She wouldn't last one season on ST:TNG

We're still talking about Michelle Obama's arms?  Seriously?  I had to double check the date on the latest tome on the subject from the L.A. Times.  A fitness expert is quoted as saying:

...strong legs and a flat belly are often interpreted as sexy features on a woman, bulging biceps . . . not so much. "It crosses the boundary from having sexy, toned arms to having arms that display, 'Hey, I'm working on being strong.' " Banet-Weiser says. "The evidence of that work . . . is quite threatening."

Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em...

Q: How do you tell the First Lady from her security detail?
A: She's the intimidating one.

..and I'm done. This is pretty silly.

You just lost the game

That's actually a username on some site I go to. I love that name. It's what came to mind when I was reading about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (Docket No. 08-205). (Background in non-legalese here and here.)

The producers of "Hillary, the Movie" wanted to show their, uh, documentary on television instead of movie theaters. "Well, ok", said the FEC. "But it's not a documentary, it's a hit piece, so you'll have to disclose the people who financed and contributed money to this."

"Aw hell no!" And so the fighting started. And more than a year later, here we are.

See, there was nothing standing in the way of showing this piece, except having to disclose who funded it, and not being able to show it within 30 days of an election, and a few other rules from our almost-got-it-right campaign finance reform McCain Feingold laws.

But the producers wanted to be counted as "news" and "documentary" people, and not have to embarass whoever was really behind them. That's a hell of a tell.

Yes, yes, anonymity is the last defense against tyrrany. There was nothing stopping the producers from running the film in more theaters. Word of mouth, echo-chamber mailing lists and blogs would have gotten a sufficient audience for it...but that was the problem. How to get it to the eyeballs of people who *gasp* didn't agree with them?

Well, since the idea of simply sending a CD to every house in a city hadn't been thought of yet, I guess this was the route to go: claim you've made a documentary and try to show it as news, and then complain about "bias" and "freeeeedom!" when you're told "no". Even the classic R bugaboo Michael Moore doesn't try this nonsense.

Any publicity is good publicity, but I'm not buying it, even if it is listed by Amazon as a documentary.

@SenJohnMcCain - potshots are fun, but what are you going to DO?

Well, first I started following Dave Snowden, then my BFF got in the picture. Then I heard from Fark that Senator McCain has gotten on Twitter. Now I don't know that he's actually typing updates into his Blackberry, but somebody's doing it with his permission.

It's all about the benjamins earmarks, if you're just following the updates. What you don't get, and what I hate about Twitter generally, is context. Should I be against all pork? Just all the pork in this bill?

It turns out that there are few to no earmarks for Arizona in this particular bill. Here's a searchable database if you care to look. I found it myself. It was not in Sen. McCain's 'tweets'. (I refuse to learn the vocabulary,but it's fining its way into my brain anyway).

The stimulus bill that passed the other day is another matter. None, or at least most, of the states' governers are stupid enough to reject all the money, just the money they can keep from relatively defenseless people - non donors: the unemployed, the poor, the children.

McCain voted against that, too, so he's at least consistent.

What I want to know is - what's your alternative? What are you offering instead? Are you going to keep knocking people for wanting money to get help:

• $190,000 to build a Living Science Museum in New Orleans, LA
• $95,000 for the state of New Mexico to find a dental school location
• $380,000 for a recreation and fairground area in Kotzebue, AK

...and my favorite...

• $50,000 for the City of Charlotte for gang prevention

See how easy that is? I'm just knocking you around, because these sound good. Maybe they're real, maybe they're not. I can snark all day long, but I can probably find out in a few minutes whether or not they can be worthy projects.

You, sir, have staff at your disposal who can contact the people repsonsible for these earmarks and just ask. This is not rocket science, this is sausage making. And like it or not, you're a sausage maker.

PRAYER FOR A HAPPY DEATH # 2

As promised, I've done a little more digging on that whole indulgence thing. Turns out the new, improved indulgences turned 40 last year, and, understandably, are wanting to get out more. Pope Palpatine Benedict has been throwing them out like candy to kids at a parade for the last year or so.

Why do indulgences exist? Well, if you can get in to trouble, naturally you'll want a way out. Since Catholics have many, many ways of getting in trouble, there are many, many ways of getting out.

Now, that's my take. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have a more fun and concise explanation here. Catholic.org takes all the fun out of it, explaining that indulgences are not a get out of hell free card - there's work involved.

Well, ok, then. There's a recession on, and not much to do, so hey, why not indulge?

What's that? The title? Where does it come from? Here.

Imagine a 50 year old woman teaching 10 year old you about Ejaculations

Indulgences are back, say they were never really gone.

Man, this brings back memories. One of my Catholic educations was four years at ye olde catholic school, where Vatican II was obeyed but looked at with jaundiced eyes. So we had our Catechisms from the 1950's, which depicted a sleeveless dress as "not covering enough". And Headless Jesus, appearing in an aura of light to scold wrongdoers.

My favorite? Ejaculations! Saying "My Jesus Mercy" whenever you'd hear an ambulance pass was supposed to get you three years off your time in Purgatory in what I eventually called the Catholic Calculus.

I'll have to look up more on the different equations later.

David Duke Calls Black a Kettle

Well, if President Obama isn't bad enough, that scumbag socialist who freely associates with terrorists, now we have the new RNC chairman, one Michael Steele, a RADICAL RACIST, doncha know. Oh, wait. David Duke is from Louisiana. He's a da-yum RAAAAAAD-I-CAAAAL ray-cist, y'all!.

Now Fark got it right, I think: "With no ulterior motives whatsoever, RNC elects Michael Steele as chairman"

Just as we had Gov. Palin, now we have Mr. Steele. "Anything you can do, I can do better, anything you can do I'd better do." Imitation isn't flattery, it's "oh hell, that didn't work, let's see what they're doing."

Which is nothing new. Going back to 2004, the Democrats were ripping each other up over whether or not they were Republican enough to get elected. In 1992, we had the Republican "Big Tent" which was supposed to welcome just everyone, except that it didn't. No surprise.

Then this past year we had the PUMAs, which made more news than impact.

And it's all a distraction, a side show. There's very little of substance in what Mr. Duke has to say. His tirade is analagous to the ambulance-chasing lawyer passing out his cards at the scene of an accident.

What is substantive is the "purity" battle going on now in the Republican party. How pure and what kind of pure is going to distract for a while, but it will be back, and if responsible people aren't paying attention, the hucksters again will get up just enough support to make a comeback.

We're here

This is what my low bandwidth streaming showed most of the time. But it happened, it's official.

Now the real work begins.