HELP WANTED: LESS THAN COMPLEAT IDIOT; APPLY WHITE HOUSE MILITARY OFFICE


WASHINGTON – An administration official says a presidential Boeing 747 and a fighter jet flew low near ground zero in New York City Monday because the White House Military Office wanted to update its file photo of the president's plane near the Statue of Liberty.
This official said the White House Military Office told the Federal Aviation Administration that it periodically updates file photos of Air Force One near national landmarks, like the statute in New York harbor and the Grand Canyon.
The official requested anonymity to give more details than the official White House announcement that took the blame.

Can somebody say "Adobe FREAKIN' PhotoShop?" Mrs. LOST has a standing offer to do the work next time for half the cost of the jet fuel used for this Brownie-worthy stunt. Speakin' of Brownie, is HE working in the White House Military Office currently?

LEST WE FORGET DEPARTMENT

News this week from the "Supermax" Federal prison, as domestically produced wingnut terrorist Terry Nichols has filed papers seeking to upgrade his prison-provided diet. While the whole article plus the petition can be accessed here, the following snipped was quite revealing:

As seen on the following pages, the complaint filed by Nichols--who is imprisoned at the "Supermax" lockup in Florence, Colorado--contends that "God created mankind to consume unrefined whole foods" that work "in a synergistic way to keep one's body (i.e. God's holy temple) in good health to ward off various diseases." Nichols, who stresses that he is "not a terrorist," helpfully included a proposed diet that prison officials should serve (or make available at the Florence commissary). The mass murderer, it seems, is a big fan of Kellogg's bran products. To support his legal claim, Nichols has rounded up declarations from six fellow Florence inmates, each of whom is supposedly beset with assorted digestive issues. Eric Rudolph, whose bombs killed victims at abortion clinics and the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, reports that the "refined and highly processed" food served to killers like him causes "constipation, gas, and stomach cramps." Like Nichols, Rudolph believes "our bodies" are "sacred and should be treated as such."

Ah, Terry? Something tells LOST that God also created mankind to nurture its young and to care for each other, not blow one another to bits, too.

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT!

From the Now it can be told Department. Waterboarding was used to find a post-invasion link between Al Qaida and Iraq. The f*ckups in charge compromised our principles to find *ss covering. Why in the name of Roger Ailes would anyone listen to this jerk ever again?

The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.
"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.
"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."
It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubeida at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.
"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

MORE EASTER

Can't help but notice a little mirth at the the "resignation" or "farewell address" of Mr. Focus-on-the-Family. Seems Mr. Dobson is lamenting the "loss of the culture war." . LOST is lamenting the adulteration of the faith of LOST's Father by nutty 5 issue, Shiite-Catholics. The people who think that your faith is the sum total of your answer to the questions of abortion, stem cells, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and, wait for it . . . . human cloning. They've taken over all of the local parishes. Those who disagree with them are being squeezed out or cowed into silence. It is true that there are some enlightened catholics in each of the local parishes - there is no other way to explain how Ayatollah Perozich in the next parish over could get his wrist slapped by the Diocese for bulletinizing his fatwa on the President ("one Hundred Days or End of days" - essentially labeling Obama as the antichrist. Nitwitted, collared b*st*rd). But as Truman said, there's loud shouting in the Amen corner these days, and its the 5 issue crowd. So it is that abortion abortion abortion is the issue. Nothing else matters. Our local Deacon said as much a few weeks ago, when he blithely dismissed Iraq war casualties as being less than one day's worth of the slaughter of the unborn. Thanks, Deacon. War is okay, got it. Just gotta criminalize abortions and all will be well. These extremists operate from a fantasyland perspective that abortions never happened before Roe v. Wade and that somehow, magically they'll all disappear within minutes of Roe's overturning. Well, what then? Imprison doctors? Why stop there, why not the abortion demanders - the women and men who seek them? Will police departments have unborn crimes units - and detectives investigating miscarriages?

Seriously, Abortion is an important moral issue. LOST believes that it is morally wrong to use it as a means of dispensing with unwanted pregnancies. But LOST believes that no-fault divorce at the drop of a hat is morally wrong, too, yet it exists; and it exists without so much as a whisper from the Shiite catholics, despite their vitriolic family-values-and-we-must-defend-marriage-by-keeping-Chuck-and-Ted-apart (or at least in the closet). LOST does believe that greater forms of contraception deserve to be accepted or at least "decriminalized" by the Vatican's impure thought police, instead of running around Africa claiming that condoms cause AIDS. LOST also believes that the immorality of abortion must yield to the immorality of disproportionate consequences which would be occasioned by a denial of access to abortion to those victims of rape or incest, or those whose own life is jeopardized by unanticipated labor and childbirth. An organization so easily painted with the multi-millenial stain of misogyny ought to readily realize this and be more open-minded on the issues. At the very least it should be tolerant of those in the faith who recognize these issues are complex beyond zebra shades of black and white.

LOST doesn't think the Messiah died and was resurrected to maximize opportunities for a reactionary partnership between laity and clergy to condemn others, or read edicts into the Faith that seek to divide by fostering blind obedience. The days of blindly following the collared ended in 2002, when the scandals broke, and we were all shown-through the magic of television that large sectors of the clergy and hierarchy were more about protecting and preserving their own than they were about continuing the business of the Good Shepherd. That's an Easter message that all should embrace, and the Ratzinger pope should lead, follow, or get out of the way.

EASTER SUNDAY STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Easter. Never the biggie of Catholic Holidays for LOST. Oh sure, there was candy, usually several pounds of it, waiting to be lathered over tooth enamel, all to the delight of dentists everywhere. Nobody decorates their house for Easter - nothing like Christmas, at least. No giant peeps on the lawn, or inflatable ones. Good lord, thank heaven for that. The ones people put on their lawns at Christmas look like - when deflated, some giant got a "safe" quickie and left the bag laying on the porch after staggering away . . .
But LOST digresses. There are no great Easter shows, either. S'pose you can count "Ben Hur" but it ain't Its a Wonderful Life, that's for sure. About 30 years ago (dang, THAT long?) Franco Zefferelli did "Jesus of Nazareth" as a mini-series, and it was pretty good, but it goes close to 8 hours by the time its done - and of course it covers Christmas in the beginning, too.
No, Easter is kind of a golf-clap Holiday, even if it comemorates the most amazing feat of the Namesake of the Christian faith. Perhaps its because of the timing - the whole weekend together is a roller coaster of emotions - the ugliness of "Good Friday" and its despair, followed two days later by the (okay, no lawsuit from Robert Schuller) Glory of Easter? Don't know for sure. Is it the universalist Christians and the liberal Christians who have recently reached the conclusion that the Resurrection was more metaphoric than realistic? Perhaps that is part of it too, who knows. Perhaps from the other end of the spectrum its the influence of fundamentalists who have equated Jesus with the GOP platform, and decided that the effigy of science should be burned at the stake wherever it diverges with Genesis et seq., right down to assuming that despite its literal truth, the Old Testament surely meant to mention that Triceratops and T-Rex were peacefully coexisting in Eden with Adam and Eve before the serpent showed up? Speaking of animals, maybe its because the secular myth sold to kids about Easter - the friendly candy-mongering Rabbit icon - is so implausible that even pre-schoolers can debunk it before 1st grade - at least the crimson suited fat guy looks and seems human, even if the deer DO fly?

Maybe growing up Easter is more about a Holiday that has to get out of the way of the kids who are striving to plunge headlong into Summer, and it needs to be enjoyed in a random, drive-through fashion on the way to June?

For whatever reason, Easter for LOST does not now, nor has it ever really captured the same brightness that its precedent Holiday, Christmas, does and has for LOST.