FIENDS LIKE THESE

Dear Beast,
As a (former prankster) and (former Hooligan), I applaud your efforts to expose Byron and his pet rat, Casey as the self-absorbed humorless assholes they really are [“Big Baby Brown,” issue 111].
Charlie Flynn

Dear Charlie,
Well, come on then, buddy! Get his lights turned off or something! That’s what we would say if we were trying to get people participate in a prank campaign to make Mayor Brown and Alisa Lukasiewicz regret their improper actions. Which we’re not. Stay tuned.

VEE VILL BURY YOU

no one is going to get your whole revolution against the local government because as soon as anyone finds out you encouraged all that shit theyre going to empty out every last beast box.
Ryan

Dear Ryan,
You kind of enjoy that thought, don’t you? Our little snotty paper being silenced by the awesome power of the state. What does that say about you, Ryan? Think about it.

CUTLER & RUN

when i tried to hold his spokesman accountable in the media,for a running from motorcycle accident,on 10/15/2005,he got off with disorderly conduct,da clark said that he did not think that the plea was inappropreate,well i bet if it was him who got hit it would have been a totaly different out come.These people in power think that they are above the LAW.After i found out what they did and contacted channel 2 news,they did almost there whole news cast on it on,02/28/2006,BROWN STATED THAT THE FACT THIS IS COMING OUT NOW,DISCREDITS ARE LEGAL SYSTEM AND WHO THE F--- ARE THEY KIDDING,THEY ARE THE ONE'S WHO DISCREDIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM.IT SEEMS THAT ONLY THE POLITICALLY CONNECTED OR THE WEALTHY,CAN GAT OFF OF ANYTHING THEY CHOOSE AND THE LITTLE GUY GETS SCREWED!   COME ON THAT WAS A PRANK/JOKE ,CHILL OUT AND GET SENSE OF HUMOR. HIS SPOKESMAN BECAUSE OF WHO HE IS AND WHO HE KNOWS WALKED AWAY FROM A D.W.I. AND A HIT-N-RUN/INJURYS.I'M THE THE ONE HE HIT AND HAVE HAD TO HAVE NECK SURGERY AND NOW HAVE A PLATE AND SCREWS IN MY NECK THANKS TO HIS NIGHT OUT ON THE TOWN,AND LOOKING AT BACK SURGERY NEXT,AND CLARK THINKS THAT THE PLEA WAS FINE,THAT'S ARE LEGAL SYSTEM,THAT DISCREDITS THE LEGAL SYSTEM,BUT IT WILL ALL COME OUT IN THE TRIAL,FACTS OF WHAT HAPPEN THAT NIGHT AND WHO'S TELLING THE TRUTH!!!! 
keith a borders

Dear Keith,
We know that the communications director for both our current mayor as well as former mayor Masiello, Peter Cutler, most likely after a night getting pounded on Chippewa, rear-ended your motorcycle with his car on West Tupper and Delaware. We also know he tore off down Delaware, blasting over the curb as he swerved down Edwards, knocking over a bus stop sign, damaging his engine and triggering his airbag as he sped down the sidewalk for a block or so. We know that you gave chase, following Cutler down Elmwood, Bryant and Richmond, where you asked a cop for help to no avail. We know that, although Cutler claims he was scared of you, he made no effort to draw the attention of police at either of the apparent crime scenes the both of you passed, nor did he call 911 as you did. We know that Cutler’s now-smoking car seized up at Massachusetts and Winter, where he abandoned it and ran four blocks to Breckenridge, where he fled police and hid under a car behind a house. We know he wasn’t breathalyzed. We know he received reduced charges and a sentence of “time served” from judge Patrick M. Carney three days later, although it’s not clear he spent any time at all in jail, in a very unusual plea deal with the DA’s office. We know DA Frank Clark claims the deal was a mistake made by an unnamed wet-behind-the-ears prosecutor who no longer works for the DA. We also know Frank Clark is a fucking joke.

We think you’re a tough mofo for chasing Cutler across town after he hit you, and we think the whole sordid story is disgusting, the kind of thing that makes you just hate everyone in our astoundingly unethical government. That’s why we hope you’ll listen to our advice: if you want people to take you seriously, and not to dismiss you as some crazy crank, you’ve got to lay off the caps lock key. You sound stupid, inarticulate and insane. If we hadn’t already heard about your story, we’d have pegged you as just another delusional paranoid with an unbelievable story of imagined persecution. Speak softly, Keith, and let the truth be your hammer. And try the spell-checking tool. Good luck.

THAT’S [sic]

Just wanted to know if you guys were up on the Seattle usage of the term "santorum"--it is defined as the fecal matter, cum and lube that you squirt out after having anal sex without a condom [Matt Taibbi, “Dialing for Santorum,” issue 111].  Can't take credit for  it myself but I think it's a fairly apt term, and one that really doesn't have any synonyms per se.  So if anything thank you Senor Santorum for giving a name to a heretofore unclaimed substance.  PS great paper I want all your balls in my mouth
Margaret

Dear Margaret,
Multiple teabagging, eh? Let’s call that a Lieberman.

CHIMPEACH

"Fuck yeah!" is putting it mildly, yet it kept falling out of my mouth as I read [Allan Uthman, “Crush, Kill, Destroy,” issue 110].  It's a shame his stupidity isn't a crime. His own father would impeach him for that. 
Ann

Dear Ann,
Count your blessings—if he weren’t so stupid, he could have done a lot more damage.

BILE RISING

Freakin' brilliant [“The BEAST Page 3 Featureless Internet Kitsch,” issue #111].  You guys nailed him/them right on the head.  I laughed out loud at the spot-on details.
- joe Murphy

Dear Joe,
We always pick on a new local paper of note; it’s kind of a hazing ritual. And Buffalo Rising’s psychotically positive attitude sort of makes it the perfect anti-BEAST, our tailor-made nemesis (if we weren’t abandoning this godforsaken carcass of a city for international fame and fortune). But something tells us they’re not stupid enough to flip out and give us our next cover story. They probably don’t even own pool cues, and if they did, they’d be all like, “This pool cue is amazing! It’s the finest pool cue in all creation. It has all of the qualities necessary to transform Buffalo from a post-industrial wasteland into, like, the most neato-keen city in North America! If we use this pool cue to assault those meanies at The BEAST, we could be delaying Buffalo’s inevitable transformation into the capitol of coolness!” You know, something like that.

ANIMANIAC

Hey Beast,
Charging a measly $1 to fund your paper is a fine idea.

Did you ever think of offering special inserts for ads or features that other papers don't have?  In the olden days when papers had real comic strips that were good, they used to get the honor of a huge insert section.  There's good comics in your paper, but they hang out in between all the wordy parts.  (What happened to Deep Fried?  I miss it.)

The artists of Deep Fried and Perry Bible Fellowship both worked at upstate NY animation studios I worked at.  Neat.  It's hard to commit to a regular strip like that, but if you had a section to feature "random cartoons and art" I bet you would get lots of submissions from people who want to get their art and name in print, or win a contest for something like a Beast t-shirt.

I saw Michael Gildea's review of the dancing penguin movie, Happy Feet.  It made me want to send a shout-out for Dan, my talented co-worker at a small place in Buffalo who worked on the movie.  I thought the movie was a mix of awful and great, myself.   It had some pretty dark moments and at least it took chances, even if they didn't always work.  It would be great to have more directors like George Miller (who also made "Babe" and the "Mad Max" series) making animation.

Mr. Gildea was cool for mentioning the main problem with corporate animated movies these days, when organic hand-drawn artistry is replaced by assembly-line computer sterility.  "The movies look so incredible but the stories are dogshit".  Here's the point of view of people at animationnation.com, "the voice of the animation industry":  hand drawn vs. computer is the same conflict that happened when the camera was invented.  They said photography would replace painting and kill it forever.  But photography just changed the function of painters and added a new dimension to what painting could look like, and made it's own category.  Each media has it's own language.  Some stories are just better when they're organic and impressionistic, others are better with photo-realism.  A lot of recent animation stories suck because business executives in charge aren't artists and don't understand the language, and they want to substitute the fast food mass-production and re-usability of digital assets for a better medium.  The result is a saturated market of imitation formula movies.  It started before computer animation was a big deal, so it really isn't obsolence and evolution, it's a decision of corporate management.  Educated viewers who demand quality can do something about it.
-Pat, patsanimation.com

Dear Pat,
We’re talking about little kids here. What are they supposed to do, form a political action committee? As to the cartoons: People send us cartoons all the time as it is; the only problem is they are terrible most of the time. “Deep Fried” was deep sixed not by us, but by Jason Yungbluth. You’ll have to look elsewhere for stories about child-molesting clowns and drug-addicted cats. Hey, what about an animated Deep Fried movie? Get on it, Pat.

OSAMA FOR YOUR MAMA

AL-QAEDA SAYS IT'S WINNING THE WAR.

Al-Qaeda is also gloating over Donald Rumsfeld resignation. When we cut and run from Iraq, as per the Democrat plan, al-Qaeda will claim victory over the United States and then they will folllow us back home to the U.S.. The terrorists welcomed a Democrat win as their victory.

You wanted change? You're gonna get change when Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups hit our homeland. Where will we run then? Where?
James Ziolkowski

Osama bin Laden responds:
Greetings infidels! I assure you that there is now no need to worry about further terrorist attacks on your nation, now that my friends the Democrats have seized your hapless nation once again. Soon enough, agent Pelosi will force conversion to the one true religion upon your unholy people. It is better for you that your people have chosen surrender and dismissed the great warrior Rumsfeld. I look forward to serving as your next vice president in 2008. Vote Obama/Osama! Or else, you know, Jihad, fiery death and all that. Toodles!

CLINTON DID IT

"But so far his only attacks on Reynolds have been about his pet issue—the loss of domestic jobs to China." [Allan Uthman, “Con,” issue 107]

Try telling the whole truth.

It was Bill Clinton who made the China a "Favorite trading partner." And got China into the WTO. Also Clinton was signs NAFTA and trade deals with Vietnam And India.
And lots more.
BOB

Bob,
Actually, pinhead, it was Clinton’s predecessor that granted China Most Favored Nation status—remember him, Bush’s dad? Oh, and the current Bush has made that status permanent. Furthermore, what the fuck are you even talking about? What Clinton did or did not is totally irrelevant to a piece about a congressional race in 2006 in which neither of the candidates are named Clinton. Jack Davis is supposed to answer for Clinton’s policies why? Because he’s recently joined the same party? If that makes sense, then we have a few questions for Reynolds concerning Iran-Contra and Watergate. Your misdirectional bullshit is of low quality, Bob.

GREAT NAME FOR PORN

The Beast
By Reagan Bryce

This is so ridiculous. Politics and religion give me this ookie feeling…

Ted Haggard is going through a lot of pain and uncertainty right now, and the question is: Does he deserve our compassion?

We all make mistakes, sure – but it makes sense to measure men by their capacity to admit, and correct them. But what if some of them don’t know how?

What if a man has made so many errors, that his only psychological option is to rationalize and lie to others? I know, it sounds impossible…

The more a dishonest man has at stake, the more he will lie to prevent the consequences of his actions.

Years ago, I was being trained as a bartender by a man whom I don’t particularly admire. One day, in one of his vain attempts to “teach me about life,” he said, with laughter: “When you get caught for something you know you shouldn’t have done, there are only three rules to abide by: Deny, deny, deny.” I would like to note that he didn’t advise a 19 yr old to use his reason to his best ability, thus enabling himself to better prevent acts of willful evasion and wrongdoing -- but to deny it when he does it.

Well, Haggard has an entire life behind him: A wife, five kids, thousands of associates and followers, and all of his public and private convictions. If he were to admit to the allegations against him, all of this would be compromised; he would be despised by many, especially those who trusted him; he would be publicly known as a hypocrite, a sinner, a fraud who does not practice what he preaches. I have an inkling that he would feel very alone and out of place if he were to consciously admit that he is what he is.

Thus, I am not surprised to hear that he claims he merely received a massage from this man, purchased methamphetamine once, and never tried it. Given the circumstances, what else should I have expected? He must know, on some level, that he has interacted with this man, and that there is some kind of evidence. If he denied the allegations outright, he would be even more suspicious if evidence surfaced connecting him to this man; so, in shame, guilt, and repentance, he admitted to “some” of the evil – i.e. those things which will compromise his integrity to a bearable extent, in order to maintain his greater illusion.

I do not have it in me to hate this man; I feel nothing but pity. He is synonymous to an animal squealing in helplessness from its trap – which it so sloppily walked into.

I am impotent to make his life worse, and I do not desire to. It nauseates me to think of such suffering.

Does he deserve our sympathy? That is for all to answer by their own minds, i.e. by their own standards.

Reagan,
Oh yes, such suffering. It must be worse than Fallujah. But it’s okay that you don’t have it in you to hate Ted Haggard, Reagan. We can hate him enough for the both of us. You can relax. What is this, a homework assignment?

EGO TRIPE

When I read about that German blogger who attacked Taibbi, I experienced more fear thinking about that sort of an incident than the 911 attacks themselves [Matt Taibbi, “Murrah Redux,” issue 109]. If he opposes governments for their evil actions yet gets violently confrontational with Matt for disagreeing with him he no longer has a cause, except defending his machismo. Rather than engaging in rational debate about how to make our world a safer more enjoyable place to live in, some would rather battle for their egos than for social justice.
Steven Cedino

Dear Steven,
We guess that once you’ve pinned your career on the thin hope that you really aren’t a jackass like everybody says and actually are more perceptive and clever than anyone else, there’s not a lot of wiggle room there. Just look at Rumsfeld.

WHERE WINGS TAKE DREAM

I think part of the issue here is the desire to understand. To be able to grasp the whys when the whys seem incomprehensible to us. The fascination with Dahmer and Gacy.

The whys are not only distracting, but ultimately they are irrelevant. To attempt to assign logic to patterns of behavior that are so outside the norm is fruitless. Why would the government do such and such is the same as why did this corporation dump waste in this river. They had a goal and this was the most expedient way of satisfying that goal.

Both Matt and [sic] referenced thousands of people acting in concert to pull off this conspiracy, and while that is a possiblity, it's a highly unlikely one. As any system becomes more complex, it also becomes more prone to failure. Taking this into account, consider the following:

What is the minimum number of people required to actually pull off the 9/11 attacks?

The answer is 5.

You require four pilots and one person to provide financial support, logistics and intelligence. That's it. Add fourteen additional operatives, who in no way have to know the terminal nature of the plan, for crowd control and you have the official story. The only organization that has provided any type of evidence as to who those people are is our government, which has shown repeatedly how they can manipulate information.

You can add additional levels of complexity, involve other persons or organizations, but as I said, they are not required. I never validated any conspiracy theory or theorist, only stated that the official story is flawed and should be subjected to greater scrutiny. While Matt and [sic] seem perfectly willing to dismiss the entirity of 9/11 conspiracy as just idle nonsense, the official story has one glaring hole in it that personally I have not been able to explain away.

Able Danger could be nothing more than luck, the Pennsylvania crash could be the work of heroes preventing another attack, and the planes that hit the towers could be the planes that we've been told they are.

But, if a 757 hit the Pentagon, why is there no damage to the external facing in proximity to where the wings should have impacted?

I can't rationalize that away. And until I have an explination for that detail, then the official story doesn't fit, which, logically implies only one thing:

Conspiracy.
Christopher A. Globus

Dear Christopher,
Popular Mechanics: “A crashing jet doesn't punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building, says ASCE team member Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University. In this case, one wing hit the ground; the other was sheared off by the force of the impact with the Pentagon's load-bearing columns, explains Sozen, who specializes in the behavior of concrete buildings.” We done here?

GIANT SQUIB

One of the things they conspiracy people like to talk about is "the squibs." They point out jets of smoke coming from floors below the impact sites as proof of demolition charges, and say they are occurring before the collapses begin. meaning they are not jets of smoke propelled by the air blast of a free-falling skyscraper.

Well, I have looked at THEIR videos. The players usually allow you to advance them a bit at a time. In the collapse wherin the radio mast sinks straight down (south tower?), you can advance the vid and watch the antenna begin to move down...THEN the "squibs" appear. Not before, but after the collapse begins. They are wrong or lying about their own evidence.

In the other collapse, the section above the impact topples over 10-20 degrees before it begins falling, and it does so as one would expect, by collapsing into the damaged area, where a host of support columns were missing.

All the BS about controlled demolition is so much white noise around the more interesting - and real - question, which is, did the Bush admin allow it to happen, or was it just a case of criminally stupid negligence?
Cory

Dear Cory,
Why do you hate the truth so much?

GOOD WORK SLIPPING FAST

Even for intelligent and sensible people, many of the 9/11 conspiracy claims are something that we want to believe for ideological reasons, or constructed in such a way (ie. the titanium passport or the tale of the living hijackers) that it seems hard not to believe that something stranger than we thought happened on 9/11.  So, I suppose I want to thank/encourage Taibbi for trying to put the record straight on a lot of issues that have been based on hearsay and riddled with contradictory information.  As a decent journalist, you (Taibbi) are used to sticking your nose into things where you're not wanted, and where people don't want to know the ugly truth.  And for 9/11 conspiracy theorists, the ugly truth is that Bush probably had nothing to do with the attacks, and that we have let him (masterfully?)manipulate those events to his silly boy-emperor ends.  I think you (Taibbi/Beast) should keep up with the work, because it is important for a reasonably unbiased source to compile important information in a way that mainstream media and conspiracy bloggers never would or could, whether it is from bias, incompetence, or that old "we write what people want to read" argument.  Anyway, thanks Taibbi/Beast/Guys, and keep up the good work.
Eric

Dear Eric,
There we go again with the “keep up the good work.” How are we supposed to keep it up if you don’t send us money? Donations are tax-free, Eric, because we don’t tell the IRS about them. Think about it, friend; who else deserves your money? Who else would have more fun with it? Not starving African children; that’s for sure.

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