The housing bailout bill passed the Senate in a 72-13 vote. President Bush, who won 2 elections through voter fraud, said that he would vote against the bill before deciding to vote for it.

In the House of Representatives, where elections are coming up soon, most Republicans backed away from voting for the proposal, with the NYT stating:

Republicans said they would not support a bill that puts taxpayer money at risk while potentially bailing out irresponsible borrowers and greedy lenders.

Sorry but if that is a quote tied to the entire Republican party then the entire political party is scum. Especially when you consider that they wasted trillions on a war started under false pretense, pushed market deregulation, turned a blind eye to rampant fraud, and are now engaging is socialism for the rich (with privatized gains and socialized losses).

Republicans may not raise taxes, but if they eat your wealth with increased debt and inflation how is that any better? I remember when 82 cents bought a Euro. Now the dollar is worth .63 Euro! Take out increased national debt, military spending, and real estate fraud, and the economy has never recovered from the 2001 recession.

Don't get me wrong - I think both political parties are blue and red shadows of their former selves - packaged fraud sold to the uninformed. Its just that the Republicans seem a bit more aggressive stealing your money, while telling you that you are too stupid to realize what they are doing.

I wish they would have gave me a link in this trivia post. And Ryan thinks I am a conservative! Doah

But oh well, at least I still have the poster. :)

though the practice was more common before YouTube remixes. The question is, can the neoconservative war hawks destroy this country before the people take it back from them and throw them in jail where they belong?

Bush estimated $50 billion...but add up a trillion here and a trillion there, and suddenly you are talking real money.

To keep our way of living, we want to move away from free trade:

Six in 10 Republicans in the poll agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad for the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations to limit foreign imports. That represents a challenge for Republican candidates who generally echo Mr. Bush's calls for continued trade expansion, and reflects a substantial shift in sentiment from eight years ago.

But those in power want you in financial ruin so you cede more control to them. Unless you are doing something creative or something with passion someone will program a computer to do what you are doing or someone in the third world will do it for $3 to $40 a day. Get ready of those living standards to get equalized across the borders. Welcome to freedom and free markets.

We put a brutal dictator in charge of Iraq, and then hung him for being the person we knew he was. We knew who he was when we put him in charge and when we were giving him biological weapons he used on his own people.

Now we made the country unstable, and under-promoted a local government there which is struggling to rule the chaotic lands. And now we are questioning their ability to rule.

The one recurring theme in the problems in Iraq is US involvement.

The only difference is a letter, a few years, and a few bombs.

If you buy an SUV the gas you are using goes directly toward making the world less stable, warmer, and funds terrorism.

No longer able to hide the SUV relationship, terrorists have started letting the public know by crashing a flaming SUV into the Glasgow airport. Buy a flag and a Hummer today to show your support for terrorism.

Church and state is out the window, apparently. From the WSJ's article titled Court Loosens Campaign Ad Law, Tightens Student Speech Freedoms

In four opinions, the court's four conservatives and conservative-leaning Justice Anthony Kennedy, diluted a key part of federal campaign finance laws, limited student free speech rights, threw out a challenge to President Bush's religious initiatives office and sided with builders and the White House in a dispute over federal endangered species laws.

Ron Paul covers patriotism.

The media reports Presedent Bush's job approval ratings have fallen to 29%. That's approaching the most pessimistic mood in the history of the WSJ/NBC poll.

The same media helped put the scumbag in power. A friend recently mentioned this

I had someone tell me once years ago...

That the one person you DO NOT want to vote for, no matter what party they belong too, is the one person that gets most all of the "free" and positive main stream media coverage...

Anyone remember the Presidential Political campaigns of 2004 or 2000?

According to information gathered from several media watch sites like fair.org and sinclairwatch.net, G.W. Bush received an average of 8 to 1 in "Free" positive mentions by the major Television Networks over ALL other political opponents combined (Democrat and Republican) during both of those political campaigns.

I think that says a lot about bias in the main stream media.

NBC, CNBC, MSNBC are owned by GE. When I worked at MNSBC, some of the constraints imposed on the "Donahue" show were the result of GE ownership and a conservative NBC boss who'd come out of GE Financial and GE's plastics division.

Fox News is owned by the right-wing Rupert Murdoch (and News Corporation), and does Murdoch's ideological bidding.

ABC is owned by Disney. You'll remember that CEO Michael Eisner said that Disney wouldn't distribute "Fahrenheit 911" because Disney "didn't want to be in the middle of a politically-oriented film during an election year." Eisner's comment was allowed to pass only because so few people realize that Disney is one of the biggest purveyors of political opinion this election year and every recent election year -- almost all of it right-wing political opinion. Each day in major radio markets nationwide, Disney radio stations serve up hour after hour of Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, etc. etc.

CBS News, owned by Viacom, got taken in by forged documents -- and then censored accurate reporting critical of Bush, apparently at the behest of Viacom's CEO, Sumner Redstone. Six weeks before the election Redstone endorsed Bush on behalf of Viacom: "From a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on."

The reason right wing is in flavor now is because faith based voters are easy to manipulate. As media creation and consumption gets more decentralized and more personalized I wouldn't be surprised to see left wing news to be much more in demand.

Election Fraud Abroad:

With the intention of ousting an undesirable regime, the U.S. government dedicates itself to strengthening and uniting opposition to the government. This includes funding opposition political parties, and creating non-governmental organizations dedicated to toppling the regime in power. On top of this, the U.S. might contract political consultants and polling agencies to help their favored candidate win at the ballot box. But in the event they cannot win the election, fake polls cast doubt on the official electoral results, and the opposition claims fraud. Massive protests and media attention put pressure on the regime to step down, or to give in to opposition demands. [2]

As implausible as it might sound, it was exactly this strategy that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 2000. After the war in Kosovo and NATO bombing had failed to produce regime change, the United States worked to strengthen Milosevic’s internal opponents by uniting them behind one candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, and pumping about $40 million into his election campaign. [3] U.S.-funded NGO’s and electoral consultants helped create a propaganda campaign surrounding the elections, and worked behind the scenes to help organize mass resistance to the Milosevic regime. [4] U.S.-trained “election helpers” were deployed around the country on election day to monitor results. The U.S. even provided young activists with thousands of cans of spray paint and campaign stickers to cover the country with anti-Milosevic slogans. [5]

According to official results of the first round elections neither candidate had won a majority of the vote, and so it would require a second round run-off. But U.S. consultants published their own “exit polls” giving Kostunica a huge victory and Milosevic refused to recognize them. [6] The opposition claimed fraud and U.S.-backed groups staged acts of non-violent resistance to put pressure on the government. Armed groups stormed the Federal Assembly and the state television headquarters. [7] Massive protests and rebellion forced Milosevic to step down. There would be no second round election, and Washington’s candidate Vojislav Kostunica took power. The strategy had worked.

2000 US Election Fraud

While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking – the results seem to contain substantial anomalies.

In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.

2004 US Election Fraud

Speaking of statistics, perhaps the juiciest analytical morsel comes from Steven F. Freeman, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania, who thoroughly examined discrepancies between reported results and exit poll data, with particular emphasis on the crucial states of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Specifically, Ohio's reported results gave Bush a 6.7% premium over exit polls in 2004, Florida gave him an extra 5%, and Pennsylvania boosted him by 6.5%.

Freeman calculates the combined statistical probability of these three discrepancies occurring in 2004, is one in 250 million. In 10 of the 11 so-called "battleground" states, he observes, "the tallied margin differs from the predicted margin, and in every one, the shift favors Bush."

But what are exit polls, and how accurate are they? Basically, they ask people leaving a polling area how they voted. And, as for precision, even Republican consultant Dick Morris gives them high marks. "Exit polls are almost never wrong," he wrote in a November 2004 article. "So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places, that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries."

Note, too, that exit poll discrepancies in Ukraine's run-off leadership election of Nov. 21, 2004, similar in magnitude to Bush's three sixes in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, were enough within days to bring hundreds of thousands of protestors into the streets of Kiev.

The exit poll data for Freeman's own analysis of the 2004 election came from the National Election Pool, a consortium of major television networks and the Associated Press, and are collected by two respected polling firms, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. Freeman notes that in Germany, where it takes a week or more to tally an election, the German people nevertheless know the results the night the polls close "because the news media's exit polls, for two generations, have never been more than a tenth of a percent off."

Today I went to the farmers market and saw some bizarre Jews for peace people spreading their message of hate and intolerance. One guy has Israel on the map forever sign, while the next one is holding their flag next to a US one, and the next has a Israel for Peace sign.

If something is created out of brute force, violence, and murder, and is maintained by the same, how can you say you support it and peace? What a joke.

So I walked behind the people, and while I was walking past them I told my girlfriend "while I was in the Army I killed 14 Muslims, for peace." Some of them turned their heads and looked at me. I wonder if any of them realized that my comment was no less absurd than their signs.

In an article about Gregory Nickerson, Harpers notes how the US tax code is for sale:

Supporters of the American Jobs Creation Act had argued that with all their tax savings, the companies that benefited would rush out and hire lots of new workers. But it didn't turn out that way. “One thing is clear,” Business Week reported in August of 2005. “The money piling in from abroad as the result of the Jobs Creation Act has done little to actually spur hiring. In fact, six of the 10 companies repatriating the biggest totals are axing workers in the U.S. They include HP [Hewlett Packard], which announced July 19 that it would cut its head count by 14,500 in the U.S.”

I get frustrated when it comes time to pay taxes. Not because I believe that I am above paying them, but because it reminds me of

• how gamed everything is (leading radio companies use payola, the WSJ sells advertorials, and colleges bogusly recommend best loan providers for kickbacks)
  
• how people go to jail without cause (non violent drug users, and people like my sister)
  
• that I am writing checks to drop bombs on people to kill them so we increase the profit margins of oil companies and defense contractors

We can learn a thing or two from our leaders:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales acknowledged that mistakes were made and accepted responsibility Tuesday for the way eight federal prosecutors were fired.

At a news conference Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said he would find out what went wrong but said he would not resign. "I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility," Mr. Gonzales said amid growing calls for his own termination.

Murderors run free while freedoms receed. Is it any wonder the teens binge drink and people want to oust the government?

in between Christmas and the hope for peace a new year brings he was hung
the timing of events is rarely accidental when leaders are involved
it was deplorable and we hope lessons are learned, so they claim
but those lessons are that murder should never be seen or it is harder to sell

while everyone is still consumed with fear of liquids
talk sanely about using nuclear weapons to spread peace
not to worry though, these ones are small, and there is a new round of safer nuclear weapons
we have candy for the kids and contractors

if you can't get enough bodies to agree with what you are doing you have four options

• jail or kill them
  
• undermine the economy and shift power elsewhere
  
• public relations
  
• bring back the dead

$10 billion dollars a quarter is not enough for some big oil companies, as it turns out. Not only do we roll back environmental protection via things like the Clear Skies Act, but, as it turns out, the government has not even been collecting BILLIONS of dollars of taxes due from these oil companies.

Think about that for a second. They already have BILLIONS of dollars and are not paying their taxes, and yet the government has to freeze money in my friend's bank account under a false presumption of a certain income level.

Each time I pay them, I actually feel unethical for paying taxes because I know how wrong the system is.

I actually believe that I am probably more free market oriented than any major political ideology, political party, or part of the governemnt is. But the thing is, I still pay taxes when the billionaires don't. If you want to make it fair and talk up free markets start by abolishing the Federal Reserve and killing income tax.

If you just change the order of a few words the clarity and honesty drastically improve. For example:

and may God continue against Iraqs neighbours and all foreign nationals and kill thousands of innocent people and we are prepared to do so.

About giving some opulent asshole nearly endless trust and authority without any checks and balances. Especially if those opulent assholes have interests that represent a rich minority which cares not about the state of most citizens (and are typically well aligned against the interests of the common man).

Although I have more money than most people do, I wish all the money in the world was destroyed, or that we had a value system which placed a higher value on freedom and human life than our current one does.

Unchecked power ultimately will destroy any society, be it capitalistic / socialistic / fascist. It just took us a bit longer to fall apart than the Soviet Union because we had greater natural resources and our system was SLIGHTLY less flawed.

Is apparently quite hard to send money to via Western Union due to racial profiling, etc.

Realistically if someone was a terrorist or whatever and sending money through Western Union wouldn't they have a fake ID or alias? And wouldn't they be getting more than a few hundred at a time?

God didn't need to be pissed at people?

If religion was generally more about compassion and understanding, and less about judgement and fearmongering, would power sources still push it so hard?

Or do they only push it because it teaches people not to think for themselves?

he prettymuch rocks

Is the US's IRS Collecting Income Tax Legal?

Related: The Money Masters

And a quote from the president who was sucker enough to create The Federal Reserve:

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world - no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. - Woodrow Wilson

Wow. The president is going to do his first presidential veto ever, vetoing against increased funding for embryonic stem-cell research. From the WSJ

"The simple answer is he thinks murder's wrong," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "The president is not going to get on the slippery slope of taking something living and making it dead for the purposes of scientific research."

• why did he have no problem with it as a Texas governor?
  
• why start all the wars?
  
• why claim the existence of a neverending war?

Noam Chomsky on how the US never was a democracy:

That's the way the country was founded. It was founded on the principal explained by Madison in the Constitutional Convention that the primary role of the government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. And then the constitution was designed to sorta ensure that.

On personal motivation and balance

and Noam Chomsky on The Charlie Rose Show, talking about democratic deficit

part 2

On the need for creativity

part 2

Our own versions of humanity and human ideals are limited by our own flaws and our own sets of experiences, but it doesn't mean that we should just accept things as they are or feel powerless to change them.

I still have a lot to change to do internally to become the person I should have been many years ago, but if the whole rulebook or set framework is wrong then one should look to change it, as best they can.

So much of it comes down to controlling public perception. Why, for example, are there so many conditions for recycling. Why does the local recycling guide not accept many things that they should? Why does the recycling tips information page look like a legalspeak long set of rules when the process should be simple and easy? It is because there is more profit in discouraging people and making them not care. The more we consume the more profit there is. We can worry about the trash later, when there are business models that (hopefully) come about which are profitable on that issue.

Of course eventually they will come about and be profitable, but there is too much money tied up in exploiting current energy supplies and making people not care. Only when people notice the problem will there be enough mindshare to divert appropriate resources to that issue.

There are tons of other issues too, but why is it that we have to operate on such a reactive level if we are so advanced? Why can't there be more investment in fixing problems before they get out of control?

I find it absurd that I stood a couple feet from him and that he emailed my old roommate and autographed my roommate's copy of Manufacturing Consent.

Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens - a vote against evolution

Internet started with the concept of tubes.

Free market enterprise really smells like shit when people like Stevens have an opinion that matters. Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should be free to voice their opinions, I just don't think his should count any more than mine. Especially on issues related to the WWW.

If the voting machines work, jim crow laws don't appear, and individuals can inspire others to be non apathetic maybe that sort of scum will be removed from congress.

How can this man be considered anything but a hypocritical scumbag?

It is pretty bad when you stack the deck and still lose. But Bush's reputation precedes him.

One does not need to join the military to realize just how slanted military courtrooms are. I was stupid enough to learn the slant the hard way. My lawyer (when I was in the military) was actually verbally reprimanded for actually trying to defend the defendants. He was getting out of the military the day after he participated in my case. He not only tried to defend me, but he and I also played word games during the joke court session :) Those courts really are a joke.

Of course the president is still hints at guilt on the locked up parties, as though the court cases have already occurred

President Bush said he would "look seriously" at the case, adding: "The ruling, as I understand it, won't cause killers to be put out on the street."

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president ... right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Teddy Roosevelt (Republican), 1918

"Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." - George Orwell

"Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn't stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband -- it creeps up insidiously... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone." - Baron Lane

Last week a scumbag Army recruiter knocked on my door. The same week I was notified by the department of veteran affairs that some of my personal data was likely stolen. Lovely.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has recently learned that an employee took home electronic data from the VA, which he was not authorized to do and was in violation of established policies. The employee's home was burglarized and this data was stolen. The data contained identifying information including names, social security numbers, and dates of birth for up to 26.5 million verterans and some spouses, as well as some disability rating.

I kept asking for his address to send him a 'Hitler was right' t-shirt, but he was disinterested in realizing or expressing his own hypocrisy.

If you are a Jew who is fond of ethnic cleansing you are a fucking scumbag that does not deserve to be alive.

CNN just published an article stating that the Homeland Security accepts fake IDs:

A man using a fake identification card was able to enter the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, even though the type of Mexican-issued "matricula consular" card he used is not recognized as valid by the United States government.

Homeland security would be more aptly named homeland scam. If they can't keep my data safe or their own building safe they have no business protecting anyone and they should all lose their jobs.

In other (un)related news, you have to smirk at this headline: Bush reviews Iraq plan, says oil is key. It is a shame none of the media realized that point until now, and even now they are still getting it wrong.

In other (un)related news, Violent crime in the U.S. is on the rise, posting its biggest one-year increase since 1991. Surely that can't be caused from bleeding the poor, sucking out the middle class, and teaching everyone that violence is appropriate.

The question is weather privledged elites should dominate mass communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must. Namely to impose necissary illusions to manipulate and decieve the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena.

The question in brief is weather democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existance democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured. They may well be essential to survival.

This is another reason I have a distaste for the word evil and for organized religious institutions in general. Largely because many popular religions teach people to be guided by fear and not question things. Manipulative leaders cater their manipulative efforts to those large markets.

I have allowed myself to remain far too ignorant on far too many issues for far too long. I don't think I have the linguistic skills or broad worldview necessary to be one who has any large lasting effect on humanity, but I can support the things I believe in and make sure I chip away at the things I do not.

My (somewhat limited) understanding of modern search technology and the web allows me to spread any message I believe in cheaply, even if I was not smart enough to think up the idea and am only marketing someone else's message.

The Tragedy of the Commons is a good read about the problem with capitalism in a finite world.

I know many people play up the importance of Google too much (and I give them lots of crap when they screw up), but I think they are one of the few company structures with enough power to eventually change or undermine many of the broken patterns in society. The would probably be the only company I would ever want to work at, although I doubt I would be smart enough to get hired there, and I still want to roam from topic to topic on my own for a while.

Brilliant stuff. And even funnier that he was able to do it live.

What if you didn't like feeling pushed, even if you knew the person pushing you in a direction cares for you and was doing so to try to help you? What if they didn't realize that in spite of you respecting them greatly that pushing you just frustrates you and causes unnecessary friction?

In these cases is it best to just be straight up? Or when does it make sense to lie?

Many issues are not ones where there is only one truth, and many issues are irrational in nature. Not saying my path is correct or whatever, but what if there are multiple ways to a goal. How do you make a person respect your opinion on issues where many people are typically irrational? Take religion, as an example.

Describing the fall of the Alexandria library Carl Sagan said:

“there is no record, in the entire history of the Library, that any of its illustrious scientists and scholars ever seriously challenged the political, economic and religious assumptions of their society. The permanence of the stars was questioned; the justice of slavery was not.”

Amazing! I can't believe how many bloggers have mentioned that they are glad they believe in ________ over _________ and _________ after referencing an ill blogger that allegedly chopped up some little girl.

Here is a tip for you Mr ultra religious ______ wing better than whoever nut job blogger: if God is true and so omnipotent then he chose to make the person that chopped up that little girl AND he chose to make it happen AND he chose to have you blog about it as if it was a function of athiesm even though ALL OF IT was HIS CHOICE.

I am not going to post my religious beliefs here, but anyone who thinks the wrongs of the world are created by a lack of religious beliefs needs to ask themselves why the all powerful creator created many of the shitty things that occur on Earth.

I am sick of people who just want to divide the world and state that every thing good is me and everything bad is not me. The best and worst parts of all people who ever lived are in all of us. We are all far more connected than we would ever know, and the attempts to come together usually revolve around tearing something else apart.

To be honest I am usually most motivated when I or people I know experience injustice, but I don't think it needs to be that way. And I am going to be a way better person when I am more motivated by good things than by stopping bad things. You have understand what drives people and you have to create alternatives if you want to change the world.

Some people due stupid shit for the rush, and then as they do one thing that is slightly abnormal it is easier to do something else that is more abnormal. I think killing people is shitty, but we do that each day we pay taxes for bombs that land on small 3rd world villiages.

You can't stop humans from having fundamental human flaws, you can only do your best to learn about the world and yourself to reach your full potential and then with a bit of luck maybe help set up a framework that hopefully makes it easier for others to do well.

Many religious systems teach people not to question things. And even if the religions were completely pure that single feature (large groups of people not questioning things) means that corrupt scumbag individuals will gravitate toward certain religions just because they have an easy prey to market their message to.

most things that are sold as right and good limit your potential and / or destroy the lives of people who follow that route. Your path should - to the best of your ability - be chose by you.

I sometimes wish I had profoundly useful things to say. I usually don't, but I have become more observant of when I hear them.

Via World Changing

homeland security at work:

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

Bush declared four days after the storm, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees"

South Dakota lawmakers approved a ban on nearly all abortions yesterday, setting up a deliberate frontal assault on Roe v. Wade at a time when some activists see the U.S. Supreme Court as more willing than ever to overturn the 33-year-old decision.

Republican Gov. Mike Rounds said he was inclined to sign the bill, which would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the woman’s life. The measure would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.

I don't understand the drive to make people live - if even under horrible circumstances - when generally I do not think most people and organizations of power give a shit about humanity.

What are the odds that crime rates sharply increase with more unwanted children joining society?

Why are arabs working in the port a big deal?

• It is harder for us to hate and misunderstand a group of people that we come in contact with and learn anything about.
  
• Why not remind everyone of the bullshit terrorism meme.

Grabbing lines from the New York Times:

Glazer, Moynihan and, later, Glenn Loury argued that ambitious efforts to seek social justice often left societies worse off than before because they either required massive state intervention that disrupted pre-existing social relations (for example, forced busing) or else produced unanticipated consequences (like an increase in single-parent families as a result of welfare).

The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war, including younger neoconservatives like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, in two ways. First, it seems to have created an expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow at the core and would crumble with a small push from outside.

The [Iraq] war's supporters seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution-building and reform.

Even benevolent hegemons sometimes have to act ruthlessly, and they need a staying power that does not come easily to people who are reasonably content with their own lives and society.

By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic.

• you have to become the change you want to see
  
• change is internal
  
• forcing unwanted change on others creates conflicts and side effects that fuel destructive self fulfilling prophecies

The above quote comes from a NYT article which comes from a part of a book named America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy

Nothing like a little self censorship to spread freedom and democracy:

As the only syndicated political cartoonist who also writes a syndicated column, my living depends on freedom of the press. I can't decide who's a bigger threat: the deluded Islamists who hope to impose Sharia law on Western democracies, or the right-wing clash-of-civilization crusaders waving the banner of "free speech"--the same folks who call for the censorship and even murder of anti-Bush cartoonists here--as an excuse to join the post-9/11 Muslims-suck media pile-on. Most reasonable people reject both--but neither is as dangerous to liberty as America's self-censoring newspaper editors and broadcast producers.

The nanny media, even more prudish since 9/11, covers our millions of eyes to protect us from our own icky deeds. In Afghanistan in 2001, while covering a war that had officially killed 12 civilians, I watched a colleague from a major television network collate footage of a B-52 bombing indiscriminately obliterating a civilian neighborhood. "If people saw what bombing looks like here on the ground," he observed as body parts and burning houses and screaming children filled the screen, "they would demand an end to it. Which is why this will never air on American television."

thanks to Peter

Is the bird flue protection seriously needed, or are the VC's creating a $200 million fund for it simply exploiting fears in the average citizen?

Some congressmen talk about how search engines enable dictatorships and other shit like that.

It is there. Often it is there because our country feels we can exploit the other countries for greater profit. Placing blame on the search engines is such bullshit that I can't even think of an angle where that seems reasonable.

Here at home the DOJ blocks search spiders from the archive of their site and yet wants the rest of the world to be totally open. What a pantload.

read more

Ever notice that the countries listed in slideshows like this one

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/2006/01/24/06caphosp_corrupt_slide.html

are always far away from here?

Ever wonder if we are on their slideshows of most corrupt countries?

I don't read good blogs as often as I used to, but I love this post

What was once in the foreground is moving into the background, and vice versa. Our world is being continuously rearranged around us in deceptively small increments. Though we like to pretend that the emerging new order is "normal," that daily life proceeds much as it always did, with a few small novel inconveniences, we keep on bumping uncomfortably into the furniture.

some of the great comments on that page:

There is no "war on terror." The war is on the idea of a free-thinking society with merely a "threatening" harmless third world country to justify it.

and

Iraq had the political nuance to refuse to use the currency of a nation which was so obviously hostile to them and insisted that all transactions under the oil for food program would be conducted in Eurodollars. Now when other nations followed suit (Iran, North Korea etc - axis of evil just a coincidence?) the noble and righteous US of A decided to take action and in the manner of a playground bully beat the ten bells out of the weak kid lest anyone else get any clever ideas about refusing to hand over their lunch money. IF the abandonment of the US dollar had proceeded it would hae most certainly led to a major currency collapse and economic depression not seen since the Wall Street Crash.

and a quote from Joho:

I think that's also why so many of us are so invested in the Internet. That's the fresh start we've been looking for. It's a world that's more connected, more creative and more fair than the real world.

Sleezeball politicians are trying to silence scientists. Something they did a good job of that led the world into the dark ages.

Here is yet another reason I don't believe in many things I am told to believe:

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

So says Disney.

Always bad to title posts after the name of a Creed song, but I really have few cool points to lose, so I am sure it will not hurt me that much.

Did you know that the federal discretionary spending on military is greater than the discretionary spending on everything else combined?

And that the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 is being pushed through with another tax cut. The net effect is $30 billion dollars more deficit. No real cut there.

Here is the full text of another Bin Laden tape.

Many things that are sold as good act to confine and manipulate those which they help until at some point they must drastically alter course. I am both a bit scared and excited to see what the next few decades may bring, although I think it would probably be best for worldwide peace, humanity and prosperity if our country soon failed miserably and was forced to restructure. I am almost certain it will happen. I just wonder how the world will fair.

Will there be any dominate countries? Will the only superpowers become corporate entities? Or will those fail hard too?

You know stuff is going wrong when the patent office may infringe a patent to create a system that organizes patents.

The atmosphere is shitty, but the economy is doing well, sort of.

I wonder if Bush will get impeached for spying on US citizens, ie: the program. If he is I hope they put him in jail so he is kept safe from the terrorists...the scumbag.

Bush concern at Iraq 'propaganda'

that has to be the funniest article title I have read in at least a month.

Question: What is the point of a huge defecit?

Answer: Carve out the soul of the country. Kill social programs and make education unaffordable to most. The more we kill off options and the more people who are dirt fucking poor the cheaper we can exploit those people to make them die in a bullshit war aimed at doing nothing more than driving up the stockprice of dirtbag companies that sell weapons to the government.

Fuck education:

The House deficit reduction bill, which passed by a close vote of 217—215, reduces spending on federal student loan programs by $14.3 billion over the next five years. The Senate bill, which passed by a vote of 52-47, reduces student loan spending by $9.7 billion over the same period. The bills lower subsidies to private lenders that provide student loans and increase borrowing costs for students.

According to the United States Student Association, the House bill will cost the average student borrower an additional $5,800 in loan payments. On average, students currently borrow about $17,500 for college.

Both bills also reduce spending on entitlement programs and include changes to Medicaid, food stamps, farm subsidies, and other programs. However, the specifics of the bills differ substantially, and the House and Senate will have to compromise on a final version of the bill.

The House bill will decrease total spending by $50 billion, while the Senate bill will decrease spending by $36 billion. These are the first cuts to mandatory programs since 1997.

Question: What is the purpose of the war on terror?

Answer: To keep people perpetually in a state of fear against an unknown enemy so that you can exploit them.

We need to cut college loans by 20% so that we can keep defense spending growing at least 10 to 20 billion dollars a year. Fucking disgusting.

The House Armed Services Committee completed its markup of H.R. 1815, the FY’06 Defense Authorization bill, on May 19. The bill includes $441.6 billion for the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy. This is $19.5 billion above the amount authorized for FY’05.

If we treated other people with just a morsel of respect then there would be way less war. But of course that isn't profitable for defense contractors or their shareholders.

The amount spent on national defense has increased from approximately $288.8 billion in 2000 to $420.7 billion in 2005. The 420.7 billion does not include other items such as money for the Afghan and Iraq wars ($49.1 billion for Fiscal Year 2006), or Homeland Security funding ($41.1 billion for Fiscal Year 2006), for example.)

Globe and Mail on the Padia case

Yesterday, in a stunning climbdown, the Bush administration indicted Mr. Padilla, thereby short-circuiting the Supreme Court's plan to examine the legality of the President's move to jail an American citizen indefinitely without charge by declaring him an enemy combatant.

It was only the latest in a series of legal retreats by the administration, which has given ground on several fronts from its open-ended incarceration of hundreds of detainees in Guantanamo Bay to compromises on some of the more Draconian aspects of the Patriot Act.

Keep in mind that what happens in the court room has nothing to do with what happens in truth or the real world. Hard to imagine a person or company that can afford to waste more money loading up a case and creating fake evidence than the US government.

Although the foreign press should be careful with what they write, lest their news cause the need for US bombing threats. Shady.

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible

THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.