The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 1/24/2005

(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.

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Where do I begin? Did you SEE that Condi Confirmation hearing? Could they CRAWL any farther up her buttocks? I thought it was going to turn into some sort of orgy or something. They were fawning over her. The only ones that didn't were Barbara Boxer (my new hero, see the video) and John Kerry (where were you when we needed you?) She will certainly be confirmed which, I don't fully understand. She's the most incompetent person EVER. Rude Pundit says it best (with much bad language.) Well, they'll confirm Gonzales and Condi and anyone else Bush wants. No story there. Move along people.

But on top of that, and this is WAAAaaay more important, my slumlord bastard landlord catzo cretino has yet to address the leak in my bedroom ceiling. It's been over a week and the plaster has dissolved and collapsed, exposing the wooden slats and there's icky brown water dripping into strategically placed buckets on what used to be a light beige carpet. (He's SOOOoo not getting his rent money this month.) Oh, and since there was a blizzard here this weekend, I can't ride my motorcycle so I'm stuck riding the trains which suck when the the weather is good and so don't even get me started on how much they suck after a blizzard. (And yes, no matter how cold it is, it still smells like urine.)

So, how was your week?

 

Most Important Story You Won't Hear About this Week: Fired reporters challenge Fox TV license

Best Idea of the Week: Make NYC the 51st state.

Site of the Week: Cliches

Blog of the Week: I need Coffee

Food Blog of the Week: Japanese Food

Food Craft Site of the Week: Twinkie Sushi

Useful Site of the Week: 100 most mispronounced words

Howard Zinn Article of the Week: Support our troops: Bring them home

Weird Political Site of the Week: Political Graveyard

Picture of the Week: A snowball hits it's target

Must-see Video of the Week: FOX got sideswiped!

Johnny Carson: Present at the moment of conception for an entire generation. You'll be missed, dude.

WTF?

This will never pass, will it?

Excerpt: The Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which handles finances, floated the prospect of tying Social Security benefits to sex and race on Sunday during Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press.
Stupid Idiots of the Week

One week's cost of the Iraq war is all it would take to repair the Hubble. ONE WEEK. Meanwhile, letting the Hubble die is killing the science program's biggest and bestest PR machine.

Excerpt:The White House has eliminated funding for a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope from its 2006 budget request and directed NASA to focus solely on deorbiting the popular spacecraft at the end of its life, according to government and industry sources.


Stupidity knows no bounds. Here's what we'll be losing. Then again, as Micheal Rivero over at whatreallyhappened.com wrote: I don't think we should be looking for intelligent life in outer space when we are in such dire need of it here

The only good news of the week

Michael Powell resigned from the FCC.

Excerpt: U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell plans to resign after four years as chief regulator of the telecommunications and media industries, sources familiar with his decision said on Friday.

Though, I'd bet dollars to donuts that a) he takes a job with some industry he's just recently weakened regulations for and b) he gets replaced with someone worse.

Excerpt: Martin Seen as Leading Race to Succeed Powell
The short list for FCC chief also is believed to include two old Texas allies of the president.

Though, if anyone manages to create a worse environment than Powell did with regards to "decency" standards, I would consider it quite a feat. I mean, Powell's got folks so freaked that they're blurring out cartoon baby butts.

Excerpt: The latest example of TV network self-censorship because of FCC concerns came a few weeks ago during a rerun of a "Family Guy" cartoon. Fox electronically blurred a character's posterior, even though the image was seen five years ago when the episode originally aired.

(Don't even get me started on the whole Spongebob is gay thing.)

News I Already Knew

Is it any surprise that religious people are intolerant?

Excerpt: Church-going Americans have grown increasingly intolerant in the past four years of politicians making compromises on such hot issues as abortion and gay rights, according to a survey released on Saturday. At the same time, those polled said they were growing bolder about pushing their beliefs on others -- even at the risk of offending someone.

Boy howdee.

Nobody Does it Better

Cheney, a.k.a. Dr. Doom, can't help himself. There's nobody who delivers a scary message better. "Iran is the new Black"

Excerpt: Vice President Dick Cheney said on Thursday that Iran was at the top of the administration's list of world trouble spots and expressed concern that Israel "might well decide to act first" to eliminate any nuclear threat from Tehran.

(The neocons REALLY want this war with Iran.)

But he's also scaring people with regards to domestic issues.

Except: Although Mr. Cheney is most identified in the public mind with foreign policy, he has also begun assertively rebutting administration critics on domestic issues, as he did in a speech last week on Social Security, while he works behind the scenes to hold together an increasingly fractious Republican Party.

But, and this is good, Cheney is blaming the mess in Iraq on Saddam. Most excellent example of evil spin EVER.

Excerpt: Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday that he overestimated the pace of Iraq's recovery from the U.S.-led invasion because he didn't realize the lasting devastation wrought by Saddam Hussein on his people after the first Gulf War.
Bad Idea

Yeah, that's all Rumsfeld needs is more power.

Excerpt: The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Is the guy Svengali or something?

More News I Could've Predicted

Did the networks dub out protestors during the inauguration?

Excerpt: A strange sentence in a UPI report suggests that TV news networks covering the inauguration dubbed out the jeers of protesters.
Read the Rude Pundit's take on the inauguration. Priceless.
Blogs are Evil, Blogs are Bad

Blogs have been getting a lot of press lately. I covered it last week, as did Kos,

Excerpt: And for the dogooders. The very lamest position I hear taken in the blogosphere is that all bloggers should volunteer to go along with some code of ethics, like journalists supposedly do, or even sillier, slap a graphic up to announce the bloggers adherence to The Code. How politically naive. All of you in that crowd, please, go talk with the Republicans about taking that up, and I surely hope you are successful. Look, if enough people have a problem with bloggers that are able to make a dime because of their expertise, then those disclosure-freaks need to work on passing a friggin law about it. Until that occurs, the point is moot.

but now the stories on how to regulate the internet are coming out.

Excerpt: According to a survey titled "The Future of the Internet" recently released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, American's growing dependence on the Internet is making it a flashing electronic target for terrorists.

I guess the Powers that Be are feeling a little threatened.

Excerpt: The corporate decision to censor critical reporting is pushing millions of viewers off their TVs and on to their computers, which is ultimately bad for advertisers and business, and great for website owners, especially liberal website owners.

Yeah, journalism is SO much more respectable than blogging. </sarcasm>.

Excerpt: But what’s clear now – as the U.S. news media has learned to tip-toe around Bush family scandals – is the applicability of that the old adage about the rich: “The Bushes aren’t like the rest of us.”

 

That's what I'm talkin' about

Being a couch potato is not so bad for your health.

Excerpt:They argue that high-energy activities, such as pounding the treadmill at the gym, accelerates the ageing process and makes the body more susceptible to illness.

Pass the beer!

Excerpt: A study published in the Jan. 20, 2005 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found that women who have a drink of beer or wine daily have sharper minds into old age than women who abstain.
News I Would Never Have Predicted

Here's proof that Germans have a sense of humor.

Excerpt: A yearlong search to find who is responsible for sticking small American flags into piles of dog droppings in public parks in Germany has so far been fruitless.
Don Your Conspiracy Cap, Gracie...

Here comes the Bird Flu!

Excerpt: Vietnam on Thursday confirmed the sixth human death from bird flu in three weeks and neighboring Thailand recorded its first case among poultry this year as health experts expressed concern about a possible repeat of last year's devastating outbreak.

Will it pass from Human to Human? Yes! Score!

Excerpt: Worryingly, two cases now in hospital might have caught the virus from another person, not from an infected fowl. Overall, these cases also suggest that many human infections with H5N1 may not have been diagnosed, partly because tests are not reliable or widely available.

Add to that the fact that researchers have a hard time NOT creating deadly viruses in a lab

Excerpt: Senior scientific advisers to the World Health Organisation (WHO) have recommended the creation of a genetically modified version of the smallpox virus to counter any threat of a bioterrorist attack.

And the general incompetence in labs.

Excerpt: If we have "accidents" with relatively stable bacteria experimentation like Tularemia, how can we assure the world that there won't be an accidental escape of altered Smallpox, altered H5N1 or some other pathogen like Ebola? It happened with SARS on several occassions.

And we have a crazy mixture of bad and worse.

But don't let just that worry you. This guy has pointed out something that occurred to me in the deepest recesses of the paranoid area of my brain.

Excerpt: few days after firefighters found Im’s body, a national radio talk-show guest theorized the killing was part of a plot to kill off key microbiologists in the world before unleashing "the ultimate epidemic." Steve Quayle, a self-published author and newsletter writer from Bozeman, Mont., told listeners of "Coast to Coast AM" that Im was the 40th microbiologist to die under suspicious circumstances in four years and was perhaps among those specializing in vaccines and bio-weapons research.
I'll never understand them.

Who the hell are they polling? I want names, places and dates because I can't believe that there are that many stupid people out there.

Excerpt:A major new national opinion survey of 1,608 American voters released this week shows that 42 percent would support the U.S. invasion of Iran to stop its nuclear program.

Then again, remember the Judge in Alabama who wanted to keep the 10 commandments in a federal court building? Well, he's running for governor and, [gulp] he's leading in the polls. Alabama should really invest more in their schools 'cause apparently, they're kinda' dumb down there.

Excerpt: A new poll shows Roy Moore with a lead over Gov. Bob Riley in the race for the 2006 Republican gubernatorial nomination, a potential boost for the former chief justice should he decide to run for the office.

 

News of the Weird

Here's a story that will make you go "awwww."

Excerpt: A LITTLE Scots girl chucked a message in a bottle into the English Channel - and ended up marrying the 10-year-old Dutch boy who found it.

Ouch.

Excerpt: A woman in Brazil has given birth to a "giant baby" weighing 17lb (8kg) - twice the size of an average newborn.

 

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.