THE SLUDGE REPORT (page 2)---the official drudge antidote

THE SLUDGE REPORT (page 2)---the official drudge antidote

<' alt='blog*spot' width='146' height='78' border='0'>

Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice. Pull down your pants and slide on the ice.
-Kurt Vonnegut-

-- Dollar Cost to Wash the Skid Marks Out of Saddam's Shorts --

(JavaScript Error)

"We've got an issue in America. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." -George W. Bush BLOG OF DEATH ANOTHER DAY IN THE EMPIRE God is NOT an Asshole CBS NEWS CNN DEUTSCHE WELLE Years of love have been forgot In the hatred of a minute. -Edgar Allan Poe "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -Theodore Roosevelt Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -- JFK "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -ABRAHAM LINCOLN, November 12, 1864 ERIC ALTERMAN'S ALTERCATION AMERICAN POLITICAL JOURNAL BARTCOP.COM BUZZ FLASH CAMPAIGN DESK COUNTERSPIN CENTRAL The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice. Clint Eastwood TEXLOSS All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed. -Montaigne LIBERAL OASIS LIBERAL SLANT MOVE ON.ORG Stephanie's back on the radio! THE NOTE ONLINE JOURNAL OPEN SECRETS.COM TAKE BACK THE MEDIA TOM PAINE PUNDIT PAP WORKING FOR CHANGE AL FRANKEN BOROWITZ REPORT RICHARD COHEN JOE CONASON E.J. DIONNE, JR ELLEN GOODMAN JIM HIGHTOWER ARIANNA HUFFINGTON MOLLY IVINS If you come for the kisses, you must stay for the farts. - 14th Century Latino adage ---BUSH FACES GHASTLY LEGACY--- PAUL KRUGMAN LAWRENCE LESSIG GENE LYONS GREG PALAST BILL PRESS TRUTHOUT TED RALL RICHARD REEVES TOM DISPATCH TOM TOMORROW CYNTHIA TUCKER IMPEACH BUSH t-shirts here Sludge Report/Black Flag t-shirts now available DEEP BLUE REVIEW MORE NEWS YOU CAN ABUSE ---WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS--- Why all of a sudden this unrest and confusion. (How solemn the faces have become). Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly, and all return to their homes, so deep in thought? Because night is here but the barbarians have not come. And some people arrived from the borders, and said that there are no longer any barbarians. And now what shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were some kind of solution. Constantine P. Cavafy (1904) Bush Credibility in Freefall What has happened down here is the wind have changed Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain Rained real hard and rained for a real long time Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline The river rose all day The river rose all night Some people got lost in the flood Some people got away alright The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne Louisiana, Louisiana They're tyrin' to wash us away They're tryin' to wash us away Louisiana, Louisiana They're tryin' to wash us away They're tryin' to wash us away Remember those less fortunate ABOUT FASCISM ACLU ART OR CRAP? AVERY ANT and his rants Fish will be the last to discover water. -Albert Einstein BUSH TO STAND ON ONE FOOT UNTIL EVILDOERS GIVE UP You're an Asshole- video " The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day the leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give it to them. " Dwight Eisenhower, U.S. president 1953-1961 BIBLE BILLBOARD ALBUM CHART STEWART BRAND JUNIOR BROWN CHOWHOUND CONSUMER REPORTS CORN CAM CONSPIRACY THEORIES CULTURE JAMMING DEMOTIVATIONAL POSTERS DICTIONARY END-OF-LIFE CHOICES ENGLISH IDIOMS FILM.COM FOREIGN WORD GALLUP POLL Kurt Vonnegut for Secretary of the Future HOLLYWOOD.COM INFORMATION PLEASE INSENSITIVE GREETING CARDS INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE MR. CRANKY REVIEWS MODERN HUMORIST NEWS OF THE WEIRD PLASTIC All that we are is a result of what we have thought. --Buddha BARTLETT'S QUOTATIONS Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination. --Lily Tomlin SHAKESPEARE SKELETON CLOSET SLANG DICTIONARY SMOKING GUN TOM DISPATCH LISTEN: RACHEL YAMAGATA DAILY BRIEFING MAGAZINE READER F****D COMPANY The Madness of George Bush SLASHDOT THE BIG EYE I don't know who these people are, nor the precise nature of their politics, but I sincerely wish they were running this country. NEWSPAPER FRONT PAGES ARIZONA REPUBLIC ATHENS NEWS BOSTON GLOBE CHICAGO TRIBUNE DENVER POST EDITORIAL CARTOONS GLOBE & MAIL THE GUARDIAN HERALD TRIBUNE OMAHA WORLD HERALD PALM BEACH POST SYDNEY MORNING HERALD TIMES OF LONDON TORONTO STAR MORAL MAJORITY COMES CLEAN WARFOLLY WASH POST NEW REPUBLIC NEWSWEEK THE NEW YORKER THE PROGRESSIVE THE NATION SLATE TIME MAGAZINE US NEWS & WORLD REPORT VILLAGE VOICE DEEP BLUE REVIEW-more news Sludge Report (page 1) ---more abused news--- "I love my country too much to be a nationalist." - Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960) "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -Thomas Jefferson Frat Member Found Wrapped In Plastic, Tied To Tree... (should keep for weeks) WHO SHOULD YOU BELIEVE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING? HIGHLY EDUCATED CLIMATOLOGISTS OR ANAL RETENTIVE MEGALOMANIAC RUSH LIMBAUGH? Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. John STUART MILL 1806-1873, British Philosopher, Economist BUSH SUPPORTS A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO BAN DEMOCRATS, DEMOCRATS SUPPORT AMENDMENT TO BAN MORONS PENTAGON 'CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE' REPORT pdf "THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOR," THE COMPOUND COMMANDMENT RIGHT WINGERS FORGET US 'deeply troubled'... KINKY FRIEDMAN FOR TEXAS GUV Free Filthy Sanchez internationalterrorist.com You can put lipstick on a pig and call it a princess, but it is still swine. DEEP BLUE REVIEW---MORE NEWS Better let me sniff that...heheh... "SHOCK AND AWE"...heheh... RIGHT-WINGERS PRAISE LIMBAUGH'S DRUG USE..."STUPENDOUS". IMPEACH BUSH SHIRTS ETC BOYCOTT OF RUSH LIMBAUGH ADVERTISERS GROWS ÃÆÃ¢â¬ÂÃÆÃÂ¾ÃÆÃÂ±ÃÆÃÂ¡ Zorba ÃÆÃÂ¡ÃÆÃÂ©ÃÆÃÂ³ÃÆÃÂ¨ÃÆÃâÃÆÃÂÃÆÃÂ¥ÃÆÃÂ´ÃÆÃÂ¡ÃÆÃÂ© ÃÆÃÂ´ÃÆÃÂ§ÃÆÃÂ ÃÆÃÂ¾ÃÆÃÂ¨ÃÆÃÂ§ÃÆÃÂ³ÃÆÃÂ§ ÃÆÃÂÃÆÃÂ¡ ÃÆÃÂ°ÃÆÃÂ©ÃÆÃÂ¥ÃÆÃÂ© ÃÆÃÂªÃÆÃÂ¡ÃÆÃÂ© ÃÆÃÂÃÆÃÂ¡ ÃÆÃÂ·ÃÆÃÂ¯ÃÆÃÂ±ÃÆÃÂ¥ÃÆÃÂ¸ÃÆÃÂ¥ÃÆÃÂº The future's uncertain and the end is always near... t r u t h o u t - William Rivers Pitt | HST and the Proverbial Live Boy In Matthew 10:34-36, the Master says, "I came not to bring peace but a sword. For I come to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's foes shall be those of his own household." Rapture at Christo's Gates DAILY HOWLER DAILY OUTRAGE DAILY WEASEL DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND DEMOCRATS.COM ROMENESKO'S MEDIA NEWS TALKING POINTS MEMO WONKETTE BUSH WATCH CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS CHICKENHAWKS CONSORTIUM NEWS DAILY SHOW THE HAMSTER HARPER'S WEEKLY REVIEW PETER WERBE SLUDGE WEATHER ACTION TONIGHT'S SKY LEWIS BLACK DAILY DISH DEPRESIDENT E! ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY EXTRA GAWKER IMDB PEOPLE NEWS INTELLIGENCER THE KICKER MICHAEL MUSTO OBSCURE STORE THE ONION PAGE SIX MTV NEWS TELEVISION WITHOUT PITY TIP SHEET TV GUIDE NEWS WHITEHOUSEMEMOS YAHOO ENTERTAINMENT ZAP2IT CONTACT THE SLUDGE REPORT: sludgemail TO STAY INDEPENDENT AND UNBALANCED, THE SLUDGE REPORT DOES NOT ACCEPT CRITICISM. and the light grows ever dimmer... dim bulb productions The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred. -- from The Nation's founding prospectus, 1865 If you do not find an intelligent companion, a wise and well-behaved person going the same way as yourself, then go on your way alone, like a king abandoning a conquered kingdom, or like a great elephant in the deep forest. Buddha If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone 'America died from a delusion that she had moral leadership. Will Rogers And because wickedness is multiplied, most men's love will grow cold. Matthew 24.12 They say "Everything's all right" They say "Better days are near" They tell us "These are the good times" They don't live around here Warren Zevon I've always said that there's nothing an atheist can't do if he's really unsure whether he believes anything or not. Graham Chapman Saints are sinners who kept going. Robert Louis Stevenson Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. McBeth If there were no Santa Claus, it would have been necessary to invent him. Voltaire We have a drug problem in America and it's called television. We have a nation being turned into a bunch of fucking droids and getting so fat that pretty soon Americans are going to start oozing into each other's protoplasm. We'll just be giant globs with several feet and several heads probably wired straight into the television. This is the future I see. Someone asked, How do you explain what we do next, and I said, Dance. Fuck. Fight. Make yourself indigestible to the system so that if you are ever swallowed up, you will be vomited out. I really think so. Make yourself unemployable. You'll never get an interesting job if you're employable. Get arrested, form a punk band and go to Indonesia and fall in love with someone who doesn't speak your language. I'm not kidding. -Greg Palast Sorrows of Empire "Four sorrows ... are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens." -Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire More: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Thomas Jefferson "There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by... corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses. It's one of the reasons why the word "corporation" doesn't exist in the constitution - they were to be chartered only by states, so local people could keep a close eye on them." James Madison, Father of the Constitution "In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions." Andrew Jackson "I am more than ever convinced of the dangers to which the free and unbiased exercise of political opinion - the only sure foundation and safeguard of republican government - would be exposed by any further increase of the already overgrown influence of corporate authorities." Martin van Buren "As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters." -Grover Cleveland "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." Theodore Roosevelt The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, IS Fascism. -Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bush has one of the emptiest faces in America. He looks to have no more depth than spit on a rock. It could be that the most incisive personal crime committed by George Bush is that he probably never said to himself, "I don't deserve to be president." You just can't trust a man who's never been embarrassed by himself. The vanity of George W. stands out with every smirk. He literally cannot control that vanity. It seeps out of every movement of his lips, it squeezes through every tight-lipped grimace. Every grin is a study in smugsmanship. --Norman Mailer There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears so to speak. Producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution. - Aldous Huxley Political Swirl...Political Swill In spite of the model lesson of water down a drain, dominant American politics spins in a dyslexic wrong-turn vortex independent of truth, dependent on a reversal of the planetary whirl to change. Nothing short of alchemy can alter this. Physics is beginning to show that we choose our own reality, and we have chosen this one. May God have mercy on us all...and like it or not, He is firmly entrenched in this - now more than ever. Nothing is more mystifying to the losing side of the equation than how this perplexing path found its way under our feet and how we arrived at this peculiar place upon it. This will be the topic underlying all the rancorous bickering and backbiting that guarantees to reach levels inversely proportionate to the depths we've sunk. How many buckets of blood will it take? How many foreclosures, bankruptcies, broken families, homeless children, men gone postal? How much stark reality will it take before the light of truth forces its way into the fogged notions and delusional perspectives that dominate the picture our leaders portray? We have become a land guided by propagandists, charlatans, and dangerously misguided fools. Pumped up by the smoke they send up our shorts....inflated and full of false bravado...preaching fear and the false promise that salvation lies in hating in superior ways....pretending to love, all the while. But hate has never been the long suit of true champions...has it? Certainly not fear? And pretending to love is the coldest chill of all. We know that much...don't we? Somewhere deep within the soul of the people THIS, surely, has not been lost. If THIS somehow has been squandered, in our heady side trip through this ornate yet vacant new wilderness, we truly do have something to fear...and we are, in fact, lost. RUNNING AMOK...in the finest of shoes Is there no more perfect phrase for the psychological climate in America than "fear and loathing"? That patented phrase is from the fevered genius of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and all rightful credit is his. An ugly but necessary preamble in this land of litigation and hustle and profit at all cost, etc...but things like that must be said or risk be taken down by the snarling dogs of legal recourse. Regardless, and all apologies aside, let the point be made: America is lost and searching. Despite the trumpeting of the tired nonsense that America is great, and sound, and will return to its brief and sparkling glory, the brutal point and ugly truth is that America has lost its way... America is no longer America. When every dollar that is spent to annihilate our "enemies" is equally invested in trying to coexist peacefully...when other cultures are respected and embraced and regarded as important and not just strange and different and in need of 'Americanizing'....when lying and deceit lose their currency...and, when depth of spirit is as valued as depth of bank accounts...maybe THEN, the original promise of this country will have a chance of being realized. The world is watching...and loathing. ----------------------------------------- Something's happening here, But you don't know what it is, Do you Mr. Jones? - Bob Dylan ----------------------------------------- In an old "Hey Rube" column, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson referred to this Dylan lyric and offered his astute psychosocial commentary. http://espn.go.com/page2/s/thompson/001120.html While I couldn't agree more, I see things a bit differently and would offer another perspective: This is a subject that has been a personal preoccupation for decades, and just when an analysis begins to make sense it ratchets up to a whole new plateau. One aspect of American culture has become clearly paramount: The widespread acceptance of an ethos of personal survival and personal welfare at all cost - 'me-ism'. Truth matters only when it is personally beneficial. Plausible deniability, a modus operandi of the ruling elite that grew out of the dark age of Nixon era Washington and found full bloom under Reagan, has now become solidly rooted in the fertile compost of America at large. Nobody, it seems, will take responsibility for anything. Not only is there ubiquitous denial of anything compromising, there is an odd counter-phenomenon of a willingness to accept unwarranted credit. People everywhere are pretending to be talented and famous, and, oddly, accepted as so. Up is down and down is up. What IS happening here? We fell down the rabbit hole a good while back and it is, collectively, just now beginning to dawn on us. The tragic consequence is magnified by a sense that the cultural tools to cope with this sort of problem have eroded as well. We have come to embrace bullies and demagogues and are loath to listen to hard truth. We want a yellow-brick road to candyland and don't want to recognize we are lost in a pointless forest. This ethic of survival at all cost is in striking contrast to the indigenous American philosophy that "..today is a good day to die..", an elegant and zen-like reverence for divine will. Without this kind of acceptance and desire, on a broad scale, for an authentic existence, the world will grow ever uglier and more vulgar. Fights regularly break out in the stands of high school football games, men are killing each other over little league baseball, soccer moms are arrested for assault and running amok...on and on. Look at the recent presidential election...sheesh...it all has the same smell: "...my dog's badder than your dog...even if I have to cheat to prove it." Are we doomed? George Harrison thought so, and considered naming his last album "Your Planet is Doomed, Part One". He declared: "The world is going mental as far as I'm concerned...Basically, I think the planet is doomed." George went on to say that things are speeding up because of technology and "...everything that is happening". "Everything" paints it with a bit of a broad brush, but he was certainly onto something. Fat-cats grow fatter these days, while poets and painters starve. White collar criminals retire to gated communities, sometimes after a short stay in a country club prison. Vile toxins bubble up not only in the culture, but also in the landscape and in the drinking water, with those growing wealthy from it dying and passing on their ill-gotten wealth or living out their years in quiet well-feathered obscurity. It is all finally coming home to roost, and while some might agree, it does little good to don a sandwich-board and take to the streets proclaiming "THE END IS NEAR!". Yet, it's way past time to pay casual regard. The signals have become too evident, too blatantly obvious. Clearly the message is on the verge of filtering down to the mainstream. When that happens, it will be, as usual, too late and entirely out of our hands. Perhaps it is too late already. But what is there to do? There is no easy remedy for the self-indulgence that plagues America. It is so reinforced by our impatient ways, and so woven into the fabric of our culture. Until this black tide is turned by soul searching and self-realization on a mass scale, nothing will change. If and when it does, it is probably too late anyway, things are that bad. Why bother? Life as it is will go on, at least for a while, and the ethos that 'anything that enhances the bottom line is good' will continue, and the storm clouds will continue to gather. Oh, and now there is this "war"... THE AMERICAN KAKISTOCRACY kakÃÂ·isÃÂ·tocÃÂ·raÃÂ·cy plural: kakÃÂ·isÃÂ·tocÃÂ·raÃÂ·cies noun. bad government: government by the most unscrupulous or unsuitable people, or a state governed by such people (Early 19th century. From Greek kakistos "worst" + -cracy.) Thesaurus * kakistocracy Pronunciation: (kak"u-stok'ru-sE), [key] n., pl. -cies. government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power. Free counters provided by Andale. Technorati Profile