Who stole my cartoon?

Someone was kind enough to put this up on a certain whiny website and ask for it to be "texted," so I obliged. : )

We're still in mourning over Billy Mays. More inciteful... I mean, insightful commentary later.

You've been hit by - You've been struck by -

The Alien thing that has been impersonating Michael Jackson for the last however many years has been terminally recalled.

Hopefully now the real Michael Jackson (not a reptoid, chimp-bothering, child-fiddling, baby-dangling weirdo) will return!





what?

Iran: Revolution Number None

see more Political Pictures

My heart is with my Iranian students, many of whom may be caught up in the whirlwinds of violent change at this moment. At the very least they're probably glued to the television or internet, waiting for news from home and hoping their friends and families are okay.

I'm not their teacher anymore. I cannot help them now. I cannot show them the way to go, or the right way to do something. I can't tell them where to find what they need, or suggest alternatives if they can't find it.

All I can do is keep my fingers crossed on their behalf, and hope that, in the days ahead, the decisions they make are the right ones for them.

A lot of people outside of Iran have notions about what should happen next. Democracy, say some. A return to the royal family, say others.

Some, focused on the notion that the CIA and/or Mossad have engineered this whole thing, seem to be brushing its importance off, or at least having a worrying antipathy to it all. "How dare the people rise up? Don't they know they're being played by spooks?"

And maybe they are. It wouldn't be the first time either country got involved with Iranian politics for their own ends.

And it would make the neo-con crowd ever so happy if they didn't have some smirking chimp with nuclear ambitions threatening his neighbors, and didn't have to suffer another Iraq war to get him out.

(The fact that they backed a different smirking chimp for eight years is clearly another matter.)

But what if the CIA and/or Mossad is NOT involved? Or what if they're there, on the street, but the matter is no longer in their control, if indeed it ever was?

What if this is a genuine moment of Iranian anger? What if this is a genuine movement that has burst out into existence?

What if, after years of being told they can't have what they want, the Iranian people are finally saying "yes, we can" and running out to take it?

I think we would be damned silly to pooh-pooh this moment in time because of what the Neo-cons want, or what the CIA may or may not have done, or what Israel thinks.

I think we should be keeping our fingers crossed on the behalf of the Iranian people, tonight and for all nights, until this matter has been settled by them.

I think we should hope that, when the dust is settled, the people either have the government that they want, or that they have put the government that remains on notice that there ARE limits to their patience, and change had better be forthcoming.

That's the thing with revolutions: even the failed ones are successes, because they reveal that the people, once angered into motion, are not some abstract threat to be laughed at like a mythical boogeyman, but a concrete force that can rise up like an earthquake, and shatter the foundations the empire rests upon.

From these days forward, things are never going to be the same for the Iran that I grew up knowing. And we would be wise to wish that country well, rather than spitting at their efforts from our own high towers.

Our own towers aren't indestructible, either.

Kids, you're not my kids anymore. You're men and women. You're the heart and soul of Iran. You are its future. If I have one wish for you, it's that you think about what you want before you get it, and make sure it's something that will work for you.

Don't worry about our ideas and our desires. That's us. That's why we have negotiations and diplomats.

You are not a satellite. You are a body unto yourselves. Find a new orbit and fly.

Scientology: The Truth Rundown

The leader of the Church of Scientology strode into the room with a boom box and an announcement: Time for a game of musical chairs.

David Miscavige had kept more than 30 members of his church's executive staff cooped up for weeks in a small office building outside Los Angeles, not letting them leave except to grab a shower. They slept on the floor, their food carted in.

Their assignment was to develop strategic plans for the church. But the leader trashed their every idea and berated them as incompetents and enemies, of him and the church.

Prove your devotion, Miscavige told them, by winning at musical chairs. Everyone else — losers, all of you — will be banished to Scientology outposts around the world. If families are split up, too bad.

Fascinating articles from the St. Petersburg Times website, Tampabay.com, giving the stories of high-ranking defectors from the Church of Scientology concerning their leader, David Miscavige, the physical and verbal intimidation he doles out, the church's totalitarian "ecclesiastical justice," how the Church crookedly strong-armed the IRS to get its tax-exempt status back, and details into the cover-up of Lisa McPherson's death.

Of course, the Church is denying what they're saying, in their usually creepy manner. But be sure to see the "dirt" they dug up on the defectors for the reporters: aren't you glad to know that bungling a business deal is "treason"?

Obama blocks access to visitors log?

Well so much for transparency.

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama's pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com's request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

I can understand the need for occasional secrecy in case of emergencies or secret negotiations, but it's the people's house and we should know who the President is seeing. The Federal Bench agrees with this reasoning, and no amount of hokey-pokey between the President's office and the Secret Service is going to change the fact that this looks like a LACK of transparency, which is something we've suffered for too long to take lightly, now.

Barry, come on. Tell us who you're meeting with. We have the right to know. And if you have to do something secret, meet them at a Parliament Funkadelic concert.

The BNP Goes to Brussels

Once again, the anti-immigrant British National Party (BNP) has scored a political victory. In spite of a massive advertising campaign set against them, they have gained two seats in the European Parliament, giving BNP head Nick Griffin a place at the 785-member body.

Which means that the man who claimed, as late as 2007, that the only reason he doesn't deny the Holocaust anymore is because European law "requires" him to acknowledge its existence may have a chance – however slim – to see that law changed.

Full story up at Op Ed News, here.

I'm sure I'll get pilloried by boneheads at Stormfront over this one, too.

Total Bollocks

I'll have more to say about it soon, but if I lived in Northern England, I'd be wearing one of these now.

This is truly shameful.