The Sound of the Crowd

Hoffmania

1. Why’d we go to war, again? I mean, the last reason they had left was “Saddam was a bad guy.” And if this item turns out to be true…well, as Hoffmania says, the scary thing is, we could so easily belive that they would do this.

2. My State Senator, ladies and gentlemen. Or, as if I needed another reason to want to move to San Francisco…

(That sound you hear in the background is Keitha packing a bag, all to the tune of “California, Here I Come.”)

3. The best candidate the Democrats have...sigh…

4. Tom Hayden makes the case for withdrawing from Iraq.

It’s over! Let it go!

…John Kerry was reportedly upset with a Senate colleague for endorsing Hillary Clinton’s presumed 2008 presidential bid, crying, “What are you doing endorsing my 2008 presidential opponent?”

John. You are not going to be the 2008 nominee. All you are now, all you will ever be for the rest of your life, is the man who could not beat George W. Bush.

Go. Away. We’ll call you when we need you to rescue a fucking hamster.

Orcinus (the second-greatest liberal blog out of Seattle) on what the Republicans hath wrought with their would-be exploitation of “people of faith.”

“Republican leaders have decided to step back from the brink and reconsider where their old friends on the extremist right are carrying them.

There’s one little problem, though: They’re too late. They’ve created a beast they think they can control.”

The whole thing is a little lengthy, but it’s well worth it, and it’s important.

On the other hand, I’m not at all sure that John from AmericaBlog is overreacting when he says this is Nazi Germany in America:

“Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen says homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle. As CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, under his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters.”

John (whose blog, you’ve probably realized by now, is the place to go if you’re interested in the Microsoft/Ralph Reed/etc thing) then throws in the following aside to Microsoft:

“…this is why we are so scared that your capitulation to the religious right could start an entire wave of businesses throwing us under the bus, a bus we’re already sitting on the back of. Can you understand our fear about what is happening to our country? Can you now understand why it is so important for you to take a stand for what you’ve always defended until now?”

Amid at Cartoon Brew has some scornful words for the execs at Warner Bros. Animation, who apparently have “junked the original Loonatics designs and made new ones because an 11-year-old started a petition saying he didn’t like the characters.”

I agree with much of what Amid has to say. Especially “If you truly believe in the quality and value of your product, you don’t change it every time somebody in the public raises an objection.”

But I think he’s overreacting to what seems to me clearly an attempt by those execs to spin their way into putting a good face on a PR nightmare. Nobody liked the “Loonatics” designs; they were mocked in animation-specific blogs like Cartoon Brew, more general blogs written by animation fans (like this one), and the MSM. This just gives them a day or so of getting to play that “see how we listen to the children” card.

1. No one likes a clever dick: But a lot of people liked a clever Douglas, and FilmForce has assembled a collection of rememberances of Douglas Adams by his friends and colleagues, including actors who appeared in the radio series of Hitchhiker’s, Neil Innes of Python and Rutles fame, and Stephen Fry.

If I were you I’d skip the opening paragraphs, which consist of someone trying too hard to be “Adamsesque,” but some of the rememberances are really entertaining and fun.

2. Happen to catch the Daily Show last night? If not, watch this clip. Jon Stewart is never more excellent than when he’s angry.

3. The GOP plan for Social Security isn’t going exactly well. Gee, who could have seen that coming?

4. Sounds like Lucas’s stuff to me: A Daily Kos contributor who is also a Star Wars fan nominates an excerpt from the novelization of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover for “Worst Opening Paragraph of the Year And It’s Not Even May Yet…”

He’s right, it’s enough to make you miss James Kahn.

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How’s it going? 2004 was a new record for terrorism worldwide, you say? Well, I certainly can’t think of anyone to blame for that.

At least that’s what Ink 19 editor Ian Koss thinks. Me, I just think N-uh-ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…