Film of the Week

 Margin of Error
by Michael Dare

Frank Margin works for E.R.R.O.R (Election Results Reversed on Request), a sub-division of the Liebold Voting Machine Company. He is a salesman who travels the world selling Liebold voting machines to dictators who want to hold elections with a veneer of legitimacy, but nevertheless guaranteeing the results they request. It's on a mission to the Ukraine that he's kidnapped by resistance forces who demand he rig the machines for THEM. He narrowly escapes, being chased by ruthless but bumbling terrorists who use the world's last steam-powered computer, AND the dictator's sadistic henchmen who aspire to the heights of Abu Ghraib. He goes underground as a Muslim only to be picked up by the CIA as the new John Walker Lindh. James Bond-like international thrills and hijinks ensue, savagely ripped from today's headlines, with the fate of the planet at stake, involving spy drones, contrails, torture, HAARP, the Illuminati, crop circles, and tin foil hats. Will Frank change allegiance from the New World Order to the will of the people? Pay me to write it and find out.

The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time
by John Scalzi

 #3) Ayn Rand's A Selfish Christmas (1951)

    In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts and therefore Christmas possible.
    Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as "anti-life." 

#6) A Muppet Christmas with Zbigniew Brzezinski (1978)

    A year before their rather more successful Christmas pairing with John Denver, the Muppets joined Carter Administration National Security Advisor Brzezinski for an evening of fun, song, and anti-communist rhetoric.
    While those who remember the show recall the pairing of Brzezinski and Miss Piggy for a duet of "Winter Wonderland" as winsomely enchanting, the scenes where the NSA head explains the true meaning of Christmas to an assemblage of Muppets dressed as Afghan Mujahideen was incongruous and disturbing even then. Washington rumor, unsupported by any Carter administration member, suggests that President Carter had this Christmas special on a repeating loop while he drafted his infamous "Malaise" speech. 

#9) Noam Chomsky: Deconstructing Christmas (1998)

    This PBS/WGBH special featured linguist and social commentator Chomsky sitting at a desk, explaining how the development of the commercial Christmas season directly relates to the loss of individual freedoms in the United States and the subjugation of indigenous people in southeast Asia.
    Despite a rave review by Z magazine, musical guest Zach de la Rocha and the concession of Chomsky to wear a seasonal hat for a younger demographic appeal, this is known to be the least requested Christmas special ever made. 

For the rest, go here.

Bargain of the Week

     "Last month the Bush administration handed a multinational mining company 155 acres of federally owned, prime mountain top real estate near a Colorado ski resort. The price? Just $5 an acre (a total of $875), in an area where 1/10 of an acre fetches as much as $100,000.
   "The sweetheart giveaway sailed through under a 132-year-old federal law that allows mining companies to purchase unrestricted patents on public land, and then use the land for their own profit - by mining it for silver, gold or other minerals or even by developing it into luxury condominiums and getaway homes."
- Greenwatch Today: Bush Hands Million-Dollar Public Land to Mining Company for $875 -

Bumpersticker of the Week

Internet Joke of the Week

     Three women die together in an accident and go to heaven.
    When they get there, St. Peter says, "We only have one rule here in heaven: don't step on the ducks!"
    So they enter heaven, and sure enough, there are ducks all over the place. It is almost impossible not to step on a duck, and although they try their best to avoid them, the first woman accidentally steps on one.
    Along comes St. Peter with the ugliest man she ever saw.
    St. Peter chains them together and says, "Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to spend eternity chained to this ugly man!"
    The next day, the second woman steps accidentally on a duck and along comes St. Peter, who doesn't miss a thing. With him is another extremely ugly man. He chains them together with the same admonishment as the first woman.
    The third woman has observed all this and, not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly man, is very, VERY careful where she steps.
    She manages to go months without stepping on any ducks, but one day St. Peter comes up to her with the most handsome man she has ever laid eyes on very tall, long eyelashes, muscular, and thin.
    St. Peter chains them together without saying a word.
    The happy woman says, "I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you for all of eternity?"
    The guy says, "I don't know about you, but I stepped on a duck!"

Hoaxes of the Week

The BBC World Satellite television channel broadcast an interview with a man identified as Jude Finisterra, who claimed to represent Dow chemicals. He said Dow had accepted responsibility for the chemical accident at Bhopal and had set-up a multibillion dollar compensation package. The hoax ran twice on BBC World and was picked up by the major news wires before the BBC determined that no man named Jude Finisterra worked at Dow and he was an impostor. The company was forced to remind the world it did not take responsibility for the disaster and said there was no compensation fund set-up for the victims. Later the man calling himself Finisterra told BBC radio he was part of the Yes Men. 

Dubya wasn't arrested when he visited Canada last week, but this fake CNN report sure makes it look like he was.

Non-Hoax of the Week

Paul Krassner's been nominated for a Grammy for his liner notes to the Lenny Bruce CD Let the Buyer Beware. 

Crop Circle of the Week

Family Values Yesterday

     Bush introduced Mike and Sharla Hintz, a couple from Clive, whom he said benefited from his tax plan. Last year, because of the enhanced the child tax credit, they received an extra $1,600 in their tax refund, Bush said. With other tax cuts in the bill, they saved $2,800 on their income taxes. They used the money to buy a wood-burning stove to more efficiently heat their home, made some home improvements and went on a vacation to Minnesota, the president said.
   "Next year, maybe they'll want to come to Texas," Bush quipped.
  Mike Hintz, a First Assembly of God youth pastor, said the tax cuts also gave him additional money to use for health care.
   He said he supports Bush's values.
   "The American people are starting to see what kind of leader President Bush is. People know where he stands," he said.
   "Where we are in this world, with not just the war on terror, but with the war with our culture that's going on, I think we need a man that is going to be in the White House like President Bush, that's going to stand by what he believes.

Family Values Today

     A Des Moines youth pastor is charged with the sexual exploitation of a child. KCCI learned that the married father of four recently turned himself in to Johnston police.
   Rev. Mike Hintz was fired from the First Assembly of God Church, located at 2725 Merle Hay Road, on Oct. 30. Hintz was the youth pastor there for three years.
    Police said he started an affair with a 17-year-old in the church youth group this spring.

- Thanks Miriam Adams -

Stupid Answers of the Week

Mel Gibson left out the scene in The Passion where Mary wakes up to find the image of a grilled cheese sandwich on her face. What other scenes did he leave out?"

The scene where God creates an olive oil powered computer to put the Code in the Bible.
- Harry Houck -

That part where Jesus says, "Dude, where's my car?"
- Bill Moses -

Nabisco Communion Wafers at the Last Supper Scene. They're the holy ghostest with the mostest.
- Tim Hundsdorfer -

Mel left out the scene where Jesus sodomizes all the young altar boys, sending forth missionary pedophiles to preach His Gospels in all the four corners of the Earth. 
- Palantir -

He left out the scene where Jesus pulls the gun out of Moses' cold dead hand.
- pal of Palantir -

He left out the part where Saul of Tarsus turns into a tremendous PR man, and creates a religion out of whole cloth, based on the actions of dozens of pseudo-Messiahs that are well documented to have been running all over the Middle East in those times.The Greatest Story Ever Sold, indeed!
- Gregg Bender - A Heretical Freethinker (An endangered species in the US these days.) -

    1. John Wayne, dressed as a Roman Centurion, at the base of the cross mumbling, "Wahl, I guess he was th' son o' Gawd!"
   2. Jesus resurrected in an Armani suit and silk power tie, armed with an M-16, a degree from Bob Jones University, his own CBN TV show, and a Defense Dept. contract, appearing to the Apostles with the message, "It's time to clean house, boys, and bring democracy to the Middle East."
   3. The part where George W. Bush, as Pontius Pilate, condemns Jesus to death, operating on a one-sentence recommendation from Tribune Alberto Gonzales, afterwards saying, "Hey,I'm just fulfillin' bible prophecy here!"
- RSJ -

The scene where Jesus dresses up like Rambo before he goes out and kicks the money changers out of the temple.
- Frank B. Michel -

In response to the picture of airline wreckage outside the Pentagon (from Snopes) that conspiracy theorists who think it was a missile need to explain...

One interesting thing to note about that piece of wreckage is that it is painted blue. American Airlines planes, other than the lettering, are not painted. They are polished aluminum. There is a lot of discussion about this piece in the Pentagon thread here.
-Robin Reed

Stupid Question of the Week

What will Dubya be doing on 06/06/06?

Send your answers to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

Gallery of the Week

How come you didn't think of The Infinite Cat Project?

Quiz of the Week

Belief-o-Matic asks 20 questions about your spiritual beliefs, then tells you what religion you seem to belong to. I turned out to be either a Unitarian Universalist, a Liberal Quaker, a Neo-Pagan, or a Mahayana Buddhist.

Don't Take My Word For It

     "When the Mongol hordes sacked Baghdad in 1258, they fanned out through the prestigious city demolishing buildings, burning neighbourhoods, and mercilessly massacring men, women, and children. The waters of the Tigris ran red with human blood, many libraries perished, water resources trashed, irreplaceable cultural treasures were lost.
    "All achieved without an airforce. While the scale of the Mongolian slaughter is the stuff of legend, it is time to ask the obvious follow up have the excesses of Mongols been surpassed by those of the Marines?"
- Richard Neville: The Bad Santa -

"Why would our young men and women go into battle saying, 'Lets kill 'em all?' Why would an American helicopter crew gun down women and children trying to escape Falluja, who were crossing a river in broad daylight? Why would one of our officers gun down wounded civilians in a mosque?"
- Sam Hamod: a former advisor to the State Department on Islam and the Middle East -

"In stunning revelations set to rock the vote from Tallahassee to Capitol Hill - and perhaps even a bit further up Pennsylvania Avenue - a Florida computer programmer has now made remarkable claims in a detailed sworn affidavit. The programmer claims that he designed and built a 'vote rigging' software program at the behest of then Florida Congressman, now U.S. Congressman, Republican Tom Feeney of Florida's 24th Congressional District.
- The BRAD BLOG -

"A plurality of likely voters say that longtime Christmas fixture Santa Claus is a Democrat, a new Zogby International poll reveals. The same survey found voters even more sure of the political leanings of two other Christmas icons: Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch are likely Republicans."
- Santa Claus 'a Democrat', Ebenezer Scrooge, Grinch 'Republicans', New Zogby Poll Finds -

"The coquettes whittled to bottom and bra, then peeled to a g-string and pasties while dancing, really dancing, with charm, humor and grace. Sexy grace. Allure. It was like a drug and I wanted to smoke some. No crotch thrusting. No flicking tongues. It wasn't Fuck Me. It wasn't I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar. It was I Enjoy Being A Girl."
- Xanadu Xero: A respite from holiday shopping: Christmas strippers -

"Early in 2002, the Taliban was split. About 50 percent of the Taliban leadership hated Osama bin Laden and wanted him out. We could have worked with them. But we went ahead and treated the Taliban as one entity. The Taliban has survived. Al Queda has survived. We wanted to eliminate crazy people who want to fly planes into buildings. But instead we dehumanized everyone in Afghanistan and Iraq."
- Seymour Hersh -

    "The aim of the US assault is to make Fallujah a model to the rest of Iraq of what will happen to those thinking on similar lines. It is the leading thrust of an orgy of killing intended to crush and drive underground every voice of dissent and ensure that elections this coming January will throw up a weak-willed, pro-US toady regime. The American military is rumored to be planning similar attacks on scores of other Iraqi cities and towns.
    "Not a single major voice has been raised in the American media against the ongoing destruction of Fallujah. While much of the world recognizes something dreadful has occurred, the US press does not even bat an eyelash over the organized leveling of a city of 300,000 people. In none of the US media commentaries is there a single phrase of unease about the moral, or legal, questions involved in the attack on Fallujah. None have dared say it in as many words that the American military operation in the city is an unlawful act of aggression in an equally illegal, criminal, aggressive war.
   "The United States went into Afghanistan to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. They killed 10,000 innocent Afghans but could not find their man. They went into Iraq to discover and eliminate Saddam's WMDs. They killed tens of thousands of Iraqis but found no WMD. They laid siege to the city of Fallujah to kill or capture Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. The city and its inhabitants have been blown to smithereens but there is no Zarqawi. Is it not only too convenient? Next when they want to attack Pakistan, or Iran, they simply have to say that Bin Laden is taking refuge there. Just like the next Iraqi city awaiting the fate of Fallujah will be the latest refuge of Zarqawi; the WMDs too could next fly to Syria or may be even Saudi Arabia. Is one imagining things here? Or is it that the US imperialism is indeed now riding full time on the back of gargantuan lies?
    "After granting George Bush a carte blanche to do what he likes the American citizens, of course, continue their daily lives oblivious to what is being done in their name. Between their work places and the nearest fast food joints, they just do not have enough time to check back on the activities of the man who is playing the Terminator in the name of God and in their name."
- Anwaar Hussain: I Am Become Death - The Destroyer Of The Worlds (mandatory reading) -

"One hapless doctor, Hakim Mirzoev, says he expected the Americans to surround the city, fire a few shots, and declare victory. He didn't realize that a greater PSYOPS scheme was in the making, a plan to flatten Falluja under boot and mortar so that the City of Mosques could be rebuilt by Christian Soldiers into a Model City - a Pasadena by the Euphrates. With this world-historical Crusade in mind, Falluja was crushed, thousands were killed and wounded, hundreds of thousands displaced, so that America could perceive itself great in the gaze of the world."
- Greg Moses: Ask Not Who Bankrolled Fallujah Attacks: War Tax Resisters Opt Out -

    "Ordinary people in the United States have been manipulated into imagining they are a people under siege whose sole refuge and protector is their government. If it isn't the Communists, it's al Qaeda. If it isn't Cuba, its Nicaragua. As a result, the most powerful nation in the world is peopled by a terrified citizenry jumping at shadows. A people bonded to the state not by social services, or public health care, or employment guarantees, but by fear.
   "This synthetically manufactured fear is used to gain public sanction for further acts of aggression. And so it goes, building into a spiral of self-fulfilling hysteria, now formally calibrated by the U.S governments Amazing Technicolored Terror Alerts: fuchsia, turquoise, salmon pink."
- Arundhati Roy: People vs. Empire - Only global resistance from below can counter repressive states -

"[W]hen Bradley asked Dylan about Rolling Stone magazine's recent selection of (surprise) Like a Rolling Stone as the number one song of all time, Dylan was characteristically unimpressed: 'Well, the lists, they change names pretty frequently ... I don't really pay much attention to that.' Follow-up question that would be asked by ANY SENTIENT INDIVIDUAL at that moment: So, Mr. Dylan, what do you think is the greatest song of all time? Had the focus shifted for a moment off himself and his status as a legend, Dylan might have opened up a little, smiled, maybe even picked up a guitar and sung a Woody Guthrie song or something. But Bradley neglected to ask his subject anything about music, current events, pop culture or religion."
- Dana Stevens: Dylan on 60 Minutes: It's Alright Ma, I'm only fulfilling my contractual obligations. - 

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
- Robert F. Kennedy -

     "In an apparent reversal of decades of U.S. practice, recent federal Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations bar American firms from publishing works by dissident writers in countries under sanction unless they first get U.S. government approval.
   "The restriction, condemned by critics as a violation of the 1st Amendment, means that books and other works banned by some totalitarian regimes cannot be published freely in the United States, a country that prides itself as the international beacon of free expression."
- Scott Martelle: Will voices of dissent still be heard? U.S. firms now need OK to publish authors from nations under sanction -

    "Harnessing the electrical echoes of thought, researchers have developed a way for people to control a computer cursor simply by thinking about it.
    "The device, which so far has been tested successfully on four people, does not require implants, surgery or any other invasive medical procedure, the researchers reported Monday. Previous efforts required electrodes wired directly into brain cells."
- Robert Lee Hotz: Device for the Paralyzed Turns Thinking to Doing -

"I think therefore I spam."
- René Descartes (before the horse) -

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson because it is so easy to do."
- our food supply -

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
- George Bernard Shaw -

"To an unprecedented degree, the United States and its allies have turned to private companies to fill tens of thousands of jobs once performed only by soldiers, from prison interrogators to bodyguards for high-ranking officials. Several of these companies have even engaged in firefights as part of their work. To Iraqis, the corporate guards are often indistinguishable from U.S. troops, with whom they often cooperate. Yet there is one key difference between the contract soldiers and U.S. troops: With pressure to quickly fill thousands of jobs, many companies have recruited former police officers and soldiers who engaged in human rights violations -- including torture and illicit killings -- for regimes such as apartheid South Africa, Augusto Pinochet's Chile, and Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. Some of these firms perform only cursory pre-employment screening, if any -- making it easy for those with questionable backgrounds to slip through unnoticed."
- Barry Yeoman: Dirty Warriors - How South African hit men, Serbian paramilitaries, and other human rights violators became guns for hire for military contractors in Iraq -

"Condi is a bulldog like House Majority Leader, Tom Delay. She and Tom know that facts and truths are two things that have very different meanings. Yeah, Condi, like Tom, knows that the real truth can only harm America, and so she tells her version of the truth, or speaks her version of facts. Colin never understood that to be a team player you had to yield to the Bush line. Condi, however, knows when to lay spread eagle and force some low-level operative to admit to failure."
- Kathleen Kuntly: Condi Replaces Colin -

     "On patrol in Taliban-infested sectors of Afghanistan's Paktia province, Pat Tillman's 'Black Sheep' platoon, formally known as 2nd Platoon, A Company, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, became bogged down because of a broken Humvee. Lt. David Uthlaut, the platoon leader, recommended that his unit stay together, deliver the truck to a nearby road, then complete his mission. He was overruled by a superior officer monitoring his operations from distant Bagram, near Kabul, who ordered Uthlaut to split his platoon, with one section taking care of the Humvee and the other proceeding to a village, where the platoon was to search for enemy guerrillas.
   "Steep terrain and high canyon walls prevented the two platoon sections from communicating with each other at crucial moments. When one section unexpectedly changed its route and ran into an apparent Taliban ambush while trapped in a deep canyon, the other section from a nearby ridge began firing in support at the ambushers. As the ambushed group broke free from the canyon, machine guns blazing, one heavily armed vehicle mistook an allied Afghan militiaman for the enemy and poured hundreds of rounds at positions occupied by fellow Rangers, killing Pat Tillman and the Afghan."
- Steve Coll: Army glossed over Tillman's ill-fated mission - Account of Ranger's death was inflated, kept from family -

"With an endless war against an enemy noun that can never be defeated; the sublimation of rebellious popular culture to the corporate prole-wheel of profit, co-opting any revolutionary spirit and transferring it into a lust for baggier pants or thinner thighs or shinier lipstick; the self-censorship of free speech, when it's not herded into a zone to protect our masters from hearing its voice; a media apparatus that bows to the needs of the state and commerce and ignores the people; and a sham two-party system that pretends disagreement on certain issues for public entertainment and distraction, while they each receive cash infusions from the same multi-national sources, America has entered a reasonable facsimile of Orwell's Oceania, but, like any respectable government project, twenty years overdue. We have only the option of scribbling in our electronic diaries for the benefit of an unknown future, committing Thoughtcrime until the knock at the door in the middle of the night."
- RS Janes -

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge - even to ourselves - that we've been so credulous."
- Carl Sagan -

"The problem is not materialism as such. Rather, it is the underlying assumption that full satisfaction can arise from gratifying the senses alone. Unlike animals whose quest for happiness is restricted to survival and to the immediate gratification of sensory desires, we human beings have the capacity to experience happiness at a deeper level which, when achieved, can overwhelm unhappy experiences."
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama -

"Whenever you see darkness, there is extraordinary opportunity for the light to burn brighter."
- Bono -

"Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others."
- Robert Louis Stevenson -

"I declare that the overcoming of clinging to the impurities of the world is possible for a person who knows and sees but not for a person who does not know or see. In the person who knows and sees, the dustless and stainless Eye of Truth arises. Seeing the truth, he sees things as they are. Seeing the truth, the eye is born, knowledge is born, wisdom is born, science is born, and light is born."
- Samyutta Nikaya -

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
- Dr. Seuss -

"There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change."
- Euripides -

    "I drop half a milliliter of water into a plastic test tube and mash a piece of a leaf inside. As the water tints green, I notice that my hands are shaking. I haven't slept for two days, and the Marxist guerrillas have this town encircled. But what's really making me nervous is the green liquid in the tube.
    "Over the past three years, rumors of a new strain of coca have circulated in the Colombian military. The new plant, samples of which are spread out on this table, goes by different names: supercoca, la millonaria. Here in the southern region it's known as Boliviana negra. The most impressive characteristic is not that it produces more leaves - though it does - but that it is resistant to glyphosate. The herbicide, known by its brand name, Roundup, is the key ingredient in the US-financed, billion-dollar aerial coca fumigation campaign that is a cornerstone of America's war on drugs.
    "One possible explanation: The farmers of the region may have used selective breeding to develop a hardier strain of coca. If a plant happened to demonstrate herbicide resistance, it would be more widely cultivated, and clippings would be either sold or, in many cases, given away or even stolen by other farmers. Such a peer-to-peer network could, over time, result in a coca crop that can withstand large-scale aerial spraying campaigns."
- Joshua Davis: The Mystery of the Coca Plant That Wouldn't Die - The war on Colombia's drug lords is losing ground to an herbicide-resistant supershrub. Is it a freak of nature - or a genetically modified secret weapon? -

"The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of the social lies that a free, thinking man is bound to rebel against. Who makes up the majority in any given country? Is it the wise men or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible overwhelming majority, all the wide world over. But, damn it, it can surely never be right that the stupid should rule over the clever!"
- Henrik Ibsen -

"Seeking conclusions is a modern sickness. Rather, find meaning in the process of becoming."
- The Rev. Koshin Ogui: bishop of the Buddhist Churches of America -

    "If the richest nation in the history of the world is populated by millions of Bible-believing Christians, then how come issues of poverty and economic justice were barely mentioned this past election season?
    "There are an estimated 35 million poor people in America, including nearly 13 million children. The poverty rate has increased steadily over the past three years, most dramatically among children. But not a peep about this from either Bush or Kerry.
    "A Bible-believing America? Yeah, and I'm the next pope."
- Sean Gonsalves: On their own terms - Using scripture to engage Bible-believers on moral values -

"As we change ourselves from the inside out, we send ripples of inspiration and healing out into the world. By joining together in groups to support each other in this, those ripples become waves which powerfully help to build a brighter future for us all."
- Building a Brighter Future -

"Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy."
- US Defense Department report by the Defense Science Board -

    "The Wal-Mart Corporation has marketed itself as a patriotic buyer of U.S. goods, with Bring it Home to the USA banners and the slogan, "We Buy American, Whenever We Can." These claims are about as honest as the company's extolling of its 'worker-friendly' policies in its corporate image advertising campaign. [Benjamin] Edwards's art shows, 'We Buy American Whenever We Can't Buy Chinese' might be a more appropriate slogan for the megastore's business model.
   "Edwards's experiment took him to eight Wal-Mart stores in one day, where he randomly picked up products and recorded their countries of manufacturing origin. Forty-six percent of his day's total comes from China; only 19 percent from the United States. Wal-Mart's slogans supporting American manufacturing ring hollow when paired with Edwards's results, and that if Wal-Mart were an independent nation, it would rank as China's eighth largest trading partner, before Australia and Russia."
- John Podesta: American Progress Action Fund -

"The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other."
- Bertrand Russell -

"No one needs to watch another brain tumor patient engage in a David-and-Goliath legal battle to defend her last-ditch drug of choice."
- L.A. Times Editorial: A Kinder Pot Policy -

"What I find is that people are mad about our policies. They're not necessarily mad at us. And therefore, as policies are successful, attitudes can be changed."
- Colin Powell in an interview with P.J. O'Roarke -

"When you take your case to Washington, D.C., you're taking it to the criminal who's responsible; it's like running from the wolf to the fox. They're all in cahoots together. They all work political chicanery and make you look like a chump before the eyes of the world. Here you are walking around in America, getting ready to be drafted and sent abroad, like a tin soldier, and when you get over there, people ask you what are you fighting for, and you have to stick your tongue in your cheek.No, take Uncle Sam to court, take him before the world.
- Malcolm X: The Ballot or the Bullet, April 3, 1964 -

"Keep an open mind, sure - but not so open that your brains fall out."
- M.D and Steven Novella: Alien Abductions and Coffee Enemas or the problem with being open-minded -

Everything Else

You'll be so proud of your country when you see these pictures from Fallujah.

Here's a clip from the 70s children's TV show Rainbow that teaches kids how to play with their friend's balls.

A superb collection of links to off-beat music videos from the likes of Black Flag, Public Image Ltd., and The League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots.

Peter Jackson is remaking King Kong starring Jack Black, who is putting together a video diary of the shoot.

For your historical collection, the World's Earliest Television Recordings.

Surely you've got something better to do than listen to Jingle Bells in Yiddish.

I KNOW you've got something better to do than play Reflex, the most addicting game of the week.

Turn off your radio and check out some good old-fashioned relevant folk songs by Papa Dish, like The Last Voyage of the Condoleezza Rice, The Ballad of John Ashcroft, and Connect the Dots.