The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 7/19/2004

(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/

A few things: First, I saw "Outfoxed" last night at one of those moveon.org house parties. It was nothing I hadn't known before but it was done in a clear and concise way, complete with leaked memos. (FOX, obviously, is not too pleased.)If you know anyone who watches FOX news, I think you should tie them down in a chair, prop their eyes open (a la "A Clockwork Orange") and make them watch it. More than Moore's movie, I think it uses facts and examples fairly unemotionally. I'm getting it for my stepdad. He's a big O'Reilly fan.

Another thing: Whoopi's firing from SlimFast was truly appalling. She should be able to speak her mind. Free speech, anyone? Anyone? I mean, Dennis Miller made jokes about Clinton's penis and they keep throwing shows at him. Lovely double standard. If I were a real journalist, I would do some investigating into who actually called SlimFast and complained. Was it another PR-organized group that was GOP funded? Or is the owner a big GOP donor? Questions I'd love our journalists to answer.

And one more thing: Martha got 5 months. Jeeze. She didn't hurt anybody (though comparing herself to Nelson Mandela didn't garner her any sympathy.) Now we have to support her for 5 months at taxpayer's expense? Why not just make her do a year of community service? Make her go to impoverished school districts and do arts and crafts with the kiddies. Meanwhile, war-criminals are gallivanting across the globe.

Picture of the Week: The Queen digs for gold.

Cool Picture of the Week: Donwave.gif

MP3s of the Week: One-minute Vacations

Gift Idea of the Week: Dynamite Clock

Bush Joke of the Week: Military Salute

Action site of the week: Rapid Response Network.

Make yourself feel better if you've ever fucked up at work: Typo on the WTC monument.

Bush Administration foreign policy: Replace one brutal dictator with another.

Excerpt: Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

Good luck to the Red Cross for getting an investigation started into that one.

Excerpt; "These are dreadful allegations. It is vital that they are cleared up one way or another, and that needs an independent inquiry," Mr Cook, who quit the Blair cabinet over the Iraq war, told the British newspaper the Sunday Herald. "An international body such as the Red Cross would be best able to give authority to the investigation that the situation now demands."

So the talk over the possible cancellation or postponement of elections continued this week.

Excerpt: The head of a new federal voting commission suggested to congressional leaders Monday that there should be a process for canceling or rescheduling an election interrupted by terrorism, but national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said no such plan is being considered by the administration.

According to Al Martin (Paid subscription only. Sorry)

Excerpt: Bush already has that power [to suspend elections] under Patriot I with the expansion of his authority under the War Powers Act of 1947, since, it should be remembered, a declared state of national emergency already exists in the United States at present.
      The only reason Bush would need the underlying state constitutions and county and municipal election laws to be changed is if he intended to invoke his authority to permanently cancel elections.

Will they just threaten a staged terror attack? Conspiracy nuts want to know.

Excerpt: Allowing suspension of the elections on just the threat of a terror attack would create a hole in the legislation big enough to drive an oil tanker, or an open dictatorship, through. Since the legislation has not been seen yet we do not know what it will say. Once introduced, the bill would then go into Senate and House Committees (Republican controlled) where the language could easily be modified to give discretionary power to the Administration. At that moment the Constitution would overtly cease to have any operational meaning at all. The separation of powers would vanish.

What would Lincoln do?

Excerpt: We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.

This administration rules by fear. Plain and simple.

Excerpt: Consider this: This fear mongering is even getting attention in the mainstream media. Last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that some believe Bush is spreading fear for his own means.

Because guess who would benefit from a postponement?

Excerpt: Pre-election terror attack would all but guarantee victory for conservative incumbents

(So I ask you, if conservatives are guaranteed to benefit in the event of a terrorist attack, and it's pretty well known that the terrorists hate GW, than why would terrorists attack and effect the outcome for GW? Just wondering is all.)

Kerry is creating a legal team to contest any close states.

Excerpt: Mindful of the election problems in Florida four years ago, aides to Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, say his campaign is putting together a far more intricate set of legal safeguards than any presidential candidate before him to monitor the election.

Maybe he should add a sub-team to that. One that would fight the cancellation or postponement of an election.

And in a little reported battle on the abortion issue, the right-to-lifers won one this week.

Excerpt: A House committee gave abortion opponents a victory Wednesday, voting to making it easier for hospitals, health insurers and others to refuse to provide or cover abortions.

And look at what this republican candidate for senate in Oklahoma has to say about abortion.

Excerpt: On the death penalty, he said: "I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life."

Nice.

The Philippines pulls out so now the administration is bribing Pakistan to send troops to Iraq.

Excerpt: The USA today wrote off nearly half-a-billion dollar debt owed by Pakistan under an agreement signed between the two countries, a day after Mr Richard Armitage visited Islamabad to discuss, among other things, Pakistan’s chances of sending troops to Iraq.

Jon Stewart gets it right again.

Excerpt: To the delight of his studio audience he showed how Republican Party "talking points" turn into mass media brain-washing as GOP stooge after stooge makes his (and her) way onto mass media outlets to repeat, WORD FOR WORD, whatever the Stalinist GOP churns out.

The Marriage Amendment didn't even come to a vote. Good. Of course, it's not dead yet.

Excerpt:Realizing that a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage faces little chance of passing soon, if ever, House Republicans yesterday discussed alternative approaches, including stripping federal courts of jurisdiction over the issue, passing a federal law to define marriage and using the appropriations process to ban gay marriage in Washington.

Meanwhile, this activist is out there outing people in DC, proving all sorts of hypocrisy. Heh heh heh. Me likey!

Excerpt: Michael Rogers, a Washington political activist, decided several weeks ago to launch an Internet campaign to publicize the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian members of Congress and their staffs, if they favored the federal marriage amendment. Drawing on a network of informants, he began posting on his Web site the names of gay congressional staffers who work for anti-gay members of Congress. "It's about exposing hypocrisy," Rogers told Salon, adding that he was prepared for some nasty hand-to-hand political combat.

This is a war crime, isn't it? Hiding detainees from Red Cross inspectors?

Excerpt: The international Red Cross said Tuesday that it fears U.S. officials are holding terror suspects secretly in locations across the world.

The Pentagon can't find trillions of dollars and the guy responsible for keeping track of it has quit the job.

Excerpt:Rabbi Dov Zakheim's refused to tell journalists the exact reason for his departure on Wednesday. However, he hinted that the task of controlling hundreds of billions of dollars in the Bush administration was exhausting.

Of course Bush is mum about his plans for his second term.

Excerpt: As he campaigned around the country last week, President Bush asked voters to give him another four years to make the nation "safer and stronger and better." But with the election less than four months away, one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the president's campaign is what he would actually do if he wins a second term.

Seems pretty clear to me. Here's what he'd do in his second term.

Excerpt; PRESIDENT George Bush has promised that if re-elected in November he will make regime change in Iran his new target.

Florida congresswoman gets censured for telling the truth.

Excerpt: "I come from Florida, where you and others participated in what I call the United States coup d'etat. We need to make sure it doesn't happen again," Brown said. "Over and over again after the election when you stole the election, you came back here and said, 'Get over it.' No, we're not going to get over it. And we want verification from the world."

This is either messy journalism or a cover up. An airplane landed with unconscious passengers. The reports on it were all over the place.

Excerpt: Weirdness abounds. I am betting the firemen gave lousy info, but anything is possible nowadays. Figured I'd capture these articles in case they ended up missing in action.

The Bush AWOL story just won't go away. After they said they'd lost the microfilm, questions were raised as to where the off-site paper backups were.

Excerpt: Those records came from federal records clearinghouses. Texas law requires separate record keeping for state National Guard service, and those records should exist on microfilm in Austin, the AP said.

The whole thing about kids being tortured at Abu Garib is just so horrifyingly awful. Here's a link to Sy Hersh's speech at the ACLU.

Excerpt: "The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher." ...

And surprise surprise Amnesty International has not been allowed to see any of the children.

Excerpt: Amnesty International (AI) complained that it had been "refused access" to enter Coalition detention centres, except for a brief visit to one in Mosul, in northern Iraq. A researcher at the international watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) also said workers did not have access to detained children. Clarisa Bencomo, the researcher, wondered if the children were being kept in poor or unsafe conditions.

But it's not only in Abu Garib that children are tortured. Right here in the USA, orphan children are used in experiments to test AIDS drugs.

Excerpt: Liam Scheff is the author of a series of articles exposing the Incarnation Children's Center's cruel experimentation on children - often orphans - who are subjected to excruciating multiple drug "treatments" for having tested positive in so-called HIV/AIDS tests. Liam's original expose' "The House That AIDS Built" is here.

On top of all that, Jeb must be pissed at GW. GW is pissing off the cuban voters in Florida, halting delivery of necessary medicines for Cuban children. If it's not a crime of some sort, it is definitely evil.

Excerpt: The U.S. Treasury Department reported that it has fined biotechnology firm Chiron Corp. $168,500 for illegally exporting goods to Cuba. According to Chiron, from 1999 to 2002, the Emeryville-based company shipped five vaccines for infants and children to Cuba from its plants in Germany and Italy.

The torture of children is a clear indication that our society has died and it is now rotting.

The administration is really fighting an audit of the Iraq funds, aren't they?

Excerpt:The Bush administration is withholding information from U.N.-sanctioned auditors examining more than $1 billion in contracts awarded to Halliburton and other companies in Iraq without competitive bidding, the head of an international auditing panel said Thursday.

How convenient was it that the lead auditor in Iraq got assassinated, no?

Excerpt: Gunmen killed an auditor for the Industry Ministry in a drive-by shooting as he was leaving his office in Baghdad, authorities said Wednesday.

Why might they be hedging? Perhaps because their biggest cronies are involved, and I'm not just talking Halliburton.

Excerpt: Why is the government's top independent watchdog deliberately sugarcoating taxpayer ripoffs? Because he, like other Bush administration officials charged with overseeing expenditures in Iraq, is anything but independent.

Our president: High on crack

Excerpt: "The world is changing for the better because of American leadership. America is safer today because we are leading the world. Afghanistan was once the home of al-Qaeda. Now terror camps are closed, democracy is rising, and the American people are safer," he said.

With the release of the 9/11 report, the Niger uranium story is back in the news. And the administration, remaining true to form, is withholding a document that would prove that the qualifiers were erased from the intelligence reports given to the shrub.

Excerpt: Senate Democrats claim that the document could help clear up exactly what intelligence agencies told Bush about Iraq's illicit weapons. The administration and the CIA say the White House is protected by executive privilege, and Republicans on the committee dismissed the Democrats' argument that the summary was significant.

And some are spouting off on Wilson again, taking random, incomplete sections of the report to prove that Wilson lied.

Excerpt:Choreographed editorials and Op-Ed pieces on Thursday in the Wall Street Journal and National Review and by conservative columnist Robert Novak signaled the revving up of a Republican campaign to discredit former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his claims that President Bush trumpeted flimsy intelligence in the drive to invade Iraq.

Niger has denied ever speaking with someone from Iraq.

Excerpt: Niger's former prime minister has said that Iraq did not try to buy uranium, contradicting claims made in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq.

And Wilson has struck back.

Excerpt:The following is Wilson's letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee pointing to errors in the Republican senators' additional comments to the report and demanding corrections.

(And I love what he said in this article:

Excerpt: “Everything they have put into play since Sept. 11 has come up horse turds,” Wilson said when he spoke Sunday at the Sopris Foundation State of the World Conference.)

Meanwhile, in the UK, the Butler report was released. Here are some of the key findings.

Excerpt: The language of the Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons may have left readers with the impression that there was "fuller and firmer" intelligence behind its judgments than was the case.

But it was watered down to protect Blair.

Excerpt: Downing Street secured vital changes to the Butler Report before its publication, watering down an explicit criticism of Tony Blair and the way he made the case for war in the House of Commons.

They're looking into Fannie Mae. One can only imagine what they'll find in that morass.

Excerpt: U.S. mortgage finance enterprise Fannie Mae's asset quality and credit risk management are under examination, the company's federal regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, told Congress on Tuesday.

If you are, you're playing Russian Roulette.

Excerpt: A government investigation on Tuesday gave the U.S. Department of Agriculture poor marks in testing cattle for mad cow disease, saying the agency was neglecting to test the majority of cattle most at risk.

Not that Soy is that much better for you.

Excerpt: Americans rarely hear anything negative about soy. Thanks to the shrewd public relations campaigns waged by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Protein Technologies International (PTI), the American Soybean Association, and other soy interests, as well as the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 1999 approval of the health claim that soy protein lowers cholesterol, soy maintains a "healthy" image.

Meanwhile, they're trying to make chocolate from blood.

Excerpt: Scientists from the Russian city of Voronezh managed to produce milk and coffee from blood.

If you had any doubts about John Edwards' foreign policy experience, read this.

Excerpt: In his Senate years and primary campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards has emerged as a politician willing to push beyond conventional foreign policy ideas and introduce imaginative proposals that often do not meet with swift approval.

After reading it, you'll feel like Edwards has more knowledge and experience than GW NOW, not EVEN having to compare him to GW in 2000.

If you think Mike Ditka was a crazy choice to replace Ryan on the GOP ticket in Illinois...

Excerpt:In a measure of the Illinois Republican Party's desperation and Chicago's devotion to Da Bears, a movement is afoot to draft the team's brash, tough-talking former coach Mike Ditka to run for the U.S. Senate.

What could one possibly think of having Ted Nugent on the ticket?

Excerpt: But another name surfacing is that of rocker, outspoken conservative and gun-rights activist Ted Nugent.

And why are they scrambling to find a celebrity to run? Because the democrat who's running, Barack Obama, is a friggin' superstar.

Excerpt: "Barack is an optimistic voice for America and a leader who knows that together we can build an America that is stronger at home and respected in the world," Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said in a statement.

What the hell is in the water in Texas?

Excerpt: AFTER A SHORT respite from the fight over the Pledge of Allegiance, the Republican Party has once again thrown itself into the fray over issues of church and state. This time it's the Republican Party of Texas, President Bush's home state, which has approved a plank in its platform affirming that "the United States of America is a Christian nation."

Figures that a religio nut like bush came from Texas, huh?

Excerpt: At the end of the session, Bush reportedly told the group, “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’’

What's with all the birds having issues? Last week it was the pelicans disappearing,

Excerpt: Wildlife officials estimate nearly 27,000 American white pelicans have abandoned their summer nesting grounds at the Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge north of here. The question is why - and where they went.

This week, they're crash landing into highways.

Excerpt: Nearly two dozen endangered brown pelicans have crashed onto sidewalks and roads, mistaking the heat-induced shimmer of the paved surface for lakes and creeks.

And a heron colony has vanished.

Excerpt: Biologists checking in on one of the region's largest heron colonies discovered it was gone.

And 10,000 Tanzanian flamingos have died.

Excerpt:"So far it has not yet been established what is exactly causing the deaths; scientists are on the ground to find out," Tanzania National Parks' James Lembeli told BBC News Online.

Could it be the pole shift? If birds use a different type of vision, one that uses UV and magnetism, could they be a bit "off"?

Excerpt: The collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, which both guards the planet and guides many of its creatures, appears to have started in earnest about 150 years ago. The field's strength has waned 10 to 15 percent, and the deterioration has accelerated of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth.

Next war will be Iran

Excerpt: President Bush freed Afghanistan from the Taliban and toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but in doing so he also may have unshackled an even more dangerous foe: Iran.

Good luck CFR. Remember, George answers to a "higher power".

Excerpt:A prominent U.S. foreign-policy group is urging Washington to end a quarter-century of hostile relations and make new diplomatic overtures to Iran, despite disagreements on a vast range of issues.

And, just in time, look who they want to be the Secretary of the Army. A Carlyle crony.

Excerpt: More likely, it was Harvey's ties to the defense industry and the influential Carlyle Group that won him the Bush administration's favor.

Yup. Lots of money to be made.

Excerpt: Now, as fighting continues in Iraq, they are collecting tens of thousands of dollars in fees for helping business clients pursue federal contracts and other financial opportunities in Iraq. For instance, a former Senate aide who helped get U.S. funds for anti-Hussein exiles who are now active in Iraqi affairs has a $175,000 deal to advise Romania on winning business in Iraq and other matters.

But the sale of some stuff just can't be a good idea.

Excerpt: The Security Council's decision to end military sanctions on Iraq has triggered a rush by the world's weapons dealers to make a grab for a potentially multimillion-dollar new arms market in the already over-armed Middle East.

How fat were medieval friars? Pretty damn fat.

Excerpt: Suet, lard and butter were wolfed down in "startling quantities" by the closed communities, whose abbots often depended on arranging large and regular helpings to keep their flocks under control.

What's in the box?

Excerpt: Three unmarked graves, their age and inhabitants unknown. Buried carefully nearby under precisely stacked rocks, a weathered old wooden chest sealed with a rusty padlock, its contents just as mysterious.

Blondes become dumber if they hear dumb-blonde jokes.

Excerpt: Blondes really are more stupid after hearing 'dumb blonde' jokes, according to research by psychologists in Germany

Pot helps night vision.

Excerpt: We knew it gave people the munchies and made them giggle. Now researchers claim to have found a new property in cannabis - it helps us see in the dark.

This is BY FAR, my favorite weird site EVER. (Even more than the aliens running the world stuff.) The whole thing is about the Earth being hollow and that there is an entire race of beings living under there supported by centrifugal force!

Excerpt: On the top of a high mountain, near the fountain-head of these four rivers, Olaf Jansen, the Norseman, claims to have discovered the long-lost "Garden of Eden," the veritable navel of the earth, and to have spent over two years studying and reconnoitering in this marvelous "within" land, exuberant with stupendous plant life and abounding in giant animals; a land where the people live to be centuries old, after the order of Methuselah and other Biblical characters; a region where one-quarter of the "inner" surface is water and three-quarters land; where there are large oceans and many rivers and lakes; where the cities are superlative in construction and magnificence; where modes of transportation are as far in advance of ours as we with our boasted achievements are in advance of the inhabitants of "darkest Africa."

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.)

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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
Urban Survival

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.