I've been a member of the League since October of last year, and have maintained their links on the left. At first it was more than worth it, as the hits to the blog increased, but as happens so often, things began to fall apart a bit...no real nastiness, but the group is now, and has been for some time, more like just a bunch of bloggers rather than an actual group that works together. This is not to say anything bad about the individual members, they are all very good blogs, but we're all just off in our own separate ways, and there isn't a lot of communication or coordination between the assorted members of the League, and while I still get the occasional hit from a League member, I'm really not getting a whole lot out of it.

So I'm asking myself, and I'm asking my fellow League members, is there any reason to maintain the League as it stands? Should I continue to be a part of a group that really isn't a group? Or should we all start all over again to re-forge our alliance? Let's take the next week to decide this and after that we'll see where it goes.

Have A Nice, Hot Cup O' Joe!

If the voters want to cheer military sacrifice, let them have it. If "JFK - The Sequel" wants to brag that he was wounded, George can top that. The groundwork has already been laid. Although the dentist's records from Our Noble Leader's National Guard years were released, there is still time to "find" his orthopedist's.
Read the rest at "Digital Symbolism". --Ayn Clouter

click on photo


Maybe we'll ......

If you've been following the Daily Kos controversy -- a great summary is here -- you might enjoy my song parody on the subject, the Daily Kos Song.

From the musical "Paint Your Bandwagon", to be sung from an undisclosed location, a song beginning:
"In our red states we use a name for lie, for mock, and for snark.
A snark's TBogg, a mock's Mad Kane. We call a lie Rich-ard Clarke."
Read it all at "Liberalism Lowers Your I.Q.". --Ayn Clouter

The Flip-Flopper-In-Chief would have us believe that John Kerry's the real flip-flopper. This, from a President who never lets the facts interfere with policy. Which brings me to my latest song parody, Fact-Free Bush. Feel free to sing it to "She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain," using this midi link which opens a second window.

Fact-Free Bush (to be sung to "She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain")

By Madeleine Begun Kane

When the facts get in the way you change the facts,
And when facts get in the way, give facts the ax.
When the facts get in the way,
When the facts get in the way,
When the facts get in the way you change the facts.

When Iraq is not as threat'ning as you claimed,
Say you never said it was, play language games.
When Iraq is not as threat'ning,
When Iraq is not as threat'ning,
When Iraq is not as threat'ning as you claimed.

When your job projection numbers are quite wrong,
Blithely claim you never bought them all along.
When your job projection numbers,
When your job projection numbers,
When your job projection numbers are quite wrong.

That was always my position, is your line.
Doesn't matter if you've really changed your mind...


The rest of my Fact-Free Bush song parody is here.

(This post originally appeared here.)

Arnold gets remedial tutoring in sexual harassment.

*Ø* Blogmanac April 1, 2004 | George W Bush's change of heart: plans Peace 'Imaginatorium'

A Blogmanac exclusive: full text of speech that rocked the world

US President stuns world: "We must find alternatives to war"

2004 The plenary session of the Fiji Summit was attended by 4,700 delegates who enjoyed the brilliant fireworks display put on for the occasion by the people of Jordan. After a moving rendition of Peace on Earth by several hundred international stars from the music world, to which the thousands of delegates sang along, President Bush's inspired television address to the world [excerpts below] was watched by the delegates and an estimated world audience of four billion people.

At the invitation of US President George W Bush, representatives of 190 countries had met in the South Pacific nation of Fiji for the inaugural Global Peace Imagination Summit. All the nations present pledged just 10 per cent of their defence budgets to fund Bush's new brainchild, the Global Peace Imaginatorium. Although the pledges are a mere fraction of national war chests, the resulting peace foundation is already bigger than any one institutional, business or national entity in the world. Pundits said that its very size will help protect it from pressures from the enormous world armaments industry.

Washington sources say that the purpose of the multi-trillion dollar institute will be to solicit from citizens of the world ideas for alternatives to war in cases in which conflicts arise. Suggestions, whether from professional conflict resolution practitioners, diplomats, academics, or ordinary citizens, are to be rewarded with cash disbursements. Every suggestion will be rewarded, and is then eligible for entry to higher levels of reward according to the judgement of panels of democratically elected representatives from all nations.

President Bush stunned the world with his televised address to the world, for which his government had set aside 25 billion dollars of armaments purchase money to promote, so scarcely a man, woman or child in the world did not know about the Summit nor Mr Bush's speech. His opening remarks brought gales of laughter from the floor of the Summit. "I know a lot of people in the media think I'm nuts. Maybe you think I'm nuts," he said with a grin.

"Some members of my White House inner circle think I'm a bit nuts, too. Especially now.

"But ladies and gentleman, I don't think I've ever been so sane in my life! [Applause] The human race has chosen war as a means of settling disputes for thousands of years, and it's time is over. It not only hasn't solved anything, but its consequences have gotten far worse. It's over. Finis. Kaput!

"A hundred years ago," he told the now silent crowd, "when armies collided in battle, about 10 per cent of the casualties were civilian and 90 per cent were combatants. Today, it's the other way round. The whole nature of warfare has changed, and no longer can we believe that the people who die or get burned and maimed in battle might in some way have to accept responsibility for their own actions. Today, the innocent are the main victims. Not only that, but our generals now sit in comfortable air-conditioned offices, nowhere near the field of battle, and make decisions on the deployment of weapons whose unspeakably tragic consequences they will never see, and that our grandparents could never have conceived of – weapons that can level vast areas of civilisation in one moment. We know in our hearts the difference between right and wrong, and this is wrong gentlemen, this is wrong.

"My friends," President Bush continued, "for a long time I myself mistakenly believed that war is all right. That it's OK. That it's 'patriotic'. I suppose it is because I had never been in one, who knows. Maybe it was just the culture I was brought up in, the movies and TV shows I watched and the books I read as a kid. Whatever the reason, like so many people, I had never really thought 'outside the square'. I saw some nation do something I didn't like, and I automatically thought of war as a solution.

"Then something big happened, ladies and gentlemen, and even now it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. One night about ten days ago, I woke up at about 3 o'clock in the morning in a cold sweat, with some realizations running through my head – and I don't even quite know how to explain it, but somehow I knew that if we just tried to do things differently, we would actually do it. Suddenly I trusted people again. I trusted that people could solve the problems of people – and do it fast. All that what was needed was the will, a bit of money, and the encouragement of leaders. I thought, how can I even call myself a leader if I do not lead people into something new and better?

"I said to the First Lady, 'You know, I've been wrong. Almost all of us have been wrong. For thousands of years, we've all beeen wrong. And as President of the USA, I'm gonna come right out and say I was wrong. That we all have to do things differently, totally differently, from now on. No one else has as much of a chance to turn things around as me today, and I'm not going to squander this chance.' Laura looked at me a bit funny [audience laughs] but I think she knew deep down that something profound had happened to my thinking, and that maybe I was right. Maybe together, human beings could do it.

"Men and women of the world, I'm here tonight to tell you I was wrong: War is not the solution!"

"Men and women of the world, I'm here tonight to tell you I was wrong: War is not the solution!" President Bush paused at this point for 90 seconds of thunderous clapping. Following several minutes more of his speech, his concluding remark, met again with sustained applause that ended in a standing ovation, were these words, heard by two-thirds of the world's population:

"Men and women of Planet Earth: We can do this. We can put people on the moon, we can build the Internet, we can spend trillions and trillions of dollars on frivolous and evil things. Many nations represented tonight in this auditorium, including my own, can build – have built – weapons of mass destruction that can destroy the world many times over. Yet millions of people are starving and have no access to clean water. We have to stop this now; we can't say 'it's how things should be because they always were'. Enough is enough! We have the technology to do almost anything we can imagine.

"From this night onwards, we also have the technology of this wonderful Global Peace Imaginatorium to begin to help us clear the fog from our minds. Because, ladies and gentlemen, it is only our lack of imagination, and the fog in our minds, that has kept humankind in this tragic cycle of suffering since time began. Now we will make it an honor for a human being to come up with solutions, just as we will make it a disgrace to use the old methods and to be stuck in old thinking, like I was.

"The Imaginatorium will not stop war and create a new world, but it will foment ideas on how to do this – ideas that have been lacking. Ideas that no leader has ever before thought of asking you to think up. (I don't take the credit for this. Laura says it was the pizza I ate before going to bed.) [Laughter]

"My friends of all nations, all creeds and all races: now, having realized my own past errors of thought, I ask you to join with me to eradicate what is obsolete from our minds. Because it all comes from our minds. I know that now. As John Lennon and Yoko Ono put it so well way back when, "War is over. If you want it."

[Standing ovation]