Fuck Off

November 2nd is National Celibacy Day.

One Good Thing About the Patriot Act

You don't have to pay your income taxes because the Patriot Act specifically forbids any funding of terrorist organizations.

Executive Orders With the Force of Law When Enacted by the President

10995--Federal seizure of all communications media in the United States; 
10997--Federal seizure of all electric power, fuels, minerals, public and private; 
10998--Federal seizure of all food supplies and resources, public and private and all farms and equipment; 
10999--Federal seizure of all means of transportation, including cars, trucks, or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports and water ways; 
11000--Federal seizure of American people for work forces under federal supervision, including the splitting up of families if the government so desires; 
11001--Federal seizure of all health, education and welfare facilities, both public and private; 
11002--Empowers the Postmaster General to register all men, women and children in the United States of America; 
11003--Federal seizure of all airports and aircraft; 
11004--Federal seizure of all housing and finances and authority to establish Forced Relocation. Authority to designate areas to be abandoned as "unsafe," establish new locations for the populations, relocate communities, build new housing with public funds; 
11005--Seizure of all railroads, inland waterways and storage facilities, both public and private; 
11051--Provides FEMA complete authorization to put above orders into effect in times of increased international tension of economic or financial crisis (FEMA will be in control in case of "National Emergency").

- Paula Demers: The Executive Order Above All Executive Orders -

Stupid Answers of the Week

    1. Probably for the same reason they recommend Bob Woodward's book, which shows Bush as decisive, yet wrong, not that they've actually read it beyond a Washington Times snap review.
   2. Of course the Bush Regime would be interested in any movie with talking puppets; just kind of brings it all back home for them, especially Scott McClellan.
   3. They don't like the competition in 'trivializing the war on terror.'
-Best, RSJ

The simple answer is that the resident of the white house is a puppet himself and the potential slurs were too close to home. Whereas the 9/11 movie can be refuted by the army of media whores who haven't seen it.
- Paul Bush

Being a puppet himself gives more credence to puppets because he has more empathy for the unreal than what he has actually done.  This is because of the shifting nature of his excuses, er reasons for what he has done.  He's pretending to be President, so it's all a show to him.
- Gene 

- Locke Milholland

Puppets like clowns are insidious and frightening. That's why. 
Wait a minute. I'm making excuses for the Bush administration? What the....?
Forget I said anything.
- Marta Martin

Political Videos of the Week

Following in the footsteps of Jib Jab, here's a version of Let's Do the Timewarp Again that you're sure to enjoy.

A tribute to every asshole in America.

Check out a US AC-130 gunship blowing up an Afghan mosque.

It's so obvious that you've got to ask yourself why nobody else has noticed before that the guys in Mount Rushmore make a perfect barbershop quartet.

Bust of the Week

The Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory Service in Amarillo (Amarillo, Texas) recently received a submission of approximately 70,000 chocolate candies (total net mass 154 kilograms), suspected psilocybin mushroom/chocolate concoctions. The exhibits were seized by the Texas State Highway Patrol pursuant to a vehicle stop on I-40, just west of Amarillo (the vehicle was traveling from California to Tennessee). The candies were being stored in the vehicles trunk in trash bags, under what appeared to be a space blanket, and were furthermore being cooled by dry ice.
- INTELLIGENCE ALERT: 70,000 PSILOCYBIN MUSHROOM/CHOCOLATE CANDIES SEIZED NEAR AMARILLO, TEXAS (Check it out. Lots of insane busts, including lollipops containing heroin) -

Stupid Questions of the Week

Don't Take My Word For It

"It would be better for men
To be few and live far apart, Where none could infect another; then
Slowly the sanity of field and mountain
And the cold ocean and glittering stars might enter their minds."
- Robinson Jeffers -

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
- John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790 -

"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows."
- Epictetus: 50-138 A.D. -

"Evidently, there are two Iraqs. One exists here on our Earth. The other occupies a parallel space-time continuum perceivable only by a select few individuals, one of whom is the president of the United States. If you've got a better theory, I'm open to it. All I know is that in recent weeks, we've seen that nation go from awful to whatever comes after awful. Yet, to hear the president talk, the situation is actually a lot better, more hunky and/or dory than anybody really knows." 
- Leonard Pitts: Bush Must Be Talking about Another Iraq -

"The liar Bush will be re-elected because Americans are unaware of the reality of the world. It seems that the American electorate will accept a person who lies on purpose and they will elect a liar as president."
- Mahathir Mohammed: Former Malaysian Prime Minister -

"I can think of very few more insane events than having parents and children wait in long lines at shopping malls, supermarkets, hospitals and clinics to get a flu vaccination, worrying that the supply might run out before they step up to get the shot. As an expert with two decades worth of experience under my belt, trust me, healthy people don't need a flu shot. In fact, almost no person, old or young, needs one!"
- Dr. Joseph Mercola: The Ultimate Insanity -

    "About half of the roughly $5 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds disbursed by the US government in the first half of this year cannot be accounted for, according to an audit commissioned by the United Nations, which could not find records for numerous rebuilding projects and other payments.     "One chunk of the money -- $1.4 billion -- was deposited into a local bank by Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq but could be tracked no further: The auditors reported that they were shown a deposit slip but could find no additional records to explain how the money was used or to prove that it remains in the bank.
    "Auditors also said they could not track more than $1 billion in funds doled out by US authorities for hundreds of large and small reconstruction projects."
- Bryan Bender: Iraq Audit Can't Find Billions - Gaps found in spending for reconstruction -

    "Halliburton, far and away the largest recipient of Iraq reconstruction dollars with about $18 billion (U.S.) in contracts, has seen revenues increase by 80 per cent in the first quarter of 2004 compared with the same quarter of 2003, according to the Financial Times. These revenues reflect 'steep profits from their Iraq operations.'
    "Next in line is the Bechtel Group of San Francisco, with nearly $3 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts. In fact, revenues generated outside the United States have increased for Bechtel by 158 per cent, turning around a three-year slump.
    "ChevronTexaco of San Ramon, California has a contract to market Iraqi oil. Its profits have increased 90 per cent during the first half of 2004 compared with the same period in 2003, for a total increase of more than $3 billion.
    "And then there's Lockheed Martin, which hasn't even had to risk operating in Iraq to earn its war booty. In 2004, Lockheed's shares have more than tripled in value since their low in early 2000. A Lockheed spokesman told The New York Times that the company's success since 2000 came from the 'changed geopolitical landscape.'"
- Antonia Juhasz: Only American Big Business Sees Iraq Campaign As A Success -

"Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms."
- Simone Weil -

"The Constitution is a document that should be changed only to expand the rights and freedoms granted to Americans, not to restrict them."
- Anthony Romero: Director of the ACLU -

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
- Ayn Rand: The Nature of Government -

"Greetings Martyr-to-Be: Allah be praised for your interest in al Qaeda, the world's preeminent terrorist group! We hope you will soon discover why al Qaeda is known for thinking outside the box. With operatives in 98 countries, al Qaeda is considered the Tiffany of Terrorism."
- A Message from the Chairman: Join al Qaeda and Show the World What You're Made Of -

    "Here is a small sample of who has been getting 'reparation' awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestl ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not claim that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait - only that they 'lost profits' or, in the case of American Express, experienced a 'decline in business' because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the biggest winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505m in 1999. According to a UNCC spokesperson, only 12% of that reparation award has been paid, which means hundreds of millions more will have to come out of the coffers of post-Saddam Iraq.
    "The fact that Iraqis have been paying reparations to their occupiers is all the more shocking in the context of how little these countries have actually spent on aid in Iraq. Despite the $18.4bn of US tax dollars allocated for Iraq's reconstruction, the Washington Post estimates that only $29m has been spent on water, sanitation, health, roads, bridges, and public safety combined. And in July (the latest figure available), the Department of Defence estimated that only $4m had been spent compensating Iraqis who had been injured, or who lost family members or property as a direct result of the occupation - a fraction of what the US has collected from Iraq in reparations since its occupation began."
- Naomi Klein: Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys 'R' Us? -

    "In short, the neocons are just plain crazy, albeit in a historically unique fashion. This explains a lot. It explains the peculiar stubbornness that refuses to acknowledge error, even as Iraq implodes. It explains our rulers' utter indifference to being caught in so many lies – the disappearing 'weapons of mass destruction,' the illusory 'links' between Saddam and 9/11, the brazen cherry-picking of sexed-up intelligence, and the outright forgeries.
   "They aren't lying – they're creating 'new realities.'
   "The militant craziness of this sort of mindset also explains the casual cruelty involved in implementing the neoconservatives' vision of empire. It explains Abu Ghraib, not as an aberration but as the new norm. It's okay to bomb cities filled with civilians, to lock up and torture anyone who gets in your way, all the while proclaiming that you come as a 'liberator.' You always hurt the one you love – if you're a sadist, that is."
- Justin Raimondo: Delusions of Empire - The epistemology of imperialism - the problem with you peaceniks is that you're too 'reality-based'! -

"In the case of the global climate crisis, Bush has publicly demeaned the authors of official reports by scientists in his own administration that underscore the extreme danger confronting the United States and the world and instead prefers a crackpot analysis financed by the largest oil company on the planet, ExxonMobil. He even went so far as to censor elements of an EPA report dealing with global warming and substitute, in the official government report, language from the crackpot ExxonMobil report. The consequences of accepting ExxonMobil's advice - to do nothing to counter global warming - are almost literally unthinkable. Just in the last few weeks, scientists have reached a new, much stronger consensus that global warming is increasing the destructive power of hurricanes by as much as half of one full category on the one-to-five scale typically used by forecasters. So that a hurricane hitting Florida in the future that would have been a category three and a half, will on average become a category four hurricane. Scientists around the world are also alarmed by what appears to be an increase in the rate of CO2 buildup in the atmosphere - a development which, if confirmed in subsequent years, might signal the beginning of an extremely dangerous "runaway greenhouse" effect. Yet a third scientific group has just reported that the melting of ice in Antarctica, where 95 percent of all the earth's ice is located, has dramatically accelerated. Yet Bush continues to rely, for his scientific advice about global warming, on the one company that most stands to benefit by delaying a recognition of reality."
- Al Gore -

"2) Fort Lauderdale, FL - October 27, 2001: Wynn Errico, owner of Wynn Motor Co. in North Lauderdale, said three FBI agents came to his dealership several days after Sept. 11 to question him. Errico said Atta drove into his used car lot around 2 p.m. on the Friday before the attacks, saying he wanted to sell the Grand Am because he did not need it anymore. Three men in a white minivan accompanied him and waited for about 45 minutes while Errico and Atta went back and forth about a price, Errico said. He said Atta rejected his offer of $800 cash. He said, 'I'd rather run it into a building than sell it for $800,' Errico said."
- Grant Noah: Ten More Things You Probably Never Knew About Mohammed Atta -

"Mr. Bush is obviously eager to avoid the subject of prisoner detentions. Maybe that's because his public stance on what happened at Abu Ghraib, and what caused it, is entirely at odds with the facts brought out by official investigations. When he last spoke of the matter, months ago, the president maintained that the abuse was the responsibility of a few low-ranking soldiers working the night shift. He has not acknowledged that scores of soldiers have now been implicated for crimes including homicide, or that a Pentagon-appointed panel has found responsibility at senior levels of the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House. Nor has he held anyone in his administration accountable. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who made policy decisions about interrogations that led directly to the abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, said he's not aware that any abuses occurred during questionings -- even though an official report by his own department confirmed that very point."
- Remember Abu Ghraib? -

    "George W. Bush: Fuck you. You are an insane Jesus Freak, and I'd rather have a million Catholic priests in a million little league locker rooms than you as my president. You believe God literally tells you what to do, and this is how you decide your foreign policy. You confessed to the former Palestinian prime minister that Jesus told you to invade Iraq. You don't know jack shit about anything. You hate the Constitution, you're no better than the Taliban, you spent your life doing coke and drinking until your wife finally threatened to pack her bags, so you chose pussy over coke and booze at the reckless young age of forty. (How noble.) You sodomize dogs before drinking your semen out of their canine assholes and spitting it back into their mouths so they can lick you with your own semen.
    "John Kerry: Fuck you. You're the kind of tyrannical ass-fucker who isn't just pro-choice; you looked the American people in the eyes and admitted that you believe money should be taken from pro-life taxpayers to fund millions of abortions. You're a two-faced bastard who will say anything to get elected and advance your faux-Marxist agenda, and hardcore leftists agree with conservatives on this one: Everyone knows you're totally full of shit when it comes to everything."
- Marty Beckerman: George Bush and John Kerry, Suck my Fucking Cock, You Lying Nazi Dog-Fucking Cocksuckers from Hell -

"We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet." 
- Hermann Hesse -

"I believe Jesus was a pacifist in his first life, but listen to me. God is a killer. Jesus will return as a warrior. Look at the Book of Revelations and you'll find out that Jesus is going to come back as a killer. And don't you forget that. God will kill a third of the population, a third of the earth."
- North Carolina preacher Jeremiah Baldwin carrying a poster that proclaimed "In God and Bush We Trust" outside the Republican Convention -

"Author and former Republican presidential candidate John Buchanan urged voters to speak out against President Bush and spread the word against him during a lecture at the Dover Public Library on Tuesday, Oct. 12. When Buchanan asked the audience if they thought Fortune 500 companies ran the government instead of the politicians, nearly everyone raised their hands. 'You don't have to be too bright to know that,' one audience member told Buchanan."
- Rebekah Brooks: Buchanan bashes Bush, promotes his new book -

    "When George Bush is defeated in November, whole warehouses of 'Presidential Papers' will suddenly disappear. That paper mache Thanksgiving turkey that Dubya was planning to serve to the guys in Iraq again this year? Tossed -- along with that old 'Mission Accomplished' banner. Even the document proving that Laura Bush's chocolate chip cookie recipe was plagiarized from Betty Crocker will be zapped.
   "CD-ROMS containing evidence of links between Bush and Al Qaeda? Rumsfeld's prison manual for Abu Ghraib? What really happened in Guantanamo? Cheney's under-the-table pipeline to Halliburton? Which five-star hotel in Houston bin Ladin is hiding in? Who now owns our national forests? The kickback records from Enron? The secret lists of how many GIs were REALLY wounded in Iraq? Who actually forged the Niger yellowcake documents? The true CIA WMD reports? Who really outed Valerie Plame? Who now has their hands on the missing Iraq oil billions? Why there is water in our troops' gasoline? The real air safety report from the Wellstone crash? The home movie of Scalia duck hunting with Cheney right before Bush v. Gore was decided? The Diebold reports?
   "Eeeuuuu. What's that? 'How to simulate a flu vaccine shortage.' And 'How can we turn Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a man allegedly dead since March 2004, into the next Hallowe'en terrorist bin Ladin?'
   "After the 2004 election, there will be a myriad of 'sucker lists' and 'bagmen lists' and 'dirty tricks lists' and 'dirty laundry lists' to wash and sort and destroy. Then there's good old John Ashcroft and his endless lists of personal dossiers -- one for every man, woman and child in America. That's a hecka lot of shredding!
    "George and Rummie and Condie and Karl will have a LOT of shredding to do between November and January."
- Jane Stillwater: Prediction: When Bush loses there will be MAJOR document shredding at the White House - 

"Lowly men are never high, even when elevated. High souls are never low, even when downtrodden."
- Tirukkural 98: 972-73 -

"The only people to get even with are those who have helped you."
- Anonymous -

"Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too."
- Voltaire -

"A man should not act as a judge either for someone he loves or for someone he hates. For no man can see the guilt of someone he loves or the good qualities in someone he hates."
- Babylonian Talmud -

"Bush's so-called pre-emptive war policy is a return to Stone Age barbarism. The world had advanced, with carefully thought out rules and regulations of when a nation is justified in conducting war. Thoughtful peace loving and intelligent men and women had recognized that every nation should follow certain logical rules and regulations pertaining to the conduct of war, understanding that especially in the atomic and nuclear age, some madman might start the war that could end the world."
- Bob Kendall: Bush's Barbaric Concept of War! -

"Three men went into the jungle on different occasions and saw a chameleon. 'A chameleon is red,' said the first man. 'No a chameleon is green,' said the second man. 'Nonsense, a chameleon is brown,' said the third man. Those who disagree about the nature of God are like these three men."
- Hindu Story -

"I don't know why people are scoffing at Mr. Cheney for stating that he never tied Iraq to 9/11, he'd never met John Edwards or that things are going swimmingly in Iraq. Yes, to those obsessed with facts, such statements would appear to be brazen lies. But it is like I always say to myself when filling out that rudely inquisitive 'age' box on forms: If you repeat a lie, it becomes your truth. And if you repeat a lie often enough, you become a Republican."
- Betty Bowers - 

"People who don’t have great senses of humor think that comedy is that you just think something’s trite and stupid and you don’t care about it. [They think] if you’re laughing, it’s because what you think you’re laughing at is stupid — because that’s about as far as their sense of humor goes. People don’t realize that it can be something a lot deeper than that."
- Trey Parker on the making of Team America -

"Instead of worrying about the flu, our government has been busy spending millions stockpiling over a million doses of anthrax vaccine (with no use for it in the foreseeable future), and more than 200,000 doses of smallpox vaccine (without a single case occurring here since 1949). These actions were taken so that the Department of Homeland Security can look like it takes the threat of biological agents seriously. A bioterror attack would likely affect only hundreds, or at the worst thousands, yet the expensive preparations are for millions of potential victims."
- Dr. Marc Siegel: Vaccine Poker -

"I didn't come to gain students, I came to train teachers."
- Yogi Bhajan: guru and yoga instructor I studied with in the back of an antique store in West Hollywood the '70s -

"Congressional Democrats are mostly either joined at the liver with the Republicans on drug policy, or too cowardly to speak out. Although it would be a devastating October surprise, Health and Human Services does not seem eager to use its power to reschedule marijuana as a therapeutically useful drug. The judiciary, however, is ripping mad about being throttled by Ashcroft's theological police.
    "Thus there's only one practical consideration left for the anti-drug war side. Who will appoint the judiciary, including as many as three Supreme Court justices?
    "The Supreme Court can legalize marijuana by fiat. Think of it - no negotiations and tortured lobbying, but genuine experts expounding on the facts, constrained by rules of evidence.
    "Pick one: Bush or Kerry. Which candidate is most likely to name judges who will interpret the Constitution of the United States according to facts in evidence rather than DEA propaganda?"
- Jules Siegel: The Doper Vote - 

"In their wisdom, the Members of the U.S. Congress proposed and ratified the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which established the procedures for the President to be removed from office if it is determined that 'he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.' In the case of the current President, George W. Bush, we have the advantage of a Presidential election, just weeks away. It would be a grave crime of omission to cover over this admittedly sensitive Constitutional issue, and leave the matter in the hands of a Vice President Dick Cheney, were there to be a Bush-Cheney re-election and a subsequent, inevitable mental breakdown crisis."
- Lyndon LaRouche: The Number One Issue in the Presidential Debates Is George W. Bush's Mental Illness -

"President Bush taught three Oregon schoolteachers a new lesson in irony or tragedy Thursday night when his campaign removed them from a Bush speech and threatened them with arrest simply for wearing t-shirts that said 'Protect Our Civil Liberties,' the Democratic Party of Oregon reported."
- Teachers' T-shirts bring Bush speech ouster -

    "Bryan Platt, Chairman of the Jackson County Republican Central Committee, said he stood 100 percent behind the person who made the decision to exclude the women, removing any doubt that one or two individuals exceeded their authority and blew it. No, it was solid, Republican neo-conservative fascist policy on open display, and the Brown Shirts weren't about to apologize for it. No way.
    "I am now a man without a political party. I will never again register as a Republican unless the party returns to what it was before the fascists took it over."
- Carl F. Worden: The Last Straw -

    "John Kerry, quoted in a New York Times Magazine profile a week ago, said that he hopes to see the threat of terrorism reduced some day to the level of a minor nuisance. The Bush campaign immediately launched a big offensive on the theme that Kerry thinks terrorism is merely a nuisance.
    "Huh? Isn't there a difference between hoping that something will happen and thinking that it has happened already? Do you have to be mired in logic to suspect that these two states of mind are pretty much the opposite of each other? The distinction between how you want things to be and how they really are seems to be a particularly tough one for President Bush himself. But to count on voters to share this confusion is pretty courageous."
- Michael Kinsley: We Hold This Dirt to Be Self-Evident -

   "Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that 'if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
    "'Just in the past few months,' Bartlett said, 'I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: 'This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them...
   "'This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,' Bartlett went on to say. 'He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.' Bartlett paused, then said, 'But you can't run the world on faith.'"
- Ron Suskind: Without a Doubt (mandatory reading!) -

"Instead of constantly berating George Bush and proclaiming him a hypocrite without compassion I believe it is the solemn duty of every liberal to make reparations to George Bush. And the best way to do this is to make sure that every member of the Christian Coalition, every evangelical, fundamentalist and God-fearing, church-going, conservative in America is made fully aware of how forgiving George Bush has been to this convicted pedophile. And they should be made fully aware of the gravity and extent of Gary Glitter's admitted crimes including the 4,000 child-rape images the better to appreciate George Bush's wonderful capacity for forgiveness."
- Martin Lewis: Hallelujah! Bush Forgives A Pedophile! -

     "The South Park movie was an assault on the status quo. Team America is a defense of it, which is inherently less funny.
   "Mind you, Parker and Stone's comedic gifts haven't completely escaped them, but amid the sometimes-inspired wackiness, the pair is trying to deliver a message. That message, which uses much cruder words than can be printed here, is this: The U.S. military may be overly aggressive at times, but the terrorists are much, much worse, and those Hollywood types are dangerous, blithering idiots for expressing contrary opinions."
- Mark Caro: Does it count as a satire if it defends the status quo? -

"Bob, let me begin by saying that what you are asking is a stupid goddamned question that only has meaning if you've been busy wolfing down chowder from Karl Rove's boner. And don't you smirk at me, you Bush bitch, you little corporate whore, so painted red by pharmaceutical companies, with your little slit mini-skirt and no panties, ready for Merck or Exxon/Mobil or Carlyle to negotiate a price for your sweet policy pussy. I'll come over to your fuckin' podium and force feed you a bowl of mercury emissions and we'll watch you twitch and dance, motherfucker, dance as that toxic shit eats away your fuckin' brain man, makin' you seem like more of a retard than ever."
- The Rude Pundit: What John Kerry Should Say -

"Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic."
- Fyodor Dostoyevski: Notes from Underground, 1864 -

"I wish to see the discovery of a plan, that would induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without cutting one another's throats. When will men be convinced that even successful wars at length become misfortunes to those who unjustly commenc'd them, and triumph'd blindly in their success, not seeing all the consequences."
- Benjamin Franklin -

"Bush managed to push many undecided and independent voters in the direction of this current edition of the loathsome 'Massachusetts liberal,' a proud commonwealth that once was the cauldron of the American Revolution that has of late, in the magic geography of the Bush elite, apparently become a suburb of Paris. He did this simply by his own god-awful performance and his opponent's nettlesome insistence on appearing to be a mature adult -- Kerry looked the part; Bush looked like he was coming apart. Voters not enslaved by unrealistic political fixations began to appreciate that a calm man with a firm but friendly mien who can put his thoughts into full sentences might actually be able to deal with the world without threatening violence or feigning pique and conquer domestic problems with nimble intelligence, whereas the shambling, occasionally inarticulate heap across the stage from him -- with all the persuasive power and poise of a kid caught near a broken window readying to toss another rock -- more closely resembled a hollow log than presidential timber. In each debate, Kerry had command of the facts, figures, and himself; Bush took us through yet another rambling tour of his junk shop of campaign slogans, evasions, diversions, and blatant lies, augmented by smirks, sneers, and class-clown attempts at gravity."
- R.S. Janes - 

"Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace."
- James Madison -

"We all have to recognize that no matter how great our strength, we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please."
- President Harry S. Truman -

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
- Andre Gide -

"Because, see, all things are not equal. For instance, how severely John Kerry was injured in Vietnam is not equivalent to whether or not Bush is hiding the fact that he didn't fulfill his military obligations. For instance, John Kerry's conflicted vote for authorization to go to war is not equivalent to the President taking us to war under false pretenses. It's like saying that squashing a bug is the moral equivalent of slitting the throat of a small child. Yeah, you've got toddler blood on your hands, but look at the other guy - he has bug guts on his shoes. See? You're both killers."
- The Rude Pundit: A Fundamental Unfairness -

"Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience."
- Sgt. Camilo Mejia: sentenced to one year in prison for refusing to return to fight in Iraq -

"The overwhelming popularity of President Bush, in spite of everything, finally shows us what the American people, whom we have so sentimentalized for so long, a la Norman Rockwell, really are, thanks to TV and purposely lousy public schools: ignorant."
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: Requiem for a Dreamer -

"There are two kinds of artists, and one is not superior to the other. But one kind responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself."
- Saul Steinberg -

    "Deep in the brain lies the amygdala, an almond-sized region that generates fear. When this fear state is activated, the amygdala springs into action. Before you are even consciously aware that you are afraid, your lizard brain responds by clicking into survival mode. No time to assess the situation, no time to look at the facts, just: fight, flight or freeze.
    "And, boy, have the Bushies been giving our collective amygdala a workout. Especially Dick Cheney, who has proven himself an unmatched master of the dark art of fear-mongering. For an object lesson in how to get those lizard brains leaping, look no further than the vice-presidential debate."
- Arianna Huffington: Appealing to our Lizard Brains: Why Bush is Still Standing -

    "During the three presidential debates, only one question was asked about the environment, but the answers still led to one of the biggest whoppers told by an American president since Bill Clinton claimed he had not had sexual relations with a certain intern.
   "President Bush said he was a 'good steward' of the land, but in reality Bush has blocked California's efforts to clean its own air, attempted to open more public land to extraction industries and destroyed the morale of National Park Service employees. The League of Conservation Voters, hardly a radical environmental group, awarded Bush its first F grade."
- Environmental Whopper -

"10 - Because Saddam was personally responsible for 9/11; I mean because the US was under imminent threat of attack from Iraq; I mean, Saddam had weapons of mass distraction, I mean destruction programs, that he was selling to the Al-Qaeda and Taliban. Oh, wait a minute, now it's coming to me. Because we wanted to liberate the Iraqi people against a ruthless and mean dictator. Yeah, that's it. Like we said all along, Bush just wanted to liberate the Iraqi people." 
- Top 10 reasons that George W. Bush invaded Iraq -

"Going through life with a conscience is like driving your car with the brakes on."
- Sammy Glick in Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? -

Everything Else

Fix your own VCR at The Self Service Website.

Censored website of the week: Re-code.

Watch Jon Stewart's amazing performance on Crossfire.

Compare the service records of Democrats, Republicans, Pundits, and Preachers at Do We See A Pattern Here?

An excellent guide to the myths of the war on terrorism.