November 2005
11/23/2005: It's University Of Kansas vs. the Kansas Board of Education, a real world rage-in-the-cage match up that pits the low-life morons running the Kansas Board of Education against the thinkers at the University of Kansas.
KU has decided to offer a new course, God bless'em, called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."
According to Paul Mirecki, the chairman of the religious studies department, "The KU faculty has had enough... Creationism is mythology. Intelligent design is mythology. It's not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not." Mirecki said his course, limited to 120 students, would explore intelligent design as a modern American mythology. Several faculty members have volunteered to be guest lecturers, he said.
While university Chancellor Robert Hemenway didn't take a soap box defending the new course, he did offer this: "If it's a course that's being offered in a serious and intellectually honest way, those are the kind of courses a university frequently offers."
11/23/2005:
For taking stupidity head-on; for standing up to a major public
organization; for making a real difference in the face of
ignorance; for protecting our Constitutional rights in spite
of moronic attempts to bend the law in order to violate
them; for disseminating the truth against all efforts to suppress
it; for being A Thinker instead of a Follower; Paul Mirecki
is hereby awarded the very first "Todd Grigsby's Views
Thinker Award".
11/23/2005: Ok, now I get it. I used to be confused about what all the hubbub was about when people would protest the G8 meetings and scream bloody murder over trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA. What was the big deal? Aren't we creating closer ties with other nations? Isn't that a good thing?
But the last three years have been a real eye opener for me. I'm in the computer industry, and unless you're living under a rock, you've heard about the huge outsourcing industry that has sprung up and decimated our technological sector in the United States.
But globalization doesn't just affect the high tech guys. Try out these stats:
Center for Economic and Policy Research
Mark Rupert, political scientist at Syracuse University
Victor Davis Hanson for National Review Online
Promo for the video, which you can order, "This Is What Democracy Looks Like"
"The Miami Model," a video from the FTAAIMC.
CorpWatch
Resource Center For the Americas
Global Exchange
11/18/2005: Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania and a celebrated Vietnam veteran, proposed a withdrawal of nearly 160,000 troops from Iraq "at the earliest predictable date."
In response, Republicans hysterically slandered that Murtha was advocating what they called a strategy of surrender and abandonment. So basically, they smeared the messenger rather than argue with the message. Democrats defended Murtha as a patriot, even though few agreed with his proposal.
The House move comes just days after the GOP-controlled Senate defeated a Democratic push for Bush to lay out a timetable for withdrawal, instead opting for wording that we should leave Real Soon Now, maybe even in 2006. Or sometime after that. Maybe. Whatever Ole Bushy says.
Speaking from a U.S. logistics base at Balad, north of Baghdad, Col. James Brown, commander of the 56th Brigade Combat Team, said, "We have to finish the job that we began here. It's important for the security of this nation."
Right on the first one. We're not done. And we probably never will be.
And only sort of right on the second one. Yeah, we need to do whatever it takes to eliminate possible terrorism there. I guess the problem is, there's nothing we can do now to achieve that. What we should have done was have those same troops stay in Afghanistan until we found Bin Laden rather than creating a breeding ground for terrorism in Iraq in a useless war founded on lies.
John Kerry popped out of the woodwork long enough to state, "There is no sterner stuff than the backbone and courage that defines Jack Murtha's character and conscience."
Amen. I don't agree with his proposal, but at least he's adding his voice to the millions that are crying out against Bush and his hard-headed determination to screw up the Middle East at the expense of as many U.S. lives as he has at his disposal. We need to lean on Bush to move faster, more effectively, and get our troops out of harm's way in a realistic amount of time.
My prediction: Bush needs two things: a better approval rating, and some goodwill. He can attain both by getting our troops home in the next 6 months, before Congressional elections. He will cap it off by having a post-Iraq celebration for the troops. He will even declare some day or another, "Iraqi Freedom Day" to mark the day the last troops left. He will call it a victory and have it televised. Even if you hate MFFB's guts, you'll be warmed by the scenes of troops coming home and hugging their kids. It'll be a big to-do on Fox Network (aka "The White House Propoganda Station"). And the Republican Party will thumb their noses at Democrats all the way to the polls.
My other prediction: As soon as it looks like Bush is going to pull the trigger on getting out of Iraq, the Dems are going into a full-court press to counter it with a full, independent investigation of the lies told in the run-up to the Iraq War. The evidence will be turned over to the media, more investigations, another grand jury, and Voila! Cheney and/or Rove will be indicted, and the President will be publicly placed next in the queue.
11/16/2005: Journalist Bob Woodward learned the name of Valerie Plame, the CIA analyst at the center of a leak inquiry that has dogged the Bush White House, one month before the name was made public in a newspaper column. He also stated that the source was not Libby, and was a high ranking administration official. To my mind, this indicates it's one of two people: The Evil Albino Smurf, Karl Rove, or the Evil Emporer himself, Dick Cheney.
Either one would be great, just great! Get the sharks with the lasers in their foreheads ready!!
But wait, the sharks can't be fed just yet! You see, there's a little glitch, and it's this.
Bob Woodward still won't reveal his source publicly.
Y'know, at times when national security is at stake, there should be no protection of sources. The First Amendment was never intended to be turned against the very nation it was designed to protect. And Bob Woodward is very confused indeed if he thinks he's got any right whatsoever to protect the identity of someone that damaged the security of this nation. In fact, by printing the information he obtained, he is an accessory to treason.
And you know what the penalty for treason is, don't you?
It's Death.
The attorney for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff and the only person indicted during the CIA leak investigation, quickly asserted that Woodward's admission undermined the case against his client. Which is crap. Whether Libby exposed Wilson's wife before or after another person did is irrelevant. If my neighbor robs a bank before I do, but with both rob the bank, guess what? We both go to jail!
Bob, sometimes you have to do the right thing. Sometimes you have to make a sacrifice to do the right thing. Sometimes, for the greater good, you have to be willing to fall on your sword. In this case, you would be the greater man, the patriot, the hero, if you stood up and said, "To hell with it. I'm mine own man, and I'm going to do what's right, and I'm going to turn over this traitor's name to the grand jury and to the public. The United States of America is worth more than my job, and so is my honor."
What are you going to do, Bob? Are you going to be a spineless sack of liquid crap, or are you going to be an American Patriot? What's it going to be?
Bob?
11/16/2005: Vice President Dick Cheney had the gall, in response to Democrats accusing the Bush administration of misleading the country on prewar intelligence, called the allegations, "One of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."
"What we're hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war," Cheney said. Which is complete crap. What we're hearing is Congressmen getting ready to accuse the President and his cabinet outright with lying to Congress, which, if memory serves, is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison....
"The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out." Which is so much worse than being subjected to bombs and bullets in a foreign land fighting a war that was started with lies.
"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone." And we the American People can't prevent our Vice President from lying some more.
"But we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history." I'll tell you what you will do, you sack of liquid crap: you'll sit right there and listen to us tell the truth on you day in and day out until the American People swallow their pride and admit they were wrong to give criminals like you and Georgie control over our once-proud nation.
"We're going to continue throwing their own words back at them." Ok, here are a few words:
Oh! Wait a minute... Those were your words, weren't they you evil, dispeptic, freak...
Cheney charged that "some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing force against Saddam Hussein." Politicians that had been lied to repeatedly by everyone in the Bush administration. Politicians who are pissed off at having the wool pulled over their eyes. Politicians with hearts, hearts that break at the knowledge that over 2000 U.S. military personnel have died (officially) in the war they were fooled into okaying.
"In Washington, you can ordinarily rely on some basic measure of truthfulness," (not since you rolled into town you fat....), "and good faith in the conduct of political debate," Cheney said. "But in the last several weeks, we have seen a wild departure from that tradition." The tradition we're departing from is that of letting lying dogs sleep.
The vice president also said that before the war, "there was broad-based, bipartisan agreement that Saddam Hussein was a threat." Based entirely on your lies.
"In a post-9/11 world, we couldn't afford to take the word of a dictator who had a history of WMD programs", that never successfully produced a WMD and had been completely dismantled, "who had excluded weapons inspectors", that were then allowed back into the country once Saddam had been slapped back down with a few bombs delivered from a safe distance, "who had defied the demands of the international community", and been smacked back into line every time, "who had been designated an official state sponsor of terror", by an administration that had made up its mind to invade prior to 9/11, "and who had committed mass murder," not unlike the mass murderers in the Sudan, Rwanda, and Congo that we ignore entirely on a regular basis because they don't have oil.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi lashed out at the vice president's own credibility because she's got the spine to do it.
"Just because he says it doesn't make it so," she told CNN. "There are pages [and] pages of statements that he has made that have been factually incorrect."
Nancy Pelosi rocks.
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There are no WMDs in Iraq.
Never were.
No chemical weapons.
No biological weapons.
No nuclear weapons.
No possible "mushroom clouds."
Bush lied to you.
Cheney lied to you.
Condoleeza Rice lied to you.
Colin Powell lied to you.
Donald Rumsfeld lied to you.
I told you Bush was lying.
And you didn't listen.
You believed his lies.
You focused on his propoganda.
You allowed yourself to be fooled.
You re-elected him.
You elected a liar and a murderer by proxy.
11/16/2005:
For standing up to the Republicans in the NeoCon-dominated
Senate; for refusing to let the Patriot Act be renewed until
it sufficiently curbs the FBI's ability to invade American
citizens' privacy without just cause; for standing up for
the basic principle of checks and balances; for insisting
that Republicans stop "behind closed door" negotiations that
excluded Democratic leaders; for insisting on some form of
annual oversight on the classified letters of search and seizure
issued by the Justice Department (currently 30,000 and sure to
grow); for protecting the rights outlined in the Constitution,
This month's Spine Award is awarded to Michigan Representative
John Conyers.
11/11/2005: President Bush said Friday that the U.S. must continue to fight in Iraq to prevent it from becoming a failed state from which terrorists would launch attacks on other nations.
Which of course was one of the reasons we shouldn't have gone in in the first place. All the terrorism experts said, "Don't do it! If you do, terrorism will gain a foothold!" But did Bushy listen? Heck no! He was too busy staying the course. Y'know, the obstacle course, the one littered with proof that Iraq had no WMDs. Nowadays, these people are referred to as the critics that Bush dismisses...
He had the cojones to say that it was irresponsible to rewrite the history of the case for the Iraq War. Oh, son, you misunderstand. We're not rewriting anything. We're just telling the truth on you. I know, it sucks, but you've been telling lies faster than a corrupt CEO, and it's time you got a major smackdown.
They knew before the war that one of their prime source for information, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, had been tortured for information, was clearly in no position to know about the things he was talking about in response to the torture, and that they should rely on him. They knew that Chalabi didn't need to be tortured to give them bad info -- he wanted Saddam out of the way so he could take his rich, elite butt back home. They knew that there was NO intelligence to suggest that Iraq had dealings with terrorists outside of Saddam's monetary contributions to Hamas, which in the Arab world is like giving to the firefighter's fund. There was also no intelligence AT ALL that linked Iraq in ANY WAY to 9/11.
Bush, that's not rewriting history, you putz, that's retelling it until someone listens. And they are starting to listen...
11/11/2005: Yesterday, Michael Savage was on the air arguing with a caller. The caller was trying to point out that, while the rioters in Paris were primarily from North Africa and the Middle East, they were not fighting under the banner of Islam -- they are rioting because they are routinely discriminated against, held down in poverty and unemployment.
Savage kept yelling over the caller, "Oh, it's not the Muslims! Then it must be the Jews! Or the Christians!"
The caller would patiently try to get his point across again, that the rioters might be overwhelmingly Muslim, there was nothing in any news report that pointed to the riots being inspired by Islamic issues.
Savage yelled again, "So you're saying it wasn't the Muslims, that it was the Rabbis?! The Rabbis are burning Paris! No? Then it's the Christian preachers! Preachers are setting the cars on fire and rioting in the streets!"
And then, probably sensing that he was looking like an idiot, he cut the caller off and went to commercial. Because that's what he does -- when he's losing, when he has no comment, he cuts the caller and goes to commercial.
What a moron.
11/9/2005: On CNN they had a video that discussed "The Bush Factor."
I'm still waiting for it to load as I type this, but here's my idea of the Bush Factor: It's the effect that Bush has on any situation, making it immediately seem mishandled, bungled, corrupted, misrepresented to the public, and dealt with in a manner that serves rich and elite interests only.
Anytime I see Bush make a speech on TV, the Bush Factor can be defined as an overall dumbing down, like having the stupidest, meanest, bully in class talk down to the brightest kids in the class, not caring that he's wrong since the bright kids are powerless to correct or stop him. Only in this case, the bully can't call you out at 3:00 in the parking lot. Instead, he just continues sending your kids to die in a war he lied to start, he continues screwing up your kids' schools, he continues taking your tax dollars and giving them to his rich buddies, he continues selling your natural resources to his corporate friends, etc. And while you scream for him to stop, he just makes another grinning-monkey appearance on TV and talks down to you again about 9/11 and Iraq, as though there were a connection, ever. It's sort of like the Chinese Water Torture, but with grammar and the fate and reputation of our nation being equally mauled.
Still waiting for it to load.... what's with the 'net today?
Ok, well, we have this text description to go off of: "Would President Bush's appearances on behalf of Republican candidates help or hurt them?
Well, let's picture it. You have a well dressed, well-spoken, solid-principled individual giving a speech, then introducing Bush.
And then a monkey-faced frat boy with a 35% approval rating and a distinct inability to A) recognize that the American people don't believe Iraq had anything at all to do with 9/11, and B) to pronounce "nuclear", steps up to the podium, grins, and sends the candidate's election prospects into a tail-spin.
Nearly everyone hates George W. Bush. The 35% are the hardcore Neo-Con Repubs and the employees and management that work for Haliburton and similar companies that have been awarded billions in no-bid contracts.
A 65% hatred rating can get your ass kicked off the stage. But it won't do you Republicans any good to remember that because you embraced him too hard for too long. The DeLays, Roves, Cheneys, Libbys, et al, have made your party stink too high for too long.
11/9/2005: So Bush, in a desparate attempt to cover his butt, has instructed his aides to develop a "campaign-style" strategy to fight allegations that the Bush administration lied its collective butt off to make its case for war.
I say, "Bring it."
There are too many people that cried foul at the very beginning and haven't let up the entire time. Their case is well-documented, and they have stacks of first-hand accounts. This isn't a law school homework assignment. This is the big league, baby.
And the truth will set you free.
11/9/2005: Last night David Letterman said: "That President Bush, I'm tellin' ya, I wouldn't give his troubles to a monkey on a rock."
Ok.
I have no idea what that means, but it cracked me UP! A monkey on a rock. That's my new saying. A monkey on a rock. Is that supposed to imply that a monkey on a rock is relatively immune to trouble? Does it mean he's so dumb that the troubles won't bother him? Does it mean that he's already go so many troubles that more trouble won't matter? Or is it that a monkey on a rock deserves trouble?
Ok... enough of that.... David Letterman has a delivery that can't be beat. Funny stuff...
11/9/2005: The Kansas Board of Education voted 6-4 to change the science curriculum in that state to include criticisms of evolution and to include "Intelligent Design" as a valid theory. This, of course, against all scientific evidence to the contrary.
How can parents stay in that state? How can they allow their kids to stay in a state that inserts religion into science and calls it "the best thing that could have happened to science"?
What morons.
11/9/2005: No.
Much as I'd like to leave it at that, let's discuss it.
If you could save a life... 10 lives... 1000 lives... by torturing a prisoner that probably has information about how they'll die, would you do it?
Experts universally agree that, when tortured, a prisoner will tell you whatever they think you want to hear to get the torture to stop. They'll be as detailed and creative as necessary to save themselves.
Here's another way to put it: Is revenge ever right? You might argue that it is. But does revenge ever get you anything except possibly a feeling that justice was done? And when you torture someone, is there really anything more occurring there than revenge?
If the information obtained can't be relied on, then torture is simply cruel and unusual punishment. Period. And aren't we as a nation better than that? I think we ought to be.
11/9/2005: Aka, Scooter Libby.
Yeah, Scooter poured out his deepest, darkest desires in a book about Japan, snow, sake, and little girls raped by trained bears. He may be the next great writer, but I'll never know. Check out the reviews.
11/11/2005: There was a lady on the radio last night given Ahnuld a rash of crap about the fact that he got on the air and announced that he took full responsibility for the slate of bills that got soundly rejected.
If he'd said nothing, she'd have busted his butt. If he'd won and said or not said anything at all, she'd have done the same. I believe in giving credit where it's due, and I thought it was graceful of Arnie to take ownership of his failure and move on. You can't slap a man with his own apology.
Now, if he'd dealt with the butt-grabbing scandal the same way....
11/9/2005: Ahnold stated in June that he would "go over the heads of Democratic legislators" and push his "reform" initiatives straight to the people. I guess he forgot that those Democratic legislators were elected by the people to do the job Ahnold is spitting on. Last night Ahnold's entire slate of "reform" initiatives got smacked down.
Y'know, to a certain extent, I like Ahnold. There's a lot there to not like, but he comes across as though his heart is in the right place, and that's something you don't get with most politicians. He's got a certain amount of Reagan factor that way.
But Ahnold shouldn't be fooled -- even Reagan couldn't sell ideas that hurt the common man and his family, and Ahnold's "reform" slate did exactly that, over and over.
There's an important lesson here: The electorate is never so comatose that you can blatantly hurt their children, take power away from them, or take their money away from them. Ok, so Bush has been getting away with that for a while. But his smack-down is coming....
