"‘‘He pushes himself into madness,’’ says Tomaz Kovsca, a journalist for Slovene television. ‘‘He pushes too far.’’ Rajko Petek, a 35-year-old fellow soldier and friend who is on Robic’s support crew, says: ‘‘What Jure does is frightening. Sometimes during races he gets off his bike and walks toward us in the follow car, very angry.’’
What do you do then?
Petek glances carefully at Robic, standing a few yards off. ‘‘We lock the doors,’’ he whispers."
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When gravity is not quite gone, but, rather, decides to frack with you. (The grass on that patch of earth is really nice, dude. Forget them sandles and just sway with the rotation).
There but for the grace of not having a VIP ticket go I.
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People that make living on this dirtball endurable:
"Margaret, please tell Howard that I love him because he loves you. But that is about all the reaching across the aisle that I can handle. A few years back, millions of people across this nation and across the globe marched for peace. George Bush ignored us and we had to endure his lazy ass being in the White House for eight years.
So now a black man named Barack Obama, elected by the will of the people, has decided to fight for the poor, and work for world peace… and a bunch of white guys who think Fox really is News just can’t stand it.
Well, they can kiss my ass because I am tired of their belly aching."
"Dick Cheney has had four heat attacks. He underwent four-vessel coronary artery bypass grafting in 1988, coronary artery stenting in November 1994, and urgent coronary balloon angioplasty in December 1994. He has been treated for popliteal artery aneurysms, deep-vein thrombosis, atrial fibrillation, and most recently back problems. I wonder what his out-of-pocket expenses were. I wonder if he even cares?
Universal Healthcare in the wealthiest country on earth should have been a no brainer. And speaking of a no brainer…"
"Margaret, I know it has been a few years since we last made the trip across the pond, but I was wondering if anyone is still alive in Europe? I watched a little bit of Fox News this weekend and I’m afraid everyone in Europe might have died from lack of access to healthcare. What a shame. They had such delicious food and beautiful art."
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Telecoms are coming out swinging on Net Neutrality. Our job is to keep the heat on our Congress people.
"This kind of discrimination threatens one of the most distinctive features of the Internet: the fact that there is no easy way to discriminate among different kinds of content, just as the electrical grid doesn’t ask whether your TV set is made by Sony or Panasonic. But, in recent years, that distinctive feature has been threatened. We now live in a world where the technology for watching what people do with their data packets is sophisticated enough to give a company like Comcast the ability to decide which packets can be shuffled into slower or faster traffic lanes, depending on what its business model dictates. And, in addition to having the technical ability to discriminate, Internet providers now have the legal authority to do so. In the 2005 Brand X decision, the Supreme Court ruled that cable broadband providers were not a 'telecommunications service' but an 'information service,' and, therefore, were freer to keep competitors off the network."
"WASHINGTON — Show me some civility, Republicans cried Friday after a Missouri congressman speaking on the House floor was caught on microphone apparently cussing out a fellow Missourian.
Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., had just finished addressing his Republican colleague Todd Akin Thursday.
Skelton then turned to the side and muttered 'stick it up your ass.'"
"LONDON — Parents should give their teenage children a weekly alcohol allowance at home, to help them avoid falling into the country's notorious binge-drinking culture, a study recommended Friday.
It said banning teenagers from drinking alcohol risked pushing them to buy cheap booze on the street and get into more trouble.
Health authorities have long sought to promote a more 'continental' European attitude to drinking, as opposed to the heavy boozing which brings chaos to many town centres on weekend nights.
The result of the drinking culture was reflected in the new study's findings: some 30 percent of teenagers surveyed said they have experienced violence while drunk, and 12.5 percent reported having had sexual encounters they regretted."
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A website for liars. Aren't there about a billion of these in existence?
"Margaret, I haven’t laughed so hard since Katie Couric interviewed Sarah Palin. A few thousand white folks called in sick to work last week so they could parade around the nation’s capital on Saturday and Fox News declares a revolution is underway. My goodness. I don’t know which is more sad – the fact that they couldn’t spell half the words written on their illegible signs or that they all left their white hoods at home. Bring the hippies back. Their protests were much more entertaining.
After a preview screening last week (at which I did a Q&A session with Michael), he came over to my home for a late night bite. Over lasagna, he told me about an incident that occurred while he was filming that exemplifies how the economic crisis cannot be looked at through a left vs right prism.
It happened while he and his crew were shooting the climax of the movie, where Michael decides to mark Wall Street as a crime scene, putting up yellow police tape around some of the financial district's towers of power.
While unfurling the tape in front of a "too big to fail" bank, he became aware of a group of New York's finest approaching him. Moore has a long history of dealing with policemen and security guards trying to shut him down, but in this case he knew he was, however temporarily, defacing private property. And his shooting schedule didn't leave room for a detour to the local jail. So, as the lead officer came closer, Moore tried to deflect him, saying: "Just doing a little comedy here, officer. I'll be gone in a minute, and will clean up before I go."
The officer looked at him for a moment, then leaned in: "Take all the time you need." He nodded to the bank and said, "These guys wiped out a lot of our Police Pension Funds." The officer turned and slowly headed back to his squad car. Moore wanted to put the moment in his film, but realized it could cost the cop his job, and decided to leave it out. "When they've lost the police," he told me, "you know they're in trouble."
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White colonizers. Golf course cut from a jungle inhabited by unruly monkeys.
Nothing racists about Roy Blunt, folks. Just your run of the mill policy disagreements.
Congressman Blunt then went on to tell an anecdote which suggested that life in Washington, for GOP members today, is comparable to the lot of imperial British agents in India who had to contend with monkeys running amok on a golf course that the colonial occupiers had carved out of the verdant Indian jungle. There was a problem, the Missouri Representative explained; monkeys would come out of the jungle, grab golf balls, and throw them about. Amidst swelling laughter from his audience Roy Blunt narrated,
"I could go into great and long detail about how many things they did to try and eliminate the 'monkey problem.' But they never got it done, so finally this golf course and this golf course only, they passed a rule and the rule was - you have to play the ball where the monkey throws it. [audience laughter swells] And that is the rule in Washington all the time."
It seemed like a direct window into the psyche of the revanchist wing of the GOP; politics is a golf game and unruly Democrat "monkeys" have swarmed out of the jungle to disrupt the play. Since it is impractical to "eliminate" the monkeys, accommodations will have to be made. Republicans will now "play the ball where the monkey throws it."
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I may be frustrated over some policy inaction with Obama, but it is always good to be reminded that elections do have consequences and because the right guy was elected, good things like this happen.
Only a commitment, though. Much work to be done to ensure Net Neutrality.
"The fight for Net Neutrality took a big step forward on Monday with the chair of the Federal Communications Commission announcing plans to expand the rules to protect a free and open Internet.
In a speech at the Brookings Institution, Julius Genachowski said the FCC must be a 'smart cop on the beat” preserving Net Neutrality against increased efforts by providers to block services and applications over both wired and wireless connections."
