The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 5/30/2005

Memorial Day

(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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The filibuster 'deal' was something else, huh? I don't like it very much. It sure feels like the dems caved again. I mean, I was looking at the whole filibuster thing as a win/win for the dems side. If the dems had the votes, they would've bitched-slapped Frist right out of the 2008 election. If the dems didn't have the votes, they could've paraded around the talk-show circuit accusing the republicans of being a bunch of fascists. I know, some might argue that had the dems not had the votes, then a bunch of nasty conservative activist judges would get confirmed. But I'm sorry, even with this stupid agreement, Pricilla Owens got confirmed. So I ask: What the hell did the dems gain?? Color me stupid I guess but I don't think this deal will hold up. It's about as likely to float your average rock. And I doubt very much that Dobson fellow will give up so easily.

Put the filibuster thing aside, and please, let's just shove it to the side for a while because it's almost as much of a waste of breath as the Michael Jackson trial, why the hell aren't these friggin' idiots talking about the Downing Street Memo?! It's a landmine! It's the equivalent of someone standing up and yelling "Fire!" in movie theater... when there's actually a fire!

Where's the outrage? The media, as usual, is silent. No protests have been called (well, not before September anyway), no sit-ins, no starve-ins, nothing. Just a lame little petition that may or may not have any effect but will give arm-chair activists the illusion that they've actually done something. The phone boards of all major media and as well as Congress should be lit up with pissed off citizens saying "what the fuck?" That memo, (Which is actually not memo by the way. Calling it a memo marginalizes it. It's really the minutes of a meeting.) has everything in it that proves that GW wanted war from the get go! Not only that, there's even more evidence that Bush and Blair, in May of 2002 -- months before UN Resolution 1441 was passed -- doubled the rate their bombing of Iraq to try and instigate Saddam into retaliating. Read that again. I'll wait.

Are you pissed of now? Good.

For crying out loud people! Wake up! It doesn't get any worse that this. These guys lied, cheated and stole from this country. They've killed and maimed our soldiers. They've tortured and killed innocent people. They've polluted, destroyed, humiliated and angered an entire region and its population and they're lining other countries up for attack. (Who knows what else they've been up to.) They're wreaking havoc with our -- the People's -- constitution and they're still sitting on their saggy, lilly white asses, sipping cognac and laughing at the little people and for what?! Some freakin' delusional idea of American Empire!? Are they high? Is that justifiable? Our society should rule all others? Why? Are we that friggin' special? I'll tell you we're not. I'll tell you we are fat, lazy, selfish and lethargic. Are those the values we want the rest of the world to have?

Get those cretins out of our White House! (Read this week's Voice of the White House installment.)

Jeebus they've pissed me off this week.


Funny Site of the Week: I'm a Japanese school teacher.

Blog of the Week: Stories in America

Math Site of the Week: The Prime Number Shitting Bear

History Site of the Week: Old Advertisements

Link Exchange of the Week: Funny Farm

Revisited Videos of the Week: The Skateboarding Bulldog

Graduation Speech of the Week: Howard Zinn

Science Article of the Week: Cosmology 303: You Are Here

Audio of the Week: Deep Space

More Audio of the Week: GW admitting to spreading propaganda

Animal of the Week: The standing red panda

How-to of the Week: Fabricating Fingerprints

Squirrel of the Week: Sugar Bush Squirrel

Pictures of the Week: Little Urchins

Coincidence of the Week: 911 graduates in the 9/11 class at West Point.


News of the Weird

I've moved News of the Weird to the top this week because there's something really weird going on in Las Vegas. I'm not saying it's true. I'm not saying it's not a stunt. I'm not condoning, verifying or vouching for anything in this video (wmv). I'm just putting it out there in the event that, if something DOES happen, you heard it here first.

Excerpt:An ABC-TV affiliate in Las Vegas broadcast images of a UFO summoned by a self-styled "prophet" who predicts many more will be seen throughout the area next week.

Of course, if it is true, maybe this weird, glowing spot on Titan is an alien moon-base city or something.

Excerpt: The NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft has identified an unusual bright spot on Saturn's moon Titan that is mystifying scientists. The spot is approximately the size of Ireland, and is just south-east of the bright region called Xanadu.

I'll have a "reporter on the scene" next week. Actually, she's a girlfriend from high school who's taking her whole family there for a vacation. I told her that if the aliens come and offer to take her away that she has to say no, because I need her here. (Maybe she should suggest they take Bush and Cheney instead??) Anyway, she says she'll take pictures if something other than an Elvis sighting occurs.
Hero of the Week

David McSwane for catching recruiters doing bad bad things to fill their quotas.

Excerpt: When McSwane was finished, Army recruiters in Golden had been caught encouraging him to manufacture a fake high school diploma and accompanying him to a head shop to buy him a drug detox kit.

 


Pandemic Update

As if we don't have enough to worry about, seems China is hiding the number of avian flu deaths.

Excerpt:The report above would seem to indicate a news blackout of some sort was in place for Qinghai province.  The sequence of events is cause for significant concern. 

Indeed.

Also, avian flu has jumped to pigs, which, oddly (or not so oddly) enough, are more like humans.

Excerpt: Concerns over the presence of a dangerous strain of avian flu virus in Indonesia's pigs are growing, as government tests confirm the existence of infection. In some areas, the H5N1 virus could be infecting up to half of the pig population, without causing any signs of disease.

Brace yourselves, it could be a bumpy ride.

Excerpt; What needs to be stressed over and over again is that the virus is mutating (it infected birds, now it has infected humans, and it has also infected pigs in Indonesia).  It's only a matter of time before it becomes contagious between humans.

 


The Corporation is Evil

Or, in other words, a large corporation is pushing for laws that benefit its profit margins, no matter what the public wants or needs.

Excerpt: "Monsanto Laws" Sweeping the Nation Take Away Community/County Rights to Ban GMOs

Or, in other words, they SAY they don't want you to be embarrassed at the checkout counter, but they really mean is that they won't tell you when you overdraft so they can charge you a hefty fee.

Excerpt: One of Britain's leading banks is quietly altering its systems so that customers can unknowingly breach overdraft agreements, triggering penalty charges in the process, documents obtained by the Guardian show.

(They're doing it here too)

 


War Prep: China

I actually read this whole article about China as the military foe of the future

Excerpt: The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was.

And was pretty convinced that's what is going to happen next. But why? Could it be that once China withdraws its financial support, we'll need something to keep the economy going, like a huuuuuuge war? Just positing.

Excerpt: China rejected on Tuesday a detailed prescription from Washington for a quick move to a more flexible exchange rate system, beginning with a 10 per cent revaluation of the renminbi.


Canary Island Tsunami

Remember this story?

Excerpt:What will happen when the volcano on La Palma collapses? Scientists predict that it will generate a wave that will be almost inconceivably destructive, far bigger than anything ever witnessed in modern times. It will surge across the entire Atlantic in a matter of hours, engulfing the whole US east coast, sweeping away everything in its path up to 20km inland. Boston would be hit first, followed by New York, then all the way down the coast to Miami and the Caribbean.

So, guess where there was a large earthquake last week?

 


Rest Easy Middle East

Even though Bush et al are ramping up the nuclear program again

Excerpt:Under the cloak of secrecy imparted by use of military code names, the American administration has been taking a big - and dangerous - step that will lead to the transformation of the nuclear bomb into a legitimate weapon for waging war.

The Middle East has little to fear from being nuked. I mean, how stupid would that be? Nuking most of the oil, making it unusable for about, oh, I dunno, 10,000 years.

 


Watch what you eat.

Don't eat the beef.

Excerpt: A scientist and former inspector for the U.S Agriculture Department says he's willing to take a lie detector test to back his claim that his government is covering up mad cow disease.

Gee, and what do you think happened to the good doc after he said that he wanted to expose the extent of mad cow in our food? Dead.

Excerpt: A prominent physician at San Francisco General Hospital who once headed the San Francisco Medical Society was found stabbed to death inside the doorway of his Diamond Heights home Thursday, police said.

 

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.)

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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
Two Glasses
Brad DeLong
The Wonkette
Urban Survival
Greg Palast
Mark Crispin Miller


Link exchange:

Ilia Dreams Blog
Iraq War Blog
BushVote.com
Dommecile.com
Funny Farm

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.