Last night, Sean Hannity said this:

"I don't think anybody exposed anything. I think everybody knew in town what [Valerie Wilson] did for a living. There's no evidence that she was covert. None."

And two nights ago, Anne Coulter said:

"She hadn't been a covert agent for six years, and everyone in Washington knew she worked for the CIA."

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knocked that talking point down hard today in the Libby indictment:

At all relevant times from January 1, 2002 through July 2003, Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA, and her employment status was classified. Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson's affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community.

One right-wing talking point down, many more to go.

First time in a 130 years a White House official has been indicted. Libby is charged with perjury (2 counts), obstruction of justice (1 count) and making false statements (2 counts). He faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine if convicted of all counts. Click here to download a PDF version of the Libby indictment.

"More than a billion dollars a day, $45 million an hour, almost $340 for every living American - that's what Exxon Mobil reported in third-quarter revenue Thursday.

For the oil giant, that translated to $9.9 billion in net income.

The financial results drew outrage from politicians and consumer advocates who are suspicious of historically high U.S. gasoline prices." continue reading...

Note: And keep in mind, this articlel is just talking about Exxon, one oil company, there are many, many others with amazingly high profits... I'll say it now: two years from now, a major investigation is going to conclude that the oil companies fucked this country like Enron fucked California in 2000.

'Grand Canyon Skywalk' scheduled to open January 1, 2006 on the Hualapai Indian Reservation. Juts out about 70 feet into the canyon, 4000 ft above the Colorado River... Will accommodate 120 people comfortably... Built with more than a million pounds of steel beams and includes dampeners that minimize the structure's vibration... Designed to hold 72 million pounds, withstand an 8.0 magnitude earthquake 50 miles away, and withstand winds in excess of 100 mph... Has a glass bottom and sides...four inches thick.

2,000 military personnel have been killed serving in Iraq. The justification for their deaths: 9/11? False. WMD? False. "Iraq was a haven for terrorists"? False. "Spreading Democracy"? False.

These pics' are long overdue - but I don't think they're getting much attention on my flickr acount. These are from our visit to Tijuana, or "TJs", as everyone here seems to call it. Enjoy.


I thought the massive chandlers in this alleyway turned shopping-center were really cool - but this picture doesn't do them justice.


I could have stayed here all day - after walking down the alleyway (pictured above) I found this... the bright-orange fountain sat in the center of four buildings they “butted” up against each other - forming an open square.

Even though it was only 100 feet or so from the very busy, very loud city streets - it was completely quiet and peaceful here.










Thousands upon thousands of little ceramic bulldogs, velvet Jesus statues, stuffed tigers, and a long list of other completely useless and gaudy items for sale - line the stretch of highway that leads back towards the boarder.

All this is so close I could literally put my arm out the window of the car and probably tip something over... I just kept thinking about how much fun it would be to watch a speeding car spin out of control and crash into all this... crap... or whatever you might call it.

Or you know what - scratch the car idea, instead I would pay good money to watch a person riding a bicycle wipe out in this mess. Ahh, that's comedy.

I'm assuming that if I were to walk the streets, randomly asking total strangers what they could tell me about 'the project for a new American century'... very, very few would respond, "it's one of Dick Cheney's personal-pet projects" with the goal of promoting "American global leadership"...

Even fewer might able to answer that this concentrated political agenda has been around since the early '90s, although at that time the think-tank was referred to as New Citizenship Project. But in the spring of '97, the PNAC was founded, and in '99, they released a document, co-written by Wolfowitz, titled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses', it stated on page 63, that one of the best ways to get the American public behind the outing of Saddam and the occupation of Iraq would be a "new Pearl Harbor".

Well, luckily for the Cheney and the other members of the PNAC, they only had to wait another two years for their "new Pearl Harbor". Which allowed them to cut-right-to-the-chase with their key 'statement of principles', one of which being: "we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future".

As I mentioned here on this blog earlier, Bush just announced a $48 bn increase in defense spending, the largest increase in 20 years. This in combination with the fact that the United States, since going into Korea in the '50s, has been at war with some one, in some corner of the globe, right up until present day:

Guatemala - '50 to '53, Korea - '50 to '53, China - '45 to '48 and '50 to '53, Indonesia - '50 to '53, Cuba - '59 to '61, Congo - '64, Vietnam - '61 to '73 (although we were having France do our fighting long before '61), Laos - '64 to '73, Peru - '65, Grenada - '83, Lebanon '83 to '84, Cambodia - '69 to '70, Panama - '89, Bosnia - '95, Afghanistan - '98 and '01 to ??... just to name a few.


Wouldn't it be amazing if one day, I could stumble out of bed only to find that, in a bold move, our government decided to cut back on military spending - and instead of paying $399.1 bn, more than the rest of the industrialized world combined, we were only going to match the spending of Russia at $65.2 bn, our next highest spenders. And the left over $333.9 bn was going to be spent on education... renewable energy... healthcare... all that "crazy stuff". I think I would be so happy that I would just start crying.

But maybe I shouldn't hold my breath.

I stumbled across this website and thought I would help spread the word. This guy printed 15,000 of these bubble stickers and stuck them on advertisements all over New York city - people walking by stop and fill them in - he later goes back and takes pictures.

This should be shocking news... but sadly, it falls under the day-to-day, business-as-usual category. The Iraq constitution was just passed - unfortunately it passed with more votes then there are voters in 12 of the 18 provinces. But, I suppose, these things happen.

On top of the fact... well, it's under investigation, so instead of "fact", I'll use the term "incredibly-high-probability", that the constitution's vote was fraudulent... the whole thing was written not by Iraqis, but by the U.N., and submitted to Iraq two days before the vote. Leaving almost no time to go over it and discuss it's wording.

And! On top of this - the new constitution takes away a massive amount of woman's right's that the previous constitution warranted... now, granted, I doubt that Saddam truly stuck to it. But the previous constitution was modeled, in the 70s (if I remember correctly), after the current British constitution... demanding equal pay and work for men and women, it allowed woman to go to school, marry who they wanted, when they wanted.

And now - the new, U.S. backed, constitution, that was shadily passed a few days ago, doesn't allow women to go to school or work without a male's written approval... they aren't even allowed equal pay. So much for a "democracy".

It is absolutely pouring outside right now - lighting and all, but that's
besides the point here... the first time I went over to my friend,
Justin's apartment, he and his girlfriend, Mollye, showed me some pictures
of "the compass that doesn't point north" that Jack Sparrow uses in
'Pirates in the Caribbean'... the two of them had made the compasses from
scratch - and later sold them on eBay, and apparently they were very, very
popular. This year the two were too busy to make as many as they did the
year before, but if you are interested, stop by and check them out - item 1, 2 & 3 - they are actually quite cool.

Condoleezza Rice on 'Meet the Press' yesterday: "But the fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al-Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al-Qaeda and perhaps after the Taliban and then our work would be done and we would try to defend ourselves.

Or we could take a bolder approach, which was to say that we had to go after the root causes of the kind of terrorism that was produced there, and that meant a different kind of Middle East. And there is no one who could have imagined a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein still in power."


Oops. Did she mean to tell the truth on 'Meet the Press', or did it just slip out? I think reporters from every corner of the country should be pressing Bush 24/7 to respond to this comment. There is no mention above of WMDs, there is no mention of an "immanent threat" - because there never was WMDs, there never was an immanent threat. And no one in the white house or the CIA ever thought for a second there actually was.


Condi again on 01/10/03: "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Ari Fleisher on 4/10/03: "But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found."

About two years ago, Amanda and I watched an amazing documentary at the 'Michigan' theatre in Ann Arbor called 'The Corporation'. A small section of the film discussed the likliness that after scientist finish mapping all of our human genes - that corporations and firms will begin to patent them individually.

Well, this morning I saw an artical on National Geographic's site stating that already - since I belive they just within the last year finished mapping all the human genes - firms and universities have patented over 20 percent, or over 4,000 of the 24,000 genes - of that 20 percent, 63 percent are assigned to private firms.

I do not know what the hell is up with this manipuin. its scary. i hope you can see it through the glare on the glass.

look at all of the sandals emily and i bought in miami today!

After work tonight, I drove Amanda to LAX - the airport was mostly empty, and her check-in took all of five minutes. So we just sat on a bench for an hour and talked / cuddled until she walked through security.

Then as I was half-way up the 405; I got a phone call from her saying that they had over booked the flight by 50 people and she had been pushed back until 6 in the morning... mind you, it's 12:30 at this point. But first she has to make a 1-800-phone-call to check on how this will affect her layover in Dallas.

I turn around and begin to head back to pick her up... then a mile away from the airport I call again to see how things went on the phone and she tells me she just found out the lady who told her she didn't have a seat was wrong - and that she was about to board the plane.

But it wasn't a big deal because a) there was a very interesting interview on NPR, which I might have missed the end of it had I drove straight home, and b) this meant I didn't have to wake up at 5 in the morning drive to LAX again... for a third time.


So at this moment she is probably somewhere above Arizona. I hope she is sleeping peacefully... is it pathetic that I miss her already? Never mind, that's a rhetorical question - I know the answer.

"US President George W Bush has announced plans for a $48bn increase in defence spending to fight the war on terror.

The increase - of nearly 15% - will be the largest rise in US military spending in 20 years..." cont'd...


"...We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist..." - Eisenhower

"To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. ...The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war." - Ralph Bunch

I read this on Mark Maynard's site and my jaw dropped... I don't even know what to say in response to it... what-a-kick-in-the-crotch, slap-in-the-face for fundamentalist.

A few clips from an article in London'’s Sunday Times entitled, "Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible"”:

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect "total accuracy" from the Bible.

"We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision," they say in The Gift of Scripture.

The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US.

Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools, believing "intelligent design" to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began.

But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be "historical". At most, they say, they may contain "historical traces"...

The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: "We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters."

They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its "intransigent intolerance" and to warn of "significant dangers" involved in a fundamentalist approach.

"Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their own superiority, and even consider themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence against others."

I'd like to hear some people's thoughts on this.

For Amanda's 26th birthday we spent four days... well, three actually, in San Diego [with a quick stop down in Tijuana]. We spent most of our first day at the world famous zoo - which lived up to it's reputation. We both agreed that it wouldn't have been boring at all to spend all three of our days at zoo - unfortunately we didn't get a chance to go see the 'wild animal park'.

Here are some quick pics from the day that I snapped with my camera-phone, we'll post our actual film-pics after we get them developed.

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

"Only Buddhism is compatible with science. It covers the smallest particles to the largest creations of the cosmos. It is the only religion capable of scientific truth."

Yesterday we went to go see a taping of that '70s show's last season - despite the fact that we were all starving out of our minds during the four-hour taping, it was a lot of fun. Afterwards they handed a handful of scripts out and the actors came around to talk to fans and give autographs.

My favorite part of the night was probably when Bob came up in the audience to answer questions and ending up singing karaoke to 'It's not Unusual'... that guy is funny.

Amanda even got a hug from Hyde... her favorite.

Note: click on the picture above to see who the signatures belong to.

Yesterday, while running inside a gas station to pre-pay, I noticed a newspaper with an aerial shot of the fire damage on the counter... I had no idea it was so bad: