You have to wait until the end of this fairly entertaining video before you see Norm at his finest, worth every second.
Go vote for Frankin tonight! (love ya Robert, but there is too much at stake this time).
eightandfive is © the fine people who write these fine pieces. Some rights reserved.
You have to wait until the end of this fairly entertaining video before you see Norm at his finest, worth every second.
Go vote for Frankin tonight! (love ya Robert, but there is too much at stake this time).
The McCain campaign is currently mocking Obama by sending out “Obama Energy Plan” tire gauges to contributes. I suggest Obama also send out tire gauges to supporters. The tire gauges should read:
“Obama. Simple, common sense solutions to the mess republicans have gotten us into.”
Just an idea… not sure if it would fit on a tire gauge.
For the past several weeks now we have been inundated with news stories about destroyed CIA tapes. The President is exercising his right to remain silent. I wonder if anyone has also mentioned he will be treated as innocent until proven guilty? I am sure he knows of his right to an attorney, but if we detain him as a terrorism suspect we may be able to stash him away down in Gitmo or at a Rendition-friendly country for a few years until shit dies down.
But all the criminal activity aside, I want to know this: Who really makes tapes of anything nowadays? There are no destroyed tapes. Basically because there are no tapes! The criminals involved with this investigation often mention videos and the news stories alternately mention videos and tapes.
This is 2007. Let’s get realistic. These videos were recorded onto some kind of camcorder and were then digitally saved to a hard drive somewhere. There ARE no tapes! If they’re smart, they’ll sell the digital recording device on eBay to a UK buyer or someone engaged in German porn. That way, the traces of the torture videos will be written over so many times as to be irrecoverable. If they sell their disks and cameras to the porn industry, then even if a disk were sent out for recovery all we’d see is the Money Shot.
A typical hard drive data wipe requires data to be written to every writable sector several times before it is certified as “clean” and I would expect an additional step of destroying the hard drive would be mandated. Not destroying by smashing either, but destruction by an incinerator or another more robust shredding or melting process.
It’s only a matter of time before someone who was not comfortable with the illegal torture activities shows up with a USB stick, or a camera phone or some other digital representation or copy of the tortures at Gitmo.
This is the digital age. Remember the pictures at Abu Ghraib? Remember the Holocaust concentration camps? The records exist. They will be found for the torture at Gitmo. It’s only a matter of time before someone’s conscience catches up to the illegal atrocities of this Republican Administration and they all go to jail. The President may pardon every criminal involved, but let the written and digital records come forth. The truthiness is out there!
This week President Bush announced sanctions against Iran. If there’s one thing that America should have learned over the past eight years, it’s that war in the Arabian Gulf region does nothing for America. We do not have cheaper oil, we are no more safe now than we were before 9/11. We are not consuming all terrorist resources “fighting them over there instead of over here.” But where is there? Where is here? I suspect folks in Germany do not consider themselves integral to any war on terror. But Germany has been targeted. I am guessing Michigan, Florida, Chicago, (insert your state or town here), all count as “over here” but the question is: Even if we turn all of the Arabian region into a fun-filled theme park, would we have stopped these wackos from trying to carry out plots against Americans?
It took America five years to even figure out who was a terrorist. We’re still not REALLY sure. Bottom-line is: if we think you are, then you are. If we think you’re not, well…then you probably are, but we’ll let you in our country as long as you remember: YOU ARE BEING WATCHED AT ALL TIMES. Note: Cease communication and start running if you see someone approaching you sporting this lapel pin.
As you count your blessings over the course of the next few months of the holiday season, remember what makes America great. Next year will be election season and the hyperbole and exaggerations will be flying faster than a politician denying a crime.
We have a rule in America: If you are a politician getting a blowjob, then we try to run you out of office because you’re a sick, immoral pervert who lowers the standards of society. But if you’re giving the blowjobs, then we just pull out our peckers and get in line because after all, who doesn’t like a good blowjob?
Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has resigned today. This being the second recent senior Bush Administration to submit walking papers in the past few weeks. The political wheels are finally coming off of the Bush war-wagon.
What does this indicate is happening to this Administration? Is the President finally accepting defeat? Are these resignations finally the Administrations way of saying, “Yep. We couldn’t do it ram it down everyone’s throats. We tried, we said 9-11 lot, and we showed a lot of gore on the TV, but the people still wouldn’t go for it.”
I am not sure if these resignations indicate a duck and cover strategy or if they are simply trying to put some distance between the most divisive of Bush’s cronies and the election in 2008. With Rumsfeld, Gonzalez and Rove all out of the public eye over a year before the next election, I suspect it will make people think the Republicons ain’t so bad. Especially if the cost of a gallon of gasoline starts to drop dramatically right before the next election.
I predict that gasoline will drop to about $1.45 to $1.55 per gallon right around Halloween of 2008.
Do any 8n5ers have any predictions or theories as to why Bush is throwing in the towel?
The surge is not working.
With today’s helicopter crash, the Department of Defense will add fourteen more to their list. Right now the official number the media’s reporting is
“at least 3,721 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.”
Inver Grove Heights, Richfield, Cottage Grove, Shakopee, Roseville, Fridley. These are cities in Minnesota that all have one thing in common: Their population is equivalent to the number of reported casualties in the GWOT. There are over thirty other cities in Minnesota with fewer citizens than casualties in the GWOT.
How can this be? It’s because the media is reporting the corpse count of U.S. military personnel who have died in Iraq. The media has a slightly higher corpse count than the DoD. But if one were to examine the raw numbers the DoD is reporting, one would simply need to add some columns to get the real casualty report.
The surge is not working.
Total deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan: 4,129 dead U.S. soldiers. This count is not designating between combat deaths and non-combat deaths because after all, the families aren’t any less distraught that their son or daughter died from non-hostile action.
The number of soldiers who were wounded but returned to duty is at 15,751, and the number of soldiers who were wounded but could not return to duty is 13,254.
If you add all three together, the total number of casualties as reported by the DoD is 33,134 (source: DoD website defenselink.mil).
To put this in perspective, it would be the equivalent of taking all the citizens of a large metro-area suburb, killing 4,000 of them and wounding the rest, half of which could go back to their daily routine (albeit injured) and the other half which would require a hospital stay. All of them would likely need psychological treatment.
So when Fox news (the only media source with the headline “Positive Surge Results…”) or one of the other mainstream media outlets suggests that the surge is working, you can tell them they are dead wrong.
The surge is not working.
The edited and unedited “Daughter” videos:
ATT alleges that a webcast vendor censored a lyric that was unflattering to President George W. Bush. Pearl Jam had this to say:
This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media. What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band. AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.
Pearl Jam has it nailed. Ever day something like this is allowed to occur in America, a piece of freedom dies. We must remain vigilant and alert to even the smallest erosions of liberty and free speech or one day those concepts will just be a forgotten memory.
Earlier this week the democratic house capitulated to King George by allowing the FISA law to be changed in such a way that he can now wire-tap calls and monitor emails from any US citizen to outside of the US, this surveillance needs no suspicion, no pre-approval, and no repercussions if it “accidentally” records discourse within our country. Since Consiglieri Gonzales is in charge of monitoring this program it’s unlikely that the oversight will be anymore than a rubber stamp.
I’m used to the Democrats giving in to crap to get other stuff done (and they’ve gotten a lot done, of which I’m proud) but where is the ideologically driven right on this issue? Why aren’t the right-wing talkers OUTRAGED? The government has officially compromised our constitutional right to privacy. Before now I would have thought that keeping the Government out of our underwear drawers would be at least as important to conservatives as not allowing gays to marry. I was wrong. Do you think they’d be cool with Clinton monitoring them?
Girl Talk. Download - pay what you can. - #
Phish reunites to tour in 2009. - #
Here's a helpful and depressing tutorial on the current financial crapstorm, in cartoon form. I'm having a hard time figuring out who did the video, but it was linked to on Cosmic Variance. - #
MoveOn.org is giving away free Obama buttons. Almost 2 million ordered so far. - #
If I had married Tea Leoni and starred in film and TV with Gillian Anderson, I would have the exact same problem. How many love children do you have David? - #
