Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Girl-God Raises the Yamato

An episode of the previously-blogged anime Kamichu took us rather by surprise. Girl-god Yurie’s spirit form travels to the bottom of the Pacific ocean to raise the spirit of the Japanese battleship Yamato, for an elderly man who left the crew before the ship’s sinking in 1945. I’ve spliced a few scenes together.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUL07/KamichuYamato.flv 425 240]

What surprised us was how the episode rejoices in the legend of the ship — the largest ever built — without political overtones or, for that matter, ever mentioning WWII. The PBS program NOVA has a good section about the Yamato on its Web site. The old man in the cartoon who rhapsodizes about sailing on the Yamato says he was born in 1920, so either he’s supposed to be well into his 80’s, or the show takes place some time ago.

Brooks No Denial

The lame-brained Republican political commentator David Brooks is always good at raising my blood pressure, which is sometimes too low anyway. Look at this idiotic comment he made on The News Hour:

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I’ll just tell you that, in private conversations months ago, Republican senators, senior Republican senators were anxious to move away from the White House, to move towards some sort of withdrawal. Now they’re not talking that way. They’re talking, “We’ve got to stick with the president.” And why? Two words: Harry Reid.

It’s because they detest the way he’s drawn the line. He’s drawn the line that said, “You’re either for a certain withdrawal right away, or starting with 120 days or whatever, or you’re with the president.” And they hate those two choices. And they’d rather not be in those choices, but Reid is the majority leader. He sets the parameters of the choices, and that’s the dilemma they’re in.

Sheesh. Always, always the Neocon supporters, mostly now reduced to being apologists due to the undeniably total failure of the Bush administration, still insist on constructing convoluted logic that blames Democrats for everything. Yeah, it’s Harry Reid’s fault that Republican politicians can’t distance themselves from Bush. Ridiculous.

Colbert’s Love Regrets

Compliments of my FiOS DVR, I’ve spliced together the end of Tuesday night’s Colbert Report with the beginning of Wednesday’s show, so you can see a gag he carries over between them.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUL07/ColbertFilibuster.flv 400 300]

Colbert On Demand

I’ve made mention that the one weak spot in Verizon’s otherwise fabulous FiOS TV service is the free video-on-demand selection. But heck, they’re new and have only 500,000 customers so far. Some bright spots in the free line-up are clips from Comedy Central.

The first few moments of the video has the intro. The reference Colbert makes to a previous appearance by his guest goes back to last October, during my first attempts at embedding video.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/JUL07/ColbertFonda.flv 400 300]