one word: Blech.Greg Palast
the Con p 263 of Armed Madhouse
In his vulturous, brain-damaged way, Zell Miller was right: Stand up for Black voters and the redneck boobs will take their revenge. So the election came down to this: Nitwits who think Ollie North's a hero not a conman, who can't name their congressman, who believe that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin laden were going steady, who can't tell Afghanistan from a souvlaki stand and bloated with lies and super-sized fries, clomped to the polls 59 million strong to vent their small-minded hatreds on us all.
I fear the election was an intelligence test that America flunked.
(So far this is my favorite paragraph in the book .) THE KINGDOM OF SILENCEA job at a Saudi newspaper offers a rare look inside a closed society.
by LAWRENCE WRIGHT
Issue of 2004-01-05Posted 2004-01-05
This New Yorker article is very long. Parts of it are very funny, and I'm sure that this passage is meant to be somewhat sympathetic: "For most of the country’s business and intellectual leaders, and for many of the royals, the Western world had been a refuge from the intellectual and sensual sterility of the kingdom. I suspected that many had nurtured a secret escape plan in case the extremists gained complete control—they would retreat to second homes in Santa Barbara or Miami. But now such places seemed hostile to them. These élite men who had prided themselves on living in two worlds felt trapped in their own stern culture, and they were suffocating."
My first thought after reading it was Good, maybe the chickenshit Saudis will do something about their out of control religious idiots.
Should be filed in the "Horror" section. It's not much of a stretch, which is really scary.
A couple of weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Attorney overseeing the investigation, Carol Lam, had ordered her prosecutors to draw up the indictment before she was finally forced out in mid-February....
So, hey brainiac, who's gonna take care of California's levees while more of the California National Guard goes to Iraq to try to secure oil supplies? Oil supplies that we need since your corporate base doesen't give a shit about anything but profits.
California was at one time a magnet for the best and brightest students because the state invested in research and development because the corporate interests shared in that investement and PAID THEIR FUCKING TAXES. Now the corporations all have cadres of lawyers whose job it is to find out how to avoid paying taxes. Chevron is one of his gold sponsors. They got their way on 87 didn't they? They ain't paying no damn taxes on the oil they suck out of the ground in Cali.
