Over a Thousand Swedes Die in Tsunami

Am I drawn to the story of these people dying inthis tragedy because they are white? I mean over a 100,000 brown folks have been washed out to sea. Or is it just my narcisism? Maybe it could have been me or one of my friends.

Actually my friend Mary put this in the correct perspective: Social Democracy killed these people. If they weren't on one of their 8 weeks of vacation they would be alive today. The welfare state claims another thousand victims!

Scalia On Orgies: They're Good!

Scalia on orgies.

Is Anyone Asking The Obvious Question Here?

Is it me or is it strange that Reggie White, a top athlete in the world, died at 43? I really don't know. I would assume it's the wear and tear over the years, or could it be that the lord just wanted for him to play football?

Paper For 400,000 Buses Full Just In The UK

Wrapping paper and holiday cards, enough for 400,000 bus loads just in the UK every year!

Great October Proletarian Revolution Privatized

Russian Duma cancels commemoration of the October revolution.

Arthur Miller Dines With Fidel

Last year Arthur Miller wrote this article about his dinner with Fidel. I thought it was an extremely witty account. I particularly like his comments about Fidel and lettuce.

Merry Christmas

"Religion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money!"

—George Carlin

A Nugget From Anne Gaylor

“For a fact, the Christians stole Christmas. We don't mind sharing it with them, but we don't like this pretense of theirs that it is the birthday of Jesus. It is the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun--Dies Natalis Invicti Solis. Christmas is a relic of sun worship.

The customs of this time of year endure because they are pleasant customs. It's fun to hear from distant family and friends, to gather, to feast, to sing. Gifts, as Robert Ingersoll once said, are evidences of friendship, of remembrance, of love.

The evergreens displayed now as in centuries past flourish when all else seems dead, and are symbols, as is the returning sun, of enduring life.

In celebrating the Winter Solstice, we celebrate reality.”
-- Anne Nicol Gaylor, president emerita, Freedom From Religion Foundation. Speech written for the 8th annual Winter Solstice Party, New Jersey chapter of FFRF, Dec. 22, 1985. (Freethought Today, Jan/Feb 1986)

Spanglivator

Here's what the Onion has to say about Spanglish, James L Brookes' latest. I also saw The Aviator, is it me or is Scorcese slipping? Two words for Howard Hughes, who cares? The Onion once again nails James L Brooks, brilliant but the nuerosis scenes get irritating. See Spanglish. I never thought I would say this, and now twice after Punch Drunk Love, Adam Sandler was actually good. And then there's this way of looking at it.

Mr President and Good Writing

Sam Rosenthal on the press conference: "The president got a tad petulant when fielding questions on Social Security. His emphatic response to any and all queries about his position on the subject was an indignant, righteous refusal to answer: “You’re not going to get me to negotiate with myself,” he repeatedly told the perplexed reporters. “I know what you’re trying to get me to do. You’re trying to get me to answer ‘Why this,’ ‘why that,’ to take positions -- don’t bother to ask me.” Rather than merely dodge the questions, Bush seemed intent on staking out an explicit, principled position in favor of dodging the question. There may have been a method to this madness above and beyond Bush’s stated explanation that “Congress writes legislation” and therefore he, as the president, shouldn’t be setting specific guidelines for a Social Security reform proposal. The president isn’t usually a big separation-of-powers, checks-and-balances kind of guy."

The Neverending Story

Yes, we have the right to be offensive. It truly amazes me that this story is repeated over and over...... It's about basic freedom of expression. Yes, we all have the right to have whatever idiotic idea we want, and not just in our heads, including bashing things we think are foolish-religion, bad haircuts, monogomy, whatever.

That this debate still goes on show's how fleeting the whole thing is. Imagen if the Federalists had gotten thier way and we had no first amendment?

In Milwaukee we have had our own little version. Local bully and bigot Mark Belling let slip "wetback" and his company, Clear Channel-who are in the bully/bigot business, suspended him after local outrage and protest. The local activists, some of whom I know and love, called for canceling his program. I disagreed. The problem with Belling isn't that he is an out of the closet racist. The problem is that he is in and he has respectability. I say let him be true to his ideas and call a spade a spade (off color-again intended-joke intended). Here's Milwaukee's best writer's take.

The Post-mortem Assasination Of Garry Webb

Garry Webb was a conventional reporter from a military family who wrote conventional stories about America. This all changed after he stumbled on to the story of the counter-revolutionary (Contras) forces in Nicaragua in the 80's ties with drug smuggling. The problem was that these cats were the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers and all that. We were all shocked that anyone would even mention such unmentionables given the honarable allies, the Indonesion butchers, the neo-Nazi Argentine sadistic totureres, the Zairean kleptocracy to name a few, the intellegence services had been cavorting with in the post-war period. Garry Webb made the mistake to blabb this around town. So what did US journalism do for one of their own? A full court press to distract, discredit, disinform, and in the end to destroy Garry Webb's career and now Garry Webb himself. This was done by marshalling the strength of the NY Times, LA Times, and the Washington Post to make sure that "real" evidence could be found to support such allegations. Unsurprisingly they found nothing. The problem is the contras were involved with the drug trade and the CIA actually admitted it years later.

Now that GW has offed himself the slander continues, with an obit in the LA Times this week mutering about his "troubled" career and "accusations" about drugs and other such charges. The obituary is a sorry book end to a story that epitomizes the worst of our "liberal" media.

One of the more troubling sidenotes to the story is the "left's" complicity in the whole matter. One of the coincidences of the story is the rise in the use of crack as the contras financed their murder of teachers and farmers in the 80's. Some used this coincidence to claim that this was a plot to undermine the black community through mass drug induced distraction. This was not the main point of GW's reporting but many flakistas used it as proof. I've met the type. Any evil in the world can be explained by tangential evidence to a CIA operation. The rulers will always try to marginalize the left by pointing to the conspiracy theorists but lets not make ourselves easy targets with wild accusations.

Here Alex Cockburn discusses the Webb affair. Classic Cockburn here. Marc Cooper also tells it like it is.

Holiday Gift

Here's an amazing archive of sounds (Lost and Found Sound) of the last century. I'll be away until the 2nd so enjoy these stories and sounds. Check out the answering archive, hilarious!

Sideways

Sideways really is a good movie. Read the review. See it over the holiday.

Interested In A Vacation?

Here's a favorite place of mine, Tulum, MX.

Social Security Privatization: They Are Going To Try

First an interesting aside, google ( a verb?) Social Security privatization and see what comes up. On the first page all proponents and one dissenter.

Social Security privatization is a colossally bad idea for many reasons, here are three:

1)The market is inherently unstable, it's not called creative destruction for nothing. Yes some people will do well and others poorly out of "bad" decisions but lets say you don't have an MBA or insider knowledge, is it your fault that you believed some asshole on Louis Rukeyser on what Mutual Fund to invest all your future in? An economic libertarian would say yes, I say no. We don't have an equal access to knowledge, this is a myth perpetuated by people with more skills and knowledge and more access to it than others.

2)Social Security is a quasi-progressive institution. I say quasi because there is a cap on SS taxes after $80,400-meaning that if you make this much or more there no longer are SS taxes taken out of your check-and for other technical reasons the system does not produce as advertised. This being said the system has the potential to redistribute wealth from those who can afford a meager pension to those who can't. Personally I think the system is way to meager and should become a national pesion system funded by employers.

3)This scheme will not save the system money and it is being done not so that people will be more comfortable in the long run but because Wall Street wants all that cash, trillions! Basically it's a payoff. Here's a discussion of this issue.

Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Suppression of Cleaveland Indian Effigy Burning

The Ohio Supreme Court yesterday ruled that suppression of the burning of an effigy of the racist Cleaveland Indian mascot was not a violation of the protestors first amendment rights. Let's say it was an effigy of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, I wonder if 1) the cops would have acted the same and 2) the court would have ruled the same way. The way that they weaseled out of the issue, at least two of the judges, was to say that it was a fire hazard. With more and more Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush judges we will get more and more authoritarian decisions like this.

Now Here's What I want For Christmas

Belarus Military supply store. Belarus Defense Department selling off stuff. Hmm... I wonder why?

Now Here's A Use For The Consulate I Never Thought Of

"Some consular posts, sometimes sought out by tourists who run out of money, are also being closed or handed to local staff across the developed world." In an article about the UK closing some of its more sleepy consulates.

Romania and Belarus

Will Belarus go the way of Romania? This is what Russia fears and why that guys face looks like it does.