The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 7/26/2004

(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/

Well, gee. Guess who got off the hook in the 9/11 report? .....EVERYONE! Jeesh. It's toothless. Granted, it was supposed to be all about the intelligence, but couldn't they have fired one person? Maybe Condi perhaps? It's all so demoralizing. (Meanwhile, the media really should be held accountable as well.) Bush has been warned: another attack will be his fault.

And I feel I must comment upon the Sandy Berger thing, or if you prefer, Pantsgate. (The real question is why Berger didn't step down from Kerry's foreign policy team before this all came out. Clumsy, very clumsy) Listen, even Dan friggin' Rather said it seemed like a political move to perhaps deflect from the 9/11 report (maybe to make the last NSA look worse than the present NSA?) At least Kerry is calling a spade a spade. McClellan basically admitted it was Alberto Gonzalas that leaked it. Meanwhile, over at the illustrious newsmax, Berger did it to cover for Clinton. WhatEVerrrrrr. A blogger did a test of the whole "Berger Sock Experiment" that was very interesting and Josh Marshall caught Tucker Carlson lying about it. Maybe they're going after Wilson again, even though it's not really working for them because the Berger thing is really such a non-story. Meanwhile, GOPer Richard Shelby is being investigated for actually leaking classified phone calls. Berger didn't leak anything. Distract, distract, distract.

And talk about distraction, they "found" the video of a bunch of the hijackers at the airport. Just in time to prove that they were Arabs or something, I dunno. But we're dealing with real amateurs anymore. Notice anything about the video that's a little hinky? I'll give you a clue: NO DATE AND TIME STAMPS. Hrmph. Oh, and not to mention, one of the guys in the video is still alive. I swear, on Saturday, I walked out of my apartment and headed out to do some work and when I got to Atlantic Avenue, I saw a buttload of cop cars and a buttload of cops all parked in front of the House of Our Lord church, which is a big peace activist church here. Anyway, I walked over over to one of the 12-year-old-looking cops and asked "What the hey?" He said that it was an anti-terrorism exercise. I said, "Really? But you're really practicing for when the RNC is in NYC right?" Then I looked around and realized where they were. Atlantic Avenue is a huge Arabic neighborhood. After 9/11, I heard helicopters buzzing around Atlantic Avenue at all hours for weeks, terrorizing the neighborhood. So I asked the baby cop "Wait. You're really here to scare the bejeezus out of the Arab folk here, aren't you." And he replied "Yup." What a world.

Oh, and I think I know where my Dad went. If you remember (or not), last year he died of cigarette-related cancer. He was an avid golf fan (though, not a very good player, as so many avid fans are) Anyway, I betchya' he's here.

Hubble watch: Nope. No $$ for repairs.

Halliburton watch: Let the subpoenas begin!

Best Krugman article: The Arabian Candidate

Lawn furniture of the week: Terra Grass Armchair.

Fun with photoshop: Mamsects and Insmals

Beer site of the week: 32 ways to open a beer.

Potty site of the week: The Practical Uses of Pee.

Coolest video: State Trooper saves a jumper

Ironic site of the week: A website for the homeless.

Gift idea of the week: Creatures in my head dolls

Saddam could get off. A conviction for him isn't written in stone.

Excerpt: The first is that almost all the reports about Saddam's atrocities have come from exactly the same sources — exiles, dissidents, local opposition like the Kurds — who provided all the grossly inaccurate information about Saddam's programs of weapons and mass destruction and about his links to Al Qaeda.

I HATE it when stuff we all know is reported as if it's actual news. Like, for instance, "The wealthy benefited most from the tax cuts!"

Excerpt: Upper-income families, who pay the most in taxes and reaped the largest gains from the tax cuts President Bush championed, drove a surge of consumer spending a year ago that helped to rev up the recovery. Wealthier households also have been big beneficiaries of the stronger stock market, higher corporate profits, bigger dividend payments and the boom in housing.

And housing starts tumbling wasn't unexpected to me.

Excerpt: U.S. housing starts plunged unexpectedly in June to their lowest level in more than a year as rising interest rates slowed the hot housing market, a government report showed on Tuesday.

Or how about this "news", "CEOs bonuses may rise"

Excerpt: "We expect to see bonuses up again by about 20 percent, like last year," said Doug Friske, Towers Perrin compensation consultant. "For stock compensation, it is less clear."

This article says that passing a law that would hold companies liable for anything they made that enabled people to steal copyrighted material. (Well, they used the word "encourage" instead of "enable" but my word is what they REALLY mean)

Excerpt: Critics say the bill would effectively outlaw peer-to-peer networks and prohibit the development of new technologies, including devices like the iPod. The Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act was introduced last month by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The legislation would hold a company liable that "intentionally induces" a person to infringe copyright.

So, no more VCRs? No more DVD recorders? No more CD burners? Good fucking luck.

I did hear something else creepy in this realm of state control over this sort of thing. A friend of mine said that a buddy of his used Verizon DSL and that it had been going down a lot. This buddy of his ran an FTP server (geek) and I guess he used it to primarily send his own movies that he produced for clients. Turns out, Verizon is monitoring file swapping and since he was moving large movie files, they assumed he was passing around DVDs so they shut him down. Isn't that horrific? Fortunately, he knows someone who can write him a little program that hides his packets so Verizon won't know if they're movies, music or hi-res graphic files. Take THAT big brother.

Here's something I didn't know about Kerry. He investigated Iran Contra.

Excerpt:In his first month as a senator, in January 1985, he discovered the thread that would unravel the Iran-contra scandal - the creation of an illegal foreign policy apparatus run out of the national security council by Reagan's military aide, Oliver North, and the CIA director, William Casey. Kerry had the training and instincts of a prosecutor. As a district attorney in Massachusetts, he smashed the local mafia. Now, as senator, he has surrounded himself with tough investigators.

First there was Whoopi. Then there was Ronstadt.

Excerpt: Singer Linda Ronstadt not only got booed, she got the boot after lauding filmmaker Michael Moore and his new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" during a performance at the Aladdin hotel-casino.

Moore has written the Aladdin an open letter.

Excerpt: What country do you live in? Last time I checked, Las Vegas is still in the United States. And in the United States, we have something called "The First Amendment." This constitutional right gives everyone here the right to say whatever they want to say. All Americans hold this right as sacred. Many of our young people put on a uniform and risk their lives to defend it. My film is all about asking the questions that should have been asked before those brave soldiers were sent into harms way.

This was just plain dumb. This hysterical woman writes this article about a bunch of Pakistanis on an airplane and everyone goes nuts.

Excerpt: Last Tuesday morning, WomensWallStreet.com (WWS) published my first-person account of a recent Northwest Airlines flight that I took from Detroit to Los Angeles called "Terror in the Skies, Again?"  A heads up about this article went out in our Daily Cents email -- our subscriber newsletter which primarily features financial tips and information for women. 

Let me point something out. All of the "weird" behavior she witnessed had everything to do with the fact that they men were Muslim and they needed to pray. Traditionally, they have to wash up first, hence the trips to the bathroom. They have to pray in groups, hence the eye contact and they have to stand up if they can't bow, or something like that. Listen, I'm no expert, but I have a clue. It's the ignorance in this country that is so friggin' grating.

I'm not the only one who thinks she's a panicky idiot.

Excerpt: Here's an idea, though: once I sat next to a woman who alarmed the flight attendant by ringing the call button and saying that she needed to get off the plane.  It turned out that just before she had left home to catch the flight, her doctor had informed her that her biopsy indicated she had breast cancer -- so she was just generally distraught, not actually afraid of flying.  The attendant gave her three or four stiff drinks, and soon the woman was mellow and not causing anybody any trouble.  Maybe they should have tried that with Annie and hubby. 

And the Pakistanis? Well, they were a group of musicians backing the Pakistani Wayne Newton.

Excerpt: But the men checked out, and Jacobsen was told that they were "hired as musicians to play at a casino in the desert." She was not told the name of the band, nor the name of the casino. And as her story made the rounds through the Internet and beyond (the Dallas Morning News printed a condensed version earlier this week), a note of skepticism about her story crept in. Had she imagined the whole thing? Or was the government covering up a "dry run" for another terrorist attack?

Novak regurgitated (because "writes" just doesn't cut it) that Frist is incompetent.

Excerpt: The finger-pointing by Republican senators is natural. How could they lose the class-action bill when they had a clear majority? How could they fail to win a majority on the gay marriage amendment? How could they fail to pass a budget? Why did they succumb to Teddy Kennedy on the tobacco buyout? The answers revolve around the caliber of leadership.

Punishment for not rallying the troops for the gay marriage amendment perhaps? Man, if they treat their own party like this, it's no wonder they do what they do to the dems.

BTW, a study was done that showed that gay unions don't hurt marriage.

Excerpt: New research published Tuesday claims to refute the notion that same-sex unions have a negative impact on heterosexual families in European countries where gay and lesbian couples are able to get married or enjoy partnership benefits.

Take THAT Santorum.

Extend tax cuts in a time of war?

Excerpt: Eager to sign his fourth tax cut in as many years, President Bush is pushing congressional leaders to extend a series of middle-class tax cuts before Congress's planned adjournment at the end of the week.

Re-electing him will insure US safety?

Excerpt: President Bush said Tuesday his re-election will ensure safety for Americans as well as for those in the rest of the world in the war against terrorism.

Uh, George, Kofi begs to differ.

Excerpt: The world is no safer than it was three years ago, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday, countering President Bush's claims he had made the world a safer place.

It's like Bush is a drug addict or something. Oh. Wait. I forgot. HE IS.

Excerpt: It is a truth universally acknowledged that the last people to know they're drunks are the drunks themselves and/or their circle of enablers.

Kos puts it into perspective.

What's going to happen if China has to really meet its energy demands? Hint: It won't be pretty.

Excerpt:Forget global terrorism. One of the scariest stories today is how the Chinese are going to meet their energy demands over the next 20 years. While Scotland fumbles with issues of wind farms blighting the landscape, we should wake up to the potential energy horror story that will impact on everyone.

And all that coal they're going to burn is not, I repeat, NOT going to help the gulf stream.

Excerpt: In the Pentagon report they said that they believed that the stoppage of the Gulf Stream would probably happen in three to five years from October 2003. This was their best guess, and admittedly it was only a guess and a theory.
But what they didn’t know, because it was beginning at the actual time of their release of their report, was that the Gulf Stream was beginning to change shape. The change of shape of the Gulf Stream is the beginning of the breakdown and stoppage of this warm water current and the end of our civilization as we know it.

Explains that wall between Mexico and the US that they want to build, doesn't it?

Excerpt:The proposed Mexico-Arizona Border Fencing Project stretches 330 miles across the entire Arizona-Mexico border. If completed, the wall would include 74 miles of O’odham lands, which would be viewed by 145 remote surveillance cameras.

The house doing what GOP-led house will always do.

Excerpt: The House voted Tuesday to block a rule that would require companies to count stock options against their profits, after a party-splitting debate over corporate accountability, economic growth and jobs.

God forbid they should do something that benefits the stockholders.

Tuna may taste good, but demand for it is killing the environment.

Excerpt: Over thousands of springtimes, as far back as Homer's Odyssey, the fishermen of Favignana have battled giant bluefin tuna lured into vast chambers of intricate netting. This year, the nets were empty.

And don't eat KFC chicken.

Excerpt: An investigator for an animal rights group captured video showing chickens being kicked, stomped and thrown against a wall by workers at a supplier for KFC, which has been under pressure since last year over the treatment of animals.

Maybe these chickens thought that they were on their way to KFC.

Excerpt; A busy highway near Oxford in central England was closed in both directions Friday when around 1,000 chickens escaped from a truck that collided with four other vehicles, injuring four people.

(Here's KFC's comment page. Let them know what you think.)

And now there's mad cow in Italy.

Excerpt: A 7-year-old cow from a breeding farm in northwestern Italy has tested positive for mad-cow disease.

But we're safe here, right?

Excerpt: Thomas O. McGarity, a food safety expert and president of the Center for Progressive Regulation, today derided the Bush Administration's response to the threat of Mad Cow disease in the U.S. beef supply, concluding that the series of regulatory measures taken to date "are riddled with sham safeguards and faux firewalls that fail to protect public health."

Vegetarianism. It does a body good.

Excerpt: EATING vegetables like broccoli and spinach may help older women retain some memory abilities later on, while avoiding obesity in middle age lowers the risk of later Alzheimer's disease in both sexes, new studies suggest.

But fat lot of good all this worry and planning does me. I've been wearing cosmetics for 30 years. I'm doomed.

Excerpt: Although most scientists believe that vCJD in humans is caused by consumption of cattle-derived food products contaminated with the agent that causes BSE (Refs. 11-14), exposure from cosmetics derived from cattle protein is another potential route of exposure.

Maybe I should just comfort myself knowing that the benevolence of my government will protect me.

Excerpt: Food makers and some livestock groups have lobbied for months to repeal the law, which requires the labels to appear on packages of meat, seafood and fresh produce beginning in 2006. Consumer and other grower groups contend the mandatory labels will give shoppers useful information and distinguish U.S.-grown food from competitors in retail stores.

Here's a made-up story for you. Supposedly there's a large conservative group that plans to protest the protesters while the RNC is here in NYC.

Excerpt: Protest Warriors, which claims about 3,000 members nationwide, expects about 200 in New York for the four-day convention, which begins Aug. 30 and is expected to draw tens of thousands of opponents of President Bush

Let's see...that's 3000 nationwide. How many of those bozos will make it to NYC? Compared to the rest of us? They will be shouted down like bugs. This is friggin' New York City . We do things BIG here.

Excerpt: Bush-bashing, whether legitimate election strategizing or informal theater, is not a new or remarkable thing -- the latest manifestation being Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. But in a year when New York will host its first Republican National Convention from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 -- just days before the third anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 -- the practice here has reached new heights.

And Breslin is suggesting that perhaps the protestors should just ignore the permitted route. Who knew he was so revolutionary.

Excerpt: But if you can put a lot of protesting Democrats near the Trade Center, this stone conservative, religious right-wing George Bush and his people can point to the crowd and say, "Sure, look at them, no decent American would be in a demonstration at this spot. These people say the world is not safer since we captured Saddam Hussein. That's un-American. Of course it is safer. The only thing that has happened is a bunch of soldiers being killed every day. I will show you how indecent they are: They hold up signs asking me where is bin Laden."

Well, to be fair, the conservatives who are picketing the DNC in Boston aren't pleased with their route either. Though, 300 arrests a day? The right-wing is SO MUCH MORE violent then the left-wing it seems. We'll see what the arrest rate is here in August.

Excerpt: Protesters likened the site Saturday to a concentration camp as they complained it is too far from the FleetCenter to get their messages across, even though the site is next to a parking lot where many delegates will pass on foot en route to the arena.

Get rid of the mercury in vaccinations, and autism rates go down. Go figure.

Excerpt: When Bob Jackson saw on the internet, that some numbers in California show a decrease in the number of children being diagnosed with autism, he became hopeful that this was the evidence needed to show a link between the mercury that was once used in childhood vaccines and autism.

Look for vehement disagreement from big pharma.

Looks like Rumsfeld will have more denials to make.

Excerpt: A US citizen in court charged with running a private "war on terror" in Afghanistan claimed he and two other Americans were working with the full knowledge of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

When I first heard this.

Excerpt: Pop star Michael Jackson, facing a trial on child molestation charges, is about to become a father to four more children -- quadruplets -- by way of a surrogate mother, Us Weekly magazine reported on Tuesday.

I was like, eww, yuck, that is SO wrong.

Thank heavens it really was wrong.

Excerpt: Beleaguered pop star Michael Jackson on Tuesday flatly denied a magazine report that he is about to become a father to quadruplets by way of a surrogate mother.

But this will gross you out.

Excerpt: A 71-year-old grandmother who has married a 19-year-old student denies that she's a "cradle snatcher".

Garrison Keillor on why democrats are democrats.

Excerpt: People are united in a civil compact and we know it, even if we don't talk about it. This compact is powerful in the Midwest, and when we midwesterners travel to New York or London or Paris, we wonder: if we were struck by a car and lay bleeding in the gutter, would people stop and help?

And Bill Moyers on the freak show that is our world.

Excerpt; Michael Moore's weird alright, but not as weird as Michael Powell, our cartel-loving chairman of the Federal Communications Commission whose idea of the press seems to be channeling William Randolph Hearst.

David James Duncan on compassion and dissent

Excerpt: THERE IS A SUPERSTITION -- fed most savagely these days by politicians and news media -- holding that what we hear firsthand is "true" or "real" and that what we merely imagine is "untrue" or "unreal." News reports, for instance, are real, while the works of Tolstoy are not. This is nonsense. Insofar as literature enlivens imaginations, firms our grasp of reality, or strengthens our regard for fellow humans, it serves the world. And insofar as the president-character speaks scripts that deny life-threatening facts or erode the careful distinctions that sustain civil discourse and international goodwill, the "real" news report merely disseminates propaganda.

Microsoft patented the double-click.

Excerpt:Now any US company using a variety of clicks to launch different software functions from the same button will have to change their product, pay licensing fees to Microsoft or give Microsoft access to its intellectual property in return.

Who's applying pressure to attack Iran? I'm not. Are you?

Excerpt: The Bush Administration is under mounting pressure to do something about Iran, and end the drift that has characterised US policy for more than three years.

Can't be Cheney. He lobbied to ease sanctions against Iran back in 1996.

Excerpt:It was Cheney who urged Congress in 1996 to ease sanctions against Iran, a country that's part of President Bush's axis of evil, so Halliburton could legitimately do business there.

I'd bet the mounting pressure is coming from Karl Rove. Via the Daily News

Excerpt: The country should be ripe for revolution. But the mullahs are very good at police-state tactics. The long-awaited revolution is not happening. Which makes the question of preemptive attack all the more urgent. Iran will go nuclear during the next presidential term. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of the "Great Satan" will have both nuclear weapons and the terrorists and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or preemptive strike.

China and Russia are holding joint military exercises.

Excerpt: The navies of the two neighbours that have been developing what they call a "strategic partnership" in recent years, held their first joint exercise in October 1999 when a Russian destroyer and a cruiser visited China. Russia has been a major supplier of military hardware to China, including advanced ships and fighter planes that have been key to China's drive to modernise the People's Liberation Army.

The democrats are actuallydoing there jobs. Amazing!

Excerpt: Senate Democrats blocked three more of President Bush's judicial nominees Thursday in a series of votes forced by Republicans even though they knew they would lose.

Of course, it could play in the the GOP 's hands.

Excerpt: When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., fell seven votes short on Tuesday of forcing a confirmation vote on Bush judicial nominee William G. Myers III -- widely considered the most anti-environment judicial candidate Bush has ever put forward -- it might have seemed like a big blow to the GOP. But Frist and his fellow right-wing Republicans got precisely what they were aiming for.

Remember, first it was the brown pelicans, then the white pelicans, then the herons, now it's more pelicans.

Excerpt: As if all that is not enough...we now have another disturbing development involving pelicans.
According to a new report on Reuters, California's endangered brown pelicans are "mysteriously starving to death during a bumper year for anchovies, their preferred prey....Hundreds of the ungainly sea birds appear to have flown off course in search of food...with young pelicans turning up in Arizona deserts...."

And homing pigeons too.

Excerpt: Organisers of a race for homing pigeons were still scratching their heads in wonder after about 1,500 of the birds, famous for their ability to find their way home, went missing during the contest.

It could be the sun. It's acting strange.

Excerpt: A sunspot group aimed squarely at Earth has grown to 20 times the size of our planet and has the potential to unleash a major solar storm.

And it could be bad.

Excerpt; Scientists are warning a "perfect space storm" that occurred 144 years ago could happen again at any time with catastrophic consequences.

I will never get on a boat again.

Excerpt:European satellites have given confirmation to terrified mariners who describe seeing freak waves as tall as 10-storey buildings, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

More about Mars water.

Excerpt: Surface water on Mars existed across a significant span of time, not just for years but eons, suggest new findings made by NASA's Mars rover Opportunity.

Ammonia on Mars or not.

Excerpt: If the ammonia report proves entirely false then it would seem to me very probable that some high level someone or group of someones set out to sow damaging disinformation.

Are they hiding info about ammonia?

Excerpt; Now, has a major European physicist been silenced simply because he might be the first scientist on Earth with hard evidence of a life process beyond Earth? If so, is the suppression linked to an unstated political pecking order in the American and European bureaucracies? Who would control the suppression beyond astronomer Guido De Marchi in Amsterdam?

Is NASA editing images of Mars? This guy seems to think so.

Excerpt:   I began with this set of images to assemble the color views for publication on my web site.  As soon as I had overlaid the first two frames, it was clear that something was not right.

Well, I'm glad that's settled.

Excerpt; Mark September 29 on your calendar because it will mark the beginning of the end of the world.

I've thought this for awhile.

Excerpt; If you've ever thought life was actually a dream, take comfort. Some pretty distinguished scientists may agree with you. Philosophers have long questioned whether there is in fact a real world out there, or whether "reality" is just a figment of our imagination.

Bush really could be a chimp.

Excerpt: A YOUNG monkey at an Israeli zoo has started walking like a human following a near death experience, the zoo's veterinarian said today.

I mean really, a little brain-damage, a good barber...

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
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.