Stonehead

Monday in Kalamazoo, President Bush chided Kerry for admitting that his family had some SUVs, while telling environmentalists on Earth Day last month that he didn't own a SUV. "What this country needs is a leader who speaks clearly and when he says something he means it," Bush said.

"A wise guy, eh? Why I oughta!" "Coitenly! Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!"

By all means, let the deception continue...

Andre Thomas, the Sherman man accused of killing his wife, son and his wife's young daughter a week ago, quoted a Bible scripture Friday night after he apparently used his hands to pull out his own right eye. Grayson County Sheriff Keith Gary said Thomas was in a jail cell directly across from the book-in station when he turned his back on the jail staff. Gary said the staff heard a scream, and then Thomas turned around with his eyeball in his hand. Thomas is charged with one count of capital murder for the death of Laura Christine (Boren) Thomas. Police also contend that Thomas killed his son Andre Lee Boren and Mrs. Thomas' daughter, Leyha Marie Hughes. All three of the victims were discovered March 27 in Ms. Thomas' Sherman apartment. The bodies of the three victims had been mutilated. Thomas, who apparently turned his knife on himself, walked into the Sherman Police Department later that same day and confessed to killing his wife. He was suffering from knife wounds and was taken to Wilson N. Jones Medical Center, where he underwent surgery. He was later transferred to the Grayson County Jail and placed on "suicide watch." Gary said Thomas was still under that watch when he plucked out his own eye. The jail staff, Gary said, rushed to Thomas' aid and took him to the hospital. Gary said Thomas quoted a Bible verse to the jail medical staff when they rushed in to help him. He quoted Mark 9:47, which states, "And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell." R.J. Hagood and Bobbie Peterson have been appointed to defend Thomas against the capital murder charge. On Monday, Hagood filed a motion to have Thomas evaluated by a mental health professional. That evaluation was expected to take place Monday afternoon or Tuesday. Judge James Fry, of the 15th state District Court, will hear the capital murder case and has approved Hagood's motion. Fry gave the doctor 30 days to turn in a report on Thomas' mental health. Monday afternoon, Hagood said he doubted it would take that long for the report to be completed in this case. In his motion, Hagood said his client is "unable to communicate" well enough to help with his defense. Grayson County Attorney Joe Brown said the injury Thomas caused himself is not a clear cut indication of mental illness. Brown said people do desperate things out of fear of punishment, as much as they do it out of insanity. Brown said he expects to present the capital murder charge to grand jurors on April 15. When asked if he intends to charge more than one count of capital murder, Brown said his office is still in the process of investigating the case. He said the case could go before several grand juries before it is completed. Brown said the capital murder charge is based both on the fact that more than one person was killed and the age of two of the victims. Those are two of the few criteria under which Texas law allows a person to be charged with capital murder. This case is the first one in Brown's tenure as the County Attorney that has qualified for the death penalty. Brown said while he is not happy to have the case, he is looking forward to the challenge presented by it and plans to secure a conviction. Some estimates say the case could cost the county more than a half a million dollars to try. Brown said he will be keeping the Grayson County Commissioners Court appraised of the cost involved. "You can't decide on justice for two dead babies and a 20-year-old mom based on a dollar figure," Brown said. Although cases are generally assigned to district courts based on the first letter of the last name, Thomas' case has been set for the 15th rather than the 336th court. Fry said the district courts have generally tried to rotate the capital murder cases, and Ray Grisham, who currently sits in the 336th, tried the last one. Fry is expected to hear the case before the end of the year. However, if the case is not tried by then, Fry is expected to hear it anyway rather than turn it over to Jim Fallon, who won judgeship for the 15th state District Court in the Republican Primary when he beat out challenger Amos Mazzant. No Democrat filed for the office. http://66.15.115.161/cgi-bin/LiveIQue.acgi$rec=117771?news

video http://www.transbuddha.com/davion/media/html/orcaeskimo.html

umm...i guess you'd be SOL then

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Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb operated a clandestine nuclear arms network that was feeding Libya's drive to build an atom bomb. Khan first met the Libyans in Istanbul in the late 1990s. He cut a lucrative USD100 million deal to supply equipment needed to build a bomb to on-site training. "He became a one-stop shopping centre," said Jim Wilkinson, deputy White House national security adviser while Mohamed EIBaradei, Director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency described his network as a "supermarket" for countries wanting the bomb. Khan cleverly used precision engineering laboratories and companies around the world that were contracted to make different parts of the equipment he needed to supply to the Libyans and many of these parts were dual purpose equipment that is also used in the oil and gas industry or other industries. That modus operandi never created a suspicion in the minds of the manufacturers until Khan's network was exposed by investigators. Khan has admitted to selling nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea but was promptly pardoned by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Bush has "allowed this farce to go unquestioned". In fact Bush is quite mum about Khan's network and this episode but very rhetorical about WMDs and non-proliferation of WMDs. It will remain an enigma why Bush illegally invaded Iraq to topple Saddam by military force on the premise that Iraq possessed WMDs (and that Saddam was an imminent threat) but takes a keep-thy-mouth-shut view on Khan and Pakistan, just as it will remain an enigma why Osama, who was trained and funded by the CIA and was an ally of the US, turned on the US and attacked it on September 11. It is probably the same shroud that covers the secret post-9/11 airlift of Saudi nationals and members of Laden's family. Bush has weak knees on Khan and Pakistan, the nation that created and trained the Taliban using teachings of the 18th century Wahabbi sect that originated in Saudi Arabia and has an admitted rogue conduct in clandestine proliferation of nuclear weapons, paradoxically accuses John F Kerry of being weak on the issue of terrorism. Bush has an enigmatic embellishment to adorn his policies and actions, and on the way he carries on his so-called War on Terrorism. The US has rewarded Pakistan with a elite military status for its "support in the war on terrorism" and has designated Pakistan as a "major non-Nato ally"! That means Pakistan will be given preferential treatment in foreign aid and defense co-operation. That also lends support and credibility to the theory that there are in fact two wars - one is war on terrorism that Congress supported and the other is a war on WMDs which is a private war of a coalition led by Bush culminating in the illegal invasion of Iraq. The dichotomy is clear and real. So, Pakistan is rewarded for its WMD network which is real but Iraq was invaded for the WMDs that it did no have. If you have never seen the wedlock of enigma with a paradox, you now have one to see in how Bush treated Pakistan vis-a-vis Iraq. The abyss in the enigma comes from information compiled by Craig Unger in his new book, HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD:THE SECRET RELATIONSHIPS, that details "murky banking deals and illegal arms deals" going back to three decades between the Bush family and the Saudi Royal family and later the "complex war negotiations". More than that Bush is a "friend of the Saudi Royal family" who maintained close business relationship with Osama. It leaves one wondering if the world's most feared terrorist has a cowboy buddy in the White House which makes Bush the most dangerous man in the world and throws up more questions on why the focus on the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda was hijacked and mothballed into another war to topple a secular regime in Iraq. The result - Saddam is in jail while the warlords in Afghanistan are gaining ground! The lies of Bush are therefore no ordinary lies. His lies, as we now see them are dangerous on a large scale. They encompass hundreds of billions of dollars and territories across the globe. Never was America so cleverly hijacked by the lies of one man. Never before a man successfully used the media and public relations in a multi-billion dollar campaign to make lies look like gospel truth. It makes Goebbels look minuscule and if Goebbels was alive today, he would have died of shame. The record now shows that Bush is indulgent toward regimes that are strongly or actually implicated in nurturing militant terrorism and does not have a systematic approach or a real plan to eradicate terrorism but has successfully and ruthlessly exploited 9/11 for his own agenda which includes a private war to topple Saddam at the expense of the US taxpayer. -- source

There are good Israelis and bad Israelis. Did you know that when the state of Israel was founded in 1948, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced no territorial boundaries? Today, Israel remains the only nation in the world without formally declared borders. -- source Not taking sides, just trying to show more of the inequity inherent in both sides.

Interesting thoughts on real threats by nuclear proliferation: Excerpts-- The questions that now cry out to be answered are, Why did the United States, standing in the midst of the Pakistani nuclear Wal-Mart, its shelves groaning with, among other things, centrifuge parts, uranium hexafluoride (supplied, we now know, to Libya) and helpful bomb-assembly manuals in a variety of languages, rush out of the premises to vainly ransack the empty warehouse of Iraq? What sort of nonproliferation policy could lead to actions like these? How did the Bush Administration, in the name of protecting the country from nuclear danger, wind up leaving it wide open to nuclear danger? In answering these questions, it would be reassuring, in a way, to report that the basic facts were discovered only after the war, but the truth is otherwise. In the case of Iraq, it's now abundantly clear that some combination of deception, self-deception and outright fraud (the exact proportions of each are still under investigation) led to the manufacture of a gross and avoidable falsehood. In the months before the war, most of the governments of the world strenuously urged the United States not to go to war on the basis of the flimsy and unconvincing evidence it was offering. In the case of Pakistan, the question of how much the Administration knew before the war has scarcely been asked, yet we know that the most serious breach--the proliferation to North Korea--was reported and publicized before the war. It's important to recall the chronology of the Korean aspect of Pakistan's proliferation. In January 2003 Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that Pakistan had given North Korea extensive help with its nuclear program, including its launch of a uranium enrichment process. In return, North Korea was sending guided missiles to Pakistan. In June 2002, Hersh revealed, the CIA had sent the White House a report on these developments. On October 4, 2002, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs James Kelly confronted the North Koreans with the CIA information, and, according to Kelly, North Korea's First Vice Foreign Minister, Kang Suk Ju, startled him by responding, "Of course we have a nuclear program." (Since then, the North Koreans have unconvincingly denied the existence of the uranium enrichment program.) Bush of course had already named the Pyongyang government as a member of the "axis of evil." It had long been the policy of the United States that nuclearization of North Korea was intolerable. However, the Administration said nothing of the North Korean events to the Congress or the public. North Korea, which now had openly embarked on nuclear armament, and was even threatening to use nuclear weapons, was more dangerous than Saddam's Iraq. Why tackle the lesser problem in Iraq, the members of Congress would have had to ask themselves, while ignoring the greater in North Korea? On October 10, a week after the Kelly visit, the House of Representatives passed the Iraq resolution, and the next day the Senate followed suit. Only five days later, on October 16, did Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, reveal what was happening in North Korea. In short, from June 2002, when the CIA delivered its report to the White House, until October 16--the period in which the nation's decision to go to war in Iraq was made--the Administration knowingly withheld the news about North Korea and its Pakistan connection from the public. Even after the vote, Secretary of State Colin Powell strangely insisted that the North Korean situation was "not a crisis" but only "a difficulty." Nevertheless, he extracted a pledge from Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, that the nuclear technology shipments to North Korea would stop. (They did not.) In March, information was circulating that both Pakistan and North Korea were helping Iran to develop atomic weapons. (The North Korean and Iranian crises are of course still brewing.) In sum, the glaring contradiction between the policy of "regime change" for already disarmed Iraq and regime-support for proliferating Pakistan was not a postwar discovery; it was fully visible before the war. The Nation enjoys no access to intelligence files, yet in an article arguing the case against the war, this author was able to comment that an "objective ranking of nuclear proliferators in order of menace" would put "Pakistan first," North Korea second, Iran third and Iraq only fourth--and to note the curiosity that "the Bush Administration ranks them, of course, in exactly the reverse order, placing Iraq, which it plans to attack, first, and Pakistan, which it befriends and coddles, nowhere on the list." Was nonproliferation, then, as irrelevant to the Administration's aims in Iraq as catching terrorists? Or was protecting the nation and the world against weapons of mass destruction merely deployed as a smokescreen to conceal other purposes? And if so, what were they? Read the entire article at the source About the Nation : The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred. -- from The Nation's founding prospectus, 1865 So, hypothetically, North Korea has or will have the capability to lob nuclear missiles at the west coast. Heard this was the reason for Bush to pursue a space-based missile defense system ($$$) which will probably not work for defense against potential enemies such as China or Russia but may against rogue states such as N. Korea. BTW, we had to drop out of a weapons treaty to pursue this one, again $$$.

I suspect that a terrorist group is similar to a cult. A philosophy has to underlie the terror; otherwise, they are merely common criminals. However, a philosophy alone is not enough. The words are reinforced by the deed to form solidarity within the group by forging a bond of complicity. Blood is bond. Violent action also instills fear among the group to keep its members in line. What do any of us understand about the motivations underlying terrorist actions? Why does terrorist action seem incomprehensible, so foreign to our worldview? I would suggest that perhaps we, as Westerners with our many distractions and gratifications have become subdued and perhaps theirs is the normal state of affairs, that is, to actually believe in something strong enough to die for it. Now consider that although our lives are different, one thing all of us share is our death. All of us will die some day only we don’t know exactly when and in what manner. It seems in some twisted way that death as your premeditated action as part of a mission focuses the meaning of life with laser-like precision in the final act, punctuated by a climactic deed when meaning and existence gain concrete impact, a unity of manifestation before disintegration. I would also suggest that terrorist action that is met by crushing brute force is a tactic that may achieve their desired ends under certain conditions. The deed is intended to provoke a corresponding action that causes the powers in control to become terrorists themselves. From our perspective, the terrorists appear to be the villains but our actions demonize our identity in their eyes. A sad situation indeed for those innocents caught in the middle ground in the battlefield between the oppressing government and the terrorists. However, those of the population not actively engaged who were formerly apathetic may now begin to align with the terrorists by voicing support either in private and perhaps even in public. Some of these people will graduate to providing monetary support. A government cannot take a single solution (kill all the terrorists) approach to this complex problem. Sometimes appeasement may be the answer by losing a battle to win the war. I would think that some thought would have to go into dealing effectively with the challenges presented by terrorism by treating this problem with a multi-pronged approach. So anyway, some unconventional thoughts… What is the meaning of dynamite? An unexploded piece of dynamite is unfulfilled in purpose. Its explosion is its meaning. "I am not a man. I am dynamite." -- FW Nietzsche

Yes, I remember a lot of talk right after 9/11 of military strikes to avenge the tragedy. I was on the way back from Three Fingers when I got word that we had launched a strike against the Taliban forces in Afghanistan (cruise missiles?). So, even then, in the wilderness with today's technology it's difficult to disengage from the madcap world. There are some of us who feel obligated to stay continually connected, almost like an addictive fix of technology or to the feeling of power that technology confers.

Maybe these ‘terrorists’ provide the dialectic that governments can use to their advantage to maintain an invisible iron grip on their people. I seriously doubt some camel jockeys can plan and execute a major coordinated attack without state sponsorship. Perhaps many of these ‘terrorists’ are mere patsies who are conned into performing actions based on religious beliefs or other behavior controlling memes. ‘Die Hard’ was just a movie but remember that the terrorists claimed to be politically motivated for a larger cause when actually they were only thieves. Or, maybe the ‘real’ beneficiaries are the opposition. Have you read Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle? Remember the plot line about Bokononism and how it originated and remained in existence? Scoff at my using examples from fiction but recall that Tom Clancy wrote about terrorists using airplanes as weapons (Debt of Honor; Executive Orders). I would only think that things are not entirely as they seem and that our perception of the world as fed to us by media channels and public relations firms present only a portion of the way things really are. Only the solitude of the mountains provides the breather from the insanity, ugliness, and stupidity of the sometime state of human affairs. For a brief moment anyway, until you return.

The issue is not as clearcut as the recording industry would have you believe. Five major labels control 85% of the music market to essentially form a cartel. These major labels squeeze out independent labels and put a stranglehold on musicians control of their music. To get an idea of where these major labels are coming from, does anyone remember the CD price-fixing scandal five years ago? More information on the controversy surrounding the Grey Album and other issues concerning the recording industry can be found at this link. There's also an excellent interview with Ian MacKaye of Fugazi and co-founder of Dischord Records. Ian never charges more than $7 for a show (isn't that great!). I don't buy into the hype that CDs should cost $18 or concerts should be $75 nor should you.

Any fans here of Al Jourgensen and Ministry?

A little bit of electoral shenanigans here. Reagan's team stole the Dem's campaign strategy book, the October Surprise (deal with the Iranians to release the hostages), etc. But yeah, I gotta give the credit to Team Reagan for having a pulse on America regarding government bloating and tax revolt. If memory serves me right, what we really got was 12 years of Bush Senior in office.

Look, if you want non-conformist progressive, you vote Nader. Either way I look at it, whether Rep or Dem, we're on the tracks heading toward a financial wreck. Maybe someone other than Bush can stall it for awhile. Maybe not. I'm just wondering how to emerge relatively unscathed regardless of who the winner is. Is it any wonder now that pain-killers are the hot item? The 60's was LSD--progressive, countercultural, anti-establishment, the 70's marihuana--laid back, take the economic blows, ride it out; the 80's cocaine--hard driving, flash over substance, greed; the 90's ecstacy and methamphetamine?--little bit of schizo here, irrational exuberance; the 00's oxyticin, vicodin, pain killers.

How so?

Editorial suggests that Bush plan is to induce federal insolvency to force a sweeping program of privatization: Greenspan Testimony Highlights Bush Plan for Deliberate Federal Bankruptcy Excerpt: Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean have talked explicitly about the Republican privatization agenda in this election year. Dean has noted that the Bush economic model for the U.S. is Argentina, although the sophistication of that analogy is lost on the average voter. Kucinich has talked about the dangers of privatizing water. Privatization deserves to be front and center in this country's political debate, and privatization's history of miserable failure needs to be placed squarely on the table in plain language for the electorate to consider. The history of failed privatization schemes includes doomed water privatization projects in South America and the U.S. (Atlanta is the poster child), rail privatization in Britain, and school and prison privatization in the U.S. The Bush administration's pursuit of federal bankruptcy on behalf of their largest corporate sponsors, who will be the primary beneficiaries of privatization, represents an all out assault on the idea that the federal government should represent the commonweal (sic) and act as a wise custodian of our collective resources. We see instead a vision of a global battlefield where scarce resources go to the strongest and to those who already have. Mr. Greenspan's comments today tell us that this world view extends to the domestic front and will continue and accelerate in a second Bush administration.

Secretary of State Colin Powell takes a moment to savor the bouquet of his boss, President George W. Bush as they wait for a cab in front of a public restroom in Washington, DC Thursday. - May 30 6:11 PM ET ---more here

Well what about the one asking how a blind man knows if he's wiped clean?

Now I'm totally guessing here, but I was under the impression that utilities lose money. Doesn't seem like a money making business unless you can gouge the customers by sharply increasing prices. One thing that industry has going for it, though, we absolutely need our water. Isn't that why we have government regulations and regulators? To make sure that we're not given the shaft?

Indeed. Correlation does not mean causation. I think it's absurd to blame everything bad on Bush as if he and his administration were the sole cause of the bad effects, e.g., on the economy. I do have to ask though if his administration has made things worse or better. I generally support a strong defensive and offensive military capability but wonder if we might become a victim of overspending through these military ventures. Seems a paradox. How do we ensure global and domestic stability to reinforce our interests yet limit government spending to assure solvency of our financial situation? It's not just terrorists and terrorism that is threatening us today. Also, the character issue. I just simply believe that Bush is full of it when he takes his 'holier than thou' attitude. As if being a born again Christian gives him a more astute understanding of the solutions to society's problems. Yeah, right. Faith-based solutions to society's problems rooted primarily in Old Testament dogma. As far as social experiments, I don't recall when faith-based solutions were proposed last, so maybe it's worth a shot. However, it sure seems close to officially endorsing a favored religion. The idea of a theocracy is downright frightening considering the hysteria that can result from that combination and concentration of power--the union of religion and state presided over by the greatly expanded power of the Presidential office. I don't know maybe things aren't that bad. But I think that your condition colors your perception of the world. If you're prospering under the Bush years, then I'd imagine you generally support his administration and the changes they have imposed. But consider that there are a large number of us who are not benefiting from his administration.

"We have met the enemy and he is us." --Walt Kelly, creater of Pogo comic strip Seems Bush's two pronged approach to leadership primarily involves the contradictory actions of cutting taxes and increasing spending possibly leading to bankruptcy. Take a look also at Bush's stance on nuclear proliferation: ''The administration's hypocrisy on the nuclear initiative is breathtaking. Bush called for the nations of the world to work together and enact more stringent controls on the transfer of nuclear technology and material. His chosen vehicle would be the International Atomic Energy Agency.'' ''Soon after Bush took office, he also acted to undercut the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) -- the very treaty he said Wednesday should be strengthened. When the NPT was extended several years ago, the bargain struck was that nonnuclear nations would agree to the extension if nuclear states would sign on to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Bush announced that the United States wouldn't be ratifying the treaty. Instead it would be developing, and testing, a new line of mininukes, thus thumbing its nose at the world's efforts to wind down the Cold War nuclear race....Then there's Pakistan...'' -- source