Tell Senator Specter to Help End the War

I get a lot of pesky emails from folks like MoveOn, but I put up with them because their goals usually seem worthwhile. Sometimes I even do what they ask or go to the events they're promoting. Today I got one asking me to go to a town hall meeting being held by a group called Pennsylvanians Against Escalation in Iraq where they plan to attract local media to focus public attention on the fact that Senator Specter did the Bush-Cheney junta's bidding by voting against a spending bill that sets a deadline for safely extricating our troops from the sectarian hell that has been unleashed in Iraq by our corrupt and delusional president. [Although they don't say, I'm guessing our newly elected Senator Casey voted to bring our troops home ASAP. Anybody know? Boy, did he drop off the radar. He's probably secretly plotting to extend affordable health care to all Americans or something subversive like that.]

This Thursday—April 5—at 7:00pm in Philadelphia, Pennsylvanians Against Escalation in Iraq are holding a town hall meeting where local veterans and concerned area residents will discuss the overwhelming support for ending the Iraq war. Media will be in attendance and a strong message will be sent to Specter to stop voting against the will of his constituents.

Here are the details—can you join other MoveOn members at Thursday's town hall meeting on Iraq?

Pennsylvanian's Against Escalation in Iraq—Town Hall Meeting
Where: Friends Center, Martin Luther King Room (3rd floor), N 15th St & Cherry Street Philadelphia, PA 19102.
When: Thursday, April 5, 2007—7:00pm

Typical of MoveOn, I receive this email the day before the event. It may be, however, possible for me to attend. As advertised, the location doesn't look like much. However, if the Quakers had anything resembling a central authority, Friends Center could be it. There is a third of a square block right in the heart of Center City that is the Quaker equivalent of the Vatican: a beautifully austere, Midnineteenth Century meeting house (big red roof on map), Friends Select School (taking up another big chunk of land at 17th Street and the Parkway), Philadelphia Yearly Meeting offices, and other offices for organizations like the American Friends Service Committee. I have to give the Quakers credit. They've been peacefully recomending to the rest of us to renounce our barbaric ways for over 300 years, yet they continue to host events like this without completely losing it [which is truly Christian]. They emphasize on their website that all are welcome [which is also strangely consistent with the behavior of Jesus in the Bible book], so maybe I'll see you there tomorrow.

Wood spiders on drugs.

The Reagans on drugs. [Sorry if you already saw this one. It still makes me giggle. I think it's because I still remember being forced to sit through the original speech in my crappy fascist high school where the only useful things I learned were how to type fast without looking at the keys and some complicated French verb tenses.]

Gonzales' Goon Squad Backs Down, for Now

The AP is reporting that independent videographer, Joshua Wolf, has been released from federal detention after 226 days. He had refused to surrender video footage [that we now know shows mostly police brutality] obtained at the G8 protests in San Francisco in 2005. Instead of surrendering it to the secretive [and we now know politically compromised] federal grand jury that was investigating the injury of a police officer during the protests, Wolf arranged to have the footage posted publicly on the web. While the Gonzales Goon Squad (GGS) is still claiming the prerogative to compel Wolf to testify in person before the grand jury, Wolf made a clear public statement immediately following his release that he has no intention of testifying before the grand jury. Watching the footage and making the assumption that GGS wants to win its case, I'd think it would be unlikely that they would actually try to make the guy testify. But once you know that one third of our current federal prosecutors were chosen for their political loyalty to a would-be dictator over their professional abilities, you realize that winning cases might not be what it's all about anymore.

Here's something funny, but probably only if you work in a publishing environment.

DVD Review: Children of Men

Children of Men is described by Netflix as a “futuristic drama” based on a “classic dystopian novel” by P.D. James. For that reason alone I made sure it was at the top of our queue a few days before it was released on DVD. Seeing the trailer a few weeks ago didn’t hurt either. I even remember hearing a lukewarm review of it on NPR when it was playing in theaters a few months ago [and I don’t think we can ever expect NPR to give anything from the sci-fi genre much more than that because they’re kind of stodgy despite being so well informed].

I confess to not having read the novel, which might be why I liked the movie so much. Maybe not. I’d put it in the same category with Blade Runner, A Handmaid’s Tale, A Clockwork Orange, Shaun of the Dead, and 28 Days Later. It is groundbreaking science fiction material as prescient as Blade Runner, and it further establishes Britain as the most likely setting of the filming of the end of the world as did Shaun and 28 Days. This movie could be considered both a cautionary tale and a likely prediction of our own future if current events continue in the same [looped] vein they have since 911.

Each frame of this movie is packed with pertinent textual and visual information. You might find yourself watching it twice and pausing so you can read all the graffiti, text, and motion graphics [video ads] that fill the background in many scenes. This text answers some questions [why did everybody stop having babies?] and raises others [not gunna be a spoiler] for a viewer whose curiosity is likely to be more than piqued. Although most of the scenes are dark and ominous, vibrant colors like safety yellow and blood red flash across the screen as brief visual punctuation marks that echo developments in the plot.

The plot and dialogue are well written, gripping, and easily believable in spite of how far fetched the premise might seem. The story begins with the murder of the youngest living human, Baby Diego. In the eighteen years since his birth, The West has descended into burning chaos with Islamists and nuclear terrorists slashing and burning every country except Britain, which is consequently overrun with refugees who are ruthlessly hunted down and eliminated or released into seething refugee camps.

One of these refugees has the first human pregnancy since the birth of Baby Diego, and she must be safely escorted out of fascist England so humanity can be saved. As a special treat along the way, we get to meet Michael Cain who plays a cannabis farmer.

I could keep typing, but I may have already given too much away. Go rent Children of Men.

According to the Inky, a commonwealth appeals court has upheld Philadelphia's new campaign finance limits, which are much more stringent than in the rest of the commonwealth and were passed by city council and a lame duck mayor in response to the pay-to-play scandals. If Tom Knox weren't currently trying to buy the mayoral election with his own money, this would be a very positive development.

Psychic Abilities of Ganymede's Ghost Proven Once Again

If you are my parents, a relative over 50, or someone who uses the word "practicing" to modify your religious and superstitious preferences, you might want to stop reading now [or pour another drink]. I was right about not going to the Black Party. According to more than one first-hand account obtained by Gawker outside Roseland on Sunday morning, SOMEONE TOOK A DUMP ON THE DANCEFLOOR. I wonder if the culprit was admitted at the under-30 discount rate?

What happens when a Severely Deluded US Senator wants to take a stroll in Bagdad to prove that he's not Deluded?

Over a hundred American troops have to drop what they're doing to secure his perimeter. Thinkprogress is already reporting that snipers have returned to the lucky open-air market our Republican senators chose for their latest installment of political theater [of the absurd].

In a surprise move today, the Supreme Court has ruled that greenhouse gases are actually greenhouse gases and the EPA has the authority to regulate all of the pollution coming out of tail pipes, not just the pollution that existed as pollution prior to 1860.

You know it's bad when they can't [really can't be bothered to] determine who Philly's 100th murder victim of 2007 is because the 101st body found may have been there since before the 100th body was found. You also know it's bound to get worse when the discrepancy exists because children playing saw the body about ten hours before anybody bothered to call 911.

What do Monster Dictators and their top officials eat?

It's probably not what you're thinking. Happy Easter though!

This weekend's NYTimes Fashion & Style Section has a very one-sided article about Lesbian Spring Break (aka The Kraft Nabisco Championship or Dinah Shore Weekend), which is held annually at Lake Drying-Up Nonative Palms, California. The photo and first paragraph shamelessly and pruriently plead for the reader's attention: girls gone wild! Lesbian ;) girls gone wild! Once obtained, this attention is then sqandered on senseless capitalistic jargon and blather about how economic power equals civil rights in the United States [sad but true]. When it was still okay to discriminate openly, the actual golf tournament wanted nothing to do with the racous lesbian parties going on in town and actually changed its name from the Dinah Shore Championship to the Kraft Nabisco Championship. Now that it's not usually okay to discriminate openly, marketers from the golf tournament actually talked to lesbian party promoters about cross-promoting weekend events. Now, the director of the golf tournament claims the name change was intended only to emphasize the event's corporate sponsorship and lesbian golf fans who happen to be attending the near-by party weekend are "more than welcome" at his golf shows. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Times writer then becomes a bit fixated on this idea of corporate sponsorship. The rest of the article devolves into the journalistic equivalent of product placements. Instead of interviewing any of the thousands of non-business-owning, non-marketing, non-party-promoting participants about the state of lesbian civil rights and solidarity [or even the important role of lesbians in womens golf], the Times is happy to give two free screens of raw quotes to people intent on making more money from this annual event next year. For analysis, the reader is offered only that the commercial success of Showtime's L-Word changed everything.

Who Remembers Shona Laing?

Jason does.