Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, …. said she raised the following questions at the briefing:

” 1. Who were these women? Could they have been members of groups hostile to the United States? Could they have planted bugs, disabled weapons, or in any others jeopardized security of the president or our country?

news.yahoo.com

That’s the first question — who the women are? We may not buy into that every Jezebel that we don’t click, but the angry red planet recognizes slut shaming when we read it. We don’t really care if people, even Secret Service agents, hire prostitutes, legally or otherwise, but if it is so important to you or your ‘country’s image’, the first question would be ‘do these guys have nothing better to do this week?’ or ‘can they have their orgies after the president’s visit is over?’

“…the U.S. military had investigators in Colombia interviewing the women who were brought to the hotel by the Americans.

U.S. Representative Peter King said on Tuesday the investigators had not found that the women were involved in the drug trade or organized crime.”

Yes, because women involved can’t just be regular working girls, they have to be part of some evil conspiracy. If anyone is an asshole here, it is the agent(s) who refused to pay after being ‘serviced’. Douchebags. By the end of this, we imagine the Secret Service agents will be portrayed as the real victims, seduced and trapped against their wills by wily Cartagenera vixens.

~ hillary must reckon that pakistani students have the memory span of an average u.s. citizen:

[Hillary] Clinton told the students “there is a huge difference” between the Obama administration’s approach and that of former President George W. Bush.

“I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him,” she said to a burst of applause from the audience of several hundred students.

who was the ‘him’ she was ‘opposing’ when voting to invade iraq and voting for the patriot act twice? what a card!

~ while the rest of us – or maybe 3% of us – struggle to pay our energy bills, yet still freeze our asses off whilst wearing four (4) layers indoors, obama likes to keep it warm enough to sit around in his shirtsleeves in january:

Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He”s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama”s senior adviser, David Axelrod”

–nytimes.com

yet, a day or so earlier, he was admonishing the relatively southern city of washington, dc, because they don’t have enough snow shovels or mr. plows:

“My children’s school was canceled today,” Obama said, speaking to reporters before a meeting with business leaders. “Because of what? Some ice? . . . We’re going to have to apply some flinty Chicago toughness to this town.”

–washington post

despite obama’s strange ability to navigate blizzards with aplomb yet still be uncomfortable in a 64 degree room, and notwithstanding obama’s lack of ‘concern’ for either frugality or for the fate of those remaining polar bears perched on disappearing ice floes as the white house burns more than enough fuel, why can’t anyone determine where he is from – hawaii or illinois? i guess lincoln must have claimed to be from more than one state, too. meanwhile, jimmy carter was indisputably from georgia, and he installed solar panels on the white house.

“ATLANTA – Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss enlisted Sarah Palin to rally conservatives while Democratic challenger Jim Martin pushed to activate black voters, as they grappled for advantage in a Tuesday runoff that will shape Democrats’ hold on power in Washington.

Palin, the Alaska governor who was John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, was to arrive in Georgia for a private fundraiser Sunday night, followed by rallies across the state Monday.”

that’s excellent. even a fucking clown like sarah palin understands the importance of going down to georgia to support some cartoonish oaf from her party in his reelection bid. similarly, one would think that during the last four weeks, barack obama could have pulled himself away from disappointing his supporters for a few hours to go to hiram or macon and get some attention for jim martin. instead, he hasn’t done shit, and on the final day of the campaign, when palin will be spouting who knows what lies and getting saxby reelected, apparently obama will be throwing hillary’s state department coming out party and stroking off all of the pumas who feel he owns them payback.

but i’m sure obama is more broadly minded that we are; by letting saxby continue to hold georgia’s seat fits in with his rhetoric about ‘reaching across the aisle’ and ‘rewarding your rivals’ or whatever equivocating, pandering, douchebag nonsense defines ‘change’.

~ after the first ten (10) times we watched michael richards shouting racist epithets, we wondered how his episode would compare to mel gibson’s. we were curious about how differently the anti-defamation league responded to gibson and whoever would respond to richards; also, depending on the public response, we should see which is more accetable – condemnatoin of jews or that of blacks.

of course, they can’t be compared. michael richards is a former actor who few people can distinguish from one of his roles (‘kramer’); one could say that his career was already ruined, not for calling people at the laugh factory ‘nigger’, but by being so successful at being kramer that he could never work as anything else. mel gibson, on the other hand is not only still rich and powerful, but he actually goes out of his way to make blockbuster films out of his anti-semitic beliefs (‘the passion..’). one is a previously innocuous, potential ‘has-been’; the other is an actively working bigot, working on bigotry.

both made public apologies, or at least videotaped an ‘apology’, and claimed that they had fixed things behind the scenes. although, why does michael richards have to apologize for being a racist in a comedy club, but a passenger on a plane in minneapolis does not have to apologize to the six people whose days and travels were ruined becuase he/she does not want to fly on a plane with muslims? a passenger sees muslims on a plane, then slips a note to the stewardess for them to be removed and questioned by police. is the adl or is kramer going to speak about that?

does a jackass like that talk about it when he sees his friends? ‘guess what doods, there were some islamo-passengers on my plane. they scare me, so i had them removed.‘

he probably does, proudly.

~ when it comes to banning gay marriage:

“I don’t believe there’s any issue that’s more important than this one,” said Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican.

does this dipshit have an email address? he is from a state that was royally fucked in last year’s hurricane, and he can’t think of something ‘more important’ than his attempts to legislate against equal rights for all americans. i suspect that if they could get him on the phone, there are more than several people in southern louisiana who could give him some ideas of what is ‘important’ this year.

apparently there is a paucity of ideas in those there congress halls, for the right-wing fringe represented by Senator Brownback froths that men getting married “is harmful to the future of the republic”. the future of the republic! So that is what the Republicans want to protect the nation from; it isn’t as though we are enmeshed in an never-ending war against terrorists and freedom-haters – according to Republicans we needn’t worry about the record national debt, the cost in lives or money, the u.s. marines’ defiling of our national integrity in haditha, busted medicare, fuel costs, our rent going up $50 next month, or those hordes of immigrants we were being told to worry about just last week. in fact, the mere mention of outlawing gays has persuaded people to forget that the republican senate plans this week to repeal taxes on the wealthiest americans.

The only thing that is possibly crazier than Sam Brownback is the notion of Canadian terrorists storming parliament and cutting off heads.

~ after a memorial day cook-out with ‘radicals’ who think that the encroachment of tract homes into west philadelphia is a marvelous idea, we see in cnn [w] that susie briones, of the san joaquin valley is upset that her marine son had to see dead bodies:

“He had to carry that little girl’s body,” she said, “and her head was blown off and her brain splattered on his boots.”

that’s rough. that poor marine had his boots soiled. it sounds like he had it much harder than the little girl his buddies had just murdered. having to look at dead bodies must be a far more traumatic experience than actually being one of the civilian ‘bodies’ just killed by the marines.
anyway, since when are marines supposed to be ‘traumatized’ by dead bodies? aren’t the marines trained to make dead bodies out of people?

~ there must be something in the water, or they are still electing cowards to the united states senate:

“…you have no civil liberties if you are dead.” – Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KN)

is that supposed to scare us into allowing the NSA unfettered access into our homes and lives? try moving to west philadelphia, chickenshit. you can’t ride a trek across baltimore and 48th at 10pm if you’re dead.

~ we woke in new hampshire to the news that president bush’s approval rating has dropped to 29%. traveling to philadelphia, we listened to the news regarding usa today’s revelation that the NSA has been taking notes on every phone call made by americans—whom they talk to, when and for how long they call, where they are when they do so. as we waited for months to see bush’s rating drop into the twenties, we were, aside from our outrage at being spied upon, bemused that his rating should now lose the remaining 29 points in a matter of hours; it must become zero percent, for where would they find an american citizen who approved of having the gov’t monitor their conversations?

however, we were surprised, which itself is surprising, given the mental lethargy of our neighbors, when npr gleefully reported that over 2/3 of americans said that spying on them is acceptable. One can almost hear the self-righteous thugs proclaim, ‘if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide’ (if that principle were true, then the bush administration would not have killed the justice department investigation into the laws violated by the nsa’s original wiretapping), or the information is ‘just digits’. The purpose for warrants is not to impede the cops or to give comfort to terrorists; it is to put the burden upon the gov’t to prove that, when weighed against a potential crime, it is worth violating the rights of a particular suspect. the notion that every call made in america needs to be monitored by the gov’t – with or without a warrant, and in this case, without—demands that every call is suspicious and, by extension—no pun intended—every american is a suspect.

~ trent lott, referring to those of us who insist that our privacy, not to mention the constitution, be respected spouts, “Do we want security … or do we want to get in a twit about our civil libertarian rights?” By portraying us as a bunch of whiners, reducing our concerns about constitutional violations to being something silly like a ‘twit’, Lott is trying to embarrass us or make put us on the defensive, when, if anyone should feel like coward it is Lott—and anyone else who is frightened into allowing any restraint on our rights or invasion into privacy by the gov’t. If Patrick Henry had been half the pussy that Trent Lott is, we would still be drinking tea and/or chicory. Fact.

also the aforementioned ‘fact’ that a majority of americans agree that gov’t monitoring of their lives is ‘okay’ seems to be exaggerated:

‘A majority of Americans disapprove of a massive pentagon database containing the records of billions of phone calls made by ordinary citizens” –usa today

~ it isn’t our concern that a 55 year old is looking to pick up 14 year old girls for sex; there are prisons and inmates with a sense of certain duties to take care of that. what is our concern is that someone who works for the department of homeland security is so lacking in the skills to maintain a fraudulent identity online. does the dhs not have classes on altering your images in photoshop, staging camera angles, pulling phony images (of someone more attractive) from home galleries, setting up accounts at hotmail, configuring the switchproxy extension, and, for fuck’s sake, not telling a girl whom you are seducing that you are really 55 years old? how are we supposed to remain safe from the terrorists?

~ has anyone noticed that we have been converting the log archives from 2000 to 2003 from static to dynamic pages? once completed, it will remain as easy to overlook the earlier entries as it is currently.