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3/8/2002
The Daily Read
New info on the John Ashcroft vs. Deidra the Calico Cat battle royale cage match. Turns out that not all calico cats are female. Just most of them. That tiny percentage of male calicos are genetic mutant mules who cannot breed, thus proving once and for all that calico cats are the minions of Lucifer!
Gore Vidal - prophet, mad man. BTW, did you know that he didn't call McVeigh a hero, he called him a Henley hero, Henley being the author of the poem McVeigh read at his execution. The press, confused by the obscure reference, thought the crazed Vidal must be babbling, and so only included the 'hero' part in their stories.
I received a response from the local news program I wrote about in yesterday's Screed. They asked for my source for the story, and suggested that they might dig a little deeper, now that Pickering's nomination is on hold. So here's the source. Take note: when you have a problem with a report, complain to the reporter, not the management of the station or paper. It's the reporter's name that is on the report, not the editors, so it's his or her ass on the line. Editors couldn't care less.
Why is it being left up to George Will to lead the charge?
Must read - 17 Techniques for Truth Suppression.
Last night, I saw a report on NBC where they showed images taken by a Pentagon security camera of the moment the plane hit the Pentagon. I found this link to a Washington Post story. Be sure to check out the slide show. Here are some things to note: the date, no plane or parts of a plane are visible in any of the pics. The government has not acknowledged the legitimacy of these photos, so either they are a tremendous fake, or they weren't supposed to be released. The source of the explosion appears, to my untrained eye, to be a stationary object.
The Daily Screed
by Catherine Austin Fitts
How much has been stolen from you and your family during federal fiscal years 1998, 1999 and 2000? Stolen with the help of our congressional representatives and federal officials working with government contractors and companies like Enron. A report done by the Senate Governmental Affairs committee, as well as Congressman Horn's report card, document a list of agencies that were not able to produce reliable financial systems and/or audited financial systems.
How much does this cost you? Approximately 85% of your tax dollars goes to agencies that cannot properly account for the money they spend. Two of those agencies, the Department of Defense and Housing and Urban Development, have reported \\$3.3 trillion missing for fiscal 1998, 1999 and 2000. That works out to about \\$11,700 per US resident, based on an April 2000 census of 281,421,906.
The President's proposed budget for 2002 before the 9/11 increases proposed an amount of money for these agencies equal to \\$4,724 per California resident.
IF YOU LIVE IN TEXAS
IF YOU LIVE IN TENNESSEE
IF YOU LIVE IN PENNSYLVANIA
IF YOU LIVE IN NEW YORK
IF YOU LIVE IN MASSACHUSETTS
IF YOU LIVE IN MICHIGAN
IF YOU LIVE IN FLORIDA
IF YOU LIVE IN NORTH CAROLINA
IF YOU LIVE IN GEORGIA
IF YOU LIVE IN VIRGINIA
After all of this was reported, our congressional representatives voted significant increases for the DOD and HUD. It's time to hold your Congressional representatives accountable.
3/7/2002
The Daily Read
The man who decided who would be our president got his start by performing a western version of Jim Crow. In 1971, he lied about his past to Congress. Can you guess his name?
Molly Ivins delicately carves the meat from Frank Bruni's Ambling into History, revealing its undercooked, fleshless carcass. It reminds me of the advice given to the young reporter/star of the movie Almost Famous. The haggard old rock reporter warns the naive young kid - don't become friends with the band. Frank Bruni should have taken this advice - don't become friends with the bum.
This might look like a harmless tuft of legal grass, but there is a lion hiding behind it. Look at what the Justice Department is assigning itself control over - internet, software, telecommunications and entertainment. These are the messengers, and if you control the messengers, you control the message. Danger, danger! You have five minutes to evacuate.
Oops. Now it is dangerous to look like a criminal. Unofficial FBI policy - shoot first, ask questions later, then offer apologies and firm commitments to investigate. Meanwhile, this guy has no bottom jaw. I suppose he is lucky to be alive, if you think having no face is lucky.
Tommy Thompson - "This administration has absolutely no intention of abandoning those very important protections (minimum wage)." That is, today they have no intention. Yesterday, they had every intention. What is most remarkable about this administration is the way it defines backpeddling as a positive step forward, the shameless way they call factual reporting on their policy initiatives a misrepresentation of the facts, the way they can say Wednesday that they plan to do something, and Thursday say they never have had plans to do the very same thing. PS. What does the Secretary of Labor have to say about this?
I have a natural tendency to take anything Al Martin says with a grain of salt. Yesterday, he reported that Neighborhood Watch would be recruited into the War Against Terrorism. Today, the Washington Post reports the same thing. Danger, danger! You have three minutes to evacuate.
Why is it being left up to William Safire to lead the charge?
Jon Carroll obviously hasn't been clued in to the fact that fighting a ground war in an impoverished country doesn't exactly fill the coffers of the military industrial complex. We need a more sophisticated opponent, so that we can buy more sophisticated and expensive weapons with which to pummel him. Bullets are so last-war.
The Daily Screed
Tomorrow, I hope to print an article by Catharine Austin Fitts in this space. Ms. Fitts is investigating misappropriation of government funds - theft, as BartCop likes to say.
Last night, I saw a report on the local news concerning Democratic opposition to the nomination of Judge Charles Pickering to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. In the report, the news reader said that he was being opposed because of his anti-abortion stance and disagreement with certain aspects of the Voting Rights Act. The reader failed to report that the real reason Pickering's nomination is being opposed is because he secretly argued for prosecutors to go easy on a case he himself was trying. Not only that, he was arguing that they should go easy on a man who had burned a cross in front of, and fired shots into, the house of an interracial couple.
"I think the prosecution should go easy on my Klan brother," is the essence of Pickering's secret attempt to influence the manner in which prosecutors were trying a case before his very own bench. Which means that not only is he a racist sympathizer, he also tried to use the influence of his office in an unethical manner.
But if the local news doesn't report this, then people get the impression that Pickering is a principled conservative judge being maliciously targetted by blueblooded East Coast socialists. Since most people receive most of their information from the local news, this is a prime example of how the media is skewed to the right.
3/6/2002
The Daily Read
Say what? This is a candidate for the no-duh award, except I'd like to see a similar study done on caffeine. Down with the Coke cartel!
Yesterday, I wrote about my dream for peace in the Middle East. Today, we see the Bush dream for peace. This is an old link, dating back to the Clinton administration. The American media has forgotten how to perform the most basic preschool exercise - connecting the dots. This link will migrate to the war criminal record tomorrow.
The difference between leaders who lead, and those who react.
Nightline on the ropes. Why? Maybe because they reported 2.5 million dead in the Congo so we can have disposable cell phones and expensive diamond rings, or because they reported on an Oklahoma town poisoned by a mining industry, or any number of other things. God knows, in this our holy crusade against T-Rism, we can't have reporting like this. Visit the Nightline site and decide for yourself why ABC wants to drop one of the best investigative journalism shows still on television.
Reichsfuhrer Ridge says that arming pilots isn't a good idea. Why not? Most airline pilots are ex-military. They know how to handle a firearm. Could it be that they might get in the way of an officially sanctioned hijacking? After all, we must keep all our options open and think outside the box.
I wonder if, once they decide if this is a recession or not, they'll stop calling it the Clinton recession. If it isn't a recession, will Clinton still get credit for it, or will Bush? Just wondering. I also wonder if they've asked these folks if there is a recession.
Why has the White House been so careful with Cheney, keeping him safely stowed away in Aunt Edna's window seat command center? Because a Democrat is third in line of succession (read down). In case of a disaster, they have to keep Dick alive long enough to name a Republican VP. Can't let the Dems take over.
Bush proposes undercutting the wage market by flooding it with people who can legally be paid less than minimum wage. If he could, this man would bring back indentured servitude, especially for Mez'cans.
Dick Cheney, your mommy is calling.
The Daily Screed
Why is John Ashcroft afraid of calico cats? Everyone knows it is black cats that are the real servants of evil, right?
Wrong! It's quite simple, really. You see, all calico cats are female. If it is a calico, it is female. And since females are by God's decree the epitome of evil tempting men to folly with their naked aluminum breasts, then it stands to reason that any cat breed that is always born female simply MUST be the spawn of Satan. If all Rottweilers were male, wouldn't that tip you off to their hellish status (starring role in The Omen notwithstanding)?
So please stop making fun of the Attorney General for holding to discredited late 17th century religio-scientific theory. Science can't argue with common sense.
3/5/2002
The Daily Read
Hot cold fusion. Or is it? Notice that the one who disputes the claim is a government lab. Free energy would destroy the imbalance of power, so it musn't be allowed.
Did a plane hit the Pentagon in Sept. 11? Click here and pay particular attention to question number 7, look at the official photos taken immediately after the event, and ask yourself, so where is the impact?
Russian journalists, sick of being manipulated by the government and powerful media owners, plant to create their own media company. So if it can be done in Russia, why not in America?
Did you support a terrorist today?
"They are talking about fall. Presumably sometime before the election which, of course, is very interesting to everybody." What are 'they' talking about? Why, war with Iraq, silly! Those poll numbers are dropping, after all.
The winds of discontent are rustling the leaves of complacency.
The Daily Screed
Last night, I dreamed that I had lunch with Ehud Barak in the palace of King David. We sat on a portico that faced the setting sun, and the hills of Judea were gold and green.
We discussed peace. We tried to decide how best to bring peace to Israel, and this is what we learned:
As long as the terrorists who won Israel's independence from Great Britain are the ones still in power, as long as the ones who fought for Israel's survival in the sixties and seventies are in power, and as long as the ones who hijacked planes and Olympics in the seventies are in power, there will be no peace.
There can be no peace with Arafat. There can be no peace with Sharon. There can be no peace in a divided Israel and Palestine. There can be no peace as long as Israel conducts war against its own people. There can be no peace in a West Bank and Gaza connected by a fenced highway. There can be no peace as long as Israelis and Palestinians are separate but equal.
Peace depends on the rule of law. But there can be no rule of law in a divided Palestine with Palestinians as second-class citizens. Israel must be one nation, with a participatory government created by all its citizens. That means Israelis and Palestinians equally involved in the creation of government, that means the Israelis must be willing to lose an election to a Palestinian, it means Israelis must be willing to have a Palestinian president or prime minister, if that is how the election shakes out.
It means that the rule of law must be established and fairly administered. It means that Palestinians must trust in the rule of Israeli law, and that the Israelis must give them a reason to trust. It means that Israelis must trust in the rule of Palestinian law, and that Palestinians must give them a reason to trust.
The first step is to stop talking about a divided Palestine. The first step is to tear down the walls and the check points and extend to every Palestinian Israeli citizenship. Once this is done, terrorism becomes a crime and not an act of war. As the crime of an individual or group of individuals, it can be prosecuted individually and punished individually and the innocent bystander of today will not become the terrorist of tomorrow. Justice replaces retaliation. Peace eventually replaces chaos.
This was my dream, and likely it will remain a dream. Because none of this can happen so long as religion serves as the excuse for racism.
I'm one to talk, though, with America adopting the failed Israeli model of dealing with terrorism.
3/4/2002
The Daily Read
There is no avoiding the Sword of Damocles. I'm only paranoid because they're out to get me.
I felt a gentle shift in the journalistic landscape, five clicks to the left - click click click click click. No doubt these folks will soon be receiving concerned calls from the office of Mr. Rove.
Top Ten Conservative Idiots - Ari Wormtongue, Lott, DeLay, Scalia
The Daily Screed
The state of Tennessee is currently debating budgetary shortcomings. That sounds innocent enough, but what that means is that, for a state that consistently ranks near the bottom in education, lawmakers are discussing cutting education funds in order to balance the state budget.
That means that they will be laying off teachers and increasing class sizes by five students per class. Can you imagine being alone in a room with 37 third graders? It means that gifted students won't get special classes to challenge them. It also means that tuition at the local state university is expected to increase by 50%.
It means that the downward spiral will only continue. As education worsens, state conditions worsen. As state conditions worsen, jobs and people with the means to do so leave the state. Which means that fewer people are working and fewer taxes are being collected at the same time that more people are leaning on the state for support, while at the same time your wealthiest tax payers are taking their tax dollars to other states. Which means that the state has to get by on even less, which continues the downward spiral, which continues and continues.
There are some ways to correct this downward spiral. During the 90s, a booming economy provided budget surplusses. Despite the downward spiral tendencies, enough money came in to offset it. But rather than take advantage of the good times to set aside for the lean times, lawmakers prefered to believe that the good times would last forever. Rather than fix problems while they could be fixed, they chose to frolic in the easy dough.
Now that times are hard, there's no money to fix the problems. There's only enough money to make the problems worse.
We live in a cyclical economy. In Biblical times, people lived in a cyclical environment. There were times of plenty and times of lean. Smart rulers, kings revered by their people, set aside grain in times of plenty because they knew that a time of lean must surely come. But this simple wisdom seems to have been lost.
They also understood that a cycle, combined with downward pressure, creates a spiral. They knew that if they didn't collect enough grain to last through the lean times, then the time of plenty would be spent in recovery, thus reducing their ability to save for the next lean time - a downward spiral.
That's what is happening in Tennessee. The Clintonian time of plenty was spent recovering from the Bush time of lean. There were no resources left to prepare for the new Bush time of lean. And as usual, it isn't the generation in power that is suffering. They've got their check - how do you suppose people achieve power? It's the next generation that will have to try to check the downward spiral. The Clinton economy provided the longest economic boom in American history, but it wasn't enough to dig Tennessee out of the hole of the first Bush recession. What kind of economy will it take to dig us out of this one? Pie in the sky?
What brought about the mysterious downfall of the Mayan empire? Republicans.
Historical note: Last Wednesday (Feb 27) I missed mentioning the anniversary of the Reichtag Fire - Hitler's September 11th. Thank God elections weren't scheduled for October.
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