This one is like the Zapruder film - destined to be viewed millions of times by several generations of Americans. The shock-value with both is what links them together in terms of their popularity and staying power. Aside from the man sitting about 10 feet away from him though, Colbert put on a clinic here that must have been widely admired throughout the comedy world. Whether it needed to be done or not, this film redefines the role that comedy plays in our democracy, and I can’t help but remember Bill Hicks as I watch this once again. There’s a piece of Bill’s genius that can be heard in the voices of so many comedians today, but in Colbert’s performance here, it is very thick, like you can almost picture him thinking the same exact things if he were still alive…this one’s in memory of Bill Hicks:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Comedy, Video, Politics at 10:46 PM MDT
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This 2 minute clip is one you cannot afford to miss!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Comedy, Video at 10:19 PM MDT
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Blue Man who blogs on Blue Man in a Red District is doing great things in support of the military these days. Before I had the chance to highlight this first story, there was a second one that blew me away.
A Soldier Speaks Out: “No wonder the military elites have worked to silence these hero’s. They provide an accurate first person account of what exactly is going on in Iraq. This recent post by Alex provides greater perspective on the clusterfuck in Iraq.“
Monthly memorial to replace individual soldier funeral: “Fort Lewis was my favorite duty assignment of all. Not only did I serve in a great unit, the 1st Battalion 23rd Infantry “Tomahawks”, but I enjoyed the mild winters and summers, as well as the scenery of Mt St Helens, Puget Sound and other west coast treasures…Soldier from Fort Lewis are dying in such high numbers that the post is unable to perform individual ceremonies.” From the Post Commander:
“As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 1:03 PM MDT
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“Poor people go to hospital for minor surgery of some kind, abdominal surgery, or for women gynecological surgery, and come out of the operation with a longer recovery rate and a larger scar than expected. They learn later on that while they were in for this minor surgery a kidney was taken at the same time.” (1)
A new Dutch reality show from the producers of Big Brother, features 10 contestants competing for 1 kidney. (2)
Another reality show by those same producers, Fat Teens Can’t Hunt, will see 10 overweight British teenagers sent to Australia’s outback to live and eat in the wild. (3)
An elephant in eastern India has sparked complaints from motorists who accuse it of blocking traffic and refusing to allow vehicles to pass unless drivers give it food. (4)
Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom’s brother instead. (5)
A man cut off his penis with a knife in a packed London eatery. (6)
An overweight inmate was executed by injection after a delay of about 90 minutes while prison medical workers struggled to find suitable 
veins in his arms. (7)
Iraq’s president heads to U.S. to lose weight and hopefully improve his overall health. (8)
All men who receive a Prostate Cancer Screening outside the ballpark will receive two free tickets to a future Milwaukee Brewers game. (9)
Oral sex linked to throat cancer - “worse than tobacco” (10)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Comedy, Words at 1:59 AM MDT
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FYI - bernie kosar and a few others…my spam filter managed to catch one of my own comments and in reviewing the contents I noticed several others that should have gone through. I’ll be checking this daily from now on, so if you’ve been frustrated with comments not posting, rest assured, I’m on it. Sorry about that!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 10:20 PM MDT
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Bad feelings in the captain’s chair last night, all about this recognition of something I’d denied a few times already this year, this biased mind clinging onto hope for a higher peak yet undiscovered, though realistic the entire time about how much extra juice could actually be injected into the bloodstream from the addition of Chris Webber, the Pistons have lost something along the way, and while I wasn’t made to be more optimistic by anything I saw this season, there wasn’t much of a doubt that they’d handle whatever came at them in the East and struggle in the finals. The best that most teams in this league can hope for is a realistic outlook like that.
The fear hadn’t crept in to stay until last night. It was hard to watch Chauncey Billups single-handedly blow the game in the final two minutes. My yearly playoff dream team has had Chauncey at the point for 3 years running, but if last night’s game was a sign of things to come, the ride may be coming to an end. Analysis will point out the disgraceful numbers produced by Webber and a bad night from Rasheed, but like I said before, expecting Webber to make your team better is a mistake, and with Sheed’s production throughout the playoffs, I’m not laying game four on his shoulders. This one belongs to my guy Billups, and worse than anything, his poor decision-making spanned a couple timeouts, plenty of time to get your head back to where it needs to be.
That didn’t happen. He iced the game for Cleveland with a stupid pull up 3 pointer in transition. So maybe he figures out what made him lose 50 points on his basketball IQ in game 4, and it turns out to be a fluke. I hope that’s the case. Because if Detroit has a 3:1 or 4:1 chance of beating San Antonio in the finals, then I’d put Cleveland at 6:1. I’m rooting for the Pistons, but above everything else, I’m rooting for the chance to see San Antonio sweat at some point in their series. And yes, that means I have indeed written off Utah. Deron Williams cannot do it alone. Kirilenko and Okur need to donate their game 4 checks to charity. Doom and gloom…
Posted by Al Swearengen as Sports at 12:50 PM MDT
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SoundStage (1975) - 2 Parts
Posted by Al Swearengen as Music, Video at 12:40 AM MDT
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Andrew Sullivan: “In Norway, we actually have a 1948 court case that weighs whether “enhanced interrogation” using the methods approved by president Bush amounted to torture. The proceedings are fascinating, with specific reference to the hypothermia used in Gitmo, and throughout interrogation centers across the field of conflict. The Nazi defense of the techniques is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration…Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture - “enhanced interrogation techniques” - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.” (t/b)
Posted by Al Swearengen as History, Military at 12:27 AM MDT
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TPMmuckraker: “Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) jacked his house off the ground, inserted a new first story and placed the old first floor on top, thanks to the help of a top executive at local oil company Veco Corp. who hired at least one key contractor to complete the feat of a job…two former Veco Corp. executives who pled guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges…The sentence, preceded by a listing of a dozen Veco-related enterprises around the world, said: “Veco was not in the business of residential construction or remodeling.”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Politics, Words at 12:16 AM MDT
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“Here’s a 6-foot-6, 300-pound guy, as intimidating as can be, and yet every time you approached him he always welcomed you with big old smile. In between the lines, he had his game-face on, but outside the lines, in the community or in the weight room, he was always smiling and having good time.” - LSU athletics spokesman Michael Bonnette
“Marquise will be remembered as a thoughtful and caring young man who established himself as one of the year-round daily fixtures of our team. I send my deepest condolences to the Hill family.” - Bill Belichick
“We are absolutely heartbroken to learn of Marquise’s death. Our immediate thoughts go to Marquise’s mother, Sherry, and the rest of his family. He was only 24 years old and his death is hard to comprehend. Marquise was a very respectful young man who worked hard to improve and was always eager to contribute to the team, both on the field and in the community. On behalf of the entire Patriots organization, we extend our most heartfelt sympathies to Marquise’s family and friends who mourn his loss.” - Robert Kraft
Hill’s agent, Albert Elias, said the player spent much of his time since Hurricane Katrina helping rebuild the homes of family members including his mother, Sherry, and the mother of his 2-year-old son.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Sports at 11:57 AM MDT
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This really broke my heart to read, as it is yet another example of the collateral damage this compromise over the Iraq war funding has created. It confirms that as a people, we were too collectively fucked up at this point in our existence to do the right thing. This country chewed up Cindy Sheehan and spit her out. This outcome is a symptom of something that is historically significant, and in 100 years, if we made it out of this dark age better for the experience, I’m sure that the treatment of our military and Mrs. Sheehan will play a major role in that process. Politics aside…if you are ambivalent to the plight of these people or unwilling to take them seriously for one reason or another, THEN YOU ARE LACKING! As a human being, as an American…this storyline of Iraq and terrorism is barely B-movie plot worthy at this point, and on Memorial Day it’s a sad thing that the unbelievable bullshit won out over reason once again. We honored those who served, those who died, all across the country as my family did in our town today. How are we honoring those who have died in Iraq? How are we honoring those who are still there? How about the ones who have been cast aside and defecated upon by the system? Will the millions we blow on fireworks in a little over a month come at the expense of a hundred veterans out there, unable to get treatment for PTSD - or - at the expense of a hundred soldiers in Iraq patrolling streets driving in an IED’s dream?
Cindy Sheehan (link): …I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither…The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.
I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions. Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people…
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Politics, Military at 2:15 AM MDT
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Neoconservative Bill Kristol debates progressive Robert Kuttner:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video, Politics at 12:40 PM MDT
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Dick Cheney at the West Point graduation ceremony on 5/26/07:
Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.
General David Petraeus:
Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows
that they are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone “talk;” however, what the individual says may be of questionable value.
Senator Patrick Leahy from ‘The Murder of Maher Arar’:
“Oh…Mr. Attorney General, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to treat this lightly, WE KNEW DAMNED WELL IF HE WENT TO CANADA HE WOULDN’T BE TORTURED, HE’D BE HELD AND INVESTIGATED. AND WE KNEW DAMNED WELL THAT IF HE WENT TO SYRIA HE’D BE TORTURED, AND IT’S BENEATH THE DIGNITY OF THIS COUNTRY, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured. You know and I know, that has happened a number of times in the last five years by this country. It is a black mark on us.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Politics, Military at 2:09 AM MDT
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‘Group Therapy‘ by Marc Olmsted, this one comes with my 100% money-back guarantee!
‘Operation Freedom From Iraqis‘ by Frank Rich
On why Jose Padilla is looking more and more innocent every day, I suggest you read Lewis Z. Koch at Firedoglake
‘The Good Life?‘ by Quinn, is one of many stories to be found on this site pertaining to cocaine addiction and madness.
“Why do the Iranian people not revolt against the regime?” by Hoots
‘Secret memo shows Israel knew building settlements was illegal‘ by Kel at The Osterley Times
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:54 AM MDT
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A video clip from my neck of the woods:
Posted by Al Swearengen as Video, Politics at 8:17 PM MDT
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