According to Viceroy Cheney, the increasing violence in Iraq is an attempt to sway U.S. elections next month. The thinly-veiled point, of course, is that they are trying to scare the American people into voting for the Democrats, which (to Viceroy Cheney and his ilk) is just what the enemy wants.
It seems like the right moment, then, to point people to my August post about how this could all just be a clever terrorist trick of reverse psychology — make us think they support the Democrats, thereby making us vote Republican, which is who they really want in office.
As an aside: I really do hope that the GOPresidency doesn’t trash the entire globe before we get the chance to see Viceroy Cheney drop from the inevitable fatal heart attack. To the wingnuts: You’ll note that this is not a threat. It’s merely a statement-in-advance of how much joy I hope to one day experience. I might even dance. Or at least sashay.
“The report by electionline.org,” reports The Washington Post,” says [ten] states and possibly others, could encounter trouble on Election Day because they have a combustible mix of fledgling voting-machine technology, confusion over voting procedures or recent litigation over election rules — and close races.”
The temperatures announced the coming shift even before we set back the clocks over the weekend. But with that chronometrical change comes the start of The Dark Times. I spent much of yesterday christening that beginning with Jubelale.
But there is light at the end of the long Winter tunnel: Only one hundred and eight days until pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training.
For whatever it’s worth, I’ve switched over my feeds here to FeedBurner. So, the link at the bottom of every page, and this site’s auto-discovery tags, now lead to their version of my feed instead of the local ones. Anyone subscribed to the original feeds here (whether Atom or RSS 2.0) will be automatically redirected to the FeedBurner version.
In addition, again at the bottom of any page here, you can click a link to subscribe to this site via email using FeedBurner.
“The Pentagon,” reports the Associated Press, “cannot account for 14,030 weapons — almost 4 percent of the semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons it began supplying to Iraq since the end of 2003, according to a report from the office of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.”
So, anyone want to enlighten me as to why I can see fireworks coming from somewhere between the southern edge of Waterfront Park and the area around South Waterfront?
Is the GOPresidency about governing or is it merely about power? When its chief political advisor and operative is maneuvering goverment action to best suit the political needs of Republican candidates, the answer to that question is fairly obvious.
Historian and critic Garry Wills, writing for The New York Review of Books, describes in detail how the GOPresident “promised his evangelical followers faith-based social services” and then proceeded to deliver beyond their wildest dreams, providing them with “a faith-based war, faith-based law enforcement, faith-based education, faith-based medicine, and faith-based science.”
A few days ago, I mentioned that in its clampdown on unofficial merchandise, Universal Studios Licensing LLC had demanded nearly $9,000 in retroactive licensing fees from one fan.
By way of an update, you can see some of the spread of the story and reaction via WHEDONesque.
Also check in with my own pitch at trying to harness fan frustration into something tongue-in-cheek and non-confrontational: The Browncoat Invoice, in which we ask fans to tally how many hours they spent on helping to market and promote Serenity, and then publish the totals for all to see.
It was conceived as a gentler way to make both the specific point about Browncoat marketing for Serenity and the more general point about the relationship between producers of entertainment and their increasing (and knowing) reliance in the 21st century on fanbases to help promote that entertainment.
According to KGW today, the tram cars finally “arrived on a large ship at the Port of Portland’s Terminal Six Sunday afternoon.” Still no word on the route they ended up taking, which was rumored to be via San Francisco after the unplanned detour to Vancouver, British Columbia.
“The tram’s first test run between OHSU and the South Waterfront,” they report, “is scheduled for November 9th.” Expect pictures from the vantage point of SW 1st and Gibbs when the time comes.
At that point, according to Ryan Frank, they “will still be in their wrap during the early unmanned test flights”. After that, only OHSU staff gets to ride in them until January.
Addendum: Jack and I are posting tram news nearly simultaneously. Only he’s pointing to some other coverage reporting that Sam Adams is open to suggestions as to what to name the two tram cars.
Meanwhile, a blog entry from Theo seems to contradict the “via San Francisco” part of the tram travels rumor.