do not fret the bus will get you there yet


jenny holzer, in a dream

* Top ten conservative idiots. excerpt:

"3. Bill Frist

"We noted recently (see Idiots 215) that Bill Frist was in a spot of bother over a dubious stock sale - he dumped shares in his family's medical corporation just before a disappointing earnings report. Bill says he did nothing wrong - and anyway, those stocks were in a 'blind trust' so he could avoid a conflict of interest.

"Well consider that conflict of interest, um, unavoided. New documents released last week reveal that the trust managers 'routinely informed Frist whenever shares of Hospital Corp. of America Inc. were added to his portfolio,' according to the Denver Post. The Post continued, 'If Martha Stewart can be jailed for lying about a quarter-of-a-million episode of insider trading, Frist may be sweating.'

"True, but that also opens up the the exciting possibility of 'The Apprentice: Bill Frist,' which, let's face it, would be awesome. When he ditches a contestant at the end of every episode his catchphrase could be, 'You're in a vegetative state.' Or, 'Step into my laboratory, Mr. Frisky.'

"Incidentally, Bill Frist also said last week that the Senate won't be investigating the CIA leak case. Now there's a shocking surprise."

-- related: clusterfuck nation. excerpt:

"If the American public could stand the truth, we would stop calling it the Iraq War and rename it the War to Save Suburbia. Of all the things that Bush and Cheney have said over the last six years, the one thing the Democratic opposition has not challenged is the statement that 'the American way of life is not negotiable.' They're just as invested in it as everybody else. The Democrats complain about the dark efforts by Bush and Cheney to cook up a rationale for the war. Guess what? The Democrats desperately need something to oppose besides the truth. If they would shut up about WMDs for five minutes and just take a good look around, they'd know exactly why this war started.

"When the American people, Democrat and Republican both, decided to build a drive-in utopia based on incessant easy motoring and massive oil dependency, who lied to them? When tens of millions of Americans bought McHouses thirty-four miles away from their jobs in Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Dallas, who lied to them? When American public officials adopted the madness of single-use zoning and turned the terrain of this land into a tragic crapscape of strip malls on six-lane highways, who lied to them? When American school officials decided to consolidate all the kids in gigantic centralized facilities serviced by fleets of yellow buses that ran an average of 150,000 miles per year per school, who lied to them? When Americans trashed their public transit and railroad system, who lied to them? When Americans let WalMart gut Main Street, who lied to them?"

-- also related: this guy is bad news.

* MSNBC talks with david berman. excerpt:

"'My advice is this,' Berman said, 'If you believe in fate, and if life has brought you here, to the edge of this sentence, on this Web page among billions, then maybe you should think about possibly buying the CD. As for the rest of you, please exercise your free will and buy Tanglewood Numbers today!'"

* Happy Birthday to bob pollard.