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Thursday, June 30, 2005
Adam To Congress: GET FUCKED! Once again, the House of Representatives has refused to block a pay raise for themselves. In a 263-152 vote, the House blocked a bid by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to force an up-or-down vote on the pay raise. Instead, lawmakers will automatically receive the raise _ officially a cost of living adjustment _ as provided for in a 1989 law that barred them from pocketing big speaking fees in exchange for an annual COLA.These motherfuckers will be pulling down over $165,000 per year starting in 2006. Minimum wage in the US is $5.15/hour. A worker at minimum wage earns in a year, before taxes, the princely sum of $10,712. That's less than the greedy fatcat shitbags in Congress earn in a goddamn MONTH. 123 of the 435 members of the House of Representatives are millionaires. In the Senate, about 1/3 are millionaires. How the fuck much more money do they need? In 2003, approximately 35,861,000 Americans lived below the poverty level. 45,000,000 Americans live without health insurance and millions more are stuck with high-deductible, low-care plans that amount to the same as having no insurance at all. Soldiers in Iraq are still scavenging pieces of scrap metal to bolt onto their vehicles as armor, and Congress was recently told that they'd underfunded the Veteran's Administration to the tune of $2.6 billion. Where the fuck are your priorities, Congress? Tom Delay, the Heirarch of Hypocrisy, the Sultan of Slime, had this to say: "It's not a pay raise. It's an adjustment so that they're not losing their purchasing power."Yeah, well I haven't seen a fuckin' raise or "cost of living adjustment" in over 5 years. My goddamn "purchasing power" has been declining for years, you motherfucking thief. Why don't you go talk to the fuckin' stockers at Wal-Mart and tell them why it's more important that 535 fatcats in Washington, DC keep their "purchasing power" but making sure the blue-smocked wage-slaves earn enough to support their families and get decent health insurance from their employer just isn't a priority. Fuck you, every Representative that didn't vote against this pay raise. That'll go double in the Senate if they once again block Senator Feingold's efforts to force accountability. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:50:00 AM   | Rock On, Spain! Spanish Council of Deputies gives the Pope the finger, approves same-sex marriage. "We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentlemen, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told the chamber before the vote.Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, alone among all world leaders, is offered free beer if he's ever in Austin. Once the Canadian Senate gives final approval to same-sex marriage, Paul Martin is welcome too. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:23:00 AM | Wednesday, June 29, 2005
A Warning From Canada Thanks to Michael and Dan, I now know that the wicked funny piece below is from Uncut_Diamond. A warning to my Yankee Friends. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:53:00 PM | Hats Off To Canada! Canadian Parliament passes equal marriage rights bill. Well done, Canada! We rational people here in the US look to you as a beacon of hope for our future. Hell, we even forgive you for Celine Dion and Shania Twain after this. Now, if you guys could do something about those winters, I might consider moving up there. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:44:00 AM | Tuesday, June 28, 2005
I'm Shocked, Shocked To Find That Gambling Is Going On In Here! Halliburton Iraq deals described as contract abuse A top U.S. Army procurement official said on Monday Halliburton's deals inAnd what have we on the Left been saying for years? Yep, that exact same thing. "I observed, first hand, that essentially every aspect of the RIO (Restore Iraqi Oil) contract remained under the control of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This troubled me and was wrong," said Greenhouse.Damn those un-American whistleblowers! Standing in the way of higher dividends for Dick Cheney and his fatcat asslicking buddies - whose side is Bunny Greenhouse on, anyway? Sounds like someone needs some softening-up in Gitmo to me! What concerned Greenhouse most was that the oil contract, which had a top value of $7 billion, was given to KBR without competitive bidding.Of course, we're not supposed to question Halliburton's motives or actions - Dick Cheney took it upon himself to investigate the scurrilous charges levied against him and has confirmed that they're balderdash. Who are we to doubt the word of Dick "The Insurgency Is In Its Last Throes" Cheney? Making sure I've got this straight: Consensual blowjob = $40,000,000+ investigation and 8 years of bullshit media coverage of Bill Clinton's penis in excruciating detail. Blatant cronyism and corruption, billions of dollars of taxpayer money missing = Nothing. Maybe we ought to claim that Halliburton cloned the Clenis and is fucking interns with it... posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:02:00 PM | Rick Santorum: Fucking Idiot or Lying Ratbastard? I vote: BOTH! Santorum blames Beantown for Buggery. In an opinion piece for Catholic Online, the Senator with an obsession with "man on dog" sex proclaims that it's the damn liberals that are to blame for the "decline" in our moral climate: It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning "private" moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.Riiiiiight. The people of Boston are to blame for the Roman Catholic Church's utter failure to act decisively to identify and stop priests that were sexually abusing children. Sorry, Ricky. I don't take the word of a nutjob that lets his kids play with a dead fetus on issues like this - I look at the events and see instead that a viciously patriarchal church actively worked to cover up the serial abuse of children by priests, shuffling the priests from diocese to diocese when things got too hot for them, and coercing their victims to keep their mouths shut so as to avoid embarassment for the church. John Law, as a Bishop, Archbishop and Cardinal, actively and enthusiastically participated in the cover-up. He was rewarded for his criminal acts by the senile cross-dresser John Paul II with a nice, cushy sinecure at a basilica in Rome, safe from prosecution in the US for the rest of his life. Don't blame liberals for the failings of the out-of-touch criminals in the upper hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church - the faculty of Harvard didn't hold priests at gunpoint to force them to rape children. John Kerry wasn't helping cover up abuse and Ted Kennedy never once threatened a victim with excommunication if he came forward. Rick Santorum thinks that he's got some moral authority, but his hypocritical support for this administration and their illegal, immoral war in Iraq puts the lie to the pious diarrhea spewing from his lips. There's something about glass houses and stones that applies to Ricky here. The GLBT community isn't to blame for the declining membership of the Roman Catholic Church. CNN didn't create the twisted, gyno- and homo-phobic climate in the church. The priests that are required to behave as if they were sexless automatons and the sick old control freaks that lead your precious church - they're to blame. Don't try to pass the buck. Since you implicitly support the culture of pedophilia in the hierarchy of your church, you're to blame too. So take your bullshit on down the road - no one's buying it here. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:25:00 AM | Monday, June 27, 2005
| Nothing To See Here, Move Along California National Guard counterterrorism unit spying on American citizens. [San Jose Mercury News - registration required, or go to BugMeNot.com] Three decades after aggressive military spying on Americans created a national furor, California's National Guard has quietly set up a special intelligence unit that has been given ``broad authority'' to monitor, analyze and distribute information on potential terrorist threats, the Mercury News has learned.Isn't that something, folks? Your Homeland Security tax dollars at work! Col. Robert J. O'Neill, a veteran intelligence officer who started last week as director of the new program, said he envisions his team as being a one-stop shop for local, state and national law enforcement to share information. Intelligence officers will have access to sensitive national security information that they can analyze and potentially share with state and local law enforcement, he said.A big ol' "Fuck you very much" to the Governator and his toadies! Yeah, I can see that it'd be a piece of cake for Osama Bin Laden to infiltrate Code Pink or the Raging Grannies. Hell, maybe we oughta just round up the Gold Star Families for Peace and chuck 'em all in Gitmo - it'd be no less than they deserve, the unAmerican traitors! A little round of waterboarding for some middle-aged moms and dads would really drive home how fuckin' seriously committed we are to rooting out ThoughtCrime in this country. Color me disgustipated. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:13:00 PM | Sunday, June 26, 2005
Congenital Idiots On The Internets! In response to a blog entry I made about the Bushistas and our illegal detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, some yahoo from Alaska named Bruce Robertson had this to say: I just finished reading an artical regarding the burning of our American flag. This is the second bullshit story I've read in as many days about how it is ok to burn the flag. For many of these cocksuckers to burn our great symbol of freedom, they have no clue why they are doing it. A man told me the other day while watching some piece of shit on TV burn the flag, "its just a piece of cloth". The fuck it is! It is what this country stands for, freedom. Yes, even the faggots who burn our flag have rights and those rights were written with the blood of countless men and women who fought for not only their freedom but for future generations as well. How dare you and anyone else disgrace this country by burning away that which symbolizes the greatest country in the world. I say we take every single one of those miserable faggot bastards who burns the flag, stuff them into a potato sack and drown them like a litter of unwanted kittens. God bless those who have fought for this country and those who stand in line for their turn to do the same. And for those who think flag burning is ok, well.......FUCK YOU!Let's parse this out, shall we? Just set aside the numerous spelling and grammatical errors and look at the statements he makes.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:56:00 AM | Why I Love Psychiatrists We've heard a lot from the definitely NOT gay Über-Midget of Hollywood, Mr. Tom Cruise, about Teh Ev0l of psychiatry and therapy. It's important to consider the source in situations like this - the OH SO STRAIGHT Tommy-boy said “Here is the thing: you have to understand, with psychiatry, there is no science behind it....And to pretend that there is a science behind it is criminal.". This is a high-school dropout that has actively embraced the whackaloon precepts of Scientology, a moneymaking scam masquerading a religion. He deserves almost as much respect for this belief as the creationists deserve for their latest round of efforts to replace scientific education with their moronic "Intelligent Design" folderol. Scientology, despite the use of the word "science" in its name, has nothing to do with science. It was founded by a hack science fiction writer, bigamist and serial liar that got kicked out of the US Navy for being a delusional tool. The Church of Scientology is geared towards parting the lost and delusional from both their common sense and their paychecks. There has not been a single scientific study that confirms a single one of the precepts of Scientology. Psychiatry, on the other hand, has decades of scientific research behind it. Psychiatrists are required to get a medical degree followed by specialized training in the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional disorders. The field as a whole is constantly evolving as medical and scientific research shed light on new treatment methods. To insist that a crackpot scam somehow knows better about the workings of the human mind than professionals who have devoted years to learning its functioning is so far down into the realm of stupidity that the UFO cultists seem paragons of logical reasoning. I take something of a personal interest in these attacks on psychiatry and psychiatric medications because I know from personal experience how they can help in the proper setting. For years, I suffered periodic bouts of depression. Religious faith and "positive thinking" did jack-fuckin'-shit for me except make me feel worse about myself and my life. On a couple of occasions, it seemed preferable to kill myself than to go on with the bleak and pointless life I was living. It wasn't until I started seeing a professional counselor and taking medications prescribed by a psychiatrist that I found a way out of the cycle. Psychiatric medications are like eyeglasses or crutches - they make it possible for people to fucntion in society. To insist that a depressed person needs to quit therapy and medications and rely on "vitamins and diet" instead is the exact same thing as dancing around in front of someone in a wheelchair and telling them they need to suck it up and just walk. It's bullshit, and Tom Cruise needs to shut his fucking yap. He is, of course, always welcome to come say that shit to my face and see how many goddamn teeth he walks away with. I've got the Clue-by-four ready for him. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:45:00 AM | Saturday, June 25, 2005
Lazy Day Melissa took the kids up to her parents for the day, so I've had the last 6 hours to myself. I've done a comic book run, eaten a nice, greasy cheeseburger and I'm currently rearranging the living room furniture to try and fit in another PC. Later, I'll explain why Tom Cruise needs to shut his fucking yap. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:56:00 PM | Friday, June 24, 2005
Friday Five - Weirdness Magnet Laura, the Foxy Finn, asks this week: What are the five weirdest, most bizarre things which have happened to you? Did they make sense afterwards?Stuff that seems weird happens to me all the time. In retrospect, it almost always makes sense. I'll go over a few things that have never really made sense, and I might throw in a couple that did just to mix it up a little. The usual caveats regarding memory and our brains' ability to edit memory to make a better story apply, but each story is told as I recall it, to the best of my ability.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:22:00 AM | Thursday, June 23, 2005
Well, You Oughtta Clap Me In Motherfucking Irons Right The Fuck Now Bill "Falafel" O'Reilly says I'm a traitor! And when he [Durbin] went out there, his intent was to whip up the American public against the Bush detainee policy. That's what his intent was. His intent wasn't to undermine the war effort, because he never even thought about it. He never even thought about it. But by not thinking about it, he made an egregious mistake because you must know the difference between dissent from the Iraq war and the war on terror and undermining it. And any American that undermines that war, with our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with 3,000 dead on 9-11, is a traitor.I've said a whole fuck of a lot worse than Durbin, and I've planned to say it in exactly that way. You betcher sweet ass I'm trying to undermine the "War on Terra" and the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq. The "War on Terror" is by design an open-ended, ill-defined war with no clear enemy, no clear goal and no clear victory condition. People like Alberto Gonzales and Donald Rumsfeld have actively worked to make it acceptable to win by any means necessary. Torture? No problem - if it's a little too much for our soldiers and contractors, like, say, we need some dirt farmer boiled alive, we'll kidnap 'em off the street and send 'em to Uzbekistan or Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Civilian casualties? Hey, man. Shit happens - we gave those folks in Fallujah warning. Kind of. Yeah, we know it wasn't until after we invaded that Iraq became a prime terrorist training center, but who gives a shit about those dirty ragheads, right? I live in a country in which the party in control of all 3 branches of Federal government thinks that passing an amendment making it illegal to burn a flag is more important than providing health care to the poorest among us. To them, making it legal to discriminate against homosexuals is a higher priority than working to reduce the rate of death caused by disease, starvation and war in Africa (a child dies every 3 seconds there - in the time it takes you to read this parenthetical statement, 6 children have died). The sexual harassing, drug-popping morons on right-wing talk radio would have you believe that using your Constitutional right to dissent is the exact same thing as selling WMD components to a dictatorial regime, or providing arms and support to terrorists. It's not, though, and it's important to remember that the shitbags on the right are masters of projection - if they complain about something the other side does, odds are they're doing it themselves. Look at the Roman Catholic Church - they insisted for decades that gays were child molesters, when it turned out that they were the single largest ring of pedophiles and pedophile enablers this planet has ever seen. If it's treason to speak up, if it's wrong to hold our leaders accountable for their actions, I don't want to be right. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:34:00 AM | Wednesday, June 22, 2005
You Stupid, Jingoistic Motherfuckers House Passes "Flag Burning Amendment" The day started with a debate on health care, but in very short order, James Sensenbrenner (R-Headuphisass, WI) derailed it by proposing yet another amendment geared towards bypassing the ruling of those liberal bastards on the Supreme Court that it's OK to speak freely, even if such speech involves lighting a piece of cloth on fire. Supporters said the measure reflected patriotism that deepened after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and they accused detractors of being out of touch with public sentiment.You know, King Kong stood on top of the World Trade Center, and he's never once said anything about flag burning. Seriously, though, what the FUCK?! I mean, we've got all kinds of shit we need to get done to at the very least put a fresh band-aid on all the problems facing our country. Health care - both for the uninsured and the underinsured. Dealing with Iraq. Social Security. Our dependence on foreign oil. The deficit. The list goes on and on and on. There's 286 fucking morons in the House that value banning something that's happened maybe five times in our country more than they value making sure poor Americans get a shot at even the same level of piss-poor healthcare enjoyed by the residents of our penal system. The Cult Of The Flag in this country bothers me - the flag is a rectangular piece of cloth, not the repository of the mystic vril of the American people. It's a symbol, yes, but burning the symbol of America does no harm to America itself. I don't pledge allegience to the flag - it's not the flag I revere. The flag is nothing without the Constitution, and the Constitution is what matters in the United States. Every country has a flag, many of them have red, white and blue flags. More than a few have flags with stars and stripes on them. The flag's not special. The Cult Of The Flag, though - they'd have the flag itself be the object of veneration. "My country right or wrong," they proclaim, not understanding that it's never that simple. They want to set the flag up like Gessler's hat, a litmus test - one's degree of subservience to the flag and those that brandish it determine one's worthiness as a citizen. I understand that it's easier for them that way. Reducing citizenship to a pavlovian reflex means thought is not needed. Critical thinking, which so often leads to people rethinking their beliefs, tends to make the simpleminded uneasy. If they can reduce the ideals and principles of the United States of America to slobbering grunts of blind adoration of a scrap of fabric, it's much easier to force everyone to march to the beat of their drums. War becomes a matter of waving the flag over a map - "Those folks don't worship our flag! Git 'em!" Every time this cockamamie flag-burning amendment has come up in the past, it's passed the House and died in the Senate. This time, though, there's a chance it'll pass. 65 cowards masquerading as Senators have indicated they'd vote for the amendment. That's still 2 short of the minimum needed to kick it out to the states for ratification, but I'm not as optimistic this time. What I want is for someone, anyone, tell me why you give a shit if some anarchist in Seattle burns a flag. Tell me how it hurts you. Prove to me that this rampage of flag burning (all 5-6 cases of it) threatens our nation. Tell me this, and I'll point out to you in exquisite detail that you're (a) a fucking liar and (b) a goddamn moron. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:23:00 PM | Who Am I?
A wave o' the rubber chicken to Maggie for the idea to engage in quizzage. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:24:00 PM | Age Of Wonders AAV-2 virus targets, kills cancerous cells. "Our results suggest that adeno-associated virus type 2, which infects the majority of the population but has no known ill effects, kills multiple types of cancer cells yet has no effect on healthy cells," said Craig Meyers, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Penn State College of Medicine in Pennsylvania.Just when I start to lose all faith in my fellow humans, I read about research like Dr. Meyers', or about the Planetary Society's solar-sail satellite, and I feel a little bit better, and I think that maybe we can think our way out of this mess. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:35:00 AM | Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Dick Durbin does not hate America Nor does he have it in for our soldiers. Anyone that tries to tell you different is either an idiot or a liar, probably both. For those that haven't read Durbin's exact words, here's the passage that's got the pro-torture shitlickers all het up: When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here--I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:That's not the statement of a traitor to America's principles - Durbin clearly loves our nation, and mourns the choices and events that have produced a festering sore like Camp X-Ray. The torture apologists on the Right will tell you that it's unfair to compare the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib to the treatment of prisoners by the Nazis or Stalin's goons down in the Lubyanka. I'll leave aside the frequent comparisons of the Democrats to the Nazis by GOP leaders like Grover Norquist, Ken Mehlman and Rick Santorum and address the issue of comparison. Did Durbin state that American soldiers were Nazis? No he did not. Not in any way, shape, form or fashion. He stated, and more eloquently than most could, that the practices of interrogators and guards at Guantanamo Bay fit on a continuum that ranges all the way down to the horrors of the Killing Fields, the Gulag Archipelago and Dachau. We, as Americans, claim to hold ourselves to a higher standard, one that doesn't include shackling men in freezing rooms long enough that they squat shivering in a pool of their own shit and piss. Our standards are supposed to be better than pissing on prisoners. We're supposed to be better than piling naked men and boys together to "soften them up", better than putting a leash on a man and dragging him around a prison. If the best that the Right can come up with is that our military-run prisons aren't quite as bad as those of Cambodia, the USSR and Nazi Germany, perhaps they should aim a little higher. Some lying goat-rapers, of course, will point to the menu at Gitmo and tell you "The inmates in Guantanamo have never eaten better, they've never been treated better and they've never been more comfortable in their lives." That sounds suspiciously like the wife-beater that buys his wife jewelry every time he beats her senseless, and then claims that he couldn't be punching his wife in the face, because if he hated her that much, why would he buy her a diamond bracelet like that? It's bullshit, it's smoke and mirrors, it's a bald-faced lie. The pro-torture motherfuckers are trying to have it both ways - on one side of their mouths, they claim that the illegal prisoners are being treated like royalty and out the other side of their mouths they mutter about how we're being too easy on them. It must really chap their asses to see the thugs in Egypt's anti-democratic prisons and Saudi Arabia's palace torturers get away with murder, while there are still some vestiges of belief in the importance of due process here in the US. The shit the Uzbeks get to do sends them screaming and flinging shit like barbary apes on methamphetamine-laced laxtives. You've no doubt heard the canard that of the Guantanamo detainees we've released, 12 have been found fighting against the US. This is cited as proof that we're being too lenient with the prisoners. Let's think about that - these men and boys were sold to US forces in Afghanistan by warlords, who were paid a bounty for "Taliban" prisoners, no questions asked. They were stripped, drugged and blindfolded, then shipped across the Atlantic to live in chain-link cages where they were humiliated by interrogators, pissed on and beaten for a couple of years. Finally, after they've screamed enough times in Arabic, Uzbek or Pushtun that they know nothing, that they were just walking down the road tending their goats and then suddenly got picked up and hauled away, finally they're released with a change of clothes and a whole new set of psychological traumas without so much as a "So sorry we wasted a couple of years waterboarding you for nothing!". After all that, why on Earth would they have any kind of grudge against the US? Right now, the Bush Administration is creating new enemies for the US where none existed before. Every day we're in Iraq, more Iraqis see us as an evil occupier. Every day we hold innocents withouth charge or trial, more people around the world see our statements about human rights as rank hypocrisy. Every day we use weasel words or outright lies to justify policies that are un-American to the fucking core, more people wonder what makes us so special, and think that maybe, just maybe, some folks ought to get together and do something about the big bully on the block. Don't know about you, but I think we can do a whole hell of a lot better than that. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:30:00 AM | Monday, June 20, 2005
Welcome To The Middle Ages! Schizophrenic nun murdered in "exorcism". This is a real corker, folks. A Romanian nun has died after being bound to a cross, gagged and left alone for three days in a cold room in a convent, Romanian police have said.Common sense would tell you that tying someone up, stuffing a towel in their mouth and denying them food and water for three days while they hang unattended in a cold room is A Very Bad Idea, but I suppose when you're trying to torture the Devil out of someone, it's A-OK. Well, whaddaya know? That's exactly what the "God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil.... I don't understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this. Exorcism is a common practice in the heart of the Romanian Orthodox church and my methods are not at all unknown to other priests."I do find myself wondering if Romania's assigned any Romanian Orthodox priests to assist with the spa the US runs down at Gitmo.... Well, at least they're not molesting children and shuffling priests across state and national boundaries to protect them from prosecution, right? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:53:00 PM | Lame Excuses From Texas Senators The folks at Facing South have more dirt on the senators that refused to co-sponsor the recent apology from the Senate for failure to pass anti-lynching legislation in the last 100 years. The responses that interested me were from John "Gotta Fuck Me A Box Turtle" Cornyn and Kay Bailey "Breck Girl" Hutchison, the two incompetents that misrepresent Texas. The resolution was passed by a voice vote, a procedure the Senate has that allows votes against popular legislation to go unrecorded, thus allowing a Senator to vote against a measure without all that pesky documentation of their, say, bigoted or idiotic opposition. John Cornyn did not co-sponsor the apology, despite Texas' shameful record as the #3 lynchingest state in the Union (493 in the last 125 years or so). Here's the excuse given by his staff: “There are different ways to acknowledge those times when Americans have failed to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.”Nice an' ambiguous there, Turtle-boy! That helps you keep your grip on the Dumbass Bigot Cracker vote without threatening any marginal standing you might have with the African American vote. Fortunately, there's plenty of other stuff to damage the tiny shreds of credibility the buggerer of shelled reptiles might have in that community. Kay Bailey Hutchison, meanwhile, delegated one of her staff to report, Chris Paulitz, a Hutchison aide, said the senator's staff did not push her to co-sponsor the resolution because "it was guaranteed to pass."Whoop-de-fuckin'-do! She went to a funeral! My GOD, what bravery! This resolution was, like previous government apologies to Japanese-Americans interned in WWII and uranium miners, an acknowledgement of error. It's something that, in general, costs next to nothing politically and reaps huge benefits in goodwill and trust. Common sense and decency should, I think, be enough to make any senator understand that co-sponsoring an apology is an institutional apology and not a personal, legally binding admission of participation. If you can't muster up the intestinal fortitude to put your goddamn name on the smallest fucking possible gesture of atonement for one of the bloodiest parts of our nation's shameful history of race relations, what the fuck are you doing in the Senate? Besides, of course, enthusiastically licking the asses of the criminal band of bozos in the White House. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:23:00 AM | Sunday, June 19, 2005
Fathers' Day Got to sleep late, and Melissa and the kids got me a set of Errol Flynn DVDs. I have:
I'm a lucky guy! To all the other dads out there reading this, I hope you're having a happy Fathers' Day too. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:29:00 AM | Saturday, June 18, 2005
Operation: Yellow Elephant General J.C. Christian, Patriot has come up with a brilliant plan to (a) shore up the recruiting drive of our fair nation's military and (b) let the College Republicans prove their patriotism. In his words: I learned in the last presidential election the importance of turning a weakness into a strength. I think we were all amazed to see a man who had gone AWOL from an undeployable National Guard unit defeat a decorated war hero because he was perceived to have more credibility as a military commander. We can do the same for the College Republicans.He's even had a lovely logo designed, which I think I might just put on some stickers to post here and there...  So let's help the College Republicans show us what they're made of! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:05:00 PM | Busy, But Productive, Morning Not a lot of sleep last night, but this morning I have: (1) Cleaned out the last spyware the kids downloaded onto the crappy PC. (2) Changed the brake pads on the minivan. (3) Bought a nice monitor for $15 at a yard sale. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:10:00 PM | Friday, June 17, 2005
And They Call Jeb "The Smart One"? I suppose that compared to Georgie, almost anyone seems smart. That's the only yardstick that makes Jeb Bush seem like he doesn't have his head 100% up his ass. Unfortunately, even using the Dim Son as a yardstick, Jeb's at least 80% Rectocranially Inverted. Because an autopsy proving Jeb and every single other right-wing corpse-raper was wrong just isn't enough to close out the Terri Schiavo debacle once and for all, now it seems Jeb wants a prosecutor to investigate the 911 call made after Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago. Jeb Bush wasn't satisfied fucking Terri Schiavo's brain-dead body before it died. He's convinced that he's got to dig up her moldering corpse and sodomize it some more, grunting and squealing to prove to people like terrorist Randall Terry and America-hater Pat Robertson that he's the guy they need to support in 2008. Meanwhile, Jeb's Florida continues to fester - hundreds of children have been lost in the system at the Department of Children and Families, he's appointed a theocratic whackaloon to head DCF and Flordia continues to be the primary base of support for terrorist groups. Way to set your priorities, Jeb - keep fucking that corpse while the living folks that need help don't get it. What the fuck do we have to do to get rid of this plague of Bushes in our country? Since they're such good friends with the House of Saud, can't we just deport them to Saudi Arabia and have done with it? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:00:00 AM | Living While Muslim It's the new "Driving While Black". Tashnuba Hayder can tell you about that. She's 16 years old, and according to the FBI, she was a potential suicide bomber. This article has me so pissed off that I'm having trouble articulating. Read it and see what the FBI considers a threat to the US. Yeah, we all want the FBI to not drop the ball like they did before 9/11, but this is asinine - they knew almost from the beginning they didn't have a case, but instead of apologizing and moving on, they tried to cover their asses, locking two innocent teenage girls up in a detention center for 7 weeks, agressively interrogating them. Motherfuckers, that's what they are. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:32:00 AM | Thursday, June 16, 2005
Impeach The Sons Of Bitches Then throw them in Pound-You-In-The-Ass Federal Penitentiary - forever. Greg Palast, one of the UK's most respected investigative reporters, was unable to attend John Conyer's forum on the Downing Street Memo(s) today. He was, however, able to provide a statement. As part of his statement, he provided a timeline of events he has been able to build from documents and interviews he has gained access to. February 2001 - Only one month after the first Bush-Cheney inauguration, the State Department's Pam Quanrud organizes a secret confab in California to make plans for the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam. US oil industry advisor Falah Aljibury and others are asked to interview would-be replacements for a new US-installed dictator.If there was any goddamn justice in this fucking country, there would be a committee looking into impeachment proceedings for Bush and Cheney right now, and another committee gearing up to get them, and Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzales and Rice over to The Hague to face War Crime proceedings. Yeah, I got suckered by all the bullshit before the war, and I'm admitting it. I thought I was too smart to be a sucker, and as any con man can tell you, that's when you get taken to the cleaners. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:45:00 PM | 'th FUCK??!! A representative of the Bush administration had some interesting things to say about Gitmo yesterday. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday about the military prison at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba. Some Senators, oddly enough, think that maybe - just maybe - Congress should have some degree of oversight of the conditions and treatment of prisoners there. Senator Patrick Leahy said the United States may face terrorism "as long as you and I live." He asked Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, who oversees military trials of Guantanamo prisoners, if that means America can hold prisoners that long without charges.As long as the conflict endures. Men and boys that are, in most cases, probably guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, can be held until the "War on Terror" is over, whenever that is. Well, maybe that's not exactly what they meant by that, right? Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record) asked Deputy Associate Attorney General J. Michael Wiggins whether theIn perpetuity. No charge, no trial, no review, nothing but being chained in the fetal position in a pool of your own urine day in and day out in perpetuity. Is it just me, or is that more than a little Kafkaesque? Jeff Sessions (R-AL), also known as one of the senators that thinks lynching is A-OK, got a mite huffy about some of the awful, awful things that Senators Biden, Leahy and Durbin had to say: "This country is not systematically abusing prisoners. We have no policy to do so. And it's wrong to suggest that. And it puts our soldiers at risk who are in this battle because we sent them there."Sessions, despite having made a living as an attorney before he started suckling at the teat of GOP corruption, thinks that we're not harsh enough - it's not enough to hold prisoners in perpetuity without charging them with any crimes. No, we need to kill some of them, too. Because, after all, they're just muslims, and if it's OK to lynch blacks in Alabama, it should be perfectly OK for the state to turn an illegal detention facility into a death camp. So there you have it - according to the Bush misAdministration and their loyal asslickers in the GOP, it's perfectly fine to hold people with no proven direct connection to Al Quaeda or any other terrorist group indefinitely, without access to lawyers, judicial review or even a fair and impartial military tribunal, and to hold them indefinitely in conditions that can best be described as "not as bad as those in Cambodia or the Soviet gulags". In fact, some in the GOP think we should just execute them. Pardon me while I go puke. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:21:00 PM | Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Batman Begins I ditched work early today and went to the Alamo Drafthouse to see Batman Begins. Christian Bale was properly brooding and intense, and the look and feel of Gotham was nicely done - not the hypergothic style of Burton's films at all, but still obviously more than your garden variety city. The supporting roles - James Gordon (Gary Oldman), Alfred (Michael Caine), Ducard (Liam Neeson) and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) among others - were an added treat. The use of good, experienced actors in those key roles was important to keeping the movie in check. I had always felt that using Jack Nicholson in Burton's Batman was a mistake, as Nicholson doesn't really seem to share the screen very well. The script riffed heavily on stuff from Frank Miller/David Mazzucelli's Batman: Year One, which is in many ways the definitive Batman origin story. The scene in which Batman makes his debut, breaking up a mob drug shipment, is excellent - it isn't until near the end of the scene that we get to see Batman at all. We get to see the reactions on the faces of the criminals as they hear their fellows screaming off camera, focusing on the terror Batman is instilling in them. There's a nice layering of villains in the movie - a mob boss, the evil psychiatrist that runs Arkham Asylum, the corrupt CEO of Wayne Industries (Rutger Hauer, like Oldman playing it nicely low-key). Not for everyone, that's for sure, but as far as I'm concerned, well worth the price of admission. A damn site better than Lucas' crapfest, I'd wager. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:42:00 PM | Well, Crap David Sutherland dead at 56 of liver failure. I remember the incredibly nifty (to my impressionable 12-year-old mind) illustrations from classic D&D. The dragon on the old "Blue Box" set, the thieves stealing the gem from the idol on the original Player's Handbook. Sutherland's art was, I belatedly realize, a key part of the building of my mental landscape. I'm ashamed to admit that I never gave a thought as to Sutherland's career - his name didn't ring any bells for me, and it was only Abby relaying the link above to me that made the connection. This from the obituary really got me: After a Pacific Northwest firm bought TSR in the late 1990s and didn't rehire Sutherland, his career crashed. Recently divorced, Sutherland became despondent.Damn. I was never even aware of him until he was dead. I can't explain why this depresses me so, but it does. I just feel like I owe him a "thank you", and I can't do that now. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:16:00 AM | New Column From The Divine Mrs. L Melissa's latest column is out: Busy, busy, BUSY "We're all busy," a friend of mine said recently. "Whenever you ask someone how they're doing, they automatically answer 'busy.'" It's true; men, women, even children, everybody's got too much on his or her plate. Every conversation seems to turn on a kind of one-upmanship of busyness ("I'm too busy to eat!" "I know exactly what you mean -- I'm too busy to sleep!") Busy is the universal excuse -- "I'd love to, but I'm too busy," "I wanted to do a better job, but I'm busy," "I'm sorry I'm so grumpy, I'm just stressed out because -- (wait for it) -- I'm so busy." Sloth has become the unforgivable sin. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:51:00 AM | Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Plus ça Change... From AmericaBlog and the good folks at Facing South: The US Senate has finally admitted that lynching is, you know, bad. Not the entire Senate, though. The resolution was passed on a voice vote instead of a roll-call vote. Why? It seems 12 senators don't believe [choose one or more] (a) that lynching is necessarily bad, (b) that the Senate's inaction over the last 100+ years due to the filibusters of Southern Senators was shameful or (c) that the Senate has an ethical obligation to own up to its past errors as an institution. Senate Resolution 39 reads as follows: Take careful note of the Senators on the list at the beginning of the resolution. A total of 60 co-sponsored it. From Facing South, here's a breakdown of the Southern Senators that did not sign on to co-sponsor: Lamar Alexander (R-TN) Jim Bunning (R-KY) Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) Thad Cochran (R-MS) John Cornyn (R-TX) Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) Kay Hutchinson (R-TX) Johnny Isakson (R-GA) Trent Lott (R-MS) Mel Martinez (R-FL) Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) Jeff Sessions (R-AL) Richard Shelby (R-AL) John Warner (R-VA) As Facing South points out, Especially noteworthy is the fact that not a single senator from four of the top five lynching states -- in order, Mississippi (with 581 recorded lynchings from 1882 to 1968), Georgia (531), Texas (493), and Alabama (347) -- signed on. (Louisiana had 391 lynchings.)I'm sure that John Cornyn is more concerned with the possibility of men marrying box turtles than he is with working to resolve long-standing issues of racial injustice. Kay Hutchison is probably looking forward to running against Governor Perry, and doesn't want to lose the all-important Dumbass Bigot Cracker vote. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson over in Georgia have seen how the Dumbass Bigot Crackers there have got their knickers all a-twist over the flag of segregation, and want to keep that demographic happy. Trent Lott - well, we know where he stands already, don't we? I don't know for sure that any of the senators listed above are the 12 that didn't want to go on the record as being pro-lynching, but it wouldn't surprise me one damn bit if any of them were. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:44:00 AM | Monday, June 13, 2005
A Republican I Can Respect There's precious few of those, these days. Time was, I thought Walter Jones (R-NC) was a boob of the highest order - he, along with Bob Ney (R-OH) (currently trying to explain why his mouth was wrapped around Jack Abramoff's cock, metaphorically speaking) were the guys responsible for changing the menu at the Capitol cafeteria so that "french fries" would sully the lips of Patriotic Congresscritters no more. "Freedom fries" were the order of the day, and never had so few done so little to help so many. Jones is gettin' some mad props, though, because he's one of the only people in congress (Ted Kennedy in the senate and a few others, although the "leadership" of the Democrats seem more concerned with getting their knickers all atwist over Howard Dean than actually being, you know, the fucking opposition) demanding explanations for the debacle in Iraq, as well as an exit strategy (that's a "strategery for commencin' to leave" if you're having Condi or Unca Dick read this to you, Mr. Pretzeldent). Rep. Jones is introducing legislation calling for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Considering how Senator Voinovich of Ohio is being pilloried for saying that he thinks that maybe John Bolton isn't the absolute perfect person to represent us at the UN, Jones is taking a big risk. The Pretzeldent and his cronies don't like being defied, especially by the folks they thought were already in their pockets. Jones said on ABC's "This Week": "When I look at the number of men and women who have been killed -- it's almost 1,700 now, in addition to close to 12,000 have been severely wounded -- and I just feel that the reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there."In April, 2003 Jones attended the funeral of Sgt. Michael Bitz, killed in fighting in Nasiriyah. At the funeral, Bitz's widow read a letter from her husband. Jones says, "And that really has been on my mind and my heart ever since." Jones, whose district includes Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point, has written condolence letters to the families of more than 1,300 service people killed in Iraq, and posters outside his congressional office show the faces of those killed.Damn! Rumsfeld wasn't even signing his own fucking letters, and he (along with Cheney and the Pretzeldent, among others) has their blood directly on his hands. Walter jones deserves calls and letters of support and our respect for his courage. I'm quite sure there's still a lot to disagree with him over, but for now, he's risking his career by standing up to his party's leadership, demanding an accounting of their lies. That's a damn sight more than many Democrats have worked up the balls to do. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:37:00 AM | Sunday, June 12, 2005
Fuck The downstairs computer (which is a POS, but was, until this week, a marginally functioning POS) is crashing almost constantly now. Aaaarrrgh. Like I've got the time to figure out the problem. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:59:00 AM | Saturday, June 11, 2005
Slow Saturday For the first time in what seems like forever, I've got an entire Saturday that involves no travel, no appointments, no commitments and no obligations. It's been rather nice, actually - the kids and I went to Costco (Shiny!) and now Alec's down for a nap. Once he wakes up, the kids and I might go to Dragon's Lair and pick up our subscriptions, or the whole family might go to the YMCA and swim. It's all up in the air, because we don't have to be anywhere. Sweeeeeeeeeeeet. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:59:00 PM | Friday, June 10, 2005
Jesse Helms - "Integration Went Too Fast" It seems that Jesse Helms, also known as "That Pustulent Scumbag From North Carolina", has pulled his head out of his senile, festering ass long enough to write a memoir. In it, he graciously admits that he got it wrong about AIDS: "it had been my feeling that AIDS was a disease largely spread by reckless and voluntary sexual and drug-abusing behavior, and that it would probably be confined to those in high risk populations. I was wrong." Gee, thanks. As long as it was just faggots and junkies dying of AIDS, he didn't give a shit at all, but once straight white folks were at risk, he started to get worried. Not worried enough to really support funding research or prevention, mind you, but worried nonetheless. Don't do us any favors here, shithead. Helms also writes the following gem: "We will never know how integration might have been achieved in neighborhoods across our land, because the opportunity was snatched away by outside agitators who had their own agendas to advance," according to the uncorrected proof. "We certainly do know the price paid by the stirring of hatred, the encouragement of violence, the suspicion and distrust."I bet Emmett Till could tell him how integration might have gone without those "outside agitators". So could Medgar Evers. And Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins. I bet those little girls, blown up by white christian patriots as the prepared for church in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL - I bet they could tell him how integration would have been achieved. The "stirring of hatred" and "encouragement of violence", that shit came from motherfuckers like J. B. Stoner, Byron de la Beckwith, Strom Thurmond, Lester Maddox. The KKK certainly stirred up a lot of hatred. So did the "White Citizens' Councils", now known as the "Council of Conservative Citizens" (big fans of Jesse, Strom and Trent Lott, those guys). Shitsucking goatrapers like Jesse Helms aided and abetted the violence, turning a blind eye when fire hoses and police dogs were turned upon schoolchildren, when Alabama state troopers charged into marchers on horseback swinging their clubs as hard as they fucking could. James Earl Ray was only engaging in self-defense as far as Helms was concerned, I'm sure. So it was all "outside agitators" with "their own agendas to advance", was it? Dr. King, born in Atlanta, was an outsider? Andrew Young? Will Campbell? Lyndon Johnson? My father, born and raised in Pensacola, FL? My mother, born in Mississippi? What, exactly, makes one count as a native to a fucking ignorant piece of dogshit like Helms? Dollars to donuts "native" status depends upon being against "forced integration". Jesse Helms needs to shuffle off to an underfunded nursing home and rot until he dies a lonely, bedsore-ridden death. We don't need to hear from him any more. Aaaargh. My doctor told me to keep an eye on my blood pressure, so I better stop writing before I burst a blood vessel somewhere. Gaaaaaah. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:54:00 PM | Friday Five - Fixing The Schools This week, Dan wants to know: A train leaves Chicago at 3pm travelling south towards New York at 80 pounds per hour. Meanwhile, a car leaves London on Tuesday, heading towards Los Angeles at 3.5 meters per sterling pound. When the two meet, a hapless high school student will realize he's never going to get into college. Before that happens, suggest five ways in which your local school system could be improved to better prepare students for either college or the real world or both. (Bonus points for someone who can tell me when the train and car will meet.)
The answer to Dan's word problem is easy: Blue, because kangaroos don't have doors. The other Friday Fivers and their plans for school reform can be found here. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:58:00 AM | Thursday, June 09, 2005
The Pure, Simple Values Of Texas First off, Governor Assbag had something to say to the queer population of Texas when he dropped to his knees to fellate the Christian right this week: "Texans have made a decision about marriage and if there is some other state that has a more lenient view than Texas then maybe that's a better place for them to live," Perry said..."A nurturing home with a loving mother and loving father is the best way to guide our children down the proper path," said Perry, who was joined by several legislators.My response: go fuck yourself, Assbag. You want to talk about the values that the good, christian folks of Texas apparently believe in? Do you, fucker? Talk to me about this, then: Old South racism lives in Texas town LINDEN, Texas -- They picked up Billy Ray Johnson outside a convenience store in this East Texas bayou town, a place where Confederate flags fly in some front yards and a mural of barefoot slaves picking cotton greets patrons inside the local post office.Three of the men charged with assaulting Billy Ray Johnson were given 30 day sentences. A fourth got 60 days. Two of them were acquitted by all-white juries. There's the fucking values Perry's talking about. Remember James Byrd, Jr in Jasper? Matthew Shephard? Gwen Araujo? You can bet your sweet ass I remember 'em. As the party wound down after midnight, evidence showed, Christopher Colt Amox, who was 20 at the time, punched Johnson in the mouth, toppling him to the ground. As Johnson lay unconscious, vomiting and gagging, Amox and three other young men--James Cory Hicks, then 24; Dallas Chadwick Stone, then 18; and John Wesley Owens, then 19--debated whether to call an ambulance, authorities said. Instead, they loaded Johnson into a pickup truck and drove him 2 miles down a little-used dirt road, tossing him next to a public dump, on top of the nest of fire ants.The mother of one of the men accused of assaulting Johnson was brimming over with concern and Christian charity, though: "These boys' names are ruined for life," Howell said. "And [Johnson] is better off today than he's ever been in his life. He roamed the streets, the family never knew where he was. Now in the nursing home he's got someone to take care of him."There's some Heartland Values for you, eh? Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, spent over $80,000 a few years ago to get his greasy paws on David Duke's mailing list of Who's Who In Racist America. I hear every day from the right in this fucking nation, the group that claims to speak for "the simple values of Heartland America", that people like me are less than human - that we don't deserve to be given equal treatment under the law, that we're diseased, child-raping degenerates. The same quislings that fight like hell to deny gays and lesbians equal rights are cruising for underage ass, or quietly celebrating their own same-sex marriage because they're lucky enough to live in a state where progressives have fought and bled to get them the rights they want to deny to everyone else. The agenda of the Religious Right is to install their own brand of theocracy, based upon a twisted, hate-filled interpretation of the Bible. The leadership of the GOP has decided that they need the support of this American Taliban, and are willing to do anything to get it. Between the corporate money and the warm bodies of the ChristoFascist Zombie Brigade, they've built a vision of an America that distorts every single thing that's made America great. Corporate control of the media stops criticism. A compliant congress after 9/11 enthusiastically approved the PATRIOT Act, which gives our government sweeping powers to investigate and detain American citizens without charge or trial. The masses are kept scared and loyal by constant bleating of the dire threat posed to America by faggots'n'dykes - 40 years ago, they screamed about the blacks. 50 years ago, Communists threatened America. 60 years ago, it was still fashionable to hate Jews. 80 years ago, it was the Italians and we've all heard about the signs that used to be in some bars that read, "No Dogs Or Irishmen Allowed". Every generation, these Theo-Stalinists manufacture an enemy that they can point to and screech, "LOOK OUT! THEY'RE COMING TO RAPE YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS!" Always, the targeted group is given power and influence disproportionate to their numbers, reality be damned. God has ordained their hate, and they can point to specific Bible verses (always in translation, though) to back up their claims. Don't you lecture me about morality, Governor Assbag. I can see what kind of "values" you and your backers are talking about, and I'm fuckin' sick of hearing it. It's shit like this that makes me respect the Second Amendment. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:41:00 AM | Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Homelan' Sekuritee, On Da Job... Sort Of How much have we spent funding the Department of Homeland Security? I know it's a lot, but maybe it's not going to the right places. Like the places that train border agents not to let people carrying bloody chainsaws cross the border. On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Despres.So lemme get this straight - a nutjob carrying almost every tool in the Crazed Killer Arsenal, some of which are bloodstained, gets waved on in to the country? I mean, were I a border guard, tasked to prevent murderously crazy people from sneaking in to America and killing American citizens, I'd be willing to take a chance and tell the guy that looks like he and Charlie Manson would get along like long-lost brothers that, I'm sorry, but this border station has a limit on the number of crazy-ass motherfuckers we can allow across the border, and we've already reached our limit. Perhaps you could come back some time when you don't look like a crazy-ass motherfucker? Thanks! Have a nice day! It turns out, after police in Massachusetts found Despres wandering down a highway dressed in a bloodstained sweatshirt, that he was wanted in Canada because someone had decapitated one of his neighbors, possibly with a chainsaw. Bill Anthony, speaking for the US Government, said this: "Nobody asked us to detain him," Anthony said. "Being bizarre is not a reason to keep somebody out of this country or lock them up. ... We are governed by laws and regulations, and he did not violate any regulations."Being bizarre? That's a little more than being bizarre. I mean, I know people that can't go to Canada because they got busted with pot, and our government has an elaborate (and secret) no-fly list that you can't be removed from once you're on it, but hauling a big ol' pile of bloodstained weaponry behind you and trying to cross the border, that's A-OK! Gee, guys. I feel soooooo much safer now. Going forward, how about less money spent decorating the offices and more money spent telling border guards "CRAZY-ASS MOTHERFUCKERS TOTING BLOODSTAINED CHAINSAWS ARE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE US. WE'VE GOT ENOUGH OF THOSE ALREADY!"? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:21:00 AM | Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Still No Justice For Gwen Araujo I've been following this case - something about it caught me and I've felt compelled to keep track of what's going on with it. I've written about it before - here, here and here. The State of California has tried to bring the murderers of Gwen Araujo to justice already, but when the defense last time claimed that it's not murder if you're afraid you're going to turn queer they got a hung jury. This time, one of the men initially accused in her murder has pled guilty to manslaughter and is testifying against his friends. The attorneys representing his friends are all trying different tactics this time: Merel's lawyer said his client genuinely cared for Araujo and did not do her any serious injury. Cazares' lawyer said his client was outside when the killing took place and only helped bury the body out of loyalty to his friends. Magidson's lawyer repeated his defense from the first trial, that his client was involved in the attack and regretted it but it was not premeditated.Let's hope that justice is finally done in this case. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:52:00 AM | I Salute You, Sir Gord is pissed. I am an angry pedestrian, and today I figured out why. I bitch about Korean drivers, and yeah, a lot of people drive (even when stone-cold sober) as if they're stinking drunk; people drive in crazy selfish competitive me-first ways here that boggle my mind, and I imagine that if guns were legal, road rage would be a major cause of death. But there are enough idiot drivers to go around worldwide, and I remember nearly being killed (yes, actually nearly being killed) several times in different cities in Canada by self-important, inconsiderate idiots behind the wheel. We habitual pedestrians know of this illness, this global epidemic of driverism, that seems all too inescapable. That's some good rantage, even though it hits me where it hurts. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:43:00 AM | Monday, June 06, 2005
The Lost Audiopost Here's, more or less, what I had planned to post Saturday: Solo Trippin' Melissa's written many times about the drive East from Texas. I love it, tiring as the drive might be. Slowly my surroundings change, the "Texas veldt", as I call it, being replaced with taller trees lining the roads, shifting to the muggy bayous of Cajun country. I really pick up, though, once I cross into Mississippi. The oaks and pines loom over the highway, kudzu trails over trees, in some cases forming a screen between the forests and the road. If time's not an issue, I'll take a state highway that parallels the Interstate and ride the Blue Highways. The radio is another private joy of mine. I find a small local station and listen to whatever is on - stuff that won't fly on Clear Channel Corporate Cookie Cutter radio. College stations, with young DJs still finding their voices and playing whatever the hell they want. Local lawyers giving legal advice to whoever calls in. Fire-and-brimstone preachers screaming about the End Times, or Demon Alcohol. Once, on a Sunday morning, a New Orleans public radio station with an elderly woman with a beautiful High Delta accent (the one that Vivian Leigh put on so well in A Streetcar Named Desire) reading newspaper articles for blind listeners. I get some good food moments when I travel alone, as well. The roadside BBQ stands, boiled peanuts, po boys. Even the places that aren't any good are worth it - I enjoy just getting to try something new. I indulge in an RC Cola and a Moon Pie, or buy some GooGoo Clusters. Fresh peaches from a roadside stand or just a bottle of water and some peanuts. I don't eat healthy while I drive, that's not what it's about. It's not as comfortable to drive for hours on end as it used to be. My back hates it, and I've got to stop and stretch more often. Since I quit smoking, I've become more aware of things like paper mills and dead skunks. Still, there's something magical about being on the road. I'm not the first to notice it, and it's not profound to say that sometimes it feels like I've got nothing but open road in front of me, that the highway I'm driving goes on and on and I'm tempted to explore it - to see where it takes me and what surprises are around the next bend. Someday, I always tell myself, someday I'll drive on down and check it out. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:32:00 AM | Support Our Troops - Bush Doesn't You see those damn yellow ribbon magnets all over the place - some morons have their cars so covered in them that compasses deflect when you drive past them. Here's a funny fact, though: Almost all of the people with those magnets on their cars voted for a president that has on multiple occasions made it clear he doesn't give a rat's ass for the men and women fighting, dying and getting their limbs blown off for his little war. We've read about pay cuts for troops in combat, stingy payouts for the families of soldiers killed in action, fucking over soldiers at Walter Reed and about denial of mental health and rehabilitation services for National Guardsmen. The families of some of the men and women in the National Guard are in desperate financial straits - with the primary wage-earner out of the country, these families are forced to go on food stamps. Now we find that these same families, who are already being hurt by the "stop-loss" policy of the Pentagon, are going without health insurance. With thousands of reservists and National Guard members being called to duty, some families are not only left without a spouse's income but also their health insurance.That's right - the spouses, sons and daughters of the men and women fighting Bush's War are, thanks to the stinginess of this misAdministration, not able to get healthcare. But there's no crisis, not like there is with Social Security. If you're not making the big money donations to the Rethuglicans, you're expendable. No, giving your eye, arm, leg or life in Iraq doesn't count. It's all about the Benjamins for them. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:53:00 AM | Sunday, June 05, 2005
Well, I thought it'd work... Left early yesterday to go pick up Drew in Picayune, MS. Didn't blog, thinking I'd call in a voiceblog from the road. Helluva time to find out that feature wasn't working for whatever reason. So my apologies for the lack of bloggage yesterday. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:13:00 PM | Friday, June 03, 2005
Interviewing the Friday Five Today, Gord asks: You're granted an interview with the political leader of the country of your choice. Who would you choose to interview, and what five questions would you make sure to ask?I'm gonna go wild here. Hopping into the Offical Friday Five Wayback Machine, I'm going to visit Godfrey of Bouillon and ask him some questions. ACL: Good evening, Sir Godfrey. GofB: Je suis désolé - je ne comprends pas votre langue barbare. Êtes-vous allemand? ACL: [adjusts equipment] Sorry about that, the translator is working now. Better? GofB: Non, vous êtes anglais! Bah! Plus mauvais encore, with your bland food and tasteless... [coughs] Your pardon. ACL: No worries... what should I call you, exactly? You were never king of the kingdom of Jerusalem... GofB: Sir Godfrey is fine, thank you. ACL: Very well, sir. A little background for our readers here - you were given the fiefdom of Bouillon by Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire after he took Lower Lorraine following the death of your uncle, Godfrey the Hunchback. GofB: That is correct. Although we did not refer to him as "the Hunchback" - that would get you a quick and savage beating at his hands. No, I called him Uncle Godfrey. ACL: I stand corrected. In 1082, however, you were finally granted Lorraine following some years of fighting on behalf of Henry. 14 years later, you and your brothers raised an army of 40,000 in support of the First Crusade - GofB: First? There were more? How did they go? ACL: Oh, just fine. Don't worry about it - Jerusalem is out of the hands of the Caliphate. No problems at all there these days. Anyway, you swore an oath of allegiance to the Byzantine Empire in order to cross the Bosporus and spent a couple of years fighting around Palestine. In 1099, you convinced Raymond of Tolouse to march on Jerusalem. GofB: That is correct. Ah, what a glorious battle it was! ACL: Yes, it's still spoken of today. GofB: The streets ran with the blood of the unbelievers! After centuries, Jerusalem was once again in the hands of men of God! Ho! Serving wench! No more of this "coffee", bring me some wine! [later] ACL: My apologies for that, sir. I should have warned you that the production assistants don't care much for being called "wenches". I'm sure that stain will come out. Are you sure you're not burned? GofB: [sighs] Let's just get this over with. Yes, I conquered Jerusalem. ACL: Very well. Now, first I want to know, Why Jerusalem? You had a nice, secure fiefdom in Lorraine, and you left it to risk death in a strange place. GofB: It just seemed like a good idea. I mean, Raymond and Bohemund said, "Hey! Let's go kill some infidels and force a major influx of hard currency into our primitive economies, disrupting them and upsetting centuries of balance!" It seemed like a good idea to me, so I forced some peasants to volunteer and headed off with my brothers. There wasn't much going on at home - the area was pretty much settled down. ACL: What about the religion? You know, the Moslems blocking pilgrims to the Holy Land and all that? GofB: I'm counting that as a question. ACL: That's a follow up, it doesn't count. GofB: Whoreson! Do you question me, varlet? [draws knife] ACL: Right. Question Two: What about the religion? You seem to be saying you didn't much think about that. GofB: We didn't really care about that. Sure, I made a big show of being all into that stuff, but that was just to keep the Pope off my back. It made for a good reason to attack, but if we hadn't had it, I'm sure we could have come up with something. The Pope had some really interesting stuff about these huge catapaults the Mohammedans were building that were supposed to be able to get a bloody great rock into Rome from across the Mediterranean... ACL: I see. Next question: Solomon's Temple? What's the deal? GofB: This is about the Knights of the Temple, right? What a bunch of nutjobs. With their "holy bloodline" and all that, muttering about conspiracies and stuff like that - there was something off about them, and I'm not just talking of their hygeine. They never blinked, you know that? ACL: So what did they find in the temple? GofB: OK, this is going to kill you - porn. ACL: Porn? GofB: Yep. Porn. Piles and piles of these clay tablets with carvings of women on them. The priest with 'em said that all the Hebrew writing was just different parts of The Song of Solomon, with arrows pointing to the carvings. Those Templars were pissed! They sure didn't leave any of the tablets behind, though. ACL: Well, last question: Why didn't you become king? You were offered the crown, but turned it dow., electing instead to rule without a crown. GofB: I was hoping the lousy bastards would rise up and demand I be made King of Jerusalem, actually. You know, I modestly turn it down, all "I couldn't possibly wear an earthly crown where Jesus wore his crown of thorns" and then they'd get all "No, really, we couldn't possibly live without you as king - nay, EMPEROR! All Hail Emperor Godfrey I!" It kind of fell apart when the simpletons just nodded and said, "You know, he's right on that." I still kick myself over that. ACL: Well, certainly not the interview I was expecting. Sir Godfrey, I thank you for taking the time to talk to me. The Wayback machine's waiting, so I'll just nip out the back here and- GofB: So what happens to me next? ACL: I'm really not allowed to say - time-space continuum and all that stuff. GofB: How long do I live? Do I conquer Egypt? Answer me! Guards! ACL: Gotta go! GofB: Gardes! Arrêtez-les! The other Friday Fivers and their interviews are listed here posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:31:00 PM | Damn You, Amnesty International! The Administration is rightly pissed about the report on Human Rights by Amensty International that comes down so hard on the US. I mean, the accusations that the US engages in illegal detentions, or that there is widespread abuse of prisoners in these facilities, or even that many of these detainees are innocent - those are an insult! A slap in the face, as it were. There's nothing that could even hint that the US, known throughout the world as a beacon of hope and freedom, could condone or allow abuse and/or torture at ANY facilities. No documents, no photographs, NOTHING! There's nothing that would give anyone the impression the US doesn't treat all detainees humanely and in full accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Just look at how justifiably outraged our leaders are over this: "For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously." - Dick Cheney, May 30, 2005 "Occasionally there are allegations of mistreatment. But if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who had been inside and been released to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated." - Dick Cheney, May 30, 2005 "It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world." - George W. Bush, May 31, 2005 "It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth." "Free societies depend on oversight and they welcome informed criticism, particularly on human rights issues. But those who make such outlandish charges lose any claim to objectivity or seriousness." - Donald Rumsfeld, June 1, 2005 "And the implication that it's a gulag is what's wrong, not what's going on at Gitmo." - Donald Rumsfeld, June 1, 2005 ''The United States of America is one of the strongest defenders of human rights around the world." - Condoleeza Rice, May 29, 2005 Of course, those anti-Freedom types at Amensty have issued a set of completely unreasonable demands - can you believe they want us to "End all secret and incommunicado detentions; grant the International Red Cross full access; ensure recourse to the law for all detainees; bring to justice anyone responsible for authorizing or committing human rights violations."? They are so completely out of line! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:12:00 AM | Thursday, June 02, 2005
Treatsies For Me! "Adam," I sez, "you been workin' really hard lately. Bloggin' every day, sometimes several times a day, goin' in to the office and slaving over a hot keyboard, drivin' in traffic, wranglin' kids and all that crap." "You're right, Adam. I deserve a treat." "You nailed it there, Adam. As always, you cut right to the point." "So whatcha gonna do?" "I been thinkin', Adam, and I think I need some Violently Executed Swag. Specifically, a spiffy new t-shirt and a little somethin' to wear in to the office. So I bought me some." "Brilliant as always, Adam!" "I know." "Beer?" "Don't mind if I do!" posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 2:05:00 PM | Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Books Is Dangerous! At least, some of them is. So sayeth Human Events Online, a conservative web site that listed the 10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. A group including the VP of Regnery Publishing and Phyllis Shitfly has some pretty weird ideas about what constitutes "harmful". Me? I think books in and of themselves aren't harmful. It's what people do with them that's dangerous. You can no more blame the books than you can blame video games for the state of the world. I'll provide the list and give you some translations of their reasoning:
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud Yes, books are definitely dangerous. I mean, using books, it's possible to justify environmental destruction, slavery or even genocide! Someone might even be inspired to say something like "Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!" before they slaughter the inhabitants of an entire city. [/sarcasm] Books, and the ideas contained therein, are not inherently harmful. People are dangerous. People like the judges of this oh-so-dubious list are dangerous, as is anyone that attempts to shut down free expression and communication. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:03:00 AM | |
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