My Pet Goat

With all the fuss being made about Bush reading My Pet Goat to a kindergarten class for seven minutes after being told about the terrorist attack on 9/11, has anybody bothered to actually read My Pet Goat? Of course not. Everyone is just assuming that the My Pet Goat being read by the students and teacher in Fahrenheit 911 is the same My Pet Goat being read along with by Bush. Not so. Disinfotainment Today has unearthed the actual copy of My Pet Goat that George W. Bush was reading that fateful morning. It totally explains the expression on his face...

    "Just sit there," said the goat. "Don't do anything. Just sit there."
   "That's right," said the schoolteacher who seemed to be reading from some OTHER My Pet Goat. "This doesn't involve you. You don't have to do a gosh darn thing."
   "Listen to what we're saying," reiterated the goat. "It's not your problem. Other people are working on it who can do a better job than you. Just give them time to do the hard stuff and you won't have to do any thinking at all. We know you hate thinking. Just sit there with that dazed look on your face that you've perfected so well whenever Laura asks for oral sex."
   Bush stood up for a second to adjust his crotch.
   "What are you doing?" said the teacher. "Sit back down. You've got more time to contemplate."
   "You like contemplating, don't you?" asked the goat.
    "Shut up," said Seymour, the invisible owner of the pet goat, who wandered into the classroom unseen. "Who said you could talk to the president?" he said to the goat.
   "He's not really the president," said the goat.
   "And you're not really a goat," said the schoolteacher.
   "And you're not really invisible," said the real president, who was actually in another building at the time.
   "Gosh," said Bush. "Is it all just a dream or do I really get to fulfill my lifetime goal of going to war like my daddy?"
   "Fuck you," said the goat. "You rich boys are all alike."
   And so, against the wishes of the goat, Bush went to war and everybody lived happily ever after.

The End
 

Recycling Rumors
by Paul Krassner

     On this 35th anniversary of Woodstock, everyone who was there has their own specific memories and associations. The 60s were over. Negroes had become blacks. Girls had become women. Hippies had become freaks. Richard Alpert would become Ram Dass. Hugh Romney would become Wavy Gravy. San Francisco Oracle editor Allen Cohen would become Siddartha and move to a commune, where everybody called him Sid.
    There was the music and the mud. There was the dope and the dancing. There was the free food and the free love. There was the Port-o-Potties and the politics. Most of all, there was a sense of community. The political contingent was encamped in a red and white striped tent called Movement City. In the afternoon, Yippies were churning out flyers proclaiming that the festival should be free, and at night they were busy unscrewing the chain link fences.
    While The Who was performing, Abbie Hoffman, tripping on acid, climbed up on the stage with the intention of informing the audience that John Sinclair (manager of the band MC5 and chairman of the White Panthers) was serving ten years in prison for possession of two joints--that this was really the politics behind the event--but before he could get his message out, Pete Townshend--also tripping, having been dosed backstage--transformed his guitar into a tennis racket and smashed Abbie in the head with a swift backhand.
    My yellow leather fringe jacket, which I had been wearing for the first time, was stolen from the Movement City tent. But I found myself dealing with a much more significant kind of paranoia. I had been informed by a reliable source that a think tank, the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, was contracted to determine how Americans might react to a cancellation of the election in 1972 because of internal civil unrest in response to the Vietnam war. Investigative journalist Ron Rosenbaum was able to determine that I was the fourth person down from a leaker in the White House.
    Feeling like the Ancient Mariner waving his filthy albatross in front of anybody who would listen, I did my best to spread the word, regardless of the possibility that I was being used to float a trial balloon. I worked my way up from the underground papers to the reporters in the press tent at Woodstock. I blabbed about it at campus appearances and in alternative radio interviews. Ultimately the story filtered up into the mainstream media.
    When Attorney General John Mitchell announced that whoever had started this rumor should be punished, I sent him a letter confessing my sin, but I never heard back. Meanwhile, the RAND Corporation concluded that the average American citizen would not stand for a cancellation of the election. Now, 35 years later, that same possibility has been floated publicly from the White House by Condoleezza Rice and others, a trial balloon propelled by the arrogance of power but pricked by the polls. Oh, well, there's always the possibility of declaring martial law.

Same-Sex Make-Overs Declared Null and Void

The California Supreme Court ruled today that make-overs done by the same-sex "Fabulous Five" approved by the San Francisco mayor earlier this year are null and void. The court, ruling on a lawsuit brought against the mayor by the Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund, said that the California Constitution states that make-overs cannot by done by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and all make-overs are between a man and a woman.

Dueling Quotes

"...we need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. Those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench."
- George W. Bush -

"...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
- US Constitution, Article VI, Clause 3 -

Crop Circle of the Week

Headline of the Week

AL-QAEDA PLANNING TO DISRUPT FALL ELECTION WITH MALFUNCTIONING ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES
Florida Seen as Target

Troubling new intelligence information indicates that the al-Qaeda terror network may be planning to disrupt the fall presidential election by installing thousands of malfunctioning electronic voting machines throughout the country, focusing their efforts on the state of Florida.
- The Borowitz Report -

The War Against IEWDNBIFSWHTUTAAWTTTSTCOTFW

"We actually misnamed the war on terror, it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world." 

(Laughter.) 

"No, that's what they do." 

- Dubya - 

Why This Isn't a Blog

My primary problem with blogs is they're backwards. Since the most recent entry is always on top, there's no way to construct set-ups without the punchline preceding them.

Take the case of John Buchanan, Republican candidate for president and major journalist. This week I got an hysterical e-mail from ShareTheTruth.org and 911Truth.org saying that Buchanan had been arrested, that it was a travesty of justice, that I should do something about it. (Jack Blood posted the letter verbatim here.)

In the real world, you're reading that paragraph FIRST.

A couple days later I got a slightly less hysterical e-mail saying "Buchanan Freed! Judge dismisses case after 4 hr wait for no-show 'victim'" by David Kubiak. "Judge Jose Jiminez threw out all charges against John Buchanan today when the Florida state attorney could not produce the alleged 'victim' in the case. The judge realized it was all a mistake and John Buchanan was released from jail." (Posted here.)

In the real world, you're reading that paragraph SECOND.

But if this were a blog, you've have read the second paragraph first since it would have been a later entry. You'd have found out that John Buchanan was released from prison BEFORE finding out that he was arrested in the first place.

That's why I like constructing a weekly instead of blogging daily. I can put things at the top that pay off at the bottom. I can put items in order instead of in reverse order. You can read replies AFTER original statements. You can laugh at punchlines because you read the setups first. It makes disinfotainment make more sense, and disinfotainment needs all the sense it can get.

Oh, and John? Glad you're out of jail.

October Surprises Announced

White House unveils schedule for pivotal month leading up to election.
 

• Oct. 6: Bin Laden captured, finds Jesus, calls Bush great man.
• Oct. 9: Colin Powell throws out first ball at Falluja Little League game.
• Oct. 15: Casual Friday constitutional amendment proposed.
• Oct. 24: Invasion of Iran.
• Oct. 31: Halloween candy tax rebate announced.

- Ironic Times -

Stupid Answers of the Week

Last week we asked "How is the Abu Graib prison scandal, which is telling the world how the United States treats its enemies, actually HELPING the cause of the New World Order?"

#1

The answer is that terror has been a weapon of the U.S. for many years. By showing how ruthless you can be, you make not only your enemy, but also the world cower. E.g…

The US military industrial complex experimented with the most devilish weapons on the people and land of Vietnam. Napalm, chemical and bacteriological weapons were used indiscriminately to kill civilians and destroy everything that grew on the land. Vietnam had to bear an enormous burden after the war. Millions were killed or injured, eight hundred thousand children were orphaned or abandoned and the land ravaged by unexploded bombs and mines. It is estimated that the United States used a total of 338,237 tons of napalm in the Vietnam War between 1963 and 1971. The igniting agent, white phosphorus, continues burning for a considerable amount of time. A reported three quarters of all napalm victims in Vietnam were burned through to the muscle and bone (fifth degree burns). The pain caused by the burning is so traumatic that it often causes death. During the war about 10% of Vietnam was intensively sprayed with 72 million litres of chemicals, of which 66% was Agent Orange.

There were 539,000 tons of bombs dropped on Cambodia - 600,000 (minimum) people were killed. 

During the CIA's secret air war, a bomb dropped on Laos every eight minutes for nine years, from 1964 to 1973.US aircraft dropped 2,092,900 tonnes (1,898,260 metric tons) of bombs on Laos, approximately the total tonnage dropped by US air forces during all of World War II in both the European and Pacific theatres. More than two tonnes of US bombs per inhabitant were dropped in the liberated zone (Pathet Lao zone), where the Lao People's Army was associated. This was some of the heaviest aerial bombing in world history. Estimated civilian deaths: 500,000 people. The United States dropped an estimated 285 million cluster bomblets all over Southeast Asia during the course of the Vietnam War - seven bomblets for every man, woman and child. By 1973 it was estimated that there were at least nine million unexploded bomblets still lying on Laotian territory. As much as half a million tons of unexploded ordnance (primarily cluster-bombs) remains littered all over the Laotian countryside - 35 years later.

Wal Cooper

Australia

#2

Excuse me, what part of "fear" don't you understand? Fear works so well in keeping the population of the U.S. in line, it's got to work for "those folks" too.

Yes, fear is the common denominator here. We start by scaring the people at home, lying to convince them a war is necessary. We keep them on edge with constant warnings of impending attack.

Meanwhile...We cage "enemy combatants" without hearings, while passing draconian laws allowing citizens at home to be treated the same way.

And it works for both enemies and citizens. Face it. Everything being done to those prisoners in Iraq and Guantanimo has been perfected in our own home-grown prisons.

The humiliation is intended to keep our enemies subdued, and when the good people at home see how they could be treated, they'll be more careful about what they say - and maybe about what they think.

It's win - win for the oppressors.

John Zutz
Milwaukee
VVAW National Officer

#3 

IT'S HELPING THE CAUSE OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER BY TELLING OTHER AUTHORITARIAN AND TOTALITARIAN GOVERNMENTS HOW THEY MAY BEHAVE , PROVIDED THAT THEY PLAY BALL WITH US AND NOT OPPOSE THE CONSPIRACY TO RU  THE PLANET.SEMPER FI

"THE DEEPEST ROOTS ARE UNTOUCHED BY THE FROST" 
Chris McFarland 

#4 

two or so, ok dude? 
palantir22 

#5 

 That's another 7 stupid questions,isn't it?...8 now... 

- Steve Kinloch 

Belated Christmas Gift from Hell

The Fez boasts a mideastern flare popular with lounge lizards. 
Don your tin foil fez and smoking jacket, have a drink, and kick 
back to contemplate the government's betrayal of the nation's trust. 
Be careful - they might hear your thoughts through the transmitters 
in your fillings. 
- Tin Foil Hats - for the discriminating lunatic -

Quiz of the Week

What is a fitting tribute to the death of Bennett Abrams, the man who created the artificial tree?

a) Plant a tree
b) Kill a tree
c) Start a blog
d) create an artificial family tree

This week in Najaf, the US military killed 157...

a) Iraqis
b) Afghanis
c) Normal people just trying to get on with their lives with a minimum of interference.

Stupid Question of the Week

According to Cyberspace Gives Al Qaeda a Place of Refuge at the Los Angeles Times, "Since Osama bin Laden and his followers were driven from their bases in Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda terrorist network has demonstrated an increasing ability to exploit the Internet in reconfiguring itself as a semi-leaderless global extremist movement." This situation should be dealt with by...

a) closing cyberspace.
b) shutting down websites that look even slightly like they might be terrorist related.
c) masturbating wildly.
d) voting Republican.
e) sending your solution to "How do we deal with al Qaeda using the internet?" to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

Sophistimicated Doowacky of the Week

Falkon

Thanks to copyscape, a copyright protection program that searches the web for sites with YOUR material, I found out that somebody has stolen my Satan for President site and changed it into a Falkon for President site. Pretty weird, and a perfect excuse to write...

The Threatening Letter of the Week

Hi Falkon, this is Satan. 

You thought you could get away with this? Watch your behind.

Toodles,
Satan

PS: You're ugly too.

Book of the Week

Copies of second-lady Lynn Cheney's long-out-of-print paean 
to lesbians on the range, Sisters, are going for thousands of 
dollars on e-Bay, but you can check out the best of it here. 

Word of the Day

Main Entry: dys·to·pia
Pronunciation: (")dis-'tO-pE-&
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from dys- + -topia (as in utopia)
1: an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives.
2: ANTI-UTOPIA
3: A perfect excuse to change the name of Disinfotainment Today to Dysinfotainment Today, making it an actual quadruple pun, just in time for the Olympics.

Free Music

At benfrank.net, there's an excellent collection of free anti-war, anti-Bush, pro-peace MP3s from the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Eddie Vedder, Billy Bragg, Michael Franti, Greenday, REM, Ani Difranco, David Rovics, Greg Palast, Lenny Kravitz, Beastie Boys, John Mellencamp, Paula Cole, Public Enemy, and many many more.

No, No, Wait
This is the Belated Christmas Gift from Hell

The Quantum Sleeper Unit is a high-level security system 
designed for maximum protection in various hostile environments.

Don't Take My Word For It

     "The Democratic National Convention is behind us, and the case has been stated for change. There have been niceties and tributes, and there has been rancor and vitriol. Surely though, the event's highlight was John Kerry's acceptance speech. Kerry touched upon on all relevant points that will determine the election's outcome, and he did so with all of the grace that could have been expected. One particularly high point for me was his pronunciation of the word 'nuclear.' The 'c' was pronounced immediately before the 'l' and there was no insertion between the two letters of an arbitrary letter 'y.' To appropriate a well-worn phrase, John Kerry hit the pronunciation of the word 'nuclear' out of the park.
    "It was awesome. For the first time since Al Gore's campaign four years ago, I was observing a man in the pursuit of our highest office who could pronounce a word that most of us grew up with...
   "Nuclear is a grave word, with grave implications, and George W. Bush's intransigence in refusing to learn its proper pronunciation is willfully ignorant. It reflects his towering anti-intellectualism, and his boorish and bullying nature. George W. Bush has extended his belligerence with regard to the rest of the world to the English language itself."
- Chris Elliott: Mispronouncing a lie doesn't make it true -

"If you would have gold in all your days, ascertain where it will exist in the future, and be there when it occurs."
- Voltaire -

    "These people all hate each other and are not, repeat not, going to work together. They have told Bush to fx*! off with his 'Intelligence Czar' nonsense and that will go nowhere, believe me. Beltway turf wars are bloodier than the Tarawa campaign and there are no prisoners taken. The CIA is threatening to release the bank account information (the black accounts, not the white ones) of top Bush people who have hundreds of millions of stolen bucks stashed in Swiss and offshore banks. The price of silence on this fun and games is to give up any idea, genuine or not, of revamping the Intelligence community. On the other hand, several other alphabet agencies are planning to ambush senior CIA operatives with really nasty leakage. Murders and drug connections are prominent.
    "Someone with CIA connections is now 'outing' gay Republicans in public and this is causing spastic colon here. So many 'straight' and respectable men are trembling in their clubs now. There are more practicing gays among the Republicans than there are in the entire Frisco Castro district and that is saying something. Bush & Co had better be careful about their pit bull attacks on Kerry because that is a sword that cuts both ways. I will send you under separate cover a list of the bank accounts. Everyone is leaking everything now and it's a reporter's paradise on earth. The barn is on fire and the frantic rats are biting each other trying to escape! Look for some really big-name defections soon..."
- The Voice of the White House -

"People who were opposed to the war from the beginning and have been critical of the media's coverage in the period before the war have this belief that somehow the media should have crusaded against the war. They have the mistaken impression that somehow if the media's coverage had been different, there wouldn't have been a war."
- Leonard Downie Jr., Executive Editor of the Washington Post -

"Even in the case of individuals, there is no possibility to feel happiness through anger. If in a difficult situation one becomes disturbed internally, overwhelmed by mental discomfort, then external things will not help at all. However, if despite external difficulties or problems, internally ones attitude is of love, warmth, and kindheartedness, then problems can be faced and accepted."
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama -

"The miracle is this - the more we share, the more we have."
- Leonard Nimoy -

"Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the 'I' in internet. At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net. Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was." 
- Tony Long: It's Just the 'internet' Now -

   "Bush is planning to have the Pentagon announce a 'redistribution' of overseas forces this week (meaning Germany, Belgium, Spain, Korea and possibly Japan -- part of the announcement was that these redistributions would not be occurring in Iraq or Afghanistan).
   "Anybody who is a military veteran or military dependent knows that for all their nasty behavior and shabby treatment of Americans, the Europeans are well and truly screwed if we withdraw our troops and our money from their environs. This, I believe, is Rumsfeld's Revenge for the failure of the putative allies to toe the Bush Doctrine line. If, as I am willing to bet, 'Old Europe' perceives that the vast majority of American troops are going to be removed and returned to US territory, we're liable to see an amazing, if grudging, turnabout in attitude in Germany. And something that somebody should be briefing Kerry and Edwards on at this very moment is what the results could be if the Kerry Administration were to try to reverse the Bush Administration on this decision: American military morale could plummet if folks who think their normal overseas tour is about to be curtailed and they are headed home are suddenly told 'Never mind, unpack your bags, you're gonna be sleepless in Stuttgart for awhile yet.'" 
- Sherrie Gogerty Geeting: Song in the Keyes of B-sharp(ly to the right) - 

"The New Freedom Initiative proposes to screen every American, including you, for mental illness. To this end, the president established a New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, to study the nation's mental health delivery service and make a report. It's interesting to note that many on the staff appointed to the Commission have served on the advisory boards of some of the nation's largest drug companies."
- Jordanne Graham: Bush Wants To Be Your Shrink -

     "Hell, it's getting so you can't turn a corner or have a nuanced, humane thought without confronting another hunk of undeniable proof that what these media documents say is true: The Bush administration is quite possibly the most economically destructive, environmentally devastating, ethically corrupt, internationally loathed, deliberately tyrannical, worst-dressed administration in American history.
    "What, too harsh? Hardly.
    "When the professors and other intellectuals and the artists and the social workers and the mystics and the truly spiritual among us are appalled and mournful, and the homophobes and the rednecks and the religious zealots are cheering and shooting their guns in the sky, this is how you know.
    "When America has become a global punch line, a petulant and screeching child in an oversize Texas cowboy hat throwing oily little tantrums on a WMD whim, and the global community can only sit there, stunned and enraged, as every ally withdraws all offers of support and overtures of concern for our well-being, this is how you know."
- Mark Morford: Time to Get Out the Bush -

"Our only security is our ability to change."
- John C. Lilly -

    "Abandon wrongdoing. It can be done. If there were no likelihood, I would not ask you to do it. But since it is possible and since it brings blessing and happiness, I do ask of you: abandon wrongdoing.
   "Cultivate doing good. It can be done. If it brought deprivation and sorrow, I would not ask you to do it. But since it brings blessing and happiness, I do ask of you: cultivate doing good."
- Buddha: Anguttara Nikaya -

"The deepest truth blooms only from the deepest love."
- Heine: English Fragments -

"Illness is not cured by saying the word 'medicine,' but by taking medicine. Enlightenment is not achieved by repeating the word 'God' but by directly experiencing God."
- Sankara -

    "In November, President Bush gave physicist Richard Garwin a medal for his 'valuable scientific advice on important questions of national security.'
    "Just three months later, Garwin signed a statement condemning the Bush administration for misusing, suppressing and distorting scientific advice.
    "So far, more than 4,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel prize winners, have put their names to the declaration."
- AP: Scientists join ranks against Bush - Thousands have inked declaration condemning use of scientific data -

"Three-plus years later we know better, or at least we should. Intelligence matters. The job of the president is not to love his wife; it's to manage a wide range of complicated issues. That requires character, yes, but not the kind of character measured by private virtues like fidelity to spouse and frequency of quotations from Scripture. Yet it also requires intelligence. It requires intellectual curiosity, an ability to familiarize oneself with a broad range of views, the capacity -- yes -- to grasp nuances, to foresee the potential ramifications of one's decisions, and, simply, to think things through. Four years ago, these were not considered necessary pieces of presidential equipment. Today, they have to be."
- Matthew Yglesias: The Brains Thing - Three years of watching Bush makes the point: Intelligence matters more than character -

"[W]e allow corporations to do things that we would never allow a person to do. The Corporation, a documentary now in theaters, examines corporations as legal 'persons.' Applying the standard diagnostic criteria of psychologists, the filmmakers conclude that corporations are psychopathic personalities. The documentary makes the case that the corporation's operating principles give it a highly anti-social 'personality': It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt. In other words, it is evil."
- Joel Bleifuss: Silence of the Dems -

"What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century, and how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and the state governments?" 
- Question put to Dubya on Democracy Now -

"Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. You're a -- you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." 
- Answer given by Dubya on Democracy Now -

"The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct."
- Cicero -

"A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool."
- Joseph Roux -

"John Kerry, Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Katie Couric, CBS, NBC are all communists. Hillary Clinton is a lesbian fat hog with fake hair. Al and Tipper Gore are terrorists who are part of the Taliban. The pope is senile. And pedophilia is fine with him as long as it's not reported in the liberal press. If you think all this sounds nutty, well, it is. According to the organization Media Matters For America, all this has been written by Jerome Corsi. Why do we care what Jerome Corsi says? Well, we don't. But as co-author of the book 'Unfit for Command' about John Kerry and his service in Vietnam, some people are making the mistake of taking him seriously. In the world of putrid right-wing pond scum, Corsi is one of the biggest bottom-feeders of them all."
- James Carville on CNN's Crossfire -

"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living, the other helps you make a life."
- Sandra Carey -

"There is no slippery slope toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders."
- Alan K. Simpson -

Everything Else

How can you not love a site dedicated to trading sex for votes against Bush? 

A very cool gallery of photos of Gypsy Boots (RIP).

George Bush: the unauthorized biography, a free book entirely online, proves the acorn doesn't fall very far from the tree.

See you at Hempfest 2004! (Bring my ticket)