Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I really should read my own blog.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

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Over There

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I just watched F/X’s new show “Over There,” and it may have been one of the most wasted and unpleasant hours of my life. Well- there was that one time in undergrad when I drank a bottle of cheap tequila and vomited through my nose for 2 hours. But at least I was drunk enough to dull the pain.

I couldn’t even finish the show, and as I write this it is playing in the background, and I hear someone screaming in agony. I wasn’t aware the show was filmed in front of a live studio audience.

At any rate, it is a smorgasbord of stupid, replete with every cliche and every simplistic and cartoonish characterization of the military imaginable. We have the stupid officer/NCO conflict, ham-handedly portrayed (or shall I say over-played), the race angle, the cheesy swapping of nicknames that seems to be first nature for bad military movies, and so on.

While the combat inexplicably starts and stops to allow the characters to have time for idle banter, the pain from the crappy dialogue is never-ending. Then you have the real silliness that is bound to offend anyone who ever served in the military. Friendly mortar fire dropping in at a “danger close” range of 15-20 meters, soldiers firing never-ending magazines blindly over berms (made with hand shovels in the cover of darkness- don’t ask) at wild angles, the clear lack of order, explosions launching people through the air triggering memories of the A-Team, Army guys referencing ‘boot camp,’ the advance over the berm online ala Pickett’s Charge at Cemetary Ridge. Like I said, the pain never stops.

I don’t know what military they fashioned this show after, but if this is an accurate portrayal of the modern military since I left, we have bigger problems than recruiting shortages. I also hope this show was not meant to be a ‘salute to our troops,’ because I have a feeling the troops are sure to salute right back. Unfortunately, it will be of the one-fingered variety.

Since this is ostensibly a military show, perhaps the best description is one that even most non-military types will understand.

FUBAR.

*** Update ***

More here. “Not even close to ‘Over There.'”

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Creationism Update

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Another day, another battle in the war on science. Some members in the Catholic church are urging caution:

A recent article by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn in The New York Times, asserting that “unguided, unplanned” evolution is inconsistent with Catholic faith, should be read with caution warn a number of Catholic scientists and theologians, including the head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Most of the experts interviewed said the article can offer a useful alert if taken at a theological level. Evolution, they point out, has sometimes been invoked to justify atheism, as well as immanentism (that God is a vague life force) or deism (that God set the universe in motion and has nothing more to do with it).

To the extent Schönborn’s point is that Christianity cannot accept a universe without an active, personal God, they say, there’s little to dispute.

If taken as a scientific statement, on the other hand, these observers warn that Schönborn’s insistence on seeing “purpose and design” in nature could steer the Catholic church towards creationism in the bitter cultural debate, especially prominent in the United States, between evolution and intelligent design. Doing so, they say, risks overstepping the bounds of the church’s competence, as well as reopening a divide between science and the Catholic church that had seemed largely overcome.

Several said Schönborn’s July 7 piece should be read in the context of a 2004 document of the International Theological Commission, an advisory body of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the most recent Vatican document to treat evolution.

Ask any Catholic you know how much fun things have been since the Second Vatican Council, and you can understand why they are urging caution and trying to avoid another ‘divide.’

In other creationism news, make sure you check out report #5 from inside the Creationism Mega Conference at the Panda’s Thumb. The previous reports from the conference can be found here.

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They Beamed Him Up

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The end of an era:

James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original “Star Trek” TV series and motion pictures who responded to the command “Beam me up, Scotty,” died early Wednesday. He was 85.

Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. at his Redmond, Wash., home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease, he said.

The Canadian-born Doohan was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a new space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of dialects from his early years in radio, he tried seven different accents.

“The producers asked me which one I preferred,” Doohan recalled 30 years later. “I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding. So I told them, ‘If this character is going to be an engineer, you’d better make him a Scotsman.'”

I feel old.

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Not Getting It

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Either the folks at Kos aren’t getting it, or they are just trying to keep hope alive:

In 1993, when Justice Byron White retired from the bench, President Clinton was thinking of nominating Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, who was not necessarily the most popular choice, to fill the seat. Did Clinton try to ram the appointment through? He could have – he still had a pretty sizable majority in the Senate at that point.

But in fact, Clinton decided to discuss the vacancy with the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who was “not surprised” that the President reached out to him…

The post then goes on to list the history of advise and consent. Which is all well and good, if you are a history major studying judicial nominees. But it matters not a whit. The rules have changed (literally and figuratively), advise and consent is now up-or-down votes, and the folks who appear to be in the driver seat of my party just don’t care:

Focus on the Family Action Chairman James C. Dobson, Ph.D., issued the following statement today in response to the resignation of Sandra Day O’Connor from the U.S. Supreme Court:

“Today marks a watershed moment in American history: the resignation of a swing-vote justice on the Supreme Court and the opportunity to change the Court

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