Select-o-Matic

Forever in your debt.

2011-05-29T10:17:00.002-04:00

My apologies.

2011-01-31T15:43:00.003-05:00

I have, as can be witnessed by the total lack of posts, for better or worse, taken quite the break from blogging. This was partially by choice and partially circumstantial. We'll not get into the circumstantial bits of detritus; it's far less entertaining.

The "choice" or intentional break was simply to sit back and watch and to also take a break. "A break from what?", you ask, partly interested. A break from punditry, a break from the daily onslaught of mind numbing tripe that is jettisoned at us from all points of the compass.

There's something to be said about being one person and attempting to gather the documentation to put forth some semblance of intelligent information. Nevermind the lack of a dedicated readership. But, as I was discussing mere days ago, I don't do it for the readership. I do it because I have to get it out. This is my Howard Beale window. This is my megaphone of silence. Opinions and ideas cast out into the void, hoping for intelligent interception. You're more than welcome to come and visit me, sans images (temporarily), or you can jump over to yet another blog that I created and neglected and recently resurrected: Machine-Gun Shatner.

It's sort of a weigh station for other issues at hand, and where I can do other things than try to convince people to stand up, take accountability, and retake control of THEIR government, i.e. eject all lobbyists/private interests from DC... But I digress.

If you are new, welcome. If I'm lighting up your Buzz bin, welcome back.

Wrench

2010-08-15T21:44:00.001-04:00

Happy Airborne Day, brothers!!!

Memorial Day 2010

2010-05-31T10:32:00.003-04:00

Thank you. You are eternally missed and revered.

What happens when you're not paying attention?

2010-04-22T13:18:00.001-04:00

Hub-Maker Phil Wood Passes Away

BAXTER, IA (BRAIN)—Phil Wood, the man responsible for sealed hubs and bottom brackets, died on March 14 at his daughter's home in Roseville, California. He was 83.

He started the Phil Wood Company in 1971 as primarily a hub maker, though he offered other components. He sold the business to Peter Enright and a group of investors in 1991.

“I feel so lucky to have talked with him about a week before he passed away, and he mentioned again that he was so lucky to sell the business when he did,” said Enright, Phil Wood Company’s president.

“We talked off and on over the years, usually to catch up on news about his friends in the bike business. But he was quite happy to return to the farm after selling the business to help raise his granddaughter,” Enright added.

Wood was a problem-solver working at Food Machinery Corporation. Had he not been bothered chasing bearings for a hub he was rebuilding for his daughter, sealed-bearing hubs might have taken years to hit the bike market, Enright noted.

“He was complaining to Spence Wolf about why no one offered a sealed bearing hub and Wolf told him to make his own hub. A little while later he asked Spence how many he should make. It took Spence a bit to remember what he was talking about. He said make 50 hubs and the business was launched,” Enright said.

Wood’s family is deciding on funeral arrangements at this time.

“I’m glad he and I were able to have that last chat. He was a little bothered he wasn’t as ambulatory as he once was but he was content to move on,” Enright said.

A memorial service for Phil and his wife, Vada, who passed away December 18, 2009, will be held on April 17, at the Calgary Baptist Church in Los Gatos, California, at 11:00 a.m. Phil is survived by his six children.

—Matt Wiebe

This blog has moved

2010-04-04T12:15:00.001-04:00

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Why is it that 8 years later, people are saying what I was saying then?

2010-01-04T22:24:00.002-05:00

The DHS was conceived and built as a blackhole for county, city, state, and federal government funds to be squandered under the auspices of "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here." I've called bullshit for years and I will continue to do so.

DHS is a gaping, pus-filled, cankerous sore on the ass of the United States' economy and persona. Yet the majority still buy into the fear-mongering.

Enlightenment is just a click away.

Five Years, SDMF

2009-12-08T01:33:00.002-05:00

Five Long Years

Onward towards forever. Oh, and FUCK YOU FOR ETERNITY, NATHAN GALE!! Also not to ever be forgotten: Nathan Bray of Columbus Erin Halk of northwest Columbus Jeff "Mayhem" Thompson of Texas

Never Shall I Fail My Comrades...

2009-11-11T01:50:00.002-05:00

Can someone please explain this?

2009-11-07T02:43:00.002-05:00

As we arrived at a local Asian restaurant and were seated at our tables. The above is what I saw. Full-size images provided for close inspection.

2009-11-04T00:00:00.001-05:00

I'm wondering if this will post to both blogs now that this phone is linked to both of them. Hmmmmmm...

Windows Live Writer test for Blogger and my blog

2009-10-25T15:53:00.000-04:00

I’ve already managed to link my Motorola Q9H to this blog, now I’m attempting to post to my blog without being logged into a browser.

Lets hope it all goes well. There are many bells and whistles that I’ll be attempting to use/implement/not destroy my blog. Wish me luck, or whatever.

Power Shift 09

2009-10-19T22:43:00.006-04:00

While I argue/fight mostly against the side of government that is set on abolishing civil liberties and making the Constitution obsolete, it cannot be forgotten that there are some very important folks out there who are on the front lines for the environment and the adoption of alternate energy sources.

Not that I'm not for those things, it's just that I choose to put my "energies" to work in other areas. One is no more important than the other, and neither is something to be dismissed. There are those whom I consider my friends that are working endlessly on making Powershift09 the most important event on people's minds this month. They do all of this while studying, taking exams, and working their asses off in their respective areas of study. They, more often than not, sacrifice any type of "free time" to make sure that there is no slack to take up. You have to admire and respect them for their efforts. And make no mistake, they are making a difference.

This is my small effort to get the word out and help my friends in every way that I can.

My hat is off to you guys.

RIP

2009-10-03T10:45:00.003-04:00

10.3.93

Lest we forget, our brothers and our benefactors...

2009-06-06T10:38:00.003-04:00

June 6, 1944

No exit strategy. Victory at all costs.

No Mission Too Difficult
No Sacrifice Too Great
Duty First
Danger Forward

Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-24T20:59:00.002-04:00

Thank you.

Welcome Back...

2009-03-23T16:28:00.003-04:00

If you are like soooooo many MS Office 2007 users who absolutely fell on your face with the new interface, have no fear, Old Menus are here. That's right. There's a free plug-in called UBitMenu that restores your old, long-lost friend, the MS Office interface that you loved so dearly.

The kicker is that it doesn't replace the ribbon styled menus of the new Office, it works in conjunction with them. Will this keep you from advancing and not learn the new menus? Who knows. And, more than likely, you don't care either.

You may now return to your previously, less-pissed-off, self.

...Good Day.

2009-03-02T06:40:00.002-05:00

'Rest of the Story' Host Became Most Familiar Voice in American Radio

By LINDA ZECCHINO and DEAN SCHABNER
March 1, 2009—

The "most listened to man" in broadcasting passed away Saturday. After more than seven decades on the air, venerable radioman Paul Harvey's folksy speech and plain talk are no more.

Harvey died at the age of 90 at a hospital near his winter home in Phoenix.

His death came nine months after that of his wife, Lynne Cooper Harvey, whom he often called "Angel" on air, and who was also his business partner and the first producer ever inducted in the the Radio Hall of Fame. She died in May 2008 at age 92.

"My father and mother created from thin air what one day became radio and television news," Paul Harvey Jr. said Saturday. "So, in the past year, an industry has lost its godparents. And, today millions have lost a friend."

Harvey's career in radio spanned more than 70 years, and his shows "News & Comment" and "Rest of the Story" made him a familiar voice in Americans' homes across the country.

From his humble beginnings as a teenager helping out cleaning up at a local radio station, Harvey went on to have his broadcasts carried by 1,350 commercial radio stations, as well as 400 stations of the Armed Forces Radio Service, and he was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1990.

"Paul Harvey was one of the most gifted and beloved broadcasters in our nation's history," said ABC Radio Networks President Jim Robinson in a statement released Saturday. "As he delivered the news each day with his own unique style and commentary, his voice became a trusted friend in American households.

"Countless millions of listeners were both informed and entertained by his 'News & Comment' and 'Rest of the Story' features," Robinson said. "Even after the passing of his loving wife Angel in May 2008, Paul would not slip quietly into retirement as he continued to take the microphone and reach out to his audience. We will miss our dear friend tremendously and are grateful for the many years we were so fortunate to have known him. Our thoughts and prayers are now with his son Paul Jr. and the rest of the Harvey family."

Former President George W. Bush said he and former first lady Laura Bush were saddened to hear of Harvey's death. "Paul was a friendly and familiar voice in the lives of millions of Americans," Bush said in a statement released late today. "His commentary entertained, enlightened, and informed. Laura and I are pleased to have known this fine man, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family."

Bush presented Harvey with the nation's highest civilian honor, the medal of freedom, in November 2005.

Harvey entertained and informed generations of Americans by paying attention to the people and places most others overlooked.

Born in Oklahoma in 1918, he was broadcasting from Tulsa by age 14. His love and respect for simple American values permeated his broadcasts, and he celebrated that life.

"Emporia, Kan., is home to this state's national champion honeymooners: Margaret and Joe Pearson," he said in one broadcast. "Theirs has endured 72 years."

Harvey started working at a local radio station at the suggestion of one of his high school teachers. He started out just helping clean up, but soon was on the air himself, filling in with reading the news or commercials.

After a stint at radio station KFBI in Abilene, Kansas, he moved to KXOK in St. Louis.

By 1940, Paul Harvey's easy wit and laconic speech made him Chicago's most popular newscaster and gave him his own show.

He also settled down with Cooper, whom he had met the year before. Harvey said he invited her to dinner, proposed to her after a few minutes of conversation and from that moment on called her Angel.

Cooper was credited with coming up with many of the programming innovations that became Harvey's trademarks.

Among her ideas were the concepts of including news features within hard-news broadcasts and the humorous "kicker," which became a Paul Harvey trademark. She also developed and edited her husband's best-known feature, "The Rest of the Story."

In 1951, "Paul Harvey News" went national with broadcasts stretching coast-to-coast and reaching millions of listeners each night. Though he broadcast six days a week for more than half a century, it never seemed like hard work.

His gift for drawing in listeners and making them see what he did was an art form.

Harvey explained it simply: "As a boy, I fell in love with words and ran away from home and joined the radio. And it really was something."

By the early 1960's, Harvey was trying his hand at television. He conducted interviews from the floor of the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Angel produced the 1968 television series "Paul Harvey Comments" that ran without interruption for 20 years in national syndication.

But television was not quite suited to Harvey's brand of storytelling. In a medium meant to convey images, his power was in conjuring them out of thin air. He, better than anyone, understood this and said as much in a speech he gave in 2003.

"You trust me to paint pictures on the mirror of your mind," he said, "and I will let you feel such agony and ecstasy ... as you would never be able to feel by looking at it."

Over the years, Harvey won nearly every honor or accolade imaginable. He was named Salesman of the Year, Commentator of the Year, Person of the Year, Father of the Year, and American of the Year. He was elected to the National Association of Broadcasters Radio Hall of Fame and Oklahoma Hall of Fame and appeared on the Gallup poll list of America's most admired men.

In addition he has received 11 Freedom Foundation Awards as well as the Horatio Alger Award. In 2005, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' most prestigious civilian award, by President George W. Bush.

Paul Harvey's particular style relied on exaggerated pronunciation, pregnant pauses, delayed revelations and a staccato delivery. His quirky openings and catchphrases were often parodied -- "Hello, Americans, this is Paul Harvey! Stand by & for News!" -- but his rapt audience ate it up.

This devoted following made him an advertiser's dream: He could as effortlessly weave a pitch into his program as he could capture images in words that lingered in his listeners' minds.

His programs, "News and Comment" and "The Rest of the Story", were carried on the ABC Radio Network and could be heard Monday through Saturday for more than five decades. "The Rest of the Story," a look behind the stories of events and people, was developed and produced by Harvey's only son, Paul, Jr.

At the age of 82, when most broadcasters have long been off the air, Paul Harvey signed a 10-year contract with ABC Radio in 2000. An executive with another network, who had hoped to sign Harvey to a deal, said "Call me when the contract's over so I can try again."

Traug Keller, then president of ABC Radio Networks, explained the rationale behind the 10-year deal.

"Paul Harvey is, without question, one of the most influential Americans of our time," Keller said. "In fact, political adviser and communications specialist Frank Mankiewicz noted that Paul Harvey's name appears most often in lists of the 10 most influential opinion-shapers of each decade since the 1930s."

Harvey's voice was carried on more than 1,200 radio stations, 400 Armed Forces Network stations that broadcast around the world and 300 newspapers.

The program also aired twice daily on the Internet, bringing the wit and wisdom of Paul Harvey to a whole new audience.

All told, with more than 25 million listeners tuned in each week, Paul Harvey was the largest one-man network in the world.

A Chicagoan throughout his life, Paul Harvey resisted offers to move the broadcasts to New York.

"That would never have been a good choice; I would have lost touch with so much of the country had I done that," he told The Chicago Tribune in 2002. "From here I think I can see the world with a wider lens."

Fellow broadcaster Bob Sirott summed up Harvey's longevity to The Tribune succinctly and simply: "He stands for the America that sits west of the Hudson."

Good day, Paul Harvey. Good day.

I miss you, my brothers.

2009-02-26T21:43:00.002-05:00

I'll run harder tomorrow, because you cannot.

One of the greatest, ever.

2009-01-15T07:38:00.003-05:00

I post obits here regularly. Sometimes I miss one or two; sometimes I pass over some. Today, I feel as though I have lost a family member. His influence upon me at an early age cannot be ignored. Even my love for open-wheeled cars was born from his imagination.

I am not a number, I am a free man!

Rest Easy, Number 1

Patrick McGoohan dies at 80; TV's 'Secret Agent' and 'Prisoner'
The actor often played villains on TV and in movies. But he gained his greatest fame as the TV spy John Drake. He also won two Emmys for 'Columbo.'
By Dennis McLellan

January 15, 2009

Patrick McGoohan, a two-time Emmy Award-winning actor who starred as a British spy in the 1960s TV series "Secret Agent" and gained cult status later in the decade as the star of the enigmatic series "The Prisoner," has died. He was 80.

McGoohan, whose career involved stage, screen and TV, died Tuesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica after a short illness, said Cleve Landsberg, McGoohan's son-in-law. The family did not provide further details.

It was the height of James Bond mania in 1965 when McGoohan showed up on American TV screens in "Secret Agent," a British-produced series in which he played John Drake, a special security agent working as a spy for the British government.

The hourlong series, which ran on CBS until 1966, was an expanded version of “Danger Man,” a short-lived, half-hour series on CBS in 1961 in which McGoohan played the same character.

But it was McGoohan's next British-produced series, “The Prisoner,” on CBS in 1968 and 1969, that became a cult classic that spawned fan clubs, conventions and college study.

Once described in The Times as an "espionage tale as crafted by Kafka," "The Prisoner" starred McGoohan as a presumed British agent who, after resigning his top-security job, is abducted in London and taken to a mysterious prison resort called the Village.

Known only as No. 6, he is interrogated by a succession of officials who are known as No. 2. But he refuses all methods of breaking him down to reveal his past or why he resigned, and he repeatedly makes failed attempts to escape.

The seemingly idyllic village contains "seeing eyes" that monitor activities and signs such as "A Still Tongue Makes a Peaceful Life."

McGoohan co-created and executive-produced the series, which ran for only 17 episodes, as well as wrote and directed several episodes.

In a 1967 interview with The Times, he described the series as "Brave New World" stuff.

"Nobody has a name, everyone wears a number," he said. "It's a reflection of the pressure on all of us today to be numbered, to give up our individualism. This is a contemporary subject, not science fiction. I hope these things will be recognized by the audience. It's not meant to be subtle. It's meant to say: This little village is our world."

Of the enduring cult status of the series, McGoohan once said: "Mel [Gibson] will always be Mad Max, and me, I will always be a number."

McGoohan, who reportedly turned down an offer to be the big screen's original James Bond, appeared in films such as "The Three Lives of Thomasina," "Mary, Queen of Scots," "Silver Streak," "Escape From Alcatraz," "Scanners," "Ice Station Zebra" and Gibson's "Braveheart," in which he played England's sadistic King Edward I.

In his review of "Braveheart" in The Times, critic Peter Rainer wrote: "Patrick McGoohan is in possession of perhaps the most villainous enunciation in the history of acting."

As a guest star on Peter Falk's TV detective series "Columbo," McGoohan won Emmys in 1975 and 1990.

Falk once described McGoohan, who also occasionally worked as a director and writer on the "Columbo" mysteries, as being "mesmerizing" as an actor.

"There are many very, very talented people in this business, but there are only a handful of genuinely original people," Falk told the Hollywood Reporter in 2004. "I think Patrick McGoohan belongs in that small select group of truly original people."

He was born to Irish parents in the Astoria section of Queens, N.Y., on March 19, 1928. Some months later, his family returned to Ireland, where he grew up on a farm before moving to Sheffield, England, when he was 7.

In the late '40s, after working a number of jobs, he became a stage manager at Sheffield Repertory Theatre, where he soon launched his acting career.

In 1951, he married actress Joan Drummond, with whom he had three daughters, Catherine, Anne and Frances.

In 1959, he received a London Drama Critics Award for his performance in a London stage production of Ibsen's "Brand."

On television, McGoohan also starred in the short-lived 1977 medical drama "Rafferty."

Sharif Ali, McGoohan's agent, said McGoohan had been writing and had two acting offers on the table before he died.

"He really didn't talk much about his illness," said Ali. "We were too busy talking about his future; he was excited to get back to work. He had so much more to give."

In addition to his wife and daughters, McGoohan is survived by five grandchildren and a great-grandson.

Patrick McGoohan, an actor who created and starred in the cult classic TV show "The Prisoner," died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a short illness. He was 80.

His son-in-law, film producer Cleve Landsberg, announced the news Wednesday.

McGoohan starred in the 1960s CBS series "Secret Agent," and won two Emmys for his guest appearances on the detective drama "Columbo." Most recently he appeared as King Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson Academy Award-winning film "Braveheart."

But he was most famous as the character known only as Number Six in "The Prisoner," a 1968 British series about a spy who resigns from the intelligence service, only to be abducted and held captive in a mysterious haven known as The Village. There his overseers strip him of his identity in their attempts to glean information, while thwarting his attempts to escape.

Prior to "The Prisoner," McGoohan starred in "Secret Agent" (also known as "Danger Man"), which debuted in 1964, and whose memorable theme song seemed to speak of the hazards facing the characters in both series ("They've given you a number, and taken away your name").

McGoohan's agent, Sharif Ali, said Wednesday that the actor was still active in Hollywood, with two offers for wide-release films on the table when he died. "The man was just cool," Ali said. "It was an honor to have him here and work with him. ... He was one of those actors, a real actor. He didn't have a lie."

Born in New York on March 19, 1928, McGoohan was raised in England and Ireland, where his family moved shortly after his birth. He had a busy stage career before moving to television, and won a London Drama Critics Award for playing the title role in the Henrik Ibsen play "Brand."

He married stage actress Joan Drummond in 1951. The oldest of their three daughters, Catherine, is also an actress.

After "Secret Agent"'s success," McGoohan pitched to producers the surreal and cerebral "The Prisoner" to give himself a challenge. McGoohan also wrote and directed several episodes of the series.

Although only 17 episodes were made, it became a cult favorite, and its cultural impact continues, as evident by his guest appearance playing Number Six in a 2000 episode of "The Simpsons."

The show is being remade as a series for AMC to premiere later this year.

"His creation of 'The Prisoner' made an indelible mark on the sci-fi, fantasy and political thriller genres, creating one of the most iconic characters of all time," AMC said in a statement Wednesday. "AMC hopes to honor his legacy in our re-imagining of 'The Prisoner.'"

Later came smaller roles in film and television. McGoohan won Emmys for guest spots on "Columbo" 16 years apart, in 1974 and 1990.

His film credits include "Ice Station Zebra," the 1979 Clint Eastwood film "Escape from Alcatraz," the John Grisham courtroom drama "A Time To Kill," "Silver Streak," and "Scanners." He also starred in the 1963 Disney TV film "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh," playing an 18th century English country priest who thwarts the king's minions as a disguised avenger.

His last major role was in "Braveheart," in what The Associated Press called a "standout" performance as the brutal king who battles Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace, played by Gibson.

In his review of the film for the Los Angeles Times critic Peter Rainer said "McGoohan is in possession of perhaps the most villainous enunciation in the history of acting."

McGoohan is survived by his wife and three daughters.

Four Years, SDMF

2008-12-08T08:24:00.004-05:00

Oh, and FUCK YOU, NATHAN GALE!!

Also not to ever be forgotten:

Nathan Bray of Columbus
Erin Halk of northwest Columbus
Jeff "Mayhem" Thompson of Texas

Damn... It's been a year already.

2008-11-19T11:58:00.004-05:00

RIP

Six degrees of "The Dude".

2008-09-30T08:43:00.003-04:00

Ok, so here we are, knee deep in the bullshit of presidential debates. I have made one observation that has now made every debate an even more entertaining laughing stock.

You've seen The Big Lebowski, right? Right. When John McCain answers any question, does he not remind you of Walter Sobchack (John Goodman)? I mean, regardless of the question asked, there's bitter little John with his marionette-like movements always returning to a war story that we've already heard in an effort to connect everything under the sun to his time as POW, never mind how off topic he is.

You think I'm kidding? Just keep an eye out for "Walter" the next time that little John makes a statement. All he's lacking is a .45 ACP, and we all know that under that leatherette skin of his, he's a gun grabbing dick just like the rest of 'em.

Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from Paul Newman

2008-09-27T12:41:00.002-04:00

Paul Newman, 83, the actor and sex symbol who surged to stardom by playing loners as well as criminal and moral outlaws -- anything to downplay his astonishing looks -- died of cancer Friday at his farmhouse near Westport, Conn.

Brooding and sinewy, with luminous blue eyes and a husky voice, Newman resembled a preppy Greek God in his earliest screen roles. He quickly rebelled against conventional casting that tried to turn him into a pretty-boy alternative to Marlon Brando and James Dean. He became known as an introspective and nonconformist performer -- a perfect anti-hero idol for the socially rebellious 1960s and 1970s.

In many of Newman's best films -- "The Hustler," "Hud," "Harper," "Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Sting," "Slap Shot," "The Verdict," "Nobody's Fool" and "The Color of Money" (for which he won the Oscar) -- he played amoral rats, genial louts, self-destructive idealists, drunkards and has-beens. Some of his characters redeem themselves by being defeated or killed, and others just continue bumming along.

Newman hated to see his characters triumph on charm alone. No one, he said, would pay money to see such a beautiful man win the woman and save the day. Off-screen, he mocked his sex-symbol status and said that his personality was closest to the vulgar, second-rate hockey coach he played in "Slap Shot" (1977). His approach likely saved his career as he matured into a disciplined performer, one of the most enduring and polished of screen stars.

At a peak of his fame, he gambled on directing small-budget films that often showcased his second wife, actress Joanne Woodward. Their film "Rachel, Rachel" (1968), with Woodward as an aging, virginal schoolteacher, was an unexpected hit.

They had a famously durable marriage. Newman spoke about their relationship by noting how they decided to act in the comedy "A New Kind of Love" (1963).

He told Time magazine: "Joanne read it and said, 'Hey this could be fun to do together. Read it.' And I read it and said, 'Joanne, it's just a bunch of one-liners.'

"And she said, 'You [expletive], I've been carting your children around, taking care of them, taking care of you and your house.' And I said, 'That is what I said. It's a terrific script. I can't think of anything else I'd rather do.' This is what is known as a reciprocal trade agreement."

Despite his powerhouse reputation, Newman had an uneven performance record as an actor. He starred in several critical and commercial duds, including his debut as a Greek slave in "The Silver Chalice" (1954), a role he called "the worst motion picture filmed during the fifties."

Nor was Newman at his best as a Mexican bandit in "The Outrage" (1964), a French anarchist opposite Sophia Loren in "Lady L" (1965) or a sci-fi wanderer in Robert Altman's "Quintet" (1979). He acted in a few disaster movies -- one set in a flaming skyscraper, the other about a volcano -- for the money. He also turned down promising parts if their shooting schedule interfered with his auto racing.

Persistently overlooked by the Academy Awards despite 10 total nominations, Newman won relatively late in his career: for best actor in "The Color of Money" (1986) as aging pool shark Fast Eddie Felson who is equal parts mentor to and manipulator of the character played by Tom Cruise. Newman had reprised the role of Fast Eddie Felson from "The Hustler" (1961).

Newman also received the 1986 honorary Oscar in part for "his personal integrity and dedication to his craft" and the 1994 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his philanthropic work.

Paul Leonard Newman was born Jan. 26, 1925, in Cleveland and raised in the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights. His father owned a sporting-goods store.

German Jewish on his father's side, Hungarian Catholic on his mother's, Newman once said he considered himself Jewish "because it is more challenging."

During World War II, he served as a Navy radioman in the Pacific. He had been turned down as a pilot because he was partially color blind.

After the war, he studied economics at Kenyon College in Ohio but preferred to say he graduated "magna cum lager" because of his barroom antics. One bar escapade landed him on the front page of a Cleveland newspaper, mortifying his parents.

Thrown off the football team after another bar fight, he turned to acting to find a way to channel his rambunctiousness and performed in summer stock and repertory work after his college graduation in 1949. He also attended Yale University's drama school before his looks helped him win several roles on television and his breakthrough part on Broadway.

Director Joshua Logan cast him as a wealthy playboy in William Inge's "Picnic," the drama about sexual tensions that erupt in a Midwestern town when a charismatic stranger arrives. Logan told Newman he could not possibly play the stranger because he did not "carry any sexual threat at all."

The part went to Ralph Meeker, a loss that motivated Newman to begin exercising regularly. Newman spent considerable time with the play's female lead, Joanne Woodward. He divorced his first wife, actress Jacqueline Witte, in 1957, leaving her with custody of their three children. He and Woodward married in 1958, and they did 15 movies and television projects together. She survives him, along with their three daughters and two daughters from his first marriage.

While in "Picnic," Newman joined the Actors Studio, where he learned "the Method," a style of acting that requires actors to plumb their own lives for motivation. He studied with Elia Kazan and Martin Ritt, both of whom would later direct him on stage or film.

Film studios kept calling Newman, and he resisted many of the initial offers because he considered their contracts stifling. "And then somebody, after a couple of Budweisers, said, 'You know, they knock and they knock, and at some point they stop knocking,' and that stuck in my head," he later told New York magazine. "I thought, 'When will they stop?' And the last knock was 'The Silver Chalice. ' "

Wearing a toga -- a "cocktail dress," as the actor called it -- and spouting ludicrous dialogue, he received humiliating reviews. When a Los Angeles station aired the movie years later, Newman took out a large newspaper ad apologizing for the film.

Back on Broadway in 1955, he earned enthusiastic reviews in "The Desperate Hours," playing a ruthless criminal who holds a family captive. That same year, he replaced James Dean, who died in a road accident, as a washed-out prize fighter in a television version of Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Battler."

Seven years later, Newman sought out the same, but much-diminished role in the film "Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man" (1962).

"They screamed at me out there," he once said, referring to Hollywood advisers. "I was cheapening myself by playing a bit part, they said. I was a star and couldn't play a bit. . . . I wanted to do it again for myself. I wanted to sit down and look at the kinescope of the TV show, and then look at the movie and see what I've learned about acting over the years."

Meanwhile, Newman had built up a critical reputation of imbuing stock characters with an intelligent restraint that often was not associated with the more flagrant of the Method acting followers.

As examples, reviewers pointed to his work as boxer Rocky Graziano in "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956) and an Army officer accused of enemy collaboration in "The Rack" (1956). He brought a vulnerability to roles that emphasized his physique, notably in "The Long, Hot Summer," based on stories by William Faulkner, and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (both 1958), from the Tennessee Williams play.

Starring opposite Elizabeth Taylor in "Cat," Newman played hard-drinking Brick, who refuses his wife's sexual advances because he is mourning the death of his gay friend, Skipper. The homosexual theme is played down in the film version, but Newman was well-aware of the subtext and tried to enliven the set with jokes about Brick's repression.

In one scene, he secretly pushed his wife's nightgown to his face out of deep longing for her. During rehearsal, he once said, "I suddenly tore off my pajama top and started to climb into my wife's nightgown, crying, 'Skipper! Skipper!' There were 20 people on that set, and do you know, not one of them laughed.

"To them, this was the Method in action and they stood in respectful silence. So, having bombed out on that mission, I mumbled something about, well, no, I guessed I wouldn't do it that way, after all."

Tired of mediocre studio assignments, Mr. Newman wanted to confront studio chief Jack Warner with an ultimatum. Newman's agent, the powerful Lew R. Wasserman, persuaded Newman of a better idea. Wasserman went to Warner and offered him $500,000 to buy out Newman's contract, saying the actor would "never amount to much."

It worked. Newman was free and paid his debt to Warner within two years. He returned to the stage, in Tennessee Williams's "Sweet Bird of Youth," directed by Kazan, and won terrific reviews as an ambitious gigolo.

He acted in the 1962 film version of the play as well as "The Hustler," the first in a series of roles that explored what he called the "corruptibility level" of people. He said that theme spoke to him as a socially conscious actor.

As Fast Eddie Felson, he played a soulless and self-centered rebel who competes against the legendary Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). For the role, Newman took lessons from the pool superstar Willie Mosconi but apparently had not learned well enough.

On the set, Gleason hustled him in a real life pool game. "I beat him three straight games in pool for a buck each," Newman said. "And then we played for two hundred dollars, and he beat me easy."

"Hud" (1963), based on Larry McMurtry's novel about a man with a "barbed-wire soul," as well as "Harper" (1966) and "Cool Hand Luke" (1967) made Newman the prime interpreter of selfish rebels.

"I tried to give Hud all the superficial external traces, including the right swing of the body," Newman once said. "I took out as many wrinkles as possible. I indicated that he boozed very well, was great with the broads, had a lot of guts, was extraordinarily competent at his job, but had a single tragic flaw: He didn't give a goddamn what happened to anyone else."Newman added that some reviewers faulted him for having "a face that doesn't look lived in." But Newman said the character's smoothness was exactly what made Hud dangerous.

His insight into character motivation was one of his finest traits. To play the self-destructive detective in "Harper," he said he "simply got drunk" as he read the script.

By the late 1960s, he began to feel like he was duplicating himself as an actor. He tried producing films in a short-lived partnership with Barbra Streisand and Sidney Poitier, but directing proved more his forte.

For his debut, he chose "Rachel, Rachel" and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for directing.

Reviewers praised his clean, lucid style and technical skill, and he directed Woodward again in movie or TV versions of several Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. She was a middle-aged widow raising two daughters in "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" (1972) and appeared in "The Shadow Box" (1980), a television drama about hospice patients.

From the start of his career, Newman limited his social time in Hollywood, telling an interviewer he did not want to fall into the trap of material success that came so easily in the film world. He made an effort to appear grungy, wearing jeans and running shoes as well as a beer-can opener as a necklace.

He shunned Hollywood for an 18th-century farmhouse in Westport, with an apple orchard and pool. Newman hated signing autographs or being asked to display his best-known physical feature, his blue eyes.

"I try not to be hurtful," he said. "I say something like, 'If I take off my glasses, my pants will fall down.' Or, if they're insistent, I say, 'Sure, Ill take off my dark glasses if you'll let me look at your gums.' Fair's fair."

Asked once about his looks, he said his children called him "Old Skinny Legs."

Newman's biographer, Eric Lax, wrote that the actor liked to confound the Hollywood elite by driving a Volkswagen in which he had installed a Porsche engine.

His cars became a joke with friends such as Robert Redford, who once gave Newman a Porsche as a present. The car, however, was a wreck -- dented from an accident and missing its engine. Redford paid a dump truck driver to deposit the car in Newman's driveway with a note attached: "Happy birthday."

Newman had the car compressed, then placed in a wooden box at the Redford estate with a nasty letter. He conceded that Redford won the gag by never acknowledging the box.Newman had discovered auto racing while acting in the race-track film "Winning" (1969). "I cannot be competitive about acting, because there's no way to compete as an actor. What are you competing against?" he once said. "In auto racing, you either win or lose. You go across the finish line and come in first or second or ninth -- or not at all."

In 1976, he won his first national amateur championship, and the next year began racing with professionals. In 1979, he and two co-drivers finished second in the Le Mans 24-hour road race. He continued participating in pro races in the 1980s and 1990s, reaching speeds of 220 mph.

Newman also made forays into politics, often providing sex appeal to liberal campaigns. He volunteered extensively in 1968 for Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy (D-Minn.) and protested the Vietnam War at the U.S. Embassy in London.

Newman occasionally was ridiculed as out of his element. He was roundly criticized in 1978 as unqualified when President Jimmy Carter asked him to attend a U.N. General Assembly session on disarmament.

By the early 1980s, Newman made a decision to refocus his acting career after years of bloated disaster films and other undistinguished projects. Among the best films were the police story "Fort Apache, the Bronx" (1981) and the courtroom drama "The Verdict" (1982), in both of which he played deeply flawed heavy drinkers.

He was a stuffy old WASP in "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge" (1990); an aged ne'er-do-well in "Nobody's Fool" (1994); and a gangster chieftain in "Road to Perdition" (2002), a film that brought him his final Oscar nomination.

Articles have suggested that Newman's film choices were influenced by his troubled relationship with his father as well as Newman's estrangement from his son, Scott, a budding actor who died in 1978 of an overdose of alcohol and Valium.

In honor of Scott, a son from his first marriage, Newman organized in 1988 a camp in Connecticut for children with cancer and life-threatening illnesses. His most famous philanthropic venture began in the early 1980s when Newman and author A.E. Hotchner began a food business, Newman's Own, with products including salad dressing, spaghetti sauce, popcorn and cookies.

With profits from Newman's Own, he gave more than $250 million to charities and social welfare organizations. He joked that his salad dressings and pasta sauces earned more than his films.

Newman continued to act in recent years, notably as the stage manager in a 2002 Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," but he was certain acting was not his whole life.

He said that over the toilet bowl in his office bathroom he hung a letter from a fan -- of his tomato sauce. The letter ends: "My girlfriend mentioned that you were a movie star and I would be interested to know what you have made. If you act as well as you cook, your movies should be worth watching."

Castrating Congress, one unlawful billion at a time.

2008-09-22T19:49:00.002-04:00

I'm going to continue my recent practice of keeping it short.

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." So the White House wants its Secretary to have total power over the funds, however much that ends up being. In other words, the White House wants to take the power of the purse away from Congress in this matter and center it in the executive branch.

Lockstep towards tyranny.

Somebody do me a favor...

2008-09-15T22:51:00.001-04:00

Check John McCain's wrist and see if he's still wearing SPC Matthew Stanley's KIA bracelet. I'm just curious.

Batshit crazy!!

2008-09-05T16:08:00.003-04:00

Yeah, that about sums it up.

In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, Palin says, "God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that."

And... Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war because, "Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

Ever heard Megadeth's "Holy Wars"? No? Give it a spin.

Bandit this here's the Snowman, you got your ears on?

2008-09-03T10:43:00.001-04:00

Jerry Reed, 71, a Grammy Award-winning country guitarist, singer and songwriter who played a mischievous, good old boy sidekick to Burt Reynolds in "Smokey and the Bandit" and other movies, died Sept. 1 at his home in the Nashville suburb of Brentwood. He had emphysema.

Mr. Reed's trademark Georgia baritone drawl and relaxed manner in film and television roles brought his ingratiating presence to a wide audience, notably as trucker Cledus "Snowman" Snow in "Smokey and the Bandit" (1977) and its two sequels.

But it was in country music where Mr. Reed thrived as a major, innovative artist from the late 1960s to early '80s. Besides " East Bound and Down," the theme song for "Smokey and the Bandit," his hit songs included the propulsive " Guitar Man," the Cajun-inspired funky novelty tune " Amos Moses" and the tender " A Thing Called Love." Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Porter Wagoner were among those to cover his best-known pieces.

Mr. Reed was a dynamic virtuoso who had distinguished himself as a session guitarist supporting Presley, Waylon Jennings and others before emerging as a major solo talent. He was most remembered for using an intricate guitar-picking style known as the "claw" because it used the entire right hand where earlier guitar giants such as Chet Atkins and Merle Travis favored a two or three-fingered approach.

Besides being the title of a song he wrote, the claw was a development that music historian Rich Kienzle called essential to the "wild, untamed and dauntingly complex" country music that followed Atkins and Travis.

Jerry Reed Hubbard, the son of cotton mill workers, was born in Atlanta on March 20, 1937. After his parents divorced, he spent his early childhood in orphanages and foster homes.

He showed his early flair for music by using a hairbrush as a rhythm guitar to accompany the "Grand Ole Opry" radio program. His mother, who had remarried, bought her son a cheap guitar and he showed immediate skill, albeit with unorthodox fingering methods.

Mr. Reed quit high school to perform in local honky-tonks and festivals and impressed an Atlanta radio show host, who took over the young man's management. He won engagements opening for singers Ernest Tubb and Faron Young.

He also wrote novelty tunes such as "If the Good Lord's Willing" that made little impact when he recorded them in the late 1950s.

However, rocker Gene Vincent covered Mr. Reed's song "Crazy Legs" in 1958, and Brenda Lee's version of Mr. Reed's "That's All You Gotta Do" appeared on the flip side of her 1960 hit "I'm Sorry." Wagoner also had a No.1 country hit with Mr. Reed's "Misery Loves Company" in 1962.

After brief Army service, in which he played in a country band, Mr. Reed settled in Nashville and was a session and tour guitarist for Wagoner and Bobby Bare, among others. His own career as a solo artist had withered until Atkins, who headed the Nashville unit at RCA Records, urged Mr. Reed to leave his record label, Columbia, for RCA.

Atkins's idea was not to refashion Mr. Reed to fit public taste but to let him pursue his own sound and identity. The plan worked, with Mr. Reed successfully reaching the charts with "Guitar Man" (1967).

The next year, Presley recorded "Guitar Man" and Mr. Reed's "U.S. Male" with the songwriter doing the backup guitar work.

Over the next several years, Mr. Reed experienced what was arguably his most professionally successful, with Grammy Awards for best instrumental performance both as a solo artist ("When You're Hot, You're Hot," 1971) and with Atkins ("Me & Jerry," 1970). His other hits included "Amos Moses" (1970) and " Lord, Mr. Ford" (1973), a comic look at the plight of car owners during the era's gasoline crisis.

Tall, blond and charismatic, Mr. Reed became a comic fixture on country television programs including the "Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour" and tried to parlay that fame into an acting career. His admittedly modest abilities limited him mostly to broad comedy, and his final role was as a sadistic football coach in "The Waterboy" (1998) with Adam Sandler.

Among Mr. Reed's last hit records, in 1983, was Tim DuBois's comic novelty " She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)." Although he faded from country music's front tier, he won another Grammy for best country instrumental performance for "Sneakin' Around" (1991) with Atkins.

In the late 1990s, he formed the Old Dogs with Jennings, Bare and Mel Tillis, and the group specialized in singing comic laments about aging. "I'm not one of those flat-belly singers anymore," Mr. Reed told the Associated Press at the time. "The record industry is one of those industries that will discourage you and turn you loose. They sell records to those screaming little girls."

Survivors include his wife of 49 years, Priscilla Mitchell Hubbard of Brentwood; two daughters, Charlotte "Lottie" Stewart of Franklin, Tenn., and Seidina Hinesley of Smyrna, Tenn.; and two grandchildren.

RIP Issac Hayes...

2008-08-10T21:49:00.001-04:00

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Isaac Hayes, the baldheaded, baritone-voiced soul crooner who laid the groundwork for disco and whose "Theme From Shaft" won both Academy and Grammy awards, died Sunday afternoon after he collapsed near a treadmill, authorities said. He was 65.

Hayes was pronounced dead at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis an hour after he was found by a family member, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office said. The cause of death was not immediately known.

With his muscular build, shiny head and sunglasses, Hayes cut a striking figure at a time when most of his contemporaries were sporting Afros. His music, which came to be known as urban-contemporary, paved the way for disco as well as romantic crooners like Barry White.

And in his spoken-word introductions and interludes, Hayes was essentially rapping before there was rap. His career hit another high in 1997 when he became the voice of Chef, the sensible school cook and devoted ladies man on the animated TV show "South Park."

"Isaac Hayes embodies everything that's soul music," Collin Stanback, an A&R executive at Stax, told The Associated Press on Sunday. "When you think of soul music you think of Isaac Hayes _ the expression ... the sound and the creativity that goes along with it."

Hayes was about to begin work on a new album for Stax, the soul record label he helped build to legendary status. And he had recently finished work on a movie called "Soul Men" in which he played himself, starring Samuel Jackson and Bernie Mac, who died on Saturday.
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Steve Shular, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said authorities received a 911 call after Hayes' wife and young son and his wife's cousin returned home from the grocery store and found him collapsed in a downstairs bedroom. A sheriff's deputy administered CPR until paramedics arrived.

"The treadmill was running but he was unresponsive lying on the floor," Shular said.

The album "Hot Buttered Soul" made Hayes a star in 1969. His shaven head, gold chains and sunglasses gave him a compelling visual image.

"Hot Buttered Soul" was groundbreaking in several ways: He sang in a "cool" style unlike the usual histrionics of big-time soul singers. He prefaced the song with "raps," and the numbers ran longer than three minutes with lush arrangements.

"Jocks would play it at night," Hayes recalled in a 1999 Associated Press interview. "They could go to the bathroom, they could get a sandwich, or whatever."

Next came "Theme From Shaft," a No. 1 hit in 1971 from the film "Shaft" starring Richard Roundtree.

"That was like the shot heard round the world," Hayes said in the 1999 interview.

At the Oscar ceremony in 1972, Hayes performed the song wearing an eye-popping amount of gold and received a standing ovation. TV Guide later chose it as No. 18 in its list of television's 25 most memorable moments. He won an Academy Award for the song and was nominated for another one for the score. The song and score also won him two Grammys.

"The rappers have gone in and created a lot of hit music based upon my influence," he said. "And they'll tell you if you ask."

Hayes was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.

"I knew nothing about the business, or trends and things like that," he said. "I think it was a matter of timing. I didn't know what was unfolding."

A self-taught musician, he was hired in 1964 by Stax Records of Memphis as a backup pianist, working as a session musician for Otis Redding and others. He also played saxophone.

He began writing songs, establishing a songwriting partnership with David Porter, and in the 1960s they wrote such hits for Sam and Dave as "Hold On, I'm Coming" and "Soul Man."

All this led to his recording contract.

In 1972, he won another Grammy for his album "Black Moses" and earned a nickname he reluctantly embraced. Hayes composed film scores for "Tough Guys" and "Truck Turner" besides "Shaft." He also did the song "Two Cool Guys" on the "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" movie soundtrack in 1996.Additionally, he was the voice of Nickelodeon's "Nick at Nite" and had radio shows in New York City (1996 to 2002) and then in Memphis.

He was in several movies, including "It Could Happen to You" with Nicolas Cage, "Ninth Street" with Martin Sheen, "Reindeer Games" starring Ben Affleck and the blaxploitation parody "I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka."

In the 1999 interview, Hayes described the South Park cook as "a person that speaks his mind; he's sensitive enough to care for children; he's wise enough to not be put into the 'wack' category like everybody else in town _ and he l-o-o-o-o-ves the ladies."

But Hayes angrily quit the show in 2006 after an episode mocked his Scientology religion.

"There is a place in this world for satire," he said. "but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs of others begins."

Co-creator creators Matt Stone responded that Hayes "has no problem _ and he's cashed plenty of checks _ with our show making fun of Christians." A subsequent episode of the show seemingly killed off the Chef character.

Hayes was born in 1942 in a tin shack in Covington, Tenn., about 40 miles north of Memphis. He was raised by his maternal grandparents after his mother died and his father took off when he was 1 1/2. The family moved to Memphis when he was 6.

Hayes wanted to be a doctor, but got redirected when he won a talent contest in ninth grade by singing Nat King Cole's "Looking Back."

He held down various low-paying jobs, including shining shoes on the legendary Beale Street in Memphis. He also played gigs in rural Southern juke joints where at times he had to hit the floor because someone began shooting.

Happy National Airborne Day!

2008-08-09T12:50:00.002-04:00

To all my brothers out there.

And not to be out done. Here's to the Colonel.

Show off.

Do any of you realize...

2008-08-04T21:33:00.003-04:00

One of the greatest injustices, travesties, land grabs, scams, and many other events that we as a country should be rioting over, is and has been going on in New Orleans since Katrina?

I didn't think so.

Follow this list of blogs and get educated. You'll want to have a bucket close by so that you can throw-up into it. Yeah, it will make you that sick to see how much you don't give a flying fuck about your fellow man, your country, or the fact that we live in such a, "Hey, it's not happening to me, so I'm gonna sit here on my ass and watch a little TV." society, that we are the most pathetic nation in the world.

Dangerblond
Your Right Hand Thief
We Could Be Famous
The G-Bitch Spot
Bigezbear
Humid City
Squandered Heritage

Or, don't read and keep looking at yourself in the mirror every day.

I'm not sure that flip-flop is the right word.

2008-08-04T13:54:00.003-04:00

So, a little bit further down the page is a piece that I did on Obama. This will be an addendum to that.

It seems that "in a reversal", Obama has decided that it is not only a good idea to tap the national oil reserves, but that offshore drilling is a good thing. Whew, damn, if he has many more "reversals" he's going to have to switch parties.

Just to add... For those of you who don't know; Peak oil is a scam. The "emergency" and "dependency" oil issue is not only to further split a failed two-party system, but at its core it is a lie that is solely designed to increase prices and revenue for oil companies. Do your own research.

Obama want's to tap reserves.

Obama supports offshore drilling.

Remember that "economic stimulus" rebate check that you cashed?

2008-07-28T18:33:00.003-04:00

The federal budget deficit will surge to $482 billion next fiscal year.

Thanks for doing your part in guaranteeing the most complete economic depression since the nineteen-thirties... Dipshits.

Karl Rove says, "Hey Congress!!! FUCK YOU!!!" And gets away with it.

2008-07-10T23:38:00.003-04:00

Let's see you try this:

By BEN EVANS
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 10, 2008; 4:40 PM

WASHINGTON -- Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena and refused to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he influenced the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, chairman of a House subcommittee, ruled with backing from fellow Democrats on the panel that Rove was breaking the law by refusing to cooperate _ perhaps the first step toward holding him in contempt of Congress.

The White House has cited executive privilege as a reason he and others who serve or served in the administration should not testify, arguing that internal administration communications are confidential and that Congress cannot compel officials to testify. Rove says he is bound to follow the White House's guidance, although he has offered to answer questions specifically on the Siegelman case _ but only with no transcript taken and not under oath.
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Lawmakers subpoenaed Rove in May in an effort to force him to talk about whether he played a role in prosecutors' decisions to pursue cases against Democrats, such as former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, or in firing federal prosecutors considered disloyal to the Bush administration.

Rove had been scheduled to appear at the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Thursday morning. A placard with his name sat in front of an empty chair at the witness table, with a handful of protesters behind it calling for Rove to be arrested.

A decision on whether to pursue contempt charges now goes to the full Judiciary Committee and ultimately to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

House Republicans called Thursday's proceedings a political stunt and said if Democrats truly wanted information they would take Rove up on an offer he made to discuss the matter informally.

The House already has voted to hold two of President Bush's confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with its inquiry into whether the administration fired nine federal prosecutors in 2006 for political reasons.

The case, involving White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, is in federal court and may not be resolved before Bush's term ends in January.

Democrats have rejected the offer from Rove to talk with them informally because the testimony would not be sworn and, they say, could create a confusing record.

Rove has insisted publicly that he never tried to influence Justice Department decisions and was not even aware of the Siegelman prosecution until it landed in the news.

Siegelman _ an unusually successful Democrat in a heavily Republican state _ was charged with accepting and concealing a contribution to his campaign to start a state education lottery, in exchange for appointing a hospital executive to a regulatory board.

He was sentenced last year to more than seven years in prison but was released in March when a federal appeals court ruled Siegelman had raised "substantial questions of fact and law" in his appeal.

Siegelman and others have alleged the prosecution was pushed by GOP operatives _ including Rove, a longtime Texas strategist who was heavily involved in Alabama politics before working at the White House. A former Republican campaign volunteer from Alabama told congressional attorneys last year that she overheard conversations suggesting that Rove pressed Justice officials in Washington to prosecute Siegelman.

The career prosecutors who handled Siegelman's case have insisted that Rove had nothing to do with it, emphasizing that the former governor was convicted by a jury.

Thanks to the Washington Post for this article.

Yeah, we used to have a powerful Congress, but that was before they were all castrated.

Sooooo... How's that Obama feeling working for you right now?

2008-07-10T23:04:00.003-04:00

Is that kicking and screaming that I hear? First off, let me preface by saying that Hillary sucked, Obama sucks, and McCain sucks. We have been sold out. It's that simple. Having said that... Let the shit hit the fan.

Yesterday, in what can only be called a stab into the heart of the Constitution of the Republic of the United States of America, John McCain and Barack Obama along with others, granted immunity to telecoms who have violated your 4th Amendment rights under the auspices of domestic spying. But wait, there's more... It seems that Obama, after having secured the Democratic nomination, has decided to drift a little closer to the right.

What's most fascinating about his efforts to appeal to the American center is the extent to which Obama, as a constitutional law professor and Harvard Law Review president, has repeatedly chosen the Bill of Rights as his vehicle for doing so. Yesterday, Barack Obama shed his skin; the skin that enticed so many people into believing that he did, in fact, support the United States Constitution, and in particular, the fourth amendment to same.

What's Obama doing? He's trying to cozy up to the conservatives in order to gain votes. You know those "independent" votes that are soooooo very needed? That's bullshit. "Independent Voters" is double-speak for "I need to turn more conservative heads and secure their votes if I hope to defeat McCain in the fall." The bottom line is that there is political reality, and then there is principle. Barack Obama has billed himself as a new breed of politician who will stand up on principle. Yesterday illustrated that he’s reneged on that promise. He’s been revealed as an old school politico, who sticks his finger in the wind to see which way it’s blowing.

I'm just pointing out facts here. I never was for him. He just didn't have what it took for me. What was it that he didn't have? I follow the little things, like, ohhhh, let's see, HIS VOTING RECORD. All you have to do is see that when the big issues came up for his Senate vote, he didn't bother to show up. But I've been down that road already with those of you who are/were supporters.

So now we're faced with an individual who may become President. I really don't care who's President. What I care about is their ability to appoint Chief Justices to life terms in the Supreme Court. And on that note, Obama scares the hell out of me. He's all for the lowering of the walls between church and state.

But, let's get to the meat and potatoes of why I want him and McCain on a spit.

“The history of the Intelligence Community is replete with instances of abuse of civil liberties,” observed Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper last year in the course of his confirmation as Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

That is not news, of course, though it is useful to have it acknowledged by the Pentagon’s senior intelligence policy official. Also useful is Gen. Clapper’s proposed remedy:

“The requisite elements of a program to prevent such abuse are: (1) clearly articulated and widely publicized policies; (2) training, both basic and refresher; and (3) a mechanism to verify compliance independently,” he wrote (pdf) in reply to a question from Sen. Carl Levin.

By these standards, the pending amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was being considered by the Senate today leaves much to be desired.

Far from being “clearly articulated,” the legislation leaves even experts uncertain as to what its provisions mean. And by granting retroactive immunity to telephone companies for unspecified illegal acts that they may have committed, the legislation compromises the most important mechanism for independent verification of legal compliance, namely the judicial process.

“Does the new FISA bill authorize wholesale interception of all communications to and from the US,” asked James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology, “or does it only authorize the interception of the communications of particular individuals?”

Incredibly, the answer is not reliably known. “Both national security and civil liberties interests weigh in favor of clarity on this question,” Mr. Dempsey wrote last month.

Meanwhile, the congressional grant of immunity to telephone companies that are being sued for suspected acts of illegal surveillance under the President’s warrantless surveillance program “is a naked intrusion into ongoing litigation,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) on the Senate floor yesterday.

“I am aware of no precedent for the Congress of the United States stepping into ongoing litigation, choosing a winner and a loser, allowing no alternative remedy,” he said.

“I believe it will be determined by a court that ultimately this section of the legislation is unconstitutional, in violation of the separation of powers, because we may not, as a Congress, take away the access of the people of this country to constitutional determinations heard by the courts of this country.”

“If I were a litigant, I would challenge the constitutionality of the immunity provisions of this statute, and I would expect a good chance of winning,” Sen. Whitehouse said.

So if you paid attention, you knew that Barack Obama loved the death penalty. You knew that he was pro-gun. You knew that he loved him some faith-based programs (and, if it's any comfort, the Family Research Council and other conservative and evangelical groups are pissed that Obama won't let churches discriminate in hiring for the programs). Most of this is no-brainer shit in the political realm. Did you really want Obama to have to defend no death penalty for child rapists? Pick your battles, motherfuckers, and pick 'em well.

Like this one: Barack Obama's reversal of his position on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was a craven, cowardly bullshit move that ought to haunt him with the left (and libertarian right) for the rest of the campaign. By voting for the bill yesterday (including voting for cloture), Obama made a mistake that is the political equivalent of Hillary Clinton's Iraq war vote. (They are not morally equivalent, since the dead would probably rather be alive and spied on.) And while there's no telling how Clinton would have voted had she been the nominee, just as there's no way to know how Obama would have voted on the war had he been in the Senate in 2002, the New York Senator was unencumbered and able to take the moral high ground and voted against the bill.

It wouldn't be so bad if Obama hadn't made an absolutely definitive statement about opposing any bill that contained immunity from civil lawsuits for telecommunications companies. But the bill did contain it. And he still voted for it. So he joined with other enabling Democrats to be like beaten dogs to their President-owner, hoping that Bush would praise them and pet them, even briefly. A proud, proud moment.

So now we know: Barack Obama believes that corporations that agree to break the law at the President's urging are not complicit, which means that if the President breaks the law, the law should be changed so that, retroactively, the President can't be prosecuted for the crime. He believes that anyone can be subject to surveillance at the whim of the President at any time with the only oversight being over the techniques of the surveillance ("No, guys, c'mon, you can't just put cameras all over the country. Oh, wait, sure, go ahead, you crazy terror fighters"). He believes that, even if the FISA court actually has the 'nads to say no, the government can continue its surveillance while it appeals the ruling. And on and on.

And to top this tasty morsel off... Obama is all for coming down on Iran. Yeah, that's war talk, for those of you who are listening.

Brief and rare pride in my Supreme Court

2008-06-26T10:44:00.003-04:00

While there are other hurdles... Today we get to chalk one up for the Constitution of the Republic of the United States of America.

By MARK SHERMAN
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 26, 2008; 10:30 AM

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for four colleagues, said the Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home."

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.

The capital's gun law was among the nation's strictest.

Dick Anthony Heller, 66, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection in the same Capitol Hill neighborhood as the court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Heller's favor and struck down Washington's handgun ban, saying the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own guns and that a total prohibition on handguns is not compatible with that right.

The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.

Scalia said nothing in Thursday's ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."

The law adopted by Washington's city council in 1976 bars residents from owning handguns unless they had one before the law took effect. Shotguns and rifles may be kept in homes, if they are registered, kept unloaded and either disassembled or equipped with trigger locks.

Opponents of the law have said it prevents residents from defending themselves. The Washington government says no one would be prosecuted for a gun law violation in cases of self-defense.

George Carlin, dead at 71.

2008-06-23T06:36:00.004-04:00

I don't know where to start with this one... Back in the 80's I was exposed to one of the coolest, funniest, most brutally honest individuals ever to walk upright. It was just common sense humor that no one had ever quite put a finger on. Within days of seeing his first HBO special, "Carlin at Carnegie", George Carlin was such a fixture in my life that he had become almost like family. I'm not really sure how many times I have seen him live, but it seemed that everywhere I went, there was George, crass as ever.

Rest in peace, George, I'll miss you.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — George Carlin, the dean of counterculture comedians whose biting insights on life and language were immortalized in his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine, died of heart failure Sunday. He was 71.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

Carlin's jokes constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" — all of which are taboo on broadcast TV and radio to this day. When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "Saturday Night Live" debut in 1975 — noting on his Web site that he was "loaded on cocaine all week long" — and appearing some 130 times on "The Tonight Show."

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 — a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (and sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, "George was fairly conservative when I met him," said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early '60s.

"We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away," Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration if not their close friendship. "It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."

Carlin was born May 12, 1937, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of high school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.

While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.

"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.

From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Forth Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs including a carnival organist and a marketing director for a peanut brittle.

In 1960, he left with Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. He left with $300, but his first break came just months later when the duo appeared on the Tonight Show with Jack Paar.

Carlin said he hoped to would emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade that Carlin grew up in — the 1950s — with a clever but gentle humor reflective of its times.

Only problem was, it didn't work for him, and they broke up by 1962.

"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."

Eventually Carlin lost the buttoned-up look, favoring the beard, ponytail and all-black attire for which he came to be known.

But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit "Cars."

Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

Special-Effects Maestro - Stan Winston dead at 62.

2008-06-17T17:01:00.003-04:00

Damn man, my blog is reading more like an obituary page more than anything else here recently. I met Stan in the mid-90's at a workshop. His work was/is a major influence in my decision to pursue Industrial Design Technology. Stan was awesome. The man and his genius will be terribly missed.

By DERRIK J. LANG – 20 hours ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Stan Winston, the Oscar-winning special-effects maestro responsible for bringing the dinosaurs of "Jurassic Park" and other iconic movie creatures to life, has died. He was 62.

Winston died at his home in Malibu surrounded by family on Sunday evening after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma, according to a representative from Stan Winston Studio.

Working with such directors as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Tim Burton in a career spanning four decades, Winston created some of the most memorable visual effects in cinematic history. He helped bring the dinosaurs from "Jurassic Park," the extraterrestrials from "Aliens, the robots from "Terminator" and even "Edward Scissorhands" to the big screen, and was a pioneer in merging real-world effects with computer imaging.

"The entertainment industry has lost a genius, and I lost one of my best friends with the death Sunday night of Stan Winston," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "Stan's work and four Oscars speak for themselves and will live on forever. What will live forever in my heart is the way that Stan loved everyone and treated each of his friends like they were family."

Winston won visual effects Oscars for 1986's "Aliens," 1992's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and 1993's "Jurassic Park." He also won a makeup Oscar for 1992's "Batman Returns."

Winston was nominated for his work on "Heartbeeps," "Predator," "Edward Scissorhands," "Batman Returns," "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and "A.I."

He last worked with director Jon Favreau on "Iron Man."

"He was experienced and helped guide me while never losing his childlike enthusiasm," Favreau said in a statement. "He was the king of integrating practical effects with CGI, never losing his relevance in an ever changing industry. I am proud to have worked with him and we were looking forward to future collaborations. I knew that he was struggling, but I had no idea that he would be gone so soon. Hollywood has lost a shining star."

At the time of his death, Winston was in the process of transforming his physical makeup and effects studio into the new Winston Effects Group with a team of senior effects supervisors. Winton's most recent projects included "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins," "G.I. Joe," "Shutter Island" and Cameron's "Avatar."

"He ran at full throttle, in both work and play, and was a man of kindness, wisdom and great humor," Cameron said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "He was a kid that never grew up, whose dreams were writ large on the screens of the world. I am proud to have been his friend, and I will miss him very deeply."

As a child growing up in Virginia, Winston enjoyed drawing, puppetry and classic horror films. After graduating from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville in 1968, Winston moved to Southern California to become an actor but instead worked behind the scenes and completed a three-year makeup apprenticeship program at Walt Disney Studios in 1972.

Winston is survived by his wife, Karen; a son, daughter, brother and four grandchildren.

Farewell, Tim Russert.

2008-06-13T17:06:00.002-04:00

Tim Russert dead at 58 of heart attack

Spain has the balls to do what Americans do not. Sad... really.

2008-06-09T16:26:00.006-04:00

Link to the article

We get 4 pages of shit on Hillary's bullshit pseudo-concession speech and merely a blurb on an event on something that could, notice that I said could, inspire American truckers (like my brother), to take action.

Spanish Truckers Begin Fuel Protest

It's a thing of beauty.
Trucks block the traffic on the Spanish border with France in Behobia, northern Spain, Monday, June 9, 2008. Tens of thousands of Spanish truckers began an indefinite strike over soaring fuel costs that could bring the country to a standstill.

Monday, June 9, 2008; 4:05 PM

MADRID, Spain -- Gas stations in Madrid and the northeastern Catalonia region began running out of fuel Monday as an indefinite strike by truckers began to bite.

The protest over soaring fuel costs began at midnight Sunday.

Antonio Onieva, president of Madrid's station owners organization, told reporters that by 5:30 p.m., 15 percent of the capital's outlets had run out of fuel. Manuel Amado, president of Catalonia's owners' federation, said 40 percent of Catalonia's 1,714 stations had sold out.

The stoppage led to lengthy lines at many gasoline stations across the country as drivers rushed to fill up.

Truckers also blocked a number of roads around the country, including some leading into the center of Barcelona and the international border with France.

"We are the ones who move the goods that this country needs to keep working. If we stop because we haven't got the money to buy fuel then the country will stop," Julio Villascusa, president of the transport association Fenadismer, told Cadena SER radio.

Fenadismer representatives and Development Ministry officials met Monday but failed to reach agreement, stretching the strike to a second day.
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Fenadismer said more than 90,000 drivers have been called to take part in the strike.

The strike was not expected to have a major effect on city food markets until later in the week.

There was almost no movement of trucks early Monday at Mercamadrid, the main wholesale food market for the Spanish capital.

Development Ministry transport chief Juan Miguel Sanchez said the government will guarantee market supplies.

Fenadismer representatives and Development Ministry officials met Monday but failed to reach agreement, stretching the strike to a second day.

A strike by fishermen across Spain also protesting fuel costs has entered a second week. News reports said smaller boats that fish closer to the coast had now joined the protest, which began May 30.

The stoppages are part of Europe-wide protests against rising prices.

Spanning the globe... and the agony of defeat.

2008-06-07T15:25:00.002-04:00

In my opinion, Jim McKay was THE voice of sports broadcasting. His voice is as clear in my head now as it was when I first began watching "Wide World of Sports" way back when.

He will be missed.

By DAVID BAUDER
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 7, 2008; 2:12 PM

NEW YORK -- Jim McKay, the venerable and eloquent sportscaster thrust into the role of telling Americans about the tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympics, has died. He was 86.

McKay died Saturday of natural causes at his farm in Monkton, Md., said son Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports. The broadcaster who considered horse racing his favorite sport died only hours before Big Brown attempted to win a Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes.

He was host of ABC's influential "Wide World of Sports" for more than 40 years, starting in 1961. The weekend series introduced viewers to all manner of strange, compelling and far-flung sports events. The show provided an international reach long before exotic backdrops became a staple of sports television.

McKay provided the famous voice-over that accompanied the opening in which viewers were reminded of the show's mission ("spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports") and what lay ahead ("the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat").

McKay _ understated, dignified and with a clear eye for detail _ covered 12 Olympics, but none more memorably than the Summer Games in Munich, Germany. He was the anchor when events turned grim with the news that Palestinian terrorists kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes. It was left to McKay to tell Americans when a commando raid to rescue the athletes ended in tragedy.

"They're all gone," McKay said.

The terse, haunting comment was replayed many times through the years when the events of Munich were chronicled.

"I had to control myself. I was full of emotion," McKay recalled. "But when you are a professional, it is important to communicate what it is like, to capture the moment."

Sports, McKay said, lost its innocence that day.

He won both a news and sports Emmy Award for his coverage of the Munich Olympics in addition to the prestigious George Polk award.

"In the long run, that's the most memorable single moment of my career," said McKay, an Emmy Award winning broadcaster who was also in the studio for the United States' "Miracle on Ice" victory over the Soviet Union. "I don't know what else would match that."

A veteran of the U.S. Navy in World War II, McKay was the first on-air television broadcaster seen in Baltimore. He worked at CBS Sports briefly, but did his most memorable work at ABC Sports when it dominated the business under leader Roone Arledge.

"He had a remarkable career and a remarkable life," McManus said. "Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn't come up to me and say how much they admired my father."

McKay was the first sportscaster to win an Emmy Award. He won 12, the last in 1988. ABC calculated that McKay traveled some 4 1/2 million miles to work events. He covered more than 100 different sports in 40 countries. In 2002, McKay received the International Olympic Committee's highest honor _ the Olympic Order.

"He was a founding father of sports television, one of the most respected commentators in the history of broadcasting and journalism," said George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports. "

Added Bob Iger, president and chief executive of The Walt Disney Company: "He was a regular guy who wrote and spoke like a poet."

McKay's first television broadcast assignment was a horse race at Pimlico in 1947. It was the start of a love affair _ horse racing captivated him like nothing else.

"There are few things in sport as exciting or beautiful as two strong thoroughbreds, neck and neck, charging toward the finish," he once said.

Racecaller Dave Johnson worked with McKay during horse racing telecasts.

"How many Saturday afternoons did we spend with Jim McKay?" he said from Belmont Park. "Maybe more than with family members. Never a cross word out of him, such a decent human being."

Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, worked with McKay for six years at ABC Sports.

"He was truly the most respected and admired sportscaster of his generation and defined how the stories of sports can and should be covered," he said. "While we all know what an absolute titan he was in his chosen field, I will always remember him as an extraordinary human being guided by a strong moral compass."

U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth said McKay set a standard for sports journalism.

"Jim is synonymous with the Olympic Games." he said. "As host of ABC's Olympic coverage, he brought into our homes the triumphs and struggles of athletes from around the world."

The New York Yankees paused to remember McKay before the national anthem Saturday, and fans at a packed Yankee Stadium responded with applause.

McKay left his mark on countless colleagues. Bob Costas called McKay a "singular broadcaster."

"He brought a reporter's eye, a literate touch, and above all a personal humanity to every assignment," Costas said. "He had a combination of qualities seldom seen in the history of the medium, not just sports."

Al Michaels described McKay as the "personification of class and style."

"His enthusiasm permeated every event he covered and thus always made it far more interesting," he said. "I always thought of him as a favorite teacher."

Mike Tirico, covering the NBA finals in Boston for ABC and ESPN, worked four British Opens with McKay. He said McKay held a special place in his household while growing up in Queens in New York.

"Dinner wasn't served on Saturday night until 'Wide World of Sports' was over," Tirico said.

In addition to McManus, McKay's survivors include his wife, Margaret, and his daughter, Mary.

Harvey Korman, dead at 81... Damn.

2008-05-29T20:27:00.001-04:00

The Associated Press
Thursday, May 29, 2008; 8:14 PM

LOS ANGELES -- Harvey Korman, the tall, versatile comedian who won four Emmys for his outrageously funny contributions to "The Carol Burnett Show" and played a conniving politician to hilarious effect in "Blazing Saddles," died Thursday. He was 81.

Korman died at UCLA Medical Center after suffering complications from the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago, his family said. He had undergone several major operations.

"He was a brilliant comedian and a brilliant father," daughter Kate Korman said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "He had a very good sense of humor in real life. "

A natural second banana, Korman gained attention on "The Danny Kaye Show," appearing in skits with the star. He joined the show in its second season in 1964 and continued until it was canceled in 1967. That same year he became a cast member in the first season of "The Carol Burnett Show."

Burnett and Korman developed into the perfect pair with their burlesques of classic movies such as "Gone With the Wind" and soap operas like "As the World Turns" (their version was called "As the Stomach Turns").

Another recurring skit featured them as "Ed and Eunice," a staid married couple who were constantly at odds with the wife's mother (a young Vickie Lawrence in a gray wig). In "Old Folks at Home," they were a combative married couple bedeviled by Lawrence as Burnett's troublesome young sister.

Korman revealed the secret to the long-running show's success in a 2005 interview: "We were an ensemble, and Carol had the most incredible attitude. I've never worked with a star of that magnitude who was willing to give so much away."

Burnett was devastated by Korman's death, said her assistant, Angie Horejsi.

"She loved Harvey very much," Horejsi said.

After 10 successful seasons, Korman left Burnett's show in 1977 for his own series. Dick Van Dyke took his place, but the chemistry was lacking and the Burnett show was canceled two years later. "The Harvey Korman Show" also failed, as did other series starring the actor.

"It takes a certain type of person to be a television star," he said in that 2005 interview. "I didn't have whatever that is. I come across as kind of snobbish and maybe a little too bright. ... Give me something bizarre to play or put me in a dress and I'm fine."

His most memorable film role was as the outlandish Hedley Lamarr (who was endlessly exasperated when people called him Hedy) in Mel Brooks' 1974 Western satire, "Blazing Saddles."

"A world without Harvey Korman _ it's a more serious world," Brooks told the AP on Thursday. "It was very dangerous for me to work with him because if our eyes met we'd crash to floor in comic ecstasy. It was comedy heaven to make Harvey Korman laugh."

He also appeared in the Brooks comedies "High Anxiety," "The History of the World Part I" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It," as well as two "Pink Panther" moves, "Trail of the Pink Panther" in 1982 and "Curse of the Pink Panther" in 1983.

Korman's other films included "Gypsy," "Huckleberry Finn" (as the King), "Herbie Goes Bananas" and "Bud and Lou" (as legendary straightman Bud Abbott to Buddy Hackett's Lou Costello). He also provided the voice of Dictabird in the 1994 live-action feature "The Flintstones."

In television, Korman guest-starred in dozens of series including "The Donna Reed Show," "Dr. Kildare," "Perry Mason," "The Wild Wild West," "The Muppet Show," "The Love Boat," "The Roseanne Show" and "Burke's Law."

In their '70s, he and Tim Conway, one of his Burnett show co-stars, toured the country with their show "Tim Conway and Harvey Korman: Together Again." They did 120 shows a year, sometimes as many as six or eight in a weekend.

Korman had an operation in late January on a non-cancerous brain tumor and pulled through "with flying colors," Kate Korman said. Less than a day after coming home, he was re-admitted because of the ruptured aneurysm and was given a few hours to live. But he survived for another four months.

"He fought until the very end. He didn't want to die. He fought for months and months," said Kate Korman.

Harvey Herschel Korman was born Feb. 15, 1927, in Chicago. He left college for service in the U.S. Navy, resuming his studies afterward at the Goodman School of Drama at the Chicago Art Institute. After four years, he decided to try New York.

"For the next 13 years I tried to get on Broadway, on off-Broadway, under or beside Broadway," he told a reporter in 1971.

He had no luck and had to support himself as a restaurant cashier. Finally, in desperation, he and a friend formed a nightclub comedy act.

"We were fired our first night in a club, between the first and second shows," he recalled.

After returning to Chicago, Korman decided to try Hollywood, reasoning that "at least I'd feel warm and comfortable while I failed."

For three years he sold cars and worked as a doorman at a movie theater. Then he landed the job with Kaye.

In 1960 Korman married Donna Elhart and they had two children, Maria and Christopher. They divorced in 1977. Two more children, Katherine and Laura, were born of his 1982 marriage to Deborah Fritz.

In addition to his daughter Kate, he is survived by his wife and the three other children.

Remember the Declaration of Independence? Apparently not.

2008-05-28T22:35:00.001-04:00

The Bush administration has arrogated powers to itself that the British people even refused to grant King George III at the time of the Revolutionary War, an eminent political scientist says.

“No executive in the history of the Anglo-American world since the Civil War in England in the 17th century has laid claim to such broad power,” said David Adler, a prolific author of articles on the U.S. Constitution. “George Bush has exceeded the claims of Oliver Cromwell who anointed himself Lord Protector of England.”

Adler, a professor of political science at Idaho State University at Pocatello, is the author of “The Constitution and the Termination of Treaties”(Taylor & Francis), among other books, and some 100 scholarly articles in his field. Adler made his comments comparing the powers of President Bush and King George III at a conference on “Presidential Power in America” at the Massachusetts School of Law, Andover, April 26th.

Adler said, Bush has “claimed the authority to suspend the Geneva Convention, to terminate treaties, to seize American citizens from the streets to detain them indefinitely without benefit of legal counseling, without benefit of judicial review. He has ordered a domestic surveillance program which violates the statutory law of the United States as well as the Fourth Amendment.”

Adler said the authors of the U.S. Constitution wrote that the president “shall take care to faithfully execute the laws of the land” because “the king of England possessed a suspending power” to set aside laws with which he disagreed, “the very same kind of power that the Bush Administration has claimed.”

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Adler said, repeatedly referred to the President’s “override” authority, “which effectively meant that the Bush Administration was claiming on behalf of President Bush a power that the English people themselves had rejected by the time of the framing of the Constitution.”

Adler said the Framers sought an “Administrator in Chief” that would execute the will of Congress and the Framers understood that the President, as Commander-in-Chief “was subordinate to Congress.” The very C-in-C concept, the historian said, derived from the British, who conferred it on one of their battlefield commanders in a war on Scotland in 1639 and it “did not carry with it the power over war and peace” or “authority to conduct foreign policy or to formulate foreign policy.”

That the C-in-C was subordinate to the will of Congress was demonstrated in the Revolutionary War when George Washington, granted that title by Congress, “was ordered punctually to respond to instructions and directions by Congress and the dutiful Washington did that,” Adler said.

Adler said that John Yoo, formerly of the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in 2003 that the President as C-in-C could authorize the CIA or other intelligence agencies to resort to torture to extract information from suspects based on his authority. However, Adler said, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1804 in Little vs. Barreme affirmed the President is duty-bound to obey statutory instructions and reaffirmed opinion two years later in United States vs. Smith.

“In these last eight years,” Adler said, “we have seen presidential powers soar beyond the confines of the Constitution. We have understood that his presidency bears no resemblance to the Office created by the Framers… This is the time for us to demand a return to the constitutional presidency. If we don’t, we will have only ourselves to blame as we go marching into the next war as we witness even greater claims of presidential power.”

You know what? You didn't have to accept it. But you did.

2008-05-28T07:04:00.003-04:00

We chose not to contribute to the recession at my house. We didn't accept the bullshit stimulus check that was created out of thin air by the Fed. Didn't you people even stop for a second and wonder where that money was going to come from? I can only hope that you stocked up on food.

Rest easy, Sydney Pollack

2008-05-27T08:42:00.002-04:00

Sydney Pollack, 73, a director and producer of popular Hollywood movies for nearly four decades, including the comedy "Tootsie," and who won Academy Awards for "Out of Africa," died May 26 at his home in Los Angeles. He had cancer.

Mr. Pollack, who called himself "Mr. Mainstream," was wildly successful at moviemaking with mass appeal but drew mixed reviews during a prolific career.

His best-remembered work could be provocative, timely and sensitively crafted: "Tootsie" (1982) was hilarious and underscored aspects of the feminist struggle; the taut spy story "Three Days of the Condor" (1975) captured Nixon-era paranoia; "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" (1969), though set at a Depression-era dance marathon, resonated with young ticket buyers who saw the rigged contest as a reflection of modern society.

Mr. Pollack's movies often emphasized the loner at conflict with society, whether a fur trapper in the wilderness in "Jeremiah Johnson" (1972) or a cowboy who tries to recover his soul after selling out in "The Electric Horseman" (1979) with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

He saw Redford as his ideal collaborator and cast him in seven movies, from "This Property Is Condemned" (1966) to "Havana" (1990), because of what he considered his "very internal, rather understated" acting style as well as a dark undercurrent he found appealing beneath Redford's "golden boy" exterior.

Redford returned the compliment, telling Film Comment magazine, "Sydney's the one director that seems to read me best. . . . Basically he's a romantic."

Audiences embraced two of Mr. Pollack's best-known romance stories: "The Way We Were" (1973) with Redford as a WASP writer and Barbra Streisand as a Jewish political activist during the Hollywood blacklist; and "Out of Africa" (1985), a $30 million production based on Danish author Isak Dinesen's years in Kenya and her complicated affair with a free-spirited and handsome pilot.

The latter film, which earned Oscars for Mr. Pollack for directing and producing, starred Meryl Streep and Redford against a backdrop likened by critics to a National Geographic spread.

Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader complimented Mr. Pollack's craftsmanship and taste, saying that "although the denouement is a bit overextended, he never yields to facile, insistent sentimentality -- his effects are honestly won."

Many others found both films saccharine and ponderous, and Mr. Pollack spoke of his own "tendency by nature to be heavy-handed," which he attributed to his early training as a television director "where you have to grab the audience in the first 10 minutes."

Few disputed that Mr. Pollack was a master of pulling terrific performances from actors. Those who won Oscars under his direction included Gig Young as a cynical dance-marathon announcer in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and Jessica Lange as an emotionally vulnerable actress in "Tootsie."

But even in his less-regarded works, many actors earned Oscar nominations, including Paul Newman and Melinda Dillon in the newspaper libel drama "Absence of Malice" (1981) and Holly Hunter in "The Firm" (1993), based on the John Grisham legal thriller.

Mr. Pollack's skill with performers has been credited to his start in show business as a theater and television actor in the 1950s. With his glasses and curly hair, he became a recognizable presence over the years, thanks to memorable cameo appearances in films and on television.

As a young man, he had been a student of Sanford Meisner, who taught the acting technique known as "the Method," which uses the performer's emotional memory to add realistic touches to a role.

"He was the most influential person in my life in terms of my thinking about drama, about life itself," Mr. Pollack said of Meisner in 1993.

"Everything I do is from the point of view of acting," he added. "I think of cinematography from an actor's point of view. My scripts are from an actor's point of view. Once you find the spine of a part, it becomes a wonderful mold for the whole movie. You measure every single thing against it."

In later years, Mr. Pollack had a significant impact as a producer by using his reputation for commercial success to support other directors, some of them untested. Last year, he backed screenwriter and first-time director Tony Gilroy on the critically praised "Michael Clayton," a thriller with George Clooney.

He also teamed with writer-producer-director Anthony Minghella to produce such films as "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999), "Iris" (2001), "The Quiet American" (2002) and "Cold Mountain" (2003).

Movie critic and historian David Sterritt said Mr. Pollack's "main importance was as a kind of hyphenate -- someone who produced, directed and sometimes acted."

"He was one of the consummate professionals of the last 40 years or so in Hollywood," Sterritt said. "On his own films, or those he supported as a producer or actor, he reached a high level of achievement, if not always a high level of art."

Sydney Pollack was born July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., and raised in South Bend.

He once described himself as an "unpopular and rather sad kid" while growing up in Indiana and made awkward attempts to fit in socially by playing sports. He once took up boxing but, with his poor vision, "didn't see the punches until they were too close."

Movies enchanted him, but he vividly recalled that his father, a boxer-turned-pharmacist, discouraged his ambitions as an actor as an unmanly trade. Sydney Pollack's two siblings went into entertainment: Bernie became a costume designer, and Sharon became a dance instructor.

After high school, Sydney Pollack went to New York in 1954 and studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse under Meisner, who was so impressed with Mr. Pollack that he made him his assistant. Mr. Pollack's students included Robert Duvall, Rip Torn, Brenda Vaccaro and Claire Griswold, whom he married in 1958.

In addition to his wife, of Los Angeles, survivors include two daughters, Rebecca Pollack and Rachel Pollack, both of Los Angeles; a brother; and six grandchildren. A son, Steven Pollack, died in a small-plane crash in 1993.

In the 1950s, Sydney Pollack began making regular appearances on TV anthology programs such as "Playhouse 90." Director John Frankenheimer brought Mr. Pollack to Hollywood in 1961 to work as a dialogue coach on the juvenile delinquency drama "The Young Savages."

Mr. Pollack said he bonded with the film's star, Burt Lancaster, over the fact that neither had been to college. Lancaster smoothed the way for Mr. Pollack's entry into Hollywood by urging powerful agent and mogul Lew Wasserman to hire him as a director.

He said Lancaster told Wasserman: "He can't be worse than some of those bums you got workin' for you now."

Mr. Pollack directed many TV series and won the 1966 best directing Emmy Award for an episode of "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre." He also took occasional acting jobs and made his movie debut in the supporting role of a sergeant in "War Hunt" (1962), a drama set during the Korean War that featured the largely unknown Redford.

In 1965, Mr. Pollack won his first movie directing credit for "The Slender Thread," a suicide help-line drama with Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. Mr. Pollock later dismissed the melodramatic film as "a dreadful picture," and he was not contradicted by reviewers.

He also bombed critically with his next three films, including "This Property is Condemned" (1966), based on a Tennessee Williams one-act play; the satiric western "The Scalphunters" (1968), starring Lancaster; and the anti-war drama "Castle Keep" (1969), based on a William Eastlake novel.

He began his first long run of hits with "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?," a grim film with Jane Fonda. The movie proved an unexpected commercial success and brought Pollack an Oscar nomination for directing and launched him to the front rank of directors.

Most reviewers found "Tootsie," with Dustin Hoffman as an out-of-work actor masquerading as a woman to get a job on a TV soap opera, probably his finest achievement.

Critic Pauline Kael wrote that Mr. Pollack seemed to direct with less self-consciousness, especially in opening scenes showing what she called "a crackling, rapid-fire presentation of the hopes versus the realities of out-of-work actors' lives."

Mr. Pollack's most notable acting role may have been as Hoffman's long-suffering agent in "Tootsie," a part he was said to have taken only reluctantly after Hoffman, in female character, hounded him with notes that read, "Please be my agent! Love, Dorothy."

He had key supporting roles in Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives" (1992) as an adulterer, Robert Altman's "The Player" (1992) as a Hollywood lawyer and Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999) as a creepy doctor, parts he took because he was curious about how other famous directors worked.

He also had a stint as a wife-killing oncologist on the HBO mob drama "The Sopranos."

Directing and production credits included "The Yakuza" (1974) with Robert Mitchum as an American private eye in Japan; "Bobby Deerfield (1977) with Al Pacino as a race car driver who falls for a woman with cancer, Marthe Keller; "Random Hearts" (1999), a romantic drama with Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas falling in love after their spouses die in a plane crash; and "The Interpreter" (2005), a thriller with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn set at the United Nations.

In 2005, he made his first documentary, "Sketches of Frank Gehry," after meeting the celebrated architect at a Los Angeles party.

Mr. Pollack told the Christian Science Monitor that he hoped his own films, made for broad audiences, would follow the tradition of many movies of the 1930s and 1940s dismissed as "standard studio fare" but are now seen as great art.

He added that he was motivated by two factors: "First, I have to satisfy the needs of popular art. Second, I don't want to be intellectually insulting. I want to raise issues and questions that are sufficiently intriguing -- so people I care about will like them, too."

Memorial Day 2008

2008-05-26T10:01:00.003-04:00

Thank You.

An unending appreciation of dungarees.

2008-05-21T15:28:00.001-04:00

135 years ago today, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a patent for work pants reinforced with metal rivets.

Thanks guys.

Hey Kentucky!

2008-05-20T00:46:00.002-04:00

You're going to vote for Clinton because you're not smart enough to vote for Ron Paul and too fucking racist and bigoted to vote for Obama... Shades of WV. You deserve your fate when these fucking neo-socialist fucks gather a Democratic Congress and White House and completely repeal the 2nd Amendment among other issues.

I better never hear any of you fucks say anything derogatory or negative about WV again.

Tomorrow, or whenever you're failing yourself and you say you can't do "it"...

2008-05-18T21:22:00.003-04:00

Keep in mind there's a fifteen year-old, blind kid, named - Tommy Carroll who is smoking your weak, "I can't do it", ass.

Of all the things that I've done in my life...

2008-05-18T18:23:00.004-04:00

being a Philadelphia Flyers fan is one of the hardest.

Maybe next year.

Can anyone tell me...

2008-05-17T13:08:00.003-04:00

Why the POW/MIA organization and all the former POWs of the United States of America are not kicking John McCain in the balls on a daily basis? Anyone who has even the slightest education on the issue knows where he stands.

EXCEPT BY JOHN McCAIN

I made a difference this week. What did you do?

2008-05-15T21:12:00.001-04:00

just moments ago, by a near-unanimous vote, the Senate stood up to Big Media. They voted to throw out the FCC decision to let the largest media companies swallow up even more local media.

This is simply an astounding victory, and it would not have happened without the massive grassroots effort by you and thousands of others who called their senators, sent more than a quarter million letters, posted thousands of pictures and stories on StopBigMedia.com, and testified at public hearings held by the FCC.

It was your dedication that made today's Senate win possible.

Today was a huge step forward, but there is still much to do. The fight against the FCC now moves to the House, where our elected representatives need to hear from us.

President Bush has promised that he will try to veto this bill. But tonight the Senate and the American people have spoken with one voice. This historic vote sends a clear message that the only people who support more media consolidation are Big Media lobbyists and the White House.

We are in this struggle to bring more minority ownership, diverse perspectives and independent voices to the media. We need to make media consolidation an election-year issue. And we need to start talking about how to break up the giant conglomerates.

Corporate news today -- with its propaganda pundits, horse-race election coverage, and celebrity gossip -- undermines our democracy. We must continue to speak out and demand that the public airwaves be used to actually serve the public.

In just three weeks, thousands of people will be gathering together in Minnesota to build the movement for better media. You can join them at the National Conference for Media Reform, just visit www.freepress.net/conference.

For today, know that you played a key role in the fight for better media for all.

Thank you,

Josh Silver
Executive Director
Free Press Action Fund

This just in...

2008-05-14T16:26:00.002-04:00

Off days suck.
Not rowing sucks.
Not riding my bike sucks.

This is today's mantra.

2008-05-12T17:52:00.002-04:00

You know you'd tap it... If for no other reason than out of spite.

2008-05-02T20:19:00.002-04:00

Yeah, I know that it came out last Oct., but the Sprocket and I were sitting here watching skate/mtb vids and I just wanted to throw it out there. Regardless of whether you like vert or not, this one is the shit.

Shred or Die

The Formation of Damnation

2008-04-26T17:41:00.003-04:00

One of the greatest metal bands of all time is about unleash one of the strongest albums of their career. On Apr. 29, 2008 (USA) Testament's "The Formation of Damnation" will hit the streets and a new bar will be set for any band who claims the label "heavy metal". The following release from Nuclear Blast records says it all. I'm just proud to be a life-long fan.

TESTAMENT:

The Formation Of Damnation

April 29, 2008
Nuclear Blast Records

Testament is

Chuck Billy – vocals
Eric Peterson – guitars
Alex Skolnick – guitars
Greg Christian – bass
Paul Bostaph - drums

Prophecy is a territory explored only by brave men and warriors. The two are not necessarily mutual but the differences between them are certainly marginal. And truly, the best prophecies come from those who aren’t necessarily seeking to be prophetic, but who simply step forward into those dark, uncomfortable places because their need for honest expression is total, no pre-determination, no intent, just pure, raw gut delivery of truths as seen.

Testament have found themselves in the prophecy business before during their 25 year career, and with “The Formation Of Damnation” they have delivered their sharpest, leanest, heaviest and most prophetic set of songs for two decades. The quintessential modern heavy metal band, the undisputedly enormous influence over a whole nu generation of aural aggressors. With "The Formation Of Damnation" Testament have deliciously served up 'old school' without the old, a crushingly heavy album without the weight of oppression, all crisp and lively like a ball-pin hammer-wielding maniac intent on bashing your brains to a pulp. It crackles with the type of vibrant energy that comes from an umbilically connected creative core writing together for the first time in over ten years, their reserves of residual anger, aggro and raw visceral riffery greater than ever. Recorded at Driftwood Studios in Oakland, CA (except for the drums which were done at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley) and mixed at Backstage Studios in Derbyshire, UK, “The Formation Of Damnation” is a worthy sibling of previously lauded Test-efforts such as “The Gathering” whilst behaving very much like the older, wiser brother of 1988’s “The New Order.”

“We’re talking about things we’ve lived through,” says Eric Peterson, “we’re living through the politics, we’re living through the bullshit, we’ve lived through bad relationships and we’ve lived through tough times. It’s not even that we’re necessarily political, we’re just everyday people who have always been thinking about these things. Out of all our records “The Formation Of Damnation” could be “The New Order’s” big brother.”

“The New Order” had also been inspired by George Orwell’s ‘1984’,” continues Alex Skolnick, “that whole vision of complete government control and totalitarianism taking over the US, as well as disasters both man-made an natural. Here it is years later and we have the Patriot Act, Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. So when you compare the two albums, it’s kinda spooky. And this album is no going to get filed under ‘easy listening’, that’s for sure.”

“It’s also absolutely about being older and wiser,” confirms Chuck Billy, “And now we also have children, their world is being affected, and everyday life generally throws up some heavy stuff, both national and personal, so all these songs are very much of our time and experiences. For example, over the last couple of years Eric and I both lost our fathers, so “The After Life” is about when we might next see them. Then there’s “The Evil Has Landed” which is about the twin towers, and at first I didn’t know if I wanted to sing about that, but once I performed it became clear that deep down I had to, and ‘Killing Season’ is one for all the soldiers we get letters and e-mails from during this war, it’s for those troops who get fired up by heavy metal before they go into combat and it’s my little contribution to the cause. And with all the songs I wanted us to make the statement that we’re stronger, more powerful and more confident than ever before. We’ve got the game!” “I think it’s the best record I’ve ever had anything to do with,” chuckles Greg Christian, “and not to sound conceited but it’s also really the best heavy metal record I’ve heard in a long time.”

Reaching this lushest of creative fields has been quite a journey for Testament, the sort that tests, stretches and ultimately breaks most bands. Formed in the Bay Area of Northern California in 1983 under the moniker of Legacy (the change to Testament came when Billy arrived to take over from Steve Souza on vocals and Derrick Ramirez was replaced by Skolnick), they grew up at the same time as Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth, being one of the five bands forming the core of what would become the world famous thrash metal scene. But from the beginning Testament trod a unique path, making sure that their extraordinary musicianship, intuitive feel for harmonies amidst the savagery established itself as a stand alone sound.

“I was in the band Forbidden back then,” says Paul Bostaph, “and I remember that us and other bands at the time might stumble across a riff, think about it and scrap it simply because it was too close to the Testament sound. They really did have their own style and their own dimension, which gave them an edge from the very beginning and influenced so many bands on the scene.”

1987’s debut release “The Legacy” threw down a marker, and by the time Testament were about to release 1988’s “The New Order” their legend was already hitting enormous popularity. However, their extreme talent got muddied and compromised by the weight of expectation, and while albums like -1989’s “Practice What You Preach" and 1990’s “Souls Of Black” continued to open the same creative doors for a slew of bands which Testament have always done, their level of recognition was perhaps not commesurate with their influence over an entire genre. Talent+personalities can equal problems, and thus it was that after 1992’s “The Ritual”, Clemente left and Skolnick decided it was high-time to essentially find himself and reclaim a few of the teenage years he lost.

“I was in high school, 11th grade, when I joined this band,” laughs Skolnick, “so I really needed to go away and grow as a person, as a musician and get the necessary confidence to enjoy this and gather the strength to make things happen and fight for changes. When I left Testament I still felt like the shy, annoying brother in the room; when I came back, I felt like a respected, professional musician.”

And so it was that for many years, the core creators behind Testament’s music remained separate. Friendships were maintained and good times still had, but musically, matters remained separate as Skolnick explored jazzier rock climbs, Christian engaged in his own projects whilst Billy and Peterson kept Testament alive with a series of different musicians coming in and out. Bostaph had his first short stint with the band in 1992 (in the midst of joining Slayer), whilst White Zombie and Anthrax drummer John Tempesta came in with death metal guitarist James Murphy to play on 1994’s “Low” album, perhaps Testament’s most progressive in terms of material range.

Peterson and Billy continued to fly the Testament flag, releasing the decidedly deathier tones of “Demonic” in 1997, whilst 1999 saw Murphy again on guitar with Slayer’s Dave Lombardo on drums for “The Gathering.” Arguably the album which led Testament back onto their path after a little radical experimentation in the recent past, “The Gathering” became a meeting point for dozens of hungry young metal acts looking for a new metal God. But Murphy was diagnosed with a brain tumor from which he did eventually recover, and in 2001, Billy was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. It was to prove a life-affirming, as well as life-changing, event.

“I’m a big believer that things happen for a reason,” says Billy, “we never split on bad terms, we always kept in good contact, we saw them on the east coast, we always supported Alex when he came through town, and we never discussed getting back together, we’d just hang out. But when I got sick and there was Thrash Of The Titans concert, that was the first time a reunion of any sort happened. It broke the ice, Greg (Christian) put some stuff behind him with Eric and I to get up there, I performed a song with everyone and that was the start of it all coming together again.”

From that came the deeper realization that with a fair few years between them (not to mention oceans under bridges) it was time to jump to the next level and simply get creative with each other again.

No expectations.

No grandiose plans.

Just pure powerful playing, which is why 2005’s 10 date European reunion tour (featuring all the original members) ended up spurring studio work.

“We didn’t ever plan this,” affirms Skolnick, “the reunion show in 2002 at the Dynamo was the catalyst, we never made any plans, we just enjoyed that show and then ended up doing a few more, which proved to us that now we’re older and more mature we can all enjoy being in this band. And once we’d done some extra shows in 2005, once we’d seen the reactions, once we’d seen a new audience mixing with the old, we just took things to the next logical progression.”

It is the journey to “The Formation Of Damnation” and the affirmation of the quintet’s chemistry which is one of the album’s strongest elements.

“Sometimes you can have a lot of ideas but keep on clashing the people you work with,” says Peterson, “and that’s what’s happened to us in the past. But with this album, we really do just appreciate what we have.”

“There’s been such a growth in our maturity and comfort with each other,” furthers Billy. “Eric’s developed into such a great rhythm player and Alex really acknowledged that as well as his creativity. Those two really gelled, and Alex also had a lot of input with arrangements, he really did fine-tune a lot of the songs.

“In some sense I took a step back from the writing this time because through it all, whatever differences we may have had, Chuck and Eric have kept Testament going,” explains Skolnick, “I knew they had a way of working together, so a lot of my work was assisting with their writing process. In some ways it was like a production role, and I’d never say I was a producer here because the album was in it’s early stages, and for the most part I really enjoyed the role.”

“It felt quite natural, especially as I know Eric’s writing so well,” adds Christian. “I know he had this vision in is head for the songs so I just did my best to help pull them out, and because we understand what each other are saying we can work really quickly. The chemistry between Eric, Alex, Chuck and myself is amazing, and it’s amazing how well Paul Bostaph has fitted in, really, on every level it’s been such a positive experience.”

“This is like family,” says Bostaph. “I’ve known all these guys for over 20 years, we’ve played together, bands I’ve been in have toured with them and I am a huge Testament fan, so joining this time was a huge no-brainer. And again, as Greg said, for me it was a case of giving myself to what this Testament album needed, and that was my only focus, making sure that the band got exactly what it needed from it’s drummer.”

In closing, take a moment to consider the following…

In 1988, Testament spoke of a new order and here, in 2008, Testament speak of the formation of damnation.

“It’s of our time right now,” concludes Peterson, “the world we live in is rife with aggravation, politics is forever more about money rather than doing what’s right, we all keep taking from mother earth… human beings are basically done! We’re setting ourselves up big-time for damnation, and that’s what these songs talk about, from love to politics to holy wars, it’s all there, it's all written about.”

You probably don’t want to hazard a guess as to what Testament, the true societal prophets of rage, will be speaking of in 2028…

Thanks guys!!

The whole TFOD album is streaming through the TestAmenT MySpace.

2008-04-24T11:47:00.004-04:00

Phillip Bobbitt is an enemy of the Republic of the United States of America.

In a recent edition of the Austin-American Statesman a book review of Phillip Bobbitt’s new book Terror and Consent goes into how the book calls for the shredding of the Constitution. The article written by James E. McWilliams features an image of the Constitution being torn with a big bold headline that states “Everything must go.” The words “How to Fight Terrorism”, are put in place of where the Constitution is torn. The article is blatant propaganda to make people think that the answer to fight terrorism is to destroy the Constitution. As disgusting as this is, the contents of Bobbitt’s book advocates exactly what the picture depicts. Bobbitt endorses using nongovernmental organizations and multinational corporations to take over the roles and functions of nation states. He also endorses giving the United Nations the authority to wage war without approval from the Security Council and the use of non-lethal chemical weapons to fight terrorism. If he really wanted to end terrorism using non-lethal chemical weapons, he should be endorsing the use of non-lethal chemical weapons on the headquarters of the CIA, British Intelligence and Mossad because that’s where the majority of terrorism comes from. Of course, Bobbitt won't mention that fact.

Let’s look at a blurb from the Austin-American Statesman article that gets into some of the things that Bobbitt endorses in his book.

Bobbitt’s previous book, "The Shield of Achilles," explored the grand themes of warfare and state development, marking his penchant for the magnum opus. At nearly 700 pages (including more than 100 pages of notes), "Terror and Consent" follows suit, taking on a similarly big picture. If "we want to defeat state-shattering terror in the twenty-first century," Bobbitt writes, we will have to "transform the emerging constitutional order of the twenty-first century State."

Specifically, we must stop thinking like a nation state and start thinking like the "market state" that we are inevitably becoming. The nation state — a constitutional order dedicated to protecting and improving the material welfare of its citizens — served the United States well from the mid-19th century to the end of the Cold War. But Bobbitt contends it’s vulnerable to a new battery of threats. The accessibility of weapons of mass destruction, the globalization of international capital and the "universalization of culture" have eroded the conventional borders that once legitimated national security.

What’s needed is a constitutional order that takes its structural cues from multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations, relying "less on law and regulation and more on market incentives" to expand people’s options. Such a market state keeps its finger on the pulse of consumer demand, advocates trade liberalization, is prone to the privatization of public works and "will outsource many functions." In the seminar rooms of political science departments this change is referred to as "neoliberalism" (on the streets, it is known as "globalization") — and Bobbitt, who is a geopolitical realist, believes we have no choice but to embrace it.

Simply put, Bobbitt is endorsing what the elites have long sought after and that’s a New World Order or a global government. Bobbitt advocates the destruction of the Constitution and the transfer of power to multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations. This man is a traitor. In the New World Order that the elites envision, people will only have the illusion of choice via phony democratic rule. Real decisions will be made by multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations behind the scenes. Unfortunately, what Bobbitt advocates is already happening considering initiatives such as the Security and Prosperity Partnership which seeks to dissolve the national borders between the Canada, United States and Mexico.

Bobbitt also endorses preemptive use of force by the United Nations without a Security Council authorization as well as the use of non-lethal chemical weapons to prevent terrorism. This is confirmed from a blurb in the Austin-American Statesman.

Bobbitt believes that the UN Charter should be amended to allow the preemptive use of force without a Security Council authorization, that the Geneva Conventions should be changed to forbid the indefinite containment of terrorist prisoners without trial and that we must, in cases in which the use of non-lethal chemical weapons could be used to prevent terror, be able to redefine such methods as "counterforce measures."

What is not mentioned in the article is what sort of non-lethal weapons he would advocate using. Considering that the public is having pharmaceutical drugs and fluoride dumped in their water, mercury put in their vaccines, pesticides sprayed over populated areas and all sorts of other horrors one has to ask if Bobbitt would endorse these methods to fight terrorism?

The war on terror is a proven fraud which makes Bobbitt’s book entirely irrelevant. He bases all of his conclusions off of something that is a lie. Bobbitt also refuses to acknowledge mainstream history which shows that anytime power is concentrated in the hands of a few it always turns out badly. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the New World Order is seeking to gain absolute power. If they are successful in achieving this, we will see a tyranny like no other. The New World Order will be a global enslavement system in which advanced technology is used to dominate the people of the world. It is disgusting that Bobbitt prefers a system that concentrates power in the hands of the unelected few over the freedom and inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution. It is insane to say that the Constitution is outdated and a new form of governance is required in the 21st century. Free speech, the right to bear arms, the right not to have your home searched and personal belongings seized without a warrant are concepts that are just as applicable in the 21st century as they were in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Bobbitt is an elitist hack and a traitor for the statements he is making in his book. While he has every right to say these things under the First Amendment, his statements undermines everything that has made this country special. What he doesn’t realize is that the New World Order will dispose of him like they will everyone else when they see that he is of no further use to their insanely corrupt and tyrannical system. Bobbitt is nothing more than another useful idiot for the New World Order enslavement system and he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.

Below is Bobbitt’s contact information if you’d like to express your displeasure at his anti-American and pro-NWO statements.

Phone: (512) 232-1376
Fax: (512) 471-6988
E-mail: PBOBBITT@LAW.UTEXAS.EDU

If for some reason the AAS should stop posting the above linked article, I have archived it on my server, here.

Here's what I've been up to.

2008-04-24T11:23:00.003-04:00

Ok, so I know that my posting has fallen off to almost nothing in the recent couple of months, not only am I getting ready to graduate, but things have been coming down the pipe faster than I can keep up. You know that I've discussed the recession that we are clearly in, and you know that I've blasted the MSM (main stream media) for not telling you what myself and others have been screaming to the tops of our lungs. We may have made a breakthrough, but you're not going to like it.

What follows is a WALL STREET JOURNAL article. Yep, the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Who's a conspiracy theorist now?

Load Up the Pantry
April 21, 2008 6:47 p.m.

I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.

And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

These are trends that have been in place for some time.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.

The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years.

Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point.

The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want to eat more and better food.

A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol as a fuel additive. That's soaking up some of the corn supply.

You can't easily stock up on perishables like eggs or milk. But other products will keep. Among them: Dried pasta, rice, cereals, and cans of everything from tuna fish to fruit and vegetables. The kicker: You should also save money by buying them in bulk.

If this seems a stretch, ponder this: The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it's the rosy memory of a bygone age.

The good news is that it's easier to store Cap'n Crunch or cans of Starkist in your home than it is to store lots of gasoline. Safer, too.

EARTHQUAKE!!!

2008-04-18T06:13:00.003-04:00

Ok, so I'm sitting here this morning, recovering from one helluva case of hay-fever/103 degree fever... You know the deal. Anywho, at around 0535 the house began rocking. As soon as it began I knew what it was. I looked around the room and sure enough, everything that was hanging free was swinging like a pendulum.

For the record it lasted for about 20 seconds and was apparently somewhere 5.4 at the epicenter. Where was the epicenter? In southern Illinois. I'm four and a half hours East of the epicenter... We don't do earthquakes here!

Proof it wasn't the fever.

You should have listened to Thomas Jefferson...

2008-03-13T13:12:00.002-04:00

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

How's your dollar doing? How much did gas go up in your locality today? Five cents over night for me. How well is your Dollar standing?

I told you so.

Back door gun control taking on a life of its own.

2008-02-26T19:22:00.002-05:00

Can't take our guns outright, yet. So what are they doing? Attempting to tax, ban, encode, and pretty much any frigging thing possible in order for it to be impossible to own ammunition. Sneaky fuckers, eh?

Jerry the Geek is tracking this epidemic that is sweeping the nation.

I've pulled Jerry's article from his above linked site, in case you guys don't click the link. I would however urge you to click the link and see everything that he's got going on over there.

Given the plethora of "Encoded Ammunition" bills introduced into various State legislatures in January, 2008 (five so far; there may be more, I'm still researching), it occurred to me that it would be handy to have some kind of 'tracking document'.

Accordingly, I spent a couple of hours building an Excel Spreadsheet listing the salient characteristics of all the bills I have so far discovered. You can download the "2008 Geek Guide ..."( etc.) here.

Note that the file, 2008_Encoded_Ammunition.xls, will require that you have Microsoft EXCEL loaded on your computer. You can download it, but you can't read it without the software.

Here's a list of the states reported to date: Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Hawaii, Tennessee.

And here is a list of the data items found there, along with a short (?) description of the data points:

* State: The name of the state in which the bill is introduced.
* Bill #: The designation of the bill(s). Note that in at least one state (Tennessee), the identical bill was simultaneously introduced in both houses.
* Link to Text: A "Tiny URL" code. Copy and past it into your web browser, and the original URL will be generated to take you to the document which contains the full text of the bill. Note that I neglected to include this link in at least one of my original articles. I hope I've corrected those articles, but ALL are referenced here.
* Sponsor: The name of the state legislature(s) who sponsored and/or introduced the bill. This allows you, if you are a resident of that state, to follow him/her back to his/her personal website and send him/her emails appropriate to the amount of outrage you feel about his/her disenfranchisement of honest shooters.
* Justification for bill?: A simple YES/NO, if the text of the bill includes verbiage which attempts to justify the introduction of this disgusting piece of .... legislation. (Sorry, I can't help editorializing, even when I know I shouldn't. I'm just that irritated.)
* Date Bill Introduced: The date the bill was first read into the record in the state house, assembly or senate.
* Bill Status: The current status of the bill, usually, "referred to Committee" or similar verbiage. Bills so designated sometimes STAY in committee until the end of the legislative session (January 1 of the following year), after which they will die. At least one bill has a "bill expiration date" built into it, which I presume refers to the legislative guidelines for that state.
* Type of Ammo: The limitations on the kind of ammunition which is subject to these restrictions. ALWAYS "Handgun", but may also include "Assault Weapon" or "Assault Pistol". Some states include a list of "Designated Weapons" in the bill, which usually refer to what is essentially an "Assault Weapons" list established by existing state laws.
* Sell Only By Date: The date upon which vendors (retailers, etc.) may offer for sale 'only' ammunition ... or bullets (some states mention both) which has been "encoded".
* Own Only By Date: The date upon which all vendors and private citizens may not possess ammunition (or bullets? .. not always clear) which has not been "encoded". Possession may or may not involve specific penalties; see below.
* Per-Round Tax/Fee?: ALL states have, as far as I know and of this date, imposed some kind of tax or fee per bullet; this is most commonly five cents, although one state sets the fee at ".005 cents" which works out at five cents per thousand rounds or bullets. As noted, this last may be a typographical error. It's difficult to imagine politicians setting the fee so low, as long as the bill is obviously designed as an ipso facto impediment to free exercise of the second amendment. (There I go again!) Mississippi politicians aren't even honest enough to set the fee as part of the bill. They merely stipulate that a "End User Fee" will be established. Don't expect a "five cents per thousand rounds" fee from these boys. They ALL have to finance a database system, enforcement, and undefined other expenses needed to administer this bogus bill. (Oops! Sorry.)
* Fee Retained by Retailer: A couple of states provide that the vendor may retain a portion of the fees they collect, presumably to encourage the vendors to support the bill. Fat chance, ammunition sales will be so undercut by this oinker that the resulting market won't support any retail sales of ammunition or other firearms-related business in these states. (Dammit! Stop that, Geek!)
* Owner Penalties: This identifies the fines or penalties which may be imposed on 'anyone' who attempts to defile, obscure or obliterate the serial numbers on a bullet or round of ammunition. Usually a misdemeanor ... but we're usually talking about a year in the pokey and/or a fine of $1,000.
* Merchant Tax Penalty: One state (Illinois) imposes a penalty on a vendor who fails to accurately report tax revenues (the "per-round tax/fee"). This is a Class 4 Felony in Illinois. As may be presumed, the bureaucrats don't like it if you file the serial numbers off bullets but they take it seriously when you don't pay them their Dane Geld, hence the Felony vs the Misdemeanor. (That was okay, wasn't it? Not 'editorializing'?) The rest don't mention it ... to date. Apparently, that is covered in another section of the Code.
* Merchants Adherence Fine: I THINK this is the fine for selling non-encoded ammunition after the cutoff date. Your guess is as good as mine. Universally, it's $1,000.
* Buyer Data Collected: The information that the vendor is required to collect to define the retail buyer. Always Name, Date of Birth, Driver's License Number, and "any other information which the (governing agency) may define/require". More weasel words; they can ask for the serial number of the firearm in which you choose to shoot the ammunition, if they want to, and if there are not state laws forbidding this ... it's okay!
* Retailer Reporting: The vendor must report the information recorded on each ammunition sale periodically. This is either Monthly or Quarterly, if it is included in the Bill. Presumably, when you report the information, you must also remit the 'End User Fee' collected at the time of sale.
* Enforcement: For the Average Joe, this is one of the most important facets of the bills. In Illinois, the 'administrative authority' (usually the DOJ) can make it up as they go. Excuse, I mean the "any reasonable rules" may be imposed. That's an administrative decision, not subject to normal Congressional Oversight. Not encouraging. In Tennessee, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) is the administrative authority. Isn't it nice when the police get to make the rules?
* Exceptions: Who do these bills, if they become laws, NOT apply to? In those states in which the legislators actually spent more than ten minutes writing the bill, the "Federal, State and Local Law Enforcement Organizations" are exempt. No word yet on whether the National Guard and the U.S. Military are exempt; but since they are not LEOs, and they are not specifically exempt ... hey, they might grab a few bucks from the Feds! (Must ... Control ... The ... Fist ... Of ... Death!)
* Bill Expiration Date: As mentioned above, one state included and expiration date for the bill if it is not enacted into law. Probably an administrative requirement, but I include it just for ... well, actually, no reason at all.
* Notes: Miscellaneous notes included only to show that not all states just stuck to boilerplate. The general text is obviously taken from a template ... source not yet identified ... but some states legislatures seemed to feel that they needed to assert their individuality. Indiana declared an emergency; Hawaii and Mississippi granted an 'income tax credit' for in-state bullet/ammunition manufacturers to purchase, install and use bullet-encoding machinery; Tennessee included a really onerous records-keeping requirement for both vendors and manufacturers.
* Text for Justification of Bill, if present: For states which included a justification of this bill (a minority, only Hawaii and Tennessee), the full text of their 'justification' is included just so you don't have to read the actual bills. I found it interesting that (so far) the majority of states which accepted this bill-template didn't feel it necessary to explain WHY this bill was necessary. I interpret this to mean that they don't care enough about the citizens who have to live under these egregious rules; they just entered the bill because they can. I'm guessing that they're Liberal Democrats who are just looking for a real good rating from The Brady Campaign, and don't expect the bills to get out of committee, let alone actually pass, so why bother? This may be "a good sign" that the authors aren't serious about the bill(s).

I'll be updating this document, if and as more states are found to have proposed similar bills. (What am I saying? These are all the same bill, with minor variations.) If you find an error in the document .. and I do strongly encourage you to view this document critically with the goal of correcting errors and providing more information ... please let me know.

I'm tempted to dismiss these bills as bogus, not likely to pass; nothing to see here folks, move along. But since the Microstamping Bill (not the same thing) was passed in California last year, it is demonstrably NOT SAFE to expect that any gun-control bill, no matter how unreasonable or how irresponsibly enacted or how badly worded, cannot be passed by any given legislature. EVERY TIME a bogus gun-control bill is passed by a state, it sets a precedent for other states which are controlled by liberal gun-grabber politicians who just want to get their names on the roster of 'people who are trying to accomplish something about crime!'

No more editorializing. Every time I write one of these articles, it makes my guts ache for the rest of the night. I find it hard to believe that these weasels are stomping on the rights of their constituents for their own career advancement.

But then, if they weren't rats and weasels, they would find honest work.

Oh, and just as an aside, the Supreme Court is about to start ruling on the wording of the 2nd Amendment and comparing every other state's legislation to D.C.'s. There's a serious problem with that however... D.C. is not a state of the union of the United States of America; it doesn't fall under the same laws as we do. Also, don't you find it funny that while we're in a war against terrorism, the largest supposed target would decrease the budget for emergency planning and security cost in the District of Columbia from $14 million in 2006 to $3 million in 2008?

Just remember... "We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here."

I'd advise you to get ready to rally against your government and take our country back, but you'd just ignore me and go back to watching whateverthefuck it is that you watch.

Greenspan urges the further collapse of the US economy.

2008-02-26T13:15:00.002-05:00

First of all, you need to understand that dumping of the dollar will not help our inflation. If the oil producing nations drops the dollar peg(US dollar reserve), we will further spiral into a recession. No, I don't know more than Greenspan, but come on people, use your frigging heads here. Even Dick Cheney has liquidates his US holdings into something else.

Get ready for stagflation.

Arabianbusiness.com article link

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Monday near-record Gulf Arab inflation would fall "significantly" were the oil producers to drop their dollar pegs, in contradiction to Saudi policy.

"In the short term, free floating... will not fully dissipate inflationary pressure, although it would significantly do so," Greenspan told an investment conference in Jeddah.

But Saudi Central Bank Vice-Governor Muhammed Al Jasser and UAE Central Bank Governor Sultan Nasser Al-Suweidi both said dollar pegs have served their economies well by attracting foreign investment.

"They did very well for our economies because it has led to more capital flows," Al-Suweidi told an investment conference in Abu Dhabi on Monday.

Likewise Al Jasser, questioned by newswire Reuters about the riyal/dollar peg on Sunday, said: "It just happens to be serving our economic interests and continues to do so."

The pegs restrict the Gulf's ability to fight inflation by forcing them to shadow US monetary policy when the Fed is cutting rates to ward off recession and Gulf economies are surging on a near five-fold jump in oil prices since 2002.

Inflation in Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, hit a 27-year peak of 7% in January, while in the UAE, price rises in 2006 - the latest available figure - rose to 9.3%, at least a 19-year high.

Still, "Gulf governments should consider the implication of such a move in the long term," Greenspan said of the idea of floating their currencies.

Rifts in Gulf monetary policy widened last May when Kuwait broke ranks with its neighbours by severing its link to the dollar in favour of a basket of currencies, saying a weak dollar was driving imported inflation.

Oman has said it will not join a single currency at all, and Al-Suweidi said in November he was under mounting social and economic pressure to drop the peg.

He has since backtracked, mirroring the position of Saudi Arabia, which has in the last month introduced public sector wage increases, welfare payments and subsidies to offset the impact of inflation.

Qatar, contending with the region's highest inflation, is urging Gulf states to bridge differences over a single currency, saying monetary union could avert possible unilateral revaluations, its prime minister told Reuters on Saturday. (Reuters)

On a side note, here's an article where Greenspan says that the US economic recovery is going to take longer than previously thought. And most of you people didn't even know that you were in a recession.

Hexy in the Hall of Fame.

2008-02-07T07:44:00.000-05:00

It's an awesome thing to see one of your favorite individuals get the recognition that they deserve, in their lifetime, and even more so while they are young and able to truly appreciate it. Last night, Number 27, Ron Hextall, in my opinion, one of the greatest goalies to ever grace us with his abilities, was inducted into the Philadelphia Flyers' Hall of Fame.

Hexy made you want to watch hockey. Hexy made you want to play hockey. Hexy made you look at other goalies, past and present, and see where they were lacking. For his aggressive nature and raw ability, Philadelphia was the only place for Hextall. Truly, he was a Broad Street Brawler. When I was a teenager, Hexy, for me, was larger than life and the only validation needed for ESPN's "Hockey Night". Honestly, I could really go on, but I'll turn it over the the Flyers' site and Philly.com.

(Philadelphia, PA) – Ron Hextall became the 19th member of the organization to be inducted into the Flyers Hall of Fame in an on-ice ceremony at the Wachovia Center during Wednesday night's Flyers-Washington Capitals game.

Hextall, 43, appeared in 489 regular season games during his 11-year Flyers career (1986-87 through 1991-92 and 1994-95 through 1998-99 seasons), posting a 240-172-58 record and 2.91 goals-against average. His 489 games played and 240 wins as a Flyer rank him first all-time in Flyers history. In 84 playoff games for the Flyers, Hextall registered a 45-36 record and 2.95 GAA. His 45 playoff wins are the most in Flyers history.

As a rookie during the 1986-87 season, Hextall posted a 37-21-6 record, 2.52 GAA and one shutout in 66 regular season games. He led the NHL in games played (66), wins (37) and minutes played (3,799). He compiled a 15-11 record, 2.77 GAA and two shutouts in 26 playoff games as the Flyers advanced to the 1987 Stanley Cup Finals. He was named to the NHL All-Rookie Team and NHL First All-Star Team for the 1986-87 season. In addition, he won the Vezina Trophy as “the goaltender adjudged to be the best at his position” and the Conn Smythe Trophy as “the most valuable player for his team in the playoffs”.

The 1986-87 season was the first of five seasons that Hextall recorded 30 or more wins (only goaltender in Flyers history to post five 30-win seasons - 1986-87, 1987-88, 1988-89, 1995-96 and 1996-97). On December 8, 1987, Hextall became the first NHL goalie to score a goal by shooting the puck into the opposing net as the Flyers defeated the Boston Bruins at the Spectrum, 5-2. He repeated the feat when he became the first goalie to record a playoff goal as the Flyers defeated the Washington Capitals at the Capital Centre in Game Five of the Patrick Division Semifinals, 8-5, on April 11, 1989.

He was traded by Flyers, along with Steve Duchesne, Peter Forsberg, Kerry Huffman, Mike Ricci, a first round pick in the 1993 NHL Entry Draft, $15 million and future considerations (Chris Simon and a first round pick in 1994 NHL Entry Draft) to the Quebec Nordiques in exchange for Eric Lindros on June 30, 1992.

After two seasons with Quebec (1992-93) and the New York Islanders (1993-94), he was traded by the Islanders, along with a sixth round pick in the 1995 NHL Entry Draft, to the Flyers in exchange for Tommy Soderstrom on September 22, 1994.

Over the final five seasons of his career (1994-95 through 1998-99), Hextall posted two 30-win seasons (31 in 1995-96 and 31 in 1996-97), led the NHL in GAA (2.17 GAA in 1995-96) and helped the Flyers to the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals.

He still holds team records for most penalty minutes by a goaltender in one season (113 in 1988-89) and most points by a goaltender in one season (8 in 1988-89).

The Flyers Hall of Fame was established in 1988 to permanently honor those individuals who have contributed to the franchise’s success. The Hall of Fame induction is held, as needed, with candidates nominated and voted upon by a panel of media members and team officials.

The following people have been previously elected into the Flyers Hall of Fame:

1988 - Bob Clarke and Bernie Parent #1
1989 - Bill Barber, Ed Snider and Keith Allen
1990 - Rick MacLeish and Fred Shero
1991 - Barry Ashbee and Gary Dornhoefer
1992 - Reggie Leach and Gene Hart
1993 - Joe Scott and Ed Van Impe
1994 - Tim Kerr
1996 - Joe Watson
1999 - Brian Propp
2001 - Mark Howe
2004 - Dave Poulin

Hextall nets special Flyers honor

By Ray Parrillo

Inquirer Staff Writer
Even if you had your eyes closed, you knew Ron Hextall was guarding the net.

All you had to do was listen, and you'd hear the loud clang of Hextall's stick against the uprights and the crossbar, a ritual but also a sort of siren call that the goalie was daring any shooter to come his way.

Of course, when Hextall was playing goal for the Flyers 20 years ago, you wanted to keep your eyes open, focused on him, because you never knew what you might see.

He was unique. When Hextall came into the NHL as a 22-year-old rookie for the 1986-87 season, the league had never quite seen anything like him: a tall, rangy, athletic goalie who wandered far out of the net to deftly stickhandle the puck. He'd go on to become the first goalie to score a goal by actually shooting the puck into the net. He did it twice.

Hextall also used his stick in more violent ways, chopping down intruders around the crease as if they were so much timber. The league didn't always appreciate Hextall's stick-wielding, which is why it suspended him for eight games for slashing Kent Nilsson in the back of the leg during the 1987 Stanley Cup Finals against Edmonton. He still holds the record for most penalty minutes by a goalie, 113 in the 1988-89 season.

And Hextall was a goalie who played with an anger that seethed just below his engaging, mild-mannered surface, a goalie with a hair-trigger temper who was quick to drop the gloves and join the fray.

Who can forget Hextall's racing out of the net and throwing his blocker at Chris Chelios in Game 6 of the conference finals in 1989 to avenge a vicious hit Chelios made on Brian Propp earlier in the series?

Tonight at the Wachovia Center, Hextall, now assistant general manager with the Los Angeles Kings, will become the 19th member of the Flyers' organization to be inducted into the team's Hall of Fame, and the first since Dave Poulin in 2004.

Before the game, there will be a highlight video and a ceremonial puck drop. Between the first and second periods, Hextall will be joined on the ice by his family for a tribute video and the induction.

"It means a great deal," Hextall said yesterday by telephone from Los Angeles. "Everybody knows I have extremely strong ties to the Flyers and to the city of Philadelphia. To be honored means a lot to me, and to have my family and friends there, and obviously the fans, it's going to be great."

The Flyers' promotions department will have little trouble filling the jumbo video screen with highlights from Hextall's colorful past.

A year after Vezina Trophy winner Pelle Lindbergh was killed when he drove his turbocharged Porsche into a wall in front of Somerdale Elementary School in South Jersey, Flyers coach Mike Keenan made Hextall, just up from the minors, his No. 1 goalie.

In his first game, Hextall stopped Wayne Gretzky on a breakaway to preserve a 2-1 Flyers win over Edmonton.

According to Full Spectrum, a detailed history of the Flyers by Jay Greenberg, Gretzky said to Hextall, "Who the hell are you?" Hextall snapped back at The Great One, "Who the hell are you?"

The victory was the start of an unforgettable season by Hextall and a young Flyers team. With some of the most remarkable goaltending by any netminder from any era, Hextall strapped the Flyers onto his back and carried them into the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Finals against Edmonton, probably the greatest offensive power in NHL history.

Hextall was spectacular in Game 6 at the Spectrum, which shook from the crowd's roar after J.J. Daigneault scored to complete a come-from-behind 3-2 win over the Oilers. To this day, just about anyone who was inside the Spectrum that night of May 28, 1987, says they never heard a louder arena.

"Winning Game 6 at the Spectrum was absolutely insane," Hextall recalled. "One of the best moments of my career, if not the best."

The series shifted back to Edmonton for the ultimate game and, again, the 6-foot-3 Hextall was brilliant, holding off the Oilers until Glenn Anderson scored with three minutes remaining to seal a 3-1 Flyers loss.

Long after the game, a tearful Hextall sat in the corner of the locker room, too devastated to remove his uniform. The pain, he said, still lingers.

"I can't explain to people how difficult that was for not only myself but every guy in that room," he said. "To be so close and to have gone through what we went through for the two months leading up to Game 7 and to be sitting in that locker room after the game with a hollow feeling, that all that work kind of went for naught.

"I mean, I can say it took me two, three months that summer to kind of get over the real, real stinging part. But there's a pain there that will never go away for me."

Hextall won the Vezina Trophy and became only the fourth player from a losing team to win the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to the most valuable player in the playoffs.

At the time, it seemed impossible that Hextall could repeat such a stunning rookie season. For various reasons, including injuries that forced him to alter his style, he never did.

"That's a special team and special year for me," he said.

He never allowed a goal he didn't think he should have stopped, and he was always man enough to accept blame.

The goalie was included in the huge package the Flyers sent to Quebec for the rights to Eric Lindros in June 1992. Hextall returned to the Flyers in '94 for five more seasons and helped reenergize a team that had gone five straight years without making the playoffs.

Hextall, who had boldly predicted he would one day score a goal, did so early in his second season, against Boston on Dec. 8, 1987. (He repeated the feat against Washington in 1989.) Eight years earlier, the Islanders' Billy Smith had been credited with a goal because he was the last offensive player to touch the puck. But Hextall became the first to shoot it into the net.

"I remember [the media] bugging me every day: When are you going to score a goal? When are you going to score a goal?" Hextall recalled. "I remember the fans started to chant whenever the net was empty. I was like, just give me time. I was looking for the right opportunity, and it presented itself."

I've lost a hero.

2008-01-10T20:19:00.000-05:00

Sir Edmund Hillary

Sir Edmund Hillary, who has died at the age of 88, made it to the summit of Everest in 1953, and became the first man on the planet to reach its highest point.

As a boy in New Zealand, Edmund Hillary's fragile appearance belied his ground-breaking potential.

At school, he was in a gym group for those lacking co-ordination and admitted to feeling a "deep sense of inferiority".

But the 40-mile journey to school in Auckland each day gave young Edmund many hours to pore over adventure stories and travel ever further in his mind.

Unrecorded achievement

Early ideas of following his father into beekeeping were shelved soon after a school mountain trip in 1935.

Seeing snow for the first time as well as learning to climb, Sir Edmund found his vocation.

After spending two years as a navigator in the New Zealand Air Force, he joined a local Alpine Club to take on all the national peaks.

Unsatisfied by these local triumphs, he also travelled to the Himalayas and started wrestling to improve his strength.

This was all with the idea of taking on the ultimate challenge, becoming the first man to climb Everest.

By the time Sir Edmund attempted his ascent, seven previous expeditions to the top of the world's highest mountain had failed.

Sir Edmund recalled: "We didn't know if it was humanly possible to reach the top."

Despite this general trepidation, the determined New Zealander joined a trip led by British climber, Sir John Hunt, up the south-west ridge of the edifice.

By the latter stages, all but two climbers were defeated by exhaustion and the effects of high altitude and bad weather.

Only Sir Edmund and his Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, were able to continue.

'All this - and Everest too!'

When they finally reached the top Sir Edmund, who lost four stone on the expedition, reported his first sensation as one of relief.

He took the famous photo of his Sherpa companion posing with his ice-axe, but refused Tenzing's offer to take one of him, so his ascent went unrecorded.

Well, George, we've knocked the bastard off
How the laconic Sir Edmund reported his ascent of Everest to a team mate

On the morning of Queen Elizabeth's coronation in May 1953, her subjects were told that Sir Edmund had made it to the summit.

As he was a New Zealander and therefore a citizen of the Commonwealth, British subjects celebrated his achievement as their own.

On the day the Queen was crowned, one newspaper headline crowed "All this - and Everest too!"

Sir Edmund was knighted for his efforts, and Tenzing given a medal.

The pair initially reported the ascent as one made in unison. Only after the Sherpa's death in 1986, did Sir Edmund reveal that he had been about 10 feet ahead at the final ridge.

Personal tragedy

Sir Edmund was apparently so shy that he even proposed to his wife with a message via her mother.

In the years that followed his famous ascent, he shunned the celebrity that had become his overnight.

On the 50th anniversary of his achievement, he even turned down an invitation from the Queen, so that he could instead travel to Kathmandu to be with lifelong Sherpa friends.

He was made an honorary Nepalese citizen in 2003.

Sir Edmund was far happier exploring.

During the next two decades, he led expeditions to the South Pole, searched for the fabled Yeti, and completed six Himalayan ascents.

And he became increasingly concerned by the plight of the Sherpa people he had met on his expeditions.

He spent two years as New Zealand's High Commissioner to India, and founded the Himalayan Trust in 1964, which helped establish clinics, hospitals and nearly 30 schools.

It also supported the construction of two airstrips, bringing in more tourists than Sir Edmund liked.

He continued this work after personal tragedy in 1975, when his wife and daughter died in a plane crash on their way to meet him at a construction site.

Although the explorer was inconsolable for a long time, he found solace in the Nepal landscape and its people.

"Life's a bit like mountaineering..."

He was a vociferous opponent of what he considered the commercialisation of the mountain, rich tourists paying their way to the ultimate altitude thrill, and often leaving rubbish behind them.

Seemingly forgetting his own determination to conquer the high ridges, Sir Edmund urged these later climbers to "leave the mountains in peace".

Although he will always be remembered for reaching the world's highest plateau, for the explorer himself, his greatest satisfaction came with the Nepalese people he befriended.

He said: "My most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and clinics. That has given me more satisfaction than a footprint on a mountain."

Sir Edmund Hillary remained philosophical about living with such an early achievement. He explained: "I've had a full and rewarding life. Life's a bit like mountaineering - never look down."

Rest easy sir, I'll meet you at basecamp.

Want to laugh and cry at the same time?

2008-01-10T16:07:00.000-05:00

I read a headline today that states:

Bush Predicts Mideast Peace Treay

I really don't need to go into the particulars as we all know that it's bullshit. A president who didn't have a clue about foreign relations before he took office and doesn't have a clue now, who hasn't set foot in Israel until now, and who has no plan to stop warring in the Mideast, really has no right or place in speaking about peace int he Middle-East.

Don't get me wrong, as you may have read here before, I don't think that we have any business supporting Israel in their little terror-capade, but to try to salvage what's left of a bullshit presidency by discussing peace in the Mideast is a complete, side-splitting, joke.

Why did he run off to Israel? Because, recently, in the middle of the night, he signed a piece of gun-control legislation into law that was pretty unconstitutional, and he had to run somewhere in order to avoid the onslaught from us, the "We the people", that are supposed to run this country.

You people do realize that the government of this Constitutional Republic that we live in, work for us and not the other way around, right?

Are you a fellon who can't vote? Don't worry, there's a job for you... Controlling everyone's vote.

2008-01-10T12:20:00.000-05:00

I knew this was coming. I've been fighting the urge to even discuss Iowa and New Hampshire. I've had to sit back and check my facts and cross reference my sources. Further down on this page, I used to have an embedded version of "Hacking Democracy", a very important documentary that illustrates how easy it is to build an empire using the simplest code and electronic voting machines. Diebold are at the forefront of the criminal vote changing/stealing/nullifying.

If you've seen "Hacking Democracy" then you are familiar with Bev Harris of Blackboxvoting.org, and yesterday she once again thrust Diebold directly into the spotlight.

Ken Hajjar, the Marketing and Sales Director at LHS Associates was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to "sale / CND" (sale of controlled narcotic drugs) and sentenced to 12 months in the Rockingham County Correctional facility, and fined $2000. As things go for the politically connected, he was then given a deferred sentence and $1000 of his fine was suspended.

LHS Associates is a private company that counted over four fifths of the New Hampshire vote with no oversight whatsoever and also holds Diebold contracts for Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

Follow this link for a copy of Ken Hajjar's criminal record.

In case you're not sure about what you saw with the criminal record sheet. He's a convicted Narcotics Trafficer.

"They program every single voting machine in New Hampshire, Connecticut, almost all of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine." Harris comments. "But did state officials in five New England states ever do a criminal background check on this company's executives? Do the laws of these five states even ALLOW them to hire convicted criminals for services paid for by the state? What about over 500 local towns and municipalities?"

What's even more disconcerting is the information provided in a Ken Hajjar interview.

While I'm not going to get into who got cheated and how many discrepancies are gushing from the wound of the New Hampshire primary, but for a bit of illustration on how completely rigged this system is, all you have to do is look at the suspicious percentages that Rudy "The Steaming Pile" Giuliani received:

Campton, Hampton, and Sandwich are townships in New Hampshire.
Campton - 604 votes
VOTE COUNT METHOD: Hand Counted Paper Ballots
- Giuliani = 55 votes = 9.11%

Hampton - 3,141 votes
VOTE COUNT METHOD: Diebold Accuvote optical scan ; contractor: LHS Associates/John Silvestro
- Giuliani = 286 votes = 9.11%

Sandwich - 395 votes
VOTE COUNT METHOD: Hand Counted Paper Ballots
- Giuliani = 36 votes = 9.11%

How fucking sick is it that in three townships, Giuliani gets 9.11% of the vote?

There's so much corruption connected to all of this that in order for it all to be exposed, a person would have to devote their lives to it an create a website to supply the information to you. Luckily, that person is not me. You want more information and fact? Visit Blackboxvoting.org. Be prepared, however, to be shaken to the very foundation of your liberties. It is your responsibility to make sure that your vote counts.

I don't really care who you vote for, but don't you want your vote to count?

Chalk one up for the 2nd Amendment!

2008-01-03T15:41:00.000-05:00

A grocery store customer in Indianapolis is being credited with halting an armed robbery by pulling his own weapon and pointing it at the assailant until police arrived.

According to a report in the Indianapolis Star, Charlie Merrell, 51, was in a checkout line at a grocery store called Bucks IGA on the city's south side when a "masked man jumped a nearby counter and held a gun on a store employee."

The police report cited by the newspaper said the incident happened at 5:17 in the afternoon Monday as Merrell was doing some year-end shopping.

"While the suspect was demanding cash from the workers," according to the police report, "Merrell pulled his own handgun, pointed it at the robber and ordered him to put down his weapon."

The newspaper noted that Officer Jason Bockting, in his documentation of the incident, said when the suspect seemed to hesitate, "Merrell racked the slide on his gun to load a round in the chamber."

At that point, the report said, "the suspect placed his gun and a bag of cash on the counter, dropping some of the money … the suspect removed his mask and lay on the floor."

Merrill, meanwhile, held the suspect at gunpoint until officers arrived and took him away in handcuffs.

Police reported Merrell had a valid permit to carry the handgun, and they recovered an unloaded .380-caliber handgun and $779 cash from the suspect.

Police records show Dwain Smith, 19, was being held in the Marion County Jail on a bond of $30,000 on initial charges of robbery, criminal confinement, pointing a firearm, battery and carrying a handgun without a license.

As my daughter would say, "Put that in your juice box and suck it!"

2007-12-27T11:11:00.000-05:00

Romney numbers among the zealots/assclowns who believe that the United States was founded on christianity. Him and his kind need muzzled, less their rabid ignorance be spread even further than it already has. David Ignatius did a damned fine write up in today's WaPo, for those of you who do not yet have a membership(it's free) there, I have provided the full text below.

Link to the article at the Washington Post

Wisdom From The Founding Rationalists
What Jefferson and Adams Might Tell Mitt Romney

A bracing text for this Christmas week is the famous correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Their letters are a reminder that the Founders were men of the Enlightenment -- supreme rationalists who would have found the religiosity of much of our modern political life quite abhorrent.

It's not that these men didn't have religious beliefs: They were, to their deaths, passionate seekers of truth, metaphysical as well as physical. It's that their beliefs didn't fit into pious cubbyholes. Indeed, the deist Jefferson took a pair of scissors to the New Testament to create his "Jefferson Bible," or, formally, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which cut out the parts he regarded as supernatural or misinterpreted by the Gospel writers.

It's useful to examine the musings of these American rationalists in this political season when religion has been a prominent topic. Politicians and commentators have suggested that for the Founders, the very idea of freedom was God-given -- or, as the Declaration of Independence puts it, that human beings are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Yet this famous passage begins with a distillation of the Enlightenment's celebration of human reason: "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

My Christmastime reading of the Adams-Jefferson letters was prompted by this year's most interesting political speech but one I also found troubling -- Mitt Romney's Dec. 6 speech on "Faith in America." It was a fine evocation of our twin heritage of religion and religious freedom, until he got to this ritual denunciation of the bogeymen known as secularists. "They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America -- the religion of secularism."

Anyone who reads Adams and Jefferson -- or for that matter, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton or other voices of the American Enlightenment -- can make their own judgment about what the Founders would say about Romney's broadside against secularism. My guess is that their response would be something like: "That is bunkum, sir."

Many of the Founders liked to speak of the "God of Nature," notes Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Oregon. Adams used this term in a June 20, 1815, letter to Jefferson: "The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by His own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?" Adams mistrusted priests and kings, but he was also skeptical of the revolutionary philosophers who had overthrown them in France. He spent his life looking for a middle ground.

Jefferson spoke in a May 5, 1817, letter of "true religion" as based on "moral precepts, innate in man," and the "sublime doctrine of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of Nazareth." He contrasted this true faith with "sectarian dogmas." If the sectarian version prevailed, warned Jefferson, then he might agree with Adams's speculation that "this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it."

Before leaving these restless men and their ruminations on man and God in what one editor of the letters called "an epistolary duet," let us recall this caustic Nov. 4, 1816, missive from Adams: "We have now, it seems, a national Bible Society, to propagate King James's Bible through all nations. Would it not be better to apply these pious subscriptions to purify Christendom from the corruptions of Christianity than to propagate those corruptions in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America?"

The Founders certainly believed in God, but for most of them, their faith was a deeply private matter, as Jefferson put it in a Jan. 11, 1817, letter, a subject "known to my God and myself alone." Indeed, they found loud, public displays of religiosity a profanation of this inner and spiritual practice of religion. Adams, the more conventionally "religious" of the two, insisted in a Sept. 14, 1813, letter that there is "but one being who can understand the universe, and that it is not only vain but wicked for insects to pretend to comprehend it."

One theme in this year's political campaign has been whether the United States will move from the faith-based policies the Bush administration has celebrated to a more rationalist and secular approach. In this debate, religious conservatives like to stress their connection to the Founders and to the republic's birth as "one nation under God." But a rereading of the Adams-Jefferson letters is a reminder that in this debate, the Founders -- as men of the Enlightenment -- would surely have sided with the party of Reason.

Go get yourselves a WaPo membership.

They hate our freedom!

2007-12-21T18:48:00.000-05:00

Christmas in Iran.

Yep, you heard me correctly. Those evil Muslims are at their old tricks of tolerance and friendly celebration, again. What ever shall we do?

Keep drinking that Kool-Aide you fascist loving fucks, and keep trying to sell the war on Iran to those that will listen.

As for the rest of us... Happy Holidays!!

Hey Ohio!! Corrupt much?

2007-12-16T12:33:00.001-05:00

Link to NYT Article. Posted below, for those of you who are not registered at NYT.

CINCINNATI — All five voting systems used in Ohio, a state whose electoral votes narrowly swung two elections toward President Bush, have critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election, a report commissioned by the state’s top elections official has found.

“It was worse than I anticipated,” the official, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, said of the report. “I had hoped that perhaps one system would test superior to the others.”

At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote counts into machines. At boards of election, they were able to introduce malignant software into servers.

Ms. Brunner proposed replacing all of the state’s voting machines, including the touch-screen ones used in more than 50 of Ohio’s 88 counties. She wants all counties to use optical scan machines that read and electronically record paper ballots that are filled in manually by voters.

She called for legislation and financing to be in place by April so the new machines can be used in the presidential election next November. She said she could not estimate the cost of the changes.

Florida, another swing state with a history of voting problems, is also scrapping touch-screen machines and switching to optical scan ones for the election. Such systems have gained favor because experts say they are more reliable than others and, unlike most touch screens, they provide a paper trail for recounts.

Ms. Brunner, a Democrat, succeeded J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who came under fire for simultaneously overseeing the 2004 election and serving as co-chairman of President Bush’s re-election campaign in Ohio.

She ordered the study as part of a pledge to overhaul voting after problems made headlines for hours-long lines in the 2000 and 2004 elections and a scandal in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, that led to the convictions of two elections workers on charges of rigging recounts. Ms. Brunner’s office temporarily seized control of that county’s board of elections.

The study released Friday found that voting machines and central servers made by Elections Systems and Software; Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold; and Hart InterCivic; were easily corrupted.

Chris Riggall, a Premier spokesman, said hardware and software problems had been corrected in his company’s new products, which will be available for installation in 2008.

“It is important to note,” he said, “that there has not been a single documented case of a successful attack against an electronic voting system, in Ohio or anywhere in the United States.”

Ken Fields, a spokesman for Election Systems and Software, said his company strongly disagreed with some of the report’s findings. “We can also tell you that our 35 years in the field of elections has demonstrated that Election Systems and Software voting technology is accurate, reliable and secure,” he said.

The $1.9 million federally financed study assembled corporate and academic teams to conduct parallel assessments. A bipartisan group of 12 election board directors and deputy directors acted as advisers.

The academic team, made up of faculty members and students from Cleveland State University, Pennsylvania State, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Pennsylvania, said systemic change was needed. “All of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election,” the team wrote.

In addition to switching machines, Ms. Brunner recommended eliminating polling stations that are used for fewer than five precincts as a cost-cutting measure, and introducing early voting 15 days before Election Day.

Soon, I'll be able to say that I told you so.

2007-12-14T23:50:00.000-05:00

I've been screaming about the Saudi complicity for years to anyone who would stand still long enough.

The following article was lifted from George Washington's Blog

Co-Chair of Congressional 9/11 Inquiry and Former Head of Senate Intelligence Committee Confirms White House Cover Up

The Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, revealed that the White House refused to let the 9/11 inquiry interview one of the most important witnesses imaginable:

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence that might have linked Saudi Arabia to the Sept. 11 hijackers.

* * *

The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

In his book "Intelligence Matters," Mr. Graham, the co-chairman of the Congressional inquiry with Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, said an F.B.I. official wrote them in November 2002 and said "the administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source.'' On Tuesday, Mr. Graham called the letter "a smoking gun" and said, "The reason for this cover-up goes right to the White House."

This isn't some fresh-face kid talking. This is a consummate insider: the former head of senate intelligence and co-chair of the congressional 9/11 inquiry.

If the White House refused to allow an interview of a government informant who was landlord to two of the hijackers -- one of the most valuable leads it could possibly pursue -- what other investigations did it spike? And if the White House killed an investigation to, allegedly, protect its Saudi friends, how much more motivated would the White House have been to kill investigations into areas which implicated elements of the U.S. government itself?

You have got to be fucking kidding me!!!!

2007-12-13T16:50:00.000-05:00

I'm really not sure exactly how pissed off I am right at this moment. These cocksuckers have blatantly violated the Constitution of the United States of America, and almost by unanimous vote.

So, I'm curious as to how this works out. If I protest this unbelievably ridiculous bullshit am I a terrorist? Who the fuck needs the Congress of the United States to hold their fucking cock-jacking hand and reassure them that fucking Christmas and Christianity are important enough to have legislation enacted?

What am I going on about?

HR 847

Please allow me to refer you to the very piece of paper that this fucking country was founded upon. It's not far down the page. It's only the First Fucking Amendment.

Read the following very slowly so that it has the fullest of opportunities to sink in:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Just as an aside. This vote basically says, "FUCK YOU, YOU NON CHRISTIAN FUCKS!!" to every single person of a faith that is not christianity. While I don't have a particular dog in the "GOD WARS", I am a United States citizen and the shit just hit the fan.

I may touch upon this again. I have to go and brush my teeth, as I just threw up in my mouth.

Obama sounds what should be the death knell of his public/political career.

2007-12-12T23:01:00.000-05:00

Remember that "Thought Crime" legislation that I wrote about not too long ago? If not, scroll down and educate yourself.

Barack Obama supports this legislation, and this fact alone should end his political aspirations. We have had enough fascist legislation foisted upon us in the last eight years; we do not need any more. This truly sickens me, and I hope that you will take up the torch of liberty and engage in this battle as well.

Obama to Support Homegrown Terrorism Bill

By Jessica Lee, The Indypendent

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama says that he will support the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (S. 1959). According to the automatic email responses constituents are receiving from his office, Obama appears to be straddling the fence between preserving civil liberties and being tough on terrorism.

“The American people understand that new threats require flexible responses to keep them safe. They also insist that our responses to threats respect the constitution and do not violate the basic tenets of our democracy,” Obama’s email said. Several people who have written to Obama have posted his response on various blogs, including “Justin” who’s personal blog was picked up on diggs.com.

“I wrote Senator Obama (my senator from Illinois) about this act, which is now in a committee of his (the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs). I asked that he read the bill (not to insult his intelligence, but after the Patriot Act it appears this is a necessary request for most senators), and that he recognize the dire consequences that could result from its vague language,” Justin wrote Dec. 6 below the post of Obama’s email. “He’s quite eloquent, you’ve got to give him that. This act ‘includes provisions prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts from violating civil rights and civil liberties of U.S. citizens.’ Didn’t we used to have something like that? What was it called? Oh right… The Constitution.”

The House version of the bill, H.R. 1955, passed Oct. 23 by a vote of 404-6 under the “suspension of the rules,” a provision that is available to quickly pass bills considered “non-controversial.”

Obama is on the 17-member Senate Committee for Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where S. 1959 was introduced by Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) Aug. 2. “I will keep your important comments in mind as I work with my colleagues on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. I will work to ensure that this legislation helps to achieve our domestic security objectives while protecting civil liberties and constitutional rights,” Obama stated in his email to Justin.

Many scholars, historians and civil liberties experts say they fear that the proposed bill will set the stage for future criminal legislation that be used against U.S.-based groups engaged in legal but unpopular political activism, ranging from political Islamists to animal-rights and environmental campaigners to radical right-wing organizations.

“This bill fits the pattern we are seeing coming out of Congress – both Republican and Democratic – of a continued campaign of fear, which gets into heads of Americans that we now need to start criminalizing ideology,” said Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. He said he is very concerned about the bill’s vague definitions of “violent radicalization,” “homegrown terrorism,” and the terms within the definitions including “extremist belief system,” “violence” and “force.”

“What is an extremist belief system? Who defines this?” Queral questioned. “Planes flying into the World Trade Center is an extremist belief, but are anti-abortion activists extremists? Are individuals who liberate mink extremists? These are broad definitions that encompass so much, which need to rather be very narrowly tailored. It is criminalizing thought and ideology, rather than criminal activity.”

Jules Boykoff, an assistant professor of politics and government at Pacific University and author of Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States, told The Indypendent said he is concerned about how the government is broadening the definition of terrorism.

“Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act is a law that created a new brand of terrorists, the ‘domestic terrorist.’ Under this definition, the civil rights work Martin Luther King, Jr. did could have been construed as an act of ‘domestic terrorism,” Boykoff said.

In a Nov. 30 Common Dreams article, ‘Homegrown’ Suppression of Dissent,’ Boykoff provided a historical-based critique of who could be included under the umbrella definition of terrorism. “Even a cursory look backward through U.S. history reveals heroic figures who could be dubbed ‘violent radicals’ or ‘homegrown terrorists’ under the proposed bill, from U.S. revolutionaries like Sam Adams to gun-toting slavery abolitionists like John Brown to militant civil-rights organizers like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Kamau Franklin, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), also expressed concern that H.R. 1955/S. 1959 will foster a legislative momentum on criminalizing a broad range of dissident voices. “The Commission’s broad mandate can lead to the ability to turn civil disobedience, a form of protest that is centuries old, into a terrorist act,” he said. “My biggest fear is that they [the commission] will call for some new criminal penalties and federal crimes,” says Franklin. “Activists are nervous about how the broad definitions could be used for criminalizing civil disobedience and squashing the momentum of the left.”

“It’s possible that someone who would have been charged with disorderly conduct or obstruction of governmental administration may soon be charged with a federal terrorist statute,” Franklin said.

Many activists and civil liberties advocates have expressed concern across the nation on blogs and radio shows about how the bill’s use of vaguely defined terms can be seen within a historical pattern of sweeping government repression of dissenting voices throughout the history of the United States where citizens have been targeted for their political beliefs. Two generations of Americans experienced first hand the two “Red Scares” (1917-1920 and 1940-50s) and the FBI’s secret Counter Intelligence Program, nicknamed COINTELPRO, which enabled the FBI to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” domestic protest groups for “subversive activities” and “potential crimes.”

To many, the similarities between COINTELPRO and the bill are unsettling. The proposed legislation calls for the National Commission to “examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism and ideologically based violence in the United States” in order to develop policy for “prevention, disruption and mitigation.” This investigation is needed, according to stated Congressional findings, due to possible threats to national security.

The secret program continued until it was discovered COINTELPRO was investigated by a U.S. Senate select committee on intelligence activities (commonly known as the Church Committee) which convened in 1975. The Church Committee found that from 1956 to 1971, “the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”

In the last 30 years, significant evidence has surfaced about how the FBI and local law enforcement disrupted non-violent social and political movements, even “neutralizing” individuals through target assassinations. The secret program was vast, with agents monitoring and agitating people involved in the “New Left,” including anti-Vietnam War efforts, the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the American Indian Movement, Puerto Rican independence groups, popular musicians and counter-cultural and revolutionary independent newspapers.

OTHER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE VIEWS ON THE BILL

Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said that he believes the proposed bill is unconstitutional.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters in New York City Nov. 29, Kucinich took several questions from the audience, including my question asking why he voted against the bill. Kucinich was one of only six representatives to oppose the bill on Oct. 23.

“If you understand what his bill does, it really sets the stage for further criminalization of protest,” Kucinich said. “This is the way our democracy little, by little, by little, is being stripped away from us. This bill, I believe, is a clear violation of the first amendment.”

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was one of the 22 House members not present for the vote.

A small demonstration against S. 1959 took place outside Senator Hillary Clinton’s office in New York City Dec. 10. Her office did not return an Indypendent’s call for comment.

–

Read Jessica Lee’s Nov. 16 article on HR 1955:

“Bringing the War on Terrorism Home: Congress Considers How to ‘Disrupt’ Radical Movements in the United States.”

Blog Update Dec. 2 — Kucinich Opposes H.R. 1955

Blog Update Nov. 27 — Opposition to the Bill and how the Legislation would Target the Internet

Read the proposed Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act:

H.R. 1955

S. 1959

This article was taken from The Indypendent

I have published this information elsewhere. Think that your state is different?

2007-12-12T14:02:00.000-05:00

When you call your representatives and urge them to represent your beliefs, wants, and dreams, are you getting what you ask for, or are you getting what you deserve for not demanding proper performance from those that work for US?

Take a four minute rollercoaster ride of how your legislators and, as the example, the Texas legislation represents you.

Call me the Grinch, call me Scrooge, but don't say that I didn't tell you.

2007-12-12T13:21:00.000-05:00

If you're running out and spending all of your earnings/savings on iPhones and every other gadget being hawked this holiday season, you're setting yourself up for some serious hurt. If you didn't read my previous post on the recession that you're not aware of. I suggest that you pay very close attention to this one. Keep your cards close to your chest and keep your money in your wallets. Do you ever stop to consider why you don't read/hear these types of stories in the American press? Believe me when I say that it is not going to be easier on you if you ignore the issue. Turning a blind eye will not save you from the avalanche of issues born of a trillions dollar debt and the fact that the world is refusing to do business in US currency.

Morgan Stanley issues full US recession alert

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
Last Updated: 1:24am GMT 11/12/2007

Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy, warning of a sharp slowdown in business investment and a "perfect storm" for consumers as the housing slump spreads.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke will be hoping he can keep the US economy from recession

In a report "Recession Coming" released today, the bank's US team said the credit crunch had started to inflict serious damage on US companies.

"Slipping sales and tightening credit are pushing companies into liquidation mode, especially in motor vehicles," it said.

"Three-month dollar Libor spreads have jumped by 60 to 80 basis points over the last month. High yield spreads have widened even more significantly. The absolute cost of borrowing is higher than in June."

"As delinquencies and defaults soar, lenders are tightening credit for commercial, credit card and auto lending, as well as for all mortgage borrowers," said the report, written by the bank's chief US economist Dick Berner. He said the foreclosure rate on residential mortgages had reached a 19-year high of 5.59pc in the third quarter while the glut of unsold properties would lead to a 40pc crash in housing construction.
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"We think overall housing starts will run below one million units in each of the next two years -- a level not seen in the history of the modern data since 1959," he said.

Although the US job market has apparently held up well, an average monthly fall of 138,000 in the number of self-employed workers over the last quarter suggests it may now be buckling. "Consumers face what could be a perfect storm," said Mr Berner.

The partial freeze on subprime mortgage rates announced last week by US treasury secretary Hank Paulson may help cushion the blow for some banks, but it could equally backfire by adding a "risk premium" that drives even more lenders out of the mortgage market.

Like Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers, the bank no longer believes Asia and Europe will come to the rescue as America slows.

It has slashed its 2008 growth forecast for Japan from 1.9pc to 0.9pc, and warned that credit stress will weigh heavily on the eurozone.

Mr Berner said US demand is likely to contract by 1pc each quarter for the first nine months of 2008, but the picture could be far worse if the Federal Reserve fails to slash rates fast enough. It is betting on a quarter point cut this week, with three more cuts by the middle of next year. "We expect the Fed to insure against the worst outcome," he said.

Morgan Stanley is the first major Wall Street bank to warn that it is may now be too late to stop a recession, though most have shifted to an ultra-cautious stance in recent weeks.

The bank at first treated the August crunch as a "mid-cycle correction", much like the financial storm after Russia's default in 1998. But the collapse of the US commercial paper market has now continued for seventeen weeks, suggesting a "fundamental deleveraging of the banking system."

Mr Berner -- known at Morgan Stanley as the "resident bull" -- is one of the most closely watched analysts on Wall Street. While he began to turn bearish last April as the credit markets turned nasty, the latest report is written in tones that may is rattle the fast-diminishing band of optimists.

How bad is it when Iran starts refusing US dollars for oil? What currency are we having to convert to, at a higher rate, in order to pay for our oil imports? Euros, that's what.

I advise you to get a Plum RAZR from Sprint for $.99 and save the other $499.99 for keeping you house together. It really is time to reel in the spending.

HEY, NATHAN GALE!!!! FUCK YOU!!!!

2007-12-08T11:34:00.000-05:00

You should have just ate your fucking gun and left the rest of us the fuck alone, YOU FUCK!

5 times?

Also, not to ever be forgotten:

Nathan Bray of Columbus
Erin Halk of northwest Columbus
Jeff "Mayhem" Thompson of Texas

Hey!! Shut Up!! Pay Your Respects!!

2007-11-30T17:10:00.000-05:00

Iconic Daredevil Evel Knievel Dies at 69

By MITCH STACY
The Associated Press
Friday, November 30, 2007; 5:01 PM

CLEARWATER, Fla. -- Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

Knievel's death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.

Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.

Longtime friend and promoter Billy Rundel said Knievel had trouble breathing at his Clearwater condominium and died before an ambulance could get him to a hospital.

"It's been coming for years, but you just don't expect it. Superman just doesn't die, right?" Rundel said.

Immortalized in the Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil," Knievel was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.

Though Knievel dropped off the pop culture radar in the '80s, the image of the high-flying motorcyclist clad in patriotic, star-studded colors was never erased from public consciousness. He always had fans and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years.

His death came just two days after it was announced that he and rapper Kanye West had settled a federal lawsuit over the use of Knievel's trademarked image in a popular West music video.

Knievel made a good living selling his autographs and endorsing products. Thousands came to Butte, Mont., every year as his legend was celebrated during the "Evel Knievel Days" festival, which Rundel organizes.

"They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives," Knievel said. "People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner."

For the tall, thin daredevil, the limelight was always comfortable, the gab glib. To Knievel, there always were mountains to climb, feats to conquer.

"No king or prince has lived a better life," he said in a May 2006 interview with The Associated Press. "You're looking at a guy who's really done it all. And there are things I wish I had done better, not only for me but for the ones I loved."

He had a knack for outrageous yarns: "Made $60 million, spent 61. ...Lost $250,000 at blackjack once. ... Had $3 million in the bank, though."

He began his daredevil career in 1965 when he formed a troupe called Evel Knievel's Motorcycle Daredevils, a touring show in which he performed stunts such as riding through fire walls, jumping over live rattlesnakes and mountain lions and being towed at 200 mph behind dragster race cars.

In 1966 he began touring alone, barnstorming the West and doing everything from driving the trucks, erecting the ramps and promoting the shows. In the beginning he charged $500 for a jump over two cars parked between ramps.

He steadily increased the length of the jumps until, on New Year's Day 1968, he was nearly killed when he jumped 151 feet across the fountains in front of Caesar's Palace. He cleared the fountains but the crash landing put him in the hospital in a coma for a month.

His son, Robbie, successfully completed the same jump in April 1989.

In the years after the Caesar's crash, the fee for Evel's performances increased to $1 million for his jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London _ the crash landing broke his pelvis _ to more than $6 million for the Sept. 8, 1974, attempt to clear the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in a rocket-powered "Skycycle." The money came from ticket sales, paid sponsors and ABC's "Wide World of Sports."

The parachute malfunctioned and deployed after takeoff. Strong winds blew the cycle into the canyon, landing him close to the swirling river below.

On Oct. 25, 1975, he jumped 14 Greyhound buses at Kings Island in Ohio.

Knievel decided to retire after a jump in the winter of 1976 in which he was again seriously injured. He suffered a concussion and broke both arms in an attempt to jump a tank full of live sharks in the Chicago Amphitheater. He continued to do smaller exhibitions around the country with his son, Robbie.

Many of his records have been broken by daredevil motorcyclist Bubba Blackwell.

Knievel also dabbled in movies and TV, starring as himself in "Viva Knievel" and with Lindsay Wagner in an episode of the 1980s TV series "Bionic Woman." George Hamilton and Sam Elliott each played Knievel in movies about his life.

Evel Knievel toys accounted for more than $300 million in sales for Ideal and other companies in the 1970s and '80s.

Born Robert Craig Knievel in the copper mining town of Butte on Oct. 17, 1938, Knievel was raised by his grandparents. He traced his career choice back to the time he saw Joey Chitwood's Auto Daredevil Show at age 8.

Outstanding in track and field, ski jumping and ice hockey at Butte High School, he went on to win the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men's ski jumping championship in 1957 and played with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959.

He also formed the Butte Bombers semiprofessional hockey team, acting as owner, manager, coach and player.

Knievel also worked in the Montana copper mines, served in the Army, ran his own hunting guide service, sold insurance and ran Honda motorcycle dealerships. As a motorcycle dealer, he drummed up business by offering $100 off the price of a motorcycle to customers who could beat him at arm wrestling.

At various times and in different interviews, Knievel claimed to have been a swindler, a card thief, a safe cracker, a holdup man.

Evel Knievel married hometown girlfriend, Linda Joan Bork, in 1959. They separated in the early 1990s. They had four children, Kelly, Robbie, Tracey and Alicia.

Robbie Knievel followed in his father's footsteps as a daredevil, jumping a moving locomotive in a 200-foot, ramp-to-ramp motorcycle stunt on live television in 2000. He also jumped a 200-foot-wide chasm of the Grand Canyon.

Knievel lived with his longtime partner, Krystal Kennedy-Knievel, splitting his time between their Clearwater condo and Butte. They married in 1999 and divorced a few years later but remained together. Knievel had 10 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

More info on the annexation of Iraq.

2007-11-30T10:16:00.000-05:00

This is a continuation of my previous post. This information is to aid you in understanding that we are now in an "official" occupation and have no intent upon leaving. Who are you going to tell?

Follow this link to the original post, and other pissed off information from Little Country Lost

President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a deal on Monday arranging for permanent bases and “investment opportunities” for the Bush Administration in Iraq. In return, Nouri al-Maliki and his government will get protection from the United States military against any threats to Maliki’s power (at least until Bush decides to renege on the deal). The Bush Administration is calling this arrangement an “enduring relationship with a democratic Iraq”. While this imperial arrangement is the exact opposite of what the American taxpayers are demanding, this is a victory for the Bush Administration, which has been quite clear that its intention is to keep our military in Iraq.

In reality, this deal is a treaty between President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki. However, because President Bush decided not to call it a treaty and instead a “Declaration of Principles for Friendship and Cooperation”, the Bush Administration is going to use those semantics to circumvent Senate approval.

The result of this not-a-treaty, while it may not happen right away, is that the shit shall soon hit the fan. First, this deal is a slap in the face to Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shi’ite leader of the Mahdi Army. At the end of August, Moqtada al-Sadr called for a six-month Mahdi Army ceasefire, partially to rehabilitate his army and partially to ensure that he is viewed as a legitimate leader in Iraq. Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, prior to the ceasefire, had been violently protesting the Shi’ite Maliki government, which al-Sadr considers to be too cozy with President Bush, and the possibility of a permanent presence of United States forces in Iraq. A political agreement that arranges for permanent US military bases, allows the pillaging of Iraqi wealth by American corporations, and protects the Maliki government from other groups that would want to be a part of the government, like Moqtada al-Sadr and his followers, is a development that will not make Moqtada al-Sadr a happy camper.

Along with pitting Shi’ite against Shi’ite once again by screwing Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, the Bush Administration’s “Declaration of Principles for Friendship and Cooperation” will also piss off the Sunnis. The political reconciliation that the Bush Administration told us American and Iraqi suckers the “surge” was designed to create was a deal which would bring the Sunnis back into the government. Instead, in typical Bush Administration fashion, they doubled-down on Prime Minister Maliki, vowing to protect him with violence if and when needed. The Sunnis have been effectively eliminated from the government and will be left only with violence to further their interests once again.

Basically, the last three months of semi-good news from Iraq are just the calm before the storm. And our troops are sitting on the levees. This might be a decision that is looked back upon as being as devastating as when the Bush Administration disbanded the Iraqi army after the initial invasion. It has the potential to be way worse. The most devastating part is that it didn’t have to be this way. Both Sunnis and Shi’ites were cooperating. That’s all over now.

The question we need to be asking ourselves is what goal could the Bush Administration have that this treaty would help facilitate and why would that be their goal? While it is the complete opposite of what is in the best interest of the American people, the Bush Administration’s goal seems to be a larger, more permanent war.

But why would they want that?

One reason is that a full blown war, that engulfs the entire Middle East and the kills a bunch of United States troops, would be a big enough shock to allow the President to claim further and more extreme executive powers, like the ones laid out in NSPD-51, and possibly allow the Bush Administration to claim that it, or at least its Republican co-conspirators, must stay in power for our own safety, just as was done by President Musharraf in Pakistan. At the same time, the Bush Administration and its partners would have a huge distraction which would allow it to further privatize the commons, making heinous amounts of money for the privileged few that have benefited so greatly from the Milton Friedman inspired privatization bonanza that has charged forward at full speed during the last 7 years.

Sound impossible? Just look the policies implemented by some of the same exact people who make up the Bush Administration and the Republican party in other countries around the world during the last few decades. Since the 1970’s, democracies were destroyed in places such as Chile, Argentina, Poland, Russia, and others. In all these countries, while obviously not taking the same exact courses, a functioning form of democracy was transformed, with the encouragement and/or assistance of the United States, in order for unfettered “free-trade”, or privatization, to thrive.

Privatization policies naturally concentrate huge amounts of money into the few hands that own and operate the gigantic corporations which are able to swallow up all other businesses and exploit their workers when regulations disappear. In effect, privatization policies have severe negative impacts on the lives of the vast majority of a country’s citizens, due to disappearing jobs, wages, benefits, and government services, and therefore must be implemented quickly and while the public is in a state of shock. As told by Milton Friedman, the privatization prophet himself, "Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change." It was military coups that shocked Chile, Argentina, and Pakistan, paving the way for their dictatorships. Economic shock and violence took democracy out of Poland and Russia. After the shocks occurred and the economies transformed, huge profits were reaped by those who invested in the misery of these countries, much of that money flowing to the filthy rich who currently control our very own United States government. Iraq is the country that most vividly displays the disastrous effects of war-generated privatization on the daily lives of citizens (to have these patterns laid out in brilliant detail, you simply must read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein).

The difference now is that the Bush Administration is going for the grand prize – milking the United States of America itself, which at one time, before he took office, was the richest country in the world. The United States got its first shock on 9/11. In the aftermath, the American public willingly went along with the Patriot Act, two occupations of Middle Eastern countries based on little evidence, our government torturing innocent people, and the Military Commissions Act, which voided habeas corpus, one of our most basic rights. We also allowed our military to be broken and replaced by private “contractors”, allowed our media to be consolidated to the point that it is now controlled by only six companies, and allowed the land where poor people used to live in Louisiana to be sold off to private developers in the wake of a hurricane, just to name a few of the most egregious examples of how the Bush Administration used our collective shock to quickly push through policies we would never otherwise authorize. The results have been disastrous. Thousands of us have died and tens of thousands of us have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gas prices have soared and the implementation of policies that might make it possible for Americans to use less gas have been effectively shut down. The dollar has weakened by 30% against the Euro since the Bush Administration took office, making our savings worth significantly less. Health care is too expensive for many of us to afford. People who can no longer afford their mortgages are being thrown out on the street. Unfortunately, I could go on.

The thing about shock though, is that it is a temporary state, and the United States citizenry seems to be shaking it off. Unless we believe that the Bush Administration is done, we must be prepared to be shocked again.

It’s all about tricking Americans into going along with the Bush Administration’s plans. The Bush Administration, after signing their dirty deal with Prime Minister Maliki, told the press that they will be focusing on “achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made.” Not actually making progress, but fooling us into thinking they have, while they pursue their real goals. We may not know the fine details of those goals, but history seems to repeat itself. And I think we know enough of the big picture to know the Bush Administration agenda has got to be stopped.

At the very least, even if privatization, poverty, and treason don’t concern you, it should be crystal clear, in the wake of President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki's deal, that the Iraq war will continue as long as the Bush Administration is in power. Trying to cut off funding, or passing a bill requiring withdrawal, is just a shell game. To end the war, we must end the Bush Administration. Impeachment must happen. It’s the only weapon we have to use against the United States taxpayer’s real enemy, which is not brown people in the Middle East, but is instead the treasonous regime that started this phony “war on terror” in the first place. The stakes are too high, and we better use our weapon quick if we don’t want our 157,000 troops and God only knows how many contractors all coming home in body bags when the Iraqis who are not part of the Maliki government start violently fighting the occupiers of their country once again.

Someone once told me that I was full of shit for...

2007-11-28T21:27:00.001-05:00

saying that it was an occupation; saying that we were building bases there; saying that we weren't coming home anytime within this quarter-century; saying that the Iraqi government is nothing close to autonomous, and that they don't make a move unless we tell them to.

I just laughed at them and said, "You'll see."

Well, this week, it was all laid bare.

"How's that possible, Wrench?" You say, as you stare at your screen.

Observe.

Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America

Encapsulated in this document - linked above - is the geo-political reality of what the Bush/Cheney administration and their neoconservative and Likudnik supporters had set out to achieve since the day George W. Bush became President of the US.

Far from ‘liberating’ the Iraqi people from the ‘yoke of tyranny’ for them to become a ‘free and democratic’ model to which all other Middle Eastern states could aspire, which was the propaganda and rhetoric used by the neoconservatives that convinced the Coalition of the Willing that Iraq was a ‘noble and righteous cause’, the declaration instead condemns Iraq to an endless occupation designed to enhance the power of the elite puppets of Iraq, and to ensure that Iraq’s resources remain firmly under American control and enriching American controlled oil companies. In short, the document is the instrument by which Iraq has effectively become a colony of the US.

There are several iniquitous points made in the document that betray the real intent of the administration but, in particular, point five of the second principle relating to ‘the economic sphere’ which says: “Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq,” and point eight which says: “Supporting the Republic of Iraq to obtain positive and preferential trading conditions for Iraq within the global marketplace including accession to the World Trade Organization and most favored nation status with the United States,” says it all.

Iraq’s puppet leaders have signed over Iraq to the US.

I don't make this shit up, people. This is the reality that your family members, neighbors, and co-workers either refuse to hear, understand, or accept.

Why do you think that Haliburton pulled all American stakes/properties and relocated to Dubai?

Happy Birthday, Jimi.

2007-11-27T20:40:00.001-05:00

Jimi Hendrix would have been 65, today.

Ladies and Gentlemen... My friend and yours,

2007-11-27T17:18:00.000-05:00

Henry Rollins.

And people ask me why I have a Black Flag tattoo on my right shoulder. HA!

So, it's recession time. And that's no shit.

2007-11-26T23:15:00.000-05:00

Why? Well, it could be that we've been in a recession for almost six months now, and that the feces has hit the oscillating air mover and you're just now finding out about it.

Insight? Yep.

Wall Street is betting on a recession.

Investors in stocks and bonds are paying prices that indicate they believe a snowballing housing crisis and worsening credit crunch will soon tip the U.S. economy into a recession, analysts said. Many economists, including leaders of the Federal Reserve, don't think things will get that bad, but some say the risk of a serious downturn has risen in recent weeks.

Investors were so eager to buy ultra-safe government bonds yesterday that they were willing to accept sharply lower interest rates. The rate on the 10-year Treasury bond fell to 3.84 percent from 4 percent Friday. The low rates indicate investors expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates aggressively in the coming year to ease the pain of recession.

Stocks are now down more than 10 percent from their peak in October. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index fell 2.3 percent yesterday, dropping the market to a level that Wall Street analysts say reflects an expectation that corporate profits will fall.

Taken together, those and other data indicate that financial markets have a decidedly negative prognosis for the economy. "They're saying the odds of a recession are pretty damn high," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial.

Follow this link for the rest of the article.

Time to dust off the "Way-Back" machine...

2007-11-25T14:30:00.001-05:00

Go with me now, back to 1994, when we were all doing something different, and Rudy wasn't really speaking loud enough for the whole world to hear. **WOOOOOOOSH!!*

Well, here we are. Let's walk over here for a minute and listen in. Think that you and Rudy Giuliani share the same views on freedom? Think again:

"What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

That's just a tasty morsel from this NYT article, on a news-stand in March 20, 1994.

You just let me know when you want to zip back to 2007 and kick 'ole Rudy in the sack. I'll leave the engine running.

Chuck Norris bashes the Constitution.

2007-11-23T23:14:00.000-05:00

It appears that the recent publicity that our boy Chuck has been getting has made him a fucking idiot. Any individual who endorses prayer in school and the integration of christianity into the government of the United States of America should be shown the door.

People, there is a reason that our Constitution, in the FIRST AMENDMENT, plainly states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That makes perfectly understandable sense to me. Watch the following and attempt to figure our just were good 'ole Chuck, FUCKED it up.

Our forefathers did not build the fucking country on the bible. Stop drinking the kool-aid Chuck.

Have you ever seen Chuck look so whacked out? What the fuck is he on?

I could go on, but you get the gist and I don't feel like wasting time on a has been who is attempting to continue a less than stellar career by jumping on the political band wagon.

Hey Chuck! The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You, YOU FUCK!

Sickened but not surprised.

2007-11-21T18:56:00.000-05:00

"Pssssst, hey young man... How would you like $30,000.00 to enlist for four years?"
"That's right, just sign right here and we'll get you in the war in as little as six months."

Fast forward to one year and one newly disabled soldier.

"Psssst, hey buddy... You aren't worth anything to us as a soldier anymore. You're disabled and cannot serve out your enlistment. Give us back our money."

Sound like a sick joke? Nope. It's a reality, folks.

Click me for the full KDKA article.

I am truly at a loss for words.

2007-11-21T10:22:00.000-05:00

Pay close attention, please. The following bit of information will either confuse you, infuriate you, make you throw up in your mouth, or all of the above.

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general

"hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

You may want to read that again. Yes, the man who supposes to be the President of the United States of Ameria said that Pervez Musharraf "truly is somebody who believes in democracy." No, there aren't two Musharrafs walking around. No, there was no overnight miracle or some shit. Musharraf has imposed martial law on "his" people. He is, in my opinion, and maybe yours, a tyrannical dictator.
,
We all possess the knowledge that Mr. Bush really is an idiot, but come on, it's hard enough for us to try to save face everyday without the least intelligent man ever to attempt speech, speaking on behalf of the American people. Do you people understand what martial law is? Why is there not a public outcry against Mr. Bush and these perverse statements. He really thinks this way. In Mr. Bush's feeble mind, martial law=democracy. I won't even go into the fact that the United States is not a democracy.

Here's the link to the full article: Click Me.

Why you should pay more attention to Judge Andrew Napolitano.

2007-11-20T06:43:00.000-05:00

The following Thomas J. DiLorenzo piece can be found at Lew Rockwell.com

After 9/11 the neocons who dominate the Republican Party commenced three separate wars: One in Afghanistan, another in Iraq, and the third against the civil liberties of the American people. As Judge Andrew Napolitano writes in his brilliant new book, A Nation of Sheep (p. xi):

[T]he Bush Administration has systematically attacked and diminished virtually every freedom and right guaranteed by the Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, the right to privacy, the right not to self incriminate, the right to counsel, the right to speedy trials, the right to fair trials, the right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment, even the right to be set free after acquittal! . . . . President Bush has broken laws he swore to uphold, and declined to enforce laws that he has himself signed into existence . . .

While the Republican Party (with the help of many Democrats) was waging this war on American freedom, its propagandists in the media endlessly repeated the nonsensical notion that the people who attacked America did so because "they hate our freedoms." In reality it is the neoconservatives who hate American freedom, as the above-mentioned "accomplishments" of theirs proves.

In A Nation of Sheep Napolitano gives us chapter and verse of how Americans have been neo-conned into acquiescing in such an attack on their own liberties. The book is the third in a trilogy, following Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks its Own Laws, and The Constitution in Exile. All three are required reading for Ron Paul Revolutionaries – and for anyone who wants to understand the meaning and significance of constitutional liberty in America, who its enemies are, and why they must be stopped.

All neocons play the Orwellian game of making pronouncements about the Constitution, pretending to be supportive of it, while actively supporting its destruction. They are especially fond of cloaking themselves in a few selected words of the founding fathers to give the impression that Washington, Jefferson, and Madison would somehow approve of their foreign policy imperialism. But consider this: At the heart of their phony constitutionalism lies the notion that, before the American Revolution, the founders said something like this to the King of England: "Your Majesty, all we ask is that you provide us with security and protect us from the French, the Spaniards, and any other hostile force. In return, we will gladly give up all of our personal liberties and the rights of Englishmen."

Of course, no such conversation ever took place. But this is exactly the philosophy of the neocon regime that rules America (and much of the rest of the world) today. As Judge Napolitano correctly points out, the slogan of the American Revolutionaries was "Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death," not "Give Me Security and I Will Gladly Give UP My Liberty."

To make things even creepier, the administration claims that its war on American liberty has as its purpose the protection of "the Homeland," a phrase that was never used by anyone else to describe America, and which is much more commonly associated with Nazi Germany than any other society.

There is no tradeoff between liberty and security, as Napolitano says. The notion that there is, is "a one-way trip into slavery." The only legitimate purpose of governmental provision of "security" is to secure our liberty, period. And this can only happen if there are enough "wolves" in society, defined as those who "challenge government regulations, reject government assistance, and demand that the government recognize and protect their natural [God-given] rights." Unfortunately, writes Napolitano, "the majority of Americans are sheep" who "stay in the herd and follow their shepherd without questioning where he is leading them."

If we look around the world, we find no precedents for the abolition of liberty leading to more security. It hasn’t worked for Israel in its struggles, nor did it work for England in its battles with the Irish Republican Army, says Napolitano.

In A Nation of Sheep Napolitano presents a long litany of the destruction of liberty that has occurred in just the past few years. The following is a sampling:

* Police departments routinely conduct random bag searches on buses and subways, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
* Government bureaucrats can now write their own search warrants, called "National Security Letters."
* If you want to go to say, Disneyworld, you are required to be fingerprinted, and your prints may end up in the files of the FBI
* Government now has the ability to acquire all financial information about your life, without your permission or knowledge.
* Peaceful protesters have been mass arrested.
* Artists have been arrested for writing such things as "Giuliani = Police State" and "God Bless America" on sidewalks (with erasable chalk).
* Government schools crack down on speech the state does not like, suspending students who utter it.
* Government officials can now search your home or office without notifying you.
* Persons served with "National Security Letters" are prohibited from telling anyone about it.
* Government is tracing email conversations through its "Carnivore" technology.
* The president has been given the authority to essentially declare himself dictator after declaring "a state of emergency" as a result of the "National Continuity Policy."
* The president has been given the ability to station military troops anywhere in America to "restore public order," reversing hundreds of years of constitutional restrictions on the use of the military on American citizens.
* The president believes he is allowed to simply ignore the Geneva Conventions.
* The government now has a "domestic surveillance program" that enables it to spy on Americans’ phone calls, e-mails, and all other electronic communications without a search warrant.
* Government surveillance cameras are everywhere (including 142 of them in the Greenwich Village and Soho neighborhoods of New York City alone).
* "Red light cameras have been placed in thousands of intersections, causing thousands of accidents as motorists speed up to avoid having the camera snap a picture of their license plates should they pass under a red light. If your license is photographed by one of these cameras, you have no right to confront your accuser since the "accuser" is a camera, and, you must prove your innocence and are not presumed innocent until proven guilty.
* Airport "security" has become a Gestapo-like nightmare that does nothing to make traveling any safer.
* The government can deny anyone the right to due process by declaring him an "enemy combatant."
* The Bush administration is guilty of torturing prisoners in violation of U.S. and international law.
* News about the Iraq War has been vigorously censored. All reporters must be "embedded" with the military, which then takes them on Potemkin Village tours.
* Some reporters who have had the courage to report on some of the items on this list have had their phones and emails wiretapped.
* Government scientists can turn on your cell phone remotely and without your knowledge and track your location.

To make matters worse, other countries have begun to copy some of these policies. This is bound to create even more resentment of Americans around the world.

The Great Perverter of the Constitution

A Nation of Sheep also gives the reader an historical perspective on governmental attacks on personal liberties. It started almost at the very beginning of the republic, as the Adams Administration used the Sedition Act to arrest numerous critics of the government. When Thomas Jefferson succeeded Adams he pardoned everyone who had been unjustly imprisoned by the Federalists. But, writes Napolitano, "the progress made by Jefferson receded once President Lincoln took office." He mentions Lincoln’s shutting down of the opposition press in the North, his illegal suspension of habeas corpus, and his censoring of telegraph communication. He also focuses on Lincoln’s deportation of Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham for speaking up against the Lincoln regime’s abuses of constitutional liberty.

Napolitano quotes the speech that Vallandigham made back home in Dayton, Ohio, on August 2, 1862, that eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment (without due process). "No matter how distasteful constitutions and laws may be, they must be obeyed," said Vallandigham. "I am opposed to all mobs, and opposed also . . . to violations of [the C]onstitution and law[s] by men in authority – public servants. The danger from usurpations and violations by them is fifty-fold greater than from any other quarter, because these violations and usurpations become clothed with [a] false semblance of authority."

Vallandigham "hit the nail on the head here," Napolitano correctly states. Lincoln, who is described by Napolitano as "The Great Perverter of the Constitution," responded with slick and deceiving language to say: "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, and not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert?"

Lincoln’s clever catch phrase led many to accept this particular act of tyranny (deporting Vallandigham), but the truth is, as Napolitano states, the "Constitution which is the sole source of all presidential power, gave him neither the right to ‘shoot a simple-minded soldier boy’ nor the right to impair in any way ‘the wily agitator’ using his First Amendment protected rights," as Vallandigham was doing.

Lincoln’s actions in the Vallandigham affair, writes Napolitano, were "a classic formulation of the argument against freedom, the argument that security and stability come at the expense of the laws and the freedoms that our Constitution was intended to guarantee. Those frightened by war and conflict . . . are, like Lincoln, dead wrong. When all our liberties are gone, there will be nothing left to protect."

In his concluding chapter Napolitano notes that, as of his writing, there were sixteen politicians competing nationally to replace President Bush. Sadly, "With the exception of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), in terms of fidelity to the Constitution, it does not matter which one of them wins. Except for Congressman Paul, they all love power for its own sake, believe that Big Government should redistribute wealth, regard the Constitution as a quaint obstacle, and would enforce or disregard laws as they saw fit . . ."

Judge Andrew Napolitano is an alpha male wolf in a nation of sheep. We can only hope that books such as this one will awaken enough sheep to assist in the defense of liberty before it is too late.

What is HR 1585? How does it affect you?

2007-11-16T14:50:00.001-05:00

New federal legislation shows the Bush administration has begun systematically putting in place authorization for the president to federalize the National Guard and use the U.S. military in domestic emergency situations.

A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (H.R. 1585) requires the secretary of defense to prepare and submit to Congress by March 1, 2008, and each subsequent March 1 a plan to coordinate the use of the National Guard and members of the Armed Forces on active duty when responding to natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters.

Section 1806 of H.R. 1585 requires the secretary of defense to prepare two versions of the plan, one using only members of the National Guard, and one using both members of the National Guard and members of the regular components of the armed services.

The section also requires the secretary of defense's plan to specify "Protocols for the Department of Defense, the National Guard Bureau, and the governors of the several states to carry out operations in coordination with each other and to ensure that governors and local communities are properly informed and remain in control in their respective states and communities."

WND currently is running a six-part series on NORAD-USNORTHCOM, reporting on exercise Vigilant Shield 2008 and observations WND made on site at Peterson Air Force base during the Joint Interagency Coordination Group command center operations during a real-time national training exercise.

In that series, WND reported that USNORTHCOM was created following the 9/11 terrorist attacks to be a military combatant command charged with protecting the homeland security of the mainland United States.

WND observed that the governors in Arizona and Oregon remained in control of the military responses during game-playing when "Radiological Dispersal Devices (RDDs)" were detonated at Sky Harbor in Phoenix and on the Steel Bridge in Portland as part of the Vigilant Shield 08 exercise scenario.

USNORTHCOM also worked under civilian direction when assisting California in the response to the recent outbreak of wildfires in Southern California.

According to a report posted on the USNORTHCOM website, "USNORTHCOM coordinated the use of three military aircraft to gather still images and infrared and full-motion video that fire ground commanders used to plan firefighting operations."

The USNORTHCOM report noted "California officials called directly to the aircraft crews and told them exactly what areas to map and what imagery to send to planners on the ground."

The report further stressed that USNORTHCOM was able to respond to requests from California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection within hours, compared to the week a civilian contractor required to provide the needed aerial photography.

USNORTHCOM also hosted an emergency database warehouse for the state of California, where all the gathered imagery was stored so it could be easily available to the participants in the firefighting operation.

The newly prepared National Response Framework currently posted on the Department of Homeland Security website states the states are sovereign entities such that "the Governor has the primary responsibility for the public safety and welfare of residents."

The National Response Framework also specifies, "If a state anticipates that its resources may become overwhelmed, each governor can request assistance from the Federal Government or from other states through mutual aid and assistance agreements such as the Emergency Management Assistance Compact."

The National Response Framework says the federal government's involvement is anticipated only when an incident exceeds state or local resources.

Under that outline, the federal government is a first responder only when incidents involve primary federal jurisdiction or authorities, for instance, on a military base or other federal facility.

Still, WND has reported National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51) and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (HSPD-20), signed in May, allow the president to declare a national emergency and take over the management of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments and agencies.

WND also has reported Section 1076 of the John Warner Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2007 grants the president the right to commandeer federal troops or state National Guard to use them domestically.

The language of Section 1076 appears to nullify the Posse Comitatus Act, in that the language allows the president to federalize the National Guard or use the U.S. military in a wide range of emergencies, including natural disasters, epidemics, or other public health emergencies, terrorist attacks, insurrections, or domestic violence, including conspiracies to commit domestic violence.

Critics are concerned that when legal infrastructure for the president to involve the military in a domestic emergency situation, or to federalize the National Guard, is in place, a president intent on a power grab could declare a national emergency under NSPD-51 or HSPD-20, and impose federal martial law, by-passing civilian control.

In an exclusive interview with NORAD-USNORTHCOM commander, Gen. Gene Renuart, separately published in WND today, WND posed these questions.

Renuart responded by emphasizing the importance of respecting the U.S. Constitution, including civilian control of the military.

He expressed caution that the military and USNORTHCOM in particular should be careful not to engage in legal or political questions involving presidential directives such as NSPD-51 and HSPD-20.

Renuart was also clear to affirm that, "Our involvement at USNORTHCOM would be at the specific direction of the secretary of defense, on orders from the president."

The answer implied that USNORTHCOM would respond to a direct order from the secretary of defense, on orders from the president, to become involved in a domestic emergency situation, without attempting to resolve thorny questions of civilian control that a president in a power grab might attempt to obviate.

WND observed nothing in the operation of NORAD-USNORTHCOM in Vigilant Shield 08 which would substantiate a charge that the Bush administration is preparing to utilize the military in domestic situations to supersede civilian control in a domestic emergency.

Yet, provisions such as Section 1806 of H.R. 1585 emphasize again the Bush administration determination to establish new ground in articulating a primary role for a federalized National Guard or the U.S. military in domestic emergency situations.

As was the case with NSPD-51 and HSPD-20, emergency situations are given a very inclusive definition in Section 1806 of H.R. 1585.

That language defines emergency national planning scenarios to include: "Nuclear detonation, biological attack, biological disease outbreak/pandemic flu, the plague, chemical attack-blister agent, chemical attack-toxic industrial chemicals, chemical attack-nerve agent, chemical attack-chlorine tank explosion, major hurricane, major earthquake, radiological attack – radiological dispersal device, explosives attack – bombing using improvised explosive device, biological attack-food contamination, biological attack – foreign animal disease and cyber attack," or "any other hazards identified in a national planning scenario developed by the Homeland Security Council."

On May 17, H.R. 1585 was passed in the House by 397-27, and it passed the Senate 92-5 on Oct. 1, 2007. The conference bill has not yet gone to President Bush for signature.

Support Ron Paul? You're a terrorist in cahoots with Al Qaeda.

2007-11-16T11:04:00.000-05:00

Have a candidate that scares the shit out of both sides of the aisle? Have a candidate that vows to uphold the Constitution and all it stands for? Well, CBS, FOX, and pretty much the rest of the MSM have labeled you and Dr. Paul an enemy of the state. Glenn Beck and his Marxist-talking-head-assclown, David Horowitz, say that Ron Paul supporters are all terrorists.

In the light of HR 1955, which nullifies the 1st Amendment and makes anyone who would speak out against the government on any issue, a domestic terrorist.

Remember the quote, "The terrorists attacked us because of our freedoms."? Do you now find it pretty damned ironic/sad that the government of the United States of America is doing everything within its power to remove our freedoms? Need some insight into what I'm talking about? Just scroll down and read until you get sick, and then come back and read some more. Being your Pepto® with you.

I know that this post is short and all, and I apologize, but there are so many things going on at this time, I am having to categorize it all in order to get my head around it and publish a full-on rant.

No, I'm not on strike.

2007-11-12T17:23:00.000-05:00

Just busy in other areas. Yeah, there's some things coming down on us that I'll hopefully touch upon later.

What to do when an entire federal agency pretends that it's Jayson Blair?

2007-10-27T18:20:00.000-04:00

If you don't know who Jayson Blair is, shame on you, and go Google his name.

I hate to keep making references to 1984, but damn man, the Ministry of Truth was in full swing this week. I'm not going to write at length about this, as I want you to follow the link to a wealth of information dealing with this issue.

In my opinion, what you watch on tv every day becomes more suspect. I'm glad that I don't watch television.

Maybe FEMA stands for "Federal Education Manipulation Agency"?

Follow this link to another link that links to a bunch of links that will make you think.

Oh what the hell, you may not click the link.

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. government's main disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a hastily called news conference on California's wildfires that no news organizations attended.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, still struggling to restore its image after the bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, issued the apology after The Washington Post published details of the Tuesday briefing.

"We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment," FEMA deputy administrator Harvey Johnson, who conducted the briefing, said in a statement. "Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received."

No actual reporter attended the news conference in person, agency spokesman Aaron Walker said.

A spokeswoman for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has authority over FEMA, called the incident "inexcusable and offensive to the secretary."

"We have made it clear that stunts such as this will not be tolerated or repeated," spokeswoman Laura Keehner said. She said the department was looking at the possibility of reprimanding those responsible.

The agency had called the briefing with about 15 minutes notice as federal officials headed for southern California to oversee and assist in firefighting and rescue efforts. Reporters were also given a telephone number to listen in on but could not ask questions.

But with no reporters on hand and an agency video camera providing a feed carried live by some television networks, FEMA press employees posed the questions for Johnson that included: "Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?"

According to Friday's Post account, which Walker confirmed, Johnson replied that he was "very happy with FEMA's response so far."

He also said the agency had the benefit of "good leadership" and other factors, "none of which were present at Katrina." Chertoff was head of the Homeland Security Department during Katrina.

FEMA's administrator during Katrina, Michael Brown, resigned amid widespread criticism over his handling of the disaster, despite U.S. President George W. Bush's initial declaration that he was doing a "heck of a job."

E-mails between Brown and his colleagues over the course of the storm revealed a preoccupation with his media image, including his declaration, "I am a fashion god."

FEMA is reviewing its press procedures and will make changes to ensure they are "straightforward and transparent," Johnson said on Friday.

Link to the original article.

Will you be here in seven years for me to urge you to take action again?

2007-10-26T19:08:00.000-04:00

Congress extents ban on Internet taxation for seven more years.

Though some wanted it to be abolished forever, at least we'll have a projected seven years. Hope you're here with me when the time comes again to take action.

At least we've secured this little piece of freedom.

Now all we have to do it make sure that the chairman of the FCC doesn't back-door us. More on that later.

Got 47 minutes for some insight?

2007-10-25T11:47:00.000-04:00

Thought Crime is now a reality, and I'm a home grown terrorist.

2007-10-25T09:20:00.000-04:00

You'll notice the lack of profanity in this post. I am attempting a new tack in my delivery and it may or may not hold. I'm not much for toning down or conforming, as you well know. And honestly, inside, I am screaming expletives like you would not believe, or maybe you would. I don't know that I have ever been as angry as I am right now.

H.R.1955 Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. This bill is one of the most blatant attacks against the Constitution yet and actually defines thought crimes as homegrown terrorism. If passed into law, it will also establish a commission and a Center of Excellence to study and defeat so called thought criminals. Unlike previous anti-terror legislation, this bill specifically targets the civilian population of the United States and uses vague language to define homegrown terrorism.

What's more sickening than anything else? This piece of legislation passed the house with 404 votes, on Tuesday, October 23, 2007. Don't believe that your representative voted for this? Remain seated and follow this link. There is little doubt that this bill is specifically targeting the growing patriot community that is demanding the restoration of the Constitution.

First let’s take a look at the definitions of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism as defined in Section 899A of the bill.

The definition of violent radicalization uses vague language to define this term of promoting any belief system that the government considers to be an extremist agenda. Since the bill doesn’t specifically define what an extremist belief system is, it is entirely up to the interpretation of the government. Considering how much the government has done to destroy the Constitution they could even define Ron Paul supporters as promoting an extremist belief system. Literally, the government according to this definition can define whatever they want as an extremist belief system. Essentially they have defined violent radicalization as thought crime. The definition as defined in the bill is shown below.

`(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.

The definition of homegrown terrorism uses equally vague language to further define thought crime. The bill includes the planned use of force or violence as homegrown terrorism which could be interpreted as thinking about using force or violence. Not only that but the definition is so vaguely defined, that petty crimes could even fall into the category of homegrown terrorism. The definition as defined in the bill is shown below.

`(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term `homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

Section 899B of the bill goes over the findings of Congress as it pertains to homegrown terrorism. Particularly alarming is that the bill mentions the Internet as a main source for terrorist propaganda. The bill even mentions streams in obvious reference to many of the patriot and pro-constitution Internet radio networks that have been formed. It also mentions that homegrown terrorists span all ages and races indicating that the Congress is stating that everyone is a potential terrorist. Even worse is that Congress states in their findings that they should look at draconian police states like Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom as models to defeat homegrown terrorists. Literally, these findings of Congress fall right in line with the growing patriot community.

The biggest joke of all is that this section also says that any measure to prevent violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism should not violate the constitutional rights of citizens. However, the definition of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism as they are defined in section 899A are themselves unconstitutional. The Constitution does not allow the government to arrest people for thought crimes, so any promises not to violate the constitutional rights of citizens are already broken by their own definitions.

`SEC. 899B. FINDINGS.

`The Congress finds the following:

`(1) The development and implementation of methods and processes that can be utilized to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States is critical to combating domestic terrorism.

`(2) The promotion of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence exists in the United States and poses a threat to homeland security.

`(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.

`(4) While the United States must continue its vigilant efforts to combat international terrorism, it must also strengthen efforts to combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists based and operating within the United States.

`(5) Understanding the motivational factors that lead to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence is a vital step toward eradicating these threats in the United States.

`(6) The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and local solutions.

`(7) Individuals prone to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence span all races, ethnicities, and religious beliefs, and individuals should not be targeted based solely on race, ethnicity, or religion.

`(8) Any measure taken to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism in the United States should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights and civil liberties of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.

`(9) Certain governments, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have significant experience with homegrown terrorism and the United States can benefit from lessons learned by those nations.

Section 899C calls for a commission on the prevention of violent radicalization and ideologically based violence. The commission will consist of ten members appointed by various individuals that hold different positions in government. Essentially, this is a commission that will examine and report on how they are going to deal with violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. So basically, the commission is being formed specifically on how to deal with thought criminals in the United States. The bill requires that the commission submit their final report 18 months following the commission’s first meeting as well as submit interim reports every 6 months leading up to the final report. Below is the bill’s defined purpose of the commission. Amazingly they even define one of the purposes of the commission to determine the causes of lone wolf violent radicalization.

(b) Purpose- The purposes of the Commission are the following:

`(1) Examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States, including United States connections to non-United States persons and networks, violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in prison, individual or `lone wolf' violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence, and other faces of the phenomena of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence that the Commission considers important.

`(2) Build upon and bring together the work of other entities and avoid unnecessary duplication, by reviewing the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of--

`(A) the Center of Excellence established or designated under section 899D, and other academic work, as appropriate;

`(B) Federal, State, local, or tribal studies of, reviews of, and experiences with violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence; and

`(C) foreign government studies of, reviews of, and experiences with violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence.

Section 899D of the bill establishes a Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States. Essentially, this will be a Department of Homeland Security affiliated institution that will study and determine how to defeat thought criminals.

Section 899E of the bill discusses how the government is going to defeat violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism through international cooperation. As stated in the findings section earlier in the legislation, they will unquestionably seek the advice of countries with draconian police states like the United Kingdom to determine how to deal with this growing threat of thought crime.

Possibly the most ridiculous section of the bill is Section 899F which states how they plan on protecting civil rights and civil liberties while preventing ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism. Here is what the section says.

`SEC. 899F. PROTECTING CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES WHILE PREVENTING IDEOLOGICALLY-BASED VIOLENCE AND HOMEGROWN TERRORISM.

`(a) In General- The Department of Homeland Security's efforts to prevent ideologically-based violence and homegrown terrorism as described herein shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, and civil liberties of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.

`(b) Commitment to Racial Neutrality- The Secretary shall ensure that the activities and operations of the entities created by this subtitle are in compliance with the Department of Homeland Security's commitment to racial neutrality.

`(c) Auditing Mechanism- The Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer of the Department of Homeland Security will develop and implement an auditing mechanism to ensure that compliance with this subtitle does not result in a disproportionate impact, without a rational basis, on any particular race, ethnicity, or religion and include the results of its audit in its annual report to Congress required under section 705.'.

(b) Clerical Amendment- The table of contents in section 1(b) of such Act is amended by inserting at the end of the items relating to title VIII the following:

It states in the first subsection that in general the efforts to defeat thought crime shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights and civil liberties of the United States citizens and lawful permanent residents. How does this protect constitutional rights if they use vague language such as in general that prefaces the statement? This means that the Department of Homeland Security does not have to abide by the Constitution in their attempts to prevent so called homegrown terrorism.

This bill is completely insane. It literally allows the government to define any and all crimes including thought crime as violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. Obviously, this legislation is unconstitutional on a number of levels and it is clear that all 404 representatives who voted in favor of this bill are traitors and should be removed from office immediately. The treason spans both political parties and it shows us all that there is no difference between them. The bill will go on to the Senate and will likely be passed and signed into the law by George W. Bush. Considering that draconian legislation like the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act have already been passed, there seems little question that this one will get passed as well. This is more proof that our country has been completely sold out by a group of traitors at all levels of government.

Where else is there to go? We are at the bottom.

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

2007-10-24T10:04:00.001-04:00

Who do you blame for our current status as Americans?

Frank Rich wrote an excellent article. As with many recent articles, there are many hyperlinks within the article that I wouldn't want you to miss, so follow the link for the full complexity of the article. The guts of it, I will post here.

“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.

Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”

Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page.

There has been scarcely more response to the similarly recurrent story of apparent war crimes committed by our contractors in Iraq. Call me cynical, but when Laura Bush spoke up last week about the human rights atrocities in Burma, it seemed less an act of selfless humanitarianism than another administration maneuver to change the subject from its own abuses.

As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent. That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200 other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department, Blackwater’s sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won’t even share its investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which have deemed the killings criminal.

The gunmen who mowed down the two Christian women worked for a Dubai-based company managed by Australians, registered in Singapore and enlisted as a subcontractor by an American contractor headquartered in North Carolina. This is a plot out of “Syriana” by way of “Chinatown.” There will be no trial. We will never find out what happened. A new bill passed by the House to regulate contractor behavior will have little effect, even if it becomes law in its current form.

We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.

I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.

As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.

In April 2004, Stars and Stripes first reported that our troops were using makeshift vehicle armor fashioned out of sandbags, yet when a soldier complained to Donald Rumsfeld at a town meeting in Kuwait eight months later, he was successfully pilloried by the right. Proper armor procurement lagged for months more to come. Not until early this year, four years after the war’s first casualties, did a Washington Post investigation finally focus the country’s attention on the shoddy treatment of veterans, many of them victims of inadequate armor, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.

We first learned of the use of contractors as mercenaries when four Blackwater employees were strung up in Falluja in March 2004, just weeks before the first torture photos emerged from Abu Ghraib. We asked few questions. When reports surfaced early this summer that our contractors in Iraq (180,000, of whom some 48,000 are believed to be security personnel) now outnumber our postsurge troop strength, we yawned. Contractor casualties and contractor-inflicted casualties are kept off the books.

It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.

Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.

We ignored the contractor scandal to our own peril. Ever since Falluja this auxiliary army has been a leading indicator of every element of the war’s failure: not only our inadequate troop strength but also our alienation of Iraqi hearts and minds and our rampant outsourcing to contractors rife with Bush-Cheney cronies and campaign contributors. Contractors remain a bellwether of the war’s progress today. When Blackwater was briefly suspended after the Nisour Square catastrophe, American diplomats were flatly forbidden from leaving the fortified Green Zone. So much for the surge’s great “success” in bringing security to Baghdad.

Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.”

This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass death in Nisour Square to fix even our fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our battle plan.

Similarly, it took until December 2005, two and a half years after “Mission Accomplished,” for Mr. Bush to feel sufficient public pressure to acknowledge the large number of Iraqi casualties in the war. Even now, despite his repeated declaration that “America will not abandon the Iraqi people,” he has yet to address or intervene decisively in the tragedy of four million-plus Iraqi refugees, a disproportionate number of them children. He feels no pressure from the American public to do so, but hey, he pays lip service to Darfur.

Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

Whew!! Got some good news.

2007-10-23T18:04:00.000-04:00

You know that drop-down menu over there on the right that reads, "The Past", that many of you have no doubt been clicking to no avail?

It works, and you are now able to peruse every post that I have ever written, again.

WOOOT!!!

How is it that Giuliani is even running for president?

2007-10-23T07:38:00.000-04:00

How is it that a man who is basically guaranteeing a war with Iran as soon as he is elected, even being taken seriously, not to mention being pushed as a potential President of the United States of America?

Haven't you people learned anything from the last six years? How hard is it to actually investigate... I won't use the term investigate, it sounds too much like work. Is it the soundbites? Is it that you take what you hear and see through the mainstream media as fact? Is it really that hard to take a minute and actually look at the facts as they constantly present themselves?

Let's work backwards from today, for just a bit. The following article is from today's print edition of the Washington Post. There are quite a few links in the actual article that I am not going to hyperlink, it may help to further your insight.

Giuliani's War
__

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, October 23, 2007; A19

I have a weakness for wars with colorful names. My favorite, mentioned twice by me this year alone, is the War of Jenkins' Ear, which occupied Britain and Spain from 1739-41 and ended in a stalemate. This brings me to the coming war with Iran that Rudolph Giuliani has solemnly vowed he would launch should, God forbid, Iran get nuclear weapons and he become president. It will be called the War of Rudy's Mouth.

Rudy's mouth, as anyone in New York can tell you, is a formidable weapon that, when turned on a target, can vaporize the person, leaving just a small mound of dust and maybe a false tooth or two. An oft-cited example is the poor fellow who called the then-New York mayor's radio show and asked why the law prohibited the keeping of ferrets as pets. "There is something deranged about you," the mayor said.

Not surprisingly, the Republican front-runner -- an astounding phrase -- is treating Iran as a nation of ferret owners. He has vowed to strike the Islamic republic militarily should it develop a nuclear weapon -- not a mere threat, he has added, but "a promise." This, of course, is both a cliche and the kind of rhetoric of the "bring 'em on" variety that suggests Giuliani has learned nothing from the Iraq fiasco. Since making that remark, Giuliani has sounded this theme often, including during a GOP presidential debate Sunday. The other Republican candidates do not, for the most part, disagree.

Similar statements have come in recent days from the White House. President Bush, an exceedingly slow learner, has suggested that a nuclear Iran could result in "World War III" and Dick Cheney, chastened not a bit by a record of heroic mistakes and misleading statements, promised Iran "serious consequences" if it proceeds with its nuclear program. By now, I think, Tehran has gotten the message.

Sadly, it is simply not possible to dismiss the Iranian threat. Not only is Iran proceeding with a nuclear program, but it projects a pugnacious, somewhat nutty, profile to the world. Various intelligence agencies assure us that Iran is a sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere, and its president is the voluble and bizarre Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, come to think of it, looks a bit like a ferret. The time may indeed come when the only way to deal with Iran is with force. In the meantime, it might not hurt to lower our voices and try some old-fashioned diplomacy.

War with Iran would be ugly. An airstrike would undoubtedly cause Iran to unleash Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist groups, causing no end of trouble in the Middle East. It could close the Persian Gulf to shipping, producing an oil shock. It could foment serious trouble in Saudi Arabia's oil-producing region, which has a significant Shiite population.

Giuliani ought to recognize that he is no longer the big-mouthed mayor of New York but a serious contender for the White House. All that his talk can accomplish is to make Iranian moderates rally around Ahmadinejad. That's a pity. Iran's economy is weak, and even many Iranians know their president needs his meds. His agnosticism regarding the Holocaust -- maybe it happened, maybe it didn't -- has to strike educated Iranians as deeply embarrassing. But Ahmadinejad does not actually rule the country. The mullahs do.

Rather than enhance Ahmadinejad's standing in his own country, rather than put Iran up against a wall and dare it to back down, rather than make Iran the hero of anti-American Islamists everywhere, why not attempt to engage in direct talks and treat the country not as a pariah -- one-third of the ludicrous and illogical "axis of evil" -- but as a fellow state? Why not, as it were, treat Iran as we once did the Soviet Union or we now do China? We talked to the former; we talk to the latter.

The next president is going to have to use his noodle. Iran may be trying to go nuclear, but Pakistan already is -- and it's so unstable the present government may not last long. The United States cannot make war all over the globe, leading the West in a resumption of the crusades against the Islamic East. War should be the last resort, spoken of with the respect it deserves and in terms that acknowledge the dizzying chaos, widespread terrorism and grievances that would haunt us long into the future. War with Iran will not turn out to be the applause line it is in the campaign. That, Mr. Giuliani, is not a threat. It is a promise.

OK, let's move on. As you may or may not know, Mr. 9/11 is directly responsible for the deaths of many of FDNY's finest. Why? Eight years of failings. That's why.

Proof? I'll let them tell you.

The above video is from here. Robert Greenwald doesn't take any short cuts when he makes a documentary, and he's created some real eye-openers.

Next, well look at how Giuliani is constantly, and without shame, using 9/11 as not only his primary cause but as a fund raising plan, though he won't tell you that.

There's no denying that anything with 9/11 in it "the mayor" is going to take full advantage of. And if you believe that he had nothing to do with this, then you deserve everything that Rudy gives you.

And finally... What makes him so convincing during debates? Fabrication of numbers and facts. With that ability, even you, yes you loyal reader, can appear to have the upper hand.

Fabrication of numbers and facts, you say?

I say that we suspend any and all further action of Mr. Giuliani. Remove him from the campaign trail. Send him to Gitmo, as a war criminal. Which is pretty easy since habeas corpus has been repealed for any one accused of pretty much anything. And hold him indefinitely.

Comcast begins attacks on Net Neutrality.

2007-10-19T20:39:00.000-04:00

Maybe if the chairman of the FCC gets his way, Comcast can change their name to Fascicast. Comcast has been caught deciding what people can and cannot do while on the Internet. This is a direct affront to Net Neutrality. Remember Net Neutrality? Remember me telling you complacent fucks that you had better avail yourselves of every single bit of information that you can gather on why you need to be be very aware of what Net Neutrality is?

Click me to see Comcast's most recent actions.

Click me to see how the chairman of the FCC is about to make Rupert Murdoch the most powerful and biased media monopolist the world has ever seen.

I would also recommend that you attempt to peruse my archives to find the articles on Net Neutrality. After all, it's only our freedom that we're talking about.

The DREAM ACT will not die. It is our job to kill it, NOW!!

2007-10-16T22:19:00.001-04:00

Clearly these ass-clowns are not acting in the best interests of the American people. We cannot afford to ignore this. It demands our full and undivided attention until these assholes get the point, or we carry them out in flex-cuffs, and eject them from government forever.

Amnesty Advocates Set to Bring DREAM Act to the Floor!
Call Your Senators Now!

This morning, we heard from reliable sources that amnesty advocates in the Senate are poised to renew their push to pass the DREAM Act. Our sources tell us that the DREAM Act will be offered as an amendment to the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill (H.R. 3043) on the Senate floor, most likely late TODAY or TOMORROW. Things are moving so quickly that we understand even Senate staffers do not have the text of the amendment!

Nevertheless, we do know that the DREAM Act grants amnesty to illegal aliens who entered the U.S. before the age of 16 and have met certain educational requirements. Those who are granted amnesty under the bill may later on Petition the Department of Homeland Security to grant their parents legal status. And if past versions are an indicator, the amendment will have no caps on the numbers, no age limit on applicants, will allow "conditional legal permanent resident status" to be extended indefinitely, and will provide for retroactive benefits. We can also expect the amendment to authorize in-state tuition to illegal aliens and make illegal aliens who receive conditional LPR status eligible for federal financial aid.

ACT NOW TO STOP THE DREAM ACT!!!! Please call your Senators IMMEDIATELY and let them know that you oppose the DREAM Act. Tell them:

* A vote for the DREAM Act is a vote for amnesty;
* The DREAM Act unfairly rewards illegal alien parents with exactly what they wanted-legal status for their children and a U.S. education at taxpayer expense;
* When you told them you opposed the Bush-Kennedy Amnesty Bill, YOU MEANT IT and are upset they are trying to sneak provisions of it past the American people;
* You are watching how they vote.

Last month, you inundated Senate offices with thousands and thousands of calls opposed to the DREAM Act. Your efforts stopped the DREAM Act in its tracks. Please act now to stop it again!

After you have called your own Senators, please call Senate Democratic and Republican leadership:

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) - (202)224-2158

Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL) - (202)224-9447

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) - (202)224-3135

Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) - (202)224-2708