(no subject)

Great and productive weekend this week, got in a surprising amount of dance plus some walking (my god it was beautiful outside, wasn't it?), and was very good about my calorie intake despite incredible temptation at Alyne's Chinese New Year's party. I seem to be down another pound unless my scale is lying to me in a vain attempt to get me to rethink replacing it with a digital model. I choose to believe it for the moment, as the momentum's got me in a good headspace and I want to stay there for a while. If I can keep this up I just might be where I want to be by Rakkasah and that would be so cool.

Alyne's party was a lot of fun and my Thai yellow curry rice with broccoli, Quorn, and tofu was a huge hit. Everybody was complimenting me on it all night. We got to see some fantastic juggling, then Aelf forgot I was a Gemini and did my evil bidding to go ask Alyne to dance for us. Halfway across the room I commented to one of the guests I'd just met that at that moment Alyne was saying, "I will if you will." To which Aelf replied, "But I'm not dressed for it!" and Alyne countered, "Neither am I, c'mon!" When Aelf stalked back over to me she growled, "You knew that was going to happen didn't you?" I just grinned back at her as she continued, "I fall for it every time, don't I?" So I went out to fetch some music out of the car and we did 3 back to back drum solo pieces and nearly collapsed by the end. Wow that's a workout, and even warmer in jeans and with my hair down. But it was fun, and hey a little more exercise is never a bad idea.

Yesterday I did a slew of errands and then cleaned the apartment top to bottom. Also got a lot of little tasks done that I should have gotten around to ages ago. When I finally had time to collapse at the end of the day I actually felt like I was on top of everything for the first time in a long time. That's a really nice feeling.

Quick Edit: Managed to catch an interview with Daniel Kim on an AZN show called "Dim Sum", and they were doing this quick question segment where he had to choose between two things. One of the questions posed to him was, "Jack or Locke". He paused, looked up as if considering, then slowly smiled and said, "Locke". That certainly made me go, "Hmm..."

Be vewy qwiet, I'm hunting lawyers...

( Because it's almost too delicious: )

And woah, who spiked the Kool-Aid over on FOX?

On Fox News Sunday this morning both Jack Reed (D-RI) and George Allen (R-VA) called on Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate whether Dick Cheney had the right to declassify the NIE when he ordered Scooter to flash it to Judy Miller.

Say, maybe we could get Cheney up on two investigations at the same time. How sweet would that be?

(no subject)

Glenn Greenwald has an amazing post up on the Bush cult of personality that everyone should take a look at:

And what I hear, first and foremost, from these Bush following corners is this, in quite a shrieking tone: "Oh, my God - there are all of these evil people trying to kill us, George Bush is doing what he can to save us, and these liberals don’t even care!!! They’re on their side and they deserve the same fate!!!" It doesn’t even sound like political argument; it sounds like a form of highly emotional mass theater masquerading as political debate. It really sounds like a personality cult. It is impervious to reasoned argument and the only attribute is loyalty to the leader. Whatever it is, it isn’t conservative.
[...]
If it now places one "on the Left" to oppose unrestrained power and invasiveness asserted by the Federal Government along with lawlessness on the part of our highest government officials, so be it. The rage-based reverence for The President as Commander-in-Chief -- and the creepy, blind faith vested in his goodness -- is not a movement I recognize as being political, conservative or even American.
[...]
Conservatives used to consider things like this to be quite disturbing and bad -- and the eavesdropping then was at least with judicial oversight. Now, George Bush is in office, and all of the distrust we used to have of the Federal Government exercising these powers has evaporated, because we trust in George Bush to do what is best for us. He should not just have those powers, but many more, and he should exercise all of them in secret, too, with no "interference" from the courts or Congress.

That is why I say that whatever else these Bush followers are, they are not conservative.


Please do read the rest, and don't miss his follow up post today

So, they label the argument and the person making it "leftist" and "liberal" and - presto! - no more need to address the arguments or consider its substance because it’s all been shooed away with one fell swoop of name-calling cliches.

I mention all of this because it illustrates what I think is an important point. I’ve been blogging for just over 3 months now. It’s almost certainly the case that the only views of mine that bloggers at LGF and RWNH know are, at most, my opposition to the Administration’s various theories entitling them to violate Congressional laws and my belief that the Administration manipulates terrorist threats for domestic political gain.

In other words, they don’t actually know my political views on most issues in controversy. All they know, at most, is that I am a critic of the Bush Administration’s approach to terrorism policies and the Administration's insistence that it need not abide by the law -- opposition which, in their eyes, is more than enough to qualify me as a "leftist" or "liberal" despite not knowing if I actually subscribe to liberal views on virtually any issue. Mere opposition to the Administration, by itself, is enough to qualify one as a "leftist" or "Liberal"...
[...]
It is somewhat amazing to write a post describing this phenomenon only for Bush followers to deny its validity and, in doing so, provide such vibrant examples of exactly what I describing. They read the post and then rushed to dismiss what I wrote as coming from a "leftist" all because I criticized Bush and his followers. I suppose I should be grateful for the argumentative support.

Mindgames

If someone can explain the difference between this sort of fundie indoctrination of young kids and brain washing, I'd dearly love to hear it:

Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.

"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"

The children roared their assent.

"Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them. "Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air.

Read More...

"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.

"God!" the boys and girls shouted.

"Who's the only one who knows everything?"

"God!"

"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"

The children answered with a thundering: "God!"

Wow...