Separated at Birth II

Remember a couple of years ago when I did the Separated at Birth with Sarah Palin and Liz Lemon and then Saturday Night Live picked up on my joke and used it in their little skit show for the next 8 weeks?

Well, SNL, here's your new opening bit:

President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court Elena Kagan...


...and former SNL cast member Jon Lovitz...

tagged: Separated at birth, Elena Kagen, Jon Lovitz, politics, pop culture, Saturday Night Live

YouTube Tuesday: Ain't It the Truth

By now you've probably heard that the country has lost one of the brightest cultural luminaries of the last century the other day.

Lena Horne was a tremendous singer and artist and she used her well-deserved celebrity to champion civil rights equality even at the risk of her own career. She had a sense of class and distinction that is sadly lacking in most of today's pseudo celebrities.

Horne wasn't a pop culture giant while I was growing up. Still, a person of my generation had a good chance of seeing her perform on the television box, and more importantly hearing her and being exposed to her music. It makes me sad that she is gone (though she had a long and successful life) and that artists like her are a dying breed -- giving way to the Lady Gagas of the world.

Life is short, short brother
Ain't it the truth
And there is no other
Ain't it the truth
You've got to rock that rainbow
While you've still got your youth
Ain't it the solid truth

tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, music, movie, Lena Horne, Lady Gaga, Ain't It the Truth

Day at the museum

Our family celebrated Mother's Day on Sunday with a trip to one of the best cultural attractions in the metro area.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was hoppin'. A lot of people had the same idea. It was a bit gloomy outside on a cool and breezy day, but not too bad to go out and enjoy a nice walk though the Nelsen's sculpture park.

But the art and attractions in the museum were shining. We arrived around 2 p.m. and it was already busy with crowds of people showing up to view the amazing modern art in the new Bloch Building. One of my favorite pieces was Mark Rothko's Untitled No. 11, 1963, a piece (as most Rothkos are) that must be seen in person to fully appreciate.

One of the proudest moments for me was when we were browsing through the European art galleries when my 7-year-old daughter, an aspiring artist herself, recognized and named the Claude Monet painting.

Undoubtedly, most patrons came to museum on Sunday for the opening of the newly renovated Egyptian Galleries.

Kansas City welcomes Meretites! Exciting new Egyptian galleries will feature an elaborate and complete funerary assemblage from the tomb of a 2,300-year-old noblewoman, Meretites, which translated means Beloved by her Father.

Visitors will have the rare opportunity to view a spectacular inner coffin and outer coffin from middle Egypt, both decorated with hieroglyphics and images of gods and goddesses. The collection includes a gilded mask and protective body plates, plus intricately carved blue and green figurines called shabtis, which were intended as workers in the afterlife.

Their website says there was a fee to view the new gallery, but they didn't charge us anything. We gladly mad a donation since, again, this is an incredibly worthy local attraction.

I didn't get a picture of the mummy in the new display. Too dark, and I didn't want to use my flash.

But I did get a shot of this 2200-year-old Assyrian relief...It's a image of a winged genie fertilizing a date tree and is inscribed with cuneiform markings telling about the conquests of Assyrian monarch Ashurnasirpal II of Nimrud.

With the weather going into a cloudy/rainy pattern, I highly recommend you make a trip to the Nelson and reacquaint yourself with the great collections. Maybe even buy yourself a membership...

tagged: art, museum, Nelson-Atkins, Egyptian, Assyrian, Mark Rothko, Claude Monet, Mother's Day, Kansas City

Random Photo XXVIII: Yard bird

I spent some time on the patio the other day, tracking the comings and goings of another colorful feathered friend. It's hard to catch these guys in flight, especially with all of the trees and shrubs in our yard. But it's fun watching them do their various bird things.

tagged: Random, Photo, blue jay, bird, Kansas City, Johnson County, spring

Bullitt list -- 05.05.10

Today's category:
Hope & Change update

I remarked once upon a time that the famous Hope and Change campaign that swept the current president into office on a tide of schmaltz and triteness wouldn't actually change anything. Well, I've been seeing some headlines lately that indicate that things actually have been changing...

..for the worse.

• One of the things Comrade Obama promised to "change" was the general lack of transparency among government agencies. After all, we're supposed to have a government of the people, by the people, for the investment banks people. Hard to achieve that when the people aren't allowed to know what's going on with the government.
  
  Luckily, Obama put his best people on the task of increasing government transparency. That's why, after a year and a half, federal agencies are NOT more transparent.
  
  In fact, some agencies in the Obama Administration are using trumped up exceptions to Freedom of Information requests more than they did in the previous year.

  Major agencies cited the "deliberative process" exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush's final full budget year... Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.

  I guess we'll just have to rely on the Ministry of Truth to tell us what we need to know.
  
  
• But hey, at least we still have a free press in our country, right? In fact, we have the most open journalistic culture in the world. Our reporters have more access to more government officials than any other country in the world, free or otherwise, right?
  
  Well, not so fast my friend. According to the annual report from Freedom House, press freedom around the world declined for an 8th consecutive year, and the United States press now ranks 24th in press freedoms (PDF). And that's before factoring in recent events wherein CEOs of major U.S. corporations who lost their latest techie toy pull strings to have law enforcement authorities harass poor, hard-working journalists.
  


• And speaking of law enforcement authorities, the Obama Administration has has the dubious distinction of overseeing a new record for people under wiretap surveillance. Wired recently reported a 26 percent jump in police wiretapping.

  Courts authorized 2,376 criminal wiretap orders in 2009, with 96 percent targeting mobile phones in drug cases, according to the report. ... Not one request for a wiretap was turned down.
  
  Each wiretap caught the communications of an average of 113 people, meaning that 268,488 people had text messages or phone calls monitored through the surveillance in 2009, a new record. Only 19 percent of the intercepted communications were incriminating...

  This sort of thing shouldn't be surprising given Obama's history of supporting domestic spying. Still, you might want to be careful who you criticize when you're on the phone with your crazy, conspiracy theory uncle.


• Not that you're worried about the government spying on you. Why would they care who you are? As long as you mind your own business, go to your job every day, pay your mortgage, do what the authorities tell you, pay your taxes.... oops. You forgot to mail your tax return, didn't you. Well, I guess there's a satellite-based missile with your name on it...
  
  



• Okay, maybe saying there's a satellite-based missile with your name on it is a bit of an exaggeration. Because despite the spying, censorship and opaque bureaucratic machinations, if there's one thing our government never does it's assassinate its citizens.
  
  Well, almost never. It turns out the Obama administration has ordered a hit on a U.S. citizen, effectively approving a death penalty sentence without a judge or jury or due process of law.

  The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them.

  Kind of surprising that there haven't been any protests or marches against the administration's abuse of a citizen's civil liberties. Maybe it's because al-Awlaki is a legal US citizen and not a illegal alien.
  

tagged: Bullitt, hitman, Obama, freedom, hope, change, Anwar al-Awlaki, spying, wire tap

YouTube Tuesday: Tears of a clone

I like this short film from the Independent Online Cinema team in London who imagine a dystopian not-too-distant future when clones, and clones of clones, struggle for a sense of identity and the last remaining green goo.

IOC shows that you can have pretty high production value for web-based video and still not break the bank.

Let me know what you think.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, movie, short film, clone, dystopia, Independent Online Cinema

Racing Arizona

Politicians and their sheeple have done a great job this year of bringing back race as a wedge issue.

We were all really concerned that once a black president was elected we would all finally move beyond race and racism, but it's a relief that they have recognized that race as a political wedge issue is still very valuable.

Just look at how well it has been used. If you think we're over taxed, it's because you're racist. If you think the government is spending money on the wrong thing, you're a racist. If you disagree with passing a law mandating 30 million new customers for the insurance industry, it must be because you are a racist.

If you think hundreds of teens should be home studying or working at a productive job on Friday nights instead of rioting on the Country Club Plaza? Well son, you're a damn racist.

Yes sir. Despite all of the hope and change, the race card is alive and well in politics today. Just look at all of mileage the race baiters are getting out of this new Arizona Illegal Immigration law.

Before even reading or understanding the law at all, Koolaid drinkers flew off the handle calling it unfair and racist. I'm no lawyer, and I haven't gone through the legislation with a fine toothed comb, but my friend R.Sherman is, and he has. He's a great guy despite being a lawyer and he points out that the Arizona law essentially takes current federal law and makes it Arizona State law, except that the Arizona law is more lax than federal law.

Look, I'm on record as being pretty status quo on illegal immigration.I certainly don't condone it anymore than I condone any other illegal activity. But then again, of all the problems we have in our country, I don't think illegal immigration is the worst.

To the people who are acting all outraged about the supposed racial injustice of the Arizona law, I question your sincerity. I don't think you're really worried about the rights of illegal immigrants. More likely, your worried about your voting blocks and creating a wedge issue.

That's to bad because there are real, legitimate reasons to not like the Arizona law. Just from what I've read I don't think it's racist, I just don't like the idea of giving the police more excuses to hassle us. Frankly, I think we're putting ourselves at more and more risk when we give the government more reasons to stop us and demand identification.

I mean let's face it. The human rights train left the station long ago. We've already pretty much established that the Bill of Rights is more of a punchline than a protection against government abuses.

But rather than trying to limit government abuses, we've done everything we can as a society to encourage it. We basically said "Here Uncle Same, take half my income. Take care of my neighbors so I don't have to. While you're at take care of my health and retirement planning as well. What? You say you need to read my emails and listen to my phone calls so that you can keep me from doing something that it bad for me? Well, okay. You know best."

And now you're worried about abuses in Arizona? Well, you should be. But as I've said before, we have ourselves to blame. When we put too much faith in "the authorities" to look out for us you can't be too surprised when those abuses inevitably occur. If we make the government collectively responsible for everything, then the governed aren't individually responsible for anything.

You can't have a nanny state without also having a police state.

tagged: race, politics, Arizona, immigration, law, illegal

Random Photo XXVII: Cardinal

This guy and his wife have made my backyard and the backyard of two of my neighbors their home for the last few years. Nice to see that they survived the winter.

tagged: Random, Photo, cardinal, bird, Kansas City, Johnson County, spring

Eat the rich

There was something I wanted to keyboard about a couple of weeks ago, but because I've got a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day, I didn't have time to get to it.

That's what happens with us salary types sometimes. Gotta punch the clock so you can bring home the Benjamins and, more importantly, pay the taxes without which everyone would get sick and die, starve and die, not have roads and die, or just generally freak the fuck out and die.

Ah, yes. That's what it was. I wanted to keyboard something about taxes. It was around April 15, Tax Day ... or as I call it, Pull Down My Pants and Slide On The Ice Day.

At the time there was a pretty concerted pro-tax increase public relations effort put forth by... well, who knows but the source was probably somewhere deep in the bowls of our bloated federal bureaucracy. Even a media avoider like me couldn't dodge the bevy of stories featuring "rich" people who want to pay more taxes. I first heard the NPR version of the story, but it was also pretty common in print and on blogs.

And I take the stories at face value. I mean, if the Washington Post reports …

"I'm in favor of higher taxes on people like me," declared Eric Schoenberg, who is sitting on an investment banking fortune. He complained about "my absurdly low tax rates."

… I'll take their word that this guy Schoenberg exists and that he wants to pay more taxes. According to the reporting, he's not alone.

But there's something fishy about such a sentiment. For one thing, what people like Schoenberg are saying (if they actually exist) is that they want the government to raise taxes on other people. This is a pretty common liberal viewpoint. And by liberal, I mean the current Democrats and Republicans who seem to think we can continue buying everything for everybody without having to eventually pay for it.

That's all well and good. I've pretty much started to come to grips with the fact that the battle is over and the forces of fiscal restraint have lost. Americans (those who bother to pay attention anymore) have discovered that it's easier to vote themselves other people's money and outsource their social responsibility for their neighbors to the government.

I just find it a bit silly that they feel like they have to wage a PR war to assuage their guilt. They're trying to convince me that raising taxes will be a good thing. That even the rich people want their taxes raised because they want to pay more taxes. Okay. Fine. Let the good times roll.

But here's the thing. If rich people want to pay more in taxes, they can. Now. Without any acts of congress or anything. If you're a rich bastard, you don't have to shelter all of your earnings. You don't have to hide your assets. You don't have to take the millions of deductions on your tax return.

Hell, I bet you could even write out a check for $50,000, take it to your local IRS office and just plain donate it to your government that is cash strapped because of its investments in General Motors and insane foreign wars. You'd probably even get a tax deduction for your donation.

So yeah rich people. If you're feeling guilty about not paying enough taxes, then by all means pay more. Just don't expect me to buy in to the BS that I'm getting a good value for my tax dollar.

tagged: Rich, income tax, policy, General Motors, government, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett

YouTube Tuesday: Beck

Well, it looks like nobody is going to respond to my request for free tickets to tomorrow's Jeff Beck concert at Starlight.

There was a time when I wouldn't really think twice about drop a couple of c-notes to go see one of the last true guitar heroes. But for now, my economic priorities are firmly placed on a Supermodel Wife and two beautiful daughters. So for now, I'll be satisfied watching YouTube videos of the master at work.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, movie, music, guitar, Jeff Beck, Starlight Theatre