Pro-War

By Diane Arbus, 1967

Just a Little Off

President Bush tries to play a G chord for "Country singer" Mark Wills. The problem is that, like everything he does, he's about one fret off.In any case, this is the President's latest homey photo op, while lots of people die in Louisiana and Missisippi.After playing some golf, this guy was still sticking to the bogus schedule his handlers had set up for him - which included a stop at a country club (to promote his Medicare boondoggle!!) and a little recognition of his semi-buddy John McCain's birthday. Didn't he realize that the people of the Gulf were suffering their greatest cataclysm in a hundred or more years ? This is not what you'd call leadership.

Kombat Keyboard Badge

...with two chickenhawks rampant awarded to Jonah Goldberg

Peter Daou - The Value of Morality in the Long Run

Here's an excellent essay , seriously worth the read, that helps me understand, a little, the proponents of the Iraq War (from The Daou Report). Daou seems right, if disturbing, about the effects of physical, material strength versus the long lasting benefits moral strength. His model resembles George Lakoff's description of the Conservatives' strong father authority pit against the Progressives' more nurturant orientation.
George Lakoff

The Flintstones is a True-Life Documentary

A recent LA Times article reports how Christian Evangelists are buying up roadside attractions of dinosaurs to proselytize their own agendas of Creationism or Intelligent Design, or whatever they're calling it lately. The idea is that there must have been dinosaurs about on the day that God created Adam and Eve, so they need them to help expose the lies of evolutionary science.
Before the Garden of Eden

Curious George from Dubyasworld

The Old Monkey Trap

To the Right, March

Check out this site, if you will steel yourself, of "Patriotism in Action": it's Rightmarch.com. Their ads contain some of the most inept,ill-phrased right wing nuttery I've seen. These people seem so earnest, but their unfocussed efforts seem almost laughable.Their current lede says "Support Our Troops against Cindy Sheehan." What does that mean ? Maybe they want the National Guard to attack Camp Casey.

Freepers Don't Speak for Me

Above we see the level to which critics of Cindy Sheehan have stooped. This is just psychotic ! Courtesy of Free Republic and Sacred Cow Burgers. Just unbelievable the desperation involved in this kind of rubbish.<

Throw Rocks at Boys

for any young ladies that have ever been teased unmercifully.

From the Freeway Blogger

Neat

If you stare at the black cross, a green dot will appear to be travelling around the other dots. But if you look away, then look back, there's no green. If you stare hard enough at the cross, the pink dots will pretty much disappear. Comments on Random Good Stuff tell us it's called "motion induced blindness"...

Our Man at the U.N.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair

John Bolton has almost immediately shown why he was by all means the worst possible choice for a "diplomat" to represent our country. He has already introduced 750 !!! amendments to various U.N. actions - to render them into mush.The WaPo notes that these Bolton moves "would eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations, scrap provisions that call for action to halt climate change and urge nuclear powers to make greater progress in dismantling their nuclear arms." Read more...

The Real Problems of America

Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker:

The U. S. health-care system, according to “Uninsured in America,” has created a group of people who increasingly look different from others and suffer in ways that others do not. The leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is unpaid medical bills. Half of the uninsured owe money to hospitals, and a third are being pursued by collection agencies. Children without health insurance are less likely to receive medical attention for serious injuries, for recurrent ear infections, or for asthma. Lung-cancer patients without insurance are less likely to receive surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation treatment. Heart-attack victims without health insurance are less likely to receive angioplasty. People with pneumonia who don’t have health insurance are less likely to receive X rays or consultations. The death rate in any given year for someone without health insurance is twenty-five per cent higher than for someone with insur-ance. Because the uninsured are sicker than the rest of us, they can’t get better jobs, and because they can’t get better jobs they can’t afford health insurance, and because they can’t afford health insurance they get even sicker. John, the manager of a bar in Idaho, tells Sered and Fernandopulle (authors of "Uninsured") that as a result of various workplace injuries over the years he takes eight ibuprofen, waits two hours, then takes eight more—and tries to cadge as much prescription pain medication as he can from friends. “There are times when I should’ve gone to the doctor, but I couldn’t afford to go because I don’t have insurance,” he says. “Like when my back messed up, I should’ve gone. If I had insurance, I would’ve went, because I know I could get treatment, but when you can’t afford it you don’t go. Because the harder the hole you get into in terms of bills, then you’ll never get out. So you just say, ‘I can deal with the pain.’ ”

I think this reminds us of folks with real problems (that we can actually do something about) much more poignantly than the hundreds of hours our corporate media spends on the Runaway Bride or on young white girls missing in Aruba.

You Go Grandma

Enjoying the Hempfest

Go Noles !

Getting On With His Life

...and his vacation. The Preznit has been on vacation nearly a year (339 days) out of his five in office.

New Product

Where can I get a pair of these so that I can listen to the President's speeches with complete protection (like this Veteran of Foreign Wars, Bill Moyer)?

Quote of the Day

"We are not to turn the Holy Scriptures of any group into public policy."
-Barry Lynn-

This is the ultimate wish of our Founding Fathers. Religious as certain individual founders were, like Adams, the main chance was the escape from all that business. But now consider the developing Iraqi constitution. Article Two ,Paragraph One says,"Islam is the official religion of state, and is a fundamental source for legislation." Hard to believe that this is the kind of "nation building" our soldiers are suffering for. Along these lines, read Digby: he really turns it on.

Republicans Against the Working Class

Click the Picture

And the winner is...

Juan Cole claims the Iraq War is over, and the winner is... Iran.

al-Jaafari and Iranian VP Reza Aref

Here is a great site, Project Vote Smart, which has tons of searchable info on your candidates - those who represent you and I on the state and federal level. Even more interestingly, PVS has a searchable data base of all of George W. Bush's public statements, so you can see how and where he said "hard work" or the time he said he liked to "catapult the propaganda". Great! You can also check such utterances as how often he spoke of "imminent danger" or "imminent attack". Not that he was trying to scare anyone. Anyway, this wonderful site prints out a whole speech and marks your search in red.

Peak Oil Theory

This week, Peter Maas has come out with an article in the New York Times Magazine about the looming crisis in oil production throughout our planet. Adherents of the Peak Oil Theory claim that it won't be too long before even the most oil rich areas cannot meet world demand(a large portion of which is us).Saudi Arabia has an estimated 260 billion barrels, Iraq 110 billion. Of course, the management of the Iraq War by our current administration has decreased the amount of Iraqi oil being produced. Maas points out that these are finite amounts, that in the near future will not be adequate. He argues that the 10 billion barrels in ANWR will be necessary at some point, but he mostly argues that we urgently need to conserve in our use. Even though I am a Sierra Club member, I could see clean, careful drilling in ANWR if, in return, BushCo would continue serious cutbacks-restrictions for mpg allowed in our vehicles.









One way to alleviate this problem to everyone's benefit would be to add a dollar or two Federal Tax to each gallon, but then use the extra tax collected to pay for universal healthcare. This isn't likely to happen with such chicken politicians running things, but then America would have the best healthcare on the planet while reducing our taste for gas hog cars, trucks, and SUVs.

A Sort of Democratic Republic

It has become apparent that the final Bush excuse for the Iraq War, spreading Democracy with a capital D, is not to be in Iraq. The people of Iraq may vote and paint their thumbs purple, but it sounds like it will be a totally Islamic kind of republic in which women will fare no better (perhaps even worse) than under Saddam. Currently the three main groups in Iraq cannot decide on how to finalize their constitution, generally because of religious factionalism.Worst case scenario: civil war. See also Peter Galbraith in The New York Review of Books.

Quote of the Day

"Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein

George Kisses Cindy

What's Good for the Goose...

Daily Kos remembers some quotes and opinions from right wingers Santorum, Hannity, Delay et al about how terrible it was for Clinton to attack Bosnia.Link.Their opinions sound so hypocritical nowadays.

Good Sign (from Watertiger)

Click me

From Tom Tomorrow :

You are Here

Where it says "Sun"

Another Viewpoint on Gravity

Is the theory of gravity "flawed"? Some scientists The Onion presents seem to think so...

Bridge to Nowhere

Click the picture, please. Or click this link.

Fun T-shirts for the Big Event

Get your "I Raq and Roll" t-shirt for the upcoming Pentagon Freedom Walk. Recently the Washington Post has declined sponsorship, but you can still join in singing with Clint.

MST3K

Here's a link to a great site which has all the movie posters from the old series, Mystery Science Theater 3000. These are great to steal liberate for your computer wallpaper or whatever...

Red States' Misunderstanding

Although some right wingers claim that the Blue states suck up all the Federal money away from the poor Red states, the opposite is true. Big East and West pay appreciably more in taxes than they get back from the Feds. See link.