I think the war in Iraq may be the JFK assasination of our lifetime. I can understand why the American public believes that Saddam was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11 when the POTUS mentions 9/11 five times while discussing the war in Iraq and a North Carolina congressman outright declares ‘Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11’ despite the official report saying otherwise.

Those of us of an age will be happy to know that punk rock has triumphed over The Man. Nike Skateboarding (which, by its very name must indicate that punk is dead) decided yesterday that using an iconic album cover by Minor Threat for their own retarded promotion without the permission of Ian MacKaye was a bad idea. This blog here has a picture of the poster in question, as does Gawker, where I got the link. Message to all corporations: co-opting the punk ethic to build your pseudo street cred will still fool the children into buying your product, just stick to working with Blink 182 or whatever.

Justice Souter had no problem siding with big business (proxied through the New London, Conn. City Council) to apply the eminent domain standard. Now, there is a possibility that his own home in New Hampshire could be taken using the leverage he provided.

So, I’ve noticed this hilarious ad on the S1 bus every day for the last week, and it finally worked it’s magic and I looked up the website – milkmakesmesick.org.

Apparently, there are plans to file a lawsuit against the dairy council! John, shall we sign you up?

Like a breath of stale air, this story on the origins of Suck is initially waved off but give it a chance and you’ll be basking in the memory of a time before Heather Havrilesky sucked … the bad kind of suck. (jk — I still love Heather. She was my first “.crush”.)

When you make a strong – even outrageous – statement attacking the opposition, DON’T BACK DOWN. It doesn’t matter whether you were wrong to say it, whether you’re saying something totally reprehensible or not. If you actually apologize you look like a weakling, and even a whiff of weakness is deadly. Jeez, it’s like Rove is putting on a seminar titled “How We Keep Winning Even Though We Screw Everything Up.”

Last week, 11 Senators (2 from Texas) chose not to sign on as co-sponsors of the bill apologizing for the Senate’s failure to pass anti-lynching legislation. Terry Neal asks a good question in the Washington Post today:

Really, what reasonable person thinks any of the senators who didn’t sign the lynching apology bill actually endorses that morbid practice?

The better question is, by declining to sign on to the resolution, did they practice symbolic politics, just as those who signed it also practiced symbolic politics? The senators who failed to sign the measure prior to its passage — with the exception of Voinovich — were either from southern states or states with relatively small African American populations. Only the senators themselves know their true motivations.

One of the big entertainment news stories is that someone acquired or spoofed Nicholas Cage’s old email address, ncsaturn.7@aol.com. What is more embarrassing: having your email address stolen or having to publicize that you use AOL?

In preparation for the upcoming Great Westward Migration (if anyone in Austin wants to hire me, just let me know.) I’ve added a few Texas-centric blogs to my bloglines list.

I’ve idly thought to myself “Of course we’ll hear some talk of finding a way to let W run for a third term. People joked about it with Clinton, and we now have a Republican leadership that has absolutely zero respect for the Constitution.”

But seriously.

I moved my running blog over to WordPress. Pretty happy overall, but there’s been a ton of continued fixes to get it sort-of running. Very clearly an open-source thing, unlike MT.

It’s called Open Source and it’s out of WGBH in Boston. In their first two weeks, the shows have ranged from the future of the Internet and information, the impact of India and China achieving a middle class on the world, and the beauty of a good suit. Kind of like Wired but radio.

Catch it before it goes away.

Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post writes about the recurring “news” story of our times – that of the damsel in distress. Make that the white-middle-class damsel in distress.

Since I don’t have cable and can’t be inundated with the every-15-minute updates of these stories, I usually find out about them about two days after everyone else, and inevitably I think “Why the hell do people care??” Sure, the most obvious “who gives a shit” story would be the one of the runaway bride, but at some level they’re all the same and they should all really be just local stories. Somehow they get magnified into a national SAGA OF EPIC PROPORTIONS!

Can anything be done to counteract this trend? Does anyone really give a shit about these stories, or are they just filler for the 24-hour news cycle that will continue to be regurgitated ad nauseum??

Woops!

When relatives of Vivian Shulman Lieberman went to visit her final resting place in a Houston mausoleum one year ago today, they discovered that the cedar chest containing her ashes was missing.

In its place, behind the locked, glass door of Lieberman’s niche in Congregation Beth Israel’s mausoleum, was a can of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips.

However, I think Cynthia would agree that it would not be inappropriate for her to store my ashes in a Pringles can.

Hey everybody! It’s the Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005

neither any State or local government, nor any entity affiliated with such a government, shall provide any telecommunications, telecommunications service, information service, or cable service in any geographic area within the jurisdiction of such government in which a corporation or other private entity that is not affiliated with any State or local government is offering a substantially similar service.

OK, I get it, so Republicans believe that the federal government should use its power to prevent those invasive local and municipal governments from infringing on corporations’ god-given rights to overcharge for Internet service.