The Longest Day

One of my favorite movies is "The Longest Day," a sweeping saga of D-Day. It has one of the best long, single-takes in moviedom - the French seaside village battle. It stars everyone. And when I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE. I think I'm the only person who wasn't in that movie, mostly because I was born a few years too late. A couple of the nifty gems about this movie:
The piper who played the bagpipes as Lord Lovat's commandos stormed ashore is played by the actual man who did this stirring deed on D-Day. His name is Bill Millin. He recently donated that very set of pipes to the national war memorial in Edinburgh Castle.

As a 22-year-old private, Joseph Lowe landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day with the Second Ranger Battalion and scaled the cliffs at Point-Du-Hoc. He scaled those hundred-foot cliffs all over again, for the cameras, some 17 years later.

ABC/ESPN is STOOOPID

During the Pistons game tonite, ESPN ran an ad for the FIFA World Cup showing a bunch of Scostmen running around in kilts carrying the St. Andrews cross flag. What was the background music? U2's "I Will Follow." U2 is an Irish band. Idiots.

Violent protests in Iran

Things aren't going well for the mullahs in Iran right now, with violent protests in Tehran and elsewhere.

Why isn't this getting more coverage in the US? Oh yeah, that's right, some farking dude won some farking game show on TV last nite.

What do you call a busload of politicians going over a cliff?

A waste of a perfectly good bus. Earlier this morning, the Opinion Journal, the online version of the Wall Street Journal's opinion page, which is no liberal bastion had this to say about the Republicans running to the side of Jefferson (D-LA) after his offices were raided by the FBI:
Something like this makes it harder to argue that the GOP deserves to maintain its majority.

Now, Bush is running to Jefferson's side, sealing the docs that were seized.

What the HELL are the Republicans so afraid of? Are there more raids of Congressional offices in the future? 45 days is a long time...and this delay (heh, I said "delay" talking about crooked Congressmen) hampers other ongoing investigations, and probably hampers them just long enough for the November elections to come and go.

Do you know what else Jefferson is "famous" for? How about comandeering a half-dozen National Guard troops and their 5-ton truck to rescue "personal belongings" from his house during Katrina. Full story here

Individuality=racism

The Seattle school board created a definition of racism, that includes cultural racism. Cultural racism's definition has this bit:
having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology.

The story and link to the whole Seattle definition of racism here

GW's dad was right....

GW's dad said "Avoid the appearance of impropriety".

It's too bad the current administration don't take that to heart...to wit:
Gilead is the holder of the patent for Tamiflu, a drug that would be used in a bird flu pandemic. Donald Rumsfeld owns a ton of their stock. Despite the BS the administration is spraying on this about how Rummy is staying uninvolved with Gilead, it makes you wonder....

Border Patrol "selling out" the Minutemen

Let's try this phrasing on for size:
"Police tell criminals the location of Neighborhood Watch people"

That's exactly what the Border Patrol is doing.. I wonder why?

How bad is racism in Japan?

Try this on for size. The writer is an English teacher in Japan; he's a fairly large black dude.

An Open Letter to the Detroit Red Wings

With the understanding that the Detroit Red Wings play in the National Hockey League and that the NHL has certain rules governing such things as penalties, the rink, etc., the Detroit Red Wings coaching staff, players and upper management would do well to refresh themselves on the Rules of the NHL, specifically, Rule 90 which states in part:
The time allowed for a game shall be three (3) twenty-minute periods of actual play with a rest intermission between periods.

Sincerely,
A P.O'ed Red Wings Fan