Bartcop Entertainment - Tuesday, 3 August, 2004

Tuesday

3 August, 2004

(Updated Daily)

Issue #116

The Only Daily That Comes Out Weekly

Issue #116

is brought to you by

Shotgun Diplomacy

 

 

Can of Worms

 

John Kerry says he would try Osama bin Laden for murder. Now THAT would be an interesting trial. Like Charles Manson, Osama bin Laden didn't actually kill anyone. He just told people to and, wouldn't you know it, the people he told were actually insane enough to DO what they were told. Some people are just looking for permission. Anything's all right to do as long as someone else tells them it's all right. When these people stumble into the sphere of influence of someone who'd rather talk about it than actually do anything, the match is made in heaven. The biggest atrocities mankind has ever foisted upon itself are simply collaborations between fancy talkers and people who do what they're told.

 

The talker is actually an enabler. It works like this. A standard human being decides what they want to do, anything from getting a good education to fucking a lot of women to killing a lot of men, and they search for an enabler, someone who says getting a good education or fucking a lot of women or killing a lot of men is a cool thing to do, and they proceed to do it because they've got the enabler's tacit permission. Is it the enabler's fault that the man got killed or the woman fucked? And what if a man gets fucked or a woman gets killed or someone gets a fucked education? Is it the enabler's fault if the enabled is dyslexic?

 

Maybe the enabler was joking. If I were Osama's defense attorney, his testimony would be "It was some time in 2000 and we were sitting around hitting the spliff when we all got the giggles and somebody said wouldn't it be cool if the ice caps melted and the oceans poured into New York City, and someone else said yeah, and the ice age comes and all the water freezes again, and I said that would be more than cool and everyone laughed at my little pun. Someone said how about an ocean liner crashing into the Chrysler building and I said how about planes crashing into the World Trade Centers and we laughed and laughed. I thought we were just talking about a movie. How was I supposed to know those maniacs would go out and do it? I was just kidding around but they ACTUALLY crashed the planes and made a movie where New York froze over. I also said let's cut down all the trees and foul the air. Are they going to do that too? I say all kinds of crazy things. It's not MY fault if maniacs go out and actually DO them."

 

To the best of my knowledge, and I've looked everywhere, there isn't one single piece of actual evidence or testimony connecting Osama bin Laden to the events of 9/11 other than the highly suspicious and poorly translated tapes that came out afterwards, and even on those, he never actually says "It was all my idea," he just says "Good job." The whole case against Osama is based upon our trust in what the Bush administration tells us, just like the case for invading Iraq. We know how good THAT case was.

 

Kerry's too smart not to know the kettle of worms he's opened up. He's challenging Bush to make his case against Osama. Wanna bet it doesn't hold up?

 

Efyingday Onventioncay

by Paul Krassner

 

    My name is Rumpleforeskin, and I approve this message. I defy conventions for a living, and last week I defied the Democrats convention. Here are some highlights:
    Teresa Heinz Kerry began by saying, Onjay and I avehay iftyfay-eight ositionspay. She paused in her speech several times to walk out into the audience and pull delegates thumbs out of their mouths.
    A 12-year-old girl, who was outsourced from Bombay, representing Kids For Curry, stated, When the vice president publicly said Go fuck yourself to a senator, I realized that's why we have the First Amendment in this great nation.
    In the press tent, a fist fight broke out between Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel over whether the word media was singular or plural. Is too, Brokaw shouted. Are not, intoned Koppel. Fox network presented a montage of Al Sharpton saying Slap my donkey over and over. And CNN experts critiqued Dennis Kucinich while he was speaking but with the sound turned off.
    A scandal developed when it was revealed that Elizabeth Edwards insisted on being paid $100,000 in cash as a reward for product placement if she would mention Wendys fast-food chain in the context of family values.
    John Edwards displayed signs of Tourettes Syndrome as he frequently interrupted his own speech with uncontrollable outbursts: Bush! Cheney! Ashcroft! He seemed to waiting for someone named Hope to arrive, but she was delayed somewhere in Boston gridlock. Edwards kept reassuring the crowd, and explained that if Hope ever arrived, then for the 2008 convention, he would be sure to invite Help to be on the way.
    A psychic was on hand to predict how many manipulative applause lines each speaker would indulge in. As for entertainment, Michael Moore sang a reggae version of Won't Get Fooled Again, followed by a trio--Whoopi Goldberg, Linda Ronstadt and Ann Coulter--who performed a stunning rendition of You Can't Always Get What You Want.
    In the streets, a sequel to the famous Stanford experiments was taking place in a makeshift concentration camp. About a dozen protesters played the part of prisoners being tested by actual guards to determine the precise point at which abuse becomes torture. This study concluded that such a determination is totally subjective, depending on whether you are a prisoner or a guard.
    The real heroes of this convention were those plain folks from across the country--walking back and forth behind TV correspondents reporting from the convention floor--smiling at the cameras and saying into their cell phones, Can you see me now? God bless America. Can you see me now?
    Oh, yes, John Kerry's speech was brief and to the point: I have decided to decline your generous nomination, he roared above a standing ovation, because I want to spend more time with my family.
    Backstage, Teresa was absolutely furious, and she started yelling at him, Oveshay it! Oveshay it!

 

Apology of the Week

 

I turned on my computer like I always do. I opened up my inbox like I always do. This morning, 8/02, the latest letter was from 7/19. Every incoming letter since 7/19, two whole weeks of communication, was mysteriously missing. I know I didn't mistakenly delete them because they would have been in the DELETED ITEMS folder, which they weren't, not to mention the fact I would never do such a thing, so don't blame me. It's got to be a peculiar virus or computer glitch, not my fault, but I'm apologizing anyway. There was a lot of good stuff in there, including some spectacular crackpot letters that would have surely entertained you. If you're a crackpot, please resend.

 

Also among the missing e-mails are all the responses to last week's "Stupid Question of the Week," many of which were quite excellent, so please resend answers to "Does the United States of America actively foment trouble in foreign countries it wants to invade, and if not, why?" Please resend your answers to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com, and that means you Mr. Chomsky.

Paintjob of the Week

 

Republican Campaign Song of the Week

 

Don't

by Michael Dare

(sung to the tune of whatever tune you hear in your head while reading it)

 

Don't pay attention to your brain

Don't even notice we're insane

Don't ever smoke from a groovy bong

Vote for the team that busted Chong!

 

Don't let your conscience be your guide

Don't let 'em take you for a ride

Don't run around with your hair cut long

Vote for the team that busted Chong!

 

Don't give a guy a second break

Don't go and jump into a lake

Don't pay attention to this song

Vote for the team that busted Chong!

 

Don't ever argue

Don't ever think

Don't try to look for a missing link

Do what is right

Know what is wrong

Vote for the team that busted Chong!

 

Don't ever smoke from a groovy bong

Don't run around with your hair cut long

Don't pay attention to this song

Don't try to fuck with a broken shlong

Vote for the team that busted Chong!

Vote for the team that busted Chong!

 

The Stupid Question of the Week

 

Weren't you paying attention? Didn't I already explain that I mysteriously lost the answers to last week's question? What's the matter with you? You think I'm going ask another question? Wouldn't that be Two Stupid Questions? In one week? Are you nuts?

 

Send your answers to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

 

Headline of the Week

 

You Can't Mock the President or Say "Balls"

The Most Important Thing I Learned in School This Year

By Billy Wilson

 

The following is an essay written by a High School sophomore in Freyburg, Maine, as the essay part of the final exam in his English class. His teacher sent it to CounterPunch as an example of the uprightness of modern youth.

 

The most important lesson I learned this year in school is to pay attention in class and not to doodle while the teacher is talking. The worst thing you can do is draw a picture that shows President Bush's head on a pole with blood gushing out of his bulging eyeballs. If you do something like this, it means you're probably going to blow up the Oklahoma Book Depository, or fly remote control planes into the White House, like the CIA did on 9/11. Even if you're only 15 like me, you can hijack a bus (like Sandra Bullock did in that cool movie, Speed), and drive it into the Bush ranch at Waco, and burn all the children to death.

 

I learned that drawing pictures of the President with his arms growing out of his head is no laughing matter. It's bad to make the President look stupider than he already is. You can't draw him writing memos on wide-ruled paper with a crayon, or dressed up like a cowboy and playing with toy pistols in the Awful Office. That type of humor isn't funny. You can't make him look like Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine, with blood gushing out of his ears.

 

It is OK to draw a picture of Saddam Hussein on all fours, with Condolisa Rice in a furry African bikini and rings around her neck, holding the evildoer on a leash, and Donald Rumsfeld whacking him on the behind and making him bark like a dog, because that's just a frat prank (like the sexy girl soldier Lindy English did at that prison in Israel I mean Iraq). But the President is God, which is why his picture is on the dollar bill, and why you can't make him look like an elephant like those soldiers did. You know. Kneeling with his feet up in the air and one finger in his nose and the other in his anus. That's really bad.

 

You can't draw the president's face on a stick, even if you make it look like a lollipop or a Bubblehead doll. You are a bad person if you do that and if you do that, the Secret Police will come to your house at midnight and make you stand on a box with a shopping bag over your head and electrodes attached to your generals. Then they'll bulldoze your house into dust! (Which is way cool to see them do that on TV.)

 

If you make fun of the president that means you hate him and are a enemy combatant. The president has so much to worry about, like his physical fitness and if he takes his sedatives on time, he doesn't need some wise-ass kid sneaking into the Lincoln bedroom at night and fucking his wife (you shouldn't say fuck), or his really cute daughters, who drink a lot and fall down at parties and are pretty easy. The president was bad too, like his daughters, before he learned that Jesus wanted him to kill all the Arabs. The president is truly blessed, so you can't tell your friends you made a videotape of him masturbating and sent it to Seymour Hersh. You can't do that, because one of your friends may be an informer for Homeland Security and then they'll chop your fucking head off!

 

What I learned this year is that the President is not someone to mock. Even if he is an idiot and a war criminal who deserves to be hanged, and even if no one in the media has the balls to say so. (You shouldn't say balls either.)

Billy Wilson can be reached through his teacher at: redspruce@comcast.net

 

Bizarro World Quote of the Week

 

"When you talk to your friends and neighbors about this campaign, remind them that President George W. Bush has led us from a recession to the fastest growing economy in the world (Actually from the fastest growing economy in the world to a recession) and 1.5 million new jobs (overseas).  Remind them that when terrorists brought war to our homeland (Invited by traitors within the current administration), President Bush has led a relentless campaign against the enemies that struck our homeland (Actually against people who had absolutely nothing to do with the terrorists)."

- Dick Cheney annotated

 

Sophistimicated Doowacky of the Week

 

At Paper Toys, you can print out dozens of pages for free, cut on the dotted lines, fold 'em, and end up with intricate reproductions of everything from Angkor Wat to Mount Rushmore.

 

Assholes of the Week

 

The proprietors of the estate of Woody Guthrie are threatening to sue the Jib Jab people for their parody of This Land is Your Land. Woody Guthrie, who surely would have been thrilled to know that his songs were available around the world for free through Napster, is rolling in his grave.

 

Don't Take My Word For It

 

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time"

- Edward P. Tryon -

 

"Seeing through the game is not the same as winning the game."

- North Dallas Forty -

 

"Before the marches, before the convention, on Thursday, August 26 in NYC, Bush goes on trial for War Crimes."

- Iraq War Crimes Tribunal in NYC -

 

"Even now, these wars are being planned by the current administration... I'm positive, based on conversations with people close to the White House, that plans are in place for the next invasions."

- George McGovern on Bush plans to invade North Korea and Iran -

 

"We shouldn't have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, their kids and grandkids will be just fine, and then one for most Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. And you know what I'm saying. You don't need me to explain it to you, you know -- you can't save any money, can you? Takes every dime you make just to pay your bills, and you know what happens if something goes wrong -- a child gets sick, somebody gets laid off, or there's a financial problem, you go right off the cliff. And what's the first thing to go. Your dreams. It doesn't have to be that way."

- John Edwards -

 

"[Our constitution] foresaw that troublous times would arise, when rulers and people would become restive under restraint and seek by sharp and decisive measures to accomplish ends deemed just and proper; and that the principles of constitutional liberty would be in peril, unless established by irrepealable law. . . .This nation . . . has no right to expect that it always will have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution.. Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln; and if this right [to suspend provisions of the Constitution during the great exigencies of government] is conceded, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate."

- The Supreme Court of the U.S. in ruling that Abraham Lincoln had violated the constitution by subjecting Confederate sympathizers to military tribunals -

 

"Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties."

- Doug Larson -

 

"War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military."

- Georges Clemenceau -

 

    "A half-brother of Osama bin Laden says he enjoyed most of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, except for what he called 'inaccuracies' about his family.

    "'It's a moving film,' Yeslam Binladin, a Geneva-based tycoon and one of the al-Qaida leaders 54 siblings, said in an interview with the French magazine VSD. 'I even laughed at times,' said Binladin, adding, 'but a lot less when he states errors or inaccuracies about my family, knowing perfectly well that he's deceiving the public.'"

- AP: Bin Laden's brother disputes aspects of Fahrenheit 9/11 -

 

"Why is it that our society continues to pour investment into punishing humans for crimes, instead of investing in educating to prevent crimes and/or pinpoint what causes these crimes in the first place? The ACA (American Correctional Association) is the pinnacle of our social disease, and as humans we need to confront this disease with a grassroots community decision making body of voices. The government has made it clear that they aren't invested in our concerns and are only making it extremely easy for profit-hungry corporations to benefit from incarceration. Every prisoner is a political prisoner."

- Floyd Peterson, Anarchist Black Cross - 

 

    "[W]hen it comes to felons who have paid their debt to society, it's hard to see what we gain from blocking the door to the voting booth. It doesn't deter them from breaking the law again, since nobody who is willing to risk imprisonment is going to be scared straight by the prospect of losing the franchise. It does nothing to make the victims of the cons' crimes whole.

    "One rationale is that it protects good government by preventing crooks from voting for lax law enforcement. Another is that it helps prevent voting fraud. But it's exceedingly unlikely that ex-cons would organize to elect a corrupt district attorney or that, if they tried, they would succeed. Nor is there any reason to think ex-convicts are especially prone to stuffing ballot boxes or rigging voting machines. Barring all ex-offenders from the polls makes about as much sense as forbidding tax cheats from working with children. If election security is the worry, we could limit the ban to those who have broken campaign- and voting-related laws."

- Steve Chapman: Give Ex-Convicts the Vote, It's a crime to deny offenders their full rights of citizenship -

 

"Only through their own struggle for liberation will ordinary people come to comprehend their true nature, suppressed and distorted within institutional structures designed to assure obedience and subordination. Only in this way will people develop more humane ethical standards, 'a new sense of right', 'the consciousness of their strength and their importance as a social factor in the life of their time' and their capacity to realise the strivings of their 'inmost nature.' Such direct engagement in the work of social reconstruction is a prerequisite for coming to perceive this 'inmost nature' and is the indispensable foundations upon which it can flourish"

- Noam Chomsky: preface to Rudolf Rocker's Anarcho-Syndicalism -

 

"It's worth remembering that the dislike and distrust the world now feels toward America didn't just happen. It was the result of a concerted effort by this administration to piss off everyone in the world on just about every issue. Heck, if George W. Bush could build coalitions half as well as he burns bridges, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with."

- James Carville: Had Enough? -

 

"The destruction of the capitalist media (via raids, detournement, explosions, sabotage, guerrilla theatre during bourgeois events, etc.) must be simultaneously accompanied by the development of a counter-culture, a revolutionary bohemia, an anarchist aesthetic. For this we need liberated printing presses, alternative gallery/performance spaces, experimental cafes, anarchist bookstores, the things that allow for an intellectual and radical community to grow. It is becoming increasingly evident that this may be impossible in the American metropolis. Gentrification has consistently destroyed every venture of this sort. The commune, an idea that has scarcely been explored by anti-statists in America since the 1840s, is an idea which must be articulated, developed, and acted on."
- The Drunken Boat Manifesto -

 

"The strongest bulwark of the capitalist system is the ignorance of its victims."

- Adolf Fischer -

 

    "[D]on't think for a minute that the premonition of invasion comes only from the left. While progressives cite with outrage the probability of future preemptive invasions, Administration hawks and the influential right-wing media have boastfully warned of their desire for Middle East conquest.

    "Also in March of 2003, at a meeting of the hawkish, right-wing American Enterprise Institute, the focus was squarely on their 'bold vision of the postwar agenda: radical reform of the UN, regime change in Iran and Syria, and "containment" of France and Germany.'"

- Tom Ball: Top 21 Pieces of Evidence that Show Iraq is only the First Step to 'Reshaping the Middle East': A Reference for Seekers of Truth -

 

"During shock and awe, I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president's personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad. I wondered, 'Does Jesus understand collateral damage?'"

- Meryl Streep -

 

    "i heard terrorism makes good television
it's no coincidence and as a matter of fact
if it weren't guaranteed to be on television
there'd be less reason for a terrorist attack

    "i heard television loves an enemy
it's no conspiracy but it's still crass
it's cheer the home team and exile the underdog
and it's feel fantastic after kicking someone's ass"
- Pierce Woodward: terrorism makes good TV -

 

"The only difference between Charles Manson and George W. Bush is scale."

- Xarvon, alien investigator -

 

"'I voted against the constitution because it was a constitution!' said the great French political philosopher, Pierre Joseph Proudhon during the French Revolution of 1848 when he was asked why he had been among the tiny minority of the National Assembly voting against proposals for a constitution. His attitude was not based merely on his libertarian view that society should be allowed to develop its institutions empirically and organically, rather than by formal fiat. He also pointed out that in a constitution which divided powers, the tendency would always be for the executive, the most rigid, centralist and power-oriented branch of government, to take control. His point was well taken, and history has given it justification in the centuries since the American states adopted their own pioneer constitution. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the president of France elected under the constitution that Proudhon rejected, made himself first a dictator and then an emperor. And with only brief intervals, the president of the United States has represented all that is reactionary and overbearing in American life and in the American attitude towards the world in general. I need hardly expand on the offenses against basic human rights that have taken place under the apparently benign constitutions of the Soviet Union in the past, or the People's Republic of China in the present."
- George Woodcock -

 

    "It is widely believed that the military draft is bad and reinstating it would be wrong. Whether this is true or not, the assumption that we do not have a draft is certainly wrong. We have a draft, different from the past, but still a military draft.

    "First, there are all the extensions of Active Duty troops and  activation of Guard and Reserve units. Thousands of our troops are prohibited from leaving the military, and part-time reservists are forced to become full-timer soldiers. Americans who were completely out of the military (even a 67-year-old doctor) have been ordered to return to service. This is compulsory--no volunteerism here. Now, forcing people to remain in or return to the military, doesn't this sound like a military draft?"

- Stewart Nusbaumer: The All-Volunteer Illusion -

 

"Bush's erratic behavior and sharp mood swings led White House physician Col. Richard J. Tubb to put the President on powerful anti-depressant drugs after he stormed off stage rather than answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay, but White House insiders say the strong, prescription medications seem to increase Bush's sullen behavior towards those around him."

- Teresa Hampton & William D. McTavish: Sullen, Depressed Bush Retreats Into Paranoid World -

 

"On Rosh Hashanah, by using the nanotechnology of Kabbalah - as performed by Kabbalists Rav and Karen Berg - you have the chance to go back in time and delete all the negative actions that will boomerang back at you."

- e-mail from Kabballah.com about this event -

 

"I have never read Marx. Well, I read a few pages then decided he was a bore. Karl didn't invent the class struggle, he merely wrote about it in a way that impressed some people, using lots of big words.. While it can certainly be useful to know about the history of the working class, you don't need to have studied Marxist theory to know that being bossed around is degrading."

- Dave Coull -

 

    "Do you recall the flap about Naomi Wolf telling Al Gore to wear earth tones? The media frenzy about Gore inventing the Internet? Gore claiming to have inspired the movie Love Story? Gore discovering Love Canal?

    "All of those lies were invented by the dirty tricks division of the Republican National Committee and came out of its attack faxes. From the fax machine these fabrications went directly and uncritically into print and were broadcast on mainstream radio and television as facts. These were not paid political commercials, but made-up stories that were printed and broadcast as news to a trusting public. And when these news stories were disseminated, they were more persuasive than any political commercial.

    "Republican dirty tricks helped by media complicity let George W. Bush steal the election from Al Gore in 2000. Data from the journalism resource service, Nexus-Lexus, strongly suggest that if the mainstream media had covered George Bush's actual lies with the same frequency and depth that they carried the RNC lies manufactured to discredit Al Gore, then Gore would have won by a landslide. Never underestimate the power of Republican dirty tricks."

- Frederick Sweet: Republican dirty tricks undermined Al Gore and are now slandering John Kerry. Will Republican lies and distortions give Bush another victory? -

 

"It may have been the guy in the hood teetering on the stool, electrodes clamped to his genitals. Or smirking Lynndie England and her leash. Maybe it was the smarmy memos tapped out by soft-fingered lawyers itching to justify such barbarism. The grudging, lunatic retreat of the neocons from their long-standing assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama didn't hurt. Even the Enron audio tapes and their celebration of craven sociopathy likely played a part. As a result of all these displays and countless smaller ones, you could feel, a couple of months back, as summer spread across the country, the ground shifting beneath your feet. Not unlike that scene in The Day After Tomorrow, then in theaters, in which the giant ice shelf splits asunder, this was more a paradigm shift than anything strictly tectonic. No cataclysmic ice age, admittedly, yet something was in the air, and people were inhaling deeply. I began to get calls from friends whose parents had always voted Republican, 'but not this time.' There was the staid Zbigniew Brzezinski on the staid News Hour with Jim Lehrer sneering at the 'Orwellian language' flowing out of the Pentagon. Word spread through the usual channels that old hands from the days of Bush the Elder were quietly (but not too quietly) appalled by his son's misadventure in Iraq. Suddenly, everywhere you went, a surprising number of folks seemed to have had just about enough of what the Bush administration was dishing out. A fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people's eyes. It felt something like a demonstration of that highest of American prerogatives and the most deeply cherished American freedom: dissent."

- Ron Reagan: The Case Against George W. Bush -

 

    "USA Today's editorial page editor told his readers that Coulter's column contained 'basic weaknesses in clarity and readability that we found unacceptable.'

    "Actually, Coulter seems pretty clear, which is probably why she said that the paper's decision 'raises the intriguing question of why they hired me to write for them.'

    "In the end, it's not a very intriguing question, because the answer is the same when you ask why the three networks have abandoned genuine coverage of national politics for faux-reality shows. It's what happens when journalists of whatever stripe forget their obligation to the public interest and allow themselves to become mere agents of avarice."

- Tim Rutten: 15,000 journalists and still a dearth of coverage -

 

"The decision to not run the lazy, mean-spirited rant actually made perfect sense, especially after Coulter reportedly refused to make any requested changes. But then Coulter ran to Fox News and insisted that the paper was trying to "ban" her conservative voice, which meant USA Today had a headache on its hands.

- Eric Boehlert: USA Today kills ludicrous Ann Coulter story!
But why did it hire the unhinged buffoon to cover Boston in the first place? -

 

"No sympathy for USA Today in this dispute. Coulter's work was at her usual level. What'd they expect -- professional journalism?"

- Richard Roeper: Coulter doesn't have market cornered on shrill tone -

 

    "Before USA Today even knew she had quit, Coulter very publicly aired a preemptive strike via the Drudge Report, her own website, Front Page Magazine and Human Events itself by publishing the "rejected" essay. (Technically, it wasn't rejected. The editors followed normal editorial procedures, raised their concerns and offered suggestions, to which they received no response. They did not reject the essay, Coulter rejected them.)...

    "Examining the Human Events' exposé of this Coulter-created controversy, we see a great deal of hyperbole and very little substance.

    "The title alone - Banned in Boston! - is wholly incorrect. Coulter wasn't 'banned' from anything, and was actually 'in Boston.' Further, implications of censorship are nonsensical as anyone (even in Boston) can read her 'rejected' essay."

- Daniel Borchers: Ann Coulter - A Living Spoof of Conservatism -

"One rigged roadside bomb, one dead American and two wounded Americans -- which may mean a young woman without a limb, a young man without his sight who knows? This has been the drip-drip-drip of Iraq for us. One death, now generally tucked away well off the front page, because when anything becomes the norm in our media world, it ceases to be the news. In the same way, constant kidnappings or regular beheadings, if endlessly repeated, will also migrate sooner or later into the deep interiors of our larger papers and drop off the half-hour that each night (minus ten minutes of medicine ads for the aging) passes on network TV for our planet's news."

- Attack Dogs -

 

"We see quite clearly that what happens to the non-human happens to the human. What happens to the outer world happens to the inner world. If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of the clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human.

- Thomas Berry -

 

"When the vice-president of the United States is caught, on TV, publicly lying about leading this country into a war where almost 1000 of our young people have needlessly died, and then later states, again on TV, that he never said what he said, why is it that the only 'news' show to play the side by side tapes of him lying, and then denying what he said, is The Daily Show? Why wasn't that headline news on every news show? 'Vice President denies saying what we have him on tape saying, soldiers dying every day because of it.' That's news, but I have to watch Comedy Central to see it. What's wrong with this picture, Mr. Brokaw?"

- Ruth Lopez: Note to Tom Brokaw: Why I get my hard news from Jon Stewart -

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
- Mark Twain -

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
- Last words of Pancho Villa -

 

Contact George W. Bush - president@whitehouse.gov

Contact Dick Cheney - mailto:mvice.president@whitehouse.gov

Contact Jeb Bush - jeb.bush@myflorida.com
Contact Saddam Hussein - president@whitehouse.gov

Contact Osama bin Laden - president@whitehouse.gov
Contact Kim Jong Il - eng-info@kcna.co.jp
Contact Jacques Chirac - france-presse@un.int
Contact the Pope - accreditamenti@pressva.va
Contact the Democratic Candidates:  Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Bob Graham, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman, Carol Moseley Braun, Al Sharpton

Embassy of France in the US: 202-944-6000
German Embassy in the US: 202-298-4000
Embassy of the Russian Federation: 202-298-5700
Embassy of the People's Republic of China: 202-328-2500
White House switchboard: (202) 456-1414
Contact your Senator - http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm
Contact your Representative - http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.html
House and Senate switchboard: (202) 224-3121
Links to Central Government Agencies - http://www.firstgov.gov/

 

Mordechai Vanunu
c/o Cathedral Church of St. George
20 Nablus Road
PO Box 19018
Jerusalem 91190
Israel

vanunumvjc@hotmail.com

 

 

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Acknowledgment

dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is free and may be reproduced in any form. It consists of information from dozens of sources, cut up, thrown in the air, and recycled randomly. It is sent all over the place, so I apologize if you're seeing the same thing twice. If you see a joke, graphic, or news item that came from or through you, thanks, send more, and please accept the fact that much of dIsInFoTaInMeNt ToDaY is unacknowledgeable, and if I sought permission from everyone whose bastardized material showed up here, I'd never get anything else done. Please note that I don't even put my own name on it. If you're still pissed off, hey, it's either satire or fair use.

Thanks,

Stu Gotz

 

 

http://www.disinfotainmenttoday.com

 

 

 

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'TBH Politoons'

Thanks, again, Tim!

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Reader Comment

Re: Cable Networks

Cable Networks Filled Void at Convention

Thank God for CSPAN! After gagging on the Pundit to Pundit coverage on all the other channels, I called it quits and switched to CSPN. Even the local (Massachusetts) cable news channel was too much.

While I may have missed some potentially interesting backstories, I actually got to hear what was going on. I even got to see the roll call of the states, always the most amusing part of any convention!

Yotta


Thanks, Yotta!

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Weekly Link

Sick Of This Crap!

We're back from vacation!!!! Steeped in family-in-law, I barely had time to check on the ever downwardly spiraling Bush effort to control the world, or at least the media's portrayal of Jean Kerrie. Special thanks to Prof Pissed for her stalwart efforts to keep the flava flowing during our downtime.

This week's issue features:

* Are my in-laws pulling Donkey in November?!?!?

* The deficit is e-goddamned-normous. Where are the conservatives now?

* A Czar is born?

* Press back to pandering to their masters

* Meanwhile, back in the Sunni triangle

Sick Of This Crap!

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from Mark

Another Bumpersticker

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The Wall Street Poet

A Crude Brood

Last week the price of oil reached almost  $44 a barrel, the highest point since trading in crude futures started in 1983. Is it time to start worrying?

A Crude Brood

I'm getting kind of nervous
'Bout the rising price of crude,
Each week it seems to jump a notch,
What is one to conclude?

Our middle east suppliers
Don't inspire lots of trust.
Can we feel safe with these bozos,
Might they one day just combust?

Should we look for new alternatives
Is that the thing to do?
Should we practice conservation?
No one seems to have a clue.

Then an oil firm in Russia
Goes bankrupt and stops its pumping,
Or a pipeline outside Basra
Get blown up, its contents dumping.

Things like this could lead to gas lines,
An economy unglued.
I'm getting kind of nervous
'Bout supplies and costs of crude.

© 2004

**********

For more political verse: http://www.beltwaybard.com

Links from Bruce

The Joe Bob Report

Joe Bob's America Column Archive

The Lincoln Heights Literary Society Interview (July 2003)

The Media Bistro Interview (June 2003)

The eFilm Critic Interview

The Pop Cult Interview (2003)

The Underground Online Interview

Weekly Link

Humor Gazette

FRONTLINE: reports: who's afraid of rupert murdoch?

FRONTLINE: programs: transcripts: who's afraid of rupert murdoch?

Rupert Murdoch

Reader Review

Wacky Doolittle on the Big Screen: FAHRENHEIT 9/11 REVIEW

Selected Readings

POOTIE POOT TO THE RESCUE?

TURKEY WON'T TRUCK

HOW THE CHIMP WINS

KERRY IS WINNING. RED ALERT!!!!

REPUG FAMILY VALUES

THE CHIMP WAS AWOL

RIVER BEND IS BACK

In The Chaos Household

Tonight, Tuesday:

Wednesday  -  08/04

Archivists are trying to preserve and copy what they say is the only sound recording from the moment of John F. Kennedy's assassination, captured by a Dallas police motorcycle radio on this dictation belt. The recording came from a police radio stuck in the 'on' position, which relayed sounds of the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination to headquarters where they were etched onto dictation belts. But the recording is too fragile to be played again and has never been authentically copied.

The Information One-Stop

Moose & Squirrel Information One-Stop

Hosting 'SNL'?

Radio Show To Be On Sundance

A row of bobblehead dolls featuring the name and likeness of Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wearing a business suit and holding a gun are pictured in an office at Ohio Discount Merchandise in this April 30, 2004, file photo in Canton, Ohio. Schwarzenegger announced Monday, Aug. 2, 2004, that he had settled a suit with Ohio Discount Merchandise Inc. allowing them to produce the doll without the gun, and Ohio Discount also agreed to donate a portion of its sales to Schwarzenegger's nonprofit organization, Arnold All-Stars afterschool program.
Photo by Haraz Ghanbari

Highly Recommended Reading

Travels to Washington State

Rolling Out New Album

In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends

Bares Torso For Madame Tussaud

Prima ballerina Elena Kulagina (L) and dancer Roman Geer of the Russia's Tchaikovsky Perm Ballet pose in front of 48 ballerinas during a photocall for the German premiere of 'The biggest Swanlake in the World' in front of Munich's Nymphenburg castle August 2, 2004. With 48 dancing swans instead of 36 in any previous productions, the Tchaikovsky Perm Ballet is the biggest production of 'Swanlake' in the world. The Ballet will be performed in Munich's Prinzregenten Theatre from August 3 to August 22.
Photo by Alexandra Winkler

Hospital News

Going Private

Formerly 'The Vidiot'

pissed

Wins Master Tapes from Universal

A man dressed up as a Viking spits fire during the annual Viking festival of Catoira, a village in northwestern Spain, August 1, 2004. The festival recreates the frequent Viking raids in this area and is celebrated annually every first Sunday of August. Picture taken August 1, 2004.
Photo by Miguel Vidal

Disney Performer Rejects Plea Deal

Michael Chartrand

Helps Save Store From Closing

Yellow Bracelet

A squirrel allows his legs to dangle freely as it lounges on a section of fence in Alexandria, Va. Sunday, Aug. 1, 2004.
Photo by Gerald Herbert

'The Osbournes'

PersephonePlus

Custom Kaleidoscopes by Ed the "BearMan"

Media Matters

Take Back The Media!

Blah 3

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What Really Happened

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I'm Not Sorry

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2 Dudes

skippy the bush kangaroo

TrimmedBush

George W. Bush for President 2004

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Who Died and Made You President? :: The Bean Magazine

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