First, here's a good fact checking of Condi Rice's Q&A in front of the 9-11 commission. Here's some more fact checking, this time on her opening statement. When I say “Condi has a hot ass”, what I actually mean is that her pants caught on fire during her testimony.
So it gurgled a little when we changed the oil, and a bit of water had gotten into the engine. The carb was also a little sticky, but a quick clean and it was fine. No damage to the supercharger or other systems, and it fired right up and got up to pressure without difficulty. There's a problem somewhere in the hydraulic system though which is affecting the lights (Corvette light pods are hydraulically actuated) and the brakes, so that's next on the list. But I am really relieved to find out there's no fundamental engine damage. 700+ HP is a lot of engine to lose… Anyway, after the engine and brake work, it goes in for suspension and tires, and then, if I can afford it, tattoos paint.
How many points is it for an old lady again?
First: If you are a contributing BME/extreme member that is known to me, and you are in need of injectables and you were under the impression they were no longer available, feel free to contact me personally for access.
Now, you may have already seen this elsewhere, but the screens are made… again… for this shirt design. This time I think we really aced it. The print has a black backing as well and is really slick (and big). They'll run at the start of the week as far as I know. (Comments?)
I'm really not sure that if this new US policy of bombing Mosques in Iraq is going to fly. I realize that guerilla forces are not only using the mosques as bases, but also to store weapons and so on. But the problem is, by attacking a mosque, you attack both civilians and Islam itself… Symbolically and politically it plays directly into the hands of leaders like al-Sadr. Fuck, sometimes you wonder if the US commanders have ever read anything by Mao or Guevara.
Oh, and I don't know if you watched Nightline last night, but Ted Koppel was talking about the plans set into motion via 9/11. They started with “Continuity of Government” and explaining why Bush didn't return immediately to Washington after the attacks — “This was absolutely the Armageddon plan put into effect.” (with the implication that they're still on).
Richard Clarke also backed up that they went into that mode after the war, saying,
Every federal agency was ordered, on the morning of 9/11, to activate an alternative command post, an alternative headquarters outside of Washington, D.C., and to staff it as soon as possible. [We'd had drills where we'd] gone off into caves in mountains in remote locations and spent days on end in miserable conditions, pretending that the rest of the world had blown up, and going through the questions, going through the drill. . . . Everyone there play acts that it's really happened. You can't go outside because of the radioactivity. You can't use the phones because they're not connected to anything.
Wonderful world they're planning for…? Now maybe you have a better understanding of how all the big nuclear ICBMs they've been test firing along with Russia, China, India, Pakistan, are actually going to be used… After all, it's not like you need any of these shadow government preparations for terrorists. This stuff is exclusively about fighting large-scale enemies in a total-annihilation-style thermonuclear war.
Let's see what Donald Rumsfeld has to say about this, and his role in all of it…
Don't divide the world into "them" and "us." Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours.
Sounds pretty “them” and “us” to me.
I don't normally post newsfeed stuff here, but holy crap is this a neat one:
The headline:
U.S. declares war on porn (more)
Obscenity: For the first time in 10 years, the U.S. government is spending millions to file charges across the country.
The fact that they're starting to arrest people doing normal pornography in America is pretty scary… It was bad enough when you just had to constantly fight for your financial rights as an adult content provider, but threatening to take someone's freedom away because they sold a video of a facial or something is frightening.
The Justice Department is being very clear that this is not about “edge” porn like rape, snuff, and so on — this is about shutting down the porn mainstream in America as well. I highly doubt that it'll survive in court, but they don't care — because they have money and time on their side. When you start arresting webmasters and levelling false charges, you do put the little guys out of business, even when the charges are thrown out. Just like Todd Bertrang has had to sell his house to defend himself against false charges like “kidnapping” because his girlfriend referred to herself as his “slave” (as probably a million other people in BDSM relations do as well), and you can bet he's not getting it back even if/when he wins in court.
If you want to make it a little scarier, a man was just arrested on some terrorism charger here in Canada after the NSA tracked him down via email monitoring (more). I'm not going to comment on the details of the case, what's scary is the monitoring ability. As the NSA points out, because so many of the big international communications hubs are in the US, they have not only the ability to monitor it, but, in their mind, “the NSA has a perfect right to monitor all Internet traffic”.
Every day I feel more and more like I'm watching “first they came for the pornographers…” play out right in front of my eyes.
