Thursday, March 09, 2006

Vice-President Cheney back in the driver's seat: Cheney v. Cheney

Yesterday, a bellicose, ubermensch Dick Cheney made public threats against Iran. . .even before he has finished sorting out the Iraq situation. Cheney is clearly a paper tiger. We don't even have the troops, resources, or will to "finish up" the war next door to Iran. Or is this his strategy for the cut and run option in Iraq?

The Veep weighed in heavy over the last week on the inherent goodness of domestic spying and standing fast in the war in Iraq. He also subtly warned breakaway Republicans to pipe down and mind their own business.


In the White House itself, Cheney--after a brief public stint in the doghouse [1] --is back in charge. It's going to take more than a mere shooting or his top aide's indictment to take down the top dog.

[1] While still still running the show. . .but offscreen for a week or so until they could all get back ahead of the story.
---o0o---

It lives: Get Your War On


click to enlarge


It's crude, rude, profane and over the top, but I still find myself returning over and over again to Get Your War On. Since the early days of the war, David Rees has been churning out his panels using clip art. The comics depict office workers attempting to understand the war and what we have wrought. Check it out. Buy his book.
---o0o---

Sesquipedalian Words

Some people say that

Acetylseryltyrosylsery
lisoleucylthreonylserylprolylserylg
lutaminylphenylalanylvalyphenylalanylle
uclserylserylvalyltryptophylalanylaspartylprolyl
isolucylglutamyllucylluceylasparainylvalylcystinyl
threonylserylserylleucylglycylasparaginylglutaminylphenyl
alangylglutaminylthreonylglutaminylglutaminylalanylarginy
lthreonylthronylglutaminylvalylglutaminylglutaminylphenyla
lanylserylglutaminylvalyltryptopphyllysylprolyphenylalanylprolylg
lutaminylserylthreonylvalyarginylphenylalanylprolylglycylasparty
lvalyltyrosyllysylvalyltyrosylarginyltyrosysylasparaginylalanylvalylleu
cylaspartylprolylleucylisoleucylthreonylalanylleucylluceylglycylthreo
nylphenyllalanylaspartylthreonylarginylasparaginylarginylisoleucyli
soleucylglutamylvalylglutamylasparaginylglutaminylglutaminylse
rylprolylthreonylthreonylalanylglutamylthreonylleucylaspartylal
anylthreonylarginylarginylvalylaspartylaspartylalaanylthreonyl
valylalanylisoleucylarginylseryllalanylasparaginylisoleucyulas
paraginylleucylvalylasparaginyglutamylleucylvalylargin
ylglycylthreonylglycylleucyltyrosylasparaginylglutam
inylasparaginylthreonylphenylalanyglutamyls
erylmethionylserylglycylleucylvalyltrypt
ophylthreonylserylalanylprolyl
alanylserine


is the longest word in the English language. Well, it's gotta be right up there. It is the 1,185 letter name for the Tobacco Mosaic Virus.

If you don't count the names of diseases and some chemical compounds, the other candidates are: (usually named as the longest word):
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, "a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust," however the word comes up in that context rarely. It generally only appears as an example of a very long word.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, a village in Wales, is probably the winner for proper names.

Two words you probably have heard, antidisestablishmentarianism and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious both appear in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Honorificabilitudinitatibus appears in Bill Shakespeare's Love's Labor Lost. There are a few very long words that appear in only one place: James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.

Dictionary.com goes through the usual candidates, and says at the end, "perhaps smiles is the longest word — after all, there is a mile between the first letter and the last. "
---o0o---

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Painting: you are here


Click painting to enlarge.

I'm tired of words today. I wrote two poems last night. They were not so good, and you know they must be feeble, readers, because you've seen some of the things that actually do make the cut! /jack
---o0o---

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Alien Lore No. 65 - George Bush, Dick Cheney & The Greys



With the circumlocutious logic we so often find in the reasoning of the UFOlogy community, the UFO folks were in a tizzy when George W. Bush became President. They believed he had promised, and would deliver on the promise to make a full discolosure about what the government knew about UFOs and The Greys.

Another reason for Ufological optimism was a 2000 Roswell visit scheduled by Cheney. This visit followed on the heels of a now famous meeting between presidential candidate George W. Bush and Arkansas native Charles Huffer. During that July 2000 encounter Huffer asked George Bush if he were elected President would he disclose "the truth about UFOs?" Bush in reply stated "Sure. I will . . . It will be the first thing he [points to Cheney] will do. He’ll get right on it."

When Cheney arrived in Roswell months later, many thought it was a portent of good things to come. Cheney, of course, simply made his speech with no mention of Greys, UFOs, or anything remotely close, and went back to Wyoming.

Because of Dick Cheney's high White House positions in past Ford and Bush Sr. administrations, the appearance of his name on the George W. Bush Presidential ticket led many UFOlogists to believe that Cheney might represent an attempt by the government to make a disclosure on UFOs. Because if you ever want to open up, and make full disclosure, who else would you pick?

As Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, however, Cheney did not release an iota of information to researchers about UFOs. Somehow, researchers believed the Vice-President would now provide some truthful answers.

Because of his former defense position, and because more attention was being placed on candidates concerning UFOs, after the Bush UFO campaign promise in Arkansas, it was incredible that Cheney ended up on a campaign swing to Roswell, New Mexico. The visit occurred October 25, just three months after George Bush made the UFO promise to Charles Huffer that Cheney would look into the UFO situation. The Roswell trip had UFOlogists going bananas.

Roswell is the site of the most famous UFO event in history. In July 1947, there was a crash that some believe involved a flying saucer and four small grey aliens. The crash had been investigated intensely by researchers beginning in the late seventies.

Only six days before Cheney arrived in Roswell, 30 cattle were found dead under mysterious circumstances on a ranch outside of town. Papers as far away as Boston, Massachusetts covered the story of the "mysterious mass death."

Since the late sixties mysterious deaths among cattle had evolved to become a common occurrence on western ranches. These mysterious occurrences had been documented by UFO researchers and the FBI, and had become known as "cattle mutilations". Many researchers claimed the cattle mutilitations were extraterrestrial based, because many aspects of the incisions, and organ removals, appeared beyond human technology.

It was "very interesting that Cheney flew into Roswell," wrote UFO Roundup editor Joseph Trainor, "after the mysterious mass death of 24 cattle in that community. Was he on some kind of clandestine mission for the Pentagon?"


In his speech, Cheney did not even acknowledge the UFO background of the town. The vice-presidential hopeful spoke to the enthusiastic crowd of 2,500, but never mentioned the UFO subject once. He was like the secretive and calculating Cheney of old. And today.

No one asked about UFOs, and he was not asked for a comment about the mysterious death of the cattle that had occurred just prior to his arrival. He completed his speech, and left town.

Lab results on the cattle deaths determined that the deaths had been caused by poisoning. The vet suspected that the cattle had been poisoned by a weed that had found its way into the bails of hay causing nitrate poisoning.

Some, however, felt that the Cheney trip to Roswell might have been a signal. These people felt it was like Reagan making a speech in 1982 near hanger 84 at the Roswell Air Force Base, where tradition says the bodies of the dead aliens from the Roswell crash were held prior to being flown to Wright Fieldin 1982. Like Reagan, Cheney might have been giving an indirect nod that he was aware, and would if elected, deal with the UFO situation.

After their election, there was no indication that the UFO issue had been the first thing Cheney did once elected as promised by Bush in the campaign. In fact there was no indication anything had been done.

Dick Cheney was questioned on Washington D.C. Public Radio Station WAMU on April 11, 2001. Cheney spoke from the White House.

Researcher Grant Cameron: Since the statement made by George Bush last July, there is a vicious rumor circulating in the UFO community that you've been read into the UFO program. So my question to you is, in any of your government jobs, have you ever been briefed on the subject of UFOs, and if you have, when was it and what were you told?

Cheney: Well, if I had been briefed on it, I'm sure it was probably classified and I couldn't talk about it.

Rehm: Is there investigation going on within this administration, Mr. Vice President, as to UFOs?

Cheney: I have not come across the subject since I've been back in government, oh like since January 20th.

Rehm: All right.

Cheney: I've been in a lot of meetings, but I don't recall one on UFOs.

The U.S. government has claimed since December 1969 (when it shut down Project Blue Book) that nothing is classified, and who are we to doubt that government?
---o0o---

Monday, March 06, 2006

Del Brummet's new trailer for Taracotra. . .


click image to enlarge

Del Brummet has put out another trailer for his movie in production, Taracotra. Links to this trailer, and the two previous ones follow:

Taracotra trailer 3
Taracotra trailer 2
Taracotra railer 1
---o0o---

Sunday, March 05, 2006

The Fugu Stew

A rakugo (a humorous short story) tells of three men that cooked up a fugu stew. Not being pros, they were not sure how safe it was[1].

To test the stew, they gave some to a beggar. When they checked on the beggar later, he was still healthy, so they ate the stew.

Afterwards they saw the beggar again. He said he was happy they looked healthy. Now, he knew the stew was safe and he could eat it. The three men had been bamboozled by the wise beggar.

[1] (by law a fugu chef undergoes years of training, learning to remove the poison from the blowfish).

---o0o---

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Alien Lore No. 64 - The Alien Interview



You may have heard of the famous alien interview. I've never actually purchased it. . .but I have a clip. The grainy color footage lasts two minutes and fifty-five seconds.

The video, of course, was smuggled out of--where else?--Area 51 by a man known as "Victor". The video shows a Grey being interrogated.

The video was made public on the notorious Art Bell radio show on 13th March, 1997 by the ufologist Sean David Morton. He said the interrogation occurred in 1996.

After stealing the video, Victor resolved to have the footage broadcast on network television. He babbled on about it being proof in case he was assassinated. Fox TV turned him down after their problems authenticating the Roswell autopsy footage they had previously aired. Fox did not want to be taken in a second time.

Rocket Home Pictures Productions agreed to produce a documentary based around the interview. Morton was brought in by Rocket's president, Tom Coleman, to give his views.



Morton described the video:

"The film was shot through a large plane of glass. There was no sound accompanying the images. The interview took place in a darkened room, lit with an eerie greenish glow, I could make out the silhouettes of two men, one dressed in military uniform with what appeared to be the stars on the epaulet of his jacket, and another more casually dressed man with his hand occassionally rubbing his forehead. They sat with their backs to the camera at one end of a long table, which was littered with wires, chords and microphones. There were what appeared to be medical devices. One in particular was blinking erratically, as if it was monitoring a very sick heart. And there sitting at the end of the table was a small, beige-skinned, black-eyed, bulbous headed creature, the like of which haunt the nightmares of thousands of unwilling abductees."

Morton talked about the Grey's appearance and condition. The alien made very jerky movements and kept bobbing up and down.

"Its skin was a pinkish beige, but the rest of the head looked purple and bruised, as if it had suffered severe contusions across the skull."

Near the end of the tape, the creature goes into violent spasms, and its mouth opens and foam begins to come out. The monitor starts jumping wildly, and, as doctors treat the stricken alien, the footage ends.

The footage has the characters DNI/27 burnt into the bottom line of the frame, along with what appears to be the time code numbers. George Knapp, the TV journalist who encouraged Bob Lazar to go public with his knowledge has shown that Lazar's pay cheques from the time he claimed to be working at Area 51 had DNI stamped on them.

The producer of the documentary, Jeff Broadstreet, knows how Victor took the footage from the base. Victor told him he managed to obtain a copy of the video in an unsupervised moment. "He was assisting in the process of downloading a large amount of video analogue tape to storage on DVD or digital video disc."

He claims Victor deliberately removed the audio track to protect the identity of the men in the video and his own anonymity. Victor also told the producer that he thought the man on the left, who is seen with his hand to his head during much of the segment, is a military telepath who communicated with the creature.

According to Victor, the contents of the removed audio track involved an attempt at trying to obtain some form of technological information from the alien about the coordinates of a ship or object.

No one says if they Grey helped them track down the ship or not.
---o0o---

Seventy-three years ago today, FDR became President



On March 4, 1933, in the pit of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States. In his famous address, delivered outside the east wing of the U.S. Capitol, Roosevelt outlined the "New Deal's" expansion of the federal government as an instrument of change and social security. He told desperate Americans that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Two years into his first term as President, the Nation began a slow recovery. But the fat cats turned against Roosevelt's New Deal. They feared his social experiments, and his removing the nation from the gold standard. And they feared the deficits he was running up (which Republicans now pile up at the greatest rate ever).

Roosevelt's response to the fat cats: a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

In 1936 (and in 1940 and in 1944) he was re-elected by huge margins. And he blew it for a bit. Sure that his mandate in '36 gave him carte blanche, he sought to pack the Supreme Court (which had invalidated numerous New Deal programs) by increasing the number of justices (all of whom would be his nominees). He lost that battle, but now the government itself could and did regulate the economy.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt led us into a global war and worked closely with England and Russia and their leaders Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin to take out the Axis.

President Roosevelt felt the future of the world depended on relations between the Americans and Russians, and he devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations organization.

As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt's health declined, and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a brain hemorrhage, reportedly with his girlfriend at his side.

Largely in response to FDR's unprecedented four terms, the 22nd amendment was enacted and ratified by the necessary number of states. I wish we would repeal this law. You never know when the next FDR will come on the scene. You may argue that recent history shows that two terms are more than enough. But you just never know. . .
---o0o---

Friday, March 03, 2006

Poem: I don't believe

I don't believe in transubstantiation
I don't believe in Papal Infallibility
I don't believe in no-knock warrants
I don't believe in the divine right of kings
I don't believe in smooth jazz
I don't believe in rock instrumentals
I don't believe in jazz vocals
I don't believe in the Second Amendment
I don't believe in Republicans
I don't believe in The National Front
I don't believe in the vegan taliban
I don't believe in repressed memory
I don't believe in John Lennon not believing in Beatles
I don't believe in Richard Gere and the gerbil
I don't believe in Ku Klux Klan
I don't believe in libertarians
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Caligula
I don't believe in Draco
I don't believe in reactionary figurative painters
I don't believe in dinosaurs being 4,000 years old
I don't believe in astral projection
I don't believe in angry Buddhists
I don't believe in angry Baptists
I don't believe in Halie Selassie as a deity
I don't believe in Upanishads
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in the sutras
I don't believe in Jack Chick
I don't believe in the Book of Mormon
I don't believe in Bhagavad Gita
I don't believe in nazis
I don't believe in fascists
I don't believe in the 22nd amendment
I don't believe in Osama
I don't believe in free trade
I don't believe in Christian Science
I don't believe in Busby Berkeley
I don't believe in partitioned countries
I just believe in me. . .and ye.
---o0o---

Thursday, March 02, 2006

The latest Secretary Rumsfeld poetry: five new poems



Every couple of months, I sift through a few of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's press "opportunities," press conferences, and speeches. A few poems usually emerge. In our continuing series, here are some poems spoken by the Secretary in February, 2006, at two venues: an interview with Charlie Rose, and remarks he made to National Guard Youth Challenge Participants on February 28.


24 hours a day


The new media environment
Where there are cell phones and blackberries
And e-mails and 24-hour talk radio

24-hour news programs
And the internet and bloggers
And all of these things that move information

Instantaneously all across the globe
24 hours a day,
7 days a week.
---o0o---




The 20th century

The United States government
Is simply not organized

And arranged and structured
To cope with that.

We're still in the 20th century.
---o0o---


A very difficult one


If you're engaged in a major battle
With major armies and navies competing
And air forces competing, that's one thing.

The center of gravity of that war
Is where those battles occur.
Today, we're not competing

With our major armies, navies or air forces.
It's an unconventional conflict.
It is irregular warfare.

It is asymmetric and the battleground
Is not so much out there,
It is here.

The center of gravity is in the capitals of cities
All across nations all across the world
Because it's a totally new environment

And a very difficult one.
---o0o---

Too old to cry

When I was roughly your ages --
That was a long time ago --
There was a Governor from Illinois named Adlai Stevenson.

He ran for President a couple of times
And lost to General Eisenhower
Both times.

He spoke at my graduating class in college.
It was between his two defeats.
Someone asked how he felt about losing.

He said well,
He was too old to cry
And it hurt too much to laugh.
---o0o---

Rewards, and pebbles in the pond

I've often thought of throwing a pebble in a pond
And watching the ripples go out.
And how interesting that is that each person

Touches a series of circles
Of people
That you come in contact with.

If each of you represent the ripples that go out
To the others you touch in your daily life,
You'll find yourself rewarded many many times over.

---o0o---

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

President Bush intends to beat Tricky Dick

The President appears to be "shooting the moon" with his current approval rating of 34 percent. The operational theory amongst the White House staff is "if you can't come out on top, lose big."

Only two Presidents stand in the way of President Bush's title quest. Jimmy Carter's approval ratings plunged to 26 percent in July 1979. The current title holder, President Richard M. Nixon, sank to a 24 percent approval rating in July 1974 and resigned the next month. President Bush is intent on besting Tricky Dick's record.

The President may be closer to his goal than anyone knows. According to Seattle political analyst John Newton, "It's insane. I can't even reliably crunch the data anymore. There is no precedent for this kind of bumbling. The numbers are decelerating logarithmically! If I had to make a guess, George Bush's approval rating will be hovering in the high 'teens sometime in early May."
---o0o---