Whole Foods CEO John Mackey pens an anti-Obamacare oped in the WSJ. Madcap hilarity ensues.
Regardless of one’s stance on the health care debate, publicly taking a position so incredibly contrary to his core customer demographic is a pretty bizarre and stupid move.
UPDATE: Whole Foods deleted the thread I linked to in “ensues” above. Nice.
GM’s been talking about the groundbreaking plug-in hybrid Volt for a while, but now they’ve let the ad men and marketers (read: LIARS) start babbling, and as a consequence we’re now seeing press that suggests that the Volt gets a whopping 230 miles per gallon.
Mark Chu-Carroll over at Good Math, Bad Math explains why this is pure, unadulterated bullshit. The Volt’s cool and all, and in some circumstances could get even better mileage than that, but the mechanisms involved make traditional MPG figures pretty much useless.
The Volt leaves your house in the morning charged from the grid, and can go up to 40 miles without using any gas at all; after 40, though, the electric engine is charged by a small gas generator that will apparently produce about 50 MPG on its own. Consequently, people with short commutes might use zero gallons of gas a week, but people driving in from the burbs would use way more. Touting the 230 figure, though, is just a bunch of suits lying.
This is rich:
At the town-hall discussion in New Hampshire yesterday, President Obama addressed the ridiculous “death panel” argument the right has been carelessly throwing round. He noted, “The irony is that actually one of the chief sponsors of this bill originally was a Republican — then House member, now senator, named Johnny Isakson from Georgia — who very sensibly thought this is something that would expand people’s options. And somehow it’s gotten spun into this idea of ‘death panels.'”
The president’s remark came soon after Isakson told Ezra Klein that Sarah Palin’s attacks on this are “nuts.” Isakson added, “You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up. It empowers you to be able to make decisions at a difficult time rather than having the government making them for you…. And it’s a voluntary deal.”
The problem, from Isakson’s perspective, is that he’s now inadvertently defended reality, when his party is committed to doing the opposite. Republican senators aren’t supposed to debunk nonsensical talking points; they’re supposed to repeat nonsensical talking points.
So, Isakson is left with an awkward task: walking back honest support for his own proposal.
The episode ends with Isakson proposing an essentially redundant amendment so he can claim he’s tried to fix the whole “death panel” issue — an issue that has never existed, since his amendment is substantially the same as the existing bill.
People is talking about concerts, but they’re all just lists. Lists are boring. Lists with context are more fun, so in that spirit, here’s my list.
I have no idea of the year, but he was touring for Rhinestone Cowboy, so assume around ’75 or ’76. I was obsessed with the song as a tyke, and Campbell played Jackson (nobody played in Hattiesburg), so up the highway we went. It’s the only time I ever went to a concert with mom and dad. I remember falling asleep during the opener (a standup comic), and being woken up later to hear the only song I cared about.
Or something like them; I was too young to know that, quite frankly, without Brian Wilson they’re all harmonizing doofuses. It was sometime in 1980, when I was ten. My mom took me to the Gulf Coast Coliseum, which was a big deal at the time. I don’t remember really wanting to go, but I must’ve.
I can nail the year a bit better this time; they were touring on Afterburner, and it was spring semester of 1986. I got a ticket to go for my 16th birthday, but my mother – like any sane parent – wasn’t about to let me drive myself to Jackson for the show. So she and my brother came up, too, and we stayed in the Ramada across the street from the venue. At showtime, I walked across to the concert, where I was almost immediately adopted by a pair of young Marines on leave. I was a small kid, and they kept me from getting hassled by the generous redneck contingent — and also gave me beer. And pot. All in all, a delightful experience.
Several times in the early 90s, mostly around the Journeyman tours. The most notable show was in September of 1990, just weeks after he’s played with Stevie Ray Vaughan on SRV’s last night alive. There was no opening act; they just killed the lights, and a cigarette ember floated out on stage and proceeded to play the shit out of a guitar.
Also a few times, but the most fun was in 1990 or 1991 when, over spring break, I found out he was playing in New Orleans that night — with Concrete Blonde opening. I got tickets for my brother and I, and called Mike in Florida to taunt him. “Fuck that,” he said, “we’ll meet you there.” And they did. Amazingly, Frank and I ran into Mike, Joy, and Miche in the hallways between Blonde and Sting. It was also at this show that Sting was busily introducing the world to Vinx.
Yes, as an opener for Sting in ’90, but also as a headliner in Atlanta in ’93 or early ’94, and then again, in the early 21st century at Numbers in Houston. I sorta felt like the same people were at both shows, though we’d gotten a lot older in the intervening decade. Less weird hair. More golf shirts. Sad but true.
In 1998 or so, I guess, in Houston. Same kinda vibe as the later CB show — very Goth Goes Grey. Excellent show, though.
Pensacola, Florida, around 1993/early 1994. The other end of a “shit, we’ve already got these tickets” pact I made with my late college girlfriend. We broke up in early fall of 1993, but already had the Rush and CB shows booked (well in advance). The breakup acrimony was put on hold for the two road trips, weirdly enough.
Initially, for like $5 at terrible Tuscaloosa bars like the Ivory Tusk in the early 90s, when he was just getting started. Eventually, for like $45 for lawn seats out at the Woodlands in Houston. It’s fun to watch a band get big.
TWICE, bitches. For Chicago in 1999, I took Frank for his birthday. That was really, really cool. Then, again, last year, we went again here in Houston at Jones Hall. The Chicago gig was smaller and more traditionally weird-Waits, but the Houston gig was pretty damn fine, too. Any Waits is good Waits.
Do not miss this band. Even if you don’t really dig them. They’re worth the ticket price, and put on a fantastic show.
Same here.
When I last saw them, 5 or 6 years ago at Reliant Arena here in Houston, Grohl asked the crowd “Is that club Numbers still here? Man, I played there a long time ago with my other band, and I was on acid, and they were playing the most fucked up shit on the bigscreen projector.”
Numbers is like that.
Numbers is also notorious for shitty acoustics, which sent Mrs Heathen and I to the door only about 20 minutes into a 2002 BHT show. Oh well. It doesn’t bite all bands equally, but some of the worst sound I’ve ever heard has been there.
At the dear, departed Satellite Lounge in Houston, ca. 1997.
At the dear, departed Urban Art Bar (a/k/a Urban Aardvark), ca. 1994. I didn’t know this at the time, but liner notes of S60’s records make clear there’s a connection between their and and Vinx.
At Numbers, which comes up a lot, in support of their first record. This was one of those times that the sounds was good, and Shirley was close enough we could’ve touched her.
Twice, both in Houston. First at a hall at UH that was nearly perfect acoustically, and then again at (wait for it) Numbers a few years later — though this time the sound was good.
I have seen god, and he is short. Sweet Fancy Moses, do not pass up a chance to see him. Hock something. Sell plasma. Seriously. At the brand-new Toyota Center in 2004, on seats so good we could tell what gauge strings he was using. With Maceo Parker on sax, I kid you not.
Don’t laugh; that rich kid faux-redneck does a pretty good show. Also, free tickets, since I was consulting for this guy at the time.
Twice at Legion Field (Steel Wheels in ’89 and Voodoo Lounge in ’94), one time almost at the Superdome. This is like a whole ‘nother post. Seriously.
Opened for the Stones in ’94. Their act didn’t mesh well with Legion Field.
Small act, sure, but worth picking up on. Many times, in many places, but best at the Satellite.
Houston’s Continental Club, around 2000. It was a terrible and rainy night, so turnout was low. It ended up being kind of like about 15 people just hanging out with Welch and Rawlings as they played, which was very cool and very intimate.
Also many times in many places, but the best was at historic Gruene Hall, Texas’ oldest dance hall. I shook his hand; he did not shoot me in the face.
They’re really separate acts, but Keen does a big picnic show every year, and the encore featured both of them. It’s some serious mainline Texasism, let me tell you. And that’s a good thing. Now pass me a Shiner.
A Houston native, Lovett told a story from the stage of playing honkytonks out in the rural wilds north of Houston as a then-unknown. A lady took advantage of a pause to scream “WE LOVE YOU LYLE.” Without missing a beat, Lovett replied “Yeah, but where were you then?”
There’s a pattern to seeing some bands: once on the way up, and once on the way back to earth. It’s especially true for acts with long lives, like this one. I saw them headline at Alabama in around 1990 or 1991, and they brought the house DOWN. They were just on FIRE.
Then, 5 or 6 years later, they headlined the music festival at Frank’s alma mater, which was a much smaller gig. It was that night I got to drink beer with Pat DiNizio, which remains a pretty cool memory, especially since I wore out a copy of “Especially For You” in high school.
Another headliner at Rhodes’ Rites of Spring.
It’s a shame they’ve apparently married the fucking House of Blues here, because that means I’ll never see them in Houston again. That place sucks enough to keep me away from this band’s magic; that oughta tell you something.
But if you can see them somewhere else, DO. I’ve seen them at Rhodes in a stone pit, at the old Satellite, at Fitzgerald’s, and at Numbers, and they always turn in a great show.
Someday, I’ll tell you the story of how I got to be the coolest big brother on the planet for about 20 minutes.
Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center, 1989, maybe? A then-unknown Black Crowes opened for him. None of us had any idea who they were when they took the stage, but we ALL went and bought that first record the next day.
In the late 80s or early 90s, some adventurous types bought Tuscaloosa’s famed Chukker (now sadly defunct). They renewed the place’s tendency to book interesting acts, which is the only way I ever got to see Sun Ra. They also brought in Clarence Gatemouth Brown and local acts yet to break wide like Man or Astroman?.
No, really. Opening for the opener at a U2 show at Legion Field in the early 90s.
Sadly, only twice so far. Once at Legion Field in the early 90s, supra, and then again in 2001 on the longest and best first date EVER; that story deserves its own post, too.
No, not Jim Carrey. The other one with Vernon Reid and “Cult of Personality.” Lots of fun, but I still don’t understand why Corey Glover insisted on performing in a BodyGlove Shorty. I mean, it’s fucking HOT in Alabama.
Speaking of hot: at the Woodlands in Houston in 1994 or 1995, probably September. It was night, sure, but still stiflingly, blazingly hot — so much so that this is my only really clear memory of the show. This night was a double-bill; we blazed back to the Urban Aardvark in downtown Houston to see Sun 60 (supra).
Son Volt was opening.
With Tom at Verizon; it was also the first time I’ve ever seen a line at the MEN’s room and not at the ladies’, which speaks to the demograhics of the show.
Last year at Verizon. Oldest aggregate concert age EVER. Also, if the bathroom line metric holds, just as much of a sausage-fest as Costello.
My erstwhile attorney and I, at Verizon. Tweedy and co. play a good show; see ’em if you get the chance.
Once opening for U2 in Birmingham (after BAD), and then again in Jackson, Mississippi in a floating bar on the reservoir called The Dock. There are no words for how surreal that was. Chuck D pronounced the crowd “the off-beat-jumpin’est motherfuckers” he’d ever seen.
Either you don’t know and don’t care, or know and care deeply. Speeding Motorcycle Uber Alles.
I’m a box of poison frogs. It’s a wonderful life.
A few times. Once, as a solo artist at Rockefeller’s like 12 or more years ago. Then lots of other times as part of the Speeding Motorcycle affair.
At Verizon in 2002. I don’t need to see her again, but I’m glad I’ve seen her once.
He opened for Tori. I would, however, see him again.
Yet another Verizon show, this time with Mrs Heathen. They do a really good show.
Scottish punky power pop. I hope you can understand them when they sing, because you goddamn well can’t understand them when they talk.
At Birmingham’s City Stages, 1993, with (I think) Mohney and crew.
In August of 1989, after they’d broken wide open that summer. The concert had to be moved to a larger venue, and they were still pretty shocked and dazed by their sudden success. At one point, one of the said “You know, this is really surreal, since six months ago we were playing to 8 people at the Chukker.” And I think I may have been there then, too, ignoring them, drinking beer on the patio.
In a shocking sequence, University Programs booked three years of genuinely good shows: Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers (who played forEVER), and Bob Dylan. Charles gave the best show, actually, in 1988.
A million times at Egan’s in Tuscaloosa. Shines was one of the last if not THE last real Delta bluesman; he was a contemporary of Robert Johnson. That you don’t know who he was just makes clear that Shines passed on the deal Robert apparently took at the crossroads.
BoingBoing points us to Dara O’Briain:
Jesus, homeopaths get on my nerves with the old ‘Well, science doesn’t know everything.’ Well, Science knows it doesn’t know everything; otherwise, it’d stop. […]
Just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.
This hamburger at Indika. How did I miss this? Who’s with me?
You Do Not Have Health Insurance. Go. Read.
You do not have health insurance. Let me repeat that. You do not have health insurance. (Unless you are over 65, in which case you do have health insurance. I’ll come back to that later.)
The point of insurance is to protect you against unlikely but damaging events. You are generally happy to pay premiums in all the years that nothing goes wrong (your house doesn’t burn down), because in exchange your insurer promises to be there in the one year that things do go wrong (your house burns down). That’s why, when shopping for insurance, you are supposed to look for a company that is financially sound – so they will be there when you need them.
If, like most people, your health coverage is through your employer or your spouse’s employer, that is not what you have. At some point in the future, you will get sick and need expensive health care. What are some of the things that could happen between now and then?
- Your company could drop its health plan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (see Table HIA-1), the percentage of the population covered by employer-based health insurance has fallen every year since 2000, from 64.2% to 59.3%.
- You could lose your job. I don’t think I need to tell anyone what the unemployment rate is these days.**
- You could voluntarily leave your job, for example because you have to move to take care of an elderly relative.
- You could get divorced from the spouse you depend on for health coverage.
For all of these reasons, you can’t count on your health insurer being there when you need it. That’s not insurance; that’s employer-subsidized health care for the duration of your employment.
Once you lose your employer-based coverage, for whatever reason, you’re in the individual market, where, you may be surprised to find, you have no right to affordable health insurance. An insurer can refuse to insure you or can charge you a premium you can’t afford because of your medical history.
You do not have health insurance.
The new Where The Wild Things Are trailer looks even better than the first one.
A monkey in India has started, apropos of nothing, helping a dude herd his goats. Said monkey has had zero training or guidance, and has apparently just picked it up by watching.
“She takes out the goats for grazing and brings them back. A shepherd is usually required to accompany the goats all day long and bring them back in these hills. But because of her, manpower can be spared. She is as good as a shepherd. The only thing is that she does not speak, but otherwise carries out all responsibilities.”
They say they feel confident that the goats will be safe when Mani accompanies them.
Mani is said to make a strange sound when she discovers a goat is missing or when danger lurks.
“She makes a strange noise if she finds a goat missing. Even though such a large number of goats go out for grazing, nobody accompanies them. If Mani is with them, we are confident that she will bring back the goats safely, wherever they might go.”
How ’bout THESE terracotta warriors?
Sincerely, John Hughes. Teenager Alison Byrne Fields wrote a fan letter to Hughes in 1985, and they ended up pen pals.
This is all over the Net, but I’m sure enough that more people need to see it that I’m running it, too. I got it from JWZ. There’s also a follow-up.
If you’re of the right tribe, go read and enjoy Signs you’re a bad programmer.
Siege reminds us of Bill S Sienkiewicz Friendly Dictator Trading Cards.
My people call it. . . SasqWatch.
I had not, until a YouTube review of Hughes’ work last night, realized that the song playing while Cameron stares at Seurat’s “A Sunday in the Park…” in Ferris Bueller was an instrumental cover of the Smith’s *Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want. By “Life In A Northern Town” one-hit wonder Dream Academy.
Wacky.
Really, Microsoft? Really?
Dead.
The director of iconic 80s coming-of-age films had a heart attack on his morning walk. He was 59.
This is an excellent time to note how prolific he actually was; while he’s well known for directing Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Weird Science (1985), and Ferris Beuller’s Day Off (1986), he also wrote National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) (and, sadly, its sequels), Pretty in Pink (1986), and Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), among others. The Heathen Generation’s youth wouldn’t have been the same without him.
Save Ferris.
That’s pretty much the only take-away I can think of when faced with his plan to charge for access to any of his news websites by next summer.
The DNC is actually shooting back about the GOP’s “disrupt the town hall meetings with coached mobs” tactic.
In all the chaos surrounding my travel, I didn’t notice until today that the client-specified car rental company (Avis, whose primary market appears to be biz travelers whose choices are made by beancounters — the cars are shappy, ill-maintained, poorly cleaned, and drastically less well kitted out than National or Hertz — but they’re cheap) doesn’t even have an affinity program.
Instead, they will give you points elsewhere, which is generally a sucky alternative. Still, I’ve got 10 rentals with ’em (and counting), so I needed to see SOME credits. The deals relevant to me are:
Given Southwest’s generally customer-friendly POV compared to other airlines, it’s not surprising that they beat CO all to hell here. Hotels just aren’t quite as sophisticated with affinity programs as airlines, so I guess that explains Hyatt’s poor showing.
Mmmm, arithmetic.
It should surprise no one that they’re full of writers and books.
Lady Gaga Is Not Ever Going To Go Away.
Seriously. If you know the song referenced here (“Poker Face”), watch the video. She’s got chops. It’s fun.
They’re Closing Bookstop on Shepherd, and want us to go shop at the bland, cookiecutter new store they bulldozed a shitload of gorgeous art deco buildings for up in River Oaks.
Bastards. Heathen like Amazon better anyway.
Turns out, a certain Jackson lawyer isn’t a natural born citizen EITHER!
Happy Birthday, old boy.
So, with most webmail tools, if you hit the “logoff” button, no amount of URL tomfoolery will allow a nefarious person to re-connect to your mailbox from the browser or session without your password.
This is As It Should Be.
I’ve just noticed, however, that Outlook Web Access apparently sees it differently. When you hit the logoff link in OWA, you get this warning:
At this point, the URL has shifted from our base OWA URL to something that ends with “/auth/logoff.aspx?Cmd=logoff”, which gives the user the distinct idea that their session has been zapped safely. Sure, it’s probably safer to quit the browser at this point, but in this age of weeks-long uptimes for even Windows boxes, who does that?
I sure don’t. However I just had a need to log into our support mailbox, and haven’t used OWA in at least 24 hours. The minute I pointed Safari at OWA, I was looking at my inbox. No login. No challenge. No nothing.
What the fuck?
The 21st Street Mission run by Edith Keeler in “The City On The Edge Of Forever” has got to be the cleanest homeless shelter ever.
4:20, 4:20, 5:21, 4:30, 5:15, 6:06, 6:50, 7:10.
Sigh. Fuck you, Continental.
I like gadgets. Everybody knows this. I also travel quite a bit, and have for years, and this isn’t news, either.
In my gadget-loving travels, I’ve had plenty of chances to use GPS systems, initially just the Hertz NeverLost system. Hertz’s Magellan-based car-mounted tool was fanTAStic in 2004, but has really not aged all that well. I didn’t really realize this until I had to use National in Kansas City this winter, which gave me my first exposure to the Garmin line.
I’d already seen and played with these units, and was pretty sure I’d choose a Garmin if I bought my own, and my early trips to Kansas City with National’s Garmins convinced me of that pretty handily. A touchscreen beats the Magellan’s interface all to hell, and having the unit on the dash makes more sense than keeping it in the passenger footwell, too. (National’s approach is also more flexible than Hertz’s, since they don’t mount the devices in the cars — renting with the GPS option means they just give you a little bag with the Garmin and its cables inside, which makes yield management easier for them.)
Of course, busy as I’ve been, I never bothered to actually go buy one — sure, it would be cheaper in the long run to own a $200 Garmin than to rent it for $15 or $30 a week, but the $30 is corporate money and the $200 wouldn’t be. Also, I really only needed them occasionally, and so I kept putting it off.
Then I bought a new iPhone this summer, and realized a purpose-built GPS is probably a dead letter. Google Maps + the internal true GPS of the 3G/3GS iPhones isn’t quite at Garmin quality levels, but it’s enough that I don’t need to spend another $200 or tote around another gadget. I’ve used it plenty to navigate in new cities or unfamiliar areas of Houston, and even without turn-by-turn, it’s absolutely good enough to make the idea of a Garmin redundant, at least for me.
The real head-scratcher, though, is this: We took the Benz in for some routine stuff last week, and the loaner car was a 2009 C-class. It’s a very nice car, to be sure, and comes with a fancy in-dash screen for managing various car features, including the built-in navigation system.
Which sucks. It’s unremittingly halfassed, and I’m sure constitutes a several thousand dollar add-in. An entry-level $149 Garmin beats it all to hell; shit, the outdated NeverLost system at Hertz is nicer and easier to use. What the hell?
It’s not just Mercedes, either. I have yet to see an original-equipment built-in GPS system that’s better in any way than the current crop of pocketable Garmins. Frankly, the iPhone’s drastically better and easier to use than any built-in, too, and gives the Garmin a run for its money. How long, though, do you reckon before carmakers get this news? Since Audi was still selling analog cell phones for $2000 in 1999, it seems likely we’ll see these things persist for quite some time.
Weird.
Check it out — SFW.
Here. (SFW)
Houston, specifically. The Economist has some nice things to say about us:
Mr Kotkin particularly admires Houston, which he calls a perfect example of an “opportunity city” — a place with lots of jobs, lots of cheap housing and a welcoming attitude to newcomers.
He is certainly right about the last point: not too many other cities could have absorbed 100,000 refugees, bigheartedly and fairly painlessly, as Houston did after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. With vibrant Asian communities alongside its balanced Hispanic, white and black mix, with no discernible racial tensions, and with more foreign consulates than any American city except New York and Los Angeles, Houston is arguably America’s most enthusiastically cosmopolitan city, a place where the future has already arrived.
We Heathen call it Home. The state itself is certainly not without problems (as the article points out), but Our Fair City gets all too few shiny notices such as this.
(Is Barack Obama an American Citizen?)[http://www.hereticalideas.com/2009/07/is-barack-obama-an-american-citizen/] explains much about the birther movement. All you gotta do to understand their POV is reject objective reality. Utilizing three alternative frameworks of reality — one of which involves the Norse god Loki — the author explains how Obama may in fact not be the natural born citizen actual evidence show shim to be. Heh. Here’s a taste:
It might seem, to the average person, that the “Birthers” must have a tough time proving their case. After all, Barack Obama has released his Certification of Live Birth, which meets all the requirements for proving one’s citizenship to the State Department. The authenticity of the certificate has been verified by Hawaii state government. Moreover, Barack Obama’s birth announcement was found in two newspapers at the time, and such notices were provided directly by the Hawaii Department of Health.
Faced with this overwhelming evidence, the average person will no doubt shrug and consider the case closed. There is no question that the evidence points to the conclusion that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is therefore a “natural-born citizen.”
No question, that is, if you accept the dominant paradigm of metaphysical realism. That is, the idea that things exist independent of the mind and that those things are perceivable and knowable. Moreover, those who insist that Barack Obama is an American citizen also rely on philosophic naturalism–the idea that reality is subject to objective, knowable natural laws that can’t be tampered with.
However, if one rejects these two philosophic concepts, it’s quite easy to demonstrate that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore constitutionally ineligible to be President of the United States.
The best part? Such subtle takedowns are sure to be lost on birthers, at least one of whom will read this and, failing to understand the big words, forward it to all their like-minded compatriots.
Excellent illustrations of Wire characters.
If, in the course of my web reading, I encounter a video from YouTube that’s long, or if I’m doing so from a place with questionable or slow connectivity, my standard procedure is to open the video and immediately hit pause. the YouTube player is smart enough to accumulate the video and hold it for me, and when I come back to that page in 10 or 20 minutes, the video will play uninterrupted.
What, then, is the problem with the Comedy Central videos? No matter how long I let them buffer, they always stutter and pause and require additional buffering.
Does someone geekier than I know why their approach is so broken?
Tom Knapp knows his way around a shotgun.
Intrigued, I found Knapp’s own site for more information. Here you can find the answer to the twin questions “Are those stock guns?” and “How do you do international travel with shotguns in this day and age?”
ARE TOM’S GUNS CUSTOMIZED?
Although Tom’s shooting performances are out of this world, his show guns are right out of the box.
The story gets even better.
When Tom is performing shooting exhibitions around the world for Benelli, he doesn’t carry his guns with him. The Benelli importer for the country Tom is visiting supplies the Benelli models that Tom will use during his performance there. Tom assembles those guns right out of the box in front of his first audience.
Cool.
I had a long sequence of very odd dreams last night, only one image of which I remember well at all. For some reason, Mrs Heathen and I were having dinner with LeBron James, who was unaccountably dressed in a vintage Kansas City Royals uniform that included snowshoes.
My subconscious is weird.
I’m completely flummoxed that people — cops, their apologists — are in any way offended by what the President said about the Gates arrest.
The quote, for reference:
Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.
Obama continued:
As you know, Lynn, when I was in the state legislature in Illinois, we worked on a racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and Hispanics were being stopped disproportionately. And that is a sign, an example of how, you know, race remains a factor in the society. That doesn’t lessen the incredible progress that has been made. I am standing here as testimony to the progress that’s been made. And yet the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, this still haunts us. And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently and often time for no cause casts suspicion even when there is good cause.
There is absolutely no room for offense on any of this.
Gates was in his home. Cops were jackasses. Gates got loud. Cops acted stupidly. End of story. If you’re trying to make hay with this in the press as though Obama hurt your feelings, you’re just as much of a jackass as the cop who cuffed an old man in his own home on trumped-up charges.
“He can speak French. In Russian.”
This Star Wars fan-remake hinges on a great idea: split it into 472 15-second bits, and have random folks sign up to make a segment. So far, 24 are finished.
BoingBoing has a few questions. I’m pretty sure the answers are d., b., d., d., and e.
How about some pictures of the top of Everest from a hot-air balloon?
Yesterday, Chris Matthews smacked around nutbird Congressman John Campbell on the “Birther” issue, and got him to admit that yes, Barack Obama is a natural born citizen of the US.
This came up again today; I recall it circulating once before, years ago, and I’m sure it’s on the Heathen Archives somewhere, but anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a repost.
Consequently, we present, once again, The 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In The US Army.
Ottawa authorities just discovered what happens when you leave a blank square on a roadside attraction sign.