Month: May 2004 (Page 4 of 5)

Kos says it so much more eloquently than I could.

I’m still getting reports from some people that this new site comes up as white text on a white background, which is of course not what I intended. I’ve heard this about Firefox on Windows and Mozilla on Linux, variously. I’ve been continuously tweaking my style sheet to try to make it compliant and fix the problem, but I think it may still exist.

The site displays fine for me on both IE 6 and Firefox, using Windows XP. If you are getting the white-on-white still, please e-mail me using the e-mail link below this post. (That is, if you’ve managed to read these words by highlighting the text. Ugh. And my apologies.) Also, if there are any style sheet gurus who can help me diagnose/fix the problem, I would be eternally grateful. Thanks.

Now that words mean things is back up, Joe Conason of Salon must be reading my archives.

Sony officially unveiled the Portable Playstation (PSP) at the E3 show today. Sweet. I must say, the thought of playing WipeOut (probably the best racing game ever) on a high-resolution widescreen portable makes me drool uncontrollably.

1. Everything happens for a reason.
2. You can’t escape your destiny. It’s part of you.
3. Helping innocents – good. Personal gain – bad.
4. You can’t fight Death. If it’s your time, it’s your time.
5. Protect the Book.
6. If you go back or forward in time, mostly all that will change is your hair.
7. Rose McGowan for Shannen Doherty? Not such a good trade.
8. Wearing red knit elbow warmers that match your red knit tube top is not only not embarrassing, it’s fashionable.
9. All TV shows jump the shark, but for some it’s just a shorter jump than others.

I’ve been absolutely slackjawed this week watching the right twist itself in knots to defend the torture at Abu Ghraib. Here are some common rationalizations:

-It’s not as bad as the terrorists did to us.
-No one apologized to us when they killed 3,000 people.
-No one’s perfect.
-It wasn’t “abuse.” It was just having a good time, letting off some steam.
-This is war – what’ya expect?
-This wouldn’t have happened if women weren’t allowed in the armed services.
-This wouldn’t have happened if there wasn’t so much left-wing indoctrination on college campuses.
-Frat boys do worse to each other all the time.
-If they were going to do it, why oh why did they have to take pictures of it?
-This is just a few bad apples. And who cares about a naked pyramid or two?
-Bush apologizing is like FDR apologizing to Hitler.
-“Get off his back.” -Dick Cheney, on Don Rumsfeld
-Hey, this is great! Maybe this will teach them not to mess with us again.
-They hate us anyway, so what’s the difference?

None of these are made up, or even exaggerated. They come directly from right-wing pundits, who can collectively bite my shiny metal ass.

UPDATE: La Shawn Barber, who provided the FDR/Hitler item above, tells me in the comments to this post on her site that she’s not tying herself in knots over the torture at all. She heartily endorses it.

“Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that even He could not eat it?”

-Homer Simpson

To Joe Lieberman, who said this (amongst other gum-flapping) Friday at the Rumsfeld hearings on the Abu Ghraib prison torture in Iraq:

LIEBERMAN: Mr. Secretary, the behavior by Americans at the prison in Iraq is, as we all acknowledge, immoral, intolerable and un-American. It deserves the apology that you have given today and that have been given by others in high positions in our government and our military.

LIEBERMAN: And those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah a while ago never received an apology from anybody.

Thanks, Joe, for doing the work of the Bush administration yet again by conflating 9/11 and Iraq for the 3,440th time. Plus, you tossed in the “at least we’re somewhat better than the terrorists!” line too. Oh and one more little thing about Iraq, Joe: *we* invaded *them,* remember? Your WMT Golden Weasel is in the mail.

——————-

The prison torture story, which continues to widen and deepen, has had me seeing red all week. I’m so angry with an administration that considers the Geneva Convention “legalisms,” and a right-wing that can muster up 40 times the outrage over a cartoon than they can over actual torture, that I can barely see straight.

I watched a little of the hearings Friday, but I couldn’t stand the aforementioned gum-flapping of all involved, so I turned it off. Boiling it down, there are two questions that need to be asked and answered here.

1. Who’s responsible for these actions?
2. What are you going to do about it?

Neither of those questions has been even partially answered, as far as I can tell. Of course Rumsfeld won’t go, because that would be a tacit admission by the Bush team that their whole war strategy was a mistake. And we all know how these guys do with acknowledging responsibility.

But as a nation, we need to not let this go through a few news cycles and disappear, like every other scandal in this administration. We deserve better, and the only way we’re going to get it is to demand answers – and action.

“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary.”

-George Orwell

Well I’m back. How have you been? What’s been going on? It feels good to be back. There are some changes around here, and I’ll go through them quickly.

–Tweaked design. Several people have bemoaned the white text on black, so I flipped it. It’s also sort of a streamlined look, especially because not everything on the old site is included (yet).

–No online comments. A controversial decision, but one I feel good about, at least for now. You can always e-mail me a comment about a specific post, and you can read the past comments. Despite recent events around here, there’s a lot of good stuff still in the comments.

–Categories. I had categories on the old site, but I never used them. Several people have asked to see, for example, only the movie reviews. Now you can – just click on a category name to see only those posts. I don’t have a lot of the past entries categorized, but I’m working on it. When you choose a category, it’s listed at the top of the page so you know what you’re looking at. Click on “all” under the category list to go back to seeing everything at once.

I’d like to thank everyone who’s coming back here after my three-month hiatus. There’s lots of stuff I want to add (links, favorite posts, photo galleries, other articles), but I didn’t want to wait until everything was done to launch. If I did that, I’d never be back.

E-mail me at any time about anything. I love to hear from you.

Well, here goes.