Friday glamor shot

A little shot of Pixel basking in the bar of morning light that comes into our bedroom (and often attracts an array of flopped felines)...


Have a good weekend, y'all!

Strange product of the day

Simultaneously hilarious and creepy -- the ultimate hand soap...

(via boing boing)

Invisible money-suck

A dailyKos diarist has an interesting way of looking at the real price of gas, factoring in the amount that we spend for defense and security related to the Mideast sources, not to mention the loss of the more productive ways those dollars might have been spent. Looks like we're paying an amazingly steep tax, but it's just not applied at the pump.

The Kyl-Lieberman amendment

TPM TV has really become a great resource for keeping track of complicated stories developing on the national scene, with Josh Marshall laying out the sequence of events, summarizing documents, showing clips of testimony. Not every episode has that focus, but yesterday's was a great completion to my Tuesday rant about whether we were going to roll our way into Iran via amendments to other legislation. Turns out that the offending amendment received some substantial revisions, taking out some of the worst parts, but the final version, passed overwhelmingly, still raises some concerns. Watch the summary here.

Best of pals

BAGnewsNotes does a great job of unraveling a picture and story in the Washington Post which attempts to help establish Hillary Clinton as the inevitable Democratic nominee and recipient of George Bush's blessing. Most critical here is that the photo accompanying the (odd) piece was six years old -- totally mislead your readers much?

Yeesh.

Adventures in produce VIII: Strange mix of seasons

Ok, I've been getting a sense of the seasonality of produce from this undertaking. That is, until this time...


Ok, we start with sweet potatoes (in the bag) and daikon radish (white). A smattering of small ("stuffing") peppers. But wait, Swiss chard? Didn't we get that in week 1?


More tomatoes (regular in bag, and heirloom out of it), redleaf lettuce, another watermelon. (Isn't it September? Well, some folks got apples...) We also got a bag of potatoes, which I guess I couldn't be bothered to photograph this week.

Oopsie

How many years into this Iraq war business are we? Four? Apparently nobody ever told military commanders how to handle contracters working with/for/against them, especially when they misbehave. Military rules? Civilian justice? Pure Wild West no-holds-barred shoot-em-up ok? (I think the answer speaks for itself.)

Democratic parade

For anybody who, like me, missed last night's Democratic candidates' debate, TPM has a pithy roundup of the highs and lows.

Wow -- just... wow

Springwater companies, not content with selling us rebottled tap water at high prices and environmental cost, take a leap into the surreal by selling pre-packaged ice cubes -- that is, their magic water in little ice trays, that you can freeze for yourself. Because that $1 ice tray is just too much to face. Capitalism at its finest, folks.

(via Alas, a blog)

Headed down that same %$#@! road . . .

That is, apparently an amendment today (co-sponsored by Lieberman, of course) is the first step in laying the groundwork for intervention in Iran. EEeeesh. Has no one the spine to say, Not again?!

Update: Well, Jim Webb stepped up. I'm not clear whether the vote has happened yet though.

Due to be kept back a year...

A little video report card on the Bush Administration's job performance with respect to "homeland" security -- after all, they've had six years to put everything right, right?

Sigh.

Another reason not to rely on cell phones

The government can now get a retroactive warrant for all of your movements, using your cellphone as a tracking device, and the standard of evidence for such a warrant is lower than usual because this is "historic" not "live" tracking. I'm sure that will make us all sleep much better at night.

(via boing boing)

Stupid kids

Well, the first big veto showdown is likely to come over the renewal of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which is widely popular in Congress (and the nation) but apparently stands in the way of Bush's larger plans to further wreck the national health system get adults to use more private insurance. There might just be enough umph to override a veto on this one, but the pressure is likely to be heavy. (Insurance-industry funders might be even more important to the Bushies than military contractors!)

Meanwhile, below the radar, the White House is up to other rape-the-nation games, this time requesting that the Everglades be removed from the endangered list of UN World Heritage sites (see also here). NPR speculated that Bushies were trying to "erase a black eye" from the nation's conservation record, but surely that's a wishful explanation. I'd guess that hungry developers or nearby farmers would like more leave to trample the wetlands for their own benefit.

These guys sure know how to look after the country's needs, eh?

Update: wow! even the health/insurance industry backs this bill! Bush is really off in the deep end on this one!

Wait, maybe things *aren't* going swell in Iraq?

Thomas Friedman, famous (and widely mocked) for saying over and over that "these next six months" (measured from any current moment) would determine the future of Iraq, now says we're out of time. Welcome to reality space-time, Thomas!!

(via Atrios)

Sure, we live in a post-racist world

Latest RNC attack is that Obama is too intellectually lazy to be President. Lazy black folk, always laying around the porch... wait, who's that current feller setting records for vacation taken in office (during a war, no less)? Oh yes, it's ok if you're (white and) a Republican!

Not a pretty sight.

In case you're wondering what it's all about

Seen the coverage of demonstrations in support of "the Jena 6"? Heard they were accused of murder, which was then lowered to battery, and unsure why this is a civil rights cause? MissLaura at dailyKos does a good job of summarizing the background to these arrests, in which white students using racial intimidation were given wrist-slaps while the reponding black students were charged with crimes...

What took place in Jena is not aberrant; it's consistent. The details are a local disgrace. The broader themes are a national scandal. Jim Crow Jr. travels well--unencumbered by historical baggage.

Worth a read just to realize that we're not all operating in the same century all the time...

Rudy iffy on First Amendment

Thinks that "there are lines that shouldn't be crossed" in speaking one's opinion of politics and political figures. And, you know, those lines are just this side of thought or criticism.

Forget the poor and tired; we don't even want the talented and harmless

This story makes me feel a bit ill -- a UK citizen, longtime US resident, and college music professor is detained after a research trip, has her visa ripped up, and is sent "home" with no explanation of why she was considered a Person of Concern.

"They told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights," she said. "For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means."

The passage of over a year, the intervention of the British consulate, and the pleas of her professional society (and her fiance) have all done nothing to advance her case. America, the walled fortress; makes one so proud...

(via boing boing)

Today's pithy quote

Interviewer: Do you see the world through the prism of gender?

Gloria Steinem: No, the world looks at me through the prism of gender.

(via Echidne of the Snakes)

Getting to the heart of books?

A wonderful take on books, via artistic defacement: Brian Dettmer's Book Autopsies. Fantastic, both those that reveal illustrations and those showcasing mostly text -- I want one! wow.

(via boing boing)