Five Before Chaos

As it finally winds down, a word to the die-hard Clinton supporters. Your candidate did not lose because she was a woman. She lost because she ran a shitty campaign, took a lot of bad advice, and to many of us, she represents exactly what has kept the Dems in the political wilderness for the last 25 or so years. So think about that for a minute instead of blaming it on sexism, as you do a great disservice to the cause. That’s not to say that there was not sexist things being said (or racist things on the other hand). She WAS the frontrunner for a long time, remember, and the media bought into and pushed that line for a long time, too. Some of us don’t support Hillary because she’s a pandering corporatist DLC hack, gender is not even a factor. Whining about how it was “stolen” from here when it was never hers to “steal” in the first place is dumb and dishonest.

The Toronto Globe and Mail has an excellent rundown on what I’m talking about.

Reminds me of the early days of computer text gaming. Have a lookie.

Yeah, I know, it’s been a while. Time for some Brothers Johnson. Not really much of a video, so just turn this one up and go about yer business… Have a great weekend. Get the Funk Outta my Face!

Headaches, as in both the nasty sinus one I have right now that feels like it’s pushing my teeth out of my mouth, and the one Scott McClellan’s book is causing for the WH and the media. I really don’t understand what the big deal is… there’s nothing McLellan’s revealed that sane people who didn’t have their heads buried far up their asses didn’t know as it was happening. Bush lied? Propaganda? The media was continually bent over and lubed up for the WH? Jeez, not rocket science here.

McLellan is most certainly lying… but not about what happened. He’s lying when he acts like he was somehow duped or played for a fool. Just watch one of those old press conferences.

But what galls me most ins a squandered opportunity (much like what happened with Colin Powell, who also know he was peddling bullshit and did nothing about it). Can you just imagine the impact it would have had, if right in the middle of a White House press conference bullshit-fest, McClellan suddenly got a pang of conscience and threw oup his hands and said, “You know, i can’t spin this shit and polish these turds anymore. Bush lied about this whole thing. I was there as they were concocting this latest story.”, or “Who the fuck am I kidding, Libby and Rove coordinated their stories. Now don’t you fucktards have a missing white girl story to cover?”

Maybe if Scottie had a bit of conscience in that eternal black pit of hackery called his soul, he could have turned the tide against Bush much sooner, and maybe even saved a few lives in the process.

Last year, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez teamed up to give us the double feature, “Grindhouse”, with Rodriguez giving us the zombie flick “Planet Terror” and Tarantino giving us the psycho car-chase movie “Death Proof”. They were conceived as tributes to the original grindhouse films, replete with crazy plots, damaged film, missing reels, and there were even several “fake trailers” that were shown before and between the movies. Although it did well critically, it kinda flopped at the box office.. a lot of people didn’t get it.

Anyways, the fake trailers, done by current directors such as Eli Roth and Rob Zombie, were excellent, as they really looked like real movies. Here’s a few for your enjoyment. The first, and best, “Machete” generated so much buzz that Rodriguez is going ahead and actually making the Machete film:

Holiday horror with “Thanksgiving”

And the actual theatrical trailer for “Grindhouse”:

(crossposted on Green Mountain Daily)

Busy day today, so unfortunately I can’t spend a bit more on this, but I was reading this article on CNN this morning that the Dept. of Transportation’s latest figures have shown the steepest decline in driving in March since records were recorded:

Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less — that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.” Records have been kept since 1942.

This is good news. Now, I know, finding the silver lining in higher gas prices is not a popular notion in mainstream America. But aside from the obvious environmental benefit, there’s something much deeper at work here, possibly a reorganization of American society.

Continue reading

I try my best not to watch the pontificating DC punditry for many reasons, mostly because they’re completely full of shit, and I hold them largely responsible for the dumbing down of our politics. But David Gergen actually said something brilliant (and sadly, naïve) the other day regarding what Hillary should be doing about those racist hicks in Appalachia:

“She should say, “If you want to vote against him because he’s black, I don’t want your vote… She’s never had redneck votes before in her life, there’s no reason she can’t take the high road.”

Sorry, Dave. There is a reason. She’s Hillary Clinton. “Taking the high road” doesn’t factor into anything she does. Video here.

One of the genres so popular at the grindhouses were the kung fu films. We’re not talking the high quality Bruce Lee stuff here. One of the most twisted trailers I’ve ever seen is for The Crippled Master, a kung fu one about two amputees that become karate masters. One has no legs, and the other might have been a thalidomide baby or something. He has no arms and only one tiny fingerlike appendage on one of his shoulders. Sick:

And then there’s this other silly one, The Master of the Flying Guillotine. I need to get me one of those. Take note of the ridiculously long fake arms on that one guy.

PZ at Pharyngula is reporting that the FBI has some rather nefarious plans to weed out potential terrorists at the upcoming Republican National Beer Hall Putsch Convention in St. Louis St. Paul. It starts at the vegan potlucks:

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant–someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

I lived in the vegetarian wilderness for 8 long years… the closest I came to any kind of terror was the feeling I wanted to run screaming from a restaurant as I salivated over the guy’s bacon at the table next to me as I ate some lame-ass tempeh strips.

On another note… remember back before 9-11 when the DoJ couldn’t be bothered with worrying about terrorism because they were more concerned with prostitution and bong salesmen. With the amount of family values politicians patronizing gay prostitutes at the convention, they could have a massive sweep and round up a lot of people. But that would put a huge chunk of the GOP hacks in jail, so we won’t see that happen.

The new issue of Radar magazine has a feature that oughta scare the shit out of you. The Last Roundup is a piece by Christopher Ketcham that details a secret government spy program that may very well spy on or detain as many as 8 million Americans.

Entitled “Main Core”, it first came to light last year during the testimony of James Comey, who worked right under then-attorney general John Ashcroft.You might remember hearing something about Alberto Gonzales trying his damnedest to get a bedridden and hospitalized Ashcrof to sign off on and certify a new surveillance program. Ashcroft wouldn’t sign it, and due to his condition, Comey was acting AG, and he wouldn’t sign off on it either, at one point later threatening resignation over the matter.

Kecham dug around and found that the program involves a massive data-mining effort. And here’s the scary part:

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Yeah, sounds like something in Stalin’s Soviet Union, doesn’t it? And as far as what would constitute a “national emergency”? Well, it’s not too clear:

Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a “national emergency.” Executive orders issued over the past three decades define it as a “natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency,” while Department of Defense documents include eventualities like “riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order.” According to one news report, even “national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad” could be a trigger.

And what kind of info?

Main Core also allegedly draws on four smaller databases that, in turn, cull from federal, state, and local “intelligence” reports; print and broadcast media; financial records; “commercial databases”; and unidentified “private sector entities.” Additional information comes from a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, which generates watch lists from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for use by airlines, law enforcement, and border posts. According to the Washington Post, the Terrorist Identities list has quadrupled in size between 2003 and 2007 to include about 435,000 names. The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center border crossing list, which listed 755,000 persons as of fall 2007, grows by 200,000 names a year. A former NSA officer tells Radar that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, using an electronic-funds transfer surveillance program, also contributes data to Main Core, as does a Pentagon program that was created in 2002 to monitor antiwar protesters and environmental activists such as Greenpeace.

If previous FEMA and FBI lists are any indication, the Main Core database includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people.

It’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Ketcham really did his homework on this, citing many historical examples and telling signs as to what is involved.

So it’s a crapshoot as to what could trigger something like this. But that’s only part of the deal. The Continuancy of Government (COG) plans could indeed very much be a police state, with the executive branch holding all of the cards. There’s a lot more to it than I can paraphrase here, but it’s indeed quite chilling in its scope. Go and read the whole thing.