Cuba Libre

Has anyone else been struck by the irony inherent in two George Bush news stories from late last week?

In one story, he laments that nations haven't stood up to the government of Cuba nor properly condemned its human rights abuses.

In the other story he vetoed a bill that would force him to stop the torture of prisoners. Many of whom are being held in ... Cuba.

A Must Read by Dr. Zaius

I have wanted to sit down and pound my keyboard over the outrage of Bush knowing that Iran halted its nuclear program four years ago, while still beating the drums of war with the oogey boogey mushroom cloud, but I haven't had the time.

Dr. Zaius raises an excellent point about the whole sad sorry sordid deal. Please go read.

Update: Speaking in Omaha earlier today, Bush called on Iran to better explain its nuclear intentions or face further sanctions. How bizarre can you get? Iran claims to not pursue nukes, turns out that's the truth, Bush is caught lying about it so the only obvious resolution is to continue the call for sanctions? On them?

Bullshit. This is about oil, pure and simple. Iran can easily form a strategic alliance with Russia and then China for the 200 billion barrels of oil in the Caspian region.

The Kids Are All Right. (Do ya got 30 grand, tho?)

The editor of the student newspaper at Colorado State University has written a concise editorial prompted by the recent tasering of a student in Florida.

It reads:

Taser this. Fuck Bush.

J. David McSwane, the student editor along with the editorial staff said they believe CSU students are apathetic about their freedom of speech and other rights.

"We thought the best way to illustrate that point was to use our freedoms," he said.

However, in just hours after publication of the pointed editorial, the paper lost over $30,000 in ad revenue. That money will have to come out of the pockets of the student staffers.

I am thinking I could help out by taking out a personal ad in the paper. Maybe you could too. Mine would say 'thankyou CSU college students for being shiny hopesticks in a big fat field of stinkin' asstwigs.'

Maybe I'll work on that wording.

UPDATE: Taking dguzman's advice, I did not change my wording and I did place an ad at the Rocky Mountain Collegian website in the Classifieds section under "Notices". I was expecting to pay via paypal or a credit card but I was not charged that way, apparently I will be contacted by a staffer about payment options. I chose to run a 24 word ad for 3 days. I guess my charge will be about 18 bucks. Not exactly 30 grand, but if all 1,666.666666666666666666666667 of my readers pony up the same dough, they will make up the 30 big lickety-split.

You're not really going to pay the pledge you made to Jerry Lewis, so cough up the dough for the Rocky Mountain Collegian. Now!

You can do the same by following this link: http://www.collegian.com/classifieds/index.cfm?event=displayAbout

Free All the Mandelas

Dance, Chimpy McStagger, Dance!

(Are you so dumb that you cannot speak?)

h/t DistributorcapNY

The Fantastical Freedoms Museum

Mr Bush says when his time in office is up, he will be only 62 and "really young". Apart from the joy of getting bored, he is looking forward to setting up a "fantastic freedom institute in Dallas" for young democratic leaders around the world.

For some reason this strikes me as a place not unlike the Natural History Museum where you can go to see things that have long gone extinct.

"Lookie, there honey - the Fourth Amendment! How quaint! Protections against searches and seizures. Sweet, really"

We're Kicking Ass!

George W. Bush reported to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia yesterday that "we are kicking ass" in Iraq.

I imagine there are some who wish he'd have put it a little more delicately. Or aside from that, at least told the truth.

Some six hundred thousand people. Or their loved ones.

Today I learned new things about Katrina

Thanks to a post at Buzzflash by the incredible journalist Greg Palast (if there was just one Greg Palast at the NYT, WaPo, and the three major networks the world could be saved - alas there is only one)



I learned two amazing things about New Orleans today.



1. Federal helicopters witnessed damaged levees and knew they were going to fail but told no one. Local emergency centers were not told. They were not told on purpose because it is the federal governments' responsibility to rebuild if a federal levee breaks. It happened in 1992 in Westhampton Dunes and the government rebuilt the million dollar homes along the seashore. They even trucked in sand.

The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005, the White House withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this was not just any source. The whistleblower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.

I'd come to van Heerden about another matter, but in our talks, it was clear he had something he wanted to say, and it was a big one. He charged that the White House, FEMA, and the Army Corps hid, for critical hours, their discovery that the levees surrounding New Orleans were cracking, about to burst and drown the city.

Understand that Katrina never hit New Orleans. The hurricane swung east of the city, so the state evacuation directors assumed New Orleans was now safe -- and evacuation could slow while emergency efforts moved east with the storm.

But unknown to the state, in those crucial hours on Monday, the federal government's helicopters had filmed the cracks that would become walls of death by Tuesday.

Van Heerden revealed: "FEMA knew at 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2 p.m., they flew over the 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech."

Question: "So the White House wouldn't tell you the levees had breeched?"

Dr. Van Heerden: "They didn't tell anybody."

Question: "And you're at the Emergency Center.'

Dr. Van Heerden: "I mean nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew."

2. There are NOLA residents who have been locked out of their public housing since the storm even though these public housing units were NEVER damaged in any way by the storm.

Here are the links:

Greg Palast editorial
Greg Palast video

Senate to George Bush: Yes, you have been kicking us in the nuts. We have just voted that you should kick us in the nuts harder

The needle is on 'flight' on the fight or flight meter today.

I feel despair.

Senate passes Bush-backed spy bill

How did George Bush steal my Jesus?

It sounds strange to say it this way, but if Al Gore had won Bush v. Gore, I would probably still be a believer. Maybe not a Catholic, me n' the pope were not exactly seeing eye to eye by then--a little dust up over an annulment and the rules for baptizing babies with or without said annulment-- but I think I'd still be somewhere in the Christian community.

And I was still a Christian through the first term of the Bush Administration. But on November 3, 2004 I sat at my computer, cried, and read through the election stories and kept coming across 'values voters'.

The idea that the only moral vote was one for George Bush was absolutely confounding to me. I had to find my bible and read the New Testament to find these mysterious passages that rang the clarion of God's anger against homosexuals and unwanted pregnancies.

There was a slight problem: I couldn't find my bible. I had the Catholic issue, given to me by my aunt twenty years before as a confirmation gift. We moved the year before the election and most of my books were still in boxes in the basement. (Still are, actually). I went to Barnes and Noble to buy a new bible and what a trip that was. How could it be that I couldn't find a bible that resembled my old confirmation bible? What were these bibles that used hip, updated text? Who was TNIV? How can anyone believe the infallibility of the bible when there are so many bibles to choose from? I eeny-meeny-miny-moed a selection and went home determined to actually read it.

Being raised a Catholic means never having to read the bible. You get the relevant parts read to you in three year cycles. The rest, meh. What I read in Today's New International Version of the bible was a little surprising. I found myself disagreeing with Jesus on a few points.

This began my search for information on how maybe we've misinterpreted Jesus. I read Elaine Pagels, books about the gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene. I devoured books on the gnostics. I read A. N. Wilson's book about the apostle Paul.

All my studying led to one very clear conclusion: I had stopped believing in Jesus.

I sometimes envy people for whom religion is not important. My husband is that way. I have dragged him to all manner of different churches and different denominations trying to find our fit. He never complained about going, and didn't really care what denomination we were visiting which week. I think he's happier now that I have no demands on his Sunday morning time. He uses it to fly fish. I can't sit on a fence. If I'm going to have faith then I'm going to have it, understand it, participate in it. Once I climbed over the fence from the land of superstition and became an immigrant to the land of reason it was impossible to go back.

I mentioned that George Bush stole my Jesus on the comments of an atheist website. Someone replied that no one can steal what you don't want. It's true, my faith was always one of more questions than answers. The president didn't really steal my religion. It was more like he helped me clean out my closets.