The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 6/21/2004

(updated every Monday at some point during the day)

Mirror (in case geocities is wacky or, in case of trouble in New York, check it for messages): http://129.79.148.33/vidiotcontact/

This last week has made me miserable. Did you hear the air-traffic controller tapes from the 9/11 hearings? Their first instinct was to cover-up?? WTF? And that Cheney was ACTING president and ordered the shoot down of planes because -- get this -- the pResident's phone didn't work?? The friggin' commander-in-chief's friggin' phone didn't friggin' work?? WTF? Then the commission confirmed no link between Saddam and al Qaeda and Cheney STILL says there's a link?? WTF? (Put up or shut up, Dick.) And Bush (psycho)is still backing up Cheney on that crap?? WTF? And even saying it himself?? WTF?? (For a galling list of dueling quotes, go here.) Even enlisting Russia to cover their assess?? WTF? (Read this letter on the White House website. Bush has to continue to say these stupid things because otherwise, he totally lied to Congress.)Add to that the fact that Ashcroft, our most incompetent AG EVER, continues to stifle Sibel Edmonds and that Halliburton continues to steal money from the American Taxpayer and the friggin' republican-controlled GOP refused to hear testimony about Halliburton's spending (probably because of Cheney and his staff's long-denied (liar!) though obvious continuing relationship with Halliburton)and I just don't know what to do or where to turn. (And is it me or does it just seem like the web gets attacked when it gets thick for the Bushies?)

How did it all get so bad? Why are there people still willing to vote for these idiots? How can their heads remain so in the sand? Are you angry yet? 'Cause I know I am.

Oh, and I'm not going to go on and on about the multiple Michael Moore melees. He can take care of himself. (Besides, I already have my tickets.) But did you know there was a another leader who tried to stifle a movie about a war because he didn't like what it said?

Picture of the week: Bush's hypocrisy, exposed.

Site of the Week: Petropulse.com

Flash of the Week: Kick Bush Out

Another Site of the Week: DraftBruce.com

Flashback

Remember way back when, during the first Gulf War, when the US told the Saudis saying "Iraq is building up troops along your borders. You have to let us set up bases in your country to protect you" and it turned out to be a big lie? Well, here we go again folks.

Excerpt: Iran reportedly is readying troops to move into Iraq if U.S. troops pull out, leaving a security vacuum.

Of course, Iran denies the buildup.

Excerpt: Iran's state-run news agency IRNA quotes what it calls "an informed source" as denying a report in a Saudi-owned newspaper that says Iranian troops are massing on the border with Iraq.

And now that the UN has issued a report that basically says that Iran doesn't have nukes

Excerpt: The U.N. nuclear watchdog was forced to make an embarrassing admission on Thursday, that it had wrongly accused Iran of withholding information about imports of potentially weapons-related technology.

The Bushies are accusing Iran of buying off diplomats to get the favorable report.

Excerpt: Mr. Brill said: "This full-blown effort to try to change the direction of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] board through public and private intimidation suggests Iran has something to hide. ... People who are trying to produce electricity for light bulbs don't engage in this kind of behavior."

Oy.

The torture isn't over

And don't think for a moment that the prison torture scandal is going away. Now the female general they were trying to pin a lot of it on is saying "no way bud."

Excerpt:The U.S. Army general suspended after prisoner abuse was revealed at a Baghdad prison says she was ordered to treat prisoners like dogs.

(Don't worry. They'll soon have her sedated.)

Oh really? Ordered by whom, I wonder.

Excerpt: Pentagon officials tell NBC News that late last year, at the same time U.S. military police were allegedly abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that one Iraqi prisoner be held “off the books” — hidden entirely from the International Red Cross and anyone else — in possible violation of international law.

Hey, condoning abuse is an impeachable offense.

Excerpt: More than 400 legal scholars from across the country urged Congress Wednesday to consider impeaching President Bush and any high-level administration officials who approved the Iraqi prisoner abuses.

But Bush wants to be the Supreme Leader. Heil Bush.

Excerpt:  Conveniently buried in the all-Reagan-all-the-time news coverage last week was the smoking-gun revelation, in the so-called torture-memos, that the Bush Administration was actively engaged in setting up a governmental system where Bush becomes the sole law of the land. In this set-up, no court, no legislature, nobody can touch him. He is to be the Supreme Leader.

Well, just in case you're confused by the torture scandal, let a member of Monty Python clear it up for you.

Excerpt: What this means in understandable English is that if a parent, in his anxiety to know where his son goes after choir practice, does something that will cause severe pain to his son, it is only "torture" if the causing of that severe pain is his objective. If his objective is something else - such as finding out where his son goes after choir practice - then it is not torture.

Censored Art

How much does Ashcroft suck? Well, have you hard about the case against Steve Kurtz? (This is must-read people.)

Excerpt: Here's the latest in the Steve Kurtz case, the Buffalo artist now being harrassed by the FBI. Recall that Kurtz's wife died, he called 911, they looked at his art and his books and called the FBI, and now the Justice Department has empaneled a grand jury to investigate him and the artists he works with. He's a really respectable guy and this whole thing is spiraling out of control.

Wilsongate continues

Here's a little something that backs up last week's theory that Tenet resigned so he could testify against Bush without having Executive Privilege in his way. Remember how he lied under oath in front of the 9/11 commission? When he said he hadn't met with the pResident during August, when in fact, he had?

Excerpt (from 8/24/01): You know, everybody wants to see the ranch, which I'm proud to show it off.  So George Tenet and I -- yesterday, we piled in the new nominees for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and their wives and went right up the canyon.

Well, there might've been a very good reason for him to perjure himself.

Excerpt: Owing to his perjury before the 9/11 Commission, Tenet has also forfeited his qualified immunity on topics relevant to his meetings with the President in August and early September 2001. This will give potential prosecutors enormous leverage. In exhange for his true testimony about this, and what he knows about the Bush White House's illegal outing of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, we should expect Tenet to ask for and receive immunity from prosecution.

And the plot thickens...

Beyond Corporate Greed

Oh my God. I don't get it. How can federal regulators expect California to pony up money to Enron

Excerpt:The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has decided that California taxpayers owe $270 million in refunds to the very companies who stand accused of gouging us.

After everyone has heard the Enron tapes

Excerpt:They are the audiotapes Enron -- and the government -- didn't want you to hear: recordings of Enron traders gloating over the way they manipulated energy shortages to maximize profits.

Oh, wait. I know how: Because they're a bunch of freakin' puppets.

Excerpt: FTCR wrote that Wood was more empathetic for the "discredited positions of Ken Lay" than of Californian. The group noted that Wood was first appointed to the Texas Public Utilities Commission by then-Governor Bush at the request of Enron's Chairman and CEO Ken Lay due to his strong support for energy deregulation. Ken Lay later urged President Bush to move Wood to FERC.

Well, looks like Ken Lay may get his sooner than later. But they BETTER make him do the perp walk.

Excerpt: U.S. prosecutors are expected to ask a federal grand jury to indict former Enron Corp. chairman Ken Lay within two weeks on charges related to the company's 2001 collapse, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Memogate Redux

Hey. Remember Memogate?

Excerpt: No one at the White House knew about Democratic memos on judicial nominees being taken from Senate computers by GOP Senate aides, one of President Bush's lawyers told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

Well, guess what. The guy that had to resign because he was in the center of the investigation? Well, seems he's been placed as head of an ETHICAL board on judicial nominations. Really. I shit you not.

Excerpt: Second, Miranda, who from the start has tried to deflect attention from his own thievery by pointing to what he says was Democratic misbehavior that he discovered when he reviewed the stolen memos, has been made the head of a new organization called the “Ethics in Nominations Project.” A man under criminal investigation for corrupting the judicial nomination process will now be lecturing us on corruption in the nomination process? You just can’t make this stuff up.

Occam's Razor

Perhaps the Powers That Be want us to remain confused about what's happening in the economy. First I read that hiring plans are booming (though, note that they're just plans. No actual hires yet.)

Excerpt: Thirty percent of polled U.S. employers plan to add to their payrolls in the July to September period, the survey by Manpower Inc. showed. That is up from 20 percent a year earlier and 28 percent in the April to June period.

But the working poor are still struggling.

Excerpt: The ranks of the working poor are swelling as more families slip into poverty, health benefits are lost and low-wage employees bear the brunt of many corporate cutbacks. That means more employees — many of them in service jobs that are essential to the economy — are working full-time, only to find they can barely support their families.

Consumer prices are up as will be interest rates soon.

Excerpt: Although the Labor Department reported that the Consumer Price Index surged 0.6% in May, the biggest monthly increase in three years, Greenspan said Fed officials still believed they could begin boosting short-term interest rates at a "measured" pace. The first increase is widely expected later this month.

And the dollar has dropped...again.

Excerpt: The dollar fell broadly on Friday, weighed by a report that showed the U.S. current account gap widened more than expected in the first quarter.

I don't see the jobs. The economy, as far as I can tell, is not improving. I must therefore assume that the government is lying.

Excerpt: The claim that employment is at a record high is cherry-picking at its most blatant, an attempt to find improvements that are simply not there. Yes, the number of working people has grown, but population has grown faster. In fact, employment has grown only half as fast as what’s needed just to keep even with population growth.

I believe him.

Howard Stern says he can deliver swing voters to Kerry.

Excerpt; Radio shock jock Howard Stern is predicting that he will help deliver the heavily sought-after swing voters to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry this November.

Bush is going to scan the entire US population for mental illness!

Excerpt: The president's commission found that "despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for "consumers of all ages," including preschool children.

Let's just put the whole country on prozac, ok??

{sigh} Let me put this into perspective. There are entire books being written about just how nuts Bush is.

Excerpt: Nevertheless, if you can hack your way through the underbrush, "Bush on the Couch" brings together a lot of provocative information, and some genuinely enlightening hypotheses, from which the resourceful reader can assemble a portrait of Bush that accounts for his seeming contradictions. Combine it with Peter Singer's "The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush," a clear-headed and superbly reasoned dissection of Bush's much-touted morality, and the forthcoming "Personality, Character and Leadership in the White House: Psychologists Assess the Presidents," a comparative evaluation of Bush and his predecessors in the office, by Steven J. Rebenzer and Thomas R. Faschingbauer, and the portrait gains more heft.

And bottom line, with these crazy assholes in this administration, who's to say they won't categorize anyone who disagrees with them as nuts? Look what they did to the serviceman who revealed the whole prison torture thing.

Excerpt: A National Guard commander told a mental health counselor to change an evaluation to show that a serviceman who accused fellow soldiers of abusing Iraqi prisoners was mentally unfit, another soldier says.

Think it can't happen to you?

Religiously Insane

The Pope has officially lost his mind.

Excerpt:The Vatican sought to play down the terrors of the Inquisition yesterday, claiming that far fewer people were tortured and executed for heresy than was popularly believed.

Remember: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!

(Got the Python link from Josh Marshall's blog. But honestly, it just saved me the time of looking it up for it myself. Every time I hear the word "Inquisition", I think of how funny the Python guys looked in their little red suits.)

Meanwhile...

in Korea...

Excerpt: US President George W. Bush has rejected a passionate offer from North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-Il for direct talks between their countries, press reports in Japan said today.

Underreported of the Week

Did you know that Kuwait halted transport through Kuwait of nuclear material from Iraq by the US? No? Interesting.

Excerpt: Kuwait refused to allow a radioactive material-bound truck to enter the country as demanded by the US army, Kuwait Times reported Sunday.

Media Envy

Boy I wish we had journalistic standards like they do in the UK. They censored FOX news for doing there what FOX news does here every day.

Excerpt: Television regulators said the broadcaster failed to show "respect for truth" in a strongly worded opinion item, broadcast on the day the Hutton report was published, which also accused BBC executives of giving reporters a "right to lie".

What? O'Reilly & Co.? No "respect for truth".

Excerpt:Radio host and FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly told listeners that he has "no respect for" the Iraqi people; that he thinks "they're a prehistoric group"; that they are "primitive"; and that the lesson from the Iraq war is that "we cannot intervene in the Muslim world ever again. What we can do is bomb the living daylights out of them."

{sigh}

Just when I thought the Senate was going to get one right, they blew it again. And let's just hope that's figuratively.

Excerpt: The United States Senate on Tuesday backed the Bush administration's plan to study a new generation of low-yield and earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, rejecting concerns that the research could spur an arms race.

But really, what can one expect from a republican-controlled senate that approves a contract to Accenture even though they've made their headquarters in Bermuda to avoid paying U.S. Taxes, which, technically, they're not supposed to be giving contracts to companies that do that sort of thing..

Excerpt: House Republicans maneuvered Wednesday to protect a controversial $10 billion contract between the Department of Homeland Defense (DHS) and Accenture.

Or when the republican-controlled Judiciary Committee defeats an attempt to subpoena the Justice documents on torture. (Got something to hide??)

Excerpt: The 10 to 9 vote reflected the mounting partisan rancor over the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and whether U.S. officials condoned harsh interrogation practices on prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Spin it, baby!

This is such a piece of rubbish. It's about the 7 minutes that Bush sat there, after Andy Card whispered in his ear about the 2nd plane hitting the WTC. Have a barf bag handy..

Excerpt: This moment will surely be used by the president's political opponents, and with equal fervor defended by his supporters. However it is interpreted, it points out a basic truth about any president: He's both an executive and a symbolic figure. He's the spiritual leader of the nation as well as the head of state. He's monarch and prime minister.

Boy, I can't wait for people to see Michael Moore's movie, just so they can see for themselves what an imbecile GW is. Symbolic figure my ass. He's only symbolic when compared to a giant, shit-brown dildo. (Sorry, mother. Hey, at least I remembered to hyphenate shit-brown, right?)

Here's another parsing of the reprehensible article.

Corporate-run Fishing is Evil

This makes too much sense, so it'll never happen.

Excerpt: Protecting the world's oceans will cost governments far less than the amount they spend on subsidies for fishing fleets and will lead to bigger catches in the long run, according to a new study.

Noooo. They'd rather just KILL EVERYTHING.

Excerpt:Every year, the giant nets that trawler ships pull across the bottom of the sea devastate an area of the global seabed twice the size of the United States, scraping up everything from coral to sharks, Greenpeace said Friday.

Veep, veep, veep.

My favorite Kerry Veep rumor thus far: Dean

Excerpt: Okay. I won't comment on the merits of a Dean choice, since I just don't know what to think about it. But I think it's 1) too bold a move for someone as cautious as Kerry to make, and 2) runs into the problem I've mentioned before -- Dean has obvious presidential ambitions, and the party's other factions don't want to give him a leg up the next time the Dems have a presidential primary.

Glad Kos mentioned it.

Actually I was wondering this myself: What ever happened to all those speeches the Chimpster was going to give?

Excerpt: Beginning with Monday's address at the Army War College, Bush will give a major speech on Iraq every week through June 30, when the U.S.-led coalition is due to turn over limited authority to a new interim Iraqi government. "We're entering a critical phase, and the president will be speaking out each week to discuss with the American people, and the world, the way forward in Iraq," said a White House official.

News of the Weird

Teleportation...of a sort.

Excerpt: What the teams at the University of Innsbruck and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nist) did was teleport qubits from one atom to another with the help of a third auxiliary atom.

Mole people under NYC?

Excerpt: Many tunnel people are solitary loonies not unlike the guys you see living aboveground in cardboard boxes in any large American city. In a few cases, though--this is where it gets truly weird--sizable communities have coalesced, some allegedly numbering 200 people or more, complete with "mayors," elaborate social structures, even electricity. Toth describes one enclave deep under Grand Central with showers using hot water from a leaky steam pipe, cooking and laundry facilities, and an exercise room.

(Hell. I live in NYC. Mole people exist AND they're everywhere.)

Not enough weird for you?

Excerpt: Ghosts, Nessie, Bigfoot, "little silver men with menacing probes": there was a time we used to hear a lot about these various manifestations of the strange, spooky and suspect. But not any more. In the past few years there has been a spectacular market crash in many kinds of paranormal activity; somehow our world just isn't as weird as it was.

Previous rant

At the very least, point your CNN-loving friends to my links page. Just getting started in reading alternate news sites gets people thinking. I have one friend who was very happy-go-lucky, thinking ol' Greta was telling the whole truth until I opened up his eyes a bit. Now, he's all depressed. He'll get over it. You gotta' get depressed before you get angry and you gotta' get angry before you can accomplish anything. We're all in mourning. We have to move through the steps. But we gotta' hurry it up.

Read. Inform. Spread the word. Even if it means your friends avoid you for awhile. If they really love you, they'll start to listen.

"POSSE COMITATUS ACT" (18 USC 1385): A Reconstruction Era criminal law proscribing use of Army (later, Air Force) to "execute the laws" except where expressly authorized by Constitution or Congress. Limit on use of military for civilian law enforcement also applies to Navy by regulation. Dec '81 additional laws were enacted (codified 10 USC 371-78) clarifying permissible military assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies--including the Coast Guard--especially in combating drug smuggling into the United States. Posse Comitatus clarifications emphasize supportive and technical assistance (e.g., use of facilities, vessels, aircraft, intelligence, tech aid, surveillance, etc.) while generally prohibiting direct participation of DoD personnel in law enforcement (e.g., search, seizure, and arrests). For example, Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETS) serve aboard Navy vessels and perform the actual boardings of interdicted suspect drug smuggling vessels and, if needed, arrest their crews). Positive results have been realized especially from Navy ship/aircraft involvement.

(Tom Ridge has practically said he'd do away with this act.)

{back}

These sites are good at culling stories from a multitude of media sites:

buzzflash.com
unknownnews.net

Here are some excellant blogs:

Bartcop
Daily Kos
Atrios
Tacitus
Josh Marshall
DNC: Kicking Ass
Two Glasses
Billmon
Semi-Daily Journal
The Wonkette

Link exchange:

Ilia Dreams Blog
Iraq War Blog
BushVote.com

These blogs will be covering the primaries and elections:

Salon.com's War Room
The Campaign Desk
FactCheck.org

media-bias exposed:

dailyhowler.com
mediawhoresonline.com

these are good left-wing journalism sites:

onlinejournal.com
thenation.com
inthesetimes.com
tompaine.com
commondreams.org
truthout.com
guerrillanews.com

a little more to the left:

wsws.org
indymedia.org

conspiratorial:

whatreallyhappened.com
almartinraw.com

HIGHLY entertaining:

surfingtheapocalypse.com

really good "Alternate Thinking" site:

goroadachi.com/etemenanki/

and for godsakes, stay away
from FOX NEWS,  MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
It's ALL CRAP!!!
watch the BBC news
or ITN news instead.

if you must succumb to reading a newspaper: 

www.guardian.co.uk 

or any other paper in another fucking country. All of our newspapers are owned by the same idiots that own the TV stations so all of the news is all the same CRAP.