Hey, you! I’m tappin’ my mike …

Can you hear me? You, out there in suburbia, on the freeways, at Wal-Mart and Home Depot, yakkin’ on Yahoo Chat or Everquest, blowin’ your wad at Nordstrom?


This is how bad it’s gotten: We can’t even have a real riot in this country over the execution of a repentant gang leader.


Although, in a faint reminder of days gone by, three witnesses to Tookie’s execution raised their fists in the Black Power salute and cried out that the state was executing an innocent man …

Then, like a wisp of smoke, it was gone … along with the fire …


Nope. It’s all about business these days. Hometown fans and college students riot when their teams win the big game, which is all about business, back-slapping or gloating. Drug dealers and gang leaders assassinate each other’s employees because that’s the price of doing business. Some disgruntled employee or ex-husband is always in the news, blasting away the object of his rage, usually at their place of business.


And I guess it’s a sign of the times that Raw Story posted this kind of important item the other day, and it just went on by …

About that annoying conspiracy theory that most of us can’t let go, and shouldn’t …

Raw Story has linked a revised version of “No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election* … from Project Censored. (Posted in ‘Round About the Blogs” on Sunday)


“Why bother?,” asks Howie in Seattle — who still has that fire in his belly as he posts the following:

This is a question that deserves an answer.


“If by “victory” is meant a majority vote cast at the polls, then the Democrats achieved “victory” in 2000, 2002 and 2004. And yet, the Republicans remain in control of the Congress and the White House.


Small wonder! Republicans build the voting machines, Republicans write the secret software, Republicans count and compile the totals. The Republican machines allow no auditing of the vote totals they report. So Republicans have the ability to “win” elections, regardless of the will of the voters. There is compelling evidence that they have done just that.


And so, if nothing is done to end the privatization of our elections and to introduce reliable verification, the Republicans will “win” again in November 2006 and then in 2008. Today, eleven months before the mid-term election, the outcome is fore-ordained – as certain as Soviet elections under Stalin, and Iraqi elections under Saddam. For, as Stalin said, “Those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything.”


In the United States today, the GOP counts most of the votes, and there are no means to verify up to 80% of those votes. In view of this dreadful situation, when the Democrats ask me for a contribution I must reply: “What’s the point? It’s already been settled! What remains is an empty charade.”-excerpted from Ernest Partridge on The Crisis Papers, via The Smirking Chimp, via Howie In Seattle.


Just below Howie’s e-mail to me with this news: “Yahoo! Shopping.” Cool. Back to normal.


God damn, does George Bush love you. All that shoppin’ and gassin’ up and pollutin’ and keepin’ up with them Joneses.

Yassir, he does, That chimp ain’t grinnin’ like that cuz he’s stupid. He’s grinnin’ cuz he thinks he’s really pulled one over on you.