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root.cellar: ... it's turtles all the way down

root.cellar Home     root.cellar Archive

daily Sunday, May 06, 2007

ö

thanks for all the fish

So sad that it should come to this, We tried to warn you

If the Vogons make no mistake, root.cellar on the web will be gone in 3 Earth days. We aren't even packing any tuberz, taterz, rootabagerz or otherwize. Down here in the cellar, you see, under the hidden trap door, there's always been a tunnel to the ocean, and there are plenty of fish in the galaxy...
open quote So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear?

You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that
grow around you

So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish

The world's about to be destroyed
There's no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the planet dissolve

Despite those nets of tuna fleets
We thought that most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your
pregnant women

So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long

So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish


So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear?


Despite those nets of tuna fleets
We thought that most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your
pregnant women

So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long

So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish close quote



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daily Sunday, February 25, 2007

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cogito ergo yamroot.cellar: 2,974 previous posts, may never reach 3000

In case anyone is wondering what's happened to root.cellar, with only four posts in February, and nothing since the 14th... well, I'm wondering too. It's not that I've lost interest in the things I care about, or that I'm just not keeping up. I guess it has most to do with the fact that almost all my visitors arrive by way of web image searches, and that the average visit length is only 33 seconds.

So here you go. Will I ever reach 3000 posts? Who knows?

2007/02

2007/012006/122006/112006/102006/092006/082006/072006/062006/052006/042006/032006/022006/012005/122005/112005/102005/092005/082005/072005/062005/052005/042005/032005/022005/012004/122004/112004/102004/092004/082004/072004/062004/052004/042004/032004/022004/012003/122003/112003/102003/092003/082003/072003/062003/052003/04

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daily Wednesday, February 14, 2007

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tehran kids platgroundTehran Peacetrain?
open quote These are the images from Tehran, Iran that you do not see everyday. close quote


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daily Monday, February 12, 2007

ö

natalie maines"ashamed the President is from Texas" rules Grammy awards

I've posted about the Dixie Chicks [Wikipedia] here before [Archives], and I know the Hollywood scene is very Blue, but nothing prepared me for them winning Song, Album and Record of the year - or for their dynamite live performance last night at the Grammys. I don't watch a lot of Grammys, in fact I only watched because I knew they'd be performing, but I don't remember the last time the audience was out of their seats cheering. SCREW the death threat!
open quote And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they'd write me a letter
Sayin' that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down close quote

Live at the Grammys (WMV or QT) but a bit grainy, at Crooks and Liars

YouTube's version of the original music video and Lyrics at LyricSpy

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daily Wednesday, February 07, 2007

ö

AIPAC logo
USS EnterpriseThose who are about to die DON'T salute you!

YouTube - AIPAC Policy Conference 2007

Nor do those who have already died or been maimed. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, before it's too damned late.

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daily Saturday, February 03, 2007

ö

Zippy's Queeg-like Dubya impressionZippy's Queeg-like Dubya impression

I must admit to needing a memory jog on Captain Queeg, so over to Wikipedia, where it all comes back, even the missing strawberries. There, I noticed this, with no link, In his column for January 8, 2006, New York Times opinion writer Paul Krugman discusses the "president's Queeg-like inability to own up to mistakes." The Krugman piece is now only available to paying NYT readers, but I found a good deal of it over here.

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daily Monday, January 29, 2007

ö

trepanned skullInfo you need like a hole in the head

A Mother of a Lode:
open quote Wikipedia:Unusual articles

This page is for Wikipedians to list articles that seem a bit unusual. These articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are somewhat odd, whimsical, or something you wouldn't expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica. We should take special care to meet the highest standards of an encyclopedia with these articles lest they make Wikipedia appear idiosyncratic. close quote


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daily Monday, January 22, 2007

ö

impeach bush church signShould Bush be impeached? Online Poll, YES = 87%

open quote Live Vote: Should Bush be impeached? - Politics - MSNBC.com

Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment? * 391630 responses

Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
87%

No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
4.5%

No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
6.4%

I don't know.
1.9% close quote

If you only see results, with no way to vote, turn on cookies and refresh the page.

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daily Tuesday, January 16, 2007

ö

fox news on 24 terror episodeFOX's 24 preps us for concentration camps [INFOWARS]

open quote New 24 Season Showcases Mass Terror, Concentration Camps Propaganda Keeps Being Pushed by FOX

The new season of 24... is to prepare the American people for the idea of concentration camps, detention centers and the rounding up of people in times of crisis.

The opener depicts an America besieged by mass terrorist attacks and public paranoia, with 11 cities, including New York, Atlanta, San Antonio and L.A., having been attacked in the space of a few weeks.

A Fox news broadcast pumps out on street corners and at bus stops from TV screens as the terrified public are urged to report anyone they consider suspicious.

[...]

At a time when legislation such as The Military Commissions Act is setting the precedent for the detention of American citizens, 24 serves as the perfect dose of fear-mongering propaganda to get the people to accept such attacks upon the fabric of freedom and to "just get used to it".

Thus when real attacks are carried out some will not be alarmed to see detention camps being used because they have already witnessed the scenario played out before their very eyes.

[...]

... the Alternet website put together an alarming report that collated all the latest information on plans to initiate internment of political subversives and Muslims after the next major terror attack in the U.S.. more close quote

This INFOWARS page has a bunch of 24 episode clips from YouTube. Good night and good luck.

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daily Sunday, January 14, 2007

ö

iran on world map"how smart Americans actually are" - No Wonder

open quote Chaser boy Julian Morrow [Wikipedia], discovers how smart Americans actually are. And, uh, in case anyone is confused - that's not the Australian prime minister. close quote

And, uh, in case anyone thinks Idiocracy is too far-fetched.

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daily Saturday, January 13, 2007

ö

bush and cheneySurge and Mirrors - Bush's Last Stand

open quote Paul Craig Roberts: Surge and Mirrors: What Bush Really Said

Bush's "surge" speech is a hoax, but members of Congress and media commentators are discussing the surge as if it were real.

I invite the reader to examine the speech. The "surge" content consists of nonsensical propagandistic statements. The real content of the speech is toward the end where Bush mentions Iran and Syria. more close quote

open quote Bush's Last Stand - by Justin Raimondo

We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

The last sentence ought to give us pause, because it underscores the real danger of remaining in Iraq one day longer, never mind four to six months or a year. Bush clearly sees the struggle in regional terms, and seeks to expand the conflict beyond Iraq's borders. That has always been the point of our intervention in Iraq: to establish a launching pad for the "liberation" of the Middle East.

Why else are U.S. soldiers storming the Iranian consulate in Irbil, and taking six consular personnel hostage - clearly an act of war? close quote



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daily Friday, January 12, 2007

ö

alien mantisThe aliens are in our brains [MetaFilter]

open quote DMT, or dimethyltryptamine, is a powerful hallucinogenic that can be found in living matter, including the human pineal gland. Small quantities of DMT are released during REM sleep. In 1990, Dr. Rick Strassman received FDA approval for a clinical study, the results of which can be read in Strassman's book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule". Users commonly reported being transported to "another dimension" and had contact with "insect-like alien beings". The late Terence McKenna was particularly interested in the drug, and coined the term "Machine Elves" in reference to these contacts. If reading isn't your thing, listen to comedian Joe Rogan's energized thoughts on the matter. (embedded video). close quote

As usual with Metafilter posts and comments, a great linkfest. I enjoyed the Joe Rogan video, very trippy. But this thumbnailed image is from a great set of 'real' insect macrophotography here. I've met this one's mother, the Nicotine Mantis Monster. She still has her hooks in me.

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ö

23 skidoo stamp RAW Eris fnordNATIONAL YEAR OF MOURNING for Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson passed away yesterday. He was the author to the seminal Illuminatus! series as well as many other reality tunnel subversions. From the RAW blog:
open quote Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.

All Hail Eris! more close quote

23 skidoo!! Wikipedia's page on the American director of the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal (CSICON).

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daily Wednesday, January 10, 2007

ö

DUHI blog to provide results in image searches, DUH! what else?

Here's the list of root.cellar's last 20 "referrals", where the visitors are coming from. This isn't anomalous but typical. If I went through the last 100, 500, or 1000, it would be the same. This may be a testament to giving proper ALT tags to images, but after 2,962 posts since April 26th, 2003, perhaps you can see why, a third of the way through a month, this is only the fourth post instead of the old-time 20-25 in 10 days. I've known this for a couple of years, so maybe it's a testament to my stubbornness, or just plain DUH!

This blog averages 333 "page views" a day. I started the Sitemeter count on August 6, 2003 and have had 268,754 page views since, but the average visit length is only 33 seconds. There's a lesson here somewhere.

root.cellar
Recent Visitors by Referrals
Detail Referring URL
  1 
http://images.google.co.uk
  2 
http://images.google.co.uk
  3 
unknown
  4 
http://images.google.fr
  5 
http://images.google.com
  6 
http://images.google.co.uk
  7 
http://images.google.com
  8 
http://images.google.co.uk
  9 
http://images.google.com/
 10 
http://images.search.yahoo.com
 11 
http://images.google.com.br
 12 
http://images.search.yahoo.com.
 13 
http://images.search.yahoo.com
 14 
unknown
 15 
http://images.google.tt
 16 
unknown
 17 
http://images.google.co.uk
 18 
http://images.google.com
 19 
http://images.search.yahoo.com
 20 
http://images.search.yahoo.com


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ö

bush vampire wants more bloodBush: more blood next, the battle's just begun

The link is to a video mashup of Dubya singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday" [Google Video] before a wildly applauding and dancing Congress. Keep this in mind if you feel a need to watch him tonight announcing his need for more maimings and death in Iraq.
open quote U2 | Sunday Bloody Sunday lyrics

And the battle's just begun
There's many lost, but tell me who has won
The trenches dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart

Sunday, bloody Sunday close quote


Thanks to the Cranky one for yanking my crank on this video. Here's the Wikipedia page about the original U2 song. Check the full-size image.

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daily Sunday, January 07, 2007

ö

dedroidificationDedroidification

Thanks to a Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing post: Web Consciousness Video Collection, I followed the dots to Dedroidification's Streaming Videos linkfest, which is an awesome collection not just for "consciousness" but also for several other subjects. Drilling up from the vids page, I found something to quote at this Reality Tunnel page:
open quote The concept of reality tunnels fits in nicely with the scientific concept of confirmation bias by which we tend to notice and assign significance to observations that confirm our prior beliefs, while filtering out or rationalizing away observations that do not fit with what we believe. This helps to explain why reality tunnels are usually transparent to their inhabitants.

[...]

Through various techniques one can break down old reality tunnels and impose new reality tunnels by removing old filters and replacing them with new ones, new perspectives on reality - at will. This is achieved through various processess of deprogramming... more close quote

Too bad the site's all in quite small Comic Sans (oh well). I had to font-size-up a couple of clicks before snapping the dead droid with caption.

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ö

cindy sheehanConfronting the Empire - The time for talk is over [ANTIWAR.com]

open quote Enough already with the policy analyses, the measured rhetoric, the hat-in-hand appeals to the Czar. It's time to confront - and bring down - the War Party.

[...]

Washington is the problem, and the solution is to make that city ungovernable, and a thoroughly unpleasant place for our ruling elite to be. If they won't listen to the voice of the hinterland, and suffer from delusions of invincibility, then they need to be reminded of their own vulnerability. By descending on Washington, and literally camping out, the millions who detest this war could make the city unlivable, or, at least, make it impossible for the mandarins of power to any longer discount us humble plebeians.

[...]

We must act, just as Cindy Sheehan and her brave cohorts did recently when they interrupted the Democratic self-love-fest and refocused attention on the most important issue of them all: the war. And, no, hearings conducted by John Murtha don't fit the bill: if they won't cut off the funding for the war, then it's time they were cut off from their pleasant lives and illusions of impregnable insularity.

Radical measures are called for. The time for talk is over: you can't reason with these people, and I've given up trying. The time for action is now. more close quote


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daily Wednesday, January 03, 2007

ö

bush and cheneyFAX Pelosi and the rest to IMPEACH Bush/Cheney today!

open quote Send 500,000 impeachment letters to Pelosi by her first day as speaker Jan. 3

... now we have someone to focus this demand on who can and possibly will act (in spite of her protests to the contrary): Nancy Pelosi.

She should have a half million signatures waiting for her her first day as Speaker of the House.

I think she and the many of the Democrats want to do this, but to overcome the reluctance of the DC etablishment and big money interests who are afraid their ox will be gored along with Bush & Cheney, she needs constant overwhelming evidence of public DEMAND not just support for impeachment.

Fax or snail mail the letter below or your own variation to:

FAX: 202-225-8259

Nancy Pelosi
2371 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

emails are nice, but letters and faxes make a physical pile that form a powerful visual, and that should be Pelosi opening her door and being buried by letters. close quote


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daily Sunday, December 31, 2006

ö

dylan, robbie, van releasedShall We All Be Released? [Youtube vid]

From possibly the greatest live song in rock history -Dylan, Joni, Van, Neil, Robbie, Richard, Ron W, Ringo, Rick, Ronnie H, Doctor John, the Diamond unit, and of course Garth, as filmed by Scorcese. Be sure to watch to the end... As Robbie says...
open quote no question about it...

it's a god damn impossible way of life... close quote

There's a little button on YouTube to watch the video in its original format... mostly better...

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daily Saturday, December 30, 2006

ö

saddam in nooseThey're selling postcards of the hanging

Who would be that "Good Samaritan"? And who's running the factory now? Josh Marshall cuts through the crap, and This Just In, from 1965:
open quote Bob Dylan: Desolation Row - 1965

They're selling postcards of the hanging

They're painting the passports brown

[...]

And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing

He's getting ready for the show

[...]

Now at midnight all the agents

And the superhuman crew

Come out and round up everyone

That knows more than they do

Then they bring them to the factory

Where the heart-attack machine

Is strapped across their shoulders

And then the kerosene... close quote

Sound familiar?

P.S. David Caputo's got a great link-filled piece on this too: So the Grand Poobah of all-that-was-evil has finally been executed...

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daily Sunday, December 24, 2006

ö

DON'T ATTACK IRANDon't attack Iran, don't sell out to Bush's "surge" on Iraq

open quote Dave Lindorff, co-author of The Case for Impeachment, has a blog, This Can't Be Happening! The last couple of entries are very interesting:

Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?

Sell-Out Democrats Have Walked into a Bush Trap on Iraq

... The end result of this betrayal of the electorate, which has made it clear it wants an end to the Iraq War, will be a collapse of the Democrats in 2008, with the party losing both houses of Congress and probably the White House too. It will be a richly deserved collapse.

While the hour is late, there is yet a slim chance for the public to rescue the Democrats from this course of political suicide and the nation from disaster. If masses of committed people from all walks of life take to the streets on January 27, when United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and Impeach for Change are planning a major demonstration against war and against the crimes of the Bush administration, maybe enough Democrats in Congress will realize the intensity of public opposition to further pointless mayhem and slaughter in the Middle East, and will realize the only option is to pull the plug on the president’s imperialist megalomania--and to initiate impeachment hearings against the president.

I realize counting on Democrats to do the right thing, even in their own self-interest, is a thin reed on which to rest hopes for a return to national sanity, but we need to grasp it. close quote

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

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daily Thursday, December 21, 2006

ö

Windows XP "Details View" pet peevesmac os list view tree name sorted

Windows XP's "Details View" is so powerful that I bet there's a built-in fix for my pet peeves with it, or at least a simple GUI add-on (nothing bloated, please) or file manager that will help. I wouldn't bother with this gripe-post unless I hoped for a useful suggestion. I'm on this XP computer many hours a day and I'd love a solution.

What you see on the right is first a snap of the old Mac OS9's Finder "List View". I know OS X has something similar. Notice two SIMPLE things: first, the 'disclosure triangles', and second, the way 'sort by Name' actually puts files and folders adjacent to each other.

xp details view

Next is a snap of XP's "Details View". In both cases I've snapped ONLY the leftmost area of the window. Now, XP does have its own equivalent of the Finder's disclosure triangles, click the 'plus box' to see more inside and the 'minus box' for none. OK, cool enough so far. And if the snap was wider, you'd see that by clicking ACROBAT7 a window panel to the right of this panel would show the files - NOT just folders - inside that folder. Nice, so what's wrong with that?

Well, on the Mac OS, as you can see, I could keep the whole window very narrow and still see - and manipulate - individual files. In fact I could have say seven of these narrow folder windows arrayed across my screen. That may seem odd to Windows folks, but I used to do that a lot - well, maybe just four - when I was on a Mac. That becomes awkward in Windows XP because the files aren't disclosed in a narrow window.

The other thing is, let's say there's a file named 'acclimate' in that downloads folder. Do we see it in this alphabetical name detail view in XP? No, because XP, unlike Mac, seems to insist on grouping folders together and files together (even that is inconsistent!). This comes into play for me all the time. Example, I save a web page out of Firefox as a 'Web Page - Complete'. The html file is down somewhere in the files but the supporting folder is up in the folders. This would not be so on Mac. Example two, I have a temporary text file, 'ACROBAT7 folder - move to partition E.txt'. I want that not to be hidden inside the acrobat folder, but at the same tree level, where I'll see it adjacent to the folder. Possible? Yah, if I make a New Folder to contain both...

Some might say use a traditional two-pane file manager like Total Commander (great, I use it), but that's just it, I sometimes want more than two panes AND I want name view to list files adjacent to folders, which I can't seem to get TC to do. OK, I guess I can go looking, but please, if there's something built-in in XP I'm missing here, or if you know a file manager that solves these peeves, let me know in Comments.

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daily Wednesday, December 20, 2006

ö

flag-covered casketsU.S. Iraq G.I. true toll - 26,000 killed, seriously wounded, or deserted?

open quote ... This means that of the 158,000 U.S. military shipped to Iraq, 26,000 deserted, were killed or seriously wounded. The DoD lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate over 12,000 dead, over 25,000 seriously wounded and a large number of suicides, forced hospitalization for ongoing drug usage and sales, murder of Iraqi civilians and fellow soldiers, rapes, courts martial and so on...

... only soldiers actually killed on the ground in Iraq are reported. The dying and critically wounded are listed as en route to military hospitals outside of the country and not reported on the daily postings. Anyone who dies just as the transport takes off from the Baghdad airport is not listed and neither are those who die in the US military hospitals. more close quote


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daily Saturday, December 16, 2006

ö

crab nebula by hubbleHubble: Most detailed image of the Crab Nebula

open quote This new Hubble image - One among the largest ever produced with the Earth-orbiting observatory - shows the most detailed view so far of the entire Crab Nebula ever made. The Crab is arguably the single most interesting object, as well as one of the most studied, in all of astronomy. The image is the largest image ever taken with Hubble's WFPC2 workhorse camera.

The Crab Nebula is one of the most intricately structured and highly dynamical objects ever observed. The new Hubble image of the Crab was assembled from 24 individual exposures taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and is the highest resolution image of the entire Crab Nebula ever made. close quote

Wikipedia on this remnant of a supernova, with a pulsar at its center.

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daily Thursday, December 14, 2006

ö

blinders on 9/11Liberal/Progressive blinders on the questions of 9/11 [911Truth.org]

Email today from the blogger at Totally Fixed and Rigged, pointing to his own posts over the last few days about recent articles in liberal/progressive media dismissing the "conspiracy nuts" of the 9/11 Truth movement, and about how when he cross-posted over at Daily Kos and Smirking Chimp he was censored. Very interesting reading, I recommend it. Meanwhile he recommends reading THIS article, one of the smartest things I've ever read on 9/11:
open quote Wednesday, December 6 2006
Into the Ring with Counterpunch on 9/11: How Alexander Cockburn, Otherwise So Bright, Blanks Out on 9/11 Evidence

[...]

Rather than arguing in the abstract for the delegitimizing power of the 9/11 evidence, let me give a concrete example of it. Robert Bowman, a retired USAF Lt. Colonel who holds a Ph.D. in physics, was director of Advanced Space Program Development for the USAF in the Ford and Carter administrations. Here's a part of what he had to say as a speaker at the DC Emergency Truth Convergence organized by the 9/11 Truth Movement in Washington, DC in July, 2005:

... This cabal of neoconservatives from PNAC who planned this war - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Jeb Bush - even before W. became president, they told us why they had to do it. They said we need to occupy Iraq permanently in order to dominate Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the southern Russian republics around the Caspian Sea. We need to control the entire Middle East and all its oil.

[...]

[T]hey knew the American people wouldn't stand for it, and they said so in their documents - and they said, unless there's that new Pearl Harbor. Well, 9/11 did supply that - and we've been lied to not only about the war, but about 9/11 itself. They ignored the warnings: more than that, we have mounting evidence that - at least - they made it impossible for those planes to be intercepted. If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot - I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they've changed them to - if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. My sisters and brothers, that is treason!
[Ed. Note: Video of this stirring speech, and many others, is available online at http://www.truthemergency.us ] close quote


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daily Monday, December 11, 2006

ö

harryhausen gulliver squirrelAll Ray Harryhausen's Feature Creatures - video [YouTube]

open quote  The four and a half minute compliation of every Ray Harryhausen animated creature in feature films, presented in chronological order.

Read the complete creature list at http://www.harryhausen.com  close quote

Over there (click a critter name for a wee QT of it with more info), I learned the giant squirrel is from The 3 Worlds of Gulliver [IMDB]. You can see Mrs. Gulliver trying to hide out behind the mushroom. Not nearly as bad as Night of the Lepus.

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ö

request deniedFour-year-old suspended for hugging teacher's aid, joins gang

open quote Bellmead, TX - Damarcus Blackwell's four-year-old son was lining-up to get on the bus after school last month, when he was accused of rubbing his face in the chest of a female employee.

The principal of La Vega Primary School sent a letter to the Blackwells that said the pre-kindergartener demonstrated "inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment."

[...]

... the thing that makes Blackwell most upset is they told him "your request for an apology by the aide and removal of all paperwork regarding this incident is denied." more close quote

I can easily imagine that this actually was a sexual contact by the child. But it's the adults' reactions that get me, and remind me of something I just read earlier this morning:
open quote Then And Now

Scenario - Billy breaks a window in his father's car and his Dad gives him a whipping.

1953 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.

2006 - Billy's Dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. Billy's sister is told by state psychologist that she remembers being abused herself and their Dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has affair with psychologist. more close quote

Not that I agree with whippings or think kids aren't abused...

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daily Thursday, December 07, 2006

ö

Robert GatesFilibuster Al Qaeda Founder Robert Gates

open quote By Webster Griffin Tarpley
12-6-6

The nomination of Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense must be rejected. Gates is deeply implicated in three decades of crimes by the intelligence community. There is no reason to think he intends to begin the necessary rapid departure of US forces from Iraq. His nomination by Bush can only be read as a deliberate provocation directed against the new Democratic Congress. Will the Democrats fight back, or will they capitulate? The American people are watching the Democratic Senators carefully, and they are appalled by the self-congratulatory and clubby narcissism of the Senate at a time when US forces are facing encirclement and decimation in Iraq and Afghanistan. . Senators must not only vote against Gates; they must stop the confirmation process with a filibuster. A look at Gates' sordid record shows why.

Robert Gates was an integral part of the gun-running, drug-running, and death squad murders lumped under the heading of the Iran-Contra scandal.

[...]

Most damning of all is the fact that Gates was one of the founders of al Qaeda, the CIA's Arab Legion which was assembled to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. more close quote

Wikipedia on Gates.

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daily Wednesday, December 06, 2006

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Snap Previews of links

This morning I was over at Web Pages That Suck's Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015. By Vince Flanders' lights, root.cellar sucks in many ways! For instance... 2. A man from Mars can't figure out what your web site is about in less than four seconds. Hahahahaaaa! How about a regular old earthling?

One thing he talks a lot about is letting visitors really Know where a link out is going. He doesn't mention it, but he implemented this cool, free javascript which brings up a Snap Preview of the site linked when the visitor rolls over the link. It doesn't slow down initial page load, so I decided to try it.

It's gifting season, so in a shameless bit of self-promotion I snapped what happens when you roll over my turtles all the way down Cafe Press store

snap preview of turtles all the way down

Some links don't work with this, for instance my affiliate links, like Orbitz travel, that start with "click.linksynergy.com", but hey! Roll your mouse over the links in my blogroll (scroll down, lower right) to see this script in action.

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daily Monday, December 04, 2006

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will code html for foodThe People Party vs. The Money Party

open quote The Blog | David Sirota: The People Party vs. The Money Party: Here Are the Players | The Huffington Post

The fact that our nation's politics is divided not between Democrats and Republicans but between the People Party and the Money Party is obvious to anyone who looks at the political system honestly (which is to say, not most journalists or Washington political hacks). Calls for "bipartisanship" and faux "centrism" that has nothing to do with the actual center of American public opinion are most often moves to prevent the political debate from analyzing the People vs. Money divide that actually fuels our politics. We already have plenty of "bipartisanship" - Republicans and a faction of Democrats who regularly join hands to screw over the vast majority of Americans.

Many people ask me who? Who are the leading members of both sides of the actual divide? The answer is that there is no official list because no one is forced to formally declare their allegiance to the People Party or the Money Party. But it is fairly obvious which lawmakers in the new majority have specifically defined themselves on economic justice issues. Though this is by no means a comprehensive list, here are the ones to watch in the coming Congress: more close quote


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daily Sunday, December 03, 2006

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newt computesOlbermann - good luck Newt vs. Free Speech [video]

Truthout has a nicely-formatted ad-free transcript:
open quote We Fight for Liberty by Having More Liberty and Not Less
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown

Thursday 30 November 2006

And finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about free speech, failed speakers, and the delusion of grandeur.

"This is a serious long term war," the man at the podium cried, "and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country."

Some, in the audience, must have thought they were hearing an arsonist give the keynote address at a convention of firefighters.

This was the annual Loeb First Amendment Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire - a public cherishing of Freedom of Speech - in the state with the two-fisted motto "Live Free Or Die."

And the arsonist at the microphone, the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, was insisting that we must attach an "on-off button" to Free Speech. more close quote


Meanwhile, media-wise, the November 2006 cable ratings are in, and the Keith Olbermann juggernaut continues.

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daily Saturday, December 02, 2006

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gort klaatuPROBED? yeah, that must be it... [YouTube]

UPDATED - broken link fixed.
open quote ... a different kind of ufo has recently come to light the last decade or so, these not being your typical circular, disc or domed shaped ufos.

These ones are cylindrical and seem to be content hovering in the daylight or in the sky for hours or days at a time. Witnesses report they seem to be monitoring whatver they are around, highly unusual, are we looking at alien or human technology here? close quote

Moai! Good Night Irene.

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daily Wednesday, November 29, 2006

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the nazi n-wordThe OTHER N-bomb - VERBOTEN [Slate]

open quote The N-Word
Unmentionable lessons of the midterm aftermath.

Warning: This article contains the word Nazi.

... polite discussion of that question does not contain any derivative of the words fascism, propaganda, or dictatorship. God forbid Nazi or Hitler. The extent to which it is verboten to bring up Nazi Germany has now become a jape. "Can't pols just have little Post-its on their microphones reminding them not to compare anything to the Nazis?" Maureen Dowd wrote in the Times recently, after yet another off-message senator was taken to the woodshed. The ban applies equally to the arena of intellectual debate, such that even the wild and woolly Internet has a Godwin's Law to describe the cred-killing effect of dropping the N-bomb. So, even though it is a truism that we learn by analogy, even though the Bush administration unapologetically practices the reality-eschewing art of propaganda - with procured "journalists," its own "news" pipeline at Fox, leader-centric ("war president") stagecraft, the classic Big Lie MO of, say, draft avoiders smearing war heroes as unpatriotic - we are not permitted to draw any comparisons to the über-propagandists of the previous century. That prohibition is reiterated in the coy caution with which I introduce the topic here.

The taboo is itself a precept of the propaganda state. more  close quote


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daily Monday, November 27, 2006

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lowell wood - doctor evilCan Dr. Evil Save The World? [Rolling Stone]

open quote Forget about a future filled with wind farms and hydrogen cars. The Pentagon's top weaponeer says he has a radical solution that would stop global warming now -- no matter how much oil we burn

... Wood's proposal was not technologically complex. It's based on the idea, well-proven by atmospheric scientists, that volcano eruptions alter the climate for months by loading the skies with tiny particles that act as mini-reflectors, shading out sunlight and cooling the Earth. Why not apply the same principles to saving the Arctic? Getting the particles into the stratosphere wouldn't be a problem -- you could generate them easily enough by burning sulfur, then dumping the particles out of high-flying 747s, spraying them into the sky with long hoses or even shooting them up there with naval artillery. They'd be invisible to the naked eye, Wood argued, and harmless to the environment. Depending on the number of particles you injected, you could not only stabilize Greenland's polar ice -- you could actually grow it. Results would be quick: If you started spraying particles into the stratosphere tomorrow, you'd see changes in the ice within a few months. And if it worked over the Arctic, it would be simple enough to expand the program to encompass the rest of the planet. In effect, you could create a global thermostat, one that people could dial up or down to suit their needs (or the needs of polar bears).

Reaction to Wood's proposal was fast and furious. more close quote


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impeach bush AND cheneyArticles of Impeachment against Bush AND Cheney [Daily Kos]

open quote by Eternal Hope

If we are to impeach, we must impeach both Bush and Cheney. It will not do any good for us to impeach Bush and have Cheney take the Oval Office and pick someone just as radical as he is. It will also not do any good for us to impeach just Cheney and allow Bush to groom John "I'm not knowledgeable" McCain for the 2008 election. Therefore, we must simultaneously impeach both of them so that the 3rd person in succession, Nancy Pelosi, would become the next President of the United States.

What remains to be done is for us to work out articles of impeachment against the President. Others may surface after the Democrats begin their job of investigating and getting to the bottom of the matter. If the Bush administration obstructs or lies to the Congressional Committee chairs, those could in and of themselves be grounds for impeachment and removal of Bush and Cheney.

In the meantime, here are the following 14 possible articles of impeachment against the President and Vice President. more close quote

Image thumbnailed from David Dees. What struck me here was how limited in scope these "articles" are. Maybe these were chosen because they're easy to prove that specific laws were broken, where the broader issues of crimes against humanity are less proven and/or codified. Still, it's enough, Eternal Hope...

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daily Wednesday, November 22, 2006

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THE ROAD TO ELEUSISNeo-Eleusinian Mysteries: The History & Future of LSD

open quote Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing: Eleusinian & Neo-Eleusinian Mysteries: The History & Future of LSD - Bruce Eisner Video

I've been working with my video library recently and uploaded almost 2 hours of a talk I gave at the 2001 International Conference on Altered States in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the talk, I develop for the first time the idea for the potential use of LSD in which its use is combined with a variety of other psychological techniques and technologies which I call the Neo-Eleusinian Mysteries. close quote

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

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screwed by Bush: "how 'bout you be Bush and I'll be the country"

screwed by Bush

[YouTube NSFW]

This would be funny if it weren't true...

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megapixel mythmegapixel myth tested on public - save your money

open quote Pogue's Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog

... On the show, we did a test. We blew up a photograph to 16 x 24 inches at a professional photo lab. One print had 13-megapixel resolution; one had 8; the third had 5. Same exact photo, down-rezzed twice, all three printed at the same poster size. I wanted to hang them all on a wall in Times Square and challenge passersby to see if they could tell the difference.

[...]

Anyway, we ran the test for about 45 minutes. Dozens of people stopped to take the test; a little crowd gathered. About 95 percent of the volunteers gave up, announcing that there was no possible way to tell the difference, even when mashing their faces right up against the prints. A handful of them attempted guesses - but were wrong. Only one person correctly ranked the prints in megapixel order, although (a) she was a photography professor, and (b) I believe she just got lucky.

I'm telling you, there was NO DIFFERENCE. more, lots of comments close quote

I still use and love my old 2003 2 megapixel Canon Powershot A60. If you don't pre-AF by pressing the shot button halfway, slowish shutter lag is its only problem, shared with many cameras. But, I bet at 16 x 24 anyone could tell it's not 5 or more...

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daily Saturday, November 18, 2006

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curly howardMichael Moore's 12 promises to Disheartened Conservatives

open quote Michael Moore's pledge - Los Angeles Times

... let me make 12 promises as to how we will treat you, the minority, in the coming years.

Thus, here is "A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives":

4) When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home too. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on some amateur Power Point presentation cooked up by men who have never been to war.

5) When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you too will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that afflict you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family too.

6) When we clean up our air and water, you too will be able to breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water. When we put an end to global warming, you will no longer have to think about buying oceanfront property in Yuma. moore close quote

"Oh, a wise guy, eh?"

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daily Friday, November 17, 2006

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hypnotized by consumptionWorkers of the World? "That's All, Folks" [YouTube]

I don't know why this brilliant toon mashup is titled with "illustrated by Disney" since there's a lot of WB and others in it too:
open quote Communist Manifesto illustrated by Disney

Displaying a broad range of Golden Age Hollywood animation, Manifestoon is a homage to the latent subversiveness of cartoons. Though U.S. cartoons are usually thought of as conveyors of capitalist ideologies of consumerism and individualism, Drew observes: "Somehow as an avid childhood fan of cartoons, these ideas were secondary to a more important lesson - that of the 'trickster' nature of many characters as they mocked, outwitted and defeated their more powerful adversaries. In the classic cartoon, brute strength and heavy artillery are no match for wit and humor, and justice always prevails. For me, it was natural to link my own childhood concept of subversion with an established, more articulate version [Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto]. Mickey running over the globe has new meaning in today's mediascape, in which Disney controls one of the largest concentrations of media ownership in the world." close quote


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despairoutrage fatigue

It's Friday and I haven't posted since Monday, maybe a new low. I'm not sure I can agree with Bob Reich on strategy, he may be right about McCain, but this outrage fatigue sure rings a bell, especially now that even Conyers has joined Dean, Pelosi et al in ruling out impeachment:
open quote American Prospect Online - What the Dems Should Do Now - Robert Reich

Some Democrats want to expose the malfeasance and nonfeasance of the Bush Administration -- find out who really knew what and when with regard to weapons of mass destruction, Abu Graahb (sic), Katrina, payoffs to Abramoff, and all the other rot. That's understandable, but it would be far better if Democrats used their new-found power to lay out a new agenda for America.

There's no point digging up more dirt. Bush isn't running again. John McCain, the Republican's most likely choice to replace him, has distanced himself so far from the administration that no amount of dirt will soil him. Besides, the public and the media are already suffering from outrage fatigue. And the Democrats wouldn't be credible, anyway. It will be easy for Republicans to dismiss their efforts as more of the same old partisan bickering. The fact is, the public is sick of mud-slinging.

Instead of dwelling on what's gone wrong, Democrats should focus on what to do right. For example: more close quote


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daily Monday, November 13, 2006

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"V" Meets The Secret Service at the White House

open quote On Monday, November 6, 2006, "V" visited security check points at the White House, the main Treasury, IRS and Justice Department Buildings and the Capitol. "V's" purpose was to deliver the People’s Petitions for Redress of Grievances relating to the Government’s violations of the war powers, tax, privacy and money clauses of the Constitution, and to inform key Government officials that at least 100 more "Vs" would be at their doorstep on November 14th expecting a response to the Petitions.

At the White House about a dozen Secret Service agents appeared on foot, bicycles and car to meet "V." While virtuously assuring the security of the state, they were curious about the image of "V" and asked many questions. Most, when asked if they had seen the movie "V for Vendetta" [Wikipedia], smiled their approval.

When an agent asked if "V" would remove his mask for identification purposes, "V" explained that would defeat the very purpose of the mask, which was to give expression to the fact that the nation was becoming a police state, that too many people were becoming afraid to be identified as dissenters or protestors, and that this was not in the long term interest of a free people. The agents accepted the veracity of "V's" message and refrained from veering "V" from his vanguard visit as the vox populi. more, with video close quote


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daily Sunday, November 12, 2006

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kill em all, let god sort em outMajor corps want to kill Air America, Jews, atheists and other unsavory types

open quote Air America on Ad Blacklist?

... The directive then advises ABC Radio Network affiliates to take note of a list of other sponsors who do not want their programming to run during Air America programming.

The list [PDF], totaling 90 advertisers, includes some of largest and most well-known corporations advertising in the U.S.: Wal-Mart, GE, Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Bank of America, Fed-Ex, Visa, Allstate, McDonald's, Hewlett Packard, Sony and Johnson & Johnson. The U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Navy are also listed as advertisers who don't want their commercials to air on Air America. close quote

And, in a related development:
open quote Left Behind: Eternal Forces: Video game where Jews and Atheists must be killed or converted due for Christmas

A video game about a Christian militia slaughtering Jewish and atheist New Yorkers who won't be converted in the name of a particular brand of Christianity will be on the shelves of more than 10,000 American retailers in time for the Christmas season, including Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Circuit City, GameStop, EB Games, CompUSA, Amazon.com, Costco and numerous others.

[...]

In Left Behind: Eternal Forces, kids will assume the role of a member of a "Christian" gang wandering the streets of a post-apocalyptic Manhattan, killing or converting as many Jews, Atheists, and other unsavory types in the employ of the Anti-Christ as possible to get to the next level. If the heathen won't convert, the character can kill them. The company is offering a free demonstration model to churches. close quote

Merry X-MAS...

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howard beale is mad as hellmad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!! [YouTube]

From the 1976 movie, Network [IMDB], newsman Howard Beale's rant as written by Paddy Chayefshy. If you haven't seen the movie, at least see this. If you have, check it out again and pass it around:
open quote  We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

[...]

You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!" close quote

Oh btw, this is the rant that eventually took me to the video: The 'Election' Results - Sucker-Punched Again

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Giant Native American Medicine Hat Head [Google Map]

giant earth head medicne hat

Medicine Hat?
open quote A land formation in Alberta, Canada, that looks like a native American wearing an iPod was recently discovered in satellite images on Google Earth near Medicine Hat.

The origins of Canadian city names are always interesting, but the origin of the name of Medicine Hat is the stuff of legend.

Approximately 150 km east north-east of Lethbridge, the name of the site of the present city was noted as Medicine Hat by W. Johnson, a member of the North West Mounted Police, in 1882. There are many possible explanations for the name, which is a translation of saamis, Blackfoot Indian for "the head-dress of a medicine man." close quote

Zoom out one and scroll around, for other evocative formations. Here's a page with more info, interviews, and suggested names.

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daily Saturday, November 11, 2006

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colbert slamming donkey pinataColbert destroys his Emergency Donkey Piñata

Colbert mourns the repuglican loss. The link is to a QT mov, but here's the WMV link if you prefer.

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rumsfeld rolls a doobieLast laughs: Olbermann montage of comics doing election week

The segment with Rumsfeld rolling a doobie in a press conference wasn't really funny, though. It's an insult to Mary Jane! Still, an astonishing bit of video magic. Enjoy your retirement, Rummy, the dead and wounded won't be loving theirs.

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daily Thursday, November 09, 2006

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ed bradley diesOMG - Ed Bradley goes at 65?!

I'm a little surprised by my reaction, but I'm just about choked up.
open quote NEW YORK - Ed Bradley, the award-winning television journalist who broke racial barriers at CBS News and created a distinctive, powerful body of work during his 26 years on "60 Minutes," died Thursday. He was 65. Bradley died of leukemia at Mount Sinai hospital, CBS News announced.

[...]

"Ed could get people to say the damndest thing because he put them at ease," said former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw said Thursday. "It was like talking not to a reporter, but talking to an interested counselor of some kind. ... He had this wonderful way of stroking his beard and saying, 'Well, what do you mean by that?'" more close quote


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my accent test result - wicked pissah!What American accent do you have?

I bot into this quiz and got cot as having a Boston accent, even though I think I (mostly) don't. Doesn't everyone tok this way? There was nothing wicked obvious like chowda, bahn, smaht, cah, or CELLA. In fact I'm a bit puzzled about how accurate this was, having grown up a meah 11 miles noth of Fenway:
open quote 3. We're going to start with two ordinary words, "cot" and "caught." Do you think those words sound the same or different?

8. Moving on, what do you think about "Mary," "merry," and "marry"?

RESULT: You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine. close quote


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topaz internment campLike Cornered Rats, GOP Losers More Dangerous Than Ever

For Ted Rall, the glass is still worse than half empty. I hope he's wrong:
open quote Like Cornered Rats, GOP Losers More Dangerous Than Ever

Concentration Camps

In January 2006 HomeSec awarded a $385 million contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton Co., to build "temporary detention and processing capabilities"--internment camps--"in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

The question, asks Progressive magazine editor Ruth Conniff, "is what is the government planning to do with mass roundups of people?" After all, Bush and other Republican leaders have spent five years calling Democrats and others who disagree with them traitors and terrorists. Following so much hateful rhetoric, you can't blame liberals for wondering whether they too are about to be declared "enemy combatants." They're not paranoid; they're just paying attention.

[...]

As ugly secrets surface, Bushists will turn desperate. more  close quote

Image of the WWII-era Topaz Internment Camp. Nimmo also has more on the JWDAA. So does Toward Freedom. Wikipedia has more on Kellogg, Brown and Root, a Private Miltary Company. Root? Usurpers!

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daily Wednesday, November 08, 2006

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lap dog liebermanLap Dog Lieberman spoils the party [firedoglake]

open quote ... Meanwhile, I guarantee you Lieberman was rooting for Webb, or for any configuration of final race results that will make him a critical swing vote for control of the Senate. Whether the Republicans need him as a crossover for control or just as an extra vote to make 51, he will leverage his position in a bidding war between the Dems and the White House. Bet on it.

Joe promised during his campaign his seniority would be there for him, and I'm sure it will be, no matter who offers it to him. It's hustler time in Connecticut. Joe will milk a bidding war for time and attention and the best personal deal he can get, because for Joe, it's all about Joe.

I guarantee you one of the first congratulatory calls he got was from Rove tonight, and that Cheney called him, too. close quote

Lieberman thumbnailed from firedoglake. Meanwhile...

dancing bananadancing bananadancing bananadancing bananadancing bananadancing bananadancing bananadancing bananadancing bananadancing bananadancing bananadancing banana

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daily Tuesday, November 07, 2006

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hacking democracyHacking Democracy - Full Film Online

open quote Throw away your TV - Hacking Democracy - Full Film

The Much Hyped HBO Documentary "Hacking Democracy" [link] is now online. So hyped in fact that Diebold doesn't want you see it [link].

This cautionary documentary exposes the vulnerability of computers - which count approximately 80% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections - suggesting that if our votes aren't safe, then our democracy isn't safe either. close quote

Check out Black Box Voting too. It may or may not be too late for this election, but 2008 is still very open to cleaning up.

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crooks and liars logoELECTION DAY: falsehood is a feature, not a bug

Danger, Will Robinson:
open quote Crooks and Liars » An ideology of lying

... lying has become not only a perfectly acceptable tactic, but one that is central to their movement. Lying is not something they do sometimes It is who they are. Lying is a central and consciously adopted part of their ideology.

[...]

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."

The authoritarian Bush movement is so Wise (in the case of neoconservatives) and so Good (in the case of the religious fundamentalists who are their loyal comrades) that everything, including the most blatant lies, is not only justifiable, but necessary. Reality can and must be fundamentally distorted for our own good. As Mona put it - and as the two posts linked above illustrate - "for neoconservatives [which has subsumed the so-called "conservative" movement itself], falsehood is a feature, not a bug." more close quote


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daily Friday, November 03, 2006

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YANKOVIC!.COMWeird Al is just too White and Nerdy [GoogleVid]

COMIC RELIEF DEPARTMENT: "Weird Al" Yankovic's White and Nerdy music video from his new album "Straight Outta Lynwood". The snap isn't from the video, it's Al's Home Page. Anyway... here's some of the lyrics:
open quote I've been browsin', inspectin'
X-Men comics, you know I collect 'em
The pens in my pocket, I must protect 'em
My ergonomic keyboard never leaves me bored
Shoppin' online for deals on some writable media
I edit Wikipedia
I memorized "Holy Grail" really well
I can recite it right now and have you ROTFLOL
I got a business doin' web sites
When my friends need some code, who do they call?
I do HTML for 'em all
Even made a home page for my dog
Yo, I got myself a fanny pack
They were havin' a sale down at The Gap
Spend my nights with a roll of bubble wrap
Pop pop, hope no one sees me... gettin' freaky
I'm nerdy in the extreme and whiter than sour cream
I was in A/V Club and Glee Club and even the chess team
Only question I ever thought was hard
Was, do I like Kirk or do I like Picard? Spend every weekend at the Renaissance Faire
Got my name on my underwear  close quote


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this blog is anti torture35,000 in Secret Bush Prisons?

open quote I'm at the Center for American Progress, listening to Sid Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald talk about the Imperial Presidency, and one thing is important enough for me to want to live blog. Sid says that Wilkerson, Powell's old chief of staff, believes that the correct number of victims in secret Bush prisons is 35,000, only 5% of which "may" have to do with terrorism. More than twice what I thought, and hardly any to do with the "war on terror."

Wake up America, it's getting closer. close quote


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ted haggardhypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to the one heavenly lord

open quote Enough With the 'One God' Stuff

In the world today, one ancient religious ideology, monotheism, stands out as especially dangerous, repressive and loony.

[...]

But monotheism posits one omnipotent, lonely sucker all by himself -- "the sky god" as Gore Vidal once called him. The first five books of the Hebrews' Bible reveal, not surprisingly, that the sky god is often angry, jealous, vengeful, and even murderous -- regularly toying with, manipulating and punishing the puny beings he creates to worship and amuse him. Not surprisingly, he's a self-absorbed ascetic who invents for his "children" bizarre, impossible-to-comply-with rules governing a multitude of tiny details of daily life. Sometimes he goes berserk about minor infractions; frequently he ignores major violations of his own rules. He's the original bad father, threatening awful punishments, with no wife, lover, siblings, friends, co-workers, neighbors or relatives to reign him in.

Early Christians and then Muslims added to monotheism the great creative innovation of the promise of eternal life.

[...]

Inevitably, some prominent believers turn out to have long been hypocrites, liars and secret sinners -- adulterers, gamblers, drug users, homosexuals. But hypocrisy poses no threat to the monotheists who say the hidden sins demonstrate the awful power of the evils they battle. The self-righteous condemn the sins, of course, but they actually approve of the lies, insisting that "hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue -- to the one heavenly lord. more  close quote

And, on a related note, Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, has given up his post while a church panel investigates allegations he paid a man for sex. He also happens to be a friend and advisor to Dubya. I posted about Pastor Ted's New Life Church, Colorado Springs (USAFA) and young officers who believe in a coming apocalypse being appointed to the military academies by zealous congressmen last November.

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daily Thursday, November 02, 2006

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bush killed conservatismThe American Conservative: GOP Must Go

What goes around comes around...
open quote ... It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen - in America and the world at large - as a decisive "No" vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on George W. Bush's failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration's endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why - thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer.

As a consequence, he rushed America into a war against Iraq, a war we are now losing and cannot win, one that has done far more to strengthen Islamist terrorists than anything they could possibly have done for themselves.

[...]

On Nov. 7, the world will be watching as we go to the polls, seeking to ascertain whether the American people have the wisdom to try to correct a disastrous course. more close quote


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gore calls for MoveOnAl Gore makes calls: Move ON!

This just in from Al and the good folks at MoveOn:
open quote In every election I've ever been part of, the last four days have been decisive. What you do this weekend could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

MoveOn has put together an outstanding program - bringing together tens of thousands of volunteers with cutting edge technology to get Democrats who might not otherwise vote to the polls. You can join the effort from anywhere - all you need is a phone and a computer.

This morning, I joined the team and made some calls. It was easy. I'm writing to personally ask you to join the team too. Can you make some calls this weekend? Sign up to join a group of callers in your area right here:

http://www.moveon.org

I know it's easy to feel like your calls will be drops in a political ocean. I'm here to tell you that they're not. I know a thing or two about close races where a few hundred "drops" make all the difference. And the margins in many of these races are even closer. You could personally turn out the voter who tips the balance.

Why should you pick up the phone?

Do it because the ice is melting in the Arctic, in Greenland and all over the world, and unless we take on the climate crisis soon, we could cross a point of no return.

Do it because the war in Iraq is a disaster, and our brave men and women who are fighting and dying there need an honorable and speedy path home.

Do it because in the wealthiest nation in the world, there are millions of kids who can't go the doctor when they get sick because they don't have health care.

Do it because President Bush and this Congress have chipped away at our fundamental rights - rights guaranteed every citizen - that make our country a beacon of freedom. Do it because our government shouldn't be able to wire-tap innocent citizens without a warrant.

Do it because of Abu Ghraib. Do it to tell the world that America won't sanction torture - and we fire the politicians who do. That's the real no-brainer.

Do it because five years after September 11th, President Bush and the Republican Congress have made us all less safe.

But most of all, do it because the country we all love needs our help. Our democracy is in trouble. America needs you. And in these next four days, you can come to her aid.

This election represents our greatest opportunity in decades to tilt our nation toward a progressive future. Making some calls to infrequent voters only takes an hour or two. But if thousands of us do this together, we can make history.

Now's our time. Please join me. close quote


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daily Wednesday, November 01, 2006

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halliburton - sorry about your kidsTop Twenty Iraq Oversight Outrages

open quote Top Twenty Iraq Oversight Outrages Uncovered by the DPC

Republicans in Congress Refuse to Demand Accountability in Iraq;
Billions of Dollars Wasted, Our Mission Undermined

Over the last three years, Senate Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) hearings have uncovered massive waste, fraud, and abuse relating to government contractors operating in Iraq. This report presents twenty of the worst oversight outrages, as documented in testimony and evidence presented at DPC hearings: