NARM!!!

For those of you that don't know of what I exclaim, here is a little refresher! Oh, and you may not want to read ahead if you haven't seen this weeks episode where Nate finally bites it...Ohhh, sorry. Did I spoil that for you?

If you have been paying attention you know that I hate the character Nate on Six Feet Under. Well maybe not, it's really been more of a quiet seething. I hate his constant hangdog, passive-aggressive, incessant whining.

Sure the guy hasn't caught a break in 5 seasons. His wife, who he never really wanted to marry in the first place, gets killed by her lover who happens to also be her brother-in-law. Sure he spent a couple of seasons recovering from a massive aneurysm. I'll even grant him his fracked-up relationship with the lovely Rachel Griffiths. Crazy is contagious and she is Typhoid Brenda.

We've all had our share of psycho relationships. But the rule of three (sane, sexy or smart...pick any two) dictates that they must have ridiculous sex. And if you have been watching you know that's the case. So you'd think that after a good schtupping the guy would be happy. But you'd be wrong.

I understand he's had it rough but he never smiles. What is the deal. He's got a cute little daughter. You'd think that he wouldn't be so mopey around her. The guy never shakes off his doldrums.

For crying out loud, his Brother, David is beaten to within an inch of his life and he still has managed to find joy. Claire shacked up with the literally off-his-meds crazy Billy and she eventually found a nice guy who really cares for her. Even simp Rico finally managed to get through the, figuratively speaking, razor blades his wife Vanessa keeps in her vagina to slice off his manhood.

But our boy Nate can't be helped. When he finally meets his ideal mate, the equally morose Maggie, Nate isn't happy. All he can muster is a "this wasn't planned." The guy just shags his soul mate for the first time and that's the best he can do? He doesn't deserve to live.

All I have to say to Nate is I'm glad you're finally dead.

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Currently I'm listening to So Cruel from the album "Achtung Baby" by U2

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Another new obsession

Here you go

Woot! is cool. Woot! is simple. Woot! is fun.

Woot! does one thing and one thing only. Woot! finds a great product on deep discount and sells it for 24 hours. That's it. After 24 hours they have moved on to the next product.

An amazing recent example is this home entertainment system for $129.00 + S&H

Check Woot! out.

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My New Obsession

Check this out

You may be wondering what this is all about. LiveJournal is a blogging tool/community. Very similar to Blogger, the tool/community that I use to create my blogs. Are there differences? Some. But that is a different question.

My new obsession is a script that someone wrote that gathers the 40 most recent pictures posted to LJ. It's simple yet intriguing. Be careful or you'll break the refresh button on your browser.

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Currently I'm listening to Terrorism, Shoot-to-Kill and America's Local Police from the PodCast "KCRW's To the Point" with Warren Olney

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Bringing Respect and Dignity to White House

President...shudder...Bush continues to make America proud.

In this clip Bush flips the bird to the White House press corps. This is, according to Jay Leno, unaltered footage.

of course this isn't the first time that Dumya has flipped the bird. This isn't the first time I've written about Dimya flipping the bird.

Sadly, I'm certain that it won't be the last either.

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Currently I'm listening to Sweet Dreams from the album "Billboard Top 100 of 1983" by Eurythmics

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Conclusive evidence that Rove broke the rules and maybe the law

Let me start with the incontrovertible evidence that Rove broke the rules, his word and his non-disclosure agreement with the United States of America.

Government employees take oaths and have to sign multitudes of documents prior to starting their jobs. Among them is an NDA agreement. This gov't NDA here is just a generic one. I'm sure that a high level guy like turdblossom has to sign even tighter agreements.

However there is a specific codicil in the agreement that makes it abundently clear that Rove broke the agreement. Section 3 of the document states:

"I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of classified information by me could cause damage or irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation. I hereby agree that I will never divulge classified information to anyone..... I understand that if I am uncertain about the classification status of information, I am required to confirm from an authorized official that the information is unclassified before I may disclose it..... I further understand that I am obligated to comply with laws and regulations that prohibit the unauthorized disclosure of classified information."

It couldn't be any clearer. Rove violated the agreement. The NDA covers both negligent and deliberate leaking of information.

I have quite a bit of experience with NDA's. There is usually a penalty for violating them. For corporations it's usually monetary. For Corporate Officers, there could be criminal penalties. On a reality TV show the penalty for disclosing the ending of a show starts at $5million. For Federal employees I would think that termination would be part of the equation.

I can only imagine what sort for penalty there is for a guy that violates his White House non-disclosure agreement. Oh wait, I don't have to imagine. It states the penalty very clearly in the NDA.

4. I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in the termination of any security clearances I hold; removal from any position of special confidence and trust requiring such clearances; or the termination of my employment or other relationships with the Departments or Agencies that granted my security clearance or clearances. In addition, I have
been advised that any unauthorized disclosure of classified information by me may constitute a violation, or violations, of United States criminal laws, including the provisions of Sections 641, 793, 794, 798, *952 and 1924, Title 18, United States Code, * the provisions of Section 783(b), Title 50, United States Code, and the provisions of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I recognize that nothing in this Agreement constitutes a waiver by the United States of the right to prosecute me for any statutory violation.

So, the answer is ALL OF THE ABOVE. Rove can be terminated, clipped of his security clearance, restricted from access and thrown in jail.

So, I have to ask, why haven't any of these punitive measures been taken?

I wonder if there some rules about failure to take action on a known violation...

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Currently I'm listening to Alley Cat from the album "'60s Instrumentals (Take Two) " by Bent Fabric

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George Lucas and the Greeks

After visiting Greece I came to the conclusion that British and French imperialism was good for Greek Antiquities. The Elgin marbles are better off in the hands of real museum curators. The same thing is true for Star Wars.
Somebody, anybody, should have wrested control (or at least creative control) from that madman named George Lucas. The guy hasn't made a decent movie in, I don't know, two decades.

It's a little understood fact that it isn't the writer, director or even the actor that can make or break a movie. It's the Editor. A bad editor can ruin a good movie and a good editor can make a turd, blossom. And it's not too widely known that Lucas had a wife, named Marcia, that was a film editor. More precisely, his film editor. And it's even less widely known that she divorced his crazay ass right around Empire Strikes Back.

Hmmm, is it just a coincidence that American Graffiti, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were all great movies (and maybe Empire Strikes Back) and everything since just sucked massive Jedi ass?

So when I watched, shudder, episode 3, I just kept thinking to myself "Self, who is the idiot that green lit this project and how can I kick his ass?" How can you ruin the greatest modern mythology since Lord of the Rings? How can you denigrate the sheer brilliance of Star Wars with stupid CGI fireworks? Why does Lucas create situations that require a Deus Ex Machina, usually in the form of R2D2, every five minutes?

Seriously, since when can R2 jump 20 feet in the air? Since when does he have a blaster? Since when does he have oil reserves? C'mon, the bot can barely walk in Episode 4. But 30 years earlier, in galactic federation imperial years, he's Inspector Gadget. What happened? Did he not take his robot geritol?

Anyway. I'm pissed off at the destruction of my childhood fantasies. It's just lame and stupid and dumb and demoralizing and bullshit.

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Currently I'm listening to Mr. Crowley from the album "Blizzard Of Ozz" by Ozzy Osbourne

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Jeez it's hot

Is it just me or is this the most miserable summer...like ever?

It's hot. Balls sticking to my thigh hot.

And trust me, it's as uncomfortable as it sounds.

I don't have much else to say...it's too hot to think of something smarmy.

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The Blame Plame Game

Look people. The President has only one path. Rove and Libby have to go.

Let's make this really simple. It is now very clear that both Turdblossom and Scooter lied (why are we paying these guys salaries? They can't even come up with cool nicknames). They either lied when they were questioned directly by Dubya (now that's a nickname!) or they lied to the Grand Jury and the FBI.

So Bush either knowingly takes the advice of liars or employs perjurers. It seems to me that there is no other way to spin this. This would be amusing if there weren't 1700 dead and 48,000 injured Americans and over 120,000 dead Iraqis. Rove lied and lots of people died.

We got into this terrible war as a result of stupid Neo-Con foreign policy and sheer ignorance of what is fueling the terrorists. Rove was one of the main geniuses behind this plan.

Let me re-cap the sordid tale for you. Desperate for some way of tying Saddam to Al Qaeda, Dick Cheney asked the CIA to investigate a possible Iraqi uranium purchase from Africa.

The CIA, at the suggestion of nuclear counter-proliferation specialist Valerie Plame, sent a man very qualified to investigate the claim, Ambassador Joe Wilson. Wilson also happened to be Plame's husband. Wilson found nothing to substantiate the Cheney claim. Further, it was determined that the original claim was a fabrication. Who did the fabricating? We may never know.

Cheney and Bush chose to ignore Wilson's findings and claimed in the 2003 State of the Union that Saddam was seeking yellowcake uranium from Africa. Wilson, irate that Bush & Co. chose to ignore his findings wrote an editorial critical of Bush and his rationale for the war.

As the mastermind behind the war, Rove needed to smear Ambassador Joe Wilson. Wilson, very well-spoken, carried too much stature. Rove was certain that the story would not die with Wilson on the case.

Rove searched high and low for some ammo. Thanks to a poorly timed memo from the CIA to Colin Powell, Rove learned some dirt on Wilson and Plame. Despite the clear marking on the memo of "Secret" Rove decided that spinning the argument for the war was more important than hiding the identity of a covert CIA operative.

So Rove planted the story, with some reporters friendly to the administration and the GOP, that Wilson was given the job of investigating the yellowcake uranium by his wife, a CIA employee. Which was a falsehood in it's own right. Plame did not have the authority to send her husband to Africa. However, back to point, it's not clear how the nepotism charge was supposed to taint Wilson but I'm sure that the phrase liberal democrat was bandied about.

The problem is that leaking any information about an under-cover operative is illegal. Treasonous in my opinion. By the way, President Bush (41, not 43) agrees with me.

Dubya, ever mindful of his public perception says that he will 'take care' of the leakers in his administration. So he investigates. He comes back and says that, definitively, no one in his administration leaked the name of a CIA operative. Both Rove and Libby are named directly as being free of leak taint. For over two years that was the party line.

Until Special Prosecuter Fitzgerald successfully had adminstration-friendly journalists found in contempt. This broke the case open. The public learned for the first time that, in fact, Rove and Libby were intimately involved with the leak.

So there you have it. The Blame Plame Game in a nutshell. An amateur move that endangered the lives of countless undercover operatives. The Watergate Burglars (or Rat Fuckers as they preferred to be known) were much more creative in their attempts to knock off their competition...the Canuck Letter was sheer brilliance. The Rove smear was just lame and ineffective.

So you have to wonder what happened...did Rove tell Dubya that he did in fact leak the info and Bush gave him a pass? Did Rove lie to Bush? Did Rove lie to the Grand Jury? It doesn't really make a difference.

Rove can't be trusted with State Secrets.

None of this is news to people that have been asking for the truth behind the war. We have been asking for several years for the proof that Saddam was tied to Al Quaeda. Little of the evidence is forthcoming and the little bit that was made public turns out to have been fabricated and shoved into the spotlight by Rove and Libby (and let's not forget about Ari Fleischer).

There are many questions. But none of them really matter. The President thinks that this comes down to indictments. But it doesn't, it comes down to how much bullshit the American public can stomach.

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Currently I'm listening to Not Home Anymore from the album "Strangers Almanac" by Whiskeytown

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Been a long time

OK, I've been a little busy. Between work and family life I have had my hands full. But I think that I'm at a good place to start blogging again.

I don't know where to begin but I think that the Blame Plame Game is a good start. Then I'll move into the hottest frackin' summer I can remember. From there I may move into the incredible lameness called Star Wars episode 3.

I'm really backed up and in need of some good blogging. Once I get my juices flowing I know there are some great pieces inside my brain. Enjoy the fun!

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Currently I'm listening to Coverville 105: The Prince Cover Story from the podcast "Coverville" by Brian Ibbott

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