No

SUNDAY 09.19.04 / 9:48 AM / LINK

So you wanna privatize Social Security?

A little tidbit here at Kellysite about enronizing your retirement investments.

From The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2004:

"Most of all, the discrepancy between the performance of the fund and the stocks it touts shows that investors don't always get what they think they're buying in a mutual fund. For even though Value Line's success is built around stocks ranked No. 1 by the company's research arm, the fund's managers have in recent years dipped into stocks rated as low as No. 3…. "

Kelly's comment:

"So, when individuals place their Social Security funds in a losing mutual fund—who bails out the hapless ones who lose their retirement? Of course, who cares? That’s the Republican way. It’s everyone for himself—but especially, it’s everyone for the benefit of the securities industry."

Winning Stock Pickers Losing Fund

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09.19.04 / 9:28 AM / LINK

The Kennebunkport Sapranos?

The Bushes are getting their ducks in a row to trash the Kitty Kelly book about their exploits. Apparently Kelly makes it clear she does not think the family resembles the Waltons. She suggests they're closer to the Sapranos. We'll have to wait and read. The publication date is this Tuesday.

Check out the story here at the Guardian.


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09.19.04 / 9:04 AM / LINK

Truth banned (or at least beaten to within an inch of its life) by RNC

If West Virginians or the nation at large accepts this, there's literally no hope the system will survive. If we wind up with one party rule because the public swallows absolute garbage from the RNC we will have completely acquiesed to fraud and will deserve what our gullibility conceives. The injustice is, it's still a democracy so we all suffer from the choice of the connable.


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SATURDAY 09.18.04 / 1:34 PM / LINK

The U.S. must face the monster it created --Spc Richard Murphy

SPC Murphy was stationed in Iraq for 15 months, including several months as an MP (Military Police) at Abu Ghraib Prison.



CLICK PIC FOR MORE


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09.18.04 / 1:22 PM / LINK

Pitfalls of Know-It-All Authority



09.17.04 / 8:04 PM / LINK

A skater. A girlie-man scion of the elite. And now a president. Jeez.

What about Dan Rather? Is he guilty of something or what? The president is guilty of taking us to war under false pretenses, so who's setting the ground rules here?

At TPM Josh Marshall writes, "The word is now out that the CBS Bush National Guard memos are not (really) forgeries but rather recreations of actual documents authored by Lt. Col. Killian." Killian was Bush's commander at the time. But calling them "not forgeries" sounds like something the Republican spin machine might come up with.

Dan Rather stupidly published the memos without checking the copies out and now they've become objects of derision, which is apparently stupendous news. But even more stupendous is the news behind the stupid reporting: Killian's secretary, an 86-year-old citizen simply recalling her times serving under the Lt. Col., said the messages were obviously not printed on the right forms, but they contained the gist of what the thinking circulating around the National Guard offices was about the service of George Bush at the time.

What she's saying is that, despite whether or not the documents given to Dan rather were authentic, the truth of the moment was that George Bush was a skater. A girlie-man scion of the elite who was in a position to avoid the possibility of immanent death in Viet Nam. Is he still a skater? By all evidence he is to me, but these things mean so little to American's who prefer being lied to.

So the guy was a sleaze, so?... Should this influence my opinion about him now?


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09.17.04 / 7:3- PM / LINK

George Bush plagerized by Bob Dylan!

This song from Bob Dylan's Love and Theft is just a fantastic song, but I was saddened and perplexed to learn Dylan may have plagerized it from George Bush. CBS's Dan Rather recently claimed to have witnessed Bush jotting down some lyrics while humming a melody very much like Dylan's Mississippi. Noticing at one point the president wan't paying attention (which is pretty much all the time), Rather grabbed and copied the pages with his pocket facimile maker and we have them in our possession now at NoUtopia.

Bush's lyrics follow Dylan's version below.


Mississippi
Bob Dylan

Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin' up, we struggle and we scrape
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape

City's just a jungle, more games to play
Trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away
I was raised in the country, I been workin' in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

Got nothing for you, I had nothing before
Don't even have anything for myself anymore
Sky full of fire, pain pourin' down
Nothing you can sell me, I'll see you around

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime
Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well, the devil's in the alley, mule's in the stall
Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all
I was thinkin' about the things that Rosie said
I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie's bed

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees
So many things that we never will undo
I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too

Some people will offer you their hand and some won't
Last night I knew you, tonight I don't
I need somethin' strong to distract my mind
I'm gonna look at you 'til my eyes go blind

Well I got here following the southern star
I crossed that river just to be where you are
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast
I'm drownin' in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothin' but affection for all those who've sailed with me

Everybody movin' if they ain't already there
Everybody got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interesting right about now

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waitin' to be kind
So give me your hand and say you'll be mine

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long


Baghdad City
George Bush

Every step of the way troops walkin' the line
Their days are numbered, but not mine
Bodies pilin' up, they struggle and they scrape
They're all boxed in, nowhere to escape

Iraq's just a sandbox, more games to play
Trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away
I was raised in the country, I been screwin' up the town
I been in trouble ever since I sat my elite ass down

Got nothin' for you, I had nothin' before
I really had nothin' when I walked through the door
Sky full of fire, pain pourin' down
I can sell a rube anything, I can run this ship a-ground

All my powers of expression and thoughts so outa line
Will never win a grammy, 'cause I can't reason or rhyme
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Baghdad City a day too long

Well, the devil's in my party, bunch of fools in the stall
I say anything I wanna, I get away with it all
I was thinkin' about the things that Cheney said
I was dreaming I was sleeping in Cheney's bed

Walking through the leaves, bumpin' into trees
Feeling like a big man spreadin' discord and unease
So many things that we never will undo
I know you're sorry, but I'm not sorry too

Some people will offer you their hand, but I don't
Last night I screwed you, tonight I won't
I need somethin' strong to distract my mind
I'm gonna wear my pilot jumpsuit 'til its seams unwind

Well I got here following the southern star
I jumped into a nightmare (I never look ahead too far)
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Baghdad City a day too long

Well our ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast
We're drownin' in the poison 'cause I let polluters have a pass
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I spread nothin' but affliction to all who disagree with me

Everybody leavin', they wanna get out here
Everybody blowin' town to get elsewhere
But stick with me country, stick with me anyhow
Things are bound to get better right about now

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know the Lord is waitin' to be kind
I prayed to Karl --he said he'd always be mine

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
Maybe we can backtrack, maybe even backtrack all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Baghdad City a day too long

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WEDNESDAY 09.15.04 / 9:54 PM / LINK



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SUNDAY 09.12.04 / 1:22 PM / LINK

Just 1/59th of Viet Nam

Americans love round numbers. And now we've recently rounded up to 1000 the number of Americans made dead due to the war policies of the Bush administration. Most of these are the children of the poor and lower-middle class as opposed to those of politicians and other elite who may have "other priorities" and means.

One thousand is just 1/59th of Americans killed in Vietnam, but the war's still young. Viet Nam ran from the early to mid 60s until 1973 when we bolted the country after it became beyond dispute that we were running backwards through that jungle. That amounted to about eight years, and we've only been in Iraq for two, so there's plenty of time in Iraq to crank up the numbers. And there are so many more wars the administration wants to start So, if we're soothing ourselves by denying this is another Viet Nam, we run the risk of becoming too sanguine about these death counts (in both senses of the word).

Doesn't it break your heart to think that half of U.S. voters still support a man who started a war on bogus grounds, conducted the operation incompetently, uses it to maintain power by fueling his rhetoric with fear, then tells us God made him do it?

We are so ripe for these neo-fascists.


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09.12.04 / 11:25 AM / LINK

Free-Marketeers want to run a vote scam

Here's an excellent editorial from the NY Times addressing the electronic voting machine issue.

While some election officials -many of them tied financially to the manufacturers of voting machines- are saying paper backup records for these machines are impractical, opposition groups like Common Cause say that's not a good reason not to provide for the verification of the results of an event that is the basis of our entire system of government ...namely, voting. After all it's no less impractical that starting a war. And far less expensive.

The editorial reports, "At a hearing this spring, officials from Georgia, California and Texas dismissed concerns about electronic voting, and argued that voter-verifiable paper trails, which voters can check to ensure their vote was correctly recorded, are impractical. The Election Center, which does election training and policy work, and whose board is dominated by state and local election officials, says the real problem is people who 'scare voters and public officials with claims that the voting equipment and/or its software can be manipulated to change the outcome of elections.' "

Anyone who's ever had their computer brain-washed by a virus knows just how susceptible to tampering electronic brains can be. And anybody who wants to make it easier for vote tampering to be untraceable is well, anti-American. Although, if they're also public officials tied financially to corporations, that would make them at least traditional free-marketeers --and very practical ones at that. So, for those who've made it their life's work to play the system it's probably a wash.

More about electronic voting:

Black Box Voting

Bald-faced lies about black-box voting machines

Back door found in Diebold vote-counting program

Madame Butterfly's Absentee Ballots AWOL (Florida de ja vu)


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SATURDAY 09.11.04 / 1:27 PM / LINK

Nah, he meant just what he said

Is there anyone out there who believes this?

"U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney sought Thursday to 'clean up' a controversy he ignited this week, saying he does not believe that electing John Kerry president would mean the nation would be hit by another terrorist attack. "No matter who is president, the country is vulnerable to attack, he said in a newspaper interview."

Well, maybe about 45% of voters...

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09.11.04 / 12:48 PM / LINK

On good manners...

Speaking of polite (preceding post), will the Democrats stop being polite? Dick Cheney, is not polite. George Bush is not polite. Don Rumsfeld is not polite. The whole freakin pachyderm is not polite. Fact is, the politer John Kerry is, the behinder he falls. To use Republican rhetoric, you can't reason with thugs.

Put more edge on will youse guys!

Democrats don't have to be dirty, they just need to slug these no-tax-and-spend Republicans with the truth. Slug 'em hard relentlessly. Riducule them, because these war incompetents are emminently ridiculable for chrissake! (Excuse my French as my mother used to say)



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09.11.04 / 12:43 PM / LINK

Typology for Dummies

Re: the great typology debate about the latest Bush records to seep into the light of day --I ran across this post at Altercation and thought it useful info given the charges of "Forgery!" coming from where you'd you expect.

It's a reader's post and it goes like this:

Name: Connie Kreienheder
Hometown: St. Peters, MO

"I'm a regular reader and am grateful for the common sense (with sources) that I find in your column. With that said, I'm forwarding the following info because I know there are currently attempts to persuade the public that the 60 Minutes documents on Bush's "service" might be fake, so I've done a little research of my own and thought I'd pass along my findings. I don't know about these so-called typography experts, but they need to go back to school. They're out to lunch when they say the fonts in the documents weren't available in the early 70's.

"The first IBM Selectric typewriter came out over 40 years ago, in 1961 and used the interchangeable font "golfball" typing element, better known as a typeball. Additionally, the IBM Selectric "Composer" was a hybrid that came out in 1966 and had proportional spaced fonts. The IBM Selectric I and II had the following fonts available to these models:

"10-pitch type: Advocate, Bookface Academic 72, Delegate, Orator, Courier 72, Pica 72, Prestige Pica 72

"12-pitch type: Adjutant, Artisan 12, Courier 12 Italic, Scribe, Prestige Elite, Courier 12, Elite 72, Letter Gothic

"Special Type: Light Italic, Script, Printing ANSI-OCR, Symbol 10, 108 OCR, Manifold 72, Symbol 12

"Even if superscript had not been available under one of the special type font "golfball" elements, all a clever typist had to do was change the ball to a smaller pitch font, roll the carriage roller backward one half-line, hold it there and type the two letters, "th", to achieve the superscript "look," and there were many fussy officers who desired these things in their correspondence. I know this because I was a clerk-typist and secretary for the Federal Government Civil Service and U.S. Army command in St. Louis, MO in the early 1970's, and had to use these tools.

"So to those that say the fonts weren't available in the early seventies.......BALDERDASH!"

...which is a polite way of saying, "Bullshit."

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FRIDAY 09.10.04 / 6:59 AM / LINK

When life begins ... "Don't ask me." --Mr. Science

When life begins is a crucial issue in the debate over abortion, but if we're hoping to get objective answer to that question, forget about it because as writer Paul Bloom says, ".. it is not a question that scientists could ever answer."

I guess it'll have to be something to haunt political debate until Jesus returns. Unless Republicans remain in power, then there'll be no debate.


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09.10.04 / 6:45 AM / LINK

Fool me once, shame on - shame on you... fool me, I can't be fooled again... or something like that.
--paraphrase of a Bushism

The president has gotten his post-campaign bounce. Nine points by one poll. The conventional wisdom is that after watching a party convention and listening to what was said there, voters make choices about who they'll vote for. What I don't understand is why anyone would believe that what was said there will have anything to do with what will be done following the election? This, in itself, is reason to fear for the future of the Republic. It's not exactly hidden info that party conventions are nothing more than spin festivals.

My wonder only increases in the case of George Bush who went into the 2000 election a self proclaimed "uniter not a divider", a "compassionate conservative", and someone who was going to bring "honesty back into the White House". But he renegged on all counts.

In fact, in my case, there's nothing George Bush could ever say that would convince me I should believe anything he has to say. Not after four years of the Bush administration. I don't have the clinical credentials to call him a pathological liar, nor do I think it's that simple. It's more that he's become a pathological believer and missionary, and that anything he says in that capacity could never be a lie. He has the seed of most demagogues --he believes his own hype.

Paul Krugman covers a bit of this ground in his piece today in the NY Times.


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THURSDAY 09.09.04 / 7:00 AM / LINK

Using 9/11

Coming from an administration that gave Muslim and Arab terrorism a new cause to rally behind and a new place to rally in, claims that a vote for Kerry is a vote for terror is another new pinnacle of the disingenuous.

But that's Dick Cheney's latest line.

The New York Time comments here.


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George W. Bush plumbed the deepest place in himself, looking for a simple expression of what the assaults of September 11 required. It was his role to lead the nation, and the very world. The President, at a moment of crisis, defines the communal response. A few days after the assault, George W. Bush did this. Speaking spontaneously, without the aid of advisers or speechwriters, he put a word on the new American purpose that both shaped it and gave it meaning. 'This crusade,' he said, 'this war on terrorism.'

"Crusade. I remember a momentary feeling of vertigo at the President's use of that word, the outrageous ineptitude of it. The vertigo lifted, and what I felt then was fear, sensing not ineptitude but exactitude. My thoughts went to the elusive Osama bin Laden, how pleased he must have been, Bush already reading from his script. I am a Roman Catholic with a feeling for history, and strong regrets, therefore, over what went wrong in my own tradition once the Crusades were launched. Contrary to schoolboy romances, Hollywood fantasies and the nostalgia of royalty, the Crusades were a set of world-historic crimes. I hear the word with a third ear, alert to its dangers, and I see through its legends to its warnings. For example, in Iraq 'insurgents' have lately shocked the world by decapitating hostages, turning the most taboo of acts into a military tactic. But a thousand years ago, Latin crusaders used the severed heads of Muslim fighters as missiles, catapulting them over the fortified walls of cities under siege. Taboos fall in total war, whether crusade or jihad."


Read the whole article here or here.

And read a Crusade story here.


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09.04.04 / 12:18 PM / LINK

Keeping the law out of the hands of the people

Molly Ivins reports what she calls an "unnumbered weirdness by John Ashcroft". She says it's too hard to count them all.

"The Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office "to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the department has deemed 'not appropriate for external use.' Of the five publications, two are texts of federal laws. They are to be removed from libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library," according to the American Library Association. "All the documents concerned either federal civil or criminal forfeiture procedure, including how to reclaim items that have been confiscated by the government during an investigation."

Two texts of federal laws are not appropriate for "external use".

Federal laws!

Texts of Federal laws are not appropriate for citizens to have access to.

Let me say that one more time (and let me frame it for you to print out and hang on your refrigerator door):

John Ashcroft's "Justice" Department considers it inappropriate for outsiders (citizens) to have access to the text of federal laws.

See the ghost of Lenin smile.


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09.04.04 / 9:37 AM / LINK

One Black View of the Evil Elephant

Especially after the 2000 election attack by Florida Republican's on the voting rights of blacks, seeing dark complexions supporting the president at the convention was a curious thing. But I guess it's no more curious than blue collar voters backing the BS of the administration while its policies continue to batter the working class' immediate economic prospects and long term future (see sidebar left).

August Census Bureau announcement: Poverty up by 1.3 million Uninsured up by 1.4 million Median income stagnant 12.9 million kids in poverty Meanwhile George W. Bush's top donor deliveries: Pioneers ($100,000) Rangers ($200,000) Campaign tot: $76.5 million According to Texans for Public Justice: 69 % of the 544 elite donors are CEOs and business executives & 17% percent are lobbyists.

Here's one report on the situation from The Black Commentator. What Black Commentator says is, "The sham of GOP Black voter outreach is over and the true Republican mission has begun: suppress the African American vote, by any means possible." That black voter disenfranchisement was so blatant and successful in Florida in 2000 (and substantially unchallenged) makes any black support of George Bush all the more mysterious. Maybe there really is a Dark Lord or a Wizard of Odd casting spells and blowing smoke for the Evil Elephant --the One-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named that Karl Rove sold he soul to.

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