dueling headlines

"Spread of AIDS is Slowing, UN Report Finds"
New York Times

"UN Says AIDS Spreading Unchecked"
Houston Chronicle



And they wonder why we ridicule the traditional media?

Memorial Day, 2006 CE

2,466 Americans.

Honored for their sacrifice.

Dishonored by their president.

thanks, asshole

I am utterly disgusted.

A little earlier this evening I started watching a television program on the Discovery Channel, a show called "Futureweapons" discussing, as you might suspect, military technology of the future. At one point, the narrative turned to the phenomenon of Electromagnetic Pulse, where the wave-front of a nuclear explosion wreaks havoc on electrical and electronic systems and causes them to malfunction or stop working altogether.

The narrator called them "nukular" explosions.

Repeatedly.

On the Discovery Channel.

After the third "nukular," I changed the channel.

Apparently, our barely-literate empty suit of a puppet president has normalized stupidity to the extent that a pronunciation of the word "nuclear" that is not accepted by any standard reference work is able to make its way into use on a television channel that purports to be educational.


Thanks for lowering the bar on literacy, George. Oh, and thanks for causing decades worth of damage to our nation, damage that we may never be able to repair.

And while I'm thanking you for that, George, and as hurricane season begins, I don't want to forget to thank you for taking such good care of New Orleans, where they today found another Katrina victim dead in the laundry room of their home.



Thanks, you cowardly, incompetent, illiterate, illegitimate, dishonest, privileged, pretender-to-the-throne, sorry-sack-of-shit asshole of a president.

Happy Memorial Day.

mastering his domain

According to Robert Reid of the Associated Press, the Pentagon is taking serious steps to investigate and correct the issues raised by the apparent slaughter of Iraqi civilians in Haditha committed by members of the United States military forces that has been breaking in the news for the last couple of weeks.

The government is sending Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the top-ranking officer in the Marines to Iraq to investigate further and to explain to U.S. armed forces personnel that they should use deadly force "only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful."

This whole line of spin brings to mind the "Seinfeld" episode in which George Costanza, after being confronted by his boss about having sex with the office cleaning woman on his desk, innocently asks "was that wrong?"

If we have to explain to our servicemen why they are not supposed to massacre the very people we are trying to "liberate," we have already lost the "war on terror."

poodle and pony show

Watching Blair and Bush try to convince the world that they are smarter than the rest of us by reciting their talking points in unison, it suddenly occurred to me that this surreal "press conference" would have made the legendary soft-porn director Russ Meyer weep with joy because that just had to be the biggest pair of boobs on this planet.

you bastards!

They convicted Kenny!

GUILTY on all counts.

Won't it be interesting to hear George once again explain how "Kenny-boy" Lay really wasn't his friend, just sort of a casual acquaintance who contributed lots of money to Bush family campaigns. And won't it be interesting for Kenny to learn to live for a few years with "the" for his middle name...

you can't make this shit up

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/24/delay-colbert/

goodfellas

I'm stunned. It seems that, after all of the excesses of the Bush administration, there is something that gets our lawmakers riled up. Denny Hastert and John Boehner have vehemently come out against the search of William Jefferson's office yesterday by legal authorities, despite the constitutional injunction that their workspaces are exempted from this sort of occurrence. It seems they suddenly feel that the laws of this country should be enforced. Or, at least the ones that protect THEM.

Am I the only one that is hearing this as "you can never whack a made guy" played out in the aristocratic milieu of Washington, D.C., rather than the primitive wilderness of New Jersey?

Technicolor rainbow, that is

Today, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted 12 to 3 to recommend that the Senate confirm Michael Hayden as the new head of the Central Intelligence Agency.


I guess holding that whole "architect of the constitutionally illegal NSA wiretapping program" and "no uniformed military personnel are allowed to occupy civilian positions" stuff against him would have been uncouth.

black is a rainbow

Chris Matthews' lead headline for "Hardball" tonight:

"President Bush once again tries to bring peace to the Middle East!"



Yeah, he has to 'cause that whole "bomb-the-fuck-out-of-it" approach seems to have backfired for some elusive reason...

farewell

Lloyd Bentsen passed away today.

During the presidential campaign of 1988, Mr. Bentsen "debated" George H.W. Bush's running mate, the intellectually-challenged Dan Quayle. At one point in the debate, Quayle famously said "I have as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency."


Lloyd Bentsen's answer was the model of effective simplicity.

"Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."


Rest in peace, Lloyd.

I'm so proud

I got a one-ring hangup call today on my cellular phone. It came from the telephone number 305-503-8066. A moment on Google turned up some interesting information. Apparently, I'm far from alone in this odd experience.

http://www.consumerist.com/consumer/calls-from-a-stranger/

Another site linked to purported that these calls were from government computers involved in the NSA "terrorist surveillance" program.


I wonder if I should get more paranoid.


Anybody got a good design for a tin-foil hat I can use?

sound familiar?

"Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Kingdom Coming"

I'm reading a very interesting book: "Kingdom Coming, The Rise of Christian Nationalism" by Michelle Goldberg. I quote:

"The diversion of billions of taxpayer dollars from secular social service organizations to such sectarian religious outfits has been one of the most underreported stories of the Bush presidency. Bush's faith-based initiatives have become a spoils system for evangelical ministries, which are now involved in everything from prison programs and job training to teenage pregnancy prevention, supplanting tthe safety net that was supposed to catch all Americans. As a result of faith-based grants, a growing number of government-funded social service jobs explicitly refuse to hire Jews, gay people, and other undesirables; such discrimination is defended by the administration and its surrogates in the name of religious freedom. Bringing the dispossessed to Jesus Christ has become something very close to a domestic policy goal of the United States government. And all this has happened with far less notice or public debate than attended the removal of Terri Schaivo's feeding tube or the halftime baring of Janet Jackson's breast."

Intrigued yet?

I got the book at my local Barnes and Noble. I paid $24 for it, but it was money well spent. I'm only halfway through, and I'm already appalled. Everything she says has the ring of truth.

unintentional irony

Enjoying a rare lazy Saturday afternoon today, I have been watching a string of older science-fiction films on Encore. The current one is the 1995 release "Johnny Mnemonic," which has been one of my guilty-pleasure seen-too-many-times flicks like "Battlefield Earth" and "The Fifth Element" for several years now.

This time, however, I suddenly found myself in paroxysms of laughter at one particular line I had never noticed before.

In an expository scene between Johnny Mnemonic, played by Keanu Reeves, and his accidentally acquired bodyguard, Jane, played by Dina Meyer, a scene in which Johnny explains to her why the bad guys are after him, he says the following:


"I can carry 80 gigs of data in my head."



I can't be the only person to have thought that for Keanu, that sounds about right.

Crazy Idea....

...or not so crazy?

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld assured members of Congress today that using thousands of National Guard troops to help secure the U.S. border with Mexico will not detract from the troops' ability to perform other missions at home and abroad. He said it would sharpen their skills. "The up to 6,000 guardsmen and women proposed for this effort represent less than 2 percent of the total National Guard force of some 400,000, and for the most part, they will be deployed during their two- or three-week active duty training period," he told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. "As such, this will not only not adversely affect America's ability to conduct the war on terror or respond to other domestic emergencies, it will actually provide useful real-life training for the members of the National Guard," he added.

It's a good start on gathering and training troops for Iran...

just wondering

If the government passes legislation making English the official tongue of the United States and requiring all citizens to be proficient with the English language, does that mean that we are going to be stripping the citizenship from the two-hundred-fifty million or so people in this country who are not proficient in English and making them go through the application process, including our current semi-functionally illiterate idiot of a "commander-in-chief?"

If so, I'm all for it. However, if illiterate cracker-speak qualifies as English, then it means that we just don't want brown people here.

I wonder which way it will go.

it's called religious freedom

Religious nutjobs, particularly of the Catholic variety best exemplified by William Donohue, are all up-in-arms about the silly movie adaptation of the best-selling "The DaVinci Code." I don't think I can count the amount of times I have heard somebody on the news channels railing against the producers of the film for "attacking" or "insulting" their religious notions and not "respecting" their preferred brand of superstition.

These are mostly the same people that I have seen vehemently attack atheism and atheists and attribute vile motivations to them simply because of their lack of god-belief. As an atheist, an American, and a person of high self-imposed ethical standards, I'd like to explain this one more time.

The United States of America has as one of its basic tenets, the notion that people are free to pursue whatever religious belief they choose, including none.

Nobody is required to respect any religion. If you feel that people are attacking your religion, that's just too bad. I am under no obligation to have any reverence for your religious ideas and you are not required to respect my lack of belief. I will support to the death your right to believe as you wish, and in return, you are required to support my right to not believe. I can mock your religion and call it stupid with no penalty and you can mock my lack of religion. The moment this nation requires respect for religion and religiosity but tolerates disrespect for the non-religious is the moment that it ceases being the United States.

This country intentionally has a secular form of government.

Deal with it.


Meanwhile, don't bitch about my offenses against you while you are simultaneously insulting me for my lack of god-belief.

and speaking of insults

There was a great bit of Freudian subtext today that leaked out of our feckless leader. While visiting a border town for his dune-buggy photo opportunity, he talked about how this area was once "over-run" with people entering without the benefit of visas. And of course, he is offering billions of dollars to defense industry contractors to develop his plan for "the Great Wall of Chino" to keep the brown people from south of the border in their place.


If anybody of Hispanic descent of any type can vote for a party that is so derisive of their cultural relatives, they deserve the utmost in pity for they are truly handing the end of the rope to their own hangman.

is nobody insulted?

"It's my job to protect the American people."
- George W. Bush


"We need to make Americans feel safe again."
- General Michael Hayden


"You have no civil liberties if you are dead."
- Senator Pat Roberts



Folks, the Bush administration feels that this a nation of cowards that wants nothing more than to hide behind their big, strong president Daddy. How do you like knowing that the leadership of this country thinks that you are a pussy?

Presidential Poetry

My friend, Fire Berry, put up a poem she got from a Washington Post writer. Here's a link to the post at her blog:

http://palaverandparlance.blogspot.com/

dereliction of duty

It's been an honor to watch the amazing in-depth coverage of breaking national news on the cable networks today.

FOX, CNN, and MSNBC all had riveting coverage of a pre-trial evidentiary and procedural hearing for one of the jocks accused of sodomizing a stripper, and CNN Headline News had ground-breaking and un-interrupted live-action video of a police chase featuring a stolen pickup truck towing a heavy trailer in the hot southern sun. We are so fortunate to have this kind of technology to help focus us on events that will shape our generation.



Huh?


CIA whoozywhat?

sigh

Speaking of women, I just have to say how much I envy Keith Olbermann.

Not for his excellent program, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," although it is an absolutely indispensable part of my television viewing.

It's because he is lucky enough to spend a lot of time with the two most gorgeous, intelligent, and delightfully appealing women on television, in coin-toss order, Monica Novotny and Alison Stewart.

As a disillusioned divorcee, I can only say that those two wonderful females give me hope that there might even be one like that out there somewhere for me.

Of course, in the meantime I can at least console myself that I am privileged to enjoy the acquaintance of two of the most delightful women who aren't on television, (also in coin-toss order) Mary K. and Ronni...

"Forever Pregnant"

Here you go, ladies. This is what the Bush administration thinks of you:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051500875.html?referrer=emailarticle


So please keep yourselves trim and not stinking of tobacco so that you are invitingly ready for us real humans to implant our seed in you, and make damned sure that nothing bad happens to our progeny.

Thanks!

more new math

The 24-hour news networks are all touting polls indicating that 75% of the American populace have a "positive or very positive" reaction to George's little "going to Mars" immigration moment last night.

I'm a bit confused. The left-leaning blogs are excoriating the president for things like his lack of detail as to how his proposals will be implemented, and for burdening the already-groaning National Guard with yet another assignment not in their job description and for which they are horribly ill-suited.

The right-wingers are blasting him for pandering and providing no substance and for not promising to evict the twelve million immigrants in this country already.

Nobody seems to be praising him except for the news networks themselves. So, where in the world are they finding this three-quarters of the country that is polling so solidly behind the chimp-in-chief?


As for me? My question, which doesn't seem to be getting asked by anyone, is simple. If border security is so urgent as a result of the September 11th attacks, why is George just starting to talk about doing something about it FIVE YEARS later, and why is it only the Mexican border that is being discussed? Isn't that like putting a privacy fence in the front yard and leaving the screen door out back wide open?

Someone? Anyone? I feel like Diogenes looking for a real journalist...

oooh, dibs!

George W. Bush thinks people should learn to speak English to qualify to become American citizens.

George W. Bush thinks so.

Mom's Day

Hey!

If your mom in within reach, give her a big hug. If she's not, give her a call. If she's out of range, spend a bit of time remembering her, and telling your children a story about her. Preferably one that you haven't told them a hundred times.

Sing her favourite song, eat her favourite meal, do something she always tried to get you to do but you were too stubborn to.

Spare her a thought.

going, going...

29%

"The Target is Al Quaida"

DING! Wrong!

The target is you and me. The NSA is building a database of phone calls so they can spot anamolies? What anamolies? And they are not even denying it; they are DEFENDING it! Are we going to accept this?

And the prez wants to make the former NSA leader the head of the CIA???


DING!DING!DING!DING!DING!!!!!!!!!!!

~~~~~are we there, yet~~~~

then and now

"...government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth."
- Gettysburg address, President Abraham Lincoln



Thanks to the lying, incompetent scumbag now in the White House, it's time to change that to "government of the donors, by the donors, and for the donors."

It's also time for some regime change in the United States of America.

Traitor

Wow, the republican party will sell out their own children to get re-elected, and their children will sell out their own beliefs to get them re-elected, just to keep the currs in power.

Some of my best friends are gay and I wish they were allowed to have open personal lives and loves, even though their Daddy's not sitting at the right hand of the w.

Mary C, you should be ashamed of yourself.

to quote Vincent Furnier

SCHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL'S...


OUT.

FOR.


THE SUMMER!

another one

Welcome Jackson Browne to the musicians against Bush group.

I'll still never forgive him for beating up Darryl Hannah...

smoking polls

A just-released USA Today/Gallop poll shows George W. Bush now at an all-time low of 31% approval in the United States. Given the fact that sometime in the next six weeks or so that we will have suffered the two thousand five hundredth American fatality in Iraq, it seems to me that by the end of June our disgrace of a president will drop below 25% to never rise again. It's about time our country woke up and realized what a catastrophe this administration has been. The biggest shame is that it is going to take us decades to dig ourselves out of the horrible situation this idiot and his cronies have placed us in simply for the sake of their own enrichment and twisted ideologies.