Supudubya
"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Tom Toles at The Washington Post -
The Reorganization of the CIA Is Now Complete 
- cartoon
commentary. Hahahahaha.
# 4o. del Tren - Supadubya - rap video, MP3, and lyrics, dissing Dubya big-time. Powerful stuff. Warning: strong language. Copied below is their "About this Track" screed. Apparently, this was recorded before the "election". [smith2004]
ABOUT "SUPA DUBYA"excerpt from the lyrics:
We're living in dangerous times. Dangerous because "the most powerful man on earth", as Americans like to call their president, has unleashed a protracted war against an abstract enemy upon this world. Justifying his regime's actions by claiming to rid the world of tyranny and a supposed fight against terrorism, Bush & Co. found in the events of September 11, 2001, the launching pad for their agenda of imperial expansion.
Almost immediately, the government set the propaganda machine in motion, wrapping itself in the flag and other nationalist symbols and taking refuge in the fear, confusion and anger that followed the terrorist attacks. They repeated over and over those buzzwords that made it so easy for most Americans to believe that what was beginning was in fact a righteous war against an evil enemy and not the beginning of what they had planned to do all along... long before the election was stolen in 2000, and certainly LONG before the twin towers collapsed. Mass media - in particular, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel - were a vital instrument in the carrying out of this task of propaganda. All those who opposed an invasion of Afghanistan (and later, of course, Iraq) were deemed anti-American, unpatriotic, or even worse... terrorist sympathizers.
Since the events of that day, the United States has inched ever closer to an Orwellian police state, in which citizens have been truly brainwashed into believing that this invasion serves a noble, even a holy purpose. What's even scarier, many of them, through the so-called Patriot Act and other measures adopted by the Bush regime, have been persuaded to surrender some of their civil liberties in the name of the so-called "war on terror". It wasn't until just over a year or so ago that serious questions about the intent and agenda of the Iraq occupation have been raised in the mainstream media, and the anti-Bush crowd began to become less a fringe movement of radical nuts and more the rational, objective and serious questioning of the decisions made and policies adopted by the current Administration. It had become impossible to remain quiet in the face of such blatant violations of international law and diplomacy, witnessing the unilaterals actions of a small group acting not in behalf of freedom, morality and democracy, but in the best interests of the corporate and military elite of the right-wing powers around the world.
With this track we have tried to put into perspective a glimpse of what the Bush/Cheney regime truly represents, and the means with which they have achieved their goals, as well as what we believe to be the truth in the alleged war on terror, its origins, its true motives and ends. Perhaps to some the lyrics of the song will seem extremist or radical. It might be especially difficult for some Americans to stomach; however, we believe that we truly have not exaggerated in our statements. We must be conscious and aware of the many different ways in which our perceptions and convictions are shaped. We must know our sources of information, whose interests they truly serve; and most of all, we must be aware of our own history and past as a species, so we may better understand what is currently going on and so we may have the capacity to put it into a perspective and not fall into the fatal error of limiting our memory to the here and now.
Yes indeed, we're living dangerous times. And it could get worse before it gets better if Bush/Cheney are not re-defeated this coming November. This is only the beginning in the expansionist agenda of the american right wing groups in power. It is vital that this veiled dictatorship be removed from office; not only for the sake of Americans, but for the sake of the entire world.
i'm the schoolyard bully, gimme your milk money and play my game
the only bastard on the planet gettin by on his fuckin last name
can't even pronounce nuclear missile, but i know how to pull the trigger
kick back and relax while the empire grows bigger and bigger
fuck genghis khan, fuck caesar, fuck alexander the great
i'm bigger than all those niggas, this is the perfect fascist state
don't mess with texas, motherfucker, don't mess with me or i'll blow your brains
i'm super duper dubya, this is my world and my game!!!
# Emily Yoffe at Slate - Guinea Get Your Gun: How I learned to love firearms. - Ms. Yoffe, as part of a "human guinea pig" project, learned to fire a shotgun, a revolver, and two semi-auto pistols, and had so much fun that her NPR-producer friend, who said earlier that she would never shoot a gun, gave it a try. Bravo! [scopeny]
# Mark Egan at Reuters - Veteran CBS News Anchor Dan Rather Resigns - I remember when Mr. Rather took the reigns from Walter Cronkite, who closed every news cast with "And that's the way it is on Wednesday, November twenty-fourth, two thousand four" (modulo that day's date).
When CBS called the state of Florida for Bush on election night, Rather said Democratic challenger John Kerry was "rapidly reaching the point where his back is to the wall and the bill collector is at the door."
Earlier, he had said, "This Florida race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex."
...
In a famous exchange with Richard Nixon, the embattled president asked Rather during a televised news briefing, "Are you running for something?" Rather shot back with, "No, Mr. President, are you?" Later, Rather began a question with, "I want to state this question with due respect for your office." Nixon retorted, "That would be unusual."
...
One CBS insider told Reuters the names most mentioned as likely replacements for Rather are CBS White House reporter John Roberts and "60 Minutes II" correspondent Scott Pelley.
# Mike Wasdin at Strike the Root - Libertarianism Is Immoral - not quite the correct title. The article is about how libertarianism is amoral, and why morality and legality, in a proper world, would have little correlation. [root]
There should be no victimless crimes at all. All crimes should be judged for what they are, crimes of trespass. If there is no trespass, there is no crime. This is really all crimes are anyway. Whenever you do something to someone else's property, you are trespassing. If you commit theft, assault, rape or murder, it is nothing more than a trespass. All laws should deal with trespass, and to what degree the trespass was.
I will admit there are problems with the libertarian philosophy. As with Walter Block's example, there will be times when you will have to make a non-libertarian choice, as with the example of the cabin. Even so, I still say it's a superior philosophy. If I was to steal someone's property because I was cold and hungry and would have died otherwise, it is still theft and I would need to be charged as such. It is never good to steal, even for a really good cause, but I would do it to survive. I would hope to be able to explain myself to the party in question, offering to re-pay them, but a crime would have nonetheless been committed.
# Perry de Havilland at Samizdata.net - A moment of utter clarity - why the fight against the British ban on Foxhunting with Dogs is important. It really has nothing to do with hunting. It's all about setting limits the power of the democratic mob. [samizdata]
Those who were marching against banning foxhunting completely miss the issues at stake here. The issue is not and never has been foxhunting but rather the acceptable limits of politics. And you cannot resolve that issue via the political system in Britain. It is only once the people who oppose the ban on foxhunting and the people who oppose the Civil Contingencies Act and the people who oppose the introduction of ID cards and data pooling all realise that these are NOT separate issues but the same issue will effective opposition be possible. And I fear that opposition will, at least until the 'facts on the ground' can be established, have to be via civil disobedience and other ways to make sections of this country ungovernable by whatever means prove effective. The solution does not lie in 'democracy' but rather by enough people across the country asserting their right to free association and non-politically mediated social interaction by refusing to obey the entirely democratic laws which come out of Westminster.
# I love Google Desktop Search. It indexed my 4600 Outlook messages yesterday in a couple of hours. It organizes email messages into threads. You get one entry in the search results for each thread, with a link on the number of results that leads to a page with one line per message. From each message, you can navigate to the next or previous message in the thread, in date order. It updated its index instantly, whenever I read or sent a new message. It also updated its index of files right away when I saved one. Unfortunately, it's Windoze only, so Macintosh & Linux users are SOL.
