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It's been a long time since I posted here last. Don't really feel like writing much today. Maybe some time soon.

- quote of the day -

"Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises." Abraham Lincoln via The Truth Will Set You Free

Don't you just love America?

Via: VideoSift

Indiana

 

- quote of the day -

"Let it be said: Israel has a right to defend herself, a right to counter-attack against Hezbollah and Hamas, a right to clean out bases from which Katyusha or Qassam rockets are being fired and a right to occupy land from which attacks are mounted on her people.

But what Israel is doing is imposing deliberate suffering on civilians, collective punishment on innocent people, to force them to do something they are powerless to do: disarm the gunmen among them. Such a policy violates international law and comports neither with our values nor our interests. It is un-American and un-Christian.

But where are the Christians? Why is Pope Benedict virtually alone among Christian leaders to have spoken out against what is being done to Lebanese Christians and Muslims?

When al-Qaida captured two U.S. soldiers and barbarically butchered them, the U.S. Army did not smash power plants across the Sunni Triangle. Why then is Bush not only silent but openly supportive when Israelis do this?" Patrick J. Buchanan at WorldNetDaily

- quote of the day -

"Is that how it went down? Does it still feel good? They got two of your brothers from the same platoon later, chopped off their heads. Reckon that was payback? Now the squealers are coming out. It's in the goddamned papers. The brass are going to throw you to the dogs. They can be big men, they can rape whole countries, kill tens of thousands -- but just let some grunt try to get a little on the retail side, and all hell breaks loose. It just ain't fair.

Well, buddy, what can we say? You should have your fun last year, when there wasn't an election. Nobody would have paid a blind bit of notice. And you should have called in an airstrike, not that half-assed burning job – nothing buries evidence like a 500-pound bomb.

The only thing now is to get a good lawyer, then hunker down. If you can string it out long enough, Bush's media brigades can start working the refs for you, muddying the waters, smearing your accusers, providing the proper context, invoking 9/11. And speaking of 9/11, isn't that what it's really all about? Isn't that what you were really doing when you raped that girl and shot her in the head and burned her body and killed her family – defending our country from those who attacked us on that tragic day? What you did was justice, damn it, not a crime! Just like the whole war.

But you're on your own this time, comprade; Uncle Rummy's done cut you loose, set you up for the old "bad apple" shuck-and-jive. Sure, he's personally signed direct orders that he knew would kill thousands of civilians every bit as innocent as that family you massacred -- but then, he's an Ivy League man, a corporate chieftain, a respected public servant, and you are just another hick from the sticks. He's home free; you're going all the way down.

Let this be a lesson to all the cannon fodder out there: don't get above your raising, don't emulate your betters. Law is for the lowly, not the great and good."

Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque

- quote of the day -

"Must we, as our leaders tell us, suspend judgment to await the verdict of history? The deaths are now; the grief is now. We must therefore decide now if we are being played for patriotic fools by people willing to risk our children in this cause but not their own." Gordon Livingston at The Baltimore Sun

- quote of the day -

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Bruce Schneier at Wired News

self portrait

  

burn

  

- quote of the day -

"President George Bush hates Hugo Chavez. That's good enough reason for me to buy Citgo gas. But think about it for a second: Hugo Chavez is a leftist and uses his country's oil wealth to pay for health care and college education for Venezuela's people. This equal distribution of wealth runs totally anti-thetical to Bush's fat cat capitalist mentality that puts $4oo,ooo,ooo in the pocket of one Exxon big wig who's so fat that he probably can't see his own penis.

And it really pisses me off." Lassiter Space

- quote of the day -

"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot;
Or he can, but does not want to;
Or he cannot and does not want to.
If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent.
If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked.
But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil,
Then how come evil in the world?"
-- Epicurus

Order within Chaos

  

Indiana

  

- quote of the day -

"You know what this is all about? It is all about 'smoke and mirrors'… it is all about these jerks getting together and saying, 'Hey guys, the American sheeple are getting on all up in arms over the borders and illegal immigration. We’ve got to do something, but we can’t do something or our swiss bank accounts will be in jeapordy. Here’s an idea - let’s pretend we’re going to tackle this bull by the horns, then we’ll be able to point to the issue and tell the American sheeple that it’s too complicated of an issue. They’ll buy it!'" The Gun Toting Liberal