The Vidiot's weekly blog:

What pissed me off this week? 1/16/2006

(updated every Monday at some point during the day)

...'cause I'm angry and my friends are sick of listening to me...

 

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I don't have much to comment upon this week. It's been a busy week of apartment hunting. I have a theory about Craig's list: It may have started out good, but now, the real estate listings are dismal. Most of them are in horrible neighborhoods you wouldn't want to live in. And there's a high flake-factor with the people who list. They don't call back, they give the apartment to someone and don't call to cancel the appointment they have with you. It's the weirdest thing. At the end of the day, the apartment that was decided upon was found through a girl at work. I asked her, out of the blue, if she knew of any apartments in her neighborhood, and she said, "you know, I never do, but this week, I know of two!" And there you have it. The new place is one block down the street from my favorite bar, it's a brownstone, it's sunny and the landlords are two, sweet little old Puerto Ricans who aren't grubbing for money. (That means the apartment is at least $400 less than it should be.)

I'm so relieved to be out of here that I'm barely pissed off this week!

 

Thingy of the Week: ThumbThing

Must Read of the Week: Challenging Abramoff's "Artificial Aristocracy"

Toothbrush Accessory of the Week: Violight Toothbrush Sanitizer

Monopoly sites of the Week: Alternate Rules and Make your own board

Picture of the Week: One-eyed Kitten

Um, Bush of the Week: Jenna

Me Wanny of the Week: The new Apple Powerbook

Media Lesson of the Week: Photo retouching

Cool use of Google Map of the Week: Dig a hole

Blog of the Week: Science Blog

Speech of the Week: Al Gore: US Constitution in Grave Danger

Site of the Week: Vatican Secret Archives

Scorecard of the Week: GOP Scandals

Trivia of the Week: Alcohol facts

Satire of the Week: Cheney Secretly Underwent Cardiectomy


Suicide Watch

When you see articles like this about someone who is about to spill the beans,

Excerpt:Even if Abramoff wanted to escape the suburban home where he has hunkered down, the knee surgery he underwent Thursday has hobbled him. He sits at home, friends say, speculating about which of the people who no longer return his calls are making which anonymous snipes in the newspapers...

You have to wonder if they're going to be 'suicided'. I mean, if it involves Rove

Excerpt:Did you know that Jack Abramoff and Karl Rove shared an executive assistant?
In 2001, Karl Rove needed a Gal Friday, someone to help oversee the "strategic planning, political affairs, public liaison, and intergovernmental affairs efforts of the White House."

Suiciding is a distinct possibility. I mean, remember David Kelley?

Excerpt: (In part one of this report we examined evidence ignored by the national media, both in the U.S. and U.K., that shows fairly conclusively (at least to this writer) that Dr. David Kelly did not commit suicide. *

Or how about Rosenbaum.

Excerpt: Rosenbaum's last piece for the TIMES was published on 12/24/2005, and reported that Samuel Alito had authored a 1984 memo arguing that then-President Reagan had the right to order wiretaps without warrants. Rosenbaum was mugged to death two weeks later, as Alito's confirmation hearings are about to begin?


Police State Watch

Didn't see this coming, did you? Well, I did.

Excerpt: Bush wants to create the new criminal of "disruptor" who can be jailed for the crime of "disruptive behavior." A "little-noticed provision" in the latest version of the Patriot Act will empower Secret Service to charge protesters with a new crime of "disrupting major events including political conventions and the Olympics."


NOLA

This is more like what I saw when I went to New Orleans.

Excerpt: The picture they painted of the city is sobering. Only some 100,000 people, out of a total population of 467,000, have returned to New Orleans, just a month and a half before the famous Mardi Gras celebrations. However, the national media and their corporate friends in the urban development business, will paint New Orleans during the next Mardi Gras celebration on February 28 as a city coming back from disaster. Nothing could be further from the truth.


Underreported of the Week

Did you know that they guy who took over the peacekeeping operation in Haiti was a henchman for Pinochet?

Excerpt:  Bacellar’s replacement is the controversial Chilean General Aldunate Herman.  Aldunate Herman is a 1974 School of the Americas graduate who reportedly participated directly in the attack on la Palacio de la Moneda on 11 September, 1973.(1)  He was also accused of direct involvement in the 1976 murder of a Spanish diplomat.(2)
It’s quite possible that Reginald Boulos and his networks could not have asked for a more ideal commander for a force now gearing up to "finish the job" of wiping out Haiti's mobilized popular opposition.  

And you'll not hear this on the evening news.

Excerpt: HUNDREDS of foreign Islamic fighters are gathering in Afghanistan ahead of the deployment of 4,000 British troops to the country in the spring.

And I didn't hear this on the news either.

Excerpt: The Interior Department yesterday agreed to open about 400,000 acres on Alaska's North Slope for exploratory oil drilling, an area that previously had been off limits because of concerns about the impact on wildlife.


Tin Hats?

Well this sort of gives some credibility to those folks who speculate that HAARP is really a weather war weapon.

Excerpt; The boom of thunder and crackle of lightning generally mean one thing: a storm is coming. Curiously, though, the biggest storms of all, hurricanes, are notoriously lacking in lightning. Hurricanes blow, they rain, they flood, but seldom do they crackle.
Surprise: During the record-setting hurricane season of 2005 three of the most powerful storms--Rita, Katrina, and Emily--did have lightning, lots of it. And researchers would like to know why.


Caught in another lie.

He said that 9/11 made him tape people. Turns out, that's not so true.

Excerpt:     The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

Impeach him! The public demands it.

Excerpt; By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Big surprise.


{sigh}

Yeah, what this guy said.

Excerpt: When will the Washington Press Corps report that the most powerful man in the world is too stupid to deliver 250 simple well-rehearsed words without an earpiece??????


News of the Weird

Usually, suicide is a cry for help. This guy was not crying for help.

Excerpt; Belmont resident killed himself with a homemade guillotine after lining his walls with electronic Molotov cocktails so that his house would burn down, officials said. The fire-starting devices failed to work.

Did you know you can put bunnies in a trance?

Excerpt: The easiest way to get a bunny on its back is if you pic it up with your right hand under to front legs and your left hand on the butt and they you kind of stick the bunny into the crook of your elbow as if you are cradling a baby. Once there, you use your right hand and start petting the bunnies face and you should start to see them relax and the head start to fall backwards and then they are in a trance. 

D'oh!

Excerpt: A US man who threw a mouse onto a pile of burning leaves could only watch in horror as it ran into his house and set the building ablaze.

If you eat them, will your pee glow?

Excerpt: Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that glow in the dark.

Columbus: A pirate or a gentleman?

Excerpt: Spanish scientists are to test the DNA of hundreds of Catalans with the surname Colom to determine whether Christopher Columbus, far from the Italian gentleman he has long been believed to be, was in fact a pirate born in Catalonia.

And I thought I was clumsy.

Excerpt; A 19-year-old broke his leg in two places while kicking at a spider in the NSW Southern Highlands.

 

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 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.

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

A String Theory Blog


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
counterpunch.com
thenation.com
inthesetimes.com
tompaine.com
commondreams.org
truthout.com
guerrillanews.com


a little more to the left:

wsws.org
indymedia.org


different:

whatreallyhappened.com
almartinraw.com

more different :

surfingtheapocalypse.com


really different:

goroadachi.com/etemenanki/

 

and for godsakes, stay away
from FOX,  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.