Strangling President Bush

Anyone remember the old sticker from the 1980's that said:

Stress: The confusion caused by your conscience overriding the urge to strangle the living daylights out of some jerk who desperately deserves it!

Wow, I feel that way about Bush, w.r.t. the wiretapping furor going on right now. We all know that the Puzzle Palace does SIGINT, and we all know it's supposed to only do its work abroad, not domestically. So, when Bush is criticized because of the wiretaps on international phone calls originating in the U.S., does he say "hey, once a call crosses national borders it's fair game"? No, because that would be sensible, and would shut down the whole controversy. Everyone would shrug & go on about their business. Instead of that, he has to come out with a justification out of a Vaclav Havel play: "that congress authorized me to use all necessary [military] force supersedes all other law and means I have carte-blanche to do whatever I think's needed".

Has he lost his mind?

Is he trying to put that hyena from New York in office in 2008?

Has he simply decided that he isn't accountable to anyone but himself?

Has he completely stopped listening to Cheney?

Does Rove think by playing into the hands of the "Bush is trying to eliminate democracy in America" camp that they'll be distracted from our massive trade & budget defecits in 2006?

Is he really a marionette being manipulated by space-aliens?

WTF ?!

From the 'nuff said department

Photon Strikes Back

... and gets pre-Raphaelite on her fanny. This time he's saving her from Boethius.

A modest proposal to rid the world of abortion

Politically, I'm mostly a conservative libertarian, and, generally speaking my "knee-jerk" opinion on something is more likely to align with those on the right of the traditional spectrum as with those on the left. In some others, though, I don't really fit anywhere. Specifically, as it matters for this post, I'm both Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion. This's an odd position to be in, that I've been hoping that technology might remedy for me with the invention of the artificial womb. Alas, this hasn't happened. In light of the lack of invention of the artificial womb, with the desire to see no children who aren't wanted while at the same time seeing no fetuses knocked off, I hereby tender the following proposal:

1. All male children shall receive reversable vasectomies (at public expense)
2. Any mentally-competant male wishing to have the state of his vasectomy altered (either to reverse it or else to re-instate it) shall have the operation performed promptly and at public expense.
3. False testimony about one's "fertility status" shall be a felony.

Spendy, to be sure, but it would ensure that before a child is brought into the world, the would-be parents must take a positive affirmative step that having a child is really what they desire and intend. This is analogous to "opt in" versus "opt out" marketing terminology. I think that all would-be parents should have to "opt-in" instead of the other way around.

1. Undesired pre-infants won't be slain by the gazillion each year.
2. High-school girls who succumb to peer-pressure to have sex will still catch all the latest diseases, but they won't have their futures truncated by the need to care for a child while still laying the foundations for their own lives.
3. The ability to procreate will be tied to one's general societal fitness without regards for race, religion, money or (competant) intelligence, or, in otherwords, eugenics without all the evil.
4. The rearing of children, having become a marginal token of societal fitness, will become an incentive for the formation of more stable marriages.
5. The idea of being properly prepared for the advent of children being part of the general meme, the age at which people become parents will increase -- this may cause additional research expenditures for the prevention of Down's syndrome.
6. Non-marital sex will become even more common, necessitating the need for better immunization against STDs( but also lowering the number of divorces from marriages that never should have been ).
7. Given the larger proportion of children raised in conditions of relative surfeit rather than relative deficit, non "white-collar" crime (violent and property) will diminish.
8. Money spend on social services for single mothers & their children may be diverted into the education or health-care budgets, or eliminated from governmental budgets altogether.
9. Men will also get to feel a little pain bringing a kid into the world.

All for the cost of 2 to 5 outpatient surgeries per semi-capita, surgeries which by then will be so common and standardized as the be cheaper than most airfares.

The life of an academic

What does your a mild-mannered wife do when she's not knitting with her husband? She slogs through critical theory of course! And then (cue the Wolf's leitmotif from "Peter and the Wolf") Photon will decide she looks comfy, and it's lights out til bedtime. Ah, the hazards of being an academic.... :0)

Things you have to be to be a Democrat or a Republican

Just in case you had a low opinion of American politics, allow this summary of the righteous Things you have to believe to be a republican "article" and its rebuttal to lower that opinion even more. I wish that this was satire.

Democrats think Republicans believe...	Republicans think Democrats believe...
Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.	People who use drugs deserve compassion and understanding -- unless their drug of choice is tobacco.
Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.	Children can be exposed to years of violent and sexually-explicit imagery in popular culture with no ill effects, but an adult who is exposed to a racially insensitive remark is emotionally scarred for life.
The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.	Banning abortions will only drive them underground, but banning guns will make them disappear.
A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.	Teaching children about safe sex in school will make them sexually responsible, but teaching children about safe gun handling in school would make them violent killers.
Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.	The Enron accounting scandal is an indictment of free markets as such, but UNSCAM is no big deal.
The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.	An unemployment rate of 5.6% during the Clinton administration was unusually low, but an unemployment rate of 5.6% during the Bush administration is unusually high.
If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.	Successful government programs should be praised and publicized -- unless the program is welfare reform.
A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.	A work of art portraying Jesus submersed in urine is daring and avant garde, but a work of art portraying Mohammad submersed in urine would be bigoted and hateful.
Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.	George Bush invaded Iraq for the oil, but the many profiteers from the oil-for-food program opposed the war out of principle.
HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.	Janet Jackson's breast is protected by the First Amendment, but political advocacy ads are not.
Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.	Scientists and engineers can't build a safe nuclear reactor, but global warming activists can accurately predict the weather.
A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.	Education should be value-neutral, except for values like multiculturalism and environmentalism.
Government should limit itself to the power named in the Constitution, which includes censoring the Internet.	We need to move beyond 9/11, so we can get back to obsessing over Vietnam.
The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.	The Second Amendment does not protect the right to keep and bear arms, but the Fourteenth Amendment mandates race preferences.
Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness, and you need our prayers for your recovery.	Fetuses do not have rights, but animals do.
General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have the right to adopt.	Parents should have a choice over whether their children are born, but not what school they attend.
What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.	American corporations outsourcing jobs to poor foreign workers is bad; taxing American corporations and sending money to foreign dictators who promise to give it to poor foreigners, but actually squirrel it away in Swiss bank accounts, is good.

Stolen wisdom

I stole this graphic from Headrush. Even utterly out of context, it's wisdom & beauty are inescapable.