If what you like is plenty of action, thrilling escapes sans verisimilitude, then ARGO is for you. It is a loosely based, highly contrived account of an incident in Iran that is not worth describing. You probably know what it is, anyway. Ben Affleck was in charge of falsities and he is entirely unapologetic. I…
Others
HOO DAT?
Pollsters do not directly ask responders who Joe Biden is but the best estimate on the basis of various questions is that roughly 50% know he is Vice President. That’s not so bad. Fewer have a clue about John Kerry or Chuck Hagel. Hegel is probably known by about 20-25%. Compared to these chaps, Hillary…
END OF THE SARAH ERA
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) took place in Washington, DC. Among other things, the event allows Republican activists to assess their putative presidential candidates. Ron Paul, a congressman and darling of the libertarian right, won a straw poll for the second consecutive year. Mitt Romney, considered an early front-runner for the nomination, came…
WHORES ON THE HILL
Compared to the congressmen who were giving him the third degree, Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, came across as a nice guy. Sure, he is really a dirty rat fink but the congressman present at the inquisition are rabies-infested dirty rat finks. They have only a few purposes and these do not include getting to…
SOMETHING FISHY IN THE STATE OF U.S./IRAN RELATIONSHIPS
Make of this what you will. The complete report, naming names and facts and figures may be found by CLICKING HERE. This report IS NOT CLASSIFIED and, like most government documents can be distributed at will. United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 May 4, 2010 The Honorable Joseph I. Lieberman Chairman The Honorable…
THE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA
Americans have never been famous for being the sharpest tools in the shed but things are getting ridiculous. 1. 50% of Americans believe it is right for the government to monitor phone calls and e-mails without court permission in order to fight terrorism. 2. 33% of Americans do not believe in global warming. 3. 36%…
BIG UGLY IS WATCHING YOU
Never mind Big Brother. Big Ugly is now on the job. From Ars Technica comes this frightening report. Christopher Soghoian, a graduate student at Indiana University’s School of Informatics and Computing, has made public an audio recording of Sprint/Nextel’s Electronic Surveillance Manager describing how his company has provided GPS location data about its wireless customers…
NO STATE IS AN ISLAND UNTO ITSELF
I am a constituent of Jennifer Granholm, surely one of the most competent governors in all the land. She works like a fiend trying to stem the collapse of the auto industry in Michigan. She is a great environmentalist, she tries hard to do something about health care, she has solid ideas about education and…
THE UGLY MAN WITH THE UGLY CHEST
In the last 3 or more years we have seen enough photos of Khalid Sheik Mohammed in the newspapers and on TV to be convinced he is uglier than King Kong – and much hairier, too. So, surely, he deserved the two years of heavy beatings and 183 waterboarding episodes he received. The American public…
THE RISE AND FALL OF INCOMPETENCE
In the recent history of the United States, no one coveting high office has been so clearly unqualified for the post she sought as was Sarah Palin. The announcement yesterday that she is stepping down from her post as governor of Alaska is great news for all persons who have principles or are not retarded.…
NEW MEANINGS FOR OLD WORDS
Plain people like to distinguish what the law is from what the law should be. In some circumstances, that is a real distinction but more often there is not. Great moral leaders like Henry Thoreau, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi almost got it right. They believed that when they were “violating” man-made law they…
CALL FOR THE REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GASES
The European Union has urged Japan and the United States to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 24 percent each by 2020 from 1990 levels in an attempt to ensure that developed countries pull their fair share in the fight against climate change. The EU figure could influence debate on Japan’s emissions reduction target for…
I HATE POLITICS
One good reason I hate politics is that politicians and those journalists who cover what we may quaintly call “their activities” are illiterate morons, and their abuse of language weighs heavily on me. Take the word “crisis”. Obama and others of his ilk like the word. So what? I like the words “black hole” but…
DIRT BAG POLITICS
By selecting Kirsten Gillebrand to replace Hillary C as a senator from NY, Governor David Paterson once again gave us reason to hate politics. Paterson, of whom nothing good could ever be said, began his Caroline Kennedy campaign by privately telling her she had the job but was only playing the game of “keeping up…
YOUR MONEY; THEIR (EXCUSE THE EXPRESSION) JOBS
November 24, 2008 Nobody asked you for your approval and nobody asked you for your input but several hundred thousand people are marching around with your money in their wallets. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has as its logo the following reassuring message: Ensuring that the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce. Glad,…
THE TOP TEN
November 12, 2008 Everybody wants to get in on the act. Do you know even one person who doesn’t enjoy making up his list of something or other? The 10 best movies of all time; the ten best of the week; the ten worst of the week; the ten most beautiful women in the world;…
GANGSTERS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
November 10, 2008 The following are excerpts from Peter VanDevelder’s article “Scoundrels and Scandal inside the Interior Department” published in High Country News on October 13, 2008. Link to it here for the full report + other articles. On Sept.10, Earl Devaney, the Interior Department’s Inspector General, released a report to Congress that documented —…
BALLOT PROPOSITIONS
November 5, 2008 Anti-choice issues [quaintly labeled "pro-life issues"] were raised in Colorado, South Dakota and California. In Colorado, with 28 percent of votes reported, 75 percent decided a fertilized egg was not a human person. In South Dakota, voters decided by 55 percent , with 70 percent of the vote reported, that legalized abortion…
Deficiencies in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
October 25, 2008 For decades, numerous federal reports have described serious weaknesses in US Dept. of Agriculture’s civil rights programs—in particular, in resolving discrimination complaints and providing minority farmers with access to programs. In 2002, Congress authorized the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (ASCR) at USDA to provide leadership for resolving these long-standing…
GAO, OUR WATCHDOG ON THE JOB
October 12, 2008 It’s really too much for ten men, much less an unpaid one person staff. The Government Accounting Office (GAO sends us reports everyday about its findings and they are quite long. They are good, too, but overwhelming.) Today, 151 came in and who could read even a fraction of them? Here is…
GAO, OUR WATCHDOG ON THE JOB
October 12, 2008 It’s really too much for ten men, much less an unpaid one person staff. The Government Accounting Office (GAO sends us reports everyday about its findings and they are quite long. They are good, too, but overwhelming.) Today, 151 came in and who could read even a fraction of them? Here is…
IS JOHN McCAIN A VIETNAM WAR LIAR?
August 16, 2008 ocregister Irvine, California. POW mate calls McCain ‘liar’ over ‘turncoat’ charge. Retired Marine colonel angered by candidate’s statements that he helped enemy while 2 were in Vietnamese prison camp. By MARTIN WISCKOL THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER Former Orange County Supervisor Edison Miller is lashing out at John McCain, saying the presidential candidate…
GAO REPORT ON CORPORATION TAX LIABILITY
August 13, 2008 The following information is provided by the GAO (Government Accounting Office.) [SG: By contacting the GAO you can obtain monthly or daily briefings by e-mail free of charge concerning taxes, homeland security, law and justice, national defense, and any other kind of activity the government engages in. You can also get FOIA…
THE WAR ON DRUGS
June 25, 2008 From Drugpolicy.com……………Everyone has a stake in ending the war on drugs. Whether you’re a parent concerned about protecting children from drug-related harm, a social justice advocate worried about racially disproportionate incarceration rates, an environmentalist seeking to protect the Amazon rainforest or a fiscally conservative taxpayer you have a stake in ending the…
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