FRIDAY FUN

100 Useless Japanese Inventions (I don't know, some look pretty damn useful...)
Bad Movie Physics (there is no sound in space)
Chess for Beginners (No, really.)
Demotivators (Feel good about feeling bad.)
Flysui (game)
Future Cars of the Past
How to Survive Shopping at IKEA (warning: some implied violence)
Knifethrowing (game)
Merlin's Lists of 5ive Things
Russian Roulette for Kids
Vertigolf (game)
Wastebasket (game)

Today's Lie Of The Week:

"If I had been there, presented what I have seen as the record of the intelligence estimates, I probably would have come to — not probably — I would have come to the same conclusion that the political leaders did." ---David A. Kay, former chief weapons inspector in Iraq

I have literally no access to international intelligence. Most of my intelligence comes from my genius wife. And yet, I knew in 2002 that Iraq was no danger to our country, that it had no nuclear weapons, much less "weapons program activities". Does Kay feel that anyone with a semblance of intelligence will actually believe him? Plus, his grammar really sucks.

Headgear for the spooks as Bush, the "we received faulty intelligence on Iraq's WMD" president, continues to redirect his administration's utter failures and deceptions of us onto the CIA:

Morford on Bush on Trees

Mark Morford has a few thoughts about Bush's environmental record. Snippet:

...Here's how successful the GOP's antienvironment brainwashing has been: With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, not one of the major Demo presidential candidates has truly focused on environmental issues in the debates or in their campaign speeches, for fear of being labeled "too liberal." Thanks to the GOP, to talk too much about the health of the planet now is to be thought of as anticapitalist and antiprogress and an outright traitor to the American causes of money-uber-alles and the-world-is-our-sandbox. So duped is the nation that to even hint that you care deeply about safe drinking water for kids or the direct connection between toxic big agribiz and the increased rates of heart disease and cancer in this nation is tantamount to spitting on the flag. BushCo even shames its own party members. Abundant, I imagine, are the staunch Republicans who still care deeply about the health of the planet and want to see pollution decreased and their children able to drink the water or go fishing at the local lake without worrying about mercury poisoning from the local coal factory -- the one Bush just excused from complying with the Clean Air Act. But they don't dare speak up. They don't dare mention that they care, lest the "liberal" label get slapped on their asses and they are instantly considered treasonous terrorist sympathizers who would happily give refuge and a nice organic chai tea to Osama bin Laden. This is the GOP credo: You're either with us 100 percent, or you're a commie hippie homo who should move to France. And there are few things a conservative fears more than being ostracized by the party. The truth is, no matter which party you align yourself with, nowadays it takes more guts, more outright nerve, to care about this planet, to work to strip your life of the plastic and the poisonous and minimize your waste and your impact, eat more consciously and support local farming and cherish the flora and fauna, than it ever could be to load up the Escalade with Malaysian-made crap you bought at Wal-Mart that's now 89 cents cheaper because it's made in a sweatshop and not at the local factory that was forced to shut down. This, then, is the ultimate BushCo credo: No sanctity. No reverence for that which is larger and more ancient and more divine. No concern for that which provides beauty and nourishment and sustenance. Mother Nature is not a source of life and inspiration and vital health -- she's just a lowly wench who needs to be put in her place. And this, then, is the only possible response: If there was any better time in American history to proudly announce yourself as an environmentalist, this is it. It really doesn't matter where you stand on other issues. Because when that beautiful bitch Mother Nature really begins to strike back, nothing else will matter.

Mars

Am I the only person on this planet who is less than overwhelmed with all the recent photos of Mars? I think one photo of the surface pretty much sums it all up: a barren, rock-strewn desert with no life, no water, nothing except dirt and rocks. Whoopie doo!

Now let's return to our own planet, Earth, which is under serious threat of extermination by a maniacal band of very wealth thugs, currently in possession of the government and economy of a once mighty and proud people, the citizens of the United States of America. These citizens have lost contol of their lives and destiny, succumbing to the whims of corporations, to the point of having little or no influence on the education they seek, the jobs they want, the quality of food they eat, the media they watch, and the government they elect. Everything, EVERYTHING, is controlled by a few obscenely wealthy, compassionless, capitalistic white men who believe that their judeo-christian god expects them to do what they do.

Face it folks, we've lost both the battle of the ideologies, and the war between the haves and have-nots. It will take nothing less than a world-wide upheaval of the establishment to restore any semblance of the old world order. Not that the old order of 4 years ago was anything to brag about, but comparing it to the current world order (and the oncoming trainwreck of our immediate future), it was nirvana.

All the hand-wringing, campaigning, speeches, op-eds, blogging, investigations, caucusing, demonstrating, marching, voting and rally screams aren't going to REALLY make a diffrence in the long run. When everything is said and done, those same few white men will still be running the show.

We may as well toss all the trash out the window of our supersized, toxic fume-belching, gas-sucking SUV while on our way to Wal-Mart to purchase our slave-wage-produced shoes, DVD-players and furniture, with a quick stop at McWhopper Box Bell to gorge ourselves with supersized, lard-drenched, growth-hormone-saturated, generic slab of a meat-and-potato by-product, and wash it down with the requisite 200 ounce carbonated chrome-cleaning, artificially flavored soda-like beverage, because in the long run nobody REALLY cares.

Because if anyone cared, we wouldn't be in this newly godforsaken chamber of horrors we call America.

This week's Occasional Quote of the Week (borrowed from B&S):

"...the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is." --- V.P. Dick Cheney in a 1998 speech to the "Collateral Damage Conference" of the Cato Institute

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." ---Dr. Seuss

John Chuckman on Elections

One man's opinion. Snippet:

...Most liberals, like most conservatives in America, have a remarkable indifference about what happens to the world, so long as it doesn't affect their enjoyment of life. It is a disturbing orientation for people who, secretly or overtly, regard themselves as divinely-anointed, planetary overseers. So many times during the Vietnam War, I was astounded that people went right on happily sucking beer and dancing while American pilots napalmed villages in Asia. It was only when American coffins started arriving by the hundreds that much popular music turned harsh and full of protest and many proms lost their cozy glow. There will be no return to what, before Bush, passed as normal in America until the nation has shaken its latest violent seizure. Even then, actions have been taken that will continue to sour the future. Does anyone believe that all the new, oppressive legislation in the United States will be rescinded? That the bloated, dangerous increases in military spending will be undone? That America's damage to international institutions will be corrected? That America's contempt for its more thoughtful allies will disappear? That the immense welling-up of prejudice against Arabic people will simply disappear? The truth is that even if a moderately liberal person were elected President, he or she would face exactly what the Clintons faced for eight years, a hideous and relentless assault with opportunity for few meaningful accomplishments. The American Congress is so conservative, and has demonstrated itself so lacking in courage or imagination or largeness of view, that only the most modest changes can be expected under any president. Failing new developments, the one big issue promises to be whether the costly, pointless invasion of Iraq was a legitimate part of the War on Terror. I believe the answer will hinge on how many Americans continue to die rather than any rational discussion. The most troubling aspect of this is the way many Bush opponents seem only to care about getting American troops out of there. Where's the sense of responsibility for the mess America created? Iraq will take many years to return to any kind of meaningful society. Well, by all means, it would be nice to see Bush back with the rattlesnakes in Texas and once again to have a President capable of addressing civilly the rest of the world -- nice things but not a lot to get excited about. No likely Democratic candidate is going to produce a greatly more rational and decent United States. One or two Democrats, Lieberman or Clark, almost certainly would be as narrow and harsh as Bush, offering nothing beyond a day's satisfaction in seeing Bush sent packing.

Mydoom

New computer virus is on the loose. Be careful with your e-mail, people.

...In what computer security experts are calling the biggest virus threat in months, a new computer worm named ``Mydoom'' flooded e-mail systems Monday and clogged computer networks around the world. ...Just hours after discovering the worm Monday afternoon, anti-virus software companies were reporting thousands of infections and were warning that infestation from Mydoom could soon surpass that from the ``SoBig'' worm that plagued computer users in August. ...The worm uses random subject lines that include ``test'' and ``Mail Delivery System'' and carries different text messages, including: ``The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment.'' The attachment names also vary, having ``.exe,'' ``.pif,'' ``.cmd'' or ``.scr'' as extensions. They're often compressed as a Zip file. When the attachment is opened, the worm launches a flood of malicious e-mails to users of Microsoft Windows. A notepad filled with nonsense characters opens when the worm is executed. Mydoom can send out e-mails with spoofed addresses, grabbed from a computer user's address book. Mydoom also is able to make up e-mail sender addresses using valid Internet site names...

N'kisi

THIS is just too weird.

No Wonder Those Cows Are Mad

The excerpt below is not meant to gross you out, but to get you started in thinking about those hamburgers and hot dogs that you eat and how they are processed. Professor Michael Pollan from UC Berkeley gives us a glimpse of the meat industry:

It's hard to say whether an American hamburger was appreciably less safe to eat the day after a Holstein cow tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy [mad cow] in Washington State last month than it was the day before, but it had sure gotten less appetizing. The news cracked open a door on the industrial kitchen where America's meat is prepared, and what we glimpsed on the other side was enough to send even the heartiest diner to the vegetarian entree or the fish special. We learned, for example, that the beef we have been eating (until the U.S.D.A.'s sudden change of heart about the practice) might consist in whole or part of meat from a ''downer cow,'' an animal so sick and hobbled that it must be dragged to the slaughterhouse with chains or pushed by a front-end loader. Then, before finding its way into a frankfurter, the carcass of that animal is often subjected to an ''Advanced Meat Recovery System'' that is so efficient at stripping flesh from spinal cord that the chances are good (35 percent, in one study) that the resultant frankfurter contains ''central nervous system tissue'' - precisely the tissue most likely to contain the infectious prions thought to communicate B.S.E. So: We have been eating downers and really picking their bones clean. And what did these animals eat in turn? Many of us were surprised to learn that despite the F.D.A.'s 1997 ban on feeding cattle meat and bone meal, feedlots continue to rear these herbivores as cannibals. When young, they routinely receive ''milk replacer'' made from bovine blood; later, their daily ration is apt to contain rendered cattle fat as well as feed made from ground-up pigs and chickens - pigs and chickens that may themselves have grown up on a diet of ground-up cows. But the grossest feedlot dish we read about in our newspapers over breakfast has to be ''chicken litter,'' the nasty stuff shoveled out of chicken houses: bedding, feathers and overlooked chicken feed. Since this chicken feed may contain the same bovine meat and bone meal that F.D.A. rules prohibit in cattle feed, those rules are, in effect, all but guaranteed to break themselves. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention one of the ingredients in chicken litter: chicken feces, which the U.S. cattle industry regards as a source of protein. Whatever else it is - nutritious, economical, the polar opposite of wasteful - you can't help feeling that the convoluted new food chain that industrial agriculture has devised for the animals we eat (and thus for us) is, to be unscientific for a moment, disgusting. I know, I'm offering an aesthetic judgment of a system designed not for beauty but for efficiency. Protein is protein, goes the logic of this system, whether you find it in an animal muscle, a soybean or a chicken dropping: this reductionism is the world-beating formula that drives industrial agriculture, and it works, up to a point. By feeding the absolute cheapest forms of energy and protein to animals it treats as machines, the industrial food chain has succeeded in making the protein we eat unimaginably cheap. Just look at what you can get for a buck or two at Wal-Mart or McDonald's. But there is a problem. By the reductive logic that rules our food system, cannibalism should be as legitimate a way of eating as any other: it's all just protein, right? Yet the great unlearned lesson of B.S.E. and other similar brain-wasting diseases is that, at the level of species or ecosystems, it isn't quite true that protein is protein. Eating the protein of your own species, for example, carries special risks. The Fore of New Guinea were nearly wiped out by kuru, which bears a striking resemblance to B.S.E.; they spread it among themselves by ritually eating the brains of their dead kin. Biologists think that evolution probably selected against cannibalism as a way to avoid such infections (among other things). Many animals' instinctive aversion to their own feces and to the carcasses of their species may represent similar strategies to avoid infectious microbes and parasites. Through natural selection, animals have developed what amount to a set of hygiene rules that function much like taboos. One of the most off-putting things about factory farms is how cavalierly they flout these evolutionary rules, forcing animals to overcome deeply ingrained aversions. For their instincts we substitute antibiotics. Life as a human omnivore is more complicated and risky. When you can eat almost anything, how do you avoid the dangers nature presents, the plant toxins and parasites and lethal microbes? We have culture to guide us (traditions, science, Jane Brody), but surely even we can still hear older voices, aversions (to rot) and attractions (to sweetness) that still speak when we encounter a plate of food. In matters as fundamental to our animal lives as choosing what to eat, perhaps our aesthetic sense of things is not just aesthetic but is informed by something deeper, something we would do well to heed. For tens of thousands of years, we have been eating the flesh of ruminants that live on grass. The rightness of that picture - a bovine grazing on grassland - goes way back, maybe all the way to the savanna. And while that picture has recently been eclipsed by nauseating images of modern meat production, the grass-fed ruminant and the vegetarian herbivore are not extinct yet. For several years now, an alternative, postindustrial food chain has been taking shape, its growth fueled by one ''food scare'' after another: Alar, G.M.O.'s, rBGH, E. coli 0157:H7; now B.S.E. Whatever science told us about the risks of these novel industrial entrees and sides, something else told us we might want to order something more appetizing: organic, hormone-free, grass-finished. It might cost more, but it's possible again to eat meat from a short, legible food chain consisting of little more than sunlight, grass and ruminants. Back to the future: a 21st-century savanna. If, as seems probable, this landscape should now expand at the expense of the feedlot, then something good - even beautiful - will have come of this poor mad cow.

Clark the War Criminal?

Lefti on the News points to an interview of Wesley Clark by a Democracy Now! reporter, which I happened to catch on the way to work this morning. Clark responded to the accusations of war criminality with an edgy but still civil manner. He didn't try to duck the questions, gave reasonable answers, considering the lack of preparation, and showed some compassion. However, he didn't apologize in the least for any of his actions in Bosnia as NATO commander, which, at this point, might be good, or bad, for his campaign. As this is probably the only potential black mark on his stellar career, he should consider clearing up the story by maybe writing a book about his stint as NATO commander (answering these questions in the process) or maybe guest editorials in prominent newspapers. There's still plenty of time to write/publish a book before the campaign gets down to the wire.

Dennis the Anti-mensch

A long time ago my wife and I frequently went out of our way to watch Dennis Miller, one of the wittiest and most politically insightful commedians around. More recently it's like he had part of his brain removed, the part that questions. He's now become a mouthpiece of the neocons. Mark Morford summarizes it nicely:

Dennis Miller has usually been happy to spray his acerbic wit across the political spectrum, but things will be different on his new CNBC talk show. BushCo is in a mock-free zone. "I like him," Miller explained. "I'm going to give him a pass. I take care of my friends." Miller is a familiar figure from his years on "SNL," HBO and "Monday Night Football," but he will be in a different role on his daily show -- that of a total suckwad right-wing prickmonkey who's just a sad and miserable and crusty shade of his former self. This is the Miller who has appeared at fund-raisers for Bush, ridden with the president on Air Force One, sat in the gallery at last week's State of the Union speech and was even talked about as a Republican senatorial candidate in California. This is the Miller everyone used to think of as cool and articulate and hilariously hyperintelligent and able to dissect relatively complicated issues with deliriously inspiring rants that were able to sub-reference Nie! tzsche and Bela Lugosi and chaos theory usually all in one sentence. What a pathetic and moribund loss. What a sad blow to articulate thinking. What bilious and dank forces of right-wing fearmongering and neurosis and tax-break bullshit must've attached themselves like rabid leeches to Miller's seething soul to suck him so far over to the Dark Side. Dennis Miller, the new RushHannityStern of the Right. How sad. As if you needed another reason to ignore CNBC.

Kudos to Virginia

From the Miami Herald:

Posted on Sun, Jan. 25, 2004 - VIRGINIA Lawmakers want out of Bush education plan RICHMOND - In a backlash to President Bush's signature education program, Virginia's Republican-controlled House of Delegates approved a resolution calling on Congress to exempt the state from the requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act. The act ''represents the most sweeping intrusions into state and local control of education in the history of the United States'' and will cost ''millions of dollars that Virginia does not have,'' the resolution says. In passing the resolution 98-1, Virginia lawmakers loudly echoed concerns in other states about the effects of No Child Left Behind, which became law in 2002. Under the act, being implemented gradually, every student must be proficient in reading and math by 2014, and schools that don't make ''adequate yearly progress'' risk expensive consequences, including being forced to pay for their students to attend higher-performing schools elsewhere.

First of all, this is a Republican-controlled legilature that passed the resolution! Secondly, this could start the snowball rolling with other states joining in. Let's keep an eye on this, as NCLB affects a good portion of this nation.

More on this HERE.

Hurry Up and Die - We Need the Money

Not exactly sure why, but this just doesn't seem kosher. Snippet:

Retired Teachers Get an Education in Life Insurance - By Scott Gold, Times Staff Writer HOUSTON — Outraging the education community, Texas is considering allowing a large financial firm to take out life insurance on retired teachers, cafeteria workers and bus drivers. A state retirement plan would be the beneficiary of the policies, the financial firm would make millions on the transaction, and families of the retirees would get nothing. Former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, now an executive at UBS Investment Bank of New York, is promoting the proposal. State officials stressed that they are only considering the idea. But they pointed out that the plan could raise millions of dollars for the financially strapped Texas Teacher Retirement System, one of the largest public pensions in the nation, while the state would assume little risk.

Now, a person can take out insurance on pretty much anything and anyone; I mean, I can take out insurance on my pet turtle, as long as I could find an insurer that would be willing to cover it. So technically the proposal by TTRS is legit. What in in question here is the morality of this issue. If a majority of the public thinks it's outright wrong, then TTRS should drop this like a hot potato.

Duke of Hurl

Well, here's a soothing bedtime story.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, in federal prison after pleading guilty to mail and tax fraud, is considering a run for Congress when he is released this year, his secretary said Friday.

If not Kucinich, then Clark?

Good interview with Michael Moore today on Democracy Now! He discusses, among other things, why he supports Wesley Clark's bid for the nomination.

Clark, if Kucinich's drive for the nomination expires, seems like the person with the best chance of surviving the oncoming, relentless onslaught of Republican trash that will overwhelm the campaign. If Kucinich bows out, it looks like Clark's the man, in my book.

I'm not giving up on Kucinich. I'm voting for him in the state primary, I've dedicated this blog to him, and I've donated to his campaign. However, one must be realistic and prepared to accept the consequences of an unfair, media-controlled nominating process (that hopefully someday will be fixed) that has Kucinich in a vise. We must examine each candidate and decide which one has the best combination of three attributes: ability to beat Bush, the least amount of corporate sponsorship, and the most likely to abide by his/her principles and carry out campaign promises.

Even if Clark is only half as good as he leads us to believe, we're still talking about a person with infinitely greater tendency, than Bush, to be truthful, compassionate and intelligent.

---

I wish Clark would wear his uniform to the debates. It might look silly, but it definitely will remind the viewers that he has some invaluable experience in leading others. Or maybe his military hat; that would be interesting. At least his West Point sweatshirt. Anything. Something. Don't generals have swords that they wear to balls? Wouldn't that be a great thing to be wearing in the debates and on the campaign trail? Or his military-issue pistol: wear that sucker prominently around town and everyone will perk up when he speaks.

Boomer Review

Recently Left is Right reviewed the idea of a Boomer Corps as a means to provide meaning to retired baby boomers' lives while assisting this nation in its anticipated time of need. PPI has expanded on this concept and released a policy paper:

Seven years from now, the oldest members of America's largest generation will turn 65, and soon after, our elderly population will begin a dramatic expansion, doubling in size during the next two decades. This coming gray revolution will not only be the baby boomers' last act, but will mark the beginning of a permanent, structural change in our society. These realities will require a major cultural adjustment, challenging not only our mental picture of aging, but also the assumptions upon which our "old age" institutions were built. So far, the debate in Washington has focused on the money that will be necessary to meet the health and retirement needs of the growing number of older Americans, with a focus on ensuring the continued solvency of Medicare and Social Security. This is obviously critical, but it is just as important to start thinking about how we can tap the growing resource that this better educated, healthier, and more active class of elders represents. For more than a decade, the Progressive Policy Institute has been at the forefront of the effort to make national service a civic rite of passage for America's youth by advancing innovative short-term civilian and military service programs, and by connecting participation in these programs with greater educational opportunities. In this policy report, we hope to jumpstart a new debate about creating a second civic rite of passage, designed not for the transition from youth to adulthood, but instead focused on the transition from a full-time career to an active retirement. During the last six decades, steadily increasing lifespans combined with greater levels of health and activity have slowly changed the way Americans approach the later years of their lives. While most Americans continue to see their 60s as a time to bring their full-time careers to an end, there is also a growing number of Americans who are interested in a more active retirement mixing work, leisure, and service. By targeting this pool of active retirees, a large-scale national service initiative could play a critical role in how we take on the challenges of an aging society in the decades to come by enlisting baby boomers themselves into civic projects tackling the problems that their numbers create. Building on America's successful but limited experiments with senior service -- such as the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), the Foster Grandparents program, and the Senior Companions program -- this large-scale national service initiative would focus on meeting three critical needs....

Read the entire report HERE.

Dennis "I am standing up!" Kucinich

Terrific article in today's LA Times about Dennis Kucinich, mainly about his history. Discovered a few things that I didn't know about him. Snippet:

His presidential aspirations took form in February 2002, when he was scheduled to speak, along with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and actor Warren Beatty, to the Americans For Democratic Action in Los Angeles. He was staying at the Westwood home of a friend, Emmy-winning TV producer and writer Lila Garrett, one of the event's organizers. "He was sitting at my computer in shirt sleeves after breakfast, about four hours before his speech," she recalled. "And he said, 'What theme would you like me to use?' I said, 'Reveal who Bush really is.' He replied, 'I can do that,' and he wrote this really beautiful prayer for America." In his prayer, Kucinich lamented the USA Patriot Act and the approaching war in Iraq and concluded: "America, America. God shed grace on thee. Crown thy good, America. Not with weapons of mass destruction. Not with invocations of an axis of evil. Not through breaking international treaties. Not through establishing America as king of a unipolar world. Crown thy good, America." Fifty-thousand people responded with e-mails. He knew he had tapped into a chord of national discontent. Eight months later, he kicked off his presidential campaign. He has drawn enthusiastic crowds, though polls put him a distant sixth in a field of seven, and he received only 1% of the vote in Iowa on Monday. And he delights supporters with his animated style, his progressive vision and his willingness to poke fun at himself. Walking into an Iowa coffee shop the other day, Kucinich was dwarfed by the crowd gathered around him. He kicked off his shoes, jumped on a chair and shouted: "I am standing up!"

(Note: one-time registration is required for access to LA Times online.)

FRIDAY FUN

Create Your Own Font
Create Your Own South Park Character
Design Your Own Domestic Robot
Detouching Celebrity Photos
Evil Care Bears (game)
Map of the Universe
Movie Makeup
Time-Warp (Technology through the decades)
Which Pirates of the Caribbean Character are You?
World's Worst Resume
Zip Code Finder (not what you'd think)

American Leftist

Joe at American Leftist is a new blogger in internet town who covers somewhat less mainstream (and thus more interesting) stories. Check him out. Also, Joe must be a terribly brilliant person, seeing how he supports Kucinich.

Evolution of a lie, by Kevin Drum:

March 2003: Weapons of mass destruction. June 2003: Weapons of mass destruction programs. October 2003: Weapons of mass destruction-related programs. January 2004: Weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.

November 2004: Weapons of mass destruction-related program idea-generating thoughts concerning fanciful activities attributed to concepts discussed in Arab countries.

Bush by the numbers.

Scandal In The Making

From The Boston Globe:

Infiltration of files seen as extensive - Senate panel's GOP staff [sp]ied on Democrats - By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff, 1/22/2004 WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe. From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics. The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle has already launched an investigation into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a website last November. With the help of forensic computer experts from General Dynamics and the US Secret Service, his office has interviewed about 120 people to date and seized more than half a dozen computers -- including four Judiciary servers, one server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and several desktop hard drives. But the scope of both the intrusions and the likely disclosures is now known to have been far more extensive than the November incident, staffers and others familiar with the investigation say. The revelation comes as the battle of judicial nominees is reaching a new level of intensity. Last week, President Bush used his recess power to appoint Judge Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, bypassing a Democratic filibuster that blocked a vote on his nomination for a year because of concerns over his civil rights record. Democrats now claim their private memos formed the basis for a February 2003 column by conservative pundit Robert Novak that revealed plans pushed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to filibuster certain judicial nominees. Novak is also at the center of an investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA agent whose husband contradicted a Bush administration claim about Iraqi nuclear programs. Citing "internal Senate sources," Novak's column described closed-door Democratic meetings about how to handle nominees. Its details and direct quotes from Democrats -- characterizing former nominee Miguel Estrada as a "stealth right-wing zealot" and describing the GOP agenda as an "assembly line" for right-wing nominees -- are contained in talking points and meeting accounts from the Democratic files now known to have been compromised. Novak declined to confirm or deny whether his column was based on these files. "They're welcome to think anything they want," he said. "As has been demonstrated, I don't reveal my sources." As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem. Other staffers, however, denied that the Democrats were told anything about it before November 2003. The emerging scope of the GOP surveillance of confidential Democratic files represents a major escalation in partisan warfare over judicial appointments. The bitter fight traces back to 1987, when Democrats torpedoed Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court. In the 1990s, Republicans blocked many of President Clinton's nominees. Since President Bush took office, those roles have been reversed. Against that backdrop, both sides have something to gain and lose from the investigation into the computer files. For Democrats, the scandal highlights GOP dirty tricks that could result in ethics complaints to the Senate and the Washington Bar -- or even criminal charges under computer intrusion laws. "They had an obligation to tell each of the people whose files they were intruding upon -- assuming it was an accident -- that that was going on so those people could protect themselves," said one Senate staffer. "To keep on getting these files is just beyond the pale." But for Republicans, the scandal also keeps attention on the memo contents, which demonstrate the influence of liberal interest groups in choosing which nominees Democratic senators would filibuster. Other revelations from the memos include Democrats' race-based characterization of Estrada as "especially dangerous, because . . . he is Latino," which they feared would make him difficult to block from a later promotion to the Supreme Court. And, at the request of the NAACP, the Democrats delayed any hearings for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals until after it heard a landmark affirmative action case -- though a memo noted that staffers "are a little concerned about the propriety of scheduling hearings based on the resolution of a particular case." After the contents of those memos were made public in The Wall Street Journal editorial pages and The Washington Times, Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, made a preliminary inquiry and described himself as "mortified that this improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch." Hatch also confirmed that "at least one current member of the Judiciary Committee staff had improperly accessed at least some of the documents referenced in media reports." He did not name the staffer, who he said was being placed on leave and who sources said has since resigned, although he had apparently already announced plans to return to school later this year. Officials familiar with the investigation identified that person as a legislative staff assistant whose name was removed from a list of Judiciary Committee staff in the most recent update of a Capitol Hill directory. The staff member's home number has been disconnected and he could not be reached for comment. Hatch also said that a "former member of the Judiciary staff may have been involved." Many news reports have subsequently identified that person as Manuel Miranda, who formerly worked in the Judiciary Committee office and now is the chief judicial nominee adviser in the Senate majority leader's office. His computer hard drive name was stamped on an e-mail from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League that was posted along with the Democratic Senate staff communications. Reached at home, Miranda said he is on paternity leave; Frist's office said he is on leave "pending the results of the investigation" -- he denied that any of the handwritten comments on the memos were by his hand and said he did not distribute the memos to the media. He also argued that the only wrongdoing was on the part of the Democrats -- both for the content of their memos, and for their negligence in placing them where they could be seen. "There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff." Whether the memos are ultimately deemed to be official business will be a central issue in any criminal case that could result. Unauthorized access of such material could be punishable by up to a year in prison -- or, at the least, sanction under a Senate non-disclosure rule. The computer glitch dates to 2001, when Democrats took control of the Senate after the defection from the GOP of Senator Jim Jeffords, Independent of Vermont. A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

This is bad stuff; really bad stuff. The Republicans have breached numerous laws and government regulations while carring out this covert operation. If you or I did anything like this at work, we'd be fired on the spot, no questions asked.

The question, at this point, is: Will the totally spineless Democratic leadership actually do something about this? Based on the past three years' actions of our congressmen and senators, I give it a resounding NO!

We're too afraid of Bush and the neocons saying something bad about us, because our feelings will get hurt. We are the wimp-assed, sissy-wipped, cowering, embarrassed-to-be-liberal, sit-on-our-butts-while-Bush-destroys-our-country Democrats. Whoo, whoo, whoo!

David Swanson has some reasons for supporting Kucinich:

Most Americans won't start paying attention to this election until AFTER the Democratic nominee is chosen. If we choose one who presents a contrast to the President, we will excite people and turn out new voters, in addition to all the regular voters who plan to vote for whoever the nominee is. And we all can support whoever the nominee is. But now is our opportunity to make that nominee a candidate who can revitalize our democracy and defeat President Bush by calling for fundamental change, not staying the course but altering the rhetoric. That Dennis Kucinich will make the strongest candidate against Bush is hard to dispute. That he is not ahead of other Democrats in the polls is no reason not to vote for him in the primary. A primary is a chance to vote for the best candidate. If he doesn't win, you've helped promote his platform at the convention. If everyone who says "Dennis is my first choice but he's not electable" turns off their televisions and talks to their neighbors and votes for him, he will be elected, "electable" or not.

(from a recent newsletter)

A Riddle and a Generator

Can you solve this riddle:

Three salesmen come into town for a convention, only to find that there's just one motel room left. But it has 3 beds, so the three decide to share the room. "How much for the room?" they ask. "Thirty dollars," comes the reply from the clerk (I know, a cheap motel). So each salesman throws in $10 (3 x $10 = $30). They leave and go to their room. The room clerk then realizes that the actual rate for that room is $25, but he doesn't know how to split the $5 rebate into three portions. So he decides to give back $1 to each salesman (3 x $1 = $3) and to pocket the remaining $2 for himself ($3 + $2 = $5). So the salesmen actually paid $9 each ($10 - $1 = $9). Now, 3 x $9 = $27, plus $2 the room clerk pocketed = $29. Where did the last dollar go? Hint: It wasn't room tax.

If this is too hard, relax by Generating a Bush Conspiracy.

Gerrymandering - Part II

Earlier this month UC Berkeley published Part I of a two-part series on gerrymandering, as referenced HERE at Left is Right. Part II is now out and well worth the read. Snippet:

Do you think that the Supreme Court’s motivation has anything to do with the fact that Republicans have set a new precedent by redistricting in Texas in 2002, only two years after the census? Maybe. I don't think you can read the crystal ball. Let me put it this way: I think most Court watchers were surprised they took this case. I sure was. In Bandemer they set the standard deliberately high, I've looked at the case pretty carefully, and there's certainly no indication that the Democrats have been shut out in any blatant way. That's one of the arguments for saying that political gerrymandering takes care of itself. To the extent that these are Congressional seats, it evens out. Voters change, they move around, they don't vote party lines as much anymore. You can try to stack it up, but things tend to balance out over the years anyway. One year it's the Republicans screwing the Democrats and the very same year, in another state, it's the opposite. But regardless of whether it balances out numbers-wise, doesn’t the fact that close to 400 of the 435 House members don’t have to face competitive elections mean that they can afford to be more partisan and less conciliatory? That's an old story. Do you know that it was said back in the 1950s and 1960s that there was greater turnover in the Dumas of the Soviet Union than there was in the House of Representatives? Although it does strike me that both sides have become more aggressive in Congress, yes. Look at what the Democrats are doing to the nomination of judges. In the current case, Pennsylvania Democrats are arguing that it is "unconstitutional to give a state's million Republicans control over ten seats while leaving a million Democrats with control over five." Is it unconstitutional or merely unfair? That is the issue that will dictate the outcome of the case: Can the Court refine its 1986 standard determining whether a political gerrymander is unconstitutional and decide whether it has been met in this case? I doubt that they'll significantly change what the standard is. They may well send it back to the lower court and say, "You've used the wrong standard. We agree that we didn't give you much to work with, so now we’ll give you some more." There's another potential outcome. They might get five votes for the proposition that they made a mistake in 1986. Two justices of the current court, William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor, took the position in 1986 that the court had no business in this area — that gerrymandering should be a political question, which simply means that anything goes. One argument in support of that is that there hasn’t been a violation since 1986. And it's possible that they'll get five votes for that proposition. Justice O'Connor is normally the swing vote, she was a member of a state legislature, so she's pretty savvy about redistricting.

Protecting Our Endangered Species - NOT

From BushGreenWatch, indications of a disappearing ESA (snippet):

"The pattern one vividly sees when examining the Bush Administration's record under the Endangered Species Act is a general reluctance to obey the law, and then an expensive and time-consuming effort to cover the federal violator's tracks once sued," says William Snape, vice-president and chief counsel for Defenders of Wildlife. President Bush has appointed crusading opponents of the ESA to key positions, including Craig Manson, the assistant Interior Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, who told the Los Angeles Times in an interview: "If we are saying that the loss of species in and of itself is inherently bad, I don't think we know enough about how the world works to say that." Currently the Administration is proposing to create a gigantic loophole that might push many species in other countries into extinction. Under the proposal, hunters would be able to kill elephants and other "trophy" animals; wildlife traders, circuses and the pet industry would be permitted to capture rare birds from the Amazon (or other species of endangered foreign wildlife) as an economic boost to cash-strapped countries. Ivory tusks, skins and antlers could also be imported.[9] Environmentalists have criticized the Bush proposal as an invitation to the return of large-scale poaching. The ESA lists 1,363 U. S. plant and animal species and 558 foreign and animal species as threatened or endangered. Since taking office, the administration has listed no additional species on its own accord.

Saving species is not essential to deficit reduction, healthcare, environment quality, education or international trade. But as the party of "compassionate conservatism" (as they so claim), one would expect Republican support of a policy profile that concentrated on respecting and supporting our planet's natural resources and inhabitants.

Ouch! Someone just kicked me back into reality.

Left i on the News makes a point about the popular opinion that space exploration pays for itself by generating technological spinoffs that ultimately benefit mankind:

I am a supporter of basic scientific research, I think it is essential to always carry on that tradition to the extent we can afford it, but the idea of justifying it based on bogus claims of "benefit for humanity" is generally way overdone. If the political will existed to scrap the entire military budget, once we used that money to deal with homelessness, health care, housing, and other basic human needs, I'd be more than happy to see whatever remains being spent on space exploration. But until that day, I'll continue to view it as one more effort to funnel billions into the profits of big corporations (and from there into the pockets of the billionaires who control those corporations).

Hard to read and hard to put down. Jake Sexton's personal observations of the last few months of his mother's life. (UPDATE: The site seems to be intermittently down. Try again later, if you can't connect; it's worth it.)

Keep Score

Be sure to watch Bush's SOTU tomorrow night with THIS SCORECARD.

Roses are Red, Violets are Purple, Orchids are a Pain in the Ass

Next time someone tells you that life is fair, just refer them to THIS nifty item:

Man pleads not guilty to importing prized orchid from Peru - Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 01-15) 21:16 PST TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- A Virginia man pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges he illegally imported one of the most prized orchids ever found after buying it at a roadside flower stand in a Peruvian mountain village. James M. Kovach, who brought the orchid to a botanical gardens in Sarasota in June 2002, faces a maximum six years in prison and a $350,000 fine if he's convicted of smuggling and possessing the flower. Orchids such as the one Kovach bought are protected under the Convention on International Trade Species, which forbids the trade or movement of certain plants from country to country. His trial is expected to start after March 1. Kovach's find of the peach-and-purple flower -- twice the size of others of its kind -- has been called the most significant in the orchid world in the last 100 years. Kovach, of Goldvein, Va., took the orchid to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, where scientists classified and named it for the man who brought it to them: Phragmipedium kovachii. Kovach did not speak to reporters after the court appearance. Marie Selby, a top identifier of orchids, pleaded guilty last week to a misdemeanor charge of accepting and handling the flower, and the gardens agreed to pay a $5,000 fine. Horticulturist Wesley Higgins agreed to a plea deal specifying house arrest for six months, probation for a year and a $2,000 fine.

Amen

As Ted Rall says:

Iraq's WMDs were probably destroyed at least 13 years ago. Fortunately for Bush, they exist only in the one place he cares about: the deluded minds of a frighteningly ignorant American electorate. Which is why our troops in Iraq are no longer bothering to go through the motions of searching for them. And why Bush yanked the Joint Captured Matériel Exploitation Group that was supposed to destroy WMDs if and when they had been discovered. "Its work was essentially done," a Defense Department official told The Times, because it was tired of "waiting for something to dispose of." Nearly 500 American servicemen have been killed in the war against Iraq. At least 2,400 more have been wounded. We've killed so many Iraqis--tens of thousands, certainly--that the Pentagon can't keep count. We've borrowed more than $160 billion to pay for this extravaganza, with many more hundreds of billions to follow. And what was the point of this waste of life and treasure? "To disarm Iraq," Bush told us. But Iraq, as everyone from the CIA to Hans Blix to Saddam told us beforehand, didn't have any arms to dis. Calling off the WMD hunt is Bush's tacit admission that he lied about the reasons for war. It's hard to think of anything worse that a president can do. It's even harder to imagine the American people, so cynically accepting of deception, holding him accountable.

Freeper Explained

Wonder what a "freeper" is? (I did.) Try this explanation:

Ever since there was an al-Qaeda Underground, the word freeper has been circulating the boards. What is it? What does it mean? Where did it come from? I will answer these questions for you, from the point of view of someone who used to think that the republicans were right some of the time, and the democrats were right some of the time. Freeper originally was a word used to describe those who hang out and post on a website called www.freerepublic.com. This message board is for conservatives. I encourage you all to go to this site and take a look for yourself. Now, since that time, the word freeper has evolved. Many of us in the middle (the real middle) and on the left (to varying degrees) are amazed at what the mainstream republicans and media have been able to accomplish. They've basically built a following of "freepers" who are like sheep; following blindly, spouting the party line, never questioning. They're blinded by the hate that the media and the mainstream repubs have shoved at them for years. They've been scared into sheep. They've been told anyone in the middle or left is a commie pinko who wants to destroy them and the country with "big government". They believe this without question, in their blindness. For this reason, the word freeper does not just equate to those who hangout/post on freerepublic, it now encompasses any and all of the brainwashed right. You can be a conservative and not be a freeper if you think for yourself, but you can't be a freeper without being a sheep. The Tactics of Freepers Freepers engage in many forms of tactics to intimidate their enemies. If you're engaged in a real debate with a freeper (perhaps one of your friends is a freeper) they will usually start raising their voice immediately. They will then say things as if they were obvious fact (fox news isn't biased, cnn is liberal, Clinton was a rapist, etc) when in fact anyone who looks at such things objectively disagrees with them. They refuse to back down from such points, even if massive evidence to the contrary is displayed for them. Another tactic used by freepers, but only in the online community, is called "freeping". Freeping equates to we network security guys called a Distributed Denial of Service Attack. In network security, an attacker can utilize large numbers of 'hacked' computers, making them all flood a server with various protocols and information at the same time, hogging the server's bandwidth and overloading it's software, eventually causing said server to crash when it can't handle the load anymore. Freeping is the same thing, except instead of 'hacked' computers being used, people are being used. They herd their sheep to one specific site that disagrees with their fascist views and they disrupt the site constantly until a) they feel their mission is accomplished b) the site goes down or c) they get bored. Then they all go back to freerepublic (freeperville, henceforth) and pat each other on the back and say "Wow, we sure showed those commies!" For some reason, they believe this helps their agenda. Personally, I think it paints them as the criminals they are. If they were using ICMP packets instead of actual people, it'd be illegal. Summary Freepers are slightly to the right of Hitler. Most believe that America is the only Godly country (save Israel, sometimes) and that all the unGodly must be 'smited'. They believe that rich, white males should be ruling the world and keeping their 'wimmin' and 'niggers' in check, and working, like the Good Book says they should. They're completely unable to comprehend that they're not the majority in this country, and that legitimate conservatives (John McCain) and legitimate Christians despise them. They're truly the perfect example of propaganda, scare tactics, and brainwashing. If you know any freepers in your day to day activities, I encourage you to prove my words to yourself by attempting to engage them in honest debate. If they fail to exhibit the qualities, they're not completely hopeless yet, I encourage you then to attempt to give them a mind of their own. anti-freeper

Diagramming Bush

Uggabugga, famous for diagrammatically simplifying the complexities of the world, has diagrammed the connections among the Bush dynasty, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, the oil industry and the financial world. See if you can decipher it (warning: must be sober).

Useful link for the primary season

The Primaries and Caucuses: Track the Results (Also added to left sidebar.)

Boomer Corps

Although a long way off, I've been lusting for retirement. Now PPI comes along with a crazy idea of baby-boomer retirees spending their golden years by helping others. Damn the PPI and its good ideas, now I'll never stop feeling guilty about maybe not having given enough to the less-fortunate during my life.

Easing Up on Toxic Waste Cleanup

Just HAD to reprint this rant from today's CAP Progress Report:

Halting Toxic Cleanups A new report by the EPA shows that "cleanup work at 11 of the worst toxic dumps in the country hasn't started because the Superfund program doesn't have enough money." The Bush Administration has played a direct part in creating the funding problem, ending the tax on corporate polluters that funded the program, at the behest of the oil/chemical companies that have funded its campaigns. BREAKING THEIR PROMISE: The Administration specifically promised not to choke off Superfund's funding. As a candidate for Vice President, Dick Cheney was asked on the 7/30/00 edition of Meet the Press whether he "would support authorizing funding for Superfund to clean up toxic waste?" He replied "I would." Less than 19 months later, the White House announced its decision to end the corporate tax that funds the Superfund. EFFORTS TO REINSTATE TAX REJECTED: Last year, the White House and its allies in the Senate voted down an attempt by progressives to reinstate the Superfund tax, despite dwindling resources for cleanups, and increased concerns over the public health effects of toxic dumps. THE HALLIBURTON INFLUENCE, AGAIN: The Asheville, NC Citizen, a newspaper that covers an area with a Halliburton-owned toxic site, pointed out in a 12/5/02 editorial that the Administration's elimination of the Superfund tax is a major gift to polluters like Halliburton and its other financial backers, with the result being "taxpayers left holding the bag" for cleanups. Knight-Ridder reports that "the chemical, oil and gas industries [that pushed for the tax elimination] have donated more than $158 million to political candidates since 1996." For more details on those contributions see the Center for Responsive Politics special Superfund site, and its corresponding Superfund write-up. BY THE NUMBERS: Because of the Administration-backed funding shortfall, a Knight-Ridder "analysis of EPA data shows that over the past two years, the EPA has designed fewer cleanup plans, started less waste-removal work and finished far fewer jobs than it did during the Clinton administration and some years before that." Specifically, the number of Superfund cleanups completed in fiscal years 2001 and 2002 plummeted 41 percent compared with the annual average over the previous eight years. In calendar year 2002, 39 sites were cleaned up - the fewest since 1991. So far this year, only three cleanups have been finished. And "according to three EPA Inspector General reports, seven ready-to-clean Superfund sites last year received no money to start removing waste." WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON: The Administration's decision to end the corporate tax that funds Superfund (and thus bankrupt the program) will have serious consequences throughout the country. As the U.S. Public Interest Research Group notes, " one fourth of Americans live within four miles of a Superfund site, the nation's worst toxic waste sites. Superfund sites are contaminated with dangerous substances and linked to cancer, birth defects and learning disabilities." In Libby, Montana, where 200 workers have already died from toxic exposure, Lee Newspapers reports "federal efforts to clean up the sites is being delayed by a lack of money."

Go to the actual web page for access to the supporting linkage.

Gerry the Salamander

Interesting piece, in UC Berkeley News, regarding the Pennsylvania gerrymandering/congressional redistricting case that the Supreme Court is addressing this year. Good introduction about the history of gerrymandering, followed by an interview with Bruce Cain (the Robson Professor of Political Science and director of UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies). Snippet:

In the Pennsylvania case now before the Supreme Court, Democrats are arguing that it is "unconstitutional to give a state's million Republicans control over ten seats while leaving a million Democrats with control over five." Is it unconstitutional or merely politics as usual? Some Democrats are arguing that. Back when Phil Burton drew the lines in California [as a state congressman in 1981], it was Republicans who were claiming unfairness and wanted the court to intervene. The shoe was on the other foot in Indiana in the 1980s or Pennsylvania in the year 2003. The aggressor claims immunity from the court and the victims want the courts to protect them. Why do you think the court agreed to hear this case now? There are two theories floating around. The first is that the court's seriously interested in getting involved in adjudicating these gerrymandering cases. Theory No. 2 is that the court wants to drive a stake into the heart of the 1986 Bandemer decision, which extended the prohibition on racial gerrymandering to political gerrymandering. But in the intervening years since then, there have been no rulings that have used Bandemer to deem a redistricting plan unconstitutional. Isn't that because Bandemer's standard of determining unconstitutionality — that a political party has to be "entirely shut out of the process" — is so vague as to be useless? It's not so much vague as it is tough. Basically the court set the threshold very high — you have to show that this party has been systematically excluded from power, has no way to address this inequity, and that the gerrymandering is part of this exclusion. That's not true in most cases, even in hard-core Democratic and Republican states. California is a hard-core Democratic state, but our new governor is a Republican. So such exclusion, which was borrowed from the racial gerrymandering cases, is a very, very high standard to apply to political gerrymandering. No plan has risen to the level of constitutional significance since the Bandemer definition. So it's quite possible that the court wants to say explicitly, "Don't give us any more of this nonsense, we set the bar very high on purpose and we're not going to be drawn into this because it's a fundamentally political fight."

I See Green People

Greenwatch, a daily e-mail newsletter and web site started last month and sponsored by MoveOn.org, tracks how Bush's policies affect the environment. Check it out.

FRIDAY FUN

ASCII Movies
Coffee-flavored Steak
Cooking in Your Dishwasher
Gender Genie
Scrabble Score of your name
Things Geeks Say When Pulled Over for Speeding
TOP 10 IMPOSSIBLE INVENTIONS THAT WORK (favorite: #5 - Anti-gravity Device)
Ultimate Recliner (but will it fit through the bathroom doorway?)

"Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software." ---Arthur C. Clarke's 69th Law

Keeping our "Left" Fingers Crossed

Grist Magazine feels that Bush's environmental policies may eventually catch up to him. Snippet:

Many fear that the Republican party as a whole might pay dearly for the Bush administration's radical approach to environmental issues. "The irony is that while the Bush administration's environmental policy is designed largely to strengthen their campaign strategy, it could do just the opposite," [Lincoln] Chafee told Muckraker [Grist magazine]. "Look at a map of all the states Bush won in 2000 -- the red states are mining states, they are timber-producing states, they are ranching states, many of which have a very strong opposition to environmental laws. But that doesn't represent the interests of most of the swing states. And even the mentality in the traditionally Republican states is changing -- states like Idaho, where people are beginning to understand that there has to be a balance."

Very nice essay on Kucinich (and Dean). Tiny snippet:

Although Kucinich has defeated Republican incumbents for the state legislature and for his Congressional seat, this was in a local context where people knew him personally, and recognized his integrity, intelligence, and track record. National politics is far more susceptible to manipulation. Kucinich's campaign has continued to raise important issues, in the most far-reaching way. He's articulated a powerful vision of where we need to go as a country. But his support base has been largely confined to those who voted Green in 2000 or seriously considered doing so. Kucinich is raising critical issues as long as he is in the race, and this may influence the nomination of someone else who's decent. But backing him will have only an indirect impact on who that someone else will be.

Right, but remember, we need to vote our conscience in the primaries (e.g. Kucinich), then vote for the nominated Democratic candidate (probably Dean) next November.

THIS looks fun.

I'd Be Pissed, Too

From The Daily Mis-Lead:

Bush Exploits MLK's Grave For Political Fundraiser On last year's Martin Luther King Day, President Bush eloquently honored the memory of Dr. King, saying "I believe [in the] power of his words, the clarity of his vision and the courage of his leadership."1 This year, however, instead of honoring the legacy of Dr. King, President Bush has decided to use Martin Luther King Day as tool to force the federal government to subsidize a fundraising trip for his re-election campaign. The New York Times reports that the President "hastily planned" a visit to Dr. King's grave, and then will immediately go to "a $2,000-a-person fundraiser in Atlanta."2 Even though Bush may spend the majority of his time hobnobbing with donors at the fundraiser, because he will briefly visit Dr. King's grave, he is allowed to deem the entire trip "official" and then bill taxpayers for portions of the huge cost of hotel rooms, rental cars, security, and travel. And those are no small costs - the Washington Post notes that Air Force One alone costs $57,000 an hour to operate.3 Civil rights leaders are outraged at the blatant exploitation of Dr. King's birthday as a tool to force taxpayers to bankroll a political fundraiser. Rev. Timothy McDonald, an organizer of Atlanta's Martin Luther King Day celebrations said, "It's the epitome of insult. He's really coming here for the fundraiser. The King wreath was an afterthought." Despite Bush's platitudes about Dr. King's legacy, he is so focused on his fundraiser - and so neglectful of the Martin Luther King Day celebrations - that he has done little to prevent his visit's security detail from limiting access to a historic black church where a civil rights symposium will be taking place. In response to Bush's visit, protestors are marching "with bullhorns, signs and thumping drums, shouting for the president to stay away." They say that on top of Bush using Dr. King's grave as pretext for a fundraiser, his policies have directly insulted Dr. King's memory. As Rev. Raphael Allen said, "His administration has never supported anything to help the poor, education, or children. It's all about isolationism and greed for the upper class. That's not promoting the legacy of Dr. King."

Also, on today's Democracy Now! Jesse Jackson discusses the final years of MLK. Go HERE for the show.

God Bless Our Flag

Thank god (pun intended, as you'll see) someone has finally redesigned our flag to more accurately reflect today's political and social values. (Thanks to Rob at Conniptions for the lead.)

Patriots 'R Us

Arianna Huffington (whom I despise for withdrawing from the California gubernatorial recall race after I had sumbitted my absentee ballot with her name) nevertheless raises a good question:

The most alarming thing that emerges from O'Neill's revelations is the total lack of leadership on Bush's part. Just as the president was finally outgrowing the long-standing rumors that he was a cheerful pawn in a game he was too dumb to understand, O'Neill applies the paddles to the "Bush as clown" image, turns on the juice, and yells, "Clear!" At the very moment that Rove and the Bush re-election team are gearing up to sell us the president as the macho, heroic cowboy from Crawford who is going to keep us all safe from terrorists, despots, and Mad Cow meat, here comes his former Treasury Secretary with his devastating assessment of Bush as "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people". Will this be the wakeup call that finally opens the American public's eyes to the deadly consequences of being governed by a disengaged dolt in the hands of a gang of brazen fanatics?

Of course, all sane, intelligent persons know the answer, namely that Bush and Co. will do whatever it takes to retain the office of the Presidency, no matter what the cost, no matter who gets steamrolled in the process, and no matter what morals and ethics may fall into the great abyss. The Florida debacle will seem like a walk through the arboretum on a sunny, Spring day. The fact that a majority (around 55% according to the average of most reputable polls) of Americans continue to approve of his job, in spite of three years of the most malicious and lawless actions (by Bush) of any President of the past 100 years, will guarantee his reelection November 2, 2004. Starting November 3, we will all be witness to the most insidious, dispassionate unravelling of this nation's political and economic systems since the days of the Third Reich. Intertwined with our nation's decent into hell, will be the anxious fingers of a half-dozen "dictators" hovering over nuclear missile launch buttons, led by none other than our good friends-in-arms Israel and Pakistan.

The only way to avoid this scenario is for Democrats to get off their soft asses and start a revolution. No, not a riot-in-the-streets kind, but a kind that stems from real action (boycotts, demonstrations, retaking the media, VOTING, town meetings, and searching out the real news and information (which the rest of the world already does).

Anything less, and in four years we'll all be attending mandatory practice sessions to learn the lyrics to the new National Anthem: "Patriots 'R Us".

Perle v. Krugman

Added ZNN Alternative News plus Decades Ago to the sidebar. Come back regularly, as these new additions, along with Newsfeed, Buzzflash and Quotes of the Day, are automatically updated daily if not hourly. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome, as always.

In deference to the MoveOn.org Bush-in-30-seconds commercials contest, LiberalOasis has made his own ad. (Warning: profanity; also, be sure you know the meanings of pusbag, horse***t, f***head and d***head before viewing.)

Number of days between Novak column outing Valerie Plame and announcement of investigation: 74 days. Number of days between O'Neill 60 Minutes interview and announcement of investigation: 1 day. Having the administration reveal itself as a gaggle of hypocritical goons ... priceless. -- Josh Marshall

Bush Shops at Wal-Mart

Here are some anecdotal excerpts from a NYTimes article on the current flap stemming from a recent in-house audit of Wal-Mart's labor law violations:

...several current and former Wal-Mart employees confirmed in interviews that violations of state law on child labor and breaks were a recurring problem at many understaffed Wal-Mart stores. Leila Najjar said that when she worked for a Wal-Mart in a Denver suburb at age 16 and 17, she sometimes was forced to miss breaks, work past midnight and work more than eight hours a day even though Colorado bars minors from doing that. Time records from a court case showed that her store sometimes forced her to work illegal hours. During the holidays, Ms. Najjar, a recent graduate of the University of Colorado, recalled, "the store closed at 11 and there were nights we had to stay to clean up until 12:30, 12:45. It was a long day, and I was tired the next day at school. And sometimes, I'd have to work 10, 11 hours on a Saturday or Sunday." If the same rate of violations were found throughout the Wal-Mart system, that would translate into tens of thousands of child-labor violations each week at Wal-Mart's 3,500 stores and more than one million violations of company and state regulations on meals and breaks. Company officials said such extrapolations were misleading, noting that many of the seeming time-record problems could be explained by legal behavior. Wal-Mart employees clock in and out by swiping their identity badges, which the time clock reads electronically. Ms. Williams said employees sometimes forgot to swipe when they arrived at work or when they took lunch. Sometimes, she said, workers missed breaks not because management pressured them but, for example, because they wanted to finish early to take a child to the doctor. John Lehman, who ran several Wal-Mart stores in Kentucky, said he was sure that large-scale violations on child labor, breaks and meals continued at Wal-Mart. In the months after the company distributed the audit internally, he said, store managers like him received no word to try harder to prevent violations. "There was no follow-up to that audit, there was nothing sent out I was aware of saying, `We're bad. We screwed up. This is the remedy we're going to follow to correct the situation,' " said Mr. Lehman, who said he quit in 2001 because he was disgusted with the company's treatment of employees. He now works for a union trying to organize Wal-Mart workers. "Wal-Mart stores are so systematically understaffed that they work minors just like they do adults," he said. "They don't have enough workers to take care of the business. Yes, their prices are low but then the stores are so understaffed that workers often don't have time to take their breaks or lunches." Maria Rocha, who ran the restaurant inside a Wal-Mart in Dallas, said her workload was so great and the restaurant so understaffed that she never took breaks and often missed lunch. "It was just too busy to take a break," said Ms. Rocha, who quit in October. "There were a lot of customers, and the managers would be mad if you took a break." Verette Richardson, a former Wal-Mart cashier in Kansas City, Mo., said it was sometimes so hard to get a break that some cashiers urinated on themselves. Bella Blaubergs, a diabetic who worked at a Wal-Mart in Washington State, said she sometimes nearly fainted from low blood sugar because managers often would not give breaks. As for claims of child-labor violations and stores too understaffed for worker breaks, Ms. Williams said, "In a company that has more than 1 million people in the U.S. alone, I have no doubt that in some individual instances that can happen."

Typical Wal-Mart salary: Minimum Wage.
Typical Wal-Mart owner net worth: Billions.
Typical Wal-Mart employee benefits package value: Priceless. Literally.
Number of times Left is Right ever has made a purchase at Wal-Mart: 0.

Stop letting the low prices lure you into your local Wal-Mart. Resist the urge to save money at the expense of increasing the desperation of the lower income class. Stop shopping at Wall-Mart; there are plenty of other stores that sell what you need. JUST STOP GOING TO WAL-MART. It's wrong.

Paper Reduction Act Gone Awry

An example of electronic voting gone haywire:

January 9, 2004 - Wexler: "Florida State House Election Proves Need For Paper Trail" (Washington, D.C.) Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL), in a letter to Secretary of State Glenda Hood as well as Palm Beach and Broward county commissioners, expressed the danger of using only "touch-screen" voting machines to record an individual's vote. Wexler is calling for ballot printers to be affixed to touch-screen voting machines in order to print out individual voter-verifiable ballots. An article in today's South Florida Sun-Sentinel highlighted the close election in Florida's House District 91, where Ellyn Bogdanoff, a political consultant from Ft. Lauderdale, defeated Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Mayor Oliver Parker by only 12 votes. The Sun-Sentinel stated, "The remaining 134 invalid ballots cannot be manually recounted because they were cast electronically on computerized voting machines and there is no written records of those votes." This is the exact problem facing the 15 counties in Florida that use direct recording electronic (DRE) or touch-screen machines. "The result of this election is a huge wake-up call to the very real possibility of another election debacle in Florida. America's voters understand that elections are not exercises in expediency but in democracy, and the right to vote depends upon accuracy. Every ballot must be counted properly, and the means for a recount must be available. Without a tangible ballot individually verified by each voter, neither is possible," Wexler said.

A harbinger of next November?

The Occasional Quote of the Day

President Bush:

"No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

Kucinich in N. California

Nice article about Dennis Kucinich by The San Francisco Chrolicle. Snippet:

...With repeated trips to California, particularly the Democratic-leaning Bay Area, Kucinich has developed a loyal following among those on the left who believe that Dean and the rest of the Democratic pack are too cautious -- and too centrist -- on issues such as the war, environment and health care. "Northern California is key to my strategy for winning the White House,'' Kucinich says. "The response here has empowered my campaign.'' Indeed, his local appeal was illustrated in a visit to Berkeley -- where he delivered a rousing, and often eloquent, sermon on politics to an adoring standing-room-only crowd of 1,200 packed into the pews of a church...

Pepsi is back in Iraq.

Pepsi production returning to Iraq - JIM FITZGERALD, Associated Press Writer Wednesday, January 7, 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (01-07) 13:29 PST WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- PepsiCo Inc. plans to resume producing Pepsi-Cola in Iraq, using the same bottler that distributed fake Pepsi after economic sanctions forced the company out of the country. PepsiCo, headquartered in Purchase, said Wednesday it has signed an agreement with Baghdad Soft Drinks Co., Iraq's largest bottler, to make and distribute Pepsi, 7-Up and other soft drinks in central Iraq by the end of June. "Iraqis have been great supporters of Pepsi over many years, and we're delighted to resume local production," Saad Abdul-Latif, president of the Middle East/Africa region of PepsiCo International, said in a news release.

Mark Morford adds a little to Abdul-Latif's quote:

"Because if there's one thing a bloody decimated war-ravaged piss-poor violence-torn rubble-strewn hate-wary completely miserable nation needs as it's being violently and unhappily occupied by the world's least welcome and most obnoxious superpower, it's syrupy sticky heavily carbonated high-sugar American-made fizzy crappy drinks that feed more dollars directly into the American corporate maw," he really, really should have added. "Pepsi: It quenches your brutally severed limbs!"

The Debt We Owe to Bush

Personal debt is spiraling out of control. Snippets:

...Statistics released recently by the Federal Reserve show that consumer debt, excluding mortgages, doubled over the last decade to record levels. Consumer debt, such as credit cards and auto loans, hit a record $1.98 trillion in October, amounting to $18,700 per household. Experts say the figure will rise again after holiday-shopping statistics are taken into account. The number of past-due credit accounts rose to a high of 4.09 percent from July through September, according to figures released last week by the American Bankers Association. "The job market has been flying against strong headwinds, lengthening the time between jobs and intensifying financial stress," said James Chessen, chief economist for the trade group. Without strong job growth, the trend will continue, Chessen said, leading to greater debt and additional personal bankruptcies that will wound the recovery or further split consumers into blocks of winners and losers.... ...Many consumers are feeling trapped in a web of debt, said Tamara Draut, a spokeswoman for Demos, a nonpartisan public-policy organization... The recent tax cuts didn't help the people who needed them the most, Draut said. "The jobs aren't coming back yet, so many families are dealing with the fundamental issue that their wages aren't keeping up with their costs." ... ..."The good news is that consumers continue to do their share to expand the economy," said Samuel J. Gerdano, executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute. "The bad news is they continue to add to their debt burden." Last year, the number of business bankruptcies declined. But the number of personal bankruptcies during the 12 months ended Sept. 30 rose to 1.66 million, up 7.4 percent from the 1.54 million filings in fiscal year 2002 and a record total of filings for any reporting period ever. Gerdano said bankruptcies might be considered "a natural outgrowth" of a vigorous $10 trillion economy driven almost exclusively by consumers. Such high levels of personal bankruptcy and consumer debt don't spook policymakers necessarily, he said, because spending on credit is a powerful arrow in the economic quiver. "The economy is doing well because people are going into debt, and it is a matter of fact that as the economy improves, more people will grow deeper into debt and bankruptcies will grow," he said. The need is striking a happy medium. Roger M. Whelan, a former bankruptcy judge for the District of Columbia, said the challenge is improving the economy without overspending. "It's a conundrum: Credit fuels the improvement, but overspending can result in debt and losses to the (credit) industry," said Whelan, a scholar in residence at the American Bankruptcy Institute. "We are living in a society where living within our means is not the thing to do. Keeping up with the Joneses has a greater meaning today than it's ever had." Whelan and other experts note a lack of education courses on proper budgeting. They point to the large number of college graduates who leave school with huge debt.

"Happy medium"?? Who are they trying to kid? When interest rates start climbing after the election, personal bankrupcies will consequently most likely go through the roof, the real estate market will crash, real unemployment and inflation will rise dramatically, and the economic conditions of the past three years, as bad as Bush has made them, will seem like nirvana in comparison.

Fishing for the Big One

Left is Right has rarely, if ever, recommended a movie. However, after seeing Big Fish yesterday, we must admit that this is much more than an entertaining experience. Besides making one feel good about life (when's the last time you saw something man-made that did that?) this gem makes you ponder the necessity and consequences of fantasy, imagination and trust in personal and family relationships.

The Poor Really Aren't Poor

Here's the conclusion of the latest analysis by the Heritage Foundation on Poverty in America:

The living conditions of persons defined as poor by the government bear little resemblance to notions of "poverty" held by the general public. If poverty is defined as lacking adequate nutritious food for one's family, a reasonably warm and dry apartment to live in, or a car with which to get to work when one is needed, then there are relatively few poor persons remaining in the United States. Real material hardship does occur, but it is limited in scope and severity. The typical American defined as "poor" by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians. But the living conditions of the average poor person should not be taken to mean that all poor Americans live without hardship. There is a wide range of living conditions among the poor. Roughly a third of poor households do face material hardships such as overcrowding, intermittent food shortages, or difficulty obtaining medical care. However, even these households would be judged to have high living standards in comparison to most other people in the world. Perhaps the best news is that the United States can readily reduce its remaining poverty, especially among children. The main causes of child poverty in the United States are low levels of parental work and high numbers of single-parent families. By increasing work and marriage, our nation can virtually eliminate remaining child poverty.

Gosh, I guess things are much better than I thought. I guess every poor/homeless person in America moved to South-Central L.A. when I wasn't looking, because there sure are a lot of them there. CAP has a slightly more critical view of this Heritage analysis. Snippet:

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION: In other cases, Heritage blatantly distorts the facts. The first figure of the report entitled "Ownership of Property and Consumer Goods Among Poor Households" asserts that 98.9% of poor households *own* a refrigerator, 64.7% *own* a washer dryer and 75.6% *own* a Refrigerator. But these assertions are based on aggregate data from the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey 2001. The Heritage data is based on figure 2-4, which includes home owners and renters. The majority of those below the poverty line are renters and, of course, renters generally do not own the appliances. As a result, Heritage's figures grossly overstate property ownership by the poor. HERITAGE IDEA #1 – WOMEN SHOULD GO BACK TO BEING BEATEN: The policy team at the Heritage has two creative solutions for the non-problem of poverty. First, "if poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty." But a 1999 study reported by the Journal of Social Issues found that 74% of poor women (defined in the study as those on welfare) had experienced severe domestic violence as adults and 12% have experienced severe domestic violence in the previous year. In light of that data, Heritage's "solution," suggests that many poor women should simply return to spouses who physically abuse them. HERITAGE IDEA #2 – OLD AND JOBLESS SHOULD JUST FIND A JOB: The other "solution": have each poor family work 2,000 hours per year. Such a remedy simply isn't an option for many 3.4 million seniors who live in poverty. It also ignores the fact that 8.4 million unemployed people looked for work in December, the economy has shed around 2 million jobs in the last three years, and the unemployment rate stands at 5.7%.