UnCommonwealth

Please go vote

Tomorrow is Election Day in the United States. If you are a registered voter, please go to your polling place and vote for Democrats in partisan races and progressives in non-partisan races.

Raising My Hand

Yeah, the what happened with Connie Willis and Harlan Ellison ("Pissing Away Relevance Since 1985!") is pathetic and wrong.

Alan DeNiro for President!

Crazy

Okay, so some guys apparently running pathetic get-rich-quick schemes got arrested in the Midwest for "terrorism" after they bought a bunch of cell phones. Like about a billion other people on this planet (like me, if you go back just three generations), they were of "Middle Eastern" descent. So that must mean there was an IMMINENT THREAT OF TERRORIST ATTACK.

Some lady freaked out on a plane from England after a few days of every media outlet in the English speaking world bleating 24/7 that people should freak out about planes from England. Instead of just having Leslie Nielsen slap her, the plane was diverted from DC (to Boston! take that Senator Ted!) and escorted in by fighter jets. Somebody (who?) somewhere (where?) reported that she was in possession of petroleum jelly! And possibly some sort of note! (She had neither.) She was certainly a TERRORIST BENT ON ATTACKING U.S. SOIL!

Today in Seattle, some paperwork got messed up and some poochies screwed the pooch so a major Pacific Rim port was shut down and a half-mile radius area was evacuated while a "gamma-ray device" was brought in to determine that some oily rags were in a container that was supposed to contain oily rags. Clearly, TERRORISM THREATENS THE NORTHWEST!

Somehow, we've gone from being a nation that "doesn't negotiate with terrorists" to being a nation that, through the policies of our government and the actions of our media, collaborates with terrorists in their goal of spreading, well, terror.

I'm talking about you, and you, and you...

Dear Joe

Hey, Joe Lieberman!

"No" means "no."

E Pluribus Unum

So, according to this article, Senator Bill Frist has introduced a resolution stating that the national anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance and other “statements or songs that symbolize the unity of the nation … should be recited or sung in English, the common language of the United States.”

You know, one statement I've found that symbolizes the unity of the nation pretty well is this: out of many, one.

Do you think if I see Bill Frist with a dollar bill I can make a citizen's arrest?

Oh, who am I kidding? When's the last time that guy even saw a single?

Story of the Year

If you're a US citizen, and you've ever had a telephone conversation you'd like to keep private, or received an e-mail you wouldn't want to share with others, or bought something at a store, like a prescription drug say, that you think is your own business, then please go read today's lead article in the Washington Post. Read the whole thing.

It's even worse than we'd thought. The President has granted the FBI and other agencies unprecedented powers of surveillance of citizens within this country, specifically excluding any requirement that they be suspected of any wrongdoing. And lest we forget who is really running things, he's reserving the right to share whatever his agents find out with private companies.