Ars Magna Has Bush Pegged

When Mike and Sabra Morton hear grumbling coming from the depths of their computer, they know that Ars Magna, the software program they created that always answers in anagrams, is awake and worrying.

When Ars was asked what he thought Rove was doing when he did not say the name of Valerie Plame, his answer was this:

Reveal. Impale.

If you haven't read this hilarious and insightful article, you owe it to yourself if for no other reason than to see what Ars thinks of George Bush.

Out of the mouths of cyber children comes the darndest things.

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The link at the Times has expired and this is just too good for you not to read it:

Artificial Intelligence
By MIKE MORTON and SABRA MORTON
Published: August 18, 2005

WHEN we hear grumbling coming from the depths of our computer, we know that Ars Magna, the software program that always answers in anagrams, is awake and worrying.

This software sometimes can seem opinionated. Lately, for instance, it speaks happily of the Statue of Liberty as "built to stay free," but when it hears the name George W. Bush, it's likely to cry, "He grew bogus!"

Ars is still angry about that C.I.A. leak.

So, Ars, it all began when Karl Rove, as he tells it, did not say the name of Valerie Plame. What do you think he was trying to do when he didn't name her?

Reveal. Impale.

Well, then, what did he achieve by not naming Valerie Wilson?

Orwellian vise.

But Mr. Rove is President Bush's key political advisor. Can't we depend on him to be truthful?

Leaky; solicit avid pro.

By which you mean Robert Novak, who is believed to have helped him expose Ms. Plame? What's Mr. Novak's job in this affair just now?

Bark: "Not Rove!"

Lately, Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's press secretary, likes to say at news conferences, "I appreciate the question." What do you think he means?

Riot technique: appease it.

Ars, for more than two years we've heard accusations and denials and hours of commentary on this business. Do you have any idea what actually happened? Can you figure out who said what to whom, when?

Them want who? How?

What who? Now them?

Our thoughts exactly. But perhaps the full truth will be, uh, revealed. After all, Mr. Bush says he has instructed his staff that when the prosecutor comes calling, they're to fully cooperate. How do you read that?

Leery: coup aloft.

In the past, Mr. Bush said that anyone in his administration who exposes a C.I.A. agent will be fired. What might he say now?

"I'd ... well ... brief ..."

And if Mr. Bush is asked to fire Karl Rove?

"Karl ... forever ... I ..."

What advice would you give Karl Rove today?

"Lark OVER!"

And what will President George Bush do now?

He ponders big gesture.

Ah yes, his nomination to the Supreme Court. We'll get back to you on that one, Ars.

Mike Morton is a software engineer and the creator of Ars Magna. Sabra Morton is a writer.

The Madness of George Bush

Bush cheerleader, Pat Robertson, has gone too far. He has proved he is not just the anti-Christ, but insane. He has called for Hugo Chavez' death. [Read the interview of Chavez by Greg Palast.

Chavez, of course knows he is the last stop before U.S. corporations wipe out - through globalization - the ability of the poor to take control of their lives and economies.

Robertson is a symptom of what is increasingly an unsustainable way of life: rampant greed by corporations that has been sold to us as "democracy" and "capitalism."

In service of this greed, violence has become an end in itself.

"If the citizenry would recognize that Bush's [and Robertson's] egomania is acting out a national illness," says psychiatrist Carol S. Wolman, "we would all be saner."

For what we are suffering from is a mental disease fed by media hype created by anti-Christ Christians and Reich wing politics. We are well into it, as was Germany when it elected Adolph Hitler chancellor.

Like Hitler, King George is just the tip of our iceberg. If we want to get well as a nation and as a people, each of us better face this bitter truth today.

SLAPP Suits: Filed To Shut You Up

Corporations are now filing what are called "SLAPP" suits or "strategic lawsuits against public participation."

Corporations file these suits, not to win them, but because they cost critics so much money that the critics are silenced, along with everyone else who thinks about raising a question or complaint about a corporate product or practice.

Some examples of SLAPP suits from PR Watch:

In Las Vegas, a local doctor was sued for his allegation that a city hospital violated the state's cost-containment law.

In Baltimore, members of a community group faced a $252 million lawsuit after circulating a letter questioning the property-buying practices of a local housing developer.

In West Virginia, an environmental activist was sued for $200,000, for criticizing a coal-mining company for activities that were poisoning a local river.

In Pennsylvania, a farmer was sued after testifying to his township supervisors that a low-flying helicopter owned by a local landfill operator caused a stampede that killed several of his cows.

In Washington state, a homeowner found that she couldn't get a mortgage because her real-estate company had failed to pay taxes owed on her house. She uncovered hundreds of similar cases, and the company was forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. In retaliation, it sued the woman for slander and dragged her through six years of legal harassment before a jury found her innocent.

In Missouri, a high-school English teacher was sued for $1 million after complaining to a weekly newspaper that an incinerator burning hospital waste was a health hazard.

For the story on this, see: Freedom of Speech, Going, Going...

In an unprecedented move that is being appealed, one of these suits has been struck down by U.S. District Judge Manuel Real (don't you love his name) and the gigantic, multi-state law firm that filed it, fined.

But the $267,000 in sanctions for filing a "frivolous lawsuit" against a community activist and three Forest Service employees will hardly stop these suits.

Corporations and their attorneys will just build it into the "cost of doing business."

It's time to write to our representatives and demand that SLAPP suits be made illegal.

In addition, interested parties are urged to call the law firm Foley and Lardner at (619) 234-6655 (San Diego) and let them know what you think of their plan to appeal and, thereby, waste more public tax dollars.

Remember, democracy requires vigilance. We need to act now or, the way things are going with the neo-cons intending to oust all judges not in their corporate pocket, we will have no avenues of action open to us in another decade.

Fred Mattlage: Peace Hero

It's growing. Support for peace and accountability is growing.

Support for pulling our sons and daughters out of the wretched and ill-conceived war in Iraq is growing.

Support for the Rosa Parks of the peace movement, Cindy Sheehan, is growing.

And people are blogging all over the net about it.

To my atheist friends, forgive me, but : Alleluia! Praise God!

In addition, Fred Mattlage, a cousin of the infamous Larry who fired a gun to frighten the protestors, has stepped up and offered the protestors his land to camp on, in order to assure their safety.

So, how about y'all send postcards to Fred Mattlage of Crawford, Texas with big ol' Thank You's on 'em.

Way to go, Fred!

It can't be easy to stand up to your neighbor the President and all the people around him who persist in maintaining the war in Iraq has merit. And when the protestors go home, he's still going to have to live in that community.

He's a hero. The kind of hero who steps up and makes a commitment.

The kind of hero like our founding fathers who put their lives and livelihoods on the line for humanity's soul over the interest of powermongers.

Fred Mattlage is an every day hero. Write and let him know care of:

Crawford Peace House
9142 East 5th St
Crawford, TX 76638-3037

I'm sure the people there will see he gets them.

Also, consider making an on-line donation to the Peace House which has supported Cindy's protest from the planning stage and could use funds.

Support Our Troops: Support Cindy

Cindy Sheehan remains outside Bush's ranch, waiting to meet with him.

Now is the time to support her with e-mails, letters to the editor and messages to President Bush urging him to meet with her.

Why? Because she needs your help. Now.

Yesterday, on Sunday, while Sheehan and about sixty supporters were conducting a prayer service, a nearby landowner, Larry Mattlage, "fired his shotgun twice into the air."

Sheriff's deputies and Secret Service agents went to his house but did not arrest him.

Did you read the quote of what he said? He said: "This is Texas."

Brilliant. That explains it all, doesn't it?

He can fire a gun in the air and intimidate anyone anytime he wants.

I bet he considers himself "a Christian" too.

What a laugh.

This is a voter that supports Bush.

On this topic - I read a bunch of posts on some "patriotic" site that were so foolish as to be laughable. They called Sheehan a media whore.

And like George Bush isn't? What was that media stunt in a borrowed flight suit? Or the grandstanding of any of their dear Republican darlings?

They're just biting their own tails, furious that she's getting attention.

When a person has no answer, he or she resorts to insults.

Even more important, when a person is, subconsciously, deeply afraid he has taken the wrong position and is about to be proved "wrong" he lashes out with a vengence.

The more insulting a person is, the more they fear they don't know what they are talking about.

It's that old rigid mind that would rather break than face the truth.

So this handful of geniuses were going around and around comforting themselves with insulting her.

Someone else said: Her actions have to be nipped in the bud!

What? Her constitutional right to protest and free speech?

No doubt.

But when her rights are all gone, so will their rights to blog be taken away.

Guess they haven't figured that one out yet.

But what was truly sickening - and I mean turn your stomach sickening - were not the insults but the fact that in post after post there was zero - that's right - ZERO sympathy for a mother who has lost her son.

And ZERO sympathy for any of the 1800 families who have lost children.

And less than ZERO sympathy for the troops sweating it out in Iraq in that hell hole with insufficient body armor.

One poser (not an error) had the gall to say Casey "didn't have to go," it was his choice.

So I guess none of them have gone, right?

And I guess they're saying it's okay if no one wants to go fight, right?

And National Guardsmen who never signed up for Iraq but for a few weekends a year doing domestic duty don't have to go, right? They can "just say no."

So that won't land them in jail? No body will call them deserters, right?

I mean that's the logic. Unless they want to flipflop on that.

Well, that's the point of Cindy's protest.

Let everybody know: Nobody should go. You'll just die for people who don't give a rats ass about you OR your mother.

So pass the word to all those thinking about enlisting or re-uping. Tell the guardsmen: Don't go. Don't leave your children fatherless for a lifetime.

Don't go. Don't die. You don't have to go. Even self-styled Republican pundits are now saying it's your own fault if you go and die because you have a choice.

No wonder this country is self-destructing.

That's loyalty for you.

Next Targets: U.S. Security & Iran

Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace. ~Charles Sumner

As trillions are being spent for war, (The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.64 billion per day since September 30, 2004 and we are approaching 8 Trillion in debt) the Bush Administration is quietly dismantling our arms control offices.

This from the American Progress Report:

"NATIONAL SECURITY -- BUSH QUIETLY DISMANTLES ARMS CONTROL OFFICES:

Harvard specialist Graham Allison has noted that the “consensus in the national security community” is that “if policy makers in Washington keep doing what they are currently doing about the threat, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is likely to occur in the next decade.”

Moreover, “if one lengthens the time frame, a nuclear strike is inevitable.”

But such warnings don’t seem to bother the White House. Global Security Newswire reported last week that "[w]hile Congress is on vacation, the Bush administration is planning to quietly eliminate most State Department arms control offices, phasing out senior positions and merging personnel and functions with nonproliferation and other units."

What’s more, this phase-out isn’t an issue of funding. It’s actually the Bush administration’s strategy:

"The changes, many of which could begin in less than two weeks, appear to reflect a determined shift by the administration away from decades of U.S. focus on promoting international arms control agreements toward ad hoc, less universal efforts to prevent the spread of restricted weapons to terrorists and certain regimes."

Why?

Because the same people who brought you the war in Iraq are preparing to bring you another one in Iran, according to The American Conservative.

Isn't that sweet?

To all you people who voted for Bush the second time around:

When the bombs start falling on us, take a bow because it's because of you, baby.

Peace Quotes

Two great quotes:

When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.

- Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist


It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.

- Albert Camus

For more, visit Peace Quotes.

Another Kid Goes To War

Another kid who knows nothing about the realities of the war in Iraq signed up.

There's a comment after this article - by some scared person who is probably just at the tipping point where he's going to have to accept that Iraq is an obscene mistake, but he's throwing a tantrum over it - who posted the comment that "liberals hate the military."

FDR, the greatest liberal that lived, had no hesitation in fighting a war of last resort.

Reagan and Bush Senior decreased military spending.

Clinton increased it.

So such railing against liberals is just so...I don't know...boring?

Besides being untrue.

But I digress.

Stories like the one posted above point out how the youth of America is being wasted.

Iraqis Riot Over No Power, Water, Jobs

You won't hear about it from main stream media.

If it surfaces - which it won't - Rice will give it the devil's spin by calling those who were shot in Iraq as insurgents.

But they weren't.

They were simply fed up.

Residents of a peaceful town, protesting that they still have no power, water or jobs, were shot and killed.

Yet can you blame them for becoming irate? We get bent out of shape if the cable goes for five minutes.

But for expressing their disgust - not with bombs or guns, but with a protest - they were shot and several killed.

This is the "free Iraq" Bush yaps about all the time.

It's a lie.

You aren't free when you can't protest without being shot.

We learned that at Kent State. But we still had courts to rule it was wrong.

Iraqis have no justice system left.

Their justice system is fearful soldiers with guns ready to mow down anything that moves - against them. Forget you if you are a citizen. Someone can shoot you in the head and take your car. And it happens.

Some freedom we've given them.

But, of course, it was never about them anyway.

Cindy Sheehan: Bush Tainted Flag

Cindy Sheehan is one brave woman.

Riding in a red, white and blue bus emblazoned with the words "Impeachment Tour" she showed up at Bush's Texas ranch on Saturday asking to talk to him so he could tell her what "the noble cause" was, for which her son died in Iraq.

The fact is, the United States was founded on the idea of having a noble destiny. Unfortunately, that idea has turned into an arrogant superiority that says anything we do - no matter how destructive - is part of that noble cause.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make the invasion of Iraq into a noble act, no matter how hard you try.

And the Administration has certainly been trying with obfuscation, but as this war rages on it will become clearer and clearer just what a mistake - and a crime against the world - it is.

The war in Iraq has killed over a hundred thousand Iraqis, over 1800 of our troops and left nearly fifty thousand of our sons and daughters severely disabled.

The war in Iraq has threatened world stability and given terrorists a breeding ground.

Some noble cause for a son to die for.

Sheehan's analysis of how George Bush has tainted our flag with the blood of innocents is profound.

Support Low Power Community Radio

We need a media revolution in this country so voices other than Fox can be heard talking about something more meaningful than the latest celebrity fashions.

We could have one if we continue to grow low power community radio.

But it's at a dangerous junction. Note this from The Free Press:

"In 2000, the FCC opened up the nation's airwaves to low power community radio stations. Since then, more than 675 local stations have gone on the air in 50 states, forming the national backbone for community broadcasting."

"Now, local radio (LPFM) needs your help to survive and grow. The FCC is considering critical new measures that would prevent commercial stations from pushing our community broadcasters off the dial. Before the FCC decides, they need to hear from you."

Tell the FCC to support low power community radio

You can also support local radio by participating in the Grassroots Radio Conference in Northampton, Massachusetts on August 4-7, 2005. Grassroots radio organizers and friends are gathering in Northampton to help build and launch the new Valley Free Radio (WXOJ-LP). To learn more about the Grassroots Radio Conference, visit conference organizers Prometheus Radio.