DAVID KAY OPENING REMARKS TRANSCRIPT

Well, not to beat a dead horse, but Iraqi weapons inspector David Kay's comments have been splashed all over the news (in case you didn't know) and Bush has said that he wants to "know the facts" regarding the intelligence failures. However, he hasn't endorsed the call for an inquiry into why the intelligence failed so badly.

Gee, why could that be?

Perhaps it's because HIS intelligence failed?

Aaanyway, Click here for a transcript of David Kay's openning remarks to the Senate regarding WMD in Iraq.Here's an excerpt:

Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.

And another:

It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.

And yet another:

There’s a long record here of being wrong.

Click here to read about how Bush 43 doesn't feel like letting the world know how biased he was at MyWay News.

James Brown MUG

I feel... good?

BUSH 43 LIES, CAUGHT ON CAMERA!

Well, actually, caught in a 2003 address to the United States. The clip appears here, thanks to the Daily Show having the guts to have Richard Perle (one of the architects of Bush 43's Middle East policy) on and less than ten minutes later run a clip of Bush claiming that there is "no doubt" that based on intelligence that Saddam Hussein has WMD. Check out the clip below by clicking on the pic!

bush43lies.mov (1342k file)

The arty shooting is because I used my pocket video camera to shoot the TV screen because my video capture card isn't set up right now. :(

BUSH 43 MISSING SPINE AND WMD

That's right, the man was wrong about WMD in Iraq, but can he just admit that he's wrong? No - of course not. He gets asked simple questions about it and yet he must dodge them replying with anything but "I was wrong."

And now the conservative media is doing everything but calling him on it. The New York Times describes what he is doing as "backing away from Iraqi arms claim". Huh, that's funny, to me it looks like he's trying to pretend like he had never said that "...intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Which is funny because those were his exact words.

Oh well...

Read the New York Times article over at their web site.

A Bush-Lie so Nice, I'm Postin' it twice!

Well, lookie here! Thanks to the fine folks over at The Daily Show, we have a nice, juicy clip of George W. Bush lying to the people of the United States of America in a 2003 address. Basically, what he says in the clip is that there is "no doubt" that Saddam has WMD. Which is funny since experts now agree that he never had them. Of course, can Bush simply admit that he's wrong? Nope! He just dances around the question!

I've placed the clip of Bush lying in my Video of the Moment section. However, I've also posted it over at TheNewsBlog also, so you can check it out there, too.


bush43lies.mov (1342k file)

The arty shooting is because I used my pocket video camera to shoot the TV screen because my video capture card isn't set up right now. :(

Anyway, watch and weep, all who trusted Bush 43!

OH, THE HORROR!

And I'm not talking about Kerry's win in New Hampshire, either! Check out this messy story from ETaiwanNews.Com:

A dead sperm whale being transported through Tainan City on its way to a research station suddenly exploded yesterday, splattering cars and shops with blood and guts.

...

The whale was to be preserved and an autopsy performed at the "Shi-Tsao Natural Preserve" in Tainan County by a team of marine biologists and taxidermists.

...

"The animal was close to death when someone found it beached on shore on Saturday... Because of the natural decomposing process, a lot of gases accumulated, and when the pressure buildup was too great, the whale's belly just exploded and spilled blood and the innards on the street," Wang said.

...

Local news reports showed a number of people who had gathered to take photographs of the whale before it exploded in Tainan City, as well as residents and shop owners following the explosion. Many were wearing gauze-masks and trying to clean up the spilled blood and the entrails with brushes and brooms.

"What a stinking mess! This blood and other stuff that blew out on the road is disgusting, and the smell is really awful," said one resident.

The news also showed one section of the street along with several parked automobiles and pedestrian walkways covered in red with copious amounts of splattered whale blood.

Lying on the trailer-truck was the dead whale - underbelly exposed with a large elongated tear where the biological gaseous blowout took place. Besides the shocking red bloody mess, large piles of whale intestines and guts were strewn along the road, leaving an unpleasant and ghastly scene for startled residents.

Makes you glad to be an American - if only because it meant you weren't in Tainan City to witness that mess!!

Sorry, there are no pictures of the mess... blech...

KERRY??? COME ON, NEW HAMPSHIRE!!

Come on, New Hampshire voters!! Don't make THIS guy the front runner!!

You want a career Washington insider going up against Bush 43?? And people used to make fun of Gore for being stiff! My God, Kerry makes Al Gore look like Orlando Bloom!

DON'T DO THIS, PEOPLE!! I don't want to end up voting for the winner of the "I make David Caradine look exciting and dynamic" contest.

...

CONFIDENTIAL PERSONAL INFO GIVEN TO BIG BROTHER BY AIRLINE

While this may sound like an exaggeration, it isn't. Northwest Airlines handed over confidential passenger information (basically, everything the airline knew about a chunk of it's passengers assumably down to whether they wanted to Kosher meal or not) to of all parts of the government, NASA. It was all in the interest of helping security. The idea was to put together a massive database of people that would help the airlines screen passengers for terrorist ties.

This is the second airline to hand over confidential passenger info to another party. JetBlue, apparently did it to an unnamed US government contractor.

No specifics were mentioned regarding how many people had their personal information compromised, but Northwest did say they had handed over the information during a span of three months. A Washington Post article from January 17, 2004 says that over ten million passengers could have been effected.

Ah, there's nothing like the freedom that comes from corporations working in tandem with government to make us feel perfectly... unfree.

Read more about it at the Washington Post web site.

Japander.com

Did you know that a lot of American stars, like Mel Gibson, Jennifer Connelly (and MANY others), do commercials in Japan? This is a bit odd since they don't do commercials here. Well, now there's a web site that lets you see many big stars pander to the Japanese in TV commercials at Japander.com - get it? JAPander?

Anyway, check out the site here and then come back here to comment on the ads. A lot of them are a riot...

Back to work!

AL QAIDA ALMOST GONE?

That's right - the big bad enemy that is, or mostly was, Al Qaida is 70% wiped out, according to a January 23, 2004 article at WorldTribune.Com. The article quotes a guy at the State Department called Cofer Black as saying "They are being hunted down, their days are numbered."

Apparently, the US Intelligence Community backs this up. If this is the case, what's the point of keeping Bush 43 around for another term? The only war that matters (the one on terror) is almost over. If it took the USGov and it's allies less than four years to neutralize that much of Al Qaida surely, he can take care of the final 30% before he leaves office in January of 2005, right? I mean, come ON, he'll have had FOUR YEARS to catch Osama bin Laden.

If Bush 43 does catch bin Laden before the election of 2004, why do we need him? No more need for war-mongering now that our only enemy is destroyed. If Bush 43 doesn't catch bin Laden by the election, isn't that evidence that he shouldn't be allowed to keep his job? What kind of inept fool can't find a 6-foot-tall, Middle-Eastern guy on dialysis who looks like Osama bin Laden?

Either way, what is a good reason to keep Bush 43 around?

Read the World Tribune article at their web site.

PATRIOT ACT PARTIALLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Well, check it out. According to an AP article at MyWay News, a US Federal Courts judge declared that the part about providing support and/or assistance to terrorists is just too vague. The judge also said that it violates the first and fifth amendments.

Perhaps it's time to repeal this damn thing and rely on laws that have kept us safe for decades leading up to 911? You know, the JUST kinds of laws? Just a thought...

Read the AP article at MyWay News.

Another Monday...

Yeehaw, it's Monday again and I still didn't get around to doing everything I wanted to do this weekend. I did manage to write over the weekend, which was good. I did not get to work on my screenplay, which I wanted to do. I also didn't get a chance to update TheBeauty or the comics today. Oh man, and I need to contact Fortune City - I discovered they still have my site up from six years ago. They've got my copyrighted artwork still up with ads on the page, which means they're making more money off of my work than I am!! Too busy...

Anyway, the good thing is, I'm still on schedule for working on TheKey: Book 1 every day so far this year. I've spent at least SOME time doing SOME kind of work on it, whether it's proofreading, editing, rewriting or getting others to read it and give me feedback. All right, time to get writing some copy...

CHENEY MAKES EXCUSES FOR HALIBURTON

A January 23, 2004 article at CNN.com quotes Dick Cheney defending Haliburton as a great company and that Democrat candidates for office who suggest that he showed favor to the company he used to be the CEO for are just "desperate". The article, itself, is incredibly biased (I can be biased, I'm not a journalist and don't claim to be unbiased as all journalists and news organizations do by default), and clearly casts Cheney as a guy sticking up for his palls. It allows two huge quotes from Cheney to be unbroken in the first two paragraphs of the article itself. To the article's credit, it does explain in the paragraph after those quotes that:

Halliburton's work in postwar Iraq -- much of which it won in a no-bid contract process -- has come under criticism and scrutiny because of the firm's ties to Cheney, who headed the company between serving as Defense secretary in the first Bush administration and becoming vice president.

Which is fine, except that after you read the first two paragraphs before it, your average Joe is going to stop reading because he's had an opportunity to be convinced by Cheney that Haliburton deserved to "win" the job.

From the CNN.com article:

Offering a spirited defense of the company he once headed, Vice President Dick Cheney said Halliburton Co. is being maligned for its work in Iraq by political opponents of the Bush administration who are "feeling desperate."

Yeah, so, don't describe him as "coming to his own defense" (seeing as HE was the one being accused of wrongdoing) give him spirit. People love spirit!

Here is the beginning of the first two huge quotes:

"The company is a great company. They do great work for the federal government, as well as for their customers around the world," he told Fox News Radio in an interview Wednesday.

I'm sure a LOT of companies who provide the same services as Haliburton do good work, but we'd never know it since they were never given the chance to even bid on any Iraq jobs!! Another thing: So, we have a right-leaning CNN.com article quoting Cheney on a righter-leaning Fox News radio interview. Love that bias!

More from those two quotes:

"They've had now, I believe, some 15 people killed -- either Halliburton employees or subcontractors working for them."

Yeah, I think the USMil has had a few more than that, not to mention all of the other companies who have lost civilian workers over there and definitely not to mention the 10,000 Iraqi civilians who lost their lives thanks to the Iraq Attack. CHENEY, that's got NOTHING to do with it, all right? STOP trying to illicit sympathy for a company you blatantly favored by invoking the lives lost by employees of that company. That's pretty damned disgusting, if you ask me.

More from those two quotes:

"They are operating in a combat zone. They're rendering great service, and they make about three cents on the dollar for it."

What does that even mean? Are you trying to suggest the USGov is getting a good deal by using some BS phrasing? "Three cents on the dollar?" On WHAT dollar? What absurd fianancial slight-of-hand is this?

Cheney goes ON:

"This is not the most profitable part of their business portfolio, by any means."

If they're losing 97 cents on the dollar (??) why are they doing it then? Doesn't this show that they are a financially stupid company, making some seriously bad business choices? Or is it that they're just doing it as a favor for their ex-CEO?

Even more from those two quotes:

"They do it because they're good at it, because they won the contract to do it."

They won the contract?? THEY WON THE CONTRACT???

Tell me something , Dick, when you're running in a race-- heh, sorry, not when you run in a race -- when a runner runs in a race and makes it to the finish line, is it still considered a "win" if there was no one else in the race??? Because that's, what happened.

The Bush 43 Admin handed Haliburton an oil firefighting contract without taking a single bid from anyone else OR Haliburton!

And one last chunk of the two huge quotes from Cheney:

"And, frankly, the company takes a certain amount of pride in rendering this kind of service to U.S. military forces."

Ah, yes. Invoke their patriotism! Very nice.

"In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary , 'patriotism' is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first." -- Ambrose Bierce

'Nuff said.

Read the above mentioned CNN.com article.

Read more about that no-bid process that "won" Haliburton the job at CommonDreams.Org.

Here's the Third: Helmut Newton R.I.P.

I was wondering who the third famous person would be after Ann Miller and Bob Keeshan went (famous people always seem to die in threes). Well, it's Helmut Newton. If you think Helmut Newton isn't famous, then you just don't know his name. However, I can almost guarantee you've seen his work. Helmut Newton was a very successful photographer of nude women. His work has inspired MUCH masterbation in the masses of men who grew up on Playboy magazine. His work was not what you often see these days. It was stylish and interesting, beyond just the "subject" in the photo. You can literally tells his work apart from the average centerfold photographer.



He died after crashing his car into a wall outside the Chateau Marmont, here in LA, about 15 minutes from where I live.

Read more about his life and death at MyWay news.

Check out some of Newton's work with the help of Google's Image search. (WARNING: This link connects with nudity if you have your Google Image Search settings for "SafeSearch is off"! If you are offended by the nude female body, DON'T CLICK!!)

News About Tammy's Mom

Just a quick update. Apparently Tammy's mom got through the brain surgery in one piece. Now it's just a question of how fast she recovers. I'm waiting for a call back from Tammy so I can find out more than what she left on our answering machine last night.

Thanks for everyone who thought about/prayed for her. I'll post more when I know it!

NO WMD? TOLD YOU SO, BITCH!

UGH! All right, time for TheNewsBlog to take a more personal tone and get a bit holier than thou. Well, holier than Bush 43, anyway. Of course, that's not saying much these days, is it?

So, David Kay, former weapons inspector, comments in a Reuters article that he doesn't think Iraq had ANY STOCKPILES OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION since Desert Storm.

Here's a direct quote from the article:

"What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he said.

So, no WMD in Iraq. Not even one. So... no reason to go.

WHO ELSE TOLD YOU THAT, KAY??

Oh yeah, Scott Peterson, a man whom used to be an Iraqi weapons inspector, himself! How many TV shows did YOU GO ON, MR. KAY to dispute Peterson's claims?? Quite a few as I recall.

And don't forget all those other people, who were they? Oh yeah, THE PACIFISTS (myself included) - who told you not to go. I have HOURS of protest footage featuring people telling the USGov to not attack Iraq.

Now, after most of the world told you and Bush and the rest of his cabal that going into Iraq was a bad idea, GUESS WHAT!

WE WERE RIGHT!

YA GOT NOTHIN'!

Saddam was never a threat, even to Israel. As Colin Powell said, he had been contained for ten years. And now, International Law has been broken, our national principles compromised, 10,000 Iraqi civilians are dead, 500+ US GIs are dead and it can now be said that the last two people to inhabit the White House are liars.

The only difference is, no one died because Clinton lied about getting oral sex in the Oval Office.

The only good thing that can come from a Bush re-election is his IMPEACHMENT.

Personally, I think watching his ass get impeached would be worth him "winning" another election.

Read the Reuters article at Yahoo News.

Bob Keeshan/Captain Kangaroo R.I.P.

Man, I should just add a new category to the site: Dead People.

This guy raised my generation through the birth of the 2 income family. When our parents started ignoring us because of work, Bob Keeshan as Captain Kangaroo made us all feel like we had a place in the universe and in someone's heart. Somewhere between Fred Rogers and Bob Keeshan, I learned my basic moral set.


While Bob Keeshan and Fred Rogers are both gone, they'll never be gone from my life.

I hope God doesn't dump ping-pong balls on your head, man... unless you enjoyed that as much as we all did...

TOKYO GODFATHERS (2003)

Entertaining? Heeeellll YEAH!
Technically any good? While the coincidences and sappiness are totally over the top and unrealistic, I didn't care and if you have a heart, you won't either.
How did I feel as the credits rolled? HAPPY! This was a definite crowd pleaser without being patronizing. Sappy, sweet, but well worth watching. Sentimental the way films used to be.
Final Rating? GSN

Ann Miller R.I.P.

Sigh... 81 years ain't a bad run, really...

Read more about her passing at Eonline.com.

SPACE... THE FINAL BATTLEGROU-- WHAT??

According to a January 18, 2004 Reuters article over at the MyWay News web site, the Bush 43 Admin plans to turn it's new initiative for space exploration into yet another excuse to give buckets of money to the military/industrial complex. From my own research, I've have had a pretty good idea that this was coming. But reading about it from a mainstream news source like Reuters is depressing. While researching a scifi novel in 2002, I stumbled across the Federation of American Scientists web site's page on Space Weapons. It looks like they added two documents to it since I last read it. In short, it the page hosts documents from the Department of Defense, the RAND Corporation and others that describe how space should be militarized so the US can control it completely. Now, mind you - this may sound like science fiction, but it isn't. These documents are legitimate and they aren't talking about building space battleships and colonizing other planets. In the real world, "outer space" simply refers to anything outside the Earth's atmosphere.

But here's a bit from the Reuters article to pique your curiosity:

No country depends on space and satellites as its eyes and ears more than the United States, which accounted for as much as 95 percent of global military space spending in 1999, according to the French space agency CNES.

"Yet the threat to the U.S. and its allies in and from space does not command the attention it merits from the departments and agencies of the U.S. government charged with national security responsibilities," a congressionally chartered task force headed by Rumsfeld reported 10 days before Bush and he took office in 2001.

Theresa Hitchens of the private Center for Defense Information said the capabilities to conduct space warfare would move out of the realm of science fiction and into reality over the next 20 years or so.

"At the end of the day it will be political choices by governments, not technology, that determines if the nearly 50- year taboo against arming the heavens remains in place," she concluded in a recent study.

It's more than just a "taboo," it's International Law. Not that the Bush 43 Admin has any problem ignoring International Law, of course. Back in the early 1960s, there were a few resolutions passed by the UN with the general idea that any type of war should not extend into the heavens. But of course, the USGov doesn't care about that. In fact, both the Clinton Admin and the Bush 43 Admin learned to pervert the words in the UN resolutions to make it sound like it was OK to weaponize space...

Now, we're not staring down the barrel of men in space suits with laser guns, but we are looking at the US domination of the immediate space around our planet. Sure, the USGov may not declare it as theirs, they'll just be "maintaining the peace" with their weapons of extra-terrestrial destruction.

Of course, they would never trust that with no weapons in space there would be no need for... weapons in space...

Read the Reuters article for yourself.

Oh man, what happens to my site when I'm not paying attention!

Wow - I was trying out a new search service at http://labs.google.com and did a search for "thepete". I found a link to a page on my site from another site called "linkdump". I can't work out what the hell it is, but that's not what this post is about. This post is about the page on my site that the linkdump site linked to.

It's this one: Now THIS is a playing card I can get behind!

BUT BEFORE YOU CLICK ON IT, BE WARNED - in the comments there are some seriously fowl language. In the interest of fostering open dialogue (even with idiots) I have not censored the lanugage.

That said, check it out - I love how these idiots pick on a lone voice in the wilderness of faux-conservatives who think blind-faith to one's government is what it means to be American. Clearly these guys have not read their history OR the Declaration of Independence. Anyway, enjoy - the entry itself is about that French line of playing cards with the Bush 43 administration on them.

Man, those faux-conservatives can't take a joke! ;) Feel free to add comments on that post here since it's too old to have more posts...

PATHS OF GLORY (1957)

Entertaining? DEFINITELY!!
Technically any good? YES! While it does come across as a little patronizing at times, the message of the film practically requires that.
How did I feel as the credits rolled? Reaffirmed in my belief that war is wrong and serves no purpose but to destroy lives.
Final Rating? GRN (This is one my favorite Kubrick films.)

KILLING, THE (1956)

Entertaining? Yeah, definitely.
Technically any good? It's probably Stanley Kubrick's worst directed film, but the punchline of the movie is worth all the other flaws.
How did I feel as the credits rolled? More satisfied than I felt during the credits of most other films I've seen lately.
Final Rating? WFC

Yeesh... M$IE for Mac SUCKS....

Which is why I don't use it and I don't recommend anyone else does. It's essentially just Micro$oft trying to ruin it's competitor through shoddy programming. For those of you who have PCs, when you use the popup menus on my main page, the popups appear toward the bottom or extreme right of your screen. This is because MacIE handles placement based on pixels differently. The code tells the browser where to show something based on how many pixels down from the top and right from the left. For some odd reason Mac IE does it differently from even PC IE.

So, honestly, I'm thinking about going back to regular text links for the menus. As bizarre as that sounds, I'm just crazy enough to do it!! (Or busy enough to get really annoyed when my stupid web site menu acts up and forces me to change it every so often!) The other advantage to straight text links is that it the whole site will load faster.

I know, I know - this is SO exciting. I'll get on with things soon... gotta do some "real" work and then run some errands and then work on the novel and draw some, too. I've got a LOT to publish!! YIPPEEE!

More soon!

Solved...almost!

Okay, the menu problems are solved - for the most part. In either browser on the PC they work fine. On Mac Mozilla Firebird and Mac Safari they work fine. But in M$IE (EYE-EEEEE!) they cause a tremendous amount of space to appear beneath the menu and the body of the page. It's just brilliant, really...

At this point, I'm tempted to use the same text menu I used on this site four years ago...

If you're using a Mac USE MOZILLA FIREBIRD!!! It loads faster and is an all around better browser.

DO IT NOW!!

I try to solve things and...

I try to solve things and it all goes to hell...

Sorry folks! If you're viewing this site in M$IE, you won't be able to navigate very well for a while. Sure, scroling up and down is fine, but the new nav menus I installed last night only seem to partially work in Mozilla. In Explorer, they don't work at all. I don't understand this because I am using the exact same script that TheFiancee uses to make her Boba Loca popup (see her site, scroll down to the bottom and put your pointer over the Boba Loca logo). I don't understand why all of the sudden my popups don't work.

What's really annoying is that I've got other stuff I need to do right now, so that means the busted menus have to stay there for a while... sorry, folks!!

But do check out TheBeauty! I just added Ingrid Bergman! GO VOTE! And if you register, you can leave comments on each pic, too! COOL!!

Oh and be sure to check out the new Audio of the Moment - it's Howard Dean, fresh off of his failure in Iowa, apparenly, losing his mind... it's pretty damn hillarious! (Kinda sounds like me when I figured out my menus were screwed up!!)

Those Japanese are KOOKY!

While surfing my favorite news sites, I saw the picture of the Japanese woman below to the left at Google News. Of course, I had to click on it. It turns out it was a "man on the street" kind of thing where a reporter was asking people what they thought of grown men reading porn or sexually suggestive material on trains. The woman has a pretty reasonable response in my opinion, but the guy's reply was a RIOT!

Kumiko Miyazaki, 19

"I wonder how the daughter of one of those dirty old men would feel if they saw their father reading such a magazine or newspaper on the train or wherever. He must be thinking of only his own gratification because he is lonely, but if I saw my father reading porn, I would be so shocked my blood circulation would go backwards. For kids in their puberty, seeing guys reading porn is a total turn-off, while kinky ads are too stimulating for them to deal with. There is no doubt they can get influenced by media."

Masaru Kanemoto, 30

"It is OK because it is not a violation of manners at all. What is wrong is when an adult cannot instill values and discipline in their children. Basically, why are there so many girls willing to pose in those kind of magazines? Answer: because their parents didn't teach them the difference between right and wrong. Look at this station. During summer, these high school girls dress like whores in little more than bikinis. That is far more tempting than any kind of porn magazine. The other day, a girl in a micromini was sitting on the street. Of course, everyone could see up her skirt. Then she said to me, "If you give me some money, you can see more." What a drug. So it's not a question of looking at erotic material. It's a question of morals."

What a fool! He's only got it half right - teaching morals is right, but it's THE MEN that have to learn morals - not the women! If men wouldn't buy porn, there would be no market for porn and women wouldn't be offered money to do porn. THERE'S your solution Bright-Eyes-San!

He's right about porn being like a drug, though... don't I know it!

God bless the Internet is all I gotta say, you know what I mean? Guys out there, back me up on this!

Check out the other comments at JapanToday.Com!

Wrote some more...

The past few nights have been light on the writing for Book 1. The night before last I spent hours trying to print out all the new stuff on my new laser printer, but didn't manage to actually write anything. I did spend time working on the manuscript, in that printing it out was supposed to allow me to get more feedback on it. Luckily the problems I was having with the printer were 95% related to things I was doing wrong, like trying to save paper by printing on both sides. I'm such a spacial retard, I couldn't figure out how to put the paper back in the machine so that it would print properly on the other side.

Last night was much more successful. I worked on the "Approaching the Train" sequence. This only amounted to working on two days worth of entries, but it was some important tweaking that I did.

Anyway, more tomorrow!

PROOF OF BUSH FAMILY NAZI CONNECTION - no, really!

Yes, of course, we've all heard how "those conspiracy nuts on the Internet" claim there's a link between the Bush clan and the Nazi party. Well, according to an October 10, 2003 article at the New Hampshire Gazette web site, USGov documents prove, without a doubt, Prescot Bush's financial connections to the Nazi party through Nazi financier and German industrialist Fritz Thyssen. It's generally understood that Thyssen got the Nazi party going, financially, the only thing missing from cases those "conspiracy nuts" make was proof.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

...newly-uncovered government documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his "enemy national" partners.

Want some more?

The documents also show that Bush and his colleagues, according to reports from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and FBI, tried to conceal their financial alliance with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, a steel and coal baron who, beginning in the mid-1920s, personally funded Adolf Hitler's rise to power by the subversion of democratic principle and German law.

What about this?

Furthermore, the declassified records demonstrate that Bush and his associates, who included E. Roland Harriman, younger brother of American icon W. Averell Harriman, and George Herbert Walker, President Bush's maternal great-grandfather, continued their dealings with the German industrial baron for nearly eight months after the U.S. entered the war.

Now, sure, you're probably thinking something like "So, WHAT? Evil isn't genetic, is it?"

Of course it isn't. What it does do is establish a pattern of Bush family members helping their future enemies in business matters. Doesn't this remind you of how Bush 41 and company helped Saddam Hussein get chemical and biological weapons back in the day? And what about all that training and weapons that same administration gave to the Mujahideen, many of whom later became our enemies, better known as Al Qaeda and/or the Taliban?

The point really comes down to this: Every generation of Bush and Co. back to World War II has made money off of supporting a person who would later become their enemy. Then, when the US goes to war with that enemy, they make more money thanks to profits from investments made in companies that get busy during war. This makes the Bush clan into one of the biggest (if not the biggest) family of war profiteers in American history.

Please read the New Hampshire Gazette article and judge for yourself.

Rick the Brick?

A brick as a Christian mascot? Wouldn't a plank of wood be more appropriate? After all, Jesus was a carpenter, not a mason... >GASP!<... Or was he???

Progress!

Well, the past few nights I've still been able to keep with my schedule of working on the book once a day. It has been a challenge since my copy writing has, as expected, backed up on me. Of course, me having my not-so-little bout of whatever the hell it was didn't help things, either. The point is, I'm on page 53 of now more than 200 pages. This means I'm more that a quarter of the way through. (Yes, I'm sure you can do the math!) So, with any luck, I should be done within the next week or so. Work is going to be lighting up a bit after tomorrow, so I should be able to work more on it.

Meanwhile, TheFiancee has done some more work on the Ballpoint Adventures book. She's been kind enough to volunteer to edit it so I can get it published sooner. After that, it'll be time to edit my Otis strips followed by About Face and my Captain Caffeine stuff. That's right, I've been SLOWLY drawing the first Captain Caffeine adventure in over five years. (Or should I say slowly finishing the one I started five years ago!) Ugh... never a dull moment... oh yeah, did I mention the short film I shot last summer that needs to be edited and the other DVDs I need to finish working on? I am so lame...

I also hope to have new Otis and Ballpoint strips for the site within the next week, as well. They're drawn, I just need to finish editing them.

What ELSE is new??

All right, so it's a little distracting...

I recently stumbled across this picture in my travels. It's old news, but it's the first time I saw the statue in question...

INSERT YOUR FUNNY CAPTION HERE

I could think of several:

"I feel like something is watching me..."
"Thank God for this podium in front of me."
"Why does it look like everyone is looking right past me?"
"NIPPLE!"

Got any of your own? Post 'em in the comments!

THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WORLD

Of course, everyone know that the Internet has changed the world. But what a lot of folks may not realize are the ways it's been changed. Sure, we all do email and get news, info and porn from the 'net, but have you considered how the Internet has changed history?

According to a Fortune.Com article posted at CNN.com, there is a new term to describe what the Internet has done: "Bottom-Up". It refers to the idea that the new power in the world starts with the people at the bottom. (That's US.)

The idea is that big business is learning how to listen to their customers opinions to help better give them what they want. Politicians are able to better understand what their constituents want by listening to feedback posted over the web. Howard Dean's campaign couldn't have been as successful as it has been without the Internet. The Fortune.Com articles' point in the end is that "In the bottom-up economy, presuming you know what the customer wants is the ultimate error. "

Somebody should tell that to computer programmers...

Read the entire article for yourself at CNN.com.

I actually WROTE...

Just a quick update, here. Last night and the night before I was able to actually work on the manuscript. I didn't print it out - I just worked directly on the laptop. I edited about 25 pages the night before last, adding a few bits of dialogue here and there, to make things a little more clear. Last night I did a lot more with a lot less, which is both good and bad. I added a lot of nice character stuff with two characters that were lacking it. I didn't get through 25 pages, but I definitely did the same amount of work as the night before, simply because I added so much more last night than I did the night before, so I'm happy with that.

I've been kind of out of it for the last few days. It's been hard keeping up with my schedule and to be honest, I haven't been able to. I don't know what I had, but it was some kind of "sick". I couldn't write for very long because I was really tired all of the time. Then, when I'd try to sleep, I couldn't fall asleep. Then, I keep getting these tension headaches. I'm frankly amazed I've been able to get any work done at all.

Well, I've got to sleep some more. Gotta get back on a reasonable day schedule...

Wish me luck!!

At least I have my laptop back!

TED KENNEDY: IRAQ ATTACK FULL OF CRAP

Wow, who knew he had it in him? In an impressively gutsy, but slightly long-winded, speech to the Center for American Progress, Senator Ted Kennedy channelled the convictions of his dead brothers, illustrating brilliantly just how the Bush 43 Administration has lied to and manipulated the American People and the people of the world. Seriously, this speech says it all and nails King George and his cronies to the wall. Sure, he's still a Democrat and Democrats are still lame ducks, but hearing him present the blunt, honest truth was refreshing and downright inspiring.

Here are some important quotes:

"I believe that this Administration is indeed leading this country to a perilous place. It has broken faith with the American people, aided and abetted by a Congressional majority willing to pursue ideology at any price, even the price of distorting the truth. On issue after issue, they have moved brazenly to impose their agenda on America and on the world. They have pursued their goals at the expense of urgent national and human needs and at the expense of the truth. America deserves better.

"The Administration and the majority in Congress have put the state of our union at risk, and they do not deserve another term in the White House or in control of Congress."

"President Bush and his National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft explained the reason for that decision in their 1997 book, A World Transformed. They wrote the following: "Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream... and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable exit strategy we could see, violating another of our principles... Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." Those words are eerily descriptive of our current situation in Iraq."

Kennedy speaks of Colin Powell's comments regarding Saddam Hussein after Bush 43's innuaguration in 2001.

At a press conference a month after the inauguration, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." The next day, Secretary Powell very clearly stated that Saddam "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction...

"Then, on September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked us and everything changed. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld immediately began to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda and the attacks. According to notes taken by an aide to Rumsfeld on September 11, the very day of the attacks, the Secretary ordered the military to prepare a response to the attacks. The notes quote Rumsfeld as saying that he wanted the best information fast, to judge whether the information was good enough to hit Saddam and not just Osama bin Laden. "Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Here's a fun bit about how Bush 43 has lost focus on the real bad guy who is still out there. Kennedy refers to the Bush 43's infamous 2003 State of the Union Address:

" In his State of the Union Address, President Bush broadened his policy on Afghanistan to other terrorist regimes. He unveiled the "Axis of Evil" - Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Those three words forged the lock-step linkage between the Bush Administration's top political advisers and the Big Three of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. We lost our previous clear focus on the most imminent threat to our national security-Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

What did President Bush say about bin Laden in the State of the Union Address that day? Nothing.

What did he say about the Taliban? Nothing.

Nothing about bin Laden. One fleeting reference about Al Qaeda. Nothing about the Taliban in that State of the Union Address."

Here's another good bit:

Saddam was an evil dictator. But he was never close to having a nuclear capability. The Administration has found no arsenals of chemical or biological weapons. It has found no persuasive connection to al-Qaeda. All this should have been clear. The Administration should not have looked at the facts with ideological blinders and with a mindless dedication to the results they wanted.

Getting to his point, he said:

The decision on Iraq could have been announced earlier. Why time it for September? As White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card explained on September 7, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

That was the bottom line. War in Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. It was a product they were methodically rolling out. There was no imminent threat, no immediate national security imperative, and no compelling reason for war.

FINALLY, it's so great to hear someone IN Washington DO THEIR JOB by standing up and pointing out exactly how messed up, Bush 43 has made things and how much he had lied to make things this bad. And if you don't think things are bad, then why is it that Bush 43 has had to lie, exaggerate, manipulate and otherwise BS his way into getting America to go to war with Iraq?

Why use all of that stuff about WMD, threats to the US and connections with Al Qaeda if what he was doing was such a good thing? Do the ends justify the means? Is it okay to lie, cheat and steal, if things are okay in the end?

What the hell good are principles if you're just going to toss them out the window whenever you need something that they can't give you?

What's the point of even having an "America" if all the good things it stands for, freedom, righteousness, justice, are ignored?

So, we got Saddam out of power. We compromised our principles to do it.

Finally, someone inside the Beltway, agrees with that statement. Let's hope, for the sake of our principles, more people agree with him.

Read a transcript of the speech for yourself at the American Progress web site.

Watch the speech, itself in Real Media, at C-Span.Org.

UGH, technically, I wrote nothing...

Well, yesterday was spent mostly sturggling through my copy writing stuff. I did squeeze in a few hours to work on Book 1, but in the end, it was not productive in the least. See, I wanted to read the novel through again and add scenes with a pen to a printed-out copy. Alas, my computer screwed up and instead of printing out the odd pages and then the evens on the back, it printed out the odds on the back of the odd pages. And now, I don't have enough paper left to reprint the entire novel. So, I have to work from the computer screen, which I don't enjoy doing. That's the way it goes, sometimes.

Anyway, so for the next few hours I have to work on more copy writing and then I'll settle in and reread the novel and make changes on the computer. Anyway, more later!

A favor of anyone who visits this site...

Hey there. One of my best friends on the planet is a woman called Tammy. She works her ass off every day and has to deal with the most twisted things in her job as a mental health counselor for the state of Illinois. She is constantly dealing with stuff so twisted, I hope to develop her life story into an hour-drama TV series. The thing is, it would be so dark, it'd have to be on HBO right after OZ.

On top of all that, in the next few days, her mom is going to undergo brain surgery. That's right, brain surgery.

Now, as some of you may know, I'm pretty far from a praying man, but I'm also not willing to rule anything out, either. So, if you could, as a favor to me, think pleasant, positive thoughts for Tammy and her mom over the next few days, I would really appreciate it. And if you believe in a god, pray to him/her/it for Tammy's Mom, please?

Thanks.

I'll be sure and post how it goes.

Done with the notes!

Well, I'm finished with my last batch of notes for the book! I know I've got at least one other batch still coming to me, but I'm too anxious to wait for them. Tomorrow night, I am going to give the polished first draft another run through and start tweaking stuff. Nothing huge, just some things here and there to flesh out some things. Basically, adding some stuff in that should have been there all along. It's just that the way I wrote it, I was bent on getting it done and if I stopped to think for a second, I was sure I'd stop completely. So, I missed a lot of stuff that happened between characters in the interest of getting the general story told. Now, it's time to include that stuff.

Once I'm done with that, I implement the last batch of notes that I'm still waiting for and then it's off to my editor. Hopefully, she won't gut it, completely. Or hate it, for that matter...

While she's editing, I'll be working on Book 2. Once I get it back from her, I get to implement any changes she made and then format it for publication, get a cover together and then publish it!!

FINALLY!!

IRAQ ATTACK PLANNED PRE-911

The Drudge Report ran a story on January 10, 2004 that quotes former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as saying that within in only a few days of BUsh 43 taking hold of the White House, he and others began planning for the ousting of Saddam Hussein. According to Ron Siskind, an author with a forthcoming book on the Bush 43 admin called The Price of Loyalty, O'Neill and other "White House Insiders" were told to get the US into Iraq, somehow, someway. They were looking at everything from how to do it, to how to deal with the aftermath to who gets all that fine, fine crude.

Of course, if you read between the lines, you can see what this kind of story is suggesting. First off, think about where Americans were pre-911. We all thought Bush was a bit of a twit who had barely the right to be in office (while some of us felt he totally lacked that right). Most of us hadn't even heard the names "Osama bin Laden" or "Al Qaida" by September 10th, 2001.

Yet there Bush 43 and company were, planning to overthrow a dictator who they would later claim was helping Al Qaida. Nobody cared. Then, when 911 happened, people cared. However, a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida was never established. Yet, the American people allowed the Iraq Attack to happen anyway. Clearly, 911 was used to inspire the American people to be morally accepting of the invasion of a sovereign nation. Can we trust a leader who is willing to use the deaths of 3000+ Americans to help justify a war on a country that we know now, couldn't touch us?

More than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the Iraq Attack began. Afghanistan, no one kept track how many civilians died there. There are 500 US military dead, so far. Should this guy really stay in office until 2008?

Read the Drudge Report story.

For the Men out there...

I'm not usually such a blatant objectifier of women, but I recently stumbled across the below pic while doing some research for a copy writing job I was working on. Seriously - I was *not* surfing for porn! Anyway, so, here it is for those of you who are straight males, lesbians, or those who enjoy looking at well-put-together female bodies clad in incredibly tight and shiny clothes:

US TERROR THAT MEDIA FORGOT

The wonderful web site TheMemoryHole.Org, has posted a very interesting story about a group of white supremacists who, in May of 2003, were caught in Texas with multiple bombs (including a cyanide bomb), illegal weapons, chemicals (including hydrochloric and nitric acids), hate literature and even fake identification. The FBI has apparently served several hundred subpoenas, attempting to track down co-conspirators around the country.

But wait - you've never heard of this story, have you?

Unless you've been to The Memory Hole web site, or happen to live in the city where the arrests happened, you have NOT heard about it.

This is because the US media has made a decision that only MUSLIM terrorists are bad and that a huge story about white, American terrorists right here in the US should be ignored, probably because, who wants to hear about Americans turning against themselves?

Back in the 80s, the Soviet Union had a serial killer wandering around, killing people. Body after body and the Soviet government refused to give police any help or funding because the Soviet State did not produce serial killers.

This head-in-the-sand attitude cost many lives in the Soviet Union and it could potentially cost innumerable lives in the US if these white supremecist domestic terrorists aren't caught.

Please check out the coverage of this story at TheMemoryHole.Org.

Convinced yet that the media just isn't doing their job?

Latest on my laptop...

Well, you may be wondering just what's up with my laptop, as today was supposed to be the day that I got it back... well, here's a (not-so) quick post that you can find at the Apple.com web site about what happened today:

Sorry to vent, BUT:

Well, the status section of this web site is basically useless. I've been following it daily and finally yesterday it said that my iBook was now "In-Transit to Store". So, today, I called the store I dropped it off at and got disconnected twice after I pressed "5" to speak with a live person in the store. That person said that he was pretty sure my iBook should come in later in the day based on what I told him the Apple.com repair status page had told me. He said if I didn't hear from anyone by 2pm or so, I should call again.

So, I called at 2:30pm. Got someone much faster, this time, but this time the guy says he's pretty sure it's in the store but that I should give them a few hours to get to "processing" my iBook. See, they want to make sure it works before they give it back to me. Fine, fine, but they can't confirm that it's definitely in the store. I wait until 4pm and call again.

This time, no one picks up after I press "5". I let it ring and ring until their phone system gave up and disconnected me. I called again. The same thing happened. I called again, but this time pressed "4" to ask the computer about the status of my repair. The computerized lady tells me that my computer's repair is still in progress.

SIGH.

I hang up and call again. I press "5" to talk to a person. After about 20 minutes, I get someone. I tell them that I need to find out if my iBook is back and they tell me to hold on. I wait on hold for another 10 minutes. Someone picks up and asks, "Are you being helped?"

I repeat what I told the other person who picked up.

At about 35 minutes after I first made the call, I decided this was really lame and that I'd need proof that Apple was treating me like crap, so I aimed my PC's web cam at my cordless phone so I could get a shot of the little clock. It says that I had been on the phone 38 minutes.

Finally, I hung up at 48 minutes and called back again. Almost immediately (of course) I get a guy and he tells me how he's not even sure my iBook is in the store. He says it's possible that it's there, but that according to his records, the repair is still being done. I asked him if that was the case, why does the web site say that it's "In transit to Store"? He then tells me that he's not even sure that the web site is right. He went on to admit that they sometimes have trouble getting the information from the third party repair service to the web site.

SO WHY DO THEY HAVE THE WEB SITE?

Then he adds that the iBook could be in the store waiting to be processed...

Ugh...

He did say that I can call the regular AppleCare number and they could connect me with the third party repair service, who could then tell me where my computer was. Of course, AppleCare closes at 6pm, which is just when I was talking to the guy...

Oh yeah and here's that web cam pic:
That's the above mentioned webcam shot of my cordless phone.

For more, check out the original thread at the Apple web site.

WE WANTS AN iPOD FOR USSS!!

This epitomizes how I feel about mine:






Click the images to buy Gollum/iPod T-shirts!! (Other iPod T-Shirts also available!)

Editing away!!

Just a quick update to let everyone know I've actually been successful at working on my giant novel project every day of the year, so far. I know it's just been a week since 2004 began, but hey - this is just the beginning. Here's some other good news:

1) I'm already through my batch of notes on the first draft and am now going through a writer-friends notes making more changes to the first draft. (It won't officially start being the second draft until I actually start rewriting giant swaths of stuff, which I expect to do once I'm done with all of the notes I have gotten.)

2) My laptop should be back from the Apple store tomorrow which will make doing my work even easier. I can't wait to get that damn thing back!

3) I've been moving at a good clip despite my laptop-less-life. I've managed to edit 25 pages or more a day. So, I'm making more headway on this project than I did in all of 2003.

Which reminds me, I better get back to it!

Oh, if any of my friends out there have read TheKey and have notes or even just comments, SEND 'EM TO ME NOW!! (I'm sending you the most sinister of evil looks, CHAD!! ;) I NEED 'EM NOW!! Well, only about Book One (that's the entries up to Day 50).

MORE LATER!!

How about a HUMAN?

Well, we got Radio Shack's Finest to Mars...

WHAT DO YOU SAY TO A HUMAN GOING NOW, NASA??

...Losers.

LIBERAL MEDIA, HUH? UPDATED!

The liberal media are at it again!





If they're so liberal and left-wing, why are two different chunks of the media attacking the one man who has a chance at beating Bush?

Anyone who believes in the liberal media MUST admit that going after the one Democrat who can beat Bush is not a good thing for the left-wingers in the world. So, what could the left-wing media be thinking?

Perhaps, they're thinking that they want to help out the people who make laws that help big media get bigger? Just a thought....

UPDATED:

According to a January 7, 2004 article at HillNews.Com Donald Rumsfeld was originally supposed to be named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" instead of the US Military. How's THAT for another nice example of how the media is NOT left-leaning. Naming Rumsfeld "Person of the Year" would be like putting a man who had lied to a country and was indrectly responsible for the deaths of more than 9,000 people. Oh wait... it would be exactly like doing that.

Read the article at HillNews.Com.

I'm BORED!!

Well, yesterday evening, I was able to get some more edited in TheKey Book 1. I edited 25 pages of it, which was cool for me. I need to do more work on it tonight, which I will do. I SOOOO miss my laptop, though. I am suffering from massive cabin fever and am planning on forcing TheFiancee to come out with me to the movies or dinner out or SOMEthing... anyway, I've spent a good chunk of the afternoon writing copy, which is another reason I've got massive cabin fever.

Anyway, more, soon...

Thanks, Chad!

Just wanted to say THANKS, CHAD! For letting me know that the comments thing wasn't working on this here blog-thingy. Things seem to be working fine now, though! So, please, feel free and comment away!! Yipeeee!

2 years ago today...

Two years ago, today (well, to me, it's still January 1), I began a writing project that would go on to consume much of my life for a year straight and then some. I began writing a page per day and before long, I began to write 3-4 pages a day and then 5-10 and by the end of the year, I was approaching 20 pages a day and even eclipsed that from time-to-time.

It was a simple enough project at first, but the more research I did, the more the story seemed to write itself. It's funny, but if one of the theories my fictional series of novels presents, all of the events in the novels really happened... but more on that later, MUCH later...

The point is, two years ago today, I began a novel and one year ago, yesterday, I finished my sixth novel in the series and my 2452nd page.

Today, after a year of trying to make a living, write other things and occassionally squeeze in some time on this project, I begin serious work on the second draft. I begin this year with the goal and the promise to work on this project every single day of the year until it is through. After I finish the second draft of each novel, I'll be sending them to a former English professor who will be proofreading and generally editing them for me. From there, I will self-publish them. If the sixth book has been sent to my editor before the end of the year, I will begin work on my companion novel which will flesh out the rest of the universe nto explored in the six novels. If, by some miracle, that is done before the end of the year, I will begin work on Book 7.

Watch this space for updates and watch this space for the official web page of TheKey.

That's the name of the series, by the way, TheKey.

I'll also be continuing my work as a copy writer and working on two screenplays I've already started.

I am, after all, a writer...