thanks again, Ann

We need somebody to stuff a bound and conscious Mary Matalin feet-first into a running wood-chipper.

That's just a joke, for those of you in the media.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/01/27/coulter.stevens.ap/index.html

things I don't understand

Why in the world would an insurance-salesman gecko talk like a roadie for Spinal Tap?

wild about Harry

Harry Whittington, better known as "the guy Dick Cheney shot in the face," was released from the hospital today and gave a brief statement, including the sentence:

"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week."





In an unrelated story, Mary Jo Buttafuoco issued a public apology to Amy Fisher for all the trouble she caused her.










Heh. I said "Buttafuoco."

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-

What with all of the Bush administration's very public woes right now, isn't it about time we had a good solid terror fakeout? Place your wagers as to what, where, and when in the comments section, please. Unless you'd like to talk about wolves and valleys or some such tripe...

who you gonna call?

Mythbusters!

Seems to me those two wacky science guys on the Discovery channel would be just the ideal people to take a shotgun exactly like Dick Cheney's, set up just like his was, using the same shells he was using, and a ballistics dummy, and shoot the thing to find out just how far you would need to be to have the projectiles penetrate the ballistics dummy's heart and liver.


Seems to me.

right

After Elmer Cheney's admission today that he had "a beer" at lunch at noon but there had been no further drinking on Saturday before he shot his friend in the face, I am surprised by one thing in particular.

I thought by now pretty much everybody in the United States knew better than to buy the "honest, Ossifer, I jush had one li'l beer an' thass all" routine.

I guess I was wrong.

too good for words

Normally, I hate these "Megan's Law," "Jessica's Law," type of legislations. All of them I have ever seen are bad law passed because of panicky public sentiment and pandering legislators, and they do nothing but to further complicate an overburdened legal system and make enforcement of the laws more subjective when the existing laws cover the situations adequately and simply need to be used to their full extent.

However, I've finally heard of one that I like.


"Cheney's Law."

It has been proposed with the intent of making it a felony to leave the scene of a serious hunting accident. The very idea that "Cheney's Law" has been proffered is so rich, delicious and satisfying that it hardly even matters whether or not it is actually passed!

some animals have more privacy

It's so touching to hear such pro-government types as Alan Simpson touting their belief in privacy of late. We now know that Dick Cheney's hunting accident was a "private" matter that occurred at a "private" hunting camp, and that Dick had every right to expect the world to respect his "privacy." And, of course, the right for his victim to his own "privacy" as to the nature and seriousness of his wounds.

Yes, this vocal support of "privacy" must come as a great relief to Bill Clinton for the respect that was given to his "privacy." And Michael Schiavo must be thrilled to know of the republican insistence that citizens' "privacy" be observed.

These hypocritical pukes make me sick to my stomach. I'd like to send all of them on a "private" hunting trip with "private citizen" Dick Cheney. The "private citizen" that we pay, the "private citizen" that travels with a cadre of Secret Service people that we pay, in military jets that we pay for, and convoys of gas-guzzling armored SUV's that we pay for. The "private citizen" that travels with a full-time staff of physicians that we pay for. The "private citizen" who thinks that his "privacy" extends to his meeting with his oil-company cronies to set government energy policy and to engineer multi-billion dollar giveaways of mineral rights that "we the people" own.

This administration is the most vile, corrupt, dishonest, anti-american, anti-constitution, anti rule-of-law, anti-freedom anti-every single principle that this country was founded on that has ever held the reins of U.S. power, and I sincerely hope I live long enough to see all of them rotting in the prisons in which they belong.

and assaulted, too?

Today, we find that Neil Entwistle is accused of killing his wife and child by shooting them "with a small shotgun," according to the Abrams Report.

Wait a minute. A small shotgun killed people?

Apparently, being "peppered" can be dangerous after all.

damned liberal media

Now that the news has been released that Dick Cheney's target mannequin had a "mild heart attack" this morning, the vicious nature of the left-wing media is coming out. All morning, reporters have been referring to the victim as the man who was "shot," rather than using the more accurate "peppered" and "sprayed" that were the favored words yesterday.

Hopefully, some republican surrogate will set them straight, and will finally have the courage to say what needs to be said.

Mr. Whittington is a seventy-eight year-old man. His heart can't be all that strong to begin with. He's near the end of his days. What business did he have playing with guns to begin with? If anything happens to him, it's really his own fault for not taking better precautions with his life. Besides, a heart attack is no big deal. Cheney's had dozens of them, and he's just fine, right?


Maybe Whittington is just allergic to pepper...

laughter, the best medicine

After an uproarious morning of clever hijinks, including Scottie McClellan cracking wise about wearing his orange tie in case Dick Cheney shows up, and Jebbie "I'm HUSKY, dammit" Bush affixing an orange sticker on his chest with a similar punch line, and of course, our president yukking it up with a Texas football team, we can only imagine how amused Mr. Whittington must be.

Of course, the "mild heart attack" that he suffered this morning, leading to a heart catheterization to try to remove one of those harmless "pellets" from his cardiac chambers is only a minor setback, and as long as he keeps his good Republican sense of humor, everything will be hunky-dory.

I guess it will be a knee-slapping few more days in the ICU.

finally, the facts

ABC news, with their department of dedicated investigative journalists, has found that the weapon used was really not as dangerous as early reports indicated:

"After difficulty getting information from Cheney's staff, ABC News learned from sources mostly outside the White House that the vice president's Secret Service contingent had notified the local sheriff an hour after the vice president accidentally shot prominent Texas lawyer Harry Whittington with a pellet gun while hunting for quail."


A little further digging by yours truly has discovered more detail. The weapon was a very rare, top-of-the-line model, which was described by an eyewitness as:

"An official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time."


Thank goodness this country has a press that operates free of the restrictions and oversight of the government.

one question

The second-in-command of the United States of America carelessly shoots a man in the face, sending him to the Intensive Care Unit for two days. The local police are prevented from interviewing the shooter for over twelve hours. The press receives no official notification from government representatives. The incident is semantically minimized by political surrogates to the point of absurdity. The responsible party himself makes no effort to come forward and express his utter mortification for his part in a tragic event, and to provide a personal explanation and to accept responsibility for the situation.


Are these the actions of an honorable man?

official notice

To the world -

If you have been paying any attention to the news over the last twenty-four hours, you now understand the Bush administration's position:

If you aren't smart enough to not be standing where we are shooting, it's your own damned fault.

no shame

I wish I could think of a more eloquent way of getting this point across, but it's easier and more direct to just say it.

I have spent a lot of the last five-plus years being utterly appalled by the actions of the members of the Bush administration, but I have never been so totally disgusted as I am now by the ass-covering callousness being manifested in the wake of Cheney's "hunting accident."



Forget that the victim spent two days in the Intensive Care Unit for "minor" or "superficial" injuries.

Forget the amount of time that elapsed until the news was released.

Forget that the story was released by an eyewitness rather than the government.

Forget that Cheney was not tested for blood alcohol despite the law in the state of Texas.

Forget that they were "hunting" captive birds bred and released for the purpose of being slaughtered.

Forget that Cheney himself is an odious and immoral wretch.

Forget all of that stuff.



Remember only that these people described the event as a man being "sprayed" or "peppered" when what happened was that he was SHOT IN THE FACE by the Vice-President of the United States.

be vewwy, vewwy quiet

After much publicity, debate, and many bake sales and fund-raising drives, it's over at last. In a surprising bit of joint legislative action by the White House, the Pentagon, and the United States Congress, a controversial problem has finally been solved. It has been decided that, in the future, full body armor will now be supplied by and funded by the U.S. government, and issued to...




...all of Dick Cheney's hunting partners.

stupid clucker

Vice-president Dick Cheney, who avoided combat with five deferments during the Viet Nam war because of his "other priorities" at the time, has finally become blooded. Cheney was said to have been "hunting quail" when he shot a 78 year-old man who got in the way. The man has been identified as an attorney, and although it is not confirmed, the victim is possibly named "Fitzsimmons" or "Fitzcarraldo" or "Fitzgerald," or something like that.

Witnesses at the scene are privately reporting that Cheney, who had promptly painted his forehead and cheeks with the blood of his quarry, had to be physically restrained from "humanely" finishing off his kill so that he could gut him and have him mounted in a lifelike pose. Informed sources state that the wounded man has been determined to be linked to Saddam Hussein, Al Quaeda, and Barack Obama, and that this manly display of courage on Cheney's part has actually saved a tall building in a major American city from being destroyed and could not have been accomplished without Bush's patriotic "Terrorist Surveillance Program."

In a related story, Mr. Cheney has been scheduled to receive a Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush for his fearless defense of the homeland in a ceremony next week while Joe "I'm not Henry Gibson, goddammit" Lieberman maternally applauds Their Holinesses. It is expected by the administration that this exhibition of machismo will finally dispel the totally undeserved "chickenhawk" reputation that has for some strange reason followed Mr. Cheney around for over thirty years.

doesn't it just figure

Watching the first few minutes of the Kubrick classic "Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb)" I suddenly noticed that even SLIM PICKENS knew how to pronounce the word "nuclear."

no comment

FOX "News" has a show segment called "Can't Make This Up."


Seriously, I'm not kidding.

oh my, lawsy-dee

Ironic, isn't it?

The same group of people that turned the Ronald Reagan funeral into a ten-day political paean to the glories of right-wing policy are the ones who are now shocked, shocked I say, (Heathcliff, fetch the smelling salts quick, now!) over a couple of critical but civil remarks about the realities of our current national situation at the funeral of a lifelong and high-profile civil libertarian. The ugly racist stench of their tut-tutting seems to be overlooked by many of our countrymen, but there is an unmistakable reek of "don't get uppity" in their chiding.

I guess they feel a two percent favorability rating among Americans of African heritage is insurmountable, so they are going to take the opposite approach and try to further marginalize our fellow citizens who happen to be black and don't follow the rules for "house negroes." With government-approved haters like the fundamentalist christians preaching the elimination of people with different sexual preferences, the violent, racist and jingoistic self-labeled minutemen "guarding" our border from hispanics seeking opportunity, and with the Bush administration ensuring a right-wing caucasian majority in a traditional democratic stronghold by not reviving a moribund New Orleans, it looks like they think they have a broad enough power base to become more overt in their effort to take over the United States and re-form it into their dream theocratic-militarist-corporate state.

It seems more clear every day that the end result of all of this is going to be the United States militarily and politically battling the other nations of the world as it simultaneously faces the chilling prospect of another civil war. Unfortunately, just the same as happened in the Civil War, it is another vocal minority that once again appears to be dragging the entire nation into ever-increasing chaos. Less than half of the population of this country supports the extreme positions this group stands for, yet they are dictating policy that affects all of us and will continue to burden our descendants and pretend that their stance represents the largest part of the citizenry.

Slowly, painfully, people are starting to wake up. Americans are starting to notice that what this administration says and what it does are entirely different things. We may be a self-absorbed people, but sooner or later we begin to understand when there's something wrong. Our national understanding eventually ousted Richard Nixon. We are at one of those historic intersections now. As a nation and as individuals, we are going to be forced to make decisions about who we are, what we stand for, and what we will tolerate as we hurtle into the future. It is time for all people of conscience to speak out, loud and proud, and give the people who are dragging us headlong into apocalypse clear notice that we will not stand for the destruction of the dream of "a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."


Stand up for what you believe in. Help keep America free.

Garrison Keillor on G.W. Bush

"Your mistakes are responsible for terrible suffering, but you stand among your victims and urge public support for your policies as a sign of support for the people those policies have injured. This is a plot worthy of Shakespeare."

I was never a fan of Keillor's, although I didn't actively dislike his work either. This quote is from a new article published in Salon by Mr. Keillor in which he talks about and to our incompetent president.

I wish I had said it.

so it's like that?

With the flap over the exchange of letters between John McCain and Barack Obama that have been recently publicized, it looks like we have been given a preview of what sort of fight there will be for the White House in 2008. It is pretty clear that John McCain and the republican party are going to fight dirtier and dirtier campaign battles, and that from their standpoint this is about winning at whatever the cost. If McCain had any intention of claiming he would bring some sort of dignity back to politics, he just destroyed what credibility he might have had that his intentions were honest.

It is time to use their own smears against them. The democrats need to come out swinging hard at McCain, and remind the voters of this country that this was the same man that George W. Bush painted, with the help of a Rovian whisper campaign about mixed-race babies and post-traumatic stress issues, as one unhinged by his long captivity during the Viet Nam war and who could not be counted on to maintain an even keel during a national crisis. It's obvious from the shrillness of his letters to Obama that the pressure is getting to him and he's just an eyetwitch away from doing something crazy like raising taxes on the wealthy or cutting down on the out-sourcing of American jobs. If we use it right, these letters were the "Dean scream" moment for John McCain.

Remember, it's not lying if republicans said it.

synchronicity

Author Betty Friedan and actor Al "Grandpa" Lewis both passed away this weekend.

Am I the only one to notice that they looked exactly alike?

sadly, it wouldn't surprise me

With the evidence now that the administration was considering plans to decorate a U-2 spy plane in UN colors to try to tempt Saddam into shooting at it, thus justifying military action, I can't help but wonder if this Mohammed cartoon tempest wasn't started by an someone as part of an intentional design to touch the collective Muslim psyche and manipulate it into aggression on westerners.

With all of the distant saber-rattling about the dangers of worldwide fundamentalist Islam, and with countries like Iran, Syria, North Korea, and pretty much all of South America making the right collectively tremble, it isn't too distant a leap to imagine the Bush cabal using a known psychological and cultural hot-button to covertly achieve their desires without being placed in the position of creating more enemies among the ever-diminishing number of countries that don't scorn us.

Even the new conservative Prime Minister of Canada was elected in part on his platform of building up the Canadian armed forces, making allusions that you never know, "there might be a war."

Who on Earth would Canada have to go to war with?

it's not an accident

Bush is now using a slogan backdrop that reads "Strengthening America's Competitiveness."

This is starting to look more and more like Kerry's slogan writers are hacking the White House's propaganda-generating software.

the blind leading the sighted

Don't you just want to chuck George under the chin and tousle his hair for his pledge to magically re-educate seventy thousand science and math teachers to help our flagging educational system?

He's right, of course. We need to do it because good sciencemanship and mathemizing is important for our kids' learnification.

the two Pats

In a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday during which allies of the Bush administration once again defended the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens in direct defiance of the Constitution of the United States, there were a number of heated exchanges between opponents of the illegal wiretaps and administration supporters.

Toward the end of the day, committee chairman Pat Roberts, senator from Kansas, once again rolled out his latest rubberstamp of the administration, angrily telling critics of the program that "I would only point out that you really don't have any civil liberties if you're dead."

Well, Pat, in the immortal words of another Pat, American hero Patrick Henry, a patriot in deed rather than in choice of lapel pin, "give me liberty or give me death."

You see, Pat, the problem is that under your president, we don't seem to have any civil liberties while we're alive.

Pat Roberts, the embarrassment of the United States, the shame of Kansas.

the new grammar

Let's see, now.

George Bush's stated goal to cut foreign oil dependence by seventy-five percent by the year 2025 was "just an example" of what could be done to improve our national well-being and wasn't intended to be taken literally as a plan for the future, according to a White House spokesman. People just didn't quite grasp what he really meant when he said it. I guess we weren't paying enough attention or something.

Bill Frist now says that when he stood on the floor of Congress and proclaimed that after watching an hour of carefully-edited videotape that in his "opinion as a physician" Terry Schiavo was clearly aware, that he wasn't diagnosing her he was actually just "raising the question." We all misunderstood. We really must need some remedial language lessons.


The new reichpublican excuse seems distillable to "I didn't mean what I actually said in plain English."


And somehow, many of the American people are so easily duped as to be blithely unaware of this contemptuously blatant disregard for them that an ever-more-shrill forty percent still support this administration. You have to wonder how it is that they are so easily distrac...




...ooooooh, look, BUBBLES!

random observations

Tucker Carlson enjoys acting exaggeratedly gay just a little bit too much.

the new math

News reports today indicate that our feckless leader is going to be asking Congress for a bunch more money so he can continue pumping quarters into the enormous arcade game that is the Iraq debacle. After the coming appropriations, the tab for this war, which was going to pay for itself (remember that?) will be close to half a trillion dollars.

Meanwhile, Congress has cut about forty billion dollars, less than ten percent of the cost of the war so far, in funding for the poorest, oldest, and most vulnerable citizens of the United States, many of whom are watching their family members die in this desert misadventure.

On the other hand, they have given the wealthiest one percent of our country the biggest tax breaks in history, ensuring the continued aggrandizement of ancient fortunes, draining the fluid dollars in the economy into their coffers.


Can anybody tell me again how this is wise government? Is this what America is really like? Do today's Americans sit back and watch the less fortunate die and not care at all? Are we really so greedy and self-absorbed that we are willing to throw the weak overboard so that we can get the latest electronic toy, the latest costly tennis shoe? Didn't we used to pride ourselves as a nation on our steadfastness about doing the right thing? How does anybody that supports these kinds of policies and actions even look at their reflection in the mirror?

I can see in a not-too-distant future a book entitled "The Most Shameful Generation."

I hope I'm gone by then.

fake headline of the day

Republicans Smoke Blunt, Get Boehner!

can you hear me NOW?

As a part of the recent Chris Matthews malaprop crusade, I emailed several of the show's sponsors recently and submitted a brief complaint, as follows:

I am sick and tired of having my love of my country questioned and being insulted by the likes of Chris Matthews. I demand a public apology from MSNBC and Chris Matthews, his immediate termination by MSNBC, and I am further notifying you that I will boycott any and all of your products until these demands are met.


Five days later, I received this solitary terse reply:

We have received your e-mail concerning Verizon advertising on MSNBC's "Hardball." Thank you for taking the time to convey your opinion to us. Be assured that we appreciate your concerns.

Verizon


Their appreciation of my concerns is indeed overwhelming, isn't it? They sent an email form letter to me, and to probably thousands of other citizens from whom they willingly accept money, but display an utter lack of concern or sincerity.


I have Sprint now.

puppy love

I'm proud to have made one small difference.

I've been meaning to blog about this for a week or so, but pushed it aside. Last night's State of the Union address reminded me I needed to do so, and all the more now. Many of you already know about the dog that was in the audience last night. His name is Rex. Here is his story, by way of a thank-you email sent to me and to many other citizens who care about animals, who may have helped in some small way to permit Rex to attend last night. Here's the email, which I will quote in full:


(Milo,)

Thanks to your support, the legal obstacles were cleared expeditiously, allowing U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jamie Dana to adopt Rex, her military working dog partner.

As you may know, Sgt. Dana and Rex were working together in Iraq, searching for hidden explosives. In June, a bomb detonated under the vehicle in which she and Rex were riding, and Sgt. Dana was critically injured. Rex, who had suffered only a minor burn on his nose, was brought to the hospital to provide moral support. As Sgt. Dana recovered with Rex by her side, the bond between the wounded soldier and her loyal partner grew even stronger. As a result, she sought to adopt him; however, military rules prohibited the adoption of military dogs before the end of their useful working lives.

But thanks to the outpouring of public support, Congress addressed this issue and passed a bill allowing the adoption of military dogs under exceptional circumstances. President Bush then signed the bill into law, eliminating the legal obstacles that prevented Rex’s adoption. And we are pleased to report that the Air Force moved quickly. On January 13, at a special adoption ceremony at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, Sgt. Dana’s squadron commander, Maj. Paul Cairney, officially handed over Rex’s leash to Sgt. Dana.

At the ceremony, American Humane CEO and President Marie Belew Wheatley said, “We extend our grateful appreciation on behalf of our more than 29,000 members who appealed to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to support the act of Congress that made this adoption possible. We at American Humane know there is a powerful bond between people and animals that has already played a role in Sgt. Dana’s recovery and now can continue to do so. We extend our grateful appreciation and thank the Air Force, which believes, as we do, that allowing Sgt. Dana to adopt Rex was the right thing to do.”

Sgt. Dana, recalling her thoughts when she first saw Rex during her recovery, said, “My best friend is okay. We lived, and we’re gonna be okay.” Sgt. Dana continues to recuperate, as she and her husband, Mike, welcome Rex into their “family” of three cats, two dogs, and four horses.

The American Humane Association deeply appreciates your help and support. Your voice has made a difference in convincing members of Congress and the President to do the right thing.



Welcome home, Sgt. Dana and Rex. Have a good life together, you've earned it.

flustered clucks?

During his live speech today, George W. Bush was in front of one of the usual "slogan" backdrops for which this administration is famous. This one read:

"Americans Win When America Leads"

These guys are really off their game. They can't even come up with a new, punchy slogan like the ones they have used before. They must be hiring Kerry campaign slogan writers. They are running scared.

They have every right to.

freedom curtailed is so intolerable

From the "with a straight face" file:

Florida Representative Bill Young gave a speech on the House floor this morning full of passion and outrage. Seems his wife was ALSO ejected from the State of the Union address last night for wearing a T-shirt with a message.

Her T-shirt said "Support the Troops."

Bill is all upset that her First Amendment rights were roughly run over last night.


You reap what you sow, bitch.

fight or die

A letter from Cindy Sheehan:

Dear Friends,
As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country.

There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened:

This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union Address. At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2245 Dead. How many more?

After the PSOTU press conference, I was having second thoughts about going to the SOTU at the Capitol. I didn't feel comfortable going. I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me and I knew that I couldn't disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket and I didn't want to be disruptive out of respect for her. I, in fact, had given the ticket to John Bruhns who is in Iraq Veterans Against the War. However, Lynn's office had already called the media and everyone knew I was going to be there so I sucked it up and went.

I got the ticket back from John, and I met one of Congresswoman Barbara Lee's staffers in the Longworth Congressional Office building and we went to the Capitol via the undergroud tunnel. I went through security once, then had to use the rest room and went through security again. My ticket was in the 5th gallery, front row, fourth seat in. The person who in a few minutes was to arrest me, helped me to my seat.

I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled; "Protester." He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs. I said something like "I'm going, do you have to be so rough?" By the way, his name is Mike Weight.

The officer ran with me to the elevators yelling at everyone to move out of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, "That's Cindy Sheehan." At which point the officer who arrested me said: "Take these steps slowly." I said, "You didn't care about being careful when you were dragging me up the other steps." He said, "That's because you were protesting."

Wow, I get hauled out of the People's House because I was, "Protesting." I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later.

I was immediately, and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for "unlawful conduct." After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, "2245, huh? I just got back from there."I told him that my son died there.

That's when the enormity of my loss hit me. I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go? I started crying in pain. What did Casey die for? What did the 2244 other brave young Americans die for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm's way for still? For this?

I can't even wear a shrit that has the number of troops on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are responsible for killing. I wore the shirt to make a statement. The press knew I was going to be there and I thought every once in awhile they would show me and I would have the shirt on. I did not wear it to be disruptive, or I would have unzipped my jacket during George's speech.

If I had any idea what happens to people who wear shirts that make the neocons uncomfortable that I would be arrested...maybe I would have, but I didn't. There have already been many wild stories out there. I have some lawyers looking into filing a First Amendment lawsuit against the government for what happened tonight.

I will file it.

It is time to take our freedoms and our country back.I don't want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether he/she has paid the ulitmate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government. That's why I am going to take my freedoms and liberties back. That's why I am not going to let Bushco take anything else away from me...or you.

I am so appreciative of the couple of hundred of protesters who came to the jail while I was locked up to show their support....we have so much potential for good...there is so much good in so many people.Four hours and 2 jails after I was arrested, I was let out. Again, I am so upset and sore it is hard to think straight.

Keep up the struggle...I promise you I will too.

Love and peace soon,
Cindy


For anybody that still hasn't figured it out, our nation is in mortal danger. We must rise up, and by violence, if necessary, free our nation from the death-grip that scoundrels like George W. Bush have placed it in.

Revolution sounds better every day.

oily bohunks

Remember how, during last year's extreme gasoline price spike, the oil companies like Exxon, accompanied by our own oh-so-sincerely sorry president, told us that the sky-high price was a factor of supply and demand influencing the free market, and that the price was not so much related to a lack of crude oil as to a lack of refining capacity in the United States?

Remember how, many times now, we have been told that there is no "price-fixing" on the part of the oil companies, no collusion, and it's really just the power of capitalism at work when we see gas prices at competing outlets rising in perfect synchronization to the tenth of a cent no matter what the time of day is?

Remember how, just last week, Exxon announced quarterly net profits of over ten billion dollars and an annual net profit of over thirty-six billion dollars?

Remember how, just last night, our incompetent president assured us that we were "addicted to oil" and needed to get the petroleum monkey off our back?

Well, guess what.

Just this morning, Exxon announced that they were cutting down on refining oil into gasoline. Why?

Their PROFIT MARGIN is too low.

In other words, they are going to put less gasoline into the system so that prices will go up and so that they will make more money from each gallon, insuring that they continue draining the finances of the United States into their own bank accounts at the nearly billion-dollar-per-week pace that makes them happy.

Our dealer just upped the price of cocaine on us because they want the money and they know we'll pay it.


The executives of the American oil companies, the same people who stiffed the American public out of seven hundred million dollars in royalties last year, money that they pay the American people (the owners of American oil reserves) to suck the oil out of the ground and sell it back to them at inflated prices, these ostensibly "patriotic" Americans, should be hanged for treason and for war profiteering.

And, that is NOT a riff on Ann Coulter. I'm dead serious.

These people are bad for America. They should be eliminated as the traitors they are.