But I don't remember for sure.
Anyhoo, that opening ceremony was pretty much the coolest thing I've seen in a long time.
Two points:
-The little boy that walked out with Yao Ming that had saved some of his classmates during the earthquake was adorable. And his story came very close to making me cry.
-I kept yelling at the TV every time they showed George and Laura. Especially when they showed the two of them applauding the Iraqi athletes. I started yelling "you do NOT get to clap for them!" over and over. I really wanted a collective bird-flipping at them from the Iraqi team. But apparently they have more class and decorum than I do.
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Saturday, August 9, 2008
I Think They Were Building the Bird's Nest When I Was In China...
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Taking a Break
In case you care, I probably won't be posting much for the next week or so. I'll have friends in town and most likely won't have as much free time to post.
Before I go, I feel like I should at least mention Tim Russert's death. I didn't always agree with him, but he was good at what he did, plus, he was a fellow Buffalo native and always spoke of that with pride. That's all.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
That's Exactly What I've Been Saying
While talking about the campaign, Hillary Clinton said precisely what I've been saying this whole time: it would be ridiculously stupid for her supporters to vote for McCain over Obama. And vice versa, it would be stupid for Obama's supporters to vote for McCain over her.
Because WHY would you vote for someone who's beliefs are 180 degrees away from yours when there is someone with a very similar platform to what you agree with right there just waiting for you to vote for them? Because isn't looking past someone's lack of experience or a minor deviation from your exact beliefs a better choice than someone with whom you have nothing in common?
I also agree with something else she said, which was that the Democrats will have a unified party once they have a nominee. I'm taking that to support my theory that the people who claim they would vote for McCain over their favorite are doing it out of some sort of hissy fit, or that they say that now but come November there's no way they'd pull the lever for a (pro-war, anti-choice, freedom-hating, Bush-imitating) Republican.
Also, I'm resigning myself to the idea that Obama will probably be the nominee. I know people out there think I'm obsessed with having Clinton win because I am not shy about the fact that I support and prefer her. Obama isn't a terrible candidate, he's just not my first choice. But hell, John Kerry wasn't my first choice in 2004 and I still voted and campaigned for him. Though I'm pretty sure my property won't be vandalized this time.
Having said that, I feel I should add a *woot* to West Virginia.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Quickie: A New Low In Lawsuits
...and that's saying something.
A man who ran over and killed a Miniature Pinscher is suing the dog's family to repair his 97 Honda Civic.
Never mind the fact that he killed their dog. Their grief isn't nearly as important as fixing his 11-year-old car.
If someone hit my Min Pin they wouldn't be suing me for damages. Why? They'd be dead. Or at the very least, they'd be too busy contemplating the fact that I just handed them their own reproductive tract in a baggie.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Fun With Celebrity Drug Arrests
I'm not normally into blogging about celebrities. Maybe I once mentioned how Tom Cruise spent over a million dollars on gas in one year. Or things that happen to involve a celebrity but also relate to body image, Hillary Clinton/politics, censorship, etc.
But I'm a big, geeky CSI fan.
So I thought I'd bring up Gary Dourdan's arrest. He has been implicated on charges for possession of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and prescription pills. He was released on $5,000 bail, since, you know, he's a TV star and 5 G's is probably like pocket change.
Let me take a moment and point out that even his mug shot is sexy.
Anyhoo, apparently he's scheduled to leave the show at the end of this season. After the weird, hallucinatory sex scene in the episode "Cockroaches" I'm somewhat unconcerned by that.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Who Needs Clean Living Quarters, Anyway?
A soldier's father posted a video on YouTube showing deplorable living conditions at a Fort Bragg barrack.
Rust, peeling (lead) paint, clogged drains, broken toilets and sewer gas. Goes well with religious harassment, sexual assault and phony discharges.
Let's Just Ignore That Little 24th Amendment Thing
In a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that it was NOT unconstitutional for Indiana to require ID to vote.
Um. Yeah it is.
The 24th Amendment states that the right to vote "shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax."
Requiring ID to vote is an indirect poll tax. You have to pay to get a driver's license or non-driver ID in most states (all of them as far as I know). You have to pay to get a passport. You have to pay for any government-issued ID.
Therefore, it is possible that someone would be barred from voting because of an inability to pay. Disenfranchisement for being poor.
As of right now, seven states request photo ID and 18 require ID that doesn't need to be photo.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Clinton Wins Pennsylvania!
It's been called by multiple sources. CNN, The New York Times, and Reuters.
Woo hoo!
See, here's the thing. People keep saying she's going to drop out any day now. They say it's coming; she hasn't got a prayer.
WRONG.
She's behind by less than 130 delegates. Know what that is? NOTHING. Pennsylvania alone has 188. And there are more primaries to go. Seven states, Puerto Rico and Guam still remain. That's 501 more delegates. And if you add in PA it's 689 (since we don't know exactly how the delegates will be divided yet). Say they split the remaining races exactly down the middle. If you take their current delegate standings (Clinton 1541 and Obama 1679) and added half (344) to either of them, it's still a razor thin margin. If that were the case, Obama would have 2023 and Clinton would have 1885.
Obama would be ahead, but that's still 2 delegates shy of sealing the deal*.
Basically, what I'm saying is, at this point it would be beyond stupid for her to drop out of the race. Especially with tonight's Pennsylvania victory, the margin between them is so tight there's no telling who's going to come out the winner.
We aren't going to know for sure until August, people (person?). We may have an idea when all the primaries are over in June, but I'm not taking anything to heart until the actual convention and official nomination.
*I realize I am not addressing any remaining superdelegates with this. But my point would stay the same. It's still too close to know, and it would be insane to drop out at this point. No superdelegates were harmed in the making of this post.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Football Keeps Me Sane
According to CNN, football great/god Herschel Walker write a book revealing he suffers from Dissiciative Identity Disorder. This disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, is a condition where people display multiple identities or personalities, usually called "alters." Generally, when in one of these alters, the person won't remember anything about what they did. In Walker's case, he was prone to violent outbursts, at one time attacking and trying to choke his wife, not remembering it afterward.
DID is not what like how it is portrayed in movies. No nifty Primal Fear "third person" or narrator/Tyler Durden dichotomy. Sorry.
Walker claims that his DID didn't really surface until after he retired from football. When he was playing, in college and professionally, he had somewhere to channel his mind, something keeping him occupied. Once he retired, he no longer had that, and that is when his DID really took over.
No, people, claiming to have DID is not a cop-out to excuse violent behavior. It's a very serious mental condition. And mental conditions are as serious as physical ones, sometimes even more so. Walker would have nothing to gain by sharing this story if it wasn't true. Maybe my view on him is skewed (I did go to Georgia, after all), but he hasn't been seen as anything other than a great football player. He hasn't been caught up in some OJ-style crime where he needs this to defend himself. He wrote a book, shared his story, he wouldn't gain anything by lying.
Friday, April 4, 2008
The Government Oversteps Its Boundaries...I Know, What A Shocker
POPLINE, a government reproductive health database/search engine, has censored the word "abortion." The search engine turned the word into a stop word. Stop words are words that are excluded in a search engine. Usually words like "and," "it," and "the" are excluded from searches because they would yield pretty much every website out there.
Want to hear something ironic? If you were trying to use the database to argue against abortion, it still wouldn't yield any results. So whoever it was who decided that we shouldn't be reading about the process didn't realize they were also taking away resources for the anti-choice side too.
WAYS TO TAKE QUICK ACTION:
1. Drop a quick comment on their webpage.
2. Call/E-mail the INFO Project P.I. and Project Director:
Professor Jane Bertrand, Principal Investigator
The INFO Project
(410) 659-6300
Earle Lawrence, Project Director
The INFO Project
(410) 659-6300
3. call the Hopkins/Bloomberg School of Public Health, Director of public affairs, Tim Parsons, at 410-955-7619 or email him at tmparson@jhsph.edu.
Tell him that blocking abortion information through POPLINE constitutes political censorship, and is a stain on Johns Hopkins.
Really, this isn't about whether you think abortion is right or wrong. This is an insult to free speech, to net neutrality, and to education, as POPLINE is an educational database.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
No Schwartzenegger Jokes, Please, Let's Be Adults
This is really interesting. There's an article on The Advocate about a transgendered man who is pregnant. He talks about how people act towards him, especially doctors who treated him differently or wouldn't treat him at all. His wife had a hysterectomy due to endometriosis many years ago so she couldn't carry a baby. Oh yeah, he became officially registered as male so he is legally married.
It's a really interesting article and apparently he is going to be on Oprah tomorrow. I hope she handles it well.
The "Things That Make Me Stabby" File Sure Is Thick Today
Apparently, marital rape is no reason for a restraining order. The court is saying Amy Castillo "continued to have sex with [her husband Mark]" even when she knew he was cuckoo and dangerous and that means she shouldn't get a restraining order against him.
Mark Castillo is the man that drowned his three children. Just FYI.
Shall we mention that she testified to the fact that she only continued sleeping with him so he wouldn't suspect anything was wrong? And that he had mentioned he knew the strongest way to hurt her would be to kill the kids and leave her alive so she would have to live with the loss? Does this not sound like a man scary enough that you would do whatever he asked so he wouldn't be suspicious?
*stab*
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Yeah, I'm *Totes* Not Buying This One.
Allegedly, the results of a Gallup poll indicate that if Obama were the Democratic nominee, 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for McCain. And 19% of Obama supporters would vote for McCain over Clinton.
So yeah, I really doubt that.
I mean let's think about this logically. Clinton and Obama are ideologically very similar if you look at their voting records and platforms. Focusing on issues that are important to me, both would be fine. Both are pro-choice and earned a 100% rating from NARAL, both have plans to get us out of Iraq, both have a idea for healthcare, etc. McCain's record on all of these things (which I'm not going to link to, because I don't want to be the reason anyone pukes up their dinner) is abysmal. He's anti-choice (and anti-woman, essentially), pro-war (he's said staying in Iraq for a century would be fine by him), and panders to the wealthy (which means healthcare reform is right out).
You'd have to be ridiculously stupid to vote for a candidate with a 180 degree difference from yourself because your favorite wasn't nominated. Especially when there's a candidate with a nearly identical ideology to your favorite just waiting to be voted for.
This kind of poll is incredibly fallible anyway. There's also the fact that people may say those things NOW, but come Election Day there's no way they'd actually pull the lever for McCain.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Gubernatorial Sex > People Losing Their Homes
David Paterson admitted today that both he and his wife have had extramarital affairs, both at the same time when they were going through a rough time in their relationship.
I understand why he would come forward and say this. He's a politician, so at some point someone would probably drag this into the spotlight, and by being forthright with the information he sets an example of honesty that, after recent events, the state of New York sorely needs. So as not to be the butt of too many jokes.
But seriously, why do we even need to know? As long as he does a good job as Governor, I genuinely don't care what he does in his own time. It's not illegal, it doesn't put anyone's life in danger, and it has no bearing on his job! Who are we to judge someone else's private life? Who are we to look into someone else's relationship and use it to determine their fitness for a given profession?
There was a comment left on the New York Times website that was great. It was written by Vivek Chandran and is as follows:
"If say my wife and kid got run by a car .. and I rushed them to hospital.. I’m looking for the best doctor to ensure that my wife and kid get the best medical care possible. Once I find the best doctor .. I do not ask him for his credit history, whether he is gay or straight or whether he has had an extra marital affair. I only look for competence. Similarly I expect only competence from my janitor, my garbage collection person, the baggage handler at the airport, the grocery clerk. When all of us as people do not look for morality but competence in all our transactions with other people .. why do we looks for morality just in the Governor .. who is a provide of another service for all of us."
I literally copied and pasted that, so all errors, grammatical or otherwise, were made by the original poster.
Also, some infidelity statistics for you (taken from various internet sites via Google):
-22 percent of married men have strayed at least once during their married lives.
-14 percent of married women have had affairs at least once during their married lives.
-50 percent of Americans say President Clinton's adultery makes his moral standard "about the same as the average married man," according to a Time-CNN poll.
-17 percent of divorces in the United States are caused by infidelity.
-Affairs affect one of every 2.7 couples
-Ten percent of extramarital affairs last one day, 10 percent last more than one day but less than a month, 50 percent last more than a month but less than a year, but 40 percent last two or more years. Few extramarital affairs last more than four years.
-75% of men and 65% of women admit to having sex with people they work with. (I include this because Paterson admits to having an affair with someone who worked in a different department at the NY Capitol)
-Percentage of marriages that last after an affair has been admitted to or discovered: 31%
Bottom line, someone's private life and relationships have nothing to do with their ability to do their job.
I think we should pay attention to how many people lost money because of the collapse of Bear Stearns. Or how when we were concerned about Spitzer's little whore problem, one of Bush's cronies was spending over $200 billion to bail out predatory banks and lenders?
But no. We are much more concerned about what's happening in someone's pants.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
I Have a Feeling This Wouldn't Go Over So Well In New York
But it's in Georgia, so...yeah. Minor league baseball team the Macon Music (say it out loud, then reminisce about the city's now-defunct hockey team the Whoopee) has deemed June 13 "Eliot Spitzer Night". They have extended an invitation to the future former governor to come throw out the first pitch. Some other perks:
-The 9th fan to enter (a.k.a. "Client 9") will get a prize pack.
-Anyone named Eliot, Spitzer, or Kristen will recieve an admission discount. So will any fan from New York or anyone who has ever "resigned a position."
-There will be a giveaway: a trip to New York and a stay in the Mayflower Hotel (except I thought the Mayflower was in DC?).
I haven't decided yet if I find this funny or horrible. I guess it could be a little of both.
Thanks Jen for sending this to me, by the way.
I close with an amusing Daily Show video:
"It was his Achilles heel...if Achilles' heel had been on his penis"
Also, the lip bite factor:
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
SPITZER RESIGNS
It's official. Eliot Spitzer has just resigned from the office of Governor of New York. Effective Monday, David Paterson will take over. He will be the first black Governor of New York and only the fourth black Governor in the country.
This may seem hard to believe, but I don't know what else to say. I don't even have any sarcasm for this. I'm snark-less.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Some Good Out of the Spitzer Fiasco
So, Spitzer is probably going to resign. We all pretty much figured, right?
I was thinking about it. It may actually do some good for the state. Not that Spitzer was bad for the state, from my point of view and with what I care about he actually was very good. But, with him leaving there is allowance for some shuffling that may be beneficial. According to the New York Times, if/when he steps down, David Paterson would become Governor. And as I said yesterday, I believe he will do a fine job. I think that ideologically he's very similar to Spitzer. He also gave an incredible speech at the FPA Conference I attended yesterday. Also, as an interesting tidbit, he would be New York's first black (and legally blind) governor.
So then Senator Joseph Bruno would become Lt. Governor. This is where I think I may have found some silver lining. He's the current majority leader of the state senate. He's also a republican. Very anti-reproductive freedom. Which means he has consistently blocked the Healthy Teens Act and RHPPA from getting to a floor vote and, ultimately, getting passed. So in theory with him in the Lt. Gov. seat, there is a chance that his successor will be friendly to women and possibly get these laws passed. I guess that depends on who succeeds him as majority leader. I don't know how this sort of thing is handled. Will there be a special election in his district? Will the republicans still be a majority in the state senate? I think it was only a one seat difference. So without him there, there is a tie until his seat is filled.
Monday, March 10, 2008
My Name Is Eliot Spitzer, And I Like Whores.
I'm sure we've all heard the news. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has been linked to a prostitution ring. As "Client 9." He hasn't answered many questions, nor has he addressed the concept that he may resign.
Now, I actually don't care if he wants to pay for it. Seriously. Yeah, it's illegal, and it's not the smartest idea, but really, that's not what bothers me here.
My problem is that this seriously diminishes his credibility. The good things he has done in his career will now forever be overshadowed by his sexcapades.
Politically, I still like him. But now I don't think he'll be effective in any office. Thankfully, Lt. Governor Patterson is politically similar, so if Spitzer resigns, Patterson will be a fine successor.
These are expensive hookers, too. Around $4,000 per hour. I'm in the wrong line of work.
Interestingly enough, he was scheduled to speak at a conference I attended this morning. He had to cancel. He was "called away." I'll post about the conference later. I will say it was an interesting day to be in the NY Capitol building.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
As Ohio Goes, So Goes The Nation
Let's hope that statement is accurate. Watch Clinton speak after her victories last night.
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