According to AP, Carlin has passed.
RIP.
by John Cole| 77 Comments
This post is in: Popular Culture
This post is in: Media, Popular Culture
I am ignoring the news, because there is a lot of stuff out there that pisses me off and I found myself flipping between the Food Network and a re-run of Monk. Some thoughts:
Robin Miller’s eyes can not be naturally that blue.
I like the Season 1 Monk theme song better.
I like Sharona better than the Natalie.
Watching Rachel Ray for the first time for more than a few minutes, I can tell why she is so popular. She is just a fun person, or at least appears to be on tv. Plus, after watching her, it just makes that whole Dunkin Donuts terrorist scarf nonsense look even dumber. Rachel is so undeniably, quintessentially American.
Every time I watch Monk, I laugh that the Chief is played by the same actor who was Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.
Thank goodness the new season starts in a few weeks.
I don’t care what other people say. Lt. Disher is win.
At any rate, consider this an open thread.
*** Update ***
One other thing. Someone please tell the Republicans and the McCain campaign to shut up about Obama opting out of public financing. Hypocrisy? Blow it out your ass- your candidate spent years forcing those laws down our and then just decided to break them and that they did not need to apply to him. Obama didn’t break any rules, or break any laws. Seriously. Just shut up and pound salt, you wankers.
This post is in: Popular Culture
Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who’ve been together for more than 50 years, are finally married:
The lesbian couple were the first to participate in a 2004 challenge of California laws against same-sex marriage, exchanging wedding vows only to see the ceremony voided later.
But on Monday, Martin, 87, and Lyon, 84, exchanged vows again. This time, California law — at least for now — was on their side.
“I think it’s a wonderful day and I have to thank our mayor for most of it,” Lyon said. “I’m very happy and very grateful for all of you.”
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who helped launch the series of lawsuits that led the court to strike down California’s one-man-one-woman marriage laws, presided at their wedding at City Hall.
Lyon and Martin will now be able to inherit from each other, have hospital visitation rights, and share in the many of the same things straight couples do (with the exception of federal benefits.) What won’t change is the state of your marriage. You and your husband or wife will still be able to love each other, raise your kids, file a joint tax return, and all the things you’ve been doing together for years. And if all that comes crashing down around Tony Perkins and Jim Dobson because Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin got married yesterday, they may feel the urge to scapegoat them. If allowing gays to marry is going to affect their marriages, then they probably just have a shitty marriage to begin with.
The truth is, for people like Dobson, Perkins, and supporters of theirs everywhere, this is not about marriage at all; it is about power and not wanting anything to change without their say-so. It’s about control of the political process and they will object to any social change if it doesn’t fit within their narrowly defined, small-minded worldview. When decisions are made that they have no control over, they see that their power over the process is slipping away. They see their power over the way people think and their ability to shape the debate diminish greatly. That must be a tremendous blow to their egoes. I thoroughly enjoy watching them implode and embarrass themselves on national television.
Oh, and it’s about raising millions of dollars to line the coffers of their churches and organizations and their own pocketbooks. Yeah, that too.
(photo credit: San Francisco Chronicle – Liz Mangelsdorf)
by John Cole| 46 Comments
This post is in: Popular Culture, War on Terror aka GSAVE®
Bill Moyers Journal reports on government proposals to spy on… your Warcraft and Second Life activity:
What is weird about the WoW footage in the piece is that it features AQ events stuff, which is from several years ago. Guess that was the only file footage they had.
The NSA Is In Your Base and Spying on Your DOODZPost + Comments (46)
by John Cole| 57 Comments
This post is in: Popular Culture
Thought this was interesting:
Belgian Brewer InBev is offering a big payday to shareholders of Anheuser-Busch Cos. (BUD) (BUD) Inc., but its bid to create the world’s largest beer company is already facing a major obstacle – U.S. election-year politics.
InBev SA, whose brands include Beck’s and Stella Artois, delivered an unsolicited all-cash bid of $65 a share for Anheuser-Busch, which makes Budweiser, Michelob and Bud Light. That’s well above the St. Louis-based company’s closing share price of $58.35 Wednesday.
But politicians and activists are already lining up against the deal, saying it could cost jobs in the United States and send ownership of an iconic American company overseas. With economic concerns at the front of voters’ minds, the opposition could cause a headache for InBev.
When I lived in Germany, I remember drinking a Czech beer named Budweiser, and I would bet it has been around longer than the “iconic American” beer of the same name.
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Popular Culture
Really people, this is sooooo 2004:
Setting the stage for a political showdown, the California secretary of state today said an initiative barring gay marriage had enough signatures to qualify for the Nov. 4 ballot.
The proposal would amend the state Constitution to define marriage as a union “between a man and a woman” and undo last month’s historic California Supreme Court ruling, which found that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was unconstitutional.
A coalition of religious and conservative activists submitted 1.1 million signatures for the ballot measure. Random sampling by Secretary of State Debra Bowen found that enough legitimate signatures had been collected.
Even though this is silly (in my gay-assed opinion) have you noticed that the California and New York decisions haven’t caused nearly the uproar they did a little over 3 years ago? No matter what the final outcome is, I think that’s progress. Still, the process is flawed. The California legislature has thought this through – twice – and has decided that allowing gays to marry is not going to be the downfall of civilization. Putting it to a popular vote is a process that the Founders of this country would likely balk at. To quote Al Gore from his terrific book, The Assault on Reason:
When reason and logic are removed fromt he process of democracy – when there is no longer any purpose in debating or discussing the choices we have to make – then all questions before us are reduced to a simple equation: Who can exercise the most raw power? (p. 244)
And that’s the question in California. Or, at least it’s a question the right-wing sponsors of this measure are hoping to answer.
by John Cole| 29 Comments
This post is in: Music, Popular Culture
Bo Diddley, the musical pioneer whose songs, such as “Who Do You Love?” and “Bo Diddley,” melded rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll through a distinctive thumping beat, has died. He was 79.
Diddley died Monday, surrounded by family and loved ones at his home in Archer, Florida, a family spokeswoman said.
The cause was heart failure, his family said.
A shame.