we did.
• We used white phosphor in Falluja, which is a war crime if your Saddam Hussein, but if your the US military...

All of these concerns however, no attention was paid to any of them. This was just the story of one company of soldiers, who did heroic work under awful circumstances in what sadly was a whole unnecessary war.

I would have hoped better from this from CNN. I went to their site later to see if I could post a comment on it, or email the producer. But it turns out the video was from 2007. So much for up-to-date on-demand services.

Chuck - The Christmas Show

Here is a recommendation for you; watch the Chuck Christmas Show. It's the best hour of television I've seen all year. Of course I love the homage to Die Hard, and that they picked up Sergeant Al Powell to redo his role. But I also loved the superb quality of both the writing and the acting, and the blend of action into a romantic dramedy.

I know ya-all are going to be like, hey, come on, it's just Chuck. Yeah. Whatever. It's a great show that's just lurking as a mid-season replacement holdover.

Speaking of TV shows, I've been catching up with Crash on Starz. The first few episodes were great. But it went through a mid-season slump when they spent too much time on Dennis Hoppers psycho mind-trip through the desert. Seriously, can Dennis Hopper play anything other than his "leftover burnout from the sixties" role. I don't buy that he is a high-stylin' hip-hop producer at all. It doesn't jibe. Not one bit. Anyway, the last couple of shows have moved onto the other characters, so that's a good move.

It's been a while

I know it's been a while since I blogged. To tell you the truth I don't feel very inspired to do so. With Obama going into the White House I feel like this giant weight is off of our shoulders and I don't have that much to rant about when it comes to politics.

Though I have to say that I do find it said how the conservatives have just lost their shit altogether. In a Democracy, particularly a two-party system like ours, you need a decent opposition voice. You know, one that posits cogent, informed, counter-arguments to the party in power. Sadly, that's clearly not happening here. All I hear from the right is conspiracy junkies going on and on about birth certificates and shady Chicago politics.

They just don't get it. This is why they are losing. These are serious times and we need serious leaders (© 1995 The American President). The media seems obliged to give these kooks a stage and all they can come up with is to put Sarah Palin out in front of a slaughterhouse. Sadly, that's not even a metaphor.

If there really is something going on out there, please let me know. I've been on kind of a self-imposed news blackout for a little bit. I do watch a show or two here and there, but I've had a lot to do recently and keeping up with the trials and tribulations of the pillhead and his minions doesn't make the priority short list.

Expelled - Ugh.

I finished up Expelled this morning to get through some insomnia. Ugh. What a joke. The second half was all about equating Darwin to Hitler. I was treated to long scenes of Ben just walking around concentration camps.

His point was that Hitler embraced Darwinism and used it as a vehicle to rid society of those he found to be weak or inferior. And in fact, Ben believes this will happen to any society that embraces Darwinism. Right...

But while I was listening to it I was wondering if this exact same argument couldn't be applied to Libertarianism. Libertarians believe that only the strong should live. That the weak should starve to death in the streets as they have no economic value. Should we go around calling Libertarians nazis? Probably wouldn't be a good idea to have Ben make that argument since he is a Libertarian. Oops.

But back to this ID crap. The last part of the movie was a viciously cut interview with Richard Dawkins where they used pre-interview footage of him fidgeting when Ben was late. Nice. Apparently Ben learned a thing or two about skewing interviews from his tenure at Fox and in the Nixon administration.

So, if all of this ID stuff is so important to Ben, where is he with it now? Funny thing, after getting paid to do this flick he has said nothing about ID since. Nor did he say anything about ID before doing the movie. Makes me think he was just in it for the money.

Christianity Doesn't Say Why

I watched a little more of Expelled. At one point a creation scientist whines on about how science can't tell you why the world exists, but other systems do. (Expelled is very careful never to ever mention specific religions as alternatives.)

But, in the case of Christianity, that's a lie. Nowhere in the Bible does it say why God created the Earth. Period. Look around. And don't give me 'Pastor so-and-so feels that...' or 'You can interpret this verse in an incredibly tortured way and come up with...' I want chapter and verse. Period.

It's not there.

Christianity. FAIL.

John Yoo

While I am a compassionate soul some things I just can't abide. John Yoo, the guy who wrote the torture memos and who said that he would have to know the circumstances before telling you if crushing a child's testicles was lawful, is still walking around the Berkeley campus dispensing his sadistic brand of logic.

He needs to be censured. He needs to lose his job. People need to be held to account for this.

The price of torture is well known:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

The gaul to believe that you can torture people and there not be consequences is stunning to me. It's only eggheads like John Yoo who live in a bubble completely detached from reality who think that torture is something akin to putting sugar in your coffee.

Talking to the kids

Here is a little two minute video on my talk with fourth graders and what their feedback means to me:

Find more videos like this on jackherrington

Youtube link

Guys. Please go out there and try it. The kids will love it. You will love it. They will touch your heart and I know you will touch theirs.

Chuck

Lori and I have been slowly catching up with this season of Chuck. It's the little things in that show that get me. I love how Chuck has a poster from the original Dune movie in his bedroom. The set designer truly understands geek. Makes me as happy as a semutic trance every time I see it.

Expelled - What's the point again?

I was able the get Expelled on Netflix's instant access service. Which is pretty damn near free. So I started watching it.

If you don't know what the movie is about, here is synopsis: Creationists (oops, Intelligent Designists) are a downtrodden minority getting kicked around by evil scientists. Scientists and anyone who believes in Evolution are nazis. Oh, and, it's a documentary. It's also narrated by Ben Stein, who, because is Jewish I suppose, feels no problem with literally transitioning between every scene with images from the Holocaust.

In a nutshell my critique is this; if they had something real to propose as an alternative to evolution, they should have spent the money making a film that did that. They don't have a real proposal. So they didn't.

There is no "Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design". ID is a critique of evolution. With arguments that have been around as long as evolution and which are as pointless now as they were then. Without evolution, there is no ID, since ID is all critique and no substance. ID is this; "Where evolution has gaps, insert God."

I'm about half way through and not a lot to report yet. Though there was an unintentionally funny exchange when Ben went to the Discovery Institute (where ID was born). He was talking with the CEO, I guess, who basically said, "Go see the scientists about that", referring to the small pool of ID scientists at the institute whose job it is to write the scientific mumbo-jumbo that puts Christ into the schools. These are obviously second class citizens who will be let go as soon as the ID carrier virus is injected into the classroom, and the Christian super-virus can piggy back it's way into the host.

Another odd moment was when Ben takes you through the workings of the cell with this absolutely stunning CG. The only problem is, there is no voice over, so what you are seeing looks really pretty, but it's not explained, at all. So it might as well be the opening credits of Spider Man.

It's kinda hard to watch actually, not because ID is so dumb, but for two reasons. First, the production values are shockingly low. And second, the whole movie is a whiner-fest.

One thing I'm still a little puzzled by is who this movie is for. Pure ID says that you can put any intelligent agent into the role of the architect of humanity. That doesn't sit too well with Christians who want Christianity taught in school, not just any old religion. If ID were to work then you would have to teach Islam, Buddhism, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, all of it. And yeah, that's not going to fly for the Christian right. Since not just any sky God will do, it has to be their sky God.

Garanteed to fail

Seen at my local Circuit City:

Mistake? I think not! The play here is trick those who might believe they are getting a guarantee but are not! Hah! Misspelling to the economic rescue!