Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Petty moves from a petty man.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

“Alexa, change the president.”

In after Baud. Damn.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

People are complicated. Love is not.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

No one could have predicted…

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Consistently wrong since 2002

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

The words do not have to be perfect.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

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Archives for 2004

Chest Pains

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I had a scare this week. ONnTuesday I had a horrible stomach-ache and a head ache, and I took two excedrin for the headache. About an hour later, I felt like my heart/stomach was going to explode out the front of my body.

I initially didn’t want to, butsince I have lost my girlish figure, I decided to go have the thing examined at the hospital. The whole thing was kind of scary, especially since the warning signs for gastritis/ulcer/GERD are similar to those for heart attacks. At any rate, I worked myself into a full lather, and convinced myself I was having a heart attack and was going to join ‘Lizbeth.

So they hooked me up to an EKG, did chest x-rays, hooked me up to a heart monitor, inserted a heparin lock, and, after hours of waiting, released me. Today I went to the Doctor and found out I have GERDS, or so she thinks. More tests are pending. Better than a heart attack, that is for sure.

At any rate, some quick notes for Doctors:

1.) When you inform a patient that you intend to do a rectal exam to check their stool for blood, you should not be holding a large syringe. I took one look at the monstrosity she was holding and told the Doctor- “If you use that thing, I am ready to make a prediction.”

2.) When someone has worked themself into a lather and is convinced they are having a heart attack, do not read off a list of symptoms. Every symptom she listed, I began to experience.

Docto X- “Do you have a shooting pain in your arm?”

Me- “I do now!”

Doctor X- “Do you have shortness of breath or dizziness?”

Me- “I do now!”

I finally told her to stop listing symptoms before she killed me.

Some quick notes for patients:

1.) When you push the nurse call button, don’t immediately start asking where ‘all the stewardesses are?’

2.) When your doctor asks you a question, they may not want a literal answer. For example:

Doctor Y- “Did you have a rectal exam the other day?”

Me – “Yes, Doctor X did one.”

Doctor Y- “Good- then we won’t have to do one today. How was it?”

Me- “It was awful. It was traumatic. It was terrible.”

Doctor Y- “No- (giggling). I meant, what was the result of the test.”

Me – “Oh.”

At any rate. I live to fight another day. I am now dreading routine prostate exams, which start in 7 years. At anyrate, the Dcotors all said that even though I am young and thought it might be something else, they wished everyone would come in and get checked like I did. Apparently they would save a helluva lot more lives if more people were as easily scared as I am.

So- If you have chest pains, even after a spicy Thai dish, go.

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Radicals In Our Midst

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Not long ago in my little mosque around the corner from a McDonald’s, a student from the university here delivered a sermon. To love the Prophet Muhammad, he said, “is to hate those who hate him.” He railed against man-made doctrines that replace Islamic law, and excoriated the “enemies of Islam” who deny strict adherence to Sunnah, or the ways of Muhammad. While he wasn’t espousing violence, his words echoed the extremist vocabulary of Wahhabism, used by some followers to breed militant attitudes.

Like others who listened that day, I was stung by the sermon. It stands in chilling contrast to reforms taking place within Muslim communities nationwide. In fact, only months earlier at my mosque, my mother, sister-in-law, niece and I prayed in the main hall, an act of defiance that led to a reversal of the policy that women had to pray in a secluded balcony. Sadly, I have learned that the realization of an inclusive Islam is a fragile thing, even in this country. Americans need not look elsewhere to hear hate-filled rhetoric preached by fundamentalists. It resounds in our own back yards.

Like many small mosques, mine does not have an imam. Instead, a governing board – which appoints its own members – sets policy. An elected executive committee is supposed to decide who will lead prayers and deliver sermons. With infighting, that committee disintegrated over the last year, and went vacant after the board failed to hold elections in November. The board took over managing the mosque. A month before the student’s speech, he and about 10 other men staged the equivalent of a coup. They appointed five in their ranks as the “temporary executive committee” and usurped the board’s power to choose who will lead prayers, preach and make management decisions.

These men rally around strict interpretation of the Koran and Sunnah, which last week entailed a sermon that criticized women working outside the home and called women who have lost their chastity worthless. The group has packed the mosque’s bookcases with fundamentalist publications.

Even though a majority of the mosque’s membership, which is largely made up of West Virginia University students and staff members, is moderate, passivity by it and the board has allowed extremism to take hold. One board leader told me that the board doesn’t want to “get aggressive.” Tired of such complicity, my father – who helped start the mosque, Morgantown’s first, 23 years ago – just resigned from the board. But this is not a story about family wounds. If it were, I would leave and worship elsewhere.

This is where I live and work. I know the mosque in question.

(via Tacitus)

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Rumsfeld Redux

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When every Democrat, in a coordinated movement, attempts to have Don Rumsfeld forced out of office in election year hijinks designed solely to get to at Bush, it is idiotic to point to concerns leveled by Republicans about Rumsfeld’s performance and state- “See, this isn’t partisan.”

In fact, it takes a level of shamelessness and audacity that surprises even me, and I have a PhD. in cynicism.

While the ever-widening scope of the abuse cases at Abu Gharib is deeply upsetting to me, trying to state that this is all Rumsfeld’s fault, or a direct result of our Gitmo policy, or anything in that vein, is disgusting. All you have to do is trace Kerry’s statements to see the motivation for this putsch against Rumsfeld- watch as they started out benign, then, when the Democrats thought they had something they could use against Bush and the Pelosi’s and the Rangel’s started in with their fiery rhetoric, Kerry’s statements started to become more heated and fiery.

Could you guys try to be less transparent?

*** Update ***

On the positive side of things, I guess I won’t be hearing about the successes of “Clinton’s Army” again any time soon.

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Comments Policy

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Look folks- some quick points here:

1.) This is my blog. I write about what I want.

2.) Following Point #1, I will usually respond to most comments on most threads.

3.) There are often times a number of comments, so, I sometimes do not read them all, as, either the thread has Godwinned, I am dealing with the same people talking about the same thing in other threads, or, get this- I may not even notice your pithy response.

4.) Following Point #3- challenging me to a debate about something in one thread, then a week later, stating in a different thread that since I failed to respond to your previous challenge, you have won a debate, proven I am a hypocrite, or thus, show everyone on the blog the falsity of every statement I have ever uttered is absurd and stupid.

Chances are, I have decided that I wouldn’t cross the road to piss on you if you were on fire, and decided it is not worth discussing things with you. Remember- I adhere to the principle to never argue with idiots, because they just drag you down to their level and beat you with their own experience.

More likely, however, is that I NEVER SAW YOUR DAMN COMMENT.

5.) Following Point #4- I don’t see every comment, so it is impossible for me to remove or correct every odious and obnoxious comment from the resident moonbats on the right and the left. Therefore, I warn you that you must delve into the comments section at your own risk, and should you find your delicate sensibilities offended, all I can say is that you have been warned.

I really don’t have the time, nor, quite frankly the desire and energy, to correct every commenter who quotes freely from Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore, although I do try. I might note, however, that most of the people who quote freely from sources such as those are usually have attained a level of silliness far greater than anything Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh could ever hope to reach.

Again, enjoy the comments section, and while I do my best to remove Indymedia/Stormfront bullshit, I miss stuff. Deal with it..

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Thanks For Clearing Things Up

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The other day I was chided for noting the Democrats were turning the Abu Gharib mess into a partisan issue.

Go read the NY Times Op-Ed page today.

Go read the remarks by almost every Democrat.

Go read your liberal bloggers.

Then come back here and apologize to me. There is nothing that the Democrats will not latch on to in an attempt to regain their power.

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Paid Partisans

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The other day, I was quite shocked to see in the comments section to the torture outrage post this statement from Ted Barlow:

I appreciate this, John. It’s good to know that the mainstream left and right are essentially on the same side.

I don’t want to sound crazy here- but I never thought this was a political issue or something that even deserved a second thought before making a judgement. Torture is wrong. Period.

I guess when you are a paid political pundit, you are not paid for your thinking. You are paid to sound like you are thinking while cranking out shrill agitprop. Thus, barely a week later from the scandal being blown wide open, we find the Calpundit sounding all the right partisan tones:

MSNBC has posted the full text of the Taguba Report on abuses at Abu Ghreib prison. I haven’t examined it yet, but wanted to point it out to anyone who’s interested in reading the full text. Maybe someone can email a copy to Richard Myers, Don Rumsfeld, and George Bush.

This is an election cycle, so maybe Mr. Drum is just following the faxes from Hyannisport:

The horrifying abuse of Iraqi prisoners, which the world has now seen, is absolutely unacceptable and inexcusable. And the response of the administration, certainly the Pentagon, has been slow and inappropriate.

Get it guys- this is not a human rights issue. It is campaign fodder.

And like sand through the hour-glass, my opinion of the Democrats gets worse.

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