Bob Morris @ Jun 27th 2006 14:35 - Category: Unfiled ;
It’s a sofa, it’s a table, it’s a casket!
Why buy a casket for just one day?
At CasketFurniture.com, our products can last you a lifetime, and still be the perfect vehicle to carry you to the great beyond. Whether it’s a couch, shelf, or end table…
This is not, repeat, not satire.
Bob Morris @ Jun 27th 2006 08:48 - Category: Unfiled ;
KCRW-FM’s Chris Douridas was arrested in January near a Santa Monica bar on suspicion of drugging and trying to kidnap a teen.
However, after a five month investigation, Douridas, who hosts a popular trend-setting radio show in L.A., was charged with felony cocaine possession.
“Based on a thorough investigation, we felt that the only charge that could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt was possession of cocaine,” said Eva Jabber, a deputy Los Angeles County district attorney with the sex crimes division.
He was arrested in Florida for drugs in 1999, something that could have a serious impact on the case, depending on whether or not that counts as a first strike under California’s draconian Three Strikes Law. Anyone know?
Update: It does NOT count as a strike, and depending on Florida case, Douridas would probably be eligible for diversion or a drug treatment program. Which is what should happen to someone with a presumed drug problem caught possessing a small amount.
Bob Morris @ Jun 27th 2006 00:23 - Category: Anti-war ;
A majority of Americans say Congress should pass a resolution that outlines a plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday. Half of those surveyed would like all U.S. forces out within 12 months.
A Democratic leadership that was not comatose would greet this as welcome news, taking it as a mandate to stop the war, a move which no doubt would revitalize the party, bring in new people, and win them big victories in November.
But, of course, the Democrats are comatose.
The percentage of Americans who say the president has “a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq” has dropped to 31%, a new low. That’s still higher than the 25% who say congressional Democrats have a clear plan for Iraq.
That is … pathetic. So is the whole charade of voting when the choices are so dismal. People want a choice. The Democrats aren’t giving them one. Neither is netroots. Kos et al say they want to take over the Democratic Party but their vision differs little from what exists now. Netroots is tepid centrism pretending to be liberal but is actually mostly libertarian. This is change? That their leaders want to install themselves as the new kingmakers is a given. Again, how is this different?
Real change is more than window dressing. It takes time. Thinking that one election will produce a massive change is folly, especially when both parties mostly move in lockstep (except for a few social issues.) That’s why change isn’t happening, and why a reshuffling of the leadership won’t help. Neither party wants it.
If Congressional Dems really wanted to end the war, they’d mobilize to stop funding it. Every thing else is just posturing. The imperialist policies of the US have been in effect for decades; invading countries, overthrowing governments that displease them, torturing dissidents. No, the tortures didn’t begin with Bush, nor will any of this stop if the Dems take the House in November. The arrogance of Congress and the White House on Iraq is appalling. As Lefti on the News recently pointed out, none of them even bothered to ask the Iraqis what they want.
Most Congressional Democrats, along with Republicans, were totally opposed to the Civil Rights movement when it began. But after enough people got in the streets and demonstrated, many of those very same members of Congress voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The change didn’t come through voting, it came through people in the streets who forced often racist Congressmembers to do their bidding.
Bob Morris @ Jun 27th 2006 00:20 - Category: Unfiled ;
From the august Columbia Journalism Review
The current issue of Newsweek features a provocative takedown of Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, also known as Kos, the titan of the blogging left who has come under heavy fire lately from his fellow bloggers for “Kosola” and from the MSM (see Brooks, David, New York Times) for hubris and greed.
The Newsweek piece, by Jonathan Darman, features such lines as “It seems as though the rock-thrower is growing up”; “Moulitsas is also learning another downside of membership in the elite: the bigger the liberal sniper gets, the more incoming fire he faces”; and “The pressure on Moulitsas — to be consistent, to be pragmatic, to win — will only grow as the fall elections approach. Already, the strain of the spotlight is beginning to show in his growing belligerence and paranoia.”
Bring on the bloggers.
…
Some bloggers, such as Blue Crab Boulevard, considered the wider implications of the Kos coverage. Asking whether the “Koz Kidz” are ready for the spotlight, the blogger writes, “So the more they react, the harder the media scrutinizes. The more rage they respond with, the more coverage they will get. Not positive coverage, either. This will not get prettier or easier for Kos. The real danger here is that if the media drags him down, they will be trying really hard to bring down all bloggers at the same time.”
“The knives are out,” Blue Crab concludes. “Ready for prime time?”
Bob Morris @ Jun 27th 2006 00:17 - Category: Government spying ;
Tony Blair keeps trying to out-do Bush in governmental monitoring of citizens. He may have succeeded this time. From BlairWatch.
The Government now wants to track all 12 million children in England and Wales in a new database due to become operational in two years and expected to cost £224 million. The idea of this scheme is the surveillance of all children from birth and will include information on whether or not they eat the required five portions of fruit and vegetables each day.
I thought that must be satire. It’s not. The British government really does want to know if children are eating their veggies, as well asking personal, subjective questions about the mental health of the parents, and much more.
With the Government’s less than brilliant record with computer systems, I wonder how long it will be before this latest intrusive project goes expensively pear-shaped.
Ah, someone will certainly be getting rich off this doomed Orwellian project, now won’t they?
Bob Morris @ Jun 27th 2006 00:07 - Category: Unfiled ;
From the wondrous, Every Morning I Wake Up on the Wrong Side of Capitalism, in a post about the more lunatic of the right wing conspiracy theories.
I found somewhere on the Internet a document which gave exhaustive detail about the legal arrangements by which aliens had taken ownership of the Earth (I can’t re-google it, must be the CIA). There’s something extra wierd about phrasing ones discussion of alien influence in this legalistic way. If aliens have taken over Earth, surely the question of whether they have done so legally or not is not really of utmost importance.
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