Carry on, it's a marathon


nicolas se stael, untitled

* The Rude Pundit on the Bush lies. excerpt:

"The Rude Pundit believes this at the bottom: Cheney's a lying piece of shit and the President is a rube and an idiot of titanic proportions (fuck all those people who say, 'No, he's really not that dumb'). Either Cheney outright lied to Libby about Bush giving the thumbs-up or the conversation went something like this: Dick Cheney slithered into the Oval Office and said, 'George, listen, there's some shit I'm gonna get Scooter to do. You don't give a happy ratfuck, right?' And the President said it was fine, whatever, lemme play more Madden. So Bush 'knew' in the sense that he was told, but 'knowing' and 'Bush-knowing' is a little like the difference between telling your husband you love him while lying in bed awake together or while he's in a coma.

"On the President Not Being Able To "Leak": Let's say, and why not, that you are a dopehead living in Amsterdam and you are one ganja-smokin' motherfucker. You wake and bake; you do a three-toke lunch; you head over to one of the many fine, fine 'coffeeshops' every evening to meet up with hookah-suckin' friends to get toasted, toasted, nice 'n roasted on the latest greenhouse-grown organic shit. And it's all cool, man, 'cause pot's legal in Amsterdam. But let's say you run a website that's specifically targeting Americans in America, tellin' 'em not to smoke pot. In fact, the website is all about how bad it is, how it should not only remain criminalized, but the penalties oughta be more severe, how smokin' marijuana is a gateway drug, even though you've never found yourself suckin' a glass crack pipe or stickin' needles in your arm.

"Let's say that eventually you are outed, that someone says you are, in fact, a number one stoner, not the model of drug free living you advocate. Now, the proper response would be to hang your head in shame as you are beaten with sticks like a rabid cur, chased down the street until you disappear over the horizon. But, no. Instead, you simply state that no, you are not like American dopesters 'cause it's legal for you. You never broke the law, unlike all those fuckin' tokers in the USA.

"When 'senior White House officials' declare that President Bush can't 'leak' classified material because he, in fact, is in charge of declassifying it, despite having said repeatedly that Bush would take any leakers in his administration, rip out their tongues and shove them up their own assholes, well, shit, it's still time to break out the sticks and clear the road for the horizon's beckoning."

* Fun, 70s signage from the electric company.

* Howard Zinn, in this month's edition of the progressive. excerpt:

"What is the idea of our moral superiority based on? Surely not on our behavior toward people in other parts of the world. Is it based on how well people in the United States live? The World Health Organization in 2000 ranked countries in terms of overall health performance, and the United States was thirty-seventh on the list, though it spends more per capita for health care than any other nation. One of five children in this, the richest country in the world, is born in poverty. There are more than forty countries that have better records on infant mortality. Cuba does better. And there is a sure sign of sickness in society when we lead the world in the number of people in prison—more than two million.

"A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for the next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our power on some other part of the world. It might also inspire us to create a different history for ourselves, by taking our country away from the liars and killers who govern it, and by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can join the rest of the human race in the common cause of peace and justice."

* Game six of the 1986 World Series replayed using RBI Baseball. worth a view. [via]