As much as I’m not a fan of Sarah Palin, I’ve never seen a need for her to resign. Of all the people in the world, why on earth is she stepping down? Talk about unexpected.
Palin Resigns as Governor of Alaska
Posted by ALmod on July 3, 2009
Posted in Republicans | Tagged: Alaska, governor, republican, resigns, sarah palin | 2 Comments »
Universal gets movie rights to a video game…
Posted by ALmod on July 3, 2009
…and it’s Asteroids. Really?! As in… Asteroids?!
The best comment on this came from Woody over at GU Comics:
“Set in the deepest reaches of space, you are the pilot of a sophisticated starship beset by alien vessels and massive rock structures. Your only saving grave is a high tech phaser array. Okay, enough of that snarky bullshit. There was no backstory. There was not plot at all. You were a triangle, shooting dots at jagged, roughly circular polygons that would break up into smaller, jagged, roughly circular polygons.
“I don’t know what shocks me more. The fact that Universal would buy the movie rights to Asteroids or the fact that they had to beat out 3 other studios to get them.”
I think this is how you know that the Hollywood trend of making movies from video games has probably gotten a little out of hand.
Posted in Corporate Craziness, Entertainment, Laugh It Off, Video Games | Tagged: asteroids, movies, universal, Video Games | Leave a Comment »
What the F@!%?
Posted by ALmod on July 2, 2009
Posted in Mainstream Media, WTF, War on Terror | Tagged: crazy, glenn beck, michael scheuer, WTF | Leave a Comment »
A Quorum, Indeed
Posted by ALmod on July 2, 2009
It took jurors so little time to find Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford’s buddy John Katopodis guilty on all counts that I didn’t even realize they were done. I’m so used to slow trials, that I went out and had a late lunch. I didn’t even bother to look at the news, so I heard from my husband when he got home from work. Smart jurors. Now if we can just hurry up and get Langford’s trial in gear before he can do even more damage to Birmingham.
Leave it to Scott Stantis to call it like it is…
Scott Stantis, The Birmingham News
Posted in Laugh It Off, Local Government, Mainstream Media, Public Outrage, Scandal | Tagged: larry langford, Jefferson County, jefferson county commission, john katopodis, guilty, trial | Leave a Comment »
What a week!
Posted by ALmod on June 29, 2009
Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and now Billy Mays.
Most people remember Ed McMahon from the Tonight Show where he served as Johnny Carson’s “toadie.” I wasn’t a late night viewer, though I did catch Carson’s last show, and I did watch Jay Leno regularly later on. (I haven’t seen Conan O’Brian’s version yet, but I have seen his work on Late Night.) The thing I remember most was his work with Dick Clark on TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes. I also remember him from his days as the spokesman for American Family Publishers and Star Search. He’s another one of those faces from my childhood that I’m going to miss.
I never watched the original Charlie’s Angels. I watched the movies with Cameron Diaz, and I hated the second one. But I did catch Farrah in several movies, and the memory of seeing her caught in the middle of an all out war between Johnathan Taylor Thomas and Chevy Chase still makes me smile.
Honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan when it came to Jackson’s behavior, but I did find myself looking over his videos and performances. Despite that very strange and controversial personal life, you have to admit he was something special when it came to his work. He could move like nobody else, and he could sing like nobody else. It makes me chuckle a little bit because I remember saying something similar about Frank Sinatra after he died. Like him or not, Frank was a legend on the stage.
I remember getting to watch Thriller for the first time and what a big deal it was. I remember the Wierd Al parodies. I remember watching Captain EO at Disney World. I remember seeing him on stage with N’Sync at the MTV Awards. I remember seeing him dance with Usher. Those were some amazing performances, and while it’s nice to have those things to look back on, it’s also sad to know that there will never be any new ones. He was something special. There will never be another Michael Jackson.
Billy Mays introduced me to Oxy Clean. There’s not much else I can say about the guy. He wasn’t really an entertainer, and I never watched his show on the Discovery Channel. But I will miss the amusing conversation with my friends whenever we saw him on television pitching something new. (”Billy Mays is selling insurance, now!”) Like Ron Popeil, he’s an infomercial face that we recognize. I’ll miss him.
Posted in Entertainment | Tagged: billy mays, death, ed mcmahon, farrah fawcett, michael jackson | Leave a Comment »
“Governor AFK” has been found!
Posted by ALmod on June 23, 2009
Hiking in the woods, but he seems to have chosen an interesting time to do so. That’s going to be some killer poison ivy.
UPDATE: The governor still hasn’t been technically “found” or “seen,” despite the jest in my title. But this story just gets wierder and wierder. Now he’s apparently been in Argentina.
UPDATE: The governor has officially been “found” and has given one of the wierdest press conferences I’ve ever seen.
Posted in Laugh It Off, Scandal | Tagged: governor, hiking, naked hiking day, sanford, south carolina | Leave a Comment »
That Pesky First Amendment
Posted by ALmod on June 23, 2009
So here’s the argument: The definition of “marriage” should be left to religious groups who believe that it is defiined by one man and one woman while the government handles “civil unions.”
So here’s the problem: To do that and put it into law, the federal government must specify which religious definition of “marriage” to use, and in order to do that, Congress would have to make a law “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” as it would very clearly establish one religious definition over several others– including some Christian groups.
Currently, the states handle the definitions under which they grant marriage certificates, but should any seperate marriage from civil union, they would be left with a very possible court challenge regarding the First Amendment. At least, in the wording, it cannot state that marriage is defined by any religious means. If it hasn’t happened yet, it will eventually.
The only way that this could be avoided is if the state issued “certificates of legal union” as opposed to “marriage certificates” to all legal unions– including religious heterosexual ones. Certificates of marriage would have to be distributed by religious institutions, and they could not be exclusive to any one religious group. This includes religious organizations which have no issue with homosexual marriage or polygamy. Further, “marriage” could carry no additional privileges under any state or federal law. To allow anything else leaves the law open to challenge as an establishment of one religion over another.
So my question is to other heterosexuals out there who use the above argument. Would you have an issue with the government issuing you a “certificate of legal union” rather than a “certificate of marriage” with all religious institutions (including those who support gay marriage) being able to distribute the latter? If so, do you feel that a “certificate of legal union” would be inferior to a “certificate of marriage” or the ability for other institutions to distribute “certificates of marriage” would cheapen it? And if that is the case, do you feel that to say as much brings the “seperate but equal” argument into play with the gay marriage issue?
Posted in Federal Government, Legislation, Religion | Tagged: gay marriage, first amendment, Religion, civil unions, gay rights | 4 Comments »
Another Reason to Drink Pepsi
Posted by ALmod on June 23, 2009
I’ve just purchased a couple cases of the new Mountain Dew Game Fuel to try it out. Of course, this may be all of the product I drink. I normally drink diet drinks, and this has WAY too much sugar for my taste. It still makes a nice occasional treat. But I’m a big fan of the Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi, and the grocery store is sold out. It’s fizzy goodness.
Then this morning, I got the following forwarded email from the American Family Association.
PepsiCo sponsors four more gay pride parades
Dear xxxxxxx,
Following their sponsorship of the New York Gay Pride Parade scheduled for June 27, PepsiCo has agreed to sponsor four more gay pride parades – Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix and Cleveland. Click here to see the kind of parade PepsiCo is sponsoring.
PepsiCo shows its employees caught in this destructive and harmful lifestyle no compassion, no support to help them leave it. Rather,PepsiCo spends huge sums of money to promote the lifestyle.
AFA has asked PepsiCo to be neutral in the culture war regarding the homosexual agenda and the legalization of homosexual marriage, but PepsiCo adamantly refuses to do so.
PepsiCo requires employees to attend sexual orientation and gender diversity training. It supports homosexual groups with gifts totaling over $1 million. PepsiCo refuses to give any money to groups such as Parents and Friends of Ex-Gay and Gays (PFOX) that work to help individuals change their sexual behavior.
So as it turns out, not only do I already love Pepsi products, but now I find out that if I drink them, I get the opportunity to tick off the AFA! Bonus! I do so hope that someone sees me drinking it and approaches me with the above “knowledge” so that I can respond with, “REALLY?! I need to drink MORE of this stuff!!!” Then I give them a hug, tell them I’m contagious, and then skip away while waving a rainbow flag or something. (NOTE: I’m happily hetero, and I don’t carry a rainbow flag in my purse, but it doesn’t make the mental picture any less amusing.)
Here’s what the email goes on to suggest that you do to fight this “horrendous act.” The last one was something I found particularly amusing, since it might not exactly have the desired affect if your friends and family aren’t raging homophobes. (In which case they could end up like me and doing the exact opposite. My comments are in brackets.)
• Sign the Boycott Pepsi Pledge. After signing the pledge, please call Pepsi (914-253-2000 or 1-800-433-2652) and tell the company you will boycott its products until it stops promoting the homosexual agenda. [I signed this petition and then called Pepsi to tell them that I will drink more of their products as a result of learning about this.]
• Call the Pepsi bottler nearest you and ask it to stop supporting the homosexual agenda. [I called them to tell them to keep up the good work. I like for people in Alabama to have jobs, and Buffalo Rock is a big employer.]
• Pepsi’s products include Pepsi soft drinks, Frito-Lay chips and snacks (800-352-4477), Quaker Oats (800-367-6287), Tropicana (800-237-7799) and Gatorade (800-884-2867). [I called the AFA to thank them for giving me a premade grocery list and taking the guess work out of it for me.]
• Print the Boycott Pepsi Pledge and distribute it. [I'm not a big fan of fliers and consider them to be a waste of paper and source of litter. So I put this up on my blog. Good enough.]
• Forward this e-mail to your friends and family so they will know about Pepsi’s support of the homosexual agenda. Millions of people are not aware of Pepsi’s support of homosexual organizations.
I know what you’re thinking. The AFA is harmless, right? Well, let’s not forget that this is the same group that pushed for the arrest of a U.S. Congressmen simply because he was openly gay and threatens companies who do not discriminate against homosexuals in their hiring practices. If you read up on their history, you find that this group is a few “God Hates Fags” signs away from picketing soldier funerals. Be very careful of any “Christian” group that sponsors hate or exclusion or fear of an entire demographic rather than attempting to reach out to them. Meanwhile, I take great pleasure in doing all I can to foil the plans of such groups.
What I find amusing is that at this rate, AFA members are “boycotting” so many different companies that they’ve pretty much eliminated themselves from the consumer base. Of course, that would have to mean that AFA members made good on their threats, which I doubt. My last count included Ford, Kraft Foods (which owns several other brands), Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, Kodak, various fast food chains, Disney, and several others.
Posted in Corporate Craziness, Laugh It Off, Religion | Tagged: afa, boycott, game fuel, mountain dew, pepsi, world of warcraft | 2 Comments »
Right-wing Extremists: Is it okay to admit they exist, now?
Posted by ALmod on June 10, 2009
Remember this? Remember how shocked and outraged right-wing bloggers were at the mere suggestion that extremists exist who might hold a considerable right-wing stance (albeit “extreme” by definition) on issues? Remember how that was the reaction despite an almost identical report on extremists on the left and the fact that the FBI’s Most Wanted was soon topped by one such person?
And then there was the last few weeks. Who could have possibly predicted that an anti-abortion activist with priors who was part of an anti-government group would attempt (and succeed) in a violent act? Who could have predicted that a military veteran of World War II and a white supremacist would have opened fire in a Holocaust museum? Why wasn’t our government looking into these things? Oh that’s right… They were. In fact, the descriptions of these two people almost read word for word from the FBI report on what to watch out for.
And if you’re waiting for the conspiracy theory that this is actually an Obama coverup to make the report seem feasible, you need not do so. It’s already out there. It’s been deleted, but you can still see the page title.
Remember that little bit that Napolitano added that everyone was so upset about? Let me remind you:
“The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.”
Now considering that the shooter from today is credited with this post, among others like it, does the above statement sound so far-fetched? Considering that people got so worked up during the 2008 campaign that some actually believed (and still believe) this stuff, was this a shock to anyone? Really? Does anyone actually believe that more people like these two are not still out there? Allow me to enlighten you here, here, here, here, and here, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. That was a good 10 minutes of Google searching that likely put me on a watch list of some sort.
Are these people your typical right-wingers? Of course not! Are they your typical right-wing nutjobs? Of course not! Are these the typical person who disagrees with the president and/or his policies? Of course not! In fact, most of these people will rightly agree that these acts are completely horrific and unjustified and hurt the very message they want to deliver rather than help it.
These are extremists, and just like the left-wing extremists, the fact that they are “extreme” means that they are not even close to being mainstream. That’s the whole point. But the fact that they are in the extreme minority doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, and it doesn’t mean that our government shouldn’t be doing all it can to protect innocent citizens from being caught in the crossfire of crazy.
The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific
information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,
but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about
several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first
African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and
recruitment
information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,
but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about
several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first
African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and
recruitment
Posted in Federal Government, Public Outrage, War on Terror | Tagged: fbi, george tiller, Holocaust museum, James von Brunn, left, left wing extremism, most wanted, Napolitano, report, right wing extremism, scott roeder, terrorism | 5 Comments »
Conspiracy Alert: The White House statement that never was, but it is.
Posted by ALmod on June 10, 2009
Okay, so this is kind of a response to this blog post (h/t to The Snake Pit). It popped up on my RSS feed, and it got my attention.
Before I begin, let me just say that this particular blogger could easily be grouped with those who broke the hero-shot non-scandal– which I promptly made fun of. When you take a look at his typical fare, it pretty much falls in line with what Bob McCarty and Michelle Malkin are pumping out.
Now, I will give the writer that, at the time of this post being written, he is correct in that the release does not appear on the White House website. Does this spell conspiracy? Not exactly. Some press releases are distributed to certain media outlets, some are televised, and some are distributed through electronic feed. If something was distributed to the major news outlets but not placed on the feed or website just yet, well it wouldn’t be the first time that something like that had happened on the White House website or any other website for that matter.
Do I agree that the matter was handled differently than the Tiller murder? Yes. Do I agree that the statement came later than it should have? Yes. Do I think it shows that President Obama “disrespects” or “DOESN’T care about his troops” or “DOESN’T appreciate his troops”? No. Particularly since it’s not unusual for any president to be occasionally late with a statement– particularly this one and not just on this matter. Besides, there are worse things that he could have done that would have been far more disrespectful to dead soldiers than taking a few days to release a statemtent. But depending on which way you lean politically, the question of respect is a matter of opinion.
Did the media report differently on the two issues. Yes, and they should have. They were, in fact, two totally different issues that should have been handled differently. Whether or not they media did a good job of that or not is another matter of opinion, and it depends on who you read and consider to be your media source. Either way, the president has no control over how the mainstream media covers these things, as no public official ever should.
The part that is a matter of fact is whether or not the White House released a statement. Did they or didn’t they? It’s as clear cut as that, and the writer says that they didn’t. There’s the fact in this posting, and whether or not he got it right is going to heavily play into whether or not the rest should probably be considered to be credible analysis of the president’s actions. So on the author’s suggestion, both AP and CNN came up with the exact same lie at the exact same time and participated in a conspiracy to cover up Obama’s failure to release a statement. At face value, the suggestion already sounds absurd.
But then I also look to Fox News for my media “checks and balances.” Leaning heavily to the right, Fox News would be and should be the first to jump on any perceived conspiracies regarding such a matter. But as it turns out, Fox News reported on the same statement. So now according to the writer’s suggestion, CNN and AP both reported on a statement that doesn’t exist, and Fox News is helping them in their conspiracy to make Obama look good. Let me repeat that. Fox News is part of a conspiracy to make Obama avoid embarassment. Tell me when that starts to sound a bit off.
To the writer’s credit, he did include a half-sentence to suggest that Obama “is playing favorites with whom he sends his statements.” It’s not so much a matter of that so much as when you want to get something out, it’s not unusual to fax it to a few larger news outlets and then let it spread out from those sources. And it’s quite possible that the statement will be posted on the website (the source of the press release feed, to which I am also a subscriber) but simply hasn’t been yet. It could be as simple as an oversight made by any number of people, but none of that makes this a conspiracy.
Posted in Bama Bloggers, Federal Government, Mainstream Media, Public Outrage, Religion, Scandal, War on Terror | Tagged: conspiracy, Mainstream Media, obama, press release, soldiers, statement | 10 Comments »
