A Big Day

If you rely on exclusively conservative sources for your news (ie: Fox News, Drudge Report), you are missing a huge story that came out today. And I doubt that the mainstream media will cover this story very much either.

The "Torture Memos" have been released.

... This is huge. Essentially, they are the legal opinions crafted under the Bush administration twisting the legality and definitions of certain forms of torture into a confusing pretzel of permission to commit war crimes. They are part of the damning case that is making it legally treacherous for certain people, from John Yoo to Alberto Gonzalez to our former president and vice-president, to travel to other countries (read: Canada and Spain) out of fear of being arrested for war crimes.

And people really need to get over this false idea that just because America and our president do something illegal that somehow it is still okay. Torture is illegal and has been illegal for decades. Our laws on this issue did not fall alongside the twin towers.

Andrew Sullivan, one of my favorite bloggers, covers the topic of torture voraciously. I highly recommend his blog (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com). Here's a paragraph he wrote this afternoon as he reads through the torture memos:

"Perhaps you are reading these documents alongside me. I've only read the Bybee
memo, as chilling an artefact as you are ever likely to read in a democratic
society, the work clearly not of a lawyer assessing torture techniques in good
faith, but of an administration official tasked with finding how torture
techniques already decided upon can be parsed in exquisitely disingenuous ways
to fit the law, even when they clearly do not. This is what Hannah Arendt wrote
of when she talked of the banality of evil. To read a bureaucrat finding ways to
describe and parse away the clear infliction of torture on a terror suspect well
outside any "ticking time bomb" scenario is to realize what so many of us feared
and sensed from the shards of information we have been piecing together for
years. It is all true."

Signs You Are A Dork #28

You can fill up the trunk of your car with your board game collection.

Carrows Restaurant

Now serving shitting pancakes

Church Sign Fail

One of my favorite things is the variety of messages on those signs outside of churches. They are usually very witty and clever (well, relatively speaking), and I can just imagine some priest or pastor sitting with a pad of paper in his quiet office exclaiming "OH! Good one Jesus!" when they come up with a new one (because surely all of these messages are coming directly from Jesus Christ).

I pass by a church on my way to work that always has the most entertaining signage, usually tinged with just the right amount of social commentary. Here is their current sign:


If you can't read the photo from my iPhone, the sign reads:

"OUR GREATEST THREAT IS NOT GLOBEL [sic] WARMING BUT SPIRITUALITY LUKEWARM"

First of all, it is too bad these signs do not come with a spell-check.

Secondly, are you sure about that, West Los Angeles Christian Center? I get a feeling after the pastor comes up with these quirky quips, s/he does not spend much time thinking about what they really say. The play on words is fun, but empty.

In my humble opinion, rising coastlines; millions and millions of displaces people; more severe extreme weather disasters; changes in agricultural capabilities (ie: having to plant corn in North Dakota instead of Iowa), and skirmishes and wars over those new capabilities; the famine and refugees that accompany said wars -- all that is slightly more important than people sleeping in Sunday mornings.

Their previous sign was too rich:

"NO COURT CAN OVERTURN YOUR CONVICTIONS"

Clearly in reference to their assumed anti-gay stance (those pesky "activist judges" upholding our state's constitution!), it does not take long to recognize the utter BS of this sign. Just taking the statement at face value, "NO COURT CAN OVERTURN YOUR CONVICTIONS" ... umm... is that not one of the exact purposes of our judicial system?? Enforcing and overturning convictions per a jury or judge's prerogative?? Am I missing something?

I will be keeping an eye on the West Los Angeles Christian Center. Talk about entertainment.

Okay, No... This Is Some Funny Shit

I take back what I said in my previous post.  This is the funniest thing I've ever seen:

That Is Some Funny Shit

I have seen people roll their eyes when mention is made of America's Funniest Home Videos.  I say to hell to those people.  AFV is hands down the funniest show on television.  

Okay, so the hosts over the years have been... awkward.  

But the videos?  There is something beautifully universal about seeing a kid run into a screen door, or some octogenarian crash and burn dancing at a wedding.  It is the perfectly pitched combination of Murphy's Law and schadenfreuder.  Pure and basic hilarity.  

I just watched their 300th episode tonight (which is already airing in syndication), and I cannot remember a time I laughed so hard.  The show has been on the air almost as long as I have been alive, and they were showing some of the most fantastic clips.   Here is a two minute segment had me in tears.  

I want this television show to outlive me.  

Why Daylight Saving Rules

I'm leaving work and the sun is still out... No reflective armband for me for my bike ride home!!

Thank You Brasa In Culver City

This is the best plantain I have ever eaten ... Crispy on the outside, soft and hot on the inside, brown sugar coating ... Mmmmmm.

(click image for larger, more delicious version)

Angry

I just came across this news.

To sum it up: Obama wrote a letter to the people running the "No on 8" campaign last summer, saying how much he supported them and how much he opposed Proposition 8:

"And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the
California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or
those of other states. ..."

That is what Barack Obama wrote to us, months before the election.

Obama won California by 24 points. Proposition 8 won by four points. Day's before the election, I received this flyer in the mail:

Yet still, Obama's letter sat on the desk of some high paid consultant throughout the campaign, gathering dust.

"I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution..." Can you imagine that important sentence from Obama's letter being used in nearly every TV commercial and in nearly every mailer ad for "No on 8"? If there is one state that loves Obama, California loves Obama. The proposition would have been crushed!

I gave hundreds of dollars to "No on 8" and volunteered at phone banks (or at least tried to volunteer -- when I was stood up for volunteering in Santa Monica, I didn't go back). The incompetence is infuriating.

We had that letter -- a golden ticket -- to use against the manipulation and lies being hurled from the other side. And the letter sat there, doing nothing. Un-fucking-believable.

When the California Supreme Court chooses not to overturn Prop 8 in the coming months (which is what is going to happen), and we start gearing up for a new ballot initiative for 2010 or 2012, I demand that all of the dimwits who fucked up the last campaign be as far away from California as possible. Send them on some nice long vacation where their horrible decisions no longer effect my civil rights. Otherwise, count me out. I won't waste my time and money on those people again.