Rumsfeld said Tuesday the world faces "a new type of fascism"

Pot. Kettle.





ITMFA

It's amazing how much they still hate Clinton

For Christ's sake, they're blaming him for stuff that is the opposite of what he did. Do you suppose that on a gut-level, they know how badly their team bungled this and they think we're stupid enough to be bamboozled?



ITMFA

What did people do with their time before Photoshop?

I find several of these very disturbing.

The lies and the order in which they occurred

I read this in Mother Jones magazine this week. Chuck sent the link.

After you peruse the timeline, don't subscribe to the magazine at their website. Come back and get a subscription here so that I make $.12 and can afford to keep running for office.





ITMFA

Robert Crumb is far from my favorite comics creator...

...but he is capable of truly brilliant work.

I love science

This is a mondo cool site.

I'm stealing from Tom Toles

But if he means what he said, he won't mind.

I'll bet 50 bucks, right now, that it's a Republican

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4137637.html

If enough people say it often enough, does it become true?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14718.htm

I've complained about the lack of Arabic names on the passenger manifests since 12 September 2001. I don't know what to say about the physics of collapsing buildings; that's outside my areas of pretend expertise. But documents are something I know how to nose around in and draw conclusions from and there were no seats available for the hijackers according to the manifests.

Didn't we go through this before back in the 70s?

The 1770s I mean.

The following are some of the crime of George III as given by the Declaration of Independence. See if they sound familiar.

•He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

•He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers

•He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

•For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

•For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

•For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

•He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

ITMFA

History reporting is as bad as science reporting

This is an interesting piece. But history books don't say that the Aztecs did not resist the Spaniards. It was bloody house-to-house fighting with waaaaay more Aztec brutality than Spanish. At least that's what the history books I've read say.

The sooner mankind blah blah blah

There is very, very little in the results of this survey that I find comforting. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it terrifying.

It's what they're doing to science that really makes me sick

Chuck sent this to me to make me sputter.

I don't like it

I guess I start looking religious when people start trying to sidestep the Constitution. That is my holy writ.

Blair feels "betrayed"

Leaving aside all the British parliamentary politics, which is interesting but beside my point, it's about time that a man as apparently bright as Blair found his patience with Bush evaporating.

9-11 report

Go read a few pages of this.

Then come back here and buy it. Everybody needs to read the report. This is a painless way that is getting rave reviews.

*and* we're running out of oil

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14645.htm

An administration obsessed with secrecy

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060821/ts_alt_afp/usmilitarymissiles_060821123203

The Reagan administration did something similar several years ago: a Chinese physicist was visiting a California university, lecturing on Chinese advances in nuclear fusion research. A pair of FBI agents showed up and stopped his lecture for "national security" reasons. That is strictly an anecdotal story told often by Jerry Pournelle, who claims to have been there.

Y'see, the Brits don't know the difference between a leak of sensitive information and pre-election press release

Oh, those silly Brits. Won't they ever learn?

Chuck found this.

The sooner mankind, etc etc etc

Daniel found this. Well, he really found this, which is the sort of executive summary of the paper.

It just makes sense.

Presidential oath

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." -- US Constitution, Article II, Section 1.

I just thought I'd remind anybody who happens to look this way that the President's insistence that he took an oath to defend the United States is not true. Unless he took an oath to somebody else that we don't know about. This is the one that we need to hold him to. He's violated it plenty.

It's time for him to go.


ITMFA

We're being mis-led about the British bomb making

And Chuck was suspicious all along. The guys had no passports. They had no flight reservations. And, apparently, they didn't have a bomb.

I wonder how long the NSA will let me leave this post up?

Caps Lock keys

The ever-useful-when-it-comes-to-technology and completely-useless-when-it-comes-to-politics Jerry Pournelle just gave me an excellent suggestion. Stuff foam rubber under the cover to the caps lock key. It won't make contact if you accidently hit when you reach for the tab key and it can still be turned on with more direct pressure.

This "controversy" is several days old

But I just got around to reading it in detail.

I think this is the same scheme that Daniel came up with once. Except for the part about making Charon a planet because it and Pluto revolve around a common center that is not inside Pluto.

Imagine that little sparrow's metabolism in a T. rex

I've many times read that birds have an efficient respiratory system but this is the first time I've ever bothered to read anything about it.

I do so love me some science.

The Cold War and the Space Race

I've maintained for a couple of years now that, for the most part, the reason we had a Cold War was that the Soviets could run rings around us in espionage and counter-intelligence. We never seemed to know what they were doing and they had infiltrated British intelligence at the highest levels. Top American intelligence people believed that there was a very highly placed Soviet agent in the US throughout the 60s.

In any event, as President Bush tells us, it depends on what intelligence you read. JFK gets a bad rap for claiming there was a missile gap when he had been briefed by the CIA that there wasn't one. Hmm. Well, there were earlier CIA documents that claimed a huuuuuge gap.

Anyway. These are some really interesting source documents if you're interested in the Cold War or missile technology or the Space Race.

Now is the time for all good men...

...and women to call their Congressman and demand that impeachment procedings begin today.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/17/domesticspying.lawsuit/

and

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060817/ap_on_go_pr_wh/warrantless_surveillance

The government can prove the president didn't exceed his authority but they'd have to reveal state secrets to do it? That makes no sort of sense whatsoever.



ITMFA

Fascism in the US

Go read this review of John Dean's new book.

Then come back here and order it from Amazon.

I've always maintained that John Dean is a weasel. Yes, he did the right thing in Watergate but don't forget that he was one of them. He turned on them so that he wouldn't have to go to jail, not because he thought they needed to be brought down. But, over the years, he's matured and I have a grudging respect for him now. I've been known to respect a weasel or two.

There is so much in this story that bugs me, I don't know where to begin

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060815/pl_afp/usattacksbushpolitics_060815172722

First off, why doesn't he just say, "Do you know how much political capital we can realize from having a few terrorists arrested every three or four months? Why, we can do this for years!"

"The president, suffering in the polls because of sky-high gas prices and the unpopular war in Iraq..." The media is still giving the SOB a free ride. Or at least the AFP is. Why not "The President, suffering in the polls because of repeated violations of the Constitutional rights of US citizens and for his almost constant lying..." If Dan Rather was dead, he'd be spinning in his grave.

It doesnt't take William Randolph Hearst to figure out that persecuting the president sells ad space. Why aren't they doing it? Because the GOP will ask why they hate America? When did the press become afraid of politicians? Did terrible things happen under Reagan that we don't know about? Did reporters get phone calls in the middle of the night? LBJ used to call Rather in the middle of the night and talk about peckers. Didn't bother Rather.

Back to the article, what has happened to the FBI? Did we disolve it when we discovered terrorism?

Feh. ITMFA.

Local prosecutors stand by their charges?

"We don't know what they was a-gonna do, but I can tell you right now, mister, that when Ay-rabs buy up a buncha cell phones it aint' gonna be my fault when the whole things goes ka-blooie, I ken tell you right now."

Hey, I've seen "the Wire." No good comes from people buying cell phones. It just leads to drugs and dancing with strippers.

NASA is trying to make me think it didn't happen

I'm pretty sure now that it was staged in the New Mexico desert. Around Roswell or Area 51 or something.

Lieberman

Joe should run for election as an independent. I made a mistake by not thinking deeply enough.

He needs to renounce the Democratic Party if he plans to run against the nominee that was selected in the primary in which Joe originally chose to participate. But, if he thinks that he was unfairly treated by Democratic voters then he needs to give all the voters a chance to give him a thumbs up or thumbs down.

But, by god, good Democrats need to get behind the party's chosen candidate. I'm talking to you, Mark Pryor.

Man, I love science

I love science so much that today I used the phrase "non-monophyletic clade" in a conversation with a fellow comic geek.

Anyway.

Science remains cool.

When I think of all the terrorist attacks over the years...

...those that came from the Statue of Liberty are the ones that chill me the most.

Sheesh.

We live in a country led by people who are either terrified or so blinded by greed or both that they can't even function properly.

Right now, my '08 ticket of choice is Gore-Clark

I like to see ol' Wes flexing some muscle.

Oh, how I hate Republicans and oil companies

Chuck passed this along.

Chuck is thinking tricorder

http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/release.php?id=1069

Universal conpspiracy theory

James Fetzer is an important Kennedy assassination researcher. I'm not sure how I feel about him taking up a new hobby.

British Petroleum thinks you're too stupid for words

Seems that BP thinks that when they have sucked all the oil out of Alaska that they can then say they're shutting down the field because of a little 5-barrel spill.

Read that article again with the idea of peak oil in mind. If there was any money left there, they'd still be pumping. Feh. Of course, now they'll be clamboring even more to open the ANWR. Fuck.

I am shocked -- shocked

to learn that Americans aren't as polarized as the media has portrayed them.