Bits and Pieces for the Week of May 24 - 30

The Video Shell Oil Desperately Doesn't Want You to See (Mike)

As it's doing with stem cell research, California is leading the way in laser fusion research (Mike)

Poor Tom... "Tancredo attacks Sotomayor for belonging to La Raza, ‘a Latino KKK’" as opposed to really belonging to the KKK. Of course this is coming from the same guy who threatened to bomb Mecca. Who says the right wing isn't amusing? (7 of 6)

The horrifying and often unfair reality of forclosures in Las Vegas (Mike)

Shrewd move... President Obama nominates Judge Sonia Sotomayor for SCOTUS A Female Latina!! Let the Senate republi-cons vote down the first Hispanic pick nominated to SCOTUS and they will lose the Hispanic vote for 100 years!! (7 of 6)

Interesting, who knew we still had a "AAA sovereign rating." "China warns Federal Reserve over 'printing money'". "China has warned a top member of the US Federal Reserve that it is increasingly disturbed by the Fed's direct purchase of US Treasury bonds." (7 of 6)

"Memorandum for Record: 05-29-2008"

To: The Office of the President of the United States From: Freeman, Milo D., OIF Sept. '06 - Dec. '07 RE: Detainee Abuse Photos MESSAGE FOLLOWS Mr. President, My name is "Milo Freeman." I am a proud supporter of your election, and an Iraq War veteran. I served in support of OIF from September of 2006 to December of 2007. I am proud to call myself a veteran. I am not, however, proud of the ways which my country has chose to view or exploit my service in the past. While proud of my former occupation, it became clear to me very quickly that our presence in Iraq was in fact a harm to the people of that country. I believe that our presence there caused a great deal of suffering to the people of Iraq, and only served to damage our standing in the world. When I first heard that you were running for President, I eagerly supported your campaign. The night of your election was one of the proudest of my life, because, as a man of 26 years, yours was the first presidency in whose making I had truly had a hand. I have applauded many of your sweeping accomplishments since taking office. I applaud your decisive actions on the economy, and have applauded your efforts to undo the damage of the last eight years. But there is one policy of which I must vehemently disapprove: the decision not to make public ALL of the photographs depicting detainee abuse by US forces. I know that my comrades serve bravely every day in the service of our country. I know that their service is noble, because once it was mine. But I also believe that we are frail, that we are human, and that without the proper guidance we can fail to live up to the values that our Constitution espouses. I believe that being American does not render us incapable of sin. And in these photos, sir, I believe that we have committed many grave sins, indeed. I understand your office's desire not to engage in partisan witch-hunting. I understand that our nation faces many challenges, and simply finding scapegoats for the recent past will solve nothing. But I also believe that we, as Americans, must LOOK our sins in the face. We must know that we have done wrong, so that we can TRULY begin to heal the wounds we have inflicted. Without this catharsis, sir, there can be no justice; there can be no healing. I understand that the photos you have chosen not to release contain images which may incite backlash against the forces responsible. I understand that they contain images which may be upsetting to the American public. My response: good. After an era which was so marked by double standards of justice, my conscience cannot abide the sufferings depicted in these images. I cannot proudly call myself an American, a veteran, while knowing that my service contributed to this shame. It is not merely wrong, sir, it is vile. It is abomination. We allowed ourselves to forget our most basic values, and in so doing we are ALL the less for our silence. Even you, Mr. President. When American forces stormed into Germany in 1945, they discovered horrors beyond belief. They saw how German soldiers had allowed themselves to be co-opted, how German citizens had willingly blinded themselves to the truth. And when they looked upon those crematories, those stacks of corpses piled like cordwood, they did the only thing they felt was right: They rounded up the surviving soldiers, and forced them to bury the dead. They rounded up the villagers, and forced them to confront the hideousness of their own sins. For not all sins are acts of comission, as you well know. In hiding the truth from the public, we are committing sins of OMISSION. If yours is the Administration that I believed it to be, then you can maintain no silence in this. The truth, however ugly, must be made known. If the rumors are true--that the photos you have suppressed not only depict torture and humiliation, but even murder and rape--then we are bound, as Americans, to acknowledge our crimes. Without truth, there can be no healing. I implore you, Mr. President. Serve Justice. Serve Truth. Release these photos. // Freeman, Milo D. (SPC), US Army, 2004-2008 MESSAGE ENDS

This odd-looking graph is actually one of the most important you'll ever see. Click the image to see why.

The gays are coming.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Keyboard Cat

Be very afraid.

FRIDAY F U N

• Food fight
• 2-year-old pool player
• When a blog post just isn't big enough for your expressions, try StoryPit
• 10 Strange Species Discovered Last Year
• Birdsongs radio
• Cat attempts to fix printer
• Why women can't put on mascara with their mouth closed
• Useful Latin phrases

Why Obama can't fix our country:

The Audacity of Hopelessness By Phil Rockstroh May 27, 2009 Editor’s Note: Over the past few decades, an arrogant Establishment has led the United States on a dangerous course of deindustrialization, empire-building and free-market extremism that brought fortunes to the well-connected of Wall Street and Washington, and declining standards of living for many other Americans. Now, as the consequences of those policies become bitterly apparent, some Americans are trying to make sense of what happen, as poet Phil Rockstroh does in this guest essay: From time to time, events unfold that are so large in scope, so all-encompassing in their implications that one's initial response is muted by an inability to categorize it all within the realm of experience. Previous reference points prove of little service. One's image of oneself and one's place in the world is under siege, perhaps even in danger of being torn away. One stares into the abyss, until the abyss removes its dark shades and makes direct eye contact. The mind buzzes; one's thoughts scuttle in circles like stunned insects. On a collective basis, we as a nation are living through such a time. At present, we are witnessing the descending spiral of Icarusian Capitalism; our sacred delusion of the perpetual ascendancy of a god-like market place lies broken in the dust. Malls and McMansions stand abandoned, desolate as the edifices of forgotten gods, as the come-ons of the salesmen of deregulated capitalism are churned to spittle amid a cacophony of collapsing market platitudes. And not an uptick in public optimism, nor a surge of euphoria on Wall Street, nor the "invisible hand of the marketplace" sprinkling pixie dust will bring back the Olympian days of 2005, when the wise men of Washington and Wall Street knew the force of gravity was just a myth believed in by those embittered prophets of doom whose only joy in life is fantasizing the fall of their wealthy betters. It does not matter a damn how many dollars our present day believers of neoliberal tall tales, President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner, pour into the hole in the ground where the crash occurred, a bean stalk, twining skyward towards a golden, debt-negating goose, will not flower forth. Fortunately, when false convictions fall, it is possible for a leveling of sanity to prevail. But there can be no more hubristic flights borne on waxen wings. No more multibillion dollar confidence scams from Wall Street. No more smash and grab imperial wars. No more tea parties for the dim and deranged. Evil of Banality There is the banality of evil, and then there is the evil of banality. Both, the present era has produced in abundance. From about the late 1970s to the present, the United States all but ceased manufacturing products and went into the business of manufacturing marketplace hype, baseless fears, and illusionary enemies. Due to this economic and cultural derangement, a dark tower of self-imprisoning delusions has circumscribed our nation's fate. Is it any wonder the quintessential dark lord of the darkest tower, Dick Cheney, will not exit the scene? And what will foster real change? Not pleasing sound bites and rousing oratory from President Obama, then a continuance of many of the pernicious policies of his criminal predecessors. Conversely, the iron gates of Hell must crash closed behind us. The absence of light must grow so unbearable to us that we're willing to ask how is it we arrived in this place and become willing to challenge our most cherished concepts about ourselves and our place in the scheme of things. That is the sort of "indefinite detention" the nation could use. What is needed is the audacity of hopelessness. President Obama and the Democratic Congress could have ridden a wave of public discontent towards meaningful reform, but instead they have hugged the shore. And they seem to be surveying the property, scouting locations to build beach house retreats for their elitist benefactors and the militarist fantasists whose tsunami-sized arrogance wrought the present destruction in the first place. Meanwhile, right-wing radio haters, like penned dogs, bark into the empty air of their meaningless day. Daily, we negotiate our way through the encompassing banalities and casual brutalities of soft oligarchy, as beneath it all churns the nebulous rage of the powerless that creates an audience for the likes of Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh. It is high season for those virtuosos of displaced anger, because not only the nation's treasure, but its élan vital, has been squandered inflating the bubble-borne vanities of the ultra-wealthy up to the point of economic immolation. The elite have perpetrated an act of catastrophic clownishness so massive that it has left the rest of us stunned, and left to pick amid the debris of our exploded hopes. But hopes do not die pretty. Once dead, they do not rise like the redeemer gods of myth; instead, they stagger about, rotting and snarling like B-movie mummies. They leave us with our mouths tasting of ash. Our hearts choked by dry thistle. High-End Looting Yet the buffoons of Wall Street and the killer clowns of our militarized Disneyland strut and swagger past the smoking ruins they left behind after their high-end looting spree. In their plundering, the only thing they didn't steal for themselves was any sense of self-awareness. Or is self-awareness necessary when you're obscenely rewarded for your narcissistic follies? What motivation would a high-chair tyrant have to modify his self-centeredness when he is shielded from the consequences of his bratty machinations? Why become an honest actor in the realm of human events when one can strut through life with a con artist's inexplicable sense of entitlement? And what about the rest of us? The financial elite, by means of their bagmen in the Executive Branch and Congress, continue to plunder our hopes for a meaningful future byway of that legal larceny popularly known as the bailout, i.e., the latest transfer of wealth from the bottom upward. This is why the buffoonish tea-bagger types hoard their resentments. All they've been left with is a heap of fragmented hatreds. Those toxic baubles they store against reality. Tragically, when not addressed, fear and resentment will increase in intensity and can become an exponentially growing feedback loop of paranoid rage. At present, such a process has created that haunted forest of the airwaves known as right-wing talk radio. It is the voice of anger feeding off of itself, and it seems dangerously close to reaching the point of hypertrophic breakdown. It is the audio analog of a belief system in exponential decay. The more the rot increases in the system the more Glenn Beck babbles and weeps. It is physically manifested in the cataclysmic ecosystem of Rush Limbaugh's repulsive bulk, his corpulent carcass is the morbid bloat of unregulated capitalism. Right-wing hatred is a many headed hydra that feeds on fear and desperation. It cannot be fought by attacking its spindling heads, each of its hissing mouths dripping with black poison. Instead, one must make thrusts at the noxious heart of the raging beast. But one cannot know where the heart of an external monster beats without suffering the agonies of one's own. Don’t Look to Obama Accordingly, one must allow one's heart to be broken. And don't look to Barack Obama's bland charm to mend it. Because the honest grief of the heart provides a point of reference, a foundation of knowledge, as to why the monster is inconsolable in its wounded fury; hence, this provides a strategic starting point as to how to fight it. And that is why we must release the photographs of torture. Moreover, we must bring public ignominy upon the respectable psychopaths in high places who mandated these policies, plus bring a leveling of shame upon the high-flying, highchair tyrants of high finance who exploded the global economy. Our ugliness must be public like a frog. The nasty secrets must be revealed; the mortifying pictures gazed upon. Our stomachs should seize up in revulsion. The ordeal must exact such a degree of revulsion within us that we will never again allow these despicable practices to transpire on our watch. There is a stench of putrefaction rising from beneath our feet. We must uncover the corpses laid under by empire. Being placated by Barrack Obama's bland charm -- in the same manner we were cowed by George W. Bush's infantile petulance, amused by Bill Clinton's brilliant, bad boy seductions, and drugged by Ronald Reagan's stupefying 1940's Hollywood bromides -- will only defer the reckoning and render us ignorant stooges in the impersonal sweep of history. As a people, we have a choice: We can be strengthened by embracing uncomfortable truths, or we can grow enervated and enfeebled by pushing them away. But sadly, Obama is attempting the tried and tested political trick -- used effectively by Washington hacks from Watergate ("Our long national nightmare is over") to Iran-Contra ("We cannot have another failed presidency") -- of inducing the uniquely American trait of Instant Amnesia that has, in the past, allowed the empire to stagger on, repeatedly committing variations of the same crimes, then coddling and protecting the same variety of corrupt elitists responsible, and thereby, reducing the Constitution to tatters and rendering the rule of law to rubble. But this time, the rot is too deep, the pathology too systemic. Obama's placebo presidency will not stem the hypertrophic decay. Granted, it was good to evict the previous, psychotic tenants from the property (Although Dick Cheney seems to be stalking the place with his obsessive, media drive-bys.) but that does nothing to repair the collapsing foundation of the structure, its core eaten away by an infestation of anti-democratic termites. Rather than addressing the core issue, the deterioration of the rights and liberties granted by the U.S. Constitution, President Obama is wallpapering over the rot wrought by the national security state's termite hive mind of authoritarian appetites, that has been, silently, and hidden by darkness, gnawing the house of state to sawdust. Again our choice: Either open up the decay within the system to the light of day and start the process of rebuilding and renewal, or allow the republic-ravening pestilence to continue unchallenged, hence unabated, and let the nation go bughouse crazy as the house comes down around us to the strains of the insect-brain stridulations of Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh. Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com

It's gonna take a revolution to fix things.

Bits and Pieces for the Week of May 17 - 23

Historically speaking, house prices still have quite a way to fall. (Mike)

California (and much of the U.S.) is going to be hit with another massive wave of home loan defaults starting in 2010. Prime suspects? ARMs and Alt-A loans. If you continue believing all the real estate gurus telling you that the housing market is going to bottom out later this year, well, good luck with that! (Mike)

Obama Sez: Don't prosecute, or hold accountable, law-breaking government employees (including POTUS), but don't provide justice to certain imprisoned foreigners because they might be dangerous even though there's no proof. (Mike)

Are electric cars for real this time? (Mike)

How Torture Trapped Colin Powell (Mike)

This just in: You'll have to suck the balls of Republicans to get them to change. (Mike)

Luggage returning from the Hudson River (Mike)

I thought Obama was making a major error or was trying to appease republi-cons when he... "announced his intent to nominate" Ignacia S. Moreno to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice. However, after this report of apparent republi-con obstruction... GOP plans 450 climate bill changes, it confirms Obama is making a huge mistake. At first glance to me, it appears that Obama is in bed with corporations and could really care less about serious issues involving the environment. His latest turns towards the center have made me clarify my stance... I'm off his mailing list for now. Don't get me wrong, Obama is still 100 times better than bu$h/cheney... it does appear he is channeling his inner Clinton. (7 of 6)

FRIDAY F U N

• Time-lapse art
• Rules for Time Travelers
• Let librarians help you find the info that you need
• Google only pick up about 1% of the information available on the Internet. Online College Blog helps you find the rest.
• The White House Museum
• The Internet Archive has a wealth of downloadable material
• Unusual warning signs
• Behind the scenes at the White House
• Matchmaking at 30,000 feet
• You just don't see these things every day
• My, that's a big one
• Fearless rabbit

Yesterday here in California voters soundly rejected the five ballot propositions that would have affected the state budget:


[click for larger image]
Prop 1F wasn't directly about the budget, but would delay legislators' salaries until the budget was passed if it exceeded the standard deadline. Of course that one passed handily.

Personaly I was pissed that the State put these measures on the ballot in the first place, in essence asking the voters to do the legislature's work. My answer to them (by rejecting all of the props) is: "Fuck you; go back to work and do your job!" I have my own job; I don't need to do the government's work, too.

Here's another indicator showing why the recession is still getting worse:


[click for larger image]
Increased delinquencies leads to increased defaults leading to increased bankruptcies, leading to increased unemployment and business failures, leading to increased delinquencies, leading to increased defaults.... etc. It's a vicious, spiraling cycle. If you're just lookng at the stock market for signs of a recession recovery, well, you're just going to get fooled again.

Bits and Pieces for the Week of May 10 - 16

How Ameriquest helped bring down the housing market

Obama continues to fuck up big time on this issue. And here is his newest FU. I thought we elected Democrats because their ethics are at least not in the sewer, where you usually find Republicans? (Mike)

Jeez... Now they're saying that the H1N1 flu could be worse. (Mike)

Sun to power wastewater facility in Arizona. First of its kind in AZ... took them long enough. (7 of 6)

Comedian Obama (Mike)

(Note from Seven of Six: I'll be on sabbatical. Thanks.)

FRIDAY F U N

• A colleague of mine is an avid scuba diver and photographer. Here are her photo galleries of dives off the coasts of Honduras and San Miguel.
• Hypersculpture
• Cleaning out the office fridge really is a good idea
• Science projects that I wish I could have done in high school
• Font War
• 10 Principles of Economics (trust me, it's funny)
• Fiddler on the Roof - in Japanese
• You'll have to jump through a couple of hoops, but Barnes and Noble will give you a bunch of free mp3 ebooks.
• Ordering drive-thru fast food doesn't have to be boring
• Faces in places
• Finally, if you haven't seen this, well, check it out:
  
  

Glenn Greenwald debukes the "inflame anti-American sentiment" justification by Obama for keeping torture photos classified:

"We're currently occupying two Muslim countries. We're killing civilians regularly (as usual) -- with airplanes and unmanned sky robots. We're imprisoning tens of thousands of Muslims with no trial, for years. Our government continues to insist that it has the power to abduct people -- virtually all Muslim -- ship them to Bagram, put them in cages, and keep them there indefinitely with no charges of any kind. We're denying our torture victims any ability to obtain justice for what was done to them by insisting that the way we tortured them is a "state secret" and that we need to "look to the future." We provide Israel with the arms and money used to do things like devastate Gaza. Independent of whether any or all of these policies are justifiable, the extent to which those actions "inflame anti-American sentiment" is impossible to overstate. "And now, the very same people who are doing all of that are claiming that they must suppress evidence of our government's abuse of detainees because to allow the evidence to be seen would "inflame anti-American sentiment." It's not hard to believe that releasing the photos would do so to some extent -- people generally consider it a bad thing to torture and brutally abuse helpless detainees -- but compared to everything else we're doing, the notion that releasing or concealing these photos would make an appreciable difference in terms of how we're perceived in the Muslim world is laughable on its face. "Moreover, isn't it rather obvious that Obama's decision to hide this evidence -- certain to be a prominent news story in the Muslim world, and justifiably so -- will itself inflame anti-American sentiment? It's not exactly a compelling advertisement for the virtues of transparency, honesty and open government. What do you think the impact is when we announce to the world: "What we did is so heinous that we're going to suppress the evidence?" Some Americans might be grateful to Obama for hiding evidence of what we did to detainees, but that is unlikely to be the reaction of people around the world. "If we're actually worried about inflaming anti-American sentiment and endangering our troops, we might want to re-consider whether we should keep doing the things that actually spawn "anti-American sentiment" and put American soldiers in danger. We might, for instance, want to stop invading, bombing and occupying Muslim countries and imprisoning their citizens with no charges by the thousands. But exploiting concerns over "anti-American sentiment" to vest our own government leaders with the power to cover-up evidence of wrongdoing is as incoherent as it is dangerous. Who actually thinks that the solution to anti-American sentiment is to hide evidence of our wrongdoing rather than ceasing the conduct that causes that sentiment in the first place?"

One theory I heard that sort of makes sense is that Obama knows that the courts are going to force him to turn over the photos. By resisting as long as possible, he's "supporting" the military by keeping them out of the crossfire and thus gaining their support and thanks early in his administration to use as future capital. My question is, "But at what cost?"

A message from Obama (snippet):

"....We also have an unprecedented commitment from health care industry leaders, many of whom opposed health reform in the past. Monday, I met with some of these health care stakeholders, and they pledged to do their part to reduce the health care spending growth rate, saving more than two trillion dollars over the next ten years -- around $2,500 for each American family....."

Well shiver me timbers! That's $250 per year per family, or around $60 per person per year. I.e., pocket change! I mean, WTF! That's real healthcare spending reform?

10+ reasons why people write viruses [subscr. req] By Chad Perrin, et al The image of virus writers as intelligent kids with too much time on their hands resorting to digital vandalism to entertain themselves persists. Years ago, making such a guess about why people write viruses might have been accurate most of the time, but the world has moved on. The writers of viruses and other mobile malicious code are many and varied, and their reasons are as wide-ranging as they are themselves. The forms of replicating mobile malicious code are multifarious, too. The most common forms are viruses, worms, and Trojans, though non-replicating equivalents are gaining prominence as well. Cross-site scripting is an example of non-replicating code that serves much the same purpose as self-replicating malicious code; it can affect millions without having to actually “infect” the victim’s computer at all. I can’t claim to know why everybody who writes malicious code does so. I haven’t met them all. I can make some generalizations about reasons people might do so, though. Anger issues There are those who, for whatever reason, just do destructive things for the sake of their destructiveness. They may be malicious narcissists, psychopaths, or just so self-centered in their impression that the whole world is against them that they will blindly lash out at anyone and everyone when they get the chance. For such people, who I believe are a thankfully rare breed, the harm they cause others has no point beyond the harm itself. They are unreasoningly destructive, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. They might think they’re misunderstood and want to communicate with the world by harming it in some way -- and maybe they’re right, that people just don’t understand them deep down. When they react to this state of affairs by maliciously setting out to harm anonymous strangers, however, I don’t think I want to understand them beyond the minimum required to track them down and put a stop to their antisocial behavior. Your mileage may vary, especially if you’re a criminal psychologist. Do it for the Lulz Some still do it for the “fun” of destruction. They may get a thrill out of reading news items about their work causing people trouble, or they may just take a fire-and-forget approach, creating destructive, self-replicating programs for the joy of it without much caring whether they ever see the consequences themselves. Mostly, I’m sure they find it funny to read about people being inconvenienced by what they’ve done. In short, some people write mobile malicious code for the same reasons vandals break windows and spray paint garage doors that belong to people they don’t even know. Espionage321 I’m not talking about sabotage here; I’ll address that later. By “espionage,” I mean attempts to gather information through underhanded means for reasons other than identity fraud and other directly, criminally profitable purposes. Viruses, worms, Trojans, and even backdoors and other malicious code slipped into your software by the vendor may serve the purposes of espionage. People worry about the potential for Chinese manufactured computers having some kind of hardware backdoor built into them; conspiracy theories about commercial software vendors being required to provide backdoor access to the NSA run rampant; the government of India famously demanded that Blackberry provide universal decryption keys for all Blackberry devices sold in the country; and the NSA’s Dual_EC_DRBG NIST encryption standard may itself include a backdoor of sorts, as I mentioned in What my grandmother taught me about IT security. Considering the fiasco of federal warrantless wiretapping violations of the law during the Bush administration’s tenure, and the worse violations hinted at by several officials’ carefully phrased testimony that such worse violations weren’t a part of this particular program, it would be foolish to assume that government agencies never spy on people via software. How many of you remember ECHELON? Online gangs It probably sounds like something out of a 1980s vintage techno-thriller, like Bruce Sterling’s Islands in the Net, but it is disturbingly becoming a reality -- there are actual “gangs” of angry, or just plain ignorant, kids who engage in digital vandalism as part of a misdirected urge to enhance group identity and personal pride in a fractious, underground community. Such groups may target each other or, more often, some third party whose troubles at the hands of such a gang of vandals will be easily noticed and identified. With dramatic names like “Team Holocaust” and “Phalcon SKISMs,“ such cybergangs may occasionally claim a higher purpose (like YAM), but they may also have no pretensions of purpose other than claiming a strong group identity. Like being a Denver Broncos fan, except they mark their territory with digital vandalism instead of by painting their torsos orange and waving giant foam fingers in the air. The hacker instinct Keep in mind the difference between a hacker and a security cracker. People with a hacker mindset usually find themselves eventually drawn to specific fields of interest. In some cases, that interest might revolve around understanding self-replicating mobile malicious code. Sometimes, the best way to understand something is to experiment with different ways to create examples of it. Sometimes, the best way to test something you’ve created is to see it operating under real world conditions. Some immoral or amoral hackers with an interest in self-replicating mobile malicious code may test their creations by releasing them into the wild and seeing how they do. Money money money Most writers of malicious code in the wild these days seem to fall into this category; people who are in it for the filthy lucre. Viruses and worms often carry payloads that open up avenues of intrusion into a system, providing a means for either security crackers or their automated tools to slip past the system’s defenses. Such automated tools can harvest authentication information and other sensitive data (such as for reasons of identity fraud), set themselves up as automated spam generators, or contact a centralized control mechanism of some sort, such as an IRC chat room to create a botnet of thousands, or even millions, of unwitting users’ computers, all of which can be controlled simultaneously by a single security cracker. It is increasingly common for botnets to be offered for rent, for any of a vast number of reasons. Political agitation Sometimes, digital vandalism -- whether accomplished by a virus, a worm, a DDoS attack, or some other means -- can be accomplished for the purpose of making a statement. Whether the reason for something like that is directly political in the sense of addressing matters related to government or more indirectly political, such as interfering with certain types of Web sites and other operations of some class of people with whom one disagrees somehow, the point is sometimes to make people who aren’t directly responsible for whatever’s being targeted aware of one’s own disapproval of those targets. DDoS and other attacks against Microsoft or Yahoo! might fall into this category. Depending on their specific choices of targets and their motivating issues, some such political agitators (as in the case of those targeting and protesting Chinese and Australian national firewall policies) might even be admirable for their principles and the courage of their convictions to some degree. In extreme cases, on the other hand, such as where large numbers of innocent bystanders are materially harmed (having their checking accounts wiped out to make a political statement, perhaps), action taken on behalf of this kind of motivation might reasonably be called “terrorism. Romance and drama Some may be drawn in by the perceived romance and drama of a criminal life itself. Just as some people may start out seduced to a life of crime by the power they perceive in street pushers in their neighborhoods, the exploits of cat burglars in movies, or the rare reports of some criminals who always seem to get away with their criminal acts in the news, the artificial mystique manufactured by the media around “Computer Hackers” can inspire the aspirations of the amoral youth with technical talents. Because of the character of certain online communities, it can be much easier sometimes to feed one’s own delusions of the romance and drama of being a “Computer Hacker” for a longer time than in most other criminal enterprises where the physically gritty, and petty, reality of what they do becomes quickly inescapable. Once fully absorbed within such an insulated, self-reinforcing fantasy life, I don’t know how easy it is to overcome the illusion and realize that one has become nothing but a criminal security cracker -- that being a real hacker is about skill and not 1337 h4xx0r nicknames -- without being forcibly disillusioned by getting caught, prosecuted, and imprisoned for one’s crimes. Sabotage Sometimes the purpose of malicious code might be directly targeted at disrupting the operations of some class of people one doesn’t like. While this sort of behavior might seem superficially similar to that of terrorism as described under "Political agitation," or to vandalism as described under "Online gangs," it’s not terrorism, and it’s more personal than typical vandalism. It is a simple criminal act, aimed at a specific target, more akin to assault. People with business interests may do this not for profit or for political purposes, but to damage other businesses’ ability to compete, at least temporarily. Government agencies may do so to try to bully another government into doing something it doesn’t want to do, as appears to have been the case in the Estonian “cyberwar.” The motivation to sabotage may even be based on something as petty as personal revenge. The intellectual challenge (and to pass the time) From member jim.parlett: Why do people play online games? Why do people do crosswords or play chess? It's the element of competition, pitting your wits and skill against that of others. It's a competition to see who can write the best virus, who can beat the antivirus companies, who can beat Microsoft's developers. I suspect the vast majority of virus writers are male, because competitiveness is a predominantly (but certainly not exclusively) male trait. It's not necessarily about being malicious, not always about money; it's sometimes about winning, about challenging the rest of the world and beating them. It's the cyber age version of graffiti, the Internet equivalent of the adolescent challenging the mature and making waves. Extortion From member Dixon: Let's not leave out plain old-fashioned extortion, as with Vundo/Antivirus2009/Antivirus360. "You're infected! Give us sixty bucks and we'll fix it!" Resume material From member Oz_Media: I knew a few guys in the early 90s who wrote viruses simply to get noticed as capable programmers. Offering up a virus, then creating a removal tool and sending it to major players (F-protect, Computer Associates, Kaspersky, etc.) put them on the map as code savvy. In fact, I remember a time when that was the key focus behind writing viruses and exploiting code -- to show off your talents compared to existing engineers. Who do you think major antivirus companies hire to write removal tools? The same criminals who exploit systems, of course. Also, if a company wouldn't hire them as programmers, they'd hack the software and send the exploit details to the engineers, offering to fix it for $$$$. Then they'd go to a competitor and show them the competition's weaknesses and use THAT to get work with the competitor. Think of Stuart from MAD TV, "Look what I can do!" NOTE: I said I knew them, I didn't say they were friends. Follow the money I had to guess, I’d say that the most common reasons to write viruses these days, by far, are at least somewhat profit-motivated. The I Love You email virus was kind of a watershed incident, the point where a lot of people really started noticing the growing trend in profit-generating mobile malicious code. Any attempt to explain away all virus, worm, and other malicious code writing using a single generalization is unreasonably simplistic, though. Virus writers are people, too -- at least in that they may have any of millions of different motivations for what they do -- even if they’re often subhuman in some respects as well (notably in their ethical development). Most are probably motivated by some combination of more than one of the above suggestions, in fact, and perhaps by other reasons we haven't touched on.

Bits and Pieces for the Week of May 3 - 9

This is some sick shit. Ethics-starved Senator Arlen Specter sets up web site for donations to his reelection campaign under the guise of donating to cancer research. (Mike)

WHO is now saying not to eat pork from pigs who possibly have the H1N1 virus. “Meat from sick pigs or pigs found dead should not be processed or used for human consumption under any circumstances...” When will corporations realize it takes just a little more effort, a little more money to keep their companies clean? Instead, Smithfield Foods goes cheap and in the end, will no doubt have to pay more in the long run. And you "Weight Watchers" eaters thought you had problems before! Oh yeah, lets not forget the little part about introducing a deadly new virus strain... nothing like a little bottom line to cure your ills... permanently. (7 of 6)

Over 50 lb's of Cocaine wash up on Texas shore. (7 of 6)

A case FOR government regulations (Mike)

Outrage doesn't say it well enough for me... I don't get the people in this country... how can anyone be satisfied with this verdict in the beating death of another human being? (7 of 6)

Ok, Arlen we get it... Specter Won't Back Public Health Care Or Employee Free Choice Act. Claims he won't be a loyal Democrat. Then I say no support! Obama do not campaign for him... no funding from the DNC... what good will he do if we throw money his way without him voting for issues important to Democrats. It's imperative that we come up with a solid Progressive challenger in the Democratic Primary. Force him to play ball... we do not need another "Blue Dog 'Dino' Dem!" (7 of 6)

FRIDAY F U N

• An unusually useful book and a paper web site by the same author
• Very cool pizza box
• 64 Things every computer geek should know
• If my living room looked like this, I'd never leave home.
• Special Report: Star Trek fans are disappointed with new Star Trek movie

Unions at Fault?

Creditors May Have Pushed For Chrysler Bankruptcy To Rake In Bailout Cash -- Ryan Grim The White House, auto executives and union representatives were all able to come to an agreement last week to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy. But the car company's creditors -- Wall Street banks and hedge funds -- refused repeated compromises and drove the company under. The refusal doomed a major American auto company to bankruptcy, but it may have been a smart business move for the lenders. Many of the Wall Street firms holding Chrysler bonds may also own credit default swaps that they bought to hedge their bets. These swaps, which are essentially like an insurance policy on the bonds should Chrysler default, were likely mostly issued by AIG. AIG, thanks to the government bailout, has paid off swaps in the past at 100 cents on the dollar. Under the deal they would have had to accept with Chrysler, the bondholders would have received as little as 30 cents on the dollar, for example. Why take 30 or 35 cents on the dollar from Chrysler when you can get the whole buck from the American taxpayer? "The basic story is very simple," says economist Dean Baker of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. "If they hold credit default swaps on the bonds, they're totally happy with them defaulting." In what would rank as one of the great scams of this financial crisis, government bailouts may be colliding. Wall Street may be raking in taxpayer dollars through AIG and returning the favor by driving the auto industry into bankruptcy...

Wow Sara... Great Article

The Far Right's First 100 Days: Shifting Into Overdrive Thursday, April 30, 2009 -- by Sara Robinson Somewhere back in February, about three weeks into the Obama Administration, everybody on the left suddenly noticed that there was something different going on with the conservatives. The outrageous screeds and paranoid delusions sounded pretty much as they always had -- but there was a new fury behind them, a strident urgency that hadn't been there before, and a very audible shift of the gears in right-wing behavior and rhetoric. None of this came as a surprise to veteran right-wing watchers -- we'd been predicting a bad backlash since the 2006 election -- but three months into the new administration, it's increasingly hard to ignore the fact that this ominous new trend is taking on a momentum of its own. On April 7, the Department of Homeland Security ratified some of those observations. Fueled by bone-deep racism, an unnatural terror of liberal government, frustration over the economic downturn, and fears about America's loss of world standing, they said, the militant right wing is indeed rising again. Their numbers are up, their talk is turning ugly, and it's not unthinkable that we could be in for a wave of domestic terrorism unseen since the mid-90s. I've been meaning for a while to talk about what changed after the Inauguration, and why, and what it means to the country going forward. Our observance of the end of the First 100 Days seems to be a good time to do that. The DHS report laid out the history and the current drivers in straight factual terms, and made some safe predictions about what might make the situation worse. (Interestingly, the nightmare scenario for most right-wing watchers -- a white-hot backlash in the wake of another major terrorist attack -- appears nowhere in the DHS assessment. Perhaps they didn't want to put ideas into paranoid right-wing heads.) But the report stopped short of taking the next step. We need to look at what long experience has taught us about the past escalation patterns of right-wing rhetoric and violence, and figure out where we currently stand within those patterns. We actually know quite a bit about this. Most national agencies tasked with keeping tabs on political and religious extremist groups look for specific signs that help them sort out who's just talking the talk, and who's actually getting ready to walk the walk. The criteria vary from agency to agency; and our collective insight into these patterns changes and deepens every year. But there are some generally-accepted principles -- and applying them to the current state of conservatism gives a clearer view what's changed in the past 100 days, what the shift really means, and what could be coming next if the right keeps going down this road. I want to make it clear: the DHS report emphasizes that there's no specific evidence that any particular group is planning any particular action. At the same time, what's equally clear from the pattern analysis is that the upshift we heard was the right wing going into overdrive -- the speed at which talk about revolution (which has been going on for years, but intensified after 2006) accelerates into concrete preparation for action. Here's why. * * * Ready.... The far right wing has been laying the groundwork for violent action for decades. Long before they turn dangerous, political and religious groups take their first step down that road by adopting a worldview that justifies eventual violent action. The particulars of the narrative vary, but the basic themes are always the same. First: their story is apocalyptic, insisting that the end of the world as we've known it is near. Second: it divides the world into a Good-versus-Evil/Us-versus-Them dualism that encourages the group to interpret even small personal, social, or political events as major battles in a Great Cosmic Struggle -- a habit of mind that leads the group to demonize anyone who disagrees with them. This struggle also encourages members to invest everyday events with huge existential meaning, and as a result sometimes overreact wildly to very mundane stuff. Third: this split allows for a major retreat from consensus reality and the mainstream culture. The group rejects the idea that they share a common future with the rest of society, and curls up into its own insular worldview that's impervious to the outside culture's reasoning or facts. Fourth: insiders feel like they're a persecuted, prophetic elite who are being opposed by wicked, tyrannical forces. Left to fester, this paranoia will eventually drive the group to make concrete preparations for self-defense -- and perhaps go on the offense against their perceived persecutors. Fifth: communities following this logic will also advocate the elimination of their enemies by any means necessary, in order to purify the world for their ideology. All these ideas have been part of the discourse on the right for decades. You can trace their genesis all the way back to the 1950s, starting with the overheated apocalypticism of the anti-Communist movement. Over time, it came to include the dualism of the John Birch Society and assorted white supremacist groups; the persecution complex of Nixon and his Silent Majority followers; the anti-liberal eliminationism that's been gathering force for the past decade; and the war on evidence-based science and reason that's always been at the heart of conservative arguments. As J. Peter Scoblic argues in Us vs. Them, narratives that justify violence have always been deeply ingrained in the right-wing belief system. Since the Inauguration, all of these themes are being played far more loudly and openly. And somewhere between November 4 and this 100th day, the right wing has also begun to act on these beliefs in ways that push the whole process to the next level -- the level where thoughts and beliefs begin to crystallize into action. * * * Set... What's different now? Plenty of things -- all of which, taken together, strongly suggest a group that's just about done talking, and is beginning to organize itself to act. First, there's been a shift in rhetoric. Over at Orcinus, Dave Neiwert and I have argued for years (with plenty of expert support from social psychologists) that strong words are often a thought rehearsal, a premonition of possible strong action to come. It's not that people always act on the rhetoric -- they don't. It's that when the actions do come, you find that there's usually been plenty of very hot rhetoric tossed around in the run-up, as people psych themselves up for battle. That's why agencies watching worrisome groups keep their ears open, and listen carefully for a specific shift in tone. A lot of groups seeking change establish the lines of conflict by constantly naming and accusing their enemies, and insisting on their essential evilness. This isn't great politics, but it's not usually a problem -- unless it moves to the next stage, where the group starts expressing a clear intention to eradicate those perceived enemies. This can be a signal that they've accepted the need for violent action in their own minds, and may be actively planning something. It's a shift that should never be ignored. When Sean Hannity runs a poll asking whether his viewers prefer a military coup, secession, or armed rebellion -- and armed rebellion wins -- that's evidence of this kind of shift. Right-wing talkers have built careers out of demonizing liberals; but when they start talking about what specific steps should be taken against them, that's not something we should ignore. Second, there's been a quantum leap in the sheer down-the-rabbit-hole surreality of their beliefs about the world. Bloggers have been pointing out for years that conservatives have zero compunction about Making Shit Up; but in the past, their prevarications were almost always built around a kernel of fact, wrapped in thick layers of distortion, misattribution, or lies of omission. What's new in the past 100 days is that we're now seeing stories that are just flat-out fabulation, without even so much as a nod to factual reality. They're not even bothering to try to attach these claims to any kind of truth. Their fantasies are so much truthier to them. Up is down. Black is white. Obama's not a citizen, he's going to take our guns, Congress is about to legalize incest....this we believe, and there's no expert and no amount of real-world evidence that can ever convince us otherwise. The right wing's retreat from consensus reality has finally left them living in an Orwellian alternative universe all their own. Third, they've been humiliated by their election losses. And that's hugely dangerous, because authoritarian leaders react uniquely badly to being humiliated. Experts tell us that their huge egos and insatiable need for control make them very brittle -- and that the shattering point is often a specific event that publicly repudiates their authority, or makes it obvious to the world and their followers that they are no longer in control. Decisively losing both the White House and the Congress has been all that, and then some. This overweening humiliation is growing every day that the Democrats and their new president stay in power. It's a pain that will not go away, and it's likely to curdle into something far more venomous in time. The result, unfortunately, is probably going to be more violent attacks on government authority like the one in Pittsburgh last month. Fourth, there's that new sense of urgency. Groups heading for violent confrontation are often pushed past the brink by the belief that the apocalypse is unfolding before their very eyes, and that they have no choice but to seize the moment and act. For many on the right, January 20 was the day the trumpet sounded. Obama's going to turn the country over to the Commies. He's going to take away your guns. He's going to open the borders, turn the country into a welfare state, and give all our tax money to lazy minorities. And it's no idle threat -- they're quite convinced that he's going to do all this any day now. This panic is new, and it's palpable. It's also worrisome, because these would-be revolutionaries have been preparing themselves for years for just this moment. Fifth, the demagogues have seized conservatism's center stage. Violent groups typically organize around a leader who promotes the apocalyptic visions, the dualism, the persecution complex, the eliminationist fantasies -- and the sense that True Patriots can no longer wait another minute to act. In some groups, this leader exerts total control over every aspect of their followers' lives, like Koresh and Jim Jones did. In others, the leader is simply a figurehead who puts the ideology out there, leaving the followers to figure out how to implement things on their own. (The followers also bear full responsibility for the results, leaving the leader relatively unscathed.) Osama bin Ladin runs his show this way. Either way, these leaders are invariably amoral, ego-driven high social-dominance men who gain power by hijacking their followers' moral systems. When they succeed -- which is to say, when they finally override the ethical ballast provided by tradition, customs, laws, and conscience to become the dominant moral authority in their followers' lives -- they can gain a stunning degree of influence, and lead people into doing things they'd never have considered on their own. The right wing has never been short of these guys. Still, in the past, the paranoid stylings of media ideologues like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck were simply background ranting to the more reality-based lead vocal of the party's actual politicians. But now the election is over. The candidates have all gone home. And the GOP's party structure is in tatters. There are no credible political leaders left to drive the conservative conversation. That leaves a power vacuum on the front line that the right-wing hate talkers are now rushing forward to fill. When Rush Limbaugh is considered the GOP's spiritual leader and Glenn Beck is its leading prophet, the conservative movement's entire discourse is now driven by whatever outrageous rhetoric seems most likely to boost Fox's ratings. The moral hijacking of the movement has begun, and nobody should be surprised when these folks finally end up in the same moral abyss these kinds of leaders always bring their followers to. Sixth, they're putting themselves in direct opposition to state power -- and identifying that power as their primary enemy. All groups headed for a violent confrontation eventually come to believe that their enemies are somehow aligned with the government -- and the government is out to get them. Conservatives are coming up hard against this one now that they no longer control the government themselves. Back when they were gleefully dismantling the Constitution and building a surveillance state, it never occurred to them that they might someday be out of power. Now, of course, they're terrified to find all that unleashed, unaccountable power in the hands of Libruls and That Black Guy. Weirdly, they seem to have almost total amnesia about their role in all this. To hear them tell it, Barack Obama seized all this power for himself in just the past three months. Given that epic memory failure, there's not much hope that they'll draw the right lessons from this reversal. It's far more likely that their newfound terror of government power will lead them to resent -- and eventually overreact to -- even casual encounters with government authority. Seventh, they're arming up. Back in 2006, right-wing watchers warned that white supremacist groups were encouraging their members to join the military in order to get the weapons training they'll need to execute their racial holy war. And for the first time ever, the recruit-starved military wasn't doing much to cull them out. The DHS's concern about returning veterans was no doubt partly based on this recent history, which has given racist groups unprecedented access to propagandize troops at the front. At the same time, the past 100 days have seen record gun sales and nationwide ammo shortages as terrified conservatives buy up guns in anticipation of a total weapons ban. This seems like just another curious only-in-America news story -- until you realize that the far right is already sporting most of the earmarks of a group that's gearing up for violent action. Given the rest of the pattern, we should take this trend very, very seriously. Eighth, they're flexing their muscles. Groups who are flirting with terrorist action will usually start by experimenting with threats and petty violence. Learning that they can successfully intimidate others adds to the group's sense of invincibility, and teaches them the dangerous lesson that violence works. Both these discoveries increase the chances they'll resort to violence more quickly, and in greater magnitude, in the future. The Southern Poverty Law Center carefully tracks hate incidents around the country, and they've seen a significant uptick in violence and threats since the inauguration. While we can hope this will die down in time as people make their peace with the new status quo, we also need to be aware that there's a pattern where things go the other way -- that these events will embolden the right to commit bigger acts of thuggery, and organize on a broader scale for actual domestic terrorism. If our national terrorism watchers were tracking a religious or political group that had suddenly escalated on all eight of these fronts in a matter of three short months, they'd be seriously concerned. They'd be asking the question we need to ask: Now that we're here, what comes next? * * * ...Go? Let me start this last piece of the discussion with a warning. This isn't a prediction. It's just a description of how things typically play out when any authoritarian group arrives at the place where the American right now stands. If they keep going this way, this is where the road leads -- but the people now in that movement still have a choice about whether or not they're actually going to make the trip. If they do, here's what lies ahead: Further separation. One of the watershed moments in the development of a religious or political radical group is the day they decide to go upcountry, building some sort of secluded retreat or community away from the prying eyes of the authorities. The Aryan Nations, the Fundamentalist Mormons, Jim Jones....the list is long, because this is such a universal moment in the radicalization process. It's also the next place the gears shift. The American right is too big to just all go off into the woods together -- but they're obviously trying hard to retreat from the rest of us in other ways. The complete break with factual reality is one part of this. The growing talk of secession is another overt sign that they're desperately looking for someplace to escape to. Given that impulse, it's very likely that land is already being quietly bought up, and that some people are beginning to plan their moves to various locations around the country where they believe they'll be safer. It's not unreasonable to expect that over the next year or two, we'll start to hear about a new round of separatist compounds; and that a few states will become right-wing havens where secessionist talk will turn more serious. This is a dangerous development. Groups that try to separate always claim that they're retreating to "live in peace" -- but too often, peace is about the last thing that results from this. Goin' up to the country is an overt declaration that the group believes that the mainstream culture is "out to get us," and is now asserting its right to live outside the law. There's an unquestioned conviction that the outside world means them harm -- and that they must organize and arm themselves for the coming showdown. The isolation also allows high-dominance leaders to concentrate their power over group members, without any pesky social or legal recourse to fairness. Suspicion and dependency flourish. People learn that might makes right, and come to accept violence as a natural and proper way to deal with conflict. This is why law enforcement groups consider the moment of physical retreat as sort of Rubicon beyond which the likelihood of violence increases dramatically. We should be very concerned that the right wing seems determined to go there. Overt lawlessness. A group that is separated from society, living in its own world, telling itself stories that justify violence, gripped with paranoia, perfectly willing to engage in petty thuggery and intimidation, and armed to the teeth has pretty much everything required to turn into a first-rate criminal cartel. Members come to believe that they answer to a "higher law," and express that new-found "freedom" by overtly and deliberately defying laws passed by a government they don't respect as legitimate. At this point, it's common to see people who've never been in trouble with the law before suddenly coming into contact (and confrontation) with the authorities. Lawlessness is a sign of an increasingly open contempt for and defiance of the larger society -- and a hint that that the group is moving into the openly oppositional stance that precedes a large-scale attack or confrontation. Furthermore: once they get to where they're brazenly breaking laws, you can bet they're especially breaking weapons laws. Gathering guns and bomb-making materials is seen as necessary to either defend their home turf from their perceived enemies, or make offensive plans to eradicate those enemies. Picking fights with authorities. A decade ago, law enforcement and government officials too often blundered into bloody showdowns with radical groups because they simply didn't understand the central role they played as The Enemy in the group's unfolding eschatological drama. These days -- following several disastrous confrontations in the 1990s -- government officials are being trained to move slowly, to avoid backing would-be revolutionaries into humiliating corners, and to work within their worldview and belief structure wherever possible to defuse a possible confrontation. That's important, because a group that's gone all the way to the end of the road arrives at a place where it's armed, barricaded, mentally and physically prepared, and spoiling for a fight. From that point, any excuse -- a routine business inspection, a traffic stop, a custody hearing that didn't go the right way -- can become the catalyst that leads the group to take out after its government persecutors. As the group becomes more dug in and angry, these confrontations become harder to avoid. And all too often, they end in disaster. * * * From here, the most likely case is that vast majority of the folks now drunk on right-wing hate talk will ultimately sober up just soon enough not to follow the movement's emerging leaders down this road. But, if the 1990s were any guide (and the DHS report seems to think that they are), there will also be a small but significant fraction of hardcore right-wingers who will zoom right through the flashing red lights and ride all the way to the bloody end. Without the moderating influence of the saner voices among them, they'll quickly turn violent -- and we could be in for an interesting few years before it all burns itself out. And, in the end, it probably will burn itself out. In the 1990s, the violence escalated up until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 -- an event so gruesome and dramatic that it discredited the movement even among its own followers. Tim McVeigh's capture and execution also scared tough-talking movement leaders with the threat of real consequences. And so that round ended. What we've seen the past 100 days strongly suggests that, to at least some degree, we will be going there again. The right wing long ago accepted a foundational narrative that justifies violence. Now, the leaders of the movement are inciting their followers to take many (if not most) of the intermediate steps that signal a group actively gearing up for violence. From this point, it's only a short slide to further separation, disengagement, and finally confrontation. What we've seen so far has been intense and surprising -- but we should also recognize it as the first warning gusts of a rapidly gathering storm.

Bits and Pieces for the Week of April 26 - May 2

Antarctica is falling apart. (Mike)

Ten Sneakiest Credit Card Tricks. (7 of 6)

If you insist on wearing a mask to protect yourself from the swine flu virus, you should read this first, as most masks are useless. (Mike)

Depressing video: demolishing new homes (Mike)

Welcome to Phase V (Mike)

Why does swine flu appear to be more deadly in Mexico? (Mike)

Possible source of current Swine Flu; also, see on Googlemaps the locations of all reported cases (Mike) (UPDATE: Or maybe not)

Here's a link to the article in the NY Review of Books (about Presidential power grabs) written by Senator Arlen Specter, who referred to it in his announcement today of his switch to the Democratic Party. (Mike)

Lately, it seems bloggers get the jump on traditional media for early leads in big news events. It should come as no surprise that certain bloggers are linking Smithfield Foods and their products to the Swine Flu outbreak in Mexico. (7 of 6)

The next wave of the real estate crash: it's coming (and that's not even taking into consideration the rapidly developing commercial real etate crash) (Mike)

As a delegate to the California Democratic Party State Convention this past weekend, I can assure you that the party is continuing its course of becoming one of the most progressive state parties in the nation. The party's primary concern and topic of discussion is the 2/3 vote requirement for passing annual state operating budgets by the legislature. As a result of the current law, the highly-polarizing and dysfunctional Republicans have a nazi-like stranglehold on their party's legislators and thus the budget negotiations. The Democratic pary leadership has vowed to do everything possible to get this law overturned. (Mike)

It appears funding for flu pandemic preparedness was taken out of the stimulus bill. A lot more from Think Progress. The republi-con mantra, "Keeping you safe by going cheap!" As they utter, "Damn Mexicans", under their breath! UPDATE: Just like clockwork... the hate mongers are all over it! (7 of 6)

Too funny... domestic extremist bombers demand natural food. Terry Nichols and Eric Rudolph don't like Super Max prison food. My brother in law tells me it's the same food the cafeteria serves the prison guards as well. (7 of 6)

Magnitude of dirty VA hospital equipment unknown. I'm glad I cancelled my colonoscopy at the V.A. Hospital here in Phoenix... I will reschedule when I know steps have been taken to assure safeguards are in place. (7 of 6)

FRIDAY F U N

• An a capella tribute to composer John Williams
• 100 numbers in 100 movies
• Inappropriate Science Fair exhibits
• Intros to TV shows
• Newsmap - a new way of finding the news that you want
• How to correctly cough and sneeze
• Swine Flu PSAs from the 1970s
• Draw a cyclist's path (game)
• Help Tooly find his tools (yes, it's a really odd site)
• First there was (and still is) TinyURL. Now there's GiantURL.