background noise eh?

So our Preznit thinks that Tom DeLay being indicted for his knowledge of illegal fund-raising, Rachel Dratch Harriet Miers' sabotaging her own nomination, Plamegate, oh yeah, and that pesky little war over in Iraq....and on-and-on is just "background noise". Well Monkey Boy, as you said the turrists could hear us a few years ago, the background noise is a bit louder to over 60% of Americans....

• Amazing to me that Rachel Dratch Harriet Miers has the nerve to simply, in response to a request for all information that she had which might have been requested by the Cheney administration in order to re-assure or otherwise inform groups about her credentials, use one word, and write "no". Really, does she think she's involved with a high-school debating society? This is the US Senate, and regardless of their honesty, or lack thereof, why you be so dismissive and curt? These are the people who will or will not assure you a lifetime position on the bench. I think she should stick to comedy. She's quite funny.



• Amazing the nerve of the Cheney administration in trying to spin everything. I mean, just how many people have to die in the administration's hands for them to say, "Yup, the military has a culture of abuse." Over 100 have died in the care of such a supposedly professional army. Really. And the fact that they make such an effort to spin conjures up the Shakespearean line, "thou doth protest too much". I mean, at what point does Scott McClellan just admit that everything, or at least all the most serious allegations are actually true? The fact that there have been so many scandals...do you really think that everyone/anyone believes anything that comes out of your mouth? It's also amazing that the administration doesn't just apologize. OK, at that point it would just appear insincere and would certainly annoy me, as did the IRA (and Protestant paramilitary groups') apologies that claimed they weren't interested in killing anyone but the military. Oh, well, glad to hear the bomb was supposed to discriminate. I'm sure that's very heartening to the families of the victims who were military/paramilitary members. Still, would it kill them (poor choice of words) to show a bit of empathy for once? Then again, as I've said, no one would really believe them. I know that basically anything they do, I question the motive and there is always some ulterior motive underlying what they do. So I guess they may as well continue Keeping Up Appearances and I'll keep scorning them.



• Another Conservative trashes Rice, the secrecy of the Cheney administration, its abuses etc. Terribly sad really to see what is happening to this country. And I still don't think we seen nothin' yet.



• Very sad news about our troops, and not terribly surprising. Still, this is the sort of news that is going to be more and more common as time goes on and our soldiers are forced to fight in increasingly stressful situations where their presence and involvement is not wanted. 1/4 of troops come home with some physical or mental problems. Do you know what sort of problem this will cause as a weight on our health-care budget and on the VA in the future? And that's not blaming these brave men and women. I don't blame them for serving and I appreciate their courage. There is financial incentive and obviously opportunities for a better life that motivates people, not to mention, of course, patriotism. But the physical, and even more serious, mental problems resulting from this incredibly ill-begotten war will be huge. Maybe the American people will see the real cost of war this time, and also, how and why it happens and whether it's really worth it. Also perhaps they'll see the importance of holding their leaders accountable. But obviously the effect on families for years and years is going to be huge as part of the fall-out from this war. Historical revisionism will run rampant and unscrupulous politicians of the future will blame feckless, shiftless vets whose homelessness, drug addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence, etc, was all oh-so-sad. They'll shift the blame onto poor people, the direction of whose lives will have been forever, and irreversibly, altered, during the....how long will we be in Iraq? 10 years? 12? 15? Lord only knows.



• As Eddie Izzard said about the gun lobby, (paraphrasing) they love to say that guns don't kill people, people kill people. But the guns help. You'd have to have a pretty bad heart for someone to turn and go __pow__ and you die right there. Yes, this is just what we need. Monkey Boy firming up his base. (Surely there are about eight dirty jokes in that sentence) So now the good ol' gun lobby, Wayne LaPierre, Moses, etc have ensured that gun manufacturers can't be sued in civil litigation by victims of gun violence. Ah, well it's good to know that apparently whether you get a gun or not is not indicative of your state of mind or the fact that it might be used to kill someone. Even if they're not used for violent crime, apparently it's just that one person is madder than another, it's nothing to do with the gun lobby. And I love how the story states that the law's backers are happy because it will keep them in business (not that the guns they make will be responsible for any deaths, no sirree; but they're glad to be able to make guns that will not be responsible for killing anyone). Seriously though, how do you totally exempt the gun industry? When the murderer is tried in court, or on Law & Order, I guess they'll have to curtail the interest on the weapon used in the murder because apparently, the weapon's not important. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. But guns help.



• That Wacky Liberal Media, item 1871. Damn that liberal media, damn socialists with their constant subsidization of poor lazy people and taking money from hard-working heirs and trust fund babies. Yeah, that NY Times with its constant pinko, Commie, profit-sharing Socialistic junk. Yeah, GE wants to share some of its weapons-making technologies with its competitors, ha ha. Yup, how can a Conservative get the word out with all those pinko, wacko, bleedin' heart libs around? Well, apparently, quite well. Seems Ed Schultz' radio show, which was to have begun airing on Monday on Armed Forces Radio, was cancelled the day it was to have begun running. And of course, not-at-all-coincidentally, who confirmed the cancellation? Allison Barber, the Pentagon official who rehearsed the US troops for Monkey Boy's informal discussion photo op with them. Schultz had been critical of her. So it was a total coincidence that she was the one to nix his radio show....of course.



• Oh yeah, and apparently we've invaded Syria too. Nice. Just wonderful. It really wouldn't surprise me with these psychos in government.



• OK, so a couple cartoons just to end on a (darkly) entertaining note. Dilbert, Ted Rall, and This Modern World, another This Modern World (this one truly very very ingenious and speaks to how blindly loyal some Republicans are to their "leaders"), and the 10/17 Slowpoke Comics.



• And I swear I'm not making this story up. I've been working for a temp agency recently and yesterday, four of us went to a nearby town in two cars, one of them mine, another belonging to Rod (names have been changed to protect-oh screw it, I wanted to change them). Well, Rod was low (real low) on gas and actually asked for a cash advance on his paycheck. They couldn't hook him up with that though so he hoped he'd make it back from where we were working (a fair distance). I had a tire in which the air pressure had dropped and I'd been meaning to fill it up. Well, the passenger in Rod's car, Carol was a big woman-probably 250 lbs. and maybe 5'2". So as we finish the job, I set out a short time ahead of Rod. But we stop to get a drink and be extorted get gas. So Ron and his passenger overtake us. So Tracy and I get back on the road and are heading back when she suddenly practically wakes the dead, yelling, "THEY'RE WALKING DOWN THE FREEWAY." My mind was in auto-pilot somewhere; I mean, it's not like you need to concentrate on the road on southern California freeways; so I'm not sure what she's talking about. But I figure it out just about right away and realize it's Ron and his big passenger. They've run out of gas and are walking to the exit. We pull up behind them and the big woman almost does a jig on the highway shoulder. So they get in and drive on a few minutes and all of a sudden the car starts fishtailing. Well, I don't have a big car, and really, fitting four people in it is a feat rarely attempted, let alone accomplished. So where has Carol been sitting? That's right, over the tire that had the low air pressure. Her size, combined with the fact my car can comfortably seat one, meant that when she sat over the wheel well, the air pressure in that tire finally threw up its hands and admitted it couldn't take it anymore. Anyway....it fishtailed a bit and then I stabilized it. We drove slowly down our exit and along city streets to get home. Still, hard to imagine a more eventful 15 minute drive back from work.