The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 12/27/2004

(updated every Monday at some point during the day)

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

Cost of the War in Iraq

Remember these faces.

List of Voter Fraud Stories

Media Contacts

Track your congresscritters here!


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/

I feel guilty going on about how sucky GW is when the people in Asia are dealing with a real shitstorm. Can you imagine? Having a lie in, and first thing in the morning, you've got a ton of water sweeping through your bedroom? One minute it's a beautiful sunny day, and the next, death and devastation reign?

How big was it? Well, from an AP Story:

"All the planet is vibrating" from the quake, said Enzo Boschi, the head of Italy's National Geophysics Institute. Speaking on SKY TG24 TV, Boschi said the quake even disturbed the Earth's rotation.

And this:

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake off Indonesia moved the island of Sumatra about 100 feet to the southwest, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

This blog entry was going to be a quickie anyway because there wasn't a whole lot of news over the holiday, but the tsunami/earthquake thing really caps it. (And I'm totally avoiding the weird "alternate" interpretations of the event.)

Payback's a Bitch of the Week: Bush Monkey Picture Shown on Giant NY Billboard

Dumb Religion Site of the Week: Let my people go.

Moronic Stories of the Year: Morons in the News


Evil Act of the Week

Cutting funding for food programs just so you can pay for an unnecessary war is just plain evil.

Excerpt; In one of the first signs of the effects of the tightening U.S. budget, in the past two months the Bush administration has reduced its contributions to global food aid programs aimed at helping millions of people climb out of poverty.

Myth of the Week

As I stated last week: Social Security is fine.

Excerpt: Most economists are irritated at the palpable nonsense being circulated about Social Security. Start with a basic fact - it is not broken and does not need fixing.

(Here is a page devoted to the myths and realities of SS)

So, why is Georgie going around telling everyone it's basically the equivalent of Iraq's WMDs?

Excerpt:This would suggest that we're now in the lying and fear-mongering phase of the campaign, which would be followed of course by a later phase in which a specific policy remedy is brought forward, nominally meant to address the fake problem.

Call your critters, make sure they know how you feel.


Internet Buzz of the Week

This cropped up on an indy website: "Proof" that George might be seriously ill.

Excerpt:The president apparently uses a wearable defibrillator, a device to stop heart arrhythmia, as seen in photographs. He has had a sudden fainting spell and other symptoms of atrial fibrillation (AF) and has a genetic tendency for it. Some observers have noted neurological and psychological irregularities and other evidence of stroke, which is a possible result of AF. Some of these irregularities could be caused by Wernicke-Korsakoff's, a disease of inveterate alcoholics. The president has an even stronger genetic predisposition for hyperthyroidism and some symptoms of it, including the heartbeat arrhythmia. Only his doctors know for sure.

Unfortunately, the link keeps getting corrupted. So here's another one, just in case. I don't know if the sites are getting hacked or if the servers are just overloaded with hits from the curious. I'm trying to keep my conspiracy hat off.

Hey, we don't want anything to happen to George 'cause if it does, the reigns get handed to {gulp} Cheney.


Good Idea of the Week

I swear, if I didn't live in NYC, I'd live in Wisconsin. (Too bad their winters are so brutal) The Wisonsins are creating a People's Legislature. A bunch of them are going to get together, set an agenda, and let their critters know what's important to the people, instead of what's important to the lobbyists. Every state should have one of these.

Excerpt: They don't intend to come up with all the answers, but they do want Wisconsin legislators to know that it's time they start working on the issues that are important to the people, not just those with an ax to grind or a profit to make.

{sigh}

If the democrats weaken their stance on abortion, I will bolt from this party faster than you can say "Bush is a chimp."

Excerpt: After long defining itself as an undisputed defender of abortion rights, the Democratic Party is locked in an internal struggle over whether to redefine its position to appeal to a broader array of voters.

It's got to be an internal struggle, 'cause out here, externally, we wouldn't dream of altering the party's stand on that.


Admiring Ukraine's Democracy

I sure wish we could hold a revote here.

Excerpt; Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko headed toward victory in a re-run of Ukraine’s rigged presidential election on Sunday, with exit polls and early results giving him a healthy lead.

Conquest via Economics

Any doubts that the war in Iraq wasn't about economic conquest of empire will be alleviated by reading this.

Excerpt:The United States is helping the interim Iraqi government continue to make major economic changes, including cuts to social subsidies, full access for U.S. companies to the nation's oil reserves and reconsideration of oil deals that the previous regime signed with France and Russia.

And Castro has just become the new Saddam Hussein.

Excerpt: President Fidel Castro said a crude oil deposit has been discovered off Cuba containing up to 100 million barrels, good news for a country that imports about half the petroleum it needs.

You are what you eat.

If you're still eating meat, you're not paying attention.

Excerpt: Parts of cattle supposedly banned under rules enacted after the nation's first case of mad cow disease are making it into the human food chain, according to the union that represents federal inspectors in meat plants.

Water on Mars?

You tell me. Look at this picture.

Looks like water, no? Well, there's also this story of how the rover got a bath.

Excerpt:An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash has boosted the performance of one of the two U.S. rovers probing the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine said on Tuesday.

Yup. Looks like it rained on Mars.


News of the Weird

He's not really dead. He's just mostly dead.

Excerpt: A Siberian Buddhist leader whom followers claim looks and feels just the same as when he died in 1927 is mystifying science.

 

 

Previous rants


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}

 

 

These sites are good at culling stories from a multitude of media sites:

buzzflash.com
unknownnews.net
rawstory.com
daou report


Here are some excellant blogs:

Bartcop
Daily Kos
Atrios
Tacitus
Josh Marshall
DNC: Kicking Ass
Two Glasses
Brad DeLong
The Wonkette
Urban Survival
Greg Palast


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.