Wave that flag, support those troops, praise that God...

...but please don't notice that our banks under a conservative, tax-cuts-AND-spending government just quietly borrowed 50 billion dollars to cover costs.

W. Post turns on Bush

Long overdue hatchet piece on Bush from the fawning sycophants at Wash. Post

... one senior House Republican who met with Bush recently. ""Our [G.O.P.] members just wish this thing would be over. People are tired of him." Bush's circle remains sealed tight, the lawmaker said. "There's nobody there who can stand up to him and tell him, 'Mr. President, you've got to do this. You're wrong on this.' There's no adult supervision. It's like he's oblivious. Maybe that's a defense mechanism."

"The things that make him unpopular also help him deal with all the pressure," said some other guy. "He's stubborn. He's loyal to his philosophy... This is either extraordinary self-confidence or he's out of touch with reality. I can't tell you which."

No comment -- Jpeg

We Own The Internet

[hat tip: Ken W.]

Huge Campaign Finance Savings Coming Soon To An Election Near You

Politicians soon will be able to divert campaign war chests to a different focus: Finding the best people available to rig the local Diebold voting machines.

Apparently all it takes is a screwdriver. Awesome.

Not Fooling Anybody

A collection of restaurants that used to be something else, including this one, a half mile from where i grew up in Detroit.

When Chimps Attack II

Fred Durst shows you his 'O' face (WARNING: Spyware-laden link. Proceed at your own risk. Thanks, Nora).

WARNING: NSFW. Actually, not safe for anyone with the gift of sight.

More
everywhere
else.

W.M.D. D.O.A.

The hunt for WMD is officially over.
The search was quietly called off in December (strangely) just after the election.
It took 2 years.
We didn't find a scintilla of evidence.
Isn't that odd?

Conservatively about 15,000 Iraqis are dead. (Probably more like 50,000) It's unclear if Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush will be able to get to all 15,000 hand-written apologies this year.

Oh well... I can't think about that. I have shopping to do, flags to wave and investments to take care of.

GOP Dems agree: American morals are crap

A gallup poll shows that Americans don't think much of our own moral values.

Bush - Cheney 9/11 Commission Meeting

I take that back, he is dumb. What is he doing? Signalling to the band?

"If we had something to hide, we wouldn't have met with them in the first place," Bush said. "We answered all their questions."

No word on whether they were answered truthfully or not.

Bush said it was important for him and Cheney to appear together so that commission members could "see our body language... how we work together."

So they're an interpretive dance couple now? Was Dick Button there to provide commentary?

Web Evil!

Somehow in my clicking, I hit this site (http://looking-for.cc). Do not under any circumstances go there!!! In a dick-headed effort to get you to try their search engine it sets itself as your startup page...
no matter how many times you delete it/reset it.

If karma works, I hope someone shoots these people in the face.
Does anyone know how I get this off my system?

Re-Code

It's like do-it-yourself bartering!

(Note: I am in no way condoning this type of behavior. I just think it's clever.)

via boing boing

Other People's Stories

This is my kind of Website - dedicated to the ripping off and retelling of other people's good material. Brilliant!

via Liz H

Apologies to diamond purchasers

but Mr. Dash is dead fucking on.

"Carve the turkey any way you damn well please." Think about the number of assumptions there. A shrill harpie of a wife, so overbearing that she's prone to criticizing her husband's turkey carving, yet so inept that she can't carve the turkey herself because it's a man's job. A henpecked, spineless cad of a husband, so hapless that he accepts her orders to portion the poultry but then holds onto the resentment of her criticisms of his effort. A relationship so broken and twisted that his purchase of a blood-tainted rock from a monopolist cartel would appease her superficiality enough to get her to relent from her sniping at his performance of a trivial act. And this seems like a bargain because this man is so emotionally worthless that he couldn't just say, "Hey, if you want me to carve the turkey, you should probably be less critical of how I do it."

via svn

Post 9/11 ATM Fraud

Hey, dumbass. You're using your ATM card. Did these people really think they were getting away with something?

The Milwaukee Embarrassment

I reference last night's All-Star debacle only to ask one question: Why didn't Torre or Brenly just bring in a belly itcher?

Hi-Tech Fake Firm Busted

The 140-count indictment against 16 members of a "sophisticated" ring of accountants, computer operators and others was the first of its kind, District Attorney Richard Brown said yesterday.

I ain't naming names, but it sounds familiar...

Fox News 'Expert' Was Clever Fraud

One senior Fox executive said Cafasso was so convincing and seemed to have such respected patrons at the Pentagon, that there was no reason to question him. ÒHe was so confident,Ó the executive said. ÒThe sheer brazenness of it is just remarkable.Ó

Hmmm....

Literary kitsch on the pop culture radar

Gear up. Thomas Kincade (the "artist" responsible for those execrable "paintings of light") has swapped careers and penned a best-seller every bit as sappy and faux-quaint as his paintings.

Kinkade has branched out with "the Thomas Kinkade lifestyle brand," including furniture and this book "Cape Light". Kinkade certainly contributed no more than his name, the 600-odd words of introduction and the preposterous cover painting depicting a stone cottage with lighthouse surrounded, unhelpfully, by trees. "Cape Light is a place," Kinkade assures us, "where people have the time to savor life's simple pleasures" (presumably between shipwrecks).

A Case of Strange Book-Keeping

Like so many authors, David A. Vise, an award-winning reporter for The Washington Post, wanted to create big buzz for his recently published book. He promoted his work on just about every radio or television show that would have him, including "Today," Don Imus's show and "The O'Reilly Factor." He made personal appearances around the country. He created a Web site advertising the book and its author.

But unlike other authors, Vise also bought between 16,000 and 18,000 copies of his own book from an online bookseller, Barnesandnoble.com, and then returned most of them in a confusing series of transactions. This unusual tactic has prompted suspicions that he was trying to manipulate bestseller lists by creating phantom sales, which Vise firmly denies.

News For Sale

Some mope is hawking his "Breaking News" website on eBay.

Current asking price is $21

I wonder if he'll swap stock with me... Let's see, with 1000 shares of Scient...

Airline bailout?

The Senate approved a $15 billion bailout of the airline industry today, 96-1. The one dissenting vote was that of the typically combative and controversial Peter Fitzgerald (R) of Illinois.

I caught the tail end of his comments as I was driving home tonight, and I have to say I probably agree with him.

An excerpt:

"Either the shareholders or the taxpayers will take a hit," stated Fitzgerald, "and I donÕt think itÕs at all intuitive that the right thing to do is shift the cost of the industry decline from the shareholders to the taxpayers."

The senator explained that the shareholders are, in many cases, sophisticated investors who may be familiar with the industry and who understand the inherent risks in airline stock. The currently structured bailout would protect them, while making ordinary American taxpayers foot the bill.
(emphasis mine)

From the linked MSNBC article:
Even as lawmakers debated the provisions of the bill, some questioned whether an industry with such highly paid executives, and that was financially wobbly even before Sept. 11, should be given a special government-financed aid package.

Addressing at least part of those concerns, Congress stated that executives of airlines seeking assistance could not receive salary increases over the next two years if their current salaries exceed $300,000 a year.

$300,000! You've got to be fucking kidding me! What about the tens of thousands of people that are about to lose their jobs over this? Not a fucking word about them. But heaven forbid some jackass CEO make less than 6 figures a year. Now that would be a real tragedy.

The Problem With Music by Steve Albini

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke". And he does of course.

Steve Albini, a Chicago native and the man who produced Nirvana's In Utero, spouts off on the music industry and does a little math to demonstrate that after record label raping most band members make less than a job at 7-11.

In May of 2000, Courtney Love gave a speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference. In her speech, she discussed rock bands and record companies and did some recording-contract math. Most of that speech was taken from this.

via the shey network

MO Attorney General to Miss Cleo:

"Too many people ripped off by your bidness!"

"Miss Cleo should have seen this coming," Attorney General Jay Nixon said. "It doesn't take a crystal ball to realize that ripping off consumers isn't without consequences."

via Metafilter