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Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all. - Maximilien Robespierre A Violently Executed Feed BUY SOME STUFF, MAKE ME HAPPY Contact me. Links and stuff Handshake Bloggers Damn Good Music
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Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Happy Pancake Day Everyone else is shouting about Mardi Gras, and while it's tempting to offer beads to any women that might wish to email me photos of their breasts, I won't. Instead, it's a HOLLA! to our more civilized neighbors to the North, and to the rest of the British Empire. Enjoy your pancakes, guys! We're dining on flapjacks at Casa Lipscomb tonight, no breast-baring required to get a stack of maple-drizzled heaven. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:43:00 PM   | Sick Time Drew's home from school with a throat that acts like it's got strep, which is making the rounds at his school. It couldn't be the flu, which I got a shot for, noooooo. It has to be strep. Fuck. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:18:00 AM | Monday, February 27, 2006
RIP, Ms. Butler Damn and double-damn. Octavia E. Butler, considered the first black woman to gain national prominence as a science fiction writer, has died, a close friend said Sunday. She was 58.Fucking fuck fuck fuck. I loved reading her books - her stories had a very human touch, and were these utterly beautiful, complex pieces with multilayered meanings. I'm pretty damn depressed about this. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:49:00 AM | Turn On The Kitchen Light And See What Scuttles For Cover Senator Santorum prides himself on his Christian nature. He's made it his trademark - from his insane rantings about "man-on-dog" sex to his drearily nutty book It Takes A Family, all the way down to his pathological idolization of his stillborn child, everything is suffused with blithering nonsense laid over with a pious, holier-than-thou attitude that, like the mucous that coats a garden slug, allows him to ooze his way through life. Santorum's been at the forefront of the Theo-Stalinist bridgade in the US Senate, a cheerleader for Bush - and now he's the GOP's point man on ethics in the Senate. If there's one thing Senator Santorum knows, it's ethics - he's been skirting around ethics laws since he hit Congress, and the most charitable reading I can get of the GOP's selection of him as the "Ethics Guy" is to remember the axiom that it takes a thief to catch a thief. Sadly, the moment I look at the GOP leadership, I know that's not what's happening, so I'll opt for the more cynical motives on their part. See, Little Ricky, he doesn't have a skeleton in his closet. No, he's got the whole motherfucking graveyard crammed in there. He and his family live full-time in Loudoun County, VA, in a house initially valued in 2001 at $643,361, most recently assessed at $757,000. The Santorums bought their oversized Shenstone “estate” even though his financial disclosure forms since 2001 have shown little family income beyond his Senate salary, now $162,100, and he admits that life hasn’t been financially easy. The senator made a startling remark to The New York Times Magazine last spring: “We live paycheck to paycheck, absolutely.” But he explained that his parents help out. “They’re by no means wealthy -- they’re two retired VA [Veterans Administration] employees -- but they’ll send a check every now and then,” he said.Damn, they must be gettin' a lot of help from the folks - not that there's anything wrong with that. Last year, Senator "Man On Dog" had this trip to lay on those of us in two-income households: “In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to.” The American Prospect took this advice and took... “an honest look at the family budget” -- his family budget. What we found is that Santorum’s exurban lifestyle is financed in ways that aren’t available to the average voter back home in Pennsylvania -- namely a political action committee that lists payments for such unorthodox items as dozens of trips to the Starbucks in Leesburg, a number of stops at fast-food joints, and purchases at Target, Wal-Mart, and a Giant supermarket in northern Virginia. Although a Santorum aide defends those charges as legitimate political costs, good-government experts say the expenditures are at best unconventional, and at worst a possible violation of Senate rules, and the purchases appear to be unorthodox when compared with other senators’ filings. Santorum’s PAC -- a “leadership PAC,” whose purpose is to dispense money to other Republican candidates -- used just 18.1 percent of its money to that end over a recent five-year period, a lower number than other leadership PACs of top senators from both parties.Oooooh, Little Ricky's got some 'splainin' to doooooo! The article has more, much more - the good researchers at The American Prospect have dug up some pretty clear and damning evidence that Senator Santorum is, at best, a corrupt, lying, cheating, two-faced duplicitous son of a bitch that has used his elected office to line his own pockets and those of his supporters. Not exactly the guy you want leading a "reform" movement, especially if you're serious about reform - not that I would for a second suggest that the GOP, the folks that brought us Jack Abramoff, The K Street Project, Bill Frist, Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, Deadeye Dick Cheney, Fat Tony Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Abu Ghraib and Michael "Heckuvajob" Brown are in any way serious about changing the way things work. Why should they, when the current system has paid off so well for them all? Remember the cockroach principle, as well - the lights got turned on in DC when Abramoff got nailed, and for every cockroach like Santorum you see scuttling for cover, you can bet there's at least ten hiding in the walls. It's going to take a lot of work to clear the nest out, and it'll take more than a couple of squirts of Raid to get them. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:10:00 AM | Sunday, February 26, 2006
An Ich Wylle Digge Thys Blogge! Once again, the lovely and talented Spidra gets me hip to something cool: Geoffrey Chaucer's Blog. My firste blogge poste posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 2:20:00 PM | What Happens In South Dakota Won't Stay In South Dakota If you're not reading Pharyngula, one of the best science blogs on the 'net, you should. In addition to interesting science simply explained, and some of the most delicious smackdowns of unIntelligent Design I've seen this side of Richard Dawkins, there's pirates and political commentary, too. Which brings us around to this blog entry: We're all Dakotans Just a thought…but you know, my town isn't far from the South Dakota border, and there really isn't that much difference between my neighborhood and that of some small South Dakota town 50 miles away. I think the piggish prigs who are pushing the legislation to criminalize abortion are contemptible, but does that mean we people of the progressive state of Minnesota are any better? That got me wondering—I'm a fully entitled, blissfully unaware, card-carrying member of the Patriarchy, after all, so I've never had to consider what it would be like to be female, 17, and worried that I might be pregnant.What follows is a rather chilling thought exercise on the hurdles facing women in Minnesota, still a rather progressive state. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:37:00 AM | Saturday, February 25, 2006
Big Pimpin' On Da Enterprise! Your results: You are James T. Kirk (Captain) You are often exaggerated and over-the-top in your speech and expressions. You are a romantic at heart and a natural leader.  Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Test And of course you know who's to blame for all of this: KHAAAN! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 4:44:00 PM | Friday, February 24, 2006
Let Freedom Reign? Freedom Is On The March? Something About Purple Fingers? The Iraqi Civil War has begun in earnest - well, not so much begun as "become pretty goddamn hard to miss even if you're a fucking clueless Neo-Clown." Before the invasion, when I sounded a lot more like John Kerry or other pro-war Dems (you know, the "well, we should invade, but get more countries to help us" type of statement), I poo-pooed statements that an Iraqi invasion would lead to a civil war there. My personal mea culpa was public and heartfelt, and I'm not going to hide my shame over the the me of 3 years ago. Sadly, it looks like the people of Iraq are in for years, if not decades, of civil war. The ideal combination of occupation (Abu Ghraib and the assault on Fallujah pretty much destroyed our humanitarian credibility), long-simmering sectarian/ethnic issues (the legacy of Saddam Hussein and centuries of other, outside interference - from the Persian Empire all the way down through the Caliphate, the Ottomans, the British and the US, among others), modern politicians trying to surf on the crest of the mob (Moktada al-Sadr, among others) and a shitty economy (and that, ultimately, would be us - the US-run CPA spent more time and effort helping contractors line their own pockets than getting the economy running) have merged, and every grudge is going to get settled. Even if the actual fighting doesn't spread, the effects will ripple outwards. Iran wants a piece of this action - the bigger the civil war in Iraq, the more tied down the US, and Iranian/Iraqi Shiite ties will get stronger. Saudi Arabia and Syria have close ties to the Sunni forces, and they're not gonna want a militant Shiite state right next to them. Turkey will strengthen their Iraqi border, and the Kurds in Turkey are in for another round of repression (as, for that matter, are the ones in Iran). Al Qaeda will use this as further recruitment and fund-raising material. Hamas in Palestine will surf the crest of Arab/Persian conflict and point at Israel and the US, no doubt garnering funding from Arab states to replace what the US is already threatening to cut off. The Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt, coming off a strong showing in recent elections, will get more support - as will happen in Algeria. Hard-liners in Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia - they'll all use the civil war to their own ends and point to the United States as an instigator. China and Russia can take advantage of a further distracted US, North Korea will demand more concessions at the bargaining table from the US, South Korea and Japan. The US economy will take a further beating as oil prices skyrocket again and more troops and equipment are shoved into Iraq to try to hold things together. It's not looking good at all. The insurgency's been in its last throes for what, 3 years? Still lookin' pretty strong to me. So maybe cooler heads will prevail in Iraq. Maybe someone in the Pentagon will get a cluestick upside Field Marshall Rumsfeld's head a few times and a better strategy can get implemented. Maybe monkey's'll fly straight out of my ass playing bagpipes and singing "My Country, 'Tis Of Thee". I'm not holding my breath for any of that, though I hate to say the monkeys appear the most likely option. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:12:00 AM | Thursday, February 23, 2006
South Dakota Puts Women In Their Place In a move calculated to give misogynistic nutjobs tiny, throbbing erections, the South Dakota Senate voted 23 to 12 to approve a law banning almost all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest. 23 out of 35 Senators - 22 men and only one woman - think this is a good idea, that women deserve no control over their bodies. Sure, they dress it up with a fake show of concern for the life of the "innocents" in their wombs, but they don't put their money where their mouths are - there's no increase in funding for healthcare for pregnant women or children, there's no commitment to education, no support for single mothers, nothing for any of a myriad of programs that help mothers and poor families and children. That tells me it's bullshit. It's like the men that beat their wives or girlfriends and tell them it's for their own good, that they're too "mouthy", that they need to learn their place. It's an incredibly restrictive law, and it's been pushed through because some men in South Dakota think they need to make a point, that they want to have the glory of passing THE LAW that helped Bush's new Supreme Court overturn Roe v Wade. The law will be challenged, that's without a doubt. Millions of dollars and thousands of hours will be spent as it goes through the courts. That time, and those dollars, could be better spent providing condoms and birth-control pills to women. A fraction of that money would fund real sex-education classes for teens, rather than the asinine, ineffective and falsehood-laden "Abstinence" classes they get now. An ounce of prevention that way would get much, much more than a pound of cure. Shit, it'd be cheaper just to give every woman in South Dakota 3-4 doses of "morning after" contraceptives to keep handy. I don't claim to know how the Supreme Court is going to rule - it may be that precedent shall continue to be their guide, that there will be some element of the SD law that is clearly unconstitutional. I'm not holding my breath, though. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:11:00 AM | Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Rick Santorum Was Right! Remember this? Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality —We all laughed at him about it, but recent events have proved him right - if you allow men to marry each other, sooner or later, someone's going to marry a dog! A 7-year-old girl wed a stray dog as part of a ritual to ward off the "evil eye" on her and her family in eastern India, a news agency reported Wednesday.Oh, how wrong we godless liberals were! Senator Santorum, can you ever forgive us? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 12:29:00 PM | How We Became A Rogue State This article from The New Yorker details one man's efforts to bring the Pentagon's Culture Of Torture to a halt, and shows how his efforts were shut down until he was finally driven out. The memo is a chronological account, submitted on July 7, 2004, to Vice Admiral Albert Church, who led a Pentagon investigation into abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It reveals that Mora’s criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and persistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, in April, 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the consequences of President Bush’s decision, in February, 2002, to circumvent the Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as “unlawful,” “dangerous,” and “erroneous” novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse. Mora warned that these precepts could leave U.S. personnel open to criminal prosecution.The article details the exact steps Alberto Mora took to bring the very real legal and ethical problems with the policies and practices that encourage abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and throughout the US' international network of prisons - the ones we know about as well as the ones that remain hidden from sight. The specific individuals in the government with knowledge of treaties and international law dealing with the treatment of prisoners were systematically shut out of the discussion, such that the only voices heard were those sycophantic toadies like Alberto Gonzales willing to endorse the criminal notion that the president of the United States has the authority to rule as a despot - arresting, imprisoning, spying on, torturing and, as revealed in testimony recently, assassinating those he deems a threat to national security. It's really nice that the Republicans in Congress are willing to stand up over the UAE's potential ownership of American ports, but that's a sideline - most American ports are already owned and operated by foreign companies, and the risk of the port inspection system is due more to anti-union activities and the sorry state of "Homeland Security" than it is to folks with funny accents signing the checks. The real threat we face is in an executive branch that seriously thinks it's above the law. If Congress can't or won't live up to its responsibility, it's up to us to set things right. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:39:00 AM | Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Secrecy Breeds Secrecy In 1995, Bill Clinton ordered the declassification of tens of thousands of documents that had been locked away for decades. This commitment to transparency was well-received, especially by historians and those interested in the previously-hidden decision-making processes of our government. The CIA and several other agencies, more used to being able to scuttle unseen in the wainscoting of our government, as it were, objected. In 1999, they started pushing back. After Bush took office, they accelerated their work and after 9/11, it became a mad scramble. Much of the information they're yanking back out of sight is, however, already out there. It has become retroactively secret again, which means that historians and archivists that have copies of these documents in their files are suddenly technical criminals. So far, there's no effort to track down the copies of this "Now You See It, Now You Can't" information - vital secrets, such as "a 1948 memorandum on a C.I.A. scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain and drop propaganda leaflets," or "a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program," and most importantly, "the C.I.A.'s assessment on Oct. 12, 1950, that Chinese intervention in the Korean War was 'not probable in 1950.'" That last assertion, by the way, was shot down in flames just two weeks later when the Chinese poured into North Korea with a vengeance. That's not to say that all of this information should be out there - some of the files included detailed instructions on the use of explosives, some of the others no doubt have other tidbits that aren't for public consumption. I'm not for making all information available to all comers, just most of it - and then I'll want to discuss exactly what kinds of information should be restricted, and to whom, and for how long. The reclassification, though, seems driven more by the concept of secrecy for its own sake than any real national security priorities. It's true that the CIA and DIA, among others, were pushing to reclassify some or all of the released documents early on, but they got a big leg up thanks to the institutional secrecy of the Bush Administration, which has never missed an opportunity to stonewall, block, delay and/or mislead. Our Constitutional government depends in large part upon information - an educated electorate, supplied with clear information by its government elects representatives that in turn need clear information as to the effects of their decisions in order to rule, if not wisely, then at least with the minimum amount of foolishness possible. Right now, that's not happening - from the billions spent on propaganda in the US by the administration to the stonewalling on requests for information about secret meetings between the White House and energy corporation representatives to the top-secret "No-Fly" list, all the way to this massive "take-back" of public information. Every decision to keep information from the public is used to reinforce other similar decisions, and the clear statement of this policy is that we, the people of the United States, can't handle information - that we don't need to know what goes on out of our sight, that we'd be better off if we just let Which, I have to say, doesn't sound very enlightened or Democratic to me. It makes me think of Louis XIV's statement, "L'Etat c'est moi", or of the Soviets' rigid control of information - two historical governments that were, to say the least, less than responsive to the needs or desires of their citizens. Sooner or later, that'll come crashing down. We can only hope that our grand experiment doesn't come crashing down with them. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:48:00 AM | Monday, February 20, 2006
Our Gift To The Freedom-Loving People Of Iraq Never let it be said that we Americans are not a giving people. Sure, we've taken some things from the Iraqis - we took Saddam and his sons, we stood by while looters took their cultural heritage, our corporations are taking their oil and we've taken their dignity. We've also given them something much better than Sunni secret police. We've given them Shiite secret police! Bold, fearless police. Police brave enough to bust in on a 16 year old's birthday party. Police unafraid to give an old man a heart attack and prevent his son from taking him to the hospital. Yes, the people of Iraq should be grateful for all we've done for them. We're not even charging them for the depleted uranium or the cluster bombs, after all! posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:57:00 PM | Um... How To Explain This? The kids have developed a fondness for "Star Trek: The Next Generation", which shows on G4. As Melissa and I found out the other night, G4 also runs regular ads for "The Man Show". Have you ever tried to explain to a 6 year old why a stripper is teaching a midget how to hump a brass pole? We tape Star Trek now, so we can fast-forward through the commercials. It's much easier that way. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:22:00 AM | Sunday, February 19, 2006
Here Be Dragons Hat tip to The Left End of the Dial for the clue-in on this. You are reading it every day, aren't you? You should. Paul Craig Roberts discusses the "transformation of American conservatism into brownshirtism." Last week's annual Conservative Political Action Conference signaled the transformation of American conservatism into brownshirtism. A former Justice Department official named Viet Dinh got a standing ovation when he told the CPAC audience that the rule of law mustn't get in the way of President Bush protecting Americans from Osama bin Laden.Now, Bob Barr isn't one of my favorite people. His work on the Clinton Impeachment debacle is, to my mind, a large part of the reason we're in the pickle we are now. His current work (meager as it is) against the Gang Of Crooks in the White House comes too little, too late to make me like him. Still, the enemy of my enemy is, if not my friend, at least shooting in the right direction. Barr's not the only rightie that's learned it's a bad idea to criticize Our Maximum Leader, of course. Between right-wing commentators calling those opposed to one-party rule "traitors", a media that refuses to fulfill its civic duty by questioning the illegal activities of the government, a congress that is packed with toadies that actively support Bush's Cult Of Personality (more cult than personality, to tell the truth - they make Ayn Rand's Randroids look levelheaded by comparison) and a military hierarchy that supports torture, kidnapping and spying on dissenters, we're moving into dark territory. In the Middle Ages, maps of the world had lots of blank spots in them - whole sections that had not been mapped, that were unknown to the explorers and mapmakers. Rather than leave them blank, the cartographers let their imaginations run riot and drew fearsome beasts to fill the gaps. In the map of our political landscape, we learned in the 20th Century that there were dragons on the map - real ones, that could devour entire peoples and lay waste to nations. Japan's militaristic empire, the madness of Germany, the calculating brutality of the Soviet Union, China and North Korea. The Killing Fields of Cambodia, Srebrenica, Kosovo, soccer stadiums in Rwanda filled with the hacked and ruined bodies of Tutsi men, women and children. The United States is heading for the land of dragons. I don't know if we'll pull back from the brink like we have before, or if this time we're well and truly fucked. Maybe we'll pull away this time, but unless Congress and the media and the American people step up to the plate and repudiate the illegal power-grab of Bush and his neo-totalitarian thugs, we've left the ground fertile for the next megalomaniac to sow his seeds of destruction. The next guy might be a monarchist, he might be a Maoist, or a theocrat, or just an amoral, power-mad maniac. It won't really matter, to tell the truth - I wouldn't want to live in any of those Americas. I strongly suspect none of you would like it, either. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:52:00 AM | Saturday, February 18, 2006
Science - 1 million, Mormons - 0 [Note: Blogger ate this post, I don't know why. Reposting it.] DNA evidence proves, to the surprise of no one that matters, that Native Americans are not, in fact, the "lost tribes" of Israel. The Mormon church is, of course, taking the logical route - they're insisting that evidence that contradicts the story made up by Joseph Smith 175 years ago is false, and that believing the evidence of your eyes is heresy. Which puts them nicely in the same ship of fools as the Creationists, the Scientologists, the Busheviks and the Astrologists, among others. Why bother using the senses we have to observe, why bother using the wonderfully complex cerebral cortex we evolved, when you can just believe in something some greedy asshole made up and not have to think at all? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:19:00 AM | Friday, February 17, 2006
Lack Of Content I'm spleened out today. Got nothing to rage over at all. What I do have, though, is the Best. Comments. Thread. EVAR. Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis in a no-holds-barred intarnetweb SMACKDOWN! A sample, so you'll know I'm not making this up: Warren Ellis: Every hotel room in southern California was booked within eighteen femtoseconds of the San Diego Comics Convention reservations webpage being uploaded. That’s it, people. If you didn’t get your booking confirmed within eighteeen femtoseconds of the starting pistol, you’re screwed. Because there are one hundred thousand hungry people out there who need to attend San Diego Comics Convention in order to walk right past all that comics shit and go straight to sniffing Brandon Routh’s cricketbox, sending bits of themselves to the cast of SERENITY and masturbating ferociously in the men’s stalls while wearing V FOR VENDETTA masks and discounted Hulk Hands.It is to die for, it is a Geekgasm of the highest order. It is what I love about Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis and it could only be better if I had a pair of Hulk Hands... posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:32:00 AM | Thursday, February 16, 2006
Why We Fight? Frank Capra created this series as a stirring rebuttal to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Why We Fight lays out the case for war against the Japanese Empire and Nazi Germany simply and eloquently. It's propoganda, and it's well-done propoganda, but there's truth behind it - our ideals as a nation compelled us to fight like hell against the Nazi and Japanese war machines. Today it's not a statement, it's a question. Iraq never had any connection to the Taliban or Al Quaeda, the groups directly responsible for the attacks on 9/11. Saddam Hussein, while a bad person, was contained - a paper tiger, toothless and declawed. The WMD breathlessly reported by Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell never existed, save as masturbatory dreams in the tiny minds of Neo-Con warmongers. So why are we there? Is it to bring "democracy" to Iraq? Maybe, but a democratic or republican system of government means less than nothing without a civic society to nurture and protect it. Iraq is currently in the early stages of a civil war. When the US leaves, it's likely to erupt into a full-scale conflagration - Shiite against Sunni against Kurd, North against South, and Iran, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia will get spillover, as will Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, Israel and a host of other countries. Key to keeping the simmering rage and violence under control in Iraq is remaining sympathetic to its citizens. During the Vietnam War (a "conflict" that is strikingly similar to this one in many ways), this was referred to as winning the "hearts and minds" of the people. That effort failed, for many of the same reasons that it is failing in Iraq. In Vietnam, the benefit from the lackluster efforts to "improve" things in Vietnam paled beside the horrors of My Lai and indiscriminate napalm attacks. It wasn't the media, or the people back home that "lost" Vietnam - that war was lost even before the French came under seige at Dien Bien Phu - but the behavior of US and South Vietnamese troops made it much easier for the Viet Cong and NVA to find sympathizers. This isn't an exercise in counterfactual speculation, though - it's not my intent to determine how, if at all, we could have "won" Vietnam. I'm not trying to do the same in Iraq - in many ways, I think we've "lost" there already - although "win" and "lose" are empty terms given our lack of a long-term strategy for Iraq. We can claim to be showering our gift of freedom on the Iraqi people, but to them, it looks a lot like cluster bombs and depleted uranium ammunition. We can claim to be spreading democracy, but to them it's more like random arrests, illegal detention and nervous, trigger-happy troops shooting up random cars that look like they might turn the wrong way. That's the problem with pictures like the ones from Abu Ghraib. (Salon.com, watch an ad and read the article) It doesn't matter at all whether the Iraqi people are more or less free now than they were under Saddam, not to them. We claim to be liberators, but they see infidels and occupiers repeating the pattern from the last couple hundred years of Western-Islamic relations. The US has been no different from the French, the British or the Russians in how they treat native Islamic populations. There's an invasion, talk of the benefits the poor, benighted brown-skinned men and women can derive from the leadership of the wealthy, powerful white brothers (Kipling's "White Man's Burden" is still in play) and then the occupiers get tired of being shot at and bombed, and the arrests begin. The torture starts. Sooner or later, the occupiers will pull out, but not before propping up a strongman or two to keep things going smoothly in their absence. Fast forward a few decades and repeat - perhaps with the veneer of a different language, perhaps not. If there's any Freepers or right-wing Kool-Aid drinkers reading this, they've likely shut down their critical thinking and started bleating about "appeasement" and "Islamofascism" and "treason", but I'm not making excuses - the Muslim world has done a jim-spiffy job of producing its own thugs and murderers, and I don't condone killing civilians no matter who does it - Al Quaeda, Israel, the US Air Force or Christian Identity psychotics. I don't know how to get out of Iraq without making things worse. Staying the course seems a bad idea, as it just perpetuates an already untenable situation into an indefinite future. Pulling out starts the big war sooner. Handing things over to the UN just pushes the whole problem into someone else's lap. There's not an easy answer, but those of us with brains know there's never an easy answer. What I do know is that we can't keep going on this way. We can't keep treating men and women, innocent or guilty, this way. We can't kidnap nursing mothers to use them as weapons against their husbands. We can't lock up teenage boys for years without charge or trial, and we sure as shit can't shackle innocent men in puddles of thier own urine to make them confess to imaginary crimes. When we use terror to fight terrorists, we're not much better than the people we're fighting. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:55:00 AM | Wednesday, February 15, 2006
New Linky Love! I hang out with all types on them there Internets - queers, Christians, Muslims, Straights, gamers, mundanes, psychologists, bartenders - and even, from time to time, Canadians. My Dear Canadian Friends have started a group blog about Canadian politics, and it's delightful reading. C-eh? N-eh? D-eh? Smashing good stuff, like this by The Great Beast: With all due respect to Fred’s opinion, I couldn’t disagree with him more: I simply will never, ever get enough of David Emerson. I want to swim in the warm amniotic ocean of his syrupy treachery, listen to the delicate keening whine of his self-pity, and bask in the sultry heat of his radiant hypocrisy.Go getcher ass over there and read up every goddamn day, eh? And maybe bring me back something if you go oot to Tim Horton's. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:26:00 PM | Is It Cold In Here, Or Is It just Me? From the Washington Post: Congressional Probe Of NSA Spying Is In Doubt Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.Karl Rove apparently made the rounds with his file of photographs of key GOP members in compromising positions to make sure no one defected from the Party Line. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), a devious cunt that pretends to be a "moderate", has gone from being profoundly concerned to thinking it's not "essential or necessary" to investigate the President's bald-faced admission that he's violated the law and the US Constitution. While it appears the Democrats may actually stand upright and show some backbone on this, the Rethuglicans have once again circled the wagons and beaten the hesitant among them into position. This is a dangerous step - if Congress does not fulfill its duty and provide oversight and control of the President, who will? The courts? The media? Don't make me laugh. Snowe claims that secret meetings with Dick Cheney make up for the lack of warrants and domestic spying. That's like claiming that telling your wife that, sure, you've been banging her best friend and her sister, sometimes at the same time, but she shouldn't get too upset because you are, after all, keeping her posted on it, and by the way, you've got some pictures of it all to show her. It's not OK, and anything short of an immediate stop of illegal activity is not acceptable. Our enemy is, and always has been, those that wish to hold themselves above other men, unaccountable and untouchable. From King George III on through the plantation owners, the Robber Barons and all the rest - anyone that tries to set themselves up as an aristocracy, as a class separate from and above the rest of our nation - those are the enemies that can destroy our country. Right now, a Congressional cabal is trying to destroy the two-party system so that the GOP can lock down all federal power. Right now, an out-of-control Executive Branch is insisting that it has the right to ignore the Constitution and rule by its whims, imprisoning, torturing, snooping and killing as necessary to cement its grip. The enemy is among us, and I'm not talking about Khalid over at the Snack'n'pack. Our enemies have always been among us, they drive fancy cars and live in houses we can't even afford to drive past, and they're out to make us their serfs. If they're not stopped, it's going to get cold and it's going to get brutal, and it's going to take a long time to repair the damage. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:38:00 AM | Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Just For Reference This is the spread from a .28g shotgun fired at a range of 25 yards. A human head would fit neatly in the middle of the target.  Yeah, Harry Whittington was "just peppered" with birdshot. A shotgun pellet produces wound trauma by crushing the tissue it comes into direct contact with as it penetrates. In order to produce wound trauma that will be effective in quickly stopping an attacker, the pellets must penetrate his body deeply enough to be able to pass through a vital cardiovascular structure and cause rapid fatal hemorrhage to quickly deprive the brain of oxygenated blood needed to maintain consciousness.Just "peppered" with birdshot. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:09:00 PM | New Domestic Disturbance Melissa, IMHO, hits this one out of the park. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:25:00 AM | An Open Letter To The Leadership Of The Democratic Party You stupid, stupid fools. No, I understate. Stupid would be an improvement. Stupid would mean you at least understood the basics of politics. Stupid would mean you were capable of making it through the day without shitting in your pants, that you weren't in danger of getting your soft, undeveloped skulls smashed in by the toilet seat every time you went to get a drink of water. You are a bunch of goddamn low-grade morons, brainstems without a cortex, creatures that have somehow managed to evolve backwards, replacing the spines that helped our ancestors crawl out of the primordial muck and replacing them with a gelatinous mass that makes your bodies quiver in a light breeze. Paul Hackett was the best thing that's happened to Ohio politics in a long time, and you sons of bitches shoved him out the door. You idiots, you simple-brained spineless hacks, have connived to drive away a man that's done more to energize the Democratic Party than any old party boss in the last 30 years. Sherrod Brown - who's he? What's he done lately? Not a lot. He's one of the old guard, the ones that lost Ohio in the first place, one of the clueless, colorless dull-as-dishwater types that has spent the last several years managing to fail to capitalize on the plethora of scandals that circle the GOP like hungry buzzards. Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid, who have failed to provide anythying resembling adequate leadership to the Democratic Party over the last several years, presenting themselves ass-up for Frist and Santorum at almost every opportunity, went so far as to call the major donors that supported Hackett and urge them to cut him off. They were terrified that Hackett would say something indelicate, that he might offend the right wing circle jerkers by speaking truth. Hackett had this to say: "For me, this is a second betrayal. First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me."Hackett appears to be stepping out of politics, and the back-room bosses of the Democratic Party couldn't be happier. They don't represent us any more. The leadership of the Democratic Party wants progressives as window dressing, as a little bit of color for their potemkin campaigns. What they really want, what they crave like a junkie craves that kilo of pure, sweet heroin, is the corporate dollars. It's not about the people, it's not about the workers, it's about laying down in the mud and rooting their way to the teats of the vast, diseased sow of corporate subservience. This isn't a time for machine politics. This is a time for a renewal, a housecleaning. A real covenant with the voters of America that states that it is the people of America, the men and women that make this country great get up every day and work their fingers to the bone, they build cars, plow fields, sweep floors, direct traffic, teach children, mine coal, tend bars, mow lawns, sit in cubicles, stand behind cash registers, stock shelves, nurse the sick, build houses - that those people are the ones that are important, that have the greatest potential to keep our nation great. It's not about Ken Lay, or Dick Cheney or Jack Abramoff. It's not even about George Soros, or Paul Newman. It's about the barrista at the coffee shop and that guy holding the "Slow" sign next to the road grader, and your kid's fourth grade PE teacher and everyone else pulling together and doing their share. It's not a time for Sherrod Brown, or Hillary Clinton, or whatever other triangulator can twist arms in the back rooms to get the nomination. It's time for the goddamn fatcats to get shoved out of the Democratic party, it's time for people like me and you to run the machine hacks out of town on a rail and take back our party and then take back America. It's time to tell the party bosses that they fucking work for us, and if they can't do the job, they're fucking FIRED. The bosses think they've got us over a barrel, that they can tell us who to run and who we need to vote for. We've got two paths in front of us. On the first, they're right. We'll continue to support milquetoasts and losers. On the second, though - that's the good one. On that one, we fight. We clean our own house and then we clean the country. We work like hell to solve the big problems, and even though there'll be new problems, we keep plugging away, working together to keep it together. I'm not an idealist - I've had my heart broken too many times to think that "golden ages" are anything more than a veneer. I know there's always things to make better, things to fix, that human nature and entropy work together to keep even the highest ideals wobbly. I'm cool with that. It's not about building a perfect world, just about making this one better. Goddamn, this kind of shit is why I'm voting for Kinky for governor. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:21:00 AM | Monday, February 13, 2006
HEY! Guess Where I'm Blogging From! Give up? Northwest Airlines Gate D-15 in the Atlanta Airport. About 45 min away from boarding, then it's off to Memphis and a 2 hr wait for our flight to Austin. Ah, the excitement of the jet-setter's lifestyle. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:11:00 PM | Sunday, February 12, 2006
Ecce Signum! Behold the proof! Despite Little Scotty McClellan's sweaty, brethless assertions to the contrary, Bush and Abramoff have met. Many times. Here's a link to an article about one of those meetings, complete with a photograph. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:44:00 AM | Saturday, February 11, 2006
Right Now We're in Jasper, GA at my parents' house. It's snowing. The kids are having a plotz over the snow. Franny: "It's snowing like MAD out there. It's snowing EVEN MADDER out front!" Drew: "SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW!!!!! DON'T EAT THE YELLOW SNOW!" Alec: "SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW AAAAAAAWWWWOOOOOOOO!!! I HOWL LIKE A WOFFFF!" posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:49:00 PM | A Few Things I've Picked Up On This Trip So Far
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:43:00 AM | Friday, February 10, 2006
Out The Door FIxing to hustle the sleeping kids into the van for the drive to the airport and the DELIGHTFUL 2 hour wait before our plane leaves the ground. Apparently, a family booking travel to a funeral requires the pinheads in the TSA to spend extra time pawing through your luggage looking for signs you're a I'll try to post over the weekend. You guys have fun, and let's not have any repeats of the Badger Incident in the hot tub while I'm gone, OK? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 3:32:00 AM | Thursday, February 09, 2006
Political Theories I've been reading about the "Unitary Executive Theory", which claims, in short that the president can, in wartime or in times that sort of look like wartime if you squint really hard and wad the Constitution up in a ball and turn on a black light, flagrantly disobey any goddamn law he pleases and Congress and the Courts can go fuck themselves. It's an interesting theory, if you're into that political kink that involves jackboots, warrantless searches and spying, detention without charge or trial, torture and a near-seamless merging of national and corporate interests. For those of us more interested in respect at all levels of our society for equal and just enforcement of the law, though, it's somewhat problematic. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, Patrick Henry, John Adams, John Hancock and a bunch of other men were rather against anything resembling a "Unitary Executive". See, they fought a war to get rid of a Unitary Executive - King George III. Just a few of their many, many words about this can be found in The Declaration of Independence: We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.Pretty straightforward, that. They're saying that it's the obligation of the government to be fair, and to use its powers wisely. They're saying that if it doesn't, then folks have an obligation to throw the sons of bitches out on their asses and get some people in that know what the fuck they're doing. Thomas Paine was somewhat more direct in Common Sense: But where says some is the king of America? I'll tell you friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Britain. ... so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. [Emphasis Mine]The Unitary Executive Theory is about giving us a king. At this time, it's King George - again - and we've had quite enough of kings named George. I do not advocate revolution. Yet. Those guys back then knew what they were talking about when they said: Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.There's still time to evict the thugs squatting in the White House, and to chivvy the scoundrels in Congress back to the rocks from under which they crawled. There's still time for the media to clean house and get rid of the toadies and sycophants and get back to its proper job of reporting the truth. There's still time, but it's growing short. Figure out which side you're on - a Republic of, by and for the people, or an oligarchy of, by and for the powerful. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:09:00 AM | Wednesday, February 08, 2006
A Picture, For Your Viewing Pleasure President Pantywaist and Our Dear Laura react to Joseph Lowery's well-deserved redassing of the Codpiece-in-Chief: 
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 4:57:00 PM | Not Surprisingly... The Democrats, by and large, still don't fucking get it. From the link, Democrats are heading into this year's elections in a position weaker than they had hoped for, party leaders say, stirring concern that they are letting pass an opportunity to exploit what they see as widespread Republican vulnerabilities.Well, duh! What kind of fucking simpleton would you have to be to fail to exploit the utter lack of WMD, the shifting mosaic of rationalizations for war in Iraq, the Plame Affair, swift-boating, the indictment of Scooter Libby, Abramoff, DeLay, Ohio's "coingate", voting irregularities, the still-ongoing criminal lack of armor for troops and vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden's continued presence outside of a US jail cell, torture, illegal wiretaps, tax cuts for the wealthy and service cuts for the poor, the shitty state of the economy, rising gas prices, Katrina, Bill Frist, Terri Schiavo, Pat Robertson, Rick Santorum, Halliburton's record profits, the record profits of oil companies, Enron... and that's just what I could think of off the cuff. If the leadership of the Democratic Party cannot find something in all of that to use as a goddamn hammer on the gang of thieves and liars in the GOP, then the leadership of the Democratic Party needs to be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a goddamn rail. It's ridiculous, that it should even be up for discussion - I mean, in 1994, 1996, 1998 and 2000, the GOP used a fucking failed real estate deal to hammer Bill Clinton and the Democrats - Congressmen like Dan Burton made up bullshit about Vince Foster's suicide, Newt Gingrich apparently mined his own sordid life for crap to spew on the campaign trail - the GOP had to take the time to make shit up, and they managed to figure out how to win. The Democratic leadership, however, seems to be either too lazy or too stupid to figure out how to goddamn CUT AND PASTE from the newspapers to their press releases. We have damn few people in the Democratic Party willing to speak truth to power any more. Not Joseph Biden, slave to MBNA and avid supporter of a bankruptcy law that stops just short of creating Dickensian workhouses. Not Joseph Lieberman, who's spent so much time with his head up Bush's ass that he should get an MD and become a proctologist. Not Hillary Clinton, out to triangulate her way to the Democratic nomination in 2008. This list goes on - I could name dozens more that think accommodation and compromise will work with the theo-Stalinists of the GOP. A few understand what needs to happen, that's true - some more than others. The Congressional Black Caucus has to, because no one else gets it and no one else will speak for them. Howard Dean tries from time to time. Al Gore has been out shouting it from the fucking rooftops. Jimmy Carter, at Coretta Scott King's funeral, once again stated his position squarely on the side of social justice and good governance. John Kerry belatedly took a stand over the Alito nomination. Ted Kennedy gets the energy to fight from time to time. Who else, though? Goddamn, you fucking morons in the DNC. I'm holding down a full-time job, cleaning my house, cooking, washing dishes, folding clothes and preparing to leave in two days for a fucking funeral, and I can get a fucking handle on how to go after Bush and the GOP. What the FUCK are you doing up there in your fancy offices? Sniffing glue? Are you even able to dress yourselves without help? Do you have to wear crash helmets so you don't hurt your pwecious widdle heads when you walk headlong into the walls? I hope to god none of you ever gets a job at the Whataburger near my house, or I'll never get a burger right again. You idiots would leave the meat out and claim you've invented a radical new way to provide the meat-based fast food nutrition that your focus groups say America craves! AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGH. I think I just burst a blood vessel. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:09:00 AM | Tuesday, February 07, 2006
MOMMMMEEEEE!!!!! THEY'RE LAUGHIN' AT MEEEE!!! Alberto Gonzales, One thing we've learned is that this administration treats everything like it's junior high gym glass. Someone pisses you off? Dish out some juicy secret about them! If an opponent is too strong, have your friends make up some bullshit to spread around in the cafeteria. Further proof of this is revealed in this statement by Alberto The Waterboarder: "Our enemy is listening, and I cannot help but wonder if they aren't shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror," Gonzales said during the committee hearing that lasted about seven hours.That's right - whatever grave Constitutional problems there might be with spying on US citizens without warrants, oversight or transparency, they pale beside the risk that our enemy is laughing at us! NO! Say it ain't so! ::clutches pearls:: It's obvious that an actual threat of attack by Al Quaeda means nothing to President Pantywaist and his gang of bed-wetters. Their reaction to the infamous 8/6/2001 briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Within US" is proof enough, but if you need more, look at the state of "Homeland Security" - the department's a joke, a big, fat money-trough for special interests to feed at. Our borders are no more secure now than they were in 2000, and in some ways less secure. The only use President Pantywaist had to Homeland Security was to hike the "terror alert" level every time John Kerry got better press than he did in 2004. I'm not trying to minimize the threat Al Quaeda poses to us - they could kill thousands more of us, and are certain to try again. They're not as big a threat, though, as the Confederacy, the Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany, the Redcoats or global warming. We dealt rather well with all but the last of those, and if we had almost anyone other than President Pantywaist at the helm, we'd be well on our way to dealing with that. When do we get to tar and feather President Pantywaist and the Bed-Wetters? You know, that'd be a good name for a band. I'm just sayin'. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:59:00 AM | Monday, February 06, 2006
Let TV Be Our Guide... We hear a lot that we have to torture people, because somewhere, there might be a ticking bomb, and torture the only way to get that information. Some call that the "24 Scenario" or the "Jack Bauer Scenario" - after, of course, the popular TV series 24. I'm down with that - after all, life has a disturbing way of aping fiction. I'm constantly getting caught up in high-speed car chases with alien ninja robots on my way home from work, and then there's the comical yet sexy series of double-entendre-laden misunderstandings I've had with the pretty young woman at the coffee shop. Yes, I think we need to pass a law making torture legal, and we can call it the "24 Law" - but the kicker would be that the torturer has to be as scruffily attractive as Kiefer Sutherland, and they have to videotape it with a ticking clock in the lower right hand corner of the screen. In fact, I'm thinking of a few more laws that we should enact, all inspired by TV shows that just might come true!
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:00:00 AM | Sunday, February 05, 2006
I'm Not An Alarmist But this kind of worries me. In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States.Do I think that Guatemala-style death squads are even now fanning out across the US to take out Bush's critics? No. Consider, though. The Bush adminstration has already interpreted the limited powers of the presidency through the lens of the "Unitary Executive Power", which simply put states that the President can, basically, do whatever he wants when he wants. According to the Bushistas, it's legal to imprison American citizens without charge or trial for years. It's legal to kidnap foreign nationals and hand-deliver them to nations like Syria, Egypt and Uzbekistan so they can be tortured. It's legal, in the minds of this gang of thugs, for US Soldiers and intelligence operatives to torture foreign nationals in secret prisons in former Soviet-bloc prison centers. It's legal for this administration, they claim, to engage in warrantless wiretaps despite very specific prohibitions of that exact activity in the law. This administration hasn't met a legal prohibition it could obey yet, and I don't trust them to stay away from murder, either. Trusting George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld on this is like handing your wallet to a crackhead and telling him you'll be back to pick it up later. Wake the fuck up. We're inching towards fascism. Wake. Up. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:34:00 PM | Link To A Film Review Daniel Mendelsohn on Brokeback Mountain. ...For to see Brokeback Mountain as a love story, or even as a film about universal human emotions, is to misconstrue it very seriously—and in so doing inevitably to diminish its real achievement.Hammer. Nail. Head. One caveat- I have not yet seen this movie, though I've read Annie Proulx' story. I knew from the first time I read it that it wasn't about being gay, or being in love. It was about being in the closet - something I know a little about. Being bisexual is superficially easy - you can "pass" as straight. When you're in a long-term monogamous relationship as I am, it would could be easy to pretend that I wasn't bi - and I did that for many years. It's still a lie, though, and that lie was pretty fucking poisonous. It's no wonder so many gay and bisexual teens seriously entertain thoughts of suicide - the options aren't often very appealing. It's either be honest and risk ostracism from your family and beatings from bashers or lie and sneak and have to live your entire life thinking about every word and deed lest you betray your secret. Brokeback Mountain isn't slash, and it's not romance. As Mendelsohn points out, it's a tragedy. Being in the closet, having to lie every single moment of every single day, is a tragedy. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:10:00 PM | Saturday, February 04, 2006
Looks Like Jeb's Running Scared Why else would he be bringing in folks from Texas to shred state documents in violaiton of Florida law? A source in the FBI confirmed that public records are being destroyed on orders of Jeb Bush. The source said the governor may have taken that action in response to the continuing criminal probe of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the federal investigation of the 2001 gangland murder in Miami of Gus Boulis, owner of the Sun Cruz casino boat.Wouldn't it be delicious if the allegedly "smarter" Bush brother got taken down by Abramoff? posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:57:00 AM | Friday, February 03, 2006
80s Scandanavian Pop Music And Pie - I VOTE JA! Weebl agrees with me. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:43:00 PM | Today's GOP: Honor And Respect To America's Military Everybody remembers President Pantywaist's delightful day playing dress-up JUST LIKE A REAL SOJER! His turn as Commander Codpiece got the talking heads all moist in their Special Bits and everyone cheered his proclamation of "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!" - which, in fact, it was. Honest. Everything since then, of course, is just the last gasps of the insurgency. Now, we find that playing dress-up is what the rethugs do best. Congressman Bob Beauprez (R-CO) likes to play too! The problem is that Beauprez did not bravely serve half of his obligation to the Air National Guard. He never even bothered to contract an obligation. The Selective Service Classification History for Robert Louis Beauprez indicates that he requested and received three different student deferments."Well," you say, "at least he's one of those Republican He-Men, that takes care of our military!" Think again. He's got one of the worst records of support for veterans in Congress. Hats off to the Chickenhawks of the GOP! We're grateful to all who volunteer to wear our nation's uniform- especially if they're Republican and never bothered to serve. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:54:00 AM | Thursday, February 02, 2006
All Talk, No Action Just like I told you yesterday - you can always trust Bush to fail to live up to his promises. Tuesday, he proclaimed, So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative -- a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research -- at the Department of Energy, to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy.Just over 24 hours since he said that, his advisors tell us that, no, he really didn't mean what he said: What the president meant, they said, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equal to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.The man's full of shit, he's so full of shit I'm surprised it doesn't ooze out of his ears. The Advanced Energy Initiative will disappear, mark my words. It'll go to the same place that the Mars mission went, that his promises to fully cooperate with the 9/11 and Katrina commissions went, his promises to unite rather than divide, to restore honor and dignity to the White House... it'll go down the Memory Hole and no one in the mainstream media will say a damn thing about it. The GOP will insist that we've always been at war with Eastasia, until that changes and they'll point out that it's patently ridiculous to insist we've ever been at war with anyone other than Eurasia. Things will continue to get worse, and I'm not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel yet. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:26:00 AM | Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Update On The Campaign Still at work on the gaming campaign, and I've just opened the wiki to the players so they can get in on the world-building. I have to say that I'll be doing a wiki for every campaign - it makes it so much easier to keep track of what I've done so far. If you're interested in doing a wiki for your own purposes (be they pure as the driven snow or more nefarious in intent), pop on over here to take a quick tour. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:31:00 PM | Same Old Shit, Just New Words If you want to read Maximum Leader's pointless drivel, knock yourself out. His speechwriters gave him some lovely platitudes to spout, and he spouted them well, with nary a misstep (although I wish someone would beat it into his imbecilic, alcohol-soaked cortex that it's pronounced "NOO-CLEE-AR", not "NOOK-YOO-LER"). He talks a good game, but it's rather like that woman you meet in a bar that tells you all night long how she's going to rock your world, that she will do things to and for you in bed that will make your hair stand on end, that will make you swear off other women for life - and then when you take her home, she plops down on the sofa and starts watching TV, and starts yelling at you to get her another beer, fer chrissakes, and do you have any potato chips, and did you think you were actually going to get to fuck her? Yeah, right! Before Bush starts pointing fingers at Democrats for lack of cooperation, he might remember that his party controls both houses of Congress. The Democrats have more or less rolled over for almost every initiative - the morally bankrupt bankruptcy law? Patriot Act? Tax cuts? Some Democrats went along with all of those. Now, because some Democrats have finally developed the nerve to be an actual opposition party, Boy George is wetting his pants and throwing a hissy fit. Then there's this: The only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership -- so the United States of America will continue to lead.Wrong. It's a double order of wrong with wrong sauce on top and a supersized side order of wrong. The statement means nothing. Strong leadership over the edge of a cliff doesn't help a damn thing. Oh, we're out to end tyranny now? That's a tall order - one that we couldn't fill if we had ten times our strength and a hundred times our wealth. How do we define victory in this war? How do we know when it's over? We can't live in a permanent state of crisis, and insisting that the men and women in Iraq that are fighting against us "hate our freedom" doesn't begin to address the complexities of the situation. Most of the people in the resistance in Iraq just want the US and its puppets out of their homeland. They've seen innocent men, women and children tortured at Abu Ghraib by American soldiers, they've seen their sons and daughters killed by US artillery, they've seen the innocents trapped in Fallujah slaughtered along with the guerrillas that made a stand there, they've seen billions of dollars in money earmarked for rebuilding disappear into the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats and American corporations, and the streets of Iraq are still full of sewage, the power runs in fits and starts and they're just sick of it. They want to stand on their own, fall on their own and pick themselves up on their own. They don't want the Great White Brother to help them - they want to do it themselves. The inconsistencies of our struggle against tyranny perplex many, as well - North Korea is a Bad tyrannical government, but not bad enough to invade. Same with Iran. Saudi Arabia is a good tyrannical government, as is Pakistan, and China and Russia don't seem to bother President Bush at all. Egypt, Zimbabwe and the Sudan aren't a problem. Venezuela is, even though its president, Hugo Chavez has been democratically elected - and with fewer questions as to the integrity of the election than our elections in 2000 and 2004. Our nation is grateful to the fallen, who live in the memory of our country. We're grateful to all who volunteer to wear our nation's uniform -- and as we honor our brave troops, let us never forget the sacrifices of America's military families.Grateful, but not grateful enough to provide adequate equipment, or to give them a clear mission or to even fully fund benefits for our veterans. The families of our National Guardsmen are forced to go to food banks to get groceries, children are left without health insurance - is this honoring them? I think not. It doesn't matter how much lipstick you put on a pig - it's still a pig. And it doesn't matter how much empty rhetoric you vomit forth - illegal surveillance is still illegal surveillance. Legal and constitutional tools are easy to use, and more than adequate for the job at hand. Speaking of jobs, let's talk about the economy. It's being propped up by the housing bubble right now, and even that support isn't helping the economy. The good jobs, the jobs that pull people out of poverty and into the middle class - and a good number of middle class jobs, as well - are leaving the US for overseas. The jobs that are being created are much worse - minimum wage, entry level jobs that can't support a family. Jobs without benefits or with benefits that are as effective as a band-aid on a bullet wound. Tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest 3% of Americans don't do the rest of us any good, nor does slashing funding for antipoverty and public health programs. "Addiction to oil" - nice phrase, and it's been said for decades by progressives. What are we going to do about it, though? Proof's in the pudding, I say. When Exxon's posting world-record profits and Halliburton's raking the cash in hand over fist, why should I believe anyone that promises they're out to make us less dependent on oil? The record of the last 5 years says different. In short, I'm not seeing anything different. Sure, some of the words have changed, but I see nothing that indicates the actual practice will be one bit different. The middle class and the poor will continue to get screwed, the rich will get richer, we're stuck in Iraq until the end of our "mission", and no one can say how we know when that is. The GOP will continue to support bribery, corruption, cronyism, theft and worldwide tyranny while loudly proclaiming the opposite. The US will continue to decline in the eye of the rest of the world, the deficits and national debt will continue to climb, and sooner rather than later, the housing bubble will burst and the climate continues to get warmer, melting icecaps, producing stronger hurricanes and more flooding and drought. The poor of New Orleans are still going to get screwed, left to sit in the rotting, moldy remains of their houses (if they're lucky enough to get back to New Orleans at all). And the addle-pated imbecile that squats in the White House still can't pronounce "Nuclear". I weep for my nation. posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:36:00 AM | |
