My favorite quote of the day concerns the "cheesburger bill" currently rushing through congress to shield fast food retailers from lawsuits from obese customers:

"You cannot litigate personal choices and lifestyles," said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.

This from a man who feels completely comfortable legislating personal choices and lifestyles for other people in accordance with his twisted and ignorant views of the world. The Neocons seem to lack any personal insight into their hypocrisy. Idiots.

heh. another neighbor is on the Firefly wagon...

Once again I am guessing the movie will sell more in DVD format than on the big screen.

My friend J , who claims that her husband W is the one really watching the show , was going on and on about it.

‘Cheney cabal hijacked US foreign policy’

Maybe not news to some, but consider the source....

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

Also, from the Don't-get-your-hopes-up-just-yet department:

If that label sticks, if Iraq continues to bleed, if the White House continues to flounder, if the conservative base fractures, Republicans could lose the House. To be sure, that remains an unlikely prospect given the makeup and configuration of current districts; of course, so was the prospect of Democrats losing the House and Senate in the autumn of 1993.

Bush backers should be concerned, because there’s more at stake here than simply which party holds the Speaker’s gavel. It is not unthinkable that a House Democratic majority would launch impeachment proceedings against the President. After the political wars of the late 1990s and the bitter election of 2000, Democratic back-benchers certainly have the motive. They are now marshaling the means: More than 80 House Democrats are pushing a measure demanding that the President turn over all communications with the United Kingdom relating to the Iraq war. Plus, the Democratic heir-apparent to chair the House Judiciary Committee is Rep. John Conyers, who believes there is “a prima facie case of going to war under false pretenses.”

The only thing Bush’s political opponents lack now is the opportunity. That could come after next fall’s elections.

[link]

Ha! I just got news at work that will make my life easier, but my boss's potentially harder -- they're transitioning all the fundraising database stuff into the main university information database, which means that, as a student, I won't have access to any of it! So I don't have to go to the training, and I won't even be able to look stuff up on it for my boss.

Now that I've seen the rest of it -- it appears that the abuse is endemic, and not confined to the prisons or formal interrogations. One of the former interrogators is testifying that it's happening all over Iraq.

From what I understand, the prisoners are being tortured before they're turned over to the formal interrogators who are actually trained to not use torture and why it doesn't actually work.

Amy Acker was on Alias last week? I miss a lot by being behind.

Yeah. She's also a bad guy and I'm assuming will be in other episodes. I finally watched my Alias tape from last week last night. I'm actually disappointed that Rachel Nichols looks like she's actually going to be a major character because that means I'm going to have to keep watching.

OK, my five best sandwiches as of today: 5. The ham sandwich I ate the other day that let me know my stomach was on the mend by being pleasant to contemplate. was a modest hardworking sandwich but totally did its job. 4. Bacon lettuce tomato: It's a classic for a reason, folks. Have only had one bad one, ever.(that place didn't give a crap, obviously.) 3. First time stepdad bought me a cheesesteak. We had a good time that day and I decided not to hate his guts anymore. 2. Leftover turkey day turkey. 1. French dips at Katz' deli...the finest of the form.

Woo! My boss just brought me Chinese food. Not for free, of course, but somehow lunch tastes better when my only involvement in acquiring it is, "I'll take that combo plate, here's five dollars."

From Wired:

Australian for 'Pickled Long Pig'
Boozing it up in Australia can have a deadly side effect: It can dramatically boost your chances of being attacked by a saltwater crocodile. Nearly a third of all individuals attacked by "salties" between 1971 and 2004 had been drinking, according to a study published in Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. It's not that the crocs -- whose numbers have boomed from 3,000 to 75,000 since the species gained governmental protection in the 1970s -- suddenly developed a taste for internally marinated humans. Instead, it's alcohol's charming effect on the human brain that's to blame, according to Charlie Manolis, one of the study's authors. "Sometimes when people do drink they throw caution to the wind," Manolis told AFP. No kidding.

I can't imagine a likely situation where I'd think that wrestling a crocodile would be a good idea. How often do people hold you at gunpoint and say, "It's that, or sex with Dick Cheney!"

Nearly a third of all individuals attacked by "salties" between 1971 and 2004 had been drinking, according to a study published in Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. It's not that the crocs -- whose numbers have boomed from 3,000 to 75,000 since the species gained governmental protection in the 1970s -- suddenly developed a taste for internally marinated humans.

Did they consider that maybe a third of all Australians are drunk? Huh? Did they?