Friday, January 15, 2010

Moronic Question of the Week

"Firefly' Actor Adam Baldwin (adamsbaldwin) on Twitter, referring to Haiti relief efforts:
Exit Q: how much of O's own $cash$ did O 'sacrifice'/send?

I've heard some stupid shit lately from conservatives, but this has to be in the top 5.

Gee, Adam, I dunno. How much of Dubbya's own pocket money did he send to Katrina victims? How much did Clinton send to victims of the Oklahoma City bombing?

Jesus H. Christ. Are conservatives really so desperate for something to slam Obama with that they're reduced to THIS? I guess playing a thuggish, moronic asshole on FIREFLY wasn't that much of an acting stretch.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

The Story No One Wants You To Hear: We're Winning

Taliban and Al Quaeda leaders are being killed at an increasing rate. Civilian casualties are down. Recruitment of Afghans to defend their country from terrorists is up. Al Quaeda's strike attempts are growing smaller, sloppier and more amateurish.

We're winning. I don't expect the Republicans to admit it, because, in contrast to what they claimed about liberals, they really DO want us to lose so they can regain the power they pissed away so badly. I don't expect the mainstream "liberal" media to admit it, because they're terrified Republican Brownshirts like Liz Cheney will claim they're biased or that they're downplaying the threat.

But why the hell aren't the Democrats pushing this story? If Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama go on TV and said, "we're not out of the woods yet, but we're making real progress," what the hell are Liz n' Dick Cheney and Pat Buchanan going to say? "No, we're losing?" Good luck with that message.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

An Open Letter to Netflix

Dear Netflix:

I'm doing this as an "open letter" because you don't seem to have any way via e-mail to address this complaint, nor does your "contact by phone" number offer any help.

When I first started using your service, I thought it was fantastic. Movies delivered to my mailbox, no late fees, and most importantly, new releases available on the date of release or at least very soon after. When I saw the previews for the DVD release of a movie I'd been wanting to see, I'd often go right to the computer and put it on the queue. It was so great and so convenient that I told all my friends about Netflix.

Now, however, service has dropped off badly. THE HANGOVER has been listed as a "very long wait" for weeks. I finally took FOUR CHRISTMASES off the queue when it was still a "very long wait" after New Year's. Now I see The HURT LOCKER, which I'd really been looking forward to, is going to be a "long wait."

Here's my question: if I'm going to end up going to Movie Gallery anyway to rent the new movies I really want to see, why the heck am I paying you?

As I noted above, when I like something a lot, I tell all my friends. The same is true when something disappoints me.

Jerry D. Rhoades, Jr.

Readers: anyone else having this problem?

Hype

We're discussing the movie PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and the question "Hype: Blessing or Curse?" today at Murderati.com. Stop by!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

I'm Almost Afraid To Ask

As you may have noticed, when I re-enabled comment moderation, I also turned off the annoying word verification feature. Word verification is used to make sure that there's a human commenting and not some robot spam-posting program. I figured that, if I was going to be approving comments anyway, I'd just discard the spam manually and save y'all the trouble of trying to decipher the wavy letters and such.

Well, that's exposed me to some of the spam that's out there, and let me tell you, the Internet has gotten stranger than even I imagined. One site whose 'bots keep trying to sneak a link into my comment stream is apparently one that features videos of women giving birth. I haven't dared click through because frankly, seeing that twice (three times if you count the video in Lamaze class) is enough for one lifetime, thank you.

But WTF? Is this, like a fetish or something? If so, may i just say EEEEEUUUUUUUW!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

The O RLY? Factor

Latest Newspaper Column:

The kids on the Internet have a saying, or as it's known, a "meme." Whenever an Internet discussion gives rise to a claim that's patently absurd, someone is likely to respond with "O RLY?"
Pronounced "Oh, really?" it's a response that indicates anything from mild skepticism to outright scorn. For some reason, it's often paired with a goofy picture of a quizzical looking owl.
Well, you know me, always hip to what's happenin' now with the youths on the webs, there. So, without further ado, we bring you a column we call The O RLY? Factor:
First, there's hysteric-in-chief Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who got his knickers in a bunch when the failed Christmas Day attack on an American airliner was described as an "attempt." Hoekstra took to his Twitter account to try and raise the fear level: "It was a terrorist attack!" he tweeted. "Just not as successful as they (AQ) planned."
O RLY? Well, perhaps Rep. Hoekstra was so eager to politicize the incident that he didn't exactly think through the implications of what he was saying. See, it's a wingnut article of faith that "Thanks to George W. Bush, America wasn't attacked after 9/11."
If, however, you've changed the rules so that even an attempt counts as an attack, then that talking point goes right out the window, because there was a nearly identical failed attack by "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. And therefore, all of Bush's waterboarding, wiretapping, renditions and "black sites" didn't keep us that safe after all, now did they?
Unless, of course, you attempt to rewrite history even further, like former White House mouthpiece Dana Perino, who asserted on TV, apparently with a straight face, that "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."
O RLY? I seem to remember that Dubbya was inaugurated in January 2001 and that the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occurred in September of that year. Now, I'm no fancy political consultant like Ms. Perino, but I do have a nifty little device called a "calendar" that tells me that Sept. 11, 2001, was during President Bush's term.
Ms. Perino went on to insist that the terrible massacre at Fort Hood must be described as a terrorist attack. "We owe it to the American people to call it what it is," Perino said.
O RLY? Because so far, no one has developed any evidence that I know of that Nidal Malik Hasan was anything but a lone Muslim nutball who thought he was killing in the name of Allah.
But if we're going to call attacks by lone Muslim nutballs "terrorist attacks," then, as we've mentioned before in this column, you have to include DC sniper John Allan Muhammad, who was, according to his partner, Lee Boyd Malvo, engaged in "jihad."
You have to include Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who drove his SUV into a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to, in his words, "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world" and follow in the steps of his hero, 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta. And so, we're back to attacks on our country during Bush's term.
The star of today's O RLY? Factor, however, is former Vice President Dick "Shooter" Cheney, who's broken with years of tradition and decorum to try and undermine the president. (I remember when this was called "treason," but that's a rant for another day.) President Obama, Cheney sneered, "pretends we're not at war" with terrorists.
O RLY? This might come as a surprise to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, or his deputy Khwaz Ali Mehsud, or to the top Al Quaeda official in Somalia, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan. It might come as a surprise to Al Quaeda trainers Mufti Noor Wali and Abdullah Hamas al Filistini, not to mention senior Al Quaeda commander Zuhaib al Zahibi.
It might come as a surprise to them, that is, if they weren't all dead, just a few of the many terrorists killed by American forces in the past year.
It would definitely come as a surprise to those same forces who are still being deployed in the fight against Al Qaeda and their sponsors in the Taliban. Guess Shooter forgot about them.
This has been the O RLY? Factor. We report, you deride.
And just remember: The wingnuts only think they can get away with these outrageous lies because they think you're too stupid to know the difference.
RLY.