Pathetic

That's probably the common element to anything I'll be mentioning, beginning with Blogger now more or less being equivalent of a Yugo. Shit, I'd probably have better luck tapping out Morse code on a cup attached to a piece of string...it took almost 45 minutes to simply get to the point where I'm able to compose something--and I still don't know if it's gonna publish. (Update: two hours and three tries thus far).

Not that I'm likely to switch just yet, but I actually looked at typepad to check out their service...

Anyway, I'm going to post several otherwise non-related items, with the idea that maybe I can get Blogger in gear just long enough to note a few things, and then I've got some stuff to do that involves more than watching IE's progress bar stall over and over again.

So Many Idiots, So Little Time

Democratic Underground's Top Ten Conservative Idiots List was updated earlier today, and there's plenty of competition. I'm sure I would have eventually gotten to it anyway, but I was searching around for references to the gag-worthy "Culture of Life" mantra that slithers out of the lips of the wingnuts and came across it...I wasn't disappointed.

"Cultists of Life" check in at the runner-up spot...amazingly, Hal Turner, wingnut radio talk show host, allowed his inner Nazi to overshadow his own cult leanings upon learning that Ms. Schiavo is Jewish. Others, while not following in Hal's footsteps, per se, have made at least half-hearted attempts to sow hate and fear, threatening to shoot either Michael Schiavo, or the judge (who is himself a devout Christian). Tom DeLay and George W. Bush demonstrated themselves to be hypocritical idiots, respectively--DeLay, it's been revealed, had a similar enough situation to Schiavo involving his father: the elder DeLay was badly injured and was being kept alive with a respirator. The family decided to shut it off.

Bush, who, recall, demonstrated his fealty to the "cult of life" by mocking Karla Faye Tucker while governor of Texas--and might as well have spat on every person in uniform in the country when he turned WMD into a punchline at a black-tie dinner, signed legislation allowing hospitals in the Lone Star State to turn machines off regardless of family wishes. Bush also ducked the issue of the teenage suicide shooter in Minnesota for almost a week--what bravery on the part of the commander in chief. I guess he was waiting for Rove to look at the polling data...

Finally, Jeb gets jabbed when word gets out that he sent a goddamned posse to try to take the corpus--literally. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed.

Anyway, there's a LOT more to see by linking over.

Lesson on How to Win Ugly

The Rude Pundit's got it.

Guiliana Sgrena and Naomi Klein

Suburban Guerrilla and Counterpunch both have excerpts, and the news would be shocking--except for the fact that almost nothing captures public attention (unless it's the Schiavo tragedy)...Sgrena reveals new details about what was the closest of calls (including the fact that she was shot with what appears to be a .50 Caliber gun, which tore through her shoulder and punctured a lung).

Short version: there was no checkpoint. The road itself was NOT the airport road familar to anyone who's aware of the situation in Iraq (i.e., the most dangerous road in the world). Sgrena was traveling a VIP route to the airport, which required a diversion into the Green Zone. The car was shot at FROM BEHIND. Oh, and the US has taken custody of the vehicle (although it is owned by the Italian government) and refuses to release it to investigators....Hmmm.

Keep the Cardboard Box, Throw Away the Item

From Bad Attitudes here's a link to a Michael Kinsey's op-ed that opens with two prescient paragraphs:

Based on the two big domestic stories of last week -- Terri Schiavo and Social Security personoramification (or whatever they want us to call it instead of privatization) -- the Republican philosophy seems to be that people need more control over their own retirements but less control over their own deaths.

Based on recent polls, most people feel the exact opposite. They prefer the modest but certain Social Security check they get every month over the opportunity to spend their twilight years nursing their portfolios and worrying every time Alan Greenspan's successors open their mouths. On the other hand, they want to set for themselves the rules about their own final departure. Specifically, people are terrified of being kept joylessly alive, active minds trapped in shut-down bodies or lost minds mocking the dignity of a lifetime, just to prove somebody's political point.

Kinsey goes on to suggest that Bush actually believes in his culture of life (and Social Security privatization) rubbish--as he puts it, Bush possesses "the stubborn conviction of the unreflective mind." Hmmm. We'll see whether or not that plays out over time, won't we?

Finally, here's an op-ed by Bob Herbert about a law suit filed on behalf of Arkan Mohammed Ali. Who's that? Herbert informs:

Arkan Mohammed Ali is a 26-year-old Iraqi who was detained by the U.S. military for nearly a year at various locations, including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. According to a lawsuit filed against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Ali was at times beaten into unconsciousness during interrogations. He was stabbed, shocked with an electrical device, urinated on and kept locked - hooded and naked - in a wooden, coffinlike box. He said he was told by his captors that soldiers could kill detainees with impunity...

No charges were ever filed against Mr. Ali, and he was eventually released. But what should be of paramount concern to Americans is this country's precipitous and frightening descent into the hellish zone of lawlessness that the Bush administration, on the one hand, is trying to conceal and, on the other, is defending as absolutely essential to its fight against terror.

This underscores a major flaw in the global "war" on terror. It's not enough that Mr. Ali was freed. The problem was jailing and abusing him in the first place.

OK, I'm hoping that Blogger will actually post this--then I've got to go get a few things done. Maybe later I'll be able to post again, but if not...

And, for the record, I'm really getting sick & tired--yeah, I'm a small fry in the blogging world, but it's frustrating nonetheless...