The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 9/13/2004

(updated every Monday at some point during the day)

Sadly, we've reached 1,000.

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

"Programming" note: Classes start for me next week. I have no idea how much time I'll be able to put into updating this page. It's been a long time since I was in school, so I'm not even sure my brain works good anymore. Anyway, I suspect the page will get more "linky" and less "commenty". Just be forewarned.

I just don't get it. Bush's guard record gets exposed for the fraud that it was,(he was even more AWOL than previously thought) and he goes up in the polls! (At least that first poll showing a huge bounce after the RNC is easily explained. It's not an 11 point race.) Kerry says he'll pull troops out of Iraq and Bush goes up in the polls. We're told Bush did cocaine at Camp David and is maybe bisexual he goes up in the polls! The Administration's latest "bin Laden is close to being captured" ruse has been exposed as the politically motivated lie that it was, and Bush's polls STILL go up. Bob Graham nails the Administration for covering up the Saudi connection to 9/11 and Bush STILL goes up in the polls. His own delegates won't vote for him and he still goes up in the polls. Bush loses the gay vote and still goes up in the polls. And don't even get me started on Sy Hersh's new book.

Who the hell are they asking! What kind of idiots are they? Does reality mean anything to anybody anymore? Do they not understand what a second Bush administration would be capable of? Are people really that easily manipulated by fear?

I just don't get it. Think, people! THINK! [Insert bitch slap here.]

Sad News of the Week: Hugh Jackman is leaving Broadway. {sniff}

Site of the Week: Operation Truth

Veteran ad of the Week: Texan's for Truth

Photo of the Week: Dickhead at RNC

"Oops!" of the Week: Miss Universe

Beautiful Photos of the Week: Monkeys

Disturbing Film of the Week: Convoy of Death

Corporate-aimed Retribution of the Week: Wal-Mart Supercenter rammed

Gift Idea of the Week: Facade Computer (be glad I didn't decide the gift idea of the week was anal jewelry 'cause that would've just been nasty.)

History Lesson of the Week: A Report on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence

I can't friggin' believe Cheney actually said what he said. Paraphrasing "Vote for us or you'll all die!"

Excerpt:Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.

And I can't believe that nobody is pointing out the fact that 9/11 happened on their watch.

Whatever. I can only hope that the curse of Dick Cheney still stands.

Excerpt: This pattern of misplaced confidence in Cheney, followed by disastrous results, runs throughout his life -- from his days as a dropout at Yale to the geopolitical chaos he has helped create in Baghdad. Once you get to know his history, the cycle becomes clear: First, Cheney impresses someone rich or powerful, who causes unearned wealth and power to be conferred on him. Then, when things go wrong, he blames others and moves on to a new situation even more advantageous to himself.

Then again, I think I'm beginning to believe that Cheney has completely lost his mind.

Excerpt; Indicators measure the nation's unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.

In Texas, they want to raise the utility rate for people with bad credit ratings...which usually happens to people who are POOR.

Excerpt: In a new rate-setting tactic for electric utilities, the unit of Dallas-based TXU Corp. plans bigger rate increases for customers with low "credit scores," which are numeric rankings that take into account customer histories of paying electricity, phone and cable bills, the Wall Street Journal reported.
I'm not sure whether this is more evil or stupid, but it's a whole lot of both.

The Bushies are at it again. Remember back in July, they tried to find out the race of a reporter?

Excerpt: President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.

Now they doing the same thing for the debates.

Excerpt: Journalists applying to the Commission on Presidential Debates for credentials to cover the presidential debates are being asked to provide their racial data, a move that has some upset.

WTF?

Regarding all the hullabaloo about the CBS documents: My mother was a secretary in the 1960s. She used a typewriter that had proportional spacing and the funny "th" thing. So there.

Excerpt: But specialists interviewed by the Globe and some other news organizations say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format, were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s, when Bush was a first lieutenant.

Of course though, people in the middle of the country probably will only hear "forgery" and leave it at that. The GOP ploy to plant a seed of doubt has probably worked. They'll never hear or know that the guy behind the charges of "forgery" is a conservative operative.

Excerpt: Unlike Rupert Murdoch, whose empire includes the conservative television outlet Fox News, Bozell is not simply to be the leader of a conservative media company (the Media Research Center is also under his control); he has campaigned aggressively for conservative candidates, including Pat Buchanan. He is the nephew of conservative columnist William Buckley, and the son of Brent Bozell, Jr., who assisted Barry Goldwater with the writing of Conscience of a Conservative.

Can we please stop talking about crap that screwed us up 30 years ago and talk about the crap that's screwing us up NOW!

I think housing is our canary in the economic coal mine.

Excerpt: As U.S. home purchases slow, an expected rise in demand for rentals will result in a spike in inflation, analysts say, citing studies showing housing costs have been under-reported by the government.

And all us miners? We'll be dropping dead of debt.

Excerpt: The bad news is that other recent structural changes in the economy - the federal government's shift from surpluses to huge deficits, the national predilection for consumption over saving and housing prices that climb faster than incomes - have increased the country's reliance on another kind of fuel: credit.

I know I am. Well, I'm cutting out the whole debit card use. I'm going to withdraw cash and leave my card at home.

Excerpt: "You can swipe [a debit card] here and swipe it there and not even notice that you've just spent a few hundred dollars," said Lindquist, a delivery driver at Target Corp. "With cash, I always know how much I'm spending."

Not only did Graham say that Bush et al had tried to coverup the Saudi connections to 9/11, but Greg Palast has an interesting memo in his possession showing that Graham isn't just talking out of his ass.

Excerpt: But when a failed Texas oil man took over the White House in January 2001, demands on the Saudis to cut off terror funding simply stopped.

OK. The reason the administration is saying that the mushroom cloud in N. Korea isn't a nuke

Excerpt: A huge explosion rocked North Korea last week but U.S. and South Korean officials said Sunday it was unlikely to have been a nuclear weapons test despite the appearance of a "peculiar cloud" over the area.

is because if it is a nuke (which I think it is) then the rattling of Iran's cage for some suspected nuke pre-capability will look ridiculous.

Fortunately, Nader didn't make the Florida ballot. Here's a list of a bunch of other states he didn't make it on to. Thank heavens. Some of the are swing states.

Excerpt: 2004 Petitioning/Ballot Status for President

So, while our illustrious media is busy covering who did what 35 years ago, there's no mention of the spy scandal at the Pentagon.

Excerpt: James Gordon Meek reports that both FBI investigations of leaks from the Pentagon concern in part secret US intelligence on Iranian weapons of mass destruction programs. The FBI suspects that this intelligence was leaked to AIPAC and the Israelis on the one hand, and to Ahmad Chalabi on the other. Chalabi in turn is suspected of passing the information on to Tehran, playing the role of double agent. Although the FBI seems to be keeping the two inquiries separate, there is strong circumstantial evidence that there was a behind-the-scenes connection between Chalabi and the Israelis. That is, the information circuit may have been ingrown among the Neoconservatives, the Israelis and Chalabi's people.

And Cheney's chief of staff is right there baby.

Excerpt: IT'S DIFFICULT TO categorize I. Lewis Libby, who seems to have lived every minute of his 54 years. He currently is chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney—which, of course, makes him one of the most powerful people in Washington. Libby also is a red-hot suspect as the man who leaked the name of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame—a federal offense not just in Washington, but in real life. Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, exposed the Bush administration’s false claim that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger.

Too bad they didn't treat the Swift Boat Assholes with as much salt as they're treating the Kitty Kelly book.

Excerpt: Time Managing Editor Jim Kelly said he had not gotten an advance look at the book but "you obviously would have to fact-check the hell out of it." Excerpting a book "by Kitty Kelley is a problematic proposition," he said. Doubleday says it never offered first serial rights to keep the book's contents from leaking out.

Carter really zinged Zell.

Excerpt: Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.

Take THAT Halliburton.

Excerpt: The U.S. Army plans to move within months to break up the multibillion-dollar logistics contract that Halliburton Co. has to feed, house and look after U.S. troops in Iraq, and to put out the work for competitive bid.

I have no idea what prompted this action and I have no idea if it'll stick.

If you can read this story about one of our guys who's not coming home from Iraq and NOT cry, you're Dick Cheney.

Excerpt: Please join us by taking a few seconds out of your busy life and say a prayer for him, Jennifer, his wife; Tanner, his 1-year-old son; his mother and father, and the rest of his family.

Or this one.

Excerpt: I found out that my brother, Sergeant Ryan M. Campbell, was dead during a graduate seminar at Emory University on April 29, 2004. Immediately after a uniformed officer knocked at my mother's door to deliver the message that broke her heart, she called me on my cell phone. She could say nothing but "He's gone." I could say nothing but "No." Over and over again we chanted this refrain to each other over the phone as I made my way across the country to hold her as she wept.

There are now over 1000 of these stories coming out of Iraq. Not to mention the 10s of thousands of Iraqi stories.

This is so wrong and has conflict of interest written all over it.

Excerpt: Iraq's tough-talking interim prime minister was one of U.S. and British intelligence agencies' most trusted sources for information about Saddam Hussein's government, former officials say.

What the hell is this thing on Mars?

Excerpt: In this image from the Mars Global Surveyor, there is a strange shaped crater that appears to have been intelligently modified, surrounded by rows of other structures in the area that do not fit any known non-intelligent geological formations. In the center of the circle there seems to be a collection of triangular shapes, which remind me of the mystery triangular spacecraft so well documented recently in the skies over Earth.

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.