Thousands still say no to war

20,000 did today in DC.

So, how were you feeling 4 years ago?

And how about now?

"Despite working hard, many people are barely staying afloat in the modern economy. Our days are filled with stress. Our meals are rushed. And, as much as it saves time, technology creates more clutter and more burdens. We have less time to spend with our families; less time to invest in our communities; less time to relax."

Does this sound like an accurate description?

Why you should love the Green Party

Canberra, Australia:

While thousands protested on the street against George Bush, it was the protests of Greens Senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle which upset John Howard and caused the corporate media to take notice that all Australians weren't stuck up George's arse.

[snip]

In parliament house, the Greens Senators managed to cause some attention by interjecting during George Bush's speech. Senator Bob Brown interjected: "I call on you to return our Australians (and) treat them as the Americans do (and) we will respect you." Senator Keery Nettle shouted protests about the US-led war in Iraq and interjected urging Australia not to sign a free trade agreement with the United States. Mr Bush smiled and responded, "I love free speech". But the Prime Minister, John Howard, was not amused!

[snip]

The 18-year-old son of Mamdouh Habib, one of two Australians being held at a US military prison in Cuba without charge after the Afghan invasion, was dragged out after yelling: "Hey Bush, what about my Dad?". He attended parliament as a formal guest of one of the Green Party Senators.

It's about time some politicians spoke for the people. Don't you wish this would happen in the states?

Moving slowly here..

There are a couple of things I should have gotten to last night whih I didn't. One is posting something Atrios posted last night about Grover Norquist having ties to Islamic terrorists, a story which got airtime on MSNBC a couple of nights ago but really hasn't seen any play elsewhere.

You may be wondering, "Who the hell is Grover Norquist?" Well, when he's not equating our income tax with the Holocaust, he's, "one of the most connected members of the new right wing movement. He has close ties to the Republican Party, large U.S. business interests, and both the subsidized and regular U.S. media. He truly represents the nexus of politics, business and media," says Media Transparency.

Norquist is also Karl Rove's best friend. I don't need to tell you who Karl Rove is.

It's the weekend, you have a free half hour, right? Read what Atrios has to say, then read what his reader comments were. It's an eye-opening look at one story that should on on the front page of every newspaper in America in a just world.

The other story which should be on the front page is larger, and I haven't seen it get much play besides on Indymedia, Scoop, and here: Whether or not Diebold voting machines in Florida gave the election to Bush. To quote myself, "I don't have time to read it right now, but I plan on looking this over tonight. Very interesting."

I, uhm, still haven't fully looked it over yet...

And now this lazy shit is off to clean his car.

rall.com

Quality.

I flipped around the AM dial on my ride home until I found some comedy - The Sean Hannity radio show!

Sean and his guest, Fox "News" anchor Tony Snow, were discussing Democratic campaign strategy. Hearing two partisan Republicans discuss what the Democrats should do is about as unbiased as me discussing who the New York Yankees should trade for this off-season (hey George, if you're reading, Albert Belle is on the market, go get'em!)

Here's the quote that sticks out the most, when these two numbnuts were discussing how Howard Dean was bringing the Democratic Party to the left: "Clinton would have tried to go to the right of Bush."

Seeing that Clinton would have fallen off the edge of the cliff if he attempted to tip toe to the right of Bush's stance on things, I can see why they wished the Democrats would attempt to.

Over on the Michael Savage Circus, his show was all about letting "America haters" call in to try and defend themselves. Gee, it's oh so inviting when a host invites you onto his show by insulting you first, then giving you the number. I'm sure that makes for a level playing field. Michael mine as well just said, "Hi, I'm Michael Savage, I invite all you America haters to call my show and give me your opinions, even though I've already predetermined your opinion for you."

If Michael wants wants real America haters, instead of real American Patriots who just happen to disagree with him, calling his show then I suggest he take his show in the road. I have a few locations lined up, they end with "stan" and just happen to have buckets of oil.

Disarming Afghanistan?

Afghan President Karzai has launching "Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration", a program to buy back guns from soldiers to Afghani warlords so a multi-ethnic Afghan army can be put into place. This has been sponsered by the UN and backed by the US.

I heard about this while listening to BBC Newshour this morning, and I thought to myself, "The government is taking away guns to institute a national army? Golly, what would the NRA think about this?!"

After reading this article from Al-Jazeera, I came to the conclusion that the NRA would like Karzai's program after reading the last sentence of the article:

Each militiaman who hands in a weapon will receive $200 in cash. And the price of buying a similar gun on the illegal weapons market? $100!

Zing! It's nice to know that the Bush administration believes in installing governements that have their heads as far up their ass as Bush does.

How much damage have Diebold's voting machines already caused?

Sccop in New Zealand suggests that they threw the 2000 election to Bush. The case is proven in a new book by Bev Harris, "Black Box Voting" (click here to read chapters 1-11), which takes a look at memos from Diebold. The article starts with a quote from the Washington Post on a report right after the 2000 election:

"DELAND, Fla., Nov. 11 - Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters."

I don't have time to read it right now, but I plan on looking this over tonight. Very interesting.

My day has "LONG DAY" written all over it. We're busy, and I have people calling who can't even type in a fucking password. I mean, honest to fucking god, how STUPID can you be?! If you can't type in a fucking password, what's next?! Should I tie your shoes for you, too?! Jesus H. Christ, I have no patience for FUCKING MORONS today. And I'm too busy to post anything right now. Sorry.

UPDATE: Well, it wasn't busy for a while, so I figured I would do some news combing, but then it gets busy again. You know how it goes...

Fact checkers, please? We need a fact checker.

During my lunch break where I get to mooch the Providence Journal off a local restaurant, I came across an op-ed piece which validates my refusal to pay money for this rag: The rich are soaked -- How progressive should our taxes be?

I thought it might be educational, but I stopped reading after I came to this paragraph:

Taxpayers with incomes of $27,000 or less, who make up 40 percent of all taxpayers, do not end up paying any income tax; they receive checks back from the government, in the form of the earned-income tax credit, that exceed their income tax. There appears to be a natural incentive for people who pay no income tax to seek larger checks from the government by voting for candidates who seek to increase their earned-income tax credits and other benefits from the government. Who will pay the increased cost? Other taxpayers. Who can most easily afford to have their taxes increased? Higher-income taxpayers.

Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie. Lies.

Being a frequent visitor to the $27,000 a year or less income category, the last time I checked, I pay a lot in federal income taxes. I remember one year fondly when I made just a bit above $27,000 and I was bumped up to the 28% tax bracket, and boy did I get wollaped with taxes that year. The other years I have earned my lower middle class wage to pay for my single, childless self, I have paid thousands in federal income tax. This year alone at my new job, which I have been working since the beginning of September, I have shelled out $326.21 for federal income tax. That's in less then 2 months time, mind you; I know this because my latest paycheck stub happens to be in my pocket. I've worked two other jobs this year, employed for a total of 9 months, so I've paid at least $1000 to the federal income tax coffers this year.

When I haven't owed the government money, my largest tax rebate in the past few years has been around $500.

So, uhm, where again do wage earners of $27,000 a year or less not have to pay federal income tax? Where have the thousands of dollars I've paid to the government gone if I'm suddenly not chipping in for taxes? Where's my earned-income tax credit? The author might be correct regarding married couples with children who earn as much as I do, but he does not specifiy them, he just paints all workers who makes $27,000 a year or less with the same broad brush.

I had to look this paragraph over a couple times just to make sure I read it correctly. How could the Projo print such a bald-faced lie?

As if it couldn't get worse, but in the latter half of the paragraph the author accuses low wage earners like myself of attempting to get the rich to pay us more money, like we're some kind of money sucking parasites who wish to bilk anyone who makes more then us. What gall!

You get the jist of the op-ed piece from that paragraph. I didn't feel the need to continue reading it so I could get bashed and lied about, so I stopped. Then I wondered if this article would mention the flat tax anywhere, and sure enough, the idea that died with Steve Forbes' presidential campaigns was mentioned near the end of the piece. So on top of lying, the author continues to damage his credibility by bringing up a tax plan to favor the rich which was even unpopular with Republicans back in 1996. What will he say for an encore?: "As a money-grubbing investment manager, I admit to liking the Bush tax cut..."

Well, at least he's honest once.

Yet another lie

From Buzzflash: Cheney lied about poll results in Iraq on Meet the Press. What's this now, the 19 zillionth time he has used that show to spread propaganda from the White House?

Maybe if the media was actually liberal, The Big Dick wouldn't be able to pass off bald-faced lies on national television and not be questioned about it. But nope, we have the lapdog media. They don't care where the bone comes from, they just want something to chew on for a while.

Anyone else see the irony in this?

Diebold, the partisan Republican company which producing insecure electronic voting machines, continues atempting to censor the media from publishing publicly available memos from their corporation which detail how faulty their products, the products which American democracy rests on the backs of, are. This time their target is Indymedia.

There is a basic tenet of democracy being violated here, and that's freedom of the press. If the media is censored from reporting news that is publicly available, then how will the populace ever be informed enough to make wise decisions about their government? For a corporation which produces voting machines, their actions make them appear to love fascism more than any democracy which they now happening to be profiting off of.

Here are the links provided by Indymedia to the Diebold memos:

• 1
• 2
• 3

Sue me, assholes!

I have family matters to attend to tomorrow, so I won't be around. Feel free to take advantage of the comments feature and chat amongst yourselves if you find yourself here Wednesday.

Get those Christmas donations ready

As you probably know by now, the Senate and House have passed a bill banning partial birth abortion, continuing the efforts of the right to make a woman's freedom to choose what she does with her body illegal. Bush is sure to sign this into law.

Here's an accurate description of this bill NOW's press release: "NOW calls this bill what it really is: an abortion procedures ban. Like each of its predecessors, this bill was intentionally worded so vaguely that it could criminalize even some of the safest and most common abortion procedures after twelve weeks and well before fetal viability. It doesn't even contain a provision to permit the procedure if it is necessary to preserve the woman's health and future fertility.""

Don't like the sound of this? There here's where your support, and a few bucks if you can spare it, should be going:

NOW
Planned Parenthood
March for Freedom of Choice (Which is 4/25/04 in DC, BTW.)
Feminist Majority
NARAL Pro-Choice America

Of course, the biggest way people can help is by unelecting Bush next year before he can do further damage. But you already knew that.

Are they aiming spam at 5 year olds now?

I just got an email with this subject: "Your weenie can grow to amazing size".

Excuse me, did I just read "weenie"? We're not even going all out to call it a weiner, it's now my weenie? I think if I called it my weenie, nobody would think of it as being an "amazing size" while buying me some tweezers for Christmas.

Oh God

New, something for your GI Joe's to bitchslap: The Ann Coulter action figure!

Yes, it's real. It costs $29.95, which is rather expensive considering that she doesn't even come with a full skirt.

(Note to any feminists in the reading audience for clarification purposes: Loaded Mouth does not advocate bitchslapping women. Ann Coulter isn't a woman, though, she's the scion of Satan. If you had any confusion, I hope this clears it up.)

Bare cheeks are still necessary

To update a post I made lst week about the residents of a British town set to stage a mass mooning of toxic US Navy ships being sent there for salvage. Bush is having second thoughts about sending those toxic ships across the pond. The Sierra Club and Basel Action Network filed a lawsuit and pointed out that the transport of these ships might break a few laws. The judge sided with them, but has allowed the first 4 toxic ships to goto England. Which to a layman like me, doesn't make too much sense.

It's still the economy, stupid

The Wondershrub of the West has given us a record $374.2 billion budget deficit. The missing money can be traced back to the homes of the rich, the ones who received the tax cuts and well also receive billions for war contracts in Iraq. If you're looking for Robin Hood, he was brought up on terrorism charges and thrown in Gitmo.

Fark headline of the day

Japanese Mr. Magoo takes dog for walk in front of a bicycle race. The good news is the dog is doing fine

This could work to our advantage

Washington Post has an interesting piece about the threat of third parties in the 2004 election. Before anybody screams Nader (and you know where I stand on that), this piece also predicts that a strong third party candidate can do harm to Bush:

The Libertarian and Independence parties are significant threats to the Republican Party in 2004. The soaring budget deficit in Washington, ballooning expenditures and an expansion of government under Republican control of the White House and Congress have not only fired up the usual inside-the-Beltway deficit hawks; they have also fueled a grass-roots protest movement. Some of those disaffected Americans won't vote at all. Some will vote Democrat. But many will go outside the box to vote for a third party.

The piece also points out that the Green Party has gained strength and the Democrats still aren't paying attention. It doesn't mention that the Greens want Bush out of office just as much as anybody else on the left, and they are floating strategies to run a campaign that would try not to hinder a Democratic candidate, as long as that candidate doesn't lean too far to the right.

Third parties haven't disappeared, and this piece contends that they have gained more strength. They are going to make this next election a bit more interesting.

Plame who?

Lambert over at corrente points out that the media just isn't reporting the Plame story anymore. Complacency from the media that gives the Bush administration a free ride on many of their scandals is, unfortunately, expected. I'm not sure what else to say about this because it's not like I'm saying anything new, and to tell you the truth, I don't even feel outraged about Bush getting away scot-free with this latest scandal, even though the actions of someone in his administration could have killed a CIA agent and her contacts, nevermind the fact that the leak ruined her career. Nevermind the fact that the this information was leaked for petty reasons, simply to get back at a distingushed ambassador for writing an op-ed piece that told the truth. Nevermind the fact that there will be no independent investigation into the Bush administration's actions, and nobody is asking why? What does Bush have to hide?

Nope, no outrage. Not even from me. What the hell is wrong with me?

Cha-Ching!

"Much of the US financial contribution to Iraqi reconstruction will be earmarked for American companies, according to the top international official at the US Treasury."

US corporations profiting off death. Nobody saw that one coming.

For those who love to eat pussy

Restaurants in Guangzhou, China, well again be allowed to put cat on the menu.

What did you think I was talking about? Pervert.

Bub-bye

Rumour has it that Sony is going to cut 20,000 jobs. I wonder how many of those cuts will come in this country.

Yesterday, I said I needed a few days to myself, which I still do. I didn't want to mention why because I am not pining for sympathy, but there has been a death in my family and that's who I'm going to be with for the next few days. I'll be at work today and part of the day tomorrow, and my curious mind will naturally look for things to post here. It's probably better that I do some light blogging, it will keep my mind off other things, so the site will not be ignored completely. Thanks for understanding.

I need a few days to myself.