DC Mayor, Anthony Williams Achieves 37% Illiteracy Rate for City

Something to be rightly proud of in the capital city of the United States of America:

But even Williams acknowledged huge failures. Public schools have not improved, and the divide between rich and poor has sharpened. Thirty-seven percent of residents older than 25 have trouble filling out a job application or reading a map, one of the highest rates of functional illiteracy in the nation, according to 'The State of Literacy in America,' a government report.

Living in downtown DC allows you to see hundreds of homeless people sleeping and urinating all over the sidewalks, parks, statues, and buildings of this proud city. Less than a quarter mile from the front door of the White House is where you'll encounter your first DC homeless people - and they radiate outwards from there - in every direction. Is this a great country or what?

There Is No God

Another chink in the armor of the believers:

Two female gorillas have been photographed using sticks as tools to get through swampy areas, the first time the apes have been seen doing so in the wild, researchers reported on Thursday.

“This is a truly astounding discovery,” said Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who led the study.

The findings can help shed light on how human beings came to use tools, and also broaden the understanding of how animals use them, the researchers said."

Any increase in our understanding of the natural world is a good thing - it helps to dispel misinformation, and hopefully decreases the importance of religion in the world.

They Let It Happen

Not that we needed more evidence:

THE Pentagon yesterday blocked the testimony of a military official before the committee investigating intelligence failings in the run-up to 11 September, amid claims that a covert American unit identified four hijackers more than a year before the World Trade Centre attack.

Rogue [UK troops] act as the terrorists

Read an interesting story about UK troops who want to come home. The author of the piece mentioned that:

Rogue policemen act as the eyes and ears for terrorists tipping them off about the movements of British patrols, helping ensure attacks are well-timed and deadly.

Maybe the author hadn't yet seen this:

'Two persons wearing Arab uniforms opened fire at a police station in Basra. A police patrol followed the attackers and captured them to discover they were two British soldiers,' an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.

So, the British troops are the terrorists. Huh?

Yep - that's the work of the Six.

So, why would the British government being trying to kill (literally and figuratively) the peace and security operations in Iraq? My guess is that the neocons and Blair want a civil war in Iraq - that way the country will get divided into little, corrupt regimes that are much easier to deal with from a political/financial imperialist-domination standpoint.

And so what if the left-over states are all incredibly violent towards one another? Our military industrial complex will love it. We'll sell incredible amounts of weapons/arms to the whole lot of them - just like we sold arms/weapons to Iran and Iraq at the same time. It'll be brilliant!

Kathy Woods: Ignorant Bitch

Seriously - what would make a person say the following?

'My son's a Marine! Go home, Cindy!' yelled Kathy Woods of Simi Valley, Calif., who said she has spent weeks quietly simmering over Sheehan's mission. Woods's son is stationed in Hawaii and has not served in Iraq.

'She doesn't speak for me,' said Woods, a tourist, who added that she thought Sheehan was a publicity seeker."

Why does it matter that this bitch's son is a Marine? I don't care if the dude is a fuckin Marine or a circus clown - we should not be in Iraq, you dumb bitch.

Oh - p.s. and by the way - my son is chillin in the desert sands of Hawaii, not Iraq.

Bitch.

NFL Blackouts

I've heard the term 'blackout' before, as relates to the televising of NFL games, but now I know what it means. If a home team - in my case the San Diego Chargers - don't sell out their home game for that Sunday (usually, it's a Sunday), then the game will not be shown on local television.

I can see why the stadium/Chargers revenue folks might like this - maybe - but how can blocking a blockbuster day of advertising to a massive home/local audience be a good thing from a revenue perspective?

I hope it gets blocked. Upon going to the Chargers home page right now you get a nice little message:

More than 1,300 tickets remain on sale for Sunday night's nationally-televised game against the New York Giants, signaling the likelihood of a local television blackout.

GET YOUR TICKET NOW!

Are we all following this? If you don't buy a ticket to the game, then you, Chargers fan, makers of Chargers profit, enricher of team and NFL ownership, will not be able to watch the team you support play.

I've heard some outrageous shit in my day, but this is pretty darn well near the worst of it.

Awesome. Just one more reason to start an NFL fans' union to lobby the NFL for changes. But most NFL fans, like U.S. voters, are sheep - and more than willing to do what their told like good little sheeple. But, you never know - I bet even the typical NFL sheep-fan has a tipping point.

Lance: I Doped, But...Not Fair!

Or, something like that:

Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong confirmed Thursday that he had granted permission to a L'Equipe journalist to scour doping records from the 1999 Tour de France, adding that he had been misled in doing so.

Typical.

Racist Incidents at UVA Bush's Fault?

Not all Bush's, perhaps, but he's a big part of it - given that he has implicitly or explicitly endorsed his Rethug Party and all the right-wing hate talk show hosts on the radio, and on tv:

After class at the University of Virginia one night this week, sophomore Kyle Miller found a note attached to the windshield of his jeep. It wasn't a ticket; it was something hateful, racist, written in red ink, in all caps.

The rise in racist incidents across America during racist Woodrow Wilson's reign is well-known - why would we expect Bush's reign to produce something different?

My own contradictory sentiments aside regarding the importance of words - words can, in fact, matter - sometimes a great deal. Bush's coddling of the extremist wings of the Right - including hate groups and individuals similar in thought to the KKK - has been a boon for racism in America. Well done, Bush.

More 'They Let It Happen'

Atta Papers Destroyed on Orders? Kinda sounds like Watergate...

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.

The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa.

A.I.D. == C.I.A.

Typical:

In July, Eritrea asked the U.S. Agency for International Development to stop its operations in the Horn of Africa country without giving any reason.

Cuba Wants to Send Doctors and Supplies

But Bush would rather have poor people die...

Israeli vs. Israeli

Great news:

On Monday, Israeli retired Maj. Gen. Doron Almog decided not to disembark from an airplane at London's Heathrow airport out of fear that he would be arrested by British authorities for war crimes allegedly committed against Palestinian civilians.

War criminal. I love those words. They mean some horror of a person is going to jail for a long, long time.

Doggies

And other pets. Read this (and watch the slide show), then join or at least give money to PETA. They're the folks who do all the worrying about stranded doggies when you're feeling too overwhelmed to do it yourself. And they don't just worry - they act.

The Crazy Guy At The Bar

Reprinted in full, from Eschaton:

Certainly not actually crazy. Honor, fighting for country, paying the price so freedom is free. On leave. From where? Hawaii, is the first response. From 14 months in Iraq is the real one. There with brother, friends, his second day being legally allowed to drink. Honor, love of country, willing to die. Honor. Fighting. 25 kills, officially. Captured. Tortured. Friend cruises by. Have a beer, tag some pussy. Not tears, but almost tears. Says, in fact, almost in tears. No one understands. Brothers. Fight for country. Honor. No one understands. Fighting for country. 25 kills. Women. Children. Children carrying ammunition. No one understands. Fighting for country. A bit drunk. A lot drunk. On leave, just one week. Where is brother, friends? Women. Children. Freedom isn't free. 21 just yesterday. Was once religious, no longer believe. God wouldn't allow such pain. The war is against religion, must stop it to defend the country. Almost in tears. Knee blown out. Chest. Scar. Fighting for brothers. Fighting with brothers. No one understands. honor. repeat. honor. Fighting for country. Captured. Razor. No air support when needed. Politics. Will fight for country. Children. Killed. Honor. Freedom. Fighting for country. No one understands. 14 months. Honor. Brothers. Dude, have a beer. Tag some pussy. Children. Backpacks. Ammunition. Fought for country, for freedom. Will end up in hell.

how many like him?

All these crazy/depressed killers will be coming back home one day. They'll be the new murderers, the new psych ward patients, the new homeless, the new welfare recipients, the ugly face of America and the public face of its ruthless brand of captilism, where the poor go to fight and die in wars of agression for the rich.

And those soldiers not poor at departure time will be poor by the time they get home, or soon thereafter - after they get medical releases from the military, after they get fired from their first couple of jobs, after their wives have left them, after the flashbacks have started, after America has forgotten them.

More Heroic Cops

Just one of the thousands of cases of cop terror to come out of New Orleans. Too depressing to list them all.

What percentage of cops are terrorists? Got me. 10%? 20%? 50%? 99%?

In this particular article, we don't hear of cops actually executing any U.S. civilians, but the terror these cops inflicted on U.S. civilians is very real. These cops should be jailed for life.

Yeah Momma, Somebody's Comin to Getcha

Some video of Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, just south of New Orleans, on Meet the Press.

Supposedly, some of the Wal-mart-related facts might be wrong and/or misleading, but we'll have to wait and see on those. But this guy sure made a compelling case for the reasons why government officials should be prosecuted.

UPDATE: Fiore.