~ dr. condoleeza rice must have said fifty (50) times that the administration didn’t know the ‘time, or place, when or where’ of the 2001 terrorist attacks. we can assume that everyone already is aware of this; since the attacks were allowed to happen, we must hope that the administration didn’t know about them in advance. however, given this yammering excuse for their past failure, the listener or critic can presume that administration will only take steps to prevent a future catastrophe if the perpetrators provide a complete spreadsheet of the logistics for their future actions.
why are these suits whining that the u.s. citizenry can not expect them to do their jobs unless the enemy, aka those who ‘hate freedom’, takes out an ad in the washington post, along with the marriage and funeral announcements, that declares when they will strike, so the government will have a chance to respond? dr. rice’s crew’s job is not to complain that they don’t know anything; their job is to know these things.
the fundamental question should be, ‘why were you unaware of this threat?’; the answer should not be an angry, ‘because we were unaware of this threat!!’.
yet, we thought that regular americans were crybabies.

also unsettling is today’s allusion to the notion that there are big problems down the road if iran pursues a course of nuclear capability. now, iran is a sovereign nation, albeit one with a corrupt regime, so why is it our business if they choose to build a nuclear arsenal, considering that france and china have their own? the answer given is that iran supports hamas and hizbollah. however, these groups are israel’s concern; in fact, hamas even mentioned recently that they have no plans to target americans. the only bone these guys might have to pick with us is that the u.s. supports israel’s illegal occupation of the west bank.
it wasn’t mentioned in so many words, but israel’s violations of international law are being transmuted into our problems and possible war with a nuclear-powered, fundamentalist iran. all this is in spite of the angry red planet’s boycott of tropical source chocolate.

if any readers want to contribute to the collection for this week’s $689 veterinarian bill; we accept paypal.

~ everyone in the angry red office has been sick over the past two weeks; some of us want to eat but can’t, and others can eat but won’t. in the meantime, we have scrawled a few notes:

— we predict it is more likely that ‘outlaw cleric’ al-sadr will be killed, along with many americans and iraqis, than arrested.

— the local protest over the iraq war would draw more participants if there had been some u.s. flags instead of, or at least in addition to, palestinian flags behind which american participants were expected to march. or if the black panthers spent more time talking about bush (2004) and less time ranting about allende (1973).

— whilst investigating the percentage of local ‘artists’ at the dogwood festival, we noticed two (2) cups with markings that indicated that they contained 64oz. of cola. more surprising than the discovery that the 12″ tall cups were not an attempt at art was the discovery that each 64oz. of cola was intended to be consumed by one (1) human.

— it looks like we will rearrange our favourite spider-man cover list when ‘spectacular #14’ comes out. [+]

— ‘vetted’ is replacing ‘on the ground’ as the media’s latest annoying platitude. [+]

— too few people in this country are aware of the importance of keeping line of secularism from becoming thin.

~ unless he plans on shooting a bunch of 12 year old kids, are we to assume that when paul bremer promises ‘punishment’ for the culprits who mutilate corpses in fallujah, he is exhibiting a gruesome understanding of april fool’s day?

~ we’ve pointed out a few times that howard dean is no dennis kucinich [w], but watching dean stand there and advise us all to turn over to john kerry was enough to cause us to drop our heads and avert our eyes, lest our stomachs be turned instead. it’s one thing to be practical and to avoid showing any lack of division before the competition, but it is no less disheartening to see someone who held some of your respect eating his words and acting like a company mule. the democrats are apparently asking ‘deaniacs’ to sign a pledge of loyalty to the party, promising that they will routinely devote their support to whoever becomes the nominee, which reminds me of the childish notes we used to sign that promised we would have the front seat on the next car ride – when we were children. meanwhile, ralph nader [w] does not seem to be on any ballots yet.

~ does anyone else find that it is curious to hear laughing whilst listening to the “9/11 Commission Hearings”?

proposal for an overweight america #1:

car manufacturers, stop including console cupholders that are able to be configured for 48oz drinks.

~ find some new images in the u.s.a. scene report, particularly in new york and a couple of the new england states.

the only thing remarkable about the pritzker prize this year is that the iraqi/woman angle provided it with enough media play to enable us to discover that the new republic has an architecture critic.

~ the people who have been trying to follow the links in the previous post doubtlessly have noticed that seds [w] is down.

~ any npr fact checkers out there should please note that phobos is the larger of mars’s two moons. on the latest ‘weekend edition’, it incorrectly was mentioned that deimos [w] is larger than phobos [w].

~ the flag for the state of georgia, as chosen by a non-binding referendum, is lackluster, unimaginative, and otherwise quite lame. it is about as clever as the flag of malaysia, liberia, or texas. we continue to await a public design competition, juried by the populace, rather than a default logo coughed up by the fossils behind the closed doors of the state house.

~ back in january, we thought some people in iowa were fools for not having made a decision less than a day before their caucus. this ‘super’ tuesday, it is clear that we won’t vote for kerry; it is not clear what will be the most effective move against him. we had been pulling for dean, even sending out all those handwritten letters, so our original intention was to vote for him as an ‘i told you so’ to the naysayers and morons who used the term ‘dot-com’ when referring to his candidacy. it is conceivable that our state could go for edwards, so should we vote for him just to spite kerry and to add some tumult to the season? kucinich is the only person in the running who comes close to the ideological persuasion of the angry red planet, so perhaps we should ‘vote our conscience’, despite the likelihood that he might not get the nomination; this is what we have always done in the past. the result is that we are stuck in the position against which it is our policy to rail: having a vote be part of some byzantine chess match instead of having it be some declaration of hope and optimism.

of course, this is all idle chatter, because when november arrives, we will be casting our votes for an independent candidate.