"Today is both an ending and a beginning. An end to the right-wing dominance of talk-radio, a beginning of a battle for truth, a battle for justice, indeed, for America itself..."
- Al Franken: opening remarks on Air America -

    Okay, first of all it's weird that the new liberal radio station Air America shares a moniker with Air America, the covert CIA air transport operation that hauled illicit drugs and guns from Laos during the Vietnam war. Quick, which Air America ISN'T a covert CIA operation?
   Okay, the current Air America isn't necessarily a CIA operation, but it's certainly something they're allowing. They're in charge. They could have shut it down. They didn't. Why? They want to listen to it. What better way to spy on the enemy than to encourage the public airing of their dogma. Air America, like all national media, have the sword of Damocles hanging over their head in the form of Michael Powell, ready to swoop down with fines of up to $200,000 each time the word "fuck" is uttered (or any other indiscretion that offends their delicate sensibilities). At Air America they even talk on the air about the fact that Ashcroft is listening.
    So Air America plays it safe by being just to the left of the middle of the road, which is okay, considering the total lack of competition that the right side faces in the media. The more they own the road, the more the fringe stuff will come out. Right now, they're "truth lite." They wouldn't let someone describe the Bush Administration as "Christian Fascism" the way Meria Heller does. They know the enemy is listening and they don't want to REALLY upset them.
   From my point of view, having been banging my head on the media doors for years, listening to Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo and Randi Rhodes and Marc Maron expressing themselves on national radio is somewhat akin to having been standing in a dark cave for years with a few other hardy souls armed only with candles only to see the whole place suddenly lit up with Klieg lights. I've explored the whole cave. I know about dark spots that still haven't been enlightened, but on the whole, Air America gives the other side some very worthy competition. These guys are smarter than Rush and funnier than Stern.
    Considering how much publicity Air America has generated, is it possible that a man who doesn't read newspapers would even know about, much less listen to it? Could Dubya find himself twisting around the AM radio dial some early evening, preparing for a night of hot heterosexual sex, and accidentally stumbling across Air America? If he did, he would certainly lose his erection listening to Al Franken.

Speaking of plagiarism...

Mr. Toad's Wild GHB-Fueled Rave - 14% 
Monorail goes Bi - 17%
Snow White's Secret Victorian Castle - 73%
The Glory of Media Consolidation, with Abraham Lincoln - 10% 
It's a Fascist World After All - 7% 
President Dumbo - 3%
Jefferson Airplane's Tea Party - 99%
Mainline Street USA - 1%
Jungle Boogie Boat - 1/2%
Chip 'n Dale's Backdoor Treehouse - 41%
Goofy's Bureau of Statistics - 73645%
Honey, I Shrunk the Animation Division - 20% 

- MovieJuice Poll got the ball rolling. I've added six. Be my guest. -

Michigan's governor has signed a bill repealing the $300 fine for not carrying proof of insurance when driving. Anyone who has paid will get a refund.

 Con Heir.

Success at screenwriting is like success at computing, it all depends on the strength of your internal drive.

Qualifying snark: Traditionally, art galleries have SMALL thumbnails of art which, if you click on them, lead you LARGER versions of the art. What backwards genius decided to create a page of LARGE thumbnails of art which, if you click on them, lead you to SMALLER versions of the art? Take page one of The Cartoon Guide to Genetics, "The Spiral Staircase," which is presented as an untitled bitmap that's 148.8KB. Click on it and you get a JPG that's 74.5KB. Completely nuts. The dimensions are larger but the file is smaller. The index page takes forever to download because it's 50 gigantic bitmaps. Totally user unfriendly. I just reduced "The Spiral Staircase" thumbnail to a JPG that's only 12.4KB with no loss of image quality. If they did that to all the thumbnails, the page would load more than 10 times faster. Is it worth it? Yeah, Larry Gonick's a genius, and this is mandatory reading, but still...

    "AOL, despite all their success and their entire marketing, advertising, and increasing subscriber base, has decided to become an unofficial arm of HOMELAND security and the Justice department. To that end they have instituted new software that reads all messages that pass through their ISP, and they have begun deciding who will be allowed to read what. Hence America-On-Line has now become ASHCROFT-on-line.
   "AOL currently hides behind 'new software' which is their excuse for every intrusion into the thoughts and transmissions between private individuals. Whenever anyone complains about these detected intrusions into private communications between any number of people a computer message handles all the dirty-little-details and cannot be confronted about what is really going on. So all attempts to discuss the reasons for any blocked messages have no quarter to appeal to. AOL is in effect hijacking what you can say, or what those who are subscribers, are "allowed to read." There does not seem to be a law against this foul practice, but there damn well ought to be. The speed and ease of communication, without censorship, by the government was part of the original appeal behind the Internet, and was one of the reasons that this medium has become so popular among so many world-wide.
   "So when you see AOL in that address on your computer, just beware that whatever or whoever you are sending to, or receiving from, is being closely monitored by several agencies of the government."
- Jim Kirwan -

The White House says the recession began under Clinton.

"There is no heaven and there is no hell. They are not geographical, they are part of your psychology. They are psychological. To live the life of spontaneity, truth, love, beauty is to live in heaven. To live the life of hypocrisy, lies, compromises, to live according to others, is to live in hell."
- Osho -

"The nation's immediate problem is that while the common man fights America's wars, the intellectual elite sets its agenda. Today, whether the West lives or dies is in the hands of its new power elite: those who set the terms of public debate, who manipulate the symbols, who decide whether nations or leaders will be depicted on 100 million television sets as 'good' or 'bad.' This power elite sets the limits of the possible for Presidents and Congress. It molds the impressions that move the nation, or that mire it."
- President Richard Nixon: The Real War (1980) - 

"You see, if you amount to anything in Washington these days, it is because you have been plucked or hand-picked from an Ivy League school - Harvard, Yale, Kennedy School of Government, you've shown an aptitude to be a good Ivy League type, and so you're plucked so to speak, and you are assigned success. You are assigned a certain role in government somewhere, and then your success is monitored and tracked, and you go where the pluckers and the handpickers can put you." 
- Rush Limbaugh -

"If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others, which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
- Justice Robert H. Jackson: Judge of the United States of America who represented the United States before the Nuremberg Tribunal -

"To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes, in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
- Judgment in the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan at Tokyo: THE PEOPLE Versus GEORGE WALKER BUSH, President of the United States of America -

"Sympathy is to empathy as symbolism is to embolism."
- Roget's Embolism -

"All those years ago when I was in the Pentagon, this wouldn't have happened. ATC Radar images were (and are) available in the understructures of the Pentagon, and any commercial flight within 300 miles of DC that made an abrupt course change toward Washington, turned off their transponder, and refused to communicate with ATC, would have been intercepted at supersonic speeds within a max of 9 minutes by a Fighter out of Andrews. Period. Why these planes weren't, baffles me. If we could get fighters off the ground in 2 minutes then, we could now." 
- former Pentagon Air Force Traffic controller -

"There are many issues thrown at us daily to keep us so overwhelmed and distracted (deliberately) that we cannot pay attention to the real horror behind it all, and I speak of the One World Order, coined by George H.W. Bush Sr. himself. One world under the rule of the richest families on Earth. The international banks making all the rules with their Corporate minions behind them. Not a one of us have had any say or vote in this matter. Not a one of us has been consulted as to what WE the people want. We are treated like a third world citizenry with zero intelligence of our own."
- Meria Heller with Robert Gaylon Ross: The American Union -

"A number of veterans' advocates say signs of widespread mental problems among soldiers from Iraq shock them -- one in 10 soldiers evacuated from the war on terror to an Army hospital in Germany were sent solely for mental problems. The Pentagon says that number is not out of line. It also is investigating more than two dozen suicides in Iraq and Kuwait but says the rate is not alarmingly high."
- Mark Benjamin: Army sent mentally ill troops to Iraq -

    "Political appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency bypassed agency professional staff and a federal advisory panel last year to craft a rule on mercury emissions preferred by the industry and the White House, several longtime EPA officials say.
    "The EPA staffers say they were told not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies called for under a standing executive order. At the same time, the proposal to regulate mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants was written using key language provided by utility lobbyists."
- Tom Hamburger and Alan C. Miller: EPA rule written to suit industry, staff says -

    "If you're looking to buy a copy of Robert Greenwald's superb documentary, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, don't go to your local Wal-Mart. Anderson Merchandising, the company that picks the movies that are sold in the retail chain, has told the distributor of the movie that the film is inappropriate for Wal-Mart.
    "The decision is a form of censorship because Wal-Mart is one of the largest outlets in terms of CD and DVD sales, and is often the only retail source in smaller communities. If you want to protest Wal-Mart's decision, you can either call the company headquarters at 1-479-273-4000 email them through the website. The address for snail mail is: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 702 S.W. 8th Street, Bentonville, AR 72716."
- Lakshmi: Wal-Mart nixes 'Uncovered' -

"Republicans used to complain that President Bill Clinton used Air Force One as his personal campaign plane, taking many official presidential trips that had no real purpose other than to raise reelection funds or drum up votes. But President Bush has been on the go even more than his predecessor, according to an analysis by Brookings Institution visiting scholars Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and Anthony Corrado and research intern Emily Charnock. In his first three years in office, Bush took 416 trips to 46 states, compared with Clinton's 302 trips to 40 states during a similar period. Virginia was Bush's most visited state (not surprising, since presidents often take day trips across the Potomac for public events). More notable, the scholars found, was the heavy proportion of Bush travel to 'swing states' -- those where the vote margin in the 2000 election was within 6 percentage points."
- Presidential Mileage -

"A powerful Senate appropriations chairman threatened this week to shut down the world's largest laser if the Bush administration falters in creating a miniature sun inside a California laboratory. At the same time, Republicans and Democrats are signaling even tougher scrutiny than last year of administration plans for a powerful bunker buster nuclear weapon. Sen. Dianne Feinstein suggested creating 'weapons systems that are so bizarre and so catastrophic goes beyond the moral code.' I'm going to oppose it at every step of the road because I do not believe the American people want to support a new generation of nuclear weapons,' she said... The administration's $6.6 billion spending proposal for nuclear weapons research and maintenance is coming under unusually rigorous attack early in an election year, and not from the rambunctious House but a less expected quarter, the ordinarily staid Senate."
- Ian Hoffman: Bush's laser, bunker buster under attack from Senate - Feinstein vows to oppose "bizarre" weapons at "every step of the road" -

"It is an extraordinary case -- in which the Vice-President contends that he is, in essence, beyond the reach of the law. It began as a set of rather pedestrian discovery matters in two consolidated civil lawsuits. Now, however, because of Cheney's stance, it could be a landmark Constitutional decision.
   "What are the implications if Cheney does win this case, and Scalia's bright-line rule prevails? For a sense of them, it's useful to look to Judge Sullivan's well-reasoned opinion (and remember, Judge Sullivan has been nominated to judgeships by two Republicans -- as well as one Democrat).
    "Judge Sullivan wrote that 'The implications ... are stunning,' for Cheney's position is 'untenable.' He gave a few key examples of what accepting the bright line rule would mean: 'Any action by Congress or the Judiciary that intrudes on the president's ability to recommend legislation to Congress or get advice from Cabinet members in any way would necessarily violate the Constitution. The Freedom of Information Act and other open government laws would therefore constitute an unconstitutional interference with Executive authority. Any action by a court or Congress that infringes on any other Article II power of the President, for example, the President's role as Commander in Chief of the armed forces and the national security concerns that derive from that role, would violate the Constitution. Any congressional or judicial ruling that infringes on the President's role in foreign affairs, would violate the Constitution.'
    "The result, Judge Sullivan argued persuasively, would be to 'eviscerate the understanding of checks and balances between the three branches of government on which our constitutional order depends.' In other words, it would be to forever change the government, and the system our Founders envisioned."
- John W. Dean: A Closer Look At The Case From Which Justice Scalia Has Refused To Recuse Himself: The Momentous Stakes, and the Larger Political Context -

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election." 
- German Chancellor Otto Von Bismark -

"People don't actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath."
- Marshall McLuhan -

"We must be careful that the people who make $5,000 a year are not pitted against those who make $25,000 a year by those who make $900,000." 
- Senator Barbara A. Mikulski -

"Did you know that the number of votes cast on touch screen machines in some precincts in the California primary last month exceeded the number of voters registered? Move along, nothing to see here. This ballot disaster was reported in the LA Times on March 9, 2004. As always, our do-nothing media have not bothered to investigate or report on it since that date. 'In 21 precincts where the problem was most acute, there were more ballots cast than registered voters.'"
- Faun Otter: Vote Crime - The Mugging of America -

"America was not established to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal -- to discover and maintain liberty among men." 
- President Woodrow Wilson -

"I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people." 
- Vincent Van Gogh -

"It is never too late to be what you might have been." 
- George Eliot -

"Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn't be done." 
- Amelia Earhart -

"The weak are more likely to make the strong weak than the strong are likely to make the weak strong." 
- Marlene Dietrich -

"Making weapons is what we know how to do best, the supreme achievement of late-twentieth-century American civilization. To this blessed work we assign our finest intellect and the largest share of our treasure, and in the magnificence of an aircraft carrier or a cruise missile we find our moral and aesthetic equivalent of the Sistine ceiling and Chartres Cathedral." 
- Lewis Lapham -

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." 
- Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. -

"The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?" 
- Pablo Casals -

"The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them." 
- Senator William Fulbright -

"One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition." 
- Alvin Toffler -

"My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage." 
- Franz Kafka -

"Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle." 
- President Franklin Roosevelt -

"The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." 
- General Douglas MacArthur -

"What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen." 
- Leo Tolstoy - 

"Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it." 
- President Thomas Jefferson - 

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land." 
- Bishop Desmond Tutu - 

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them." 
- Albert Einstein -

"Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates." 
- Gore Vidal -

"Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human." 
- Agatha Christie -

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." 
- Oscar Wilde -

"I would have hoped the film would had some of Christ's actual teaching."
- Meria Heller -

"Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness." 
- James Thurber -

"War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses." 
- Thomas Jefferson -

"We are all born mad. Some remain so." 
- Samuel Beckett -

"Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business." 
- Tom Robbins -

"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom." 
- Bertrand Russell -

"The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind." 
- Frank Lloyd Wright -

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom." 
- Clarence Darrow -

"Man is only great when he acts from passion." 
- Benjamin Disraeli -

"You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave." 
- Billie Holiday -

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves." 
- Carl Jung -

"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself." 
- Anais Nin -

"No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time." 
- Henry Kissinger -

"No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation." 
- General Douglas MacArthur -

"Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit." 
- Ansel Adams -

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." 
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. -

"War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace." 
- Thomas Mann -

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." 
- Ernest Hemingway -

"Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve." 
- Edward Albee - 

"The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution." 
- President John F. Kennedy -

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence." 
- H.L. Mencken -

"We didn't go to Iraq to save it, but now we have to save it to excuse the fact that we went."
- Robert Scheer -

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- Mark Twain -

"[The word] liberal derives from the Latin 'liberalis' - of freedom, befitting the free. Synonyms are progressive, broad-minded, unprejudiced and generous; while antonyms include reactionary, narrow-minded, intolerant and stingy. Accordingly, a political liberal is an open-minded person who considers all the arguments before drawing conclusions. A conservative, on the other hand, clings to one position and sees no reason to entertain diverse viewpoints because he already has his mind made up. Are mainstream media 'liberal'? I certainly hope so." 
- Forrest Wood -

    "It's a crisp fall day in western Virginia, a hundred miles from Washington, D.C., and a breeze is rustling the red and gold leaves of the Shenandoah hills. On the weather-beaten wood porch of a ramshackle 90-year-old farmhouse, at the end of a winding dirt-and-gravel road, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is perched on a plastic chair, wearing shorts, a purple sweatshirt, and muddy sneakers. Two scrawny dogs and a lone cat are on the prowl, and the air is filled with swarms of ladybugs.
    "So far, she says, no investigators have come knocking. Not from the Central Intelligence Agency, which conducted an internal inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, not from the congressional intelligence committees, not from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. All of those bodies are ostensibly looking into the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, amid charges that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plain lied about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda terrorists and its possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In her hands, Kwiatkowski holds several pieces of the puzzle. Yet she, along with a score of other career officers recently retired or shuffled off to other jobs, has not been approached by anyone.
    "Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. 'It wasn't intelligence -- it was propaganda,' she says. 'They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together.' It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war."
- Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest: The Lie Factory, Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war -

"Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the Hell happened."
- Phil Proctor -

"Money can't buy friends but you get a better class of enemy."
- Spike Milligan -

"A computer lets us make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history -- with the possible exception of handguns and tequila."
- Mitch Ratliffe -

"News is what somebody somewhere doesn't want you to know. Everything else is just publicity."
- Lord North -

"While sitting at your desk, if you lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles and then, while doing this, draw the number '6' in the air with your right hand -- your foot will change direction, and there's nothing you can do about it."
- Bill Vallely -

"We had to starve you so that we could stop bombing you, and then we had to bomb you so that we could stop starving you."
- Kathy Kelly explaining the history of the US and Iraq: Defeating Terrorism, Step One: Look in the Mirror -

"As military veterans and families, we understand that hardship is sometimes part of the job. But there has to be an honest and compelling reason to impose these hardships and risks on our troops, our families, and our communities. The reasons given for the occupation of Iraq do not rise to this standard."
- Bring Them Home Now -

    "Those who encountered Bush in Alabama remember him as an affable social drinker who acted younger than his 26 years. Referred to as George Bush, Jr. by newspapers in those days, sources say he also tended to show up late every day, around noon or one, at Blount's campaign headquarters in Montgomery. They say Bush would prop his cowboy boots on a desk and brag about how much he drank the night before.
   "Many of those who came into close contact with Bush say he liked to drink beer and Jim Beam whiskey, and to eat fist-fulls of peanuts, and Executive burgers, at the Cloverdale Grill. They also say he liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the head for a line of cocaine.
   "Winton Bount's son Tom, an accomplished architect who designed the Shakespeare Festival Theater in Montgomery, remembers well his encounter with Bush. He recently co-produced and underwrote a telling movie called The Trip, set in the period from 1973 to the early 1980s, about a young gay Texan and his conservative Republican lover. The son known as 'Tommy' said he ended up in the same car with Bush, with Bush driving, on election night.
    "'He was an attractive person, kind of a frat boy,' Blount said. 'I didn't like him.' He remembers thinking to himself, 'This guy thinks he is such a cuntsman, God's gift to women,' he said. 'He was all duded up in his cowboy boots. It was sort of annoying seeing all these people who thought they were hot shit just because they were from Texas.'" 
- Glynn Wilson: George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama -

"According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt. Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration's assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to plant WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by friendly fire..."
- US tried to plant WMDs, failed: whistleblower -

    "A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.     "She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was 'an outrageous lie'.
   "Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used 'state secrets privilege'."
- Andrew Buncombe: I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida would attack cities with aeroplanes' - whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks to The Independent -

”When George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, he said he was against nation building. I didn’t realize he meant our nation." 
- Al Franken -

"War is a false and misleading metaphor in the context of combating terrorism. The metaphor suited the purposes of the administration because it invoked our military might. But military actions require an identifiable target, preferably a state. As a result, the war on terrorism has been directed primarily against states like Afghanistan that are harboring terrorists, not at pursuing the terrorists themselves."
- George Soros: Playing into their hands -

     "Did you know that Bush just turned down an IRS request for 80 more criminal investigators to block the flow of funds to Al Qaeda? Not unless you happened to read a story tucked away on page C3 of today's New York Times; it didn't make the AP wire, or the news roundups on Google and Yahoo. Yet it offers a truly fascinating glimpse into Bush's Washington, where a GOP congress joins hands with a GOP White House to hide embarrassing truths from the American people. And Bush would have got away with it clean if a single Democratic congressman hadn't been paying close enough attention to spot the pea under the shell.
   "By all means read David Cay Johnson's whole article, maybe even twice, to get the confusing details straight in your mind."
- Jerome Doolittle: Bush's Shell Game on Terror Continues -

"As for the wars which were anciently made on the behalf of a kind of party, or tacit conformity of estate, I do not see how they may be well justified: as when the Romans made a war for the liberty of Grecia; or when the Lacedaemonians and Athenians made wars to set upon or pull down democracies and oligarchies; or when wars were made by foreigners, under the pretense of justice or protection, to deliver the subjects of others from tyranny and oppressions; and the like."
- Sir Francis Bacon -

"Fools' names, like fools' faces, Are often seen in public places."
- Thomas Fuller -

"There are more fools in the world than there are people."
- Heinrich Heine -

"I have as little respect, Sir, for a fighting nation as I have for a fighting individual."
- John Stuart Mill -

"If associations to control burglary and murder were tolerated, we should take it for granted that the members should all be burglars and murderers."
- George Bernard Shaw -

"Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all."
- William Goldman -

"When a man is told something he doesn't know, he almost always thinks its a lie."
- Charles Willeford -

"Consider how the beginning of all Thought worth the name is Love: and the wise head never yet was, without first the generous heart."
- Thomas Carlyle -

"Writing sentences is difficult whatever their subject. It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby Dick. So you might as well write Moby Dick."
- Anne Dillard -

"It is no great feat to burn a little man. It is a great achievement to persuade him."
- Erasmus of Rotterdam -

"It is in defeat that we become Christian."
- Ernest Hemingway: Father Rinaldi in A Farewell to Arms -

"Souls are not saved in bundles."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

"Whenever you wish to assert something completely false, always preface it with the statement: 'There can be no possible doubt' or 'It is universally admitted that'."
- Baron Bulwer-Lytton -

"By holding back documents, officials, information, images and the sight of returning military coffins, by twisting and exaggerating facts to fit story lines, by demonizing anyone who disagrees with its version of reality, this administration strives to create an optical delusion."
- Maureen Dowd: Mired in a mirage -

"Contemplating suicide? Let Special Effects give your suicide note that professional look."
- Sign seen in stationary store window -

"On a flight from Bishkek to Tehran on dilapidated Kyrgyzstan Airlines a few years ago, the pilot announced that the landing gear on my friend's Tupolev 154 wouldn't deploy. Tehran refused permission to crash-land the Soviet-era plane at its newly renovated airport. Five minutes later, my pal recalls, fighter jets appeared on each side of the crippled plane to escort it out of Iranian airspace. (It landed safely back in Bishkek.) Why didn't we respond to our crisis in the air on 9/11 with the same efficiency as Iran, a third world country hobbled by international trade sanctions?"
- Ted Rall: Where was the Air Force? The real question of 9-11 -

    "A copy of a previously unpublished manifest, obtained late Thursday night and dated September 15, 2001, provides evidence of a private Boeing-727 Saudi flight from Lexington, Kentucky to London. But the names on the manifest raise serious questions about FBI policies and procedures related to witness identification, criminal investigations and obstruction of justice.
    "Ahmad A. M. Alhazmi, 20, (Saudi passport no. B805019) is listed on the manifest with Prince Sultan bin Fahad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, 19, (Saudi passport no. 406 A), son of Saudi defense minister Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.     "The name Alhazmi and its ties to laundered Riggs Bank cashiers checks may become a subject of interest when National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testifies later this week--especially since young Ahmad Alhazmi has the same last name as Nawaf Alhazmi, one of the terrorists identified as an alleged hijacker of American Airlines flight 77."
- Tom Flocco -

    "When police noticed Dina Dagy's family was spending $250 to $300 a month on electricity, they suspected a marijuana farm was flourishing under high-intensity lights inside their home.
    "What they found when they showed up with a drug-sniffing dog and a search warrant was a wife and mother who does several loads of laundry a day, keeps a dishwashing machine going, has three electricity-guzzling computers and three kids who cannot remember to turn the lights out when they leave a room."
- Family's electricity use is shock to police on hunt for marijuana -

"You have come here to discover the light within. You are here to become anchored to the supreme Truth in your heart. Carry on with your journey no matter how many obstacles or challenges you face. Have courage. Rest in the contentment of the divine light."
- Gurumayi Chidvilasananda -

"The way you let your hand rest in mine, my bewitching Sweetheart, fills me with happiness. It is the perfection of confiding love. Everything you do, the little unconscious things in particular, charms me and increases my sense of nearness to you, identification with you, till my heart is full to overflowing."
- Woodrow Wilson -

A mother who said God told her to kill her sons has been cleared by a jury that determined she was legally insane at the time. Since Bush said God told him to invade Iraq and kill tens of thousands of innocent people, does that make him legally insane?

Today's "Pause the World" Event over at Good News Broadcast is "World Water Day 2004." The World Water Rescue Foundation reminds us that Benjamin Franklin once said that "We will know the worth of water when the well runs dry," so be kind to your water today and don't let it get into any mischief. 

After reading this page of actual scientific studies of the effects of marijuana, you'll be glad you had a nice cool drink of refreshing water.

Know a veteran who's thinking of voting for Bush? Show them this.

Little Steven, Bruce Springsteen's guitarist, has spent some of that money he's making on The Sopranos creating Little Steven's Underground Garage, which contains his personal radio show full of classics. The fact that everything is only available in MP3 format means you don't have to put up with silences you get during "live" broadcasts, but can make for some long downloads. Other than that, this is a classic music site that's very fun to listen to and read.

A detailed report and accompanying searchable database released by Rep. Henry A. Waxman identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice in 125 separate public appearances.

Actions lie louder than words.

The early worm gets eaten by the bird.
 

     No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
   Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
   I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
   They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
   It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

• Free Bumperstickers
• Studio Script Notes on The Passion by Steve Martin
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• Why I'm Not a Terrorist
• My Candidate: John Buchanan: Bush's GOP Challenger Detained by US Secret Service
• Republican Zen Bastard: Meet the Republican who will Challenge Bush by Paul Krassner
• Zen Bastard: Predictions for 2004 by Paul Krassner
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• Zen Bastard: Blowjobs, Ballet, Baggies - the parts left out of the Reagan movie by Paul Krassner
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• Bob Hope's Last Monologue from Heaven by Lynette Sheffield
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• I Didn't See the News Today, Oh Boy
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• Booze (A movie I'd like to see)
• Hope (after the election)
• The Empty Boat by Chuang Tzu
• Special Halloween/Election Issue
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• Forwarded E-mail from Satan
• A Letter from Tom Robbins
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• The Ultimate Politically Correct Flag and Pledge of Allegiance
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