Much more

eloquent that I could ever hope to be.

'Beginning of the End of America'

And kind of scary when you think too much about it.

One of the criteria I was using to judge the effect of these various measures the administration was putting in place to deal with "terrorist" was to consider what I might be able to do if they picked me up mistakenly on these kind of charges.

Could "they" use this law against me?
Or any other American Citizen?
Or even a citizen of some other country?
Could it happen to the people who voted for this law?
Or wrote this law?
Could I do anything about it if it happened?

And with the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the right to torture information from me and the elimination of my right to see all the evidence against me there is simply nothing I could do about it but hope I survive.

Except that I could be held indefinitely.
Without being charged.
Without being given access to an attorney.
Without the right to sue the people who did this to me.

And they scoff at me when I called it the "Torture Bill" ...

Not sharing

Man I don't know what the president is smoking but he's not sharing it with the rest of us.

New US policy to interdict use of space

Now he seems to think he owns space and no one else can use it.

I found this after the How Stuff Works site I go to asked if the US should defend space by itself. That reminded me of an article that came up in news sources on Wednesday about some crazy crap the president did. I couldn't find it in my google search "defend outer space" but when I went back to the stuff site and found the cause, our new National Space Policy, that lead me to a new search,

National Space Policy

The first one on that list was the Taipei article. Looking it over, however, I see no other major US news sources have high ranked articles on the issue. So we're ignoring the fact that the president believes he has the right to weaponize space and attack other people's space based assets and efforts.

Such hubris is surely doomed. Surely.

Now this one

isn't odd. It just pisses me off.

Breast Cancer is Sexy, or Pink Ribbons, Advertising, Class, and Race

But it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. We need to keep clearly in mind what Corporate America is after, our money, and they could give a sh!t about anything else.

"... a much easier fear to exploit ..."

An open letter to Yoplait yogurt

And what about, as Suzanne points out, the other leading causes of death among women? Did anyone else know that men can get breast cancer too? And that they're almost more likely to die from it than rich white women (but much less likely than poor black women).

---

Let's just have a total day then,

Some dare call it femicide

The idea that the tragedy in the schoolhouse in Pennsylvania was a tragedy not because they were girls being killed but because they were Amish.

And that these anti-abortion freaks are part of the "family oriented" "good christian" "people" who value life.

In a sad sick way it reminds me of something I made up when I was in high school to be outrageously facetious, I said

"I'm going to make this world a better place if I have to kill every man, woman and child to do it!"

It's not so funny when you think that someone out there may actually think this way.
Totally not funny.

---

Not *quite* so depressing,

Go register to vote, you sexy thing, you

But I wouldn't just say this to women, but to everyone. I may not agree with your politics but you have an obligation to provide your input to the system. And if you sit at home saying "but my vote won't matter" then I say that you have no right to bitch about things for the next stretch. Dipshit.

So go register!

A NEW EXCITING snack food

I'm guessing that's what it is.

But now we're apparently out of something called "popcom".

Don't be

what you hate.

Yesterday started off okay. Not too sore from karate on Saturday. Matt was up and doing his chores. Got my laundry started and it was going (his goes on Saturday usually). Went to the store to get some things I needed, some groceries and some stuff. Decided to go to the big wal mart to get both at once (needed a web cam to test out the Jeff-gaming-from-Hawaii thing).

Got everything plus a few things I forgot and was waiting in line at the self-serve checkout. Saw one open lane next to it. Apparently it had a "cash only" sign which I failed to see. However I didn't find that out until I had scanned all the stuff. And two seconds after I got there and started some bozo came up behind me and put all his stuff on the little metal shelf right next to me (while I pulled my stuff out of the cart). It struck me as a bit rude but I had work to do so I didn't pay it much attention.

Got it all scanned and then went to pay and pulled out the debit card. I didn't hear him get all huffy until I was at the checkout terminal. He loudly (and rudely) pointed out it was a cash only lane and pulled the sign off to show me. I raised my hand to get the attention of the attendant but he waved the sign in the air and hollared. She came over after fixing something else for someone and got it transferred to her checkout and I paid.

It was (of course) a bit humiliating since I often pride myself on paying attention to detail, to what's going on around me. But as I walked out to the car and decided that perhaps I should have gotten in that guys face and pointed out how much of a rude, abusive jerk he was being, I realized that I was him.

I can't count the number of times I've been in line behind someone who doesn't know how to work whatever in front of me. How to scan their credit/debit card into the little scanner. Or is writing a check as slowly as molassas. Or is somehow being a detriment to my getting out of this big group of people and on my way. Now I have never been rude or verbally abusive to these people in line in front of me but I have made use of the "heavy sigh" and I don't doubt that the annoyance has exuded from me in palpable waves as I stand there behind them not-so-patiently waiting my turn.

So I decided that I must not be that guy. While life is, indeed, to short to spend it all waiting in line, being unhappy about it can only make it worse. Making other people unhappy about it is bad karma.

---

And on a totally different note, read

The Secret Letter From Iraq

and ponder on some of the things this marine has seen.

---

Oh, and I bought some blearb at the store, only to discover that I had an extra bottle in the garage and Matt didn't know to look. So now we have a whole lot of blearb in the house (just in case you need to borrow some).

We need what?

Matt's gotten good lately about writing down on our "shopping list board" the things he uses up so that I'll know to pick up more. However his handwriting could use some work.

Yesterday we apparently ran out of something called "Blearb".

I thought he'd been watching too much Futurama.