The Turner Diaries -- a review

A blurb on the back of The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce (under the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald), states that if books were banned in America, this novel would surely be banned. It's good that The Turner Diaries is not banned. The novel should actually be more widely circulated. Its underground reputation and its scarcity in bookstores have boosted its legend far beyond what the book delivers. Were this book stacked against other novels that profess ideologies, this infamous novel would finally be seen for what it is: a dull adventure novel that takes itself very seriously and as a consequence, is rife with much unintended comedy.

The story comes in the form of a diary written by an educated conservative gun-lover named Earl Turner in the futuristic world of America, circa 1991 (the novel was originally published in 1978). From the outset, the author shamelessly sets up this future world so that he and his gun-loving brethren appear as oppressed martyrs for freedom. The "Cohen Act" has outlawed firearms and anyone caught with one is subject to arrest and imprisonment. A police state not dissimilar to that which exists in America in 2008 lays siege to the America in this novel. The part of the police state that most troubles Earl Turner is having his beloved guns outlawed.

The unintended humor of this novel comes to light within the first 50 pages. The unabashed hypocrisy of the author and his movement is stunning. The "patriots" in The Turner Diaries live in small Communistic "units" -- think "terror cells" -- that resemble urban communes: Turner and his commune reside in an abandoned auto garage that has no hot water, but does have makeshift, pirated electricity and heat. Everything among the "patriots" is shared, they each contribute to the commune according to their talents: Katherine, the only female in Earl Turner's commune is an expert with make-up, so she specializes in creating disguises for the others; Earl Turner is an electrical engineer, so he wires the bombs and sets up the cold water shower for the group. Henry and George, the other two guys in the unit, are just a couple of hairy-forearmed, true-believing grunts.

What Turner and his commune -- and the other communes that comprise their gun-loving Woodstock Nation, known as "The Organization" -- are that these people, regardless of age, education, walk-of-life, or gender are all addicts. Instead of being addicted to narcotics, they are addicted to guns: a knee-jerk "I-want-this-and-you-can't-tell-me-I-can't" ideology. Like a dope fiend -- such as Rush Limbaugh, for instance -- they are addicted to the phony sense of empowerment, god-like-ness their weapons give them, and ultimately to the violence the guns make possible. In the same way a drug user will reason, "It's my body and I should have control over whatever I choose put into it," so too do Turner and his commune believe in their right to possess guns.

That is paramount to understanding The Turner Diaries -- the main character and his commune are addicts. To support their habit, these addicts plot to destroy everyone who stands between them and their satisfying their habit, robbing and murdering in order to feed their addiction. Although Earl Turner continually sneers about other, "lesser" races lacking moral fiber, being filled with uncouth blood and living as prisoners to their basic instincts, he and his commune are guilty of each of these sins; often to a greater extent than those he criticizes and despises. For instance, Turner and his people are among that minute fraction of the population who murder other human beings. Moreover, Turner and his commune are part of the fraction within that fraction who believe killing innocents -- even of their own precious race -- is justified because it suits The Organization's needs. What are these profound needs that are so important as to make Turner and his ilk feel justified in murdering literally hundreds and hundreds of people? The need to own a gun -- to feed his addiction. There may be numerous addicts in the world, but how many have devolved to these deranged depths?

The author of the novel rightly predicted that the news media of the future would be completely compromised and utterly subverted for propagandist purposes. How do the commune-living "patriots" of The Turner Diaries wish to deal with those reporters with whom they disagree? They wish to cut their throats and pile their bodies in city streets. In Earl Turner's "free" America, no one would have the freedom to disagree with him. Guns in this futuristic world were taken away from the populace because of the violence perpetrated with these weapons. How does Turner and his commune prove they are worthy of owning firearms? By killing people -- many, many people (nearly 1,000 by the end of the first 100 pages), most of them unarmed and no direct threat to Earl Turner.

This is not to say The Turner Diaries is a one-note white supremacist rant. It's not. Early on, Earl Turner turns on the musk-oil charm and seduces Katherine. One morning, while the other two men are out on a "mission", Earl Turner walks into the little shower closet just as she finishes showering. You can almost hear the wah-guitar come in as this fish-white Terry-Nichols-like main character stands naked before Katherine. His big move to get the carnal action rolling? He holds out his arms to her, like a guy in community theater porn. Earl Turner has all the suavity of John Madden. So, Turner begins the sort of godless, hedonistic sexual relationship with the woman behind the backs of his comrades -- just the sort of extravagance he would deride the hippies of the 1960s for carrying on, or worse, modern day liberals. Yeah, the society of the heroes in The Turner Diaries is bleak and reeking of hypocrisy. They commit all the same sins of the people they profess to hate. None of this is surprising, though it just gives an interesting insight into the frighteningly narrow, shallow world of white supremacists.

After blowing up an FBI building and bombing The Washington Post, destroying a printing press, Earl Turner and his merry band of sociopaths lament the negative media attention their "heroic" acts receive:

What's happening now is reminiscent of the media campaign against Hitler and the German's back in the 1940's: stories about Hitler flying into rages and chewing carpets, phony German plans for the invasion of America, babies being skinned alive to make lampshades and then boiled down into soap, girls kidnapped and sent to Nazi "stud farms." The Jews convinced the American people that those stories were true, and the result was World War II, with millions of the best of our race butchered -- by us -- and all of eastern and central Europe turned into a huge, communist prison camp.

If Earl Turner had even a rudimentary knowledge of American history, he would know that it was the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought America into World War II. And the "stories" of Nazis atrocities are corroborated by tens of thousands of photographs and libraries of documentation created and kept by the Nazis, themselves, along with tens of thousands of eye witnesses. In short, this single passage illustrates that Earl Turner and his commune -- and the novel's author -- were utterly divorced from reality. I once saw an interview with Ted Bundy, which occurred shortly before he was executed. He claimed that hardcore pornography led him to commit his awful crimes. In fact, authorities never found any pornography among his possessions. What they did find were a number of "majorette" magazines that featured articles on and pictures of female high school majorettes in marching bands. The parallel I'm drawing here is the ability of a psychotic mind to absolutely fabricate stories that can be checked and verified.

As any band of lunatics would do, the Organization refers to its harsh methods of dealing with dissension as "discipline." At one point in the story, Harry Powell, leader of "Unit 5", is ordered by the Organization to assassinate "two of the most obnoxious and outspoken advocates of race mixing". Powell refuses. He wrote back to his superiors "that he was opposed to the further use of violence". He was arrested by members of other units, shot and buried for his trouble.

The Turner Diaries was Tim McVeigh's bible. I read the book in the spirit of Lenny Bruce's comment, "Knowledge of syphilis is not instruction to go out an get syphillis." I've always heard of The Turner Diaries in the context of right wing lunatics. So, I thought I'd see what it was all about. What I found was a trove of unintended satire. The characters' reasoning for their admitted terrorism sounds pretty much like what we'd imagine Osama bin Laden would think rationalizing his acts of terrorism: "Our cause is so righteous, it justifies the killing of innocents."

The world envisioned by white supremacists as conveyed in The Turner Diaries is stark and grim, devoid of the human qualities that make human life worth living: love, art, beauty, dialogue among people, the freedom of people to have their own beliefs. Earl Turner and the author of the novel grope toward a world where "civilization" is whittled down to a band of wary-eyed, sullen white people who punish every infraction among themselves -- no matter how small or insignificant -- with death. It's Communism with a rabid, racist brand label on it. I can just see a person in the group beautifying his home in some way that makes the rest of the stunted commune accuse him of having "Jew blood" somewhere back in his family. Who proceed to stone the guy to death just because he painted his front door a color deemed "unpatriotic" by the rest of the clan. The people in and who embrace The Turner Diaries think very highly of themselves as they strive to undo every advance that has made civilization as we know it. They refer to people of races they hate as "mud people," but it's The Turner Diaries crowd who seek the primordial mud of incest and cannibalism and arbitrary murder. Actually, I believe a world such as this does already exist. We know it as Hell.

Ugh - a photo essay

I recently found these photos of my nieces and nephew. That's Connor in the middle, his sister, Mekiah, on the left, and his cousin, Alexandria, on the right. The picture was taken in 2003, I believe. Connor is a professor of such wisdom as, "Bees got mouths!" and "For Christ's sake, Pappa!"

W. Puts on His Pardoning Hat

With nine months left in his reign (p)residency, George W. Bush is enjoying a tradition of office: rolling out presidential pardons to rogues, scoundrels, and in W.'s case Coke dealers, Heroin pushers, Crack sellers...

The W. pardons got off to a strange, if entertaining start when his initial list of pardon candidates included famed actor John Wayne, Senator Joseph McCarthy, clocktower shooter Charles Whitman and porn actor John Holmes. It seems that W. did not understand that his pardons were restricted to people with legal problems, and who are currently alive. After it was explained to W. that pardons could not bring people back from the dead, a new list was drawn up and has been captured by Mary Flood on her lawyering blog Legal Trade:

WASHINGTON - On March 24, 2008, President George W. Bush granted pardons to 15 individuals and a commutation of sentence to one individual. The individuals are listed below:

PARDONS:

William L. Baker Spokane, Washington
Offense: Distribution of a controlled substance, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 841(b)(2); falsifying records, 21 U.S.C. §§ 827(a)(3), 843(a)(4).
Sentence: July 15, 1980; District of Wyoming; 24 months imprisonment, one year special parole.

George Francis Bauckham Oak Ridge, New Jersey
Offense: Unlawful detention, delay and secretion of mail by postal employee; 18 U.S.C. § 1703(a).
Sentence: May 16, 1958; District of New Jersey; five years probation and $100 fine.

Kenneth Charles Britt White City, Kansas
Offense: Conspiracy to violate federal and state fish and wildlife laws; 18 U.S.C. § 371.
Sentence: November 12, 1998; District of Kansas; three years probation and restitution of $8,250.

William Bruce Butt London, Kentucky
Offense: Bank embezzlement; 18 U.S.C. § 656.
Sentence: June 20, 1990; Eastern District of Kentucky; three years probation.

Mariano Garza Caballero Brownsville, Texas
Offense: Dealing in firearms without a federal firearms license; 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(a)(1) and (2).
Sentence: November 1, 1984; Southern District of Texas; 34 days imprisonment, four years probation, and a $1,000 fine.

Anthony C. Foglio, Santee, California aka Tony Foley
Offense: Distribution of marijuana; 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1).
Sentence: October 15, 1996; Northern District of West Virginia; three years probation.

Marvin Robert Foster Boca Raton, Florida
Offense: False statement in connection with a Federal Housing Administration loan; 18 U.S.C. § 1010.
Sentence: January 19, 1968; District of Rhode Island; one year probation and a $3,500 fine.

Carl Harry Hachmeister Denton, Texas
Offense: Conspiracy (to commit wire and mail fraud); 18 U.S.C. § 371.
Sentence: January 22, 1985; District of Utah; three years probation and $39,330 restitution.

William Marcus McDonald Wetumpka, Alabama
Offense: Distribution of cocaine, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, use of cocaine, possession of cocaine, use of marijuana; Article 134, U.C.M.J.
Sentence: May 2, 1984; U.S. Air Force general court-martial convened at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia; four years confinement at hard labor, forfeiture of $300 pay per month for four years, reduction in rank to basic airman, and a bad conduct discharge.

Robert Michael Milroy Cinnaminson, New Jersey
Offense: Importation of heroin; 21 U.S.C. §§ 960(a)(1), 952(a), and 843(b).
Sentence: April 2, 1975; Eastern District of Virginia; seven and one-half years imprisonment, six years special parole, and three years probation.

Jerry Lynn Moldenhauer Colorado Springs, Colorado
Offense: Knowingly selling migratory bird parts in violation of Migratory Bird Treaty Act; 16 U.S.C. §§ 703 and 707(b).
Sentence: September 19, 1994; District of Colorado; three years probation and $1,000 fine.

Thomas Donald Moldenhauer Colorado Springs, Colorado
Offense: Knowingly selling migratory bird parts in violation of Migratory Bird Treaty Act; 16 U.S.C. §§ 703 and 707(b).
Sentence: September 19, 1994; District of Colorado; three years probation and $1,000 fine.

Richard James Putney, Woodbridge, Virginia
aka Richard James Putney Jr.
Offense: Aiding and abetting the escape of a prisoner; 18 U.S.C. §§ 752(a) and 2.
Sentence: September 16, 1996; Northern District of West Virginia; one year of probation and a $100 fine.

Timothy Alfred Thone Woodbury, Minnesota
Offense: Making a false statement to the Department of Housing and Urban Development to obtain a mortgage loan; 18 U.S.C. § 1010.
Sentence: September 18, 1987; District of Minnesota; two years probation, $1,500 fine.

Lonnie Edward Two Eagle Sr. Parmelee, South Dakota
Offense: Simple assault committed on an Indian reservation (misdemeanor); 18 U.S.C. §§ 1153 and 113(e), now 18 U.S.C. § 113(a)(5), as re-numbered and amended.
Sentence: October 6, 1976; District of South Dakota; two years probation.

COMMUTATION:
Patricia Beckford Portsmouth, Virginia
Offense: Conspiracy and attempt to distribute in excess of 50 grams of crack cocaine, 21 U.S.C. §§ 846 and 841(a)(1), 853, 855; unauthorized use of food coupons, 7 U.S.C. § 2024(b).
Sentence: April 27, 1992; Eastern District of Virginia; 276 months imprisonment; five years supervised release; $10,000 fine.
Terms of commutation: Sentence of imprisonment to expire on July 24, 2008; term of supervised release left intact and in effect with all its conditions.

The issue of the number of pardons handed out to people guilty of drug offenses was raised by one reporter who asked W., "Sir, are you pardoning these drug traffickers because they were former connections of yours?" To which W. replied, "Yeah." White House press secretary Dana Perino was quick to run over and explain that W. had thought the reporter asked, "Would you have pardoned Jesus?"

1st Two Faces of Mount Flushmore

Officialdom

I was born in Otherland, right on the border with Theland. As you can tell by the names of each country, they are very similar -- similar in culture, as well; language, customs. To be honest, if you run into a Thelander, you might just as well mistake the person for an Otherlander. After all, we are close national neighbors. Each is the others' largest trading partner and numerous treaties have been signed allowing -- with proper documentation -- citizens of one country to work in the other. Overall, a positive relationship exists between the two nations.

We all wear green hats. Hat-wearing is part of our shared culture. And you can only get our kind of green hats from our respective governments. Some people trying to get into Theland or Otherland sometimes wear phony green hats, but it's pretty obvious they're fakes. You turn them inside-out and you find they're red inside or paisley, or some other color. The real ones are green through-and-through. That's how it's always been.

This distinction became very important a few years ago when some paisley-hatted guys from another nation attacked a Theland city. Since then, the color of your hat's been immensely important. Sometimes, life-or-death important.

I live in Otherland, but work in Theland. My green hat was in perfect order, so I was issued a purple work hat. Every time I go over to Theland, I have to wear my purple hat. No problem. Often, when I travel to Theland to visit an art gallery, see a concert, visit friends or go to a restaurant, I wear my green hat and my wife wears her green hat. Like any other travelers, we're asked some questions by the Theland border guards. After the paisley-hatted attack years ago, it only makes sense.

The other night my wife and I went over to Theland to visit friends. We were meeting them at a restaurant in a sketchy part of town, so my wife and I took my car over -- it's an old warhorse and doesn't much matter if it's vandalized on top of its road-weariness. Since we were going to a bar afterward, I left my purple hat at home because I didn't want to take the chance of losing it or having it stolen. It would be a royal pain in the ass if I lost my green hat, but the green hat would be much easier to replace than a purple hat. I'd gone over with my green hat a hundred times before and didn't think twice about it.

That is, until I pulled up to the border guard booth. He typed my license plate into his computer. He asked our citizenship, the purpose of our trip and what we were bringing over. We answered all of his questions. Then he asked me where I worked. When I told him I worked in Theland , he asked to see my purple hat. I told him I had left it at home because I was going out to a restaurant and then to a bar and didn't want to take the chance of losing it. When not crossing for work, I always used my green hat and never had any problems.

Thelander border guards have a reputation for unpleasantness. Deserved or not, it's there and I've personally witnessed it on many occasions. Times I've gone into a Thelander border station to renew my purple hat, I've witnessed Theland border guards berating other applicants. It's one thing to ask questions and demand to see proper documentation, but some Thelander guards did this with overt hostility and naked belligerence. I once witnessed a guy in an orange hat being asked to prove where in Theland he had attended school. The orange-hatted guy showed the border guard a postcard from the campus. I was at the next wicket, and winced, knowing what was coming. The Theland guard went up one side of the orange-hatted guy and down the other. He then asked for a full accounting of the orange-hatted guy's life: every family members' name, had the orange-hatted guy ever been arrested anywhere in the world. All of this was carried out at full volume so that everyone in the office could hear what was said.

Another time, in the middle of the day while I was renewing my purple hat, a Thelander guard shut off the office lights and announced, "Sorry, we're closed." Then he turned the lights back on and barked laughter at his joke.

Most days, going to work, I encounter ordinary, pleasant Thelander guards. They have a job to do; they're not customer service reps, their job is security, and I not only understand that, I'm protected by their efforts.

The night I went over with my wife, I got one of the pricks.

When I told him that I had left my purple hat at home, and why I had done so, he bellowed, "You have a purple hat and you must wear it every time you come into Theland !" In the nine years I've had a purple hat, I'd never known about that. But if that's the rule, that's the rule. No sweat, I'll wear the purple hat. It's all the same to me.

"Did you know that?" the guard sneered. I told him no, I didn't. He repeated the statement. I had understood the first time he'd said it, but what was I to do? Teleport home and teleport back wearing the purple hat? "OK," I said. "Now I know."

That wasn't good enough, though, for the prick. Although my background had been thoroughly checked every year I renewed my purple hat -- having even been fingerprinted so that I could have a yellow band for the purple hat that allowed me through an express commuter lane -- the prick pulled me into the border guard office.

The border guard office is always a treat -- if you think of miserable experiences as treats. There are usually ten guards standing around behind a counter, chatting, while a line of people stand in the center of the cramped room, as still other people sit in plastic contour chairs awaiting further interrogation by one of the guards. My wife and I walked into the crowded office and were met by a shout from a guard behind the counter.

"Step over here," he said, indicating somewhere near the counter. I must have taken one too many steps toward him because he quickly growled, "Not that close." The pricks among Thelander border guards are known for speaking with such wonderful specificity. Once I had stepped back, the guard then told me to approach him -- I imagine the pricks were uniformly children who grew up tormenting animals and pulling the wings off of flies. He took from me the slip of paper the guard in the booth had filled out. Then I was directed to a wicket further down the counter. The guard there -- seated at a computer terminal -- looked at the slip of paper and asked me, "Don't you know you're supposed to wear your purple hat when crossing into Theland?" I said that I hadn't known that.

"How long have you worked in Theland?" he asked. I said about eight or nine years. And he said, "And you didn't know that you had to wear your purple hat any time you cross into the country?" It struck me as odd the number of times he asked the same question. I said, again, that I didn't know, but now I did. When he asked the question again I had the distinct feeling that he was fucking with me. He then took my green had and my wife's green hat and told us to sit down. As we sat down, I wondered not for the first time what the Theland Security screen looked like on their computers. Last year, not long after renewing the yellow band I wear around my purple hat, I was pulled in four times in the space of 10 work days. Each time they wanted to check the validity of my purple hat. They could check all they wanted, but while they were fussing around with me weren't there guys with paisley hats to be watching out for? Every time I sat waiting as they re-keyed my information into their system, I wondered, Why don't they have a Save button on their screen so they don't have to redo the work that was done the last time I was in here?

And I thought of years before, on my way to work, when a Theland border guard asked me if I had anything to declare. "All I have with me is my lunch," I'd said.

"What is it?" he'd sneered, as though he was about to catch me in a lie.

"Chili."

"What's in it?"

"Turkey."

"Turkey?!" he shouted, honestly outraged. "Turkey's a banned substance." He said it like I had plutonium in the car.

"A 'banned substance'?" I'd said.

"Yeah, a banned substance!" he'd shouted and then pulled me in for secondary inspection. There, the guards had just laughed off the slip he'd attached to my windshield and let me continue on my way.

While my wife and I waited, a young, pretty girl came into the office. The guard who dealt with her spoke so loudly I heard that the girl was trying to enter Theland without her green hat. She'd just forgotten it. The guard at the counter told her to sit down. A moment later, he called her to the counter again. He asked where she worked. "In Otherland," she said. The guard asked if she owned a house there. "Yes," she said. He asked if she paid taxes, hydro bills, if she had a mortgage. The girl answered "yes" to each question. He told her to sit down. A few minutes later, he summoned her back to the counter and told her, "The next time you enter Theland, you'll have to bring proof of your mortgage, your most recent tax return and copies of your hydro bills." Then he let the bewildered girl go.

A few minutes after the girl left, my wife and I were called back to the counter. The border guard holding our green hats asked me again if I had known that I was supposed to wear my purple hat whenever I crossed into Theland . A feeling of unreality passed over me and I suddenly wondered if the border guards looking through my car outside were planting drugs in it. I wondered if the border guard before me was going to void my purple hat, rendering me instantaneously unemployed. Or, if he was going to demand that the next time I entered Theland -- which would be two days hence -- that I would have to bring proof of my mortgage, my taxes, the parish priest and five box tops from Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Why not? The guards existed in a strange, seemingly ungoverned sphere where they could make up the rules as they went along.

On this night, however, the guard told me to wear my purple hat from then on and he released us. When I later told a friend about the experience, he said:

I can just see a bunch of punks who got their jobs thru army buddies or family contacts making life miserable for any captive audience. Pathetic. There is a terrible passion in this country for authority. Thelanders are frantic to exercise authority over anyone and everyone. This is true not just in cops, but in store clerks, courthouse secretaries, anyone who is supposed to be answerable to the public. It's sad and irritating.

It's the same anywhere, I guess. Although Otherland has a mellower reputation than Theland, Otherland is very much run by an oppressive bureaucracy. Sometimes it feels as though a silent coup took place years ago in Otherland where the bureaucrats took over. The lights in the country still work, water still flows from faucets and people continue showing up for work, so everything appears to be in order and functioning. But the moment one comes into contact with any semblance of officialdom, there's a feeling of brushing against an executioner's robes and that one's neck is being appraised for the next noose.

We live a good life in Otherland and Theland, but even green hats cast shadows in the sun.

Kwam-foolery: The Delusions of the Emperor of Detroit

Detroit News Thursday, January 20, 2005: Two cops sue mayor, police chief

Accusing Detroit Emperor Kwame Kilpatrick of arrogance only goes so far toward illuminating the roots of the Kwam-foolery that has engulfed Detroit since 2002. Kwame is arrogant, yes, but after losing his fight against the release of a secret deal he withheld from city council, it's now clear that Emperor Kilpatrick is delusional.

"I think on a certain level, the mayor just doesn't get it, or he's in denial," [Council President Ken Cockrel Jr.] said.

The documents show that once Mike Stefani, the attorney for the three cops who filed suits against Kilpatrick and former chief of staff Christine Beatty, confronted Kilpatrick's attorneys with text messages that showed the pair lied under oath last summer, the mayor moved to settle the suits in exchange for the text messages. The amount grew to more than $9 million with attorneys' fees.

The documents further show that Kilpatrick scrapped the original settlement in an apparent attempt to circumvent a Free Press Freedom of Information Act request for the settlement documents. The city then concocted a second agreement that had two parts -- one for public consumption and the second that contained the agreement to conceal the text messages.

The City Council never saw an agreement about the text messages when it approved the settlement.

Not only will Kwame not resign from his job, he believes "[t]his is what I was born to do." And the city of Detroit and the rule of law are mere obstacles in the way of his destiny.

Kwame also states "[t]here was no cover-up." Which is an incredible claim. The documentation he fought to suppress, Detroit city council and multitudinous lawyers and journalists beg to differ. No cover-up? Just because a cover-up is poorly perpetrated, doesn't mean it didn't happen. For Kwame to claim otherwise demonstrates a clear disconnect with reality. There's no question he has spent too long among his inner circle of yes-men.

Regarding the money spent to settle the whistle-blower court case (almost $9 million) that opened this entire can of worms, Emperor Kilpatrick says, "I pay it back every day. . . . When I go out and do an economic stimulus package for hundreds of millions of dollars. When I go find a way to do a deal on the (Detroit-Windsor) tunnel for $75 million dollars. . . . I work every day to make sure the city gets what it's owed."

Emperor Kilpatrick believes he's above the law. He doesn't realize that it's his job to do these for Detroit, and he's still obligated to follow the law.

"My wife trusts me, my kids trust me and I think a great deal of citizens here (trust me, too) . . . What you can trust is that I'll be out there shoveling your snow, that I'll be fixing the streets up after the (snow) is all melted away."

"I'll be out there shoveling your snow". Unbelievable. Kwame Kilpatrick literally believes he is the city of Detroit. There is no separation, when the reality is ordinary Detroiters showing up to their jobs day-in and day-out -- while Kwame lazes about amid one tryst in the Carolinas, in Colorado, at the city's expense -- are getting the job done, keeping the streets cleared, continuing to collect the garbage. The comic effect the mental image Kwame Kilpatrick conjures of himself decked out in his pimp winter-gear, shoveling snow, clearing the city sidewalks and streets himself proves that mental illness does have its entertaining moments.

And finally, the last refuge of every scumbag politician: their families. Obviously desperate for some handhold on credibility, Kwame shields himself with his family, telling us his wife and children trust him. Some man he is hiding behind these poor, wronged people. The taint and tarnish with which Kwame has painted his own reputation and that of the city of Detroit is quite bad. Pouring that bucket over the heads of his family is sickening and really demonstrates the man's moral squalor.

If there is any justice in this world -- and there is little evidence it exists at all -- Kwame will remain in office long enough to burn every bridge he had once planned to cross into post-mayoral prosperity. That even his whores turn their backs on him -- but not in the fashion he's accustomed to -- and that in five or ten years time we do find him outside in the winter, a hulk in rags, shorn of his pomposity, shoveling snow from a smashed Detroit sidewalk.

Snow is the New Asbestos

The local news has lost its mind. Channel 4 in Detroit actually now calls itself "Rescue 4", as though they'll get your cat out of a tree, resuscitate someone's dying grandmother, or do Blackwater duty guarding dignitaries. At least once per broadcast an urgent-eyed anchor leads into a commercial break promising to later divulge information "that will help keep your family safe!" Which usually amounts to advice on par with, "Don't drink toilet cleaner, it's not healthy!" or "Double A batteries -- they're not a snack!"

Since when is it the duty of local news to look after the safety of a community? Don't police, fire and ambulance services take care of that?

This false netting of "safety" is nowhere as intrusive, overblown, ridiculous or boobery-born than the local weather report. Not only does the weather report take up entirely too much of any broadcast, but it has the most atrocious, misplaced tone of drama and even suspense injected into it. Particularly during winter. The approach of snow storms in Michigan are treated like plagues, like great mishaps, as though volcanic ash was going to fall upon naked citizen who have no skin.

Snow is the new asbestos. Snowfall is reported like meteor showers about to thit the earth; like nuclear fall-out approaching.

For most of my life, it's just been snow. Children play in it. Snow is like dust, except it melts.

In the hands of "Rescue 4," snow is airborn maggots carrying bird flu; each flake is a tiny albino terrorist powered in anthrax. But not to fear! "Rescue 4" will throw its cloak around every viewer and escort us through the nightmare. "Just close your eyes and think of Christmas," says the paternalistic stentorian voice.

Maybe some of these weather guys were pummelled with snowballs or subjected to snowbaths as youths -- the schoolyard version of waterboarding -- and for this reason report snowfall like the coming of an area-wide yeast infection. Possibly, I'm being too Jungian in my analysis. Whatever the reason, our perpetually amped-up media cannot be trusted anymore to even provide a basic weather report. There are numerous cases where a crippling storm was predicted and unremarkable amount of snow actually fell. I can just see the advertisers leaning on station managers to "sex" things up. "Whaddya mean it's going to rain?" an advertiser rails over the phone to a station minion. "I'm paying you people enough money to throw in an 'alert' or 'warning' or 'watch'. Get your heads out of your asses and scare people! I'm not selling enough vinyl-sided windows!"

Hence, "Rescue 4", the winged firetruck with its air-raid siren blaring, red-blue-yellow lights flashing like a nervous breakdown, driving in circles with its ladders and hoses and mounted guns casting lunatic shadows across the storybook covering of winter snow in Detroit.

Enjoy New Grenada's "Emergency Brigade

Will Ferrell: A Career of Wigs

The man's entire approach to comedy is to wear funny wigs.

What if you're a comedy fan who doesn't find tacky wigs, alone, to be funny and satisfying? Then maybe Will Ferrell isn't for you.

He sure ain't for me.

He has a new wig movie coming out that is being hocked on TV as though Milo Minderbinder is Ferrell's agent. Who knows, maybe Milo is.

Careless Stupidity Has No Expiration Date

Report: Security relaxed at Obama speech

Feb 21 05:27 PM US/Eastern

DALLAS, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- The Secret Service told Dallas police to stop screening for weapons while people were still arriving at a campaign rally for Barack Obama, a report said.

Police stopped checking people for weapons at the front gates of Reunion Arena more than an hour before the Democratic presidential hopeful appeared on stage Wednesday, the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram reported.

Police said the order to stop using metal detectors and checking purses and laptop bags constituted a security lapse, the newspaper reported.

Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence -- who heads the department's homeland security and special operations divisions -- told the Star-Telegram the order had been intended to speed up seating of the more than 17,000 people who came to hear the candidate speak.

Lawrence said he was concerned about the large number of people being let in without being screened, but that the crowd seemed "friendly," the newspaper said.

Several Dallas police officers -- speaking on condition of anonymity because the order came from federal officers -- told the newspaper it was worrying to see so many people get it without even a cursory inspection.

The Star-Telegram said the Secret Service did not return a call seeking comment.

April and June of this year, respectively, will mark the 40th anniversaries of the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. No Thanksgiving since 1962 has passed without the morbid remembrance of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Although the "official" descriptions and details of how these three killings occurred have never matched up to physical evidence and eye-witness testimony, no matter which side of the story you're on -- believing these men were killed as the result of conspiracies or by an epidemic of "lone nuts" -- no one can dispute that there is a commonality joining all three tragedies: a woeful, intentional lapse in security.

Dallas police in November of 1963 were ordered to stand down -- the late officer Roger Craig verified this in interviews -- and even some of John F. Kennedy's Secret Service detail were ordered away by Lyndon Johnson's Secret Service detail (there's footage readily available on YouTube of a Secret Service agent at Love Field in Dallas, running along side the president's limousine and being waved away by agents in the car behind). The Memphis police kept conspicuous distance from Dr. King in Memphis at the time of his assassination. And the ever-infamous Los Angeles Police Department were told to stay away from the Ambassador Hotel where Robert Kennedy made the final speech of his life, with the explanation that his private security would handle the occasion.

Since the times of these assassinations, new and updated rules for protection have been instituted, but in every case, had normal protocols of the time simply been followed, there's a good chance these killings might not have happened.

And so we have, here, again, Dallas, Texas taking lightly the security of an important figure in American life. The Secret Service ordered the Dallas Police to stop screening attendees of Barak Obama's rally for weapons. The crowed of 17,000 "seemed friendly." Since when does anything in our post-9/11 world "seem friendly" to paranoiac authorities? And since when is the Secret Service engaged in customer service? They claim their order to stop screening people going into the rally was done in an effort to speed up everyone's entry. Well holy shit, I enter the United States to work and the officials at the border have a distinct interest in moving at their own pace, the line of vehicles before them be damned.

Four decades hasn't been near long enough to heal the damage done to America by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. I wasn't alive at that time, and I can't imagine the sense of chaos and hopelessness that must have taken hold of the nation after these tragedies occurred. This intentional relaxation of security at Barak Obama's Dallas rally was inexcusable and the people who made the ridiculous decision to stop screening for weapons should be fired and possibly charged with negligence.

Next time you're held up at airport security while some half-wit minimum-wage security guard examines your ballpoint pen to determine that it's not a neutron bomb, say: "Don't I look friendly?" This may lead to a rubber glove inspection of your person. And it should snap home the reality that we don't need FISA renewed, we don't need domestic spying, we don't need neighbors sniffing each others' underwear. We simply need our security officials to do their jobs. Because, when they don't, the course of the nation's future is at stake. And that's no exaggeration.

And the Cocksucker Shrieked "Me First!"

I read this by John Steinbeck years ago in an old anthology, and I'll be damned if I could ever find it again. Finally did today, on the Web. It's the best thing of Steinbeck's I've ever read:

The Danger of Small Things by John Steinback

I guess it is true that big and strong things are much less dangerous than small soft weak things. Nature (whatever that is) makes the small and weak reproduce faster. And that is not true of course. The ones that did not reproduce faster than they died, disappeared. But how about little faults, little pains, little worries. The cosmic ulcer comes not from great concerns, but from little irritations. And great things can kill a man, but if they do not he is stronger and better for them. A man is destroyed by the nagging, small bills, telephones (wrong number), athlete's foot, ragweed, the common cold, boredom. All of these are the negatives, the tiny frustrations, and no one is stronger for them.

There are few times in life when we get to see what other people are genuinely made of. In my experience, these moments come in traffic or when I have occasion to wait in line for something. And nothing brings out the stark differences between personalities than waiting in line while in a vehicle.

I recently had occasion to leave my compound in the Turks & Caicos Islands to do some work in Detroit, Michigan. As my consortium owns property in Windsor, Ontario, I stayed in Windsor and crossed the Ambassador Bridge into Detroit for my week of meetings. Most days on the bridge were fine. Traffic was slow, it was congested, but it moved. Today, however, it was completely log-jammed.

Now, I am a man of the world. I'm a humanist. I'm willing to wait my turn and suffer right along with everyone around me. For a few moments there was a sense of unity among us, the Community of the Wronged, or at least The Slowed; The Stopped. Until the first miscreant shot past in the commercials vehicle lane and attempted to cut into the car lane up ahead. Lines, queues, moments when a chunk of humanity is stopped somewhere, bring out the worst in people. There's this "Me First!" nodule in the genome of our less evolved brethren that starts throbbing and suddenly the elbows come out, and the nasally voice of the bastard's soul all but shrieks to all around, "Me first! Not you! Me!" Which lights up the jungle "Fuck You!" aggressor in me. Every time I'm stuck in line somewhere, I immediately think of disaster films in which the Honor System and the Social Compact break down and frazzled yuppies and disreputable businessmen blunder around with the sole purpose of saving themselves.

People who are willing to wait their turn in line -- and we all know who we are -- should be armed with game warden tranquilizer guns and tags. The next time we're in line and some line-crashing asshole makes his presence known, we should fire a dart into his neck and then affix a tag to his ear. Better yet, we should combine the tranquilizing and tagging, shooting a miniature bar-coded dart in their person that can be later read by a monitoring device so we can then round up these people, corral them somewhere they can cut each other in line until their wretched, rotted hearts are content.

The motto on the American greenback should be changed from "In God We Trust" to "Me first!"

Terrorist Ice! D.C. Crackdown on frozen menace!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates suffered a fractured shoulder after slipping on ice Tuesday night at his Washington home, the Pentagon said.

Gates, 64, didn't seek treatment until Wednesday morning when he checked into Walter Reed Army Medical Center, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

"I think he's in a lot of pain," Morrell said.

A dragnet has been thrown across Washington, D.C., to capture the frozen-hearted terrorist menace that felled Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Ice of all shapes, hues, textures, density and location are being rounded up in an unprecedented coordinated effort between the D.C. Parks Department and Department of Homeland Security.

"We will not rest until every inch of this terrorist has been scraped from every surface in the city," a visibly shaken Michael Chertoff said. "A full, behind-closed-doors investigation will be conducted by a newly created arm of the FBI. The new agency will be known as the 'FBI' -- Frozen Bureau of Investigation."

George W. Bush commented, "We wouldn't have this, uh, problem, if the, uh, cap-- cap-- if Warshington D.D. was in Texas."

As of this post, four tons of area ice is already on its way to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for what officials describe as "hostile interrogation."

Attorney General Michael Mukasey wouldn't comment on the legality of waterboarding the ice, but would only say, "Like all Americans, I find the idea of slipping on ice abhorrent and repugnant." Then he signed an order that all telephones in hockey rinks and appliance stores across the nation be tapped in order to cordone off this heatless menace.

Manoogian Megalomania

Kwame Kilpatrick is like a moron muscle car owner who has terrorized his neighborhood with dangerous driving for six years, and now, after he's wrapped his precious car around a lamp post, he turns to his outraged neighbors and says, "I just sat down and had a very grown-up conversation with my twin boys about road safety."

Bully for them.

Kwame "apologized" to Detroit this evening. It was a rank pastiche of velour rhetoric pulled from the outhouses of self-help, slick PR consultants and corporate executive contrition. It was the sort of apology that left an odor in the room of everyone watching.

After listening to what Kwame had to say, a few things became very clear:

• Kwame has no business being mayor of any city -- no business being dog catcher in the furthest flung of communities;
  
• He clearly sees a few more dimes can be wrung out of Detroit, so he won't resign;
  
• It took an excruciatingly embarrassing scandal to prod him into spending time with his family;
  
• He needs women to bail him out of trouble -- Christine Beatty whose resignation satisfied the public bloodlust for a firing; tonight, his wife, Carlita joined him on television;
  
• He has no idea why the public is actually angry with him.

While Kwame bemoaned the invasion of his privacy during his most insincere "apology", he gave no indication that he understood that few people -- if anyone -- cares about his family. I don't wish them any harm, but their happiness and well-being is irrelevant to me. My interaction with Kwame Kilpatrick is as a taxpayer, and he has badly handled his duties and responsibilities as mayor of Detroit. And he did not address the side of that scandal at all.

My concern, watching his "apology", was not how much pain his own hubris, stupidity and machismo has caused him and his family, I care about the near $9 million dollars his hubris, stupidity and sleaziness has cost an impoverished city. I care about the business his hubris, stupidity and sleazy machismo is frightening away and out of the city of Detroit.

Of course, Kwame had the gall to refer to himself as a "public servant." Right -- in the same way Donald Trump is a "servant" at Trump Tower.

No, a few coins remain in the cash register that is Detroit and Kwame is going to stick around until he's pocketed every last one.

The most obscene aspect of Kwame's televised "apology" was the inclusion of his wife. Lord knows Carlita Kilpatrick has paid her dues as Kwame's wife, and she may well have appeared at his side by her own volition, but it was ugly and surreal hearing her take on this matter. Her inclusion succeeded only in muddying the true issue -- the goddamned money Kwame has mishandled, mismanaged and misappropriated. I hope the press does stop hounding Carlita and refrains from filming the Kilpatrick children.

Amid the numerous irrelevancies volleyed about during the mayor's address, I will, however, heed one request Kwame made: I will blame him, and him solely, for the avoidable, irresponsible shitstorm that has enveloped the city of Detroit for the past week. Among the wretched wrecks of human beings who become politicians, Kwame is at the bottom of the barrel of spoiled souls. Kwame Kilpatrick is deluded, corrupt and contaminated. For these reasons, I'm actually glad he will remain in office, so that he will remain a target of community pundits for as long as possible -- the distraction of a new mayor won't queer the trajectory of bile and recriminations that still must be heaped on Kwame.

Kwame Kilpatrick is a wreck, an embarrassment, an illiterate, unimaginative adulterer and luckily the stocks of his hubris will keep him directly in the line of fire of the city's rightful enmity. He is a failed man. And there remains for us to learn more about Carmen Slowski.

The Banana Republic of Detroit

No Speech Audience, Church Setting Slammed:

WXYZ.com has learned Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will deliver his speech Wednesday from a room in his church that will be virtually empty. There will be no audience and reporters are being barred from the speech.

Kilpatrick's speech, his first public comments since the sex-text scandal broke, is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ.

From Mayor's Office...

"The address is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. There will be no audience. There will be no reporters allowed inside. There will be no still photography allowed inside. The mayor will not do any interviews.

"We are asking that you remind your viewers... that this is not a public event and they can tune into stations that will be broadcasting the address live."

The travails of Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick are beginning to resemble something out of Dr. Strangelove were it written by Roald Dahl and directed by Terry Gilliam.

So, Kwame Kilpatrick has booked an empty room at his church from which to make his grand statement. With all the conjecture about whether or not the mayor will resign, maybe Kwame is going to hit Detroiters with some asymmetrical warfare and use the occasion to declare a Thousand Year Reich in Detroit. That could be the first genuine surprise in this sad, maddening, predictable saga surrounding this scoundrel mayor.

An editorial in the Detroit Free Press says "It's disappointing that Kilpatrick chose his church . . . as the setting for tonight's speech. It looks contrived, at best."

Contrived? No, the past week of the mayor's political career has veered into surreal travesty. At best, Kwame addressing the city of Detroit from an empty room in his church is the utter definition of farce. In fact, addressing the city from a bastion of hypocrisy makes perfect sense.

As one observer, I have no idea why the mayor would bother addressing the city of Detroit at all. There is no one in a position of authority willing hold him accountable for his numerous misdeeds. Aside from the avalanche of text messages that flitted between himself and his chief of staff being revealed, there's nothing occurring in this term of his mayorship that did not take place in the first term. Kwame's as arrogant, stupid and self-interested as he was the day he was first elected by his sorely abused electorate. Among his supporters, he has nothing to apologize for. Among everyone else, there's nothing short of resigning immediately -- and he's more apt to walk across the Detroit River and feed Windsor, Ontario with loaves and fishes before that occurs -- that would untarnish his thoroughly shat-upon image.

That said, to anyone other than his most devoted, deranged supporters, Kwame is an utter disgrace. Let him address an empty room in his church. Any apology he utters will have all the sincerity of Jimmy Swaggart bawling "I have sinned!" onstage before his own brainwashed multitudes in the 1980s. Any words of contrition from Kwame will ring as hollow as they did the first time he uttered those insincere platitudes years ago.

The only thing that will satisfy most Kwame-watchers is if he pledges to resign immediately, sets a date to burn his pimp suits in Hart Plaza and announces he's moving to Florida to open a micro-brewery cum brothel cum bail bond firm.

Short of that, what the hell does anyone expect to hear from this shameless, humiliated politician?

Cowardice of Manoogian Magnitude

I have known cowards in my time: male elementary school teachers working out their latent homosexuality by battering around nine year old kids; the high school basketball coach and his arm-flailing tantrums, regaling teenagers with stories of his bar fights during bus rides to out-of-town tournaments; politicians who avoided military service of their own, but have no trouble sending others into war. Few times, though, have I witnessed sheer tail-between-the-legs cowardice that Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is exhibiting at the moment of this writing.

Last week, embarrassing transcripts surfaced of sexually explicit text messages the mayor wrote back and forth with his female chief of staff, which has whipped the panty-sniffers into a righteous fury. The revelation also raised the issue that the mayor and chief of staff perjured themselves in a whistle-blower court case where they were asked if they were carrying on an affair and answered in the negative.

So, for the last week the embattled city of Detroit has awaited a statement from its mayor. And for the last week, he has remained in hiding, leaving some in the media to even wonder who is running the city. I imagine Kwame Kilpatrick slumped in an easy chair, glad in boxer shorts and a wife-beater shirt, in front of a television set while playing with a nickel-plated revolver; a mixing bowl filled with salted pumpkin seeds next to him. His mistress has faced the music, sending in her letter of resignation and making a statement apologizing for the upset news of these text messages has caused. Not a grand gesture and certainly no surprise, but at least it's something.

The fact that Kwame Kilpatrick has so far refused to show his face in Detroit proves how much he is used to lurking in shadows -- intimidating and firing all those who accuse him of wrongdoing, surrounding himself with a ridiculous number of body guards, living beneath the shelter of his family name and parents' work. Right now, the city of Detroit needs Kwame Kilpatrick to stand up and make a statement. But there is no Kwame Kilpatrick -- there's no there there, no person within the pimp suit, no voice behind the bluster, no conscience behind the brash words and deeds, no backbone behind the seal of the mayor of Detroit. When the time arrived for Kwame Kilpatrick the man to stand up, he was absent and cowardly, silent and hiding; a great gaseous exhalation emitting from his bravado, the empty-suit bravado that could only emanate from behind a wall of body guards.

He's so far left his mistress to take the fall in public.

Kwame will appear at some point. By now he has no traction to gain back the ground he has lost as a public official. He has been called by the media to make a statement, called by his constituents to account, and Kwame has hidden himself.

He will surface at some point. Flanked by ministers and his family, he'll doubtless turn on all the phony penitence that comes with the kit when one finally sells his soul and becomes a politician. Like all humiliated miscreants before him, he will ask forgiveness as a preface for begging that all this be put behind him. It's unfortunate that any personality capable of going into politics is fundamentally unable to comprehend the deafening echo of this week of silence from the mayor, neutering his bluster, musting his speechwriter's apology text and rendering invisible the moment he finally emerges from his hiding place.

Latest

Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick to break silence on text messaging scandal

So, from the unassailable pulpit of his church, ole Kwame will address the city, no doubt surrounded by a phalanx of security, clergy and family gritting their teeth. Kwame will remain the mayor of Detroit for several reasons. He's too arrogant to resign. The City Council and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy are too corrupt and compromised to make any move against Kwame. And Kwame simply does not possess the character to do the right thing by any one but himself. Even his family has used to mop the floor of his misdeeds, but that doesn't matter to him. He's got three sons who have no paternal role model. But what does that matter so long as Kwame has mistresses to fuck and a city credit card to fund his trysts.

The city of Detroit is bereft of many things -- it's former stature, economic vitality, a cohesive, thriving community, and schools with enough text books for each student. Unfortunately, though it's no surprise, it's still horribly demoralizing to see that the city is also bereft of leadership with even a semblance of honesty or integrity.

The ghost of Coleman Young -- succubus that it is -- continues to feed on the throat of that city. His host body is Kwame Kilpatrick.

"The Mayor is LOL LOL! Damn That. Never Busted."

O, I would bet there are guys on death row who are glad they are not Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick right now.

Thursday, January 24, 2008
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick shamed by text messages

They raise questions about trial testimony

David Josar, Paul Egan and Christine MacDonald / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said Wednesday night that text messages indicating he had a sexual affair with his chief of staff in 2002 and 2003 were "profoundly embarrassing" and "reflect a very difficult period in my personal life."
. . .
In some of those more than 14,000 messages, Kilpatrick, 37, and Beatty -- both were married at the time -- exchanged sexual banter, declared their love and arranged trysts in motels in Metro Detroit and on out-of-town business trips.



But under oath last summer in a whistleblowers suit filed against the city by two former cops, they both denied a romantic or intimate relationship. They also testified that they didn't plot to fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown, but the text messages include exchanges about dismissing him.

Brown and ex-bodyguard Harold Nelthrope sued the city, claiming they were unfairly punished because Nelthrope alleged misbehavior by the mayor and his police bodyguards, and Brown investigated those claims. A jury awarded the pair some $8 million, including interest. In a separate but related case, a third ex-cop, Walt Harris, was paid $400,000.

As a Detroit tax payer, I don't care about the mayor's philandering, I'm angry that his arrogance, lies and abuse of office led to those above-mentioned police officers being fired and to the ultimate pay-out in their whistle-blower court case of $8.4 million. I vividly remember seeing Kwame on television calling the fired police officers liars and even saying they were mentally ill.

Not quite.

The complete decimation of Detroit took place in the 1970s and '80s under the reign of Kwame's spiritual father, Coleman Young, a complete and utter gangster who spent his multiple terms as mayor callously enriching himself while sinking the once-great city. I recall in late 2001 when Kwame was first elected. I was happy for him and very hopeful for Detroit. Kwame and I are the same age and I admired how much he had accomplished in his life. But as it has turned out, Kwame has followed in Gangster Young's footsteps. Yes, Kwame brought the Super Bowl to Detroit and many people believe he's made many other gains for the city, but he has also sorely abused his office, leasing expensive vehicles on the city's dime for family members; having family and friends on the pay-roll, though these folks were not expected, nor did they, actually show up for work at the jobs they were being paid to do.

With Clintonian self-righteousness, Kwame vehemently denied rumors of a wild party occurring at his mansion early in his first term. A stripper alleged to have danced at that party was later murdered in a 2003 drive-by shooting. The dancer's family believed that one of the fired police officers who won a whistle-blower lawsuit against Detroit was fired for investigating the dancer's death.

Sordid shit.

Coleman Young slithered out of numerous investigations and ultimately retired as a revered local politician and even went into academia. He made out all right for himself, though the blight of Detroit is his true legacy. Kwame may come out of this scandal still the mayor of Detroit. The difference between him and Coleman Young is that Kwame has in arrogance what Young had in cunning.

Hopefully an example will be made of Kwame. I hope he and his mistress are charged with perjury and prosecuted heartily. And when found guilty, I hope they are sentenced to repaying the city of Detroit the $8.4 million their stupidity and hubris cost it.

1/26 Clarification

When I refer to Kwame Kilpatrick's "Clintonian self-righteousness" I am not aligning myself with right-wingers and their knee-jerk hatred of former US president Bill Clinton. My use of the word "Clintonian" refers to venal, petty deception that causes a crazily disproportionate amount of harm and disappointment -- as well as loathsome self-pity; the sense that when someone is legitimately caught doing something wrong, that they portray themselves as being persecuted. For some strange reason, right-wing conservatives seem to believe that the worst thing a human being can do is be the recipient of a blowjob. I'm not jumping on that bandwagon.

More to the point, a "Clintonian" lie occurs when someone who is the bearer of hope and promise stupidly and needlessly plays into the hands of their enemies.

I also refer to Kwame's misdeeds as "Clintonian" in order to keep them in perspective. Kwame has cost his city a lot of money, brought a shroud of shame to his family and basically ruined himself as a public official. As with Bill Clinton's misdeeds, these do not even approach the gargantuan, egregious, multifarious, malignant sins of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Kwame deserves to be found guilty of perjury, he should resign his mayorship and repay the millions of dollars the city of Detroit paid out for the whistle blower trial and pay-out his actions caused. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (and everyone else who has served in BushCo in the last eight years) should be tried for war crimes and jailed for the rest of their lives.

That's a distinction I think is worth drawing.

Culture War

Lenny Bruce once said, "I always wonder about the anonymous giver. Cause the anonymous giver is truly an egomaniac: 'I'm so good -- I'm not going to tell anybody.' That's sick, man. I'm going to leave you with this, that the only anonymous giver you'll ever have to worry about is the guy that knocks up your daughter."

I've been watching Aaron Sorkin's TV show Studio 60, and though I continue to admire Sorkin's talent as a writer, I'm about fed up with his arrogant, self-righteous sanctimony. Every episode of Studio 60 is lopsided and disfigured with sermons and pontificating -- as was the endlessly nauseating West Wing with all its white-guilt do-gooders getting those smarmy smirks on their faces in the final two minutes of each episode when they were able to do right. The sketch comedy show within Studio 60 is a completely artificial petri dish in which Sorkin coaxes and prods cloned cells of the Culture War going on in America today. Every character is a cipher; one-dimensional Sorkin puppets spouting cliched inanities with more schmaltz per episode than the entire Brady Bunch series and every After School Special. I honestly don't know who I find more sickening: the big city liberal sharpies with their pitying, sensitive comments in support of gay marriage, marijuana use, and slamming everything the right-wing holds dear, or the right-wing one-dimensionals with their surprisingly well-articulated prejudices that are nuanced with actual, subtle reasoning and heart-warming small-town stories (Sorkin showing off how broad-minded he is by lending his quill equally to the ciphers of people he hates).

Studio 60 reminds me is that I would be no more happy with people like Aaron Sorkin, than I would be with Pat Robertson, Bill O'Reilly or George W. Bush.

I'm sure that I'm very slow waking to this fact, but the two sides of the culture war are mirror images of one another, with slightly different window dressing. The Left believes itself so righteously enlightened, the Right believes itself righteously moral. The Right has its penned in yard of sacred cows and the Left has its penned in yard of sacred cows. Each group spends its time and energy lobbing stones into each other's pen.

The loudest of the loud on each side, who mount their garbage trucks, are the anonymous givers Lenny Bruce was talking about.

While these two lazy, myopic groups pick their feet in Poughkeepsie, I think more attention should be paid to the real Seven Deadly sins: Hypocrisy, Arrogance, Hubris, Deceit, Violence, Thievery and Self-righteousness.

I'm as pissed off to hear about Bill O'Reilly's hypocrisy as I am hearing about Hillary Clinton's. Sides don't matter, actions do. Who's doing what. That's what we should be reacting to. Rudy Giulliani's pornographic use of 9/11 in his presidential campaign is abhorrent to me. Rich Democrats pretending to give a shit about "ordinary" Americans is abhorrent to me.

There's no answer to any of this except to lampoon the true Seven Deadly sins wherever they arise. But that's only for people who are serious about this kind of thing, something Aaron Sorkin and Fox News definitely are not. They're both just filling time in between commercials.

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AP Reporter Jousts with Romney

The video

Heated Exchange At Romney Press Conference

Standing in a Staples for, probably, the first time in his life, Mitt Romney -- does the name "Mitt" not evoke the image of a hand-puppet for you, too? -- was in the midst of pontificating about how his campaign is not run by lobbyists, when an AP reporter interrupted him and pointed out that Romney's campaign advisor, Ron Kaufman is a lobbyist. To which Romney displayed his true CEO fangs and looked at the reporter as though he'd like to see him the-wrong-way-up at the bottom of a well. But nice-guy-camera-guy Romney thrust to the fore with a condescending chuckle and proceeded to split hairs about the lobbyist in campaign. To his credit, the reporter didn't let the point go in a haze of sulfur-stenched double-talk.

OK, someone other than Ron Kaufman runs Romney's campaign, but it's more than a little hilarious that a guy -- Romney -- would so brazenly brag about being beyond the reach of lobbyists and at the same time have a top advisor who is, in fact, a lobbyist. Elementary school kids in the schoolyard wouldn't let a peer away with such hypocrisy. Try this kind of parsing in the breakroom of any office in the land and you'd be laughed right out to the parking lot. But this is politics and this is a presidential campaign and even John McCain dragging his 90 year old mother around the country seems to be in bounds for getting elected. No surprises here. However, some of the comments accompanying the blog carrying the video of the exchange are utterly mystifying in their blind ignorance and stupidity, and a little heartbreaking in their fragile, groping reach toward something like innocence:

Um, excuse me, but Mitt doesn''t need lobbyists to run his campaign like McCain does. Mitt''s already spent $17 million of his personal fortune and he''s willing to spend another $60 million. Ron Kaufman is an honorable man and so is Mitt. It is a rather cynical view of the world to presume that something evil is occuring just because Ron Kaufman is a Romney advisor. There are few people in this race who are willing to sacrifice their own fortunes for the opportunity of serving this country. Romney doesn''t need to the job for money and he certainly won''t enrich himself when he''s done, like the Clinton''s and so many other former presidents have. Mitt could even serve in the presidency without accepting a salary. Waddya think of that? I highly doubt any of the other schmos could give of themselves in such a way. Mitt is a true leader-servant. This country needs more people like him.

Posted by VAMan2 at 11:54 AM : Jan 18, 2008

O, dear person; dear, deluded lost soul. Ron Kaufman is an honorable man? If he's a lobbyist, he's a scumbag. And by extension, Romney is an utter scumbag for having him as part of his campaign, and an arrogant, truth-devoid scumbag for splitting hairs over the role of this lobbyist in his campaign. Do you actually use the word "sacrifice" in your statement? Romney's a CEO, which means he'd suck the marrow from the bones of his dead mother. His "fortune" is filthy lucre. My favorite line from this verbal comic strip is "Mitt could even serve in the presidency without accepting a salary." As if anyone who occupies that tainted seat in the Ovum Office does it for the salary!

There is something heartening knowing that such a vacant personality is a Romney supporter. Talking about building a house on a foundation of sand.

Another gem:

The reporter was a jerk, acted like he knows better than Mitt who his staff are. I was embarrassed for him. Mitt stood strong and straightened the boob out.

I appreciate that Romney isn''t neck deep in lobbyists like the senators running for president are. He really wants to help the American people.

The press are so jaded they can''t believe a good guy when the see one. I believe Mitt will go all the way to the White House. We better hope he does. He is the only candidate that has any clue how the economy operates.

Romney''s a decent, brilliant man, has been a raging success in the business world for decades He has turned around dozens of failing businesses, organizations, and a state. He is direly needed in Washington.

Mitt ''08!

Posted by bookaholic at 03:34 AM : Jan 18, 2008

You're kidding, right? Kidding, or huffing oven cleaner while smoking weed that's been marinated in Drano. May I introduce someone to you? His name is George W. Bush. He has turned the reputation of the United States of America into a used bedpan. The (p)residency of W. has been so disastrous, so hope-annihilating, so soulless, so dark and maniacal and without sense, so malicious and seething with malfeasance and malevolence, that maybe we all should be on your regimen of oven cleaner and Drano-dripping weed.

All of this serves to remind me that America's greatest export to the world is myth, fantasy, fiction. America should stick to what it does best -- making Hollywood extravaganzas and yuppie television pablum. Hopefully when China takes over the world in fifteen years, it will at least leave the Hollywood sign on that hill in California as a sort of tombstone.

Microsoft is collapsing under its own weight

It's finally begun: Microsoft is collapsing under its own weight. You can only sell bad software for so long, only make so many tens of billions of dollars from it, before people start to cop onto your scam. Among the many reasons why I hate Microsoft and its products is that Microsoft ships software before it's ready for the market, turning its customers into unpaid Quality Assurance testers. This undercooked software is then the reason your bloats up your PC with patch after endless patch, hotfix after execrable hotfix. If Microsoft were a car company, its vehicles would be shipped with no windows, no trunk door, components missing from the engine, and with only three tires. Sure, you'd eventually get everything you needed to have a functioning vehicle, but the problem is you didn't get what you paid for in the beginning.

The Microsoft automobile would also be sold to you without any seat belts, without airbags, and with no locks on the doors -- in other words, with nothing to protect the occupants. This is how Microsoft ships its products. In 2006, Internet Explorer was unsafe to use for 284 days of the year -- nine months out of 12.

Not to mention the bloatware that ships with every Windows PC -- all those ridiculous trial versions of software you would never buy, anyhow, which take the better part of a day to uninstall -- and the arbitrary changes to their products' usability and interfaces. For instance, I've used Microsoft Word for a dozen years -- though I've recently moved over to OpenOffice Writer -- and many of the updates and new versions consist of simply moving functions around from where I was used to finding them off to some new place. The most egregious example of this is Word 2007. Nice try with attempting to make it more visual, but who in the vast Microsoft Brain Trust broached the idea of making Word 2007 save files with the .docx extension? Try opening a .docx file in an earlier version of Word. The result is pure, unadulterated schmlanx. "Why would anyone want to open a file created in Word 2007 in Word 2003 -- or, Zeus forbid, Word 98?" Those of us who work on multiple PCs, that's who. The only reason I moved from Mac to PC in 1997 was because Apple was going through a bad time, which made getting replacement parts for products stupidly difficult. Terrified of having thousands of pages of my writing trapped on my 1991 Mac Classic with no way to print -- my LaseWriter was conking out with no help to be found -- I printed my work and moved to PC, so I wouldn't have to run the compability gauntlet any longer. But now I can relive those good ole days with Word 2007 and its insane .docx format.

Customer dissatisfaction is nothing new with Microsoft. People could despise the Gates/Ballmer Leviathan all they wanted, but both men went on to become billionaires twenty and forty times over. With the release of Windows Vista, however, Microsoft-the-maker-of-inferior-products has finally had its mask ripped away. On the surface, Vista's smooth look is a complete and utter rip off of Apple's OS X. No one with an ounce of professional pride would engage in such baldface theft of another's ideas. Better yet, Vista was voted the #1 Technology Disappointment for 2007, among the Top ten terrible tech products by CNET, which stated "Its incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade, are just some examples of why this expensive operating system earns the final place in our terrible tech list."

Expensive is right. There are no less than five different versions of Vista, and they're well over $250. Which is great because there are Linux-installed PCs available for as little as $199:

Linux PC Models Multiply As Vista Struggles

Demand for Linux systems is such that some retailers are selling out. Last year, for instance, Wal-Mart for a time couldn't fulfill orders for Everex's $199 gPC.

Until recently, Linux PCs were about as easy to find in stores as a vinyl record. Now, personal computers with the Linux operating system pre-installed are becoming more readily available, thanks to new models from upstarts and established PC makers -- and disappointment withMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s new Windows Vista OS.

In just the past several weeks, a handful of new, low-cost systems have hit the market that are powered by Linux -- open source software first developed by Linus Torvalds and enhanced by enthusiast programmers around the world.

In August 2001, I attended a conference held by the Society of Technical Communicators in Chicago, and heard a talk given by a manager in Microsoft's technical communications. He was a decent enough guy who began his talk by showing us the top of his head, ruffling his hair with a hand and saying, "See? No horns." Right -- Microsoft isn't evil.

Well, let's hope Microsoft makes its more sinister technology is as shoddy and hole-ridden as its mainstream software:

Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software

By Alexi Mostrous and David Brown

Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.

The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.

Technology allowing constant monitoring of workers was previously limited to pilots, firefighters and Nasa astronauts. This is believed to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software for mainstream workplaces.

Let's hope this monstocity sinks to the bottom of the sea before we've got car battery cables linking our testicles and nipples to our PCs.

Check out

gOS

Everex Think Cloud

OpenOffice.org

Ubuntu

Canada's tallest man in danger of being worn out by Windsorites

Gentle Giant

Gentle Giant Dreaming Big

Monster burger defeats giant

Twenty-four year old Jerry Sokoloski, who stands 7' 7" and weighs 550 lbs, has toured Windsor, Ontario since late 2007. A gracious guest, amiable Sokoloski has made appearances at area businesses, meeting Windsorites, and was most recently seen at Bubi's Awesome Eats -- at an invitation-only, who's-who-of-Windsor-event -- where he was served an 18 pound hamburger.

A growing number of citizens, however, are concerned that Windsorites might ask too much of Canada's Tallest Man. For instance, there has been talk of cordoning off a three-block section of Ouellette Avenue in order to create space for Mr. Sokoloski to demonstrate physical feats, such as throwing a minivan tire, palming and squishing watermelons with one hand, arm-wrestling a revving firetruck, and running and touching traffic lights. Although harmless, goodnatured feats, there is worry among city officials that Windsor's demands upon Mr. Sokoloski may wear out the country's tallest citizen, thus limiting his ability to visit other Canadian communities.

Word of other, more troubling feats have circulated through the city's grapevine, including having Mr. Sokoloski swim across the Detroit River, demonstrate at Sandwich Street's Dominion House how much beer he can drink and how many men he can fight at one time. Moreover, following his appearance at Bubi's Awesome Eats, every restaurant in the city is now eager to have Mr. Sokoloski to their establishments to eat 20 pounds of food. Such are the demands on Canada's Tallest Man, and the rigors of these requests can take their toll on even the most gigantic constitutions.

Mr. Sokoloski's tour of Windsor has been hailed as an unqualified success, particularly in light of the failed 2005 visit by Canada's Most Introspective Man, Maurice Osgood. Mr. Osgood's visit culminated with his appearance at the Capitol Theatre, where he sat on stage pondering the audience for two hours before saying, "It is most satisfactory to be here." To which the audience responded with silence and then a smattering of tepid applause. Most of the audience, however, was, in the words of construction worker Frank Gentry, "pissed off."

Talks are in progress between Windsor officials and Mr. Sokoloski's staff about temporarily deputizing Mr. Sokoloski into the Windsor Police Service so that he may compete on the Windsor side of the annual tug-of-war across the Detroit River between the Windsor and Detroit police services during the International Freedom Festival.

In 2009, there are plans to bring Mr. Sokoloski back to Windsor to team up with Girard Charbonneau, Canada's Loudest Man, for a tour of local eateries and historical sites. There was hope that Ian Jott, Canada's Hungriest Man, would be in Windsor to join Mr. Sokoloski and Mr. Charbonneau in a "Three Tenors"-like tour, but Mr. Jott is already scheduled to tour Romania and Transylvania at that time.

At present, Mr. Sokoloski's public appearances are being cut back for him to get some much-needed rest and begin, again, to focus on his writings. Calls seeking confirmation that Mr. Sokoloski has been invited to sample and endorse Windsor escort agencies were not immediately answered.

Politigoths

Politicians are like the "goths" that went to my high school -- utter conformists whose every waking minute is spent convincing you how "different" they are.

Pedant-iPod

Leave the Great Unwashed to their petty entertainments, to their tone-deaf music, to their album cover shuffle. Show-off with dignity -- demonstrate your moral and mental superiority with the new Pedant-iPod.

What's the good of technology if it doesn't kill time and belittle others?

Learn the Byzantine language, listen to the Refutation of Christian Polemics, to MENSA Roundtable or to Latin crossword puzzles read by Dr. Stephen Hawking.

Flash around the ultra-large, über-readable Pedant-iPod display on the bus or subway or aeroplane, in the cafe or at the cinema. Show the Philistines around you who really knows how to live!

The Pedant-iPod is the size of a hardcover book and weighs approximately four pounds. Pedant-iPod is only available in "ascetic black" with 11MB of memory -- no one who knows anything requires more disc space than that.

Show the pissants in your life who the pædant is. Sanctimonious superiority should always be represented. Be one of the anointed with Pedant-iPod.

Breakfast can be the most righteous meal of the day!

Tasteless Foodstuffs, Inc., presents its brand new line of religious breakfast cereals so that you can start each day of 2008 or 5768 or 1428 with a healthy balance of righteous fury, indignant adrenalin and face-slapping-swift reflexes.

IslamiX Cereal brings the fun back to breakfast with a different Mohammed cartoon on the box each month. IslamiX's whole grain goodness will give you the energy to chase down women who refuse to wear hijabs, condemn infidels of all stripes, ban movies, books and whole segments of human beings, while at the same time keeping all of those anger humors burbling through your pancreas and liver in full bloom. Dodging American missiles sometimes feels like a full-time job. You don't want to be a step slow on the wrong day. So make every day an IslamiX day!

Torah Pops give you the ultimate in bowel health and regularity. Are you as stopped-up as a patriarchal figure in a Philip Roth novel? Well, kvetch no more! Torah Pops will turn your colon into the land of milk and honey within seven days or you'll get your money back! Performing rocket attacks on old men in wheelchairs and destroying the lives of Palestinians is hungry business. Keep up your koyekh with Torah Pops!

Pope-e-os, the original big hat cereal! It's not easy being the largest land-holder in the world, oppressor of millions of human beings, or dodging new pedophile court cases every day of the week. You need Pope-e-os and all of its big hat, healthy goodness. There's a liberal dose of mercury and lead injected into each morsel so that every mouthful will taste like incense -- while at the same time lowering your IQ, dulling your conscience, and spinning your moral compass backward until it breaks. The Roman Catholic Church has not existed 2008 years by dealing rationally with the world, so why should you? Narrow your mind and appetite the Catholic way -- with Pope-e-os!

Better Computing in 2008

What Web browser do you use? Internet Explorer? If you use IE, immediately go to Mozilla Firefox and download the Firefox Web browser right now. In 2006, Internet Explorer was unsafe to use -- meaning, while using it your computer was vulnerable to hacker and virus attack -- 286 days out of the year. During the same time period, Firefox was unsafe to use for 9 days.

I know, I know, you've got all your Favorites set up in IE and it would just be too much of a pain to switch to something else. No. Switch. And take your Favorites -- in IE, click File / Import and Export . . . This launches a wizard that allows you to save your Favorites to your local machine -- I always save such things to my Desktop. When you download and install Firefox, one part of the setup process asks if you want to bring over IE Favorites.

Once you have Firefox as your browser, check out its innumerable cool "add-ons." For blogging, I love ScribeFire. This tool places a small orange pad and pencil icon at the bottom of your browser window. If you're like me, blog ideas usually come while you're surfing the Web or reading the news online. I click the ScribeFire icon and its interface launches, taking up the lower half of my screen with its writing tool. You can write in HTML, styling your prose with code. Or, you can use its "Rich Formatting" tab and style your writing just like you would in a word processor. It's easy configuring ScribeFire so that it publishers right to your blog. And you can save unfinished blogs as "Notes."

Install the Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer so that no matter what computer you're on, you'll always have your Bookmarks (Favorites) with you. The Google toolbar has a similar feature, which is worth checking out. With so many easy-to-use Web-based applications available, there's no reason to go without just because you're not at your own desktop computer in your own home.

As the Internet expanded over the years, so has the amount of crap that clutters it. Surfing ain't what it used to be. That's why I use StumbleUpon to find new and interesting Web sites. StumbleUpon is a toolbar that installs in your browser window. Part of the sign-up process is choosing from a wide range of topics that tell StumbleUpon exactly what kind of content you want to see. Once it's installed, click the "Stumble!" button in the toolbar and a new, random Web page comes up. Some of the most interesting images, trivia and articles I've ever read have come my way with this tool.

For the best in productivity tools and tips on simply getting things done, get over to Lifehacker.com. I found this site following a link to an article about commonsense weight loss tips. Didn't take long to start clicking around and finding cool interior design articles, tips on optimizing my computer and physical workspace. There is no end to the cool and useful downloads they feature. One of the best tools I found through Lifehacker.com was CCleaner (which stands for "Crap Cleaner"), for cleaning useless garbage files from my computer. And there are more excellent articles on Lifehacker.com every day.

Another way to make the most of your time on the Web is using the site Digg.com. "Diggers" from around the world post news stories on this site and the rest of us vote on each story by clicking the "digg it" button next to each article. If you like it, you digg it, if you don't like it, you can click the "Bury" button. Again, some of the most interesting and helpful articles I've read in recent times were found through this Web site. In fact, it's now my primary source for news.

There are a load of online tools I also use for my writing.

Have you ever had a computer meltdown, which destroyed important files? I have. It was a tough lesson to learn that we should all be backing up our stuff. You should back up your files to disc, certainly, but I also back up all of my writing to Gspace, a tool that allows you to FTP content to a Gmail account. This way, no matter what computer I'm on -- my wife's laptop, my parents' desktop -- I can always access my files. Even when I switch back and forth from Windows to Linux Ubuntu on my desktop. As long as I have access to the Internet, I can get at my files, download what I want to work on and get down to work.

If you're sick of being a prisoner to Microsoft Word, there are a number of word processing alternatives. OpenOffice Writer is free to download and is pretty much as robust as MS Word. It's part of the OpenOffice Suite that includes a spread sheet program, a presentation program; basically comparable programs for everything Microsoft offers. In OpenOffice Writer, save your work in "Rich Text Format" and you can go back and forth from MS Word to OpenOffice Writer with no trouble.

Some great online writing tools are Google's Google Docs, which makes your work accessible to you wherever you are as long as you have an Internet connection. Google Docs also allows you to share your work with others for feedback and collaboration purposes. You can give people "read only" access or full access, where they can get into your document and make edits.

Two other great online word processors are ThinkFree and Zoho. Their interfaces are still a little rough; still a little ways from Web 2.0 glossy beauty, but the applications are very usable. Once again, working in either ThinkFree or Zoho, your work is saved online so it's safe even if you suffer a computer meltdown. And your work's accessible to you no matter where you are (as long as you have that precious Internet access).

For distraction-free writing, check out Dark Room. This is an old school no frills word processor. It's virtues are that it fills your entire screen, eliminating all onscreen distractions. And it's old school interface is really handing for coding or first-draft writing. In fact, I'm writing this in Dark Room on my own computer right now. You can't boldface or italicize or underline your text, but you'll enjoy a certain freedom being away from such cosmetics and get down to simply setting words onscreen.

If you're in to writing plays or screenplays, Celtx is a great free screenwriting, playwriting program. Writing in such media involves a lot of fussy formatting. Celtx does all of that for you. Specify whether you're writing a screenplay or play, and Celtx will make sure the Action, Dialogue, Characters and Setting are formatted in the current professional standard. The program even allows you to share your work with the Celtx community for feedback.

If you're a budding Web developer, you'll be extra glad I steered you toward Firefox. There are hundreds of add-ons you can get through Firefox that make Web development a breeze. The Web Developer toolbar gives you a wide range of tools for examining code on your Web pages or the Web pages of other sites. You can look at any site's .css, Information / Div Order will chop up any Web page into its individual divs so you can see how the maestros of the Internet lay out their pages.

The Firebug add-on gives you an even more granular look at Web pages. It's icon lives at the bottom right-hand corner of your browser screen. On pages that validate, you'll see a gree circle with a white checkmark there. On pages where there are problems, the little icon becomes red. Click the icon and its interface opens like ScribeFire. There are numerous tabs: Console, HTML, CSS, Script, DOM and Net. Each shows you indepth detailed information about how a given Web page works. It's invaluable for troubleshooting Javascript and HTLM errors.

Although Internet Explorer is a universally acknowledged piece of shit, it's still with us. Developers must still code for it. IE is not standards compliant, meaning, it does not obey the Web standards created by the bodies that govern the Internet. To some, this may make IE seem like a real go-its-own-way pioneer. For people who have to code for it, it's a major pain in the ass. So, a great way to see how pages render in IE is by using Firefox's IE Tab. Once it's installed, you'll see a small orange Firefox icon at the bottom right of your browser. Click it and it'll become the IE icon, while at the same time reloading your page in the browser to render as it renders in IE. Often, the differences can be staggering and maddening. But at least you'll see them here where you can still do something about them.


Sometimes the Internet seems like one giant, vomitous pop-up window filled with bilious advertising that dogs you whever you go. If you're an active, conscious Web user, you'll find there is a ton of great stuff waiting to be discovered. Now go out an find it.

Metty Xmas

Bad Kiwi Santas in drunken rampage

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A gang of about 50 apparently drunken Santas invaded a New Zealand cinema complex at the weekend -- frightening customers, damaging property and swearing, the cinema's manager said Monday.

Thought by police to be university students dressed in Santa suits, the group did a lightning 20-second raid on Hoyts Cinema complex in the South Island city of Christchurch on Saturday, manager Derek Rive said.

"As they ran through the complex they wrecked everything they could, the Christmas tree -- they bowled everything over ... (they were) just absolute fools," he told The Associated Press.

He said the "hooligans" abused patrons, chanted obscenities, ripped down posters and knocked over cardboard figures advertising films.

Wife Stabs Husband for Opening Xmas Present Too Early

The report of Rock Springs Police shows that a woman stabbed her husband during an argument. Nothing new and surprising so far, but as the report continues it shows the argument started when her spouse opened the Christmas present earlier then she intended for him to do it or at least this is how it seems.

The aggressive wife is 34-year-old Misty Johnson from Rock Springs, Wyoming. She was charged for her deed with aggravated assault and battery (a felony) and misdemeanor domestic battery against her husband Shawn Fay Johnson, also 34.

The Husband was taken to a local hospital as soon as possible where he was treated of a wound to the chest and then released, police informed. He was the one that called 911 at about 1 a.m. on Wednesday and reported that his wife had stabbed him, the authorities said.

An officer who was patrolling the area was informed and arrived at the scene shortly after the call.

On Thursday, a judge set the bail for Misty Johnson at $7,500 and according to the Sweetwater County Sheriff's Office she was released on Friday from the county jail.

Police investigators said that Shawn Johnson revealed that his wife was the one who started arguing immediately after she returned home shortly before the stabbing incident.

Information on the content of the present or if it really was for Shawn Johnson hasn’t been released yet and according to detective David Thompson the investigators haven’t found out.

When searching the scene of the accident, police officers found a marriage license according to which they were married in late September.

Dr. Richard Dawkins' children's book

An early draft of Dr. Richard Dawkins' children's book has been given exclusively to Inside the Hotdog Factory:

The most important thing Jimmy needed to know about life was that he would one day die. Depending on where he lived, his chances of being sexually molested and killed at the hands of his tormentor might be slightly higher or lower than the national average. But, no matter what, he was going to die one day, and rot. All people die.

The second most important thing Jimmy needed to know about life was that his mummy and daddy were going to die. Not today and probably not tomorrow, but they would some day. All people die. No one had been born, yet, who had cheated death.

Jimmy's little puppy, Bilsby, would one day die, too.

Although Jimmy would be taught by his parents and teachers and society that there was God in the sky watching his every move -- even when he went to the bathroom -- these were all lies told to him by stupid, simpleminded people who were intellectually dishonest and prejudiced to the core. When people die, they are done. There is no human soul, there is no heaven and there is no God. If someone truly loved Jimmy, they would teach him this. But nobody really loves Jimmy. He's just the culmination of his parents' egotism and their shallow desire to perpetuate their shallow, ignorant egos. They wanted to have a newer, smaller version of themselves to pamper and coddle and fill with their prejudices and ignorance so that he might, one day, marry a shallow, materialistic Christian girl who will share all of his societal and religious prejudices.

~

So, the lesson for Jimmy -- and for everyone -- is that the meaning of life is death. When Jimmy gets older, though, he will have to understand that the universe does not owe him, or anyone, meaning. He will find meaning in television, Internet pornography, shopping, washing his car, and a myriad other ways; believing the most primitive, idiotic fictions; floating in a seamless cloud of ignorance. Not only will none of that be meaningful meaning, it will be all the meaning he'll ever know because that's all there is. He'll live then he'll die and that'll be it.