Schiavo Judge Has Reason to Fear

Leave it to a baptist preacher to stick his nose in other's business. What ever happened to separation of church and state?
village voice > news > Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway: "Probably the worst blow came when the pastor of his church asked him to leave. 'You must know that in all likelihood it is this case which will define your career and this case that you will remember in the waning days of life,' Calvary Baptist Pastor William Rice wrote to his parishioner. 'I hope you can find a way to side with the angels and become an answer to the prayers of thousands.' "

Brain Dead 

Will a British divorcee cost 'Wolfie' his job?

I'd like to get an opinion from Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, William Bennett and James Dobson on whether Paul's getting a little nookie on the side should affect his nomination to head the World Bank. Where are these self righteous bigots when one of their own gets caught dipping his wick outside of the marriage? Get Ken Starr on this pronto!!
the Mail online | Mail - news, sport, showbiz, health and more | Will a British divorcee cost 'Wolfie' his job?: "His womanising has come home to roost,' a Washington insider said. "Paul was a foreign policy hawk long before he met Shaha but it doesn't look good to be accused of being under the thumb of your mistress. "

Where Are the Democrats?

Where Are the Democrats? (washingtonpost.com): "It was a Republican -- Christopher Shays of Connecticut -- who got it right. 'This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy,' he said. Bingo! It is DeLay and the Christian right that set the agenda for the Republican Party and, therefore, for Congress. It is DeLay, whose religious zealotry prompted him to leap all sorts of constitutional barriers and go court-shopping, who, have no doubt about it, would reshape this country in his religious image. "

The Green Door in the Floor

Show me the money shot: How porn made itself at home in America's living room.
village voice > nyclife > The Essay by Howard Hampton: "Delving into The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, you'll find reams of titillating, funny, appalling, and often pointless information on the $10 billion-a-year business that arose in the cum-mustache wake of Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door. The book dishes the dirt and zeitgeist in roughly equal portions, with hilarious and devastating observations on the passing scene from expert witnesses such as performer-turned-industry health activist Sharon Mitchell (who in the '70s snuck into a theater and gave a mind-blown patron a heart attack when he realized the actress on-screen was actually sucking him off in person: How could The Purple Rose of Cairo hope to compete with that?). But as with most oral histories, the bigger picture tends to get lost in a cut-and-pasty mosaic of who-fisted-whom gossip and flaky subcultural minutiae. As Bob Dylan could have said to Georgina Spelvin: You know something's happening but you don't know what it is, do you, Miss Jones"?

IMAX theaters reject film over evolution

Outfuckingrageous!
CNN.com - IMAX theaters reject film over evolution - Mar 23, 2005: " IMAX theaters in several Southern cities have decided not to show a film on volcanoes out of concern that its references to evolution might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs"

Those Pious Right-wing Hypocrites 

The Bronze Rat

The Bronze Rat

A woman walks into a curio shop in San Francisco. Looking around at the exotica, she notices a very life-like, life-size bronze statue of a rat.  It has no price tag, but it looks so striking she decides she must have it.  

 She takes it to the owner: "How much is the bronze rat?"

 "Twelve dollars for the rat, a hundred dollars for the story," says the owner.

 The woman gives the shop owner twelve dollars.  "I'll just take the rat; you can keep the story."

 As she walks down the street carrying the bronze rat, she notices that a few real rats have crawled out of alleys and sewers, and begun following her down the street.  This is a bit disconcerting, so she begins walking a little bit faster.

 Within a couple of blocks, the group of rats behind her grows to over a hundred, and they begin squealing.  She starts to trot towards the Bay.  She takes a nervous look around and sees that the rats now number in the thousands, maybe in the millions, and they are all squealing and coming towards her faster and faster.

 Terrified, she runs to the edge of the Bay and throws the bronze rat as far out into the Bay as she can.  Amazingly, the millions of rats all jump into the Bay after it, and are all drowned.

 The woman walks back to the curio shop.  "Aha," says the owner, "I'll bet you have come back for the story."

 "Actually no," says the woman.  "I came back to see if you have a bronze Republican."

 

GM Seeking Deep White-Collar Cuts

What's good for General Motors is good for the country, right? Best get in line for a job at Wal-Mart before it's too late.
Yahoo! News - Report: GM Seeking Deep White-Collar Cuts

David Brooks-The Do-Nothing Conspiracy

What a bunch of hogwash! If lumping the "entitlement" programs into one big problem then we should have more of that kind of problem. Instead of running up the cost of preemptive wars on a credit card, instead of shitting on our environment to pad the pockets of those whose greed far exceeds any compassion for saving it, instead of padding the pockets of pharmaceutical companies at the expense of the sick and aged, instead of calling a special session of congress to impose the neo-conservative will on a family matter, then lets have more of the problem of entitlements. If more polarization is the result then fine, bring this government to it's knees and the economy along with it. The people WILL survive.
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Do-Nothing Conspiracy

Iraq-An Unhappy Anniversary

This weekend marks the two-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Two years ago, the White House had waged an aggressive campaign for invading Iraq. Since that time, however, all of the rationales posed by the White House as justification for the war have been thoroughly debunked. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam had no collaborative ties to al Qaeda. Even more egregious, however, is while there was a comprehensive plan for getting into the war, the White House never implemented a real plan for winning the peace and establishing a secure Iraq. Today, more than 1,500 American soldiers have been killed. There still is no exit strategy for U.S. troops. There is no standard for determining when Iraqi security forces will be ready to take over responsibility for their own security. Corruption is rampant, reconstruction is woefully behind, and the American public is becoming increasingly disillusioned with this "war of choice." (According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 53 percent of Americans said the war was not worth fighting and 70 percent said the number of U.S. casualties is an unacceptable price.)

COST OF WAR, THEN AND NOW: In the days after the invasion two years ago, the Bush administration famously predicted the war would pay for itself. Andrew Natsios, head of USAID, remember, told Congress: "In terms of the American taxpayers contribution, [$1.7 billion] is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries and Iraqi oil revenues." Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz backed him up, saying Iraq was a country "that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon." Today, the U.S. is on track to spend more than $300 billion to maintain our troops.

INSURGENCY, THEN AND NOW: Two years ago, the White House claimed U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators by an overjoyed Iraqi people. In July 2003, there were an estimated 5,000 insurgents fighting against U.S. troops. Today, that estimate is closer to 18,000. And while a year ago, there were an average of 14 attacks against U.S. troops per day, now there are more than 70.

IRAQI FORCES, THEN AND NOW: The Pentagon has long been saying Iraqi security forces are on the cusp of taking over responsibility for their own security. It's a lot of politics with very little truth. A new report by the Government Accountability Office found "U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped." For example, the number of Iraqi security forces is consistently overstated. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said, for example, that there are 145,000 Iraqi troops trained; Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, puts that number at closer to 4,000.

RECONSTRUCTION, THEN AND NOW: Two years ago, the White House promised to restore prosperity to Iraq. However, instead of sending seasoned experts to lead the massive reconstruction, the administration instead sent very young, inexperienced ideologues, chosen for their loyalty rather than their training. Money was bottlenecked; contracts were botched. And that lack of attention had serious consequences. AP reports, "Two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the tattered and dangerous country has become one of the world's poorest, ranking at the level of Haiti and Senegal." Today, Iraq produces about 700,000 barrels of oil a day less than before the invasion. Electrical capacity has gone backwards. Last June, Iraq was generating less electricity than before the war, leaving most Iraqis with only 12 to 14 hours of power a day. Today, that's fallen even further. According to State Department figures, "Iraq now averages just 8.5 hours of electricity a day, with some provinces getting as little as five hours."

USING CONTRACTORS, THEN AND NOW: The administration put the burden of reconstruction on the shoulders of private, no-bid, outside contractors, many of whom saw it as an easy way to make a quick buck. Today, for example, Pentagon auditors have discovered Halliburton has overcharged American taxpayers by $108 million. Just this week, in the first criminal case of contracting fraud in Iraq, a former manager for Halliburton subsidiary KBR was indicted on 10 counts by a federal jury for cheating the government out of nearly $4 million in Kuwait. A separate audit also found Halliburton can't account for $1.8 billion in a separate contract to repair oil fields in Iraq. It's not just U.S. money missing: the Coalition Provisional Authority also can't account for almost $9 billion in spent Iraqi funds

The Black Commentator - Freedom Rider: Uncle Toms and Turncoats

The Black Commentator - Freedom Rider: Uncle Toms and Turncoats - Issue 130: "America has no shortage of sell outs and traitors. We are awash in good-for-nothing sell out colored preachers. Traitorous Democrats in Congress help corporations enslave us through an atrocious bankruptcy bill. The media sell us out every day when they choose to tell us all about the latest celebrity divorce but ignore the Bush meltdown in the international community or the death toll in Iraq.
The latest stab in the back outrage is the growing number of black ministers who make a political and financial calculation to ally themselves with this most corrupt and unrighteous administration. Their cynicism and greed are so blatantly obvious that they come off as the unscrupulous always do, like lunatics making bizarre pronouncements that have no basis in reality."

The Endless Supply of Oil and Other Fairy Tales

EnergyBulletin.net The Endless Supply of Oil and Other Fairy Tales Energy and Peak Oil News: "Common bloviated pigeon-chesting by those that believe our drive-by fantasyland will continue ad-infinitum include the following claims;

* Ho hum, heard it all in the 70's
* Peak oil = chickenlittlism
* The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stone
* OPEC could simply pump more oil if they wished
* The world is awash in oil
* The market will provide

Obvious logical fallacies aside the final statement has some credibility; we suspect the market will provide with rickshaws and bicycles being high on the demand list. "

Lest we forget

Iraq war 2nd anniversary March 19, 2005

http://www.truthout.org/mm_01/1Tribute.swf

Long Island: Running on Empty

You think gas at $2.35/gallon is expensive? That will be chump change compared to what it will be in a very few years.
The New York Times > New York Region > Long Island: Running on Empty: "If the cost of energy skyrockets, are the suburbs doomed? Would Long Island, already paying among the highest fuel and electricity rates in the country, become an unsustainably expensive place to live?
A way of thinking that says 'yes' is circulating, and has assumed tangible form in a video called 'The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream.' Made in Toronto by the independent producers Gregory Greene and Barry Silverthorn, it explores the idea that the world is running out of cheap petrofuels and predicts the utter ruin of North America's suburbs - and not in the distant future, but somewhere between 5 and 25 years from now."

'Mildly Pro-Choice' Rice Won't Rule Out Presidential Bid

Somebody ought to bitch slap this lying broad into reality. Condi Mushroom Cloud Rice wouldn't make a pimple on Hillary's ass and I'm no fan of Hillary's.
'Mildly Pro-Choice' Rice Won't Rule Out Presidential Bid (washingtonpost.com)

Dean slams Bush on town-hall meetings

Dean slams Bush on town-hall meetings: "Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said yesterday that President Bush's policy of excluding non-Republicans from town-hall meetings on Social Security reform was not an American thing to do."

The Black Commentator - No Fools Allowed

The Black Commentator - No Fools Allowed - Issue 129: "What little remains of American democracy is dissipating in an insipid narcissistic media haze. A haze in which the number of innocent Iraqi civilians, men, women and children, being killed in this unjustifiable war, is considered to be so inconsequential that it is a question not worth asking and not worth reporting.

The fact that Americans did not protest and oppose a second theft of the presidency, and accepted the legitimacy of his election, implicates Americans in George W. Bush's America's war crimes. Beyond America's borders, people can only believe that by electing George W. Bush to a second term in office, a majority of Americans had endorsed the criminal and the crime. "

Personal Accounts Tank in Polls, GOP Says

Yahoo! News - Personal Accounts Tank in Polls, GOP Says: " The heart of President Bush (news - web sites)'s plan for Social Security (news - web sites), allowing younger workers to create personal accounts in exchange for a lower guaranteed government benefit, is among the least popular elements with the public, Republican pollsters told House GOP leaders Tuesday. "

For President's Social Security Proposal, Many Hurdles

The New York Times > Washington > News Analysis: For President's Social Security Proposal, Many Hurdles: "'When a boat springs so many leaks, it only floats for so long,' said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, who declared that Mr. Bush was losing the momentum he had picked up after making Social Security the centerpiece of his State of the Union address. 'The Democrats have certainly shot holes in it, but the Republicans have also been shooting holes.'"
"This privatization plan is sinking like a rock," said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.

Just Say No

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Just Say No: "resident Bush's effort to hustle the nation into dismantling Social Security as we know it seems to be faltering: the more voters hear about how privatization would work, the less they like it. "