Letterman's Lair

A Picture (Or in this Case, A Cartoon) is Worth A Thousand Words: Part II

2006-11-08T18:37:00.000-09:00

That cartoon is worth more than a thousand words. It's priceless!

Today is a good day to be a Democrat!

A Little More Musical Humor For Your Edification: Grand Funk Railroad Reimagined for Smirky Boy

2006-10-28T07:17:00.000-08:00

Here's my version of a Grand Funk Railroad standard (the tune for which can be found here) from the Arena Rock days of the early 1970s, when bands filled entire stadiums with tens of thousands of screaming fans and went off on long musical excursions to weird places. It's my take on Smirky Boy's current predicament as he and his party find themselves adrift on a sea of voter anger, mired in scandal, corruption, malaise, and with a dispirited, disaffected base:

I'm the Decider/Headed for Meltdown

Everybody, listen up now
And come back, my sheeple
I'm the Decider, I'm the Decider
Though I'm feeling might lost

I've been stuck now, weeks uncounted
And it's been months of mindless spin
Can you hear me, can you hear me?
Or am I all alone?

If you return to the fold, my sheeple
You can kiss your ass goodbye
Take me back now, take me back now
To the ranch up in the sky

Am I in my office dreaming,
Or are you really scheming
To take my toys away from me?

You'd better think about it,
I just can't live without them
So please don't take my toys from me
Yeah, yeah, yeah

I can feel the hand of Uncle Karl
And it's dragging me down into the night
Laura help me, Laura help me
Get this turdblossom from my sight

I'm your leader, I'm your leader
Although I'm feeling mighty weak
Everybody listen to me
And return now to the fold

I'm The Decider, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
I'm The Decider, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
I'm The Decider, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
I'm The Decider, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

We're headed closer to meltdown …
We're headed closer to meltdown …
We're headed closer to meltdown …
We're headed closer to meltdown …
Ohhhh …

We're headed closer to meltdown …
We're headed closer to meltdown …
We're headed closer to meltdown …
We're headed closer to meltdown …

(Repeat until Smirky Boy fades into well-deserved obscurity)

A Milestone We Perhaps Should Not Be Proud Of: 300 Million Americans

2006-10-06T18:26:00.000-08:00

Our country is about to hit a milestone in the next two or three weeks or so, one which we perhaps should not be proud of.

In less than a month, the 300 millionth American will enter the world.

Think about that for a moment. There will soon be 300 million people in this country. When this country got started 230 and some odd years back, our population then was almost 4 million people.

Our population now is almost 100 times that number of Americans counted in the first census.

We are the third most populous country in the world, behind China and India and then followed closely behind by Indonesia.

There are too many people in this country, in my opinion. There is no way you can effectively and efficiently govern a country of 300 million people.

This is part of the problem of trying to maintain our vast economic empire. It's too big for its own good and in the end, it will be our undoing unless we can divest ourselves of it and step down out of the catbird seat.

We shouldn't have been there in the first place anyway. It's time to step aside.

FoleyGate: The Karma Fairy Giveth, and the Karma Fairy Taketh Away

2006-10-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

This is a gift. Our old friend the Karma Fairy has come along and ripped away the nice, neat facade the Republicans have manufactured to cover the real face of their party and exposed the steaming, malodorous pile of horse manure underneath the mask.

Here we have a guy (Mark Foley) who regularly trolled the internet, looking for teenaged boys to be his next victims. And the "leadership" of the House did nothing to stop him or alleviate the situation by asking him to resign. They knew about this for more than a year and they did nothing.

This man is a serial pedophile who may have hurt, mentally and emotionally, many young men who put their trust in him. The Republicans can't blame this on the Clenis. Bill Clinton had nothing to do with this nor was any Democratic office-holder involved.

They own this scandal lock, stock, and barrel. All we have to do a mere month out from the election is remind people of who they're supporting when they support Republicans.

These people are hypocrites who have shown time and again that they can't be trusted with power. It's long past time to kick them out of the halls of power and send them to the curb to be thrown out with the other garbage of history into that famous dustbin of history.

When they tell voters that they are "Keeping Us Safe From The Terrorists" we just have to come back with "And you are you doing about pedophiles.

It's time we take back our government from these fools.

It's Official: They (The Republican Party) Stole Ohio in 2004

2006-09-26T17:52:00.000-08:00

First, go read this article from Opednews.com, then read on.

Have you finished reading the article? Good, then consider the implications of it. If you've not read it, go back and do so forthwith, we can wait.

For starters, Kenneth Blackwell, the Secretary of State for Ohio, a Republican activist, and the man in charge of Bush's 2004 campaign in that state, should be sitting in jail right now for breaking innumerable campaign laws, ethics violations, and electoral fraud on a massive scale.

George Walker Bush is not the legitimate occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This article proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Short of someone coming forward and confessing to his or her role in the 2004 election theft, this is as close as we will ever get to a genuine 'smoking gun' in this case.

The Republican Party stole the 2004 election in Ohio from John Kerry. Period. There is no question, there can be no doubt, there can be no second-guessing about this. This is now an established fact.

The question now before us is this: what do we do about it? If this had happened in another nation, we would have taken to the streets and demanded the immediate resignation of an illegitimate government that had usurped the right of the People to govern themselves.

We can't bury this away or pretty it over. It is the elephant in the national living room we can no longer ignore and/or pretend it doesn't exist.

George Walker Bush and his minions do not legitmately occupy the halls of power and they should be removed forthwith so we can reclaim our government. To do anything less will be to spit on the graves of those brave Americans who gave their lives to purchase freedom from tyranny and oppression so that we could be a free people.

George Walker Bush is a liar, a fraud, a thief, and a war criminal to boot. He does not deserve our support (if he ever did at all, a proposition I find highly offensive on its face) and we should not support him or prop him up any further. He is a liar and to call him anything but that is to participate in the lie.

Our government does not belong to us at the moment. It is being run by a bunch of greedy oligarchs bent on draining the United States treasury dry in their quest for unlimited power and influence and to permanently extend the American Empire's reach to every corner of the globe.

These people are criminals who should be brought before the International World Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

We have to stop these people before they destroy what's left of our country.

Getting Warm Yet?

2006-09-25T17:41:00.000-08:00

The planet is getting warmer and pretty soon we will be as warm as we were a million years ago or so.

Bush still thinks global warming is 'just a theory' whereas thinking people (like you and me) know the planet is getting warmer because the scientists are telling us.

In the BushWorld universe George W. Bush resides, you can have your very own 'reality' to play in and ignore the realities of the peoplea around you.

I think George W. Bush is a lunatic myself.

The Gulag Archipelago, Redux?

2006-09-17T12:22:00.000-08:00

Did anyone ever read The Gulag Archipelago, the book written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the network of prison camps in the old Soviet Union into which the KGB would put dissidents and anyone else opposed to the Soviet Union?

That was a really, really scary book. What is really scary though is that it looks like we are creating our own Gulag Archipelago, only this one is not inside the United States, it is spread all over the world.

We now have our own network of concentration camps scattered in U.S. bases all around the world, islands of inhumanity beyond the reach of American or international law where we can torture prisoners and no one is the wiser.

Wake up, people! Our country is in peril of losing its soul because of the crimes being committed in our names. This is a little bit more imporant that who Paris Hilton is "servicing" who will be the next American Idol.

This is beyond horrible. It's a war crime and the people responsible must and will be punished.

Finally, an Update (With a Little Bit of Humor to Give You Something to Laugh About)

2006-09-16T13:22:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated this blog in quite a while, as in seven months and more. Real life keeps getting in the way. Anyway, here is my version of a Shelley Fabares standard, redone to put Donald Rumsfeld in his proper place in the scheme of things.

Donny Rumsfeld

Donny Rumsfeld, Donny Rumsfeld, Donny Rumsfeld, Donny Rumsfeld
You're a devil to me

Donny Rumsfeld, how I loathe him
He's done evil things, I can't abide
And he runs away from the truth but he can't hide

Donny Rumsfeld, how I want him
To face justice for what he did
Every time he gets away my heart begins to fall

CHORUS
(I'm a Fury) I just want him to pay
I dream of him in chains, wearing an orange suit
(It'll be good) to finally see him put away
Answering for his many crimes, for these he must pay

Oh Donny Rumsfeld (Donny Rumsfeld)
'cause I loathe him ('cause I loathe him)
And I pray that someday he'll get caught
And at long last we'll finally see him come to naught

CHORUS
(I'm a Fury) I just want him to pay
I dream of him in chains, wearing an orange suit
(It'll be good) to finally see him put away
Answering for his many crimes, for these he must pay

Oh Donny Rumsfeld (Donny Rumsfeld)
'cause I loathe him ('cause I loathe him
And I pray that someday he'll get caught
And at long last we'll finally see him come to naught

(Donny Rumsfeld, Donny Rumsfeld)
Donny Rumsfeld, (Donny Rumsfeld), you're a devil to me

(Donny Rumsfeld, Donny Rumsfeld)
Donny Rumsfeld, (Donny Rumsfeld), you're a devil to me
FADE

Enjoy!

An Evening of Ironies: Celebrating the Golden Anniversary of Alaska's Constitution

2006-02-06T17:16:00.000-09:00

Wow. Fifty years ago today, (February 6th, 2006) the delegates to the Alaska Constitutional Convention signed their names to the document they had just finished crafting. After spending 75 intense and long days at it, the work of 55 people was now ready to bear fruition to the soon-to-be State of Alaska and its people.

We Alaskans celebrated that momentous event this past weekend, with a celebration in honor of its fiftieth birthday, held at the place where it was crafted all those years ago.

Of the original 55 delegates to the Convention, only five remain alive today. Three of them were present at the festivities, the other two were too ill to attend.

The celebration took place mostly on Saturday, the 4th. There was a four-hour Q&A symposium with the surviving delegates held over in the Schaible Auditorium on Saturday afternoon. This was ollowed by a dinner at the Wood Center ballroom, then the worldwide premiere of the KUAC documentary on the Convention, in the Davis Concert Hall with a reception afterward in the Great Hall.

I went to the dinner on Saturday and watched the movie afterward. The evening was full of ironies, multiple layers of them, actually.

First, when we got to the ballroom, there was a string quartet set up outside the doors, with a microphone on a stand in front of them, hooked up to a speaker inside the ballroom itself. Evidently, we would be serenaded by cello players as we dined.

I went in and found a table without a number (such was my ticket for the event), and took a seat. After a bit, the food servers came out and started laying out the salad appetizers and dinner rolls. People were trickling in (the dinner was supposed to start with a "cocktail hour" at 5:15 and dinner itself at 6:15) and finding seats here and there. I ate my salad and watched people mill around, waiting for things to get going, I supposed, as the strains of Handel and Bach and other classical music wafted in from the speaker at the side of the room.

The event was semi-formal (emphasis on the "semi" part, the invite said "Black Tie Optional" for example) and I knew there'd be a, shall we say, variety in the clothing and dressing styles of the attendees. I was not disappointed. Most of the people were wearing formal wear, elegant dinner gowns, floor-length dresses, suits, ties, etc. But there were a few outliers, for lack of a better word.

Like this one. Lady, granted this was a "black-tie optional" event and granted that this was a semi-formal event, but there still was an air of importance to the evening. We were, after all, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of our state's constitution and its signing, complete with guest speakers, and all the pageantry and elegance that stems from such an important event.

So, the question I have of you is this. Why did you come to the event wearing two shirts, one over the other, apparently a t-shirt of some kind with an Alaskan eagle emblazoned on the front, (sort of) longish sleeves you'd rolled up your arms a bit and not only that, a shirt about three sizes too large for you that hung down around your waist like a lost child or something?

Why? And to compound that act of sartorial carnage, you had on jeans and heavy shoes that looked almost like hiking boots. Plus your hair was frazzled and a bit unkempt. Lady, you looked like you'd just gotten out of bed five minutes before you got to the event.

Why, oh why did you take such a cavalier attitude to the staid formality of the proceedings? Granted, this is Alaska, but still, you could have at least made some kind of effort to appear at least somewhat presentable.

I was still trying to figure out the reason for this woman's lack of fashion sense when I heard the familiar strains of a song being played by the quartet outside the room. After a moment, I placed it. It was the theme song to Titanic, the James Cameron film from 1998, which came out more than four decades after the convention whose anniversary we were celebrating.

I started laughing at the absurdity and the irony of it. The quartet was earnestly trying to channel these guys for some strange reason. The irony works on several levels, some of them contradictory. The song is about lost loves, remembrance, and a yearning for closure, as is the movie whose theme it is. It's a poignant irony, given that most of the delegates to the convention are now dead, as one of the signers remarked in his short speech at the dinner, he could remember all those who'd gone on before, choking up a bit as he said it. He was also helped up to the podium as he's well past 80 years old now, I think.

But, on the other hand, I had this picture of Celine Dion showing up in the old newsreels from the convention, belting out a version of her song ("Yea, Nea, whenever you're done, I know that the voting will go on ...") as the delegates studiously went on about their business. I suspect that if she'd been there singing to them, they'd have finished a lot sooner than the 75 days it took them to complete their assigned task. I half-expected one of the players at the end of the song to get up and announce to the other cellists, "Ladies, it's been a pleasure to play with you tonight, Godspeed to all of you! (as the S.S. Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration sinks into obscurity?) or Leonardo DiCaprio to come running through the ballroom with Kate Winslet, followed by Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews or something.

Then, they played that that Aaron Copeland song made famous by the "Beef, It's Whats for Dinner" advertising campaign, ironic considering that beef was on the menu that night.

Finally, after we watched the movie over in the Great Hall and came out for the reception afteward, there was a bit of generational and sartorial irony happening. This radical feminist, in-your-face, Bush-bashing slam poet was having a show in the Salisbury Theater, at about the same time as the documentary showing. Both shows ended at about the same time.

So picture this. You have a bunch of old white guys, old fogeys, elegant dinner gowns, suits, ties, etc. milling around the Great Hall while at the same time, a bunch of twentysomething fans of the radical slam poet, Alix Olson, are coming out, ready to stick it to the man, take over the world, and rock the vote, Sideshow Bob 'dos, nose rings and other piercings, floor-length mulicolored dresses (presumably made of organic fabric and hand-dyed), long scarves, parkas, scrappy-looking young folks looking for all the world like they'd just wandered off the set of a Phish video or Ralph Nader rally milling around off to the side a bit.

Generation gap indeed.

Which one are you?

2006-01-21T13:02:00.000-09:00

It's long past time for me to update this blog with a new post for the new year.

I was just reading this editorial over on crisispapers.org yesterday.

Mr. Partridge lays it all out. Basically it comes down to this: either you understand the peril our country is in or you don't

Too many liberals and internet activists simply don't understand what we're up against. The Republicans are no longer playing from the same rulebook we're using. They have fixed the game such that we can no longer trust the integrity of the electoral process.

Their operatives now own the companies that make the machines that count the votes. If they have their way, we will no longer use paper for our ballots. When that happens, we can forget ever having free and fair elections in this country ever again.

If we do not stand up to them now, there will be nowhere left to stand when the time comes to stand up to them. That time is now and we are the people to do it.

Do not assume that all of us on this side of the issue are "wild-eyed conspiracy theorists" bent on undermining Bush's "election" (I am putting that in quotes because I believe his "election" is about as legitimate as an offer from Engr. Michael Okumbo, son of the late Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha to give you the sum of $21,000,000 [Twenty-One Million Dollars U.S.] in overbid oilfield service contracts) and partisan whiners who can't get over losing an election.

We didn't lose the election. We won. They stole it and we're now forced to deal with that fact.

Bush and the Republicans are thieves who have stolen three national elections in a row and are well on their way to stealing a fourth unless we do something about it.

Certainly, we need to organize for the 2006 elections, but get what? That's not enough this time around. We need to stand up to them and stop them.

Which one are you? A gulliberal with your head in the sand or someone who knows tha the Republicans have to be stopped at whatever the cost.

I'm not a gulliberal. Are you?

If you are, get ready for the day when the jackbooted thugs come knocking on your door to take you off to the "re-education camps" they will have set up in the Utah desert somewhere far away from prying eyes.

Get ready for the real world to come crashing into your little fantasy. While you're worrying about "getting our message out" or how to "reach swing voters" they are putting in to place the mechanisms of an overtly facist police state.

I for one know where I stand on this. Do you?

We must stop them or else it's over.

A Sunday Winter Ride Down Noyes Slough

2005-11-06T19:08:00.000-09:00

Today was the first official Sunday Winter Ride of the FCC '05/'06 winter riding season.

We kick off the Sunday rides every year with a ride down Noyes Slough, after it has frozen up enough to ride on and/or the snowmachines have been down it enough to pack it down.

The meeting time and place was by the Beaver Sports Outdoor Center building at noon. I rode over there a little before 11:30 and got there just about exactly at noon (with a stop at the Tesoro on University Avenue to buy a sandwich and donut for lunch. The temperature was around -5 Fahrenheit.

There were a few riders already there, milling around waiting for the ride to start. Andi Hunter was there (I'd invited her to come along with us) along with her friend Terri. And there was one other woman rider present along with Gail Koepf.

After a bit, Simon showed up and then we got in gear and took off. We took a circuitous route down through College and over to the railroad tracks. We followed along the trail that parallels said tracks as it rode up and down the bumps and rises. Terri dropped out (she was out of shape) a bit before we got to the slough, and then it was relatively easy riding from there on out.

Noyes Slough winds and wends along through and behind several neighborhoods in North Fairbanks and the only thing we really had to watch out for were soft spots at the various beaver dams. Mostly, we had to get off our bikes and walk up and over said beaver dams. That was always a bit interesting, to say the least, in that you never would know what kinds of wood and how sturdy the wood the beaver use for their dams.

Finally, we got over to around where Danby Street crosses over the slough (I have to say, those bridge crossings are pretty cool, because you're riding under these bridges, sometimes with only two or three feet of clearance), and we stopped to take a breather.

We collected our breath, and took off again. Andi and the rest got up ahead of me, I was ahead a bit of Rocky, Gail, and their group. We encountered some nasty overflow/soft, watery ice past Minnie Street Bridge and another beaver dam, and it was basically walking from there on over to the river. Rocky and the rest bailed there (they had another ride planned, all the way up Cranberry Ridge), so it was just me to catch up with Andi, Tom, Simon, Dallas, and the others.

We gathered our energies and rode over to the Wendell Street Bridge, then through downtown Fairbanks over to McCafferty's Coffee House to have some warm drinks and warm up. We parked our bikes by the restaurant and went in.

We sat around, regaling Andi with stories of bike rides past and some of the things we'd done and seen on some of our rides in both summer and winter. We shot the breeze for a while, warming up. There was some strange-looking homeless guy who came walking by the restaurant and looked in and waved at us. Andi waved back and he came in and started joking with us. The owner came over and kindly asked him to leave, which he did. "I know most of the regular street downtown, but that guy I don't. He must be an irregular street person." was his comment.

Finally, it was time to head back. We took a circuitous route back over to the slough and I decided I didn't want to ride all the way back over, so I decided to take College Road back over to Beaver Sports. Andi decided to follow along with me.

We rode down College Road without event, other than me pointing out the various landmarks along the way and the history of Fairbanks thus presented.

Finally, at 3 or so, we got back to Beaver. We were the first, so I went in to warm up. Andi came in a bit later to ask the bike guy about her tire. He adjusted it for her and then we hung out with him for a bit.

She had to go swimming up at the UAF Patty Center pool and I had to head home, so we parted company there. I told her the next ride would be next Sunday at noon at Ivory Jack's parking lot in the Goldstream Valley.

All in all, it was a great kickoff ride for the '05/'06 season!

Gaming the Endgame: The Stevens Solution

2005-10-18T23:13:00.000-08:00

We may at long last be finally seeing the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

It is possible that the grand jury investigating the Plamegate mess may be about to issue indictments in the case. It is quite possible indeed that Peter Fitzgerald's carefully aimed missile lobbed right at the heart of the Bushies' precariously stacked house of cards may bring said house of cards down upon the shifting sands of fortune on which it stands.

The game may be up for Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rummy, Condi, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the criminal cabal squatting in the halls of power.

The malignant fascist cancer that is the Republican Party of today may be about to implode. The only question now is this: what will replace their rapidly-crumbling facade?

The answer is really simple: a caretaker government until we can have another election to sort out this whole mess and get our country back on track.

Here's how I see it playing out (in the best of circumstances):

Rove gets indicted, is tried, and goes to prison. Cheney sees the handwriting on the wall and either up and quits or gets indicted before he can cut and run. Without his brain to tell him what to think and without the puppetmaster pulling his strings, Bush implodes, perhaps even on national television.

He's either forced to resign or he's impeached by the House, convicted by the Senate, and then is dragged out of the White House in handcuffs, along with the rest of his criminal cabal.

The rest of their minions flee prosecution and/or jump the gun.

We then have a dangerous situation. Seeing that Bush and his house of cards are both about to implode, cooler heads in both parties realize that, for the good of the country, it's time to step in and take over. The Democrats because they know this may be the only way to show the country that desperate times call for desperate measures and the Republicans because they want to save what's left of their party before it's dragged down with Bush will both realize that it's long past time to be responsible and do what's right for the country.

Now that both Bush and Cheney are gone, who gets to be president?

House Speaker Dennis Hastert is a no-go. He's in too deep with the Bushies from the get-go. He should be forced to resign and should be frog-marched in handcuffs and leg restraints along with the Bushies and their ilk to face justice for their many crimes. That leaves the President pro tem of the Senate to step in and mind the store until another election is held, unless Bush appoints a successor to Cheney (which I do not want to see happen) who'll save his bacon by pardoning him after he's forced out. I would hope the Republicans in congress would see such a move by Bush as the last, desperate attempt of a pathetic worm of a man to wiggle his way out of facing the consequences of his actions. I would hope they would reject such a move by Bush without even giving him the fig-leaf of a vote on the matter.

If Dennis Hastert is out, that means that my senator, Ted "Teddy Warbucks" Stevens gets to be caretaker president under this scenario.

Let me tell you a little bit about him and why I think this would be the best possible scenario for the country. Ted Stevens, despite being probably borderline senile and cursed with an ethically-challenged son, does actually, genuinely care about this country in his heart of hearts.

If he felt it was the right thing to do for the country (and to save his beloved Republican Party), he'd be honored and humbled to step in as caretaker president for the duration.

This is a good thing, because he won't have any real power behind him. He'll just be an amiable caretaker president until we can have a real election. With the Republican Party imploded, Stevens might very well end up as being the last Republican president this sorry excuse for a country will be saddled with.

He'll have to give up his cushy Senate seat to do this. Despite his gruff exterior, Ted Stevens actually has some vestigial sense of honor and integrity.

The real power for the duration of this crisis will be held by a consortium of Democratic representatives and senators allied with the few remaining moderate Republicans in congress to steer our country through this minefield it is in.

Then, in the end, Ted Stevens gets to preside over the demise of the Republican Party in America and he becomes as relevant as yesterday's news, riding off into the sunset at the end of the three years (or two, as the case may be).

Once he's out of the senate, we'll run a good candidate and win that seat for the Democrats, putting a Democrat back in that seat for a change.

We get our country back, Ted Stevens gets to cap off his career as a caretaker president, and hopefully the Republican Party will die with him long before he leaves the building.

That's my dream, and I am sticking to it.

An Evening With The DNC (Or One of Them, At Least): Mike Honda (D-CA) Makes the Trek North

2005-10-16T19:07:00.000-08:00

I and a bunch of other Democrats here got a special treat yesterday.

Congressman Mike Honda, (D-CA 15th District) paid us a visit this past weekend.

He's the First Vice Chair of the DNC and this past weekend was the Alaska Democratic Party Central Committee meeting, held here in Fairbanks.

So, as part of his duties, he came up here to meet with us and see how Democrats are doing in the Last Frontier.

We had a banquet in his honor down at the Best Western hotel on South Cushman yesterday. It cost $35 to get in, but it was well worth it.

I got there at around 6:15 (the evening was scheduled to start at 6:30) and met up with a friend of mine whom I had realized was coming to this event. Andy is originally from Minneapolis, but moved up here about a decade ago to help keep ANWR out of th oil companies' greedy hands. He'd just gotten off the plane a few days ago after spending two weeks in D.C. lobbying for the Refuge.

We wandered around the lobby for a minute or two before he asked one of the employees where the dinner was to be held. We were told it was upstairs, and after a couple blind leads, we found the room.

Paul, another one of our mutual friends (who is a Japanese-American from Hawaii) and fellow Esterite, was sitting over at a corner table. We migrated over to his table and sat down. We spent a few minutes hobnobbing together before the guest of honor came in. The room was beginning to fill up by then (even though it was still early) and when I called out his name, the congressman came over to our table. He shook our hands and we welcomed him to Fairbanks.

A couple other friends and fellow Esterites, Ed Davis and Sean McGuire, showed up a few minutes later, and we all gathered around the table to talk politics.

We were all happy about the local election results from the October 4^th election. The food was being laid out on the table, and after it got past seven or so, people started lining up to eat.

Andy and I got in line early and each had a generous helping of the rice, mashed potatoes, and I had a large cut of the roast beef along with my halibut (and salad in a separate dish!).

Everbody lined up to eat, and the line led right past our table. One of our gubenatorial hopefuls, Eric Croft (a legislator from Anchorage) and the chair of the Alaska Democratic Party remarked as we were eating our dinner to "go ahead and start without us" to which I replied that we'd been waiting for dinner for a while. They laughed at that one.

Finally, everyone sat down and started eating. The festivities were supposed to begin at 7, but by 7:30, everyone was still in dinner mode. Andy and I enjoyed our meals so much that we went back for seconds on the rice, halibut, potatoes, and roast beef after everyone had eaten their fill.

Finally, the food was eaten, everyone was sated, and it was time for speechifying.

The new chair of the Interior Democrats, David Bantz, along with the vice-chair, was introduced. He then introduced our state party chair, Jake Metcalfe, who spoke for a few minutes about our local election results, building the party from the ground up, and stuff like that. Jake then allowed Eric Croft a few minutes to talk about his campaign and then he introduced our DNC national committeeman, John Davies (who is my former state representative), who then introduced Congressman Honda.

Finally, Congressman Honda got up to speak.

He talked about our party-building efforts here as being part of the 50-state strategy that Governor Dean is implementing across the country. He remarked that our party here is very strong, vibrant, and going places, just like the state parties he's seen in Washington, Hawaii (he nodded to and exchanged a few words of Japanese with Paul at our table), and other Western states.

Finally, he concluded his remarks with a plea for us to do our part to get rid of Don Young. He reminded us that if we can elect more Democrats to Congress next year, we can and will take the House back. If we do so, we can start asking the questions that need to be asked. That got a round of applause, as did many of his other comments.

Then it was time for dessert and more politicking.

It was a fun evening and one which I hope will lead to a refreshed, vibrant Alaska Democratic Party next year.

On to '06 and then '08!

'Finding' vs. 'Looting': A Tale of Two Pictures

2005-08-31T20:06:00.000-08:00

You will need to read the captions in the links provided to both these pictures in order to understand the import of this post. It is sickening in its implications.

First, this picture:

Then this picture:

So let me see if I understand this correctly, if your skin is white, you're "finding" stuff in grocery stores but if your skin is black, you're "looting" stuff from grocery stores.

Once again, racism rears its ugly head in the United States of America in the 21^st Century.

What the hell are we coming to?

A Little Humor to Lighten Things Up

2005-07-30T16:34:00.000-08:00

Some song parodies here, for your reading enjoyment. Hopefully you'll get a laugh or two out of them:

To an old Barry Manilow standard, the tune for which can be found here

Condi

I remember all her lies
Coming from her heart of ice
Shadows of the truth
Hidden from her eyes
Lyin' through her teeth
She lies like a rug

Lyin's just her only way
Happy Murkans don't care why
Speakin' for the Chimp
She is Bush's bitch
I never realized
How dumb she really is, oh Condi

Well you came and you took without askin'
And we'll put you away, oh Condi
Well, you sold yourself out and told all those lies
And someday you'll face the music, oh Condi

Hopin' for the day to come
When you'll be doing the Perp Walk
Caught up in your web of lying and deceit
The vision is in my mind
Of you in handcuffs, oh Condi

Lyin's just her only way
Happy Murkans don't care why
Speakin' for the Chimp
She is Bush's bitch
I never realized
How dumb she really is, oh Condi

Well you came and you took without askin'
And we'll put you away, oh Condi
Well, you sold yourself out and told all those lies
And someday you'll face the music, oh Condi

Yesterday you lied
You'll face the truth one day
Cryin' for your Chimpy
They're coming for you, oh Condi

Well you came and you took without askin'
And we'll put you away, oh Condi
Well, you sold yourself out and told all those lies
And someday you'll face the music, oh Condi

Well you came and you took without askin'
And we'll put you away, oh Condi
Well, you sold yourself out and told all those lies
And someday you'll face the music, oh Condi

Oh Condi

etc.

To an old Frankie Avalon standard

Rummy

Hey, Rummy! Oh, Rummy!
Hey, Rummy! Oh, Rummy!

You had better watch your back
The truth is catching up with you at last
A war based on lies, it's all your fault
A war you wanted for your neocon buds

Rummy, get ready to walk
You're going down with the Chimp over this
And no amount of dissembling will save you
From doing the Perp Walk in chains

Rummy, architect of the neocon plans
Even you must realize
This can't go on forever

Rummy, you'd better 'fess up
Or you'll go down with the Chimp over this
You started an illegal war and we can't forgive you
As long as we have something to say about it

Hey Rummy!, Oh Rummy!
Take a hike, straight to Gitmo!

Rummy, architect of the neocon plans
Even you must realize
This can't go on forever

Hey Rummy! Oh, Rummy!
Hey Rummy! Oh, Rummy!
Hey Rummy! Oh, Rummy!

and finally,

Here's one to the theme song of a Seventies cinematic experience I'm sure more than a few people recall, perhaps fondly, perhaps not:

Scott

Who's the dumb patsy
That's a mouthpiece for the Bush machine?
SCOTT!
Ya damn right!

Who is the fool that will risk his neck
For his Chimpster man?
SCOTT!
Can you dig it?

He's the deer-in-the-headlights dude
Caught lying through his teeth
SCOTT!
Right on!

They say this dude Scott is a bad liar
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
I'm talkin' 'bout Scott
THEN WE CAN DIG IT!

He's an implicated man
And no one cares about him except the Chimp
DUMB SCOTT!

The Wreck of the S.S. Turdblossom

2005-07-24T18:21:00.000-08:00

In honor of Uncle Karl's ongoing legal "issues", I present this reworking of a well-known Gordon Lightfoot song, the tune for which can be found here.

The Wreck of the S.S. Turdblossom

The legend lives on in the West Wing on down
Of the big cheese they called Bush's Brain
The man, it was said, never gave up an inch
Even when the ship of state was heading for the drain

He was evil and cunning, a thousand times over
Then did the S. S. Turdblossom set sail
Karl kept a tight ship, yes this is true, to the end
When the ship of state sank like a stone

Karl Rove was the genius behind the White House
Coming down from a stolen election in November
As the architect of their evil plan, he was on top
With a West Wing and a press corpse to his liking

Then came Valerie and hubby Joe, speaking the truth
Karl could not abide by this, no he could not
And later that day, he spoke her name out of turn
Could this be the beginning of the end for them?

The whispers online made a tattletale sound
And the wave soon broke over his ship
As everyone knew, as Karl surely did too
T'was the ghost of Bad Karma come knockin'

The day would soon come when the truth would come out
As the lies kept on piling and piling up
When the truth finally came, it rode right on in
In their faces, did it come a-crashin' down

When the press corpse finally noticed what Karl did say
It was too late for him, yes it was
At high noon did the house of cards finally collapse
He said, "Guys, that's it, I'm outta here"

Karl Rove then tried to go to the ground
But the West Wing would not let him go
And later that day, when the lights came on up
Came the wreck of the S. S. Turdblossom

Does anyone know where old Karl has gone
While the country awaits Mr. Fitzgerald
The pundits all say they'll get right to the root of this
If they could just understand it at all

He might have gone south or he might have changed names
He might have lost weight and gotten a new face
But all that remains is the truth of what he did
To tell her name to one who should not know it

George Bush stumbles, in a confused daze
In the ruins of his house of cards
And Condi still lies like a good little wench
She does what her Dear Leader commands her

And farther on down the political food chain
The press and the pundits still sit there
And they all say they would have done it right
With the "election" of November still fresh

In a small little courtroom Patrick still struggles on
In the search for the Truth will he prevail
The presstitutes still lie, 24 hours a day
For they still fear the S. S. Turdblossom

The legend lives on in the West Wing on down
Of the big cheese they called Bush's Brain
The man, it was said, never gave up an inch
Even when the ship of state was heading for the drain

Mariko (my dad's cat), 1989-2005: An Appreciation.

2005-07-10T17:07:00.000-08:00

For the first time since 1970, my dad's house is now catless. With a heavy heart, I buried my dad's cat Mariko, a Japanese Bobtail, aged 16 years, two months, this afternoon. She died earlier this afternoon. Apparently, her liver failed her, the vet thought. My dad is out of town for a week, and I was watching the cat for him, and looking after his house. This meant going out there every day, dropping off the paper and/or mail, and feeding Mariko.

I came by late Friday afternoon and noticed that she seemed listless and lethargic and wasn't eating the food my dad had put out for her on Friday. I tried to feed her, without success. It was the same thing yesterday, except she seemed slightly more active yesterday. Today, when I went out there, she still hadn't eaten. It was time to take her to the vet, which I did. An hour after I dropped her off, they called and left a message that she had died. So, being very sad, I went back there to collect her and take her home to bury her.

This is my letter to Mariko, her eulogy, if you will.

Well, Mariko-san. You've done and crossed the Rainbow Bridge. You're in a better place now, and your 16-year journey on Earth has come to an end. I put you in the ground today, just downhill from the Usual Food Guy's house, the only home you ever knew.

My dad got you in October, 1989. You were a little five- or six-month kitten at the time, and the other cat, Buttons, didn't like you. You and she fought and eventually worked things out. You explored every nook and cranny in that house and in 1990, you had one litter. My dad got you fixed a couple years later. You were a good hunter, you caught quite a few birds, squirrels, mice, voles, and even a rabbit or two.

You and Buttons got along, and when she died in 1995, you were sad. When my dad got Madori in the latter part of 1995, you were initially hostile, but you took her under your wing. You were a good cat, friend, and foster mother to Madori.

I got to be your occasional food guy from time to time, when my dad was out of town. I think you could always tell when I was on the way to the house. I would come in, and there you would be, clamoring for the Food Guy to do his Food Guy thing (and Kitty-Litter Changer thing, and Scratcher-Behind-the-Ears-Guy thing too), impatiently demanding your food, and making sure that Madori got fed too.

I was there for you, and when Madori died in 2003, you were alone again. My sister's cat, Hanna came to stay with my dad for a while, and you didn't like her much, so she spent most of the time downstairs.

You were getting old by then, and you couldn't get around much at all. I would still come out and feed you from time to time, but you were starting to get a bit more demanding about your food. You would meow a lot, and that got on my dad's nerves at times. He loved you dearly, but sometimes you drove him up the wall.

And then finally, came the last few days of your life. You got out of the house on Wednesday and apparently returned before my dad left on Friday morning. I came out there and there you were, hiding in the corner. I held you and petted you, but you were listless and lethargic and didn't want to eat anything. You were getting thin and emaciated. I had to leave because I had a meeting to go to that evening. I was worried about you.

You were still the same on Saturday, and I should have taken you to the vet then, but I thought you might just simply have been exhausted for some reason. And then today, when I went out there, you were still hiding in the corner. You wanted to die. So, it was time to get the cat carrier out and take you to the vet. I was scared for you , and I cried when I went out to the shed to get the cat carrier.

You were trying to meow on the way down there, but your meows sounded more like chirps, you were that dehydrated and emaciated. The vet took your temperature, blood, and your weight and did a few tests. She told me you were probably infected with something and/or had a liver problem and that she wanted to keep you for a few hours for observation.

And then I got the phone message from her. It came an hour after I dropped you off, and I got it a couple hours later. You were gone.

I was sad for you, but I knew you were now in a better place. I went down and got you, and talked to the vet about what did you in. Your liver apparently failed you, and you hid it from my dad and me for a long time. You lost the will to live, and that was that.

You were a good cat, and I was a good (Sometimes) Food Guy for you.

Goodbye, Mariko, and I'll see you on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge. I'll have your favorite toy with me and we'll play some more then.

The (Sometimes) Food Guy.

Rest in peace, and I'll see you later, my friend.

Adding Insult to Injury: Yet Another Reason Why We Will Not 'Win' The Hearts and Minds of Iraqis

2005-07-04T22:29:00.000-08:00

Read this article and answer me this: how can Bush and company even suggest that we're "winning hearts and minds" of ordinary Iraqis and that the Iraqi Resistance is "in its death throes" and we've almost won the war?

The answer is "Because the Bushies and their ilk are not part of the reality-based community."

We lost this war a long, long time ago. The only question now is, when do the people "in charge" finally figure that out.

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

2005-06-30T22:52:00.000-08:00

The single best commentary of Bush's use of 9/11 I believe has ever been done by an editorial cartoonist.

The URL is here.

The Endgame: Can Bushie Get Himself Out of This Mess?

2005-06-25T14:47:00.000-08:00

Bush has blown his load. His approval ratings are in the toilet and going south, people are fed up with the war and increasingly seeing it as the utter fuckup we know it to be, his Bamboozapalooza tour promoting the handing over of Social Security to his Wall Street buddies went over like a lead balloon, and he's rapidly running out of options.

He's in a bind because his lies are catching up with him. Perhaps the whole house of cards is about to fall apart? Perhaps his immense sand castle is about to be hit by a rogue wave of seismic proportions?

Perhaps the American people are finally starting to wake up?

Time will tell. One thing is for sure, things are about to get "interesting" in the Chinese sense.

God willing, we'll survive what's about to happen here.

If we don't, then that is that and we can put the final nail in the coffin for the United States of America.

Riding the Midnight Sun Run in the rain

2005-06-19T15:08:00.000-08:00

The 2005 Midnight Sun Run was a wet one this year.

It rained steadily leading up to the race and all the way through the race. I was the organizer for the FCC riders again this year. We're tasked with the job of pacing the lead runner(s) and we had fun doing it, as always.

There were six of us all told, and something like 3,000 entrants in the race.

There was me, Tom Clark, Richard Stolzberg, Doug Burnside (in his recumbent bike with the mp3 player from his car down behind his windshield), and a couple other guys.

I got over there to the Patty Center parking lot at UAF a bit early, as I always do, just to see the costume entrants. People can enter the race in the costume division (essentially noncompetitive) and every year, people come up with weird costumes.

There was a lady dressed up as the "Runaway Bride" (with a guy next to her dressed up as a Greyhound bus), a kid dressed up as a shark, people pretending to be a school of salmon, and the like.

We lined up over on Fairbanks Street bridge, and as soon as the Army guys set up by West Valley High School set off the blanks in their howitzer, the race was on.

We cruised along across Fairbanks Street into the subdivision, then up along Geist and over to the other side of University Avenue. The cops had partially closed off University on one lane (the eastbound lane) but traffic was still open through the intersection. Tom had to wave one motorist off from driving right through the intersection just as we were about to go across. It was raining all the way. We sometimes couldn't keep up with the motorcycle cop on the Harley he was riding (which bikes are donated by Harley every year, and returned in September to be sold) and he had to stop several times, sometime to help us keep the course clear.

There were people having solstice/garage parties all along the route (more about that in a moment) and we were riding along, enjoying ourselves in the rain.

Finally, we got over to the Riverview subdivision, and more of the same. The race wound and wended its circuitous route through the Riverview Country Club (as I like to call that subdivision) on its way over to the crossing under the bridge at Peger Road. Just before we got to the bridge, my friend Mike called out to me from his front yard, where he always has a party every year.

It was on that part of the course that I realized that Mike Kramer was the lone runner at the front of the pack, with the second runner (Kevin Brinegar) some hundreds of feet behind him. This was unusual. Usually it's Kevin who is up at the front.

We got under the bridge and had to pick up the pace to stay ahead of Mike. Then we had to get down First Avenue, loop up Moore Street, thence back over on Crosson (I think) to get over to ~~Pioneer Park~~ Alaskaland, where the race ended.

It ends inside the park, and we had to stay with Mike right up to the end, when we pulled off to the side. He won hands down, almost 30 seconds ahead of Kevin.

I bid my buds a farewell and headed back over to Mike's for the party.

There was still plenty of food left over, and I got a cheeseburger, potato salad, and some excellent marianated chicken. I hung out there for a while, watching the parade of runners come down the street. The Army guys came through en masse as they pushed their howitzer cannon (used at the beginning) to the finish line. I missed the "Runaway Bride" entrant as she came by.

Finally, it was gettin along to late in the evening, and I had a long(ish), cold, wet bike ride back to my cabin, in the rain. I bid everyone adieu and rode on home, in the rain, wearing my FCC jacket, with an FCC t-shirt under it.

An NPR Icon Comes to Fairbanks: An Evening With Bob Edwards

2005-06-16T23:21:00.000-08:00

I got to meet one of my heroes in person yesterday.

For many, many years, all the way up into the 1990s and beyond, my ritual every morning while either on the way to work or in to town or whatever I was doing was listening to Morning Edtion on NPR.

And the biggest reason I listened to that show on KUAC every morning came to Fairbanks for a sit-down interview in the Davis Concert Hall with Robert Hannon, a KUAC mainstay and reporter.

I am speaking of none other than the incomparable and illustrious Bob Edwards, of course.

I'd heard about this last week and was eagerly awaiting Wednesday, June 15th with great anticipation. The evening did not disappoint. The discussion was scheduled to begin at 7:30. I got there at about 7:15 or so and the concert hall (which seats 800 people, if memory serves correctly) was already starting to fill up.

I grabbed a program playbill and took a seat in the center of the concert hall.

People were coming in from both entrances and were walking down the aisles to take their seats. There was a hub-bub of conversation going on as the audience was waiting patiently. The set was a spare, simple one: two very comfortable-looking chairs with a little table between them, a pitcher of ice water and two glasses and a simple floral arrangement behind, framed by the flags of Alaska and the United States.

A few minutes after 7:30, Robert Hannon came out the the center of the stage. He introduced himself (to a round of applause, I might add) and then told us that when he was considering public radio as a career, he had always liked to listen to Bob Edwards because his interviews were always informative and entertaining, almost like conversations. He then played a brief sampler of Bob Edwards' 25-year career at NPR, a sort of "Bob Edwards Greatest Hits," as it were.

When the clip of Bob talking to Red Barber came on, the audience applauded loudly and long.

Then, without further ado, Robert introduced us to Bob Edwards, also to loud and long applause. He was dressed casually, in a black t-shirt and blue jeans and looked for all the world like somebody you'd see at the neighborhood bar or coffee shop and someone you would want to hang out with. Bob took a bow and sat down next to Robert and they started talking.

Robert asked him first about his departure from NPR, which wasn't on the greatest of terms. While still singing the praises of NPR, he had some (justifiable, in my view) animus toward his former employers, who basically forced him out of his job and position there.

Then they started talking about Red Barber and Bob commented on how he'd heard the audience applaud at the clip Robert had played of him interviewing Red. He talked about how he and Red had done their little four-minute chitchats every Friday for almost 12 years or so, until Red died in 1992. They then played a clip of Bob interviewing Red at the time of the first Gulf War, in 1991.

You could have heard a pin drop in that concert hall.

They then got into a discussion about Bob's book on Edward R. Murrow (copies of which were on sale in the Great Hall) and his new career on XM Satellite Radio.

Bob talked at some length about what he saw as the strengths of that new network and what he wanted to accomplish with it. He talked about why he wrote the book about Murrow and what Murrow's example meant to him. Essentially, he thought that Murrow showed by his career in journalism what a true, courageous journalist was supposed to be and lived that example by reporting to America from London during the Blitz and standing up to Joe McCarthy, among other things.

They covered a lot of ground, and finally, Robert opened the floor to questions from the audience. The first question was about Bob's trip up here in 1982, when the Alaska Public Radio Network first went up. A number of NPR personalities came up here for that. Bob went to Talkeetna and talked a social worker. He relayed the anecdote to us about how she'd used as an example of "cabin fever" a woman who "just last week" had killed her husband with a frozen beaver.

That got more than a few laughs.

Then there was a question about the meida coverage leading up to the Iraq war. Bob talked about how the commercialization of the media and the increasing pressure from sponsors as well as the business-driven model have turned the media into a shadow of its former self. He talked about how the disucssion of WMD's came down to swift boat veterans and he talked about how the serious, substantive issues about the war were brushed aside for "entertainment" stories like Michael Jackson or whoever else is the media focus of the moment.

Essentially, how the media has become trivializing and trivialized as a result.

He still said we should support NPR, which lead to the next question about what is the future of NPR and should we start supporting XM radio. His answer was essentially "yes," and "if you think it's a good idea." He thinks that XM will never supplant NPR nor should it anytime soon and they should be considered complimentary.

He reminded us that there was no way Ted Stevens would let the House of Representatives gut funding for public broadcasting. He talked a bit about Kevin Tomlinson and how he would be politicizing NPR coverage. He made the comment, to much laughter, about how Tomlinson wanted Brit Hume to come in and lecture NPR reporters on being "fair and balanced" and how he'd love to be a fly on the wall when Hume tried to tell Nina Totenberg how to "practice journalism" in a professional manner.

The last question was about why NPR now had a Los Angeles office. His answer was esentially that NPR had to branch out, because people ont the West Coast felt that it was too Washington-centric.

He told us to keep supporting our local station and write letters to Congress to demand support for public broadcasting because "you Alaskans do write letters and you know how to do it well and you write a lot of them."

Finally, it was time to adjourn to the Great Hall and eat some ice cream and get our books signed. I told Bob when I got to the signing table that he didn't look anything like I thought he would look.

I now have an autographed copy of his book (along with a CD of his XM radio broadcasts) and I'm a happy camper.

98 Firings Under the Belt: Liz Berry's Kiln is Fired Up for the 98th Time

2005-06-11T18:25:00.000-08:00

I've been busy these past few days, but some interesting things have been happening in my world of late.

My old friend Shawn is back in town. He and I biked with the Fairbanks Cycle Club for many years before he had to leave Fairbanks in 1999 to help his mother out. His dad was dying of lung cancer (he died in late 1999) and he went down to help her sort out his dad's estate and move her to Reno. He's been in Reno ever since, with an occasional trip up here since then. The last time I saw him was September, 2002. We rode part of the Equinox Marathon route and then rode over to Liz Berry's place for the kiln-firing party.

Anyway, I saw him over at my favorite coffee shop yesterday after work and we traded stories and talked for a bit. He's up here for our mutual friend Malcom McEwen's wedding on Sunday. Shawn also told me that there would be a kiln firing on Saturday morning. I told him I would be there.

I slept in this morning and spent some time on the computer, catching up on emails, TT subs, etc. I then rode my bike up Henderson Road to the top, then down Ester Dome Road. I stopped at the turnout by Ann's Greenhouses to talk to Rocky and Gail, who were participating in the Tour of Fairbanks stage race. Then, I rode up the bike path and took the trails up by Black Sheep Lane and the horse farm to come down Miller Hill and stop by Liz's place.

She's living at the Pioneer's Home now and her Parkinson's Disease has gotten much worse over the years. However, she fires her wood-fired pottery kiln up twice a year, once at the beginning of summer and once in the fall. Today was Firing Number Ninety-Eight for Liz Berry's kiln.

I got there a little after noon. There were crews of people splitting wood into kindling to be thrown into the fire. The potters were watching the fire carefully, checking the temperature and looking at the cones on the various levels. I parked my bike and basically watched as things went on. Wood was cut, stacked in boxes, and at either end of the kiln, bundles would be thrown in onto the grate. Ashes would be removed and put in buckets. There were other buckets full of mud for sealing up the kiln, which came in due time. Once Liz had decided that the kiln was hot enough, she signaled the potters and helpers that it was time to seal up both ends of the kiln. My friend Tom Clark was one of them. First, they took the grates out of each side, then grabbed boxes of kindling for each side. Then, they stacked up wood to be crammed in behind the boxes.

Once the boxes were secured in the kiln, they crammed wood in behind them, all the way up to the back. Then they put the sealing plates over the holes, carefully stacked bricks up around them, and piled mud around and on top of the bricks everywhere to seal up the kiln.

Then it was time to clean up around the kiln, sweep up the wood scraps, and put everything away until the next kiln firing.

They will open the kiln up tomorrow to see how things are doing in there. It should be a good group of pottery!

Impeachment: The Logical Conclusion to the Ramifications of the Downing Street "Memo"

2005-06-04T14:14:00.000-08:00

In case you've not heard, The Downing Street "Memo" (actually it's a set of minutes from a meeting) surfaced a little over a month ago. It is the minutes of a meeting between the British intelligence chief and his American counterparts and his report to Tony Blair about that meeting.

It is, in a word, damning. In essence, it says that Bush and his cabal had already decided to invade Iraq as early as midsummer, 2002 and were fixing (i.e., lying) the intelligence and evidence to point to the conclusion that Saddam had WMD's and was still a threat to his neighbors and we had to invade him to stop him.

For all intents and purposes, this document shows the naked truth for all the world to see: Bush and other high-ranking members of his "administration" lied from the get-go about the reasons for the Iraq war.

Bush Lied. People Died.

Bush lied through his teeth and he, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and the rest must be held accountable for what they did.

Over 1600 American soldiers are dead, tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead or wounded, some permanently, and our standing in the international community has gone down the toilet.

All because Bush wanted to show his Poppy that he can "be a man" too and he's got a bigger schlong than Poppy.

Bush and Cheney must be impeached. Then they and the rest can be brought before the World Court to face justice for their crimes. These include war crimes and crimes against humanity, among many others.

They must be removed from the offices they have usurped.

Then and only then will we have any sense of closure on this horrible crime that has been perpetrated in our names.

The Faces of the Fallen: A Tribute

2005-05-28T15:12:00.000-08:00

Go here to see an online slideshow of portraits of those American soldiers who have paid the ultimate price in Iraq and Afghanistan while in our country's uniform.

Those who died in Afghanistan could be said to have died in something resembling a worthwhile cause (that of securing the capture of Osama bin Laden, remember him, he's the guy who is actually planned, bankrolled, and carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001?) but those in Iraq have died for no reason.

They did in the service of a lie. They were in our country's uniform to defend our freedoms yet those freedoms were never, ever under threat from anything or anyone in Iraq.

Yet they died anyway. They died so that Bush and his oil buddy corporate patrons could have easy access to a cheap source of oil in order to line their pockets with cash.

This is an evil against which there can be no lesser moral obligation than to stand against it and say, "No."

This must not stand. We must do whatever we can to stop Bush and the men behind him. Perhaps then, those many, many brave men and women who died there will not have died in vain.

Let us remember this on this day we set aside to honor our nation's fallen warriors.

Revenge of the Dark Lord of the Chimp? My take on the final Star Wars movie

2005-05-24T04:12:00.000-08:00

I saw the movie last Thursday, in a theater that was about half-full (this was at 9 in the morning) with a mixed audience that had a fair range of age groups.

I'd gotten a free ticket from a co-worker (he bought the tickets weeks ago, thinking he was getting a ticket for the 9 am show and the 9 pm show when he was actually getting two tickets to the 9 am show) and got to essentially take the day off to see the movie.

I got to the theater about an hour early. Within a few minutes, a couple guys had already shown up. More and more people started showing up as the time neared for the theater to open. When it did, we formed a rough line to get in. My co-worker had given me my ticket about a week ago, so when I walked up to the ticket-taker, all I had to do was give it to her. Most everybody else were in line to buy tickets for the show.

We all got settled in, and then had to sit through almost a half-hour of promos, ads, more promos, more ads, etc. before the previews got going. The previews lasted twenty-odd minutes. Finally, the movie got going.

I liked it. It was good, fun, and worth it (especially when you're getting in free!) and I'll probably go see it again in about a week, after the lines die down, to get a feel for the things I might have missed in the first viewing, things that have been mentioned online in other fora.

What most about the movie I liked was the general sense of continuity between it and the second three movies and how Lucas ties everything together. This is why I think the movies now need to be seen in chronological story order. I thought the whole business of Anakin and Padme(sp?) was overdrawn in that you never got a sense of real passion from them, almost like they were acting out a character play rather than that they were lovers. However, we do get the feel that Anakin does care about her. I think part of the reason they are so restrained toward each other is that they can't truly be openly together. There seems to be an "illicit" angle to their relationship that suggests to me that the Jedi are supposed to be celibate and chaste and Anakin didn't want his fellow Jedi to frown upon his relationship with her.

This movie is really about Anakin's final transformation from caring, decent human being to "Darth Vader" and I think Lucas pulls it off well considering. He isn't so much "seduced" by the Dark Side as much as he's forced into it. The choices he makes throughout the first three movies paint him into a corner from which he can see only one way out: surrender to the Dark Side and follow Palpatine to the end.

The most effective scene was when the mask drops down on his face, from his point of view. It's as if we're seeing the last vestige of his humanity disappear, subsumed under his Vader persona. But that vestige is still there, buried within him somewhere, to emerge at the end of the last movie, when he decides he cannot kill his own son and turns against evil and the Emperor. This is why I thought the "Nooooooo!" scene actually worked pretty well. What we saw then and in the brief bit of dialog between him and Palpatine was that shred of humanity still within his soul, biding its time.

In the end, Luke was right. There was still some shred of decency left in there somewhere and it came out, right at the extremity of Vader's life when he is confronted with a stark choice: kill his own son or turn against evil.

There was an obvious (whether Lucas intended it to be so is another matter entirely) political allegory between the manner in which Palpatine becomes Supreme Chancellor and then Emperor and current events. However, I suspect that allegory will go over the heads of quite a few people watching the film, which is unfortunate because I think the film rightly makes the point that Power Corrupts, and Absolute Power Corrupts, Absolutely.

Samuel L. Jackson is one of my favorite actors and I liked his on-screen presence in these three movies of the first trilogy. The only thing that didn't work quite right for me was his edgy, quirky humor. He might have worked out better as a "Han Solo" kind of character, but he does manage to pull this role off pretty well.

The battle scenes were long, complicated, and overly packed with action, in my opinion. Lucas could have toned them down a bit.

Lastly, in the birthing scene toward the end, there was a real-life touch provided by a couple babies in the audience. When the babies onscreen are born and begin to cry, so too did the young 'uns in the theater, right on cue. It was distracting at first but provided a moment of comic relief for me when I heard it.
All in all, I liked it. It was good theater and I think Star Wars aficionados will get a kick out of it.

April showers mean May flowers?

2005-04-30T15:36:00.000-08:00

This has not been a good month for His Chimpliness.

Bad news from Iraq, bad news on his Social Security "reform" blitzkreig, bad news about Tom DeLay, basically bad news wherever he turns.

It's been a veritable April shower of bad news these past 30 days.

Perhaps this might mean all these turd blossoms he's been unwittingly avoiding will blossom into full flower in the month of May?

One can only hope and we can (and will) continue to work to expose the hyprocrisy and stupidity of the Bush cabal at every turn.

They must and will pay for what they have wrought.

Gannongate Lives Again!

2005-04-24T22:28:00.000-08:00

Just when the White House thought it might be past them, Gannongate rears its ugly head and comes back with a vengeance.

This time it is not going away, I don't think.

This time around, it's more serious because this time it is now apparent that James Guckert was at the White House on a number of occasions when there were no press conferences, "presidential" or otherwise, scheduled anywhere in or near the White House?

So what was he doing there? I'd say it's long past time for Congress to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the matter and find out exactly what he was doing there.

Private "interviews" with White House staffers? Exclusives with Karl Rove? Gaining access to classified material he had no clearance to see?

Enquiring minds want to know.

This is our house, this is our government and we have a right to know what was going on here.

Pass the popcorn. This is only going to get better and better.

His Most Excellent Majesty, George Walker Bush, The King of Kings?

2005-04-17T18:19:00.000-08:00

Back in the days of absolute-power royalty (we're talking the Middle Ages here, precisely the time Bush and his cronies would like to drag the United States back to) when the King would pay a visit to some provincial town or capitol, the local officials would scurry around to make everything look spic and span for the ruler's visit.

They would clean up the streets, sweep up the sidewalks, round up all the bums, vagrants, homeless, etc. and generally make the place look pretty so His Most Excellent Majesty would not have to see or hear anything unpleasant.

Well ... looks like we're back to the good old days, as this story in the Lincoln Courier attests:

Bush coming to Lincoln Museum dedication

BY LISA KERNEK
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

SPRINGFIELD — President Bush and his wife, Laura, will travel to Springfield Tuesday for the dedication of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, the White House confirmed Friday.

The president and first lady will tour the museum, and Bush will speak at the 11 a.m. dedication ceremony, a White House spokesman said.

The visit will be brief. Bush has events scheduled at the White House Tuesday afternoon.

"It’s obviously very exciting and it really honors this project and the city," museum executive director Richard Norton Smith said of the presidential visit.

"Everything will be brief," Smith added, "including his remarks and the ceremony."

Following Friday’s announcement, at the request of the Secret Service, city crews began removing street lights, traffic signals and trees near Union Square Park, site of the dedication ceremony. The poles and trees could obstruct the view of government snipers who will be protecting the president, city spokesman Ernie Slottag explained.

The trees are to be replanted after the ceremony.

The Federal Aviation Administration also said it would restrict flights over Springfield from 9:40 a.m. until 12:55 p.m. Tuesday.

Mayor Tim Davlin called the presidential visit "the kind of thing you dream about when you’re planning this, a year or two or three or four years ago. ... That added national exposure and worldwide exposure is just going to be wonderful to do a good kickoff for the museum."

...

Every person attending the ceremony will have to pass through a metal detector. Backpacks, chairs, umbrellas, strollers, food, beverages and other items are banned. The complete list of banned items is listed on the backs of the tickets.

...

So let's get this straight: the Boy King will be paying a three- or four hour visit to Springfield, he and his entire entourage will be whisked through the city, he'll have a whirlwind tour of Lincoln's museum, he'll have a photo op at the dedication where he'll read Karl Rove's words being fed to him through his earpiece, and then he and his whole entourage will fly out of town like the wind immediately after the ceremony is concluded.

And they're taking down streetlights, cutting down trees, cordoning off the city center, etc. just so His Fraudliness doesn't have to worry about "assassins" sneaking in to his handpicked crowd of supporters and GOP stalwarts?

What is it this guy is afraid of, exactly?

Us. He's afraid of having to see or deal with Ordinary 'Murkans who might have a few things to say to him.

He's afraid of the truth, is what it really comes down to.

This is exactly why we're looking like a nation of fools to the rest of the world. Can you for even one minute imagine Clinton having to do something like this?

He'd tell the Secret Service to lay off on the tree-cutting thing and he'd go out and mingle with the crowd because that was what he did as president.

He understood what it means to be a leader. Bush doesn't.

We've already seen plenty of this since Bush and his cronies hijacked the White House, "First Amendment" zones, checkpoints six block down the street, protesters being arrested for doing nothing but wearing anti-Bush t-shirts, etc. so this won't be the last.

Welcome to Bush's AmeriKKKa, formerly the Land of the Free.

A Tale of Two Pictures, Again

2005-04-11T18:34:00.000-08:00

Remember the infamous picture of Saddam's statue being toppled right after the US took Bagdahd two years ago?

That picture served as the Bush cabal's perfect vehicle to symbolize the PR blitz about the invasion and war. Throngs of cheering, grateful Iraqis pulling down the bronze statue of the hated, despotical dictator Saddam Hussein while American soldiers cheer them on.

Here is what Americans saw on that day.

Well, it turns out the picture was actually a staged event, as carefully choreographed and planned as a World Wrestling Federation "fight" and was taken in what the movie people call "ECU" or "Extreme Close Up" focus.

When you pull the camera back a bit, here is what that square actually looked like in the wider shots.

Then, just recently, thousands of Iraqis came out to protest the occupation. They descended upon that square and inundated it with people.

Quite the contrast, eh?

Anyone want to take bets on if the "mainstream media" will bother with reporting on that contrast and discussing that contrast in great detail?

(cue sound of crickets chirping)

I didn't think so either.

They're too busy sucking on the Chimp's member to bother with pesky little things like facts.

They're a bunch of tools.

That is all

Spring has Sprung!

2005-04-09T16:56:00.000-08:00

Well, at long last, it seems to be spring in these parts.

The puddles have returned.

It happens every year around this time of year. The sun returns, the snow starts melting, and the puddles come back. It may be spring on the surface but it is still deep, dark winter underground, where the storm drains and catch basins are.

So, every year, we start getting big puddles where the drainage basins are still frozen up, like the one over by Beaver Sports that formed over the past few days.

I wandered over there from B&C Laundromat ('tis time for my bi-weekly pilgrimage down to B&C to feed the Almighty Laundry Gods and keep them happy for another two weeks) to check it out.

It was about half the size of Lake Superior. Both drainage basins (the one next to Beaver Sports and the one across the street by Hot Licks were still frozen solid. The puddle was deepest there and was so deep, it covered the entire street. The only way to see the centerline was when cars went through the puddle and waves washed over it. Those same waves splashed up on the sidewalk on both sides of College Road and for fifty feet or so on either side of the puddle, the sidewalk was black with water.

It was fun watching the cars approach the puddle, slow down, and gamely make their way through it, most of the cars, at least. Some of them just went plowing straight on through, splashing up enormous rooster's tails of spray on either side.

A work crew from the the Department of Transportation was up College Road, working on a puddle up there near the Oaken Keg (though that puddle was smaller). They had their big work truck, hot steam points to thaw the ice with, and traffic cones galore.

When I was finished with my laundry, I went driving over to College Road and I could see them setting up in Beaver Sports' parking lot, preparing to do battle with Lake College Road.

I suspect that lake's days are numbered after they're finished with it.

A Tale of Two Pictures

2005-04-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

First, this picture:

Then, this picture:

Who looks more presidential?

Or, put another way, is the Boy King steamed that the Big Dog is upstaging him? Does a bear relieve itself in the woods?

For little Georgie, it always has to be about HIM and no one else.

Anyone have ideas for captions for those pictures?

The Bugman Falleth? At Long Last, Is Tom Delay's Karmic Bitch Catching Up With Him?

2005-04-07T18:16:00.000-08:00

Ah yes, The Bugman's got himself in a little heap o' trouble, yes he has. He's had quite a few ethical 'problems' that are now starting to catch up with him in a big way. He climbed on board the Schiavo Express, coattails flappping in the wind, sword at the ready, charging off after ephemeral windmills only he could see, and taking the Republican Party along for the ride (even though they didn't exactly go unwillingly) all the way straight down the cliff.

And now he's realizing just what a pickle he's gotten himself into.

Poor Tom Delay. Let's make him the face of the GOP, shall we? Hang him 'round the necks of the Republican Party like the decaying, putrifying albatross he is and force them to play Peter and try to deny they ever even knew him, their fellow hypocritical political bedmate.

Let's further the fun by encouraging him to stay in to the bitter end against his enemies. Let's call his constituent offices and/or his Washington office and tell his staff that we're "loyal 'Murkans outraged at this high-tech lyching of a great, decent American and we want the Senator (wingies usually get those things wrong, gotta stay in character), to hang in there" and that "we're praying for you all the time."

Here's his contact information just for your edification.

Washington DC Office
242 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Ph. (202) 225-5951
Fax (202) 225-5241

Stafford, Texas District Office
10701 Corporate Drive, Suite 118
Stafford, TX 77477
Ph. (281) 240-3700
Fax (281) 240-2959

Webster, Texas District Office
711 W. Bay Area Blvd. Suite 410
Webster, TX 77598
Ph. (281) 557-8855
Toll Free 1(800)759-5748
Fax (281) 557-8899

You know what to do. Pass the popcorn and let's have a little fun!

Poor, poor, pitiful Tom DeLay, victim of his own arrogance, hubris, and stupidity (cue sound of violins). Let's help him to bring down as many of his fellow Reich-wingers as possible, shall we?

Iraq 2005: According to Dahr Jamail, It is a Hellhole

2005-04-03T15:40:00.000-08:00

Last week, Dahr Jamail came up here to speak about the Iraq war and the situation in Iraq. This visit was part of his speaking tour of the western US and took place over Thursday and Friday of last week.

He spoke at the Carlson Center, in the same side room where UAF holds the reception for the graduating class every year (the graduation ceremony itself is held in the main auditorium of the Carlson Center).

The room seats around 450-500 people and was roughly half-full. There were two slide projectors hooked up to his computer, one on each side of the room so people on either side could see clearly. Dahr stood in front of a podium on a dais at the head of the room, right between the screens for the projectors.

The first thing he talked about was the general situation in Iraq. It sucks, to put it quite simply. There is rampant unemployment, daily car bombings, the infrastructure is collapsing, and the Iraqi population is growing more and more angry by the day.

He addressed the pathetic situation of the Iraqi health system. It, like most of the infrastructure of Iraqi society, is falling apart as well as the roads, bridges, electrical system, and all the rest. Trained specialists are leaving in droves because they are becoming targets themselves of gangs of Iraqi kidnappers. Kidnapping has become the crime of choice in Iraq (with nearly 70 percent unemployment, people have to do what they have to do to survive, I guess) and people like those doctors and other specialists are increasingly becoming the targets of those kidnappings.

As they leave, the people left behind in the hospitals have to deal with a greater and greater patient load with fewer and fewer resources available to them. Things like hypodermic syringes, gloves, bandages, medicines; just little things like that.

Because the water situation is so bad (water purification plants having been bombed, water lines destroyed, etc.) the Iraqi population is increasingly unable to obtain potable water. The water they do get is teeming with various diseases and toxins. So, they drink bad water, get dysentery, cholera, typhoid, diahrrea, or whatever, and then have to run the gauntlet of the "modern" Iraqi health system, with predictable results.

And their relatives get angry at the few doctors left and more often than not, take that anger out on the doctors and nurses at the hospitals and clinics, including beating them up and/or killing them in some cases.

Then he talked about the shitty situation in Fallujah. The US military has essentially cordoned Fallujah off from the outside world and in essence, made it into an outdoor prison. Something like 65 percent of the buildings in Fallujah have been destroyed. Those who want to go back there first have to get an ID card from the US military. Then they have to try and piece together the shattered remnants of their lives, under the ever-watchful gaze of the US military, while they pitch tents at the sites of their former homes.

Fallujah was never a hotbed of pro-Saddam activitiy, quite the opposite. So much so that during the invasion two years ago, there was no fighting there. Initially, they welcomed us as liberators from the tyrannical Hussein regime.

We very quickly wore out our welcome there. Resistance to our occupation began to occur there, first sporadic, then growing. Instead of trying to deal with it judiciously and humanely, our military fanned the flames by cracking down. Then the contractors got killed there last year and our GOP-owned media made it out that the entire city of Fallujah was complicit in that attack.

So, we cracked down and started bombing the city into rubble. The first time was in April/May of last year, and then in November of last year. Dahr was able to get a picture of what's going on inside the city by making contact with people in the city who have managed to slip in and out of the cordon around it. Western journalists are no longer allowed in the city at all, so he can't get in. He can only rely on information from his contacts there.

Suffice it to say, what has happened to that city is a war crime. Period.

He had a number of very graphic slides and pictures taken in the streets of Fallujah and in the main morgues in Bagdhad and Fallujah. Those pictures are horrific, to say the least.

The bottom line is this: what has happened to Iraq was deliberate, calculated, and is a war crime by any definition of the term.

We're responsible for this because we didn't stop it. Our tax dollars are going to pay for this. We're paying for this, in ways we can't even begin to imagine and will do so for years and years.

We had an open house at the peace center downtown. It was a potluck affair, and there were about twenty or thirty of us all told. Dahr spoke a little bit there about his plans for the next few months and was quite gratified at the turnout and enthusiasm Fairbanks showed for him on Thursday.

I had a chanced to talk to him for a little bit. I asked him about the report he'd posted on his weblog a few months ago about the alleged war crime committed by US troops. I told if that doctor has evidence of that, then that evidence needs to come out because that is a war crime. Period. He agreed and had written to the doctor asking him to present any and all video evidence or testimony about that incident. He has not heard back from that doctor. Yet.

Ann Coulter: Can't Take The Heat, Eh?

2005-03-30T19:00:00.000-09:00

Well, after a monthlong hiatus, I'm back.

Ann Coulter was giving a lecture at a university in Kansas. People in the audience started tossing hardball questions at her when it came time for "Q and A" and she couldn't deal with actual criticism of her agenda and philosophy.

Read this thread on DU for more background on the story and what really happened.

Then watch this clip from a local television station to get the "mainstream media" spin on it.

Basically, she got heckled, and since she has such a thin skin, she walked off the stage rather than face criticism.

(that and she was asked which is bigger, her Adam's apple or her dick)

But, I digress. This shows again what a wackaloon wingnut she is.

Ann, get a clue (and a life while you're at it)

Germans Speak Their Minds: Go Home, Georgie!

2005-02-26T09:24:00.000-09:00

Take that, George. Even though you forced the German goverment to essentially shut down own of its cities so you could have Schroeder suck your cock, 15,000 of his citizens still managed to get out and protest you in that city.

The people of Germany (and most of the rest of Europe) don't like you, George.

A lot of Americans don't like you either.

Guess money can't buy you love, eh?

"Lucky Man" for 2005 (With Apologies to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer)

2005-02-25T18:47:00.000-09:00

My version of an old ELP classic (the tune for which can be found here, which parody pokes fun at Gannon/Guckert and his tawdry saga of media (and literal) whoredom:

"Lucky Man" (the 2005 edition)

He had dirty websites
And 'clients' by the score
All coming back to 'rent' him
They're begging for more

Ooooh, what a lucky man he was
Ooooh, what a lucky man he was

The White House press room,
They gave him a pass
A wink and a wave in the morning
He got in nice and easy

Ooooh, what a lucky man he was
Ooooh, what a lucky man he was

He threw many softballs
For his Karl and his Scott
Of his disgrace and shilling
The people would know not

Ooooh, what a lucky man he was
Ooooh, what a lucky man he was

A blogger had found him
His 'assets' on display
No whining could save him
So he sat down and he cried

Ooooh, what a lucky man he was
Ooooh, what a lucky man he was

I think Emerson, Lake, and Palmer would approve.

The Whore Side of Town (With Apologies to Johnny Rivers)

2005-02-24T21:22:00.000-09:00

My take on the Gannon/Guckert saga after it has run its course and his Fifteen Minutes are up and he's back to doing what he's good at (to the tune of an old Johnny Rivers classic from the Sixties)

The Whore Side of Town

Boo-hoo-hoo whiny crybaby
Boo-hoo-hoo whiny crybaby

How can you tell me you really missed me?
When the last time I saw you, you wouldn't even blow me
That chimp guy you've been seeing
Must have put you down
So welcome back buddy
To the whore side of town

To him, you were nothing but a juicy boytoy
A shill, not much more than his little pet boy
To me, you were the best date this old guy had ever found
And boy, it's hard to get good dates
On the whore side of town

I can't blame you for trying
I'm trying to break out too
I've got one little hang up buddy
I just can't seem to get it up without you

So tell me, are you gonna stick around now?
Will you go down for me all the way now?
With you at my feet
I can get it up again
Together we can suck it buddy
In the whore side of town

(So tell me how much you love me)
(Come be my bitch and say you want me now)

Oh, with you at my feet
This town can't keep me down
Together we can blow it buddy
On the whore side of town

Boo-hoo-hoo whiny crybaby
Boo-hoo-hoo whiny crybaby

I ask again, where's the outrage? None of my friends who I've talked to about this (with one or two exceptions) have even heard of this story.

Remember the good old days when we used to have a free, independent media that actually did its job?

I'd like to see those days come back to our country. How 'bout you?

That way, stories like this would not get ignored the way this one is.

Allah's Soldier: A Sunni Sniper Tells His Tale

2005-02-22T02:53:00.000-09:00

Shit. this guy fancies himself to be an Iraqi version of Vassili Zaitsev, the Russian sniper in WWII who dispatched many a German soldier in the Battle of Stalingrad and on whose exploits the film, Enemy at the Gates is based.

It would seem he's pretty good at it too.

And there are probably quite a few Shi'ites in Iraq who are cheering this guy on, even if he's a Sunn'i because he's killing the infidel Americans who have invaded and occupied their country and killed their fellow Iraqis by the thousands.

And he's likely to become a hero amongst them for what he's doing to our troops.

Shit.

Thank you, George Walker Bush, for bringing this mess on.

May God have mercy on you. The people of Iraq will not.

Security, Security, Wherefore Art Thou, Security: The Boy King Visits Germany

2005-02-20T22:58:00.000-09:00

I am on the World Socialist Web Site mailing list. Even though they're (sometimes) loony-lefty, they do have some fairly good analysis and articles on their site.

I was amazed to read this article about the extraordinary security measures being taken ahead of His Chimpliness' visit to Germany later this week.

And I do mean extraordinary security measures.

They are, for all practical purposes, shutting down an entire German city. No vehicular traffic, no air traffic, the highways and roads shut down, especially in the area around where the Boy King will be, and the populace essentially under lockdown.

Why?

Because they know that Bush and his regime are not popular in Germany. Bush is about as popular there as a MADD activist is at a Friday night kegger on campus.

The Germans despise him with a passion and his handlers know this.

Therefore, all this "protection" isn't there to protect him from attack. It's there to insulate him from the truth as much as they possibly can.

This is shameful.

What was that about "restoring honor and integrity to the White House" I remember a certain faux Texan proclaiming a few years back.

If you're so sure of yourself, Georgie Boy, then come out of that shell and face the people who oppose you. Otherwise, you're just a cowardly little boy in way over his head. Why don't you just come out and admit that and save us a whole bunch of trouble.

Hypocrisy: Thy Name Is Republicanism

2005-02-19T03:55:00.000-09:00

You drop off the radar screen for two weeks, and look what happens.

This ongoing Gannon/Guckert saga is probably the most egregious example of Republican hypocrisy of late, but certainly isn't the only one nor will it be the last.

This guy is a whore, a literal whore. Not only that, but he is also a gay whore, prostituting himself to the highest bidders on his various websites, peddling gay sex no less. And to top it all off, he's a Republican gay whore, to boot.

Where's the outrage? This cad is given essentially free access to the White House so that Bush's mouthpiece (or Bush himself) can call on him to ask leading, softball questions which then can be expounded on to advanced the GOP talking points of the day.

This guy is about as legitimate a journalist as I am a board-certified psychotherapist licensed to dispense medical advice over the internet.

This guy is a shill who was being used. For what purposes we don't know (yet), but we can be assured of one thing. Karl Rove, the power behind the throne, is somehow involved in all this.

Either this guy was simply a plant being used for softball questions, or someone in the White House was using him for sexual favors. Or perhaps, it is both of those possibilities. Either way, it shrieks "hypocrisy" to me.

This whole thing stinks and maybe, just maybe, it might be the thread that unravels the whole shaky edifice upon which the Bushies are sitting.

One can only hope.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Republicanism.

The Truth About Rummy (That He Does Not Want to Face)

2005-02-05T15:03:00.000-09:00

Hm. It would seem from reading this article on Truthout that Donald Rumsfeld isn't particularly eager to face justice in a German court for the prison scandal (among other war crimes he's responsible for) if he attends that security conference in Germany next week.

I wonder, has there ever been a time when a senior American official is hesitant to visit an allied country because he might be arrested there for war crimes?

Remind me again what is wrong with this picture. Rummy's a coward, pure and simple; and the idea that he might have to face the consequences of what he has wrought scares him. It should.

Rummy, you're a war criminal. Even if you never ever see the inside of a court to face justice for your crimes, it still does not remove the fact that you have committed crimes against humanity and against the American people.

Somehow or another, I think that realization will haunt you for the rest of your existence on this planet.

Sleep well, if you can.

Vote or Starve: Your Call, Iraqis

2005-02-01T05:22:00.000-09:00

Dahr Jamail is one of the few independent journalists operating in Iraq, outside of the 'official' news media corps. He is not content to simply get his information spoon-fed to him from the US military or the corporate media, so he went there to check the facts on the ground for himself, and report back to us what he sees and hears there.

Things like this little tidbit he unearthed about why turnout was so 'heavy' in Bagdahd and other cities in the recent election in Iraq:

Many Iraqis said Monday that their names were marked on a list provided by the government agency that provides monthly food rations before they were allowed to vote.

”I went to the voting centre and gave my name and district where I lived to a man,” said Wassif Hamsa, a 32-year-old journalist who lives in the predominantly Shia area Janila in Baghdad. ”This man then sent me to the person who distributed my monthly food ration.”

Mohammed Ra'ad, an engineering student who lives in the Baya'a district of the capital city reported a similar experience.

Ra'ad, 23, said he saw the man who distributed monthly food rations in his district at his polling station. ”The food dealer, who I know personally of course, took my name and those of my family who were voting,” he said. ”Only then did I get my ballot and was allowed to vote.”

”Two of the food dealers I know told me personally that our food rations would be withheld if we did not vote,” said Saeed Jodhet, a 21-year-old engineering student who voted in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad.

There has been no official indication that Iraqis who did not vote would not receive their monthly food rations.

Many Iraqis had expressed fears before the election that their monthly food rations would be cut if they did not vote. They said they had to sign voter registration forms in order to pick up their food supplies.

There's more at the link, but you get the gist of it. This is not the definition of a democracy or anything close to it. Voting at the point of a gun is not democracy nor is withholding someone's food unless they vote.

This is a sham, plain and simple. These people were coerced into 'voting' simply because the US-sponsored government wanted a high turnout in the 'election' last week.

This is a shame.

The Recount Gambit: How They May Have Gamed The Ohio Recount

2005-01-27T19:22:00.000-09:00

I was reading a thread on my favorite cyber-pad earlier and came across this story alleging that there was an effort made in a certain Ohio county during the recount process to tamper with ballots. Naturally, this was apparently done in order to assist George Bush's campaign by "manufacturing" more votes for him.

Should this surprise us? Our democracy is dying, right in front of our eyes.

Spread that link around to everyone you know. It might just be the smoking gun we've been looking for.

A Commentary on Commentaries

2005-01-24T22:27:00.000-09:00

I didn’t start getting really big into DVDs until a little over two years ago, in the fall of 2002. I was vaguely aware that they existed and that they were an alternative to VHS analog videos. That was about the extent of my knowledge. I probably first heard of them a few years ago and didn’t pay them much heed until they started taking off in 2001 and 2002.

Suddenly, they were everywhere. DVDs had existed under the radar screen for years before I got wind of them; their makers slowly building up the market until it reached critical mass. Enough people had purchased enough DVD players that the studios could start releasing them on the mass market. Once there were a whole bunch of DVDs on the market, more people started buying players for them. The rest is, as they say, history.

I recall being asked by a fellow dorm room resident back in college (this was around the fall of 1984) about compact disks. He and I were talking one day about how CDs were starting to show up everywhere and he asked me if I thought they would take over the market from tapes and phonograph records. I told him it would depend on if the market would reach critical mass. He agreed with that assessment.

As we all know, the CD market did take off. Phonograph records and players went the way of the dodo (except as props for hip hop acts) and that was that. It’s the same thing with DVDs. Once the market took off, it never looked back. VHS tapes are also on their way to eventual extinction. Basically, the first DVDs in the United States came out in 1997. By 2000, there were over 13 million players in the United States and well over 10,000 titles available. That growth rate is continuing to increase. DVDs are rapidly becoming the standard for home video and may eventually replace audio CDs as well.

In the fall of 2002, I needed a new television. So, with a measure of trepidation, I headed on down to the West Fairbanks Fred Meyer home electronics department to buy a 19" television with a built-in DVD player and a VHS player. It cost me about $400 at the time (it was on sale) and nowadays, I could probably get a similar model for around $300 on the internet somewhere.

I took it home, set it up, and then, over the course of the past two years or so, began building up my DVD collection. I now have a line of DVDs almost three feet long stretching on the floor under my television, with stacks of DVDs above them. I have two or three dozen DVDs by now (I’ve not bothered to count the exact number, needless to say, it is in the hundreds of dollars) and I am sure my collection will continue to grow. Just about every time I go by the West Fairbanks Fred Meyer store, I check their home electronics department to see what new offerings they have in the DVD section. I almost always walk out with another movie to add to my collection.

When my collection started getting bigger, I began to experiment with the Menus section of the DVD. I hadn’t bothered with the supplemental stuff on the first few DVDs I watched, but then I started to take note. There were cast bios, deleted scenes, "making of" featurettes, still photos from the movie set(s), and lots of other stuff to be explored. So, adventuresome person that I am, I started exploring those extra features.

This was my first encounter with DVD commentaries. I was hooked immediately. For an amateur film buff like myself, this was like getting an inside seat at the cast and crew final screening of the completed film. Generally, when a film is finally done, in the can, and completed, the cast and crew will sit down to watch it at the studio theater. A good DVD commentary is like being right there with them as they are watching the film.

There are several different kinds of commentaries, though. The first is the straightforward ones I’ve just been mentioning: the director, producer, writer(s) and/or several cast members or crew members will sit down and comment on the film as it’s playing. Sometimes there will be director’s commentary, often with commentary from the writer(s) of the film and that will be that. Or, there will also be a commentary from the cast, often along with the director’s commentary, sometimes by itself. Then there are the commentaries from the crew, the special effects people, the technical design crew, and the like, which can be very interesting indeed in their own right.

Commentaries are an interesting phenomenon because they are essentially without precedent in cinema. Yes, there have been plenty of “the making of” documentaries, replete with cast interviews, scene setups, explanations of special effects, et cetera, for many years that have provided a very interesting supplement to home videos. But, prior to DVDs, you never had everything in an entire package. Now you can have the movie, with commentary by the director, writer, cast, crew, or whoever else might be interested in commenting on the film. In addition, there is all the other supplemental stuff, the explanation of special effects, lighting design, casting decisions, etc.; all of which add up to a complete package.

I have also noticed that you can watch the evolution of computerized special effects in films over the past 10 or 15 years or so. For instance, the commentary for Shawshank Redemption discusses one particular scene where Tim Robbins is hanging over the edge of a roof, holding on to Clancy Brown for dear life and the film makers note that this scene was one of the first uses of digitally removing something from a scene (in this case, the safety cables holding both actors to the roof.) Then in Deep Impact, there is a sequence toward the end where they are talking about the tidal waves coming up the mountains and how this was one of the earliest uses of computer-generated waves. You can then see (and hear) how that was perfected in The Perfect Storm and see CGI at its highest form in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Commentaries are like the Cliff’s Notes for a film. When they’re done right, they make you feel as though you were there in the film-making process. When the director explains why he or she chose to use or not use a particular scene, you understand that comment in conjunction with the “deleted scenes” section of the DVD. Or an actor will explain why he or she chose to read a certain line of dialogue in a certain way. It’s funny to listen to Kurt Russell and John Carpenter commenting on Big Trouble in Little China. It’s almost like you’re over at one of their houses, watching the film with them. When commenataries are done wrong, they are boring as all hell and contribute little to the film or your understanding or appreciation of the film.

DVD commentaries will be an invaluable resource for film historians and critics yet unborn. This is because the commentaries will provide a priceless insight into the minds of the director, producer, cast members, crew, etc. as they were filming the movie and assembling it.

This brings up another thought about DVD commentaries. Nowadays, movies are being released on DVD and are generally done with commentaries already on the disc. After the movie is in the can, the director, cast, crew, writer(s), etc. assemble one last time and record the commentaries. Then everyone goes their separate ways and that is that.

It is not quite so easily done with a movie more than say, five or six years old, before the major advent of DVDs. If you’re a studio and you want to release a movie from 10 or 15 years ago, you have to reassemble the cast, crew, director, writer(s), or whoever (if you can find them), and have them sit down and record the commentary. If it’s a movie from 10 or 15 years ago, that can be done, but it takes time.

Sometimes only the director and writer can be rounded up to do a commentary. Other times only two or three of the actors can be found and that leaves the studio with an incomplete commentary because every one else who was involved in the movie are now working on other projects. For an actor, that could get very tricky because recording a commentary for a movie you did six or seven years ago means dropping what you’re doing to go fly off somewhere to record the commentary, meaning the director of the movie you’re working on now has to shuffle things around to let you take a day or so off to record the commentary.

If the movie is 20 or 30 years old, many of the cast and crew are dead. Unless you want to have a seance, you’re out of luck. If the movie is 40 years old or older, that’s pretty much the case all the way around. Some studios have been known to have film critics or historians do a commentary on a movie that is that old or older. I don’t know about you, but having a film critic or film historian commenting on a classic movie is like reading a classic of literature, Shakespeare or Dickens, for example, and having some English professor looking over your shoulder, commenting or explaining over some particular passage or why the author chose to narrate this scene from that character’s POV. It would be annoying, in other words.

I suspect there will also be a difference between DVD commentaries from recent movies as opposed to those of movies from 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. That difference is this: the people commenting on their movies from the past have had 10, 15, or 20 years to reflect on a movie, its impact on popular culture, how it affected their lives, etc. They can then bring that perspective to the commentary when they sit down together to record it 10, 15, or 20 years after the fact.

People commenting today have no such perspective. They are commenting from the immediacy of the moment and don’t have the historical perspective that they might have 20 years from now. They are too close to the finished film to have any appreciation for its impact, scope, and place in cinematic history, if it indeed has such a place.

In whatever case, DVD commentaries will make for a great resource for film historians and critics of the future to look back on this time in cinematic history and to gain a deeper appreciation of certain films and how they were put together.

Perhaps when movies are re-released on DVD for their 10th, 20th, 25th, or whatever anniversary editions, the surviving cast and crew will be able to come together again to record their comments on the film after some time has passed.

Commentaries are also interesting from the standpoint of character. Several commentaries (This is Spinal Tap most notably) have had the cast members make their comments either completely in character for the movie or parts of their commentaries in character. This makes for an oblique perspective into the making of the film because you will have one of the film’s characters commenting about what’s happening on screen and why he or she felt that scene or dialogue was important.

The most interesting commentaries are when the director/writer(s) do a commentary separate from the cast member(s) sitting down to record a commentary. Then you get to see both sides of the film-making process and you get to see why the director liked a particular scene and what the cast member(s) felt about that particular scene and why they did or did not agree with the director about it.

The most fun I’ve had with commentaries is to realize that they provide a different insight into the filming process. It is almost like taking a crash course in how to make a movie. You learn something from the process and you learn something about how a film comes together (or doesn’t come together, as the case may be) and you learn something about the people who made the film.

For that reason alone, I like DVD commentaries.

Beyond Clueless

2005-01-21T19:40:00.000-09:00

You see quite a bit when you are wandering around online. Some things are interesting, others funny, some very frightening, others just make you scratch your head and wonder what this person or that person was thinking, like this post on a thread in the "Books" folder in Salon's message board.

The person mentioned in that post isn't just clueless. She's downwright dangerous. People wonder why our country is is the state it is in and people like her are the reason. Want to bet who she voted for, if indeed she could even be bothered to vote at all? (Hint: it probably wasn't that guy with the Purple Hearts and combat medals from Vietnam).

OK, lady. It's like this. World War II was a really, really, big event that happened back in the last century, the 1940s to be exact. It involved literally hundreds of millions of people and killed tens of millions of people. There was this really, really bad guy in World War II named Adolph Hitler. He was really, truly bad news and words like "evil" and "genocide" really don't quite adaquately describe what he was all about.

Yes, you can say that Hitler had "something to do with the Jews" but saying that is like saying that Columbus guy you might have read about in school, if you were paying attention (a proposition which I find very difficult to accept, given your pathetic state of awareness of world history) in class, had "something to do with Indians."

Yes, Hitler had "something to do with the Jews." He tried to kill them, not just a few of them, but all of those he could get his hands on. He succeeded in killing six million Jews and around five million or so other victims at places like Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dauchau, and others.

Here's a big hint for you. Go to your local library (you know, that building with all the books in it?), go to the catalog and look up the subject heading "Holocaust."

Then go get some of those books and do a little reading. I think even Danielle Steele would approve of you setting her books in order to educate yourself about what happened sixty years ago in Europe.

You see, there are still people alive today who remember what happened then. They were there and they might be a bit, um, 'annoyed' to say the least, at your appalling ignorance about matters like this.

Learning. Try it sometime. You'll like it.

On the picture about the little Iraqi girl I posted yesterday, I got sent a Newsday article in email (which article I can't reference at the moment and don't have the URL handy) explaining a little more of the context of the incident. Basically, the reporter was with a bunch of US soldiers on night patrol when they saw this car coming along toward their direction. So it wasn't a checkpoint, but the results are still the same. Cultures (both military, American, and Iraqi) clashed for a brief, tragic moment, and two Iraqis are dead, leaving behind their children who will now have that much more reason to hate us.

I suspect the soldiers involved with this incident will never, ever, 'get past' or 'get over' this incident. It will probably haunt them for the rest of their lives and possibly one or two or more of them will end up dead, either by suicide or driving themselves to drink (which amounts to the same thing) over this.

This whole thing is beyond insane, and if you voted for Bush, this is what you voted for. I sure hope you're happy about it because I for one am not and much of the rest of the world isn't either.

The Face of War: What We Have Wrought in Iraq

2005-01-20T00:56:00.000-09:00

Ladies and gentlemen. I'd like you to take a close look at the picture below, taken from this link posted on Salon's TableTalk message board on Wednesday the 19th of January.

Click on the link above and there will be a caption for the picture, explaining that the little girl's parents were killed by US troops who fired on their vehicle when it failed to stop at a checkpoint, despite warning shots being fired at it.

I am horrified when I contemplate what this picture represents. I can easily imagine the scene as cultures clashed for a moment and two Iraqis were killed, leaving behind a frightened little girl who is now an orphan, thanks to our troops.

I'm sure the car was just driving along the street, the occupants minding their own business. Perhaps they were trying to get home before the curfew began or perhaps they were rushing their little girl to the hospital because she might have been sick or something.

They come up to a checkpoint, manned by nervous US soldiers, some perhaps as young as 19 or 20; soldiers who shouldn't have been there at that checkpoint in the first place.

These soldiers had orders to stop and search every vehicle passing through the checkpoint. Iraqi civilians, most not familiar at all with military procedures, discipline, and bearing would have to get out of their cars and/or be searched themselves, under the gaze of nervous, fearful young American soldiers pointing guns at them.

Here comes this car. The soldiers hold their hands up to stop the car. It keeps coming. They fire a few warning shots. The car keeps coming because the driver does not understand what's happening, probably does not speak English, and therefore does not understand the orders being shouted at him.

The soldiers almost certainly have orders to shoot any and all vehicles that do not stop at the checkpoint.

They do so and two Iraqis are dead, leaving behind a little girl who, if she has the chance to grow up, will do so hating the American soldiers who did this to her and her country.

Not only that, she will hate America and all things American. This means she will hate you, me, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, John Kerry, Donald Trump, Harrison Ford, Bo Jackson, Barbara Boxer, Howard Dean, and all Americans because we are the infidels who killed her parents.

Her hatred of us will be nurtured by those extremist Muslim fanatical followers of Osama and his ilk who will now spread this picture all over the Muslim world to fan the flames of hatred against us; flames already fanned to great effect with the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal from last year.

This little girl will grow up to hate us and many, many of her fellow Iraqis will hate us even more when they see this picture, as will Muslims all over the world.

Congratulations, George Bush. You have just given Osama bin Laden another recruiting poster with which to use to bring even more angry, desperate young men to his cause. Young men who will now have even more reason in their minds to bring even more death and destruction to Iraq with their car bombs, suicide bombs, and attacks against our troops immersed in this awful quagmire.

There is nothing we can do or say to this little girl that will ease the hurt and anguish she feels right now. We took her parents away from her. That is something that cannot be undone. Words like "forgiveness" and "contrition" are empty words now. Perhaps this young girl may find it in her heart to forgive our country for what our soldiers did to her but probably not. We can only try our best to rectify the situation by getting our troops the hell out of her country so this sort of thing can't happen again.

That's not likely to happen any time soon. We can't do anything to "make this right" other than ensuring that this little girl gets the best possible medical care and is placed in a good, decent home with Iraqis who can raise her as their own daughter.

That's also not likely to happen anytime soon. What will happen is in a week or so, the soldiers will get a wrist-slapping "reprimand" and life will go on.

And in the meanwhile, this traumatized little girl will nurture a cold ball of hatred for us, a seed that will grow into a desire to visit revenge upon us someday.

And this wonderful little episode of American hubris was paid for by our tax dollars.

Congratulations, George Bush. You've outdone yourself with this one.

For all those people out there who seek to assign blame to the troops who did this, I say, "Don't." They were, after all, 'just following orders' and carried out those orders with dispatch and resolve. The result is two dead Iraqis and a traumatized orphan.

It's not the soldiers' fault that this happened. It's the fault of the people who put them there in the first place and it's the fault of those who support those people.

The blood of this little girl's parents is on your hands. I hope you can sleep at night knowing you voted for the man who is responsible for this crime.

For everyone else: as an American, I am sorry that this happened. I will, I must, work to see the day that George Walker Bush and the other high-ranking members of his neocon cabal are sitting in front of the International Court in the Hague, on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

What they did is against every fiber of my being as an American. I disown them and urge my fellow citizens to do likewise because what they did excludes them now and for all time from the circle of existence that encompasses what it means to be an American.

What they did was wrong and I am sorry they did it in my name and that of America.

May God forgive us for what we have allowed to happen in our names.

Fascism, American Style

2005-01-17T21:14:00.000-09:00

Over the past four years or so, I have seen various articles, editorials, opinions, etc. online that have made ominous comparisons between the situation in Nazi Germany in the years leading up to World War II and the political situation existing in America in the early 21st Century.

Mostly, what I've read online suggested the very compelling and strong parallels between how Hitler rose to and consolidated power and the manner in which George Walker Bush assumed power and how he has consolidated that power.

I generally take much of that with a little grain of salt, primarily because none of the articles I've read online haven't been written from any kind of personal experience. I have read posts from people with whom I correspond online (on various political message boards, chiefly this one) about friends of theirs who were refugees from Nazi Germany and who have said much of the same sorts of things that the articles I've read have said.

I tend to take that sort of thing much, much more seriously than someone else just writing or posting an opinion about what's going on in America now and making the parallel between now and Nazi Germany of the 1930s.

But people who are old enough to have understood what was happening in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and who managed to flee that nightmare are a totally different kettle of fish.

They were there. They saw it happen. They watched the fascist nightmare unfold and take over their country.

Just the other day, I read this article, posted on Salon's message board. The author of that article grew up in Germany in the 1930s and experienced for herself the horrors of jackbooted thugs, cheering, enthusiastic crowds at book burnings, mass rallies, and in general, saw the face of fascism directly.

She speaks from direct personal experience. She knows about that which she speaks. She is seeing it happen right here in the United States of America, seven decades after her family just barely managed to get out of Nazi Germany with their lives.

America is well on her way to become a fascist dictatorship and unless we do something about it, the United States of America as we know it will cease to exist.

The party of Teddy Roosevelt is no more. It has been hijacked by a small cabal of ruthless, amoral, evil men with very small minds and very black hearts. The men behind Bush are bent on turning this country into facist, theocratic dictatorship in which our "government" will exist only to enrich the coffers of Bush's corporate patrons.

These people are destroying our country and they must be stopped. Our country is on the verge of becoming a fascist dictatorship. All the signs are there, if you care to look:

The major media in this country are now essentially owned by the Republican Party

Our "President" claims to be a personal messenger of God and has made the claim that God speaks through him and millions of his followers actually believe this!!!

The Republican Party controls all three branches of the government, the executive, the legislative (both houses of Congress), and the judicial.

Touch-screen voting machines are an anethama to democracy and yet Republicans are pushing to get them installed in as many states as possible, machines with no paper-trail audit whose makers are more often than not very partisan Republicans.

Most of our fellow citizens would rather prefer to watch American Idol than engage in serious, thoughtful discussion of the issues of the day and are consequently no longer interested in being active participants in governance.

Both the media and the government would rather prefer that we remain fat, dumb, and stupid and will do whatever it takes to ensure we don't break from our media-induced stupor enough to realize that we're living in a fantasy world created by the MediaMatrix, a world that has about as much to do with reality as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire has to do with personal financial planning.

Would someone like to explain how this is much different from Germany, 1935? Granted, we don't have jackbooted, goostepping thugs marching around, waving swastikas everywhere, but they're here in spirit, at least. Granted, we don't have concentration camps (yet), but they may yet be coming. It's becoming harder and harder for me to deny the eerie parallels between Nazi Germany and the United States of 2005.

In essence, power has been concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Their agenda is not one in keeping with the ideals this country was allegedly founded upon. These people now own the media and are doing everything they can to ensure that Americans remain blind to their true agenda and aims.

Wake up and do something about this. Your country and the world's future are both on the line here. Stand up to this nightmare and do whatever you can do to stop this fascist nightmare from taking over our country.

As a start, I suggest order this DVD and showing it to as many people you possibly can.

The Tsunami: Before and After pictures

2005-01-09T15:02:00.000-09:00

Reading about the devastation and destruction in South Asia due to the December 26th, 2004 tsunami is one thing. Seeing the visual evidence of that destruction, devastation and/or permanent alteration of the landscape/coastlines in the affected areas is something else entirely.

I got this link from a friend of mine who in turn got it from one of his friends. It is eye-opening to say the least. It is a series of 14 before-and-after pictures of some of the affected coasts in Sri Lanka and northern Indonesia.

Before and After: The Tsunami Picture Series

Give what you can to help out the victims of this natural catastrophe. It is the least we can do to help them.

A New Year: Time for a change

2005-01-01T09:41:00.000-09:00

Happy New Year, everyone.

Let's make this the year that all of George W. Bush's chickens come home to roost. It's long past time for him to face the consequences of what he's done and it's long past time for us to stand up to him and speak our minds.

In that regard, we have one last chance to put a roadblock in the way of him and the Republican Party in their march to retain their grip on power.

January 6th, this Thursday, is the day that Congress meets in joint session to certify the electoral vote. Usually, it's a boring excercise in tedious reading of each state's electoral vote, followed a unanimous vote by Congress to certify that vote. Once all the votes are tallied, the winner is announced, to no surprise.

This time it's different. Right now, there are several representatives in the House of Representatives who are prepared to sign the written declaration of objection to certifying Ohio's electoral votes. The election in Ohio is suspicious, to say the least, and almost certainly fraudulent. At the very least, Congress should vote up or down on whether to accept Ohio's electoral votes.

I think they should vote Ohio's electoral slate down. What the representatives need is at least one senator to sign the objection with them in order to force Congress (and the Republicans) to vote on the issue.

Contact your senators now, today. Ask both of your senators to sign the form that will force Congress to face the truth of what we're dealing with:

George Walker Bush and his criminal cabal of neocon nutjobs are destroying this country and have to be stopped.

This is our last chance to do exactly that. Failing that, we can only hope to blemish Bush's aura of "inevitability" and "leadership" with the stain of illegitimacy and hope that will dog him for the next four years.

We have to stand up to this man and the men behind him or else this country is history.

Recounting the Senate race: An Epilogue

2004-12-21T21:56:00.000-09:00

Well, the recount is over. It finished last Friday with essentially no change to the optical-scan machine-announced election night results.

Our group initiated a statewide recount of the Senate race here because we felt the announced results differed widely from pre-election expectations, exit polls, and because we felt there was a strong possibilty of fraud, given the stakes at play in this election with the balance of power in the United States Senate in question.

Our system here works. The recount showed that.

Alaska has optical-scan machines, but Diebold does NOT have anything whatsoever to do with the programming of the tabulating computers in those machines. A worker in the Division of Elections programs the memory cards here and no one else has access to those cards or that software.

Bipartisan teams check the process at every level of the counting. Essentially, as it stands right now, our system of counting votes is impregnable to fraud, unless someone were extremely determined and/or had inside access.

We raised the required $10,000 deposit for the recount in record time, just barely getting the required signatures of registered voters and the deposit in to the Division of Elections a few minutes before the deadline.

Then, we asked the state to hand recount 10% of the 439 precincts in the state. They agreed to do that, in addition to rerunning the ballots through the machines for a statewide recount. Since some of the rural precints were already hand-counted on election night (not all precincts have the optical-scan machines), those precincts were left out of the pool, because they'd already been hand-counted. So effectively, we got to count about 15% of the precincts.

Those results were essentially the same as the machine count. There were maybe 2 or 3 precincts with a difference, and the difference in each case was 1 or 2, perhaps 3 votes all told.

If we'd recounted the entire state by hand, that result would have differed from the machine count by maybe two or three dozen votes at the very most, and probably a lot less than that. This is out of nearly 311,000 votes cast for our Senate seat.

The bottom line: Our system of counting votes works.

What doesn't "work" (at least beyond reproach) is our system of registering and verifying voters. It's basically alright, if you're a registered voter at a stable address who doesn't vote absentee. However, there are some glaring problems that need to be addressed, and our group will be writing up a white paper to be posted on our site that addresses the problems we notice during the recount (e.g., it is possible, though not very likely, to request an absentee ballot, get it in the mail, vote, return it by mail to the DOE, and then vote at your regular polling place and no one would be the wiser unless and until they checked the voter rolls and absentee lists).

What it all means is this: nearly 150,000 of my fellow Alaskans essentially voted to endorse nepotism. Frank Murkowski names his own daughter to fill out the remaining two years of his Senate seat after he's elected to the governor's mansion in 2002, and almost 150,000 Alaskans have no problem with that.

It goes to show the power of incumbency (in this case that of our senior Senator, Teddy Warbucks) and the ability of the Rove machine to grease the skids to ensure that LISA! won the state outright.

One thing is for certain: if a guy like Tony Knowles, a popular two-term former governor whose views and outlook is close to that of the majority of Alaskans, can't win here, we're royally fucked.

Another thing that is certain about all this: Lisa Murkowski will never, ever, have and independent voice all her own. Karl Rove and Ted Stevens now own her lock, stock and barrel and that's that. She'll do what she'd told, vote the way she's told, and march in lockstep with the fascists who've now hijacked her party.

The sad this is, I bet that at some level at least, she's quite well aware of that.

You've made your bed with them, Lisa. Now go sleep in it.

The rest of us will soldier on without you.

We don't need or want you.

Winter Solstice party

2004-12-18T20:25:00.000-09:00

I went over to my friend Tom's place, a little over a mile up Goldhill Road from me, to attend his annual Winter Solstice party. He was also celebrating the (more or less) completion of the addition to his house, a project he's been working on since May.

I spent much of this afternoon screwing around with a snowthrower, clearing a driveway. I kept having mechanical issues with it, so finally I just gave up after the track came off the wheel again. I was looking forward to Tom's party.

So, I went down to Gullivers Books to purchase a presents for him and his wife. I bought a couple novelty items, a fork and a spoon, each had a telescoping handle that could stretch two feet long. I then went over the the West Fairbanks Fred Meyer, bought a cheap stapler (for a couple bucks or so), grabbed two paper bags, and then put each present in its own bag.

I was ready. I drove over to the party, all set and ready to go. The place was filling up when I got there, about 6:30 or so. He had the new arctic entryway all done, so I put my shoes and coat in the pile and came in.

Tom was in the back, showing off his new addition. When last I saw it, the opening in the old wall that would be the main entrance was marked out, but not cut yet. There were no walls (yet), the bay window was in place (sort of) and there was no drywall up yet, among many other things.

Now, the only thing left for him to do is lay down the flooring. I was quite impressed with the new addition and told him so. We marveled at the layout and he told us where he's going to have his bike room set up (he'll even have a ramp going up to the back door so he can ride his bike right into the room after one of the bike club's Tuesday rides in the summer.

I gave him his presents and told him that he'd better watch out with that Santa dude and not get on the guy's bad side or else. He assured me he would.

Then it was time to eat. I adjourned to the food table and partook of the Unkempt Joseph's (sloppy joe's) on one end, deviled eggs on another, and chips and dip in between.

I talked to our mutual biking buddy, Dave James, about bikes politics, and the like and milled around. After a while, our fearless Tuesday Night Bike Ride leader, Douglas Burnside, showed up. He and I talked about his amazing car stereo system and how much he'd invested in it (in the thousands of dollars, I can't remember the exact figure). He has quite the award-winning stereo system, I might add. I've sat in his car after a Tuesday ride and been amazed at the quality of the sound reproduction from the speakers and amps.

After an hour or so of milling around, Tom announced it was time to light the bonfire. He had a pile of old brush and scrap wood from the addition, laced with fuel oil for this purpose.

We walked out and he took a lighter to the top of the pile. We wondered why he was doing that but wondered no more after the fire got going and the fuel oil started lighting up.

We had to step back several feet once the fire got going strong. Other people started drifting out to watch and talk as we added fuel to the main fire from satellite piles around it. It got hot enoug that snow in the trees around the fire started melting and dripping. In fact, it felt a lot like rain!

The fire burned on and on and down. We added the rest of the wood to it. Some of the kids discovered that the sawdust pile on one end of the fire was laced with fuel oil. When they kicked sawdust up in to the fire, BOOM!! and a bright flower of fire burned briefly before dying out.

The fire was dying down, and I was getting tired, so I bade Tom my farewells and went home.

'Twas a good solstice party at Tom Clark's place this year!

My first post

2004-12-15T22:32:00.000-09:00

I was just trying to comment on Phoenix Woman's blog and I ended up having to create a blog of my own to do it.

Thus is born Letterman's Lair.