Saturday, September 23, 2006

Spot The Elephant

(YOU tell me what's wrong with this email i received today)
JOEL,
TigerDirect thanks you for your continued business. We work hard to be an industry leader and continue to bring our previous Ultra customers the best prices around.
Help out your fellow customers by submitting a review of the product you purchased. It is simple and quick, go to http://www.tigerdirect.com/, navigate to your product page, then click on the "Submit Review" link.
For your convenience, I've also included some of our latest tech deals below. Again, I want to personally thank you, Deneke, for being a loyal TigerDirect customer.I look forward to serving you again in the near future.
Regards, Carl Fiorentino President
TigerDirect.com

Friday, September 22, 2006

my friend lecram sent me this link. he thought it might be something i would find interesting. indeed. not only interesting, but riveting, thought provoking and i could could only say a hearty "thank you, brother" afterwards. if you find keith olberman to be the devil or the antichrist or (worse) an appeaser or terrorist sympathizer and you would rather listen to the vile spew of ann coulter or rush limbaugh or bill o'reilly (because you care not for truth and decency and the american right to dissent), then move on to someone else's blog.
if you hate politics and the very thought of thinking outside your protective little bubble of ignorance, then you, too, should walk to the next window.
if you are so deadset against anything president bush has done or not done or stands for or doesn't stand for and can't for one millisecond suspend your hatred for him or those he chose to prop him up for the last almost seven years, then you as well might want to click out and on.
for keith olberman gives a damning and sobering commentary on the state of our ground zero, our nation and our very existence as we advance to the future on the shoulders of those giants who helped create this very country, whose visions we reap the benefits of.
but if you still give a damn about us, about our nation, about our history, present and future, then perhaps you might give this link a listen.
in the end you may still feel as you did before (agreement or no agreement).
in the end, you may curse keith olberman. you may curse me for getting you to listen to him. you may banish my blog and never visit it again. but it would be worth that small price if only to have you listen to what he says and maybe (just maybe) consider that there is a truth here that exists outside what we are told to believe by our government and by the majority of the large media and that there is a man who is not afraid to say it.
however, this post is not about keith olberman. it is, rather, about the words and ideas he expresses in this most poignant and pointed commentary. words and ideas delivered without partisan rancor, without personal attack, without reduction to libel and innuendo. it is emotionally charged, personally felt and judiciously laid out in a professional and reasonable format. but with no quarter given.
click on this, give it a watch and a listen, then keep on living with or without the message he imparts. for this is what it is to be free.

as an addendum, i found this quite lengthy editorial round-up in the washington post, which gives a rundown on what really went on as the republicans wrangled over the new terror torture legislation. and a tidbit about karl rove promising an "october surprise". as we should all know by now, that phrase when uttered by rove means something very unpleasant and most likely untrue in order to scare our populace into voting for his party.
oh, and it's been leaked that our military has been alerted to a deployment in or by october to iran in order to start a blockade of that country.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Twist Me Up And Smoke Me Out

"I am not going to dignify a comment by the Venezuelan president to the president of the United States," Rice told reporters in New York. The main U.S. seat in the assembly hall was empty as Chavez spoke, though the U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told The Associated Press that a "junior note-taker" was present, as is customary "when governments like that speak."

now, correct me if i'm wrong, but is this the tone we as american people want our leaders to take concerning government leaders of other nations who stand opposed to our actions and stances? while i find chavez's rhetoric to be just that (words to whip up the emotions of those already allied with him) i find it hard to accept that our representative would not even be present for the speech. i could understand walking out in protest if the language turned violent or juvenile (as it obviously did). but isn't bolton paid to attend UN meetings? and isn't he in a sense acting just like those our government dismisses out of hand? it doesn't say much for our maturity, diplomacy skills or respect for international bodies to just refuse to show up during the working week. perhaps, tomorrow i'll refuse to go to work, because it's krispy kreme donut day and i only like the ones that come in the pink boxes.
seriously, though, we act as if the UN exists solely to follow our every whim. yes, their headquarters reside on our soil (which i think is a good thing for the general physical safety of the building and its delegates...for the time being), but they do not answer to us, never have and never should. so, why does our administration get away with this type of 10th grade attitude? why aren't we getting so pissed that the national polls show us ready to vote for anyone not an incumbent in order to make our government act more in line with the rest of the world or even our popular thought (which has nothing in common with what our government has been about for the past 5 years)? i don't ask these questions, because i'm naive. i already know the answers. i'm just curious if any of you have thoughts about this that might make me think a bit sideways about the issues.

p.s. and, because katie never saw this video, i'd like to repost its link now and may she have sweet golden slumbers after viewing it (once you're at the link, click on "the big finale").

Monday, September 18, 2006

Quickie Dickie

i was hemming and hawing about putting this link on my site for a while ( read: 10 hours), but i feel i have to. if you have the stomach, click on this and read the article. then click on the video portion that accompanies it. kids for another crusade.