Late Summer Stall

As usual, things have been kind of been stalling out here a Cheshire Prospects.  Again.  And I'm sorry.  Again.  I'm moving at the end of the week, and combined with lack of access to a reliable computer during my spare time... le sigh, I haven't been doing a good job.  I hope that next week will see a little more production, and then hopefully a bit of a write up about my little vacation to the Canadattic in a few weeks.  After that point, I'll be back on payroll and who knows what'll happen then.

But for the time being, I'm sorry for a lack of new material and exploration and entertainment.  I'll try to dig in a little and find the creative vein.

In the words of Biggie...

...it was all a dream.

Go.  See.  It.

Regulate this

Via TPM, House Minority Leader John Boehner thinks "having a moratorium on new federal regulations is a great idea."  He'd like to put this stay on for a year.

Whew.  Where to start?

It's not like making regulations is more or less the day to day business of legislators and the agencies of the federal government.  Oh wait, it is.  So Rep. Boehner wants to more or less excuse himself from, you know, working.  So he can focus on more important things - like pandering to the tea partiers and trying to get Obama out in the next presidential election.

What an ingenious stunt - I mean, bonus points for playing it like this is some sort of actual plan and not just an extension of the Republican obstructianism that's become the primary tactic of the minority party while crying foul for the President and his party to not attempting more "bipartisan outreach."

And sure, while you wouldn't be putting a moratorium on emergency regulations like those on the oil or gas industries right now (the only sane sounding thing in this jig, which probably only sounds sane because of how ridiculous the rest of it is), you want to halt any of the regulations being laid out for health care reform, or financial reform, or energy reform, or environmental reform because, of course, that's all the stuff your side had been losing on in the past 18 months.

And sure, it's not like a lack of regulations and appropriate oversight was what caused this.  Or this.  Or this.  Or any of this.

John Boehner is an "ideas man."

No, there isn't.

To answer TNC's question - he hits the nail on the head.

IMPROV EVERYWHERE

... does some seriously funny and impressive ish.  Hat tips to Patrick Appel filling in over at The Daily Dish and to my buddy Dan from over at The Eighth Samurai:

Where's my damn flying car?

Until then, welcome to the next generation of parking garages thanks to our friends in Budapest:



(Hat Tip: Chris Bodenner filling in for Sully)

New kid on the writer's block

My good friend and former teammate Max Esposito has a new blog to accompany his already awesome website of his original photography, video, and artwork.  Max is probably one of the most creative and phenomenally funny people I know, so give him a little bloggy-love traffic on his site and check it out.

Below is his most recent video:


the 4th: a four minute portrait from Max Esposito on Vimeo.

Video of the Day

First (maybe only) time I'm going to get to say "I knew this girl way back when, before she went viral"...



(Hat Tip: April)

Hail the Emperor

ESPN is reporting that George Steinbrenner passed away this morning at the age of 80.  Despite my deep-seeded hatred of the New York Yankees, one has to respect and pay tribute to a man who changed the way the game of baseball was played and viewed in both the country and across the globe.  But beyond that, it is his charity that he should be known and most greatly remembered for.  May he pass knowing that he did what all of us should strive to do - change the world.

In much the same way as the ancient Greeks, let Bostonians and Red Sox Nation hold their siege of New York until the funeral games are over.  And what better funeral games than the 2010 All-Star Game in Anaheim tonight.

Final World Cup 2010 Post, I Promise

First of all congrats to Spain on winning their first World Cup.  Anyone who watched the game has to admit that Spain was certainly the better team and played a better game.  For a while though I thought it might have been an Olympic year and we were watching the diving competition, BA-ZING. But really, anytime you get to see a team win something it's never won before, it's pretty cool.  Even if it gives Asha a heart attack.

Via my buddy Duff's status on the Book, this quote is pretty good: 

"The Dutch are now Europe’s version of the NFL's Buffalo Bills, having gone to the finals three times and lost them all. Or, perhaps Holland is the new Cleveland, given the whining and poor sportsmanship with which they greeted tonight’s loss."

And speaking of Clevelanders, via Elysse, it seems some people are having a hard time giving up World Cup drivel, aka, Paul the Octopus.

I think the only fair way is settle the dispute of the rights to Paul (besides possession being 9/10th of the law, so you have that going Germany) is to give Paul one last choice - put the choosing-contraption in the tank with each of the countries claiming a right to him and let him pick where he wants to retire to.  I mean, the octopus picked the World Cup games right, the least you could do is give him his psychically-induced free will back.  It could be a Disney moment, like the freeing of the Genie at the end of Aladdin.

(Photo Credit: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)

UPDATE: I said last post, but I never said last update.  Yeah loopholes. D. Will has a good recap of the tournament over at Discount Thoughts & Opinions.

The New Guard

It doesn't make a whole lot of people happy - except for Asha - but I'm really glad that a team that has never won a World Cup will be winning one this year.  Congratulations to both the Netherlands and Spain on making it to the final, and to Germany and Uruguay on their great runs.

And GO ORANJE!

Ultimatum

Okay - listen Pennsylvania.  I know I have no way of making you do this, but I thought it was best I let you know and you can decide how to best go forward with it for yourself.  I don't want to sound mean or anything but you need to hear this.

I know this whole global warming thing is throwing you for a loop. Hell, the whole planet is getting messed up.  And I know most of it is our fault - the BP thing, the pollution, the wars - the list goes on and on.

But for real, you need to make up your mind about this weather thing.  Four feet of snow or 100+ degree days.  You can't have both.  Pick a side.  I'll respect your choice either way.  But I froze my ass off this past winter shoveling you out, and now I sweat when I'm sitting still in this heat.  Pick a side.  Coke or Pepsi.  Celtics or Lakers.  But I'm through with you playing it both ways.

Happy Independence Day everyone!

Mr. Jefferson and friends:

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

"I don't believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein or Superman..."

So someone explain to me how if this guy were walking around in the Rocky Mountains with a pistol, sword, dagger, plastic handcuffs, a Bible, and pot saying he was hot on the trail of a notorious criminal, would we not nearly unanimously consider him to be seriously and mentally deranged?  We wouldn't call him an American Hero, right?

Listen, I don't like Osama bin Laden.  I don't think most people do.  And I can't wait for the day that he's brought to justice.  But Gary Brooks Faulkner is no hero.  The guy's brother compares him to a Terminator.  This guy over at The Huffington Post compares him to Superman or Batman, and that even the greatest of superheroes have their psychological flaws.  Except they neglect to take in the important point that NONE OF THESE CHARACTERS ARE REAL.

Vigilantism is not "the American way of dealing out justice."  It's the imagined, fictional way we do American justice.  Just like how this guy is living in a fictional world where he got close to killing bin Laden.