First Looks category archive

Become a balloon here.

From the Demon Princess:

image courtesy MoronCowboy.

There’s a reason for that (the MSM silence on Bushie perfidy-ed.) ~ the American media who’ve been complicit in hyping the war even though it hasn’t gone well ~ CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN as well as ABC ~ have all been hoodwinked in an elaborate ruse by Bushco to wage a disinformation campaign and distort news by deliberately planted information through Generals and lobbyists with very profitable business interests in the Middle Eastern war machine. Bushco successfully planted these a***holes as “media analysts” to keep us “on message,” which was, predictably, the war, despite some setbacks, is going well.

The lies do get tiresoms.

Why do you put up with them?

Gasoline prices surpassed $3.50 a gallon nationwide for the first time and oil jumped to a new record Monday, as the long rise of energy prices showed little evidence of giving way to recession fears.

The national average price for regular gasoline is up 23 percent from a year ago, according to AAA, the automobile club.

Some analysts expect it to approach $4 a gallon this summer, when demand is at a peak.

On my way home from the jobsite today, I passed a local Shell station–the one where I refill my propane tank–advertising $3.36.

They had a line. Actually, three lines.

Tomorrow, starting at 6 p. m., Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, just a block from where the hippies meet on South Street, Philadelphia.

Barring a relapse, I might actually be there.

Not that that’s any kind of a draw.

Probably more like a threat.

Over at the Group News Blog.

From the Booman Tribune. Follow the link to see the answer to the question at the end of the excerpt. And ask yourself, “Why didn’t they do this in a neighborhood of poor white folk?”

We all know how insane black people are to believe conspiracy stories like the one that AIDS was invented by white people to kill blacks. That’s one of the issues good patriotic whites have with the Rev. Wright. He acted like every crazy, angry black man who ever crossed their paths, and which they are still telling stories about, whether it happened to them personally or not.

Of course, patriotic white Americans do tend to forget a few minor problems with this narrative. Minor things like slavery, the Klu Klux Klan, lynching and the infamous Tuskegee experiments when poor black men with syphilis were left untreated for decades just to see what course the disease might take, even though there were treatments available to them. They weren’t even told they had syphilis, merely that they were being treated for “bad blood.” In fact, they were unknowing and unwilling participants in a study to see how bad their symptoms would get before they died from the disease the good doctors conducting the study refused to inform them they suffered from.

Those days are long gone, fortunately. These days the federal government researchers would never deliberately lie to black people in order to get them to participate in an unethical scientific study. Not in the 21st century! Or would they? (Tip of me hat to the field negro and Francis Holland)

Josh Marshall:

The ACLU needs your help to try to restore the rule of law to our polity.

Via Brendan.

From an email. Original source unknown:

Retirement Planning

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer/wine one year ago, drank all the beer/wine, then turned in the cans/bottles for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have had $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

(Aside: If someone knows the original source, please let me know so I cite it.)

Prepare for your retirement.

Drink liberally tomorrow at Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6-9 p. m.

Heck, I might even make it there this week. Fingers crossed and all that.

Some commentary of the single (that is, text), as opposed to multi, media here and here.

Video via Brendan.

Be sure to watch both parts.

Via Duncan.

Over the past year, consumer confidence has deteriorated significantly. Worsening problems in housing, harder-to-get credit, financial turmoil on Wall Street and lofty energy prices have put people in a much more gloomy mind-set. Last April, confidence stood at 85.4. The index is based on results from the international polling firm Ipsos.

And today another airline bit the dust.

But the rich are richer . . . . and isn’t that what matters to a Bushie?

Family:

I guess it was about time. It’s been about six weeks.

No Exit is a play. Sadly, the Bush administration is real.

Though one does get the feeling from time to time that they don’t separate real life from stage craft.

Their legacy, though, is tragically concrete.

Pointless, phony, fraudulent war forever. The little boy has soiled the sandbox and leaves the rest of us to scoop it.

After completing the modest U.S. troop drawdown that’s already scheduled for July, he foresees “a 45-day period of consolidation and evaluation. At the end of that period, we will commence a process of assessment, to examine the conditions on the ground, and over time, determine when we can make recommendations for further reductions.”

English translation: The place is a mess. We have no idea when things might get better. We’re not pulling out any more troops. We’re running out the clock on 2008.

It’s Westmoreland all over again once more redundantly.

Sorry, folks, that’s not a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the reflection at the bottom of the well:

Six months at a time.

Last video via Balloon Juice.

Via Upyernoz.

Here.

Jeez, oh man. What a roster.

Via Phillybits.

By extrapolation, bet this occurs in the voting booth, too:

She and undergraduate Amy Beth Warriner gave 30 students specific words to remember. They found that students who forgot a word were more likely to do so again later if they had spent longer trying to retrieve it.

In other words, they were practicing the error, reinforcing the incorrect pattern of brain activation that originally caused it.

Humphreys’ advice: If you just can’t figure something out, “stop trying; you’re just digging yourself in deeper.”