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Despite the Gulf Coast’s continued pounding by hurricane after hurricane, the most horrifying event of the past year is clearly still the Iraqi quagmire which would have ended long ago had it not been for the drumbeat of reactionary “news” sources like Fox and Clear Channel, or shameless mouthpieces such as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael “Savage” Weiner and original gangsta of the Rebloodlican Posse, Rush “Hillbilly Heroin” Limbaugh. Nothing could stop the dishonest spewing of lies from this gang of lying liars (as Al Franken would so affectionately refer to them) to the American public - save a sudden loss of Oxytocin supply by Rush. The most telling statistic: those who had viewed more Fox News coverage of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” actually knew less about the actual facts surrounding the war.

From the book “50 Reasons Not to Vote for Bush”, by Robert Sterling. An excerpt from his book which deals with the Right-Wing Media Whores Coalition, Reason #40, “The Corporate Takeover of Our Media”:

A cynic would suggest that the Democratic Party is only in opposition to corporate media power now that the damage is hitting its members personally. FOX News is a prime example: the pseudo-news operation is a right-wing cheerleader, with hacks such as Levittown square Bill O’Reilly, transparent GOP mouthpiece Sean Hannity and Shepard Smith (the Dan Quayle of news anchors) barely concealing their support for the Bush agenda. Besides its ownership by Rupert Murdoch, FOX News is run by Roger Ailes, a longtime Republican supporter from the Nixon years. (Curiously, Murdoch’s recent buyout of DirecTV for $6.6 billion was aided by the nullification of a previous deal by Echostar nixed by the FCC, a move that suggests political back-scratching.) Then there is the rise of Clear Channel Communications, the radio behemoth with over 1,200 stations in the US. (The maximum allowed was 40 before the 1996 telecom “deregulation.”) Clear Channel was a major player in the Dixie Chick-bashing, blacklisting their music from stations for Natalie Maines’ solitary denouncement of Bush during a European concert. It’s a disturbing development that a single company could control public airwaves to such a degree and silence someone for her politics: making it even more suspicious is that Clear Channel is run by Chairman Lowry Mays and Vice Chairman Tom Hicks, both of whom have been close business associates of Dubya. (In fact, Hicks is the man who bought the Texas Rangers from a consortium Shrub was part of, making Georgie-boy a multimillionaire.) Clear Channel also staged “patriotic rallies” across the country that were thinly veiled promotions of the Iraq war.

(All of which increasingly exposes the lie by right-wing mouthpieces who whine of a “liberal” bias in the media. As Al Franken put it, “Asking if there is liberal or conservative bias in the media is like asking if al Qaeda uses too much oil in the hummus. There is a bias in the right-wing media. The right wing media is FOX, Washington Times, Ann Coulter, Wall St. Journal ed page and talk radio. They will lie and cheat in talk radio to pursue. There is no equivalency.”)

Cynical politics aside, at least Democrat leaders have finally awakened to the consequences of the policies they’ve resoundingly supported. Bush, Powell and their allies appear ready to retire any concept of public interest in fairly distributing airwaves, and Bush has threatened to veto any law that reverses the FCC decision. The bottom line: had any 2004 Democratic presidential candidate made the FCC appointment, the new rules would not be in place.

I just got back from Rebirth Tattoo for my second sitting to finish up the spiderweb on my left elbow. Shading is definitely less pleasant than line work, but went a lot quicker. It bled a bit more so the plastic wrap on my arm makes it look like a steak in a supermarket meat section. From here I’m going to start working on more designs. I’m thinking of working toward sleeves or starting with at least one, then working on the other arm. Everything I have planned right now I noticed I was planning for my left arm so I’ll likely focus on that and a large back piece. My designs for cuffs and some Scotland pieces are the farthest along and I’m really liking them so I forsee those getting attention first.

I’ll be sure to get pics up as soon as I can.

I guess the slight headache I had when I got up yesterday was actaully my body fighting off a cold. The late evening of food and drink obviously weakened my immune system just enough to have a bad cold hit me like a boot to the skull. I took the day off today so hopefully I can (mostly) get over it before I have to get back to work.

Today’s the big two-five. A quarter century. Like the rest of the birthdays that were supposed to be momentous this one seems to be just like any other day. Just another step closer to 30 and imminent death. Though one notable exception is the all too rare Tuesday drunk. Anyway, thanks for the birthday wishes from everyone who sent them whether I was around to thank you or not. Next time send cash ya cheap bastards!

You know what? I’m really sick of seeing OSX trolls posting all over the internet, irc, usenet, whatever.

Everytime ANY topic comes up, some OSX troll pipes in “So it’s just like OSX!” well, OSX isn’t fully (or even mostly) open source, Quartz Extreme isn’t an open standard, Ok? Do you understand that? Even if it was, the rest of us like our software to be GPL’d so that we don’t just shift from being slaves to Bill Gates and Microsoft, to being slaves of Steve Jobs and Apple. Mabye you don’t care if you really ‘own’ your PC or not but we linux users do. So STFU with your OSX this and OSX that.

It’s getting absurd. Someone mentions making a Linux network for sharing sound — some OSX Troll pops in “Just spend thousand of dollars on mac parts and there you go! You don’t have to use an inexpensive solution!” Pretty soon I’m gonna start seeing “If those idiots voted in OSX instead of Bush everything would be perfect now”. The Gentoo-Emerge trolls never came close to the kind of witless trolling that you OSX fuckers are reaching!

I don’t like your cheesy OS. I think the widgets are ugly. I think that stupid bar on the bottom of the screen looks like CDE back from the grave. I’ll take an Athlon64 instead of your goddam PPC. I like my beige box instead of your tiny little silver brick. I want to be able to open my case and see what shits inside it, and I don’t want to have to use a fucking laptop harddrive in a non-portable computer.

Look you obnoxious pricks — not everyone digs your fucking Macs.

I can’t wait for Grand Theft Auto: New Orleans to come out! Underwater fights, looting, boat jacking and Sean Penn… it’ll be awesome.

Seriously, though. Why is everyone freaking out about the rampant looting that has ensued since Katrina tore through? The rescue effort - consisting of 1 helicopter and a few boats was deplorable. If I knew I was going to be sitting on my roof for the next few weeks, you’d better believe I’d swim over to a flooded 7-Eleven to pick up some Ding Dongs! One reporter stopped a looter mid-stride to ask him some questions. The interviewee replied, “There’s still some canned food inside if you want it.” Obviously these people aren’t out to steal as much crap as possible so they can sell it later. They are getting what they absolutely need and then leave. Should they starve to death because the one helicopter in operation is “out to lunch?”

Yeah, yeah. I know guns are being looted too. It only took the slightest hint of chaos and the notion of a completely unresponsive police and govermental system to bring the sickos out in force. The second I heard reports of rapes and murders I’d sure as hell stockpile a small arsenal in my place faster than you can say “Branch Davidian”. I still can’t really fault the people that are taking things that aren’t a matter of life or death because there’s always exceptions to the rule, right? There will always be people out there stealing $150 football jerseys to “keep warm,” just as there will always be people out there snatching up Nikes to keep the flooded sewer water from touching their feet.

It’s gotta suck to be in New Orleans right now. Good luck, New Orleansers, and may the waters recede in time for Mardi Gras.

This is definitely interesting. Follow the rules exactly.

Check out the following exercise, guaranteed to bake your noodle. There’s no trick or surprise, but trust me. Follow these instructions and answer the questions one at a time and as quickly as you can. Again, as quickly as you can but don’t advance until you’ve done each of them… really.

What is:

1+5 ?
2+4 ?
3+3 ?
4+2 ?
5+1 ?

Now repeat saying the number 6 to yourself as fast as you can for 15 seconds. Then read on for the rest…
(more…)

Micheal Brown, Director of FEMA, admitted openly tonight on ABC’s LateLine that the Federal Government had no idea there were refugees in the Superdome Arena and Convention Center.

From the article: “Mike Brown, FEMA Director: Every person in that convention centre we just learned about that today.”

YOU JUST LEARNED ABOUT THEM?!? You’ve got to be shitting me. You can’t get through 10 minutes on any commercial television station without something about the deplorable conditions, well, everywhere along the Gulf Coast and this fuckwit just found out. He’s the director of FEMA for fuck sake. These guys are supposed to be the ones who keep an eye out for this crap and jump on it like Rosie O’Donnell on an X-Mas ham. CNN (and the rest of the world for that matter) managed to find out all about it the same day, but this asshat didn’t seem to noticed until his Saturday morning cartoons were over. I read somewhere this guy managed race horses or some shit before taking over at FEMA so I can’t say I’m completely surprised.

A lot of the media says this isn’t the time to point fingers and talk about who failed to act, but I say anything that’s another kick in the republican face is always on topic.