Just think: It could always be worse. You could be stuck in a shack in the frozen north with nothing but shoe leather for a feast.
Happy Turkey Day, everyone. We'll be back when our distended stomachs have recovered.
You know, my kids really love those old Rankin Bass stop action Christmas specials and look forward to watching them immediately after Thanksgiving. But I now have my own favorite Christmas special, thanks to Stephen Colbert and Comedy Central.
I had hoped to find a clip of Willie Nelson as the fourth Wise Man singing about his gift to the baby Jesus of a little pot, but John Legend singing about needing nutmeg was pretty damn funny too.
Serving eggnog without nutmeg is like serving turkey without a duck and a chicken inside it.
Words to live by. More clips over at Colbert Nation. Don't miss Jon Stewart trying to interest Colbert on the Festival of Lights.
Jon debuted a new segment last night called "Does That Get Me Fired?", in which he asks the seemingly reasonable question: What exactly does one have to do in order to get reprimanded by the United States Senate? If trashing your own party's nominee for President and disgracing your party with seven felony convictions doesn't do it, what will?
"A great career down, let's say, a series of tubes."
With Hillary Clinton's nomination to Secretary of State pending the vetting process looking at Bill's international dealings, Stephen sits down with Cliff Sloan, former Clinton administration official, to get vetted for his inevitable appointment to the Obama Cabinet.
The thing you have to realize in this process is that any secret you have may come out at any time.
You can watch more Colbert videos at Colbert Nation.
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With the Santa Ana winds kicking up this fire raging in Sylmar is very dangerous.
UPDATE: I was just outside for some coffee and it's ugly. The sky is tinted with a weird shade of orange from the smoke and breathing is very difficult.
Officials are reporting that we could have serious power outages in LA.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an emergency declaration for the Sayre fire in Los Angeles, while Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared a state of local emergency Saturday. An estimated 10,000 residents have been evacuated from the Sylmar area, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department as the fire continued to burn Saturday, with ten-percent containment.
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The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) had to take several power lines out of service starting at 5 a.m.. Saturday as the fire moved toward the I-5. All in-basin natural plants were activated by the LADWP by 6:30 a.m. From 9:40am - 10:05 a.m. areas throughout the Valley and Southern California - including Sherman Oaks, Mid City, Crenshaw and Harbor City experienced rolling black outs. Power was restored to those areas thereafter. According to Joe Ramallo, DWP, approximately 1,000 customers remained without power in the fire-ridden areas.
This blaze comes just 24 hours after massive fires broke in both Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.
For more information and the latest updates on the Sayre Fire, residents should call the LA Fire Department hotline at: (800) 439-2909.
Dirty tricks, wedge politics, class warfare. Push polling and playing to racist instincts of voters. All's fair in political battles. If reading those things makes you think of Karl Rove, then you have forgotten the godfather of those tactics: Lee Atwater. Atwater was the originator of the winner-takes-it-all tactics, something that still reverberates today within the Republican Party. Wikipedia:
Harvey Leroy "Lee" Atwater (February 27, 1951 – March 29, 1991) was an American political consultant and strategist to the Republican party. He was an advisor of U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He was also a political mentor and close friend of Republican strategist Karl Rove. Atwater invented or improved upon many of the techniques of modern electoral politics, including promulgating unflattering rumors and attempting to drive up opponents' "negative" poll numbers with the aggressive use of opposition research. He has been characterized as the "happy hatchet man" and "Darth Vader" of the Republican Party. In spite of criticisms of Atwater's tactics as unethical and dirty tricks, he was widely regarded as a near-brilliant political operative who helped candidates to win.[..]
Atwater rose during the 1970s and the 1980 election in the South Carolina Republican party, working on the campaigns of Governor Carroll Campbell and segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond. During his years in South Carolina, Atwater became well known for running hard edged campaigns based on emotional "wedge issues".
Atwater's aggressive tactics were first demonstrated during the 1980 congressional campaigns. He was a campaign consultant to Republican incumbent Floyd Spence in his campaign for Congress against Democratic nominee Tom Turnipseed. Atwater's tactics in that campaign included push polling in the form of fake surveys by "independent pollsters" to "inform" white suburbanites that Turnipseed was allegedly a member of the NAACP.[4] Atwater also highlighted that Turnipseed had been "hooked up to jumper cables" as a teen undergoing electroshock therapy for depression.
In 1990, Atwater was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. On his deathbed, Atwater had a famous epiphany where he renounced and apologized for his toxic contribution to politics:
My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul
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The Emmy-nominated filmmaker Stefan Forbes is here to discuss his new documentary, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, still playing in limited release around the country and available on DVD.
Please join me in welcoming Stefan and learn how the ghost of Atwater still haunts the Republican Party.
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SNL spoofs Joe Biden and John Murtha for doing what Democrats do best: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Next on Road to the White House, earlier today, Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and Congressman John Murtha spoke in a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where they tried to blwo the election for Barack Obama.
Hammond's Murtha is way too much like Tweety, but pretty funny nonetheless. It does like Murtha is having a tough time of it in his race.
Jon Stewart looks at who the 24 hour cable channels use to fill up their time slots and asks exactly what their qualifications are for their punditocracy.
With a little creativity or a whole lot of batsh@t insanity, that f@#%ing guy could be you!
There are more Comedy Central videos available at Indecision 08.
What I'm reading.
I'll be posting a bunch of books. With the election going on I haven't had a chance to post many. I'm juggling about a dozen of them right now...
With all this talk of "real Americans" and the superiority of small town values, The Daily Show's Jason Jones went straight to the heart of these values -- Sarah Palin's hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.
A place where no means maybe; where strangers are just friends you haven’t thrown up on yet.
You can see more of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report at Indecision'08. And you can read Jon Stewart's clarification of his "F*ck you" to Sarah Palin at an appearance at Northeastern University at HuffPo.
[Note from Dave: I was present, observing in the back, while Jones was interviewing customers at the Mug Shot Saloon in Wasilla. (You can see some of it in the unfortunately brief video I made of my time in the Mug Shot here.) Most of the interviewees, I think, were alternately excited and amused at the idea of being national TV. Considering that they were some of Palin's biggest fans, I suspect they were about as amused at the outcome as Mark Chryson was.)
Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.
With God On Our Side by Bob Dylan
As the end credits roll marking the finale of W and the completion of director Oliver Stone’s troika of Presidential bio-pics (JFK, Nixon, W), the voice of another generation lashes out of the screen. Almost a half-century-old now, With God On Our Side recorded by Bob Dylan in 1963, served as a litany of American hubris and military actions which are philosophically defended by claiming to have God on the side of America.
The Iraq War can now be added to that list.
W is a far, far better picture than I expected. It is not as some critics have suggested, a black comedy. It is not a farce. While there are some loopy dream sequences and flights of fancy, it is a powerful, straightforward biography depicting the guilt-ridden son of a hugely successful man.
*yawn* She showed in her Couric interview that she couldn't speak in an unscripted manner. But she showed last night that even with scripts, she can't talk either. This was a big blown opportunity to connect with a huge audience.
I gotta admit: John McCain can be pretty damn funny... well, when he's not accusing Obama of being an un-American terrorist sympathizer. Here is the second half of his speech. It started out rather mean-spirited but actually ended on a nice note when he shared some warm words about his opponent.
"I can't shake the feeling that some people here are voting for me. Nice to see you, Hillary."
"It's going to be a long, long night at MSNBC if I manage to pull this thing off. I understand that Keith Olbermann has ordered up his very own 'Mission Accomplished' banner. They can hang it up in his padded room."
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Higher res WMV (26MB)
The campaign took on a lighter tone Thursday night as both candidates delivered hysterical, self-deprecating speeches. Here's the meat of Obama's routine. John McCain, FOX News, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin: You are officially on notice.
"People tell me I share the politics of Alfred E. Smith and the ears of Alfred E. Neuman."
"But I have to say tonight's venue is not what I'm really used to. I was originally told that we would able to move this outdoors to Yankee Stadium. Can someone tell me what happened to the Greek columns I requested?"
"I must say I love the Waldorf Astoria. You know I hear from the doorstep, you can see the Russian Tea Room."
"It's an honor to be here with Al Smith. I obviously never knew your great grandfather, but from everything Sen. McCain has told me...the two of them had a great time together before prohibition. Wonderful stories."
"Now, recently one of John's top advisers told The Daily News that if we keep talking about the economy, McCain's gonna lose. So tonight I'd like to talk about the economy.""While the collapse of the housing market's been tough on every single homeowner, I think we all need to recognize this crisis has been eight times harder on John McCain."
"Contrary to the rumors you've heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton, sent here by my father Jor-El, to save the planet Earth."
"Many of you know I got my name, Barack, from my father. What you may not know is Barack is actually Swahali for 'That One.' And I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn't think I'd ever run for President."
"I have never put lipstick on a pig. Or a pitbull. Or myself. Rudy Giuliani: That's one for you. I mean, who would have thought that a cross-dressing mayor from New York City would have a tough time running for the Republican nomination. It's shocking. That was a tough primary you had there, John.""But I know Senator McCain agrees that some of the rumors are getting a bit crazy. I mean, Rupert the other, Fox News actually accused me of fathering two African-American children in wedlock."
Awesome.
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This was just too good to let slide, but with all the discussion of the bailout bill and the Vice Presidential debate, it got lost. On last Thursday's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart showed an absolutely schizophrenic appearance by John McCain discussing the bailout to prove once and for all, McCain IS Gollum.
We loves the bill! We hates the bill! We loves the bill… hates the bill!
That’s an unfair joke…it’s an unfair joke because Gollum is an old man, corrupted by his quest for ultimate power and…oh.
