The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 9/20/2004

(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/

Being an "older" student sucks. My first class this time around, students brought their laptops to take notes on! Last time I went to college, there was no internet. Before that, there were barely any computers. Also, since there is the internet, departmental secretaries, who historically have always been the gate keepers of all pertinent information, are now practically useless. Nobody imparts information anymore, they assume you have found it on the internet. Add to that the fact that academia is an impenetrable bubble to begin with and well, you get how my week went.

Lucky for me though, it's not as bad as Dan Rather's week. Poor guy. Totally set up by SOMEONE. (Hmmm, who could that be?) I feel bad for him. He had the story. His gut (and things he's heard) tells him it's true, he gets the docs from a seemingly reliable source to back it up, he ran with it and BURN.

Thing is though, the White House hasn't really countered with "ooo, they're all lies" because that would, well, technically be a lie. No. From the get-go, they were all "oooo, they're forgeries" Now, my question is, how'd they know they were forgeries?? My answer: because they had already destroyed all the originals and copies, that's why.

Meanwhile, all this blather about Rather and we're totally missing the point: Iraq is a freaking goddamn mess!

Gift Idea of the Week: Tarsian & Blinkley clothing

Site of the Week: Bush Yoga

Useful site of the Week: Edible Weeds

Graphic of the Week: GWB Vietnam-era Service Record

Sad Picture of the Week: The Littlest Terrorist Dies....

Shameful Stats of the Week: Women in international parliaments

Programming note: Kerry on Letterman tonight (Monday 9/20)

Book Recommendation from Kos: George Lakoff's new book, Don't think of an elephant!

Biggest Story about GW's guard papers that won't get covered because the monkeys are too busy howling about the forgeries: Evidence of possible tampering in President Bush’s National Guard files

Oh, and if I hear one more friggin' media sycophant say "Kerry is twisted into a pretzel." I will go completely insane and I will take you all with me! ("Beetlejuice")

I'm sure you've heard this. Robert Novak thinks it's okeedokee to reveal sources...as long as they're not HIS sources.

Excerpt: The man who has stood on this principle for months, in deflecting calls for him to identify who in the Bush administration "outed" CIA operative Valerie Plame, said this weekend on national television that CBS should release the name of its source for the documents at the center of the dispute over its recent program on President Bush's National Guard service.

And I don't even know how to address this bit of hypocrisy.

Excerpt:Religious right leader and televangelist Jimmy Swaggart invoked George Bush's name today, and Bush's support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, while telling his parishioners that he'd gladly murder any gay man who looked at him the wrong way. I am so kidding you not.

House lawmakers gave themselves another raise!

Excerpt: The cost-of-living raise would be the sixth straight for members of the House and Senate, boosting the salaries of lawmakers, now $158,100, by about $4,000 in the new calendar year.

I have a suggestion, why don't we add a little box on our taxes like the "donate to campaign" box? Add a box that says "do you think Congress deserves a raise this year?" and majority rules.

Better yet, they should only be allowed to vote themselves a raise IFF they increase the minimum wage.

Proof that Cheney is a traitor.

Excerpt: But less than six years later, as a private businessman, Cheney apparently had more important interests than preventing Hussein from rebuilding his army. While he claimed during the 2000 campaign that, as CEO of Halliburton, he had “imposed a ‘firm policy’ against trading with Iraq,” confidential UN records show that, from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that sold more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was in charge. Halliburton acquired its interest in both firms while Cheney was at the helm, and continued doing business through them until just months before Cheney was named George W. Bush’s running mate.

And proof our government was meddling in Venezuelan politics.

Excerpt: Documents recently obtained from the U.S. Department of State under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by www.venezuelafoia.info demonstrate that more than $5 million annually during the past two years was given by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to various organizations in Venezuela, many of which are aligned with the opposition to President Hugo Chávez.

And proof of media bias. Look at the headlines: Same poll numbers, only in one, Kerry is ahead, and in the other, Bush is.

Excerpt:Wisconsin CNN/USA Today Gallup Poll. Registered Voters. 9/9-12. MoE 5%. (8/23-26)
Bush 50 (46)
Kerry 45 (49)
The USA Today headline:
Bush widens Wisconsin lead over Kerry, poll shows

Michigan CNN/USA Today Gallup Poll. Registered Voters. 9/9-12. MoE 5%. (No trend lines.)
Kerry 50
Bush 43
The CNN headline:
Poll: Michigan too close to call
Sigh... gotta frame those stories within the media narrative, the facts be damned!

And speaking of poll numbers, this should twist your knickers. Gallup oversamples republicans in their polls. Hence, Bush is "leading". Gallup contends that they do this because they think that it accurately reflects who will be voting this fall. Uh, think again, morons.

Excerpt: So the Democrats have been 39% of the voting populace in both 1996 and 2000, and the GOP has not been higher than 35% in either of those elections. Yet Gallup trumpets a poll that used a sample that shows a GOP bias of 40% amongst likely voters and 38% amongst registered voters, with a Democratic portion of the sample down to levels they haven’t been at since a strong three-way race in 1992?

I'm telling you people, Schwarzenegger will be president someday. And this amendment will be called "the Schwarzenegger Amendment."

Excerpt: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher's proposal would allow anyone who's been a U.S. citizen for 20 years to run for the nation's highest office. That would include Arnold Schwarzenegger — bodybuilder, movie star and now governor of California.

The amendment would have to be ratified by 3/4 of the states. But I'm not saying that couldn't happen either. People, as a group, tend to be quite dumb.

Excerpt: Lately I have found myself in the same predicament, but instead of the clinically dead, I see the brain dead. I can’t get away from these mindless zombies. Everywhere I go, they are there. The worst part is, they cannot be detected by sight, smell or touch. One way to identify them is to look for the sheepish gaze in their eyes, but the best way that I have found is to listen for the mindless tripe passing over their lips.

They're so dumb, they'd vote for a guy who would do this.

Excerpt: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bills Saturday that would have raised the minimum wage to $7.75 an hour, made Wal-Mart-like megastores more difficult to build and limited schools' ability to give students random drug tests.

Sure, it's interesting that Rove dodged the draft.

Excerpt:Except for a lapse of several months, Selective Service records show presidential adviser Karl Rove escaped the draft for nearly three years at the height of the Vietnam War using student deferments.

And GW may have had more than one DUI.

Excerpt: This came via email from an experienced DUI attorney who has a big problem with Bush's explanation of his 1976 DUI. This lawyer suspects that it was not his first drunk driving offense. Is anyone else discussing this?

And just maybe, the National Enquirer may get your average Joe to really think about GW's drug abuse.

Excerpt: One source, author Toby Rogers, said a former member of George Bush Sr.'s staff revealed to him that George W. used cocaine and "has been out of control since college."
The issue that goes on sale Friday explores Kelley's charge that George W. did cocaine at Camp David while his father was President, that First Lady Laura Bush sold marijuana in college ... and much more.

But as stated before, Iraq is FUBAR!

Excerpt: US military officers in Baghdad have warned they cannot guarantee the security of the perimeter around the Green Zone, the headquarters of the Iraqi government and home to the US and British embassies, according to security company employees.

What the hell does this remind you of?

Excerpt:Soldiers from a combat unit at Fort Carson say they have been told to re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq, the Rocky Mountain News reported Thursday.

I'll tell you what: "If you don't behave, I'll send you to the Russian Front!"

The fact that this woman got arrested for yelling something disagreeable at the first lady, or the fact that when she stated that her son was dead because of the war, the first lady's supporters started chanting "four more years!"

Excerpt: Police escorted Sue Niederer, of Hopewell, N.J., from a rally at a firehouse after she demanded to know why her son, Army 1st Lt. Seth Dvorin, 24, was killed in Iraq. Dvorin died in February while trying to disarm a bomb.
As shouts of "Four More Years" subsided, Niederer, standing in the middle of a crowd of some 700, continued to shout about the killing of her son. Local police escorted her from the event, handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police van.

What the hell are they saying? Four more years of what? Death?

Used to be that mothers of slain soldiers were respected and honored.

Excerpt: “The Service Flag displayed from homes, places of business, churches, schools, etc., to indicate the number of members of the family or organizations who are serving in the Armed Forces or who have died from such service. Service flags have a deep Blue Star for each living member in the service and a Gold Star for each member who has died.” Thus, the gold Star and the term Gold Star Mother, as applied to mothers whose sons or daughters died in the World Wars, has been accepted.

Now, they're arrested practicing the right that their child was defending when he/she died. Well, I hope that Kerry's use of the war moms is tasteful and effective. These women need to be heard.

Excerpt: Mothers of U.S. troops serving in Iraq will help Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry make the case Monday that President Bush's optimistic view of the war does not reflect reality, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said Sunday.

Gearing up for war with Iran.

Excerpt: America seized on satellite pictures of a possible Iranian nuclear weapons testing site yesterday to demand that Teheran be given an ultimatum to come clean or face United Nations sanctions.

Though, where they'll get the troops to do it, I have no idea.

Excerpt:The US military may run out of national guard and reserve troops for the war on terrorism because of existing limits on involuntary mobilizations, a congressional watchdog agency warned in a report.

Well, I do have an idea. It's called "the draft".

Excerpt: 08th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 163

To provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 7, 2003
Mr. RANGEL (for himself, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. LEWIS of Georgia, Mr. STARK, and Mr. ABERCROMBIE) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Armed Services

Kerry thinks so too, so I'm not just talking out my butt.

Excerpt: Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry said President Bush has a secret plan to call up more National Guard and Reserve troops immediately after the election, an allegation that the Bush campaign called ``false and ridiculous.''

The plan for a huge database on every citizen has been resurrected again. Only it's going forward incrementally, starting with the military.

Excerpt: It's been seven months since the Pentagon pulled the plug on LifeLog, its controversial project to archive almost everything about a person. But now, the Defense Department seems ready to revive large portions of the program under a new name.

Putin's response to terror is to garner more power.

Excerpt: President's newly-developed plan entails that governors should no longer be elected by those people who live in the regions, but by delegates instead. President himself will provide the candidates. Political analysts are skeptical as to the fact that such drastic measures will aid to combat terrorism; they also doubt that such measures have in fact been conducted in accordance with the Constitution.

Makes one wonder, doesn't it?

Excerpt: The murky events of the school siege in which hundreds of children were killed are raising disturbing questions as to which entities were actually behind the co-ordination of the attack. Subsequent developments will bring a clearer picture but many indicators point to this event being a staged psy-op.

Rumsfeld has completely lost his grip.

Excerpt: A transcript of Secretary's luncheon speech and question and answer session appearing on the website of the Department of Defense is redacted where Rumsfeld misspoke calling Osama bin Laden by the name of Saddam.

Oh, that's good. Blame it on the weather.

Excerpt: As hurricane Ivan roared northwards yesterday through the Gulf of Mexico towards landfall in the US as early as this evening, Wall Street analysts warned that the damage could extend into the wider economy.

Jeeze. I can't tell anyone just how pissed off this makes me. DeLay may not be investigated by the ethics committee.

Excerpt: No they didn't! The House ethics committee has just voted to postpont the DeLay ethics complaint filed by Rep. Chris Bell. From the Richard Morrison press release:
In another show of the power of money in Washington, the House Ethics Committee resorted to an option that has never been used before that could, in effect, kill the ethics investigation into Tom DeLay's illegal fundraising and his role in Texas redistricting.  After nearly three months of reviewing the charges against DeLay, the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Ethics committee postponed today's hearing and have decided to put before the committee the question of whether to proceed with the investigation.  This unprecedented move could result in a deadlock among the ten member committee resulting in no further action in this Congress.

Blowjob? Investigate!

Illegal campaign finance to gerrymander state districts thereby insuring republican control in the legislative branch of the US Government? Eh. Not so much.

No matter how you look at it, the corporate giant is a menace.

Excerpt: Burning incense and sounding a conch shell horn, residents of an ancient Mexican city protested on Saturday at the construction of a Wal-Mart store on the edge of the ruins.

When a Rupert Murdoch vehicle like the NY Post starts going off on the internet and how "evil" it can be, you can bet that's one of the talking points the GOP wants out there.

Excerpt: Instead, the 'Net has become the most powerful tool for spreading hatred in history, as well as the home of the two great pornographies, the grotesque porn of the flesh and the even more virulent pornography of hatred.

Make the internet seem malevolent, and controls on it will be more accepted, no? Or maybe they'll just crash the thing.

Excerpt: It is the news that internet users do not want to hear: the worldwide web is in danger of collapsing around us.

Now, I believe there is global warming. There's no doubt that the planet is heating up. We may even contribute to a portion of it. However, there are no people on Mars and the climate changes there.

Excerpt: Data gathered by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft suggest that the martian climate may have changed significantly in the past, and may be changing quickly even now. According to two papers published in the Dec. 7, 2001, issue of Science, these changes may happen over a much shorter time scale than scientists previously thought.

So there must be something else, right? I think it's the sun.

Excerpt:September 13, 2004 ... I AM TRYING TO KEEP THIS PAGE UPDATED AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE ... WE ARE IN A SEVERE TURBULENCE STATE IN THE SOLAR WIND AND THE SUN IS GOING BONKERS AND THIS IS REFLECTED IN OUR EARTH WEATHER ... THIS COULD BE JUST THE BEGINNING FOLKS ... FOR THE MAINLAND USA ... HURRICANES SUCH AS IVAN HAVE MADE LANDFALL AND PROGRESSED OVER LAND TO AS FAR NORTH AS CANADA THROUGH THE CENTRAL USA ... REMEMBER THAT THE 3 STORMS THAT FORMED "THE PERFECT STORM" ALL FORMED OVER LAND IN OCTOBER / NOVEMBER OF 1991

And does anyone else notice that there's a lot of grounding of whole airports due to communication problems around the time of solar flares.

Excerpt: Air traffic controllers lost radio contact with aircraft flying high-altitude routes in the western United States on Tuesday, disrupting thousands of flights heading in and out of southern California, authorities said.

If this is true, it's explosive. He is Bob Dole's former chief of staff:

Excerpt: Our case is alleging that Bush and his puppets Rice and Cheney and Mueller and Rumsfeld and so forth, Tenet, were all involved not only in aiding and abetting and allowing 9/11 to happen but in actually ordering it to happen. Bush personally ordered it to happen. We have some very incriminating documents as well as eye-witnesses, that Bush personally ordered this event to happen in order to gain political advantage, to pursue a bogus political agenda on behalf of the neocons and their deluded thinking in the Middle East. I also wanted to point out that, just quickly, I went to school with some of these neocons. At the University of Chicago, in the late 60s with Wolfowitz and Feith and several of the others and so I know these people personally. And we used to talk about this stuff all of the time. And I did my senior thesis on this very subject - how to turn the U.S. into a presidential dictatorship by manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor event. So, technically this has been in the planning at least 35 years.

Why won't someone in the media -- the MAINSTREAM media --investigate the story and let's see what they find? Why is it so off limits?

Also, this story about the list of military exercises on 9/11 may have interfered with timely reaction to the highjackings. If true, it implicates Cheney, big time.

Excerpt: It is clear that at least five if not six training exercises were in operation in the days leading up to and on the morning of 9/11. This meant that NORAD radar screens showed as many as 22 hijacked airliners at the same time. NORAD had been briefed that this was part of the exercise drill and therefore normal reactive procedure was forestalled and delayed.

Why can't anyone really look into that one too? I'm sick of seeing this stuff on the conspiratorially-minded websites and wondering how much, if any of it, is true. Why not cover it, research it, and prove it's either true or false? Am I asking too much?

{sigh} Apparently, I am.

Especially since the media can't even get the number of casualties right in the Iraq war.

Excerpt:Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports commonly cited by newspapers, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. Most don't fit the definition of casualties, according to the Pentagon, but a veterans' advocate said they should all be counted.

Juan Cole has a good discussion of the history of the Middle East and the real goals of al Qaeda.

Excerpt: Bin Laden's dream of a united Muslim state under a revived caliphate may well be impossible to accomplish. But with the secular Baath gone, it could be one step closer to reality. If you add to the equation the generalized hatred for US policies (both against the Palestinians and in Iraq) among Muslims, that is a major step forward for al-Qaeda. In Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda has emerged as a dissident political party. Before it had just been a small group of Bin Laden's personal acolytes in Afghanistan and a handful of other countries.

And this is old, but it should be read. It was linked to by Urban Survival and it's an explanation of Narco Dollars and how they work in our economy. And NOW I get it.

Excerpt: To understand the threat of decriminalization of the drug trade, just go back to your Sam and Dave estimate and recalculate the numbers given what decriminalization does to drive BIG PERCENT back to SLIM PERCENT and what that means to Wall Street and Washington's cash flows. No narco dollars, no reinvestment into the stock markets, no campaign contributions.

Since nobody got hurt, this is really funny.

Excerpt; An exuberant dog left in a truck while the owner watched Canada win the World Cup of Hockey managed to throw the vehicle into gear and coast down a city hill.

Well this is a denouement if I ever heard of one.

Excerpt:Pallanti's book "Monna Lisa, Mulier Ingenua" (Mona Lisa, Real Woman) says land registry records and other historical documents prove that she was Lisa Gherardini, born in Florence in May 1479.

The Mona Lisa was some rich guy's wife. Sorry. I liked the feminized self-portrait theory so much more.

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

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.