Okay, panic.

Hello, Mr. Brown

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:23:07 GMT

23 skidoo ! (*in Vincent Price voice* Welcome)

Gotcha.

Network Badge

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:41:25 GMT

Ding dong the evil bastard's dead

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:13:02 GMT

Jesse Helms is finally burning in hell. I smell a stench that hell wasn't quite prepared for and that makes even the evilest among them hold their noses.

Some notable things said by eastern North Carolina's favorite son:

>> I've been portrayed as a caveman by some. That's not true. 
I'm a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men 
are equal, be they slants, beaners or niggers.
Jesse Helms, North Carolina Progressive, February 6, 1985, 
quoted from the Democratic Alliance, "Yes, They Really Said It!"

>> When a caller to CNN's Larry King Live show praised guest 
Jesse Helms for "everything you've done to help keep 
down the niggers," Helms' response was to salute the camera 
and say, "Well, thank you, I think." 
(Wilmington Star-News, 9/16/95)

>> "The destruction of this country can be pinpointed in terms of its
beginnings to the time that our political leadership turned to
socialism. They didn't call it socialism, of course. It was given
deceptive names and adorned with fancy slogans. We heard about New
Deals, and Fair Deals and New Frontiers and the Great Society." — From
a Helms editorial at WRAL-TV in Raleigh.


The comic strip "A Town Called Dobson" has a wonderful 
anti-tribute to Helms in today's edition: 
http://www.towncalleddobson.com/strips/2008/7-4-08.png
I wish I knew how to put it straight here on the page--
I don't think Storm Bear would mind--but my skills in 
this are very limited.

More on Cindy McCain's crimes no one is talking about

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:48:17 GMT

(and I can keep harping on this until the wingnuts lay off attacking Michelle Obama for absolutely no valid reason).

From Stephen Elliot at Huffington Post:

As Long As We're Talking About Michelle Obama, Did You Know Cindy McCain Was A Drug Addict?

It's a psychedelic experience this week, watching Cindy McCain out on the campaign trail, attacking the opponent's wife. In rally after rally she says, "I've always been proud of my country," a not so subtle jab at Michelle Obama's gaffe earlier about really being proud of America for the first time.

But Cindy McCain has one hell of a scandal in her past. In the mid-nineties she was addicted to prescription pain killers. Worse, she was stealing the drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a third world relief organization she founded. Like most ridiculously rich people, she didn't have to go to jail for her crimes and was allowed to enter a rehab program rather than face criminal charges. The charity was shut down. (italics, large purple text added)

So when Cindy McCain says, "All I know is that I've always been proud of my country," take it with a grain of salt. She spent at least three years stoned out of her mind. It's impossible to know what she thought during that time. Was she really proud, or was she just hallucinating?

Cindy's addiction has been virtually ignored this election season. As a thought experiment, try to imagine what the reaction would be if Michelle Obama had a history with drug addiction? If Michelle Obama had stolen drugs meant for third world countries to support her own addiction?

Of course, we want to leave spouses out of politics. But if Cindy is out attacking Michelle people are going to start throwing rocks back at her glass house. She'd have to be high to think otherwise.

-Stephen Elliott

Some stories about Cindy's drug addiction:
Salon.com
The London Telegraph

While Michelle Obama gets smeared for saying human things...

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:39:57 GMT

It appears that Cindy McCain is a thief and not much of the media is talking about it. And she stole from a freaking charity. Repeatedly, if she got to the point of addiction to the drugs she pilfered. Where is the big headline, people?

This from 23/6 dot com (love the graphic):
http://www.236.com/news/2008/06/13/236_remembers_7140.php

That's no lady, that's John McCain's wife

Michelle Obama has been under quite a bit of media scrutiny lately, from her terrorist fist jab to the rumored (and non-existent) "whitey" tape, and the Obamas are preparing for even more wife-attacks to come. And yet, we never hear too much about the other. Michelle Obama is unfairly attacked or portrayed by the media or a Republican-backed 527 group, 23/6 will remind you of this terrifying and true fact about Cindy McCain.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which leads to this in Salon.com by Amy Silverman:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/10/18/drugs/

No no no Tim Russert CAN'T be dead

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:46:10 GMT

No no no no no no it can't be. No.

Ever heard of Mrs. McCain The First?

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:26:55 GMT

Enlighten yourself. Bring a barf bag. The man has no soul.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html

A woman's life under McCain (NO pun intended--iiiiiiicccck)

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:41:39 GMT

http://therealmccain.com/clinic.php?utm_source=clinic

See the Brave New Films "McCain Clinic" videos
and send them to every female, young and old, that you know. Please.
Daughters especially, your daughters MUST see these.

We have a nominee (and a late but gracious concession)

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:07:01 GMT

Let the election begin. And let it lead to a new era of governing that has something to do with the people being governed, not just the corporations making the money off it.

Go Barack Obama!

Tom Hayden: On Hillary Clinton and that Screech I Keep Hearing

Mon, 12 May 2008 20:28:12 GMT

Why Hillary Clinton makes my wife scream

TOM HAYDEN
GUEST COLUMNIST (SeattlePI.com)
4-25-2008

My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior, since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack Obama's transformational appeal.

For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From first lady to Lady Macbeth.

It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amid the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle. I even had framed a flattering autographed message from Hillary. But as the campaign has gone on and on, her signed portrait still leans against the wall in my study. I don't know where she belongs anymore.

At least Hillary was a known quantity in my life. I knew of the danger of her becoming more and more hawkish as she tried to break the ultimate glass ceiling. I also knew she could be forced to change course if public opinion was fiercely opposed to the war. And I knew she was familiar with radical social causes from her own life experience in the '60. So my progressive task seemed clear: help build an antiwar force powerful enough to make it politically necessary to end the war. Been there, done that. And in the process, finally put a woman in the White House. A soothing bonus.

But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.

Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person, who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville, whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.

To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working-class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are.

To take just one example, the imagined association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers will suffice. Hillary is blind to her own roots in the '60s. In one college speech she spoke of ecstatic transcendence; in another, she said, "Our social indictment has broadened. Where once we exposed the quality of life in the world of the South and the ghettos, now we condemn the quality of work in factories and corporations. Where once we assaulted the exploitation of man, now we decry the destruction of nature as well. How much long can we let corporations run us?"

She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale Law School meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.

Most significant in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists." Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. (All these citations can be found in Carl Bernstein's sympathetic 2007 Clinton biography, "A Woman in Charge.")

All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the '60s of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?

It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.

It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with FOX News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic superdelegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House, whether or not she is the nominee.

Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: If Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/360639_hayden27.html?source=mypi

Rest in peace, Spike

Wed, 07 May 2008 19:05:30 GMT

You were a joy, especially when you were doing your happy-Spikey dance. You laid down with me for comfort when I broke my foot and everyone else was spending the day in Edinburgh. You had wise eyes that I was first able to see into when I helped hold and comfort you for a summer shearing the week I first met you. You were a good dog, Spike. A very good dog. For a long, long time. We will miss you, good boy.

October 11, 1993- May 7, 2008

Come to think of it, Vonnegut got death.

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:54:37 GMT

"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!"
-- Kurt Vonnegut, author

A sad snippet from BestFriends.org article

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 12:50:48 GMT

"It’s estimated that there are more than 10,000 puppy mills in the United States. Most of them operate as clandestine operations to avoid government regulation. They range from huge operations hidden in remote barns to backyard breeders keeping dogs in sheds and trailers. Although every state has puppy mills, Virginia is becoming one of the largest puppy mill centers in the nation. Altogether, such mills produce an estimated four million puppies per year.

A cruel irony: an estimated four million homeless animals are killed every year to control pet overpopulation in the U.S." (italics added)

http://news.bestfriends.org/index.cfm?page=news&fps=1&mode=entry&entry=022EB593-BDB9-396E-9DDAE9BA880B26EC

My comment: What makes people so cruel and so stupid? And why do dogs, unlike many abused people, continue to trust and love our species even after being treated so deplorably by some of them? Maybe they were put here to be our conscience as well as our best friends. Of course, that only works for those of us who have any conscience, which would not include anyone who would abuse a dog.

Great trick learned from Best of Freecycle post

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:17:14 GMT

Is someone asking a dumb question in a forum that's so easy to Google the average 2-year-old could find it? Give them this link:

http://www.fuckinggoogleit.com/

Where Stands Scotland Now? And Bugger Off!

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:52:55 GMT

I'd sure love to know who wrote and/or performed the hilarious song "Where Stands Scotland Now?". It gets labeled on the internets as Eric Bogle (and does sound just like him) but I can't find reference to it on his website. It concerns two Scots running into each other in an Aussie bar and involves much drinking. ("We sang Flower of Scotland fifty times"...) The other song I'd like to find the origin of is called "Bugger Off" and is certainly done by a Scottish band but when I find it credited in mp3 forms I get "by Pogues", "Corries", scads of Celtic folk bands but it is always the same version of this song. I tried Google and only got a website asking the same question. The answer must be out there somewhere...?

UPDATE:
It IS Bogle

The song mentions that the guy is from "Peebles". Eric Bogle is, according to his bio on his official website, from Peebles. I'll be damned, it was right there. So why does he not have it listed on his site as one of his songs? Do I have the wrong title? Anybody out there know the title to that song?

And I'm still trying to find out who did "Bugger Off".

2-17-2008
FURTHER MUSINGS:
Ask yourself something long enough and you'll get an answer?
Now "Bugger Off" comes up in Google. Several times. Go figure. Maybe I phrased it differently this time, not following the "just fucking google it" link advice? Here are some answers, though I'm not sure which is the band doing the version that I have:

http://www.triskelle.eu/lyrics/buggeroffyoubastards.php?index=080.010.020.020
The proper title is "Bugger Off You Bastards" and The Dubliners come up as one of the performers of it, but I'm certain the one I have is a Scottish band. I'm closer...AH! Follow that link a little further and you find that Author is Unknown. That guy's written a lot of stuff--wish I could find his albums.

and the lyrics:

BUGGER OFF - Traditional

Chorus:
So bugger off, you bastards bugger off! (Fuck You!)
Bugger off, you bastards bugger off! (Fuck You!)
Like a herd of bloody swine that refuse to leave the trough
You'll get no more this evening so you bastards bugger off

Well you've been a lovely audience, but oh the time does pass.
So don't you all be lettin' the door hit you in the ass.
You've been a splendid audience, but enough is enough.
We'd take it very kindly if you'd all just bugger off!

Chorus

Here's to all the bartenders and waitresses who've been servin' you your beers,
and puttin' up with your noxious breath and your stupid drunken leers.
so leave your money on the table when you go,
tomorrow you'll have a sorry head and nothin' left to show

Chorus

Here's to all the lovely ladies who might be waitin' for the band,
and thinkin' one of them might make a charmin' one night stand.
Please don't be offended girls this song is not for you.
we'll be happy to oblige you when this nasty job is through.

Chorus

So you've been promisin' the ladies a night of lovin bliss,
but truth be told your far to drunk to stand up straight and piss.
So give it up you lousy sods you'll not be gettin laid.
and the sooner that you're out the door the sooner we'll get paid.

Chorus

So bugger off, you bastards bugger off! (Fuck You!)
Bugger off, you bastards bugger off! (Fuck You!)
Like a herd of fucking swine that refuse to leave the trough
You'll get no more this evening so you bastards bugger off

(1-2-3 FUCK YOU!)

There are no fnords in the advertisements

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:44:23 GMT

RIP 1/11/2007: Robert Anton Wilson, futurist, philosopher, playwright, satirist, psychologist, tattoo inspiration, guerrilla ontologist, smart and damned funny guy whose works this faithful reader will miss in the (hopefully) continuing Earth Archives. Only he knows if he's still Barding in some other space and time. I'd love a peek but that's a pretty permanent deal just to satisfy curiosity.

"Think For Yourself"--RAW