Saturday, February 1, 2003

Vonnegut & A One Two Punch On Rush QUOTE OF THE DAY: "It's beyond me how anybody can look at these protesters and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro Marxists and communists." - - Rush Limbaugh WEB SITE OF THE WEEK: "Take Back The Media" Campaign to boycott & pressure Rush Limbaugh's sponsors In 1 week of the boycott, AMTRAC, Radio Shack, BOSE & others have dropped their ads. Lists sponsors & contact numbers so you can join in. http://www.takebackthemedia.com RUNNER UP SITE OF THE WEEK: The Latest F.B.I. Tracking System http://users.chartertn.net/tonytemplin/fbi_eyes/ RHINO HERE: According to CBS Marketwatch, efforts to cut into Rush's adverting revenues by web site "Take Back The Media" are starting to work. Michael Stinson, the boycott organizer, is an antiwar Vietnam vet who's angry at Limbaugh for questioning the dissenters' patriotism. http://www.takebackthemedia.com/rushbusted.html A few months ago, salon.com political columnist, Joe Conason got by Rush's screeners & confronted him about bad mouthing Vietnam Vet John Kerry from Massachusetts. "I then asked Rush how Bush might respond if, in the debates, Kerry asked him where he had been when he didn't show up for his plum [National Guard] assignment for a year. Or for that matter, how [Rush] could disparage a war hero when he himself had dodged the Vietnam Draft by claiming to have a boil on his butt." "He tried to lie [his way] out of this but I explained that his 4-F form listing a 'pilonidal cyst' was printed in books for all to see [i.e., "The Rush Limbaugh Story" by Paul D. Colford, St. Martin's Press, 1993, in Chapter 2: Beating the Draft]. Are You Ready For "EXILE TV"? If Saddam goes into exile, it could create a whole new flavor of reality programming. Mother Jones.com,1/29/03, by Mark Fiore http://click.topica.com/maaaOgpaaVHcSbakg7sb $2,000 Salvation Bounty On Addicts Heads In shrub's SOTU address he stated, "Too many Americans in search of treatment cannot get it. So tonight I propose a new $600-million program to help an additional 300,000 Americans receive treatment over the next three years." Okay, lets do a bit of math, $600-million bucks (sounds like a lot) divided by 300,000 addicts... That's $2,000 per addict. Problem is anyone who's helped a friend or relative into a real treatment program knows the price is currently more like 6 to 8 thousand bucks. But, hey! shrub has a plan. The money will be offered through his, as he calls it... "... faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act to encourage acts of compassion that can transform America, one heart and one soul at a time." What shrub envisions are squads of Jesus Freaks roaming the streets trying to convince drug addicts that accepting Jesus as their ONLY savior & going "cold turkey" is the best way to shake a habit. And for each saved soul, they get $2,000. Rice for Peace - No War On Iraq In the 1950's, tens of thousands of people sent small bags of rice to President Eisenhower convincing him not to attack China. Rice For Peace.org encourages people to send the same message to shrub regarding Iraq. They say, "If we are going to send something to Iraq, it should be food, not bombs. It should be peace, not war. SEND A HALF-CUP OF UNCOOKED RICE with the message: 'Rice for Peace - No War On Iraq' on the outside of the package. MAIL TO: George Bush, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington DC 20500. (Try to resist the temptation to send pretzels). http://www.rmpjc.org/RiceForPeace Kurt Vonnegut Turns 80 Last November, Kurt Vonnegut turned 80. Vonnegut's first novel, "Player Piano", was published in 1952. His "Slaughterhouse Five", was surely one of the pre-eminent anti-war novels of the 20th century. For his 80th, N.Y. City Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared November 11 "Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Day". The Mayor's proclamation is at: http://vonnegut.com/images/news/KVproclamation.jpg THE BOTTOM LINE this weekend is an excerpt & link to a recent interview with Vonnegut in which he wryly offers up his 8 decade perspective on politics & the state of the world. 9:23:16 AM    comment

Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !*!@ By Joel Bleifuss, In These Times, 1/27/03 You have lived through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan wars, Desert Storm, the Balkan wars and now this coming war in Iraq. What has changed, and what has remained the same? One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here. There were already all these games going on when I got here. ... An apt motto for any polity anywhere, to put on its state seal or currency or whatever, might be this quotation from the late baseball manager Casey Stengel, who was addressing a team of losing professional athletes: "Can't anybody here play this game?" My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20, finds herself-as does George W. Bush, himself a kid-an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment's notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. And to the choice between liberalism or conservatism and on and on. What is radically new in 2003 is that my daughter, along with our president and Saddam Hussein and on and on, has inherited technologies whose byproducts, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint. Based on what you've read and seen in the media, what is not being said in the mainstream press about President Bush's policies and the impending war in Iraq? That they are nonsense.... THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW IS AT: http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. 9:05:15 AM    comment

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