Investing in me

I've been so preoccupied with the stomach issues that I haven't really paid much attention to an increasingly worsening bout of sinusitis that's been creeping up on me for the past few weeks. The headaches got so bad yesterday that actions needed to be taken so I invested in some nasal spray and a mini vaporizer. Best investments I've ever made. Seriously, one night's use plus plenty of sleep and I feel like a new woman! Just in time for the Depeche Mode concert tonight, woo!!!

I've wanted to see these guys since high school and finally, finally I get to tonight, and right down the road even. Nothing like a 10 minute commute to a venue :) Wish I could get the rockstar commuter parking, but alas I'll be way the hell out in boonieville as I'm going on my own. I haven't been to Shoreline in ages and I'm looking forward to checking out all the hideously overpriced merchandise, not buying, just looking. Anything I end up liking I'll just look for on eBay :)

He's ready for his close up

via TBogg:

I was bored so I decided to check in on Burger King Scorsese to see what's shaking in Tinseltown. Apparently the studios are once again not listening to him:

"United 93 Ending Altered"

Let's stop right here and point out the ending of United 93 no longer has George W. Bush telling Andy Card, "Dammit, Andy! No goddamed evildoer is going to kill innocent Americans on my watch. Now prep and scramble a jet for me pronto. I've got democracy to save. Here, hold my goat book." Bush then flies above United 93, ejects, crashes through the windscreen, subdues the hijackers and lands the plane safely, welcomed by a crowd of flag-waving soldiers with "Baghdad or Bust" signs on their Hummers.

Focus groups felt it lacked "verisimilitude".

The Cult of Bush

Anatomy of the "thought" process of Bush defenders

As much as anything else, Bush defenders are characterized by an increasingly absolutist refusal to recognize any facts which conflict with their political desires, and conversely, by a borderline-religious embrace of any assertions which bolster those desires. It's a world-view which conflates desire with reality, disregards all facts and evidence that conflict with the decreed beliefs, and faithfully embraces any assertions and fantasies, no matter how baseless and flagrantly false, provided that they bolster the mythology.

Thus, things are going really great in Iraq - just as we predicted they would. When we invaded, Saddam had WMD's and he was funding Al Qaeda. Oil revenues will pay for the whole thing, we will be welcomed as liberators, the whole war will be won quickly and easily. A large military presence is unnecessary because there is no insurgency. Bush is a popular and beloved President. All but a handful of radical fringe subversives in America support the war and believe terrorism is the overarching problem. Americans want to militarily confront Iran, want illegal warrantless eavesdropping, and are happy with how the country is being governed.

It never matters how much evidence arises demonstrating the falsity of these beliefs. They are not susceptible to challenge or reconsideration because they are the by-product of faith and desire and not a critical or rational assessment. They believe these things because they want to believe them, they have to believe them, because the whole world-view on which their identity and purpose has come to be based -- the brave, heroic President leading the great conservative nation in glorious, epic war-triumph over the evil Muslim enemy -- depends upon believing these myths. No facts can shake these beliefs because they aren't grounded in facts and aren't the by-product of rationality.

[...]

This intellectually corrupt syndrome goes back a long way and has been festering for a long time. Nuggets of deceitful, fact-free fantasy get planted in some cesspool like Drudge and then mindless followers who want to believe it start repeating it as fact, and then it gets ossified forever as conventional wisdom and can never be dislodged from their minds. That's how Al Gore came to "claim that he invented the Internet," how Howard Dean became a far left radical pacifist, how Jessica Lynch had a heroic shoot-out with Al Qaeda and was then rescued by gun-blazing Marines, how Moveon.org produced commercials saying that Bush was Hitler, how Saddam funded Al Qaeda and personally participated in the planning of 9/11. It's even how the lesbian, Hillary, killed Vince Foster in order to ensure that their affair (or whitewater crimes or drug-running landing strip) would be kept quiet and, to this day, it's how Bill Clinton was a wildly unpopular president.

Soon after 9/11, the Bush movement became driven by much more than a set of political beliefs. It provides its adherents with much more than just a vehicle for political activism. It gives them purpose and a feeling of strength and power that they otherwise lack. In that sense, it is not dissimilar to a religion, and it is therefore unsurprising -- but nontheless ugly and destructive -- that their beliefs and convictions are not grounded in facts and reality but in a resolute faith that cannot be shaken by facts. Every event is interpreted so as to bolster the faith, facts are disregarded which undermine the faith and fact-free assertions are embraced which confirm the faith.