so lets see if i can write this all down in 14 minutes. ready go.

got off the airplane and after twenty minutes found out that they had lost my bag. jenny was waiting for me inside the gorgeous vancouver airport and drove me to the good residence where matt was working on his blog. the man is crazy about blogging and web design which is probably why we get along so well.

while jen got her nails did, me and matt walked through town to go to his soundcheck. it wasnt raining and it wasnt as cold as i thought it was gonna be

every third or fourth person had a little red flower on their collar. i asked matt wtf. he said it was a red poppy to acknowledge canadian veterans and sorta to remind people that war is dumb. so later at the Commodore i met the band and the tour manager and the manager and the guitar tech and everyone was super cool as in SUPER cool, in fact the guitar tech has been ac/dc’s guitar tech for the last 20 years and i was all you know ac/dcs my favorite band and he was all yeah yeah and we talked for about five minutes and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a guitar pick that said ac/dc and he was all this is angus’s and i nearly fell over.

then i took pics of sound check and it was really interesting seeing how exact they wanted the sound and the set list. and then i took pics of matt getting interviewed by mtv canada and a local newspaper and the radio – all seperate interviews.

then i walked down the street to hang out with the canadian bloggers and buzznetters and it was superrrrrr fun. i wont even start to list the people there because i will forget someone and that will break my heart. lets just say that there was a canadian army guy and america army guy and a representative from the us dept of homeland security there and we drank and drank and drank. there was also a canadian there who was trying to get onto Survivor as well as many other killer people.

ok then we all went to the show and i saw more people whose blogs i read and then i was all who’s this great band and it was The Ladies and Gentlemen, really good. i will buy their cd tonight.

but the coolest part – well, equally as cool – was as i was walking around all these amazing people kept stopping me saying, youre tony eh? i read your blog youre awesome! now that happens to me at blogging conventions but for it to happen at a concert in canada was pretty wonderful. if i had nipples theyd have gotten hard. especially since lots of the heyyouretony were hot babes as in h.o.t.

so when the time came for matt to come on i went to the front of the front row and showed the security guy my pass and i was right there under matt’s nose. but that wasnt as fun as seeing the fans in the front row who were all omg omg. after three songs they kicked me out and i roamed the crowd and drank and took pictures and more people pulled me aside and took pics with me and the show was really good, i must say, and then afterwards i noticed smelly danielly was hanging around and i remembered that i had a photo pass AND an all-access pass but they both looked like backstage passes so i asked her if her bf would mind if i took her backstage to meet matt again and he was cool with it so we went to the green room and that wasnt where the party was at, but then i saw matts manager so i followed him and we went upstairs and like danielly said matt didnt have his shirt on and jen was sorta hugging him and it did seem like a personal moment but they said no its cool and matt put on his shirt and i stole a beer from his mini fridge and we all talked for a few minutes and then went back downstairs to the green room and then it was packed.

so we let matt make the rounds and sign things and take pics with people, and then it was time to go, so matt and jen and i hopped into a cab and sped back to their place.

whats so funny about the goods, and i say funny but i mean wonderful is they adore their three dogs. like so much. so here this guy just rocked the fucking house but when we got to the door they both said, the babies are gonna be mad at us for being away so long. and so they made extra sure to pet them all and kiss them all and we hung out in the living room petting the dogs and then jen ordered a pizza and when it arrived we ate and i passed out. before i even uploaded my pics.

today we were all little computer geeks. everyone was on their computers at one point for a good hour. then later me and jen took the littlest doggie to the vet and i took pics of that too. now im off to meet up again with some of the blogger boys and then dinner with the goods and then concert time. then tomorrow i will be jetting back to LA.

vancouver is a great place. i hope to come back again soon. the rain and cold havent been so bad at all. i think its different when you dont live there. in fact its sorta nice to see the red leaves and orange leaves and clean streets and junk.

more accounts: smelly danielly + ciavarro + blogger unknown + ben allbright + the acoustic diaries

so a bunch of us moved to the back for either more space or a better view of the gorgeous coast. so I moved away from the big smelly lady next to me because the dude in front of me reclined his chair back the whopping three inches that instantly makes his life complete. but I didn’t care, it was a nice excuse to jet. so to speak.

last night and this morning I was procrastinating like crazy which makes no sense because I really want to go on this trip. there are very few trips that I want to go on and this was definitely one of them. however last night when I was getting drowsy at midnight and I hadn’t yet finished packing I went to bed still unprepared for the morning.

being bald has its advantages but you still have to shave your damn head in the morning and that takes just as much time as picking my fro used to take. and then there were all the electronics I had to remember: computer, cords, batteries, headphones, ipod, battery chargers, lenses, memory cards, memory card readers, digital tape recorder, batteries for that, cord for that.

I cant even imagine what it would be like to have to pack if I had children. no thanks.

my flight this morning was at 10:30am which seems reasonable. but since its an international flight they like you there two hours early. if I was traveling with my mom she would like to be there three hours early. because of the early morning traffic I got there 45 minutes early.

theres a new thing going on at airports. im not sure if I like it or not. they have these machines where you get your boarding passes. the first thing they ask you is your confirmation number of your ticket. because im a dumbass I don’t have any such thing but I knew I had it in my gmail. so right there I opened up my laptop and because buzznet got me a tiny ibook g4 its got the airport xpress wifi built right in that bad boy and because the Lord loves us the airport had wifi going and I was able to search my gmail and found my confirmation number and I typed it in.

after a few touch-screen selections they asked me to swipe my passport.

well Ive had this passport since the millennium when 20 of my closest friends and I saw Tsar in Madrid and I never knew you could swipe that fucker. but lo I slid the passport where it told me to and out spat a boarding pass.

oh lucky me, someone saw that no one was sitting in front of me, so he sat there, and has now reclined his seat back. fidgety motherfucker. im wishing ill toward him which is tricky when youre 35000 feet up cuz if he gets hit by a lightening bolt I have a feeling that we will all get hit by a lightening bolt.

one thing that I packed with me this time that I didn’t pack with me for the new york trip is a condom. now I don’t think I will have any chance to get any Canadian lovin but I didn’t think I had a shot in new york either and I was pretty much wrong. and even though bringing one might jinx it, some would have you believe, I don’t subscribe to such witchcraft and as a former cubscout I was taught early on that it would not be wise not to be prepared.

this is one fidgety dude. he has his arm outstretched, he keeps scratching his head. his suit jacket looks too tight. hes not looking out the window, why did I pick mr nervous nelly to sit behind. why does he want to shake his dandruff over his seat an onto my beautiful white laptop?

why cant he just cruise to the very back and lay down or read his book or chill the fuck out?

why cant everyone just be perfect like me?

that’s what I want to know.

that’s all.

tom green is back to blogging. I bet he doesn’t fidget on the airplane.

ok im here! yay!

ok they lost my bag! booo!!

ok im at matt and jen’s place! yay!

ok they have wifi! horrrraaaayyyy!!!

im posting pics of the trip here

join me, wont you…

Granville Room – 957 Granville Street, Vancouver!

6p-7:30p right before the Matthew Good concert

Larry Wilkerson publicly attacked the Bush Adminstration, describing the actions of the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense as a “cabal”.

Perhaps you read this quote:

“What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

I know all my readers are brilliant but let’s just throw the definition out there anyway because Tuesday Rummy was asked about it.

ca·bal (ke-băl’, -bäl’) n.

1. A conspiratorial group of plotters or intriguers: “Espionage is quite precisely it—a cabal of powerful men, working secretly” (Frank Conroy).

2. A secret scheme or plot.

The key word here is Secret.

Secret in a representative democracy is a bad thing because those people are supposed to be working for us. We are supposed to know what they are doing so that we can tell them to keep it up or to knock it off. Normally people work in secret because they are up to no good.

Sometimes people work in secret because that’s their job. For example Valerie Wilson worked in secret to protect us. Until Scooter Libby and others in the White House outted her as some weird payback for her husband publicly calling BushCo liars.

Not every CIA operation is good though.

Yesterday the Washington Post reported that the White House has been using the CIA to interrogate and imprison alleged al Qaeda operatives in Eastern Europe, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries.

In a press conference held Tuesday the Defense Secretary was asked about Col. Wilkerson’s claim and not only did Rummy pretend not to know who Gen. Powell’s Cheif of Staff was, but he reacted so oddly that if it weren’t for the Department of Defense’s transcript I wouldnt have believed it myself because, Goodness Gracious, it sounded like Mrs. Doubtfire or Larry Haskel had grabbed the mic.

Q. Mr. Secretary, recently Larry Wilkerson, the former State Department official, has described what he said was a cabal between you and Vice President Cheney in forming public policy leading up to the war. And he described what he said was a seriously dysfunctional foreign policy. I don’t think we’ve heard you speak on that. Can you just respond to that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I haven’t read this. I’ve heard about it. And I don’t know the man. I’ve never met the man, and I don’t believe he’s ever been in a meeting of the NSC. So it’s hard for me to understand exactly what his insights might have been.

But, obviously, the president is the one who makes foreign policy, and the secretary of State is the one that implements foreign policy. And it’s the country’s policy.

I don’t know what else one could say.

Q. If I can just follow up. He seems to be complaining that the State Department’s role in that was minimized in the lead-up to the war.

SEC. RUMSFELD: My experience in those meetings is that the president is the principal person who decides these things, and if he — what was his job, this fellow?

Q. He was — forgive me, I cover the Pentagon, but he was the chief of staff to Powell.

Q. He was chief of staff to Powell.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I don’t know what his perspective was or what his expectations were.

Q. Do you think he was speaking for Secretary Powell?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh my goodness. Secretary Powell is perfectly capable of speaking for himself. I can’t imagine —

Q. You didn’t interpret it that way?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I didn’t.

Q. So there was no cabal?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Of course not. My goodness gracious. The president of the United States makes these decisions, and he did it in open meetings and discussions that went on, and at great length. And that kind of a perspective obviously is looking through the wrong end of a telescope, I think.

Do you think that this could explain why the Instapundit, who writes about the war and politics and Iraq 20-30 times a day hasn’t mentioned the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld since September 7? Or only three times since June? Aren’t we in a war? Or is there really that little good news in Iraq to selectively blog about?

Makes you wonder who supports cabals, who supports transparancy and who supports torture. People can talk all they want about the war on Terror, but what happens when we are the ones on the wrong end of terror and lies and corruption?

Instead, the law professor from Tennessee has chosen to write about Cindy Sheehan, negatively, 15 times since August 15.

I guess Glenn’s saying that she’s America’s real enemy.

Secret torture, perjury, no wmds, cabals, lies… that gets a pass for the world’s most popular right-wing blogger. But a mother of a fallen soldier who asks for peace? No mercy.

cabal was also a great video game + raymi + the void got his

and protested the war

lots of pics on my buzznet page and on mc brown’s

the glare and the sun and the reflections haven’t woken up yet so I sit here on the office couch and I write to you. Hi you.

If you notice some capitalization like I do don’t be alarmed. Im not being kidnapped and someone else isn’t writing this blog, its me. Sorry this is all you get.

Last night I went on a date with a new girl. When it rains it pours. Another blonde. Typically im not into blondes but in LA you really cant be that picky about hair color, especially that hair color because blonde chicks are everywhere.

Lets pretend that this girl looks like paris hilton but with tits. Not huge fake ones, but just some tits. Ive seen the paris video and she has something but you know what im saying, last nights girl actually could fill up a bra.

Because I live a bizarre life, this girls first words last night were, you realize my last boyfriend died in a car crash. I was all, no I didn’t realize that, how on earth would I have been aware of that? And she said he was famous in the [world that he was famous in]. But I do not roam in those circles so I just said, uh huh and wondered if she had been set up with me because she needed a shoulder to cry on or a gentleman to romp with or someone to get drunk with. People set me up with girls all the time and theres generally a reason, as opposed to, “oh this is a hot babe, lets set her up with Tony.”

So we sat there and she ate sushi and I ate shrimp whose tails I had to pull off myself for some reason. and the kool kids used their chopsticks and drank their fancy drinks and I just listened to her tell me about how much she loved this guy but that from early on she knew it wasn’t meant to be, and then all of a sudden he was gone and now she really misses him.

And usually I can be super funny but I was looking for spots to jump in with a joke but they weren’t coming.

Fortunately the waitress asked us if we wanted saki and I was all hell yes.

And we started drinking.

And she started crying. And then she asked if I would hold her hand and I was all, ok here we go. And she had the softest hands. And she was hot. And she had a short skirt. And she had a plunging blouse with a colorful bra that begged for attention but I just stared at her eyes fighting my peripheral vision. And losing.

But she didn’t care so when she had finished sobbing I said.

Ok are you ready to go on with your life?

No.

Ok now are you ready to go on with your life?

No.

Ok now are you ready for something other than crying and sadness and longing?

And she didn’t say anything so I put my hand on her bare thigh.

She sniffled.

i said have you ever been on a date where the guy didn’t hit on you?

She said no, and broke a smile.

I said, have you ever made the first move on a dude before?

She laughed and said no.

So I removed my hand and looked up at the big paper umbrella hanging above us and started whistling quietly.

And I heard a giggle, then a sniffle

And then I felt a kiss on my cheek.

And that’s why my fingers smell seafoody this morning.

talking to strangers + the hotline + piette + terra

after sex
what is there
after lust is what i mean
sitting there on the edge of the bed
big room big mind
its 4am now shes rubbin my back
dont touch me nevermind
i feel only a little bad
bad that i wont fall asleep with her
and now im not really a boy no more
i tucker in kiss her soft cheek let myself out
drive home listening to acdc cuz i am a boy.
the stoplights flash red black red
theres so many people out not just bums
tall men and women outside of bars
i wanna tell em its not worth it
its love inside your belly cant believe how cute she looks
not cant believe how bad she sucks
its love you must want im sure
again ive gone down the wrong path
but when i called her she asked
please wont you come
i think im dumb
and someday my princess will come
skipping and wearing converse
maybe she wont have a string purse
she’ll knock knock on my door
dress like an angel and fuck like a whore
aint gonna screw on maggies floor no more
the twighlights still growing and the streets they are filling
the suns lighting up my shades and the bulb on my ceiling
i wish i could tell you right now
just how im feeling
glad to get laid but love was not made
dont come back here mister
your tab has been paid.

from Stiff, available now

signed copies available ($1 shipping in US, $2 shipping int’l)
or get it directly from CafePress, unsigned

which might explain why you dont see comments on the top rightwing blog.

on Sunday the blogfather actually wrote something. as you know typically he simply quotes other righty blogs and adds a line or two of snideness or agreement. Sunday he wrote a few paragraphs defending the White House leak, speculating as to Joe Wilson being guilty of something, and concluding that this looks bad not for the white house or for the VPs cheif of staff, but for the CIA. the professor called the CIA “the big loser.”

which prompted metafilter user edverb today to write:

how could this theory from Reynolds make any sense? It’s illogical, leaves out major details, and skews the timeline. It blames the CIA and Wilson for telling the admin what the didn’t want to hear.

Wilson returns, reports, then publishes an oped in the New York Times (!!) about his mission. This pretty much ensures that people will start asking why he was sent, which leads to the fact that his wife arranged it. Once Wilson’s oped appeared, Plame’s covert status was in serious danger. Yet nobody seemed to care.

…as if Wilson’s report happened in a bubble.

Some major pieces of timeline are missing there. In between “Wilson returns, reports” and “publishes an oped” should appear:

“a year passes while Cheney and admin officials make unsubstantiated allegations about Saddam’s nuclear programs, culminating in the discredited 16 words in Bush’s 2003 SOTU, followed by invasion in March 2003.”

But Reynolds doesn’t seem to care…

This leaves two possibilities. One is that the mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn’t care much about Plame’s status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.

So Reynolds proposes that the CIA, who was out to embarrass Bush, was so prescient that they sent Wilson to Niger in January 2002, six months before the admin began the drumbeat for war, a full year before Bush’s SOTU, and 14 months before the invasion…all to discredit sclaims that Bush and Cheney hadn’t even made yet?

Neat trick, that.

(If they had that sort of prescience, I’d posit that quite to the contrary, it would reflect quite well on the CIA.)

The other possibility is that they’re so clueless that they did this without any nefarious plan, because they’re so inept, and so prone to cronyism and nepotism

blah blah blah

No, Glenn…the other possibility is that you’re completely full of it, you illogical sycophant.

That’s the fatal flaw of the elite neocons — when reality doesn’t jibe with their theories, they think it’s reality’s fault.

To them, when Wilson couldn’t substantiate the Niger sale (because there wasn’t one) — that’s Wilson’s fault. When the CIA told them not to use discredited intel, that’s the CIA’s fault. Any cockamamie theory will be advanced, no matter how ridiculous, to shift blame from the people to whom it belongs.

Here are the facts: There was no uranium deal. There was no ability to refine uranium anyhow. There was no nuclear weapons capacity. Wilson was right. Cheney and Bush were wrong. They exaggerated and fabricated a case for war. There were no WMD, Iraq couldn’t pass WMD to terrorists because they did not possess them.

Simple as that. It’s an insult to our intelligence to weave complicated, illogical fantasies about how this is all someone else’s fault. It’s horseshit.

– posted by edverb at 11:54 AM PST on November 1 from this thread

meanwhile yesterday Glenn was too busy to actually write stuff so he linked to his bro Tom Maguire who that day said it was NBC News that had the problem and not the fella indicted or the White House or the administration who is appearing to be more corrupt than ever imagined.

After Maguire’s long screed explaining that it was Time reporter Matt Cooper’s allegedly faulty memory that made him unreliable, as opposed to Scooter Libby’s that has possibly made himself criminal, a commentor (Maguire allows comments on his blog) called bullshit on the entire post and the righties who submit such innanities instead of just calling a lying crook a lying crook.

from the desk of JayDee:

It’s amusing to watch even an exacting mind like TM’s leap to comfortable partisan conclusions. Matt Cooper’s memory is weak…because his account differs from Rove’s. Only in Partisan Pubby Land is it an assumption that the pigboy is the one telling the unvarnished truth.

What is Russert supposed to do? Libby decided to use him as a cover and he decided not to be a party to a crime. He still has a job to do, and is apparently trying to respect the due process of law by not blabbing about it too freely. One of the most useful things to come out of these proceedings is a window into the way this admin abused its press relationships in order to disseminate false information to the public. We’ve gotten other hints of this, as in their paid propagandizing of Armstrong Williams. But this is the first instance where it is all being revealed under oath.

What this story – and the reactions of the gooper faithful – reveals most of all is the sham of Republican “patriotism”. It isn’t the law they respect, it isn’t our national security , it isn’t the health and safety of our citizens – it’s partisan political winning that matters to them – POWER. Let’s be clear here. The goal of this group of bastards, when they ascended to one party power in our democracy, was to create a “permanent majority”. Permanent. The very idea is antithetical to democracy. For all their phony blather about democracy, while they actively perverted it, their legacy may actually be to prove once again the power of democracy. Even with this crap press we’ve got today, even with all the rightwing partisan judicial activists they’ve stocked the court with, their crimes are being prosecuted, their lies are being unraveled. And their partisan sycophants are looking sillier and more foolishly hypocritical by the day.

ive said it before and i will say it again. what is fascinating to me about the blogosphere is not who is right and who is wrong, it is who will back their party no matter what and who will step up and say, “I’m a Republican and I hate to admit it, but my party is fucked up. Yes we are in power, but we are abusing our power. I’m ashamed.”

So far the propagandists and apologists are just keeping their head down and driving the lane.

In a way I admire them for their loyalty. But the SS were loyal too when they knew they were wrong.

This case is not as complex as people will have you believe it to be. The White House outted a CIA agent as a way to get back at a former US diplomat and to put a chill on anyone who dared disagree with them about their reasoning for invading Iraq. Then they lied about it and now they have been caught.

It astounds me how the Right were unified in disagreeing with BushCo about Harriett Meyers because she wasnt conservative-enough, but they refuse to admit that this administration did anything wrong surrounding Joe Wilson and his wife.

My advice: instead of getting upset, watch them spin their wheels in the sand trying to get out of this unbelieveablely deep hole of shit theyve found themselves in.

My other advice: quit aligning yourselves with parties, and instead choose individual representatives and individual causes.

incredible tom paine chart + odub + flagrant + huffington post