Former Justice O"Connor speaks out agains t Republicans

Expert from an NPR report this morning:

In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O’Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, as she put it “really, really angry.” But, she continued, if we don’t make them mad some of the time we probably aren’t doing our jobs as judges, and our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won’t be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation’s founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O’Connor, as the founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don’t protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader Tom DeLay. She didn’t name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortions, prayer and the Terri Schiavo case. This, said O’Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress’ onetime only statute about Schiavo as it was written. Not, said O’Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written. This response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O’Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts.

It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn’t help, she said, when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn’t name him, but it was Texas senator John Cornyn who made that statement, after a Georgia judge was murdered in the courtroom and the family of a federal judge in Illinois murdered in the judge’s home. O’Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms, recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges, stripping the courts of jurisdiction and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges. Any of these might be debatable, she said, as long as they are not retaliation for decisions that political leaders disagree with.

I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.

Battle at the Sink

 

King Henry V and his loyal knights banded together at the kitchen sink to fend off another assualt by the French. This time the french King Charles VI led his army against the English. But again Henry won the day. 

Review of Flightplan and 40year old Virgin

Flight Plan

Before I review this movie I have to review the DVD case. For a living I do retouching and color correction of images. So I am an EXPERT in what is good and bad retouching. On the bad side are the Oprah covers where they have literally painted every pixel of the big O so that she looks illustrated rather than photographed. Most magazine covers blow chunks with crappy non-real images. But I digress. The DVD cover image for Flight plan has Jody Foster looking like she did on the Courtship of Eddy's Father. She does not even appear to be human. And I have never seen an iris of any eye that is 98% cyan, 30% Magenta and no yellow. In the movie she looks haggard, stressed out, and old. The DVD cover looks silly.

Anyway the movie is mildly interesting and Jody Foster is always good even in lame movies. I am not sure what it is about Foster, and other actors of her like, that can punch through the utter crap that they are staring in to give good performances. I guess it is because they know what they are doing. Anyhow this movie gets a big fat 5.


40 year old virgin:

A one trick pony that I litterally gave up on. Though it could be because his appartment and mine looked a little too similar (action figure wise) It had funny bits here and there but the yuck factor overshadowed everything else and so I give it a solid 3.

Who came to the west coast of the US by the thousands in the mid 70's?

Refugees fleeing the collapsing nationalist government of Vietnam. So get ready for all the Iraqi's wanting asylum from the self-destructing nation of Iraq. Since the Samara boming, only 13days ago, 400 people have died and many more wounded. Refugees are just one more thing, in a long list of things, that we failed to expect. They are not here yet but they will be. Already 4,500 have fled the hottest areas in Bhagdad to Sadre City where they are being looked after by that pillar of sanity Moqtada Sadr (sarcasm). Sunni's are fleeing as well to safer climbs in Iraq. But if the situation deteriorates into a bloodier civil war then we should not expect Iraqis to simply sit at home and wait to die. They will leave. Some will go to Iran, some to Syria (The ones that want to kill Americans) The rest, who merely hate us, will come here and expect, with much justifiction, to be supported by the country that did such a lousy job defending them. Iraq is the big stink that just keeps on stining. So as the wallet of the taxpayer starts to close when the last troops leave Iraq it will be pried back open again to help support all the poor Iraqi's fleeing their dead homeland. Greaat Job Bush! You rock dude! To look for a unified message from Washington here is what you get:

US Ambassador to Iraq:

The US ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, said that "the potential is there" for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war in Iraq.
While he believed the country had pulled back from the brink, "if another incident [occurs], Iraq is really vulnerable to it at this time, in my judgment."
"We have opened the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?" Mr Khalilzad said.

General Pace:

said on Sunday that things in Iraq were going "very, very well, from everything you look at".

Lent 1

We are all on the road to Calvery. There is not a single human being that will not, in time, be taken and handed over to death. On this short little jaunt to our physical ruin we must act to better our world. There will be no end credits or large orchestral musical score to the end of our lives. It only matter what we do while we yet live. So today, in the spirit of Jesus who poored out his blood for our salvation, I did my part and poured out a pint to the American Red Cross. They were in dire need of it and I was only too happy to oblige. This does not mean that I hold myself up as an example. I am also a selfish pig, who has not fasted one bit. The truth is that the Red Cross asked me if I would donate and I said yes. It was only while reclinging on the bed, my blood flowing into a bag, that God woke me up to what I was doing and why. We only get a trifling few years to make the world a better, more peaceful, more just, and more spiritually awake place. God will take us to our work even if we don't realise what it is we are doing.

Rev. Phelps another great American...(not)

Here is a self described "old-time" gospel preacher who says, "You can't preach the Bible without preaching the hatred of God." He shows up at the funerals of GI's who got killed in Iraq with signs saying "God Hates Your Tears" or "Thank God for IEDs" The reason for this stupid behavior is that Phelps hates gay people and wants to show his hatred of gays by bashing soldiers who fight for a nation that accepts gay people. I really hope Rolling Thunder does a large storm all over Phelps shanty religion so that the rain come and the winds blow and his lousy house of nothing is completely destroyed along with his brood of vipers. However in the spirit of Christ I forgive him for he knows not what he does.

Henry at the table lamp

 

And so did the Warlike Henry meet the overlusty French at the table lamp and faught them there. Brining ruin upon their entire host, King Henry lost no time in securing the entire desk from the table lamp to the computer monitor. Yet worse fighting was yet to come.  

Poll Crunch Time! Insulated and damn proud of it!

Does the nation approve of W's job?

Approve: 40%
Disapprove: 55%
Duh..I..duno: 5%

There is a big price to be paid by politicians like W that allow their handlers to strictly control the kind of people they see. bush never sees a crowd that isn't 100% pro-Bush. He never gets to listen to people who think he is wrong. It looks like the only info he gets about people that do not like him or his policies is vetted and processed through his handlers in such a way as water it down. He seems so disconnected from the pulse of America as to be on a different planet. The hardcore cadre of Bushleaguers is shrinking by the day. Yet he still meanders on in the fog of "mandate" as if he had one to begin with. I think at some point in the future it is going to come out that he is off the wagon and really off the seat of power. He does not even seem to be President anymore. This would be fine with me but for the fact of all the misanthrops that surround him who wield enormous power like 3 year olds who found their dads 357.

Why conservatism is a mental disease

American conservatism is not so much a political philosophy as a neo-fascist religion, similar to Nazism. It is not based in any kind of empirical reality but in a set of apriori dogmas designed to scapegoat the all of the nations ills on a single set of people. Like the Nazis before them the modern American conservative blames, the liberal intelligency for all the nations ills. Unlike the liberal community that is always reevaluating itself and wrestling with moral and ethical dilemas, the conservative see no need to question him/her self. To question someone elses morals is the only requirment, never their own.
I am, of course, not really serious about the whole "mental disease" bit. That is hyperboli and a homage to MS. American neo-conservatism does not rise tø the level of a disease. It is an induced set of behaviors concocked by the elites that run the country to get a certain segment to vote their way at all times. The behavoir is continously reinforced by dozens of magazines, hundreds of radio stations, thousands of books, and most television networks.
Their dogma is perfect and the best a conservative can hope to accomplish is perfect adherence to the dogma. That is why, to those who do not live in la-la-land, conservatives never reallly are able to solve problems. They spew rage and self-righteous indignation aplenty but when push comes to shove they can't actually consumate. That is why all that is great about America is traced back to progressive politics, not conservative politics. The sad fact is that if the people of America, in 1776 had listened to the conservatives of their day, we would be sining God Save the Queen at football games and the damn ball would be black and white and round.
The modern American conservative expends most of his energy in adherence to dogma. He feels he has accomplished something since he sees adherence as a worthy goal. Where progressives see strengthening of nationhood through cooperative acction (government). The conservative is at a loss to understand why a nation should even exist. All he needs is a flag to wave and a drum to beat and the liberals to hate and he is fine. This is, the the enlightened human, perfectly obvious and desired by the power-elite. The powerful want a populace to give their rights away and freedom away, while "privatising" government; taking the power from the hands of the people and giving it to a very small oligarchy to control.
The modern conservative has a mental blockage that prevents them from appreciating the truth. They will watch FOX news and rail against the liberal media all the while watching a media empire that, in London, publishes full frontal nudity in its papers as a way to sell them. They will go bankrupt with healthcare bills, dutifully giving thousands of dollars a year to insurance companies, yet with bloody eyes rail against any attempt to put the control of our nations health into the hands of the people. What is worse is that they see themselves as perfect so that their actions, though anything but in the eyes of the reality based community, are perfect too. They are a sick lot and need a cure. They have been programmed and brainwashed to monkishly spout the latest radio induced diatribe and dogma at every problem, while beinig blind to the fact that their dogma is useless, unworkable, and based on lies.
While the liberal or progressive sees people as their country, the conservative has been brainwashed to see only himself. They cannot see beyond their own self or family. It is ironic that conservatives rail against liberals for being pleasure seaking hedonists. The truth is that the selfish people, who put their own desires and needs over anyone else are the conservatives. By being brainwashed into fearing cooperative action for the common good. They will cooperate to help remove freedom from the hands of the people, because they have been trained to do so.
Progressives have always faught to make this country better, while conservatives have always faught to keep things the same or move them back to some utopia that never existed. That is their mental disease. Unlike most organisms that strive to be the fittest to servive, they seek to retrograde, to devolve to a lower lifeform. The modern conservative movement is a movement to oblivion. I only wish they would hurry up and get back to the ooz and then maybe even back to carbon.

Along for the ride

Is it just me or is the US looking more like it is just along for the wild ride in Iraq? Our Ambassador, when lecturing the Iraqi's about the dangers of sectarian violence, sounds a bit odd since it was our intervention that has caused this mess to begin with. If he wants to lecture somebody about the dangers of stirring up sectarian violence he should start with the gang in the White House.
When I was a kid we took a trip to the beach and my brother and I were playing around in the sand when we noticed a bit of seaweed sticking up out of the sand. There was a tiny trickle of water aroundt the little weed. I pulled on the seaweed. Within a few minutes there was a gorge 5 feet deep with a torrent of rushing water. I had unwittingly openned the floodgate to a stuffed drain. There are so many life lessons that one can learn from childhood and then apply to your adult life. Such as when you see an iregularity in the sand, you might do well to leave it alone. When hiking in the the high desert of Oregon you would be stupid to stick your arm under every rock since you would probably get bitten by a rattle snake. Or if you are climbing Mount Everest you would be seen a fool to go up in only your long underwear and bunny slippers.
We went into Iraq with, depending on your point of view, with good intentions. However the road to hell is paved with many of those. It is a mark of how obtuse we rich fat people are that we thought we could make a happy land out of a dictatorship. General George Marshal would have really cautioned against getting our hopes up with Iraq. History is filled with failed attempts at nation building, the vast majority of such attempts colapse. Assemblies of millions of people are just too complex to make such affairs work out. The only reason it worked out with Germany and Japan was that both naitons had the gun of Soviet Russia pointed at their heads. They simply had no good alternative to us. Iraq has no such gun. On the contrary the population is given pause to trust us, and given reasons to believe in those who fight against us. Suni and Shiite have lots of reason to kill each other. Regligion is always a good reason to butcher your fellow humans. The land of Europe is filled with the bones of Catholics, Cathars, Franciscans, Calvinists, Lutherans, Baptists, and a whole host of other sects that cut each other to peices over religious differences. Us going into Iraq and trying to make a democracy is like us going into a time machine and trying to hammer out a democracy out of the insane Holy Roman Empire of the 15th century.

What does he think he is doing?

I am trying to be less partisan toward the current occupent of the White House but he is really making it hard for me not to think of him as a lame-assed dumbshit who cares more for his foreign terrorist-funding buddies than he does for his nation or the poor slobs he has bravely sent dies or get maimed in Iraq. As an American I am pretty sick of this SOB. Giving control to 6 of the nations largest ports to a company that is owned by the royal house of the United Arab Emirates is NUTS! But in Bushland this all makes sense. Since his family has been buddy buddy with the terrorist funders for years he really doesn't see much of a contradictioin. Bush makes it soooooooooooooo easy to be a Democrat. I was so pissed at Clinton for his lack of morals but at least he stuck up for his country most of the time. This little texas cow pie isn't worth the pennys his body would be worth if it were turned into fertalizer or, dare I say, Bio-diesel.

My Castle circa 1984

  

A great Mass

I just finished to listening to the Messe De'Notre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut 1300-1377. I do not like all medieval polyphony, it gets on my nerves, but there is something about the Messe De'Notre Dame that grabs me by my...well it grabs me... and doesn't let go until the end. It is a complex and difficult piece of music to listen to and unless you are willing to be patient and listen to it five or six times you will fail to appreciate all the levels of polyphonic, isorythmic detail. Machaut was not known as a religious composer so much as a composer of poetry and secular songs to punctuate the high art of courtly love. The music is large, complete, and done by one man. It gives you a window into the grand religious life of the 14th century. Probably performed at the new cathedral of Notre Dame of Rheims, this must have been shocker. There had never been anything like this before in the presentation of liturgical music. Machaut seems to have wanted to use the Mass itself as a kind of musical stage. Anyhow he rocks and the Messe D'Notre Dame is a great work that is like a very complex dish of food that takes time to enjoy.

Review of Crash and VP marksmanship

I want to really unload on a crappy movie and rip it to shreds but I cannot do this for this film. Crash is awsome and I highly recomend it. Superb all the way around. It paints a pretty complex picture of race relations and nobody comes out looking good, well almost nobody. It gets a 9.

Cheney's little incident:

Snickering, followed by giggling, followed by laughing, followed by a sense of pitty for such a bunch of pathetic turds occupying positions of power, followed by sense of impending doom because the turds on in power in my country.

"Why is Iraq war only getting bad press?" and other stupid questions

The answer is that IT IS A WAR! Wars are usually 100% bad news until the very end when the good news of peace comes about. So people that like to beat war drums and are all cranky about bad press should not be so clueless about the reality of a real war.

Here is a little ditty from Herman Goering doing an interview before he killed himself at Nuremberg:

"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Brownie is giving wedgy to Bushy

Today the former director of FEMA, the infamous Mr. Brown, told a congressional subcommittee that he had actually told the White House to prepare for the worst two days prior to the disasterous hurricane Katrina. We also learn that the levy breaches were known the very day that they happened practically while they were happening. Ouch! I cannot blame Bush for the weatherm however if this is true then it really makes this lackluster and incompitent administration look even more lackluster and incompitent.

A long time ago I said that this administrations worst enemies are its former employees since it garners absolutely no loyalty. So Michael Brown is squealing on them and also we have Scooter Libby now saying that his "superiors" told him to leach classifeid info to the press. This of course leads into the POLL CRUNCH!!!!!! These numbers are before you add in the current revelations.

Approve: 41%
Disapprove: 53%
Duh I Duno: 6%

Still W is plugging along like he has a mandate for something other than resignation. Whats more is that the administration is going out of its way to appear pushy and tightlipped. Instead of Clintonian humility, even false humility, we have eitehr bravado, or stupifying silence. The administration seems paralyzed by the world situation and the domestic situation. Their warfare is only making matters worse at home and abroad and they have no idea how to either win the war, or even know what the war is really about. The mighty ship of SS Bush, its hull scrapping along the bottom, is slowly coming to an unglamorous stop to be buffeted by the waves of fate until it is beaten to pieces.

How to tolerate the intolerable

I cannot speak for people who are upset about the insulting cartoons of the prophet Mohammed peace be upon him. As a Christian I have seen all manner of views of Jesus from The Passion of the Christ to Monty Python's Life of Brian. And of course there is no good protrait. How can there be a good protrait of the Divine? God, exaulted his He, is not some bearded old foggy sitting on a cloud. But we are visual creatures so we like to give that which is without form a form for us to recognize. As there is no good form there is no bad form. All the good and righteousness that the prophet represents cannot be defamed by any silly cartoon. Just as all the good and righteousness that Jesus represents cannot be defamed by movies or books. If I let my absolute faith, and love, for God, exaulted his He, be hurt by books or angry words, then it is weak and needs to be strengthened for that which we believe in, both Muslim and Christian, is the rock eternal, the maker of all the is seen and unseen, and He cannot be assailed by anyone.

My new little Scion xA

 
 

Chemical Jihad

I am using the word Jihad in hopes of the Bush Administration reading my Blog.

The chemical Jihad I am referring to is the holy war against depression. Depression is the great satan, moo-hoo-ha-ha, and I will use any and all means, including underhanded chemical attacks, to fight it. Enter Fluoxetine, aka Prozac. This little guy goes into your synaptic connections and blocks the re-uptake of serotonin so that more of it can be transfered from one nero-transmitter to another. So how does it feel? Well it feels okay. It does not make you feel happy go-lucky, or stoned, or anything like that. All it seems to do, at least for me, is even out the ups and downs, particularly the downs. The problem with depressive illnesses is that they cut your abiliy to function. It is harder to concentrate, to remember stuff, and it becomes a self reinforcing problem that spirals downward. The chemical Jihadist is able to get back to normality while still dealing with the issues that bring about the depression. Prozac, for me, is not a substitute for counseling and other mental healthcare but is just another part of it.

Interesting Historical Mumbo Jumbo

In AD 874 king Burhred of Mercia abdicated in the face of overwhelming Danish raids into his kingdom. So he split to Rome where he lived out his life and finally was burried in the church of Sancta Maria Antiqua. I decided to find out more about this church, if it still existed etc.

It does not really exist as a functioning church anymore. It was built in the 5th Century near the Roman Forum and was the seat of the Bishop of Rome. It's ruins are part of the Forum tour today. It was buried under tons of rubble when the Forum was burned in 1084 when the Normans set fire to the city. In 1902 it was excavated and there are many 7th and 8th century frescos still on it's walls. There is still one sarcophagus present in the church. Maybe its king Burhred?

I find your lack of faith disturbing..Part MXCVLM

I am an American and a Christian. Every once in a while South Park has Jesus (peace be upon him) appear in a totally religiously incorrect episode. But I have never thought about launching a Crusade against Comedy Central. So I ask muslims to "give it a rest" as far as their overreaction to the whole mohammed cartoon deal. I think Mohammed (peace be upon him) is probably too cool to bother with such stuff. Both gentlemen are way beyond wasting their imortality on getting pissed at being profaned. As a Christian I would not insult a fellow believer even though he or she may not recognize Jesus (peace be upon him) as the Christ. However our faith should be strong enough to insight us to be conduits of mercy to our brothers and sisters dispite the insults.

Enemies and Evil Do'ers

There was once an EVIL EMPIRE known as the Soviet Union. They had ten thousand nuclear warheads pointed at us. They paraded them around Moscow. Their leaders talked about how they were going to bury us etc. And yet we talked to them, had a phone line between our President and their leader. In the 45 years of cold war between the US and the USSR we never really stopped talking. And we saved each others lives. There were plenty of people on both sides that would have liked us to slug it out in a big horrible, earth-ending, war. But calmer, more adult, minds won out and though we bitched at each other and spied on each other, and faught violent proxy wars in little counties like Vietnam and Afgahnistan (USSR War not our new one) we did not go to war directly with each other. And so you and I are still alive and the earth is not a dead rock.

So when Bin Laden goes out and asks for a truce or to negotiate we should not simply say that he is the bad guy and we don't talk to bad guys. That is a childish response, not the response of a Super Power. The US is too big to muck around in the simplminded world of good vs evil. There are usually a multitude of ways to skin a cat. Some ways require talking. Even if that talking is to the very cat needing to be skinned. This takes skill, leadership, commitment to life, commitment to American greatness, and the ability to actually believe that we are worth fighting for.

I remember the God given opportunity that Bush and Iran passed up when both leaders were in Rome for the funeral for Pope John Paul II. Sometimes the initiative must be siezed when the opportunity presents itself. By asking for a meeting with Bin Laden we would put him on the defensive. IF he shows up he knows he could be killed. If he says no then he appears foolish or cowardly. By continuously allowing Bin Laden or his lueitenent to speak about truces, and meetings, we give them too much power. I would wish to force them to put up or shut up. I would say that in our world people talk to each other not shoot at each other. And If Bin Laden wishes to talk we can talk.

Oh crap...Hamas won an election

Well what did everyone think was going to happen? Look what happened in 1776 when a pissed off population of British subjects voted their conscience. Why is it people think that elections lead only to happy times for all? If a country is filled with people who are poor, under employed, crowded, assaulted, and preached to be hate-mongers, they probably will not for for a peace-nick. The French revolution should be the standard warning to anyone trying to get a democracy out of a tyranny or anarchy. America worked becasue the actaul government after 1776 was little different than the previous one. Accept there was no king or parliment on the other side of the atlantic. With France, the king got his head chopped off along with thousands of other royals and anyone else who got in the way of "liberty". It didn't end until the dictatorship of Napolean.

In the longrun there will be peace and Isrearl and Palestine will exist side by side. But it isn't going to be in my lifetime.

Poll Crunch For January!!!!

Does the Nation like the job ol' W is doing?

Approve 41%
Disapprove 53%
Duh I dunno 6%

So is he doing a good job? I mean just because the naiton thinks he stinks that doesn't acutally mean he is doing a bad job. However whether we look at foreign or domestic policy he looks pretty pathetic. In the time it took FDR to destroy Japan and Germany, W has yet to stabilize Afgahnistan to say nothing of the FUBAR that is Iraq. The number of jihadists in the world is on the rise, Osama Bin Laden is still at large, our civil liberties are under attack, our nations image is in the toilet, and while out economy is "expanding" it is little comfort to the 30,000 people the lost their high-wage jobs at GM or the 30,000 that are losing their jobs at Ford. The healthcare crisis is only getting worse. Chinese investment bankers are taking turns driving the world economy as well as funing the US government. Bush, to me, looks weak and disconnected to the reality of the world and his nation. I think he is not going to be remembered as a good President.

Forgiveness and punishment

There is nothing that test your faith as a Christian more than being faced with a great wrong and then wrestling with forgivenss. The Christian soul wishes to forgive almost at once while the intellect says "What are you nuts? Eye for an Eye!" The Christian approach is the only approach that leads to lasting peace. However the desire for punishment of the offender is strong too. I harken back to Calvery when Christ was hanging on that cross and the two men were haning with him. The one man tells Jesus that if He is the son of God then why doesn't he get down off the cross. The other man says that Jesus is an inocent man while both of the men are being crucified as they deserve. Then he asks Jesus to remember him. Jesus of course tells him that he will be with Jesus in Paradise. However at no time does Jesus get the dude off his cross. He lets the man hang there and die along with him. So I guess the moral is just because you get forgiven your sin, and will be with Jesus in Paradise, doesn't mean you get out of your earthly punishment, whatever that happens to be.

The other great thing about forgivness of sin is that as a Christian I can help redeem a mans soul by that act. God alone redeems souls but forgiving my neighbor I redeem myself. That is a pretty powerful position to be in. Conversely to withold forgivness for those who wrong me is a blight on my soul and I would not wish to meet God and answer for why I could not forgive another's transgressions. We set ourselves up for getting punished in the hearafter if we try to hold onto the sins of those who wrong us. We become the sin eater taking on the punishment we wish to levy on them. I would certainly rather leave eternal punishment to God and not tell the divine whom He should punish and whom He should not.

For the aetheist I would argue that Christain forgivness is the only true path of healing since to not forgive is to keep the wound alive thus propetuating and transfering the wrongs of others from generation to generation. Punishment is another matter. Punishment for a wrong comitted is appropriate in this life. Proper punishment preserves the order of systems. Without it the order breaks down and people feel as though they can get away with anything.

Confusing idiocy from Michael "Weiner" Savage

MS loves to extoll the virtues of the insipid fear monger Joeseph McCarthy and the knucklewalking bafoons that followed him. Currently MS is trying, in his typically mentally retarded way, to link the current furor over wire tapping with red bating in the 50's. What a load of shite. MS should just admit that he is a f'ing NAZI and be done with it.

Review of Dead Like Me

I highly recomend this two year Show Time series, now available on DVD. if you want lots of gore, and excitment you can forget it. This is a comedy drama with good writing, good characters, and high style. In a nut shell this is the story of the mundane, and not so mundane, life of a dead girl who has to spend some time being a grim reaper. The main character is not out of central casting, does not do the typical teenage crap that makes you want to puke everytime you see a teen on TV. Ellen Muth is superb as are the rest of the cast members. Check it out.

Review of King Kong

Remaking King Kong is the hight of Hollywood vainglory. The original is
a great film that despite its age stands up on its own. This film,
while technically brilliant, has a script that is no better than the
1976 version, and in some ways is worse. It is a very beautiful, long,
disappointment. Not only is the script poor the acting is also
lackluster with the notable exceptions of Naomi Watts and the ape. The
island natives are valueless imps with no back story at all to tell us
why they do what they do. They come accross as nothing but a plot contrivance to get us into
the jungle and face to face with Kong. Interestingly the wall scenes in
this film look puny and confusing compared to either the original or
the 76 remake. If Jackson wanted to remake a film from that era that
desperately needs to be remade he should have picked Metropolis.

Gets a 6 out of 10

The Unholy Communion

The parishoners stood in line faithfully. The line snaked back from the altar. Many ministers awaited them. As each approached the altar they placed their items on the counter and the ministers recited methodically with joy and reverence. "Did you find everything you needed?"

The responsorial "grumbling and mumbling" is heard from the congregation as they approach the altar

The minister then solemnly speaks the incantation "Credit or Debit"

The parishoner bows while looking into his wallet or her purse. Then hands the minister the method of redemption.

The minister then weighs the sole of the parishoner.

After the communioin the minister hands the items back in a sack and says "Merry Christmas" As if that last bit matters in this unholy communion.

And still the lines snake our from the unholy altars of excess from malls, and main streets, small towns and megolopoli, from New York, to London, to Moscow. And the hyms of consumption and production rise up off the simmering surface of the dirty little world. And little old ladies stand in the rain with little kettles and ringing bells asking that more metalic mana be dropped into their own little altars for all are slaves and obidient servants to the money god of the little dirt ball and that god does not dwell in heaven or hell or anywhere else but in the stock exhanges, pocketbooks, and debit cards of the faithful. As the people need the god to eat so they need the god to build houses of worship to other gods, peopled by committees of trying to help the poor by relying of the money god to save them. But no one will be saved by worshiping the money god. All goway emptier than they came dispite the heavy loads of packages under their arms. They will open those packages with joy and smiles but all too soon the smiles fade and the vast empty vacume of their sole bekons them like a cliff pulls at a man standing at its edge.

Christmas Poll Crunch

Ho Ho Ho do you approve of Bush or not?

Approve: 41%
Disapprove: 53%
Duh I dunno: 6%

Dufus and his war on America

Okay let me be frank. President Bush is a disreputable destroyer of America. The Administrations argument to ignore laws (break them) is that they are saving America. What is the America they are saving? Land of the Free and home of the Brave? Sorry not anymore thanks to Bush. The land of the spied on is more accurate. Maybe the king dork is spying on me now. Hey dork...yes you...Happy Holidays.

President Bush needs to go. All his people need to go. We have law, the stuff they like to ignore, that can get rid of them. However what happens if we tell them to go and they decide to stay anyway? That is when you have to go to the Declaration of Independance.

" That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it"

Down with king George!

Is anybody listening?

Is it okay to tell you child, while angry, that you cannot weight for the child to turn 18 so she can get out of your house? Is it okay to tell your child that if she talks to her Dad about your adulterous affair with with a stranger, you will make her life a living hell while the divorce proceedings are happening? Is it okay to tell you children if they are fighting that if they don't shut up you will leave them. Is it okay to get drunk and then yell at the kids that they are making your life hell? Is it okay to expose your children to your affair and then force them to lie about it to keep it quiet?

Am I being irrational in thinking that none of this is okay?

Let me know?

Life is Good

The duplicitous nature of man may spell his final doom on this little dirt ball but life is still good. I feel sorry for those afloat in the inky sea of life without a compass. A good compass in this particular ocean allows you not only to find your way but to stand in shallow water and walk in the right direction. The compass is TRUTH

Stopping the A Bomb

B-29 flying fortress takes off from tiny island with one big bomb, an atom bomb.
It flys across the ocean, stayig the course that it has set by the leaders.
Over the target it's bombardier opens the bombay doors.
The pilot stays the course as the bombardier drops the bomb.
Then they realize that the course they have stayed is the wrong one
They circle around and the bombardier jumps out of the bomber.
He plumets earthward, arm outstretched like Superman.
He catches up the the bomb
He places himself between the bomb and the ground.
He leans against the falling bomb putting all his weight into it.
At 1100 feet the presure trigger goes off
The bombardier is vaporzed along with a hundred thousand of the wrong people

Unless we do something different in Iraq we are the bombardier pushing against the bomb.

Migration

All the talk of more border gards, more vouchers, employer scrutiny, won't accomplish anything. Not until the reasons behind the flight to the US is addressed. Men and Women come here because there is NOTHING for them in their own countries. Low wages brought on by endemic corruption, non-responsive governements, dangerous and unsanitary living conditions, all push people to flee to the US. South of the boarder is a hell hole and you'd have to be nuts not to want to get out of it. We need to do a better job of building internally sustainable economies with living wage jobs in Mexico and Centeral America. Free trade is only making matters worse since it is forcing upon these nations the idea that the path to weath is an export economy. This may be a part of national wealth creation but if practiced to the exclusion of internal economies it leads to self reinforced low wages.
The country has its economic star tied to low wage jobs. A rise in wages causes transnationals to leave for cheaper nations and so the incentive is to keep your labor force poor and under control. It would be better for the IMF and World Bank to emphasize internal economic growth and self sustaining growth policies. That have to be based on a nation existing for itself without export economics. Only after a nation has a vibrant self sustaing economy can it bother with export as a serious industry.
Free trade is in the process of becoming a manifest evil since the way it is practiced it enslaves poor naitons. That is why Hugo Chavez is doing what he is doing. He is attempting to curb it in his own nation. It makes him dangerous since if all Centeral American nations took control of their countires and focused on what was best for their own work force the goods you and I eat and wear would be more expensive. He is dangerous since the power of transnational companies is being thwarted and put in jepoardy.
If we really wanted to curb illegal imigration we would be talking to people like Chavez and partenering with them to assist other nations in building internally sustainable economies, not trying to oust him via a coup. The myth that people would simply come to the US if their own nation was in order is just that a myth. It is in America's interest to see to it that the poorer nations to the south have higher wages, less coruption, and better living standards. It would not only reduce illegal imigration but enhance stability in the countries involved and that would better for national security, drug policy, and business.

The Elephant in all his glory

I listened to President Bush outling his definition for victory. He laid out his multi-level approach to when our troops come home. He said the same stuff as before though I do not think he used the term "evil-doers". Punidts on both sides either applauded or denounced it. However the big Elephant was there for all to see.

If the goal is for our troops to leave when Iraqi forces can "stand up" then we are admitting there will be a reason to have those Iraqi troops standing up. We are admitting that there will be war when we leave. Even the President is admitting this. We will leave Iraq at best a land where factions are fighting each other. At worst we will leave and let the Iraqi government fight a civil war for its survival.

That is the Elephant that nobody really wants to talk about. We are getting ready to leave Iraq in a state of destruction. Destruction wrought upon it by Sadam, Bush senior, Clinton, and George Bush. Even the President is not talking about leaving Iraq in peace. Only leaving with the government troops able to fight the war themselves. We are now being prepped by Bush and Congress to accepet Iraq as a war zone and at the same time cheer ourselves as victorious warriors.

I heard a Bush league pundit say that we "cannot walk into the future while looking into the past" regarding our desire to know how we got into this war. Well we better pay attention or we will be duped again. We all are to blame for this mess. Congress did have 90% of the info the White House had. And they are not dumb people. They saw the flimsy evidence but went along. Nobody wanted to act week after 911. So we all gave Bush the benefit of the doubt and trusted our troops to sqwash Iraq. Well this should instruct us not to trust one President when all sorts of other people are saying something different. It should instruct us to the value of real debate. Iraq is an example of letting your hart rule your actions.

Still the Elephant remains. We are getting ready to leave Iraq in a state of war. Not good. Not at all. But probably unavoidable and the best that can be achieved now. But hey we should everyone how tough we are. Right?

Of boots and feet

I calculated that if I replaced my Raichle Montanga's with the La Sportiva Trango S EVO, on a two mile hike I would save my body from having to lift 5,922.56 lbs of boot. The calculation is rough but goes like this....

Old Boots weigh 6 lbs
New Boots weight 3.2 lbs

Two Miles of Trail run 10,576 ft

Average stride 2.5ft

Strides in Two Miles: 10,576 / 2.5 = 4,230.4

Weight per stride (old boot) = 3lbs
Weight per stride (new boot) = 1.6lbs

Total boot wieght for two miles (old boot) = 12,691.2 lbs
Total boot weight for two miles (new boot) = 6,768.64 lbs

That is an amazing amount of lifting your legs do aside from the act of lifting the rest of your body and backpack. Just my old boots make my body lift 6.35 tons on a short little two mile jaunt.

Ae we ready for a pandemic if it comes? What the hell! We already have one!!!!!!!!!

Currently the worst pandemic in human history is upon us. It is not bird flu. It is a virus that is 100% fatal if untreated and even with treatment life is shortened and life quality effected. The pandemic is the HIV/AIDS pandemic. To date this pandemic has killed 25 million people. 5 million people have come down with it this year alone. 3.1 million people die of the disease each year. 40 million more are infected. 40,000 US citizens come down with the illness each year. In africa, where the pandemic is currently hitting hardest only 1 in 10 infected people are being treated. In Asia the pandemic is out pacing all actions to stop it.

Yet here we are worried about Bird Flu. Currently if you become infected with it the odds of you dying are as yet unkown. The mortality rate in Asian cases is 72%. If you put the deaths in context that percentage should not look as frightening. The cases documented are of very poor people living in terrible conditions and treated with substandard care at the outset of their illness. If an American contracted the illness in the US, I would imagine the mortality would be less. Aids is as 100% fatal for the American as it is for the Botswanan, though it takes 10 to fifteen years to manifest itself. At best a patient will live the rest of their lives ingesting loads of anti-retroviral drugs.

Are we ready for bird flu? Bird flu is a cake walk to the HIV/AIDS pandemic that has been raging out of control for 20 years.

Info Sources - The Aids Pandemic in the 21st Century - United States Agency for International Development issued in 2004
- Center for Disease Control

Murtha and how to misquote him

I keep hearing how Jack Murtha from Pennsylvania wants the troops out imeadiately. NPR says it, CNN says it, CBS says it. Of course Jack Murtha never said it. But that doesn't matter. It matters more that the story is enhanced if he had said it so lets just pretened that he did. What he actually said, in his House Resolution, was this....

Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
That: The deployment of United States forces in Iraq, by direction of Congress, is hereby terminated and the forces involved are to be redeployed at the earliest practicable date. A quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines shall be deployed in the region. The United States of America shall pursue security and stability in Iraq through diplomacy.

What he is saying is that since the President is unwilling to look facts in the face the Congress, who has the power to wage war and conclude peace, has to act. All the resolution would do would be to redirect things so that they are descalating toward no troops in Iraq. "The earliest practicable date" could mean 6 months or longer. And even then the force would not be gone, only out of the site of most Iraqi's. This pretty much gels with what Iraqi leaders want too.

But let us not look at the actual words of the honorable Mr. Murtha. Let us listen to Cheney or Bush or anyone of a hundred pundits all commenting on Murtha without actually discussing the resolution. Let us not discuss what took Murtha to his current way of thinking. Does anyone know why he did what he did? Is anyone discussing the facts? No.

Fact: In recent surrvey's 70% of Iraqi do not approve of being occupied.
Fact: 45% of surrvied Iraqi's consider attacks against US soldiers totally legitamate self defense.
Fact: Insurgent attacks have increased from 150 a week in 2003-4 to over 700 a week in 2005
Fact: Infrastructure in Iraq remains below where it was prior to the invasion.
Fact: 60% of the nation is unemployed

All Jack Murtha is trying to do, like a true patriot who loves his country, is direct our vision to reality and get us to discuss the big elephant in the living room before it stomps on us.

For those of you who do not know who Murtha is:

"This is Jack Murtha, who left college during the Korean War to enlist as a private in the United States Marine Corps, and who later, as a 33-year-old husband and father of three, volunteered to fight in combat in Vietnam, where he was twice wounded and received the Bronze Star with combat "V," two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

Nobody -- not even the most conservative commando with the biggest flag lapel pin in the House Republican leadership -- dares to suggest that Jack Murtha is "soft" personally or politically on communists, terrorists or any enemy of America. He is recognized as the knowledgeable and informed Democratic hawk on defense in the House, whose counsel and support have been highly valued by presidents, national security advisors and defense secretaries in both parties.

Twice Murtha, in the House, voted to back invasions of Iraq by a president named Bush. Today, recently back from a return inspection visit there, Murtha is upset and angry about Iraq, its future and the well-being of this nation's military men and women their civilian leadership have stationed there"

-source May 8th 2004 CNN

The Bush league better catch a clue!

The White House is like a guy who goes into a movie theater and yells "fire" then gets caught and trys to argues that it isn't really his fault since everyone else ran out of the theater too.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire vs Jar Head

HP

For starters this series almost always puts me to sleep. It just keeps going on and on and on. It is like going to prep-school while partaking often of LSD. The weird characters and magical jiggery-pokery just keeps comming at you. There always seems to be some kind of sporting event with lots of flying around and hooliganism. And for all the magical stuff things are pretty squalid. Can't they clean that Hogwart dump up? Does it have to look so shitty? Shouldn't it be at least as advanced as the non-magical world the gandalf-wana-bes come frome? Still the place and stories seem to have enormous appeal to young people and old people. The story in this film, like most of them, while attempting to be vast and expansive, is real two dimensional. I always, about half way through the films, tend to wonder "okay so who is the bad guy? Wormwood...no....thats not it..." and so on. So how does this rate with Star Wars. Very similar. Loud and shallow. It has better acting and much better dialogue but it is pretty much the same. This movie gets a 7

Jar Head

This movie is the least bloody war film I have seen in quite some time. What it lacks in blood it more than makes up for with characters. The main character is solid and is crafted so well that you like, loath, love, and hate him almost all at once. This would be an excellent film to accompany Three Kings and Blackhawk Down as a desert war trilogy. Films like this eat Harry Potter and Star Wars like a couple MRE's. It gets a 9.

Why wanting our troops out of Iraq is patriotic

If you love your country and value its power and reputation you would be against this war. You would demand the President laydown the strategy to achieve victory and the terms when our soldiers could come home. The patriot should utterly reject the notion that soldiers should determine when our nation fights and for how long. That power resides in the hands of the people, not generals. The President may wish to fight but the final decision is not his to make. This is a democratic republic not a dictatorship.

ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8
The Congress shall have Power to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.

Of course our leaders continually find observing the law problematic hence the War Powers Act of 1973. Yet our nations fate is still in the hands of the people. The generals, and those in favor of war, can present arguments to sway the people, but the people are always the final arbiters of their nations fate. Should those arguments be shown to be false or error filled, it is the patriotic thing to point that out. If the war has been started under such pretenses then the patriotic thing to do is end it quickly. And the patriotic thing to do is force its leaders to obsserve the nations laws not circumvent them for political expediency.

Finally as a patriot you would demand the removal and prosecution of those who a: did not observe the law, and b: led us to war based on errors and misinformation.

Awe the sounds of democracy

I heard a bunch of yelling in Congress today and it brought tears of joy to my eyes. That is the sound of democracy, the sound of passionate debate, the sounds of a nation grappling with wieghty decisions about a war. Better that than a quiet office in the White House.

NPR letter put into perspective

My recent letter read on NPR's All Things Considered is, by an large, how I feel. But it was hacked up and meant to add a counter point to the letter they read before it. I was the bad-cop. I sounded like a Richard Dawkins wana-be and I need to set the record straight for my friends and myself.

Inteligent Design is not a scientific theory. It is creationism, wrapped up in a fancy new term. Since I am a Christian this seems to be a dilema for me. How can I assert that creationism is nonsense and evolution etc is corrent and still claim to be a believer?

For one thing I put faith in God that he gaves us big brains for a reason. I put faith in God that we can come to terms with the universe in all its complexity and not worry about where God is. We probably had more "faith", as biblical literalists would describe it, back in the days of Moses. However that definition of faith is inaccurate, if by that they mean a literal reading of the Bible since no prophet or desciple could be faithful since no such book existed in their day. How could they know God if they had no Bible to read? St. Paul could did not read the Bible nor did any of the 12 apostles or any of their imeadiate desciples. The Vulgate, or Common Bible, composed by St. Jerome, was not complied until the 5th century. I will not go into the plethora of biblical translations from the Septuagint, and Vulgate to Luther's german bible to KJV.

Clearly if you hold to biblical literlism, in my humble opinion, you build your faith on sand not rock. Faith based on one book is like a bad scientific theory. Bad theories get clunkier and clunkier until they collapse on their own. So too faith ascribed to one book. Either you choose to remain blind to the modern world and view things like TV as magic, or you try an mesh the modern marvels and mankind quest for knowledge with the book. Either way you fall down. So faith cannot be predicated on attempting to measure the imeasureable. True faith is a hard link between the diety and you. There is no physiological mumbo-jumbo to mess with.

ID or the attempt to measure the imeasurable or quantify God is nuts. It cannot be done. If God wished us to figure him out in that way why no just say "uhummm...over here!" I believe you could sift through each subatomic nuclei in the universe and not find a trace of God. And this has nothing to do with my faith. In a hyper materialist culture full of hyper-materialist church goers, whos faith is based on a book instead of their own connection to God, is it any wonder that people want to be directed to God like we are directed to Walmart?

Faith is not religion. God does not "belong" to a church. Nor is God an old bearded man with a crown on his head. But images die hard and the faith of our forefathers, full of superstition, meldrama, and materialism, is dying hard too. I don't think faith can be built on this world. Not that there is anything wrong with the universe. It is just the wrong perspective. So I guess I would admonish myself to not waste time finding some kind of physical proof of God in science by doing equations, I should save my effort and meditate on how best I can serve my fellow man. Concentrate on what purpose my life has beyond simple reproduction. The Bible has lots to say on that count. And so do lots of other books. And all, in my opinion, are manifestations of Gods word, that always works for good for those who love the Lord.

Poll Crunch time...again

Does America approve of the way W is doing his job?

Approve: 37%
Disapprove: 57%
Duh-Iduno: 6%

Okay for those of you not keeping up with the Poll Crunch, this is an average of 6 national polls. My advice to the President is stop trying to campaign and please start to lead. You cannot photo-op your way out of this big mess. The only way to do this, and do this right, would be to can Rove and the other men and women who have dis-served you. Unfortunately, unlike Clinton, none of your "freinds" will back you if they leave. They will stab you in the back so I guess you are screwed. You can keep them around but things are not looking good. You have 3 years left to serve, not three months.

Problem 1: Iraq
Problem 2: Scandle
Problem 3: Lack of initiatives that satisfy the majority
Problem 4: Growing credibility gap due to problems 1 thru 3
Problem 5: Base abondoning you because you look weak and disconnected.
Problem 6: Adhering to policies that have not been shown to work
Problem 7: Adhering to policies that have been shown to cause problems
Problem 8: Blind "damn the polls full speed ahead" approach

Solution 1: Use any pretext you like and draw down US forces in Iraq by 25%. Start talking about the end game in each speach.
Solution 2: Fire Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld with extreme prejudice. Force Cheney to resign and then pick governor Romney of Mass. to succeeed him.
Solution 3: Authorize 3 billion dollar increase in home-heating assistance for the poor. Launch initiatives aimed at alternative fuels technologies.
Solution 4: This will be partially solved by solutions 1 thru 3
Solution 5: Go to Iraq and spend 2 months there in the green zone running the war in-country.
Solution 6: Forget SSI reform and forget about your oil buddies. They haven't helped you have they?
Solution 7: Author new guidlines that prohibit inhumane treatment of any detainee and then admit the the mistakes of the past.
Problem 8: This will have been solved if the other solutions were followed.

But this will not be done. It seems the more unpopular Bush becomes the more he digs in his heels. Who does he think he is running against? America itself? His problems have all been self inflicted by his own pigheaded nature and the misadventures of his confidents. The democrats could sit and say nothing and his popularity and his presidency would still collapse.

And now for something completely different...Hedonism

Lets just say that I have 10 million in the bank and make 500k a year off the interest. So I am trying to decide what auto I should waste gas in. There is no reason, other than environmental concern, to pay attention to gas prices just as there is no reason to pay attention to sticker price.

So off I go to the exoticar lot. Hmmm?

The first car that I come to is the Bugatti Veyron
This would set me back 1.5 million bucks. At 1000 HP and a top speed of 253 it really has some man-appeal however it becomes radically unstable at those speeds. It sort of looks like a jelly-bean. It has this piddly wing on the back. It goes from 0-60 in 3 seconds

I then decide that I should really keep things under 1 million. So I go to the Corvette Z06
This is way cheaper only $65k and it has almost the same snappy acceleration as the million+ bugatti.
0-60 in 3.8 seconds. It has a top speed of 190mph and uses a 500HP V8. However the interior is kinda 80's looking with lots of faux leather dash board and crummy looking guages.

Moving on up a bit to the Ford GT. This little 140k car is looking mighty nice. It has this retro sex appeal. Its specs are pretty much the same as the Corvette but for an extra $75,000 you get a racing stripe and you can go 15 mph faster than the vette. Interior is very nice.

I go foreign again and look at the Maserati MC12. I could not imagine driving 200+ mph in a convertable. But the car has me one over except for the 400K price. It's 0-60 is still only equal to the vette though the interior is the winner so far. For only an extra 261,000 you can go 5 mph slowwer than the Ford GT.

Back to America and a look at the Saleen S7. The version I am looking at is 1000hp and is the quickest car in the world at 0-60 in 2.8 seconds. Unlike the Bugatti this car is designed to stick to the road. Its interior is sparten but very cool. It tops out at around 230mph. Basically it is equal or better in performance to the bugatti but at 1/3 the price.

I look at the Lambo's and Porches too, they look nice, but really can't stand up to the real bad boys above.

I sill have a few left to look at the Panoz Esperante and others that might be in the drive way....

Thanks for a great life

I'd just like to thank God for the great life he has given me.

Islamic Jesus

Here are some sayings of Jesus taken from the Muslim tradition:

Jesus (Peace be upon him!) said, "Do not take the world as masters, for it will take you as slaves. Lay up your treasure with him who will not lose it, for he who possesses treasure in this world fears lest some calamity may come upon it, but he who possesses God's treasure has no fear of calamity coming upon it."

The Messiah, son of Mary (Blessing and peace be upon him!) passed by a company of the Jews; then they spoke evil to him, but he spoke good to them. Then someone said to him, "Verily they are speaking evil, and you are speaking good." Jeus replied, "Everyone spends from what he possesses."

Jesus (Peace be upon him!) said, "Seek a great amount of what fire cannot consume." Someone said, "And what is that?" He said, "Kindness."

The disciples said to the Messiah (Peace be upon him!), "Look at this mosque, how beautiful it is!" Then he said, "My people, my people, verily I say unto you, God will not leave one stone of this mosque standing on another, but will destroy it for the sins of its people. Verily God does not pay any heed to gold, or silver, or these stones which charm you. The things dearest to God (Exalted is He!) are the pure hearts. With them God preserves the earth, and with them He destroys it if they are otherwise."

Jesus (Peace be upon him!) said, "The love of this world and of the next cannot stay in the heart of a believer, just as water and fire cannot stay in one vessel."

The Messiah (Peace be upon him!) said, "O you who seek the world to be charitable with it, your leaving of it alone is more charitable." And he said, "The least thing is such that looking after it occupies one to the exclusion of glorifying God, and glorifying God is greater and more important."

The Messiah (God bless him and grant him peace!) said, "The world is a bridge, so pass over it and do not inhabit it." And some people said to him, "O prophet of God, if you would only order us to build a house in which we might worship God!" He replied, "Go and build a house on water." They said, "How will a building stand on water?" He replied, "And how will worship stand along with love of this world?"

The Messiah (Peace be upon him!) said, "Blessed are the humble in this world; they will be set on high on the Day of Resurrection. Blessed are they who make peace between men in this world; they are those who will inherit Paradise on the Day of Resurrection. Blessed are they whose hearts are purified in this world; they are those who will see God (Exalted is He!) on the Day of Resurrection."

Concerning Jesus Birth:

It is related that when Jesus, son of Mary (Peace be upon him!) was born, the devils came to Iblîs [Satan] and said, "This morning the idols have been thrown down on their heads." Then he said, "This is a new thing which has happened. Remain where you are." Then he flew till he came to the East and the West of the earth, but found nothing. Afterwards he found Jesus (Peace be upon him!) already born with the angels doing him honour. Then he returned to them and said, "Verily a prophet has been born last night; no woman ever became pregnant or gave birth to a child without my being present, with the exception of this child."

Conerning Jesus Crucifiction:

Then when God (Exalted is He!) wished to take him and raise him to Himself, his disciples gathered withhim in Jerusalem in a room belonging to one of his companions, and he said, "Verily I am going to my Father and your Father, and I am giving you an injunction before the departure of my divine nature and am making with you a covenant and a pledge. So he who receives my injunction and fulfils my covenant will be with me to-morrow; but he who does not receive my injunction, I have nothing to do with him, and he has nothing to do with me."
Then they said to him, "What is it?"
He replied, "Go to the kings of the ends of the earth and convey to them what I have charged you with, and summon them to that to which I have summoned you, and do not deceive them, and do not fear them, for when I leave my humanity I shall be standing in heaven at the right hand of the throne of my Father and your Father, and shall be with you wherever you go and shall strengthen you with help and strength by the permission of my Father. Go to them and summon them with gentleness and cure them and command them to be kind and forbid them what is unlawful, until you are killed, or crucified, or rejected from the earth."
Then they asked, "What is the verification of what you command us?"
He replied, "I am the first who does that." And he went out the next day and appeared to the people and began to summon them and admonish them and warn them until he was taken and carried to the king of the Children of Israel. Then he ordered him to be crucified, and his humanity was crucified and his hands were nailed to the two pieces of wood of the cross, and he remained on the cross from dawn to afternoon. And he asked for water, and was given vinegar to drink, and he was pierced with a lance. Then he was buried where the cross was and forty people were put in charge of the grave; and all this happened in the presence of his companions and his disciples.
Then when they saw that happen to him, they were sure and knew that he had commanded them nothing in which he was different from them. Three days afterwards they gathered in the place where he promised them to appear to them and they saw those signs which [had been arranged] between him and them; and the news spread among the Children of Israel that the Messiah had not been killed.
Then the grave was dug up, and the humanity was not found. The parties among them disagreed, and there was a great amount of talk which is too long to be recounted. Then verily those disciples who had accepted his injunction separated in the country and each of them went his own way. One went to the west, one to Abyssinia, two to Rome, two to the king of Antioch, one to Persia, one to India, and two remained in the dwellings of the Children of Israel summoning them to the opinion of the Messiah until most of them were killed, and the Messiah's claim was spread in east and west by the deeds of the disciples.

Just a little bridging of the gap between the Muslim and the Christian.

What Republicans just dont seem to understand

Back in 2002 I listened to the debate that took place on the floor of the US senate for hours and hours. I heard liberal voices such as Hillary Clinton, and centerists like McCain, and consrvaives like Lott, speak up on the need to confront Sadam Hussain. I heard over and over again the term WMD from Rumsefeld, Wolfawitz, Bush, and a host of others. The only man to really speak up against the idea war was Robert Byrd and everyone pretty much thought he was a dottering old fool.

I listened intently to Colin Powell at the UN lay out the WMD locations and then play tapes of WMD people doing stuff with WMD.

There were lots of books about the WMD's and even Time had WMD on the cover. It was a year after 911 and with anthrax poisonings and the stench of death still in the air in NYC, I was also willing to give Bush the benifit of the doubt.

I heard no mention of questionable intelligence. People like Scott Ritter who spoke up about the idea that Iraq had no such WMD were shot down in flames as being out of touch or pushing an "agenda". The Vice President said directly that there was "no doubt" that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. And all the information about Iraqi's was that they were waiting for us to liberate them.

What if anything has been shown to be accurate about what was said by the war mongers? Sadam was a bad guy. Anything else? WMD? None found yet, not after two years. Only a few empty morter canisters. Nuclear material? Nothing. Terror links? Well there are certainly a shit pot load of them there now! Cheering crowds celebrating? Long since replaced by sobbing masses morning blown up family memebers.

So when Republicans now get all cranky about Democrats and everyone else not wanting to put up with the shit that is Iraq I am puzzled. Do they not live on Earth? Do they not understand the giant cost to the US taxpayer? Do they not morn the loss of the _______(fill in the blank) dead Americans? A representative who is more loyal to a President than a nation is, to me, a traitor. Presidents are replaceable, while the lives snuffed out in this usless, costly, and error filled war are gone forever.

The longer the Administration and its defenders follow their current path the deeper their troubles will become. The "Issue" will not go away, like the stench of decay it only gets worse. Do they really want Scooter Libby to go to trial? Do they actually want the VP to testify? They want to be the party of straight talkers and fiscal responsibility, the party of God. But by stumping for a villain in the White House they profane God, make their economic ecumin out to be of little account, and twist their words in defending evil practices that are no less evil if performed by US soliders than by Iraqi Insurgents. They can't understand how the Democrats have one-up'd them. Well the truth is that the democrats have not done that. Iraq is bigger than any Democratic plot or lefty agenda. Thousands of permanently disabled warriors, millions of families effected by loss and privation caused by deployment, stop loss, lost arms and legs, and lost lives are simmering like an ugly stew that the war mongers in Washington cannot escaple eating.

And still they labor in denial thinking that this is a problem that can be spun away with radio pundits and controled TV news bites. They seem to think that there is a way to mud-sling their way back to the lime light. Yet the dead keep on coming, the wounded keep coming, the money keeps flowing away, the credibility keeps evaporating like the sweat off a PFC's neck patroliing Anbar province, and Americans are really getting sick of so called representatives that seem to care more about apperances than the truth.

So all you republicans who would rather destroy a nations credibility and ruin thousands of lives than admit to a failure in the White House be warned. You have made a very nasty bed and you will have to lay down in it. And if it were only the warmongers who had to lay in that filthy pit they have dug for themselves all the better but they will not be alone. We all get to go down there with them, all of us little war mongers who gave Bush the benefit of the doubt.

Why Star Wars can't really change

I must confess that I would like a deeper story for Star Wars. But then it wouldn't be Star Wars
I must confess that I would like better dialogue for Star Wars. But then it wouldn't be Star Wars
I must confess that I would like fewer muppets and midgets. But then it wouldn't be Star Wars
I must confess that I would change nothing about Star Wars. So it stays Star Wars

Review of Last Days

A hartfelt, provocative, insiteful, creatively shot, piece of crap. I wanted to blow my own head off with a 12 guage after watching this. Pay no money to watch this. Wait for it to be on cable. Then bang your head into a wall for two hours and drink an entire 5th of gin. If you own anything that could be used as a weapon remove it ahead of time from your home. This is as close to Vogon Poetry made flesh as I can imagine. For that matter the rating VP will now be used on my reviews for films that fall below the number 1 catagory.

On the positive side the film did end. Though while it is playing it seems to go on forever.

More perspective on Iraq

There is no good way out of Iraq, no ticker tape parade or 72 pt type saying WE WIN, no sailor kissing a girl in Time Square, it won't end that way. I think the best way to end this is to institute a draft for all Americans of fighting age and send us forth. The war to almost all Americans is an abstraction that can only be understood by listening to talking heads who may or may not have even been to Iraq. So lets sign up and go over to fight, or build a democracy, or whatever the hell Bush wants us to do. Lets all go men. What are we waiting for? If the vast majority of Americans would not willingly join up to fight then the war is probably not worth fighting. Our army will go a do whatever it is we call them to do. Tell them to go to hell and liberate it from Satan and they will salute and do their best to do it. The problem with having such a force is that the leadership needs to have a realistic picture of what they are asking this army to do. Because the army will go forth and try even if they are sent on a suicide mission.
At the battle of Shilo, general Prentis was ordered to hold his position and not retreat. He and his men followed that order even when the confederates brought up 64 canons and aimed them at point blank range. He and his men followed that order as the rebels fired the guns into them. And all of his men were either killed, wounded or captured.
The army is trained to carry out an order no matter how suicidal it might be. If they are told to invade a nation, topple a dictator, and build a democracy they will try their best to do that. Even if the job is an impossibility.

Descartes and Luther

I am in the middle of Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy and while also reading Martin Luhers On Christian Liberty. Descartes was writing about 100 years after Luther but both men come across to me as revolutionaries in the way they thought of their respective subjects. With Luther we have this disaffected German monk who is trying to peal away centuries of detritis from Christian worship and get back to, as he saw it, a purer form of faith based worship while rejecting worldly works. His point that "a house never built a hammer" is as excellent an example as I can think of to spell out his belief that faith must come before works. Or take his notion that a Christian is totally free and subject to no earthly power. That was radical in an age of emperors, popes and kings. Not that I agree with him in totality on all counts. However in the age of Luther this was radical enough to cause a war that lasted 30 years.

Descartes by contrast was a Catholic scientist who decided to peal away all the philisophical detritis of the passed centuries to attain a purer philosophy regarding how we know what we know. He joined the army and spent time on campaign in centeral Europe. He is the quintessential doubter of everything. "I think therefore I am." seems pretty straightforward until you delve into his meditations. I am comming away with a great respect for Descartes for his ability to mathematically turn aside all presupositions and, trusting only that he thinks, building a philosophy that stands on modern scientific grounds.

Both these guys have had great influance on the course of Western Civilization. I see in both their writings glimpses of the Declaration of Independance and Constitution that would come into existance a century later. Luther would say that a man's faith his between him and God and that no earthly power could either justify him before God nor banish him from God's sight. In other words governments really can't do much regarding religion and it would be better to keep them out of it entirely.

In actuality the Holy Roman Empire did practice a form of religious tolerance for pretty much any sect. And while they did this the religious terrorism that was endemic in many places in Europe was not evident in the Empire. When Maximillian II took the throne, being a staunch supporter of the Catholic cause, the emprie was plunged into religious warfare ending in the empires eventual destruction.

I was amazed and hartened a week ago when I heard Justice Stephan Bryer talk about the Supreme Courts thinking on the seperation of church and state. In that talk he too brought up the sectarian religious wars spawned by the advent of Luther inwhich Rene Descartes marched and thought.

Compared to Descartes and Luther, Karl Marx reads like even more of an idiot.

End of October Poll Crunch...Ouch!

Approval: 39%
Dissapproval: 56%
Duh I Dunno: 4%

Nothing like these numbers has been seen since 1974 and a Presidential resgination.

Fighting a ..har har har..delaying action

For all this talk about how inoccent Tom Delay says he is, he really is acting awfully guilty. If I had no guilt to hide why would I bother trying to trash the DA and now the Judge? His actions speak louder than his attorney. By doing all the stuff he is doing in smearing and politically attacking he comes accross, at least to the reality based community, as two-bit texas crook, one of many. Unfortunately in a courtroom the republican smear tactic is not going to fly far. He is acting like a mob boss that won't be happy until one of his paid~off mob judges adjudicates him to freedom.

My squirlly approach to ID

Let me be frank. I believe fully in Darwinian evolution in all its glory. I believe fully in the current cosmological models concerning the theorized early universe. The ideas of Max Plank, Werver Heisenburg, and Al Einstine are all cool with me. There is not much science that I don't get along with provided it has been through peer review and empirical study. Global warming, for me, is a demonstratable fact not some lefty's guess. I listen to Dawkins and like 99.9999% of what he has to say about science. I do not believe that a bearded old foggy in the clouds is monkeying (no pun intended) around with the universe. Hooorah!

I am also a devout Christian and believe fully that universe is a manifestation of God. Faith in the soul, God, the righteousness of action based on that faith has absolutely nothing to do with the logical and scientific quest for a better understanding of the world we live in. Science cannot quantify the value of my soul any more than faith can tell you how many electrons are in a 1 pound lump of Uranium 235.

People that want science to back up their God are as worthless as Scientists who want God to back up their science. I would not trust a "man of God" if he gets all upset over Darwin just like I would not trust a "man of science" who got upset over Pope Benedict. Either man shows his weakness of conviction to his own ideas.

#18

In the summer of 2004, while biting into a peice of coffe cake, I lost a filling. It had been in #18 for twenty years at least. Then it and part of the tooth around it was gone. The gap felt like a small grand canyon to my everprobing tounge.
I went to my Dentist and she used 8 little tubes of gunk to fill it up. The lost filling exposed the upper most level of the pulp of the tooth.

In mid summer 2005, the tooth began aching a bit. Not much just a localised pain that I muddled through with. Then I went and had #18 filled in a different location. The pain went away...for a while...

Last month a different pain started. This pain wasn't aywhere near #18. It was dull pain infront of my left ear. The pain would come and go every day or so. I muddled through with it taking tylenol or advil. Then one day last week, near the end of my shift, the pain began to evolve into an intense, stabbing, pain as if someone had first stabbed my temple with a 6 gauge hypo, injected a gallon of pain inducing stuff, then topped it off by slamming a baseball bat into my head. The pain lasted for 15 minutes then died down to a dull ache that felt like someone had...well... slammed a baseball bat into my head.

In 20 to 30 minutes the pain was back. For the next 48 hourse my trigeminal nerve was going bananas. Tylenol, advil, even codine, offered no relief, not even a little. I can't tell you the dismay I got when, after injesting, two advil, two tylenol, and two codine all at once, the pain was as intense as if I had taken nothing at all.

The pain was so bad I could not sit or lay down. I had to move, pace back and forth, as if part of my brain was trying to runaway from the pain. I ended up going to the ER and the doctor there diagnosed me with Trigeminal Neuralgia. He gave me Tegretol, which in higher doses is used to stop siezures, and that finally cut the pain back to the baseball bat level. Reading up on the disorder was depressing. TN according to the TN support website (you know a disorder is bad when it has its own support web pages) I learned the pain of "Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is not fatal, but it is universally considered to be the most painful affliction known to medical practice."

Holy crap I can vouch for that. I know that I have never had a pain like it. Dual dry sockets after wisdom teeth extraction was a cake walk to this. Internal bleeding into a knee joint is like cotton candy. The closest I can get is imagine your head between I-5 and a Semi-Truck just before it is crushed. That is sort of like it without the mess.

After taking the Tegretol for a day the pain was much better. By Saturday morning however the pain was back but now was entirely localised under #18. As if it was hiding out under the unrully molar. So I opted to get the @#$ing tooth yanked out of my head and hopefully be done with the pain.

As I sat at the emergency dental office, an office that used to be the locatin of my childhood pediatrician, the words of my current PCP haunted me. "A lot of people get their teeth pulled out before they learn what the disease is. They get them pulled only to have the pain persist." Well I was hoping that the molar was the poblem.

An hour later I walked out of the office, face numbed up, #18 still in my head but now mangled like Freddy, or Jason, or the Texas Chain Molar Massacre. The dentist could not dislodge the tooth. Sunday came and went and it was not a bad day. The whole face felt not too bad. Of course that was probably due to taking 2 percocets every 3 hours. But the nerve pain was gone, because the perc's would not have touched that kind of pain. Sunday night the pressure began to come back and, like before, the normal meds did nothing for it. By this time I was taking Pennicilian too.

Monday I finally went to a oral surgeon and he, in 5 minutes, rid me of the molar. I felt really bad about it. Like part of me was now gone, mainly because it was gone. I was also pissed becasue until that day I had all my teeth. I didn't take care of my teeth much as a kid. But as an adult I brush regularly and have not had a toothache it 20 some years. Even though I admit that my dental visits have been but two in the last 14 years. Today, Teusday, I have a bloody hole in my mouth, the pressure pain is dull and, I think, going down. I really hope this does the trick. I can't imagine how pissed off I will be if the pain comes back and I am missing a tooth that didn't have to go.

I stopped the Tegretol too. According the MERK book that could cause severe side effects like me turning into a republican or something, but I seem to be fine. I will keep you posted on what happens now that #18 is gone.

Article VI Section III, better be careful how you use religion in appointments!

There is the 3rd section from Article VI of the US Constitution:

"...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. "

Currently I think the White House might be in trouble by making Ms. Meirs' religion part of the deal. The only reason they keep brining it up is to help her get confirmed. If they are brining up her form of religion as a way to aid in her confirmation then that constitutes a religious test and that is a BIG no-no.

Review of Battle Star Galactica

I remember talking my mom and dad into buying this crappy toy Viper back in 1978 and then building models of the Galactica and cylon raiders and base stars. Above all wanting to like the series like I liked Star Wars. I got bored with it pretty fast and soon the models were kit-bashed for other ships and movies that we made.

The current manifestation of BSG is to the original series what a 2005 Mustang GT is to a Modle-T. The season openning movie of last year was superb and had a better story than any other Sci-Fi show of 2004 or 2005. What is more the show has a level of filmaking craftsmanship. It is not your typical Sci-Fi channel shlock-story and bad effects. This film looks good from every angle and that includes the acting and writing.

The story has been twisted a bit but the twists make the cylons not only more nasty but also scarrier. The story is more connected and realistic, as far as a pulp sci-fi show can afford to be. I got loaned the entire 1st season on DVD and I am sorry I missed watching the show. I wrote it off as probably terrible, but I was dead wrong. If the rest of the series is as good as the premier it will have a long run. I hope it does because sci-fi real sucks right now.

Of Cats and Presidents and wars

Sophia: Reports of her death were greatly exagurated. After falling off the van at 30 miles per hour and disapearing for 5 days she showed on the porch, looking hungry and with a scuffed nose.

President: In an October 5th poll W gets a 37% approval rating. Here is the breakdown of that poll. It is going to sicken you so get an air-sickness bag.

Apporve: 37%
Disapprove: 58%
Duh: 5%

Repbulicans give him a 79% approval rating.
Democrats give him a 14% approvoal rating.
Independants give him a 29% approval rating.

These new numbers do not skew the Poll-crunch numbers at all. My poll still has him at 42% overall.

Two things stand out:

One: 21% of republicans don't like the guy. That is not good for W. I mean it is great that he still garners almost 80% approval from people who voted for him but that is only 1/2 the nation.

Two: The independant Yuk-factor is the closest to the national average. Independant candidates should really pay attention to that number.

An area where W had been pretty ok was in his favorability rating. Basically do you think W is a good egg, family man, etc. He had been in the 50's. That has now slipped to 49%

The War: Yes dispite the Meir nomination, and the big earthquake, and floods, the war continues. Not much more to report on that front. British troop actions in the South in and around Basra, usually not to belicose, have not been good. Not only has their action in demolishing a police station to extricate a british soldier angered the locals. Now they have arrested more policemen and made the locals even angrier. Of course the Britsh only arrested the officers because the Basra constabulary has been, in there words, infiltrated with terrorists.

In more happy moments for the Iraqi police two more got assasinated today.

In more happy news for US forces a nice young man was blown up near a checkpoint in Baghdad.

In more happy news for the Iraqi government. The Governor of Najaf narrowly missed being happily assasinated today.

But hey atleast the US is drawing down its force from 135,000 to 152,000....wait a minute. I guess we are drawing them...up?

In shocking news former dictator Sadam Hussein said that he thinks his life might be in danger!

American Religion 3

The religious leaders sat around the table and were congratulating themselves on their clsoe ties to the government.

Churchman 1 "The coffers are pretty full this month. Good job people! Say how is it going with the government?"

Churchman 2 "Well I spent all day with the governor and he really appreciates all we do for him. You know making sure our congregation knows to pay their taxes and such. He also wanted me to let all of you know how appreciative he and the government are of how we have kept all the disent down. You know, concerning some of the actions that have had to be taken to keep the people in line."

Chruchman 1 "We are lukcy to have so much political clout with the governor. He helps us stay pwoerful and we help him control the people. You know if you play your cards right you might end up in the Senate. Was there anything to worry about on the horizon?"

Churchman 2 "Well there was one thing that came up. The governor is wanting to know what we thought of the reform movement. I told him we are trying to stamp it out."

Churchman 1 "Ah yes the reform movement. I went out and tired to debate the head of it the otherday and...well...he has got a point. We have gotten pretty worldly, we spend more time with the governor than we do with our own congregation."

Churchman 2 "Are you nuts? That freak is just grandstanding, trying to muck things up for the rest of us. All this crap about peace and love and redistribution of wealth. You have to give that bs lip service but get real! This is the real world and in the real world you have to live in the real world. He's a herretic and needs to go."

Chruchman 1 "Yes I guess your right. He did have a bit of a Messiah complex. 'thinks" God talks to him. As hif God would give a rip about a homeless man and his wierdo friends."

Chruchman 2 "Thats more like it. Anyhow we have nothing to worry about. Pontius Pilate would send him up the river if he thought this Jesus guy was going to start trouble."

Solicitations as blog responses SUCK!!!!!

I am not usually in favor of castration, disembowlment, or other forms of inhuman nastiness but by golly I might make an exception when it comes to turd-eaters posting business solicitations in the form of blog responses.

Example:
Hi there,
You got a nice blog here.
If you like coins there is a lot
of information about coins in my blog
Coind Directory


If this had been inresponse to my posting about coins or money etc I would not mind so much. However this was a post to an article about the Cronyism.

Cats! Those wonderful balls of joy

Sheilia: Rescued from abandonment, fixed, loved, played with
Condition: Gone native, can't stand us

Snowbell: Found us, fixed, loved, fed and played with
Condition: Was disappeared by local Coyote secret police

Alba: Rescued, fixed, fed, loved, played with
Condition: deceased, ran over by school bus infront of the kids

Blanche: Rescued fixed, fed, loved, played with
Condition: Missing presumed dead

Sophia: Rescued fixed, fed, loved, played with
Condition: Missing presumed dead after falling off the spare tire under our minivan as it spead down the road taking little kids to school.

Our neighbor cat:
Condition: deceased, ran over infront of kids waiting for the school bus, (but not by school bus) then put out of its misery by my wife with a bullet to the head.

Cats! those wonderful balls of joy.

Early Poll Crunch for October

Approve 42%
Disapprove 53%
Duh I dunno 5%

If you think there is not a racial divide in American politics look at the break down between white and black Americans in the CBS poll:

White Approval: 47
White Disapproval: 48
Black Approval: 12
Black Disapproval: 82%

Overall these numbers are pretty lousy. You could spin this has a good "bump" for Bush but overall there is not much of anything to spin. What is putting Bush in the tank are ramifications of the decisions that he and his pal's have made over the last 5 years. It amazes this blogger that no body has demanded to know more about the enery-task force meeting of 2001 now that gas prices are approaching $3.00 for regular.

As for his performace at the Rose Garden press briefing his attempt to skew the numbers of Iraqi battalions upward is pretty lame. I guess you could say that there are potentially 1000 battalions available since if you count all the draft age Iraqi's, or you could count the ones who are just forming. But the generals on the Hill said it best and truthfully. There is only 1 battalion capable of independant operation, that is down from 3 in July. That is a very important number because it doesn't matter a cold damn about how many battalions are in the field if only 1 of them can act without US support. Since our goal here is to get out of Iraq and that can't happen, by the Presidents own words, until the Iraqis can step up for their own defense.

Bush speaking of knowing the "hart" of his nominee to the high court is of little confidence to many Americans since we are all sure he knew the hart of Michael Brown too. And putting a person on the high court who cannot think for herself and change her mind in the face of new information is also piss poor.

Yet Bush's enemies better be very careful since the big ugly machine will not go down quietly. Already it is going into election-year over drive with misinformation, lies, and glittering generalities galore.

Cronyism all over again

In another bold move for the bold President he nominated his own lawyer as a potential supremem court judge. That is exactly what this country needs a lady who gets on-the-job training as a supreme court judge.

Miss Meirs desribe your experience arguing before the court? Oh sorry we forgot that you never have.

Miss Meirs describe your experiences as a federal judge?
Oh sorry we forgot you never were one.

Miss Meirs describe your experiences as country judge?
Oh sorry we forgot you never were one.

Miss Meirs descibe your experience arguing before the Texas Supreme court.
Oh sorry we forgot you never have done that either.

Miss Meirs describe your decisions at the White House.
Oh sorry we forgot you are invoking attorney-client privilage.

Oh sorry we cannot confirm you......sorry..

Review of Serenity

Space is really small and filled with nasty people and things. And the planets resemble the Hollywood hills. This movie was, I think, slated to be a TV movie but got to go to the big screen and I am glad it did since the SCI-FI genre is in need of new material on the big screen. However it was clumpy pile of crap. Serenity was a mish-mash of old M.A.S.H locations, passible special effects, awful writing, a good plot...sort of, and actors who looked like they walked out of centeral casting on the SCI-FI channel.

The Universe of Deamon Smith and his cohorts is so superior to this shit that I really want to make a live action motion picture and make a 100 million dollars on it. Our story was no less grand than this one, more understandable and just as dramatic. What in the name of all that is holy are we doing sitting on this script when we could be making a big time real movie and on our way to being gozillionaires? Of course we won't do that because that would be risky, and we all don't think we could pull it off, and we are losers and deserving of being upstaged by lame piles of crap like Serenity.

It gets an overall 5 for the film. However our film gets a big fat "0" since it is not made and will not be made and will die with us and nobody will know about it.

The blogger here is trying to use "shame" as a method to galvanize support for Apes Must Live but he feels that it will not work for the people responsible for not using the talents they have contain no shame to be galvanized.

You will, all of you, one day be one of us!