Food for thought

Some 1.2 billion people - nearly one out of every three in the developing world - do not have access to a safe and reliable supply of water for their daily needs.

source: http://www.gdrc.org/uem/data-snapshots.html

Pray for rain

A major wildfire is burning in southwestern Colorado and is threatening an irreplaceable monument to our past:

Eight-hundred-year-old cliff dwellings and pottery are in danger of being destroyed by a raging wildfire in southwestern Colorado.

A 300-acre fire has been blazing in the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park since Monday. The fire, called the Dwelling Fire, doubled in size Monday and was 40 percent contained Tuesday.

Here is a photo:


Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park

How to win friends and influence people.

Rep. Tom Tancredo fans the flame during an interview recently:

Talk show host Pat Campbell asked the Littleton Republican how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons.

"Well, what if you said something like -- if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered.

"You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said.

"Yeah," Tancredo responded

You have to wonder how many new terrorists were created at that moment.

True

One true sentence from the Portland Oregonian:

"Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest,
educate our children and, now, die, I think the Republicans have done
a fine job of getting government out of our personal lives."

What about the social security crisis?

When was the last time you heard about the social security "crisis" that had to be fixed to save Western Civlization? A long time, right? Well that is just further proof of Dubya's decline. Having spent all that political capital and coming up empty handed....

The death knell for the ss reform was quietly reported in the Washington Post by reporter Mike Allen:

Social Security Fades Into Fall

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) now thinks he may not begin consideration of Social Security legislation until September, an aide said. Thomas told an Associated Press reporter yesterday that, "The issue is dealing with more time-sensitive legislation first." He said Social Security "is not time-sensitive, and we are going to pass CAFTA," the Central American Free Trade Agreement, before Congress begins its summer break. Thomas, referring to a congressional trip to Cape Canaveral, Fla., that canceled votes yesterday, said: "There's no hang-up on contents. It's just how many days we got and how many space shuttles don't get off the ground."

RIP

What, me worry?

Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck

Never misunderestimate Dubya

Thanks to Sheelzebub over at http://preemptivekarma.com/ for this insight:

"Do you actually think a man who sent several thousand soldiers to their deaths based upon a lie cares about how proper Rove was?"

Uh, no.

Zell Miller, I challenge you to a duel.

For someone who claims the pious high ground, Zell Miller appears to be a big league hypocrite:

When this nationally famous figure left the governor's office in 1999, he pocketed more than $60,000 in taxpayer funds
earmarked for entertainment and other expenses at the Governor's Mansion, WSB-TV investigative reporter Dale Cardwell revealed last week.

Miller also picked up a check for more than $20,000 for "unused leave"-a sum to which he was not entitled as a constitutional officer, Cardwell also reported.

Before you judge him however, he has an excuse:

Miller says that he was technically eligible to take the mansion money as his own because no one said he could not.

Now there's an excuse right up there with the dog ate my homework!

So Zell, pistols?

George's Pacifier

From the Atlanta Journal with a hat tip to good friend Julie K.



Okay guys, go get 'em. I'll wait here.
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Eureka!

I had a moment of epiphany recently reading the brilliant Smirking Chimp.

"It's time to say it. THERE IS NO WAR ON TERROR. There can never be. A war on "terror" is as delusional a concept as a "war on panic," "a war on elation," "a war on consternation," "a war on alarm" or "a war on happy." They are feelings, not groups of angry people".

Brilliant thought, simple language. Wish I had thought of it.

Go Arianna, Go

Okay she talks funny and is arrogant. But damn if Arianna Huffington doesn't nail it:

"How convenient for the president’s apologists to use the attacks (in London) to absolve him of his responsibility to deal with thorny issues he doesn’t really want to. “Global warming? Africa? Sorry, boys, no time for them, the war on terror’s back on the front burner!”

Wait a minute, if we let terrorists set the international agenda doesn’t that mean, you know, that they win?"

Why I Love Colorado

Longs Peak over Beaver Meadow
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Beaver Meadows, Rocky Mountain National Park
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LOOK AT THIS PHOTO:

If we are going to start a war, we should be able to see what it looks like:


The reality of war.
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11/14/2004 Iraqi nurse checks child who lost a leg in fightings in Falluja. An Iraqi nurse treats 2 year-old child Mustafa Adnan, at a Baghdad hospital, who lost a leg when his house in Falluja's Jolan district was shelled during fightings between U.S. forces and rebel fighters in the war-torn city November 14, 2004. U.S. tanks shelled and machine-gunned rebels still holding out in Falluja Sunday in heavy fighting that was preventing an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy from getting aid to civilians trapped in the city for six days. (Ali Jasim / Reuters)

I'm not sure where this photo appeared, but the photographer risks his life daily to document a war with vast suffering. We should be able to look at his work. Our work. Bloody babies, screaming women. Fuck this war and the cowboys that started it.

Look at others:

FallujahInPictures

The Peckerwood Files

From the Peckerwood Files, todays guest columnist is MediumHeadBoy. MHB comes to us via

rightwingnews

There are many right wing sites out there and for the most part it becomes a violent pity party. Anyone who disagrees withthem are "trolls" and given various epithets. Give yourself a treat and visit one. (I often frequent RightWingNews). It will make you feel a lot smarter, but also scare you.

If you are offended by wingnut collquialisms you might want to read his words with your eyes closed:

Corny, why don't you get away from that computer once in a while and go out and find yourself a nice sheep? Or is your pecker stuck too far up Karl Marx's bunghole?

by MediumHeadBoy on 2005-06-08 14:13:03

Well done, MHB

Kim du toit is an idiot

Kim du toit should be take outback and beaten like a rented mule.

kimdutoit

Truth be told

From the presidential files:

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."—Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

For more Bushisms:

Bushisms

Think of this, HUMAN EVENTS, The National Conservative Weekly.

May 1933, Berlin book burning


"Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings."—
Heinrich Heine

Read These Books

Karl Marx: He's No. 1


I had never heard of Human Events, The National Conservative Weekly. But when I saw a link

HumanEvents

to their website that advertised the "TEN MOST HARMFUL BOOKS OF THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY" I had to visit it. I am a sucker for lists. And I hoped I had read at least a few of them. I had. Here is the list, compiled from a panel of 15 conservative scholars and policy leaders. (More on that later)

The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engles
Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
Quotations from Chairman Mao, Mao TseTung
The Kinsey Report, Alfred Kinsey
Das Kapital, Karl Marx
Democracy and Education, John Dewey
The Course of Positive Philosopy, August Comte
Beyond Good and Evil, Freidrich Nietzsche
General Theory of Employment,
Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes

Finishing just out of the money is Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Coming of Age in Samoa, The Population Bomb, and of course The Origin of Species.

So who is Human Events? Ann Coulter for one. Terrence Jeffrey, editor, and former campaign manager for Patrick Buchanan.

Now that I know what the wingnuts don't want me to read, I have a reading list.

Leave it to Homer

From our poet laureate, Homer Simpson.


Homer
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Next time you're expelled it'll be straight to the Army for you, where you will be sent to America's newest quagmire. Where will it be? North Korea, Iran ... anything's possible with Commander Cuckoo Bananas in charge."