been keeping away from the politics lately because a) the ominous rumblings about iran scare the bejeezus out of me and b) it’s so much more pleasant to browse websites about the beauty that is new zealand.

But thank goodness there is still a modicum of common sense out there: bush can’t punish assisted suicide doctors.

From the day we’re born we’re dying – the minute people stop being afraid of that fact, they’ll stop feeling the need to tell people how and when they can or cannot die. Bush’s “culture of life” seems to be trying to promulgate the notion that human life is so special and unique that it must be preserved at all costs, irrespective of the concepts of dignity and control.

Human life is not unique. We will all die, no matter what we do, and in spite of all our best efforts. Billions of people have lived, are living, will live… and we all *die*. It is a forgone conclusion, absolute truth, fait accompli.

What *is* unique about humans is that we are wholly conscious of our ultimate fate. And we have the means to control the method and manner in which we will die. Animals don’t. There is no informed suicide amongst the rest of the species. Yet if I wanted to end my life next week, I could. I’m healthy, relatively young, fully compos mentis. I have the luxury of overdosing in my bed, or slitting my wrists in the tub, or blowing my brains out, if I so choose.

So why, oh why, would we deny the people who need a graceful exit most – the people wracked with pain, or helplessly disabled, or losing their few last precious conscious thoughts – why would we not grant their simple request of honouring their life with a peaceful and decent end?

The “culture of life” is completely heartless and cruel, and I’m glad to see that this ruling upholds one of the few humane acts we can provide for our fellow humans.

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oregon, supreme court, assisted suicide

ugh, back to the grind. and really, grind is the most apt word for it. it is a singular chore to drag myself through the days, knowing that nothing more is going to get done, and the few things I would like to accomplish at this job are unlikely to see fruition before I leave. and believe it or not, that’s *not* a reflection on me. this is the only job i’ve ever held where i have achieved almost nothing concrete – the system is set up in such a way that it’s nearly impossible for anything to actually change, and where simply spending day after day slogging through the system is the only thing that keeps everything going, and is, in fact, seen as doing a “good job”. it’s running to stand still, and I was never a big fan of treadmills.

none of this was helped by the fact that the tube fare hikes threw the entire transoprtation system into a tizzy. as for me, I ended up spending £3 for my journey into work, because i didn’t have the 45 minutes to queue for the ticket line. they’re trying to forcibly move everyone onto the oyster card system (the RFID chipped passes), and so took away the option of paying for a single zone fare ticket with coins at the quickticket machine. up until now, I have avoided using the oyster card for a few reasons: a) the queue to top up the oystercard is always ridiculous b) it wouldn’t save me any money and i’m likely to lose it and c) my extreme distrust of the government. see, the oyster card is really just a tracking mechanism, as you can be followed throughout the tube system. if you want to get a season pass, you have to link the card with your personal information, and many people link it to their bank details as well. that’s an awful lot of information for the government (yes, the tube is still partly owned by the government as a public/private partnership) to have about the vast majority of perfectly law abiding tube riders. i trust the government with my information about as far as I can throw tony blair, and i am convinced that the push to get everyone on oyster cards is a direct result of the july bombings. i held on to the paper tickets for as long as humanly possible, but there is simply no way i’m paying £6 each day to get to and from work.

which leads me to my second gripe about this morning – they’ve effectively forced everyone to go to an oyster card, without making *a single extra provision* for it. suddenly, people who can no longer buy cheap paper tickets need an oyster card. yet at tooting broadway (a fairly busy station) there were still only 2 oyster card compatible machines, while the 4 quickticket machines stood useless. it was the same everywhere i saw, and the queues were out the door in many stations. further, after a full 2 years, the oyster card *still* cannot be used in many places, effectively forcing people to pay two fares when using the train and the tube, and pay-as-you-go customers also cannot use it on the overland train. not to mention, there are plenty of places where you are not able to “Touch in, touch out” in order to get the correct fare, and as a result, end up being charged the highest possible amount. the oyster card is a shining example of how the ancient city of london takes newfangled technology designed to make life easier, and just fucks it up with piss-poor implementation. and adding insult to injury, the tfl website didn’t even have fully up to date information – half the links were to the old fare info.

meanwhile, the tube workers were on strike over the new year holiday, and going on strike again in a week. what a fucking shambles of a scam.

the whole thing has become (you should pardon the pun) like a runaway train.

i know i’ve said this multiple, multiple times, but a public transportation system is judged on its convenience, reliability, and affordability. the tube is none of the above. what a shameful excuse for an infrastructure.

needless to say, i arrived at work grumpy and the day only went downhill from there.

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oyster card, london underground, tube strike, fare hikes

sorry things have been so quiet, but the server issues seem to be sorted now, so hopefully all will remain healthy.

First of all, to all my peeps in NYC – you have my complete sympathy. I can only imagine trying to get to work, do errands, etc. for more than one day with no public transportation. Even during a blizzard, the subways are operating – they truly are the lifeblood of the city. You can pick up groceries, etc. locally. But getting to work? I imagine most people don’t even bother, since if you dont own a bike, there’s nothing much that can be done if you’re not walking distance. Hopefully it will all be resolved shortly. I shudder to think about the people trying to get to the airports in a day or two.

secondly, thank god people are coming to their senses. “intelligent design” is just a pretext for promoting religion, which has no place in the public schools. you don’t like it? send your kid to private. really, this just says volumes about the current climate in the u.s. today, that an idea this farcical had to be struck down by the courts.

After dragging his feet and trying to pretend he’s *not* an asshole for protesting something so morally right, bush finally agreed to mccain’s anti-torture amendment. However, as this article points out, what no one is talking about is the fact that this was even a discussion at all is alarming in the extreme (thanks for the link, a):

So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? … if Vice President Cheney is right and that some “cruel, inhumane or degrading” (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.

in the same return-to-cold-war vein, the u.s. is trying to build a wall to keep out mexico. the sheer inanity of such a move is just stunning. there are lots of people who die trying to come to the u.s., or sacrifice anything they have. the far more effective (and less ineffectually simplistic) thing to do is to prosecute the corporations that hire people illegally. Until they stop making shitloads of money off of an already disadvantaged labour force, this despicable practice will continue to be perpetuated. And as long as demand continues, it will also artificially prop up the economy. Building a wall?? C’mon – how unrealistic can you get? Where people already risk life and limb to come to this country, a *wall* is unlikely to do much. Where the reasons and motivation for illegal immigration are so complex, simple bricks and mortar is hardly the answer. A physical barrier is easily circumvented when you’re willing to risk it all. Therefore, it’s not only a waste of money, but also detrimental to US/Mexican relations. We already profit greatly from Mexico not only through immigrant labour (legal or illegal) but also through NAFTA. We exploit that agreement to the fullest and economically, it’s in our best interests to play nice. So why are we trying to re-enact east v. west berlin??

the rest of my vitriol will have to wait for another time, since I have to head off to face the chaos of the christmas crowds… wish me luck!

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nyc transit strike, intelligent design, mexico wall, mccain torture bill

so I just downloaded itunes, something i’ve never bothered with before because a) I never buy downloaded music and b) i don’t have an ipod. even when i reinstalled quicktime, i installed the previous version, as the newest comes packages with itunes, and i just despise that kind of marketing – i shouldn’t have to download something i don’t want. but recently someone turned me on to a few cool podcasts, and realplayer doesn’t support podcasts, so i thought i’d give it a whirl.

well i’m here to tell you it sucks. after installing it, I decided to try out some of the m3u playlists i put up on my website. it’s anarchy. first of all, itunes randomly inserts songs from the playlist just any old place in the library. so if perhaps you had (oh, just for example) a bob dylan playlist, you will suddenly find “all along the watchtower” interpersed between gorillaz and the arcade fire, whilst “rolling stone” is underneath modest mouse, for no apparent reason. completely defeats the purpose of a playlist.

secondly, some song links wouldn’t play at all. upon investigation, i found that these were all links with spaces in them. turns out, that even if the original link is url encoded, itunes de-encodes it so that it can no longer follow the download. e.g. if the original link from the playlist for “the aeroplanes – don’t stop me” is http://www.kingsofar.com/mp3s/Dont%20Stop%20Me.mp3, itunes reads it as http://www.kingsofar.com/mp3s/Dont Stop Me.mp3, and can’t download it. when you rightclick “get info” on the clip, go into “edit url” and replace all the spaces with “%20″, suddenly, like magic it works. grrr.

then, even if your m3u playlist has no spaces (not always possible, considering the links are generally done by someone else), itunes will play the first song, then stall. that’s just crazymaking. so you either have to download the playlist to your desktop first, then drag it into the source sidebar (this is, by far the best option, as it eliminates the problems above), or install a third party application like m3u2itunes to get it to work properly. bloody hell.

there’s more techie complaints here, but suffice to say, i am not impressed.

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a few statistics:
there are more than 40 million people living with hiv and aids
23 million people have died
global spending on hiv research is $3 billion
u.s. spending on bird flu is $7 billion
8000 people per day die of aids
in the minute it takes you to read this post, 5 people will have died
in zimbabwe the hiv infection rate is 33% – that’s one in every three people
more than a half million children died of aids in 2005
if we continue on this way, there will be 45 million more infected by 2010.

i cannot believe it’s nearly 2006, and in spite of more than 20 years of research into the biggest epidemic this planet has ever seen, we still have no vaccine, no cure.

go give money. wear a ribbon. challenge the government. scream at the top of your lungs.

this is no longer acceptable.

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i recently had a long involved discussion with someone over the “secularisation” of the holidays, and the knee-jerk reaction of christians to what they perceive as a threat to their celebration of christmas. his point was, essentially, that freedom of religious expression is protected by the first amendment, and that “banning” public nativity displays and the like is evangelism by secularists, since it doesn’t violate anyone’s rights.

he’s missing the point, big time.

see, rulings by the supreme court have reaffirmed time and again that (other than the historical use of religious symbols, such as “in god we trust” on the coinage) the government cannot be seen to be implicitly endorsing any one religion over another. avoiding the appearance of promotion/favouritism/endorsement is not the same thing as “banning” religious expression. therefore, displays which exhibit a variety of symbols or religions are fine. However, once you open it up to Christians, Jews and Muslims, you also have to allow for zoroastrians, satanists, scientologists, etc. Everyone’s all for inclusive displays, until people want to start putting up satanic symbols – suddenly it’s not quite so okay any more. So really, it’s an impossible situation for the state.

and my argument is that you can’t possibly please everyone and their religion, so why try to please anyone? Just do away with it altogether. No muss, no fuss. What does the gov’t. care about religion anyway? Why get involved in such a personal matter?

private organisations and their property are free to do whatever they want, and i can’t stop them. but don’t force me to look at your creche on my town common (which I pay taxes to help upkeep), as if it somehow represents my beliefs as well. Otherwise, I’d rather have nothing. As my mom used to say, “If you can’t play nice and share, I’ll take it away, and no one can have it.”

And if it matters to you enogh to fight for your right to a nativity, then I am also going to fight for my right to have *MY* religious symbols displayed – which you shouldn’t feel threatened by, because it’s just my expression of religious freedom. So where’s the beef?

Secularism of public life is the wave of the future – hop on for the ride.

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y’all already know my stance on the death penalty. it’s hypocritical and expensive and inhumane, and in a system fraught with human error, the liklihood of taking an innocent human’s life by mistake is unavoidable, and it’s inconceivable that we should allow that to happen at the hands of the state. a civilised people should be exemplified by a civilised government. and when we can’t guarantee our citizens a fair trial, we have no business executing them. case in point: the 1000th man scheduled to die in the u.s. since the re-institution of the death penalty.

we have a right to deprive people of their liberty, but not their life. that’s what makes the death penalty cold-blooded public vengeance, plain and simple. but vengeance is not the remit or right of the government, and that’s what makes these killings no better than the crimes we so loudly decry.

if i was home right now, i’d be protesting with all my heart and might. because i honestly think that the u.s. has the power (and therefore the obligation) to be better. to lead by example. i think the death penalty debases us as a nation, and dehumanises our society. and we deserve better than that.

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death penalty

when will we stop killing people to prove that killing people is wrong?!?

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death penalty

for someone who goes on and on about freedom so fucking much, bush has a funny way of showing it. like wanting to bomb al-jazeera, the only semi-free media in the entire middle east. how back-assward is that? yet, given the types of constraints, manipulation, and gag rules he regularly tries to impose on the u.s. media, it’s hardly surprising. the feds spent $7.2 billion dollars classifying documents to prevent their release last year and uses state-secret priviledge 33 ties more often today than during the cold war. i swear to god, if we get out of the next 3 years of this administration alive, without an accidental or intentional nuclear holocaust, i will consider it a holy miracle. i wish i was being sarcastic there.

waiting on a miracle: the 40 million people living with hiv. it’s nearly world aids day, and with 25 million already gone, people continue to die of this virus at an unconscionable rate. world targets fall by the wayside, infection rates are nearly 1-in-4 in some places. yet the bird flu scare gets more press coverage. what does that say about society? that people who die quietly are forgotten, but people who die of a bizarre and exotic disease make us sit up and take notice. bush has called for $7.1 billion in spending from the u.s. alone, to prevent a disease which may kill an unknown number between 2 and 50 million people. yet current *global* spending on hiv research is a paltry $3 billion. it’s a fucking sin.

and finally, people see the Virgin of guadaloupe in tree bark. I would ridicule it… but in a world so full of craziness, horror and despair, the fact that people still believe in *something* is a miracle unto itself.

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bush, bird flu, hiv, classified documents

This is easily the *stupidest* thing I have ever seen in my life. Upside-down Christmas trees. Those of you in the states have probably already heard about this ridiculous “trend”, but as they say here in jolly ol’, i was gobsmacked to hear about this.

Now I’ve seen everything. I understand reinventing products to capture a niche of a market, but who the fuck turns a tree upside down?!? They say it has to do with some 12th century tradition of hanging a tree from a ceiling. The reason they stopped doing it in the 12th century? Because it was d-u-m-b.

Trees are (despite the fact that we dress them up) not in-and-of-themselves, a product. They’re trees. They grow that way. This reminds me of the “square tomato” idea. Just flat out moronic.

Part of me thinks this whole idea started as a joke to see if they could prove p.t. barnum’s assertion that “there’s a sucker born every minute”.

Americans really are dumb as a bunch of rocks, sometimes. And yes: apparently, we *will* buy anything. And pay a lot for it.

In case you haven’t seen this lemming-like phenomenon…

in other dumb news, the big news story of the day here in london:

Severe wintry weather is being forecast for the UK, with as much as 20cm of snow ……
Snow, sleet and hail will be coupled with gale force icy winds and wind chill temperatures as low as -10C.

for those of you in boston, 20cm is a little less than 8 inches, and -10C is 14F. here’s what i think of snow in london.

Go on, you can laugh now…

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upside-down xmas tree

u.s. admits use of white phosphorous

cheney takes aim at iraq critics

see, now this is the kind of shit which makes me hoppin’ mad: the government lying about stuff, until the truth is uncovered independently, and then accusing Americans who lack faith in the system, of being unpatriotic. When really, given the piss poor track record, you’d have to be completely out of touch with reality to blindly believe anything which is issued from their collective mouth.

Where does it stop? If they commit torture and use toxic chemical weapons and lie about that, how on earth are we really to believe they didn’t lie about evidence in Iraq? When, exactly, are we supposed to suspend disbelief? As a kid, parents tell you when they catch you in a lie, that you have to earn their trust back. Didn’t Cheney’s parents tell him the same thing? Such a simple lesson, yet such a hard one for this administration to learn. I can’t imagine why.

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cheney, white phosphorous, iraq

let me count the ways…

How depressing, corrupt, unlawful and tragically absurd the administration’s world view actually is…how low the moral bar has been lowered…and (though I know I’m capable of intellectually lazy notions of collective guilt) how complicit our silence as citizens is…Nixon, a true fiend, looks like a paragon of virtue next to the criminally incompetent robber barons now raiding the present and future.

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john cusack, anti-bush

i’m still shattered, having only had 6 hours sleep since saturday night, and therefore far t tired to work up a proper rant. so here’s a hodgepodge of things which i find more irritating than inner-thigh chafing.

surprise, surprise: the fda’s rejection of the morning after pill was politically motivated, and it bent its own rules to do so. shocker. i swear to god, one of these days, women are just going to get too fucking fed up and stop taking this shit off rich white men who think they know best. then they’ll be sorry.

lordy, lordy: first, sony installed malware on your computer, then it turns out their removal kit opens up a massive security breach.

The consequences of the flaw are severe. It allows any web page you visit to download, install, and run any code it likes on your computer. Any web page can seize control of your computer; then it can do anything it likes. That’s about as serious as a security flaw can get.

so they screw you up front, and then they fuck you in the backdoor. sweet.

pathetically obnoxious bill o’reilly baitingly encourages terrorists to target san francisco after voters urged a ban on on-campus military recruitment. because god forbid *democracy* should rule the land! then the numbskull chalks it all up to some malicious smear campaign by the evil lefties. Oy vey – that man makes my ass cramp. It must be very tiring to be the sole defender of all that’s right and good in the world. Whatever.

and finally, a little feel-good hit: cheney gets heckled. and it’s not even christmas yet.

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and not very pleased! I am sooo sick and tired of being sick and tired in this country!! This has never happened to me in any other city i’ve ever lived in.

the upshot being… i’m cranky. guy fawkes day/bonfire night is coming up here, and people have been going nuts with the stoopid firecrackers for like two weeks now… enough!

lest this turn into (yet another) generalised malingering rant, here’s some interesting judicial linkage for ya:

how a staged sex crime fooled the supreme court

on a theme: the kansas supreme court has ruled that disease prevention does not justify longer jail sentences for gay than straight statutory rape.

in the face of an embarrassing nominee withdrawal, bush digs in his heels. because let’s face it – bush doesn’t do withdrawals, troop or nominee.

hokey dokey, that’s all for today folks. hopefully i’ll be a healthier, better blogger tomorrow.

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because the devastation in new orleans wasn’t bad enough, the freakish born-agains are calling it punishment from god

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, submerging entire neighborhoods for weeks with its ferocious tidal surge, some say it was not a freak act of nature but a message from an angry God.

That’s the belief of some Christians in the United States, who have been warning the Mardi Gras capital, long known for its hedonistic ways, was bucking for a good dose of divine retribution

they need a good slap.

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The state of the union: Only 28% of americans think the country is headed in the right direction. More disturbingly, 66% think it is not. His approval rating is only 39%. A lesser man might actualy be forced to rethink his policy and public agenda. But not Bush! No sir. In case you wonder what I think of Bush, let me clarify: he can suck it.

Meanwhile, Masshole governor romney, (the pride of my homestate) sounds suspiciously like he’s eyeing a presidential run.

”They’re not just intent on blowing up a little bomb here and there at a shopping mall, awful as that would be. They want to bring down our government, bring down our entire economy. They want to put in place a huge theocracy.”

……

Romney, who has yet to announce whether he will seek the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, drew criticism from some Muslims and civil liberties advocates last month when he raised the prospect of wiretapping mosques and conducting surveillance of foreign students.

This is the same guv who’s tried to prohibit gay marriages for out-of-staters by enforcing a 1913 law enacted to prohibit interracial marriage. In case you’re wondering how I feel about Mitt Romney, let me clarify: he can go suck it.

and hitting closer to home for me, the bbc wants more funding through an increase of the tv tax. yes, that’s right – here in th UK, you have to pay a tax for the “priviledge” of owning a tv. approximately £120 per year. this is actually, for all intents and purposes, a public subsidy, much like we subsidise the NEA and public television in the u.s. however, the tv tax is a stupid idea all around, as it is, in effect, a flat tax (since almost no households are telly-free), and considering they spend £200million collecting, enforcing and prosecuting the tv tax for 2 million evaders (at £120 a piece), it’s hardly cost efficient! Just increase our income tax by £100/year, and fund the bbc that way. I’ll hardly miss the £10/paycheque, but i’ll resent the hell out of having to “renew my license” every single year.

The bbc already receives over £2billion per year, and churns out such pap as holby city. In case you wonder how I feel about the television tax, let me clarify: they can suck it.

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(advisory: completely biased, totally unobjective, thoroughly self-pitying rant ahead. you’ve been warned.)

okay, another failure.

I found black beans (not in a tin, mind you, but dried. i’d be praising jesus if I found a can of goya anywhere on this godforsaken little pissant island).

i was excited. i bought rice and tortillas and tomatoes and onions and peppers and yogurt for bean burritos. i even have adobo at the ready.

i rinsed the beans. I soaked them for 24 hours. i simmered them for two. i seasoned carefully. i stirred frequently. i practically sang lullabyes to the stupid little things.

they were just about ready. i left them for five more minutes.

and the motherfuckers *burned to cinders* on the bottom of the pan.

after listening to me rave like a lunatic for several minutes about the deficiencies of London, England and anything/everything British, jonno wisely went up the street to get some pizza. bless that man. may god shower blessings upon him for saving my sanity.

also – because they have no real holidays between now and the end of the year, (halloween celebrations being not much to speak of) there is already christmas chocolate in the supermarkets. but i *cannot believe* they put the fucking xmas decorations up on the high street already.

sometimes this country really bites.

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some days, i swear, i don’t even know why i read the news.

first off, this idjit decides to say something as inflammatory as:

“If you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down,”

Now you can think whatever you like about the connections between crime and race. But as a politician and someone with a microphone in front of you, you cannot say it.

Not only has he refused to apologise, for his remarks, but he has also attempted to defend tham, by saying it was a “hypothesis” and that his record proves he’s not racist. Both of which are immaterial. What he *said* was categorically racist because it drew upon stereotypical presumptions about black people.

People have argued that in fact, aborting all black babies *would* bring down crime – as would aborting all white babies. All of which may be true – but that’s not what he *said*.

His comments reflect an underlying prejudice. A not-so-Freudian slip. What’s more disturbing than the idea that these views are held b the people in government (not in and of itself, all that shocking), is the notion that when they say something which can clearly be construed as hurtful, even damaging – that they see no need to bear any responsibility for that. He said something which hints at endorsing genocide, and will not apologise. I find that shamefully repugnant.

In other ridiculous news, florida has enacted a “shoot first” policy.

Previously, gun owners could only use their weapons if they first attempted to withdraw and avoid a confrontation, and were permitted to shoot threatening individuals only inside their home or property.

Now they can use “deadly force” if they “reasonably believe” that firing their gun is necessary to prevent a crime or serious injury. The law also effectively prevents civil legal action by victims of such shootings.

The gun-control lobby is hitting back where it hurts: the pocketbook. It is taking out a series of adverts warning Britons that their lives may be endangered if they visit florida. I think this is a brilliant tactic, and one which has worked before, as demonstrated by tourism boycotts of arizona and south carolina (over the mlk holiday and confederate flag, respectively). when common sense has taken a back seat to vigilanteeism, perhaps a monetary incentive will make more of an impact.

the lawmakers have taken leave of their senses, quite clearly. or perhaps they’re planning to save money by doing away with the police (who, last I checked, were still responsible for public safety). i can see no other logic to it.

but hey, i’m from massachusetts, so what do I know?

and then there’s the whole “intelligent design” controversy, which to be honest, I can’t even dignify with blog space.

thanks god it’s the weekend and I can stop thinking about shit which makes my blood pressure skyrocket.

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read this

The poverty rate, 12.7 percent, is … the highest in the developed world and more than twice as high as in most other industrialized countries, which all strike a more generous social contract with their weakest citizens. Even if the real number is lower than 37 million, that’s a nation of poor people the size of Canada or Morocco living inside the United States.

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Okay, I’ve been trying to get away from the Katrina stuff because I just don’t have the stomach for it any more (and I’ve been arguing it to death with a bunch of pro-Bushies on the American expats board). But here’s a political cartoon that’s been making the rounds – if you haven’t already heard/seen the interview given by Aaron Broussard, the Jefferson Parish President, the ending might be a little tough to take.

But here it is anyway.

In other stomach-churning news, fema is trying to keep images of dead bodies out of the media. Contrary to their statements, I don’t think they’re trying to protect anyone’s sensibilities, or dignity.

I *MIGHT* have believed that before they tried to ban the pictures of soldiers coffins.

But the truth is, u.s. media almost never show images of dead americans anyway. one of the few exceptions to that was 9/11. Then, it was okay.

So really, as someone recently put it, *the truth* is that “they don’t want dead bodies shown because carnage makes people angry, and angry people demand change.”

I’ve still got bile at the back of my throat, so here’s a spew:

jon stewart’s take on the katrina debacle
– god, i love that man.

a student speaks out – and gets arrested

someone actually says it: “go fuck yourself, mr. cheney”

barbara bush says “it’s working out well” for the poor evacuees

tom delay thinks being an evacuee is “kinda fun”

this cartoon captures it perfectly

and finally, a chilling account of why the unthinkable is no longer

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