(no subject)

Gah, can I bring myself to not buy tickets to this?

Depeche Mode
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, CA
Thu, 04/27/06
On Sale Sun, 01/29/06

I'm not sure that I can. I've missed every tour since I moved out here and I'd dearly like to see them live. Thursday nights are awful for me, but...well, maybe I could get away with just this one plan. Maybe. *sigh*

So I made it home in time to catch "Pom Poko" last night on TMC and it was every bit as crack-filled as I'd been led to believe. I think that I came to the conclusion that I don't need to see animated raccoon genetalia ever, but particularly not if it includes expansion of said genetalia for use in battle and so on. The shape shifting stuff was cute, and I loved the foxes, but well hung anime raccoons is just so wrong on so many levels.

The vegans are coming! The vegans are coming!

In defense of our great nation's Honeybaked Ham stores, the Department of Homeland Security is on the job! Beware, nefarious vegetarian no-goodniks, for your evil plot to picket outside carniverous establishments has been uncovered:

For example, more than two dozen government surveillance photographs show 22-year-old Caitlin Childs of Atlanta, a strict vegetarian, and other vegans picketing against meat eating, in December 2003. They staged their protest outside a HoneyBaked Ham store on Buford Highway in DeKalb County.

Government photos of Caitlin Childs, terrorizing one ham at a time.

An undercover DeKalb County Homeland Security detective was assigned to conduct surveillance of the protest and the protestors, and take the photographs.

The detective arrested Childs and another protester after he saw Childs approach him and write down, on a piece of paper, the license plate number of his unmarked government car. “They told me if I didn’t give over the piece of paper I would go to jail and I refused and I went to jail, and the piece of paper was taken away from me at the jail and the officer who transferred me said that was why I was arrested,” Childs said on Wednesday.

As for Caitlin Childs’ protest against meat eating, the files obtained by the ACLU include the DeKalb County Homeland Security report on the surveillance of Childs and the others. The detective wrote that he ordered Childs to give him the piece of paper on which she had written his license tag number, telling her that he did not want her or anyone else to have the tag number of his undercover vehicle.

The detective did not comment in his report about why his license tag number was already visible to the public.

Take that hippy pig-huggers!
via Pandagon

Well all I can say is that I feel much safer at night knowing that America's ham industry is safe. Do the agents of the HSD really have this much spare time on their hands? If so, maybe we should all invest in buying them some nice video games to play with instead. I'm thinking one of those sets of Solitaire games. Should keep 'em busy for at least a bit. Or maybe crossword puzzles...

Or perhaps we should all join hands and recite General J.C. Christian's prayer:

Lord, please bless the State Security Apparatus, that it might conduct it's wiretaps to the best of its abilities. Provide Our Leader with the ability to look into our bedrooms, so that He might catch French politicians putting their little soldiers in ladies' mouths and watch celebrities doing it. And Lord, let him share those videos with godly men like myself, who may then rail against these evils from our pulpits.

And bless our interrogators and their glowsticks and electrified nipple clamps of freedom. Provide them with the ability to induce pain as close as possible to that experienced during organ failure without quite equaling it.

And give us the ability to kill brown people more efficiently, so that our contractors may garner more fruit from their labor.

Amen.

It's on

Sweet baby Jesus, the filibuster is on!

Dear MoveOn Member,

Late yesterday afternoon, Senators Kerry and Kennedy announced that they will lead a filibuster against the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. The vote will come Monday, and now the rest of the Democrats have just over 48 hours to decide which side they are on.

To successfully block the nomination, 41 senators must join the Democratic filibuster. Most Republicans and a few conservative Democrats have already pledged to vote for Alito, so getting to 41 won't be easy. Every single Democrat could end up casting the last crucial vote—and this is the moment for us to weigh in.

Have you contacted your Senators yet?

Sure we may not win this fight, but dammit I'd rather try and fail than just stand by with my thumb up my ass. It doesn't take much to make a phone call or drop an email, just take a few minutes and let your elected officials know that we're holding them accountable for their actions.

Edit
According to the Majority Report this fight might not be as hopeless as it seemed:

Ben Nelson (NE) originally stated he would vote Yes for Alito. But it looks like he is putting his finger in the wind. He is now taking calls and tallies as well: 202-224-6551 .

Bill Nelson (FL) SAYS HE IS NOT HEARING FROM ENOUGH CONSTITUENTS! DC Phone: 202-224-5274 . He is hearing from tons of right-wingers who are saying that he should not filibuster!

Ken Salazar (D-CO) is taking your calls now regarding whether or not he should support the filibuster! Call the toll free line - 1-888-355-3588 (PRESS 2) . OR FAX: Senator Salazar: 202-228-5036 (DC FAX) .

As one of the commentors on Eschaton noted, "Really, if we're not going to fight over this, what are we going to fight over?"

Word.

Update:
I know I quote Digby a lot, but damn:

The chattering classes are all very sure that the Democrats have made a grave mistake on Alito. According to reports in the press, many insider Democrats believe this too. I believe they are wrong. This may look like a ragged strategy in some respects, but it is good for us to be seen doing things that have no obvious political advantage and for which we can legitimately claim to have taken the moral high ground. Yes, the tittering congnoscenti will flutter their fans and whisper that Democrats are witless and dull, but in this case we are talking directly to the people not to them. They have no idea anymore that a world exists out here where poltical calculation is beside the point.

Regardless of how this comes out in the end, and we don't know until the votes are cast, this may be seen as a defining moment for the Democratic Party. When a calculating political creature like Dianne Feinstein rushes to support a filibuster rather than reaffirm her opposition once conventional wisdom says a filibuster will fail, is meaningful. Democratic politicians (if not their moribund strategists) are feeling the pressure from the people to do the right thing.