Friday, September 12, 2003

I have seen spaghetti-western future... Once Upon A Time In Mexico is God's perfect hyperkinetic rock star spaghetti western. You. Must. See. It.
11:49:34 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Oh, and if I'm right, Erica may be reading this shortly. Don't ask me how I know this - I have ways. =) Anyway - if you ARE reading this, hi! Hope you're doing well and enjoying the blog! If you're NOT Erica, well, hey, you probably don't care. =)
8:19:53 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I have just now, for the first time in my life, had my plans derailed by getting paged. I was quite literally walking into the movie theater to get me a fix of that Robert Rodriguez Once Upon A Time In Mexico goodness when my pager goes off. If I'd remembered a script's arguments correctly, I wouldn't have had any problems...but no, it was supposed to be "users" not "user"...so I had to drive home and fix the problem. So now I'm stuck here 'til the 9:10 show. Oh, horrible fate!

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Ooooh...in today's Entertainment Weekly, there's a little blurb for "Winner of the Week" in the music section...it goes to Johnny Cash, for increased sales on his last album after the MTV VMAs. That's just bad luck on the timing there...
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Here comes your man... Joe Conason's Journal. A source close to Wesley Clark rates the probability that Clark will run for president at "90 percent." [Salon Headlines] Just more fuel on the fire.
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Defending the Beeb "Scare" Quotes. "SCARE" QUOTES....BBC headline this morning:US troops 'kill Iraqi police' (As of 10:14 am Pacific time.) The "scare quotes," as the BBC-o-phobes like to call them, are there to indicate that someone says this has happened but the BBC has not... [CalPundit] The Beeb is worthy of our defense. It's the closest to a true global and unbiased news source there is. At a message board I frequent, someone attacked it by bringing up a quote from a BBC employee describing it as "maybe soft left". The guy who brought this up tore them apart for this...neglecting to think about whether Labor and the Lib Dems holding 462 seats in Parliament to the Tories' 163 might hint at a certain "soft left" position held by most British citizens. Yes, the Beeb is more liberal than Fox News. Yes, the Beeb is probably more liberal than CNN. That's because they're not beholden to corporations, so they're less likely to veer in that direction, and because their primary target audience, the British people, are, well, liberal, by and large. I'm gonna try to find the article that "soft left" bit came from...the same Beeb employee also pointed out that yes, your average Beeb employee probably tilts a bit to the left, because they mainly live in London, a mainly left-leaning urban area. Sounded eerily similar to the (accurate) explanations of social liberal bias in American journalists. Luckily for the British, they're going to get over this - no one but the Murdoch papers and the loonies at the Telegraph could actually buy the idea of the Beeb having a profound "liberal" bias...

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More on Polls Bush's Gallup numbers collapse; Lieberman too. I'm back! Actually not really. I'm haunting DC for the rest of the day, but I found a Starbucks and... [Daily Kos] Kos looks at the poll the Clark Sphere mentioned earlier - he does a more detailed analysis of both the polls with and without Clark, and Bush's constantly plummeting approval numbers. Things definitely are looking good.
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Jack Beatty Says What's What This is a little old (from July's issue of the Atlantic Monthly) but worth reading - Jack Beatty determines the ideal candidate to beat Bush. You'll never guess who. =)
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Clark Poll Numbers Already Good? Like a Freight Train. It's important to take polls--especially national polls during primaries--with a grain of salt, but this recent USA Today/Gallop Poll (480 Democratic-leaning voters, MOE 5%) indicates an amount of momentum that can only be described as massively good news for Clark: Gephardt 15 Dean 13 Lieberman 12 Kerry 11 Clark 9 Braun 5 Graham 5 Edwards 5 Sharpton 3 Kucinich 2 That's right, Clark, undeclared and not truly campaigning, has 9%. This is when the meme "Clark has no name recognition" actually works for Clark. Because if he's pulling 9% of Dem voters with low name recognition, just think what will... [The Clark Sphere] Wow - 9% without even declaring. That's big.

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Well, I survived the ISO audit. I'm sure we're going to get some suggestions for improvement, but I think they'll be useful and quite valid. And hey - it's over. I can relax now. =)
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No, That's Not Gibberish Aoccdrnig to rscheearch.... Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. [David Harris' Science & Literature] Scary thing is, it looks like that's right. Wow.

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This Just Makes No Sense World decries move to oust Arafat. Israel's decision to expel Yasser Arafat meets a chorus of disapproval, as Palestinians rally to their leader's side. [BBC News | World | UK Edition] I don't get this at all. That is, I don't get how the hell the Israeli government actually believes this is the right thing to do. Like him or not - and I'm not sure anyone actually does like him - Arafat is the legitimate head of the Palestinian Authority, and as close to a head of state as the Palestinians have ever had. Israel is deposing him solely because they don't like him. Yeah, he's made some major, major mistakes - engaging in terrorism and rejecting Barak's offers at Camp David in '00 - but you can't just decide that you want your enemy to have a new leader. That's not how it's f'n done. Not to mention that if they DO expel Arafat, there will never, ever be peace - the wave of violence that would follow is just terrifying to imagine.

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Union Endorsements Might Boost Edwards? Union Endorsement May Switch to John Edwards. This is very interesting.... Edwards Becomes A Favorite Among Union Members: The largest union in the AFL CIO decided Thursday... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime] This leaves SEIU and AFSCME without endorsements...that's two very, very big unions. Not to mention that SEIU is the largest union and growing...if Edwards gets the SEIU endorsement AND Clark declares, Kerry might as well just drop out now.

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Exploiting the Atrocity. As usual, Paul Krugman gets it exactly right, the Bush administration has obscenely exploited 9/11 from the start Exploiting the Atrocity [Blog Left: Critical Interventions] He's Krugman - of COURSE he gets it right.
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He Walks The Line Country legend Cash dies. Singer Johnny Cash, one of country music's most iconic stars, dies in Nashville, Tennessee, aged 71. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition] Actually, I'd say Cash was far more than just "one of country music's most iconic stars" - he's one of America's most iconic FIGURES. Period. We're the better off for having ever had the chance to hear him sing. Rest easy, Mr. Cash.

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Bush Buggers Over New York On the same theme of how Bush has exploited 9/11, dicked over New York, and more or less plans to keep doing so, see this article from yesterday at Salon.
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