What's Wrong With America: Military Industrial Complex

There is a vast (yet loose) conspiracy that sucks our tax money into a void of unaccountability. How is it that we spend more than half of our nation's tax revenues for the mechanics of war... or worse?

Halliburton Works For Al Qaeda?

Click on the cartoon to see full scale.

A 24-year-old staff sergeant was electrocuted when he took a shower at a US Army base in Iraq.

He wasn't the first. At least 12 soldiers and marines have been electrocuted by shoddy wiring and construction at US bases built by Halliburton.

No one is that inept. Halliburton is obviously working for Al Qaeda.

The streets of Baghdad are safe. Combat has ceased. Yet our troops continue to die.

But now is no time to go wobbly. If we pull out now, all the sacrifice will have been in vain!

...and Dick Cheney's trust fund has another massive check deposited into it.

4000? Crap!

Iraq War Memorial Planners Forced To Revise Length Again

WASHINGTON—In the wake of the 4,000th U.S. military death in Iraq, the American Battle Monuments Commission announced Monday that, for the fifth time in the last 12 months, it will resume construction on the poignant final tribute to the brave men and women who continue to give their lives in the Iraq War.

Polls

For years now I've been hearing the Nazis... oh sorry, I mean Republicans claim their enemies are "reacting to polls" and that their enemies' opinions change "at the whim of the polls." At what point does consistency stop being whimsy? At what point do the desires of the governed supercede those of the rulers? I thought this country was a representative government, not a Republican Party government. We're five years into a stupid, illegal, and immoral war that many of us have been against since the beginning. Am I reacting to a poll? Is my opinion a whimsy? In this NPR report* a Nazi... sorry, Republican accuses those that want to bring some sense of sanity and humanity to troop rotations of changing troop rotations based on polls. Those against the war and it's abuse of our military personnel have been trying to reduce the amount of time our troops spend in theater for, what, four years or more? How is this "reacting to polls" as opposed to being consistent?

As soon as I can listen back to this report and find out who the Nazi... gosh! I keep calling those people what they are instead of what they call themselves... was I'm going to add him to my list of people whose face I will spit into at the first opportunity.

*audio not yet available as of this posting but should be there in about an hour.

Endless War... for Six More Months...

Figments (Doonesbury)

Click on the cartoon to see it full sized.

Even Raging Madmen Occasionally Make Sense

Art, Nuisance, or DANGER?

You would think that driving an artcar would make you a police magnet, but in my experience and in the experience of almost everyone I've talked to, police won't hassle you just because they feel like, unlike being a black male in a car with big wheels. In Louisville a missing taillight on one of those will get you pulled over by two or more cop cars and a dog will run back and forth over your custom seats while you sit on your hands on the sidewalk. I've seen it happen several times. I've had a few cops ask me questions about my old truck that sported a voodoo theme, but only out of curiosity, and none have done more than give a questioning look at my car. I guess maybe since we're so aware of our extra lights, etc. we go to great lengths to make sure we're also legal.

But in the city of Austin, Texas, a pair of restaurants is up against the LAW for using artcars for planters in front of their shops. They demolished an old car and then had it painted by local artists. They filled it with dirt and planted cactus in it.



I had always thought of Austin as particularly progressive but apparently they have some politicians with sticks up their asses there as well. The restaurants have been repeatedly ticketed for violating a junked car statute. It has worked its way up the courts and is being fought on a First Amendment basis. Good luck to them!

Rammed Earth Construction

I seem to be on a bit of an alternative construction binge tonight so if you don't care, I apologize. No, wait. If you don't care, fuck you. Yeah, that's much better.

Rammed Earth Construction uses dirt that has been compressed in a form. Dirt. That stuff's pretty cheap, last I heard. I think the resulting walls are beautiful. Decide for yourself here by looking at the pictures here. And just to make sure, here's a picture from somewhere on the internets.

Bail Construction with Garbage

Straw bail construction is an environmentally friendly way to build, it gives an incredibly well insulated, quiet house, and the results are really very pretty. Below is a "how to" video on straw bail construction.

Years ago I stumbled onto a really nice site that was part of a university's architecture program (I have looked for it many times since and it was obviously taken down). They were using these huge bails of cardboard waste from a factory. They even wrapped them in plastic and used them for the foundation! The resulting dorm cottages were quite nice to look at, the bails turned out to be pretty much fireproof (the outside would light, smolder, and extinguish), and with extremely wide eaves on the roof, water intrusion was no problem. So why don't you see more of these? Wax and plastic coated cardboard goes into the landfill because it cannot easily be recycled and if this were bailed and used in construction it would save us a great deal of room in our dumps, it would save us trees, and it would save us in heating and cooling costs. Oh, that's why. It might mean slighter profits for the timber industry. I forget who pays for our laws to be written.

Garbage and America

I've heard of many ridiculous barriers to using alternative building methods in this country and here's a guy that's fighting it.

Jay Leno

I used to watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and I was a fairly religious watcher of Late Night with David Letterman. When Jay Leno took the reins instead of Letterman, I was appalled. Apparently my... uh... appallment? wasn't unfounded. I would appear he has pissed a bunch of people off by hounding a guest (who threatened to leave) to show him his "best gay look." Well, a website has decided to let people do just that:





They're at nine pages and counting. These are a couple from the first, very long page.

McCain/Lieberman

Boy if this doesn't say it all. Did I mention I'm betting McCain takes Lieberman for a running mate?

Typical Bush Administration Behavior

"Deregulate! Deregulate!" come the cries from the right. In their opinion regulation stifles business and the ability of business to make giant profits. Under this administration deregulation has been undertaken from the executive rather than by the legislature. By violating laws, defunding regulatory agencies, or installing toadies that will suck the cock of any business leader they should be regulating, these criminals have worked against the interests of the majority to enrich their crooked, wealthy buddies.

The Huffington Post has posted this article about this administration's corruption. Harper's Magazine printed a very disturbing piece on the Attorney firings that really churned my stomach. But what made me want to point this out was a piece on NPR this morning about the corruption at the FAA concerning Southwest Airlines aircraft inspections. Apparently it's so bad that many of the 737's that were contemporaries of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 are still flying and have not been properly inspected.

In March 2007, the airline reported to the FAA that it had not done the required fuselage inspections on 47 jets. The checks are crucial because some versions of the Boeing 737 are vulnerable to cracks just above and below the windows. In 1988, an Aloha Airlines 737 decompressed and blew out 18 feet of its roof, killing a flight attendant. Instead of grounding the 47 aircraft and inspecting them, Southwest quietly continued to fly the jets. Gawadzinski, who was aware of Southwest's alleged deception, is accused of helping the airline cover it up.

How much you wanna bet that those responsible will simply resign and move on to other shockingly overpaid positions elsewhere? At this point I wonder if there is a single regulatory agency that hasn't either been corrupted or eliminated via budget.

UPDATE: Goshes I forgot to mention the most recent This American Life which was dedicated entirely to the Bush administration's bullheaded refusal to do anything without a legal battle. Really amazing stuff. What's more amazing is our "representative government" doesn't have the balls to put these sorry bastards in prison.

Four Seater

"W" Loudly Booed by Baseball Fans

Funny how a crowd of true Americans that hasn't been carefully screened to eliminate those that disagree with Shrub (aka George W. Bush) sounds just exactly like most of us feel. Over 40,000 baseball fans loudly booed the "President." He deserves worse than boos.