January 27th: A Very Important Date For More Than One Reason

I am happy to announce that on my birthday, January 27th, there will be a giant March on Washington to protest the Iraq War. Democrats.com boasts that it "will be the largest anti-war protest since the war began on 3/19/03." God, it's hard to believe that this war has been raging for nearly four years, all the more reason to protest.
For those of you willing to make the trek out to DC (good for you), here's the general info:
Assemble on the National Mall, between 3rd and 7th Streets, at 11 am.
Rally 11am-1pm.
March will kick off at 1pm.
There's really no reason not to be there. The march organizers have thought of everything:
Transportation
Ride Share
Housing
Maps & Logistics
Schedule of Events
And if you really, really can't make it, there's one other ways to help:
Sign the Petition to Congress
I hope everyone who reads this can go and that a huge stink gets raised. It's been four years! It's time for a change. It's really that simple.

They Take Our Children When We're Not Looking

Ah Bill Mahar. I met him once. He was somewhat arrogant, but in a good way. A guy that said what he felt, but wasn't rude on a more personal level, taking time to talk to everyone that had shown up to see him perform at Smith College. I gave the guy a copy of my zine, Chicago Pulp, which he gladly accepted, and then I invited him to my friend's birthday party, tempting him with free booze. Which he declined, saying, "I'm rich, I can pay for my drinks." Well, at least he's honest.

And honesty is the name of the game, even if it's tinged with a wicked wit. I particularly loved this piece which came out when Congressman Mark Foley's sexually explicit conversations with his young, male aides. Enjoy!

If you think the worst thing Congress doesn't protect young people from is Mark Foley, wake up and smell the burning planet.

The ice caps are cracking, the coral reefs are bleaching, and we're losing two species an hour. The birds have bird flu, the cows have mad cow, and our poisoned groundwater has turned spinach into a side dish of mass destruction.

Our schools are shooting galleries, our beaches are cancer wards, and under George W. Bush -- for the first time in 45 years -- our country's infant mortality rate actually went up.

Read the labels on your food. It turns out the healthiest thing you can put in your body is Mark Foley's penis. He was probably the first fruit those pages ever came into contact with that wasn't drenched in pesticide.

But that's America for you -- a red herring culture, always scared of the wrong things. The fact is, there are a lot of creepy middle-aged men out there lusting for your kids. They work for MTV, the pharmaceutical industry, McDonald's, Marlboro and K Street. And recently, there's been a rash of strangers making their way onto school campuses and targeting our children for death. They're called military recruiters.

More young Americans were crippled in Iraq last month than in any month in the past three years. And the scandal is that Mark Foley wants to show them a good time before they go?

When will our closeted gay congressmen learn? Our boys aren't for pleasure. They're for cannon fodder. They shouldn't be another notch on your bedpost. They should be a comma in Bush's war. If I hear a zipper, it had better be on a body bag.

Why aren't Democrats and the media hammering away every day about who we're supposed to be fighting for over there and what the plan is. Yes, Mark Foley was wrong to ask teenagers how long their penises were -- but at least someone on Capitol Hill was asking questions.

We're the predators. Because we have an entire economy built on asking young people what they want, making the cheapest, sleaziest form of it they'll accept, and selling it to them until they choke on it and die.

You know who's grabbing your kids at too young an age? Merck, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, by convincing you they're depressed, hyperactive or suffering from attention-deficit disorder and so they must all get medicated. The drug dealers hooking your kids aren't in South America, they're in the halls of Congress handing out campaign donations to your congressmen.

Mark Foley says he never slept with those kids, and I believe him, because American children are so hopped up on pills I doubt any of them could get it up.

From 1995 to 2002, the number of children prescribed antipsychotic drugs increased by over 400 percent. Either our children are going insane -- which we might look on as a problem -- or, more likely, we have, for profit, created a nation of little junkies. So stop already with the righteous moral indignation about predators -- this whole country is trying to get inside your kid's pants because that's where he keeps the money Daddy gave him to stay out of his hair.

I don't care if Mark Foley had been asking boys to describe their penises because I have some sad news for you: Your kid is so larded out on Cheetos and Yoo-hoo, he can't even see his penis. We live in a country where the ultimate consumer is an obese 16- year-old hooked up at one end to a Big Gulp and at the other to a PlayStation. So many of our kids today are fat drug addicts, it's almost as if Rush Limbaugh had had puppies.

In conclusion, we can pretend that the biggest threat to "our children" is some creep on the Internet, or we can admit it's Mom and Dad. When your son can't find France on a map, or touch his toes with his hands, or understand that the ads on TV are lying -- including the one in which the Marine turns into Lancelot -- then the person fucking him is you.

-- Bill Maher

YAHOO, what is it GOOD for?

In what is surely yet another attempt to outdo Google, Yahoo has created GoodSearch, a search engine that donates half of its revenue, averaging about a penny per search, to the charities the user designates. So some good may actually come of the Google-Yahoo wars. More than 22,000 charities and schools have signed to be part of GoodSearch, now if only the search engine worked.
When I tried to "yahoo" myself, this is the message I got:

Your search or request could not be completed due to unusually high volume.We thank you for your patience as we add more capacity.

Hmmmmm...

The Sluggish Move Left

The article below was written by Pat Buchanan.
"What the hell is something Pat Buchanan wrote doing on this website?" return readers might ask.
Well, it's simple, I think Patrick Buchanan, at the ripe old age of 68, may actually be coming to his senses. Although his website proudly proclaims "Patrick J. Buchanan, right from the beginning," good ol' Patty may be a moving closer to the left the closer he comes to "the end." He's been extremely critical of George Bush and the war in Iraq and now of Israel.
The following article was written in August, but it's relevance hasn't deminished. So read on and surprise yourself with Buchanan's rational thinking and humanity, but before hailing him as the next great liberal convert, remember that he also wrote the following in his newest book "State of Emergency":

With perhaps 4 million illegal aliens having broken in in Bush’s five-and-a-half years in office, and our border states being daily breached by thousands more, can anyone say President Bush has protected the states of this Union against that invasion? In an earlier America, this dereliction of constitutional duty would have called forth articles of impeachment.

After reading that crap, I think we should end on a more positive note by reading some of the author's more enlightened commentary:

August 1, 2006
The Moral Culpability for Qana
by Patrick J. Buchanan
"Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hezbollah," roared Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon on July 27.

"Every village from which a Katyusha is fired must be destroyed,"bellowed an Israeli general in a quote bannered by the nation's largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.
The Israeli paper then summarized what the justice minister andgeneral were saying: "In other words, a village from which rocketsare fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire." That was Thursday.
Sunday, in Qana, 57 of Haim Ramon's "terrorists," 37 of themchildren, were massacred with precision-guided bombs. Apparently,Katyushas had been fired from Qana, near the destroyed building.
"One who goes to sleep with rockets shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't wake up in the morning," said Israel's ambassador to theUnited Nations, Dan Gillerman.
Today, we hear unctuous statements about how Israel takes pains to avoid civilian casualties, drops leaflets to warn civilians to fleetarget areas, and conforms to all the rules of civilized warfare.
But Israel's words and deeds contradict her propaganda. As the warbegan, Ehud Olmert accused Lebanon, which had condemned Hezbollah for the killing and capture of the Israeli soldiers, of an "act of war."Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz publicly threatened "to turnback the clock in Lebanon by 20 years."
Gillerman, at a pro-Israel rally in New York, thundered, "[T]o those countries who claim that we are using disproportionate force, I haveonly this to say: You're damn right we are."
"His comments drew wild applause," said the Jerusalem Post.
Though Israel is dissembling now, Gillerman spoke the truth then. No sooner had Hezbollah taken the two Israeli soldiers hostage thanIsrael unleashed an air war – on Lebanon. The Beirut airport wasbombed, its fuel storage tanks set ablaze. The coast was blockaded.Power plants, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, roads, trucks, and buses were all hit with air strikes.
Within 48 hours, it was apparent Israel was exploiting Hezbollah'sattack to execute a preconceived military plan to destroy Lebanon –i.e., the collective punishment of a people and nation for the crimes of a renegade militia they could not control. It was the moralequivalent of a municipal police going berserk, shooting, killing,and ravaging an African-American community, because Black Panthershad ambushed and killed cops.
If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, bywhich Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what canthat term mean? There are 600 civilian dead in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, a ratio of 30-1, though Hezbollah is firing unguided rockets, while Israel is using precision-guided munitions.
Thousands of Lebanese civilians are injured. Perhaps 800,000 are homeless.
Yet, whatever one thinks of the morality of what Israel is doing, the stupidity is paralyzing. Instead of maintaining the moral andpolitical high ground it had – when even Egypt, Saudi Arabia, andJordan were condemning Hezbollah, and privately hoping Israel wouldinflict a humiliating defeat on Nasrallah – Israel launched an air war on an innocent people. Now, 87 percent of Lebanese backHezbollah, and the entire Arab and Islamic world, Shia and Sunnialike, is rallying behind Nasrallah.
And how does one defend the behavior of the United States?
When Gillerman was exulting in the disproportionality of Israel'sattack on Lebanon, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton was smiling smuglybeside him. When the UN Security Council tabled a resolutioncondemning Hezbollah's igniting of the war and Katyusha attacks, but also the excesses of Israel's reprisals, U.S. Ambassador John Boltonvetoed it. When a few congressmen sought to moderate a pro-Israeliresolution by adding words urging "all sides to protect innocent lifeand infrastructure," GOP leader John Boehner ordered the words takendown.
Why? Because, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, hadprepared the resolution and wanted it passed the way they wrote it. Our Knesset complied. It sailed through the House 410-8.
For two weeks, Bush seemed unable to find a word of criticism forwhat our friends in Israel were doing to our friends in Lebanon. Hepublicly sent more bombs to Israel. He and Condi emphasized that America did not want a cease-fire – yet.
And because America provides Israel with the bombs it uses onLebanon, and we refused to restrain the Israelis, and we opposedevery effort for a cease-fire before Sunday, America shares full moral and political responsibility for the massacre at Qana.
Rubbing our noses in our own cravenness, "Bibi" Netanyahu took timeout, a week ago, from his daily appearances on American television,denouncing terrorism, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of theterror attack on the King David Hotel by Menachem Begin's Irgun, anattack that killed 92 people, among them British nurses.
This was not a terrorist act, Bibi explained, because Irgun telephoned a 15-minute warning to the hotel before the bombs wentoff. Right. And those children in that basement in Qana should nothave ignored the Israeli leaflets warning them to clear out ofsouthern Lebanon.
Our Israeli friends appear to be playing us for fools.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Who needs the Net and who's getting it

The Internet is an increasingly powerful tool in our world. Not only does it simplify communication and provide us with hours of entertainment, but it's also a limitless fountain of information in a world where it seems like governments, politicians and big business are trying to limit the amount of information the public has access too. That's why it's important that people everywhere have unlimited access to the Internet. However, in the United States millions of households don't have Internet access.

In the end, I think that access to the Internet comes right down to economics. Computer companies and Internet providers don't offer packages cheap enough for welfare mothers to give provide their children with unlimited access. And why would providers assume the bother and the cost of installing ADSL lines in rural areas and small cities when their profit margins won't be nearly as cushy as if they install cabling in large cities. So essentially, if you're poor or live in a less densely populated area, you aren't going to have the same access to news, cheaper forms of communication and ideas that vary from the mainstream as the urban upper middle class, the people who are already pretty much calling the shots.

It's also interesting to take into account that the US is not the global leader in high speed Internet access. According to the Communication Workers of America, "The U.S. doesn't even fall in the top ten; we rank behind Great Britain, Spain, Canada, Japan, France and even Mexico, with an economy less than one third the size of ours."

What this signals is that our government isn't spending enough on telecommunications development and access for all. Maybe Bush should start shifting some of those oil subsidies over to the telecom industry. After all, oil will be obsolete within a few years with the development of electric, solar and natural gas powered cars, but the telecom just keeps on evolving.

"Consumers are charged more for slower speeds" in the US, explains CWA. "We rank #16 in the world: behind countries that range from Sweden to South Korea."

If you want to find out if the Internet access in your neighborhood is up to par, test it at Speedmatters.org.

The Unspoken Double Standard

HeeHeeHee