May 31 commentary:

"For links to the articles I read on the air, guest websites, archived shows, my commentaries, a listener's discussion forum, and the text of Mark Stanneart’s latest commentary, visit: www.rabblerousing.org."

well now: astonishing news out of wash dc. The us congress has just discovered an amazing document which has been gathering dust for years now. Its called the us constitution. Its first 10 amendments have been neglected for some time now, as has its stipulation that only congress can declare war. In fact the present congress has been acting as if the constitution no longer existed. But lo and behold they suddenly discovered it did. And what you might ask prompted them to dust off the supreme law of the land and even threaten to apply it? You got to laugh. One of their own had his office raided by the fbi which is under the control of the executive branch and was caught with 90 k wrapped in tin foil in his freezer. The guy appears to be a crook, up to his eyebrows in bribery charges, but the rest of the congress, which sat on its hands while the executive branch headed by king george trashed most of the first 10 amendments is getting excited over this one. Don’t get me wrong. The fbi invading congressional offices is a clear violation of the contstitutions provisions for the separation of the executive and legislative branches of our esteemed govt. it is clearly another step in the creation of the fascist police state the neocons desire. but isn’t it curious that it didn’t seem to bother congress for the past few years as king geo the feeble minded usurped most of the their powers and basically ignored them as he assumed the role of a dictator while they watched and applauded, but this was going too far for the congressional greedheads. Get us to support your oil wars by lying your butts off to us and we’ll avert our eyes and pretend irt didn’t happen. Trash one civil right after another, take away our liberties in the name of the war on terrorism and we’ll do nothing, but Mess with our ability to take and stash bribes in our office freezers, and we’ll squeal like stuck pigs. The American political system, as performed by manny moe and cujrly. You got to just love it.

Next item: don’t know if you know this but british lt commander steven taham formerly in charge of information dissemination for the british forces in iraq, has revealed in a new book that the only news presented on tv to our troops in iraq is fox news. No wonder that surveys of our troops reveal that the vast majority believe they are in iraq because saddam was involved in 911. That’s it boys and girls in the military. Reality as presented by fox news. Now go out and kill some ragheads for us. George orwell would love it.

You want more good news? Gi’s in iraq trying to get info on the internet are finding that many web sites are blocked. How do we know this? Charlie brown who is running against cong john Doolittle in the upcoming election has a son serving in iraq. The son tried to go to his fathers web site. Couldn’t get there. The site was blocked.

Next item: This next article is out of britain. Funny thing, but we don’t read of this in American media. I cant understand why. FCC investigation: Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'Andrew Buncombe, The Independent
Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.
Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.
The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one station told viewers who had produced the items.
"We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them," said Diana Farsetta, one of the group's researchers. "I would say it's pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air."
Ms Farsetta said the public relations companies commissioned to produce these segments by corporations had become increasingly sophisticated in their techniques in order to get the VNRs broadcast. "They have got very good at mimicking what a real, independently produced television report would look like," she said.
The FCC has declined to comment on the investigation but investigators from the commission's enforcement unit recently approached Ms Farsetta for a copy of her group's report.
my comment: isn’t it incredible that a govt agency charged with protecting the publics interest has to go to an outside organization to obtain data that they should be collecting on their own. Are they collecting anything on their own except their paychecks? Ah forgive my cynicism. It’s a bad hair day. Back to this article. The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.
Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer's product. One example cited by the report was a Hallowe'en segment produced by the confectionery giant Mars, which featured Snickers, M&Ms and other company brands. While the original VNR disclosed that it was produced by Mars, such information was removed when it was broadcast by the television channel - in this case a Fox-owned station in St Louis, Missouri.
Bloomberg news service said that other companies that sponsored the promotions included General Motors, the world's largest car maker, and Intel, the biggest maker of semi-conductors. All of the companies said they included full disclosure of their involvement in the VNRs. "We in no way attempt to hide that we are providing the video," said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel. "In fact, we bend over backward to make this disclosure."
my comment: for some curious reason, these disclosures never make it on air, but the propaganda does. Curious eh?

humor at end: Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells? The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because

that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the

pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a

specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. the story gets better.

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's Behind. ... and you thought being a HORSE'S Behind wasn't important!