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(Banishment is one of the signs of the Sith. Dissent can't be tolerated.)

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For Permalinks Go To  Mirror Universe. For Commentary go Here. Recent Archive
Visual (s) of the Day, Music Vid Archive, Phil's Anti Tony Mowad/Anti BET on J Music Channel (widescreen!) or  Here

Note to Atrios: the kewl kids aren't creating old fashioned MP3 lists. They're creating their own television channels. I told you I'd have my vengeance Reginald Hudlin. Newest version of the Anti Bet on J/Anti Tony Mowad jazz channel. Actually, it's more than just acid jazz. There's straight ahead and a few rock tunes thrown in for good measure. Plus toons and politics. This is set on random play so every time you refresh the 80  230  350 502 1060 2100 4500 or so vids appear in a different order.  You shall rue the day that you crossed me Reginald Hudlin.   And Goddamn you Reginald Hudlin. Goddamn you and BET on J to Hell. UPDATE: WIDESCREEN VERSION HERE.  More legal update: This is actually more of a search engine (me plus the tech). All of these vids are available on the public youtubes and such. Vids that are copyright violations are often taken down. More Update: Fullscreen function fully enabled. ON the bottom right corner that's the box that's furthest to the left.

May 7

By the way, barring involvement with  brothels with nazi paraphernalia and the usual bad things that happen to black leaders, Barack Obama is the Democratic Party nominee.

 Its the math. Obama might be able to win it with pledged delegates if he gets a big win in Oregon. I also agree that Bill Richardson, or "Judas" as he's known in Clinton quarters, makes sense as the VP. He's likeable, shores up Latino support  and he puts  New Mexico in the win column. That would be a real change ticket. I think Hillary has run a disgraceful campaign which should disqualify her for the VP spot. Not to mention that it would not be unlike having Lady Macbeth as your VP, always with helpful advice I'm sure.  But never say never in politics. My other VP pick is Sherrod Brown, the new senator from Ohio.

Let's face it: the wife of my blood cousin on my father's side might be some kind of frackin' artistic genius. Her latest paintings are also a tribute to the novels of Jules Verne. The one above is called "Captain Nemo". Might try a more contemporary science fiction writer though. Say, Greg Egan.  Related: She has also made the Youtubes. Very talented woman. Somewhat Related: Mother's Side cousin Leonce Gaiter, more masculine than Michael Jackson but probably not more masculine than Prince, has removed his vids from the Youtubes. I wish he hadn't done that. They were very thoughtful and sort of serve as a historical record. Ah well.

Can't stop looking at the video above. Can't stop listening to the video below.

May 6

(Review by Joan at Oped here.)

Nuns and students without valid photo ID turned away from the Indiana polls, according to Bradblog. Not an accident and thank you so much my neo Jim Crow Supreme Court. Atrios doesn't get the magnitude of this. It kind of is a grand magnificent conspiracy. Writer at Booman Tribune correctly sees nature of grand magnificent conspiracy in a piece titled: "The Republican War on Voting Rights". Here's a snippet:

The real basic take away here is that if you are going to tip elections, you aren’t going to be able to do it “one vote at a time” as these voter id, anti-voter laws purport to combat.

You do it by rigging the system from the inside - by massive voter roll purges that are designed to purge the very demographics that are most likely to hurt the other party, by challenging districting in order to “make it more fair for people’s votes to be reflective of the district”, by implementing laws that are meant to keep millions of people who are likely to vote for the other party from voting and by stacking the deck in the positions where the voting machines are selected and monitored, where the federal and state election laws are “interpreted”, where the decisions are made with respect to voter registration and how the elections are run and even having cousins in the very media outlets who are calling the races for their candidate-cousins.

Make no mistake - this is a more than just a major partisan initiative. This is an all out assault on the voting rights of millions of potential Democratic voters and therefore, votes. This is a premeditated, long term, wide ranging attack against millions of Americans’ voting rights. But it isn’t just an assault on Democratic voters. It is an assault on the most basic right that a democracy affords.

And it should be referred to accordingly.

May 4

One more issue of one of the best comic series I have ever read. Two quick short reviews: "You killed Dom! You bastards!"

And two: Most comics don't end with what looks like a nuclear explosion....I also agree with Wikipedia and the fan page at White Chapel: Tom Noir is still alive. He faked his death.

As you may or may not know, there's a split over at 2 Political Junkies. Dayvoe backs Obama and Maria backs the Clintons. It's getting a little testy. They might be down to one political junkie in the future. Anyway, I left this comment at one of Dayvoe's posts where I speculate what would happen to the always dependable black vote if Hillary were to steal the nomination:

At 11:40 AM,  Philip Shropshire said...

Why Richard Dawkins, for no good reason, continues to be a mean ol' atheist. I mean, where does the man's hostility come from. Who knows. Reality perhaps?

Interesting conversation about science featuring hot woman who looks like a hot woman I used to date (Or as I used to joke about Christine: We both thought she could do better.). If you really enjoyed the film Mindwalk, then this is for you...

From Treehugger, say it ten times fast: How much gas can Switch Grass switch, if we could switch gas with Switch Grass?

May 1

My favorite Move On Ad.

Quantity isn't the only reason people prefer the Internets over traditional media. A lot of the time the quality is better as well. For Exhibit One: the often incredible writings of Agent Ska's brother, who's been traveling all over the world and he's not visiting safe places, either. He's a Year of Living Dangerously kind of guy. I might note that what he does sounds like a cover for a spy (in the movies anyway) but I'm sure he's not. (See torture scene in latest Bond movie...) Contrast and compare this piece that he wrote with, say, Ruth Ann's latest:

As much as I like Sri Lanka, I’m not going to miss this stuff - it was a cheap, guilty thrill at first (look! guys with guns! posters of dead people! boy I ain’t in Kansas anymore!!) but it fades very very quickly into dull apathy, occasionally broken by revulsion and, to be honest, sometimes even real fear - standing alone on the side of a road as stressed, heavily-armed police prepare for an oncoming motorcade, you look around and idly ponder just how many ways you could die or lose a limb in the next minute. Bomb or claymore mine in that open drain or that pile of trash or tucked into the concrete lane divider; car coming from that lightly-guarded alley ramming the motorcade as it passes by you; bodyguards panicking and firing wildly as a sniper unloads from a rooftop.

Usually just a bloody-minded mental exercise, but sometimes it escalates beyond as the time trickles on and there’s nowhere you can go; the imagination accelerates its speculations, the brain imagines how upset friends and family will be, if you get yourself killed, that you stupidly put yourself in harm’s way instead of simply going by a different route, and the pit in the stomach starts to overcome the professional’s interest in the security preparation, convoy and escort packages, etc. Myopic, cowardly, selfish, paranoid, ridiculous, melodramatic, sure, but that’s life. Then the Hummers and troop trucks and motorcycle outriders and ambulances and armored SUVs and darkened-windows limos blaze by, horns honking and lights flashing and guns pointing, and disappear into the distance. And there you are again on the other side, a bit sweatier, a little later in the day, looking for a place to reload your cell phone account and pick up some cookies.

I also fast realized that much of the intellectual interest one can take in the place is completely dependent on the fact that you have a ticket out - for actual normal people with nowhere else to go (in the broadest possible sense), checkpoints and propaganda and assassination reminders are just hell. Hopefully as I come back here again and again over the years things will improve. For my (but mostly their) sake then I’d no longer viscerally feel “there but for the grace of God go I” as I walk, eyes averted, past the jumpy 19-year soldiers visibly bracing when an unidentified car pulls up to a sensitive checkpoint, the middle-aged men missing arms, the civilians being dragged off their bus and yelled at by nervous police in Tamil neighborhoods, and the galloping convoys trying to out-run the shadowy IEDs that haunt drivers’ dreams.

Side note: Looks like Ted Rall is back in this week's City Paper. I think my one man public outcry turned it all around. Or maybe they skipped him for a week.  But I'm watching you City Paper..."in brightest day, in darkest night" etc...

April 29

I got this from the Prolefeed guy. I'm pretty sure the guy with the gun is an auto insurance agent. Related and hilarious clip here. Is it just me or is the Prolefeed as good as anybody on teevee or in my newspapers? More political stencils here. We can only beat them with stencils you see.

When I asked Chris Potter what happened to Ted Rall I also noted--perhaps a bit too obtusely-- that the Pennsylvania primary results were essentially unverifiable. Perhaps it was really a 52 to 48 race like the exit polls. Perhaps Hillary won by 20 points. Who knows. And who can check. Trust politicians because they would never never ever lie to us, right Chris?  Now, as it turns out, they've been having this debate in New Jersey except its happening in a courtroom. Get the background here from Bradblog. Long story short:  Sequoia doesn't want you looking inside their machines, or the machines that were used all over Pennsylvania last week and Allegheny County in particular. (I could be wrong about that.) Sequoia had been fighting in court to make sure that their machines couldn't be examined. That this would be an issue in a real democracy is stunning. Then again, I suppose I don't live in a real democracy. Anyway, super hacker Ed Felton is getting a look.

Here's what he's found so far. Remember,  Fast "Eddy" Rendell and our Secretary of State said everything worked fine last Tuesday. Compare and contrast with these graphs from Slashdot:

"Princeton Professor, Ed Felton, has posted a series of blog entries in which he shows the printed tapes he obtained from the NJ voting machines don't report the ballots correctly. In response to the first one, Sequoia admitted that the machines had a known software design error that did not correctly record which kind of ballots were cast (republican or democratic primary ballots) but insisted the vote totals were correct. Then, further tapes showed this explanation to be insufficient. In response, State officials insisted that the (poorly printed) tapes were misread by Felton. Again further tapes showed this not to be a sufficient explanation. However all those did not foreclose the optimistic assessment that the errors were benign — that is, the possibility that vote totals might really be correct even though the ballot totals were wrong and the origin of the errors had not been explained. Now he has found (well-printed) tapes that show what appears to be hard proof that it's the vote totals that are wrong, since two different readout methods don't agree. Sequoia has made trade-secret legal threats against those wishing to mount an independent examination of the equipment. One small hat-tip to Sequoia: at least they are reporting enough raw data in different formats that these kinds of errors can come to light — that lesson should be kept in mind when writing future requirements for voting machines."

By the way, if you're playing the home game, this would be evidence of election fraud. But remember, only dirty fucking hippies on the internets think this story matters.

There's a terrible vid battle going on between the Brazilian Girls and The Bird and the Bee. Bloody and awful. Yet there can only be one.

I understand these online comics are up for an Eisner according to Paul D. I'm going to try and check them out.

Best Digital Comic
The Abominable Charles Christopher, by Karl Kerschl, www.abominable.transmission-x.com
Billy Dogma, Immortal, by Dean Haspiel, www.deanhaspiel.com/immortal.html
The Process, by Joe Infurnari, www.theprocesscomic.com
PX! By Manny Trembley and Eric A. Anderson, www.pandaxpress.com
Sugarshock!, by Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon, http://www.myspace.com/darkhorsepres...m=1&storynum=2

My cousin Leonce Gaiter has made the Youtubes. He is out and gay so I suppose as Eddie Murphy once described Michael Jackson: "Not necessarily the most masculine brother in the world..." But he's much more masculine than Mr. Jackson anyway. He also comes off as highly intelligent and thoughtful. I got sort of a Malcolm Gladwell vibe but without the funny hair. He seems to be doing these vids to promote a book proposal. That's not promising. Perhaps he doesn't have a better agent than me. Anyway. The vids are here and here. Part two features a critique of Christianity in the black community, I think. Judge for yourself.

I see our cutting edge "alt" weekly The City Paper seems to have canned Ted Rall. If you're keeping count they have gotten rid of their funniest and most political cartoonists, Rall and that Tom the Dancing Bug guy, and kept on their least political and least funny cartoons or Red Meat and that Derf fella. I will try to provide where they have failed. Update: I'm going to ask the city editor if that's the case or if it was just last week's issue. I know Tom hasn't appeared in weeks. I'm not absolutely sure about Rall.

From Boing Boing. Also from Boing Boing contributor Cory Doctorow: He will soon be releasing his well reviewed young adult novel "Little Brother". And check out this crazy premise: apparently, in the far off future, you'll be a kid and some evil government will try to make everything that you enjoy doing over the Internet completely illegal. Ker Razy. I can't wait to read it when Cory releases the Creative Commons version of this book in several days. It feels like 1984 with a viable resistance movement. Some of us would really like to know how such a resistance movement would work. We really would. Especially if it involves not blowing up stuff.

April 28

My cousin Leonce Gaiter is blogging again. This time for the Huffington Post. He apparently has a better agent than the person who is writing this or he's a better writer perish the thought. He's back and he's pissed off about Obama.

Just a sample:

Also related: The Supreme Court upholds voter ID ban. I found the dissents particularly interesting. Just for the record: no evidence whatsoever that Democrats have used fake voters to win elections. Massive evidence that the GOP has used every trick in the book to steal the last two presidential elections and at least one house seat. This has to be said: A lot of Democrats weren't unhappy that their party was robbed of two presidential elections. If you were upset, then you might pass a bill that would change things. Related: Dems failed to pass newest version of Holt bill. The bill required the abnormal two thirds and apparently there is