RSS feed for InstantSpot site Tracy's Blog

TURDS WITH CAMERAS

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:15:26 GMT

Video Nation: A 38-year-old man drowned off Ocean City, Md., in July, trying to save his two sons from a rip current. Two men from a nearby parasailing boat had jumped in to help and could have used more assistance, one said, except that the boat's passengers declined, with several more concerned with video-recording the drowning. [KMGH-TV (Denver)-AP, 7-25-07]

As a 27-year-old woman lay dying from a stab wound incurred at a Wichita, Kan., convenience store, in June, at least five customers stepped over her to enter the store, including one who stopped to photograph her on a cell phone camera. [Tampa Tribune-AP, 7-4-07]

THANKS JULIE !!

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:17:09 GMT

I've been using the turds category more lately. Turds are funny, I don't care who ya' are, turds are funny.

Cannibal Truism
A cannibal was walking through the jungle and came upon a restaurant
operated by a fellow cannibal. Feeling somewhat hungry, he sat down
and looked over the menu..

Broiled Missionary: $10.00 -
Fried Explorer: $15.00 -
Grilled Republican: $100.00 -
Baked Democrat: $100.00..

The cannibal called the waiter over and asked, 'Why such a price
difference for the Politicians?'

The cook replied, "Have you ever tried to clean one?
They're so full of shit, it takes all day......"

TODAY'S PARABLE

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:47:34 GMT

Milarepa's Last Testament
as told by Lama Surya Das

After the enlightened cave-yogi and songmaster Milarepa left this world, a scrap of rice paper was found inscribed with his handwriting. His ascetic followers were astounded, for it stated that beneath a nearby boulder was buried all the gold that ascetic Mila had hoarded during his life.

A few eager disciples dug around and under that large rock. In the earth they discovered a ragged cloth bundle. Opening the knotted bundle with shaking hands, they discovered only a lump of dried shit.

There was another scribbled note as well. It said: "If you understand my teaching so little that you actually believed I ever valued or hoarded gold, you are truly heirs to my shit."

The note was signed "The Laughing Vajra, Milarepa."

MinutemanMedia.org

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:38:35 GMT

UP MANURE CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE – BY Carl Pope

It’s an unpleasant subject—one that polite company often avoids. But this fall Congress will be asking the question: Who should pay to clean up water polluted with livestock manure--those who caused the pollution, or the taxpayers whose drinking water and streams are polluted? The answer should be obvious. If you contaminate water, you should be responsible for cleaning it up. That’s the law. But under pressure from the livestock industry, Congress is poised to add a provision to the Farm Bill that creates a special exemption from the polluter-pays law and absolves all livestock operations of responsibility for improper management of manure. Citizens whose drinking water and rivers have been harmed by the factory farm industry need help to fight this amendment.

Historically, farmers have used their animals’ manure to fertilize their crops, but crops can only absorb a limited amount of such nutrients. In today’s livestock industry, it’s common to find tens of thousands of hogs and dairy cows or millions of chickens crowded into industrial-style facilities, which can generate as much manure as small cities. When the amount of manure generated exceeds the crops’ ability to absorb it, excess phosphorus, nitrogen and other chemicals including arsenic can pollute the water.

When this happens, someone must clean it up. Currently the polluter-pays law known as Superfund is the only vehicle that cities and states can use to recover cleanup costs from manure-related pollution. Neither the Clean Air Act nor the Clean Water Act authorizes the state or federal government to seek recovery of damages. This means that without the polluter-pays law, local communities are left holding the bag.

In the past few years, Waco, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, each experienced millions of dollars in higher drinking water treatment costs because large livestock operations had polluted their sources. Because their ratepayers should not have to absorb these extra costs, the cities sued livestock operations under the federal polluter-pays law and eventually won better manure management practices. More recently, Oklahoma Attorney General W.A. Drew Edmondson sued large poultry companies in Arkansas to stop the pollution of the Illinois River Watershed and to recover cleanup costs.

Oklahoma and Texas have forced the livestock industry to take responsibility for its negligent actions in their states, but the industry is now fighting to avoid further accountability. It wants Congress to create a special exemption in the Farm Bill, so that if livestock manure contaminates water, the livestock industry would be off the hook.

The industry argues that the law is threatening the nation’s small family farmers with lawsuits for doing what farmers have always done – fertilize their crops with animal manure. But there is no epidemic of lawsuits. In the entire 26-year history of the polluter-pays law, there have been only three lawsuits against animal feeding operations to recover cleanup costs for manure-related contamination. Each involved large-scale animal operations with a history of manure management problems. Farmers who are using their manure in quantities their crops can absorb are protected under the law. The polluter-pays law includes a specific exception for the “normal field application of fertilizer.” Only those factory farms who have so much manure that they have to dump it on the land to get rid of it, rather than use it to fertilize crops, have anything to fear. In addition, any animal feeding operation that’s complying with its Clean Water Act permit is insulated from the polluter-pays law.

Despite the livestock industry’s assertions to the contrary, no farm has ever been designated as a Superfund site due to fertilizer releases.

The National Association of City and County Health Organizations has united with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties and water utilities, including the American Water Works Association and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies to oppose exempting the livestock industry from the polluter-pays law. This fall, the Senate should not force communities to pay to clean up the livestock industry’s mess. Otherwise, local communities could literally be left up manure creek without a paddle.

TODAY'S TIMES

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:57:51 GMT

MY TITLE: Don't blame me, I'm a selfless servent of the people and great guy!

How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army By L. PAUL BREMER III

“The Iraqi Army of the future cannot be an extension of the present army, which has been made into a tool of dictatorship.” — Report by the Department of State’s Future of Iraq Project, May 2002

IT has become conventional wisdom that the decision to disband Saddam Hussein’s army was a mistake, was contrary to American prewar planning and was a decision I made on my own. In fact the policy was carefully considered by top civilian and military members of the American government. And it was the right decision.

By the time Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, the Iraqi Army had simply dissolved. On April 17 Gen. John Abizaid, the deputy commander of the Army’s Central Command, reported in a video briefing to officials in Washington that “there are no organized Iraqi military units left.” The disappearance of Saddam Hussein’s old army rendered irrelevant any prewar plans to use that army. So the question was whether the Coalition Provisional Authority should try to recall it or to build a new one open to both vetted members of the old army and new recruits. General Abizaid favored the second approach.

In the weeks after General Abizaid’s recommendation, the coalition’s national security adviser, Walter Slocombe, discussed options with top officials in the Pentagon, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. They recognized that to recall the former army was a practical impossibility because postwar looting had destroyed all the bases.

Moreover, the largely Shiite draftees of the army were not going to respond to a recall plea from their former commanders, who were primarily Sunnis. It was also agreed that recalling the army would be a political disaster because to the vast majority of Iraqis it was a symbol of the old Baathist-led Sunni ascendancy.

On May 8, 2003, before I left for Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave me a memo titled “Principles for Iraq-Policy Guidelines” that specified that the coalition “will actively oppose Saddam Hussein’s old enforcers — the Baath Party, Fedayeen Saddam, etc.” and that “we will make clear that the coalition will eliminate the remnants of Saddam’s regime.” The next day Mr. Rumsfeld told me that he had sent the “Principles” paper to the national security adviser and the secretary of state.

Meanwhile, Walter Slocombe’s consultations with Americans officials in Washington and Baghdad showed that they understood that the only viable course was to build a new, professional force open to screened members of the old army. Mr. Slocombe drafted an order to accomplish these objectives. I sent a preliminary draft of this order to the secretary of defense on May 9. The next day I sent the draft to the Defense Department’s general counsel, William J. Haynes, as well as to Mr. Wolfowitz; the under secretary for policy, Douglas Feith; the head of Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks; and to the coalition’s top civil administrator at the time, Jay Garner, asking for comments.

On May 13, en route to Baghdad, Mr. Slocombe briefed senior British officials in London who told him they recognized that “the demobilization of the Iraqi military is a fait accompli.” His report added that “if some U.K. officers or officials think that we should try to rebuild or reassemble the old R.A. (Republican Army), they did not give any hint of it in our meetings, and in fact agreed with the need for vigorous de-Baathification, especially in the security sector.”

Over the following week, Mr. Slocombe continued discussions about the planned order with top Pentagon officials, including Mr. Feith. During that same period, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the field commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, received and cleared the draft order. I briefed Secretary Rumsfeld on the issue several times, and forwarded a final draft of the proposed order for his approval on May 19.

Walter Slocombe subsequently received detailed comments on the draft order incorporating the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, making clear that the top civilian and military staff in the Pentagon, as well as the commanders in the field, had reviewed the proposal. Another coalition adviser, Dan Senor, spent the night of May 22 coordinating the text of the announcement with Mr. Rumsfeld’s close adviser Lawrence Di Rita. Apart from minor edits to the order, none of the military or civilian officials raised objections to the proposal to create a new Iraqi army or to formally dissolve Saddam Hussein’s security apparatus.

On May 22, I sent to President Bush, through Secretary Rumsfeld, my first report since arriving in Iraq. I reviewed our activities since arrival, including our de-Baathification policy. I then alerted the president that “I will parallel this step with an even more robust measure dissolving Saddam’s military and intelligence structures.” The same day, I briefed the president on the plan via secure video. The president sent me a note on May 23 in which he thanked me for my report and noted that “you have my full support and confidence.”

The decision not to recall Saddam Hussein’s army was thoroughly considered by top officials in the American government. At the time, this decision was not controversial. When Mr. Slocombe held a press conference in Baghdad on May 23 to explain the decision, only two reporters showed up — neither of them Americans. The first I heard of doubts about the decision was in the fall of 2003 after the insurgency had picked up speed.

Moreover, we were right to build a new Iraqi Army. Despite all the difficulties encountered, Iraq’s new professional soldiers are the country’s most effective and trusted security force. By contrast, the Baathist-era police force, which we did recall to duty, has proven unreliable and is mistrusted by the very Iraqi people it is supposed to protect.

INTRO TO COULTER (COURSE 101)

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:37:29 GMT

15. "(Liberals say) (t)he death penalty does not deter. How do liberals know? This is an article of faith, not a statement of empirical fact. If the death penalty doesn’t deter murder, how come Michael Moore is still alive and I’m not on death row?"

I’m not even entirely sure what this means; is she trying to prove some sort of point through two examples of anecdotal evidence?

14. "When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

This is an incredibly bold statement that I fear hints at an underlying theme in today’s society; rule through fear as opposed to good policy. Also, to add to the hilarity, John Walker was a fundamentalist Muslim, about as far from liberal as one gets.

13. "They’re [Democrats] always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let’s do it. Let’s repress them. Frankly, I’m not a big fan of the First Amendment."

I have to wonder if she truly hates the First Amendment, or merely wants to apply it according to her standards? She doesn’t seem to be in any rush to limit "her" speech anytime soon.

12. "Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t answer to the name Mohammed’)".

This one is just ironic. Agree with her political position or not, I don’t think that anyone is in any rush to label Ann Coulter as "nice."

11. "Press passes can’t be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the President."

There are many quotes displaying Coulter’s propensity towards racial profiling, so this one is merely representative.

10. "God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’"

Seems a rather disrespectful thing to say about a gift, if you ask me.

9. "The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man’s dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet–it’s yours. That’s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that’s the Biblical view."

This indignant attitude about human beings possessing dominion over the entire Earth is too prevalent in religious institutions for comfort. Have these people not given half a thought to preservation, both for our generation and generations to come? Or are they excited to hasten the Rapture?

8. "I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn’t."

Hmm.

7. "I think [women] should be armed but should not [be allowed to] vote. No, they all have to give up their vote, not just, you know, the lady clapping and me. The problem with women voting — and your Communists will back me up on this — is that, you know, women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it. And when they take these polls, it’s always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care."

Now this one is truly bizarre; who would even joke about having their right to vote taken away? Especially someone so involved in politics … Susan B. Anthony is most certainly rolling over in her grave (if you believe in that sort of thing).

6. "When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men and they were sane. Now we’re up against absolutely insane savages."

Joking or not, this is a frightening display of white supremecy. The assumption inherent in this quote is that any person of non-Caucasion origin is a "savage."

5. "Our book is Genesis. Their book is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the original environmental hoax."

There is certainly a healthy debate as to the cost / benefit of prohibiting the use of DDT for environmental conservation versus the preventative effects of DDT on the spread of malaria, I just can’t seem to remember it being addressed in Genesis. Why must some people involve the Bible in so many contemporary debates?

4. "I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo."

There is so much wrong with this statement: abandon of human rights, racism and racial profiling, torture, and the threat of arrest for particular political ideals. She seems surprisingly willing to abandon basic and fundamental American ideals for a Conservative.

3. "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war."

Welcome back to the Dark Ages, complete with a Holy Crusade! How does this woman get air-time?

2. "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

She later amended this quote, and added "after everyone but the reporters and editors had left the building."

1. "I would like evolution to join the roster of other discredited religions, like the Cargo Cult of the South Pacific. Practitioners of Cargo Cult believed that manufactured products were created by ancestral spirits, and if they imitated what they had seen the white man do, they could cause airplanes to appear out of the sky, bringing valuable cargo like radios and TVs. So they constructed "airport towers" out of bamboo and "headphones" out of coconuts and waited for the airplanes to come with the cargo. It may sound silly, but in defense of the Cargo Cult, they did not wait as long for evidence supporting their theory as the Darwinists have waited for evidence supporting theirs."

To me, this is the most dangerous of her outrageous crusades, as even moderate religious faithful have proven their propensity towards joining the intelligent design bandwagon at a nudge. I saw an interview of Coulter on the 700 Club where the host (his name escapes me) was absolutely gushing over the logic and scientific validity of her arguments against evolution in her book ‘Godless.’ Even a cursory review of the published literature on evolution will reveal to the intelligent reader that every single one (and I mean every single one) of Coulter’s arguments has either been debunked, or was never a valid argument in the first place. I dislike her enough when she spouts her misguided political rhetoric; I absolutely loath her when she makes an attempt to discredit a theory before even bothering to open a book on the subject!

TURD OF THE WEEK NOMINEES

Tue, 15 May 2007 17:09:05 GMT

OKAY, HERE'S THE NEW DEAL.....

TURD 'O THE WEEK NOMINATIONS WILL OPEN ON TUESDAYS.

TURD'S DAY THEY WILL BE VOTED IN.

FOLLOWED BY UNCEREMONIOUSLY BEING ADDED TO MY NEW PAGE....

GOLDEN TURD RECIPIENTS!

(Fallwell is off limits, for at least a week,

in respect for his families, and the easily offended)

ANYBODY REMEMBER PAT'S MEMORY PILLS?

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 14:20:16 GMT

Still Waiting for Answers

Surely no one beyond a handful of the most self-deluded Republicans in Congress was surprised at the disclosure by George Tenet, the former intelligence director, that there was never a serious debate in the Bush administration about whether Iraq actually posed a threat to the United States.

It has long been evident that President Bush decided to invade Iraq first, and constructed his ramshackle case for the war after the fact. So why, after all this time, are Americans still in the dark about the details of that campaign?

For that matter, why don’t Americans know the full truth about Mr. Bush’s illegal domestic spying program or his decisions on how to handle prisoners of the war on terror? And now there are new questions begging for answers — about the purge of United States attorneys and about campaign pep rallies in executive branch agencies that might well have violated federal law.

For six years, the Republican majority in Congress ignored the administration’s power grabs, misdeeds and incompetence or, worse, pushed through laws that gave legislative cover to some of Mr. Bush’s most outrageous abuses of power. Now that the Democrats control Congress, they have opened the doors of government in welcome ways. But the list of questions just seems to grow.

We hope Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, enforces the subpoena of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss prewar claims about Saddam Hussein’s long-gone weapons programs. Ms. Rice, who was national security adviser before the war, says she has answered every possible question. Actually, we don’t have room for all our questions.

Just a few: Did she vet the briefing Mr. Bush got from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s rogue intelligence shop on Iraq’s alleged efforts to acquire uranium? The Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department thought, correctly, that the report was false. So why did Ms. Rice permit the president to repeat it to the world? Or did Mr. Bush also know what he was claiming was wrong?

The same applies to other claims about Iraq, including a false report about the purchase of aluminum tubes for bomb building, talk of mushroom clouds and fairy tales about links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. When it became clear the intelligence was false, why didn’t Ms. Rice make sure the public found out? Before the war, Ms. Rice was not in a post requiring Senate confirmation, but she is now. If she refuses to testify, the House should hold her in contempt.

It is imperative for Senator John Rockefeller, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, to finish two remaining studies on prewar intelligence that his Republican predecessor, Senator Pat Roberts, had no intention of completing. The first, on the errors made by the intelligence agencies in predicting what would happen after the invasion of Iraq, is expected to be finished next month. The final piece of the report will compare what administration officials said about Iraq with the actual information they had. Both reports are essential for understanding how this country got into this mess. Mr. Rockefeller will have to make sure the White House does not drag out the declassification procedure.

And then there are the questions about the purge of federal prosecutors. There is mounting evidence that many of the eight fired United States attorneys were punished for refusing to prosecute Democrats on phony election-fraud charges. Who ran this purge? And is it true, as it now seems, that others were rewarded for bringing weak corruption cases timed to close races?

For the last six years, the White House has also conducted seminars in each election cycle that certainly seem like an effort to use government agencies to help G.O.P. candidates. Did they violate the law that forbids the use of federal offices for campaigning?

Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political “architect,” is at the center of both of these scandals. Congress needs to issue, and enforce, subpoenas to compel him and other top White House officials to testify.

Mr. Bush’s supporters are already arguing that Congress’s much-needed investigations are politically motivated and backward looking. Actually, the baldly political act was the Republicans’ refusing to do their constitutional duty of oversight for the last six years. Mr. Waxman said his panel issued four subpoenas to the Bush administration under Republican leadership. The same leadership issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to the Clinton administration.

As for looking back, Mr. Bush has hardly given up the habit of stonewalling Congress, or shown that he has learned the limits of his power. The war in Iraq not only continues, but Mr. Bush is escalating it and repeating many of the same myths about Saddam Hussein. The country does not need any more myths. It needs answers.