BE THE CHANGE GUEST EDITORIAL BY b2 MOP Jerky, ACD makes some good points, but I am not sure that there is necessarily a huge sacrifice involved in weaning our greedy little lips from the teats of Oil Dependency, and there is something that each of us can easily do to move our country in that direction. We have to stop thinking that politicians will be motivated to do anything for the common good, and start being the change ourselves. Asking "what can I do to make a difference"? And then doing it. If that's a sacrifice then so be it. Contrary to the Dubya Doctrine, we will not be able to "shop our way out of this dilemma", although a conscious and widespread use of market forces can push the market in the correct direction. I agree that enviros can be insufferable but I do take exception with the concept of drilling in ANWR, because we cannot drill ourselves out of our oil dependency. And nuclear energy is a step back in time to a technology that would never be able to stand on its own without massive subsidy and carte blanch as to what we will do with the radioactive waste for the next however many millennia. Big Oil is in control of this country and that is a big impediment to achieving any solution. But consider this: There is enough potential wind energy in the states of Ndak, Kansas, and Texas to supply ALL of our countries Electrical needs and Nationwide enough wind potential to provide for this nations Energy needs. The beauty of wind is that it will never run out. Harvesting it doesn't pollute the atmosphere, irradiate the land, or kill caribou/seals. You can elect to buy wind power right now! That's right, you can call your utility and ask to buy a block of renewable energy. In Colorado it costs $2.50 a month, or 2.5c/kw more, to buy a 100kwh block of renewable energy. If everyone started buying renewable electricity credit it would drive the market for wind energy and they would have to build even more wind farms to supply the demand. So here is something that we can all do today, to move us towards energy independence. About 75% of my electrical needs are met with the renewable energy that I have elected to buy, and the gimungous sacrifice that I make is around a 10% increase in my electric bill. As non-renewable energy costs continue to rise, wind will just keep getting cheaper. Now your saying Ok, so if we bring wind farms into the national grid, we can back way off on our coal and natural gas electrical generation, but use that as back up, for when the wind isn't blowing. That would help a lot with the global warming scenario but what about all the imported oil that we use in our cars and trucks? A lot is being said for biofuels, but that is mostly politics. We cannot grow our way to oil independence any more than we can drill our way to it. Biofuels helps out the farmer/agribusiness, but it decreases our food supply and raises the cost of food, not to mention a host of other concerns. Here is the kicker, if everyone had a hybrid car or truck with an extra battery that could be plugged in and charged up overnight, we could drastically reduce our oil consumption. If we were in effect plugging into a wind farm powered electrical grid, then millions of hybrid cars (US fleet) would act as a huge energy reservoir for the wind generated capacity. It is estimated that off-demand electricity used to run a hybrid costs the equivalent of about .50c/gallon. Check out this link for a more in depth look at the wind/hybrid solution. And realize, that as screwed as we may be over the long run climatically, here is something that each of us can start doing today to start us on the road to energy independence from other countries, and moving away from toxin spewing coal fired plants or radiation spilling nuclear plants. This is not some technology in the future. This is all possible, economical, and happening today. Once we start to deflate the demand bubble for oil, then the Middleast looses their stranglehold over us and the price of oil drops. What could be more patriotic than reducing our dependence on the Middleast? And it would eliminate the need to invade these countries. Clean, renewable energy is the wave of the future, and it not only promotes homeland security, it is good for the planet, our health, and cheap energy is necessary for our energy driven economy. This is something that Right and Left should both agree on. I think that nothing less than our Global competitiveness is at stake. You may not be able to afford to buy that hybrid today, but you sure as Hell can start buying some renewable electricity and get things headed in the right direction. I know that in my neighborhood we are looking at several new coal fired plants in the planning stage, and Nationwide they are starting to look at reviving the nuclear dinosaur. Do you want a Three Mile Island/Chernobyl in your backyard? So whatcha waiting for... Call your utility and sign up for some of their renewable energy and BE THE CHANGE. - YOP b2 Send all Jokes, Letters and other stuff to Jerky: jerkyleboeuf@gmail.com

ONE YEAR AGO IN THE DIRT In celebration of the completion of Ratz Benedict's first year as Pope, we here at the Dirt are pleased as pickled peckers to present what yer old pal Jerky wrote about him -- and it -- last year. Enjoy! - YOPJ Most observant Catholics probably couldn't give a blind man's wink what a paranoid, obese, atheistic Internet pornographer thinks about the inner workings of their Mother Church. But considering the three-week, wall-to-wall, posthumous Pope-a-palooza to which the media have recently subjected us, yer old pal Jerky thinks it's a fair bet the Powers That Be have some mighty big plans for the Papacy… plans that will be eminently ecumenical once put into action. So fuck'em, this affects us all. From our privileged (and blinkered) vantage point here in the Enlightened West, the thought of elites using the media to increase the Pope's global influence makes about as much sense as the idea of increasing the British Royal Family's role in running England's government. It seems regressive, reactionary, counterintuitive and absurd. But the merest glimpse at a newsstand or flick past any cable news channel tells us that's exactly what appears to be happening. Why? Why this sudden interest in, and official reverence for, an institution that had come to be viewed, until relatively recently, as an archaic and deservedly waning power? Is it envy? Are the Powers That Be jealous of fundamentalist Islam's stranglehold over its adherents, and do they see in the hypnotic chants, trappings and rituals of the Catholic Church an opportunity to replicate this powerful mechanism of social control? Do they wish to fortify us in anticipation of some looming global crisis, like the Peak Oil crunch, an incoming asteroid, or an unjustifiable and genocidal escalation of the so-called War On TerrorTM? Or is it just another step in the ongoing process of New World Order globalization? Yer old pal Jerky has his suspicions. But whatever the case, there can be no doubt that intellectual investment in Catholicism has been on the rise among conservatives for years, on the upswing since William F. Buckley's unconvincing professions of faith in the 1950's, to the present day's flailing, wailing, celluloid Passion plays. The Supreme Court's youngest and most doctrinaire members are both ultraconservative, and both are members of the self-flagellating, fascism/intelligence-connected Catholic Secret Society, Opus Dei. And every year, on Ash Wednesday, the greasy smear on Robert Novack's forehead just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Which brings us to the 265th and newest pontiff, Pope Ratz Benedict. Considered Opus Dei's "man inside the Vatican" even though he isn't officially a member, Ratz literally served as the Catholic Church's Grand Inquisitor. Then of course, there's the whole Nazi thing. If you've been paying attention, you've probably seen any number of talking heads excusing Ratz' membership in the Hitler Youth during World War II as being "unexceptional", because membership was "cumpulsory" and anyway, he only joined "reluctantly." But that's the whole fucking point. That Ratz was reluctant to join -- but did, anyway -- actually makes it worse. It means he knew better. Ratz's go-along attitude during the war doesn't make him exceptionally wicked or worthy of scorn. It just makes him a sadly unexceptional and ordinary human being. Shouldn't the Pope be, at the very least, an exceptional human being? Whatever one's philosophical disagreements with John Paul II, it's impossible to dismiss his personal courage. Was Ratz really the best followup the College of Cardinals could come up with? But there's more to dislike about the latest Pope than a historically receding lack of courage. There's his declaration that media attention to the pandemic of priestly pederasty was evidence of a "conspiracy" against the Church. There's his belief that AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and The Eagles have been doing Satan's work via backwards masking or some such nonsense. An absolutist, hard-line, gay-hating, sex-fearing, flesh-denying, anima-destroying conservative intellectual, you can be pretty sure that Ratz is also a secret atheist, as pretty much every Pope has been throughout the ages. It's the burden they bare, for the good of all mankind. This hidden atheism is also a trait of the Straussian "noble liars" and other affiliated Bush Crime Family elements with whom Opus Dei -- and Ratz Benedict, himself -- have found common cause and forged increasingly close organizational alliances over the years. What… you thought Ratzinger's historically unprecedented intervention on Dubya's behalf during the 2004 elections -- declaring, in a letter sent only to American bishops, that priests "must refuse to distribute" communion to any "Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" (meaning John Kerry) -- was a coincidence?! It wasn't. The unbendingly anti-ecumenical Ratzinger's co-founding, along with Bush scion Neil, of a self-described "obscure" ecumenical foundation -- among whose ranks one can also find several prominent Muslim royals, the former chief rabbi of France, the current head of the Club of Rome, and longtime Bush family criminal cohort Jamal Daniel -- could only be more suspicious if they'd seen fit to throw James Baker and a couple bin Laden brothers into the mix. That the Vatican should join with the forces of anti-democratic globalism is not surprising, considering their commonly shared belief that democracy -- the idea that a government's power is only legitimately exercised insofar as it relates to the informed consent of the governed -- is a perverse mockery of "natural law." After all, if the Holy See could see fit to do business with the Third Reich, why not the Fourth? This is not an unimportant point, because despite the media's insistence on calling the choice of JP II's successor an "election," the process by which Ratz was selected was anything but democratic. If the world's Catholics were allowed to choose their Pope, do you really believe they would have chosen a sour and twitchy old doctrinaire Hannibal Lector look-alike like Joseph Ratzinger?! This was not an election. It was an elite political appointment that took place under cover of a dense fog of mock-mystical camouflage. And by willfully presenting this selection as legitimate, the mainstream media have once again aided and abetted a monstrous fraud. They have helped to obscure the fact that, other than a few quirks of haberdashery, the only substantial difference between the College of Cardinals in Rome and Iran's Council of Elders is that, over the past couple centuries, the imams have been far more successful in maintaining control over governments, and blocking the advance of humanist, Enlightenment ideals. And man oh man, does that ever chap the Vatican's ass. Of all the evidence mustered by conservative intellectuals to prove the superiority of the Christian faith, perhaps the most specious is that idea that Christendom "spawned" the Enlightenment, and thus the liberal democracy that we in the West enjoy. This is hogwash. In modernity's earliest stages, every step in the march towards personal liberty was taken in spite of, and not because of, the Church. How many brilliant minds were snuffed by Ratzinger's Inquisitional forebears, just for sharing their knowledge with others? How many heretics were beaten, drowned on the wheel, broken on the rack or put to the torch because of some minor theological point of disagreement? How many Crusades were launched under fraudulent circumstances? How many Jews expelled, forced to convert, or just plain murdered? No, there is no mystery in this evolving union between the Vatican and the Brave New World Order. Like is simply attracting like.

THEY SAID IT! "Are ya laffin' beeyotch? Ya find it funny? Ya find it funny? Huh? Repeat it after me bitch! I come in the name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, God Almighty, you know, ruler of Heaven and Earth and every Godamn thing in between. You understand me now?" - This guy is so fucking awesome, what with his laying out the Spirit of Truth and shit. Christianity and crack cocaine, two great tastes that go great together! *** **** *** "If they could get it small enough, it could be mounted on a helmet, then they could pan around on their heads and they could feel the sonar on their tongues with good registration to what they are seeing visually. ... It will free up their eyes to do what those guys really want to, which is to look for those mines and see shapes that are coming out of the murk." - Mmmm... that's some tasty warfare!

JOKES! Today's first joke was sent in by Nan or Ben! A minister dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates. Ahead of him is a guy who's dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket and jeans. Saint Peter addresses this cool guy, "Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?" The guy replies, "I'm Peter Pilot, retired America West Airlines Pilot from Phoenix." Saint Peter consults his list. He smiles and says to the pilot, "Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom." The pilot goes into Heaven with his robe and staff. Next it's the minister's turn. He stands erect and booms out, "I am Joseph Snow, pastor of Saint Mary's in Pasadena for the last 43 years." Saint Peter consults his list. He says to the minister, "Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom." "Just a minute," says the minister. "That man was a pilot and he gets a silken robe and golden staff, and I get only cotton and wood. How can this be?" "Up here, we work by results," says Saint Peter. "While you preached, people slept; while he flew... people prayed." *** *** *** Thanks to our old pal Waterman for sending in today's second joke. After numerous rounds of "We don't even know if Osama is still alive", Osama himself decided to send George Bush a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game. Bush opened the letter and it appeared to contain a single line of Coded message: "370H-SSV-0773H." Bush was baffled, so he e-mailed it to Condoleeza Rice. Condi and her aides had not a clue either, so they sent it to the FBI. No one could solve it at the FBI so it went to the CIA -- nada. Eventually they asked the super code breakers at the NSA for help. Within a minute the NSA emailed the White House with this reply. "Tell the President he's holding the message upside down." WORST JOKE OF THE DAY Today's groaner was sent in by N8Possibilities... The Sheriff in a small town walks out in the street and sees a blonde cowboy coming down the walk with nothing on but his cowboy hat, gun, and his boots, so he arrests him for indecent exposure. As he is locking him up, he asks "Why in the world are you dressed like this?" The Cowboy says, "Well it's like this Sheriff. I was in the bar down the road and this pretty little redhead asks me to go out to her motor home with her. So I did. We go inside and she pulls off her top and asks me to pull off my shirt... so I did. Then she pulls off her skirt and asks me to pull off my pants... so I did. Then she pulls off her panties and asks me to pull off my shorts... so I did. Then she gets on the bed and looks at me kind of sexy and says, 'Now go to town cowboy'... And here I am!" Son of a gun, blonde men do exist!

READER'S SOAPBOX! Got a gripe? Pet peeve? Have your say in the Daily Dirt! Columns can pretty much be about anything, as long they meet the following criteria: 1) don't write shit that'll get us in trouble. 2) Keep it interesting. 3) Keep it short. 4) We don't edit your mistakes. Oh yeah! feel free to send a picture of yourself if you want. TOPIC: TWO-WAY MIRRORS care of: N8Possibilities Two way mirrors... how to tell if it is or not... I thought it was quite interesting! And I know in about 30 seconds you're going do what I did and find the nearest mirror. Often heard about the 2-way mirror but could never tell. So, I thought you might be interested. Do you know how to determine if a mirror is 2-way or not? This is not to scare you, but to make you aware. A policewoman who travels all over the country and gives seminars and techniques for businesswomen passed this on. When we visit toilets, bathrooms, hotel rooms, changing rooms, etc, how many of you know for sure that the seemingly ordinary mirror hanging on the wall is a real mirror, or actually a 2-way mirror (i.e., they can see you, but you can't see them)? There have been many cases of people installing 2-way mirrors in female changing rooms. It is very difficult to positively identify the surface by just looking at it. So, how do we determine with any amount of certainty what type of mirror we are looking at? Just conduct this simple test: Place the tip of your fingernail against the reflective surface and if there is a GAP between your fingernail and the image of the nail, then it is a GENUINE mirror. However, if your fingernail DIRECTLY TOUCHES the image of your nail, then BEWARE, FOR IT IS a 2-WAY MIRROR! "No Space, Leave the Place!" So remember, every time you see! a mirror, do the "fingernail test." It doesn't cost you anything. Remember: "No Space, Leave the Place!" Ladies: Share this with your girlfriends, sisters, daughters, etc. Men: Share this with your wives, daughters, daughters-in-law, mothers, girlfriends and/or friends. - N8Possibilities [Dude, quit blabbing all my secrets. - Jerky] FIRST AMENDMENT ZONE / ASK JERKY! Hey, Jerky, in reference to the Iranian Oil Bourse and the almighty declining American dollar, here's a piece on globalization that confirms, to some degree, the veracity of those claims made in said article. It puts everything is much different light, doesn't it? YOPGessier (PS - If you were intending to run any more "mother jokes" here's my all-time favorite - "Your mother's pussy is so dry, her crabs have to carry canteens!") [A mix of funny and horrifying. It's the perfect Dirt letter! - Jerky] *** **** *** Jerky; The preznit just pulled the plug on the largest and most comprehensive healthcare study since the Framingham Heart Survey (on which the preponderance of our coronary expertise is based). The National Children’s Study, mandated by Congress in the Kennedy Children’s Health Act of 2000, follows 100,000 Americans from before conception until their 21st birthday, focusing on diabetes, asthma, leukemia, obesity, autism, violence, and cognitive disorders. Cumulatively, these diseases cost more than $300 billion per year. Between 2000 and 2005 $50 million was spent to design the protocols, identify the researchers nationwide, and sign up 100,000 couples planning to conceive. From 2007 onwards, the program would cost approximately $100 million per year. In his 2006 budget, Chimpie eliminated the funding entirely, and last week he ordered the project shut down. Budget Director Joshua Bolton scoffed at critics from the AMA and leading medical research institutes, saying: "We need to focus on national priorities." I can’t think of a more succinct quote to define this administration and its role in the debasement of American values. ACD [Jesus Fucking Nailholes. - Jerky] *** **** *** Jerky, In response to Etna Fred's suggestion that the twin towers were "pre-wired" with explosive charges when they were built to prevent collateral damage "just in case," I have to say it would be very nearly impossible because explosives deteriorate with time. How many times have we seen a discovery of "old" TNT being diffused by a bomb squad where the greatest concern is the instability of the substance due to its age? C-3 and C-4 also become unstable with age. Gunpowder also becomes dangerous with age, rendering it unstable after a few years. No, if Etna Fred had it right, somebody would have to "maintain" the explosives, periodically switching them for new charges. Besides, it just makes better sense that security of the WTC was overseen by another Bushco relative and that it was an inside job. Guess we'll probably never know. YOP, Hammerhead [What do you make of the second pic in today's Stupid, Stupid World? I don't know about pre-wiring, but... that don't look right to me. - Jerky] *** **** *** Jerky; What do you think of the website JC's Girls? Do you think those broads are for real or just pulling off another religious-based con? Jon from Las Vegas [I think those girls would look a lot better with spooge dripping off their chins. - Jerky] *** **** *** Jerky, George Wallace, on The Tonight Show, told America why walling off Mexico would not work: "who would build it?" C the D [Too true. - Jerky] *** **** *** MOP Jerky, Check out this litte video called Dance Monkeys Dance! It's quite well said. - YOP Sherm [Very nice. - Jerky] *** **** *** WATER! It has been scientifically proven that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli bacteria found in feces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of Doo Doo. WINE! However, we do not run that risk when drinking wine (or rum, whiskey, beer or other liquors), because alcohol has to go through a distillation process of boiling, filtering and fermenting. WATER = Doo Doo. WINE = HEALTH. Free yourself of Doo Doo, drink WINE! It is better to drink wine and talk Doo Doo than to drink water and be full of it. There is no need to thank me for this valuable information. I am doing it as a public service! Have a nice day! David A. [I have enough trouble choking down one glass of water a day. I didn't need to know that shit. - Jerky]

Send all Jokes, Letters and other stuff to Jerky: feedback@dailydirt.com