The Monster Limo Weblog

People are Weird About Taphophobia

2009-01-13T22:12:00.004-05:00

Have you ever heard of taphophobia (or taphephobia)? Neither had I until I recently saw a news story about more and more people being buried with their cell phones. Can you believe that? For those of you like me, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Taphophobia is the fear of being buried alive. Apparently this used to happen a lot in the yesteryears because doctors were pretty bad at correctly diagnosing death. Yeah. Think about that for a minute. My previous biggest fear was being burned alive by lava. Now it's being buried alive. If I'm buried alive with my cell phone, I guess I could call someone. Or I could check the Drudge Report every half hour for breaking news. On the other hand, if I really am dead, there is a good chance that not everyone will find out. I'll just have to record an out-of-office message that says, "Hey. You've reached me, but I am dead. I'll return your call on my next trip to life. Have a great day." But seriously, it seems that some people are burying their loved ones with cell phones so they can call the phone and still hear that person's voice. How comforting.

2005-07-17T09:53:00.000-04:00

The LAPD Shoots Babies, Don't They...?

The Worst State Ever. A man is on trial for beating his three-year old child to death, after an extended period of time in which he would force the toddler to box with him. Said the child's aunt, "(The father) was trying to teach him how to fight. He was concerned that the child might be gay." Of course this happened in Florida.

Performance Art Gets Great If by great you mean "now included a douchebage who inflates his forehead and calls it art." Dude, sometimes when you're the "only person in the world" who does something, it's because the 6 billion other people on the planet are too smart to do what you're doing.

A 'We're Bigger Than Jesus' For Our Times Coldplay's Chris Martin first became a major douchebag when he started writing shit on his hands for magazine shoots like little "equality" signs (take note Eddie Vedder!) and blurbs about fair trade. Then he started wearing colored tape on his fingers for various causes and at this point I expect him to make a "statement" by wearing a monochromiatic clown suit and a diaper for his next Rolling Stone cover. Anyhoo, Martin described Live8 as "the greatest thing that's ever been organized, probably, in the history of the world" so I thought it might be nice to look back at the original Live Aid concerts and see what they created: a Stalinist-style resettlement project.

Time For A New Nickname Marcus Marcus Your current one has just been taken over by a soda brand...

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism put out by The American Conservative, Why The War In Iraq Has Made Us Less Safe put out by Time, and another article I am too lazy to write a clever link to.

Davis Rees, I Love You...

-The Sikh Geek

2005-07-12T10:21:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Rove Overboard?

"You're In A Bad Spot, Here, Scott..." Yes, the administration may or may not be in trouble over revelations that Karl Rove was the source for Bob "Furry Slug" Novak's column leaking Valerie Plame's name. But whether or not Rove's leaking was illegal, let's focus on the point we as Americans can all agree on: the transcript of the press corps suddenly grilling Scot McClellan like they're actual reporters is really, really awesome.

British Police Raid 5 Homes in Leeds in Wake of London Bombings Investigators say the action is "directly connected" to the investigation of the bombings, but there are no reported arrests yet.

ETA Bombs Spanish Power Plant; No Injuries It's unclear what this means for the Basque separatist group's stance on possible talks with the Spanish government, which Prime Minister Zapatero recently approved. Either ETA is rejecting the talks outright, or is planning to enter into talks from a position of strength.

New Monaco Monarch Assures Continued Survival Of 'Prince Albert In A Can' Jokes But, in a classless move, he didn't invite his illegitimate son to his coronation. If this were 13th century Scotland, that would be cause for a regicide.

Bush Meets With Top Senators on SCOTUS Nominees But the bipartisan group of senators came away from the meeting without a list of candidates to ponder; provoking speculation that Hamlet Bush has been politically paralyzed by Plamegate.

Hillary Compares Bush to MAD Magazine Mascot I really only included this link because of the headline on the Telegraph Story: "Bush is like comic book idiot, says Mrs. Clinton."

BTK Killer's Home Sold At Auction To Strip Club Owner More of those red state values we keep hearing so much about.

Phone Headsets In Cars Not Any Safer: Study Oh, the next thing you're going to tell me is that it's not safe to drive while drunk.

Weekly Reader Editor Arrested For Soliciting Sex With Minor Over Internet I knew all those Weekly Readers I read in elementary school were somehow...unwholesome.

Major U.S. Pullout From Iraq Expected To Begin In '06 Just in time for midterm elections, as it happens.

Poll: Bush Approval Ratings Up One Percent So much for the gain in support Fox News was predicting following the London attacks.

Reserve and National Guard Troop Levels Continue To Fall From a peak of 220,000 active duty reserves in 2003, there are now 138,000, as more and more reserves meet the 24-month maximum commitment created by the Bush administration.

- Consider Arms

2005-07-07T10:28:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: War is Declared, And Battle Come Down.

7 Blasts Hit London It's not in the story, but the latest AP update confirms 33 dead. A previously unheard-of Islamic organization has claimed credit, and has threatened similar attacks in Italy and Denmark.

Egyptian Ambassador to Iraq Executed The Al Qaeda group led by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi has announced that it executed Egypt's top envoy to Iraq, who was kidnapped in Baghdad on Saturday.

Arroyo Faces Increased Pressure to Resign The president of the Philippines, enmeshed in a vote fraud scandal, is now losing key allies. Meanwhile, a national poll shows that 60 percent of Filipinos want her to resign.

NY Times Reporter Jailed by Federal Prosecutor Judith Miller, one of the MLWL's least favorite reporters, has nonetheless done the decent thing and gone to jail to protect her source, unlike the weasely Matt Cooper, who agreed to testify before a grand jury.

Conan the Budgetarian Arnold Schwarzenegger, otherwise known as Governor Embarassment, has struck a deal with Democratic leaders in the California state legislature on a $90 billion budget, representing a growth of 10 percent over last year's budget. The man who promised to "trim the fat" from government and put "Collyforneeya's" fiscal house in order has presided over his first double digit budget growth, although last year's budget increased by more than 7 percent. Additionally, the budget is unbalanced, with a $6 billion deficit between revenues and expenditures. About $4.7 billion of that will be made up with one-time gimmicks, meaning that next year there will be a $5 billion hole in the budget before the first workshop is prepared. Collyforneeya should change its state motto to "Caveat Emptor."

Iraq and Iran Sign Military Pact; U.S. Mum The former enemies, who fought for nearly a decade in the bloodiest Mideast conflict of the 20th century, have signed an agreement in which Iran will provide military training and other, unspecified services. The pact is the first sign of a closer alliance between the Shi'ite theocracy and Iraq, with its Shi'ite-dominated government. A government minister replied to questions about how the U.S. might view such a deal with a member of "the axis of evil" by saying, "Nobody can dictate to Iraq its relations with other countries."

Feds Probe California National Guard Spy Unit The federal government has launched an investigation into whether the state of Collyforneeya broke the law when it created a special unit within the National Guard to spy on U.S. citizens considered "subversive." Gov. Jingles ordered the unit to spy on a Mother's Day anti-war demonstration organized by a group of senior citizens called the Raging Grannies. Despite this, the National Guard claims it did nothing wrong in setting up the unit.

Prescription Drug Abusers in U.S. Top 15 Million The number has more than doubled since 1992, with the rate of prescription drug abuse among teenagers tripling. My God, does this mean Tom Cruise was right?

-Consider Arms

2005-07-06T13:30:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Judge Jeff Jones For Supreme Court.

Thousands March in Protest of G8 Summit Notably absent: Bono.

Bush Urges Civility in Supreme Court Vacancy Debate Because who knows more about civility than the guy who beat John McCain in South Carolina by suggesting he fathered an illegitimate non-white child, right? But seriously, Bush is more worried about the debate over the next Supreme Court nominee that will take place in his own party than he is about any petty Democratic roadblocking. If the Democrats are smart, they'll support a "moderate" candidate, like Alberto "Mr. Torture" Gonzalez. The prospect of that empty suit on the highest court in the land is unappealing, but let's face it; Bush is not going to nominate anyone who's appealing. By attacking the moderate, the Democrats essentially give the Republicans a reason to unite in his defense; by attacking the moderate, the Democrats help widen the gap between social and fiscal conservatives, weakening the party for the next round of elections. We're going to get a lousy judge out of this no matter what; we might as well try to at least sap the Republican's strength in the bargain. For more SCOTUS strategizing, click heeyah and heeyah.

Prosecutor: Plamegate Reporters Should Go To Jail Even though they didn't write stories about the leak, and even though the reporter who did write a story about it hasn't been called before the grand jury. Ahem.

Meth #1 Drug Problem For Small-town Law Enforcement A survey of sheriffs' departments around the country has found that police officers consider the skyrocketing use of methamphetamines the number one drug-related problem. In addition to the costs of incarceration and court, counties are also struggling with environmental costs of cleaning up toxic meth labs and caring for the children of meth-addicted parents. In some rural counties, as many as 8 out of 10 people in jail are there for meth-related crimes. Meanwhile, the White House reiterated this week that marijuana is still the most serious drug problem in America.

Military Extends Homeland Operations "The document acknowledges, for instance, plans to team military intelligence analysts with civilian law enforcement to identify and track suspected terrorists."

Chilean Court Strips Pinochet of Immunity You're never too old to stand trial for murder, generalissimo.

Sentencing Set For Lil Kim Careful observers of the criminal justice scene will note that Ken Lay remains at liberty.

British Foreign Minister Says Coalition Troops Will Leave Iraq If Asked Did you know that Jack Straw used to be a Trotskyite? Life is fucked up.

Vladimir Putin Denounces Robert Mugabe As a 'Dictator' In related news: Manny Ramirez characterizes Derek Jeter as a 'baseball player.'

-Consider Arms

2005-06-30T12:30:00.000-04:00

Waiting For Lil Antonin's Take On The SCOTUS Decisions...

Modern Art: Still A Steaming Pile Of Shit. "San Francisco-based American artist Jill Miller is participating in Norwich Gallery's EAST 05 international exhibition, July 2 - August 20, 2005. Although she will exhibit a performance work, she will not appear in the gallery. At least not in the flesh. Miller's durational performance-installation, "Waiting for Bigfoot," will be located in a remote Northern California forest ("Bigfoot Country"). A live video feed will be delivered to the Norwich Gallery as real-time video via satellite uplink, 24 hours a day. The artist will live at the campsite, situated in the epicenter of Bigfoot sightings, for the duration of EAST 05."

Crash Course on the Downing Street Memos

At Least The Title Wasn't "Ghost Writer Haunts President..." Bush lied about serving during Vietnam. Bush had predesignated the war against Iraq. Bush was lousy at business. Bush didn't actually fly a plane to the "Mission Accomplished" pep rally. Stop. I'm dying from the shock.

But Still I Get Shit For My Beard At EVERY Airport Security Scan "On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Despres. Then they let him into the United States." Maybe they thought he was in the Misfits...

The Worst State Ever. "EAST PALATKA, Florida (AP) -- Federal agents raided a migrant farm labor camp where homeless men and women were kept in what labor officials called a version of modern-day slavery. Four people, including the camp's owner, Ronald Evans, face federal charges in a case that officials said is likely to grow. Investigators are looking into alleged environmental violations and drugs found at the camp in Friday's raid."

Marcus Marcus Update!

Keep Your Head Up, Or Just Keep It On A six-year-old girl was drowned and then two days later decapitated by her mother in northern California. While the events are horrifying and bizarre, the article barely mentions an even more bizarre fact. The mother "was a member of a cult that worships the late rap star Tupac Shukar."

-The Sikh Geek: Tanned, Rested and Ready

2005-06-29T10:23:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Have You Forgotten?

Bush Speech Draws Mixed Response We can already see the public relations strategy for the coming months: 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, oh, and by the way, 9/11. Bush mentioned the terrorist attacks of September 2001 five times in his 28-minute speech, which was ostensibly about the need to "stay the course" in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Israeli Army Clashes With Settlers Over Gaza Pullout It's going to be a long, hot summer, folks.

Scandal-related Damage Control, Philippines-Style President Gloria Arroyo, mired in scandal since admitting to rigging an election last year, has hit upon the kind of leadership tactic that Hillary Clinton can only dream of: She is sending her husband, reeling from his own racketeering scandal, into exile.

Shi'ite Cleric Orders End to Celebratory Shootings After 3 Deaths You know all that news footage of people in the Middle East celebrating some election victory or suicide bombing by shooting their guns in the air? Did you ever wonder what happens when the bullets come down? Apparently, they kill people, as they did in Lebanon after the recent elections, hence the fatwa. In a truly awesome move, the top Shi'ite cleric in Lebanon called such displays both "annoying" and "retarded."

Redesigned Freedom Tower Unveiled, Now With 20 Percent More Freedom The new design is slightly less ridiculous than the previous one, but take heart, fans of childish gestures: the new building will still be 1,776 feet tall. About 400 feet of that will be in the form of a spire, like in the old design, but get this: In the new Freedom Tower, "The spire will emit light, to serve as a 'beacon of freedom,' according to the plans."

Poll: Majority of Californians Starting to Come to Their Senses The poll numbers continue to be grim for Gov. Embarrassment (R-Austria): Only 39 percent of Californian voters say they're inclined to accept a second term for the star of "Jingle All The Way," while 57 percent say they are not so inclined. The election is 17 months away, so let's not uncork the champagne yet, but this is fine evidence that the business of governing is turning out to be harder than the business of pretending to be a murderous robot from the future.

Connecticut Democrats Kill GOP Plan to Limit Eminent Domain First the conservatives on the Surpeme Court make the right call on the eminent domain case, and now the Republicans are blocked in their effort to limit the damage done by the majority ruling. Up is down. Night is day.

"The Indians Are Bastards Anyway" Every year around this time, the federal government releases more declassified Nixon tapes and documents. One of my favorite summer activities is reading about the bizarre inner life of Dick Nixon. Starting last year, the tapes increasingly depict Nixon as Lear and Kissinger as his fool, and this year's batch is no exception. The highlight seems to be Nixon's characterization of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. "We really slobbered over the old witch," he told Kissinger, who replied, statesmanly, "The Indians are bastards anyway."

-Consider Arms

2005-06-28T10:51:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Stop All the Downloading!

Set Your TiVos To "Stunned": Bush to Address Nation While Surrounded by Soldiers Continuing the martial theme of his tenure, the only U.S. president to dress in military uniform while in office tonight will address the nation with a "stay the course" message about the war in Iraq from Fort Bragg, NC, surrounded by members of the 82nd Airborne. Meanwhile, Bush's approval ratings have fallen to their lowest level ever, with only 41 percent of the country saying he's doing a good job.

Iraqi Deputy, 4 Others Assassinated Al Qaeda is claiming responsibility for the bomb attack that took the life of Dhari Ali al-Fayadh, the first member of the Iraqi parliament to be assassinated since the body took office.

Italy Seeks Extradition of CIA Agents in Kidnapping Trial Lots of luck.

Mugabe Says Tony Blair 'Not Man Enough' to Come to Zimbabwe Also challenges Blair to meet him at the flag pole after recess for a slap fight.

Study: Losing Weight Increases Chance of Early Death Don't lose weight. Don't gain weight. Just. Don't. Do. Anything.

Psychiatrists Blast Cruise for Anti-Psychiatry Remarks "And you haven't been in a good movie since 'Magnolia,'" they add.

Bush I and Clinton Take Boating Trip Together It's like that movie where James Garner and Gene Hackman are both ex-presidents. If I recall correctly, this is a recipe for hilarious consequences!

Majority of Americans Believe Bush 'Intentionally Misled' Public About Iraq War And yet, I remember being called a traitor for suggesting precisely this in the long-gone spring of 2003. Does this mean it's okay for the Dixie Chicks to emerge from the witness protection program?

AFL-CIO On Verge of Split Over Strategic Disagreements Related: Grange Riven by Dispute Over Wisdom of Paper Money.

-Consider Arms

2005-06-27T12:30:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Special "Stinging Dissent" Edition

Supreme Court, in 9-0 Decision, Rules that It's Not Ridiculous to Wear Robes to Work The Supreme Court decisions this term have been underwhelming. Or, if it's possible, merely whelming. The New London decision was a disaster; today's don't seem as earth-shaking. The court ruled that courthouses can't have displays of the 10 Commandments (but they can have friezes of Moses, if they're the Supreme Court), but that state capitols can. This is a decision that will please precisely no one. The court also ruled that file-sharing companies are liable for copyright infringement lawsuits, which is a decision that might have pleased King Canute. The court also ruled that Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller do not have the constitutional right not to name their sources before a grand jury, which sets up the delicious (but, in civil liberties terms, unhappy) prospect of Judith Miller going to prison.

Defeating Insurgency Could Take 12 Years, Rumsfeld Says Amidst New Iraqi Carnage Meanwhile, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East expressed frustration that his employers, the American public, are growing weary of this quagmire. "We don't need to fight this war looking over our shoulder worrying about the support back home," Gen. John Abizaid said, in response to polls showing that more than half the country now views the war as a mistake. Meanwhile, the violence has claimed the lives of more than 1,300 people since April 28, with the insurgents seemingly striking at will.

U.S. To Resume Production of Plutonium, First Time Since Cold War But when Iran does it, it's a matter of international concern.

California National Guard Identifies Your Mother As Terrorist Threat A special intelligence unit set up within the California National Guard to spy on citizens it believes could constitute a "terrorist threat" recently was exposed for spying on an anti-war Mother's Day celebration (Mother's Day, incidentally, was originally an anti-war holiday) sponsored by veterans' families and a group called the "Raging Grannies." Although this doesn't exactly strike fear into the depths of my soul, Lt. Stan Zezotarski told the San Jose Mercury News not to be fooled by the outward appearance of these deadly grandmothers: "Who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up? After all, we live in the age of terrorism, so who knows?" Indeed, leaked government reports indicate that there might already be grandmothers afoot in the Muslim world.

U.S. Military Confirms Talks With Iraqi Insurgents Whatever happened to the bankrupt, Ba'athist dead-enders who were on their last legs and feared democracy? Hmm, we must have killed all of them, because these insurgents are merely "representatives of the Sunni community" who seek "an active voice in the national dialogue." And instead of letters to the editor or petitions, they tend to use car bombs.

Life Can Be Tough For the Hitlers of Circleville, Ohio I say, good for them. Seriously: Why let one evil dictator screw up a perfectly good name for everybody else?

Veterans' Healthcare Budget Comes Up $1 Billion Short But the good news is, there's plenty of money for Hummer-related tax breaks!

GOP Senator Hagel: We're Losing the War in Iraq Nonsense. We won the war; it's the police action we're losing.

Cheney Says He Knows Where Bin Laden Is, But 'Weak Links' Forestall Capture "In the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links," Vice President Destro said, ominously. "And I find that until we strengthen all the links, we're probably not going to be able to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice." Wait. Since when is he "Mr." Bin Laden? At any rate, if Destro knows where the Evil One is, maybe he can fill in Pervez Musharraf, who says he has "no idea" where Bin Laden is. After all, it's been, like, two weeks since the two of them last played squash together.

Billy Graham: Let Hillary Run the Country Hey, the Republicans got five Supreme Court justices to decide who runs the country; why not Billy Graham?

Schwarzenegger Seeks Truce With Democrats You certainly terminated them, all right, Governor National Shame.

- Consider Arms

2005-06-16T14:26:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: I'm Starting With the Man in the Mirror.

EU Ponders Putting Constitution on Hold Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

Bush Criticizes Iranian Presidential Election Not enough disenfranchised black voters.

Five Marines Killed In Iraq Blast Since the elections, you see, everything there has been much calmer and more stable.

U.S. Ambassador: Osama Not in Afghanistan U.S. Public: Who's Osama again?

House of Representatives in 'Good Decision' Shocker The House voted to repeal the section of the ludicrously named USA PATRIOT Act that allows the FBI to examine library and bookstore records. However, President Bush is vowing to use his veto (FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER) if it passes the Senate. That's right; the guy has been president since January 2001, and he hasn't vetoed a single piece of legislation. What are we paying him for, again?

Democrats Use Downing Street Memo to Question Pre-War Actions of Administration And on the subject of the Downing Street Memo: it's sad when even the Monster Limo Weblog gets to a story before the Associated Press.

Jingle All the Way Back to Austria, You Steroidal Cretin Despite the fact that a tax hike is not on the ballot for this year's special election in California, Schwarzenegger continues to ignore the actual ballot initiatives, instead insisting that Democrats are trying to raise taxes. Recall, people: you did it once, you can do it again.

PBS Takes Steps to Shed Liberal Image Because in the United States in 2005, the way to achieve balance is to become conservative. Think about that, folks.

GM Warns Unions of Health Cuts GM plans to unilaterally reduce the healthcare benefits of United Auto Workers retirees, in addition to laying off 25,000 workers, unless the union agrees to concessions. Strike.

-Consider Arms

2005-06-14T09:22:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Another Case of Preferential Treatment for a White Celebrity.

Now I can confidently purchase "Invincible" without feeling like a pervert.

Best Deep Throat Revelation Ever "According to originally confidential FBI documents — some written by Felt — that were obtained by The Nation from the FBI’s archives, Felt played another heretofore unknown part in the Watergate tale: He was, at heated moments during the scandal, in charge of finding the source of Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate scoops. In a twist worthy of le Carré, Deep Throat was assigned the mission of unearthing — and stopping — Deep Throat."

20 Dead in Suicide Bombing in Northern Iraqi City of Kirkuk Meanwhile, a suicide bomber in Baghdad killed five police officers, and the police station in Kenaan was destroyed after a mortar attack.

Better Late Than Never The state of Mississippi is putting an 80-year-old Klansman on trial for the murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner during the "Freedom Summer" of 1964. Bonus: the story is written by Emily Wagster Pettus, which is maybe the best reporter name ever.

Lawyer for CIA Terror Suspect Wants Trial Moved to Miami Say, do you think the guy accused of blowing up a Cuban airliner might get a sympathetic hearing in Miami?

U.S. Soldier Who Defected to North Korea in 1965 Prepares for First U.S. Visit in 40 Years "I'm a fucking retard," he confesses.

Flaws Discovered in Terror Watch List Among the major problems: 32,000 suspects classified as "armed and dangerous" are also given the lowest-level security rating, requiring no action by law enforcement. Oops!

-Consider Arms

2005-06-05T10:44:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: It'll take more than an ozone douche to keep the Sikh Geek out of the game.

Sadly, No One Is Able To Change His Name Back From "The Asshole Who Treid To Rename Fucking French Fries" The most ball-shattering act of jingoism in the lead-up to the Iraqi War was the attempt to rename "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries." (Long time MLWL viewers should recall our early article and MC No Shame's stunning graphic.) France didn't attack us and we weren't at war with the Gauls; we were just THAT pissed off at their refusal to support or unilateral, unprovoked, illegal war based on obviously false information. Now it seems that the public servant who led the charge (with, in his own words, "God's hand") against freedom-hating potato products has changed his mind and is now a vocal opponent against the war. Says Republican Walter Jones, "I wish it had never happened." Neither do we, douchebag.

STILL Pissed Off That He Didn't Get That Shiny Red Bike... An artist in Glasgow is getting heat for a 200 square foot billboard he designed that carries such slogans as "Stop Lying to Your Children About Santa Claus." The "artist" laments, "If you try and tell kids the truth about how they're being manipulated, you're the bad guy crushing their dreams." Well, yeah... Best line of the article? "Cullen's portfolio also includes a drawing of Santa saying 'I killed Jesus.'"

Because It's Either Al-Qaeda or The A.L.F. That Will Deliver The Next Terror Attack Remember when the Patriot Act was first being pitched and Americans were told that it would only be used to fight terrorists and not abused by fighting more minor, domestic crimes? Me neither.

None Dare Call It Monopoly, Or Really Sucky FM Radio A Clear Channel sponsored anti-Clear Channel station goes up against a real Clear Channel station to ultimately get more listeners to any of the Clear Channel stations. I think.

Why it's a surveillance camera in the George Orwell Plaza!

-The Sikh Geek

2005-05-27T08:20:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Abortions For Some, Miniature American Flags For Others.

If Knives Are Outlawed, Only 1950s Teen Delinquents Will Have Knives British lawmakers are considering heeding a call from a nationwide physicians' lobby to ban kitchen knives, which doctors say are used in half the stabbings in the country. To think, this wussiest of countries once conquered half the known world.

Movie Execs Fear Shrinking Attendance Could Be Permanent God, please let it be so.

Pentagon Confirms Koran 'Mishandling' Okay, so is Newsweek going to retract their retraction? Also, I'm still waiting for the FBI or the Pentagon to deny a single torture allegation. Anyone? Gentlemen?

Ohio GOP Fundraiser 'Lost' $12 Million in Public Investment Funds Invested in rare coins, no less. The people of Ohio are frankly lucky that the state pension plan wasn't sunk into magic beans.

Schwarzenegger Blasted For 'Product Placement' in Political Ads Some of the California governor's education ads have prominently featured Pepsi products; Pepsi is a major contributor to Schwarzenegger, and also one of the companies that would be affected if the governor ever made good on his threat to get junk food out of schools. Surprised, California? Well, you shouldn't be, because YOU ELECTED A MAN WHOSE PREVIOUS JOB WAS PRETENDING TO BE A MURDEROUS ROBOT FROM THE FUTURE.

France Set to Vote 'Non' This Weekend If French voters reject the new EU constitution, it could spell the end of Jacques Chirac's unpopular government and weaken the country's position in Europe.

Satirical Bush Posters Torn Down in California High School Posters promoting a school play that featured a caricature of the president with a Groucho Marx-style mustache and cigar were taken down after a single student complained. Officially, the school says the posters were removed because they "promoted smoking."

Americans Are Either Cynical or Retarded: Poll A USA Today/Gallup/CNN poll this week showed that George Bush's approval ratings, at around 46 percent, are the lowest since his "election" in 2000. Moreover, huge majorities disapprove of his positions on Iraq, the economy, Social Security, and foreign affairs. And yet fully 52 percent of the public thinks Bush "has the personality and leadership qualities a president should have." Either Americans are retards, or they are cynical to a extent no one has previously imagined.

-Consider Arms, Who Is Soon to Be Decamping from the Blue States to the Red States for a Much-Needed Vacation

2005-05-26T09:05:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Please Stop Flushing Books Down The Toilet.

Washington Post: Koran-Flushing May Have Happened After All The best part about this whole story is that no one denies that FBI agents tortured prisoners; the big question is whether they got a book wet.

Baghdad to be 'Locked Down' as Conflicting Reports Emerge on Fate of Zarqawi 40,000 troops will soon participate in a massive sweep through Iraq's capital, looking for weapons and insurgents. Light at the end of the tunnel? Turning the corner? A dwindling band of Baathist dead-enders? Etc.?

France Looks Set to Reject New EU Constitution Not enough gypsy-bashing.

Saudi Poet Jailed After Calling For Elections But in Iraq, he'd be a heroic advocate of freedom! Too bad he's a native of our ally, Saudi Arabia, where he's just a criminal.

Dems Ponder 'Compromise' On Social Security Dismantling We'll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory if it's the last thing we do.

From Red to Even Redder The Wall Street Journal has an interesting graphic showing what current census projections could mean for electoral politics. Based on census data, states which voted Bush in 2004 (Red states) are going to keep growing, while population in Blue states will decline. In 2004, the Red states accounted for 286 electoral votes. By 2032, those same states will have a total of 303 electoral votes. In the meantime, the Blue states were 252 electoral votes in 2004, and by 2032 that number will shrink to 235. This is obviously not to say that every state will continue to vote the way it did in 2004; but by 2032, the Republicans could lose Ohio, New Mexico, and Iowa and still win the White House. Start breeding, Democrats.

Avert Your Eyes: Non-Catholics in Child-Abuse Scandal According to New Orleans police and the FBI, the Hosanna Church was a front for a Satanic cult that included a pastor and a police officer, which abused dozens of children. The FBI has recovered photos and videotapes of Satanic rituals being performed that also involve child abuse. Phew - I'm glad all that "Satanic cult" stuff in the 1980s was only make-believe!

-Consider Arms

2005-05-24T10:26:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Saint Barbara, Don't Let Me Explode.

Filibuster 'Saved' in Bipartisan Deal But in order for the Republicans not to eliminate the filibuster, Democrats have to promise not to use it. Let's all just admit we were wrong and go back to a hereditary monarchy.

Anti-Syrian Lebanese Opposition Splits Along Religious Lines That didn't take long.

Socialist/Green Coalition Collapsing As Germany Faces Early Elections On the bright side, those elections might result in us getting to use the phrase "Chancellor Merkel."

Good Taste Continues to Threaten American Industry Despite the new Star Wars movie's record-setting weekend, overall box office receipts were still down from this time last year, for the 13th straight week.

13 American Soldiers, 49 Iraqis Killed in Bomb Blasts Light at the end of the tunnel, turning the corner, insurgents on the ropes, last gasp of Baathist dead-enders, progress, democracy, etc. etc.

Penn. Man Accused of Trying to Sell Bomb to Al Qaeda Um, don't they have their own?

Texas School Apologizes to Honors Student Identified Only as "Black Girl" in Yearbook Identification was not "meant to be malicious," says White Lawyer.

Medicaid Paying for Sex Offenders' Viagra: Audit I sense an endorsement deal...

Stop Drinking Coke You should stop anyway, but definitely don't drink any Coke products while the company's workers in California and Connecticut are on strike. Yes, Sikh Geek, this includes Sprite: Remix.

- Consider Arms

2005-05-11T09:41:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Warning - May Blow Your Mind, Dude.

William Saletan on the Kansas Evolution Controversy "It's too bad liberals and scientists don't welcome this test. It's too bad they go around sneering, as censors of science often have, that the new theory is too radical, offensive, or embarrassing to be taken seriously. It's too bad they think good science consists of believing the right things."

Suicide Bombs Kill More Than 60 in Iraq; Bloodiest Day Since February Corner: turned. Light: at end of tunnel. Momentum: forward.

Judge Allows United to Default on Workers' Pension Guess who's going to have to pay for that pension fund? The taxpayers - and the workers are only going to get half of what they're owed. Another success for the magic of the free market!

NY Times Tries to Shed 'Liberal' Image Okay: done. What's step two?

4 Dead in Anti-American Protest in Afghanistan The protest was sparked by a Newsweek story about how American interrogators in Afghanistan have been desecrating the Koran. Hearts and minds, baby, hearts and minds.

Right-wing Airplane-bombing Terrorist Was Also CIA Agent Shocker.

'No Motive' in California Mass Murder/Suicide Whatever happened to "crazy"?

Bush-loving Baptist Pastor Resigns Amid Purge Scandal The Rev. Chan Chandler of the East Waynesville Baptist Church in North Carolina has resigned in the wake of allegations that he booted nine members of his church for voting for John Kerry. Apparently, most of the young members of the church, who had been brought in by Chandler, left with him.

$82 Billion Spending War-related Spending Bill Heads to Bush That's $300 billion on war and terrorism since 2001. Meanwhile, how's your health plan?

-Consider Arms

2005-05-10T09:31:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: Nucular War.

World Exclusive: Elaine from Seinfeld Has Opinion Hey, everybody, it's Arianna Huffington's new "group blog" - featuring brilliant sentiments from noted thinkers like Danielle Crittenden, Larry Gelbart, Bill Maher, and Rob Reiner (an unintentionally hilarious piece called "Where Have You Gone Woodward & Bernstein?" that plumbs new depts in celebrity pseudo-solemnity). Wow, what a great addition to the marketplace of ideas. Was there really anyone in the world who thought, "What we need is another self-absorbed, semi-amusing 'riff' from Larry David"?

Hollywood Panics as Good Taste Runs Amok With two dud "blockbusters" in a row ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to Sci-Fi Shit I Didn't Care About Even When I Was 12" and "Swords!" or whatever with the elf from the hobbit movies), Hollywood is looking at its biggest slump in at least five years. Keep it up America; stop going to movies!

A Tale of Two Headlines: Bush Says Georgia Is an Example of Freedom to the World from today's Voice of America, and Georgia: Torture Still Goes Unpunished from an April 13 report by Human Rights Watch. Hey, they could still be an example of freedom to the world; a bad example, but an example nonetheless.

North Korea: U.S. Should Stop "Fussing" Over Possible Nuclear Weapons Test Reports that Kim Jong Il also urged America to stop "a-cussin' and a-feudin'," and to instead begin "a-huggin' and a-lovin'," could not be confirmed at press time.

U.S. 'Playing With Fire' On Drive to Revalue Yuan Maybe we shouldn't piss off the people who own $196.5 billion worth of Treasury securities, keeping interest rates artificially low. Because low interest rates and exuberant consumer spending aren't keeping the economy afloat or anything.

- Consider Arms

2005-05-06T10:11:00.000-04:00

TODAY'S TOP NEWS: In Which The British People Reward Failure and Deception.

Jolly Good Show, Captain Fuck Up! Tony Blair has pulled off the unprecedented feat of steering the Labour Party to three successive electoral victories (in British history, only the dread Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives managed the same). This means, old boy, that the British people have given the thumbs-up to lying in order to embark on an illegal imperialist war. Old habits die hard, old chap! But this was no coronation: Labour's majority is down from 161 seats to about 60; they won 36 percent of the vote to the Tories' 33 percent, and the Liberal Democrats' 22 percent. In other words, 64 percent of the British people voted against Labour. But in the kooky, spooky, mysterious and ooky British electoral system, that still translates into an absolute majority in Parliament. And you thought the American electoral system was fucked up!

GOP Congressman Admits: We Went to War for Oil Then why the fuck am I paying $2.29 a gallon for regular gas? This administration is so incompetent that it can't even exploit other countries correctly!

Secret Blair Memo Admits: We Went to War Because We Fucking Felt Like It Oh, the UK is all in a tizzy because a secret memo from Blair's cabinet was leaked showing the war in Iraq was decided on in July 2002. Big deal. Two weeks ago, I saw a guy from Centcom tell an audience at UConn, proudly, that they started planning the invasion in January 2002. You limeys were late to the ballgame!

Insurgent Attacks Kill 33 in Iraq Corner turned, light at end of tunnel, tremendous improvement, etc. etc.

Al Qaeda's Number Three Man Caught! Bin Laden Sure to Follow! Unless you talk to the CIA, the Pakistani secret service, and indepedent scholars, who say this guy wasn't #3, that Bin Laden is no closer to being captured, and that there is no - repeat, THERE IS NOT - a tooth fairy. Spoilsports.

Kerry: Supporting Gay Marriage a Mistake for Dems And if any Democrat knows about making political mistakes...

Venezuela Demands Extradition of Terrorist Suspect from U.S. I believe you mean "freedom fighter," not "terrorist," you Communist wetback.

-Consider Arms

2005-05-02T10:50:00.000-04:00

Today's Top News: Even Laura Bush Mocks Her Husband's Pronunciation of "Nuclear."

Blair Wants Billions to Build New Nuke Weapons There's an arms race with Wales, you see.

Speaking of Nukes: US Military Wants to Give Regional Commanders Authority to Carry Out 'Preemptive' Nuclear Strikes Doesn't the Cold War, with its lower risk of nuclear weapons use, actually seem kind of quaint nowadays?

At Least 30 Killed in Bombing at Kurd Pol's Funeral About 130 people have been killed in insurgent attacks in the last four days.

Ohio GOP Treasurer Investigated for Investing $50 Million in Public Funds in Rare Coins; Now Hundreds of the Coins Are Missing Insert your own "penny ante" joke here.

US Grants $500 Million Annually to Torture-prone Uzbekistan But the key here is that they're torturing the right people.

-Consider Arms

2005-04-29T11:04:00.000-04:00

Today's Top News: Now Safe for Nerds.

Thatcher, frustrated at failure of Conservative Party, leaves Britain as election nears Back to Mordor, it seems.

Speaking of permanent minority parties... "Give 'em Heck" Harry Reid says it will take "a miracle" for the Democrats to recapture the Senate. That's the spirit!

Schwarzenegger praises vigilante "Minuteman" border patrols; says group has been effective in halting illegal border crossings Irony is apparently not a strong point for the man from Austria. Nor, after this, will be his popularity among Mexican voters in California.

Iraq car bombs kill at least 23, wound at least 80 At least four others killed in Baghdad mayhem today.

Munch masterpieces likely incinerated by thieves Wait, what was the point of this robbery, again?

Iraqi Vice President says Sunnis may withdraw from government First, though, they'll have to actually join the government.

Islamist Web site reports Bin Laden dead, then alive Let's compromise: He's undead, like Dracula.

Interesting read: How evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news Or, as Jose Ortega y Gasset said, revolution is not the overthrow of the existing order, but the establishment of a contrary order.

-Consider Arms

2005-04-28T10:35:00.000-04:00

Today's Top News: The Filibuster Is Over! We're Back!

Security: Seize These Impudent Peasants! Things continue to look bad for Rep. Tom "The Bug Man" DeLay, R-Tex. Last night, the House voted to repeal new ethics rules it had adopted earlier this year specifically to protect the ethics-averse majority leader from facing prosecution for any acts committed while in office. DeLay, while stalking off in anger, told reporters looking for a quote, "You guys better get out of my way! Where's my security?"

Bigfoot Emerges to Defend Social Security Liquidation The press-shy President George W. Bush is planning his first press conference of the year for tonight at 8:30 p.m., specifically to focus on his plan to eliminate Social Security, a plan that has led to record-low approval ratings for the embattled chief exec. Also likely to come up: the top U.S. general in Iraq announcing this week that the insurgency remains undiminished in its capacity to wreak havoc, and has even gained ground.

Read the Secret Service's files on ace reporter/gay prostitute/softball player Jeff Gannon/J.D. Guckert. Nothing sexy, sadly, but a lot of interesting factoids like: Gannon would frequently be checked into the White House on days when no press events were scheduled.

Iraqi PM picks new cabinet; Sunnis slighted, but an old familiar face. Embezzler, Iranian spy, and longtime MLWL favorite, Ahmad "The Man of Cats" Chalabi is the new Iraqi Minister of Oil! Shut out: former interim PM Iyad Allawi's Sunni party, which got none of 37 Cabinet posts.

State Department releases new statisics on world terrorism: every indicator has increased. The number of attacks went from 175 in 2003 to 675 in 2004, and the number of people killed went from 651 to 1,907. Keep in mind that these numbers don't include insurgent activity in Iraq. Don't worry though, because "senior officials said the threefold increase was a result of changes in methodology and urged reporters at a hastily called briefing not to compare this year's terrorism numbers with previous ones."

Schwarzenegger approval ratings fall below Gray Davis' Quick! Recite another inane catchphrase from one of your stupid movies!

Motley Crue offers $10K reward for missing fan. What budget cuts hath wrought: We're now outsourcing police jobs to over-the-hill hair metal bands.

- Consider Arms

2005-03-29T10:04:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Kerry in '08! Come on! Who's With Me?

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss While you were busy filling glass bottles with gasoline for your Terri Schiavo-related riot, there was a revolution in Kyrgyzstan. U.S. press coverage seems to link this revolution to the similarly bloodless affairs in Ukraine and Georgia, but there's a key difference: the Kyrgyz rebels are former Communist insiders, and the regime they toppled is that of a liberal, Western-style reformer.

Wrong Man, Right Mustache A letter signed by 59 former diplomats has been delivered to Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The signatories, including diplomats from every administration from Nixon to Clinton, urge Lugar to oppose the nomination of ivory-'stached neocon John Bolton to the post of ambassador to the UN. Personally, I think the idea of appointing a man who has vowed to destroy the UN to serve on its Security Council is one of President Bush's rare Dadaist touches.

Property: No Longer Theft We've all had a good chortle about the crass consumerism of Christian stores like Not Of This World, but what about the runaway shopaholism of those consummate state-smashers, the anarchists? At this year's annual Anarchist Book Fair in San Francisco, the intellectual descendants of Emma Goldman and Buenaventura Durutti came together to express their opposition to all forms of hierarchy by purchasing books, CDs, and t-shirts that say "Fuck Your Fascist Beauty Standards." As Joey Cain, the organizer of the book fair, puts it anarchistically: "A Bush election is very good for anarchist consumerism." You see? The president is getting the economy back on its feet.

The Triumphant Return of "Jeff Gannon," Ace Reporter! "Jeff Gannon," known to his parents and gay softball teammates as J.D. Guckert, has been invited to appear as a member of a National Press Club panel on issues involving blogging and journalism. "Jeff" is remarkably well-qualified to discuss this issue, since he posted GOP press releases on a blog called Talon News and was given a White House press pass in exchange. The fact that "Jeff" is not technically a journalist (and has, technically, been a male escort) does not seem to deter the National Press Club. The panel will also include phony reporter Ana Marie Cox of "Wonkette" fame, making this the first time in history that Cox will be in a room full of reporters and not be the least qualified person there.

Standing On the Shoulders of Giants The problem with the Left - liberals, progressives, populists, anarchists, what have you - is that it's no fun. The Left contains many well-meaning people (and many not-so-well-meaning people), but when it comes to cutting loose, you might as well be at a Young Americans For Freedom mixer in Indiana, circa 1963. The Left has far too many sacred cows to be effective at undermining the rapacious Bush administration and its allies, whose only sacred cow is Capital. Follow the above link for proof of this: A selection of Lefty writers desecrating the great work of Ambrose Bierce, one of America's most vile, embittered, and magnificent journalists. The well-meaning Lefties attempt a rewrite of Bierce's famous "Devil's Dictionary," in which he spelled out the nihilist worldview in a way so witty and charming that even the people he attacks (that is, everybody) can't help but laugh along with him. Bierce had no friends or allies, and spares no one from his disdain: He not only goes after religion and politics, he goes after basic human relationships, as when, for example, he defines the word "Befriend" as "To make an ingrate." Bierce vanished in Mexico before World War I, and his masterpiece has long been in the public domain; indulge your wicked sense of cynicism here. But his successors have done a poor job matching the man's bile, because they only direct it at one source: Bierce recognized that all politicians and parties are equally contemptible, an insight the Left can't stomach (Bierce's definition of "Radicalism": "The conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today"). Here's Arlie Hochschild, by contrast, breaking out the satire: "Environmental Protection Agency: Economic Predators Inc." Nurse - please! My sides are splitting! Or, how about Tom Engelhardt defining "Patriotism": "How Americans love their country. A trait so positive you can't have too much of it, and if you do, then you are a super-patriot which couldn't be better." A cutting insight, there, Tom. But contrast that with Bierce's definition of the same word: "Combustible rubbish read to the torch of anyone ambitious enough to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first." The lesson: real satire has no friends, not even Naomi Klein.

-Consider Arms

2005-03-29T10:01:00.000-05:00

2005-03-28T10:34:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP ONE: Captain EO Is Innocent

In Slate today, there's a little notice about BJ, the "pudgy superfan" at the Michael Jackson trial who stands outside on a ladder and yells that Sony is behind the accusations against Jackson. I realize there are more important things to think about, but for the love of God I can't tear myself away from the Jackson trial coverage. It is simply the best courtroom circus of all time. From the article:

7:35 a.m.: BJ the pudgy superfan is here in front of the courthouse again, standing on his ladder and yelling. He waves around a DVD copy of Captain EO as he chants, "We love Captain EO! Captain EO is innocent!"

BJ's become a real fixture here. Everybody knows his name. And his story: He moved here from Tennessee during jury selection just so he could hang around the trial and offer his undying support to Michael. Sadly, yesterday—during one of the breaks—BJ got kicked out of the courthouse.

Easily the most astonishing thing about this passage is that Captain EO is out on DVD. How did that happen?

2005-03-23T11:50:00.000-05:00

Are You Sure You Want To Side With The Likes Of Randell Terry?

[note: I assume this was posted by the SG, even though it is unsigned]

"The Left's gleeful, pro-death stance"? "Willful pursuit of a woman's death by starvation"? If Jeb Bush takes the crown in '08 it's because of statements like these. That's because the Right has mastered the technique of marshalling outrage over cultural and "moral" issues, to generate votes, while advancing policies that undermine every aspect of our lives, including how we end them. When you take away the ex post facto maneuvering of Congress, the subversion of the judicial system, and the political opportunism (this may be planet earth, but it still doesn't make it right), you know what you're left with? You're left with the legal guardian of an incurable woman attempting to carry out her wishes, which have been affirmed by 19 judges and whose ethical basis is agreed upon by the majority of Americans. So let's take this point-by-point:

1. She's not terminal, but she stated that she would not want to be kept alive by artificial means, and courts from the state to federal level consistently reaffirm this.

2. The state of Florida expanded their definition of life support in 1999 to include feeding tubes. Note that this link came from the Schiavo's own web site, so even they define a feeding tube as "life support."

3. "If we assume that those who advocate her death are correct, Schiavo is completely unaware of her situation and is thus incapable of suffering physically or emotionally." So does that mean we should force her to live via life support means?

4. Conservative talking points will get you no where. No court has found any evidence that due process was denied, that's why no court will overturn the earlier ruling.

5. Actually, that's the problem. Schiavo is being treated differently by conservatives in Congress who are coming dangerously close to creating bills of attainder, this is, legislation directed at a single individual. Again, 19 judges have upheld Terri's wish not to be kept on life support as advocated by her legal guardian, her husband.

6. Saying that the call for states rights in this case makes it analogous with segregation is absurd. Why do you think SCOTUS refused to hear this case? Again, because no constitutional rights were violated. What Congress is attempting to do is circumvent the state judicial system. Are you advocating that?

7. It's a tactic to obstruct the outcome of this case in an effort to pander to the Right, nothing more.

As this excellent opinion piece in Salon points out, this is bigger than the "haters", the "God-bashers". It's about whether we allow the emotional intensity of a single case to override, and ultimately erode, our objectivity as codified in our legal system. And when Schiavo finally does expire, the Right will most certainly be there to sanctimoniously proclaim their righteous indignation and chide the Left for it's ghoulishness. Despite the will of our laws and despite will of most Americans.

--MC No Shame

2005-03-23T09:23:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP ONE: Why Not? Another Terri Schiavo Post.

Yesterday, I spoke with a friend of mine in Nicaragua, who's working for a left wing newspaper and hanging out with old Sandinistas. A real Bush-supporter, in other words. He was asking if the American media was giving any play to a story about the U.S. stationing missiles in Nicaragua. Not really, I said. It's all Terri Schiavo and Michael Jackson up here. "Terri Schiavo?" my friend asked. "Isn't that the woman the liberals up there want to kill?"

Word to that. As much as it pains me to be on the same side of any issue as Tom DeLay and the Bush brothers, I've been completely alienated by the Left's gleeful pro-death stance on Terri Schiavo. I'm not arguing about which neurologist says she's in a permanent vegetative state and which doesn't; I'm talking about the willful pursuit of a woman's death by starvation. When you clear away all the talk about culture of life, judicial oversight, Republican cynicism, and congressional intervention, that's what we're talking about: whether a woman starves to death or not.

Serious subject, but the seventh graders who make up the American Left can't bring themselves to address it with any kind of solemnity. Here's popular Lefty blogger The Rude Pundit, whose screed was approvingly linked by Buzzflash:

As the Rude Pundit said last week, she must die, for her sake, for the sake of her family, and to demonstrate that God, Jesus, Allah, whoever, doesn't want her to live. (There you go, stupid fuckers praying outside the hospice, traveling from all over the country to screech and murmur to a negligent deity: if "God" wants her to live so fuckin' badly, why doesn't "He" heal her?)...Now we know why the enemy so absurdly "protects" the "rights" of those "who have no voice": the brain-damaged, the fetuses: because those can't tell the enemy that they're just fucking wrong....Correction: Last week, the Rude Pundit referred to Terri Schiavo's brain as a "rock." More properly, it should be called a "puddle" or a "soup."

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2005/03/quorum-of-savages-notes-from-debate-of.html

For the first time ever, I'm glad that George W. Bush is president, because it means assholes like this will be impotently frustrated for at least another three and a half years. The inability to show compassion is an ugly deficiency; since it's so common to the Left these days (the Rude Pundit is by no means an unrepresentative sample), it's almost guaranteed that nauseating little haters like this will never, ever be able to convince a significant slice of the American public to vote for their candidates.

To all the people who are complaining that the Republicans are using this case to score political points: Welcome to planet fucking Earth. Are you aware that playing politics - to the extent of turning absolutely everything into a political cause - is what all politicians do all the time? The Republicans are smart; they're positioning themselves as compassionate on a key issue in a key state. Democrats can only natter pointlessly about court proceedings while their "progressive" allies shout: "When is that bitch gonna die?" (I comment I have heard) This is why Republicans run the country and will continue to run the country for the forseeable future: because Democrats and progressives are dumb as shit.

A few points to consider before painting up those "Let the bitch die" banners:

1. Schiavo is not terminally ill. She has lived in this state for 15 years. This is not a case about "end of life" decision-making or "the right to die." The question is whether her legal guardian has the right to force her to die by starvation and dehydration.

2. Schiavo is not dependent on life support. Her lungs, kidneys, heart, and digestive systems work fine. A feeding tube is a piece of adaptive technology, not some superhuman feet of preservation.

3. If we assume that those who advocate her death are correct, Schiavo is completely unaware of her situation and is thus incapable of suffering physically or emotionally. "Relieving her suffering" is therefore not a justification for bringing about her death.

4. Schiavo, like all people, has a federal, constitutional right not to be deprived of her life without due process of law.

5. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, Schiavo has a statutory right not to be treated differently because of her disability. Florida law obviously does not allow a husband to starve his non-disabled wife to death; in this case, Schiavo's disability makes her exceptional in the eyes of the state courts. Under the ADA, the state has the burden of justifying the line it's drawing.

6. In other contexts, federal courts are available to make sure state courts uphold constitutionally protected rights. Hearing liberals cry about states' rights - the rallying call of segregation - is ugly.

7. The law passed in Congress did not require a feeding tube to be reinserted. It simply created a procedure under which the federal courts can decided whether Schiavo's federally-protected rights are being upheld.

As Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a friend of labor unions and liberal causes, said, "There are a lot of people in the shadows, all over this country, who are incapacitated because of a disability, and many times there is no one to speak for them, and it is hard to determine what their wishes really are or were. So I think there ought to be a broader type of a proceeding that would apply to people in similar circumstances who are incapacitated."

http://www.slate.com/id/2115208/

Keep up the hating, though, gang, and the God-bashing and the snide juvenile jokes. Not only will Republicans hold onto Congress, but on Inauguration Day 2009, you're going to be gritting your teeth and bitching on the Internet about President Jeb Bush.

2005-03-21T17:50:00.000-05:00

Don't Get Used To This

The Right To Die Before You're Used As A Political Pawn
As if non-stop Martha coverage wasn't enough to send me to Costco for a 2 gallon bottle of Pepto-bismol, now I have to endure the ad hominem legislative antics of our "culture of life" supporters in Washington. Yes, I'm talking about the media and political frenzy around Terri Schiavo, a woman who's condition makes Stephen Hawking look like an Olympic athlete. Won't someone please let this poor woman die with at least a shred of dignity? While I empathize with her parents and their obstinate reluctance to let go of their child, no amount of "therapy" is going to bring back a brain damaged woman 15 years after the fact. And to allow Congressional Republicans (and Democrats), along with the president, to use the family tragedy as a cheap tool to placate Christian fundamentalists and pad their voting record is just repulsive. Constitutional scholars back me up here; isn't it illegal for Congress to pass a law directed at a single individual? I won't even get in to all the obvious contradictions of being against stem cell research, being for the death penalty, but claiming you're out to protect life. So I'm saying it loud and saying it proud; for the sake of the husband, the family, and our legislative process, but most of all for the woman herself, I want Terri Schiavo to die.

--MC No Shame

2005-03-19T18:25:00.000-05:00

Robert Blake Lives, Terry Schiavo Dies

Enough To Make Steroids In Baseball Seem Important Hats off to Rep. Al Edwards for fighting the good fight. The Texas legislator is attempting to put an end to sexually suggestive" cheerleaders. "It's just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they're shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down." And speaking of "breaking it down," isn't the Lone Star State always scraping the bottom in national standards of literacy and school performance? Way to pick your battles. P.S. The steroid is not entirely unimportant; seeing Mark McGuire cry like a child in front of members of Congress was priceless.

What Happened to Marcus-Marcus Anyways? Old-time fans of the MLWL have been wondering for awhile what has become the blog's co-creator and delightful poster of over a year. I wish I had good news to report, but currently he is looking for a new job...

The Hunter Becomes The Hunted The voice of The Fish on the air becomes the Fresh Fish in the jail. "Agents with the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force arrested a Christian radio station personality as part of a child pornography investigation. Bureau agents began investigating Chris Ruleman, 40, a midday host for WFFI, 94FM The Fish, earlier this week after receiving information that he possessed child pornography."

A Thousand Flowers Of Parody Bloom Wow. Whiskey Bar does an amazing comparison between David Horowitz's anti-liberal academic crusade and the Maoist Cultural Revolution.

I Mean, What's REALLY Important About An Unqualified Gay Prostitute Gaining Questionable Access To The White House Press Room Under The Cover Of A GOP-Funded Pseudo-News Outlet For Two Years To Lob Softball Questions To The President And His Press Secretary? "The House Judiciary Committee voted against adopting a resolution demanding Bush agencies turn over all credentialing information related to James D. Guckert 21-10, the discredited conservative reporter and prostitute who wrote under the nom de guerre 'Jeff Gannon.'" Shocker.

That's What You Get For Referring To Consider Arms As "The Lowest of the Low" Bitch. Connecticut's biggest embarrassment (well, after Lieberman and that mayor who molested kids)is headed to prison for corruption. While the shitty Courant is quick to point out that Federal Prison Camp Devens isn't quite "Club Fed" we're dissapointingly sure that John Rowland won't have to beg for his life at the hands of scumbags like this.

A Cross-Country Tour Fit For The Band Jackyl

The Decalogue is hitting the Southern states with awesome opening act and quixotic political aspirant Judge Roy Moore!

Until Chris Burke Becomes A Preacher, Religion In Hollywood Can't Get More Retarded "In its apparent never-ending thirst for increased cash flow the so-called “Kabbalah Centre,” run by the Philip Berg family of California and favored by Madonna, has launched a new energy drink. The “Kabbalah Energy Drink” is sold in a red; white and blue can and produced through the same company that puts out 7 Up. A Kabbalah spokesperson says, “It’s infused with Kabbalah water, which is holy water” reported MSNBC. “We’re going after the Red Bull market,” he also said."

-The Sikh Geek, Weekend Warrior

2005-03-17T11:17:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Happy St. Paddy's Day.

I've Saved Social Security! And I did it with fried Oreos: According to University of Illinois researchers, over the next 50 years, the average U.S. life expectancy (currently at 77 years) will drop by as much as five years, the first time in two centuries that life expectancy will decline in America. The reason? We're all too fat. On the bad side, this means an overall quality of life decline. On the bright side, it could have such significant impacts that the Social Security "crisis" currently being pimped by the Bush gang will solve itself, demographically speaking. So you see, every cloud does have a silver line. Eat up, fellow porkers - we're being fiscally responsible!

No Blood for Oil. Seriously Well, I guess the neocons were right: The Iraq War wasn't about getting that country's most lucrative natural resource. Yesterday, the price of a barrel of oil hit $57.24, nearly two dollars higher than the previous record, which was hit in October. Remember in 2003 when people went batshit because oil went over the $50 mark for the first time ever? Boy, I never thought I'd consider 2003 "the good old days."

Hey, Is That the Heroic Defender of Freedom Making Out With Stalin? No, it's just Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch making nice with Communist Party officials; not American Communist Party officials, mind you, but the kind of Communist Party officials who actually kill people. This fawning report in the People's Daily, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, details a recent visit Rupert had with party officials, who praised him for his "active efforts and strenuous work in advancing cooperation with China's news media." Rupert, for his part, vowed that he would "further strengthen cooperative ties with the Chinese media, and explore new areas with an even more positive attitude." I don't know about you, but I can't wait for Fox News' "even more positive attitude" regarding the persecution of religious groups and the murder of political dissidents.

Affirmative Action for the Stupid Bush can't stop promoting people who fail, can he? Airheaded Condoleeza Rice botches the national security intelligence leading up to the Iraq War; she's promoted to be Secretary of State. George "Slam Dunk" Tenet fucks up the pre-war intelligence; he's given a presidential medal of freedom. Johns Bolton and Negroponte both bungle their war assignments; Bolton is now the UN ambassador, and Negroponte is national intelligence director. The latest success in this parade of failure is Paul Wolfowitz, a man who uses his own spit to comb his hair. Wolfowitz is Bush's choice to head the World Bank; although Wolfowitz has no training as an economist, he did say that the occupation of Iraq would "pay for itself," which has turned out to be...insanely false. The only way the Europeans can save face on this is by making Michael Moore head of the IMF.

This Would Be a Great Way to Make 20 Grand In our 10-day hiatus from blogging, there's been a lot of important news: demonstrations in Lebanon, mounting evidence of corruption in Tom DeLay's office, the continuing unpopularity of Bush's Social Security program, the appointment of John Bolton to the UN. Instead of playing catch-up with any of that, though, we proudly present an offer for $20,000 in exchange for proof that ace reporter Jeff Gannon had sex with prominent Washington figures during his days as a male escort. Enjoy!

-Consider Arms

2005-03-07T21:51:00.000-05:00

None Dare Call It Nihilism

"Jesus Christ was put on trial again last week in the United States Supreme Court."

Yeah, it's true. Supreme Court Justice Pontius Pilate once again tried our Lord and Savior for claiming to be the Messiah. Oh wait, it was just a ruling about fringe dipshits trying to put stone idols in front of secular courthouses. (If they were REALLY Christ-centered wouldn't they want to put up copies of the Beattitudes instead? You know, perfecting the Law and all that?)

You Could Cut The Irony With A Tiananmen Square Tank "China issued a tit-for-tat report card Thursday on human rights in the United States that lambasted the Pentagon for "wanton slaughters" abroad, belittled American elections as awash in special-interest cash and accused U.S. courts of deep-seated racial bias. The Chinese government report, which portrayed the United States as gun-crazed and unfair to minorities, came three days after the State Department released its annual report on human rights abuses in countries around the world, including China. It marked the sixth straight year that China has countered the American report with one of its own, but this year's was particularly noteworthy because it condemned the United States for abuses by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq."

Finally, MC No Shame Will Get Laid...

Enemy Of "Fancy Big City Book-Learnin'" Nominated As Secretary of Education Or close enough to it. As you slwoly tread through this press-release filled CNN article, you may note between the paragraph long quotes from the White House that Bush has just nominated John Bolton as the ambassador to the UN, the same man who told a Federalist Society forum, "...there is no such thing as the United Nations" and "If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

-The Sikh Geek

2005-03-04T17:50:00.000-05:00

Every Other Weekend I Have Trouble Breathing

That's What You Fucking Get For Giving A Cake To A Finger-Biting Monkey No really, that is what you do get. You know a news article is going to be GREAT when it begins, "A couple's plans for a birthday party for their former pet chimpanzee turned tragic..." What a shitty way to lose your balls.

That's What You Fucking Get For Bringing A Curse Stone Into Town Who's brilliant idea was this in the first place? "A stone commissioned to mark the millennium may be destroyed after being blamed for bringing misfortunes of "biblical proportions" to a city. Since the Cursing Stone was placed in Carlisle, the city has suffered floods, foot-and-mouth disease, job losses and a goal famine for the football team. The 14-tonne granite artwork is carved with a 1,069-word 16th Century curse. Now city councillor Jim Tootle wants the stone destroyed and has tabled a motion to discuss it on 8 March."

That's What You Fucking Get For Being An Old Woman With A Heart Attack And Not A Deranged Child-Molesting Washed-Up Pop Star Who's Pretending To Be Sick To Get Out Of His Court Dates For His Child-Molesting Charges "A woman who had suffered a massive heart attack died after hospital personnel moved her out of a trauma room to accommodate a flu-stricken Michael Jackson, the patient's family said."

This One Goes Out To Consider Arms and HakujinJoe High school zinemakers and zombie fans the two of them. A high school junior in Kentucky was arrested for writing a short story about a high school overrun by zombies. The charges? "Making terrorist threats." (Hey, remember when a scared and traumatized United States passed through the Patriot Act on the open understanding that while we'd give up liberties, they would only be used to fight "terrorists"? Do you think short stories written by teenagers about fucking zombies was part of the understanding?) Extra points to the shit-for-brains judge for raising the kid's bond to $5,000 from $1,000 "citing the seriousness of the charge." And extra extra points to the kid's own grandparents who fucking sold their grandson down the river. If only that fucking school COULD get overrun by zombies... it just might get a little smarter.

-The Sikh Geek

2005-03-02T15:53:00.000-05:00

Hatred For The Past and Present

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..." "House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said today there is no constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state as the Supreme Court prepared to take up a case challenging the display of the Ten Commandments on the Texas Capitol grounds." "I hope the Supreme Court will finally read the Constitution and see there's no such thing, or no mention, of separation of church and state in the Constitution." As the former governor of Connecticut John Rowland can attest to, bold grasps at religion are the desperate last moves of corrupt bastards.

A Word From Our Sponsor: Bad Idea Jeans Looking good Arizona! "The House of Representatives voted Tuesday to let people carry weapons - including guns, grenades, rockets, mines and sawed-off shotguns - into schools, polling places and nuclear plants if they claim they're only trying to protect themselves. The vote on the legislation came after Rep. Ben Miranda, D-Phoenix, pointed out it would bar prosecution of those who want to bring a weapon into the House or Senate. Despite that, lawmakers gave it preliminary approval on a 30-16 margin."

Pretty Vacant Indeed "The bass player and father of two, who co-wrote The Sex Pistols' biggest hits, Anarchy In The UK, God Save The Queen and Pretty Vacant, hates it when his children, now 11 and seven, hear obscenities on the radio or TV. "It's pathetic when people just swear for the sake of it," he said in a carefully pre-recorded interview to be broadcast this Sunday."

Well, I Guess It COULD Get Worse Buck up millions of American without health care! If you get sick, at least there will still be hospitals that will still exist to overcharge. No such luck for the residents of the most batshit country on the face of the earth, Turkmenistan. Their glorious leader has just shut down all of the hospitals save for one. Said President Niyazov, "Why do we need such hospitals?" He has also in the past ordered the construction of ice palaces in the middle of the desert, a giant revolving gold statue of himself and a national holiday to celebrate the muskmelon.

-The Sikh Geek

2005-03-02T13:52:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: A Phony Reporter/Male Prostitute of Truth in a White House Press Corps of Lies.

If This Means No More Late Night Cinemax Porn, Then I Will Be Truly Radicalized Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) now says he wants laws applying decency standards for broadcast TV and radio to cable TV and satellite radio. "Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area," Ted says. Now, I know what you're thinking: Congress doesn't have the power to regulate cable or satellite media, right? Apparently, that's in doubt. The "get government off our backs" Republicans are mulling a court challenge that would enable them to extend the same standards to cable and satellite that broadcasters have to abide by. But don't worry, because Ted assures us that "No one wants censorship." Well, I guess that takes care of my concerns.

You've Been Struck By a Smooth Criminal Here at the MLWL, we've held off from posting about the trial of Michael Jackson, but the "strong hints" coming from his lawyer that he's going to take the stand and testify on his own behalf have forced our hand. As annoying as celebrity show trials are, come on: that would be the most entertaining court testimony in years!

Journalism Ethics, Boston Globe-Style By the shores of Gitchee Gumee, by the shining big sea waters, strode the mighty Hiawatha and...his ethically-challenged blogging habits? That's Hiawatha Bray, thanks very much, technology reporter for the Boston Globe who apparently spent much of his free time in 2004 posting comments on web logs proclaiming his support for George Bush and trashing the "moronic" John Kerry. Ah, but who cares, right? I mean, he covered technology - indeed, he covered the ways in which technology affected the campaign, writing at least three major articles about Kerry and Bush while simultaneously proclaiming his love for Bush and hatred for Kerry. Newspaper reporters have been fired for less since the advent of blogging; such concerns are why people on this very blog use pseudonyms. Let's see if the Globe has the balls to fire Bray.

The Daily Mayhem: Iraq Edition Barwiz Mahmoud Marwani, one of 20 judges on the tribunal trying Saddam Hussein's case in Iraq, was assassinated outside his home in Baghdad on Tuesday. The judge and his son, a lawyer, were shot dead by gunmen as they left their home. Also on Tuesday, two separate car bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital killed 13 people. On Monday, a car bomb killed 125, the worst such attack since the fall of the regime two years ago.

Choking on the Rottenness of It All A federal panel of three judges has overturned a multi-million dollar verdict won by victims of torture in El Salvador. A previous federal jury had awarded more than $54 million to the three victims - a church worker, a doctor, and a professor - after they proved their case against former generals in the Salvadoran government who now live in the United States. The appellate court that overturned the ruling did not contest the claims of the victims - but said there were no "undue circumstances" preventing the victims from filing suit before the statute of limitations passed. Nice.

-Consider Arms

2005-03-01T20:04:00.000-05:00

Extraordinary Rendition

Like The Cub Scouts, Only More Fascist I wonder what color their shirts will be... Spooked by the recent thumbs-up the Ukraine gave to a non-KGB controlled government, Vladamir Putin has set up a youth group called Nashi or "One of Us" to "get 300,000 people on to the streets to defend Russia" from the threats of "external governance", "orange revolution" and "American intrusion" before the next Russian elections in 2008.

She Can't Be Human In a recent defense of Jeff Gannon (yes, it IS possible considering she's the same woman who defended Joe McCarthy) bottle-blonde/demonic bhenchod Ann Coulter referred to journalist Helen Thomas as "that old Arab." Her syndicaters cleaned up the Coultergeist by changing "that old Arab" to "that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas." I'm sure they were just grateful that she didn't make another reference to "oily Jews."

RE: BTK, WTF KS?! "WICHITA, Kan., Feb. 28 - As members of his congregation took their seats in the sanctuary on Sunday, Pastor Michael Clark stood in the back and leaned against a wall. He put his clasped hands to his face, closed his eyes and took a quiet moment. Within minutes, he was before the congregation of Christ Lutheran Church, beginning to guide them through what he says will be a long journey of healing. The 8:15 a.m. service was the first time he had spoken to his congregation since the church's board president, Dennis Rader, was arrested Friday by Wichita authorities who allege he is the BTK killer, the worst serial murderer in Kansas history."

I Think Of All The Education That I Missed You can see it now, 9 months from now the litany of year-end wrap-up specials will highlight "Female Teachers Sleeping With Underage Students" as one of the hottest trends of 2005. Nope, this California teacher didn't bear the child of her underage lover, but she did have sex with him in her car a few feet away from her own two year-old child. Nice touch. I mean, bad touch. Bad touch.

Look Back Without Regret, Look Forward To Profit The Governator has recently come out to express lack of regret in using steroids during his career as a bodybuilder. "Because it is the wrong message, like you say, to the children," he said. "But people should take food supplements. People should be able to take the vitamins and all of the nutritious stuff that is available. But stay away from drugs." It helps that Arnold has a small fortune tied up in quasi-legal PEDS (performance-enhancing dietary supplements) through a bodbuilding tournament and two magazines that are propped up by PEDS advertising revenue. That might explain why he recently vetoed a bill that would have banned PEDS for high-school athletes; stopping the use of certain anabolic substances would hurt Arnold pocketbook. But big-ups California, how many other states can say that they're being run by a murderous robot fro mthe future?

Pastor Describes School Lunch Program As Tool of the Antichrist A few sarcastic sentences won't really add anything to this...

-The Sikh Geek

2005-03-01T10:41:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Snow Delay.

The Bush Administration: A Lottery That Rewards Stupidity Let's say that you help convince your boss to embark on a bold new project that is sharply criticized both within the company and within the business community as a whole. But you insist that you have sound reasons for doing so, and that ultimate success will vindicate you. Maybe you even cut some corners and play around with the details to make the project seem better to your boss. Then, when the project is completed, it turns out the only vindication is of the critics, since the project is a disaster from start to finish. How do you think this display of dishonesty and incompetence will be rewarded? Well, if you're Paul Wolfowitz, and the project is the invasion of Iraq, you get rewarded by becoming the top choice to succeed James Wolfensohn as head of the World Bank! So there is a happy ending to this, after all.

And a Child Shall Lead Them...Into Eating Cat Food At last, the kid from The Omen movies has a real-life counterpart: Nine-year-old Texan (of course) Noah McCullough, who is being paid by the anti-Social Security gang Progress for America to shill around the country for the president's plan to scrap guaranteed retirement incomes. The idea that the American people will take advice on a topic as complicated as Social Security from a fucking nine-year-old is...actually, brilliant. This is the smartest thing the bastards have done so far.

Is It Time to Invade Iraq Again? Now that everyone has forgotten about the supposed original reason for invading Iraq (WMD, anyone?) and has instead agreed to pretend that the reason we invaded was to end Saddam's human rights atrocities, the question must be asked: Is it time to invade Iraq again? Because, according to the State Department, the U.S.-installed interim Iraqi government is guilty of "serious human rights abuses," including "torture, illegal detention by police, and forced confessions" as well as summary executions and the use of forced child labor. It is time that America sent a message to America-occupied Iraq: America will no longer tolerate these atrocities, and is willing to invade if it must.

Bloggers in "Not Entirely Worthless" Shocker Here's an interesting commentary on how bloggers have driven the "Jeff Gannon" story (easily the best news story of the year so far). It's nice to see bloggers not being worthless for a change. Yeah, yeah, I realize this is a blog, but the operative words here are still Bart Simpson's, when he replied to Milhouse's suggestion to put shocking information on the Internet: "No, we actually have to reach people whose opinions matter!" But here's a question, even for a blog-basher like yours truly: How come much of the mainstream media has ignored Guckertgate? Is the news judgement of the Daily Kos really that much better than everybody's at CBS and ABC, which still have not aired reports on the scandal?

Words of Wisdom From the Aptly-Named Dick Armey Some people object to irresponsible cads like myself characterizing the president's position (and the position of young Noah McCullough) on Social Security as being in opposition to it; the president doesn't want to scrap Social Security, I am told, he wants to fix it so it's there forever, like fossil fuels and the ozone layer. Fortunately, there are still Republicans dumb enough, or heedless enough of public opinion, to ignore the script: take former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who told a gathering in Texas over the weekend that the real goal is to "phase out" Social Security in favor of private accounts. Thanks, Dick.

-Consider Arms

2005-02-25T15:42:00.000-05:00

The World Had No Need For A Fred Durst Sex Video. None.

Somebody's Working Like A Horse To Be The Top Douchebag of 2005 Jeff-Jimmy-Joshua Gannon now has a blog, to defend himself and provide a forum for his side of the story. A little bit of shame would be alot for this male prostitute/imposter journalist/gay porn internet magnate/White House plant/leaker of classified information.

What's A Decent Article Doing In The LA Times? No way Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter; if you remember correctly, the President said back in 2002 that we would use false claims of WMDs to launch a unilateral invasion of Iraq to fascilitate an Islamic theocracy that was both cold to us and warm to Iran at the cost of thousands of US lives and hundred of billions of dollars. We're WAY in-focus.

Douchebag Deathmatch Showdown! Who do you root for in this situation: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach vs. PETA? Is both groups ritualistically killing themselves in accordance to Kosher law too much to hope for?

That's What You Get For Singing About Your "Goodies" Best urban legend I've heard in awhile... "I have been hearing from many people that the hip-hop artist Ciara used to be a man and had to have a sex change. Even more, I heard that she stated it on nation televison!" "I have heard a rumor that the R&B star, Ciara, was born male. That he/she decided that he wanted to be a female at the age of 5, and his mother let him grow his hair out. I was told that he had surgury, so he no longer has a penis. and apparently he/she was on Oprah having an in depth converstation about it, along with discussing it in a magazine article."

Blurring The Line Between Urban Legend And Corrupt Business Practices "A US woman is suing Hewlett Packard, saying its printer ink cartridges are secretly programmed to expire on a certain date. The unnamed woman from Georgia says that a chip inside the cartridge tells the printer that it needs re-filling even when it does not. The lawsuit seeks to represent anyone in the US who has purchased an HP inkjet printer since February 2001. HP, the world's biggest printer firm, declined to comment on the lawsuit."

To Boldly Waste One's Life At least it's for a worthwhile cause! "Fans of the Star Trek: Enterprise TV show are protesting the show's cancellation with street demonstrations in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, London and Tel Aviv. Trekkies are holding rallies worldwide on Friday to bring attention to their cause. Rallies will be held at the Paramount studios in Los Angeles and at the offices of CBS and the Sci-Fi channel in New York. Additional rallies are set for the local Fox affiliate in Washington, D.C., the offices of the BBC and Channel 4 in London, and at Tel Aviv University in Israel."

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-24T17:07:00.000-05:00

HELP! TIMELY RESPONSE IMPORTANT HELP!

God, And You Know, Stuff Like That A new study has found that "religion really does matter" to today's teens. It also discovered that their religious beliefs are rooted in ignorance and bullshit. "Though the phone survey depicted broad affinity with religion, the face-to-face interviews found that many teens' religious knowledge was "meager, nebulous and often fallacious" and engagement with the substance of their traditions remarkably shallow. Most seemed hard put to express coherently their beliefs and what difference they make. Many were so detached from the traditions of their faith, says the report, that they're virtually following a different creed in which an undemanding God exists mostly to solve problems and make people feel good. Truth in any absolute, theological sense, takes a back seat."

The Freedom To Fear For Your Own Safety According to a Amnesty International report, woman and girls live in daily fear of violence and sexual assault, two years after the liberation of Iraq and its blossoming into a beaconing neo-Athens of democracy and freedom. "The lawlessness which followed the overthrow of the dictator's regime has made the situation worse for women as the number of killings, abductions and rapes has increased."

Nothing Succeeds Like Success, And Corrupt Incompetence Play government for a moment. What would you do if a company with questionable ties to the vice president was rewarded huge government contracts and ended up overcharging the military by millions? You reward them with performance-based bonuses!

At Least He Didn't Use The "Omlette and Broken Eggs" Analogy Motherfucking liar, Richard Perle said during his recent debate that "I'm sometimes asked now that we know there were not weapons of mass destruction in Iraq shouldn't we re-evatulate the decisions to go to war and that seems to me a little bit like deciding at the end of the year not that it was foolish to have purchased insurance becuase your house didn't burn down." As DailyKos points out, "$300 billion and counting, 1,500 dead and over 10,000 maimed American soldiers, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians either dead, maimed, or suffering the loss of their loved ones" is one motherfucker of an insurance policy, especially when the chance of the house of the US "burning down" from a non-existant WMD program is pretty slight.

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-23T15:50:00.000-05:00

New Photographs of Old Ghosts

What's "Honorary Cash Cow" When Translated Into Hebrew? Madonna has been promoted to the highest non-ordained position in the Church of Kabbalah. According to one source, "Her teachers think she has reached the pinnacle of spiritual understanding." The pinnacle of spiritual understanding? Just like the Buddha or Jesus? Sure.

More Diplomatic Genius From The White House "George Bush has banned Camilla Parker Bowles from the White House - because she is a divorcee. The unprecedented snub has effectively sabotaged Charles's plan to take his bride on a Royal tour of America later this year. The trip would have been the pair's first official tour as a married couple. But the US President - a notoriously right-wing Christian and reformed alcoholic - told aides it was "inappropriate" for him to be playing host to the newly-weds, who are both divorcees. The decision was made even though the late President Ronald Reagan was divorced."

If You Really Want To Help, Don't A group calling itself "the Minuteman Project" is so intent on "protecting our country from an invasion by people from all over the world across our southern border with Mexico" that they are gathering around 500 wackos to "assist" the US Border Patrol in detaining illegal immigrants for one month in Arizona. The government is understandibly weary of a mass of patriotic nutcases with a vague mission and equally vague stance on carrying guns. The patrols will start on April 1st. Seriously.

Our Heroes Tortured By Evildoers Can't Get Money From Evildoers Who Are Now Heroes, Unlike The Evildoers Who Were Tortured By Our Heroes. I Think. "The latest chapter in the legal history of torture is being written by American pilots who were beaten and abused by Iraqis during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it has taken a strange twist. The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime. The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money. The case abounds with ironies. It pits the U.S. government squarely against its own war heroes and the Geneva Convention. Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States. But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says."

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-23T14:24:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: I Think "Jeff" Has a Question.

Puppet Vs. Theocrat: Who To Root For? Iyad Allawi, the stooge picked by the American occupational authorities as the post-interim-constitution, pre-interim-election prime minister, says he will gather up his handful of votes and stage a secular challenge to the Shi'a party and their choice for prime minister, Al Dawa leader Ibrahim Jaafari. Allawi, only slightly delusionally, believes he is "poised to block Dr. Jaafari's nomination and possibly peel off enough members from the Shiite's United Iraqi Alliance to form a government of [his] own." Despite barely scraping into double digits in the percentage of the vote his party got, he seems pretty optimistic. You think maybe Washington is telling him something they're not telling the rest of us?

It Must Be Time for Another Appearance on Leno The popularity of make-believe California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger continues to plummet, with just 55 percent of citizens approving of his job in office, down from around 70 percent in September. Additionally, about 53 percent of Californians now think their state is on the wrong track, compared with 38 percent previously. Boy, California, I sure didn't see that one coming: You mean the guy whose old job was pretending to be a murderous robot from the future isn't such a good choice for governor? Huh. Live and learn.

But, Dash It All, Chaps, We Had Wogs to Abuse! A very interesting read today: The Guardian goes in-depth on how the British government rushed to the Iraq War, against the advice of a number of top cabinet officials, including Blair's own attorney general. Right up until the outbreak of hostilities, Lord Goldsmith, the AG, was equivocating on the legality of the war, seeking assurances that there were, in fact, weapons of mass destruction currently in production. He never drafted an opinion endorsing the legality of the war, which is one of the conditions demanded by Blair's defence minister; no matter, Blair's government just lied and said that Goldsmith had written such an opinion. Interesting stuff.

Good, Old-Fashioned Mob Justice A group of 500 armed yayhoos calling themselves The Minutemen have announced that they're going to "patrol" a 40-mile stretch of border between Arizona and Mexico in April, when the number of illegal border crossings is at a peak. In other words, 500 people have announced their intention to usurp a function of the U.S. government. So what's the reaction of the U.S. Border Patrol? "Concern," because apparently it's not illegal to form an armed band of vigilantes dedicated to bashing Mexicans. Doesn't this sound like an area ripe for new legislation?

When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro ...as Hunter S. Thompson once opined. And this is about as weird as it gets: The Pro Wrestling Republican Coalition, dedicated to linking the Republican Party and sports entertainment. There is much to enjoy in this profile of various coalition members. Like this reference to a wrestler/Republican who recently served as press secretary for a GOP congressional candidate in New Jersey: "Most recently, Roman served as one of Undertaker's Druids at Wrestlemania XX in Madison Square Garden." But the reason I'm posting it today is because of the last man profiled: Bobby Eberle. That's Bobby Eberle the Texas Republican, of GOPUSA fame, and the owner of none other than Talon News, the fake web site that enabled hot military stud "Jeff Gannon" to get drawer-drippingly close to spin hunk Scott McLellan in the White House press room. Oh, what a tangled web, etc.

-Consider Arms

2005-02-22T14:55:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Hunter S. Thompson RIP.

"Looks Like Satan Wins Tonight" First Hunter S. Thompson, and now Dr. Eugene Scott, a great American original. You may remember his late-night Bible talk show, in which he would smoke cigars, play the saxophone, wear fake glasses, or don Indian headdresses. He would often cut to footage of himself or family members riding horses in circles, for no discernible reason. If he suspected that not enough people were calling his 1-800 number to donate money, he would say in resigned tones, "It looks like Satan wins tonight." A fine reminder in this age of cookie cutter evangelicals how much fun the nutty man of God can be, Dr. Scott died at home, aged 75.

Nice Try, Man of Cats Longtime MLWL favorite Ahmad Chalabi has dropped his bid to be named prime minister by the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition that won 48 percent of the vote in the elections last month. Instead, it looks like Dawa Party leader Ibrahim Jaafari has gotten the nod, which isn't too surprising; Jaafari had the backing not only of Dawa, but also the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Note: Dawa has, since its establishment in 1958, worked towards establishing an Islamic theocracy in Iraq.

Does Lactose Intolerant Know About This? In a move that is sure to outrage the members of Raid, Vegan Reich, and Earth Crisis, a UC Davis researcher has released findings showing that raising children on a vegan diet significantly raises the risk of malnutrition. No less a tofu-head than Paul McCartney himself pronounced the study "rubbish," pointing out that vegan diets can "help you with colon cancer and stuff." I don't know about you, but I'm sold.

Americatown: The Patriotic-est Place on Earth In an effort to shed the gritty image that has led to the nickname "Fayettenam," city officials in Fayetteville, NC have hit on a new theme: patriotism. Specifically, the city wants to be known as "the most patriotic town in America." The city fathers are hoping this entails, among other things, daily parades, tax breaks for people who display the flag, painting the roads to look like flags, a daily flag-saluting ceremony outside the courthouse, and fireworks every Saturday. Reserve your hotel rooms now, fans of ironic kitsch!

Farewell Then, Beard #3 Rush Limbaugh has finalized his divorce, separating him from Marta, his third wife. Now, I don't necessarily care about three marriages. Nor do I think it's a big deal to be hooked on pills all the time. I'm just saying that the next time you hear Rush crowing about the "moral values vote," maybe you should keep those things in mind. Hey, how many times has Bill Clinton been divorced? Let's see: Never. And how many times has he been hospitalized for drug dependency: Oh, yeah, never. Hmm. Makes you think.

-Consider Arms

2005-02-19T17:19:00.000-05:00

A Shoe Of Truth Thrown At A Douchebag Of Falsehood

Fuck Yeah! What's a use of a shoe better than Kruschev banging it on a desk at the UN to make a point? Joining the sacred pantheon that houses the dudes that threw pies at Ann Coulter, and throwing it at Richard Perle while screaming "Motherfucking Liar!" at a Dean/Perle debate in Portland, Oregon. (Thankfully, DailyKos keeps its language just how we like it, filthy.) Dick started off by commenting that Democrats "looked at the Democratic Party and chose a physician to lead them." Yeah, medical doctors are such a lowly and disrespected career; it's right above carny and right below Port-A-John cleaner. Perle is such a loathesome, warmongering piece of shit I could only hope the shoe was a heat-seeking ballistic wingtip.

Support Our Brave, Child-Fucking Troops Nobody's a fan of child prostitution, but it's a whispered fuck that a sizeable chunk of our taxmoney goes to support it. Grit your teeth and read this article by Charles Colson on the military's ‘Unmentionable Topic’. “It’s the same thing the military brass and senior enlisted men have failed to mention. It’s the same thing medics who pass out condoms fail to mention. It’s the same thing the U.S. government has failed to mention. It’s the same thing our churches, inhabited by veterans who keep the secret, fail to mention. It’s the unmentionable topic among Navy veterans . . . namely, that many of the mysterious Asian prostitutes who tend to our men in uniform are kids, and many of these kids are, basically, slaves.”

It Must Suck To Attend William Cooper Middle School "Each student was required to wear identification cards around their necks with their picture, name and grade and a wireless transmitter that beamed their ID number to a teacher's handheld computer when the child passed under an antenna posted above a classroom door."

Finally, A Gift For Both The Sarcastic Liberal AND The Douchebag Neo-Con In Your Life A Coca-Cola logo-styled "Enjoy Capitalism" t-shirt.

The English Langauage Fails It especially fails when you need it to describe a lawsuit brought against the Gorilla Foundation which houses "Koko" the gorilla, by two former female employees who claim that they were ordered to bond with the talking primate by bearing their breasts. If you thought that your job sucks, at least it probably won't end with you muttering the phrase "I refused to expose my breast to perform acts of bestiality with one of the gorillas."

Condi in 2008: SHE PLAYS THE FUCKING PIANO PEOPLE! The rumour mill in the Beltway is abuzz with talk that Cheney is going to resign for "health reasons" in 2005, putting Condi in the VP seat and jockeying her for a 2008 presidential run. Keep in mind that this terrifying prospect is being put forth by WorldNetDaily, the same site that shills for books entitled "The Nephilim and the Pyramid of the Apocalypse" and "Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection."

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-18T10:46:00.000-05:00

It Came From Nathan Glazer's Attic

There's major news on the "return of the living dead" front. Iran Contra aficionados are dancing in their seats over the news that two key figures from the Reagan administration's scandalous conduct in Central America have been promoted to top jobs in the Bush Administration. In this entry, we'll deal with the less savory of the pair (as far as such designations have meaning): Convicted perjurer Elliott Abrams.

Elliott Abrams, friend of the Contras and foe of interfaith marriage, has been named to one of the highest foreign policy posts in America: deputy national security adviser. The appointment has passed with little notice by the mainstream press; after all, who cares about some bureaucrat ascending another rung on the ladder?

Ah, but Abrams is no mere bureaucrat! A hardcore Cold Warrior and Reagan Administration official, Abrams has neoconservative street cred like Florida has beaches.

Born into a liberal Jewish household in New York, Abrams was a Democrat for much of his young life. While attending Harvard Law School, he lived in the attic of Nathan Glazer, the Trotskyite-turned-neocon sociologist. He worked for Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Scoop Jackson, the two Democrats closest to neocon thought on domestic and foreign policy, respectively. He married Rachel Decter, whose mother, Midge, is a formidable neocon publicist and who herself is married to Norman Podhoretz, "neocon Yoda figure" as Slate calls him, and the father of New York Post columnist John Podhoretz (Norm, like Glazer, is also an ex-communist). Abrams is also a longtime friend of neocon folk hero Natan Sharansky, currently a member of the Israeli Knesset.

Abrams ditched the Democratic Party in the late 1970s, finding Jimmy Carter's foreign policy "hopeless." He joined Reagan's State Department and initially distinguished himself by his principled opposition to U.S.-backed dictators like Augusto Pinochet of Chile and Manuel Noriega of Panama. This flirtation with credibility went out the window when Abrams distinguished himself by his fanatical defense of the murderous Salvadoran government, even after evidence of massacres in that country became public. When his wife told the Washington Post that she'd like to mow down NY Times columnist Anthony Lewis with a machine gun, Abrams said, hilariously, "I wouldn't waste the bullets. I would rather have them go to the Contras."

But Abrams wasn't just a wacko; he was also a pretend spy. Although not a main player behind the Iran-Contra skulduggery, Abrams nevertheless traveled to Britain in 1986 with a secret Swiss bank account number and the code name "Mr. Kenilworth" in order to solicit a $10 million donation to the Contras from that well-known advocate of democracy, the Sultan of Brunei.

While Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh was preparing a multi-count indictment of Abrams, Abrams took the manly way out and pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, a misdemeanor. In 1992, Abrams was one of the recipients of Poppy Bush's famous Christmas Eve pardons, clearing his criminal record.

Bush says that Abrams' central task is promoting "the expansion of freedom in the world." Surely he's aware of the irony of entrusting such a task with a man famous for defending murderous tyrannies, who personally acted as the courier in a transaction that provided a terrorist organization with millions of dollars. Then again, maybe not.

Be sure to watch for this series' next thrilling installment: The Negroponte Checkmate!

2005-02-17T16:26:00.000-05:00

The Eve of Destruction

Who Says There Is No Justice In This World? Me, for one. Bush named the first US director of national intelligence and it none other than John Negroponte, the man who oversaw death squads in Central America. One former senator said that Negroponte's job was an uneviable one. "Your successes will remain secret, while your mistakes will all be public." Well, if a pile of murdered nuns doesn't trip you up on your way to diplomat and department head, I don't think that will be much to worry about.

It Just Doesn't Stop Getting More Bizarre Jeff Gannon, the fake reporter for the party-line Talon "news" who was given day-passes for two years into the White House press room to lob softball question at Bush before getting found out, and then found out for prostituting himself to men on the side, and THEN suspected for being involved in the Valerie Plame outing, has NOW been revealed to have been allowed into the press room before his shell "news" organization ever existed. Frank Rich (a NYT Arts critic) describes with hilarious and devestating detail, the whole mess in this piece.

Global Climate Change: What Me Worry?

Torture Update! A British detainee at Gitmo has been blinded in one eye after guards there "held both of his eyes open and sprayed (pepper spray) into his eyes and later took a towel soaked in pepper spray and rubbed it in his eyes." Remember the detainee at Abu Ghraib who was hung from his wrists while being interrogated? He doesn't remember being tortured, mostly because he was killed during that interrogation, according to reports recently reviewed by the AP. Good thing our new Attorney General has made stopping dirty movies one of his top priorities.

Axis Of Evil Update! New CIA Director Porter Goss admits that North Korea has more nukes now than when the US labelled them a threat and one-third of a double-pointed "Axis of Evil." He also said that the war in Iraq feeds the international terrorist threat! Iran and Syria have created a united front to deal with any potential threat from the US! Russia will be selling Syria arms! Bonus!

Yeah Syria, But You Were TOTALLY Happy That It Happened... "While acknowledging that the United States does not know who was behind the Monday bombing that killed the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, Ms. Rice said Syria should be held at least indirectly responsible, 'given their continued interference in Lebanese affairs.'" We don't know... but you should be held indirectly responsible. Did you now that she can FUCKING PLAY THE PIANO?!

-The Sikh Geek feels sick

2005-02-15T16:12:00.000-05:00

...And You Will Know Them By Their Trial of Dead Links

Go CNN! Who the fuck cares if you're using the exact same sketchy photo to rep both Iranian and North Korean nuclear plants?! Like, aren't they both part of the evil quadrangle anyways?! Force someone else to resign and get Larry King to tell me how a hot supermodel figures into all of this.

My Head Hurts Let's get it organized. For two years the White House gave a daily press pass to a pseudo news reporter from GOP-bought-and-paid-for Talon News, so he could lob softball questions to Bush. Then he gets found out by the media. Then his gay prostitution on the side business also gets found out. Now he has ties to the Plame CIA leak mess?

Six Degrees of a Six-Point List From Empty-handed via Ameriblog via...
By its own admission, the White House has:

Planted fake news stories on local TV stations to push its agenda
Put journalists on the government payroll.
Had supposed independent journalists testify to Congress when they were being paid off by the govt.
Paid off journalists to push its agenda in the larger media.
Launched unprecendented tactics to subpoena a number of reporters and try and force them to reveal confidential sources -- all about a story concerning a White House member who broke the law by revealing a CIA agent's identity, thus endangering the lives of friends to the US around the world.
And now, planted fake journalists in the White House press room and passed them CIA documents to push its agenda.

To Think That Some Dude From ESPN and Some Dude From Comedy Central Are at the Top of the Shitheap... (from the blog of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann) "Ward Churchill says some detestable things about 9/11 victims, so the Governor of Colorado wants to squeeze him out of the University there. Marine Corps Lieutenant General James Mattis tells an audience in San Diego “it’s fun to shoot some people,” particularly in Afghanistan, and his superior officers ask him to please not say stuff like that again. Eason Jordan makes a remarkable gaffe, implying that the U.S. military is hunting journalists. He backs off within moments of the remark, apologizes, and still gets forced to resign from CNN. Brit Hume and other political commentators twist Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s words to make it look like he would’ve supported President Bush’s partial privatization of Social Security, and nobody corrects their journalistic blunders, let alone resigns."

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-12T19:47:00.000-05:00

What Will Happen To The Zapatistas Now That Kaffiyehs Are All The Rage With Talkivists?

Still Riding On That Post-Election Glow "A car bomb exploded in front of a hospital south of Baghdad, killing 17 and wounding 16. A suicide driver rammed a US Bradley fighting vehicle and exploded in Salaheddin province north of Baghdad, injuring three soldiers. Two Iraqi civilians were killed during a clash between US troops and insurgents in Mosul. US Marines killed two insurgents during an attack Friday night on a Marine position near Husaybah along the Syrian border. At least 31 people were killed Friday, including 23 in the two sectarian attacks. In an attack on the bakery in eastern Baghdad, gunmen in several cars blocked the street in front of the shop and stormed inside, shooting and killing 11 people, police said. The assailants escaped."

Apparantly, 30 Better Than Our Syncronicity Fetish After a two-year abscence, the number 53 has finally appeared in the Venetian lottery. The number (or lack of it) had been blamed for several deaths and bankruptcies, and when it appeared a consumer group called Codacons, which had called for a banning of the number from the lottery, declared that the "bewitchment" of Italy had finally ended.

Two Steps Away From Blaming Budget Problems On "Evil Robots From The Future" "In a fiery speech to Republican faithful Friday evening, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ridiculed Democrats as wasteful spending 'addicts' who have been taking 'sleeping pills,' and he characterized California's problems as stemming from 'evil.'" This after calling the state Democrats "lazy" and "girlie men." Great job California.

There Are No Words Tom Sizemore Or maybe there are two: "The Whizzinator."

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-10T20:06:00.000-05:00

Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream

"A Cheap Holiday In Other People's Misery..." Britain's Channel Four is preparing a show entitled "Guantanamo Guidebook" that will film seven volunteers over 48 hours being subjected to various interrogation techniques such as extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation and mild physical contact. One volunteer was forcd by doctors to leave after he contracted hypothermia. Ironically, or unironically, Channel Four was also the brains behind the show "Big Brother."

George Washington Would Lead Our Country With A "Lord's Gym" Sweatshirt On It's been awhile since we've checked up on the Presidential Prayer Team For Kids, but not to worry, they are still as amazing as ever. In addition to encouraging kids to pray for the Secretaries of Energy and Veterans Affairs, they are also skullfucking George Washington's corpse with their mind-numbingly terrible paraphrases of the first president's quotes. "If we said this in words used today, it would read something like this: It's been so obvious that God's hand has been right here helping us through this entire Revolution. Anyone who doesn't believe that's true and doesn't thank God for His help isn't a very good person! But there will be plenty of time for me to turn into a preacher who tells of God's marvelous help for our troops once I no longer have to lead this Revolutionary Army!"

Even The Burger King Has More Class Charles and Camilla to marry.

There's ALWAYS Enough Money To Tell Kids They Can Get AIDS From A Dirty Toilet Seat Despite slashing funding for basic services, despite the fact that they actually lead to an increase in teen sexual activity and despite the fact that they have been proven to hemmorage false and misleading information, Bush has asked for a $40 million increase in funding for abstinance only sexual education. How much does it really cost to have a teacher scream "JUST KEEP YOUR PANTS ON!!!" to a a group of disinterested teens?

If They Were Doing Any Better With The Axis Of Evil, We Would Be Blown Up Already North Korea publically declared for the first time today that they have nuclear weapons "to defend themselves against the US" while rejecting attempts to restart disarmament talks. In honor of this ball-shattering, nightmare-inducing news, we present a gallery of North Korean propaganda art.

Maybe He's Hoping For A Presidential Appointment To Secretary of Big-Haired Douchebaggery "Rock star Jon Bon Jovi is a staunch liberal Democrat. But he may be turning over a new leaf. He's now backing Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger for president. Though no one has yet to tell Bon Jovi that the U.S. Constitution forbids the Governator from running for president, the rocker says he would jump the Democratic ship to help Arnold. 'I would vote for him right now. I've known him a long time. I think he's a brilliant man, on and off the camera, and he's the most hard-working man, the most focused I've ever seen.'"

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-10T14:32:00.000-05:00

How the Republicans Reach Out to Gay America

"Jeff Gannon," Hot Military Stud The scandal over Jeff Gannon, the Texas GOP plant in the White House press corps, continues. In a bizarre turn of events, it turns out that his name isn't Jeff Gannon at all - it's James Guckert. What's more, James Guckert is the man behind web sites like HotMilitaryStud.com and MilitaryEscortsM4M.com, both of which were apparently gay prostitution sites. Gannon/Guckert has resigned from Talon News, the phony news agency run by the Texas GOP.

-Consider Arms

2005-02-08T10:53:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: The Bad News Is, I Just Told You The Good News.

Well, That's One Way to Pass Inspection For synchronicity fans: How many kids did the unlicensed daycare worker hide in the closet during inspection by the state?

The Failure of Triumph Let's not get all carried away about what a big success the Iraqi election was. For starters, that 57 percent turnout figure could well turn out to be a myth - although it's still being repeated by right wingers and their lackeys, Iraqi election officials have backed away from it, saying "Only God Almighty knows the final turnout." He's apparently not sharing that info, either; it's been more than a week since the election, and we don't know who won, or even how many votes were cast. Another good point: to whom does the oft-cited "14 million eligible voters" figure refer? Is that only people who registered to vote, or is it adults over 18, or what? Because if 57 percent of registered voters turned out, that's pretty low - lower than the U.S., where between 80 and 90 percent of registered voters turn out for national elections (the problem is that so few Americans are registered). Another question: How many adults are there in Iraq - and for that matter, how many Iraqis are there? No one seems to know the former, and estimates of the latter range from 25 million to 27.5 million. If Iraq has an adult population of 18 million, as Ken Pollack (you know, the "Threatening Storm" guy) estimates, then 8 million voters (a number that might be high, since no one can verify it) wouldn't be a 57 percent turn out, but more like a 45 percent turnout. But I guess that asking these questions makes me an enemy of freedom, so forget I said anything.

Paying the Piper, NY City Style Mike Bloomberg, billionaire, wanted to be mayor of NY City so darn bad that he switched his party registration, becoming a Republican. Because New York exists on a system of baksheesh more elaborate than anything in the Levant, Mike became mayor, thanks to his vast private fortune. Now he's finding out what it means to be a Republican: Although he personally supports gay marriage, he is ordering city lawyers to appeal a court ruling that struck down a New York City ban on civil unions. "I think people have the right to love, to live with and to marry whoever they want, regardless of their sexual orientation," Bloomberg whines, while ordering his lawyers to ensure that people don't have those rights. His reward? Denounced by both gay rights advocates and gay marriage opponents as an "unprincipled coward." Welcome to the Big Tent, Richie Rich!

Screw You, Poor Person George W. Bush unveiled his budget Monday and, as he said of another budget proposal, it's got a lot of numbers in it. Like these: $3 billion will be cut from 18 federal programs relating to low-income housing; 8 percent of the federal program that helps poor people pay for home heating will be cut; $60 billion over 10 years will be cut from Medicare, including programs aimed at fighting obesity and preventable diseases and training programs for doctors who work in pediatric hospitals. Additionally, the federal food stamp program will be slashed, taking food stamp benefits away from people who receive the vouchers as part of federal childcare programs. The massive cuts in social programs are needed to pay for the failed war in Iraq and the tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of society. I bet you'll vote next time, hippie.

We'll Get You Yet, FDR! Walter Benjamin once wrote that the totalitarian forces gathering strength in Europe in the 1930s were so frightening precisely because it seemed that, if they won, not even the dead were safe from them. I think I know what he meant: here's the invaluable Paul Krugman once again proving that he's the only NY Times columnist worth reading. The real goal of Social Security "reform" isn't to provide "young workers" with "choice": it's to dismantle the welfare state created by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

-Consider Arms

2005-02-05T14:35:00.000-05:00

Consider Arms and The Sikh Geek Keep Wearing The Same Outfit to the Prom

A Mess Of Our Own Making In Neo-Athens Bonus points to any reader who can find something encouraging in the following quote! "Insurgents have killed 17 Iraqis and two US soldiers in a fresh wave of attacks, as partial returns from the elections show a Shiite alliance with ties to Iran rolling up a strong lead over pro-US prime minister Ayad Allawi."

Did He Also Have Top Go To The Brig Without Dessert? "A US soldier who stamped on Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison has been sentenced to six months in jail and discharged from the army."

More From That Damned Liberal Media In the lead-up to the election, the NY Times killed a story about the bulge in Bush's back during the presidential debates, because the evidence of the bulge being an electronic cheating devise were only speculatively proabable. Not as realistic as the leader of the free world wearing a "badly tailored suit" during a nationally televised presidential debate.

Because She Has The Sense To Know It Was Also On A T-Shirt In A Wham! Video

You Sold Your Soul To Become Meatloaf?! You took out a huge full-page ad in Variety to defend the sequel to Deuce Bigalow, Rob Schneider? WTF.

No Fucking Comment

A class entitled "Passport to Manhood."

Since "Crunk Juice" Did So Well... Madonna is reportedly considering becoming the endorser for a Kaballah energy drink. "We are going after the Red Bull market but Kabbalah Energy Drink tastes better. It is infused with Kabbalah water, which is holy water."

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-04T10:18:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Assistance from a Distance.

Ward Churchill, Honky Ward Churchill makes things hard for people on the left. Because of idiot comments like the ones that have landed him in hot water this week, it's harder than ever to have a rational discussion about the World Trade Center attacks. Now I've found something else to hold against this tenured radical: Mr. American Indian Movement is as Euro as me! Churchill is not actually Native American; his "membership" in the Keetowah Cherokee tribe was granted to him under a program designed to recognize "friends of the tribe" - Bill Clinton is another recipient. In essence, he was made an honorary Indian, but keeps acting as if he's been made to suffer his whole life because of his "indigenous" status. Dick.

You're Off the Team Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., is simultaneously dragging the Democratic Party and the great state of Connecticut through the mud. Yesterday, on the floor of the Senate, Lieberman not only voted for Torturemaster General Alberto Gonzales, he actually praised Gonzales' advice to deny Gitmo detainees their Geneva Convention rights, calling the decision "progressive" and "remarkably just." "You've got to appreciate the context," he said. Oh, we do, Joe. We do.

Eagles "A Lock" For Superbowl, Rice Says Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (I can't believe I just wrote that) says that a U.S. attack on Iran is "not on the agenda." I'd like to propose a new way of looking at such pronouncements from this administration. In the glamorous world of professional wrestling, when a wrestler or manager or valet (or Vince McMahon) makes a pronouncement about what won't happen, that's a near-guarantee that it will, in fact, take place. "Austin, you'll never get a title match against Triple H!" means "There will be a wrestling match between Steven Austin and Triple H tonight." In other words, the Iran Invasion Watch is still on, for reasons like...

This Despite Condi's promo, the leading Iranian opposition group in exile is hysterically squealing that Teheran is almost in possession of a detonator that it would need to start the chain reaction to explode a nuclear bomb. The group says that this intelligence comes from "the Iranian people." The only way to avert Iran getting a functioning nuclear weapon, the group implies, is for a U.S. invasion that will, coincidentally, install this opposition group as Iran's new rulers. This would be worth ignoring, if only there hadn't been a similar shady opposition group with similar worthless intelligence from a similar Middle Eastern country beginning with the letters "Ira."

The Worst Are Full of Passionate Intensity Marquette University has shut down a College Republicans fund-raiser for a group called "Adopt a Sniper" that raised money "for U.S. troops" by selling bracelets that read, "1 Shot 1 Kill No Remorse I Decide." The obvious nauseating aspect of this aside, why would someone hold a fund-raiser for American troops? Isn't that what taxes are for?

-Consider Arms

2005-02-03T16:22:00.000-05:00

In Chinese Astrology, 2005 Is The Year Of The Flaming Douchebag

Like Taking Candy From A Baby, But Remarkably Worse... Big ups to Vikings quarterback Duante Culpepper for giving diamond necklaces to a paralysed child at an awards ceremony on Wednesday, and then taking them back (causing the child's mother to cry). Now and forever, the Douchebag Pantheon will resound with the words, "Where's that kid at? I've got to get my stuff back."

And I Thought Nintendo Controller Belts Were The Nadir Of Eighties Retro Elliot Abrams was recently promoted to national security advisor to George Bush. If that name sounds familiar it's because Abrams has previously pled guilty to withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra affair. Well, at least he'll have a good handle on all those arms we illegally sold to Iran when we fight a preemptive war against them...

The Shame Of Connecticut Joe Lieberman, the very fibre of your being echoes with the words "fucking douchebag." Less than a year ago he declared a three-way tie for third place in a primary to be "the people of New Hampshire putting me into the ring." Now everyone's favorite anti-candy crusader is one of two dissenting Democratic senators who are going out on a limb to fight for the nomination of Bush's torture-loving lapdog, attorney general nominee Gonzales. Leiberman called the denial of rights to Gitmo detainees "progressive" and "remarkably just" while also citing the fact that the Bush administration allowed the prisoners to receive food and water. Yeah, not allowing those under your care to starve to death is truly the markings of an angel of mercy. Asshole.
Get video of Mister Joementum sucking face with George Bush here.

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-03T11:44:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Laura Bush, Gangbuster.

State of the Union: Everything Is Fine...In Narnia Joshua Micah Marshall takes apart the SOUA, especially in regards to the bullshit Bush was peddling about Social Security. Sadly, Marshall does not mention my absolute favorite part of the speech: the part where the president said that his wife is going to defeat America's street gangs. Because, you know, there's nobody better to reach out to alienated young people in gangs than a prim white librarian who married an oil brat.

The President May Have Exaggerated When He Said that Social Security Will Involve Raping Your Children If Something Isn't Done By 2007 Meanwhile, how did the dreaded liberal media do in parsing the president's speech? Pretty terrible, according to MediaMatters, whose front page today is full of grisly details: six Republicans to one Democrat on "Hardball," CBS using the "personal accounts" lingo about Social Security, David Brooks being David Brooks on ABC, etc. The most that anyone could muster in terms of a backbone was Ceci Connelly's lame explanation on Fox News that Bush "may have stretched the truth" when he said that Social Security will be bankrupt in 2042. How did you get your job at the Washington Post, Ceci? Were you the 14th caller to a radio show or something?

Stop Attacking Our Freedom With Your, uh, Freedom Two dread enemies of public order, the Veterans for Peace and the Quakers, have been banned from a Tennessee high school's organization fair for distributing material that parents found "anti-American." Among the quotes in the literature that the magificently named principal, Wayne Shank, found particularly offensive was one by that noted bomb-tosser and freedom-hater, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Jeff Gannon, Ace Reporter Maybe you've heard of TalonNews.com, maybe not. Maybe you've heard of Jeff Gannon, Ace Reporter, maybe not. But some of the milksops in the White House press corps are crying foul over the fact that Gannon has had White House press credentials for two years. Maybe it's because they're soft and sloppy and he makes them look like chumps. Maybe it's because they can't keep up with his superhuman productivity and effortless grasp of complex policy questions. Maybe it's because his web site is owned by a Texas Republican Party big shot and he actually asks questions like this at press conferences: "Since there have been so many questions about what the president was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting?"

The Usual Suspects: High School Students, Elected Officials, College Professors There are a number of people who won't be at President Bush's speech today in Fargo. Among them, elected Democratic officials, high school students, librarians, and people who wrote letters to newspapers in support of gay rights. All of these people are officially banned from the event, according to a blacklist circulated by the Republican Party to the people taking tickets at the door.

-Consider Arms

2005-02-02T14:08:00.000-05:00

DC Is Hollywood For The Ugly

This Just In From The "Sikh Geek Kicks Ass" News Bureau... For the past two years the White Hosue has been issuing a dialy press pass to a pseudo-journalist named Jeff Gannon, a self-described "white house correspondent" to TalonNews.com, a GOP shell if a website. Why would the White Hosue give a man with virtually no journalistic credibility an open seat in the press corps? Perhaps it's due to hard-hitting questions such as these: "Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the US economy, [Minority Leader] Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you said you're going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

Well, There Go All Of MY Plans To Visit North Korea! The Illest Kim Jung has declared a war against shaggy hair in his hyper-bizarre dictatorial island. According to this Salon article, men in North Korea now have to conform to "socialist style" hair, no longer than two inches, with an exception being made for bald-headed comb-overs (Score, MC No Shame!). The "dear leader" of North Korea claims that long hair deprives the cranium of precious oxygen, something "blind followers of bourgeois lifestyle" are in desperate need of.

PETA, Your Stupidity Never Ceases To Underwhelm Us

But Don't Let It Soften Your Post-Election Hard-Ons The CIA has corrected itself and admitted in an offical report that Saddam Hussein abandoned his chemical weapons programs in 1991. Nobody left in Iraq looking for weapons we now admit were never there in the first place. Mint.

From The Land Of Rasputin "Almost immediately after he left, Olga broke into hysterical sobs and phoned a friend, who persuaded her to go to the police. There, detectives nodded knowingly. "Gypsy hypnosis," they said."

-The Sikh Geek

2005-02-02T08:56:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: The New Iraqi Prime Minister Is...Dennis Miller?

They've Got G.I. Joe. Can Barbie Be Far Behind? In one of the few moments of genuine humor in the Iraq war, insurgents who claim to have taken an American soldier named "John Adam" hostage have, in fact, taken a toy hostage. Based on footage aired by the guerrillas, it appears that the "soldier" in their custody is, in fact, a G.I. Joe-type doll. If these motherfuckers touch Optimus Prime, though, I'm parachuting into Fallujah myself.

What a Resounding Success! Let Us Never Speak Of It Again Conspicuously missing from all the hoopla over what a tremendous success Sunday's elections were was one rather obvious question: Who won? Well, it's Wednesday, and while we're not entirely sure who won yet, the United Iraqi Alliance, the largest single faction, is claiming victory. Who's that, you ask? The UIA is a coalition of religious Shiite partis like the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Revolutionary al-Dawa Party, and the Badr Organization, which was trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. If you've noticed the repetition of the word "revolution" in those names, you've no doubt wondered how this faction regards the benevolent imperialism of the good ole U.S. of A. Well, fear not. Here's prime minister-apparent Abdul Aziz al-Hakim on the occupation: "No one welcomes the foreign troops in Iraq. We believe in the ability of Iraqis to run their own issues, including the security issue." Hey! That doesn't sound like gratitude to me.

Take Your Latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, Body-piercing, Tax-raising Freak Show Back to Vermont It looks like Howard Dean is all but assured to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a sign I can only take as hopeful. However, keep in mind that Dean was "all but assured" to be the Democratic presidential nominee just one year or so ago.

A Preview of Life In the USA, Circa 2011 As the lede paragraph to this story begins: "Rocked by scandals and shoddy results, Gov. Jeb Bush's drive to turn over many state services and millions of taxpayer dollars to private companies..." has apparently stalled, thanks to opposition by Republicans. Apparently, privatizing Medicaid in the state is a bridge too far even for the GOP, which is also upset that the public functions farmed out to private companies have been managed shoddily, crookedly, and behind schedule. Welcome to the magic of the marketplace, fellas.

The Man of Cats Returns! Well, so says Judith Miller, the NY Times "reporter" who is Ahmad Chalabi's biggest U.S. cheerleader these days. When last we left Chalabi, the disgraced Iraqi National Congress leader, he was ducking various warrants for his arrest and crying to the Iranians about how unfair the U.S. was being toward him. In a delusional appearance on "Hardball" after the election, Miller claimed that Chalabi, in fact, is negotiating with U.S. officials about assuming a position in the new Iraqi government, perhaps as oil minister. Miller claims this is because Chalabi is responsible for putting together the United Iraqi Alliance, a fact that the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani will doubtless be intrigued to learn. For these insane claims (first question: Since when are "U.S. officials" going to put people who didn't run in the election into cabinet positions?), Miller cites anonymous sources. Say, Judy, one of these "sources" wouldn't happen to be a certain Man of Cats, would it?

-Consider Arms

2005-02-01T20:00:00.000-05:00

So THAT'S What 200 Boxes of Cake Mix Looks Like!

Put On A Coat, It's Going To Get Drafty The Church of the Bretheren (similar to the Quakers and Mennonites) has been contacted by Selective Service who requested that they have "alternate service" programs in place in case of a draft. Officials deny that these requests were in advance of a draft. Rather they said that "Alternative Service Director Cassandra Costley stopped by the Brethren Service Center simply because she was in the area." Right...

That Sounds Awfully Familiar... Nice piece from a weblog called Critical Montages that dug up a clip from elections in Vietnam that echo the printed page pep rally of the past few days.

Space Travelers, Writers For A Conservative Website or Demonic Deceivers? From our favorite online Hillary-haters, WorldNetDaily, comes a little gem from their bookstore. Weirdos.

Big Ups To Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair? Who voiced the strongest public opposition to the $40 million coronation/inauguration? Try Judy Bachrach from Vanity Fair, who turned a three-minute fluff piece on Fox News into an exciting and uncomfortable mess when she butted heads with the 3am Cinemax talking head and said that the ball wouldn't keep the troops safe in their flimsy Humvees.

Since The MLWL Has Felt So Lonely In The Absence Of Freedom Fries Here is as complete of an article as I could find about the Calvin peeing on whatever stickers.

-The Sikh Geek

2005-01-31T20:25:00.000-05:00

Truckdriver To The Sugar-Craving Minions Of Tim Allen

Generation of Vipers. Really Stupid Vipers. A study of high school students released today showed that in matters of personal liberty and Constitutional rights, the youth of America are united in an empassioned "Whatever." One in three students said that the First Amendment goes "too far" and three out of four said that burnign the flag is illegal, which it is not, well, not yet...

Gitmo Being Run By Vengeful Older Brother, Demanding "Why Are You Self-Harming Yourself?!" After reading this I want to perform a hanging gesture.

Perpetual Listmonger: Corruption/Corporation Edition From Alternet comes the 10 worst corporations of 2004.

-The Sikh Geek

2005-01-28T14:33:00.000-05:00

I've Got $5 On The Governor. He's Fighting With Something To Prove.

Ain't Irony A Bitch A college student who attacked seat-belt laws in the university's newspaper dies in a carwreck. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt. His two friends who survived were. Hey, at least he'll make the paper again. Under the Darwin Awards.

Who Isn't The Republican Alan Freed These Days? Do the matrimonial-payola! Fresh off the chuncky heels of Maggie Gallagher comes Mark McManus, yet another chump paid to push Bush's marriage agenda while passing himself off as a real columnist.

Why Dress Up? It's Only A Solemn Commemeration Of The Holocaust With All Of The Major European Heads Of State...

Dick Cheney, Snow-Shoveling Child.

Our Mental and Moral Superiors In The Red States "A state senator has a plan for saving Oklahoma's gamefowl industry now that cockfighters are legally prohibited from pitting birds fitted with razor-like spurs. State Sen. Frank Shurden, a longtime defender of cockfighting, is suggesting that roosters be given little boxing gloves so they can fight without bloodshed. The proposal is in a bill the Henryetta Democrat has introduced for the legislative session that begins Feb. 7. 'Who's going to object to chickens fighting like humans do? Everybody wins,' Sen. Frank Shurden said."

Less Like Adbusters and More Like Mark-Ass Bustas It's a sport among tose at the MLWL to see how much time can pass before either PETA or Adbusters does something cringe-worthy. Fresh from their "Post-Apocalypse" issue (because even after collapse of industrial civilization, a lame Situationist-biting glossy will still make it out by deadline) Adbusters has decided to market a shoe known as Blackspot and advertize it with weird quick-cut ads. So the best way to protest advertising products is to advertise a product... Douchebags.

Worst Substitute Teacher Ever. EVER. But hey, maybe she could get a job at Gitmo?!

-The Sikh Geek

2005-01-27T16:22:00.000-05:00

So THAT'S How They Felt When They Hoisted Up "Bring The War Home" Banners

CNN, Soon To Give Masthead Credit To "Pentagon Press Release" The race to the bottom with Fox continues. This article was linked by a headline that read "Stop-The-Vote Violence Kills 5 In Iraq." How exactly is the "stop-the-vote" violence of today different than all of the violence of a few weeks or few months ago? Will CNN soon replace the word "insurgents" with "puppy-kicking goodness-hating monsters with fangs and scales"? Were there any supermodels hurt in the helicopter crash? Answers, please.

Big Ups To CNN, Part II

Daily Kos Addresses CT's Long Running Embarrassment Senator Joseph "Jomentum" Leiberman recently took a break from waging a war against sugar and video games to give his full-support behing the recent nomination of Frederick Chopin Rice, citing that lawmakers shouldn't look so much to her past resume of failure and deception as they should give American policy "the benefit of the doubt." Has anyone on a job interview ever had the balls to suggest that "what I've done in the past really has no bearing on what I will do"?

At Least David Rees Is Still Around...

Our Brave Heroes, Defending Freedom The interrogator left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash. Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact with women other than a man's wife or family, and with any menstruating women, who are considered unclean. "The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," says the draft, stamped "Secret." The interrogator used ink from a red pen to fool the detainee, Saar writes. "She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee," he says. "As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred. "She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward" - so fiercely that he broke loose from one ankle shackle. "He began to cry like a baby," the draft says, noting the interrogator left saying, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

-The Sikh Geek

2005-01-27T13:43:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: It's Going to Get Worse Before It Gets Even Worse.

Caesar Threatens Senate With Plebiscite In the latest of what seems to be a never-ending series of stories detailing the buyer's remorse that California should feel over electing the drug-using son of a Nazi to the governor's mansion, Gov. Schwarzenegger has announced a brilliant new strategy to avoid having to deal with the Democrat-controlled legislature: eliminate them. Because of California's goofy-ass law on referendum votes, Arnold is going to use his celebrity to get enough signatures to put laws up for referendum that would never be passed by the legislature. Most importantly, he's going to put the entire budget up for referendum vote; the privatization of the state employees' pension plan; and a redistricting plan that will neuter the legislature. California, you're jingling all the way to dictatorship.

America's Newest Foe: Gay Cartoon Characters After Margaret Spellings was confirmed as federal Education Sec'y, people in Washington thought she would be a breath of fresh air after the controversial, journalist-bribing tenure of Rod Paige. Those hopeful souls were quickly disappointed, though, when Spellings' first act as Secretary turned out to be a bizarre attack on a PBS cartoon show in which a bunny rabbit named Buster travels to Vermont and encounters two lesbian couples, among others. PBS has now agreed not to air the episode, thus saving our children from a life of sin. Hot on the heels of James Dobson's war on Spongebob Squarepants, this signals a new front in the conservative culture war: the completely ridiculous front.

Waiting for the Man...the Man Named Hamid Karzai Afghan puppet ruler Hamid Karzai has managed to block a U.S. plan to spray crop-killing chemicals on the vast, productive opium fields of Afghanistan, thus frustrating a U.S. effort to control what is now the largest crop of heroin in the world. Currently, 5.1 million acres of land in Afghanistan is being used to grow poppies for opium cultivation. Now, before you say "Well, at least heroin is better than terrorism," you should note the reason for the belated U.S. alarm: the heroin trade is funding Islamist terrorists in the region.

I Predict Social Security Will Go Bankrupt, Exactly 17 Years Ago Much has been made in the sinister liberal media of the fact that the Social Security "crisis" George Bush is forecasting for 2018 and 2042 (depending on what mood he's in, apparently) is no such thing. But this is not the first time the son of privilege has gone all Chicken Little on the government's most effective entitlement: During his unsuccessful run for Congress in Texas in 1978, Bush made it a campaign point to stress that Social Security would be bankrupt by 1988, and that the government should allow private investment accounts. As we all know, Social Security did, in fact, go bankrupt in 1988, and now there is no longer any Social Security.

Conservative Opinions at Rock Bottom Prices First, there was the revelation that the Department of Education paid hack columnist Armstrong Williams $240,000 to hype the No Child Left Behind Act. Now, we have another example of the government bribing a journalist to promote opinions they would have pimped for free. Maggie Gallagher apparently received somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000 in 2002 and 2003 from the Department of Health and Human Services to promote George Bush's wacko marriage policies, while simultaneously writing a syndicated column extolling the virtue of the selfsame wacko policies. Gallagher's excuse, which I am not making up? "I would have disclosed the payments if I had remembered them." Boy, the conservative racket has to be more lucrative than I thought, if you can just forget when someone lays 40 G's on you.

-Consider Arms

2005-01-26T18:02:00.000-05:00

Gangsta

An Ode To Keeping It Real
Murder Inc. label head Irv "Gotti" Lorenzo and his brother Christopher surrendered to the FBI on money laundering charges today. They're charged with funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug money, from Gotti friend and drug lord Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff, through the shitty rap label best known for cutie Ashanti and Mr. Scary Voice, Ja Rule. "Cocaine business controls America..."

--MC No Shame, are you happy now, Sikh Geek?

2005-01-26T16:17:00.000-05:00

Like A Swift Kick To The Groin. Followed By Another.

Bedtime for Democracy Part One and Part Two
Attorney General Alberto "Inhuman and Cruel is Still Cool" Gonzales and Madame Secretary Rice.

It's More Disturbing When You're Old Enough To Recognize The Inherently Dangerous Race-Baiting Say hello to the latest pro-wrestling superstar, Muhammad Hassan! Muhammad is a rough around the edges Arab stereotype who will make you feel allright about booing bullshit like Arabs in our country. Finally, an Iron Sheik for our times.

The Force Is Apparently Not With The Nerdy And Untouched A Seattle man was given the boot after attempting to squat outside a Cinerama Theatre for ALMOST FIVE MONTHS to see the new Star Wars movie. The Jedi Knight/douchebag was not angry so much at the evicting officers as he was at the city of Seattle itself. Said he, "...I also challenge the idea that you're wasting your time if you're not stuck in a cubicle all day." Yeah, a self-imposed bivouac on a sidewalk for over a third of a year to see a shitty Lucas film isn't a waste of time.

How Dare The Sacramento Bee Tarnish The Image Of Our Country's Heroes???!!! Because before 9-11 hysteria, the NYPD were most known for shooting immigrants and sodomizing detainees while firefighters were mostly thought of as scumbags who could be banging someone's wife.

Million-Dollar Bullshit Is the Telegraph better than FrontPage? Disability activists and anti-euthanasia groups are coming together to protest the Warner Brothers film Million-Dollar Baby and it's veiled second half "Hooray for killing the disabled and worthless!" plot twist. A woman from the National Spinal Cord Injury Association said that Clint Eastwood was guilty of using the "power of fame and film to perpetuate his view that the lives of people with disabilities are not worth living." A researcher for the group Not Dead Yet said the film, "plays out killing as a romantic fantasy and gives emotional life to the `better dead than disabled' mindset." There's always the chance that Clint just hates the handicapped. He did spend over half-a-million dollars to fight a court order to make his Carmel, California hotel handicapped-accessible (one images it as a greater sum than that of the actual renovations).

-The Sikh Geek

2005-01-25T16:26:00.000-05:00

Man, Bob Guccione Looks Like A MESS.

That's Gonna Be One Wicked Awesome Embassy! Tucked into the ball-shattering request for another $80 billion for the Iraqi war is a pricetag of $1.5 billion for a new US embassy. Who designed it? Bob Guccione?

"Morning Shock Jocks" Becomes Slang For "Pair Of Douchebags In Front Of A Mic" Because nothing could be funnier on your morning commute than making fun of the victims of the greatest natural disaster tragedy in recent memory.

Rich Little, Nowhere To Go But Down After Hawking Little Debbie Snackcakes Making the piano-playing douchebag on PBS look good, Rich Little entertained attendees at the Inauguration by honoring Ronald Reagan while simultaneously taking cheap shots at the poor. Little said he missed and adored the late President Ronald Reagan and "I wish he was here tonight, but as a matter of fact he is," and he proceeded to impersonate Reagan, saying, "You know, somebody asked me, 'Do you think the war on poverty is over?' I said, 'Yes, the poor lost.' " The crowd went wild.

Blast Form The Past: Divorcing Your Cancer-Stricken Wife As She Lays On A Hospital Bed Big ups Newt!

While I Never Thought I'd Be Rooting Intensely For Leo... I also never thought I'd be sourcing an article from FrontPage either. But movies that glorify killing off the sick and handicapped deserve little more than empty ticket lines. Big ups Hillary Swank! Hopefully the Academy will forget you and Clint like you forgot your husband while accepting your last (and hopefully last) Oscar!

Speaking Of The Oscars... Here are the nominees for the 2004 Razzies.

-The Sikh Geek

2005-01-24T19:11:00.000-05:00

I Never Thought I Would Have So Much Respect For Someone Over At Vanity Fair

What Else Could One Expect On A Day That Brought Forth Edith Warton? A scientist at Cardiff Univeristy has surmised that January 24th is the most depressing day of the year: a miserbale combination of "lousy weather, post-Christmas debt, time elapsed since yuletide indulgence, failed new year resolutions, motivation levels, and the desperate need to have something to look forward to." Killer.

In Case You're The "Compare Apples and Oranges" Type, That Means The Entire Cost Undergraduate Degress For At Least One-Million People Another $80 billion for the war in Iraq. Killer.

Don't Worry Norway, We're Terrified Too.

Can't They Just Keep On Keeping Their Promises? Good job, Mel Gibson. Not long after making hudreds of millions of dollars off the crucifixion, defending his Holocaust-denying father and suckering the public into believing his Pope-hating schismatic faith is "traditional Catholicism," Mel's film Braveheart is inspiring born-again douchebags to rediscover their inner warriors. Shouldn't this have been lefting to the Ultimate Warrior?

Another Drop In The Ocean Of Shitty Modern Art Two tenured art professors have resigned from UCLA after the school failed to suspend a graduate student for his performance art piece in which he apparantly used a gun in a possibly mock round of Russian Roulette. Ready for the turn from suck to massive suck? One of the protesting professors was the "artist" behind "Shoot," a performance art piece in which his assistant shot him in the arm with a .22 caliber rifle. The other professor declared the lack of disciplinary action as "sort of the last straw." Raze the entire fucking department and declare the unused rubble an instalation piece entitled "Department of Douchebag Studies."

-The Sikh Geek, appropriately listening to The Red House Painters today

2005-01-24T08:57:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: I Survived the Blizzard of '05, But I Was Really Bored.

RIP Johnny Carson A lot will be written this week about Johnny Carson's cultural and sociological significance - as a last exemplar of the time when popular culture had a center, as the last link with the vaudeville era, as the comforting tonic for Vietnam-era Americans facing social disintegration, etc. But what should be remembered is that he was an individual, a performer, and most of all knew how to deliver material well. Even when he bombed, he got a laugh - "You didn't boo me when I smothered a grenade at Guadalcanal" being one of my favorite ripostes to an unenthusiastic crowd. This link takes you to another good example: the text of "What Democracy Means to Me," which he delivered in September 1991, after the final collapse of the Soviet Union. Read it, and remember that, despite all the talk about his Midwestern sensibility and his essential white guy-ness, how gutsy his stuff could be, especially in light of today's superpatriotism: "Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead...Yes, democracy means fighting every day for what you deserve, and fighting even harder to keep other, weaker people from getting what they deserve."

DIY, the Rumsfeld Way Here's a good example of good old fashioned Yankee ingenuity: When the existing national intelligence service refuses to cook the books to produce information that suits your distorted view of the world, get around the problem by simply creating your own intelligence service! That's what Donald Rumsfeld did: the Washington Post has exposed the existence of an organization called the Strategic Support Branch which has been spying in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world for two years.

A Grateful Nation Says "Fuck Off" The presumptive future Prime Minister of Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, has raised some eyebrows in Washington with comments this weekend relating the first item on his agenda: getting rid of the Americans. Al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is also the leader of the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of the main Shi'ite parties formed on the instructions of our old pal the Ayatollah Al-Sistani. Al-Hakim denounced the Americans for "massacres and atrocities" against the Iraqi people and said he wants U.S. and British troops to be replaced by Iranians and Syrians. It will be interesting to see if there isn't some kind of "major surprise" with this week's elections that result in the election of a more pliable Iraqi.

Antonin Scalia, More Catholic Than the Pope Here's an interesting story about evil genius (and possible soon-to-be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) Antonin Scalia telling a Louisiana Knights of Columbs group that Christians should "live fearlessly." Scalia exhorted the Knights to embrace "traditional Christianity," and held up for their edification the example of the martyr St. Thomas More, who died for opposing Henry VIII's break with Rome. "I find it hard to understand people who revere Thomas More but who themselves selectively oppose the teachings of the pope," Scalia told the crowd. One such dissident jumps immediately to mind: Antonin Scalia, who in 2002 announced that the Church's condemnation of capital punishment simply doesn't apply to him: "I read it, I considered it, and I decided that I disagree with it, so I am disregarding it," Scalia said then. He also said that any judge who agrees with the Church's teaching about the immorality of capital punishment should resign. "Here I stand, I can do no other," said a famous 16th century European religious figure, but not Thomas More.

Dial 'P' For Perjury Although Alberto Gonzales has not been confirmed as the Attorney General yet, if he does get approved he will begin office in an unusual way: having just committed a crime. Newsweek has dug up proof that Gonzales perjured himself when he testified in Congress about his role in helping GW Bush get excused from jury duty in 1996 - a chore that would have revealed Bush's own drunk-driving conviction from 20 years earlier (on his registration form, Bush cannily left blank the answer for whether he had ever been convicted of a crime - and thus did not perjure himself). Gonzales apparently requested an off-the-record interview with the judge in the DUI case, an interview that resulted in Bush being excused for jury duty. Under questioning from Sen. Pat Leahy, though, Gonzales said no such meeting ever took place. Hey, didn't the Republicans recently impeach a president, claiming that the issue was that he had lied under oath? Ah, never mind: That was seven years ago, and who can remember that far back?

-Consider Arms

2005-01-22T16:27:00.000-05:00

As Stephen Baldwin and Carfax Abbey Come Together For Tsunami Relief

"We've Got The Gay-Love Bomb!" The Pentagon was a bit emberrassed when it was discovered that they were working on a non-lethal super-aphrodisiac weapon that would incite enemy troops to thrwo down their guns are start humping each other. The military denied that gay-bomb plans were ever seriously considered, and recent discoveries prove that they never were... if $7.5 million and 6 years of consideration can qualify as "not serious."

What Is Sketchier, France's Xenophobic Headwear Policy Or The Reporting Done For Outlook India? Dude, you shouldn't contradict your headline in YOUR FIRST SENTENCE...

-The Sikh Geek

2005-01-20T16:39:00.000-05:00

Reunited And It Feels So Good

DC Gets Ready To Party! (Rest Of The Planet Trembles In Fear...) A poll of 21 countries that was published yesterday shows how terrified the rest of the world is at the prospects of another four years of Bush. 18 of the 21 countries feared that Bush would have a negative impact on the world. Thankfully Poland still has the balls to represent! In a two-to-one margin, those surveyed said that W would have a negative impact on peace and security.

More Than Ironic Metal Posturing Jumping The Shark...

One Inaguration To Feel Not-So-Morbid About On Sunday, the Ukraine's president-elect Victor Yushchenko will be sworn in after a crooked first election and literally getting the gasface from the agents of the KGB.

When Defiance Melts With A Slow Pathos

Saying Thousands Of Words When The Rest Don't Say Anything It's telling that the most damning journalism to come out of the Iraqi War hasn't had a single word attached to it. The scandal at Abu Ghraib came from photographs while newspapers and television softened stats and reread Pentagon press releases. This incredible series of photographs from a shooting in Tal Afar says alot more than a flat line about "a shooting at a checkpoint" ever could.

Sometimes You Just WANT The Urban Legends To Be True

-The Sikh Geek curtesy of the general wireless internet policy at the Los Feliz library

2005-01-20T09:46:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: I Hereby Declare This An Inauguration-Free Zone.

Good News? For the first time ever, heart disease is no longer the number one killer of Americans: the number one killer of Americans is now circus accidents. No, just kidding, it's cancer. Although death rates from both diseases have been falling, the death rate from heart disease has plummeted, and actually cancer has been the number one killer since 2002 (there's evidently some kind of lag about making the announcement). If you'll study the chart, you'll see that the leading causes of death are almost all diseases, except for "injuries" and "suicide." Good morning.

How Low Can It Go? By "it," I mean the U.S. dollar. Warren Buffet, investor/businessman/evil capitalist extraordinaire, says there's no way to avoid a further devaluation of U.S. currency, barring a major change in trade policy. That's not going to make the Chinese central bank, which is currently keeping our debt-ridden economy afloat, any happier. Buffet, whose net worth is about $41 billion, also says he's having a hard trouble lately finding any stocks to invest in, "if that says anything about the state of the economy." It does, brah.

It's Time for the Cheap Shot of the Day In the wake of what they see as their major triumph, getting George W. Bush into the White House without a judicial coup, conservative Christian group Focus on the Family has a new agenda: fag-bashing a cartoon. That's right. The group is objecting to a video being distributed to elementary schools to encourage diversity, because the video features Spongebob Squarepants, who is apparently a "gay icon."

Jolly Bad Show Proving that it's not just Americans who are capable of bizarre, homoerotic torture of Iraqi civilians, the Brits are currently embroiled in an Abu Ghraib scandal of their own. The country that brought you the concentration camp is now facing military reports that the abuse of civilians was "widespread" under an operation code-named "Ali Baba."

War With East Asia Completed, Big Brother Looks to War With Eurasia Here's a great interview with Sy Hersh on what we're going to be in for in the next four years: war with Iran. As Hersh points out, one of the most interesting aspects of his big scoop was that the CIA has essentially been taken out of the intelligence-gathering process: All this stuff is being run out of the Pentagon now. The tentative plan, according to Hersh, is this: to coincide with the Sharon government's pullout from Gaza in the summer, the U.S. is going to strike three or four strategic targets in Iran and hope that this action foments a popular uprising against the government. So the good news is that the hawks don't foresee regime change by overwhelming force; the bad news is that these are the people who said the Iraqis would welcome our troops with flowers and candy.

-Consider Arms, Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You If the Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Your Country Itself

2005-01-19T13:20:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Your Inauguration Spoilsport Headquarters.

Sikh Geek, This One's For You Could anything be more horrible than the concert for young people held prior to the inauguration? This year it was called "America's Future Rocks Today" (that's like something from The Simpsons) and it featured such stellar performers as Hillary Duff, Fuel (not the punk one), 3 Doors Down, Ruben Studdard, and JoJo. And, in a special treat for the Sikh Geek, we have this sentence, about the man the Geek nominated as Douchebag of the Year: "Also appearing...[was] actor Stephen Baldwin, who rode a skateboard onto the stage..."

Bill Thomas: Man of Confusing Action Everyone who hates Bush's plan to wreck Social Security is celebrating the remarks of Bill Thomas, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (and therefore one of the most powerful men in the country), to the effect that the Social Security privatization plan is "a dead horse." But as Josh Marshall points out, Bill has some pretty kooky ideas that he thinks should be tried in place of Bush's plan, like "gender-adusting Social Security," which would mean raising the retirement age for women since they live longer.

Irony: It's Not Just for Europe Anymore Remember all the hullabaloo about how presidential girl gone wild Jenna Bush was going to display some of the ole noblesse oblige and go amongst the downtrodden ghetto children as a schoolteacher? Well, apparently dear Jenna's efforts to shape young minds has stalled on a very unexpected obstacle: the No Child Left Behind Act, the centerpiece of her half-wit father's first term domestic agenda. It seems that under the terms of the act, Jenna does not have the proper qualifications to be hired as a teacher. Times like these were made for schadenfreude.

The Weapons Are In Narnia One key claim by the sort of guys who call in to talk radio shows and work at the Heritage Foundation is that the reason we didn't find any WMD in Iraq is that Saddam moved them all over the border with Syria before the war. This assertion seems counter-intuitive for two reasons: (1)the Ba'ath Party in Syria was the bitter enemy of the Ba'ath Party in Iraq; the two were always fighting, including actually going to war with one another (2)Why would the evil madman dictator Hitleresque Saddam Hussein divest himself of his most effective weapons before the war started? Is that generally how wars are fought? Well, now there's a third reason this theory doesn't hold up: U.S. inspectors who have left the country for good say there's no evidence whatsoever Saddam moved anything across the border.

The Gold Rush and Where It Got Us Every so often I like to check in on California and see what boneheaded plan their boneheaded governor is up to. Here's a nifty idea: Let's redraw the voting districts of a solidly Democratic state to illicitly favor Republicans! Of course, that's not what the woman-molesting son of a Nazi says, but that's what his plan would do: It would force districts to be "competitive" by ensuring that in every district there's never more than a 7 percent difference between the registration of Republicans and Democrats. This effectively means that the race goes to who can raise more money - the Republicans, in other words. Only one problem: Under Governor Jingle-all-the-way's own proposal, party registration can't be used as a factor in redrawing districts - while mandating the use of party registration in doing so, simultaneously and contradictorily. Maybe that kind of thing flies in Vienna, Fritz, but not here.

-Consider Arms

2005-01-18T09:44:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: America: The Country That Soft-Pedals Torture.

Iran Invasion Watch: The Return In the wake of Sy Hersh's piece exposing US recon operations in Iran, George W. Bush has refused to rule out the use of force in the process of coercing the Muslim nation to abandon its nuclear program. The Iranian defense minister had this ominous rejoinder: "We can claim that we have rapidly produced equipment that has resulted in the greatest deterrent," then adding, "[cough]nuclearweapons[cough]."

Martin Luther King is Alive! By now, you've probably heard about the Nevada TV weatherman fired over the weekend for accidentally saying "Martin Luther Coon" on the air. But if you read down, you'll see a much bigger fuck-up happening around the same time from a competing local station: A TV reporter erroneously said that a teenager caught in an avalanche was found alive; in fact, he had been killed. A reporter for a third Nevada station, meanwhile, brought obloquy on himself by asking a police chief how the family of the dead boy took the news. All in all, a stellar week for local news in Nevada.

False Messiah Watch When the news of the Washington Post's $100,000 bribe to the Bush inauguration broke last week, one of my first thoughts was, "I wonder how Sun Myung Moon is involved in the inauguration." One of my next thoughts was, "I bet John Gorenfeld knows." Lo and behold: the fearless reporter who has locked his teeth around the ankle of the arms magnate/self-proclaimed messiah has, of course, delivered the goods. Moon has donated a hearty $250,000 to the inauguration through the shell company known as the World Television Center, an entity which Moon boasts will help end public education. Give Gorenfeld a Pulitzer!

The Irony of the Flip-Flop Label Will Never End On Sunday, the Washington Post published an interview with George W. Bush (for which they paid the low, low price of just $100,000) in which the president said he didn't foresee any action on the proposed amendment to the constitution outlawing gay marriage. "Nothing will happen," were his exact words. As you can imagine, this upset the social conservatives who probably put Bush over the top, particularly in Ohio. Now, the White House has once again flip-flopped, with Bush vowing fast action on the amendment. "I don't think one interview is a turning point in his presidency," said U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Dogfucker). So you see, kids, it's okay to lie, but only if your lie doesn't constitute a "turning point" of some kind. That's what we call moral values!

Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining When Ohio passed the most sweeping anti-civil union bill in America last November, it seemed like a defeat for gays and progressives. But it was a victory for at least one put-upon minority in society: dudes who beat up their girlfriends. The Cuyahoga County public defender's office has begun asking judges to dismiss domestic violence charges filed against accused batterers who aren't married to their alleged victims. Under the terms of the amendment, the lawyers have a case, because domestic violence laws illegally grant a marriage-like status to unmarried people who live together. Republicans: Hating Gays and Providing Loopholes for Batterers Since 2004.

-Consider Arms

2005-01-17T09:04:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: First News Magazine to Use the Headline "Social INsecurity" in a Cover Story Gets a Bottle in the Face.

Iran Invasion Watch, Day 478 Things have been sleepy on the let's-invade-Iran front...or maybe they only appear sleepy. Ace reporter Seymour Hersh has dug up some interesting info: the U.S. military has been conducting recon missions inside Iran since last summer, undertaken with an eye toward identifying targets in the event of an invasion or "tactical strike." One former high-level intelligence official told Hersh, "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."

Let's Do the Dollar Limbo: How Low Can It Go? Already being battered by the euro, the dollar is now rapidly losing value against a currency it had been trouncing for years: the yen. The yen has now hit a five-year high against the dollar and looks likely to climb even higher after the upcoming G7 meeting, when China will likely allow greater currency flexibility. What this means in the short term is that the U.S. trade deficit shows no signs of closing, meaning that American bond ratings are still in peril. In layman's terms: We're still fucked.

Ex Post Facto Reasoning at Its Finest In an interview with the Washington Post published yesterday (an interview bought for the low, low price of $100,000 - see Friday's top five), Bush claimed that it doesn't matter that Saddam had no WMD, that the Iraqi people did not greet the US as liberators, and that the US is now mired in that country's affairs without hope of extrication. Why? Because he won the election. "We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," he said, introducing yet another neologism into the national lexicon. As for Osama Bin Laden's "accountability moment," scheduled since September 2001, Bush has this explanation for why it's been so hard to find the man: "Because he's hiding." Shit! You're right. I bet he has an unlisted phone number, too. Why didn't Saddam think of that?

The Sky Is Falling!...Or Is It? It looks like the rest of the big media is finally catching up to Paul Krugman and Kevin Drumm, as this excellent (and lengthy) NY Times Magazine article shows. To wit: There is no Social Security crisis, the only "crisis" for Republicans is that there's a government program that works the way it's supposed to and that stands in the way of turning America into a Latin American-style oligarchy. Speaking of Social Security, by the way, check out this unsettling story of how the Bush administration is using Social Security money to promote its plan to dismantle Social Security. Cue: vomiting in terror.

The Way Way Back Machine Presents: Scott Ritter Scott Ritter is the decorated former Marine who was one of the most gung-ho members of U.N. weapons inspections teams assigned to Iraq in the 1990s, in part because Ritter had fought Saddam's army in the first Gulf War. After those inspections, though, Ritter turned against the U.N.'s disastrous embargo of Iraq, arguing that the sanctions did more harm than good. During the run-up to war with Iraq in 2002, Ritter was a vocal opponent of the invasion, telling anyone who'd listen that Saddam no longer had any WMD. At the time, even I thought he was overstating the case: Surely Saddam had something, if only to act as a deterrent to Iran. Now, with the quiet news this month that the U.S. has officially abandoned the search for WMD, we all know that Ritter was 100 percent correct. Naturally, this modern-day Cassandra is being lavishly feted by the mainstream media, who are also apologizing for the scurrilous attacks on his character and patriotism they publicized in 2002 and 2003. Oh, you mean that's not the case? Ritter is the subject of a virtual press blackout while he works on his latest campaign, which is criticizing the proposed Star Wars missile shield? I guess the liberal media has one thing in common with the Lord: they both work in mysterious ways.

-Consider Arms

2005-01-14T14:31:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Remembering When "Royal Nazi" Was Only Something We Called Our Landlord.

Too Bad the Duke of Windsor Didn't Live to See This The British royals are battening down the hatches in the face of massive public criticism of Prince Harry's Nazi costume fuck-up. I guess we shouldn't really expect them to be upset - they are a bunch of Huns, after all.

The Only Growth Industry in Iraq When it became apparent, in the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, that the Iraqis were not a docile people eager to welcome our troops as liberators, neoconservatives in this country proposed a new justification for the war: the Flypaper Theory. Under this dubious theory, the war would draw terrorists from around the country to Iraq, where they would then be killed until there were no more terrorists. This week, the CIA's think tank reported on how this has actually panned out: Iraq has now become the leading haven and training ground for terrorists in the world.

Bush: Man, Did I Say All That Shit? What a Douchebag In a forthcoming interview with Babwa Wawa, George W. Bush says he regrets using "undiplomatic language" in his first term, like his famous challenge to Iraqi insurgents to "bring it on" (regrettably, they did) and his vow to bring in Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive" (that worked wonders, didn't it?). "So I do have to be cautious about, you know, conveying thoughts in a way maybe that doesn't send wrong impressions about our country," he said. Hey, I have a better idea: Spout all the cowboy talk you want, just don't illegally invade countries for fraudulent reasons. That would be much better.

The Damn Liberal Media Is At It Again! Among the swells giving big-money donations to the president's inaugural committee (such upstanding citizens as oil companies, Wall Street firms licking their chops over Social Security, and the lobby that wants to build nuke plants have kicked in hundreds of thousands of dollars) is an interesting one: The Washington Post, that alleged outpost of the liberal media, which donated $100,000 to the inauguration. The Post says the donation is just to secure tickets to the balls for their advertisers, but they ran a story earlier in the week suggesting that the big lobbies giving donations to the inauguration were expecting a quid pro quo. Oh, and by the way: the Post also scored an exclusive interview with the president slated to run this weekend. Just a strange coincidence, I'm sure.

Avert Thine Eyes, Peasants! Here's a story about the elaborate security procedures in place for dickbag's inaugural parade (cop fetishists are droolingly calling it a "ring of steel"), but the real gem is in the 4th paragraph: "Parade performers will have security escorts to the bathroom, and they've been ordered not to look directly at President Bush..." THEY'VE BEEN ORDERED NOT TO LOOK DIRECTLY AT PRESIDENT BUSH??? I swear, it's not going to be long before we have to refer to him as the Unconquered Sun and genuflect before his picture.

-Consider Arms

2005-01-13T09:46:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Stop Your Fooling Around.

The Pacification of Iraq, Armstrong Williams-Style Apparently, the government bribing reporters isn't just for the USA anymore: Iraqi leader Iyad Allawi's government has been giving an exciting new meaning to "hospitality" by handing out $100 bills to journalists while campaigning in the run-up to the elections at the end of the month. $100, incidentally, is the equivalent of about half the average monthly salary in Iraq. Think there'll be some hard-hitting coverage of the issues?

If Adolf Hitler Flew In Today... Prince Harry of Britain, the Goofus to his brother William's Gallant, has landed in what may be his biggest P.R. blunder to date: He was photographed at a "fancy dress party" in a Nazi costume. Although frankly, as the photograph included with this story shows, it's a pretty poor Nazi costume: the armband is all wrong, the shirt is untucked, and he's wearing baggy khakis. He looks less like a stormtrooper and more like one of those unemployed, shifty dudes who used to hang out with George Lincoln Rockwell.

All The Truth In the World Adds Up to One Big Lie Almost two years after the U.S. and Britain launched an illegal invasion to disarm Saddam Hussein of his chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons, the effort to prove that he had any such weapons has ended with a whimper. Last month, the final members of the Iraq Survey Group quietly left the country; there are no more Americans searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In other words, the entire reasoning behind the war was based on demonstrably false premises. Compare it to your favorite phony justification - the Maine explosion, Gulf of Tonkin incident, Polish soldiers shooting Germans - and the end result is still: In seven days, George Bush will be sworn into a second term as president. Fuck.

How The Party of Small Government Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Brother Remember the halcyon days of the Clinton administration, when Republican whackos were also banging on about black helicopters, jackbooted federal thugs, and the unlawful encroachment on our privacy by the surveillance state? Man, those were the days! Today, Republicans have apparently learned that there are some benefits to being Big Brother, as witnessed by Tom Ridge's latest proposal: He wants all passports to include fingerprints in a digital chip that will also have other personal information about you.

A Newfound Respect for Mel Gibson As one of the approximately nine Americans who enjoyed both "The Passion of the Christ" and "Fahrenheith 9/11," I am pleased to note that our ranks have been swelled by the addition of a new member: Mel Gibson. I always suspected he wasn't on board with a lot of conservative stuff when he ridiculed the lack of WMD on the Hannity show, and now he's praised "Fahrenheit 9/11" and says he feels a kinship with Michael Moore. You have to follow the link to the Free Republic message board; the wingnuts there don't know what to make of it, and electronically cry tears of frustration and betrayal. Choice.

-Consider Arms, relieved that The Sikh Geek has made it to Hollyweird safe and sound

2005-01-11T09:18:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: A Robot In Every Home.

Slip-Slidin' Away We often hear that the slippery slope argument is a logically flawed one; action A doesn't by necessity lead to result Z, and so forth. But the Dutch medical industry is going out of its way to prove that some slopes are more slippery than others. Long a pioneer of euthanasia (a pleasing, Greek euphemism for "doctor-assisted suicide"), Dutch doctors are now arguing for an expansion of their powers under the country's assisted suicide laws. First, they want the right to euthanize infants, despite the law's stipulation that patients who are being euthanized have to ask for such an end in writing; second, they want the right to euthanize people with no actual physical or mental illness, but who seem to be kind of, you know, bored. At this rate, by 2050, there will be no Dutch people left.

The Security President In another weird inauguration move (see last week's brouhaha over the cross being banned), the Bush administration is breaking with tradition and forcing the city of Washington, D.C. to pay the costs for the public services in use at Bush's inauguration, to the tune of about $12 million. About $40 million will be spent in funds raised from private donors, but past administrations have covered D.C.'s expenses in terms of police overtime, security checks, infrastructure, etc. The only way the city will be able to pay the bill, ironically, is by taking $12 million out of its homeland security fund. This is an administration with its priorities straight: When it comes down to a choice between protecting the nation's capital and protecting out-of-town douchebags in tuxedos and cowboy boots, there's just no question.

America: Banned in America Libraries in two southern Mississippi counties have banned the Daily Show's "America: The Book" from its shelves, while Wal-Mart continues to refuse to stock the book. The foes of the book contend that their objection is based on the page showing mock-up nude photos of the nine Supreme Court justices. While some may see this story as a chilling indication of the assault on civil liberties in America, I am much more frightened by the phrase "southern Mississippi libraries." What do you suppose they're like?

May You Never Get Sick in Tennessee, Friend The Democratic governor of Tennessee has announced a spiffy new move that will save the state roughly $1.7 billion a year: letting the poor die in their wretched garrets. Well, he didn't exactly use those terms, but here's how it works: 323,000 adults will be dropped from the state's Medicaid program. These unfortunates are people who work full-time jobs that pay them too much money to qualify for regular Medicaid, but don't provide healthcare for them. In a lavish gesture of noblesse oblige, though, the governor is permitting these folks' 100,000 or so children to continue to have access to medicine and doctors.

Doesn't Anyone Resign in Disgrace Anymore? Perhaps the hallmark of a shameless society is that things which would once mean ruin and scandal now pass before the glazed eyes of the public with nary a batted lash. Case in point: Armstrong Williams, conservative commentator and token black guy for the Right. Last week, it emerged that the federal Department of Education paid Williams $240,000 - of public money! - to hype the No Child Left Behind on his TV show, in his column, and to black journalists. In other words, the federal government bribed a prominent media personality to express approval for a controversial policy. At the very least, shouldn't Williams have to stab himself in the intestines before Ken Hamblin cuts his head off?

-Consider Arms

2005-01-11T09:05:00.000-05:00

NOTE FROM THE MANAGEMENT

Please excuse our tardiness in posting this month. The Sikh Geek is currently relocating from one blue state to another, which has naturally put things in flux. But before long, we'll be back with more of the same freedom-hating, America-blaming that you've come to expect.

2005-01-06T08:22:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: I Hope I Haven't Overdone It.

California: Will You Ever Get Tired of Being Wrong? Hey, remember how much fun that Gray Davis recall was back in '03. Good times, man, good times. Hey, whatever happened to the Governator, anyway? Well, here's one totally awesome thing he's doing: He's proposing a law that will privatize Calpers, the state's public employee pension, which happens to be the largest pension fund in the country. This move will accomplish two things: First, it will screw people out of their life's savings by throwing them on the ineptitude of the free market; second, it will neuter one of the most politically progressive investment funds in America. In other words, it's a lose-lose situation for everyone who's not a powerful millionaire. But hey, that Gray Davis sure was boring!

The End of a Crappy Era Tucker Carlson, bow tie-wearing hostess of CNN's "Crossfire," is leaving the network, and it looks like the show won't survive his departure. CNN declined to renew Carlson's contract, and in what must be a real nut-puncher, a network executive said, "I guess I come down more in the Jon Stewart camp," referring to an incident last year where the "Daily Show" host called Carlson a "dick" to his face on the air. Well, but it's not all bleak for Carlson, who's hoping to land a primetime show on MSNBC, home of...oh shit. That's like the graveyard.

The Loneliest Whacko Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., is making waves by saying that he wants to roll back a number of disastrous Bush initiatives from the first term, such as the Medicare debacle and the No Child Left Behind Act. Pence says he wants to focus, rather, on balancing the budget and restoring control of education to states and cities. He says he realizes this makes him "the skunk at the garden party," but it also makes him, you know, genuinely conservative, instead of whatever mutant ideology is being birthed from the skull of Karl Rove right now. Too bad Pence doesn't realize there's no room for conservatives in the GOP anymore.

Our Christian President Says: "Tear Down the Cross"! In response to a planned demonstration by a Christian group at Bush's inauguration, the Secret Service has banned the display of crosses at the celebration. That's right; our "Christian President" has prohibited the display of the central symbol of his putative religion during his inaugural parade. Well, I expect all those "Save Merry Christmas" people to be up in arms over this, but then again, I'm a huge fucking moron.

Terrorism is So 2002 Porter Goss, like an angry monkey with a hammer in a glass shop, has made another big change at the CIA on the heels of his purge of the agency's top officers: he's canceled the daily meetings on terrorism held by the director since Sept. 11 (you remember Sept. 11: it was the day of all that terrorism). Unbelievably, this is because Goss believes the agency has been spending too much time fighting terrorism, and not enough time on "other issues"; like what, one wonders? MP3 piracy? Road rage? Tsunami detection?

-Consider Arms

2005-01-06T07:35:00.000-05:00

What's The Matter With Kansas? Alot.

CNN, Your Source For News About Attractive White People Estimates place the percentage of children killed in the Asian tsunami at roughly one-third of the total. That's 50,000 kids in addition to over 10,000 orphans. Fresh from it's hard hitting reports on the hot supermodel held up in the tree and other inconvenienced celebs, CNN puts the pic of cute, Aryan child Ragnar Ericsson to represent all of those lost and missing from Indonesia to East Africa. Awesome job, dudes from Atlanta. You're quickly making USA Today look good.

-The Sikh Geek, as impressed with wireless as that old guy on the commercials

2004-12-31T06:36:00.000-05:00

"I hope you're happy, heavy metal music magazines."

Yearend Listmonger: Douchebag Edition From AlterNet, a list of the 25 Dumbest Quotes from 2004. Go fuck yourself with a falafel on the internets, girlie men.

General Clark Signs Major Endorsement Deal With Bad Idea Jeans, Inc. Apparantly tired of being taken seriously, former General and presidential hopeful Wesley Clark is working on a sitcom based on his own life.

For The Xenophobic, American Spectator-Reading Kindergartener On Your Christmas List

Border Patrol pajamas.

No, Seriously. What The Fuck IS The Matter With Kansas? "A Newton, Kansas, couple already charged with forcing mentally ill residents of a group home to work on their farm in the nude were indicted Wednesday on 35 charges."

No, I Mean It. What The Fuck Is The Matter With Kansas? Really. From the makers of GodHatesFags. com and everybody's favorite insane church suspected to be an intricate performance art project, The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, comes a bizarre tyrade praising the tsunami in Asia for killing gay Swedes. WTF?

I've Become The Year's Most Speechless Sikh Geek While trying to post about BeliefNet's "Year's Most Inspiring Person" award ridiculously going to Pat Tillman, I had the wind taken out of my sails by this douchebag: "I Believe that Clay Aiken has been one of the Most Inspiring People of 2004. He has brought a new meaning to GOOD WHOLESOME music. He spreads the Good News of Our Lord in every song he sings, his public image, and his love for his family and God. I know of several people who have been baptized as a result of finding the Lord through their encounters with the works of CLAY AIKEN!! I believe that God has a place for CLAY in this world and sent him as an example for all ~~~ this is shown in the fact that CLAY came in 2nd Place in American Idol, and strives everyday to walk in the light of Our Lord. Thank you God for sending us your Angel of Love and Compassion in one CLAY AIKEN!!! Sing a joyful noise unto the Lord!!!"

-The Sikh Geek

2004-12-30T08:53:00.000-05:00

$8,751 To Iraq For Every $1 To Asian Disaster Relief

At Least That Fucking Hot Chick Wasn't Amongst The 100,000+ Dead! God bless you, CNN. You get more like the Post and USA Today with every passing moment. Cringe as you read this hard hitting article about the handful of beautiful and famous people caught up in the greatest natural disaster in recent memory. Does Anderson Cooper care to speculate as to the tsunami's effect on the Olsen twins?

Just Because They Didn't Call Us "Stingy" Doesn't Mean That They Won't Invade Our Country With Black Helicopters... Remember the UN comment in the wake of the tsunami that called the US "cheap" for its initial $15 million donation? It was made up. Would you really be that shocked to learn that the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth are connected to this?

Is Anyone Else Weirded Out That Osama Bin Laden Continues To Make Tapes And Nobody Really Cares?
"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."- G.W. Bush, 9/13/01
"I want justice...There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive,'"- G.W. Bush, 9/17/01, UPI

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
"I am truly not that concerned about him." - G.W. Bush, responding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts, 3/13/02

-The Sikh Geek

2004-12-29T13:41:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Susan Sontag, RIP.

President Douchebag to the Rescue Criticism of the U.S. response to the tsunami disaster continues, as the White House was browbeaten by the U.N. into upping its paltry $15 million aid offer to a slightly less paltry $35 million. "The United States is not stingy," Colin Powell said, in what may be his final major lie as a hireling of the Bush administration. As for the Head Cowpoke himself, Dubya has remained secluded - where else? - on his brush-choked Crawford, Tex. ranch, preferring to let the grown-ups handle the humanitarian aid. Hey, George, I know what you can do: Declare tectonic plates part of the Axis of Evil! Meanwhile, the death toll continues to rise.

The Great Drain The latest top CIA official to fall victim to new director Porter Goss is the agency's top analyst, Jami Miscik, who has been forced to resign. This makes six top public officials forced out of the CIA, including the No. 2 and No. 3 people at the agency, plus an undisclosed number of clandestine operatives. I have a feeling that CIA briefings from now on are going to consist of sentiments like, "Everything's coming up roses, Mr. President - thanks to your forward-thinking leadership!"

The Daily Mayhem: Iraq Edition A bomb in Baghdad today killed 29 people, including seven Iraqi policemen. This follows a bloody Tuesday in which 26 Iraqi policemen were killed in separate attacks. The insurgents are actively targeting members of the country's security forces, and are seemingly having some success; recruitment of Iraqi police puts staffing levels at less than half of what analysts say are needed to restore order in the country.

Uganda in "Good News" Shocker! One of the world's nastiest guerrilla conflicts looks like it might be coming to an end, as the Ugandan government and the Lord's Resistance Army have signed a total cease-fire set to begin on New Year's Eve. The LRA is one of the most vicious guerrilla groups in the world, having killed thousands, kidnapped thousands of children to use as slaves and soldiers, and driven more than 1 million people from their homes in the 18-year war to establish the Ten Commandments as the only law in the country. This is the first time the phrase "Good news from Uganda" has been used since Idi Amin fled the country.

No Silver Lining Too Bright to Be Clouded The Bush administration's lamebrained tax "reform" proposal, which could have included a national sales tax, has been postponed until 2006 at the earliest. Hurray! The reason it's been postponed, though, is because Bush's economic team wants to devote all their "political capital" to wrecking Social Security and to "a budget plan that will demand politically painful cuts to non-defense spending." Boo!

-Consider Arms

2004-12-29T08:24:00.000-05:00

You'll Never Walk Alone, Consider Arms

Americans Support "Melting Pot" (Especially If It'll Burn Those Muslim Bastards) A recent nationwide poll conducted by Cornell University found that almost half of all Americans support restricting the civil liberties of Muslims in the US. Almost a third would like to see Muslims required to register where they lived with the federal government. Maybe we can get them to wear little yellow Korans on their clothing...

Wearing Sackcloth, Covered In Ashes and Drinking A Venti Half-Caf Mocha Latte And I who was so morbidly fascinated by the trend of "megachurches" should be glad that it took this long to learn about churches who are adding franchises like Subway and Starbucks to the grounds of their churches. "Starbucks has done what churches should have done a long time ago, and that's to become more people-friendly," says the Rev. Peter Bonanno, senior pastor of Grace Capital Church. "It's not so much the coffee as the environment the coffee and the coffee bar create - a relaxed, relational, and fun place. We hope to create an environment that we believe is more biblical than [conventionally] religious."

But That Would Mean The Central Logic Of Bush's Social Security Plan Is... Is... FLAWED!? A San Diego man recently did a side by side comparison of the money he got back from Social Security and the amount of money he would have made if he invested the same money in the Dow. The result? Social Secuirty won by $261,372 to $255,499.

It's Not As Bad As You Think. It's Much Worse. A long, but very worthwhile article from Noam Chomsky on the 2004 presidential elections.

-The Sikh Geek

2004-12-28T11:40:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: All By Myself.

Paging Dr. Freud Speaking before troops in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a passing reference to Flight 93 - you know, the "Let's Roll!" flight, the one that the passengers heroically crashed - that has raised some eyebrows. Rumsfeld told the troops the plane was shot down - a longtime contention by people skeptical of the official version. The Pentagon, naturally, insists that Rummy "misspoke."

Holy Fucking Shit, Part 2 I realize that you're probably sick of hearing about this earthquake/tsunami combo. It's such horrendous news and the immediate impulse is to feel totally impotent - 45,000 people are now believed dead. But for geology nerds, this one is a biggie: This earthquake was so powerful it actually shortened the day - by three microseconds, granted, but still. That's a fucking earthquake.

The Honeymooners Okay, so George W. Bush has the worst approval ratings of any sitting president since 1948, when Harry Truman had to beat three other major party candidates in the election. Bush's numbers are below 50 percent, around 48 or 49 percent. The funny thing about this story is the idiotic Gallup pollsters asking questions like "What happened to the honeymoon?" You douchebags! Bush only won 51 percent of the fucking vote in the first place! Are pollsters really so stupid that they think all the people who voted against Bush are going to give him a "honeymoon" just because he eked out a win? Hey, I know what happened to the "honeymoon": President Douchebag won the smallest margin of victory in any presidential election since World War I! Dicks.

Postcards from the Red States Hey, is it time to celebrate a two-year-old girl's birthday party in the Red States? That must mean it's time for an alcohol-fueled brawl that leaves seven men in the hospital with stab wounds! "You couldn't script a worst-case scenario," a paramedic said. "You have 60 people inside, some wounded, the weather, the ice, at the time no one appeared to speak English, and on top of that, it's Christmas. The scene was horrendous, you just can't describe it."

Open and Honest Government, the GOP Way Speaking of Ohio...Secretary of State and supreme douchebag, Ken Blackwell, is seeking a court order that will allow him to refuse to be deposed by lawyers challenging Ohio's handling of the Nov. 2 elections in the state Supreme Court. You heard it right: an elected official in statewide office is asking a judge to give him special permission not to have to answer a lawyer's questions about his conduct in office. Cue the Lee Greenwood music.

-Consider Arms

2004-12-27T09:23:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: The Day The Earth Wouldn't Stand Still.

Holy Fucking Shit The death toll in the earthquake/tsunami combo that devastated the Indian Ocean region over the weekend is now at 21,000, with more than 12,000 of those in Sri Lanka alone. The earthquake was so powerful that it moved the island of Sumatra 100 feet to the west; it was so powerful that it actually disturbed the rotation of the planet. The relevant governments are saying that they gave inadequate warnings of the tsunami...but what's an adequate warning for a 20 foot wall of water traveling 500 miles per hour?

Today, All the World Wants to be Ukrainian! So says president-elect Viktor Yushchenko, anyway, and who can blame him for being a little over-excited? He's just won the third round of presidential elections in his country, and it looks like he's the winner, although the pro-Russian candidate vows to challenge the results of the election in court. Still, in this brief period before the shit storm really kicks up, let's take a moment and enjoy the fact that, incredibly, the good guys managed to win one.

Night of the Living Muslim Dead Residents in Somerville, Tenn. have successfully blocked a Muslim group from building (installing? developing?) a cemetery on a plot of land it owns, in part because of fears that the cemetery would be used as a terrorist staging ground. "Ladies and gentlemen, you may think this is farfetched, but that is what the Jewish people thought when the Nazis started taking a small foothold, a little at a time, in their community," one opponent said at a public meeting. I would almost support this insane act of bigotry if the reason they opposed the cemetery was a fear it would attract goths.

The Nigerian Letter, Alex P. Keaton-Style The College Republicans - which, since 2002, is not a group affiliated with the Republican Party - is in trouble for soliciting millions of dollars in a direct-mail campaign that used front organizations to make people think they were sending money to the Republican Party. A large number of those who made donations apparently include that reliable demographic for fraud: elderly people with dementia. Hey, shouldn't these College Republican douchebags be fighting in Iraq or something?

Bringing You the Wars of Tomorrow, Today More than 1.7 million Iraqi Kurds have signed a petition calling on the United Nations to allow a referendum vote on independence for Iraqi Kurdistan. This is the largely-unnoticed powder keg simmering beneath all the other disasters in Iraq: A huge number of Kurds want independence, despite the weasel-words of the two main Kurdish parties in Iraq. However, Turkey, Iran, and Syria all vehemently oppose an independent Kurdistan, with Turkey boasting a decades-long war against its own Kurdish population as proof of how far it's willing to go to block the political aspirations of the Kurds. Thank God we have capable foreign officials like Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and that nut who combs his hair with his own spit to sort these delicate situations out.

-Consider Arms

2004-12-23T10:22:00.000-05:00

Christmas Is Early This Year

I know I said I was going to take a much needed holiday from posting, but then guess what happens? John G. Rowland, the disgraced former Republican governor of my home state, enters a federal courtroom in New Haven with the intention of pleading guilty to corruption charges.

Now he's prison-bound like Social Distortion, although the details of what charges he's pleading to and how much time he'll do are not yet available. This is poetic justice: It's been a year since Patty Rowland helped bring about her husband's downfall by lashing out at the press in poetry form, and it's been two years since hundreds of state employees (including blind people who worked at a special factory sewing canvas bags) got laid off by Rowland on Christmas Eve. Now, two days before Christmas, Rowland is going to cop a plea that will put him in a federal prison sometime in 2005. And they say the good guys never win...

-Consider Arms

2004-12-22T09:30:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: It's Cliche to be Cynical at Christmas

The Daily Mayhem: Iraq Edition 22 people were killed in a rocket attack on a U.S. mess tent in Mosul, including 20 Americans, in one of the deadliest attacks on American forces in Iraq since the start of the war. The carnage coincided with a surprise visit to Iraq by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The White House insists that January elections will still take place, even though reporters have raised questions about the U.S.'s ability to protect 9,000 polling places throughout the country when it seemingly cannot protect its own bases.

They Love Big Brother British citizens will now be issued national identification cards, despite a last-ditch revolt by hundreds of Conservative and Labour MPs to block the measure from passing Parliament. Tony Blair's government argues that the ID cards will help the government better combat terrorism and "trafficking in people"...oh, and also eliminating dissent. Can't forget about that benefit.

O Little Town of Bethlehem Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, said in his annual Christmas remarks that Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is turning into a "prison" thanks to Israeli efforts to erect a "peace barrier" around the mostly-Palestinian city of 61,000. Why is that guy such a freedom-hater/anti-semite/French person?

There Has Been Some Concern About the Torture, Yes FBI agents repeatedly wrote memoranda complaining about the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay by U.S. government interrogators, only to have their concerns subject to a high-level cover up. Memos obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union show that over a period of several months, FBI officers complained about witnessing military interrogators beat, strangle, and burn Gitmo detainees, often while pretending to be FBI agents themselves. The memos indicate that approval for the torture came from the "Dep Def Sec," or Deputy Defense Secretary, or Paul Wolfowitz, as his mother knows him. Interesting to note there isn't much outrage over this. Well, at least these Gitmo psychos aren't bringing their torture tactics home with them.

This Would Be a Great Christmas Present The Supreme Court of Chile is gearing up to hear what could be the final appeal for Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the brutal dictator who staged a coup against the democratically elected Socialist government in 1974 and ruled until 1990. Chilean authorities are hoping to prosecute Pinochet for some of the political murders carried out on his orders, while Pinochet's lawyers, as they have in the past, are arguing that the old man is too sick to stand trial. Let's hope the good guys finally win one.

-Consider Arms, about to embark on a much-needed break from posting over the Christmas holiday

2004-12-20T09:46:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: The Love is Free and the Freeway's Long.

The Daily Mayhem: Iraq Edition Bomb attacks in the heavily Shi'ite cities of Karbala and Najaf have left at least 60 dead and more than 120 wounded, while gunmen in Baghdad assassinated three top election officials who were making preparations for next month's scheduled vote. The violence shows an increasing division in the country between Shi'ites, who strongly support the vote, and Sunnis, who do not.

Saving Christmas...From Capitalism You've no doubt noticed the intense right wing crusade this year to "save Christmas" from trial lawyers and PC bureaucrats. But a fairly notable religious figure thinks the real menace to Advent isn't from overzealous grade school principals, but rather from our friends the capitalists. Pope John Paul II has warned that materialism is "suffocating" Christmas, and admonished Christians to keep the imagery of the Nativity at the center of their holiday devotions. What will Bill O'Reilly say?

This Year's "Have You Forgotten" Here's a sordid little tale in the Nashville paper about a deal by which the members of the fan club of country singer Chely Wright have goosed airplay and sales for her patriotic song by a well-orchestrated campaign of calling radio stations and pretending to be in the military. The song, which I'm sure is a corker, is called "The Bumper of My SUV" and it's the second-fastest selling country single in America. At any rate, the story's more valuable as a sad glimpse into the world of fading country stars than anything else.

Why People Don't Like Liberals, Part 265,189 Okay, some Christian church in Colorado Springs pays the local paper $36,000 to print the entire New Testament as an ad insert. Who cares, right? Oh, no, so wrong. Liberals care. Liberals care a lot, and they're really upset about this huge imposition on their freedom and their wall of separation and everything else that liberals love. Not only is a private company taking money to print an ad a terrible assault on the liberties we all cherish, but that money could be put to better use: people who never attend church and who despise Christians sure have a lot of ideas about how churches should spent their money. To get the full effect, you really have to read the comments, like this one: "Religion is a personal matter; one can read specialized books for that.One shouldn't be allowed to impose any religion on a general newspaper : it is a lack of respect for people having a different religion, or having no religion at all." Or, as Monty Python once put it, "Help, help, I'm being repressed!"

Chapter 11: Graveyard of Empire Here's an interesting analysis of Bin Laden's latest message from the AP. Basically, it argues that Bin Laden's strategy is to lure the U.S. into financial insolvency, as he believes the war in Afghanistan did to the Soviets in the 1980s. This is a fascinating analysis, because the basic conservative interpretation of the collapse of the Soviets is that we forced them to go bankrupt by pumping up the arms race. I don't accept that conclusion for a couple of reasons, but I think it's possible that the war in Iraq and the war on terror, combined with Bush's ruinous tax cuts and the massively expensive privatization of Social Security, could cause a genuine economic crisis in the U.S. Bin Laden, the conqueror?

- Consider Arms

2004-12-16T09:10:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Now With Slightly Fewer Dioxins.

The Furry Slug: A History Here's an excellent article from the Washington Monthly that shows how Bob Novak, known as "the Prince of Darkness," has been able to create and maintain an ethics-free journalism empire and evade taking the fall even for his illegal activities. Also interesting to note is that the Slug started at the same newspaper my father did. Well, it's interesting for me, anyway.

The Lady is a Herring This holiday season has already brought us all a wonderful gift in the form of the jaw-dropping, seemingly endless revelations about the sliminess of Bernard Kerik. Today's installment: the New York Times, along with many others, is beginning to suspect that this "nanny" that supposedly cost Kerik his nomination doesn't exist. Not only can't the Times find any neighbors or relatives who remember a nanny, but Kerik refuses to provide some basic information on the woman, like her name, her nationality, her age, and how long she was employed. If in fact there is no nanny, the theory is that Kerik and the White House might have cooked it up as a red herring to throw everyone off the track of his very real ethical, moral, and legal deficiencies (por ejemplo: today, the Bronx D.A. is considering a criminal investigation into whether Kerik illegally used a mob contractor to perform renovation work on a property he owned).

What's New in Crazy Judge-wear Two of the best judge-related trends in recent years have been emblazoning judicial robes with gold trim (courtesy of William Rehnquist) and trying to post the 10 Commandments in court (courtesy of Roy C. Moore). Now, an Alabama judge is in trouble for combining his chocolate with his peanut butter: Judge Ashley McKathan has caused quite a stir by wearing a robe in court with the Ten Commandments emblazoned in gold on the front. As McKathan said, though, it's really all a matter of semantics: "If the Ten Commandments, or the appearance of the Ten Commandments would prevent someone from getting a fair trial then I have a problem with the definition of the word fair," he said. Got that, fair-boy?

The Parallels to John Major Continue David Blunkett, the British Home Secretary and the third most powerful man in the Labour Party, has tearfully resigned his post, thanks to a juicy sex scandal. Well, it's more of an ethics scandal; Blunkett's ex-mistress, the publisher of the right wing magazine The Spectator, leaked info that Blunkett improperly bent the rules to grant her nanny a visa. The ex-mistress decided to ruin Blunkett when he demanded DNA testing to prove that her two kids are his rather than her husband's.

The Littlest Freedom-Hater Loudon County, Va. detectives are pretty busy these days, what with all the America-hating going on in local elementary schools. Recently, two detectives paid a visit to the home of Yishai Asido, an 11-year-old boy who said in class, when assigned to write a letter to Marines in Iraq, that he didn't care if the Marines lived or died. For this, the boy was suspended from school and reported to the police, who dropped by and questioned his parents for two hours about their political opinions and whether or not they were teaching their children "anti-American values." They also asked whether a friend from Germany who had recently visited the family was a "Taliban supporter." Incidentally, Asido's father is an Israeli immigrant who served in an elite combat unit in that country's military, an outfit that has spent considerably more time fighting terrorists than the Loudon County sheriff's department.

-Consider Arms

2004-12-15T14:23:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: A Barry Bonds of Virtue pursuing a Home Run Record of Truth using the Steroids of Sarcasm.

NextYear: Free and Fair Elections, We Promise So, you think there were some voting problems in Ohio this year? Black voters waited for hours to vote in towns where white voters were able to go in and out in 15 minutes; poll workers gave faulty instructions that caused thousands of ballots to be disqualified; electronic voting machines transferred a still-unknown number of votes cast for Kerry to be counted for Bush. And guess where most of these problems occurred? "The foul-ups appeared particularly acute in Democratic-leaning districts, according to interviews with voters, poll workers, election observers and election board and party officials, as well as an examination of precinct voting patterns in several cities," according to the Washington Post. Gee, you think there might be a story there?

Virtue Is Its Own Reward; For Being a Dick, Though, You Get a Cushy Job Zell Miller, the unhinged ex-Democrat who foamed at the mouth on behalf of the Republicans at their annual convention this year, is being rewarded for his disloyalty with a job at Fox News. He's also getting a job at the powerful Atlanta law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge despite, you know, not actually being a lawyer.

Public Enemy Number One I'm really sad that Bernard Kerik isn't going to be Secretary of Homeland Security - this guy would have been a hoot. Not only did he employ an undocumented worker and evade his employment taxes for her; not only did he accept thousands of dollars in illegal contributions while NY City Police Commissioner; not only does he have ties to mob-owned businesses; but now, apparently, he spent much of the 1990s conducting two separate extramarital affairs at the same time, including one with a correction officer that has resulted in a $250,000 civil judgement against the city. Just how loathsome is this individual? When his sister was sick in the hospital, he had her two daughters stay with one of his mistresses instead of at his family home.

I Can't Resist Still not queasy over Bernard Kerik? Then relish this parting shot: After September 11, Kerik conducted an extramarital affair in an apartment overlooking the devastation - an apartment that had been donated to the city for the express purpose of allowing weary rescue and construction workers a place to sleep. The fact that there is an overflow of sewage in Kerik's past is a salutary lesson: All this stuff was discovered by reporters, not the Bush administration that was supposed to vet him before putting his nomination forward. Forget Iraq; Bush can't even get good intelligence on guys he wants to hire!

Meet the New South, Same as the Old South Timothy Ellender, a Louisiana judge, has been suspended without pay from the bench for six months for wearing blackface, fake handcuffs, and a jail jumpsuit to a Halloween party. Worryingly, even the judges who voted to suspend him agreed he "did not intend to insult blacks." Really? Sort of a tribute to the achievements of their race, then?

- Consider Arms

2004-12-13T09:27:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Hussein Urges Calm.

The Daily Mayhem: Iraq Edition Eight U.S. Marines were killed in Anbar province Sunday, the highest single-day U.S. death toll in more than a month. Meanwhile, a car bomb in Baghdad killed 13. The attacks come exactly one year after U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein.

Another Tragic Suicide-by-Homicide Remember the lonesome death of David Kelly? The British WMD expert was fingered by Blairistas as the man who leaked damaging information about the British government's sloppy rush to war in Iraq; in the resulting public furor, Kelly killed himself...or so a coroner's inquest ruled. The Guardian, however, presents a special report complete with testimony from the paramedics who were first on the scene suggesting that Kelly may, in fact, have been murdered, since he couldn't have possibly died from the wrist wound the coroner said was fatal. Hey, but who would want to kill a prominent scientist who had humiliated a secretive, vindictive government? I guess we've hit another dead end.

Bernard, We Hardly Knew Ye Well, it's time for the post-mortems on the brief but shining moment in which it looked like Tammany tiger Bernard Kerik would get appointed to the thankless federal czardom that is the Department of Homeland Security director's post. Kerik, of course, showing exactly what Republicans mean when they say they are the party of the average American, had tax and nanny problems; how many people do you know have live-in servants, by the way? But now begins the process of finding exactly who will fill Tom Ridge's excruciatingly miniscule shoes. Scroll down for a horrifying possibility: Homeland Security Director Joe Lieberman!

Rest in Peace Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who wrote a controversial series for the San Jose Mercury News about the connection between the CIA, the contras, and crack in America, was found dead in his home over the weekend, an apparent suicide. After his career as a newspaper reporter, Webb went to work for the state of California, and completed an important report documenting cases of racial profiling by the state highway patrol. He suffered from severe depression, though, and at the end of his life was writing stories for a local weekly.

Mullahs Call For Greater Intellectual Freedom in U.S. Here's another dry irony that sticks like a fishbone in the craw: Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who won last year's Nobel Peace Prize, is unable to sell her memoirs to a U.S. publisher because the State Department refuses to grant a license necessary in trade cases that involve "trading with the enemy." That's right; the book, which is freely available in the Islamic Republic of Iran, is forbidden in the United States. Another irony not mentioned by the story: One of the U.S. companies cited by Congress last year for continuing to violate rules on trading with Iran is none other than Halliburton, which actually has a suite of offices in Teheran.

-Consider Arms

2004-12-08T10:35:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: I Love a Man in Uniform

Recent Reports Indicate That The Sky Is Not, In Fact, Falling Paul Krugman, like Jay-Z with rap, can't leave column-writing alone; the game needs him. So he came out of hiatus to pen this excellent rejoinder to the Bush-pushed delusion that the Social Security system, under its current arrangement, is in danger of "bankruptcy." Actually, the problem is a revenue shortfall (equivalent to about a missing 20 percent of what's needed) sometime around 2052. That shortfall could be made up by government expenditures equivalent to 25 percent of the Bush tax cuts; these expenditures would keep the system solvent until the 22nd century. Mark my words, though: If we let Bush privatize Social Security, it truly will go bankrupt.

Blair: We're Not Going to Be Doing That Tony Blair has rejected a call for an independent inquiry into the number of civilians killed thus far in the Iraq war. Blair says that the numbers from the Iraqi Health Ministry are the most reliable (they put the figure at just over 3,500, by the way), thereby marking the first time in history that the words "Iraqi Health Ministry" and "reliable" have been used in the same sentence.

Very Bad Things A U.S. Marine seeking asylum in Canada has testified before that country's immigration board that he is responsible for the deaths of at least 30 civilians over a single 48-hour period in Iraq. Sgt. Jimmy Massey is the second Marine to publicly make the claim that he had orders to shoot on sight, and the third to seek political asylum in Canada. Yeah, but, you know, we had to liberate those people, and sometimes liberation means shooting unarmed women and children.

Are You Still Here? I Thought We Fired Your Ass In the midst of all the ship-jumping at the Bush Administration, it's easy to forget that there are some people who don't want to go, like Donald Rumsfeld. It's also easy to forget that there are some people who don't want to go but who the administration is trying to push out the door, like Donald Rumsfeld. To that august category, add the name John Snow. Snow was hired to replace Paul O'Neill as Treasury Secretary because unlike O'Neill, Snow was willing to unblinkingly tell people that day was night. For example: This is how Snow explained, to a group of powerful bankers and investors in Zurich, the administration's policy of promoting a "strong dollar" while pushing trade deficits that ensure a weak dollar: "Because that's the policy." For some reason, though, the Bush administration has determined that this dull-witted hack is too dull-witted to sell their insane new economic plan, so they're looking at replacing him with either White House Chief of Staff Andy Card (who once typed, in an Internet forum, this phrase: "We need the biggest tax cut possible!!!!!!!" Yes, he used all those exclamation points) or former Senator Phil Gramm. Gramm would be a hilarious choice for two reasons: One, his wife was on Enron's Board of Directors and he was one of the few people in the country willing to publicly oppose the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform bill that Bush signed into law in 2002. Second, Gramm will forever be linked with the Gramm-Rudman Act of 1985, which was a historic first step on the road to the balanced budgets of the Clinton administration. A longtime deficit hawk, Gramm, as Treasury Sec'y, would essentially be in charge of shitting on himself. Oh, and he also produced porno movies in the 1970s (true!).

President or Bartender on "Love Boat"? You Make the Call

-Consider Arms

2004-12-07T13:02:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: The Same Old Cheese.

Empty Barrels Make the Most Noise In the wake of Janet Jackson's boob exposure at the Super Bowl, FCC Chairman/corporate stooge Michael Powell revealed some startling statistics: in 2003, there were 240,000 complaints about indecency made to the FCC, up from only 14,000 in 2002. What Powell didn't announce is that almost all of those complaints - 99.8 percent, in fact, - come from a single group. The organization, the Parents Television Council, is almost solely responsible for all complaints made to the FCC - in fact, aside from the Super Bowl this year, so far 99.9 percent of FCC complaints have been made by the PTC. The New York Times recently did a story showing that every single one of the 23,000 e-mail complaints about the Fox TV show "Married by America" was traced back to exactly three people working at the PTC.

Computers: Not Our Friends In a very interesting development, a 46-year-old computer programmer has come forward to testify before the House Judiciary Committee that he was paid to create software that would allow election officials to alter vote totals in e-voting machines. The man who paid him? The programmer says it was U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), who bragged about using e-fraud in 2002 elections in the state and said he wanted it done to eliminate vote totals in minority-heavy districts in 2004. Watch this space for details.

Everything's Going Great, Thanks for Asking A secret CIA cable to Washington has been leaked, and the message is "Everything's coming up roses" for Iraq. Ha! No, just kidding, the CIA officer's cable says Iraq is a disaster and is getting worse. You'll be happy to know, however, that US Viceroy in Baghdad, John D. Negroponte, says that the cable was too negative. Of course, take it with a grain of salt, as this is a man whose idea of "negative" in the 1980s was "pointing out that death squads are killing people in Central America."

Dr. Doom and the Joker Team Up in a Crossover Spectacular Clear Channel, the Satanic fascist radio behemoth that strides across our airways like a mighty tyrannosaurus, has picked the unofficial source of White House propaganda, Fox News, to provide the national news reports for more than 500 stations. If this were a wrestling match, at this point Hulk Hogan would run from the back and drop the big leg on the two evildoers; Hulk, where are you, man?

So Heroic We Had to Kill Him Ourselves You may remember the jingoistic fervor that surrounded the death of former Arizona Cardinal Pat Tillman, who was killed while serving with the military in Afghanistan. By now, you're also probably aware that, as it turns out, Pat Tillman was actually killed by his fellow Rangers, who thought he was an enemy soldier (although you could be forgiven for not being aware of this, as the press coverage of Tillman's death now is not nearly as intense as when we first heard of it). As this story makes clear, the Pentagon knew that from the beginning, but instead chose to peddle a bogus version of Tillman's death. Does this sound familiar to anyone? If the name "Jessica Lynch" suddenly dislodged itself from your unconsciousness, give yourself a hand.

-Consider Arms

2004-12-03T09:34:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: What's So Funny 'Bout War, Hate, and Ignorance?

The Daily Mayhem: Iraq Edition Insurgents launched two attacks in Iraq today, targeting a Shiite mosque and a police station. 30 people were killed, including 16 Iraqi police officers. In addition to killing the policemen, guerrillas looted weapons, torched police vehicles, and released prisoners. Meanwhile, two city councilmen from Khalis, north of Baghdad, were assassinated while on their way to a regional planning session about the scheduled Jan. 30 elections. Additionally, a U.S. soldier was killed during heavy mortar attacks in central Baghdad, while the U.S. announced this week it will send an additional 12,000 troops to Iraq, bringing the total to 150,000. A spokesman for the Iraqi government said today that the security situation has much improved recently.

Meanwhile, in the Land of Mordor While we're busily ignoring the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and talking about how "terrorism" is our number one security concern, our old pal Communist China has launched a new class of submarine capable of carrying nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. This will be China's first truly intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system. The technology is believed to be based entirely on Russia's, as a leaked CIA report indicates that Russia is the leading supplier to China of nuclear weapons technology. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Thank God we stopped Saddam Hussein from using his vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The world is truly a safer place.

Don't Laugh: Those Quakers Are Up to No Good The American Civil Liberties Union has filed Freedom of Information requests in 10 states for evidence it says will show that the FBI and local police forces are colluding in an illegal spy operation targeting religious groups like the Quakers and Catholic Peace Ministries. Not that we might better spend the effort spying on, say, China.

Schadenfreude, Provincetown-Style Andrew Sullivan, the insanely obnoxious right-wing journalist/blogger, is having his home in Provincetown, Mass. foreclosed on because he hasn't been paying his property taxes. I guess leaving print media for blogging wasn't quite as lucrative as Mr. Sullivan had claimed. Next: We evict Christopher Hitchens from his prime bunk near the steam tray at the Interfaith Cot Shelter.

New For Fall: Trial By Ordeal The U.S. government now concedes that it is using evidence obtained via torture to determine whether it should detain individuals in the increasingly-bewildering War On Terror. Another unpleasant surprise: Using torture in police investigations only became illegal in the U.S. 70 years ago.

-Consider Arms

2004-12-03T08:52:00.000-05:00

SHOCKER!!

I Guess My Question from Yesterday has been Answered
Who is the next to fall in the steroid scandal? Did anyone doubt Bonds was next? This story is full of some great stuff like Bonds claiming he thought he was using "flaxseed oil," and the fact that kept using "the cream" and "the clear" out of loyalty to his trainer even though he didn't think they are working. But make sure you get to the last paragraph where Bonds talks about why he didn't buy a house for his trainer (who allegedly was living in his car at times.) "I'm black, and I'm keeping my money. And there's not too many rich black people in this world. There's more wealthy Asian people and Caucasian and white. And I ain't giving my money up." Classic. This story will only get better (unless you are part of Major League Baseball that is.)

-Lil' Antonin is still celebrating the fact he passed the NY Bar Exam (send gifts c/o MLWL)

2004-12-02T08:43:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: How Will We Ever Fill Tom Ridge's Shoes?

I Don't Believe in Anything Now! The man who news reports invariably refer to as "Yankees slugger Jason Giambi" has admitted to using steroids during the 2001, 2002, and 2003 baseball seasons from Barry Bonds' weight trainer. Say...you don't think Barry Bonds has used illegal steroids, do you? I just don't know what to believe anymore.

Sex Makes You Gay, and Other Things I Learned in School According to the congressional staff of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), public school students who learn from the 100 federally-funded "abstinence only" sex ed programs are learning a variety of interesting facts. Such as: HIV can be spread via sweat and tears; touching a person's genitals can lead to pregnancy; half of gay male teens are HIV-positive. These, and many other aspects of the programs, are, how you say, "completely fucking bonkers." Still, the Bush administration has budgeted $170 million in public money for these excellent educational programs in the coming year.

Snapshots From George Bush's America: Gay Novels Must Go An Alabama state legislator (Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale) has introduced a bill that would ban books with gay characters and textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural from being in public libraries, including university libraries. Allen, who naturally says that his bill is designed to protect children from "the homosexual agenda," says that his law would prohibit university theater groups from staging productions of, say, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," and would also ban books that have heterosexual couples doing things that violate Alabama's anti-sodomy and sexual misconduct laws.

Our Buddies, the Pro-Sharon Lobby In a story that is apparently only getting attention in Israel, the FBI has raided the offices of the American Israel Political Action Committee and subpoenaed four members of the neoconservative organization to appear before a grand jury in an ongoing investigation of Israeli espionage at the Pentagon. AIPAC was one of the key centers of pro-war fervor during the buildup to the Iraqi invasion.

Ethan Allen Would Be Proud Vermont was an independent republic before joining the union after the Revolutionary War. As opposed as I am in principle, I can't help being sympathetic.

-Consider Arms

2004-11-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

Some Good News for a Change

Thumbs Up for the 3rd Circuit
About 10 years ago there was a law passed commonly referred to as the "Solomon Amendment" which forced schools to allow military recruiters on campus to, well, recruit. Many schools (mostly law schools) had banned the recruiters from campus because they refuse to consider all applicants for their jobs (if you are openly gay don't bother applying.) My law school had worked a deal where the recruiters could go to a different part of campus and interview, not using law school facilities. A couple years ago the government threatened to cut all federal funding (millions of dollars in student loans) if the military recruiters were not allowed on the law school. Yesterday's ruling outlawed this practice. Which is good news, although law students (with help from the administration) can no longer do things like drape rainbow flags outside the interview room or fill up the interview slots and then ask if it is cool that you are gay after sitting through an interview.

-Lil' Antonin

2004-11-29T10:34:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: I'm Thankful That Bush Can Only Run Twice.

Hot Gay News The U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on the Massachusetts State Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage, turning it down without comment. This upholds the decision, leading many in favor of gay marriage to cheer: Not so fast, friends. This could be a signal that the Supremes are going to leave the whole question of gay marriage up to the states, which means that while gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, other states could ban it without fear of judicial review, as 11 states did in November.

You're Retired! In more Supreme Court news, 60 percent of Americans favor a mandatory retirement age for justices on the nation's highest court. This is something I've long favored: I think it's bizarre that we have a robed priesthood of nine people who are the only ones capable of a definitive interpretation of the sacred scriptures (er, I mean, Constitution) and that they keep their jobs until they die. What kind of primitive bullshit is that? Less inspiring for my cause, though, is that an almost equal number of Americans in the survey could not correctly identify what job William Rehnquist does (he's a spokesman for Avis).

Never Have Cattle Been So Eager For the Ring Through Their Noses Evangelical Christian voters who have lately been spraining their arms while patting themselves on the back for getting Dubya an actual election victory apparently haven't gotten the memo: The base's role is to win elections, then get ignored for four years (Black Democrats can tell you all about it). These hoppin' mad evangelicals think that "it's payback time": they want, among other things, a Supreme Court ban on gay marriage and abortion (well, you already lost the first one, folks). Actually, Rove's post-election analysis shows that the biggest growth in GOP voters was among married white women with children whose main concern was "security," and that's who's going to get pandered to (aside from the top 1 percent of the income-earners, of course). Note to evangelicals: Will you ever get tired of being hoodwinked?

The Argentina Parallels Just Keep Coming The Bush administration has a foolproof plan for financing its risky privatization of Social Security: first, the costs of the operation will be taken "off-book," meaning they won't show up in the annual budgets approved by Congress. This doesn't actually, you know, do anything, but it makes people feel better. Next, they plan to pay for the huge costs of privatization by BORROWING the money, which will do two things: It will increase the national debt-to-GDP share by an astonishing 23.6 percent, and it will increase the national debt, in real terms, by about $4.7 trillion. In the private sector, this would mean two things: ruin and jail (you can't take expenses "off-book" unless you're the federal government). In the public, it means a greater chance that foreign investors, panicky about that astonishing debt-to-GDP, will stop buying t-bills, which happen to keep the budget deficits afloat. The possible result of that would be that the U.S. would be forced to default on its loans, with a corresponding devaluation of bonds and hyperinflation. But, you know, anything for the free market.

So THIS is What They Meant By "Moral Values" In Redder-than-Red Alabama, the God-fearing voters went to the polls on Nov. 2 and did two things: they voted to elect George W. Bush, and they voted in favor of racial segregation. There was a constitutional amendment on the ballot there that would have eliminated language from 1901 still in the state constitution that mandates separate schooling for "white and colored children" and allowing poll taxes. This amendment was defeated by voters, although by such a slim margin that there's currently a recount. Opponents of the amendment argued, bizarrely, that repealing racist language in the constitution would allow "federal judges" to institute income tax hikes. The heat's off ya, Ohio: This is officially the dumbest result of an election on Nov. 2.

-Consider Arms

2004-11-26T13:24:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Default Rag.

Armageddon, Here We Come At a private meeting of investors this week, Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach sketched out a scenario he says gives America a 90 percent chance of facing "economic Armageddon": America's record trade deficit means that the dollar will keep falling, especially against Asian currencies. In order to keep foreign investors buying T-bills and to prevent a rise in inflation, Alan Greenspan is going to have raise interest rates farther and faster than he wants. The result: Americans in debt will get crotch-punched by the sudden interest hikes. Consumer spending will drop off sharply, and the economy will plummet. The alternate is that Greenspan raises inflation and keeps interest rates down, allowing consumer debt to shrink in real terms (household debt in the US is now worth the equivalent of 85 percent of the total US economy). The only problem with that is that it totally devalues long-term t-bills, which could mean a dropoff in foreign investment in those, which would in turn mean that the US government could no longer finance its massive budget deficits. Roach says there's only a 10 percent chance we'll avoid both outcomes. Like those odds?

The Government Grabs the Bozack. Literally Here's a pleasant surprise for holiday air travelers: As part of new search procedures, airport security personnel are now going to be, in the words of R. Kelly, "feelin' on yo booty." "In late September, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began allowing security checkpoint screeners to manually pat down women's breasts and the genital and derriere regions of both sexes during searches." Once again, the Republican administration gets government off our backs...and swinging from our balls.

Dude! We Were Totally Going to Call You! According to newly-released CIA documents, the U.S. government knew for weeks in advance about the planned coup in 2002 against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (a coup, of course that lasted almost a full weekend). Before saying, "What? Is it our job to tell everyone when there's a sinister conspiracy afoot in their country?", think about how angry you'd be if you found out that Hugo Chavez knew for weeks about September 11 but didn't inform the US government.

Democracy Marches On A lot of people complain that not enough Americans vote...well, in the very red state of Wyoming (residence of Destro Cheney), they've somehow managed to solve all that. According to the Wyoming Secretary of State, out of 232,396 registered voters, there was a turnout of 245,789 - a whopping 106 percent.

The Bloodless Purge Continues In the latest sign that "everything's a-ok" at the CIA, two more senior officials have announced early retirements, and are widely believed to be casualties in Porter Goss' war to make the agency more Bush-friendly. The chiefs of the Europe and the Far East sections are stepping down, with Goss vowing in an internal memo that more heads are going to roll.

-Consider Arms

2004-11-24T09:41:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Show Me Your Taxes.

We Built This City on Rock and Roll...and Taxpayer-Funded Bonds Despite record budget deficits, our heroic fiscal conservatives in Congress managed to find plenty of money to fund such essential projects as: $350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; $2.3 million for an "animal waste management lab" in Kentucky; $50,000 to control wild hogs in Missouri; $1 million for a "Wild American Shrimp Initiative"; $4 million for a fertilizer plant in Alabama; $450,000 for researching the use of salmon as baby food in Alaska; etc. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), por ejemplo, had enough pork to write 20 press releases this weekend. Note also that the vast majority of this wasteful spending goes to Red States, the welfare queens of the USA.

Ukrainians Gone Wild Tens of thousands of Ukrainians gathered to demonstrate in Kiev as pro-Western opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko declared himself president following an election that most observers say was rigged by the pro-Russian candidate's party. Hmm...so, in that country, when someone rigs an election, the people protest? Haha! How primitive and backward! Don't they know that they're supposed to embrace fraud for the sake of national unity?

Charter Schools: Nature's Cruelest Mistake According to the US Department of Education (that's Rod Paige's Dept. of Education, remember), charter schools cannot match the performance of public schools, producing students who fail to meet state education standards 30 percent more often than their public counterparts. So let's review: We take public money and give it to any jackass who wants to open a school, and we let them manage it as if it were their money. Then, they fail. Response from the Bush administration? Charter schools need more money. Of course they do.

Red State Schadenfreude: Ohio Edition Hardy-har-har. Ohio, the state that gave the White House to Bush, now has more people out of work than any other state in the country. In October, the number of unemployed people jumped from 345,000 to 373,000, and job loss came in sectors that are gaining employees in every other part of the country, like healthcare. Okay. It's true, there are nearly 400,000 adults out of work in Ohio. That's a negative. But on the positive side: Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved the most punitive anti-gay discrimination measure in the country, which actually forbids gay people to visit each other in the hospital! That's SO much better than having a job, don't you think?

Happy Thanksgiving Through the Looking Glass Ah, the Republican Party. It stands, as we all know, for fiscal responsibility (runs up record budget deficits), low taxes (plans to raise taxes on employers who provide health insurance to workers and on people who deduct state and local taxes from their federal returns), a "stand-alone" foreign policy (embroils us in costly occupations of far-flung countries with no end in sight), libertarian values (passes legislation preventing gays from entering into civil unions or recieving partnership benefits from their employers), and, of course, a strong law and order policy (cuts the federal program that funds new police officers; passes laws to allow people who have been indicted to retain Congressional leadership positions). Now, as this article shows, the Republicans are once again flying their flag, getting the intrusive, oppressive federal goverment off our backs by writing provisions that allow Congressional committee chairmen to review the tax returns of any American they want. Let the eagle soar...

-Consider Arms, who will not be posting tomorrow, as it is a day to give thanks for our glorious leader and all that he has done for our proud nation

2004-11-23T09:02:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Secretary of Defense Ron Artest.

Congress in "Good Decision" Shocker Congress has eliminated funding for two nuclear weapons research programs, including the one designed to produce so-called "bunker busters" that President Bush says are essential to the nation's security. This is a surprising blow to Bush's overall nuclear strategy, and a spokesman for the think tank that came up with that strategy said bitterly, ""We just don't seem to be able to turn the corner even on researching what's doable with new kinds of weapons." I know! Damn the public's pig-headed aversion to the total extinction of life on the planet!

The Liberal Media Strikes Again Last week, we brought you the exciting news that a UC Berkeley study into e-voting irregularities in Florida shaved between 130,000 and 260,000 votes off Bush's total in that state - not enough to reverse the course of the election, but a significant warning that e-voting is a dangerous threat to democracy. I say "we" brought it to you because, along with Keith Olbermann and the Oakland Tribune, the MLWL is seemingly one of the only media sources in the world interested in talking about this major story. This Media Matters analysis tells the sorry tale: Even after an MIT professor duplicated the results of the UC Berkeley study at the behest of the Associated Press, the mainstream press has yet to touch the story with a ten foot pole. Olbermann is literally the only TV outlet to talk about the story at all.

Don't Cry for Me, Argentina Yesterday, I mentioned Argentina in my daily round-up of Bush administration tragedies. While I was thinking of that country's slide, under Peron, from being one of the 10 wealthiest countries in the world to being one of the poorest in the hemisphere, Paul Krugman - Princeton econcomist and NY Times columnist - has another reason for the comparison. Krugman, currently on sabbatical from the newspaper while he writes an economics textbook, says that our economy today looks very much like Argentina's in the late 1990s. Argentina, you'll recall, kept itself afloat for years by expanding its public debt - and the privatization of its Social Security system was the key element in the expansion of that debt. You'll recall, also, that in 2001, Argentina was forced to default on that debt, which led to massive inflation, rioting in the streets, and three presidents in a single year. "So if you ask the question do we look like Argentina, the answer is a whole lot more than anyone is quite willing to admit at this point. We've become a banana republic," Krugman says. But before we jump all over President Bush, it's important to remember some key successes: for example, gay people can't visit each other in the hospital.

Monkeys! Monkeys! Monkeys! The battle between evolution and creation isn't as clear-cut as many of us would like to believe: It's not simply a matter of inbred Biblical literalism vs. pure science. For starters, evolution is not the most well-supported scientific theory, in terms of evidence; there are huge gaps in the theory that no one can explain. Additionally, creationists' opposition to evolution has a lot more to do with an entire view of society predicated on the notion of Original Sin than on their revulsion at descending from monkeys. That said, I present you with a story from a genre that I'm calling "Red State Horror Tales": Most Americans believe in creation, and an astonishing 37 percent think it should be taught INSTEAD of evolution, while 65 percent of Americans think it should be taught in addition to evolution. Only 13 percent of Americans believe that God played no role in evolution or creation at all. I think there's something to that "It's the culture, stupid" analysis...

We Love You, Perfect Leader!

-Consider Arms

2004-11-22T08:01:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Hunting Is Now Apparently More Dangerous for Hunters than Animals.

Screw You, Taxpayer The liberal media is at it again. The headline of this story ("Bush Plans Tax Code Overhaul; Changes Would Favor Investment, Growth") makes the president's new tax plan seem like a relatively benign affair, but when you read the story you realize that Bush is actually proposing at least two very radical things. First, Bush plans to shift the tax burden even further away from people who earn money on investments and interest (i.e. the very rich). No surprise there. But: in order to fund these cuts, the Bush administration is proposing (1)eliminating the ability to deduct state and local taxes on your federal income tax and (2)eliminating the tax credit for businesses that provide healthcare for their employees. In effect, the first provision punishes "blue states," which have higher state and local tax rates (and already pay more than "red states" in federal taxes), while the second provision encourages businesses to dump insurance programs, thus allowing health insurance companies to sign up more people under vastly expensive, individual health plans. The net effect, for many people, would be higher taxes and a loss of their healthcare. Some economists have said the two proposals are red herrings, designed to force moderates in Congress to concede the administration's real agenda (tax cuts for the wealthy), but you have to wonder.

Screw You, College Student In the omnibus spending bill approved over the weekend, Congress has given the Department of Education the go-ahead to make radical changes in the way that federal financial aid for college students is calculated. The net result could be that as many as 84,000 families who are currently eligible for federal financial aid will lose that eligibility. Additionally, the budget that was approved by Congress keeps the maximum Pell grant pegged at just over $4,000 for the third year in the row, despite Bush's constant claims during the election campaign that he had raised Pell grants. At what point do Americans realize that "class war" is not something that nasty liberals want to wage, but rather is currently the policy of the governing majority?

The Bug Man Goeth? Tom DeLay, the House majority leader who once said that he couldn't enlist in the army during Vietnam because all the slots were filled by Blacks and Mexicans, gets to keep his job, thanks to a hasty Republican move to change a congressional rule that doesn't allow people who have been indicted to keep their seats. The Republicans originally did this 10 years ago to embarass a Chicago politician, but are now reversing their votes to keep DeLay, whose indictment in Texas is pending, in his job, at least until he goes to the slammer. Somehow, as the author of this Houston Chronicle column points out, I don't think this is what Republican voters had in mind when they made "moral values" their top issue of 2004.

Ever Get the Feeling You've Been Cheated? So far, all of Bush's Cabinet appointees have been dogged loyalists rather than bomb-tossing Christian ideologues. Now, he announces that he's going to push legislation next year to allow illegal aliens to work legally in the United States. This, you'll recall, was a plan he hatched earlier this year, but quickly shelved it when it became apparent that tons of Republicans hated the idea. Additionally, majorities of Latinos in the US oppose it, as it's basically a way to legalize the exploitation of immigrant labor. But so far, Bush has been fucking over the conservatives left and right; when are they going to wake up and realize it?

Have You Forgotten? Because It Kind of Seems Like You Have When Sen. John McCain came to Monster Limo Weblog Land in October to stump for our Republican congressman, the key selling point was that our congressman and McCain would be part of a Republican majority that would pass the recommendations on intelligence reform made by the 9-11 commission, and then President Bush would sign them into law, making us safe from terrorism forever. Well, during the lame duck session that ended this weekend, the Republicans in Congress got together, rubbed their hands together, and...killed the intelligence reform bill. Although Bush says he wants it passed before Dec. 31, a Republican leader says the chances of the reforms getting passed at all are "slim and none, and slim just left town."

-Consider Arms

2004-11-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Before the Law Stands a Doorkeeper.

U.S. Rep. Franz J. Kafka (R-Pit of Despair) I'm glad to live in a country where there are laws that are so important I'm not even allowed to know what they are: former Idaho Republican Representative Helen Chenoweth tried to get on a plane recently, only to be told that she had to submit to "advanced screeing procedures." Chenoweth asked to see the legal authorization for such procedures, and was told no; she got back in her car and drove to her destination. But why wasn't Chenoweth simply shown the language authorizing the procedure? "Because we don't have to," says TSA Security Director Julian Gonzales. "That is called 'sensitive security information.' She's not allowed to see it, nor is anyone else."

My Vote Cancels Out Yours...But 130,000 "Ghost Votes" Cancel the Fuck Out of Mine Whoah, big surprise! It looks like electronic voting machines in heavily Democratic counties in Florida improperly awarded George W. Bush about 130,000 votes in this election. In Broward County alone, which went big time for Gore in 2000 and where exit polls showed John Kerry with a big lead, Bush got 72,000 votes he shouldn't have. Now, Bush won Florida by 310,000 votes, so this obviously won't change the outcome of the election. But here's the interesting thing: If the 130,000 votes were "ghost votes," which means votes that were never cast by actual people but were added to Bush's total, Bush's margin in Florida drops to 180,000. If they were Kerry votes that were switched, though, Bush's margin drops to 51,000. Either way, it gives me a renewed sense of confidence about the infallibility of electronic voting.

The Great American Idiot Ah, undecided voters. Just how stupid are they? Pretty stupid, according to this excellent memoir of the campaign trail by Christopher Hayes. While working in Wisconsin, Hayes encountered undecided voters who favored Bush because their chief concern was the environment; a voter who voted for Bush because he thought Cheney, an oilman, would help end the country's dependence on foreign oil; a voter who switched, inexplicably from Dean to Bush; and a woman who had actually canvassed for John Kerry but then switched to Bush because she FAVORED stem cell research. But it's not just that they're dumb: They don't even understand what politics is about. "The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn't name a single issue that was important to them," Hayes writes. "Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue." Eye-opening.

A Bizarre, Growing Respect for Linda Ronstadt Linda Ronstadt's awesome! First she gets banned from a Vegas casino for giving props to Michael Moore, and now she's railing about how Bush is like Hitler! "It's like Germany, before Hitler took over. The economy was bad and people felt kicked around. They looked for a scapegoat. Now we've got a new bunch of Hitlers," she says. Now, I don't actually agree, but when Linda Ronstadt is more politically outraged than most young, "edgy" artists, how punk rock is that?

Your Next Secretary of State: A Liar, or Simply Incompetent? Media Matters does a good job outlining some of Condoleeza Rice's numerous falsehoods, things that in a perfect world would disqualify her from being the chief diplomat of the United States, but which, perversely, seem to actually work in her favor these days.

-Consider Arms