OH NO HE DIH-INT

"The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit."

~ George W. Bush, June 26th, 2003

"The United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values. I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it."

~ George W. Bush, July 7th, 2006

1. the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.
2. a method of inflicting such pain.
3. Often, tortures. the pain or suffering caused or undergone.
4. extreme anguish of body or mind; agony.
5. a cause of severe pain or anguish. –verb (used with object)
6. to subject to torture.
7. to afflict with severe pain of body or mind: My back is torturing me.
8. to force or extort by torture: We'll torture the truth from his lips!
9. to twist, force, or bring into some unnatural position or form: trees tortured by storms.
10. to distort or pervert (language, meaning, etc.).

Um.

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Dance Of The Morons

Cost of cleaning up the Superdome, and readying it for tonight's Monday night football game: $144 million dollars

Cost of unused (declared unsafe for a flood area) FEMA trailers: $114 million dollars

From an AP story on the Superdome's re-opening:

Brian and LaChandra McGowan's lives are still in disarray.

A year after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home and ravaged their city, they're in Dallas, where they moved "temporarily." That government trailer they've been waiting on for months has yet to materialize, and they're only now starting to rebuild their home.

And their close-knit family is strewn across the country — some in Phoenix, some in Baltimore, only one sibling in New Orleans.

Yet when it came time to renew their Saints season tickets, Brian McGowan never hesitated.

"I said, `Brian, we lost everything we had. We have nothing. We're fighting with the insurance company and FEMA, and you're going to spend money we don't have to hold onto these tickets?'" LaChandra McGowan recalled.

"He said, `That's all I have left and I won't let them go. We'll put it on a credit card, we'll do whatever it takes. I won't let them go.'"

Sure enough, the McGowans and their two sons were back in New Orleans on Sunday. Their trip will be brief, time enough to see some family and friends and the Saints' triumphant return home. But their presence — and that of thousands others like them — is as much a testament to the loyalty of Saints fans as to the resilience of the city itself

So...you're basically homeless, and you spent money you couldn't afford on FUCKING FOOTBALL TICKETS? Dude. You should have let Katrina kill you. You are as worthless a skinwalker as I've ever heard of in my entire life. Check your family tree; I'll bet you are somehow related to Dubya. Wow. What. A. Moron.

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I Wonder If My Geek License Will Be Revoked...

...because I couldn't care less about the new Transformers movie. I literally start snoring when I see the movie mentioned on a website. Never watched the cartoon. Never had the toys. The idea of sentient machines that can either be in the form of a fighting robot or...a truck sort of baffles me. And not in a good way, like dark matter, or how women manage to make their boobs jiggle so wonderfully. More in a "wow, that's stupid" or "wow, that's worse than the power rangers or that pokemon crap" kind of way. Wanna get me interested? Have them change from fighting robots into porn stars. Or trannies. "More than meets the eye", indeed!

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I Really Wish Your Imaginary Friend(s) Would Stop Making You Kill People

I remember the first indication I had that anything was wrong on 9/11/2001; it was the sound of jets flying over my apartment. I was still in Houston, and I lived near a building alternately called Williams Tower and the Transco Tower, right by the Galleria. I guess someone in power thought the building might be a target, so a flight of F-16s was summoned to circle around like so many buzzards. Because that’s where you want to shoot down the enemy plane; right next to the target, in a heavily populated area...

I was unaware that there was anything going on before I heard the jets overhead. I was unemployed, and playing video games on my couch before a job interview. Okay, maybe not before a job interview. Maybe before making lunch, followed by more video games. Shut up.

Rufus noticed the planes before I did, and came into the living room, meowing his head off, behavior which, if you’ve met Rufus, isn’t that unusual. This is a cat who yells at his water.

I looked out the windows, saw the planes, and turned on CNN (I had no computer/internet at that time); just in time to see tower one going down. Yikes.

My first thought was, sadly: finally. I had been expecting an attack on a major US city for years, but had predicted that it would be a dirty bomb, or worse, a “clean” bomb. Did you know that there are allegedly a number of “suitcase nukes” missing from the old KGB inventory? How many, you ask? Between five and ten. Eeek.

I wasn't surprised that planes were used as weapons after I learned who was responsible. Al Qaeda (whose leadership is made up of former Mujahideen fighters) was trained by the CIA to kill Soviets; one of the methods the Company taught was hijacking a fully fueled passenger plane and using it as a guided missile. Chickens, home, roost, etc…

Has this country learned anything in the five years since 9/11 that might prevent further attacks? Nope. We’re still pissing off potential attackers. The war to liberate Iraq has turned into the best recruiting event so-called “global terrorism” has seen since the Crusades. The fucktard in the White House is doing the best impression of Nero since, well, Nero. I feel LESS safe now than I did before 9/11. Here’s the thing; Israel may (in my opinion) get a few things wrong in the diplomacy department, but what they do get right is airport security. Check out this link from the Wikipedia page on El Al. Why don’t we do follow these methods in America? Four reasons: the airlines won’t spend the money (because they’d have to raise ticket prices), the government won’t put six marshals on every plane, most Americans wouldn’t want to show up three hours before their flight, and the government won't profile those of Arab descent. But look at El Al’s safety record; it’s beyond compare. Israel is a MUCH bigger target than the US, so maybe they know more about this sort of thing than we do. I’m not the biggest fan of any kind of profiling; but in some extreme cases, it’s academic. Until a blond, blue-eyed terrorist is arrested, don’t we have to look at the most likely persons to be involved with a terrorist act? The other side of that coin is that it would seem to emphasize the need for terrorists to recruit blond, blue-eyed operators. Hell; I ALWAYS get extra screening; I guess because I have a beard and a weird last name.

The really scary thing about the current state of airline security is that they tell you EXACTLY what you CAN bring on the plane. So, I can bring liquid medication on the plane (or more accurately, *something* in a medication container)? I can bring formula or breast milk for my baby? Great! If I’m an enterprising terrorist, I’ll make this information work for me. And don’t get me started on exit door screening, or the lack thereof. Can you imagine what might happen if some whack-job opened an exit door mid-flight? Have you ever sat on the exit row? Have you ever been screened for that seat assignment? You haven’t, have you? All they ask is if you are “willing and physically able to perform the duties associated with the seat”…on the ground. Do those doors work in the air? Do you trust the maintenance and electronics of an aircraft that has broken reading lights to have safeties on the exit doors?

Let’s not forget the “lesson” of Katrina. What if instead of a hurricane, broken levies, and flooding; New Orleans had been hit with a dirty bomb? Would the response have been the same? Shouldn’t FEMA and Homeland Defense have treated Katrina as a drill for just such a response? What better opportunity would they have had to test options for evacuating a city, and first response procedures?

But that’s not how the federal government learns. It takes more than one disaster or attack for them to learn a lesson. Uncle Sam is like a bad, bad puppy. It needs its nose pushed onto a great number of turds before it learns not to shit in the house. I have the sinking feeling that we aren’t done with turds just yet.

What, you may ask, is the root of these recent terror attacks? Greed, oil, money, religion and fear, in that order. There’s a WHOLE lot of money in oil and gas; and the men who control the rights to most of the supply are very religious, as are the people who live on the land over the oil and gas, as are the men who control production. We put bases in Muslim countries, and piss off people who don’t want the US in their country at all, except for the oil companies, but only for a price. Oh, you want our oil companies there? You want to buy our tanks, our planes? Sure! But we get to put a base in your country. Who controls the oil & gas supply? A few Middle Eastern Muslims. Who controls the production and the military? A few American Christians (who, beyond their greed, actually believe that they are doing "god's work" by destabilizing the region, thus helping bring about "Armageddon", and the "second coming" of their "savior"). Greed + Fear = Anger, and Anger + Poverty = Terror, or Crime, or both. It's a classic vicious cycle; and until terrorist attacks cause either group to lose large sums of money (we're talking in the hundreds of billions, for starters), neither side will change the status quo. "Everyone" (read: those in power) is making money; so what if thousands of civilians and military personnel are dying? So what if they are helping to create a culture of fear? So what if they are perpetuating a cycle of poverty (and thus, resentment of the west, and easier pickings for terrorist recruiters)?

Here's a "fun" question -

Q: What is the ultimate purpose of a terror attack?

A: To cause the civilian population to lose faith in their government, and that government’s ability to protect them from the scary/bad people, thus destabilizing said government. Period. There is no military upside to a terror attack. You aren't hitting a military target, so you haven't harmed those who oppress you, or those who might have the ability to directly strike back. There is no ground gained, no prisoners taken, and nothing of any real value learned, other than the competence of the first responders. There is sometimes a financial upside to a terror attack; but it's usually for the very governments that the terrorists are attacking.

So long as we fear terror, the terrorists win. So long as we allow our own government and politicians to control us using fear, the terrorists win. So long as we don’t prevent attacks using logical, proven methods, the terrorists win. We weren’t attacked because “they hate our freedom”, or because of “bad luck”, or “karma”. John Milton said it best: “Luck is the residue of design”. We trained an attack dog, hoping it wouldn’t come back and kill our children. It did. Now we’re helping breed more attack dogs, and we still aren’t protecting our children from future attacks. That's bad planning, not bad "luck". Something has to change before something worse than 9/11 happens. And soon.

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Things About Which I Officially Do Not Give A Shit (today, anyway)

(in no particular order)

- Tom Cruise

- Katie Holmes

- Suri Cruise (photos of, the actual existence of, etc.)

- Brooke Shields

- Paris Hilton (her, her "album", who she blows, the actual existence of, etc.)

- Lindsay Lohan's shaved vag (photos of, the smell of, the texture of, the actual existence of, etc.)

- Katie Couric

- The View

- Sumner Redstone

- Sports

- Your problems

- Jared Leto's hair

- the new religious website started by the Democrats

- David Hasslehoff

- flavored condoms

- any dessert not involving chocolate

- Ray Nagin

- Barrack Obama

- Dubya

- Karl Rove

- Steve Irwin (dead, alive, zombie, whatever)

- Barbara Boxer

- Donald Rumsfeld

- Tony Blair

- Anything I left off this list, but literally could not care less about

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Ray Nagin: Moron, Genius, Or Perhaps...Both?

"You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed and it's five years later. So let's be fair." - August 27th, 2006

Exactly! There's the straight-shootin' Ray that we sorta kinda of admire*!

"I tell you what I will never do again is refer to that site as a hole. It's a sacred site that is presently in an undeveloped state." - Like, two days later

Boo! Hiss! Pussy waffle boy! Let's be honest; it HAS been five years, and it IS still a hole in the ground, thanks to the morons at the Port Authority, and the moron governor of New York. And as for sacred; that's a religious statement, and ergo not logical.

Don't get me started on his "100 Days" promise.

Q: Why is he still the mayor of New Orleans?

A: Voodoo. And chocolate. Mmmm. Chocolate**.

* not so much
** voodoo = money; and the involvement of my beloved chocolate was negligible

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In Other News, Chocolate Is DELIGHTFUL!

We know, Monkey Boy. We just keep trying to FORGET. Maybe you should go clear some brush, and let the grownups do the grownup stuff, m'kay?

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