random quotes ... to amuse, inspire, enrage:
  If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

tagged: failure, humor
  — bumper sticker

escapist reading about our “leaders”

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

an upsetting day. so, reading the news.
Farewell to the crown, farewell, the velvet gown, won’t you all come tumbling down? Goodbye to the crown! (Chumbawamba, “Farewell to the Crown”)
Nepal votes out their monarchy and institutes a republic. Gyanendra has to vacate the palace within two weeks or face eviction. Also, he had to [...]

bushwreck

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

an article about another bushwreck: how bush wrecked conservatism
and the ongoing bushwreck of the US government’s trustworthiness as a source of information, and its government policy on the environment, all in one: Washington Post on the bowdlerization of a speech about global climate change, transforming it, basically, into “yaay for the public health benefits of [...]

Requiem for habeas corpus

Monday, October 30th, 2006

Sometimes one despairs and relies on others to speak truth to power. Many have done so with respect to with respect to the “Military Commissions Act of 2006″, but Kent Keith Olbermann’s was particularly eloquent.
update: Ahem. Apparently that’s Keith Olbermann, and Kent Brockman. Another sign of aging, because I would never ordinarily confuse [...]

some off-the-cuff remarks on the Bush Admin’s nominations

Monday, October 31st, 2005

I know other folks have observed this, but, really, isn’t it completely clear that Bush has implemented a religious test for office? Isn’t his pattern of practice completely obvious? Not just in his three Supreme Court nominees, but lower court nominees and executive appointments have all been filled with conservative Christians. Seriously, [...]

jonathan kozol on education & no child left behind

Sunday, September 4th, 2005

DS: You also suggest that our current system of locally financed schools be abolished, claiming that it perpetuates inequality by allowing suburbs like Scarsdale or Manhasset to spend twice as much on each student as less affluent cities do.
JK: Schooling should not be left to the whim or wealth of village elders. I believe that [...]

yet more quotes & comments

Friday, August 19th, 2005

some links, some quotes, some comments, all in one … I pulled various of these articles up several hours ago from various blogs, which I would like to link back to, but windows got closed, systems got rebooted, and to make a long story short I no longer know which link came from where. [...]

new yorker on bush on science

Monday, August 15th, 2005

In The New Yorker, The Talk of the Town, posted 2005/8/15, Hendrik Hertzberg had this to say about Bush & his recent comments on intelligent design:
If the President’s musings on [intelligent design] were an isolated crotchet, they would hardly be worth noting, let alone getting exercised about. But they’re not. They reflect an attitude toward [...]

the protocols were followed

Saturday, May 14th, 2005

in the recent governmental panic attack about the cessna, White House Spokesperson Scott McClellan says that there was no need to notify Bush because “the protocols were followed”.
so … we get a glimpse into the fact that we don’t actually have a Glorious Leader. and it turns out that we don’t actually need a Glorious [...]

words sometimes fail

Saturday, May 7th, 2005

Army Pfc. Lynndie England cnn 5/2:
“I had a choice, but I chose to do what my friends wanted me to,” she said. … “They did it for their own amusement.”
Abu Ghraib was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of US human rights abuses. Investigations of numerous deaths while in US custody in [...]

judy bachrach excoriates bush & ‘prayer service’

Friday, January 21st, 2005

quick reference: Judy Bachrach takes out Bush / Prayer Services [Fair And Balanced | Oliver Willis]

monster slash

Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

No, it’s not fanfic about Bigfoot & Yeti, together at last. Bobby “Boris” Pickett remakes “Monster Mash” to point out Bush’s slash & burn environmental policies. See monsterslash.org
Lyrics:

We were hiking in the forest late one night
When our eyes beheld an eerie sight
Our president appeared and began to frown
Then he and his friends [...]

looking around, groundhoglike

Monday, November 8th, 2004

Well, I’m starting to look around, groundhog-like. It looks like four more years of winter.
Small mercies: Thank the dark lords that Shrillblog keens on. After scraping the residue of election obsession from my life, I found all I had left were Jon Stewart & Shrillblog. And my Buffy DVDs.

bush loyalty oaths

Saturday, October 30th, 2004

good postings on the bush loyalty oaths:

Whiskey Bar: The Future Belongs to Me

bush campaign trips IP rights again

Friday, October 29th, 2004

the bush campaign dropped the song “Still the One” after the songwriter protested & said the campaign hadn’t asked his permission. [y!]
ha. this follows the olympics brouhaha. [athens olympics blog 8/26] [ZNet Blogs 8/26]

who knew? bush is really a horror movie character. or two.

Thursday, October 28th, 2004

[T]those of us who argued that there was really no difference between Bush and Gore look pretty stupid now. None of that reflects especially well on Al Gore, by the way; it simply wasn’t evident at that early date that the then-Texas governor was the real-world version of Greg Stillson, the born-again, world-destroying future president [...]

a history of the bush website

Wednesday, October 27th, 2004

georgewbush.com: one website’s story

1999-may-21, the bush campaign thinks “[t]here ought to be limits to freedom” (at least for website satirists gwbush.com) [but see georgewbush.org which bravely soldiers on]
in 2004, the bush website looks like it was designed of, by & for microsoft products
in 2004, the bush website put up the popular but short-lived bush-cheney sign [...]

disappeared information

Wednesday, October 27th, 2004

bradblog chronicles the disappearance of info from the Bush administration websites
chomsky reminds us of the reagan administration destruction of documents
democratic underground.com covered the replacement of the National Archivist with a partisan hack [2004-05-05] — just in time to cover the release of the Bush I records! How con-veeeenient.

The Gadflyer: Believe

Tuesday, October 26th, 2004

another one for the scrapbook: Thomas F. Schaller, The Gadflyer: Believe

“Bush’s Big Joke: A Video of Atrocities”

Thursday, October 21st, 2004

“Bush’s Big Joke” — A Video of Atrocities - A BuzzFlash Reader Contribution

hannah arendt & bush

Monday, October 18th, 2004

do people ever quote hannah arendt when they are not making profound & deep observations? salon.com’s war room blog has these additional comments regarding the ron suskind nyt magazine piece on bush & the faith-based administration: