The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 5/9/2005

(A day early this week.)

(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.

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/

I swear. If it's not one thing it's another. This update is late because I hadn't any internet access, due to the fact that Verizon hasn't updated any of their phones lines in my neighborhood since they were first installed sometime at the beginning of the LAST century. (Yes. I'm still on a dial-up at home.) So, in my book, Verizon STILL sucks.

On top of that, as mentioned in last week's rant, I have this chronic pain issue and I broke down and tried some western pharmaceutical crap. My doc said it was a benign medication. It worked great with the symptoms, but the side effects drove me to the emergency room. (Unfortunately, no Patrick Dempsey type doctors were in attendance that night.) Anxiety, shortness of breath, palpitations, increased heart rate and blood pressure. I thought I was gonna' die! Benign medication MY ASS! Granted. I'm a nervous nellie and I'm sure that I psychologically exacerbated the symptoms, but for heaven's sake, he made me feel like a complete freak for reacting the way I did. "Gee. I've never had a patient react that way to this medication. It must be something else." Well la-tee-dah asshole. I'm still feeling a little waaaa from it. I swear, if and/or when I get cancer, I'm totally doomed. For me, the treatment will be worse than the disease for sure.


Video of the Week: David Ray Griffin talking about Gov't complicity with 9/11

Must Read of the Week: "Apocalypse Soon" by Robert S. McNamara

Another Must Read of the Week: Albert Einstein, Radical: A Political Profile

Tech List of the Week: Wireless

New Search Engine of the Week: Clusty.com

Time-Waster of the Week: Fun with Rubber Bands

Another Time-Waster of the Week: The Face Book Project

Site of the Week: Hammy Hamster

Anti-Bush Site of the Week: Made You Think

Useful Site of the Week: The Official NY Rejection Line

Weird Christian Site of the Week: Charlie Chipmunk Sings the 10 Commandments

Picture of the Week: Penguins at Airport Security

Unsubstantiated Rumor of the Week: Allawi may be dead


On chip at a time.

You know. Sometimes I think that the "powers that be" are releasing the pressure in the economy one steam valve at a time. Maybe that's the right thing to do. Instead of a massive crash, there will be a bunch of little crashes, one after the other, but at a controlled rate. So, they raise the minimum payments on credit cards a bit,

Excerpt: In response to federal regulators, major U.S. credit card issuers, including Wilmington-based MBNA Corp., are raising the minimum amount cardholders must pay each month. Regulators are concerned that minimum payments are so low cardholders who pay the minimum won't ever pay off their balances.

While at the same time, allowing predatory lenders to continue practicing their evil ways.

Excerpt: The bill essentially cements into law the rights of predatory lenders who seize on financially vulnerable Americans that have less-than-perfect credit records. This is a $9-billion-a-year industry – but apparently, these sharks want to cheat hard-working people out of even more of their home equity. And the supposedly "up-from-your-bootstraps" Republicans are helping create a system that actually kicks people in the face as they are earnestly trying to climb the ladder.

so as to control the implosion. I mean, if some of the people who can't finance their debt will be able to take out loans to cover their debt, then all of the people won't go down at the same time, right?

Meanwhile, the real estate bubble is subtly popping.

Excerpt: Just think about the lies that government leaders have been caught telling over the past decade, and think again if you want to trust the current denials about the housing market. You may think that to accuse the government of lying is rather impolite. On the contrary, it is impolite to tell lies in the first place. At the very best, they're trying to ignore the issue, obfuscate the truth, whistle their way through the dark and get everyone else to do the same. But if you want the truth about the issue, you're going to have to tune out their rhetoric, look at the facts, use your brain and think for yourself.

Pssst, Eliot...

...stay away from boats and small aircraft. Insurance fraud is the bread and butter of the Bush Family Evil Empire.

Excerpt: New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, engaged in a wide-ranging probe of the insurance industry, is calling for more scrutiny of offshore subsidiaries of insurance companies.

Contrast This

On one hand, we have this fluff piece about Afghan girls participating in sports.

Excerpt:With the help of several new Kabul fitness clubs (with women-only hours) like the Khusal Khanmeena gym, Afghan girls and women are getting their first taste of sports. Girls' schools here are also introducing athletics, and the women's Olympic committee is now training some 1,500 Afghan girls to compete abroad. Last summer, for the first time in the nation's history, two women competed in the Olympics.

But the reality? Well, that's a different matter indeed.

Excerpt: It's less than a week since the tiny Afghan village community witnessed the execution of 25-year-old Bibi Amena for adultery, but by Tuesday life appeared to have returned to normal. Bibi was sentenced to death by local religious leaders in the Spingul valley in the isolated northeastern province of Badakhshan.

A better way?

Well, this is still a better way to make a decision when compared to electronic voting machines.

Excerpt: Instead, he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has been time-tested on playgrounds around the world: rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper smothers rock.

A confirmation, of sorts

Now we really know where the republicans stand with regards to government propaganda.

Excerpt:House Republicans Wednesday soundly rejected an effort by Democrats to ban the Department of Education from spending money on "covert propaganda."

Apparently, they embrace it.


Bush v. U.N.

The neocons really do want to take Kofi down.

Excerpt: Kofi Annan will be a very worried man," Fox News reported on Thursday, now that Congress has been given documents that may expose "damning information" about Annan's role in the oil-for-food scandal.

Well, if FOX news reported it, it MUST be true.


TIA ain't dead yet.

Man, this surveillance database thing is like a game of whack-a-mole. Soon as you bang one, it pops up somewhere else.

Excerpt: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this week floated an idea to start a nonprofit group that would collect information on private citizens, flag suspicious activity, and send names of suspicious people to his department.

Gee, and where might they cull some of that information?

Excerpt: Yeah, weren’t we just talking about office drones? This new bit of “production management” technology in use by Japanese company Omron aims to squeeze every last morsel of productivity from you peons. It makes use of video cameras, security systems and mandatory RFID tags carried by employees to monitor everyone’s whereabouts, analyze employee work performance, and eventually optimize employee allocation to improve product quality (why don’t they just replace everyone with robots so we can all go home, already?). Yes, worker bees, all your brain cycles are belong to Omron. Every. Last. One.

And there will always be the children.

Excerpt: For a growing number of students, the easiest way to make a couple of hundred dollars has nothing to do with chores or after-school jobs, and everything to do with informing on classmates.

There's got to to be more to the story

Honestly, I can't figure out what all the rigmarole about the new "freedom tower" is all about.

Excerpt: The reassessment forced architects to rethink elements of the structure, which could delay the 1,776-foot tower's scheduled 2009 opening by up to a year.

What? Is it some power-play between the city and Pataki involving funding for the West Side Stadium plan? That's all I can think it is.

Another thing I can't figure out is the death of Edward von Kloberg III, image guy to the reviled.

Excerpt: As part of Washington's image machinery for more than two decades, Edward von Kloberg III did his best to sanitize some of the late 20th century's most notorious dictators as they sought favors and approval from U.S. officials.

Now, if I had access to the internet, I could link to an article here where the most recent installment by the Voice of the White House guy talks about von Kloberg's death and his possible connection to Jeff Gannon/James Guckert.

{sigh}


Too big for their britches.

Honestly, what makes Wal-mart think they can diversify into banking?

Excerpt: In the face of a wave of opposition against the prospect of a Wal-Mart-backed bank, Utah's industrial bank leaders, legislators and financial regulators gathered Monday to hash over industry issues and circle the wagons

News of the Weird

Pygmies, huh?

Excerpt: INDONESIAN scientists have found a community of pygmy people in the eastern island of Flores.

Missed this convention? Well, if you're a time traveler, that shouldn't really be a problem, now should it.

Excerpt: Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT on Saturday, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

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}

 

 

Who am I?:

I am a biker chick who lives in NYC. This blog is about current events and my left-leaning, acerbic spin on those events. Nobody pays me anything to do this. Nobody tells me what to write. I will NEVER tout anything for anybody's money! EVER!


Use this instead of Google:

Clusty.com

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

buzzflash.com
unknownnews.net
rawstory.com


Here are some excellent 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
Dommecile.com

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 (and whose companies are diversified in industries that support the war machine) so all of the news is all the same CRAP.