First he was dead wrong on the illegal and tragic catastrophe of the Iraq war and now Hitchens is wrong again. This time it's about ham. In fact the social injuction against eating pigs predates Judaic custom and originates with ancient Egypt and the close ritual association between pigs the dark scary god Set.

And @ 0:04 we note that Dr Paul is drunk.

They *were* but they're long defunked. The singer who wrote the tune is dead now. He was the father of one of my best friends in high-school and in those few hallucinogenic years of limbo post-hs.

I grew up in a really conservative 'old money' city that had, as an alternative repercussion, one of the best music things happening back in the 70s and early 80s. (The days when the people trying to harm you for living outside of normative boundaries wore either Doc Martins or motorcycle boots; when you knew the politics of your enemies by the colour of their boot-laces.)

The short story is: The folks who made it happen had kids, I went to school with those kids, and I can proudly say that if it wasn't for the parents of my mates I'd be a fooking tax lawyer or somesuch awfulness.

...well I'm sorry, he had a better avatar, he...

be so promotin' and all upvotin' your sifts...

I'm just an *isdupe and you're the authority...

...Sift you shifty siftbot baby, why you gotta treat me so baaad...so bad, so bad, so bad...

American "football" is rugby-with-autism played in body-fenders. It's more like some homoerotic Broadway choreographed over-production of a divorce litigation done up by Elton John than any sport.

Cato Institute:

Established: 1977
Founders: Edward Crane and Charles G. Koch
President: Edward Crane

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/cato-institute

Cato Institute was founded by Ed Crane with a $500,000 grant from Charles Koch, a chemical and petroleum heir who was active with Crane in the Libertarian Party.

Cato's corporate sponsors include: Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Bell Atlantic Network Services, BellSouth Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation, GTE Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Netscape Communications Corporation, NYNEX Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Viacom International, American Express, Chase Manhattan Bank, Chemical Bank, Citicorp/Citibank, Commonwealth Fund, Prudential Securities and Salomon Brothers. Energy conglomerates include: Chevron Companies, Exxon Company, Shell Oil Company and Tenneco Gas, as well as the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Foundation and Atlantic Richfield Foundation. Cato's pharmaceutical donors include Eli Lilly & Company, Merck & Company and Pfizer, Inc.

Other non-Bush Administration alumni include former board members: Rupert Murdoch and Theodore J. Forstmann, also founding chairman of Empower America, now FreedomWorks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreedomWorks

My favourite Jim-from-Taxi incident: Iggy is on vacation the entire episode. Show opens with Danza, Henner et al. playing Charades. One of the characters, standing in the middle of the shop floor, mimes out a wall the way a mime would. <snip> After end credits roll Iggy, just arriving from the airport, enters empty shop with his duffle bag and promptly thuds into the Charade "wall" and says "Now who put that there!"

It's the Steve Ballmer gene.

Joe Rogan irritates the lord fuck out of me. I don't know why. I'd like to see Chuck Zito zip his yap shut in the octagon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Zito

Now there's a spectacle.

Didn't watch the video- upvote for the perfect thumbnail.

"It's not Somalia, it's Ronpaulia!"

Trancecoach's door slams. Twenty two minutes later Trancecoach confronts his Aikido instructor at the dojo. Voices are raised. A struggle ensues. Trancecoach wrestles with his "8th dan" Aikido master. Eventually he gets the better of him when he finally pins his teacher's shoulders to the mat -- despite the fact he's only been taking Aikido for four and a half months.

If all those battles through the long centuries were about who got the choicest land, then the French win, obviously.

edit to add: Mad props to the Norwegians too.

Here's Nardwuar vs James Brown: http://videosift.com/video/Nardwuar-James-Brown

Two years ago you downvoted my sift of two otters fucking on the dock by my place.