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Monday, May 31, 2004
Shocked, I'm just SHOCKED! Cheney pushed for Haliburton contract approval. A Pentagon e-mail said Vice President Dick Cheney coordinated a huge Halliburton government contract for Iraq, despite Cheney's denial of interest in the company he ran until 2000. The March 5, 2003 e-mail, from an Army Corps of Engineers official, said that top Pentagon official Douglas Feith got the job of shepherding the contract, according to the newsweekly Time that hits newsstands Monday. Feith had approved the multi-billion-dollar deal "contingent on informing WH (the White House) tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w(ith) VP's (vice president's) office," said the e-mail obtained by Time. Well, I, for one, never dreamed that something like this could happen. Now, let's see - the Clintons got hounded for 8 years over a failed real estate deal in which they LOST money. Can we expect a Special Prosecutor to look into this? Don't hold your breath. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:28:00 AM   | Memorial Day In Flanders Fields In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. John McCrae A hearty "Thank you!" to all the veterans out there. Were it not for your sacrifice, and the sacrifices of those not with us, the world would be a much worse place. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:37:00 AM | Sunday, May 30, 2004
| The Pope Is Worried About You No, seriously. He's afraid America might lose its spirituality. It appears that our interest in prosecuting cases of child molestation by priests, the refusal of American Catholics to shut up and do what they're told when the Pope says to vote for Bush and the simple fact that we are, by law, a secular nation, have struck a nerve. Good. The last thing we need in this country is to be more "spiritual". When folks are more concerned with the afterlife, they tend not to worry too much about this one. There's enough people suffering in this world, to my thinking. I'd like to see the Senile Fool devote a little more effort to feeding the hungry and less to obsessing over America's supposed moral failings. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:45:00 AM | Saturday, May 29, 2004
Just watched: "Justice League: Starcrossed" Not a bad movie. I've been a watching Cartoon Network's animated series since it started, and I wasn't surprised at all with the quality, seeing as it came from the same team that brought us the Batman and Superman animated series. The kids and I have seen every episode, and we've each got a favorite character. Drew likes Green Lantern, Franny loves Hawkgirl and I like Batman. "Starcrossed" is definitely worth watching, and it seems that come August 7th, there'll be a new Justice League series to keep me entertained. If the preview's right, it'll have Green Arrow in it, and that's definitely cool news. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:22:00 PM | Oh, yeah. We're making huuuuge progress in Iraq Al Sadr's militia ignores truce, reoccupies Najaf. Don't get me wrong - Al Sadr's a buffoon and a thug, but this situation is in large part our doing. Had we not shut down Sadr's pissant newspaper and issued an arrest warrant, we could have likely held off an armed uprising at the same time as the one in Fallujah, which would have, at the very least, allowed us to use more forces to contain Fallujah. This might have allowed us to do something other than cave in to the Baathists like the Simp Chimp did and turn Fallujah over to one of Saddam's generals. Granted, it's not like we have high expectations of the Neo-cons' "strategery" in Iraq - I've seen low-grade morons come up with better strategies in Risk. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:55:00 AM | Friday, May 28, 2004
Friday 5 Confessional goodness from Laura! I have a confession to make: I actually like watching those lame, cliche-filled success-story films. You know the ones I mean - girl works her way off the streets and ends up studying in Harvard; boy wants to dance his own steps; girl wants to sing but her mother forbids it. Yeah. Hallmark channel material. Add a pot of ice cream and a box of tissues and I'm all set for the evening. Now that I revealed my darkest secret, what are your five most uncool passions? I dunno - most of my passions are considered "uncool" already, so the list is apt to be rather unsurprising. I'll see what I can come up with. (1) Scandanavian pop music. Aqua. Abba. The Cardigans. Yep, I listen to 'em all. I can't help it. I like the happy, catchy tunes. (2) Superhero comics. I like 'em Silver Age and 4-color. I like steel-jawed heroes, sneering villains and plucky sidekicks. Jack Kirby's Captain America, Superman before John Byrne, and Steve Ditko's Spider-Man. DOn't get me wrong - I think Miller, Moore, Ellis, Morrison and Ennis rock the fuckin' house, but when no one's looking, I'm digging into some old classics and grooving to simple tales of good guys beatin' up on the bad guys, and nobody ever dies. (3) Cheez-its. I loves me some cheesy, salty, fat-laden crackers. TIme was, I'd eat 'em by the pound. I can't do that anymore, so I just treat myself every couple of weeks to one of those "snack size" bags from the vending machine at work. (4) Puns. I love puns. I know they're wrong, but I love them anyway. (5) Westerns rock my world. John Wayne and John Ford, baby. I love the straight-shooting heroes, the high noon shootouts and the un-PC flavor of it all. I like the TV westerns, too. The Lone Ranger, Have Gun Will Travel, all of 'em. So, really, not much of a list. Still, check out what the other Friday FIvers have to say by clicking the links to the left. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:40:00 PM | Once again, white-supremacist Trent Lott shows us what a dumb-ass cracker he is His take on the Abu Ghraib abuses? "Frankly, to save some American troops' lives or a unit that could be in danger, I think you should get really rough with them," Lott said. "Some of those people should probably not be in prisons in the first place." When asked about the photo showing a prisoner being threatened with a dog, Lott was unmoved. "Nothing wrong with holding a dog up there unless it ate him," Lott said. "(They just) scared him with the dog." Lott was reminded that at least one prisoner had died at the hands of his captors after a beating. "This is not Sunday school," he said. "This is interrogation. This is rough stuff." Lott once again trots out the lame "we hadda do it to save 'merkin lahves" bullshit, apparently because he's either (a) a fat, lying fuckwit or (b) a complete imbecile, seeing that 70 to 90 percent of the inmates at Abu Ghraib were innocent of any crime. I'm betting Lott's a fucking liar, but he's got a good streak of dumbass in him, too. Either way, the man deserves a good ass-whuppin'. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:33:00 AM | Thursday, May 27, 2004
I keep warning you people about the goddamn monkeys, but you don't listen! Super baboon escapes from zoo. Dig this - a male baboon at the Seneca Park Zoo escaped despite an electrified fence and being shot with a tranquilizer dart. He returned to his enclosure voluntarily - obviously letting the zoo staff know that he owned their asses, and would be out to get them when he felt like it. Nine months ago, an orangutan walked out of his cage and picked up a zoo volunteer. Me? I'm ready to welcome our Monkey Overlords. I'm brushing up on my banana daquiri recipes and learning how to pick parasites out of thick, matted fur. You poor saps, on the other hand, are doomed. DOOMED! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:18:00 PM | Al Gore on "the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon" Al Gore gave this speech on May 26 at New York University. It's a lot to read, but worth it. George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world. He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon. Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins. How did we get from September 12th, 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the goodwill and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib. To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat -- and the assertion need be made by only one person, the president. More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does. Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens -- sooner or later -- to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul. One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know -- and not just from De Sade and Freud -- the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America. Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order to understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that. There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people of any other nation. Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation -- especially the temptation to abuse power over others. Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our Constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens. Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by Specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a grown man piss on himself." What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances. The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of Sept. 11. There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him. He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name. President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.] The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict "has arguably focused the energies and resources of al-Qaida and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq al-Qaida now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks. The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals, and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force. There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting. Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor. And the worst still lies ahead. Gen. Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said, "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss." When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss," then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged. Retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls." The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Col. Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from happening again." Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically." The White House spokesman Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers." But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior general at the Pentagon as saying, "the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public. The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care." In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption." Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his service in Iraq, and his former domestic advisor on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out. And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation. To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was crisscrossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority. The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America. Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even -- we must use the word -- tortured -- to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say. These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the president's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned. Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors. President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies." George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies. How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush. How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison. David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "We were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war. Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him $340,000 per month. Thirty-three million dollars, and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling $70 million in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush administration on planning and promoting the war against Iraq. And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam's secret papers. Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the president of the United States for all these years. One of the generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the U.S. is in a holy war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same Gen. Boykin was the person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in Guantánamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners ... The testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their religion. Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks later he used it again. "We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said. What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom -- coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion -- would now be responsible for this kind of abuse. Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam, and after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, "they ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit ... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." The president convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The president convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with al-Qaida, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden. He asked the nation, in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners. In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reins of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe. Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over. Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952. When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of General Zinni, 'Headed over Niagara Falls.'" One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and 25 days remaining in this president's current term of office and that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current administration. It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq. We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point. We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as secretary of defense. Condoleezza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately. George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately. As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors. During Ronald Reagan's presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back? The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We, as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights ... Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize -- and to recognize quickly -- that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples." But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan "show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known." Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders. These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America -- it is also an illusory goal in its own right. Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator. A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for al-Qaida, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans. Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our military, even without their commander in chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on." Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force -- but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States -- and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead. Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of conscience wagered with history by this willful president. Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people: "This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength." The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862: "The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history ... the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation ... We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth ... The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless." It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing. The same dark spirit of domination has led them to -- for the first time in American history -- imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush administration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request -- or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned. They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing. The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Sen. Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War. The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh -- perhaps his strongest political supporter -- who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam." This new political viciousness by the president and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives. The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree. Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system. But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of Sept. 11. The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest." The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration. To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate U.S. values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see -- and criticize -- in places like China and Cuba. Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans -- at least for a very long time -- to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world. President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world -- but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders. Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America. He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, whom he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco. In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president. I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability ... So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo and secret locations as-yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands. I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable -- and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility." posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:35:00 AM | | Wednesday, May 26, 2004
The Danes once again take the lead in caring for their workers Danish IT company to offer porn as company-paid benefit. After examining well-known trends in Internet and business traffic, LL Media decided it would be sensible and appreciated to offer all of its employees free subscriptions to Internet pornography. The company's director, Levi Nielsen, believes that access to porn is a natural fringe benefit, like a free phone or a company car. "We know that 80 percent of all hits on the Internet are on porn sites. And we can see that people also surf porn pages during work," Nielsen told Danish Broadcasting's DR Nordjylland. In return for this service the company blocks all access to porn pages during office hours. Nielsen hopes that the expense of about DKK 30 (USD 5) per head per week will make his staff more relaxed and more efficient on the job. Those clever, clever Scandanavians. Always thinking outside the box. No pun intended. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:22:00 PM | A Poll! In the interest of giving you the highest quality for your surfing buck, The Management has placed a poll on the left sidebar. Your answers will be confidential, although the wrong answer will trigger a 20,000 volt power surge through your keyboard, turning your fingers and hands into carbon. Choose... wisely. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:53:00 AM | Tuesday, May 25, 2004
This is a relief, but the circumstances make me VERY nervous FBI admits it made a mistake when it claimed a muslim lawyer was connected to the Madrid bombing. As additional evidence in support of Mayfield's arrest, the FBI pointed to Mayfield's attendance at a local mosque, his advertising legal services in a publication owned by a man suspected to have links to terrorism, and a telephone call his wife placed to a branch of an Islamic charity with suspected terrorist ties. OMIGAWD! A MUSLIM WENT TO A MOSQUE! By those lights, anyone that attends a church can be arrested as a possible suspect if an abortion clinic is bombed. FBI agents began their surveillance of Mayfield two weeks after the attacks in the Spanish capital. Under a provision of the U.S. Patriot Act, they entered his home without his knowledge During a later raid, FBI agents took Mayfield's computers, modem, safe deposit key, assorted papers, as well as copies of the Quran and what they classified as "Spanish documents" -- apparently Spanish homework by one of Mayfield's sons. So, basically, Mayfield was suspect because he was a Muslim, and his son was taking Spanish lessons. This meant that it was OK to arrest him, smear his name and falsely attempt to link him to a horrific crime that he was IN NO WAY CONNECTED TO. Fuck you, FBI. J. Edgar Hoover might be proud of you, but I'm disgusted. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:34:00 PM | Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I am pissed off Why am I pissed off? Because, according to some "experts", it's OK to kill transexuals. An immature, heterosexual young man who learns that a woman he was sexually intimate with is biologically male is likely to "panic" and overreact with violence, a psychologist told a Hayward jury Monday in the trial of three men accused of killing transgender teen Gwen Araujo. "It would flip them out," said Andrew Pojman, a Walnut Creek psychologist who teaches at the Wright Institute in Berkeley. "They'd have a strong sense of panic and uproar and wanting to fix it. It would be very upsetting." So, basically, according to the defense in this case, it's not really murder if you choke, punch, beat and strangle a transgendered person to death. They're not really people, after all. I appreciate the need for lawyers to offer a vigorous defense of their clients, but these lawyers can't then act shocked when they're called out as slimy, scummy shysters that give lawyers a bad name. Gwen Araujo was brutally murdered by a gang of sick thugs, and those thugs deserve the harshest penalties available under the law. This is the same kind of desperate defense used in rape cases ("she was askin' for it, her bein' dressed all slutty and all")and in the Matthew Shephard case ("he was askin' for it, seein' as he made a pass at me and threatened my masculinity"). It's at best unethical, it's morally repugnant, and it's wrong. Life sentences in prison as fucktoys for convicts sounds like justice to me. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:49:00 AM | We was BAMBOOZLED! CIA fears Chalabi passed classified info to Iran. Julian Borger in Washington Tuesday May 25, 2004 The Guardian An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday. Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq. According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions. The CIA has asked the FBI to investigate Mr Chalabi's contacts in the Pentagon to discover how the INC acquired sensitive information that ended up in Iranian hands. The implications are far-reaching. Mr Chalabi and Mr Habib were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons on which Washington built its case for war. "It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi." Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state department, said: "When the story ultimately comes out we'll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy." Mr Chalabi has vehemently rejected the allegations as "a lie, a fib and silly". He accused the CIA director, George Tenet, of a smear campaign against himself and Mr Habib. However, it is clear that the CIA - at loggerheads with Mr Chalabi for more than eight years - believes it has caught him red-handed, and is sticking to its allegations. "The suggestion that Chalabi is a victim of a smear campaign is outrageous," a US intelligence official said. "It's utter nonsense. He passed very sensitive and classified information to the Iranians. We have rock solid information that he did that." "As for Aras Karim [Habib] being a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, we have very good reason to believe that is the case," added the intelligence official, who did not want to be named. He said it was unclear how long this INC-Iranian collaboration had been going on, but pointed out that Mr Chalabi had had overt links with Tehran "for a long period of time". An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA confirmed its long-held suspicions when it discovered that a piece of information from an electronic communications intercept by the National Security Agency had ended up in Iranian hands. The information was so sensitive that its circulation had been restricted to a handful of officials. "This was 'sensitive compartmented information' - SCI - and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras Habib," the intelligence source said. Mr Habib, a Shia Kurd who is being sought by Iraqi police since a raid on INC headquarters last week, has been Mr Chalabi's righthand man for more than a decade. He ran a Pentagon-funded intelligence collection programme in the run-up to the invasion and put US officials in touch with Iraqi defectors who made claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Those claims helped make the case for war but have since proved groundless, and US intelligence agencies are now scrambling to determine whether false information was passed to the US with Iranian connivance. INC representatives in Washington did not return calls seeking comment. But Laurie Mylroie, a US Iraq analyst and one of the INC's most vocal backers in Washington, dismissed the allegations as the product of a grudge among CIA and state department officials driven by a pro-Sunni, anti-Shia bias. She said that after the CIA raised questions about Mr Habib's Iranian links, the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) conducted a lie-detector test on him in 2002, which he passed with "flying colours". The DIA is also reported to have launched its own inquiry into the INC-Iran link. An intelligence source in Washington said the FBI investigation into the affair would begin with Mr Chalabi's "handlers" in the Pentagon, who include William Luti, the former head of the office of special plans, and his immediate superior, Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defence for policy. There is no evidence that they were the source of the leaks. Other INC supporters at the Pentagon may have given away classified information in an attempt to give Mr Chalabi an advantage in the struggle for power surrounding the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30. The CIA allegations bring to a head a dispute between the CIA and the Pentagon officials instrumental in promoting Mr Chalabi and his intelligence in the run-up to the war. By calling for an FBI counter-intelligence investigation, the CIA is, in effect, threatening to disgrace senior neo-conservatives in the Pentagon. "This is people who opposed the war with long knives drawn for people who supported the war," Ms Mylroie said. So our prime ally in the war might've been working for the Axis Of Evil? Given the Bush family's history of trading with the enemy (Prescott Bush made millions selling to the Nazis during WWII, GHWB and the rest of the family are pretty damn chummy with the Saudi royal family), I'm honestly not surprised. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:05:00 AM | Obama stalker revealed Liberal Agit Prop has a photo, phone number and email address for Justin Warfel, the Rethuglican goon that's stalking Barack Obama. Use it well, or pass it on to someone that can. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:01:00 AM | Monday, May 24, 2004
Dr. Dobson has escaped from the nuthouse again - someone tranq his ass! Finally, the Homosexual Agenda is laid bare! For more than 40 years, the homosexual activist movement has sought to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family. The utter destruction of the family? Oh, those sneaky fags - they'll destroy the family by forming families of their own! The institution of marriage, along with an often weakened and impotent Church, is all that stands in the way of its achievement of every coveted aspiration. "Weakened". "Impotent". Sounds like someone's projecting to me. Have you considered viagra coupled with a regular exercise regimen? Spanking it to pictures of Ronald Reagan doesn't quite count as either sex or exercise. Those goals include universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, I'm not seeing a problem. discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, Damn those pesky biblical scholars and their Satan-inspired knowledge of ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek! How DARE they apply this knowledge to properly interpret these scriptures in a historical/sociological context! muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, If this is the case, why the FUCK haven't you shut your goddamn pie hole yet? granting of special privileges and rights in the law, Yeah, special priveleges like... THE SAME ONES ALL OTHER AMERICANS ENJOY. Special rights like... THE FREEDOM TO BE TREATED THE SAME UNDER THE LAW AS ALL OTHER AMERICANS. I can see why this would be a problem. overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, This is funny, seeing as the biggest organized ring of pedophiles in the US right now is... THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. Dammit, those sneaky fags have managed to corrupt THE POPE! No GLBT person I know (including myself) advocates pedophilia, as that's a completely separate thing from homosexuality. Pedophilia is a crime involving sex between an adult and a child, and children cannot give informed consent. Homosexuality involves, among other things, sex between CONSENTING ADULTS. I'm surprised you left out bestiality - I suppose Senator Santorum's got that angle covered. indoctrinating children and future generations through public education, And, of course, the solution is to shut down public schools and send all our kids to the fine religious institutions you run. I don't think so, chump. I want my children to have an education. and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies. Because that, as we all know, is just wrong, wrong wrong. How DARE people that love each other and wish to make a lifetime commitment to each other PRESUME that they're entitled to be treated like human beings? I swear, you'd think morons like him'd come up with some new arguments. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:05:00 AM | Yeah, right, this is nothing like Vietnam I mean, there ain't no jungles in Iraq at ALL! Plus, them Ay-rabs is taller than them Vit-n'mees. Oh, and the Russians ain't givin' 'em their guns. Here's a vomit-inducing writeup of the "terrorists" that got "lit up" in Iraq last week. Some highlights: A videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck. The U.S. military says it is investigating the attack, which took place in the village of Mogr el-Deeb about five miles from the Syrian border, but that all evidence so far indicates the target was a safehouse for foreign fighters. The article describes correspondences between the wedding video and post-attack video of the site. Here's the best part, though: Haleema Shihab, 32, one of the three wives of Rikad Nayef, said that as the first bombs fell, she grabbed her seven-month old son, Yousef, and clutching the hands of her five-year-old son, Hamza, started running. Her 15-year-old son, Ali, sprinted alongside her. They managed to run for several yards when she fell -- her leg fractured. "Hamza was yelling, 'mommy,"' Shihab, recalled. "Ali said he was hurt and that he was bleeding. That's the last time I heard him." Then another shell fell and injured Shihab's left arm. "Hamza fell from my hand and was gone. Only Yousef stayed in my arms. Ali had been hit and was killed. I couldn't go back," she said from her hospital bed in Ramadi. Her arm was in a cast. She and her stepdaughter, Iqbal -- who had caught up with her -- hid in a bomb crater. "We were bleeding from 3 a.m. until sunrise," Shihab said. Soon American soldiers came. One of them kicked her to see if she was alive, she said. "I pretended I was dead so he wouldn't kill me," said Shihab. She said the soldier was laughing. When Yousef cried, the soldier said: "'No, stop," said Shihab. Fourteen-year-old Moza, Shihab's stepdaughter, lies on another bed of the hospital room. She was hurt in the leg and cries. Her relatives haven't told her yet that her mother, Sumaya, is dead. "I fear she's dead," Moza said of her mother. "I'm worried about her." Moza was sleeping on one side of the porch next to her sisters Siham, Subha and Zohra while her mother slept on the other end. There were many others on the porch, her cousins, stepmothers and other female relatives. When the first shell fell, Moza and her sisters, Subha, Fatima and Siham ran off together. Moza was holding Subha's hand. "I don't know where Fatima and my mom were. Siham got hit. She died. I saw Zohra's head gone. I lost consciousness," said Moza, covering her mouth with the end of her headscarf. Her sister Iqbal, lay in pain on the bed next to her. Her other sister, Subha, was on the upper floor of the hospital, in the same room with two-year-Khoolood. Her small body was bandaged and a tube inserted in her side drained her liver. Her ankle was bandaged. A red ribbon was tied to her curly hair. Only she and her older brother, Faisal, survived from their immediate family. Her parents and four sisters and brothers were all killed. In all, 27 members of Rikad Nayef's extended family died -- most of them children and women, the family said. I am willing (albeit through some serious mental contortions) to believe that this was from top to bottom a collossal, tragic and horrible failure in communications. What I'm not willing to believe is that the Army still honestly thinks they blew up terrorists. This cannot be anything but a disaster for the US in Iraq and the Arab world in general. For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. - Hosea 8:7. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:47:00 AM | Sunday, May 23, 2004
Yay! Sunday! The day I wake up to find one of the earpieces of my glasses has come off during the night. The day I stop on the way in to church to buy some superglue to fix my glasses. The day I coat my hands and right thigh with superglue because I bought the cheap stuff, and it's apparently designed to squirt all over the place when you open it. The coat of shellac on my hands wasn't so bad, but having to rip my pants leg off my leg really, really sucked. Especially when it left a chunk of pants fabric attached to my leg, and I had to rip that off separately. Had to wash my hands with acetone, and it looks like I'm down to one pair of work-OK pants now. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:59:00 PM | Saturday, May 22, 2004
Yeah, I bet you're pleased, you little fuckbags Picked this up from Texas Media Watch: ANTI-CONSERVATIVE STAR TELEGRAM REPORTER GONE Steve McLinden, the Ft. Worth Star Telegram reporter who sent an e-mail to the Young Conservatives of Texas calling them “heartless, greedy, anti-intellectual little fascists” is no longer working for the newspaper. Star Telegram officials confirmed Thursday, March 13, that McLinden is gone, although they provided no information about his departure. Last month, the Young Conservatives contacted Ft. Worth Star Telegram executive editor Jim Witt about McLinden’s vitriolic e-mail, which also charged that the “jackbooted” Young Conservatives are trying to stamp out the two-party system in the U.S. Witt responded to YCT, acknowledged that the e-mail was out of order and promised the matter would be investigated. Young Conservatives president Chris Allen said Thursday he was pleased that the Ft. Worth Star Telegram had taken the action. “We didn’t approach this with the intention of getting Mr. McLinden fired, we were just trying to have fun with the situation,” Allen said. “But the move by the Star Telegram was a brave step – we appreciate it.” Allen said conservatives have had a lot of distrust of the media, but the Star-Telegram’s move could change that attitude. Yeah, it must make thugs like you get stiff little dicks when you get the media to dance for you. That's assuming you can get it up at all. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:54:00 PM | I love you, Eric Idle He's written "The FCC Song". If a radio station plays it, it'll cost a quarter of a million dollars. Go here. Download it. Love it. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:47:00 PM | How low are the Republicans? We know Tom "Bugfucker" DeLay, chicken We know the Simp Chimp is a lying, scumsucking bag of shit. Didja know that Jack Ryan of Illinois had put a stalker on his opponent's trail? Yep. Barack Obama, who stands a damn good chance of winning the senate race in Illinois this November, is being followed day and night by a goon with a video camera. Jack Ryan has hired one Justin Warfel to follow Obama around and record his every word. One more than one occasion, Warfel has heckled Obama. Engaging in a little armchair analysis, I'd say the Mr. Ryan is getting desperate. I'd also speculate that he has a tiny penis, sodomizes diseased goats and really, really needs a visit from someone unafraid to use a Clue-by-four to instill respect for our nation's political traditions. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:29:00 PM | Friday, May 21, 2004
Bravo, John Kerry He's drawn his campaign slogan, "Let America be America Again", from a poem by Langston Hughes. Let America be America again Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:05:00 PM | An interesting (and timely!) blast from the past It's an 11-minute movie from 1946 called "Despotism", and it details the spectrum of political freedom, as well as give some handy charts showing how to tell where your community fits in. Despotism. Enjoy! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:11:00 PM | Friday 5 From the oh-so sneaky Canadian mind of Gord: Sometime in the last few years, I crossed a couple of great divides. For one thing, I stopped being depressed about my life. For another, I completely changed my dietary habits and my attitude toward exercise. Both of these are major changes that I never thought possible, and having made them, I feel somewhat of a discontinuity from the person who, for so long, waited to cross those divides. What are the five greatest divides that you've crossed so far in your life? (1) Fighting back - I've discussed this a lot before, so forgive me for repeating a story some of you have heard many times before. Elementary school was hellish for me. I had been marked early on as bully-bait, and for several years, I endured taunts and occasional but regular beatings at the hands of a small group of other students. I tried every means I could to avoid conflict and contact with them, to no avail. It wasn't until I made the connection that the only thing they respected was force that things changed. The moment I punched the leader of this group in the testicles with a rock in my fist was the moment I crested the mountain. I still lost that fight - the bully's friends beat the holy crap out of me after that - but they left me alone from then on. It was too much work to beat me up, and they didn't get the satisfaction of seeing me cower any more. Where I'd formerly cringed as they neared me, I started looking them in the eye. Where I'd formerly run from them, I charged at them. Where I'd curled up in a ball on the ground, I instead bit, spit, clawed and fought them with every bit of strength at my disposal. I walked straighter, talked louder and didn't ever back down. It wasn't that I stood up to them that made them leave me alone. It was the simple fact that I was not afraid to do everything within my power to take as many of them down with me as I could. (2) Realizing I was taller than my father. My father was always a big figure in my life - he enforced discipline and served as the "bad cop" to my mother's "good cop". This is not to say that he was abusive, just In Charge. During my freshman year in college, I came home for a visit, and it hit me that I was taller than my father. With that epiphany, I was able to move into a position where I gradually came to relate to both of my parents as an adult, rather than as a child. I still defer to my parents in many things - they're smart, and I can respect their judgement, but I do it as my own person. (3) Melissa. My relationship history prior to meeting Melissa was, at best, spotty. A series of bad relationships had led me to be distrustful and unwilling to open up. As our relationship developed from dating to exclusive dating to marriage, I gradually grew myself and rediscovered a lot of the hope I'd lost before. (4) Kids. Like marriage, having children is an experience that can't be described adequately. It's frustrating, exhausting and infuriating. It's also exhilerating, uplifting and full of joy. For me, this was the divide that completely separated me from being an adult. Having another human being's life - not just their physical existence, but their entire life - in your hands can't help but make you grow up. I can't shrug off the consequences of bad decisions now. I have to plan. In advance. I have to think about budgets, and consquences, and clean up messes, and make sure all the piddly stuff is taken care of. Laundry. Schoolwork. Grocery shopping. It's tiring, and I lose my temper over it more than I'd like to admit, but overall, it's a wonderful experience that I wouldn't trade for anything, although an offer of free maid service for life would sorely tempt me some days. (5) This divide is one to come, and it ties in with #4. One day, I'm going to have to let go of the kids and let them be adults. I'm not even in the foothills of this divide yet, but I can see the slope ahead of me, and it's going to be a long hike. (Way to extend a metaphor, eh?) Drew, Franny and Alec will, as I did, grow tired of being "the kids" and want out from under their parents' (benevolent) thumbs. Right now, the question of how I'll deal with that is still academic, so I can look at it somewhat dispassionately, but I know from previous experience that I've got a poor track record of being able to let go of things. Honorable mention goes to my decision several years ago to stop doing theatre. I majored in theatre in college, and really enjoyed the rough-and-tumble of getting a show off the ground. Seeing a show come together was a delight, and I got adrenaline every single night during the run of a show. Some experiences before we moved to Texas with a community theatre in Birmingham, though, reminded me how little I liked most of the people I dealt with in the theatre world, and subsequent experiences in Austin drove that home with grim precision. Before I walked away, I was doing theatre because it was what I had a degree in, not because I loved it any more. The long hours and low pay, the petty bickering, the pompous self-importance and the sneering all just made me ill. That's not to say that all theatre is bad, nor that all theatre people are bad, just that, for me, the negatives outweigh the positives. I'm working a cubicle job now, one that's not terribly exciting, but it's one at which I'm well-compensated. I can be satisfied at the end of the day because I'm providing for my family and I'm respected by people whose opinions I respect. Some might call it selling out, but I'm quite frankly not at all interested in starving for art. Hell, if you know me, you know I'm not interested in starving at all, as my figure quite clearly shows. The other Friday Fivers are listed to the left. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:58:00 AM | Spittle-flecked rant I'm referencing the following article: The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Editorials First, the basic information, written by Bill Hill, a columnist for the Daytona Beach News Journal: Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher....was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity... ...The "Slam Team" was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school's closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived. In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel. A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy. The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job. Bill Nevins was suspended for not censoring the poetry of his students. Remember, there is no obscenity to be found in any of the poetry. He was later fired by the principal. After firing Nevins and terminating the teaching and reading of poetry in the school, the principal and the military liaison read a poem of their own as they raised the flag outside the school. When the principal had the flag at full staff, he applauded the action he'd taken in concert with the military liaison. Then to all students and faculty who did not share his political opinions, the principal shouted: "Shut your faces." What a wonderful lesson he gave those 3,000 students at the largest public high school in New Mexico. In his mind, only certain opinions are to be allowed. But more was to come. Posters done by art students were ordered torn down, even though none was termed obscene. Some were satirical, implicating a national policy that had led us into war. Art teachers who refused to rip down the posters on display in their classrooms were not given contracts to return to the school in this current school year. A friend of mine and fellow devotee of Civil Liberties (Hi, Jeremy!) did a little legwork and got some more information. According to the school's website, the principal is one Gary Tripp. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that anyone call or write the school and give that stupid, fascist sonofabitch hell. Who am I kidding? I'd be delighted if that shitlicking goon had to change his phone number due to the huge number of irate calls coming his way. I'd also be delighted if he lost his job and wound up homeless and trading handjobs for crack, so if anyone can make that happen, I'll be in your debt. The climate in the country is, quite frankly, making me sick. For every thing that gives me hope - The Simp Chimp's plummeting public image, the beautiful scenes of love and commitment we saw in San Francisco earlier this year and earlier this week in Massachusetts - there are easily a half dozen that make me want to alternately vomit and beat the people responsible senseless with a length of steel pipe - Abu Ghraib, illegal detentions in Camp X-Ray, "American Idol", the vile rantings of every single goddamn one of the psychotic windbags that provides right-wing "commentary" on the TV and radio. I've always considered myself a loyal American and a good citizen, but crap like this seriously makes me think that I should just leave. If Gary Tripp keeps his job after this, and isn't ridden out of town on a rail after being tarred, feathered and beaten to within an inch of his life, I've got to seriously question whether or not this nation is worth fighting for. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:25:00 AM | Thursday, May 20, 2004
Something to make you chuckle Coyote vs Acme OPENING Statement of Mr. Harold Schoff, Attorney for Mr. Coyote: My client, Mr. Wile E Coyote, a resident of Arizona and contiguous states, does hereby bring suit for damages against the Acme Company, manufacturer and retail distributor of assorted merchandize, incorporated in Delaware and doing business in every state, district and territory. Mr. Coyote seeks compensation for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering caused as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company, under Title 15 of the United States Code, Chapter 47, section 2072, subsection (a), relating to product liability. Mr. Coyote states that on eighty-five separate occasions he has purchased of the Acme Company (hereinafter, "Defendant"), through that company's mail-order department, certain products which did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labeling. Sales slips made out to Mr. Coyote as proof of purchase are at present in the possession of the Court, marked Exhibit A. And there's more, of course. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:40:00 PM | How does History Judge the Simp Chimp? We can't say yet, but historians, well, that's a different matter. Historians vs. George W. Bush From the article: Although his approval ratings have slipped somewhat in recent weeks, President George W. Bush still enjoys the overall support of nearly half of the American people. He does not, however, fare nearly so well among professional historians. A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University’s History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure. Of 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush’s administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush’s presidency is only the best since Clinton’s and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success. Later on in the article: The past presidencies most commonly linked with the current administration include all of those that are usually rated as the worst in the nation’s history: Nixon, Harding, Hoover, Buchanan, Coolidge, Andrew Johnson, Grant, and McKinley. Here's some choice comparisons: REAGAN: “I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan--because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration. I strongly disliked and distrusted Reagan and think that George W. is even worse.” NIXON: “Actually, I think [Bush’s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.” Bush uses “doublespeak” to “dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ‘Forest Restoration Act’ (which encourages the cutting down of forests).” HOOVER: “I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America’s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.” HARDING: “Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.” McKINLEY: “Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ‘hip pocket’ of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove’s favorite historical president (precedent?).” GRANT: “He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney’s corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant.” “While Grant did serve in the army (more than once), Bush went AWOL from the National Guard. That means that Grant is automatically more honest than Bush, since Grant did not send people into places that he himself consciously avoided. . . . Grant did not attempt to invade another country without a declaration of war; Bush thinks that his powers in this respect are unlimited.” ANDREW JOHNSON: “I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Andrew Johnson. It has been a sellout of fundamental democratic (and Republican) principles. There are many examples, but the most recent would be his successful efforts to insert provisions in spending bills which directly controvert measures voted down by both houses of Congress.” BUCHANAN: “Buchanan can be said to have made the Civil War inevitable or to have made the war last longer by his pusillanimity or, possibly, treason.” “Buchanan allowed a war to evolve, but that war addressed a real set of national issues. Mr. Bush started a war . . . for what reason?” To use The Simp Chimp's own lexicon, I'd say he's had the worst presidentiary ever. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:04:00 AM | Wednesday, May 19, 2004
This is one of many reasons I voted for Dean Almost anyone would be better than The Goddamn Simp Chimp, but I just flat-out liked Dean. In this opinion piece, he shows how the institution of marriage in Vermont was totally decimated by civil unions between gays and lesbians. Not. Vermont's lessons on gay marriage. IN THE SPRING of 2000, Vermont became the first state in the union not only to recognize same-sex partnerships, but to make sure that every single right outlined in the Vermont Constitution and Vermont laws applied equally to heterosexual and homosexual Vermonters. Every right but one. Gay and lesbian Vermonters do not have the right to call their unions marriage. The fallout was the least civil public debate in the state in over a century, since the "wets" and "dries" battled in the middle of the 1800s. Death threats were made, epithets were used, not only on the streets and in the general stores but on the floors of both the Senate and the House, as the bill was being debated. Otherwise respectable church leaders railed against homosexuals and not so respectable ones organized political action committees vowing to oust any legislator who voted for the bill. Five Republican members of the House lost their seats in primaries. In the general election, Democrats lost control of the House for the first time in 14 years, as the Republicans piled up nearly a 20-vote majority. My own race, for a sixth term, was the most difficult in my career. Four years later, we wonder what the fuss was all about. Civil unions were never an issue in Vermont in the 2002 election and will not be this fall. The intensity of anger and hate has disappeared, replaced by an understanding that equal rights for groups previously denied them has no negative effect on those of us who have always enjoyed those rights. My marriage has not become weaker. [snippage mine] Just as the civil rights movement and subsequent integration began the process of removing painful stereotypes held by whites about African-Americans, so does the open declaration and subsequent demand for equal rights begin to remove stereotypes about the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community. Here are some facts about gay and lesbian Americans. Like straight Americans, gay and lesbian Americans are far more concerned about family matters such as jobs, education, and health care than they are about sexual matters. [more snippage] While it is true that the Bible (largely the Old Testament) condemns homosexuality in a few places, it equally condemns eating shellfish. Jesus never mentions homosexuality. The bottom line is this: America is grappling with the discarding of old stereotypes about a group of people who have been part of our country since America has been a country. This is a painful process. Massachusetts hopefully will not have as hard a time as Vermont did, but the struggle is a real one, and will be painful for institutions as well as individuals. All Americans are diminished when we allow stereotyping to dismiss the worth of fellow Americans. All Americans are stronger, and the nation is stronger, when we judge people by who they are, not what they are. Wise words. Now, go donate some money to Kerry so we can kick the Simp Chimp out of our White House. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:44:00 AM | In lighter news Still of the utmost import, of course - don't get me wrong. The Hitchhiker's Guide movie website is up. So DON'T PANIC. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:57:00 AM | Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Cognitive Dissonance, Anyone? Showing once again that he has no understanding of the term "irony", Dumbya puts his foot in it again. Personally, I think it's just one of many words the Idiot Son Of An Asshole doesn't understand, but that's another rant. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the landmark case "Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education", in which the US Supreme Court acknowledged that "separate but equal" was, in point of fact, all of one and none of the other. It's one of those cases that displays what's right about our system - when it works, bad law is struck down and good law is upheld. The end of segregation was a sea change in America - it was no longer OK in the eyes of the Law to discriminate, and over the past 50 years we've made a tremendous amount of progress (admittedly, there's a long way to go still). Yesterday was also the first day of legal same-sex marriage in the state of Massachusetts. The Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" didn't apply in marriage, either, and that the state had no choice but to broaden the freedoms available to its citizens. I cried as I heard a piece on NPR about one couple as I heard their voices breaking as they said their vows and a priest said, "I now pronounce you partners for life and legally married." A beautiful thing, love is. Yesterday, George W. Bush was in Topeka to honor the anniversary of "Brown vs. Board of Education". A good thing for him to do, although his actual record leaves considerably more to be desired. The usual lip service given by Republicans, with no actual deeds to back up the words. Now, when the Supreme Court ruled on school segregation, there was a lot of squealing from the bigots (notably folks like Strom Thurmond and George Wallace) about "activist judges" trying to dictate to the people what they could and couldn't do. Get ready for the irony. On his way to Topeka yesterday, Dumbya said this (emphasis mine): "The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges." That's right, on his way to commemorate a landmark Civil Rights decision, Dumbya sneered at another landmark Civil Rights decision, USING THE EXACT SAME WORDS USED TO ATTACK INTEGRATION. The mind boggles at such willful ignorance. Granted, it's entirely possible that Dumbya was aware of the import of his words, and was using coded phrases to communicate to the Right Wing that he's on their side, and hopes he can get rid of the pesky "forced integration" as well as keep them queers from ruining his and Pickles' wonderful marriage. I dunno, though. Never attribute to malice what can be chalked up to stupidity, as a wise man once said. While The Smirking Chimp has displayed a good degree of malice before, he's displayed an inordinate amount of stupidity. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:51:00 AM | Monday, May 17, 2004
If I believed in Hell, I'd probably go there For the support I gave this bloody, horrible farce in Iraq. I've been wrestling with this for some time - my initial support for the removal of Hussein was based upon my personal belief that there is a moral responsibility to end the rule of tyrants. I let my conviction that as one of the primary backers of Hussein (tacitly, both in his bloody rise to power and his decades of oppression of his own people), the US had a responsibility to remove him. Ideally, this should have been done in 1992, but it wasn't, and I'm sure some degree of frustration over our betrayal of the Shiites when they attempted to revolt fed into this. I thought I was too smart to be taken in - I dismissed suspicions about WMD, but didn't buy the more extreme of the administration's tales about them. Hussein had been pursuing WMD, and I lied to myself that if that was the pretext that would convince the UN to act, it was acceptable. Still, the main thrust of my argument, that Hussein needed to go, remained. The worst excesses of his regime bear that out, but we've done no better since then, as I'll discuss further on. As the war progressed, I began to have doubts - the blitzkrieg across the plains of Iraq, the rapid collapse of the Iraqi army - these and other signs were promising, but I had concerns about the vulnerability of our supply lines. The decision to go ahead with the invasion without the 4th ID seemed impetuous, but I convinced myself that there was a plan. I had to, or admit I'd been wrong. Within a month, I couldn't lie to myself any more, but I still didn't want to admit it. Over the months, every new casualty, both Iraqi civilian and US soldier, has made the ache in me a little bigger, the amount of crow I'll have to eat a little bigger and dryer. Abu Ghraib. Where Hussein had rape rooms and torture chambers, US soldiers under the supervision of civilian CIA contractors tortured, abused, humiliated and raped innocent civilians. In Baghdad and Fallujah and who knows how many other cities, our soldiers "light up" peaceful demonstrations and shoot civilians, apparently at the express orders of the civilian leadership. The plunder of Hussein and his cronies has been replaced by plunder of an entirely different and more urbane sort - Halliburton reaps the benefit of a former leader sitting in the White House. I cannot sit and lie about my part. I am a citizen of the United States. While I did not vote for the president, and I voted for the opponents of both current senators and my representative, I gave aid and comfort to this bloody war. I have blood on my hands. I have dishonored myself, and betrayed my own ideals, because I let myself get fooled. Because I foolishly believed that someone somewhere in our government had the sense to learn from past mistakes, that things would work out all right. With the government we have in place now, there is no compromise. There is no dance of accomodation, no respect for other opinions or beliefs. In the eyes of the world, we are no better than what we ostensibly fought to destroy. No matter how lofty my ideals, I am guilty. The guilt is spread widely across the population of the United States, but it doesn't spread thin. We all have the stain on us, and we've all got to live with that. We can make it right, but it will be a long row to hoe. We have to start by removing the gang of incompetent thugs in office. We have to earn back the esteem in which we used to be held, and we have to admit that we erred. It doesn't matter to the rest of the world how many of us opposed the war - the very fact of the war means that, to make right our nation's sins, we all have to expiate our collective guilt. We can't engage in games of moral dick-wagging. As voters, we are the government, and we are ultimately responsible for our nation's actions. Some of us are more guilty than others, but we're all guilty, both by association and by our very citizenship. Friedrich Nietzsche once warned, "Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." In battling the monster of Hussein, we have allowed ourselves to become monsters as well. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:05:00 PM | New reads for ye Melissa's latest column is up. Read it at domestic disturbance. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:22:00 AM | Sunday, May 16, 2004
Which random Irish Gaelic phrase am I? Ganked from Marvin Take the quiz: "Which Random Irish Gaelic Phrase Are You? "  Go n-eithe na peisteoga thu Go n-eithe na peisteoga thu - 'May the worms eat you.'You're one sick bastard. When you die, you're going to to a very warm place. That is, if you don't already run it. Anyone surprised by this result, come see me after class for some remedial work. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:05:00 PM | What kind of America is this? More than anything else, the Secret Service's pattern of actively subverting our First Amendment rights gives me the heebie-jeebies. So-called "Free Speech Zones" are not about protecting Dumbya from potential assassins or, as one agent claimed in one of the most ludicrous justifications I've ever seen, protecting the weak-minded from possibly wandering into the road in the path of the pResidential motorcade and getting hit by a car. They're designed to create a Potemkin America for The Chimp to wander through, blithely ignorant of the reality of the fact that most of America thinks he's doing a piss-poor job. When Bush went to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us." The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech. The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, but folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign. Neel later commented, "As far as I'm concerned, the whole country is a free-speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind." At Neel's trial, police Detective John Ianachione testified that the Secret Service told local police to confine "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views" in a so-called free- speech area. and... Similar suppressions have occurred during Bush visits to Florida. A recent St. Petersburg Times editorial noted, "At a Bush rally at Legends Field in 2001, three demonstrators -- two of whom were grandmothers -- were arrested for holding up small handwritten protest signs outside the designated zone. And last year, seven protesters were arrested when Bush came to a rally at the USF Sun Dome. They had refused to be cordoned off into a protest zone hundreds of yards from the entrance to the Dome." One of the arrested protesters was a 62-year-old man holding up a sign, "War is good business. Invest your sons." The seven were charged with trespassing, "obstructing without violence and disorderly conduct." and... When Bush stopped by a Boeing plant to talk to workers, Christine Mains and her 5-year-old daughter disobeyed orders to move to a small protest area far from the action. Police arrested Mains and took her and her crying daughter away in separate squad cars. Let's see that last bit again: When Bush stopped by a Boeing plant to talk to workers, Christine Mains and her 5-year-old daughter disobeyed orders to move to a small protest area far from the action. Police arrested Mains and took her and her crying daughter away in separate squad cars. Yeah, big man, Bu$h. Afraid of a 5 year old girl and her mother. I hope we get the chickenshit, lowbrow, lying, cheating, baby-killing ratbastard shiteating alcoholic idiot dumbass motherfucker out of office this November. I want that man to live a long, long life knowing every goddamn instant of it that he's regarded as a pathetic loser, the worst president we've ever had. I want him to wake up the morning after the election to the sight of people dancing in the street outside the White House celebrating his loss. I want him to wind up broke and begging for change on the streets of New York City, sucking down Night Train and fighting off the rats for a place to sleep every night. Hate doesn't even begin to describe the feelings that subhuman goat-raping shit-for-brains no-account genetic reject brings up in me. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:48:00 AM | Saturday, May 15, 2004
Link analysis Lately, I've been getting tons of hits from people apparently hoping to find video of the execution of Nick Berg. Fuckin' sicko snuff-film freaks. NO SNUFF FILMS HERE, NUTJOBS!! Still, it was a relief to see in the dozens of Google hits for "Nick+Berg+head+cut+off+video" one lone search for "black+porn+gangbang". God bless you, lone porn-seeker. You've helped restore some small degree of my faith in humanity. Good luck finding that porn, buddy! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:21:00 AM | Friday, May 14, 2004
Friday 5 - now with distressing personal revelations! Another one o' mine. We all lie to ourselves about something - "No, I don't smoke too much." "I never speed." "I didn't really shoot that man in Reno just to watch him die." What are the top 5 lies that are your life? What will you rationalize away, no matter how like a 500-pound (about 227.3 KG) gorilla it is? To be honest, when I came up with this question, I was thinking of the discomfort of others rather than myself. Still, I'm nothing if not a good sport (that one's a freebie), so I'll play along. (1) I'm socially confident. Most of my life, I've suffered from an at times crippling social anxiety. Having ADD, it's been very hard for me to actually connect emotionally with others - as I described it to one psychologist I saw, it's like the refraction one sees looking into a pool of water - the emotions I react to are skewed by my perceptions, so what seems a witty comment to me often is perceived as me being hurtful. I've compensated for my concerns by adopting a loud, fast-paced demeanor and hoping that by just running rough-shod over myself as I speak, I can breeze past any social blunders. Works five times out of ten. (2) Winning isn't everything. Those that play games with me know what a hard time I have with this concept. I play to win, and I hate to lose - natural enough, I know. Still, I can be hyper-competitive if I don't force myself not to be. Our friends from college to this day refuse to play Trivial Pursuit with me, and shortly after Melissa and I got married, I reduced my Mother-in-law almost to the point of tears when we played Monopoly (she wanted a loan from the bank, I stuck to the rules, things got tense and I still feel rotten about it). I blame this situation on genetics and family dynamics - my older brother and I are 15 months apart, and games were for us what armed conflicts in 3rd world nations were to the US and Soviets during the Cold War. To lose to my brother was worse than almost anything else, and so I started refusing to admit defeat. Cheating was still out - for a win to count, it had to be because I was a better strategist and tactician, not to mention luckier, better looking and smarter. (3) I'm a cynic. In truth, I'm an incurable optimist. Which is why I'm so bitter lost of the time - I have high expectations for myself and my fellow human beings, and it infuriates me when I'm disappointed. Even when I know I'm setting myself up to be disappointed, I hang onto these expectations. No matter what news of environmental degradation, I maintain the belief that, as a species, we can sort it all out and make it better. No matter how horrific the news, I believe that, in the end, the world will be at the end of the day marginally better than it was before. (4) I'm a good ol' boy. Yeah, I was Raised Right, and I like a good beer with my (CAROLINA STYLE) BBQ. I have a Redneck pedigree going back at least to the colonization of America, and I suspect it'd go back further if there was a Saxon, Latin or Celtic term for my People. Still. I'm more comfortable in a city, I hate pickup trucks, I'm an intellectual and it's only the most pure country music that appeals to me. I don't even really enjoy the prospect of dealin' out a good ass whuppin', and I actually like Yankees. Except for the New York Yankees, and that's because no right-thinking baseball fan likes them. (5) I can't think of anything else I lie to myself about. In truth, there's tons of things, but I'm not comfortable being honest about them. The other Friday Fivers are listed to the left. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:02:00 AM | Thursday, May 13, 2004
19,000 Hits creeping up on us Which means if you want to get in on the CONTEST, you'd better enter soon. I'll stop accepting entries tomorrow night or as soon as we hit 19,000, whichever comes last. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:26:00 PM | Oh, riiiiight. It all makes sense to me now! In the "I can't believe there's a person twisted enough to make this dumb-ass argument" department, Jeremy Reynalds of Mens' News Daily says Gays and lesbians are to blame for Iraqi prisoner abuse. Shall we look over his "reasoning"? At least until the gorge rises so high in our throats that we have to stop to vomit. Could it be, as Rush Limbaugh mentioned in passing on a recent broadcast, that the perpetrators of the alleged crime are homosexuals? If that's the case, maybe the motivation for their activities was far different than from what has been discussed in the media's wall to wall coverage of this incident. If these individuals are homosexuals, maybe they were getting stimulated by looking at naked Iraqis in sexually provocative positions. I don't know about the rest of you, but I find nothing less sexually provocative than the sight of people being abused by prison guards in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Well, maybe a few things, like John Ashcroft, snuff films and the music of Faith Hill, but I can tell you that I did not experience even an involuntary muscle twitch in my crotch looking at those pictures. Why, you ask? Many people believe that homosexuals have a much greater potential than heterosexuals to be sexual predators. In addition, a sizeable number of sexually dysfunctional individuals (aka sexual predators) take pictures of their illicit acts. It gives them an opportunity to glory in their "conquest" as they visually relive their sickening activities. Nice dodge, there: "Many people believe..." - so fucking what? Many people believed that Jews made matzoh from the blood of Christian babies, and that Adolf Hitler was good for Germany. They were wrong, as are the nebulous "many people" you cite, dipshit. Mr. Reynalds, you quite simply have no idea what you're talking about. I do believe that you must've got some kind of rise out of those pictures, considering the amount of verbage you've devoted to obsessing over their supposed provacative nature, and I believe you probably want desperately to further some twisted homophobic agenda by blaming homosexuals for what is, at its root, evidence of a systematic pattern of callous disregard for international law, human rights and simple human decency. The fact is, blame for this lies up at the top - with Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and their gang of neoconservative chickenhawks. You decry a "thinly veiled attempt to politicize the situation", which seems to me to be a case of projection. To turn something like this into an attack on the GLBT community is sickening at best, and worthy of nothing more so than the scorn of real Americans who have seen enough of you and your ilk's efforts to dehumanize anyone that disagrees with you. Fuck off, you vacuous, boneheaded turd. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 2:27:00 PM | Scary stuff The scariest thing is, it's so damn plausible. The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012 Note that I don't issue this as a broadside against the military, but rather as a caution about overreliance upon any one arm of the government as a panacea. This caution applies to the courts, Congress, the President and all subsidiary branches. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:58:00 AM | Rummy the Dummy supports torture I'm starting to wonder if "the best Secretary of Defense, EVAH" is senile or insane. How else to explain his decision to ignore the Taguba report on abuse in Abu Ghraib until "60 Minutes II" ran a story on it? How else to explain his continued backing of sleep deprivation and other borderline torture methods in interrogations in Iraq? I'm not the only one concerned about him, either. Lots of current and former military officers want his ass impeached. That's a nice start, but we need to, as Emeril says, "kick it up a notch". Impeach Dumbya and Captain Heart Attack, and throw their worthless asses into a hardcore federal "punch you in the ass" penitentiary for a few dozen years. Wouldn't it be funny to hear Kkkarl Rove squealing as he got hauled into the showers for some "special time" with some other inmates? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:39:00 AM | Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Some humor, kind of Back when I was in high school in rural Georgia, there wasn't much to do on weekend nights. My friends and I would play D&D, but eventually, we'd end up where most other teenagers in the area did - driving around, shoooting the breeze, and maybe scoring some beer. One guy in my group was Rodney - we called him "Poot", although no one knows where or how he got the nickname. Poot was full of weird opinions - he believed for months that Motley Crue was all women, and when finally confronted with the undeniable fact that the heavily-made-up metalheads were all men, stated, "Hell. If that Nikki had a pussy, I'd fuck 'im." One ritual that happened every week was that, when we stopped for gas, Poot would go inside the store and inevitably return with an armload of Bear Paws, a sticky frosted cinnamon pastry. We would happily fall upon these and eat them as we contiunued to drive around, and it was some time before we noticed that Poot never actually ate any. The next weekend, he did it again. "Anybody want a Beah Paww?" Poot asked as he got in the car. I asked, "Hey, Poot, how come you don't eat any?" "Aw, man, I hate them things." "Then why do you get them?" "Hell, they's four fo' a dollah!" posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:06:00 AM | Ralph Nader - titty-baby For those of you from outside the Deep South, that term might be unfamiliar. A titty-baby is one that whines or cries at every opportunity. Ralph Nader suing Texas because he can't get enough signatures on his petitions. "Democracy is under assault in Texas," Mr. Nader said. "Through unconstitutional laws and denial of access to public places, Texas voters are being denied more voices and more choices. So, lemme get this straight - Nader can't get enough people to sign a petition to get on the ballot, so he's whining about it. According to Burnt Orange Report, his supporters are paying $1 per signature and they're still not getting enough signatures. Democracy under assault, Mr. Nader? Considering the yeoman's work you did for the Republicans in 2000, I'm amazed you have the gall to talk of democracy being under assault. Were it not for you, Gore would have handily carried Florida and we wouldn't have the current Constitutional Gang-rapists in office. Here's a suggestion - fuck off, Nader. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:47:00 AM | Tuesday, May 11, 2004
As you sow, so shall ye reap one hundred-fold God-DAMMIT. Already, we're seeing the benefits of Mr. Bring-It-On's "Git Tuff" strategy in Iraq. Iraqi militants claiming al-quaeda link behead captured American civilian. Nick Berg, after being held by Iraqi provisional government officials without charges, was released and almost immediately kidnapped by militants and beheaded in a videotaped execution in retaliation for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. First off, I'd like to say, "Well done!" to the militants, for murdering an innocent man. Another "Well done!" to the dipshits at the Pentagon and White House who did NOTHING about abuse at Abu Ghraib until the news media started talking about it. Finally, "Well done!" to pResident Bu$h for everything he's done to ensure that the Arab world hates us for generations to come. Fuckin' morons, all of them. Do you wonder why I'm bitter? In a delightful postscript, the morons in the next bank of cubicles are talking about how those damn mooslem terrorists are gonna get theirs when we just drop an a-bomb on their pagan asses. AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:34:00 PM | David Brock on The Right Wing Noise Machine Watch an ad, read the article. It's Salon, so you know it's worth it Thirty years ago, conservatives embarked on a plan to subvert journalism and skew America to the right. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Can we beat them? I think yes, but I'm beginning to wonder if America is worth it. All my life, I've believed that, overall, despite our many failings, this nation has been a net force for good. It's getting to be too hard to sustain that belief of late. I sit at work and listen to people laugh about the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners, up to 90% of whom, according to the Red Cross, aren't even guilty of anything save being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Guatanamo Bay, where hundreds of men and boys have been detained for years now without charge or trial, and where our president has been in all seriousness making the argument that he is above the law - any law. We know that global warming is a looming threat, but we're unwilling to do anything about it. Despite overwhelming evidence that homosexuality is genetic and as natural as any other predispositional behavior, most Americans still seem to believe it's "just a lifestyle choice", and that Gays aren't deserving of the same rights as other Americans. The religious right makes progress every day on turning America into some kind of twisted theocracy built in the image of some bizarre amalgam of the Spanish Inquisition and Puritan ideals. So I dunno. Tomorrow, I might feel different, but today, I'm just sick and tired of it all. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:42:00 AM | Monday, May 10, 2004
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Yeats. Damn fine poet, and this is my favorite by him. Conservatives Justify Torture As 'Blowing Off Steam' What rough beast, indeed. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:48:00 PM | 18,000 Hits That's what the counter read when I logged in this AM. Reminded me - only 2000 hits until 20,000, which means you guys have only 1000 until I stop taking entries for my contest. Don't forget to email me with your prediction for the date and time this blog will accumulate 20,000 hits. Put "A VIOLENTLY EXECUTED CONTEST" in the subject line and your name & your prediction in the body. Winner gets a mix CD of glam-rock standards and some homemade chocolate chip cookies. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:47:00 AM | Sunday, May 09, 2004
Useful website MediaMatters.Org Keeps an eye on the posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:58:00 PM | And now for something lighthearted... Perusing my list of weird links, I came across the Cthulhu Lives! homepage. Among all their other Weird Goodies, I found a commercial you've GOT to watch. I want this breakfast cereal. 2 meg movie, sound required posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:17:00 PM | A practical solution to the disturbing reports coming out of Iraq. When confronted with soldiers emailing photos of torture to friends, relatives and newspapers, what does MULTIPLE CHOICE TIME! Do they... (a) forthrightly address the institutional and systematic problems that led to the abuse, including court-martials for the officers responsible? (b) Publicly and emphatically apologize for allowing war crimes to take place and immediately act to end the abuses? (c) End "inessential" internet access for troops? If you chose "c", you're not cynical, bitter or unAmerican. You're just painfully aware of how this misAdministration works. Happy Mothers' Day, Dumbya. You're a real mother, and I mean that in only the negative ways. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:01:00 PM | Mothers' Day We're all up early (for a Sunday) at our house. Baby Alec was up and fussy last night, so I ended up rocking him back to sleep on the couch and falling asleep downstairs, which makes my back feel oh-so-good. With any luck, Melissa got a couple of hours of sleep in the process. Haven't looked at the news today, but I'm sure I'll be disappointed by my fellow human beings once again. Just gonna focus on the family picnic we're planning for after church. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:19:00 AM | Saturday, May 08, 2004
OK, we're fucking doomed No, not because of The Chimp and his Clusterfucking minions, although they're certainly pushing us rapidly towards some kind of disastrous tipping point. I speak, rather of THIS. An electric lid remover. Are we so fucking lazy that we can't use our goddamn HANDS to open a jar? I mean, come on! I'm no Samson, yet I have no problem opening jars. For those of us unable to do that, they make simple, handheld devices that use leverage to provide the necessary oomph. There is no logical reason for someone of even passably sound body to need one of these. Fucking DOOMED. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 4:48:00 PM | Friday, May 07, 2004
New Friday 5, NOW WITH TIME TRAVEL! From the British lifestyle forced into a Scandanavian nation known as Rob: if you could travel forward in time and meet yourself for a drink or a coffee somewhere, what are the five things you'd ask yourself about how your life turned out? OK, before I get to the bar, I'd stop at a bookstore and buy an almanac, and maybe try to pick up a CD-rom with the last 20 years or so of the Wall Street Journal. A summary of the last 20 years of winning lotto numbers wouldn't be that bad, either. It's all about the Benjamins, baby. My questions would be, in this order: (1) How's the family? I'd want to know how my kids are doing, if there were any specific bits of trouble I'd need to be prepared for. Is Melissa doing well? The parents, siblings and all the rest? I don't know if I'd want to know specific dates for the deaths of my parents, but if anyone dies prematurely or accidentally, I'd like to know how to prevent it. (2) Did I ever get off my ass and write something? (Note to future self: It's OK to lie to me, if it might get me off my ass to do something) (3) OK, so the 2004 election, Bush lost, right? I've got $20 says he did, and I so want to take Garcia's money on this bet. That's a table dance at the local strip club, and I'm going to make Garcia get the table dance. (4) Have I said or done any really dumb things I ought to be forewarned about, so I don't do 'em? Got in a fight with a friend over something stupid? Tried to pistol-whip the pResident? Taken a dump in any punchbowls? Names, dates and details so I can avoid them. (5) Do you have one of those flying cars yet, or did The Future rip you off? Flying cars are cool. Rather prosaic questions (and I figure I'll know if I succeed in my "future knowledge for past cash" plan by whether or not FutureMe buys the drinks. The other fivers are, as always, located to the left. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:21:00 AM | Thursday, May 06, 2004
| Pat Tillman You wanna know what his family and friends think of the Dumbya misAdministration's attempts to Canonize Pat Tillman? True hero athlete / Day's theme: Challenge yourself Tillman's youngest brother, Rich, wore a rumpled white T-shirt, no jacket, no tie, no collar, and immediately swore into the microphone. He hadn't written anything, he said, and with the starkest honesty, he asked mourners to hold their spiritual bromides. "Pat isn't with God,'' he said. "He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.'' There's more in the article - it paints a picture of a man we should honor not as a martyr, but as a good man. He was a good man before he died. He was a citizen, and a damn well-educated one at that. Skeptical, intelligent, caring and concerned about doing what was right, based on his ideals. And now, he's dead. I'm not going to turn this into an attempt to make him into a poster-boy for the anti-Bush axis, I just think we need to leave his corpse alone and let his family and friends grieve their loss. Let them be. Let Pat Tillman be. He's not a symbol, he's not a hero. He's a person, just like the hundreds of others of his fellow citizen-soldiers that have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Focus on the living, and what we can do for them. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:40:00 PM | Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Don't know how this one slipped under my radar But I'm by-God pissed off as hell about it. Virginia, home of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and George Washington (and, sadly, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell) has passed a piece of legislation that makes Michigan's attempt to make it perfectly fine for doctors to refuse patients treatment if they don't like their ways look like responsible, progressive legislation. I am speaking of Virginia House Bill 751, which says the following: A civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage is prohibited. Any such civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement entered into by persons of the same sex in another state or jurisdiction shall be void in all respects in Virginia and any contractual rights created thereby shall be void and unenforceable. Short, but not sweet. It means that, among other things, the fine state of Virginia will not recognize gay marriages performed in other states. It won't recognize domestic partnerships from other states. It will make adoptions by gay couples in other states null and void in Virginia. Gay couples will not be able to sign contracts to allow each other to make medical decisions. Gays will not be able to will their estates to their partners. Health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, home loans, business loans - all not allowed for gay couples, or even couples that look gay to the courts. The governor, realizing that this was too flagrant and rancid even for him to stomach, changed the language and sent it back to the legislature to be voted upon in its amended form, but the legislators of Virginia garnered enough votes to override his veto threat and passed the law anyway. Frankly, I'm beyond disgusted. Part of me wants to cry and scream in anger, while the other part feels a lot like I did the time I found a nest of rats in the chicken coop on the farm - no emotion, I just killed every one of those rats within the reach of my shovel, from the fat adults all the way down to the hairless and blind babies. I'm sure that I'll eventually be more willing to let the rational part of my brain think about legal challenges and boycotts, of letter-writing and petitions, but right now, I wish I was there in front of that legislature holding a big shovel. Puny, sick little fascist bigots. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:59:00 PM | Ralph Nader - Asshole, Assbag and Ass-licker for Bu$h This article: The Village Voice: Features: Ralph Nader, Suicide Bomber by Harry G. Levine pretty much sums up why I loathe Nader so much. Dig on these quotes: Later I was introduced to Nader's closest adviser, his handsome, piercingly intelligent 30-year-old nephew, Tarek Milleron. Although Milleron argued that environmentalists and other activists would find fundraising easier under Bush, he acknowledged that a Bush presidency would be worse for poor and working-class people, for blacks, for most Americans. As Moore had, he claimed that Nader's campaign would encourage Web-based vote-swapping between progressives in safe and contested states. But when I suggested that Nader could gain substantial influence in a Democratic administration by focusing his campaign on the 40 safe states and encouraging his supporters elsewhere to vote Gore, Milleron leaned coolly toward me with extra steel in his voice and body. He did not disagree. He simply said, "We're not going to do that." "Why not?" I said. With just a flicker of smile, he answered, "Because we want to punish the Democrats, we want to hurt them, wound them." Rolling Stone: "In 1996, you told the New York Times, 'If I really wanted to beat Clinton, I would get out, raise $3 or $4 million, and maybe provide the margin for his defeat. That's not the purpose of this candidacy.' Since you're planning to raise $5 million and run hard this year, does that mean you would not have a problem providing the margin of defeat for Gore?" Nader: "I would not—not at all." "Throughout the campaign, Nader brushed aside concerns that he might help elect Bush by employing one of several blithe quips," wrote Jonathan Chait in the November 2002 American Prospect. "If asked about being a spoiler, he'd invariably reply, 'You can't spoil a system that's spoiled to the core.' " Chait concludes: "Not since Steve Forbes has a presidential candidate turned aside unwanted queries so robotically. Nader's one-liners were pure, made-for-television nonsequiturs, all refusing to engage on any substantive level the fact that his candidacy might prove a decisive factor in Bush's election." There's more, providing a pretty damn solid (and damning) base for accusations that Nader's nothing more than a self-absorbed, lying tool. I'm gonna put the rest in all caps and bold, just to make sure folks understand: IF YOU VOTE FOR NADER, YOU ARE VOTING FOR BUSH, PLAIN AND SIMPLE. A VOTE FOR NADER IS A VOTE AGAINST GETTING THE LIARS AND BASTARDS OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE Got it? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 2:30:00 PM | Mad Props A hearty thanks to GreenCine Daily for a link and some extry traffic! Without any hope of renumeration, Greencinelooks to be a good DVD rental outlet for them folks as got out-of-mainstream tastes. Check it out, see if they got titles you wanna see! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:28:00 PM | Presented without comment Well, maybe a little. Ganked this from Mouse Words, an Austin blog I haven't said enough about yet. Breakdown of states by average IQ and how they voted in 2000. BWAH! Please, spare me any outraged comments on how EEEEEVIL IQ tests are and how poorly they measure anything of substance. I KNOW that, this is just for a funny, 'K? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:09:00 AM | So what now? Marvin linked to this article, and I felt compelled to make some more comments on it. A Wretched New Picture Of America (washingtonpost.com) Marvin, and the article's writer, Philip Kennicott, both make a good point: America is at the same time the best and the worst of us. We are Martin Luther King, Jr, FDR, Lincoln, Jack Kirby and Herman Melville. We are also Lt. Calley, Richard Nixon, J. B. Stoner, Thomas Kinkaide and Danielle Steele. To accept the best that Americans have been and done, we have to cop to the worst. The war in Iraq, which I initially supported based upon my own belief that the people of Iraq needed to be rid of Hussein (and also supported thinking that some real effort would be made to get the UN involved - more the fool me), will likely be known by the photographs of grinning GIs giving a thumbs up as they pose near piles of naked, hooded Iraqi men and boys. Just as Vietnam is represented by the photo of a young girl running naked down the road in an appempt to escape the napalm burning her body, and by a photograph of a South Vietnamese officer executing a young man on a streetcorner, Iraq will be known as, not a Just War to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, not a Just War to liberate a people oppressed by a dictator to whom we gave tacit and explicit support to over the years, but as a war predicated upon a tapestry of lies, arrogance, greed and powerlust. A war that served ultimately to give our enemies ammunition in their fight against us. We've got a lot to be proud of in America, but we've got a lot to be ashamed of, too. We're no different from the rest of the world in that. [LATE ADDITIONS] Chris at Pressure Valve provides a handy little timeline of what the misAdministration knew and when they knew it. MSNBC has a transcript of the Army's report on Abu Ghraib - read it, before it goes down the memory hole. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:45:00 AM | You wanna see where I used to live? My parents' house is on the market. It's a bargain! If you buy it, I'll tell you where I stashed my porn in high school. Might be some vintage stuff still hidden up there. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:59:00 AM | Tuesday, May 04, 2004
As if we needed more, yet another reason Disney SUCKS ASS Disney blocking US distribution of film critical of Bu$h. Yes, it's the NYT. Try salon/tabletalk to get in Michael Eisner has blocked Miramax pictures from distributing Michael Moore's latest film, "Fahrenheit 911" because of... concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor. Yeah, I can see that. I can also see that it makes perfect sense for yet another fat-cat corporation to do its damndest to fuck over anyone that has the audacity to speak against the Status Quo. I'm not trying to make Moore out to be some kind of saint - he skews a little too far into strident and screechy for me most of the time - but I can only hope that this situation adds to the pressure on the American public and media to make them WAKE THE FUCK UP. At the risk of being forced to go put on a tinfoil helmet, I'd like to suggest that the odds of what happened in Abu Ghraib happening to dissenters here will go up sharply if The Chimp gets elected this time around. Hell, we've already got f'Right Dingers claiming that sexual assault, being beaten with sticks (to death, in a couple of cases), being humiliated, getting chemicals poured on you - none of those things are, really, all that bad. Sooner or later, the enemy'll morph from the brown people to anyone that doesn't agree with them. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:04:00 PM | Look ma, no cavities! I like going to the dentist - not in a weird way, like Jack Nicholson's character in "Little Shop of Horrors", but in a "It's rather relaxing" kind of way. The hypothetical cuteness of the hygienists has nothing to do with this, so you can stop sniggering behind my back there. Never minded the doctor too much, either, for that matter. That's more understandable, 'cause the doctor gives you Happy Pills sometimes. For those that might be wondering, yesterday was just about as close as I get these days to Existential Doubt. I'm doing fine, keeping a low profile in the office and quietly putting out feelers for different jobs. Life ain't bad, 'cept for the aforementioned lack of sleep, which should go away at some point in the future. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:52:00 PM | Monday, May 03, 2004
Tell me why I don't like Mondays Apart from the return to the tedium of being cooped up in a cubicle farm with a group of, with a few notable exceptions, individuals with about as much intellectual curiosity as a pile of dirt. Apart from knowing that I've got 4 more mornings ahead of me that will consist of waking up short on sleep, of Melissa being more and more short on sleep, of trying to rush Drew though the morning to get him to school. Some minor interpersonal issues have come up at work recently, and I've realized that the job I'm currently doing has ceased to interest me. I realize that I'm making a complaint millions of folks would like to make, that there are people that would kill just to have a job, and a wonderful family and to be as good-looking, witty, clever and well-hung as I am. Doesn't help, at the moment. I can't enjoy being better off than someone else unless they've pissed me off in some way. I'm feeling like a half-empty kind of guy at the moment. Part of it is the fact that there's a good possibility that Dumbya will be elected this time. The thought of being subjected to 4 more years of Constitutional Ass Rape by that high-functioning moron and his gang of thugs, of seeing torture, illegal detention, collective punishment, know-nothing-ism, homophobic, gynophobic, racist bullshit passed off as "the way of the world, post 9/11" makes me want to build a giant Death Ray and start culling people. At the same time, I need to find something to do here at work that's intellectually demanding. Playing pissant office politics with the schmuck a few cubicles away is rather like beating up on grade school kids - it's easy as hell, but you feel unclean after you're done. (Not that I've beaten up on any grade school kids since I was in grade school - just trying out a simile.) There's not much challenge going on right now, and I kind of need to be at the low end of a learning curve to really feel like there's somewhere for me to go. So, to sum up my uniquely First World problems: I'm overweight, I'm not happy at my job, and my baby is healthy but unwilling to sleep all through the night. Feel free to hurl brickbats at me in the comments. Oh, did I mention I don't have enough time to goof off? Yeah, life's tough all over. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:59:00 AM | Sunday, May 02, 2004
From Cool to Stupid First, we've got this: Spray-on armor. V. spiffy, I want a can as soon as it's on the market. Next, we go to Florida, where some genius, a modern DaVinci, a genius of Edisonian proportions, has invented THE SELF-CHILLING BEER CAN! If there isn't a Nobel Prize for beer, there oughtta be. And now for the Stupid: DEA agent giving gun safety class for kids shoots self in leg: During the speech, the agent drew his .40-caliber duty weapon and removed the magazine, the report said. He then pulled back the slide and asked a man in the audience to look inside the weapon to make sure it was not loaded, the report said. "The person nodded that it didn't have ammunition," Farmer recounted. "The gun was never pointed at anyone." Witnesses told police that the agent kept his gun pointed toward the floor and when he released the slide, the weapon fired one shot into the top of his thigh. The important question is, did the kids learn anything? "Everyone was pretty shaken up," Farmer said. "But the point of gun safety hit home. Unfortunately, the agent had to get shot. But after seeing that, my nephew doesn't want to have anything to do with guns." And knowing is half the battle. Yo, JOE! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:58:00 AM | Saturday, May 01, 2004
Gotta Have It Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation - a book about a subject near and dear to my heart. Some tidbits from a piece on CNN about the book: "People who don't know their apostrophe from their elbow are positively invited to disseminate their writings to anyone on the planet stupid enough to double-click and scroll," she writes. Truss takes a road sign that warns "Children Drive Slowly" as a declarative sentence describing young drivers' lack of speed, and notes that the sign "No Dogs Please" is flat-out wrong. "Many dogs do please, as a matter of fact; they rather make a point of it," she writes. I think I'm in love with Lynne Truss. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:48:00 AM | |
