The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 10/18/2004

(updated every Monday at some point during the day)

No update for this week (10/25). I have my first midterm in 10 years. I'm in hell.

"What are the methodological shortcomings of the regime approach, both in terms of its conceptualization of environmental degradation but also in terms of regime effectiveness?"

2,500 words. Go!

Yikes.

On top of the that, I'm still stressing over the election. Please Lord, don't let me put anything snarky into my midterm when I have to start discussing Kyoto.

Maybe next week. (It's due on 11/1).

...'cause I'm angry and my friends are sick of listening to me...

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/

Finally, the debates are over. Not that I didn't enjoy them mind you, but they forced me to watch waaaayy more of George than is good for me. (Though, I'm loving the backseat psychoanalyzing that Bush and Cheney are getting: Cheney is a sociopath and Bush is a severely paranoid. Sounds about right to me.) I wasn't all that impressed with Schieffer. I mean, he must lean towards Bush because when Bush answered the economic questions with that No Child Left Behind crap, Schieffer didn't come back with "But sir, you didn't answer the question."

And Kerry's mentioning of Mary Cheney, and the ridiculous reaction from the Cheney's may have been orchestrated by Mary herself. I thought their reactions to it were a lot of hooey. I mean, remember when Alan Keyes went off on Mary Cheney? Not one peep out of the Cheneys about that one.

Be that as it may, George lost yet another debate. Meanwhile, he had another lump on his back. Honestly though, the man's performance sucked. If he's going to go to all the trouble to be wired up, you'd think he'd seem more competent, no? I mean, some of the numbers he cited actually helped Kerry's case. Now, however, speculation about "the lump" is going deeper...into medical territory. Did Bush have a stroke? (Would it be that surprising from someone with the history of cocaine abuse that he has?) He did postpone his medical checkup this year. Maybe he's wearing a heart monitor of some sort. Remember, he did have a speck of foamy drool at the corner of his mouth for most of the debate. So, maybe he is losing his mind. (Or as the Guardian puts it, he's mentally fragile.) Alas, we may never know.

Jokes of the Week: Edinburgh's 50 best jokes

Site of the Week: Underground Clips

Must-read of the Week: Karl Rove in a Corner

Scary Must-read of the Week: Without a Doubt

Transcript of the Week: Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire. (Here's the video clip.)

Action of the Week: Sinclair advertisers -- let them feel the love...not. (Be nice, but firm. Make sure they understand that you won't buy their stuff if they continue to support a station that is so overtly playing politics with our airwaves.)

It took a lot of balls for these guys to say no.

Excerpt: A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson, Miss., and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel, the troops relatives said Thursday.

(Here's the Salon article on it. They've since been released.)

Honestly, anyone who thought that the RNC wouldn't try to screw the vote in as many states as possible just hasn't been paying attention.

Excerpt: Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

And I'm not just saying that the RNC had something to do with, they actually did have something to do with it.

Excerpt: Here is the direct link between Sproul and Voters Outreach of America. According to several sources, two of the contractors Sproul hired to oversee petition gathering for No Taxpayer Money For Politicians -- Aaron "A.J." James, who directs Voters' Outreach of America, and Diane Burns -- were also paid by Sproul to get as many signatures as possible for Nader. Good stuff, so far. But the reader then asks the key question -- who is paying for these efforts? The answer? KLAS-TV, Las Vegas: "The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee."

Here's another article on RNC connections to the fraud.

Excerpt: A company called Voters Outreach of America has been operating in Nevada for the past several months. The company is largely, if not exclusively, funded by the Republican National Committee. VOA has hired scores, perhaps hundreds, of temporary workers and has been paying them to go out and sign up new voters. But the company doesn't really want just any voters. It only wants Republicans.

And one more

Excerpt: Republican operative Nathan Sproul's company is under investigation for allegedly destroying voter registration forms signed by Democrats. Now comes new evidence about Sproul's connections to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

And there's another thing. Remember way back when, during the mid-term elections, the phone-jamming thing in New Hampshire? Well, not only did the guy who orchestrated the illegal phone-jamming get promoted, Ashcroft has used his justice department to try to keep the media from printing his name. It didn't work.

Excerpt: The unindicted co-conspirator in a 2002 election fraud case, which has already yielded two felony guilty pleas, is none other than Jim Tobin, New England regional chair of Bush-Cheney 2004, according to court documents filed Thursday by the New Hampshire Democratic Party and now reportedby the Manchester Union Leader.

(He has since resigned. Question is: Would he have had the blogs not gotten a hold of the story and made it news?)

Only the Bush administrationpromotes those who fuck up. The rest of us get fired.

Excerpt:As US officials in Iraq were counting the cost of the devastating suicide attack in Baghdad's green zone, Defence Department insiders in Washington said that the Pentagon is angling to promote Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, who ran prisons in Iraq at the time of the abuses in Abu Ghraib jail.

Honestly, who expected factory orders to rise? I didn't. Must be those rose-coloured glasses wearing idiots in Washington.

Excerpt: Orders placed with U.S. factories fell for the first time in four months, the Commerce Department said Monday, with demand dropping sharply for commercial airplanes and parts.

Somebody has to explain this to me. I don't get it. Some resolution was signed that says Iraq has something to do with 9/11???

Excerpt: For example, the resolution states that "since the United States was attacked, it has led an international military coalition in the destruction of two terrorist regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq."
First of all, there appears to be a calculated ambiguity in the language of that clause through the use of the word "since," which can mean both "from the time when" as well as "because."

Friday was a busy day. First Rove testified in the Valerie Plame case.

Excerpt:President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, testified Friday before a federal grand jury trying to determine if an administration official leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer.

And more Bush AWOL papers were "discovered".

Excerpt:Weeks after Texas National Guard officials signed an oath swearing they had turned over all of President Bush's military records, independent examiners found more than two dozen pages of previously unreleased documents about Bush.

And they announced that they're raiding the pension fund to cover the country's debt.

Excerpt: US President George Bush's administration has weathered a pre-election mauling by announcing emergency measures to skirt a $7.38-trillion debt limit.

We all knew that the war in Iraq was a bad idea. Not only because, well, it was a bad idea, but because the aftermath of it would be a mess. Hell, it would've been a mess had competent people been in charge. And since incompetent people were in charge, it's a total train wreck. Though, the scariest thing about the Knight Ridder article discussed here isn't so much that the Bushies were incompetent, but the fact that everybody who could talk on the record wouldn't because of fear of this administration. Now THAT's scary.

Excerpt: In an interesting sidelight, the article notes that every effort was made to get those who were interviewed to speak for the record, "but many officials requested anonymity because they didn't want to criticize the administration publicly or because they feared retaliation. One official who was deeply involved in the pre-war planning effort, and was critical of it, initially agreed but then declined to cooperate after expressing concern that the Justice Department might pursue a reporter's telephone records in an effort to hunt down critics of the administration's policies."

(Here's the full article.)

Recently, Bush and Cheney et al have been really fluffing up Zarqawi's importance. Instead of Osama or Saddam, it's now Zarqawi. The bogey man du jour.

Excerpt: The militant group led by terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed to be behind many deadly attacks in Iraq (news - web sites), has declared its allegiance to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), citing the need for unity against "the enemies of Islam."

Here's they guy they say is responsible for all the beheadings and the terror in Iraq, even though there are plenty of stories saying he didn't have anything to do with it, (especially since they guy they showed had two legs and Zarqawi is believed to have only one.) There were stories of him being captured in July. Though, apparently, that was too long before the election and so those stories were quickly forgotten or "disproved".) And never mind that the experts say that Zarqawi is just not that big of a man on campus.

No, none of that matters here. So look for a Zarqawi arrest sometime around halloween. (And if that doesn't happen, look to either some staged terror on election day or a war with North Korea started by Bush right after the election, no matter who wins.)

In fact, it's really bad. Seymore Hersh has more bad news out of Iraq.

Excerpt: You know what I told him? I said, fella, I said: you've complained to the captain. He knows you think they committed murder. Your troops know their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Just shut up. Get through your tour and just shut up. You're going to get a bullet in the back. You don't need that. And that's where we are with this war.

And it gets worse. We have top secret interrogation facilities in Jordan too! Boy howdee!

Excerpt: It is not known where precisely in the Hashemite kingdom they are being held, but they are thought to be at a secret facility belonging to Jordanian intelligence or at a secret base. Their detention outside the U.S. enables CIA interrogators to apply interrogation methods that are banned by U.S. law, and to do so in a country where cooperation with the Americans is particularly close, thereby reducing the danger of leaks.

Just how do they get away with this stuff. Baker, who I'm not crazy about to begin with, is on the one hand, going around and asking countries to forgive Iraqi debt and on the other hand is part of a the Carlyle group which is at present trying to collect on Iraqi debt for Kuwait!!!!

Excerpt: Mr Baker's Carlyle Group is in a consortium secretly proposing to try to collect $27bn (£15bn) on behalf of Kuwait, one of Iraq's biggest creditors, by using high-level political influence. It claims Mr Baker will not benefit personally, but the consortium could make millions in fees, retainers and commission as a result.

Uh, ... how can he NOT benefit?? What do you want to bet the Kuwait is the only country that will get paid?

So much for free speech.

Excerpt: Police in riot gear fired paintballs filled with cayenne pepper Thursday night to disperse a crowd of protesters assembled in this historic gold mining town where President Bush was spending the night after a campaign appearance.

I can't believe this is news. They're now reporting the Halliburton's interests are assisted by the White House. No! Really??

Excerpt:Over the last four years, the Bush administration and Vice President Dick Cheney's office have backed a series of measures favoring a drilling technique developed by Halliburton Co., Cheney's former employer.

I wonder how a ruling like this one on political activity on the internet will effect the blogosphere. I'm not enough of a legal mind to figure it out.

Excerpt: A recent federal court ruling says the FEC must extend some of the nation's new campaign finance and spending limits to political activity on the Internet.

I guess the republicans were taken by surprise and now want to reign it all in. I mean, heaven forbid the actual people the politicos are supposed to represent should have any power at all.

It's true, the Bushes may be handing you money to your face in the form of "tax relief" but they're picking your pocket from the back in the from of State and Local taxes.

Excerpt: While purring about middle-class tax breaks, U.S. lawmakers who backed them ignored how the cuts would further accelerate state and local tax increases.

The Bushies are very good at sneaking little riders into their laws and making sure the media doesn't cover them. Did you know that the No Child Left Behind Act has a little thing in there about how military people can contact your kids without your approval? And get them to sign on the dotted line without your approval? Remember how dumb we were when we were that age?

Excerpt: The No Child Left Behind Act, an expansive education reform bill passed two years ago, requires high schools across the country to release information about juniors and seniors to military recruiters and to give them the same access to students as college recruiters and prospective employers.

Think the judiciary doesn't matter for this election? Roe v. Wade could be overturned pretty easily.

Excerpt: Thirty states are poised to make abortion illegal within a year if the Supreme Court reversed its 1973 ruling establishing a woman's legal right to an abortion, an advocacy group said Tuesday.

It's true that our allies will rethink their support of our efforts in Iraq if there's a new man at the helm.

Excerpt: Germany might deploy troops in Iraq if conditions there change, Peter Struck, the German defence minister, indicated on Tuesday in a gesture that appears to provide backing for John Kerry, the US Democratic presidential challenger.

How about that little trick the Bush campaign pulled on the media? I mean, usually, when a president says he's going to give a major policy speech, he gives a major policy speech.

Excerpt: President Bush, stung by the erosion of his lead over Sen. John Kerry in post debate polls, has abruptly scheduled a major speech for tomorrow in hopes of halting Mr. Kerry's momentum.

Not our present president though. Nope. He just pulled a bate and switch on the networks. Ended up just giving a stump speech. Hey, media! Now you know how it feels to be totally screwed by this administration. Not so much fun, huh?

Though, honestly, any administration that won't do what is necessary to deal with Iraq and damn the political consequences is fully capable of anything.

Excerpt:The Bush administration plans to delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.

At least my debt has name now: It's called "survival debt"

Excerpt: "People are living paycheck to paycheck, and, after they've paid the bills, everything else -- like groceries or back-to-school clothes -- goes on the credit card," Draut says. "Credit cards are picking up the slack in the household budget."

Germany! Please don't give these idiots any ideas.

Excerpt: Germany has become the first country in the world to tax private personal computers that are deemed to be "Internet-capable".

Chris Reeve's body is barely cold and they're already putting a stop to his Paralysis Act.

Excerpt: L.A. Weekly has learned that, just a day after the actor's death, one or more Republican senators put a surprise hold on the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act. The uncontroversial legislation had been expected to sail through committee and then the Senate as easily as it had the House of Representatives where it passed 418 to zero last week. Mondayís action was beyond cruel; it was like opposing Mom and apple pie.

How do their wives sleep with this guys? Well, actually, they probably don't, hence the nasty attitudes.

New life, right here on Earth!

Excerpt; Genetic analysis reveals that the organism is so bizarre and unlike anything else seen by scientists that perhaps it should be placed in its own category of living things.

This rocked my world. An asteroid didn't kill the dinosaurs...maybe.

Excerpt: Dinosaurs were dying out before Earth was struck by an asteroid impact that is widely thought to have been responsible for their extinction, two scientists claim.

I'm no whiz or anything, but in order for this to work, how the hell would they keep the space station stationary?

Excerpt: Under the mag-beam concept, a space-based station would generate a stream of magnetized ions that would interact with a magnetic sail on a spacecraft and propel it through the solar system at high speeds that increase with the size of the plasma beam. Winglee estimates that a control nozzle 32 meters wide would generate a plasma beam capable of propelling a spacecraft at 11.7 kilometers per second. That translates to more than 26,000 miles an hour or more than 625,000 miles a day.

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 (retired)
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.