How to Act Around Sushi

A few brushup reminders when going to a sushi restaurant. Like never asking the sushi chef about his secret past. Or batting an eye when you are served endangered species. (Bad manners, don't you know..) And remembering to say 'toh-toh-toh-toh' while someone pours beer for you.

Secretary of State Powell's Chief of Staff

Alone among those who surrounded Mr. Powell in the first term, he is speaking out critically, assailing the president as amateurish, especially compared to the first President Bush, and describing the administration as secretive, inept and courting disaster at home and abroad. Nor has he spared his former boss, whom he says was overly preoccupied with "damage control" for policies set by others.

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made," Mr. Wilkerson said in a well-publicized speech at the New America Foundation in October. "And you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either," he added in the speech.

Mr. Wilkerson has also attacked the Bush administration for allegedly condoning torture and setting lax policies on treatment of detainees that led, he charges, to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the black eye they gave to the United States Army.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Beatles.

Ex-Nixon Administration Members Get it On

"That someone...Don,...It's you."
"What?"
"Yep," Cheney peeped, "I-I....I love you. ...There I fucking said it!" Cheney felt rather awkward saying it but he knew that's what he believed. Rumsfeld was speechless. He blushed a deep red and let out a faint laugh.

Cheney then looked up at Rumsfeld. His dark gaze leered at Rumsfeld, hypnotizing him to overcome a feeling of lust. A desire.
"Oh, Dick..." Rumsfeld nudged Cheney against a wall and stared deeper into his dark eyes. Rumsfeld couldn't help but touch Cheney's lips with his.

“Holy mackerel...that’s funny! I had a similar feeling about you!” Rumsfeld giggled as he kissed the side of Cheney's mouth hysterically. Rumsfeld let his tongue go for Cheney's ear.

Perpetual "War" for Indefinite Power

"The result is that the president's wartime powers, with its armies, battles, victories, and congressional declarations, now extend to the rhetorical "War on Terror": a war with no fronts, no boundaries, no opposing army, and -- most ominously -- no knowable "victory." Investigations, arrests and trials are not tools of war. But according to the Yoo memo, the president can define war however he chooses, and remain "at war" for as long as he chooses.

This is indefinite dictatorial power. And I don't use that term lightly; the very definition of a dictatorship is a system that puts a ruler above the law. In the weeks after 9/11, while America and the world were grieving, Bush built a legal rationale for a dictatorship. Then he immediately started using it to avoid the law."
------------
"This is not a partisan issue between Democrats and Republicans; it's a president unilaterally overriding the Fourth Amendment, Congress and the Supreme Court. Unchecked presidential power has nothing to do with how much you either love or hate George W. Bush. You have to imagine this power in the hands of the person you most don't want to see as president, whether it be Dick Cheney or Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michael Moore or Ann Coulter.

Laws are what give us security against the actions of the majority and the powerful. If we discard our constitutional protections against tyranny in an attempt to protect us from terrorism, we're all less safe as a result."

Eat My Shorts

An interesting approach to lowering alcohol levels.

Bush Violates Fourth Amendment

It was revealed today that court-appointed White House resident George W. Bush has been violating the Fourth Amendment since 2002 by "authorizing" the National Security Administration (NSA) to wiretap phone lines in the United States without a court order, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America which specifically prohibits illegal (non-court ordered) search and seizure by the United States government.

Many in the NSA refused to carry out this blatantly illegal and unconstitutional order to "search for terrorists". The chief judge of the 11 on the FISA surveillance court abruptly quit. My hat goes off to these defenders of a basic tenet of the Bill of Rights, while our purported Commander-in-Chief breaks the oath of office. How is this abuse of power different from McCarthy's tyrannical search for "Communists" at every corner? Did we learn nothing from J Edgar Hoover's blatantly illegal activities? Or Nixon's?

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was developed specifically as a response to Nixon using the NSA to spy on the American people. It's role is to emphasize the constitutionally mandated check by the judicial system on the executive branch by creating a court to review each case of surveillance including wiretapping for approval or rejection.

This is not at all ironic when you consider that Cheney, a former Nixon administration official (along with Rumsfeld) placed himself on the short list for Vice President. His most recent comment demonstrates both his pining for the Nixon administration-era power grab mentality, while also implying as an ex-Nixon employee that illegal wiretaps were probably his idea: "Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday called for "strong and robust" presidential powers, saying executive authority has eroded since the Watergate and Vietnam eras."

Fabio

Ok, did everyone already know about this except me? Fabio riding a rollercoaster and a bird flies into his face? And his publicist said "Oh my god! Think if his mouth was open!"

How did I miss this?

Plant a Seed

Talk to it, watch it grow. Online.

80's Commercials You Forgot About

China and the Rule of Law

I've long disliked the 'government' of China for one main reason - the concept that there is an elite that is 'better' and tells people what to do and justifies it, simultaneously blaming their actions on the people they are treating as individuals without humanity - while never looking at or discussing their own foibles. No one is better than anyone else. Period. I loathe all people that do this; especially politicians, and the fattest of them all: Karl "the Ass" Rove. He'll push any guilt/blame button he can think of while simultaneously repositioning himself as innocent to force any agenda through - simply because he has the power, and idiot judicially appointed clientele to do so.

Anyway - this fair and balanced article I thought was interesting - discussing the reality of the rule of law in-depth against the hypocrisy of the Chinese government. True successors of Deng Xiopeng - where have you gone?

Spock?

The Comic Adventures of Lethem & Chabon

Two vaguely (un)interesting authors that appeal to the Norman Mailer set team up as superheroes.

Chris Whitley, Wesley Willis, Daniel T. Johnston

Growing up I listened to Daniel T. Johnston in High School thanks to Adam - with a happy smirk. I could never figure out if his music was tongue-in-cheek or if he was truly nuts. After checking out a biography of him from the library I realized he was brilliant and insane - like Dali or Blake. Years later Kurt Cobain discovered him.

Wesley Willis certainly is one of these - and if you need an irreverent Christmas tome that will get you through the next few weeks (don't go to Wal-Mart - that will help quite a bit..) listen to 'Kris Kringle was a Car Thief' on this site. And then listen to everything else when you have time. Unfortunately Willis and Whitley are no longer with us, but their music is.

Mars Isn't Red

My theory has always been that both the Moon and Mars landings actually took place in New Mexico and Nevada. The pictures on this site only prove that a red filter has been intentionally used for pictures of Mars for decades.

And as we all know - repeat it with me - everything on the internet is TRUE...

Commercial

My favorite SNL commercial.

Worst. President. Ever.

Get your T-shirts and bumper stickers here!

Top 50 Independent Films

Top 50 of the only kind of films worth seeing.

British Word Usages Not Found in American English

balls-up*
error, mistake, snafu (this is commonly misinterpreted as referring to the testicles, however, it is in fact an old horseman's term referring to when the hooves get packed with snow)

Vintage Photography Archive

80's Arcade Sound Files

A Weird Animated Fable - You Know, For Kids

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Oil Drilling

The Senate voted today to drill for oil in the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge - 52-47. Fucking pricks.

Suprisingly Coleman voted against it, despite intense pressure from the Bush administration. Coleman, handpicked by the administration, followed by Wellstone's fatal biplane "accident", had said in his campaign that he'd vote against arctic oil drilling. (Though he's voted for plenty of other intensely fascist things like Real ID.)

What pisses me off more than anything is the Federal Government controverting decades of its own precedent going back to Teddy Roosevelt setting aside National Parks and Refuges. Apparently all it takes is a scum sucking company like Exxon (who already cost taxpayers 4.5 BILLION dollars in cleanup after their drunk tanker ship captain capsized the Valdez off the coast of Alaska) to make suggestions, and it's a done deal. The oil contingent has been aggressively trying to take over government since the Eisenhower administration. Even Nixon turned them down. But bitchwad Bush and his crony criminals are open for big business deals. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or not, if you don't think that the United States government is a discount store for multinational corporations, or an overpaying subsidizer of the military industrial complex to drain the treasury in order to blame anyone left in government that believes in investing in the country istelf - then don't vote for Neo-Con Airhead Republicans. Duh.

And here's the supposed benefit: TEN YEARS from now, with the amount that's drilled there, gas prices will reduce ONE CENT PER GALLON. This is worth it? It helps to have Vice Resident Darth Cheney and a Secretary of State who literally have Exxon tankers NAMED after them. What's next, Disney taking over Jellystone Park?

UPDATE: "The spending battle now heads to the House, where Republicans are divided over whether to cut more deeply across a broader range of social programs. Also, House GOP leaders may remove a provision that allows drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge....It appears increasingly likely that protests from moderates will force House GOP leaders to drop the oil drilling plan and revisit it in final compromise talks with the Senate."

Hitchcock

Hitchcock started making films in the silent movie era, working on 17 films before 1925 in the UK. He went on to make nine more silent films until his last silent and first sound films in 1929. He went on to make 15 more in Great Britain over the next 11 years until he hit Hollywood in 1940. From there he made 29 more films in the U.S. until his last in 1976.

Toonces Videos

Bob and Matt saw a cat at the Humane Society whose mouth was always partially open for some reason, so they took it home and named it Toonces.

It died a year later as I recall.