Star Spangled

In honor of Fourth of July, and as a nice go screw yourselves to our "stop all that eviiil flag burnin' so we can wrap ourselves in it" Congress critters, here's Jimi Hendrix with his Woodstock, "Star Spangled Banner/Purple Haze" riff. Crank it up and rip the knobs off! As Screenhead said, "probably still the prettiest “f*ck you” to a government overstepping its bounds":
----------------

No Medicinal Marijuana Nor Sympathy from Congress

Once again these people prove the absolute lack of compassion and complete depth of ignorance they wallow in. It often makes me hope that they or a loved one goes through the same pain and desperation the terminally ill have to go through and see how they feel then about Medicinal Marijuana.

--------------------------------
"If I am terminally ill, it is not anybody's business on this floor how I handle the pain or the illness or the sickness associated with that illness. With all due respect to all of you, butt out. I did not enter this world with the permission of the Justice Department, and I am certainly not going to depart it by seeking their permission or that of any other authority. The Congress has no business telling people that they cannot manage their illness or their pain any way they need to. I would trust any doctor in the country before I trust some of the daffy ducks in this institution to decide what I am supposed to do if I am terminally ill... When is this Congress going to recognize that individuals in their private lives have a right
to manage their problems as they see fit without the permission of the big guy in the White House or the big guy in the Justice Department or any of the Lilliputians on this Congressional floor? Wake up!"
--David Obey (D-WI)

My letter to my "Representative" Ben Chandler, "Mister No Compassion" obviously:

Sir
As my representative I cannot believe that you voted against Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment that would protect patients many terminally ill against the assault by the Federal government against Medicinal Marijuana.
I'll be looking very closely at your opponent in the next election. Maybe he/she will be a more compassionate in their dealing with people under the boot of neo-fascists. Maybe you feel you have the next election locked up. Personally I'll be waiting to see who your opponent is.
Sincerely

------------
The ignorance and lack of compassion is astounding.

MAN

MAN, n.
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earh and Canada.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Digby is SOoo right

From Digby at Hullabaloo, giving some sympathy for the Rush. Being a thrice divorced, drug addicted, conservative, impotent, parolee can't be easy. So as in all dealings with conservatives, ignore the hypocracy and feel the love for the Rush(at least you know where he got the name now).

Here's digby...

"The main thing is that we shouldn't condemn Rush for his hypocrisy. We should extend an understanding hand and help him come to terms with his problems. He's just another flawed, dysfunctional, rich, celebrity Republican drug addict with a taste for kinky sex. Doesn't he deserve our compassion? I think perhaps we need to ask our Republican representatives to step up and show their support for this flawed, but human, leader of their movement. After all, forgiveness is the Christian thing to do. "

Continue here:

Harry Reid vows to block further congressional pay raises

Harry Reid vows to block all Congressional pay raises until the minimum wage is raised.

A week after the GOP-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Senate Democrats on Tuesday vowed to block pay raises for members of Congress until the minimum wage is increased.
"We're going to do anything it takes to stop the congressional pay raise this year, and we're not going to settle for this year alone," Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said at a Capitol news conference.
"They can play all the games the want," Reid said derisively of the Republicans who control the chamber. "They can deal with gay marriage, estate tax, flag burning, all these issues and avoid issues like the prices of gasoline, sending your kid to college. But we're going to do everything to stop the congressional pay raise."
The minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Democrats want to raise it to $7.25. During the past nine years, as Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to increase the minimum wage, members of Congress have voted to give themselves pay raises -- technically "cost of living increases" -- totaling $31,600, or more than $15 an hour for a 40-hour week, 52 weeks a year, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Continue here:

Landscape Turned Red, The Battle of Antietam

I just finished, "Landscape Turned Red, The Battle of Antietam" by Stephen W. Sears. I'm usually not a big reader of historical books but I became interested in Antietam when a friend and I were talking about what the most deadly battle in the Civil War was. The battle at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg , Maryland was not only the worst of the Civil War, but the worst of any battle in our history. The fighting and losses in this one battle were horrific. From just after dawn on Wednesday morning September 17, 1862 to just around three o'clock that afternoon over 18,000 men were dead, wounded, or missing on both sides. For the day the best estimates are 22,719.
Before the battle ordinary landscape features and places having significence only to locals for generations became places of legend and undoubtedly lived in the minds of the survivors forever with the horror, heroism and melancholy of that day; "the East Woods", "the West Woods", "the Cornfield", "the sunken road", the Dunker Church". The violent battle was so intense and sustained a veteran recalled that, for a moment in his mind's eye the landscape around him turned red.

"We are having a terrible battle, it commenced at daylight this morning and has been raging furiously all day. All other battles in this country are merely skirmishes compared to it."
--Soldier at General George B. McClellan's headquarters

The book is excellent in the build up to the battle and the mindset of not only the Generals and soldiers involved but others as well, Abraham Lincoln, who spent much of his time trying to get General McClellan to actually use his army, and other politicians and civilians of the day.
While reading you'll wander if you could do what these men did. Often masses of soldiers standing only yards from each other firing, loading, and firing again, and screaming. Then Bayonets, clubbing with rifles, and at the end bloody hand to hand combat. Overall the horrific din of artillary firing overhead and explosions.

"More Yankees crowded forward over the dead and wounded of their first line to return the volley, and the two battle lines, disdaining cover , stood 250 yards apart in plain sight of each other and blazed away, loading and firing with feverish haste. Shouted commands went unheard in the din, and ragged sheets of dirty white smoke hung low in the windless air over the pasture and in the corn. Finally, as if by mutual consent, the two lines could take it no longer and lay down behind whatever cover they could find and continued the fight."
--the cornfield

"The fire now became fearful and incessant, merged into a tumultuous chorus that made the earth tremble. The discharge of musketry sounded upon the ear like the rolling of a thousand distant drums."
--war correspondent Felix de Fontaine

"..There were a few moments of savage hand-to-hand combat among the trampled cornstalks, with men swinging clubbed muskets and stabbing at each other with bayonets...Private B.H. Witcher of the 6th Georgia urged a comrade to stand fast with him, pointing to the neatly aligned ranks still lying to their right and left. They're all dead men his companion yelled at him, and to prove it he fired a shot into a man on the ground a few yards away; the body did not twitch.."
--the cornfield

"..In this road there lay so many dead rebels that they formed a line which one might walked upon as far as I could see, they lay just as thay had been killed apparently, amid the blood which was soaking the earth."
--Lt. Livermore of the 5th New Hampshire, the sunken road

If you like history and especially if you like the early America of the civil war era you'll probably like the book. I'll give it a 3-1/2 on my 5 scale. It gives a view into the lives of the time, not just the armies, but the people, and even the political intrigues. The battle gave the North (despite great losses) a strategic victory and allowed Abraham Lincoln to announce his Emancipation Proclamation.

If there really are places that could be deemed haunted Antietam would surely be such a place;
"The queerest thing about it, a man remembered, was the quiet the battle had inflicted. There was no roosters left to crow, and hardly any dogs to bark, and the birds did not return until the next spring. When night come I was so lonesome that I see I didn't know what lonesome was before. It was a curious silent world.."
--Landscape Turned Red

The "Cornfield" today, evening;
"..To the west, the horizon is splashed with pink. To the south, a half moon hangs in a sky turning a darker shade of blue. There is no breeze at all, and the grass in the Cornfield is perfectly still...The sky darkens... Far away, a train blows its whistle, then blows it again, then again. The whistle fades as the train moves on. Now the only sound is the chirp of a million crickets. A faint breeze rises. The grass quivers, then sways gently. It's night now, and the Cornfield -- the bloodiest part of the bloodiest day in American history -- is as peaceful as any place on Earth."
--From, "And The Slain Lay in Rows", Peter Carlson(The Washington Post)

Internet freedom and the Snowe-Dorgan Amendment

Call 'em if they're yours.

-----------------------------------------
Here are the members of the committee who have not taken a strong position in favor of Internet freedom and for the Snowe-Dorgan Amendment. Please urge your members to call them now:
Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)Phone: 202-224-3004
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) Phone: 202-224-2235
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) Phone: 202-224-2353
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) Phone: 202-224-5274
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) Phone: 202 224 3224
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) Phone: 202 224-4623
Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) Phone: 202-224-6253
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) Phone: 202-224-2644
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) Phone: 202-224-6551
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) Phone: 202-224-6244
Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) Phone: 202-224-2841
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) Phone: 202-224-3753
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) Phone: 202 224-6121
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) Phone: 202-224-5922
Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) Phone: 202-224-4024
Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) Phone: 202-224-6472

Here are some recent articles and videos in support of SavetheInternet and Net Neutrality:
An Internet for the Few or the Many?Michael Copps has a message for the technology industry when it comes to Net neutrality: Get involved.CNet News.com
Don't Let the Service Providers Discriminate on the InternetTwo of the Internet's top business innovators made a case for Net Neutrality today in an op-ed written for the San Jose Mercury News. "Reinstating the Internet's core principle of net neutrality won't stand in the way of innovation," write John Doerr and Reed Hastings. "Indeed, net neutrality has, until recently, been the very foundation of Internet innovation."San Jose Mercury News
Protecting Net Neutrality from the Neutricidal TelcosFor AT&T and Verizon to be screaming for the protection of the free market against Net Neutrality is "sheer hypocrisy," writes Internet guru Cory Doctorow. "They themselves are creatures of government regulation, basing their business on government-granted extraordinary privileges."Information Week
No Tolls on the InternetOnly a Congress besieged by high-priced telecom lobbyists could possibly consider handing the Internet over to the handful of cable and telephone companies that control online access for 98 percent of the broadband market.Washington Post
Also, check out these recent "Videos from the People:

Urge Congress to Pass the Medical Marijuana Amendment

Urge Congress to Pass the Medical Marijuana Amendment
The bipartisan Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment would prohibit the U.S. Department of Justice -- which includes the DEA -- from spending taxpayer money to arrest or prosecute medical marijuana patients in the 11 states where medical marijuana is legal.

And while you're at it:
Support Marijuana Taxation and Regulation
Each year, more than 700,000 people are arrested for marijuana offenses, costing American taxpayers more than $7 billion annually. Despite this, marijuana is still easily available, both to adults and minors. Through a focused system of taxation and regulation, we can take money out of the pockets of drug dealers and more effectively limit youth access to marijuana. Shouldn’t we focus our country’s resources on important priorities instead of prosecuting a wasteful war on marijuana?

Video of your rights when stopped by the cops

A 40 minute video by a former ACLU staffer explaining your rights and how to protect your rights (yes, you still have a few) when pulled over by the cops.



















Find it here:

White House staffers accept $135,000 in freebies

Now all the cable news has to do is pretend this is a Democratic White House and let the howling begin.
-------------------------------

..."As Congress debatees a crackdown on members' and their staffs' accepting travel paid for by outside interests, newly filed records show Capitol Hill lawmakers aren't Washington's only frequent fliers. According to filings with the Office of Government Ethics, White House staffers have accepted nearly $135,000 in free trips since November 2004. Among those picking up the tab: some of the president's top business supporters, including the National Association of Manufacturers, and dozens of conservative and religious groups, among them the Southern Baptist Convention, Focus on the Family and the Federalist Society."

Continue:

Pigs at the Trough

Time to think of guillotines?

Despite record low approval ratings, House lawmakers Tuesday accepted a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500.
The 2 percent cost-of-living raise would be the seventh straight for members of the House and Senate.
Associated PressHouse says yes to $3,300 pay raiseJune 14, 2006
____________________________
A bid to boost the U.S. minimum wage failed Tuesday as Republicans in the House of Representatives pushed back an effort by Democrats to force a vote on the measure.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said last week that he wanted to hold off on debating minimum wage legislation until possibly after the November elections. House Majority Leader John Boehner also said he probably wouldn't allow the legislation to reach the House floor this week.
Bloomberg NewsBid to boost minimum wage suffers setbackJune 20, 2006

I have to admit, even I didn't think the political pimps in control of our national whorehouse would have the gall to sneak through a pay raise for themselves, then turn around a week later and kill the first increase in the
minimum wage in almost ten years. Even I wouldn't have imagined they would think
they could get away with it. Not in an election year. I guess it's their way of
showing Tom DeLay they don't need him around to act like a pen full of swine with a taste for eating their own feces. The Bug Man may be gone, but his pestilence remains. But what it really indicates, I think, is the complete confidence the GOP majority now places in the chronic amnesia of the American voter -- and the willingness of the corporate media complex (particularly its broadcast arm) to avoid doing or saying anything that would jog the patient's memory, at least when doing so might directly damage the interests of a powerful business constituency.

From Billman

Happy Birthday Kris

kris Kristofferson born June 22, 1936.
here's Kris and Johny Cash doing "Sunday Morning Coming Down"/1980.


--"Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday"

More on Fletcher's Blog blocking

More on that Fletcher (mis)administration attempt to block critical Blog sites.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From BluegrassReport one of the blockees:
---

Rep. Ben Chandler (D) has just publicly condemned Fletcher's censorship actions and stands behind the constitution. Keep in mind that Ben also voted for net-neutrality as well:

KY Congressman: Great Kentucky Blog Ban Violates
Constitution!
...Rep. Ben Chandler (D-KY), whose district includes the state capitol, has just come out firmly against the policy. "I believe the recent action of the Fletcher
administration to block access to a handpicked number of blogs is a violation of
the equal protection clause of the Constitution," Chandler said through a spokeswoman. "This flies in the face of a fundamental right of free
speech."

Ryan Alessi has a story on the Herald-Leader website:
Fletcher Administration Blocks State Employees' Access To
Political Blogs
By Ryan AlessiHERALD-LEADER FRANKFORT BUREAU
FRANKFORT - Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration blocked state employees' access to Web logs today, a day after a prominent political "blogger" was critical of the governor in a New York Times story. The ban sent the political sector of the cyber world into a tizzy, attracting attention from national blogs, some of which were added throughout the day to the list of sites state workers couldn't access.
Finance and Administration Cabinet spokeswoman Jill Midkiff said that as part of a continuing Web-monitoring process, the state is restricting employees' access to sites that contain computer viruses as well as those devoted to entertainment, movies, auctions, classified ads, jokes, comics, message boards and, yes, blogs.
"We want to make sure we are doing what's best for the taxpayers," she said.
Officials had planned two weeks ago to limit access to blogs as part of a regular update of "non-business-related" Web pages, Midkiff said. The timing had nothing to do with the front-page New York Times story about Fletcher's political troubles, Midkiff said.
In that story, Mark Nickolas, publisher of the Bluegrassreport.org blog, criticized
Fletcher's administration for trying to "play by their own rules even if it's against the law." [...]
In an interview, Nickolas said the timing is more
than suspicious.
"But all this is going to do is draw more attention to it," he said. "It is an example of the low political IQ of the administration, that they think they can censor political speech to keep people in line."

-----
Blogs weighing in:
Talking Points Memo
Boing Boing
Daily Kos
Atrios
And on and on. For the latest though go to BluegrassReport

The Hitler vs. Coulter Quiz

The daily pop quiz. Can you guess who said what. Did Adolf Hitler make the comment or did Republican Mann...er I mean Ann Coulter. I got eleven out of fifteen

------------------------------------------------
The Hitler vs. Coulter Quiz
Can you correctly attribute the following quotes?

"Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason...Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy."

Ann Coulter or Adolf Hitler

"We must study this vile liberal technique of emptying garbage pails full of the vilest slanders and defamations from hundreds and hundreds of sources at once, suddenly and as if by magic, on the clean garments of honorable men, if we are fully to appreciate the entire menace represented by these scoundrels of the press."

Ann Coulter or Adolf Hitler

"Taking these consequences into account, it is no accident that it is always primarily the liberal who tries and succeeds in planting such mortally dangerous modes of thought in our people."

Ann Coulter or Adolf Hitler
...
Here's the rest.
Found the link at AMERICAblog

BluegrassReport.org Being BLOCKED By State Government

Republicans Love censorship(of other ideas)
-----------------------------------
Kentucky:
BluegrassReport.org Being BLOCKED By State Government

I've gotten a handful of e-mails this morning already that BluegrassReport.org has apparently been blocked to state computers by the Commonwealth Office of Technology. Readers in three different cabinets have e-mailed to tell me they get a "blocked" message when they try to access the site. Nothing like a little censorship with your breakfast. Welcome to the People's Republic of
Kentucky. UPDATE: I'm getting flooded with e-mails and a couple of phone calls from readers in other cabinets -- and other elected constitutional offices -- that the site has been blocked. But what's interesting is there's no problem allowing state workers to access the Republican Party of Kentucky or Fox News or Drudge Report or at least one conservative Kentucky blog. Pathetic.
UPDATE
#2: The Bluegrass Institute's blog is accessible, as are the political blogs run by Mark Hebert and Pat Crowley. Looks like BGR is being targeted. What are they afraid of?
Go to BluegrassReport
This from DailyKos

Must be a coincidence that the banning of BGR happens the day after a front-page New York Times story critical of the administration which contained not only a quote from me but also mentioned this site. Coincidence, of course.

-----------------------------------------------
What a bunch of babies

AT&T Providing "secret rooms for NSA spying on Americans?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
AT&T spy-room in St Louis - whistleblowers Two anonymous ex-AT&T whistleblowers say they worked in a secret room in a backbone administration center in St Louis that appears to have been an NSA spying operation (the NSA isn't supposed to spy on Americans). EFF is suing the AT&T over its role in NSA wiretapping millions of Americans through a switching office in San Francisco.

"In interviews with Salon, the former AT&T workers said that only government officials or AT&T employees with top-secret security clearance are admitted to the room, located inside AT&T's facility in Bridgeton. The room's tight security includes a biometric "mantrap" or highly sophisticated double door, secured with retinal and fingerprint scanners. The former workers say company supervisors told them that employees working inside the room were "monitoring network traffic" and that the room was being used by "a government agency."
The details provided by the two former workers about the Bridgeton room bear the distinctive earmarks of an operation run by the National Security Agency, according to two intelligence experts with extensive knowledge of the NSA and its operations. In addition to the room's high-tech security, those intelligence experts told Salon, the exhaustive vetting process AT&T workers were put through before being granted top-secret security clearance points to the NSA, an agency known as much for its intense secrecy as its technological sophistication."

Link
From BoingBoing

American Street: Bombing Innocents

Bombing children and other innocents:
This is from American Street.
--------------------------------------------------------

In a short editorial, the Detroit News asked an interesting question:
“Some war critics are suggesting Iraq terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi should have been arrested and prosecuted rather than bombed into oblivion. Why expose American troops to the danger of an arrest, when bombs work so well?”

Here’s one possible answer: In order not to send a five-year-old Iraqi girl into oblivion with the same 500-pound bombs that sent al-Zarqawi into oblivion.

Of course, I don’t know whether the Detroit News editorial board, if pressed, would say that the death of that little Iraqi girl was “worth it.” Maybe the board wasn’t even aware that that little girl had been killed by the bombs that killed Zarqawi when it published its editorial. But I do know one thing: killing Iraqi children and other such “collateral damage” has long been acceptable and even “worth it” to U.S. officials as part of their long-time foreign policy toward Iraq.

This U.S. government mindset was expressed perfectly by former U.S. official Madeleine Albright when she stated that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from the U.S. and UN sanctions against Iraq had, in fact, been “worth it.” …

Some would argue that such “collateral damage” is just an unfortunate byproduct of war. … Such claims, however, miss an important point: U.S. military forces have no right, legal or moral, even to be in Iraq killing anyone. Why? Because neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States. The Iraqi people had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. Thus, this was an optional war against Iraq, one that President Bush and his military forces did not have to wage.
–Jacob G. Hornberger, “Killing Iraqi Children”

--Read the whole thing here:

Dubai STILL controls 22 US ports

CNN: Dubai STILL controls 22 US ports
Aravosis
Isn't that special. CNN reports that Dubai is still controlling the ports, and that Congress silently killed legislation that would have helped ensure the ports stay American-owned. Lou Dobbs thinks the Republican Congress and the Bush White House have played a fast one on the American people.

From DailyKos
And AMERICAblog

Good read-Arianna talks about Tony Snowjob

From Arianna.
------------------------------------------------
Tony Snow: You Can Take the Man Out of Fox News, But You Can't Take the Fox News Out of the Man
Quick, somebody get Tony Snow a compassion cocktail -- with an empathy chaser!For years now I've been praying for public officials to start speaking their minds and not hide behind a smokescreen of mindless, focus group-tested, politically correct pabulum. But an interesting thing is happening with Tony Snow. Since becoming press secretary he has, indeed, been speaking his mind. But the kind of mind that's being revealed is very troubling. His reaction to the U.S. death toll in Iraq hitting 2,500 was "It's a number."His response to the kidnapping of Pfc. Kristian Manchaca and Pfc. Thomas Tucker was to grumble about the media "focusing on them" instead of the fact "that since Zarqawi was killed, hundreds of bad guys have been rounded up." [Update: Snow’s problem with the media focus on the story is even more disturbing now that the kidnapped soldiers have been found barbarically slain.]Snow seems to be missing the humanity chromosome. The jury is still out on whether his regret gene is just as recessive. He did call himself "an idiot" for his they-all-look-alike confusion of black House members Sheila Jackson Lee and Cynthia McKinney. Will he publicly flagellate himself in the same way for his appearance on Imus last week in which he slammed former President Carter, saying that during the Carter years "you had the humiliation of hostages being taken in Iran"? Oops. Should President Carter be expecting a "my bad" card in the mail, Tony?Then there were Snow's head-scratching comparison of the gay marriage ban to the civil rights struggle (compounded by his inability to define civil rights) and his unfortunate use of "tar baby" imagery to deflect questions on NSA surveillance programs.It's becoming clearer by the day: you can take the man out of Fox News, but you can't take the Fox News out of the man.
Continue:

Today in Bushopotamia

Breaking: American soldiers' bodies found in Iraq
It's an especially ugly day in Iraq:
Iraq officials report finding 2 dead American soldiers who had been kidnapped
Car bomb explosion in Baghdad market
- 4 dead, 16 wounded
Suicide bomber blows up self, kills 2, 3 wounded in Basra home for elderly
From AMERICAblog

2500 that didn't need to die

The Death of Achilles
-Hugh Cook
Turning on the blade of the sun
He feels no pain.
He counts it all as illusion.
Existence was a cobweb's whisper.
And now he is nothing, and knows it,
The sky
Darkening to extinction as he falls.
On his knees he is an avalanche still falling,
But is dead by the time
He bucks to the earth and rolls.
The echo of his cry
Lives half a moment after Achilles.
Then there is war, but not his war,
Though there are still clouds, and there is still smoke,
And there are still fish in the silver sea-
And the wind blows wide across
Tundra
Palm trees
Coral islands
Enameled deserts ....
Somewhere, the shell of a turtle lies
Half-buried in the driftwood of the sun ....
source:

Good Times at the White House

The White House has a picnic on the day American soldier's deaths in Iraq reach 2500. They're partying like it's 1989. From Taylor Marsh here's that invite:



















"It's a number,"
--Tony "Snowjob" Snow, White House press secretary (regarding the 2500 service people killed in Iraq)

From the General here's a few of those "numbers":

















But you know they're just numbers and Republicans must party (in a Republican kinda way).

Dixie Chicks Live

I'm not a fan of the Dixie Chick's music but I love their chutzpah. The only thing they got wrong was thinking dubya is actually from Texas, he's a privilaged yankee blueblood. Anyway for their musical fans they'll be live on the Internet tonight.



















You can check out the Dixie Chicks live on the internet at 10pm ET tonight.
From THEOcracy via Crooks and Liars.

Pentagon spinning Zarqawi like a top

Wow, now this is just funny as hell. The gang that couldn't tell the truth if it bit them on the ass, and that's been proven to be planting fake stories as fast as they can make them up has found a "huge treasure" of documents in Zarqawi's old hideout. Do I believe they actually found these documents? NO. Do I think it's just more Bushco propaganda? YES. Digby does a much better job than I could in deconstructing this B.S. go there and read.
I really have to throw in a few samples. Can you say Pentagon propanda? I thought you could.

"A blueprint for trying to start a war between the United States and Iran was among a "huge treasure" of documents found in the hideout of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraqi officials said Thursday. The document, purporting to reflect al-Qaida policy and its cooperation with groups loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein, also appear to show that the insurgency in Iraq was weakening.The al-Qaida in Iraq document was translated and released by Iraqi
National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie. There was no way to independently confirm the authenticity of the information attributed to al-Qaida."

--

"While the coalition was continuing to suffer human losses, "time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance," the document said.

The document said the insurgency was being hurt by, among other things, the U.S. military's program to train Iraqi security forces, by massive arrests and seizures of weapons, by tightening the militants' financial outlets, and by creating divisions within its ranks."

--
(And here's Digby)
"Now, "some" might say since the Bush administration has been proved to be planting propaganda in both the Iraqi and US press, since we've "found" many spurious documents in Iraq before, and since they are lying scumbags about virtually everything including whether the sun came up this morning --- that we should be skeptical of such things. I am not one of those people. Clearly, the war is won and we can bring the troops home."
--digby

For Pets Left Behind

From the Humane Society.

Stellar Nurseries

Want to feel small? Click on the photo, thousands of light years in distances through our Milky Way galaxy, stars being born in the nebulae above, and how tiny and backwater our little solar system really is.
Photo from NASA

For Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon and the gang

Here's some of the gang:

Here's what they've done:

Just watch it.

And here's their good times.

Thanks to Jesus General.

Fafblog - 6/10 Changed Everything

I love Fafblog's take on that whole idiocy about Gitmo suicides being attacks on America. We occupy the dubya era, where doublespeak and spin rise to levels of parody that make parody appear normal. Of course the "Journamalists" in the corporate news media write and read this Orwellian "suicider" crap with the straightest of faces and the only thing you can wonder is whether they're imbeciles, whores, or both.
They've been doing this since the run up to the 2000 "election". You'd think we'd be used to it by now. Anyway here's Fafblog and Giblets with the straight dope, enjoy.

--------------------------------------------
6/10 Changed Everything
Run for your lives - America is under attack! Just days ago three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay committed suicide in a savage assault on America's freedom to not care about prisoner suicides! Oh sure, the "Blame Atrocities First" crowd will tell you these prisoners were "driven to despair," that they "had no rights," that they were "held and tortured without due process or judicial oversight in a nightmarish mockery of justice." But what they won't tell you is that they only committed suicide as part of a diabolical ruse to trick the world into thinking our secret torture camp is the kind of secret torture camp that drives its prisoners to commit suicide! This fiendish attempt to slander the great American institution of the gulag is nothing less than an act of asymmetrical warfare against the United States - a noose is just a suicide bomb with a very small blast radius, people! - and when faced with a terrorist attack, America must respond. Giblets demands immediate retaliatory airstrikes on depressed Muslim torture victims throughout the mideast!
"Oh but Giblets there are dozens of innocent prisoners in Guantanamo" you say because you are a namby-pamby appeasenik who suckles at the teat of terror. Well if these Guantanamo prisoners are so innocent then what are they doing in Guantanamo? Sneaking into our secret military prisons as part of an elaborate plot to make it look like we're holding them in our secret military prisons, that's what! And once they get there they can chain themselves to the floor, break their bones on helpless guards' fists, and waterboard themselves to their heart's content to further their sinister Salafi scheme to sully the reputation of secret American torture facilities everywhere!
Continue:

God Save the Internet

The free God Save the Internet song download(MP3).
From The Broadband (Kay Hanley, Jill Sobule, and Michelle Lewis)

Support Net Neutrality-Call your senator

Call Congress about Internet Freedom
Senate is preparing to cast a crucial vote on Internet freedom. They will vote on a bi-partisan Net Neutrality bill put forth by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Byron Dorgan (S. 2917) We need to pass this bill so large telephone and cable companies do not control what you do, where you go, and what you watch online.
More than 800,000 people have sent protest letters to Congress. Thousands more are calling their elected represenatatives to demand that they take a stand for Internet freedom. Because of the intense heat, some members of Congress are switching from AT&T's side to ours. Every elected member of the Senate needs to take a stand on Internet freedom.
A list of senators, decided, undecided and not sure.
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Tell your senator that you support Net Neutrality — the First Amendment of the Internet — and ask that they support the Snowe-Dorgan bill on net neutrality. Congress must protect this set of principles to keep the Internet free and open to all comers. Make the call now.

Learn more about this issue? Explore SavetheInternet.com.
Thanks to Skippy.

A quick video clip featuring the musician Moby which spells out the issue pretty clearly.

Riverbend talks about Zarqawi

From Baghdad Burning on the death of Zarqawi.
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"..To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."So now that Zarqawi is dead, and because according to Bush and our Iraqi puppets he was behind so much of Iraq's misery- things should get better, right? The car bombs should lessen, the ethnic cleansing will come to a halt, military strikes and sieges will die down… That's what we were promised, wasn't it? That sounds good to me. Now- who do they have to kill to stop the Ministry of Interior death squads, and trigger-happy foreign troops?"

Continue:

The Norman Rockwell Code

Funny
---

Director/writer Alfred Thomas Catalfo’s parody of The Da Vinci Code.

” When the curator of The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is murdered, the police desperately need help with the investigation. Langford Fife, Professor of Symbology at Stockbridge Community College and the son of a certain Deputy Sheriff from Mayberry, North Carolina, is called to the scene. He may have received his degree in symbology through a correspondence course but he’s ‘just as competent as those high-falutin’ professors from Harvard with their fancy sheepskins from accredited schools.’ With cryptologist Sopha Poisson of the Quebec Secret Service, Langford sets out to uncover the clues hidden in the paintings of Norman Rockwell… clues which will lead them to a secret society, a legendary bloodline and a battle with sinister forces.”

The Norman Rockwell CodeWatch the whole thing (35 minutes) or just the trailer for a taste of it.

Bush could have gotten Zarqawi years ago

This is from Salon:

As NBC News reported back in 2004, U.S. military planners drew up plans to take out Zarqawi three times in 2002 and 2003, but the Bush administration killed the plans each time. Why? Because, military officials told NBC, the Bush administration feared that destroying Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Iraq "could undercut its case for war against Saddam."

Anti-iTunes

Anti-iTunes DRM demonstrations across the USA tomorrow
Tomorrow, activists in seven cities across the US will picket Apple Stores, handing out information about the dangers of the DRM hidden in Apple's iTunes. iTunes DRM may seem pretty innocuous at first, but every time you invest in an iTunes Store song, you make it more expensive to switch to an Apple competitor's product at any time in the future. You didn't have to abandon your CDs to switch to MP3s (in fact, the more CDs you owned, the better your MP3 experience was, since you could rip those CDs to seed your MP3 collection), but if you want to go from Apple's iTunes to a competing device, ever, you have to be prepared to abandon your whole investment.
Add to that Apple's willingness to remove features from iTunes Store songs in the name of "updating," the absence of any way to give away, sell or loan your iTunes Store songs, and Apple's use of blacklists and legal threats to prevent people from adding functionality to the iPod and iTunes and buying an iTunes song starts to seem like a worse and worse deal (especially since many artists report that they're seeing $0.07 or less from the sale of their music on the iTunes Store, so all your money is doing is lining the pockets of the same recording companies that are busily suing grannies, little kids and everyone else they can get their hands on).
The demonstrations are being organized by the Free Software Foundation's "Defective by Design" group, the same cats who crashed Bill Gates's keynote at WinHEC dressed in toxic waste suits. I can't wait to get to one of their actions -- they sound like a hoot!

Let the fun begin! We will be on-site tomorrow from 10am (local time) getting suited-up and you can expect the action to start at 10:30am - remember to bring those cameras!
Apple Store - 1 Stockton St, San Francisco, CA 94108Apple Store - 679 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611Apple Store - 4702 NE University Village Pl, Seattle, WA 98105Apple Store - 100 Cambridge Side Place, Cambridge, MA 02141Apple Store - 767 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10153Apple Store - 160 Walt Whitman Rd. Huntington Station, NY 11746hApple Store - 6121 West Park Blvd. Plano, TX 75093

LINK:

Bill Moyer's Baccalaureate Speech

Some excerpts from Bill Moyer's wonderful Baccalaureate Address at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. From Common Dreams:
Go read it if you haven't already you'll be glad you did.
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"So I have been thinking seriously about what I might say to you in this Baccalaureate service. Frankly, I'm not sure anyone from my generation should be saying anything to your generation except, "We're sorry. We're really sorry for the mess you're inheriting. We are sorry for the war in Iraq. For the huge debts you will have to pay for without getting a new social infrastructure in return. We're sorry for the polarized country. The corporate scandals. The corrupt politics. Our imperiled democracy. We're sorry for the sprawl and our addiction to oil and for all those toxins in the environment. Sorry about all this, class of 2006. Good luck cleaning it up. You're going to have your hands full, frankly. I don't need to tell you of the gloomy scenarios being written for your time. Three books on my desk right now question whether human beings will even survive the 21st century. Just listen to their titles: The Long Emergency: Surviving the Convergence Catastrophe; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or
Succeed; The Winds of Change: Weather and the Destruction of Civilizations. These are just three of the recent books that make the apocalypse prophesied in the Bible...the Revelations of St. John...look like child's play. I won't summarize them for you except to say that they spell out Doomsday scenarios for global catastrophe.
There's another recent book called The Revenge of Gaia that could well have been subtitled, "The Earth Strikes Back," because the author, James Lovelock, says human consumption, our obsession with technology, and our habit of "playing God" are stripping bare nature's assets until the Earth's only consolation will be to take us down with her. Before this century is over, he writes, "Billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be kept in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable." So there you have it: The future of the race, to be joined in a final and fatal march of the penguins.

And this

If the world confuses you a little, it confuses me a lot. When I graduated fifty years ago I thought I had the answers. But life is where you get your answers questioned, and the odds are that you can look forward to being even more perplexed fifty years from now than you are at this very moment. If your parents level with you, truly speak their hearts, I suspect they would tell you life confuses them, too, and that it rarely turns out the way you thought it would.
I find I am alternatively afraid, cantankerous, bewildered, often hostile, sometimes gracious, and battered by a hundred new sensations every day. I can be filled with a pessimism as gloomy as the depth of the middle ages, yet deep within me I'm possessed of a hope that simply won't quit. A friend on Wall Street said one day that he was optimistic about the market, and I asked him, "Then why do you look so worried?" He replied, "Because I'm not sure my optimism is justified." Neither am I. So I vacillate between the determination to act, to change things, and the desire to
retreat into the snuggeries of self, family and friends."

And finally this one:

"Let me tell you one of my favorite stories. I read it a long time ago and it's stayed with me. There was a man named Shalom Aleicheim. He was one of the
accursed of the Earth. Every misfortune imaginable befell him. He lost his wife, his children neglected him, his house burned down, his job disappeared--everything he touched turned to dust. Yet through all this Shalom kept returning good for evil everywhere he could until he died. When the angels heard he was arriving at Heaven's gate, they hurried down to greet him. Even the Lord was there, so great was this man's fame for goodness. It was the custom in Heaven that every newcomer was interrogated by the prosecuting angel, to assure that all trespasses on Earth had been atoned. But when Shalom reached those gates, the prosecuting angel arose, and for the first time in the memory of Heaven, said, "There are no charges." Then the angel for the defense arose and rehearsed all the hardships this man had endured and recounted how in all the difficult circumstances of his life he had remained true to himself and returned good for evil.
When the angel was finished, the Lord said, "Not since Job himself have we heard of a life such as this one." And then, turning to Shalom, he said, "Ask, and it shall be given to you."

The old man raised his eyes and said, "Well, if I could start every day with a hot buttered roll..." And at that the Lord and all the angels wept, at the preciousness of what he was asking for, at the beauty of simple things : a buttered roll, a clean bed, a beautiful summer day, someone to love and be loved by. These supply joy and meaning on this earthly journey."

Go read the whole thing, or listen if you find the audio. Can also be found at Blue Gal, and
Braveneworld.

You Tube: Slipping Away

My video for the day: Moby's "Slipping Away" from Hotel. I like but kinda sad



From YouTube

Top Ten

Means nothin' to nobody but me but here's the top ten on my mp3 player at this very moment:

Slipping Away : Moby
We Are All Made of Stars : Moby
Heartbreak Beat : Psychodelic Furs
Ghost in You : Psychodelic Furs
74-75 : The Connells
Dreams : The Cranberries
Femme Fatale : Velvet Underground
Satellite of Love : Velvet Underground
China Roses : Enya
Talk : Coldplay

Fundies among us

Photo from Needlenose

Eric Alterman | Estate Tax Repeal

The obscenely rich are about to get their wet dream realized. Under cover of gay marriage/flag burning crises our bought and paid for, Republican dominated congress is about to turn our government into a Marie Antoinette style oligarchy.
This from Eric Alterman
-----------------------------------------------
Now take a look at what I learned from The Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities, here.

"Estate tax repeal will likely cost $1 trillion in the first decade alone, and compare that amount to other priorities. For example, in light of the controversy this week over cuts in homeland security funding for a number of communities, it is worth noting that the annual revenue loss from repealing the estate tax is roughly the same as total federal spending on homeland security nationwide.
The number of estates subject to tax is small and shrinking rapidly under current law — from more than 50,000 in 2000 to fewer than 13,000 in 2006 to about 7,000 in 2009.
Phony “compromise” proposals are being pushed by some who favor repeal to attract moderate Republicans and Democrats. The leading such “compromises” proposed by Senator Kyl or Senator Baucus would cost almost as much as full repeal, according to the Tax Policy Center, though the former is a bit worse than the latter.
If the tax is frozen at its 2009 level instead of repealed, only the wealthiest three out of every 1,000 estates would owe any tax at all.
If Congress were to opt for the Kyl or Baucus proposals instead of freezing the tax at its 2009 level, all of the additional tax-cut benefits would go to the wealthiest 0.3 percent of estates (those worth more than $7 million for a couple).
All of this, meanwhile, will further separate the wealthy from the rest of us, and hasten the creation of class-driven/anti-opportunity society where democracy has become all but impossible to practice. I keep saying this over and over, these people are purposely destroying everything of value in this country; and the media are just watching.
For more, go here."

By the way the only thing I'd disagree with this comment,
"..these people are purposely destroying everything of value in this country; and the media are just watching."
I'm convinced that the "media" aren't just "watching" but the vast majority, and especially the national news creatures, are active participants in the destruction. That includes such faux liberals as NPR, etc.

From Bob Harris | Bush Abrogates Third Amendment

A snarky epic from Bob Harris prince of snarkiness. Hey Bush is right, why leave that 3rd amendment intact.
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Bush Abrogates Third Amendment, Just to Complete the Set

"American citizens will now be compelled to allow British soldiers to live in their homes, thanks to a new signing statement from President Bush.

By negating the Third Amendment, the new order completes the abrogation of the entire United States Bill of Rights. High-level White House sources have indicated that this was Bush's sole purpose in issuing the statement.

While precisely which British soldiers are to live in which homes remains unclear, the signing statement is clear and unambiguous, according to a press release on the White House website. The statement, in Bush's handwriting, contains the complete text of the Third Amendment — "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law" — crossed out, with the words "Hey, Bigtime, we missed one! Bring on the redcoats!" and what appears to be a smiley face added underneath.

The new signing statement was written into the margin of an unrelated bill blocking any recount of votes in the massive GOP sweep of the 2006 elections, giving Republicans a resounding majority in 53 states. Some Democrats mildly protested the vote count in December, citing mathematical studies which they claimed demonstrated that only 50 states had existed prior to the election. Republicans denounced this as "math," and the question remained unresolved for weeks.

The story gained further notoriety when bloggers in the state of North Florida found that three days before the election, the Veterans Administration had declared the entire black population of the state as Killed In Action in the 1944 battle of Anzio, even though several hundred Republican votes in the state were apparently cast by manatees. Some activists have argued that manatees, which typically inhabit warm, shallow estuaries, would be unlikely to have reached the appropriate polling places.

However, in January, a blonde tourist from Connecticut went missing, and the news channels dropped about the story completely.

"Bigtime" is believed to be a reference to Vice President Dick Cheney, although Cheney was unavailable for comment. The vice president has had an increasingly distant relationship with the press ever since accidentally shooting twenty-six people in the face over the course of three afternoons in October, 2006. Cheney has denied that alcohol played a role in the incident, and all twenty-six people have apologized to the vice president."

Continue:

Pink Floyd "Comfortably Numb"

Another treat while I was perusing YouTube. Pink Floyd doing "Comfortably Numb" and guitarist David Gilmore with an amazing solo. Hey, I must post. If not videos it'd be something else.
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Superstition on Sesame Street

A fun little clip. Stevie Wonder does "Superstition" on Sesame Street(1973?). How can you not LOVE You tube:

Goose Stepping Police Fight Anti-Bush Posters

I found this story so outrageous and hard to believe that I had to search for other back up sources. If these thugs are in office through one more "turist" attack I believe it may well be the gulags for many of us. They have plenty of goosestepping cops and judges(as you will read about here) who'll just LOVE doing the job.

--------------------------
From Mother Jones
and The Arctic Beacon















Uppity Cleveland woman carted to psych hospital by police and ordered to a psych unit by judge
For as long as we have had some kind of mental health system, women who "behave incorrectly" have been ordered to undergo its treatments. At one time or another, feminists, suffragists, menopausal women, and women who question authority in any way have been sent to institutions so that they could recieve "help." The latest woman to get such help is Carol Fisher of Cleveland. Fisher is on the staff of Revolution Books, and on January 28, while she was putting Bush Step Down posters on telephone polls in Cleveland Heights, she was ordered by a police officer to take them down or face a fine. When she complied, she was asked for her ID, which she did not have on her. He then grabbed her by the arm, pushed her against a store window, and knocked her face down onto the sidewalk. He was joined by another officer, and they both pressed their feet against her back until she could not breathe. Her chin was pressed down into the concrete; Fisher has osteoradionecrosis in her jaw from radiation treatments for cancer.

Fisher was handcuffed and shackled. During this time, Fisher yelled out to everyone who passed what the posters were about. One of the police officers then told her, Fisher says, to "Shut up or I will kill you! I am sick of this anti-Bush shit! You are definitely going to the psyche ward."

She was then threatened some more and taken away in an EMS truck. At the hospital, Fisher was asked to undress in front of the police officers, which she refused to do. The officers refused to leave, so a nurse attempted to shield her while she undressed. Fisher says she was then cuffed to the bed, given an IV of some sort, and made to wait hours for a psychiatrist to interview her. By this time, members of her World Can't Wait group were in the emergency room having a confrontation with the police, who refused to let them see Fisher. Someone called the news media, who never made an appearance.

Continue:

Black Hawk Down Revisited

To the country for the weekend. It sure felt good. Maybe one quick post.
So the guys who killed our soldiers and dragged their bodies through the streets of Mogudishu are now Bushco's friends. Figures.
I agree with Susie at Suburban Guerrilla this is definately a case of IOKIYAR(It's okay if you're a Republican)

----------------------------------------

Black Hawk Down Revisited

Somalia is still ruled by the brutal warlords who dragged dead US soldiers through the streets in 1993. But times change. Now they are America’s new allies in the war on terror

THIRTEEN years after President Bill Clinton withdrew forces from Somalia, in the “Black Hawk down” shambles, American security officials are giving clandestine support to the same warlords who mutilated and humiliated US soldiers in 1993.
The American Operation, in breach of the United Nations’ arms embargo on Somalia and therefore in breach of international law, is controlled through the US Embassy in Kenya and Washington’s 1800-strong Combined Joint Task Force in Djibouti, on Somalia’s northern border.

The Combined Joint Task Force, under Admiral Richard Hunt, is an anti-terrorist operation for the troubled Horn of Africa, but most specifically for Somalia, which has had no effective government since 1991 and is seen as an ideal place for al-Qaeda activists to hide and plot attacks.

Somalia is only a short boat ride from Yemen and is a historic doorway to Africa from the Middle East. No visas are needed to enter Somalia and there is no police force. The country has a weak and ineffective transitional government operating largely out of neighbouring Kenya. Most of Somalia is in mayhem and lawlessness, ruled by a patchwork of competing warlords; the capital is too unsafe for even Somalia’s acting prime minister to visit.

The US, terrified that Islamists allied to al-Qaeda are gaining control in Somalia, has turned to the kind of warlords who once dragged dead American soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, as its new allies in the “war on terror”."

Continue at Sunday Herald

Rolling Stone on the theft of the 2004 Presidential "election"

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." —George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000

Robert F. Kennedy and Rolling Stone on the theft of the 2004 Presidential "election". You'll have to look elsewhere of course for information on the theft of the 2000 Presidential election, and wait for the theft of the 2008 Presidential elections.

"After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004 -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes."
-Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Hopefully Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. won't be riding in any small planes anytime soon if you know what I mean(wink, wink).

Impeachment? No. Impalement!

Mister 29%



















Photo thanks to watertiger at Dependable Renegade

Impeachment? No. Impalement!
by Will Durst
"I don’t know about you guys, but I am so sick and tired of these lying, thieving, holier-than-thou, rightwing, cruel, crude, rude, gauche, coarse, crass, cocky, corrupt, dishonest, debauched, degenerate, dissolute, swaggering, lawyer shooting, bullhorn shouting, infra-structure destroying, buck passing, hysterical, criminal, history defying, finger pointing, puppy stomping, roommate appointing, pretzel choking, collateral damaging, aspersion casting, wedding party bombing, clearcutting, torturing, jobs outsourcing, torture out-sourcing, election fixing, women’s rights eradicating, Medicare cutting, uncouth, spiteful, boorish, vengeful, jingoistic, homophobic, xenophobic, xylophonic, racist, sexist, ageist, fascist, cashist, audaciously stupid, brazenly selfish, lethally ignorant, journalist purchasing, genocide ignoring, corporation kissing, poverty inducing, crooked, coercive, autocratic, primitive, uppity, high-handed, domineering, arrogant, inhuman, inhumane, inbred, inept, insipid, incapable, incompetent, ineffectual, insolent, insincere, know-it-all, snotty, pompous, contemptuous, supercilious, gutless, spineless, shameless, avaricious, noxious, poisonous, imperious, merciless, graceless, tactless, brutish, brutal, Karl Roving, backward thinking, persistent vegetative state grandstanding, nuclear option threatening, evolution denying, irony deprived, consciously depraved, conceited, perverted, peremptory invading, thirty-five day vacation taking, bribe soliciting, hellish, smarty pants, loudmouth, bullying, swell headed, ethics eluding, domestic spying, medical marijuana busting, Halliburtoning, narcissistic, undiplomatic, blustering, malevolent, demonizing, Duke Cunninghamming, hectoring, dry drunk, Muslim baiting, hurricane disregarding, oil company hugging, judge packing, science disputing, faith based advocating, armament selling, nonsense spewing, education ravaging, whiny, insane, unscrupulous, lily livered, greedy(exponential factor fifteen)......"
Continue at Common Dreams:

The War Prayer

In honor of the American troops in Iraq now going through "moral and ethical training". This excerpt is from Mark Twain's "The War Prayer", I'll hereafter call this piece "dubya's plea".

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"..we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."
--Mark Twain, From The War Prayer (dubya's plea)
Thanks to wood s lot

Timothy Leary-Ten Years Gone

Timothy Leary dead ten years yesterday:

"My advice to people today is as follows: If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out."
-Timothy Leary




















“I've left specific instructions that I do not want to be brought back during a Republican administration”
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“Think for yourself and question authority”
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“There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third.”
--
Timothy Leary (October 22, 1920 - May 31, 1996)