|
The
Vidiot's
weekly blog:
What
pissed me off this week? 11/1/2004
(updated
every Monday at some point during the day)
One
day away from abject disappointment
or unbridled exuberance.
...'cause
I'm angry and my friends are sick of listening to me...
Cost
of the War in Iraq
Remember
these faces.
Free
stuff can be found here
Mirror
(in case geocities is wacky or, in case of trouble in
New York, check it for messages): http://129.79.148.33/vidiotcontact/
Just
a programming note first: I will post something on Wednesday
AM. It will be a commentary on the election. On Wednesday, THIS
LINK HERE, will be active.
What can I say?
I'm nervous as hell. Part of me thinks Kerry will win, only because I
personally know so many people who have traveled to Ohio and Pennsylvania
to do GOTV activity and most of them never gave one political care prior
to this election. On the other hand, the GOP has been doing major GOTV
and voter disenfranchisement activity like never before in Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin,
South
Carolina, Ohio,
New
Mexico, West
Virginia, Florida
(New term: Caging.)
and even in Texas
(Where I assume there shouldn't be any worries for GW and Co.??) to just
name a few. And on still another hand, I don't think that those who voted
for Gore in 2000 are going to be any less inclined to vote for Kerry.
On yet another hand, if the states hold true to their 2000 votes, even
if Bush maintains all of his states, he'll win because there are more
electoral votes for him and fewer for the blue states because of the census.
Then there's Florida. No need to remind anyone of what happened in 2000.
That being said, I feel like those who were disenfranchised in 2000 will
sure as hell make sure they vote this time. But add to that the Jebster's
antics this go-around and it could all be a wash. On top of that,
the whole election
aftermath could be a nightmare.
I heard someone
describe himself as "irrationally optimistic". I guess that
describes me too.
There are predictions:
Indian
astrologers have called it for Kerry. The
Redskins lost the game before the election, which historically means the
incumbent looses. But, even though it may sound like a cliche, let's
hope that Kerry wins like the Boston
Red Sox won -- decisively.
Otherwise,
he's going to have a helluva time governing, especially since it looks
like we'll not be taking back the house. But
that's still better than a Bush "win", which would be thoroughly
depressing.
Gift Idea
of the Week: Sushi
Memory Stick
Picture
of the Week: Why
do people live in Florida?
Clip of
the Week: Rep. Tim
Ryan (D-OH)
Hero
of the Week It
was a toss up between Springsteen and Eminem. But Eminem takes it, only
because nobody expected him to step up to the plate, but lordy moses,
did he EVER. Mosh
the vote people! Wear your black hoody and mosh the vote!
Excerpt: Instead,
he releases a rousing call to arms for the hip hop generation to take
back the government that seeks to represent them. He even proclaims
himself their leader. Surprise indeed.
Don't get me wrong though.
Bruce will ALWAYS be a hero.
Outrage
of Last Week
Did you know that this administration is suppressing
part of the 9/11 report until after the election?
Excerpt: "It
is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were
not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed,"
an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that
"the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration,
because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before
9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward.
Outrage
of This Week The
administration is trying to keep
voters from suing to enforce HAVA. Only the Justice Department --
Bush's Justice Department -- should have that authority.
Excerpt: But in
legal briefs filed in connection with cases in Ohio, Michigan and Florida,
the administration's lawyers argue that the new law gives Atty. Gen.
John Ashcroft the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions.
These include a requirement that states provide "uniform and nondiscriminatory"
voting systems, and give provisional ballots to those who say they have
registered but whose names do not appear on the rolls.
Man. They have all the bases
covered, don't they.
Bad
Idea of the Week They've
decided to ease
the bio-security around the reconstituted 1918 virus.
Excerpt: There
is precedent for concern. Two lab accidents in China earlier this year
sparked a new cluster of SARS cases. And it is believed the H1N1 influenza
virus, which stopped circulating in 1957, was reintroduced into humans
in 1977 through a lab accident.
Durr
Department Stupid
people love Bush.
Excerpt: The consensus:
the higher the IQ, the less people trust Bush and respect the job his
administration has done. The lower the IQ, the more people admire his
steadfastness. "It was pretty much a slam dunk. There's no nice
way to say this. Dumb people like him. They think his unwavering nature
is a positive personality trait. They even venerate him for never admitting
mistakes, even when he's wrong. On the other hand, smart people think
he's a lying bully. I mean, c'mon, you have a deserter accusing a decorated
veteran of treason. Who's going to buy that besides stupid people?"
Oil wealth can cause corruption.
Excerpt; Oil wealth
is often a breeding ground for corruption, according to the latest survey
by anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International (TI).
Check
21 Hey you!
Don't
float that check.
Excerpt: The Check
Clearing for the 21st Century Act -- better known as Check 21 -- will
allow financial institutions to exchange electronic images of consumers'
checks rather than transporting the actual paper checks around by air,
land and sea.
The
Apex of Corporate Greed This
just isn't right. The oil companies are making a killing and we're dyin'
out here.
Excerpt: Exxon
Mobil Corp., the most profitable U.S. company, said third-quarter net
income rose 56 percent as oil prices surged and chemicals earnings quadrupled.
Question
for the IRS: If
you're going to go after the NAACP because they said some bad stuff
about Bush, thereby violating their non-profit status
Excerpt:In a letter
dated Oct. 8 and released Thursday, the I.R.S. told the association
it had received information that Mr. Bond conveyed "statements
in opposition of George W. Bush for the office of presidency" and
specifically that he had "condemned the administration policies
of George W. Bush in education, the economy and the war in Iraq."
Then shouldn't they be doing
the same for Bush's
churches ?
Excerpt:The Bush-Cheney
re-election campaign has sent a detailed plan of action to religious
volunteers across the country asking them to turn over church directories
to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade
their pastors to hold voter registration drives.
Oh, wait, the Bushies think
that's
OK.
Excerpt; Political
pressure is building on a powerful House lawmaker to remove the so-called
IRS “muzzle” that prevents religious leaders from endorsing
political candidates from the pulpit.
And just has a halloween treat,
Ken Starr has risen from the dead and he wants to eat our brains.
Excerpt: Judge
Ken Starr, best known as the independent counsel appointed during the
1990s to investigate scandals involving then-President Bill Clinton,
said Friday that America's founding fathers never intended for religion
to be separate from government and public education.
I
don't want to discuss it. The
bin Laden tape is a nothing. It has had no effect on the voters. Thanks
heavens. But, you wouldn't know that by listening to our gaggle of sycophants,
would you. I have just a few questions about that video:
1. He looked pretty damn good,
didn't he? His beard has gotten magnificent. It almost looked like central
casting produced it. But I thought he was dead.
Maybe it was a sibling doing GW a favor 'cause you know, the two families
go waaaaay back.
2. bin Laden speaks English
pretty damn good. So why did he record a message for Americans in Arabic??
Oh, I know. Probably so they could mistranslate
it for American consumption.
A
rhetorical question. What
the hell is George thinking? We definitely need Muslim peacekeepers in
Iraq. It has to be a "my dick is bigger than your dick" sort
of thing.
Excerpt: Diplomats
said Annan accepted the plan. But the Bush administration objected because
the special force would have been controlled by the UN instead of by
U.S. military officers who run the Multi-National Force in Iraq. Muslim
and Arab countries refused to work under U.S. command, and the initiative
died in early September.
He's
a criminal. Add
to Bush's list of crimes: Tax
evasion.
Excerpt: As if
Bush's sale of his $606,000 share of Texas Rangers stock to owner Tom
Hicks for $15 million wasn't enough, there's more from deep in the heart
of Texas to nail the good old boy, namely the possibility of tax evasion.
That is, Bush declared the proceeds as a long-term capital gain, which
it wasn't, as opposed to ordinary income, which it was. This means Bush
paid at the capital gains' rate of 20 percent as opposed to the ordinary
income rate of 39.6 percent. Beating the IRS out of nearly 20 percent
in additional taxes. But the fun doesn't stop there.
Cuckoo
I think Cheney's lost it. He
must
be getting the word brilliance confused with something else, like
quagmire or shit pile or something.
Excerpt: Vice President
Dick Cheney said Friday the invasion of Iraq will go down in history,
along with the war in Afghanistan, for its "brilliance."
This
can't be good. China
is dumping
it's dollars for gold and oil.
Excerpt: China's
next move could come in the form of massive dollar devaluation when
they decide to unload their supply of accumulated greenbacks. China
just recently released six billion of those greenbacks for its purchase
of Noranda Mining - Canada's biggest mining company. Keep your eyes
open for stepped-up greenback dumping by China in exchange for natural
resources such as oil-bearing properties or perhaps more mines. We predict
that in the near future, Saudi princes will decide to denominate some
of their oil transactions in Yuan (or at least something other than
dollars) and invest their profits into shares of China Mobile or PetroChina
instead of Citigroup.
And they're not the only
ones.
Excerpt: It seems
something might be "in the works" according to some info that
has recently surfaced....First it appears that Russia's Central Bank
has ceased to support the US dollar!
Russia is thinking of switching
to petroeuros.
Excerpt:President
Vladimir Putin said Thursday Russia could switch its trade in oil from
dollars to euros, a move that could have far-reaching repercussions
for the global balance of power -- potentially hurting the U.S. dollar
and economy and providing a massive boost to the euro zone. "We
do not rule out that it is possible. That would be interesting for our
European partners," Putin said at a joint news conference with
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the Urals town of Yekaterinburg,
where the two leaders conducted two-day talks. "But this does not
depend solely on us. We do not want to hurt prices on the market,"
he said. "Putin's putting a big card on the table," said Youssef
Ibrahim, managing director of the Strategic Energy Investment Group
in Dubai and a member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, an influential
body of leading world thinkers thought to help set the United States'
foreign policy agenda. "In the context of what is happening worldwide,
this statement is very important," he said.
If I'm not mistaken, I think
that was one of the things that Saddam was considering before the conflagration.
But there's something going
on in Russia any way. Something's up. You know something's up when a top
Russian air force General gets himself assassinated.
Excerpt: A top
Russian air force general was shot dead by at least one unknown gunman
as he travelled along a major highway on Sunday, local news agencies
reported.
Why? Was he planning a coup?
Was he going to "out" Putin's military plans?
Of
course they will.
I don't understand
how this can be.
Excerpt:The Army
is laying the groundwork to let Halliburton Co. keep several billion
dollars paid for work in Iraq that Pentagon auditors say is questionable
or unsupported by proper documentation, according to a report published
Friday.
And maybe this
whistleblower should've been the hero of the week.
Excerpt: Once they
had gone, Greenhouse raised other concerns. She argued that the five-year
term for the contract, which had not been put out for competitive bid,
was not justified, that it should be for one year only and then be opened
to competition. But when the contract-approval document arrived the
next day for Greenhouse's signature, the term was five years. With war
imminent, she had little choice but to sign. But she added a handwritten
reservation that extending a no-bid contract beyond one year could send
a message that "there is not strong intent for a limited competition."
Halliburton is being investigated...by
the FBI.
Excerpt: The super-heated
United States election campaign entered its final weekend with the Democrats
pounding George Bush over a potentially embarrassing FBI probe of the
controversial oil services group, Halliburton.
Bush, too (two??) should be
as well...for lying
to the American people and to the world.
Excerpt:Secret
plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence
planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial
heard yesterday.
Yeah. Sure. His mind wasn't
made up. Hell. That bastard made up his mind in 1999!
Excerpt: Two years
before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush
was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking
Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations
with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.
QaQaaGate
By now, you've all heard of
the missing
cache of weapons.
Excerpt: he Iraqi
interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear
inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives
- used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear
weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military
installations.
Well, now there's another
one, and that one had sarin.
Excerpt:Bunker
2 at Muthanna State Establishment, once Iraq's central chemical weapons
production site, was put under the control of the United Nations in
early 1991 after it was damaged by an American bomb in the Persian Gulf
war. At the time, Iraq said 2,500 sarin-filled artillery rockets had
been stored there.
Way to go, George.
Iraq
war: Quagmire It's
just getting better and better
over there.
Excerpt: The intelligence
revision of the scale of the insurgency, which puts the number of militant
cells at over 50 and growing, indicates that the current level of coalition
forces will struggle to cope with an increased level of insurgent activity
as the election approaches next year.
Even Powell
thinks we're losing.
Excerpt: For months
the American people have heard, from one side, promises to "stay
the course" in Iraq (George W. Bush); and from the other side,
equally vague plans for gradual withdrawal (John Kerry). Both plans
depend heavily on building significant Iraqi forces to take over security.
But the truth is, neither party is fully reckoning with the reality
of Iraq—which is that the insurgents, by most accounts, are winning.
Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general who stays in
touch with the Joint Chiefs, has acknowledged this privately to friends
in recent weeks, NEWSWEEK has learned. The insurgents have effectively
created a reign of terror throughout the country, killing thousands,
driving Iraqi elites and technocrats into exile and scaring foreigners
out. "Things are getting really bad," a senior Iraqi official
in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government told NEWSWEEK last
week. "The initiative is in [the insurgents'] hands right now.
This approach of being lenient and accommodating has really backfired.
They see this as weakness."
Ah-nold
This
made me laugh. Not only because the statue was hideous, but because they
decided to not make it because Arnie is supporting Bush.
Excerpt: Plans
to build an 80ft statue of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator character
in his Austrian home town have been scrapped because he's backing President
Bush.
Media
bias More
proof of media bias.
Excerpt: AP Poll:
Bush, Kerry in Dead Heat
Reuters Poll: Bush Grabs One-Point Lead on Kerry
News
of the Weird Hobbits
in Indonesia. Cool.
Excerpt: Scientists
have found skeletons of a hobbit-like species of human that grew no
larger than a three-year-old modern child. The tiny humans, who had
skulls about the size of grapefruits, lived with pygmy elephants and
Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia 18,000 years ago.
Time flows
in one direction everywhere, right?
Excerpt: Regardless
of the direction they run in, the new universes created in these big
bangs will continue the process of increasing entropy. In this never-ending
cycle, the universe never achieves equilibrium. If it did achieve equilibrium,
nothing would ever happen. There would be no arrow of time.
Now
go out and VOTE!!!!
Previous
rant
What do we
do about all of this crap? I have no idea. Part of me wants to start teach-ins
at my local pub. Just go to the bar, rant and rave and inform the idiots
who still think Dan Rather is telling them the truth. Another part of me
wants to organize a voter observation program to insure that this moron
isn't in the White House all the way to 2008. I sincerely believe that if
we protected the voting rights of the underprivileged that any Democrat
could SWEEP any election. And we'd have to start with the Florida Election
for Governor THIS FALL (like these
guys!.) I don't think Democrats are the answer. But they are at least a
start.
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}
|