Dennis the Menace

One of the most outspoken members of the Congress -- a member with a long record of standing up to both Democratic and Republican presidents when they have abused the Constitution -- has answered with a stirring speech on the House floor.

On Wednesday, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said:

"This Administration is angry that the media leaked the story about it snooping into the bank records of millions of Americans. It supporters in Congress want to formally condemn the New York Times. What a bunch of baloney.

"It is about time the media did its job of protecting the public interest. If the media and this Congress had shown some independence from the party line of this Administration, the claims of WMDs would have been dismissed, and fact there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 would have been well established and we would not have gone to war against Iraq.

"A few years ago, a movie, Wag the Dog, told of how a US administration misused its communications power to create phony stories to put the nation into an international conflict. This Administration not only wagged the dog in Iraq, but, with the help of its fabricators at the Rendon and Lincoln groups, it has wagging a whole kennel.

"In a free society the media cannot be a lap dog of any Administration. The First Amendment states, 'Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech', except of course, under this Administration."

Always has time to scare you

The worthless president had this to say about today's supreme court ruling on military tribunals for Gitmo hostages: "The ruling won't cause killers to be put out on the streets," he said. "I'm not going to jeopardize the safety of the American people." He's amazing. There is not a situation that can come up that he can't use to scare people. Of course, he says they are killers but we'll never know because this fascist won't allow these people to go to trial. We will just have to take his word on it and since he's been right so often I guess we can all just relax.

Our idiotic Senate

I can't believe these people are actually debating an amendment to our constitution that would ban flag burning. George Bush might at as well make his signing notes and interpret the law as he wishes because our legislative branch is worthless.

In protest on July 4th I am going to burn an American flag in my back yard, photograph the event and post it here.

Mary

She was one of the first people who taught me how to work in a library when I first started as a part-time shelver back in 1993. She was in her late 40's, had been working circulation at this small branch for years and really knew how to manipulate the old Dynix software. She taught me a lot of the tricks I used over the years.

When my family moved away and her delinquent son became my roommate and friend she invited me to join her and her family for holidays. One of my favorite Thanksgivings was with her and Chris at a buffet place not long after she was on her own again. A whole of mediocre food was consumed but we laughed a lot.

Mary died a couple of days ago. It sucks, there isn't much to say other than how much it sucks. Chris wrote a nice obituary for her on his blog.

Going after her like she's made outta ham

Just found this nice short article about Fred Willard at the New Yorker website.

The FBI and the Seven Knuckleheads

You can't help but wonder why the gov'ment would crow so much about the yahoos they framed in Miami. The only contact they had to Al Killya was through an informant posting as a member of the terrorist group? How ridiculous is that? I am sure there has got to be other more dangerous homegrown groups out there than these guys. They are colored and they did study Islam a little bit, that is much more frightening than crazed hillbillies in the midwest with actual weapons?

Stop, you are making me more apathetic

I've heard about this before. The Daily Show is making kids more cynical and less apt to vote? I would think John Stewart's willingness to show government at its worst is a good thing. If some of the humor is lost on someone and then they don't participate then I think we are better off. He's got to be doing more good than harm.

Besides if this is the result of viewing the Daily Show's coverage of politicians then the Daily Show is doing its job: "The results showed that the participants rated both candidates more negatively after watching Stewart's program. Participants also expressed less trust in the electoral system and more cynical views of the news media, according to the researchers' article, in the latest issue of American Politics Research."

Sounds like it's causing people to question their government and those than run it. Thank god. Only in George Bush's America would questioning your government be considered bad for your country.

Political collateral damage

I found this link on another website but I think this shows you how our president is completely full of it.

"But people who attended a series of high-level meetings this month between White House and Congressional officials say President Bush's aides argued that it could be a politically fatal mistake for Republicans to walk away from the war in an election year."

Getting elected is hard work. Dying so a Republican can get re-elected is even harder.

Obviously annoying

I've had a google news alert running on Donald Hall for a year or so now. Since he's been appointed poet Laureate of these United States I have discovered one thing that had eluded me. What I discovered, thanks to every podunk newspaper who has written an article about Hall is that Hall uses 'deceptively simple' language. I guess that makes him a poet. Criminy.

Lewis Black

I finally watched the most recent Lewis Black HBO special last weekend. I watched on "HBO on Demand" because I have suuuuuuper cable. I still like Lewis Black but I felt there was something missing in this performance. I felt a couple of times that he was falling back on catch phrases too often. Maybe that's because I am intimately familiar with his material and style. His views on politics were spot-on as usual and when he compared a hunting ranch to Auschwitz for quail I almost fell off the couch laughing. Honestly, if you are hunting on one of those ranches on a guided hunt, that's not hunting, that's traveling a long ways and paying big bucks for the thrill of killing an animal with your gun. I loved how he opened his discussion of Cheney by just saying the vice president's name in just the right way to bring down the room. It was masterful timing.

One part of the show I could have completely done without was his account of his appearance last year at the correspondents dinner in Washington D.C. It just wasn't that funny. I guess he didn't want to talk politics all night. The routine would have been better if it had been shorter.

Ebert Quote

It's been a while since I've quoted Roger Ebert here. This is from his review of Wordplay: "we observe that to be a crossword champion, you have to be incredibly intelligent; be capable of intuitive, lateral thinking; know everything, and focus your knowledge into a narrow and ultimately meaningless pursuit. Yes, that makes you an obsessive eccentric, but they're really the only interesting people left, don't you sometimes think?"

He's a good liar

Love this quote from Santorum followed by facts that trump his BS.

'"This is an incredibly -- in my mind -- significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," Santorum said.

A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions "in such a degraded state they couldn't be used for what they are designed for."'

I hardly think pre-1991 weapons are cause for crowing like a retarded rooster with a pair of scissors stuck in his bottom.

God Bless 'em

A couple of weeks ago I sent another futile email to my Senator, Elizabeth Dole. It was about immigration and pretty much how I thought this whole debate was complete bullshit and the only way to cut down on illegal immigration was to work with our brothers to the south in order to make their countries more desirable. A huge undertaking but the only true solution. Think a re-united Germany. Of course all she sent me was a letter full of Republican talking points. That's a confidence builder, having a senator who just votes down party lines and spews her party's talking points in a form letter when responding to one of her constituents. If I wanted to read that shit I could have gone to the Republican party's website. Why waste paper? She hasn't responded to my letter about net neutrality yet. She probably has her people working right now on a polite way to tell me to get bent when addressing that topic.

Shit Bag Advisor

I see the two soldiers that were missing have turned up dead and early reports say they may have possibly been tortured to death. I guess this is the kind of of staying the course sacrifice the draft dodger Karl Rove was referring to recently. The video of this disgusting bloated career politician preaching to a sympathetic crowd about the cowardice of his opponents is enough to make a gentle soul want to put that spongy fat head in a vice and squeeze until he suffered as much as those two dead American soldiers. What a piece of crap.