J Dubya Rants Off Into The Sunset

You Ready To Get Your Rapture On?

2006-01-20T14:36:00.000-05:00

God created the heavens and the earth and mankind some 6000 years ago. (I know b/c the bible tells me so.)

And some day very soon (I know because the rapture index tells me so), Jesus, our Lord and personal savior, who suffered and died on a cross at the hands of the dirty jews and liberals, will come back to judge us.

For those like me, who have lived in pious, hypocritical indignation for the better part of my adult life, we will be magically lifted up into heaven, to sit at the right hand of the Lord to watch the rest of humanity be tormented with plagues and stuff for years. And this will please the Lord. And me, because I'm a sadomasochistic scumbag with a fetish for the suffering of others. After we get bored watching all those people suffer, many of whom will do so only because they never had the opportunity to see my Will and my Word for themselves (hey, life ain't fair), our Lord Jesus will battle it out with Satan's son in an end-of-days chess match that has already been pre-ordained for him to win centuries ago. (I know b/c my pastel-suited, gold-chain wearing, womanizing, ambiguously gay minister told me so.)

Obviously, this all raises the question, if God created the universe and everything in it, and is all-knowing, and all-seeing, why go through the motions on this pale, blue dot just to torture innocent people of his own creation that likely had no chance to do or know otherwise, and play into this prediction of the end-of-days battle (the victory of which is already pre-ordained)?

And the answer to that, my brothers and sisters, is that the Lord works in mysterious ways...

G.I. Jesus, A Real American Hero

2005-12-02T16:10:00.000-05:00

Yo, Jesus!

He'll fight for freedom wherever there's trouble, G. I. Jesus is there! G. I. Jesus...

A Real American Hero, G. I. Jesus is there!

It's G. I. Jesus, against Muslims and democrats, fighting to save the day!

He never gives up, he's always there, fighting for freedom over land and air... G. I. Jesus...

A Real American Hero, G. I. Jesus is there!

G. I. Jesus is the codename for America's daring, highly trained, special mission force of Christian fundamentalists. Its purpose: To defend human freedom against the ACLU, a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world.

He never gives up, he'll stay till the fights won, G. I. Jesus will dare.

G. I. Jesus . . .

A Real American Hero, G... I... Jesus!!!

Owww!

2005-12-01T15:21:00.000-05:00

So right before my alarm goes off this morning, I'm having a nightmare. Apparently, my bosses at work and I are putting on a Shakespeare play for some of our clients, family, and friends. Turns, out, I have a role in the play, whch I had forgotten about. I'm thinking I just have to get this script copied and run it to my boss so he can say his lines, which he didn't have time to memorize.

Of course, all the copiers are shut off and are taking too long to power back up... And I hear the play going, and I notice there's dead silence. Someone is supposed to be speaking, but isn't. Then it dawns on me, *I* am the one that's supposed to be speaking! They're all waiting for me! I'm not in costume, there's no way I can go out there like this, so I decide to just get the heck out of there and start looking for a new job!

Then my alarm goes off. [Queue the conscious part of my brain!] So I hop up out of bed to shut it off (or so I think), thinking, "Phew, that was just a dream, but I'd rather still be dreaming about that horrible play than having to get up and go to work."

As I'm trying to hop out of bed, my foot gets caught in my sheets, and when I yank it out, it slams onto the edge of the wooden platform bed (in a downward chopping motion, if you need the visual), and I break a toe on my right foot. Yes, not just stubbed, broken. Ouch. Foot swollen, I limped all the way to work. Good times!

Hey, here's a fun experiment: try limping in public some time. Look at the looks on people's faces when they see you limpimg. It appears to be some strange combination of pity and contempt. We're such good animals!

Greased Pigs

2005-11-16T11:11:00.000-05:00

In case you're wondering why it costs 50-60$ to fill your gas tank, look no further. let's see, a few years back, we needed a new energy policy, since it's pretty clear we're a) running out of oil, b) it's getting really expensive, c) it's killing the planet, and d) it was one of bush's campaign promises. so, what do we do? we bring in the oil company executives, and they meet with our VP in secret meetings. the white house won't even release the list of attendees. now, after huge, unexplained spikes in the cost of oil and gas, and new record profits for oil companies (Exxon had the biggest profit this last quarter for profits of any company in history), congress decides it's gonna hold hearings, bring those execs in to testify, and make 'em tell us why their prices are so high and their profits are so big. Way to go, Congress! Are you actually going to represent our interests for once? Well...

The Democrats wanted these guys sworn in. Seems resonable - hey, it's only fair, senators, you made the baseball players swear in when they testified about that global killer of an issue, steroid use in baseball... but no! Ted Stevens would not allow them to be sworn in. Ted Stevens, Republican Senator from Alaska, who chairs the committee. he whose life's dream is to allow the oil companies to drill in the alaskan wildlife reserve. he absolutely HEARTS the oil companies. he of the 500 million dollar "bridge to nowhere" that he had inserted as his pet pork project in the new transportation bill, to link a village/island of 50 people currently served by a ferry, to the mainland - oh, and his family just happens to own land there, go figure! - he who threatened to resign from the senate if they took away his little pet project funded by our tax dollars to, gasp!, support a bipartisan effort to cut pork to help pay for katrina damage - waaaa!

Wanna know why he didn't want them sworn in? Turns out, those secret energy task force meetings, the ones that were supposed to lead to fuel independence and new technologies and cleaner fuels so we can burn clean fuel and not have to worry about Mess-O'Potamia anymore!, turns out they were just meetings between cheney and the oil/energy company executives (you know, great guys like Ken Lay, the former head of Enron!), and environmentalists and other outsiders weren't even allowed to attend.

Oh, and those oil company execs, by the way? they lied about being there. to congress. good thing we didn't let them get sworn in, hey Ted? so what exactly did they talk about at those secret task force meetings i wonder? my guess, and this is just a guess, mind you, is that they were wondering just exactly how far, in feet, they could shove that gas nuzzle up our collective a$$es before we throw these theives out.

Read this article, it's ridiculous: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501842.html

If you go back a little further to January 2003, you'll see that a federal court had ordered Cheney to turn over material about who was at those secret meetings, but the Supreme Court threw out the ruling, saying Cheney didn't have to turn over the materials. The secret was safe, thanks in no part to his good pal and duck-hunting buddy, Justice Scalia.

"Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana, just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force....

While Scalia and Cheney are avid hunters and longtime friends, several experts in legal ethics questioned the timing of their trip and said it raised doubts about Scalia's ability to judge the case impartially, the newspaper pointed out.

But Scalia rejected that concern Friday, telling the Times, "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned."" (Oh, I think it can!)

"The Times notes that [the] pair arrived Jan. 5 on Gulfstream jets and were guests of Wallace Carline, the owner of Diamond Services Corp., an oil services company in Amelia, La. "

How much clearer does this have to be?!?! Oww, that gas nuzzler hurts, make it stop, make it stop!!!

Holy crap, the hounds are turning on each other!

2005-11-15T19:35:00.000-05:00

These are some of today's juicy stories:

The Drudge Report and the Washington Times are both running stories about how Bush no longer trusts his senior aides and only speaks to 4 people now: Condi, mom, Karen Hughes, and Laura. He's not even speaking to his dad. Is he afraid to talk to men? (BTW, this is pretty scary if true.)

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska chastized Bush for attacking war critics and said the Dems have a right and obligation to speak out. I'll drink one to Chuck tonight.

Tucker Carlson, that right-wing, bow-tie wearing Republican hack, writes that Karen Hughes (Bush's Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, our ambassador to the Islamic world) is a complete failure in the middle east and a horrible choice on Bush's part. Gee, who'd have thought the soccer mom couldn't turn hundreds of years of animosity and mistrust on its head in her 2 patronizing visits?

The Senate just voted 79-19 to add language to a $491 billion Pentagon spending bill that calls on the Bush administration "to explain to Congress and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the mission in Iraq." Better late than never.

Pat Buchanan's magazine has a nice article bashing Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard journal, talking about how it pushed us to go to war with Iraq after 9/11 instead of going after Osama.

Cheney got heckled at a speech today, in TENNESSEE of all places. Go Vols!

Rumsfeld is now claiming that the Iraq was was not his idea! (He was just in charge of it. Either way, nice job, loser.) I thought this was going to be the adminstration of accountability? At some point, I'm sure, the whole thing will be blamed on Clinton (Bill or Hillary, either will do), liberals, Jimmy Carter, the ACLU, or the Dems in general.

And Bill O'Reilly, good ol' Falafel King himself, has completely lost his marbles. First he calls for a terrorist attack on San Fran, then he threatens to post the names of the internet sites ("left-wing smear merchants," I believe he called them) that ran this story on his webpage! Way to aid and comfort the enemy, Billy, and subvert the First Amendment, all in one fell swoop. Tard. Oops, I better be careful, or else the splotchy Mcarthy wannabe might tattle on me...

Classic!

On Boycotts

2005-11-15T14:13:00.000-05:00

Should I boycott Target stores because the left tells me they allow their pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception on religious grounds, or because the right tells me they switched their holiday shopping decor from "Merry Christmas" to "Happy Holidays" and last year banned Salvation Army bell ringers in front of their stores?

Do these boycotts cancel each other out? Or do they get added together for a double boycott from both sides? Should I limit my boycott to their holiday items and pharmacy?

What about the fact that they sell those sweet, delicious Golden Grahams for only $2.50 a box?!?

Guess who's back, back again?!

2005-11-01T17:13:00.000-05:00

Jebus is back in the building!

This time his most holy of holies makes his appearance on the door of a wardrobe in Romania. when asked for comment, the Son of Man issued the following statement:

"I suffed and died on a cross for this? For what?! For who?!* So I could end up in grilled cheese sandwiches and closet doors? F you people, all of you!"

* Editor's note: Jesus was a big Ricky Watters fan back in the day.

I Hope O'Reilly Shows Up At My Door!

2005-11-01T10:23:00.000-05:00

"CALLER: Bill, this is the time of war. She [Plame] was a WMD analyst. She wasn't monitoring troop movements in India or something like that. She was working on this country's most pressing concern. This is an important issue, and I got one point about the media. If you want true, no-spin facts about this case, you can't do better than mediamatters.com.

O'REILLY: Ah! All right. Anyway, we get another nut on the air. That's the worst part of doing this. Ninety percent of the callers are good, and then you get nuts. Now, we should go to their house. We should all go because I can get their addresses when they call in. We can trace them back, and we should all go over and surprise them."

Bump, bump, bump, another crook bites the dust, yeah...

2005-10-28T11:52:00.000-05:00

And another one's gone, and another one's gone, another crook bites the dust...

From CNN.com: "Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was indicted today by a grand jury on one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury in the CIA leak probe. The indictments are the first in a nearly two-year investigation into the public unmasking of an undercover CIA operative."

"Is United States becoming hostile to science?"

2005-10-28T09:14:00.000-05:00

Becoming?...

By Alan Elsner

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bitter debate about how to teach evolution in U.S. high schools is prompting a crisis of confidence among scientists, and some senior academics warn that science itself is under assault.

In the past month, the interim president of Cornell University and the dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine have both spoken on this theme, warning in dramatic terms of the long-term consequences.

"Among the most significant forces is the rising tide of anti-science sentiment that seems to have its nucleus in Washington but which extends throughout the nation," said Stanford's Philip Pizzo in a letter posted on the school Web site on October 3.

Cornell acting President Hunter Rawlings, in his "state of the university" address last week, spoke about the challenge to science represented by "intelligent design" which holds that the theory of evolution accepted by the vast majority of scientists is fatally flawed.

Rawlings said the dispute was widening political, social, religious and philosophical rifts in U.S. society. "When ideological division replaces informed exchange, dogma is the result and education suffers," he said.

Adherents of intelligent design argue that certain forms in nature are too complex to have evolved through natural selection and must have been created by a "designer," who could but does not have to be identified as God.

AT ODDS WITH BUSH
In the past five years, the scientific community has often seemed at odds with the Bush administration over issues as diverse as global warming, stem cell research and environmental protection. Prominent scientists have also charged the administration with politicizing science by seeking to shape data to its own needs while ignoring other research.

Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians have built a powerful position within the Republican Party and no Republican, including Bush, can afford to ignore their views.

***

The issue of whether intelligent design should be taught, or at least mentioned, in high school biology classes is being played out in a Pennsylvania court room and in numerous school districts across the country. The school board of Dover, Pennsylvania, is being sued by parents backed by the American Civil Liberties Union after it ordered schools to read students a short statement in biology classes informing them that the theory of evolution is not established fact and that gaps exist in it. The statement mentioned intelligent design as an alternative theory and recommended students to read a book that explained the theory further.

Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller believes the rhetoric of the anti-evolution movement has had the effect of driving a wedge between a large proportion of the population who follow fundamentalist Christianity and science. "It is alienating young people from science. It basically tells them that the scientific community is not to be trusted and you would have to abandon your principles of faith to become a scientist, which is not at all true," he said.

On the other side, conservative scholar Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, believes the only way to heal the rift between science and religion is to allow the teaching of intelligent design. "To have antagonism between science and religion is crazy," he said at a forum on the issue last week. Proponents of intelligent design deny they are anti-science and say they themselves follow the scientific method.

AMERICANS DON'T ACCEPT EVOLUTION
Polls for many years have shown that a majority of Americans are at odds with key scientific theory. For example, as CBS poll this month found that 51 percent of respondents believed humans were created in their present form by God. A further 30 percent said their creation was guided by God. Only 15 percent thought humans evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.

Other polls show that only around a third of American adults accept the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, even though the concept is virtually uncontested by scientists worldwide.

"When we ask people what they know about science, just under 20 percent turn out to be scientifically literate," said Jon Miller, director of the center for biomedical communication at Northwestern University. He said science and especially mathematics were poorly taught in most U.S. schools, leading both to a shortage of good scientists and general scientific ignorance.

U.S. school students perform relatively poorly in international tests of mathematics and science. For example, in 2003 U.S. students placed 24th in an international test that measured the mathematical literacy of 15-year-olds, below many European and Asian countries.

Scientists bemoan the lack of qualified U.S. candidates for postgraduate and doctoral studies at American universities and currently fill around a third of available science and engineering slots with foreign students. Northwestern's Miller said the insistence of a large proportion of Americans that humans were created by God as whole beings had policy implications for the future. "The 21st century will be the century of biology and we are going to be confronted with hundreds of important public policy issues that require some understanding that all life is interconnected," he said."

'Twas The Night Before Fitzmas

2005-10-27T12:01:00.000-05:00

--by Randy McGowan

"Twas the nite before Fitzmas and through the White House
Not a neocon stirred, not even Cheney, that louse
The documents were shredded and all burned with care
Even Judy was smart enough not to be there.

The liberals were snuggled all warm in their beds
Convinced that George Bush would no longer be led
With Laura in her burkah and George in his cap
He thought to himself, can I beat this wrap?

Then from the news there arose such a clatter
George ran to his office "what the hell is the matter!?!"
He grabbed Rove and said "what is the excitement?"
And there stood Fitzgerald, hands full of indictments.

Karl’s bald head then started to glow
Like George Bush’s nose, in the days he did blow
When what to his bloodshot eyes should appear
But cops and attorneys and all coming near.

Fitzgerald was thorough, if not very quick
And George now realized he wasn’t that slick
More rapid than eagles Fitz’s charges they came
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name.

"Now, grab all those docs and seize that computer!
Arrest Cheney! And Rove! And Rumsfeld and Scooter!
To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!
Now, lock away, lock away! Lock away all!"

With a wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Fitz let George know he had plenty to dread
He leaked not a word, but went straight to his work
arrested them all and said “Bush you’re a jerk.”

And poking his finger in George Bush’s nose
Said time for a speech in the garden of rose
He sprang to his car to his team gave a shout
And away they dragged Rove who started to pout.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight:
"Go F yourself Dick Cheney, and all your friends on the right!""

Evolution Debunked!

2005-10-26T13:59:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a velociraptor! And there was also a drunk named Noah. And Noah took the velociraptor, and the raptor's girlfriend, and led them onto a big, wooden boat that he had built. And then the raptors went to work! -- killing and maiming all the little animals on the boat, which they found in twos, and which pleased them greatly, because there were two of them as well. Then god made a rainbow. The end.

What a Funny Guy!

2005-10-26T13:11:00.000-05:00

"Let me say a few words about important values we must demonstrate while all of us serve in government. First, we must always maintain the highest ethical standards. We must always ask ourselves not only what is legal, but what is right. There is no goal of government worth accomplishing if it cannot be accomplished with integrity."

"Second, I want us to set an example of humility. As you work for the federal government there is no excuse for arrogance, and there’s never a reason to show disrespect for others. A new tone in Washington must begin with decency and fairness. I want everyone who represents our government to be known for these values. " - George W. Bush (October 15, 2001)

He was just kidding, right?

Worst Friend Ever

2005-10-25T18:46:00.000-05:00

Yeah, Time To Go

2005-10-25T11:04:00.000-05:00

"Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;

• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;

• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;

• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;

• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;

• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces."

If You See These Kids From "Village of the Damned" - Run!

2005-10-21T15:53:00.000-05:00

Silly little skinhead monkeys:

"Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans.

***

'We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white,' said Lynx. 'We want our people to stay white … we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race.'

Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. 'They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening,' said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins' father. 'I'm going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would.'

April home-schools the girls, teaching them her own unique perspective on everything from current to historical events. In addition, April's father surrounds the family with symbols of his beliefs — specifically the Nazi swastika. It appears on his belt buckle, on the side of his pick-up truck and he's even registered it as his cattle brand with the Bureau of Livestock Identification."

2005-10-21T09:57:00.000-05:00

Zap! Zing! Ka-pow!

2005-10-19T16:05:00.000-05:00

Bill O'Reilly: There's a lot of bad people out there and it's our job to go after them.

Jon Stewart: So when are you going to start?

-- The Daily Show (10/18/05)

Wrong Number Dialers

2005-10-18T08:32:00.000-05:00

What's our government doing about them? It's outrageous, I tell you.

More Supporting Of The Troops - Does The Word "Shame" Come To Mind?

2005-10-17T13:03:00.000-05:00

His hand had been blown off in Iraq, his body pierced by shrapnel. He could not walk. Robert Loria was flown home for a long recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he tried to bear up against intense physical pain and reimagine his life's possibilities.

The last thing on his mind, he said, was whether the Army had correctly adjusted his pay rate -- downgrading it because he was out of the war zone -- or whether his combat gear had been accounted for properly: his Kevlar helmet, his suspenders, his rucksack.

But nine months after Loria was wounded, the Army garnished his wages and then, as he prepared to leave the service, hit him with a $6,200 debt. That was just before last Christmas, and several lawmakers scrambled to help. This spring, a collection agency started calling. He owed another $646 for military housing.

"I was shocked," recalled Loria, now 28 and medically retired from the Army. "After everything that went on, they still had the nerve to ask me for money."

Although Loria's problems may be striking on their own, the Army has recently identified 331 other soldiers who have been hit with military debt after being wounded at war. The new analysis comes as the United States has more wounded troops than at any time since the Vietnam War, with thousands suffering serious injury in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"This is a financial friendly fire," charged Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, which has been looking into the issue. "It's awful." Davis called the failure systemic and said military "pay problems have been an embarrassment all the way through" the war.

Army officials said they are in the process of forgiving debts for 99 of the 331 wounded soldiers, all now out of the military. The other cases have not been resolved, said G. Eric Reid, director of the U.S. Army Finance Command. Complex laws and regulations govern the cancellation of debts once soldiers leave the service, he said.

Part of the problem is that the government's computerized pay system is designed to "maximize debt collection" and has operated without a way to keep bills from going to the wounded, Reid said. In the past seven months, a database of injured troops has been created to help prevent that. Now, he said, the goal is to make "a conscious decision . . . on the validity of that debt" in every case.

Early this year, the Army reported that, in looking at a two-month period, it had identified 129 wounded soldiers -- still active in the military -- who had debts. Those were resolved. But the Army cannot pinpoint the full number of wounded active-duty troops with debts.

The House Government Reform Committee has for several years been looking at pay problems among service members. Last spring, the committee asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate debt among the war's wounded and whether troops were being reported to collection and credit agencies. The findings are due early next year.

Although efforts are being made to correct such problems, Rep. Todd R. Platts (R-Pa.) said that for some troops, "we've so mismanaged their pay that . . . we've sent debt notices while they're still in combat, in harm's way." Hounding wounded troops is unfathomable, he said. "For even a
single soldier, this is unacceptable," he said.

At the root of the problem is an outdated Defense Department computer system, which does not automatically link pay and personnel records. This creates numerous pay errors -- and overpayments become debts, said Gregory D. Kutz, the GAO's managing director for forensic audits and special investigations. "They've been trying to modernize it since the mid-1990s," he said. "They have been unsuccessful."

No one can say how many troops have pay problems across the military, Kutz said, but the GAO has found that, in certain Army National Guard and Reserve units, more than 90 percent of soldiers have had at least one overpayment or underpayment during deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Steps have since been taken to improve the system, but the problem will not be eliminated, Kutz said, until the larger computer system is reengineered.

Typically, troops get a boost in pay while in combat. When they come home, the system can take extra weeks to catch up with the change, and some people are overpaid. For wounded troops -- still adjusting to their injuries and changed futures -- a debt notice can be another bitter discovery.

"It was like I was being abandoned. I was no good to the military anymore," recalled Loria, who served more than five years. "They figured the pay glitch was my fault and I was going to pay for it."

Loria was a combat engineer in Iraq in February 2004 when he rushed out with other soldiers to rescue a comrade wounded by a roadside bomb near Baqubah. After helping load the soldier onto his Humvee, Loria started to drive away. A second bomb exploded.

"My whole body hurt," he said, "and I felt like I was on fire." He noticed that his hand and lower arm seemed to be hanging off to the side.

A week later, Loria awoke in a hospital bed at Walter Reed, his wife watching over him. He had to learn to walk again, and, worse, he had to accept that "I was never going to do something that required two hands." Still, he said, he tried to remember that others died in Iraq and that "so many people in Walter Reed were 10 times worse off than myself."

After he left the hospital, his financial trouble started. First, his wages were garnished. "I was missing car payments and phone bill payments and everything else," he said. Then, when he was leaving the military, shortly before Christmas, his debts were laid out: $2,200 in travel related to follow-up hospital treatment, $2,400 for combat-related pay he should not have collected and several hundred dollars more for military gear that went missing after his injury.

The full force of his debt hit as he was trying to get to his family in New York for the holidays. "I had a quarter-tank of gas, three cats in my vehicle and no money whatsoever," he said. His outraged wife, Christine Loria, called the local newspaper in Middletown, N.Y., which published an article, and New York lawmakers became involved: Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer and Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D). Within a matter of days, the debts were cleared, and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner donated $25,000 to Loria.

Months later, home with his wife and stepson, Loria was stunned to receive a call from a collection agency. He owed $646 for housing: nine days of rent, damaged window blinds, a broken refrigerator tray.

"They call and they call and they call," he said. "They're nasty to me." Sometimes, he said, he feels outraged. "I don't know how much you want from me. I already gave you one arm and a part of a leg."

As Loria battled with bill collectors, Ryan Kelly, 25, took his problems to the GAO. He did this at the suggestion of a friend and fellow volunteer at the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit program in Roanoke for injured troops.

Kelly had been wounded in Iraq in July 2003, when his Humvee was blasted by a roadside bomb. "It blew my leg pretty much clean off," he said.

Like Loria, Kelly spent months at Walter Reed, recovering and learning to walk again without his lower leg and foot. The Army staff sergeant struggled with questions about his future. Because he had been injured as a reservist, he was told, there was no guarantee he could deploy to Iraq again. "I didn't want to stay in the Army if I was just going to be a warm body, filling a slot," he said.

When Kelly left the military last year, he recalled, "it was an intense, emotional time." He thought little of the final two checks totaling $2,700 because he was owed vacation and travel pay, he said. Later, he was bewildered as pay stubs continued to come in the mail, each blank except for a notation of a $2,230 debt.

Frustrated, Kelly called the Disabled Soldier Support System, a unit where a counselor told him the Army had mistakenly paid him for an extra 22 days. But Kelly said he was told it would all work out well because the military owed him for his leave and travel. A few weeks later, he said, "I got a check, and I thought, 'Oh, that's nice.' "

But after he and his wife moved to Arizona, he received a bill for $2,230 -- with the threat of a referral to a collection agency. "I was pretty speechless," he said.

When Kelly called the GAO, he learned that the debt was already listed on his credit history.
"What benefit is the Army getting, aggressively going after disabled service members for $500 or $1,000 or whatever? Why not give injured service members a little leeway?"
That sentiment is common.

Tyson Johnson, 24, of Prichard, Ala., was stunned after being struck by a mortar round in Iraq to find a bill waiting for him when he came home from the hospital. It was for $2,700, the bonus he had been given when he enlisted.

"I definitely felt betrayed, because I went over there and almost lost my life," said Johnson, a corporal when he was injured. His debt was resolved after his story made news. "I really didn't need more stress."

Sgt. Gary Dowd, 28, was caught in an ambush 30 miles north of Tikrit, Iraq, in 2003 and suffered multiple injuries, losing his left hand and forearm.

After 13 months of treatment, he retired from the Army early this year. Shortly afterward, he received a letter at his home in Tampa asking him to repay $600 for a survivor-benefit insurance plan he had opted out of when he signed his deployment papers.

There was no number on the bill to call -- no way to protest. "I was pretty irked that they thought I owed them something," he said. "I feel like I've given them enough."

Although Dowd feels there is no ill intent, he said, "I do wish that once they realized they had an injured service member, they would flag them and say: 'This guy has been in the hospital. He's going through enough already.' "

What's Your Favorite Bible Verse?

2005-10-13T12:05:00.000-05:00

I personally like God's treatment for leprosy:

The recipe is basically this: "Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one. Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly off. Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient's right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally kill a couple doves and offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. Leviticus 14:2-52."

Who needs modern medicine?

By the way, antibiotics are now used to treat leprosy. The World Health Organization, or WHO, has developed treatment guidelines that include a combination of antibiotics, including the following: rifampin · dapsone · clofazlimine · ethionamide · minocycline · clarithromycin · ofloxacin.......

Bagginsssses?!?!

2005-10-12T10:40:00.000-05:00

More evidence of a Hobbit-like ancient human relative discovered...

"(AP) -- Scientists say they have found more bones in an Indonesian cave that offer additional evidence of a second human species -- short and hobbit-like -- that roamed the Earth the same time as modern man."

More here.

Dick Cheney, Halliburton... I Think the Picture Says It All...

2005-10-12T10:16:00.000-05:00

"An analysis released by a Democratic senator found that Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton stock options have risen 3,281 percent in the last year...."

***

"Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asserts that Cheney's options -- worth $241,498 a year ago -- are now valued at more than $8 million."

"“Halliburton has already raked in more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney Administration for work in Iraq, and they were awarded some of the first Katrina contracts," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it. The Vice President should sever his financial ties to Halliburton once and for all.”

Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options. The company has been criticized by auditors for its handling of a no-bid contact in Iraq. Auditors found the firm marked up meal prices for troops and inflated gas prices in a deal with a Kuwaiti supplier. The company built the American prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The Vice President has sought to stem criticism by signing an agreement to donate the after-tax profits from these stock options to charities of his choice, and his lawyer has said he will not take any tax deduction for the donations.

However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) concluded in Sept. 2003 that holding stock options while in elective office does constitute a “financial interest” regardless of whether the holder of the options will donate proceeds to charities. CRS also found that receiving deferred compensation is a financial interest.

Cheney told "Meet the Press" in 2003 that he didn't have any financial ties to the firm. “Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest," the Vice President said. "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years.”

Cheney continues to received a deferred salary from the company. According to financial disclosure forms, he was paid $205,298 in 2001; $162,392 in 2002; $178,437 in 2003; and $194,852 in 2004."

Are you kidding me?! Cheney was instrumental in getting us into Iraq. Instrumental in getting Halliburton awarded all the no-bid cost plus contracts to rebuild oil fields, etc. in Iraq. Instrumental in getting Halliburton the contract to build Gitmo. Instrumental in getting Halliburton awarded Katrina contracts. 433,333 stock options and about 200 thousand dollars a year in deferred salary. I repeat, 433,333 stock options and about 200 thousand dollars a year in deferred salary...

Yeah, I trust him.

Golf, Anyone?

2005-10-07T16:17:00.000-05:00

Sid Blumenthal talks about how our guh-ment is for sale to the highest bidder:

The sums every industry, from financial services to computers, spends on lobbying are staggering. Broadcast media firms spent $35.88 million in 2004 alone on lobbyists in Washington, according to the Center for Public Integrity. Telephone companies spent $71.97 million; cable and satellite TV corporations, $20.22 million. The drug industry during the same period shelled out $123 million to pay 1,291 lobbyists, 52 percent of them former government officials. The results have been direct: The Food and Drug Administration has been reduced to a hollow shell, and Medicare can't negotiate lower drug costs with pharmaceutical companies. In the 2004 election cycle, the drug industry paid out $87 million in campaign contributions for federal officials, 69 percent of them flowing to Republicans.
Whereas almost all lobbying before the Bush era was confined to Capitol Hill, now one in five lobbyists approaches the White House directly. Consider the success story of one Kirk Blalock, a former aide to Karl Rove as deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison, where he coordinated political links to the business community. Now, one year out of the White House, he's a senior partner in the lobbying firm of Fierce, Isakowitz and Blalock, boasting 33 major clients, 22 for whom he lobbies his former colleagues in the White House. Indeed, the Bush White House boasts 12 former lobbyists in responsible positions, from chief of staff Andrew Card (American Automobile Association Manufacturers) on down.
"The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled since 2000 to more than 34,750," reports the Washington Post, "while the amount that lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by as much as 100 percent."

Unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations. -- President Andrew Jackson, farewell address (March 4, 1837)

2005-10-05T17:36:00.000-05:00

2005-10-05T15:07:00.000-05:00

What do they mean by falafel, you ask? Click here for more info...

Torture of Iraqis Was for 'Stress Relief,' Say US Soldiers

2005-10-04T16:02:00.000-05:00

"By Neil Mackay The Sunday Herald
Sunday 02 October 2005

For the first time, American soldiers who personally tortured Iraqi prisoners have come forward to give testimony to human rights organisations about crimes they committed.
Three soldiers - a captain and two sergeants - from the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mercury near Fallujah in Iraq have told Human Rights Watch how prisoners were tortured both as a form of stress relief and as a way of breaking them for interrogation sessions.
These latest revelations about the torture of Iraqi detainees come at a time when the Bush administration thought it could draw a line under the scandal of Abu Ghraib following last week's imprisonment of Private Lynndie England for her now infamous role in the abuse of prisoners and the photographing of torture.
The 82nd Airborne soldiers at FOB Mercury earned the nickname "The Murderous Maniacs" from local Iraqis and took the moniker as a badge of honour.
The soldiers referred to their Iraqi captives as PUCs - persons under control - and used the expressions "f***ing a PUC" and "smoking a PUC" to refer respectively to torture and forced physical exertion.
One sergeant provided graphic descriptions to Human Rights Watch investigators about acts of abuse carried out both by himself and others. He now says he regrets his actions. His regiment arrived at FOB Mercury in August 2003. He said: " The first interrogation that I observed was the first time I saw a PUC pushed to the brink of a stroke or a heart attack. At first I was surprised, like, 'This is what we are allowed to do?'"
The troops would put sand-bags on prisoners' heads and cuff them with plastic zip-ties. The sergeant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said if he was told that prisoners had been found with homemade bombs, "we would f*** them up, put them in stress positions and put them in a tent and withhold water. It was like a game. You know, how far could you make this guy go before he passes out or just collapses on you?"
He explained: "To 'f*** a PUC' means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day. To 'smoke' someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day.
"Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. We did that for amusement."
Iraqis were "smoked" for up to 12 hours. That would entail being made to hold five-gallon water cans in both hands with out-stretched arms, made to do press-ups and star jumps. At no time, during these sessions, would they get water or food apart from dry biscuits. Sleep deprivation was also "a really big thing", the sergeant added.
To prepare a prisoner for interrogation, military intelligence officers ordered that the Iraqis be deprived of sleep. The sergeant said he and other soldiers did this by "banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling".
They'd also pour cold water over prisoners and then cover them in sand and mud. On some occasions, prisoners were tortured for revenge. "If we were on patrol and caught a guy that killed our captain or my buddy last week Ö man, it is human nature," said the sergeant - but on other occasions, he confessed, it was for "sport".
Many prisoners were completely innocent and had no part in the insurgency, he said - but intelligence officers had told soldiers to exhaust the prisoners to make them co-operate. He said he now knew their behaviour was "wrong", but added "this was the norm". "Trends were accepted. Leadership failed to provide clear guidance so we just developed it. They wanted intel [intelligence]. As long as no PUC came up dead, it happened. "
According to Captain Ian Fishback of the 82nd Airborne Division, army doctrine had been broken by allowing Iraqis who were captured by them to remain in their custody, instead of being sent "behind the lines" to trained military police.
Pictures of abuse at FOB Mercury were destroyed by soldiers after the scandal of Abu Ghraib broke.
However, Fishback told his company commander about the abuse and was told "remember the honour of the unit is at stake" and "don't expect me to go to bat for you on this issue if you take this up". Fishback then told his battalion commander who advised him to speak to the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) office, which deals with issues of military law.
The JAG told Fishback that the Geneva Conventions "are a grey area". When Fishback described some of the abuses he had witnessed the JAG said it was "within" Geneva Conventions.
Fishback added: " If I go to JAG and JAG cannot give me clear guidance about what I should stop and what I should allow to happen, how is an NCO or a private expected to act appropriately?"
Fishback, a West Point graduate who has served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, spent 17 months trying to raise the matter with his superiors. When he attempted to approach representatives of US Senators John McCain and John Warner about the abuse, he was told that he would not be granted a pass to meet them on his day off.
Fishback says that army investigators were currently more interested in finding out the identity of the other soldiers who spoke to Human Rights Watch than dealing with the systemic abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Colonel Joseph Curtin, a senior army spokesman at the Pentagon, said: "We do take the captain seriously and are following up on this."
Fishback has now been removed from special forces training because of the army investigation."

Faux News Is Bad News

2005-10-04T14:06:00.000-05:00

NYT - October 4, 2005

"Federal auditors have blistered the Bush administration for secretly concocting favorable news reports about itself by hiring actors to pose as journalists and slipping $240,000 in taxpayer funds to a sell-out conservative polemicist. The government till was also tapped to have political spin doctors track whether the message of President Bush and the Republican Party was being well treated in legitimate news reporting.

In its purchase of self-aggrandizing agitprop, the administration plainly violated the law against spreading "covert propaganda" at public expense, according to the report of the Government Accountability Office. More than that, Bush officials forged a cheesy new low in Washington politicians' endless bazaar of peddling public relations initiatives at taxpayers' expense.

The White House order to close down the ersatz news coverage should have been unequivocal once the real news media uncovered the hired fakers. But administration apologists continued to insist only "legitimate dissemination" of public information was at work in the under-the-table employment of Armstrong Williams, a political talk-show host, to wax breathless over the No Child Left Behind Act.

The scheme was so seamy that auditors were unable to document whether Mr. Williams actually delivered all the articles and talk-show hype that his company claimed in quietly billing the government for $186,000 worth of yessiree-Bob "news." On Friday, a spokeswoman for the current education secretary, Margaret Spellings, reacted to the report by calling these efforts "stupid, wrong and ill advised." We hope she noticed that they were also illegal."

GAO report here.

Been Pretty Heavy on the Discourse, Light on the Monkeys Lately...

2005-09-30T17:33:00.000-05:00

So, here goes...

2005-09-30T16:33:00.000-05:00

Hmm, maybe they're right....

Let's recap his Administration so far, shall we?

Stolen elections in 2000 and 2004, 9/11, rampant cronyism, failed Katrina response, blacks used only for photo-ops, "townhall" meetings where everyone must be a pre-screened Republican, payign political pundits to push their plans, record-setting vacations, hubris, lies, distortions, red state/blue state, "compassionate conservatism," push-polling, negative campaigning, smear campaigns, "plants" (aka: Jeff Gannon/James Guckert) in the white House press corps, surrounds himself with yes-men, won't allow dissent, doesn't read newspapers, guts environmental, health, and safety protections, promotes industry lobbyists to regulate the industries they lobby for, invades countries that pose no threat to us because God told him to, ignorance of global warming, double the number of lobbyists in DC since taking office, demoralized and weakened military, lack of armor for soldiers, illegal war in Iraq, renditions, Patriot Act, no WMDs, can't find Osama Bin Forgotten, everyone around him getting indicted or under investigation, outing CIA operatives, treason, war crimes, torture scandals, tax cuts for the rich, 3 million jobs outsourced so far, deflation of the U.S. dollar, record budget surplus gone, 1.2 trillion giveaway to big pharma, failed attempt to destroy Social Security, can't speak clearly, can't admit when he's wrong, can't get through a speech or debate without wearing a wire, sat like a deer in the headlights for 7 minutes after being told a 2nd plane just hit the World Trade Center, $2.5 TRILLION additional deficit since taking office, $300 BILLION spent in Afghanistan and Iraq with no end in sight, has yet to veto a spending bill, "free speech zones," over 1,900 U.S. troops dead in Iraq so far, about 20,000 U.S. troops permanently wounded in Iraq so far with missing arms, legs, eyesight, burns, brain damage, estimates of 100,000+ Iraqi civilians killed so far, terrorism on the rise instead of dropping, FEMA gutted and useless, Dep't of Homeland Security a joke, "terror alert level" used for political purposes, oil prices, rising gap between the rich and the poor, rise to power of religious fundamentalists, Gitmo, refusal to fund No Child Left Behind Act, US soldiers trading sick photos of dead and mutilated Iraqis online for access to amateur porn...

I could go on, but it's Friday. I'm out!

My Letter To O'Leilly today - Let's See If He Has The Courage To Answer It

2005-09-30T15:09:00.000-05:00

"Hey Bill,

Saw your Talking Points Memo last night, in which you decried the court-ordered release of the additional Abu Ghraib photos/videos as a "disgrace."

One of the real disgraces is that you don't go after an administration that condones sodomizing young Iraqi boys and raping Iraqi women on camera with the same zeal that you go after district attorneys in Florida you feel are weak on child molestation and rape cases.

This type of behavior was condoned at the highest levels, and will not end until the Bush Administration's feet are held to the fire. You can help, or you can go down in history as one of the enablers. Your choice.

Respectfully yours,

[deleted]"

"Supporting The Troops" Does Not Mean Sporting a Yellow Bumper Sticker!

2005-09-30T14:20:00.000-05:00

It means preventing horse-pucky like this from occuring: "A group of House Republicans have proposed a plan to offset the costs of relief and rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina that includes trimming military quality-of-life programs, including health care."

And this: "Pentagon still not reimbursing troops who buy own body armor"

And this:

""What is shown on the photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison that the Pentagon has blocked from release? ”

We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,' Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges.'"

A report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse at the prison outside Baghdad says videotapes and photographs show naked detainees, and that groups of men were forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped. Taguba also found evidence of a 'male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.'"

Rumsfeld told Congress the unrevealed photos and videos contain acts 'that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman.'" The military later screened some of the images for lawmakers, who said they showed, among other things, attack dogs snarling at cowed prisoners, Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts, and naked prisoners forced to have sex with each other.

In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: "Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men .... The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.'

Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/ children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out.""

No, sorry -- putting a yellow ribbon on your car, calling anyone who protests our unnecessary and illegal little war in Iraq un-American and a traitor, and backing at all costs this corrupt administration that lied our troops into this war to begin with and refuses to make it official policy that torture is not acceptable -- is not supporting the troops.

Refusing to allow this Republican administration to claim that they support the troops -- while at the same time they are reducing soldiers' family-leave allowances, combat pay, and health care, refusing to provide them with updated body armor other than Vietnam-era flak jackets despite 2 1/2 years -- and an order from Congress -- to do so, re-upping these guys with their back-door draft, failing to instruct them on the strict prohibitions against torture in the Geneve Conventions, and punishing any whistle-blower who dares to have the courage to speak out about some of the horrors they've witnessed -- is supporting the troops.

Pressuring the psychopaths that are running our country to make it concrete policy that the troops cannot torture and rape detainees, is supporting the troops.

Refusing to buy into the right-wing echo chamber's (yeah, that means you Bill, Sean, Rush, and all your "fair and balanced" friends) attempts to discredit anyone who speaks out about this war, whether it's Joe Wilson, Cindy Sheehan, Richard Clarke, Paul Hacket, or any of the brave soldiers willing to testify to the attrocities being committed by our own, is supporting the troops.

Calling for an immediate end to this occupation is supporting our troops.

Delay Indicted, Finally!

2005-09-28T11:55:00.000-05:00

From MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader.

You might recall our Republican friend Tom Delay (aka: the "Hammer") from his days as a bug exterminator in Texas. No? How about when he was investigated by the (Republican-controlled) house ethics committee on several occasions? No? How about when he tried to use a brain-dead woman as a political tool to distract from his ethics violations and blame them on a vast left-wing conspiracy?:

One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the
visibility of what is going on in America," Mr. DeLay told a conference
organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. A
recording of the event was provided by the advocacy organization Americans
United for Separation of Church and State. "This is exactly the issue that is
going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me
and against many others," Mr. DeLay said. Mr. DeLay complained that "the other
side" had figured out how "to defeat the conservative movement," by waging
personal attacks, linking with liberal organizations and persuading the national
news media to report the story. He charged that "the whole syndicate" was "a
huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in."

1 corrupt wing-nut down, many more to go...

(For a good summary of all the current corruption scandals plaguing Republicans right now (and believe me, there are a LOT), check here.)

UPDATE!!! They replaced him with what, you ask? More of the same! Are you kidding me? Check out this 2003 Washington Post article about Delay's new interim relacement, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri. The title sums it up pretty well: "GOP Whip Quietly Tried to Aid Big Donor - Provision Was Meant To Help Philip Morris" -- here's the link.

Only hours after Rep. Roy Blunt was named to the House's third-highest
leadership job in November, he surprised his fellow top Republicans by
trying to quietly insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA into the
475-page bill creating a Department of Homeland Security...

Ahh, another Republican with all our best interests at heart. While some lawmakers busied themselves trying to create a Department of Homeland Security to help protect us from terrorist attacks, this piece of work was busy coddling to the cigarette company that "contributed more than $150,000 to political committees affiliated with Blunt since 2001, according to Federal Election Commission records." Maybe it also helps that "Andrew B. Blunt, one of the lawmaker's sons, is a lobbyist for Philip Morris" ???

Our democracy has been bought and paid for.

UPDATE (Pt. Deuce): Turns out this Blunt guy paid a "consultant" who just happens to be one of those indicted along with Delay in Texas. (Click me!)

These people are dirty.

Dear God...

2005-09-28T10:47:00.000-05:00

Could you please tell your followers that when you kill or displace 1 million people, destroy billions of dollars in property, and cause America to look like a bunch of fools on the world stage with one of your mightly huricanes, that's it's not really a "miracle" when a frigging puppy is later found alive? Thanks.

Proof That You Can't Keep a Good Crony Down!

2005-09-27T10:52:00.000-05:00

Michael Brown has been rehired by FEMA "as a consultant" to evaluate FEMA's response following Hurricane Katrina, according to CBS news.

Are you kidding me? I'll tell you why he's been "Re-hired," it's because today (Tuesday) he's testifying in from of the Republican whitewash, I mean investigation, into the hurricane response. It's called "hush money," people...

There ya go, there's a nice little reward for your incompetence, Brownie.

What a joke. Let's add him to the list of incompetent imbecines Shrub has awarded for their incompetence: George Tenet, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, 2 two intelligence analysts that thought those pesky aluminum tubes could be used for centrifuges...

Did I mention these people are incompetent?... Hey, at least they're loyal Republicans. That's all that matters, right?

Why are the Minnesota Vikings, expected by many to make a Super Bowl run this year, 0-2 and in a free fall?

2005-09-22T12:25:00.000-05:00

The answer's obvious - they're horrible at evaluating talent.

"George Bush Don't Like Black People"

2005-09-21T12:31:00.000-05:00

"Five days in this motherf***ing attic
I can't use the cellphone I keep getting static
Dying 'cause they lying instead of telling us the truth (...)
Screwed 'cause they say they're coming back for us, too
but that was three days ago and I don't see no rescue (...)

Swam to the store, tryin' to look for food
Corner store's kinda flooded so I broke my way through
Got what I could but before I got through
News say the police shot a black man trying to loot...."

Video here.

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." - Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC)

2005-09-21T09:22:00.000-05:00

Hurricane Katrina

2005-09-20T15:48:00.000-05:00

I don't think here's a whole lot I can say about the hurricane (and the response to it, or lack thereof) that hasn't already been said, other than watch the spin, check the facts, and if you can, call your congressmen and women and demand an independent bipartisan investigation of the response to this disaster (as you may know, Republicans voted on almost universal party lines to shoot down this idea -- wonderwhat they're hiding?), so that we can find out who's at fault, and how to fix this debacle so it doesn't happen again in the future. Seriously, 4 years after 9/11, a new Department of Homeland Security, "stream-lined" (aka: underfunded) FEMA, and billions of our tax dollars wasted, and we're not even safe from a storm and flood that they had early warnings about. They better fix this, and soon. Sorry, I'm not even trying to be funny here. It's damn near impossible.

Jesus Cliffs Notes

2005-08-30T15:51:00.000-05:00

Virgin birth, carpenter's son, 20-year void (probably spent picking up some buddhism...), hates coin-changers in his father's house (unless they're Republican), water to wine, made some buddies (shouldn't have trusted that shady one), couldn't get laid (probably because he rolled 13-deep with his homies - that scared away the ladies), Sermon on the Mount (still weeps that his followers never read this, and instead choose to focus on Leviticus and Revelations), jealous priests angry, got crucified, rose from the dead so we could hide Easter eggs and wear ugly pastel clothing, Mel Gibson made a torture movie about him, and finally, theimage of our lord and savior, the only begotten son of the divine creator of the heaven and the earth, can now be found in vegetables, grilled cheese sandwiches, and fish sticks, predominantly in third-world countries and the deep south of the United States...

The end...?

Update: No, certainly not! Now they've found the image of the Virgin Mary in a sonogram, and they're auctioning it off on eBay. I'm sorry, I just can't take this kind of idiocy any more... I have to move to Europe or something. (And for those who know me, you realize that's a huuuuge sacrifice considering how much I like having air conditioning...) Here's a link to the auction.

and let us pray: God, please save us from your followers.

(Revision, Jesus-Style: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10025.htm)

"Monkey see, monkey go all-in"

2005-08-24T10:56:00.000-05:00

That's how they roll!!!

From MSNBC:

"When given a choice between steady rewards and the chance for more, monkeys will gamble, a new study found.

And they'll keep taking risks as the stakes rise and dry spells get longer. "

Picture of the Day

2005-08-23T17:41:00.000-05:00

Bush took to the road this week ***from his 5-week vacation*** to hide from Cindy Sheehan (the greiving mother of a son who died in Iraq and who demands that Bush explain to her what noble cause her son died for)... I mean, to try to salvage his tanking poll numbers (as of today, now lower than Nixon's at the height of Watergate)... I mean, to remind 'Merica why we're fighting a war in Iraq - why, 9/11 of course!

Unfortunately for him, looks like monkey-boy's screeners are on vacation all month, too... 2 vets stood up and turned their backs on him during his speeech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday. How'd they let these unpatriotic, anti-american, america-hating, left-wing, tree-hugging, granola-bar eating, commie, dirty lib-ruls through anyway?

Caption: Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bullshit Protector" flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

ps: Maybe this is the real reason he took to the road... he apparently needs a vacation from his vacation... http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050819/laf006.html?.v=19

Wow, Hoss likes his Hillbilly Heroin!

2005-08-19T09:37:00.000-05:00

"Prosecutors cited prescriptions Limbaugh received between March 2003 and September 2003, when pharmacy records show Limbaugh picked up 1,733 hydrocodone pills, 90 OxyContin pills, 50 Xanax tablets and 40 pills of time-release morphine." (http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-prush17aug17,0,825845.story?coll=sfla-news-palm)

But he could be a bit less hypocritical about it...

"There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

"What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."-- Rush Limbaugh show, Oct. 5, 1995 (http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/10/ana03004.html)

Help! My House Is Infested With Boy Scouts!

2005-08-04T18:41:00.000-05:00

OK, the boy scouts have been in town here in D.C. for like 3 years now. Isn't it time they put the khaki daisy duke shorts away, untie those grannie knots, round up their pedophile scout masters -- at least the ones that didn't electrocute themselves when their tent pole hit a power line a couple of weeks ago (I kid you not, these are the guys teaching all these kids basic camping safety...) -- and head home?

I'm sure there's lots of baseball to be played and small animals to torture (or whatever it is those hitler youth like to do in their spare time).

Come on, I only kid! The scouts are a great organization, where children can learn self-respect, discipline, forestry and survival skills, and how to tie a slip-knot, among other things.

Not only that, but I think I may have a solution to our troop shortages:

"Boy Scout program membership, as of December 31, 2004

988,995 Boy Scouts/Varsity Scouts

543,487 adult volunteers

52,131 troops/teams" (http://www.scouting.org/factsheets/02-503.html)

Holy cow!

(Editor's note: I only joke on the Scouts because I'm disgruntled... Yes, I used to be a Cub Scout, and my pops talked me into quitting before I got to the Boy Scouts because he didn't want to drive me to the meetings any more...)

Hillbilly Sign of the Week

2005-08-03T08:21:00.000-05:00

Hats off to Sheltinski for spotting this one. Found outside a shanty-town on the North Carolina shore. Yee. Haw.

"We have the media now." - Ann Coulter, right-wing hack

2005-08-02T16:38:00.000-05:00

Yeah, no kidding. Some other choice Ann Coulter quotes:

"I think a baseball bat is the most effective way [to talk to liberals] these days" [10/6/04]

Canadians "better hope the United States doesn't roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent." [11/30/04]

"... the savages have declared war, and it's far preferable to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York (where the residents would immediately surrender)." [link]

"I have to say I'm all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the 'hood to be flogged publicly." MSNBC, March 22, 1997

"My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism." MSNBC, February 8, 1997.

"I think [women] should be armed but should not vote ..." Politically Incorrect, February, 2001. "It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact." The Guardian, May 17 2003.

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma Federal Building bomber) is he did not go to the New York Times building." New York Observer, interview August 26, 2002.

"We should invade their [muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war." From her syndicated column, September 13, 2001.

Ain't she/he a darling?

Allow Me To Put An End To Your Suffering... Psyche!

2005-08-02T15:57:00.000-05:00

I was worried when my law firm told me they had showers in our offices (for us to use if we were there late, or early...) Then I got really nervous when they gave us Blackberries to carry around at all times and have 24/7 contact through e-mail, in addition to our laptops and cell phones. When they came up with happy hour every Thursday, in the office of course!, I got really concerned...

But with the addition of defibrillators on every floor of our office now, my worst fears have been confirmed! That's it, we're chained to these desks forever. Even death offers us no escape from the tedium. Now, by the miracle of modern science, we can be at work on a Sunday afternoon, stressed to the hilt because some big project is due first thing Monday morning, suffer a heart attack brought on by the stress and the all-McDonald's-all-the-time diet this kind of work imposes on us, and be brought back from the brink with the ol' shocker, given some apple juice, and propped right back up at our desks so we can finish that draft discovery motion!

Yeah, lookit' 'im go!!!

"Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" -- George W. Bush (Jan. 11, 2000)

2005-07-29T10:51:00.000-05:00

Obviously, not for long...

"Bush: Intelligent Design Should Be Taught" - (link)

"Bible Course Becomes a Test for Public Schools in Texas" - By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and BARBARA NOVOVITCH (New York Times 8/1/05)

"HOUSTON, July 31 - When the school board in Odessa, the West Texas oil town, voted unanimously in April to add an elective Bible study course to the 2006 high school curriculum, some parents dropped to their knees in prayerful thanks that God would be returned to the classroom, while others assailed it as an effort to instill religious training in the public schools.

***

"But a growing chorus of critics says the course, taught by local teachers trained by the council, conceals a religious agenda. The critics say it ignores evolution in favor of creationism and gives credence to dubious assertions that the Constitution is based on the Scriptures, and that "documented research through NASA" backs the biblical account of the sun standing still."

***

Some of the claims made in the national council's curriculum are laughable, said Mark A. Chancey, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who spent seven weeks studying the syllabus for the freedom network. Mr. Chancey said he found it "riddled with errors" of facts, dates, definitions and incorrect spellings. It cites supposed NASA findings to suggest that the earth stopped twice in its orbit, in support of the literal truth of the biblical text that the sun stood still in Joshua and II Kings.

"When the type of urban legend that normally circulates by e-mail ends up in a textbook, that's a problem," Mr. Chancey said. "

(link)

Ok, our kids might end up stupid, but at least they won't be fat, right? Right?!

Maybe not... "Public Schools Begin to Offer Gym Classes Online" - (link)
I give up. At least my kids are smart and can think for themselves.

(Great link for Bushisms, by the way: http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms2000.htm)

House GOP Votes To Rename Everything By Putting the Word "Freedom" in the Title

2005-07-27T19:08:00.000-05:00

From the A.P. (really!):

House Republicans today brought up a bill named "The Freedom Act of 2005," ostensibly to rename essentially everything in the nation's capitol to include "Freedom" in the title. No longer content to simply rename french fries "Freedom fries," and July 4th (formerly known as "Independence Day") Freedom Day, some Congress members have stepped up efforts to rename EVERYTHING to show how much they love freedom.

"Through this here new laws [sic]," said co-sponsor Rep. Generic Hillbilly (R - AL), "we will show the evil-doers and terrorists that America stands for is freedom. That's spelled f-r-e-e-d-o-m. It's the ability to do important work like this for the American people in a time of war, that got me into politics in the first place. I really hate towel-heads. They don't love freedom. By the way, have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Savior?"

When asked for further comment on what exactly "Freedom" meant, the Congressman hurried off to an important meeting with Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX), in order to ensure that sufficient pork was inserted into an upcoming spending bill to appease his corporate backers.

First up on the list, according to the text of the bill:

1. Baltimore-Washington Int'l Airport (aka: "BWI") will be changed to "Free-W.I."
2. Washington, D.C.'s subway system (aka: "the metro") will be changed to "the Freedom Tunnels," with individual trains called "Freedom Mobiles." The current color-coded system will be converted to include new titles to replace the colors. For example, the "orange line" will now be called the "Patriot Line," the "red line" will be called the "Blood of Our Fallen Heroes That's Been Spilt on the Battlefield Line," and the "blue line" will be replaced with the "Amber Waves of Grain Line."
3. Washington D.C.'s Union Station will now be called Freedom Station. The bill's drafters thought leaving the word "union" in the title would mislead visitors to the city into thinking the current Administration actually supported blue-collar workers and labor movements.)

Additional name changes will be phased in over a 3-year period, inclusing renaming the Supreme Court the "Court of Freedom," Capitol hill "Freedom Hill," and the Washington monument "that tower what the French guy planned but's too big to tear down, even though he's French, so we'll leave it."

Democratic leaders in the House could not be reached for comment on the bill. They apparently were hiding under their desks due to a rumor that Karl Rove was visiting with House leaders."

-- Staff Writer

JW drafts discovery responses! Yay!

2005-07-27T16:36:00.000-05:00

Plaintiff serves discovery questions to be answered) on defendant client.

JW drafts discovery responses to these questions.

JW's bosses edit and make comments, tell JW to conform responses to client's new "model" responses (which JW was not told about, even though he is responsible for 6 cases for this client).

JW revises responses to conform to new "model" responses, which were put together by JW's co-worker, who also happened to be one of the "class a$$holes" in JW's law school class, and who provoked much laughter, especially from JW, for his assenine class participation. (In fact, co-worker was infamous for his "that could lead to a slippery slope" argument which was made at least once per class, per day. Co-worker's first response, upon seeing JW at office after JW got job at firm, was not "Hey, long time no see!" - it was "what are YOU doing here?!" Apparently co-worker was under mistaken impression that he had a monopoly on job positions at this firm. But JW digresses...)

Client says, "Why did you do that? It should be this way (telling JW to revise back to the way JW originally drafted).

Bosses say, "Why did you do that? I think client meant blah blah model blah blah responses... you shouldn't make those changes, leave them be."

JW says, "No, client really meant blah blah blah..."

Jw needs to file these responses in 20 minutes.

JW still waiting for clarification. (BTW, the answer to these responses was basically "We ain't got none." This has been ervised upwards of half a dozen times so far...)

"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government." -- Monty Python/Holy Grail

2005-07-26T13:00:00.000-05:00

Law Firm Hierarchy

2005-07-26T08:06:00.000-05:00

J Dubs, I know how much you like Animal Planet analogies to law firm life, so here is my take on the situation.

Watching chimps at the zoo, or in Jane Goodall films, you will notice a very rigid hierarchy in their social structure. The most dominant chimp is the Alpha Male, and he is always surrounded by a pack of minions desperate to earn his favor. They pick his lice, they bring him bananas, and the females knock each other over for the right to mate with him.

Slightly lower in the hierarchy are one or more Betas. They are probably the younger siblings of the Alpha, slightly weaker and perhaps not as bright, but they still have a prominent place. They are still the center of attention and tend to dominate in any confrontations with their weaker brethren.

It is easy to spot the Alphas. It is not always easy to spot the mass of the chimps in the middle of the pack. However, it is also quite easy to spot the Zetas (or however you designate the bottom of the barrel). They are outcasts, pariahs, untouchables. They are physically on the margins of the pack. They are shunned by the others, they have to eat scraps, they are isolated and insecure. They will not live for long. What a pitiful sight.

Now let's look at a law firm cocktail party. There are a few young, virile, good-looking, popular people who are laughing and enjoying themselves. They have a radiant glow, a carefree spirit, and they exude vitality. Are they the Alphas? Of course not. They are the legal assistants, the bottom of the firm's hierarchy. And then there are some relatively well adjusted young people who happily talk about parties, dating, and pop culture. However, they look a bit the worse for wear as if they have pulled a few all-nighters. They are not the alphas either; they are first or second-year associates.

Here come a few older people, who stay at the party only long enough to pound a beer and then get back to their offices. Or perhaps they have to get home to the wife and kids. They are the senior associates, and have been working very hard. They have known their share of late nights and weekends, and keep social activities to a minimum to maximize their billability when they are in the office. They are the Betas.

And finally, here comes a bloated, dissheveled man whose idea of business casual is a spread-collar dress shirt with no tie. He gets a drink and then scans the room in vain for someone he knows whom he can talk to. The young people avert their eyes when they see him. Someone smiles awkwardly. He stands there in the corner, uncomfortably sipping his beer alone, wondering if they are talking about him. Finally he retreats to his office, which he almost never leaves. He still has a dozen emails to respond to and two contracts to read before he can go home. He is the glorious Alpha, the backbone of the firm.

Friendly Reminders

2005-07-22T14:32:00.000-05:00

You know what bothers me (today)? "Friendly Reminders."

You know what I'm talking about. You've all gotten those emails, calls, or letters, and don't pretend you haven't. They usually go something like "Just a friendly reminder to blah, blah, blah... at blah blah time and blah blah place..." They also may or may not have an inordinate amount of smiley face emoticons in them - just to remind us exactly how friendly a reminder they really are...

The expression, though, is a misnomer. There's no such thing. Any reminder is inherently judgmental, because it assumes that we can't remember our appointments or our own schedules, and that whomever sent the reminder is in a better position to warn us of the impending date or time than we are. It's a real slap in the face, and that's not what I was tought friendship is really all about. Friendship is about trusting, not judging. And trust includes believing that your friends can keep their appointments without "friendly" nudging from you. Especially when those friends have a Microsoft Outlook calendar on their computer, a Blackberry with reminder functions, and a collection of post-it notes on their desk that rivals some of the best Fall leaf piles ever raked.

It also inherently signifies that there are "unfriendly" reminders, because the opposites/ good vs. evil theme is rampant in our soeciety. We eat this stuff up like candy! I guess the unfriendly reminders could include thing like past due notices, phone calls from bill collectors, and more likely, that day-before-your-doctor's-appointment call from the really mean lady that works at your doctor's front desk. (You all know who I'm talking about. She and her army of secretary clone dopplegangers infest doctor's offices worldwide. They're everywhere. I think they even have a "Nasty Doctors' Secretaries Without Borders" organization helping tsunami victims out over in Indonesia... "Yes, Mr. Ginandjar? You have an appointment tomorrow morning at 10 to remove that palm tree from your ear. Don't be late, or you will be charged a $25 cancellation fee!")

But, seriously, is there really a need to create a category of friendly reminders, so that you now have unfriendly reminders, neutral reminders, AND friendly reminders? Do we really need all these categories? It's just more stuff for me to compartmentalize in my mind, more facts to memorize, another rule of social etiquette that I'm required to strictly adhere to, lest I get scolded by someone with clearly better-delineated social graces than yours truly, and I really don't have a whole lotta room left for anything else. Every new fact I learn starting right now pushes out a piece of Dukes of Hazzard trivia that's been stored for decades, and I don't want to lose that because its sentimental value is immeasurable. (How else do you think Cooter's Place has stayed in business as long as it has?!) As it is, I already can't remember who was older, Roscoe or LuLu...

Not to mention those reminders are another email I need to delete out of my inbox, another voicemail to listen to and then delete off my phone, or another letter I need to tear up and throw away from my mailbox (that may or may not include personal info someone could use to steal my identity, take out credit cards in my name, and books 20 trips to Tahiti on my dime, and that may or may not have led to the demise of a poor, defenseless tree...)

No animals were harmed in the creation of this rant. - editor

Yesterday Wasn't All That Bad...

2005-07-22T10:53:00.000-05:00

So yesterday I got asked along fishing on a summer recruiting event. For those of you that don't know, a law firm summer recruiting season consists of bringing in a bunch of 2nd-year law school students, wining and dining them all summer, giving them cool, interesting projects to work on, paying them the same money a first-year lawyer would make, and taking them to games, shows, concerts, fishing trips, the works. The goal, heh heh, is to trick them into thinking
their jobs are going to be juuuust like this when they start working here for real. In reality, it reminds me of a story I heard many times as a kid...

"One day, however, Pinocchio awoke to a nasty surprise. When he raised a hand to his head, he found he had sprouted a long pair of hairy ears, in place of the sketchy ears that Geppetto had never got round to finishing. And that wasn't all! The next day, they had grown longer than ever. Pinocchio shamefully pulled on a large cotton cap and went off to search for Carlo. He too was wearing a hat, pulled right down to his nose. With the same thought in their heads, the boys stared at each other, then snatching off their hats, they began to laugh at the funny sight of long hairy ears. But as they screamed with laughter, Carlo suddenly went pale and began to stagger. "Pinocchio, help! Help!" But Pinocchio himself was stumbling about and he burst into tears. For their faces were growing into the shape of a donkey's head and they felt themselves go down on all fours. Pinocchio and Carlo were turning into a pair of donkeys. And when they tried to groan with fear, they brayed loudly instead. When the Toyland wagon driver heard the braying of his new donkeys, he rubbed his hands in glee."

In the meantime, though, the wining and dining part is fun, because the lawyers get to take these guys along, and they're usually a pretty cool bunch of kids. So, yesterday, we went fishing on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. We caught a bunch of rockfish and striped bass. Good times were had by all.

Don't these guys look like they're having fun?!

But hey, never let it be said that I shirk from my responsibilities. I made sure to bring along my Blackberry, you know, just in case my legal expertise was desperately needed...

The Law Firm Associate or, the Mammal's Version of the Honey Bee

2005-07-21T09:12:00.000-05:00

Remember when you were little and one of the first things you learned in elementary science class was about the Honey Bee. You would see pictures or videos of their colonies and witness the Worker Bees' incessant flying back and forth bringing nectar to the comb. We learned about the Queen Bee and her rule with an iron fist and the Drones whose sole purpose was to mate with the Queen Bee and then die or be thrown out of the hive. Do you remember being intrigued by this fascinating element of nature, but, at the same time thankful that you, as an upright, rational and intellectual human being had the ability to create your own destiny and not be relegated to what nature imprinted upon you? Apparently, we forgot what we learned in kindergarten....

We grew up, spent money on overpriced educations and entered our respective law firms as both Drones and Worker Bees, with a scant few Queens thrown in. Now, the dream of being the Queen Been may have been all of our motivations at one point--but once we entered the colony, excuse me, the law firm, our instincts kicked in and survival was the name of the game. Now, I think it's a matter of interpretation between who has it better, the Drone or the Worker Bee.

The Drones have no stingers and do not collect food or pollen for the hive--their sole purpose is to mate with the Queen. However, if the colony is short on food, Drones are often kicked out. I think you'd agree that this describes the way in which most of us try to eek through life at the law firm--laying low, making nice to partners and getting by with the bare minimum, just hoping that no one noticed that we didn't contribute anything to the betterment of the hive. However, once we were found out, there was little hope for our survival.

The rest of the law firm associates are the Worker Bees. Workers feed the Queen, collect the nectar and produce the wax comb. However, their life span is approximately 28-35 days. I think we all know the Worker Bees--they are constantly flying about, rubbing their legs together making that deafening buzzing noise. They are always eager to do more and more, so busy scraping the honey off their legs that they never bothered to notice that there is no way they are ever going to become a Queen but, they still plug away because they know of no other way. (As an aside, the Worker Bees are the only sexually undeveloped bees in the colony--do with that analogy what you will).

The Queen of course is the largest bee in the colony. She is the fat cat partner who rakes in the proceeds from the labor of the Worker Bee. It's hard for us Drones to respect the Queen, because we realize that we are only valuable for one thing and then we are expendable. However, the Worker Bees make us root for the Queen, because at the end of the day, they will die the same death as us Drones, only they will be a lot more tired...

-- K-bull

Let's Hear It From Some of the Lawyers Out There!

2005-07-20T13:53:00.000-05:00

If you've ever wondered what it's like to work in a big private law firm, watch the movie "Office Space," replace Lundberg with a smaller and more beady-eyed version of Lundberg, replace the TPS reports with discovery requests, and you're almost there...

But to paint the picture a little more vividly, here are some quotes straight from the horses' mouths:

You probably wake up like I do every day, amazed that they haven't caught on to the fraud. When will the other shoe fall? It's only a matter of time. I don't deserve these checks. I'm not a team player. I'm not even playing the same sport. Every day that goes by is one more successful charade - another scene you've successfully played in the longest running comedy you'll ever see. - "phillylawyer"- http://philalawyer.blogspot.com/2005/03/ten-percenter.html

I haven't done real work in so long that I'm at the point of getting [mad] if they expect me to. - K-bull

This is why I can't stand internal reorganizations and other administrative bs--it's like moving food around on the plate--you aren't fooling anyone into believing that you've eaten it. -K-bull

I just realized why I'm so groggy by the end of the day. Feigning interest really takes a lot out of you. I can only act interested for 6 to 7 hours a day. After that, all bets are off. - J.W.

I love what I do...that is, if "do" means surfing the internet, daydreaming about what I'd like to be doing with my life, and scowling internally at everyone I interact with during the day. I don't understand it; there are people who come to the office everyday ostensibly motivated about being confined for what will amount to the better part of their lives. By where was I, oh yeah, I love what I do... - Paulumon Grundy

Quote of the Day

2005-07-20T10:45:00.000-05:00

You're not so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it. -- Malcolm X (1925-1965)

(Man, he looked a lot like Denzel!)

Rove Protest - 7/19/05

2005-07-19T18:50:00.000-05:00

Always lots of excitement going on near the White House...

Today, a group of protestors angry about Rovegate picketed out in front of my office building (apparently they couldn't get near the White House because the Prime Minister of Australia was visiting and it was fenced off).

Here's some pics I snapped with my cellphone. (That just doesn't sound right...)

Unfortunately, I couldn't get a clear shot of the best sign there - worn by an awesome-lookin' puppy - that said "Huskies Against Treason."

Yo, Joe!

2005-07-19T09:41:00.000-05:00

My G.I. JOE Theories...

Theory #1 -- It was all a sham. COBRA and G.I. JOE were *both* funded by the Pentagon as a way of either: (1) duping Congress into allocating huge military spending increases to "fight COBRA" and fund G.I. JOE, most of which was never actually allocated to the JOEs, but instead went to other Pentagon projects (or to line Pentagon/ Congressional/ Administration insiders' pockets?); or (2) were both funded (or at least, in the case of COBRA, illicitly supported) simply to provide willing targets and willing test pilots and guinea pigs for new, advanced, untested military hardware (like jets, choppers, lasers, robots, mind-reading devices, spaceships, etc.)

So what's the evidence?

a. How Not to Fight a War on Terror. You ostensibly have a huge, well-financed, global terrorist organization with roots, bases, and cells in many countries, and with some of the world's best scientists, military strategists, and arms suppliers. So what does America do to combat them? We create *and underfund* a very small, "elite" fighting force that did not have the manpower or intelligence to ever actually defeat COBRA, arm them with untested, new military ordinance, and send them on their merry way. (Note: G.I. JOE never actually "defeated" COBRA on a global basis, although they did generally win most of the battles (or all the battles, if you only count the cartoon and not the comic)). This "elite" fighting force went into every battle just like the Light Brigade, charging directly into overwhelming enemy fire, and never operated within even the most basic of military tactical frameworks. They often went into battle before reinforcements arrived, always under-gunned, often alone or without notifying superiors of their position, and often fought with antiquated weaponry and sub-par gear. Very doubtful that they were as elite as advertised.

b. Don’t Look at Me, I’m Hideous! COBRA soldiers and many of their hired mercenaries always wore masks to hide their true identity. This concealment may have been because they were actually mercenaries and former US military and could have been easily recognized by their peers in G.I. JOE and regular military. Because COBRA eventually became a sovereign nation in the Gulf of Mexico (and hence could legitimately defend its borders, coastal waters, and airspace), there was no longer any need for COBRA operatives to conceal their identities for any reason other than this purpose. If they were worried about their families’ welfare they could have them sent to COBRA Island to live their in peace and tranquility under the benevolent rule of Cobra Commander.

c. Mind if I Take This For a Test Drive? Everything the JOEs had in terms of weaponry and logistical support was not only state-of-the-art, but also highly experimental. They regularly carried laser rifles and handguns, used jet packs, cloaking devices, 1-man spaceships and submarines, robots, etc., none of which regular military was using at the time. Considering that most of their operations took place in the early 80s, during the height of the Cold War arms race, and long before much of the technology of today was available, this is highly suspect.

d. No One… Ever… Died! Again, at least not in the cartoon. In the comic, one vigilante Strato-Viper messed everybody up, and he paid the price for it. See, no one is allowed to operate out of the well-delineated parameters. Everybody on both sides gets a laser rifle, and they all knew to never actually kill each other. Or even to shoot each other. Or even to shoot in each others’ direction, taking great care to aim all laser fire at least 30 degrees OVER the enemy positions.

e. The Olsen Twins - Shipwreck and Zartan. These were obviously hack overseers sent to keep tabs on the organization. Note the fact that these 2, working on both “sides,” regularly appeared side-by-side in several cartoon episodes. There is good reason to believe they were acting in collusion, ensuring that COBRA would be able to hatch its plans without interruption or fear of early discovery by the JOEs (and, on the flip side, ensuring that the JOEs would always be able to exploit the only possible weaknesses in each of those well-designed plans).

*** Perhaps COBRA Commander was unaware of this collusion, which might explain why every one of his "perfect plans" and "invincible fortresses" was eventually stormed by the JOEs immediately after completion (though never before completion) leading to a hysterical litany of "This is impossible!?" and "How could this happen!?"

Theory #2 -- Kids today do not have anything nearly as cool as G.I. JOEs to play with.

a. Back in the 80s, you got your G.I. JOEs and their vehicles, took them outside, and built a base (JOE or COBRA, preferably COBRA) out of an old tree trunk, or cardboard box, or a big hole in the dirt. You supplied this base, created interpersonal relationships between the action figures, put them through training, created background stories for all the characters, gathered food, built walls, dug foxholes, built bunkers, made weapons, you name it.

You then had the enemy unleash a devastating attack on your base from multiple vantage points using multiple waves of attackers, and well-crafted military strategies. Casualties were inflicted, prisoners were taken, torture took place, some losers escaped to go home and lick their wounds, and the winners celebrated (usually with torture or cruel games pitting 1 prisoner against the other or against some ninjas for sport). You then had another attack in which an attempt was made to liberate the prisoners (usually successfully) and that generally ended your story because by then you were bored, hungry, or it was getting dark and your mom was yelling at you to come in for dinner and stop getting dirt and grass stains all over your good Wrangler jeans.

b. What do kids have now? Nascar models. Yay, let's push this car around in a circle! WWF figures. Yay, let's buy 2 overpriced posable rubber figures of guys in their undies and bash them into each other while growling! Video games. While these are very, very cool and fun, all the imagination is removed from the equation. All the story lines, plots, characters, and BASES have already been constructed. For the most part, you just go in and shoot everything and steal cars. Which, as I said, is really cool. But, is it leading to a reduced capacity in kids to create and imagine these things (like shooting people and stealing cars) all on their own?

In conclusion, G.I. JOE/COBRA are a farce, G.I. JOE was the coolest toy ever, and Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes kick butt.

Quote(s) of the Day

2005-07-19T08:28:00.000-05:00

Brought to you by, The American Taliban.

These were all so juicy, I thought I'd just give you the link. Be warned, though, these people are scaaaaarrrrrry...... http://www.reandev.com/taliban/

Yeah, let's let them help select our next Supreme Court justice.

Intelligent Design Clearly The Only Explanation

2005-07-18T17:14:00.000-05:00

"Poaching making China elephants evolve tuskless"

"BEIJING, July 17 (Reuters) - Chinese elephants are evolving into an increasingly tuskless breed because poaching is changing the gene pool, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Five to 10 percent of Asian elephants in China now had a gene that prevented the development of tusks, up from the usual 2 to 5 percent, the China Daily said, quoting research from Beijing Normal University.

"The larger tusks the male elephant has, the more likely it will be shot by poachers," said researcher Zhang Li, an associate professor of zoology. "Therefore, the ones without tusks survive, preserving the tuskless gene in the species."

Since only male elephants have tusks, there were now four female elephants for each male in China, up from the ideal ratio of two, the paper said.

Similar changes in elephant tusk development and sex ratios have been reported in Africa and India. 07/17/05 02:59 ET"

Bumper Sticker of the Week

2005-07-18T14:34:00.000-05:00

Quote of the Day

2005-07-18T10:31:00.000-05:00

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Aristotle - Greek philosopher, critic, physicist, & zoologist (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)

By Popular Demand... The Smoking Chimp

2005-07-18T09:44:00.000-05:00

From Reuters:

"Zoo wants chimp to kick smoking habit - Officials tell visitors to stop throwing him cigarettes

JOHANNESBURG - A South African zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad smoking habit.Charlie, a grown male chimp and the Bloemfontein Zoo, has been picking up cigarettes thrown to him by visitors and smoking them — a habit he probably picked up by observing humans, zoo officials told the SAPA news agency on Thursday.

"Baby chimps pick up habits by mimicking adults and we think he started mimicking smokers at his enclosure which probably led to smokers throwing him cigarettes," spokesman Daryl Barnes told SAPA.Barnes said Charlie was already showing the signs of a true nicotine addict."

He even acts like a naughty schoolboy by hiding the cigarette when staff approach the area," Barnes said, adding that the zoo was determined to help him quit.

Barnes said the most important thing was that people stop providing Charlie with cigarettes or any other treats, noting the chimp already had three bad teeth because of all the cans of sweet soft drinks that people throw at him.

Charlie is not the only smoking chimpanzee. A zoo in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou reported last year that one of its chimps had taken up smoking and was desperately cadging cigarette butts off visitors. © Reuters 2005."

Video here: http://www.signonsandiego.com/multimedia/archives/001353.html

Quote of the Day

2005-07-17T10:45:00.000-05:00

Sticking to Ike for now...

Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are ... a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

-- Fmr. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower (11/8/54).

My, my, how things have changed.

Quote of the Day

2005-07-16T16:56:00.000-05:00

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

-- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th U.S. President, Republican

I like Ike.

Movie Idea

2005-07-15T16:01:00.000-05:00

[Temporarily removed - it'll be in theatres soon enough! -- J.W.]

Quote of the Day

2005-07-15T15:41:00.000-05:00

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

-- George Orwell (1903-1950)

Me and My Monkey

2005-07-15T11:20:00.000-05:00

This monkey was posing for pictures on the sidewalk on my last night in Thailand (down in one of the southern provinces that got whacked by the tsunami, a few days after the wave hit - I know, great timing...). There were two little blonde Swiss kids there with their dad taking pictures with it when I got close. They eventually finish, we come up, and the young thai kid with the camera hands me the monkey, then hops on his moped and takes off! So, I'm left standing there with this thing for about 10 minutes, and we have no idea where the guy went or if he's even coming back (maybe I should've brushed up on some thai phrases before we got there...) No idea what to do, we wait... and the monkey's kind of sitting in my folded hands, with his back to me, and keeps looking back ominously and reaching his little claws up around my neck... The whole time he's eyeballing me and showing his teeth... (I of course tried to pet him, because I'm stupid, and think I can pet all kinds of strange animals and have to touch plates when people tell me they're hot...)

Finally, after a high-noon stare-down between me and this monkey that would've made the outlaw Josie Wales break out in a cold sweat, the thai kid shows back up - he'd apparently gone off to get more film - so crisis averted, stand down! The guy finally takes the picture (of course cutting off 1/2 of me in the process - fortunately my buddy snapped this one with his digital) and we head to an outdoor restaurant down the street to get our eats on. (And yes, Ma, I washed my hands! A couple of times, actually, that primate was grungy.)

A few minutes later, the father of those kids comes up to us and asks us if the monkey bit us! Urgh?! Confused, we said "No, but..." It turned out that the monkey had bitten his son on the cheek - right under his eye! - right before we got there to take a picture with him. The dad goes "It didn't break the skin. It's probably alright, no?" So, we tell him we're not doctors, but that he might want to get it checked out anyway...

Personally, if I'm in Southeast Asia, it's 5 days after a tsunami just wrecked the area, the TV news is blaring repeated warnings about malaria, typhus, and other contagious diseases spreading in the stagnant waters, and a nasty, flea-bitten street urchin of a monkey bites my kid under his eye, I'm heading over to one of the 8,000 clinics that dot the landscape here and getting it checked out - wouldn't you?

Monkeys- sinister creatures of pure, unadulterated evil, forces for good, or simply innocent, benign forest denizens? You decide...

This About Sums It Up

2005-07-14T18:38:00.000-05:00

KRAMER (moves over and sits next to George): Do you ever yearn?
GEORGE: Yearn? Do I yearn?
KRAMER: I yearn.
GEORGE: You yearn.
KRAMER: Oh, yes. Yes, I yearn. Often, I...I sit...and yearn. Have you yearned?
GEORGE: Well, not recently. I craved. I crave all the time, constant craving...but I haven't yearned.
KRAMER (in disgust): Look at you.
GEORGE: Aw, Kramer, don't start...
KRAMER (moving back to the othe side of the booth): You're wasting your life.
GEORGE: I am not! What you call wasting, I call living! I'm living my life!
KRAMER: O.K., like what? No, tell me! Do you have a job?
GEORGE: No.
KRAMER: You got money?
GEORGE: No.
KRAMER: Do you have a woman?
GEORGE: No.
KRAMER: Do you have any prospects?
GEORGE: No.
KRAMER: You got anything on the horizon?
GEORGE: Uh...no.
KRAMER: Do you have any action at all?
GEORGE: No.
KRAMER: Do you have any conceivable reason for even getting up in the morning?
GEORGE: I like to get the Daily News!
KRAMER: George, it's time for us to grow up - and be men. Not little boys.
GEORGE: Why?
KRAMER: I'm goin' to California. You know, I got the bug.
GEORGE: Yeah, I think I got a touch of something, too.
KRAMER: No, the acting bug. Ever since I was in that Woody Allen movie.
GEORGE: "These pretzels are making me thirsty"? That was one line! You got fired!
KRAMER: I know, I know, but man! I never felt so alive! Now, are you coming with me?
GEORGE: Uh, no, I'm not.
KRAMER: Alright, suit yourself. But let's keep this between us - we're key brothers now.
GEORGE: You're not really gonna go to California, are you?
KRAMER (points to his head): Up here, I'm already gone.

Mein Gott, werde ich gebohrt!

2005-07-14T12:33:00.000-05:00

Bums

2005-07-13T11:15:00.000-05:00

I got the idea for this post when I was walking down the street on the way to work a while back, and this bum I see every morning asked me for a dollar. Now of course I didn’t give him jack (if anyone asks, it was because I didn't want to contribute to his bad habits, but really I'm just cheap). The strange thing about it was that two days before the same guy had asked me for 50 cents. I did the math, and I may be wrong, but that sounds to me like this guy just gave himself a 100% raise. Who does he think he is, Congress? You can’t vote yourself a raise! What’s his justification? [Bum voice]: “Hey, I’m sorry man, but our expenses have really gone up in recent weeks. You can’t get a puddle of urine to sit in for less than $5 nowadays. My costs are skyrocketing! You think cardboard signs grow on trees? You think these clothes were free? Ok, maybe the clothes weer, but the sign, the pee, I'm bleeding money here! OK, really I'm just bleeding from that scab I picked a minute ago, but you get the point! This is just the cost of doin' business, and I hate to do it but I’m forced to pass these costs down to you, the consumer. If you don't like it, you'll just have to get yourself another bum to step over every morning...” Seriously, just because they're homeless does not mean the don't recognize basic economics. Mad props to my hom(less)ies!

You gotta give them credit, too. If bums have anything over the rest of society, it’s patience (which probably comes from not having to go to work every day) and a keen understanding of how things actually work (which I'd like to say comes from objective observations of human interaction made over time from their vantage-points on the sidewalk, but what really are probably just induced by LSD flashbacks). How else do you explain (other than sheer insanity) a fat, toothless, drunk, smelly, homeless guy with a double-lazy eye that hits on every girl that walks by? What goes through his mind? [Bum voice]: “Hey baby, you want some 'o this?” … Stuck up! … “Yo, baby, yo!” … Prude! … “Yo, baby, you wanna find god? He’s right here!” … Hater. … Shee, man, thass three in a row. Awright, awright, awright, best outta 7…” Someone musta told this guy that the law-of-averages approach works one out of a hundred times... I wish him the best of luck.

Mean Bums Suck. What is with the really nasty bums that yell at you if you don't give them money? I fully support them scraping by however they can, and if that means begging, then so be it, ya gotta go with what ya know. But some of these guys clearly need to change their approach. For example, there used to be a bum that sat outside McDonald's (go figure) and would yell at everybody that walked by. If 2 asian girls walked by, he'd yell "Go back to your own country!" (not unlike what many other upstanding American citizens say these days, I should add...) I once passed him on the way to lunch and ignored his request - nay, demand! - for money, and he yelled at me, "I hope you choke on your lunch!" Another time I heard someone say "Sorry." to his demands, and he snapped after them: "I wish you were here and I could walk by you and tell you 'sorry.'" Wow, didn't this guy ever hear you catch more flies with honey?! You're not gonna get any repeat customers that way, and you're going to fail miserable at work-of-mouth advertising. It only takes one angry customer with lots of time on their hands to destroy a business. Then again, I shouldn't fault his businss accumen - he is homeless, after all. Obviously his investing strategy was on a par with his sales tactics... This story does actually have a happy ending, though - it turns out that Angry Bum got himself a bum girlfriend! Yeah, the two were spotted sharing park benches, holding hands, the works. It was beautiful, I tell you, shakespeare couldn't have written a better ending. (Of course, his ending would have involved both of them dying in some very ironic fashion...)

Ok, last point while I'm on the subject of bums, what about the crazy ones that scream and preach and rail about god? And no, cynics, I'm not (just) talking about Rick Santorum. Now, I’m not just being mean here when I call them crazy, ‘cause ya gotta be just a tad off to think you’re gonna win someone over to the path of righteousness by screaming about god to them as they walk by on their way to work and you’ve got your head in a garbage can, there’s 3-day-old BK fries stuck in your hair, and your hands are full of the cigarette butts you’ve been harvesting to create the world’s biggest collection of fully smoked cancer sticks, which you will later line up in front of you on the sidewalk in alphabetical order by brand name just because you have that kind of time... No, sorry, Preacher-Man in a Can, when I want to hear about god and jesus from a raving old lunatic, I'll do what most people do, I'll switch the channel on my TV over to Pat Robertson.

Best t-shirt ever seen on a bum: "You Don't Know Me."

Best ravings ever heard from a bum (pictured below sermoning to a half-eaten tuna sandwich and yesterday's WaPost): "And do you know what Confucius said?! Where is my fortune cookie?!" Quality.

A Call For Remedial Kindergarten and Driver Ed Classes

2005-07-13T10:27:00.000-05:00

I want to first start off with an apology. I used to come back from trips overseas and criticize the people there for things like, oh, not knowing how to line up (or "queue," for those of you that talk the Queen-speak) and generally violating my personal space. (The idea of "personal space" is, I believe, largely an American principle. We here in the U.S. expect -- and rightly deserve, in my opinion! -- 15-18 inches of "personal space" normally be kept between us and whomever is "gettin' too close." This is almost a necessity, because we're prone to anger and we like to shoot people.)

I now know that I was wrong. Wrong to judge. Wrong to criticize. Wrong to elbow the smarmy guy behind me in line to exit the airplane who was applying gentle but constant pressure to the small of my back in the hopes that somehow doing that would get the line, which wasn't moving at all, to somehow miraculously start going... But most importantly, wrong to think that people here are any better at little things like lining up! So, to you "for-ners," I apologize, sort of.

Now, on to some observations from the homeland. Keep in mind that I use public transportation, like the subway, every day, and live in D.C., the city with the nation's 3rd-worst traffic and absolute worst personalities, so I may run into more of this than the average commuter...

1. Single-File, Folks! Didn't they teach us in kindergarten how to get in line? Every morning I watch people rudely cut in front of me and others in some line, somewhere, even if there's only 1 or 2 people in that line. I don't care what kind of a hurry you're in, Ronald from Accounts Receivable, there's no way waiting for an extra 1 or 2 people ahead of you is gonna make you miss that buy opportunity on the stock market, the connector bus at your subway stop, or the 11 a.m. cut-off to get breakfast at McDonald's. For those of you that ride the metro in D.C., you'll see this every morning at the escalators. There will be 2 lines of people waiting to ride the escalator up from the station, the fast line on the left (we'll get to this later...), and the slow or standing line on the right. People will get off the train, and cut into the line on the left right at the foot of the escalator, no matter how many people are already lined up to get on the escalator. Hey ya'll, see that third rail? The one with the sign that says "Danger! Do Not Cross!"? Yeah, you guys should hurry up and step on it before people start forming a line. Suckers.

2. Escalator Eddie's ugly cousin, Train Car Tammy. She won't wait her turn to get on or off the the metro car, but instead has to elbow her way onto the car before anyone can exit to ensure that she can reach the vertical center pole, wrap her body around it like Reed Richards, and hog it all to herself while other people are left to grasp onto handrails, shoulders, people's heads - anything they can reach - to steady themselves, as our well-trained and very skilled metro train drivers play their favorite game: Full-speed ahead/Slam on brakes (to be repeated at least 5-6 times between each designated metro stop.) You two, you know who you are. Don't let me catch you on the last train with a car all to ourselves...

3. The Good, the Bad, and the Wide. Hey, Tubby-Tubby, when you're walking down the sidewalk with your 4 or 5 buddies, do you really need to form a line across that sidewalk, arms interlocked, looking like a poorly-executed rugby scrum and blocking every one behind you from passing and everyone coming from the other direction from getting by? People, you're walking down the sidewalk, not filming a slo-mo, pre-shootout scene for a spaghetti western, and you're certainly not filming a "Hands Across America" commercial. Just keep to one side like they teach you in driver's ed, ok? (Preferably the right side, this isn't merry old England.) I also offer an alternative solution: try moving like you actually have to be somewhere.

And hey, if your a$$ is more than 24 inches wide, this applies doubly to you, couch potato, because you're taking up even more space. Yes, if you're not sure this applies to you, just use this simple rule of thumb: if you've ever been charged for an extra seat on an airline because you are too big to fit into 1 seat, then don't stand side by side with your equally large friends and block human traffic in both directions. If you're still not sure this applies to you, check your clothes. Are they O.R. scrubs? OK, now look where you are. Are you standing in front of Macky D's? If the answer to both of these questions is "Yes," then I'm talking to you. Or, more likely, I'm behind you yelling "excuse me" for the umpteenth time, and late for work.

4. Beepy McHonksalot. Hey you. Yeah, you there, stuck in the intersection. Yes, you. The one that's really ticked off because there's a truck blocking your path. Yeah, you. The one that's been laying on the horn -- for so long that it has evolved to a state of consciousness and is now communicating with all the surrounding horns -- because the light's already changed color and that truck ain't going anywhere. Yeah, you. Guess what, YOU ARE ACCOMPLISHING NOTHING EXCEPT INFURIATING ALL THE PEDESTRIANS TRYING TO GET ACROSS THE CROSSWALK around you. Yes, and you're drowning out my IPod, and that's a serious no-no. And guess what? That dude in the truck? He's listening to his IPod, too, with the windows rolled up and the A/C cranked, and he either doesn't care that you're blaring the horn at him, he can't hear you, or he's toying with you because you look like such a schmuck. And the longer you lay on it, the better your chance of getting the fender of your Jetta kicked in by one of those irate pedestrians. Namely, me. Any questions? (Oh, p.s., when you drive a Jetta, you're just begging for truckdrivers to make you get stuck at intersections. Just a tip...)

5. Evil Glare Guy in the Crosswalk. Yeah, that's what I called you. The one giving me the Medusa death gaze with a twist of woman scorned topped off with the stink eye from one of the old geezers on the Muppet Show (I can never remember if it's Statler or Waldorf...) Yeah, the one who won't move his butt out of the way even though I have a green light, a full tank of gas, and Linkin Park jammin' on the CD player, and you have a Don't Walk sign. The one who thinks that by making me wait at the intersection while you amble lazily across to no particular destination, that you're getting back at me for some unknowable slight you or your friends or ancestors may have suffered at the hands of someone who likely had little or no resemblance or ties to Yours Truly. Look, I drive a beat-up jeep. And I have a short temper, as anyone reading this blog already knows. And no one's probably going to miss you and your passive-aggressive shuffle. Don't tempt me.

6. Evil Glare Guy's latino cousin, Hefe (and his rather large family). Hey, hombre, look, I fully support you taking pedestrianism to new heights with your uncanny ability to dart across no-matter-how-many lanes of traffic at any time of the day, any day of the week, for no discernible reason, but could you not do it on my watch? I'm already irritated at being cut in front of, beeped at, and elbowed out of the way. And like I said before, my jeep's already beat up. The last thing it needs is imprints of you and your 12 kids on it.

7. Out with the FADs Already. I'm sure anyone who's been on the road for more than 2 weeks has learned to avoid the Female Asian Driver at all costs. This creature feeds on the fear it causes other drivers around it. It has several preferred tactics to induce us to believe that it has included us in some kind of secret, vehicular double-suicide pact. It's favorite is the "Atari Lane Change." This technique is very simple: get your car (preferably a Honda Civic) up to cruising speed, match the flow of traffic around you, and then, suddenly, and without warning, change lanes for no particular reason. This technique can be followed up with the equally effective and no-less-deadly "Tri-County Tailgate" - this is where the FAD rides up on your bumper for at least 10 minutes, taking breaks only to execute more Atari Lane Changes in order to involve several other drivers in the feeding frenzy. A lesser know, but again equally effective, technique is called the "Don't Make a Left Turn While the Light is Green and No Cars Are Coming Despite a Half Dozen Cars Behind You Beeping for You to Go, But As Soon as it Turns Red Dart Out and Almost Collide With Another Car," for lack of a better term...

When used in combination, these techniques present a formidable fighting style. One last warning - if cornered, the FAD will turn one or both of its blinkers on and slow down to a crawl in the fast lane (usually during rush hour) - they call this "The Creeper." Do not be fooled! This is done only to induce other drivers into a false sense of security, and will likey be quickly followed up by an Atari Lane Change, so watch out!

As an aside, a lot of those FADs are pretty cute. Unfortunately, the closest you'll ever get to them are the grills of their brothers' souped-up, tricked-out Acura Integras, so don't bother, Romeos...

8. The Griswalds. I love to travel. and I really think it's great that families get out and travel together. And I also think it's great that D.C. has a huge influx of tourists every year that come here to see the monuments, the Capitol, the White House, the memorials, and the museums, buy "FBI" tennis visors and "CIA" t-shirts, and drop off all their hard-earned Confederate currency at the dirty-water hotdog stands on 2-dollar bottles of water and melted ice cream sammies... I just wish they could take all of us that have to live and work here around this time, and move us somewhere during tourist season. Tropical island, holding cell, it really doesn't matter. As long as I don't have to watch and listen to Bob and Harriet on the subway trying to figure out the *color-coded* metro system with their Captain Crunch decoder rings...

Seriously. Do you remember the scene from the Lion King where mufassa gets trampled to death by the frightened, stampeding heard of wildebeasts? Well, imagine how Mufassa felt as he was getting trampled -- multiply it by about 100; replace the wildebeasts in your mind with chubby families wearing straw hats, Hawaiian shirts, and fanny packs, with 8 kids in tow, 4 missing, 1 or 2 still in the oven, and the rest running up and down the wrong way on the escalators, hopping back and forth over the metro turnstiles, or B-lining straight for anybody walking in the opposite direction on the sidewalk, put some maps in their hands, binoculars around their necks, and a stream of Cheerios trickling out behind them -- and you know what we go through from about June to the beginning of September.

I do have a few words of warning to tourists in D.C., though, because, well, I'm a heck of a guy:

(1) If you have the audacity to *stand* on the escalators you better either do it on the right-hand side or, well, let's just say that if you haven't prepared yourself to fend off a vicious secretary who's 30 minutes late for work and hasn't had her double-shot Colombia Nariño Supremo espresso from Starbucks yet... you're in for a world of hurt, my friend, a world of hurt.

(2) If you're going to visit some of the sites in D.C., like oh, the Children's Museum, or the Titanic Memorial (never heard of that one, did ya?), you'd better either bring along an off-duty LAPD vice cop that's packing heat, or at the very least, change out of the "I'm a tourist, could you please take a picture of us, then mug me" outfit you bought at L.L. Bean last weekend for the trip.

(3) Don't bring the kids. At all. It's like 120 degrees here in the summer, folks, and muggy as a sauna. I appreciate, and I'm sure you'll appreciate, too, seeing a memorial to the men and women who died for our freedom and liberty during World War II that may or may not have been a bit too pricey. But if you think your 10-year old kid wants to see it, and wouldn't rather be sitting by the pool at the Howard Johnson instead gettin' groovy with Pitfall Harry on his Gameboy Advance, you're wrong. He'll just resent you for it. And eventually, when you're older, and he's in charge of YOUR welfare, he'll stick you in a run-down home where the orderlies beat you and make you watch Dharma and Greg every day. Bank on it.

To Whom It May Concern: Check this early and often, or else I'll blog about YOU!

2005-07-12T12:09:00.000-05:00

Do Yo Homework, Eat Yo Vitamins, and Drink Yo Milk!

2005-07-12T12:01:00.000-05:00

Yeah, kids, this one's for you.