The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 8/30/2004

(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/

Alright. So I protested. I did the Pro-Choice one and the anti-RNC one. The only thing I have to say about the actual protest is that it's obvious that the police learned their lesson from Feb. 15. They basically didn't try to control us too much. They didn't try to corral us. They didn't try to intimidate us. It was all really low key. They should be commended. Also, the medics who took care of the girl I was with who passed out because of the heat were tremendous. They were competant and kind. Fortunately, I had no use for the legal observers that were walking through the crowds, but I assume that they were fantastic as well.

So, what did I accomplish by having a thoroughly hot and crowded Sunday afternoon inhaling a veritable cornucopia of body odors? Did it change anyone's mind? Probably not. Even though I think protesting is a huge waste of time, I went. Not because it could be an historic event, or because I really think Bush is going to give a damn, but mostly for those people out there in the middle of the country, who are pissed and angry and unemployed who can't afford to fly here to show the world how angry they are. (Frankly, I loathe protesting. I don't like being around that many people.) Anyway, I went for them. That was my reason. Others had theirs. That, and Bush has really screwed New York.

This rant is a shorty this week. I'm feeling a little kurflooey with all the energy of the protests and stuff. I'm having a helluva time concentrating. I can't wait until this is all over. I'll be helping out at The Tank all week and trying to participate in few of the more interesting events like The Line and Constitution Night. We tried to get into Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping First Amendment Gospel Truth Revival on Saturday, but it was packed with THE SMELLIEST protestors. No A/C. Terrible sound system. We were two old fogies trying to hang out in that. It didn't work for us so we left. (I have one word for the protestors without access to a shower: Patchouli.)

Sound clip of the week: Bill Maher on Larry King

Another Sound clip of the week:Ben Barnes on how Bush's family connections got George into the Texas Reserve. (Here's the Salon story and here's Greg Palast's story on that.)

Another great SBFT connections graphic

Coupon of the Week: Taxi Coupon for RNC delegates

Website of the week: Gas Price watch

Photo of the Week: Photos of Banner Drop on Plaza Hotel 8/26

Seems that JetBlue sharing our info with the Pentagon was illegal. Go figure.

Excerpt: An Army data-mining project that searched through JetBlue's passenger records and sensitive personal information from a data broker to pinpoint possible terrorists did not violate federal privacy law, according to an investigation by the Army's inspector general.

Honestly. How stupid do they think we are. They SAY they found the remains of a visa of one of the hijackers in the Pennsylvania crash. I say bullshit. Compare the pictures. Two different guys.

Excerpt:This is of course to reinforce the official story of 9/11 which is crumbling under the weight of 9/11 research and activism. At least a third of the WTC victim's bodies were vaporized and many of the victims of the Pentagon incident were burned beyond recognition. And yet visas and paper passports which identify the purpotrators and back up the official version of events miraculously survive explosions and fires that we are told melted steel buildings.

Listen, we only know who they want us to think the hijackers were. We don't know who they actually were.

We're getting closer to war with Iran. And I mean literally and physically closer.

Excerpt: Meanwhile, the US-led coalition troops in Afghanistan are busy establishing a second Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Farah where clashes broke out near the border of Iran last week, US military said Saturday.

This has GOT to be a conflict of interest.

Excerpt: At a time when there is much controversy over electronic voting and some election experts are raising concerns about the integrity of such voting, should the leading manufacturers of electronic voting machines be wining and dining state and local officials responsible for conducting elections? Well, they are.

And Bob Novak's son is the publicist for the Swift Boat Assholes' publisher.

Excerpt:In his syndicated columns and on the CNN program "Crossfire," Mr. Novak has lauded the book and referred to veterans who criticize Mr. Kerry - most notably John E. O'Neill, the book's co-author - as "real patriots." Unmentioned in Mr. Novak's columns and television appearances, however, is a personal connection he has to the book: his son, Alex Novak, is the director of marketing for its publisher, the conservative publishing house Regnery.

Well, we won one on our side. Florida is required to be able to do manual recounts.

Excerpt: "Performing manual recounts in close or disputed elections is necessary not only to ascertain the intent of the voter, but to verify the integrity of the data on each machine," Simon said. "Today's decision upholding the law requiring manual recounts will increase voter confidence in our electoral process."

But that won't stop them. Read this amazing Greg Palast article that describes the lengths to which they will go to insure their elections, like for instance, counting their own absentee ballots.

Excerpt: And dear Reader, please take note of the implications of this story for the big vote in November. Millions have sought refuge in absentee ballots as a method to avoid the dangers of the digitizing of democracy. Florida and other states are reporting 400%-plus increases in absentee ballot requests due to fear of the new computer voting machinery. Some refuge. LePore is giving us an early taste of how the Bush Leaguers intend to care for your absentee ballot.

So, did the swift boat for idiots really have an effect Kerry's support? Well, not so much.

Excerpt; From the Bush campaign's point of view, the magnitude of the swift-boat fiasco becomes clear when it is recognized that a major goal of the August campaign was to put John Kerry on the defensive - to have him stumbling over his words, being pilloried in the press and firing his advisors. Instead (although the issue will now be muted by the theatrics of the Republican convention) it was Bush who was forced onto the defensive by the end of last week while Kerry weathered the attacks with an extraordinarily small decline in the level of his popular support.

So two planes go down nearly simultaneously in Russia and they first say it wasn't terrorism.

Excerpt: An FSB spokesman said searches had revealed no signs of terrorism but sabotage had not been ruled out.

But of course it was.

Excerpt:A group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility Friday, for the downing of two Russian planes on a militant Muslim web site, Associated Press reports.

But, it only took them a few days to come up with conclusions. We, on the other hand, have to wait three years to find out that Flight 587, the one that crashed on Veteran's day in Rockaway was not the tail popping off, but rather might've been this al Qaeda guy.

Excerpt:A captured al-Qaeda operative has told Canadian intelligence investigators that a Montreal man who trained in Afghanistan alongside the 9/11 hijackers was responsible for the crash of an American Airlines flight in New York three years ago.

As for Russia's problem with Chechnya? Well, I can't see it getting any better since Putin's lackey was "elected" there. If anything, it should make matters worse.

Excerpt: Chechen separatists have denounced the election as a farce, and says there is no guarantee it will bring peace in Chechnya any closer, our correspondent says.

If they can turn it on, they can control it. Hey, Orwell. What did you do? Build a time machine or something and misread the dial? You were off by about 20 years.

Excerpt: According to the trade journal Broadcasting & Cable, the FCC envisions a system that will send warnings to computers, PDAs and cell phones. The FCC is also seeking suggestions for ways to modernize the emergency-broadcast system, potentially including ways to automatically turn on TVs and radios in case of emergencies.

Cheney's chief of staff. Libby. A goin' down.

Excerpt: I've received some unsubstantiated rumors that Fitzgerald's office is nearing the end of its investigation, and that it will issue three indictments including Scooter Libby. According to these rumors, John Hannah, a Libby deputy, has been "turned" by the investigators and is singing like a canary. Hannah has already been linked to the case. If indeed he has turned state's witness, it would present a major breakthrough in the case.

This guy, Sistani, goes back to Iraq

Excerpt: Iraq's most influential Shia leader has returned after medical treatment in Britain as fighting continues to rage in the Shia holy city of Najaf.

And he's not there but a few days

Excerpt:As I write very early Thursday morning, Sistani 's convoy had left Basra on its way to Najaf several hours to the north. Al-Jazeerah says his convoy is being accompanied by Iraqi police.

and he already has the place under control.

Kerry had Cleland hand deliver a letter to Bush at Crawford asking him to condemn the SVFT and publicly demand they be taken off the air.

Excerpt: Democrat John Kerry will dispatch two fellow Vietnam veterans to President Bush's secluded Texas ranch on Wednesday to press him to condemn television advertisements accusing Kerry of lying about his wartime service.

So there's Cleland, a friggin' triple amputee, in the friggin' heat of Crawford, Texas trying to deliver a letter and what does GW do? Does he invite him in for and ice-cold beverage and a chat? Hell no. He had his secret service lackey block him from entering the ranch. Nice way to fortify your image, George. Shameful.

Excerpt: So he hides behind some lackey. Just like he's hidden behind women's skirts his entire life. And he calls himself a Texan. I didn't know Texans were pussies. His father must be cringing. He's done his share of dirt, but personal courage was never something Bush Sr.lacked. His son, sadly, has no courage, no character, and no guts. He talks big, but he's hiding from a triple amputee. It's not like he wore a horse's head.

The man won't face a triple amputee, so we know what his answer will be to Kerry with regards to weekly debates.

Excerpt: Democrat John Kerry on Thursday challenged Republican President Bush , to weekly debates from now until the Nov. 2 presidential election.

A big, fat "no" is expected. (The right-wing media spin on this is that Kerry is desperate to even ask such a thing.)

Here's something I know they don't want to have coming out so close to the RNC: Blame for the prison torture goes all the way to the top.

Excerpt: A high-level panel investigating U.S. military detention operations has concluded that top Pentagon officials and the military command in Iraq contributed to an environment in which detainees were abused at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a defense official said on Tuesday

Why does Rumsfeld still have a job? Why?

Excerpt: Asked in a briefing to reporters if Rumsfeld should resign, Schlesinger said such a resignation "would be a boon to all" enemies of the U.S. and would be a " misfortune" if Rumsfeld were to take that course.

He should remain because if he leaves, it would be a "win" for our "enemies"? Is this guy Schlesinger on crack? What if "If Rumsfeld stays any longer, he'll screw up more, handing more and more reasons for our 'enemies' to hate us." Like, oh, I dunno, allowing a spy to work at his Pentagon?

Excerpt: CBS News has learned that the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to -- in FBI terminology -- "roll up" someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.

And the name they're tossing out there is Franklin.

Excerpt: I'm not joking. From what I understand from my sources, Franklin was desperately trying to get the US government to act on this intelligence. Aipac was just a tool for getting influence in Washington and the White House.

(For a good, in-depth discussion of the players in this story, go here and here.)

What totally makes me go WTF is the fact that this is all unbelievably tied into Iran/Contra.

Excerpt: ``Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian spy who helped launch the Iran-Contra affair, says one of the things he discussed with Defense officials Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin, at meetings in Rome in December 2001 (and in Paris last June with only Rhode), was regime change in Iran.

Here's an idea for Rumsfeld: Stop wasting your time keeping an eye on political websites and start paying attention to doing a good job!

Excerpt: Which are pretty easy to get if you have access to a visitors' log - if, say, you are a disgruntled political blogger or online commentator and happen to notice the Defense Department's IP address repeatedly noted on your server's record. You probably wouldn't be too happy about such visitations in this hypothetical situation. You might, in fact, if you were so inclined, decide to write a flooding program full of abusive or pornographic text and imagery, attach the government IP address to it, and send it round the globe. It would be the virtual equivalent of writing a nasty, confessional note in your worst enemy's carefully forged handwriting and passing it around the whole school.

I hope these dogs aren't canaries in a coal mine.

Excerpt: Despite the study's findings, some of the owners whose dogs have died still blame the toxic brew the dogs immersed themselves in during the hunt for survivors and remains.

Are they trying to make a kinder, gentler Cheney? I hate to tell them that it's not going to work. Skeletor can only get so cuddly.

Excerpt: Resorting to unusually expansive language to address an emotional campaign issue that has proved divisive for Republicans, Cheney said he believes individual states rather than the federal government should decide whether to sanction marriage between homosexuals.

Some people were not pleased.

Excerpt:Vice President Dick Cheney, whose daughter Mary is a lesbian, drew criticism from both proponents and foes of gay marriage after he distanced himself from President Bush's call for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Perhaps this was an attempt at putting the fear of god in Cheney and telling him to toe the line?

Excerpt: A military plane carrying Vice President Dick Cheney came within almost half a mile of a small private plane over Bridgeport, Conn., this month, forcing the pilot to take evasive action, the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday.

Schwarzenegger, too, is doing something quite liberal. He's promoting solar energy. So, last week, he's cutting the tax credit for teachers and their supplies, this week, he's promoting solar energy. Must be a convention coming up.

Excerpt: On Friday, the Governor released his plan for creating 1 million solar homes by the year 2017. State Sen. Kevin Murray has been leading a legislative effort towards a similar goal.

What on earth makes people think that celebrities can govern anyway? Most of the ones I've met are kinda' dumb.

Excerpt: He played a number of notables -- David Letterman, Frank Sinatra -- on "Saturday Night Live" in the 1980s, but Joe Piscopo is now thinking of a completely different kind of role: governor.

A super earth planet has been found.

Excerpt: A new kind of planet has been discovered in a star system 50 light years away. It is the smallest world to be found outside our Solar System, and probably the first rocky planet found so far, astronomers revealed on Wednesday.

No way. I wouldn't want a New Jersey driver to be able to cut me off in three dimensions. It's bad enough with only two.

Excerpt: And yet, a flying car is suddenly less of a pipe dream or the stuff of cartoons. Giants including carmakers Honda (HMC ) and Toyota (TM ) are developing prototypes of small flying devices. Helped by advances in nanotechnology, microelectronics, and robotics, researchers from the likes of NASA, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Florida are developing new flight-related technologies, designed to make piloting an aircraft easier than driving a car.

The face on mars has disappeared?

Excerpt:On June 25, 1995 the NASA administration included the test photoshoot of the Martian face in the program flight of Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. The mission control received the long-awaited photos on April 5th, 1998. The spacecraft took pictures of the face from the height of 440 kilometers (in 1976 the images were taken from the height of 1,870 kilometers). To everyone's great disappointment, the photos depicted only uneven landscape - one could not see any facial outlines on them at all.

So cool, yet so weird.

Excerpt: University of Kiel researchers "grew" a replacement jaw-bone in a muscle in the patient's back and grafted it in place.

A new calendar based on moon cycles? I guess it would make my period easier to track.

Excerpt: If the concept of throwing the Gregorian Calendar out to replace it with the World Thirteen Moon 28-day Calendar of Peace isn’t ludicrous enough, calendar challengers say they are basing their reform on "common sense".

No comment.

Excerpt: Sexual frustration has driven a mild-mannered chimpanzee to take up smoking and spitting, according to China's Xinhua news agency

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
rawstory.com

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.