Conversation of the Week

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

Don't miss the rest of They're Made Out Of Meat by Terry Bisson.

The War Against Plants

     "Nine years ago, the Supreme Court's conservative majority proclaimed its intent to curb the federal government's power to meddle in local and state affairs. A federal law making it a crime to have a gun near a school cannot stand, the court said in a 5-4 decision, because simple gun possession is not part of interstate commerce.
    "'There never will be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local' unless the high court enforces limits on Washington's power, said Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.
    "Now, defenders of California's medical marijuana law are hoping the Rehnquist court will follow its limited-government instincts to curb Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
    "If simple gun possession is protected from federal regulation, they ask, why not simple drug possession?"
- David G. Savage: Supreme Court May Take Up Pot Case -

The Bush/Mugabe Connection
or
Great Minds Think Alike

The British Embassy in Harare has been leaked an explosive seven-page document. Titled, "Solution to the white problem," the report urges President Robert Mugabe to rid Zimbabwe of most of its remaining white population by staging a bombing which would then be blamed on "British-funded terrorists." The June 8 proposal was reportedly drawn up by advisers to the director-general of operations in Mugabe's Central Intelligence Organization secret police. According to its scenario, "British-funded terrorists" would attack a strategic economic target and diplomatic relations would be suspended. British citizens would then be given 48 hours to leave Zimbabwe or risk being interned as suspected terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
- UPI -

Gesundheit 9/11

     "It's funny. I'd seen all this stuff before. I mean it isn't as if there was anything really new here for anyone who's been paying attention for the past few years. And yet, I cried. Maybe its the deprogramming of having at least some of what we've seen replayed with any decent focus for One Brief Shining Moment, beyond the self-imposed straitjacket of a docile and dangerously inept US press. Maybe its just the oxygen given to all those impulses so many of us have kept in check, all those shoots of anger, sadness and embarrassment blossoming into full blown consciousness.
    "My own thought process in response to Michael Moore's new film reminded me of one of those desiccated sponges you put in water a few hours later and voila: your tiny piece of foam has bloated into a full blown fish, or frog, or palm tree ten times its original size. Or maybe like opening an archive, unzipping a million saved files at once. My brain fairly exploded with repressed anger going back to the Florida recount disaster: things I had known in much more detail before Moore scratched the surface again and brought it all flooding back."
- Daniel Patrick Welch: Good for Business, Bad for the People -

    "The film’s most impressive segments, however, come when covering topics that aren’t found in the standard liberal complaint list. Fahrenheit 911 looks at why someone would join the military and the deceptive practices of military recruiters in addition to how the invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in U.S. soldiers doing, both intentionally and not, horrendous things to Iraqis. (This makes the film a continuation of the “violent America” theme that Moore began in 2002’s Bowling for Columbine.) Moore deserves special credit for the way he handled footage of the bodies of dead Iraqis being carried off and of an Iraqi child with a gruesome head injury screaming in pain. Such images cannot be made “tasteful,” but they don’t have to be exploitative, and here they weren’t.
   "Moore understandably doesn’t bother to attempt the arduous task of quantifying these subjects, but strangely neither does he seek out voices that could provide a broader picture. Interviews with people such as psychologist RobertJayLifton, former Marine recruiter’s assistant Chris White and the folks behind Iraq Body Count could have gone a long way towards convincing the unconvinced. Moore appears to think the film’s footage can sufficiently speak for itself, and he may right. The Pentagon can’t be happy with the footage in the Fahrenheit 911 of two recruiters in Flint, Michigan, as the duo appears to have no shame in either blatantly lying to young people or being filmed while doing so. (A great stunt would be to have had a camera follow some muscular 18-year-old male to the recruiting station. He tells the recruiters he wants to sign up today in order to realize his dream of becoming a military recruiter and convincing other young people to go kill and be killed for God and country. What would the reaction be?) The greatest value of the film may be that it alerts more people to how the U.S. military is an operation with bloody hands that should make anybody uncomfortable."
- Micah Holmquist -

    "Fahrenheit 911 is not a political film. It is an emotional film, reflecting Moore's stated love of Ingmar Bergman. It is meant to produce, in grand Germanic-Tragedian (i.e. melancholy, Brecht, Kushner, Clint Eastwood, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) tradition, a range of emotions that come out to sublime melancholy. Its humor is so raucous as to render it surreal, and its surrealism is so sad as to render it un-real. Moore's ending monologue - he really is hardly in it at all - is most unlike the finale of his other films in which he is out to fry the big fish.
    "It is a far more psycho-political neo-Kantian travelogue for anyone, conservative, liberal, Marxist, anarchist, emotional, from the heart not the head, where all sincere politics are derived - offended by just about everything that has happened since the day that Bush was declared president, Dec. 13, 2000 (my 24th birthday). For those of us who were aware of the events, it is cathartic. For those unaware, it is nearly a Eureka moment - as I witnessed from a whole range of slack-jawed folk walking out of the cinema."
-  Jordy Cummings: The American Chip -

    "As many other reviewers have noted, it's far less an ego trip than Moore's other films and much more purposefully focused. It's also just as funny and sarcastic, whether it's turning the invasion of Afghanistan into a TV western starring Bush's cabinet members or ridiculing Donald Rumsfeld as he notes the 'care' and 'humanity' that went into the choice of bombing targets in Iraq. (On the whole, the film reveals much more of the Iraqi people than our TV news has.)
   "Moore also demonstrates a certain filmic intelligence not apparent in Roger & Me (1989), The Big One (1997), Bowling for Columbine (2002), or his cable series, The Awful Truth (1999-2001). It's most apparent in his skillful and sensitive depiction of the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and its immediate aftermath. First the impact of the airliners is presented as audio accompanying a black screen, then Moore gives us reaction shots of stunned Manhattanites and finally a slow-motion rain of debris. His elliptical treatment of a Christmas Eve army raid on a Baghdad home later in the film is equally effective. (Certain other shots are as ugly and blotchy as anything in The Big One; Moore has grown as an editor, but he still doesn't care if a piece of found footage looks terrible.)"
- Jonathan Rosenbaum: The Screed We Need -

"In a draft advisory opinion placed on the FEC's agenda for today's meeting, the agency's general counsel states that political documentary filmmakers may not air television or radio ads referring to federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election. The opinion is generated under the new McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, which prohibits corporate-funded ads that identify a federal candidate before a primary or general election."
- Alexander Bolton: Fahrenheit 9/11 ban -

"Wasn't it just weeks ago that we were debating whether we should see the coffins of the American dead and whether Ted Koppel should read their names on Nightline? In Fahrenheit 9/11, we see the actual dying, of American troops and Iraqi civilians alike, with all the ripped flesh and spilled guts that the violence of war entails. We also see some of the 4,000-plus American casualties: those troops hidden away in clinics at Walter Reed and at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where they try to cope with nerve damage and multiple severed limbs. They are not silent. They talk about their pain and their morphine, and they talk about betrayal. 'I was a Republican for quite a few years,' one soldier says with an almost innocent air of bafflement, 'and for some reason they conduct business in a very dishonest way.'"
- Frank Rich: Beautiful minds and ugly truths -

"With a single stroke, Michael Moore has undone three years of poor, slanted, biased, factually bereft, compromised television journalism. This, in the end, is the final greatness of Fahrenheit 9/11. Not only will Americans get a sense of the depth of the deception they have endured, but 'journalists' all across the country will be forced to endure the humiliation they so richly deserve."
- William Rivers Pitt: Thank You, Michael Moore -

And, of course, one spoil sport...

     "In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something, I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now, has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous 'distraction' from the fight against him...
   "We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic 'security' staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So -- he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again -- simply not serious."
- Christopher Hitchens: Unfairenheit 9/11 - The lies of Michael Moore -

I Can't Believe It's Not Food Stamps

    Madwoman Mad Kane was "amused to learn about a new Bush administration goal: It wants to change the name of the Food Stamps Program (since it no longer uses stamps) and is soliciting suggestions from the public...
   "Needless to say, I couldn't resist the challenge, and the new name I've come up with is Leave No Stomach Behind. But I think it's important to give Dubya a wide selection of creative names. So, as a public service, I challenge my readers to come up with some good names and post them in my comments."

Here are the winners.

Gallery of the Week

The covers of every single issue of Mad Magazine.

The Rick Stanley Diet

You too can walk through Brighton, Colorado with a standard registered handgun in full sight, get arrested despite the constitutional guarantee of your right to bear arms, spend 102 days in jail, and lose 37 pounds, just like Rick Stanley did.

News of the Religiously Insane

     "More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon where Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be 'reborn as new persons.'
    At the March 23 ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon's head.
- Lawmakers attend Reverend Moon's Coronation -

Peter Paranoia Says...

     "You're on your way to work in the morning and place a call on your wireless phone. As your call is relayed by the wireless tower, it is also relayed by another series of towers to a microwave antenna on top of Mount Weather between Leesburg and Winchester, Virginia and then beamed to another antenna on top of an office building in Arlington where it is recorded on a computer hard drive.
    "The computer also records your phone digital serial number, which is used to identify you through your wireless company phone bill that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency already has on record as part of your permanent file.
   "A series of sophisticated computer programs listens to your phone conversation and looks for keywords that suggest suspicious activity. If it picks up those words, an investigative file is opened and sent to the Department of Homeland Security."
- Teresa Hampton & Doug Thompson: How Big Brother Is Watching, Listening and Misusing Information About You -

I Feel So Much Safer Now

"While seated on the bench, an Oklahoma judge used a male enhancement pump, shaved and oiled his nether region, and pleasured himself, state officials charged yesterday in a petition to remove the jurist."
- Here Comes the Judge -

"A teacher's aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs and hauled before a judge Friday, accused of failing to pay the year-old fine. Hope Clarke, 32, crying and in leg shackles, told the judge she was rousted at 6:30 a.m. by federal agents after the ship returned to Miami from Mexico. She insisted that she had been required to pay the $50 fine before she could leave Yellowstone, which has strict rules about food storage to prevent wildlife from eating human food."
- Catherine Wilson: Marshmallow Bust Haunts Woman on Cruise -

Satan Doesn't Want You to Know

There's...

Don't Take My Word For It

"Go fuck yourself!"
- Dick Cheney to U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy [D-Vt.] on the Senate floor, June 22, 2004 -

"Maybe the Religious Rightists who support this administration – while washing their kids’ mouths out with soap if they utter similar profanity - will begin to realize the hypocrisy behind their cussing cult leaders who pretend to be so honorable and dignified. Maybe they will finally see the Grand Canyon-like gap between the Christianity Bush-Cheney publicly pretend to follow, and the real lives they lead."
- Jackson Thoreau -

"Freud was no optimist about the human condition. He thought he saw in man an instinctual drive toward self-annihilation. He called this the "death instinct" and postulated that man fought off this drive in himself by projecting it outward as aggression, thereby obtaining relief. As such, aggression was too deeply rooted to ever be expunged completely. At best, it could only be managed - through a blend of knowledge and reason. This was Freud's one hope for mankind."
- Gerald S. Rellick: Foolish Leaders And Bloody Wars -

"At precisely 0938 hours, an alarm was sounded at Langely Air Force Base, and those whom were on call, drinking coffee, were scrambled. They, the Happy Hooligans, a unit of 3 F-16 aircraft, were ordered to head toward Pennsylvania. At 0957 they spotted their target; After confirmation orders were received, one Major Rick Gibney fired two sidewinder missiles at the aircraft and destroyed it in mid flight at precisely 0958; He was awarded a medal from the Governor one year later for his heroic actions."
- Phil Jayhan: Flight 93 Was Definitely Shot Down -

"Tentatively called 'Foggyland,' the amusement park will take up 35 contiguous acres and feature such attractions as the Find the Car Keys Pavilion and the Do I Know You? photo booth, in which the participants face is photographed, altered to look like someone else and then provided as a souvenir."
- Brad Schreiber: Reagan Death Inspires Alzheimer's Theme Park -

"Unless something changes in a hurry, combat-ready weapons like the AK-47, the Uzi and the TEC-9 assault pistol weaponry designed to mow down large numbers of people as efficiently as possible could once again be flooding the American market. And thanks to the gaping loopholes in our gun laws, everyone from disgruntled teens to Osama bin Laden's henchmen will be able to legally obtain this kind of ferocious firepower at gun shows without even having to undergo a background check. It could be cash-and-carry mayhem."
- Arianna Huffington: Bush Ducks for Cover as NRA Opens Fire on Assault Weapons Ban -

"America has the best enemies that money can buy."
- Dr. Stan Monteith -

"Clinton's claim that Hillary was named in honour of Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealander who conquered Mount Everest, has created more New Zealand interest than the former president's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky... [T]he story has a fundamental problem: Edmund Hillary reached Everest's peak on May 29, 1953, nearly seven years after the infant Hillary arrived in the world. Edmund Hillary's autobiography - Nothing Venture, Nothing Win - noted that at the time of Hillary's birth, he was earning a modest income from bee-keeping."
- Clinton claims raise eyebrows in NZ -

"I am convinced that our founders would counsel us today that the greatest challenge facing our republic is not terrorism but how we react to terrorism, and not war, but how we manage our fears and achieve security without losing our freedom. I am also convinced that they would warn us that democracy itself is in grave danger if we allow any president to use his role as commander in chief to rupture the careful balance between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government."
- Al Gore: Democracy Itself is in Grave Danger -

"From no child left behind to no one's behind is left."
- Randy Rhodes: Air America -

"What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?"
- William Shakespeare: Sonnet LIII -

    "The Supreme Court cast new doubt Thursday on the way criminals are sentenced in many American courts, ruling that juries -- not judges -- must decide on all the factors that result in harsher sentences...
   "Scalia announced one clear limit on it. The rule will not be applied retroactively to reopen old cases, Scalia said in an Arizona death penalty case. That means more than 100 inmates who were sent to death row by judges in Arizona, Idaho, Montana and Nebraska will not get new sentencing hearings before juries." 
- David G. Savage and Henry Weinstein: Ruling Could Change Sentencing Nationwide -

    "ACT employs about 1,000 canvassers in 17 swing states, paying them $8-$12 an hour to ask residents which issues are important to them and, if they are not registered, sign them up as voters. Employees gather telephone numbers and other personal information - birth dates, driver's license numbers or partial Social Security numbers, depending on each state's requirements for voter registration.
    "A review of federal campaign finance and state criminal records by The Associated Press revealed that the names and hometowns of dozens of ACT employees in Missouri, Florida and Ohio matched those of people convicted of crimes such as burglary, forgery, drug dealing, assault and sex offenses. At least seven parolees were still living at Missouri halfway houses when employed by ACT, and four of those later were returned to prison...
   "'We continue to believe people deserve a second chance, and we will continue to offer that chance for people who are re-entering society to participate in our program,' [Washington-based spokesman Mo Elliethee] said. 'But our policy is to not hire anyone who we deem not to be safe.'"
- David A. Lieb: Voter Registration Group to Check Workers -

"The true scale of the ethnic cleansing of civilians in Sudan has been uncovered by a NASA aerial survey which showed nearly 400 villages have been completely or substantially destroyed. [Editor's note: I tried to access these picture through the NASA site but ALL pictures of Sudan are mysteriously unavailable] The existence of the photographs has been revealed by a United States aid chief, who said his organisation's estimate that 350,000 people could die in the next nine months 'is conservative'".
- True extent of Sudan's agony revealed by NASA images -

    "[Scott] Ritter says Americans are not getting a true picture of the war because the media are afraid to leave their compounds. 'They rely on what they're told, and that's what they tell the American people,' he said."
- John Intardonato: Americans were 'bushwhacked,' weapons inspector Ritter says -

"If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it."
- Jonathan Winters -

    "Well, I'm here in Iraq, and I've seen it, and done it. I've seen everything you've ever seen in a war movie. I've seen cowardice; I've seen heroism; I've seen fear; and I've seen relief. I've seen blood and brains all over the back of a vehicle, and I've seen men bleed to death surrounded by their comrades. I've seen people throw up when it's all over, and I've seen the same shell-shocked look in 35-year-old experienced sergeants as in 19-year-old privates.
    "I've heard the screams - 'Medic! Medic!' I've hauled dead civilians out of cars, and I've looked down at my hands and seen them covered in blood after putting some poor Iraqi civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time into a helicopter. I've seen kids with gunshot wounds, and I've seen kids who've tried to kill me."
- anonymous soldier: Iraq Combat - What It's Really Like Over There (mandatory reading) -

"Some people think [Mel Gibson] is an anti-Semite while others accuse him of being a homophobe, but I don't think that's true because I fucked him and afterwards we watched Yentl."
- Graham Norton -

"When Johnny comes marching home we'll all turn gay!"
- General Percy Gilbert of Great Britain at the battle of the Falkland Islands -

"Nothing dulls the mind as thoroughly as a sequence of familiar notions."
- Paul Feyerabend -

"There are no solids. There are no things." 
- R. Buckminster Fuller -

"Cheney brought my mother up to the casket, so she could pay her respects. She is in her 80's, and she has glaucoma and has trouble seeing. There were steps, and he left her there. He just stood there, letting her flounder. I don't think he's a mindful human being. That's probably the nicest way I can put it."
- Ron Reagan - 

"My message to him is, 'Get out more, pal. You are surrounded by an army of sycophants who say that, even when you blow your nose, you are brilliant.' How sad is that? It's not as if he's making Ten Commandments, Part Two. Everything in his new Star Wars movies seems so important now. Ours were much funnier. I am not speaking out of school here, but he just doesn't get it. He thinks some of this new stuff is funny."
- Mark Hamill: Lucas ruined my career -

"The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over."
- Aesop -

"Right wing death squads and a hub for drug smuggling is Bush's vision of democracy in Iraq all orchestrated by the ambassador of death, Negroponte. The old Iran Contra gang are all in place once again ready to flood the streets of America and Europe with cheap heroin from Afghanistan. The Bush administration's reluctance to hand Saddam over to the interim government of Iraq may be based not on a fear of Saddam's military capabilities but on a fear of him telling what he knows about drug smuggling."
- Ambassador of Death, Right-Wing Death Squads, Drug Smuggling: George Bush's Plan for Iraq -

    "Over Hollywood's long-standing objections, some members of Congress are endorsing legislation that would allow DVDs to be 'sanitized' — stripped of scenes that parents don't want their children to see or hear — without first requiring the consent of studios or directors.
   "As part of that continuing crackdown, the Senate on Tuesday attached a 'decency' provision as a rider to its annual defense bill. The measure would increase penalties tenfold for radio and TV broadcasters that violate federal indecency rules. Approved 99 to 1, the bill would allow the Federal Communications Commission to raise fines from a maximum of $27,500 to $275,000 per violation, up to $3 million a day per broadcaster."
- Richard Simon: Push to Allow DVDs to Be 'Sanitized' Alarms Studios -

"A former AOL employee was charged Wednesday with stealing the Internet provider's entire subscriber list -- over 30 million consumers, and their 90 million screen names -- and selling it to a spammer."
- Bob Sullivan: Former employee charged with stealing subscriber list -

    "[W]e remain in a state of denial about the size of the organization we face, the multiple allies it has, and more importantly probably than anything, the genius of bin Laden that's behind the movement and the power of religion that motivates the movement. I think we are, for various reasons, loath to talk about the role of religion in this war. And it's not to criticize one religion or another, but bin Laden is motivated and his followers and his associates are motivated by what they believe their religion requires them to do. And until we accept that fact and stop identifying them as gangsters or terrorists or criminals, we're very much behind the curve. Their power will wax our costs in treasure, and blood will also wax.    "And the genius that lies behind it, because he's not a man who rants against our freedoms, our liberties, our voting, our the fact that our women go to school. He's not the Ayatollah Khomeini; he really doesn't care about all those things. To think that he's trying to rob us of our liberties and freedom is, I think, a gross mistake. What he has done, his genius, is identify particular American foreign policies that are offensive to Muslims whether they support these martial actions or not our support for Israel, our presence on the Arabian Peninsula, our activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, our support for governments that Muslims believe oppress Muslims, be it India, China, Russia, Uzbekistan. Bin Laden has focused the Muslim world on specific, tangible, visual American policies.
    "And there seems to be very little opposition to him within the Muslim world, and that's why I think that our assumption that he distorts Islam is just that, it's analysis by assertion. I'm not sure it's quite accurate."
- Andrea Mitchell: CIA insider says U.S. fighting wrong war -

"After pledging to ask the hard questions concerning the failure of US air defenses on Sept. 11, the commission charged with belatedly investigating those events ignored inconsistent, sometimes nonsensical testimony. The 10-member panel also failed to ask about diverting exercises carried out that morning, why FL 93 came down in two places, or why the interceptors launched by the Air Force flew at a fraction of their top speeds. No one, it seems, wants to go near proof of treason rivaling America's first Pearl Harbor. 
- William Thomas: 911 Commission Coverup, The Media Repeats A Story Full Of Lies -

"If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else."
- Yogi Berra -

"Good will is mightier than the strongest weapons and guarantees the greatest security."
- Apocrypha: Aristeas, 230 -

"There must be more to life than having everything."
- Maurice Sendak-

Arithmetic from Hell

You've got to divide the success you achieve in life by the amount of evil you do squared.

Everything Else

The only problem with Kerry's 10 Commandments is they came from Jeff Crook instead of John Kerry.

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Might I recommend Candide?