JC reads the news

Mark Twain

2009-09-11T17:52:00.000-04:00

The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first…The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war." Then the few will shout even louder…Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it ... Next, statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Forgot this was here

2007-12-21T02:31:00.001-05:00

I had forgotten about this abandoned archive of my idiocy. I had no reason to think about it at all and suddenly N2 remembers its here and leaves 5 comments in one day.

So here I am again. The other site wasn't suitable for the kind of shit I want to say these days.

No more news.

I met a prophet the other day. He gave me his phone number. I was waiting in line at a print shop and there's an older guy with some stuff on the counter, the stuff looks nuts, so does he.

Naturally, I start talking to the guy. Turns out, he used to be a chemical engineer but six years ago he died and GOD took over his body. "Alpha and Omega, thats me" I fucking love crazy people.

So he told me a bunch of stuff that I will now repeat to you, and if it turns out to be true, he can give me extra points. I mean he's GOD and all. I did ask him if he could arrange some money to come my way, still nothing to speak of has arrived. (and even if it did, I've asked a lot of crazy people who think they're GOD to send money, so that wouldn't prove anything.

I am probably the only person you know who asks crazy people for money.

So we talk for a while, turns out that the world will end in nuclear holocaust before the next superbowl. First, Hugo Chavez will take over Cuba. Fidel will die, and his brother 2 days after, then Hugo steps in as leader.

He arrived at this conclusion (I made him give me his notes) by reading the book of revelation. He said Darius the Mede means Dick Cheney. I asked why, and his explanation left me certain that he was, in fact, completely fucking nuts. you see you have to take all the letters, and each one means something else, etc.

Sooooo, after that, we nuke North Korea, and the whole world blows up.

The only safe place to go is..... some place in New York state.
Sorry, I can't find the notes he gave me, I let my wife look at them, and I suppose she's lost them for me. Please don't hold it against her if you can't find the safe place to go, just head for northern New York, and find the town with living people in it.

Damn, I have his phone number on those notes! I fully intend to take him out for a drink and find out more of his revelation.

Coincidentally-
at the used bookstore the other day, I noticed a number of very unusual books had shown up. These books were all published by the same printer, they were all reprints of very old books, some in latin, all on somewhat arcane subjects having to do with an area of study that might be called The Great Work. All were inscribed F. minimus

One of the books was a guide written in Latin for taking each letter of the bible and using it for predictions of some kind. I immediately thought of my crazy friend.

So. Assuming I find my note with his crazy phone number on it, I'll take him out for coffee - never give crazy people beer- and find out more of what's going to happen.

Dinner with a racist

2006-12-06T00:27:00.000-05:00

I had dinner with a racist a few months back. Normally I wouldn't have dinner with a racist, but there were two mitigating factors. First, said racist was the father-in-law of a dear friend, and second, he was paying for dinner.

He was moving to Indiana from South Texas, and shared his opinion about the Texas / Mexico border. His considered opinion was "They ought to shoot them for trying to cross the border, I'm sick of it, they're smuggling drugs, killing people..." I can't quote the whole rant verbatim, but I hope you get the gist of it. I remember saying something about legalizing drugs so American farmers and pharmacutical companies could make the money that the criminal gangs were making and he looked at me like I was from another planet, and went on about how he hated Mexicans and we should invade them or something. Eventually one of his younger children began bawling about something or other so I let it drop.

To his credit, he still paid for dinner.

I bring this up because today I was listening to am radio. Not the big boys, but a small time host named Eric Von Wade in Corpus Christi, he's a darling of the local Chamber of Commerce Republicans, always says "Democrat Party" instead of Democratic Party, Always takes the "correct" position on any issue. I wonder if he gets a memo, or if he's really that plugged in to the Republican zeitgeist?

Today Eric Von Wade was talking about a certain truck driver, Tyrone Williams, 35, of Schenectady, New York, who was found guilty today of smuggling people across the border, then abandoning them in his airtight trailer when he felt he was in danger of being caught. 19 of the people died.

The Monday verdict, on the fifth day of deliberations, found him guilty of all 58 counts: conspiracy plus counts of harboring, transporting and transporting resulting in death for each of the 19 victims. The jurors also found him culpable as a principal offender, out for "private financial gain.

Eric asks the audience to call in and opine on whether or not Mr. Williams should, in their view be excecuted for his crime, and of course they all say yes.

But they also, every single one of them, demonized the victims. Some callers said that surviving parents who's children died should be executed too. One went so far as to call for the death penalty for anyone transporting illegal immigrants. And we should put up a fence with machine guns to keep them out, and well, you can probably guess the rest.

It became clear to me where Mr. Williams' contempt for his cargo came from.

Good, well-meaning people are not actually good, well-meaning people all the time. When it comes to people from another place, or people who speak a different language, or look different, or have different religion or customs, good, well-meaning people like you and me are capable of barbaric cruelty.

Tyrone will most likely hang for his crimes, and the next smuggler who has to ditch his human cargo in the desert is now almost certain to kill every single one of them before he leaves. If Mr. Williams had done that, he'd likely be home in Schenectady right now.

I gave up on talk radio after about 15 minutes and listened to an Abba CD.

Something ain't right

2006-12-06T00:14:00.001-05:00

Let me describe the typical life-arc of an average American born after 1980. We'll call our average person Joe. Average Joe.

Joe's parents divorce when he's in grade school, and now Joe visits his dad and dad's new girlfriend on weekends. Joe has two step-families, often at odds one with the other.

Joe graduates high school and goes straight to college. His parents, all 4 of them, help out as best they can, and with grants, Joe only has to finance 80% of the cost of going to college for 4 years.

After college, Joe begins to work. If he doesn't move back in with either of his parents, he'll be in poverty for about 6 more years, but after that, with luck and determination, Average Joe will start to earn a respectable working-class income. That's right kids, college grads are working class now. so he'll make between 40 and 65 k per year in his 30s, assuming he doesn't get downsized, outsourced, or otherwise laid off and have to start all over again.

Turns out, that's a big assumption. Average Joe will be laid off.

Look upon my weather ye mighty

2006-11-28T21:28:00.000-05:00

My Yahoo Messenger tells me the weather everywhere I have friends, and right now I just want to say...

Nyah nyah!

Do you realize that a couple days ago, Sunday, the Sunday after thanksgiving, I took my family to the beach and went for a swim?

Oh, yeah- that's Drew Barrymore.
She's cute.

And the president got dissed by his supposed puppet Maliki

I don't like W, but I don't think I'd cancel a meeting with him if his army was protecting my house.

And Britney is out showing her yoni to anyone who wants to see it. (why couldn't she do that back when she was hot?)

I just like the word yoni. Lingam is good too, but saying "yoni" with a straight face is almost impossible, and its kind of an onomatopea.

Goodnight from the tropics!

A solution!

2006-11-25T01:56:00.000-05:00

Our good friend DP has just sent me a link to the solution to the worlds problems!

The Global Orgasm

On December 22nd, Susan Moonchild's birthday, and a dark day indeed, we're all supposed to get off.

Yep, the whole worlds gonna screw, jerk off, or otherwise achieve climax.

Here's the problem-

As far as I know, the whole world pretty much does that already.

Maybe we should narrow it down- say within an hour of noon GMT? maybe that would provide a little more focus?

Out, damned spot!

2006-11-25T01:49:00.000-05:00

I watched this video on youtube, It's from a peace activist who did some interviews in Baghdad before the war started.

I didn't really pay attention to the content of the interviews, what struck me was this-

Here's American hippies walking around Baghdad, talking to well-groomed Iraqis, there's traffic, people getting on the bus, going to work, all the basics of civilized life. I'm not saying it was great, I'm told that there were some pretty awful things about the Iraqi government back then that people were afraid to say anything about.

But compare it to this from today's news:

Death toll crosses 200 in Baghdad bombings, revenge attacks follow

We have really screwed up.

Not Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, yes, they led the charge...
but you and me brother, we're just as responsible.

We're responsible for letting it happen.
We're responsible for forgetting how it started
We're responsible for not shouting down the bastards who brought this blood onto our house.
We're responsible for not ever talking about it.
We don't bring it up at dinner, or in polite company. When it's brought up we uncomfortably cast about for a change of subject, as if ignoring the blood will make it disappear.

A break from the news

2006-11-25T00:13:00.000-05:00

I remember episodes of my childhood, times when I clearly misunderstood everything around me. I remember my interpretation of events as a child and I look back with some embarassment that I could have been so foolish.

I think everybody does that, I don't know for sure, but I believe everybody looks back at the way they thought as a child or young person and feels some ebarassment over their own naievite or, as was often my case, utter misunderstanding of the facts presented.

What I think is harder, and more important, is to look at my current understanding the same way. To know that one day, perhaps I will look back at the things I've said and believed, and think, "wow, I really missed the point on that one."

Because I often miss the mark. That's one reason I keep blogs. I don't expect anybody to read them, but I do want them to exist, to be out there in the world, part of the collective conciousness, to embarass me when I'm wiser, and perhaps to remind me that I'm rarely right.

Strange thing, memory.

Memory is the only thing that connects me to that child that I once was. My body has changed and grown, every single molecule has been swapped out several times over and the very brain that holds those memories can't even be said to be the same one that experienced the events.

So what part of me is this memory? How true is it?

I've experimented sometimes with changing my memories. I've gone back and re-lived events that I should have handled differently, and handled them differently, in my imagination. Objectively, of course, I know what really happened, and what was imagination. But the re-telling of the story, the changing of the memory to include this new, alternate version also changed me in the here and now. It changed how I look at the world, how I feel about the people involved so long ago.

And at the end of the day, they're my memories, nobody else will remember it anywhere close to the way I did, and considering the amount of information I've managed to forget, it seems only fair that what I do remember, I be allowed to edit.

I started out trying to talk about the impermanence of the moment. The fact that who I am now is not the same as 15 minutes ago. Not physically, chemically, nothing.

Yet I am the same.

It's like the a garment worn by a saint centuries ago, so often patched by the pious monks that not a stitch remains of the original cloth, but still revered as being the cloth worn by saint so-and-so.

Perhaps rightly so.

Conscription!

2006-11-20T16:50:00.000-05:00

Ah, Reese Witherspoon, the name just flows trippingly off the tongue. I wonder if it's her real name? Always liked Reese, and when she played June Carter I have to admit I got a little crush on her. I know you'll say she's all chin, but so what? I'm all nose.

So the news today makes me want to vomit. Or was it the cruise?

Amid Uproar Over War, Rangel Renews Call for Draft

It was cute when you tried to float your "national service" bill when you were in the minority, we got your point, but don't you dare try that BS when you're in charge. I understand your reasoning, Mr. Rangel, is that universal military service will somehow make our nation less bellicose, but you couldn't be more wrong. Conscription isn't going to change the character of our government, It will only provide more fodder for the cannons, and do it at a discount. I like the idea that we have to pay what the market will bear for soldiers.

And somehow, I don't think anyone who's last name is Bush will be affected.

Russia denies poisoning former spy in London

Well, Duh.

Simpson's 'If I Did It' Book, TV Special Canceled

I know Pudge will probably care, but I can't tell why. Let him write his damn book.
Send all the proceeds to his victims' families.

"Kramer's" Racist Tirade -- Caught on Tape
or,
DON'T HECKLE A 7 FOOT JEW.

Go watch this, its fun. I can see a public apology in Kramer's future.

'Second Life' Invaded by 'Grey Goos', Downed for 21 Mins

If I had more spare time, more money, and a better computer, I'd hang out on second life and think this was important. I think I heard that AP or Reuters or someone has a news desk in Second Life. You know you've made it when your video game has an it's own bureau chief.

Here's another picture of a pretty girl. (and some other stuff)

2006-11-10T23:47:00.000-05:00

Kate Winslet. There's a nice looker for you.

A lot has happened since I last talked at you, let's review-

Britney and K-Fed split -Britney keeps all the money
Oh- and just for spite, she gave away pics of the new kid for free so he can't sell them. I wonder what it's like to marry someone, be so hot for him that you blow him on your balcony with the paparazzi watching, have 2 children with him, then decide that you hate him, and try to hurt him any way you can. I've never been able to love a person one day then hate them the next.

Or ever, for that matter.

Google May Help Doctors Diagnose Maladies

So let me get this straight, you trained for a decade, read the medical journals, go to conferences, and you are using Google to tell me what's wrong? Great.

Rumsfeld To Be Charged For Prison Abuse

Don't get excited, comrades. The charges will be brought in a German court. (if they're brought at all) I don't think Rummy has much to worry about. The charges come up now because he resigned Wednesday. The precedent in this kind of case has been that the minister has a kind of immunity from prosecution while he's still in office.

An American cabinet secretary formally charged with crimes against humanity in a criminal court... I bet Henry Kissinger needs a fresh set of drawers right about now.

MI5 chief says agency tracking 30 terror plots

Oh bugger! 1600 people, 30 separate plots "that we know of," What is it about Britain that makes their population so eager to join al-qaeda? I've been reading a lot about the British problem, most of these people are 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants. In America, 2nd-generation immigrants seem more worried about their SAT scores than jihad. And 3rd generation immigrants act just like everybody else.

Israel 'could launch Iran strike'

Well, lets hope not. With any luck, the Russians will abandon their little Iran project in favor of membership in the WTO.

Oh, I almost forgot-

Democrats control both houses of congress

2006-11-10T23:38:00.000-05:00

So I thought I'd bring you headlines from around the world. Isn't it interesting that people in other countries know more about our political system than most of us? Can you name two political parties in India or Pakistan? France? How about Canada? Mexico?

'Thank you America'
Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa

Your'e welcome!

The US conservative project has taken an existential hit
Guardian Unlimited, UK

Huh?

It is hard for Bush to alter his Iraqi strategy
People's Daily Online, China

Thanks comrades, but we already knew that.

Regime change in US
Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates -

Now you're just being nasty.

World both gloats, fears Bush humiliation
Ynetnews, Israel

Listen world, you asked for it, don't be such a pussy.

Al-Qaida message hails US elections
United Press International

Well thanks for the kind words, but I'm afraid the Democrats will be just as happy to see you hang as the Republicans, probably more so.

What war does

2006-10-29T01:27:00.000-05:00

More of our sons and brothers died this week. When we hear the numbers, it's hard sometimes to remember that they're people, whole people, people who have lives and were happy once.

Here's a story about one of them, Jason Lucas. Take a moment and look at him holding his children.

Local papers all around the country run this same story every week. Somehow the big news outlets don't pick this stuff up.

I don't have anything smart to say. I just thought he looked like a nice guy, and I hope his sons will smile again someday.

A formula that works

2006-10-26T22:00:00.000-04:00

Jennifer Tilly, wow.

You know, I think it's the annoying voice that really puts me over the top for this girl. She's old enough to be my um, sister, but wowiee. I saw an old interview she did on the Jon Stewart show and I remembered how much I dig looking at her. And she's charming too. And she doesn't really mind getting naked.

So whats going on in the world today...

Bush signs bill to build border fence to stop Mexicans

Get real. There will be no fence. You may not realize this, but more than a few Mexicans own wire-cutters, rendering a fence quite useless, I'm afraid. The gummint will use whatever money they get from this to pay off some Texas business interests, build a "virtual fence" and declare victory. Why bother? where would we be without Mexicans? We would have no Cinco de Mayo, no cheap mexican restaurants and no low riders. America would be a lot less colorful. Come on over, Mexicans, just do me a favor and stop taking such low wages, it makes it a little rough for the rest of us. Solidarity brothers! I have more in common with the average "illegal alien" (or whatever we're calling them now) than with the ruling classes of either country. Lets work together, shall we?

For now, modest sanctions eyed for Iran

For later, Israeli airstrike in the offing.

I once had to dumb down a newsletter headline at work that used the phrase "in the offing" because my boss didn't know what it meant.

On top of that, she was niggardly with my salary.

NJ gay marriage decision boost to "values voters"

Values?

I presided at a gay wedding ceremony last summer. Unfortunately, the state of Ohio did not recognize the union. The two men are still quite happy together, but since they're not legally married, they run into little problems like not being able to buy a house together, or share insurance, or visit each other at the hospital. I don't think it would hurt our country too much to give them the same consideration other married couples get, would it?

‘I believed Madonna would bring my son back’

I don't care how rich you are, you're not allowed to buy them anymore!

screw it, here's another hottie

2006-10-24T21:53:00.000-04:00

I wrote another post about Iran, Syria, Israel, and what's about to happen, but you don't want that now do you? So here's a nice picture to look at and isn't she nice. She can call my hometown Shitsburg, shit city, whatever you want babe.

Are you watching Lost? cuz I'm not. - in fact, I haven't had television since May. I mean we have a TV, and a DVD player, and a seemingly endless supply of Elmo videos, but no actual tv. Sometimes I try to piece together the Daily Show or the Colbert Report on you tube, and usually once a day I watch Keith Olberman go off on the president. I don't know how he stays so consistently eloquent and nasty day after day. But it's good fun.

OH YEAH, don't forget Lonelygirl15... Damn that show is good. but they only give you a 3 minute episode every couple of days. But I think Bree is going to turn in Daniel to the cult and they're going to cut his wanger off or something.

So it turns out nobody knows if Britney's baby is a boy or a girl. I am going to be honest now, Britney is no longer hot enough for me to care. If you care, you're probably just gloating. Its like seeing the cheerleader in high school who was so f-ing hot that she wouldn't even speak to you, and finding out that she's living in a trailer with her 6 kids from 5 different daddies.

A picture of some random hottie

2006-10-24T00:15:00.000-04:00

So I go to google and type in celebrity hottie, and this is the first hit. You know, Lindsay is pretty easy on the eyes, and I don't care if she only has like 8 million dollars and lives in a hotel room. I like her anyway, even though she's so poor.

I thought it would be nice to have something pleasant to look at here at JC reads the news for a change.

Dream memories

2006-10-23T23:26:00.000-04:00

Now for something not very news-related. Dreams. I know nobody wants to hear my boring dreams so I'm not going to go into them, but there's one thing...

Sometimes in dreams I remember things that didn't happen. But I remember them as if my dream self really experienced them. The other day, I was dreaming that I was talking with a friend about a nice trip we had to the Azores, and I remembered every detail of the trip, the fact that we had to speak French most of the time, The white-haired waiter at the cafe, everything.

Here's the deal, I have never been to the Azores, and I don't know if they have cafes there or if they speak French. But when I woke up, it took some serious concentration to decide that I'd never really been to that place I remembered so vividly.

I want you to tell me if this kind of thing happens to you. This means you too, lurkers. I know you're out there, I watch my traffic reports babe.

Maybe later?

2006-10-11T23:17:00.000-04:00

To be fair, the republicans will probably retain control of congress, so the actual war with Iran may not start until next spring.

In 2002 they made congress give the Mr. Bush the power to invade Iraq before they recessed for the election.

Most importantly, how do I get rich from the suffering of others? If I knew how or had the money, I'd make a ton of money predicting oil prices will go way up.

The hard part is when- November or April?

Maybe it's just best to buy stock in haliburton and whoever makes bullets.

Does that count as war profiteering?

Aw screw it. I'm going to go back to reading 'Julius Caesar.' the pentameter is annoying (damn iambic!) but the subject is quite timely.

October 21

2006-10-11T14:25:00.000-04:00

October 21 is the earliest date that airstrikes in Iran can begin. The recently overhauled USS Eisenhower left port last week with its supporting ships for the region. Ostensibly the Eisenhower's mission is to replace the Enterprise, with the Enterprise scheduled to come home in November.

If there's going to be a war with Iran, it can't start before Oct 21.
And if the elections go to the Democrats, they won't be able to start one at all.
That leaves them a window of about 2 weeks to get it started.

I suspect we'll have some kind of "provocation" from Iran toward the end of October that gives our government the pretext for a bombing campaign.

Let's be clear here, Iran is not a threat to us. If they were, you'd be worrying about what an attack on Iran would mean to you. You're not. It won't mean shit to you. They can't send bombs here. The worst they can do is send some to Israel.

I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen, but it looks like it might. All the signs point to a fight with Iran, but I was hoping they'd put it off till next year.

Slacking

2006-10-08T14:58:00.000-04:00

Hey Mr. JC, Are you slacking on the News? It is about to be the 5th year anniversary of invading Afganistan and the Taliban is in full force. There were three school shootings in one week! (Is that true?) And now we can be detained without reason or rights. Torture is okay too. Is that what they said? Hey - I need my commentary to understand what's going on around here, Mr JC. But seriously how did they do that Invisible Jacket thing... maybe this is what it looks like right before the Rapture.

Yes, I'm slacking on the news. What can I possibly add to it? The bill of rights is in its "last throes" and all the news people want to focus on is a guy who talks dirty to teenage boys.

I have been watching, and here's what I think is going on.

First, there's another invasion in the works. We already have some people working inside Iran, so that may be it. Oh, and there's going to be an assload of "terror alerts" over the next few weeks, hopefully they'll all be fake. - Speaking of fake, I expect we'll have a big arrest of "terrorists" coming up soon, probably the last week of October. Thing is, we'll never know if they really did anything or not since they're just going to disappear into our gulags, maybe they'll confess to something after being left in the cold or held underwater or whatever.

Also, The Democratic party has finally got the idea that they're playing for keeps, and they've tried to emulate some of the successful tactics used by the Republicans. They don't have the stomach for it though, so they'll eventually get caught and look even worse than the Republicans.

Take a look at George Allen. Here's a guy who thought he was going to run for president in 08. Now he's trying to get people to stop thinking he put a deer's head in somebody's mailbox.

Did he really do that? I would bet both the dollars in my bank account that its total BS. But it doesn't matter that it's not true. All that matters is that people believe it till the day after the election. The Democrats have finally learned how to find their own swift boaters. I guess it's a good thing to some degree, but it I'm sure it will come back and bite them.

I've read the dreadfully boring "torture bill" the blah blah blah of 2006. As far as I can tell, it redefines torture to mean only things that carry a substantial risk of death or leave physical marks. Super! The habeas corpus thing says it only applies to foreign nationals, (sorry Canada) but I suppose we'd never know if an american citizen got picked up, since he would never see a judge.

No, this is not what it looks like before the Rapture. This is what it looks like before an election. If Jesus really was coming back we'd at least have a popular Democrat at the top of the ticket.

crossing the street wearing an invisible jacket

2006-09-30T18:39:00.000-04:00

The Invisible Jacket on Transbuddha

Yes I want one of these, but what I really want to know is-

How did they get him to wear it in traffic?

Unanswerable

2006-09-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

What happens to grade B eggs?

the USDA describes grade B eggs:

U.S. Grade B eggs have whites that may be thinner and yolks that may be wider and flatter than eggs of the higher grades; the shells must be unbroken, but may show slight stains. This quality is seldom found in retail stores

so where do they go?

Irony

2006-09-19T23:56:00.000-04:00

Irony is lost on the religious.

The pope quotes some dead emperor in a very long, very boring speech. How boring was it? I read 75% of it, then was overcome with a boredom so severe that I had to stab myself with a pencil to regain use of my legs.

Whatever, the speech is here if you want to risk it.

Here's the offensive quote (read at your own risk)

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

So muslims around the world take offense (understandably) at the pope's boring speech, and (less understandably) some even call for the pope (and all christians for that matter) to be murdered. Specifically, they intend to:

slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen

Some muslims were so angry that the pope said their religion was violent that they killed a nun.

Irony is lost on these guys. I honestly don't think they see it.

Proud to be an American!

2006-09-14T22:17:00.000-04:00

America is a country founded on the rights of the citizen, not the rights of government. Our constitition was unlike any other law book in history. Look at the ten commandments- things "thou shall not" do...

Look at the bill of rights- things the state shall not do. Really makes me proud. We are a nation of laws, we believe in the rule of law, and our highest law is our constitution. Gosh I'm proud of that.

In America, if you're accused of a crime you have the right to confront your accusers in open court and see the evidence against you.
-- 6th amendment

In America, we don't torture confessions out of people, nor do we torture or mistreat prisoners of war.
-- 8th amendment, Geneva Convention,
Detainee Treatment Act of 2005

In America, we don't disappear people into secret prisons.
--6th, 14th amendments

In America, the police can't search your home or listen to your phone calls without a warrant issued by a judge-
-- 4th amendment,
Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978

Oh.

Well, I guess I'll just have to be proud because...

I don't know, if I can't have truth, justice, and the American Way, I guess cable TV is cool. Yeah. I'm proud of cable tv. And pop music. Oh, and microwave ovens.

I may be a coward, but

2006-09-14T21:29:00.000-04:00

What will history say of us? You and me, not W, not Cheney or Rumsfeld. What about us? What did we do to stop this mess? Where were your guts when they said they needed these new powers to protect you? What did you do to stop people being tortured? Did you think it was a good idea? I know a lot of you still do, and it breaks my heart that you can't see how truly wrong you are.

When I heard about Iraqis being humiliated and tortured in Abu Gharib, I honestly tried not to pay attention, I felt strongly that it was wrong, and I was glad to see people go to prison over it, but I didn't really think about it. I didn't really think about what that meant about us. This wasn't an isolated incident, was it?

By not being outraged, by allowing ourselves to be distracted with working 2 jobs and watching tv, we are letting this happen. Like all acts of cowardice, it is the easiest thing to do.

What are you waiting for? Some big thing that everyone will see is wrong? How about secret prisons? Doesnt that sound pretty wrong? Let's take their word for it that everyone in the secret prisons is a Very Bad Terrorist. How do we know that the next president might not be so wise and concerned about our rights? What if he decides that I should go spend some time in Uzbekistan or wherever they "render" you to these days?

I don't want that kind of protection. Seriously, thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather keep our constitution, or return to it, I'd rather have limits on police power, and not have any more of this "war" on terror. It's not a war. Its organized crime, nothing more, and if you're so scared of the big bad terrorists that you're willing to let this stuff continue, you are both a coward and a fool.

Is Google a god?

2006-08-30T23:53:00.000-04:00

Google is omnicient, or as close to it as anything I've ever seen or heard of.

Google is omnipresent, one only has to fire up a computer and google is there.

Google answers prayers, everything you could possibly want to know, google can tell you. (in most current languages, I might add. No need to use Latin to get his attention)

Google may be immortal.

The best part is, I know for sure that google exists, and I can prove it to you. Click here

Google is a bit less judgemental than your typical god, a lot more accessible, and lets face it, less evil than most.

Altered conciousness

2006-08-12T01:17:00.000-04:00

I was in a light sleep the other day. I had to get up soon to go to work, and I was enjoying the last few moments of rest before I had to get up. I felt myself falling into a deeper sleep, and I jerked my eyes open to wake up.

Thats when I saw it.

In place of the usual visual images, I saw words.

Words with bullet points next to them floating in space, words like ceiling, wall, window, curtain, door, alarm clock, cat, light, bed, pillow, etc.

The words all swam to their locations in the room and suddenly became the things they represented.

I don't know how to interpret this, maybe its a kind of dream; maybe the world is really just made of words. Maybe what we think we see as objective reality is really just an abstraction, and where I see a ceiling, perhaps there is no such thing as a ceiling, it's just the idea of a ceiling. This would come as some suprise to the people who build apartments, but perhaps what they do is just manipulate the idea of plaster against the idea of a wood frame to create the idea of a ceiling.

I suppose it doesn't matter as long as it keeps the concept of bad weather out of my room.

Statistics

2006-08-08T16:15:00.000-04:00

Follow the link.

Sunday evening an entire church of people hung out at the pool at my apartment, a preacher was telling them this is the end of the world, they better be ready.

It isn't the end of the world, and calling it god's plan is just an easy way to get good people to accept the unacceptable.

There is no prophecy, nothing is written.

It doesn't have to be this way.

We say Iran is evil because they sell weapons to Hizbollah that wind up killing Israeli civilians.

I bet they're saying the same thing about us, since we sell even bigger weapons to Israel that kill Lebanese civilians.

No, it's not the end of the world, Jesus is not going to come down and make everything all right.

And if he tried, we'd kill him.

Support the troops

2006-06-23T10:47:00.000-04:00

Everywhere I go, I see these magnets that go on your car. Little yellow magnets that instruct us to "support the troops." Is your support so lukewarm that you bought a magnet rather than a sticker? Are you thinking that you'll want to remove the thing if you ever decide to stop "supporting" the troops? Whenever I see somebody with one of these magnets, I look at them, If they're under 35, I want to scream at them to join the reserves. They'll take you, and then you could really support the troops.

What I'm about to say isn't going to surprise any of you, loyal readers, but in some circles would be called treasonous. Our military is on a dishonorable mission. They were sent to Iraq to make money for war profiteers. It's taken me 3 years to come to terms with this. I still have trouble understanding how any man can break the peace and accept all that entails for some money. I'm sure there were other, well-worded reasons given to the president and his men, and I'm sure they believed them, but somewhere in the bowels of our defense industry, men pulled strings. War is good business for them.

Meanwhile, we have 18-20 year old men manning checkpoints, nervous as you and I would be, hoping they don't shoot the wrong person, or worse, fail to shoot the right person.

Supporting the troops means throwing out the criminals who used them for dishonorable purposes. Supporting the troops means changing their mission to something that they are capable of doing. They did a great job defeating the Iraqi army, but now they're right in the middle of a civil war, trying to quell violence without taking sides. Our G.I.s don't, as a rule, speak Arabic. They don't have any way to tell friend from foe until they've been shot at. There is no way that our occupation of Iraq is ever going to improve the situation.

I heard on the radio yesterday "If Jack Murtha had his way, we'd have been out of Iraq, and we wouldn't have killed Zarqawi." That's 100% BULLSHIT. The plane that killed Zarqawi was launched from Qatar. The intelligence that gave us targeting information was local. If there were less US troops in Iraq, the mission would have gone just the same.

"We fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."
Do you really think we're going to be invaded by Iraq?
There are criminal-political gangs that want to attack us. That's nothing new. We can fight them here just fine thank you. Think of how angry you are about the 3,000 dead on 9-11. Are Iraqi's any different from us? Do you think that the 100,000 dead from our invasion is going to sit well with them?

It's time to give Iraq to Iraqis. We've really screwed the pooch on this one. The Iraqis are by no means better off today than they were in 2002. Saddam is in jail, but living conditions inside Iraq are more dangerous today.

I think we'd save ourselves a lot of heartache in the future if instead of invading these other countries all over the world, we just don't.

This week in Corpus Christi

2006-06-13T23:16:00.000-04:00

So I was driving to the bank to make a deposit, and I saw this sign. It was early in the a.m. so I thought I might be seeing things, but there it was. Makes me wonder if I'm in the wrong business.

Because you like to look at her. Admit it

2006-05-31T23:49:00.001-04:00

Especially when she looks this bad.

Why I will never work as a sysAdmin

2006-05-31T22:59:00.000-04:00

You see, I could work as a system administrator, or some other computer geek job. But I don't like stupid people. Don't get me wrong, the work I do now involves lots of stupid people. Frankly, in my business, darling, I need people like that. But I can pretend to be one of them, and most of the time they don't notice.

This means I don't get blamed for things people don't understand. I don't have people calling and asking me stupid questions, and if they do, I can pretend not to know the answer. Best of all, nobody threatens to call the FBI on me because they're too stupid to read.

The Tuttle, Oklahoma city manager, Jerry Taylor threatened to call the FBI on a Corpus Christi software developer because he couldn't access the city's website. The city's website was hosted on a free linux distro from centos. If you've ever configured an apache server, you've seen something very much like this. If you can't understand what that all means, you should call your favorite geek, and he'll tell you what to do.

Not Jerry Taylor. He threatened Johnny Hughes at CentOs. Yep, that's the answer, I can't see my website, so it's clearly HACKERS! and not just hackers, but hackers who clearly post their name and contact info on the page they've "hacked."

Read the whole correspondence here.

Meanwhile, if you're running a web server and need a free linux distro, I suggest contacting Johnny Hughes at CentOs, he seems like a really patient and forgiving kind of geek. (And he's in Corpus Christi, which automatically makes him cool- it's sort of like Tempe that way.)

Because it's the only way to make you read

2006-05-31T07:31:00.000-04:00

Yeah, she used to be sooo easy on the eyes.

Now she's married to some greasy slob who needs to have a babysitter.

It's somehow satisfying seeing Britney hit the wall at 24.

As her looks fade, we all feel better about ourselves. When the police come to her house to check on the kids, we feel like great parents.

Poor Britney...

You can come stay with me if you need to.

Fooled again

2006-05-31T06:56:00.000-04:00

All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Nothing ever changes.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." (Gustave Gilbert - Nuremburg Diary)

If you can't read, at least watch the damn movie

2006-05-26T00:23:00.000-04:00

I remember a time when Americans NEVER referred to our country as our "homeland." Homeland was something archaic, something that europeans might have said in the 1930s.

There was a time in this country when the phrase "free speech zone" would have made people giggle. It was 1999.

A president of the United States resigned over allegations of illegal wiretapping and other abuses of executive power.

I remember thinking that the Gulf of Tonkin business was frightening, but so long ago, and just grouped it in with the Maine. Anyway, people were different back then, surely we wouldn't just abandon rational thought and enter some kind of hysterical state.

I remember being taught these lessons in school. There was a real sense among the older generations that they'd seen all these things happen, been fooled and they wanted us to be wiser than they were.

War is a racket. And the men running the con get all the spoils. You and I get lied to, shot at, spied on, shat on, and if we speak up, we get arrested.

If you don't know who Emmanuel Goldstein is, at least see the damn movie. It should have been called 2006.

In 2006, advanced data-mining systems click up a red flag when you look up the transcripts of Osama's latest tape. (actually I can't even find the latest tape.)

Islamic terrorism is by no means "the most dangerous threat our country has ever faced" as you'll hear on any AM radio station. It's not even close, and it's an insult to all who have died protecting the republic from actual danger to say that it is.

Occaisional exception

2006-05-25T21:26:00.000-04:00

If you've been around enough animals, you know that every so often, maybe one in fifty or one in a hundred, an animal you know displays what might be called "genius." I have been lucky enough that in my life, I've lived with a couple such animals. They seem more human than dog/cat/horse/whatever. They are remarkably easy to train, understand exactly what you want of them most of the time, and just seem incredibly smart.

I was stumbling along and found a blog entry that was a eulogy of such an animal. His name was Tito, and he was just a dog after all, but he seems like a fine dog.

And it makes you think. I suppose we'd all like to think of ourselves as that one special specimen, the one who invents, understands, who excels over the others in our species. But the fact is, most of us aren't, and you have to go through a whole mess of dogs before you meet a Tito.

A modest proposal

2006-05-24T21:08:00.000-04:00

I was reading a well-footnoted paper called Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the origin of war, and at the end of the otherwise very well thought out paper, the author wandered off on a tangent, but it is a beautiful tangent:

An unacceptable--even mad proposal--would be to swap out the whole Iraqi population with Texans and rapture believers. It's not impossible from a logistics point of view (the US moves 25 million people through its airports in about a month). The Iraqis would get a place where the power was on all day-- which would improve their "income per capita" perception enough to shut off support for war and related disruption. The Texans would have oil, which would certainly make them happy, and with no fighting they could patch the country up in a year or two. If there really are as many people looking for the rapture as the polls show and some rapture leader got the idea that being closer to the Holy Land was a good idea, a voluntary population swap might be oversubscribed.

But then what would you do? The US doesn't need a 51st state in the Mid East full of people looking for the rapture no matter how much oil it has.

Sounds like a winner to me, and just imagine how great Texas could be with no Jesists, and all the hummus you can eat!

Case for impeachment?

2006-05-15T12:31:00.000-04:00

Starting a war of conquest, rigging elections, lying to congress, spying on domestic political opponents, wiretapping YOUR phone, they just don't have the shock value of a BJ.

Volunteers needed. Must be willing to take one for the team, have blue dress, slightly overweight ok. Fondness for cigars a plus.

Send resume & "head shot" to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Angelina's baby

2006-05-12T17:40:00.000-04:00

Down below somewhere, I believe I made the prediction that this coming tuesday will be the day Angie finally uncrosses her legs and brings another ridiculously rich child into the world, and by some sort of ironic symoblism, she's doing it in one of the poorest countries in world.

How poor is it?

So poor, Bad and Angie have a veritable army of security to keep from being kidnapped by bandits.

I suppose she's trying to help them out, I don't really see how this helps, but at least she's trying. And building some clinics or something. That's actually useful.

"Give all your money to the poor and follow me" - If you don't know who said it, well, you didn't go to sunday school.

Or, give about 2% and have your reward here on earth. (then hire a private army to keep the rabble away from the other 98%)

Ok, enough belly-aching. I'm actually very glad that Angelina finds a way to help out. And I stand by my prediction. Tuesday...

1st Amendment? Schmirst Schamendment!

2006-05-10T00:20:00.000-04:00

Truth Serum put up this link to the Harris County Republican's questionaire for potential US House candidates. Tom Delay dropped out of the race after the filing deadline for the May primary election, so the party bosses get to choose who'll take his place. It turns out the "party bosses" are closer in their politics to the Taliban than Thomas Jefferson.

Please read the questionaire. Notice question #5:
Regarding the First Amendment to the US Constitution, does the Constitution require the separation of church and state? Yes No

That's where they're coming from.

In case you haven't heard...

2006-05-09T23:00:00.000-04:00

I now live in beautiful Corpus Christi Texas. This is just about the only place in Texas that I'd be caught living, its the least Texassy of all the parts of Texas. The people here are not, as a rule, overfed beer guzzling hilljacks with burnt-out cars on their front lawn. (See Bowie, TX- Pronounced boo-whee, Its in Montague County- pronounced Mawn-tagg)

That said, I do have a few complaints about Texas.

1. Jesus wasn't a republican.
2. There are no sex shops.
3. Texas is a state, like Michigan. It's stupid to tattoo a state on your arm. If you're that proud of being from Texas, you should go live somewhere else for a while and see if it's really something to be proud of.
4. Freeways are for driving, when you're getting on the freeway, don't stop because you're scared. If you're that scared, stay home, you blue-haired old bat.

Ok, I got that off my chest. On a positive note, the beaches are gorgeous, the natives are friendly, if a little mixed up, and I don't think it ever gets cold in Corpus Christi.

The future of Iran

2006-05-07T13:55:00.000-04:00

Heres what I see happening. Over the summer, Iran will become more of a crisis, then in September / October, the Republicans will start pushing for a resolution to use force in the congress. It's a mid-term election year, just like 2002, when the last such resolution was passed. In 2002, the Democrats bent under the pressure of facing an election after looking "weak" on Iraq. The Republicans still found a way to paint the entire Democratic party as weak, and won huge gains in 2002.

I don't think the lesson is lost on them. Iran is clearly on the target list, and my prediction is a "use of force" resolution in September 2006. Specifically, September 12, 2006.

Because war wins elections.

Should we have a pool?

Somebody tell me I'm wrong.

Why I'm not a "computer geek"

2006-05-07T13:45:00.000-04:00

Honestly, I consider myself more of an all-purpose nerd. And what I know about computers is roughly equivalent to what I know about cars. (not much) Changing a hard drive or even a cpu is about as complicated as changing an air filter, and a hell of a lot easier than putting on a new fan belt. (I realize that most cars don't have fan belts anymore.) Actually the alternator belt was the one that kept going out on my old car, I HATED that, I used to rap my knuckles every time I picked up a wrench (probably still would, if I picked up a wrench)

At least with computers you don't need a wrench.

Now, back to the news...

Darfur

2006-05-06T03:23:00.000-04:00

Our regular contributor DP sent me this link to a website that has drawings made by children who were apparently under the care of Human Rights Watch in darfur:

On mission along the border of Chad and Darfur, Human Rights Watch researchers gave children notebooks and crayons to keep them occupied while they spoke with the children’s parents. Without any instruction or guidance, the children drew scenes from their experiences of the war in Darfur: the attacks by the Janjaweed, the bombings by Sudanese government forces, the shootings, the burning of entire villages, and the flight to Chad.

The one I've put up here is one of the best drawings I could find, some of the drawings are much more graphic.

So what can be done? Do we stand by and feel pity for these people, leaving them to their fate? Do we shake our heads and click our tongues at the train wreck that the continent of Africa has become? Do we invade Sudan and hope it works out better than the bloody mess in Iraq?

Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who saved hundreds from death by machete in Rawanda, was in New York last weekend urging the UN to take some action in Darfur.

I watched "Hotel Rwanda," and like most people, I hoped that I would have the courage to act as he did if I found myself in that position. But I don't, and neither do you. We sit here in Hotel America, completely safe from janjaweed militiamen and Sudanese airplanes, and I see the drawings made by children who's parents were murdered, raped, and hacked to pieces, and I write a little editorial about it and go to bed, safe in Hotel America. Tomorrow, the people on TV and radio will complain about letting too many poor foreigners into our lovely hotel, as they've been doing for weeks.

I can't help but wonder if we'd have stopped the whole thing already if the entire US military wasn't so busy.

Mercantilism

2006-03-22T23:57:00.000-05:00

This week, the border crossing from Gaza to Israel has been closed, opened temporarily, then closed again when a bomber was caught crossing the border, no doubt it's open again now.

I got to thinking, Gaza, as you no doubt are aware, borders the eastern mediteranean. Do they not have a seaport?

So I looked. There's a plan for one, from the late 90s, near the old Israeli settlement of Nezarim, but as far as I can tell, it hasn't been built yet. Do Palestinians not import or export anything?

Turns out, according to Ha'retz everything going into or out of Gaza and the west bank has to go through Israel. Israel then charges a 17% VAT tax, which it supposedly transfers to the PA, but hasn't done since Hamas won the recent election. It's hard to get good information on the region, since one side has a regrettable tendency to speak and write in a very pretty-looking language which isn't English, so if you know anything about the Egyptian border with Gaza, a deep water seaport, an airport, or any of the things that really ought to go along with independence, I'd love to hear about it.

I know that the memory of deserts filled with tanks and Arab armies coming to kill every Jew in Israel is still fresh. If I were an Israeli, I would want some guarantees about what gets imported into a Gaza seaport. If I were an Israeli with the right connections, I'd want to keep the Palestinians from trading with any other country except through my import-export company. If I had to make a wager, I'd say that the people making money by importing goods into Gaza and the west bank are a larger political obstacle to Palestinian independence than the fearful memories of 30 years ago.

Palestine and Israel

2006-03-20T21:16:00.000-05:00

Lets take a starting point of a suicide bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv. It does not matter that the bus attack was a response to some previous grievance, we are looking at Israel's perspective today.

So a bus with a bunch of people on it explodes, and a Palestinian militia group claims responsibility for the attack.

What should Israel do?

First, Israel goes to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and demands this group be rounded up and at least disarmed to prevent this sort of thing happening again. Maybe they should also go to the UN? Have you ever seen what happens at the UN when you mention Israel?

The best Israel can hope for from either institution is a strongly worded note and the rounding up of a few suspected terrorists, who may or may not have had anything to do with the attack, but have angered the PA in some other way. The bottom line is that the PA and the UN are both impotent in that neither has either the power or the will to change the situation. Only Israel can do anything.

So Israel retaliates. Lets say Israel fires a guided missile at a car carrying a leader of the group who claimed responsibility for the bus attack. This results in innocent bystanders being killed. Immediately, the cry goes out that Israel has attacked these innocent, blameless people, and another 10 bombers are recruited, and the UN passes a resolution condemning Israel's action.

Another bus explodes in response to the missile attack. and so on.

This is clearly no way to continue. This is what has driven Israel to take some regrettable actions, which in the long run will only make the situation worse. The latest action, the "Separation" or "Apartheid" fence is probably destined to be the most effective, and from the Israeli point of view, "humane," since there are no bombs or bullets involved, only the slow death of poverty and isolation.

What is the answer then? If war and separation and keeping the Palestinians weak don't work, what will?

Help them become strong.

If the PA had real power, it could control the militias and establish the rule of law. Power only comes from one place - the end of a gun. Keeping the PA weak has only made the situation worse. A weak PA allows Israeli settlers to occupy territory where they really shouldn't go. A weak PA can't stop these settlers from stoning palestinian children as they walk to school. A weak PA can't protect its citizens from the religious zealots who preach death and suicide. A weak PA is bad for Israel. A strong Palestine is less likely to attack Israel. A strong Palestine is more accountable for its actions.

Israel needs to come to grips with the idea that Palestinian statehood means a Palestinian military, a Palestinian airport, Palestinian seaports, it means that the security of Israel in the long run depends on a strong Palestinian government.

It's a tough sell, I know if I lived in Tel Aviv, I'd be deeply suspicous of an armed Palestinian state, but without arms, without organized military power, Palestine is not and never will be a sovereign entity capable of recognizing Israel and making peace.

Asymmetrical warfare?

2006-03-07T22:00:00.000-05:00

When I was about 7 years old, I was visiting family one summer, and a 5-year old cousin kept running up to me, pushing me, and running away. I faced a delemma.

Should I "defend myself" and strike the boy, who was almost half my size? He was doing me no real harm, but I was getting annoyed with him. I demanded he stop his shenannigans. (no, I did not use the word shenanigans)

He didn't stop. He kept running up behind me, pushing me, calling me some childish name, and running away.

I mulled it over in my mind. The adults were doing an excellent job of ignoring the situation. I thought if I hit him, the adults would be angry with me. I was much bigger than he was; it would seem like I was a bully.

I got pushed one time too many, and decided to take my chances and I punched the boy in the stomach. To my dismay, the brat began to howl and cry and tell everybody how I had beaten him, how he, an innocent, undeserving waif, had been brutally attacked by a bully nearly twice his size.

Nobody was angry though, in fact the opposite was true. The adults told the brat to shut up, he had it coming, now go get lost.

Sweet vindication! Looking back now, I suppose everybody there would have liked to punch that kid, but I was the only one there who could.

Bad megacorporation!

2006-02-27T19:59:00.000-05:00

Here is a search on google: tiananmen

Here's the same search on google china: tiananmen

That ain't right.

What aren't they showing us?

Yahoo does the same thing.

I don't know if MSN does, but what do you think?

American corporations should be less eager to appease dictators. Imagine the PR if you refused to kowtow to an asian despot? Would you lose the chinese market? HELL NO. People would risk death to use your search engine.

Because they would trust it.

My next car

2006-02-26T21:13:00.000-05:00

Ok, so it only moves when the wind blows, and it's hard to steer, but it has comfy chairs inside. And its way bigger than your H3.

Imagine all the school zones

2006-02-22T22:31:00.000-05:00

If you think this is funny, you're probably wasting your potential...

The day we almost Died

2006-02-20T22:41:00.000-05:00

Did you know that you almost died in 1983?

In 1983, I was 11, and I was terrified by the news. I knew a little about politics, and I undrestood that there was a real possibility of the world exploding in a nuclear war.

Somehow this was worse than the normal fears of an 11 year old boy. It wasn't just the monster in the closet, or "stranger danger" or the devil. It wasn't personal. There was nothing I could do about it, and it would mean the end of everything. All because someone got an itchy trigger finger.

I understood this fear the way only a child can. Every moment of every day, every vapor trail in the sky, every flash of light at night, I prayed for the human race.

1983 was an especially scary time for me. Reagan was president, and he had already called the USSR the "Evil Empire." At the wise old age of 11, I knew better than that. Evil is a personal, metaphysical thing, not an appropriate way to describe one's geopolitical rival.

(yes I did talk like that when I was 11... and yes, I got beat up a lot.)

I had a pretty low opinion of Reagan, I thought he might have been a little senile, and I thought (as did the Soviet leadership) that he just might be stupid enough to do it.

Around Midnight on Monday, September 26, 1983, (Sunday afternoon in the US), Lt. Colonel Stanislav Petrov went to work on his day off.

Petrov was in command of the early warning system used by the USSR to detect a missile attack by the US. A few minutes into his shift, alarms began to sound, and the computers showed first one, then five missiles flying to the USSR from the US.

Petrov had no information except the saltellites telling him an attack was happening. Alarms, lights, and training all worked against the survival of humanity.

After five minutes of hand-wringing, Petrov called Moscow and said it was a false alarm. He had no reason to believe this was so, just "instinct." Then he waited another 10 minutes to see if he was right. Petrov later said, "I thought if the United states attacked, they would send more missiles."

Smart.

Thank you, Stanislav.

Rose of Mohammed

2006-02-20T20:50:00.000-05:00

I have been wondering since our guest columnist brought it up, what are they having for breakfast? I mean the guy who makes danishes is probably not Danish, he's probably a good Muslim, and may have had his shop smashed up and his pastries stomped on. What will become of him? In Iran at least, he's represented by the confectioners union:

"Given the insults by Danish newspapers against the prophet, as of now the name of Danish pastries will give way to 'Rose of Mohammed' pastries," the union said in its order.

And I'm sure the Danes care. I mean, the boycott, the burning embassies, the police "losing control" of the crowds, the murders, those were understandable, but renaming the Danish? I'm sure Danes everywhere are weeping this evening.

Ever notice how its always the same people? I remember living in Albuquerque when the whole "Freedom Fries" business happened. The neighborhood I lived in was a very conservative outpost in albuquerque's east side. This was a neighborhood where a friend of mine had her apartment window broken because she had displayed an anti-war poster in it.

There was one restaraunt, a burger joint with extra grease that I used to visit right by my house, and they were the only place I ever saw that changed the name of their french fries to freedom fries.

They tasted the same.

And there were no french people (and only one Democrat) eating there anyway.

Its these same gomers, everywhere you go, they have to hate everyone who isn't "American" or "Muslim" or "Tutsi" or "Serbian."

The rest of us really need to stand up to them, and order french fries and a danish.

Hamas, Hudna, and Hope?

2006-02-18T01:41:00.000-05:00

We love democracy.

Unless the wrong guy wins.

Hamas is a troubling organization, sure, but they aren't al qaeda, they aren't people that can't be dealt with, and they don't (seem) to be a creation of an interested foriegn government. Hamas has been observing a truce for some time now, and they have been able to enforce the truce within their own ranks successfully.

The big sticking point is the whole "drive the zionist entity into the sea" business.

Its very hard to trust somebody who's only willing to make a "temporary peace" with you and declares your very existence to be unacceptable.

But having to administer a nation may moderate the men, if not the rhetoric. It would be ludicrous to expect a PA government led by Hamas to suddenly attack Israel, in fact, Hamas has had better discipline than any other party in the region in controlling its partisans, and has proved that when it gives the cease fire order, their people actually follow it.

Israel, the United States, and Europe all demand that Hamas recognize Israel. This is fair, everybody mentioned has already recognized the right of the Palestinian people to have an independent state, so it seems fair to them that Hamas should recognize Israel and give up the "drive them into the sea" stuff.

The fact that they don't do this immediately is not a cause for panic. Hamas, if treated as the legitimate, elected leaders that they are, will more likely than not be a better "partner for peace" than the disorganized, corrupt gang of thugs in Fatah.

We in the west should be watchful, but also patient. The situation is not helped by trying to drive Hamas back out of office. This is not a time for "regime change" the regime has changed and if we don't accept the outcome of this election, we are basically telling the entire world, and especially the Muslim world that the US talks about democracy, but has no respect for real democratic change.

So give them a chance, stop all this panic, lets see what they do. Keep Israel on a short leash, (especially right now while they're in a leadership crisis of their own) and see what happens. A few months of relative calm will do a lot to build trust. And it isn't certain that Hamas can survive palestinian politics for long without us trying to drive them out, so let's back off shall we?

It is just too bad that Condi doesnt read my blog anymore.

schlattwhapper

2006-02-17T02:36:00.000-05:00

Schlattwhapper, n.:
 The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down,
hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face.
  -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Wal mart forced to provide contraception pill

2006-02-15T00:27:00.000-05:00

I don't know what to think about this one.

Of course, I am happy that women in Massechusets can get birth control, but I have a problem with forcing any business to provide a specific product. Pharmacies should have the right not to carry medicines they don't want to, whether it's narcotic drugs that make them a target for robbery or birth control that interferes with their morality.

I feel my inner liberal saying, "What if it's the only pharmacy in town?"

This is America, there's a walgreens on every corner.

"What if no pharmacy will stand up to religious protesters and provide the medicine?"

Then you may have a legitimate greivance. But if I have a shop, and someone tells me I have to sell crucifixes, I'm gonna say no. That's my right, I own a shop, I can sell what I want. If you want something I don't have, suing me isn't the right way to get it. Go buy it somewhere else.

"But medicines are different from other goods, they're regulated, and it's not that easy to open a pharmacy, you have to have a DEA license, a pharmacist license, you know the drill."

You're right, I guess we don't have 'free markets' after all!

All of this would be solved if we just take the Guns N Dope party's advice and have a truly "free market" and remove all regulation of pharmacuticals. Imagine getting viagra at circle K! You could get a slurpee, condoms, viagra and cigarettes for later, all within walking distance of your neighborhood brothel!

Go free market capitalism!

But until then, I guess we have to force pharmacies to carry birth control, or the zealots will intimidate the pharmacists into submission.

Olympics

2006-02-14T19:19:00.000-05:00

The olympics is sport for the pencil-necked geeks of the world.

People who wouldn't be caught dead at a basketball game find themselves actually cheering for a curler?

The olympics are totally ignored by the regular-guy joe-six-pack crowd that normally flock to sporting events.

Why?

Is it marketing or does figure skating actually appeal to the same people who drink microbrew beer?

Does anybody know a bookmaker that'll take bets on olympic sports?

From another dimension

2006-02-14T19:16:00.000-05:00

Not again!

Voyeuristic intention

2006-02-13T02:12:00.000-05:00

Here's a fun google trick:
Type this into google:
-inurl(html|htm|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +"Funny pictures"

Of course, you can type in anything else instead of "funny pictures" like "secret recipes" or "reasons to live"

Whatever, what you get is un-indexed directories on the web. Most of this stuff is people's personal stuff they saved on a web page at work or school. Some is stuff that really ought to be protected, some is just dumb, see above.

Insomnia

2006-02-13T01:54:00.000-05:00

Up all night again, waiting for sleep to overtake me. I've got another day of the same old soul-sucking job tomorrow, its hard to sleep when you don't want to get up in the morning.

They pulled the "crucifixins" scene from Will and Grace!
How? How is it that anybody with a show about homosexuals can be intimidated by the religious right? Aren't they already boycotting your sponsors? Your show is already cancelled, grow a pair!

Insane god-drunk-wackos: Oooh you offended us, you have to stop!
typical liberal response: Oh gosh sorry, we didn't mean to upset you, we'll stop right away.

Liberals (again): Excuse me, um, when you said that Democrats were um, doomed to eternal hellfire, um well, that was um, a little offensive to us, um could you tone it down?

Insane g0d-drunk-wackos: No, and how dare you try to censor us!

Is it any wonder they're always kicking our asses?

Something completely different

2006-02-11T00:40:00.000-05:00

Now that I've pissed off everybody I possibly could, what could possibly be more fun than a dip into cognitive science?

Sumarizing a recent experiment:

You take a bunch of monkeys, and teach them a new trick.

You notice that the memory of the new trick is kept in a (new) group of neurons in their brains.

You then observe that even when they get the trick wrong, that is, the monkey displays the wrong behavior, the group of neurons where the trick is kept are still working away.

What does it mean?

It means that even when we do things wrong, like mispell a word, or forget where we put something, we could have got it right.

Why do we get it wrong, over and over again? Is something lost between the part of our brain that knows the answer, and the part that is looking? Is our propensity toward error something that enhances our survivability, or is it simply an artifact of evolution's notoriously poor worksmanship?

It does start to explain the whole "I'll just stop thinking about it and the answer will come to me" phenomenon.

From this experiment, I want to draw two conclusions,
1. Mistakes are good, at least for monkeys.
Just think of all the times you've made a mistake and it turned out for the best. How many times have you discovered something new because you did something wrong?

2. We can avoid making mistakes if we try.
It's in there. The answer, where you put your keys, the right way to connect to your SQL database, whatever, if you ever knew how, you still do, just relax and stop trying.

Guest Column

2006-02-07T21:27:00.000-05:00

The Blog looks good, but it's hard to read, with the banner on the side I have to wait until you post something else and then read the previous post, but whatever.

So here's something I wrote yesterday before I checked Jcreadsthenews.
Follows;

Okay I have to vent a little bit. At lunch I was reading the news about those silly Muslim cartoons that have started WWIII. It appears that all over the Muslim world they are rioting, shooting things and people, and torching trees, buildings , cars etc. and I just have a few questions.

1. the rule is no images of the prophet right? I get that just fine, but unreasonable violence, that’s okay? So the message here is don’t draw a picture of Mohammed or whoever, but shoot anyone who you may think can draw? Cant wait to convert.

2. Every time something like this happens, everything in the city gets lit on fire, and a bunch of stuff is destroyed, my question is; why destroy THEIR OWN stuff, not ours? The Danes go to sleep in their giant fluffy feather beds with their wooden shoes next to them, and Afghanistan burns away through the night. that sounds like a great testament to the problem solving skills of the rioters to me. Then they can look at their city and say look at what all the White people\non-Muslims\Americans did. (not that we are blameless, I usually support some of their views of us)

3. do none of these people ever have anything to do during the day? EVER? If your friend Bob called you right now to go burn Creed CD's in the name of all that is good and holy, then yes I'd say we might all go. For a few hours, if the weather was good, if there was a good restaurant nearby, and mostly to get the heck out of here. Would you go again tomorrow? I doubt it. Well, maybe you would… but wouldn’t it be more fun to eat PB & J at the zoo or something?

4. cartoons are idolatry? Really? Okay…
"OH great and powerful Hobbes, I ask you for forgiveness in drawing a funny looking man with a bomb for a helmet. Please stay my pen, lest it be used to puncture my heart with eternal shame. In the name of your most righteous servant Calvin, I pray that all cartoonists will be swiftly killed. Especially that guy who draws Marmaduke. He sucks. Amen."

None of this was meant to offend, I respect all religions, etc, blah blah really, blah, I'm just really confused.

The disclaimer is for my work computer. And about that statement about accepting no less than the heads of the people who drew the cartoons, well, it works both ways, bucko. You hide Osama and we'll protect Charles Schultz.

offensive cartoons?

2006-02-05T22:22:00.000-05:00

Al-Yawm, Dec 4, 2005

"We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," one preacher at Al Omari mosque in Gaza told worshipers during Friday Prayer, according to Reuters. Other demonstrators called for amputating the hands of the cartoonists who drew the pictures.

Yes, by all means, lets start cutting off the hands of cartoonists who don't "respect" all religions.

Lets start with the Saudi who drew this one.

Then, lets talk about the Egyptian TV show, "Horseman Without A Horse" which details how Jews drink the blood of non-jews during passover, among other things.

Come and get it.

2006-02-04T12:00:00.000-05:00

When do we admit that your idea of respecting your religion and our idea of respect for religion are incompatible?

From yesterday's NYTIMES
"We will not accept less than severing the heads of those responsible," one preacher at Al Omari mosque in Gaza told worshipers during Friday Prayer, according to Reuters. Other demonstrators called for amputating the hands of the cartoonists who drew the pictures.

Cartoons of Mohammed

2006-02-02T22:45:00.000-05:00

I like this one. The whole set can be found at Die Welt

I think it's great that the Europeans are finally showing a little bit of spine!

Ah, freedom, angering the religous right all over the world.

Congratulations to all the newspapers who were brave enough to print these cartoons! I know that must have been difficult, here in the US, nobody is willing to reprint them yet, they just describe them with text. Whatever! Grow a pair!

The best way to deal with religious extremists is to never give in to them. Fight them tooth and nail, and never never never never give them the satisfaction of victory. it only makes them more demanding. For instance:

Here at home our very own taliban, the American Family Association are pitching a fit over Britanny Spears appearing on Will and Grace...

Jack's fictional network, Out TV, is bought by a Christian TV network, leading to Spears contributing a cooking segment called "Cruci-fixin's." To further denigrate Christianity, NBC chose to air it the night before Good Friday. - from the AFA Newsletter

Clash of cultures? We're really not all that different. The only difference that I can see is the Muslim public is somewhat more organized (maybe their afterlife is better?)

The case against cremation

2006-01-21T01:52:00.000-05:00

I know a couple, they recently divorced. The husband, we’ll call him “Jim,” left behind some of his possessions when he moved out, among these items was an urn containing the ashes of his grandmother.

Can you guess where this is going?

This couple were ill-starred from the get-go, and when they broke up it was with great lamentation and gnashing of teeth.

The wife, we’ll call her “Betty,” realizing she had Jim’s granny in her closet, made an effort to contact Jim, calling on the phone, sending letters, speaking with his family, saying “I have a lot of your things, some of them I am sure you’d want, so please get in contact with me.”

Jim responded with a very formal letter saying, “Whatever you have of mine you can keep it or throw it away, I don’t care, and if you keep trying to contact me, I’m sending the police after you (again)”

Well, after that, you can guess how Betty felt…

Granny got flushed.

Like a dead goldfish

or an unwanted alligator-

Yes, her remains are now intermixed with other, less beloved remains, every bit as mortal, but Greenlawn Cemetery it ain't.

Neither of them ever reads JCreadsthenews, and if they ever do, well Jim, I've got some bad news for you.

And Betty-

Flushed?

Couldn’t you just leave her in the yard?

Perhaps you could have used her as an ashtray-

"The Law is King"

2006-01-18T23:47:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I do have to comment on politics, I just can't help it, so suck it up kiddies-

Al Gore gave a brilliant speech monday about the state of our nation. I heard him talking and wondered what if... That guy was one vote (yes one stinking vote) away from being president. Supreme court judges reall ycan be pretty important, and they dances with them what brung 'em.

Gore can talk for 2 hours straight and never mispronounce a word or run away from the crowd, or insist that only people who will play along be allowed in the audience. (granted, he doesnt exactly captivate the crowd, but it beats listening to a blubbering ass who can't pronounce "nuclear," and giggles every time he mentions war.)

This is a long quote, but I know damn well none of you slackers are going to read the speech, and if I was going to say anything on television, I would love to have said this, albeit with less eloquence no doubt.

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the full Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of nuclear missiles ready to be launched on a moment’s notice to completely annihilate the country? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when the last generation had to fight and win two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it’s up to us to do the very same thing!

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive branch and the President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

Yeah!

That's the kind of speech we need a lot more of. I didn't even bother listening to the right wing machine on tuesday, I'm sure they said he's "unhinged" and "taking shots at the president" and whatever else they always say. They may have just manufactured some indignation at another, totally unrelated event to distract from this speech.

Whatever, read it.

at least skim it, I think he says everything I have said or wanted to say or would have said if I was smart enough, and he says it better than I ever would, so consider it JCreadsthenews by proxy....

How Pat Robertson, et. al. tried to eat my soul:

2006-01-15T18:14:00.000-05:00

As children, many of us took our cultural myths to be absolute truth, I had a very strong, personal fear of God-the-punisher who would send me to hell at the drop of a hat.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night, convinced I had a 666 somewhere on my body, and determined to pray it off.

Nobody ever told me that my normal self-discovery as a young man was sinful, but I was sure of it nonetheless. I repressed that part of myself so forcefully that I would on occassion break out into fits of continuous masturbation lasting weeks at a time, followed immediately by pious repentance, guilt, fear, and prayer at a level bordering on compulsive. (well past bordering, truth be told)

My parents were not only not responsible for this state of affairs, but I am sure they would have acted to correct it had they known. I got my religion secretly from billy-sunday types on television, long after everybody had gone to sleep. I had a need, and they filled it with poison.

(lets not forget the little Jack Chick comic-book pamphlets describing how you always go to hell unless you "accept Jesus Christ into your heart and life as your lord and personal savior" Even now I can recite that crap verbatim, I must have repeated that magical formula thousands of times.)

That kind of religion is medieval. God DID create the world in 7 days, and if you don't believe that, you go to hell. Dinosaurs were coexistant with man, because it says right there in Genesis that Adam named all the creatures, well... there you have it. no questions.

It's as if the enlightenment never happened, and the nation founded on the principles of Humanism just forgot all about that devillish hooey. Coming out of that mindset required going through different stages of understanding, rethinking the thoughts of those who went through it first, when they could still actually get burnt at the stake for it.

But The World is too rich; the "temptations" of the flesh to real to be sin. To truly sin, to me, would be to waste ones experience here on earth in constant dreadful prayer to a mean old crusty god who probably will just toss your sorry ass to hell anyhow.

At some point, those of us who, as children had a "fear" of GOD must awaken from our dream, either gently or violently, and see the world, not as a mythic battleground for souls, but as The World, the very garden of eden, snakes and all.

Many of us began our "descent" reading the likes of Nietzsche- That could be somewhat disorienting, as if a stranger ran into your bedroom and began shouting at you, "wake up! you are dreaming! stop that stupid dreaming and help me light your house on fire!"

A bit of a shock, perhaps.

My first hints at awakening came by way of a Bill Moyers interview with Joseph Campbell on PBS. I began to watch it because while flipping through the channels, there were scenes from Star Wars .(when you're 12 years old star wars gets your attention!)... I got sucked in, watched the whole thing 2-3 times, I understood for the first time that there were other people who had faced this awful fear of everlasting hell and won, put it behind them, never to be haunted by it, they seemed happy, intelligent, wise... and that putting this childish nightmare religion behind me was the first step in a long journey toward "The Truth" or a closer approximation thereof.

Even before this event, I had an insatiable thirst for mythology. I wanted stories about all the old gods, all the old heroes, but they were hard to find, outside the bible, the Greek pantheon was readily available, but perhaps they were too foreign to me, as a child I didn't understand them properly, and as a Christian, I prayed for the souls of the poor dupes who worshipped such gods.

As time went on after seeing that show, I never read one of Campbell's books, in fact its only this past June I finally bought one, ("Creative Mythology" still working on it... 12 pages to go!)
Instead, I read all the old myths I could find. I loved the stories about Gilgamesh and Enkidu, I re-read the bible, several times, especially the old testament, this time with new, unafraid eyes. I found there no manual for living, but I found the oral history of an ancient, sometimes wise, sometimes silly, civilization.

And I found, to my great shock, Mithras and Osiris and Orpheus, Tammuz, and a host of other gods. (Ever notice how much easier it is to view another culture's gods as imaginary?)
Mithras and Orpheus being the ones that struck me most squarely on the chin. Not only was the dying/resurrected god a common motif well before AD 1, the actual teachings, the prescriptions given by Mithras, and possibly more cryptically by the Orpheus cults--- mirrored the gospels. It was all there: love your enemy, turn the other cheek, help the poor, everything that was so good about christianity was already present in religions of the region centuries before Jesus. It struck me that COMPASSION then, was nothing new. Probably not such an unusual thing for a mystic religion (as opposed to a civic one) to preach compassion...

Then, I found gospels of all kind and type, revealed at Nag Hammadi and the Dead Sea, they were republished after centuries of being supressed, literally, into the earth. Suddenly there were thousands of different Christianities! Before the great repression of Justinian, there were hundreds of cults with different beliefs, many different interpretations, many gospels being written... and I knew for sure that those tent-revivalists were definitely absolutely wrong.

There may be a god, or a thousand, I don't think it matters one whit to us mortals. We certainly shouldn't waste our (possibly) only incarnation worrying about what they'd want us to do. All the morality, the compassion, the feeling of what is right, these are within us, and no religion is necessary for us to flourish.

At a loss for words...

2006-01-10T20:51:00.000-05:00

"Since trying Michael Menkin's Helmet, I have not been bothered by alien mind control"

He's listening!

2005-12-30T11:44:00.000-05:00

Back to the news-

President publicly admits to authorizing illegal wiretaps.
Investigation to come...

Only the investigation is about who told the press about the "top secret" illegal wiretap program...

Our local newspaper just held an online poll that asked if the president should be able to wiretap anybody he wants without congressional approval, and 59% of these gomers thought it was a great idea.

Just so you know, it's a bad idea. The wiretaps the president said he authorized would have been authorized by FISA. I know the right-wing doesnt think we should use our traditional legal system against people it deems "enemies of the state," but these are precisely the cases that it is most important to follow the rule of law. Arbitrary imprisonment by the executive is something expressly forbidden by the constitution.

Now, because these illegal wiretaps were used against some of our enemies, we have made it more difficult to do away with them. The system favors those of us who follow the law. (it's set up that way to protet us from an overzealous executive. Brilliant, really.)

It's hard to change the constitution, but it can be changed through the amendment process. It takes years and a wide consensus of public opinion to get it to happen, but it can happen. If you think you can sustain public support for unlimited executive power for as long as it takes to ratify an amendment to the constitution, go ahead and try.

But for now, follow the law.

So the story is that the president decided to do something illegally that could have been done legally? Unlikely. More likely is these retreads from the Nixon administration are up to their old tricks again. I would love to see the actual list of peoople who were spied on, of course that's probably top secret too.

There have always been people who sought our destruction. There have always been those with the will and the power to injure us. Giving up our traditions of liberty and privacy will not aid our defense, they will make it both more difficult and less important.

And FURTHERMORE,

To the listeners of right-wing radio everywhere:

FISA can approve wiretap warrents retroactively, so there is never a waiting period or backlog of requests. There is never a reason for the government to say it didn't have time for a warrant.

Oh, and your supreme court judges, the ones who know the "original intent" of the framers of the constitution? Don't you think they'll have a problem with this?

What are you made out of? Sugar candy? One attack in 60 years and you're ready to wet yourselves, and toss away your liberty to the first strongman who offers you protection?

And most important for you to remember-
Hilary Clinton could be president someday... do you want her to have all these new powers, too?

Why Ohio?

2005-12-10T03:56:00.000-05:00

I don't know what we were thinking.

Let me share with you the joy of living in Ohio. The ground is covered in ice so when you walk, you're as likely to fall on your ass as not, the people here get up early and work hard and honestly believe that's a great thing to do, and there's no sun.

Seriously, the sun has not been out since November 28, it was a Monday, and it was a very long time ago.

In the summer, I was intoxicated with the life that blooms out of the soggy earth here. I referred to the place as the "cunt of god" (and I meant it as a compliment) but now that god has gone south and we're left sucking the icy tit of winter.

We moved here thinking it would be a nice stop on the road, and it is nice in the summer, but when you have to work like these misguided souls think you should, (what, are they all Calvanists?) you never get to enjoy much.

Today, a well-meaning midwesterner explained to me how they have hispanic-speaking tellers at their bank. I know I can't count the times I wished I knew how to speak hispanic.

I'd rather move back to the land of manana than spend another winter skidding around this city in a suit and tie. Somewhere with water and beaches and a lot fewer churches.

Maybe I'll open a bank.
Yo Hablo Hispanicese.

Why Iraq?

2005-12-04T02:32:00.000-05:00

I honestly don't know why we did it. The first year or so after the invasion I was still too stunned that it actually happened to even begin to understand what the reasoning was.

Was it just to make some money? Sure that was part of it, but do they really think that way? Can human beings cynically break the peace for profit?

I suppose they can, but I'm still not willing to see it that way, I think of the war profiteers, the contractors, the mercenary groups, the manufacturers of super-duper-fun-bombs as a cheering section, like a little devil on the shoulder, not in charge, but clearly interested in the outcome.

So why would sane people, working with the information that we know they had at the time, take us into this war?

Clearly it wasn't "the nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terrorist networks" as we were told. First of all, it is irresponsible to group poison gas and smallpox with nuclear bombs. They're not even close. We've been killing people with poison and smallpox for centuries, it's awful but it's not even close to the scale of nuclear weapons. Second, there wasn't even any poison gas or smallpox!

So, I tried to walk a mile in their shoes, I tried to think, what would I do?

It isn't easy, I had to hit myself in the head with a hammer, but I managed.

The sanction scheme that was imposed on Hussein at the end of the first gulf war was clearly not succeeding in removing Saddam from power, and could not be sustained for much longer. European countries were pushing to have the sanctions lifted on humanitarian grounds. Their concern was legitimate, the sanction scheme seemed only to punish the people who disliked Hussein most, actually solidifying his power rather than undermining it.

The US could not continue to enforce the sanction regime and no-fly zones for much longer, because the Saudis could not allow US troops to linger in the kingdom. After ten years of western armies in Arabia, al-Qaeda was attacking the royal family; Saudi clerics were condemning the king for allowing the ‘infidels’ to remain so long after the danger had passed, and (god forbid) Saudi women were demanding the right to drive themselves to the grocer.

If the US were to leave Saudi Arabia, the no-fly zones could not be enforced, Hussein could reassert his authority over the Kurdish region (we had to have the Saudi airbases to patrol the northern no-fly zone, because if we had to rely on Turkey to let us fly from there, they'd tell us to go fly a kite instead.) and could theoretically once again pose a threat to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

It would have been very unlikely, however that Iraq would actually invade anything. In reality, it would be a minor loss of prestige for the United States, we would not be seen as the sole power-broker for the region, Europe, Russia and China would become more important players in the oil extraction business, we'd lose the control we've had over the region since the USSR tanked in 89.

So time was running out, either leave Saudi Arabia, abandon the Kurds (again), keep a few bases in the Emirates and Qatar, and try to continue the obviously failing sanction regime or...

In walks Cheney or Wolfowitz or whoever's feeling clever, and that devil starts to convince us it'll be easy, we have new super-duper-smartypants-bombs that win wars risk free...

Then the usual things, the things that always get said before a war, "It'll all be over in a few months, we don't even need to use the whole army, and best of all, it'll pay for itself!"

Then, without really deciding to do it, we have to start the ball rolling. We start moving ships and equipment into the region, troop levels are built up in Kuwait. At home, we have to start a propaganda blitz, scare the voters, tell them Osama bin Laden (or Emmanuel Goldstein or whoever it is this week) is in cahoots with Iraq, and planning to nuke an Amerrican city any minute now, talk about "mushroom clouds" and then threaten their congressmen the week before the election, demand that they give you power to invade or you'll run ads talking about what anti-american sissies they are. Then, just because you can, run the ads anyway, and see if you can't squeeze out a little extra breathing room in the checks and balances department.

Now we have to do it, the people are actually demanding it. We've got to whether we want to or not, and anyone who doesn't want to is obviously pro-terrorist.

Gosh, in hindsight it seems kinda sinister.

People used to fight over salt.

2005-12-03T12:43:00.000-05:00

I'm glad the "opposition" in congress have finally got the guts (more likely followed the wind of public opinion, a smelly, foul wind) to stop pretending it's unpatriotic to want our friends to come home from that desert hell and never go back.

We didn't go over there ot free anybody, we went because of a kind of war hysteria that swept over our country. We went because somehow, we were convinced Iraq was going to attack us.

That was so stupid, in hindsight I think more people see it now, but at the time, if you said so, you were called un-american, pro-terrorist, you name it. It was ugly. It's happened to us before.

It'll probably happen again.

I know we want meaning for our friends and family who died for Iraq, but let's face it. They ought to be alive, and Iraq is no better off and neither are we. And the whole reason we got talked into invading that country was so some people could make money. This was an imperial adventure, not taken in the long term interest of the United States, it was plain robbery. We sent our defence force (that's really what they're supposed to be right?) to another country to steal their stuff. And it's not like you and me even get a cut, we just get to sacrifice.

Yesterday more marines died out there in the desert, and more silver was paid to mercenaries and war profiteers.

If those marines were your sons, wouldn't you rather have just one of them come home alive than all the oil in all the deserts of the world?

Aiming for less than greatness

2005-12-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

I figured it out.

The only thing worse than not knowing your if work sucks is knowing that it does.
Worse than that, however, is having your work kick ass, but the client sees it on some ancient computer that's running IE 3.o, and asking you why it looks funny.

I look at the stuff out there on the web,
Sites that looks great, the programming never fucks up, and I want to scream, or at least borrow the skills of the people who made them.

I want to be that good. I want to be able to look at my work on a 15 year old mac and have it still look right.

I really do try to learn, try to improve, but I'm just too damn busy being mediocre and making money at it.

The less there is, the more they bitch

2005-12-02T12:49:00.000-05:00

I've discovered an important principle of human nature that I'd like to share with all (both) of you.

One of my jobs involves the design of advertising. Sometimes I design very elaborate ad campaigns with internet and print components, using all the tricks the propaganda biz has come up with since 1930.

Sometimes I make a little newspaper ad for some small shop, and they want it a very specific way, so I do it just the way they want it.

What I've found, and I think this applies to all aspects of human endevor, is this:

The less there is, the harder they fight over it. If you've contracted me to do your ad design and you're spending say 100 dollars, you are going to call me ten times more often, bitch about the final result ten times more, and force me to waste ten times more time on your piddly little account than someone with a $10,000 account.

Why?

Which approach is ultimately more successful?

I'll bet you can guess which one I think works better.

It's like getting a haircut. You can come in and tell me exactly the way you want your hair cut and I'll do it that way, but don't come complaining to me that you don't like it that way.

Hours in the day

2005-11-27T23:03:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, I passed time watching 30 minute sit-coms on television. I spent thousands of hours doing this. I've seen every Leave it to Beaver, Gilligan's Island, Mr. Ed, Munsters, Addams Family, Brady Bunch, you name it, if it was syndicated in the 70's I saw it.

Now it's a little different. I don't have enough time to do all the things I want to do. Right now, I'm trying to learn some new things with Flash, but I don't have the time. Most of the time I am playing catch-up, learning how to do something I said "Yeah, I can do that" about when I was making the pitch.

Did I waste all that time as a kid? Maybe, I don't regret it though, I lived in Phoenix and it wasn't like I was going to go outside and play. And I suppose I learned something from all those old shows, or maybe not.

But even if I could go back and change history, the stuff I need time for now just wasn't there in 1979.

Now that I have a son of my own, would I want him to sit around and watch sit-coms all day?

No, if he were older I'd make him learn flash and come to work.

Putting down the brush

2005-11-27T22:48:00.000-05:00

This happens to me all the time, I'll do some sort of work, build a website, design an advertisement, write a column, whatever, and everybody who sees it says "Hey that's great, I loved it." There are precious few people who can look you in the eye and say, "No, I think this sucks," or better yet, offer criticisim "The menu is confusing, what if you do it this way"

So I get to thinking, does everybody live in a world like this? How often do we hear that our work isn't great? Even when you work in an artistic or creative field, most of the time you get zero negative feedback. I guess it's because it hurts your feelings when someone tells you the thing you worked for hours on doesnt cut the mustard. (what the hell does that even mean?)

But that's part of being an adult right? Being able to take it when somebody points out the flaws in your masterpiece. I can take it, I know I can, because I'm lucky enough to know one or two people who are willing to hurt my feelings to make my work better.

It still sucks, though, don't get me wrong, and I certainly don't need any new volunteers telling me why I suck.

Do we all live in this fantasy world where we are all very competent? Are we all naked emperors complimenting each other's clothing?

Tonight for instance, I built a website for this place, they're most likely going to say "oooh its wonderful," pay me and move on.

But I see the design and think how awful it is and how people are insane to pay me to do it.

Yet they do.

So it must be ok.

I guess.

Why Wile E. Coyote is so Skinny

2005-11-16T23:41:00.000-05:00

I visit an untitled life and here's MJC spouting about Neitzche and genius and god and what-all. It's fun I suppose, to wonder about the big questions sometimes, and you could do a whole lot worse than Neitzche. So I put my $.02 (there used to be a cent key on my typing apparatus!)

I prefer to take a survey approach, like whatshisname.... Joseph Campbell. I like to read, so it works out. I blasted my way through a penguin edition of faust a few weeks back, it was awful but in parts it was inspiring.

Everything I know about deep subjects can be summed up thusly:

If there is a god, he ain't the one you're thinking of.
(and don't count your money while you're sitting at the table)

Zorba knew how to live.

Wile E. Coyote was a super-genius.
(but he never, ever ever got to eat)

Most importantly,
Incarnation rocks.

Would it change your life one bit if you knew your great-gradfather was watching you through every second of your life? How about your mom? I bet we'd all be a lot less kinky, but beyond that, would you do anything differently?

Imagine how f**d up it would be to grow up in a religious setting where you were always told "God is always watching you, what you do in secret, God sees"

Wait a minute! That happened to me and just about everybody I know.

Here is where the real issue lies!

This world, this incarnation, we must at some point make a choice to tell that old schoolmaster of a god to take his life-denying rules and go, this life is to be taken head-on. No hiding in churces, begging forgiveness for only god-knows-what. Get out and live!

Somewhere along the line, somebody screwed up, and the western world at least (and big chunks of the rest) started worshipping the opposite of god.

The flesh is to be embraced, as anybody who's ever been in bed with an enthusiastic woman knows.
(Thank you, Mrs. JC, for continuing my religious instruction)

Exhaustion

2005-11-16T23:05:00.000-05:00

Wednesday is my last chance to get some rest. Tomorrow through next monday I will be working on websites as well as doing the work of 2 people at the paper. (really, they fired a guy, and I'm doing both jobs now.) It's amazing what people will do for money. I guess I can't complain, I do like the rush of all the stress and keeping everything up in the air, I love making money too. But I do miss those halcyon days of yesteryear (2004) when I was able to get by on freelance work and luck.

Please don't get me wrong, I don't mean to complain! I actually do enjoy all the work I have to do, it's just nice to get a break now and then, a real break, like 3 weeks in Ireland, not 4 days in Ohio.

To Sleep

2005-11-16T02:00:00.000-05:00

I had a girlfriend once, Shira, she could go to sleep in seconds. Seriously, she'd lay down, and less than a minute later, she'd be out. For me, it's a little more complicated. I know all the tricks, how to breathe, visualization, etc. Believe me, I know all about it, sometimes though, it doesn't work. And if you're one of those people who can just sleep whenever you want, well good for you.

Take tonight for example, I have an appointment in about 6 hours, its two in the morning and I can't seem to make the transition into sleep. In the morning, I'll have trouble waking up. Why?

I've never been very good at going to sleep or waking up. The only times I've ever been happy with the sleep I got were when I didn't have to get up at any particular time, and I went to sleep when I felt like it. (ah those were the days)

Now, in my new position as wage-slave, I have to get up every morning at around the same time. I've never liked doing that, and that's probably why I've been such a terrible wage-slave over the years.

I've always had trouble switching states, If I'm awake, I want to stay awake, if I'm asleep, I'd rather stay asleep. At least it seems that way when I'm forced into a schedule.

I once toyed with the idea that sleep was just an addiction, one that was passed down to us from some species long ago who got hooked and passed it down from parent to child like a drug addiction.

So, I tried to quit. I went cold turkey. 4 days later, I had an unusual experience, and I decided that I wasn't ready yet.

Years went by, and I tried a new tactic, I read somewhere how some famous genius only slept a few hours a day by taking short naps here and there. So I tried that. It was ok, except I was tired a lot, and it's hard to explain why you have to stop working in the middle of the day to take a nap when you're a wage-slave. It worked ok when I was working in a management position, since nobody really notices if the boss is asleep.

So, here I am today, wishing I could get some sleep, not because I'm tired, no, that would be too simple, but because I dread being over-tired tomorow afternoon, which at this point I guess is inevitable.

There's an old writer (He's actually dead ) Rabelais, he wrote something called Thelema or something like that, anyway, it was this monastery where everybody did just as he liked, and I remember the thing that stuck in my mind the most- "and each went in to sleep when he was tired and awoke when he felt sated" (paraphrase)

I've always wanted to live there, I've managed to spend a few holidays there, but I always seem to come back to the world of alarm clocks and (to hell with midwesterners) 8 am meetings.

Chuck E. Cheese and Uncle Sam

2005-11-13T23:03:00.000-05:00

Ok, I think I have found the internet equivalent of bigfoot here. I have called a couple chuck-e-cheese restaraunts and asked friends of mine with kids who frequent this dive if they remember anything like this coming up but nobody even knows what I'm talking about.

I first got wind of this on truthout. (thanks DP) I was immediately suspicious, an internet search found only very biased (anti-military) sites covering the story. (there was even a protest march!)

So the story is this, the kids watch a chuck-e cheese video that shows happy soldiers and marines being happy in their happy tanks or whatever.

I am not 100% sure that this never happened, but it really doesn't look like it did. Is there anybody out there with a real, first-hand account? Here are some I found on the net- let's just say they're less than perfect news sources...

from -
http://call2action.blogspot.com/2005/09/war-for-latinos.html
(I ain't saying it's a biased source, but ...
Ok I am saying it.)

Recruiters are devising new and often unexpected ways to penetrate daily Latino life. "I went to a birthday celebration at Chuck E. Cheese's," says Sanchez, a 25-year-old single mom from San Marcos, California, just outside San Diego. "We were watching a puppet show when all of a sudden a military song is playing in the background. I thought that was weird but kept watching. A couple of minutes later, all of us were looking at pictures on a TV screen of people in the Army giving food and supplies to kids in Iraq. My friends and I thought that was really weird--and got out."

from truthout
(another very biased source)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090205C.shtml

When the birthday party settled into eating pizza and birthday cake, a second feature began. A series of large screen TVs came to life to show Chuck E. Cheese TV. The program was, at first, MTV-like. Performers in large animal garb sang and danced through an idyllic scene with herons and alligators. A man clad in a blazing yellow shirt and red vest skipped across the screen, singing and snapping his fingers to the lively music. The scene shifted to a person dressed in a dog costume fishing in the lake with 3- and 4-year-old children and then shifted again from pictures of the children to mothers holding small babies. Although it was disjointed and a bit crazed, it was what one might expect at Chuck E Cheese.
Then my jaw dropped: the MTV segment shifted to a promotional piece compiled by the Department of Defense! The promo showed happy, smiling soldiers in Iraq handing out toys and candies to delighted children. This was followed by a series of scenes showing war planes, tanks and more happy soldiers. This production lasted for 5 minutes of the 15-minute CEC TV show. Throughout the segment, the large animated puppets' eyes shifted toward the TV as they nodded in approval and clapped. Then their eyes shifted back to the children, who were spellbound by the movie

from:
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/14303/index2.html
(here's one that sounds legit, but seems like a second-hand account when you read it!)

"Intelligencer: September 12-19, 2005"

Chuck E. Cheese Wants You
Is the military targeting the birthday- party set?
Last week, members of the Park Slope Parents Association were alerted to a new threat: Republicans bearing pizza. The mother of a 3-year-old reported that she was shocked to see “promo films for military recruitment” playing at her local Chuck E. Cheese’s. The 500 franchises of the amusement-park-like pizzeria were screening a two-minute montage of smiling soldiers handing out toys and candy to Iraqi kids (set to “America the Beautiful”). According to Chuck E. Cheese’s VP of marketing Dick Huston, this segment, created from footage donated by the Defense Department, began showing at the chain around July 4. “There was no firing of weapons,” notes Huston. “It was meant to honor our troops and the humanness of what is occurring. It is a nice, innocent piece. It’s pretty warm.” Still, customers complained that this was inappropriate for a child’s birthday party. “I guess people could interpret it as prowar, but we support what our troops are doing over there—helping kids.” So is Chuck Republican? “We don’t know what he is.”
—Shana Liebman

I guess I also have trouble seeing the harm in it, so they show some soldiers and airmen at work. (not at work, work, but you know, filling up gas tanks, etc) so whats the big deal?
When I was a kid I watched MASH, so what?

The thing that is most interesting of course, is I don't think anybody ever really did this! I think it was all a lie.

Maybe its because I just watched "Shattered Glass" (great movie, watch it)

Certainty

2005-11-05T22:32:00.000-05:00

Certainty is horseshit.

There are those who are comforted by certainty.

I am comforted by the absence of certainty, to a degree.

I like knowing with a high degree of certainty that absent is spelled a b s e n t, that the square of 12 is always 144, and mail doesn't come on Sunday.

Certainty is most often available when the subject is man-made. spelling, math, mail, religion, these are the domain of certainty.

Reality is uncertain. Truth is uncertain. The craving for certainty is a weakness, it is a laziness of the mind that leads us away from truth.

If I said all that as if I was certain of it, it's because I am.

I'm also certain Saturday Night Live will provide me with about 1 minute of entertainment and 84 minutes of mind-bending boredom.

I'll watch it anyway.

Black Eyed Peas should be deported

2005-11-05T22:10:00.000-05:00

I have heard the new single by the Black Eyed Peas. It's called "my humps" and it is a crime

If you have the misfortune of hearing this alleged music, remember, this is not a joke. They are able to spit out those lyrics with a straight face. If it were a joke, it would be too over the top to be funny. Nobody would believe weird al if he spoofed something and it came out like this.

So, I move we deport them. They are clearly "with the terrorists."
Send them to

Oh I don't care, just send them somewhere where they can't record any more "music"

Here's a sampling-
Cos of my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.

Democrats find some guts!

2005-11-01T22:07:00.000-05:00

I know, none of you like the political stuff, but I have to hit it now and then. I'ts part of my contract. I promise we can talk about celebrity gossip next time. (did you hear about Britney and her husband? 6 weeks with a baby and they want to break up? what swamp did these people crawl out of?)

So, back to politics, today was a big day in washington, the senate Democrats are finally pointing out that the lies that led to our nation into war were just that, LIES. Finally! I am pleased that somebody is finally standing up and calling it like it is. There were exactly how many nukes in Iraq? How about chemical weapons? Anthrax?

It has become clear now that the republican administration flat-out lied to us. We have to attack Iraq because they're gonna nuke New York. Turns out, they didn't even have a decent airplane. Why were we supposed to be terrified again?

Finally somebody is willing to really "support the troops." I know some of the "troops," we don't call them troops, we call them John and Scott and Matthew. And I don't think supporting them means sending them somewhere they never should have been sent on some half-brained mission that couldn't be accomplished in 10 years let alone six months. Do you remember them saying we'd be out in 6 months tops?

Predictably the republicans cried foul:

“The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership,” said Majority Leader Bill Frist during the tense hours on Capitol Hill. “They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas.”

No convictions? Right, actually, they don't even have any indictments!

Fristy is currently being investigated as to whether he used his position in the senate to make laws that profited his family business. Thats principled, in a way, right?

Is it principled to commit the worst of all crimes? Unneccessary war is the worst crime there is. People, who, it turns out, we had no right to attack, are dead by the thousands today. Our young men and women are fighting right now in a place they should never have been sent. How many thousands more of our brothers and sisters will die for this? How much worse off is the world today? Iraq?

What was the point?

I am delighted to see the actual leadership of the democratic party saying what should have been said in 2002. What thinking people were saying in 2002,

Reid accused Republicans of playing upon post-9/11 fears as grounds for going to war.
“Obviously we know now their nuclear claims were wholly inaccurate,” he said. “But more troubling is the fact that a lot of intelligence experts were telling the Administration then that its claims about Saddam's nuclear capabilities were false.”

It's about time. This time, when they try to shout you down and say that you embolden our enemies, tell them to "bring it on." What do you think encourages our enemies more? Reasonable debate among our leaders or lying to ourselves and the entire world about our justification for bombing people and invading their country?

Democrats should grow a pair

2005-10-31T23:07:00.000-05:00

I know next to nothing about the latest pic for the supreme court. I do know that Rod Parsley and the other unchristian jerks running the "pro-family" wing of the republican party are in love with him.

So, I am against him.

Let's face it, the time is now. GWB has never been weaker. If the democrats stick together on this one, and even filibuster if they have to, they can win.

If they don't, well, we don't know. It could be really bad, or not so bad. But really, who cares? GWB gets to pick someone, whoever it is will be terrible for the country. Everything else he has done was terrible for the country, so why should this be any different?

The point, if there is one, is to win. You don't get into politics because you like to lose. Get out there and show us you have a backbone, then maybe the rest of the country won't think democrats are a bunch of namby-pambies. And when the republicans say you're not being fair, don't let that scare you. NOBODY believes them any more.
(except for "the base" ... do you know how to say that in arabic? - al qaeda.)

Face it, you basically gave away the last two presidential elections, you could have fought, but you didn't object to the election results, "for the good of the country," or some other horseshit. Do you think Karl Rove does anything "for the good of the country?" Do you think Tom Noe was stealing money from the workers comp fund in ohio and giving it to GWB "for the good of the country?" Hell no, and it's about time you weasels get your act together and fight.

If you win this fight, maybe you'll win the next election.
Strength is attractive, people like strength. Remember when they all thought GWB was a "strong leader?"

Who do you think you are, Ghandi? MLK? Jesus?

Well you ain't, so get up and fight before they step on you (us) again.

When in Rome... Don't buy a fishbowl

2005-10-30T02:59:00.000-05:00

In a victory for the morons at PETA, the city of Rome has outlawed goldfish bowls. I couldn't make this up...

Karin Robertson, of the Fish Empathy Project (I'm not kidding) commented:

"Rome stands out for recognising that fish are interesting individuals who deserve our respect and compassion every bit as much as dogs and cats and other animals,"

Seems that fishbowls don't provide enough oxygen for goldfish to fully self-actualize. I'd like to mention that I had Beta that lived in a fishbowl for about 3 years. Seemed ok for him. He may even still be alive, I gave him to my housemate when I moved, but in fairness, by then he'd moved into a regular fish tank.

Ever notice how all the idiots at PETA have English/American names?

The revolution will be announced with paid advertising

2005-10-30T02:27:00.000-05:00

World can't wait, a very anti-bush group has called a general strike for Nov 2, and advertising it on the radio. I've heard their ads on Air America. It's basically a young woman reading a script like it's beat poetry, actually a terrible ad.

Anyway, the gist of the ad is to take the day off on Nov 2 and go shout at somebody in power. (I said SHOUT, not shoot)

Here in Columbus they have a whole day of marching planned. In Albuquerque, the other place I call home, theres a much more (typical for burque) relaxed day planned, they'll be standing around the courthouse, waving signs, probably start around noon, take a break at 2, finish up around 4...

World Can't Wait has been demonstrating in front of the white house for a while now, but you wouldn't hear about it, not even on google news! Remember the big anti-war rally on September 24? You dont? Oh, yeah that's because it wasnt on the news. And if you saw it on the news, you were told that a few hundred "slackers and hippies" who don't "support the troops" were out burning flags and stuff. (at least 150,000 well-behaved, orderly Americans, by police estimate)

Well I wish them luck, but I'll be at work on Wednesday, I don't have time for that kind of thing. Most of us don't, that's why we have elections. (here in Ohio, because of some bizarre state rule, the election is on the 8th this year)

It is Ohio. I wonder if they'll count the votes this time?

DeLaying Justice

2005-10-24T21:53:00.000-04:00

Sorry, I just couldn't help myself.

By now I'm sure you've heard that Tom DeLay's lawyers have filed a motion to get a change of venue. You haven't? What? Don't you follow Texas politics? Better than baseball any day.

They're saying that Judge Bob Perkins isn't fit to judge the case, since he gave $5,185 to democratic candidates and groups in the last five years. Of course, the State of Texas, represented by prosecutor Ronnie Earle, disagrees.

What to do?

Ask another judge of course!

But who, praytell could make such a decision?

The decision on how to handle the recusal hearing will be made by regional administrative Judge B.B. Schraub, a Republican who has administered the 3rd Judicial District since 1990. He has donated $5,900 to Texas Republican candidates since 2000, according to the Texas Ethics Commission. He made $1,250 in donations to President Bush's campaign in the 2000 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics database. - Houston Chronicle

Ahem... Let's think this through, Judge Perkins can't give a fair ruling on the case because he gave money to democrats, not opponents of Tom DeLay, just democratic causes in general. But Judge Schraub, who has given even more money to republicans, he has no conflict of interest.

Now its clear.

Oh no you don't

2005-10-21T14:04:00.000-04:00

Michael J. Clarkson, Jr:
For the record, in case anyone asks we actually live in a Republic, not a Democracy...(laughing while running away from the hail of bullets from the Democrats...oh wait, Democrats support gun control (which to me means using both hands) *LOL*.)

Hold on a minute, I grew up in the west, and while some of the coastal Democrats may be in favor of "gun control" (and seeing how poorly people shoot out there, I dont blame them) but you know as well as I do that nobody and I mean NOBODY between the Missisippi and the Colorado rivers wants to take away your guns.

Thats just another canard floated by Rush, hereafter known as Fatman, and Hannity, who we will call the Boy Blunder.

Even the east-coast Democrats are really just interested in being able to excercise their right to pass local and state laws that regulate the ownership of firearms, and in heavily populated cities, keeping track of gun ownership is actually not such a bad idea.

I heard that crap on the radio my whole life, and I'll tell you, I don't know a single (male) Democrat that doesnt love his guns.

During the last election season, I had a church lady (one of my clients) tell me that if I voted for Kerry, not only would gay marriage be legal (she seemed to think that meant it was mandatory) but Kerry would personally come and take my guns away. When I asked where she got her info from, she hemmed and hawed but it came down to her church.

And for you wackos out there who think it's going to protect you from the government, are you kidding? Do you have a tank? Saddam had thousands of tanks, do you think your piddly little machine-gun is going to protect you? Granted, there was a time when a militia was essential to the maintainance of a free state. That time is long since past. Unless you have a bomb, you aren't even going to get the attention of the US government. (and I am firmly in favor of bomb control)

Which brings me to another question. Why is the right wing even able to exist? Think about it.
Who does the right wing represent?

In order of power:
1 The Business Lobby
2 Fundamentalist Christians
3 The NRA (lots of crossover with groups 1 and 2)
4 Misguided fools who believe they are still members of the party of Goldwater.

Why does anybody who takes Christianity seriously even remotely interested in owning an automatic firearm? Or even a pistol for that matter. I don't know anybody who needs a 13 round clip to hunt deer (maybe on the east coast, we discussed how bad their aim is) and although I know people who think its cool to hunt bear with a pistol, they're stupid. My point is, that most firearms are actually designed to kill people. A sidearm or an automatic rifle have no other real value, and I don't think that hot lead is the best way to love your enemy, or turn the other cheek, but maybe I just misundertsood the entire New Testament.

But the real problem, as I see it (no it isn't that I can't seem to shut up) is the unholy alliance between the business lobby and the fundamentalist christians. Their interests are just too far apart. Business is by far the more powerful group, and it's interests would seem to be in stark opposition to "christian values."

Maybe that's why you get such wierd hybrid ideas, like "we have to destroy the planet faster so Jesus will come," or "We have to push Israel into war with the arab states so Jesus will come" Or just about anything that is good for business and can b e paired up with "so Jesus will come."

I could go on, you know I could, but I've got to go pick up the NY times (you know the "left-wing" rag that just found out one of it's reporters was a Republican operative?)
Whatever, Its still the BEST newspaper in the country, but like any paper, you have to take everything you read with a grain of salt. (a lot less salt however than is needed with tv or radio news.)

OK, wife and child are leaving the building , have to go.

Why Rod Parsley is a jerk

2005-10-19T18:04:00.000-04:00

You all know what I think of Rod Parsley, but here's another reason to hate this guy.

This summer, Rod Parsley, pastor of New Harvest World Church in Canal Winchester, whose sermons are broadcast on 1,400 television stations nationwide, published a best-selling book, “Silent No More.”

Parsley wrote that, “Allah is a demon spirit,” Islam is “a flawed religion,” and “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed.” Among his friends and supporters, Parsley counts Ohio Secretary of State and 2006 gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell. - Columbus Messenger

Can you believe a politician of any stripe would be seen with this guy? I hope everybody in Ohio realizes the likely republican candidate for governor is good friends with this divisive twit.

Ok I hate Rod Parsley. Glad I got that out.

Another thing that happened this week, I was at a chamber of commerce lunch, and a young republican-looking guy got up to explain to us how we should vote in the next election, and while he was talking, he kept referring to the "Democrat Party." Man that chaps my hide. It's not the Democrat party. Its the Democratic party. A person who is a member of the Democratic party is referred to as a Democrat. I have heard this misuse of the english language so often that I am beginning to believe its one of the coded messages we hear so much about.
- Maybe saying "democrat party" gets you into the special republican clubs.
- Maybe its a very sophisticated propaganda technique that the always-on-message right wing are using to disassociate the Democrats from the word democratic, which of course, in a democracy, might be taken to be a good thing.
- Maybe I am just a picky jerk who hates the misuse of the english language. (or more accurately, what I believe to be the misuse of the language.)

Well there's one thing I'm sure of, and that's Rod Parsley is a jerk. I've never heard him refer to democrats that way- wait -there was one time, but I dont think he said democrat party, it was more like demonic party...

Lipogram

2005-10-18T22:16:00.000-04:00

Thanks to D.P. for da lowdown on lipograms, I thought I'd try it. It's hard, but worth trying.

Saddam is going on trial, facing his own annihilation at last. I actually had pity for him, just for a bit. His solicitors say it's not fair. It probably isn't. A month of Sundays in kangaroo court, and on to gallows. Or IV?

I think most of us would want his trial to occur in a usual locality, but Dutch courts sound much too busy nowadays, and wouldn't kill him anyway.

But on TV, rich and famous still distract us from our anguish, our complications simplify, lit from on high by radiant floodlights of pop nobility. No kings for us, no gods, only idols, skinny, stupid, and rich.

Shiver me timbers!

2005-10-14T17:31:00.000-04:00

Coverage in the news of Somali pirates hijacking aid ships led me to look into piracy in general. Turns out, Somalia is pretty bad right now, but there are actual pirates operating all over the world, especialy in the south pacific and around africa.

First off, to hell with Somalia. Stop sending them aid. The World Food Program said it would withold all aid from Somalia unless their ship MV Semlow was released. rumor has it that they also paid a ransom for the ship and it's crew. Last week, another of their ships, the MV Togelow was hijacked, and was released this week, probably after another payoff.

So our aid program, the food that the compassionate people of the world give to help out the people of Somalia who are suffering through a difficult time, this is being stolen, held for ransom, along with the people we hired to take it to your crappy little country? I say cut them off.

And where are they getting the money for all these guns and RPGs? Who are they buying them from?
(this, it turns out is sort of an open secret)
YEP, its the very same nations who try to send food. the US, France, UK, Russia, China, We send guns, then we send food, and complain when they use the guns to steal the food.

So let me revise my earlier statement:
To hell with Somalia, stop sending them guns and ammunition.

No More Pies!

2005-10-11T00:10:00.000-04:00

Self-hating humans chuck bean curd at skeleton-woman
From SFGate:
Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour was attacked with a tofu pie this weekend when anti-fur demonstrators turned on her at Paris' fashion week.

Dan Matthews, vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the attack was instigated by the magazine's decision to run advertisements for fur-based clothing -- despite their offer of matching the fee in return for PETA anti-fur advertisements.

Throwing pies is stupid. Yes it's funny, but as political statements go, it sucks. Nobody is going to give up fur because you threw a pie. On the other hand, it's not the same as punching somebody in the face. It got you in the papers for a few days, but nobody is impressed. If you had the money to advertise in Vogue and they said no, well take your money elsewhere, I'm sure some other national magazines will take your ads... but after seing the handbills your people pass out in crowds downtown, I think the problem may be in presentation.

Throwing Tofu pies is extra stupid. Are you worried about offending a cow?

But all that is beside the point!
(yes I have a point, it may be a litte dull, but it'll do)

At some level, we civilized folk try to ignore the fact that we live on earth, where every living thing eats other living things in a never-ending cycle of "now I eat you, now you eat me." This has been the state of affairs here forever, and no vegans or Jains or other nutballs are going to change the fact.

It is this simple fact, this horrific fact of life, that so many of us refuse to look at, and lacking any symbols to guide us, having discarded the myths of our ancestors as superstition, and found nothing new to take their place, some people become self-destructive when they finally force themselves to look, and denying life itself, they refuse to participate in the horror.

So they throw tofu pies.

Boy George?

2005-10-09T23:30:00.000-04:00

This guy is what, 65? I think "Boy" George is a bit of a misnomer at this point. We ought to call him Oldie-but-still-weirdie George. Or perhaps Sneezy O'drughabit George?

The Daily Mail (where the news thats not fit to print can be found) headline reads:

Boy George faces battle to save career
Boy George has flown back to Britain after being charged with possessing cocaine in the United States.

What career? Culture club had 2 songs. Sure they probably made more, but I only know of 2, and if you can name more than that, you're probably weird.

Human rights lawyer Mark Stephens said: "Boy George is innocent until proved guilty but if he's found guilty it could have major implications for him to be allowed into the US. He would effectively be excluded.

His lawyer calls him Boy George? The guy is 44, but with all the clean living, he looks like hes 70. Can we please at least call him Man-George?

Silent birth - or just because you're rich doesnt mean you're not a moron

2005-10-09T01:42:00.000-04:00

Scientologists are an odd bunch of ducks. L. Ron Hubbard was a famous crook and a terrible writer, but somehow the overpaid glitterati are drawn to his (very expensive) religion.

What a surprise, actors and pop stars fall for simple ego-stroking schemes that relieve them of their money by the truckload. I am sooo in the wrong business. Kabalology anyone?

Well, speaking of overpaid actors, you may remember the guy from risky business? He's really short and a total ass? Thinks vitamins cure depression? Yep, he's knocked up his girlfriend, Katie Holmes.

ITN Reports:

Under the rules of Scientology Katie will have to suffer labour in silence.

The organisation believes pregnant women must not scream during labour as it is apparently traumatic for babies.

And the former Dawson's Creek star better get practising with her breathing as Scientology also frowns upon the use of painkillers.

So, there you have it folks, You pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the secrets to happiness, then you're told to push out an 8 pound baby without making a sound.

My wife gave birth recently, and man did she holler. Call me irreligious, but I think it would have been a real bad idea to tell her to shut up just then.

42%

2005-10-06T22:17:00.000-04:00

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted July 7-17 among 2,000 adults, also finds deep religious and political differences over questions relating to evolution and the origins of life. Overall, about half the public (48%) says that humans and other living things have evolved over time, while 42% say that living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Fully 70% of white evangelical Protestants say that life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time... and a substantial minority (38%) favors replacing evolution with creationism in public school curricula.

Are you really this stupid? creationism is not a valid point of view. You can believe in it if you want, but please don't dumb down the schools any more. The US used to be 1st in science, math, you name it, now we have almost half the population believing some fairy-story about how species never change.

WHY???? Because Rod Parsley told you ? Because you think it's part of some amorphous faith, and if you don't accept every single tenet of this lunacy you'll be condemned to eternal damnation? Are you really so gullible?

Faith is ok for some people, I understand that some folks get a big kick out of Jesus. However, to deny the evidence before your eyes, to say that white is black and black is white, this is not faith, it is idiocy.

It does not take any faith at all to know that species change over time. Anyone can see it for himself with a look around. Take for instance, our friend the dog.

As a boy, I had a dog, his name was sarge, he was a german shepherd. German shepherds did not exist before 1900. That's right, we even know the name of the german who first created the breed from one (very good) male dog and several (pretty good) female dogs. Does your religion require that you deny any historical record, no matter how well documented that doesn't fit in your fairy-tale?

If, as a small boy, I was able to understand breeding, or artifical selection, then after thinking a little bit, grok the whole idea of natural selection, why do 42% of you not get it? Have you never had a dog?

German shepherds exist, therefore species change over time.
Horses...
Laboratory mice...

Influenza, cattle, pigmy goats, pot-bellied pigs....

Not worried? 42% of any given jury (70% in the bible belt) may decide to disregard clear DNA evidence proving that you are innocent, because it's just some scientific mumbo-jumbo that the devil uses to trick you.

Stretch and Brownie and Turd-blossom, Oh my!

2005-10-01T19:37:00.000-04:00

I have a dream... no, it's not as big and important as MLK's dream. No, it's not that kind of dream at all. I have a dream that one day soon, the Bush-Butt-Kissing squad at Fox News will start to use W's pet nicknames when reporting the news....

"You're watching Fox News Live, I'm Lauren Green. Today in Washington, Bushie announced that Guru and Big Time will be traveling to Moscow for a meeting with Pootie-Poot, then on to London for a meeting with Landslide.

Former Secretary of State Balloonfoot has been nominated to take over the management of FEMA, replacing the embattled Brownie, who after vicious partisan attack from the radical left, graciously stepped down from his post to bring an outsider's view to the investigation of what went wrong with the evacuation of New Orleans.

In a surprise announcement, Dubya has tapped Fredo to be his next nominee to the supreme court. Ali and Senator both announced today that they would filibuster his nomination if necessary.

In other news, Hads, Speak, Hutch, Pedro, both Action Jacksons and Stretch held a press conference today condemning the attacks on The Blade, The Hammer, Fristy, and Turd Blossom, calling for a more civil political discourse and an "end to the politics of personal destruction."

"And lets go live to Julie Banderas, reporting live from Washington."

"Thanks, Lauren, Here with me today is Congressman Kick-ass, Congressman, do you have a comment on today's homicide bombing?"

"Yes, Julie, Dubya has a strategery to..."

"I'm sorry Julie, we have to break in, we have breaking news, Turd Blossom has been Indicted. In what is clearly a partisan attack, Turd Blossom has been indicted for the alleged outing of an alleged CIA agent, allegedly named Valerie Plame. Let's go to Greg Jarrett for a live update from the courthouse- Greg?"

"That's Gregg, Lauren, get it right.- I spell it with 2 G's for a reason. Pronounce it right you vapid meat-puppet. Yes, word has just come down that in addition to Turd Blossom, Scooter has also been indicted in this obviously partisan attack."

"We have to break for commercial, Thanks for watching Fox News Live, I'm Lauren Green."

Why?????? WHY can't the leader of the free world remember anybody's name? Is it a power-trip? He can't be bothered to learn your name so he just gives you a new one?

At least we know why he's always so giggly, always smiling.

Barbara Antoinette?

2005-09-18T22:28:00.000-04:00

What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivleged anyway, so this is working very well for them." Barbara Bush, Public Radio program "Marketplace" Sept 5, 2005

Yeah, Babs, I'm sure it's just rosy for these "underpriveledged." Homes destroyed, bodies to identify, funerals to arrange and attend, you know, it's really nice for them to sleep on a cot in the astrodome.

I know it's difficult to relate to people who never enter into your social circle, but at least pretend you do. Pretend that you have compassion for your fellow human beings. Don't say you're afraid they may move to your state. Here where I live, all the good people I know are working to help people resettle here, we're not afraid of them. It isn't scary to us.

All I am asking from you plutocrats is this-

Just pretend to care about the rest of us, pretend to speak to us as your equals. Pretend we are more than just huddled masses in your eyes. Pretend, if only for a moment while the cameras are rolling, that you can see yourself in our place, "but for the grace of God..." and all that.

Racism and propaganda

2005-09-18T19:59:00.000-04:00

Recently we at jcreadsthenews were able to conduct an experiment. DP (also known as Delicious Pandemonium) is a very left-wing reader and volunteered for our experiment. First, we removed her from her normal media environment, then took her journal entries from her return.

DP's normal media environment consists of Democracy Now! and Air America on the radio, various internet sources for news. (NO TV!)

To Remove DP from her media coccoon, we sent her to Switzerland for 2 weeks in the alps. Upon her return, we stole her journal. Here is an account of her re-entry into American culture.

Because I was out of the country when Hurricane Katrina hit I was
removed from the initial fervor of the first five days. I saw the images on TV,
but I had just seen tons of coverage of the floods in Switzerland. It was
just another flood. It seemed pretty bad, but I was far away and it was just
another one of the bad American activities.

In the Atlanta airport I waited for my plane facing the large windows
to observe the tarmac and sunlight. I tried to read but there was too much
hub bub. I heard a man from the Black Caucus saying the lack of response to
Hurricane Katrina's demolition was a race issue. Oh boy, back in the US
of A, I thought and nearly rolled my eyes. I doubted that race had any
bearing on natural disaster. Though I'm a bleeding heart lefty I thought this
was far fetched and that waving the finger around and screaming Racism was
inappropriate. Apparently in the Atlanta airport I had yet to fully
understand the situation.
You see how the mind works here, the subject was not "understanding" the
situation correctly at that time. Later, after successful re-entry into
her media sphere, she has this experience:
I made the mistake of falling asleep at 6:30PM, after returning home
from my temp. receptionist job. Upon awakening, I realized what has
happened in New Orleans. I woke up thinking of the images I saw and
that no onewith helicopters or boats came to these people's rescue
over all those days. I woke up with this dawning on me and I grew
horrified. Were all those people left to die because of the color of
their skin? It's too horrible. The external influence of news reminded
me to blame Bush, but inside I don't. There are chains of command all
over this country. There is a police force in Tennessee, Kentucky, etc.
and I know there are people in these chains who have a conscience.
Where were all the people with the power to say: send rescue teams,
send food, send water... are they all under the influence
of their chains? Maybe their helicopters don't fly that far.
Here the subject actually recognizes the "external" influence of her media
environment, and feels pressure from it to "blame Bush."   Notice also the
subject's cognitive dissonance- DP is being told it's racism, but finds it
difficult to believe.  You can feel this tension in the entry- logically, DP
reasons, there were people all over who had the ability to help, did they just
stay home?  Is DP able to find any mention of anybody helping these hurricane
victims in her normal, everyday media environment?

Not without actively pursuing the question- difficult to do in an airport, or
while working at an ass-flattening, soul-sucking job.

I believe most Americans will take the news as it is fed to them.  Meaning, they
will believe that people died because of racist policy, or if they get their news
from the other end of the radio, that Hurricane Katrina was a just punishment from
a righteous G-d who heard there was going to be a gay pride event the following
week in New Orleans.  Or whatever their favorite "news" source tells them to
think.

Poverty and racisim

2005-09-18T00:00:00.000-04:00

Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. Almost all the people who live there, be they black or white, are terribly poor. Poverty is America's great divide, not race, not religion. It's poverty.

I've been down that way, in Mississippi and Louisiana, and I know that what I think of as my lowest point financially would be a step up for many of the people there.

I know a little bit about living in poverty, not having a car, getting up an hour early to ride the bus to work, picking which bills to pay each month, turning off the AC in July because the electric bill was unpayable. I know how hopeless it feels, how you can never seem to get ahead.

I know that the life of a person doing temp jobs or day-labor, even call center and office work is just a new formulation of a very old social situation. Serfs, peones, temps, day laborers, customer service representatives, indentured servants, what is the difference?

But wait, modern laborers are "free." Free how? Free to walk away, but also not free, bound by social pressure, by morality and practicality. Workers today are free to quit their jobs whenever they want, if they don't mind being evicted from their homes, harassed by collection agents, (who are themselves caught in the same predicament) and put through the often humiliating process of finding work.

How are poor Americans kept in this perpetual state of servitude? Surely they could work together and demand some simple social supports, unions and social democratic parties in Europe have stood up for workers and made life more bearable for those citizens who aren't highly educated, wealth-generating, top-ten-percenters. Why not here? Because here in America, we have several different colors of poor people, and they all hate each other.

That's why we hear Kanye West saying "George Bush doesn't care about black people." It's just not true, George Bush probably cares quite a bit about Condoleeza Rice, and maybe even cares a little bit about Colin Powell, and I'm pretty sure they qualify as "black people."

It wasn't racism that screwed up the evacuation of New Orleans, it was the inability of the ruling classes to understand the situation. They were simply unable to imagine people who didn't own cars. They gave the order to evacuate, (again) and didn't understand that thousands of people who wanted to leave simply couldn't.

In America, we have reached a day where a man no longer judged by the color of his skin, but rather, by the content of his bank account.

Hit the baby (one more time)

2005-09-17T23:09:00.000-04:00

Britney is delivered. She pussed out (so to speak) on the kabala-water-birth, and went for a c-section-and-tummy-tuck/liposuction on Wednesday. My (due-date-monday) wife is pissed. Now I have to send back all the damn kabala water and schedule the surgeon.

Speculation on the new trailer park prince's name:
Stuff.co.nz reports:

On Wednesday, Britney Spears, 23, and her husband Kevin Federline, 27, became parents to a baby boy who will probably be called Sean Preston Spears Federline, or maybe London, according to random speculation by the world's media.

Since it's still just random speculation, I suggest Tomato. It's fruity, like Apple, but can be shortened to Tom when he has to go to the trailer park to visit grandma.

There are a lot of people who revel in Britney's extra weight, such as Electric New Paper

But now that the pregnancy is over, a hard slog lies ahead if she is to reclaim her place in showbiz royalty.

In the run-up to the birth, speculation about her career was rife amid a torrent of unflattering photos in the tabloids.

For many, chubby Britney seemed to be doing her best imitation of a beached whale. The Toxic singer was reported to have gained 23kg during her pregnancy (the average weight gain during pregnancy is 11 to 15kg).

Then they link to this picture --->

to show how fat she is. WTF??? I know I have seen that little heiffer a lot bigger than that.

And Sify has the brat's horoscope up, providing us with insights such as:

According to his birth-chart, with his moon being in Aquarius, he will have a natural flair for radio and television, and will have plenty of money

Lots of money? Wow, you're really going out on a limb there.

The thing that is most disturbing, and I think explains a lot about why the rest of the world hates America is this- these posts come from all over the world.

It's official. Britney is the public face of the USA.

Priceless

2005-09-14T00:32:00.000-04:00

Yes, It's real.

I actually got flamed on an 11 year old girl's blog today. Check it out Here

Kali is a young girl who wants to be a singer / dancer, she posted on Americablog saying:

you all need to grow up! Democrats suck! You are insane. How many people do you think they actually poll in those things!? Those things are like the little pop up polls you get on your computer,they didn't poll the whole country! Plus, why would you want to get out of iraq? I know,so that maybe we could all get bombed,that would be fun,spread peace huh? Ya, I'm sure that all those wicked evil people would love that,I'm sure they would put down their weapons and give us all hugs.I wish. America is free,and we didn't get and keep that way by backin' down,givin' up with out a fight.If you say that America is just out lookin' for a fight and after 9/11 I'd have to say your right. If you mess with America,if you mess with the big dog. We'll stick a boot up your ass,simple as that. Go to Canada, chickens.

Clearly I wanted to respond, but when I figured out she was a little girl, I tried to go a little easier on her. After all, in a few years she'll be shouting just as hard for the other side. I am sure this young lady has only ever got her news from Sean Hannity, so I posted to her blog, hoping to demonstrate that not all "liberals" are whatever they say we are over on Fox.

Along comes Archangel to straigten me out. I felt Archangel was getting a little too snippy for my comfort on a child's blog, so I invited him here for discussion.

Here you go Archangel, Let's hear more about how I am an apologist for an ideology of hate.