This was taken in the evening of November 14, 2008 on the corner of West 33rd and Greeley Square, here in NYC. It was a chilly night and, as you can see, very foggy. This was one of those great moments where you see a picture right in front of you, so you take it and the picture rocks. Yeah, that is the Empire State Building. :) Not bad for an iPhone, huh?

Huh, “Bad Girls Club” on Oxygen, a channel for women. If it’s a channel and one assumes a show for women, why do I want to watch it now?

In other words, what the hell is Oxygen doing advertising or even running a show like this which seems to be aimed more at men than the women the channel is supposed to be for. And if women enjoy women dressed up like “bad girls” I think it’s time we start dealing more with women’s issues. I can see a TV show with a token promiscuous hot chick on it, but seven of them??

Do women really like this? Or is it just to get men to watch the channel (that is supposed to be for women)?

Nicked this from poobah.tumblr.com/post/59688866

I think this bit of photomanipulation really captures the almost absurd level of hope they many Americans are putting on BHO.

I’m just waiting for that economic stimulus check he promised to get to us before winter!

When I can finally afford to go to the dentist again (Mr. Obama, I’m ready when you are) I think I’ll go with Mr. Jackman’s. Look at those choppers!

Yes, it’s the weekend, time for fun posts!!

This is what will happen if Eric Holder gets the job of attorney general, as is being reported in the news.  Sure, he'd be the first black guy to run the Department of Justice, which is great, but check out what Democracy Now reported a couple days ago:

Since leaving public office, Holder has worked as a partner at the D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling. His clients have included the fruit giant Chiquita. Last week on Democracy Now!, journalist Mario Murillo criticized Holder’s ties to Chiquita.

Mario Murillo: “There’s been talk about a close ally and friend of Obama as a potential Attorney General for the United States, Eric Holder, who is currently defending Chiquita Brands International in its defense against dozens of plaintiffs here in Colombia, working families who were targeted by paramilitaries who were funded to the tune of $1.7 million over the last several years. It’s a major scandal. And if this guy becomes the Attorney General under an Obama administration, then it’s going to be really hard to find justice in this case coming from the United States.”

In a speech to the American Constitution Society in June, Eric Holder said the next president must “move immediately to reclaim America’s standing in the world as a nation that cherishes and protects individual freedom and basic human rights.” Holder is an opponent of the death penalty but has called for stiffer penalties for some drug offensives. In 2005, he was part of the legal team that developed strategies for securing reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act.

YIKES!

And you thought Democracy Now was a left-leaning news source!

Actually, they are–which is what's scary about them going after stuff a Democrat is doing–if DN are lefties and they're pointing out bad stuff the Dems do, does that mean the Dems are… <em>righties?</em>

Regardless, good for DN for sticking to their morals and not bowing to politically correct pressure (YAY! A black man!) or partisan political pressure (YAY! A Democrat!).

Just so you know that Democracy Now isn't the only one who is saying Holder defended a major American corporation against people suing because said corporation supported terrorists, here's a little excerpt from Holder's Wikipedia.org article:

In 2004, Holder helped negotiate an agreement with the Justice Department for Chiquita Brands International in a case that involved Chiquita's payment of "protection money" to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a group on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations.

Double-yikes!  When it's put that way, you can really see how this guy was morally corrupt.  He defended a corporation that just had to do business in Columbia that they paid a terrorist group to NOT kill them–of course, they had to know that protection money would fund the killing of others. 

But hey, they have a right to make a living, right?  Just like those De Beers guys, even when people die for it.

So, this, apparently, is the change we need.  A black guy (great!) who doesn't seem to mind defending companies that pay folks to kill (not so great).  Not that I wish McCain had won–his picks would have been even worse–I'm sure he would have gone with someone like John Negroponte, who some know as the American diplomat to Honduras who didn't seem to mind Honduran deathsquads on his watch.

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Click to buy!

Positive Experience/Entertaining? Sure, but only in a way that most un-crappy Japanese animation is. Lots of explosions, sexy anime women and transforming robots.

Technically any good? First off, this isn’t a movie. It’s a video series they cut together to make a “movie.” I’m feel lucky they left the Japanese language track on it since I seem to recall too many “movie” versions of anime series being in English only. Speaking of which, the acting is just fine. The animation is more like Macross: Do You Remember Love than the original Macross series, which is a good thing. However, the story is the pits. It’s still got the love triangle that Macross fans love, but the music is kind of peripheral and the alien stuff just feels trite and cliche after watching everything else in the Macross Saga. The action was fun, but if you don’t care whether characters live or die there’s not much excitement in things going boom.

How did it leave me feeling? Disappointed. I just can’t recommend this one. I suppose if you’re a Macross purist you should check it out, if only to know how not good it was. This was the first attempt at a real sequel to the original series and thankfully, later attempts were much more successful at being entertaining.

Final Rating? DNS - Do Not See. Just check out Macross Frontier. Let’s just pretend that’s the final chapter in the saga. ^_^

I saw this on a news stand the other day while I was out with my fried
Keith and it cracked me up. Don’t know if I agree or not. I just
hope BHO doesn’t let a Pearl-Harbory thing happen the way FDR did. Oh
and building the bomb–that was pretty lame, too.

Click to buy

Positive Experience/Entertaining? Wow, not really. I watched this a bunch of times as a little kid and remember loving it but as an adult, it had its moments but was surprisingly unfunny.

Technically any good? It’s a send-up of famous movie detectives and tries to take them to task for their various foibles–whether it’s Charlie Chan’s inability to speak proper English (despite his brilliance) or Miss Marple’s inability to let us in on what she knows before she names the killer (or was it Poirot who did that?). Either way, you can’t fault the acting–well, except for Truman Capote who was amusing, in his own way. The rest of the cast is stunning–David Niven, Peter Sellers, James Cromwell, Maggie Smith, and more, believe it or not (Alex Guiness!!) all did wonderful jobs.

While this movie does have flashes of true inspiration, I have a feeling the script was written at a point in Neil Simon’s life when he was riding off of the success of other projects. The plot feels weakly pulled together and while I get that the ending isn’t supposed to make sense, that doesn’t stop it from being stupid. If you want to make something not make sense in your movie, fine, but you can’t have not make sense inside the universe of the story. The sets looked great, though. :)

How did it leave me feeling? Disappointed. I think I was very easy to please as a kid.

Final Rating? DNS - Do Not See. I’m no fan of Clue but I think I laughed more at that then I did at Murder By Death. Sad to say, I guess.

But let me tell you about the stories I've come across.  Firstly, you've probably heard that Alaska spitfire Senator Ted Stevens has actually lost his senate seat to his Democrat challenger.  This could not have happened to a nicer guy.  This moronic loudmouth was just convicted of corruption and somehow thought he would win his seat for another term.  In fact, as of November 5, 2008, it looked like a win was actually in the bag for him.  Then they find 90,000 uncounted ballots and start counting them.  By the thirteenth of November, Stevens was losing the race by 814 votes.  Finally, yesterday, AP.org reported that Ted Stevens had lost his senate seat for sure.  WHEW!

Ironically, according to ADN.com, officials were surprised to see how low voter turnout was in Alaska–then it turns out that by this past Monday, there are so many votes counted that they came to believe that this may mark the highest voter turnout in Alaska history. 

Sorry, Ted!

Meanwhile, the recount in the Franken/Coleman race in Minnesota has commenced, while, in the background, loads of Republicans suddenly sounding like we election-integrity freaks spouting off about how funny things look.  Brad Friedman, of BradBlog.com, calls these guys tin-foil hat wearers based on their lack of proof, while I simply call them late to the party.  If they have hard evidence that the fix is in for Franken to win, I'd love to see it.  Apparently, they don't have any, however.

Here are another couple of stories from the BradBlog I thought were worth pointing out:

FL Election Integrity Advocate, Candidate For Election Supervisor Arrested at Direction of Election Supervisor, Opponent
Ellen H. Brodsky Jailed Overnight After Being Barred From Oversight Several Times by Incumbent SoE Brenda Snipes
Third Such Arrest of an EI Activist Since Summer…

After being taken into custody yesterday afternoon by three uniformed police officers, Brodsky was held overnight at the Broward County Jail even though the $25 — that's twenty-five dollar — bail had been posted for her by her son by 8pm last night. She was finally released well after 5am this morning.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6668

Isn't it nice when indies running for office get messed with?  Seems like it's often the folks brave enough to be outsiders that get messed with.  Ah well.

Now, one of the promises of electronic voting, computerized ballot boxes, touchscreen voting, blah-blah-blah, and all that other voting technology, is that it's easier and will speed up the whole process so people can get back to work (because clearly, democracy is like fast food).  Well, it seems like that's not the case.  Here's a nice little headline, excerpt and link from the BB that reports the opposite:

Machine Problems Worsened 2008 Voting Woes
Voting Machine Issues, Confusion Compounded Delays Faced by Untold Thousands of Voters This Fall
Though Even That Number Fails to Reveal Untold Counting Errors on E-Voting Systems Across the Nation…

Moreover, the voting machine issues and the confusion they caused among poll workers appear to have compounded the delays faced by untold thousands of voters this fall, a preliminary analysis of 1-800-OUR-VOTE reports by Joseph Lorenzo Hall, a researcher at Princeton University and the University of California, has found…
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6671

I really hope the Obama Administration gives this country's leaders on all levels an fracking enema.  I'm so tired of reading about how leaders across the spectrum of responsibilities are letting us down.  Is it me or is money causing more problems than it ever has in the history of our country?  All this money influencing our leaders–all this outsourcing our elections to private companies while all of these supposed leaders quite literally buy into the promise that technology is perfect and can protect democracy.  As I've been saying for years, now, anything can be hacked.  Simply anything.

It's like that old story about how NASA had to spend millions to develop a pen that would write in space while the Russians just used a pencil.  This is what we should be doing with our elections.  Paper and pencils and humans counting.  Sure, it'll take a long time, but I think knowing for sure who our leaders are is a good thing, don't you?

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If you're not aware, the Yes Men are high-end pranksters that don't just play dumb jokes on people, they play jokes on entire corporations.  Democracy Now's Amy Goodman reported on the Yes Men's NYT parody last week, explaining that "One previous prank had a Yes Men member posing as a Dow Chemical
spokesperson to announce responsibility for the Bhopal chemical
disaster, forcing the company to remind the world it had done anything
but."

Whoops!

Obviously, I dig these guys.  They've got a movie and a book that goes into more detail regarding their activities, so I'll stick to the depressing stuff.

While their humor is pretty much brilliant (and a little dry–they way I like it), one of the sharper jabs I'm sure got missed by most folks checking out the http://www.nytimes-se.com/ was the ad for De Beers diamonds.  This was great–it promised that "Your purchase of a diamond will enable us to donate a prosthetic for an African whose hand was lost in the diamond conflicts.  De Beers. From her fingers to his."

Zowee.  See, what corporations do (this is true of other corps, not just De Beers) is go into 3rd world nations and effectively bribe the governments into letting them take most of a particular resource and most of the profits made from that resource, as well.  The people of the country see little or no change in their standard of living and in the case of the the diamond conflict, were caught in the middle.  Rebels rose up against governments and tried to convince locals to work with them, not the government.  According to Amnesty International, Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front's "signature tactic was amputation of civilians: Over the course
of the decade-long war, the rebels have mutilated some 20,000 people,
hacking off their arms, legs, lips, and ears with machetes and axes."

AA also reports: "People had their hands chopped off by RUF units and were sent wandering hopelessly to spread the message of terror."

Weee!  God damn!  Is greed a horrible thing, or what?  Those rebels may have represented the interest of the people in wanting their piece of the diamond pie (like Alaskans get of the Alaskan oil pie) but the RUF and all others in positions of power took things way too far.  You may feel the urge to suggest that De Beers has "got the right to make a living" but can you say that when other people are dying for that living?  Or are being horribly mutilated?

The selling of high end gems taken from mines in countries where poverty is rampant is unfair, cruel and just plain shitty.

When are we going to start talking about greed being reeeeally bad?  When is De Beers going to start talking about making up for their greed?

Well, thanks to the Yes Men, they might just have an opportunity to be guilted into doing it right now.

Don't buy diamonds.  They're pretty, but pricey in more ways than you probably want to consider.

Posted by email from thepete’s posterous