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“So what do we do? Something. Anything. So long as we don’t just sit there. If we screw up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we’ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.”

— Lee Iacocca

Dick Cheney, discussing his support of Bush’s recent executive order to permit domestic wiretapping without warrants:

Wow. Here’s a man who’s in touch with the common folk. I’m sure if I went out to my local Safeway and asked ten random shoppers if they support government surveillance of American citizens– without wiretaps or any other approvals or oversight– every one of them would object.

I can’t help but wonder how Bush and Cheney come to their conclusions.

Yay for the Senate!

After the House of Representatives voted to extend many of the provisions of the dreaded Patriot Act permanently, several influential Senators insisted they’d use a filibuster to block the approval of the bill there. They’ve done so, and Bush is pretty unhappy with it. He’s lambasting Democrats, claiming they’re manipulating the situation for partisan gains– although he doesn’t seem to notice that several high-ranking Republicans have joined the fight alongside their Democratic companions.

Aside from the fact that the Patriot Act is one of the most intrusive and damaging pieces of legislation of the past decade, it’s very telling to examine how Bush and his cronies are approaching the situation.

Bush says the Senators are endangering America by “blocking a law vital to the fight against brutal killers”.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says, “If the impasse continues, when Americans wake up on January 1, we will not be as safe.”

And Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Stupidity, chimes in with “We’re going to wake up on January 1 and we will have left some of the most important weapons against terror in the cupboard.”

Once again, we see the administration pushing their agenda by using fear. They make it sound like the Patriot Act is the only thing standing between us and certain doom at the hands of terrorists… who have undoubtably marked January 1 on their calendars with red ink, since they’ll immediately launch a barrage of attacks. Heck, without unsupervised FBI wiretaps they can win the “war”!

This trick worked in mid-September 2001, and apparently has continued to work through the intervening years, but in my mind it’s a tired song and dance that (hopefully) won’t fool people much longer. Bush sucks, and making us believe we’re screwed without him only makes him a bigger fool.

“The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.”

— Larry Hardiman

Today I finished all of my Christmas cards. Every year, as I crank through them in assembly-line fashion, I regret that I can’t write more personalized messages in each and every one of them. But I’ve sent around 150 cards every year for the past decade or so, and I simply can’t find the time to personalize all of them. It’s too bad, because in some cases this is one of the few times all year I communicate with these long-lost friends and relatives. Hopefully the entertainment value of the letter is enough that they forgive me my laziness.

This holiday season, the Motion Picture Ass. of America wants consumers to beware of bootleg DVD’s. They want to be sure we spend our hard-earned dollars not on pirated movies, but on their high-quality wares. How else would we be forced to watch the FBI warning, a lengthy heart-wrenching anti-piracy introductory message, and various Disney previews before even getting to the dang menu?

I’d like to help them in their mission to reap greater profits. As a public service, I present this picture of a woman demonstrating two examples of what might possibly be illegal DVD’s. One of them contains the first three Harry Potter movies, as well as the fourth movie in some other language. In her other hand is the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, along with Earthsea (??), on a single disc. Wow! What a bargain! Clearly the MPAA would never want us to get such a deal, so they must be bootlegs.

Dave Letterman’s Top Ten New Bush Strategies For Victory in Iraq:

10. Make an even larger “Mission Accomplished” sign.
9. Encourage Iraqis to settle their feud like Dave and Oprah.
8. Put that go-getter Michael Brown in charge.
7. Launch slogan: “It’s not Iraq, it’s Weraq”.
6. Just do whatever he did when he captured Osama.
5. A little more vacation time at the ranch to clear his head.
4. Pack on a quick 30 pounds and trade places with Jeb.
3. Wait, you mean it ain’t going well?
2. Boost morale by doing his hilarious “Locked Door” gag.
1. Place Saddam back in power and tell him, “It’s your problem now, dude”

This made me laugh.

“The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling.”

— Paula Poundstone

I’d like to stand up and cheer for people like Deborah Davis, a fifty-year-old mother of four who was recently arrested on a Denver public bus for refusing to show identification to a police officer. She was simply riding the bus, talking on the phone to a friend, when the officer stepped onto the bus and asked everyone aboard to present photo identification.

Knowing her rights, Ms. Davis refused. A second officer was summoned– he, too, asked to see her identification. She refused again. A federal officer was called to the scene, with the same result. She was promptly put into handcuffs, removed from the bus, and taken to the police station. There, after a bit of creative thought, the police charged her with refusing to comply with official instructions (a federal misdemeanor). She was told if she ever rides that bus again she will be arrested and put in jail.

The case is scheduled for federal court in two weeks. It should be interesting to see what happens. Technically, she has committed no crime– there was no sign stating that all bus passengers must provide identification, and there is no law stating that United States citizens must do so at the request of any law enforcement officer. In fact, demanding to see someone’s identification when no crime has been committed and no warrant issued is an illegal search. There are clear Constitutional issues here, making me wonder whether it will go to the Supreme Court eventually.

As our society becomes more indoctrinated to the official War on Terror stance that “security means freedom”, we grow increasingly complacent. We hand over our driver’s licenses without a second thought, simply because someone wearing a uniform asked for it. This is a dangerous path– one which probably has Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson turning in their graves. Hopefully more people like Ms. Davis will continue the struggle to free us from our own government.