Quicker than 30 Seconds - For ADD Blogexplosion addicts

Attention all Blogexplosion folks. Welcome. I found a nice web based publication that takes about 30 seconds or less to divert your attention from useless blogs while you wait to click for another.

The publication is called Right Hand Pointing. Good shorts (poetry, stories, etc....). Check it out.

Moral Outrage

Still reading Cornel West - Democracy Matters. Anyone else out there reading it?

I found two very interesting quotes and I am going to do them in reverse pagination order, just for fun:

[on page 103] The moral outrage provoked by the arrogant militaristic policies, pro-rich tax cuts, and authoritarian excesses of the Bush administration arise out of this deep well of democratic commitment and are a hopeful sign that a democratizing resurgence may be underway. And it is neither naive nor quixotic to talk about a democratic awakening in the face of the corruption shot through our political and economic system. Our history shows that stirring the deep commitment to democratic values and mandates does make a difference. But we must not confuse this democratic commitment with flag-waving patriotism. The former is guided by common virtues forged by ordinary citizens, the latter by martial ideals promoted by powerful elites. Democratic commitment confronts American hypocrisy and mendacity in the name of public interest; flag-waving patriotism promotes American innocence and purity in the name of national glory.


[and back to page 77] American self-confidence, he [Ralph Waldo Emerson] argued, should be grounded not in a narrow chauvinistic claim about the superiority of the American way but rather in a mature affirmation of America's gifts to the world as well as candid acknowledgement of the "most unhandsome part of our condition." Cheap American patriotism not only reflects an immaturity and insecurity, he warned, but also is an adolescent defense mechanism that reveals a fear to engage the world and learn from others. Narrow nationalism is a handmaiden of imperial rule, he argues - it keeps the populace deferential and complacent. Hence it abhors critics and dissenters like Emerson who unsettle and awaken the people.

The willing shill, defined and exposed

Spank you very much Ann Coulter.

The Lovely Mister Hoess

This just in from the local rag. New material forthcoming from the folks doing the interviewing /interrogating before and during the Neuremburg trials.

According to the text, Rudolph Hoess said: "I don't know what you mean about being upset about these things because I didn't personally murder anybody. I was just the director of the extermination program in Auschwitz.''

There was/is no shortage of rationalizations available to those who would like to think they are going to heaven because god is on their side as they perpetrate heinous crimes.

Great Voter Dissaffection - or sub title: Why more people watched American Idol than voted in the Election

I found a post from CW via blogexplosion who raised the point that more people sat their butts in front of a television to watch American Idol the other night than voted in the 2004 election. I wonder when the voting comes to pass for our next AI, how much it will exceed the number of people who cared about who was going to plot out our domestic and international agenda for the coming four (really, less than that now) years.

Believe it, or not, Cornel West speaks to the great voter disaffection as follows in his tremendous work, "Democracy Matters."

Starting on page 64:

"To many, our democratic system seems so broken that they have simply lost faith that their participation could really matter. The politics of self-interest and catering to narrow special interests is so dominant that so many ask themselves, Why vote?

This dissaffection stems both from the all-too-true reality of the corruptions of our systems and from the deeper psychic disillusionment and disappointment. The political discourse is so formulaic, so tailored into poll-driven, focus-group-approved slogans that don't really say anything substantive or strike at the core of our lived experience; the lack of authenticity of discourse - and the underlying lack of gravitas, of penetrating insight and wisdom on the part of politicians - is numbing. But we must keep in mind that the disgust so many feel comes from a deep desire to hear more authentic expressions of insights about our lives and more genuine commitments to improving them. Many of us long for expressions of real concern both out of hte pain ofour individual lives and about the common good - hence the power of Bill Clinton's claim that he felt our pain - as opposed to the blatent catering to base interests and to narrow elilte constituecies. We long for a politics that is not about winning a political game but producing better lives.

[...on to page 65] Both republican "vision and the democratic "vision" are deeply problematic. Our national focus has become so dominated by narrow us-versus-them disourse that it has all but drowned out authentic debate over issues...there is an underlying disgust about the preoccupation of our political leaders with partisan warfare.

The uninspiring nature of our national political culture has only enhanced the seductiveness of the pursuit of pleasure and of diverting entertainments, and too many of us have turned inward to a disconnnected, narrowly circumscribed family and social life. White suburbanites and middle-class blacks (and others) are preoccupied with the daily pursuit of the comfort of their material lives. In many cases they litterally wall themselves off into comfortable communities, both physically and socially, in which they can safely avert their eyes from the ugly realities that afflict so many of our people. Becuase they are able to buy the cars and take the vacations they want, they are all too willing to either disregard the political and social dysfunctions afflicting the country or accept facile explainations for them.

End slice:

I think West is very pertinent for many bloggers and his words salient for the climate of our times. I am reminded of two very good movies that speak to this very issue. One is Bob Roberts. This is one of Tim Robbins' best flicks. The next is Bulworth. This one is not as good as the former, but makes a powerful statement nonetheless.

Blog on friends.

What Karl Rove got for Christmas

It seems as though Karl was busy buying shills for christmas. Spurious behavior.

Slice:
By Eric Boehlert Jan. 27, 2005
Michael McManus, conservative author of the syndicated column "Ethics & Religion," received $10,000 to promote a marriage initiative.

And three makes a trend. One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, "Ethics & Religion," appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.

End slice:

Humm...did those funds come from taxpayer dollars?

Two more local boys won't be coming home

Two local soldiers were in that chopper crash recently reported. RIP dear heroes. Saddly, one was a father to a four month old baby girl who will now never know her dad.

Slice:

Lance Cpl. Joseph Spence, 24, of Scotts Valley leaves behind a wife and a four-month-old baby girl. First Lt. Dustin Shumney, 30, grew up in Benicia, and played football at Benicia High School.

End slice.

Winston S. Churchhill on War

Came across this interesting quote from Winston Churchill (September 30, 1953) in the preface of his book, Triumph and Tragedy:

On page v. - "I have to call this Volume Triumph and Tragedy becuase the overwhelming victory of the Grand Alliance has failed so far to bring general peace to our anxious world."

I would say, sadly, this is still so.

I happend to find on blogexplosion that we have no shortage of hatred and bigotry in our midst; the fuel for future conflicts.

W: the crustacean

While the right wingnuts are going after sponge bob, perhaps we should go after W. the callous crustacean.

Slice:

Ponder that a moment. The White House announces a press conference in the morning. After the announcement comes the news that 31 Americans died in a chopper crash in Iraq (6 others died today in seperate incidents). The president takes the podium fresh with the knowledge of that tragedy--and radiates a cheerful disposition bantering with the press about senior citizens and their faulty memories. She can't see something scarily wrong with that? She doesn't spot some sort of emotional disturbance or disconnect? Imagine if Bill Clinton had been chirpy and chipper having just received the news of 31 soldiers dying in the theater of combat--Rush Limbaugh would have devoted three hours to it, and Fox News would have dragged Dick Morris out of the all-you-can-eat buffet for his "expert analysis."

End slice:

I suppose crusteacans the stature of W don't fold under the heavy weight of many dead souls.

You have to click over to the full text. It is a quick read, but concludes:

"Comfortable, hell, he's [W] downright enthusiastic about it. He's so cocky now that he can't even fake a semblance of sorrow after hearing news that would have made most presidents turn ashen."

Race Matters and Social Security

Cornel West wrote the definative book, Race Matters, and I recomend it to you. Even so, it looks like Mr. Bush hasn't read it. Using race to trump up his plan to screw the people by siezing peoples social security dollars.

Check out this slice from the a closed door meeting. Any bloggers out there actually at the meeting, I would love to hear your perspective.

This week, in a closed meeting with African-Americans, Mr. Bush asserted that Social Security was a bad deal for their race, repeating his earlier claim that "African-American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people." In other words, blacks don't live long enough to collect their fair share of benefits.

This isn't a new argument; privatizers have been making it for years. But the claim that blacks get a bad deal from Social Security is false. And Mr. Bush's use of that false argument is doubly shameful, because he's exploiting the tragedy of high black mortality for political gain instead of treating it as a problem we should solve.

Let's start with the facts. Mr. Bush's argument goes back at least seven years, to a report issued by the Heritage Foundation - a report so badly misleading that the deputy chief actuary (now the chief actuary) of the Social Security Administration wrote a memo pointing out "major errors in the methodology." That's actuary-speak for "damned lies."

In fact, the actuary said, "careful research reflecting actual work histories for workers by race indicate that the nonwhite population actually enjoys the same or better expected rates of return from Social Security" as whites...

...

The persistent gap in life expectancy between African-Americans and whites is one measure of the deep inequalities that remain in our society - including highly unequal access to good-quality health care. We ought to be trying to diminish that gap, especially given the fact that black infants are two and half times as likely as white babies to die in their first year.

Now nobody can expect instant progress in reducing health inequalities. But the benefits of Social Security privatization, if any, won't materialize for many decades. By using blacks' low life expectancy as an argument for privatization, Mr. Bush is in effect taking it as a given that 40 or 50 years from now, large numbers of African-Americans will still be dying before their time.

Is this an example of what Mr. Bush famously called "the soft bigotry of low expectations?" Maybe not: it isn't particularly soft to treat premature black deaths not as a tragedy we must end but as just another way to push your ideological agenda. But bigotry - yes, that sounds like the right word.

End slice:

Proving once again, the Rovian tactics of using lies, damn lies, and statistics to befuddle the masses. Once you scratch the surface, you find these numbers doctored up, inflated, or otherwise designed to give the perception they want you to see.

P.S. does anyone have a clue what the Prez is reading these days? I wonder what books/magazines/and the like are sitting on his bedside table. What does/has he read? Anything?

Organized Religion

My father tossed me an interesting quote by Jesse Ventura by way of Playboy Magazine:

"Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers"

Interesting are the number of christians that think he was only refering to christian religions. Did they read the original article? Wouldn't that require they purchase a magazine of ill repute? Even so, not all christians think Ventura is nuts.

The athiests have a different take.

Aparently, it hurt his approval rating.


What do you think?

Ventura is not short on opinions on many subjects:

Slice:

"To me, a president should not put his personal spiritual beliefs in front of science. If we had that type of attitude, we'd probably still have polio today, if we had beliefs that didn't allow scientific discovery. Now, people may say you're not very religious -- yes, I am. I believe God gave me a brain to use," Ventura said.

Ventura also criticized Bush for the growing federal deficit, saying Bush paid for tax cuts by racking up debt on the nation's credit card. And he had harsh words for the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq. Ventura says Bush has alienated the rest of the world, and the war has not made the U.S. safer. He says Bush invaded Iraq when he should have been focusing on Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

"I would have hunted down Osama Bin Laden 'til he was dead, before I would have ever entertained anything about Iraq. My parents taught me (to) finish the job at hand, finish the job you got in front of you, before you worry about the other job down the road," he said.

Ventura says leaders shouldn't ask troops to do something they didn't do themselves. He says Bush did not serve with honor when he was in the National Guard, and received preferential treatment.

End slice:

Saving America's Families

Out for my AM run, I hit on an interesting solution to some of the tougher problems plaging American families. If we are serious about doing right by our children, we may want to do some other things besides ban GLBT folks from getting hitched.

Solution 1 - Stop corpulent or obese people from marrying.

Solution 2 - Stop people who smoke from marrying.

Both have been proven to lead to childhood obesity or smoking in children. Working to institute these bans (Solutions 1 & 2) would do a lot to stave off potentially dangerous situations for our American families and even death (either by diabetes or any number of smoking related illnesses.).

Slice from Dr. Sears:

Do fat parents usually produce fat children? Statistics say yes. Lean parents have only a seven percent chance of having an obese adolescent. If one parent is obese, there is a forty percent chance their child will be obese. If both parents are obese, the probability of the child's being obese may be as high as eighty percent.

End slice:

Slice from European Study recently published

Abstract: - In this paper, we investigate the intergenerational transmission of smoking behavior from parents to their children using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, surveyed in 1999 including 813 youths aged 16 through 19. We find strong evidence, that parental smoking significantly increses the probablity that their children likewise become smokers....

...In fact, there is no biological human need to smoke, but people still chose to do so and most start in their teenage years. A young person not having smokers in his/her environment would have accordingly little incentive to smoke, and any supposed benefits would be non-existent or unknown....

End slice:

So far, there have been no studies that empirically show that Gay Parents will yeild Gay Children. Moreover, even if they did, children wouldn't be as harmed as children living with and being raised by obese smokers as parents.

"Only the Nihilists Tremble in Their Boots"

Here are some more tasty quotes to wrap your brain around from Cornel West's book, Democracy Matters.

On page 39 :

Market-obsessed nihilism - the corporation as the embodiment of absolute will - is the Achilles' heel of American democracy that parades as its crown jewel...

[on to page 41 - yet] We are exceptional because of our denial of the antidemocratic foundation stones of American democracy. No other democratic nation revels so blatantly in such self-deceptive innocence, such self-paralyzing reluctance to confront the night-side of its own history....

[and more from page 42] It is when we confront the challenges of our antidemocratic inclinations as a country that our most profound democratic commitments are born, both on the individual and on the societal level. Only the nihilists among us tremble in their boots at such a prospect.

Deficit Will Hit Record $427B

How nice.

200 Billion Dollars, One False Premise, And a Question for you.

While Hollywood and much of America is distracted by actors' self-aggrandizement, the debt ratchets up.

Today, I can't seem to get past the 200 Billion Dollar report on NPR this AM. The ROI is, and has never been worth it. I still can't understand those who rationalize the war effort indicating that some terrorist or another was caught in Iraq (particularly since they weren't there before we moved in & there are no WMD).

Let's see. What else would 200 Billion and climbing dollars buy? How many schools could have been opened in your neighborhoods? How many new, high quality teachers could we have trained that would allow for the shrinking of classroom size and allow for more individual attention for studnents? Education isn't cheep, but it is less expensive than prisons.

In this war, there are winners, and losers - see prior post. I'm adding another to the list:

Winner: Halliburton (Lots and lots of unsolicited contracts, and over charging for gas)
Losers: American Tax Payers (to the tune of, oh, let's be soft, about 200 billion)
Result: A bigger quagmire than Vietnam, no end in sight.

Does anyone else out there have a recommendation on how this money could have been spent aside from saving the lives of all the GIs now terminated by the cash outlay?

Fun little video clip for Lord of the Rings Fans

Found this on white pepple, which linked to it at this location.

The parallels are uncanny.

Oh, and I found an interesting question posted by this vlogger, if you need another example of hypocrisy.

Lucrative Crime, purview of the Ken Lays of the Globe

Here's a nice quote my father (who collects quotes) sent along:

"Licensed prostitution, direct material theft, house-breaking, murder, brigandage for the lower classes; while skillful spoilation, indirect, refined theft, clever exploitation of human cattle, carefully planned and brilliantly executed betrayals, transcendent pieces of sharp practice in short, all the truly elegant vices and lucrative crimes which the law is far too ppolite to interrupt remain th monopoly of the upper classes."

La Phalange (French Newspaper) Published 1 Dec 1838. Source ISBN 0-394-49942-5, notes, p324.

Still true today.

If you can believe it, some of those on the far right don't like W

My dad found a nice letter from the Coalition for Traditional Values. Aparently, they are not too fond of the way the twins dressed for the big 40 million dollar bash last week. I couldn't find the letter on their web location. I did find a link to a PDF version on another blog. Here's a snip from the paper copy my father forwarded:

"We celebrate with you this week becuase Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term. But already there is a challenge to the biblical norms that you stand for, and it comes from within your very own family. This Thursday, your two daughters, Jenna and Barbara, will appear before the earthly world in attire that cannot be described in any sense as modest.

As you knon, dress and appearance are an imporatant reflection of our Christian values. "We are what we wear," as the saying goes, and according to this edict, your own daugters, bejeweled and bedecked in garments that plunge of neckline and cling of fabric, cannot be said to reflect the deeply-held believes of the tens of millions of "values voters" who sent you back to that highest office in the land...

...You have four years - a brief time only - to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God. Do not risk offending Him in these early days of your second term by presenting forth your own daughters as Oholah and Oholibah, who, like Jezebel, painted their eyes and decke themselves with ornaments to entice men to commit adultery with them (Ezek 23).

Signed: Lewis Sheldrick (CTV)
Beverley Hayden, Concerned women of America
Robert Wilder, American Family Organization
Randy Thomas, Campaign for Families
Dennis Pattion, Silver Ring Thing
Sandy Slokum, Defend our Marriages
Roy deLong, Baptist Leadership Council

The CTV spells out their values for you.

I wonder if they are equally or more so appalled at the number of civilians killed in this Iraqi conflict...but you can't tell from their web site what their take is on that.

Let's pardon Jack Johnson before the 100th anniversary of the big fight

Looks like a posthumous pardon would be fitting in Johnson's case. I saw the documentary of the big fight in 1910 on PBS the other night. Couldn't turn the channel, which is sayin' something. The footage from the fight and all elements of the documentary were stunning.

There is a nice flashplayer sequence on the PBS site, which is mainly slides so it doesn't require too big a set of pipes. Who knew Jack London was such a bigot, but bigots were in no short supply then...and even today, bogotry remains.

More Red State Perversion

Hey, I am sure this is true for most, if not all states, but the study was conducted in Ohio. Sounds like some upstanding midwestern republicans need to have some frank conversations with their teens.

Slice:

They found a chain of 288 one-to-one sexual relationships at a high school in the U.S. Midwest, meaning the teenager at the end of the chain may have had direct sexual contact with only one person, but indirect contact with 286 others.

The sociologists who conducted the study said they were surprised by the findings, which also showed that despite reputations and popularity, most teens in their study did not engage in promiscuous behavior with many others.

"From a student's perspective, a large chain like this would boggle the mind," said sociologist James Moody, who led the study. "They might know that their partner had a previous partner. But they don't think about the fact that this partner had a previous partner, who had a partner, and so on."

This means that teens need a different approach to sexual health education and especially prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, the team at Ohio State University said.

End slice:

I suppose preaching about abstinance doesn't really work. I would like for those who believe that it does, please share their abstinance story with us.

It doesn't specify the gender of these relationships, now does it? It would be interesting to see the full study. Of course, the author of the article doesn't provide the source. If this were a blog, she would be spammed for that no doubt.

Mass Media Propaganda Machine is getting desperate

Saw this in our local rag: Aparently the print media is getting desperate for content. Reporting on blogging as a new form of news delivery. Some think this is good exposure. I suggest that this is the nell pealing for the decline of newsprint across the board.

I say, good riddance, and let's hope it saves some trees in the process.

W, Leaving Children Behind again!

The rhetoric of this Bushit administration smacks completely of hypocrisy. Here's yet another example for the Hypocrisy Index:

Slice:

President Bush may propose eliminating funds next year for two popular programs that help needy students prepare for college, in an effort to finance an expansion of his signature No Child Left Behind law to high-school students, higher-education advocates told The Chronicle last week.

The college-access programs, Upward Bound and Talent Search, have a combined budget of $460-million and serve a total of about 455,000 students and veterans. While Mr. Bush's proposal will not be certain until he releases his 2006 budget in early February, reports of the potential cuts have alarmed advocates of Upward Bound and Talent Search, which are part of the federal TRIO programs for disadvantaged students.

"These are popular, successful programs," Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, said of Upward Bound and Talent Search. "We'd be deeply reluctant to trade them in for an untried replacement."

Slice:

Of course, successful programs like Upwardbound and Talent Search don't have the cash to fund shills in the media to lobby to keep them alive.

Red States lacking in football prowess?

Looks like we are in for a fun, blue state battle for the superbowl. Too bad it has to be held in Jacksonville. It would have been fun to have it hosted in New England, in the snow.

Winners and Losers

It occurs to me, as of late, that there is a bitter division between the right and left wings (and those in between) of our fair nation. There has been a fair amount of whining in both the winner and loser categories of this past election. I thought it would be interesting to see if we could document the winnners and losers in the comments of this post. That said, let's resolve to identify the winners and their respective losers here in, and your interpretation of the result.

While this is not a new idea, I don't think it has been done as a rolling blog post. I'll get us started.

Winners, Republicans
Losers, Democrats
Result: Divisiveness and bitterness on both sides

Winner: Bush
Loser: Kerry
Result: Swing toward Monotheistic Theocracy

Added this one on 25 Jan 2005:

Winner: Halliburton (Lots and lots of unsolicited contracts, and over charging for gas)
Losers: American Tax Payers (to the tune of, oh, let's be soft, about 200 billion)
Result: A bigger quagmire than Vietnam, no end in sight.
You're next...

Amercians - disengaged and desensitized

The folks who champion this charade we call the "liberation" of Iraq, are do disengaged and desensitized to what life is like in a war zone that they will say anything to purport their righteousness.

What about these comments from the real people living in Iraq?

Slice:

"This election is bogus," Mr. Hazim said. "There is no drinking water in this city. There is no security. Why should I vote?"

...Let me tell you something important," lectured Walid Muhammad, the imam of a major Sunni mosque here. "As long as my country is under occupation, I feel that my vote means nothing."

Here's one blogger actually there and not in the service of the military:

Slice from yesterday:

Saturday, January 22, 2005

I probably won't be blogging for a while because I'll be in Amman, Jordan, for the next few days until after the elections. A police officer that I know mentioned something to the effect that movement would be very restricted this week in Baghdad after the Eid.

The interim government had announced that elections day will be a holiday, together with the day before and day after, so there probably won't be any work at all after Eid and until February.

There are rumours circulating that telecommunications and the Internet will be blocked during this period although the government seems to have denied them. Curfews will be imposed at 6 pm according to the police, borders will close and traffic between the governorates will be halted. All in all, it's going to be a tough two weeks.

Will post again as soon as this mess is over.

End slice:

Are these the chimes of freedom?

Good Bye, Johnny

He was the king of Late Night TV. No one has been able to match Carson's wit since. We'll miss you, Johnny.

Abstinece makes the heart grow fonder

I was out for my Sunday AM long run and happened past a cute bumper sticker on a beat up old geo prism. It read: Why screw an intern when you can screw the Country.

Doing a google search finds many more poignant slogans. Site 1, site 2, site 3, you get the idea.

The big difference, one is an impeachable offense, I suppose. If you ask me, I would rather have a sexually satisfied leader in the whitehouse, no matter how s/he gets it. And, frankly, I don't see George and Laura doing it that often. The man seems tense, and proving he has an itchy trigger finger, perhaps he needs a few good interns too.

No doubt, there are a number of fine upstanding republicans that would enjoy helping W particiapte in some kind of trist that allows him to break one or more of the commandments.

And if you are disgusted by this post, please, oh please, share your abstinence story with us in the comments. As we all know, abstinence makes the heart grow fonder, no?

NeoConservative = NeoNazis?

Check this out.

When does our "government" cross the line and become a a fascist, imperialistic government

Slice:


"This is real neoconservatism," said Robert Kagan, a foreign policy scholar who has been a leading exponent of neocon thinking — and who sometimes has criticized the administration for not being neocon enough. "It would be hard to express it more clearly. If people were expecting Bush to rein in his ambitions and enthusiasms after the first term, they are discovering that they were wrong."

... At her confirmation hearings this week, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) named six countries as "outposts of tyranny" that would get special attention from the second-term Bush administration: Cuba, Burma, North Korea (news - web sites), Iran, Belarus and Zimbabwe.

End slice:

How many contries were on Hitler's list?

Trumped - Serial poligamy vs. Gay Marriage

How many marriages has Trump had? Which is worse, the gay partners together for these low 25 years in a monogmous relationship, or Trump, who practicies serial poligamy?

Slice:

Property mogul and reality television star Donald Trump married Slovenian model Melania Knauss on Saturday at a lavish social event in the exclusive Florida resort town of Palm Beach.

End slice:

Will this one last longer than his others? And by the way, who would marry someone with that big a comb over?

Is W a shill for Rice or Rove?

Interesting perspective from Colbert King:

Slice:

Boxer said to Rice: "I personally believe -- this is my personal view -- that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell the war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth." Loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell the war. Ponder the weight of that statement. It comes close, at least in spirit, to the picture of Rice sketched by political cartoonist Pat Oliphant a few weeks ago. In case you missed it, Oliphant drew a big-lipped, bucktooth Rice perched like a parrot on President Bush's arm. Bush was speaking to Rice in baby talk, with Rice replying: "Awwrk!! OK Chief. Anything you say, Chief. You Bet, Chief. You're my HERO, Chief."

It's hard to imagine a more demeaning and offensive caricature of a prospective secretary of state, let alone the most senior official on the national security staff. It's equally difficult to understand what prompted Boxer to imply that Rice is little more than a diligent echo of Bush's thoughts. There's nothing in Rice's background or in her performance to suggest that she is a mindless follower of presidential orders. In fact, Rice comes across as just the opposite.

End slice:

Either way, Bush is someone's puppet. He sure ain't working for over half the population.

Some actually think Bush is the antichrist, or has potential links with Satan. Hummm, Personally, I am not so sure W is that well connected, but close. Now, Karl Rove as the devil? I can see it.

Looks like Bush needs another Vacation

How much you want to bet, Bush goes on holiday after the elections in Iraq?

Slice:

President Bush started the first full day of his second term by attending an interdenominational church service, but otherwise stayed out of the limelight Friday, in part to give himself and his staff a breather before the work of his new term gets fully underway next week, officials said.

End slice:

This president has had more vacations than any other sitting president in the history of it.

CIA twisted plot gone awry?

How could we loose 300 million bux? Leave it to the government!

Slice:

Earlier this month, according to Iraqi officials, $300 million in American bills was taken out of Iraq's Central Bank, put into boxes and quietly put on a charter jet bound for Lebanon.

The money was to be used to buy tanks and other weapons from international arms dealers, the officials say, as part of an accelerated effort to assemble an armored division for the fledgling Iraqi Army. But exactly where the money went, and to whom, and for precisely what, remains a mystery, at least to Iraqis who say they have been trying to find out...

..Why was $300 million in cash put on an airplane?" Mr. Chalabi asked in an interview this week. "Where did the money go? What was it used for? Who was it given to? We don't know."

End slice:

Can airplanes fly in Iraq without the US Intelligence community knowing about it? I don't think so.

Would you be surprised if the bux turned up in some kind of Al Queda plot to blow something up? Not me.

More of Karl Rove's fingerprints on the W Administration

Looks like Rove has worked his magic again. Fooling people by "amplifying the rhetoric."

God, he is good! Continues to fool lots of folks. What's the old slogan, " you can never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American population." Or the other famous slogan, "Don't misunderestimate me."

Ha!

Slice:

The startling reference to an Israeli attack was "the kind of strong language that will get their attention in Tehran," said one allied diplomat in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"There's a rhetorical escalation here: They've ratcheted up the threat level by bringing Israel in," said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department official during the Clinton administration. "They're using the fact of the inauguration, and the uncertainty people have about where they're going in the next term, to say, 'Look, we're not going to let up on Iran.' "

Safe Haven for sale

Found this dated, but interesting location for sale. In the event that things really turn south on this country, you could purchase your very own Biosphere. But then again, it is a sitting duck target out in the AZ dessert.

I checked Ebay, but apparently it is not listed there. The building cost was 200 million. Could it go for more than 1000 bux? There aren't many Howard Hughes's out there these days, are there? But then again, he chose Vegas.

The Star Spangled Banner

Okay, so I was tooling around the Springsteen site and found this awesome rendition of our National Anthem. Check it out.

Windows Media Player Broadband

Windows Media Player for Poor unfortunate souls with dial up

In Quicktime for Apple Fans

For Real Player

Enjoy, And Rock on Bruce!

Got my new used phone

As soon as I trot to the service provider's office to activate it, I will be out of Cel Phone Hell. Thought you all would like to know that I just got my new used phone - same model as the one I had - off of Ebay from some kind soul. As soon as I trot to the service provider's office to activate it, I will be out of Cel Phone Hell. Hope to use it until the contract runs out in November and get one with a camera feature on it...for taking snaps of things you are not ready to see, as evidence.

Hey, this post reminds me of an old Springsteen tune off the Nebraska (one of my favorites) album..."Used Cars." Had to click it on my Rio Music Player as I typed this note.

"Mister, the day the lottery I win,
I ain't ever gonna ride in no used care again.
Now the neighbors come from near and far
as we pull up in our brand new used car...
I wish he'd just hit the gas and let out a cry
and tell 'em all they can kiss our asses goodbye

Well, okay, I wax nostalgic. Any smart invester knows that buying a new car is like sitting on the toilet and ripping up 100 dollar bills, wiping, and flushing them down with the shite.

In actuality, you can save yourselves the depreciation by buying used. See this nice, boring, mundane web location to calculate your savings on the money you don't borrow to finance the thing.

New Math for Presidents and Secretaries of State

I love these few paragraphs from Maureen Dowd's latest op-ed in the NYTimes:

Slice:

Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, has been pilloried for suggesting that women may be biologically unsuited to succeed at mathematics.

He may have a point.

Just look at Condoleezza Rice.

She's clearly a well-educated, intelligent woman, versed in Brahms and the Bolsheviks, who has just been rewarded for her loyalty with the most plum assignment in the second Bush cabinet.

Yet her math skills are woefully inadequate.

She can't do simple equations. She doesn't even know that X times zero equals zero. If you multiply 1,370 dead soldiers times zero weapons of mass destruction, that equals zero achievement for Ms. Rice, who helped the president and vice president bamboozle the country into war.

end of slice:

This from my Dad, who pointed me to the article:

Slice:

Condi doesn't do math. Joe Biden said 4K Iraqi troops, Condi said 120K. ''If so,'' Joe said (in effect), ''where are they?''

Bush should have a known liar as Sec't'y of State. That way foreign governments will know not to believe a word she says.

If Bush believed in the ''ownership society,'' he'd let people paying into SS keep the current overcharge and invest it or spend it themselves, rather than have the government borrow it at treaury rates and use the money to fund tax cuts for rich people. ''Ownership'' means being able to make your own mistakes. Bush wants to keep the SS privatization money in a government account. In other words, he doesn't trust the ''owner'' to be responsible. Big brother, big liar.

As for equality, he's still on the DOMA as good enough, no constitutional amendment required, turning gays into government-ordered 2nd class citizens. Next year, Pink Triangles!

Halt! Show me your papers.

Which god is the right god?

Another question came to me as our Theocracy is now official for four more years. When Islam, the world's largest religion is our target, what makes us think that our god is the right god?

All this talk about "god" raises the legitimate question, whose god is the right god? And why should we belive you?

Bush - Incubating hypocrisy from the Capital Steps

We are wearing black here. Memorializing democracy and hoping it doesn't get worse in four years or less.

Listening to our commander-in-thief make a mockery of all that is integrity. He spoon feeds us hypocrisy and the adoring public eats it up. There are way to many contradictions of behavior and espoused beliefs to point them all out in his speach.

Freedom at the barrel of a gun is a matter of perspective. At one end, you are the purveyor of freedom. At the other, you are coerced toward the oppressor’s agenda. A liberation operation looks more like an invasion depending whether or not you live in the country that has been “liberated.”

Freedom at the receiving end of a gun is not.

Certainly our freedom and democracy must be defended. And it will be. But we have to ask, Freedom by whose definition?

Long ago, I was at a UN Conference for Sustainable Living in Turkey. There was a large scale protest from second and third world countries. The main thrust of their argument was that the values of the "first" world countries were being jammed down their throats.

The president's message to the world is essentially, Freedom will come to you, whether you want it or not, and as long as it looks like our brand of freedom, we won't bug ya.

Who is the big bully now?

The question that came to my mind as I was running this morning is this: Does the executioner go to the same hell as the transgressor? For all the civilians lives lost about the globe due to our "liberation" efforts, how is slippery little W going to get out of meeting his own judgement and being banished from heaven? Perhaps it is the same logic the suicide bomber uses in exploding themselves up for the cause. Martyrdom isn't cheep. Simply becuase you believe your actions will take you to heaven does that mean it will be so?

Unity? More like Black Thursday: A Dark Day for Democracy

Unity, my ass. There is no unifying this country. Sorry to report that here, but the truth hurts.

The 20th of Jan. is going to be more like Black Thursday round about here. What a depressing day it is to actually have to acknowledge that will be to have to tollerate this arrogant, biggoted, classist, coke snorting, frat boy for four more years.

I am wearing black all day. Who's with me?

Boxer v. Rice - The exchange

Here's a link to the exchange between Barbara Boxer and Condi Rice. Which reminds me, when I was down at Stanford speaking with some colleagues, about two or so years ago, they said, "I don't know about Rice, we are scared. We were scared of her when she was here." For those of you who don't know Rice was provost at Stanford before embarking on the current line of work.

As one of the comments under the prior link suggested, perhaps Boxer could have been more confrontational indicating that she had been elected to represent the people, whereas Rice had not. Sort of separates the men from the boys, don't you think?

Personally, I love the whole line of the comic strip "The Boondocks," by Aaron Mcgruder where they are trying to find Condi a date. It had me in stiches...don't know what it has in terms of pertenance here, but hey. if you need a yuk, check them out.

Slice from Boxer:

Well, Mr. Chairman, again I thank you. I am -- Dr. Rice, I was glad you mentioned Martin Luther King -- it was very appropriate, given everything. And he also said, Martin Luther King, quote, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." And one of the things that matters most to my people in California and the people in America is this war in Iraq.

Now, it took you to page three of your testimony to mention the word "Iraq." You said very little really about it, and only in the questioning have we been able to get into some areas. Perhaps you agree with President Bush, who said all that's been resolved.

... SEN. BOXER: Well, you should read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period. That was the reason and the causation for that, you know, particular vote.

But, again, I just feel you quote President Bush when it suits you but you contradicted him when he said, "Yes, Saddam could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." You go on television nine months later and said, "Nobody ever said it was" --

MS. RICE: Senator, that was just a question of pointing out to people that there was an uncertainty. No one was saying that he would have to have a weapon within a year for it to be worth it to go to war.

SEN. BOXER: Well, if you can't admit to this mistake, I hope that you'll --

MS. RICE: Senator, we can have this discussion in any way that you would like. But I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity. Thank you very much.

SEN. BOXER: I'm not. I'm just quoting what you said. You contradicted the president and you contradicted yourself.

End Slice:

If you ask me, Boxer was too easy on her.

Bring it On

Condi is busy defending herself, but I would have to say that her definition of integrity has to remarkably differ from mine. Telling the world that there was WMD, and then not having any evidence at all smacks of a lack of integrity if you ask me.

Slice:

"You sent them in there because of weapons of mass destruction. Later the mission changed when there were none," Boxer told Rice. "Let's not rewrite history, it's too soon to do that."

"It wasn't just weapons of mass destruction," Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) supported terrorism, attacked Kuwait and Israel and needed to be removed given the new U.S. threat perception after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

"We can have this discussion in any way that you would like, but I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity," Rice told Boxer. "I really hope that you will not imply that I take the truth lightly."

End slice:

Even if Rice insists we were prepared to go to war, that implies one of two things. Either one, the bushits were planning to go into Iraq long before 9/11, and two, she was willing to go to war with the "army we've got." Either one is bad for the war and fear mongers in the admin.

Slice:

"This was never going to be easy," Rice said of the war and its aftermath during a confirmation hearing in which she painted an optimistic picture of the future in Iraq — and for resolution of the long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as well.

"It was always going to have ups and downs. I'm sure that we have made many decisions, some of which were good, some of which might not have been good, but the ouster of Saddam Hussein was worth the price," Rice said. "I think we made the right decision to overthrow him."

End slice:

"I think?!?" What the bleep? You had better damned well know definatively that it was the right decision. Given what we know about the situation, I would have to dissagree adamantly. The ROI is out right got us into one very deep hole that, in terms of both political and real capital, we won't get out of for a very long time.

What is more, she may be willing to testify that we were ready for the war, but we are most certainly not ready to establish and support the peace - more bombings today. I wouldn't want to be in Iraq and a normal citizen waiting to vote. Sounds like people going to the polls should be armed with a gun, or a death wish, hoping for martyrdom.

And another thing....what is she setting us up for? Fronts in Iran? Fronts in Israel/Palestine?


Slice:

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

...“Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing so they can ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘What are your priorities?’ Now he can keep all of the mattress mice out of it.”

End slice:

No doubt, these jesters are war and fear mongers sine qua non. That puts us in deep, deep, deep, with nary a way out. Just wait for the draft next. Booyah, we're in for a world of shit.

President Falling Down on another Front

Looks like we're on our own on the research front as well. This recent report was authored by folks in W's own administration.

Slice:

The federal government is not adequately supporting long-term research into protecting the nation's technology infrastructure from terrorist attacks, according to a report that a presidential advisory committee approved last week.

The report, from the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, concludes that networks supporting the country's financial, utility, telecommunications, transportation, and defense systems are "highly vulnerable to terrorist and criminal attacks." The report recommends, among other things, that the federal government provide more money for research and that it encourage university students to study cybersecurity.

End slice:

This would be advantageous to do some preemptive work here - Certainly it is less costly than waging war and could most certainly prevent some kind of large scale smoking gun incident.

God, Guts and Guns

I was driving my son to pre-school the other day and noticed a painted on tag line on the back end of a contractor's truck. This was no bumper sticker. It was an honest to goodness slogan posted across the back bumper - as if it were part of their company signage - and I quote:

"God, Guts, and Guns
Keep America Free"

...humm, as well as death, destruction, and maming innocent civilians as collateral damage.

Doing a google search on this slogan, you find that these folks are not alone. And, you can get it engraved on your belt buckle.

Aparently, there is a long history of people arguing about this slogan, willing to piss off and offend all manner of individual, even working to stifle one person's first amendment rights in order to prop up their own.

More on Social Security and the Rovian tactics employed by the Bushites

My dad pointed out two interesting links about the SS debate. The Rovian tactic of repeat, repeat, ad nausium seems to work in fooling about half the country. Let's hope it doesn't this time.

Slice one, from Rolling Stone:

To hear George Bush tell it, Social Security is about to go broke. Since his re-election, the president has launched a full-scale campaign to convince the public that the retirement system will run out of money starting in 2018. "The system goes into the red," Bush told reporters on December 20th at a rare press conference. "Many times, legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them. I believe that crisis is." Social Security, he concluded, "can't sustain that which has been promised to the workers."

To save Social Security, Bush wants to destroy it -- replacing government-guaranteed retirement benefits with private accounts that will be subject to the whims of the stock market. It's an expensive plan. Allowing workers to divert even a small portion of their payroll taxes into private investments, as Bush is proposing, would require the government to borrow at least $2 trillion to make up the immediate shortfall. It's also completely unnecessary, according to Paul Krugman, a prize-winning professor of economics at Princeton University. In a blistering series of columns in the New York Times, Krugman has marshaled the economic data to show that Social Security is not only solvent, it's in much better financial shape than the rest of the federal government. "The people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary weapons," Krugman wrote recently, "are now trying another bum's rush."

At his tree-shaded home in Princeton, New Jersey, Krugman took a break from working on a new economics textbook to explain why the crisis is phony -- and what's wrong with Bush's plan "to convert Social Security into a giant 401(k)."

Slice Two from another Blogger:

President Bush plans to reactivate his reelection campaign's network of donors and activists to build pressure on lawmakers to allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market . . . The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support — contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away.

End slice:

Any way you cook the books. Social Security isn't really broken, but there needs to be some kind of tweaking besides trashing it to benefit the white wealthy folks Bushit wants to help so desperately.

Meanwhile, the envrionment and our fisheries are taking a spanking from the "Environmental" President

I was reviewing the EarthIsland Journal this AM. Read an interesting article about the tragic use of longlines for fishing. Here are a couple of links for those of you bored with the politics of killing humans (in Iraq, for example) where you can find resources to help out with the problems with our Oceans.

Sea Shepherd

Earth Island Journal

Greenpeace

I am sure other bloggers out there have other resources. Please post them as comments here or link my page to yours.

Looks like the Enron folks are going to get away with it

It is hard to fathom 12 million dollars as chump change, but for the Enron folks who bilked the citizens in many states of tons of cash...this means selling, perhaps, one or two of their luxurious homes in places like Aspen, etc...

Slice:

Ten former directors of Enron have agreed to pay $13 million from their own pockets to settle a class action suit stemming from Enron's collapse in 2001, which wiped out some $60 billion in shareholder value. Because directors almost never have to pay even a penny in such suits, the Enron settlement - announced just days after several former WorldCom directors agreed to a similar deal - was widely viewed as a significant development that could discourage potential directors from serving on corporate boards.

This view is mistaken. A close look at the settlement shows that Enron's directors have still not been held accountable in any meaningful way.

End slice:

These Enron style Capitalist pigs are greased and are willing to grease as they are the slipperiest of pigs going.

W - expert at making himself look good and the Dems in Congress look bad

Here's a nice little story about how W is helping higher education by "fixing" the Pell Grant system. Which, by the way, was really dismantled by Ronald Reagan round about 1983. Just ask my sister how much "financial aid" she recieved entering college in 1984 versus what I recieved by entering one year earlier in 1983.

Slice:

President Bush announced on Friday that he will seek to raise the maximum Pell Grant by $500, to $4,550, over the next five years, as well as to eliminate a $4.3-billion shortfall that has plagued the program for the past several years.

Speaking at Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Mr. Bush made clear that he does not plan to request additional money to achieve these goals. Instead, the president said he would ask Congress to generate savings by "reforming" the federal guaranteed student-loan program, which relies on banks and other types of lenders to deliver money to students.

End slice:

You have got to love the legislate, but don't appropriate modus operandi that lets slippery politicians off the hook in the eyes of the media, but subjects the infrastructure to undue stress.

No doubt, the Demcrats in congress with any kind of conscience will need to oppose this measure - which will make them look bad, when in actuality they are working to save the system and others that will be hurt by the grand fiscal shuffle caused by a President who has really worked wonders in spending beyond his means.

Homelessness and Veterans (Vietnam to Iraq)

Two more excellent rough cut videos to view via Guerrilla News Network.

The Iraq Part II, is particularly salient for today's draftable generation.

Proving once again that the ROI is not worth it.

Why is Eeyore always sad?

I was playing a game of memory/concentration with my son this afternoon. This was the Winnie the Pooh version. He asked, "Why is Eeyore always sad, daddy?"

I really had no answer. Do you have one? He is two months shy of 3 years old. How would you explain that to him?

The thought crossed my mind to say, "Well, it is becuase we really have an imeicile for president and he has us stuck in a war that is untenable." But that would be a much tangled thicket to get into.

Another possible answer, "well, son, perhaps it is becuase he is always losing his tail."

So much for Security of the Social Sort

Lots of alliteration for over anxious anchors....Okay, I couldn't resist the line from Broadcast news after typing the headline for this post.

And while we are busy getting ourselves into a deeper end of the quicksand that is the Middle East, Bush continues to forge ahead and dismantle some high quality domestic policies.

Slice 1:

Behavioral economics has vital implications for retirement savings. But in his zeal to privatize Social Security - a quest which is itself driven more by ideology than economics - President Bush is obscuring better approaches to a comfortable retirement for all Americans.

End slice 1.

Slice 2:

This is what we should do about Social Security: At the same time we acknowledge that it is the most successful domestic program in American history, we should also admit that Social Security, in its present form, is unsustainable. And then we should come up with a plan that is different than what President Bush and most of the pundits are proposing.

End Slice Two:

All I know is that the 40 million dollars being spent on the big inagural party in a few days could go a long way for shoring up some of these endangered programs. Not to mention the hidden costs for the Big Bushit Bash (e.g. 12 Million of Homeland Security bux spent on the security for the event).

The Emperor has No Clothes

Bush is mad, and we will be the ones left hanging cleaning up his mess. He is just following the lead of his good buddies, Rove and Lay...fuck the people, stiff them with the bill, and leave the dirty sheets tossed about.

Slice:

George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times we live in. It’s an illness that has been with us since time immemorial. Because it’s an illness that's in the soul of all of humanity, it pervades the field and is in all of us in potential at any moment, which makes it especially hard to diagnose.

Bush's malady is quite different from schizophrenia, for example, in which all the different parts of the personality are fragmented and not connected to each other, resulting in a state of internal chaos. As compared to the disorder of the schizophrenic, Bush can sound quite coherent and can appear like such a "regular," normal guy, which makes the syndrome he is suffering from very hard to recognize. This is because the healthy parts of his personality have been co-opted by the pathological aspect, which drafts them into its service. Because of the way the personality self-organizes an outer display of coherence around a pathogenic core, I would like to name Bush's illness ‘malignant egophrenic (as compared to schizophrenic) disease,’ or ‘ME disorder,’ for short. If ME disorder goes unrecognized and is not contained, it can be very destructive, particularly if the person is in a position of power.

In much the same way that a child's psychology cannot be understood without looking at the family system he or she is a part of, George Bush does not exist in isolation.We can view Bush and his entire Administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, etc), as well as the corporate, military industrial complex that they are co-dependently enmeshed with, the media that they control, the voters that support them, and ourselves as well, as interconnected parts of a whole system, or a "field." Instead of relating to any part of this field as an isolated entity, it’s important to contemplate the entire interdependent field as the ‘medium’ though which malignant egophrenia manifests and propagates itself. ME disease is a field phenomenon, and needs to be contemplated as such. Bush's sickness is our own.

End Slice:

Belive it when they say, "Ask not at whom the chimp smirks - he smirks at you."

Meanwhile, we are about to screw Iran

No wonder Bush is not willing to get our troops out of Iraq. He is ramping up and already authorizing troop secret incursions into Iran. With this new Condi approved strategy of pre-emptive invasions, no doubt, we will be crossing the line from Iraq to Iran very soon.

Many have predicted this, but now we know for sure. Like Cambodia in the Vietnam conflict, we are going where we dare not tread with covert special ops taking the lead. At least we know for sure that Iran has nuclear weapons capacity and the will to use it.

Slice:

The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.

The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites. Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible."

End slice.

I predict that before we are finished with the next four years of Bushit we will be moving troops from Iraq to Iran. The Jihad has only just begun.

More Dead and Wounded In Iraq

There is a very telling graphic in the NYTimes today. Body counts in a snazzy wrapper.

Check it out.

Slice:

In the first two weeks of January, at least 202 people died as a result of the insurgency in Iraq. The killings have been indiscriminate. The dead include Iraqi officials, police officers, civilians and, of course, Iraqi, American and coalition soldiers. The attacks shown here took place across the country, but there is a clear concentration in the so-called Sunni Triangle, which stretches from Tikrit in the north to Baghdad in the east and to Falluja and Ramadi in the west.

End slice:

When will Bush realize the carnage has to stop and only he can give the command to pull our troops back to safety? The ROI is in a deep hole - about minus 12 Kelvin not worth it.

By the way, have we forgiven Bush for his little AWOL stint "serving" our country in the 70s?

I found some old posts about this subject and wonder why the media has completely bailed on the material. Just becuase CBS got stuck in the fact checking quagmire doesn't mean it is not a legit story.

Here are some links:

Bush Watch to catch him in the latest swindle.

A group wondering where Bush really was in 1972.

A UK article on the subject.

Slice:

On May 2 1973, Richard Nixon was still reeling from the Watergate scandal. American troops were on their way home from Vietnam. And outside Houston, in Texas, a 26-year-old named George Bush, a lieutenant in the National Guard, reported for drill duty as usual at Ellington air force base.

That, at any rate, is the impression given by military payroll records released by the Bush administration on Tuesday. Apparently, however, Lt Bush's superiors at Ellington didn't see it that way. In an annual evaluation of his performance - dated, coincidentally, the very same day, May 2 - they conceded that they couldn't actually evaluate his performance, because they hadn't seen him for months.

Which version is the truth?

end slice:

More people ripping off Lance Armstrong's Band

Looks like there are many bands that you can wear now. I particularly like the following:

The blue hope band

The I didn't vote for Bush Band

And the I live in a blue state band

I think one could go broke buying up all the swag related to the divisive nature of our country at this point.

I'm in cel phone Hell

Okay, yesterday, I lost my phone. The karma worked magically and my little flip phone was returned safe and sound.

Today, I found my phone...guess...bouncing around the dryer. Yes, I left it in my pocket and washed and dried it.

It's not working now. Hopefully, if I give it a bit of a rest, it might work in the Am.

I don't know. Perhaps it is time to give up the phone for good.

By the way, Ellen Macarthur is way in the lead

For those of you following the transglobal sailing race, FYI, Ellen Macarthur is currently 4 Days 6 hours and 18 mins ahead of the nearest competitor/current world record holder.

Accontability is always easier to push on other people

Another reporter points out the W adminstration hypocrites are at it again. Bush, flapping his gums about CBS fails to realize he hasn't fired anyone who told him false things (or lies as we like to call them here).

Read this article in the Washington Post:

Slice:

It took no less a sage than President Bush to put the firing of four high-level CBS News employees in perspective: "CBS said they would act. They did. And I hope their actions are such that this doesn't happen again."

This from the man who fired not a single person in his entire administration for getting nearly everything wrong about Iraq and taking the nation to war for reasons that did not exist or were downright specious.

Lucky for Bush he's only the president of the United States and not the head of CBS. Let us call the roll: George Tenet, who assured the president that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? A graceful retirement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Don Rumsfeld, who approved a battle plan of such brilliance that a 30-day war against a weak Third World country is still going on and shows no sign of ending? He stays in the Cabinet.

Condi Rice, the national security adviser who allowed the president to tell the world of Iraq's nuclear weapons program when it had none whatsoever? She is nominated to become secretary of state.

Vice President Cheney, who insisted against all evidence and with no evidence that Iraq was fast becoming a nuclear power, and who maintained that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden? He stays on the ticket and remains a heartbeat away from the presidency.

End slice:

My dad puts it nicely: "Hypocrisy! such fun. The Administration has standards for others, none for themselves."

Lost my Cel

I spent the better part of the afternoon concerned after I lost my CelPhone today. Yikes. It wasn't the worries about someone making calls to New Zealand, but the long list of phone numbers I have not written down that were caused the most amount of angst.

Fortunatly, a friend of mine called me saying someone else had called them with my phone and they had found it. So, I picked it up from this person thanking them profusely. Some kid found it on a playground my son and I were at and gave it to one of the teachers. This teacher found me.

Bingo - the karma happens - I get my phone back and these fine upstanding citizens win more karmic points.

Be good all! What goes around comes around.

Reporters for sale, Reporters for sale...No Child Left Behind...Reporters for sale

Okay, some folks actually think Tucker Carlson is cute in a bowtie, and are willing to overlook his disgressions if he were to go out on a date with them, but hey...the Major Media Propaganda Machine (MMPM) has sunk to a new low.

Check out this article in the NYTimes

Slice:

On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist (for papers like The Washington Times and The Detroit Free Press, among many others, according to his Web site). Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year. Given that "Crossfire" was initially conceived as a program for tough interrogation and debate, you'd think that the co-hosts still on duty after Mr. Carlson's departure might try to get some answers about this scandal, whose full contours, I suspect, we are only just beginning to discern.

But there is nothing if not honor among bloviators. "On the left," as they say at "Crossfire," Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, offered condemnations of the Bush administration but had only soft questions and plaudits for Mr. Williams. Three times in scarcely as many minutes Mr. Begala congratulated his guest for being "a stand-up guy" simply for appearing in the show's purportedly hostile but entirely friendly confines. When Mr. Williams apologized for having crossed "some ethical lines," that was enough to earn Mr. Begala's benediction: "God bless you for that."

End slice:

Yikes...I guess that Cornel West is right when he says in his book (Democracy Matters, page 36):

Slice:

The political nihilism in America today is not limited to the arena of party politics; it has infiltrated our media culture as well in the form of sentimental nihilism. While an essential mission of the news organizations in a democracy should be to expose the lies and manipulations of our political and economic leaders - and surely many media watch dogs devote themselves to that tast - too much of what passes for news today is really a form of entertainment. So amny shows follow a crude formula for providing titillating coverage that masks itself as news. Those purveyors of theis bastardized form of reporting are sentimental nihilists, willing to sidestep or even bludgeon the trusth or unpleasant and unpopular facts and stories, in order to provide an emotionally satisfying show.

End Slice:

Essentially, what passes for news, really isn't but watered down sentimentalism designed to make us feel good about ourselves, or conversely, terrified as we are pandered to by fearmongers supported by our tax dollars. All in the name of selling big blocks of very expensive advertising feeding the endless appetite Americans have for consumption and accrued creditcard debt. Good thing I own stock in some credit issuing banks. There will be no end to profit in that arena any time soon.

Here's a good idea

Now the government is actually encouraging exercise.

I just wonder how folks are going to get off their couches and into shape. Do I care? Not really; just as long as we don't have to shoulder the health care costs for obese individuals.

slice:

Tonight eat only half the dessert," Mr. Thompson said. "And then go out and walk around the block. And if you are going to watch television get down and do 10 push-ups and 5 sit-ups."

End slice:

As my father would say, "If exercise were a pill, it would be the best selling drug in the market place."

Weapons used for Mass Manipulation

I found this headline burried at about page 11 in the front section of our local news rag. I am wondering why it is that only the Washington Post is carrying this story...is it becuase it is such a resounding thump on the head of the Bush Administration? Is it because it is proof that the comander-in-thief really did lie to take us into Iraq? Humm...you be the judge:

Slice:

Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month
by Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 12, 2005

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

End Slice:

Perhaps the Blogisphere will be more receptive and dilligent in making this information widely known by the public, which is continually and in a manipulative way, being miss led by this "administration."

To all bloggers who see my post, please link this snip to your page and spread the word.

Big Brother is no Longer in Baghdad

I just got off the phone with my brother. He is back home and is set to enjoy a couple of weeks off to recouperate and then get back to work.

This is a great birthday present for two of his sons as their birthdays are coming up in a few days and the following week.

I, for one, am happy he is not in harms way any more than the average person at this point.

let's end this Iraqi operation soon, eh? The time to declare victory is neigh - once the elections are over, we should bail out and let them sink or swim on their own.

Inauguration Fun - Can you believe it takes 40 mill to toss a party like this?

I am still astonished that Bush and his supporters (if you can't be an athlete, be an athletic supporter), are doing their part to stimulate the D.C. drunken party circut economies to the tune of at least 40 million bux.

I put my name in for some tickets. Let's see if I get them. I have friends in DC that could use them in the event that I actually get some. I requested tix to the ball so that I might actually ask Jena and Barbara why they have yet to enlist in one of the Armed Services to better serve their country and help their pappy win the war on terror.

Here are some fun links that will help you negotiate your way through this opulent display and homage to the capitalist pigs and their voter-elected lackeys in the political arena.

Link 1 - Mike's Inauguration Guide

Link 2 - Ways to protest the inauguration

Link 3 - A place to request tix to see if you could get them and not use them
wouldn't it be fun to have no one show up to the parties they are throwing, or at least have half the room not fill up as an indication that just about half the country didn't vote for these bozos

Link 4 - A really good idea for those of us who do get in to act as witness

More free publicity for Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11

If this movie has so many critics, why is it gathering up so many awards? Because it really is a very fine production. I can also recommend Michael Moore's first flick, Roger and Me.

Here's the Email from Moore with a connection to the speach at the People's Choice Awards gig.

Monday, January 10th, 2005

Dear Friends,

Last night, at the People's Choice Awards, "Fahrenheit 9/11" was named the Best Movie of the Year. It was a stunning moment for us. And, somewhere inside the Bush White House, someone there must have been stunned, too.

21 million people voted in the People's Choice Awards. They chose our film over "Shrek 2," "Spiderman 2" and "The Incredibles." If we can beat that many superheroes, surely we can survive the next four years.

I can think of no greater honor for us this year than the award bestowed upon us last night by the American people. On live television, with no threat of my remarks being censored or cut short, I thanked all of you and the rest of our fellow Americans and dedicated the prize to the parents of our servicemen and women in Iraq, the Lila Lipscombs of America who suffer so profoundly by the reckless actions of the Bush administration.

(If you'd like to see what I said -- this time, no riot! -- you can click here. I even dressed up!)

It was an historic moment as no documentary had ever won the People's Choice Award for Best Picture. And I thank each and every one of you who voted and made that happen.

I took Congresswoman Maxine Waters and her husband as my guests last night. My family was there, too, as was some of our crew. We had a great time and I even got to meet Mel Gibson for the first time (he won a secondary prize for best film drama). More on that later!

Thanks again, and now let's get on with the serious work at hand -- winning more awards! Hahahaha. Just kidding. We have an inauguration to attend, don't we?

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
MMFlint@aol.com

Big news slips in between the pouring rain drops

Just got off the horn with my Sister-in-law. My brother is now in Germany, waiting for a flight back home!

Now if we can extend that maneuver about two or three hundred thousand more times and bring all our troops home, we can really celebrate.

But for now, we are having a toast to him at this very moment. We celebrate on a smaller scale here. Germany is a lot safer than Baghdad...and no doubt, the beer is exponentially better.

More free publicity for John Stewart

I started reading the book, but got side tracked by the much more astute book by Cornel West. I don't know if I will ever get back to the Stewart, et. al. tome. It is cute, but really marginally funny. I recommend Aaron Mcgruder's book, "The Birth of a Nation." Much better. ISBN: 1400048591

As to banning books, perhaps that should be left up to the Nazis. Speaking of Nazis, these guys are also very scary. What are they afraid of?

If SS gets "fixed," chalk up another win for the Rich White Guys club

Bush is pushing for it because he is a Rich White Guy...how is the reshaping of the very winning SS program according to W going to help us common folk?

Slice:

Late February is now the time frame mentioned by the White House for unveiling President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. The timing is no accident. By waiting until then, the president will conveniently avoid having to include the cost of privatization - as much as $2 trillion in new government borrowing over the next 10 years - in his 2006 budget, expected in early February. In this and other ways, the administration is manipulating information - a tacit, yet devastating, acknowledgement, we believe, that an informed public would reject privatizing Social Security.

More fears for bad ROI in Iraq

Here's another questioning article on the ROI in Iraq. Every day we are there, it gets less and less worth it...At this point, there is nothing but pain/death/wounds in return. Positive gain? Where is it?

Slice:

The assembly line of carnage in George W. Bush's war in Iraq continues unabated. Nightmares don't last this long, so the death and destruction must be real. You know you're in serious trouble when the politicians and the military brass don't even bother suggesting that there's light at the end of the tunnel. The only thing ahead is a deep and murderous darkness.

Three very fun links with some good ideas amidst

Found these on a tip from my father:

Site 1 - freeway blogger
Click on the Join the Army Game mid web location.

Site 2 - Nobody died when Clinton lied

Site 3 - Give Bush a brain game


Enjoy and let us know how well you score on both games

One more time - The ROI in Iraq is not worth the outlay

Here are two snips from two different locations my father pointed out to me:

Slice one:

In its present form, the war on terror is a cripplingly expensive, meagerly productive effort to locate, catch, and kill bad guys around the globe. Its successes are hardly less random, or more effective in the long term, than those that might be achieved by a platoon of men armed with flyswatters entering a slaughterhouse whose refrigeration has been off for a week.

Slice two:

Three years after the attack on New York's World Trade Center, the manhunt for Osama bin Laden has failed to produce the world's most wanted terrorist, and, according to the former No. 3 man at the CIA, that's just fine.

Former Central Intelligence Agency executive, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, has told the London Times that letting the al-Qaida leader run free may actually make the world a safer place. "You can make the argument that we're better off with him (at large)," Krongard said. "Because if something happens to bin Laden, you might find a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror."

More proof that fundmentalist-right-wing christians are fascists

Check out this url. It ought get your britches in a snarl. Sounds like these folks have their sphincters laced so tight, they hurt everyone. Just what we need are more gun toting, trigger happy Christians.

Slice:

Who We Are and What We (And God) Believe

Unsaved, not welcomed...

We Believe in the WHOLE Bible (1611 KJV). We don't throw out the parts that make us feel uncomfortable, like the book of Leviticus. We bid you greetings, friend. We do not read, eat, consume, digest, or 'try on' any product that is not made and manufactured by born-again, Bible believing, Fundamentalist Baptist Christians, and we would have you know that we condemn anyone that does, and pray as King David did, 'against them' for a quick end and a speedy journey to a very hot place, where they can spend out all eternity honoring our Lord and Maker in a literal lake of fire, Amen. Please find our site a blessing.!

End slice:

I suppose since they use 22pt bold faced font, that they really do believe the same things as god...I wonder, are they on god's side, or is god on their side?

Here's why Cornel West should run for President and win in 2008

..and moreover, I think he should choose Aaron Mcgruder as a VP running mate. They would get my vote - hell, I'd vote twice for them if I could. Or perhaps, we could contract with the same company that built the republican's voting machines for Ohio and ship them out to the rest of the country paying them to fix the machines our way....

Anyway Here's another slice from West's book (ISBN: 1594200297):

Page 35 - The Democratic Party elites are too often unwilling to tell the American people just how connected they and their Republican colleagues are to powerful corportions and influential lobbyists. Their caving in to Bush's Iraq war, and their support for the loosening of regulations on corporations that led to the recent wave of scandals, are two blatent examples. In these legislative votes, most Democrats failed to follow their conscience, following instead the polls and their reelection strategies...the vast majority of Democratic Party elites are rendered impotent by their timidity and paralyzed by their cupidity (their courting of corporate donors). Their unprincipled compromises reinforce the idea that corporate influence and lobbyists' clout run the U.S. government.