Category: Metablogs

Okay, I can admit when I’m wrong. Janet Jackson’s apparent pastie was, in fact, a giant piece of jewelry that fit around her nipple. Well. Ignore most of what I said, then, because it really is the end of civilization.

And, so far, no heads have rolled in the Plame case. This is okay. A grand jury is looking to indict, and I think out of my three predictions, Cheney will still be off the ticket before November. I was hoping for more. I mean, Karl Rove has got to go, and I thought Condi Rice was going to take a fall. Alas. I’ll have to be satisfied with Bush’s continually falling poll numbers.

Speaking of idiots, I created my first Garage Band masterpiece. (Hey! I just insulted myself!) It’s called, wait for it…, “The Idiot (Peeance Freeance).” It has a couple of samples of Bushpeak. These were found on DubyaSpeak.com. My thanks to them, and Apple. Every instrument was found as a loop. It took no skill whatsoever to create. When I eventually attach a keyboard and learn to play guitar, the possibilities will be boundless. Much fun.

Anyway, here is “The Idiot (Peeance Freeance)” in all its amateurish glory. The MP3 is around 2 MB, so if you’re still on dial-up, it will not be worth it to download. Wait for the remix by The Dust Brothers.

If you’re an obsessed liberal like me, you’re already up on the BIG news within the lefty-blogosphere, but for the rest, I have a couple of predictions to make:

• Cheney is off the Bush ticket in 04, citing health concerns, of course.
• Condi Rice is out, um, let’s say by next January. This will be a “need rest and relaxation” resignation, but we’ll know that’s not true.
• Karl Rove is brought before Congress, possibly brought up on charges, but definitely cannot help the reelection campaign for Georgie-boy next year.

And here is why: There is a story that you probably haven’t heard much about yet, unless you read the Washington Post (requires a simple, one-time registration). The long and short of it is two people in the White House exposed the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson as an undercover operative for the CIA. Last July, these two shopped around a story about Wilson’s wife to at least six reporters before they got Robert Novak to break the story.

Joseph Wilson, for those who may not recognize the name, went to Niger last year to find out information on the supposed sale of Yellowcake Uranium from Niger to Iraq. The documents Wilson was given were poor forgeries and fakes; there was no sale. Wilson let the Administration back in Washington know this, but the Bushies still felt it would sound good in the State of the Union Address, last January. These are the infamous “sixteen words.” Wilson, sick of hearing the faked documents used as proof of Saddam’s WMD program, told the press in July his findings.

A week later, Novak runs with the story about Wilson’s wife. It was pure revenge from the White House, trying to send a chilling-effect to anyone else who may have the bright idea of exposing the Adminstration’s lies. And it was also highly illegal, a felony that can cost $50,000 in fines and 10 years in prison.

Boys and girls, this is it. This is the big one. This is going to shake up the Bush White House like only one other event in recent history. I’ll leave it up to you to guess which Nixon scandal I am comparing this to.

For MUCH MUCH more coverage of this, read the above linked article in the Washington Post, this article from the Nation (from July when the story was new), and check out ongoing blog coverage from Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, including an interview with Wilson, and Atrios.

There have been a thousand cuts that should have had this Administration bleeding to death and on life-support, but this one has the CIA looking for an arrest from the Justice Department. This cut may have hit an artery.

Edited: Wilson went to Niger not Iraq… duh.

Excuses, excuses. What can explain the gaps in posting?

1. My hosting company went out of business.
   I’ve been threatening to write about this for sometime now, but Nobody of Nowheresville does a better job of it, and, while our stories are not identical, his is much more interesting. It took a bit of time to get everything right again, in my case, and Optimum Online, despite other assurances, took nearly forever to propagate my new DNS info, and since I use Optimum Online for my Internet connection, I couldn’t see my own site for about two weeks.

2. My computer died.
   And kept dying. I’ve got one of the most advanced operating systems ever, according to the marketing department, so I was a bit concerned that my computer would just constantly freeze, seemingly randomly, and would be very difficult to restart. It took me, a semi-decent tech guy, a week to diagnose the problem, which turned out to be the… mouse.

   Yeah, once I disconnected my mouse and popped on my old Apple one-button, the machine worked fine. Oh, well, goodbye, Kensington; hello, Logitech.

3. My S finger is broken.
   S finger? Yes, my left ring finger that types the S and the W and the X while I touch type. But it isn’t really broken, just the nail. In a two day period of self-immolation, I ripped half the fingernail off and electrocuted my left hand. Dammit! I’m just so tired of that left hand!

   No. Not really. I’m just extraordinarily clumsy. But the short of it is that I had a wad of bandages on my left ring finger that made me type dsort odf likwe thias as I mashed the enormous digit into the keys. The bandage is off right now, so I can no longer use that as an excuse, but maybe if I pretend the electrocution did nerve damage to my hand I can still claim that I can’t type correctly, because,

4. I’m really lazy.

Okay, I admit it. I am only putting this in my blog so it will get noticed by the search engines quicker. But, I’ll at least put the keywords into a relatively readable paragraph:

I voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election. Many people blame Ralph Nader for throwing the election from Albert Gore to George W. Bush. And yet, as an unabashed Green, I think that Al Gore did win the election of 2000, and with the 2 million plus votes for a progressive Green candidate, Ralph Nader, a majority of voting Americans would have rather seen anyone else in office besides George W. Bush. But since Democrats would rather blame people like me, rather than try to get us back into the Democratic fold (Go Dean in ’04!), we’re held as the scapegoats for the loss of Albert Gore in the 2000 elections.

Phew! That was redundant, wasn’t it?

Anyway, the above bumper sticker is really for sale at CafePress. If you voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, and want to thumb your nose at everyone else in the country, (and who wouldn’t right now?) then buy this, and put it on your rear. Um, rear bumper.

Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief comes out today (10 June 03). So does Steely Dan’s Everything Must Go. Something very negative about those two titles. Bet the albums will be great. (I already know the Radiohead album is great, since I listened to most of it already—although, I was very drunk at the time. I almost wrote a very incoherent blog entry about it, but passed out before I could click the save button.)

In other entertainment news, Mr. Show’s third season will be out in August, along with The Simpsons’ season three. Looks like I know what I’m getting for my birthday. Ah, thank the gods for the high arts.

Lessee, what else? Gosh, it’s been a while since I’ve been here. So I guess some entries this week will deal with my previous hosting company’s demise. I’d like to comment on some comments made in various places on the ’Net. And I’d like to return to blogging in general. Well, we’ll see, won’t we? The proof will be in the blog pudding.

Going to Boston for an extended weekend, tonight. Going to try to file an audio blog on Saturday using Audblog from my cell phone. Is that neat, or what?
Won’t find out if it was successful until Monday. Won’t even know if my site is up, since my hosting company looks like it is going out of business.
Will stop writing sentences without a proper subject noun.

Sigh…

A few other blog articles that I found interesting during these interesting times:

Spinsanty has a helpful primer on Iraq and our reasons for going to war. It is, I’m sure, important to realize that almost every reason that the administration gave for this war has been misdirection or an outright lie. Via name of blog.

The shocking, awesome Coalition of the Willing roll call is highlighted at Pandagon.

Notes on the Atrocitieswrites a thoughtful piece on American nationalism that points out correctly that the odd, idiosyncratic thought of 40 years ago is as quaint to us now as our thoughts will be to our country in the future.

Soundbitten gives us a bit of historical perspective.

And finally, TalkLeft points out the round up of Iraqi nationals on American soil. Via Atrios.

Dear God, it’s nice to know I’m not alone. I’d like to add two more pedantic points to an otherwise complete and fantastically nit-picky article:

1. Years are not possessive of anything so, when referencing a decade just put the plural s, not possessive apostrophe-s, e.g., the 1960s.
2. Names that end with an s get an apostrophe-s if the possessor is singular, e.g., Jack Davis’s car. If the possessors are plural, you just add the apostrophe, e.g., The Davis’ home.

It sure isn’t easy to be so uselessly burdened with knowledge of the rapidly decaying art of English syntax.