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The Vidiot's weekly blog: What pissed me off this week? 9/12/2005 (updated every Monday at some point during the day) ...'cause I'm angry and my friends are sick of listening to me... 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/ Welcome to my Rutgers classmates. As more of the lies the administration told with regards to their reaction -- or rather inaction -- to hurricane Katrina become public knowledge, and the more they try to defend the indefensible, the depth of this tragedy takes form. And as the real looting ensues, we must not get hung up on the belief that the reason there was so much disregard for the people was not because everyone was black, it's that they were poor. It just so happens that many of the poor are black. To cover this story as a study in racism is only covering 20% of the story. The real story is the class war that's been going on in this country, a war that has only escalated by the likes of GW Bush and his family. (And putting someone like Cheney in charge of the recovery effort is just a slap in the face.) Does anyone think for a minute that middle class people would ever be evacuated from an area, put on a plane and not told where they were going until they were on the plane? And when they got there, they're put behind barbed wire? (Is this a form of ethnic cleansing?) Instead, middle class people were smuggled out, under cover of darkness, with a military escort. And while everyone is applauding the behavior of the media, and praising how the media has finally found their gonads, let us not forget that it was their complacency and lack of gonads for the last three decades that got us into a situation where someone like Bush could even squat in the White house to begin with. And even with their new-found gonads, and their cutesy little coined term - Katrinagate - they're still carrying water for this administration... until they're busted by the blogs. (Thank heavens for the blogs.) And eventually, they'll start to behave like the slithering sycophants that practice crap journalism that we've all come to know and hate. Animation of the Week: Mark Fiore Satire of the Week: The Do-It-Yourself Emergency Management Guide! Crass Humor of the Week: Camel Toe Must-Read of the Week: Bill Moyers' Soul Freedom Another Must-Read of the Week: How Bush Blew It. List of the Week: 25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath Video of the Week: Bill Maher's 'America Must Recall George Bush Now' Assholes of the Week Yes. This week, we have plural "assholes"
And Laura Bush again
Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge
Drum roll please Here it is. The list of the 10 biggest stories the media didn't cover.
And if you read this blog regularly, you heard of all of them. Market Manipulation: not just a myth. Anyone who's been watching the stock market should be scratching their heads. Basically, it's gone up despite the hurricane Katrina aftermath, the nose dive in consumer confidence, the higher unemployment numbers, the rising numbers of bankruptcies, etc. and so forth. Well, scratch no more...
Iraq Just so you don't think that the Middle East is off the Bushies radar, think again.
And the war crimes? Just keep happening.
Let them eat chicken or beef. Meanwhile, as people were dying and starving on the gulf coast, the republicans practiced bidness as usual: fundraising.
And the DNC chairman? Called off fundraising and started helping with Katrina funds.
Still think there's no difference between dems and repubs? Oily greed. Anyone who didn't suspect this hasn't been paying attention.
And it only gets better.
Here's a photo of the proof. A lie is Codified! Well, it's official. It's OK to lie in a political ad.
Since when did free speech NOT mean truthful speech? Ummm, pardon me, but what's this?
Media & Stuff The WaPo had an article about how the Pentagon has revised its nuke strike plan.
Not only was this article released on a Sunday, a notoriously slow news day, but this Sunday was 9/11 so just about all the media was a flutter with 9/11 remembrances. The draft the article talks about is 6 months old but is only being reported now. Apparently, this article was meant to slide in under the radar. And well it should -- the ramifications of it would give any normal person nightmares. The article only briefly mentions the Bush Doctrine (and certainly doesn't call it that). The Bush Doctrine, (or rather "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America") was published in 2002 and codifies the concept of preemptive action as a matter of US foreign policy.
The WaPo article, while explaining how the nuclear weapons will be used, fails to indicate on any level how extraordinary the proposal is. Had they at least mentioned the Bush Doctrine in more depth, and discussed some of the basic political ramifications of such a doctrine, the average reader may have been able to at least grasp the seriousness of the new nuclear policy. As it stands now, the article merely says that it's about to be approved and made policy. No story here. Nothing to look at. Please move along. Go shopping at the Gap. There is no discussion of who will judge threats or how threats will be perceived. There was no mention of how threats were perceived in Iraq -- where no threat was found to exist -- and what would have happened had this policy been in place prior to the Iraq war. Had the article placed this new policy in the context of what we already are familiar with -- the lead up to the Iraq war -- the seriousness of the policy would've been more clear. Beyond that, the WaPo doesn't utilize any of what the web has to offer. Yes, they did provide a PDF link to the new nuclear policy document, but they could've added more links that could provide background for the story. Links like a link to the Bush Doctrine paper, links to whomever is mentioned in the article, links on the history of nuclear weapons -- who builds them to who has them. So much more depth could've been provided but wasn't. It's almost as if they haven't discovered what the net can do. News of the Weird I've eaten some pretty weird stuff, but this is too strange.
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 Brian Williams is telling them the truth. I sincerely believe that if we protected the voting rights of the underprivileged that any Democrat could SWEEP any election. 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.
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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: These sites are good at culling stories from a multitude of media sites: buzzflash.com
Bartcop
Ilia
Dreams Blog media-bias exposed:
onlinejournal.com
whatreallyhappened.com
more different :
and
for godsakes, stay away if you must succumb to reading a newspaper:
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