My good friend and one of the co-hosts of Fat Robot Radio, Tony MF, has launched his new website today. He is hilarious, and his site should definitely be added to any web surfer’s rotation. His inaugural post is up now, and I’m sure there will be more exciting things to come. The internet will never, ever, be the same again.

Go check it out:

Tony MF’s Plog

I was tired this morning. I watched the Golden Globes last night, (Where, by the way, Sacha Baron Cohen gave the funniest acceptence speech I have ever heard. Do yourself a favor and seek it out.), stayed up too late, and woke up this morning bleary-eyed to snow and gray and the prospect of more snow and gray to come. I was melancholy. I looked around my bleak darkened apartment and was sure, all at once, that I was going to have a bad day. Then I saw this:

Obama to enter 2008 White House race

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois jumped in the 2008 White House race on Tuesday, promising to bring Americans together and “change our politics” with a campaign that could make him the first black president in U.S. history.

“Our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can’t tackle the big problems that demand solutions,” Obama said in a video message announcing his bid.

“We have to change our politics, and come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans,” he said.

Hard to be in a bad mood after that. I didn’t think this would happen, and now it has. Granted, it’s only and “Exploratory Committee” but that usually leads to hats and rings and red, white and blue balloons falling from the rafters. His final announcement will be on February 10th. Mark your calendars. This man is brilliant, and will become THE 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNTIED STATES. Awesome.

Oh, and Dennis Kucinich is running again. Note its failure to make national headlines.

News from yesterday:

White House: Can’t rule out attack on Iran

The White House said Sunday it is not planning military action against Iran, but refused to rule out the possibility, bucking pressure from several senators who said the administration is not authorized to do so.

Asked whether the United States is preparing for a potential military conflict with Iran, President Bush’s national security adviser Stephen Hadley told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “No, the president has said very clearly that the issues we have with Iran should be solved diplomatically.”

But, on ABC’s “This Week,” Hadley would not rule out the possibility of such an attack and would not say whether he agrees with those senators who say that the Bush administration would need congressional backing for such a move.

Huh. Well. That’s pretty scary.

What about one hasty, poorly thought out, unpopular war at a time? Eh guys? What do you say? Why not clean up the mess already made before going and starting another one? At least close the deal in Afghanistan. I’m sure it’s fun to start a war. All that posturing, and the troop movements and shock and awe, but really, isn’t it time to be responsible? When you know that you have no ability or desire to follow through? It’s like being a premature ejaculator. All that build up with no pay off.

I somehow lost yesterday’s post, which was an incredibly exciting exclusive interview with former president Warren G. Harding, conducted through internationally renounced spiritual medium Elizabeth Baron, in which we covered the staggering scandals of his administration and his numerous extramarital affairs. It was great. I unfortunately forgot to save the file, and did not post the article correctly, so this compelling and enlightening bit of American history is, sadly, lost to the ages.

Instead, I give you Frogger.

Right. So. It looks like Bush is married to the whole Iraq War thing. Last November, by casting war baiting corrupt Republicans out on their collective asses, the American people sent a clear message to the president. I paraphrase:

American People: Dude. This war? Yeah. It blows. We want this thing over. Make it happen.

Did Bush get the message? The loudest, clearest message in fifteen years? It’s hard to say. He got SOME KIND of message, but if his college grades are are any indication, he’s not so good at comprehension. (He got at 73 in Introduction to the American Political System at Yale by the way. I just love that.)

No, Bush did what he always does. He heard what he wanted to hear. He has decided, against the advice of just about everybody on the plant who knows anything about the subject, to send something on the order of 20,000 more troops into Iraq. Now I remember November. I don’t recall anybody saying anything about wanting a massive troop escalation.

I think that the problem is that Bush knows that the war in Iraq has become the yard stick by which his presidency will be measured. This means that unless he manages to pull this thing out of its monstrous tail spin, history will judge him poorly. He will go on the Warren G. Harding List of Shitty and Mediocre Presidents, and that’s worse than only being elected to one term.

Bush will give a speech tonight, so I will hold off on my finale judgment until then, but he’s never given me much reason to hope for the best, so I won’t start now. Who knows what he might say. Needless to say, if you’re in the military, you might want to stock up on postage and sun screen.

Frankly, the whole thing has gotten a little boring, or it would be, if so many people weren’t about to die.

I found this cool picture on the internet. It is a representation of the Simpsons, drawn in the Manga style. Enjoy.

The Simpsonzu by spacecoyote

I would like to point everyone over to the ALL NEW sltmonkess.com, run by one of my Fat Robot Radio Co-hosts, Brad Bugos. Loads of exciting things are apt to happen over there, including the flagship SLTM: The podcast. Episode 4 is up now, so go give it a listen. The people at SLTM the podcast have piles and piles of great music that never gets played enough, and you would really be missing something by not checking it out. Very great, very entertaining program.

Find it here: sltmonkees.com

Apparently Britney Spears likes a challenge:

Spears working to overcome negative publicity

She’s only like, I don’t know, two years too late. Are there even any genuine Britney Spears fans left, or are we as a public only interested in her for train wreck voyeurism reasons? Last week the last bastion of Britney Spears apologists closed their E-Doors. A site called World Of Brittney, which according to this article is the most popular Brittney fan site, has had enough.

The “webmaster,” Ruben Garay announced: “As Britney keeps losing her identity and credibility with fans and industry people, so is WorldofBritney. I would therefore like to announce the permanent shut down of WorldofBritney.com.”

That’s it. If her creepy-grown-men-who-like-Brittney-Spears fan base has deteriorated, what’s left? All the ten year old girls who liked her in 1999 seventeen now, and seventeen year olds don’t listen to Brittney Spears. While Brittney was partying and courting scumbags, she unwittingly made the transition from Famous to Notorious, and that’s a hard thing to come back from.

Plus did you see those naked pictures of her? Eeek.

The Democratic Party takes control of Congress today. I am nervous, and hopeful. I want the people to see that the Democratic Party is one committed a government that works for the people, instead of one that works for wealthy and the well connected, when it works at all. Let’s be DEMOCRATS, and not just Republicans with cheaper suits and union money. I hope we don’t screw this up but, well, we might. This is the sort of opportunity that, if blown, could damage our party for years and years to come. We’ll see I guess.

I wonder if they’ll hang this guy too:

Guard questioned about video of Hussein execution

From the article:

Iraq’s national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who was an official observer at the hanging, told CNN on Wednesday that the execution was “not a sectarian lynching” but that some of the behavior in the execution chamber was “unacceptable.”

“I believe the whole process has been infiltrated by people who have a vested interest in escalating the violence,” al-Rubaie said. “They wanted to promote a political cause for themselves or for their groups or for their leader or whatever, but I believe the Iraqi government has done the proper thing.”

Right, because we wouldn’t want the death of Saddam Hussein to be exploited for political reasons.

One other interesting bit from the article:

The execution would have been done differently had the United States been in charge, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.

“But that was not our decision,” U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said during a Baghdad news conference. “That was the government of Iraq’s decision. This is a sovereign nation and they’re going to learn from each thing they do.”U.S. officials reportedly tried to delay the execution, fearing it would fuel perceptions the death of the former Iraqi dictator was more about Shiite retribution than about justice.

If we have so little say in what goes on that our security concerns can by summarily ignored, then why are we continuing to help them secure the country. Just how independent are they? I would like a reasonable answer to that question. It’s not like this is the first time this sort of thing has come up.