Month: October 2004

An excellent article from the New York Times about how our Military Laws were rewritten after 9/11.

In early November 2001, with Americans still staggered by the Sept. 11 attacks, a small group of White House officials worked in great secrecy to devise a new system of justice for the new war they had declared on terrorism.

My friend Victor sends me this link – Reasons to Dispatch Bush – looks pretty interesting.

I guess it’s the blind leading the blind.

Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters have exactly opposite perceptions.

The article goes on to say that the majority of the Bush supporters surveyed believe that Bush supports many policies that he actually doesn’t. Does anyone pay attention to the news? Wait, does the news pay attention to the news? (Link found in a friend’s blog.)

Tonight must have been “bring your weird child to Target night.” I came around this one corner and there was a lady with two small children – one in the basket and one running amok. The child in the basket points at me and says, “you are a bad person. How can you be such a stupid asshole?” Well, fuck you too! Aren’t your parents teaching you such nice things. The mom? Never batted an eye – just kept trying to find the right piece of Rubbermaid to use as storage.

Then, there was another poor kid having a fit and screaming at the top of his lungs. The dad tried all the tricks. First he was polite and asked the child to stop. Then, he ordered the child to stop. Then he said that if the child would not stop, they were going to leave the store and he wouldn’t get anything. As he was dragging the kid out of the store, the kid started yelling, “you can’t fire me! you can’t fire me!” Maybe the kid was crying to begin with because he was suffering from PTSD due to exposure to Trump’s hair.

As someone who’s already sick of all this election talk (can’t we have shorter election cycles?), this article almost makes my head explode. I sense another long drawn out post-election nightmare on the horizon.

Mishka just broke a beautiful piece of art glass that was given to me by my Mom and her friend James. I know he’s just being a kitten and it was my fault for keeping the piece on an exposed shelf onto which he could jump, but right now, that’s not really helping my displeasure with him.

More interesting stuff from Talking Points Memo:
“Right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company that owns local TV stations across the country, is ordering its local stations to preempt normal broadcasting a couple days before the election to air an anti-Kerry film made by a former ‘reporter’ for the Washington Times.” Also, check out his follow up information and links.

Also linked to on that site, a NYT article ponders just what was bulging in the President’s jacket during the debate. “According to rumors racing across the Internet this week, the rectangular bulge visible between Mr. Bush’s shoulder blades was a radio receiver, getting answers from an offstage counselor into a hidden presidential earpiece…”

The bee thing? Not so unique – who knew?

Bees! Yes, those bees were apparently happily living in my water meter. A hive was attached to the bottom of the manhole cover. I didn’t know this until the meter reader came by, took the cover off and then ran like a mad-man. Not that I blame him. I would have done the same thing. It’s apparently all kinds of complicated to have a bee hive removed. It’s even harder if the city people think you’re on crack when you call them ask them about it.

I’m feeling weak…I’m actually considering getting cable. Years ago when I was unemployed, I had to get my cable cut off and I promised myself I wouldn’t get it again until I’d met a few goals (which included such things as being debt-free and losing a couple hundred pounds). Well, I’m fatter than ever, my credit card is maxed and I have a 30 year mortgage, so I’m nowhere near meeting any of those goals…but I’m starting to get the cable itch more than I’ve ever had it before.

Do I really want to spend $55/month for cable TV? I could just get local channels for $15/month, but that seems silly considering what it’s going to cost me to get cable installed — I have no outlets anywhere near TV sets and no carpets underwhich to run cable, so I’ll need to get them to do some interior wall drops. Do I really want to give money to the evil monopoly that is Time/Warner? *sigh*