Here's a link for David – I was being extremely incoherent the other day trying to explain some of the new tricks that the Other Side are getting up to: Comment Spammers Persevere, Including Adding New Tricks via Brainstorms and Raves
Monthly Archives: August 2004
From Russia, With *Barf!*
Miss Alli’s got her recap up for the notorious caviar-scoffiing Russian Roadblock episode of TAR. Whee!!
Capitol Hill Blue
What is Capitol Hill Blue, and why are their news stories so different from the usual corporate-newsmedia fare? Well, here’s the “Blue” FAQ
Not Going Greyhound Much Longer
U.S. Highway 40 is one of the initial Greyhound route casualties, taking out a string of Utah cities that includes Vernal, Roosevelt, Myton, Duchesne and Heber, along with Echo and Park City (along Interstate 80), and Logan (U.S. 89). Altogether, Greyhound is eliminating service to 260 U.S. cities and towns between Chicago and Seattle in its first round of cuts, effective Aug. 18.
Long ago, after Pop died, my mom became the defacto “family fixer.” Her brother, my Uncle Charlie, would give her money for a plane ticket to Steamboat Springs, CO now and then to look after their oldest sister, Florence.
Eventually, there was no money for planes, and so Mom would pull me out of school. Sometimes, we’d take the bus to Steamboat from the Greyhound terminal. The bus would drop us off at the Harbor Hotel, and we’d take a cab or call for a ride to their house. Later still, there was money for gas, so we’d drive. I loved the drive along US40, but only when we took our car.
The night bus rides were the most melancholy journeys of my life. To this day, the distinctive bus-smell in a long-distance coach or tour bus takes me back to the nights I’d sit watching the miles unspool like the background in an old-fashioned black and white movie. The first time, we did it in January, when there was a lot of snow in the high country.
The moon shone coldly remote above the snow-blanketed ranches as we rolled by, which were lonely outposts in the empty miles between the small towns along US 40. It seemed to me that there was nothing lonelier in the world than a single yard lamp, glowing brightly but impersonally from out by the barns, and offering no welcome to benighted travelers. And at the end of the journey, there was only toil and frustration and worry waiting to welcome us.
The Steamboat folks would be glad to see us only because it meant that we’d deal with their problems.
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Direct Order: Read Ginmar
If you haven’t read A View from A Broad yet, you should. From the beginning. It’s that good, and that compelling, and all that a blog can be. Everyone, from either side of the political aisle, should read it.
I’ve been thinking about the huge waste of time it is for our country to be politically polarized. I think the Religious Right has hijacked the Republican Party. Or maybe we’re actually in a three-party system now (a political threeway: very complicated relations between bedfellows). Which would mean we have the Democratic Party (note: it’s not the Democrat Party, you mokes) and the Republican Party… and the Theocratic Party, slightly farther to the right of Genghis Khan, but “saved.”
“If everyone from Blue states and Red states started talking and working together again, we’d be able to form a more Purple union.”
That quote isn’t original – it’s a mashup of a couple of off-the-cuff jokes from Michael Feldman’s “Whad’ya Know?” public radio show. Michael, more or less on the fly, decided to scrap the usual quiz format and take calls from people in either Red or Blue states, put them together on a conference call that could be heard on the broadcast, and make them converse and ask each other about their lives. It was quite funny, since he kept cutting people off instead of putting them on conference-hold, but he never did succed in finding an actual Republican in a Red state – they were all Blues for whom ::NPR is a cultural and informational lifeline. He could only chuckle ruefully and say “Well… public radio listeners.” As in, of course they’ll tend to be Democrats. Still, it was pretty funny, and may well have resulted in some lonely Democrats from far-flung Red states connecting with each other.
Still With The Raping And Torture
A Sunday Herald investigation has discovered that coalition forces are holding more than 100 children in jails such as Abu Ghraib. Witnesses claim that the detainees ” some as young as 10″ are also being subjected to rape and torture
And still this story doesn’t splash all over the major television and print news outlets. It’s been bouncing around since Seymour Hersh’s first reports. A Google search on an unfortunate but important phrase in the story brings it up all over the blogiverse and the international news. It’s been touched on by a couple of our major papers, but it still hasn’t broken the surface of the national concience (or consciousness).
Why?
Probably because nobody in their right mind would want to believe it. So it’s still bumping along the bottom, where the loonies and bloggers hang out.
Via Jesus’ General, strong patriot and manly non-Frenchman.
Nancy Says to BushCo: “No Support For You!”
The widow of former President, and Republican icon, Ronald Reagan has told the GOP she wants nothing to do with their upcoming national convention or the re-election campaign of President George W. Bush.
Whoa. So noted. They really ticked her off over a campaign ad they were all set to run during or just after the week of Reaganmania that used images of former President Reagan in a way that seemed to connect his presidency to Bush’s, or gave the impression that he would have approved of Bush’s reelection.
Scroll down in the article for some more tasty fulminations from Ron Reagan, too.