The Laughable GOP
Where to begin...
I didn't watch the convention opener last night except for some brief clicker flicks for comedy relief. Hard to compete with A&E's Family Plots, Growing Up Gotti and Airline- not to mention Chris Rock's Special on HBO.
I hear tell some of the compassionate cornservatives at the cornvention were sporting little Band-Aids with purple hearts printed on them.
My daddy was awarded a purple heart in WWII for taking some Nazi shrapnel in the ankle. The injury didn't make him limp or earn him any disability pay after the war, but the medal, along with a bronze star he won, showed he was there in the middle of the fighting. I'm sure he and millions of other war veterans got a big kick out of the Deferment Party making light of their medals on silly little Band-Aids.
I guess Band-Aids will be the only time we hear the word AIDS mentioned with these delusional phonies. Must be nice to be one of those Shiny, Happy People the group REM sings about.
I watched a bit of mock-Republican Rudy Guilliani's speech.
He mentioned how swell Bush was on 9/14/01 when he finally emerged from seclusion and visited the site of the collapsed WTC. He didn't mention how Bush turned world sympathy into world resentment and hatred toward America within the year.
Neither did he mention the throngs of angry protesters marching on the streets outside.
Shiny, happy people redux.
Polls show Laura Bush is more popular than her husband. Why wouldn't she be? That's like asking if you want plain salad dressing or fetid limburger on your sandwich.
They plan to trot her out tonight and try to make the GOP seem moderate when it is not.
She is moderate.
She said does not think Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling allowing nationwide legalized abortion, should be overturned.
In an interview this week in Time magazine, she said she has an open mind about whether the country needs a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, something her husband supports and which is part of the GOP platform.
Asked if she has ever hosted a gay couple at the White House or in Texas, Laura replied, ''I'm sure we have.''
The Republican platform specifically asks for abortion rights to be banished, and for gays to be denied equal rights. But that's okay, Laura's like a Catholic who uses birth control and makes friends with gay priests and nuns, yet still professes to be devout.
She may belong to the club, she just doesn't believe in what they stand for.
I believe they call that hypocrisy- and that should be the theme of this phony exhibition of militant right-wing neo-cons, pretending to be moderates.
With 1.8 million Americans out of work, 4 million without health insurance and a 5 gazillion trillion dollar budget deficit, spies in the Pentagon and a war on terror Bush said yesterday was unwinnable, it's time for the GOP to celebrate.
They want four more years of this.
Wait.
They want four more years of this?
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Bushworld!
In her new, best selling book, BUSHWORLD, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has assembled some amazingly clever, well crafted pieces about her experiences with the Bush family.
Nicknamed "the Cobra" by Bush 43, Dowd still has a fairly warm friendship with Bush 41, and an off and on friendship with 43.
With such a spate of Bush bashing books to choose from, I wanted to find something to read that had some semblance of journalistic order to it, and this was the perfect fit.
Though Dowd illustrates the weaknesses in the Bush family, she also sees some of the good. It's a refreshing break from reading all the hard-line dogma, from both sides.
I doubt her book will make me like the Bush clan, but it may help me to hate them less.
Have you read it? Tell us what you thought.
In her new, best selling book, BUSHWORLD, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has assembled some amazingly clever, well crafted pieces about her experiences with the Bush family.
Nicknamed "the Cobra" by Bush 43, Dowd still has a fairly warm friendship with Bush 41, and an off and on friendship with 43.
With such a spate of Bush bashing books to choose from, I wanted to find something to read that had some semblance of journalistic order to it, and this was the perfect fit.
Though Dowd illustrates the weaknesses in the Bush family, she also sees some of the good. It's a refreshing break from reading all the hard-line dogma, from both sides.
I doubt her book will make me like the Bush clan, but it may help me to hate them less.
Have you read it? Tell us what you thought.
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Feith Based Initiative?
Rather than scrambling around to assemble all I can about the breaking news involving spies at the Pentagon, I suggest you check out John Aravosis's AMERICA BLOG for some sensational early coverage.
great spy story coverage
I suspect the final wheel will be flying off-- right in the middle of the GOP convention.
Rather than scrambling around to assemble all I can about the breaking news involving spies at the Pentagon, I suggest you check out John Aravosis's AMERICA BLOG for some sensational early coverage.
great spy story coverage
I suspect the final wheel will be flying off-- right in the middle of the GOP convention.
Friday, August 27, 2004
Bush Admits Iraq 'Miscalculations' in Times Interview
"NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that he had miscalculated post-war conditions in Iraq, The New York Times reported.
The paper quoted Bush as saying during a 30-minute interview that he made "a miscalculation of what the conditions would be" in post-war Iraq..."
Miscalculated?
Try BUSH FUCKED UP.
There. He's admitted it.
We told you so.
"NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that he had miscalculated post-war conditions in Iraq, The New York Times reported.
The paper quoted Bush as saying during a 30-minute interview that he made "a miscalculation of what the conditions would be" in post-war Iraq..."
Miscalculated?
Try BUSH FUCKED UP.
There. He's admitted it.
We told you so.
Way to Go, George!
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.
• It was the third straight annual increase for both categories. While not unexpected, it was a double dose of bad economic news during a tight reelection campaign for resident Bush.
As his camp tells it, "Note the words "annual increase." An increase means more, and more is good! Let's not get pessimistic, like John Kerry wants you to be!"
• New federal rules will con around 6 million workers out of the overtime pay to which, until now, they have been entitled by law, according to AFL-CIO calculations.
Please, please, please, let this apply to our favorite postman, Barcodie!
• Father Knows Best?
WASHINGTON (AP): Not many people foresaw the difficulties President George W. Bush's administration has endured in postwar Iraq. Of the few who did, two stand out, both lions of the Republican Party.
One was President George H.W. Bush. The other was his secretary of state, James A. Baker.
"Incalculable human and political costs" would have been the result, the senior Bush has said, if his administration had pushed all the way to Baghdad and sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the US-led coalition ousted the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the Gulf war in 1991.
"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect rule Iraq," Bush wrote. "The coalition would have instantly collapsed. ... Going in and thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. "Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome."
Senior Bush also cautioned Dubya not to drink and drive.
• "Let Freedom Reign!" (sic)
1. On Labor Day in 2002 Bush visited Pittsburgh. One of the people hoping to convey a message to Bush was Bill Neel, a retired steel worker. His sign said: "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us." The police wouldn't hear of it. They wanted Neel to retreat to an area one-third of a mile from the speech site. He refused to join holders of like minded signs and was arrested for disorderly conduct.
The judge threw out the charges against Mr. Neel saying: "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?"
2. When Bush was speaking at the University of South Florida in 2003, a man holding up a sign saying: "War is good business. Invest your sons" was arrested because he refused to be cordoned off in an area far from where the president spoke. He was charged with "obstructing without violence and disorderly conduct."
3. In a Bush visit to St. Louis in January 2003 protesters were cordoned off in an area so secure that the police wouldn't let the media in to interview the protesters and wouldn't let the protesters out to talk to the media.
4. Now the FBI and Secret Service are visiting activist folks in their homes to ask them about their protest plans. I have read many anecdotes from Americans who have has such visits, but to list them all would create a Blog 40 or 50 inches in depth.
Suffice it to say, four more years of Bush will train all if us to behave ourselves and obey the president. After all, when we criticize Bush, we are giving aid and comfort to the terrorists, and we don't want that, now do we?
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.
• It was the third straight annual increase for both categories. While not unexpected, it was a double dose of bad economic news during a tight reelection campaign for resident Bush.
As his camp tells it, "Note the words "annual increase." An increase means more, and more is good! Let's not get pessimistic, like John Kerry wants you to be!"
• New federal rules will con around 6 million workers out of the overtime pay to which, until now, they have been entitled by law, according to AFL-CIO calculations.
Please, please, please, let this apply to our favorite postman, Barcodie!
• Father Knows Best?
WASHINGTON (AP): Not many people foresaw the difficulties President George W. Bush's administration has endured in postwar Iraq. Of the few who did, two stand out, both lions of the Republican Party.
One was President George H.W. Bush. The other was his secretary of state, James A. Baker.
"Incalculable human and political costs" would have been the result, the senior Bush has said, if his administration had pushed all the way to Baghdad and sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the US-led coalition ousted the Iraqi army from Kuwait during the Gulf war in 1991.
"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect rule Iraq," Bush wrote. "The coalition would have instantly collapsed. ... Going in and thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. "Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome."
Senior Bush also cautioned Dubya not to drink and drive.
• "Let Freedom Reign!" (sic)
1. On Labor Day in 2002 Bush visited Pittsburgh. One of the people hoping to convey a message to Bush was Bill Neel, a retired steel worker. His sign said: "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us." The police wouldn't hear of it. They wanted Neel to retreat to an area one-third of a mile from the speech site. He refused to join holders of like minded signs and was arrested for disorderly conduct.
The judge threw out the charges against Mr. Neel saying: "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?"
2. When Bush was speaking at the University of South Florida in 2003, a man holding up a sign saying: "War is good business. Invest your sons" was arrested because he refused to be cordoned off in an area far from where the president spoke. He was charged with "obstructing without violence and disorderly conduct."
3. In a Bush visit to St. Louis in January 2003 protesters were cordoned off in an area so secure that the police wouldn't let the media in to interview the protesters and wouldn't let the protesters out to talk to the media.
4. Now the FBI and Secret Service are visiting activist folks in their homes to ask them about their protest plans. I have read many anecdotes from Americans who have has such visits, but to list them all would create a Blog 40 or 50 inches in depth.
Suffice it to say, four more years of Bush will train all if us to behave ourselves and obey the president. After all, when we criticize Bush, we are giving aid and comfort to the terrorists, and we don't want that, now do we?
GOP: Conventional Haiku
Swift boat veterans
Were not so swift after all
Used Bush's lawyer
The Bush twins will speak
Nervous, they will need lotsa
Cocaine and liquor
At the convention
Expect to see some great acts
Like Gatlin Brothers
Poor New York City
Filled with rich, white pigs
Bush calls them his base
Bush: he'll keep us safe
If we obey all his rules
fuckin' dictator
Bush: war president
Then he's Bush: peace president
Which is it, asshole?
Laura Bush will speak
Condi had to write her speech
Bland leading the bland?
Fox News is giddy
A whole week of telling lies
Payoffs for Murdoch!
We'll watch coverage
And we'll all wonder about
Why everyone's white
For a real good time
Watch the convention on TV
With Noelle Bush, stoned
Swift boat veterans
Were not so swift after all
Used Bush's lawyer
The Bush twins will speak
Nervous, they will need lotsa
Cocaine and liquor
At the convention
Expect to see some great acts
Like Gatlin Brothers
Poor New York City
Filled with rich, white pigs
Bush calls them his base
Bush: he'll keep us safe
If we obey all his rules
fuckin' dictator
Bush: war president
Then he's Bush: peace president
Which is it, asshole?
Laura Bush will speak
Condi had to write her speech
Bland leading the bland?
Fox News is giddy
A whole week of telling lies
Payoffs for Murdoch!
We'll watch coverage
And we'll all wonder about
Why everyone's white
For a real good time
Watch the convention on TV
With Noelle Bush, stoned
Jenna and Barbara do the Convention
If President Bush's twin daughters are seeking helpful hints before they enter the glaring spotlight of the Republican National Convention, the Reagan kids have some great advice:
1. Be sure there are no traces of cocaine around your nostrils, but if you forget, tell the media you just had some confectioner's sugar donuts
2. Hide the tequila in a plastic sports water bottle
3. Try not to use the F word
4. Keep gum or mints on hand to hide the liquor/pot fumes
5. Avoid answering questions with the word "whatever"
6. Try not to flip the bird
7. Don't refer to the vice president as, "that Dick" or to your father as, "Dumb-ass"
8. Don't burst out laughing or roll your eyes if anyone asks you about enlisting in the military
9. Don't refer to your mother as, "the Stepford mom"
10. Don't ask the butler to bring you ketchup for any meals you eat in public
If President Bush's twin daughters are seeking helpful hints before they enter the glaring spotlight of the Republican National Convention, the Reagan kids have some great advice:
1. Be sure there are no traces of cocaine around your nostrils, but if you forget, tell the media you just had some confectioner's sugar donuts
2. Hide the tequila in a plastic sports water bottle
3. Try not to use the F word
4. Keep gum or mints on hand to hide the liquor/pot fumes
5. Avoid answering questions with the word "whatever"
6. Try not to flip the bird
7. Don't refer to the vice president as, "that Dick" or to your father as, "Dumb-ass"
8. Don't burst out laughing or roll your eyes if anyone asks you about enlisting in the military
9. Don't refer to your mother as, "the Stepford mom"
10. Don't ask the butler to bring you ketchup for any meals you eat in public
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Time to Get More Involved?
We all have voices, we need to start using them. This will help.
Excellent Talking Points from Not.Bush.com
We all have voices, we need to start using them. This will help.
Excellent Talking Points from Not.Bush.com
Is this any way to campaign in a free country?
Hearing Bush took some doing
Nick Coleman, Star Tribune (Minnesota)
August 13, 2004
The president was visiting Mankato and Tim Walz wanted to see him. A teacher who has 23 years of service in the National Guard and who recently returned home from overseas, Walz wanted to hear his commander-in-chief.
He did.
But only after being threatened with arrest and subjected to a political interrogation. Welcome home, good and faithful soldier. You may see the president.
But keep your mouth shut.
(Intolerance is nonpartisan, so I make a standing offer to President Bush backers: If you are quashed by Democrats, I will report it.)
Walz, 40, supports John Kerry. But you don't need to know what Walz believes, and neither did the Bush campaign workers who interrogated him when he went to see the president speak in a Mankato quarry on Aug. 4.
The Bush visit was a huge event in Mankato, which had not hosted a president since Harry Truman. Walz got a ticket without trouble, but others were refused because they didn't seem rah-rah enough, including two teens rejected because they were baby Democrats.
One of the kids had his mom get tickets for the boys, in their names. The mom asked Walz to chaperone the boys. But the kids would not get to see the president.
Only supporters got into the quarry where Bush spoke to a sanitized crowd of 7,000. Not one person carried a sign in protest. But one -- one -- listened without applauding. It was Walz, and his thoughts were his own, unless someone was scanning his brain.
"It was uncomfortable," says Walz, who joined the Guard at 17 and teaches geography at Mankato West High School. "Where else in America will you find 7,000 people who agree on anything?"
Walz is a first sergeant in the 125th Field Artillery Battalion in New Ulm. He returned in April from duty providing security at a U.S. base in Italy. He has too much respect for the office of president to heckle one. But he almost got busted for escorting those baby Democrats.
After riding a Bush bus to the quarry, Walz and the kids got off to go through the metal detectors and have their IDs checked. Bush officials took the kids aside and thoroughly inspected them. When one was discovered to have a Kerry sticker on his wallet, they were ordered back onto the bus.
Walz objected, and he was asked to leave, too. "You're not welcome," a Bush guy said. "Get back on the bus."
Walz said he had a right to see the president.
So you support the president? a Bush guy asked. I didn't say that, said Walz. Then you're an opponent? I didn't say that, either, said Walz, thinking it was nobody's business.
"If you don't get on that bus," the guy said, "you'll be detained by the Secret Service for interfering with a presidential event."
"I don't want to get arrested," Walz said. "My wife will get mad because I'm supposed to pick up our daughter [Hope, 3] and make dinner. Do you really want to arrest someone who just got back from overseas, because he wants to see the president?"
The Bush guys backed down. They said they'd do him a favor if he behaved himself. He ignored the insult. They said the Secret Service was watching him. They let him in.
A week later, Walz is appalled by the freedom-loving citizens who say he shouldn't have gone to see the president.
"The attitude is that if you're not a supporter, why would you go? It's really disappointing. What happened to being able to listen to the other side?"
Walz listened. And made up his mind. On Wednesday, he was named Blue Earth County manager of the Kerry campaign. In case you have forgotten how America works, that does not make him disloyal. And no one can say he is not informed.
Unlike many people, Tim Walz has gotten to see the president.
Hearing Bush took some doing
Nick Coleman, Star Tribune (Minnesota)
August 13, 2004
The president was visiting Mankato and Tim Walz wanted to see him. A teacher who has 23 years of service in the National Guard and who recently returned home from overseas, Walz wanted to hear his commander-in-chief.
He did.
But only after being threatened with arrest and subjected to a political interrogation. Welcome home, good and faithful soldier. You may see the president.
But keep your mouth shut.
(Intolerance is nonpartisan, so I make a standing offer to President Bush backers: If you are quashed by Democrats, I will report it.)
Walz, 40, supports John Kerry. But you don't need to know what Walz believes, and neither did the Bush campaign workers who interrogated him when he went to see the president speak in a Mankato quarry on Aug. 4.
The Bush visit was a huge event in Mankato, which had not hosted a president since Harry Truman. Walz got a ticket without trouble, but others were refused because they didn't seem rah-rah enough, including two teens rejected because they were baby Democrats.
One of the kids had his mom get tickets for the boys, in their names. The mom asked Walz to chaperone the boys. But the kids would not get to see the president.
Only supporters got into the quarry where Bush spoke to a sanitized crowd of 7,000. Not one person carried a sign in protest. But one -- one -- listened without applauding. It was Walz, and his thoughts were his own, unless someone was scanning his brain.
"It was uncomfortable," says Walz, who joined the Guard at 17 and teaches geography at Mankato West High School. "Where else in America will you find 7,000 people who agree on anything?"
Walz is a first sergeant in the 125th Field Artillery Battalion in New Ulm. He returned in April from duty providing security at a U.S. base in Italy. He has too much respect for the office of president to heckle one. But he almost got busted for escorting those baby Democrats.
After riding a Bush bus to the quarry, Walz and the kids got off to go through the metal detectors and have their IDs checked. Bush officials took the kids aside and thoroughly inspected them. When one was discovered to have a Kerry sticker on his wallet, they were ordered back onto the bus.
Walz objected, and he was asked to leave, too. "You're not welcome," a Bush guy said. "Get back on the bus."
Walz said he had a right to see the president.
So you support the president? a Bush guy asked. I didn't say that, said Walz. Then you're an opponent? I didn't say that, either, said Walz, thinking it was nobody's business.
"If you don't get on that bus," the guy said, "you'll be detained by the Secret Service for interfering with a presidential event."
"I don't want to get arrested," Walz said. "My wife will get mad because I'm supposed to pick up our daughter [Hope, 3] and make dinner. Do you really want to arrest someone who just got back from overseas, because he wants to see the president?"
The Bush guys backed down. They said they'd do him a favor if he behaved himself. He ignored the insult. They said the Secret Service was watching him. They let him in.
A week later, Walz is appalled by the freedom-loving citizens who say he shouldn't have gone to see the president.
"The attitude is that if you're not a supporter, why would you go? It's really disappointing. What happened to being able to listen to the other side?"
Walz listened. And made up his mind. On Wednesday, he was named Blue Earth County manager of the Kerry campaign. In case you have forgotten how America works, that does not make him disloyal. And no one can say he is not informed.
Unlike many people, Tim Walz has gotten to see the president.
Was There Ever Any Doubt?
Benjamin L. Ginsberg resigned on Wednesday as national counsel for President Bush's reelection campaign over his ties to a veterans' group that has criticized the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry.
Does anyone still think the Bush campaign had nothing to do with the Swift Boat Liars?
One needn't bother to connect the dots. There are no dots, there are straight lines to follow.
The New York Times spells it out (sorry, I couldn't hyperlink this):
www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/politics/campaign/26bush.html?pagewanted="1&th
What does all this mean?
It means that the Bush campaign has used the Swift Boat Liars to do some of their dirty work for them. That's against the law.
My politically ignorant friend Barcodie insisted weeks ago this story had legs.
He maintained that the lies told by the Swift Bush Veterans would be proven true and that their allegations would portray John Kerry as a fraudulent war hero.
Oh, this story has legs, all right.
First, the Swift Bloat Veterans' allegations have been thoroughly discredited.
Now there is ample evidence that the Bush campaign has broken the law by allowing their counsel to advise this outside group on their plans to dirty up Kerry's war record.
From the New York Times:
"Ginsberg's work for the veterans group was just the latest Republican tie to emerge, and the most politically significant. Records show that the veterans received most of their initial financing from prominent Texas Republicans close to the Bush family and to Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist. They have received strategic advice from consultants who have worked with national Republican groups."
Bush has no shame, no decency and no honor.
He wants to win at any cost so he and his crooked cronies can have four more years to loot and pillage the country...and the world.
The Democrats want Attorney General John Ashcroft to open a criminal investigation into links between Bush and the Swift Boat Liars.
Does anyone here think Ashcroft would be capable of administering justice fairly in this case?
Please. Ashcroft and Bush are Jesus buddies. A devout Pentecostal, Ashcroft is so whacked he thinks house cats are the embodiment of Satan.
This wingnut is the go-to guy for non-partisan justice?
As if.
Benjamin L. Ginsberg resigned on Wednesday as national counsel for President Bush's reelection campaign over his ties to a veterans' group that has criticized the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry.
Does anyone still think the Bush campaign had nothing to do with the Swift Boat Liars?
One needn't bother to connect the dots. There are no dots, there are straight lines to follow.
The New York Times spells it out (sorry, I couldn't hyperlink this):
www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/politics/campaign/26bush.html?pagewanted="1&th
What does all this mean?
It means that the Bush campaign has used the Swift Boat Liars to do some of their dirty work for them. That's against the law.
My politically ignorant friend Barcodie insisted weeks ago this story had legs.
He maintained that the lies told by the Swift Bush Veterans would be proven true and that their allegations would portray John Kerry as a fraudulent war hero.
Oh, this story has legs, all right.
First, the Swift Bloat Veterans' allegations have been thoroughly discredited.
Now there is ample evidence that the Bush campaign has broken the law by allowing their counsel to advise this outside group on their plans to dirty up Kerry's war record.
From the New York Times:
"Ginsberg's work for the veterans group was just the latest Republican tie to emerge, and the most politically significant. Records show that the veterans received most of their initial financing from prominent Texas Republicans close to the Bush family and to Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist. They have received strategic advice from consultants who have worked with national Republican groups."
Bush has no shame, no decency and no honor.
He wants to win at any cost so he and his crooked cronies can have four more years to loot and pillage the country...and the world.
The Democrats want Attorney General John Ashcroft to open a criminal investigation into links between Bush and the Swift Boat Liars.
Does anyone here think Ashcroft would be capable of administering justice fairly in this case?
Please. Ashcroft and Bush are Jesus buddies. A devout Pentecostal, Ashcroft is so whacked he thinks house cats are the embodiment of Satan.
This wingnut is the go-to guy for non-partisan justice?
As if.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
John Kerry on The Daily Show
Did anyone see John Kerry last night with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show?
Knowing Kerry's a little on the stiff side, at first I was worried he'd seem a little too serious beside the razor sharp Jon Stewart.
Fortunately for his supporters, Kerry seemed relaxed, polite, affable and charming.
The best part for me was in noticing he lacks the sarcastic, often mean spirited arrogance of his opponent.
When caught off script, too many times Bush has made comments that are beneath the dignity of the office to which the Supreme Court appointed him.
For example, during the 1988 Republican Convention, Bush was asked by a Hartford Courant reporter about what he and his father talked about when they weren't talking about politics.
"Pussy," Bush replied.
During a 2000 Labor Day weekend rally in Illinois, the then-Republican presidential nominee (and Texas governor) spotted a veteran political reporter in the crowd and pointed him out to Dick Cheney, as the two stood at the podium waving to the assembled crowd. Bush said, "There's Adam Clymer, major-league asshole from The New York Times."
Addressing a crowd of formally dressed people in what appeared to be a sumptuous ballroom, Bush said, "What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base."
Columnist Molly Ivins further described Bush in a November 2003 article: "Well, the Big Picture is that after September 11, we had the sympathy of every nation on Earth. They all signed up, all our old allies volunteered, everybody was with us, and Bush just booted all of that away. Sneering, jeering, bad manners, hideous diplomacy, threats, demands, arrogance, bluster."
John Kerry's appearance on The Daily Show last night reminded us that it's not just a political race going on right now. It's a choice between two men of similar backgrounds, education and privilege running for one office.
One is dignified, one is not.
One is diplomatic, one is not.
One exhibits tact and humility, one does not.
We won't see Bush on The Daily Show. Unless his handlers can control every facet of Bush making remarks in public, he's not safe when left to speak extemporaneously.
Remember when he attended a White House dinner for Queen Elizabeth when his father was the president?
Bush said the Queen asked him why his mother had seated them so far apart. Bush said he told the queen it was probably because he was the "black sheep of the family." Then he asked the queen if she had any black sheep in her family. The queen was not amused.
We need to restore dignity to the White House. We need a leader who knows when to be serious and when it's appropriate to be goofy.
Bush has had four years to sort himself out and learn how do conduct himself appropriately as the leader of the greatest, most powerful nation on earth.
He has failed.
It's time we elect a presidential president.
Did anyone see John Kerry last night with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show?
Knowing Kerry's a little on the stiff side, at first I was worried he'd seem a little too serious beside the razor sharp Jon Stewart.
Fortunately for his supporters, Kerry seemed relaxed, polite, affable and charming.
The best part for me was in noticing he lacks the sarcastic, often mean spirited arrogance of his opponent.
When caught off script, too many times Bush has made comments that are beneath the dignity of the office to which the Supreme Court appointed him.
For example, during the 1988 Republican Convention, Bush was asked by a Hartford Courant reporter about what he and his father talked about when they weren't talking about politics.
"Pussy," Bush replied.
During a 2000 Labor Day weekend rally in Illinois, the then-Republican presidential nominee (and Texas governor) spotted a veteran political reporter in the crowd and pointed him out to Dick Cheney, as the two stood at the podium waving to the assembled crowd. Bush said, "There's Adam Clymer, major-league asshole from The New York Times."
Addressing a crowd of formally dressed people in what appeared to be a sumptuous ballroom, Bush said, "What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base."
Columnist Molly Ivins further described Bush in a November 2003 article: "Well, the Big Picture is that after September 11, we had the sympathy of every nation on Earth. They all signed up, all our old allies volunteered, everybody was with us, and Bush just booted all of that away. Sneering, jeering, bad manners, hideous diplomacy, threats, demands, arrogance, bluster."
John Kerry's appearance on The Daily Show last night reminded us that it's not just a political race going on right now. It's a choice between two men of similar backgrounds, education and privilege running for one office.
One is dignified, one is not.
One is diplomatic, one is not.
One exhibits tact and humility, one does not.
We won't see Bush on The Daily Show. Unless his handlers can control every facet of Bush making remarks in public, he's not safe when left to speak extemporaneously.
Remember when he attended a White House dinner for Queen Elizabeth when his father was the president?
Bush said the Queen asked him why his mother had seated them so far apart. Bush said he told the queen it was probably because he was the "black sheep of the family." Then he asked the queen if she had any black sheep in her family. The queen was not amused.
We need to restore dignity to the White House. We need a leader who knows when to be serious and when it's appropriate to be goofy.
Bush has had four years to sort himself out and learn how do conduct himself appropriately as the leader of the greatest, most powerful nation on earth.
He has failed.
It's time we elect a presidential president.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Central Park Off Limits to Protesters.
Oh, yeah?
NEW YORK (Aug. 23) - A federal judge ruled Monday that two protest groups cannot use New York City's Central Park as a site for a demonstration days before the Republican National Convention.
''This court cannot blind itself to the daunting security concerns facing this city during the Republican National Convention,'' said U.S. District Court Judge William H. Pauley III.-AP
The "daunting security concerns" stem from the GOP selecting a convention city still healing from the biggest attack on American soil in history.
The People will follow rules and laws that make sense, but when partisanship seems to be the underlying reason a law was made, to hell with it.
Central Park is not private property.
It belongs to the people, whose tax monies fund its maintenance.
I hope the protesters remember that the park belongs to The People, and that laws created to favor one side over another for political reasons deserve to be nullified.
Hear me now and believe me later:
Central Park will be used for protests and Bush will force the overtaxed NYPD to act as his personal Gestapo goons. Then he'll blame it all on the Democrats.
Oh, yeah?
NEW YORK (Aug. 23) - A federal judge ruled Monday that two protest groups cannot use New York City's Central Park as a site for a demonstration days before the Republican National Convention.
''This court cannot blind itself to the daunting security concerns facing this city during the Republican National Convention,'' said U.S. District Court Judge William H. Pauley III.-AP
The "daunting security concerns" stem from the GOP selecting a convention city still healing from the biggest attack on American soil in history.
The People will follow rules and laws that make sense, but when partisanship seems to be the underlying reason a law was made, to hell with it.
Central Park is not private property.
It belongs to the people, whose tax monies fund its maintenance.
I hope the protesters remember that the park belongs to The People, and that laws created to favor one side over another for political reasons deserve to be nullified.
Hear me now and believe me later:
Central Park will be used for protests and Bush will force the overtaxed NYPD to act as his personal Gestapo goons. Then he'll blame it all on the Democrats.
Monday, August 23, 2004
Pots n' Kettles
When he was running, if Draft Dodger Bill Clinton's supporters would have attacked the war record of his then-opponent, war hero Bob Dole, with the same vitriol as Draft Dodger George W. Bush's supporters have attacked war hero John Kerry, the right wing would have crucified Clinton.
Since we seem to be running this campaign based on events that happened 30 years ago, I think Bush should step forward and be urine tested to see if he's the same drug and booze addled layabout he was back then.
Come on, think about it.
Bush talks like he's high and he acts like an irrational, mean drunk.
What makes anyone think he's not acting like many an untreated addict or alcoholic and hiding his addictions now?
PISS TEST BUSH NOW
and convince us he's not still using.
When he was running, if Draft Dodger Bill Clinton's supporters would have attacked the war record of his then-opponent, war hero Bob Dole, with the same vitriol as Draft Dodger George W. Bush's supporters have attacked war hero John Kerry, the right wing would have crucified Clinton.
Since we seem to be running this campaign based on events that happened 30 years ago, I think Bush should step forward and be urine tested to see if he's the same drug and booze addled layabout he was back then.
Come on, think about it.
Bush talks like he's high and he acts like an irrational, mean drunk.
What makes anyone think he's not acting like many an untreated addict or alcoholic and hiding his addictions now?
PISS TEST BUSH NOW
and convince us he's not still using.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Some Appreciated Validation of My News Hunches
Ahhh...
I had the most fascinating conversation at a party last night with a colleague who's in town, on vacation from her stint as a New York Times reporter.
We spoke at length about issues I've been Blogging about, and she held my rapt attention expressing her bird's eye view of some of those issues. I was quite humbled by her expertise, yet gratified to learn most of my journalistic political hunches have been on target.
• As a reporter living in Manhattan, she said the anger among typical, rank and file New Yorkers is palpable toward the Bush administration. She believes the GOP's efforts to stymie protesters at the upcoming Republican National Convention will result in civil unrest that will make the 1968 riots during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago seem as tame as a petting zoo.
As I suspected, most New Yorkers are still shaken by 9/11 and they highly resent the GOP for subjecting them to more terrorist threats by holding their convention there. They see it as I see it- politicizing a tragedy in an effort to pander for votes, regardless of the peril to which it may subject still-traumatized New Yorkers.
She theorized that, thanks to Bush Rottweiler Karen Hughes' return, the GOP will blame the protests on behind-the-scenes Democrats, orchestrating shameful displays of disrespect toward a sitting president, rather than admitting any culpability for the people's unrest.
• She spoke of a team of reporters at the New York Times who have been sequestered away, busily investigating several different aspects of the Bush administration that could result in the outing of some Bush administration scandals that are far worse than Nixon's Watergate.
She's heard that Halliburton and Cheney's ties to illegal contracts in Iraq are leading the race for the scandal most likely to be revealed first. Finding a direct link has been mercurial, but the noose is said to be getting tighter.
• She spoke of a field trip she took to the NY Times Washington Bureau, where colleagues at the Washington Post treated Times Reporters to a viewing of unpublished photos of the Abu Ghraib prison torture. She assured me the photos the public saw were minor compared to the carnage and perversion she viewed in the Post's photo collection of the atrocities. She said they had literally thousands of photos, in varying degrees of atrociousness.
• When I asked her how hard it was to maintain fair and balanced reporting with regard to what we agreed was a contemptible incumbent administration, she said something our professors drilled into our heads in college, that I was pleased to see she still applied to her job.
She said, "Reporters show their true skills and abilities when they can report on even blatant malfeasance, without leaving the reader with a hint of their opinion on the matter."
And that, my dears, is why it's a lot more fun to Blog the news than report it.
Ahhh...
I had the most fascinating conversation at a party last night with a colleague who's in town, on vacation from her stint as a New York Times reporter.
We spoke at length about issues I've been Blogging about, and she held my rapt attention expressing her bird's eye view of some of those issues. I was quite humbled by her expertise, yet gratified to learn most of my journalistic political hunches have been on target.
• As a reporter living in Manhattan, she said the anger among typical, rank and file New Yorkers is palpable toward the Bush administration. She believes the GOP's efforts to stymie protesters at the upcoming Republican National Convention will result in civil unrest that will make the 1968 riots during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago seem as tame as a petting zoo.
As I suspected, most New Yorkers are still shaken by 9/11 and they highly resent the GOP for subjecting them to more terrorist threats by holding their convention there. They see it as I see it- politicizing a tragedy in an effort to pander for votes, regardless of the peril to which it may subject still-traumatized New Yorkers.
She theorized that, thanks to Bush Rottweiler Karen Hughes' return, the GOP will blame the protests on behind-the-scenes Democrats, orchestrating shameful displays of disrespect toward a sitting president, rather than admitting any culpability for the people's unrest.
• She spoke of a team of reporters at the New York Times who have been sequestered away, busily investigating several different aspects of the Bush administration that could result in the outing of some Bush administration scandals that are far worse than Nixon's Watergate.
She's heard that Halliburton and Cheney's ties to illegal contracts in Iraq are leading the race for the scandal most likely to be revealed first. Finding a direct link has been mercurial, but the noose is said to be getting tighter.
• She spoke of a field trip she took to the NY Times Washington Bureau, where colleagues at the Washington Post treated Times Reporters to a viewing of unpublished photos of the Abu Ghraib prison torture. She assured me the photos the public saw were minor compared to the carnage and perversion she viewed in the Post's photo collection of the atrocities. She said they had literally thousands of photos, in varying degrees of atrociousness.
• When I asked her how hard it was to maintain fair and balanced reporting with regard to what we agreed was a contemptible incumbent administration, she said something our professors drilled into our heads in college, that I was pleased to see she still applied to her job.
She said, "Reporters show their true skills and abilities when they can report on even blatant malfeasance, without leaving the reader with a hint of their opinion on the matter."
And that, my dears, is why it's a lot more fun to Blog the news than report it.
Friday, August 20, 2004
Bush Policies: Making the Nation Safer?
Between March 1 and April 6, airline agents tried to block Senator Ted Kennedy from boarding airplanes on five occasions because his name resembled an alias used by a suspected terrorist who had been barred from flying on airlines in the United States.
Instead of acknowledging Kennedy as the Congressional leader whose face has flashed across the nation's television sets for decades, the airline agents acted as if they had stumbled across a fanatic who might blow up an American airplane.
Kennedy said they refused to give him his ticket.
"He said, 'We can't give it to you'," Kennedy said, describing an encounter with a US AIR agent.
" 'You can't buy a ticket to go on the airline to Boston.' I said, 'Well, why not?' He said, 'We can't tell you.' "
Umm, call me a curmudgeon, but when Senator Ted Kennedy has to face bullshit like this, how can anyone say with a straight face that the Bush administration has even a clue about what it's doing?
Instead of spending the money he should have spent to authorize all domestic airports be retrofitted with state of the art screening devices and specially trained agents, Bush said we couldn't afford the $10 billion that would cost.
Yet we can afford the $100 billion and 1,000 American lives it's cost us (so far) to invade Iraq and capture Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11 except for sharing the terrorists' hatred of our government?
Yeah.
I feel safer now that Ted al Mohammed Kennedy is being watched by a crack team of minimum wage ticket sellers at US Air. Whew.
Between March 1 and April 6, airline agents tried to block Senator Ted Kennedy from boarding airplanes on five occasions because his name resembled an alias used by a suspected terrorist who had been barred from flying on airlines in the United States.
Instead of acknowledging Kennedy as the Congressional leader whose face has flashed across the nation's television sets for decades, the airline agents acted as if they had stumbled across a fanatic who might blow up an American airplane.
Kennedy said they refused to give him his ticket.
"He said, 'We can't give it to you'," Kennedy said, describing an encounter with a US AIR agent.
" 'You can't buy a ticket to go on the airline to Boston.' I said, 'Well, why not?' He said, 'We can't tell you.' "
Umm, call me a curmudgeon, but when Senator Ted Kennedy has to face bullshit like this, how can anyone say with a straight face that the Bush administration has even a clue about what it's doing?
Instead of spending the money he should have spent to authorize all domestic airports be retrofitted with state of the art screening devices and specially trained agents, Bush said we couldn't afford the $10 billion that would cost.
Yet we can afford the $100 billion and 1,000 American lives it's cost us (so far) to invade Iraq and capture Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11 except for sharing the terrorists' hatred of our government?
Yeah.
I feel safer now that Ted al Mohammed Kennedy is being watched by a crack team of minimum wage ticket sellers at US Air. Whew.
Swift Boat Bloat
I don't know what all the fuss is about.
Apparently, serving on a Swift Boat in the Mekong Delta wasn't that big a deal, since those veterans against President Kerry (who weren't on the same boat as him) were able to completely ignore what they were doing and focus specifically on Kerry's actions, on his boat hundreds of yards away.
And Kerry wasn't all that busy either, according to GOP contributor and Chief Disgruntled Veteran, Larry Thurlow.
Seems during the same skirmish, Thurlow won his bronze medal for "courage under fire" in the Vietcong controlled waterway... not because it happened, but because he said Kerry wrote up the paperwork for everyone in the Delta that day, despite the fact that earlier Kerry had stuck shrapnel into his own leg, on his way to his own private war medal-fabricating workshop, hidden in the jungle.
And never mind all the guys on Kerry's boat who said he was a hero.
Who are we to believe, guys who were on the same boat or the eagle eyes of Larry Thurlow?
Since Thurlow has disputed the swift boat fleet being under fire, I suppose it's only a matter of time before he returns his bronze medal and apologizes to the nation for accepting it under false pretenses.
But that's not the most important thing to recall 30 years later.
What's essential to recall is that, even though the Bush campaign says it does not question Kerry's heroism or his war record, we have Larry Thurlow's account.
Though Kerry's medals are supported by Navy documents and the memories of all the surviving swift boat crew mates who served beneath him, we have to seriously consider Thurlow's account, even if his ads are funded by Republican donors.
Why?
Because if we Americans can believe in George W. Bush, we'll fall for any goddamn thing.
I don't know what all the fuss is about.
Apparently, serving on a Swift Boat in the Mekong Delta wasn't that big a deal, since those veterans against President Kerry (who weren't on the same boat as him) were able to completely ignore what they were doing and focus specifically on Kerry's actions, on his boat hundreds of yards away.
And Kerry wasn't all that busy either, according to GOP contributor and Chief Disgruntled Veteran, Larry Thurlow.
Seems during the same skirmish, Thurlow won his bronze medal for "courage under fire" in the Vietcong controlled waterway... not because it happened, but because he said Kerry wrote up the paperwork for everyone in the Delta that day, despite the fact that earlier Kerry had stuck shrapnel into his own leg, on his way to his own private war medal-fabricating workshop, hidden in the jungle.
And never mind all the guys on Kerry's boat who said he was a hero.
Who are we to believe, guys who were on the same boat or the eagle eyes of Larry Thurlow?
Since Thurlow has disputed the swift boat fleet being under fire, I suppose it's only a matter of time before he returns his bronze medal and apologizes to the nation for accepting it under false pretenses.
But that's not the most important thing to recall 30 years later.
What's essential to recall is that, even though the Bush campaign says it does not question Kerry's heroism or his war record, we have Larry Thurlow's account.
Though Kerry's medals are supported by Navy documents and the memories of all the surviving swift boat crew mates who served beneath him, we have to seriously consider Thurlow's account, even if his ads are funded by Republican donors.
Why?
Because if we Americans can believe in George W. Bush, we'll fall for any goddamn thing.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Laura Bush, You Dumb Bitch!
Now that Dubya has the little woman speaking publicly about stem cell research, her most often repeated line is, "It's not fair to tell people whose loved ones are suffering from Alzheimer's Disease that a cure via stem cell research is around the corner."
Yeah, so instead of getting on it immediately, Laura and her numbskull husband think dragging it out and doing nothing for four more years will get us closer to rounding that corner?
How ridiculous is that logic?
Stick to being a bland, silent Stepford wife, Laura.
When you try to talk as if you know what you are saying, you make it too easy to see why you married someone so damn stupid.
Birds of a feather and all.
Now that Dubya has the little woman speaking publicly about stem cell research, her most often repeated line is, "It's not fair to tell people whose loved ones are suffering from Alzheimer's Disease that a cure via stem cell research is around the corner."
Yeah, so instead of getting on it immediately, Laura and her numbskull husband think dragging it out and doing nothing for four more years will get us closer to rounding that corner?
How ridiculous is that logic?
Stick to being a bland, silent Stepford wife, Laura.
When you try to talk as if you know what you are saying, you make it too easy to see why you married someone so damn stupid.
Birds of a feather and all.
Get a load of this
I just got this and I'm not yet sure what to make of it.
Is it possible 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy? Could he possibly be that despicable?
I just got this and I'm not yet sure what to make of it.
Is it possible 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy? Could he possibly be that despicable?
Pick Your Favorite
Egads. Each day, I read the headlines from all over the world, and many of the stories that pertain to areas in which George Bush has fucked up, fucked over or fucked around with people, places and things, in and out of America.
It's getting to be such a treasure trove of tripe, I can barely select one area to comment on.
Here are just a few topics to choose from:
• Bush's dirty campaign tricks, like using those Swift Boat Liars
• Draconian censorship used by the Bush administration
• Florida voter fraud
• Canadian drugs: too dangerous to import? American companies make them.
• Gas prices making Bush's Saudi pals richer
• Terrorism run amok
• Bush's troop movement plans
• Bush's backdoor draft
• Former Military leaders blast Bush
• No accountability for Abu Gh-rape torture policies
• Cheney's Halliburton price gouging and fines
• Now Iran is a nuclear threat??
• Bribing protesters: be nice and get treats in NYC
• Have to sign an oath to get to see Bush campaign
• The Najaf quagmire
• Record deficits that took half the time it took Reagan to run up $2 trillion less
• Record Trade deficits
• Separation of church and state
• Each child left behind education reform
• Rip-off Medicare benefits to the elderly
• Where's Bin Laden
• Polls say Iraq war was a bad idea
Choose the areas that most offend you and tell us why.
Egads. Each day, I read the headlines from all over the world, and many of the stories that pertain to areas in which George Bush has fucked up, fucked over or fucked around with people, places and things, in and out of America.
It's getting to be such a treasure trove of tripe, I can barely select one area to comment on.
Here are just a few topics to choose from:
• Bush's dirty campaign tricks, like using those Swift Boat Liars
• Draconian censorship used by the Bush administration
• Florida voter fraud
• Canadian drugs: too dangerous to import? American companies make them.
• Gas prices making Bush's Saudi pals richer
• Terrorism run amok
• Bush's troop movement plans
• Bush's backdoor draft
• Former Military leaders blast Bush
• No accountability for Abu Gh-rape torture policies
• Cheney's Halliburton price gouging and fines
• Now Iran is a nuclear threat??
• Bribing protesters: be nice and get treats in NYC
• Have to sign an oath to get to see Bush campaign
• The Najaf quagmire
• Record deficits that took half the time it took Reagan to run up $2 trillion less
• Record Trade deficits
• Separation of church and state
• Each child left behind education reform
• Rip-off Medicare benefits to the elderly
• Where's Bin Laden
• Polls say Iraq war was a bad idea
Choose the areas that most offend you and tell us why.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Survivor 9 and the New Cast Members
The Vanuatu island chain in the South Pacific has been home to volcanoes, poisonous insects and tribal groups who practiced cannibalism and black magic -- in other words, it's an ideal locale for a season of backstabbing and physical challenges on ''Survivor.''
On Tuesday, CBS announced the cast of the reality show's ninth season, officially called ''Survivor: Vanuatu -- Islands of Fire.'' This season, there are 18 castaways instead of the usual 16.
They'll be divided by sex, women in the Yasur tribe, men in the Lopevi tribe.
The players range in age from 21 to 59 and include a sheep farmer, a mechanical bull operator, two highway construction workers, a coffee barista, an FBI agent, a drill sergeant and an amputee.
My snippy comments are in red.
The Yasur tribe members are:
Julie Berry, 23, a youth mentor from Gorham, Maine Youth mentor? At 23, she needs a mentor.
Ami Cusack, 31, a barista and model from Lakewood, Colo. Barista? Is that a lawyer with an accent? Nah, it's a coffee roaster. That, and a model? Wow, what crosstraining!
Mia Galeotalanza, 30, a finance manager from Tom’s River, N.J. Token Jersey Italian broad?
Lisa Keiffer, 44, a real estate agent from New Orleans Swampland for sale?
Scout Cloud Lee, 59, a rancher and entrepreneur from Stillwater, Okla. Hey, Butch.
Dolly Neely, 25, a sheep farmer from Mercer, Pa. Wasn't that cloned sheep named Dolly?
Eliza Orlins, 21, a pre-law student from Syracuse, N.Y. Pre-law? Let's argue, shall we?
Leann Slaby, 35, a research assistant from Kansasville, Wis. Token nerd?
Twila Tanner, 41, a highway repair worker from Marshall, Mo. Hey, Butch!
The Lopevi tribe consists of:
Chad Crittenden, 35, a teacher from Oakland, Calif. (He's the amputee.) Wonder what part is gone?
Chris Daugherty, 33, a highway construction worker from South Vienna, Ohio Rob Mariano II?
Brady Finta, 33, an FBI agent from Huntington Beach, Calif. With a name like Brady Finta, I'll bet he's still got kick marks on his ass from grade school. Shouldn't he be at home working to protect us from terrorists?
Rory Freeman, 35, a housing case manager from Des Moines, Iowa Sensitive type?
Brook Geraghty, 27, a project manager from Boston Token yuppie?
John Kenney, 22, a mechanical bull operator and model from Los Angeles Why do people who do menial jobs have to also call themselves models?
Lea ''Sarge'' Masters, 40, a drill sergeant from Columbia, S.C. Hey Sarge, did you get so tough to compensate for having a girl's name?
John Palyok, 31, a Home Depot sales manager from Los Angeles He won't be of any help, ya never can find help at Home Depot.
Travis ''Bubba'' Sampson, 33, a loss prevention worker from Johnson City, Tenn. "Bubba" is Greek for "redneck asshole."
The Vanuatu island chain in the South Pacific has been home to volcanoes, poisonous insects and tribal groups who practiced cannibalism and black magic -- in other words, it's an ideal locale for a season of backstabbing and physical challenges on ''Survivor.''
On Tuesday, CBS announced the cast of the reality show's ninth season, officially called ''Survivor: Vanuatu -- Islands of Fire.'' This season, there are 18 castaways instead of the usual 16.
They'll be divided by sex, women in the Yasur tribe, men in the Lopevi tribe.
The players range in age from 21 to 59 and include a sheep farmer, a mechanical bull operator, two highway construction workers, a coffee barista, an FBI agent, a drill sergeant and an amputee.
My snippy comments are in red.
The Yasur tribe members are:
Julie Berry, 23, a youth mentor from Gorham, Maine Youth mentor? At 23, she needs a mentor.
Ami Cusack, 31, a barista and model from Lakewood, Colo. Barista? Is that a lawyer with an accent? Nah, it's a coffee roaster. That, and a model? Wow, what crosstraining!
Mia Galeotalanza, 30, a finance manager from Tom’s River, N.J. Token Jersey Italian broad?
Lisa Keiffer, 44, a real estate agent from New Orleans Swampland for sale?
Scout Cloud Lee, 59, a rancher and entrepreneur from Stillwater, Okla. Hey, Butch.
Dolly Neely, 25, a sheep farmer from Mercer, Pa. Wasn't that cloned sheep named Dolly?
Eliza Orlins, 21, a pre-law student from Syracuse, N.Y. Pre-law? Let's argue, shall we?
Leann Slaby, 35, a research assistant from Kansasville, Wis. Token nerd?
Twila Tanner, 41, a highway repair worker from Marshall, Mo. Hey, Butch!
The Lopevi tribe consists of:
Chad Crittenden, 35, a teacher from Oakland, Calif. (He's the amputee.) Wonder what part is gone?
Chris Daugherty, 33, a highway construction worker from South Vienna, Ohio Rob Mariano II?
Brady Finta, 33, an FBI agent from Huntington Beach, Calif. With a name like Brady Finta, I'll bet he's still got kick marks on his ass from grade school. Shouldn't he be at home working to protect us from terrorists?
Rory Freeman, 35, a housing case manager from Des Moines, Iowa Sensitive type?
Brook Geraghty, 27, a project manager from Boston Token yuppie?
John Kenney, 22, a mechanical bull operator and model from Los Angeles Why do people who do menial jobs have to also call themselves models?
Lea ''Sarge'' Masters, 40, a drill sergeant from Columbia, S.C. Hey Sarge, did you get so tough to compensate for having a girl's name?
John Palyok, 31, a Home Depot sales manager from Los Angeles He won't be of any help, ya never can find help at Home Depot.
Travis ''Bubba'' Sampson, 33, a loss prevention worker from Johnson City, Tenn. "Bubba" is Greek for "redneck asshole."
Just a Hint?
Mom! Dad! It's The FBI!
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/convention.php
New York vs The Protesters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6404-2004Aug16.html
Mayor Bloomberg's Latest Objection To Central Park Anti-War Rally
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/robbins.php
As The Convention Nears, Street People Disappear
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/gonnerman.php
You, Too, Could Be A Suspected Terrorist
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6680-2004Aug16.html
The Press And Police: Together We Keep The Country Safe From Anarchy
http://villagevoice.com/thebushbeat/
FBI Tracks Potential GOP Protesters
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040816_1394.html
Squelching protest/The great American hush-up
http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/4931361.html
What Can The Arts Do In The Face Of The RNC?
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/mcnulty.php
Indie Filmmakers Look For Drama At The Convention, Halter
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/halter2.php
Links to these articles came from Bushwatch in my morning e-mail.
Looks like my earlier Blogs about people wanting to send the Bush Republicans a message at the convention may have had a hint of truth to them.
The Barcodie set may say, "Yeah, the Village Voice, what do you expect?"
Uhh, the Voice is a well-read, local newspaper in the liberal venue the GOP selected for their convention.
If the RNC had to select NYC for their convention site so they could wring the maximum political juice from 9/11, they should be prepared to accept the consequences.
And... I think consequences may be the key word.
Mom! Dad! It's The FBI!
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/convention.php
New York vs The Protesters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6404-2004Aug16.html
Mayor Bloomberg's Latest Objection To Central Park Anti-War Rally
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/robbins.php
As The Convention Nears, Street People Disappear
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/gonnerman.php
You, Too, Could Be A Suspected Terrorist
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6680-2004Aug16.html
The Press And Police: Together We Keep The Country Safe From Anarchy
http://villagevoice.com/thebushbeat/
FBI Tracks Potential GOP Protesters
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040816_1394.html
Squelching protest/The great American hush-up
http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/4931361.html
What Can The Arts Do In The Face Of The RNC?
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/mcnulty.php
Indie Filmmakers Look For Drama At The Convention, Halter
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0433/halter2.php
Links to these articles came from Bushwatch in my morning e-mail.
Looks like my earlier Blogs about people wanting to send the Bush Republicans a message at the convention may have had a hint of truth to them.
The Barcodie set may say, "Yeah, the Village Voice, what do you expect?"
Uhh, the Voice is a well-read, local newspaper in the liberal venue the GOP selected for their convention.
If the RNC had to select NYC for their convention site so they could wring the maximum political juice from 9/11, they should be prepared to accept the consequences.
And... I think consequences may be the key word.
Monday, August 16, 2004
Random, Nonpolitical Clutter
The sunlight is changing to that cool sort of gray, autumn color.
Thank God. Summer in Texas is usually a nightmare, but we were spared this year with high temperatures usually below 100ºF.
This morning it was 65ºF outside. Bring on the long sleeves, I say.
Last night on, "Da Ali G Show," I saw a female condom being unfurled. Talk about ruining spontaneity, how does one stuff one of those things in? Ridiculous.
I didn't care much for that show when it first came on because I was too distracted to get that the character of Ali G was stupid on purpose. Now that I know he's not really a moron, I like it.
On "Six Feet Under," it seems Nate and Brenda have chemistry that can't be denied. A lot of people can't stand them as a couple, but I can see how it works for them.
I wish Ruth would dump that old farmer from "Babe" and hook up with Bettina. At least Bettina would liven up the funeral home, instead of looking like a customer-to-be.
Ruth and I are about the same age in real life, which I find rather distressing. In my mind, Brenda and I seem more the same age. See? It pays to maintain one's immaturity.
As for Claire and Jimmy "grinding the corn," I have to think most lesbians watched with bemusement. We already know how to grind us some corn, kiddies.
When the hell is Survivor coming back? I tried Googling that magic date but my patience wore thin before I could find out. Oh wait- I tried again and the date seems to be September 16. That's one short month away.
It'll be at the Vanua Islands in the South Pacific.
Here's some culinary news about the place: Taro, wild spinach and grated coconut are ground together to make the national dish, Laplap. Pork, beef, fish, poultry, seafood or bush meat like flying fox may be added, and the mixture is wrapped in banana leaves and baked in an underground oven.
"Yeah, could I have two flying fox Laplaps to go, please?"
Nahh. I think I'll stick with breakfast tacos.
In other news, I'll soon be illustrating a book of whimsical poems for a children's book my friend Brett in Portland is writing. I've already started on Matt, the fat rat, who sat on his hat and cravat. We homos have a history of doing children's books.
My old friend James Marshall has, over the last few decades, written and illustrated seven very cool books about two hippos called George and Martha. Let's hope Brett and I have similar success.
The U.S. Olympic basketball team was trounced this weekend by Puerto Rico's team. Seems most of the NBA's superstars were too chicken-shit to go to Greece to compete. Tim Duncan and Alan Iverson get some true street cred for showing up. Too bad they were flanked by NBA rookies and other posers who got too cocky before they assessed their opponents' skills.
The sunlight is changing to that cool sort of gray, autumn color.
Thank God. Summer in Texas is usually a nightmare, but we were spared this year with high temperatures usually below 100ºF.
This morning it was 65ºF outside. Bring on the long sleeves, I say.
Last night on, "Da Ali G Show," I saw a female condom being unfurled. Talk about ruining spontaneity, how does one stuff one of those things in? Ridiculous.
I didn't care much for that show when it first came on because I was too distracted to get that the character of Ali G was stupid on purpose. Now that I know he's not really a moron, I like it.
On "Six Feet Under," it seems Nate and Brenda have chemistry that can't be denied. A lot of people can't stand them as a couple, but I can see how it works for them.
I wish Ruth would dump that old farmer from "Babe" and hook up with Bettina. At least Bettina would liven up the funeral home, instead of looking like a customer-to-be.
Ruth and I are about the same age in real life, which I find rather distressing. In my mind, Brenda and I seem more the same age. See? It pays to maintain one's immaturity.
As for Claire and Jimmy "grinding the corn," I have to think most lesbians watched with bemusement. We already know how to grind us some corn, kiddies.
When the hell is Survivor coming back? I tried Googling that magic date but my patience wore thin before I could find out. Oh wait- I tried again and the date seems to be September 16. That's one short month away.
It'll be at the Vanua Islands in the South Pacific.
Here's some culinary news about the place: Taro, wild spinach and grated coconut are ground together to make the national dish, Laplap. Pork, beef, fish, poultry, seafood or bush meat like flying fox may be added, and the mixture is wrapped in banana leaves and baked in an underground oven.
"Yeah, could I have two flying fox Laplaps to go, please?"
Nahh. I think I'll stick with breakfast tacos.
In other news, I'll soon be illustrating a book of whimsical poems for a children's book my friend Brett in Portland is writing. I've already started on Matt, the fat rat, who sat on his hat and cravat. We homos have a history of doing children's books.
My old friend James Marshall has, over the last few decades, written and illustrated seven very cool books about two hippos called George and Martha. Let's hope Brett and I have similar success.
The U.S. Olympic basketball team was trounced this weekend by Puerto Rico's team. Seems most of the NBA's superstars were too chicken-shit to go to Greece to compete. Tim Duncan and Alan Iverson get some true street cred for showing up. Too bad they were flanked by NBA rookies and other posers who got too cocky before they assessed their opponents' skills.
Saturday, August 14, 2004
How Creepy is This?
Since when does a presidential campaign consist of prescreened attendees who have already decided to back the candidate?
For the undecidededs who might want to hear Bush speak in person, you're outta luck.
For those of us who back Kerry, it's good to see how Bush's handlers have decided to show the Bush dictatorship exactly as it is- a closed, censored, government-approved display of rah rah bullshit and arrogance.
Read this from CBS News.
(CBS) There was a full-throated roar of support for President Bush at a New Mexico rally -- adoring crowds and a beaming candidate -- the stuff great political theater is made of -- and it's no accident, reports CBS New White House Correspondent Bill Plante.
Said a rally organizer, "I wanna hear lots of cheering in there for the president!"
The event tickets went to busloads of prescreened party faithful -- who poured in hours in advance -- to be greeted and organized by Bush campaign staffers.
"We don't want anybody with a dry throat. We want you yelling for the president!" they were told.
The art of TV-friendly political stagecraft reaches new levels in this campaign. At "Ask President Bush" events, even the president makes no bones about the fact that he's speaking to invited guests.
"Okay, I've asked some citizens to come and help me make my points," he said.
As relaxed and affable as a talk show host, the president answers friendly questions -- which are often not questions at all.
"Mr. President, I don't have a question. I've got three thank-yous," said one supporter.
He also helps his handpicked guests to make a point.
"I don't know, Linda, if you're in a position to say this. But most people who go back to school with the new jobs end up making more money."
Linda: "Absolutely."
Mr. Bush: "Yeah, she was. That's good."
This tight control means that hecklers like those who greeted Kerry and Edwards in Missouri are almost never seen at Bush events.
And that doesn't seem to bother the president's supporters.
"I think it was more of a rally to get the supporters rallied up, so I think it served its purpose," said a guest.
But what about inviting some voters who haven't yet made up their minds?
"You mean the people who don't support Bush? They're only gonna sit and chat and you won't get to hear anything," said a backer.
It's all about getting out the message without any distractions, and making sure that there's no public argument to spoil the party.
Since when does a presidential campaign consist of prescreened attendees who have already decided to back the candidate?
For the undecidededs who might want to hear Bush speak in person, you're outta luck.
For those of us who back Kerry, it's good to see how Bush's handlers have decided to show the Bush dictatorship exactly as it is- a closed, censored, government-approved display of rah rah bullshit and arrogance.
Read this from CBS News.
(CBS) There was a full-throated roar of support for President Bush at a New Mexico rally -- adoring crowds and a beaming candidate -- the stuff great political theater is made of -- and it's no accident, reports CBS New White House Correspondent Bill Plante.
Said a rally organizer, "I wanna hear lots of cheering in there for the president!"
The event tickets went to busloads of prescreened party faithful -- who poured in hours in advance -- to be greeted and organized by Bush campaign staffers.
"We don't want anybody with a dry throat. We want you yelling for the president!" they were told.
The art of TV-friendly political stagecraft reaches new levels in this campaign. At "Ask President Bush" events, even the president makes no bones about the fact that he's speaking to invited guests.
"Okay, I've asked some citizens to come and help me make my points," he said.
As relaxed and affable as a talk show host, the president answers friendly questions -- which are often not questions at all.
"Mr. President, I don't have a question. I've got three thank-yous," said one supporter.
He also helps his handpicked guests to make a point.
"I don't know, Linda, if you're in a position to say this. But most people who go back to school with the new jobs end up making more money."
Linda: "Absolutely."
Mr. Bush: "Yeah, she was. That's good."
This tight control means that hecklers like those who greeted Kerry and Edwards in Missouri are almost never seen at Bush events.
And that doesn't seem to bother the president's supporters.
"I think it was more of a rally to get the supporters rallied up, so I think it served its purpose," said a guest.
But what about inviting some voters who haven't yet made up their minds?
"You mean the people who don't support Bush? They're only gonna sit and chat and you won't get to hear anything," said a backer.
It's all about getting out the message without any distractions, and making sure that there's no public argument to spoil the party.
Friday, August 13, 2004
Daily Pricks
I have diabetes.
Each morning when I awaken, I have to draw blood.
It's just a pin prick to my thumb (my index finger got calloused from nearly two years of bloodletting, so now it's the thumb's job) but it is an annoying daily ritual.
I have to take meds twice a day so my glucose levels don't get too high.
If they get too high, eventually they can cause blindness, limb amputation, strokes and/or heart attacks. None of those options bode for a pleasant old age, and I have started to accept that I will probably die earlier than I expected because of diabetes.
Right now, my average morning glucose level is around 104, well below the magic number 124, which is the number right before the dangerous diabetic level where degenerative problems start to occur.
In addition to having to face that morning prick, I am reminded almost daily that stem cell research that could one day lead to a cure for diabetes, and is being delayed for a few more months by a prick in the White House who'd rather curry favor with his radical fundamentalist Christian campaign contributors, who think stem cell research is tantamount to killing live babies.
I don't like any of Bush's policies, but this one feels just as personal to me as his vendetta against gays and lesbians.
We know by now that stem cell research might be science's strongest weapon against diabetes, but that's just one major disease that could be cured.
Imagine the progress that could have been made if Bush had approved substantial government grants to fund stem cell research four years ago.
Instead, he recently sent out his insipid wife Laura to bolster his nonsensical objections to stem cell research.
She said, "I know that embryonic stem cell research is very preliminary right now and the implication that cures for Alzheimer's are around the corner is just not right and it's really not fair to people who are watching a loved one suffer with this disease."
Nobody said cures are "around the corner."
But harpooning the research for four years sure as hell hasn't helped scientists round that corner.
All this talk about things turning corners, being around the corner, passing that corner, etc., with the Bush camp is just more of their partisan sloganeering. Empty phrases, designed to mollify the empty minded.
The only corner we need to get around is the last corner on this horrible Bush administration.
He and his cash-inspired, religious superstition designed to frighten people away from the advancement of science are effecting the future health and welfare of myself and millions of others in the world.
If we get rid of that prick in the White House, one day I may be able to get rid of that other prick I'm forced to endure on a daily basis.
Can I get an amen out there?
I have diabetes.
Each morning when I awaken, I have to draw blood.
It's just a pin prick to my thumb (my index finger got calloused from nearly two years of bloodletting, so now it's the thumb's job) but it is an annoying daily ritual.
I have to take meds twice a day so my glucose levels don't get too high.
If they get too high, eventually they can cause blindness, limb amputation, strokes and/or heart attacks. None of those options bode for a pleasant old age, and I have started to accept that I will probably die earlier than I expected because of diabetes.
Right now, my average morning glucose level is around 104, well below the magic number 124, which is the number right before the dangerous diabetic level where degenerative problems start to occur.
In addition to having to face that morning prick, I am reminded almost daily that stem cell research that could one day lead to a cure for diabetes, and is being delayed for a few more months by a prick in the White House who'd rather curry favor with his radical fundamentalist Christian campaign contributors, who think stem cell research is tantamount to killing live babies.
I don't like any of Bush's policies, but this one feels just as personal to me as his vendetta against gays and lesbians.
We know by now that stem cell research might be science's strongest weapon against diabetes, but that's just one major disease that could be cured.
Imagine the progress that could have been made if Bush had approved substantial government grants to fund stem cell research four years ago.
Instead, he recently sent out his insipid wife Laura to bolster his nonsensical objections to stem cell research.
She said, "I know that embryonic stem cell research is very preliminary right now and the implication that cures for Alzheimer's are around the corner is just not right and it's really not fair to people who are watching a loved one suffer with this disease."
Nobody said cures are "around the corner."
But harpooning the research for four years sure as hell hasn't helped scientists round that corner.
All this talk about things turning corners, being around the corner, passing that corner, etc., with the Bush camp is just more of their partisan sloganeering. Empty phrases, designed to mollify the empty minded.
The only corner we need to get around is the last corner on this horrible Bush administration.
He and his cash-inspired, religious superstition designed to frighten people away from the advancement of science are effecting the future health and welfare of myself and millions of others in the world.
If we get rid of that prick in the White House, one day I may be able to get rid of that other prick I'm forced to endure on a daily basis.
Can I get an amen out there?
Thursday, August 12, 2004
Molly Ivins and the Canadians: Oh, dear!
Canadians watch in shock as America seriously considers re-electing Bush
KANANASKIS, Alberta -- Make that a big Canadian, "Oh dear." These nice Canadians, whom George W. Bush once managed to triumphantly identify as "our most important neighbors to the north" are famous for their reticence. Canada, Land of the Understatement. I once proposed their national motto should be: "Now, Let's Not Get Excited." Not that I would ever generalize. I attribute their commendable phlegm to being too cold to waste much energy, and also to regular ingestion of oatmeal.
Nice, polite, calm, reserved, chock full of common sense and living next to us -- what a fate. For them, it's like having the Simpsons for next-door neighbors. A few years ago, during the height of our national meltdown over Monica Lewinsky, a host on the Canadian Broadcasting Co.'s evening news program began an interview by gingerly asking me, "So, having another of your little psychodramas down there, eh?"
This year, the American psychodrama, eh, is the election, and Canadians are taking unusual care, even by their standards, to try to phrase their questions delicately. "You couldn't possibly..." they begin, only to break off. "Are you not aware of what..." "Surely you realize how..." But they can think of no polite way of asking if we are such freaking idiots we haven't noticed the damage that has been done by the Bush administration to the American reputation all over the world.
One tries to explain that, "Who cares what the rest of the world thinks?" is a common American reaction, leaving the poor Canadians to quietly mutter, "Oh dear."
Just FYI, of the many allies the Bush White House managed to gratuitously insult on the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, we miffed the Canadians by blowing off their last-minute attempt to work out a deal for continued inspections under a strict timeframe -- we not only blew it off, we went to the trouble of being rude and arrogant about it. Among its other unpleasant traits, bad manners rank quite high on this administration's list of failings. In addition, some right-wingers weighed in with juvenile taunts along the intellectually brilliant lines of "nyah-nyah-nyah."
The National Review published a cover story headlined "Wimps!" Bill O'Reilly of Fox News got all huffy over something a Toronto columnist wrote and decided to appoint himself our national spokesman. Diplomacy is not O'Reilly's forte (he called Canadians "dishonest pinheads").
Of the many stupid things our country has done lately, alienating the best neighbor any country ever had ranks fairly high on the All Time Stupid list. So I have been at some pains to try to answer the ever-so-delicately phrased questions: Are you people actually going to re-elect that nincompoop? (I doubt a Canadian would ever actually ask an American that question -- this is free interpretation on my part.)
What makes the delicacy even more interesting is that Alberta is the province of Canada most like West Texas and the American Mountain states. Lot of ranchers, oil-and-gas men, conservative if not right-wing, a big anti-environmental movement -- just like home. Same deal -- timber industry, mining, all the extractive industries and hunters all lined up against environmentalists, who are outmanned and outgunned but perceived to have the federal government on their side.
You can find Albertans who think John Kerry would ruin the U.S. economy because they are under the impression that Democrats are all deficit spenders. When our economy catches cold, theirs gets pneumonia, so this is a source of real concern here. Pointing out that Bush is already doing trillions in deficit spending, and that he came into office with a huge surplus, draws sad agreement.
What is most striking to me every time I visit this country is how much more Canadians know about the United States and the rest of the world than many Americans do. Because they are generally less provincial than we are and certainly pay more attention to world news, they are acutely aware of how much the Bush administration has increased anti-Americanism around the globe. That's why so many of them are stupefied at the idea he might be re-elected -- they perceive him as having done great harm to his own country.
So, here I am trying to explain these politely astonished people how Americans could vote for George W. Bush. Some days are much tougher sledding than others.
Canadians watch in shock as America seriously considers re-electing Bush
KANANASKIS, Alberta -- Make that a big Canadian, "Oh dear." These nice Canadians, whom George W. Bush once managed to triumphantly identify as "our most important neighbors to the north" are famous for their reticence. Canada, Land of the Understatement. I once proposed their national motto should be: "Now, Let's Not Get Excited." Not that I would ever generalize. I attribute their commendable phlegm to being too cold to waste much energy, and also to regular ingestion of oatmeal.
Nice, polite, calm, reserved, chock full of common sense and living next to us -- what a fate. For them, it's like having the Simpsons for next-door neighbors. A few years ago, during the height of our national meltdown over Monica Lewinsky, a host on the Canadian Broadcasting Co.'s evening news program began an interview by gingerly asking me, "So, having another of your little psychodramas down there, eh?"
This year, the American psychodrama, eh, is the election, and Canadians are taking unusual care, even by their standards, to try to phrase their questions delicately. "You couldn't possibly..." they begin, only to break off. "Are you not aware of what..." "Surely you realize how..." But they can think of no polite way of asking if we are such freaking idiots we haven't noticed the damage that has been done by the Bush administration to the American reputation all over the world.
One tries to explain that, "Who cares what the rest of the world thinks?" is a common American reaction, leaving the poor Canadians to quietly mutter, "Oh dear."
Just FYI, of the many allies the Bush White House managed to gratuitously insult on the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, we miffed the Canadians by blowing off their last-minute attempt to work out a deal for continued inspections under a strict timeframe -- we not only blew it off, we went to the trouble of being rude and arrogant about it. Among its other unpleasant traits, bad manners rank quite high on this administration's list of failings. In addition, some right-wingers weighed in with juvenile taunts along the intellectually brilliant lines of "nyah-nyah-nyah."
The National Review published a cover story headlined "Wimps!" Bill O'Reilly of Fox News got all huffy over something a Toronto columnist wrote and decided to appoint himself our national spokesman. Diplomacy is not O'Reilly's forte (he called Canadians "dishonest pinheads").
Of the many stupid things our country has done lately, alienating the best neighbor any country ever had ranks fairly high on the All Time Stupid list. So I have been at some pains to try to answer the ever-so-delicately phrased questions: Are you people actually going to re-elect that nincompoop? (I doubt a Canadian would ever actually ask an American that question -- this is free interpretation on my part.)
What makes the delicacy even more interesting is that Alberta is the province of Canada most like West Texas and the American Mountain states. Lot of ranchers, oil-and-gas men, conservative if not right-wing, a big anti-environmental movement -- just like home. Same deal -- timber industry, mining, all the extractive industries and hunters all lined up against environmentalists, who are outmanned and outgunned but perceived to have the federal government on their side.
You can find Albertans who think John Kerry would ruin the U.S. economy because they are under the impression that Democrats are all deficit spenders. When our economy catches cold, theirs gets pneumonia, so this is a source of real concern here. Pointing out that Bush is already doing trillions in deficit spending, and that he came into office with a huge surplus, draws sad agreement.
What is most striking to me every time I visit this country is how much more Canadians know about the United States and the rest of the world than many Americans do. Because they are generally less provincial than we are and certainly pay more attention to world news, they are acutely aware of how much the Bush administration has increased anti-Americanism around the globe. That's why so many of them are stupefied at the idea he might be re-elected -- they perceive him as having done great harm to his own country.
So, here I am trying to explain these politely astonished people how Americans could vote for George W. Bush. Some days are much tougher sledding than others.
Just Do It
Look, we have the constitutional right to assemble. In fact, that right was the very first amendment to the constitution.
Here, read it for yourself:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That means we are allowed to gather together and protest whatever we want.
The Republican convention, soon to be starting in New York City, is being handled like the GOP has the legal right to abridge the rights of protesters, by denying them permits, by forcing them to congregate well out of sight and earshot of the GOP event, and by denying them access to Central Park, based on some bogus concerns for the health of the grass.
Back in the 70's, we anti war protesters had the freedom to assemble anywhere we wanted.
Had they tried to deny us, corral us or force us into some dark corner where the war mongers wouldn't be bothered by us, we would have burnt some things down and knocked some things over.
This Bush crowd and the GOP party have lied, broken laws, caused us international embarrassment, pissed away our money, violated our civil rights and polluted our environment.
Of course they want to abridge our rights to assemble and protest–they don't want to face the public outrage.
Sometimes governmental rules are unfair. Sometimes they are illegal.
If the GOP demands the hundreds of thousands of people who want to peacefully protest the GOP and Bush regime be abridged or denied the right to do so, their authority is superseded by the constitution and should be ignored.
I hope the protesters take back the park, take back the streets and arrive en masse to make their voices heard. If the police behave toward them like the Gestapo at the president's behest, violence could occur and destruction may ensue. It wouldn't be right to force the NYC police to enforce unconstitutional orders, they've been through enough.
Bush doesn't listen. He doesn't hear. When stubborn people refuse to listen to urgent whispers, the volume elevates until glass shatters.
It was self-serving of the GOP to hold the convention in New York City. Clearly, they're using 9/11 to court sentimentality for political gain.
If they try to corral or curtail these protesters, I predict riots and violence rivaling the 70's protests.
And the bad part is, we already know the GOP will refuse to budge and allow the people their first amendment rights, so the outcome is almost certain.
Even with the sound of glass shattering, I'm certain Bush and his minions still won't listen.
But the voters will, and so will the rest of the world.
Look, we have the constitutional right to assemble. In fact, that right was the very first amendment to the constitution.
Here, read it for yourself:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That means we are allowed to gather together and protest whatever we want.
The Republican convention, soon to be starting in New York City, is being handled like the GOP has the legal right to abridge the rights of protesters, by denying them permits, by forcing them to congregate well out of sight and earshot of the GOP event, and by denying them access to Central Park, based on some bogus concerns for the health of the grass.
Back in the 70's, we anti war protesters had the freedom to assemble anywhere we wanted.
Had they tried to deny us, corral us or force us into some dark corner where the war mongers wouldn't be bothered by us, we would have burnt some things down and knocked some things over.
This Bush crowd and the GOP party have lied, broken laws, caused us international embarrassment, pissed away our money, violated our civil rights and polluted our environment.
Of course they want to abridge our rights to assemble and protest–they don't want to face the public outrage.
Sometimes governmental rules are unfair. Sometimes they are illegal.
If the GOP demands the hundreds of thousands of people who want to peacefully protest the GOP and Bush regime be abridged or denied the right to do so, their authority is superseded by the constitution and should be ignored.
I hope the protesters take back the park, take back the streets and arrive en masse to make their voices heard. If the police behave toward them like the Gestapo at the president's behest, violence could occur and destruction may ensue. It wouldn't be right to force the NYC police to enforce unconstitutional orders, they've been through enough.
Bush doesn't listen. He doesn't hear. When stubborn people refuse to listen to urgent whispers, the volume elevates until glass shatters.
It was self-serving of the GOP to hold the convention in New York City. Clearly, they're using 9/11 to court sentimentality for political gain.
If they try to corral or curtail these protesters, I predict riots and violence rivaling the 70's protests.
And the bad part is, we already know the GOP will refuse to budge and allow the people their first amendment rights, so the outcome is almost certain.
Even with the sound of glass shattering, I'm certain Bush and his minions still won't listen.
But the voters will, and so will the rest of the world.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Bush Wants Goss: What a Shock.
We all know by now that idiot Bush wants that right-wing asshole Goss to be the new CIA Director.
True, it'll just be a temporary assignment until Bush gets ousted, but I resent Bush wasting more taxpayer money by paying a salary to another partisan scumbag who won't fix anything and whose partisan bumbling will further decimate the reputation of the CIA.
Here's Goss in a nutshell:
GOSS MOCKS SUGGESTION TO INVESTIGATE THE OUTING OF VALERIE PLAME: As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Goss refused to investigate the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame by a senior member of the White House staff. Goss told a newspaper last October that when "somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation.'"
Yep, that's how seriously he takes the outing of a CIA agent by Bush's staff.
No wonder that asshole Bush wants him to run the CIA.
We all know by now that idiot Bush wants that right-wing asshole Goss to be the new CIA Director.
True, it'll just be a temporary assignment until Bush gets ousted, but I resent Bush wasting more taxpayer money by paying a salary to another partisan scumbag who won't fix anything and whose partisan bumbling will further decimate the reputation of the CIA.
Here's Goss in a nutshell:
GOSS MOCKS SUGGESTION TO INVESTIGATE THE OUTING OF VALERIE PLAME: As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Goss refused to investigate the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame by a senior member of the White House staff. Goss told a newspaper last October that when "somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation.'"
Yep, that's how seriously he takes the outing of a CIA agent by Bush's staff.
No wonder that asshole Bush wants him to run the CIA.
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Here It Comes: My First Brain Tumor
My home phone service has an added feature that allows for unlimited long distance calls for 20 extra bucks a month.
My long distance calling has been so far below the $20, I called SBC today to have them drop the set-fee feature.
Then the fast talking saleswoman somehow boondoggled me into getting >>sigh<< my first cell phone.
Basically, they offered me a free phone, and some outrageous calling plan that allows me more minutes than I'll ever need, all for only $34 a month, which is only $14 more than I was already shelling out. Did I mention the free phone? Oh, who cares!
I hate those damn little pesky cell phones.
I hate seeing people use them.
I hate those ridiculous jingles they program in instead of a ringer.
I hate being trackable when I am away from home.
I don't even like cordless phones at home. I am not a multi tasker, plus they too cause brain tumors.
But, this is a tiny little blue and silver phone that'll hide in my pocket, and it comes with a free charger, a free hands-free wire thing and an attachment for taking photos.
Sure, like I'll be taking pictures with the creepy little thing.
Anyway, if my Blogs start to read like I have a brain tumor, someone please call me on my cell and tell me.
Oh wait. I'm not giving the number out to anyone.
That'll just cause trouble.
My home phone service has an added feature that allows for unlimited long distance calls for 20 extra bucks a month.
My long distance calling has been so far below the $20, I called SBC today to have them drop the set-fee feature.
Then the fast talking saleswoman somehow boondoggled me into getting >>sigh<< my first cell phone.
Basically, they offered me a free phone, and some outrageous calling plan that allows me more minutes than I'll ever need, all for only $34 a month, which is only $14 more than I was already shelling out. Did I mention the free phone? Oh, who cares!
I hate those damn little pesky cell phones.
I hate seeing people use them.
I hate those ridiculous jingles they program in instead of a ringer.
I hate being trackable when I am away from home.
I don't even like cordless phones at home. I am not a multi tasker, plus they too cause brain tumors.
But, this is a tiny little blue and silver phone that'll hide in my pocket, and it comes with a free charger, a free hands-free wire thing and an attachment for taking photos.
Sure, like I'll be taking pictures with the creepy little thing.
Anyway, if my Blogs start to read like I have a brain tumor, someone please call me on my cell and tell me.
Oh wait. I'm not giving the number out to anyone.
That'll just cause trouble.
Family Plots
Did anyone see it last night?
That Rick needs to get a handle on himself. Between his Wild Turkey-soaked Friday night and a new girlfriend so soon after getting dumped, he's on a sleigh ride to hell. Drunk rebounding might be one solution, but it's not a good one.
His ex-girlfriend Melissa is sort of attractive in a heavily made-up way, but isn't it pretty clear he belongs with the middle sister, Shonna?
As for the Growing Up Gotti clan, Victoria (aka Hedda Nussbaum*) needs to get herself a cattle prod and use it on those wiseguys she birthed.
I love how she threatens them.
"If you upset me, youse guys are gonna see me in the worst kind of mood youse evah seen..."
Sure. With all that Botox, she can't even frown properly.
*thanks, Cris
Did anyone see it last night?
That Rick needs to get a handle on himself. Between his Wild Turkey-soaked Friday night and a new girlfriend so soon after getting dumped, he's on a sleigh ride to hell. Drunk rebounding might be one solution, but it's not a good one.
His ex-girlfriend Melissa is sort of attractive in a heavily made-up way, but isn't it pretty clear he belongs with the middle sister, Shonna?
As for the Growing Up Gotti clan, Victoria (aka Hedda Nussbaum*) needs to get herself a cattle prod and use it on those wiseguys she birthed.
I love how she threatens them.
"If you upset me, youse guys are gonna see me in the worst kind of mood youse evah seen..."
Sure. With all that Botox, she can't even frown properly.
*thanks, Cris
Sunday, August 08, 2004
The SOS Bush Tour!
By now, everyone has heard that ACT and MoveOn have organized a super concert to raise funds to defeat Bush.
The Vote for Change Tour (October 1-10) includes Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Bonnie Raitt, Dave Matthews Band, Dixie Chicks, Jackson Browne, John Mellencamp, Ben Harper, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Pearl Jam, R.E.M, James Taylor and others.
Conceived by a loose coalition of musicians four months ago, Vote for Change is a multi-city, multi-artist tour that will include approximately 34 shows in 28 cities in 9 states over the course of one week.
To counteract this communist inspired frenzy of un-American, terrorist-loving drug addicts, the Republican party and it's allies from the John Birch Society, the KKK, Landover Baptist Church and the state of Utah have joined together to launch the SOS (Same Old Shit) Tour.
On slate:
Master of Ceremonies: Rush Limbaugh
Musical Acts:
Pat Boone
Anita Bryant
Connie Stevens
Dixie Carter
Marie Osmond
Gun Battle Reenactments:
Gerald McRaney
Charlton Heston (Alzheimer's permitting)
Chuck Norris
Spokesmodels:
Delta Burke
Shannon Doherty
Comedy Stylings:
Ben Stein
Jerry Mathers
Tony Danza
A Bush Campaign official said, "Who among us wouldn't feel lucky to witness this slate of superstars entertaining their hearts out for Bush?
"Why, Connie Stevens alone is enough to melt the coldest left-winger's heart, but when Mister Pat Boone steps onstage, we'll show the world who the REAL boss is."
The event is sponsored by Halliburton, Standard Oil, Chevron, The Saudi Royal Family, Pfizer, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Exxon/Mobil, Shell Oil, Dow Chemical, Dow Corning, Raytheon, Honeywell, TRW and Landover Baptist Church.
Tickets are available at G.F.Y.Concert.org.
Note: concert goers must sign an oath supporting the president to gain entrance. Please bring a valid state driver's license, birth certificate, DNA sample, photo for our files, recent dental x-rays,
auto registration, proof of insurance, utilities receipts, proof of employment, e-mail address and PC password, urine & stool samples, and cashier's checks made out to CREEP (committee to reelect president) in amounts of $100 or more (not including ticket prices).
We love everyone, but to ensure national security, please leave people of brown ethnicities, gay people and foreigners at home (for their own safety). No cameras, recording devices, video cams or cell phones allowed. No paper or writing implements allowed. No pants or shirts with pockets, handbags or totes will be allowed into concert venues. No media allowed except for those authorized by the Secret Service in advance. No food or beverages allowed. No loud talking. No complaining. No giggling or staring.
Just come prepared to relax, support the president and have a great time!
By now, everyone has heard that ACT and MoveOn have organized a super concert to raise funds to defeat Bush.
The Vote for Change Tour (October 1-10) includes Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Bonnie Raitt, Dave Matthews Band, Dixie Chicks, Jackson Browne, John Mellencamp, Ben Harper, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Pearl Jam, R.E.M, James Taylor and others.
Conceived by a loose coalition of musicians four months ago, Vote for Change is a multi-city, multi-artist tour that will include approximately 34 shows in 28 cities in 9 states over the course of one week.
To counteract this communist inspired frenzy of un-American, terrorist-loving drug addicts, the Republican party and it's allies from the John Birch Society, the KKK, Landover Baptist Church and the state of Utah have joined together to launch the SOS (Same Old Shit) Tour.
On slate:
Master of Ceremonies: Rush Limbaugh
Musical Acts:
Pat Boone
Anita Bryant
Connie Stevens
Dixie Carter
Marie Osmond
Gun Battle Reenactments:
Gerald McRaney
Charlton Heston (Alzheimer's permitting)
Chuck Norris
Spokesmodels:
Delta Burke
Shannon Doherty
Comedy Stylings:
Ben Stein
Jerry Mathers
Tony Danza
A Bush Campaign official said, "Who among us wouldn't feel lucky to witness this slate of superstars entertaining their hearts out for Bush?
"Why, Connie Stevens alone is enough to melt the coldest left-winger's heart, but when Mister Pat Boone steps onstage, we'll show the world who the REAL boss is."
The event is sponsored by Halliburton, Standard Oil, Chevron, The Saudi Royal Family, Pfizer, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Exxon/Mobil, Shell Oil, Dow Chemical, Dow Corning, Raytheon, Honeywell, TRW and Landover Baptist Church.
Tickets are available at G.F.Y.Concert.org.
Note: concert goers must sign an oath supporting the president to gain entrance. Please bring a valid state driver's license, birth certificate, DNA sample, photo for our files, recent dental x-rays,
auto registration, proof of insurance, utilities receipts, proof of employment, e-mail address and PC password, urine & stool samples, and cashier's checks made out to CREEP (committee to reelect president) in amounts of $100 or more (not including ticket prices).
We love everyone, but to ensure national security, please leave people of brown ethnicities, gay people and foreigners at home (for their own safety). No cameras, recording devices, video cams or cell phones allowed. No paper or writing implements allowed. No pants or shirts with pockets, handbags or totes will be allowed into concert venues. No media allowed except for those authorized by the Secret Service in advance. No food or beverages allowed. No loud talking. No complaining. No giggling or staring.
Just come prepared to relax, support the president and have a great time!
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Bush Family Gathers for Wedding in Maine
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (Aug. 7) - Three generations of Bushes went fishing off the Maine coast Saturday, drawn together for the wedding of presidential nephew George Prescott Bush, who may look gay and was rumored to be gay, but insists he's not gay.
One of President Bush's twin daughters reeled in a 38-inch striped bass with a strobe light in its tail and sequins on it's fins, the president proudly announced.
"Jenna caught it. Jenna caught the fish!" Bush shouted to journalists from his father's boat. Photographers said the monster was thrown back into the Atlantic, after Jenna, first cousin Noelle and her father started screaming the fish was telling them to start the boat on fire.
Rods, reels, an ounce of Maui Wowie and an 8-Ball of fine, Colombian cocaine in hand, the family set out together in the morning on the Fidelity III, the new powerboat given to the first President Bush by his friends in Saudi Arabia as a recent hostess gift.
Three 275-horsepower engines rumbled beneath the boat, which can reach speeds of up to 75 mph. The craft is said to get decent gas mileage, at 5 gallons per mile.
"Let those girly men Coast Guard motherfuckers try to run us down in this fuckin' boat," proclaimed the president. "We are the Bushes, we own Maine, motherfuckers."
The family mostly trolled the calm waters along the Maine cliffs, just up the coast from the Bushes' Walker's Point home. They were shadowed by Coast Guard patrol boats, posted upwind to avoid inadvertantly inhaling the smoke fumes created by the Presidential Bong.
On board were the Poppy Bush; Dubya Bush and both his daughters, Noelle Bush, the daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; and Colombian importer Paco Estrella, who was invited along as Noelle's "personal assistant."
George P. Bush is Jeb Bush's son. He's really handsome, but not gay, the family reiterated countless times.
The family gathered to attend his wedding to Amanda Williams at St. Ann's Episcopal Church near Walker's Point.
The two met while attending law school at the University of Texas at Austin. They began dating after Bush asked her if he looked better with or without plucked eyebrows.
The bride-to-be works for the Jackson Walker law firm in Fort Worth, Texas, specializing in Halliburton labor litigation. Her hobbies include golf, carpentry and watching, "The L Word."
This fall, George P. Bush will leave his position as an assistant to a federal judge in Dallas to join the Dallas office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, where he will work in the laundering division. The firm is one of the world's largest and earns millions lobbying in Washington.
George P. Bush did not go fishing.
"When a boy like me gets married, he has to have a facial, a manicure, pedicure, waxing, a mango sugar scrub, a session with his spirit guide, a massage, modern dance class and yoga," George P. said. "I was not about to get into that harsh sea air and ruin my nails handling icky fish," he said.
"I am very happy for my son. He is marrying a wonderful young woman. Life can't get any better," Gov. Bush told The Associated Press in an e-mail Thursday from Maine. "Between this event and winning the Florida vote for my brother in Florida, I can hardly cop more of a buzz, even when I hang out with Noelle."
Noelle, who recently left court-ordered rehab for treatment of drug addiction, said, "Yeah. This boat, like, with the people on it, like, it was like picturing myself with, like, tangerine skies and marmalade, uhh, you know, like toast with marmalade, only no calories and it makes you, like, smile big time, only better."
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (Aug. 7) - Three generations of Bushes went fishing off the Maine coast Saturday, drawn together for the wedding of presidential nephew George Prescott Bush, who may look gay and was rumored to be gay, but insists he's not gay.
One of President Bush's twin daughters reeled in a 38-inch striped bass with a strobe light in its tail and sequins on it's fins, the president proudly announced.
"Jenna caught it. Jenna caught the fish!" Bush shouted to journalists from his father's boat. Photographers said the monster was thrown back into the Atlantic, after Jenna, first cousin Noelle and her father started screaming the fish was telling them to start the boat on fire.
Rods, reels, an ounce of Maui Wowie and an 8-Ball of fine, Colombian cocaine in hand, the family set out together in the morning on the Fidelity III, the new powerboat given to the first President Bush by his friends in Saudi Arabia as a recent hostess gift.
Three 275-horsepower engines rumbled beneath the boat, which can reach speeds of up to 75 mph. The craft is said to get decent gas mileage, at 5 gallons per mile.
"Let those girly men Coast Guard motherfuckers try to run us down in this fuckin' boat," proclaimed the president. "We are the Bushes, we own Maine, motherfuckers."
The family mostly trolled the calm waters along the Maine cliffs, just up the coast from the Bushes' Walker's Point home. They were shadowed by Coast Guard patrol boats, posted upwind to avoid inadvertantly inhaling the smoke fumes created by the Presidential Bong.
On board were the Poppy Bush; Dubya Bush and both his daughters, Noelle Bush, the daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; and Colombian importer Paco Estrella, who was invited along as Noelle's "personal assistant."
George P. Bush is Jeb Bush's son. He's really handsome, but not gay, the family reiterated countless times.
The family gathered to attend his wedding to Amanda Williams at St. Ann's Episcopal Church near Walker's Point.
The two met while attending law school at the University of Texas at Austin. They began dating after Bush asked her if he looked better with or without plucked eyebrows.
The bride-to-be works for the Jackson Walker law firm in Fort Worth, Texas, specializing in Halliburton labor litigation. Her hobbies include golf, carpentry and watching, "The L Word."
This fall, George P. Bush will leave his position as an assistant to a federal judge in Dallas to join the Dallas office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, where he will work in the laundering division. The firm is one of the world's largest and earns millions lobbying in Washington.
George P. Bush did not go fishing.
"When a boy like me gets married, he has to have a facial, a manicure, pedicure, waxing, a mango sugar scrub, a session with his spirit guide, a massage, modern dance class and yoga," George P. said. "I was not about to get into that harsh sea air and ruin my nails handling icky fish," he said.
"I am very happy for my son. He is marrying a wonderful young woman. Life can't get any better," Gov. Bush told The Associated Press in an e-mail Thursday from Maine. "Between this event and winning the Florida vote for my brother in Florida, I can hardly cop more of a buzz, even when I hang out with Noelle."
Noelle, who recently left court-ordered rehab for treatment of drug addiction, said, "Yeah. This boat, like, with the people on it, like, it was like picturing myself with, like, tangerine skies and marmalade, uhh, you know, like toast with marmalade, only no calories and it makes you, like, smile big time, only better."
Thursday, August 05, 2004
The Imbecile slips and tells the truth, for once.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush offered up a new entry for his catalog of "Bushisms'' on Thursday.
Bush misspoke as he delivered a speech at the signing ceremony for a $417 billion defense spending bill.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we,'' Bush said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.''
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush offered up a new entry for his catalog of "Bushisms'' on Thursday.
Bush misspoke as he delivered a speech at the signing ceremony for a $417 billion defense spending bill.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we,'' Bush said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.''
Growing Up Gotti
Has anyone seen A&E's new series, "Growing Up Gotti"?
I watched a few episodes the other night, and I have to say I hope the rest of the world doesn't have access to this show.
To say Victoria Gotti is white trash with money is too simplistic.
She's white trash with laundered money, and three teenage sons who haven't yet been convicted of racketeering or other Mafia flavored felonies.
If you'd like a glimpse into a world where money does not buy taste and adolescent boys could use a big dose of tough love, this is the show to watch.
Picture a Long Island mansion with what could be a gorgeous swimming pool. Now zoom in on the pool, emptied except for a few feet of slimy, dark sludge, with a lawn chair thrown in for good measure. You have entered the world of Chez Gotti.
Also on A&E is a great new series called, "Family Plots," a reality series that revolves around a family run mortuary in San Diego. I have no idea why I like this show, but I do. I guess it's because the characters are all vaguely likable and sunny in a business you wouldn't think would attract that sort of thing.
With "Survivor" and "The L Word" on hiatus, I've been dwelling in a television wasteland this summer.
Were it not for HBO's "Six Feet Under," I'd disconnect the cable and read.
Has anyone seen A&E's new series, "Growing Up Gotti"?
I watched a few episodes the other night, and I have to say I hope the rest of the world doesn't have access to this show.
To say Victoria Gotti is white trash with money is too simplistic.
She's white trash with laundered money, and three teenage sons who haven't yet been convicted of racketeering or other Mafia flavored felonies.
If you'd like a glimpse into a world where money does not buy taste and adolescent boys could use a big dose of tough love, this is the show to watch.
Picture a Long Island mansion with what could be a gorgeous swimming pool. Now zoom in on the pool, emptied except for a few feet of slimy, dark sludge, with a lawn chair thrown in for good measure. You have entered the world of Chez Gotti.
Also on A&E is a great new series called, "Family Plots," a reality series that revolves around a family run mortuary in San Diego. I have no idea why I like this show, but I do. I guess it's because the characters are all vaguely likable and sunny in a business you wouldn't think would attract that sort of thing.
With "Survivor" and "The L Word" on hiatus, I've been dwelling in a television wasteland this summer.
Were it not for HBO's "Six Feet Under," I'd disconnect the cable and read.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Laura Bush Takes Swipe at Media Coverage
WASHINGTON (Aug. 4) - First lady Laura Bush thinks the news media is increasingly filled with opinions instead of facts, and suggested Tuesday that journalists are contributing to the polarization of the country.
"I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America," she said in an interview Tuesday with Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor."
Oh, for Chrissakes.
Maybe Laura Bush doesn't like the media covering and/or exposing the lies, the bumbling and the bullshit of her idiot husband and his crooked administration.
For her to be flapping her gums to Bill O'Reilly, one of the biggest right-wing biased pundits in America, on Fox News, a network so unfair and unbalanced they are being sued for calling themselves "fair and balanced," just shows us what a whining, delusional bunch of blamers and buck passers she's running with.
On the whole, the media reports news based on what happened.
If what happened happens to make Bush look like an incompetent fool with an obvious agenda contrary to the will and the good of the American taxpayers, perhaps it's time everyone stop blaming the media for reporting simply what's so.
People need to get this into their heads:
The media OWNERS are rich guys who tend to be conservatives.
If anyone thinks the OWNERS don't have any say over editorial content, they are fucking stupid.
If the OWNERS have a scintilla of honesty, they want their reporters to report the news as they find it- without making things up, without leaving things out. They may not like the news, but it keeps their readers and advertisers happy to have their reporters maintain an honest, legitimate source of news.
The essence of writing news is to show, not tell.
I know this because I happen to be a trained journalist, with newspaper reporting experience.
If what we are shown on television and what we read in newspapers looks bad for the president and his administration, chances are it is bad.
Did the media make up those photos of Iraqi prisoners?
Did the media make up the record trillion dollar budget deficit?
Did the media fabricate Bush's plans to create an amendment that discriminates against homosexuals?
Did the media make up unemployment figures, or lie about skyrocketing gas prices?
Did the media lie about Tom Ridge using three-year-old intelligence to announce an imminent terrorist threat, conveniently timed to distract people from the Democratic convention?
If you don't like what you hear or read about our current government in mainstream media, perhaps the change needs to made with the former, not the latter.
Don't blame the messenger, Laura.
The problem lies with information contained in the message- and chances are, that bad news is probably just an honest reflection of what your husband has done to the country, and the world.
Folks, think about it.
Have you ever, in American history, heard so much controversy about the news media?
Hell, no.
Just think about why the news appears to be so biased against Bush.
Could it be he's just doing a phenomenally horrible job?
WASHINGTON (Aug. 4) - First lady Laura Bush thinks the news media is increasingly filled with opinions instead of facts, and suggested Tuesday that journalists are contributing to the polarization of the country.
"I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America," she said in an interview Tuesday with Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor."
Oh, for Chrissakes.
Maybe Laura Bush doesn't like the media covering and/or exposing the lies, the bumbling and the bullshit of her idiot husband and his crooked administration.
For her to be flapping her gums to Bill O'Reilly, one of the biggest right-wing biased pundits in America, on Fox News, a network so unfair and unbalanced they are being sued for calling themselves "fair and balanced," just shows us what a whining, delusional bunch of blamers and buck passers she's running with.
On the whole, the media reports news based on what happened.
If what happened happens to make Bush look like an incompetent fool with an obvious agenda contrary to the will and the good of the American taxpayers, perhaps it's time everyone stop blaming the media for reporting simply what's so.
People need to get this into their heads:
The media OWNERS are rich guys who tend to be conservatives.
If anyone thinks the OWNERS don't have any say over editorial content, they are fucking stupid.
If the OWNERS have a scintilla of honesty, they want their reporters to report the news as they find it- without making things up, without leaving things out. They may not like the news, but it keeps their readers and advertisers happy to have their reporters maintain an honest, legitimate source of news.
The essence of writing news is to show, not tell.
I know this because I happen to be a trained journalist, with newspaper reporting experience.
If what we are shown on television and what we read in newspapers looks bad for the president and his administration, chances are it is bad.
Did the media make up those photos of Iraqi prisoners?
Did the media make up the record trillion dollar budget deficit?
Did the media fabricate Bush's plans to create an amendment that discriminates against homosexuals?
Did the media make up unemployment figures, or lie about skyrocketing gas prices?
Did the media lie about Tom Ridge using three-year-old intelligence to announce an imminent terrorist threat, conveniently timed to distract people from the Democratic convention?
If you don't like what you hear or read about our current government in mainstream media, perhaps the change needs to made with the former, not the latter.
Don't blame the messenger, Laura.
The problem lies with information contained in the message- and chances are, that bad news is probably just an honest reflection of what your husband has done to the country, and the world.
Folks, think about it.
Have you ever, in American history, heard so much controversy about the news media?
Hell, no.
Just think about why the news appears to be so biased against Bush.
Could it be he's just doing a phenomenally horrible job?
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Four More Years of Hell
MILWAUKEE, Wis. (Aug. 2) -- Teresa Heinz Kerry, the outspoken wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, told a rally Monday evening exactly what she thinks of the prospect of a second Bush term.
With a Bush supporter chanting ''Four more years! Four more years!'' through a bullhorn from the back of a park, the candidate's wife stopped herself to respond.
''They want four more years of hell,''
The pro-Kerry crowd erupted in applause and began its own chant: ''Three more months! Three more months.''
Now- what's the difference between a Kerry rally and a Bush rally?
Hecklers are not allowed at Bush rallies.
Even mainstream news photographers have their ethnicity questioned before they are allowed near Bush or his cronies.
People have to show ID and sign pledges that they support Bush before they are even allowed to listen to him speak.
People who buy tickets to hear Bush speak are not allowed to even wear T-shirts that don't endorse Bush, lest they get arrested.
It's all been documented.
The first amendment that allows us the right to free speech is not enforced in this regime, in fact, it's looked upon as an inconvenience by a paranoid Bush and his secretive administration.
Kerry understands that a free society must allow for assholes with bullhorns to disrupt things.
A free society was created to allow for the views of assholes, not for those with whom we agree.
Was it rude and unfair for some GOP asshole with a sense of entitlement and a bullhorn to disrupt Kerry's rally?
Yes, but we've come to expect that from an administration like this. I'm just glad we'll soon have a first lady who puts assholes like this bullhorn guy in their place.
Meanwhile, we have to tolerate three more months of this:
Agree with Bush- you get to have rights.
Disagree with Bush? Go fuck yourself.
MILWAUKEE, Wis. (Aug. 2) -- Teresa Heinz Kerry, the outspoken wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, told a rally Monday evening exactly what she thinks of the prospect of a second Bush term.
With a Bush supporter chanting ''Four more years! Four more years!'' through a bullhorn from the back of a park, the candidate's wife stopped herself to respond.
''They want four more years of hell,''
The pro-Kerry crowd erupted in applause and began its own chant: ''Three more months! Three more months.''
Now- what's the difference between a Kerry rally and a Bush rally?
Hecklers are not allowed at Bush rallies.
Even mainstream news photographers have their ethnicity questioned before they are allowed near Bush or his cronies.
People have to show ID and sign pledges that they support Bush before they are even allowed to listen to him speak.
People who buy tickets to hear Bush speak are not allowed to even wear T-shirts that don't endorse Bush, lest they get arrested.
It's all been documented.
The first amendment that allows us the right to free speech is not enforced in this regime, in fact, it's looked upon as an inconvenience by a paranoid Bush and his secretive administration.
Kerry understands that a free society must allow for assholes with bullhorns to disrupt things.
A free society was created to allow for the views of assholes, not for those with whom we agree.
Was it rude and unfair for some GOP asshole with a sense of entitlement and a bullhorn to disrupt Kerry's rally?
Yes, but we've come to expect that from an administration like this. I'm just glad we'll soon have a first lady who puts assholes like this bullhorn guy in their place.
Meanwhile, we have to tolerate three more months of this:
Agree with Bush- you get to have rights.
Disagree with Bush? Go fuck yourself.
Monday, August 02, 2004
Lynn Cheney's Secret Diary
August, 2004
Dear Diary,
Oh my, Dick finally got authorization from his cardiologists to take Viagra for his impotency problems.
As much as I've been dreading it, he appeared at my boudoir door with his bobbing member in hand the night John Kerry spoke to the American public.
Whilst my fantasies are of a strong young lass reading to me whilst I cross-stitch in the firelight, then spiriting me away to our bed of the finest chintz fabric, Dick had that gleam in his eye, the same gleam he had when he said to me one night 34 years ago, "Let's hunker down and make me a son, honeypot."
When I birthed not a son but instead little Mary, Dick was limp with disappointment. Sigh. I think that episode started his heart problems.
Now that he's a somewhat full man again, thanks to his friends at Pfizer, I cannot warm to his bear-like frame. And his four inch member may lack length, but the way it leans to the right still makes it an uncomfortable intrusion into my Sapphic tunnel of love.
But alack and alas, I did what I had to do.
I dimmed the firelight, thanks to our remote control dimmer switch made by Dick's friends at Futronix.
I removed my contact lenses that Dick's friends at Acuvue sent me. Then I asked Dick to don a dark wig, clipped into a pert bob that his friends at Monsanto sent us.
When he hovered over me, heavy with horn, and I squinted just right in the firedimmed light at his thin lips, he looked enough like k.d. lang to get my gal juices sufficiently damp.
It was then I allowed the rapture of our coupling to enfold me.
Within the three minutes Dick took to complete the act, I was at one with my faux k.d., and it was almost beautiful.
If only Dick hasn't insisted I chant, "Leahy, Leahy, Leahy" while he pistoned himself inside of me, the fantasy would have been complete.
...to be continued
August, 2004
Dear Diary,
Oh my, Dick finally got authorization from his cardiologists to take Viagra for his impotency problems.
As much as I've been dreading it, he appeared at my boudoir door with his bobbing member in hand the night John Kerry spoke to the American public.
Whilst my fantasies are of a strong young lass reading to me whilst I cross-stitch in the firelight, then spiriting me away to our bed of the finest chintz fabric, Dick had that gleam in his eye, the same gleam he had when he said to me one night 34 years ago, "Let's hunker down and make me a son, honeypot."
When I birthed not a son but instead little Mary, Dick was limp with disappointment. Sigh. I think that episode started his heart problems.
Now that he's a somewhat full man again, thanks to his friends at Pfizer, I cannot warm to his bear-like frame. And his four inch member may lack length, but the way it leans to the right still makes it an uncomfortable intrusion into my Sapphic tunnel of love.
But alack and alas, I did what I had to do.
I dimmed the firelight, thanks to our remote control dimmer switch made by Dick's friends at Futronix.
I removed my contact lenses that Dick's friends at Acuvue sent me. Then I asked Dick to don a dark wig, clipped into a pert bob that his friends at Monsanto sent us.
When he hovered over me, heavy with horn, and I squinted just right in the firedimmed light at his thin lips, he looked enough like k.d. lang to get my gal juices sufficiently damp.
It was then I allowed the rapture of our coupling to enfold me.
Within the three minutes Dick took to complete the act, I was at one with my faux k.d., and it was almost beautiful.
If only Dick hasn't insisted I chant, "Leahy, Leahy, Leahy" while he pistoned himself inside of me, the fantasy would have been complete.
...to be continued
Lesbian Soft Porn, Anyone?
"The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage -- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved, curiously envious of them. She had never to this moment thought Eden a particularly attractive paradise, based as it was on naiveté, but she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave.
"The young woman was heavily powdered, but quite attractive, a curvesome creature, rounded at bosom and cheek. When she smiled, even her teeth seemed puffed and rounded, like tiny ivory pillows.
"Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl."
Authored by Mrs. Dick Cheney
from her novel "Sisters," published in 1981.
"The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage -- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved, curiously envious of them. She had never to this moment thought Eden a particularly attractive paradise, based as it was on naiveté, but she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave.
"The young woman was heavily powdered, but quite attractive, a curvesome creature, rounded at bosom and cheek. When she smiled, even her teeth seemed puffed and rounded, like tiny ivory pillows.
"Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl."
Authored by Mrs. Dick Cheney
from her novel "Sisters," published in 1981.
Only Decent (aka: white) Americans Can Snap Dick's Pic?
Get a load of this!
Bush's reelection campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.
A rally organizer for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign asked Teri Hayt, the Star's managing editor, to disclose the journalist's race on Friday. After Hayt refused, the organizer called back and said the journalist "probably would be allowed to photograph the vice president."
Allowed?
A spokesman for the president's reelection campaign, said the information was needed for security purposes.
"All the information requested of staff, volunteers and participants for the event has been done so to ensure the safety of all those involved, including the vice president of the United States," the spokesman said.
When asked if it is the practice of the White House to ask for racial information or if the photographer, Mamta Popat, was singled out because of her name, the Bush spokesman repeated the previous line, verbatim.
Sort of like a robot.
When a legitimate staff photographer for a mainstream newspaper cannot be assured access to the vice president to do her job because of racial profiling, something has gone frighteningly awry with our national leadership.
This is how dictatorships are born.
This is not what America stands for, and we should not stand for four more years of this paranoid, xenophobic nonsense.
Get a load of this!
Bush's reelection campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.
A rally organizer for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign asked Teri Hayt, the Star's managing editor, to disclose the journalist's race on Friday. After Hayt refused, the organizer called back and said the journalist "probably would be allowed to photograph the vice president."
Allowed?
A spokesman for the president's reelection campaign, said the information was needed for security purposes.
"All the information requested of staff, volunteers and participants for the event has been done so to ensure the safety of all those involved, including the vice president of the United States," the spokesman said.
When asked if it is the practice of the White House to ask for racial information or if the photographer, Mamta Popat, was singled out because of her name, the Bush spokesman repeated the previous line, verbatim.
Sort of like a robot.
When a legitimate staff photographer for a mainstream newspaper cannot be assured access to the vice president to do her job because of racial profiling, something has gone frighteningly awry with our national leadership.
This is how dictatorships are born.
This is not what America stands for, and we should not stand for four more years of this paranoid, xenophobic nonsense.
The Pope Says: feminism weakens family and promotes homosexuality
From The Herald (Scotland)
"A damning critique of modern feminism from the Vatican yesterday was published with the blessing of Pope John Paul II. The 37-page document, On The Collaboration Of Men And Women In The Church And In The World, accuses the feminist revolution of “antagonism” and of creating a spirit of competition between men and women.
The Pope will send the report to every Catholic bishop in the world. It marks another move by the church to solidify traditional family life and Christian values."
If I were the Pope, I'd completely avoid mentioning the word homosexual.
Sure, plenty of priests are gay, but for the Catholic church, the word "homosexual" is too often connected with the word "pedophile."
Being gay is no crime, but being a pedophile is and should be a crime.
Rather that issuing edicts that shame and condemn women for not being docile and subservient enough to men, seems to me the Pope ought to cast his faltering eyesight toward his own flock of philandering, gay (and straight) kiddy rapists.
When a woman's feminism leads her toward homosexuality, there are no multi million dollar jury awards to her victims. There are no victims.
With some Roman Catholic churches having to declare bankruptcy due to the cost of litigation settlements arising over pedophilia verdicts against their priests, the Pope is in no position to judge anything ordinary adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms.
The Catholic church is suffering a decline in membership and hardships in recruiting clergy. Why? Because they are still operating with 19th century tenets, refusing to evolve.
The bishops lined up to take Pope JP's place once he dies are his proteges. None show a scintilla of promise in terms of bringing the church into the 21st century.
With dinosaurs, a failure to evolve resulted in extinction.
At the rate the church is going, the next Catholic pontiff may as well call himself Pope T Rex.
From The Herald (Scotland)
"A damning critique of modern feminism from the Vatican yesterday was published with the blessing of Pope John Paul II. The 37-page document, On The Collaboration Of Men And Women In The Church And In The World, accuses the feminist revolution of “antagonism” and of creating a spirit of competition between men and women.
The Pope will send the report to every Catholic bishop in the world. It marks another move by the church to solidify traditional family life and Christian values."
If I were the Pope, I'd completely avoid mentioning the word homosexual.
Sure, plenty of priests are gay, but for the Catholic church, the word "homosexual" is too often connected with the word "pedophile."
Being gay is no crime, but being a pedophile is and should be a crime.
Rather that issuing edicts that shame and condemn women for not being docile and subservient enough to men, seems to me the Pope ought to cast his faltering eyesight toward his own flock of philandering, gay (and straight) kiddy rapists.
When a woman's feminism leads her toward homosexuality, there are no multi million dollar jury awards to her victims. There are no victims.
With some Roman Catholic churches having to declare bankruptcy due to the cost of litigation settlements arising over pedophilia verdicts against their priests, the Pope is in no position to judge anything ordinary adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms.
The Catholic church is suffering a decline in membership and hardships in recruiting clergy. Why? Because they are still operating with 19th century tenets, refusing to evolve.
The bishops lined up to take Pope JP's place once he dies are his proteges. None show a scintilla of promise in terms of bringing the church into the 21st century.
With dinosaurs, a failure to evolve resulted in extinction.
At the rate the church is going, the next Catholic pontiff may as well call himself Pope T Rex.
Sunday, August 01, 2004
August: Bush Comes Out Fighting?
Holy cow, the news is blaring about Bush's $30 million August attack plans against Kerry.
In a New York Times article, I read, "Mr. Bush's advisers plan to cap the month at the Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr. Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision."
Whaaat?
Are these the same people who whined that the DNC convention had too much Bush bashing?
Now they are actually admitting they plan to goof on Kerry all month?
Are they kidding? America is at war! Is this really a time for 'humor and calculated derision'?
I have some idea for Bush: Rather than deriding your opponent with snippy remarks...
• Why don't you talk about your first term instead? Don't you have anything to brag about?
• Why don't you tell the voters why almost 50 American soldiers a month still are dying in Iraq?
• Why don't you explain the record multi trillion dollar budget deficit you dragged us into?
• Why don't you tell us the progress you've made tracking the treasonous White House staff member who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the media?
• Why don't you tell us how you're coming with the efforts to bring Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, to justice?
• Why don't you explain to us how the UN was irrelevant when you took us to war, then relevant once you saw you were in over your head in your "fight against terror"?
• Why don't you get straight with us about Americans being ordered to use sadistic torture against detainees at Gitmo, in Afghanistan and Iraq?
• Why don't you tell us all about that $10 billion you pledged to fight AIDS in Africa?
Does Bush really think these vital issues should be ignored in favor of playing Pin the Tail on the Democrat?
The idea that the Bush camp plans to poke fun at and deride Kerry all month is sickening at first glance.
But the good news is, research shows that approach leaves voters with a sour stomach.
That's why the Democrats in their convention tried to avoid the obvious targets of Bush's abysmal reign of terror and only mentioned his failed policies as a means to compare and contrast the two candidates.
The great part of the Bush plan to resort to put downs and wisecracks is this. When a stupid person tries to be funny, it usually fails. Wit and humor call for intellect, and Bush's fratboy humor is tedious at best.
But Bush does have some intelligent people on his staff.
But folks like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Rice doing humorous riffs against Kerry?
Yeah, I can hear the rimshots already from that group of delightfully witty raconteurs.
The best GOP joke so far?
They plan to squander $30 million this month on their comedy tour. Now that's a great way to sell a candidate who has nothing else to offer.
I say bring it on, dimwit.
Holy cow, the news is blaring about Bush's $30 million August attack plans against Kerry.
In a New York Times article, I read, "Mr. Bush's advisers plan to cap the month at the Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr. Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision."
Whaaat?
Are these the same people who whined that the DNC convention had too much Bush bashing?
Now they are actually admitting they plan to goof on Kerry all month?
Are they kidding? America is at war! Is this really a time for 'humor and calculated derision'?
I have some idea for Bush: Rather than deriding your opponent with snippy remarks...
• Why don't you talk about your first term instead? Don't you have anything to brag about?
• Why don't you tell the voters why almost 50 American soldiers a month still are dying in Iraq?
• Why don't you explain the record multi trillion dollar budget deficit you dragged us into?
• Why don't you tell us the progress you've made tracking the treasonous White House staff member who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the media?
• Why don't you tell us how you're coming with the efforts to bring Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, to justice?
• Why don't you explain to us how the UN was irrelevant when you took us to war, then relevant once you saw you were in over your head in your "fight against terror"?
• Why don't you get straight with us about Americans being ordered to use sadistic torture against detainees at Gitmo, in Afghanistan and Iraq?
• Why don't you tell us all about that $10 billion you pledged to fight AIDS in Africa?
Does Bush really think these vital issues should be ignored in favor of playing Pin the Tail on the Democrat?
The idea that the Bush camp plans to poke fun at and deride Kerry all month is sickening at first glance.
But the good news is, research shows that approach leaves voters with a sour stomach.
That's why the Democrats in their convention tried to avoid the obvious targets of Bush's abysmal reign of terror and only mentioned his failed policies as a means to compare and contrast the two candidates.
The great part of the Bush plan to resort to put downs and wisecracks is this. When a stupid person tries to be funny, it usually fails. Wit and humor call for intellect, and Bush's fratboy humor is tedious at best.
But Bush does have some intelligent people on his staff.
But folks like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Rice doing humorous riffs against Kerry?
Yeah, I can hear the rimshots already from that group of delightfully witty raconteurs.
The best GOP joke so far?
They plan to squander $30 million this month on their comedy tour. Now that's a great way to sell a candidate who has nothing else to offer.
I say bring it on, dimwit.
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