Fresh Catch

In the Open

2009-05-05T09:45:00.003-05:00

Well, well, well...a Western country - not the Netherlands - has a progressive approach to drug criminalization, and after 5 years, it's effective. In 2001, Portugal removed all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Drug use has declined in all age groups, and so has HIV transmission from sharing dirty needles. Rather than giving jail time, therapy is recommended. Certainly the momentum for de-criminalizing drug possession (and sale)is gaining in the United States, where proponents argue that getting everything out in the open is the only way to beat the so-called war on drugs.

I make mention of this, not only because I support it, but because there's another very touchy subject that just needs to be brought out in the open - illegal immigration. It is beyond time to create a system that tracks the 13 million illegals (who knows how accurate that is) living and working in the United States. It's a ridiculous elephant in the room that we have somehow let the right control this debate. There really isn't a debate - we need to know who these people are. That doesn't mean make them US citizens - that's ridiculous. But purposely keeping them unknown is also giving them amnesty. People on the right need to see that - a wall around the border is NOT going to stem the flood of immigrants into the country, and neither is piecemeal, half-assed immigration legislation. It's just unfortunate that Obama inherited one of the biggest messes in history, and this issue will probably remain in the hopper. But we're long past the debate of what to do with the immigrants - bar none, we need to know who they are, and if you de facto criminalize them...well, good luck in finding out who they are. Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone, our country is enriched with the Latino influence!

Smells Like Armegeddon

2008-12-09T19:31:00.003-06:00

He has no idea how bad it is out there! He has no idea!

Most of us are familiar with Cramer's proclamation that Armageddon has arrived, but I was thinking about it today at the gym. Most market watchers laughed when Cramer scared the pants off his lovely co-host last year with this performance. They denied the possibility that the sub-prime toxin could spread - they denied the possibility that our sacred investment system could implode as a result.

So I started to wonder today... Why aren't people in the media raising alarms? I read a blog like The Automatic Earth and I fear that I don't have enough time to prepare myself for The New Depression. Yet I watch CNBC or CNN and stories concerning the collapsing economy seem distant, as if they are discussing the collapse of the Faukland Island markets.

Why aren't Hell's Cheerleaders preparing us for a Major Recession? Either they believe the crazy shit that spews out of their mouths, or something worse. They know it's too late for people to prepare, or that revealing the truth will cause widespread panic. I survived the Hurricane Rita evacuation and lost everything I had in Hurricane Ike. I've seen a few million people clean out a city's reserves of food, gasoline, propane, and nearly everything else of "value". (There was a run on ammo, too.)

The truth? Food/Energy supplies will be interrupted. No new jobs will be created, though some workers will be shuffled. Credit won't be available. Security and healthcare services will be severely cut back. You may not find an emergency room if you are injured in a home invasion. Consider the city of Houston during the week after Ike. Now consider pockets of social unrest of that degree across the nation, perhaps the "civilized" world. Some may last a few days, others a few weeks, others longer...

We're entering dark days and the media puppets know it. I think Obama and his team are going to make a serious gamble - they don't want to cause a panic yet. He has two choices - put people to work through warfare or through "infrastructure repairs". I'm not sure either would work, but I guess he has to try something.

Meanwhile I'm sure I will continue watching the Cheerleaders of Constrainted Capitalism argue for the sanctity of The Free Market.

We're All Stars Now In The Car Show

2008-12-06T19:40:00.005-06:00

Love Is A Fire
Burns Down All That It Sees
Burns Down Everything
Everything You Think
Burns Down Everything
Everything You Say

I Knew That Our Love Was Just a Car Crash Away
-marilyn manson

I spent the day at a Houston-area Corvette Show today. A co-worker (and Vette owner) invited me to come see the cars and bear witness to the glorious consumption of petroleum product. Even though I decry the glorification of these machines, I'm a gear guy that loves to ogle. (I guess I should admit that I drive a Ford Mustang!)

The economy and the various bail outs were topic du jour, and many people I spoke with thought that this must be the end of the Horsepower Era. Surely the incoming Administration will invest money in light rail and other forms of public transportation - A Change Is Coming. Some spoke positively of this, others negatively. (OK it is Houston. Most of it was negative.)

Imagine my surprise when I get home and discover that Obama has revealed a 21st Century New Deal and the Democrats have figured out how to bail out the Big Three Autofakers. My Goodness, Christmas has come early! Except this deal is based on late 20th Century ideas and designed to propagate the unsustainable American Dream.

From the mouth of Change:

First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.
Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule – use it or lose it. If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money.

Third, my economic recovery plan will launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen. We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms. Because to help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.

As we renew our schools and highways, we’ll also renew our information superhighway. It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they’ll get that chance when I’m President – because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.

Now this is the change we were yearning (or yawning) for. We're getting new lightbulbs and performing general duct maintenance in Federal buildings. We'll build bigger, stronger, smarter roads. AND we're gonna install broadband in schools.

This is the change we needed in 1999, not 2009. Renewing our highways does not solve problems, it delays them to the next President. Renewing our highways provides a justification for the Big Three to continue building the inefficient gas guzzlers while offering worthless hybrid solutions. (It's only fitting that Barack drives a Ford Escape Hybrid - a meaningless token symbol that gets 30 mpg.) There's nothing in this deal that demands sacrifice of the pursuit of American Horsepower. Nothing in this deal that guarantees the sacrifice of the "smart" CEOs that destroyed the automotive, banking, energy, investment institutions.

But shouldn't we be thinking about the children and their inability to learn without broadband? In a word - NO. In two words - Hell NO. We could provide wi-fi to most Americans for the price of installing broadband in our schools. That would be a 21st century solution that would benefit every American instead of providing our little ADD slugs with more distractions. American kids aren't lagging behind in math and science because they can't access myspace. They lag behind because they have no reason to succeed. Why spend time learning calculus? Today's parents will gift you a cell phone, xbox, tv, athletic shoes, fast food, and gel hair products for achieving a 90% attendance rate.

Change is coming. At some point there will not be enough energy or legitimate money to support our lifestyle. (Or in the other words of Metallica - My lifestyle determines my deathstyle.) The real issue is how can we be prepared for that change? What's the use of roads when Venezuela decides to export crude to South America instead of North America? What's the benefit of broadband in our second grade classrooms when there is no money to pay teachers or run electricity to those fancy new lightbulbs?

Those guys at the Corvette Show were mistaken. The Era of American Horsepower isn't over. Now it's subsidized by the American taxpayer and guaranteed by the Obama Administration. Oh well, I didn't want to give up my Mustang anyway.

Those Damn Markets

2008-12-04T18:57:00.003-06:00

Back in 2002, before his appointment to Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke said that a government with a fiat currency could avoid deflation by printing as much money as necessary. He threatened to dump this money into throngs of seething, desperate peasants - much like the Joker in Tim Burton's Batman. However the citizens won't be reeling in clouds of toxic Smilex gas; they are smothered by mountains of toxic debt paper issued by the evangelists of The Free Market.

Well it appears that deflation is here even though Ben is stuffing cubic assloads of cash into anybody with a jacket embroidered with the name Goldman, Citi, Barclay, or Freddie. One might hope that a Dark Knight might crusade for Change and allow The Free Market to work it's wonders and miracles. That doesn't appear to be the case. Our Congressman are fighting each other who can write the bigger hot check for their core constituency.

We're heading into very dangerous territory. I can only hope that Big Ben finds that formula for Smilex. Because I'd rather go with a smile.

Back! Again.

2008-12-04T18:51:00.001-06:00

Yeah I had to take a little break from blogging. My job entered suck mode and I lost everything to a hurricane. But enough about me. Let's get back to complaining about everything else.

Phoenix

2008-11-17T21:50:00.000-06:00

This blog. Updates will return.

Misunderestimation

2007-08-02T15:12:00.000-05:00

Aggie Defense Secretary Robert Gates helps us look for a scapegoat today:

When the Bush administration decided to send the additional troops, [Gates] said, “we probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust, and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation, which, let’s face it, is not some kind of secondary issue.”
He was referring to the failure of Iraq’s parliament to pass legislation governing the distribution of oil revenue, to set a timetable for provincial elections or to ease work restrictions on former Baath party members — measures that the Bush administration considers crucial for reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Arabs in Iraq.

Why isn't the surge working? Obviously it's not our fault, it's the Iraqi government!

Yeah, this really rests of the shoulders of Iraq's leaders. The people who knew nothing about Western Democracy or Diplomacy are now failing to meet the standards of George Bush; a man whose political powers are a result of manipulated democracy and "cowboy" diplomacy. Our President has failed to pass any substantial legislation due to his extreme partisan governance, and we're supposed to be surprised that his Iraq Project is a failure in Democracy? Nobody estimated that this could happen? Nobody?

There are multiple reasons why the Iraq government is not capable of governing Iraq. They were taught to play the game by a varsity cheerleader. The Warpublicans generated the illusion of leadership with their moralistic, rah-rah "anti-Clinton" prepubescent adulation of the Bush Regime and then attempted to transplant their "vision" to a political vacuum. Iraq's government might have been able to overcome ethnic strife if they received the proper direction from a true representative of Democracy. Instead, their path was defined by a group of people who believed their Dear Leader was selected by God to prosecute the Wretched and spread the Word of Free Markets to the Middle East.

Sorry, Mr. Gates. It was easy to estimate the difficulties of the Iraqi political process if you lived outside of the Bush Bubble. And let me help you with a bit more estimation: The "Nation" of Iraq is cannot be reconciled at this point. The ethnic clans must separate for their own safety and we will be left with a new state defined by a series of virtual borders. Once the clans define their own identity they will seek to become a single state or merge with existing neighbor states. The idea of Iraq as a united nation is nothing more than a series of visions shared by our Dear Leader and his Warpublican Flock.

Continued Surginess

2007-08-01T17:29:00.000-05:00

Great news from Iraq today. The surge to continue progress toward sustainable stability has turned another corner.

Three bomb attacks in Baghdad today killed more than 65 people, as sectarian and militant violence continued to rage in Iraq.

Remember, violence indicates that the evil-doer's and the dead-ender's are in their last throes.

Meanwhile, the progress to surginess security stability continues to help the political forces in Iraq find common ground.

The Shiite-led government that is trying to cope with the violence, meanwhile, suffered a political setback today, when the largest Sunni Arab political bloc in the parliament followed through on a threat to walk out of the coalition cabinet that is trying to unify the country.

Remember, it's a good thing for a young democratic infrastructure to crack apart according to ethnic identity.

The evidence of surgtastic successory is evident in the word coming from the US Embassy:

[Phillip Reeker, spokesman for the US Embassy] expressed hope that Iraqi leaders would work to resolve their disputes over the Iraqi parliament’s month-long August vacation.

Yeah, a one month vacation from each other should bring these two parties together real soon! That's how things work in the Fantasy World of Surging Progress.

Unfortunately, it's not all good news in Iraq. The insurgents' car bomb ruined the paint job on a recently painted wall. Oh, the costs of war...

Sustainable Crisis

2007-07-30T12:40:00.001-05:00

The Warpublicans claim that we're surging ever so much closer to "sustainable stability". Meanwhile the people of Iraq are surging straight into a humanitarian crisis .

About 8 million Iraqis — nearly a third of the population — need immediate emergency aid because of the humanitarian crisis caused by the war, relief agencies said Monday.
Those Iraqis are in urgent need of water, sanitation, food and shelter, said the report by Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee network in Iraq.
The report said 15 percent of Iraqis cannot regularly afford to eat, and 70 percent are without adequate water supplies, up from 50 percent in 2003. It also said 28 percent of children are malnourished, compared with 19 percent before the 2003 invasion.

To be fair, this could be part of a brilliant Warpublican strategy to win over hearts and minds while starving the torsos and heads. Remember: a weak, malnourished terrorist is less likely to "follow us home" and attack us in our sleep. LOL!

The War? It's Very Much Fantastic.

2007-07-30T10:26:00.001-05:00

The NYTimes is running an op-ed today from the Brookings Institute that proves that not much has changed among the Liberal Hawks that sunk us in Iraq in the first place. Are we any closer to victory? Not necessarily...

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily "victory" but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

How cute is that? We already achieved the "victory" of removing Saddam from power and eliminating the threat of WMD proliferation from his government. The good folks at The New Republic and the Brookings Institute already celebrated that victory on an aircraft carrier with President Flyboy And His Stuffed Pantalones. Lacking an exit strategy, they're moving on to find the next victory or if that fails then they need to find that next sustainable metric that will stabilize and pacify their donors.

But I'm ignoring the fact that "we are finally getting somewhere in Iraq." Guess what, Ma? This war's packin' it's bags for the big city and movin' on up in this world!

So what's working in Iraq? Well, supposedly the Iraqis are rejecting Al Qaeda. You've heard of them, them's those angry folks that Bush is always talking about. Evidently the Iraqi folks weren't really exposed to Al Qaeda before and now they are rejecting them. Hooray for Progress! We're kinda sorta back to where we were when we started! And we're helping to provide basic services that the people of Iraq used to have! Now that's sustainable stability that everybody can enjoy! (*Providing that you aren't one of the million+ displaced.) Oh, and it appears that people that once lived as neighbors are kinda sorta actin' like neighborly folks again... except when they're killing each other.

When can we expect to achieve this "sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis can live with"? Well, let's not try to come up with a timetable for that one. And to be honest, we will eventually mark this down a bit lower. We just want to produce the image of a sustained stability that the Iraqis can theoretically live with and that we can use for cover before getting the heck out of town. And then when Iraq becomes a failed state in five, ten, or twenty years we'll read articles in The New Republic (now sponsored by The Brookings Institute!) about how we left Iraq in a state of sustainable stability but those folks didn't want to work hard enough to keep it.

GOP Scared of Youtube Users

2007-07-29T18:40:00.000-05:00

I didn't watch the CNN/Youtube Democrat Debate last week because today's "debates" seem like more of a Question and Answer session. The candidates get a few moments to deliver a pre-canned monologue, and then let their media personnel bark at each other after the debate. However, I do like the idea of choosing questions submitted by Youtube'rs because there is some potential to catch one or two candidates off-guard, and that provides a little bit of entertainment value to an otherwise pointless exercise. I guess that's why the Republicans are squirming away from this format...

The Rudy Giuliani campaign has cited scheduling conflicts in saying it will skip the Republican version of this week's Democratic debate, while Mitt Romney has mocked the seriousness of the questions and also seems likely to withdraw. John McCain, one of two candidates who had agreed to participate (Ron Paul is the other), has also expressed doubts about the Democratic debate's level of decorum and aides say he may reconsider his commitment.

The Republicans have a real problem when they attempt to move away from the script written by their media team. Consider George Allen; the man who said hello to a man at a rally by using a racial epithet. Or Mitt Romney; the man who held up a sign created by his supporter conflating Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden. Or Rudy Giuliani; the man who yelled 'Bullshit' at a rally in NYC.

Honestly, I think the Warpublicans should avoid this debate. There's no way they will be able to respond to the likes of Snowman, Santa Claus, or any other American that submits a video question to a website. Yeah, we can trust them to confront the menace of Al Qaeda anywhere, anytime. But seriously, there's no way they could confront a question from Youtube user Alkay-Duh2078. Truly, what Warpublican could?

Summer 2007 Top Toons

2007-07-21T16:27:00.002-05:00

I'll be linking up a new live techno mix in the very near future. Until then here's my Top Toons List to keep you satiated:
Christian Smith & John Selway - Transit Time
Frankie - Balance
Klartraum - Ghost
Pompelmoessap - Back Country
Woody McBride - Pslow
Joey Beltram - Orch7
Eric Sneo - Moving Rage
Eric Sneo - Break Up (Chris Liebing Remix)
Gabriel Ananda - Dopplewhipper (Supermayer Remix)
Bam Bam - Where's Your Child (Club Acid Mix)

Undeniable Cleavage

2007-07-20T11:10:00.001-05:00

Robin Givhan explores Hillary Clinton's bustline in a sensational piece in the Washington Post Fashion section today .

There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.
She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.

Can you believe it? Hillary's bosom has come out of hibernation. They poked their heads out and didn't see their shadow, and lo, our winter of denied Clinton Cleavage is now over. But something seems dirty about this cleavage experience. Should I be privy to this sight? Givhan explains this distressing event:

With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding -- being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.
To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d'oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable. And in matters of style, Clinton is as noncommittal as ever.

Yeah, that's it. I knew that I felt dirty, as if I was watching her cleavage through a neighbor's window. I was intruding on her cleavage, but only at Clinton's request. She exposes it and dares you not to explore it. That dirty tease. No wonder Bill's still married to her.

No Magic Bullet? No Way!

2007-07-17T08:39:00.000-05:00

Anne Applebaum at the Washington Post really earned her paycheck this week. She looked at the situation in Iraq and realized... that there are no magic bullets.

Damn. None? Really? And get this. Every possible plan has a risk! No! Seriously!

What is missing from this conversation is a dose of humility. More to the point, what is missing is the recognition that every single one of these plans contains the seeds of potential disaster, even catastrophe.

Well, slap my ass like a fresh-squeezed baby. Whodathunkit? There is no magic plan for Iraq. And all of the other plans carry a risk. Ooooh, and we've been dressed down by Anne Applebaum for our lack of humility. (I should probably be spanked again.)

So, what is Mommy Applebaum's plan? Well, she doesn't have one. It's a bit too risky to put yourself out there like that. She'd rather sit on the sidelines and tell us what's wrong with our plans.

How much does the Post pay for an editorial of this caliber? Unless they paid her in "magic" beans, they got ripped off.

Is It Can Be Fingerpointing Time?

2007-07-16T19:54:00.000-05:00

Do you guys remember that time when George Bush decided to invade Iraq and nearly every Republican supported his war without question? Well, the invasion went awry and now it's time for those Republicans to start accepting credit for their support. Right? Right?

Wrong. From CNN:

A Republican senator says he warned top White House aide Karl Rove that President Bush quickly needs to craft a workable plan to withdraw U.S. troops fom Iraq in order to salvage his legacy.

[...]

Voinovich added that other Republicans are close to speaking out against the President’s current strategy.

“I won’t mention anyone’s name. But I have every reason to believe that the fur is going to start to fly, perhaps sooner than what they may have wanted.”

In private, Voinovich is more blunt, using a profanity to describe the White House’s handling of Iraq by charging the administration “f—ed up” the war.

It's absolutely dishonest for a supporter of this war to come out now and say that the current strategy isn't working. Bush's strategy hasn't really changed since he landed on the jet carrier and announced that we won the war. He's played musical chairs with approximately the same number of troops and generals while redefining the terms of "success" for the Iraqi government. If you supported this shell game back in 2005, there's no reason for you to stop now.

Voinovich should be honest and say that the White House's handling of Iraq has "f--ed up" the election. That's the driving force behind this warning to Karl Rove. It's not a matter of American or Iraqi casualties. It's not a matter of costs or return on investment. They expected their constituents to support their Dear Leader for Life. When they discovered that wasn't the case, they began looking for a way to wash their hands of the situation which leads us to "the blame game". Unfortunately for them, the people who deserve blame are all Republicans so they have to start pointing at the people with the least to lose. That, of course, would be their Dear Lame Duck.

There's another meme here that worries me; the idea that this war was a good idea but the Administration screwed up the well-conceived plan. Or in Voinovich's terms, the Administration fucked it up. I'm afraid that the American people may think the same (and in twenty years they will support President Jenna Bush when she wants to invade Venezuela.) I hope the Democrats hit these defecting Republicans hard when (and if) they begin to point fingers.

Hey, Wait a Minute. I Think The President's An Arrogant Jerk!

2007-07-13T15:14:00.000-05:00

Reagan speechwriter (and occasional resident of planet Earth) Peggy Noonan wonders why former Bush supporters have become disenchanted:

I found myself Thursday watching President Bush's news conference and thinking about what it is about him, real or perceived, that makes people who used to smile at the mention of his name now grit their teeth.

I'm not sure why these people have only begun gritting their teeth, but it's safe to assume that they aren't from Texas. If you lived in the Lone Star State and paid attention to George Bush, then you were already familiar with the petulant fratboy that became President. This is a man who never bothered to understand issues because he has never paid the price of ignorance. His entire life is a series of failed leadership opportunities that cost the public hundreds of millions of dollars, and yet the media portrayed him in 2000 as the first real CEO Presidential candidate. His companies were investigated by the SEC, but it was Al Gore that had not earned the public's trust.

If you bought George Bush's snake oil in 2000, then I can understand why you might grit your teeth today. But it's time for you (and Peggy Noonan) to admit that your personal bias against the Democrats is the real problem here. Bush hasn't changed in the past year or two. He's the same guy he was in 1997 and even 1987: a trust-fund baby surrounded by sycophants that are willing to fall on the bed of nails that he creates. He's never been accountable for the mistakes that he's made, mainly because there's always somebody like Peggy Noonan to write op-eds about how much wiser he is than us.

As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits. He's in a good mood. There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring.

Yeah, that must be it. We aren't gritting our teeth because this condescending ignoramus is weaving a narrative from our blood and tax money. It's because he's in a good mood and we aren't. We're not smart enough to see how effective he is fighting the evil-doer's and roustabouts. We're not smart enough to understand why he's still a better President than anybody from the Democrat party. And one day soon, we'll have to read Peggy's Pontifications regarding Hillary Clinton's raw female ambitions or John Edward's hypocritical hair salon visits. I can't wait.

TEH AL QQUAIDA'R IS COMING!!!

2007-07-10T19:41:00.000-05:00

Jesus. Run, people. ABC News and The White House say that the terrorists are on the way here OR they are already here.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials tell ABC News new intelligence suggests a small al Qaeda cell is on its way to the United States, or may already be here.

Worried? Don't worry. Somebody's on the case:

The White House has convened an urgent multi-agency meeting for Thursday afternoon to deal with the new threat.

OK. Maybe it's time to be worried. These are the assholes that could deal with a Category 5 hurricane even though it was being tracked by radar by every news organization in the world.

Now, I wonder why Homeland Security decided to issue this breaking news bulletin that demands airtime from every mainstream media outlet. I must be cynical to think this unconfirmed, unsubstantiated threat is an attempt distract us from other news. Like we've lost four thousand troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or that insurgents have slipped through our surge and committed one of the most horrific attacks in Iraq since the war began.

Oh, and aren't we fighting them "there" so they won't come "here"? Whatever. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheets so I can protect myself from the Al Qaeda / Saddam Hussein / Kim Jong Il / Hugo Chavez / Fidel Castro terror threat... THAT *MIGHT* ALREADY BE SOMEWHERE PLANNING SOMETHING. Scared yet? You fucking better be.

Dead Earth

2007-07-07T14:28:00.000-05:00

What the hell has happened to music? I've tried to watch the Live Earth concert, but it is too painful to bear. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Today's kids are NOT taking good drugs. Alcohol, oxycotin, and anti-depressants are responsible for this crap. Emo? Piano rock? It's an endless cycle. This music makes you depressed because it sucks so much. Depressed people drink booze and eat pills. And then they put on a Fall Out Boy cd and get depressed again.

Taking Back Sunday. I thought one of my cats was stuck in the dryer when this band was playing. Surely live music can't be so pointless. And yet, it was. Don't Take Back Sunday. Take Back Your Music. Throw it in the garbage! David Gray? Keith Urban? James Blunt? I haven't heard this much vapid earnestness since I left Austin.

I'm going to run my air conditioner for 24 hours straight to protest this shit. Screw you, Al Gore! You should've hooked up with Drop Bass and put together a REAL concert.

Cathouse Camera

2007-06-19T22:23:00.001-05:00

So I was doing my regular search for cathouse webcams when I stumbled upon this... Yes, it's a biography of a cat. Yes, that's a midi of the theme song from Dallas playing in the background. After a few more clicks I came to the real goodies: realtime catcams.

My work for the day is now complete. Good night.

Daddy's Not Happy

2007-06-18T21:52:00.000-05:00

Oh dear. Fred Daddy Thompson isn't happy. How do you piss off Daddy and the Daddy-Complex Party? Easy. Say something bad about the military or the people who lead it. That's exactly what Harry Reid did on a conference call recently, and you know Daddy has to say *something*.

Well, you've heard by now that Senate leader Harry Reid insulted one of this country's brightest military minds, Marine Corps General Peter Pace -- calling him "incompetent." Let me take a few moments to put this in context.

Oh yeah. This is going to get good. Daddy won't let you figure this out alone. No, no. If you're going to lead the Daddy Party then you have to be willing to explain how things work...

First, Harry Reid voted for the war, like a majority of our legislators. America decided as a nation to free Iraq and the region from Saddam Hussein's tyranny. I have friends, both Democrat and Republican, who questioned the decision at the time, but the Republic made a commitment based on constitutional and democratic procedures. So they are now a hundred percent committed to moving forward in a way that’s best for our country. None of them, by the way, believe surrendering to the forces of terror in Iraq is what's best for our country.

But Daddy? I thought we decided as a nation to go after Saddam's nuclear and biological WMD stocks. Isn't that what Colin Powell went to the UN for? Oh wait... our current Daddy changed the reason after the WMD was not found. But let's explore the concept of what's best for our country. Is it best for us to attempt to force a society into an unfamiliar mold? Or is it best for us to bring the troops home from their successful mission and allow them to rest and recuperate while we rebuild our military infrastructure. (Oh, and by the way, "surrendering to the forces of terror" is sooo September 12. People aren't buying it anymore.)

Harry Reid, though, has taken a different route. He made his statement about General Pace on a conference call with fringe elements of the blogosphere who think we're the bad guys. This is a place where even those who think the 9/11 attacks were an inside job find a home.

Oh SNAP! "Fringe elements of the blogosphere?" Now, I'm not Daddy but I'd like to put this into a little context. Harry Reid's had a conference call with a group of progressive bloggers with a larger audience base than conservative bloggers. And you want to talk about fringe? Daddy has a podcast of this hit-piece on his blog. You can't even count that audience as fringe; that's a discarded left nipple tassle in Cher's closet. I will give him an E for Effort for the de rigeur 9/11 reference.

How could anyone possibly believe, as Reid charges, that our commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, is out of touch with what's going on. Surely someone in Reid's position would know that Petraeus is briefed daily on all aspects of Iraq -- from civil to military. Surely he has to know that Petraeus is a true warrior scholar who literally wrote the Army's book on counterinsurgency warfare.

Savage Symbolic Soliloquy Batman! Petraeus is a modern day Lao Tzu! He literally wrote the book that Bush would have read if he cared about military strategy. And Petraeus is so in touch that he decided that we could implement his strategy without enough troops to sustain it. Kinda makes you wonder what Daddy's Iraq strategy will be. Force another 150,000 troops into Iraq for at least a decade until we "clear, hold, and rebuild"? That's going to be a tough sell no matter how deep and rich your accent is.

But Reid's comments are not meant for logical analysis. He proclaimed the war lost some time ago, and the surge as a failure even before the additional troops were on the ground. The problem is that every one of Reid's comments I've noted here has also been reported gleefully by Al Jazeera and other anti-American media. Whether he means to or not, he’s encouraging our enemies to believe that they are winning the critical war of will.

Damn. Daddy brings home the bacon and throws it into the baked bean casserole. How could Reid possibly know that the war was lost some time ago? It's not possible because nobody in the administration has clearly defined the goals of this war! How can Reid say we've lost the war against evildoers that hate us for our freedoms?!? (And don't even try engaging that logic in combat, it'll whip your ass everytime.) And how could Reid say that the surge is a failure before it began? It's like he read the manual on counterinsurgency warfare and realized that we weren't actually implementing it....

Daddy makes a good point about the gleeful Al Jazeera reporting. If anything can be defined as gleeful, it would be that. (However, Al Jazeera would likely be even more gleeful for a discount on Law & Order syndicated episodes starring Daddy!)

I can see why the Daddy Party is so excited about candidate Fred Thompson. He has EVERYTHING. You can't read his diatribes without imagining that you're sitting in his lap, lightheaded by the combination of Aqua Velva and cigar smoke, enveloped by that husky Southern Accent that is the very definition of gravitas. Could I say these things to Daddy when he's on his sixth glass of scotch and second Cuban cigar of the evening? Of course not.

But he does have it all. The accent. The empty rhetoric. The 35-year old trophy wife. The five grandchildren. A role in the 1980's S&L bank scandal. A role in The Hunt For Red October. He helped a company avoid paying asbestos settlements. And he was on Law and Order and one of its spin-off series. This is so beyond Reagan that it's not even funny. This isn't your Daddy's Daddy. This is Daddy 2.0. Stronger. Handsomer. More Actor. More Senator. More. More. More.

If I had a Daddy Complex, I would probably vote for him...

Made In America

2007-06-12T17:54:00.000-05:00

The Sopranos ended its eight year run with a finale that left fans in the dark on one or two issues. Here are my ruminations on the subject...

The show was an exploration of the psyche of the patriarch of two post-modern American families. We were invited into the lives of those within his immediate circle and this gave us context into their relationship with Tony and how it impacted his mental dialogue. However, the primary focus of this show was Tony Soprano and his voyage through therapy with Dr. Melfi. Once that relationship ended with the next-to-last episode (85), then the show lacked a reason to exist. Thus, the last episode (86) was simply a gift to the fans that demanded a showdown between the NY and NJ crime families.

The show had become a bit of a soap opera over the last few seasons, and we were stuck going over the same material again and again. Who would Tony whack? Who will turn on the family? Is Agent Harris really investigating terrorism? WTF is the deal with Paulie's wings? Why the hell are we hearing a voice over from Vito? The finale allows you to keep speculating on these issues without sealing you into one specific story.

The title of the last episode is Made in America and it is an appropriate tautology for everything that we've seen in this series and made this statement one final time.

-Meadow and AJ are your typical, spoiled, DUMB American kids. Carmela is an Italian-American woman that has conveniently sat aside her religious/moral principles for a consumerist lifestyle (paid with blood money).

-The Sopranos crime family is now far-removed from its Italian roots and can only be recognized as a product of America. (Remember that Paulie couldn't even eat authentic food when he travelled to Italy.)

- SUV's are featured prominently in the series, and especially in the final episode. The SUV is a metaphor for the American hubris, capable of rolling over any landscape (or body part) in its way. However, these vehicles (and Americans) are prone to exploding at a most inappropriate moment.

- Americans love to proclaim their faith in God and Jesus, and they really like to do it with a nice gold chain around their neck. It's important to be perceived as religious, but it can't supplant the pursuit of the American dream. The final scene underscored this point brilliantly by showing the family partaking of the American eucharist: they didn't put a piece of Jesus' flesh on their tongue, they consumed greasy American fried food.

And what of the ending itself? I think it was appropriate. The show ended properly in the last episode, and so we were stuck tying up the loose ends of an unending soap opera. Bobby said that you never hear the shot that kills you, so it's possible that Tony was whacked by that shady guy in the bathroom. Or, the final moments indicated the type of tension that engulfs Tony's daily life. It doesn't matter either way. The story arc had concluded, and all that was left was the continuation of a melodrama. The fans would have been upset if Tony died, Tony lived, Tony flipped to the Government, Tony opened a pizzeria, Tony married his daugher, or if Tony became a crime fighting superhero. So we are left with the possibility of any and all of those possibilities.

It was a helluva journey, and I won't stop believing that we'll see a movie or perhaps a spin-off series. Meadow could get her own Law & Order series. AJ could produce a show called Goth Talk starring Vito's son. Carmela could get a spot on Flip This House. How about My Two Paulies starring Paulie Walnuts and Pauly Shore?

The possibilities are endless if you just fade to black...

Evolution Shmevolution

2007-06-11T19:38:00.000-05:00

This isn't much of a surprise. The "Mah-Daddy" Party doesn't believe in evolution. I think it can be explained quite easily.

- "When I was a kid mah Daddy taught me that life is precious and God and the Bible."

- "Mah Daddy told me that we came from Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and not from monkays."

I think that's basically where most Republicans start in life and they stay on that path. Hell, it worked for Daddy, right?

They still rely on the scientific process (that generated the theory of evolution) to improve the quality of their life, though. Air conditioning in our malls? Comes from science. Bunker busting bombs? That ain't coming from Jesus. High speed data exchange with failsafe switchover? Science.

A theory to explain the origin of our current biological system? Science just doesn't cut it. There's not enough evidence to prove the theory of evolution, so we're just going to stay with mah daddy's explanation. We were created by an invisible man who peeks into our invisible souls and categorizes our invisible spirits between two invisible worlds for our invisible afterlife. And you know mah daddy just can't be wrong. There's no need to try and prove that one wrong...

Is It Can Be Music Reviews Time?

2007-06-09T19:19:00.000-05:00

I've been in a rock mood lately while waiting for the new Velvet Revolver album to release. I never got around to reviewing the new NIN LP, so I thought I'd do it now and throw in a couple extras to boot.

Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

Well I used to stand for something
But forgot what that could be
There's a lot of me inside you
Maybe you're afraid to see

Well I used to stand for something
Now I'm on my hands and knees
Traded in my god for this war
And he signs his name with a capital G

I've meant to write a review of this album for a while, but I'm afraid that I can't find words to express my feelings. This is the first album where Reznor steps outside the skin of the depressed kid in the back of the classroom. He's always written from the perspective of the kid who feels that his voice is unheard and unwanted. After a decade of platinum albums and sell-out tours, he's finally realized that his voice is recognized. With Year Zero, Reznor is making a statement about our political landscape, our society, and the direction we are all heading together.

I didn't care for the first single Survivalism until I saw its accompanying video. At that point, I realized that this isn't necessarily a NIN song. It's a signal from the future. It isn't Nine Inch Nails, it's a garage band that is loosely connected to a cellular resistance group of artists. Like the rest of the messages from the Year Zero ARG, Survivalism is a signal sent back into time that speaks against our actions today and the future they create. It's a metaphor for the album itself, and an appropriate introduction to Year Zero proper.

The Year Zero concept would be good enough as an internet game or graphic novel, but it would fail as an album if Fallout Boy or Kid Rock supplied the soundtrack. The sounds of Year Zero are a look into the future of industrial rock and computer-obsessed garage bands. Trent and Atticus Ross push current music software to the edge to produce a collage of noise that sounds like a band of defective Roombas crying in garbled binary. It's a musical statement that doesn't come from Trent, but from Tron Reznor.

Marilyn Manson - Eat Me, Drink Me

Faster, faster,
Faster-faster-faster-faster,
I'm late, I'm late!
And the hands on my clock
Are starting to shake.

While Trent Reznor has travelled into the future to witness the dangers of the George P. Bush presidency, Marilyn Manson travelled back to the 19th Century to issue a report from the birth of Gothic culture. Marilyn has never attempted to push the sonic boundaries of music; he has been content sculpting pop albums for the post-therapy generation. He and Tim Skold (of Kingfish, KMFDM) crafted an inspired gothic industrial-pop album that feels timeless and strangely personal. Manson channels The Vampire Lestat, the Mad Hatter, the Antichrist Superstar, Armin Meiwes, and David Bowie in his performance to deliver one of his best albums to date.

Eat Me, Drink Me is full of iconic (and ironic) imagery that would seem contrived if it were produced by anybody except for Manson. Vampires, Frankenstein, Witches, Funerals, The Red Queen, and The Devil all make an appearance on this album. But all are bit players in the tragic account Manson delivers here. He's moved beyond the roles of instigator, inquisitor, and fornicator. This is a monologue delivered by Manson's living corpse as he drinks from the Cask of Amontillado. (Supplemented by an industrial rock soundtrack created by a band of vogue vampires.) It's an album that should creep out parents and make you consider painting your fingernails black, but unlike his recent work this doesn't feel like an album calculated to push you in those directions.

Ozzy Osbourne - Black Rain

Politicians confuse me.
I watch the body count rise.
Why are the children all marching, Into the desert to die.

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting much from the new Ozzy album. I felt that his reality show portrayed him as a neutered, irrelevant, pampered rock retiree. Black Rain isn't a concept album or an attempt to "revive" his career with a lot of special guests. It's not the soundtrack to a movie that doesn't yet exist like the others that I have reviewed today. No, this isn't as powerful as his earlier work. However, it's slightly more mature than other entries in his catalogue. Ozzy wants to make a statement about his life, retirement, and the world around him. He isn't taking the Rod Stewart path and singing big band standards. He sticks with one of the better guitarists in metal today (Zakk Wylde), and delivers an album consistent with any of his albums since No More Tears. It may not be groundbreaking, but it is new Ozzy. If you like his old stuff, you'll find something to like here.

Faith Based News-like Items

2007-06-05T18:39:00.000-05:00

Oh Jebus.

EVERYBODY knows that you can't be President of the United States of Jesus without Faith. Faith that some invisible creep conceived us all and soaks up our dirty thoughts. We get it. Therefore, we don't need to go through another damn Presidential Election cycle where we have to suffer through weekly "news" reports about every candidate's identical belief in the Faith and Healing Power of Jesus. OK?

But evidently that isn't possible. The Boston Globe is running an article that indicates faith will play an even larger role this cycle. So, it's not just a race for the White House. It's a competition to see who has a bigger hard-on for Jesus. Obviously this puts Hillary at a huge advantage, because she can use Bill's AND her own personal collection of strap-ons.

But don't have faith in the Boston Globe's reporting. There's proof that we'll be discussing Jesus until he finally comes home and brings the pork chops.

Hillary couldn't have suffered through her marriage without the Powa! of Jesus! Silly me. I had faith in the power of the individual to rise above moments of strife. I thought Hillary was being a strong woman and a strong wife. Now I see that she was in the corner babbling to King of the Cloud Kingdom.

And who can forget that moment last year when Obama chastised Democrats for not competing for the support of Evangelicals. (In case you're not familiar with that term, Evangelicals are those people who feel the need to warn you that their car will be empty if Zombie Jesus shows up again.)

Mitt Romney is Mormon! And that's pretty scary for some people because "those people" believe that Jesus will come and rule Missouri. That's preposterous to those Evangelical secretaries who are expecting Jesus to come along and rescue them from traffic. But is America ready for a President that wears sacred religious underpants? Hmmm. I will agree that's certainly a question. But I guess it's OK just as long as he still believes in Invisible Hippie Jesus and his Dad, the all-knowing Magic 8-Ball of Faith.

What about Ron Paul? That sick fuck doesn't even mention Jesus, Christianity, or Religion on his website. He didn't want to use public funds to support faith-based groups. Sure, Wikipedia might say that he's Protestant, but he didn't mention it during the last debates. No wonder he doesn't have a chance to win...

Please, Jesus or Calgon. Take me away.

Cindy Sheehan Says Good-Bye

2007-05-28T17:41:00.001-05:00

Cindy Sheehan says good-bye to her public life in a heartfelt diary entry at DKos titled "Good Riddance Attention Whore".

I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.
Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford , Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too...which makes the property even more valuable.

This is my resignation letter as the "face" of the American anti-war movement. This is not my "Checkers" moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.

Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.

She's returning to her family life, and I wish her well. I disagreed with her support of Venezuela and her protests in Crawford. I felt that she was running too hard trying to escape the emotional stress of her loss. I think this is the best move for her and for the anti-war movement. It shouldn't be represented by a single face.

Good luck in your new life, Cindy. And thank you for devoting so much of yourself to spread the message of peace. You showed the world that Americans are not represented by the Dittoheads on Fox News.

A Weaker Standard

2007-05-28T12:10:00.000-05:00

I felt like shoving a railroad spike into my skull today, but I decided to just go over and read The Weekly Standard instead. (Alleged) Uber War Strategists Kagan and Kristol have come together again to beat the War Drum against Iran, Syria, "Foreign Fighters", and Democrats. Their headline proclaims "Congress Gives In On War Funding Now can we fight the enemy?" Gosh, guys. You've only been in charge of this war for five years. Maybe you should have considered fighting "The Enemy" sometime before now...

Of course, the denial of reality continues far beyond the headline:

The war over the war in Washington is quiet for the moment. Congress has finally appropriated funds for America's warriors without setting a deadline for their defeat. Now the president can turn his undivided attention to fighting the enemies who are attacking our soldiers.

Ahhh, the ol "deadline for defeat" tautology. As far as I can tell, the Republicans are the only ones accusing our troops of losing. Our troops went to Iraq to secure possible WMD locations, topple Saddam's regime, and introduce democracy to the people of Iraq. That's why the troops went to Iraq, and they achieved their goals. However, that's not enough for the Republicans. They want to keep moving the goalposts for the soldiers and play a shell game with the American people. We want a definitive list of goals for our troops and the Iraqi government. That's it. That's not a deadline for defeat, it's a sign of respect toward everybody who has made a commitment of resources to this lengthy endeavor. (And the idea that the President can now turn his attention to the war is laughable. The President has turned this war over to a "war czar" so he can turn his undivided attention to that rampant wildbrush insurgency at his ranch.)

But this diatribe from Kagan & Kristol hardly focuses on Iraq. In fact, it's a call to arms against Iran and Syria (who appears to have replaced North Korea on the global Evil Axis). That's certainly something to ponder on this Memorial Day. The Administration that will remain in power until 2009 isn't satisfied with sinking half a trillion taxpayer dollars and sacrificing thousands of lives in Iraq alone. Their highly profitable war machine hunger grows as its size increases, and every mainstream Republican candidate for President promises to continue feeding this beast.

Template Change

2007-05-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

I decided to update the look of the blog. Let me know if you want or do not want.

Breaking News On The Clinton Marriage

2007-05-27T11:33:00.000-05:00

There are two new books about Hillary and her marriage to President Clinton, and boy do they have some shocking revelations:

Bill had an affair with another woman and almost divorced Hillary to be with the other woman. I know what you're thinking. This just doesn't happen in America. No way.
Hillary Clinton is the only female lawyer in America that is self-righteous, ambitious, and driven to success. Kinda takes your breath away, huh?
Immediately after 9/11, New York Senator Hillary Clinton supported the initial plan to invade Iraq. For some reason, she felt compelled to stand with a popular President and endorse a war that that most of America supported.
Hillary and Bill created a secret plan in the 1970's to share four Presidential terms. And like all secret plans hatched in the 70's, success is inevitable. Especially when one of the plotters is an ambitious woman!

Now, some of you might say that this doesn't seem like news. Hell, you might even argue that this secret pact sounds completely retarded. But you're missing the picture. These books are written by important journalists, therefore this goes beyond innuendo and becomes something that almost resembles news. Kinda pathetic, huh?

More Awesome War!

2007-05-24T23:09:00.000-05:00

I guess some progressives are a little upset that the Dems have capitulated to the Bush Administration's demands to give a blank check to fund the Iraq War for another few months. I guess it does suck a little bit, but I think it's fair to look at the context of this decision. Bush was elected President, and he can choose to pour as much of our tax money into Iraq as he wants. The Republicans f'ing LOVE this war. The troops LOVE this war. So let them own it. Let them bask in it. It's not my place to tell them that it's a huge waste of money.

The Dems are in a pretty nasty position. Everybody (that uses logic) wants to leave Iraq, but nobody wants to give the order. Bush is going to force his successor to actually make a decision. The Republicans still think we're fighting back against the 9/11 attackers. The Democrats have been beaten up so badly that they are afraid to do anything. The troops don't seem to give a sh*t one way or another.

If the Republicans insist on owning every aspect of this war, let them have it. They own it all.

Amnestah!

2007-05-18T21:34:00.000-05:00

You may have felt a general sense of unease in the air lately. Well, if you're a Republican, that is. Michael Moore's new movie premieres tomorrow night and that's always an uncomfortable experience for the Right Wing.

But that's not the biggest problem in your life. A new immigration bill is close to passing, and it doesn't have anything about setting fire to anybody lacking proper paperwork. Strike One. It doesn't have anything about shutting down Telemundo or soccer. Strike Two. And worst of all, it offers amnesty to everybody everywhere for everything. Strike Three.

But don't take my word for it, let's go to the intellectuals of the Right Wing.

The aptly named Hot Air blog says:

A huge new population of legalized unskilled workers means not only new Democratic voters but unionization, possibly on a grand enough scale to bring about a reawakening of the labor movement. If so, that’ll encompass unskilled Americans too. Granted, it’ll be a cold comfort to those Americans that the jobs they would have gotten if not for the immigrant labor glut now pay a lot more than they did before

Holy shit. Every illegal alien will vote Democrat and create a union for jobs that Americans covet. Translation: "Real" Americans will be jealous of the newly formed Democratic Orange Workers Union. Think about the last time you went to a restaurant and looked at the hispanic dishwasher and said, "Damn. That could be MY job!" And you thought you were jealous of all the illegal aliens that don't speak english working on Wall Street? Just wait until they have a union. I think I have the vapors...

Hence the new, expansive “brown person” formulation, which pits most racial minorities against conservatives in one fell swoop by suggesting that “brownness” itself is somehow frightening or intolerable to us and thus the real cause of all this hand-wringing over open borders. That term of art hasn’t trickled up to the party establishment yet, so far as I know, but it surely will have by the time illegals are legalized and begin to unionize and register in numbers. If the rhetoric is deployed skillfully enough (and the left is very, very good at this sort of thing), it could raise what they’d doubtless call “brown consciousness” to the point where it’s worth another 10-20% of the already large and growing Latino vote.

Yeah, the Democrats have been working on the "brown person" formulation for a long time now. I think it's called Howard Dean's Brownie Derivative. Yes, it's formulated to pit racial minorities against conservatives in one fell swoop. I would've thought it might take two fell swoops and possible a single scooch, but Dean has this one nailed. Maybe if the "brown conciousness" would read blogs like Hot Air, then they'd realize that they were duped. In one fell swoop.

The doyenne of "brown semi-conciousness", Michelle Malkin, sums up the bill like so:

Let me boil it down to fundamentals: Bush-Kennedy amnesty is the J. Wellington Wimpy plan:
"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
Amnesty is the hamburger. Enforcement is the payment that will never come.

Now I understand. Illegals are the "brown conciousness" that have infiltrated the sesame seed buns of Canada and Mexico. In between lies the expansive brown soy formulation where you would expect to find pure American red meat. Those fucking illegals. And they've done this in one fell swoop. I suspect Carlos Mencia is to blame. We should at least deport that son-of-a-bitch.

The Voice of Iowa provides a voice of logic-like residue:

If Congress wants to reform immigration, that’s fine. But you cannot do it without FIRST securing the border. If they build the wall and secure it with plenty of people to patrol it and the technology to help them monitor it, then I would have ZERO problem with just about any program they come up with, and that even would include a full-blown amnesty. But you leave the border that wide open, it guarantees that we’ll be back to this point again in the near future.

Hmmm. First the goddamn voices in Iowa forced us to go to Iraq and spend something like half a billion dollars because they got ants in their pants over one type of "brown conciousness". Now they want spend more of our money to build a two thousand mile fence because they got ants in their pants over another type of "brown conciousness". Seems like the voices from the Heartland are costing us waaaaay to much money.

And what is the deal with this unbelievable amnesty program? It blows a ton of money on a fence that appears to be at least a thousand miles shorter than the border. Strike One. It requires employers and employees to spend more resources to prove citizenship. Strike Two. We have to pay for another government program to create 'Z Visas' that are the first step of a 12-year program toward citizenship. Strike Three. And the American Taxpayers are Out!

Seriously, I think I'm a little tired of seeing my tax money being spent to support the "brown conciousness" in every damn country except my own.

My solution to the immigration "problem"? Let me toss out my own expensive, ridiculous solution: Buy Mexico. Legalize their drugs and sell them to the millions of Americans who use them. Invest in companies that will generate good jobs in Mexico. Hell, do "something" positive instead of calling them criminals or lumping them into something called "the brown conciousness". We can blow a lot of money on a program that won't work, or we can tackle it head-on and make positive changes in our country and theirs.

Oh, and get us the f-ck out of Iraq while you're at it. I'd rather spend that money on security in the ports 20 miles from my home. Thanks.

News? Yes!

2007-05-16T18:36:00.000-05:00

That's right. There's news in the world.

Summit Fever hits Mount Everest. Check these links for detailed reports.

The US Troop surge in Iraq isn't reducing the number of attacks or fatalities. But don't worry. Things will be very peachy six months from now.

President Bush gets a War Czar! He's basically the Chief Commander for our wars while our Commander-In-Chief takes catnaps and works on the junior jumble. When he's done, he might start thinking about an exit strategy from Iraq.

Jerry Falwell overdosed on Crazy Flakes. Now who will blame the next 9/11 on militant lesbians and Deadwood?

While we're on the topic of Hell, I guess I should mention that I agreed with Andrew Sullivan. Twice. In one day. He defended Ron Paul and proclaimed him co-winner of the Republican Debate. It's kinda interesting that mainstream Conservatives are treating the only classic Conservative as a pariah. What the hell do these guys actually stand for? These people argue that we should shut down the Department of Education in the US, but we should rebuild all the schools in Iraq.

Lots of Antartic ice melts. It's that gosh-darned sun. Why is it getting so much hotter?

Everest Season

2007-05-10T21:35:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit of an Everest junkie and love to read the compelling diaries of those who attempt the summit. It's Summit Season, and I thought I'd share a few online diaries of those brave adventurers.

PeakFreak's Khumbu Chronicles
This diary is tracking expeditions on the North and South sides of the Mountain.

London Business School's Rock and Mountain Club
Jolly group of chaps who are raising money for The Prince's Trust charity. They are attempting to place the first Welsh and Egyptian women on the summit.

Caldwell Xtreme Everest
A research expedition that is studying the effects of hypoxia. According to their last update, they are halfway complete with the program and are preparing for their summit attempt.

Coleman Everest Expedition
This looks like a small team sponsored by Coleman Outdoor products. They are carrying the ashes of an 11-year old boy who died of leukemia in 2004. This is a pretty cool site that has a lot of information, including videos.

Project Himalya
Commercial expedition from New Zealand. This will link you to their latest dispatch. You can use the menu on the left to go through all dispatches from the beginning. Lots of good quality pics!

International Mountain Guides
Another commercial expedition attempting the South route.

Greatoutdoors.com Expedition
Sponsored expedition that seems to be updated almost daily with a few pics.

Himex Expedition
Commercial expedition led by Russell Brice, foremost Everest guide/evil greedy bastard. If you watched Discovery's Everest : Beyond the Limit mini-series, then you'll be familiar with Brice and his controversial company. It appears they are filming a new season, and we're waiting in anticipation to see if there will be another David Sharp controversy.

Tao of Everest
Controversial guide Ian Woodall is making his last trip to Everest. However, he's not going for the summit. He's returning to bury Fran Arsentiev, first American woman to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen but died tragically on the way down. He also plans to bury an Indian who died in the 1996 storm. The Daily Mail reported that he will also cover David Sharp's body, but I don't see that on the Tao of Everest site anymore.

What Would Jesus Drink?

2007-05-06T18:38:00.000-05:00

Oh, those poor, poor Christians. Even society's cups are turning against them:

An Ohio woman is steaming after reading an anti-God message published on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup.

Y'know life is getting difficult when you're coffee cup points out that your god is an imaginary symbol. Sounds like Starbucks will be losing a valuable customer. What's her favorite drink, you wonder?

Incanno of Springboro, Ohio, admits she had been a huge fan of Starbucks before discovering the message, always ordering a large, house-brewed coffee with nonfat milk and two Splenda.

LOL. I wonder if the cup is really what's bugging her? Or could it be the chlorinated quasi-sugar that's been reported to cause "drug-like feelings of disorientation and confusion, headaches, depression, anxiety, diarrhea, extreme fatigue, and more."

Then again, maybe it is the cups:

As WND reported in September 2005, officials at Baylor University told the Starbucks store on its Waco, Texas, campus to remove a cup said to promote homosexuality.

I'm glad that I finally woke up from my seven-year long Jesus fugue. Or I'd be living in fear of what the next coffee cup might say to me.

Al Qaeda Netflix Strikes Again

2007-05-06T14:31:00.000-05:00

Seems like it's been a while since we got our last videotape from al Qaeda. Fortunately, we've got a new one just in time for the start of bikini season. This edition contains a threat (!) from some crazy religious fundamentalist. (The series is getting a little stale IMO.)

OBL is nowhere to be seen in the video, nor do we see his rack of guns. This video features Ayman al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's Number Two Man. (Personally, I think we should call him Number One just like we did with Commander Riker on Star Trek:TNG.)

So, what's up with al Zawahiri? He doesn't have anything to say about Paris' jail sentence, but that's understandable since this video was made a couple weeks ago. Number One wants to talk a little about the Democrat's plan to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. A al Z doesn't like this plan at all. He pleads with Bush to keep our troops in Iraq so they will be practice targets for Al Qaeda. In fact, he says he wants to kill over 200,000 US troops. We can only take that to mean that al Qaeda wants Bush to double-down and surge even more of our resources into Iraq.

The Republicans will surely contemplate this and agree to the proposal. We can take glance over at the poor confused ho at Atlas Shrugged for proof. (Don't name your blog for a Libertarian book and then advocate for anti-Libertarian values, moron.)

Here's the headline as from Ms. AS:

Al Qaeda Wants More US Blood And the Democrat Pussies say whaaaaa

So, I guess the ultra-right wing want to give more US blood to AQ. It's really hard to keep up with these people, because I thought they'd want US soldiers to keep their blood.
Continuing Ms. ASshat's post:

Someone explain it to me again why the Democrats want to surrender the fate of our great nation to the jihad?

Which nation is she talking about? Why don't these people move to Iraq if they love it so much? Does she think "the jihad" only exists in Iraq? We could wipe that country off the face of the planet and "the jihad" would still be going strong. Iraq is just a distraction.

Let's recap:

Al Qaeda: Please don't leave Iraq. We'd prefer to have US soldiers around for target practice.

Bush: I'LL NEVER LEAVE IRAQ!!!!!

Al Qaeda: Cool. Would you mind sending more troops because we want to kill at least 200,000 US soldiers.

China: Yeah, we'd kinda like to see you spend more money in Iraq, too.

Bush: You support more surge? Finally, somebody agrees with me.

Republicans: Hey! Some of us are still delusional enough to agree with you! General Petraeus is a stud! You should send more troops!

Al Qaeda: Yeah, but only send those troops to Iraq. And please stay out of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia.

Bush: Don't worry. I probably can't afford to send resources there. Our credit's a little maxed right now.

China: Good.

Russia: Awesome.

Venezuela: Works for us, too.

Al Qaeda: Bush, you're the best thing that ever happened to us.

Bush: Oh, stop! I'm blushing.

Conservatives Find Another Playground

2007-05-05T10:16:00.000-05:00

Conservatives have decided that Youtube is waaay to liberal for them, so they started their own copycat version of the video-sharing website. It's called Qubetv.tv which may sound a little redundant, but these are the same people who have to be told that we're "making progress" in Iraq everyday. Here's a little bit from their blog:

Will there be standards? “Sure. No pornography—we’re a family site. And if some al-Qaeda type sends footage of an American kid being killed, unlike the New York Times, we will have the common sense and decency to get the thing removed ASAP…as conservatives we are big believers in the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment,” pointed out Lord.

So, they are conservatives who believe in the Constitution and the First Amendment. Which means they will censor their content. Natch.

Also, they won't show any casualties from the Iraq War. Because it's one thing to send troops over to be sniped in Iraq neighborhoods, but it's gross to actually see it. That's how Conservatives support our troops! We'll buy you the plane ticket to Baghdad. But if you get hurt, you better keep it on the down-low.

So, what kind of important journalism has been uploaded to Qubetv.tv?

- A clip of Hillary talking about providing health care to all Americans. The video is from a black-and-white movie, while Hillary provides the audio. I'm not sure if there's a point to this one or not.

- Another audio clip that doesn't really warrant the bandwidth to become a video. It's an audio clip from Rush Limbaugh's show where he is playing another audio clip of Barney Frank accidently saying the word "cock" instead of "clock". It's funny because he said one word instead of another, and one of the words was a dirty word and you're supposed to find some type of deep meaning from it and ahhh... whatever.

- And here's another one from a very creepy looking guy suggesting that you log onto Youtube and post comments about his videos so they will show up on Youtube's "Most Discussed" page. Because that's where all the hard-core "Youtubers" go. He also has another video that is a haiku or something about being covered in liberal feces. I suggested that he stop working inside of pay toilets. (NOTE: This site that claims to support the First Amendment has deleted my comment questioning why this guy claims to be covered in liberal feces in the first place!)

- Here's yet another audio clip that's been turned into a video. (At least the creepy guy had a webcam!) This one features Michael Savage ranting about the immigrant invasion.

- This one is a classic. It's a series of images from the Virginia Tech massacre claiming that one trained, legal gun owner could have prevented Cho's rampage. Yeah, I'm sure that nobody but Cho carries guns to school. I wonder if anybody at NASA might have something to say about letting anybody and everybody to carry weapons in engineering departments...

Basically, this is yet another pathetic non-idea from today's Conservative movement. Google/Youtube should be happy that somebody else is posting this crap and wasting bandwidth.

Has It Really Been Four Years?

2007-05-01T19:19:00.000-05:00

Has it really been four years since Pretzel-Dunce Bush declared that the war in Iraq was over? Honestly, it feels like twenty.

Bush says that it doesn't make sense to tell the enemy when we are going. Yeah, "the enemy" needs to keep waiting in suspense.

George Bush and his Republican sycophants don't give a damn about the troops. They'll keep our troops in a foreign sandbox for the next hundred years if they can use it as a weapon against those dirty hippies that made us leave Vietnam.

Enjoy this anniversary, Republicans. This is your war. It doesn't matter what Harry Reid says. It doesn't matter where Nancy Pelosi goes. It doesn't matter where Cindy Sheehan pickets. YOUR President represents everything you stand for. American soldiers are pawns in your political game.

Republicans don't care that Al Qaeda is an autonomous cellular terror organization. Republicans don't care that they still can't find a single definition for this mission. Republicans don't care about the length of soldier's tours. Republicans only care about sniping at the Democrats.

You broke it. You bought it. Mission Accomplished.

Sopranos Season Six

2007-04-30T23:15:00.000-05:00

I'm finally starting to watch the final season of the Sopranos. All I can say is "Wow."

I wonder if they will be able to sell the Season Six DVD over the counter. This is one of the most powerful sleep aids that I have found in my life.

I'm really interested to find out how this incredible series ends. Will Tony Soprano have that third plate of pasta capellini? Will Carmela ever sell that house that nobody cares about? Will AJ stay with that woman that showed up at the end of last season? Doesn't she have a baby or something? Could I care less?

Will Meadow finish that whatever school she attends and embrace/reject her family's roots? When was the last time I cared about Meadow's story? Is it possible to make Christopher lamer? Maybe we could see him change some diapers. Or maybe make some toast. That would be poignant.

And what's next for Bobby and Janice? Another baby we don't care about? Maybe they'll go shopping for more board games. Dude, maybe they'll pick up Battleship. or Wheel of Fortune. Maybe they'll fix some lasagna.

I know that I'm not supposed to spoil anything, but I just can't help it. I have a source at HBO who did let me in on a few spoilers.

- "Somebody" makes a killer tomato sauce and leaves out the basil!

- Silvio hires three new strippers!

- Christopher gets back on dope, goes back into rehab, back on dope again, back into rehab, and then has a dream about Adriana.

- Carmela threatens to leave Tony until she remembers where her she gets her money. She feels guilty about it for a while, and then has a white wine spritzer and forgets about it.

- AJ learns all about tile grout!

- Meadow gets some new lipstick!

- And what happens to Tony? Well, I don't want to spoil it for you, but here's a hint... A magazine salesman stops by and gives him an offer that he can't refuse. Three for the price of one! But I'm not going to tell you *which* magazines he subscribes to.

And the big surprise? Well, you didn't hear it from me but they may come back for Season Seven. There's a story about some dental work that you really don't want to miss.

Conservative Iraqi Says "We Don't Want To Fix Our Own Problems"

2007-04-29T01:59:00.000-05:00

You gotta love this...

Omar at Pajamas Media has been soiling his pants over the Democrats desire to leave Iraq.

I said it before and I say it again; this war must be won. If it is not the world as you in the United States know it today (and as we here in Iraq dream for it to become) will exist only in books of history. The forces of extremism that we confront today are more determined, more resourceful, and more barbaric than the Nazi or the communists of the past. Add to that the weapons they can improvise or acquire through their unholy alliance with rogue regimes, combined with their fluid structure and mobility… well, they can be more deadly than any forces we have faced in the past. Much more.

Yeah, this war is soooo important to the world that the people in Iraq REFUSE to come together and fight for their own smurfin' country. Of course, this is exactly what every conservative blogger believes. And that's why they are typing so hard to win this war! From a Starbucks... two blocks from their house...

In no time al-Qaeda and all similarly extremist factions will start boasting about how America is fleeing Iraq under the heavy blows of the “Mujahideen” planned by OBL himself.

The Democrats just offered al-Qaeda victory on a silver plate. For free. An imaginary victory for sure, for now, but it can still be used by al-Qaeda to promote their ideology of death and attract more recruits.

“America’s will can be broken, America is not invincible,” they will say in a thousand ways. Is this the kind of message you want to send to the enemy?

Ooooh. A guilt trip from an Iraqi. Yeah, I'm so sorry that we haven't spent every forking cent that we have in our Treasury to REBUILD YOUR COUNTRY. I'm so sorry that we haven't sent every healthy teenager in America to your sandbox to fight YOUR WAR.

How many Iraqis have actually tried to stop Al Qaeda? How many Iraqis have tried to track down Osama bin Laden?

Yeah, I hate to break this to you but America isn't invincible. It isn't indestructible. There's only so much we can do to protect ourselves against the treats that exist in the world. Al Qaeda isn't the only enemy that can strike America. Al Qaeda isn't the only group that can attack the ports and refineries that lay within breathing distance of my home. If I have to choose between saving you or protect me, then I'm going to choose "protecting me" every goddamn time.

How many Iraqis want to protect the refineries in Texas City against MS-13? Against Al Qaeda? Against crazy domestic terrorists that placed explosives near a clinic in the city where my sister lives?

Sorry, Omar, but the Iraqis had a chance to capitalize on the money that American tax payers invested in your country. You people squandered it in power struggles between ancient religious fundamentalists. That's your loss and my loss. You know that the surge isn't going to work. You know that the Americans can't stay there for twenty years, fifty years, one hundred years. One day we'll leave, and the people of Iraq will split up and support whatever religious group that makes them feel fancy. And then one day your oil will run dry and we really won't give a damn what you do.

So, why don't you do something to bring your people together instead of writing a blog post about how the Democrats don't care about you. Because Iraq isn't going to come together under General Petraeus. Or Maliki. Or Bush. Or the Republicans. Or the Democrats. Hell, I doubt there's a single damn thing that would unite the Iraqi people. You can delude yourself into thinking that it's the Democrat's fault. Hell, Pajamas Media exists for the sole purpose of assigning blame to the Democrats. But at the end of your day, you'll know that Iraq hardly existed at all except in the mind of Saddam Hussein and the British that drew the map in the first place. Just keep on cashin' those paychecks and pretend that this is the fault of the Democrat party. Keep on pretending that Iraq's problem is the lack of a reality show on NBC that features all your freshly painted schools.

Happy Fantastic News

2007-04-28T12:55:00.000-05:00

I don't know if you've been following the news lately, but it's all good. It's beyond good. It's ultra-ribs. Let's recap:

Bush's AIDS czar didn't want to send condoms to Africa because abstinence is the only moral way to prevent the spread of STDs. He quit on Friday because he's been getting 'massages' from Washington DC's escort community. No word on how many 'massages' he received with his wife in the room. In his defense, he says that he's been using the services of Central Americans lately. The Republicans are blaming this on the scandal-hungry Mainstream Media BoogeyMan. In other news, they still want a restraining order against Bill Clinton.

Earlier this year Bush ordered a teensy weensy number of troops into Iraq for a tiny little fraction of time in order to make Iraq safe for Tony Roma ribs. Well, they need to stay for a teeny tiny little bit longer, but only because they need to keep searching for those elusive TEH AWESOME metrics that translate into Mission Accomplished 2.0. But don't you DARE say that we're losing. Successful Warfare in the 21st Century is measured by how long you stay!

How do you define success in the Republican Party's War On TEH TERRARISTS? Obviously an increase in the number of global terror attacks == VICTORIOUSNESS!!!!!!! If there are nearly 30% more terror attacks in the world, then sombody's been doing their job since 9/11, right?

Some commie pinko in the Army says that there is a failure in Generalship in our Army. Yeah, his title might say he is a Lieutenant Colonel or that his is a Deputy Commander, but he's obviously been watching too many Michael Moore movies. Even worse, he puts some of the blame on Congress. Hey you sick lefty, the Republican Congress confirmed the BEST people that Rumsfeld nominated. There's only a failure in Congressional Leadership for saying that we are losing this war!

A Christian Freedom Fighter left an explosive at a Women's clinic in Austin. It's not domestic terrorism. It's what Jesus would do... if Jesus knew how to make explosives. Thank God there are no hungry or sick kids on the East side of Austin that need any attention.

NYPost Not Happy With Harry Reid

2007-04-24T23:35:00.000-05:00

Rubert Murdoch's NYPost put on a fresh pair of soiled pants this morning and regurgitated the same GOP talking points about Harry Reid. (If you're not aware, Reid said that the Iraq War is already lost. This caused Republicans to blow a few blood vessels.)

Is the war already lost? Of course not. This is probably the best war America has ever fought. Sure, we could have left in a few days, a few weeks, or a few months. But why stop when you're ahead? Right?

But what would happen if we decided to come home? The NYPost breaks it down for us:

* A rapid, al Qaeda/Iranian-driven descent into regional chaos.
* Most likely, a general war.
* And, almost certainly, a Mideast nuclear-arms race as Saudi Arabia, Eygpt and (probably) Turkey rush to arm themselves in anticipation of an Iranian bomb.

Wow, a "general war" really would suck. Let's avoid that. Fortunately, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and Iran are not pursuing any type of nuclear program right now and they never will if we stay in Iraq. So let's stay. And there's no chance of regional chaos if we stay, so let's stay.

Now, some people might cry and complain that those are not the reasons we went to war. But those people miss the point. Rumsfeld's vision of the faster, smarter military didn't just apply to the boots on the ground. It also applies to the fundamental casus belli of the war. The reason for being in Iraq has to be willing to adapt to changes on the battlefield. We went to war over Saddam's WMD? Not anymore, it's all about the domino effect of democracy? What? That theory is retarded? Well thank God we didn't go to war over that. We went to war to prevent a war from occuring because of regional instability? What? Regional instability? We went to war to prevent a nuclear arms race! There's already an arms race? But we went to war to prevent al Qaeda from gaining a foothold in Iraq!

According to the Republican party, there isn't a bad reason to stay in Iraq. There are only bad people that suggest we should leave. I say the GOP should start calling itself the Iraq Republican Guard, because that's basically all they stand for anymore. In fact, they should just forget about the '08 election in the United States and focus on the next elections in Iraq. They should run Rudy Guiliani for Mayor of Iraq. Remember how he saved NYC on 9/11? It's time for him to kick it up a notch and save Baghdad. John McCain could be his market advisor. And they could bring the entire Bush family over to run the oil companies.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

Gay CPL

2007-04-24T21:20:00.000-05:00

According to gaming news site ESReality, CPL has announced its official games for this year's world tour (drum roll please)...

F.E.A.R.

World in Conflict

Nevermind the lame fact that it's F.E.A.R. on XBOX and not the PC version. But it's the fact that Angel Munoz broke his promise to the Quake 3 community. He made a promise that CPL would relive the Q3 glory days by adding it to its official games list, since Q4 has all but flopped in the gaming community. Top players began practicing it again, and he even asked map designers to develop and test new maps. All for naught. Follow the dollars. Sierra Entertainment is CPL's new, big sponsor, thus explaining the shitty selection of games. However, if you happen to be good at either one of these games, that's a serious chunk of change to win.

Lots of people were disappointed with this decision, myself included. I guess it's just time to let go and move on already :)

Pictured above are the Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and Hilary Clinton skins.

NIN Year Zero - Websites

2007-04-23T19:26:00.000-05:00

The new NIN album Year Zero was released last week. I want to discuss the album a little bit, but I think I want to cover a few topics related to the ARG (Alternate Reality Game) first.

The album is merely a component in a larger game that explores several paths our society is travelling down. The narrative is communicated via a series of websites that have been sent back in time from the year 2022 by quantum scientists. We are supposed to piece together the narrative told by these sites, and hopefully prevent ourselves from reaching this horrible future.

At present count, there seem to be 27 websites connected to the ARG. These sites have been revealed through several mechanisms. The first site was revealed on a European tour shirt after somebody noticed some letters were a different color. These letters formed a URL for the site www.iamtryingtobelieve.com. One of the lasts sites was revealed on the Year Zero cd itself. When the cd is heated up in a player, the black cd turns white with binary code written on it. This binary code led to www.exterminal.net. (For a list of all sites, visit this thread at ETS.)

The story begins in our present time. An artist creates a website called OpenAirResistance that encouraged people to subvert American values and document them. This was primarily accomplished via graffiti, podcasts, blogs, music, art, etc. A few years later LA is attacked by a dirty bomb and Anaheim is hit with a biological weapon. The government introduces perapin into the water to strengthen the immune system. Perapin decreases sex and bowel activity, and it also seems to cloud the mind. Another bio attack hits the northwest, but people are able to survive thanks to perapin.

After these terror attacks, anybody associated with subverting American values is considered an enemy to the state. We have gone to war in Iran, Syria, and Africa. It seems likely we have dropped a nuke on Iran, because the desert has been turned to glass. America believes that it is fighting with God on its side. At this time (January 2022), America is Born Again (BA) and we now enter Year Zero. A drug called "Opal" has surpassed cocaine as America's favorite drug. (Coincidentally, opal is produced in America.) Opal/Opel appears to be produced by the same company that created Perapin, and is probably similar in chemical structure.

So now the stage is set for the struggle of individualism versus compliance. Soldiers of the wars are now hunting down artists, political dissenters, and other "dead-enders". In February 2022 / Year Zero, the hand of God is literally coming down. It is called "The Presence", and it is a giant four-fingered arm striking down from the sky.

In addition to all of this, there appears to be some type of Ebola-like virus called Red Horse Vector. The government used it to clear out a group of dissenters. Government employees seem to have a vaccine for this called Copper. There are also Red and Blue pills used by former soldiers to combat the effects of perapin and allows them to become efficient killing machines.

There is no single website that tells this entire story. You have to go through the websites and read email, news articles, forum postings, and other detritus to uncover this narrative. This is a story told via personal stories of lost family members, soldiers, and underground artists.

It is within the context of all of the above that the actual album takes place. I plan on discussing the music/lyrics soon, but I thought it was prudent to set up the story.

For more information, check the following websites that are compiling this information:
NIN Wiki
Echoing the Sound

Gingrich : The Democrats Made Me Cheat On My Wife

2007-04-22T17:16:00.000-05:00

Newt Gingrich accuses Liberals of causing the Virginia Tech massacre.

I'm assuming that Democrats also forced Newt to marry his geometry teacher. And then the Democrats forced him to have oral sex with another woman. And then the Democrats forced him to divorce his geometry teacher and marry another woman that he was having an affair with.

Those liberals are insanely powerful, right? And the liberals totally suck for creating gun laws in Virginia that allowed Cho to buy two handguns. And hollow-tip bullets from Ebay. Because you know how much liberals love hollow-tip bullets.

Hey, Newt... Have you had sex with any other Congress aides lately? Err... I meant to say: Have the liberal Democrats forced you to cheat on your wife recently?

Asshole.

Where Art Thou Atheists?

2007-04-20T23:40:00.000-05:00

Conservative uber-mind, Dinesh D'Souza, wonders why the atheists aren't pissed at God about the Virginia Tech incident.

A blogger at DKos responds.

With or without a belief in a god, with or without your asinine bigotry, we will make progress, we will breathe life back into our university, I will succeed in explaining this or that point, slowly, eventually, in a ham-handed way, at risk of tears half-way through, my students will come to feel comfortable again in a classroom with no windows or escape route, and hell yes we will prevail.

You see Mr D’Souza, I am an atheist professor at Virginia Tech and a man of great faith. Not faith in your god. Faith in my people.

Virginia Tech : Unorganized Thoughts

2007-04-19T20:16:00.000-05:00

I've had a bit of tequila tonight, and I thought it might be the appropriate time to talk about the Virginia Tech incident...

My heart goes out to the families of the victims of senseless violence. This includes the people in Iraq who face this type of insane violence on a daily basis. Larry Johnson posts more about this at TPM.

-Seung-hui Cho was definitely an English major. A CS major would've posted this material to Youtube or created a Flash website containing the manifesto. In addition, only an English major would write an 1,800 word manifesto that says absolutely nothing.

-Virginia is for lovers. Specifically, it's a great place for gun lovers. Evidently you can still buy a gun there if you have been interviewed by the police for stalking and have been sent to a mental health facility and labeled a threat to yourself and society.

-According to experts, this is clearly a reason to call for more guns and less guns in our society. Thank God for experts. Maybe we just need one BIG gun...

-NBC obviously shouldn't have shown the multimedia manifesto. I guess we should have been seeing pictures of that freshly painted school building.

Call me crazy, but I kinda suspect that you can't really stop crazy people from doing crazy shit. We can't be American without access to weapons and hollow-tip bullets. We can't be American without access to powerful legal drugs. And we can't be American without a few people exploiting the loopholes that allow for crazy shit to happen. Fortunately we live in America where this only happens a few times a decade. It would totally suck to live in Iraq where this crap happens a few times a week. Fortunately, they have access to good weapons and good drugs.

Imus : The Saga Is Really Over

2007-04-13T16:54:00.000-05:00

Don Imus is now officially fired everywhere that he works. At least I can watch MSNBC in the morning. Hoorj!

Unfortunately, I haven't really learned anything in this situation. I already knew that Imus was a total asshat. I already knew that white people are walking on a thin line whenever they use phrases from Spike Lee or Dave Chappelle movies. I also knew that Al Sharpton has waaaay too much time on his hands.

At least the Rutgers girls accepted Imus' apology. That's so very important.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court hasn't apologized for selecting George Bush to be our President in 2000. Dick Cheney hasn't apologized for hijacking our foreign policy and crashing it in the middle of Iraq. The Republican Party hasn't apologized for supporting an idiotic war policy and accusing dissenters of treason.

The media hasn't apologized for whitewashing radio and television and supporting insensitive, racist jerks like Imus, Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, et al.

Hey, at least Imus isn't going to be on my television in the morning. Mission Accomplished.

Imus : The Saga Won't Be Televised

2007-04-11T19:22:00.000-05:00

MSNBC fired Imus today. This is a good thing, because MSNBC is the only cable news channel that I watch. Now I can start watching this channel in the morning.

Meanwhile, MSNBC is probably interviewing some very attractive white people for Imus' timeslot.

And nobody seems to care that his producer called these women 'jigaboos' on television and radio.

Imus : The Saga Continues

2007-04-10T19:23:00.000-05:00

The Rutgers Woman's Basketball team speaks out!

“Unless they’ve given ‘ho’ a whole new definition, that’s not what I am,” said Kia Vaughn, the team’s sophomore center.

According to the Urban Dictionary, there are at least ninety definitions for the word 'ho'. The best definition is:

(noun): Anyone who dehumanizes themselves by selling their soul to others. The term can be applied to either a man or a woman or--as in the case of --both.

Anne Coulter: You two ladies look awfully interesting. Are you Indians?
Woman #1: Yes, I'm a Navajo.
Woman #2: I'm an Arapahoe.
Anne Couter: What a coincidence! I'm a right-wing ho!

OK. Maybe that's not the definition Imus was referencing. (And yes, I want to apologize to the she-males that were offended by this post.)

Should Imus be fired for his remarks? Should a shock jock be fired for saying something shocking and abrasive; for generating ratings and attention to his show? Probably not. Should Imus be fired for saying something that runs off his fans and advertisers? Of course, but that hasn't happened over the past twenty plus years that Don Imus has spent offending people.

And I'm still waiting for somebody to explain what this controversy is about. One of his producers called this team "jigaboos" earlier in the show, and that doesn't seem to be part of this conversation. Is it the slang word 'ho' that's so offensive? Is there some type of age cut-off where it's no longer cool to use the word? Would it be OK for Rappin' Granny to use the phrase?

There is so much in life to be outraged over. People who play by the rules aren't flourishing in this country. Our President pledges our troops to fight in a sandbox until somebody else has his job. Minorities and women have a harder time finding work than white men, and they end up working for less money. Energy, food, education, and communication costs continue to rise, while wages remain flat. Condi Rice is a nappy-headed lying bitch, but it's impolite to say so. George Bush is a two-faced liar, but it's too much trouble to do something about it. Does this really require so much of Al Sharpton's attention? Is this really the biggest crisis facing the black community? If so, then I guess things are pretty damn good in that community.

Enough! Imus apologized. Life goes on. The word 'HO' will flourish and will be heard in half of the songs played at the parties these fair-haired women will attend at Rutgers. Life goes on, just like it did after Kramer yelled the "N Word" last year. Life will go on, and all of the alleged news channels will continue to feature vanilla white people on all of their programming. (And these beautiful white people will be shocked, shocked(!) the next time one of their ilk uses this language in public again.) Lame, lame, lame.

Free Speech : Less Free in Imus Country

2007-04-09T22:27:00.000-05:00

So, the safety helmet crew wants us to start self-censoring our blogs in order to create the appearance of safety. They haven't won that battle yet, but those people have their fingers in a lot of pies. Now, they have succeeded in taking Don Imus off the radio and television for two weeks because he called a female basketball team "nappy-headed hos". (This *might* make MSNBC bearable to watch in the morning over the next two weeks.) And then it will be back on television because a bunch of important rich white people think that he's irreverent, urbane, and wears a cowboy hat.

Give me a break. Imus comes back in May and makes another racist/misogynist joke within a few months. Or maybe he is replaced by another Glenn Beck / Tucker Carlson / Brit Hume clone who will say something similarly offensive. Is there really a difference? Mainstream cable news is squishy, homogeneous, and white. It's like pasteurized milk. What's the point of taking off Don Imus? To punish him? To punish anybody who says "nappy-headed hos"? Would it be OK to say "well-coifed, tattooed she-beasts"? Or what if we made the ultimate derogatory remark and said they looked like a carlos mencia in drag?

Have a good vacation, Mr. Imus. Maybe you can get your nappy hair cut while you're gone.

Free Speech : Now More Free!

2007-04-09T18:49:00.000-05:00

Feel like groaning out loud? Then check out this NYTimes article about the rising call for blogger civility. Evidently, it's time for bloggers to edit the comments left on their site and to engage in civil discussions only. Even worse, we need to place a logo on the site indicated whether anonymous writing is allowed or if the author seeks confirmation for breaking news. The article ends with this sweet quote:

Mr. O’Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,” he said. “Free speech is enhanced by civility.”

(It should be obvious that this is not coming from Bill O'Reilly from Fox News.)

Is free speech enhanced by civility? No. A pleasant conversation is enhanced by civility. Free speech can't really be enhanced by anything. It's either free, or it is censored. Occasionally you have to set restrictions to free speech in order to create the perception of safety and civility. That's why we don't have completely free speech at work or at a baseball game or on the radio. But, Thank God!, it is more civil...

I promise my loyal reader(s) that I won't be censoring comments or fact-checking or confirming stories. This blog will remain completely uncivil and irrelevant.

The Costanza Doctrine

2007-03-30T22:58:00.000-05:00

The Financial Times attempts to rationalize Bush's Iraq Policy by comparing it to George Costanza's "Opposite Theory".

The Iraq policy pursued by the Bush administration satisfies the Costanza criterion: it is the opposite of every foreign policy the world has ever met.

The Costanza doctrine is most closely associated with President George W. Bush and his first-term confidants: the wild-eyed neo-cons and the dead-eyed ultra-cons. But there is a wider group, which includes most presidential candidates and many of Washington’s foreign policy elite, who are not fully paid-up subscribers to the doctrine but went along with it nonetheless. Allied governments in London, Madrid and Canberra also signed up.

In “The Opposite”, George breaches the most fundamental laws in his universe – for example, the age-old principle that “bald men with no jobs and no money, who live with their parents, don’t approach strange women”.

Similarly, in its geopolitical incarnation, adherents to the Costanza doctrine cast aside many of the fundamental tenets they learnt at staff college or graduate school. Let me name a few.

This is a very clever little editorial, but this isn't the Bush Administration's reason for staying in Iraq. We're staying because Bush and his supporters are hoping against reason that they will be proven right. And if they fail that, then they hope to cloud the issue enough to weave a narrative that proves them correct.

I'm not sure that the "Opposite Episode" represents the Bush Administration accurately. I think I would suggest the "Revenge Episode" when Costanza travels halfway across the United States in an attempt to deliver a clever one-line response to a man that disrespected him in New York. Basically, the man makes fun of George Costanza in a meeting and doesn't think of a retort until several hours later. So, he sets up a meeting with the guy in the Midwest and sets himself up so the guy makes the same joke again and Costanza delivers his clever one-liner. And, of course, he gets zinged again and can't come up with a clever response until several hours later.

This, in a nutshell, is the Bush Republican's response to Vietnam and the first Iraq War. We would've "won" Vietnam if we argued that those hippies didn't "support our troops". We would've really won the first Iraq War if *that* Bush had the balls to march our guys right into Baghdad and toss Saddam out.

It's unfortunate that this Administration's foreign policy draws so many comparisons to a terrific sitcom. Meanwhile, Iraq continues to spiral into oblivion and nobody is supposed to mention it because it might make our sensitive little troops upset. This isn't a sitcom, it's a bit closer to Greek Tragedy at this point...

Going Back to Work

2007-03-28T17:31:00.000-05:00

Finally. Michael Jackson is getting serious about returning to his music career. It's about time.

Michael Jackson is in discussions about creating a 50-foot robotic replica of himself to roam the Las Vegas desert, according to reports.

The pop legend is currently understood to be living in the city, as he considers making a comeback after 2004's turbulent child sex case.

It has now been claimed that his plans include an elaborate show in Vegas, which would feature the giant Jacko striding around the desert, firing laser beams.

If built, the metal monster would apparently be visible to aircraft as they come in to land in the casino capital.

It is the centerpiece of an elaborate Jackson-inspired show in Vegas, according to Andre Van Pier, the robot's designer.

Luckman Van Pier, his partner at the company behind the proposal, claims blueprints have been drawn up for the show and seen by the star.

"Michael's looked at the sketches and likes them," he told the New York Daily News.

On the subject of the robot, he continued: "It would be in the desert sands. Laser beams would shoot out of it so it would be the first thing people flying in would see."

- Yahoo News

DJ Tiesto Interview

2007-03-23T23:05:00.000-05:00

An interview with a very, very important music producer:

Why Tech People Make Less Money

2007-03-21T18:29:00.000-05:00

Via Technacular:

Engineers, Scientists, and Technicians almost never make as much money as business executives.

Let’s see a rigorous mathematical proof that explains why this is true:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.

Postulate 2: Time is Money.

As every engineer knows, Power = Work/Time

Since Knowledge = Power, and Time = Money, we have Knowledge = Work/Money

Solving for Money, we get: Money = Work/Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity regardless of the Work done.

Conclusion: The Less you Know, The More you Make.

President Bush + Iraq : Four Years Together

2007-03-19T18:25:00.000-05:00

Bush decided to invade Iraq four years ago and decided to talk about this important anniversary today. (Four years is linen, so I hope he bought something appropriate for Iraq.)

Here are my immediate responses to the words somebody wrote for Bush to mumble.

Good morning. Four years ago today, coalition forces launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to remove Saddam Hussein from power. They did so to eliminate the threat his regime posed to the Middle East and to the world. Coalition forces carried out that mission with great courage and skill. Today the world is rid of Saddam Hussein and a tyrant has been held to account for his crimes by his own people.

Distraction, distraction, distraction. His regime posed very little threat to the Middle East or the world. Taking him out was the easy job. Sealing the power vacuum was the hard job. Our army is fighting a reactionary war in the middle of a revolution. This administration is directing our army to fight yesterday's enemy instead of trying to redefine tomorrow's battlefield.

Nearly 12 million Iraqis have voted in free elections under a democratic constitution that they wrote for themselves. And their democratic leaders are now working to build a free society that upholds the rule of law, that respects the rights of its people, that provides them security and is an ally in the war on terror.

Good for them. Too bad they no power and could be overthrown by a half-dozen militias funded by countries on nearly all of Iraq's borders.

At this point in the war, our most important mission is helping the Iraqis secure their capital. Until Baghdad's citizens feel secure in their own homes and neighborhoods, it will be difficult for Iraqis to make further progress toward political reconciliation or economic rebuilding, steps necessary for Iraq to build a democratic society.

Not exactly. Baghdad has been an excellent training ground for the new generation of Iraq militants. They will now move off to other cities and the petroleum infrastructure. The election? It won't matter when somebody makes a move for the resources. That's the end-game here. It hardly has anything to do with Iraq's capital city.

So with our help, Iraq's government is carrying out an aggressive plan to secure Baghdad. And we're continuing to train the Iraqi security forces so that they ultimately take full responsibility for the security of their own people.

Iraq's government is spinning its wheels and that does provide a nice shiny distraction for Bush. However, let's be honest. They didn't ask for our training, and they will throw out the textbooks when we leave. Baghdad is never going to be as secure as Denver, Seattle, or even Oakland. The average Iraqi would be safer walking in New Orlean's Ninth Ward than any American walking in Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit, or al-Anbar province.

Bush is damning our troops to stay in Iraq indefinitely because it isn't possible to meet his metrics for leaving.

I've just received an update on the situation from Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. My conversation with the Prime Minister followed a briefing earlier this morning that included Secretary Rice and Secretary Gates, along with General Petraeus and Ambassador Khalilzad, who participated by video conference from Iraq.

Hooray! We have proof that Bush showed up for work recently. These video phone calls are hard work!

Prime Minister Maliki and General Petraeus emphasized that the Baghdad security plan is still in its early stages, and success will take months, not days or weeks. Yet, those on the ground are seeing some hopeful signs. The Iraqi government has completed the deployment of three Iraqi army brigades to the capital, where they've joined the seven Iraqi army brigades and nine national police brigades that were already in the area.

Translation: This round of the military shell game will last months, not days or weeks. Yet, those on the ground are seeing signs that the militants are moving away from Baghdad. Don't you think it's awesome that I know about all these numbers? I'm like one of those egg-head mathemakitchens. Right? Right? Can I take a nap now?

The Iraqi government has also lifted restrictions that once prevented Iraqi and coalition forces from going into areas like Sadr City. American and Iraqi forces have established joint security stations. Those stations are scattered throughout Baghdad and they're helping Iraqis reclaim their neighborhoods from the terrorists and extremists.

This would be good news if Iraq's petroleum infrastructure was located within a few blocks in Baghdad. This would be good news if all of the groups we fight were based out of Baghdad.

Together, we've carried out aggressive operations against both Shia and Sunni extremists; carried out operations against al Qaeda terrorists. We've uncovered large caches of weapons and destroyed two major car bomb factories that were located on the outskirts of Baghdad.

In other news, we finally got all the deck chairs on the Titanic in their proper storage closets. Nothing to see here, just keep moving. It's all goooood.

I want to stress that this operation is still in the early stages, it's still in the beginning stages. Fewer than half of the troop reinforcements we are sending have arrived in Baghdad. The new strategy will need more time to take effect. And there will be good days, and there will be bad days ahead as the security plan unfolds.

Bad days would include those that start with the letter S, M, W, and T. And occasionally F. Days that don't start with those letters are generally good.

Bad days would include those like last Saturday when there were three chlorine gas attacks in Iraqi cities that don't begin with the letter "B" and end with the letters "aghdad".

Could somebody explain what a good day in Iraq looks like? A day when less than three bombs detonated in the country? A day when the capital city has more than six hours of electricity? A day when less than twenty civilians are killed or wounded? Seems like it's been nearly four years since there was a good day in Iraq...

As we help the Iraqis secure their capital, their leaders are also beginning to meet the benchmarks they have laid out for political reconciliation. Last month, Iraq's Council of Ministers approved a law that would share oil revenues among Iraqi people. The Iraqi legislature passed a $41 billion budget that includes $10 billion for reconstruction and capital improvements. And last week, Prime Minister Maliki visited Ramadi, a city in the Sunni heartland, to reach out to local Sunni tribal leaders.

Those are the benchmarks? They signed a deal that will be voided sometime in the next few years? They allocated ten billion for reconstruction when we've spent over ten times that much? Their prime minister was removed from his bubble wrap and sent to another city?

Wake me up whenever they figure out how to ride a bike without training wheels.

There's been good progress. There's a lot more work to be done, and Iraq's leaders must continue to work to meet the benchmarks that have set forward.

At least Ronald Reagan could say nothing with a little bit of zest.

As Iraqis work to keep their commitments, we have important commitments of our own. Members of Congress are now considering an emergency war spending bill. They have a responsibility to ensure that this bill provides the funds and the flexibility that our troops need to accomplish their mission. They have a responsibility to pass a clean bill that does not use funding for our troops as leverage to get special interest spending for their districts. And they have a responsibility to get this bill to my desk without strings and without delay.

Yeah, because Bush is soooo going to veto troop money if the bill isn't "clean". I guess this makes him feel like he earns his afternoon nap.

It can be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude our best option is to pack up and go home. That may be satisfying in the short run, but I believe the consequences for American security would be devastating. If American forces were to step back from Baghdad before it is more secure, a contagion of violence could spill out across the entire country. In time, this violence could engulf the region. The terrorists could emerge from the chaos with a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they had in Afghanistan, which they used to plan the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. For the safety of the American people, we cannot allow this to happen.

Yet another distraction. "Consequences for American Security" actually means "US access to Middle East petroleum" in this paragraph. Anti-American terrorists can find several more places to train than Iraq. If we want to be secure against these attacks, then there are more options than occupying Iraq. This is about staying in Iraq to prevent Iran from co-opting Iraq oil resources. That's the only logical reason for us to stay there. Bush just weaves stories to wrap around this fact.

Prevailing in Iraq is not going to be easy. General Petraeus says that the environment in Iraq is the most challenging that he has seen in his more than 32 years of service. He also says that he has been impressed by the professionalism and the skill and determination of our men and women in uniform. He sees in our troops "a true will to win and a sincere desire to help our Iraqi partners achieve success."

Nothing helps wind down a speech than empty patriotic rhetoric.

Four years after this war began, the fight is difficult, but it can be won. It will be won if we have the courage and resolve to see it through. I'm grateful to our servicemen and women for all they've done and for the honor they brought to their uniform and their country. I'm grateful to our military families for all the sacrifices they have made for our country. We also hold in our hearts the good men and women who've given their lives in this struggle. We pray for the loved ones they have left behind.

Yes, yes, yes. Platitudes for sacrifice are groovy. Can we go back to the first sentence in this paragraph? OK. Now will you please define what the hell it means for this fight to be "won"? I only ask because you started this speech by saying that we started this war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. We've already won. Are we there for oil? To turn Baghdad into Salt Lake City? To turn Iraq into a crime-free country like Canada? Are we there to kick out Al Qaeda or is it to prevent them from entering when we leave (which doesn't make much sense BTW)? I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan, and I'm used to redefining the definition of 'victory', but I can only go so far. What the hell is success in Iraq?

The United States military is the most capable and courageous fighting force in the world. And whatever our differences in Washington, our troops and their families deserve the appreciation and the support of our entire nation.

They deserve a commander-in-chief that doesn't manipulate the army like pawns in a geopetroleum chess game. A chess game that has made this President's family incredibly rich.

Thank you.

In the words of Dick Cheney, "Go Fuck Yourself."

Joe Klein : Go Away

2007-02-26T20:05:00.000-06:00

Joe Klein, allegedly liberal journalist, has this to say about the Democrats on Scarborough Country:

They haven't found their sea legs, but they are overreaching.

That doesn't even make sense. They can't stand up to the President, and yet their proposals go too far. Klein is slowly becoming Time Magazine's Christopher Hitchens, except he's a bit less eloquent. Even if he seems a tad more sober than Hitch...

And what about that wacko plan that John Murtha has proposed? The one that he proposed without having sea legs, and yet goes too far? The one that says we should fully fund the troops and give them adequate rest between tours of duty? According to this Washington Post / ABC News poll, it has support from 58% of the American public. It's unfortunate that pro-war Republicans don't have the balls to call Murtha's bluff and implement his changes and keep the war going. They want to fight this war on the cheap, and hope that the troops won't notice.

A Sullivan Fraud?

2007-02-25T15:41:00.000-06:00

Something is very suspicious about this post at Andrew Sullivan's blog. He only uses ten words to say that he was wrong and somebody else was right. No nuance. No triple-explanations. I would never have suspected that he could order a cup of coffee with less than forty words. Has somebody stolen his account?

He was right. I was wrong. This clip is impressive.

If you haven't seen the clip yet, I've added it to the post so you don't have to go over to Sully's Weird World. It was linked at TPM last week, and I didn't think it was that impressive. It was the standard Dem position for those of us that didn't support the war. Too bad people like Andrew Sullivan and the gang at The New Republic were too busy playing cheerleader for the Administration instead of paying attention to reasonable arguments opposing the invasion of Iraq. (To be fair, they were hiding in their closets a-feared of Osama's Balsa Wood Nuclear Planes and Mobile Hot Dog Vans of Doom.)

Cloudy With A Chance Of Chaos

2007-02-24T22:35:00.000-06:00

Take a few minutes to read this article from Fortune Magazine:

A disturbing consensus is emerging among the scientists who study global warming: Climate change may bring more violent swings than they ever thought, and it may set in sooner. Lately John Browne, the CEO of BP, has been jolting audiences with a list of proposed solutions that hint at the vastness of the challenge. It aims at stabilizing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at about double the pre-industrial level while continuing economic growth. To do that, carbon emissions would have to be reduced ultimately by seven gigatons a year. A gigaton, or a billion tons, is even bigger than it sounds. Eliminating just one, argues Browne, would mean building 700 nuclear stations to replace fossil-fuel-burning power plants, or increasing the use of solar power by a factor of 700, or stopping all deforestation and doubling present efforts at reforestation. Achieve all three of these, and pull off four more equally large-scale reallocations of capital and infrastructure, and the world would probably stabilize its carbon emissions.

There's just one catch: Even change on this vast scale might not stop global warming.

What if the secret behind civilization is that we've had really good weather?

A Difficult Life For The Little Green Fascists

2007-02-24T17:38:00.000-06:00

One of the Little Green Fascists is having a tough day. First of all, Digg has buried one of his stories.

It’s a leftist totalitarian dreamworld. They simply exclude any and all points of view that violate the groupthink—and call it “democracy.”

Well, I'm not sure that LGF has a strong record of respecting all points of view. In addition, LGF encouraged its audience to "digg" a post that is nothing more than a link to an AP article with a crappy headline. LGF's blog post didn't add anything relevant to the original article, and should have been buried because it did nothing but direct traffic to the LGF site.

If you have something interesting to say, post it up to Digg. If you are only driving traffic to your blog by linking to an article and adding two irrelevant sentences, then your digg item should be buried. Permanently.

Lamewads.

Why We Fight

2007-02-23T21:30:00.000-06:00

Assassination Proclamations

2007-02-21T20:00:00.000-06:00

A few days ago Flippant Conservative Reaction Machine (AKA Instapundit) crapped out a long brown "idea" regarding assassination of civilian Iranian scientists:

We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists.

Now, some people thought this was a somewhat asinine idea because it's a little difficult to assassinate a sovereign nation's nuclear scientist community quietly. That's not something you can do on the 'down low'. It also begs the question of whether we have the intelligence resources to identify the correct people and quietly (or even loudly) assassinate them.

Paul Campos of the Rocky Mountain News labeled Insta-Rhetorical-Loop as the Right's Ward Churchill. (I tend to think that's a little kind to Mr. InstaLobotomy.) Mr. Campos writes:

Certainly, it's worth asking Reynolds' administrative superiors at the University of Tennessee what limits, if any, the terms and conditions of Reynolds' employment put on his behavior. After all, if the American government were to follow Reynolds' advice, his employer would have an accessory to murder on its payroll.

This led to a reaction from Instanutter defending his assassination wet dream:

And as a 1989 memorandum by the Judge Advocate General of the Army notes, killing enemy leaders or weapons scientists isn’t even assassination: “Civilians who work within a military objective are at risk from attack during the times in which they are present within that objective, whether their injury or death is incidental to the attack of that military objective or results from their direct attack. ... Thus, more than 90 percent of the World War II Project Manhattan personnel were civilians, and their participation in the U.S. atomic weapons program was of such importance as to have made them liable to legitimate attack.

“Similarly, the September 1944 Allied bombing raids on the German rocket sites at Peenemunde regarded the death of scientists involved in research and development of that facility to have been as important as destruction of the missiles themselves. Attack of these individuals would not constitute assassination.”

And it will continue to go round and round because both of these guys are lawyers, and they are highly trained in creating linguistic moebius strips.

Now, I think it's time to consider Instaheadache's response with regard to civilians that contribute toward a military objective. Members of the 101st Keyboard Division like to claim that liberal bloggers reduce soldier's morale with the hurtful things they type. So, the converse of this is the assertion that conservative bloggers improve soldier's morale with the incredibly brave words they type. Hell, Michelle Malkontent has even flown to Baghdad and blogged from the battlefield itself. Can you imagine how much worse the situation in Iraq would be if our soldiers were depressed because they didn't have access to conservative blogs? The liberal media would reduce them to nothing but quivering, crying Oprah-loving peace machines. If it weren't for the 101st Keyboarders, we would've lost Iraq years ago.

That's why I'm concerned for Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, and the rest of the crew at Red State. If we quietly assassinate the key components of the Iranian war machine, then they might start assassinating the key components of our own. Hell, it seems like you can push an agenda to assassinate anybody if you try hard enough. You'd almost think there should be another way to secure world peace and equitable global commerce. But, no probably not. I think it's time to go out and buy some body armor.

Vietnam : PLEASE NEVER FORGET ABOUT VIETNAM FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD AND GODLY #*@&#$@!!!!!!!!!!

2007-02-20T20:12:00.000-06:00

Vietnam Veteran, Rick Francona, accuses Vietnam Veteran, Jack Murtha, of forgetting the lessons of the Vietnam War and that somehow Jack Murtha will repeat the same mistakes of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon when they failed to drop that one last load of bombs in Northern Vietnam which would have made The Cosby Mysteries a success. Err, I mean Vietnam a success. If only we had dropped that final load of bombs we could have prevented communism from taking over the entire Asian continent which resulted in the Super Power of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that currently rules the world.

Francona's blog entry is just plain nonsensical:

All of this boils down to congressional (political) micromanagement of the Defense Department’s conduct of a war – all the things he no doubt complained about (or should have) when he was a Marine Corps officer.

Congratulations, Colonel – you propose to do to the troops in Iraq what the Johnson and Nixon administrations did to us in Vietnam. I hope it doesn’t turn out the same way.

Jack Murtha isn't proposing micromanagement of the Iraq WhAteveR. He wants our troops fully funded. He wants them to have realistic rotations that prevent our troops from burning out after a few years. He wants the Commander In Chief to deliver a realistic exit strategy and an actual definition of victory. Murtha isn't proposing that we divide Iraq into 150,000 little squares and assign one soldier each one to guard and protect. Murtha isn't proposing that Congress needs to oversee each individual band-aid or bullet in Iraq. Murtha isn't proposing that Congress starts writing the menu for our troops.

The pro-war people have the power to call Murtha's bluff. The pro-war people have the power to say, "Yes, these are realistic measures that will provide an incredible amount of support to our troops and boost their morale in ways that Rush Limbaugh's radio show can not."

But let's be honest. The pro-war people won't support adequate funding for a 21st Century Army. They want to literally fight the Vietnam War over again with the same type of tactics and the same type of gear (but with more computers!) They want an Iraq version of M*A*S*H on our television. They want Robin Williams to act like a doofus in a movie called "Good Morning, Baghdad" (except this time he also has a blog). They want to 'win' this time so they can finally say to those dirty hippies once and for all, "See! You guys were wrong about the Iraq War and that means you were wrong about Vietnam and that means you were totally, totally wrong about Lynyrd Skynyrd."

Jack Murtha is only 'bleeding' support away from this war because people like Rick Francona only want to support our troops by writing emotional blogs and bitching about Jack Murtha on cable TV. That's it. That's how they support our troops. Jack Murtha finally called their bluff and submitted a proposal that would set a compelling standard for troop support in the 21st Century. And what happened when the pro-war crowd looked at the proposal for this type of support? They wrinkled their nose because it came from a Democrat, and then they pooped their pants when they saw the price tag. However, they can't write that in their blog so they decide to attack the messenger and accuse him of forgetting the lessons of Vietnam. That might have worked in the 60's, but not today. It's almost like Francona has forgotten the lessons of the anti-Vietnam War Movement...

War Supporters From the Nth Dimension

2007-02-18T23:11:00.000-06:00

War supporters are starting to remind me of Alex Jones fans. They will grasp onto any narrative that supports their position, even if that narrative defies any logic known to man. We have already witnessed Mark Steyn's Tall Tale of the Iraqi Sunni, Iranian Shia, and Al Qaeda working hand-in-hand to embarass Bush and his war. Now, Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe takes the wheel and steers us through the rabbit hole and into the paranoid world of the Middle Earth Lizard People.

Let's join the ride for a little bit:

WHAT DOES IT mean to support the troops but oppose the cause they fight for?

Jeff starts off with a real tough one here. Let's start off by splitting this sentence at the conjunction. What does it mean to support the troops? Good question. Does support mean that we give the troops adequate armor and language/culture training before sending them to war? Or does it mean that we will totally give a Marine a high five if we see them at the airport? I don't know. Jeff already has me stumped, and we're only half a sentence in. Let's skip this tough one and try the last half of the sentence. What does it mean to oppose the cause they fight for? Well, I guess we need to define what that 'cause' is now. We sent them in to force Saddam to give up his nonexistent weapons program. We're kinda screwed since the 'cause' only existed in the narrative constructed by pro-war Conservatives.

It's easy to support a person and not their cause. Have you ever had a friend attending college as a Communications undergrad? You can love the person, even though they are throwing away resources. Is Jeff really this dense? He must have been a Communications Major, too...

Next Jeff throws out the best line yet regarding the anti-surge resolution:

It was a disgraceful and dishonest resolution, and it must have done wonders for the insurgents' morale.

Yeah, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe is 'tuned in' to the insurgent's hearts and minds. He and Mark Steyn think that Iranian Shia, Iraqi Sunni, Muqtada Al-Sadr, Osama bin Laden, and Kim Jong Il are hanging out at Starbucks slapping each other's backs over the results of the vote in America.

Jeff, wake up. These people aren't sitting around reading the Boston Globe over cappucinos in the morning. They aren't going anywhere. Why the hell do they even care if the US troops stay or go? They are in it for the oil in Iraq. The winning faction in Iraq is going to expand the power of Saudi Arabia or Iran. That's what is at stake here. They aren't going to give two shits whether this war belongs to Bush, Clinton, Murtha, DeLay, Al Qaeda, or MTV. WAKE UP MORON.

America is a free country, but it is not the Michael Moores or the ROTC-banners or the senatorial loudmouths who keep it free. They merely enjoy the freedom that others are prepared to defend with their lives. It is the men and women who volunteer to wear the uniform to whom we owe our liberty. Surely they deserve better than pious claims of "support" from those who are working for their defeat.

Well, the op-ed pages of the Chicago Times and the Boston Globe aren't exactly on the front lines of this battle either. Pious claims of support? The last time I checked, it wasn't Michael Moore who sent a bunch of young Americans to go police rival factions in a hellish sand trap where nobody speaks English. Who is claiming to support the troops by sending an extra 20,000 of them to a pile of sand the size of California?

The pro-war Republicans are slowly realizing that this war is going very, very badly. So now they are spinning the most bizarre narratives possible. They don't want to consider the lack of pre-war planning. They don't want to consider the lack of an exit strategy. They don't want to consider that the mission objectives are ill-defined. They want to blame all of this on the hippies that objected to the Vietnam War. They want to blame Murtha, Kerry, and all other Vietnam Vets that seem to understand the cost of war better than the 101st Keyboard Brigade. At some point, I suspect they will be blaming all of this on Anna Nicole's lawyer. He's a pretty awesome scapegoat these days...

Climate Watch Blacklist

2007-02-18T20:18:00.000-06:00

CERES provides this list of the top ten companies that are not responding to climate change concerns.

Banking & Financial: Wells Fargo
Electric Power: TXU, Dominion Resources, Allegheny Energy
Coal: Massey Energy, Consol Energy
Insurance: ACE
Oil & Gas: ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips
Retail: Bed Bath & Beyond

More information can be found at this link.

The Propagation of Ignorance Will Defeat US

2007-02-18T14:45:00.000-06:00

Today Mark Steyn uses the Chicago Sun-Times as his bully pulpit to distort reality and create more conflict between Republicans and Democrats. Is he feigning ignorance just so he can take a few jibes at Democrats? Or is he truly ignorant of reality? I'm not sure, but his perspective is shared by many Conservatives and they are taking us down a very dangerous road.
Steyn uses the standard flippant Conservative voice when discussing the location of Al Sadr:

Meanwhile, the punk cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has decided that discretion is the better part of mullahs and has temporarily relocated to Iran. That's right: The biggest troublemaker in Iraq is no longer in Iraq. It may be that his Persian vacation is only to marry a cousin or two and consult with the A-list ayatollahs, but the Mookster has always had highly sensitive antennae when it comes to his own physical security -- he likes being the guy who urges martyrdom on others rather than being just another schmuck who takes one for the team. So the fact that urgent business requires him to be out of town for the Big Surge is revealing at the very least of how American objectives in Iraq are not at the mercy of forces beyond their control; U.S. military and political muscle can shape conditions on the ground -- if they can demonstrate they're serious about doing so.

Steyn has no evidence to support the claims that Muqtada is in Iran, but that doesn't prevent him from painting Sadr as a 'cut-and-runner'. However, Juan Cole provides a narrative that makes more sense:

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Muqtada al-Sadr and several leaders of his movement as well as commanders of his Mahdi Army are present in the southern marshlands of Iraq, a place in which dissidents in the former Baath regime used to hide out. The marshes have been re-flooded and are at 40% of their original area, and they do give good protection to anyone wishing to hide out. The Marsh Arab inhabitants of the swamps have largely become followers of Sadr, and so would protect him. They are in an area of Iraq that borders Iran and which serves as a smuggling route between the two countries, which may have given rise to the idea that Muqtada was on his way to Iran. He more likely is holed up in the marshes. This is the most plausible story I have seen yet on Muqtada's disappearance.

Jalal Talabani's account that Muqtada ordered his aides to Iran makes no sense at all given Muqtada's longstanding problem with Iran's authority in Shiism and his and his father's position that Iraqis should stay in Iraq even if they are in danger.

So which is it? Has Muqtada deserted his country and fled for Iran to marry his cousins? Or has he relocated to another area of Iraq? Relocation makes a lot more sense to me. However, that doesn't work with the Conservatives belief that the surge is already working so they are spinning nonsensical narratives to obsfucate the issue.

Steyn continues to weave his distorted tale:

According to a report by the New York Sun's Eli Lake last month, Iran is supporting Shia insurgents in Iraq and Sunni insurgents in Iraq. In other words, it's on both sides in the so-called civil war. How can this be? After all, as the other wise old foreign-policy "realists" of the Iraq Study Group assured us only in December, Iran has "an interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.''

Au contraire, the ayatollahs have concluded they have a very clear interest in fomenting chaos in Iraq. They're in favor of Sunni killing Shia, and Shia killing Sunni, and if some vacationing Basque terrorists wanted to blow up the Spanish Cultural Center in Mosul, they'd be in favor of that, too. The Iranians don't care who kills whom as long as every night when Americans turn on the evening news there's smoke over Baghdad. As I say in my book, if you happen to live in Ramadi or Basra, Iraq is about Iraq; if you live in Tehran, or Cairo, or Bei-jing, Moscow, Pyongyang or Brussels, Iraq is about America. American will. American purpose. American credibility.

Well, if it's in Steyn's book then it must be true. Right? Except that it doesn't make much sense. I suspect Iranian Fundamentalists want to see their Shia brethren safe. I suspect the Iranian infrastructure wants to see a Shiite majority in the government because it would complement Iran's petroleum industry quite well. There is no reason for Iran to support Iraq's Sunni guerrillas. And then throwing the anti-Shia Al Qaeda into the mix obliterates Steyn's allegations. Does he really think that Al Qaeda will work with a group of Shia that they believe is a perversion of their own religion? That's almost as crazy as the idea of Al Qaeda working with Southern Baptists to fight the Jews. It's ludicrous. And where, exactly, does the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fit into this mix? They are serious financial backers of Al Qaeda. Are we to believe that KSA and Iran are working together to create headlines in the newspapers in Chicago, New York, and Tokyo? That's almost like saying the British Kingdom was supporting the South during the Civil War so they could make headlines in Johannesburg.

I do see where Steyn is taking his argument, though. The Conservatives desperately need to link Iran to the Iraqi Sunni. It's the Sunni area where the Americans are taking the worst casualties, and it's imperative for Conservatives to create a narrative where the Iran Shia are the prime supporters of the Iraq Sunni. Yes, it's like saying the Ku Klux Klan were the backers of the Black Panthers, but people like Steyn are hoping that readers don't understand the difference between Shia and Sunni.

This is where the editor of the paper should come into play. Editors need to assert control and stand up for the integrity of their newspaper. I doubt that Mark Steyn would be allowed to write a serious column advocating that the Earth is flat. A responsible editor should come down hard on this type of material and say that it is too far away from reality to be published. There is a place for this type of idiocy, it's called the Weekly Standard. Not the Chicago Sun-Times.

And one more thing to Mr. Steyn: The Moderates in both parties, along with the Independents, do not want to live in a world where Iraq has descended into extreme ethnic cleansing. We do not want to live in a world where Iraq security is maintained by US troops indefinitely. If Bush takes us down that path, then he owns the "American Defeat", because both options are unacceptable. Neither of those are paths to "American Victory". If Bush decides to step back, admit mistakes in a frank and humble manner, and negotiate with international allies to create a new coalition; then I will sign on to that in a heartbeat and prepare myself for the resulting "Bush Peace." Ultimately, our goal is peace, not another war. There is still time to help create that type of dialogue in the world and in the United States. But that time is running out.

Stop creating new fights with Democrats and Republicans.

Start creating a new dialogue that will benefit our society and our world. The path to peace is in front of us if we decide to look for it. But we won't find it if we are focused on whether we should always take a Right turn or a Left turn.

NIN : Year Zero

2007-02-17T12:41:00.000-06:00

A new NIN album is coming out on April 17. The album is titled Year Zero and according to Trent it is "Highly conceptual. Quite noisy. Fucking cool."

This appears to be a very high concept album. The mystery began when somebody noticed that highlighted letters from a European Tour Shirt spelled the words 'I am trying to believe." That led to the discovery of the website I Am Trying To Believe which seems to focus on a type of drug injected into the nation's water supply after some sort of biological attack.

The NIN Wiki has a page for Year Zero Research that contains links to more websites. How deep does the rabbit hole go? Take a look at the image linked to this post. That's the audio spectrograph analysis of a few seconds of static at the end of the single My Violent Heart that was leaked via a USB stick at a concert in Portugal last week.

I recommend that you take some time to explore the linked pages at the Wiki and stay tuned for further updates.

Anna Nicole Smith : Rest In Peace

2007-02-15T20:34:00.000-06:00

I always liked Anna Nicole Smith. I didn't care for her reality show or some of her crazy antics, but I liked her. Why?

She was a strong, confident Texas woman who took her one gift and worked the hell out of it. You can find someone like her in every small town here. Except Anna didn't marry the richest farmer in town. She didn't marry that old guy when she was broke, even though 99.9% of the women in her position would have. No, she worked it and worked it and worked it until she found the success that satisfied her. Without compromise. Without editing herself to please her critics.

"But she made a living off her good looks!" you might say.

So what? She was born with 'em. I was born with excellent math skills. I have used them to my advantage to carve a little niche for myself in this world. I let myself get distracted when I should have focused on pushing toward high goals.

There are some men in this world that use their good looks to secure a job as a talking head on television. Men like Brit Hume or Sean Hannity like to think they are above women like Anna Nicole, but they are basically the same. Except they are selling an ideological perspective instead of sex. They pretend to be disgusted by women like Anna Nicole, even though they know they would have given her a blank check if she had shown interest in them. They kinda understand the sexual power Anna Nicole held. She understood it completely, even when she was smashed on methadone.

I will miss Anna Nicole Simpson. She was a wreck. She was a beauty. She was a strong, confident Texas woman that took her gift to the top of her industry. Rest in peace, my love.

Giuliani : He'll Fix America's Town Square

2007-02-15T19:30:00.000-06:00

So Rudy Giuliani is running for President.

And why is Giuliani qualified to be the President of the United States.

He was 'America's Mayor'! He was on TV during 9/11 while Bush and Cheney were encased in protective Tupperware! He is personally responsible for cleaning Times Square!

In other words, he basically did the job he was hired to do. Now, that certainly makes him more qualified than somebody like George W. Bush. But it's not enough for me.

- I'm a Texas boy with very little interest in New York City. I realize that the Media has a huge boner for NYC, but I don't. I suspect plenty of NY folks don't give a flying flip for my beloved cities of Austin and Houston. But I'm not trying to shove Kirk Watson or Bill White down their throats. They are good, efficient mayors of large American cities. I bet they would have done their jobs if attacked by terrorists, just like Giuliani did.

- I don't really care about Times Square. I'm glad that it's nice and shiny and clean. But that's about the extent of it. Giuliani took advantage of a wealthy tax base and a booming US economy and spent money cleaning up a wealthy part of a rich city. That doesn't exactly impress me. Come talk to me when Giuliani cleans up Houston's Fifth Ward.

But maybe I'm the wrong person to talk about this. Let's get the perspective of a native New Yorker that covered Giuliani's administration:

I just read in the paper that there was another court settlement that is costing the city millions of dollars for unwarranted strip searches by the police. This was one of the many, many civil liberties, I would say scandals, that occurred across the Giuliani administration.

He prevented people from having protests and from getting access to government records so they could gauge the credibility of his claims about his magical governance against the facts.

That was a problem with the Giuliani years. He was very, very restrictive about the flow of information. His commissioners spoke at the risk of being dressed down or removed if they said the wrong thing or if they spoke with too much candor. His mayoral management reports, which had actually really been under Dinkins fairly interesting tools for assessing the pluses and minus of city services neighborhood by neighborhood, were turned into basically propaganda, rosy -- and very thin --reports.

That was problematic with Giuliani. If he should run for President, I don’t think it will be golden years for civil liberties in America -- if he wins, that is.

The more I read about Giuliani, the less that I like him. He's one of those typical Republicans that puts on this show about caring for all Americans; a "Compassionate" Conservative that really just cares about the upper classes. In other words, he's a George W. Bush with an East Coast accent. He will be so smug and arrogant that he'll make Bush look like a populist.

But then again, the GOP doesn't have anything else. John McCain makes Bob Dole look vibrant. And the rest of the bunch only care about abortion. I think the Republicans should just send their money to Ralph Nader. They'll like him more than they'll like Hillary. (Of course, most of them would prefer to neuter themselves with a rusty Garden Weasel than live with another democratically elected Clinton.)

War Protestors Vindicated?

2007-02-04T17:45:00.000-06:00

From the Washington Post:

For people who were pilloried, penalized or warned to be careful because of their opposition to a powerful president's war, vindication is nothing to celebrate. It is a victory most bitter.

"Emotionally, it's a very traumatic and unhappy outcome." That is retired Army Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, head of the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan. "How can you be happy about being right about the disaster that's been created?"

It weighs on him.

"Vindication is not pleasing," he says. "Even some of my friends have noted: the more vindicated I've been, the more irritable I become."

Only very, very few people are pleased to see this war fail as a spite to the legacy of George W. Bush. I never supported this war. However, I desperately wish that I would have been proven wrong. But this is hardly the time to spend too much time contemplating those old wounds.

There is no time to gloat about who was right and who was wrong. It's time to look at the people who accurately forecast this disaster and ask them what we should do. The media failed us in the buildup to the war by allowing their front pages to be a bully pulpit for the Administration. Now the media has a chance to reach out to people like Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and amplify his voice. The WaPo talks to Zinni, but they don't follow up on the most important issue at hand:

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, formerly the top U.S. military man in the Middle East, started where Odom started -- in opposition to the war. Zinni argued that going into Iraq would destabilize the region and distract from the fight against al-Qaeda.

For his opposition, he says he was accused by some fellow officers of having political motivations and was disinvited from attending meetings at the Joint Forces Command, where he'd been a regular as a senior mentor for more junior officers.

But he diverges from most early critics of the war, because he now is arguing that withdrawing from Iraq would destabilize the region. Instead, he says, a new strategic framework for the war is needed -- something far broader than the increase Bush has proposed, which Zinni calls a "half-step."

"It's breaking my heart, watching it," he says of the war. "I was praying somehow I'd be wrong, but in my heart of hearts I knew it would happen this way -- the bad decision-making, the insufficient troops."

Congress now is mulling varying resolutions on the war, but Zinni complains that "the debate is wrong. I think Congress is debating the arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic."

But the ship, he argues, doesn't have to go down.

Hey Washington Post! If Zinni was right about the war and is now discussing a broader strategic framework, then follow up on it. I absolutely agree that we need to we need to pursue a broader strategy that will prevent destabilizing Iraq. (Hell, I blogged about it a few hours before reading this article!) I'd like to know what he has to say. If it's a workable idea, then it's time to spread the message and help support the idea by any means possible. It's not too late to save Iraq, but it will be if we allow Bush to keep digging us deeper while we sit around and discuss events four years past.

Options in Iraq

2007-02-04T13:38:00.000-06:00

We have two options in Iraq and they can be summed up with these lines from The Clash:

Should I stay
or should I go?
If I stay there will be trouble
but if I go it will be double.

Basically, we can withdraw from the violent areas in Iraq and slowly redeploy some troops to regional bases/ships and send the rest home. Or we can stay in the middle of this sectarian strife / civil war.

Either way I think both options will result in more violence against Iraqi citizens, infrastructure, and coalition troops (mostly Americans by now). Staying the course (or a mini surge) is the easier, safer answer and that's why Bush chose that path.

Withdrawing from Iraq (slowly or quickly) is going to open the floodgates for more sectarian violence. Iraq's untapped oil is the prize for the winner, and there's little reason to think that any of the competing power players will accept compromise. It will be a fight to the finish, and Saudi Arabia has made it clear that they will go in if we leave. (Of course, they claim that the move is only for the protection of their fellow Sunnis.) This struggle for power will be bloodier than any of the violence we've seen in Iraq for nearly two decades. Therefore, I think withdrawal is an extremely difficult proposition to accept.

If we are going to stay in Iraq and continue the oxymoronic "fight for peace" then we have to move forward with a new approach. (I would also like to say that it's difficult for me to advocate any type of war or escalation of war, but I feel that I need to explore this path.) Here are my thoughts for a true New Way Forward:

Stability in Iraq can not be provided by American and Iraqi forces alone. A failed state in Iraq will diminish American credibility for decades, it disrespects the culture and history of the people in Iraq, and it contributes to global and regional instability. While a few would profit and thrive in this failed country, the world as a whole would not. That's why the first critical step is to kneel before the rest of the world and admit that we failed to prevent the current crisis in Iraq, and that we need help. We must be humble and admit that we need help. We cannot initiate an honest dialogue with potential allies without admitting our mistakes and our needs. Humility will not fix our problems, but I think it will bring sensible allies back to the table.

We must initiate a new dialogue with our European and Arab allies. Few credible people want to see a failed state in Iraq because it is "Bush's War". However, I think our credible allies have been pushed entirely out of the process. It's time to bring them back and listen to what they have to say. Sunni and Shia live in relative peace in the Middle East, and put aside their differences in return for safety and trade. I believe an new dialogue is possible, many people in the world would welcome it, and most Iraqi Sunni/Shia are willing to return to mixed ethnic communities.

The US needs to say that we will pay the startup costs for an International or Arab peacekeeping force in Iraq. The US military has lost too much credibility and burned too many bridges to be effective anymore. The peacekeepers in Iraq need to know the society, speak the language, and share the common life-experiences of the people they are protecting. They must understand the history and honor of the culture, and it's apparent that the US military falls well short of those goals. In order to establish this force we have to pay for it.

Would it be possible to form a new coalition of the willing? I think that it would be possible if the US showed humility and made a strong case for peace. And I don't think we have any other options to explore.

So that is basically my New Way Forward. Initiate a new dialogue (with regional and European partners) that is framed by humility, financing to establish a peacekeeping force, and a legitimate commitment to peace.

I know that my plan seems absurd when you factor the Bush/Cheney cabal into the equation. However, this plan is not directed solely at the Administration. If they are impeached for some reason then the same suggestions are applicable to President Pelosi. If I am given a choice between their Stay The Course (now with mini-surge Marshmallows!) or total withdrawal, then I have to choose withdrawal. The current plan isn't working, won't work with a small pittance of extra personnel, and comes with a pricetag that doesn't justify the return on investment. We either have to support the best plan for peace or go home and deal with the fallout.

Armey Dick

2007-02-04T12:47:00.000-06:00

Former House Majority Leader, Dick Armey R-Texas, has this to say today:

Q. Your views on the Iraq war?

A. I'm not sure that it was the right thing to do. You might say removing Saddam from power was a right thing to do. Maybe it was, but was that necessarily then our responsibility to do that? And was it our responsibility to do that by invading a country that had no way declared any war on us?

Q. You voted for the resolution to go to war.

A. I did, and I'm not happy about it. The resolution was a resolution that authorized the president to take that action if he deemed it necessary. Had I been more true to myself and the principles I believed in at the time, I would have openly opposed the whole adventure vocally and aggressively. I had a tough time reconciling doing that against the duties of majority leader in the House. I would have served myself and my party and my country better, though, had I done so.

His 'principles at the time'? Are these the same principles that he holds now? And he accuses Hillary of being "whoever you want her to be"? Please. This is the man who tried to have it both ways in 2002 by saying we probably shouldn't go to war against Saddam but we absolutely have to give Bush a blank check to do it. I guess he had plenty of time to study 'triangulation' while Clinton was president.

Sorry, Dick. This Texan in Houston doesn't buy it. Refer to Colin Powell's warning to Bush: "If you break it, you buy it." You can't wash your hands of this by saying that you aren't "happy" about your vote. Why don't you go hook up with Tom DeLay and see if you can't settle your decade-old argument about whether the country needs less taxes or more Jesus.

INLAND EMPIRE Review

2007-02-04T00:35:00.000-06:00

Roger Ebert's one-star review of Blue Velvet has never been forgotten by Lynch's die hard fans:

"Blue Velvet" is like the guy who drives you nuts by hinting at horrifying news and then saying, "Never mind." There's another thing. Rossellini is asked to do things in this film that require real nerve. In one scene, she's publicly embarrassed by being dumped naked on the lawn of the police detective. In others, she is asked to portray emotions that I imagine most actresses would rather not touch. She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera. And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film.

His review of Wild at Heart wasn't much kinder:

The violence aside, "Wild at Heart" also exercises the consistent streak of misogynism in Lynch's work. He has a particular knack for humiliating women in his films, and this time the primary target is Diane Ladd, as Mariette Fortune, the town seductress and vamp. The way this woman is photographed, the things she is given to do, and the dialogue she has to pronounce are equally painful to witness. Not even Hitchcock was ever this cruel to an actress. Laura Dern is Ladd's real-life daughter, and in the movie she, too, is subjected to the usual humiliations. Ever since I witnessed the humiliation of Isabella Rossellini in "Blue Velvet," I've wondered if there is an element in Lynch's art that goes beyond filmmaking; a personal factor in which he uses his power as a director to portray women in a particularly hurtful and offensive light.

That's why I have been anticipating his review of INLAND EMPIRE. How would he feel about Laura Dern's next collaboration with Lynch? Surprisingly, Ebert awarded INLAND EMPIRE with Four Stars:

Lynch knows all stories are all in our heads; we make them up and then inhabit them. "Inland Empire" plays with our movie-fed storytelling expectations line by line, shot by shot, scene by scene, even reel by reel (pay attention to those changeover marks in the upper right). He toys with the building blocks -- establishing shots, reaction shots, POV, and especially closeups -- to get us to look at them in unfamiliar ways. It's poetry: We recognize the individual units of meaning, but the grammar and syntax have been altered.

And "Inland Empire" is very much a movie about acting, built around a towering performance by Dern that is itself about giving (and watching) a towering performance. There's a moment, when Dern's distorted, clown-like face is actually projected onto someone else's head, which has got to be the ultimate actor's nightmare: "This is what I do: I make big, grotesque clown-faces to parrot human behavior." You'll want to scream; you probably will. Lynch has actively campaigned (with a cow, on Sunset Boulevard) for an Academy Award nomination for Dern, and for very good reasons. Not only is Dern mind-blowingly terrific, but a nomination itself would be a meta-expansion/continuation of "Inland Empire," and the performance(s) she gives in it.

"Inland Empire" opens and contracts in your imagination while you watch it -- and you're still watching it well after it's left the screen. It's a long but thoroughly absorbing three hours (perhaps necessary for a movie that continually readjusts perceptions of time), but I feel like it's not over yet. It's still playing in my head, like a downloaded compressed file that's expanding and installing itself in my brain. This David Lynch, he put his digital virus in me.

I couldn't have said it better. After watching this film, it has continued to decompress inside of my head. I have attempted to dissect and reconfigure the film analytically, but it refuses to be restructured linearly. And yet, it completely makes sense on a visceral level.

Here's the French trailer of INLAND EMPIRE. If it screens again in the state of Texas, I will be there. I have to see it again.

Iraq NIE 2007 Part I

2007-02-02T17:54:00.000-06:00

I want to do a slightly longer post about the new NIE of Iraq. However, I wanted to pull out this graph:

Coalition capabilities, including force levels, resources, and operations, remain an essential stabilizing element in Iraq. If Coalition forces were withdrawn rapidly during the term of this Estimate, we judge that this almost certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of sectarian conflict in Iraq, intensify Sunni resistance to the Iraqi Government, and have adverse consequences for national reconciliation.

Let me see if I get this right... In his 2003 State of The Union Speech, Bush spent 1,200 words discussing the dire need to disarm Saddam Hussein of his WMD and nuclear weapons programs. (Heck, he was researching five separate methods of enriching uranium according to this speech.) This is the speech that sent us to war, and it said nothing about establishing democracy or resolving old sectarian differences.

Four years later we now have this NIE. There is no mention of WMD or nuclear programs. However, it does state that we must stay there. We have to stay and fight a different war than the one Bush discussed. And we can't leave.

Question: If Bush had asked the American people if we would support a 5+ year war to bring democracy and order to a fractured, sectarian society; would we support this war? No. No. No. If Bill Clinton had proposed a similar war, he would not have received the support of the American people. If Hillary Clinton had proposed a similar war, Conservatives would have assassinated her.

Why are we staying? Why the hell are we staying? Explain this to me. It's time for us to realize that we will not see the United States of Iraq in our life. It's surely not going to happen in the next year or two. And what of the people of Iraq? They are going to splinter into sectarian provinces sooner or later. And at some point in 5, 50, or 500 years they will learn to get along (like the majority of Muslims in the Middle East) or they will kill each other. Either way, it's their decision to make and they aren't going to be taking advice from Bush, Cheney, or any other Conservative blowhards.

Get US out.

Evil Ads

2007-02-02T00:49:00.000-06:00

The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Debacle

The City of Boston needs to STFU. Please. You have embarrassed yourself enough by making statements like these:

Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards "bomb-like" devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged transportation infrastructure in the city.

”It’s clear the intent was to get attention by causing fear and unrest that there was a bomb in that location,” Assistant Attorney General John Grossman said at their arraignment.

Basically, if these were bombs then they could have done a lot of damage to the city's transportation infrastructure. You could reasonably make the same argument about homeless people. Except that it should be somewhat obvious that neither these ads or homeless people are bombs.

But wait! What if the terrorists decided to plant bombs in the city's infrastructure, disguise the bomb as a character from a lame unknown cartoon, and then leave the bomb without activating it? Well, I'd say that would be a pretty crappy plan.

Seriously, has any terrorist anywhere decorated a bomb like a Lite Brite toy? Is the Joker attacking Boston? Did the Riddler join Al Qaeda?

It's time to take a look at the people in charge of security in Boston and teach them the value of tax payer money. The people of Boston can't afford to be shut down every time a city worker sees a blinking light, or Pokemon, or keychain LEDs, or whatever it is that is giving them poopy pants. Call it a misunderstanding and just walk away. Walk slowly away.

Outrage Of The War?

2007-02-01T21:41:00.000-06:00

Oy. This war just gets stupider by the minute.

See if you can keep up with this one: The NYTimes posted a video of a gunfight on Haifa Street featuring American and Iraqi forces. An American soldier is shot during the gunfight, and the video kinda shows the wounded soldier dragged into an adjoining room. The soldier later died. The NYTimes posted the video on its webpage accompanied with a picture.

Outraged? Well, maybe.

Is it THE outrage of the war? This conservative thinks so:

However, this time the NYT has gone far beyond the pale and reached to the deepest depths of depravity, inhumanity, and compassion, and violated standard ethical constraint when it broadcast the video of an American Marine being shot, and reported his death without officially contacting his family.

He isn't alone, several of the malcontents in the right blogosphere think this is the single most outrageous event of the Iraq war.

Sometimes I think I *almost* understand conservatives until I read this type of hyperbolic douchery. It's not the lack of WMD that is outrageous. It isn't Abu Ghraib. It isn't the squandering of billions. It's a picture and video of a wounded soldier on the New York Times that plumbs the deepest depths of inhumanity and depravity. Kidnapped contractors? Not as bad. Dozens of beheadings captured on video? Not as bad. The inept execution of Saddam Hussein broadcast globally in near real time on the eve of a religious holiday? Not as bad as New York Times (according to Conservatives).

And what of the family? I think this quote sums it all up pretty well:

"Oh God, they shouldn't have published a picture like that," Leija's cousin Tina Guerrero, who had not seen the images but was aghast about them anyway, told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday in Raymondville.

That's right. They haven't seen the picture or video, but they are obviously outraged. Nobody should ever publish an image of a wounded soldier, right? I mean, then the war would be gross.

So, what does this grisly death video look like? Well, it's quite outrageous. It's six minutes long, and you can barely even see the soldier because of the low contrast lighting. However, you can see enough of this 'mission' to become extremely outraged. Basically, this Texan died for no f*@#king reason. None. They were "clearing" private apartments of whatever you call want to call them: bad guys, terrorists, dead-enders, insurgents, the enemy. (I can't keep up with their names anymore...)

But let's look at this situation. A kid from Texas is leading a group of fellow Americans through an apartment building where the residents do not speak or understand English (and we obviously don't speak their language). The bad guys have seen the Americans coming, and have had time to escape. One of the enemies (or perhaps somebody else in another building) snipes at the Americans through the window. The Iraqi troops have moved on and left the Americans by this time. We lose a soldier. We spend tax-payer resources to fund this "mission". And what did we purchase in exchange? The 'bad guys' had to move next door for a few hours or days.

If you aren't outraged by now, I think you should be. We are surging more troops and spending more tax payer resources to keep doing this everyday. For an indefinite period of time. And all of it is being captured on every single medium possible, and it will only become much easier to find. It's time for Conservatives to accept the costs of war in the 21st Century, the Age of Information.

It only gets worse from here, morons. The American public is growing outraged, and the direction doesn't point to New York. It points to Washington DC, and to the "heartland" "moral majority" blowhards that used fear and jingoism to buy support for this war.

Rest In Peace Molly

2007-01-31T18:49:00.000-06:00

Molly Ivins passed away today after a long battle with breast cancer.

When I was growing up, my father or grandfather would read her column aloud at the breakfast table. I was too young to understand the politics, but I fell in love with her language. I was beginning to reject my Texan roots, but her columns helped me understand that you can be intelligent, sophisticated, and still completely Texan. (Ann Richards kinda helped out, too.)

Molly Ivins was a national treasure and an icon of The Lone Star State. And I miss her already...

Here's a classic from Molly that showcases her trademark wit:

It's all very well to dismiss the dismal sight of our Legislature in action by saying, "I'm just not interested in politics," but the qualifications of the people who prescribe your eyeglasses, how deep you will be buried, what books your kids read in school, whether your beautician knows how to give a perm, the size of the cells in Stripe City and a thousand and one other matters that touch your lives daily are decided by the dweebs, dorks, geeks, crooks and bozos we've put into public office. (You may believe yourself in no peril of ever landing in Stripe City, but should you happen to contravene a law made by the only politicians we've got, this too will become a matter of some moment to you. For example, if you happen to possess six or more phallic sex toys, you are a felon under Texas law. In their boundless wisdom, our solons decided that five or fewer of the devices make you a mere hobbyist.)

Courtesy of the Fort-Worth Star Telegram's Four Favorite Ivins Columns.

(Pssst. Use BugMeNot if you need a quick password for it or any other media site.)

INLAND EMPIRE

2007-01-30T17:51:00.000-06:00

I had the opportunity to see David Lynch's new film INLAND EMPIRE last week in Austin at the Paramount Theater. Chrysta Bell, an Austin vocalist who collaborated with Lynch on the film, and the David Lynch introduced the film, and he stuck around for a Q&A afterward.

I'm not sure if you can spoil this movie, but I'm still going to offer a spoiler-free review.

INLAND EMPIRE is Lynch's best film since Eraserhead. I've enjoyed most of the work that followed his brilliant debut, but nothing compares to this new film. It's an experience that just seems to fold into itself several times. The narrative is constructed out of emotion, sound, and reaction; the viewer can't rely on verbal dialogue to communicate the real story here.

Laura Dern delivers a stellar performance, one that seems to exorcise the demons of a thousand failed actresses from the screen before your very eyes. The rest of the cast (including Jeremy Irons, Julie Ormond, and Diane Ladd) seem like bit players from the Theater District in Dante's Inferno; and maybe they are. But they all give performances that seem to extend beyond the normal five senses.

I hate to go any further here, because I will start getting into the specifics. In short: This film makes Mulholland Drive look like a Lifetime Network movie. It's an incredible journey that should only be viewed by a small percent of the American public. Ten thumbs up!

Iraq's Last Chance

2007-01-23T18:10:00.000-06:00

Trent Lott just said this is the Iraqi's last chance to make things work.

I guess that I have to disagree with this perspective. The people of Iraq don't really have anywhere else to go. Unless they are completely annihilated, Iraq has many many more chances to make this work. At some point, they will either agree to get along (like they have in the past once the power vacuum is filled) or the weakest group will be killed or transferred. I actually suspect they will eventually unite under some type of power structure, just as they have so many times in the past. We just need to find a way to keep the body count down until it happens...

This might be the Republican's last chance to fix things before the American Public tosses all of them to the curb, but the people of Iraq don't really have a choice of withdrawing or redeploying or whatever.

Just a thought...

Blog For Choice

2007-01-22T21:45:00.000-06:00

Today is Blog For Choice Day, and this year's topic is "Why Are You Pro Choice?"

To be fair, I must start at the beginning and explain that I was once a devout Southern Baptist and I initially sided with Pro-Life positions. I was young, and the issue was black and white. Pregnant women have babies. Babies live to become people. Life is precious and should not be stolen, ergo pregnancies are precious and should not be robbed of their chance to become people.

And then one day I tried explaining this reductionist argument to my father. He was quite livid, not for my position per se; his anger was directed at my simplistic binary logic. He suggested that some pregnancies aren't planned, and that some people live outside the quaint little Baptist Bubble in which I existed. My father's arguments didn't quite convince me at the time, but as I grew older I started to notice that the world was much more complex. Women are much, much more complex than I initially thought. I began to realize that my father wasn't defending his ideology, he was defending the principle of choice.

The responsibility of The Choice belongs to the one who bears the pain of the reality: the woman. I trust her to know the limits of her physical and mental health; I trust her to know whether she is ready for the responsibility of bearing a child. I trust Her more than I trust the Government to make The Choice.

And so I have come full-circle. I have basically traded one simplistic position for another. I am pro-choice simply because I am a man. I am not so arrogant as to believe that I can make a better biological decision for a woman; I am not so arrogant as to believe that I understand this issue like a woman does. Therefore, the Choice and the responsibility of the Choice belong to Women.

And what of the babies? Well, the human body seems to abort(miscarry) 10%-25% of recognized pregnancies and 50%-75% of unrecognized/unknown pregnancies (source). And America ranks second highest in the developing world with regard to the number of infant mortalities (source). 1 out of 5 children in my home state of Texas has no medical insurance (source).

It's difficult for me to embrace my old simplistic "All Life Is Precious!" philosophy when I live in a complex world where we obviously do not place a high premium on the lives that are already here. A National Health Care Plan would reduce the number of miscarriages due to insufficient health care, it would reduce the number of infant moralities, and would improve the quality of life for the children that have already been born. Life is precious, and I suspect that if we worked hard to improve the quality of life for all people in the United States then we would actually see a reduction in the number of abortions. And that's a goal that I think we should all work toward.

Iranians Don't Like Their President

2007-01-21T13:32:00.000-06:00

The Telegraph ran a story today that exposes the political/economic rift in Iran that should be a major point of discussion in America. Basically, the Iranian Middle class is disappearing due to the weak performance of the economy.

Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 promising to use oil money to cut the gap between rich and poor. If he has succeeded, it is only because both groups are now struggling to make ends meet.

Had he nailed the economics, his critics might have had more stomach for his political grandstanding and nuclear brinkmanship. Instead, while the Iranians are at the Americans' throats throughout the region, internal inflation and unemployment are running at 30 per cent and rents and property prices are 40 per cent higher than six months ago. Even former supporters are questioning whether turning the entire United Nations Security Council against Iran was a bright idea.

Last week, 150 parliamentarians — just over half of Iran's 290 MPs — took the extraordinary step of signing a letter blaming Ahmadinejad for the country's woes and accusing him of planning to squander the country's oil earnings, which account for about 80 per cent of its revenues, in next year's budget. "The government's efforts must be focused on decreasing spending and cutting its dependence on oil revenues," the MPs wrote.

It was a sure sign that what limited backing Ahmadinejad had from Iran's supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had evaporated. The hard-line conservative newspaper Jomhouri Islami, a reliable indicator of Khamenei's thinking, spelled it out. "Speak about the nuclear issue only during important national occasions, stop provoking aggressor powers like the United States and concentrate more on the daily needs of the people," it wrote.

Iran is a complex nation, and it's a mistake to believe that Ahmadinejad speaks for the entire public. The Iranian middle class knows that their economy cannot be sustained with the petroleum revenues forever, and the crisis is coming to a head. Unfortunately, they need to find alternative fuel sources in order to maintain the production quotas (and to reuse some of the gas in effort to get the most from their declining fields).

This is a critical period in the diplomatic relationship between the United States and Iran. They either want nuclear power plants or they want to expand their territory and grab some of Iraq's oil. There's not a lot of room for us to maneuver, and that's why this requires a delicate hand. I'm can't trust Condi or Cheney to handle this situation effectively, and that's why I suspect that conflict in Iran is inevitable.

Whenever I hear the Administration's saber rattling with Iran, I'm reminded of a Drow quotation: Keep your friends within sword-reach, keep your enemies within knife-reach. The elder Bush understood this. Younger Bush, well I don't think he understands very much at all.

For more information regarding Iran's oil economy and its effect on the entire Middle East, check out this well-researched post at The Oil Drum. The near-term problem isn't necessarily Iran's nuclear weapon ambitions, it's the emerging Shi'a Crescent in the entire region that will likely create conflict and petroleum instability over the next few years.

NYTimes Reviews D'Souza

2007-01-21T13:20:00.000-06:00

I discussed Dinesh D'Souza's performance on the Colbert Report early this week. (In case you forgot, he's the Republican that wants to join forces with bin Laden to destroy the 'cultural Left'.) Alan Wolfe of TNR slams this book in the NYTimes Book Review this week.

At one point in “The Enemy at Home,” D’Souza appeals to “decent liberals and Democrats” to join him in rejecting the American left. Although he does not name me as one of them, I sense he is appealing to people like me because I write for The New Republic, a liberal magazine that distances itself from leftism. So let this “decent” liberal make perfectly clear how thoroughly indecent Dinesh D’Souza is. Like his hero Joe McCarthy, he has no sense of shame. He is a childish thinker and writer tackling subjects about which he knows little to make arguments that reek of political extremism. His book is a national disgrace, a sorry example of a publishing culture more concerned with the sensational than the sensible. People on the left, especially those who have been subjects of D’Souza’s previous books, will shrug their shoulders at his latest screed. I look forward to the reaction from decent conservatives and Republicans who will, if they have any sense of honor, distance themselves, quickly and cleanly, from the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Bush's New Tax

2007-01-21T00:21:00.000-06:00

In his State of the Union next week, PretzelDunce Bush will propose a tax increase on some people that choose a more expensive health plan from the employer. From Bush's radio program this week:

He said the current system “unwisely encourages workers to choose overly expensive, gold-plated plans,” driving up the overall cost of coverage and care.

I'm one of those people that elected the best health insurance plan that the company offered. It appears that I will exceed Bush's limit on the cost of an individual plan, so I will get hit with a tax.

I can't tell you how disgusted this makes me. I was in a mountain biking accident last year, and walked away with two broken elbows, three broken fingers, and trauma potpourri. I made three trips to the operating table. It required the work of one of Houston's top hand surgeons to restore the (nearly) full ability of my hand. (Fingers are kinda nice to have when you are a software engineer.)

This was my first significant health care experience, and I can only hope that it will be the last. My experience with the health care industry left me depressed, apalled, disgusted, filled with rage, and utterly broken. In addition to the money I pay each week for my health care, I was still left with several thousand dollars in bills that I had to pay. If I had not elected for the best healthcare plan my employer provided, I would have been responsible for several thousand dollars more in bills. And now Bush is going to tax me on it? Screw him. SCREW HIM.

NOLA / 2

2007-01-20T20:22:00.000-06:00

New Orleans has lost approximately half of its population since Hurricane Katrina. From the NYTimes:

Hurricane Katrina may have brutally recalibrated the city’s demographics, setting New Orleans firmly on the path its underlying characteristics had already been leading it down: a city losing people at the rate of perhaps 1.5 percent a year before Hurricane Katrina, with a stagnant economy, more than a quarter of the population living in poverty, and a staggeringly high rate of unemployment, in which as many as one in five were jobless or not seeking work.

Political leaders, worried about the loss of clout and a Congressional seat, press for people to return, but a smaller New Orleans may not be bad, some economists say. Most of those who have not returned — 175,000, by Mr. Stonecipher’s count — are very poor, and can be more easily absorbed in places with vibrant job markets, they say.

There were times when I was growing up when my home didn't have running water or electricity, and as a result I have been sensitive to the issues related to unemployment and poverty. Visiting New Orleans was always a little heartbreaking for me, because I always felt like I was returning to my childhood past. It always seemed that the ghosts of the South refused to die in that city, but some might argue that it contributed to the charm.

There is something pure about living in that type of economic condition, you experience the lowest of the lows and you exist without the type of security blanket that most people enjoy in life. But... it allows you a type of freedom that I almost miss, because it allows for an appreciation of life that you overlook when you have that security blanket. When you feel like you have to fight to survive each passing week, it makes you feel very, very alive. Vibrant, in tune with yourself. I feel that I have had to trade some that self-awareness in exchange for the economic security blanket that I have now.

If many of the impoverished NOLA residents can find a new home and integrate into the economic engine of their new city, then I am happy for them. It's unfortunate that it came with such a high price, and that the spirit of the city is permanently altered. Just like Iraq, I feel that we had a very small window of time to set things in the right direction, and the Bush Administration squandered it. The Big Easy could have been rebuilt as a shining example of the strength of post-9/11 America. But I guess Bush wanted to go blow the dough in some stupid desert...

Methodists Say NO to Bush Library

2007-01-20T16:47:00.000-06:00

If you are Methodist, you may want to check out this petition spearheaded by nearly a dozen current and former Methodist Bishops.

We the undersigned express our objection to the prospect of the George W. Bush library, museum, and think tank being established at Southern Methodist University. As United Methodists, we believe that the linking of his presidency with a university bearing the Methodist name is utterly inappropriate. We urge the Board of Trustees of Southern Methodist University and the South Central Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church to reject this project.

Yahoo News has more:

"Methodists have a long history of social conscience, so questions about the conduct of this president are very concerning," said one of the petition's organizers, the Rev. Andrew J. Weaver of New York, who graduated from SMU's Perkins School of Theology.

For some odd reason, the Petition organizers have included additional reading resources about the Bush Presidency with regard to three issues: The Iraq War, Kidnapping/Torture, and Hurricane Katrina.

With any luck the Library will be moved over to Baylor University. Those Baptist morons live in a very nice, thick bubble of jingoism and hypocrisy. That's a perfect place for Bush's legacy. (Is it obvious that I was a devout Southern Baptist for seven years?)

Republican Moral Clarity - NOLA EDITION

2007-01-20T16:19:00.000-06:00

Republicans use the term moral clarity to justify activities like the Iraq War and domestic eavesdropping. This position affords the Bush/Cheney regime the freedom to do whatever they want, because they are defending God and Country. Basically, it's OK to break a lot of eggs when you're making a Freedom Omelette.

So, this leads us to a little bit of domestic moral clarity with regard to the ineptitude displayed by the Administration after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. The Administration that loves to wrap itself in the Flag and the Bible didn't think a white Democrat woman like Kathleen Blanco could handle the situation in Louisiana, whereas a white Republican male like Haley Barbour could handle Mississippi. From Michael 'Heckuva Job' Brown:

Brown, speaking at the Metropolitan College of New York, said he had recommended to President Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the devastating hurricane be federalized — a term Brown explained as placing the federal government in charge of all agencies responding to the disaster.

"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" he said, without naming names. "'We can't do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'"

Brown, 52, declined to say who in the White House had argued for federalizing the response only in Louisiana. He said that he'd later learned of the machinations through Blanco's office and from federal officials.

Blanco reacted sharply to Brown's remarks.

"This is exactly what we were living but could not bring ourselves to believe. Karl Rove was playing politics while our people were dying," Blanco said through a spokeswoman, referring to Bush's top political strategist. "The federal effort was delayed, and now the public knows why. It's disgusting."

Eryn Witcher, a White House spokeswoman, denied Brown's claims.

Of course, the White House will deny this, but it hardly comes as a surprise to the reasonable observer. A person of true moral clarity would have cast aside these temporary flippant issues and would have sent all possible help IMMEDIATELY to the Gulf Coast following landfall. This administration wanted to create a political issue out of a nightmarish natural disaster, because that is the way they work. If they can't triangulate a wedge between all involved parties, then they don't want to play. It's as simple as that.

It's no wonder they American people no longer trust this Administration with regard to Iraq and the Middle East.

Wind Cars

2007-01-20T11:48:00.000-06:00

The Telegraph has a small article on the Democrat's Bill to rescind a specific type of tax break for big oil companies.

Big Oil Lovers are having heart palpitations over the fact that oil companies will pay an estimated $14 Billion over the next ten years. Will this increase our dependence on foreign oil? Some people say yes, because that $1.4 Billion per year would be used for advanced oil exploration/extraction methods. Other people say no because this is a small amount of money spread across a few very large companies that have earned record profits over the last few years.

However, I wanted to share something else from the article. It's a throw-away line that displays the mindset of Republican Oilmen:

"The San Francisco Democrats want to run cars with wind," said Representative Steve Pearce, referring to new House leader Nancy Pelosi, who comes from the famously liberal city.

It's fair to note that Steve Pearce is the owner of a small oil business worth at least a million dollars.

But let's look at this comment. "San Francisco Democrats want to run cars with wind." If we're discussing a pure zero pollution emission vehicle (including manufacturing the car and the process to compress the air), then is that really such a bad thing to 'want'? Regardless if it is feasible right now, that's a good thing to 'want'.

Pearce and his Republican ilk do not seem to have any interest in seeking legitimate, practical alternative energy sources. They 'want' to stay the course for either ideological reasons or because it is their main paycheck. They don't 'want' to reduce air pollution. They don't 'want' to actually reduce dependence on foreign oil. They 'want' the status quo to remain unchanged for the rest of their life, and they will undermine any attempt at real progress toward alternative energy sources.

I am not very upset that San Francisco Democrats 'want' a car that runs on wind, because you have to 'want' the impossible. And then you start working backward from that point until you reach the feasible. Increasing taxes on oil companies will force the US to depend on more foreign oil? How about asking those patriotic automakers to increase fuel efficiency? How about asking all those patriots like Steve Pearce to support higher efficiency cars in both public and private sectors? A little bit of conservation might actually reduce our dependence on OPEC oil.

And let's even go further with the impossible. How about the President uses his State of the Union address to begin a huge public campaign to encourage conservation, challenge American auto-makers to double fuel efficiency and reduce emissions by half, and then provide more incentives to buy American-made hybrid vehicles. Challenge the American people to work toward the goals of reducing pollution, reducing dependence on petroleum products, and help rebuild the American Automotive Empire in Detroit.

Oh yeah, that's right. Republicans don't really 'want' to pursue those goals. I forgot...

Big Drama For DJ Drama

2007-01-18T18:43:00.000-06:00

The NYTimes has this story about the arrest of famed hip-hop beatmaster, DJ Drama. He was arrested this week for violating Georgia RICO laws.

Now DJ Drama is yet another symbol of the music industry’s turmoil and confusion.

On Tuesday night he was arrested with Don Cannon, a protégé. The police, working with the Recording Industry Association of America, raided his office, at 147 Walker Street in Atlanta. The association makes no distinction between counterfeit CDs and unlicensed compilations like those that DJ Drama is known for. So the police confiscated 81,000 discs, four vehicles, recording gear, and “other assets that are proceeds of a pattern of illegal activity,” said Chief Jeffrey C. Baker, from the Morrow, Ga., police department, which participated in the raid.

DJ Drama (whose real name is Tyree Simmons) and Mr. Cannon were each charged with a felony violation of Georgia’s Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization law(known as RICO) and held on $100,000 bond.

Basically the RIAA is admitting that it is so clueless about today's music world that it can't tell the difference between a bootlegged copy of a Snoop Dogg CD and a DJ mix that contains Snoop Dogg songs. The RIAA thinks that it is in the best interest of musicians to snuff out their best promotional asset.

It's no secret that I'm completely addicted to techno. Everytime I go to a store like Fry's, I always browse the electronic music section for a professional mix from my favorite DJs. Unfortunately, there is nothing out there for me to buy. I would love to throw my money at a record company that released mixes from professional DJs like Adam Beyer, Eric Sneo, Donald Glaude, Surgeon, or T-1000. The music industry in the United States decided several years ago that it didn't want to fight for my money, so I look elsewhere for the music that I love.

That kinda leads me directly to Roger Friedman's column today:

The recording industry, or what used to be known as the music business, is in a free-fall disaster.

Last week, the total number of CDs sold in the top 10 came to less than a half million. The actual number is closer to 445,000. And the No. 1 album, the soundtrack to the "Dreamgirls" movie, sold only 60,000 copies, according to hitsdailydouble.com.

This should be considered a crisis. Tower Records is gone, and if things keep up this way, more record stores and chains will start disappearing.

And it’s not like downloading has completely taken over from physical CD sales. Despite the hype, Apple reported a 65 percent drop in downloading in December.

Hmmmm. The music industry is sending high priced lawyers to squeeze blood from the P2P community, and casting its life-long customers as criminals. And now they are trying to crack down on arguably the most popular form of underground music today. What next? I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA starts talking about invading Iran. They'd rather spend time doing anything BUT search for and promote the deserving artists that are withering on the vine.

Note to RIAA: There's a reason why producers continually give new, unsigned, unreleased music to the hottest DJs. If you worked with the DJs and utilized their resources to find hot, new producers/artists and promote/support them over time then you might actually start selling CDs again. In the meantime, I'll be grooving on the newest mix that I made this weekend...

Conservatives Agree with Bin Laden

2007-01-17T17:38:00.000-06:00

The Carpetbagger has a great rundown of last night Colbert Report featuring Dinesh D’Souza. If you are not aware, D'Souza is a conservative writer/pundit that is your typical blowhard contemporary Republican. He talks a big game, but seems to lack some of the basic logic skills necessary to digest nuance and complexity.

Basically Dinesh d'Douche agrees wholeheartedly with Osama bin Laden's view of the world. Basically the problem with America, the Land of Freedom, is our fervent addiction to freedom. And if you have defended those freedoms, then you are the reason why Al Qaeda attacked us.

Let me repeat D'Souza's assertion: If you defend personal freedom and liberty in the United States of America, then you are directly responsibly for Al Qaeda's actions.

Folks, this is the level of debate found in the Right Wing World. If you defend The Golden Rule, then the blood of fellow humans is on your hands. How appalling is this argument? Basically this is like saying that Conservatives are responsible for the death of Sharon Tate because they didn't heed the writings of Charlie Manson. Or that the people of the United States are responsible for all of the people that died in Jonestown because we didn't accept Jim Jones as our personal Lord and Savior. I thought that the Republican party stood for personal responsibility; i.e. we don't need a welfare state because it is up to you to redeem yourself. Blaming Democrats/Liberals/Progressives for the sins of bin Laden is delusional.

Like Ann Coulter, D'Souza only hopes that this type of flammatory rhetoric sells books and gets him a few cable television bookings. Of course, he has sold himself short because now he can not be accepted as an intellectual that deserves attention. D'Souza has given us nothing of substance to debate; therefore he can immediately be replaced by the next hyperbolic blowhard.

Osama bin Laden owns 9/11. You can't assign credit to anybody else, especially patriots that correctly rejected the demands of a mass murderer.

Preventive War

2007-01-17T12:26:00.000-06:00

I posted this comment at the Washington Monthly blog. Kevin Drum (formerly Calpundit) is a liberal hawk that initially supported this war. He and Atrios have argued whether the primary anti-war argument was based on the assumption that 'preventive' wars are always bad. I would argue that this was only sold to us as a preventive war, but this was not prosecuted as a preventive war. The initial case was not supported by the facts, and the actual war plan failed to meet its objectives of security WMD locations and egress points along the Iraq border. Debating the idea of 'preventive war' isn't necessarily off-base, but the realities of Bush's war preclude it from being listed as a preventive war. (I would say that Bush's war is more or less criminal intimidation.)

I haven't really felt compelled to say much about this topic until I read Drum's blog today and saw that he's still hung up on this question:

Would the war have gone better if it hadn't been preventive?

This asinine question led me to add this comment. I spent so much time on it that I felt like posting it. However, it does need some editing, but I don't have the time to do it right now. (work emergency) Hopefully I can come back this evening and add a few more thoughts on this subject.

The feasibility of a preventive war is tied to the question of "What are we trying to prevent?"

1. We were sold on a war to prevent Saddam from advancing a WMD program, or allowing "terrorists" from obtaining any elements or byproducts of Saddam's WMD program.

All evidence to support the first point was quite flimsy. In the buildup to the war, the Bush Administration failed to provide a single point of evidence that met the sniff test. Period. It's unfortunate that the war hawks failed to debate the war on these terms.

Let me state that last point again: It's unfortunate the war hawks failed to debate the war on the shared, verifiable facts and instead debated their own reductionist assumptions.

Would the war have gone better if it hadn't been preventive? Holy Asinine Crap, Batman! What does this question even mean? Are you asking if the war would have been better if we didn't go? Are you asking if the war would have been better if Saddam had claimed responsibility for 9/11? Are you asking if the war would have been better if Saddam decided to bomb Pearl Harbor again? If Saddam did not openly attack us, what other type of war would we have declared on Saddam? Or are you asking if it would have been better if Saddam had been actively seeking WMD? That leads to the next ugly point...

2. The war "plan" failed to secure WMD locations. The war "plan" failed to secure egress points along the border that might have allowed WMD to be moved out of the country.

Even if you accept that the preventive war argument is a good idea, you have to deal with the fact that the actual plan did not have the resources to resolve the WMD issue. And God forbid what would have happened if Saddam's army had been prepared to fight, or if Saddam actually had WMD to use against the invading Army.

It is unfortunate that war hawks (liberal and conservative) were inclined to support the Administration's war in the first place. If this was truly a war to prevent a WMD holocaust in the United States, then why the hell were we trying to do it on such a small resource budget? This entire war (planning, selling, execution) has been an enormous train wreck in slow motion.

I'm still waiting for a war supporter to explain why it was our most critical national security issue and how the plan was supposed to be successful. I think the real question should be "Would the war have gone better if we had supported executed a realistic plan to meet our objectives?" If we had done that, then we could actually say we prosecuted a preventive war and debate its merits. We poured our resources into a funnel that emptied in Iraq, and expected that the people of Iraq would give us cake and a map to the buried WMD treasure. That's not a preventive war; that's an arrogant, offensive display of money and power that is arguably criminal. That's how gangs control territory, that's not how a civilized society resolves a real impending threat.

Introducing the President

2007-01-10T20:02:00.000-06:00

From Chris Matthews on MSNBC tonight:

Well, here he is, the only Commander in Chief we have, President of the United States, George Bush.

Chris and Keith Olbermann do not sound convinced this will work.

Peace Movement Kills Kids

2007-01-08T19:47:00.000-06:00

Don Surber accuses the peace movement of killing nearly eight million people and that they are about to strike again.

Last time out, Cindy Sheehan and her ilk led to the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. Michael Dickey put the carnage since 1975 by the North Vietnamese government and its proxies at 7.5 million people including up to 3 million in the killing fields of Cambodia.

The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam also cleared the way for the Hanoi-backed Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces to win a 5-year civil war against a military coup.
[...]
Turn the clock to 1991 when CNN’s “Highway of Death” footage stopped the Gulf War far short of Baghdad. Saddam Hussein followed with his own “drain the swamp” retaliation of draining the marshes of southern Iraq near the Kuwait border, displacing 200,000 Marsh Arabs[...]

There's more, but I think you get the point. I guess that I can accept the Republican argument that the anti-war crowd "lost" Vietnam and the first Iraq war. Whatever. It's a nonsensical argument, but I guess you could make it if you are a nonsensical person. But that doesn't even excuse the idea that the anti-war crowd is losing this war. The anti-war crowd does not have an army with guns and bombs. Bush does.

If he really, really believed that he could somehow win in Iraq then he would pull out everything, everything necessary to do it. Nothing comes easy in war, and if we could possibly do it then Bush would be doing it. It's not like Bush is sitting on a plan for absolute "victory" but is saying that it costs too much or takes too much time. If that was the case, then he'd make a case to the American people. Bush has a plan to raise the bet in the hopes that the other guy folds his hand.

It seems like Bush's most vocal supporters (like Don Surber) are now attempting to triangulate and strategerize the blame to the Left. Does anybody seriously think that hippies lost the Vietnam war? And is Bush really sitting in the White House and say, "Damn Cindy Sheehan! I would have beat Iraq if it weren't for her meddling ways!" Please. Give me a break. If Cindy Sheehan was really the wall standing between us and walking out of free, stable, Democratic Iraq (It's like a Utah in the Middle East!) then I would go out and take care of Cindy.

Don Surber & Co. will blame the Iraq war on the Dem minority in Congress during 2002-2006. They will then blame the post-invasion mess on hippies, the Dem majority, the Liberal Media, and Michael Moore. They forced this war down our throats, and now they are upset that it was a predictable quagmire. And yet it's Cindy's fault that her own son gave his life for it. Ohwait, I screwed up Surber's nonsensical argument. The future deaths of Iraqis will be the fault of Cindy Sheehan because her son died, she refused to accept it quietly, and her voice became so loud that it overpowered the voice of the President and the minds of the American people. (There, I just wanted to make sure I got it right.)

Ridiculous.

The Surge

2007-01-08T18:12:00.000-06:00

Bush is preparing to work Capitol Hill to build support to surge 20,000 (?) US troops into Iraq.

"But advisers to the president also believe that the public is willing to give Mr. Bush another chance — especially if he puts forth a policy that is heavy on specifics. The White House is also mindful of polls showing that while the public wants the situation to improve in Iraq, it does not necessarily favor immediate withdrawal.

They're going to cast it as a choice between withdrawal and surge," said one Republican strategist who is close to the White House. "The public is not for immediate withdrawal or even a quick withdrawal, but they're not for the status quo. I think they feel as if the public is more likely to support the president's position, which is putting a stake in the ground in Iraq and saying we're going to try to win." The speech is expected to contain a series of goals for the Iraqi government.

(emphasis my own)
Wow. A policy heavy on specifics AND goals for the Iraqi government? Is it possible to send this material back to the summer of 2005 when it would have been useful? We were increasing security in Baghdad for elections, and that would've been an awesome time to have specific policy and goals.

This administration has always reminded me of the frats/jocks in College that were always lagging FAR, FAR behind in their work, but were always allowed to turn it in late. Except now this President is in a different class, with a teacher that is not accepting HS Freshman-level papers. And now this Administration is trying to play 'catch-up' as fast as they can. That is why we are stuck with two-year old solutions for two-year old problems.

Goals for the Iraqi government? The head of the government wants to quit before his term is over, and a large number of the government live in any other country except for Iraq. The problems facing this country are mature, dangerous, and complex. The US government does not have any incentives to offer the Iraqi government to do the work to meet these goals.

Specific policy? I'm interested to see where this goes. This Administration has relied solely on ideological rhetoric and ad hominem stereotypes to define themselves, their work, and the world around them. Yes, of course they pepper their speeches with a few metrics and statistics, but there's very little in terms of substance. I'll adopt a 'wait-and-see' attitude on this one.

And finally, this is my favorite aspect of the reported surge: $1 Billion for Reconstruction work. This might be the definition of the phrase "too little, too late". In addition, we've spent billions on Reconstruction anyway. However, now this time we are going to let the Iraqi people "help" rebuild their own country and share on the Reconstruction money. Gosh, maybe that's the reason why they haven't enjoyed this whole experience so far...

It's hard to say exactly how I feel about the surge itself. Obviously, I think aspects of it are well overdue. We've needed to hand some type of goal or timetable to the Iraqi government for a long time. Other than that, we've done all of the rest of this before. Perhaps it is a good idea to make one last presentation and 'surge' before we withdraw, but I haven't seen convincing military support of it. Is this Bush's last grab at the ring, or is he trying to ensure that this is escalated so high that it can't possibly end before he leaves?

Military Bungles Ahoy

2007-01-07T10:14:00.000-06:00

Frequently you read anecdotal stories emanating from our military and their romps in Iraq that symbolize American military ineptitude, and really answer the question of how we got it so wrong. And anyone using their head can peel through the layers of reasons for invasion, exposing the raw, true source - greed. And when you go into war for this reason, the logistics of a successful mission fall by the wayside.

A few months back, Vanity Fair ran an article on the infamous Haditha Killings, in which four military officers were finally charged in the brutal murders last month. While most people complained about its publication, I'm not sure how else we expose the corruption and immorality of the US Army. By virtue, I guess armies aren't supposed to be moral, but there are ways to conduct war, and ways not to - just ask Saddam.

As far as housekeeping details go, the US Army can't get that right, either. In December, re-enlistment letters (letters urging served members to return to active duty) were sent to 5,100 individuals who have recently left the military - unfortunately, 275 recipients of the letter were forced to leave involuntarily. In a total bonehead move, the military sent this letter to 75 officers killed in action, and 200 wounded in duty. And now they are having to apologize to the families of those killed/wounded who received the letter.

The Smoking Gun Roundup

2007-01-03T21:25:00.000-06:00

I occasionally go through The Smoking Gun Archives to find stories that make my life somehow seem less abysmal. Well, my life isn't that abysmal, but some of these sure are funny.

Mike Tyson tells Arizona police how to roll a 'dirty' cigarette. Additionally, weed and cocaine make him "feel good". Kudos to Iron Mike for sharing his recipe for a Keith Richards Marlboro, and I agree that weed and cocaine usually make a person feel good. (Mike also had a few bags of coke in the car with him at the time of this little conversation, too.)

The leader of Phish got busted. With xanax, percocet, and hydrocodone. I have to give credit to my Dad's rock generation. At least they got busted with real drugs. It's sad when hippie bands and right-wing radio hosts are on the same unprescribed dope...

Virginia issues the personalized license plate 'STFU-PLS' and then asks for it back.

Some guy in Wisconsin argues that he can't be prosecuted for having sex with that deer because it was already dead. This guy has already been in jail for killing a horse and attempting to have sex with it.

Fresh Catch On Hussein : Execution Edition

2007-01-02T19:28:00.000-06:00

A man in a suit stands on a platform in a dark, poorly lit chamber. He refuses to slip on a black hood and faces forward stoicly as a noose is lowered around his head. He challenges the manhood of his masked tormenters and abruptly disappears. A few moments later, the cell-phone video pans down to record the last few seconds of conciousness.

Welcome to the 21st Century, The Mobile Youtube "Can You Hear Me Now?" Century.

A quick glance at one page of Youtube shows nearly half a million views of the execution of Saddam Hussein. Among the chief complaints from the commenters are the cheap production design and shoddy cinematography. Even I was one of the millions of live viewers that sat transfixed on the couch waiting for news of the execution. Numbed, I felt little of the disgust that I feel now.

And all of this on the eve of Bush's demand for more sacrifice in Iraq...

It's hard to explain what is so discomforting about the Saddam execution experience. The authors of this blog do not, and will never, support capital punishment. But what type of punishment is fair for the author of the death of thousands? It all seemed surreal: The minute-by-minute updates of the preparations for execution were scrolled across the bottom of the television, seemingly text-messaged from Death himself. The announcement of Saddam's execution became secondary to the argument over the news source that had the first scoop.

Saddam's sentence to meet the hangman was a fait a compli. Even if you didn't support the punishment, it was difficult to argue that Saddam deserved to lay back and read books until he died. And you knew that it would never be allowed. He was going to die whether or not his executioner was an instrument of the state or simply a prison guard or another fellow prisoner. Saddam's number was up when he walked out of the spider hole alive, and he had been living on borrowed time ever since.

That's not to say any of this was justified, but it helps me understand why I initially felt little concern upon the announcement of his execution. Bush presided silently over one hundred executions while governing my home state (not his). Similarly, Bush has presided blindly while three thousand American soldiers died in a complex, sectarian web of violence and corruption. It's fitting that Bush could finally preside silently and blindly while his puppet government in the Desert created a martyr out of a psycopath in a scene that belonged in a gay Mel Gibson S&M movie. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy that we were powerless to prevent, and could barely avoid watching. I have been shocked so many times leading up to the moment that I barely registered the impact of this new trauma.

Bush assured Texans that each prisoner in the State was guilty of the crime and had full access to the courts. That's the min/max requirements necessary to execute another person in George W. Bush's perverse Christian ideology. And by that measure, Saddam was guilty, had "access" to the courts, and was even given a new suit. That's justice, Texas style. And Saddam's execution was certainly "done" bigger and better than we have seen before. Again, it's a success by George W. Bush's Texas standards. (Remember, he's a fake Texan too.) It should come as no surprise that the man who was sleepwalking through Hurricane Katrina would fail us again when American standards and principles were once again confronted head-on. Bush's minimum standards are so shockingly low that he would only be truly worried if the Turks threatened to steal our Easter Eggs...

Saddam deserved to be killed a thousand times over by the friends and families of your victims. But the people of America and Iraq did not deserve to have this thrust into our faces during a season of religious, spiritual, and/or emotional significance. Bush Admin officials claim to have 'expressed concern' over the timing of the execution, but we're all tired of hearing these weak, simplistic concessions of failed diplomacy. Did I previously say this was Bush's puppet government in the Desert? I guess I was mistaken about who pulls the strings these days.

Saddam's execution on the eve of the New Year, coinciding with a shared holiday season, is just the shocking trailer for Bush's plan to escalate the stakes in Iraq. Sacrifice? I think we've sacrificed just about enough blood to create some very scary demons that will be impossible to kill. And these demons will leave victims on this planet that will curse Arabs and Americans and will spread the seeds of hate against each other for generations to come.

Hitchens on Hussein : Execution Edition

2007-01-02T18:52:00.000-06:00

The disgusting video of Saddam Hussein's last moments on the planet is more than a reminder of the inescapable barbarity of capital punishment and of the intelligible and conventional reasons why it should always be opposed. The zoolike scenes in that dank, filthy shed (it seems that those attending were not even asked to turn off their cell phones or forbidden to use them to record souvenir film) were more like a lynching than an execution. At one point, one of the attending magistrates can be heard appealing for decency and calm, but otherwise the fact must be faced: In spite of his mad invective against "the Persians" and other traitors, the only character with a rag of dignity in the whole scene is the father of all hangmen, Saddam Hussein himself.

Salon

Essential reading from the provocative Christopher Hitchens...

Random Thoughts On The Mii Channel

2007-01-01T19:28:00.000-06:00

Here's a few thoughts on Nintendo Wii's Mii Channel.

1. Transferring Mii's is a lot of fun. However, I wish there was some type of way to know which Mii's you have transferred around to people. Once you've added new people, it's really hard to keep track.

2. Surely we could expand the nicknames by five or ten characters. Ten characters is way too short. I can do "Fox Mulder" but not "John Doggett". Weak.

3. When I receive a Mii from a Friend for the first time, why can't I choose to assign that Mii to the Friend's address book entry?

4. A 20 Mii per day transfer limit is too low. I can understand why Nintendo wants to keep it low, but you can hit that limit really fast. Especially on the weekend or a holiday.

5. When I send a Mii, I usually send it to multiple people. The menu should allow me to do that.

But yes, I still love the channel because it offers a unique form of online interaction. You never know what type of Mii you might receive when you open up the Channel. Let's just hope that Nintendo expands it a bit with an update...

Wii Friend Code

2006-12-29T13:30:00.000-06:00

If you have a Wii, then hook me up with your friend code.

Here's my code: 4152 4403 2976 8797

My Mii's want to mingle with you!

2006 In Review : Iraq Edition

2006-12-29T11:26:00.000-06:00

I've always enjoyed reading Baghdad Burning because it is a raw, unfiltered perspective of the Iraq war from the eyes of a seemingly ordinary citizen. (It might be a propaganda blog ran by Al Qaeda, but I kinda doubt it.) Anywhoo...

Today's post at Baghdad Burning is must-read if you have wondered how ordinary Iraqis are dealing with their 'liberation'.

This last year especially has been a turning point. Nearly every Iraqi has lost so much. So much. There's no way to describe the loss we've experienced with this war and occupation. There are no words to relay the feelings that come with the knowledge that daily almost 40 corpses are found in different states of decay and mutilation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of things so out of ones hands, it borders on the ridiculous- like whether your name is 'too Sunni' or 'too Shia'. Fear of the larger things- like the Americans in the tank, the police patrolling your area in black bandanas and green banners, and the Iraqi soldiers wearing black masks at the checkpoint.

This is it. This is the liberty that Bush delivered to the people of Iraq. They now live in a world where their family name could mean a death sentence in certain neighborhoods. They live in a world where the lives and deaths of Iraqi citizens are minimized to prevent political fallout in the United States. They are minimized because they aren't US soldiers, therefore the architects of the Iraq War do not care.

I encourage you to read the whole thing, because it is yet another devastating indictment of 21st Century Republican Foreign Policy. These fools led us into a horrific situation that easily could have been avoided if we had discussed the costs in a rational manner. However, it's clear that Bush supporters avoid rational debates at all costs, and now they want to 'surge' into Iraq again and damn the costs. It's time to say No. NO. NO. It's time to crucify the thieves of our Republic and leave their corpses for display as a warning to the next generation of Neocons.

Blogger Updating - Goodbye For Now?

2006-12-28T16:19:00.000-06:00

Blogger is having some problems updating this blog to their new system. So, I there will probably be some weird formatting issues for a while until everything gets sorted out. I apologize, and hopefully everything will get worked out soon.

Bye!