The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 1/3/2005

(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

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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/

The situation in Asia just gets worse and worse. As of this blog post, some are estimating 400,000 dead. That's almost half a million. Unbelievable.

But this blog is more about bashing Bush than much else so here goes:

What a fucking idiot he is. Hell, he's an insult to fucking idiots!

Here was his one GREAT chance to reach out to the muslim community. He could have rushed there, shook some hands, comforted some people, handed over one of those big, clearing-house sized checks and pledged all sorts of support and help. I mean, when the hurricanes hit Florida right before the election, he wasted no time getting his face down there for multiple photo ops. Obviously he's capable of reacting to a natural disaster. But I guess the people in Asia are just too damn Muslim or too damn brown or something, huh? (And yes, I saw Colin on Meet the Press and watched him back pedal his butt off trying to explain why the aide started out so pitiful and then grew to $350 million. "It evolved" he said. The man has no credibility left.)

Oh yeah. Bush is compassionate alright. As long as you redefine compassionate to mean "act like a racist, lazy asshole" and then you can say he's "compassionate".

Would a compassionate christian only initially pledge $15-35 million? When the cost of his coronation is going to be at least that much? When what we spend on the senseless war on a daily basis is nearly 10 times that?

Would a compassionate christian need to be shamed into into donating more?

Would a compassionate christian continue to clearing brush on his ranch while untold hundreds of thousands were drowning and suffering?

Would a compassionate christian send his brother (Can you say "Rovian photo-op for 2008"??) to the afflicted area a full week after the event instead of going himself as soon as it was physically possible?

I'm ashamed of him. I'm ashamed of all the people who supposedly voted for him. I'm ashamed of how much money is spent on the wrong things. I'm sorry world, it's not our fault. A lot of us really tried.

If you haven't already, donate what you can. (I've heard good things about Oxfam.)And to all those tourists who got there after the tsunami and are behaving like boors, Hell is readying your rooms. (And don't even get me started on the Ayn Rand Institute and the Westboro Baptist Church.)

Christmas Surprise for Donald Rumsfeld of the Week: Mechanical Ass-Wiper

Cool Flash of the Week: Make a snowflake

Bizarre Accessory of the Week: Pierced Eyeglasses

Interactive Map of the Week: Faith-based funding by state

Ewwwww of the Week: Frog eating a baby mouse

Weird Arts & Crafts of the Week: Citizen Skein

Weird Food Phenomenon of the Week: Salad Bar Hacking

Make Yourself Feel Better Site of the Week: John Cleese's website (Do the silly walk)

Funniest Read of the week: Fun with Hate Radio

Cool Tech Blog of the Week: Forever Geek

Two Tsunami-related Blogs of the Week: SEA EAT and Tsunami Tragedy Blog

Dumbest Drug conviction ever:55 Years In Prison For Selling Marijuana

Must-Read of the Week: VOTE FRAUD AND THE BANKRUPTCY OF THE UNITED STATES

End of Year Lists and Revues:

TOP TEN MOST OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENTS OF 2004

The 25 Dumbest Quotes of 2004

The top ten news stories eliciting humor in the year of our lord 2004

The 2004 Falsies Awards

Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004

Ten things we learned in 2004 about 9/11

Goodbye to 2004, another year of living stupidly

The Envelopes, Please

Ten preliminary reasons why the Bush vote does not compute, and why Congress must investigate rather than certify the Electoral College (Part One of Two)

Movie Recommendation of the Week: The Life Aquatic with Bill Murray. I can't say enough good stuff about it. It boggles the mind that the goofy guy from SNL has become such an amazing actor. And frankly, everyone else in the cast is excellent as well. Angelica Houston makes me wish I'd kept my old nose.

Election Fraud Continues

Now the media refuses to release their exit poll data. What could they be hiding I wonder...

Excerpt; The Columbus Free Press reports that the major television networks have refused to cooperate with the request by Congressman Conyers's panel for their exit poll data.

We need a senator, any senator, to step up to the plate on January 6.

Excerpt: Our last legal stand again fascism! its up to use to to push our pathetic media loving senators to stop the Ohio electors and bring the election fraud to light! After this our choices become even more limited to ousting fascism.


Call yours. They're back at work on the 4th. We don't want 2000 to happen again, do we?

Also, when you speak with them, politely remind them that there's no "crisis" with social security

Excerpt: As pretty much all the sensible articles on Social Security have made clear, to the extent that we have a problem, it is not a Social Security problem, but an accumulated national debt problem. And this isn't just a looking at one side or the other of the coin issue, but a category difference.

and that you won't vote for anyone who sides with Bush and his lame-ass privatization plans. (This Krugman article is a must-read.)

Excerpt: There is a lot of confusion in the debate over Social Security privatization, much of it deliberate. This essay discusses the meaning of the trust fund, which privatizers declare either real or fictional at their convenience; the likely rate of return on private accounts, which has been greatly overstated; and the (ir)relevance of putative reductions in far future liabilities.
Sticking it to the Blue States.

We pay a lot in taxes here in NYC. Part of the "honor" of living here I guess. But AT LEAST we've been able to deduct it from our taxes. Soon, we won't be able to.

Excerpt; As the Bush administration looks to revamp the tax code, New York officials say they are particularly worried about one idea being considered: eliminating the federal deduction for state and local taxes.
Using the Tsunami as cover.

They slipped this one in under the radar.

Excerpt: The Justice Department late yesterday published a revised and expansive definition of acts that constitute torture under domestic and international law, overtly repudiating one of the most-criticized policy memorandums of President Bush's first term.

And this decision is horrific. On Meet the Press, Colin had no defense of this interminable detention thing. Cheeeeriste!

Excerpt: A reported U.S. plan to keep some suspected terrorists imprisoned for a lifetime even if the government lacks evidence to charge them in courts was swiftly condemned on Sunday as a "bad idea" by a leading Republican senator.
This is a mind-blower.

What if the cold war was made up, just to keep us afraid and spending defense money? What if the war on terror is the same thing? It's entirely possible because the fact is that the people responsible for crafting the myth of the cold war are the same people who crafted the myth of the war on terror: They are the neocons.

Excerpt: But be forewarned: You'll never see political reality - and certainly never hear the words of the Bush or Blair administrations - the same again.

Go here to see the BBC documentary that chronicles the whole thing. I watched it the other day and you think I was pissed off before, well guess what? I'm even MORE pissed off now. (Part 2 is a corker.)

Remember, these people are totally running the show now.

Excerpt: At the same time the vice president, Dick Cheney, has imposed his authority over secretary of state designate Condoleezza Rice, in order to blackball Arnold Kanter, former under secretary of state to James Baker and partner in the Scowcroft Group, as a candidate for deputy secretary of state.
Microsoft Sux!

Chavez is such a rebel.

Excerpt; The Venezuelan president has decreed that the public administration will switch over to use open source software over the next two years


They'll save millions in microsoft licensing fees.

And here's yet another reason to switch LINUX.

Excerpt: The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are kept secret from you. Proprietary programs will use this device to control which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and what programs you can pass them to. These programs will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If you don't allow your computer to obtain the new rules periodically from the Internet, some capabilities will automatically cease to function.
Bad Idea Department

Oh, yeah. This is a good idea. This will make the government in Iraq seem so much more legitimate.

Excerpt:An even more radical step, one that a Western diplomat said had already been raised with an aide to Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is the possibility of adding some of the most popular Sunni candidates to the 275-member legislature, even if they lose to non-Sunni candidates.
Ironies of the Week

Seeing as the movie "Aviator" is such a success, revealing Howard Hughs to be the psycho that he was, this just seems so appropriate.

Excerpt:The CIA is refusing to disclose any information about abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, invoking a legal precedent that involved a secret project by billionaire Howard Hughes to recover a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine in the 1970s.

Steinbeck's hometown didn't want to pay a measly half-cent tax increase to keep their libraries open.

Excerpt:Facing record deficits, the City Council voted Dec. 14 to shut all three of Salinas' libraries, including the branches named after Steinbeck and labor leader Cesar Chavez. The blue-collar town of 150,000 could become the most populous U.S. city without a public library.
Durr Department

Gee. Big farms get the biggest water subsidies. This is a durr on so many levels.

Excerpt: A handful of large farms get most of the water and subsidy dollars delivered by the country's biggest federal water supply project, according to a study by a national environmental organization.

The media has failed us.

Excerpt: AS THE COUNTRY prepares for at least two years with the Republicans in control of both the White House and Congress, it is vitally important that the news media look at how they have failed the American people and contributed to a polarized nation.
Globilism leads to Empire

I just read this guy's book, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"and you think I was pissed off before, well guess what? I'm even MORE pissed off now.

Excerpt: John Perkins describes himself as a former economic hit man - a highly paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.
More staged terror.

All that laser hitting the cockpit stuff? Crap. Of course. Remember, neocon rule #1: keep the populace scared.

Excerpt; David Banach was showing his daughter a common laser pointer that he had purchased on the Internet, said attorney Gina Mendola Longarzo. Longarzo said she met with Banach on Saturday.
Oh, and I watched that stupid FX program on small pox last nite, just out of curiouslity. What a load of crap THAT was. Really. FX=FOX=Rupert Murdoch=Bush and his neocons, therefore BOO!
Some simple questions...

[in my tiniest voice] Um. Excuse me. Doesn't that land belong to the American People?

Excerpt: The recent deal transfers ownership of about 154 acres of Okanogan National Forest land to Crown Resources.

[in a somewhate louder tiny voice] Um. Excuse me. How can a guy who pathetically failed at his job get such a sweet pension deal?

Excerpt: Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's former chief executive, who retired last week after regulators exposed accounting errors expected to force a massive earnings restatement, stands to get an annual pension of $1.37 million, the No. 1 U.S. mortgage finance company said on Monday in a regulatory filing.

[in a loud voice] Um. But Isn't this one of the signs of the apocalypse?

Excerpt: UAE gets first ever snow fall

[in a great big booming angry voice] Why doesn't this guy risk losing his non-profit status when he uses his pulpit for politics?

Excerpt; James C. Dobson, the nation's most influential evangelical leader, is threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators "in the 'bull's-eye' " if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.
Religiocrazy

I really hate organized religion. I don't know if this is a goof or not, but it sure could be true if it wasn't.

Excerpt:The White House is reportedly exploring contingency plans in the event that President Bush and other prominent Christians are 'raptured.' But succession plans are complicated by Vice President Dick Cheney's poor health and the fact that Representative Tom DeLay, like President Bush, will be summoned to heaven along with millions of other Christians.

Back during WWII, the Pope took it upon himself to keep the Jewish children they were hiding, preferring that the children be raised christian orphans instead of Jewish family members.

Excerpt: The bitter, long-running controversy over the attitude of Pope Pius XII to the Holocaust has taken a new turn with the publication of diaries that prove he opposed the return of Jewish children to their parents after the Nazis' defeat.

And why is it religious people are always trying to tell me what's best for me?

Excerpt; Bush is interested in Allen's opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush's base. Last week, Bush's base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that "promote homosexuality". Allen does not want taxpayers' money to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle". That's why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.

Yeah. Heaven forbid we over educate ourselves.

Excerpt: "If you get a bachelor's degree," the seasoned student reassured, "you'll probably be okay. But my professor said that when you get a master's, and definitely if you go beyond that, you can lose your values. He said that college students have to be watchful because if you get too much education, you could turn-LIBERAL. He's seen it happen to a lot of good Christians."

Or, heaven forbid, we have access to emergency contraception if we've been raped.

Excerpt: The U.S. Department of Justice has issued its first medical guidelines for treating sexual assault victims — without any mention of emergency contraception, the standard precaution against pregnancy after rape.
Good at being evil.

You've got to admire the repuglicans on some level. They do know what to do with their power.

Excerpt: In the wake of back-to-back ethics slaps at the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, House Republicans are preparing to make it more difficult to initiate ethics investigations and could remove the Republican chairman who presided over the admonishments of Mr. DeLay last fall.

And they're still threatening to kill the filibuster.

Excerpt: The president's announcement last week that he plans to renominate the judge candidates followed signals from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., that he was considering a rules change that would eliminate filibusters of judicial nominees. Taken together, the actions underscore Republicans' willingness to confront Senate Democrats, who return to Washington in diminished numbers but still with enough votes to create headaches for the president.

Not to mention the replacing of a "troublesome" ethics committee member to protect DeLay's position.

Excerpt:The effort by DeLay and his allies to preserve his leadership post, even if he faces criminal charges, is one of the most sensitive issues facing Republicans as the new Congress begins. If Hefley is replaced by Smith, it is another signal by House leaders that they will stand by DeLay. "It certainly seems they're circling the wagons," said a GOP staff member who declined to be identified.
Alternate World Views

There are other theories about why the tsunami occurred. Like, could it have been man-made?

Excerpt: Now I don't claim to be an expert on seismic activity, but there has been a series of events which led up to the 9.0 earthquake of the coast of Indonesia which can not be ignored. This all could be an enormous coincidence, but one must look at the information and choose for themselves whether there is anything to it.

Or maybe it's the alignment of the planets.

Excerpt: The planetary alignment can cause many earthquakes all around the world of magnitude the modern mankind has never seen before.

Or maybe it's some weird energy thing.

Excerpt: An increasingly panicked global effort is now underway by the worlds top scientists to understand an unprecedented series of ‘blasts’, energy surges,  which the planet has been taking from as an yet unknown source which has been bombarding Antarctica with cosmic rays and disrupting Northern Hemisphere weather systems on a global scale.

Or global warming.

Excerpt: With the world's attention focused on the earthquake/tsunami that has claimed tens of thousands of lives in at least ten countries that surround the Indian Ocean, media organizations like Reuters are pinning part of the blame for the catastrophe on "global warming."

Whatever, certainly the timing of it was weird.

Excerpt: Incredible Coincidence: A massive earthquake in Asia unleashed tsunamis killing thousands, exactly one year to the hour after the Bam, Iran earthquake killed 26,000. What are the odds of two of the most destructive earthquakes in decades occurring exactly one year apart- almost to the minute!

And now, those stories from last summer where the Eastern coast of the US gets hit with a tsunami are being rehashed. Gotta' keep the populace scared.

Excerpt: In August, Unknowncountry.com published a story about the danger that an unstable volcano in the Canary Islands posed for the United States, Canada, much of the European Atlantic Coast and the Caribbean.

But, don't worry. I won't go to the HAARP place.

News of the Weird

Well, somebody has to save us from ourselves. It might as well be aliens.

Excerpt; Scientific interpretation of the monks, statements makes it evident that the Extra Terrestrial powers are watching us every step of the way. They will intervene in 2012 and save the world from self-destruction.

Ewww. These computers eat flies. Do they poop too?

Excerpt: Aircraft the size of bees that get the energy they need by feeding themselves a diet of dead flies could be buzzing around the battlefields and motorways of the future, thanks to research in southwest England.

Stupid parking ticket of the week.

Excerpt: Seriously. The city parking lot where he had found a spot has two rows of slots reserved for vehicles 6-foot-5 inches or taller, according to a sign posted in the garage. Wainwright, with his Acura, was too short to park there.

A cure for snoring?

Excerpt: The cure involves stiffening the palate to stop the vibrations that cause snoring.

I'm sure the Martians will appreciate this.

Excerpt: A new project from Nasa and three Mexican universities will grow trees on Mars.

But then again, maybe they don't need them.

Excerpt:In the image of Mars below there are many formations that look like pine trees or other similar trees to those found on Earth. They seem to be on what may be a snow covered hillside and other rocky looking outcrops.

 

 

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.