Ohhh, those wacky popetastic Catholics!

So there's just a buffet line of choices for what to bitch about in tonight's entry. Even though Bush appeared on national TV night trying to convince everyone that his ridiculous grudge match in Iraq is worth the thousands of lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, I think I'll actually spare him this time. Tonight, I'm going to vent my spleen on the Catholic Church.

Disclaimer/Caveat: If anyone reading this is a devout Catholic and is brainwashed enough to still hold their church in high regard, I can say only this: You're gonna be offended, I just know it. You'll get your little Catholic panties in a twist and you'll clutch your silly damned little Rosary beads so tightly, they'll break into pieces. So just do yourself a favor and stop reading now.

For the rest of you, carry on.

Let's put aside for the moment the general oppressiveness and weirdness of the Roman Catholic church. You know, the holy water, the worshipping of Mary, the confessing to a priest instead of directly to God, the little odd statues they scatter all over the place, the air of idolatry surrounding their rituals... Let's also put aside their silent endorsement of the slave trade back in the day, or their despicable platform of noninvolvement during the Holocaust. We won't even discuss the ridiculous big hats their cardinals and popes wear.

No, we're going to concentrate on their latest statement of almost jaw-dropping hypocrisy. Apparently, Canada's House of Commons today passed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. The legislation is widely expected to breeze through the Senate and become federal law in Canada by the end of July.

Needless to say, the Catholic Church is having themselves a right old hissy fit over it. They essentially denounced the legislation, saying that this new law would, in particular, harm children.

I had to read that twice when I saw it in the story and I still had trouble believing it. First, it's just ridiculous to think that legalizing gay marriage would actually harm children. If you counted up the 10 most infamously deranged human beings in the last century, you'd find that they all came from traditional heterosexually married couples. Besides, same-sex marriage is quite illegal in the U.S., and I'd hardly say that keeps our children free from harm. But second, the big joke to me is that the Catholic Church would have the temerity to ever play the "it's for the children" card again. This is the church that knowingly and willfully covered up countless child molestations and rapes at the hands of its priests, and protected the priests they knew to be pathological sex offenders. This is the church that has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in damage claims as a result of their clergy having sex with their choir boys. I find it incredibly offensive that the Catholic Church would dare point fingers at anyone and say they just might "harm some children." Even if their sensationalistic claims were true, they've got absolutely no business castigating others. They quite frankly need to get their own fucking house in order before passing judgment on anyone. Go bury a plastic statue in your yard and shut the hell up, that's my take on it. (For those unfamiliar with this particular weirdness, Catholics believe that burying a statue of St. Joseph in their yard -- upside down and facing the street, no less -- will help their house sell or their property value rise or some damn thing. It's even touted by some of their dioceses. What freaks.)

All that said, one thing remains: Go Canada!!

Weekend Update

While I probably won't get the chance to use the famous phrase, "Jane, you ignorant slut," this is still my weekend update. Hold on, it'll likely be a bumpy ride.

I think we're all painfully aware of what a blundering fool our President is, right? Well, apparently it's contagious. In the two weeks since VP Dick Cheney proclaimed that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes," the top-ranking U.S. general in the Persian Gulf has reported to Congress that the insurgency isn't getting weaker at all; in fact, it may be strengthening, and just today on "Fox News Sunday," our incredibly stupid Secretary of Defense, Donald "I know I'm fucking everything up, but Bush won't let me resign" Rumsfeld said that not only could the insurgency grow stronger throughout the year, but that it could be a 12-year fight to achieve victory. So let's recap: Our VP says the insurgency is weakening substantially and is indeed in its final throes, implying that their defeat is imminent. Our Defense Secretary begs to differ, saying that the insurgency is getting stronger and could take a dozen years to beat down. Where did he come up with that figure anyway? Seems rather arbitrary.

Is this the most blindly incompetent administration we've had in a couple of generations now, or am I missing something? They can't even present a united front in their idiocy. Meanwhile, the British media are reporting that U.S. officials are conducting secret negotiations with the leaders of the insurgency. I'm thinking they're just confusing secret meetings with the Bush administration's normal hobnobbing with the Saudis.

Because that's who's fueling the insurgency, folks. And oh yeah, that's who flew the planes into the World Trade Center, too. So we attacked Iraq... and now, we're told that we're there to bring the shining light of freedom and democracy to this country. Which is a noble-sounding goal, but that's not the reason we were given for going to war two years ago. We were doing it to depose Saddam Hussein and dismantle his staggering stockpiles of WMDs. Well, now we've got Saddam, and we're supplying him with an apparently endless supply of Doritos and underwear photo ops. But now the reason for invading the country has changed? Whaaaaaa? Are we going to attack China next? You know, for the sake of democracy? Just wondering.

As if this mess in Iraq isn't bad enough, now this administration is meddling in the affairs of Iran as well, with Rumsfeld denouncing the recent Iranian presidential elections and declaring them to be "invalid." I'm sorry, but who the bloody hell does this guy think he is? The last time I checked, Iran--for better or worse--was a sovereign nation, not subject to the rule or opinion of the United States in any way, shape, or form. If Rumsfeld wants to see an invalid election, he really need go no further than to the one held in this country in November 2000. The sheer brazen arrogance of Bush and his cohorts just continues to stupefy me. I don't think any of them possess a shred of diplomacy.

So enough politics, it's depressing as hell. To those of you who voted to keep these jackasses in office until January 2009, thanks very much. Seriously, way to go. As if the first four years weren't hellish enough.

Moving along, I can honestly say I've never been much of a Tom Cruise fan. I think that a sizeable chunk of his roles are basically just reprisals of his "Maverick" role from Top Gun. And lately, Cruise has just been a freak on wheels and you can't open a news website or turn on the TV without something about Tom Cruise being thrown in your face, so that makes me just loathe him even more. But still... I have a real interest in seeing this new movie he's in, War of the Worlds. Although I wish someone else had been cast in his role, I still want to see it. It's a great story, the trailers look awesome, and that little Dakota Fanning girl is always a wonder to behold... such a great little actress.

But yeah, so apparently Cruise picked a bit of a fight with Matt Lauer during an interview, getting all snitty about his Scientology beliefs. So not wanting to prejudge, and being pretty open-minded about religion, I actually did a modicum of research on this crap. And I'm sorry, it's crap. It's this ridiculous amalgam of pyschobabble and rules dreamed up by L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986. So Cruise, who publicly ridiculed Brooke Shields for using prescribed antidepressants to deal with postpartum depression, basically told Matt Lauer he was a neophyte who didn't understand the history of psychiatry the way he (Cruise) did. Very condescending interview... I watched a clip of it online and read the transcript. So I'm guessing Tom Cruise's handlers are flipping out, watching their little cash cow publicly self-destruct a little more with each passing day. Ugh, enough of this, too... I'm boring myself just writing it.

Onward to the new week...

The Plot Thickens

Oh, where to start? Let's get the trivial crap out of the way first, shall we? Remember that "benevolent June" phrase from earlier this month? Yeah, that's over with. Scorching hot yesterday, today, tomorrow, the next day... 90s as far as the forecasting eye can see. Oy vey.

And I'm not sure, but I think I heard just a tiny little snippet of a comment on the news about Tom and Katie getting engaged. Wow, they've been so stealthy in their epic two-month relationship, who even knew they were dating? I've strained my damned optic nerves rolling my eyes so much about these two. He proposed to her at the top of the Eiffel Tower? Gave her a huge ring? Good GOD. I'm surprised he didn't have a flock of news cameras on hand to record the entire thing and broadcast it to satellites from the backs of trained Asian elephants wearing turbans and sequined kneepads. And the pundits are all saying now that it MUST be serious, you know, since they're engaged and everything. No one would take a publicity stunt this far, they say. Here's a news flash for you lemmings: Engagements CAN be broken. Just ask, oh, I dunno... Katie Fucking Holmes herself, who broke off her yearlong-plus engagement to her boyfriend of nearly six years, Chris Klein. Yeah. And she did this less than a month before this whirlwind "romance" with Tom Cruise began.

On a much more serious note, here's the "Stupid Bush Quotation of the Day" (this from his weekly radio address, as reported by CNN): "We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens." This man is so arrogantly blind and misguided, I can't even grasp it. Does he still think Iraq attacked us, or had anything to do with 9/11? This is the same man who, in September 2003 said (and I quote), "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th attacks." The actual 9/11 Commission came to the same conclusion -- that there was no link at all between Iraq and al-Qaeda. And does Bush seriously think that invading a Muslin nation for no reason and waging war in their cities and villages will stop people from wanting to harm our country? Over 1,700 dead Americans, 12,000 wounded, countless thousands of Iraqi citizens slaughtered, and a tab of well over $200 billion and counting (about $325 billion if you include the Afghanistan detour on the way to attacking Iraq. And it was all, it appears, predicated on an utterly ficticious story of weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida ties, both of which have been soundly debunked, both domestically and internationally.

So my big question here is, and has been for awhile, where is the public outrage over this? Where is the call for Bush to be impeached? According to an increasing stream of leaked confidential memos from Britain (some of which are actual minutes of meetings at the highest levels of British government, such as the Downing Street Memo), Bush and his cronies had made up their minds to attack Iraq long before the actual invasion. They simply had to come up with a way to sell it to the Congress and to the American public.

Now this memo is indeed "old news," as Bush's spokespigeon Scott McClellan has said, attempting to completely dismiss this exceptionally damning document. But it hasn't become big news yet, which it absolutely must. Why is this not on the front page of every major newspaper in the country? Why are CNN and FOX and MSNBC not making this their lead story? Well, I think we all know why FOX ("fair and balanced," my ass) is burying this highly newsworthy story, but what of the others? I suppose they're too busy obsessing over "runaway brides" and the like. MSNBC did, to its tiny credit, have the blurb, "Memos Show U.K. Concern Over Iraq" on their home page today. Is that compelling enough to really get anyone to click on it and read this story, though? I long for the day when "BUSH DELIBERATELY MISLED PUBLIC ON IRAQ INVASION" is the lead story, in huge block letters. If a President can be impeached over lying about getting a hummer in his office, then surely you'd think one could be impeached over lying in order to start a war. [Note: As of the morning following this post, that story which I linked to above had been pulled, not only from MSNBC's home page, but from the main news page as well. The story may still be on their server, but there is no link to it on their website. Curious. There was, however, a riveting story about the "runaway bride" cashing in with her tell-all story.]

Keep in mind that even though Bush's press secretary--and indeed, Bush himself--have tried valiantly to brush off these memos, the absolute fact is that no one has refuted their authenticity or their complete accuracy. No one in the British government, no one in the U.S. goverment.

A few years ago, all the media could talk about was a stain on Monica Lewinsky's blue dress. Now, faced with the very real possibility that our President chose to go to war unnecessarily, and mounting evidence that the Bush administration was hell-bent on going to war with Iraq and used post-9/11 fears to falsely justify a war they had long since decided upon... well, that should tell you what a joke--and what a total myth--this whole "liberal media" label is.

Now clearly, I'm no Bush fan. I think he's a horrible President in virtually every capacity in which a President can be gauged. But this? Starting a war under knowingly false pretenses? That's flat-out criminal, folks. And it's telling that there are mounting numbers of even Republican members of Congress calling for an end to this quagmire in Iraq, and a substantial contingent of lawmakers (up to 122 at this point) demanding that Bush answer some hard questions about these leaked British memos.

If you haven't yet clicked on the Downing Street Memo link above, which takes you directly to the document itself, click on the banner below to go to the home page of this site. It's a good place to go and educate yourself. It's not anti-Bush, there's no huge Democratic slant, and it's not a bunch of ignorant people flaming each other back and forth. What it asks is, "Shouldn't this be getting more investigative attention?" The site itself is laden with facts and provides numerous links to other extremely credible sources of information. Once there, click on the link to sign your name to Congressman John Conyers' letter to the President, or address one to your own Representative. Already, 122 members of Congress have signed (Senator John Kerry is circulating a similar letter in the Senate), as have over 560,000 Americans.

If you're curious about the near-blackout on this story in the U.S. media (which is well over a month old now), there are also links to help you take action to get this important story front and center in the mainstream media. It's reprehensible and offensive to me that the media outlets in this country are overly willing to devote huge swaths of resources and newspaper/website space to pundits babbling about the Michael Jackson verdict or the latest non-development in the "pretty white girl goes missing in Aruba" story, but have turned a suspiciously blind eye to a story of enormous importance (to the tune of thousands of people killed and what will likely be a third of a trillion dollars spent by the time the final bill is tallied).

Rarely do I find a passion in my small voice for anything like this... usually, events and such are swallowed up by the inexorable march of time, and life goes on relatively unchanged. This, though, undercuts everything the United States stands for. Until Bush brought his grudge match with Saddam Hussein to the White House, we had never initiated a war, nor had we ever invaded a sovereign nation without clear and convincing cause. The government of this nation is accountable to those it governs, and when its integrity and credibility is so utterly questionable, and the catalyst for these questions is essentially covered up by the U.S. media and stonewalled by the President's administration, and when voting machines are moving towards more computerization with little or no paper trail, and when blanket laws are are passed in an atmosphere of desperate fear that strip citizens of their rights and grant fearsome privileges to the government... guys, these are serious issues for the country. Clinton's dalliances in his office didn't threaten to undermine the core of democracy and governmental accountability. Bush's actions do. So act accordingly... like the bumper sticker says, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

I close with this direct quotation from a U.S. Senator this week, responding to Bush's upbeat assessment of the situation in Iraq: "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality.... It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

The biggest surprise? These words are from a Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel from Nebraska.

Validated by the Media... um, Yay?

As I mentioned in my June 11th entry, I thought it was a bit telling that the missing rich white girl from Alabama was getting such an avalanche of media attention. Apparently, someone who actually works for the media agreed with me and wrote a tidy little article about it. Almost laughably, however, they spelled the minority victim's name wrong by her picture. Kinda of pathetic that a story that carries on about the injustice of minority victims getting far less media coverage than their lily-white counterparts would put a face with the story, and then proceed spell it wrong in the photo caption. [Edited to point out that they apparently caught their little faux pas in the USA Today article referenced here... it's been corrected.]

Still pretty gratifying being right about the whole thing. The moral of the story? Be pretty, be white, and be female and get murdered, kidnapped... or hell, just get cold feet about your wedding, and the media will beat a path to your story. (And just to prove this point, see this MSNBC article which says that the aforementioned "runaway bride" Jennifer Wilbanks has sold the rights to her "story" to a media firm. She chickened out of her wedding and faked her own abduction. Really, what's left to tell? And does anyone truly care that much?)

More Celebrity Shenanigans

Well, as everyone knows by now, Michael "Wanna ride my merry-go-round, little boy?" Jackson was acquitted on all ten charges brought against him. And rightfully so, from what I can tell. Whether he's truly innocent or not is another matter entirely, but from a criminal justice standpoint, I would have been seriously appalled and very surprised had they jury returned a "guilty" verdict on any of the felony counts. The prosecution's case was just too weak; the accuser's testimony too questionable. I'm really surprised the D.A. decided to prosecute, frankly. Apparently, there wasn't even a scrap of physical evidence anywhere to substantiate the claim, so at the end of the day, it was just a "he said/she said" kind of case, and from all accounts, the accuser and his mother were about the sorriest, most unbelievable kind of witnesses to ever walk into a courtroom. "Beyond a reasonable double" wasn't ever really in the cards. It was interesting how the prosecution heaped on as many charges as they possibly could, hoping at least one of them would stick. I have to agree with the lead defense attorney... just watching Michael Jackson carry on in his soft little singsong voice about butterflies and kittens and children and whatever... the guy is totally out there. I just don't think he's even capable of masterminding this conspiracy to kidnap an entire family, hold them against their will, and then arrange to ship them all off to Brazil. Even on the surface, that sounds ludicrous. Obviously, it seemed that way to the jury even beneath the surface.

The media sure had their own slant, though, didn't they? Over and over again, I kept hearing how Michael Jackson shared his bed with little boys, or slept with children, or whatever. Now, I actually watched that "Living With Michael Jackson" documentary, and what the man said was that he gave his bed to the children and he slept on the floor. He then babbled on about how it was a loving thing, and was there anything more natural and loving than to give up your bed for someone else, blah blah whatever. All while sitting there on the couch holding this 13- or 14-year-old boy's hand, which yes... was creepy as hell. But he never actually said that he slept in the bed with the boy. That one phrase was so misquoted so many times. I suppose the defense drilled home this point in court, but I always wondered why it was never pointed out in the public arena that the media were twisting what he said for the sake of salaciousness and titillation.

Don't you know Martha Stewart was sitting there watching this, thinking, "What the hell?? I should have gotten a better attorney." I mean, O.J., who is pretty much universally considered guilty as all hell, walked free. Robert Blake, with a mountain of evidence against him, similarly was acquitted on murder charges. Michael Jackson, who is about the freakiest freak who ever freaked, was given a stunning blanket acquittal. And Martha, who simply made a phone call to her stockbroker, got thrown in prison. She's gotta be pretty bitter at this point.

And making the cover of my Who Cares Monthly magazine was Paris Hilton's announcement that she planned to "retire" in two years. Well, my immediate thought was, of course, "Retire from what? Being a skank? Cluttering up the news with her non-celebrity antics?" I meant, what is this bimbo's claim to fame? Being an Internet video slut? Having a rich daddy? My second thought, after getting over the initial insulting shock of the notion of Paris Hilton actually retiring from anything was to think, "Shit, we have to wait two whole years for her to go away?"

And, Christ, can someone please get Tom Cruise's giant, toothy smile off my TV? Every freaking time I turn the thing on, there he is. Augh!

Finally, does anyone else just completely hate the snivelly little voice of that Good Times advertising guy? Just me? Okay, then.

Lost White Girl - Please Help!

Look, it's not that I'm unsympathetic. This disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba is distressing, and will almost doubtlessly end in tragedy. Truly, can there be that much hope that she's even still alive at this point? Very sad. But it's been the lead story on CNN and the like for days on end now. And I can't help but wonder if this story would be getting nearly the endless and very substantial coverage it's getting now if this was a black girl from Los Angeles, or a poor Hispanic girl from the projects. As I said, it's not that I am trivializing this situation... but it's a pretty white girl from a very upscale wealthy neighborhood, so I think that has a lot to do with its prominence on the news.

Yeah, I know. I'm a cynical bastard. This is not news to me.

Meanwhile, George Bush has apparently given up on shoving his crappy Social Security plan down the nation's collective throat, having learned that bad ideas are a lot harder to sell when you can't dangle the specter of fear and uncertainty over everyone's heads. So with that firmly in mind, he's returned to his roots of using the fear of terrorism to push his agenda of shit onto the nation. That's right, kids, it's time to renew the loathsome PATRIOT Act. So Sheriff Bush has pulled out the ol' evil terrorist card because it's so obvious that if we don't infringe on citizens' rights, and if we don't work our way into having a national ID card system, if we don't profile airline passengers, and if we don't conduct 1,500 heretofore illegal wiretaps every day, those terrorists are gonna get us!

Not surprisingly, Bush's numbers continue to drop as more and more people are waking up out of their long stupor and figuring out that, hey, maybe this Iraq war wasn't such a great idea after all, and wow, we're probably not any safer from terrorism than we were before this all started... and maybe even less so.

1,700 dead American soldiers, scores of foreign citizens killed, and untold thousands of Iraqis -- military and civilians -- dead as well, and the only stories our media want to focus on for the last two months are the "runaway bride," the Tom Cruise affair of contrivance (and wow, that guy is everywhere lately, isn't he?), and now a missing high school girl in Aruba.

In local news, it's been a rather benevolent month of June so far, weather-wise. We've had somewhat regular rainfall, reasonable temperatures, and not a lot of really severe weather. Actually, I had to run the heat for a bit this morning. On June 11th! We had highs only in the upper 50s or so yesterday, and dipped down into the mid 40s last night. Some nice rain showers moved through this evening and another round came through about five hours later. I haven't had to water my lawn all week, which has been great. They're saying mid 80s by the end of next week, but forecasts beyond about 18-24 hours are notoriously inaccurate, and their chance of being correct decreases exponentially with each day out into the forecast. Time will tell.

Anyway, it's time for bed... tomorrow is the day for an annual champagne brunch that some friends of mine host down in Colorado Springs. It's always a great deal of fun... lots of good food, usually a couple of dozen people, and plenty of good wine and champagne.