BunkBlog

Kyoto Accords go into effect today.

bq. Kyoto comes into force 90 days after Russia’s approval, ensuring the required threshold was met for ratification by countries accounting for 55 percent of emissions. The U.S., the world’s largest producer of the gases, hasn’t accepted the pact.

Finished downloading the BitTorrent of Eyes on the Prize this weekend, and just got around to looking at moving it to a DVD to watch on TV. I guess I should make that two DVDs – it’s over three hours long. Wow.

The genesis of the recent civil uprising against copyright law is interesting to me; too bad it hasn’t made any impact at all on the wholly owned subsidiary of the entertainment industry we call the U.S. Congress. Why in the world does it make sense for a movie to be considered legitimate for 20 years, and then suddenly it’s breaking the law? What twisted mentality takes “the most important civil rights film” and turns it into something that school children are not allowed to view without someone bootlegging it? It’s messed up.

Recently, a group of civil rights leaders posted an open letter supporting this civil disobedience masquerading as piracy. I find it disheartening that the estate of Martin Luther King, Jr is among those who object to distributing this movie. Way to honor his memory, guys.

Free your mind.

At work today, one of my cow-orkers referred to Ellen Degenerate and the oh-so-amusing PIAPS(Pig in a pant suit) aka Senator Clinton, in the space of a few minutes. Why are the folks on the Right still feeling so marginalized that they lash out with such vitriol at the various people they believe personify the evil which is Liberalism? You know that a small cadre of pundits spends hours every day coming up with new slurs and epithets to hurl at the people of the Left, because the way that so many people suddenly come up with identical witticisms is a bit . . . hard to believe. I know the Ellen Degeneres slur came from Jerry Falwell, a man who is living in a glass house of his own. I presume the PIAPS moniker is from Rush (the drug abuser) or G Gordon Liddy (the convicted felon), but I’m not 100% certain of that.

Why does the GOP believe itself to be under siege? Why are Republicans convinced that they are the underdogs? They own a huge chunk of the American business landscape, and all three branches of the federal government. Hey, ya know what? When you run the country, you can stop pretending to be the minority. K? A’ight.

Vice President Cheney, Mr. Chief Justice, President Carter, President Bush, President Clinton, reverend clergy, distinguished guests, fellow citizens:

On this day, prescribed by law and marked by ceremony, we celebrate the durable wisdom of our Constitution, and recall the deep commitments that unite our country. I am grateful for the honor of this hour, mindful of the consequential times in which we live, and determined to fulfill the oath that I have sworn and you have witnessed.
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Iran’s Defense Minister says Iran can block any attack by the U.S.

bq. “We are able to say that we have strength such that no country can attack us because they do not have precise information about our military capabilities due to our ability to implement flexible strategies,” the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Shamkhani as saying.

Um, yeah. Right. Heard of satellite imagery?

The Economics Editor at the National Review says the U.S. deficit is shrinking.

He’s right. The deficit is shrinking. That does not mean the debt is shrinking. Deficit means, “how much more in the hole we’re going to be at the end of 2005 compared to the end of 2004.” So, good news! Last year the U.S. added an extra 413 billion (that’s 9 zeros) to your debt. This year, the fine stewards of your tax dollars only plan to add 355 billion (still 9 zeros) to the unfathomable burden we’re passing on to future generations. Great news. Fantastic.

Christian missionaries refuse to feed hungry.

bq. The charity is “now asking us to follow the Christian religion. We are staunch followers of Hindu religion and refused their request. And after that these people with their aid materials are leaving the village without distributing that to us,” said a villager.

Here’s a touching story….
CNN.com – Police: Girl died after mother forced her to drink bleach – Jan 14, 2005

The 12-year-old girl had sex, so mom forced her to drink bleach then held her down until she died. Go mom! That’ll teach her to not have sex.

Most recently finished book – L.E. Modesitt’s The Ethos Effect.

Although I usually like Modesitt’s science fiction, this one was written a bit differently. I guess I’m just noticing the Tom Swifties too much or something.

Anyway, throwing out the sometimes leaden dialog, the ideas of this Parafaith War sequel are interesting. One of the things SF excels at is showing us extremes of contemporary situations so we can see them from a different viewpoint. Things in this one that you may have heard about in recent years in real life: racial profiling, incarceration without trial or charges, religious fundamentalists driving bad government decisions, and military actions with no apparent logic behind them.

Don’t eat processed meats – it’ll kill ya.

Olive oil is good for you. Like you didn’t know that, right?

Good thing we use lots of olive oil in our cooking already. Like in the frittata and foccacia we made for dinner last night. 🙂

Reuters has a wire story about a proposed final solution to the terrorist detention problem.

The Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask the U.S. Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence.

Um, if they’re never going to trial, doesn’t that mean they’re … presumed innocent? I guess that pesky Constitution has been thrown out permanently. Another part of this proposal is to give the prisoners to Afghanistan and other “partner” countries, which all seem to have a distressingly poor record of human rights abuse. Go, USA!

I love how the SecDef is able to twist things so he sounds like he’s on top of stuff.

bq. I have directed that in the future I sign each letter.

Um, who is he directing? Apparently he needs to tell himself to do things. The voices need to be assuaged somehow.

Some worry evolution dispute hurts image

bq. “I think the (evolution) theory is atheistic. And it’s all that’s presented. It’s an insult to their intelligence that they’re only taught evolution,” said Marjorie Rogers, the parent who first complained about the biology texts.

Um, yeah. All science is atheistic. That is, it is completely unrelated to religion or theology. That’s not to say it is anti-religion, just unconcerned with it. That’s what the “a” in front of “theistic” means.

Although the Yahoo version of this story has been edited to remove this quote, other news sources, such as the BBC, have yet to bow to the pressure to make the U.S. military commanders look less nuts.

bq. “The enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we’re going to destroy him.” – Lt Col Gareth Brandl

Oooookay. Satan lives in Fallujah. Suppose he has a nice garden or something?

Barack Obama faces high expectations after resounding Senate victory. I’m sure he does. Why does it sadden me to find out that he’s only the fifth black U.S. Senator in the history of this country?

How many Senators have been elected to first terms in the past 140 years? What a ratio…

OK, if you don’t think it’s disturbing that Bin Laden is thanking the President for screwing up and helping out the cause of international terrorism, maybe you’ve been listening to too much Rush Limbaugh.

Realizing that the military (and veterans groups) leans about 70% Republican, you’d think I’d get used to the insane drivel that spews from them on a daily basis.

The offtopic chat room, after ten minutes of lurking, has already managed to annoy the piss out of me this morning. I don’t even know what the context is, but at least three (of eight) members of the room have comisserated about how horrible the New York Times is, that liberal media mouthpiece. I guess they forgot how the Times was used as the unofficial news outlet for every lie told by Ahmed Chalabi about the inevitability of finding WMDs in Iraq, or the various other ways that paper held up the Bush Doctrine of preemptive warfare as a good thing. These are the same people who use Rush Limbaugh the druguser and G. Gordon Liddy the convicted felon as news sources. How can any reasonably intelligent person (all M.I. guys here) actually believe that there is a liberal media, when Fox News is the highest-rated news channel and Air America is struggling to survive amid the Rush and Liddy radio waves?

I don’t like people who mindlessly parrot viewpoints formulated by wiser heads. I don’t like people who can hold such wildly contradictory beliefs to be self-evident as, “Bush is good for the country and he lowered my taxes.” Does anyone think that we can keep going with trillions of dollars in debt, while continuing to dig deeper? Hell, Cuba has told its citizens to stop using dollars. When our money isn’t even any good in that broke-ass country, what does that tell you about our economy?

Karl Rove and friends have done a fantastic job of snookering the American people. Many undecided voters (how can it be a week from Election Day and you be undecided?) are going to vote based on whether they think Dubya or Flippy is the more honest or agrees with their views on gay rights. Who gives a shit what your neighbor does in his bedroom? All I care about is what the impact on my bottom line is from the government. If I notice the inconveniences imposed by a shrinking set of civil liberties, that is a big deal to me. If I notice that my income is shrinking because of the government’s actions, that is a big deal to me. Social issues like abortion and gay rights are not the job of the government anyway, so how the candidate feels about each issue is completely irrelevent. Or it would be irrelevent in a sane world. We live in Bizarroworld.

Mtzlplk lives.

Bush campaign creating lists of black voters in Florida, to challenge them en masse on election day. This type of intimidation is probably not legal, say experts. This seems unlikely to stop it from happening, of course.

While chatting in the “off topic” room at work today, one of the morons participants mentioned how laws are made, not by the President, but by Congress and activist judges. I objected to the adjective before “judges” since they are judges, whether appointed or elected, and the term has become one of derision used by the neocon nutjobs.

When pressed, he averred that judges were making law, in contradiction to the wishes of the electorate and the legislature.

Landmark Supreme Court Cases is a good reference.

I mentioned that Brown v. Board of Education was just such an event, and does this mean that we should have kept segregation in schools because the electorate and the legislature wanted it?

Response: If I say yes I’m a racist biggot (sic), if no then I’m inconsistant (sic).

Yep. Don’t want to be a flipflopper, do you? Or a good speller. 🙂