The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 8/2/2004

(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/

Here's my review of the DNC (Links on names are to text of the speeches. If you want to download the speeches for your iPod or something, they're free over at the iTunes store. Links to videos of major speeches are here.):

DAY 1: Al Gore: He Shoots He Scores! Jimmy Carter: Heeeyaaa Karate Chop! Rev. Alston: Most Excellent Witnessing. Hillary: Not too shabby. Bill: Out of the Friggin' Ballpark! (The Post obviously felt the need to badmouth Bill after such a stellar speech.)

Overall review of DAY 1: Whoa.

DAY 2: Kennedy: Good. Historically interesting. Missed Gephardt and Daschle because Moore was on O'Reilly. What a total waste of my time there. They were BOTH morons. Mosley-Braun: Pleasent as usual. Then... {drumroll} HOWARD DEAN. WHAT a reception he got! It went on and on. They cut away to McAuliffe really quick and he seemed almost stunned, like "I can't believe this." Meanwhile, Hillary and Chelsea were sipping champagne and Hillary didn't look too impressed. Dean gave a decent speech. I miss him. It was like seeing an old boyfriend who's luster has dulled a bit. Then, the bathroom-break speeches and then Obama: Oh MAMA! I think I had a politasm. Also, Ron Reagan gave a good speech on stem-cell research.(Here's a must-read: Ron Reagan's article in Esquire. Scathing AND well-written!) Anyway, then there was that cute little girl who said that Cheney needed a time-out for his bad language and then Teresa's speech. She did well. (That whole "shove it" thing was a total media fabrication.) I like the girl-power part of her speech. I, too, have issues like that. Like, most people think I'm a bitch, but if I were a man, I'd just be prickly.

Overall review of Day 2: Not as good as the first, but some satisfying highlights.

Day 3: Missed Jesse Jackson. Kucinich was OK. I'm sorry, I know there are people who love him like I loved Dean, but every time I look at him, I think "garden gnome". Love his politics though. Sharpton: Knocked it out of the park. If George Bush had chosen the Supreme Court in 1954, Clarence Thomas would have never got to law school." Exxxxcellant. I feel like I'm coming off a sugar high listening to him. Poor Bob Graham had to follow Sharpton. One comment on a blog board I read was that Graham makes Kerry look like Obama. Boy Howdee. Elizabeth and John Edwards were very good, as expected (Though I think he had a touch of the flu or something. He seemed to be running at about 75%.) His daughter was great. When I was 22, I doubt very much I could've held it together that well.

Overall review of DAY 3: Not as good as the first, but some satisfying highlights.

DAY 4: Wesley Clark rrrrROCKED! (Damn! He can't be SecDef. He hasn't been out of the military long enough and the Repuglican-controlled Senate will never let him get around that rule.) Afterwards was Leiberman and I couldn't stand to watch him. I watched Sharpton argue with Chris Matthews instead. Matthews was downright disrespectful. The Kerry girls were magnificent. (Idea: Kerry girls vs. the Bush twins Debate.) The band of brothers thing was perfect, Cleland rocked, and Kerry, well, it started out with him walking in from the back of the room through the crowd, and I thought "state of the union OR Yes' Jon Anderson (eww, did I just date myself??) but the speech was Awesome. For Kerry, it was OUTTA' the ballpark. In fact, after the speech, I was flipping around checking for pundit reaction and FOX took the longest to get some commentary going. Couldn't find anything bad to say perhaps? (Overall, the reaction was "wow" ) Hmmmmmm. Though, not all reviews were good. Al Jazeera didn't think much of it.

Overall review of DAY 4: Pretty damn good.

Final thoughts on the convention: The most uplifting and positive convention EVER. The tone was on-target. Made me feel like I did when the Clintons won. And I think the Republican convention is going to be hard-pressed to look anything but dour compared to it. Ha!

I also think it was shameful that the broadcast media didn't cover but three hours of it. The only one who did was PBS. (And the Bloggers. I was mainlining the coverage on CSPAN and then heading over to the blogs to get my commentary fix.) Hrmph. The dumbing down of America's electorate. Most of the country missed Obama and his was as important a key note speech as they come (First black democrat to serve in congress indeed. Idiot journalists.) Here's what I think should've happened: The networks should've been told that they're using the PUBLIC airwaves and they have a duty to the PUBLIC. So, here's a lottery for the 4 nights. Each of you, ABCCBSNBCFOX, picks a night randomly and whatever the night you get, you have to broadcast gavel-to-gavel. Period. End of story. If not, your license will be revoked.

Yeah. That'll never happen.

Cool website of the week: Make your own kaleidoscope.

Flash game of the week: Kick Mario

Decorative Idea of the Week: Furry Laptop

Sound byte of the week: Bush and Kerry had sex

Weird food of the week: Liquid Donut.

Annoy Dick Cheney: Buy this T-Shirt.

Kerry's War Room: Rapid-response blog

Coming this Fall: The Progressive Book Club

Sandy Berger was cleared of any wrong-doing in the "pantsgate" scandal.

Excerpt: Officials looking into the removal of classified documents from the National Archives by former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger say no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Gee, I wonder why our liberal media didn't cover that one?

Also in underreported, remember the July Surprise article in The New Republic? Well, our liberal media forgot to mention it in it's coverage of the recent al Qaeda arrest.

Excerpt: On July 29, CNN apparently forgot a major story the network had reported just three weeks earlier. On July 8, The New Republic posted to its website an article titled "July Surprise," which was written by TNR's John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman, and Massoud Ansari and published in the July 19 issue of the magazine. Judis, Ackerman, and Ansari quoted two sources from Pakistan's intelligence service and another from its Interior Ministry (which handles the country's internal security) saying that the Bush administration was pressuring Pakistani officials to make arrests of so-called "high-value targets" (HVTs) during the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

So did they

Excerpt:An Iraqi website says US forces have captured its most wanted Islamic militant, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

or did they not

Excerpt: Reports about the arrest of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have been denied by representatives of the US Commandment and Iraq's Interior Ministry.

Capture Zarqawi? Besides, isn't he supposed to be dead already?

Excerpt:A Jordanian extremist suspected of bloody suicide attacks in Iraq was killed some time ago in U.S. bombings and a letter outlining plans for fomenting sectarian war is a forgery, a leaflet signed by a dozen alleged insurgent groups said. A senior U.S. official denied that claim. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq "during the American bombing there," according to the eight-page leaflet circulated this week in Fallujah, a city 30 miles west of Baghdad that is a hotbed of anti-U.S. insurgency activity.

There might be a vaccine for cancer? And we've not heard anything about it?

Excerpt: An experimental cancer vaccine being tested for its safety and toxicity has produced startling results, appearing to provide immunity from the disease and leaving most patients cancer-free after more than two years.

What do we expect when our major media outlets publish GOP talking points as a matter of course.

Excerpt: Astute reader Kenlac noted how yesterday's Washington Post op ed blasting Kerry has a paragraph that sounds an awful lot like a paragraph in a Boston Globe op ed published the same day. Are the Post and the Globe publishing GOP talking points? Did one plagiarize from the other? Or is this simply a very odd coincidence?

And I guess what we demanded of the goose, is not necessary for the gander.

Excerpt; In a shift of U.S. policy, the Bush administration announced this week that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear-weapons materials.

I think this is a bad idea.

Excerpt: A group of progressive media activists covering the Democratic National Convention in Boston plans to launch a new television network to counter the conservative news coverage they see on Fox News and CNN.

Now let me tell you why: We don't need more bias in our media. We don't need to make the discourse any more polarized than it already is. What we need to do--and what we should all be pouring our money and energy into--is to have the Fairness in Media doctrine re-activated. That's all. That would solve the problem. Period.

Bush is down in the polls. Kerry/Edwards is leading the news. Must be time for another terror alert! And just in time for the Monday news-cycle too!

Excerpt: The federal government warned Sunday of possible terrorist attacks against "iconic" financial institutions in New York City, Washington and Newark, N.J., saying a confluence of chilling intelligence in recent days pointed to a car or truck bomb.

Polls are crap

Excerpt: So, Kerry had a tiny bounce from the convention, a record small bounce, except, well, half of the poll was taken before he gave his speech, unlike all those other polls, and, okay, well, if you only include the part taken after the speech he got a really big bounce, but that's not the headline we want to write...

and they're confusing anyway.

Excerpt: Bush's internals didn't change or dipped & Kerry's speech was seen as better than Bush's speech in 2000 that gave him a 17 point lead over Gore at the time. Also, Kerry is seen by 51-46 as a better commander-in-chief. All the while people are voting for Bush. BULLSHIT

Hey! I have an idea! Let's TOTALLY screw the working class by canceling their pensions while we restructure so our stockholders and CEOs can get paid!

Excerpt: The announcement by United that it is essentially unilaterally abandoning its pension program constitutes a major assault on the entire system of defined-benefit pensions in the United States. It comes after intense pressure from the Bush administration and Wall Street on United to place the burden of its economic distress on the backs of its workers.

Uh, Bush fell off his bike again.

Excerpt: President Bush charged up punishing climbs and down steep dirt paths on his high-performance bike Monday, at one point sailing over the handlebars and landing flat on his back.

I was talking to this guy this weekend who had lived or worked in Texas while GW was gov there. He said that when GW went to functions with his wife, he was fine. But when GW went stag, they had to hide the liquor from him and this was AFTER his 40-year-old's epiphany.

Maybe he's possessed by demons.

Excerpt: But this time it was different, for I knew, indeed we all knew, that there was no more pretending that George was not stupid, that he was not a simpleton and a stooge. He was undeniably all of these things, for Almighty God had confirmed to me in that moment through the Holy Spirit that George W. Bush was possessed by a demon of stupidity that had come about through a generational curse unto the third and fourth generations.

George Bush. Not just intent on destroying everything Clinton did for the environment. He's going even farther back than that.

Excerpt: A new directive proposed by the Bush administration would grant broad environmental exemptions to numerous government agencies under the guise of national security. It would also exclude the American public from decisions that can have long-term health and environmental consequences.

And the EPA will no longer have to consult wild-life agencies with regards to pesticides.

Excerpt: The Environmental Protection Agency will no longer have to consult with wildlife agencies before deciding whether pesticides are likely to harm threatened or endangered species, according to rules issued by the Bush administration yesterday.

This is not a surprise. The US didn't keep track of the spending in Iraq.

Excerpt: U.S. civilian authorities in Baghdad failed to keep good track of nearly $1 billion US in Iraqi money spent for reconstruction projects and can't produce records to show whether they got some services and products they paid for, an audit concludes.

I'd start checking the Cayman Islands if I were investigating this.

Here's how well this administration takes care of our men and women in the military.

Excerpt: The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem has double-checked procedures for keeping out flies after a nurse found maggots in a patient's nose.

I don't normally link to anything Al Martin writes because his articles are subscription only. But somebody posted his article from last week so you have a chance to read it. This particular article was frightening to say the least.

Excerpt: I’ve been getting that b-a-a-a-d feeling. You can put this under the category of continuing signs of things to come, but you’ve got to put it all together, of course. Karen Hughes, Chair of the Bush-Cheney Reelection Committee, stated that the campaign had raised only $13 million last month. So even though their total war chest is supposedly $285 million, she said that they had raised just $13 million in June, which was half of what they had expected when they had formulated targets a year ago. The funny thing about it is that when she was asked by Aaron Brown on CNN (Aren’t you concerned about this?), she said she had absolutely no concern whatsoever. And it seemed genuine. She didn’t seem like she was pretending not to be concerned because then she went into this long diatribe of how they have reduced their staff at the campaign committee. They continue to close state offices. They’re not going to distribute any campaign literature, pins, buttons, and bumper stickers in selected states. They have reduced and will continue to reduce fund-raising efforts. And I thought, “How strange this is!”

Saddam had a stroke and could die before his trial.

Excerpt: Mr al-Rashdan said: "Our information is that he's in very poor health. We understand from the International Committee of the Red Cross that our client has had a brain scan to discover how badly he has been affected by the stroke. We believe he could die because of his health problems.

Remember, dead men will tell no truths about the Bush Family Evil Empire. Then again, maybe it's just an inflamed prostate.

Excerpt: "Saddam did not have a stroke, and he is not dead," 1st Sgt. Steve Valley told The Associated Press. He did not provide further information.

Well, since campaigning on an economic boom will not be an option for Bush et al,

Excerpt: The U.S. economy slowed dramatically in the spring to an annual growth rate of 3 percent, as consumers, worried about higher gasoline prices, cut back their spending to the weakest pace in three years, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

Talking point: Torpedoed!

Excerpt: Bush (and Rove's fax missives to the media) love to trumpet that 1.5 million job growth since August. That's all we keep hearing. August, August, August. But the two quarters since August,August, August have been nothing more than disappointing.
So from now on, when you hear the August, August, August routine, ask them about January, January, January and April, April, April. 'nKay? 'nKay.

I guess they'll have to use fear instead.

Excerpt: President Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the Sept. 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

As the election nears, any and all stops will be pulled out to make sure that Bushco remains in the White house.Paul Krugman is writing editorials about it.

Excerpt: This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Think about what a tainted election would do to America's sense of itself, and its role in the world. In the face of official stonewalling, doubters probably wouldn't be able to prove one way or the other whether the vote count was distorted - but if the result looked suspicious, most of the world and many Americans would believe the worst.

And read this article in The Nation and weep.

Excerpt: On November 2 millions of Americans will cast their votes for President in computerized voting systems that can be rigged by corporate or local-election insiders. Some 98 million citizens, five out of every six of the roughly 115 million who will go to the polls, will consign their votes into computers that unidentified computer programmers, working in the main for four private corporations and the officials of 10,500 election jurisdictions, could program to invisibly falsify the outcomes.

And why the concern? Well, they seemed to have lost their backups to the 2002 gubernatorial primaries in Florida which just shows how fragile and vulnerable these dumb machines are.

Excerpt: A computer crash erased detailed records from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines, raising again the specter of elections troubles in Florida, where the new technology was supposed to put an end to such problems.

Oops. Found it.

Excerpt: "The data has been located on a compact disk that was in the files of the election office," said Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the office of Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan. "We are very pleased."

(But something about it still bothers me and I don't know why.)

So do something about the voting machines!

OK. Horrible genocide in the Sudan. We should be there to stop it. Oh wait. We can't. We're bogged down in Iraq.

Excerpt: The Bush administration does not plan to send troops to Sudan to help protect the people in the Darfur region against pro-government Arab militias while applying economic pressure.

Here's a crass way of looking at the crisis in the Sudan.

Excerpt: Sudan is a place where, as in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and many other countries, bad things have happened, and continue to happen on a daily basis. However, we may more easily understand the specific question of Sudan by referring to what we already know.
Rule 1: Oil is important. Check out the very current Department of Energy country analysis on Sudan! Updated in July 2004, how about that!

Movement on the forged Nigeria uranium papers

Excerpt:The US has long known that the Italians had the forged documents in their possession at least as early as the beginning of 2002. And what we've uncovered is that at the same time Italian intelligence operatives were surreptitiously funnelling copies of the documents to this document peddler with the knowledge that he would sell them to other intelligence services and likely to members of the Italian press.

And Powell testified before the grand jury in the Valerie Plame leak investigation.

Excerpt: Sources close to the case say prosecutors were interested in discussions Powell had while with President George W. Bush on a trip to Africa in July 2003, just before Plame's identity was leaked to columnist Robert Novak.

Meanwhile, one of the lead investigators gets a promotion. Payback for a job about-to-be-well-done?

Excerpt: The FBI agent in charge of investigating whether top Bush administration officials leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent as political payback against her husband has been named to head the Philadelphia FBI office.

Bush picked a disgraced judge for Homeland Security. He was head of the CAPPS II project.

Excerpt: W. Stephen Thayer III, who left New Hampshire's high court in 2000 under a deal with prosecutors, is now serving as deputy chief of the Transportation Security Administration's Office of National Risk Assessment.

Guess who's going to open up the ceremonies for the RNC here in NYC? Jerry Falwell.

Excerpt: Well, we knew the honeymoon wouldn't last long. After having been beaten up for weeks by the radical right, the Republicans have decided to go for Convention 1992 all over again. Yes, they've caved to the fundamentalist wackos and added intolerant bigots like Jerry Falwell to the evening's festivities. I suppose this means the Bush campaign agrees with Falwell that gays and lesbians, ACLU members and pro-choicers caused September 11?

Never mind that little problem he's having regarding his complete disregard of the campaign finance laws.

Excerpt: The Campaign Legal Center on Monday filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that Jerry Falwell Ministries and a related entity, the Liberty Alliance, both corporations, violated campaign finance laws by endorsing President George W. Bush and soliciting funds for a federal PAC on their public website. Corporations are prohibited from making political communications to the general public, or raising PAC contributions from the general public.

And again, the "Giuliani to replace Cheney" trial balloon has been released into the mediasphere.

Excerpt: Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, the hero of 9-11, is being secretly courted to become President George W. Bush's running mate in the November election, The ENQUIRER has learned.

Will he or won't he replace Cheney? I don't know.

Excerpt: Thus, among Democrats there remains anticipation of an August surprise. Cheney has finally fired his longtime doctor for failing to overcome an addiction to painkillers. So, the way the Ouiji boards in Boston have it, Cheney goes in for a fresh medical check-up and learns that a rough campaign and a second term would be harmful to his health. Regrettably, he tells the president, the party must select someone else.

Not to mention the fact of the downright Orwellian practice of having anyone who wants to hear the pres and VP speak needs to pledge their fealty to the administration.

Excerpt: Some Democrats who signed up to hear Vice President Dick Cheney speak Saturday were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse President Bush.

And did you know that Cheney's people asked about the race of a newspaper's photographer before they would allow her into photograph the event?

Excerpt; "It was such an outrageous request, I was personally insulted," Hayt said later.

With Kerry's military service being so illustrious, I'm sure that the Bush people would just love it if they Bush AWOL story would just go away.

Excerpt: Earlier this year, the White House released documents it said proved President Bush fulfilled his National Guard service during the Vietnam War. White House spokesman Scott McClellan at the time said the documents "means he served" and that there was no longer any question about whether the President actually showed up to fulfill his duty. But according to new records released late last week, Bush did not accumulate any flying hours at all for several months during 1972.

Gee. Seems some of his trainings were invalid.

Excerpt: A closer examination of President George W. Bush’s records of his service in the Texas Air National Guard and the Air Reserve reveals that as much as 60 percent of Bush’s substitute training sessions scheduled were invalid under Air Force regulations because they were conducted more than 15 days in advance of his scheduled training, according to an investigation by RAW STORY.

No wonder he's going a little nuts.

Excerpt; President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

Like the pro-war neocons need another group to rally public support for the war on terror.

Excerpt: The new group, whose formation was announced at a Capitol Hill press conference July 20, said its “single mission” will be to “advocate policies intended to win the war on global terrorism—terrorism carried out by radical Islamists opposed to freedom and democracy.”

Guess who is on it (besides the expected miscreants of course) Joe I-might-as-well-be-a-republican Lieberman.

Crass politics award of the week goes to this Bush Campaign worker who said the following:

Excerpt: "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

Especially the Roman Catholic version. According to those men who don't have sex with women, women should remain quiet and wait for orders.

Excerpt: The Vatican yesterday depicted what it claimed were women's characteristic traits: 'Listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.'

Meanwhile, there's someone else claiming to be the real pope up in Spain.

Excerpt: Papal pretender "Gregorio XVII" is leader of a self-styled church in Spain who says God crowned him after Pope Paul VI's 1978 death, that Satan controls the Vatican (news - web sites) and that the devil will crucify him at the start of an apocalyptic end of an era.

See, I don't get this. This guy says God talks to him. Bush says God talks to him. Since when has hearing voices NOT been a symptom of severe schizophrenia?

Their new democracy is looking more like a dictatorship.

Excerpt: The wave of democratic freedoms to hit Iraq apparently doesn’t include freedom of the press, Nicholas Pelham reports in the Financial Times. Iyad Allawi, Iraq’s prime minister, has established a “media committee” which hopes to take an “agressive new attitude towards press freedoms.” The story, which was released July 27, has now into the paid-only section of the FT.com archive.

Meanwhile, here in the good 'ole USA, our democracy is looking more like a dictatorship too. I mean, right to privacy? Anyone? Anyone?

Excerpt: A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a 1998 Alabama law banning the sale of sex toys in the state, ruling the Constitution doesn't include a right to sexual privacy.

Be careful of what you allow the police to do for the sake of safety.

Excerpt:A federal judge on Wednesday allowed security officials to continue searching the bags of bus and subway passengers traveling near the Democratic National Convention, over the objections of two civil rights groups.

Because it may never be rescinded.

Excerpt: Buoyed by a federal judge's ruling allowing MBTA searches of Orange Line riders' bags near the FleetCenter, the T is likely to continue some searches long after the Dems leave town.

The trouble with the internet is that it is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. Some theories are easy to believe because, well, it's hard to trust the government with regards to anything.

Excerpt: On the other hand, since my paranoid shift, whenever I hear the words "conspiracy theory" (which seems more often, lately) it usually means someone is getting too close to the truth.

So, this recent article about how one woman conned thousands of people with regards to a cover-up of a bill that was passed that "abolishes income taxes, forgives mortgages, zeroes out credit cards and declares peace." Problem: there is no such bill.

Excerpt: She is a star only the Internet could create - queen of a cybercult, architect of a conspiracy theory built on the ruins of deceit. Every day, typing at a computer or speaking on the phone, she lures disciples to a bewitching creed, and pumps new life into a dead scam that suckered thousands.

Or will there soon be one....

Excerpt: A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Shop Costco over Walmart.

Excerpt: Costco chief executive Jim Sinegal, 68, is a Democrat who says Bush's $1.7 trillion in tax cuts unfairly benefit the wealthy. He opposed the Iraq war and supports Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts for president. And he's the only chief executive of a company in the Standard & Poor's 500 index to donate money to independent political groups formed to oust Bush, Internal Revenue Service records show.

The new presidential stationary.

Excerpt: A Sri Lankan company that made personalized stationery for President Bush from paper made of elephant dung is asking people to use its products to help the country's dwindling elephant population.

Look at what's happening in Bangladesh and think "Florida in 20 years"

Excerpt: Satellite images have revealed the devastating impact of recent flooding in Bangladesh, with two thirds of country submerged in water.

And the Maldives in about a hundred.

Excerpt: To the naked eye, the signs of climate change are almost imperceptible, but government scientists fear the sea level is rising up to 0.9cm a year. Since 80% of its 1,200 islands are no more than 1m above sea level, within 100 years the Maldives could become uninhabitable.

What's causing this? Well, it could be that the ice-melt is melting faster than before.

Excerpt: Scientists have traced the retreat of the Sermilik glacier
It concluded that the margins of the Greenland ice-sheet were dropping in height at a rate of roughly one metre a year.
Now, amid some of the most hostile conditions anywhere on the planet, Carl Boggild and his team have recorded falls as dramatic as 10 metres a year - in places the ice is dropping at a rate of one metre a month.

Do not underestimate the power of China to cause a world-wide energy crisis.

Excerpt: China has released new figures showing its crude oil imports soared by nearly 40% in the first five months of the year as the country needs ever more oil to fuel its explosive economic growth.

Meanwhile the price of oil is going up

Excerpt:Crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange on WEednesday surged $1.21 to $43.05 a barrel, breaking the 21-year-old exchange's $42.45 record set in June. In London, September Brent oil on the International Petroleum Exchange was 99 cents higher at $39.53 a barrel, a 14-year high.

The questions surrounding the Saudis' ability to maintain production are swirling

Excerpt: While much of the so-called “peak oil” story is well known, what's news is Simmons’ startling claim, based on personal analysis, that Saudi Arabia’s pumping capacity is in decline.

And the oil companies are getting richer by the barrelful.

Excerpt: Soaring oil and gasoline prices boosted second-quarter earnings at major U.S. energy companies ConocoPhillips (COP.N) and Amerada Hess Corp.(AHC.N),though some analysts said on Wednesday results could have been even better.

Ok, these people really should think about a name-change and some new hobbies.

Excerpt: "The nation knows that the Cornish pasty, Yorkshire pudding, haggis and fish and chips are great British dishes, but all too often the faggot is left off that list," said Janet Doody.

There's a gay character on the Simpsons. Maybe it's Flanders.

Excerpt: Fans of The Simpsons cartoon classic have been given another cliffhanger to agonise over - which of the cast is coming out of the closet.

If your country believes in hell, you have a stronger market system.

Excerpt: Economists searching for reasons why some nations are richer than others have found that those with a wide belief in hell are less corrupt and more prosperous, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Reverse engineering of alien vehicles is real.

Excerpt: In the book Disclosure government witnesses tell the story of how recovered extraterrestrial technology was back engineered with off-the-shelf technology to build the Alien Reproduction Vehicle or otherwise known as the ARV. This Alien Reproduction Vehicle is not only capable of space travel but it is in fact capable of faster than light travel.

THAT'S what I'm talking about. This is archeology I can wrap my head around.

Excerpt: Archaeologists working in southern Peru found an ancient brewery more than 1,000 years old. Remains of the brewing facility were uncovered on Cerro Ba?l, a mountaintop city over 8,000 feet above sea level, which was home to elite members of the Wari Empire from AD 600-1000. Predating the Inca Empire by at least four centuries, this Wari brewery was used to make chicha, a fermented beverage similar to beer that played an important role in ritual feasting and drinking during Peru's first empire. Ancient Peruvians made chicha with local grains and fruit, which is quite different from today's commercial beers typically made with barley and hops.

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.