Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Will you watch the debate? I know I will. CNN, 7pm, Sunday: be there!

Defenders of religion as a positive force for humanity need to consider the stoning death of a teenage girl who was stoned to death in the supposedly “liberated” Iraqi Kurdistan. Amnesty International reports that she was struck by relatives with stones until dead as punishment for staying out the night with a Muslim boyfriend.

Girl was not Muslim, exactly, but from a Yezidi family. The Yezidi have a system of religious belief that is influenced by Islam, but is not strictly Islamic.

Want to find out more about this religion? Go ahead and Google “Yezidi”. You’ll find some information about the Yezidi religious practice in the abstract, but two of the ten links on the first page of the search results are about the stoning.

Certainly, for myself, the story of the Yezidi stoning dominates my thinking about this cultural group. I’m curious about their beliefs and practices, but first and foremost, the though comes into my mind that, gosh, the Yezidi may be interesting and unique, but they stone teenage girls to death.

That’s a big lesson for cultures, as they seek to present themselves in the world. All the highfalutin ideas about the creation of the Universe and the meaning of life are great, but when you engage in barbaric practices, that’s all that will matter to most people.

OK. I”m a native Anglino age 54. So, I’m grumpy old man material. I’m working on it daily. Today I was caught in bumper to bumper fucking traffic on Organge County freeways, mainly 91 East and 605 North. What was normally a 45 min. commute (try Sunday early morning) is a 90 minute fucking ordeal with lame assholes and fucking Mexican  lawnmower men clogging up the highway. There was one point I was surrounded by fucking illegals with their pick ups and lawnmowers or whatever other tools of trade they had in the back. The container traffic was bad enough but fuck the Teamsters too! What a bunch of organized extortionists  clogging up the fucking freeways during rush h0ur.

 Listen up: is our consumption more important than our quality of life? Think about it. If you are some scum sucking illegal trying to make a living you think I’m a racist. What do I care? Go fuck yourself! You Teamsters don’t give a fuck either. This union threatened to bring L.A. to it’s knees during the Summer Olympics in L.A. in 1984. The idea to ban container traffic on the freeways during rush hour was broached by mayor Tom Bradley. The Teamsters threatened to go on strike. The mayor caved.

So, you stupid fucking consumer stuck in traffic in Orangatan County, just realize your consumption has taken on a life of it’s own and owns the highways. So, sit there behind the wheel of  your German vehicle, and  grow old and crawl along with the rest of the cattle and illegal Mexican gophers. Such is your quality of life. You are a good little lemming and slave.

 I hate driving in L.A.

What a great day for the circuses. The circus in the proverbial ‘bread and circuses’. Man does not live by bread alone, right? So, Paris Hilton steps into the breach to relieve the Illuminati fighters of a boring day of gathering news of eventual imprisonment by a growing police state ( www.prisonplanet.com ).  So, this has become a pleasant distraction only to hear the talk shows explode like so many Stepford monkeys. Think I’ll pour a drink and watch the show.

Yeah, I hope Paris gets bought for a pack  of cigarettes by some bull dike who makes her into her bitch. There’s that part of me but there is the part that sees this whole thing as an expose of the failure of our justice system here in L.A., tinseltown, from downtown Hollywood.

Everybody knows there is an easy out for misdemeanor cases. So someone is manipulating the system to get her slammed. Who might that be? I want to know. Someone who doesn’t want this blatant invitation to violate law from reaching the mainstream media thereby making Paris Hilton into an example just to keep everyone in line. Something to think about.

Right now MSNBC is broadcasting a two hour spectactular on L.A. County jail, Lock Up , (Been there. Done that) and it’s scaring the crap out of me of what they do to felons.  There is a great need to strike fear in the public’s heart, meaning, mainly white folks. The others (whites and mostly people of color) don’t buy the intimidation because they are at war with the oppressors. There are some parts of town I would not think of entering. I was born in East L.A. and it’s been stolen from me! Oh! don’t get me started…

Ever heard of the Yowie? People looking to gain tourism dollars for Batesman Bay are hoping you will soon.

They’re saying that the photograph you see here shows the Yowie, a wild Australian ape-man cryptid. The Yowie is supposed to be the Australian equivalent of Bigfoot or the Yeti.

They say that this photograph of the Yowie is real evidence of its existence.

If you believe that, then let me give you some more information: In the photograph you see below of Barack Obama, you can see the Loch Ness monster in the background.

Don’t see it? You’re just not looking hard enough.

Thousands of people protested against the visit of George W. Bush in the streets of Rome yesterday, expressing widespread opposition to Bush’s foreign policy among citizens of Italy.

Some protesters lit smoke bombs and threw bottles. Police tried to control the protesters by firing tear gas at them.

“Bush Out!” the protesters in Rome demanded, expressing opposition to the continued American military occupation of Iraq. Bush responded by asking whether Italians had thought enough about national independence for Kosovo.

In touch with the pulse of the planet as usual, that Mr. Bush.

On the other hand, it’s a pity that a few protesters ruined the event for the rest. The Guardian is even reporting that one or two protesters broke flower pots.

What were they thinking? Damn flower pot! I’ll teach you to support the ocupation of Iraq!

Forget the talk about the tenth Illinois casino. Proposed legislation now before the Illinois house would triple Illinois gambling, including the creation of a downtown Chicago casino.

While casinos can be very profitable, they are harmful to economic development. Restaurants are the hardest hit when a new casino opens, although expenditures in other sectors decrease also. Casinos can make more than half of their income from non-gaming revenues, including hotel and restaurant facilities on the premises. According to a study by E L Grinols and J D Omorov reported in the Spring 1996 Illinois Business Review:

Restaurants in many states, including Illinois, have reported that their revenues dropped as much as 50 percent in response to the opening of a nearby casino, and many restaurants have closed.

The social costs from gambling to the surrounding community can also be high. Costs associated with bankruptcy, debt, criminal justice costs, and other consequences of gambling problems can cost the community somewhere between four to eleven times the amount of tax revenue they bring in, depending on which study you look at.  Gambling impoverishes whole communities.

And once a gambling enterprise is let into the state, it doesn’t go away. Although the racing business ceased being profitable long ago, the taxpayers of Illinois are still subsidizing that industry to keep it from going out of business.

Gambling is not good for business and it’s not good for Illinois.

The bill is being discussed in the Illinois house this week. This is the time to contact your representative. You can find the contact information for your Illinois state representative here. If you don’t know your district you can find it here.

Seen on TruthOut: an article on John Edwards’s antipoverty stance.  Summary: Edwards has chosen to make poverty his main issue, even though it may not be a winning issue, because he cares about it.  It’s not just a puff piece, either; it points out the things Edwards has done that make him look less sincere (he worked for a hedge fund from 2004 to 2006; he has a 28,000-square-foot home), compares him to people who want to do even more, and explains why his plans may not make much difference.

The TV show The Sopranos is over, and media critics are having a festival of whining about how cheated they are out of a meaningful ending to the series.

I don’t get it. How could there be a meaningful ending to a TV series that had no meaning in the first place?

I can understand if you watched The Sopranos for one season, if you had nothing better to do, but after that first season, what was the point?

Ooh, the main character was a mobster… like in hundreds of other TV shows and movies. Ooh, he does bad things… like thousands of other TV and movie characters.

Okay, the mobster saw a therapist. That had enough interest to carry a single one-hour show - kind of like Analyze This, but without the jokes.

What was left after that? Mob goons battling for control of turf. Miscellaneous, not very remarkable personal issues.

I saw a few of the shows, sure - enough to see that there wasn’t really that much there. The only people who would keep on watching The Sopranos after the first season are the kind of people who get addicted to television, and are just desperate for something to watch because they don’t have anything to do.

The Sopranos is over. Yawn. Turn off the televison now, okay?

I have just learned from one of my church friends that the liberal insurgents in our congregation are trying to get our pastor to lead us in activities related to Torture Awareness Month. “June is Torture Awareness Month!” they say. Not in my America, sister! In my America, we celebrate Flag Day and the Fourth of July, thank you very much!

It explains a lot about these liberals that they’ll try to spend all of June just being aware of torture. Think about that for a minute, will you? All these liberals are trying to think about torture all month long. It’s enough to send anyone into a state of profound moral depravity!

I, for one, think that it’s moral important for America to be humble. Yes, America may be torturing evildoers in secret prisons, but there’s a reason that those prisons are kept secret. Our government is trying to demonstrate humble leadership.

Sure, we’re torturing, but we don’t have to brag about it, do we? This torture awareness movement seems just too prideful, if you ask me.

The lieberals are at it again, trying to distract from our nation’s most important Holy Days by naming new “holidays” (NOTE the changed spelling!) all over the place. The latest is World Day Against Child Labor, which happened earlier this week. First of all, it’s a WORLD holiday, not a national one, which is completely in sync with plans for One World Government of Gog and Magog. Second, it’s completely unsupportive of responsible parental choices. I had to set the table and darn the socks and sort the laundry when I was a child. What’s wrong with that? Are we treating out kids like some kind of veal, with muscles too tender for good old fashioned work? What’s wrong with asking your son to take out the trash he makes? For goodness sake! This secular liberal push for “holidays” promoting irresponsibility and laxity amongst our children — I’m sure while still giving them an allowance! — is taking us very close to the edge of tolerability.

You know what pisses me off about liberals? The fuckers just don’t know how to be civil. I don’t know how many goddamned times I’ve had to listen to stupid liberals whining and complaining about how President Bush has taken away their freedoms - as if they ever really used them in the first place, the liars. What’s the use of giving a liberal freedom of speech, however, if they’re going to waste it with speech that is blatantly disrespectful of the opinions of others?

Do those liberals really think that anyone’s listening? If they won’t be polite, they’ll never be recognized by the people that matter. Don’t expect them to refine their graces any time soon, though, the morons.

7/5/07 UPDATE: The Jordan Times and BBC News both report Alan Johnston was released yesterday.

Johnston is fortunate indeed to work for a high-profile organization like the BBC that can organize a worldwide moment of silence or an online petition. How many other reporters have been killed or disappeared without so much publicity?

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There is no justice without truth, and there is no truth without a free press. More than 100,000 people have signed on online petition to free BBC reporter Alan Johnston who was kidnapped in Gaza three months ago.

If you would like to sign the petition for Johnston’s release, here is a link to the BBC online petition.

You can also put a button on your own blog.

Peregrin Wood wrote about how the Southern Baptist Convention declared skepticism of a human role in global warming - even though the Southern Baptist Convention has no special scientific expertise with which to make an accurate decision in the matter.

The decisions of the Southern Baptist Convention are all based on faith - what the Baptists want to believe is true, rather than what what the facts suggest is true.

So, it really shouldn’t be surprising that the Southern Baptists decided to hush up an investigation into allegations that the number of Southern Baptists has been purposefully overblown. The Southern Baptist Convention decided not to examine the complaints that church leaders have been exaggerating the number of people in their churches in order to gain power for themselves.

That’s the fingerprint of faith: If leaders say something is true, then it’s true. If there are more people attending a church than anyone at the church ever sees, well then, the good reverend must be hiding them behind the curtains, right?

Earlier today, Green Party presidential candidate Alan Augustson challenged Republican candidate Ron Paul’s call for the dismantling of the International Criminal Court. Auguston called Paul’s opposition to the prosecution of war criminals “really disturbing”.

Auguston then reiterated his own support for the International Criminal Court, saying, “One item, central to my plans for building peace, is for the US to become a signatory to the Rome Accord, submitting thereby to the jurisdiction of the ICC in The Hague.”

I caught this on Yahoo news a couple minutes ago and once again I find myself angry and indignant with our appointed leader. I would say that it’s hard to believe, but then again unless it’s something to help save lives or improve quality of life he’ll rubber stamp it. Get troops out of Iraq? Research to save lives? Can’t have that now, can we?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070620/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_stem_cells

Bush to Veto Stem Cell Bill

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago

Pushing back against the Democratic-led Congress, President Bush intends to veto a bill Wednesday that would have eased restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research — work that supporters say holds promise for fighting disease.

At the same time, Bush will issue an executive order directing the Health and Human Services Department to promote research into cells that, like human embryonic stem cells, also hold the potential of regenerating into different types of cells that could help treat illness.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Tuesday that Bush would outline an initiative that could make federal funding available for research on additional “pluripotent” stem cells — ones that can give rise to any kind of cell in the body except those required to develop a fetus.

The president has accused majority Democrats of recycling an old measure that he already vetoed and argued that the bill would mean American taxpayers would — for the first time — be compelled to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos.

“The president supports and encourages stem cell research — including using embryonic lines — as long as it does not involve creating, harming or destroying embryos,” Fratto said. “That is an ethical line that should not be crossed.”

Democrats made the legislation a top priority when they took control of the House and Senate in January, but they don’t have enough votes to override Bush’s decision.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appealed to Bush on Tuesday not to veto the bill. He said the measure acknowledges the ethical issues at stake and offers even stronger research guidelines than exist under the president’s current policy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used Bush’s veto threat as a reason to send out an e-mail letter soliciting contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to help elect more Democrats.

“By vetoing a bill that expands stem cell research, the president will say `no’ to the more than 70 percent of Americans who support it, `no’ to our Democratic Congress’ fight for progress, and `no’ to saving lives and to potential cures for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson’s,” Pelosi wrote. “He will say `no’ to hope.”

In light of the veto, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who planned to be at the White House event, sought support for a stem cell bill he is sponsoring. It has passed the Senate but has not yet been taken up by the House.

“My stem cell bill, which passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support, offers a clear alternative for our colleagues in the House to significantly expand federally funded stem cell research, while ensuring no taxpayer dollars are used for the destruction of human embryos,” Coleman said.

Coleman urged Democrats who favored the bill Bush was to veto to get behind his legislation.

“Those who support the stem cell research bill … are at a definitive crossroads,” he said. “Do they seek to advance lifesaving research for millions of Americans suffering from serious disease or do they, in fact, prefer to keep stem cell research at a political stalemate? ”

This will be the third veto of Bush’s presidency. His first occurred last year when he rejected legislation to allow funding of additional lines of embryonic stem cells — a measure that passed over the objections of Republicans then in control. Earlier this year, he vetoed legislation that would have set timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq.

Opponents of the latest stem cell measure insisted that the use of embryonic stem cells was the wrong approach on moral grounds — and possibly not even the most promising one scientifically. They cite breakthroughs involving medical research conducted with adult stem cells, umbilical cord blood and amniotic fluid, none of which involve the destruction of a human embryo.

The science aside, the issue has weighty political implications.

Public opinion polls show strong support for the research, and it could return as an issue in the 2008 elections.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared in Hanover, N.H., this week with a child who has diabetes and a paralyzed 23-year-old to urge Bush not to veto the bill. Last month, the issue was a topic at a debate with Republican presidential hopefuls in California.

The bill Bush is vetoing passed Congress on June 7, drawing the support of 210 House Democrats and 37 Republicans. That was 35 votes fewer than needed to override a veto. The Senate cleared the bill earlier by a margin that was one vote shy of the two-thirds needed to overcome Bush’s objections.

According to the National Institutes of Health Web site, scientists were first able to conduct research with embryonic stem cells in 1998. There were no federal funds for the work until Bush announced on Aug. 9, 2001, that his administration would make the funds available for lines of cells that already were in existence.

There’s just one qualification, unless you count being a Washington D.C. corporate lobbyist or Hollywood actor a qualification, that Fred Thompson has for becoming President of the United States. There’s the one and a half terms in office he spent as a senator.

What kind of senator was Fred Thompson? I decided to find out by taking a look at the height of his Senate career, five years after entering the Senate, and four years before he decided to quit serving the public and go back to being a corporate lobbyist and an actor on television. This is the time when Senator Fred Thompson ought to look the best. It’s the time when we ought to see Fred Thompson at work on the political issues that are at the core of his career.

So, I went back and took a look at the issues that Fred Thompson actually had listed on his web site back in his web site. These are the issues that Senator Thompson thought were the most important at the time:

Kosovo
Independent Counsel Reauthorization
Tennessee Valley Authority
Campaign Finance Investigation
Social Security
Federalism Enforcement Act
Tennessee Preservation
Regulatory Reform
Term Limits
Biennial Budget
Fort Campbell
Vacancies Reform Act
Campaign Finance Reform
Year 2000 Computer Problem
Govt. Waste, Fraud & Abuse
Oak Ridge
Tennessee Tourism & Travel
Satellite & Missile Technology
Computer Security
Great Smoky Mountains

The biggest impression is that most of these aren’t really the issues that were at the heart of what America had to deal with back in the 1990s, and they’re certainly not at the core of what America is dealing with today. These are mostly second tier issues without much of a vision to unite them.

The war in Kosovo was an important issue at the time. No arguments against that. But it was a war, for goodness sakes. What kind of senator wouldn’t have an issue statement on that?

Campaign finance reform, I will grant, is also an important issue, as is government fraud, waste and abuse. These are perennial problems, however, that require maintenance. They don’t reflect any great underlying vision or leadership.

But the rest of the issues? Middling, unremarkable, mush. A huge number of the issues that Fred Thompson identified are really just pork barrel for his political supporters in Tennessee. For goodness sakes, it seems that Senator Thompson even fell for the whole Y2K hoax.

Attention to these sorts of issues is necessary for the functioning of the government, but Fred Thompson’s focus on them does not reflect a mind that is capable of leadership at the Presidential level.

From his work in the Senate, as reflected in the issues that he actually worked on, Fred Thompson seems like the sort of person who functions best not working in top leadership, but at two or three levels down, in mid-management. Fred Thompson is the kind of guy you want attending committee meetings, hashing out the nitty gritty details, plodding along at the daily grind.

Fred Thompson is just not presidential material. Maybe, if a Republican were to win the White House, he could be Secretary of Transportation, or something like that. Maybe.

Fred Thompson’s record in the Senate was just plain unremarkable. That suggests the following motto for the Fred Thompson for President campaign: Fred Thompson - Ho Hum 2008.

Holy warped space-time continuum! The newest threat to the United States is one that was never expected: Americans are shrinking!

A study by the University of Michigan finds that the height of the average American male has decreased from its historical high. ABC News struggles to come up with explanations, guessing that Americans’ diet may not be providing them with enough nutrition to grow as tall as they used to.

I say that’s grasping at straws.

Why won’t the media talk about the clear reason for the new American shortage?

There is good reason to believe that it isn’t just American people who are shorter. In fact, the United States of America itself may be less tall than it was at the time of the Revolution of 1776.

All evidence points to the use of a gravity bomb by Al Qaeda - a bomb that is silent and invisible, but which warps the space-time continuum in such a way that America’s stature in the world is progressively condensed.

If Al Qaeda is not stopped soon, adult Americans could be only an average of four feet tall! Think of the consequences! The carnival industry will be devastated, with all of its potential customers too short to get on the rides!

Why do they hate our cotton candy?

It’s beyond me why so many Democrats are falling for the idea that Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is some kind of progressive knight in shining white armor. The truth is that Ron Paul is far from progressive.

Just take a look at how Ron Paul’s campaign for President is dealing with the environment… or rather, how the Ron Paul 2008 campaign is not dealing with the environment.

Ron Paul doesn’t even seem to understand that the environment is an important issue at all. The Pentagon has identified global warming as a threat to America’s national security at least as grave as terrorism, but Ron Paul hasn’t gotten the news.

On the issues page the Ron Paul campaign has put up on its web site, the following issues are discussed:

HRC = Hillary Rodham Clinton
HRC = Human Rights Campaign