Ahnuld Video....Funny!

Here's a great Schwartzennegger Animation.

Check it out.

LINK

Iraq Death Toll Reaches 2000

The Death Toll for American Service people in Iraq has

just reached 2000.

MSNBC

Wilkerson: The Cabal in The White house

OK........just a little Halloweenishness!

On the serious side, here is an Op-Ed piece from this morning's LA Times. It's by Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Chief of Staff for Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Wilkerson is another in a LOOOOOONNNNGGG line of Bush administration politicos and bureaucrats that have "defected" from the standard party-line thought processes to try to tell the truth to the American people. Here's a broadside from him that lays bare the kind of thinking and administrative brutishness that have gotten our nation into the current quandries we face today.

LINK

PS: Watch for the expected character assassination attempts that will no doubt be forthcoming from the White House. By day's end Wilkerson will be painted as everything from an idiot to a philanderer to a member of Al Qaeda. - S

Video: Lest We Forget Some Basic Truths.

OK.........just so we don't get too constructive or intellectual here, sometimes it's good to go back to basic truths.

That's what this video is for. Sheck it out.

Video

Welcome MIKKI!

Oh yes, something I need to do here..........

While I was "disappeared", my good friend Mikki joined the blog as a "Contributor". I just wanted to say, "Welcome", girl, wherever you might be at this moment (LOL). Have at 'em, and don't hold back!

Any of you who would like to be added on the "Contributor" level, which allows you to originate a post, rather than simply being able to "Comment", just send me an e-mail and we'll see about setting it up. I want to make this as much of a "free for all" as possible, so just let me know.

BTW, speaking of free for alls and such............Where the Hell is Rick??

Joshua Holland: Harriet Miers: A Sucker Punch

Still travelling down my main road of concern, the buying and selling of America by International Corporate Interests and their lackeys in Congress and the White House, comes this article by Joshua Holland at AlterNet. It's his take on the Miers nomination, and his belief that, while everybody is busy talking about Roe vs Wade, it has never been the administrations intent to appoint anyone who would actually overturn that ruling. In fact he states, and I agree with him here, that overturning Roe is one of the last things this administration would want. It would signal the end of the GOP as a political entitiy. What they do want, and what they are about to accomplish while flying under cover of all the yelling currently provided by those political suckers, the social conservatives and religous right, is the complete packing of the court to the benefit of Corporate America.

LINK

Greg Palast: Corporate Control of Privatized Voter Registration Databases?

Did Florida make yo0u cringe in 2000? Ohio in 2004? Well, get ready for Colorado, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in 2006.

We know about the privatization orgy that is the basis of the Republican agenda, but are you aware of just how far this is going? Have you heard of the "Help America Vote Act" (will this Orwellian free-for-all never cease)? This legislation requires the "privatization of all state-wide centralized voter registration databases". Additionally, it requires all states to complete this process within the next three months. Yes, this means that the information used to determine who votes where, and who is an eligible voter, will be compiled and held by Corporate America, not your local registrar or elections board.

Interesting to me that we, as a nation, blow so hard about "bringing democracy" to everyone else on earth, while we close our eyes as they snatch it away from under our noses here at home.

Greg Palast, investigative reporter for The Observer, brings us the story.

LINK

Robert Scheer: A Crusade In Support of a Flawed Crusader

Well........sorry about the absence. But now...........I'm back. Foot's better. Car's being repaired. Off the pain pills......and here we go!

Here's one from Robert Scheer in this Am's LA Times.

LINK

Land Rovers, Self Medication, and Oral Sex With Karl Rove!

Hey, Guys.....I'm fine.....sorta. The other guy was totally at fault. His steering broke and he careened across the highway at us, both vehicles going about 40 on a stretch of road known up here in Big Bear as "The Arctic Circle" (Not to be confused with Bey Buchannan).

Fortunately the Rover murderer's got Triple-A insurance and they've accepted all liability. No one was hurt at all. In fact, in the Land Rover the engine moved back and then up, finally taking a seat that blocked the entire window. I looked down and discovered (ha ha .... that's a pun...) that there was not one dent or bending of ANYTHING in the passenger compartment. It really was amazing. All the right things crumpled, and absolutely nothing was touched where we were sitting. I kept thinking that it might have been much different in the Bronco I had a few years ago. So.....I'm looking at Range Rovers now.

Now......the car smash up turned out fine, but my own smash up occurred off my front deck last Thursday morning, and that one wasn't as clean. That's why I haven't been Blogging and Flogging with my usual irritating regularity. When I stepped down off the concrete deck my left foot ended up sort of across the bow, rather than facing straight forward, and it rolled right under me tearing all the cartilege along the outboard side. (What the hell is with this nautical shit?? Weird.....). So for the last few days I've been basically sitting on the couch with an elevated left leg at the end of which sits something that looks kind of like an anvil changing into an eggplant. In my pain and boredom I've rediscovered the joys of an old hobby of mine: Self Medication! Truly one of the more rewarding pastimes I've ever passed time (or out) with. I'd have to term it a "Higher Calling".

OK. I'll stop.

Anyway, that's where I've been. It's just uncomfortable to sit in my office here, and with the resumption of my old hobby I simply haven't given a rats ass. On top of that, this eggplant thingy trying to pass as my foot has made sleep impossible. Every time I doze off I do something stupid like try to turn over and then I wake right up. In fact I haven't slept at all in two nights. I'm so tired now that I don't think that'll be a problem tonight.

So, it's getting better, and things should get back to normal here during the next week or so. Once things become normal around here, everybody will be sure there's something wrong. They've certainly never been normal before.Sorry I haven't filled everybody in. If I was dead I would have let you know.

Oh, and Rick, Karl Rove did go down, but that was for Halliburton.

L8R, Gang.

Avian Flu: Is It The WMD Bush Needs To Invade The US?

OK..........Maybe I'm paranoid, but I still do really think he and his family are out to get you and me. He hyped the American people with illusory WMD as his justification for his invasion of Iraq. He started low and slow and then built to a frenzy of imminent nuclear annihilation, then he moved while American was foaming at the mouth with fear and anger. Of course the truth, which some of us had seen but most recognized only later and piece by piece, was that it was all a manipulation, a deception, a way to dupe the American public into supporting actions Cheney-Bush knew they'd never support if told the truth.

Now, at yesterday's press conference, The Texas Totalitarian announced that it might be necessary to dispatch military forces to deal with his new MWD : Avian Flu.

Yeah, I know. It might be dangerous, and could possibly be a real threat. But is a civic invasion by the US military the FIRST thing we talk about?

This guy isn't stupid. He's evil. So are his associates, his family, and their cohorts (read Saudis.....you know.....Bush's family friends who run the country where the terrorists all come from). This Little General is looking for any reason to put US troops on the streets of this nation. The first layer of this thinking, I'm sure, stems from Bush's desire to funnel as much public money into the private hands of his friends. That's what Iraq is all about. Whatever duties the military might fulfill in a flu pandemic, you can be sure that the great majority of it would be performed by private contractors, just as in Iraq. That's SOP stemming from the "Rumsfeld Doctrine" of undermanning and underarming the military itself so that the slack can be taken up by Corporations hungry for government contracts. Bush's administration is NOT Conservative; it is Fascist from top to bottom, and serves at the behest of Corporate Interests.

The second layer of thinking is this: Corporate America (otherwise known as Karl Rove's Brain) is beginning to see the coming recession and just how bad it might be. There might be unhappiness on the part of the American people as Bush and his Big Business allies continue pressing their advantage in their ongoing War On The Poor.

They're beginning to set up a WMD-type reason to get the troops on the streets. They've either manipulated into being, or spied and taken advantage, of an opportunity to pull this off at home. The dismal federal response to the Katrina disaster either presented them, fortuitously, with the opportunity to say, "We've got to get involved on an expensive military level in disaster response." If they're only taking advantage of an accidental situation, then it's simply smart politics and good business. But, Karl Rove and Cheney aren't merely "lucky". They create their own luck........perhaps by engineering that disastrous response to create the situation that gives them this opportunity? Don't wanna go there, huh?

In either case, what they don't say is that Halliburton, Bechtel, and The Carlyle Group, will be paid from public coffers for much of the work.

They learned it in the Boy Scouts: Be Prepared.

From CNN

Molly Ivins: Unification of Church & State

Molly Ivins is from Texas and knows her stuff. She warned us about Dubya well before most people were aware of him, and she has been proven correct time and again. Harriet Miers, Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, is also from Texas, has been around Bush and his "familia" for years, and is also well know to Molly. Well, she's warning us again now.

LINK

NY Times.........HHMMMMmmmmmm..........

Some of you have noticed, and some have e-mailed, regarding something new going on at the NY Times. Just the other day they introduced, on their web site, a new system called "Times Select". It's actually a tier system. Now they're separating readers into four groups: web surfers not registered with them at all, those registered with the web site, those who subscribe to "Times Select", and those who subscribe to the actual physical paper. Until now, all web content was available to anyone who simply registered with the site. Now all op-ed pieces, editorial, and most of the stuff anyone would really want to read is available only to "Times Select" subscribers. If you already subscribe to the paper it's free. If you don't it's $50 a year.

Now, I'm not one to begrudge anyone being compensated for their work. In fact, I've often wondered why most news outlets didn't charge something, at least for things like their feed services. I realize that most of them operate off of advertising fees and that advertisers like knowing that prospective customers can get to their ads without paying, but still, this is America, and it's always surprised me that these news outlets, mostly corporate-run, hadn't move to squeeze the last drop of blood from the stone.

However, this NY Times thing is weird and worrisome for two reasons:

First, this is the NY Times we're talking about. Long a reliable mouthpiece of those of us on the Liberal Left (or even further, Socialists like moi), it's particularly troubling that the Times is apparently the first of the majors to go this route and restrict information in this way. I wouldn't be surprised at The Wall Street Journal demanding admission fees for their site, possibly including background checks and drug testing, but the TIMES???

The second thing that bothers me is more sinister: The timing. It's interesting that they have done this just as Judith Miller is released from jail. The Times has done a 180 degree turnaround on this lady. Remember, the NY Times published six articles during the run-up to the Iraq War that stated there were large numbers of WMD in Iraq, and grossly exaggerated the Iraqi threat. In May of 2004, after these articles had clearly proven specious, the Times published a front page apology to the American people, an unprecedented action. Now, here's the thing. Four of those six articles were "researched" and written by Judith Miller and appeared under her byline. Miller was nothing more than a conduit for Bush Administration propaganda touting the many advantages of throwing a good old war in Iraq. When the Times apologized publicly, she was totally discredited and exposed.

That was before Plamegate. Now she's out, and the Times is rehabilitating her image and naming her a journalistic Joan of Arc. Keep in mind that she's out because she testified before the grand jury. She says that she could now testify because she had the "proper" release from her source, Scooter Libby, Dickhead Cheney's chief of staff. Libby says she had that all the time. Everybody's lying, probably protecting the Dickhead and Bush's Brain (Karl Rove).

So, amidst all this, when the American people need all the info they can possibly get just to know who in Washington is screwing them at any particular time, the NY Times introduces a format that will greatly reduce the numbers of people who read their op-ed columnists......their LIBERAL op-ed columnists. To me, that looks as fishy as a kippered herring.

Arianna Huffington wrote a blog about this the other day. Yesterday it was re-posted on AlterNet. You can check that out here if you want, but my real point here is best articulated by a comment in response to her blog.

"To the Times Columnists... (Community rating: 0/5) --
>Posted by: Tom Degan on Oct 3, 2005 5:02 AM

Here is a little note to Bob Herbert, Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich:

The four of you are undoubtedly the finest columnsts woking today. I used to log on to the NY Times every morning, anxious to read what you had to say in regard to the mess that the disgraceful administration of George W. Bush was inflicting on the country and the world.The Times has now decided to charge us $50.00 a year to read your columns on line at the same time that the Judy Wilson scandal has expolded. They probably did this because, at this point in history, no one in their right mind would purchase the NY Times and hope to get "all the news that's fit to print". My advise to the four of you? It's a sinking ship. Get out while the getting is good. I won't be reading your columns for a while and, for that, I am truly sorry.

Tom DeganGoshen, NY"

Too bad, huh?

L8R.

?????????????

Well..........I have no idea what happened here. I left for a day, and somehow we've lost a whole bunch of posts and one that was lost before I left has returned. Weird.

Too tired for anything. I'll gedt back up to speed tomorrow.