Stuff You Should Read 10/1/06

When Can We Criticize The War Effort? - It's OK to criticize before it starts, but not after it begins? Does that makes sense in sports, employment, or anything else?

Losing A War, Winning A Police State

The Anti-Smoking Vaccine – An advertisement masquerading as news looks at this vaccine that I have no doubt will be a disaster for the body, prompting fast-track approval of anti-THC and anti-cocaine vaccines for mandatory use on all students and employees.

Sayonara To Checks And Balances – Now American citizens can be held as “unlawful enemy combatants” and legally tortured…forever.

How George Bush Admitted His War Crimes – Why pass a law pardoning yourself for war crimes unless you are guilty of them?

Predatorgate – Fellow Republicans were aware of sexual predator czar Rep. Foley’s sex chats with a 16 year old boy almost a year ago, yet did nothing about it. Moral values indeed.

Foley Ethics Investigation Blocked – Pelosi calls for ethics investigation into sex-scandal Foley, and Republicans boo. They BOO! Wow…

FOX Is Doing Those Gitmo Paradise Pieces Again

Stuff You Should Read - 9/30/06

This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like - ...and waterboarding was one of the most infamous methods of torture used by the Khmer Rouge in Tuol Sleng prison.

Mommy, What's Waterboarding?

Many Rights In U.S. Legal System Absent In New Bill - University of Texas constitutional law professor Sanford V. Levinson described the bill in an Internet posting as the mark of a "banana republic."

Hannity On Wiretapping Then...And Now - Oh, that's gotta sting...

October 3 A "Day Against DRM" - Please go on over and check this out; it's really important.

"Idiot" Bag Gets Passenger Detained - TSA screeners see a bomb threat implied in a note that says "Kip Hawley is an idiot".

TSA Rule Absurdities Continue...

Big Music Owes You Money - The Los Angeles Times has picked up on the SoundExchange story - you know, the one where an ex-RIAA collection agency says it can't find droves of artists it owes money to?

Zune, CC, and Awkward Questions

ABC, CBS, CNN Aired Bush's "Cut And Run" Attack, ignored Democratic response

Toxic Laptops Exposed

Stuff You Should Read - 9/29/06

A War On Intelligence

Congress Gives Bush The Right To Torture And Detain People Forever

Economy Booming For Billionaires

Rushing Off A Cliff

Federal Trans-Fat Plan Best: Officials - It's about time! Also see NYC Mulls Ban On Trans Fats In Restaurants

Ketamine Found To Be More Effective Than Antidepressants!

Why You Should NEVER Trust America's Mainstream Media

Skunk over at Have Skunk has something too startling for me to give away. Please go on over and check it out - you won't regret it.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, And The Button

Paul Craig Roberts over at Antiwar has some pretty chilling reasons why he believes Bush will nuke Iran and what the consequences may well be. Interestingly enough, he points out that we have been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq longer than we fought against the Nazis, yet things are completely out of control in both countries. So much for "Mission Accomplished"...

United Soviet America?

Yet another op-ed that really speaks for itself...

In the late 1980s, I was the first western journalist allowed into the world’s most dreaded prison, Moscow’s sinister Lubyanka. Muscovites dared not even utter the name of KGB’s headquarters, calling it instead after a nearby toy store, “Detsky Mir.”

...I recall these past horrors because of what this column has long called the gradual “Sovietization” of the United States. This shameful week, it became clear Canada is also afflicted.

We have seen America’s president and vice president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, advocating some of the same interrogation techniques the KGB used at the Lubyanka. They apparently believe beating, freezing, sleep deprivation and near-drowning are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. So did Stalin.

The White House insisted that anyone — including Americans — could be kidnapped and tried in camera using “evidence” obtained by torturing other suspects. Bush & Co. deny the U.S. uses torture but reject the basic law of habeaus corpus and U.S. laws against the evil practice. The UN says Bush’s plans violate international law and the Geneva Conventions.

Full article here

Love Thy Enemy

I remember a seasoned senior officer explaining the importance of the Geneva Conventions. He said, "When an enemy fighter knows he'll be treated well by United States forces if he is captured, he is more likely to give up."

A year later on the streets of Baghdad, I saw countless insurgents surrender when faced with the prospect of a hot meal, a pack of cigarettes and air-conditioning. America's moral integrity was the single most important weapon my platoon had on the streets of Iraq. It saved innumerable lives and deterred Iraqis from joining the insurgency.

But those days are over. America's moral standing has eroded, thanks to its flawed rationale for war and scandals like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. The last thing America can afford now is to leave Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions open to reinterpretation, as President George W. Bush proposed to do and can still do under the compromise bill that emerged last week.

Full article here

Criminal, Pardon Thyself

The United States is following the lead of "dirty war" nations, such as Argentina and Chile, in enacting what amounts to an amnesty law protecting U.S. government operatives, apparently up to and including President George W. Bush, who have committed or are responsible for human rights crimes.

While the focus of the current congressional debate has been on Bush's demands to redefine torture and to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, the compromise legislation also would block prosecutions for violations already committed during the five-year-old "war on terror."

Full article here

I don't understand how anyone can defend this or stand behind Bush at this point.

Now They Don't Even Have To Knock

A split Supreme Court ruled Thursday that drug evidence seized in a home search can be used against a suspect even though police failed to knock on the door and wait a "reasonable" amount of time before entering.

The 5-4 decision continues a string of rulings since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that in general give law enforcement greater discretion to carry out search-and-seizure warrants.

Woo hoo, man, you gotta love them terrorist attacks! Now we can treat those crackheads like the terrorists they really are. Because everyone knows that when you buy drugs, you're paying for Osama's next massage parlor visit.

President Bush's nominees to the high court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, notably sided with the government.

What a disaster.

Full story here

Bush's Gift Of Freedom Brings Tears To Iraqi Eyes

The wounded die alone on Baghdad's streets. An offer of aid could be your own death sentence, an Iraqi reporter writes.

Full story here

United Professionals, Unite!

In 2002, Barbara Ehrenreich and Thomas Geoghegan wrote in The Nation, "The underlying reason for organized labor's decline is that our labor laws do not let people join unions, freely and fairly, without being fired." The authors urged "a new approach to rebuilding unions – and to labor law reform….The first step…should be to create a form of membership accessible to any worker."

...Enter United Professionals (UP). Ehrenreich has now founded this nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization for white collar workers. UP's mission is to protect and preserve the American middle class, now under attack from so many directions, from downsizing and outsourcing to the steady erosion of health and pension benefits. For a besieged middle class, the arrival of UP is timely and welcome news.

Full article here

Deathtrap Plane

A jet carrying 180 British tourists was grounded when its pilot announced: "Do not fly with this plane, it is not safe."

Full article here

The article itself seems designed to make the pilot into a bad guy whose statements were clearly absurd. The reader comments, however, mirror my thoughts exactly.

If America's So Great, Where's Our Health Care?

The rest of the industrialized world gets universal health care. The U.S. gets limited access at a far higher cost. It's time for Americans to get the health care system they want, and the savings that go with it.

Great article; the entire thing can be found here.

It's interesting that

Among politicians and pundits, a universal, publicly funded system is off the table.

yet...

The public debate around universal health care proceeds as if it were a wild, untested experiment -- as if the United States would be doing something never done before.

A couple of other things from the article really stand out:

The United States spends by far the most on health care per person -- more than twice as much as Europe, Canada, and Japan which all have some version of national health insurance. Yet we are near the bottom in nearly every measure of our health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the U.S. health care system 37th of 190 countries, well below most of Europe, and trailing Chile and Costa Rica. The United States does even worse in the WHO rankings of performance on level of health -- a stunning 72nd. Life expectancy in the U.S. is shorter than in 27 other countries; the U.S. ties with Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia for infant mortality -- ahead of only Latvia among industrialized nations.

Although you'd never know it from the American media, the number of Canadians who would trade their system for a U.S.-style health care system is just eight percent.

An Unforeseen Problem (But I'm Back Now!)

Last week I had to fly to another city in order to have a medical problem taken care of. Unfortunately, the friend I stayed with turned out to have some serious computer issues that prevented me from even getting online, and I spent a good bit of time just trying to fix things.

I'm back home now, but I will be sure to announce any future travel plans so that you, my hopefully-soon-not-to-be-nonexistent-audience-once-I-start-promoting-this-place will not assume that the site is dead or just flaky and inconsistent.

Why Relocate Overseas When You Can Have Your Cake And Eat It Too?

The nation's prison industry now employs more people than any Fortune 500 corporation except General Motors. Is prison labor rehab or corporate slavery?

Full article here

Mommy, Where Do Cell Phones Come From?

Everyone's heard about the human rights abuses in African gold and diamond mines. But when it comes to their ultra-cool, razor-thin cell phones, American consumers won't get the message.

Full article here

Remember The Anthrax Letters?

Perhaps the single most common refrain from the White House and the president's allies is that there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. That's incorrect — about a month after 9/11, someone sent weaponized anthrax to two Democratic senators and several news outlets. Five Americans were killed and 17 more suffered serious illnesses.

For reasons that I've never been able to explain, the incident — I suppose one should call it an "attack" — is hardly ever mentioned. No one knows where the anthrax came from, who sent it, or why. It was a horrifying incident, immediately on the heels of another horrifying incident, but five years later, it's almost as if the episode never happened.

One woman in Florida who was widowed by the attack is still waiting for some answers, and she's willing to go to court to get them.

Full article here

It's a good thing she's still among the living...otherwise we wouldn't even have this story to remind us.

...And On a Lighter Path To 9/11 Note

It seems that ABC can invent a plot, but they can't create their own movie poster!

Ready, Set, Vote!

Check out this security analysis of Diebold voting machines.

...and some still think all that stuff about vote stealing is just "conspiracy talk".

ENDLESS TERRor !!

Many adults in the United States think their country will forever be a target for terrorists, according to a poll by CBS News. 81 per cent of respondents think the U.S. will always have to live with the threat of terrorism.

Full article here

You know, a family who doesn't forcibly enter its neighbors' homes and tell them how they're going to run things in their own house "or else" doesn't generally have a problem with neighbors wanting to burn down their house.

Why is this so hard for some people to understand?

Drug Warriors = Taliban Lackeys

After years of hard work by drug warriors in Afghanistan, the country no longer produces 87 percent of the world's illicit opium. Now it produces 92 percent, according to the latest suspiciously precise estimate from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

On Tuesday, citing ties between opium trafficking and the Taliban insurgency, UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa called upon NATO forces in Afghanistan to get more involved in efforts to stamp out the opium trade. This is exactly the right strategy to pursue if the aim is to alienate the Afghan people, undermine their government, and strengthen the insurgency.

Full article here

I wonder how long it will be before some genius legislator puts forth a bill mandating death for possession of opium or any of its derivatives (heroin etc.) because "that is aiding and abetting TERRISTS!"

WAR AGAINST TERRORISM! WAR ON DRUGS! WAR ON POOR-NOGRAPHY! Our elected officials sure do love their wars. They have at least three that will never end as long as they have money to fight them. I read somewhere the other day that the cost of our crusade in Iraq has surpassed 400 BILLION dollars.

That is far beyond insanity.

We have homeless people, people who desperately need medical care and cannot afford it...the list goes on. Yet our elected officials insist on taking that money and throwing it into wars that defy all logic and that we cannot win. Heckuva job, guys!

More Proof Of Global Warming

Air from the oldest ice core confirms human activity has increased the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere to levels not seen for hundreds of thousands of years, scientists said on Monday.

Full article here

Countdown To The Path To 9/11 Fake-umentary

Media Matters has a load of stories related to this Great Lie.

It sounds like they aren't going to pull it. Why am I not surprised?

Corporate Spin In Sheep's Clothing

If McDonald's makes the case that fast food is nutritious or ExxonMobil argues against higher taxes, it looks like simple self-interest. But when an independent voice makes the case, the ideas gain credibility.

So big corporations have devised a form of idea laundering, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to seemingly independent groups that act as spokesmen under disguise.

Their views wind up on the opinion pages of the nation's newspapers - often with no disclosure that the writer has financial ties to the companies involved. A few examples:

- John Semmens, a policy adviser at the Heartland Institute, wrote a column for the Louisville Courier-Journal that called Wal-Mart "a major force in promoting prosperity for everyone." Readers were not told that his think tank had received more than $300,000 from the Walton Family Foundation, run by the heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.

Full article here

The Bush administration has a habit of doing this too. Taken together with my previous post on Public Relations ethics, you have to wonder if there is any honest discourse in non-internet media at all aside from John Stewart and Stephen Colbert!

To me, this speaks volumes about the nature of corporations.

Why "Our Terminal Struggle"?

I started this blog not with the intent to get involved in the progressive political movement, but to help expose the corruption, dishonesty, and greed that has infected American society so successfully that it is very difficult to get the truth about anything at all unless we actively hunt it down and possess the critical thinking skills necessary to discern what is and is not propaganda.

Why is this pursuit of the truth so important? Quite simply, all the truly important events in the political and business arenas get little or no attention in mainstream media, yet they are precisely the events that have, directly or indirectly, the most impact on our quality of life. How?

- Our freedoms disappear in the name of wars on terror and drugs that are based entirely on fiction and deceit. Many of us still haven’t noticed because we’re not supposed to. As far as government is concerned, our duty is to be in fear of more attacks. Meanwhile, our government insists on using our sons and daughters to lay waste to entire countries - tearing apart families, accomplishing nothing and endangering all Americans.

- Our bodies are poisoned by many of the foods we have been led to believe are good for us, while the foods that traditionally have been healthy are now tampered with in ways that are more than shocking. Meanwhile, our public schools are awash in sugar and junk food, worsening our already awful obesity problems.

- Many of us work more and earn less, while many of the wealthier among us have it the other way around. While this is not new, the gap between rich and the rest has widened considerably over the last few years.

- The United States is now the only industrialized nation (aside from China) that goes without universal health care. As a result, almost half the country goes without medical care because they are unable to afford skyrocketing insurance premiums – and it kills people. Despite the success many other countries have had with universal health care, our media and elected officials treat the idea as if it is an untested experiment that would be irresponsible to implement!

- Technology is being locked down. Have you ever had trouble playing a DVD in your standalone player or on your computer? Thank Digital Rights Management, the holy grail of the movie, music, and software industries. With Vista and its Trusted Computing, things are going to get a lot worse than just a few minor inconveniences. The internet’s days as a haven for free speech and a source for truthful information may well be numbered once Trusted Computing becomes entrenched in our everyday lives.

These are just a few of the struggles we all must deal with in one way or another, yet they are simply not covered in any meaningful way in our mainstream media or our public schools. Could it be that perhaps some people would rather that we not be so aware of our surroundings? What can we do to change things? While I admire and support all of those who are working hard to stop the madness, I believe that ultimately we will have to go another way.

Permit me to briefly digress:

It is very disturbing, but not surprising, to watch as many of the architects and supporters of all this deception and greed have professed to have high moral principles and have effectively hijacked the name of God, wearing Jesus very prominently on their sleeves and using God’s name to ram their agendas down our throats. For them, the Bible is a weapon that they have been ordained by God to use to browbeat the rest of the world into submission. These types have become increasingly influential and powerful over the last quarter of a century, and the result has been not only an increasingly dysfunctional and vicious society, but an ever more common perception among progressives that these deluded, hypocritical, and self-serving “evangelicals” are an accurate representation of what it means to be a Christian.

This perception couldn’t be any further from the truth. “Evangelicals” are, for the most part, no more Christian that Bush is honest. In fact, the Bible has a lot to say about these people, like:

And the Lord said to him, "Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. – Luke 11:39

Jesus gave the Pharisees an especially hard time because they acted the same way many evangelicals and politicians do today – portraying themselves as beacons of morality, worthy of governing and judging others when they themselves are rotten inside.

“Christianization” and globalization have done a fantastic job of turning the world upside down. This blog exists to help expose the torrent of fiction and hate that is forced upon us on a daily basis and look at what the Bible actually has to say about it and its purveyors. My intention is not to preach – preaching turns me off more than Ann Coulter does - but simply to show that God is not on the neocon / conservative / republican / evangelical side at all, and God is certainly NOT the enemy.

Please stick around and help this blog grow!

America's Economic Meltdown?

There’s growing concern among economists and market-savvy pundits that the global financial system is hanging by a few well-worn threads that could snap at any time. The $10.4 trillion real estate “bubble” has attracted the most attention, but the shaky derivatives market, hedge funds, and falling dollar are equally worrisome. 20 years of deregulation has created an economic monster which is increasingly unmanageable and threatens to bring down the whole system in a heap.

...“The entire global financial structure is becoming uncontrollable in crucial ways its nominal leaders never expected. Instability is increasingly its hallmark….Contradictions now wrack the world’s financial system, and if we are to believe the institutions and personalities who have been in the forefront of the defense of capitalism, it may very well be on the verge of serious crisis.”

Full article here

Bush Family Values

It's astonishing to see how desperate our homegrown fascists have become. The entire cabal is in full-on media blitz mode with Rummy, Dick and Theodosius, er, Bush slamming their foreign opponents with the latest absurd tag "Islamic Fascists;" and, their domestic ones as "Nazi appeasers." Or, in the deranged mind of Condi Rice; domestic opponents are tantamount to folks who would have stopped the Civil War and allowed slavery to continue in the South.

It's not just desperate; it's monumentally moronic, given the real history. This bizarre trip on the Wayback Machine demands a deeper look--though don't look to the mainstream media. Given the opening, one would think that everyone by now would be fully informed that the Bush Family took "Nazi appeasement" to far greater heights and were actually part of an American faction of documented Nazi SUPPORTERS.

Full article here

The Kopyright Krusaders Strike Again

The producer of a mashup album that combined the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band has been threatened with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit by EMI, the Beatles' music publisher. EMI has also demanded that he turn over the IP addresses of the hundreds of thousands of people who downloaded the mash-ups, presumably so that EMI can sue all of us, too.

Full article here

You Are What You Eat

AlterNet has a great piece today on the food we eat and how it may be killing us. This issue is tough for many to truly understand until something like cancer or a chronic illness results. It's incredible to me that so many people can say, "Yeah, I know that stuff is terrible for me and I shouldn't eat it, but..." and then laugh it off. Eating is the most intimate interaction you can have with the environment outside your own body - more intimate than sex - and yet most of us (including myself up until this year) choose our food according to taste, time, and perhaps weight loss factors. Many of us who are somewhat concerned with the health implications of what we eat will still naively believe health claims stated on packages and in advertisements. This is no different than having indiscriminate sex with anybody who looks good and claims to be disease-free.

Sadly, even those foods we think are perfectly healthy can be dangerous time bombs because of how they are produced. My own diet has changed radically after spending some time investigating the subject. I now avoid: all pre-packaged foods, most forms of grain including bread, most dairy products (except cheese occasionally), and all produce and meat not raised organically. I'll try to put up some links later for anyone who's interested.

Path To 9/11...They STILL Haven't Pulled It!

Media Matters has a video clip of Thomas Nicoletti explaining why he quit work on The Political Ad.

Crooks And Liars has a nice piece (with video) on what the editor of Salon.com had to say after seeing an advance copy.

...And despite ABC statements to the contrary, they ARE pushing this trash as "official true story" and "the simultaneous world-wide broadcast to an audience of hundreds of millions".

Northwoods Schemes Hit The Mainstream

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

Full story here and here

Those who refuse to believe that BushCo was behind the 9/11 attacks really should take some time out, read the Northwoods document (which can be found here), and then take a serious look at all the stuff that has been dismissed as "conspiracy theories". They're not talking about alien cover-ups and grassy knolls. There exists quite a bit of truly chilling evidence that suggests US complicity in the attacks, and the government has categorically refused to address or even acknowledge much of it. Even Time now says:

A Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 adults last month found that 36% of Americans consider it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves. Thirty-six percent adds up to a lot of people. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality.

The Path To 9/11: The Final Chapter

Public outrage over the five-hour "The Path To 9/11" political ad has exploded! Here's a quick rundown:

Chris Wallace and Bill Bennett (!) come out against it. Crooks And Liars has videos posted.

Predictably, Madeleine Albright has sent a letter to ABC urging them not to air it. Crooks And Liars has it as well.

Meanwhile, Max Blumenthal has uncovered the right-wing fundie forces that are responsible for this gross distortion of history:

Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father's group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is "dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Televisionindustry."

These people are wolves in sheep's clothing. Let's look quickly at a couple of things the Bible says that calls them out for what they are:

You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor - Exodus 20:16

...and since they're using God as a cover:

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His name. - Exodus 20:7

Quickest Patch Ever

If you really want to see Microsoft scramble to patch a hole in its software, don't look to vulnerabilities that impact countless Internet Explorer users or give intruders control of thousands of Windows machines. Just crack Redmond's DRM.

Full article here.

It never ceases to amaze me just how ridiculous the Copyright Cartel is willing to look in their efforts to win a battle that they will clearly lose. It's this kind of stuff that makes a clear case for why it's not a good idea to use proprietary, closed source software. I really should make the switch to Linux...

Incidentally, I came across a hilarious copyright propaganda piece from 1992 called Don't Copy That Floppy, and the Software Publishers Association gave blanket permission to copy and disseminate. I got it via torrent, but you can watch it here.

Don't copy that floppy or game companies will go out of business and pretty soon your computers will be useless!

"The Path To 9/11" Political Ad Updates

When I saw that Harvey Keitel was starring in ABC's "The Path To 9/11" historical revision propaganda film, I lost respect for a fine actor. Today, however, I have to give some of that back as he comes out publicly agreeing with criticism of the film.

Scholastic has also pulled its materials for students that tie in to the fakery and replaced with material that focuses on critical thinking and media literacy skills.

If that weren't bad enough, the screenwriter has admitted to making scenes up!

If I was in upper management at ABC or Disney, I would be pretty embarrassed right about now.

You know what I'd really love to see? "The Money Path To The Making And Airing Of A Five Hour, Historically Fictional 9/11 Political Ad Without Commercials"

The Path To 9/11...Uncovered!

Last night I watched a documentary called Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: The Public Relations Industry Unspun. It goes into great detail about how the PR industry has been used by both corporate interests and governments to sell us things like pharmaceuticals and wars by creating news feeds that are then given to TV stations across the US. These news feeds are treated as real news rather than advertisements or propaganda, and there is no requirement that they be labeled as such.

Basically, the only way to avoid most of this junk is to avoid all mainstream media outlets (TV, radio, and print) altogether, which is a pretty tough sell to a large chunk of American public. Thus, the PR industry helps corporations and governments effectively shut off any honest discussion or debate about anything they wish. It should go without saying that without honest discussion and debate, significant change will not happen.

What more proof does anyone need that Satan actually exists?

A Foreign Policy Guru Says In A Deep Southern Louisiana Drawl, "We Shud Nuke Them Basturds!"

Some Canadian columnist has come up with an amazingly simple solution for one of the most pressing foreign policy issues of the day: We should nuke Iran.

Canada should nuke Iran? O...k then. The man is clearly very serious, so I can't help but wonder: did he come up with that gem himself or did someone not affiliated with his employer slip him a little gift in return for a 'soivice'?

As if his solution isn't already bad enough, he also says:

The usual suspects will complain. The post-Christian churches, the Marxists, the fellow travelers and fifth columnists. But then, the same sort of people moaned and condemned in 1938. They were clearly wrong then. They would be just as wrong now.

I'm not sure what exactly a "post-Christian" church is, but it seems to imply that REAL Christian churches would not object to nuking countries that have both a) regimes we find objectionable because they will not recognize our inherent supremacy, and b) lots of oil that America's soccer moms will need so they can continue to off-road in their SUVs. Aside from the the fact that comparing Iran to Nazi Germany is disingenuous at best (I seem to have forgotten which countries Iran has invaded or even threatened lately), the problem is that nuclear strikes - "tactical" or otherwise - will kill a lot of people, and as quaint as it may sound to our foreign policy guru, I think God had something to say about killing. What was it? Oh yeah:

You shall not murder. - Exodus 20:13 (NIV)

The Path to 9/11 Fairy Tale

A lot of people are now aware of the upcoming ABC broadcast of "The Path To 9/11" and the torrent of (well-deserved) criticism it is getting for taking "dramatic license" into the realm of "dramatically rewriting history into a neocon fairy tale".

It sure has been a good year for nausea-inducing, flag waving fairy tales. Isn't it interesting how this five hour Blame-Clinton marathon travesty is getting 9/11 anniversary airplay just ahead of elections?

Speaking of dramatic license, I think it's about time somebody used a bit of it to tell the story of how BushCo And Friends prepared and executed their plan to scare Americans into complete submission.

The American Love Affair With Imprisonment...Continued

"Two men who took fruit and vegetables out of a garbage can have been sentenced to six months in jail..."

The DA also told the newspaper that "the plea bargain was the suspects' decision."

Right. Some choice. "Shut your mouth, admit guilt, and serve six months...or get ten years for making us go through the trouble of proving your guilt like we're supposed to do!"

Seriously, this whole obsession with jailing people for actions that victimize no one is appalling.

Notice too that while it is apparently illegal in some places to dumpster dive behind places of business, your own personal trash is fair game the moment you put it out on the curb, according to the US Supreme Court in a 1988 decision which reads in part:

It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the side of a public street are readily accessible to animals, *footnote 2 children, scavengers, *footnote 3 snoops, *footnote 4 and other members of the public. See Krivda, supra, at 367, 486 P. 2d, at 1269. Moreover, respondents placed their refuse at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through respondents' trash or permitted others, such as the police, to do so. Accordingly, having deposited their garbage "in an area particularly suited for public inspection and, in a manner of speaking, public consumption, for the express purpose of having strangers take it," United States v. Reicherter, 647 F.2d 397, 399 (CA3 1981), respondents could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that they discarded."

All Pottymouths Go To Hell

It seems that some CBS affiliates are worried that airing a 9/11 documentary will get them in trouble with the FCC because some firefighters curse in it. We all know that normal people NEVER curse in dire emergency situations, and that if the children heard something like that, they would become hellbound devilspawn. It's a given that all pottymouths go to hell.

It's OK to lie and deceive the masses on national television, but using the wrong synonym for 'feces' is just out of line and unforgivable, no matter what the situation is.

Terror, Terror, Terror, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11!!!!!!!!!!!

Bush warned all of us - the unknowing, in-need-of-the-almighty-Bush-regime's-protection sheep - about the grave threat of tewwawism again on Tuesday.

If you have any problem believing that terrorism is a convenient boogeyman used to herd us all in the desired direction, I urge you to check out the BBC’s excellent three-part series, The Power Of Nightmares: The Rise Of The Politics Of Fear.

Our government is not to be trusted. Ever.

Welcome to site!

This is all new to me, so I'll be playing around with things for a few days here. Please be patient; the site should be walking on two legs in a day or two.

Cheers!