cheese it, the cops!

hey i'm headed to jamaica this afternoon, for the calabash literary festival. maybe i'll blog from down there; more likely, late next week.

have y'all thought about the cyber-rape of estonia? i'm telling you, we're going to wake up one day and realize we've got a monster regime in our midst with a nuclear arsenal: vlad, arrchitect of the chechen genocide, a program of covert murder around the world, etc. and each time he is not called to account, it gets worse. one problem: there's no actual way to call him to account. but people had better at least start calling murder murder.
and check this.

this is quite the stunning little story. seems that the whole top of the justice department, including john ashcroft and the director of the fbi, robert mueller, were going to resign rather than let the admin reauthorize their domestic surveillance program. they didn't, i guess because they either got some massive pressure of some sort - like, of the blackmail sort - or assurances that some aspects would be cleaned up. unfortunately, comey is not saying what those aspects are, but it is possible, for example, that initially the program had nothing to do with calls from or to outside the us, that it represented some kind of massive secret domestic surveillance program, pushed by bush, gonzales (as white house counsel), and cheney (the white house and vice presidential chiefs of staff - card and addington - were directly involved in the pressure). they thought they could get the thing re-authorized by ashcroft while he was in intensive care, and evidently he pointedly refused, then collapsed.
no wonder they ditched ashcroft and replaced him with that repulsive little toady. it will be good to find out what they're doing in these days of stench.

yo in case you didn't know, tinky-winky is calling jerry falwell home as we speak. he's undergoing 'cpr.' the gay community will certainly feel adrift.

so over the last couple of weeks the josiah warren project has been massively updated.

(babes in brazil welcome benedict)
it must be cool to be 70-year-old dryasdust celibate theologian and have groupies. but as a matter of fact i too cry every time i think of him.

ouch! chopping off your mom's head with a circular saw is wrong. but chopping off your own head with a circular saw is just...hard.

ok, ok, i admit it. i did an interview with the nytimes about sex in middle age. now you can stop ribbing me, or, i guess, start.

you know what makes me kind of sad about the fort dix case? that we have to import revolutionary cells, that this is a job americans won't do. people, where is our pride?

from the carnival of anarchy, in the "should anarchists be violent?" section:

Okay, now for the example and the question: Imagine there's an evil, crazy dictator who's the head a terrible state, which many people have already fallen prey to. Imagine, this dictaor could just snap his fingers to make one of his subordinates kill any person. Imagine too, however, that this dictator is a great coward and has never killed a single person and is very unlikely to kill anyone in the future. The dictator qua this single pathetic human being poses no threat whatsoever; it's just the dictator qua dictator that it could be argued that he is dangerous. Imagine all of this and ask your anarchist self: would you kill this dictator if you had the chance?

the poster says this is academic, unrealistic etc, but still interesting. but i say: yo it's absolutely typical.

so i'm listening to the "perfect country disk" i made for some students at mica (becca scollan, esp) a few years ago. every cut a hard, paradigmatic, beautiful thing. i tend to like music that is at the center of a genre or style, rather than fusions or syntheses. i wonder why?

(1) vern gosdin (the voice): chiseled in stone
(2) dolly parton: i will always love you
(3) dolly: jolene
(4) clint black: killing time
(5) doug stone (obviously one of the most underrated singers in country): better off in a pine box
(6) clint: nobody's home
(7) loretta lynn and conway twitty: you're the reason our kids are ugly
(8) doug: fourteen minutes old
(9) loretta and conway: it's only make believe
(10) tammy wynette (who is one of the transcendent artists of the 20th century): apartment #9

(11) loretta: don't come home adrinkin (with lovin on your mind)

(12) tammy and george jones: golden ring

(13) vern gosdin: today my world slipped away

(14) george: she thinks i still care

(15) loretta: the pill

(16) george: if drinking don't kill me (her memory will)

(17) george and tammy: two story house

(18) tammy: d-i-v-o-r-c-e

(19) george: he stopped loving her today

(20)  vern: break my mind

(21)  conway and loretta: the phone call

obviously i could have reached back further, to jimmie and hank and left and webb and etc. certainly i'd include the time anthems: "three days" (willie nelson, writer) and "once a day" (connie smith). so maybe i'll do my four cd alltime country set at some point.

so today was the last day of classes at dickinson. and in my "recent political thought" class i asked (after i did some card tricks) "for how many of you is this your actually last college class"? half! well that's kind of melancholy and stuff, or hopeful too. actually these people are pretty smart and good, and i shouldn't be a cynic (asshole). plus that class, where we went foucault/habermas/rawls/nozick/walzer was amazingly good and lively. so here's to you, pete backof, mike perinelli (!), matt ropeik,  the amazing alex brown,  brian (inyourface) booher, kate (magic) binetti, jd!, michael (underrated) o'brien, aaron (kickyoass) williams, lamya al-sakkaf (it's been a great run, woman), caroline (college dems) newbould, jon (ok) calka, guy (wherethefuckareyou) citron, hank (mofo) fenton, eric (studmonkey) dube, maya (biceps) ginsberg, even ryan and ryan (and ryan and ryan). 

for some reason i ain't been reading american cop. i should. you should. we all should. check this great post.

well, now. they coulda done a lot worse. certainly i would have fucked up in some major way, had i been running for office. tom tancredo acquited himself well, e.g.. do you see how i obsessively pick out the impossible? ok. maybe i was wrong, terribly wrong, about mccain, who should, um, never be president of anything. do you you know how much guts it took to be my man ron paul ? the only anti-war candidate in the history of the republican party. what if ron paul had votes? what if we were still americans? oh never mind. we aren't. ok i thought gravel was problematic, though beautiful.

just to do the ratings. mitt romney always comes off well, and seemed the most comfortable out there. i thought giuliani was ok, but he struggled here and there. huckabee and gilmore, it seems to me, are the likeliest to emerge. one lesson: you can't really have a debate with 10 candidates.

yes! america loves its mormons. it's such a funkyweird cult! but i myself am all ready for a rastafarian president. yo i will blog the republican debate if i can get the tv away from the kiddies.

it's not easy being ruled by drooling, blithering idiots. mitt romney's favorite books? "battlefield earth" by l. ron hubbard and, um the bible, written by george bush's favorite political philosopher: god. i bet romney can almost sound out the words. those would be the favorite books only of someone who hasn't actually read any books. but i wonder which he regards as sci-fi, and which he regards as scripture? oh those wacky mormons!

the quest for an explanation of cho has really reached stunning and amazing proportions, calling forth the most intense intellectual inquiry by the world's greatest scientists. their conclusion? he ran amok.

forensic psychiatrist Manuel L. Saint Martin . . . has tracked about 50 cases.  Cho's rampage had the classic signs," said Saint Martin: "It is very likely this was a case of amok."

but i would like more specific information. what exactly is the probability, expressed as a percentage, that cho ran amok? and in the name of science, we also must consider the rival theory that cho went berserk.