Wu Shih - Nothing Special

2003-07-27T02:05:00.000-04:00

It has come to my attention that I owe this blog some stories.

I don't have any.

The bullshit is so deep you need wings to keep above it. Lying to the country about a blowjob is an impeachable offense but lying about a national threat is a buck that stops everywhere but in the Oval Office. Rich Conservatives are buying a Governorship in California, Hypocrite Supreme William Bennett makes the rounds of the talking head TV shows trying to rehabilitate his sullied reputation as arbiter of morals in America, and the national media does the Administrations PR work by showing pictures and video of dead bodies to show 'progress' in the War. Armed Forces stretched too thin around the world? Don't rethink the militarization of foreign policy, increase the size of the military! Civil rights and personal liberties infringed by Patriot Act I? How about even more repression with Patriot Act II! Democrats object to your midnight rewrite of a bill in committee? Call the Capitol Police when they try to regroup in the cafeteria next door and attempt to have them arrested!

I'm pissed off at the barely disguised Fascism that Republicans pass off as "Leadership", and even more pissed off at the Moron Majority of Americans whom don't notice or don't care. I fear the Bush Administration will allow a terrorist strike in the US so they can maintain the climate of fear, and will aid and/or abet the assassination of the Democratic Nominee for President if their "October Surprise" fails to materialize.

Osama has won. He has destroyed the America I grew up in, and his Weapon of Mass Destruction is George W. Bush.

2003-06-14T07:40:00.000-04:00

Fear and Loathing in the Fourth Reich,
or 'Who's in charge here?'

BRUSSELS -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld threatened to ban U.S. officials from visiting Belgium and withhold money for a new NATO headquarters if the country does not change a law that has allowed citizens to bring war-crime allegations against Gen. Tommy Franks and other top U.S. leaders.

Funny, I thought the President and the State Department made foreign policy, not the Secretary of War.

2003-06-08T03:24:00.000-04:00

Fear and Loathing in the Fourth Reich,
or "Another Santayana Moment"

[from the New York Times Thur. June 5th]
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, in five hours of testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, made his first public comments on a report from his inspector general that criticized the department's treatment of 762 illegal immigrants after Sept. 11. He said "we make no apologies" for holding suspects as long necessary to determine whether they had links to terrorism. In the end, none (!) of the 762 suspects were charged as terrorists. Democrats said they were particularly concerned about the report released on Monday by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general. The report found "significant problems" in the way the authorities arrested and treated hundreds of illegal immigrants as part of the Sept. 11 investigation. The report found that the authorities had made little effort to distinguish real terrorist suspects from those who became ensnared by chance in the investigation. Many suspects were jailed for months, often without being formally charged or given access to lawyers, and some inmates in Brooklyn were physically and verbally abused before they were cleared of any terrorist ties, the report said.

Obviously we have learned nothing from the round-ups of Japanese-Americans during World War II. What was recognized as a low point in American History is now being intentionally repeated in the name of 'National Security'. The nationalities have changed but the excuses remain the same. Which group of Hyphenated-Americans will be next to face a "Justice" Department round up? Liberal? French? Homosexual? Of all the hyphenated groups in America, Jews should be the most alarmed by this development in-as-much as they have the most recent experience with being a hated religion and the effects of runaway Nationalism. And if Jewish-Americans don't raise their voices in support of Muslim-Americans, then that implies a failure to learn from history and the only problem with The Holocaust was that it happened to the Jews and not somebody else.

2003-05-14T01:31:00.000-04:00

Fear and Loathing in the Fourth Reich,
or "The Tyrany of the Majority".

"We're just not going to negotiate with them. If we negotiate on this we'll be negotiating on every calendar, every bill, every day."
- Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick of the Texas Legislature, on the 51 Democrats whom fled Texas rather than Rubber-stamp a redistricting plan pushed by U.S. House Majority leader Tom DeLay (R - TX).
Craddick ordered police on Monday to track down the runaway legislators and return them to the House floor, forcibly if needed.
On Tuesday, plainclothes state police investigators nabbed Rep. Helen Giddings as she got into her car in Austin. "We picked her up outside of her apartment and we escorted her to the House chambers to the sergeant-at-arms," Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger said.

Wasn't Politics supposed to be the 'Art of the Compromise'? Since when did Politics involve Troopers, Arrest Warrants, and people being held against their will?
Oops, for a moment there I thought I was talking about America - Land of the Free. Is this what Emperor Bush II has planned for the rest of us?

2003-04-18T06:32:00.000-04:00

"Gunfight at the 40,000 foot Corral"
Has anybody else ever heard of the term "Explosive Decompression"? Has anybody else ever heard of the phrase "Closing The Barn Door After The Horse Has Escaped."?
(Why is Common Sense so uncommon?)

4/19/2003
Warning: Rant Modification!
I have been told by trusted sources that Explosive Decompression is a Hollywood fiction, and that most modern airliners can stand a bullet-sized hole without blowing up. (Despite the news of a Soviet-era cargo jet that lost it's rear cargo door over the Congo and a couple dozen people were sucked out to their deaths...)
OK.
I still don't like the idea of bullets passing through any of the avionics, computers, or hydraulics that line the walls, floor, and ceiling of a "Glass" cockpit.
And given the current inflation of the term "Hero" in the mainstream press, what Red-Blooded American Male isn't going to jump at the chance to play hero if somebody they find even remotely suspicious approaches the reinforced, locked from the inside, cockpit door (Like, maybe, the undercover Air Marshall?).
No, this is going to end badly when a cockpit voice recorder reveals a gunbattle between Testosterone poisoned Americans killed a planeload of people.

2003-04-15T04:21:00.000-04:00

"Operation Oil Company Freedom"
The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which helps enforce sanctions against terrorists, drug dealers and foreign countries - such as Cuba, Iran, Iraq and North Korea - charged Chevron/Texaco with trade violations in it's dealings with Saddam Hussein's government and the U.N. "Oil-for-Food" program. In order to quietly settle the government charges Chevron/Texaco paid fines totaling about $14,000.

That's all, $14,000. Barely enough money to buy a new car, as a fine against one of the largest oil companies in the world.

And you wonder why I'm such a cynical bastard...

2003-03-25T04:00:00.000-05:00

"Fear and Loathing in the Fourth Reich"
Or "Death of Freedom of the Press, Part 2"

NYSE Revokes Credentials for Al-Jazeera
By TERESA AGOVINO, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK - The Arab TV network Al-Jazeera said Monday two of it's reporters covering the New York Stock Exchange have had their credentials revoked because of the satellite station's coverage of the war in Iraq.
Exchange spokesman Ray Pellechia denied the station's war coverage was the cause. Citing "security reasons," he said the exchange had chosen to limit the number of broadcasters working at the lower Manhattan exchange since the war began, giving access only to networks that focus "on responsible business coverage."
Al-Jazeera said it got a letter from the exchange saying the number of accredited TV stations needed to be reduced. It said reporters Ammar al-Sankari and Ramzi Shiber had their credentials withdrawn. The network said the reason was "Al-Jazeera's coverage of the war on Iraq." It said it has covered the exchange for years and believes it is the only channel affected by the new curbs. Pellechia said other broadcasters had been refused accreditation or permission to increase their staff, but he declined to give examples.
U.S. military officials on Sunday criticized Al-Jazeera for carrying Iraqi TV footage of U.S. prisoners of war.
Al-Jazeera is based in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, which also hosts the U.S. military's Central Command for the region. The station has gained a reputation as an unusually independent voice in a region where many news media are government-controlled.
Ghazi Khankan of the Council on American-Islamic Relations decried the move, saying Al-Jazeera "is really one of the very few independent Arab media, and to cut them off is a loss to the stock exchange."
He said he understood the sensitivity of the footage of U.S. captives, "but I don't think this is the right thing to do in spite of the sad pictures."

2003-03-22T04:12:00.000-05:00

"Osama has won, 'Freedom of the Press' is dead"

AP Chief, US Senator Protest Package Seizure
Thu Mar 20, 3:20 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Associated Press President Louis D. Boccardi sent a letter Wednesday to the directors of the FBI and Customs bureau protesting the agencies' seizure of an unclassified FBI lab report mailed between two AP reporters.
The seizure "compromised AP's fundamental right to conduct its lawful newsgathering activities without government interference or intrusion," Boccardi wrote to FBI Director Robert Mueller and Robert Bonner, commissioner of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. Boccardi called the seizure improper and clandestine.
Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Finance Committee, also sent a harsh letter to the agency heads. "It appears the government may have overstepped its bounds by improperly seizing private property to censor and stymie the media," Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement. "The seizure of the AP's package without a warrant or notification is a very serious matter."
Grassley, also a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees the FBI, demanded an accounting of the matter by April 11.
Boccardi requested an investigation and "full explanation of how it happened and what steps are being taken to ensure that such interference with the press does not happen again."
Customs spokesman Dennis Murphy declined to comment. The FBI did not immediately return a call.
The package was sent last September from the AP bureau in Manila, Philippines, to the AP bureau in Washington. It contained an 8-year-old unclassified lab report that had been publicly disclosed in court documents in two separate cases, and a cover note from one AP reporter to another.
"That the package belonged to the press was apparent on its face," Boccardi said. FBI spokesman Doug Garrison has said the document contained sensitive information that should not have been made public. But Grassley said a review by his staff found "nothing that could compromise public safety or national security."
AP never was notified of the seizure as required by law, Boccardi said, and was given conflicting accounts of why the package was identified as one that needed extra scrutiny.
The lab report involved materials seized from an apartment in the Philippines rented by Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. A second package containing the same report sent from Manila to the AP bureau at the United Nations was not seized by Customs.
The packages were part of research being done by the AP's John Solomon and Jim Gomez for stories published in February about the government's concern prior to the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that federal buildings might be targeted by white supremacists.

Who knew that Osama's best weapon to destroy America was John Ashcroft?

2003-03-08T07:51:00.000-05:00

Sound Familiar?
"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 that 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." Hermann Goering

2003-03-08T07:34:00.000-05:00

Read this:
Getting Serious

and this:
Emminem and George W.

And then Visit Lexi's Site and thank her for finding them:
Lexicon

2003-03-05T03:01:00.000-05:00

"Ask not for whom the JackBoots stomp, they stomp for thee..."
Of course, after the arrival of nationwide bad publicity and tens of protesters begging to be arrested the next day, Crossgates and the Pyramid Corp want to drop all charges. Fortunately, it's not that simple since they accidentally got a lawyer stuck under their jackboots. Presumably had they picked out some other poor shmuck 'to make an example of' this little tale of corporate fascism might never have seen the light of day.
But the threat to fundamental freedoms remains because of a little known legal loophole: Your 'Freedom of Speech' doesn't exist on private property. Pyramid Corp owns the mall and can thus silence and/or eject anybody they want, for whatever reason they want, to 'protect' their customers. Obviously Pyramid Corp feels that one person's quiet expression of peace was a threat to hundreds of other customer's noisy and crowded shopping experience. Obviously Pyramid Corp feels that one person's non-violent opposition to War is a threat to hundreds of other customer's ability to buy "Gangsta Rap", play "Mortal Kombat", and see "Gangs of New York" or "Daredevil".
Obviously during times of "Wag the Dog" war, when 'National Security' is the excuse that justifies McCarthy-ite tactics, any individual whom dares express that individuality had better prepare for Fascism not only from the Public and the Government, but from the Corporations whom offer Public services and own the Public's Places as well.

2003-03-05T02:45:00.000-05:00

"Next, they'll be removing all the John Lennon from the record stores"
Man Arrested for Wearing Peace T-Shirt
By DAMITA CHAMBERS, Associated Press Writer
ALBANY, N.Y. - A man was charged with trespassing in a mall after he refused to take off a T-shirt that said "Peace on Earth" and "Give peace a chance."
Mall security approached Stephen Downs, 61, and his 31-year-old son, Roger, on Monday night after they were spotted wearing the T-shirts at Crossgates Mall in a suburb of Albany, the men said.
The two said they were asked to remove the shirts made at a store there, or leave the mall. They refused. The guards returned with a police officer who repeated the ultimatum. The son took his T-shirt off, but the father refused. "'I said, `All right then, arrest me if you have to,'" Downs said. "So that's what they did. They put the handcuffs on and took me away." Downs pleaded innocent to the charges Monday night. The New York Civil Liberties Union said it would help with his case if asked. Police Chief James Murley said his officers were just responding to a complaint by mall security. "We don't care what they have on their shirts, but they were asked to leave the property, and it's private property," Murley said. A mall spokeswoman did not return calls Tuesday seeking comment.
Monday's arrest came less than three months after about 20 peace activists wearing similar T-shirts were told to leave by mall security and police. There were no arrests then.

2003-02-20T01:42:00.000-05:00

"Next!"
You know, according to Bush II's twisted logic of "Either you're with us or against us", right after he finishes bombing Iraq, North Korea, and Iran back to the Stone Age, he's gonna send Air Force bombers over to France and Germany.
"But it's War! We can do any God-Damned thing we want in the name of National Security!"

2003-02-18T06:43:00.000-05:00

2003-02-01T13:16:00.000-05:00

STS-107
I'm having a very bad day.
I'm a Sci-Fi nerd with the good luck to be born at the same time as the Space Age. Star Trek and Nasa are as as basic to me as breathing and living. I saw Man both walk on the Moon and dream of the Stars that summer in 1969. I watched the first Space Shuttle rolled out (named Enterprise), and along with my geek friends in college watched the Challenger explode 17 years ago. We were stunned, we were silent (I was sick).
Today it happened again.
My geek friends are now engineers, scientists, and professors. Our newsgroup is buzzing with accounts of real-time tracking links going down and cellphones going off. Having seen footage of the Mir de-orbit a few years ago, we all knew exactly what we were seeing well before the reporters even dared speak.
We are stunned, we are silent, (I am sick).
But we still dream of the stars.

2003-01-15T05:22:00.000-05:00

Quality reading:
True Porn Clerk Stories
Blogging in the Dark

Links o' Weirdness:
Mystical Smoking Pipe of BOB
Stand up and Pee!
What Day is It?

2002-12-31T04:17:00.000-05:00

"End of the Ninth"
I killed somebody's friend the other day. I didn't want to, but I couldn't stop and now he's dead. It's not like I haven't had friends of my own go the same way, but still it hurts like hell. To explain myself let's set the WayBack Machine for 1970.
When I was young my family's house resembled Grand Central Station with brothers, friends, and pets swarming in and out constantly. (If my mother could have replaced the back door with a revolving one, she would've.) The backyard was fenced in enough to keep the dogs and smaller children safe, but an old country road that separated our neighborhood from some fields and woods beyond was a minimal hazard for us older kids. That slice of Nature across the road was a magnet for everybody, but the one who really liked it the most was Fosdick.
I'm not really sure why Mom named him that at first, but eventually he did earn the complete moniker from the Dick Tracy comic "Fearless Fosdick". He had all the usual antics such as sitting on the newspaper while you were reading it, sleeping in sunny patches on the dining room table, and standing on your chest if you were lying down and he wanted something. But what made "Foz" really special to us was his unusual ability to hunt down things much larger than himself. Over the years it became a running joke as to what would he have in his mouth when he ambled up to the back door wanting to be let in. Mice and Squirrels? Easy pick'ins. Full grown crows? Yep, fresh from Mother Nature behind our yard. One day he dragged in a still-twitching bird so large that it scared the hell out of all of us. In retrospect it may have been a young wild turkey, but back then we considered ourselves lucky that he got along with the family dogs.
Then one terrible night he dragged himself home, bloody and broken, to die with his human friends, and we knew that he'd been hit by a car. We buried him in the woods he loved, hugged his son "Fosdick Too", and consoled ourselves with the thought that if the car had been moving just a little slower, Foz would have brought home the rear bumper in his mouth.
Fast forward to the Present.
I'm driving down a residental street in town. Re-modeled Victorian houses on one side, fields and forests that trickle down to Lake Champlain on the other. It's early evening, rainy and dimming rapidly, when something runs out in front of my car. The wild animals I've had the misfortune to hit were all slow and dumb, but this isn't one of them. He's small, friendly, and on his way back from the slice of Nature across the street from his home. 30 years vanish in an instant and now I'm on the other side of the cold equations:
A car weighs around 3000 pounds, a cat weighs much, much less.
He's dead.
I feel like shit.
You let him out, you idiot, like we did.
I'm sorry.

2002-12-22T08:20:00.000-05:00

Worship, and/or The Bottom Line.
How many molestation victims will it take before the Church loses it's tax-free status? I mean, ostensibly the Church is granted tax-free status so that money collected can go to 'good works', but now it's going to pay lawyers, insurance premiums, and out of court settlements. Let's face it, the Church is a for-profit business that involves waving a flag labeled "God" and soliciting donations. It's not like all those priests, bishops, arch-bishops and cardinals actually fear a god they profess to believe in, or they would happily cooperate with investigations confident in the truth of their innocence. But cooperation isn't in the business plan, stonewalling and cover-ups are. If an Archdiocese files for bankruptcy, isn't that an open admission that their business model failed despite not having to pay any income or real estate taxes? How much more proof do you need?
The 'Wall of Separation' between Church and State is never more important than it is today inasmuch as underlings of the State have some fear of punishment for crimes committed, whilst the minions of the Church obviously have none. (Which begs the question how much of our federal tax money siphoned toward "Faith Based Initiatives" will end up as hush money paid to mistresses, children out of wedlock, and molested alter boys?)
When people talk about ending 'Corporate Welfare' Tax Breaks, they should also talk about ending 'Church Welfare' Tax Breaks as well.

2002-12-17T04:49:00.000-05:00

"A Lott of Trouble"
Figure I'd jump on the 'bash Lott' train before it left the station: I think what everybody's missing is the fact that he's said this stuff before. (Back in 1980 during Reagan's campaign) By using almost the exact same words last week as he did 22 years ago, the Senator from Mississippi disproves his claim that he was "Just winging it". The question that begs asking is has he not learned anything in the last 2 decades, or has he forgotten it? Does he really represent the views of his state, and if not is he even aware of them? Trent Lott's fitness to represent the majority of Republicans in the Senate depends on whether that party can live with his failure to learn from history, national and personal. His fitness to represent his constituents is just as questionable.

2002-12-16T03:42:00.000-05:00

"Nothin from nothin leaves nothin"
Actually it's nice to hear Billy Preston's little ditty more often than once a year on the local Fossil-rock station that plays relentlessly at work. I'd like to think that GM paid him a truckload of money to use his song, but it's more likely that they used some sort of legal trickery/extortion to get out of paying anything at all. (the idea of a major American corporation paying a truckload of money to anybody except it's own CEO is, well, practically Un-American) [please read the parenthetical line with the deepest of sarcasm]
I had hoped to keep this blog sarcasm free, and fill it with anecdotes from my life. The problem with that plan is that I don't have a life. I wake up at the crack of dusk, scuttle off to my job, return home around 2am and read stuff on my computer until the break of dawn. Then I climb into bed before I shrivel up due to exposure to daylight, and repeat the process ad nauseum. The evening hours and total lack of prestige regarding my job pretty much guarantee my unintended celibacy, thus the ad nauseum aspect of my existence. Outing myself as a Nerd to my co-workers (with those hours, I have no friends in the meat-world) means the continued lack of a social life and therefore, after a week and a half of nothing to write about, the only thing I can do with this blog is vent the spleen I had previously promised to keep internalized.
CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED!

2002-12-05T05:07:00.000-05:00

I'm not really sure what I'm doing here.
Supposedly all this free space is provided to attract eyeballs to the banners above. And there is a provision for paying money to get rid of that banner, however I have no intention of coughing up bucks for a blog that nobody reads. So it becomes a test of wills as to how long this stuff lasts, in what is essentially an ephemeral medium of magnetic media, electrons and photons, before another more entertaining blog takes its place. Until then I'm gonna try and avoid the usual spleen-venting associated with NorthEastern, Socially Challenged, Intellectually Challenging, Nerds such as myself. (unfortunately, I will probably slip up and hurl an occasional "Dang, I wish this thing had a SpellCheck function...") What WILL appear here is gonna be as much of a surprise to me as anybody.
And So It Goes.

2002-12-03T04:46:00.000-05:00

Subject: Pop-up stopper
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 05:26:20 -0500
From: jlwarner@together.net
To: fraud@corp.earthlink.net

I recently received an E-mailing touting the 'Pop-up stopper'.
I clicked on the link and got this error message:
http://www.earthlink.net/scripts/cookies2.js

I tried to reply through the E-ddress at the top of the mailing.
I got this in return:
> A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
> recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es)
> failed: subscriberbenefits@corp.earthlink.net

I tried the customer support page on your website.
I got this Error page:
http://support.earthlink.net/support/MYACCT/forms/error.jsp

I can't decide whether all this constitutes 'Fraud' or 'Spam'.
If this message reaches a live human instead of generating another error
message, could you tell me which it is?

And you wonder why I don't use E-Billing...
JLWarner

2002-11-25T01:39:00.000-05:00

This is a test.
Had this been an actual entry, I would have written something better than this.
This is only a test.