I'm Okay -- I'm Just Taking a Break

For all of the teeming millions of you out there who dote on their daily dose of One Pissed Off Veteran, don't worry. I'm just taking a short break while I finish up some other projects that have been hanging fire.

I'll be back soon.

--The F Man

Some Saturday Fun Stuff

I am sumultaneously a devotee of classical music and a fan of street performers. So it's with great satisfaction that I present this video, which combines the two of them:

Glasses Concerto

Enjoy.

Non-Theists Are Also Americans

All but lost in President Obama's (jeez, I love saying that!) inaugural address was this line:

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers. [emphasis added]

Maybe it's just me, but I really can't recall another incident in which a high-power politician even bothered to acknowledge that we are out here.

As skeptical as I am about most things, I can't help but think that -- given that President Obama's speech was carefully constructed, deliberately worded and expertly delivered -- this signals some kind of major shift in the wind, a sea change (or whatever hackneyed cliché you want to apply) in the way that we non-theists (atheists, agnostics, skeptics, humanists, etc) will be viewed in the future.

Yeah, okay. I'm a dreamer. Give me a break... But I'm hoping that this really is a change we can believe in, and that those of us out here in Skeptic Land won't have to feel like second-class citizens any longer.

Because I Just Can't Help Myself

Jesus, the dumb fuck isn't even on the ground in Texas yet and I already miss him.

So do a lot of people in the world:

The Sydney Morning Herald complained about Bush's "singular lack of curiosity in international matters" in an editorial titled "Farewell to a flawed and unpopular commander-in-chief."
...
Le Monde: "It's hard to find a historian who won't say that Bush was the most catastrophic leader the U.S. has ever known," the French daily wrote. "One success: since September 11, 2001, there was no attack on U.S. soil. But this sits alongside an interminable list of failures, starting with the war in Iraq."
...
"Bush leaves a country and an economy in tatters," wrote the Sunday Times in London. It said America's national debt and unemployment nearly doubled on his watch.

Buh-bye Mister pResident. So long it's been good to know ya -- NOT!

Well, That Didn't Take Long

I'm talking about how John Roberts fucked up the presidential oath and stumbled around in it. I knew at the time that the wingnuttery would pounce on that like flies on shit. They couldn't get any traction with the phony birth certificate non-story, so sure enough, now Chris Wallace over at Faux News just busted his butt to be the first on the air with, "Well, again, we're wondering here whether or not Barack Obama in fact is the president of the United States."

Well, wonder away, Chrissy-Boy. You fuckers just can't let it rest, can you?

Memo to Faux News and the rest of the wingnuts out there who just can't stand that Barack Hussein Obama is now your president, too: There's a quaint little document called the Constitution of the United States, and if you ever bothered to actually read it, you'd find something called the 20th Amendment, ratified way back in 1933:

1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin [emphasis added] ...

So there you go. Even though the constitution specifies the wording of the presidential oath ("I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" -- BTW, note that there is no "so help me god" in there anywhere), the simple fact that the clock on the East Coast ticked past noon meant that Obama was automatically president. Period. End of story.

Except it won't be the end of the story. Fatboy Drug Addict Rush Limbaugh and Slanthead Hannity are sure to be pumping this non-event for all it's worth (which is less than nothing, but that won't stop them).

Oh, and little Chrissy-Boy also rhetorically speculated that, "It's just conceivable that this will end up going to the courts."

Just conceivable? Yeah, on the planetoid Pluto, maybe. And what would John Roberts do if that case every happened to come before the Supremes? Agree with the so-called plaintiffs (whoever they might be) that he fucked up and Obama isn't president?

Uh-huh.

The New Coinage

Just in time, before the last gasp of the BFEE in office, here's your chance to collect some pocket-change pieces of history:

[Edit 1-20-09: I just couldn't make this embed work without it playing automatically, which got to be a major annoyance every time I reloaded the page. So here's the link where you can see it in its own window.]

I'm glad I stumbled on this over at The Candid Blogger, before it was too late.

Thanks, CB!

The 40 "Know Bush" Facts from 2004

Over at OpEdNews, Barbara Bellows-TerraNova has a lengthy and detailed series dating from 2004 about the then-future legacy of Der Monkey Fuehrer, A Legacy Review: My Original 40 'Know Bush' Facts from 2004, (Part One, Part Two -- Part Three is inexplicably missing -- and Part Four) that is well worth the time it will take to read the whole thing.

Excerpts:

Former FBI Deputy Director John O'Neill was in charge of the investigations into:
• the bin Laden-connected bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993
• the destruction of an American troop barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996
• the African Embassy bombings in 1998, and
• the attack upon the USS Cole in 2000 . . .
told French researchers in the summer of 2001, "The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it...All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia."
In a tragic irony, O'Neill quit the FBI two weeks before 9/11 in disgust over the Bush Administration's refusal to investigate Saudi ties to Al Qaeda and went to work as head of security at the World Trade Center, where he was killed in the attack.
. . .
Three weeks after the 2000 election, while the results were still up in the air, Greg Palast, an American reporter for the BBC and the Guardian of London, reported that in the months leading up to the November 2000 balloting, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (who was also George Bush's Florida campaign manager), in coordination with Governor Jeb Bush (George's brother), ordered local elections supervisors to purge 57,700 names from voter registries.
These names were removed because they were supposedly felons who, according to Florida law, may not vote. However, in review, 90.2% of the voters purged from this list were innocent. Their names were listed in error, and never verified. It should be noted that 54% were Black and Hispanic voters, and 90% were Democrat.
Remember, Bush supposedly won Florida, and thus the country, by only 537 votes.

If the continual paging forward on the OpEdNews site annoys you, you can always go to Barbara's blog, Know More, and read the whole thing on one page. Plus there you can read the mysteriously missing Part Three (Facts #27 through #34, which includes Fact #30, an exposé of the "Republican Riot" at the Florida's Dade County elections office in late 2000).

All of these facts are verified and validated truths. But that doesn't mean that the CPM* was going to report on them, neither at the time nor now. No, they're too busy being lapdogs to the BFEE in its pathetic attempt to rewrite history and burnish the tarnished "Bush Legend". Assholes.

[* CPM = Capitalist Pig Media]

Whitewashing History

I'm the first to admit that I did not watch Baby Doc's "Farewell to the Nation" address the other night, but I've seen enough clips and read enough about it to know that he is anarrogant and self-delusional reality-denier to the end.

Yeah, big surprise there.

Over the last several weeks we've seen a media blitz on the part of Bush apologists trying like hell to shore up his crumbling reputation and engage in outright denial, in the face of facts, about the record of the BFEE. Last night's address was the crowning touch, the capstone, the little groom on the wedding cake, if you will, of that attempt.

Unfortunately it won't be the last attempt. For the next umpteen years you're going to see more of the same, the insane repetition of The Big Lie by everyone in sight, by everyone who ever held an appointive office in the BFEE, in hopes of allowing history to give the little fucker a pass on the destructive policies of the last eight years.

It's now up to the incoming Obama administration to not only try to undo all of the damage, but to demand accountability from the prime architects of the Baby Doc Maladministration who have caused this country to go in a spiraling freefall, circling the drain (to mix metaphors) of economic, political and international polity.

So far I haven't had a good feeling about what exactly Obama is going to do about it. While I'd like to see Baby Doc, Darth Cheney, Karl Rove, et al., frog-marched before the International Court of Justice at the Hague, I don't really think that's going to happen. But we should still, at the very least, hold open hearings on the crimes of the BFEE and make goddam sure that the judgment of history will be that we, as a society, were willing and able to actually do something to make the bastards accountable.

That's not too much to ask.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891 3896 3908 3921 3932 3943 3952 3960 3974 3987 3992 4004 4032 4036 4177 4180 4185 4186 4189 4197 4204 4209 4217 4221 4223 4226

Total coalition forces dead: 317
Total Iraqi Dead: 900,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2684
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 2112
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 2087
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 1070
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 911

It is still 3 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

---

Note: This will be the last "Friday by the Numbers", at least for a while. I'm willing to cut Obama some slack and let him have some time to turn the rushing current of the BFEE around and head our nation in the right direction. But if doesn't rise to the occasion, look for this regular feature to return.

Not Pro-Sodomy, Scout's Honor

From our "I swear you can't make this shit up" department comes the news that former Arkansas governor, erstwhile presidential candidate, Baptist minister and evolution denier/Intelligent Design flack Mike Huckabee swears that he is not "pro-sodomy".

Here's an interchange between him and mAnn Coulter:

HUCKABEE: I am not, as you characterized me in one article, pro-gay, pro-sodomy. That is so not me.
COULTER: Yes, there was a Supreme Court decision. You said you agreed or disagreed with. Yes, I got you on that Mike Huckabee.
HUCKABEE: Nope. You didn't. I am definitely not pro-sodomy. I promise, scout’s honor.

"Scout's honor"? Maybe he could have chosen a less ... felicitous ... phrase.

Sarah Palin: Kitten With a Whip

Thanks once more to the enormously-talented "anonymous blogger" Blue Gal, who just treated us to this new video:

Those of us out here in the sad-state-of-affairs Anonymous Bloggerland just can't seem to get enough of this stuff. Palin was just the perfect VP candidate for those of us with a sense of humor. She was -- and remains -- a freakin' gold mine of material. We can only hope that she's stupid enough to try to make a run for the presidency in four years. And it looks like she might just do that. If I weren't so cheap, I'd send her campaign a few bucks just to keep her in the public view.

Call me selfish, but I like having an easy target once in a while.

An Unanticipated Refund from the IRS? Lucky Me.

In this morning's email I received the following "official" notification from the IRS:

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund under section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Tax refund value is $120.50. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to IWP [???] the data received. If u [sic] don't receive your refund within 9 business days from the original IRS mailing date shown, you can start a refund trace online.
If you distribute funds to other organization, your records must show wether [sic] they are exempt under section 497 (c) (15). In cases where the recipient org. is not exempt under section 497 (c) (15), you must have evidence the funds will be used for section 497 (c) (15) purposes.
If you distribute fund to individuals, you should keep case histories showing the recipient's name and address; the purpose of the award; the maner [sic] of section [sic]; and the realtionship [sic] of the recipient to any of your officers, directors, trustees, members, or major contributors.
To access the form for your tax refund, please *click here* [Note: This generously-provided link goes not, as you might expect, to a "masked" URL, but directly to <mydisco-dating.de/orca/log/refund/> -- these guys have absolutely no imagination or computer-geek skills]
This notification has been sent by the Internal Revenue Service, a bureau [sic] of the Department of the Treasury.

The link, as you can see, goes to some "disco dating" website in, of all places, Germany. Given the misspelled words and the tone (it was obviously written by someone whose native language is not English), it's hard to believe that anyone would actually fall for this. But the Nigerians seem to still be making a killing -- sometimes literally -- on their particular area of scam expertise.

BTW, when I was in Saigon last September I met a couple of guys from Nigeria. Their very first question to me? "What's your email address?"... Really. I had to laugh while they, of course, had to pretend that they didn't get the joke.

But at least with the Nigerians, some people, like Scam-O-Rama: The Lads from Lagos and 419 Eater, are fighting fire with fire. Read some of the case histories on both of those sites about the ridiculous lengths some of those poor Nigerian saps will go to in trying to keep their "phish" on the line. I especially like the stories wherein the putative victim actually turns the tables and gets money from the scammers.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891 3896 3908 3921 3932 3943 3952 3960 3974 3987 3992 4004 4032 4036 4177 4180 4185 4186 4189 4197 4204 4209 4217 4221 4223>

Total coalition forces dead: 317
Total Iraqi Dead: 900,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2677
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 2105
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 2080
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 1063
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 904

It is still 9 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Blakely Lauren -- RIP

Longtime readers will recall that last summer we went to Alaska to meet my son's girlfriend, who was carrying our next grandchild.

Little Blakely Lauren was born on Christmas Eve, and died of apparent crib death on Saturday, January 3rd. Her parents, Bob and Almarie, are grieving their loss, as are Susan and I.

Here's to you, Little One. I'm sorry we never got to meet in person.

I'll be back to blogging ... in a while.

The Biggest Drawing in the World

Now for some fun stuff. Check this out. A Stockholm artist sets out with a GPS receiver and apparently an almost unlimited amount of money, to use global shipping company DHL to create, using the entire world as his canvas, the world's largest self-portrait:

Biggest drawing in the world
Uploaded by erikbjgn

It's a really clever bit of melding of technology to art and it's fascinating to watch it all come together.

Bristol & Levi's Advice to New Parents

After that fateful school "camping trip" wherein Bristol Palin and her main squeeze Levi Johnston found out firsthand about the evils of condoms, they've written a guest column on the snarky political satire site 23/6.

Some gems of their advice:

· BABY WON'T SLEEP: A common problem, not just for babies but for everyone in Alaska, considering there's always, like, 36 consecutive hours of daylight or darkness. If baby is fussing, try licking your hand and running it through the child's hair...
· BABY IS HORNY: There's no better time than the first days of infancy to start teaching your child about abstinence. Remember, the sooner you can start informing your kid about the evils of pre-marital sex, the less likely they'll be to get themselves in some kind of embarrassing, unexpected situation. This may also be a good time to start teaching your baby about irony.

Who knew that these two could turn out to be the dispensers of such sage advice? I certainly was caught in shock and awe...

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891 3896 3908 3921 3932 3943 3952 3960 3974 3987 3992 4004 4032 4036 4177 4180 4185 4186 4189 4197 4204 4209 4217 4221

Total coalition forces dead: 317
Total Iraqi Dead: 900,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2670
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 2096
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 2073
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 1056
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 897

It is still 16 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

It's an Ill Wind etc.

You know the old saying, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good"? How about "Every cloud has a silver lining"?

One of the few bright spots coming out of the tanking economy is this: Fewer death penalty cases in the courts and way fewer executions. In 1999 there were 98 people put to death in this country; in 2008 that number plummeted to 37, which comes out to a 62% drop.

Moreover, prosecutors are increasingly loath to ask for the death penalty. In many instances, it comes down to a choice for local and state governments: Cut the number of cops on the beat, or save roughly one million dollars per case by not pursing a death penalty.

It seems that what simple humanity couldn't do, simple economics took care of.

And BTW, here's an interesting statistic for all you knuckledraggers out there who think that the potential imposition of the death penalty results in fewer murders: The national "murder rate" has stayed very nearly constant between 2000 (which saw a rate 5.5 per 100,000 people) and 2007 (which saw a rate of 5.6 per 100,000 people).

That's what's called in the math biz a statistical dead heat.

The Alternative Invocation

Here's a terrific video put together by my friend Blue Gal;, which appears in its "official location" over at Alternative Invocation:

Watch it. It's totally awesome. Way to go, Fran!

[And while we're at it, congratulations to Blue Gal for making into the finals for the 2008 Best Liberal Blog award. BTW, it was from Blue Gal's blog that I learned that bloggers could drive up their readership by embedding key search phrases in their blog posts, phrases such as lesbian vampires, felafel sex and panties. Hmmmm, we'll see...]

More on Billo

I really have to quit stumbling around in YouTube. It's taking up way too much of my time...

That said, here's another one, this time with Richard Dawkins on the Bill Orally show.

Watch for this exchange about halfway through:

Billo: It [belief in god] is true, for me.
Dawkins: What do you mean, "true for you"? ... Something's got to either be true or it's not.
Billo: No, no.

And there you have it, folks. Billo agrees that he's full of shit and that he is not part of the Reality-Based Community.

Why Rush Limbaugh Left Television

Aside from the fact that he has a face and a body built for radio, that is...

Speaking of YouTube, watch this -- it's an oldie but a goodie from Rush's television show in 1990, wherein the notorious bully gets it handed right back to him:

It's kind of long, but worth watching.

I just love it how the fucker starts squirming when the audience starts calling him out, and then he finally has to kick the entire studio audience out before he closes.

Bill Orally Gets "Owned" -- by a HS Kid, No Less

One of the rewards of poking around in YouTube is that I tend to come across stuff like this:

Watch a high school student refuse to back down while calling Billo out on his bullshit.

Priceless.

A New "Follower"

One of the more interesting features about Blogspot is the "following" -- other bloggers and regular citizens can sign up to follow your blog. And I just noticed that I have a new follower, Controversy.

It's not a regular blog -- instead Ghostwriter, the blog owner, conducts a number of ongoing polls, wherein you can vote your opinion on a number of controversial issues (e.g., "What is the responsibility of the US in the Israel-Palestine conflict" is the Poll of the Day).

Go ahead and check it out. The poll results are not, of course, scientific in any way, but still illuminating as to what the blogger community in particular collectively feels about certain issues.