Cheney Bags His Limit

I taught I shot a Wepubwican. I did! I did shot a Wepubwican.

Musical News

Many Lawyers to Shoot
(to the tune of Many Rivers to Cross)
by Bob Cheney and the Quailers

Many lawyers to shoot
and I can't seem to find enough ammo
I'm a blind old coot
who just loves to hunt
with a gun that goes blammo

    AND THE COLORED GIRLS SING
   His gun does not jam-o

Many lawyers to shoot
and it's only their flak jackets
that keep them alive
I've been blind for years
And I merely survive
because I'm the guy everyone fears

    And this craziness won't leave me alone
    It's such a drag to be on the phone
    With reporters who wonder why 
    Nothing can make me cry

    AND THE COLORED GIRLS SING
    Nothing can make him cry

Many lawyers to shoot
like the ones who got OJ off with a rhyme
There have been times I find myself
Thinking of committing some dreadful crime

Yes, I've got many lawyers to shoot
especially special prosecution
Give 'em all the boot
Without the benefit of absolution

Many lawyers to shoot
there's no reason to feel misty
What's a little buckshot between friends
When you get a free helicopter ride to Corpus Christi

    AND THE COLORED GIRLS SING
    Ooooh, Corpus Christi

Many lawyers to shoot
but I can't seem to find enough ammo
I'm a blind old coot
who just loves to hunt
with a gun that goes blammo

    AND THE COLORED GIRLS SING
   His gun goes blammo ad infinitum

Faking Contrition
(to the tune of Waltzing Matilda) 
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Faking contrition. 
Faking contrition. 
Cheney feels bad that he shot his good friend. 
If you don't buy his story, you're a lib'ral Democrat. 
Leave him alone. This harassment must end.

Watch those right-wing pundits shouting on the TV tube, 
Claiming that Cheney didn't do nothing wrong. 
Don't expect them to challenge anything that Cheney does. 
They'll do Dick's will for a smile or a song...

The Hunting Song
by Tom Lehrer

People ask me how I do it,
And I say "There's nothin' to it,
You just stand there lookin' cute,
And when something moves, you shoot!"
And there's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow.

    AND THE COLORED GIRLS SING
    Quail to the left of me.
    Cheney to the right.
    Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

"In terms of required difficulty and skill, think of what these guys were doing as 'hunting' in the same sense that you might go hunting for a donut on the way to work tomorrow morning... It's astonishing that the VP was able to hit something other than one of the hundreds of tame birds released for his shootin' pleasure."
- Kieran Healy -

"Ultimately, I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and fired the round that hit Harry, and you can talk about all of the other conditions that existed at the time, but that's the bottom line. And there's no - it was not Harry's fault. You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. And I say that is something I'll never forget."
- Deadeye Dick -

"I'd rather go hunting with Dick Cheney than driving with Ted Kennedy."
- Mary Jo Kopechne -

"I heard one of Cheney's buck shot pellets hit that lawyer in the heart. Do you realize how hard it is to hit a target that small?"
- Horace J. Digby -

    "Amidst the swirl of outrage, obfuscation and wisecracking, one fundamental flaw in the White House's Cheney shooting story remains. How can a 28-gauge shotgun fired from supposedly 30 yards away cause pellets to become lodged in someone's heart?
   "How can a weapon that has little more power than a kids BB gun fire projectiles that in most cases don't penetrate further than an inch into a bird's breast and yet in this instance tore through a hunting vest, clothes underneath, the chest cavity and into the muscle of Whittington's heart?
   "Alex Jones has been bird hunting on countless occasions and considers himself an expert. Alex says that it is simply impossible for such a weak shotgun to cause such damage from 30 yards . Alex has used shotguns that are more powerful than the 28-gauge and seen pellets literally bounce off birds and only stun them. It is common practice for birds to be stunned as a result of the pellets not penetrating and it is usually necessary to have to snap the neck to finish them off.
   "The only explanation that fits the nature of Whittington's injuries is that Cheney's gun discharged at extremely close range...
   "As others have speculated it is likely that Cheney was drunk and he dropped the weapon, causing it to discharge and pepper Whittington at close range. Cheney refused to talk to local police until the next day and the Secret Service made sure the authorities had no access to him. This tells us that Cheney considers himself to be above the law.
   "If any other US citizen shot someone in the face would the police be happy to wait 14 hours before talking to them?"
- Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones: Media Ignores Cheney 'Smoking Gun' -

"He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do."
- Mary Matalin: Cheney adviser -

"After being moved out of ICU, the lawyer had a minor heart attack or as Cheney calls it, 'Monday.'" 
- Danny Gallagher -

"When gutting a moose, use the serrated spoon attachment on your survival knife to scrape any powder burns off the pelt surrounding the close-range entry wound."
- Kooky Uncle Chucky Heston -

"Cheney needs to start setting a less violent example by switching to target practice and leaving animals and people in peace."
- Ingrid Newkirk: PETA President -

"2. Until Democrats approve Medicare reform, we have to make some tough choices for the elderly."
- David Letterman's Top Ten Cheney Excuses for Shooting 78 year old Harry Whittington -

"I had a friend once who accidentally shot pellets into his dog - and I thought he was an idiot."
- Jim Brady -

"We'd advise him to pursue a less violent form of relaxation and get on with the important business of leading the country."
- Wayne Pacelle: president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States -

    "The entire Cheney hunting accident story stinks. The delay in announcing it is suspicious, obviously. I'll bet Cheney had a few beers in him, but I'm not sure that is illegal in Texas (drinking and hunting is illegal in most states, but I couldn't find out if that includes Texas). But a few other points that may be worth noting...
   "The news reports say that after Whittington had gotten off his shot and went looking for his bird, Cheney and the other hunter went to another spot where they saw a covey of quail. Texas quail might be different from Iowa quail, but in Iowa when a shotgun goes off, every quail within earshot flutters away. The story doesn't make sense.
    "None of the stories have commented on the fact that they were 'road hunting,' or hunting from a car. That is just about the lowest kind of low-rent, dishonorable kind of hunting there is (the phrase 'road hunting' is often used synonymously with 'poaching'). When I was growing up in Iowa, I went pheasant or quail hunting on scores of occasions with my Dad and others. We never would have hunted from a vehicle and it was an insult to even suggest that someone might. It was considered dangerous and déclassé, as it was too great an advantage for the hunter to be 'fair.' It most states, including Texas, it is also illegal...
   "Ms. Armstrong claims to have been in the car, but to have witnessed the shooting. If so, that would mean the hunters were fairly close, within eyeshot, which makes it even less likely that Whittington had gotten off a shot at a quail and then there were other quail still waiting around for Cheney to find them. It just does not make sense!"
- Direland: QUESTIONS ABOUT THE VEEP WHO COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN DICK CHENEY'S HUNTING "ACCIDENT"? -

"He was acting on the best available intelligence at the time."
- Cheney spokesman -

"What is the difference between Dick Cheney and a constipated owl? One hoots but can't shit..."
- the abbreviated spoonster -

"In case you hadn't heard, the Vice President celebrated Darwin's birthday on Sunday by shooting his hunting companion, a 78-year old lawyer. 'Fuck him,' Cheney snarled. 'The dumbass took his eye off me. Survival of the fittest, hombre.'"
- BitchPhD -

"Time to take the shotgun away from grandpa, who's blasted perhaps hundreds of innocent birds into bloody feathers during his life, before he has another senior moment."
- James Wolcott -

"Hey, I'm not going to bust Cheney's chops on shooting that guy at all. I know it's an accident. Because the prey Cheney hunts to eat, he strangles to death with his bare hands. Mmmmm, orphan juice."
- John Rogers -

"None of this would have happened if Bush had only read that PDB titled 'Cheney determined to strike in Texas.'"
- Washington Monthly -

"The local waterfowl will greet us as liberators."
- Paul Wolfowitz -

"A liberal is a conservative who's been shot by a gun nut."
- Tinkerbell -

"Republicans usually don't shoot lawyers for the same reason that sharks won't eat them: professional courtesy."
- Bryan Zepp Jamieson -

"So, what we have is an event shrouded in secrecy for almost 24 hours which, when disclosed, was accompanied by a fawning statement by a Bush apparatchik exonerating Cheney from any and all blame and/or liability. Thus, this appears to be yet another example of the Bush administration attempting to manipulate the press and perhaps hide the truth. What really happened on that ranch yesterday? Who the heck knows? What we do know is that, regardless of what actually happened, the administration spin-doctors immediately jumped in and crafted a story that put Cheney in the best possible light. And the 'traditional media' reported that story without any skepticism whatsoever."
- Political Cortex - 

"Hamilton, of course, shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird."
- Jon Stewart -

"In 2006, Richard Cheney, while on a hunting trip in Texas, became the second vice president to shoot a person while in office."
- Update you're welcome to make at the Wikipedia entry on the Burr-Hamilton duel -

"That's what you think."
- Lyndon Johnson -

"All I can say is what a Harry Whittington."
- Guy Cheney should have shot -

"What it comes down to, I think, is this: While the Vice President is an avid hunter, he may not be particularly up on gun safety. After all, it's not as though he's had any military training."
- Adam Felber: Fanatical Apathy -

Bonus factoid: One of Cheney's hunting companions, Pamela Pitzer Willeford, is ex-chairman of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which is charged with overseeing all public post-secondary education in Texas. According to the Texas Progress Report, Texas currently spends about $745 per student less than the national average, which places Texas 37th in the nation on education spending. Texas currently ranks 47th nationally in average SAT scores. According to Steve Murdock, official state demographer, if present education performance trends continue, by 2040 Texas will have a 40% increase in the poverty rate, a 50% increase in people on welfare, declining average income for households, a 54.3% increase in prison population, and a 36.8% increase of youth in Texas Youth Commission programs. For her outstanding work, Bush appointed her ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein in 2003.

Don't miss the Cheney Quail Hunt game that's short but sweet. I have come across a copy of the actual accident report which you may view here. Won't somebody with graphic skills turn it into a joke and send it back to me? Stupid question.

Arithmetic from Hell

   "The owner of the company that owns the Egyptian Ferry that sank has been all over the news in Egypt repeating that he will give the families of those who drowned because of his employees' betrayal 150,000 [$26,000] per lost victim. The media inform us that this sounds really 'big of him' considering that there was more than 1000 people who were lost in this tragedy, and normally when egyptians die in such accidents no one pays their families shit.
    "That is, of course, until you do some quick math...
    "The insurance policy on the ship - according to El Destour - stated that the Insurance company would pay his company $30,000 per victim, and for him to dispense it to the victims himself.
    "Now, let's do some quick math: $30,000 - $26,000 = $4000.
    "$4000 x 1000 victims = $4,000,000 dollars that the company is keeping to itself from money it should be giving to the families of the victims. That's EGP 23,000,000 million profit, over the other $4 million dollars he will get from the Insurance company in compensation for the sunken fairy. And let's not even think about how the man will not be obligated to pay the victims' families the other 150,000 EGP unless they show him a death certificate of their lost member, and since the Egyptian Law states that you can not issue such a certificate without a dead body, and most of the dead bodies have not yet been recovered, the man can keep the majority of the money himself for at least 5 more years, since that's how long it takes for the Egyptian law to declare a missing person to be officially dead.
   "And people were wondering why the man was so calm and understanding on TV when they mentioned to him how the families of the victims destroyed the offices of his company.
    "Bastard!"- The Sandmonkey's posting to an Egyptian blog -

    "Of the 19 states that cast their electoral college votes for John Kerry in the 2004 election, 12 received less than a dollar from the federal government for each dollar they paid in taxes, and one (Oregon) broke even. Of the 31 states that voted for George Bush, 25 received more than a dollar for each dollar in federal taxes, and one (Florida) broke even.
   "Eight of the top-ten state recipients of federal dollars, on a per capita basis, voted Republican.
   "Put another way, over the last decade, blue states collectively paid $1.4 trillion more federal in taxes than they received, while red states received $800 billion more than they paid. Blue states lost $8,916 per capita, while red states gained $8,499 per capita a difference of $17,415."
- New Rules Project: Ask Dr. Dave -

Co-Sponsor of This Week's Issue

Hot Religious Factoid of the Week

Just when you thought nothing was more retarded than a hard core Muslim, along come the Mormons. It seems that a rare, severe birth defect is on the rise in an inbred polygamous community on the Utah-Arizona border, according to a doctor who has treated many of the children. Intermarriage among close relatives is producing children who have two copies of a recessive gene for a debilitating condition called fumarase deficiency. The enzyme irregularity causes severe mental retardation, epileptic seizures and other effects that often leaves children unable to take care of themselves.

And might I point out that any religion that can't figure out whether their mentor is named Mohammed or Muhammed has got serious problems from the get-go?

Blatant Plug

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Funniest Film of the Week

Maybe if Christians see Jesus, the Musical, they'll burn down some embassies. It's certainly a riot.

History Lesson from Hell

There was once a Liberal Republican Party.

Quiz of the Week

Hamas vows to drink the blood of Jews because...

1) they're thirsty.
2) they're vampires.
3) they're insane.
4) soft drinks are carcinogenic.

Party Recipes from Hell

So the next time you're making a Bloody Mary, make it a Bloody Mordechai by adding some genuine Jew blood. While you're at it, turn Hamas into hummus by throwing some Arab marrow into your ground chickpeas with a little lemon and garlic. Yum, you can throw a Tupperware intifada that'll be the envy of all your neighbors.

Sophistimicated Doowacky of the Week

Which side-arm is just right for your child? Use the Kooky Kidz Korner Side-Arm Pick-o-Matic to find out.

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Free Trip to Israel

Israel's Knesset has empowered the State of Israel to criminalize any "holocaust reductionist" in the world who publicly reduces the six million figure of Jews lost in WWII. The government is now authorized to request extradition to Israel of such alleged "hate criminals" from any nation. Want a free trip to Israel? Publicly claim that only 5,999,999 Jews were killed by the Nazis.

Rodney King Memorial 
"Can we all get along?" 
Site of the Week

For the sake of world peace, someone has created Scandirabia, a website dedicated to finding dates between Scandinavians and Arabs. Coming Soon: Jewlestine.org: Jewish-Palestinian Matchmaking & Hututsi.com: Hutu-Tutsi Friend-Finding Service. 
 

If you don't have the graphic skills to do something creative with Dick Cheney's actual arrest report, how are you suppose to answer this week's stupid question?

Answers to Last Week's Stupid Question

the NSA has your number...
- Steve Banyai

How would Bush react when he saw the video?  You'd hand it to him, see.  And you would try to not snicker and you'd say, "Here, look at this George."  And he'd look at you funny and he's say,  "Dude.  Like, what's your point?"
Peace 
- Joe

Hard to tell. First, someone would have to read it to him. Then, they'd have to explain it. That means the movies would have to be shown, but only the cartoon of The Hobbit would get through. So, they'd have to try again. Which would mean dragging the cartoon back out, reading it to him again and possibly start the process all over again. Once he did understand it, he would be too old to do anything, so I guess it's a moot point....
- James and Katherine Allard

He would certainly go to www.rapturetoday.com and vote for his favorite deity to come and save  us from the simple minded.
- Thomas Wurster

He would swear it was a picture of Richard Nixon, and condemn it.
- Watermn

"World peace cannot be achieved by sitting around on our duffs singing hippie songs to the moon. Peace can only be achieved through excessive acts of seemingly mindless violence. Who do bullies pick on in the playground? The giant, crazy looking guy who looks ready to snap and kill the person nearest or some harmless looking weenie who appears to do anything to avoid conflict? People pick on the weenie because people like to start fights they think they can win. In the same way, people will continue to attack America and our interests when they get the idea that they can piss off America without us immediately eradicating them and everyone around them in the most painful way possible."
- Frank J.: A Realistic Plan for World Peace, a.k.a Nuke the Moon - 

"Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience."
- Dale Carnegie -

    "The OpenNet Initiative (www.opennet.net), an international human rights project linking researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge University, tracks Internet censorship and the techniques used to evade it. To surf the Web in China and elsewhere without censorship and in marginal safety, said John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor and a member of the initiative, the primary tool is an old standby: the proxy server...
   "Elsewhere on the Web, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) helps maintain Tor, a communications network that helps make Internet communications anonymous, and it appears to be accessible from within China. http://Peacefire.org/ offers a program called The Circumventor that lets anyone turn a Windows-based machine into a proxy, allowing others to use it to circumvent local Internet restrictions...
   "Of course, these precious few leaks are most likely little consolation for the dozens of Chinese citizens languishing in prison for saying or doing the wrong thing online. And they are all the more reason that human rights workers keep discussions of circumvention tactics short and vague."
- Tom Zeller Jr.: The Basics: How to Outwit the World's Internet Censors -

"Bush spoke of a 'goal' of cutting dependence on Middle Eastern oil, failing to mention that US dependence on imported oil and petroleum products increased substantially during his first five years in office, reaching 60 per cent of consumption last year."
- FactCheck.org: Misstatement of the Union -

"I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking."
- Cartoon Dog in The New Yorker -

"The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one."
- H.L. Mencken -

"I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good."- Seneca - "We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress."- Will Rogers -     "Virtually everything we need to do to build an economy that will sustain economic progress is already being done in one or more countries. In Europe, for instance, which is leading the world into the wind era, some 40 million people now get their residential electricity from wind farms. The European Wind Energy Association projects that by 2020, half of the region's population - 195 million Europeans -- will be getting their residential electricity from wind."
- Lester Brown: What Is Plan B? Eradicate poverty, reforest the earth, restore fisheries, eliminate overgrazing, protect biological diversity, stabilize climate - Lester Brown says it's all possible. -

    "You want us to know how you feel. You in the Arab European League published a cartoon of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank so we in the West would understand how offended you were by those Danish cartoons. You at the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri are holding a Holocaust cartoon contest so we'll also know how you feel.
   "Well, I saw the Hitler-Anne Frank cartoon: the two have just had sex and Hitler says to her, 'Write this one in your diary, Anne.' But I still don't know how you feel. I still don't feel as if I should burn embassies or behead people or call on God or bin Laden to exterminate my foes. I still don't feel your rage. I don't feel threatened by a sophomoric cartoon, even one as tasteless as that one.
   "At first I sympathized with your anger at the Danish cartoons because it's impolite to trample on other people's religious symbols. But as the rage spread and the issue grew more cosmic, many of us in the West were reminded of how vast the chasm is between you and us. There was more talk than ever about a clash of civilizations. We don't just have different ideas; we have a different relationship to ideas."
- David Brooks: Drafting Hitler -

"By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind."
- The Sutra of Hui Neng -

    "Don't go by gossip and rumor, nor by what's told you by others, nor by what you hear said, nor even by the authority of your traditional teachings. Don't go by reasoning, nor by inferring one thing from another, nor by argument about methods, nor from liking an opinion, nor from awe of the teacher and thinking he must be deferred to.
   "Instead, when you know from within yourselves that certain teachings are not good, that when put into practice they lead to loss and suffering, you must then trust yourselves and reject them."
- Buddha: Anguttara Nikaya -

"I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown."
- Ezra Pound (Palestinian poet?) -

"Sometimes I think it would be weird if there were a skyscraper that moved up and down while its elevator stayed in place. So if you wanted to go to the ninety-fifth floor, you'd press the 95 button and the ninety-fifth floor would come to you." 
- Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close -

    "It is becoming evident that the majority of the men held in Guantanamo were not, in fact, captured in battle. A study of individual detainee cases published recently by the National Journal argued persuasively that more than half of the detainees currently in Guantanamo were abducted in the mountains of Pakistan by warlords who handed them over to U.S. forces for cash rewards, sometimes $1,000 a head. At a time when U.S. forces were unable to find Osama bin Laden, and were desperate to find enemy soldiers in the mountainous caves of Pakistan and Afghanistan, tribal informers apparently had a field day pointing to their own enemies as a way to supply human chattel, who ended up in Guantanamo.
   "Many of their individual case files suggest that government lawyers felt pressured to find, or invent, evidence that detainees actually knew something about Al Qaeda operations. One Yemeni prisoner was interrogated so roughly that, according to the National Journal, he finally said in exasperation, 'OK, I saw Bin Laden five times: three times on Al Jazeera and twice on Yemeni news.' His 'admission' was duly recorded in a case file: 'Detainee admitted to knowing Osama bin Laden.'"
- The Gitmo Disgrace: LA Times Editorial -

"Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are."
- Benjamin Franklin -

"Of course, you'd like to take a vacation every week, you know, some exotic place - but you've got to set your priorities - you can't do that. You want do this or do that, go to a fancy restaurant every night, but that's not setting priorities."
- Dubya explaining why it's okay to eat shit and never go anywhere -

"The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years. New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government."
- Edmund L. Andrews: U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies -

"The equivalent of a walk-on, a token but failed attempt to show compassion that does not exist for a cause he does not support."
- George Harleigh describing Dubya's appearance at Cordetta King's funeral -

"You're seeing right now that the president is asking for still more tax cuts, really aimed at the top 1 percent, and you're seeing big cuts in things like student aid. I can't believe they're doing that. They're cutting like $12.7 billion in student loan programs, and I have a suspicion that that is about recruiting. When I travel to Iraq, and talk to the men and women, a lot of them are in there because they need the money to go to college. And if you cut $12.7 billion from student aid, then you're going to force more working poor and middle class kids to consider going into the military. They desperately need recruits because we put ourselves in a bind."
- Al Franken: Purveyor of Truth -

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
- Aristotle -

    "A Halliburton subsidiary has just received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide 'temporary detention and processing capabilities.'
   "The contract - announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR - calls for preparing for 'an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs' in the event of other emergencies, such as 'a natural disaster.' The release offered no details about where Halliburton was to build these facilities, or when...
   "'Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters,' says Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. military's account of its activities in Vietnam. 'They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the "special registration" detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.'"
- Peter Dale Scott: Preparing for martial law? Homeland security contracts for detention camps -

    "The extraordinary legal defense of George Bush's domestic spying reads like a blend of Kafka, Le Carr and Mel Brooks.
   "In 1996, Governor George W. Bush received a summons to serve on a jury, which would have required his admission that 20 years earlier he had been arrested for drunk driving. Already planning his presidential campaign, he did not want this information made public. His lawyer made the novel argument to the judge that Bush should not have to serve because 'he would not, as governor, be able to pardon the defendant in the future.' (The defendant was a stripper accused of drunk driving.) The judge agreed, and it was not until the closing days of the 2000 campaign that Bush's record surfaced. On Monday, the same lawyer, Alberto Gonzales - now attorney general - appeared before the senate judiciary committee to defend 'the client.' as he called the president.
    "Gonzales was the sole witness called to explain Bush's warrantless domestic spying, in obvious violation of the foreign intelligence surveillance act (Fisa) and circumvention of the special court created to administer it. The scene at the Senate was acted as though scripted partly by Kafka, partly by Mel Brooks, and partly by John le Carr. After not being sworn in, the absence of oath-taking having been insisted upon by the Republicans, Gonzales offered legal reasoning even more imaginative than that he used to get Bush off jury duty: a melange of mendacity, absurdity and mystery."
-  Sidney Blumenthal: The President, the Stripper and the Attorney General -

    "Among the anti-Nazi undergrounds in the Second World War were physically strong boys who thought they could resist all pressure and would never betray their comrades. However, they could not even begin to imagine the perfidious technique of menticide. Repeated pestering, itself, is more destructive than physical torture. The pain of physical torture, as we have said, brings temporary unconsciousness and, consequently, forgetfulness, but when the victim wakes up, the play of anticipation begins. 'Will it happen again? Can I stand it any more?' Anticipation paralyzes the will. Suicidal thoughts and identifications with death do not help. The foe doesn't let you die but drags you back from the very edge of oblivion. The anticipation of renewed torture increases internal anxieties. 'Who am I to stand all this?' 'Why must I be a hero?' Gradually resistance breaks down.
    "The surrender of the mind to its new master does not take place immediately under the impact of duress and exhaustion. The inquisitor knows that in the period of temporary relaxation of pressure, during which the victim will rehearse and repeat the torture experience in himself, the final surrender is prepared. During that tension of rumination and anticipation, the deeply hidden wish to give in grows. The action of continual repetition of stupid questions, reiterated for days and days, exhausts the mind till it gives the answers the inquisitor wants to have.
    "In addition to the weapon of mental exhaustion, he plays on the physical exhaustion of the senses. He may use penetrating, excruciating noises or a constant strong flashlight that blinds the eyes. The need to close the eyes or to get away from the noises confuses the mental orientation of the victim. He loses his balance and feelings of self-confidence. He yearns for sleep and can do nothing else but surrender. The infantile desire to become part of the threatening giant machine, to become one with the forces that are so much stronger than the prisoner has won.
   "It is an unequivocal surrender: 'Do with me what you want. From now on I am you.'"
- Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D., Instructor in Psychiatry, Columbia University Lecturer in Social Psychology, New School for Social Research, Former Chief, Psychological Department, Netherlands Forces: THE RAPE OF THE MIND: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, CHAPTER FOUR -- WHY DO THEY YIELD? -- THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF FALSE CONFESSION, published in 1956 -

"I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like 'What I'm going to be if I grow up.'"
- Lenny Bruce -

Everything Else

Isn't it weird that the "offensive" cartoons were published in the Egyptian Newspaper Al Fagr back in October 2005 during Ramadan and nobody said a word? 

Here's a site that debunks the wackiest paranoid conspiracy theory of them all about 9-11.