"A man has sliced his palm open, for reasons that are unclear. Another reclines, naked and still, as his body is spattered with milk and egg yolks. One holds a sign declaring, I WAIT FOR YOU ON MY KNEES AT THE GLORY HOLE. Another's placard proclaims him a GAY LAD. One has attached dozens of clothespins to his face and torso. One lays supine as a crude tattoo, huge and hideous, is cut into his back: Pwn3d by Slaw. One holds a piece of poster board scrawled with a question: ARE WE NOT HAVING FUN YET? 
    "There are hundreds of faces in the Trophy Room of 419Eater.com, and most of them are black. They gaze into the camera with wry smiles, sometimes, but more often with affectless expressions, eyes staring wanly into middle distance.
    "The persons depicted in the photos are e-mail scammers, those Nigerian hucksters whose broken-English entreaties promising millions in riches if only some dim dupe across the Atlantic will wire a few thousand in processing fees up front flood your inbox each morning.
    "They've been procured by scambaiters, a cadre of swashbuckling online vigilantes who tangle with scammers by the hundreds, replying to their e-mails and, by promising them quick cash, turning the tables on the scammers themselves, goading the greedy into all kinds of absurd and demeaning behavior."
- Mike Miliard: White hunters, black hearts - Scambaiting turns the tables on Internet con men. But when the clever pranks turn dangerous and degrading, where does the moral compass point? -
 
 
The Editorial We
by Michael Dare
 
Putting our own writing aside for the moment (we can talk about that later), what we're looking for when we browse through the writing of others is clarity of vision. Readers can sniff a compromise a mile away because the rest of the world called news is all predigested, clearly filtered through someone with a bigger vision of what they think you need to know. A Free Press gives you the pure stuff, unsullied by the corporate agenda, while intentionally sullied by our own agenda, which you can find hidden somewhere in this paragraph.
 
Of the thousands of items that floated past the Mike-roscope this week, here are the ones we've decided to pass along. Some are unpleasant, some outright infuriating, but others comforting and passive, like a puppy, you just want to tickle them, c'mere news item, let us rub your belly.
 
The Bad News continues to outpace The Good News in the Good News/Bad News column, where the good news column seems to waste a lot of space that could be filled with advertising, which would indeed be good news. Some items seem to be both Good and Bad news. Should we print them twice?
 
With Inscriptions in The Book of Life - I don't feel like apologizing to wicked people, Baron Dave Romm shares with us his thoughts on Rosh Hashanah and George W. Bush. Whether he succeeded in amalgamating the alien concepts of his Jewish heritage and the heart of his hatred for those who torture or simply displayed the schpilcus in his bling bling in the most erudite possible manner is now up to you.
 
Paul Krassner isn't sure how many more Assholes of the Week he's got in him. "I don't really want to spend my week looking for assholes," says Paul. We don't blame him, so sometimes his column will be called Zen Bastard just for old time sake, like this week, when he's hot on the trail of a magnificent travesty of justice. The Power of Laughter ends with something you can actually do about the situation, dial the phone number the district attorney with his head up his ass. Meanwhile, anyone else want to go searching for assholes? I understand they're not hard to find.
 
In his commentary on excess and inequality, Sam Pizzigati asks a question that the 30,000 millionaires created by Microsoft might not want to answer, When the Rich Make Too Much: Is it time for a Maximum Wage? Non-millionaires take note. Don't think TOO big.
 
If there were anything in this issue of the LA Free Press by P.J. O'Roarke, this is where we'd mention it.
 
Bad Food, Lynette Sheffield's intimate examination of the Doritos mystique fulfills our promise to deliver a food column. We never said it would be about something you'd actually want to eat.
 
If we were you, we'd avoid reading Iraq Death Toll Rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian Killing Fields By Joshua Holland. There is no conceivable way it can be interpreted as good news.
 
There's no I Was There and You Weren't column this week because apparently we were everywhere.
 
Who'da thought the New World Order would start in North Carolina. Read all of New World Odor if you want to keep up with the global conspiracy to piss you off.
 
Don't go blaming us for anything anyone said in Don't Take Our Word For It. We're just quoting.
 
With our unfettered access to the inner workings of hell, we're proud to tell you a few things Satan Doesn't Want You To Know. Just don't tell him we told you.
 
Add a Google Smackdown of the Week, Ask Dr. Hollywood, some High Coup, a Jean-Paul Sartre joke, a free ad, some embedded YouTube videos, throw in a modicum of outrage with just a smidgen of discombobulation, a coupla ridiculous graphics and a puzzle, and whatayuh got? It's in your hand.
 
 
 
    I spent this past weekend at the 11th annual Earthdance celebration, a global festival for peace held in northern California, uniting with over 250 locations in 50 countries, providing a wide variety of live music, workshops, speakers, inspiration and a worldwide sense of community.
    On Saturday, I was among a large group of men and women participating in the International Elders Forum. Each one had six minutes to share their wisdom with an overflowing crowd in the huge Electronica Dome. A native American, David of the Blackfoot tribe, would play the flute after five minutes of talk as a signal that there was one minute left.
    When my turn came, I began, “Whatever wisdom I have to share is in the form of comic relief, but just remember, if you don’t laugh you’re only helping the terrorists.” After seven minutes, I still didn’t hear any notes from the flute, so I decided to pass the microphone on to the next person.
    On Sunday afternoon, David told me that he had been laughing so hard he simply couldn’t play his flute. He tried again and again, yet the best he could do was spit into it. Of course, this was gratifying feedback to a stand-up satirist, but over lunch our conversation became deadly serious.
    Last November, he wanted to sell a piece of equipment, and a man who saw the ad invited him to his apartment. There, David was told to help himself to a soda from the refrigerator, which he did. When he turned around, four guys - biker/skinhead/Aryan-Nation types - burst through the door and attacked him with 2-1/2 inch metal pipes, first striking him on the forehead, then beating and kicking him while calling him a “dog” and a “prairie nigger.”
    He tried unsuccessfully to defend himself and finally dove out the first-floor window, landing in a carport. He pounded on somebody’s door - yelling “9-1-1!”- and collapsed in a puddle of blood. He regained consciousness in a hospital where he got 40 stitches for a cracked cranium and a head brace for his broken neck. His shoulder and hand were also injured. He was rescued by a friend and stayed at her home to heal. He could no longer do physical work, but she has since helped him open a small business.
    Two weeks after the incident (the night before Thanksgiving), police arrested David for missing a court date on a traffic violation. He had missed the date because he was unconscious in the hospital. At the Sonoma County jail, the guards kicked him, removed his head brace, refused him all medical attention, placed him in solitary confinement, forced him to sleep on a concrete bed without a mattress, and did not allow him to shower for six days. They eventually brought him to court, chained to a wheelchair.
    After he was released on probation, the district attorney demanded that David testify against the skinheads. Knowing the nature of the Aryan gang, he immediately expressed concerns about his safety, regardless of what his testimony might be. A couple of months later, the DA agreed to place him in a witness protection program. It turned out to be at the Pink Flamingo, a hotel in Santa Rosa, the same city in which he was attacked.
    On the third day, he walked out of the hotel and saw a bunch of bikers and skinheads outside. Not knowing they were there for a tattoo convention, he panicked and smoked a cigarette in his no-smoking room. For that offense, he was taken out of the witness protection program and left homeless, afraid to put anyone he knew in danger. The DA made it very clear to him that “We have ways to make you testify.”
    The day before the trial, David was arrested again, on the way to the Indian Health Center, for driving with a suspended license. Again, he was denied medical attention, his head brace was removed, and he was thrown into solitary confinement. A week later, he was again brought into court chained to a wheelchair - unbathed and looking like a wild Indian - and threatened with three years in jail. The DA was in the courtroom at his sentencing, pow-wowing directly with the judge.
    Immediately before the sentencing, David’s friend stood up and asked to speak out on his behalf, since his court-appointed lawyer had done so little to defend him. With the bailiff bearing down on her and contempt of court looming, the judge surprisingly agreed to let her talk. She stated how jailing David was cruel and unusual punishment, because he would have to be placed in solitary confinement throughout his incarceration in order to avoid any contact with Aryan gang members, due to his status as a hate-crime victim.
    Moreover, he was in violation of driving with a suspended license only because he couldn’t afford to pay the fines; his injuries prevented him from being able to work in his chosen field to earn the money to pay those fines. Was driving with a suspended license actually worth three years of anyone’s life, or was there another agenda lurking in the courtroom that needed such leverage to pressure David into testifying against the assailants? Was it justice to, in effect, condemn him for the heinous crime of poverty?
    The judge weighed the case and the next day released David on probation, warning him not to drive. Almost a year later, the DA is still hounding David by phone and subpoena, putting his life in danger by coercing him to testify. And where was Victims Assistance during all this horror? A Victim Witness Advocate told David, “I can’t help you. You’re on probation. Our hands are tied.”
    Since David was a victim, he does not have the right to an attorney. He was due to appear in court on September 18, but the case has been postponed for a month. He plans to say in court that he will not testify because, “If concern for my safety is not addressed, I could die.” He expects to be charged with contempt and, once again, to be put in solitary confinement.

    Whatever you can do to help extricate him from this profane injustice would be most appreciated. His tormenters, DA Anne Masterson and her investigator Denise Urton, can be reached at (707) 565-2311. You can contact David at iamhollowreed@yahoo.com. I’m grateful to be in a position to communicate the details of this nightmare, none of which I would have known had David been able to play his flute after five minutes of laughing.
 
 
Paul Krassner is the author of One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist, published by Seven Stories Press; he publishes The Disneyland Memorial Orgy at www.paulkrassner.com.
When the Rich Make Too Much: Is it Time for a Maximum Wage?
A Commentary on Excess and Inequality
by Sam Pizzigati
 
    Can our contemporary world be saved from the problems that ail us, from climate change and oil dependency, from AIDS and religious extremism, from poverty and inequality? Foreign Policy, the world's most prestigious global affairs journal, is tackling this weighty question head on, in a new issue that asks 21 of our earth's most thoughtful observers to suggest the "one solution that would make the world a better place."
    That "one solution," suggests Howard Gardner, the Harvard-based psychologist whose widely acclaimed books on human intelligence have been translated into 26 languages, ought to be a cap on the income and wealth that any one individual can accumulate.
The United States needs an income cap, Gardner posits in the new Foreign Policy, that limits the amount of money a single individual can annually take home to no more than "100 times as much money as the average worker in a society earns in a year."
    "If the average worker makes $40,000," Gardner proposes, "the top compensated individual may keep $4 million a year."
    Gardner's Foreign Policy contribution also advocates a cap on wealth, proposing that "no individual should be allowed to accumulate an estate more than 50 times the allowed annual income."
    If that allowed annual income were $4 million, then Gardner's proposal would allow no one, at death, to bequest a fortune greater than $200 million. Any individual wealth above that would have to "be contributed to charity or donated to the government."
    What's driving Gardner, a psychologist, to an economic prescription?
    "Most people in the United States cannot even envision a society that doesn't revolve around an untrammeled market," Gardner writes, noting the "widespread assumption," particularly among today's young people, "that the most accurate measure of success is how much money you have accumulated, indeed that general merit can best be gauged by one's net worth." These assumptions, says the Harvard psychologist, have nurtured a society where accumulation "has gone way too far," where a "hedge fund manager can take home a sum reminiscent of the gross national product of a small country."
    A cap on income and riches, Gardner adds, would raise billions, even trillions, "to begin to solve the problems about which others are writing in this collection of solutions to save the world."
    Attacks on Gardner's proposal are already emerging. One nationally syndicated critique -- from foundation president Clifford May -- labeled Gardner's antidote to inequality "preposterous." Gardner's Foreign Policy piece anticipates that sort of outraged reaction.
    "To those who would scream 'foul' to such limits on personal wealth," Gardner notes, "I would remind them that just 50 years ago, this proposal would have seemed reasonable, even generous."
Sums up the Harvard scholar: "Our standards of 'enough' have become irrationally greedy. Were these proposals enacted, I predict that they would be accepted with amazing speed, and individuals would wonder why they had not always been in effect."
 
 Yo Yo, I Got Schpilcus in my Bling Bling
 
    "During the last two years writing my first book, Other People's Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America, I've found that, over the past three decades, white people have used hip-hop as a safe, virtual space to tackle or elude the complicated legacy (and present) of race in our country. Every time we buy a Ying-Yang Twins CD or bust a backspin or attempt to use Ebonics, we are telling ourselves a story about America, about race, and about ourselves. 
    "So what story are Jews, specifically, telling ourselves? What draws so many of us to keep it (Is)real? (Full disclosure: that joke was stolen from respected Jewish hip-hop blogger Dan Charnas. See? We're everywhere!) My fascination with hip-hop has always intrigued and amused my third-generation Italian wife, Denise, who grew up in the more ethnically explicit suburbs of Long Island and always wondered what could possibly link my laid-back, West Coast, manicured-lawn childhood with the drive-by ghettoes of Compton.
    "But after that fascination impacted the trajectory of our lives - the book deal led me to leave work to sit in my pajamas and play Criminal Minded over and over again - she felt it was time to get to the bottom of it. Not long ago, we sat down for a conversation, one in which my beloved wife called me a wimp with an attraction for black men:"
- Jason Tanz: Assimilation and its Discontents - Why Jews love hip-hop (and try so hard to befriend black people) -
 
Inscriptions in The Book of Life
I don't feel like apologizing to wicked people
by Baron Dave Romm
 
    Rosh Hashanah, New Years Day, began on the first of Tishrei, 5768 (evening of September 12, 2007CE). This marks the beginning of the High Holy Days, culminating on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on the tenth day of Tishri (English spelling varies), evening of September 21, 2007CE.
    The High Holy Days, and Yom Kippur in particular, are a time of reflection, and a time when Jews celebrate G_d's goodness and atone for all sins realized or not. We are also supposed to cleanse our spirit and make things right here on Earth; you can't apologize to G_d for an injustice to a fellow human. It's one of the great things about Judaism.
    The problem is, as I wrote last year, I don't feel like apologizing to wicked people. Wicked people are inscribed in the book of death and too many in the middle are dangerously close. I'm sorry for any slights or transgressions along the way, whether I know about them or am too thick to get it. But I'm not even remotely sorry for holding up a mirror to the far right. If anything, I'm annoyed at myself for not doing a better job. To use Christian imagery, America has lost its soul.
    This year is an important one, religiously and politically. Both Judaism and Islam use a lunar calendar, and the holidays move in and around the solar year. This year, The Muslim observance of Ramadan overlaps the Jewish High Holy Days, and I optimistically hope that this symbolic confluence will help each understand the other better, so we can tread on common ground rather than pry apart the differences.
    Politically this year is important as a run-up to a Presidential election in 2008, with various Congressional and local primaries and ballots also to be decided. One of America's great strengths is that faith guides our political decisions; one of our great weaknesses is that too often misguided faith is mistaken for political wisdom. The Bible is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it. We can and should use the lessons of the Bible as well as the lessons of history and the knowledge of science to guide our voting choices.
    For pointing this out against the hue and cry of radical Christians, fundamentalist Muslims and ultra-orthodox Jews, I am not sorry. I regret that I sometimes don't express my views more effectively, but at some point I don't suffer fools gladly. I will try to do better, even as the extremes move farther and farther away from the world G_d created.
    Flashback: As a youngster in Hebrew School, I asked the Rabbi why Jews celebrate the New Year in the Fall. Many cultures start their new year at the Winter Solstice, when they know (from science) that the days will get longer again. Others celebrate the Summer Solstice, when the days are longest. Yet we start our calendar as the days are getting shorter, just when we need to hunker down for the winter. The Rabbi's answer (paraphrased from memory): "Jews are most optimistic when things look bad." This was not very satisfying. I suspect that the ancient Israelis simply took the time of the Harvest Festival for their major holiday, and the time of abundance as a the major Fast Day to prepare them for potential hard times. I'll note that it worked, as a cultural imperative: Few other peoples have lasted, as a group, for this long.
 
I'm sorry, but not for everything.
 
    So as we slide into the future, here are a few things I don't regret. Some of these I still don't regret, having talked about them last year. Given that the 2008 elections are after Yom Kippur next year, I might talk about similar issues for 5769. I'm sorry for personal slights to people who don't deserve it, especially the ones I was too uncaring to notice. For people who deserve it, I don't regret telling them forcefully.
 
I'm not going to apologize to - and will continue to rail against - anyone who supports torture, or who votes for anyone who supports torture.
 
    As of the passage of the bill allowing torture, it is the opinion of the US Senate that we should undo Magna Carta. While undoing basic human rights is a Republican initiative, too many Democrats have let the travesty slid by, and continue to vote, however hesitantly, for extensions. I cannot. This is still a sore spot from last year, with few Congressional voices being raised.
    We have become what we hate.
    In some ways, I'm madder at the Democrats who reluctantly supported the bill and they backed down under threat of the GOP slime machine. But that doesn't change the primary responsibility of Bush or the Republicans who stayed on their knees the whole time. In the same way that the Iraq debacle will is "Bush's War", the erosion of rights is a right-wing plan. Conservatives just don't believe in America.
Portions of the Patriot Act overturned. Sept. 7, 2007CE: "The ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York said the FBI's use of secret "National Security Letters" to demand e-mail and telephone data from private companies for counterterrorism investigations violates the First Amendment and constitutional provisions on the separation of powers, because the FBI can impose indefinite gag orders on the companies and the courts have little opportunity to review the letters, according to today's Washington Post."
    Bush's legacy is that of a liar and a coward. Even when his provisions for the FISA bill were passed with many Senate Democrats, Bush lied. His arrogance is the mark of a bully, and he just doesn't have the guts to take the high road.
 
I'm not going to apologize to gun nuts.
 
    For decades, the NRA and those who love their guns more than they love their family have been whining about the 2nd Amendment. This was never really the issue: Despite their lies, no one seriously proposed any sort of law or regulation that would take guns out of the hands of responsible gun owners. And yet, too many people (including many friends of mine) made this non-controversy the key issue in their voting. They are single issue voters on the wrong issue.
    Their final, mom-and-apple-pie-who-could-disagree? defense was the claim that owning guns protected "citizens" against politicians. Well, guess what? They lied. The conservative politicians strongly supported by the NRA and gun owners, notably George W. Bush, are the very ones that took away your rights.
    Responsible gun ownership was never the real issue; the issue involving guns was about the rights of drunken idiots. 2nd Amendment Absolutists are on the wrong side of that issue, but that's not what I'm mad about. I refuse to apologize for telling the truth, that the slippery slope of "gun rights" has led to the most repressive laws in US history. As is often the case, conservatives invented a culture war and now find themselves on the wrong side of it.
    So even though it won't do any good, and the knee-jerk gun lobby will have crafted their response before they got tot his paragraph, let me reiterate: I'm not against gun ownership, and think that all responsible adults should have the right to own a firearm. I'm against drunken idiots, whether they have a gun or a car or beat their wives with their hands. I'm against the gun nuts who's minds are so befuddled by this one falsely-defined issue that they are solidly behind the people who have eroded our rights as American citizens.
 
I'm not going to apologize to Senator Vitter or Senator Craig or any of the Republicans who demanded Clinton's impeachment while their personal lives were so much sleazier.
 
    Last year I railed against Mark Foley, and Republican leadership in the House that ignored this sexual predator. This year, we have even more Heartland Perverts that have come to light. I don't care if people like Larry Craig are gay, but I do care that he doesn't have the guts to admit it.
    These sleazeball conservatives went after Bill Clinton for imaginary crimes. (It's amazing to watch the flip-flops: In the 90s, the White House Travel Office was sacrosanct, and replacing them was too political. Bush fires eight US Attorneys, and all of a sudden all Federal employees serve at the whim of the president. Sad.) They finally caught him doing something that didn't have anything to do with running the country, and pilloried him. Real issues, such as the hunt for Osama bin Laden, were not nearly as important to Republicans as a stained dress. Pathetic.
    Sen. Craig voted to impeach Clinton. Vitter replaced Livingston who replaced Gingrich, and famously agreed with their pursuit of nothing. I'm disgusted by the whole party. Republicans have a lot to apologize for, and not just to their wives. Until I start hearing some mea culpas and see real change in their behavior: zero tolerance for Republicans.
 
I'm not going to apologize coming down hard on the conservative news media.
 
    The media in this country is not only conservative, it's very conservative, to the point where they should be ashamed to call themselves "journalists". Fox "News" is as bad as Pravda under the communists. Too many right-wing media elites think they are the story, and real news falls by the wayside. This is a very big issue, but for now I'm just doing to talk about this one article.
    The top 10 big stories the US news media missed in the past year. San Francisco Bay Guardian, September 5, 2007. The article is long and detailed, so here are the headlines (and my quick sub heads):
    1. Suspension of Habeas Corpus (they can throw YOU in jail at any time for any reason and you can't say a word)
    2. Martial Law (basically repealing the Posse Comitatus Act)
    3. AFRICOM (re oil imports from Africa)
    4. Secret Trade Agreements (Multinationals making the rules, not elected governments)
    5. Slaves Construct Iraq Embassy
    6. FALCON (numbers don't add up on arrests of sex offenders)
    7. Blackwater (and, presumably, other mercenary armies)
    8. Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (captive customer base for genetically modified foods)
    9. Privatization of Infrastructure (don't raise taxes: outsource and put unregulated construction in a different budget line)
    10. Vulture Funds (Poor countries default on loans to governments, who sell them to companies who sue for more than the amount owed)
 
I'm not going to apologize for holding Republicans and conservatives accountable, even if I occasionally have to lower myself to their level just to get their attention.
 
    Republicans don't believe in Democracy. Conservatives don't believe in America. That's harsh but true. Further, the right starts whining when you point this out. A further truth: The Sphincter Conservatives are much, MUCH nastier. When they whine about getting a fraction of their own rhetorical style thrown back in their face, they demonstrate their cowardice. They can dish is out but they can't take it. Pathetic.
    A prime example is the MoveOn.org ad, General Petraeus or General Betray Us. As usual, the right wing resorts to lies (the NYTimes did not lower their ad rates). Not only do the cowards blame the messenger, they blame the messenger of the messenger. Pathetic.
At no point do they address the issues raised in the ad: That Gen. Petraeus is a man "constantly at war with facts". In point of fact, even Petraeus' superior officer called him an ass-kissing little chickenshit over the surge. Point to MoveOn.org.
    Further, they right doesn't have the guts to do right by their nasty ads in the past, from their attack on Sen. McCain (and his wholly made up black baby) to their traitorous attacks on Democrats (morphing war hero Sen. Max Cleland into Osama bin Laden).
    Sphincter conservatives need constant stroking by hate radio and Fox "News" just to let them live with lies. Well paid verbal hit men supply the latest right-wing PC rant. The ultra-right will always be better at insults than you. They don't know how to do anything else. Facts aren't on their side, they must rant. They simply can't hear anything that doesn't sound like a drug-addled Rush Limbaugh.
    I do not regret seizing the opportunity to show the extremists the error of their ways and take control of the debate. It may save my life; it may save their life.
 
I'm not going to apologize for pointing out how Bush and co. have made the world a more dangerous place, especially for Americans.
 
    When we're attacked, it's 'You're either with us or with the terrorists'. When London or Madrid is attacked, Bush brags about not having a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. Not only is this a major flip-flop, it's wrong. We are less safe, not just from Anthrax spreading anti-government terrorists at home or Christo-Fascists who toss bombs at medical clinics, but from the wrath of G_d. George W. is relatively safe: He doesn't have a first born son.
    Bush and company don't live in the world G_d created. During this religious observance, I cannot remain silent. Can you?
 
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
 
"If God lived on earth, people would break his windows."
- Jewish proverb
 
I Don't Get It
 
A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: "Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: "OK, now what?"
 
- Listed as the worlds funniest joke from the Laugh Lab experiment done by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, 2002 -
 
High Coup
AT FIRST GLANCE I SAW
A GLORIFIED WATER TANK
NOT A CATHEDRAL

- zEN mAN -
(observing the still under construction "Cathedral of Light" catholic church in Oakland.....cost to parishioners.....$175 million)
 
Go to Health
 
    "Forget Cancer, forget AIDS, Diabetes is fast becoming the king of all chronic disease which is decimating the human race. ('The Centers of Disease Control in Atlanta declares that 33% of the babies born this year will be diabetic by the year 2050.' - Dr. Alan Cantwell)
    "Diabetes, which is expanding almost exponentially in the world today, can in part be traced to the increasing radiation to which we are all being exposed. Every physician knows that radiation can lead to cancer, but making a connection between depleted uranium (DU) and diabetes seems ludicrous at first glance is anything but. Most medical doctors have never heard of this but neither have they paid attention to the fact that mercury and other toxic chemicals are also primary causes of diabetes. Even though there is little research into the connection between radiation poisoning and diabetes we should not remain blind, deaf and dumb about it. 
    "Diabetes is a fundamental disease that affects the entire colony of cells in a person because it has to do with energy metabolism and the vastly important hormone insulin and its receptor sites.
    "Type two diabetes, which is fundamentally due to nutritional deficiencies (especially a lack of magnesium), colliding head on with a host of chemical poisons and heavy metals, is also being triggered by the heavy metal toxicity and radioactivity of uranium oxide and other radioactive isotopes that are circulating widely in the environment. Unfortunately, exposure levels are increasing dramatically with each ton of vaporized depleted uranium but that is not stopping the American and British governments from manufacturing, selling and using depleted uranium weaponry."
- Mark Sircus Ac., OMD: DNA and Mitochondrial Time Bombs: Uranium, Mercury and Diabetes -
 
Free Ad
This 300 piece Spiderman 3 Photomosaic Puzzle was MADE IN AMERICA.
 
US Ally in Iraq Comes Out in Favor of Abortion
 
"Now, I swear to God, if we will hear anyone is with Al Qaeda, even if he is still inside his mother's womb, we will kill him."
- Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman in response to the assassination of Sunni sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha -
 
Hypocrite of the Week
 
"You know, if it's good, I smoke it."
- Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, an outspoken advocate of Cuban sanctions, defending his large collection of Cuban cigars -
 
Hell's Caterers
 
    "It doesn't rival the Pentagon's $600 toilet seat, but the Justice Department can fork over a mean $4 meatball.
    "An internal Justice audit, released Friday, showed the department spent nearly $7 million to plan, host or send employees to 10 conferences over the last two years. This included paying $4 per meatball at one lavish dinner and spreading an average of $25 worth of snacks around to each participant at a movie-themed party.
    "There was plenty, too, for those needing to satisfy a sweet tooth.
    "More than $13,000 was spent on cookies and brownies for 1,542 people who attended a four-day 'Weed and Seed' conference in August 2005, according to the audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. And a 'networking' session replete with butterfly shrimp, coconut lobster skewers and Swedish meatballs at a Community Oriented Policing Services conference in July 2006 cost more than $60,000.
    "The report, which looked at the 10 priciest Justice Department conferences between October 2004 and September 2006, was ordered by the Senate Appropriations Committee. It also found that three-quarters of the employees who attended the conferences demanded daily reimbursement for the cost of meals while traveling effectively double-dipping into government funds.
    "Auditors 'found that using appropriated funds to pay for expensive meals and snacks at certain DOJ conferences, while allowable, appear to have been extravagant,' the report concluded."
- Lara Jakes Jordan: Snacks Take Big Bite Out of DOJ Budget -
 
New World Odor
New security logo on the reverse of North Carolina's driver's licenses
 
    "The first 'North American Union' driver's license, complete with a hologram of the continent on the reverse, has been created in North Carolina.
    "'The North Carolina driver's license is "North American Union" ready,' charges William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration.
    "Gheen provided WND with a photo of an actual North Carolina license which clearly shows the hologram of the North American continent embedded on the reverse.
    "'The hologram looks exactly [like] the map of North America that is used as the background for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America logo on the SPP website,' Gheen told WND. 'I object to the loss of sovereignty that is proceeding under the agreements being made by these unelected government bureaucrats who think we should be North American instead of the United States of America.'"
- Jerome R. Corsi: North American Union driver's license created - Logo intended to standardize documentation across continent -
 
"Our American way of life is under attack. And it is up to us to save it. The world's elites are busy forming a North American Union. If they succeed, as they were in forming the European Union, the good ol' USA will only be a memory. We cannot let that happen. The UN wants to confiscate our firearms and impose a global tax. The UN elites want to control the oceans with the Law of the Sea Treaty. And they want to use our military to police the world. Our right to own and use property is fading because bureaucrats and special interests are abusing eminent domain."
- Ron Paul -
 
"It is hard to conceptualize, but the sovereignty of the United States is about over. There will be increasing discussions about the emerging North American Union as the countries of Canada, the United States, and Mexico merge into one Super State. The globalist's plan is that all the nations of the world will be under the control of a one world order, ten global unions, regionally segmented for universal global management."
- Mr. eMan -
 
Dumb Cops
 
    "A US man has been rejected in his bid to become a police officer for scoring too high on an intelligence test.
    "Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took an exam to join the New London police, in Connecticut, in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125.
    "But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training."
- Freedom's Phoenix: Police reject candidate for being too intelligent -
 
No Exit Strategy
 
"The United States has committed and sponsored the crime of genocide in Iraq. Outlining the legal meaning of genocide and following Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of the nature of colonial war, this paper asserts that on the basis of patterns of purposive action a case for intentional genocide can and should be made under the provisions of the Genocide Convention. While the United States has destroyed the state of Iraq, contaminating its environment and creating conditions of mass societal trauma, including the killing of 2,500,000 over 17 years, it has failed and cannot succeed to destroy the nation of Iraq. Being the lynchpin of US attempts to pursue empire by military means, it is the duty of all who struggle for justice to oppose the US genocide wrought on Iraq, move to ensure the prosecution of all those responsible and complicit, and stand firm in solidarity with the Iraqi people and its legal and legitimate resistance."
- Dr. Ian Douglas with the cooperation of Hana Al Bayaty and Abdul Ilah Albayaty: US Genocide in Iraq -
 
BAD FOOD
Doritos
by Lynette Sheffield
 
 
    Just when you were running out of ways to waste time, Doritos comes to the rescue!
    Yay!
    I don't even buy Doritos, at least on purpose. When I am at the grocery store buying nutritious food for my family, somehow rogue Doritos leap into my cart. I don't even notice until I am midway through check-out. By that time, it would be disruptive to the check-out process to return the illicit contraband to its proper place so I am forced by the rules of etiquette to buy all that is in my cart. 
    I do not intentionally purchase Doritos because I have a severe allergic reaction once I have scarfed down an entire bag without pausing to chew: my butt swells up. I phoned my doctors office to ask if I could get allergy shots for Doritos-intolerance but they hung up on me.
    There is precious little sympathy for those of us who suffer so.
    But apparently, there are enough bags of Doritos flinging themselves into grocery carts everywhere that the demand has generated a real, actual website at www.doritos.com, I swear to God. The site celebrates all that is Dorito-ey. 
    On the front page, Snack Strong Productions (really) asks you to Prepare to take snacking to a new level and lets you explore the following after entering the site:
    Snack Tech: Games and downloads in a Doritos theme.
    Crash the Super Bowl: Shows the top 5 amateur videos as Doritos advertisements that were aired during the last Super Bowl.
    Flavor Lab: Levitating bags of chips in the different flavors of Doritos and for some reason, someone riding a Segway back and forth over and over again. Yes, I was sober when viewing this part.
    X-13D: Announcing the mystery flavor as cheeseburger in much the same way one would announce the arrival of Christ.
    Collisions: Missy Elliott asks you to help create various versions of a Doritos jingle. However, once I saw the style options were country, disco, reggae, punk, Missy only and mariachi, without having the choice of classic rock, I quickly lost interest.
    Just know when you go to www.doritos.com everything takes a minute or two to load and if you click Back, you will leave the site. 
    Most of this hoo-hah is to promote the new Doritos concept: two flavors of chips in one bag.
    I'll give you a moment to absorb this information and to recover from the resulting heady excitement.
    The marketing geniuses in the Doritos laboratories are now offering Doritos Collisions that are either hot wings & blue cheese or zesty taco & chipotle ranch. That is, I think it is zesty taco and chipotle ranch. On www.doritos.com, when you go to the Collisions part of the site and click on product info, chipotle is misspelled chipoltle. I cannot find a definition of chipoltle in any of my dictionaries and the use of the alternate spelling has sent my spell check into a snit. One must assume that the action of colliding zesty taco and chipotle ranch caused a nuclear reaction that resulted in the additional l. Perhaps Snack Strong Productions has stumbled on a new energy source.
    I certainly hope they have because we will probably need it. Those of us who are trying our dead-level best to reduce our carbon footprint face a catastrophic dilemma: Should we use Earths corn supply to make ethanol or Doritos?
    Those aren't the only two options for corn. If you want to be too afraid to close your eyes at night, go to http://www.iowacorn.org/cornuse/cornuse_17.html and if you dare, read the frightening tragedy that would befall us In a World Without Corn. Not even Stephen King would tackle this nightmare. There would be no frozen pizza, tacos or marshmallows. Wallpaper, plaster board and cardboard boxes would be affected. Ice cream would suffer from freezer burn and snack foods would lose their crunch. We would be forced to watch movies without popcorn and artificial butter flavoring. My God, people; without corn syrup to help hold moisture, lollipops would become drippy. Drippy lollipops! Is this the kind of world you want to leave to your children?
    I shudder at the very idea.
    With Snack Strong Productions introducing Collisions Doritos, I wonder if we might be facing a corn shortage AND a fuel shortage.
    Maybe we can burn those chipoltles. 
 


Dear Dr. Hollywood,
I am interested in making my own films. I am looking for effective ways to write. How much stage direction is it a good idea to give in a script?
Gary

Gary,
    There are two kinds of scripts, the selling script and the shooting script. The selling script tells the story to everyone pre-production, hoping to get you INTO pre-production. Once you're actually making a movie, you use a shooting script which tells all the people involved precisely what they're going to need for each shot. In many cases, there's not much difference, but sometimes the differences are enormous, especially when the selling script is written by a director who intends on directing the script.
    I often show people my copies of Stanley Kubrick's script for "Full Metal Jacket," and Hal Ashby's script for "Vital Parts." Both directors knew that they were going to be on the set directing the movie, so they left everything out of their script that they knew they would be telling the crew members personally. If you know you're going to be telling the actor to perform a certain way, why tell the producers and the cinematographer and everyone else who is going to be reading the script? It's between you and the actor, so you leave it out of the script. Same thing with camera moves. You're going to be working out the camera moves with the cameraman. Why tell the composer? Same thing with sound cues and edit cues. Kubrick and Ashby's scripts don't contain ONE SINGLE stage direction. They are frustrating reads because you haven't a clue what Kubrick and Ashby actually intended on doing with the script. Everything that will eventually make the film a Kubrick or Ashby film is very deliberately left out of the script, like it's no one's business HOW they've going to make it work. The reader simply has to trust that Kubrick and Ashby know what they're doing.
    You cannot afford to do this unless you are Stanley Kubrick or Hal Ashby, or unless you actually have the money in place to make your movie without interference. If neither of these circumstances fit your bill, then what you are writing is a selling script, a script that quickly and succinctly describes a dynamite movie with a minimum of flourishes, a script that isn't full of itself but simply tells a story that hopefully others will want to hear.
    What's the ratio of dialogue to action? The answer is more visual than anything else. Readers are in a hurry. They like to see space broken up into nice digestible chunks, just like your cat. Throw in a giant blocky paragraph that fills half a page and no one will read it. They'll just skip ahead to the next piece of dialogue. Sure, there are times when a whole page is just dialogue, and there are times when a whole page is just action, but you space it out. If a building explodes, give a whole line to
"Ker-blloooooooooooeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!"

Send your questions to stupidquestion"at"dareland.com

GOOD NEWS
STATEMENT OF THE REPUBLICAN MAYOR OF SAN DIEGO
 
Mayor Jerry Sanders on 9/20:
 
    With me this afternoon is my wife, Rana
    I am here this afternoon to announce that I will sign the resolution that the City Council passed yesterday directing the City Attorney to file a brief in support of gay marriage.
    My plan, as has been reported publicly, was to veto that resolution, so I feel like I owe all San Diegans an explanation for this change of heart.
    During the campaign two years ago, I announced that I did not support gay marriage and instead supported civil unions and domestic partnerships.
    I have personally wrestled with that position ever since. My opinion on this issue has evolved significantly - as I think have the opinions of millions of Americans from all walks of life.
    In order to be consistent with the position I took during the mayoral election, I intended to veto the Council resolution. As late as yesterday afternoon, that was my position.
    The arrival of the resolution - to sign or veto - in my office late last night forced me to reflect and search my soul for the right thing to do.
    I have decided to lead with my heart - to do what I think is right - and to take a stand on behalf of equality and social justice. The right thing for me to do is to sign this resolution.
    For three decades, I have worked to bring enlightenment, justice and equality to all parts of our community.
    As I reflected on the choices that I had before me last night, I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community that they were less important, less worthy and less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage -- than anyone else -- simply because of their sexual orientation.
    A decision to veto this resolution would have been inconsistent with the values I have embraced over the past 30 years.
    I do believe that times have changed. And with changing time, and new life experiences, come different opinions. I think that's natural, and certainly it is true in my case.
    Two years ago, I believed that civil unions were a fair alternative. Those beliefs, in my case, have since changed.
    The concept of a "separate but equal" institution is not something that I can support.
    I acknowledge that not all members of our community will agree or perhaps even understand my decision today.
    All I can offer them is that I am trying to do what I believe is right.
    I have close family members and friends who are members of the gay and lesbian community. These folks include my daughter Lisa and her partner, as well as members of my personal staff.
    I want for them the same thing that we all want for our loved ones - for each of them to find a mate whom they love deeply and who loves them back; someone with whom they can grow old together and share life's wondrous adventures.
    And I want their relationships to be protected equally under the law. In the end, I could not look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships - their very lives - were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my wife Rana.
    Thank you.

- Posted by Andrew Tobias

Recession Good for Mosquitoes
 
    "Among the jobs to be lost in coming months are up to 12,000 positions at the giant mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. Like other mortgage companies, Countrywide is having a hard time these days palming risky loans off on sucker investors. This means that they can only make prudent loans, which translates into less business.
    "Of course, some professions thrive in tough economic times. Business should be brisk for bankruptcy lawyers. And we will need auctioneers to help unload foreclosed properties.
    "There will also be growth in certain 'niche' occupations, such as mosquito control technician. It seems that swimming pools behind abandoned homes in Southern California are turning green, a sign of mosquito infestation. That is a health hazard. Thus, local governments are hiring mosquito control technicians to fumigate."
- Froma Harrop: Green Not Always the Color of Money -
 
The Death of DRM
(Digital Rights Management:encryption to protect intellectual property from copyright infringement)

    "eMusic.com, the number two player in the digital music market, will start selling audiobooks tomorrow, in an unprotected MP3 format (at 64 kbps) that will play on all devices. The announcement follows our report from last month on Random House Audio advising partners that it was evaluating a world in which it expected DRM to "ultimately disappear." Indeed, the NYT reports that RH Audio is contributing approximately 500 titles, or about 20 percent of its catalog, to eMusic's program. RH's audio publisher Madeline McIntosh says, 'We're very interested in testing this, but we didn't think it was appropriate to put all of our titles in a test program.' (Random will watermark their audio files and monitor file-sharing services for abuses.)
    "The NYT notes, "EMusic's lack of piracy protection is the reason no major music label has signed on with it, and why only a few audiobook publishers have so far. But the site is enormously popular," with about 10 percent of the music download market. The willingness of some publishers to participate in this venture implies that some publishers may stand ready to do the same thing with Amazon."
- Publisher's Lunch -
 
Toilet of the Week
 
"The newest tourist attraction in Minneapolis is the airport bathroom made famous by Sen. Larry Craig's (R-ID) arrest. 'People have been going inside, taking pictures of the stall, taking pictures outside the bathroom door - man, it's been crazy,' said Royal Zino, who owns a shoeshine shop next to the bathroom."
- Center for American Progress Action Fund -
 
BAD NEWS
 
Iraq Death Toll Rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian Killing Fields
By Joshua Holland
 
    According to a new study, 1.2 million Iraqis have met violent deaths since the 2003 invasion, the highest estimate of war-related fatalities yet. The study was done by the British polling firm ORB, which conducted face-to-face interviews with a sample of over 1,700 Iraqi adults in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Two provinces - al-Anbar and Karbala - were too dangerous to canvas, and officials in a third, Irbil, didn't give the researchers a permit to do their work. The study's margin of error was plus-minus 2.4 percent.
    Field workers asked residents how many members of their own household had been killed since the invasion. More than one in five respondents said that at least one person in their home had been murdered since March of 2003. One in three Iraqis also said that at least some neighbors "actually living on [their] street" had fled the carnage, with around half of those having left the country.
    In Baghdad, almost half of those interviewed reported at least one violent death in their household.
    Before the study's release, the highest estimate of Iraqi deaths had been around 650,000 in the landmark Johns Hopkins' study published in the Lancet, a highly respected and peer-reviewed British medical journal. Unlike that study, which measured the difference in deaths from all causes during the first three years of the occupation with the mortality rate that existed prior to the invasion, the ORB poll looked only at deaths due to violence.
    The poll's findings are in line with the rolling estimate maintained on the Just Foreign Policy website, based on the Johns Hopkins' data, that stands at just over 1 million Iraqis killed as of this writing.
    These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the great crimes of the last century -- the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia's infamous "Killing Fields" during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.
    While the stunning figures should play a major role in the debate over continuing the occupation, they probably won't. That's because there are three distinct versions of events in Iraq -- the bloody criminal nightmare that the "reality-based community" has to grapple with, the picture the commercial media portrays and the war that the occupation's last supporters have conjured up out of thin air. Similarly, American discourse has also developed three different levels of Iraqi casualties. There's the approximately 1 million killed according to the best epidemiological research conducted by one of the world's most prestigious scientific institutions, there's the 75,000-80,000 (based on news reports) the Washington Post and other commercial media allow, and there's the clean and antiseptic blood-free war the administration claims to have fought (recall that they dismissed the Lancet findings out of hand and yet offered no numbers of their own).
    Here's the troubling thing, and one reason why opposition to the war isn't even more intense than it is: Americans were asked in an AP poll conducted earlier this year how many Iraqi civilians they thought had been killed as a result of the invasion and occupation, and the median answer they gave was 9,890. That's less than a third of the number of civilian deaths confirmed by U.N. monitors in 2006 alone.
    Most of that disconnect is probably a result of American exceptionalism -- the United States is, by definition, the good guy, and good guys don't launch wars of choice that result in over a million people being massacred. Never mind that that's exactly what the data show; acknowledging as much creates intolerable cognitive dissonance for most Americans, so as a nation, we won't.
But there's more to it than that. The dominant narrative of Iraq is that most of the violence against Iraqis is being perpetrated by Iraqis themselves and is not our responsibility. That's wrong morally -- we chose to go into Iraq despite the fact that public health NGOs warned in advance of the likelihood of 500,000 civilian deaths due to "collateral damage." It's also factually incorrect -- as Stony Brook University scholar Michael Schwartz noted a few months ago, the Johns-Hopkins study looked at who was responsible for the violent deaths it measured and found that coalition forces were directly responsible for 56 percent of the deaths in which the perpetrator was known. According to Schwartz's number crunching, based on the Lancet data, coalition troops were responsible for at least 180,000 and as many as 330,000 violent deaths through the middle of last year. There's no compelling reason to think the share attributable to occupation forces has decreased significantly since then.
    Like the earlier study in the Lancet -- one that relied on widely accepted methodology for its results -- this new research is already being dismissed out of hand. The strange thing is that common sense alone should be enough to conclude that the United States has killed a huge number of Iraqi civilians. After all, it's become conventional wisdom (based on several studies) that about 90 percent of all casualties in modern warfare are civilians. We know that the military, in addition to deploying 500 missiles and bombs in the first six months of this year alone, has had trouble keeping up with the demand for bullets in the Iraqi theater. According to a 2005 report by Lt. Col. Dean Mengel at the Army War College, the number of rounds being fired off is enormous (PDF):
    [One news report] noted that the Army estimated it would need 1.5 billion small arms rounds per year, which was three times the amount produced just three years earlier. In another, it was noted by the Associated Press that soldiers were shooting bullets faster than they could be produced by the manufacturer.
    1.5 billion rounds per year more bullets fired than can be manufactured. Given that the estimated number of active insurgents in Iraq has never exceeded 30,000 -- and is usually given as less than 20,000 -- that leaves a lot of deadly lead flying around. Everyone agrees that the U.S. soldier is the best-trained fighter on earth, so it's somewhat bizarre that war supporters believe their shots rarely hit anybody.
    If it weren't for the layers of denial that have been dutifully built up around the American strategic class, these figures might put to rest the notion that U.S. troops are preventing more deaths than they cause.
    Recall that the stated reason for the invasion was to reduce the number of countries suspected of having an illicit WMD program from 36 to 35. Amid all the talk of troop deaths and the billions of dollars being thrown away in Iraq, it's important to remember that it is the Iraqis that are paying such a dear price for achieving that modest goal.
    With a Congress frozen into inaction, all that remains to be seen is what the final death toll from the Iraq war will be. The sad truth is that we may never know the full scope of the carnage.
 
- AlterNet -
Walter Cronkite after the Tet Offensive, 1968
The moment that turned America against the war in Vietnam
 
Rev. Lennox Yearwood Attacked, Arrested, and Hospitalized
A fascinating piece of public journalism,
make all the more profound
without any comment
as though there could be a rational explanation
for treating a Reverend this way.
 
Satan Doesn't Want You To Know
 
What's the biggest reason autopsies are rarely performed nowadays? Liability. You see, were autopsies routine, their findings would call into glaring relief the frequency of misdiagnoses (or mistreatment) on the part of hospitals and emergency medicine providers. In other words, they'd definitively expose the mistakes modern medicine makes which sometimes end up harming or killing us. What does skipping the autopsies really mean to hospitals? Avoiding expensive malpractice lawsuits.
 
Google Smackdown of the Week

vs.

And the winner is "you are an idiot" by 5,200.

Don't Take Our Word For It
 
"There are in me the seeds from which, if necessary, the universe could be constructed. In me somewhere there is a matrix for mankind and a holograph for the whole world. Nothing is more important in my life than trying to discover these secrets."
- Ted Simon: Jupiter's Travels -
 
"Once the people begin to reason, all is lost."
- Voltaire -
 
"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
- Alan Greenspan -
 
"If the definition of a 'Police State' is that we have to get permission from the government for everything we do, then my friends, we're nearly there. There are 300 million of us, and about 2 and a half million government workers and Armed Services. Does it seem right to you that 8% should be able to totally dominate the other 92% of the population? Wake up! Do your part!"
- Ron Paul -
 
"The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."
- 1973 War Powers Act, section 2, paragraph c -
 
"Lawmakers, who were assured before the war that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, and many of whom voted to give this Administration a sweeping grant of authority to wage war based upon those assurances, have been placed in the uncomfortable position of wondering if they were misled. The media is ratcheting up the demand for answers: Could it be that the intelligence was wrong, or could it be that the facts were manipulated? These are very serious and grave questions, and they require immediate answers. We cannot - and must not - brush such questions aside. We owe the people of this country an answer. Every member of this body ought to be demanding answers."
- Senator Robert Byrd -
 
"Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember."
- Oscar Levant -
 
    "No paper wants to gratuitously offend the reader. Pity, because gratuitous offence, when performed with aplomb, is the funniest thing in the world. There's more unpretentious joie de vivre in a single issue of vintage-era Viz than most artists or singers manage in a lifetime. I'd like nothing better than to fill the rest of this page with an unnecessarily florid description of something utterly disgusting happening to a well-known public figure - an 850-word fantasy in which, say, David Miliband unexpectedly develops extreme and explosive diarrhea while entertaining a group of foreign dignitaries in a pod on the London Eye on the hottest day of the year, to take just one example. But I can't, because a tiny handful of you would complain.
    "In my view, the delight such an unnecessary and puerile description would give to myself and others far outweighs the pain it would cause these oversensitive life-spoiling idiots. The offended people.
    "I hate offended people. They come in two flavours - huffy and whiny - and it's hard to know which is worst. The huffy ones are self-important, narcissistic authoritarians in love with the sound of their own booming disapproval, while the whiny, sparrowlike ones are so annoying and sickly and ill-equipped for life on Earth you just want to smack them round the head until they stop crying and grow up. Combined, they're the very worst people on the planet - 20 times worse than child molesters, and I say that not because it's true (it isn't), but because it'll upset them unnecessarily, and these readers deserve to be upset unnecessarily, morning, noon and night, every sodding day, for the rest of their wheedling lives."
 
"No one gossips about other people's secret virtues."
- Bertrand Russell -
 
"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness."
- Robertson Davies -
 
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
- Robert Frost -
 
    "Alan Greenspan has come back from the tomb of history to correct the record. He did not make any mistakes in his eighteen-year tenure as Federal Reserve chairman. He did not endorse the regressive Bush tax cuts of 2001 that pumped up the federal deficits and aggravated inequalities. He did not cause the housing bubble that is now in collapse. He did not ignore the stock market bubble that subsequently melted away and cost investors $6 trillion. He did not say the Iraq War is 'largely about oil.'
    "Check the record. These are all lies."
- William Greider: The Lies of Alan Greenspan -
 
"Causing the right amount of trouble is an art form."
- Judith Coche -
 
"To gain order and tranquility, not to win battles and provinces, is our goal. Our grand and glorious masterpiece is to live suitably."
- Michel de Montaigne -
 
"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."
- Art Buchwald -
 
"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
- Eric Hoffer -
 
    "The Bush regime is so hostile to the rights of labor that Bush's own National Labor Relations Board is refusing to obey our nations labor laws.
    "The NLRB the agency responsible for protecting employee rights is flagrantly violating the bargaining rights of its own employees. Here's the story: In 2005, NLRB employees petitioned an administrative law authority for the right to organize themselves into a union bargaining unit within the labor agency. NLRB officials opposed this, but the authority ruled in favor of the employees.
    "Having jumped through all the legal hoops and been certified, the union set out to bargain with NLRB management but the labor agency's top officials refused! The union went back to the authority, which investigated the situation and has now ruled that the NLRB is in violation of federal law. That should have been that, but Bush's hand-picked head of the labor rights agency, Ronald Meisburg, said to hell with labor rights. He is contemptuously refusing to bargain with the employees.
    "Meisburg is pulling a stall tactic that corporate violators routinely use, hoping to outlast the unionizing effort. By defying the ruling, he is forcing the issue into federal courts a process that he smugly estimates will delay any bargaining past the expiration of his term in 2010.
    "Will it surprise you to learn that the guy Bush chose to protect the rights of workers from corporate abuse has spent most of his career in service to corporate employers that seek to undermine workers rights?"
- Jim Hightower: Labor Law Lawbreaker -
 
"2 is not equal to 3, not even for large values of 2."
- Grabel's Law -
 
"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time."
- H. L. Mencken -
 
"Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution."
- Dr. David Schwartz -
 
"If you ain't the lead dog, the view never changes."
- Lewis Grizzard -
 
"I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up."
- Tom Lehrer -
 
"Smaller than a grain of rice, smaller than a grain of barley, smaller than a mustard seed, smaller than a grain of millet, smaller even than the kernel of a grain of millet is the Self. This is the Self dwelling in my heart, greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than all the worlds."
- Chandogya Upanishad -
 
"Melancholy may enter your soul, and ambush your happiness; but it will prepare you for true joy. Melancholy drives out all other emotions and feelings, so the source of all goodness may occupy the whole house. It shakes the yellow leaves from the tree, allowing fresh leaves to grow. It pulls up old bodily pleasures by the roots, allowing divine spiritual pleasures to be planted. Melancholy takes many things from the soul, in order to bring better things in return."
- Rumi: Mathnawi -
 
"Charity is equal in importance to all the other commandments combined."
- Babylonian Talmud: Bava Bathra -
Don't Let This Happen to You

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