Let’s sum up his actions: he photographed, drugged, and raped (orally and sodomized) a 13 year old girl. He was sentenced to 2 years in prison, but then skipped the country after serving only 30 days and has been living in non-extradition countries since.

Now, boatloads of people are rushing to his defense and I cannot understand why (mostly from the left, too, which is shameful. Whoopi, HuffPo, Applebaum, etc.). Simply because he is a great director does not make him above the law. There may have been some judicial improprieties at the trial, but the undisputed fact is that he raped a young girl. I don’t care how different standards of sexuality are in Europe – rape of a child is rape of a child. A 13 year old is only a “woman” if you’re living in Sparta and the wheel hasn’t been invented yet.

Polanski is now the entertainment world’s OJ Simpson.

“This is not a situation where any anti-doping rule was violated, but we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model and a hero,” the federation said in a statement.

Light it up, Mikey. You’re not doing anyone any harm and if Aquaman doesn’t deserve some down time relaxation, I don’t know who does.

Oh, and the federation can blow it out of their sanctimonious pie holes. Yeah, yeah, it’s illegal to smoke, but so are u-turns in many states and I don’t see people losing sponsorship deals or having to deal with an unending stream of Sistah Toldjyahs for it.

And to the douchebag who took the private photo and distributed it: you are a douchebag. Keep this shit private and no one is harmed. Idiot.

Here’s my conception of the dog right after it has chewed through the crib, eaten the baby, and is now coming for your soul:

Obviously, this dog needs to be stopped. Just look at the eeeeeevil!
…
..
.

Yeah, fuck you too, Sparky. Your cute shall not work on me. Wanna know why? Because you won’t shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!

You’d think I’d learn.

Anyway, new job has crazy restrictive IT policy so until ClearWire makes it out to my new location… going to be slow.

In other news, I realized today why I like Robert Randolf’s I need more love so much… the bass line is taken straight from Michael Jackson’s Off the wall. Go figure.

Anyway, I think I’ll have to figure out how to post more frequently. Killin me and my 3 regular readers.

Oh, and the update killed all my plugins, my theme, and everything. Bitches! I don’t have time for this scorched earth site shit anymore!

This is brought about because no less than 5 blog posts today have started with something like “not to spoil anything with The Sopranos, but…” and then, of course, go on to spoil the plot event. So far I’ve managed to avoid contamination, but if anyone else keeps this up, I’m calling Jeff Gillooly.

You have been warned.

Breed by Nirvana.

Nirvana. In a commercial. For a video game.

May the gods smite you but good, Courtney. But. Good.

It is expected there would be no problems securing funding to explore a drug that could shrink cancerous tumors and has no side-effects in humans, but University of Alberta researcher Evangelos Michelakis has hit a stalemate with the private sector who would normally fund such a venture.

Michelakis’ drug is none other than dichloroacetate (DCA), a drug which cannot be patented and costs pennies to make.

It’s no wonder he can’t secure the $400-600 million needed to conduct human trials with the medicine – the drug doesn’t have the potential to make enough money.

Michelakis told reporters they will be applying to public agencies for funding, as pharmaceuticals are reluctant to pick up the drug.

At roughly $2 a dose, there isn’t much chance to make a billion on the cancer treatment over the long term.

According to research on DCA, formerly used to fight metabolic disease in children, the drug apparently revitalizes damaged mitochondria in cancer cells, effectively triggering cell death and shrinking the cells.

“One of the really exciting things about this compound is that it might be able to treat many different forms of cancer,” explained Michelakis.

This is also a large part of what’s wrong with the American medical system.

Who would ever want a $2 pill that shrinks/kills tumors with no side effects? Don’t be ridiculous. The mere idea of such a thing being desirable is absurd.

So, long story short, I told ‘em to stick it.

But today… today we’re going to talk about something else: DVDs for television series that do not place their chapter marks right after the opening credits. Yeah, I’m talking to you Stargate SG-1 and The Wire (and the early seasons of The Sopranos). After you’ve seen the credits once, do you really need to keep on seeing the menus the next 12-21 times you watch the series? And you can’t even find out that the chapter points are set at ass-random times until after it’s too late.

So here’s to you, underthinking DVD designers! Give us freakin’ appropriately-placed chapter points.

Oh yeah, and another thing, the DVD people who are putting only 2 episodes per DVD like, oh The Wire, designers… you’re severely cramping our Netflix enjoyment/throughput (well, the throughput would be fine-ish if they didn’t throttle our service).

NASA managers have rejected last-ditch pleas from their top safety officer and chief engineer to scrap next month’s shuttle launch, saying that they will press ahead despite potentially catastrophic risks.

The head of the US space agency, Dr Michael Griffin, overruled warnings that there was a “relatively high” chance the shuttle’s external fuel tank could shed some of its solid foam coating when it launches on 1 July, carrying seven crew including Briton Piers Sellers, an Edinburgh University graduate.

But it gets better. Rove Griffin is going to carry on! Well, the soon to be dead astronauts are anyway. Money quote:

Dr Griffin said: “I do not see the situation we’re in as being a crew-loss situation. If we are unlucky and we have a debris event on ascent, it will not impede the ascent. The crew will arrive safely in orbit, and then we will begin to look at our options.”

Crew-loss == they all die
debris event == they all die on reentry
options once in orbit: 0

I don’t want these sociopaths to be able to add another 8 lives to their ledger. Politics is not worth sending a 25-year old deathtrap up into space.

Just remember: Mars, bitches!

Louisiana Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a ban on most abortions, which would be triggered if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1973 ruling legalizing the procedure, a spokesman said on Saturday.

The ban would apply to all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, except when the mother’s life is threatened. It is similar to a South Dakota law that has become the latest focus of the abortion battle.

Bonus points for having a woman sign the bill. Nice job, traitor to your gender. I’m putting in my claim on Kathleen Blanco’s uterus now. Kathleen, I expect you to ask me permission before you use your uterus for anything. Even menstruate.

I already gave for NOLA/Katrina, but Louisiana will never see another dime out of me.

A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that evidence could be used even when the police entered a suspect’s home illegally by failing to knock on the door or announce their presence.

By a 5-4 vote, splitting along conservative-liberal lines, the high court ruled that a police violation of the so-called knock-and-announce rule does not require that the evidence seized during the search be thrown out.

…

“Today’s opinion is thus doubly troubling. It represents a significant departure from the court’s precedents. And it weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution’s knock-and-announce protection,” Breyer wrote.

Tell me again, how five justices departing from precedent are not activist judges? How they are not legislating from the bench?
Oh yeah, those are just meaningless code words to use when you disagree with the outcome.

So long, Fourth Amendment! Thanks, scAlito! Thanks bigot voters! Thanks compliant media! Thanks eletion fraud and disenfranchisement!

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that the Department of the Army, per order of U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, has released to Judicial Watch approximately 100 pages of documents which detail the multi-billion dollar, no-bid contract awarded in 2003 by the Army to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. One document uncovered by Judicial Watch suggests the United States Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) may have publicly lied regarding the involvement of the Vice President’s office in awarding the contract.

In an email dated April 22, 2003, Carol Sanders of the USACE, writes, “Mr. Robert Andersen, Chief Counsel, USACE, participated in a 60 Minutes interview today in New York regarding the sole source award of the oil response contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root….Mr. Andersen…was able to make many of the points we had planned.” Sanders subsequently provided sound bites from the interview, including, “There was no contact whatsoever (with the VP office).”

This directly contradicts another email uncovered by Judicial Watch in 2004. The email, dated March 5, 2003, sent by an official of the Army Corps of Engineers whose name was redacted, stated, “We anticipate no issue [with the KBR deal] since the action has been coordinated w VP’s office.”

Read the emails. They’re just patently awful, and a sign of just how corrupt this government is. Using soldiers to cover for the asses of the powers behind the throne, who are lining their pockets with corrupt no-bid contracts given to incompetent contractors. This is the kind of government behavior you typically only see in despotisms or autocracies. Rarely does this pervasive, blatant corruption exist for any period of time in a democracy.

Hmm… I wonder what kind of government we have?

Major League Baseball has suspended Jason Grimsley for 50 games under the auspices of its joint drug program, making the former Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher the first Major Leaguer to be so punished without failing a drug test. Grimsley is also the first big leaguer to be suspended under the new rules this season.

This decision by MLB is so wrongheaded, it’s astounding. Look, just because a guy said he did something does not mean you can suspend him. No positive test == NO SUSPENSION.

Now the league is going to have a labor dispute over a guy who retired and without any objective evidence that he did anything in violation of any of the league rules. All for some false appearance of “enforcement.”

Here’s how you know this move is ridiculous: using the same reasoning, Barry Bonds should also be suspended. He said he used the Clear! Off with his head!

Another way: how is HGH detrimental to the game, but cortisone shots to enable an injured player to stay on the field OK? With both you get players who shouldn’t be on the field on the field (theoretically in HGH’s case). How is HGH any worse for the body than repeated cortisone injections?

Update: Yet another way to know that your move is both retarded and transparent… the dudes at Baseball Tonight at ESPN can point out the sheer hypocrisy of the move in the first 10 seconds of the segment on the news.

Nice move, Bud.

the news that a committee of scholarly bootlickers has blackballed Juan Cole’s candidacy for a tenured professorship at Yale absolutely refuses to leave me in peace.

This may not seem like particularly noxious news, at least when compared to the stench of putrefying corpses hanging over Haditha, or the Nazi stab-in-the-back myths now being recycled in Right Blogistan, but it’s touched an extremely raw nerve with me – because of what it says about the age of fear and intellectual intimidation that we live in, because of the unadulterated vileness of the self-appointed commissars involved, and, not least, because I consider Juan Cole my friend, and a man who won’t take the time to speak up for a friend who’s being blacklisted is, as the Godfather might put it, less than a man.

Now, I don’t know Juan Cole. He and I aren’t friends, and he probably doesn’t need any defense from me. What I do know is that he is a fair-minded intellectual history professor who is an expert on the Middle East, fluent in the languages of the region. And english. Which is nice, since I don’t know those other languages.

In addition to his other pursuits, Professor Cole maintains a blog, focusing on the news out of Iraq and the region at large, gathered in large part from the news sources of the region and translated by Cole. Because he’s fair-minded, because he speaks the truth about things like Zarqawi and Ahmadinejad and the actual situation on the ground and Israel’s policies and how it affects Palestinians, he has been relentlessly attacked by the mouthbreathing pond scum of the right wing bigotsphere. It’s his view that Palestinians are people too, and whose rights are being infringed, that has brought the thermonuclear righty meltdown (see also, the uproar over the papers about AIPAC’s influence, etc.)

Cole doesn’t need our defense in any substantive way; he’s ably smote all of the fools who challenged him on factual or interpretive grounds (particularly Goldberg, a repeat ass kickee). Cole could probably use some moral and publicly-stated support, however, because you see, the vile, dishonest, cowardly, Stalinist cretins of the right have finally found a way they could hurt him: by working money angles to keep him from getting tenure at Yale. And it worked.

Tenured History Professor is, essentially, the pinnacle of the history professor profession. He is immensely qualified and would be a great addition to that campus. By all objective, reasonable, academic terms, he was a shoe-in.

But the righties have turned their slime machine onto the donor list of Yale. Libelling Cole with accusations of antisemitism and urging jewish donors to contact the school and protest.

In a “highly unusual” move, Cole has been denied tenure.

Cole knows about the conspiracy. In his typical even-handed way, this is what he said on the vote:

Cole, while refusing to comment on the tenure committee’s vote, told The Jewish Week he believes that the concerted press campaign by neoconservatives against me, which was a form of lobbying the higher administration, was inappropriate and a threat to academic integrity.

“The articles published in the Yale Standard, the New York Sun, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and the Washington Times, as part of what was clearly an orchestrated campaign, contained made-up quotes, inaccuracies, and false charges,” he said. “The idea that I am any sort of anti-Jewish racist because I think Israel would be better off without the occupied territories is bizarre, but I fear that a falsehood repeated often enough and in high enough places may begin to lose its air of absurdity.”

This is how you say “this is fucking ridiculous” in academic-speak. And thus, a good, honest man is denied a post for which he is emminently qualified.

So the anti-intellectualism, the closed, ignorant, propaganda arms of the right are in full display. What do they have? Money. Money and no morals or ethics. They can’t win in the war of ideas or in the war of facts, but they can abuse the structures of power and pull levers with their money in a way to make it miserable for the non-authoritarian cultists. Billmon has a decent rundown of the history prior to this nomination. The result is shocking and appalling. McCarthy would be proud. As is every person who fantasizes about the Jewish cabal running the world.

But what’s really bizarre about this business is the massive propaganda firepower being trained on one mild-mannered Middle East specialist with a blog. Just the thought of Juan Cole at Yale was enough to send the Rubins and the Mowbrays and the Powerliars into a full-blown conniption fit – like the lady elephants in Dumbo once the mouse shows up. This reaction reeks of fear, in much the same way as the panicked response to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s recent paper on the Israel Lobby. It’s totally out of proportion to the political threat these Ivory Tower types would seem to pose to the great and powerful Oz.

But this is not, as some would have it, simply another petty academic quarrel. As Cole himself as noted in the past, the U.S. scholarly community is under relentless pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and its camp followers, who are determined to purge Middle Eastern Studies departments of anything and anyone who contradicts the party line. The goal, quite simply, is to choke off any possible source of independent information and analysis that might contradict the steady stream of distortions issuing from the right’s favorite think tanks and from propaganda artists like Mowbray and Rubin.

But this is not, as some would have it, simply another petty academic quarrel. As Cole himself as noted in the past, the U.S. scholarly community is under relentless pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and its camp followers, who are determined to purge Middle Eastern Studies departments of anything and anyone who contradicts the party line. The goal, quite simply, is to choke off any possible source of independent information and analysis that might contradict the steady stream of distortions issuing from the right’s favorite think tanks and from propaganda artists like Mowbray and Rubin.

So if you get the chance, drop Professor Cole a note saying you support him. The forces of evil, ignorance, and darkness have won. Again. I’m tired of this shit.

This Haditha story, this Haditha incident, whatever, this is it folks, this is the final big push on behalf of the Democratic Party, the American left, and the Drive-By Media to destroy our effort to win the war in Iraq. That’s what Haditha represents – and they are going about it gleefully. They are ecstatic about it- Folks, let me just put it in graphic terms. It is going to be a gang rape. There is going to be a gang rape by the Democratic Party, the American left and the Drive-By Media, to finally take us out in the war against Iraq. Make no bones about it.

Ecstatic… gang rape… Yeah, and we’re the fever swamp.

Just think, our government pays to broadcast this guy every day across Armed Forces Radio.

The Senate almost voted to repeal the estate tax last fall, but Republican leaders postponed the vote after Hurricane Katrina. It’s easy to see why: the public might have made the connection between scenes of Americans abandoned in the Superdome and scenes of well-heeled senators voting huge tax breaks for their even wealthier campaign contributors.

But memories of Katrina have faded, and they’re about to try again. The Senate will probably vote this week. So it’s important to realize that there’s still a clear connection between tax breaks for the rich and failure to help Americans in need.

Any senator who votes to repeal the estate tax, or votes for a “compromise” that goes most of the way toward repeal, is in effect saying that increasing the wealth of people who are already in line to inherit millions or tens of millions is more important than taking care of fellow citizens who need a helping hand.
…
Who would benefit from this largess? The estate tax is overwhelmingly a tax on the very, very wealthy; only about one estate in 200 pays any tax at all. The campaign for estate tax repeal has largely been financed by just 18 powerful business dynasties, including the family that owns Wal-Mart.

Once again, the procedural vote will be the important one. If the vote for cloture succeeds then the bill will surely pass at an estimated cost to we, the People, of hundreds of millions of dollars. All for the benefit of herpes-infested nothings and antisemitic goons and messianic, prudish, sanctimoniously evil poverty profiteers.

This pandering to the base by the GOP is almost as sickening as the blatantly transparent bullshit W (et.al.) is spouting about supporting a Hate Amendment to the Constitution (side note: seriously, how mouth breathingly stupid are the bigots who vote GOP? Every 2 years, they pull out the same bigoted, nativist, mouthfrothing hate agenda as if they’re going to do something about it, and every 2 years these undead zombies pull the lever. And yet… nothing is ever done. Along with being hateful and inhuman, they’re all dumber than a bag of rocks.)

There are more than a couple senators and ’08 wannabe preznits who will vote for cloture and then against the bill on the full Senate floor. This is what Biden and Lieberman (among others) did on the execrable bankruptcy bill, and what Cantwell and Lieberman (among others) did on the scAlito nomination. This is what McCain will do. I’m sure Lieberman will right there with him.

Yet again, Senate Democrats show that they have no more concern for the rule of law and for the excesses of this administration than Senate Republicans do. Due to their really pitiful passivity, they are every bit as much to blame for the excesses and abuses of the administration as the compliant Republicans are.

Even acknowledging their minority status, they have done a pathetic job as a minority party; acting more like sycophants or the fawning courtiers of the media than an actual legislative body.

Outside of Feingold, they’ve rolled over on every important decision in the past 6 years and they deserve all of the scorn you can give them. Bankruptcy, Iraq, the Supreme Court, wiretapping, Iraq, Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib, Iraq, confirmation hearings, Iraq. The sole win for them in the past half decade was Social Security. That’s it. GOP – 3 million, Dems -1.

Pathetic and shameful. When the history of the downfall of the United States into a theocratic despotism is written (written after the downfall of the despotism, of course… or by furriners), the complicity and credulity of the media and the complacency and cowardice of the one and only opposition party will take up many chapters.

Vichy. Quisling. 21st century Democratic party.

The only thing saving these sad sacks is that we don’t have a parliamentary system. That’s it. I don’t think “we’re not as bad as those assholes” makes for a good campaign slogan or a solid foundation of support, though. Do you?

High school students are going to be held accountable for what they post on blogs and on social-networking Web sites such as MySpace.com.

The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of “illegal or inappropriate” behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

Pray tell where a public school district gains the authority to punish students for activities they perform outside of school. This is no different than if the Feds were monitoring the phone calls of US citizens without warrants and then detaining them.

Legally, speaking, the schools have no right to monitor, prohibit, inhibit, or punish students for extracurricular free speech activities. In fact, every time this has been done, the schools have lost and lost big. We’re talking money and a public, formal apology big. If you have been affected, or know someone who has, your first steps should be the ACLU and the Student Press Law Center.

The latest righty ragegasm is immigration. You probably noticed this already. And what better thing to perfect your onanism with than immigrants? Particularly now that we’ve solved terrrrrism and brought democracy to Iraq.

Every now and then, these cowardly fear addicts go overboard. Like, oh, when they explicitly call for the use of Nazi Germany as the model for how to deal with our immigrant “problem.”

And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: “Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it’s just not going to work.”

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Note the word usage, “rid themselves.”

Rid. Themselves.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

“It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

Looks like time to add another notch to points 3 and 6 of the defining steps of fascism to me. Probably 13 as well.

Some 1.2 million children under 18 were living in counties rendered disaster zones by Katrina. As many as 8 percent, or 100,000, are expected to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, according to one assessment.

Most experts say the toll is likely far higher. Of the first 1,000 children screened by the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, 27 percent displayed symptoms of trauma, including nightmares, flashbacks, heightened anxiety and bedwetting, says Dr. Joy Osofsky, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at LSU’s Harris Center for Infant Mental Health.

And thus ends my first keeper team. They woulda been 5 year champions if it wasn’t for that piece of shit commish. The particular deal in question is irrelevant, but suffice it to say that it was perfectly reasonable, doubly so in a keeper league, and in no rational universe was it veto worthy.

This somewhat puts a damper on six months of offseason anticipation. So, one down, one other team lost for the year, and 4 struggling ones with underperforming offenses and pitchers who can’t buy a freaking win (yeah, I’m looking at you Santana). Good start, wouldn’t you say?

Seriously though, that keeper league was a disaster from the start. It was the most work for $25 ($37, actually) for less gain than anything I’ve done since I was working at fast food joints. Filled with narcissistic whiners and crybabies and round upon round of unending drama and email tedium. I’ll do a keeper league team again, but with a real commish (me) and people I know and trust.

Or, you know, get a life or something.

Update: nevermind, I’m still in. The commish listened to reason, so I guess I won’t call him a cocksmoker any more. This is still a horrible league filled with some really annoying people. I, of course, am not annoying in the slightest.

In other news, Ryan Madson just singlehandedly raised my ERA by almost a full point. Nice 81 ERA there, buddy.

Both the Bush administration and the Iranian clerical regime are reeling from historic low support figures from their constituent populations. United States politicians know that attacking Iran is a sure-fire political winner with the American public. Iran has become America’s all-purpose bogeyman. Foolish declarations, such as the State Department assertion that Iran is America’s “greatest security threat” are received uncritically by voters throughout the nation. Similarly in Iran, the United States can be freely demonized without serious question. The leaders of the Islamic republic regularly blame the United States for their own failings in managing economic development, border control and corruption.

It makes no sense for either nation, but a war between Iran and the US makes sense for both rulers of both countries as a way to shore up domestic support (caveat: the real rulers of Iran are the mullahs, not Ahmadinejad). And usually, when two power mad dictators want a fight, they get one. War? What’s it good for? The GOP’s domestic agenda and midterm elections, that’s who. Also, the mullahs, American and Iranian.

That Bush hears voices and has a messianic complex is just icing on the cake. Practical meets the wishful in one bow-wrapped Iranian nuking. In his warped menagerie of dusty cobweb-filled corners and coke-burnt passageways of a mind, that is.

This is madness. Sheer madness. And it’s probably going to happen anyway. What an interesting time in which to live.

Teachers at his facility are forbidden to use the “e-word” (evolution)
with the kids. They are permitted to use the word “adaptation” but only to refer to a current characteristic of an organism, not as a product of evolutionary change via natural selection. They cannot even use the term “natural selection.”
…
Bob’s personal issue was more specific, and the prohibition more insidious. In his words, “I am instructed NOT to use hard numbers when telling kids how old rocks are. I am supposed to say that these rocks are VERY VERY OLD … but I am NOT to say that these rocks are thought to be about 300 million years old.”