This is an odd collection of stuff that I find on the net mixed with some of the jokes people send to me. My politics are definitely not right wing. I post stuff here instead of spamming everyone in my address book. Take what you like and leave the rest...
Friday, April 30, 2004
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
The headline blazing across yesterday's USA Today said: Majority Supports Bush on Terrorism. That's what millions of Americans saw on the newsstands as they dashed through airports or opened their hotel room doors to see the complimentary newspaper -- and most probably didn't bother to read the fine print. But that's what Ruy Teixeira does, thankfully, and he provides this analysis on his Donkey Rising blog of the latest Gallup poll data -- a much different story than the USA Today told in its headline. "
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail your mate who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
6. When you go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.
7. When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial "0" or "9"to get an outside line.
8. You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
10. You learn about your redundancy on the 10 o'clock news.
11. Your boss doesn't have the ability to do your job.
12. Contractors out number permanent staff and are more likely to get long-service awards.
AND THE REAL CLINCHERS ARE...
13. You read this entire list, and kept nodding and smiling.
14. As you read this list, you think about forwarding it to your "friends."
15. You got this e-mail from a friend that never talks to you anymore, except to send you jokes from the net.
16. You are too busy to notice there was no 9.
17. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a No. 9.
18. AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING AT YOUR STUPIDITY AND THINKING OF WHO YOU CAN SEND IT ON TO!
Salon.com Politics
Friday, March 26, 2004
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.
After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.
Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done around here.
And that, my friends, is how a company policy begins.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Salon.com | I'd like a tuna on white -- hold the mercury!
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Compassionate Conservatism at work
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Arianna Huffington
Monday, March 15, 2004
The Spokesman-Review.com - Bush's partial history
Some military researchers and a former Texas Guard lieutenant colonel believe the stringent regulations -- known as the Human Reliability Program -- may have been invoked to stop Bush from flying Texas Air National Guard jets in 1972."
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
So Bush has a site somewhere that tracks Kerry's "flip-flops". Reader TK probably spent three seconds coming up with this list of Bush flip flops. It's not like they're hard to find:
Bush is against campaign finance reform; then he's for it. Bush is against a Homeland Security Department; then he's for it. Bush is against a 9/11 commission; then he's for it. Bush is against an Iraq WMD investigation; then he's for it. Bush is against nation building; then he's for it. Bush is against deficits; then he's for them. Bush is for free trade; then he's for tariffs on steel; then he's against them again. Bush is against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli Palestinian conflict; then he pushes for a "road map" and a Palestinian State. Bush is for states right to decide on gay marriage, then he is for changing the constitution. Bush first says he'll provide money for first responders (fire, police, emergency), then he doesn't. Bush first says that 'help is on the way' to the military ... then he cuts benefits Bush-"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. Bush-"I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. Bush claims to be in favor of the environment and then secretly starts drilling on Padre Island. Bush talks about helping education and increases mandates while cutting funding. Bush first says the U.S. won't negotiate with North Korea. Now he will Bush goes to Bob Jones University. Then say's he shouldn't have. Bush said he would demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq. Later Bush announced he would not call for a vote Bush said the "mission accomplished" banner was put up by the sailors. Bush later admits it was his advance team. Bush was for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the US. Bush after meeting with Pres. Fox, he's against it.
Friday, February 27, 2004
Dear Employee:
As a result of the reduction of money budgeted for department areas, we are forced to cut down on our number of personnel. Under this plan, older employees will be asked to take early retirement, thus permitting the retention of younger people who represent our future.
Therefore, a program to phase out older personnel by the end of the current fiscal year, via retirement, will be placed into effect immediately.
This program will be known as SLAP (Sever Late-Aged Personnel). Employees who are SLAPPED will be given the opportunity to look for jobs outside the company.
SLAPPED employees can request a review of their employment records before actual retirement takes place. This review phase of the program is called SCREW. SCREW (Survey of Capabilities of Retired Early Workers).
All employees who have been SLAPPED and SCREWED may file an appeal with upper management. This appeal is called SHAFT (Study by Higher Authority Following Termination).
Under the terms of the new policy, an employee may be SLAPPED once, SCREWED twice, but may be SHAFTED as many times as the company deems appropriate. If an employee follows the above procedure, he/she will be entitled to get: HERPES (Half Earnings for Retired Personnel's Early Severance) or CLAP (Combined Lump sum Assistance Payment).
As HERPES and CLAP are considered benefit plans, any employee who has received HERPES or CLAP will no longer be SLAPPED or SCREWED by the company. Management wishes to assure the younger employees who remain on board that the company will continue its policy of training employees through our: Special High Intensity Training (SHIT). We take pride in the amount of SHIT our employees receive. We have given our employees more SHIT than any company in this area. If any employee feels they do not receive enough SHIT on the job, see your immediate supervisor. Your supervisor is specially trained to make sure you receive all the SHIT you can stand. And, once again, thanks for all your years of service with us.
Have a Good Day!
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Josie Fuller and J.T. Francis celebrate after getting married at San Francisco's City Hall on Monday, Feb 16, 2004.
Winter of love
Cautious Democrats worry that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's historic affirmation of gay marriage will help Bush win reelection. But as the right squabbles over the issue, his party may well thank him in November.
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By Joan Walsh
Feb. 26, 2004 |
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom "looked like the cat who ate the canary," Supervisor Tom Ammiano recalls, at a hastily convened private meeting Feb. 10. That's when Newsom told Ammiano, who'd run against him for mayor last November, about his plan to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and asked for Ammiano's support.
"I'm fucking delighted!" the stand-up comic turned politician told the new mayor. Almost two weeks later, Ammiano was still beaming. City Hall had become a giant wedding chapel; just outside Ammiano's door, same-sex couples were being married in the glorious rotunda, on balconies and landings, in a dozen quiet nooks all over the building. And the national gay-rights leader was at a rare loss for words to describe the scene. "It's just so, so ... so queer!" he says finally. "But I think he's unleashed something that's bigger than all of us."
That's for sure, although it's still not clear exactly what it is. Even some gay rights advocates have worried that Newsom unleashed a big fat political backlash, epitomized by President Bush's decision Tuesday to back a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. "What Mayor Newsom has done in San Francisco ... has in fact energized and motivated those who support marriage between one man and one woman," Mathew Staver, president of the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, told the Los Angeles Times in the wake of Bush's decision on Tuesday.
That's supposedly why Rep. Barney Frank warned Newsom against his bold move. (Ammiano shakes his head at Frank's judgment. "That's Barney -- so Beltway-centric!") But Democrats all over the country have been telling the new mayor that the only person happier than the gay newlyweds is Karl Rove, who will now be able to run a campaign about the Democrats' degradation of marriage, rather than unpleasant issues like the jobless recovery, the massive budget deficit and the Iraq debacle. And the debate is sure to rage on: Will San Francisco's Winter of Love make it easier for Republicans to hold onto the White House next November?
No one knows for sure, but I don't think so. I feel like I have to confess upfront that my analytical skills have been warped by watching all of these weddings. You can't imagine what it's like from a distance. Straight or gay, visitors get teary when they walk inside City Hall, where the meaning of what Newsom did is huge and palpable. It's always struck me as vaguely homophobic, the insistence on how "normal" these couples are, but that really is what hits you in person. Sure, there are drag queens in the line waiting for marriage licenses, and plenty of old-fashioned flannel-shirted lesbians. But there are also 50-something men in bad suits and women in Prada; there are women in wheelchairs and interracial couples; and there are children everywhere, kids doing homework sitting on the floor as they wait for their parents' turn to get married. These are families already, and once you see them you know: There's really no going back.
And the ripple effect across the city, and the world, is enormous. In San Francisco, everyone knows someone who got married -- two of my daughter's public school teachers did it -- and practically every city official was deputized to marry couples over the long Valentine's Day weekend. I ran into bleary-eyed Newsom staffer Joe Caruso on Friday, the day Cambodia's King Sihanouk came out in favor of gay marriage after seeing the San Francisco weddings on TV, and Caruso was carrying one of the hundreds of bouquets of flowers strangers had sent from all over the world. The card was inscribed simply: "To the happy couple, With love from Eileen and Darren of British Columbia." People were dropping by City Hall all last week just for the emotional high. Straight San Francisco, too, is glowing with gay pride.
"We were just trying to put a human face on this issue," an exhausted Newsom said on Wednesday, after appearances on CNN's "Larry King Live" and ABC's "Nightline." He acknowledges that he's heard criticism even from supporters for his so-called act of civil disobedience. "That's the strongest argument: Why should a mayor be judge and jury and substitute his subjective interpretation of the Constitution? I've heard that. What I say is: The courts will decide. The system is working."
It's safe to say that of the roughly 119,000 people who voted for Gavin Newsom in the mayoral runoff last December, nobody thought they were voting for the radical in the race. The radical was the other guy, Matt Gonzalez, the Green Party leader who knocked off Ammiano in November and ran a spirited, occasionally brutal race against Newsom, whom he caricatured as a captive of corporate San Francisco. When I publicly declared my support for Newsom on the eve of the election, it was a dramatically uncool thing to do, and I spent many holiday parties defending my decision, which was more a reaction to the nasty campaign Gonzalez ran than a passionate belief in Newsom. (I think the die-hards who kept up their Gonzalez campaign posters featuring Newsom alongside Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger might finally have to take them down.) I saw the new mayor as a cautious, wonky Democrat who might get some good things done. I wish I could say I saw this coming. But anybody who tells you that is a liar.
It's not just his gay marriage moves that shocked the city. In his first weeks on the job, Newsom toppled the powerful but scandal-shadowed police chief and replaced him with a Chinese-American woman, acting chief Heather Fong (he pledged to do a national search), who has already shaken up the command staff and looks like she expects to keep the job. He named the first female fire chief, Joanne Hayes-White, to preside over a department that's still dogged by issues of diversity, and appointed an African-American lesbian, Heather Hiles, to the school board. He told the Chamber of Commerce to expect to share the pain of a looming budget deficit, warning that some kind of business tax-hike is all but inevitable. He took department heads on a tour of ragged, neglected BayView-Hunter's Point, declared the city's epidemic of youth violence a travesty, and put city officials on notice that he wanted change in the way they approach the problems of crime and poverty.
But even though Newsom's bold moves have surprised me, the way he made them and defended them has not. I also voted for him because of a gut sense of his personal decency, an intuition that, agree with him or not, he acts from a moral base, which I respect. When you disagree with him, it can be a little scary. I called him a "sanctimonious schoolboy" last year after we argued about his aggressive panhandling initiative, when he insisted opponents like me were basically saying it was fine to let the city's down-and-out continue to die on the streets. Ouch. Of course, it's sanctimony when you disagree with someone, but conviction when they're on your side. So I've enjoyed watching Newsom's Catholic-schoolboy conviction on the gay marriage issue, his unflappable sense of his own righteousness as he goes up against the Christian right.
It's hard not to notice that Newsom is doing well politically by doing good, and lots of folks are asking if that's the point. "There's a lingering suspicion that this is like the candyman, you know, he's doing this great thing and then he'll do something bad," Ammiano admits. The mayor's cause wasn't helped by an anonymous aide who crowed to the San Francisco Chronicle that if you "control" the gay vote, your political success is assured in San Francisco. There's no doubt his stance has helped Newsom on his left: Pollster David Binder says that just a month ago, only 39 percent of self-described "progressive voters" had a favorable view of Newsom; that soared to 72 percent in a Binder poll this week, though the mayor lost support among the conservatives and older voters who had formed his base.
Kate Kendall, director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, says it's "insane" to think Newsom took his stance on gay marriage for political gain. "He was told by his own gay staff, 'You're going to ruin your political career,' and he said, 'I don't care,'" says Kendall, who calls Newsom's move "completely transformative." Newsom confirms that some gay staffers worried about the move, but says they were won over quickly. Now he acknowledges the most fear comes from older San Franciscans, those of his father's generation. He says his father, former Judge Bill Newsom, "supports me, but a lot of his friends and our family members can't believe I'm doing this. But that generational shift shows the inevitability of this change."
On the national level, the conventional wisdom says that Newsom hurt the Democrats by catalyzing a gay marriage backlash and handing Karl Rove a wedge issue with which to clobber likely nominee John Kerry in November. But in fact, the opposite might be true. Democrats may yet thank Newsom, and the Massachusetts Supreme Court, for pulling the president out of his political spider hole and forcing him to back a constitutional amendment. Already his base is squabbling over whether Bush went far enough, and even Tom DeLay isn't sure he's ready for a move as radical as amending the Constitution.
Newsom won't take credit or blame for forcing the president's hand. "He was going to do this; the question wasn't 'if' but when," says the mayor. "It's a remarkable risk from [Bush's] perspective. He's got a debate going now in his own party. I think it was a huge mistake, but history will judge that."
Meanwhile, Kerry could come out of this looking like a centrist. When Newsom was on CNN's "Late Edition" Sunday morning talking to Wolf Blitzer, the screen below him kept flashing the words "John Kerry is opposed to gay marriage." By staking out one extreme on the issue, Newsom showed that Bush is at the other extreme. If elections are won in the middle, that's good news for Kerry.
But it's too early to know how Newsom's move will play politically, or even legally. It's still possible the courts will say he's wrong and stop the weddings. In the meantime, San Franciscans can be proud of what's going on in City Hall. I walked away last week unexpectedly happy, knowing without a doubt: This is what history looks like. This is what it feels like to do the right thing.
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About the writer Wednesday, February 25, 2004My Way News
My Way News: "NEW YORK (AP) - Andy Rooney set the phone and e-mail lines at CBS buzzing over his commentary - in which he said God was speaking through him - calling Mel Gibson and the Rev. Pat Robertson 'wackos.'"
Thursday, February 19, 2004Yahoo! News - Barney Frank criticizes S.F. weddings
Yahoo! News - Barney Frank criticizes S.F. weddings: "SUMMARY: Openly gay Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., criticized letting same-sex couples get married in San Francisco, saying it could hurt efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in his home state. "
Wednesday, February 18, 2004Salon.com | The culture-war president
Salon.com | The culture-war president: The culture-war president
By Arianna Huffington http://www.salon.com/opinion/huffington/2004/02/18/culture_war/index.html Feb. 18, 2004 | "I'm a war president," George Bush told us. But as the body count in Iraq continues to rise, the president's approval rating plummets, and the furor over phantom WMD, sexed-up intel, and Bush's spotty Air National Guard service refuses to go away, it appears Karl Rove is planning a small rewrite for his candidate: "I'm a culture war president." Remember that divisive pre-9/11 campaign staple? Well, it's flared up again -- with a vengeance and a rash of new administration actions clearly aimed at shoring up the president's Christian conservative base. In the last month, the president has traded in his too-tight flight suit for a revival tent, backing a new anti-obscenity crusade, anti-condom sex-ed programs, a renewed commitment to fighting the drug war, and his attorney general's efforts to poke around the private medical records of women who've had abortions. He even hinted in his State of the Union that he'd be willing to endorse a constitutional ban on gay marriage. With Silver Starred John Kerry threatening the president's hold on the high ground of national defense, Team Bush has decided it's time to switch battlefields and start screaming about Sodom and Gomorrah. And who has time to talk about the 3 million jobs lost on Bush's watch when gay couples are trying to make their lifetime commitment legal? Heaven forbid. You would think the Christian right has more pressing matters to worry about. America now has 35 million people living in poverty, many of them working poor. And Christian conservatives are up in arms about gay marriage? Maybe they should take another look at the Bible and its admonition that we shall be judged by what we do for the least among us. Indeed, if you removed every reference to poverty in the New Testament, the Good Book would be reduced to little more than a Not Bad Pamphlet. In the words of Rev. Jim Wallis, "The Prophets would be decimated, the Psalms destroyed, and the Gospels ripped to shreds." On the other hand, there is not a single mention of gay marriage or the need to ban it. Regrettably, this perversion of presidential priorities is not limited to campaign rhetoric -- it extends to how our increasingly limited tax dollars are being spent. Take the administration's new anti-obscenity push -- a blast from our blue-nosed past. Bush's 2005 budget calls for a boost in funding for government efforts to crack down on the adult entertainment industry -- one of the precious few non-terror-related programs to garner a spending increase. I kid you not: While the White House is cutting back on its housing budget, veterans' benefits, and the National Institutes of Health, it's opening up the coffers to make sure you have a harder time downloading the Paris Hilton sexcapade on the Net. But that's not even the worst of it. The Justice Department has recently assigned a team of FBI agents to focus exclusively on adult obscenity cases. That's right, with the war on terror in full swing, our war president is going to have a group of G-men doing nothing but working the porn beat when they could be tracking down -- oh, I don't know -- terrorist sleeper cells. Talk about your misguided allocation of manpower. I don't know about you, but I certainly feel safer knowing the feds are going to be keeping close tabs on Jenna Jameson. We see the same loopy sense of right and wrong being played out in the Janet Jackson firestorm. Less than two weeks after the shock and bra of the Super Bowl, Bush's congressional cronies were already holding hearings on the matter. Compare that to the foot dragging that followed 9/11. It took 14 months -- and a candlelight vigil outside the White House by the victims' family members -- before the president finally relented and the 9/11 commission was created. Now that's indecent. For the moral relativists in the Bush administration, the definition of sin seems to depend on whether the sinner can further their political purposes. So Justin exposing Janet's boob is a sin, but White House staffers exposing Victoria Plame is a win. Profiting from porno is a sin, but Halliburton's wartime profiteering is a win. Two men getting hitched is a sin, but Cheney and Scalia shacking up in a duck blind is a win. Telling students condoms can prevent STDs is a sin, but lying about WMD is a win. And so, apparently, is GOP staffers hacking into Senate computers and Tom DeLay illegally funneling corporate money to Texas politicians. The president's culture war is little more than breasts and circuses. Election-year weapons of mass distraction. Hail to the panderer in chief.
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Very interesting article. Scares me though.
The Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: The Meaning of Clarke by James Ridgeway: "WASHINGTON, D.C. - It's not just because Richard Clarke turned on Bush that conservatives detest him. They especially despise him because Clarke is a career federal civil servant, a species the right-wingers loathe above all. Clarke has served on the National Security Council staffs of Bush, father and son, along with Clinton. He began federal service in 1973 in the Defense Department as an analyst on nuclear weapons, and he served as an assistant secretary of state under both Reagan and Bush senior. "