Question: Is it possible to be too cynical with the Bush crowd?
Answer: No.
I give up.
by Tim F| 65 Comments
This post is in: War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
by Tim F| 68 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
With regret, I finally had to admit that I probably will not buy the Olympus E-P1. Between this review and the $800 tag it just does not seem like a sensible choice right now.
However, I still need to replace the old FE2. Legacy glass is not an issue for me. Rather, the most important point is to find something that I can have at hand more often than I would hump around a DSLR, but which can take memorable pics with full creative control. I’m also not going to pay anything more than $600 at the absolute extreme. As far as I can tell, given these relatively tight parameters, the field narrows down to the Panasonic LX3 versus the Canon G10. Whatever happens I will definitely buy one of these in the near future.
This is an open thread for photo nerds who read this blog to go to town. Don’t worry too much when the convo inevitably wanders; other readers will benefit from your experience even if I don’t.
In return I promise a series of posts on how to get started with your own homebrew-related program activities, maybe starting this weekend.
***Update***
This comparison tool helps a lot. As far as I can tell ISO noise is practically a non-issue between the LX3 and the G10, although the G10 seems like a major step up from the G9. The E-P1 absolutely kills them both. Lord give me strength.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Open Threads
Good time at the BBQ- had lots of good eats, and Lily got to play some with some kids and another dog, and she is passed out on her doggy bed in the bedroom. His royal highness, however, apparently needs attention, and is stationed behind me bitching. Loudly. Continuously:
I love him anyway.
by DougJ| 131 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
It’s quite true that most of the right-wing blogs that I look at have the same reaction to the birther nonsense that I do. So I’m going to answer Greg Pollowitz’s question for him:
By watching the MSM over the past few days, you’d think every Republican in America thinks President Obama was born in Kenya. It’s typical that the MSM is taking such an interest in this conspiracy theory while it did very little to dispel the Truther conspiracy theory that Bush knew of 9/11 beforehand. A Rasmussen poll found 35 percent of Democrats actually believe in that nonsense. Why wasn’t that as big a story?
Did Democratic Congressmen ever bring any 9/11 Truthers type bills to the floor? Were there any 9/11 Truthers with regular CNN gigs?
The Rasmussen poll number is probably bogus anyway, but to be clear, the coverage of the birther stuff does not arise because of the percentage of Republicans who believe it (I have no idea what that number is), it arises because Dobbs, a variety of Fox wingers, and some Republican Congressmen are talking about it.
I do sympathize with those on the right who don’t want to be tarred with the same brush as these nuts. But they should focus their anger on the nuts themselves. And they should be asking CNN to fire Dobbs too.
by DougJ| 72 Comments
This post is in: Media
I really can’t believe this shit from the president of CNN on the Lou Dobbs birther stuff:
“I understand that people with a partisan point of view from one extreme or anther might get annoyed that certain subjects are aired.”
[….]“I think no good journalist would ever say that a particular story will never be covered again. Every day brings new facts, new pegs.”
What’s interesting is that Dobbs has crappy ratings too. I’m not a media conspiracy theorist, but CNN has now kept two hard-core wingers — Glenn Beck, who as at CNN for quite a while, and now Dobbs — despite poor ratings. At a certain point, that starts to look less like a legitimate business decision and more like…I’m not sure what.
by DougJ| 214 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
I hope this puts the whole ZOMG HE SAID STUPID controversy to rest somewhat, though obviously we’ll have to hear what Bill Cosby thinks about it all before we know for sure.
I tend to think that people don’t care much about Gatesgate anyway because (1) no one likes the idea of being arrested on their own front porch for speaking loudly and (2) while the punditocracy contains a disproportionate number of Irish-American blowhards whose cousin/uncle/father is a cop/disgruntled ex-cop/guy who blames affirmative action for his inability to get a job as a cop, the general public does not. (My own extended family consists almost entirely of Irish-American blowhards — I may even be one myself — so I will be curious to hear what they think about all of this.)
Bob Somerby has a very different perspective on this, though, that I recommend checking out.
Update. TNC’s take on all of this is very good (via the comments):
The rest of us are left with a country where, by all appearances, officers are well within their rights to arrest you for sassing them.
by John Cole| 36 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I’m off to a bbq at a friend’s house, so you all behave.
BTW- I heard about this story on PRI’s the World this afternoon, and the story fascinated me. How Radovan Karadzic was able to hide in plain sight is pretty amazing to me.