Hezbollah captured the Soldiers inside Lebanon

This fact seems to have been ignored by most of the media. It is awfully inconvenient to those who claim that Hezbollah started this.

The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them. The forces were trying to keep the soldiers' captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli government officials said on condition of anonymity.

So, Israel had sent soldiers into Lebanon and now must bomb Beirut until it is a pile of rubble. Perhaps it is so nobody will be left to complain that it was Israel itself which started this mess.

Video from Lebanon

Static Brain has posted a chilling video from Lebanon. No worries, you won't see graphic depictions of deaths. But it is worth watching. One day, if the neocons in and around the White House have their way, it could be coming to a city near you. Somebody please vote these sociopaths out of office and replace them with people who actually care about the stated principles of this nation.

By the way, does anyone else find Israel's claim (parroted today by the drug-addled Rush Limbaugh) that the Beirut airport is a valid military target, to be utterly psychotic?

Ron Paul Tells the Truth

Ron Paul, one of the only, if not the only Congressman in America who tells the truth said this on the house floor yesterday (Click on item 53 and then Page: H5453):

Between 1997 and 2004, and that doesn't even count the last 2 years, we gave over $7 billion in weapons grants. It wasn't a loan. It was a weapons grant.

Now, the neat thing about this, this was an economic deal because it was beneficial because under the foreign military financing program that we have, Israel is required to spend 74 percent of that back here. So you are talking about a military-industrial complex, a pretty good deal. You know, we subsidize them, send the money over here, it comes over here, and our arms manufacturers make even more money and then dig a bigger hole for us in foreign policy and contribute to the many problems that we have. And that amount of money, they get $2.3 billion of these military grants, and they automatically increase it $60 million per year. So it is locked in place.

Now, you say, well, that is money for our ally. And fine, if it was used for defense, maybe. But if it is used to antagonize 1 billion Muslims and there is no willingness to even consider the fact that we should look at it in a balanced way, and instead it is ridiculed and said, oh, this is ridiculous to think of neutrality or balance and think about both sides, and the innocent people dying on both sides should be considered.

So we are moving toward a major crisis, a major crisis financially and a major crisis in our foreign policy. I don't believe we can maintain this.

So even if you totally disagree with our aggressive empire building and policing the world, let me tell you, I am going to win the argument, because we are running out of money. We are in big debt, and we are borrowing it. We borrowed $3 billion a day from countries like China and Japan and Saudi Arabia to finance this horrendous debt. And it won't be, it can't be continued. The dollar will eventually weaken. You are going to have horrendous inflation. Interest rates are going to go up, and it is going to be worse than the stagflation of the 1970s.

There's the reason things are so messed up in the middle east.

I am glad I turned off the TV 12 years ago. I can only imagine the pro-Israel screeds broadcast over every station disguised as news. Invest in gold. You're going to need it.

Revenge, Hubris and World War III begins...

The recent events in the Middle East should remind us just how morally bankrupt is the current administration of the U.S. "republic." In an almost verbatim (canned?) response to reporters during the G8 summit, Bush parrotted his May 2004 speech to AIPAC (one which was interrupted 67 times by applause and chants of "Four more years."):

"As a sovereign nation, Israel has every right to defend itself against terrorist activity,"

Daniel Ayalon, Israel's Ambassador to the US apparently thinks that barbequeing innocent civilians is the means to "show restraint."

"If we do not want to see further escalation, deterioration, violence, this is the time to stop Hizbollah and what we are doing is the most effective (way) to stop them."

Gee, Danny, do you actually think that bombing apartment buildings and fleeing civilians is a means to stop Hezbollah? The Washington Post confirms that the US administration and Israel share the same interests when it comes to current events:

For Israel, the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a security threat -- or altogether, the sources said. A senior Israeli official confirmed that Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is a target, on the calculation that the Shiite movement would be far less dynamic without him.

For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.

As somebody who is old enough to remember, this all looks like revenge. Israel was by most accounts, whooped by Hezbollah which gained a reputation amongst those who have noticed facts rather than Israeli propaganda, of targetting the military rather than civilians.

The US still hasn't gotten over Iran's rebuff and the debacle that was the Iran hostage crisis. Contrary to popular opinion, Carter actually did not appease "terrorists" in 1979. He refused to negotiate which is why the hostages were taken. When Carter let the Shah of Iran enter the US and refused to extradite him to Iran to be charged for crimes the Iranians believed he had committed against the people, violence erupted.

The entire affair was a foreign policy disaster going back to 1953's Operation Ajax in which the CIA influenced Iranian elections.

Iran is still much maligned and there is plenty of leftover resentment to support their acts of revenge. The truly sad part about all of this is that the US administration, which takes grandiose claims about its striving to acheive freedom and democracy the world over, won't even comment on Israel's targetting of civilians.

It's deja vu all over again. During the Iranian hostage crisis, the US under Carter was ramping up to supply Mujahadeen fighters to battle the Soviet infadels who had invaded Afghanistan. Even to the point of ( in collusion with the ISI Pakistan's intelligence agency) schools which taught young boys the importance of Jihad so they could be recruited into the war later.

It was announced yesterday that the US has blocked Russia from entering the WTO. Putin is not amused. He has even taken to stating publically that Iran has the right to defend itself using Bush's own rhetoric in a sardonic twist.

WWIII Anyone?

Home of the Free

I just got a frantic call from a friend.

She and her husband are buying property and have a large sum of cash that they've saved over the years for just such an event.

The problem is that nobody will take the cash as payment. They might be terrorists. They might be tax cheats. They might not have done anything at all exept to do what millions of Americans have done in the past and hoard away federal reserve notes in a closet somewhere.

But today, they risk the upturned noses of nosy bank personnel, IRS audits and worse for merely using the money they've saved over the years to purchase a piece of property on the river.

The powers that be, want you and I to insure that our financial situation be one of living paycheck to paycheck. Getting out of the rat-race by buying a piece of property that might sustain us without having to work for somebody else or start a highly regulated business, is potentially criminal. So don't do it. Never defy the slave-masters or your money will be confiscated. After all, we don't know where you got that money. Nobody saves money of any substantial amount without plotting criminal activity.

My friend is now considering driving around to over 30 different locations to obtain money orders under the legal limit. Thanks to the patriot act and other banking laws, she can't rightfully spend more than 1000 "dollars" without intense scrutiny.

I sure am glad the terrorists aren't winning. What would it be like for a country targetted  by "freedom haters" if its citizens were actually free?

Suicide is now an "act of war."

The Bush administration and the military is desparately trying to contol the damage they have caused to their own credibility with the execution of this so called war on terror. I never cease to be amazed at the hyperbole and outright lies they tell in these attempts. Three detainees at Guantanamo killed themselves Saturday morning and the camp commander, who previously exclaimed he woultn't let this happen, is now alleging that the suicides were "acts of war".

No, they weren't killing themselves out of despair for being held in a foreign country and without charges or hope of release. They were trying to make the U.S. look bad and gain sympathy amongst the world's terrorist population. Hey, if the only people who sympathize with the plight of the Guantanamo detainees are "terrorists", we have a serious lack of morality amongst the world's non-terrorist population.

Why shouldn't we feel sorry for them? And why won't  Rear Admiral Harry Harris show his real mettle and retaliate by blowing his own head off? This is war after all.

We can all feel a little better though since George "hand up my back" Bush has "expressed serious concern" over the deaths. And you know he's serious about human rights. He is the same man who it is reported called the constitution "just a God-damned piece of paper."

Just 340 days ago Bush was defending Guantanamo:

These people are being treated humanely. There are very few prison systems around the world that have seen such scrutiny as this one..

GW Bush, Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Saturday Bush had this to say:

And I appreciate the fact that the Prime Minister is concerned about the decisions that I made on -- toward Guantanamo. I assured him that we would like to end the Guantanamo. We'd like it to be empty. And we're now in the process of working with countries to repatriate people.

GW Bush, Friday, June 9, 2006

It is extremely hard to take anyone in this administration at their word. I'd say that it was hard to take them seriously but meglomaniacs and sociopaths need to be treated very seriously. They could snap at any moment and another batch of innocent people could be thrown into a prison somewhere.

Be safe....



Technorati Tags: demidog, Bush, satan, corruption, guantanamo, terrorism,

HGH is now a problem in baseball?

My God, the new crop of sports writers seem to be sniveling busy bodies, the lot of them. I'd say it was all of America, but in point of fact, Barry Bonds draws more fans to opposing stadiums than any other player in baseball. What the sports writers have deemed crucial to the integrity of baseball does not seem to ring true with the fans.


Barry Bonds has been crucified in the press on the flimsiest of evidence over alleged steroid use, and the shrill voices continue to cry. The latest moron to weigh in on the "performance enhancement issue is Jeff Pasan who writes for Yahoo! Sports. He's now convinced that HGH is a dangerous pharmacuetical that should be banned from baseball based on the testimony of a single pitcher; who's overall record wouldn't be something I'd tout as evidence that HGH or steroids are helpful to one's athletic performance, much less a widespread problem in the major leagues. I mean, who the hell heard of Jason Grimsley before he was deposed by "federal investigators?" He has a career ERA of 4.77 over his 15 year career as a middle relief pitcher.


If anyone actually takes this bonehead seriously, we can expect Congressional hearings on vitamin use and its danger to the "sanctity of the game."

Intelligent Design Spec

I have a friend who is a landscape architect. He's been in this area of Texas for at least 30 years.

The other day we were talking about the scam of pesticides and herbacides. They don't work. Pestacides are especially notorious for losing efficacy over time due to insect adaptation. Plus they are bad for humans. Yeah, I want to eat that tomato covered in 24D. Hand it over.

There are some folks who scoff at the notion that something other than random chance created the universe. I don't know why exactly this idea elicits so many negative reactions but the latest incarnation of creation science is "Intelligent Design" and I think it gets a pretty bad rap generally speaking.

My landscaper friend was explaining how the fire ants (brought to this part of the continent by "intelligent" humans) used to be susceptible to pesticide use. Now they are not. And they did so over the past 2 decades without developing resistence to Amdro. Amdro is a bait. The ants take the food to their queen, feed her poison and she dies.

Fire ants  typically care for  a single queen. If that queen dies, so dies the colony. The fireants here in Texas, to mitigate the effects of Amdro, have taken to caring for 2 and 3 queens. When a neighboring colony's queen dies, one of the queens is shared with the other.

This level of cooperation is unprecedented amongst the fire ant population. Man, being the highest intelligence in the universe, in its attempt to clean up a mess he made, has made the mess worse. One can find example after example of this sort of environmental disaster occurring through man's meddling.

Either man isn't nearly as intelligent as he believes, or most everything in the universe is more intelligent.

Pentagon People

The "plane" that hit the pentagon is curious. A security cam turns up ~5 years after the event and has a new streak "proving" that it was a 757. The government confiscated all video that may have captured the crash from surrounding businesses shortly after the crash. How convenient. Few parts, no black boxes but every single passenger and terrorist accounted for via autopsy well....sort of. We're supposed to believe that the people inside the plane and the pentagon were more resilient than the plane itself. .....right....

Coulter the drag queen?

At the risk of giving this bolemic hag more publicity, Strap on Veterans For Truth have an expose on Ann Coulter's previous manhood.

Technorati Tags: demidog, coulter, transvestite, GOP, bolemia, disorder, humor

America: From Freedom To Fascism

CBS rates Aaron Russo's new movie 4 stars.

"FOUR STARS (Highest Rating). The scariest
goddamn film you'll see this year. It will leave you staggering out of the
theatre, slack-jawed and trembling. Makes 'Fahrenheit 9/11' look like 'Bambi.'
After watching this movie, your comfy, secure notions about America -- and about
what it means to be an American -- will be forever shattered. Producer/director
Aaron Russo and the folks at Cinema Libre Studio deserve to be heralded as
heroes of a post-modern New American Revolution. This is shocking stuff. You'll
be angry, you'll be disgusted, but you may actually break out in a cold sweat
and feel a sickness deep in your gut; I would advise movie theatre managers to
hand out vomit bags. You may end up needing one."

--- Todd David
Schwartz, CBS
demidog

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Fanbelt

"Oh no..." was the second noise I heard. The first was a sort of "ThaWHUMP!" that eminated from within the engine compartment of my 1996 Silverado, the second eminating from somewhere between my ears.

The engine continued to run. My intuition told me that something was wrong. See, my wife had run an errand that morning and had been kind enough to stop in at the Quick Lube to arrange an oil change. The uneasy feeling I had was festering. Did they leave a tool in the engine compartment? They had left a pair of wiper blades, still in the package, on the passenger side cowl; noticed only by my wife after one of them flew off the car and onto the road. It was pretty obvious to me now that these fellows were not the sharpest mechanics in their trade school.

I turned the ignition key and waited for silence. Once again, I started the engine. "Sounds normal. Nothing wrong." My Seven-year-old daughter, who is in the extended cab with her sister, 3, asks me what is wrong. "I heard a noise. It doesn't seem to be serious."

But why was I still uncomfortable? Again, I shut down the beast and popped the hood. I was looking for a shop rag, tool, oil filter....anything that some dumbass may have left in the engine compartment. Facing the grill, I clutched the latch under the now-ajar bonnet and pushed it upward. The sunlight flooded into the engine compartment and illuminated the myriad of wires, computers and body parts, most of them black and covered in a thin film of oily dust. Nothing obvious. No streaks of oil. No smoke. No fire. Just the ticking sound of metal parts cooling.

The fan shroud on this truck is a pretty massive affair and is at about my sternum. If something had fallen, perhaps it was now laying on the front transaxle, or in front of the fan, next to the radiator. It would require that I step up onto the front bumper and crane my neck to see around the fan shroud.

I was hearing words in my head again. "There it is! A .... uh..... Oh crap! It's a kitten.."

Laying on her back, the white underbelly exposed, limbs seeming to splay in directions not at all natural for a graceful feline, was our little calico kitten, barely four months old. I could see her head draped over the sway bar with a few drops of blood coming from her mouth and nose.

I stood there, dumbstruck. Somewhere in the distance, my two girls were happily pretending to be several characters from Star Wars..."Luke, I am your father....; No! Fatherrrrrrrr.......", says the three-year-old.

My wife was opening the gate to the dirt road that leads to civilization from this haven amongst the cows and noticed my approach. The sick look on my face was soon mirrored. "Honey, I need you to see something."

"Do I want to see it?"

"Just come see."

Discreetness is the key in these situations. Mom and Dad need to act naturally so as not to arouse suspicions in the little ones.

"Take a look over the top of that shroud. There's a cat in there."

"Oh no..."

I peered in again from the opposite side of the grill. It got worse. "Wow, she's still breathing." That meant that we wouldn't just be performing a car excorcism. We'd have to put her out of her misery. My first thought was to just slit her throat. She had to be broken inside something awful. Her left hip looked deformed and the leg crossed over the right. Yes, that would be the most humane. Also the safest. Discharging a firearm into the engine compartment wasn't the sanest idea that popped into my head and I immediately shook it off.

My wife, having the clearest head at that moment, suggested we remove the kitten from the engine compartment. Right. Good idea. It wasn't going to be easy. Our little kitten was underneath the fan and the only purchase one might obtain was by pulling her back legs and carefully working her around the fan blades and up over the top of the fan.

That wasn't going to happen. The only way to extricate her was to ease her limp body downward onto the ground below. This too would be tricky since there was a good 18 inches from her resting place and the gravel below. A towel was placed on the ground underneath the truck and my wife accepted the task of catcher. I gently pushed the limp kitten's head and body toward the only gap available and gravity slowly eased her into my wife's awaiting arms.

Now, wrapped in a towel, she seemed, to me, a bit less repulsive. My wife, cradling her like a newborn baby, quickly got into the car and tossed me an expectant look. The creature's impending death was a foregone conclusion but maybe we could make it into town so that the vet could ease her pain.

My oldest daughter was horrified, and once the initial shock worn off, full of questions as we sped onto the country road, gravel spurting from under the rear tires, in search of a veterinarian.

Our search was in vain for an hour or more. The kitten, apparently in an attempt to further increase the nausea and raw nerves of the older family members (the three-year-old was fairly oblivious to the scene), mewed pathetically at the most dramatic moments during the trip. A call to an emergency pager, painted just below the "Closed" sign on the town vet's glass and steel entryway, provided no immediate response.

"Meeeeowwwwwww".

Finally, the annoying ringtone on my Blackberry shattered the silence between mewings. The vet was on his way. He had been inseminating some farmer's cow, needed to wash up and would be in the office shortly. I stared at the kitten's face. Her injuries seemed to become more and more severe. Broken ribs, crushed hips, bleeding organs and a huge lump on her cranium representing a crushed skull, obviously. I never went to college and may have cracked a "Gray's Anatomy" once in biology class, but I was suddenly an expert in feline anatomy. And....."Honey, what's that smell? It's smells like death..."

"Honey!...the kitten pooped in the towel. Just relax."

"Oh God. Of course she's on the brink of death. That's what animals and people do when they are about to die. They shit on themselves. Where is that vet?"

I said this to myself of course. And now it was important to keep the children occupied and distracted. In noble fashion, I extracted the children from their cramped quarters and took them to gawk at sick and recovering livestock through the adjcent barn's windows.

We were teased by a pizza delivery van which stopped at the driveway. The driver apparently needed to organize his personal belongings. Finally, the vet, a down-to-earth looking man in his 50's, pulled up in a belching diesel monstrosity replete with a utility bed and grill guard. A comotion ensued as we impatiently crowded at the front door waiting for the man to find the lock and grant us entry. Our fragile package in hand, we anxiously pushed our way into the lobby.

The three-year-old and I, plopped down onto a comfortable wingback couch a likeness of which one might find in virtually any farmhouse in these parts, while my eldest and her mother consulted with the vet.

I could see from this vantage point the open door of the examining room. The "doc" was sitting on a wheeled office chair and would occassionaly float over the linoleum toward a wall of cabinets containing all sorts of mysterious narcotics and individually packaged medical supplies.

I could only hear snippets of the conversation but almost fell out of the sofa when I heard him say "...it doesn't look like she has any broken bones or serious injuries."

In fact, it was a bit anti-climactic. I was certainly relieved. For a couple of reasons. One, our little kitten was apparently in possession of eight more lives, and two, there wouldn't be a complicated surgery and multi-thousands in fees to pay.

After the kitten was sufficiently anesthetized, we headed home to care for the poor thing. It was Saturday afternoon and all of our weekend plans were out the window. Our weekend would be full of hand-feeings and constant checking and worrying over the patient. She had a laceration (apparently from the fan itself) next to her left eye and running down the bridge of her nose, and on her head a welt the size of a quarter. In fact, her entire head seemed to be swollen. She slept for a long while and that evening, she awoke and fussed a bit in the kennel. My wife tried to give her some water out of an eyedropper but she wasn't that interested. We surmised that it might be necessary to put her on an IV to avoid dehydration - which would mean another trip to the vet. On Sunday afternoon, the kitten ventured out of her portable kennel and tried to play with some string. She then laid down as if to say "Oh, yeah. I'm not quite right, am I"?

In two more days, you wouldn't know by looking at her that anything significant had happened to her.

Consequently, It has become my habit to bang on the fender before I enter any vehicle to wake sleeping cats. I have also renamed our little miracle kitten..

Fanbelt.

demidog

Texas Wins! Vince Young Rules

Texas won another Rose Bowl tonight. The offensive MVP was awarded to Vince Young and rightfully so. Young scored the final 8 points in a nail-biting, 41 - 38 glorious victory over USC. Texas held Reggie Bush to just 82 yards rushing.

I couldn't watch the final 4 minutes of the game. I had to get in my car and drive home partly out of fear. The Ohio State game in September was a similar experience. When the second half started, I was two hours from home at a friends house and had to pack up the kids and get going. Radio reception what it is here in Austin, I finally picked up a signal just outside of Austin. Expecting to hear the customary concilliatory interviews, I was instead stunned to hear Craig Way, play caller for Longhorns football and men's basketball, congratulating VY on a come-back win.

So when I left the bar tonight it was partly out of supersticion and partly from a desire not to see the Longhorns lose. Picture Glen Close's character in "The Natural" who explained to Roy Hobbs she couldn't stand to see him fail.

I didn't get to see the last plays but hearing Craig Way call them may have been even better. As I drove east on 71, the seconds ticked by and it became clear that Vince Young is not somebody you ever want to bet against. Nobody even looked at me funny as I shook my fists and screamed...

"I wouldn't bet against me" - Roy Hobbs, The Natural

demidog

Support the troops:Rat them out!

Boots in Baghdad is a very slick blog dedicated to propagandizing spreading the good news about the Iraq war from the soldier's perspective.

Last month, the gung-ho fellow who writes to us, normally about the great work being performed by his fellow infantrymen, offered a special advisory about emails that have been circulated around the internet, allegedly by soldiers who are scared and want to come home.

These e-mails are fake. They were not written by American soldiers. American soldiers lust for the blood of their nation's enemies. They understand the commitment they have made to their nation and their fellow service members.

Private(?) Miner suggests you forward any such emails you may receive to his yahoo e-mail address

But look, If you're going to rat out some "yellow son of a bitch" who has complained about conditions in Iraq, why not just forward the emails directly the good blogger's military e-mail address.
demidog

Top ten things to do with 2005's leap-second

10. List the times and dates George Bush has told the truth about the Iraq war.
9. Watch re-runs of George Bush speeches in which Dick Cheney doesn't have his hand up George's back.
8. Count the millions denied to Administration officials because a corporation other than the one they controled prior to gaining power, received lucrative government contracts.
7. Count the number of bird flu victims that will be helped by an administration of Tamiflu as distributed by Gilead Sciences (Donald Rumsfield).
6. Count the number of convictions since 9/11/2001 of terrorists arrested by the Bush Administration's Justice Department.
5. Count the number of laws repealed by any legislature anywhere.
4. Count the number of times your congressman didn't send you a form letter in response to one of your questions.
3. Count the money donated to charity personally by Democrat senators.
2. List the number of times the Supreme Court has upheld the constitution in the last 100 years.
1. Blink if you're horny!

demidog

Politicizing AIDS- D.A.L.E.

I have been watching the AIDS "science" with some interest for at least 10 years. In 1984 I was a sign painter in San Diego when Dr. Robert C. Gallo announced he had isolated a virus that was believed to be the cause of the AIDS virus.

It has since been discovered that Gallo actually used samples given to him by another scientist in France, Luc Montagnier, who worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Neither had actually isolated a virus and Gallo's announcement that he had done so caused such an international Incident that Ronald Reagan had to meet with France's prime minister to smooth things over. Both governments took credit for discovering what is now known as HIV.

In the two decades since that announcement, the science surrounding AIDS reseaerch doesn't appear to have become any more rigorous. Previously, the Pasteur institute itself had provided the world with a repeatable protocol which would both demonstrate virulence and isolate a virus.

Today this protocol is still used. Except in the case of HIV where such practices are considered inconvenient. It would take an entire site to document the poor scientific methods used amongst AIDS researchers who treat HIV as a foregone conclusion. An acquaintanence of mine gave me a heads up about yet another salvo from the World Health Organization in the effort to politicize AIDS.

Longing to force all of Africa into submission, they've come up with a new measure of human life expectancy which claims to predict life expectancy rather than just measure it after the fact. Life expectancy has long been used to tout the efficacy of "modern" medicine. Typically, government health organizations have lumped in infant mortality with all mortality to come up with "life expectancy." Not to defend the Bible, but two thousand years ago the scribes who wrote down Judeaic laws claimed that a man lived to be about 70 on average. If that information is used as a historical benchmark, we haven't progressed as much as the medical community would have us believe.

The new measure of life expectancy, D.A.L.E. (Disability-Adjusted life expactancy), according to the WHO, is much more accurate. For myself, it is high comedy. The University of Pennsylvania "African Studies" department tries to explain the formula:

DALE summarizes the expected number of years to be lived in what might be termed the equivalent of "full health." To calculate DALE, the years of ill-health are weighted according to severity and subtracted from the expected overall life expectancy to give the equivalent years of healthy life.

Interesting to note is the fact that the new formula does not even take into consideration actual morality - at least not according to what one can find on the subject. The current hysterical proclamations about conditions around the world are projections of moratility rates for "babies born in 1999."

Lately, there have been quite who have questioned the claims of an AIDS epidemic in Africa and the numbers of deaths. When it became apparent that the diagnosis of AIDS was not based on actual test results, some health organizations looked as if they were engaged in hype. If I were less cynical I wouldn't view the new DALE formula as a way to explain away the lack of actual deaths to match the WHO's preditions.

All of the bottom 10 countries were in sub-Saharan Africa, where the HIV-AIDS epidemic is rampant. In ascending order beginning with 191, those countries were Sierra Leona, 25.9 years of healthy life for babies born in 1999; Niger, 29.1; Malawi, 29.4; Zambia, 30.3; Botswana, 32.3; Uganda, 32.7; Rwanda, 32.8; Zimbabwe, 32.9; Mali, 33.1; and Ethiopia, 33.5. [see below for full list]

No doubt, this will further solidify the HIV=AIDS argument and very few will question the accuracy of predictions that cannot come true for another 70 years.

demidog

How would this fly in the U.S.?

Allegedly, two suicide bombers, a man and his wife, travel from Iraq ( where there are little or no travel restrictions and no troops watching the main roads ) to Jordan, land themselves a cute little furnished apartment and prepare to bomb a wedding celebration.

Apparently her husband pushed her out of the hotel ballroom when he noticed her struggling with the detonation cord. I don't know about you but if my wife tried to detonate herself before I could get into position, I'd probably whisper in her ear that her actions were a bit premature. "Just wait honey, at least let me get to the other side of the room like we planned."

Compared to British police, who shot a "suicide bomber" 7 times in the head because they feared he might explode, Jordanian police showed remarkable restraint. They decided to pose her for cameras, still wearing the alleged explosive rig. Those guys have some serious cajones.

I wonder what an American judge would say about the prejudicial nature of such "confession" footage.

Jordanians are pretty compassionate all the way around though. After televising the woman twice..

..a TV announcer cited security officials as saying the woman gave no further details because "she was still suffering from the shock of the blasts and her subsequent arrest."

demidog

Codex Alimentarius: Food Rules

I am amazed at how many people just don't understand what the founding fathers of this nation believed constituted liberty. Look around you today and you won't find any resemblance of the legacy they intended to leave us.

For example, Jefferson, in 1801, received live smallpox virus from Benjamin Waterhouse, the man who first promoted Dr. Edward Jenner's smallpox inoculation. It was Jenner who is credited with discovering that cowpox serum could provide immunity from smallpox. Upon receiving the serum, Jefferson injected it into his children.

Four score and 8 years after this event, a doctor named Alfred Wallace used the health records in London to show that the mandatory smallpox vaccination program the English had instituted there, to have caused more losses of life and sickness than it was purported to have saved. In fact, since then, among the many myths that are perpetuated, the efficacy of vaccinations is tops on the list.

But that is only tangental to my first point; in Thomas Jefferson's mind, he had more right than anyone to medically defend his children and himself from any disease that may have posed a risk.

Think about that one for a while. Jefferson didn't take his children to an expert nor did he ask the permission of the medical boards to try an experimental prophylactic that had not been proven to work aside from anecdotal evidence. In fact, it has yet to be proven effective at preventing smallpox. The World Health organization claims to have erradicated the disease via vaccination programs around the world but a disease "indistinguashable" from smallpox - monkey pox - still rages on in undeveloped African nations. They still use the vaccinia serum to defend against it.

Thomas Jefferson procured the "innoculation" ( which, by the way, is not the same vaccine used during Europe's mandatory vaccine progroms - oops - programs during the mid to late 1800's ) and immediately tried it on his own children based on the word of someone he trusted.

If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the soulds of those who live under tyranny - Thomas Jefferson

In case you haven't guessed, that was his idea of liberty. That's my idea of liberty. Knowing what I know about vaccines, I wouldn't do that. But I understand why he did. And I understand why Jefferson showed a disdain for anyone who would attempt to prevent someone from determining his own medical treatment.

Let's fast forward to October 26, 2001. It was a mere forty-six days after the so-called terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. President Bush signed the inappropriately titled "Patriot Act" into law. The Senators who voted it into law hadn't read it because, it was claimed, they didn't have the security clearances to read it. So none did and it passed in the Senate 99 to 1. Bi-partisanship is over-rated.

It is only now that we are finding out what is inside and it doesn't look that good for people who value freedom.

In the bill, the government is given the power to declare martial law in the event that a "pandemic" is afoot and vaccinate everyone in the U.S., by force, and when this event occurs (not if - pay attention to what Bush has been recently peddling) you would be forbidden to sue for any ill-effects of the drugs being administered.

Now, that's just one side of the attack on your freedom to chose your own medical treatment. We are all well aware of the government's long time war on (some) drugs - those that actually work. But they are also now engaged in a war on anything that might disturb the profits of the drug companies that spend so much money keeping Senators and Congressmen in office.

Codex Alimentarius was a program initiated in the UN to create "uniform" rules on food production in order to promote trade. It has turned into one of the most disturbing campaigns against individual freedom ever devised. It classifies vitamins and herbs as "toxins" rather than food and intends to enforce a world-wide clampdown on their use.

The UN, Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization want to see that its recommendations go into effect, world-wide in 2009. The FDA (surprise!) has already agreed to them in spite of the current Federal law that classifies vitamins and herbs as food.

So, how do we get to a micro-managed food and health system? Well....how did we get to the Patriot Act? A catastrophe must occur to convince us that such micro management is necessary.

President Bush's plan includes a hefty sum for a virus "treatment" called Tamiflu that doesn't even address bird flu. The important thing to note is that the company which produces this product, Gilead Sciences was chaired by none other than Donald Rumsfeld. He was Chairman of the Board until the day he was sworn in as Secretary of Defense and still holds a significant number of shares.

It's awfully convenient that the man who headed the company which created Tamiflu is now the man who would command the troops forcing you to take it.

How many of Jefferson's views on medical freedom are shared by this bunch?

demidog

Bush: Those Bastards Bombed a Wedding!

Part of me wants to believe that Bush is just stupid. I mean, really stupid. But the voice inside my head that whispers "what a moron", is overruled by another voice. The other voice tells me that Bush isn't stupid, he is, quite obviously, evil. Bush thinks..perhaps knows, that the general population has an infinite capacity for stupidity. Though it pains me to agree with Bush on any subject, it would seem that his apparent assessment is correct. It's certainly obvious that the mainstream media, which republicans accuse is out to get Bush, refuses to call him on the blatant hypocrisy he demonstrates on a daily basis. And according to his supporters, any alleged hypocrisy by the Bush administration is actually an indictment on those who notice it occurring. You can think of this as the "I know you are but what am I" syndrome of modern politics.

Even while the Abu Gahrib incident was blowing up in his face, Bush displayed a strategy of pulling down the other guy's pants to show the world skid marks while himself wading in shit. During a joint press conference with Vicente Fox in January of 2004, Bush acted as if U.S. actions were always justified.

Iraq is more free every day. The citizens are beginning -- the lives of the citizens are improving every day. And one thing is for certain; there won't be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms.

Yesterday, after speaking with the King of Jordan, Bush uttered this gem:

and during my conversation, as he described the fact that these bombers went into a wedding and killed people there that were there to celebrate life, killed innocent -- the bombers killed innocent women and children, it struck me, Mr. Ambassador, that -- once again, that we face an enemy that has no heart, an enemy that is defiling a great religion, of Islam.

Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Here is the same man who attempted to justify the Army's bombing of a wedding party in Iraq, killing 27 men, 10 women and 15 children, as if the act upon which he is commenting is unprecendented. "Hello! McFly!"

Then again, the event that occurred on May 19, 2004 was not the first time U.S. forces had attacked a wedding. In July of 2002, celebratory fire into the air during a wedding celebration prompted a U.S. response in the form of a B-52 bombing raid coupled with a C-130 gunship straffing and a ground assault.

One hopes that the Bush twins do not suffer such a fate if ever they chose to marry.

demidog

Dan Wetzel is an Ass

Sir, you really need to get a grip.

About 90% of the time, I am going to shake my head when somebody plays the race card. But in the case of Barry Bonds, I think we should look at the way the media in general has handled the question of drug use by American athletes.

Let's examine, for example, another unquestionably good athlete, Lance Armstrong.

When the French Press was breathlessly reporting that a lab had tested urine samples Armstrong had provided in 1999, and had found traces of performance enhancing drugs, the sports media merely scoffed.

I can't think of one writer who took the allegations seriously, in spite of the fact that nobody has bothered to deny that the samples were indeed Armstrong's; other than Lance, that is.

Let's juxtapose that with Barry Bonds, who, during his incredible carreer has never even once tested positive. The media has, in spite of this inconvenient fact, insisted that Bonds has taken steroids. In fact, the more strident, such as yourself, assert that Bonds' guilt or innocence is decided merely on the suspicions of the public.

One of your respondants even had the audacity to claim that he couldn't have faced aggressive pitchers. Yesterday, Bonds homered, his 4th homer in 4 consecutive games, off of pitcher number 416. The opposing team could only shake their heads as they headed into the dugout. The pitch was not a hanging curveball or fastball left over the plate like the one Livan Hernandez offered him on Tuessday night. It was a perfect cutter low and inside.

I have been a Giants fan since about 1985. I was actually upset when Barry was signed. His arrival was sure to supplant my favorite Giant at the time, Will Clark. But I have since been won over. I have never seen anyone who could hit the way that Barry hits. Barry was no slouch before coming to the Giants organization and he just keeps getting better.

But Barry doesn't like the media. And most hack writers - there are very few good sports writers left - like to take cheap shots at Barry because it fuels controversy and ratings.

You can believe whatever you wish to believe, but without any evidence, and I mean not even a shred, to bolster that belief, you and all of the other bandwagon devotees merely look irrational and just plain mean.

If gaining weight and body mass were evidence of steroid use, Congress had better stop worrying about drug testing within Major League Baseball and start testing the hamburgers over at McDonalds. Half the school children in America are chronic steroid users, apparently, and something needs to be done immediately.

Furthermore, chronic steroid use shortens carreers and can even cause serious illness and death. Lyle Alzedo is a fairly good example of this.

And if all of that has no bearing on the seemingly irrational thought process of Barry's detractors, consider that he has come back this September and hit 4 home runs in 4 consecutive games, would have hit his first pitch for a dinger had it not been interfered with by an overzealous fan, has a .318 batting average and enjoys record sellout crowds in opposing team's stadiums.

For all of the talk that Barry's "cheating" has turned the public against him, the reality seems to vastly contradict his self-aggrandizing critics.

Barry is simply the best hitter to ever play the game and most who deride him do so only because they don't want him to overtake the fat, beer-guzzling, mouth-breathing, white guy who preceded him. The mostly-white sports analysts and writers wouldn't bat an eye if this was Derek Jeter or Mark McGwire. In fact, McGwire still has a few apologists in the media. But let's be fair. McGwire hasn't tested positive either.

Look at how many sportswriters are still pining away for Charlie Hustle's induction into the hall of fame, in spite of a mountain of evidence proving he bet on baseball.

Barry is better than either of those two in my opinion. And no. I don't believe he was a steroid user. I have no evidence that would give me any reason to believe otherwise.

But to be honest, I don't care if anyone uses steroids. I think it's a non-issue. I don't think that drugs ever enhanced anyone's performance behind the plate. Hitting a 101-mile-per-hour fastball out of the park is equally improbable whether or not one uses steroids.

demidog