Film I Want to See

Billy Jack's Crusade 
to End the War in Iraq

and Restore America to its Moral Purpose

• To prove to the world that there is available right now a realistic, immediately doable Exit Plan - Give back the Oil Bring home the Troops Plan - that will immediately end the insane daily flow of the blood of American heroes and innocent Iraqi civilian women and children, bring real stability and peace to Iraq, and bring our troops home immediately not next year, but by Labor Day.
• To lead a nationwide protest march to force Bush and Cheney to give up Iraq as an oil colony and stop the endless flow of blood by getting the hated Americans out of Iraq immediately No more orphans for Halliburton Oil.
• If Bush and Cheney refuse to end the war and give up Iraq as Bush's oil colony, hold an open public televised Hearing conducted by panelists who are people, including victims of the war, not politicians or political appointees, to explore Impeaching Bush & Cheney if that's the only way we can force them to end the war, outrageous as that first seems.
• And to stop the 3 fanatic groups and the Neo-Fascists* controlling Bush and the government from dismantling our Congress, our Laws, and the Constitution itself.

Stupid Answers of the Week

Last week's question...

The Bilderbergs met this weekend in Munich at the Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Überfahrt. George W. Bush just happened to be loitering around central Europe about then. Kissinger was there. Rockefeller too. Did Georgy Boy visit the Überfahrt?

Did George visit? Of course he did! Had to kiss the hands of those who puppeteer him or they may pull that box mike out of his suitjacket.
- Meria Heller

No, but he arranged for the hookers; in the evenings, following the daily meetings, those hookers went out to the local red-light district to find prostitutes.
- RSJ

No, he blamed it on the dog.
- redacted

He sure did. Kissinger, Rockefeller, & Cheney threw down reeds of coca leafs on the ground before him as he rode in on a goat. Then, they sacrificed the goat... poor goat.
- Frank B. Michel
 

- Please don't publish my name. I'm scared. 

Stupid Question of the Week

What the hell is this thing from Google Maps?

Send your answers to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

Sophistimicated Doowacky of the Week

What is Google Content Blocker?  Google's mission is to organize the world's advertising for maximum exposure to Web users. Unfortunately, annoying Web content often overwhelms the page, causing many users to become distracted and overlook the ads. 

That's where Google Content Blocker comes in. It effectively blocks all Web site content, leaving only the advertisements. How does Google Content Blocker work? After you install Google Content Block, just surf the Web as you normally do. When we find a site that has content, we will block that content so you see only the ads. It all happens automatically, with no effort on your part.

Today in History

Ten years ago today, Bill Clinton was still president

Internet Joke of the Week

Bubba Joe's first military assignment was to a military induction center, and, because he was a good talker, they assigned him the duty of advising new recruits about the government benefits, especially the GI insurance to which they were entitled.

Before long the Captain in charge of the induction center began noticing that Bubba was getting a 99% sign up for the top GI insurance.

This was odd, because it would cost these poor inductees nearly $30.00 per month more for their higher coverage than what the government was already granting.

The Captain decided that he would not ask Bubba Joe about his selling techniques but that he would sit in the back of the room and observe Bubba's sales pitch.

Bubba Joe stood up before his latest group of inductees and stated, "If you have the normal GI insurance and go to Iraq and are killed, the government pays your beneficiary $6,000. If you take out the supplemental GI insurance (which will cost you an additional $30.00 per month), the government pays your beneficiary $200,000."

"NOW," Bubba concluded, "which bunch do you think they're gonna send into battle first?"

Satan Doesn't Want You to Know

He's been downgraded from 666 to 616.

Don't Take My Word For It

"A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence."
- Bill Moyers: Speech at the 2005 National Conference for Media Reform -

"Journalism is the only profession explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, because journalists are supposed to be the check and balance on government. We're supposed to be holding those in power accountable. We're not supposed to be their megaphone. That's what the corporate media have become."
- Amy Goodman -

"Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has."
- William S. Burroughs -

"Okay, we cut taxes for the rich and so we have to cut services for the poor. Presumably there is some right-wing justification along the lines that helping poor people just makes them more dependent or something. If there were a rationale Bush could express, it would be one thing, but to watch him not see, not make the connection, is another thing entirely. Welfare, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps - horrors, they breed dependency. Whereas inheriting millions of dollars and having your whole life handed to you on a platter is good for the grit in your immortal soul? What we're dealing with here is a man in such serious denial it would be pathetic if it weren't damaging so many lives."
- Molly Ivins: Who Let the Dogs In? -

"It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."
- Niccolò Machiavelli -

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."
- Horace Mann -

"If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out."
- Rabindranath Tagore -

"When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is trying to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."
- J. Krishnamurti -

"Things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster civilization."
- L. Frank Baum -

"You say that you are my judge. I don't know if you are but take care not to judge wrongly, lest you place yourself in great danger."
- Joan of Arc -

"American soldiers aren't dying in Iraq because Newsweek printed a bad article. American soldiers are dying in Iraq because American soldiers are in Iraq, you fucking lunatics."
- August J. Pollak -

    "A survey to be released Monday reveals a wide gap on many media issues between a group of journalists and the general public. In one finding, 43% of the public says the press has too much freedom, while only 3% of journalists agree. And just 14% of the public can name 'freedom of the press' as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in the major poll conducted by the University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy.
    "Six in ten among the public feel the media show bias in reporting the news, and 22% say the government should be allowed to censor the press. More than 7 in 10 journalists believe the media does a good or excellent job on accuracy -- but only 4 in 10 among the public feel that way. And a solid 53% of the public thinks stories with unnamed sources should not be published at all.
    "Perhaps the widest gap of all: 8 in 10 journalists said they read blogs, while less than 1 in 10 others do so. Still, a majority of the news pros do not believe bloggers deserve to be called journalists."
- Joe Strupp: New Survey Finds Huge Gap Between Press and Public on Many Issues -

    "Lucas: The whole point of the movies, the underlying element that makes the movies work, is that you, whether you go backwards or forwards, you start out in a democracy, and democracy turns into a dictatorship, and then the rebels make it back into a democracy. That's one of the uber-issues that everyone is dealing with. You've got the personal issue of Anakin and his turn to the Dark Side, and his children bringing him back to being a human being, but the larger issue is the fact that you've given up your democracy. And it was never anything where the bad guys took over. It's always been a thing where it was given to them. It's based on Caesar. It's based on Napoleon.
   "Q: You actually have the line, 'This is how we lose a democracy.' How personal a comment was that?
    "Lucas: That was pretty much there 30 years ago. It really came out of the Vietnam War. It came out of Nixon wanting to change the rules so that he could get a third term, and with that... I'm a big history buff - I was beginning to study Caesar. Why did the Roman senate give his nephew a dictatorship when they had gotten rid of Caesar? Why did they do that? After they had a revolution in France to get freedom, why did they create an emperor? I mean, why did they do that? Why did the Germans, after they had a democracy after World War I, turn it into a dictatorship? Why did they do that? That was my initial question 30 years ago. And I'm not really saying why as much as how it gets done, because it always gets done in the same way. And it's scary, the fact that the world has caught up to that theory."
- Interview with George Lucas - 

"What if, out of the ashes of the Holocaust, we declared that 'Never Again' applies to all people?"
- Rita Corriel -

"In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office."
- Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary -

"Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them."
- Joseph Heller: Catch-22 -

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
- Mark Twain -

"To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered." 
- Voltaire - 

"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night."
- Dylan Thomas -

"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 

"It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."
- Bertrand Russell -

"Philosophers espouse freedom of thought; the wise, freedom from thought." 
- Christopher Spranger: The Effort To Fall -

"Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal." 
- William S. Burroughs -

"To be an artist is a blessing and a privilege. Artists must never betray their true hearts. Artists must look beneath the surface and show that there is more to this world than what meets the eye."
- Marvin Gaye -

"See, I write jokes for a living, man. I sit in my hotel at night and think of something that's funny and then I go get a pen and write 'em down. Or, if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny."
- Mitch Hedberg -

"The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them."
- Benjamin Jowett -

"The room contains a few dozen living human bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding, and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air sacks, and pierced by a Gordian sewer filled with burbling acid and compressed gas and asquirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by the many dark, gamy nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung along its length. Slugs of dissolving food are forced down this sloppy labyrinth by serialized convulsions, decaying into gas, liquid, and solid matter which must all be regularly vented to the outside world lest the owner go toxic and drop dead. Spherical, gel-packed cameras swivel in mucus-greased ball joints. Infinite phalanxes of cilia beat back invading particles, encapsulate them in goo for later disposal. In each body a centrally located muscle flails away at an eternal, circulating torrent of pressurized gravy. And yet, despite all of this, not one of these bodies makes a single sound at any time during the .speech. It is a marvel that can only be explained by the power of brain over body, and, in turn, by the power of cultural conditioning over the brain."
- Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon -

"Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are, and what this life is for. At the center humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul."
- Saul Bellow -

"One thing that I've learned in academia is no one much cares what your politics are as long as you don't do anything about them. You can espouse the most radical positions imaginable, as long as you're willing to be a hypocrite about them. The moment you give any signs that you might not be a hypocrite, that you might be capable of standing on principle even when it's not politically convenient, then everything's different. And of course anarchism isn't about high theory: it's precisely the willingness to try to live by your principles."
- David Graeber: The Politics of Tenure at Yale -

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
- Thomas Jefferson -

"Technological creativity, like all creativity, is an act of rebellion."
- Joel Mokyr -

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid." 
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower -

"In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost."
- Charlie Chaplin: The Great Dictator -

"Music can be all things to all persons. It is like a great dynamic sun in the center of a solar system which sends out its rays and inspiration in every direction.... Music makes us feel that the heavens open and a divine voice calls. Something in our souls responds and understands."
- Leopold Stokowski -

"Capitalism is like an island of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty."
- Noam Chomsky -

    "One Rand report said the best chance for a Palestinian nation to succeed would be for its West Bank territory to be connected, rather than separated by chunks of Israeli-controlled land, and for it to have relatively open borders with Israel. But even if the borders are tough to cross, as many Israelis envision, the country could still do well if its West Bank territory was contiguous.
   "A companion report describes the building of a corridor through the West Bank and into Gaza that could include a rail line, aqueduct, highway and fiber-optic cable system. Just building part of that would be worthwhile; putting Palestinians to work and getting money into their pockets could go far toward decreasing anger and boredom. The rail and road part of the corridor probably would cost about $6 billion; the overall estimated cost of all the reports' suggestions is about $33 billion in the first 10 years of a new state."
- Paving Palestine's Way -

"I think that metaphor is in trouble. To take the bible literally, as fundamentalists do, is an attack on the greatest collection of metaphors we have. We need metaphor as we need stories. We need stories that mean more than just the events that transpire in them. Anyone who has read to children knows that the development of their entire personalities requires stories beyond the literal. They are the only way to understand and develop ideas. If we have, as de Tocqueville predicted, become pure market forces then we need to do CPR on metaphor pretty fast. Dr. King knew that an improved reality begins with a dream. In dreams begin responsibilities."
- Mike Nichols -

"I don’t know how many kids I’m having, but they’re all girls. I’m not sure who the father is, but you can narrow it down to 270 members of Congress. All of them voted for something called the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act. It's the newest disguise the Right is wearing – a pro-family masquerade concealing the real and really ugly agenda of dismantling of Roe v. Wade. The bill dictates that anyone who helps a pregnant minor cross a state line to get an abortion that she couldn't get in her own state – anyone who isn’t her mother or father – can get thrown in the clink. It can’t be her grandmother, it can’t be a brother or sister – they can be tossed in the slammer too. It’s mom or dad, or the Graybar Hotel."
- Patt Morrison -

    "A loophole in US law may allow people to get away with any major crime within a 50-square mile 'zone of death' in western Idaho, according to a Michigan law professor.
    "A small swathe of Idaho could be the venue for the perfect crime.
    "This lawless oasis is said to exist on the edge of Yellowstone National Park because of a poorly drafted statute in the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution.
    "Criminals are entitled to be tried by a jury drawn from the state and legal district they committed their crime in, the constitution says.
    "But, argues Prof Brian C Kalt, while Yellowstone comes entirely under the district of Wyoming, small parts of it spill into the states of Montana and Idaho...
   "In other words, the jury would have to be drawn from the Idaho portion of Yellowstone which, according to the 2000 Census has a population of precisely zero."
- Matthew Davis: Loophole may allow US crime spree -

"Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
- Immanuel Kant -

"It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done."
- Terry Pratchett -

"There are only two reasons to buy a new piece of equipment: Your friends have it, or your friends don't have it."
- Bell's Law -

"Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend."
- Emanuel Swedenborg: Arcana Coelestia, 1683 -

"Anyone in the habit of deceiving the public is also, you can be sure, deceiving his close associates."
- Richard L Kempe -

"Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."
- E.B. White -

"Give the laziest man the hardest job, he'll find the easiest way of getting it done."
- Anton Martin Sorenson -

    "A motive for Israel in launching the anthrax attacks would be to bring America into war against Iraq and to remove that country as a potential threat to the Jewish state. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States Senate was thrown into a heated debate as to whether or not this country should go to war. Senator Tom Daschle took the lead in being against American involvement. In order for Israel to achieve her war objective, this time Senator Daschle would have to be removed or turned toward Israels position. Either way, Israel would win.
    "Likewise, Senator Patrick Leahy ran afoul of the Israelis when he introduced his Leahy Amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. The Leahy Amendment, also called the Leahy Law, prohibits American arms sales to foreign security or military units that systematically violate human rights. The Israeli military routinely tortures Palestinian prisoners, assassinates Arab political figures, and fires American-made rockets and missiles into civilian crowds and apartment buildings. If an American administration ever decided to enforce the Leahy Law, Israel would find herself under an arms embargo. Eliminating or turning her Senatorial adversaries - a gamble she couldn't lose would be powerful motives for Israel to target Senators Daschle and Leahy for political assassination by anthrax."
- Robert Pate: The Anthrax Mystery: Solved -

"The Motion Picture Association of America has apparently been begging the Boy Scouts of America to create a merit badge kids would earn by respecting the rights of entertainment companies and refusing to engage in online sharing. But, as everyone from BoingBoing to CNN reported last week, the only group the entertainment oligarchy could persuade was the co-ed Hong Kong Scouts Association. The group, which is part of the international scouts brand, just unveiled its new 'intellectual property rights' merit badge. Kids earn it by attending summer seminars on why it's bad to download the latest Nine Inch Nails album from their friends and sell knockoff versions of Harry Potter books."
- Annalee Newitz: Merit Badge -

"It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion."
- Aristotle -

"A smart man can learn from smart men, but a wise man can learn from everyone."
- The Hidden Jewel -

Everything Else

Guide to auto insurance companies where your payments won't go straight into Neo-con coffers.

I can't believe you don't know that Hell is for Gumshoes.