2006 archive
Give Me a Break: One Born Every Minute Dept. 0
On the rare night I watch a little television, other than Law and Order reruns, I saw three ads for this.
Jeez oh man, there must be one born every minute.
Funny Money 3
Two interesting stories today about “Liberty Dollars“:
As preamble, at one time, almost any United States bank was allowed to issue its own money. Congress put a stop to that in the early days of the Republic. It caused monetary chaos and, if a bank failed, as happened from time to time in recessions, the money it issued became worthless.
From the Local Rag, a story about NORFED (the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and Internal Revenue Code) and its funny money.
Today, with more than $20 million in Liberty currency in circulation, the group claims a network of about 100,000 people who collect Liberty medallions, (known as “specie”; don’t call them coins), and 2,500 merchants nationally who accept them in trade. Pennsylvania is among the group’s 10 fastest-growing states, a spokesman said. (By comparison, a federal official said, there is an estimated $700 billion in official U.S. currency in circulation.)
Though competing with the almighty dollar might seem like a crackpot’s game, the U.S. Mint, fearing pollution of the wider money supply, takes the group seriously.
“We don’t want consumers to be fooled,” a mint spokeswoman said in a recent alert, adding that the Justice Department says it’s a crime to use Liberty Dollars as legal tender.
The Washington Post emphasizes the crime aspect more heavily:
NORFED responded to the Mint on its Web site. “Here it is in plain sight . . . the Liberty Dollar is not a coin, not legal tender, and backed with inflation proof gold and silver!”
(snip)
Norfed encouraged people to keep doing “the drop,” referring to its advice to drop the coin into merchants’ hands so they can feel its weight.
That could land the dropper in prison, Bailey warns, for up to five years.
The U. S. Constitution seems to put the lie to NORFED’s claims that what it is doing is legal. NORFED can claim it’s not a coin, but, if it walks like a coin and quacks like a coin, it’s a coin. (Of course, they claim to be Republicans, a group which has become expert in serving us bologna and calling it steak.)
(snip)
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures . . . .
I used to have a co-worker who believed those websites that claimed you could legally avoid paying your income taxes. I kept hoping he wouldn’t try it. What with all the metal detectors around today, it would have been difficult to slip him a cake with a file baked in it.
At first glance, this seems to be another one of those outfits for people who want the benefits of living in the modern world, but don’t want to pay for them, kind of like the average over-compensated CEO, though the SPLC thinks this group has more sinister aims.
All seriousness aside, people who promulgate and who believe this kind of fanciful propaganda undermine the social contract. If they refuse to pay their share, let them not drive on the roads, not use the hospitals, not send their children or grandchildren to public schools, not use the post office, and, most of all, not accept protection from the police, the military, and the FBI.
But, of course, they don’t want to put their money where their mouth is. They want to benefit from our tax money, while running their mouths and undermining the polity.
What Does the Future Hold in the Mideast? 0
Ebay Gone Horribly Wrong 2
And you thought instant messaging was the biggest hazard . . .
Shoplift and Separate 2
To help them in their search, Cologne-based plastic surgeon Michael Koenig has provided law enforcement officials with post-operative pics of the four – including 26-year-old “Tanya’s” splendid new €8,000, 30C Bulgarian airbags, taken before their proud owners “went out for fresh air” and never came back.
Lies and Liars (Updated) 0
Tonight’s comment from Keith Olbermann. He has earned the right to say, “Good Night and Good Luck.”
“A special comment about lies and liars:”
Here is the transcript:
While the leadership inside the White House has self-destructed over the revelations of a book with a glowing red cover …
The president of the United States — unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.
Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.’â€
The hell they did.
One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.
Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.
President Bush hears what he wants.
Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said, “Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we’re attacked again before we respond.â€
Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.
And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind reader.
“If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,†the president said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, “it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we’re attacked again.â€
The president doesn’t just hear what he wants.
He hears things that only he can hear.
It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.
Yet they do.
It is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any president of this nation.
Rhetorically, it is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic leaders, Democrats, the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies of treason.
But it is the context that truly makes the head spin.
Just 25 days ago, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this same man spoke to this nation and insisted, “We must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us.â€
If your commitment to “put aside differences and work together†is replaced in the span of just three weeks by claiming your political opponents prefer to wait to see this country attacked again, and by spewing fabrications about what they’ve said, then the questions your critics need to be asking are no longer about your policies.
They are, instead, solemn and even terrible questions, about your fitness to fulfill the responsibilities of your office.
No Democrat, sir, has ever said anything approaching the suggestion that the best means of self-defense is to “wait until we’re attacked again.â€
No critic, no commentator, no reluctant Republican in the Senate has ever said anything that any responsible person could even have exaggerated into the slander you spoke in Nevada on Monday night, nor the slander you spoke in California on Tuesday, nor the slander you spoke in Arizona on Wednesday … nor whatever is next.
You have dishonored your party, sir; you have dishonored your supporters; you have dishonored yourself.
But tonight the stark question we must face is — why?
Why has the ferocity of your venom against the Democrats now exceeded the ferocity of your venom against the terrorists?
Why have you chosen to go down in history as the president who made things up?
In less than one month you have gone from a flawed call to unity to this clarion call to hatred of Americans, by Americans.
If this is not simply the most shameless example of the rhetoric of political hackery, then it would have to be the cry of a leader crumbling under the weight of his own lies.
We have, of course, survived all manner of political hackery, of every shape, size and party. We will have to suffer it, for as long as the Republic stands.
But the premise of a president who comes across as a compulsive liar is nothing less than terrifying.
A president who since 9/11 will not listen, is not listening — and thanks to Bob Woodward’s most recent account — evidently has never listened.
A president who since 9/11 so hates or fears other Americans that he accuses them of advocating deliberate inaction in the face of the enemy.
A president who since 9/11 has savaged the very freedoms he claims to be protecting from attack — attack by terrorists, or by Democrats, or by both — it is now impossible to find a consistent thread of logic as to who Mr. Bush believes the enemy is.
But if we know one thing for certain about Mr. Bush, it is this: This president — in his bullying of the Senate last month and in his slandering of the Democrats this month — has shown us that he believes whoever the enemies are, they are hiding themselves inside a dangerous cloak called the Constitution of the United States of America.
How often do we find priceless truth in the unlikeliest of places?
I tonight quote not Jefferson nor Voltaire, but Cigar Aficionado Magazine.
On Sept. 11th, 2003, the editor of that publication interviewed General Tommy Franks, at that point, just retired from his post as commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command — of Cent-Com.
And amid his quaint defenses of the then-nagging absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or the continuing freedom of Osama bin Laden, General Franks said some of the most profound words of this generation.
He spoke of “the worst thing that can happen†to this country:
First, quoting, a “massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western World — it may be in the United States of America.â€
Then, the general continued, “the Western World, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years, in this grand experiment that we call democracy.â€
It was this super-patriotic warrior’s fear that we would lose that most cherished liberty, because of another attack, one — again quoting General Franks — “that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.â€
And here we are, the fabric of our Constitution being unraveled, anyway.Habeus corpus neutered; the rights of self-defense now as malleable and impermanent as clay; a president stifling all critics by every means available and, when he runs out of those, by simply lying about what they said or felt.
And all this, even without the dreaded attack.
General Franks, like all of us, loves this country, and believes not just in its values, but in its continuity.
He has been trained to look for threats to that continuity from without.
He has, perhaps been as naïve as the rest of us, in failing to keep close enough vigil on the threats to that continuity from within.
Secretary of State Rice first cannot remember urgent cautionary meetings with counterterrorism officials before 9/11. Then within hours of this lie, her spokesman confirms the meetings in question. Then she dismisses those meetings as nothing new — yet insists she wanted the same cautions expressed to Secretaries Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.
Mr. Rumsfeld, meantime, has been unable to accept the most logical and simple influence of the most noble and neutral of advisers. He and his employer insist they rely on the “generals in the field.†But dozens of those generals have now come forward to say how their words, their experiences, have been ignored.
And, of course, inherent in the Pentagon’s war-making functions is the regulation of presidential war lust.
Enacting that regulation should include everything up to symbolically wrestling the Chief Executive to the floor.
Yet—and it is Pentagon transcripts that now tell us this—evidently Mr. Rumsfeld’s strongest check on Mr. Bush’s ambitions, was to get somebody to excise the phrase “Mission Accomplished†out of the infamous Air Force Carrier speech of May 1st, 2003, even while the same empty words hung on a banner over the President’s shoulder.
And the vice president is a chilling figure, still unable, it seems, to accept the conclusions of his own party’s leaders in the Senate, that the foundations of his public position, are made out of sand.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
But he still says so.
There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.
But he still says so.
And thus, gripping firmly these figments of his own imagination, Mr. Cheney lives on, in defiance, and spreads—around him and before him—darkness, like some contagion of fear.
They are never wrong, and they never regret — admirable in a French torch singer, cataclysmic in an American leader.
Thus, the sickening attempt to blame the Foley scandal on the negligence of others or “the Clinton eraâ€â€”even though the Foley scandal began before the Lewinsky scandal.
Thus, last month’s enraged attacks on this administration’s predecessors, about Osama bin Laden—a projection of their own negligence in the immediate months before 9/11.
Thus, the terrifying attempt to hamstring the fundament of our freedom—the Constitution—a triumph for al Qaida, for which the terrorists could not hope to achieve with a hundred 9/11’s.
And thus, worst of all perhaps, these newest lies by President Bush about Democrats choosing to await another attack and not listen to the conversations of terrorists.
It is the terror and the guilt within your own heart, Mr. Bush, that you redirect at others who simply wish for you to temper your certainty with counsel.
It is the failure and the incompetence within your own memory, Mr. Bush, that leads you to demonize those who might merely quote to you the pleadings of Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.â€
It is not the Democrats whose inaction in the face of the enemy you fear, Sir.
It is your own—before 9/11 – and (and you alone know this), perhaps afterwards.
Mr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you truly wish to preserve.
It is not our freedom, nor our country—your actions against the Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.
You want to preserve a political party’s power. And obviously you’ll sell this country out, to do it.
These are lies about the Democrats — piled atop lies about Iraq — which were piled atop lies about your preparations for al Qaida.
To you, perhaps, they feel like the weight of a million centuries — as crushing, as immovable.
They are not.
If you add more lies to them, you cannot free yourself, and us, from them.
But if you stop — if you stop fabricating quotes, and building straw-men, and inspiring those around you to do the same — you may yet liberate yourself and this nation.
Please, sir, do not throw this country’s principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics.
A noble plea. No doubt it will fall in deaf ears.
For, clearly, the current Federal Administrator has decided that anyone who does not bend to his way is an E-Vil Doo-Er.
For he’s always right, and he’s never wrong.
He is, in fact, syrup of ipecac.
Addendum, 10/6/2006
Pipeline 0
Sounds
good
to
me.
The tube was discovered six feet underground in Buholovo by workmen digging holes to plant trees. Local border cop Yakov Kabanov said: “We had our suspicions that there was someone running hooch across the border here but we could never figure out how they managed it.
Give Me a Break: Small Minds Dept. 2
Oh, man.
Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction books are an “evil” attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.
And the Tarzan stories were designed to get persons to live in the jungle with animals.
Sheesh.
The Problem with the Republic 0
A little while ago, I commented on the Local Rag’s editorial about the current Federal Administration’s Concentration Camps.
That editorial evoked a letter to the editor today:
Here, of course, is the disconnect: There is no proof that any of the persons held in Guantanamo are murderers, though some probably are. There is ample proof that many of them just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But the writer of the letter has convicted everyone in Guantanamo on the say-so of one man: the current Federal Administrator.
Perhaps a danger to society like the 78-year-old man shown below, recently released, with five years gone out of the rest of his life:
Think of that: It took the current Federal Administration five years to conclude that this man was likely not a “combatant.”
This Administrator is the same man who wants to use secret trials, to use “evidence” collected through torture, and to deny the simplest protections that are the underpinnings of justice.
Remember also the history of the label, “enemy combatant.” The current Federal Administration created that phrase so it did not have to use other terms, such as “criminal” or “prisoner of war,” because, had it used those terms, it would have had to obey the law regarding how they treated the captives. Heaven forbid that, for we seem no longer to live under the rule of law.
Their goal was, by changing the label, to release themselves from any obligation to deal with their captives within the bounds of civilized behavior, including the captives’ rights to be a actually implicated in something before being detained, to have their treatment monitored by the Red Cross, to humane treatment.
If we allow one person to arrogate to himself the right to pronounce guilt or innocence, we forfeit our liberty.
But all the letter-writer seems to grasp is that the persons in Guantanamo must be murderers.
I guess the writer’s reasoning goes, “Hey! Otherwise George III Bush wouldn’t have put them there in the first place.”
But, then, again, we know the persons held in America’s Concentration Camps must be guilty. The current Federal Administration says they are, and we have ample proof of the Federal Administration’s voraciousness veracity, now, don’t we?
Oh, yeah, there’s this:
Sorry. My mind seems to have wondered. What was the topic?
Oh, yeah. The problem with the republic.
I’m not sure, but I think part of it is folks who don’t recognize that, if you do not have “justice for all,” you have justice for none.
Chillin’ 2
Last night my girlfriend noticed that the fridge was looking a little peaked.
This morning, it showed positive signs of running a fever. Now, old GE was 21 years old and didn’t owe me a dime, so it was off to Lowes.
Half an hour later I was on my way home with the new refridgerator in the back of my little yellow truck.
And hour later, I had the door flip-flopped, took another shower, and went to work.
And the new fridge was chillin’.
Why Lowes?
Well, several years back, we were in the market for a clothes washer.
We went to the local Best Buy and found one we liked.
No one was available to take our order. The only person authorized to order large appliances was tied up with a couple who, apparently, were buying every single possible appliance they might need for a new house.
I went back the next night and told Mr. I’m the Only Person Competent To Sell Large Appliances, “I have half an hour. After that, I’m outta here.” Twenty-nine and one-half minutes later he got to me. Two minutes later, I was outta there with the order placed.
The thing arrived on-time, three days later. I picked it up and installed it. Ex came back from a business trip and noticed it had a dent (no, I didn’t dent it).
I took it back. The returns guy was great–sent someone out the take it off the van, was courteous, and prompt. Then he asked, “Do you want a check or would you like the reorder?”
I said, “I’d like to reorder.”
He said, “Then you’ll have to see that man over there,” pointing to Mr. I’m the Only Person Competent To Sell Large Appliances.
I asked, “You mean you can’t just place the order from here?”
He said he was not allowed to.
I said, “Give me a check.”
Then I remembered there was a Lowes five minutes up the road. I went up there, and 20 minutes later, I was on the way home with the SAME IDENTICAL WASHING MACHINE in the back of the van. For $10 less.
To this day, I avoid Best Buys–I go to CompUSA for computer stuff. If I do get desparate enough to go to a Best Buy, I will not purchase anything that I can’t take out of the store in my hands.
And Lowes? That’s where I will forever more purchase my large appliance. And anything else that they carry, from lumber to cabinet knobs.
Patriotboy Gets Serious 0
About legalizing torture.
Well said.
The basic values I love most, the ideals that made me proud to be an American, due process, habeas corpus, the proscriptions against cruel and unusual punishment and the use of coercion to compel confession were destroyed in the name of that kind of patriotism yesterday. Our America, liberal America, died with those ideals.
When the Founders wrote the Declaration, they wrote
Not some men. Not white men (though they weasel-worded on slavery). Not just “men we agree with.” The ideal, which they stated from their imperfect world: all men.
Now, the Declaration is not the Constitution.
The Constitution says, inter alia,
Article I, Section 9: The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. . . .
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Now, there is no invasion. Invaders are not assaulting our beaches.
There is no rebellion. There is a threat, but it is localized outside of our borders.
But the current Federal Administration, with its pornographic fascination with causing pain to others, betrays the vision of Founders and steals our freedom, sells out the vision, sells out the heritage which has at one time made the United States of America, for all its faults, a hope for the world.
Frist: Give Up Afghanistan 0
Senator Frist folds:
The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.
“You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government,” Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. “And if that’s accomplished, we’ll be successful.”
This, of course, is the same Taliban that forced Afghanistan backwards centuries in time while aiding and comforting Al Qaeda.
Guess that’s why we sent all those people over there to fight.
Oh, yeah. They were needed in Iraq, where Osama bin Laden isn’t, to counter the threat of all those non-existent WMDs.
Family Values 8
Here.
Kind of impressive when you see the list gathered together all in one place, isn’t it? And one of them probably even has his own little blue dress.
A tip to Phillybits.
Legalizing Tyranny (Updated) 1
We are selling our soul. The Local Rag gets it.
“Welcome to the American gulag.
“You have been declared ‘unlawful enemy combatants’ by President Bush. As such – and with the full consent of the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress – you can be imprisoned indefinitely. Until death.
“Your interrogations will begin almost immediately. Remain standing. You may be subject to harsh ‘alternative’ tactics by CIA personnel or U.S. military. Again, each of these tactics has been fully approved by Congress.
And it could be you. Or me.
Addendum, 9./29/2006
We’ve seen a world go from loving us on September 12, 2001 – many governments declared “we are all Americans today” – to us becoming a global pariah, with nary a friend who believes in our word or the promise of our deeds. We saw astounding pictures come back from Abu Ghraib, in which prisoners under our watch were tortured and, in some cases, killed.
And just this week, we have watched the Republican-led Congress affirm that all of that — and more — is just fine with them. At the same time, we have become willing to let the president mortgage our present and our children’s financial future to spend money on a war that did not need to be fought, while ruining a reputation that previous generations worked so hard to build.
H(ow) P(uerile) 0
Yeah, they get all upset when Hewlett-Packard does it:
Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee demanded to know how investigators for the respected Silicon Valley anchor could use tawdry tactics such as “pretexting,” or impersonating HP directors, employees and journalists to obtain their phone records.
But when the persons who have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America do it, where are they?