That's the lamest excuse I've ever heard! That's totally non-sequitary!

I started this a while ago but decided I better rush to finish it since the POW thing's getting played out.

As before please feel free to share if you enjoy the thing.

Apologies in advance that the voice work isn't as good as last time. :-)

That's okay Mikey. You and your brother are back with your mother and I. That makes us the richest people in Astoria.

McCain:

“I define rich in other ways besides income,” he said. “Some people are wealthy and rich in their lives and their children and their ability to educate them. Others are poor if they’re billionaires.”

It means the warranty has run out on Dungeon Master's brain.

You've probably already heard about pro-McCain conservative blogger Michael Goldfarb's stupid swipe at Obama supporters "It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement..." but I just want to add that Goldfarb has been a strong supporter of the war in Iraq and other hawkish neocon posturing around the world.

As somebody who has played games like Dungeons & Dragons off and on through his entire life I'd just like to say that our little fantasy world is fairly harmless. (Other than the calories consumed eating chips when we play.)

The fantasy world Goldfarb and his neocon buddies live in has been projected onto actual policy and resulted in the real loss of thousands of lives.

I don't think it's a question as to which group are the clueless assholes here. It ain't the guys rolling 20-sided dice.

It's teaching its son all right. And, he's teaching its son just like people teaching its children, just like a papa.

Happy birthday to Dean Jr. who turns twelve today.

At our house we have a tradition when it's one of the kid's birthdays - the 6 a.m. bagpipe procession to their bedroom. I get out my pipes (I really need to practice more) and we march into the birthday boy/ girl's room with the rest of family in tow. Our Chihuahua/ Pekingese Spike always comes in last, howling at the noise.

Did you know that John Woo and Dick Cheney considered listing bagpipe music under acceptable torture methods but even they couldn't bring themselves to be that cruel?

Dean Jr. tried to hide under his pillows but there was just no way to stop the dulcet tones of the pipe drones and chanter. When we finally dragged him out of bed and sat him down to watch a video that his sisters put together for him.

Comprised of pictures of him growing up, shots of Godzilla (his favorite movie star) and laced with music like Chicago's "You're The Inspiration" I couldn't believe that this little movie was put together by the two girls who spend the rest of the year plotting Dean Jr.'s painful demise.

In honor of his big day here's a much better piper than me playing the theme to Star Wars--

You should try talking to it. 'Cause, like, supposedly they can hear you even though it's all, like, ten-thousand leagues under the sea.

This...

Three weeks later, Mr. Bush went to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, at the invitation of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. There, he received a message from the Russian: the push to offer Ukraine and Georgia NATO membership was crossing Russia’s “red lines,” according to an administration official close to the talks.

Afterward, Mr. Bush said of Mr. Putin, “He’s been very truthful and to me, that’s the only way you can find common ground.” It was one of many moments when the United States seemed to have missed — or gambled it could manage — the depth of Russia’s anger and the resolve of the Georgian president to provoke the Russians.

...reminded me of this.

Later the transcript has Glaspie saying: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

Which in turn reminded me of this...

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

When it comes to foreign policy it's probably best to heed the advice of Jesse Jackson and "stay out of the Bushes." Their incomptence is generational. In fairness a president McCain would be just as clueless

Meanwhile his wife's out watching the Chippendales with her girlfriends.

Happy Friday! I'm off to start another vat of Marionberry wine. Here's a couple of things on my mind today...

There was some talk about the conflict in Georgia being ginned up by the White House because Republicans felt it would help McCain's campaign. I pretty much shunned that off personally even with McCain holding a news conference and sending his diplomatic corps of dumbasses over to the region. With today's news that U.S. and Poland reached a missile defense deal I'm not so sure. How can that be seen as anything else than poking the hornet's nest?

Overdroid had a good experience guest starring on Desperate Housewives. Of course he was attacked by another ant while in his dressing room.

The 7 crappiest superheroes in comic books. Madam Fatal is my favorite. This guy's super power is that he dresses up like a woman. Seriously.

I'm excited about today's news conference on the recently discovered Bigfoot corpse. There's been some controversy because Bigfoot is usually found in the Pacific Northwest, not the South.

Hello! Isn't anyone familiar with the legend of Boggy Creek? You can even major in Boggy Creek monster studies at the University of Arkansas.

It lacked certain elements that we need to market a film successfully.

Do you find this as nutty as I do?

"Action!"

The set jumps to life. Two young men--both terrorists--enter the station. They are surprised to see a security checkpoint manned by two NYPD officers. "I'll need to see your bag, please," says one of the officers. The lead terrorist glances nervously at his friend and swings his backpack down from his shoulder to present it to the cops. Just as the officer pulls on the zipper, however, a small army of ACLU lawyers marches up to the policemen with a stop-search order. The cops look at each other and shrug their shoulders. "This says we can't search their bags."

The young men are relieved. They smile fiendishly as they walk toward the crowded platform. As the lead terrorist once again slips the backpack over his shoulder, he mutters his appreciation.

"Thank Allah for the ACLU."

It's A Christmas Carol as directed by David Zucker (Airplane!) and imagined by Sean Hannity. Instead of the message of learning to love and cherish our fellow man during the brief time we're here on earth these conservatives are pushing the idea that liberals, the ACLU, and MoveOn are unpatriotic scumbags who haven't the slightest clue how to love America. What an uplifting message.

As somebody who enjoyed movies like Airplane! when I was a kid I was curious to see what exactly drove Zucker off the edge and into loony-town. He'd grown up a pretty progressive guy. For example he was a big supporter of Senator Barbara Boxer. What could've changed him into a raving lunatic wingnut? Any guesses?

Zucker was still nominally a Democrat when George W. Bush was elected in 2000. "Then 9/11 happened, and I couldn't take it anymore," he says. "The response to 9/11--the right was saying this is pure evil we're facing and the left was saying how are we at fault for this? I think I'd just had enough. And I said 'I quit.'"

I bet you had guessed what the answer would be. These sorts of stories are so tiresome. Rudderless, feckle cowards like Zucker who went absolutely crazy after the 9/11 attacks. Everything they professed to believe before Bin Laden punk'd George Bush to tossed out the window the moment they saw those towers go down. They hid under the bed and haven't come out since.

The article on the movie itself reads like some sort of sick parody of how conservatives perceive the world and how famous Hollywood conservatives like Kelsey Grammer, Jon Voight and Zucker have taken their fading careers as a political attack on their political beliefs, casting themselves as victims.

Indeed; there's a bit about how Kevin Farley(brother of Chris) was initially nervous about taking the lead role because of what it might do to his career in leftist Hollywood that's hysterical in it's paranoia. Yeah, it's your politics that's holding you back guys.

There's really too much crazy in this piece to hit on here but I will leave you with one last quote from that I found particularly amusing: "Zucker says that one of the major differences between the left and the right in America today is that leftists think of their political opponents as evil."

It's a classic demonstration of conservative projection of course. We don't think your evil, Zucker. We think you're a whole lot of crazy and more than a little bit stupid. But evil? Nope.

Take the biggest guy in the world, shatter his knee and he'll drop like a stone.

Thanks Randal for the KickAss Blogger Award. It's so much sweeter than the award I won last year. When it comes to awards that have "ass" in the title it's much better to have "kick" rather than "suck" be the other part of the equation. You can quote me on that.

There are people in this world that said I would never amount to anything and it's to them I address my acceptance speech-

You said I would never make anything of myself. You said I was doomed to a life of deep frying fast food and an empty apartment. You said that as a boy I looked like I was "beat hard by an ugly stick. " Well, do you think just ANYBODY can blog? Do you think just any Harry or Sally can start an account on blogger and get somebody to read it? Do you hear me mom and dad? I'm somebody! I kick major ass!

Watch me while I cut and paste the rules from Randal. Very few people on the intertubes know how to do that.

1) Choose five other bloggers that you feel are "Kick Ass Bloggers"
2) Let them know that they have received an award.
3) Link back to both the person who awarded you and also to http://www.mammadawg.com/
4) Visit the Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky and leave a comment. And don't forget your non-refundable deposit of $9.95 for your t-shirt. You should receive them in 6-8 weeks.

I'll tap...

Liberality because she wears her heart on her sleeve and I respect that. Unless it's a real heart. In that case; gross.
Jood because she's cool and writes nice things about Chihuahuas.
Fran because underneath that peaceful, Christian exterior we know there is an ass-kicker seething below the surface. Do NOT cross fran.
Enigma because she has a peaceful, walk on the beach type side and a Georgebushmustdieinafire type side.
Arkonbey because he understands the subtlety necessary to draw a vicious werewolf and
Overdroid just because he HATES being tagged.

Hmmm, that's six and I didn't even get to Swinebread who surely kicks ass in all sorts of ways.

Will you look at the man? He's a Freudian delight; he crawls with clues!

It's with a sense of bitter irony that I note Fareed Zakaria's ridiculous piece "What Bush Got Right" about foreign policy came out in the same week yet another foreign policy disaster arose given in large part to the continued incompetence of Bush's entire administration in this arena. They've been in over their heads since he first took the oath of office and, contrary to Zakaria's assertion to the contrary, nothing has happened to change that situation.

I don't like to write or even think about these sorts of global crisis these days. Truth be told I've been irrationally trying to focus on other stuff in the hope that it would blow over, resolve itself or the adults in the Western European community would step in and bring and bring a peaceful resolution to the fighting.

I'd be the first to admit that's a naive and unrealistic approach. It's just that I have a hard time with accepting the alternative; that our leadership are nothing but a bunch stupid children. I find myself very nervous watching Bush and Cheney poke at Russia over the conflict in Georgia. I've used the example many times but it's akin to being trapped in a room with a monkey that's playing with a grenade. Eventually he's going to figure out how to pull out the pin...

I'm second to nobody in my opinion that the "tough guys" that make up this administration are really a bunch of blustering pansies. One thing I've learned is that the guys that talk the most smack are usually the guys that spent most of high school stuffed in a locker. They're the guys who are cheerleaders or look for excuses to get out of going to Vietnam. They're cowards who can't back up the crap that comes out of their mouths. As a man I don't have much of an opinion of the manliness of men like Bush and Cheney.

Having said that I also recognize it's for exactly this reason that they feel they have something to prove, especially if they're own hide isn't on the line. That's why I'm not sure the tack that Matt Yglesias (via Digby) takes in calling them out is the best one to use here.

"This highlights, I think, some of the limits of the kind of bluff-and-bluster approach to foreign policy that seems popular among conservatives these days. Or, rather, it highlights the fact that popular as bluster-based policy making is on the American right it can have some extremely high costs and that, tragically, a large proportion of those costs can wind up being borne by the people who were nominally supposed to be the beneficiaries. "

Bush has been throwing some extremely bellicose language at Russia yesterday. The kind of language I can't remember being used by an American president since at least the Berlin Wall came down. Pointing out that he's all hat and no cattle might not be the best thing to do here. On a personal level he's a coward. But he's also an incurious, stupid coward who has demonstrated zero predilection towards considering the consequences of his decisions whether to our security as a nation or the well-being of the troops under his charge.

I believe the phrase is "don't poke the bear." In the case of George W. Bush I would change that to "don't poke the teddy bear, it's not stuffed properly."

There you go, hiding behind a smokescreen of bourgeois cliches.

Taking Jess Wundrun's long anti-Beatles rant from last week (I'll See You In Hell John Lennon) at face value I have a confession of my own to make- I'm a Beatles fan. I've loved the Fab Four since I was a little kid and had just worn out my little 45 of Phil Harris singing the "Bear Necessities." I played that "Jungle Book" song in a sugar-infused marathon of howling and dancing that must have driven my parents to distraction.

Without anything to dance around my bedroom to singing I decided to nip one of my parent''s albums. I'm pretty sure it was A Hard Day's Night because it had "Can't Buy Me Love" on it. I was hooked and never went back to that Disney crap.

This last weekend I got my grubby little mitts on the DVD The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows featuring the Beatles and other Artists. This thing is in a word; "awesome." Not only does it feature the Beatles but each of the four shows is packaged as they originally aired. This means we get to see acrobats, musicians and commercials for dinner rolls that promised to contain "real butter."

So far we've only watched the first appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and there are a couple of things I find striking. The first is how darned nervous they all look. McCartney and Harrison put on a brave show but they have happy feet. They don't seem all that comfortable on stage.

Lennon is really the one that looks like he wants to crawl out of his own skin. Picture this shot below with Lennon essentially standing rooted on the spot bouncing up and down like some sort of angry gorilla. It's very uncomfortable to watch the big galoot.

Why I find that interesting is that when I think of the Beatles I usually think of the later years when they were a bunch of supremely confident guys who couldn't give a rat's ass what the world thought of them. "We are more popular than Jesus Christ" and all that.

The other thing that struck me about this television performance is the realization of what a sea change these guys were to middle America. These days the Beatles are considered mellow, retro-rock. Evidence of a kinder time.

Here they were sandwiched between a magician doing card tricks and and Frank Gershin doing impressions of Burt Lancaster. The Fab Four must have looked like Hendrix setting his guitar on fire or Ozzy biting off the head of a bird to the people watching at the time. Maniacs with long hair playing impossible sounds.

I can see why they scared the hell out of the parents of our parents. The Beatles didn't just represent a new sound, they represented a new world. Today their music may seem trite and more appropriate for elevators, but there's no denying what they were.

I can see not liking their music, but you damned well better respect it.

(Except you Jess. You're too cool for me to try and boss around. :-p )