From the daily archives:

Friday, April 7, 2006

Sweet Holy Mother of Dog, am I ever depressed…

by Frank Paynter on April 7, 2006

Spent hours fooling with the CSS to come up with a mundane color combination that doesnâ€™t make me want to puke when I look at the links on this page. Maybe it makes you want to puke.

While doing that I was surfing around and hassling with the help desk at [domain-host name removed to protect the working stiffs] to get my password because Iâ€™m embarrassed by the old web page of my business which I have paid no attention to since maybe 1998. Or earlier. And it wasnâ€™t any good then. Even as brochureware it sucked. And I had no clue about just telling the truth, but rather tried to get all quasi-professional, proving to anyone with any wits that dropped by that indeed I knew fuck-all about web design, and wasnâ€™t that accomplished as a musician.

I dropped in on the accomplished musicians while waiting on hold to get my password resetâ€¦ hint, you can hack anyone just by sounding sincereâ€¦ I didnâ€™t have any way of authenticating myself (no mom’s maiden name or any other challenge question really) but the guy at [domain-host name removed to protect the working stiffs] was a good fellow and reset my password for me anywayâ€¦ wait. I better go back and edit out the domain hostâ€™s name. I donâ€™t want to get anyone in trouble.

Best thing I read tonight I think was this at Tom Matrulloâ€™s.Â I was going to leave a copy but Golby had skateboarded by and dropped in something intelligent and I didnâ€™t want to look all shabby by comparison, since Matrullo is one of the profound thinkeurs of our time as evidenced by this bit with which he ties off his excerpt from Bertrand Russell:

Touchstones. All returns, the argument doesnâ€™t change, no matter how networked, hereâ€™s a network via BMO, the same lineaments again, riverrun past eve, again. Good t-shirts might help:

The musicians… Peter is off on a voyage via 767 out of Santa Monica via Chicago to who knows.Â Madame is working off brilliant chat with Locke, all Ezra Pounded and Hank Miller, and big tits in Big Sur and they’re having fun but I’m not.

I think it boils down to a fucked-up childhood.Â I want everyone to love me all of the time.Â And when they don’t, well… futher proof that I’m the POSTWRA.Â That stands for the “Piece of Shit The World Revolves Around,” but I don’t want to offend anyone’s fucking sensibilities so I use the acronym.

This week I was foolish enough to share my well reasoned if totally batshit paranoid theory regarding the Bush family anthrax in Daschle’s face conspiracy with Jerry Michalski.Â He looked at me like I had stepped in dogshit.

Tonight I looked up Charlie Hyder.Â He’s still dead.Â But somehow the pictures of my dear friend Jim Evans had escaped me when I was neuroto-surfing on these subjects before.Â And I have no idea whether Jim is alive or dead, in Colorado or California or home on the ranch in New Mexico with Bonnie, finally aging gracefully, or what.

And sadly, I am now convinced that I have never had an orhinal thought.Â Boo fucking hoo.Â My typos are more interesting than my reflections.

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Treason

by Frank Paynter on April 7, 2006

Wiliam Rivers Pitt says…

George W. Bush and his people lied with their bare faces hanging out about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

They lied about connections between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, lied about Iraqi connections to September 11, and further lied about the threat to America posed by Iraq.

They made a decision to invade that had nothing to do with those weapons, and even conspired with their British counterparts to goad Hussein into a war regardless of whether the weapons were there or not.

They used September 11 against the American people to frighten them into a fearfully subservient acceptance of the invasion.

They bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in order to spy illegally on thousands of American citizens.

They leaked classified intelligence information in order to destroy a political foe, and in the process annihilated an intelligence network run by Valerie Plame. That network, it should be noted, was dedicated to tracking any person, nation or group that would deliver weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

Every time they broke the law, their cronies in Congress manipulated those laws to make the actions taken legal.

Pitt says this is treason, and I agree. Is the president above the law? Is the Republican Congress?

From the 1947 National Security Act

SEC. 601. (50 U.S.C. 421) (a) Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(b) Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identity of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(c) Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States, discloses any information that identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual’s classified intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than three years or both.

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Fred Brancel prepares to do his time…

April 7, 2006

Busted at the School of the Americas protest last November, Fred is getting ready to serve his sentence. He expects to be out before his eightieth birthday. Here’s a letter from him. I’ve stripped the contact info, but will be happy to supply it to you directly if you’d like to help keep [...]

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