A Political Bird

08:30 am - Link

Former 1960s radical Bill Ayers appeared (as himself) in the 2002 documentary The Weather Underground, which was narrated by Lili Taylor.

Taylor was in High Fidelity with Tim Robbins who was in The Hudsucker Proxy with Steve Buscemi.

And Steve Buscemi was in Tanner on Tanner with, yes, Barack Obama.

That's only four degrees of separation -- a closer connection than either The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times was able to establish in their exhaustive attempts to find any links between the former '60s radical and the current Democratic nominee for president.

09:46 pm - Links

Just two (well, and a half) quick ones before bed:

What criteria are the U.S. Attorney's using to judge what is a death threat?

What do brain surgeons have to say about the candidates? (And, on a similar note.)

09:18 pm - Linkbit: the Pope and the President

P.Z. Myers on Benedict XVI meeting George W. Bush - outraged, as you should be. Outraged, to a great extent, because in all the "coverage" of this "event", and indeed in the "event" itself, there is not shown the slightest awareness that these men we are seeing praise each other and be praised in return are complicit in horror and terrible horror.

I know I, for one, am tired of this eternal drumbeat of dreadful revelations, each of which has effected not the slightest visible good in its wake. But that exhaustion is no excuse. Each beat of this drum stands for the agony of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people. The least we can do is stand for them.

(P.S. On a much more minor point, Expelled came out today. Do not watch it. Expelled is a terrible movie, morally and cinematically.)

08:55 pm

Thanks to the Slacktivist commenter crowd: the transcript of Obama's speech.

If you haven't watched the speech, for whatever reason, and you don't want to watch it now, for whatever reason, please: just read it. I won't even ask you to keep an open mind - just to click the link and push the down arrow when you hit the bottom of the screen, and whatever you think of him afterwards is fair game. But read it.

04:39 pm - On Prickly City, Leap Year's Day.

I've never been a fan of Prickly City. Generally, I find it to be of poor quality - I suppose The Wizard of Id is the easiest comparison - and so it rarely crosses my radar.

redneckgaijin just sent out an alert on today's strip.

I still say it's a poor quality strip. But I will praise it for this: it states, badly but boldly, that torture is not something that "good guys" do, and waterboarding is torture. That once you get beyond a certain threshold, relative comparisons don’t really matter, and waterboarding is horrible, terrible, inhuman torture.

I don't know Scott Stantis from Adam, and I still ain't fond of his strip. But, sickening as it is, speaking truth about this subject paints a bullseye on yourself, and the man said it anyway.

So: good job, Mr. Stantis. I'm rooting for you.

10:04 pm - And on a lighter note...

It's even more appropriate today than when I first saw it.

10:20 pm - Henry Rollins 'Ember of Rage'

Picked this up from happydog:



Man, I have never seen anyone deliver speeches like stand-up comedians can.