journal

9 myths exposed

I haven't really researched all of these, but they sound about right. Wait, isn't that how myths propagate?

about time!

Bush 2004 Campaign Pledges To Restore Honor And Dignity To White House

I weep for the future...

What kind of country even considers limiting a professor's freedom to teach whatever the hell he wants, however he wants?

And I, as a future payer of college tuition, will have to pay for this tripe? No. I refuse. I wonder if I'll someday have to send my kids to study abroad...

Ick

All Mickey Dees, all the time.

Bush in 41.2 Seconds

Bush in 41.2 Seconds

I got nothin' to add to this one :)

Like the roar of an F-16...

This is some song I heard about on public radio last night (of all places) as part of the interview of some guy from rightmarch. The song is full of the kinds of feelings I'd never attribute to a reasonable american.

"Hey Hollywood, take a look around if you would
And if you don't love this land you're free to leave.

...

Now don't get me wrong I know you got a right
To say what you want and never apologize"

So which one is it? Do I have to leave? Or do I have the right to not apologize? I've never heard a liberal say 'I'm right, and anyone who doesn't agree with me has to leave'. It's just not in their mindset. Cons preach love, but practice hate.

And another thing. The F16? That was designed by SCIENTISTS and ENGINEERS. Educated folk. Folk that don't say 'nucular', unless they're making fun of people. And at least half of it was payed for by us liberals. So when I hear that roar, half of it (or more, since us liberals tend to be better educated, have better jobs, and pay more taxes) is MY roar. And now Bush is cutting high education budgets (and Arnie is too), so what is it we're going to be proud of in the future? Our excellent BBQ?

"I'll even help you pack your bags if you want, if you wanna leave."

Sigh.

For the record, I ain't going anywhere, so deal with it.

The rest of the lyrics for this hateful little song are available here. They even have an MP3 for you if you want it.

Watergate, anyone?

Infiltration of files seen as extensive

I think this is just another symptom of the current GOP 'anything it takes' attitude. They're abusing democracy everywhere, and circumventing it when they can. Think Texas. Think California. Think 'if you're not for us, your against us'. Think 'if you don't love this country, you're free to leave (actual country song)'.

Bully tactics. Scare tactics. Strong-arming.

The central tenet of Facism is that anything against the party is against the nation, and is wrong thinking. We have a facist party in full control now.

Going further, I'd say Orwell's dystopia has come to pass, in every important way. When I learned the term 'doublespeak' I understood it was a Bad Thing. The Bushies seemed to have thought "Cool! So, like lets call it the 'Clear Skies Act'. OOOOH, what about 'Healthy Forests Initiative!? And hey, it says it right there, don't it: WAR is PEACE! Yeeeeehaaaaaw".

When I was a kid I had a dog which took his time eating. He'd sniff around, take small bites, sniff some more... Then we got another dog. The new guy would wolf his food down, and start on the older dog's food once he was done. Needless to say, the poor old dog had to learn how to eat as fast as the younger one. It was a race to the bottom.

And that's what we have here. The Dems are (unfortunately) going to have to learn to wolf down that food.

Detailed State of the Union Analysis

Here are a couple of more detailed SOTU breakdowns:

The Independents True SOTU - to the point.

Estimated Prophet's Anaylisis - he goes deep on a few of Bush's more blatant lies. Hard to read, but thats what bush is counting on. Thinking is hard, it hurting my brain...

Al Franken's Commentary - funny, but insightful, and easier on brains in general :)

Mars Conspiracy

Ooooh, misteeeereeeeous. Then again, I don't really trust the government much (I guess bushy's lack of credibility is spreading around), so this'd be something interesting to track down.

Maybe Phil (the badastronomy guy) could look into this.

UPDATE: It's already been discussed here and here. Turns out these are near-infrared images, so colors are meaningless. Doesn't explain the added blurriness (overzealous compression might, though) nor the golfball (overzealous golfers might, though).

Lies of the Union

My expectations were low when I tuned in to the State of the Union last night. Listening to the purported President last night, I despaired. Every other sentence was a lie. Everything he said that wasn't a lie was a non-statement ("America is a proud blah blah blah..."). But I knew, in my heart, that a large percentage of Americans were just gonna eat this shit up. I could here them hooting and hollerin', yeehawing every time the C student said 'nucular'.

I especially loved it when he said "No one can now doubt the word of America." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHHHAAAA. Ha. Gimme a break! What planet is he from? (don't answer that). We lied to the world about WMD. We lied to the UN about WMD. We lied to ourselves about WMD. We have zero legitimacy.

We lied, and I say we, cuz he's OUR president, we put him there, so he's our responsibility -
Don't like it? Vote him out.

If I had a couple of hours, I'd go line by line tear the speech to shreds. I'm sure someone out there will. In the meantime, David Corn wrote up a good start.

Your Political Soul

I've always been leary of systems that ask you a bunch of questions then claim they can show you your true self. I'm just as dubious about this one, but I'm posting it cuz I like how I scored (I'm more anarchic and socially liberal than the Dalai Lama and Gandhi - Yeah! :).

Take the quiz yourself before you look at my Political Compass Score

Cynic? Moi?

So maybe I'm a lttle bit cynical. Just a tad. No more than a smidgen.

How very unsuprising

CBS Cowers Before the Mighty Karl Rove, Bans MoveOn Ads

Bunch of cowards. If CBS is going to boycott the beliefs of 42% of the American population (you know, the ones which hate what bushette is doing to our country), well then, I'm going to have to boycott them. Which is too bad, because 60 Minutes (I and II) were just about the only non-PBS news shows with any guts left to them.

Way to censor, guys.

BTW, I wonder if we're going to see any political ads at all on CBS, given that they're saying that they won't show any issue ads, and that with the new campaign finance laws, issue ads are where most of the money is going to wind up.

Keep an eye open, y'all, and be sure and cry foul if they do.

Bushy's Hipocrisy

This flash video eloquently points out, in the Good Doctor's own words, how inappropriate it is for uncurious george to visit MLK's tomb.

Hypocrite.

I gots me some DIRT!

Hoohaa! I just closed on my own little plot o' dirt in Puerto Rico.

This is merely the beginning of the Moralesian Empire! Bwahahaha!

Now, I just have to build a whole new house, from 4000 miles away. Childs play, for Emperor Morales, Ruler of Dirt!

The (roughly) quarter acre of dirt is about 200 yards from this beach:

The houses on the beach are vacation rentals, going for about $3000/w. I figure if I put in a nice house, I can get some fraction of that :)

Hey Ma! I'm on Google!

Amazingly, if you do a search for "bluenav review" on Google, the first entry is my hastily written, crappy review! Woohoo!

/me dances dasgooglerankdance!

Dancing the dance...

With comments as blatant as these, there should be uproar. Maybe there is.

With few exceptions, just about everyone I talk to, both the liberal and the conservative, want the bush out of the white house. Perhaps I keep a wierd set of acquaintances, because this flies in the face of a recent KTVU poll which had bushy's CA approval numbers higher than his disapproval numbers.

I figure a) people are sheep, and b) the dems are really blowing it.

GOP are true media masters

OK. I have to give credit where credit is due. The GOP is just amazing when it comes to controlling the media. I am officially in awe.

Take the O'neill thing. I tuned in to CNN and MSNBC last night, expecting to see the Bushies getting lambasted (ever the optimist, I), and what do I see? Hour after hour of "O'neil is now under investigation". Masterful. Sublime.

Instead of digging into O'neill's damning revelations, they're talking about whether some paper he was flashing around on 60 minutes was marked 'secret' or not. This is hardly news. It's about as newsworthy as M. Jackson's latest circus stunts.

The administration is leading this country, and the world, towards evil times. It was caught red-handed, its lies exposed... And the media dutifully went after the whistleblower.

Earth is the Next 'Apollo Mission'

Lost in Space

"Bush may think it's good politics to invoke the image of John Kennedy, challenging the nation to send a man to the moon. But these are times that call for a different kind of Apollo Project--on earth, not in space. We desperately need to harness the best scientific R&D in a crash effort to achieve energy independence from fossil fuels and to address the devastating impact of global warming. "

Hear hear.

It isn't winning or losing, it's how you play the game

Listening to Richard Perle on NPR last night (brave, foolish man) go on and on about how we have to 'win' the war on terror, because we can't afford to 'lose', got me thinking:

What exactly does 'losing' mean? Does it mean our opponents 'won'? 'Won' what?

Consider this: after 9-11, we lost our innocence, innumerable civil liberties, international credibility and respect, and further hundreds of American lives (not to mention all of the innocents we've murdered along the way). So, the bad guys won, right? We, in the form of our misguided executive, have amplified to astounding proportions the damage wrought by those 4 errant planes. And for what? The path we've chosen can only lead to ever-increasing death and destruction. The 'peace' bush seeks is the peace of death.

So, what if we let the other guys win, I mean really win. What if we did everything they asked us? Get our military out of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Cut off support for Israel, or at least bring it in line with the international support we afford the rest of the international community. Rein back exxonmobiletexacoenron, get them out of other country's affairs.

So, we 'lose'. So what? Much pain might ensue, to be sure, if we didn't withdraw carefully. The world's energy markets, it's lifeblood, would destabilize. The middle east would destabilize.

Nevertheless, this is one option open to us. Instead of following a path that can only end in Pax Americana, withdraw, gently, steadily and with clarity.

Instead of goofing around with moonshots (really, I'm all for space exploration but the Moon? Geez) invest in fusion research. In the meantime, we bite the bullet, invest in fission plants (ick, I know, but they'll do until we get fusion up and running).

If America wants to lead the world, let it be by example, not force.

Parody?

The Club for Growth - Limited Government and Lower Taxes

Watch the video (it's a link on the bottom), then let me know if you think they're serious. I'll be drinking my latte while browsing the NYT op-eds (I'd do it from my Volvo, but we traded it in for a bimmer). And for the record, I like sushi too.

Carlos spots his next toy :)

I've been waiting for a WMV9-HD standalone player for a while now. Never mind there is only one WMV9 HD title so far (the Artisan release of Terminator 2, which I've already played on my PC straight from my computer - it rocks).

Nudge nudge, wink wink

Excellent: t r u t h o u t - Marc Ash | That Pesky Bush-Hitler Thing

Downloafing

Some pretty funny Tech puns.

What I'm doing right now:

"downloafing -- Surfing the net when you should be working."

You can have my tivo remote when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers

As if there weren't enough evil in the world, now they want to regulate Tivo to force you to watch commercials. Maybe they'll include chains (so you can't pee), toothpicks (to prop open your eyelids) and deactivate your remote (so you can't flip channels).

A warning to media moguls - if you can't figure out how to make money without pissing all over my civil liberties, then by all rights you have no justification. Go away. Evaporate.

Thanks to Tivo, my kids are already advertising-intolerant. I've made sure they recognize commercials for what they are, and I've taught them (and will continue to teach them) the critical skills required to catch every lie the idiot-box tries to foist on them.

If the ability to skip commercials is taken away, then we'll stop watching TV. It's that easy. We already watch very little, so the next step is a small one.