Friday Cat Blogging With Photoshop

From 2Millionth Web Log

Sticking with a modern art theme again this week.

Side note: this morning Tigger was distracted--usually he loudly declaims his dissatisfaction at being left alone when I leave for work. Turns out his distraction was due to a biological hazard of living below the frost line...a damned roach managed to find its way in. Ugh.

Unfortunately I was running late and didn't have time to take action with my shoe. Here's hoping the feline took care of it, which he's done with surprising success in the past.

And I guess I can't complain too loudly--between Tiggs and the quarterly exterminator visits, the house has had a very low level of insect invasion. In fact, the last "visitor" of this type I recall was last September, just after the hurricane passed through.

Still...I'll be making a careful search when I get home tonight, with my shoe at the ready.

Update: Mission Accomplished for Tigger--good boy! You can be sure he was handsomely rewarded for his work.

Just Another Word...

From 2Millionth Web Log

This is one of the ridiculous instances where ideology trumps plain common sense:

Prisoners have no constitutional right to DNA testing that might prove their innocence, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The court divided along familiar ideological lines, with the majority emphasizing that 46 states already have laws that allow at least some prisoners to gain access to DNA evidence.

"To suddenly constitutionalize this area," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority, "would short-circuit what looks to be a prompt and considered legislative response."

All fine and good, except for people in the four states that don't allow for post-conviction testing. Sucks to be them seems to be Justice Roberts' informed legal analysis.

DNA testing is straighforward science, not some sort of interpretive procedure requiring 46 separate and often widely divergent State statutes.

No, this is a case where the conservative wing of the Supreme Court has, in the interest of preserving a narrow ideology, has deliberately undermined individual rights. Not unlike when Scalia haughtily claimed that "Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached."

Takes "tortured logic" to a whole new level.

On Twits and Twitter

From 2Millionth Web Log

Cross posted at First Draft.

Sad, but on a certain level, these clowns are so egocentric they probably DO think they're being oppressed...'just like the Iranians.'

And they get away with this nonsense because the collective memory of the institutional press only applies...to the left, to libruls, and even not-so-librul Democrats, e.g., Hillary Clinton's will go to her grave having to explain and re-explain 'vast right-wing conspiracy;' in constrast, pretty much every rhetorical hand grenade lobbed by Newt Gingrich (or John McCain) has a half life measured in nanoeseconds, no matter how puerile and/or embarrassing. And so it goes.

Merchants of Death, Pure and Simple

From 2Millionth Web Log

There's simply no other way to explain it.

Dollar Dumb

From 2Millionth Web Log

I'll grant this to Jefferson's attorney--he hits the nail on the head when saying this about his client's decision to take the now infamous cold cash:

"He does something really stupid."

Well, astute observations like that must be why you must make the big bucks, Mr. (Robert) Trout.

Anyway, it looks like Dollar Bill's legal defense will be a variant of "I was just playing along," a not uncommon strategy in cases like this, particularly given the evidence. What does surprise me is the degree to which such a defense has won acquittals, at least down here (Edwin in the 80s and Joe Delpit, a local representative...Delpit's case involved drugs, and Joe took the stand to claim secret agenthood that was so secret no one actually knew...Edwin, of all people, testified in Joe's defense. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when these two struck their deal.) Maybe Virginia jurors will look more skeptically.

Regardless, Jefferson has earned, if not $90,000 frozen dollars, deserved enmity from his constituents and from the rest of the State, choosing to save himself at the expense of the citizenry down here during an acute time of need. An acquittal won't restore an already badly tarnished reputation, and a conviction, as far as I'm concerned, won't generate any argument from me.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Senator John Ensign

From 2Millionth Web Log

Link and link.


Of course, there's the ongoing double standard: Democratic politicians are impeached or hounded out of office (i.e., Eliot Spitzer), Repubs like Ensign and Vitter shed some crocodile tears over getting caught and barely get a wrist slap.

Now, like Tristero, I don't much care about the private lives of politicians--but there needs to be some consistency.

Meanwhile, in Alternate Reality

From 2Millionth Web Log

Steve Benen considers a McCain administration in light of the crisis in Iran, Michael Lind looks more generally at the thought...

Oh, and the Senator don't know much about the corporate healthcare complex either.

The Only Thing Ticking During the Torture Sessions...

From 2Millionth Web Log

...was the lump of coal that substitutes as Dick's heart.

And to repeat, I don't have any sympathy for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah. They haven't been convicted of mass murder, but the evidence seems plenty strong enough without the Dick-Cheney-ordered waterboarding (and lord knows what else.) To cite, of all people, Shepard Smith of Fox News, we don't fucking torture.

Dick does that. Because he's a not terribly competent former executive and generally sadistic cretin.

Random Observation

From 2Millionth Web Log

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like Newt Gingrich speaks with roughly the same tone and cadence (if at a slightly lower volume) as pitchman Billy Mays...perhaps that explains why he continues to be the media's shiny object du jour, although it also suggests that, at least for some, political discourse is at the level of infomercial.

Oh, and since this is a random observation post, and I'm just thinking/writing out loud here, isn't it interesting that the wingers are all in a tizzy re: the Iranian election, when just last week many of these same lunatics were openly pining for an Ahmadinejad victory? Geez--the attention span of gnats, I swear.

Credit for Honesty, I Suppose...

From 2Millionth Web Log

Pat Buchanan's wistful for 'the old bigotry.' Imagine that.

The sort of bigotry that makes exceptionally crude jokes or unfairly stereotypes all black men as criminals...yeah, too bad those days are over, eh Pat?