Neo-Hippie Ramblings - I'm a Non-Conformist Just Like All My Friends

Trying something out

2006-08-24T07:17:00.000-05:00

If you scroll to the very bottom of the page, you'll find some text that's almost invisible, just below the page counter. This is being generated randomly, and will change every time the page is reloaded. I figure, if the government is going to treat us all like suspects, we might as well make them feel useful by acting suspiciously.

Please Support Laura in Relay for Life

2006-03-01T06:33:00.000-05:00

Laura at Can't Keep Quiet is participating in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life this year. Please stop over and lend her some support.

Bake Sales for Body Armor

2006-02-01T08:03:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted from Bring It On:

In the next couple of weeks a new site will be launched called Bake Sales for Body Armor, it is a not-for-profit site that will be dedicated to rasing money to buy body armor for the less fortunate men and women of our Armed Forces that cannot afford to buy it on their own. This not-for-profit is being endorsed by Bring It On! because we feel it is a disgrace that our own government cannot properly equip our brave men and women of the Armed Forces.

Bring It On! also felt that this is something that cannot wait and have decided to raise money in advance of the launch of Bake Sales for Body Armor. Please click on this link to donate and get a bumper sticker or shirt to show your support for this cause, all proceeds will be donated to Bake Sales for Body Armor. This is a non-partisan issue, the lives of our soldiers are at stake, please donate now!

After donating you can use this to put on your site and help get the word out.

And now a word from the creator of Bake Sales for Body Armor, Tammara Rosenleaf, who is a member of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Helena Peace Seekers, Just Don’t Go and the Prairie Chapel 12. Tammara’s husband Sean is currently serving in Iraq. Tammara can be reached at: tammara@bakesalesforbodyarmor.com

ok friends,

as many of you have been aware, charlie anderson of iraq vets against the war, and i have been working on this little project called bake sales for body armor.

this is because despite our government’s best and fervent insistence, we keep getting reports of soldiers who do not have it, and are in iraq, which is a stupid place to be in the first place, but really bad without body armor.

we know that the military says that they get the armor to those who need it the most, but the others need it none the less. at this point we have not heard of any one still lacking the breast and back plates, but some are still lacking the delt and side plates… the very things that were just such a hot topic when it came to the recent pentagon study regarding mortality and the marines… if you haven’t read this study and want to, let me know…

our web site dedicated to this effort will be going up in the next two weeks, it is being worked on by a really good designer, and what we have seen looks wonderful. you’ll all love it.

our first real bake sale will be feb 11, here in helena, but we will be looking for folks who want to host sales in other places, and there will be a place to post them on the site. we also plan to have a virtual bake sale, where you can down load pictures of baked goods with a receipt for your tax free donation, if you just want to donate to the cause.

we have the pay pal account set up, it will go up with the website, and a way for folks to sign up people who need things is also going up.

which brings us to the point where we say that this site is not limited to body armor alone..we will always put a soldier lacking armor at the top of the list, but, anything else a soldier needs over there, we will try to get for them…

our very good friend and sponsor, at bring it on, has come up with a fundraiser to support this cause. i’ve given you the link below… what i really like about this is that it addresses the need for the body armor, at the same time as it says… “What the hell do all these yellow ribbons have to do with real support of the troops”

(Self) Censorship, or, Feel Free to STFU

2006-01-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted to Bring It On

I had something totally different in mind for this post. (Sorry MLK Jr. — someone else will have to talk about the state of racial equality in America today. Pretty sure it’s covered, dude.)

Today at the Roller Rink

Something that happened this afternoon got me thinking about the fundamental difference between ‘thou shalt’ and ‘thou shouldst’.

We took the girls to a birthday party being held for a five-year-old cousin at a local roller skating rink. The parties (there were four being held simultaneously) were supposed to start at 2 pm and the rink owners had no intention of letting anybody into the rink even a moment beforehand. It was also very cold here in Dreary Erie today.

The net result of all this was that about three dozen annoyed parents and their little kids were crammed into a small entry foyer at 1:55 pm waiting for the rink to open.

One of the parents whose kid was having a birthday party (not our group) went up to the window to talk to the owner about something. I was too far away to hear the conversation, but the parent was obviously ticked off as a result. Pushing back through the crowd, he said loudly, “that guy is a fucking asshole”.

Now, I’m a big fan of the F word. I love it. I use it daily, if only in my head. It fills a niche where no other word could ever fit. It’s also quite possibly the most versatile word in the English language.

‘Fuck’ conveys, through subtle inflection, the entire range of human emotion. Anger: Fuck You! Bemusement: Fuuuuuck!?! Agreement: Fuckin’ A, Dude! Disbelief: What the Fuck? Disgust: What. The. Fuck. Amusement: Fuh-huh-huck! Horror: Oh. Fuck. Panic: Fuck Me. Passion: Fuck me. Excitement: Oh My Fucking God! Despair: Oh, Fuck. Emphasis: I Mean Fuck…

That said, it’s also not a word that I use around my kids. And it’s certainly not a word that I want for my three-year-old add to her vocabulary just yet.

So anyway, some guy at the roller rink is acting like an obnoxious dipshit in front of a group of little children. Obviously not what the majority there wanted. So what’s the answer?

This is where the difference between ‘thou shalt’ and ‘thou shouldst’ comes into play.

What could we do? We could pressure the owner into adding a ‘no obscenity’ rule. Kick the guy out. Ban him for life. Sorry Jack — hit the street — no refunds, no returns. Thou shalt not say ‘fuck’.

Or, we could take it a step further. Send angry letters to the town council. Pass an ordinance. Levy a fine. Throw his ass in the klink. Thou shalt not say ‘fuck’.

Hell, we could take it even further than that. We could beat our breasts crying, “Protect the Children — Amend the Constitution”. Thou shalt not say ‘fuck’.

On the other hand, we could take the ‘thou shouldst’ approach — which is exactly what someone in the crowd did. “Watch your mouth — there are little kids here”. End of story. The guy wasn’t happy, but he didn’t say anything else offensive, either. He already knew better — someone just had to remind him.

If we’d been in a bar the situation would have been different. There’s no law to say that I couldn’t take my kids there, though I shouldn’t and never would. But if I did, I’d have no right to yell at the guy for cursing. Different environment; different social norm.

One size does not fit all.

The Big Picture

Every few years now, some genius in Congress has had the brilliant idea that the Internet needs to be censored in the name of decency and/or protecting children. News flash: it ain’t gonna work. Trying to do so will inflict harm and waste a buttload of money. Child pornography is evil and despicable. And it’s already illegal — no new legislation necessary. If you know where to find the scumbags publishing it, nail them to the fucking wall. Period. It ain’t rocket science.

Regarding for the garden variety ‘bad stuff’ on the Web: as a parent, it’s my right and responsibility to protect my children from exposure to images or ideas that are likely to harm, corrupt or traumatize them. My right. My responsibility. Not the federal government’s. (For Christ’s sake, if you feel the need for the government intervene on behalf of children, push to fund something like WIC, Head Start, or school lunches.)

The ability to self-censor exists in every television now being produced. It’s been that way for years. Chances are excellent that it’s in the TV already in your home. Likewise, software is available for free, or a very low cost, to self-censor Internet access. When my kids are older, I’ll enable it.

Far more importantly, though, I make a point of knowing (and limiting) what my kids are watching on television — and when they’re old enough to start Web-surfing, I’ll also make a point of knowing where they’re surfing, what they’re downloading and who they’re talking to. That’s my right, my responsibility. Not the federal government’s.

I suspect that the ’save the children’ line is a grade A load of crap, anyway. It’s more a matter of “the social norms ain’t what I believe they ought to be. Quick, Jethro, we better legislate!”

More ’shouldst’. Less ’shalt’. I mean fuck…

Tags: internet censorship, self-censorship, social norms, fuck, profanity, first amendment, freedom of speech

Stupidest Coupon Ever

2006-01-11T23:24:00.000-05:00

I think I may have found it: the world's stupidest coupon. Am I reading too much into it, or does a late fee coupon say "Our late policy is so incredibly shitty that we have to give you a break just to try to lure you back in here!"

At least she gets it honestly

2006-01-10T07:15:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to think that our 5-year-old might turn out to be a bit of an iconoclast.

She recently made a few 'enhancements' to the Barbie Dress Up Kit she had asked for for Christmas.

::g::

Weaning America from the Oil Teat

2006-01-09T23:46:00.000-05:00

I just got the February issue of Discover in the mail today. One of the featured stories this month is an article by Amory Lovins, who has a lot of sound, practical suggestions for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

This isn't a tofufest either -- it's very pragmatic stuff that doesn't rely on either exotic, undeveloped technologies or unrealistic changes in the way that we live. Rather, it's a lot of small, workable suggestions that add up to big differences in a number of different arenas.

The February content isn't out on Discover's website yet, but you should be able to pick up a print copy at any newstand now. Do check it out; it's worth a read.

Amory Lovins
Discover magazine
alternative fuels
hybrid engines
SUV fuel efficiency
carbon fiber composites
thermoplastics
foreign oil dependency
energy policy
fossil fuels

Bring It On 2.0

2006-01-09T07:23:00.000-05:00

At long last, Bring It On 2.0 is online. All the good stuff is still there, but we've ditched Typepad, moved to Wordpress and added some really cool features like a comment rating system and 'red and blue' diaries to encourage users of all political persuasions to participate.

Be sure to check it out.

My poor little blog, Paganmas, et al

2005-12-29T07:26:00.000-05:00

My poor little blog is being neglected. Been very busy overall, and what online time I do have has been devoted to Bring It On lately. More smart content, more discussion, more traffic, more stupid people to abuse, what else can I say? Looks like this site will end up being my Phun with Paintshop Pro blog, for the most part -- that's what's driving a lot of the traffic now.

Well, that obviously-pagan winter solstice holiday we slapped a Baby Jesus sticker on and called 'Christmas' has come and gone once again. Can't say that I enjoyed it an awful lot this year. Seemed like it was "the holiday season" forever. By mid-December I just wanted for it to be finished. Now all that's left is New Years Eve, which isn't much of a holiday unless you're into serious drinking, elbow-to-elbow crowds at the bars, or both of the above. Which I'm not. If there were a holiday with a ganja theme, now that I could get into.

Going to visit the family, though, which should be nice.

Black Spy and White Spy, despite having received a fair number of cool toys each -- including many intended to encourage cooperative play -- still seem to prefer picking one toy and fighting over it. Grrr. I'm thinking coal next year. Except they'd probably just fight over whose piece was bigger...

The Dark Descent

2005-12-15T23:23:00.000-05:00

I've been losing more sleep than usual these days, simply because I recently bought an incredible horror anthology called The Dark Descent and instead of brushing my teeth and going to bed, I've been brushing my teeth and then standing around for another half hour finishing up whatever story I've been sucked into.

I've been a fan of horror fiction since I was in my early teens -- sometimes sneaking in books that I wasn't allowed to be reading because they were too 'adult' in nature - Stephen King, John Saul and the like. By high school, I'd read just about all of Stephen King and Dean Koontz's published work as of that time. I can't stomach Koontz anymore -- he's far too formulaic and the characters are so flat that they cause papercuts.

King I still like, when it's clear that it's really him writing. Unfortunately, I think there are a fair number of ghost-written novels out there bearing the Stephen King name (Insomnia stands out in my memory as obviously not King, but there were some other ringers as well). I've always liked his short stories better than his long fiction, anyway.

Short aside: saying that you enjoy Stephen King is taboo for an English major, especially a creative writing major (which I was). A lot of his work is pure escapism, admittedly, but some of it has a 'there there'. Case in point: You Know They Got a Hell of a Band, which has a fascinating subtext when read allegorically.

Clive Barker is a more recent favorite -- although Orson Scott Card also put together a kick-ass collection of stories in the horror mode back in the early 90s, called The Changed Man and the King of Words.

Let me reiterate, though, The Dark Descent is incredible. A lot of old favorites, as well as many excellent stories that I've never encountered before. (Theodore Sturgeon's "Bright Segment" has been playing in my head like a snuff film for two days now -- that and Clive Barker's "Dread", which is easily one of his best.) I'm only about a quarter of the way into the book and I'm already itching to get back into writing fiction -- something I haven't done seriously in about ten years.

I didn't put this blog up to hawk books, but if you like horror stories, this is one that you'll definitely want to get your hands on. Buy it, borrow it, check it out of the library or stick it in your pants the next time you're browsing through Borders. But definitely get a copy in hand.

Finally Got the Christmas Tree Up

2005-12-09T07:07:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's just because the kids are so young, but I seem to remember decorating the tree being something of a bigger deal when my siblings and I were growing up. Our five-year-old was somewhat interested in helping, but mostly just fought another skirmish in the ongoing Spy-vs-Spy drama that dominates her relationship with her younger sister.

And on the subject of pointless skirmishes, the whole 'Merry Christmas' vs 'Happy Holidays' thing is extraordinarily stupid. There's been a lot of discussion on Bring It On, so I'm not going to regurgitate that here. The guest post today from Matthew61 is really good, check it out.

Unless you feel that the 'Christmas Spirit' is about the need to dominate a 'my god is bigger than your god' argument, it would all seem to be rather silly. "I came here to buy a [cheap plastic toy] assembled by a Chinese prison laborer or eight-year-old child in Malaysia (pick one) for my spoiled, over-privileged kid, and you'd better acknowledge that this holiday is about Jesus Christ, or else!" I'm not sure if that's funny or sad. It's definitely ironic, though.

Ever smelled your own eyeballs burning?

2005-12-02T23:15:00.000-05:00

I did, this morning.

P & I realized a few months back that we'd seriously overestimated the amount of money in our pre-tax medical account for this year. Rather than lose the money at end-of-year (stupid law, but that's a rant for another day), we decided to use it toward LASIK surgery for me.

I think that there are about three categories of people wearing glasses. My wife is in one category, which is 'glasses make things crisp but I can function fine without them'. My grandfather is at the other end of the spectrum, which is 'I'm legally blind even with glasses, but they help me a little so I wear them'. Up until this morning, I was in the last category, which is 'I see fine with glasses, but I'm totally useless without them.' Remember Velma crawling around on the floor looking for her birth control goggles? That was me.

So anyway, I was at the LASIK center for about 2.5 hours this morning, about 2 hours of which was spent sitting in a hallway, in between sets of pre-op photos and a whole bunch of eyedrops.

The surgery itself involves having your eyes propped open using something akin to the setup from A Clockwork Orange, having the transparent protective layer over the lens of your eyeball sliced open and popped up like the lid on a shampoo bottle, and then having a computer-guided laser smooth out the imperfections that caused your nearsightedness in the first place. It's quick, and pretty much painless, but having your eyeball sliced open and having your vision suddenly go to shit is a scary thing nonetheless. So is the smell of your eyeball cooking under a laser. The Valium they gave me beforehand helped a little. Something stronger would've been ideal.

(The computer-guided part of the process probably makes some people feel better about the procedure. Being in the software quality assurance field, though, that part totally freaked me out.)

But here I sit, twelve hours later, without glasses. My eyes are still recovering from the surgery, but I can already tell that I'm going to see at least as well without glasses as I did with them. After having worn them all day, every day, since elementary school, it's unnerving not to have them on. (Never wore contacts because they seemed like a pain in the butt and I don't like the idea of touching my eyes.) I keep 'startling' because of the sensation of not having them, and try to reach out to find them.

Weird, but cool.

Odds and ends with a high school theme

2005-11-29T22:24:00.000-05:00

Must be the fact that we went to visit family this past weekend, but I have a bunch of stuff floating around in my head and a lot of it's tied to high school in one way or another. That was half a lifetime ago now. Ouch.

Classmates.com: Made the mistake of signing up for the basic account, out of curiousity. Now the bastards won't leave me the hell alone - they're sending me spam out the pooper. But one old friend who I actually would like to talk to sent me an e-mail through their ~~internal~~ infernal system, and I can't read the damned thing unless I sign up for a 'gold' account. That really, truly sucks. Not sure if I'm gonna pony up the cash or just try to track him down outside of their site. Grr.

Not Quite Scheherazade: Found out that someone I knew back in high school writes Not Quite Scheherazade, which I'd run across a while back, and really liked, without realizing that the author was an old acquaintance. Kudos, A.S., on a great blog.

Alcohol: I've never been a confessionalist, as the few of you who read this regularly will know. But someone very close to me has let a drinking habit slip way out of control and it's quite alarming. Not sure what happened, or exactly when, but somehow having a few too many on 'special occasions' has apparently turned into a situation where every day is a 'special occasion'. Not good.

Being Clark Kent: Apparently all these years in front of a keyboard have finally paid off. Typing was the only class I ever got a 'D' in during high school. I truly sucked -- something like 13-14 wpm at top speed. I realized today at work that I was typing amazingly fast (for me) -- probably over 60-70 wpm -- while not even looking at the monitor, and not making any mistakes. Woo-hoo!

Head scratcher

2005-11-21T07:12:00.000-05:00

Cheney's flexible guy. You can't see it in this picture but he's actually doing a split.

The McCain anti-torture amendment is "unnecessary and duplicative," but the CIA needs to be exempt or the President will veto it. Riiiiiiight.

Because the Abu Ghirab investigation clearly got to the root of the problem of POW abuse and nothing like that could ever happen again.

FDA's Morning-After Pill Decision Probed

2005-11-14T22:48:00.000-05:00

Don't remember for sure if I posted a rant about this when I first read about it. Either way, there's one coming right now...

Apparently, when it comes to the issue of reproductive rights, nothing less than total fucking domination and the absolute legislation of morality will suffice. Sieg Heil to the Rabid Reactionary Right!

I mean really, what degree of asshatted, howling-abyss psychosis does it take to combine the premise that abortion is an abhorrent thing with an all out war on every attempt to provide sex education and contraception?

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. It defies all description.

It's not about helping women. It's not about being 'pro-life'. It's not even about sex, really. At the most fundamental level, it's about the need to inflict one's own view of the world on everyone else at any cost.

I'd love to live in a world where nobody wanted or needed an abortion. A world without incest or rape. A world where couples weren't ever having sex unless they were emotionally and physically ready, and weren't having kids until they were all of that, plus financially ready as well. But I live in this world, the real one, and I understand intellectually why abortion needs to be an option, even though the thought of it makes my heart ache and my skin crawl.

I'd love to see fewer abortions -- I'd love to see zero. Not by making them illegal, but by making better alternatives available, practical and affordable.

News flash: Pretending that you're going to somehow spread the Gospel to the entire fucking human race and magically turn the entire fucking world into clones of Ward and June Cleaver is not one of those alternatives.

Supporting adoptive charities is kind and noble one.
Supporting the availability of reliable, affordable contraception is a socially and fiscally responsible one.
Supporting factual sex education in the education system, combined with the availability of resources to help parents hold a meaningful, open dialogue about sex and sexuality with their children - within the framework of their personal religious and moral beliefs - is perhaps the best one of all.

And if that doesn't fit into your need to tell other people what to do, then do us all a favor and shut the fuck up.

A Quiet Moment to Reflect

2005-11-11T23:06:00.000-05:00

Ever stop to think about how the rest of the world must see us?

Holy Trap, It's a Stooldriver!

2005-11-11T07:42:00.000-05:00

Our two-year-old, E., learned a few entertaining words recently. She can't pronounce 'screwdriver' quite right, so it comes out as 'stooldriver'.

She picked up 'holy crap' from one of her older cousins, but says it as 'holy trap'. We're not doing anything to correct that one. ;)

Don't Let the Door Hit Ya in the Ass on the Way Out

2005-11-09T07:07:00.000-05:00

From AmericaBlog:

"Intelligent Design" proponents SLAUGHTERED in PA election
by John in DC - 11/09/2005 01:51:00 AM

Ok, this my friends is what a real mandate looks like. The GOP and their religious right cronies got slaughtered in Tuesday's elections. Other than Texas, which was to be expected, they lost, big time everywhere (CA is still being counted at this hour).

Basically, the local voters in the Pennsylvania anti-evolution controversy threw out EVERY SINGLE ONE of the wacko Republican anti-evolution wingnuts who were sitting on the school board. ALL OF THEM, GONE.

Now that's a mandate.

(Hat tip to Atrios.)

Technorati tags:
AmericaBlog, 2005 pennsylvania election, intelligent design, mandate

US Using Napalm in Iraq

2005-11-05T21:14:00.000-05:00

From Project Censored:
Reviewed by Cole Ryan and David Abbott

The U.S. has been secretly using napalm in Iraq despite a 1980 international ban on the use of incendiary weapons by the United Nations. The US never signed the UN protocol banning incendiary weapons and uses semantic deception to cover up the use of napalm by calling the weapons firebombs or Mk-77s.

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1928.shtml
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0617-01.htm
http://aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=5875
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,1518692,00.html

Technorati Tags

Iraq War
Napalm
Crimes Against Humanity
Firebombs
MK-77s

Cross-posted to Bring It On.

A greater opportunity to get myself into trouble

2005-11-02T22:22:00.000-05:00

...as my wife so kindly puts it. ;)

As of yesterday, I am a contributing member of Bring It On - the group blog that I've been addicted to for months now. Woo-hoo!

I'll spare you the embarassing Miersesque gush, but suffice it to say that I've been walking around with a shit-eating grin on my face since I found out.

Like-minded liberals, heated political discussions, daily Dubya abuse, a handful of pet trolls and more page hits in a day than I get by myself in months. What's not to love?

Happy Halloween - My Favorite Holiday

2005-10-30T23:14:00.000-05:00

Generally, I try not to toot my own horn, but I do carve a badass pumpkin. That's an original design, not a Pumpkin Masters stencil.

Here's a repost from January (not sure why I was thinking about Halloween back in January -- probably just feeling burnt-out from all the Christmasing).

Top 13 Reasons why Halloween is Better than Christmas

13. Marshmallow ghosts

12. Roasted pumpkin seeds

11. Mr Bones candy in the plastic coffin

10. Putting out a masked scarecrow in a chair on the front porch two weeks before Halloween, replacing the scarecrow with yourself on Halloween night and waiting for the neighborhood kids to knock on the door

9. Dressing like your favorite sci-fi/fantasy character without 'outing' yourself as the supreme geek that you are

8. The kids don't really need to eat all that candy, but it's such a shame to waste it...

7. Carving pumpkins

6. It majorly freaks out the fundamentalists, but Wal-Mart supports it wholeheartedly (although there is some concern among astrophysicists that this paradox may eventually rip a hole in the space-time continuum)

5. Snack-sized Butterfingers

4. Any adult women's costume involving hose or stockings

3. Deck out your house well enough and the Jehovah's Witnesses and/or Mormons may walk right on past without stopping

2. Flaming poop

1. Zero pressure - if you want to skip the holiday completely (except for maybe handing out candy for an hour or taking the kids around the block once or twice in a storebought costume) nobody cares

Ooh, this is too much fun - Einstein Blackboard

2005-10-28T21:48:00.000-05:00

The church sign generator was fun, but this is even better!

A shortcut for creating Technorati tags

2005-10-24T22:21:00.000-05:00

Something practical for a change: A simple formula for creating Technorati tags automatically in MS Excel.

I can only speak for myself, but I tend to use Technorati tags less than I would otherwise, simply because they're kind of a pain in the ass to string together. To get around this, I just wrote a Microsoft Excel formula that will generate a valid Technorati tag from a text string.

=CONCATENATE("<a href=""http://technorati.com/",(SUBSTITUTE(A1, " ", "+")), """"," tag=""ref"">",A1, "</a>"))

To use the formula, do this:

Open a blank Excel workbook and paste the formula into cell B1.

Copy the cell you pasted the formula into, select the entire column B and paste the formula into the column.

Type each tag into its own cell in column A.

To use the tags, just copy the populated cells from column B into your html editor. If you're a scatterbrain like me, you might also want to protect column B so you don't inadvertently delete the formulas.

Your spreadsheet should end up looking something like this:

Don't say I never gave you anything. ;)

Ever feel like you were living in The Twilight Zone?

2005-10-24T06:26:00.000-05:00

I do, and it's not just flashbacks from my college days.

I saw a news clip this morning (from Meet the Press) in which Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R - TX) suggested that the hefty cost of indicting key White House officials had better be justified by charges more serious than perjury.

White House... perjury... hmm... does that remind you of anything?

So I dug back a little bit, and read Sen. Hutchinson's position on the Clinton impeachment. From that statement:

However inappropriate the behavior of the President was, the legal issues in the impeachment trial do not deal with this relationship. All accusations against the President here relate instead to alleged attempts to prevent the disclosure of this relationship in a pending civil rights lawsuit against the President in an Arkansas Federal court and to the public. That is the critical factor that has brought us to this extraordinary moment in our Nation's history when we are considering whether or not to remove from office the President of the United States.

Now here's the funny thing: I think her position has some merit. Not sure if I agree that the gravity of the charges justified the cost and disruptive nature of the impeachment proceedings, but she raises some entirely valid points. I guess cost wasn't as big a concern back in 1999, when we had a balanced budget and before we'd poured over $200 billion dollars into a quagmire called Iraqi Freedom.

Unfortunately, Sen. Hutchinson also seems to have a very short memory regarding her own position -- that the perjury charges against Clinton were simply the tip of the iceberg. Here's the thing: the expected perjury charges are based on the White House retribution for a former public servant's refusal to help fabricate evidence to justify an illegal war that's killed and maimed thousands of US troops and tens of thousands of civilians.

Technorati Tags:

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson
Bill Clinton
downing street memo
yellowcake forgery
Valerie Plame
Meet the Press
CIA
Scooter Libby
Karl Rove
Dick Cheney
Patrick Fitzgerald
Joseph Wilson

Lost - A rare foray (for us) into 'grown-up' TV

2005-10-23T22:46:00.000-05:00

P and I borrowed the first season of Lost from a coworker. We've been able to watch the first four episodes so far. I'm enjoying it. I have a couple of theories about what might be happening, but nothing I'm ready to commit to yet.

I don't get to watch many 'grown-up' shows anymore. Most of my TV time involves annoying animated characters, talking animals, a boy with a lightning scar on his forehead, or giant monsters that trash Tokyo.

We watched X Files religiously until it started to get lame. Ditto for Millenium. The last two shows we watched regularly were Buffy and Angel. And I was totally hooked on The Shield for the first two seasons -- but I started missing episodes when we had my nephew living with us and got so far behind that I just gave up trying to tape it. P found it far too violent, so she didn't watch it anyway.

I detest reality television, so I get the impression that I haven't missed much over the past few years. Like I said, though, I'm enjoying Lost.

My entry for the CampusProgress GWB Crony Correspondence Contest

2005-10-22T22:02:00.000-05:00

Here's my entry for Campus Progress' George W. Bush Crony Correspondence Contest:

Dubya's Desktop

It's about a 300kb file, so if you're on dial-up don't make any plans for the next couple of minutes...

Finally figured out what I'm supposed to do with the duct tape

2005-10-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

I finally figured out what I'm supposed to be doing with the duct tape in my emergency preparedness kit to help protect my family. Duct-taping Rick Santorum to the wall and leaving him there would be an excellent start.

Medical pot user yanked from hospital bed

2005-10-19T21:51:00.000-05:00

Original source - Duluth News Tribune

Medical pot user yanked from hospital bed

BY GENE JOHNSON

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEATTLE - An Army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for growing marijuana to treat his chronic pain was yanked from a hospital by Canadian authorities, driven to the border with a catheter still attached and turned over to U.S. officials, his lawyer says.

He then went five days with no medical treatment and only ibuprofen for the pain, attorney Douglas Hiatt said.

Steven Tuck, 38, was still fitted with the urinary cath-eter when he shuffled into federal court for a detention hearing Wednesday, Hiatt said.

"This is totally inhumane. He's been tortured for days for no reason," Hiatt said.

(Article continues online.)

Man, it sure is a good thing the Feds pressured Canada to turn over this ~~dangerous criminal~~ state-licensed patient who was ~~running a terrorist cartel~~ growing for his own personal use and ~~selling it to schoolchildren~~ treating chronic pain from injuries he sustained ~~during a life of crime~~ in the service of his country. We can all ~~breathe a little easier now~~ smell the stench, knowing that this ~~rotten~~ poor bastard is ~~safely off the streets~~ suffering unnecessarily.

At least he made it through the ordeal with his life, which is more than can be said for Jonathan Magbie.

And as for Canada, I can only suggest: Do feel free to disobey this evil empire of ours any time you want, eh?

medical marijuana
Steven Tuck
DEA
cannabis
federalism
state rights
legalize it
med pot
Jonathan Magbie

Fitter, Happier

2005-10-17T21:47:00.000-05:00

I've been in a bit of a funk, lately. (Listening to OK Computer repeatedly probably hasn't helped -- having Fitter, Happier bleeding into your dreams is never a good thing.) I don't remember exactly when it happened, but at some point I started hating my job.

I just spent over a year on the Project From Hell and for some reason I can't shake the tangled ball of stress and anger that grew out of it. Things that I used to shrug off easily just bug the living shit out of me now. I'm honestly trying to get past it, but I seem to have developed a hair-trigger temper somewhere along the way -- something I never had before.

To some degree, I'm just not a good match to the corporate world. I like the sort of work that I do, I seem to be pretty good at it and I get along well with co-workers, but at the same time I just don't feel like I fit. Case in point: I can't fathom the idea that someone would want to live in a subdivision, belong to a homeowner's association or go on a golfing vacation.

I'm not sure what it is that I'm 'supposed' to be doing, but it doesn't feel like what I'm doing right now is it.

Iraqis Probe 'Unusually High' Yes Tally

2005-10-17T20:44:00.000-05:00

From Yahoo News:

BAGHDAD, Iraq -
Iraq's election commission announced Monday that officials were investigating "unusually high" numbers of "yes" votes in about a dozen provinces during Iraq's landmark referendum on a new constitution, raising questions about irregularities in the balloting.

Article continues here.

I see that they've learned everything that the Bush administration had to teach about ~~running~~ fixing an election. Good job, guys.

election fraud
Iraq

Which classic movie are you?

2005-10-16T16:07:00.000-05:00

I'm Easy Rider. g/f

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Rep McKinney censored in House transcript for mentioning impeachment

2005-10-16T10:58:00.000-05:00

Sorry this is a bit dated, but I just ran across it. From Project Censored:

U.S. Representative McKinney Censored in Congress

Reviewed by Charlene Jones

Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) used the word “impeachment” on the House floor but, she said, it was not reflected in the official transcript of her September 8 description of “high crimes and misdemeanors visited on the American people.” In a speech entitled Tremendous Challenges that Face our Country, McKinney recounted the incompetence of the Bush Administration in addressing the needs of hurricane Katrina victims and the policies of Republican elites responsible for rampant poverty and an increased racial divide. Questioning everything from the lack of action on Katrina to rewarding the rich, the congresswoman later promised to use the word repeatedly on the House Floor until she sees it reflected in the Congressional Record.

Here's the story in her own words.

impeach Bush
Cynthia McKinney
censorship

The long, cold winter

2005-10-14T22:54:00.000-05:00

God help the poor. I said it to my wife in November 2000, and I'm saying it again now.

If the federal government had set forth with the intent of crushing the lower and middle classes this coming winter, it couldn't have done a much better job.

The first blow is set to land on Monday. That's when a new federal law goes into effect, making it very difficult for individuals to claim bankruptcy. Now, I'm not going to claim that nobody has abused the existing bankruptcy laws -- I know a few people who have.

However, it has also been my personal observation that most people honor their debts as best that they are able, and view bankruptcy as a 'worst case survival' alternative should all else fail. It's a safety net, and that safety net is being cut down.

The next blow is due to land in November. That's when another new federal law goes into effect, increasing and potentially doubling the minimum payment required on credit card debts. For someone with a marginal credit rating and the average household amount of credit card debt, $10,000, that could easily mean a $250/month increase in monthly minimum payments.

Predatory lenders like Capital One and Providian thrive on people who are deep in debt. Combined with the ridiculous interest rates they're able to ask (I've seen them well over 20%), they make a tidy profit on late payment fees -- often $30/month or more.

For a lower-middle class family that's struggling, often it comes down to a decision of whether to pay the credit card bill on time or to put groceries in the cupboard, and that extra $30 fee seems unavoidable.

The minimum payment increase alone might be enough to drive a number of households close to the poverty level into bankruptcy. Oh, wait... isn't that interesting?

The killing blow will land sometime over the next few months, when energy costs are expected to spike 50% or more. That might not seem like a huge deal to those living in warmer states, but here in the north, and through the midwest, it's a disaster.

At current gas and fuel oil prices, a good-sized, older house or duplex (like those that make up the lower class neighborhoods in Erie and Pittsburgh, and many throughout rural PA in general) can cost up to $300/month to heat during a cold snap. Bump that up to $450.

I started writing this thinking that rising energy costs were more a result of bad luck than government SNAFU, but that's not really true. We have the war in Iraq to thank in major part for the rising cost of oil, excabarated by repeated supply-chain disruptions in Iraq. (Those ongoing 'last throes' we keep hearing about.) Thanks, George.

And finally, to add assrape to injury, my home state of Pennsylvania has recently enacted legislation to reduce the minimum delinquency period required prior to shutoff for utilities. The float time between delinquency and shutoff of a utility can be a lifesaver for a poor family (literally, in the winter).

I don't know offhand if the electric and gas suppliers are still restricted from shutting off utilities during the winter months, but I sure hope so. Otherwise, we're going to be seeing frozen bodies pulled out of the houses of seniors on fixed incomes, as well as an increase in carbon monoxide poisonings and fire casualties resulting from the use of unsafe heating sources.

Like I said, God help the poor.

energy costs
iraq war
bankruptcy law
minimum credit payments
poverty in America
predatory lending

Which rock star are you?

2005-10-13T22:51:00.000-05:00

I always get a kick out of doing the Web quizzes that categorize you into something. I ran into a site today called Quiz Farm that lets you create one -- I put a basic one together in less than an hour: What kind of rock star are you?

Pretty cool site, though the interface is just a tad buggy.

One more for Cafe Press

2005-10-12T05:55:00.000-05:00

Harriet Miers - My Little Crony

2005-10-12T05:40:00.000-05:00

Hippie Sr. sent this one along to me. I start laughing every time I look at it.

Harriet Miers
Bush Cronyism

George W. Bush poops on the White House lawn: a timeline

2005-10-11T07:22:00.000-05:00

8:00 am EST

George W. Bush runs from the front door of the White House buck-naked and cackling like mad, defecates on the front lawn and runs back inside.

8:01 am EST

Yahoo News publishes a Reuters story, complete with color photos. The scrolling news ticker of cable channel MSNBC reads "Bush drops tur..." and promptly cuts to a commercial for Geico.

8:02 am EST

CNN sends out a breaking news e-mail & text alert: "Sources say Bush takes dump on White House lawn. Go to CNN for complete up-to-the-minute coverage." No related story can be found on CNN.com.

8:06 am EST

27 left-wing-nut bloggers post various conspiracy theories and fantastic accusations about the incident. 4234 liberals and moderates also express disgust and outrage.

8:42 am EST

The Drudge Report showcases and ridicules the 27 left-wing-nuts, and ignores the 4234 other criticisms.

8:47 am EST

Fox News reports the Drudge Report version of events, uncorroborated.

9:03 am EST

CNN.com publishes an AP story on lawn incident, buried in 'other political news'. The splash page of CNN shows a photo of Paris Hilton and her dog, and includes a related 2000-word story about her fingernails.

9:47 am EST

Indymedia.org publishes a series of high-resolution photos of Bush pooping on the lawn. The photos highlight what appears to be cocaine residue under his nose.

9:48 am EST

CNN begins playing a short clip of the President's turd, ad naseum.

9:49 am EST

A questionable presidential nominee is confirmed. The Senate disbands the EPA. 17 US soldiers are killed in Iraq. Nobody notices.

9:53 am EST

The FBI raids Indymedia's South American offices and seizes their servers (again).

10:00 am EST

Scott Mclellan deflects all questions at a short White House press conference, feigning outrage and downplaying the importance of the event.

12:05 pm EST

Rush Limbaugh states that taking a dump on the White House lawn was the only logical thing to do and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron.

12:07 pm EST

5347 right-wing-nut bloggers write posts on the event. Each offers an uncredited summary of Rush Limbaugh's asessment or Matthew Drudge's earlier post.

12:08 pm EST

Right and left-wing bloggers begin an 'I know you are but what am I?' comment war that continues unabated for three weeks.

1:00 pm EST

On The 700 Club, Pat Robertson leads a prayer for the president and makes a vague insinuation that Hugo Chavez was responsible for the turd.

2:25 pm EST

Moveon.org sends outraged e-mail titled "Hold George Bush accountable for pooping on the White House lawn" asking for phone calls to legislators and donations for an advertising campaign. Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid follow suit.

3:17 pm EST

Robert Novak leaks the name of the Secret Service agent who accidentally let Bush outside while high as a kite. Novak refuses to name his source.

3:43 pm EST

Jib Jab publishes a catchy Shockwave spoof of the Brittany Spears song 'Oops, I did it again' called 'Oops, I pooped on the lawn'.

4:45 pm EST

Internet traffic slows to a trickle due to 34,565,356 office workers trying to download the Jib Jab video simultaneously.

6:00 pm EST

The mainstream news media's talking heads begin an 'I know you are but what am I?' war that continues unabated for 3 days.

George Bush
mainstream media

Modern Man-Made Disasters

2005-10-09T16:00:00.000-05:00

Added another design to my Cafe Press store.

What do the Hindenberg, the Titanic, Chernobyl and the 2000 US presidential election have in common? They're all modern man-made disasters.

My first venture into t-shirt design - eye sofa king stoned

2005-10-08T23:21:00.000-05:00

I decided to see if I could make a go at selling some stuff on CafePress. Here's the first thing I uploaded:

Dunno if I'll sell anything online, but I think they'd definitely move in the parking lot of a jam band show.

A friend of mine also had a really good idea for a bumper sticker. Once I get the design just right, I'll put that up as well.

Posse Comitatus

2005-10-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

My first attempt at using Windows Movie Maker. Lemme know what you think...

Technorati tags:
Posse Comitatus
George Bush
Avian Flu
Martial Law

Congressman Tom Delay -- Ye Most Scandalmonger

2005-10-04T21:56:00.000-05:00

Just a little fun with Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop (at the expense of Hot Tub Tom DeLay), using an anagram served up hot and steamy from the Internet Anagram Server:

Technorati tags:
Hot Tub Tom
Tom Delay
Campaign Fraud
Money Laundering
Stuck Pig
DeLay Indictment

Scene from a Bush Fundraiser

2005-10-04T06:48:00.000-05:00

Ever wondered what happens at those $1000/plate dinners?

Encore - Tom DeLay - Why is everybody always picking on me?

2005-10-03T19:45:00.000-05:00

Under the circumstances, (i.e., today he's been squealing like a stuck pig over how unfair it all is that all the campaign fraud is finally catching up with him) it seems almost a moral imperative to sing an encore round of the little ditty I put together for Tom Delay back in April:

With apologies to The Bloodhound Gang...

Why's everybody always pickin' on me?
(Cause I have no conscience with campaign mon-ey.)

Why's everybody always pickin' on me?
(Cause I slipped a half a million to my fam-i-ly.)

Why's everybody always pickin' on me?
(Cause I stacked the Senate ethics com-mit-tee.)

Why's everybody always pickin' on me?
(Cause I took more shady trips than Tim-o-thy Lea-ry.)

Why's everybody always pickin' on me?
(Cause I'll turn the capitol into the Ho-ly See.)

Why's everybody always pickin' on me?
(Cause I threatened all those judges for de-fy-ing me.)

Why's everybody always pickin' on me?
(Cause the cash I scrubbed from Texas did a 180°)

Why's everybody always pickin' on me?

Cause nobody likes ya, monkey boy.

Technorati tags:
Tom Delay
Bloodhound Gang
Campaign Fraud
Money Laundering
Stuck Pig
DeLay Indictment

OMFG - Harriet Miers is Michael Brown in a dress

2005-10-03T07:35:00.000-05:00

You heard it here first. And it just works on so many levels, doesn't it?

Spc. Charles Graner, Before Iraq -- Some Background Reading

2005-10-02T13:56:00.000-05:00

Apparently, at least one of the fact checkers at USA Today is suffering from a severe case of cranial-rectal inversion. In the May 6th, 2004 edition of the paper, an article about Charles Graner and Lynndie England stated the following:

The only known blemish on [Graner's] work record came when he refused to work mandatory overtime one night because he had to care for his kids.

Um, not exactly. Apparently, putting Mace in a co-worker's coffee or a razor blade in an inmate's food don't count as 'blemishes' on one's record, at least when one is employed in a prison system where inmate abuse is epidemic and systematic, and officials routinely refuse to investigate allegations of abuse. Some individual accounts of abuse at Graner's alma mater can be found here.

More info about Graner, sadist and wife-beater extrordinaire, can be found here, here and here.

So here's the $64,000 question: How does someone become a guard at a prison which houses prisoners ostensibly considered a high risk to our national security? Theoretically, wouldn't said person need to pass some sort of background check? And if so, how would someone like Graner slip through?

At best, it suggests serious incompetence higher up the chain of command. At worst, it implies that Graner might have been just the sort of guy the military was looking for. All things considered, it doesn't seem much of a stretch.

Technorati Tags:

Abu Ghraib
Impeach Bush
Charles Graner
Lynndie England
USA Today
prisoner abuse

Abu Ghraib, USA

2005-10-01T13:06:00.000-05:00

The link at the bottom of this post will take you to an article written by Anne-Marie Cusac. The article ran in The Progressive. It discusses prison abuse within the United States and direct parallels to the abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib. In at least one case, the same individual, Charles Graner, has been implicated in both civilian and military atrocities.

I'm hoping that some of the information in it will matter to you, that you're not so numb to this sort of mayhem that you shrug your shoulders and say,"So what else is new?"

The bottom line here is this: Whether it be rape, torture or murder, the guilty parties at Abu Ghraib didn't break any new ground. They didn't commit any atrocities upon foreign prisoners that we hadn't already been inflicting on our own citizens.

The only difference, perhaps, is that the mainstream media in other countries has been less willing to ignore it and has therefore put pressure on the US media to pay attention as well.

Some key points:

California: Class action suit settled against the Sacramento Sheriffs Department for various acts of torture, including mock executions.

Abu Ghraib: The Guardian of London, UK reports of soldiers being trained to perform mock executions on prisoners.

Texas: Guard training videos include footage of beatings, stun gun use, and dogs being encouraged to attack inmates. At least one inmate tortured to death with a stun gun. Prisoners exposed to 120+ degree heat for extended periods.

Abu Ghraib: Reports of beatings, stun gun use and dogs attacking inmates. Hooded prisoners exposed to 120+ degree heat for extended periods.

Pennsylvania: Prisoners sodomized with nightsticks, beaten and subjected to public sexual humiliation at the same prison where Charles Graner was employed as a guard. Graner was not implicated in that particular scandal, but he was specifically named in a lawsuit involving the beating and mistreatment of another inmate, though the suit was later dismissed.

Abu Ghraib: At least one prisoner sodomized with a chemical light and possibly a broomhandle. Multiple prisoners beaten and subjected to public sexual humiliation. (Maybe Graner was just taking notes at his civilian job?)

So was the abuse at Abu Ghraib worse than what's been happening right here under our noses? I guess that depends on your perspective.

The prisoners subject to abuse at Abu Ghraib are POWs being held in flagrant disregard of the Geneva Convention -- one of the charges which should be leveled to help impeach George W. Bush. Innocent or guilty, many either haven't been charged or have been subject to sham trials.

And in the case of Charles Graner in particular, why was he placed in a position of authority at Abu Ghraib? Given the nature of the prisoners being held there, he must have been subject to extensive background checks prior to being assigned to that post. Perhaps his 'resumé' had some job skills that Rumsfeld et al considered desirable.

On the other hand, those being abused here in the US have been, by and large, convicted criminals. But as one Florida woman told NBC news, "That was not part of my sentence, to... perform oral sex with the officers."

I would argue that neither situation is acceptable and ask, "Why does it take despicable behavior overseas to get the national media's attention, when the same despicable behavior is taking place right here in the US?"

Anyway, here's the article: Abu Ghraib, USA.

Many thanks to Hippie, Sr. (aka Dad) for the link.

Technorati Tags:

Abu Ghraib
Impeach Bush
Anne-Marie Cusac
Charles Graner

Joined the Sunkist Club Today

2005-09-30T21:50:00.000-05:00

...as my friend Zak calls it. So now I'm all juice, no seeds.

Actually, the 'no seeds' part takes a while -- you have to ejaculate about 25 times to completely 'clear the chamber', as it were. So I have something to shoot for.

Once that's done, I get to drop off two samples at the lab, two weeks apart. After I get the all clear, no more worrying about birth control. Ever. Woo-hoo!

So now I'm just sitting here hopped up on Darvocet with an ice-pack tucked into my shorts.

One piece of advice for anybody going in for the snip: Shave your own sac beforehand. Really. I was a bit sketchy about doing that, so I left it up to the doctor. Big mistake. The Valium they gave me beforehand did absolutely nothing to take the edge off having my scrotum stretched out and dry-shaven with a Bic. (shudder) As a matter of fact, I'm not sure it did anything at all except to give me really weird dreams while I dozed off waiting for the procedure to start.

The surgery wasn't that painful, really. The worst part has been post-op, feeling like I got kicked in the groin whenever the meds start to wear off. I had a Prince Albert piercing done about 7-8 years ago and that pain was infinitely more intense.

But that's a story for another day...

Something serious for a change - missing child - update: found

2005-09-29T20:17:00.000-05:00

Update: Jordan has been returned to his family, safe and sound.

Jordan Rolfe (birth name) or Jordan Barry (name he chooses to use)
Born: March 10, 1999

Height: 4 feet

Weight: 50 pounds

Hair : Dark Brown, straight, medium-short length

Marks: Scar on middle back, rash (exzema) on right arm and wrist, wart on right thumb.

Last seen wearing a grey shirt with a navy blue collar and blue shorts with orange flames on the sides.

Taken from the city of Strongsville, Ohio. Last seen in Lakewood, Ohio on Clifton Blvd. 9-28-05 at 10:00 a.m. We suspect that she will be trying to make her way either towards Mexico, or Florida.

Nancy Rolfe may be driving a White Chevy conversion van with light blue or green pin stripes. She may also be with a friend who drives a white Honda with black trim. Nancy may be going by the name "Flora" and may have altered her appearance to look like an older woman. Nancy is in her 40's, thin, dark hair and approx. 5'6" tall.

The contact info is:

Detective Sgt. Colegrove
Strongsville Police Dept.
(440) 238-7373

and

Special Agent Timothy J. Kolonick
FBI
(216) 662-6637

If anyone has anything at all to report, please do.

His family are offering a $10,000.00 cash reward to anyone offering any information that leads to his safe return.

Cheney under doctor's orders to refrain from goose-stepping and/or fellating corporate interests

2005-09-27T21:40:00.000-05:00

(my improvements are in red text and today's post is rated NC17 - you have been warned)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney underwent surgery Saturday to remove aneurysms found on the back of both knees.

The procedure lasted six hours and there were no complications. Presently, the vice president is awake, alert, and comfortable, according to a news release from Cheney's office.

It added that after the procedure on Cheney's right knee "went exceedingly smoothly" a decision was made to also repair the aneurysm behind the left knee using a similar technique. Initially, the left knee was to be fixed at a later date.

Jenny Mayfield, of the vice president's office, said doctors in July "identified arterial aneurysms behind both knees."

Cheney later decided to have the "arteries repaired utilizing a minimally invasive endovascular technique."

Mayfield said Cheney expects to resume his normal schedule as soon as he is released to home, with a few exceptions.

"For the time being", said Mayfield, "Cheney must set aside his role as defense-contract whore and jack-booted thug. All the goose-stepping that he's done in the past few years, combined with the stress of kneeling down to suck corporate cock, have simply destroyed his knees."

Cheney is expected to undergo intensive physical therapy in the coming months to restore his contractor-schlong-gobbling prowess.

"We'll start him off slowly, with some head-bobbing exercises and a few padded equipment contracts", explained an unnamed source at the Bethesda Medical Center. "If all goes according to plan, he'll be letting Haliburton jackhammer his tonsils raw within a month. And he'll be back to slinging multi-million dollar no-bid contracts in no time at all. You just can't keep this Dick down."

The original, uninteresting version of the story can be found here.

The Blackwater Report

2005-09-25T22:48:00.000-05:00

Check this out - if Cindy Sheehan is a pie in the face to Bush's credibility, then the Blackwater Report is a Louisville Slugger to the back of his head.

One more link in the chain that's gonna impeach Bush.

Kick-ass stuff, Juju Revolution. Keep up the good work!

What Do News Network Acronyms Stand For?

2005-09-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

In case you've ever wondered what the acronyms for CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, or C-SPAN stood for, I've put together a handy reference guide:

New Snack - Wing Nuts

2005-09-21T20:57:00.000-05:00

I'm a search engine hit for 'chloroformed mom, sex'

2005-09-20T22:21:00.000-05:00

All I can say is a heartfelt 'yuck'.

25-Foot Pig Greets Returning Lawmakers

2005-09-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

Ah, my home state of Pennsylvania. If not the pork capital of the US, pretty damned close.

Check out the big pig.

Thanks to The Bastard at Bring It On for the link.

How do you cut down a shrub?

2005-09-19T21:47:00.000-05:00

There's an old saw that project managers like to repeat. It's supposed to help inspire teams that are about to embark on huge projects:

Q. How do you eat an elephant?

A. One bite at a time.

Well, let me suggest an update for the Impeach Bush Coalition:

Q. How do you cut down a shrub?

A. One senator at a time.

Getting the Word Out

That said, we do need to start making Congress aware of our presence.

Earlier this week, Bulldog provided a list of media e-mail addresses to contact. If you haven't pinged him for it already, you should do so tonight! The following is a complement to that list.

E-mail vs. Web Forms

Most members of Congress do not use traditional e-mail addresses. Instead, they capture feedback from the public via web forms. The use of web forms allows them to collect meta-data (who's sending feedback and why) and to filter out spam messages. It takes a bit longer to complete a web form than it does to send an e-mail, so prioritize your efforts.

Every form is a little different, so you'll have to wing it. Once you come up with a message, though, you can cut and paste the text into the main comment box of every form.

Who to Contact

If you only have time to contact two people, make those two people the US Senators who represent your state. Senators pay the most attention to their own constituents, and consider messages originating from elsewhere to be a far lower priority.
Next, contact Senators from the states directly affected by hurricane Katrina and proposed military base closings. These folks and their constituents may already be angry enough to cross well-established party lines and help support impeachment.
Third, contact Democrat and Independent Senators, especially anyone whose name you already recognize as an outspoken critic of the Bush Administration. (Clinton, Kerry, Lieberman, and Reid would be good places to start.)
Finally, contact everyone else that you have time to contact. Even guys like Newt Gingrich have been taking swings at the White House lately, so messages directed to Republican Senators may be worthwhile.

What to Say

Be cordial, honest and brief. Your message will probably be truncated to a hard limit of 1000 characters or so and because of the volume of incoming mail, it's very unlikely that anything past the first 50-100 words or so will be read.

Sample Message

Dear [recipient's name],

I am a member of a group of bloggers called the Impeach Bush Coalition. In the week since this group was formed, approximately 140 blogs have joined. Our goal, of course, is the speedy impeachment of George W. Bush.

I would like to extend you an invitation to visit our site and/or endorse our efforts. Given your standing and influence among [organization or constituency], such an endorsement could prove crucial to our cause.

Our site is here: http://impeachbushcoalition.blogspot.com.

Thank you,

[your name]

The Big Honkin' List of Links

Below is a list of links to all of the US Senators in the 109th Congress -- most open to web forms at senate.gov and a handful open to traditional e-mail addresses:

Senator's Name	Party/State	Contact Format
Akaka, Daniel	D - HI	E-mail
Alexander, Lamar	R - TN	Web Form
Allard, Wayne	R - CO	Web Form
Allen, George	R - VA	Web Form
Baucus, Max	D - MT	Web Form
Bayh, Evan	D - IN	Web Form
Bennett, Robert	R - UT	Web Form
Biden, Joseph	D - DE	E-mail
Bingaman, Jeff	D - NM	E-mail
Bond, Christopher	R - MO	Web Form
Boxer, Barbara	D - CA	Web Form
Brownback, Sam	R - KS	Web Form
Bunning, Jim	R - KY	Web Form
Burns, Conrad	R - MT	Web Form
Burr, Richard	R - NC	Web Form
Byrd, Robert	D - WV	Web Form
Cantwell, Maria	D - WA	Web Form
Carper, Thomas	D - DE	Web Form
Chafee, Lincoln	R - RI	Web Form
Chambliss, Saxby	R - GA	Web Form
Clinton, Hillary	D - NY	Web Form
Coburn, Tom	R - OK	Web Form
Cochran, Thad	R - MS	Web Form
Coleman, Norm	R - MN	Web Form
Collins, Susan	R - ME	Web Form
Conrad, Kent	D - ND	Web Form
Cornyn, John	R - TX	Web Form
Corzine, Jon	D - NJ	Web Form
Craig, Larry	R - ID	Web Form
Crapo, Michael	R - ID	Web Form
Dayton, Mark	D - MN	Web Form
DeMint, Jim	R - SC	Web Form
DeWine, Mike	R - OH	Web Form
Dodd, Christopher	D - CT	Web Form
Dole, Elizabeth	R - NC	Web Form
Domenici, Pete	R - NM	Web Form
Dorgan, Byron	D - ND	E-mail
Durbin, Richard	D - IL	Web Form
Ensign, John	R - NV	Web Form
Enzi, Michael	R - WY	Web Form
Feingold, Russell	D - WI	Web Form
Feinstein, Dianne	D - CA	Web Form
Frist, Bill	R - TN	Web Form
Graham, Lindsey	R - SC	Web Form
Grassley, Chuck	R - IA	Web Form
Gregg, Judd	R - NH	Web Form
Hagel, Chuck	R - NE	Web Form
Harkin, Tom	D - IA	Web Form
Hatch, Orrin	R - UT	Web Form
Hutchison, Kay	R - TX	Web Form
Inhofe, James	R - OK	Web Form
Inouye, Daniel	D - HI	Web Form
Isakson, Johnny	R - GA	Web Form
Jeffords, James	I - VT	Web Form
Johnson, Tim	D - SD	Web Form
Kennedy, Edward	D - MA	Web Form
Kerry, John	D - MA	Web Form
Kohl, Herb	D - WI	Web Form
Kyl, Jon	R - AZ	Web Form
Landrieu, Mary	D - LA	Web Form
Lautenberg, Frank	D - NJ	Web Form
Leahy, Patrick	D - VT	E-mail
Levin, Carl	D - MI	Web Form
Lieberman, Joseph	D - CT	Web Form
Lincoln, Blanche	D - AR	Web Form
Lott, Trent	R - MS	E-mail
Lugar, Richard	R - IN	E-mail
Martinez, Mel	R - FL	Web Form
McCain, John	R - AZ	Web Form
McConnell, Mitch	R - KY	Web Form
Mikulski, Barbara	D - MD	Web Form
Murkowski, Lisa	R - AK	Web Form
Murray, Patty	D - WA	Web Form
Nelson, Bill	D - FL	Web Form
Nelson, Ben	D - NE	Web Form
Obama, Barack	D - IL	Web Form
Pryor, Mark	D - AR	Web Form
Reed, Jack	D - RI	Web Form
Reid, Harry	D - NV	Web Form
Roberts, Pat	R - KS	Web Form
Rockefeller, John	D - WV	Web Form
Salazar, Ken	D - CO	Web Form
Santorum, Rick	R - PA	Web Form
Sarbanes, Paul	D - MD	Web Form
Schumer, Charles	D - NY	Web Form
Sessions, Jeff	R - AL	Web Form
Shelby, Richard	R - AL	E-mail
Smith, Gordon	R - OR	Web Form
Snowe, Olympia	R - ME	E-mail
Specter, Arlen	R - PA	Web Form
Stabenow, Debbie	D - MI	Web Form
Stevens, Ted	R - AK	Web Form
Sununu, John	R - NH	Web Form
Talent, James	R - MO	Web Form
Thomas, Craig	R - WY	Web Form
Thune, John	R - SD	Web Form
Vitter, David	R - LA	Web Form
Voinovich, George	R - OH	Web Form
Warner, John	R - VA	Web Form
Wyden, Ron	D - OR	Web Form

Haiku - Naval Research Lab

2005-09-15T21:57:00.000-05:00

Naval Research Lab -
Dude, I'm glad you ping my blog
But it wigs me out

Bushies - New Brand of Diaper

2005-09-14T22:52:00.000-05:00

If your baby never seems to stop pooping, have I got a diaper for you: Bushies. Guaranteed to hold even the foulest, stinkiest messes and somehow make them disappear.

It's a blunderful life

2005-09-13T22:36:00.000-05:00

It's a ~~Wonderful~~ Blunderful Life

The scene opens on a snowy bridge over the Potomac River in winter. The wind blows and dark water churns below. George W. Bush, looking weary and haggard, climbs out over the railing.

"I wish I were never born", he murmurs, leaning out toward the water.

There is a loud splash and the camera pans down to a man flailing in the water. George jumps in and pulls him to safety...

Cut to George and Clarence the angel, warming up in front of an old stove at a guardbooth.

"I'm an angel, George", says Clarence, pulling back on his newly dried clothes. "I'm here to grant your wish. Follow me."

"Anything you say, Clare-bear." George gives a thumbs-up and a grin.

"Don't call me that. It's idiotic", says Clarence.

"It's what I do, Clare-bear", says George. "I give people nicknames."

"Shut up, George."

"God likes me, Clarence. I started that there office for faith-based initiatives."

"Yes, George. But right or wrong, you didn't give that office any funding. The Big Guy wasn't impressed."

The scene fades out as George and Clarence leave the guardbooth, and fades back in at the home of a man watching television and drinking a beer.

"That guy looks familiar, Clarence, but I can't place him. Who is that?"

"That's Claude Jones, George. He was convicted of murder based on questionable evidence. When you were governor, you refused his request for a DNA test of the single piece of hair that the prosecution claimed placed him at the crime scene. He was executed. But the guy who served as governor in your place allowed that DNA test, exonerating him."

"I like beer. Think he'd mind if I grabbed a beer?"

"Shut up, George."

Next we see George and Clarence walking through the gates of a cemetery. George scratches his head.

"Gee, Clare-bear, this place looks familiar too. But it's a little different somehow."

"Well, George, it should look familiar. This is one of the cemeteries in Florida where your buddies from SCI were digging up corpses and throwing them in the woods so they could re-sell the plots. You remember, right? It was on the news. You were subpoenaed but resused to testify."

"Oh yeah. Heh, heh. Good times."

"When you weren't around to halt the investigation into SCI's illegal activities in Texas, they were under sufficient scrutiny to prevent the desecration of graves here in Florida. That's why it looks different."

"Guess you could say they had a bone to pick with me."

"Shut up, George."

Clarence and George stand outside a maximum security cell in a federal prison, peeking in at a thin man with a beard and a turban.

"Holy poop on a stick, Clarence! Is that Osama bin Laden???"

"That's right, George. When you weren't around to push your Iraq agenda, the President elected in your place focused instead on bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. It took a few years, but they finally caught him. He goes on trial next month."

"That PATRIOT Act sure did work, huh?"

"Shut up, George. There is no PATRIOT Act. We never needed it."

George and Clarence stand at the back of a crowd that has gathered alongside a convoy of National Guard trucks. Guardsmen are handing out bottled water and MREs.

"Is this Louisiana after the hurricane, Clare-bear?"

"That's right, George. Two days after Katrina."

"But we didn't get there until like four or five days afterward. And how'd all these Guardsmen get here? They're supposed to be protecting our freedom in Iraq."

"Well, in your absence, the President appointed a competent director for FEMA -- somebody who knew how to respond to a pending natural disaster. He mobilized immediately based on the National Weather Service's warning instead of waiting. And we never invaded Iraq, so most of the active guardsmen weren't overseas. They were here to help."

"Hey, I was in the Guard during Vietnam. Helped keep Texas safe from Charlie."

"Shut up, George."

The scene fades out, and then fades back in to a close-up of George and Clarence. They are once again swimming in the icy Potomac River.

"Hey Clare-bear," shouts George, "what gives? Isn't this the part where I'm supposed to go home and hug my family?"

"Sorry, George, I'm under strict orders from the Big Guy. He told me to make sure you jumped in the river. See, the poor have been praying desperately for some kind of relief, and He thought this was the best possible thing He could do for them."

Fade to black.

Clarence's voice is heard to say, "Whenever someone signs the petition to impeach Bush, an angel gets his wings."

The jackals are eating well this week

2005-09-12T22:56:00.000-05:00

Whether you agree with the allegations or not, I'm sure you're aware of the charges of war profiteering by Haliburton et al.

Here's something you might not have heard about, though. In the late 90s, when Dubya was still governor of Texas, he was chin-deep in a scandal that ended up being tagged 'Funeralgate'. A mortuary services company called Service Corporation International was caught tossing disinterred bodies into the woods in order to re-sell funeral plots. Bush refused to testify under subpoena as to his involvement in the scandal. Classy, huh?

Well, now. You'll never guess who's been handed a paid contract by FEMA to handle mortuary services in the wake of hurricane Katrina, even though funeral directors in the disaster region offered to perform the same services for free. Yup, a wholly-owned subsidary of SCI called Kenyon International Emergency Services.

In-fucking-credible.

Do try to keep track of the bodies, guys.

Picked up Koyaanisquatsi and Powaqqatsi on DVD today

2005-09-11T21:17:00.000-05:00

... and I'm watching Koyaanisquatsi right now. Oh, freude!

I first saw Koyaanisquatsi while I was in college, living at the House of a Dozen Stoners. It was a rather worn-out VHS copy that had been taped from a PBS broadcast. Even with bad tracking, intermittently poor sound quality and occasional static on a crappy old television, it was still just absolutely incredible, and beautiful, and heartbreaking.

I tried to get ahold of it for years, but it was out of print. At one point, laserdiscs and VHS tapes of decent quality were going for $100+ on eBay, and I just wasn't willing to pay that much. But now it's available on DVD with Powaqqatsi as a set, and I splurged a little on myself. Most of the DVDs I watch these days involve superheroes, animation, giant monsters or talking animals, so it's a nice change.

I haven't watched Powaqqatsi yet (since I last saw it in about 1999), but that's the one that's been in my head a lot lately. The montages of advertising and television violence are just chilling, and the film as a whole is both worldessly eloquent and perfectly timely.

Anyway, I'm going to put an Amazon link in the sidebar and I highly recommend both of these films to anyone for their music, their visual artistry and their message.

Impeach Bush - You can hide the bodies but not the stench

2005-09-10T22:41:00.000-05:00

The quagmire in Iraq has handed an oddly light workload to the spin doctors, so far. The mainstream media is lazy, or scared, or something. But strangely quiet on the subject, regardless.

Perhaps it's a lingering frost from the arctic blast that Ashcroft blew over the press when he likened criticism of the President to treason. Perhaps it's a misguided sense of patriotism. Perhaps it's the fear that questioning the White House these days is tantamount to professional suicide. Or perhaps it's just a gun-shy reaction to the knee-jerk histrionics that the far Right pundits put forth whenever anything remotely critical of Bush policy makes the headlines.

I suspect that all of these things play a role.

Most of all, though, I think that the stranglehold that the Pentagon has maintained over images of war coming from Afghanistan and Iraq have allowed this deadly farce to continue.

We in the United States rely on visual evidence as the standard of truth. That's accurate even here in the blogosphere where text still matters a lot. When we want to make a point, we link to a news source. When we want to really hammer home a point, we link to a video feed.

So in a brilliant strategic move, the Bush administration has done everything it could to hide from the public any and all images of military and civilian deaths. By and large, it's been an unqualified success. Unless you get your news from a source outside the US, your view of all events has been carefully sterilized.

I first noticed this before we invaded Iraq -- back when we were still ostensibly looking for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. (You remember, that guy Bush told us wasn't important any more?) At the time, I was reading Debka pretty regularly. They reported repeatedly, and in no uncertain terms, that China had been arming and providing troops to the Taliban.

Now Debka might have an agenda, but it's definitely not a pro-Taliban or pro-China agenda. They'd gain nothing by lying about such a thing. "The shit's gonna hit the fan when the MSM gets ahold of this", I thought.

I waited. Here's what they reported: Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. I never heard a peep about it again, at least from within the US. The media treated it like a flyblown raccoon on the side of the road.

At the time, I gave CNN et al the benefit of the doubt. "Maybe it couldn't be corroborated", I told myself, "or maybe Debka was just mistaken". Over time though, the discrepancies between what the US media reported and what the rest of the world was hearing were such that I could no longer chalk them all up to coincidence.

Case in point: Google up 'Fallujah + napalm' or 'Fallujah + ambulance' and see what you get -- and from respectable sources in the UK, at that. Seriously. Do it now. And don't forget to stop back after the nausea wears off.

Guess what? The guy who was in the checkout line ahead of you today knows nothing about what you just read. Neither did the woman who was stopped next to you in traffic. And nobody's going to tell them, either. To them, it never happened. And they'll be voting for the next President, just like you and me. That gets under my skin. How about you?

Enter hurricane Katrina.

We're hearing now that Bush doesn't want photographs of bodies to be recorded, that news crews are being turned away by the National Guard. Is there good reason to handle horrific images sensitively? Hell yes, we ought to treat our dead with respect and demand the same of the press. But that standard of behavior is the responsibility of the media to uphold and of the court of public opinion to enforce. It is not the proper place for a heavy-handed and unconstitutional edict.

Is there good reason to prevent these images from being captured at all? Sure there is. But only for those with something to hide -- those culpable for the miserable and naked failure to make good on the promises we've been asked to pay billions and surrender important civil liberties to buy: promises of adequate emergency response, promises of effective disaster mitigation, promises of homeland security.

And hot from my inbox... Is it far more sinister than a simple act of damage control?

There are some very troubling developments regarding the collecting of bodies in NOLA. The company hired to do the collection is Kenyon International. Kenyon International is owned by SCI, a major Bush contributor. SCI was involved in a scandal called "Funeralgate" wherein thousands of bodies were improperly and fraudulently disposed of in mass graves of in violation of numerous State and Federal laws on numerous occasions.

Rather than prosecute the company, the then Governor George W Bush and and his campaign manager and future FEMA director Joe Allbaugh seemingly helped the company engage in a coverup. Both Bush and Allbaugh were named as defendants in a lawsuit regarding the issue.

The fact FEMA and the Bush Administration seem to be intent on blocking media coverage of the collection of bodies, and unsubstantiated rumours of "mishandling" of bodies in NOLA already circulating should lead to great concern among the public. Is the Government planning to cover up the number of dead in NOLA as they covered up the Abu Ghraib scandal?

Check this out from Naked Wisdom. (Thanks to Voltima of Naked Wisdom for the preceding link and the quoted message above.)

From No Contact Politics: Natural Disasters: China shows how it's done

2005-09-09T15:46:00.000-05:00

From No Contact Politics:

I've resisted running this one for a few days, but I think it's time.

In well planned and implemented operations over the last month, China has evacuated just over 1.24 million people from the country's eastern coast after Typhoon Matsa in early August, and over a million people from the path of super typhoons Talim and Haitang (that's nearly a million people from Zhejiang and Fujian; and over 100,000 people in Anhui) in early September (i.e. right now). And that's just the headlines

I know lots of Americans will find this offensive, and respond with reflexive stuff about freedom and authority, but perhaps they should take a moment to think about it.

From reading right wing blogs on New Orleans, that freedom seems to be freedom to die in the name of individualism & personal responsibility (or for not owning a car) - although where local & federal taxation fits into that picture, I'm not sure.

So, where's all that Homeland Security tax money gone, all the FEMA money, all that military spending, all that GWOT expenditure, if not on defending your homeland?

Surely not into the pockets of corrupt politicans and their political sponsors. Surely not on the shadow security state and illegal weapons and technologies to oppress and suppress when you finally ask the right questions?

Yup.

Don't believe me? Read the $40 Billion Black Budget for Spying. That's bigger than the annual budgets of nearly all the states in the US, more than the federal government itself spends on justice ($24 billion), Interior ($9 billion), Energy ($23 billion), housing and urban development ($39 billion), NASA ($16 billion), and about two-thirds of the annual spend on education ($65 billion).

It's even bigger than Homeland Security ($31 billion) expenditure.

Still don't care? Still trust your rulers? I know the answer's still 'yes' for many of you reflexive authoritarians on the right, although hopefully your loyalties are beginning to feel a bit of strain right now.

It's probably lucky for the rest of the world that this will be China's century. The 'American century', the 'age of ideology', will become a fading memory, like the brief flowering of the British Empire, with only the recriminations, trials, tribunals and lawsuits remaining.

Impeach Bush

2005-09-08T20:35:00.000-05:00

At the Bulldog's suggestion, I'd like to reiterate my considered opinion that weed is good and Bush is bad.

Gratuitous Bud Shot:

Random thought on Labor Day

2005-09-06T21:25:00.000-05:00

Wal-Mart hosting a Labor Day sale is kind of like a gang of skinheads hosting a Kwanza celebration.

FEMA Sucks

2005-09-05T21:07:00.000-05:00

The FEMA Web site has a rap song for kids. (Your tax dollars at work, folks.)

I'd like to offer a set of alternate lyrics, based on recent events:

Disaster . . . it's what we are,
And you're gonna be sorry if you've got no car.
In a flood, tornado, or a bad plane crash,
You can't depend on us to save your poor, black ass.

If drinking water shows up in a big Mac truck,
We won't let it through 'cause we don't give a fuck.

The government spends millions on our agency
And the job we did in 'Nawlins was a travesty
When disaster strikes, and your skin is brown,
Get a fuckin' helmet, 'cause the shit's comin' down.

Cross posted to Bring It On.

My mechanic wants to shoot Katrina victims

2005-09-01T21:28:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not kidding.

The upside to looking kinda like a young Republican is that I can sometimes talk myself out of a speeding ticket. The downside is that bigots I don't even know have an unfortunate tendency to assume that I share their views and will start spouting whatever racist crap has been festering in their brains without any prompting whatsoever. The only thing I can compare it to is accidentally stepping on something dead and watching the maggots pour out.

So anyway, a mechanic from the repair shop we use is driving me downtown to drop me off at work so that they can have the car for the day. We start talking about the Katrina and the looting that's going on.

His position:

Most of the people who didn't leave the disaster area didn't want to leave and in fact probably stuck around to loot.
These aren't people like "you and me".
Taking anything from a store, even food and water when you're starving, is wrong. Everyone should have been fully prepared ahead of time.
He wishes he could be there as a store owner to shoot people who tried to loot from him.

My position:

What a dickhead. I kinda felt like clocking him, but he was driving my car downtown in rush hour traffic.

Yahoo Rankings - #1 for hating Nancy Grace

2005-08-31T23:11:00.000-05:00

I'm now the top search result on Yahoo for the phrase "i hate nancy grace". ROFLMAO. Here's the original post that got me there.

Followup to 'Truth? Reality?' on The Cranky Liberal

2005-08-31T21:47:00.000-05:00

The original post is here. Just yer standard "Rush Limbaugh made another asinine comment followup and here's why" post.

I just wanted to cross-post my response to one of the comments:

Cranky said:

As long as some of us are here to fight the fight, the fight ain’t over.

Hoo-yah!

A lot of my friends have been really down since November; they just got terminally disgusted and unplugged from politics and from the news in general. Not me. Seeing Bush re-elected (if you want to call it that) based largely on the fear generated by an intentionally exaggerated threat made me furiously angry, but constructively angry.

Let me share a few of my beliefs.

I believe that the current administration has compromised the integrity and good name of our Republic by its ignorance, arrogance and policies of naked aggression both overseas and within our borders.

I believe that our 'default' view of current events is being sanitized in order to control us.

I believe that our electoral process is so badly broken that civil disobedience on the scale of the civil rights movement must be undertaken to fix it, if it can be fixed at all.

I believe that the ongoing erosion of the Bill of Rights places us into clear and present danger of devolving into a theocracy or a dictatorship.

But most importantly, I believe that I have an obligation to my country, my family and to myself to express civilly my outrage, in the strongest terms that I can, and to hell with whatever the consequences of my dissent might be.

Regardless of how this all turns out, I want to be able to look back at this period in time and say "I stood up for what I believed was right."

God Bless Amerikkka

2005-08-29T21:27:00.000-05:00

Attendees of a legal gathering on private property conducted with appropriate permits and insurance are attacked by Utah police with riot gear, assault rifles, attack dogs, helicopters and tear gas. If you can't beat 'em, beat 'em, I guess. Just a little more of the kind of shit you'll never hear on CNN.

Sun Aug 21st, 2005 at 22:30:30 PDT

UTAH RAVERS TREATED LIKE TERRORISTS! EVOL INTENT'S ACCOUNT OF THE INCIDENT!

Originally Posted by knick evl ntnt

Last night, I was booked to play an event about an hour outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. The hype behind this show was huge, they presold 700 tickets and they expected up to 3,000 people total. The promoters did an amazing job with the show.. they even made slipmats with the flyers on them to promote in local shops.

So, we got to the show around 11:15 or so and it was really cool. It was all outdoors, in a valley surrounded by huge mountains. They had an amazing light show flashing on to a mountain behind the site, the sound was booming, the crowd was about 1500 people thick and everything just seemed too good to be true really. Well...

At about 11:30 or so, I was standing behind the stage talking with someone when I noticed a helicopter pulling over one of the mountain tops. I jokingly said "Oh look, here comes big brother" to the person I was with. I wasn't far off.

Apollo's diary :: ::

The helicopter dipped lower and lower and started shining its lights on the crowd. I was kind of in awe and just sat and watched this thing circle us for a minute. As I looked back towards the crowd I saw a guy dressed in camoflauge [sic] walking by, toting an assault rifle. At this point, everyone was fully aware of what was going on . A few "troops" rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone "get the fuck out of here or go to jail". This is where it got really sticky.

Article continues online here.

Video footage that the police didn't manage to confiscate here and here.

This is all kinds of fucked up

2005-08-28T11:04:00.000-05:00

I'll preface this by telling you about an old friend of mine, Burley. He's a Vietnam vet. Back in my college days, during summer break, I used to hang out with his daughter and get stoned just about every night. Once in a while, if we couldn't get ahold of any pot, he'd hook us up by leaning over and flicking a joint from behind his ear onto the kitchen table. Good times.

Burley was in the heavy shit in Vietnam. I don't know what happened exactly, because he didn't talk about it much. But I do know from bits and pieces of conversations with him and his daughter that he was a bad mother-fucker and was involved in some truly terrible things. It's hard to reconcile that image with the kind, gentle man I know, but I don't doubt that it's true.

He's spent the years since the war thinking about it. Haunted, repentant, and truly convinced that he is going to Hell for the things he did. Medicated, self-medicated, and, more recently, in and out of mental hospitals.

And with that introduction I give you King of Zembla's post, Porn for Monsters.

Dear Children of Darfur

2005-08-27T22:03:00.000-05:00

It is with sincere regret that I must inform you that the United States will probably be unable to intervene to stem the murders, rapes and other hideous state-sponsored crimes in your country of Sudan in a meaningful way.

I'd like to think that many of my fellow citizens in the US would probably care if they had a better picture of what was happening, but unfortunately, nobody is going to tell them. If just one rich white girl had been raped and killed there, you'd be all set. I could pretty much guarantee you a few thousand hours of primetime news coverage, some genuine outrage and probably even a swift, effective public call for action.

Apparently, though, the handful of people here who decide what's "newsworthy" don't consider the massacre of entire villages of unarmed civilians important enough to mention. Neither do they consider the rape of five-year-old girls by soldiers, or the murder of women carrying their infants in their arms by Janjaweed 'militias' to be particularly newsworthy.

Maybe it's because you don't have any oil or other strategic resources. Maybe you're just not white enough. I really don't know. But all we're given here is a ticker legend or a ten second sound bite mentioning 'atrocities' that happened somewhere far away in a land most of us have never heard of. The few of us who do know what's going on just can't yell loud enough to awaken the rest.

Anyway, the cavalry ain't coming.

Sorry.

VX2 Spyware

2005-08-24T22:46:00.000-05:00

Just spent way too long trying to get this shit off my PC. Grr.

After trying about five things, I finally succeeded by turning off System Restore, manually deleting the files that Freedom had identified as infected, deleting the associated registry entry and doing a hard shutdown. Reopened, re-scanned, and no more VX2.

I hate fucking spyware.

If I ever find the mofo who created that miserable piece of shit, I'm going to pretend to be his buddy and take him out for a night of cheap Mexican food and hard drinking. And then he's gonna wake up locked in his closet for two days with nothing but all of his clothing, a flashlight and a big jug of water spiked with Ex-Lax.

New baby

2005-08-19T14:54:00.000-05:00

Our third daughter, Marley Grace, was born this morning at about 9 am. A short but intense labor and delivery marked the happy ending to a high-risk, very stressful pregnancy that we had all feared might end in disaster (hence her middle name). Peace and love to the world. - J

Old comments are back

2005-08-18T21:44:00.000-05:00

Yea! Because I really did care, just not enough to spend six hours doing CTRL-C, CTRL-V, Rinse, Repeat.

Jedi Master artesea over in the HaloScan support forums had the old comment fix posted out in a handy little javascript snippet, though, so that was that and all is well in my Blogger template, at least for now. In another few weeks, I'll probably manage to hose it up again trying to improve something else and embark on another one of those 'learning experiences' that I tend to launch with a well-placed 'oh shit'.

Does this scare anyone else?

2005-08-17T07:27:00.000-05:00

This woman is a middle-school teacher, but she can't spell the word 'sponsor' or correctly use the word 'whose' in a sentence:

Please take a moment to assist a broke teacher to buy more supplies and visit my sponsers. Links located at the bottom of the page. I am 28 currently, I am married to a wonderful man. I have two children whos' fathers are not my wonderful husband. I am a middle school teacher. I recently quit smoking (yay me), and now I drink too much. I read a lot, and I watch a lot of movies and tv.

More Shady Accounting by DeLay -- Who Would've Thunk It?

2005-08-17T06:43:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A political committee founded by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay may have improperly spent unregulated "soft money" on get-out-the-vote and fund-raising activities, the Federal Election Commission says. A DeLay attorney said Thursday the money has been reimbursed.

Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee "potentially" spent about $203,000 in soft money from its nonfederal account to pay for the political activities and administrative expenses, the FEC found in an audit.

Article continues online at CNN.

Pretty standard stuff here; nothing we haven't seen before. I'm fairly certain that if I "potentially spent" $203,000 on something I would probably know it.

Anyway, here's the line that just cracks me up every time I read it: "Everything in this audit is accounting issues," [Don] McGahn [DeLay's lawyer] said.

Um, Don, I'm not sure if you're familiar with what a financial audit is, but...

Just switched over to Haloscan

2005-08-17T06:06:00.000-05:00

I just switched my comments system over to Haloscan, so any old comments you might have left between December and now are in electro-limbo. It's not that I don't care... it's just that the thought of restoring all those comments manually via cut and paste leaves me feeling borderline catatonic. Cause I've got shit to do, you know?

Anyway, if you're particularly fond of a name that you called me at some point, or just think that whatever you said back in February was all that, ping me and I'll restore it.

Terrorist Infants Threaten Airline Security

2005-08-16T05:44:00.000-05:00

These babies hate us because they hate our freedom.

Seriously, though, file this one under I told you so.

Trying to fight terrorism via massive, name-based compliance lists without any reasonable supporting data behind them is applied without judicious restraint, obscenely expensive and just doesn't work. Here's a thought: How about if the government's myriad of intelligence agencies were to just do their fucking job from the start?

A no-fly list is one idea, but here's a better one: If you know or strongly suspect that someone is a terrorist, don't give him a student visa to begin with. If he's already here, yank that visa and send his ass home. Spend a little more time on taking care of the known threats and maybe we'll all be safer.

Grasshopper -- Stuck in the 60s But Not So Counter-Culture

2005-08-14T21:58:00.000-05:00

I left work Friday feeling like I'd been sucker-punched a few times (long story, don't wanna talk about it) and P. suggested that I buy myself a pick-me-up gift. I'm not generally the 'shopping as therapy' type, but it actually sounded kind of appealing. So we headed over to Grasshopper. I hadn't been there for a few years and was looking forward to it.

The handful of you who hit this site from ErieBlogs will know what I'm talking about, as it's an Erie institution of sorts. For the benefit of the rest of you, Grasshopper is exactly like a headshop, except that you can't buy a hash pipe, dildo or whip-it dispenser there. I'd include a link, but Grasshopper has zero Web-presence except a one-line blurb on the Celebrate Erie site to the effect that they'll have a booth there next week.

Anyway, at Grasshopper you can buy tie-dyes, Guatemalan-style shit, jam band tees (although I didn't see a single Phish t-shirt -- WTF, guys?), indie-label music, a dizzying array of beads, hippie jewelry, incense and static/bumper stickers. I was hoping to find something along the lines of a Buck Fush t-shirt or bumper sticker -- anything particularly incendiary would've elevated my mood nicely.

Quick aside: I think I may have wigged out a few of the stoners when I walked in, being way out of uniform and all. (Don't worry, dudes. I'm pretty sure that you're still more likely to run into a narc wearing a Steal Your Face t-shirt and Birkenstocks than you are to run into one with a buzz cut in business casual.)

Anyway, there was not a single political statement to be found, except for a few worn out Green Party bumper stickers and leftist slogans that have been floating around since the early 90s. Yawn. Big. Fucking. Deal.

<rant> There's a culture war at full pitch, folks, and the side that shops at places like Grasshopper needs a brand of ammunition that they don't, and won't ever, sell at Wal-mart. Put down the fucking bong and quit rolling the fucking FIMO beads for a minute. It's not just good politics or good citizenship, it's also good business. Every time you see a car with a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker, you're probably looking at someone who'd buy a 'Bush Lied' bumper sticker. All sorts of people are angry and disgusted, and want to speak out. Help give them a voice.<⁄rant>

I hate Nancy Grace

2005-08-10T06:22:00.000-05:00

I hate Nancy Grace. While her mannerisms do have a distinct 'nails on the chalkboard' effect, and her tendency to damn suspects on scant evidence is offensive in its own right, what really gets to me is the way in which she parades out the murdered and the missing in a tone that I can only describe as vampiric glee.

It's the exact same blend of feigned outrage and barely-controlled orgasmic bliss that Robert Downey Jr. captured perfectly as Wayne Gale in Natural Born Killers -- and not unlike Aaron Brown in the hours and days immediately following 9/11 , totally unable to completely remove that motherfucking smirk from his face.

Anyway, I'm not alone on this one. Check out this quote from Jump the Shark:

Without a doubt, CTV jumped when they brought that horrible obnoxious self righteous judgmental witch Nancy Grace on. She's the only person in the world that actually makes me root for the defendant. When she whines and screws up her face into that sneer, flares those pointy nostrils and rolls her eyes I swear I want to throw my couch at the TV screen. And does she know how to shut the hell up once in a while and let someone else talk? It's like eeeek! Trying to get in a word edgewise here you big mouth. I once played a drinking game with someone during her show but we had to quit because I was afraid I'd get alcohol poisoning. One shot: Every time Nancy makes some lame joke at the defendants expense. Two shots: Every time Nancy says "She's a crime victim" BTW if her fiance hadn't of gotten killed he probably would have shot Nancy by now. Can you imagine having to listen to that sickening venomous honey coated accent everyday? Oh and did you ever notice how she gives this "pensive look" before she cuts away to the courtroom? She'd be a big hit at a charity function. I'd pay 50 bucks to dunk her in a tank. There would be a line wrapped around the building for that, I'm sure.

And here are some gratuitous links to other people who hate Nancy Grace:

All Thing Just Keep Getting... Stranger
Television Without Pity
State of the Qusan

A Modest Proposal - Make Tobacco More Toxic

2005-08-09T07:07:00.000-05:00

While I was out mowing the lawn the other day, I happened to notice the neighbor's 14 year-old kid lighting up a cigarette. It occurred to me then that the problem with tobacco products isn't that they can kill you, it's that they take so damned long to do so. So in the interest of the public health, let's make tobacco more deadly.

Sound crazy? Think about it. One day the 'next big thing' on the pop charts is in People magazine, cigarette dangling stylishly from his lip. Three months later, he's down a lung and hauling an oxygen tank behind him. Or the major league pitcher has a wad of chew in June, and a big, nasty chunk out of his jaw by August. That shit'll make you think.

;)

Finally - a name!

2005-08-08T19:36:00.000-05:00

Well, after nine months of indecision, we finally came up with a girl's name: Marley Grace.

America, Know Thyself

2005-08-03T22:06:00.000-05:00

The teacher stands in front of the class
But the lesson plan he can't recall
The student's eyes don't perceive the lies
Bouncing off every fucking wall
His composure is well kept
I guess he fears playing the fool
The complacent students sit and listen to some of that
Bullshit that he learned in school

Take the Power Back
Rage Against the Machine

I'm in the middle of reading Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen (see the Amazon link in the sidebar). Very interesting stuff.

What it is: A brief, heavily footnoted history of the United States that focuses on significant omissions, oversights and outright falsehoods in the curriculum taught by high schools, as defined by the twelve most commonly used American history textbooks.

What it isn't: An America-bashing guilt trip. Rather, it simply makes the argument that by white-washing negative events, disputed facts, complicated situations and the character flaws of important leaders, we lose the important perspective that an unbiased view of the past could give us on the present.

A few things my history teacher never told me:

Helen Keller was an outspoken and prolific advocate of socialism for most of her adult life.
80% of the federal budget in George Washington's day was spent on Indian wars that are all but absent from the history texts.
Woodrow Wilson was openly racist and instituted policies that removed blacks from federal posts and set back civil rights by decades.

Anyway, it's worth checking out if you're the sort who doesn't take everything at face value.

John Candy & Phil English - Separated at Birth?

2005-07-31T23:04:00.000-05:00

Shocking physical similarities aside...

John Candy's character was accused of taking dirty money in Armed and Dangerous.

Phil English is accused of taking dirty money from Tom Delay.

John Candy starred in Canadian Bacon.

Phil English recently headlined the CAFTA vote for dipping into the American pork barrel.

John Candy's career was cut regrettably short by a heart attack.

I saw Phil English walking in a Fourth of July parade this year, and 100 yards into the route he was panting, drenched in sweat and looked like he was just about to have a heart attack.

Freeing molesters to make room for dealers

2005-07-30T23:55:00.000-05:00

Unless you've been totally unplugged for the past few weeks, you've heard about Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller, the sick fuck who claims to have molested children about 36,000 times since the 70s. Over the years, he's been arrested for such crimes 9 times and convicted four times, serving a grand total of 12 years in prison -- with three of the four sentences amounting to 3 years or less apiece.

12 years in prison is a long time, relatively speaking, but it's a slap on the wrist for the offenses in question. I can think of a few more fitting punishments, all rather gruesome. (The most humane that I could suggest in good conscience would be castration as a mandatory condition of parole.)

Watching that creepy, grinning monster saunter into the courtroom made me wonder what an equivalent sentence for a drug crime might be. Here's a top result that I Googled up for '12 year sentence drug possession': Anthony Papa. Served 12 years of a 15 year minimum for cocaine possession. Granted, 4.5 oz is a lot of blow, but I'm pretty sure Mr. Papa wasn't holding kids down and forcing it up their noses.

If you want to know why someone like Schwartzmiller gets paroled over and over, look no further than the mandatory minimum sentence. Why is it that drug charges carry mandatory minimum sentences, but child rape convictions do not? Hell if I know. But if you have a registered sex offender living within a quarter-mile of your family, like I do, you might consider taking it upon yourself to ask.

Bill of Rights 2.0

2005-07-29T06:15:00.000-05:00

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion (unless it's an election year or there's some other need to grandstand), or prohibiting the free exercise thereof (unless it's something like Santeria that Judeo-Christians think is weird); or abridging the freedom of speech (unless it's on television), or of the press (unless it's critical of the current administration, because that'd be helping the terrorists or unless the press is stationed in another country, in which case the FBI can seize its assets with impunity); or the right of the people peaceably to assemble (as long as they don't plan to protest, in which case the Secret Service will arrest and hold them until the assembly ends), and to petition the government for a redress of grievances (unless the government is responsible for the grievances in question).

Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed (unless you live in certain cities and states or use public transportation, and so long as those arms are not powerful enough to be useful to, say, a militia).

Amendment III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches (except by the FBI or TSA) and seizures (except by the FBI, DEA, IRS or state or local governments), shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation (often by a government-paid informant or felon trying to plea bargain), and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized (except for citizens suspected of consentual crime, for whom all fourth amendment rights are suspended).

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law (unless being held offshore); nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. (Private property, however, may be seized by the states for use by corporations large enough to grease the right palms.)

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy (unless they're rich and famous enough to drag it out into a six month media circus) and public trial (unless being detained offshore), by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation (unless being detained offshore); to be confronted with the witnesses against him (unless being detained offshore); to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor (unless being detained offshore), and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense (unless being detained offshore).

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. (In cases of defective product liability, records shall be sealed so that the nature of the flaw which caused harm is hidden, avoiding further financial harm to the liable manufacturer.)

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (except upon detainees, insurgents, enemy combatants and other 'disappeared' persons being held against their will but not formally accused of any crime).

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people (except in the multitude of instances where the federal government has invoked the interstate commerce clause to justify doing so).

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people (except in the multitude of instances where the federal government has invoked the interstate commerce clause to justify doing so).

Sound Familiar?

2005-07-26T06:46:00.000-05:00

Sound vaguely familiar?

If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

- George Orwell, 1984

The part that boggles my mind isn't that prior events are being spun for whatever purpose the White House might have in mind. That's just crafty statesmanship -- if you can pull it off. What shocks me is that the supposedly 'liberal' media allows it to happen, over and over. It's like watching a kitten being baited with a piece of string.

can I be a slacker for a little while?

2005-07-25T06:09:00.000-05:00

The stress level of my job (and life in general, at that) is burning me out.

I can't complain about the pay, because it's actually pretty good. If one of us made about 50% more, the other could stay home with the kids. It's just not realistic now, though. Between student loans, credit cards and utilities, it'd wipe us out -- even with the offset in childcare expenses and the ability to have a single car.

Co-workers are a mixed bag. Some of them are very cool and very easy to work with. Others, well... let's just say that it's a good thing I don't have a 'Dr. Evil' conference room where I could hit a button and dispatch them to a pit of alligators. That would rock.

My day starts at about 5:30 - 5:45 am, so I can take a shower before P. leaves for work at 6:10 or so. (The girls usually sleep until at least 7:30 - 8:00, but there's no guarantee that I'll be able to shower and shave unless I do so before she leaves. If they were a little older it wouldn't be as big of a deal, but they're too young to be left unattended right now.)

I get about an hour to myself, on average, in the morning. Necessary for my sanity. That's usually blog-time, or BlogExplosion surf time. I'm getting about a third of my blog hits from search engines and links now, but the volume still falls off pretty quickly without those BE referral hits. (Alternately, it's "I want mommy; I don't want you. Bwaaaah..." time.)

If the girls co-operate, eat and get dressed without incident I make it to work at 9. No guarantees there. I used to be a very punctual person and got irritated by people who weren't. Then I had kids.

P & I have alternated our schedules so we'd have more time with the girls. Upside is that they're only with the babysitter from about 9 - 3. Downside is that we no longer get to talk on the drive to and from work, which used to be most of our private conversation time. Most of our conversations take place over IM these days.

Technically, I'm supposed to take two 15 minute breaks during the day and a half-hour lunch. Hah! I don't remember the last time I took two breaks in a day, and lunch is often closer to a 15-20 minute sprint to the cafeteria with P. between meetings. My breaks are usually 3 minute walks to get coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. If I'm really pissed off about something, or have a team member who's reached the breaking point, we'll walk to $tarbuck$ and blow off some steam.

In theory, I'm supposed to be done with work at 5. Lately, it's been averaging about 7 - 7:30 pm instead, with the possibility of another hour or two from home over VPN. And even when I'm not at work, I'm thinking about it, or talking about it with P.

The job itself is insane. On the off-chance that you work in software quality, you'll appreciate what I'm saying. Otherwise, imagine a career where:

It's so very easy to do a mediocre job but very difficult to do a good one
There's no guarantee that you'll have adequate time to do your job, and you'll probably have to negotiate for even an inadequate window of time
Your phase of a project is always considered semi-expendable
Everyone on the outside seems to think they know how to do your job (and are only too happy to tell you so)
Your feedback is most needed when it's least welcome
You rely heavily on documentation created by others as the basis for your work, but those others view the documentation as a nuisance and do their damnedest to avoid creating it in the first place
A major part of your job function includes the delivery of criticism to others while they're under a great deal of stress

Bottom line is, people in my line of work tend to burn out pretty quickly.

Anyway, after 8-11 hours of that shitstorm, it's home to the (often cranky & hungry) kids. Dinner (which is fast food way too often), some playtime and then the bedtime routine. P is usually wiped out and falls asleep with the girls. I usually stay up, either doing laundry, working over VPN or reading news sites & blogs (or all of the above). I crash somewhere between midnight and 2:00 am, and start the whole thing over.

Weekends? Go to work in the morning and take the girls somewhere in the afternoon.

So anyway, I'd like to be a part of this slacker generation I've been hearing so much about. I was born in '72, so I should be eligible...

The Memo (to the tune of 'The Letter')

2005-07-18T07:20:00.000-05:00

The Memo

I'm looking for a reason to invade Iraq
The UN's getting snippy and they won't attack
We'll cook a mess of lies and say they came from spies
Dear Tony, I'm sending a memo

And I don't care how many lives we gotta spend
Worldcom's going in the black again
It's time to do some shootin', the oil rigs need lootin'
Dear Tony, I'm sending a memo

Well I'm writin' a memo
cause diplomacy is such a massive bore
Ohh listen Tony can you see
I'm nothing but a freakin' Bechtel corporate whore, anyway...

I don't care which programs we gotta cut
My domestic agenda's really in a rut
Osama's still in hidin', approval rating's slidin'
Dear Tony, I'm sending a memo

- instrumental -

Well I'm writin' a memo
Cause diplomacy is such a massive bore
Ohh listen Tony can you see
I'm nothing but a freakin' Bechtel corporate whore, anyway...

I don't care how many lives we gotta spend
Worldcom's going in the black again
It's time to do some shootin', there's oil rigs for lootin'
Dear Tony, I'm sending a memo

- instrumental -

I'm looking for a reason to invade Iraq
The UN's getting snippy and they won't attack
We'll cook a mess of lies and say they came from spies
Dear Tony, I'm sending a memo

Baby's due in 5 weeks and we still can't pick a name

2005-07-14T07:24:00.000-05:00

Yikes.

P & I picked out a boy's name with no problem whatsoever. Not that we need a boy's name...

It's been a high-risk pregnancy, and she's had about a half-dozen sonograms. During the past 3, there hasn't been any indication whatsoever of boy-parts, so it would appear that I'm going to be the father of three daughters very soon.

Anyway, we can't decide on a name. We've got a fairly short list, but none of them seem right to both of us. We kick each one around for about a week and then come up with some reason not to use it. Sigh.

Clinton - Rove Phone Call

2005-07-12T05:48:00.000-05:00

Being a minor cog in the vast left-wing conspiracy to destroy America, I get access to a lot of intercepted phone calls. Here's a transcript I'd like to share. This having been a cellular phone call, we were only able to get Bill Clinton's half of the conversation.

[07-08-2005 16:10 EST - W. Clinton - Cellular - Start transcript]

. . . Hi Karl, sure I remember you . . .

. . . Uh huh, uh huh. Hilary and Chelsea are just fine, thanks for askin'. . .

. . . That bit of nastiness with Starr and the grand jury? Course I do. . .

. . . Novak, that CIA agent and the grand jury? Yep, I did read about that. Matter of fact, it's pinned up right here on my wall. . .

. . . Yes sir, perjury's a pretty serious offense. And treason's a capital offense. Heh heh. You must be feelin' like, uh, a fox caught in the henhouse right about now. . .

. . . Hang on a sec, Karl (muffled: Dang it! How many times do I gotta tell you Monica, no teeth!) . . . Ok, I'm back. Sorry 'bout that. So you want some, uh, advice and pointers?. . .

. . . Hmm. Ok. Lemme think . . . I've got, uh, two pieces of advice for you. Number one, you don't want to be bending over in the shower at Leavenworth. And number two, as we like to say back in Arkansas, is GO FUCK YERSELF! Slimy little piece of shit weasel. Heh heh heh.

(call ended)

[07-08-2005 16:12 EST - W. Clinton - Cellular - End transcript]

From The BiPolar's World - See my response

2005-07-08T07:16:00.000-05:00

Original post:

People of the USA are great, but they need to know that the following text is meant for all of us ...................

Bill of Rights

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

My response:

I've started and then erased about five different smart-assed comments in response.

Bottom line, for me, is that I love America the way one would love a family member who's somehow made a serious public mess of her life -- disappointed by what she's done, ashamed of the negative attention, but always trying to help her turn things around and live up to her potential.

That crazy kid and his tricycle

2005-07-07T06:01:00.000-05:00

Bush wipes out on his tricycle and takes out a Scottish police officer. Fortunately he was wearing his Spiderman helmet and wasn't seriously injured.

I want a new party

2005-07-05T06:20:00.000-05:00

A lot of shit in the legal and political news bugs me lately, and watching where the various factions fall on the issues just leaves me scratching my head. The Democrats and the Republicans both seem so off-course and corrupt that the possibility of either group acting in the best interests of the American people seems remote, at best. On the rare occasions where either group has done so, it appears to have been mostly by accident.

The closest thing I've seen to sanity has been from the Libertarians, but they have yet to figure out how to use the media. They'll be flyweights until they do.

In the meantime, I want a new party. Here's my wish list for a platform:

Personal freedom & responsibility

Ownership of one's self is absolute, and may not be infringed upon unless a person's actions cause or significantly risk serious, direct harm to others. Adults of sound mind should be free to do things that others might find reckless, stupid or immoral, so long as they only risk harm to themselves (or harm to other adults only by their own consent). If you want to bungee-jump from a bridge while shaving with a straight razor, so be it.

By the same token, responsibility for one's own actions is also absolute. If said person decapitates himself while shaving and bungee jumping, there's no room for a liability lawsuit against the manufacturers of said bridge, bungee cord or straight razor!

Free market economics with public protection

Businesses should be able to operate pretty much unfettered, with a few qualifications -- that their activities and products not cause or risk serious harm to the public, and that intellectual property should be protected.

Protection of the public should be true on both a micro level (e.g., toasters that don't catch fire) and a macro level (e.g., regulation and oversight of greenhouse gas emissions and PCBs).

Likewise, intellectual property needs to be protected -- inventors and innovators should be able to profit from their work. (If you have any doubts about the state of copyright law in America, I suggest you check out Pirates of Silicon Valley.)

Social and fiscal responsibility

I don't have a problem with paying taxes to support programs meant to improve the quality of life for Americans or to provide a safety net for those who are destitiute. I just want to know that those programs are being funded correctly, run by competent individuals and held accountable for their performance over time.

Campaign reform

No, really. I'm talking about meaningful campaign reform that takes into account the reality that elections are often decided long before election day. I've already gone on about this at length (and I really need to finish it up one of these mornings).

Separation of church and state

You should be free to believe whatever you want, but I don't want my tax dollars spent to ram it down the public's throats. If you think the Ten Commandments need to be on public display, then pass around the collection plate and put up a fuckin' billboard. If you don't think homosexuals should be allowed to marry, fine. You're free to join a church that shares your view, surround yourself with like-minded individuals and send your kids to a school that teaches the same thing. (You're also free to move the whole shebang into a walled-in compound in a remote corner of Montana and spare the rest of us your slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging presence. Which I very much encourage.)

Google Adsense - Why Freakin' Bother???

2005-07-02T22:17:00.000-05:00

This is what I'm asking myself lately. I've had about 2400 hits - per Adsense stats - since I added it six months ago. In that time, I've made a grand total of $0.15. Yippee! That won't even get you a rubber ball out of a bubble gum machine these days.

At this rate, I'll hit the $100 minimum threshold required to get a check in the mail in approximately 300 years. Essentially, they've set the threshold so high that the average site owner will never hit it. That's pretty damned brilliant, at least in the short run. Does absolutely nada for me, though, so it's coming off the site template tonight.

-= snip =-

The Anti-Drugwar Czar

2005-07-01T06:39:00.000-05:00

If any of you read alt.drugs.pot or the other marijuana-related newsgroups, you're already familiar with Brian Bennett. I just saw today that he started a blog, anti-drugwar czar.

Brian's blog gives a lot of compelling, logical arguments and his website, http://www.briancbennett.com, uses hard numbers reported by the US government itself to demonstrate visually how the escalating costs of drug prohibition are producing essentially flat results. Fascinating stuff.

I can't find this on PRWEB, but even if it's bogus it's still great

2005-06-30T06:15:00.000-05:00

Original post from the Lobster Messiah:

"Weare, New Hampshire (PRWEB) Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land.

Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home.

Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land.

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."

Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans.

"This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development."

Clements' plan is to raise investment capital from wealthy pro-liberty investors and draw up architectural plans. These plans would then be used to raise investment capital for the project. Clements hopes that regular customers of the hotel might include supporters of the Institute For Justice and participants in the Free State Project among others."

Got my ACLU renewal notice in the mail

2005-06-26T22:03:00.000-05:00

I got my ACLU renewal notice in the mail the other day. Gonna have to mail that back in soon. It's worth the dues just to know how much their very existence pisses off the right wing-nuts. >:)

What led me to join in the first place was having spent almost a year on an implementation project for Patriot Act compliance software. That was enough.

Essentially, the SDN reporting provisions of the Patriot Act are a police state's wet dream. They force businesses, at their own expense, to seek out and report any and all financial transactions conducted by anyone matching a name on a list. From a distance, it sounds fairly prudent in that the stated purpose is to keep money out of the hands of people who'd use it to kill other people.

Here's the problem: It doesn't work very well, for a number of reasons.

The kind of surveillence requried by the Patriot Act's SDN provisions tends to work very well against law-abiding citizens, but fails miserably when applied to people who move around often, don't establish stable employment histories and change their names a lot (i.e., terrorists.)

By enforcing the Patriot Act, the government fails at its publically stated objective but still manages to put in place an essentially free infrastructure that is very effective at monitoring its own citizens' behavior. Slip something through the Senate tacked to an appropriations bill, add a new compliance list and voila... instant tracking of all 'non-traditional' religious groups, political dissidents, gun owners, bedwetters, or whomever you want. Think it can't happen? Hope you're right.
It's very difficult to scrub and parse name data correctly, especially if you have a mix of business and individual names without an entity-type indicator of some kind. For companies like my employer, which has a lot of old, spaghetti-coded systems, no universal customer relationship management, and a compliance need to scan millions of names on a regular basis, installing and configuring the software to do this for you automatically is something of a major bitch. (Trust me on this one.) If you use compliance software 'out of the box' the way many companies do, your results aren't very accurate or consistent.

To my employer's credit, we were extremely conscious of our customers' privacy and we (by which I mean yours truly) did a lot of fine-tuning of the software to only review and report results that were right on the money, but I can guarantee you that we were the exception. I base this observation totally on the compliance vendor's feedback, and take it totally as a compliment.
Guidelines on how to comply are very vague, but the penalties for non-compliance are severe. This tends to encourage companies to take a very cautious approach - in some cases delaying or suspending payments to anyone whose name matches the name of someone on the OFAC list until they can clear it with the Treasury Department.

The problem is, some of the names on that list are the Latino or Arabic equivalent of 'John Smith'. News flash: If your last name is Mohammed, Gonzales, Estrada or Morales and it seems to take an awfully long time to get checks in the mail from just about everyone, guess what? It's not a coincidence.

Rummy's Tar Baby

2005-06-24T06:44:00.000-05:00

Apparently, as long as we plan to keep troops in Iraq, oh, forever, then everything will be ok.

As a fitting tribute, I present to you Donnie Rumsfeld and the Tar Baby:

The Heise Strikes Back

2005-06-21T22:49:00.000-05:00

Last week, I mentioned the Boner/Heise showdown. At that point, the Boner was on top.

As of Monday morning, though, Heise has struck back, repainting a coat of orange over Boner's most recent effort.