apple juice

Someday, someday soon I will be finally cleaning up the mess of a layout this site has become. Of course I say this now, but the next couple months hold weddings, moving, jobs, travelling, so if I actually get to work on this, it will be a small miracle unto itself.

Maybe when MT 3.0 comes out, (or when I get accepted to the beta program) I will take a stab at cleaning this place up.

If you have ever seen my desk (home or work) you will know how much of a paper stacker I am. But everyone once and a while, whoo boy! Watch out! I put the paper shredder on overdrive and clean the place up!

In an editorial appropriately titled, Mr. Ashcroft’s Smear, the washington post tears into John Ashcroft’s testimony in front of the 9/11 commission.

Mr. Ashcroft’s allegations, which triggered criticism and demands for her resignation from prominent Republicans, are grossly unfair.

If you didn’t catch this the other day, or maybe you heard Rush Limbaugh accusing Jamie Gorelick of being a flower child of the 60’s, and inventing the term “pig” for a cop. (I heard it with my own ears). Sorry Rush, but you have your facts completely wrong. Not everyone that was alive in the 60’s was a long haired hippie.

In fact, Ms. Gorelick was an advocate of increased collaboration between spies and cops, not greater separation. She pushed to give the court power to authorize physical searches as well as electronic monitoring, and surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act more than doubled during the Clinton administration. The department was criticized by civil libertarians and others on the left and right alike — us included — for the changes that she advanced.

(emphasis mine)

Someone on orkut sent me this…

At New York’s Kennedy Airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator. At a morning press conference, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he believes the man to be a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

“Al-gebra is a fearsome cult,” Ashcroft said. “They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute values. They use secret code names like ‘x’ and ‘y’ and refer to themselves as ‘unknowns’, but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the Axis of Medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, ‘There are 3 sides to every triangle.'”

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, “If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.”

this article from the American Medical Student Association, (which supports a single-payer system), for more information.

I do not think of health care as an issue for democrats or republicans. I think it is a basic human right that everyone have adequate health care.

OpinionJournal – Peggy Noonan

Okay, now I don’t claim to be some sort of expert here. But is Ms. Noonan suggesting that to ask questions is an un-American thing to do?

Imagine it is April, 1943 and FDR is meeting with the press. Mr. President, why did you fail us on Dec. 7? You call it a day of infamy, but didn’t it reveal your leadership style to be infamous? Why did you let the U.S. fleet sit sleepy and exposed at Pearl Harbor? Do you think your physical infirmity, sir, has an impact on your ability to think about strategic concerns, and will you instruct your doctors to make public your medical records?

But of course they wouldn’t have asked these questions. Our press corps in those days was more like Americans than our press corps is today. They were both less self-hating and more appropriately anxious: Don’t be killing our leaders in the middle of a war, don’t be disheartening the people. Win and do the commentary later.

Okay let’s all do what peggy asks. Stick your heads in the sand, trust that President Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of the renegades in the white house are doing what is in America’s best interests. And don’t ask any questions until they tell us it’s alright. Unless it’s about gay marriage.

They tell us there are only two sides to be on
If you are on our side you’re right if not you’re wrong
But are we innocent, paragons of good?
Is our guilt erased by the pain that we’ve endured?

Hey look it’s time to pledge allegiance
Oh god I love my dirty Uncle Sam
Our country’s marching to the beat now
And we must learn to step in time

Where is the questioning where is the protest song?
Since when is skepticism un-American?
Dissent’s not treason but they talk like it’s the same
Those who disagree are afraid to show their face
Let’s break out our old machines now
It sure is good to see them run again
Oh gentlemen start your engines
And we know where we get the oil from

Are you feeling alright now
Paint myself all red white blue
Are you singing let’s fight now
Innocent people die, uh oh
There are reasons to unite
Is this why we unite?
If you hate this time
Remember we are the time!

Show you love your country, go out and spend some cash
Red white blue hot pants doing it for Uncle Sam
Flex our muscles show them we’re stronger than the rest
Raise your hands up baby are you sure that we’re the best?
We’ll come out with our fists raised
The good old boys are back on top again
And if we let them lead us blindly
The past becomes the future once again

Sleater-Kinney – “Combat Rock”

Take this down. M, A, R, S, Mars Bitches!

There are so many good articles out there today. I’m trying to post a few of the most interesting that I have found.

Warriors for hire in Iraq

The Bush administration was unwilling to enlist serious assistance from the United Nations or from most of our NATO allies, but thanks to the PMFs that employ private soldiers of more than 30 nationalities, it has been able to assemble an international coalition of sorts in Iraq. But it is more a “coalition of the billing” than of the “willing.” Indeed, there are more private military contractors on the ground in Iraq than troops from any one ally, including Britain. One single company, Global Risks, has a reported 1,100 employees in Iraq, including 500 Nepalese Ghurka troops and 500 Fijian soldiers, ranking it sixth among troop donors.