telescreen.org

Pastrami Goatse, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

If you're coming here from BoingBoing, hi.  I wasn't expecting to see a photo I took four months ago wind up on BoingBoing, but hey, that's cool.

Feel free to take a look around, leave comments, et cetera.  Alas, I need to update more -- I've been crazy-busy at work lately, and also I need a new mouse, as the one I've had for the past week is now darting around the screen uncontrollably.  (What, I have to use the damn TRACKPAD now?)  So I haven't been spending as much time online lately as I've wanted to.

(Oh, and by the way, Micro Innovations sucks.)

Steely Dan goes after Owen Wilson.

Stephen Colbert responds to his journalistic critics.

"'Monet, Monet, Monet.  Sometimes I get truly fed up doing Monet. Bloody haystacks."

OMG, I am loving me some inattentional blindness videos.

The 10 Most Ridiculous Metal Album Covers.

LaserMonks.com!

The aroused male approaches the female, prior to mounting her:

(via Treehugger.)

Presented without comment:  the front page of today's Independent:

My mother's review of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, verbatim:

Needs more plot, less pectin.  (Awful.)

The National Journal's Murray Waas, who broke the Bush-quashes-Justice-investigation story, quoted in TPMmuckraker:

"It's surprising the story hasn't gotten greater play. It's unprecedented for the President of the United States to himself stymie a Justice Department investigation. And it's obscure for a president to make a decision about who should get security clearances.

"When FBI agents and Justice prosecutors needed security clearances to investigate The New York Times and those who leaked the NSA story to its reporters, the clearances were granted almost immediately. The head of OPR pointed that out in a memo to the deputy attorney general.

"The OPR head pointed out that private citizens sitting on a presidential commission were also granted those clearances. They are a far greater security risk than career DoJ officials, he said. . .

"Historians will tell you that it's unprecedented for a president of the United States to make the personal decision to halt an investigation of his own attorney general and his own attorneys, based on his personal decision. Earlier, the president played no role in approving clearances for the other people who were familiar with the program."

Shades of Nixon...if Nixon had displayed even more contempt for the Constitution.

He's at it again...

The Big Lebowski -- F*cking Short Version

(um, not safe for work, or anyone who doesn't want to hear a certain Anglo-Saxon word a lot of times...)

Reminds me of Seven Minutes In Deadwood.

In the spirit of this recent post, I was thrilled to find an even better Q&A explanation of the current Mideast situation.  (Can I just say that I love the Christian Science Monitor?)

ADDENDUM:  Promoted from the comments -- Tizzie calls our attention to this fine article.  (I like Slate a lot, too, but what's with the assy new redesign?)

Coolest thing I've seen in a while:

AG Gonzales: Bush personally blocked the DOJ investigation of the illegal NSA domestic spying program.

Under sharp questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that Bush would not grant the access needed to allow the probe to move forward.

“It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?” asked Specter, R-Pa.

“The president of the United States makes the decision,” Gonzales told the committee hearing, during which he was strongly criticized on a range of national security issues by Specter and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the panel’s senior Democrat.

After all, one way to avoid being told you've broken the law is to not allow the people who investigate these things to do their jobs.

From Murray Waas:

The investigation, by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, was halted when lawyers who were going to conduct the investigation were denied the security clearances that would have allowed them to view classified documents related to the surveillance program. President Bush made the decision to deny the security clearances for the investigators, Gonzales said . . .

The statement by Gonzales stunned some senior Justice Department officials, who were led to believe that Gonzales himself had made the decision to deny the clearances after consulting with intelligence agencies whose activities would be scrutinized, a senior federal law enforcement official said in an interview. . .

A senior Justice official said that the refusal to grant the clearances was "unprecedented" and questioned whether the clearances were denied because investigators might find "misconduct by those who were attempting to defeat" the probe from being conducted.

So, if you're keeping score at home, this means that the President says he has the right to quash any investigation that he wants, and that he doesn't have to submit to judicial, Congressional, legal, or any kind of review.  From anyone.  He's above the law.  (James Madison is spinning in his grave.)

Because President Bush is always right.

Check out Adrian Leskiw's collection of fictional maps.  A little obsessive, sure, but what art isn't to some degree?  (I like his photos of highways, too.)

So...was Bush off his meds for this recent European trip?

I mean, I think the current press uproar about Bush saying "get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit" is ridiculous.  Who doesn't talk like this in unguarded moments?  Who doesn't think other people do, even Presidents?  (C'mon, Bill Clinton reportedly went into thunderous, profanity-filled tirades, but had the sense to do so in private.)

But aside from Bush not realizing that this wasn't quite the best venue to let his hair down, what strikes me the most about this story is the simple content of what he said.  When he's off-message and unscripted, I'm not expecting Bush to sound like Winston Freaking Churchill, but this?

Bush: I felt like telling Kofi to call, to get on the phone to Assad and make something happen.

This is the understanding our President has of geopolitics?  He "tells Kofi" to do stuff, and stuff happens?  Um, he's the guy running the most powerful nation in the world, and he can't call Assad?  He doesn't realize that if the US wants to "make something happen" vis-a-vis the UN, the US has to do something?  Kofi Annan doesn't set the Security Council's agenda, and is only one voice without the backing of the permanent member states.

Actually, Tony Blair comes across pretty well here...not at all deserving of the "Bush's lapdog" label that's so often thrown around when his name comes up.  He's counseling Bush that he needs to act fast, that he's willing to help but recognizes the limits of what he can do and the implications of sending Rice there, urges an international presence...and what does Bush do?

He talks with his mouth full and wishes that Hezbollah would stop doing what they're doing.

News flash -- everyone (okay, every sane person) wants Hezbollah to stop doing what they're doing.  And Syria has some leverage over them, but not nearly as much as they did a year or two ago, before the Hariri assassination.  But this is how Bush evidently thinks you solve a crisis -- you push it off on the UN Secretary-General (when you're not slagging him behind his back), and order him to tell someone else to knock it off.

This is truly a foreign policy master at work, no?

And this isn't even the weird stuff, like the unsolicited neck massages or the demands for Diet Coke or the marvelings that other leaders might have to travel eight whole hours to get to St. Petersburg:

At another moment, Bush is clearly itching to get home after a relatively long trip of six days in Europe, saying, apparently to a counterpart, possibly President Hu Jintao, who is sitting next to him, "Good job. Gotta keep this thing moving. I gotta leave at 2:15. You'll want me out of town so to free up your security forces." The voice that appears to be that of Hu agrees, "Ya," and he laughs along with Bush's trademark giggle.

Bush sighs, and explains, "Gotta go home - got something to do," and asks "Where you going, home? This is your neighborhood - it won't take you long to get home." The counterpart, again apparently Hu, cannot be heard as he responds, but Bush exclaims, "You get home in eight hours? Me too! Russia is a big country, and you're a big country."

Bush is heard chastising a waiter: "No, not Coke, Diet Coke."

Around then, Bush's closest ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair, walks by, and the president yells out, "Yeah, Blair, what are you doing? Leaving?"

This isn't homeroom.  This is the G-8 Summit.  But apparently our President can't tell the difference...or, more likely, doesn't give a "shit."

In the CSM, one of the better rundowns I've read of the Hezbollah-Israel conflict.  (I figured the Middle East was due for an explosion, but I didn't think it'd happen quite this way.)

ADDENDUM:  The Monitor's really doing a great job combining good reporting with incisive analysis of this story.  Some more good articles here, here, and especially here.

Bush Pilot.

By the way, today is Telescreen.org's third birthday.  Thanks for reading.

Wow, I just noticed that the three posts below this one all begin with the word "wow."

(What, no flutter?)

Ken Nordine, yeah I know that guy, I heard his voice 1000 times, he’s the guy in the bus station that says “go ahead I’ll keep an eye on your stuff for you,” and you see him the next day walking around town wearing your clothes. He broadcasts from the boiler room of the Wilmont Hotel with 50,000 watts of power. I know that voice, he’s the guy with the pitchfork in your head saying go ahead and jump, and he’s the ambulance driver who tells you you’re going to pull thru. He’s the guy in the control tower who talked you down in a storm with a hole in your fuselage and both engines on fire. I heard him barking thru the Rose Alley Carnival strobe as samurai firemen were pulling hose. Yeah, he’s the dispatcher with the heart of gold, the only guy up this late on the suicide hotline. Ken Nordine is the real angel sitting on the wire in the tangled matrix of cobwebs that holds the whole attic together. Yeah, Ken Nordine, he’s the switchboard operator at the Taft Hotel, the only place in town you can get a drink at this hour. You know Ken Nordine, he’s the lite in the icebox, he’s the blacksmith on the anvil in your ear.

(by Tom Waits)

Wow -- Ken Nordine has a blog.  (And a podcast.)

Wow, I'd love to crash this party:

The U.S. Capitol Historical Society will hold a reception next week to honor a select group of lawmakers “for their hard work, service, time and the sacrifices made in upholding the office with which they were entrusted.”

One of the people slated to receive such accolades is former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif) . . .

Another honoree is former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who recently indicated that he may run for his old seat if an appeals court does not overturn a ruling that he must remain on the November ballot. DeLay hadn’t responded to the invitation earlier this week.

Actually, I think there's a typo in the invitation.  Instead of thanking the Congresscritters "for their hard work, service, time and the sacrifices made...", I believe it should read:  "...for their work, service, and hard time..."

Wow.  Just...wow.