san francisco again

most of these are pics taken while on the cable car and were shot from my crotch region (as in: i didn't focus or train the lens).

2007 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade

it all started so innocently...a pair of naughty little 70's calf warmers...
then the Dykes On Bikes revved up the crowd...
(could have been as many as a thousand bikes and mopeds)
(outrageous who they'll let watch this thing)
(never mind...)
generik and i had a raging argument over whether she meant the president or some secret lesbian conspiracy...

hooray for titties!!!
some of them were mighty cute...
some of them were mighty brutes...
some of them actually shaved their pits...

then the actual parade began...

ah yes, the GAY AGENDA!!! besides converting all of our children and making Dancing Queen the new national anthem...
somehow, the leis this year resembled thai stick...
later on she got rid of the seat...
the Son of God was chillin' and spreading His love...
unlike Jerry Dyer, S.F. cops got to walk with their "work-out buddies"...

the Balloon Brigade made sure that condoms were not available for any unauthorized hijinks...

a robert beltran look-a-like got his Hydra on...
da mayor of da city, mr. gavin newsom (fresh off an affair with an ex-aide's wife) let the masses know he was OUT and DOWN with the funky groove goin' on...what a hottie...

the police commissioner was HEP, too...
the Board of Equalization gave props...
and a state senator got jiggly with it...
yeah, "work-out buddies"...riiiiiiiight...
a man on three legged stilts (katie still has the vapors...)...

the 'No was represented!!!!!!
so was Barbie!!!!

but god they hope he isn't...

says it all right there...happy and proud...

kabuki...
atlantis?...
struttin'...
...yum... female or not...

all in all, a whopper of a good time. could have had pot brownies from a stranger had i been wise enough to stay another day and call in sick tomorrow. could have bought multiple cans of beer on sale by vendors on the side walk. the cops and the mayor had decided a few years ago to look the other way for these events. their concern was safety and fun.

but shit. the mayor, police chief, police commissioner and state senator all wanted in on the parade? that is so fucking cool. unlike any of our elected officials...

what a fucking cool parade, vibe, turnout (totally packed for miles) and almost to tears joyous time (cops walking with their partners almost got me, it was so open and accepting).

wish you were there.

and thanks to katie's and my wonderfully gracious host Generik for his inclusion of we two gay parade virgins.

more pics in the next post about the rest of our s.f. visit, including the baseball game and the cable car ride during which i photographed lots of architecture. whoo, whoppin' good time.

in idaho a newspaper performed investigative work (a phrase mostly unheeded by the larger national syndicates) to uncover pedophilic activities within the local Boy Scout troops at the behast of a Scout who had been molested. for their hard work it was rewarded with attacks by parts of the community and the local religious powers (including the outing of a gay reporter who was covering the story and pushing to expose the pedophiles). despite the fact that what it uncovered was insidious and pointed to a larger problem within the heirarchy of the Scouts and the Morman church.
wow. a fine example of the free press in action, working locally and standing firm in the face of fear and hatred. if you read it, especially note that the Boy Scouts of America hired lawyers to suppress and hide the civil action suit from the public.

Club Fred

had to get cigs today. normally i buy a carton at drugfair or costco and be done with it for ten days, but today being sunday and me being at home and lazy (despite the kitchen floor on my hands and knees scrubbing) i decided to walk three blocks and buy just two packs. it was nice to walk and see the neighborhood a bit. the "for rent" signs". the "street closed for repairs" signs. the families who speak no english, at least to me. which is okay. i refuse to speak their language to them. whatever it may be. so, we're even.
at the store i found myself behind a woman generously endowed in the hip (and lower) and breast (and lower) regions wearing terrycloth short shorts and whatever it might be called that cover the bittie titties (not that she had those). the store owner was very happy to see me while she spent 5 minutes digging in her purse to find a penny so he wouldn't have to give her 99 cents change.
he, also, had a very nice incense rack.
on the way home i decided to stop in at club fred. club fred was once the olympic tavern, the greatest dive to ever exist in the tower district. when fred took it over in the late 1980's (?) he managed to maintain the essence of that dirtiness.
when fred sold it in the early 2000's the new owner didn't. the new owner wanted it to become a hip-hop bar. his boyfriend wanted it to be trip-hop...i think hip to trip is some kind of stephen hawkings equation for "how gay can you possibly get"?
but that owner is goen and fred is back. as are some of the employees from before. and today felt so much more relaxed. i got a rant or two from a body piercer. i got the "whazup" from the new manager. i got to say hi to the only cop in town who would be seen alive inside one of the tower bars on his off hours.. it felt good.
and bruce was there again. bruce is the only individual drinking institution the tower should ever know. when he likes a place, then you know it's good. when the bad owner took over club fred, bruvce left. when the bad owner was gone, bruce returned. nuff said.
club fred feels good again.

WAAAH! Saddam Wouldn't Let Us In! WAAAH!!!

this is what absolutely kills me about our politicians, the media and the populace that doesn't read, ask or wonder.
anyone who followed the rush to war with iraq knows that the UN had inspectors in iraq for quite a while and, towards the end, they were being given unfettered access to sites, because saddam realized the serious situation he was in with george bush. when the inspectors "left", they did so because bush told them to get out as he was about to bomb and couldn't guarantee their safety.
for a presidential candidate to say otherwise shows him to either be a liar or a fool. for the media to allow him to get away with it (and, as well, the other presidential candidates to not call him on it) shows it to hold the populace in utter disregard. meaning: the politicians and the media look upon us as a foot does the cockroach.
that we, as a nation, have continued to swallow bush's load of bullshit disgusts me.

one result of all of this is this.

an interview with someone connected to Fair Trade products (and the website) if anyone is so inclined. Fair Trade does business with and sets up co-ops with poor farmers who would normally sell their produce at a very diminished cost to larger corporations. in this manner the farmers reap a larger profit and protect their land for future farming. my mom often sends me Fair Trade tea and i must admit it's okay. maybe not the best, but better than the norm. oddly, though, one quote from the interview caught my eye and made me remember a housemate in seattle who had been on the frontlines in the first iraq war:
"I met one farmer who had his gall bladder removed because of the effects of working with pesticides, and he talked about three waves of physical effects for other farmers, from rashes all the way up to cancer.In fact, almost all the farmers I met had had some sort of physical effect. This damages not only people but also the eco-system and animals."
when bill went to war he was one of the many soldiers told to take certain unnamed pills to protect them from biochemicals that saddam hussein was certain to unleash. he refused (so he said), because he had no idea what they were and his superiors wouldn't or couldn't tell him. in hindsight, it seems to have been the right choice, because as it turns out the military machine had grouped together with the major pharmaceutical companies and agreed to try out unapproved medicines on unsuspecting GIs. medicines that had nothing to do with the possibilities within a war. bill was, however, exposed to Depleted Uranium (DI). DI was and is still used as bullet points for piercing tank armor. DI was a major problem for the military in terms of its long half-life and had no recyclable use up until someone figured out that (because of its extemely high burning temp) it would cut through thick steel like butter. some experts estimate that up to 1000 metric tons of the stuff was left behind in iraq after the first war, most of it in dust form (the estimate for the current war is 10,000). and the only way for it to get into your system is to breathe it unless you wait long enough for it to infiltrate the water table. our GIs breathed it. a UN estimate says that over 500,000 iraqi children have died since the first war of complications due being exposed to DI.
bill breathed it. he came back already complaining of intestinal pains and migraines. he became an extremely mean drunk. he could be found writhing on the living room floor after eating certain types of produce, because his body could no longer break it down enough to pass through the duodenum. eventually, he had to have his gall bladder removed. the military never admitted responsibility nor did it ever admit that DI is radioactive enough to harm humans. at first, they even tried to deny DI was being used (as did the first Bush administration). they called it White Phosphorous. they tried to call it that again during the first stages of the current war, but eventually had to admit it was DI. while denying that it could have any long-term effects on those who breathed it.
anyway, the effect of pesticides on farmers and that of DI on soldiers seems to be similar and that is what got me on this.
i encourage the purchase of Fair Trade products unless you don't like the taste of it. it's one small way in which to help the needy who help themselves and to stick it to conglomerates of the world. although, it most likely helps them financially, too, in some sickpervertedmorallywrong way.

(from P M Carpenter comes this awesome rant about the last Republican Presidential debate. oh, that it were not true...)

Imbecility²

First, let's settle any dispute as to the the winner of last night's Republican cluster conference. The victor was, of course, candidate-in-waiting Fred Thompson. There's something about a man running for the nation's highest and most demanding office who advertises his stupendous incompetence right off the bat by avoiding any public test of his abilities. Now there's a man for this hapless century for you.
As for the others' 120 minutes, it seemed to me it was all over after Q&A #1. What followed Wolf Blitzer's question about the advisability of a touch of thermonuclear destruction laid on Iran was a veritable geyser of mindless bellicosity. Excepting Ron Paul, the Republican candidates suited up in brownshirts and armbands and went to work on yet another preemptive catastrophe thrust upon hundreds of thousands of utterly innocent human beings.
Their bloody pandering to the basest of human beings here was a national embarrassment that made me, and, I would hope, millions of others, cringe at the thought of its airing around the world.
I watched every preposterous, flag-waving minute of the "debate." Although there was nothing that topped the tactical nuking episode last night, this morning both the New York Times and Washington Post led their reporting with the immigration issue. Either the GOP itch to launch unprovoked warfare has become a commonplace yawner, or both papers arrived at the debate late, missing its defining moment.
At any rate, my friends, the others, my friends, jumped all over, my friends, John "My Friends" McCain for his compromising and compromised stance on the matter. McCain's only defense was to tie everything -- and I mean everything -- to national security, two little words he uttered with monotonous regularity. I almost felt sorry for him; it was a too-late-to-change-now, desperate display of "I'd rather be right than president," which nobody ever swallows.
The most civilized among them was Ron Paul, as mentioned, and the most articulate was Mike Huckabee, both of whom haven't a prayer. The most laughable were Tommy Thompson and Mitt Romney. Thompson as president, he kids you not, would send the current one around the country to lecture "the youth of America about honesty, integrity, perseverance, passion, and serving the public," while Romney, whose every utterance was backed up by a chorus of angels singing 'God Bless America,' proved he has yet to look up the meaning of "non sequitur."
But when it came to pure, unadulterated rambling, Rudy took the prize. Wolf simply could not shut him up as he, for example, discoursed endlessly about the "very, very important" issue of Scooter Libby's righteous pardon, since "a man's life is at stake." The irony of Rudy's improperly placed concern and compassion was thunderous.
Other than the near-unanimous urge to waste any potential foe who so much as looks at us cross-eyed, the thrust of the debate was that of a tent revival meeting. There is no earthly collectivity that loves God more than these boys, and they let us know that at every opportunity, even the inopportune ones -- invoking His name 24 times.
Whenever I watch another of these tours de force in imbecility, I quake for my country. If these men are the best that democracy has to offer, if they are what democracy calls forth, it's all over.

Court's In Session: You're All Anguses!

(heh. i found the jack in the crack ads to be quite amusing, especially the "where does the angus meat come from?)

Jack in the Box Ads Called Misleading
Competitor Sues Jack in the Box Over TV Spots Mocking Burger Meat
The Associated Press
By GARY GENTILE AP Business WriterLOS ANGELES May 25, 2007 (AP)

The parent company of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's fast food chains sued rival Jack In The Box Inc. on Friday to stop TV ads that it says suggest Carl's Jr. and Hardee's use cow anus to make Angus beef hamburgers.
CKE Restaurants Inc. sued Jack In The Box in U.S. District Court on Friday over an ad in which executives laugh hysterically at the word "Angus" and another where the chain's pingpong ball-headed mascot, Jack, is asked to point to a diagram of a cow and show where Angus meat comes from.
"I'd rather not," the pointy-nosed Jack replies.
The employee asking the question traces a circle in the air with his pen while pronouncing the word Angus.
CKE claims the ads create the misleading impression that Jack In The Box's new 100 percent sirloin burgers use a better quality of meat than the Angus beef used by Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. CKE claims the spots confuse consumers by comparing sirloin, a cut of meat found on all cattle, with Angus, which is a breed of cattle.
Executives at San Diego-based Jack In The Box had not seen the lawsuit and could not respond, company spokeswoman Kathleen Anthony said.
Restaurants owned by Burger King Holdings Inc. and McDonald's Corp. also serve Angus beef burgers.
CKE is known for running controversial ads for its chains, including one featuring a scantily clad Paris Hilton washing a car while eating a burger. But CKE claims the Jack In the Box ads go too far.
"They're not being funny," CKE chief executive Andrew F. Puzder said Friday. "They need to stop misleading people about what Angus beef is."
Puzder said that the company asked Jack In the Box to drop the ads, but that the chain refused and pointed to a Carl's Jr. TV spot suggesting Carl's Jr. milk shakes were superior to those served by competitors.
Puzder said the comparison was not valid because the Carl's Jr. ads did not suggest that Jack In the Box shakes were made from milk that came from an unsavory part of the cow.
(one thing about the carl's junior ads that disgusted me is that the actors' chewing sounded like a microphone had been placed inside their mouths and one of the things i find most unacceptable is people chewing noisily and with their mouths open. the paris hilton one, however, was...um...savory)

why do the texans seem to have all the fun? tom craddick (speaker of the house) is holding onto his position by a thread by using parlimentary rules to not allow state senators to bring a vote to the floor to boot him. the parlimentarian resigned, democrats were physically restrained from speaking, craddick was booed when he called for a two hour recess to escape questions and more requests that he kiss his ass goodbye...california's soooooo boring...
...how cool is this? in houston they have begun building and donating homes to injured vets to help them get back on their feet and take some of the financial load of their backs...
..."Houses on the south side fly American flags and cars with green Vermont license plates sit in the driveways. Across the street, a sign says "Arret" (French for "stop") and cars have white Quebec plates. Anyone who crosses the street without reporting to its customs houses can be prosecuted."...love it, want to live there...

I Love Email

Dear Speaker Pelosi,
While not a constituent of yours (different district) I am still a dirtborn resident of California. And I have questions for you as such:
1) Why, with all of the previous research done concerning alternative fuel, have you as Speaker not pushed into action any law dictating an aggressive attempt to fully introduce electric cars or hydrogen cars or hybrids that actually use much, much less petroleum than what is now being "considered"? Are you not aware that companies like Shell and Chevron buy up the patents to car prototypes like these and shelve them so as to not let them be made? Are you not, also, aware, that the electric car was actually put into production and sold to consumers only to be yanked off the streets for no reason (some car owners were even sent letters threatening them with legal action if they didn't hand the cars back to the maker)? There were no defects in these cars made public to my knowledge.Also, what, if any, defense can you give to the bills pushed through Congress that relate to hydrogen-powered cars? President Bush has merely planned for "research" during his tenure in office. That research has already been done. It's been proven to work and economically at that.
2) The Earth is bombarded with more solar energy in one hour than it would take to provide for its energy concerns in an entire year. We, of course, could never harness anywhere near that amount on a real-time basis, but I see almost no news of solar power being used in our country on a comprehensive scale. Why are we not introducing large-scale solar panels to cities and populations in an effort to combat our dependence on heating oil?
3) Wind power is the cheapest power commodity there is. It takes no electricity or oil to run the turbines that generate electricity. There is only the initial cost and susequent maintenance to be considered. Why is this avenue not being aggressively pursued?If you truely want out of Iraq and all subsequent wars based a need for fossil fuel, then you need to look immediately for answers already etched in decades of proven research and positive results.If you merely want to try and throw egg in the President's face in order to "look good" to those you think voted you into office or those over whom you now preside, then by all means keep jerking his chain over Iraq as a moral issue while you do nothing to get us out. But if you're serious...then hear the woe of the People's pocketbook and look to staunch the blood flowing therefrom. Most of us can't afford to care about a war in another country. Most of us will never know someone who died "over there". We don't have the time or the energy to expend on that sort of grieving. What we need in order to get us back on our feet and feeling good about our country, our Congress, and our President (whoever he may actually be) is some good, old-fashioned positive movement on the economical scale. Positive movement on the moral scale wouldn't be that bad, either, but let's start with our pocketbooks and our faith in Government.I am a lifelong liberal and I supported your ascendence into your current position of power, but I can see no difference between now and a year ago other than a lot more squabbling and posturing.You serve me as well as millions of others on both sides of the political aisle. Do something to save us from an infinite struggle for the one energy commidity that can never be renewed.

(allegedly) at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado, California:

if you can't see it, then it's just too late for you....

From NPR.com

Legal Affairs
Two Immigrants Say U.S. Agents Drugged Them
by Rob Schmitz
Weekend Edition Sunday, May 13, 2007 · In Los Angeles, the unusual case of two immigrants whose deportations were botched by U.S. immigration officials has allowed a rare glimpse into internal proceedings within the Department of Homeland Security.
The men say that U.S. immigration officials drugged them in order to ease their removal from the country — but airline officials ultimately put a stop to the deportations.
Both immigrants are back in Los Angeles, appealing their deportations. And they've now obtained government medical records that seem to confirm their accounts.
One of the men, Raymond Soeoth, is a Christian minister from Indonesia who came to the United States in 1999 to flee religious persecution. But on Dec. 7, 2004, immigration agents told him he was going to be deported.
Soeoth says that an agent asked him if he needed medication to relax him for the trip. He replied that he did not. But a few hours later, says Soeoth, several agents came into his cell. One of them, he says, was a medic. He was holding a syringe.
"Two officers grabbed my legs, two officers grabbed my hands. Then they opened my pants. And then I said, 'Why are you guys doing this to me?' and I was crying and crying, and I said 'Why? I'm not animal.'"
Soeoth says the medic injected him in the buttocks. He says he lost consciousness on the way to the airport. The deportation was eventually cancelled because agents failed to notify airline security.
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement medical records, Soeth was injected with Haldol, a very powerful sedative.
In Soeoth's case, his government medical records say a physician prescribed Haldol because Soeoth threatened to kill himself if he was deported.
Soeoth denies that he said this; there is no documentation in his medical records of any other suicide threats, or any history of mental illness.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Mark Raimondi says sedation is sometimes necessary, but that he cannot talk about Soeoth's specific case.
Still, Raimondi says that before drugs were administered, "First there would be an attempt to do verbal counseling to get the detainee to comply and calm down. If that failed, the attempt would be to do physical constraints. If that failed, then, as a last resort, a sedative could be administered."
Raimondi says forcefully injecting a detainee with a sedative would only occur in extraordinary circumstances.
That appeared to be the case in February of 2006, when immigration agents told Senegalese immigrant Amadou Diouf that he was going to be deported. A federal court had given Diouf a stay of deportation, but agents brought him to the airport anyway.
On the plane, Diouf asked to speak to the pilot. He says this angered his government-appointed medical escort, who tried to force Diouf into the plane's lavatory.
"He took the bag out, and he took the syringe," Diouf said. "At that point I knew that, you know, they're going to sedate me. Next thing you know, I refused to get inside the lavatory anyway, and I was pushed to the back and wrestled to the ground."
Diouf says agents injected him with a drug, and then they were kicked off the plane. He says his legs were so numb that on the way out, he fell down the plane's stairs onto the tarmac. Diouf's medical records confirm that he was given medication. It does not list the type of medication.
The American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is representing both Soeoth and Diouf says his organization is investigating whether to file a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.
Rob Schmitz reports from member station KQED.

A Couple Of Coppers

(from the new york times)
Stamping Out Diverse Voices
Published: May 8, 2007
Postal rate increases are an unwelcome fact of life for every magazine publisher. But it seems the steep new increases for periodicals, scheduled to begin on July 15, will inflict undue hardship on small independent magazines that do much to inform the national discourse on politics and culture. They will be required to pay a much higher percentage increase than some of the largest magazines.
A skimpily funded coalition of small journals of opinions and ideas — running the ideological gamut from The National Review on the right to The Nation on the left — is struggling to get Washington to focus on the issue. The group’s request that the rate increase be reversed, or at least done in stages to mitigate its crippling impact, warrants the immediate attention of the House and Senate committees that oversee postal operations.
Among other things, those committees need to review the flawed process behind the new rate structure. The United States Postal Service first proposed a large but manageable across-the-board increase of about 12 percent. The rate-setting commission quietly abandoned that proposal and instead approved a new plan resembling one proposed by Time Warner, which publishes two of the nation’s largest-circulation magazines, Time and People.
The magazine industry was given a comment period of just eight working days to respond to the complex changes, which were unveiled without any definitive computer model to help less well-heeled publications assess the impact.
The approved plan is another step away from the traditional method of determining rates based primarily on the number of pieces being sent out and their total weight. The new formula sharply increases discounts to big mailers, which are able to save the Postal Service work, for example by trucking their mail to different states. According to an analysis by McGraw-Hill, many small- or medium-circulation magazines will incur rate increases exceeding 20 percent, some in excess of 30 percent.
Of course, the Postal Service needs revenue, and popular magazines published by Time Warner and others may deserve some discount for mailing efficiencies. But rates must be structured to avoid impeding the easy dissemination of information, which the founding fathers sought to protect by creating a national postal system.

(my two cents? increase first class mail to 50 cents for the next 10 years (my opinion times 25), no further increase allowed until the specified time elapses.
leave subscription postage as is or with only a modest bump. increase "telemarketer" mail to $1.
"telemarketer" mail would include all spam mail addressed to "resident" or other name not personalized and all mail sent to a real name, but with instructions to the postal carrier to leave it even if that name doesn't live at that address. it would include as well any envelope that bears the words "limited time offer", "special introductory rates", "0% APR" for any given amount of time, "you could be a winner", and any combination of words that encourage you to open anything that you did not specifically request to be sent.
unless it's store coupons redeemable at your local outlet. for stuff that makes sense. like milk or bacon or bagels or condoms.
in this manner, we save trees and the air and the postal service can cut down on the number of overtime hours postal carriers have to work by speeding up the daily delivery process of mail that is legitimately being sent.)
just my two cents.

addendum: called adam kirtsall again. i think i was answered by the same slimeball as the last time. i was told adam was in a different office and how could i be helped.
"i need to speak with mr. kirtsall."
"for what reason?"
"because he's been leaving me automated messages for almost a year now."
"and you're just getting back to us now?"
"well, up until the last call i had no idea why he was calling. i only knew that he said it was urgent that i call back, but he didn't give a reason."
"and you had no idea why he would be calling?"
"no sir. i did not. but the last call was from a different person and it mentioned a collection agency."
"what's your id number?"
"my what?"
"your id number."
"i have no idea."
"the id number from the message."
"there was no id number."
"then what collection account are you calling about?"
"i'm not calling about any account. i'm calling because mr. kirtsall asked me to call back and i finally understood why."
"but what's the collection account you owe on?"
"i don't owe on anything."
"oh really?"
"really. i'm just calling, because i need to talk with mr. kirtsall."
"then why would we be calling you?"
"that's why i'm calling. why would you?"
"sir, i'm not showing your phone number in our system. " click.

i'll call back in a week. i feel mr. kirtsall has a year's worth of returns coming.

GRRRR!!!!!!!

(hello from ihatework.com where this wage earner is realizing that he is doing the majority of the revenue work while others are engaging in "dead legging" and not getting spanked for it)

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning article in the Boston Globe by Charlie Savage:

"Since taking office in 2001, President Bush has issued signing statements on more than 750 new laws, declaring that he has the power to set aside the laws when they conflict with his legal interpretation of the Constitution. The federal government is instructed to follow the statements when it enforces the laws. Here are 10 examples and the dates Bush signed them:

March 9: Justice Department officials must give reports to Congress by certain dates on how the FBI is using the USA Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers.
Bush's signing statement: The president can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations.

Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Bush's signing statement: The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.

Dec. 30: When requested, scientific information ''prepared by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay."
Bush's signing statement: The president can tell researchers to withhold any information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could impair foreign relations, national security, or the workings of the executive branch.

Aug. 8: The Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its contractors may not fire or otherwise punish an employee whistle-blower who tells Congress about possible wrongdoing.
Bush's signing statement: The president or his appointees will determine whether employees of the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can give information to Congress.

Dec. 23, 2004: Forbids US troops in Colombia from participating in any combat against rebels, except in cases of self-defense. Caps the number of US troops allowed in Colombia at 800.
Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can place restrictions on the use of US armed forces, so the executive branch will construe the law ''as advisory in nature."

Dec. 17: The new national intelligence director shall recruit and train women and minorities to be spies, analysts, and translators in order to ensure diversity in the intelligence community.
Bush's signing statement: The executive branch shall construe the law in a manner consistent with a constitutional clause guaranteeing ''equal protection" for all. (In 2003, the Bush administration argued against race-conscious affirmative-action programs in a Supreme Court case. The court rejected Bush's view.)

Oct. 29: Defense Department personnel are prohibited from interfering with the ability of military lawyers to give independent legal advice to their commanders.
Bush's signing statement: All military attorneys are bound to follow legal conclusions reached by the administration's lawyers in the Justice Department and the Pentagon when giving advice to their commanders.

Aug. 5: The military cannot add to its files any illegally gathered intelligence, including information obtained about Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches.
Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can tell the military whether or not it can use any specific piece of intelligence.

Nov. 6, 2003: US officials in Iraq cannot prevent an inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority from carrying out any investigation. The inspector general must tell Congress if officials refuse to cooperate with his inquiries.
Bush's signing statement: The inspector general ''shall refrain" from investigating anything involving sensitive plans, intelligence, national security, or anything already being investigated by the Pentagon. The inspector cannot tell Congress anything if the president decides that disclosing the information would impair foreign relations, national security, or executive branch operations.

Nov. 5, 2002: Creates an Institute of Education Sciences whose director may conduct and publish research ''without the approval of the secretary [of education] or any other office of the department."
Bush's signing statement: The president has the power to control the actions of all executive branch officials, so ''the director of the Institute of Education Sciences shall [be] subject to the supervision and direction of the secretary of education."

Congress. Ugh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. I'll say it again. Congress. Ugh!

Your Name Here

wow. this is both odd and revolting. this has to step out of anyone's religious beliefs, regardless of who they are. of course, it does come from the washington times...and the washington times is, how should we put it, freaking conservative! but i wouldn't be surprised if this article speaks true.

the study's in on bill o'reilly. and what it found is: if you can't say something nice...go sit by him. evidently, bill can't keep his bigot in his box.

you ever get one of those automated phone calls over and over again about every two weeks to a month asking you to call a person back, but you're given no information as to to why you should do so? i've been getting one of those ever since i moved into my current place of residence...so, about a year now.
the voice was always the same and it stated that it was important that i "contact adam kirtsall" immediately at 1-888-899-6779.
until a week ago i had no idea what it was about and assumed he was a mortgager as i get many of those.
but last week the message was lightly different. the voice, for one, was a different man and the message stated that it was a debt collection agency. i erased that message, then belatedly hoped he would call again.
today he did. i listened and jotted down the phone number. i called that number. i was answered by a real live person. following is the transcript:
"bleeping Collection Service"
"yes, i'd like to speak with adam kirtsall"
"i'm sorry, he's in another department. how can i help you?"
"well, adam kirtsall has been sending me automated messages for almost a year now and i finally understand why he's been doing this. i need to speak with him, please"
"what's your phone number sir?"
"it's --- - ----"
"are you joseph ----?"
"no, i'm not. i'm joel ----"
"so he no longer lives there?"
"as far as i know he's never lived here. i don't know who he is. this place was vacant for a couple of years before i moved in"
"do you know where he is?"
"i just told you i don't know who he is"
"it's a little coincidental that you have the same names, don't you think?"
"what's the same about joseph and joel?"
"well, it's coincidental that your last names are the same"
"yeah, how coincidental is that that i have the same last name as someone else in this fucking country? i need you to put me through to adam kirtsall or take me off of your call list right fucking now"
"you'll need to get in contact with joseph ---- and have him get in contact with us to that, sir"
"how the fuck am i going to do that when i already told you i don't fucking know him, you dumbass piece-"
click.

of course i called back. and my number had been removed from the call list in the 10 seconds it took me to re-engage.
i encourage everyone who reads this to call that number and pretend for a few minutes to be a very confused person owing them money, then blog about it.