CHRIS DAUGHTRY: A SIGN OF ARMAGEDDON?
DENNIS MILLER - REPUBLICAN SHILL
FRED DURST: OUT OF IDEAS ALREADY?
BU$H'S CABINET: INFLUENCE FOR SALE
THE TRUTH ABOUT GEORGE W BUSH'S MILITARY CAREER
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
HOW SFX RUINED MUSIC IN AMERICA
RADIO'S BIG BULLY: CLEAR CHANNEL
PROPHET OMEGA'S CLASSIC RANTS
Well, it's election year again. Another chance for people to vote and, most likely, they won't. Making a choice of the lesser of two evils. You have your bad guy and your worse guy depending on your point of view.
Let's make this brief and easy to digest. We've done OK under Clinton. There's still a lot of fucked up things going on: high unemployment, high rate of illiteracy, high rate of hunger among children. But at least we're not *all* fucked up the way we were under Reagan/Bush. You might know this already, but, Bush Sr. was the head of the CIA...*and* he was President. I can't accept those things together. While he was bailing out his son he was also plotting and perpatrating various nefarious activities under the guise of Freedom.
Let's move on to Bush Jr. He didn't have the grades, yet, he went to Yale courtesy of the exclusive Barbara Bush Scholarship Fund. He didn't serve in the Vietnam War, he was in the Texas Air Guard *and* he went AWOL for over a year. Remember this one fact: this year *both* members of the Republican ticket didn't serve in Vietnam, while the Democrats have two vets. Hmmm, what are all those conservatives who railed against Clinton's war record saying about that? They've kept pretty quiet about war records these days, huh?
Bush Jr was involved in some oil wells and anything he touched lost money. Only after he bought into the Texas Rangers and he wasn't allowed to do anything did he make his own money. He always had Daddy and Daddy's friends to help him out. Gore's family has money in oil wells as investors. Whose family do you think has deeper roots in the fields?
Recently, an expert on dyslexia claims that Bush Jr's Norm Crosby-isms is due to dyslexia. Bush and his people claim he has no such thing. What a bunch of fools! They had a perfectly acceptable reason to explain his inability to pronounce words correctly or express himself properly and they let it go! He could have then used it as another reason to vote for him: Look how hard he's fought against this problem.
I'll leave it to this: would you want a Momma's boy who obviously isn't that smart and definitely does not have enough experience in the politcal field (inability to name almost any head of state) and will be beholden to his Daddy and his advisors or would you want somebody who's been in the game longer, is obviously smarter and was part of a good 8 years...or would you want somebody who's not part of the corrupt two party system who would kick some ass - Ralph Nader, anyone?
Post Election 2000
Wow. What a sad way to end the election. I have a few questions that may expose my political naiveté.
==Why didn't we have another election? Once all the problems were exposed, why didn't we do it again? Fellas, remember when you were kids and you had "do overs" when you played football?
==Why are there different ways to vote? Where I grew up there was a big machine with a curtain. You go in, slide the lever over and the curtain closes. You flick a little lever next to the person's name. If you make a mistake, you unflick and do it right. You slide the big lever over thereby opening the curtain and the vote is counted. Why the hell in the year 2000 are people sitting with a rubber handled needle poking holes in a punch card? PUNCH CARDS???? They had punch cards in my computer classes back in 1980! Butterfly ballots???? Think about it this way: Some people turned off their high speed DSL Internet connection, shut down their home theatre system with DVD player and 5 speaker surround sound to get in their SUV with CD player and cruise control and GSM satellite positioning device to go to a polling place and poke a hole in a fucking punch card.
===Why was it that the Supreme Court judges installed by Bush's daddy voted in favor of Baby Bush?
===Why were the reports of minorities being told the polls were closed and basically given a hard time in Florida never really investigated?
===Why was Florida's Secretary of State (who's job is being phased out because she did nothing but spend money on herself under the guise of "promoting Florida") allowed to be Bush's Florida campaign chief? Isn't this a conflict of interest?
So we now have Bush's demon spawn running the country. All the people who voted for him solely to get a tax break are gonna be real surprised when he screws up the system to give his rich friends a tax break. You others will maybe see a few bucks back. That's it. Forget what damage Nader did. If the greedy tax break voters and the truly naive people who thought Clinton was morally damaged voted for Gore there would have been no contest. What will we have instead? Money back to the rich. A President who will gladly tear down every national park in search of oil or sell them off to developer friends. A secretary of the interior who will fight conservationists. An attorney general who is thisclose to the Pope when it comes to pro-choicers. A head of the EPA who was the governor of the most polluted state. Now...doesn't that sound more morally bankrupt than a guy who can't keep his trousers zipped? Oh wait, I forgot...Gore DID get more votes than Bush.
I understand that there are conservatives and liberals and they think differently. I understand that you can vote your conscience and try and put your guy in office who thinks like you. But, why is it that everybody isn't mad that pristine land in Alaska is now endangered because an oil company hand puppet is going to try and ram through legislation to go up there and drill? Shouldn't that be something basic that all people should be worried about? The oil magnates will say that we "cannot be dependent on foreign oil". So let's devastate our own land to show those damn Arabs!! Let's kill animals and chop down trees and turn our country into a desert. Huh??? Doesn't that sound a little stupid? We'll show you!! We'll tear up Alaska to look - not get, but look - for oil that will take years and years to get down to the 48 states and cost billions.
For you folks reading this who've never been to Europe...they pay on average $9 a gallon for gas. You know what? They either drive small cars (wow what a concept) or they take mass transportation (huh? what's that??). They have trains and buses! And, except for the UK right now, they run and people use them. Back during the Carter years we had an energy crisis and there was an attempt at rationing and cutting back wasteful practices. Once Ronnie got into office the crisis magically disappeared! Wow! Where it go? It didn't disappear for millions of people around the world. Only here.
I think it's a crime punishable by jail time in Em City* that the oil companies are allowed to have all the influence in the US that they have. I understand capitalism and all that but shouldn't that stop when it comes to totally messing the environment, ruining the world's air and water just to make profits? Think about this: one of the most precious rights we have in the US is the right to free speech. But if I advocate killing the President I will go to jail. If I joke about having a bomb in an airport I will be taken away. Say what you want...but not this or this or this. We try and stop sweatshops and we have child labor laws. But who is going to lobby the government on behalf of slave labor? Nobody in their right mind. But you're allowed to lobby on behalf of destroying the world just so some idiot can have cheap gas to drive a tank to the store to rent "Private Parts". Want to make money? Go buy stock in sunscreen companies because with the 17% growth in the ozone hole there's gonna be a lot of it sold. Have fun with your tax breaks!!
* Em City is from the show OZ. Rough prison show here on HBO.
Oh, Napster. What trouble this little program has caused. The creator of the program claims the program doesn't illegally trade music - people do. Kinda like bullet manufacturers saying their product is safe...I mean, what good is a bullet without a gun?
So, you have all these people trading files and songs freely. OK...let's say that someone finds a file through Napster. They like the song so much that they go out and buy a few CDs from that artist. There you have something positive happening. Now, let's say you have someone who uploads that same CD in its entirety. The same person, after having the one song he/she likes, sees the entire CD and downloads it. The band is out any money that would have come from the sale of that CD. That's pretty negative.
There are few aspects of this whole thing...face it: unless MP3s are done at the fastest rate they sound pretty bad. You don't get liner notes, artwork or anything that could make the experience better. You need an MP3 player to walk around with them. You have to pre-load the music. You can't just carry them around like CDs, tapes or minidiscs. It's still a pretty geeky thing. You can't play MP3s in your car. They'll no doubt come up with players that hold gigs worth of files. They'll come up with better ways of playing the MP3s. But that doesn't hide the question: is it legal and/or moral to freely trade music? True, record companies were freaking with the Home Taping is Killing Music campaign in the 80s. Everybody has taped a record and given it to someone. But, that's a little different than putting a file on your computer where thousands, if not millions, of people have access to it. Why shouldn't bands get paid for what they do? Electronic transfer is the future of music and video. Movies are shown on TV. Millions of people can tape them for free. But the cable or network *paid* the artists compensation for the broadcast of that movie. Why can't there be a site that has music for download that has paid the artist for the right to put that music on that site and then gets a fee from the downloader? They can encrypt files so that you can copy them once or twice before it gets blocked. Yeah, someone will hack the code...then it becomes bootlegging. Just like the people who videotape films in the theatre, dupe hundreds of copies, then sell them on the streets.
Should music be free? I don't think so if some poor musician is forced to wait tables just so someone can download their work for free just because they have a computer and DSL.
Tutti Fruity - Oh Rudy...
Well, as anyone who has lived in New York for any amount of time can tell you, NYC is safer than it was, say, 10-15 years ago. You can ride the subways anytime. Shooting galleries have been closed down or at least forced to be very underground. You don't have to worry about walking the streets. So, that's good, right? Well, yeah, I think so. I'm saving a fortune on cabs by taking the F train at 4 AM.
So, you have one Rudy Giuliani who was once the prosecutor for NY State. He led a NYPD protest against then-Mayor David Dinkins on the steps of City Hall. Remember that for later.
Rudy gets his ass elected. Fair enough. Dinkins wasn't that good a mayor. So, first thing he's gonna do is clean up the streets. He brings in William Bratton to be police chief. Now, this guy digs the spotlight. He digs being in the papers and hanging with famous and powerful people. Rudy doesn't like that 'cause *he* wants to do that. So, Bratton gets kicked out of office. Instead of promoting an officer who has the respect of the men he brings in the Fire Dept Chief to take over. ...and he starts taking credit for the work that Bratton started. OK...infighting and petty differences. Whatever - the streets are safer.
Now, what to do after you make the city safer....who can we go after...Times Square! Times Square, to be fair, was pretty skanky. It always was. It was always where sailors went on liberty, it was where you went to find peep shows, divey bars and the chance to get in a fight. It's right by the train station, and, as any traveller whose been to Europe will attest: any area directly surrounding a train station is usually pretty dicey. He sucks the Disney Corp's dick and gets all this money to "clean up" Times Square. Disney takes over. Now it's crowded with tourists buying Disney merchandise, bad brew pubs and places to buy a $8 burger. Great! What's the next target?
Topless and strip clubs are the next on the agenda. Imagine this: in NYC it's almost impossible to go to a bar and see a half-naked woman dance! NYC! under the guise of protecting "the children" and maintaining "neighborhood standards" they close these places down or force them to change their evil ways. Instead of just selling porn you have to sell 70% "non-porn" merchandise in order to stay open. Great! More places to buy cheap-ass Empire State Building statues and anything little pice of shit with New York City scribbled on it. Why didn't he force the places to darken their windows and not allow open display of tapes? We all know what's inside... Wouldn't *that* be better? The famed Billy's Topless now features woman wearing bikinis. Yeah, now *there's* a place that you want to go for your $5 Beck's! So, where did thay all go? They've put them all in Queens or Brooklyn. Right, like some guys out for a night are going to: A) get a cab for $20 B) run the risk of driving drunk or C) take the train out to Queens to go to some titty club. Don't think so. OK...the Titty Bar War won...now what?
Street Vendors. That's right, folks. The guys selling hot dogs and pretzels kebabs are the next target. He's been trying to get rid of them. Saying that they're taking away from "legitimate" (read: paying high rents and taxes) restaurants. Hey, how many times have I been out and I decided to get get a "dirty water dog' instead of going into the Thai place next door? Next: clubs.
For those not in NYC you might also be amazed to know that you can't dance in NY clubs. Yep. No dancing allowed unless you have the right license. He's using the old "Cabaret License" Law. You must have the right license to allow dancing. So, you go to the Drum n Bass night at some bar. Don't dance! You'll be told to stop by the bouncers.
There was a rock club called "Coney Island High" on St Mark's Place. They hassled this club until they finally had to close. St Mark's has always been a haven for hippies and punks for years. The end of St Marks was in the mid 80s when a Gap opened on the corner of 2nd Ave. Anyway, the city used all kinds of tactics against Coney Island High. They would send the Fire Dept, Health Dept and the ABC into the club on Friday at midnight. Make them put the lights on and turnt he music off. The crowd was free to stay (yeah, right). They would go through and cite them for all kinds of "offences" such as having an open window near alcoholic beverages. There was a woman who lived next door (wouldn't you think she would understand the fact that there was a club nearby and that there would be residual noise?) who complained over and over and over. They went in with sound level meters. They put all kinds of baffling in the club. But, she continued to complain and they continued to cite the club. Now the club is closed and I'm sure this woman is now trying to get rid of squirrels who run across her roof all night long. It's just so ludicrous.
It's just so obvious that he's a slave to someone. You have an area that's being gentrified. Why are people moving there? Well, it's where the cool folks went 'cause they couldn't afford to live in an expensive area. They started up cool fun clubs and bars. Yuppie Wall Streeters and Ad Exec-types move in. They start complaining because there's so much noise...the city has to respond because, shit, they're paying ridiculous amounts of money to live there (remember the Tompkins Square Park Riot anyone?). So now you have apartments on Ave A & B going for $1500-$2000 a month. You have Ave C getting cleaned up and ready for more high rent paying assholes to move in. When they get to Ave D..move out of the city.
So who is pulling Rudy's puppet strings? ...I think it's the Disney Corp. I think they offered him soooo much money to take over Times Square that they also said that he has to "clean up" the rest of the city to complete the deal.
Want to know what it feels like to live here under Giuliani? Well, just Click HERE.