For those few Canucks who may not realize the depth of the Plame / Wilson / Rove scandal happening south of the border, see here for starters, read the original Novak column and then follow Josh Marshall and Atrios for updates. See this Rove profile for background. Brad DeLong has a great post about it, too.
The Bush Regime Card Deck: French wackos strike back. I’m glad to see our friend Richard B. Cheney is an ace.
Yup, that’s how George Bush Sr., Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft referred to Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney, according to two retired CIA agents, one of whom briefed Sr. every day: “the crazies”. Plenty more delicious stuff in that interview.
The leading US voting machine supplier, Diebold, makes touch-screen systems so insecure that “a 10-year-old can rig an election”. That, and the company’s CEO is a major Bush fundraiser. (get the Salon day pass, and then you may need to re-enter the link, or re-click it here)
Aqua Teen Hunger Force is apparently a high point in the “anthropomorphic food” genre. The creators have also discovered that you can avoid complicated back story by making a character just come from space, which is a good point. (via greencine daily)
Nice T-dot based site: abrasion magazine. (via new Toronto convert leuschke.org)
I took a recent jaunt down the T-dot’s Graffiti Alley, and left with bucketloads of enthusiasm, and some photos. All of the pieces I got shots of are from one block that runs west from Augusta to Portland, between Queen and Richmond, and were created with community approval during the recent Style in Progress event. Since they weren’t worried about persecution at the hands of The Man, the writers were able to take their time and create careful, diverse and truly stunning pieces. It’s basically a free outdoor art gallery. If you’re in Toronto, go check it out, and if you’re not, stay tuned here, as I’ll be uploading more pics throughout the week.
UPDATE: A good site about NYC graffiti, and a good tour of said site, via Boing Boing.
Interesting NYT op-ed argues that suicide terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.
salary cap for CEOs. Arr arr etc.
How ‘bout that dogging thing?
So Cheney came out of his lair to speak to the nation on Meet the Press. He hasn’t been seen in public for six months – unless you count $2,000-a-plate Republican fundraising dinners as “public.” Surprise, surprise: he lied lied lied! Apparently Iraq did purchase uranium in Nigeria, and Iraq was tight with the 9-11 hijackers, despite what the FBI and CIA say. In other news, Sir Ian McKellen was seen in this very building wearing a Dick Cheney T-shirt. Was it this one, King? As Dick says, this war is not without sacrifice, and if by sacrifice you mean “billions of dollars in war profiteering”, then Cheney’s right there on the front lines.
Wow! From the sound of these customer reviews, David Hassentaub’s new album sure takes the prize! “a testament to the very soul of man.” “Many relevant lessons can be learned from listening to this wise teacher.” “Jesus himself never made a CD as good as this.” “The vocal power of a wookie during auto-erotic asphyxiation.” I hear The song “Hot Shot City” is particularly good. (thanks Adina)
Fans of Amazon review comedy should also have a look at Henry Raddick’s excellent work, and look! two new reviews of this unparalleled piece of offal genius have followed mine.
Quite obviously the California recall is the most colourful election campaign happening at the moment, but the runner-up is Ontario’s provincial election, which took a turn for the weird this past friday when defending Premier Ernie Eves’ camapign office released a statement that called Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty “an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet”. While I love a good crack and possibly a Buffy reference, it fueled a huge surge for the Liberals in the polls, and marked the conservatives’ brutally negative campaign as an abject failure. And they will veer even further to the right (although I can’t find the supporting article now), with promises to basically arrest everyone, in an effort to secure their “core” and place as the opposition with a solid number of seats. Some good news for the Tories, however: “They are tied with the Liberals in rural Ontario and in Eastern Ontario; they lead among voters aged 66 and older, and among those with a high-school education or less.” Good for them. Odd thing is, Eves himself has a reptilian sort of voice. I’d like to get me some books-on-tape of him reading children’s stories so that he could lull me to sleep with his slithery croak.
Revolve: “a product that places small pink boxes proclaiming “Beauty Secrets” in curvy writing right next to Mark 11:15 or Romans 14:12.” From the makers of the Extreme Teen Bible. (via the spear carrier)
Good article about the mystery of Toynbee Tiles, of which there are more than 130 across the US and which bear messages such as “Toynbee ideas in Kubrick’s 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter” and “Murder all journalists, I beg you!” (via slashdot)
UPDATE: Mamet is in on the action – and there are new and old MeFi threads. Good posts here and here from the old thread shed some light on the connecting strain between Kubrick and Toynbee: Zoroastrianism.
Quit dicking around over here and go read Andy Baio’s post about Double Dee and Steinski. Read the Village Voice article while listening to the tracks.
Oh, did he? Yes, he did, repeatedly, on this site and many others. Welcome to the penis-enlarging world of weblog comment spam. The goal is to increase “google juice” rather than to get people to visit the spam sites, although I’m sure they wouldn’t mind that either. People are already talking about email being broken and now we get this? And spamments are a lot harder to get rid of than junk mail; you can delete the comment and ban the IP, but it takes much more time than flagging a mail as junk. In fact, it makes me want to turn off commenting altogether. How do we fix it, any ideas? Seems weblog software makers will have to address this, but I also suggest we call Tommy Lee Jones, get an international manhunt going for the perpetrator of this heinous crime against all-that-is-good and then precision-bomb the squalid, penis-enlarged casino he calls home.