A retrospective as unecessary as the election that prompted it... Plus news... And disco...

The Canadian election received almost no time from me because its outcome was easy to foresee. When it became evident that none of the players involved could muster any inertia then stagnation would inevitably become the end result. In retrospect however it stands to illuminate the shortcomings of each and every party, which at the very least is what you want a pointless election to provide.

Stephen Harper gathered his forces, marshaled all of his considerable resources, selected the time of his ascendancy, and still could not move the country to a majority. You can’t even pretend there will be a better next time because there is not a single excuse to explain why he was held back or why the winds weren’t in his favour. He set the stage, this was a drama of his making, and still we weren’t collectively convinced. It’s clearly not about the vagaries of the situation but the inabilities of the man. I would be surprised if Harper stuck around for any great length of time. His value to the Conservatives at this point is being a relative success story, for thrashing the Liberals in a couple elections and raising the identity of his party as high as he personally could. To stay on is to invite eventual defeat and since total victory seems impossible to reach then why risk the legacy built? The Conservatives are back though, now their task is to find a likable figurehead, something made all the more difficult due to Harper’s authoritarian style. It is hard for a leader to emerge from a regime of followers.

Stéphane Dion of course is absolutely finished and so are the Liberals so long as they coddle him. Dion ushered in the weakest Liberal party in a hundred years they say. Had he done this while combating a power house then an excuse for him might be made but no, he lost to a chronically uncharismatic opponent. He should never have been there in the first place. Stéphane glad-handing his way to Liberal leadership undermines what’s wrong with the party entire. Politics, it really does change people, it changes how they view the world and how one interacts with others. Negotiation is key in life but when it perpetuates itself overmuch then personal potential gets left behind. The Liberal party, through its constant internal manoeuvring, stopped being a meritocracy and instead became a mediocrity. The politicians who have stuck to it the longest rise to the top and they do so in such a way where all the rest have a comfy place secured for them so long as they fall in line. I’ve heard it being called The Peter Principle. Such a formula purges the greatness from their ranks. Barack Obama, who at 47 years of age stands poised to become the next President would have never had the opportunity to emerge in the current Liberal party environment. He achieving his potential would have hurt too many feelings and upset their perceived natural order. This is still a lingering effect of the so-called Culture of Entitlement. Political parties need to be built so that the exceptional can break away from the herd and make history with their blessing.

Jack Layton and the N.D.P. never had more of the spotlight, had never before spent that much money, but they ignored their ground game in hopes of loftier ideals. This is evident when you seen that they secured nearly twice as many votes as the Bloc but earned fewer seats. Sure the people voted for them across the board but they didn’t win elections. They were the ultimate vote-splitter and that happens not by chance, but by party failing. In a political race you need first and foremost a good list, you need a census. You need to find out where you’re strong, where you’re weak, and where you’re the big maybe. The N.D.P. could have won quite a few more seats if they identified where they had a half-decent chance and then campaigned like hell in those places. Had Jack done this in Toronto he might have taken the city whole, rather than hold on to a mere two seats. Layton kept it federal, which was pre-mature. Get the seats first, secure the ridings, and then look to the higher heights.

The Bloc is at a crossroads. They shored up Quebec and made good gains but they did this on a platform devoid of separation talk, an age-old pillar of the party. So what does that make them now? As I see it they have two choices. They can play it safe and remain a party that does little but see to the interests of their home province, or they can risk re-branding themselves as a true federal force. If they want to continue making gains they have to explain to the country that the virtues of Quebec and the lessons learned guiding that province can be imported nation-wide. It’s okay for a federal party to have a home province, the Conservatives have Alberta and the Liberals have Ontario to a lesser degree. The difference is a mindset and outlook that expands beyond the provinces. Gilles Duceppe needs to find the spirit of Quebec that lay hidden in other parts of Canada. Perhaps that is a task his successor will attempt.

Elizabeth May orchestrated a serious set-back for her emerging party and probably made herself dizzy in the process. No seats, not even for herself, and that is entirely her fault. There are a couple salient facts that brought about this conclusion. First, she picked a riding where she wouldn’t have had to run against an incumbent Liberal or N.D.P. Better she thought to take a run at the extremely popular and competent Peter McKay. Recall that she also tried to make backroom deals with the Liberals and N.D.P. whereas they wouldn’t run in ridings close to home provided she didn’t field a candidate in their sweet spots. Dion’s Liberals of course accepted this shortcut to democracy, Layton rightly blasted it. When your party compromises itself to that degree right from the get-go you have to question its validity in the first place. The Green Party displayed all the shortcomings of both the Liberals and N.D.P.: Too much political manoeuvring, not enough attention to the ground fight. Now they risk irrelevancy. Elizabeth should have picked a fight she could have won and done it, making no friends in the process. That is how you forge an identity. Alliances come later, when you can bargain from a position of strength and people start to respect - or at least fear - you. The game is still about leadership, you need to be in charge of something to effect change and the first thing you need to master are your own principles. The privilege earned to be apart of the debates was squandered. Now the Greens need to prove themselves all over again.

That is all the rumination of Canadian politics I’m likely to do for a while. I like it not to linger in malaise. Our country’s politics has fallen into a trap that I see cursing generations of peaceful intellectuals throughout history. There is an aversion to bloodshed; there is no thirst for seeking victory from the defeat of others. There is too much accommodation in these races, too much thought for the day after. Such ideas may seem reasonable to the fortunate pacifist but they foster timidity which is like cancer to government. I’m actually content that Harper won it because at least he doesn’t act as if he is fearful over losing his job. We should probably pay all these people less money. Politics should remain a calling, not a career path. The results of the latter are all too uninspiring as we can plainly see.

Too many narratives will blur the image of a candidate.

Thanks to Marc for this article and his thoughts. This one goes over all of the course changes in the McCain campaign and how they have worked against him. By contrast Barack Obama has been an ocean of consistency in his run for the Presidency. He’s had one message, that of change. He has not once discarded it; instead he amazingly broadened yet refined that message to ensure it encompassed all of the topics to have come up over the campaign. The lesson to be learned when comparing these two campaigns is obvious.

Blackwater mercenaries now actually on the water.

This is cool! Blackwater has put together something of a warship that serves as a helicopter platform. They’re going to sell their military services to merchant ships that fear Somali piracy. I’ve been reading Prof. John Keegan’s “A History of Warfare” and it seems the rise of mercenary armies seems to come at the end of a civilization’s life cycle. Using them to help wage a war in Iraq is a sure sign of American decadence. That said the audacity of this business plan; the very American “can-do” mentality is rather appealing.

Pakistan and U.S. to arm tens of thousands of tribesman.

It looks like poor Pakistan is going to be hastened on its way to hell thanks to the desperation of all involved. The Taliban in the north has control over much territory and the solution to this is to arm the other half of the people living there. Arming tribesman in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets is what created the Taliban. This is a classic case of history repeating itself. I wonder then why Pakistan thinks they are going to achieve different results this time.

The 70’s news article that inspired the movie Saturday Night Fever

This is a rare, old gem. With a surprising amount of literary prose and structure a reporter uncovers the youth sub-culture of disco dancing as it first emerged. Reading the article I immediately gained new respect for the movie because it captured the atmosphere of the article perfectly. I always found it interesting that the most colourful and flamboyant street cultures come from the most industrialized, dark, and dirty of places.

You may notice that the guy's eye is white as porcelain... So that's not the Bloodshot they're talking about...

I finished Condemned 2: Bloodshot over the weekend. It was late at night and I was alone in the dark. Of course I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Not only was Condemned 2 a damn good game but it was the perfect way to cap off this terribly long, bleak, and depressing winter. If I could complete this title with my sanity intact then I had hope I could get through March without descending into a Jack Nicholson-like episode straight out of The Shining.

Developed by fear aficionados Monolith and published by ye olde tyme Sega of America for both the PS3 and the X-Box 360, Bloodshot seems poised to up the ante on a modest original title that became a sleeper hit. I own and loved the first Condemned: Criminal Origins and have loaned it out twice to friends so that they may attempt to enjoy it. One returned it days later saying there was “no fucking way” they were going to complete it. My second victim wasn’t even able to manage speech in this regard; he just handed it back in, shook his head and literally sputtered something unintelligible.

The mood and atmosphere of Condemned is simple to explain if you’re not familiar with the series. Condemned is a video game attempt to capture the essence of films such as Silence of the Lambs or Seven. You play a detective in a Serial Crimes Unit and you are hunting mass murderers. You serve and protect in a fictitious city that has succumbed to all manor of urban blight and social decay. The crime scenes are all abandoned, derelict, and well… condemned. Within these ghettos and urban ruins psychosis, violence, and death have taken over. While solving crimes you go mad and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Parents you’ve been warned: Condemned is a relentless and unrepentantly violent hobo killing simulator. The weapons of choice are whatever you can find within the crumbling environments; boards with nails through them, plumbing pipes, axes, hammers, toilet seats, prosthetic arms, gumball machines - if it’s not already clear by now this is one grisly product. It is however gripping, anxiety-filled stuff.

Mixed in with the disturbing bum fights are crime scenes that your character must investigate with special tools a la C.S.I. As gruesome as the head bashing is, the collecting of evidence and solving of crimes is thoughtful, interesting, and a great break from the horrifying action. Of course the crime scenes are the leavings of serial killers and so if you’re put off by close-up photography of a severed head or passing a UV light over a maimed corpse then you will find this aspect of the game just as disturbing as the rest.

So if you didn’t know already this is what these games throw at you and they do a really good job of it too. The first Condemned was rather basic in its controls; we’re talking two buttons that you have to push at the right times for the most part. The difficulty lay not in mastering the controls but in mastering your fear and Condemned can play your emotions like a fiddle. In order to appeal to the experienced gamer the second Condemned title added some more variety and options to the player. The main character, presumably a rookie leg-breaker in the first game is now a force to be reckoned with in the back alley death-match circuit. You don’t just beat a hobo until he stops moving, oh no, that’s for rank amateurs! Now you dispatch them in style by ramming their heads into urinals or television screens. In this way the game becomes more of a martial art or arcade styled game but I don’t think it suffers any because of it. When a game moves from a niche into the mainstream it needs to expand on its premise and Condemned is doing a fair job in that regard.

The crime scene investigation aspects of the game were also expanded and in this they did a masterful job. Once you arrive at a scene your office will ask you a number of questions revolving around the particulars of the incident and you must treat it as a puzzle, unravelling what truly happened to create such a mess of blood and entrails. The game rates you and unlocks better police equipment that you can use throughout the game. The combination of swinging heavy implements and deductive reasoning gives this title some nice variety. It does a good job keeping you off balance and guessing at what comes next.

I liked the cultish conspiracy story that Condemned 2 told and I thought that some of the environments or levels were among the best I’ve ever played. The game had some minor bugs and glitches, things quality assurance and play testing should have caught, but certainly not enough to detract much from the overall effectiveness of the game. As well I hear the on-line extras they added are a waste of time but I don’t play these kinds of games to be communal at all; horror is an intensely singular experience.

So if you like the survival horror genre then I highly recommend this one, it is right now the scariest and goriest franchise out there. Other horror classics like Silent Hill and even Resident Evil couldn’t hold a candle to the scariness of the first and this new one just blows the old competition out of the water.

Here are a few other things I found floating around the Internet lately…

Barack Obama’s speech on the State of Racism in America

I’m putting this up here for posterity. I hope you’ve heard the story of Obama’s pastor preaching some inflammatory remarks and rather than simply disowning the reverend the presidential candidate explained how things came to be this way. We haven’t heard anyone speak like this since Trudeau, Kennedy, or Dr. King and that’s why it’s worth pointing out. His thoughts and experience on race is most honest and insightful. A lesser candidate would have simply thrown their old family friend under the bus but Obama sought to elevate the dialogue instead. This is well worth the read.

Frontline Double Documentary: Bush’s War

All told this is something like four hours of quality viewing. If you’re fine with watching the program in ten minute segments on a small screen then it’s all at the link ready to go. Otherwise try to find the full version on-line. P.B.S. has been creating great documentaries on the Bush Administration and its running of Operation Iraqi Freedom for years now and this one is the whole succinct package. The first two hours are amalgamations of numerous documentaries they’ve made on individual topics or people. The last half contains quite a bit of new material. So far it seems that this is the definitive version of events; of the run-up to war, its initial execution, and a play by play of what all went so terribly wrong. Again well worth one’s time.

A Manned Mission to Mars may have to be a one way trip…

I found this thought provoking and in line with topics I have touched upon in the past. This essay goes over how vastly more feasible it would be to engineer one-way trips to Mars. It’s the getting astronauts back which make the voyage prohibitive and so in the name of human exploration volunteers would be asked if they would be the first to colonize the far away planet. These people would probably not come back and would probably not even survive to their full span of human years. It is a hell of a thing to ask anyone.

The article rightly points out that this wouldn’t be the first time this kind of high risk exploration has been undertaken. There were no guarantees even when crossing weeks of ocean to hopefully reach one of the newly discovered continents and who knew what lay in store for the pioneers. The reality of space travel is so much more daunting than anything we’ve done before and this is what may be necessary to even start. It beggars the question of course: Would you go if asked?

I don’t believe in god but when looking at our solar system I always am always forced to re-evaluate my stance. It’s like the planets are a treasure trail laid out right where we need them. Each one has something we desperately need; water, metals, various combustible gases. If we made it to one it could re-supply us in order to get to the next. If we’re going to get them - and let’s be clear, we NEED them - the sacrifice is going to have to be monumental.

Don't mind my husband, the shriners are taking him to the zoo... The cage over his face prevents his tongue from touching anything...

Gentle reader I give you Big Dog! Not me actually, it's Boston Dynamic that's developing it for the Pentagon. Had I constructed this robot the rather dull sounding name would have of course been upgraded to Panzer Stomper IV or perhaps I just would have gone with Neo-Proto-Deathbot because let’s face it; the doom of our species probably lay somewhere within that hollow metal frame.

We can’t program evil yet but its coming. If we can make cheese evil with the advent of Kraft Velveeta (tm) then anything is possible! Computer and robotic circuitry is inherently malignant by virtue of geometry, much like the hives of insects.

Big Dog currently walks, can ascend angles, and carry considerable loads for our convenience. Thanks to Mike J. for this Youtube demonstration.

What walks down stairs and feeds off your tears and is the sound of despair…

Let’s get real for a minute. Putting a rucksack on Big Dog is a form of clever propaganda. Take it from me; I’m on the Internet and therefore know all about these things. You see, the army will always require a soldier to carry his own gear; it builds character and hatred. An infantryman who doesn’t carry his own pack is called a sailor in most Christian nations. They have Big Dog acting in a subservient role so that the beast appeals to our sense of laziness and entitlement. We want one so that it will carry our crap. On the other hand it doesn’t have a head meaning it will never know joy or happiness. It will therefore kill us without remorse because we have cursed it with a hellish existence.

We’re going to see what Big Dog is really capable of once it starts terrorizing Will Smith through his suburban home a la Velociraptor in his next summer blockbuster. After that we’ll hear of them being dropped out of the sky into some defiant, oil-rich, fundamentalist fiefdom. Then they’ll be prowling our very own streets after Leaf games and we’re going to have to look into their soulless television screen faces for retinal scans in order to prove our identity. Man’s best friend indeed!

Meanwhile in the Indian province of Uttar Pradesh, a baby girl born with two faces is being worshipped as a reincarnated god. Reincarnated into what? We humans, we’re just all over the place, eh? If we’re not deciding to sit on a toilet for two solid years so that our skin becomes stuck to the seat then we’re preparing to sell the most expensive champagne in the world at $6,485.00 US a bottle. It’s been a heck of a couple weeks for news! In case you just got back from a far-away place the human race is still just spinning its wheels for its own amusement.

Violence in Tibet - Protesters clash with Chinese police in Lhasa.

This might wind up big or it will just go the way of other Chinese-squashed uprisings. The dead are nearing one hundred in Tibet and violent demonstrations are popping up in India, Barcelona, and other sympathetic nations. The poor Dalai Lama has really been bent over a barrel on this one, when I’m 72 I hope my life is going easier than his. One day he’s slamming the Chinese over waging cultural genocide. The next he’s threatening to resign as head of Tibet’s government-in-exile if his people don’t simmer down. Of course he's not there - couldn't be in Tibet if he wanted to. Asking people getting hit with batons and teargas to show restraint is like me admonishing British football hooligans, telling them "relax man, it's just a game."

Don’t expect the Chinese people to pursue peace on this; they support the hard stance.

We’re seriously living in a time of moral disconnect but this isn’t surprising because when hundreds of millions of people believe the same thing it has the power to alter our reality. By rights China has earned the reputation worthy of Myanmar, North Korea, and Iran for its human rights abuses, both pre-emptive and reactionary. They’re fast becoming rich however so not only does the world at large turn a blind eye but they get the Olympics. I expect these kinds of incidences to increase through the spring and summer up to the games. It’s going to be real interesting to see how that turns out.

Admiral William ‘Fox’ Fallon: ‘Retired’ between now and the publication of this article.

This is a great article from Esquire Magazine that features Admiral Fallon; a lifetime military man who headed Pacific Command and Central Command, which includes the Middle East region of the earth. I defy you to read this article and not wind up somewhat in awe of the man. In his youth he was a fighter pilot landing on aircraft carriers. Towards the end of his career he was brokering peace and communication through economic expansion in some of the most benighted places on earth. Admiral Fallon was the one man standing up to the Bush Administration and their thirst for war with Iran. Perhaps this article was the final straw of pressure that either forced him out or caused him to throw it in. Either way it writes up as a grievous loss in my opinion.

The arrogance of Bush and his cronies never ceases to amaze. Consider if you had a man of Fallon’s ability and experience who was duty-bound to serve and council you, would you not take a man such as this in the most serious of stead? If a guy like Admiral Fallon had a different opinion than you in the matters of war and foreign policy would you not at least second guess your own outcomes and motives? Even if you didn’t agree with him on everything, would you make life so untenable that the good Admiral would leave? It is fucking crazy how drunk on their own ignorance these neo-cons are, scary too.

Keith Olbermann points the Integrity Cannon away from President Bush for a change.

If you like reading/watching Keith’s Special Comments from his Countdown news program then this is a good one. It started with Clinton financial fundraiser Geraldine Ferraro saying that Barack Obama wouldn’t be where he is today if he wasn’t black. Nice. Clinton called the remarks regrettable but didn’t denounce or fire the woman for her racist remarks. (She left on her own volition after the public at large labelled her a dried-out old bigot.) This kind of skulduggery paves the way for Keith to hit the Hil-Dog (not a bad robot name) with a double barrelled blast of righteous outrage and sound reasoning. It’s all worth your time.

The next slum might very well be those god-awful, cookie-cutter suburbs…

I found this article very interesting. It goes over the trend of populations moving back into the cities after fleeing from the core in the 60’s and 70’s. With the suburbs starting to empty out of working class people you can naturally expect the gangs and drug trade to move in. We already know that marijuana and artificial narcotics owe their life to those sprawling anonymous neighbourhoods, soon prostitution and other illicit forms of finance might make the move as well. More than ever our city developers need to plan properly; to make sustainable, mixed-use communities that won’t fall out of fashion in a few decades time.

New war deserters find support from old war deserters…

Anytime Toronto makes it into one of the big American papers I’m compelled to put it up here. This article goes over the draft-dodging sub-culture that began back in the Viet Nam era and is getting a small revival from those who challenge the Iraq War. What a shame that this depressing predicament has become a cyclical thing!

I sh00tz t3h magik bult wit my BRAINZORZ!!!1

By using existing medical technology (EEC, ECG, etc.) this company can make retarded looking headgear that allows you to play video games with various impulses. You know, what passes for your mind. While cool in theory that’s all this toy will be unless the big game makers get behind the technology, which historically has been a tricky thing when it comes to emergent gadgetry. Getting a crummy Harry Potter game on board is one thing, Call of Duty 4 is another matter entirely. I don’t know dudes. On one hand it’s more like Virtual Reality which is really keen. On the other hand how I am going to slip that thing on in the living room and have my wife retain what little attraction she still has for me? I'm going to look like I'm waiting for my day trip on the short bus.

Then again if I touch Hermione Granger with only my brain am I breaking any laws? Decisions, decisions, decisions…

The first step is admitting you have a problem...

The response to my fledgling blog among friends thus far has been positive which is important to me because they're probably the only ones reading this stuff. Hey dudes! Good times last night, thanks for putting up with me while I tried out my British accent. I think I was secretly channelling Oprah Winfrey's butt-hole as so compellingly characterized on South Park.

My initial plan was to balance out the posts with an equal mix of world events, entertainment and Canadian interest stories so that it would read like a generalist magazine, like Maclean's for example. Heh heh! Check it out, as soon as our dollar hits parity no one is afraid to whip out the inflammatory imagery anymore. I must say though that mustache looks rather good on him. I'm also a big beret fan, they're so damn jaunty!

As I add entries however a pattern emerges contrary to my plan and in truth I've been censoring my content a bit because of it. The blog is focusing on America, particularly America's work in the Middle East, and even more particularly on the Iraq War.

The reason for this is something that required me to become honest with myself. The truth is I am deeply fascinated with the U.S. of A.; the role it's taken in the world, and how that role is changing their society. It's a truth that I'm not entirely comfortable with. For one, lots of the stories coming out of the U.S. these days are quite negative and I can easily see my commenting on them coming off as contempt or even hate. That would be not only bad but illogical. America is a huge and diverse country, either the third or forth largest in the world by area depending on who you believe and home to over three hundred million people - a great many of them from other parts of the world to begin with. It's too big to hate and quite frankly, there's tons I love about America. They're the best at a bunch of cool things and as far as people go they have some real gems, millions of gems in fact.

My second source of apprehension about this interest is that I'm a Canadian for crying out loud! What kind of wannabe finger-pointer am I turning myself into? I want to throw this level of passion into Canadian affairs - I really do - because it would be a great expression of the patriotism I feel towards my homeland. But you know what? It's just not there. I love Canada but I guess I'm not 'in love' with Canada. She's a great girl and those tits! Second biggest in the world baby... but she's a little boring though, which I guess is a by-product of stability. She likes to stay home on the weekends and day-to-day nothing much ever happens. How does that old saying go? Men want to marry the Canadas but until then we want to fuck the Americas. America is exciting, she's fucking crazy yo! She wants you to tool around in the convertible she just stole while doing lines off her guns - which unlike Canada's are silicone implants but they're still pretty spectacular in their own right.

Plus there is the fact that she's at war; a big, nasty, murky, quagmire of a cat-fight. We are living in history right now, that thing that seemed to happen a lot to our grandparents but seemed set to pass my generation right by. Why not become informed? How many times are in our lives are we going to learn about historical events by reading the morning paper? My best friend and I pulled suddenly off the road one beautiful morning and watched the second tower go down live, in real time. "This is it," my inner child voice told me as I watched, "this is what the end of the world looks like." I know the world is not ending but I also know that those towers haven't finished falling yet. The chapter is not yet complete.

So I guess the time came to own up to my dirty little fetish and come clean. In this blog I'll examine America and take notice of all the ripples it creates around the world. I'm not going to focus exclusively on the States but by the same token I'm no longer going to hold back posts because this will be my umpteenth Yankee Doodle diary entry. So with that and a newly revised mission statement that more accurately reflects the situation on the ground, here are some links...

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070920_100442_7900&source=srch&page=1

I think Maclean's is becoming consciously more sassy in hopes of increasing their circulation amongst the 'in your face' generation. In my opinion that image above doesn't really fit with the article attached but the story itself is bloody brilliant. The author's knowledge of the Iraqi people and their shifting alliances makes this a must-read if you're interested in the Iraq occupation.

If you want to read more about Iraq and the significance of its' cities with regards to Islam then Scott Ritter's paper is another good one. This guy was a former intelligence officer and weapons inspector so he has a raw, to-the-point style that's quite different then a journalist or academic. His insight and opinions are one of the intellectual foundations of the modern anti-war movement so he's always got something interesting to point out.

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/20070323_calling_out_idiot_america/

During the Petraeus Homecoming Extravaganza earlier this month the Democratic-friendly anti-war organization MoveOn (http://www.moveon.org/) took out a full page ad denouncing the general in the New York Times. This created wicked backlash and gave the Republicans a much needed target to lash out at and direct attention away from the war. Same old - same old so I didn't bother commenting on it but it just got a bit more interesting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/20/AR2007092001005.html?wpisrc=newsletter

The senate voted on condemning the ad and a great many Democrats supported the motion. It's a matter of dignity and propriety, right? You can't besmirch an army man even if he does completely cross the military/political line. One problem though, MoveOn has donated millions of dollars to Democratic candidates and they would therefore be justified in considering this vote to be a stab in the back. Some Democrats have not only bitten the hand that feeds them but they may have bitten it off completely. This might create a big change in the netroots and where they decide to give their money. Time will tell.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070920/people-kathy-griffin/

Finally something light and fluffy. I've never seen Kathy Griffen's show 'My Life on the D-List' but she's always been good for a laugh. In her Emmy speech she cracked wise about how so many people thank God for winning and this of course drew scorn from various religious groups. One line in particular jumped out at me.

"It's just not OK anymore to mock Christians and Jesus with impunity."

Take note unbelievers! The times, they're not just a-changing, they've done gone and changed! It's just not okay anymore and you can thank me for giving you the memo! Serious stuff, huh? I wonder what they'll do now that it's not okay? I'm hoping for crucifixion-lite; big staples instead of spikes to keep you up there without marring the flesh too much, something Don Rumsfeld would be cool with signing off on. You want to know what I think? I think these mild-mannered Christians are getting jealous of the wide birth Islamic fundamentalists get on account of them going ape-shit over comics and other forms of stoning-worthy nonsense. All this time those bible-thumpers have been doing that whole 'meek shall inherit the earth' shtick and the problem is nobody lives in FEAR of them anymore. Who wants that when you can claim the moral authority bust that lippy ginger-kid Kathy Griffen in the mouth for putting down the fucking Jesus! Can I get an A-MEN

Well how about a X-MEN?