Poor is the New Black
by Michael Dare

     So it would seem that the powers that be don't really give a damn about who wins the election. The fix is in, whichever candidate wins, they're working for the new world order, which means they take orders as much as they give them. We're going to get another president who takes orders from the bank instead of the population. Hooray!
   The public gets to choose which candidate looks more or less likely to kill the most innocent people in their ruthless pursuit to rule the world. I say Kerry. He's clearly less likely to kill a lot of innocent people. It wouldn't be proper.
    If you work for the new world order, part of your job is not just to increase production but to help keep the population down or there'll be WAY too many mouths to feed. Every once in a while the heads of the white world get to feel good about themselves by sacrificing a few brown people in the name of progress. War. Starvation. Disease. Poverty. Depleted uranium. SOMETHING's got to keep the population down if we're to survive, which is good or bad depending upon what your definition of the word "we're" is.
    If we means us, the general population, the Norms, if "we're" the ones who survive, no problemo.
    But if we means them, the obscenely rich, the ones who think they own everything, well, I don't feel particularly safer just because I'm white. After all, poor is the new black.
    We poor are a separate society, frowned upon by the rich, and expected to know our place. Please, massah, please don't shut any fast food places or we'll never find jobs. Yes, massah, I's be shoppin' at Wal-Mart like you tole me to, just as long as I gets my food stamps on time.
    Poor is the new black. We've got a secret handshake and we can recognize each other in crowds. We get free housing called prison if we step out of line. Maybe all it takes to get busted is being black, but all it takes to get convicted is being poor.
   Poor is the new black and the ratio is rising steadily. Blacks tend to stay black and whites tend to stay white, but the only thing harder than getting rich is staying rich. The rich are filling the ranks of the poor at a much higher rate than the poor are filling the ranks of the rich.
    One would think there would be a method to eliminate discrimination between rich and poor, to give everyone a fair shake, and that method would seem to be democracy, but only if the poor have equal access to the voting booth. You may think of the people left off the lists in Florida as black who happened to be poor but I think of them as poor who happened to be black, and it's an important distinction. If it's only a black problem, then it's not the white man's problem. It'll never happen to him, so the problem is unprioritized. But if it's only a poor problem, then it's everyone's problem because anyone can be poor. I'm sorry. Not just anyone. Just about everyone. For most people in the USA today, if not the whole world, the holy grail is getting by from paycheck to paycheck and not much more.
   If the poor are the vast majority, why aren't we telling the rich people to stop being so fucking greedy and save some for us? Why are we letting rich people decide where our kids live and die? Makes you wonder whether Buckminster Fuller was right when he said "The end move in politics is to pick up a gun."
   I could go on and on but why should I when the...

Stupid Question of the Week

is..."Is poor the new black?" Send your answers to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

Stupid Answers of the Week

 What would YOU do with The Scream?

Answer #1

It should be used as the poster for the state of the world 2004.
Meria

If I had the painting, The Scream, I would give it a smiley face.  Or, use it to traumatize my pet turtle, Sea Biscuit by putting it in his cage when he acts up. That'll teach  him to stop annoying me when I want to watch the Animal Channel and he wants to watch cartoons.
- Doris V. Berry

Paint a nice smiley face over it and give it to Pres. Bush for his trophy room.
- Patrick

Great minds think alike.
- Xarvon, alien investigator

Answer #6. The Winner!

I would ransom it for lots of money, then donate all the proceeds to disinfotainmenttoday.com.
- Dave

Calling All Random Computer Whizzes

There were easy solutions. There were complicated solutions. There were elegant solutions and workaday solutions. Whatever solution you offered to the problem of how to create a random link to any old issue of Disinfotainment Today, I applaud you, but I ended up with this one and I don't even remember where I got it. Here, everybody, here and here and here are the exact same link to random issues of Disinfotainment Today, from #1 to now. For an extra special personal random element, I recommend randomly clicking on one of the links.

Two Robots
by Michael Dare

     I arranged a ride to town to participate in the GAIN program. Just before my ride showed up, I got a call from the high school. There was a problem. It was the first day of school and I needed to be there to sign some papers or they wouldn't let my son enroll, and he was getting antsy, which was not good. He's emotionally on edge. If he got TOO antsy, he'd just leave. If he was found walking the streets on the first day of school, he'd be picked up for truancy and perhaps taken to juvenile hall. Couldn't let that happen. I had to go to the high school. He'd be sitting right out front with the papers I needed to sign.    No problem, I thought. The high school is right in-between my home and the GAIN office. Without going out of their way, my ride would simply need to pull in front of the school and let me sign the papers on the way to our destination.
   When they got to my house in the middle of nowhere, I asked them and they refused. They had been told to bring me to the GAIN office and that's what they were going to do. No stops along the way.
   "But if you take me to the GAIN office, I'm going to have to walk two miles uphill through the desert in 110 degree heat just to get back to where we already were."
   "I don't care. I just do what I'm told."
   "Can you call in and ask permission?"
   "I don't have a cell phone."
   "Use my phone."
   "I'm not allowed to go in your house."
   "The phone isn't in the house. It's sitting right there on the patio."
   "I'm not allowed to use your phone."
   I got in the car. She drove to GAIN. One block before the high school, she stopped to make a right turn.
   "You really won't just drive past the high school so I can sign my son's papers and get him enrolled?"
   "No."
   I got out of the car, walked to the high school, and blew off GAIN. My son was more important. Fuck 'em. I can't deal with robots. Little did I know they wouldn't be my first robot of the day.

    I signed my son's papers and the employees at the school weren't robots at all but genuine people interesting in helping us solve our particular problem. I didn't feel like yelling at any of them.

    After high school, it was still 110 degrees out, I missed the bus, and walked a mile uphill to get to an air conditioned 7/11 where I plopped on a desk in the corner, the only place to sit, and caught my breath, sweat pouring off me like crazy, feeling like I was about to pass out. One second later, a 7/11 employee rapidly approached.
   "I'm sorry but you can't sit there."
   "What?"
   "You can't sit there."
   "I'll move in a second, I just need to catch my breath."
   "This desk is for the officer. Do you want me to get him?"
   Get the officer? Sweat was burning my eyes and I could barely see. I wiped my forehead with five, six, seven 7/11 napkins, groped for my glasses, and behind me I saw a folding chair and a sign that said Desert Hot Springs Police. Apparently an officer assigned 7/11 duty had strayed from his air conditioned post to the inferno outside for a cigarette. I saw no reason to bother the officer.
   "No," I replied.
   "Do you want me to go get the manager?"
   "No, I just want you to go away."
   "You have to get up. You can't sit here."
   "Where can I sit."
   "There."
   He pointed to a narrow railing next to shelf full of sodas. What the hell. I did what I was told and tried to sit there but my backpack knocked over a case of sodas. I couldn't situate myself properly at all so I moved back to the desk and panted away.
   "You can't sit there."
   "No, I can't sit THERE," I said, pointing to the shelf he had sent me to. "Here I can sit."
   There. I narrowed it down for him. It all depended on what you thought the word "can" meant.
   "No, no, you can't sit there."
   Apparently the poor idiot thinks he knows what "can" means. He's at his first job, he's been told "not to let anyone sit there" by some brute of man who forgot to throw "unless they're dying" at the end of the sentence. He cannot comprehend that I am not doing what I am told. I am soaking with flopsweat and flabbergasted. Two robots in one day. Remarkable. I know the officer won't care and I know the store manager won't care. The clerk goes to get one of them. I continue catching my breath and wiping myself down, a pile of dry napkins to my right, a pile of wet napkins to my left, I'm almost back to normal, I'll be off and on my way if the bastards will just leave me alone for another 30 seconds.
   The manager shows up. He's a small man. Not intimidating at all. I was wrong about him not caring. He cares. He cares a lot. He doesn't want somebody dying in his store. "Sit there," he says. "Can I get you a soda?" He sends the clerk to the back room to bring out a box for me to sit on. I sit on the box for 30 seconds with them watching me, scared the cop will show up, man, he must be some ornery cuss.
    I stand up. I pay for my drink. I leave. The ordeal is over. Two people who refuse to think for themselves. Two people who do what they're told without question. Two robots faced with a dilemma. Me.
 

"I'm impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it."
- Klaatu: The Day the Earth Stood Still -

Special Quote for All Republican Delegates

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
- Theodore Roosevelt -

Thief of the Week

Somebody took my Ultimate List of Stupid Names and changed it to the Ridiculously Large List of Silly Names.

Sophistimicated Doowacky of the Week

If someone asks for your e-mail address and you never want to hear from them again, just give them anyname@papernapkin.net and they will receive an immediate impersonal rejection telling them you don't want anything to do with them. (Courtesy of Paper Napkin)

Totally Wacko, Zionist, New World Order,
The Entire Concept of Oil as a "Fossil Fuel" is a lie,
Conspiracy Theory of the Week
(unless it's all true)

     "If the opening paragraph of this report started by claiming that completely unlimited crude oil reserves exist inside planet earth, readers might be tempted to regard the entire text as preposterous ghostwriting for a novelist like Frederick Forsyth. If the report then went on to claim that the Russians have exploited this stunning reality for nearly thirty years, right under the largely unwitting noses of western intelligence, readers could be excused for mistaking the author for a lunatic, or perhaps as a front for spy novelist John le Carr. The problem here is that unlimited oil reserves do exist inside planet earth, and the Russians long ago developed the advanced technology necessary to recover these unlimited oil reserves in an efficient and timely manner.
   "Profoundly disturbing hard intelligence like this does not sit well with the frantic cries of western academic shills and lobbyists, determined to convince you all that the end of the oil world is nigh, or, more accurately, that America faces an imminent catastrophe when global production capacity 'Peaks', i.e. when world demand for crude oil finally exceeds the rate at which we can physically pump the required product out of the ground...
    "The theory underlying how oil is formed at such enormous depths in the mantle of the earth is not central to this report, because the Russians have already proved its point of origin in absolute drilling terms more than 300 times. Those interested in the exact process should research the archives, where there are more than two hundred Russian papers on the subject. Probably a good place to start would be The Role of Methane in the Formation of Mineral Fuels, written by A.D. Bondar in 1967. What is central to this report is the massive advantage that Russia's ultra-deep drilling discoveries and technical achievements give it over the western nations. 
- Joe Vialls: Russia Proves 'Peak Oil' is a Misleading Zionist Scam - While Moscow invests heavily in unlimited oil production for the future, New York squanders America's dwindling oil profits on fast cars and fast women -

"Can any of you 'Peak Oil' boosters out there think of any legitimate reason why a purely profit-driven corporation would acquire an outrageously profitable asset and then proceed to deliberately destroy that asset? Because I have to tell you, I have been struggling to come up with an explanation on my own and the only one that I've got so far is that the corporation might be involved in some kind of conspiracy to manufacture an artificial shortage of a crucial commodity. I know that 'Peak Oil' theory holds that we don't need the refinery capacity because, you know, we're running out of oil and all, but that doesn't explain why a tremendously profitable refinery isn't being kept in operation at least until all the local wells have run dry, does it?"
- davesweb: Whoa, Dude! Are We Peaking Yet? -

Prank of the Week

"Eager to find out what it takes to get celebrities to give it up for the GOP, we hired our own booker: Eric Wippo, of MTV's Boiling Points. Masquerading as a Republican staffer, Wippo approached more than twenty celebrities with a variety of outlandish requests. Joan and Melissa Rivers were invited to apply their red-carpet critique to GOP luminaries outside the Garden. Star Jones of The View was asked to sing Sisters Are Doin It for Themselves, with Condoleezza Rice on the piano. Though most of the stars reps regretfully declined our offers, they were surprisingly willing to entertain them."
- Calling All Stars! What would it take to get a reluctant celeb to perform for the GOP? -

Don't Take My Word For It

"Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge has declared that New York City is safe. New York City is safe, yes. Of course, that's based on 4-year-old intelligence."
-David Letterman -

"Ghost Troop, 3/7 Cavalry is the unit comprised of all the unacknowledged dead soldiers from the Battle of Baghdad, who are receiving no just reckoning or recognition because the media lied — and continue to lie – about the Battle of Baghdad. We have a Watergate cover up on our hands; worse, we have a war. I have assumed command of Ghost Troop and, according to the oath I swore when I accepted commission as an Army officer, I have self-mobilized (under my former rank of captain) to oppose the Bush cover up of the unpleasant realities of Iraq — especially of Ghost Troop, 3/7 Cavalry. I consider myself to be in a state of revolution against an unconstitutional, unconscionable abuse of the public’s right to know — the first freedom guaranteed to Americans. So long as there is no talk of what actually happened in Baghdad that weekend in April, there is no freedom of the American press. The fix is in, my friend, and America’s in a fix."
- Captain Eric Holmes May, MI, USA: Ghost Troop 3/7 CAVALRY RIP - America's Disgraced Dead from the Battle of Baghdad -

"Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy."
- Brooks Atkinson -

"First of all, thank you for pointing out to all of us that Mr. Kerry was never struck by a BULLET. It was only SHRAPNEL that entered his body! I did not know that! Hell, what's the big deal about a bunch of large, sharp, metal shards ripping open your flesh? That happens to all of us! In my opinion, if you want a purple heart, you'd better be hit by a bullet with your name on it!"
- Michael Moore's letter to Dubya: It Takes Real Courage to Desert Your Post and Then Attack a Wounded Vet -

    "I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command....
    "They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
    "We call this investigation the 'Winter Soldier Investigation.' The term 'Winter Soldier' is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.
    "We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now."
- John Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 22, 1971 -

    "Did you know there's a war game played by Air Force types that posits a situation where the United States in the year 2017 conducts a preemptive first strike on China by using a next-generation space shuttle, which swoops down and annihilates strategic targets before hooking back up with the Space Station? This is followed by the total destruction of China by a spaced-based laser, which the Pentagon humorously calls the Death Star.
    "I learned of this gut-wrenching scenario by watching a video titled Arsenal of Hypocrisy, a frightening array of future probabilities compiled by Gainesville, Florida filmmaker Randy Atkins (http://www.cfvs.com) detailing a shocking portrait of America's militarization of space. This film features the commentary of anti-nuke legend Bruce Gagnon, social critic Noam Chomsky, and former astronaut Edgar Mitchell, as well as former president Dwight Eisenhower, and provides such a chilling view of the future that it simply blew all the current news right out of my brain as my jaw dropped open and stayed that way for a few hours."
- John Kaminski: Levels of the Game -

"On a boiling hot late August day, on the eve of the Republican Convention, 100,000/200,000/400,000/500,000 upset, angry, anybody-but-Bush marchers (with the odd Green Party or Naderite supporter thrown in), walked up Manhattan's Seventh Avenue, doing for small businesses -- delis, corner groceries, Tasti-Freezes -- what several thousand Republican delegates and the massed imperial media will do only for a few fancy hotels, posh restaurants, and theaters. There was a rush on bottled water, on in fact almost anything drinkable, and at one point when the well-branded Fuji surveillance blimp, stamped with an NYPD [New York Police Department] logo passed overhead, blocking the fierce sun and throwing a shadow on the crowd below, a cheer went up from the massed marchers on their way to nowhere in particular (having been denied a permit to rally in Central Park)."
- Tom Engelhardt: Voices from the March to Nowhere -

"Higher pay for police!"
- Chant heard from NYC protesters attacked by police -

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."
- Groucho Marx -

"There are some very real issues of famine, and genocide, and slavery as a starter that the world's most powerful country needs to be discussing and deciding, but what problems we choose to face and how we choose to frame them has been a national disgrace as we approach a national election. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have been using polls instead of ethics as a compass and bifurcated our concerns to serve the right and left instead of the country. And both parties have sent us a ransom note reading pay up or pay the price even as we are already paying for this split view of the whole world. Hello! This is not a right or left world but a right and left world. The donkey makes an ass of anyone who would make him more than that, and the elephant has forgotten that what made this country great isn't the pachyderm with the most peanuts."
- Noah benShea: I Want to Report a Kidnapping -

"The war crimes trials now underway in Iraq would never have happened if one soldier, disgusted by the un-American conduct of his fellow soldiers, had not reported what he witnessed at the Abu Ghraib prison. Likewise, the Ron Dellums War Crimes Hearings held before Congress after the Vietnam War would never have happened had Lt. John Kerry not become disgusted at the conduct of American officers who failed in their responsibility to prevent abuses in Vietnam. What this means in real terms is that hidden crimes in far away places don't exist unless someone reports them. This also means that the person who reports the crime usually faces harsher and more lasting punishment than the perpetrators of those crimes. But the great tragedy of all is that those who either committed war crimes, or endorsed them or sanction them become the leaders of the lynch mobs that attack the honest American who disclosed the crimes...
   "The threats against Darby and the political attack on Kerry serves the military, and George Bush, in a significant way... they send a clear message to every American now serving on active duty... and those who will serve in the future. That message says, 'If you witness another American committing a war crime you'd better keep your mouth shut! If you embarrass our country or our president over the lives of a few dead or beaten enemy who got what they deserved we will come after you... bigtime!'"
- Identity Redacted Vietnam veteran from the American War Library -

    “So scary, watching the news. How they built it all out of proportion. Like Iraq was ever, or could ever, under any stretch of the imagination, be any threat to us whatsoever. But, watching the news, you never would have got that idea. Remember how it started? They kept talking about ‘the élite Republican Guard’ in these hushed tones, like these guys were the bogeyman or something. ‘Yeah, we’re doing well now, but we have yet to face... the élite Republican Guard.’ Like these guys were twelve-feet-tall desert warriors — Never lost a battle. We shit bullets. Well, after two months of continuous carpet bombing and not one reaction at all from them, they became simply ‘the Republican Guard’— not nearly as élite as we may have led you to believe. And after another month of bombing they went from ‘the élite Republican Guard’ to ‘the Republican Guard’ to ‘the Republicans made this shit up about there being guards out there.’
   “People said, ‘Uh, uh, Bill, Iraq had the fourth-largest Army in the world.’ Yeah, maybe, but you know what? After the first three largest armies, there’s a real big fuckin’ drop-off. The Hare Krishnas are the fifth-largest army in the world. And they’ve already got our airports.”
- Bill Hicks on Gulf War I -

"Solution to the Darfur crisis: Let's ask the UN to divide Sudan into two countries: The north would be called Sudan and it would be governed by the Bush-sponsored Khartoum group. The south would be called Darfur and its new oil discoveries would be controlled by the people who have lived there before oil was discovered. End of problem! (Am I saying that Sudan/Darfur is just another Bush war for oil?  You got it!)"
- Jane Stillwater: Report from New York City:  Is this going to be another Summer of Love?  -

"They got this idea that Bush was a great hero after 9/11, and somehow they have gotten a huge portion of the country to believe it. At least up to now, but that number is steadily diminishing as sure as Bush Senior's aura melted after the Gulf War in the middle of his term. New Yorkers didn't see the Trade Center burning on television squeezed in between commercials and narrated by CNN or Fox goons, they saw it with their own eyes, they smelled it, they felt the grime of human destruction collecting in the sweat on their arms. Their policemen and firemen died and many who survived have developed chronic health problems. 9/11 isn't a photo op to be used to re-elect the creep, as it is for Karl Rove and his followers. It is real life."
- David Cogswell: Barbarians at the Gate -

    "Just after Bush's election, (former Texas Lt. Governor Ben) Barnes' client GTech Corp., due to allegations of corruption, was about to lose its license to print money: its contract to run the Texas state lottery. Barnes, says the Justice Department document, made a call to the newly elected governor's office and saved GTech's state contract.    "The letter said, 'Governor Bush ... made a deal with Ben Barnes not to re-bid [the GTech lottery contract] because Barnes could confirm that Bush had lied during the '94 campaign.'
   "In that close race, Bush denied the fix was in to keep him out of 'Nam, and the US media stopped asking questions. What did the victorious Governor Bush's office do for Barnes? According to the tipster, 'Barnes agreed never to confirm the story [of the draft dodging] and the governor talked to the chair of the lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid.'
   "And so it came to pass that the governor's commission reversed itself and gave GTech the billion dollar deal without a bid.
   "The happy client paid Barnes, the keeper of Governor Bush's secret, a fee of over $23 million. Barnes, not surprisingly, denies that Bush took care of his client in return for Barnes' silence. However, confronted with the evidence, the former Lt. Governor now admits to helping the young George stay out of Vietnam.
   "Take a look at the letter yourself..."
- Greg Palast: Still Unreported: The Pay-Off in Bush Air Guard Fix -

"And I tell you that for the Republicans to jump on John Kerry and say that he is not a patriot after he went to Vietnam and was shot at and fought for our freedom and came back here and protested against the war, he's a flip-flopper, let me tell you: John Kerry is a 100 times better patriot than George Bush or Dick Cheney."
- Ben Barnes in I'm very ashamed by Jeff Horwitz (See the video) -

"The world is too small and life is too short not to want to spend the best part of one's waking time making both better."
- Norman Corwin -

"This little piggy went to Vietnam; this little piggy stayed home."
- The election according to Operation USA's Charles Moed -

    "The same polling agencies who told the American people that George W. Bush was ahead during the 2000 election, when Al Gore received more votes, are now telling the American people that half of them will be voting for Bush on November 2, 2004. They will keep repeating the same misleading information over and over again right up until election day, but regardless of who the people may or may not want for president, there are three Republican dominated corporations which now control over 80% of the vote count in the United States: Sequoia Voting Systems Inc; Electronic Systems & Software Inc; and Diebold Inc. As this transition of responsibility for the American election process has taken place a pattern of election upsets favoring 'right wing' candidates has emerged. These small victories have only been practice runs in preparation for the 2004 presidential election.
    "By implementing the new touch screen voting systems, eliminating the paper trail, and blocking access to the inner workings of the software, the Neocons have made election rigging extremely easy, and when accompanied by constant propaganda like fake poll data, people will accept the election results as fact.
   "The news media will repeat the story of Bush's popularity again and again until it becomes truth and the America people have been psychologically prepared to accept yet another gigantic fraud. The 2004 election will be determined by a computer generated vote count and the approval of the majority according to the polls."
- Schuyler Ebbets: Rigged Poll Data For a Rigged Election -

"It's very interesting, when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast, and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America."
- Dubya: Dakar, Senegal 2003 -

"Yeah, that's right. Slaves came to America because of their steadfast, their religion, and their belief in freedom. Getting kidnapped had nothing to do with it."
- any idiot -

"O, how I faint when I of you do write."
- William Shakespeare: Sonnet LXXX -

"Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Oh, and pitchforks."
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in hell -

"If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are... We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal."
- Alice Cooper -

"It is already in the Driver's Licenses as of June 2003. Everyone is on satellite. I had an incident recently where I was tracked. Go to a camera shop and get a lead pouch for negatives.Only lead will prevent the satellite tracking. Put your id's in the pouch.....$20.00."
- anonymous e-mail -

"When desktop support technicians resolve a ticket, they are usually required to document the cause and solution to the problem. Supervisors see these records, so you have to be professional, but can usually get away with using the acronym PEBKAC in situations where the user caused the initial problem. PEBKAC stands for 'Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair'."
- Tricks of the Trade -

    "On September 2nd, 2004, at approximately 10 pm, George W. Bush will appear on television screens nationwide. For some of our fellow citizens, this will be a moment of joy. But for most of us, it will be the low point of an incredibly exasperating week.
   "Until now, there have been only two options: miss the speech (either by screaming at the television or turning it off), or bottle up the frustration within us, causing irreparable psychological harm. The first option is unbecoming of citizens in a democracy. The second option is just terrible. But now, for the first time, we have a better way. At the moment we see the president on our television screens, we will rise. We will throw open our windows. And, as George W. Bush moves to the podium in New York City, we will send him a message about his bid for reelection: we will yell, fuggedaboudit!"
- The Great American Shout Out -

"Those against politics are in favor of the politics inflicted upon them."
- Bertolt Brecht -

    "Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler's check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world.
   "All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.     "By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing."
- David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin: Follow the Money - How John Kerry busted the terrorists' favorite bank -

"Attempts must be made to get the national media to post the 'real' Iraq War casualty numbers and numbers of soldiers killed as a result of the Iraq War on their nightly news programs every night. Or in the alternative to at least post the lower 'incorrect' casualty numbers being reported by the Dept. of Defense. It is our understanding from having read numerous qualified reports citing sources such as retired generals, field commanders, and hospital reports on the number of soldiers treated at Landstuhl, that the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq is much higher than the number being released by the DOD. Instead of about 5-6,000 the DOD reports, the real number is closer to 30,000."
- R. J. Crane: #2 of Five Things that will Defeat Bush on November 2nd - 

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Frederick Bastiat -

"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony."
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail -

"Just wait until Jesus gets his hands on you, you little bastard!"
- Abbie Hoffman's all time favorite hate letter -

Everything Else

If the whole world could vote in the U.S. presidential election, Bush would win the Cayman Islands.

This is some pretty hilarious coverage of the Republican convention, and so is Lewis Black's blog.

Searching for audio or video on the net? Try Singingfish.