TICP is on the AIR!

The Annals of Improbable Research, without doubt the most humorous magazine science has ever conceived, honored the Infinite Cat Project by including it in their September/October 2006 issue. We got a two-page spread, the whole gol-dang back cover and, as you can almost see, a mention right there on the front cover. You can download a free sample of past issues, cruise the AIRchives, or become an AIRhead at www.improbable.com. Tell 'em Mike sent ya.

Mose Knows!

This is Moses the cat, captured in six delightful Quicktime shorts by an inventive chap from London, England. These are an ICP exclusive that you won't find anywhere else and they show what can be done with a video camera, a Mac, and a little imagination. Click on the nose of Mose to be taken to the Movies page.

Social Insecurity

2-22-05: The one thing people seem to forget about Social Security is that it was never intended to be simply an enforced savings plan for one's old age. It was primarily designed as a social contract among everyone in the system to share the load when times got bad. If a husband dies in an accident, his children are provided for through Social Security. If someone is handicapped and can't work their needs are similarly provided for. And yes, when you get old it's there to help, too.

You might find it interesting to know that a retired defense analyst computed his Social Security investments and discovered that if it had been invested in Wall Street he would have LOST $15,000...and that's before investment fees were considered. I found this little nugget of information in the latest Harper's Magazine.

So remember the difference between personal greed and personal responsibility the next time you hear Chimpy McFlighsuit tell you he's "gonna fix thangs". Besides, this Social Secutiry nonsense is simply more typical Neocon misdirection as it's meant to keep your eye off the Medicare ball. But if that collapses it's only the poor that suffer and who gives a damn about them? Not those given the power to govern, that's for sure.

PS, I've just learned that the man charged to push Social Security privatization, Jim McCrery, received $200,000 in campaign contributions from Wall Street investment firms. Yes, the bill came due and you're the one's being asked to pay it.

The Iraqi Elections.

2-7-05: So I'm listening to a National Public Radio radio program the other day and someone made a mention of the "successful" Iraqi elections. It was apparant that even this seemingly enlightened and very liberal host was unaware of a couple of little details about the elections:

(1) There were no international poll watchers allowed in the country by the U.S., which is reason enough to distrust the result.
(2) The press remained safely inside the Green Zone, so the only real information we have about the election comes from our government, which lied through its teeth to start this war. And the war was about WMD's and Saddam, not democracy or "freedom".
(3) We have no idea how many Iraqi's were actually registered to vote, so anytime someone mentions the percentage of voters they're having to take our government's word for it. See #2.
(4) We have no idea how many polling booths there were in Iraq, And don't put it past Karl Rove and his oily pals to have made sure that there were too few, making the long lines at the polling places, at least those seen on U.S. newscasts, appear as if there was more enthusiasm for the event than there actually was.
(5) The election results will drive a huge wedge between the Sunni's, the Shi'a, and the Kurds. No matter who takes countrol of the government the other two parties will resort to violence to disrupt the process. It has always been like that in that part of the world. Saddam actually made Iraq work while he was in power, forcing a secular  state on the people. Putting religious fundamantalists in charge is a recipe for further chaos and is just what the U.S. is banking on.
(6) It was not a 'peaceful event' as there were more than 147 attacks around the country on voting day.
(7) The elections are a sham anyway as the U.S. military is currently spending about $40 billion dollars to build military bases in Iraq. The American military is not leaving any time soon. We're there for the long haul.

Addendum 2-9-05: Ten days after the elections the votes STILL haven't been counted, and they just threw out 300 ballot boxes, so the official stroy goes, due to tampering. (Rumor has it the provisional authority threw them out because the votes were overwhelmingly pro-Saddam.)

Standing on a soap box always makes your feet smell better.
(Yes, this is a lot of political information for a web site about cats, but I'm pissed.)

11-4-04. Well, a massively concerted effort by the Republicans to paint John Kerry as a homosexual-loving baby-killer has resulted in another stolen election, so we're stuck with that jar-headed quisling as our noble leader for another four years. That is, unless the current vote recounts and voter fraud investigations overturn the election results. Cross your fingers and support the recount.See the associated links below.

It'll be interesting to see what other part of the traditional American way of life this administration will try and wreck in the next four years since they've already looted Social Security, over-extended the military to the breaking point, infuriated most of our former allies, weakened the dollar, indebted us forever to Saudi Arabia and China (that's who's funding the government right now, bub), single-handedly caused the steepest rise in oil prices in decades and largely handed over the environment to any chemical industry executive interested in seeing just how much mercury the nearest river can hold.

Update, 12-1-04: One thing Republicans have done is added a rider to the latest appropriations bill that REQUIRES your children to undergo psychological testing, and if the doc says your children need mind or mood-altering drugs to go back to school, why, you'll have to administer them. Forget entirely that G.H.W. Bush and many of the members of the current administration once sat, or still remain, as board members for the largest drug companies.

And, as of December 1, 2006, it's becoming clear that Bush instructed his military to indiscriminately napalm almost any human that stuck their head up in Faloojeh. Iraq. Napalm, in case you forget, is a weapon composed of jet fuel and polystyrene that burns you to death with a literally unquenchable fire. America is the only country in the WORLD that still uses napalm as it was outlawed back in 1980, and even Saddam never wiped out entire towns. This is pure war criminal stuff, folks. Plain and simple.

On the bright side, such as it is, the election affords me the opportunity to remind my neocon friends of the latest stultifyingly idiotic move that Goober McPretzel makes. Boy, are they gonna be sick of ME in four years.

One more thing...it's pretty clear that one of the big problems in this last election were the touch-screen voting machines. In precincts where paper records were used the exit polls were almost 100% accurate. In paperless precincts the exit polls bucked the vote count. (Gee, imagine that.) For a graphic example of how bad this vote-rigging was, click here.

These machines use totally proprietary code that only Diebold, whose corporate head promised to do whatever he could to help Chimpy McFlightsuit be legally elected for the first time, is allowed to see.

Currently, recounts of the votes are going on in Ohio, Florida and New Hampshire. Naturally, the Neocons are fighting this legal maneuver every step of the way, even using illegal means to do so. To stay abreast of the proceedings, visit the following sites:

www.blackboxvoting.org
www.blackboxvoting.com
www.votersunite.org

One last thing to share with you...a peaceful anti-war protest was held in Los Angeles one week after the presidential elections. What did the government do about this?

They sent in tanks.

Think I'm kidding? Click here to see the video. As you view this, ask yourself, "Why were tanks in front of an anti-war demonstration, in the middle of Los Angeles, at night, on a busy street?"

Just coincidence?

Nahhhhhh.

Provisional Ballots and the Hijacking of an Election

As information about how the election begins to circulate it's become clear that the voting process was seriously derailed in Ohio. By that I mean, over 300,000 largely Democratic votes won't be counted. Click here to read the gory details. If you need more information, please visit:

www.blackboxvoting.org
www.blackboxvoting.com
www.votersunite.org

Jolly bad, old bean!

Thought I'd share this with you if you haven't already seen it...the UK's Daily Mirror put it pretty succinctly when they asked, on the cover of the November 3rd edition of their tabloid, "How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?". Click the thumbnail for a larger image.

Words of Wisdom

Mark Morford is a wonderful, progressive columnist for the San Francisco Monitor. Those of you that need a lift, and you know who you are, will enjoy this column by him.

Bush relatives for Kerry

Believe it or not, there exists within the Bush clan a large collection of George's blood relatives who think so little of the man that they've publicly endorsed John Kerry for President. You can visit their web site and read their opinions of both candidates here:
http://www.bushrelativesforkerry.com

Conservatives are SUCh lovely people.

9-4-04: I've been running this web site for about three months now and all of the email I've received has been complimentary, except for the occasional dog lover asking for their own section.

But that all changed about two weeks ago when foxnews.com added a link on their web site directing readers to the ICP, which resulted in a huge influx of visitors. It also resulted in a brief flurry of very bad-mannered emails, most all of which were in response to the "Kitties for Kerry" bumper stickers I offer. These emails eventually dwindled to nothing and I felt that was the end of that.

Well, not really.

Since the day Fox discovered this web site there has been a concerted attack to try and shut it down. The latest trick involved bloating my bandwidth usage by running scripts that continually load and reload my pages. Bandwidth usage has ballooned six-fold since then but the techs at my host are addressing this problem as I write this. We have the culprit's IP addresses and legal steps will be taken if necessary.

All I want to point out is that these right-wing fascists will do ANYTHING to muzzle opposition to their plans to essentially control everything. Even two-bit web sites like this one.

Incidentally, I don't toss words like "fascist" around casually. Read this short assemblage of the 14 Defining Characterisitcs of Fascism and see if you don't see resemblances to the current Republican way of doing things. Click here for a quick example of what I mean. (In brief, a woman is fired by her Republican boss because she had a Kerry sticker on her car. So much for freedom of choice.)

So please vote Democrat this November, both for national and regional offices. Let's bring a little bit of sanity back to the American way of life. Thanks for listening.

BTW, this information isn't meant to inflame the already hot political wars. It is simply to let you all know what kind of rotten scum exist in the world and to inform the less-polite of you that further incivilities directed at me and the ICP will not be answered. So save your digital breath.