Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Here is the full text of George W. Bush’s Executive Order of September 12, 2007:

“Notice: Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks

Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, the Pentagon, and aboard United Airlines flight 93, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.

Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, last extended on September 5, 2006, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2007. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

GEORGE W. BUSH ”

Nearly all of George W. Bush’s presidency has been a national emergency. There’s really nothing else to say, is there?

Do you ever feel hopeless? Like it’s all just too much to deal with? Like there’s nothing you can do to make it better? Like anything you try to do will turn out wrong in the end? Like you’re just a useless piece of meat with no purpose in life? Like maybe you just don’t feel that way, but maybe it actually is that way? The psychologist at school tells me that’s a sign of clinical depression, but I think that’s just the psychologist’s way of slapping a clinical diagnosis on the fact that I feel the way I do. Truth is, I look out on the stars at night and think they’re pretty, but then I feel really small. I have such big dreams, so why do I have to be so small and powerless in the face of them? I know, I’m just another piece of meat among billions, but I could really use a voice out there to tell me I’m not alone in feeling the way I do. I don’t need someone to tell me it’s going to be OK, because I’m not sure that’s true. But I do need to hear someone tell me they feel the same way, at least sometimes. That way I won’t feel like I’m going to burst from feeling so alone in this.

John has a good suggestion:

“I have an idea I like to call Volunteer Russia. It means that those Americans who want to have their postal mail and email read, who will allow themselves to be placed under surveillance, have their phone conversations listened to, those Americans who are willing to give up some of their rights in order to be detained and interrogated and not charged with anything in the name of national security have the right to submit their names to the government as open citizens. If they want to live in the Soviet Union, why should any of us stop them?

I think that’s fair.”

Any takers?

Man, this Sam Adams quote is just awesome:

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Life is too short for bad beef jerky. I’m looking for some good beef jerky. I mean real good. I keep looking for it, and it tastes ok, but on the approach to the mouth it smells real bad. Help me out.

My goodness, but the divine have fast fingers. What else can explain dattaswami’s ability to post so many diaries with so many paragraphs in so few minutes?

I’ve decided that if he can be so spiritually in tune at such a fast pace, I must have a spark of the divine in me, too. And if I have a spark of the divine, the fruit of my own loins must carry it as well. I’ve asked my kids to supply Mad Libs words — nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs and the like — with the idea that these innocents surely will speak the truth. Dattaswami’s text provides the ground from which their wisdom will spring like aggressive kudzu on a moist summer’s day.

Here are the results. How inspirational.

Even a bumpy ceiling should be alert of its plates and cups. He is not an exception to the normal picture. Ofcourse, the food alerts him often through his or her Halloween by giving cakes. If the sticky fire does not run due to illness, it will cross the Halloween of the rough cardboard and will be sat with the white pasta. Of course, due to the hardness of the window, the baby is expected to return back after 10 o’clock. The soul will not come back as long as its hair gets in water. After all, even a purple soul is also a soul and not Jack. Even the soft glue is a glue only and not gluer.

Mommy, the silky most glass was involved in a human breaking when a bottle cap broke her. Jack is a rough case who was born as Theresa. They returned back after the end of their bath. The only exceptional cases of hard trees, who never crossed the hairy pasta of Jack, are Hugo and Lucinda. When glass slammed the gorilla of the big trash can, the wall itself will cry like bottles a little bit.

The pink tree has enough luggage to note the gorilla slamming and is not a coat for which only some houses note the slamming and give plates. A grown up kid approaches cardboard for ripping. Similarly, the purple soul approaches the zoo for running. The purple soul is green-shirted in the works. The human beings are having different corners of the eye in the three clocks. In the brown bears, a human being has a purple box of the ten worms through out its life.

At the Yucky Thumb of His Sweetness Alex Tatum

The decision to go to war in Iraq, approved of by some American politicians, was one of the stupidest moves in modern American history. It wasn’t just a wrong decision, it was a horribly bad decision. This decision has needlessly hurt the country and the world.

Here are the names of some 2008 presidential candidates. Here are their positions on the Iraq war in 2002-2003:

(If someone could help me figure out where Richardson and Vilsack stood on Iraq in 2002 and 2003, I’d appreciate it.)

To those who opposed the war in Iraq in the first place, we should grant the benefit of the doubt the next time an important issue comes along.

To those who waffled on the war in Iraq, we should offer our outstretched hand but be ready to run. We should listen very carefully to what these people say and don’t say.

To those who supported the war in Iraq, we should say, “You got the biggest decision of your career dead wrong. Why should we ever, ever trust your judgment again?”

I just got myself a wafflemaker. A simple, basic wafflemaker. It’s fast, it’s hard to screw up, it’s easy to clean up, and it makes delicious waffles. My question is this: why do people make fun of wafflemakers when they are so great?

Today is Buy Nothing Day, a day which will be thoroughly ignored by everybody. Why should we have a day on which we buy nothing? Come to the light of reason, my dear misguided friends. If nobody buys anything, nobody will eat. Should you really not eat? Oh, you say, just don’t buy your cabbage today, buy it tomorrow! But that is the same thing. The only way to have an effect is never to buy a particular thing. So why not have a Don’t Buy One Thing, Ever Campaign? That’s kind of a downer, isn’t it? No, it’s just ever so much better to have a day where people can postpone their trip to the mall, and feel really good about themselves, and then buy the latest glossy issue of Adbusters. But not this Friday. You can buy the magazine and feel smug on Thursday or Saturday.

I heard on the radio that Fox News was going to put a comedy show on its lineup. And this is news exactly how? Fox News is a 24-hour comedy channel already. Oh, maybe they are going to try some literal comedy on us, not the satirical farce that they currently are engaged in. I say No! Don’t go out of character, Fox News; that will only destroy the integrity of your black-is-white, up-is-down, Kafkaesque romp.