Donita’s Debut Podcast

I’ve been editing the column Donita Sparks does called The Spin I’m In on Firedoglake.com every Friday since it began in June and just yesterday we finally launched her first podcast. We had been planning to launch this for a while but just now got around to doing so.

It went very well, we had 68 plays according to our page on Odeo as of this writing. Not bad, not a huge number but still not bad for a podcast that no one knows about yet in great numbers. Maybe a little promotion will boost that number. I urge you to check it out regardless, she has an interesting set of tunes she picked this week.

Friday Night Videos

So this second installment of Friday Night Videos I figured I would expand the post a little and give you more than one video to make this a worthwhile time spent on ye olde blog here. There is no real rhyme or reason to my tune selection so don’t read anything into that other than these are tunes I felt strong enough about to share with folks. All of these have the FiniFinito/DJ Joh Seal of Approval and are videos I think a person with a modicum of musical taste would enjoy. With that in mind, I give you the following 5 videos beneath the fold.

Students for a Free Tibet

I had an opportunity to have a conversation with my friend Matt Browner-Hamlin about the work he does as an organizer for Students for a Free Tibet, one of the leading organizations in the Tibet independence movement. Matt just got back recently from a trip to India where SFT held a training camp in Dharmsala, India. Use the Odeo Flash player below to listen to the interview.

Sean Hannity’s Gay Dating Service

Conservative Fox News and Fox Radio talk show host Sean Hannity has a dating site on the Internet named HANNIDATE which has been the subject of much comedy for several months on many blogs and talk shows. One gay journalist decided to post a profile on the site and received over 5000 profile views and wrote about his experiences with the site. Hilarity ensues.

“…and margaritas on the portal at sunset, a must!”

I am up very late at night as is my usual custom, and sometimes, even in our hundreds of channels universe, there just isn’t anything to watch on TV that will guarantee a drowsy effect for me. This inevitably leads me to watch whatever catches my eye as I surf channels and tonight is no different, I settled in on a program called What You Get For The Money on HGTV.

These sort of shows are the second or third generation descendants of the old Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous show hosted by Robin Leech that I used to watch and laugh at growing up broke as a joke as I did. My friends and I in high school made a drinking game out of the show and would get seriously intoxicated in the process.

Lying 101

The first lesson of lying is to never tell a lie that is so obvious as to be a farce upon it leaving your lips. The Preznit today went on This Week on ABC and gave the worst performance yet of his illustrious career. He actually had the cojones to say “Well, listen. We’ve never been ’stay the course’ in Iraq” when George Stephanopolous asked him about James Baker’s plan to develop an Iraq strategy somewhere between cut and run and stay the course. Unbelievable. Think Progress has video and more.

What If?

I read a lot of blogs and have been seeing a triumphant strain of blogging taking place lately that has not been seen…well, ever. Blogs came into their own as an overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning medium during the darkest days for the party in ages in 2002-2005. Blogs have always been around in one form or another since the web was unveiled, but its really been in the last 8 years that the medium really took off. With the Bushies in charge for the last 6 years, this has had a profound effect on the psychology of the average resident of Left Blogtopia.

Strange Bedfellows

What do the ACLU, People For the American Way, John Birch Society and right wing ideologue Pat Buchanan have in common? They’ve all publicly condemned the Military Commisions Act of 2006, aka the Constitution Killer. Political Cortex has a post up about the John Birch Society’s public statement issued concerning the atrocious legislation which the Cheney Administratiion signed into law this week.

I have seen more organizations and individuals come together to condemn this latest maneuver to crap on the principles of liberal democracy by Chimpy and his gang of thieves than I ever expected would get together.  I guess he is a uniter, not a divider after all. Does anyone actually think that overt fascism is not around the corner? I fully expect the next couple of years to see some dramatic changes in our society. Why not wield power when you have it? Maybe I’ll get sent to a detention facility in a warmer climate when they come for my rebellious ass.

Friday Night Videos: Brazilian Girls – Jique

I spent a large chunk of the 80s going out with friends on Friday night to football games or parties or what have you, then coming home late to find the late night video programs Night Flight on USA and Friday Night Videos on NBC. There were other programs like that out there too, like Night Tracks on TBS and of course MTV was where the whole thing got started, but the era I remember most was when MTV first started getting away from playing videos and these shows picked up the slack.

Republican Induced Schizophrenia and Treatment Options

I have an online friend in the financial world named Ari who is a currency trader that sent me an article I’d like to share with people because it refers to one of the symptoms of a mental illness Ari and I refer to as Republican Induced Schizophrenia. In an article written by Robert Kiyosaki for Yahoo Finance, the Last Days of the Dollar is the subject of probably the best explanation for how our currency trading system operates as I have ever seen written.