Bush Supports Amnesty for Insurgents

AMERICAblog has more here and here. You've got to be shitting me. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: these Bushies have the biggest fucking brass balls on record. They can put out a message like 'support the troops' as if they invented the very concept, and really own it, and then, when it suits their political whim, turn around and support an Iraqi amnesty plan that would set free people who have attacked and murdered our troops. And still over a third of the electorate is so mind-bogglingly stupid, ignorant, and/or sociopathic that they continue to support this Assclown-in-Chief and his crony fuckwit crooked asskissers.

Last Throes (Again). For 'Real' This Time!

Wow -- the DoD propaganda is as bold as ever! Wonder how long it'll take for these documents to be authenticated. Perhaps this is the first and last time we'll ever hear about them.

Update: 6/18 - compare and contrast. 'Last throes' my ass.

President Bush: Hero for a Day

I don't normally address G Dub by his stolen title, but today I think he's earned it. Today he will be turning the Hawaiian Islands into a national monument, protected from all forms of commercial exploitation forever. This is huge news in the environmental community, and breathtaking not only in its scope but in its "Holy shit, BUSH did this?!" factor.

Apparently Bush watched a PBS documentary on the island archipelago created by Jaques Couteau's son, Pepe (no, it's Jean-Michael) and was profoundly impacted. This instantaneous conversion seems to be par for the course for the Pres, but usually it's a conversion to the Principles of Evil and Occassionally Jesus and Sobriety. Given this news I'm sure there's a horde of environmental documentarians swarming to capitol as I type, ready to show Bush dozens of other examples of heartbreaking environmental devastation.

So today, I set cynicism aside. I'm not going to look for the black lining to this cloud, suspecting that this is secretly a plan to convert Hawaii's remaining monk seal and spiny lobster population into Li'l Lisa's Fish Slurry. Today, I salute a man with all five fingers and say, "Thank you."

Dumb-Ass Pisses Away a Quarter Mil

If you went to Home Depot and bought a bathroom vanity, and discovered $250,000+ inside it when you got it home, would you call the cops? Well this dumb-ass did. In this case, it wasn't technically cash -- it was 40lb of marijuana. But still -- if it was good shit, he could've made at least 200k, assuming kind bud in Mass sells for about the same as it does here in MN.

I would totally call the cops if I found a quarter million worth of guns or something, but jesus christ, man! Pot?! Who gets hurt if you keep the shit and unload it a little bit at a time? Nobody, that's who! Then again, with our backwards-ass, medieval drug laws in this country, the poor bastard could've sat in prison for a good long time just for sitting on it.

Legalize it.

(brought to you by NORML)

Snow to Bartlett: You just shit your pants, didn'tcha?

© Associated Press

As the pResident's plane flies into Iraq, Tony Snow and Dan Bartlett hold hands and pray to Christ. Judging by the expressions on their faces, either Barlett just crapped himself, they're both scared shitless, or both. Not that I blame them for being terrified, but I'm sure as soon as they'd finished kissing the asphalt back stateside, they continued to repeat the administration li(n)e that everything's coming up roses over there.

Just a piece of funny

From a spam I received today:

This is from a contest on Long Island. The only requirement was to use the two words Lewinsky (The Intern) and Kaczynski (the Unabomber) in a limerick.

Here are the three winners:


Third Place:

There once was a gal named Lewinsky
Who played on a flute like Stravinsky?
'Twas "Hail to the Chief"
On this flute made of beef
That stole the front page from Kaczynski.

Second place:

Said Clinton to young Ms. Lewinsky
We don't want to leave clues like Kaczynski,
Since you made such a mess,
Use the hem of your dress
And wipe that stuff off of your chinsky.


And the winning entry:

Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
What Kaczynski must surely have known:
That an intern is better
Than a bomb in a letter
When deciding how best to be blown.

Urban Sustainability Receives Kick to Groin

Apparently it did happen: the South Central Garden has been cleared.

The article is brief and to the point, and ignores the fact that over 6 million dollars were raised to purchase the land from the original owner (who then demanded twice as much). Not that it makes a difference, the net effect is that our nation's largest urban garden will be bulldozed and turned into a warehouse while the poor who used it as a food source are shit out of luck.

I suppose I could write about sustainability becoming a household word in coming decades as our topsoil erodes into the Gulf and our oil becomes increasingly expensive and drought afflicts our drained watersheds and populations boom and our agricultural hertitage receeds into a foggy history and the exurban movement blankets our farmland with prefab McMansions and asphalt. Or I could rant about how fucking shitty and ironic it is that people rail against the poor for being lazy and undeserving of help, but when they take abandoned land that no one wants and turn it into a lush green Eden they're ungrateful parasites that need to be removed with batons and firehoses. But I won't, because I'm tired and tired of seeing the small acts of generosity and creativity people still seem capable of tossed aside like garbage.

Thanks a lot, Ralph fucking Horowitz.

Fatherland ... er, I mean, Homeland (In)Security

This story would make you laugh if it weren't so fucking irritating. The author of this op-ed piece in the LA Times got stopped by Homeland Security at JFK. He'd just returned from the middle east, having spent time in Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Turkey. Spent time deep in Hezbollah territory, visited madrasas, etc. But that's not why the DHS stopped him. Turns out he missed a court date in NYC regarding a fight he got into with a parking attendant.

In other words, the Dept of Homeland Security has no fucking clue about the shit they should know, yet have way too much information about shit that's none of their business, in this case issues that belong in the exclusive jurisdiction of the NYPD.

He sums it all up pretty well at the end:

Homeland Security, the $40-billion-a-year agency set up to combat terrorism after 9/11, has been given universal jurisdiction and can hold anyone on Earth for crimes unrelated to national security — even me for a court date I missed while I was in Iraq helping America deter terror — without asking what I had been doing in Pakistan among Islamic extremists the agency is designated to stop. Instead, some of its actions are erasing the lines of jurisdiction between local police and the federal state, scarily bringing the words "police" and "state" closer together. As long as we allow Homeland Security to act like a Keystone Stasi, terrorism will continue to win in destroying our freedom.

If the DHS knows about your local misdemeanors, just imagine what the NSA's got on you.

...and Now for Something Completely Different

This Japanese guy named Masaru Emoto has done a bunch of experiments with water. In some of experiments, he froze some distilled water, and photographed it under a dark field microscope.

Then he printed out some words and taped the words onto bottles of distilled water, froze the bottles overnight, and photographed them similarly the following day.

Here are some of his results:

Untreated Distilled Water

Love and Appreciation

Thank You

You Make Me Sick . I Will Kill You

I'm not sure what to think about all this. It does make me think about the fact that our bodies are 70+% water.

My natural skepticism makes me think that if you hunted around with a microscope, you could find all sorts of different images in the same water. At the same time, however, I'd really like to believe that this shit is for real, and a good reminder that we get what we give, that positive energy yields positive results, and that maybe, just maybe, with the right kind of training and practice, I can give George Bush brain cancer with my mind.

Bush Admin. = Fascist Regime, exhibit 4,792

A rule designed by the Environmental Protection Agency to keep groundwater clean near oil drilling sites and other construction zones was loosened after White House officials rejected it amid complaints by energy companies that it was too restrictive and after a well-connected Texas oil executive appealed to White House senior advisor Karl Rove.
-- LA Times, June 13, 2006

Let's review the 14 points of fascism. Take a look at number 9.

I was going to incorporate the Mussolini quote "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power," but that turns out to be an Internet hoax. Not that he wasn't correct in many ways; he simply didn't actually say it.