National day of celebration

People should be out rejoicing in the streets over the Gonzales resignation. We should be declaring mass parties, with banners with the names of Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, DeLay, Rove, and Gonzales inside circles with the big red slash.

Read the paper lately and it's like, "oh well there were some questions about Gonzales' integrity, competence and honesty." And "well old Rove, well, he's just going to go fishin' now, with his wife and his dog..." Well what a fucking couple of good-old-boys now, why, those good old boys, they just done had enough now haven't they. The fuck. They are running scared, like all those BushCo crooks, once people start finding out what BushCo has been upto.

Let us all hope that exactly what BushCo has done can be brought to light. And let's hope that damage to the constitution, the law, the environment, the economy, the infrastructure, international relations, and the way in which the federal government spends our tax money may be repaired, and the sooner the better.

Karl Rove resigns

Looks like he just gave his 2 weeks' notice.

Add him to the list of failed BushCo NeoC*n thugs.

Hooray. He was one of the worst, one of the men responsible for the tragedy foisted upon the United States and the rest of the world.

Details here at Reuters Canada.

I'm putting a sweet old family picture with this post as kind of a "unicorn chaser," since the image of Karl Rove is a sickening reminder of BushCo offenses.

Space travel via balloon

In what I'd describe as a revolutionary and simple idea, an independent company called JP Aerospace is using balloons to facilitate space travel.

I read about it here in Wired's "Threat Level" blog.

In dozens of tests, JP Aerospace balloons have reached altitudes of nearly 100,000 feet. The balloons carry cameras, cell phones and GPS devices.

So this is what it looks like from up there:

This is roughly 18 miles up.

JP's idea is to assemble a platform up there, which can be reached with a unit like this:

From there (140,000 feet), theoretically, a space ship can be launched.

BushCo Lexicography hit-list

"information"
"in·for·ma·tion /ˌɪnfərˈmeɪʃən/ [in-fer-mey-shuhn] –noun
1. knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance; news."

"knowledge"
"knowl·edge /ˈnɒlɪdʒ/ [nol-ij] –noun
1. acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition: knowledge of many things."

"blogger"
"blog (blŏg) n. A weblog.

intr.v. blogged, blog·ging, blogs
To write entries in, add material to, or maintain a weblog ... blog·ger n. ... Part of Speech: n ... Definition: a person who keeps a Web log (blog)."

Sample usage: "Well I heard the bloggers are using information to create knowledge on their blogs..."

Rush L: "OH MY GOD-- BLOGGERS HAVE BEEN INFORMING PEOPLE!! THEY ARE CAUSING KNOWLEDGE!! THE BLOG-O-NAZIS ARE DETERMINED TO STOP THE SPREAD OF FREEDOM!!"

Next week on Hannity: "Do you want the world of the bloggers or do you want the world of America? America must choose now!!"

Return of the Pork Chops

Still relevant after 20 years! Damnit. Classes start the 20th and the worst of the worst are coming back to town. I once got in an argument in the middle of a class with one of these types who would not shut up during the lecture:

"Well if you're not here to talk alot and have fun, then what are you here for?"

"To get an education!"

I will quote from my friend at Shavedneck.com:

I made this flyer in early 1985 as a gut response to the recent infestation of the U of A campus with a strain of vermin known as College Republicans. Not sure their origin but they brought with them a "fashion style" that was soon to be ubiquitious: beach bikes, walkmen, oversized shirts and shorts. Unacceptable though was their attitude of "dont fuck with me cuz my daddy will sue your ass". They were almost exclusively fraternity members and were responsible for making the word "frat boy" synonymous with the Niedermeyer-asshole type frat (Animal House nemesis) it is today. (Once was a day when not all frats were conservative gross shitheads or trust fund hippies pretending not to be.)

Ugh! 22+ years later and I can still spew this hostility!! Its probably pretty easy for me cuz the Bush era we are struggling through makes those horrible Reagan years look like the Summer of Fucking Love in Haight Ashbury.

Me and my buddy Tim hung these all over campus. We actually had a pork chop see us hang one, read it and exclaim "i'm a pork chop!!" and instead of getting aggro on us he begged us for more copies. Now thats a good pork chop!

We also had to ride for our lives on fraternity row to escape their wrath at one juncture. Never underestimate the violence of a Reagan brainwashed (insert Rove/Bush today) humonculous.

As an added related note: it was Tim who first commented to me upon seeing a Pork Chop: "that guy just shaved his neck". We began calling Pork Chops "Shaved Necks". Now you know where the fucking ridiculous name for this website comes from!!!

Journalist killed in Oakland

Chauncey Bailey, a reporter at the Oakland Post, was killed last Thursday, Aug. 2nd 2007, by a 19 year old who worked a bakery. The bakery was the subject of a story by Baily. The 19 year old killed Baily with a shotgun & confessed to the crime, according to this story in the Chron.

People who spoke at Baily's memorial service expressed a strong desire to continue with the story he was working on. They also expressed the importance of investigative journalism. Chauncy Baily's editor:

"This is a moment of disaster for journalism, nationally and internationally. One of the few journalists ever killed on American soil and he was in the pursuit of stories that were controversial... I hope that this is an opportunity for us to continue the work he was doing and to step up... It ain't over. This community will know what Chauncey Bailey and I were working on... I want us to make his untimely, forced exodus our genesis, our genesis of renewed advocacy for investigative journalism."

more on the Gonzales scandal

"There are no rules"
Alberto Gonzales, July 2007

"The attorney general took an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Instead, he tells the half-truth, the partial truth, and everything but the truth. And he does it not once, and not twice, but over and over and over again."
Senator Charles Schumer, July 2007

ASTOUNDING stuff is trickling into public view in the Gonzales scandal. My point here is that we are seeing less and less tolerance in Congress for BushCo's lying, cheating, stealing ways, and that damage caused by Bush, Cheney, Rove and company is coming to light, stirring citizenry and congress, Demos and Reps alike, to call for punishment, adherence to the law, the public's right to know the actions of those who are supposed to represent us in government. BushCo has become its own ugly little entity and no longer serves the People of the U.S. The Gonzales scandal illustrates business as usual at BushCo- secrecy, lying, disregard for the constitution and law, attempts to discredit and obfuscate, contempt for the Bill of Rights and the very people the President is supposed to represent.

List of stuff that's been all over the news this week:

1. The entire top tier of the U.S. Justice Dept. was going to quit over the BushCo domestic spying program. That means ASHCROFT, yes, even Ashcroft was was so pissed about Bush's disregard for the law & Constitution that he was going to resign from his job as fucking ATTORNEY GENERAL, along with the head of the FBI Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General James Comey. This was in 2004. Link to Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's 5/15/07 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

2. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are now trying to charge Gonzales with perjury, via a special council. Gonzales keeps saying- under oath- there was no internal dispute over the domestic spying program. Mueller and Comey, in their testimony, have been frank about how the people who ran the Justice Dept. at the time believed the domestic spying was illegal and were about to resign over it.

3. Karl Rove has been subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is part of the committee's 7-month-old proceedings regarding the BushCo purge of U.S. Attorneys.

4. It's coming out that the Attorneys were fired in states where the Administration believed the Attorneys would oppose Republican attempts to discredit Democrats and draw attention away from election fraud through phony "voter fraud" scandals.

5. In the media they are now referring to Gonzales as "Gonzo."

Link to DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE's New York Times article, which sums up the week's developments in the Gonzales scandal, and provides the adminstration's masterfully persuasive counter arguments, which arguments I'd like to quote:

“confusion is inevitable when complicated classified activities are discussed in a public forum where the greatest care must be used not to compromise sensitive intelligence operations.”
“The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legal basis for intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed and that remain highly classified,”

It's worth noting that these strong-sounding arguments are handily deflated by sworn testimony of people who were there when this went down.