LEFT is RIGHT (blogging against The Bush-war) |
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| American children may be the first generation to have shorter life spans than their parents. Childhood obesity rates have tripled in recent decades, due largely to an environment that has become increasingly saturated with unhealthy, but highly marketed, food products. Obese children are now developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease at an alarming rate, and we cannot expect this to improve unless we make substantial environmental changes. The aggressive and relentless advertisement of nutritionally poor foods to children exploits them and is overwhelming for even the most vigilant parents. Children see 10 food advertisements per hour when they watch TV, mostly for unhealthy foods. In principle, parents can forbid their children to watch TV, but most agree that this approach is too extreme. Our children deserve an environment that promotes good health; it's fundamental to our nation's best interest. Parents don't want unhealthy foods marketed to their children, and the only realistic way to stop this is to enact and enforce laws that offset the economic incentives that have made children the easy prey of food companies. We need a few courageous legislators to resist the food company lobbies and start the nation thinking about banning food advertising to children. It has been done in Europe and elsewhere and should be done in America, too. If future generations of Americans are to be healthy and happy, we must curtail the lax food marketing laws that promote childhood obesity. Let's not turn a blind eye to this crisis! That's my opinion. I'm Dr. Michael Dansinger, Obesity Researcher at Tufts-New England Medical Center and Director of the Tufts Popular Diet Trial. |
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| "Iraq has become hell for journalists because wherever you go or whatever you do, you're being targeted. We depend on this work for a living and, day after day, more colleagues are being killed." - - - local Baghdad newspaper journalist Saleh Abdul-Kareem |
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The UAE control of our ports certainly has sprouted a plethora of opinions covering the entire political spectrum. They range from full steam ahead (pun intended):
to maybe we should reconsider this:
to a definite nope, nada, reject:
The Neocons, who still control everything, are going to go through with this anyway so, really, it's all just an exercise in futile debate (as has been everything else during the past five years).
| ....Today, Dubai's main business is commerce, not dwindling oil. Dubai's royal family wisely invested in scores of future-oriented businesses. Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, of which it is a member, are increasingly enriched by brains and entrepreneurship rather than oil. True, two of the 9/11 hijackers came from the UAE. A few of its citizens supported al-Qaida. But most of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and the Saudis have over $100 billion invested in key U.S. industries. It is preposterous to claim tiny Dubai will threaten the U.S. American port security is run by the Coast Guard, FBI, and Homeland Security. All three agencies and the Pentagon cleared Dubai, a very close U.S. ally, to run the ports. Congress would do far better to cease pandering to domestic lobbies and focus its intention on that yawning gap in U.S. border security – the entire southwest border with Mexico. Over one million illegal aliens flood into the U.S. each year while Congress fusses about P&O and browbeats Canada. Why? Because, as usual, gutless Congress fears angering Hispanic voters. It's safer and easier to fulminate against Arabs.... |
to maybe we should reconsider this:
| ....But of course the issue isn't whether the UAE is a friendly government. The issue is whether the UAE is a friendly government whose subsidiary organizations are more easily infiltrated--against the government's will, presumably--by people who might not be friendly than are other organizations that might manage U.S. ports. It's hard to believe the honest answer isn't "yes." .... |
to a definite nope, nada, reject:
| ....Joseph King, who headed the customs agency's anti-terrorism efforts under the Treasury Department and the new Department of Homeland Security, said national security fears are well grounded. He said a company the size of Dubai Ports World would be able to get hundreds of visas to relocate managers and other employees to the United States. Using appeals to Muslim solidarity or threats of violence, al-Qaeda operatives could force low-level managers to provide some of those visas to al-Qaeda sympathizers, said King, who for years tracked similar efforts by organized crime to infiltrate ports in New York and New Jersey. Those sympathizers could obtain legitimate driver's licenses, work permits and mortgages that could then be used by terrorist operatives. Dubai Ports World could also offer a simple conduit for wire transfers to terrorist operatives in the Middle East. Large wire transfers from individuals would quickly attract federal scrutiny, but such transfers, buried in the dozens of wire transfers a day from Dubai Ports World's operations in the United States to the Middle East would go undetected, King said.... |
The Neocons, who still control everything, are going to go through with this anyway so, really, it's all just an exercise in futile debate (as has been everything else during the past five years).
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February 27, 2006
The (hopefully) next governor of California has released his first TV ad. (video, of course)
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| "Are you dying to know how to hack into a Diebold machine? Unless your local registrar has bothered to change it, here's the key: F2654hD4. And the 8-byte password used for Diebold’s voter, administrator, and ender cards is ED 0A ED 0A ED 0A ED 0A. Aren't you glad this stuff is so easily found on the internet?" - - - Kevin Drum |
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Steve Clemons on "Dictator Bush" (excerpt):
I marvel at both the arrogant, abusive and total resolve of the Neocons, and the total disregard by the American public.
May you rest in peace, Dennis Weaver.
A true activist and a fascinating actor. My favorite work of his was the TV movie "Duel".
| ....I know Bush is the big boss, but Bush's tactic has been to allow two -- and perhaps three -- contending groups inside his White House to wage war with each other while he tilts in the final analysis towards the group that seems to win out in these private gladiator contests. Most often, the winning tag-team has been Cheney-Rumsfeld over all others. Cheney's team have been the architects of both a kind of Presidency that is exactly what the Roman "dictatorships" were defined as -- a temporary provision of unchecked executive power to a ruler -- as well as the mercurial rise in power of the Office of the Vice President. And Cheney's team is the scary sort of lot that is hell-bent on establishing a kind of permanence to their power that threatens in very, very real terms the genuineness of our democracy. Roman dictators still had constraints on what they could do. For instance, absolute authority was granted for distinct periods of time. Certain informal norms of continued consultations with the Roman Senate continued during the period of dictatorship. The word "dictator" in modern language implies far vaster power and many negative connotations than the Roman application of the concept carried with it. Nonetheless, Bush has become the epitome of a Roman dictator in the 21st century in his assertion of "unitary executive" authority which this White House has argued has "inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances." The problem is that unlike Rome, where the Senate granted the dictator great powers, Congress has not -- in fact -- given Bush the authority to operate beyond his Constitutional authority. Bush has, instead, asserted that authority and taunted Congress to stop him. This power grab should dominate our media and our civic discourse. Our President -- via a deranged, anti-democratic team of power-obsessed thugs in Vice President Cheney's office -- is engaged in a clear assault on the core architectural joists of American democracy.... |
I marvel at both the arrogant, abusive and total resolve of the Neocons, and the total disregard by the American public.
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)
May you rest in peace, Dennis Weaver.
| ....A vegetarian for most of his adult life, Weaver became an activist for protecting the environment and combating world hunger. He served as president of Love Is Feeding Everyone (LIFE), which fed 150,000 needy people a week in Los Angeles County. He founded the Institute of Ecolonomics, which sought solutions to economic and environmental problems. He spoke at the United Nations, U.S. Congress, to college students and school children about fighting pollution and starvation.... |
A true activist and a fascinating actor. My favorite work of his was the TV movie "Duel".
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February 26, 2006
| "As I heard NPR's reports about Sunis pulling shiites out of their homes (and probably vice-versa), a chill went up my spine. I have no doubt that the worst is about to begin in Iraq with ethnic cleasnsing / mass murders/ Lebanon-style (Sabra and shatilla) civil war about to begin. And the US is stuck in the middle. While it would be great to get out right now (last month would have been better), the responsibility for everything is on us. We can't leave now, and we will be blamed (mostly correctly) for all that is about to happen. I am filled with dread. Our leadership is still saying to hold the line, when the line is not there." - - - TPM reader AK |
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| "We are letting Bu$hCo get away with figurative and literal murder, and we are active and willing accomplices, aiding and abetting as long as our SUVs don't run out of gas and the price doesn't stay too high for too long. Are we really so cheap that we can be bought off so easily to not do our jobs as citizens of this once-great land? Are we so addicted to Bu$hCo crack that we won't give it up for anything - even the survival of our nation while facing the loss of our freedoms?" - - - Pessimist |
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It's Sunday morning, so it must be time to GOOGLEBOMB Bill O'Reilly!
Bill O'Reilly
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And from Tim at DemLeft: Bill O'Reilly
Click each link and help bring O'Reilly lovers who google his name to articles that tell the truth about his unethical journalism.
Bill O'Reilly
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And from Tim at DemLeft: Bill O'Reilly
Click each link and help bring O'Reilly lovers who google his name to articles that tell the truth about his unethical journalism.
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February 24, 2006
Juan Cole gave just one example of why U.S. troop presence in Iraq is not only worthless and wasteful, but also detrimental:
What an incredibly idiotic situation Butcher Bush, Shooter Cheney and Dumbsfeld have put our young men and women in. Not only are they cowering behind barriers, doing virtually nothing good, but when they do get ordered to venture outside, they are then in danger of getting their arms and legs blown off, if not killed. I don't understand why every decent American is not marching on Washington right now, demanding that their government stop this madness.
The piece also has a nice refresher course on hurricane formation. You'll definitely want to pass this one around..
| Sunni Arabs in Iraq blamed US troops for not protecting Sunni mosques and worshippers from violence. The US military ordered the US soldiers in Baghdad to stay in their barracks and not to circulate if it could be helped. [Later reports said some US patrols has been stepped up.] This situation underlines how useless the American ground forces are in Iraq. They can't stop the guerrilla war and may be making it worst. Last I knew, there were 10,000 US troops in Anbar Province with a population of 1.1 million. What could you do with that small force, when the vast majority of the people support the guerrillas? US troops would be useless if they had to fight in alleyways against sectarian rioters. If they tried to guard the Sunni mosques, they'd have to shoot into Shiite mobs, which would just raise the level of violence they face from Shiites in the south. |
What an incredibly idiotic situation Butcher Bush, Shooter Cheney and Dumbsfeld have put our young men and women in. Not only are they cowering behind barriers, doing virtually nothing good, but when they do get ordered to venture outside, they are then in danger of getting their arms and legs blown off, if not killed. I don't understand why every decent American is not marching on Washington right now, demanding that their government stop this madness.
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Weekend Bits
- If you're a bird and you survive bird flu, then you might want to avoid flying around this U.S. state.
- New electronic voting machine shenanigans revealed from 2004 Palm Beach precinct records
- Israeli giraffe forced onto birth control drug regimen
- What does it mean when real news, in a period of only 5 years, has become so outrageous that it makes a satirical, fake-news web site no longer seem that crazy?
- Start saving your $$ now, because in 2009 the first flying car, available for $148K, becomes available
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Darksyde wrote a terrific piece about how the Bush-war Administration is actively undermining the integrity of government scientists, using NOAA/Global Warming/Hurricanes as the most visible (to the public) example (snippet):
| ....But if you tuned into a cable news show discussing the relationship between hurricanes and global warming last fall, in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, you might not have heard any of this. Instead you could have been left with the impression that warming, global or otherwise, has no effect on hurricane frequency or intensity or probability of landfall. You might have heard instead it's all just a natural cycle, in between station breaks for erectile dysfunction drugs or the All New SUV with onboard wet bar and Jacuzzi! They might have looked you straight in the eyes, peering coyly out of that cathode ray tube as if they've known you all their life with perfect teeth and manicured nails, and told you point blank it was all routine. Then the mantra would all be repeated by the bubble-headed bleached blonde with a gleam in her eye: Nothing to be worried about, before moving on to the real news: Runaway brides and Brad and Jen and maybe a young missing white gal. You know, stuff that's more important than having your house swept away in a storm surge or your neighbor's kids floating face down just out of working mom's grasp, as she haltingly clings to Nana's emaciated corpse with one hand and the tattered rooftop peeking shyly out of a dark, rippling cesspool with the other. Given the format of commercial news, hemmed in by breaks for sponsors and the need to reduce complex phenomena into less precise soundbites, it's easy to pull a little bait and switch operation. Simply conflate or confuse hurricanes, dangerous hurricanes, tropical storms, and eastern Atlantic tropical depressions all together. It would be no sweat to portray the idea that there's no evidence that warming would increase the frequency or duration and range of hurricanes, or dangerous hurricanes by using the "word" storm loosely and interchangeably, referring to tropical depressions off of Africa and to hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and everything else. This is just one way to intentionally fool or accidentally confuse the public. Another would be to mix up statistics from TDs, TS's, hurricanes, dangerous hurricanes, and landfall hurricanes, and pick out whatever figures from whichever category that seems to make your case at hand, and apply that subset of stats haphazardly to other subsets with lots of vague techno-babble and pretty graphics to make it look credible: Cinematic sleight of hand to cover poor sourcing and questionable methodology. It even works on blogs, including Daily Kos diaries ... Now, given all that, suppose you have an underlying agenda where any public awareness of global warming is unwelcome and potentially damaging. You now have a problem: Katrina and Rita have thrust the issue into the public limelight in a huge, negative way. Hypothetically speaking, if you wanted to engage in damage control, as a preemptive strike against any inconvenient concern over the relationship between global warming and ending up a bloated corpse face down in floodwaters, what would you do? What if money, influence, and power were no obstacle? .... |
The piece also has a nice refresher course on hurricane formation. You'll definitely want to pass this one around..
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Friday Fun
- Remember the German video about Klaus, the forklift driver? It's baaaaack.
- Surviving Contrails
- Unpimp my ride (videos)
- So, MS Paint is for amateurs, you say? Guess again.
- Blueprint (game)
- Weight Watchers Recipe Cards from the '70s
- We're sinking! We're Sinking! (video) (Note: some people have noted that this is demeaning to Germans; I say, why can't we all just laugh at ourselves and stop being so ridiculously over-sensitive... )
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February 23, 2006
Media Matters takes on a subject rarely discussed, the implicit support by the Bush Administration of Republican-backed media smear campaigns against dissident opinion. Intro:
| Vice President Dick Cheney's recent accidental shooting of a hunting companion offered yet another example of an unmistakable pattern with the Bush administration, which few in the media have noted. When faced with potential political damage stemming from its actions or decisions, the Bush White House attacks those fomenting the criticism. Administration officials and Republican surrogates surface throughout the media to smear or discredit the source of the controversy. Following these efforts, Cheney or President Bush then take to the airwaves and appear to temper the debate. In their statements, they express respect for the subject of the earlier attacks, accept responsibility for the actions being criticized, and assert their support for fair political discourse -- all the while benefiting from whatever discrediting their surrogates' smears brought on their targets. In their coverage of these comments, news outlets regularly depict Bush and Cheney as having taken the high road. But while framing the president and vice president as above the fray, these outlets often ignore that the administration itself generated, participated in, or at least did nothing to stop the earlier attacks. The Cheney hunting accident, the John Murtha controversy, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign -- each of these events offers an example of this pattern and the media's complicity in it.... |
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Midweek Bits
- Too bad that this kind of charity is so rare these days that it makes headlines (subscr. req)
- The real reason Bush-war wants the UAE to control American ports (see "Bombs Away" post)
- The newest 2006 hybrid cars
- Prepare yourself for the U.S. Military's use of "safe" nuclear bombs against Iran.
- How the Bush-war Administration is methodically shredding the U.S. Constitution
- Huh? Jimmy Carter backs Bush-war Administration's support of UAE control of some U.S. ports.
- U.S. Congresswoman Sue Myrick sent a message today to Bush-war about what she thinks he should do about selling American ports to the UAE.
- Letterman sums up Cheney (video)
- More on the illegal certification of Diebold electronic voting machines by the California Secretary of State, Phil McPherson
- The American press has failed to adequately report the thousands of Iraqis made homeless from flooding
- AFL-CIO introduces its new blog, AFL-CIO Now, for America's working families
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February 22, 2006
If you've been using Microsoft AntiSpyware on your computer, be sure to delete the program and replace it with the newer, better, renamed version: WINDOWS DEFENDER.
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| "To paraphrase Karl Rove, Democrats and Republicans have fundamentally different views on national security. For example, Republicans think we should outsource national security to a state used by 9/11 hijackers as an operational and financial base, Democrats think we should not. Democrats have a post-9/11 worldview and many Republicans have a pre-9/11 worldview. Democrats think it is wrong to trust a state that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, Republicans think it's right. That doesn't make them unpatriotic but it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong." --- Bill Burton, communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee |
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Juan Cole explains why yesterday's bombing of the Askariyah shrine in Samarra, Iraq, could spell a further escalation of violence in the Middle East (excerpt):
Next to being an Iraqi civilian, the person I would least like to *be at this time is a U.S. soldier in Iraq. We've got to get our used and abused uniformed kids out as soon as possible. Three years ago Bush-war promised that Iraqis would be tossing flowers at our soldiers' feet. Instead they're tossing things that blow up.
(*or Ann Coulter)
| ....Then real disaster struck. The guerriillas blew up the domed Askariyah shrine in Samarra. The shrine, sacred to Shiiites, honors 3 Imams or holy descendants of the Prophet. They are Ali al-Hadi, Hasan al-Askari, and his disappeared son Muhammad al-Mahdi. Thousands of Shiiites demonnstrated [sic] in Samarra and in East Baghdad, against this desecration. The Twelfh Imam or Mahdi is believed by Shiites to have disappeared into a supernatural realm (just as Christians believe in the ascension of Christ) from which he will someday return. Some Shiites think his second coming is imminent. Muqtada all-Sadr and his followers are among them. They are livid about this attack on the shrine of the Mahdi's father. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also a firm believer in the imminent coming of the Mahdi. I worry that Iranian anger will boil over as a result of this bombing of a Shiite millenarian symbol. Both Sunnis and Americans will be blamed. Very bad. |
Next to being an Iraqi civilian, the person I would least like to *be at this time is a U.S. soldier in Iraq. We've got to get our used and abused uniformed kids out as soon as possible. Three years ago Bush-war promised that Iraqis would be tossing flowers at our soldiers' feet. Instead they're tossing things that blow up.
(*or Ann Coulter)
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February 21, 2006
Cindy Sheehan explains why Senator Clinton prefers to "stay the course" in Iraq:
I would have loved to support Hillary Clinton in 2008, since she is a female Democrat (and god knows we need more of those in office). However, she has made it abundantly clear that she will continue to sponsor the Republican/neocon policy in Iraq, meaning she favors the grotesquely immoral and illegal invasion and occupation. She is nothing more than a political pawn of the corporate/military/industrial/petroleum complex. I would vote for her only if she was the only other choice in an election between her and another neocon (such as McCain).
Clinton represents all that is wrong with the Democratic Pary establishment in Washington D.C., and Progressives must stop adoring her and come to their senses by looking for a candidate who actually supports the demands of rank-and-file moderates and liberals of our devolving nation.
| She has come out saying that it’s not time to withdraw our troops. And if she comes out now and says, “This war is wrong, we need to bring the troops home,” I would think it was her politically expedient time to do it. When I talked to her in September, I said, “The longer you wait, the more of our children are dying for no reason.” She is waiting for the time when it will make more sense for her career. To me, to base our children’s flesh and blood on a political career is not moral. If she came out now, it would be because it was the politically expedient thing to do. We have to support our elected officials who have been calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq for many months now. But since Camp Casey I see a lot more of our elected leaders coming out against the war. I think it’s because they see the grassroots movement. They’re worried about their jobs. |
I would have loved to support Hillary Clinton in 2008, since she is a female Democrat (and god knows we need more of those in office). However, she has made it abundantly clear that she will continue to sponsor the Republican/neocon policy in Iraq, meaning she favors the grotesquely immoral and illegal invasion and occupation. She is nothing more than a political pawn of the corporate/military/industrial/petroleum complex. I would vote for her only if she was the only other choice in an election between her and another neocon (such as McCain).
Clinton represents all that is wrong with the Democratic Pary establishment in Washington D.C., and Progressives must stop adoring her and come to their senses by looking for a candidate who actually supports the demands of rank-and-file moderates and liberals of our devolving nation.
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In light of the latest vote-counting fraud perpetrated on the American voter by the use of electronic voting machines, here are some excerpts from Andrew Gumbel's "How To Steal An Election":
| ....In truth, the 2004 election was far from an aberration. Nothing has been more normal, over the past two hundred-plus years, than for one side in an American election to push, shove, and strong-arm its way across the finishing line, praising the strength and fairness of the process as it goes, while the other side stares forlornly at the inevitability of defeat and yelps in frustration about the perpetration of an outrageous theft that threatens the very fabric of the nation. This pattern is hardly good for a democracy (though it is certainly better, if transparency and fair play are lacking, to have a tightly fought contest and relatively high turnout than a moribund one and a foregone conclusion). Equally, it should not come as a surprise, given the tempestuous history of elections in this country. John Quincy Adams stole the presidency from under the nose of Andrew Jackson in 1824, and Rutherford B. Hayes stole it again, even more brazenly, from Samuel Tilden in 1876. George W. Bush no more deserved to win Florida in 2000 than John F. Kennedy deserved to win Illinois in 1960. And that's just the presidency, a far more serenely contested office than the often ferocious dogfights at the state or local level. ....If America's electoral system is more corrupted than any of its Western counterparts, many of the reasons are to be found in the workings of the county elections office. The United States has never successfully produced a professional class of technocrats, and the field of election management has, by common consent, been treated too often as a dumping ground for dimwits, time-servers, crooks, and small-time political appointees who are too incompetent to be given anything else to do. The worst of them get fired, forced into early retirement, or prosecuted on fraud charges. ....There are no dirty elections without dirty politics, and indeed as long as the politics are not clean, it is almost impossible to prevent the electoral process from becoming tainted. After all, rules work only if they are enforced. America is a country that thrives on ferocious competition -- the sink-or-swim ethic of capitalist adventurism, forever flirting with the fringes of the permissible -- and few competitive arenas are more cutthroat than elective politics. To believe that smooth elections are merely a question of updated machinery and proper procedure, as many election officials and mainstream media outlets appear to have done since 2000, is to slip deep into denial and self-delusion. The system functions not on the principle of the common good, but on how much its participants think they can get away with. There is nothing virginally pure about American democracy, and there never has been..... |
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The Singular Cingular
Cingular Wireless bucks the trend: It supports unionization of its workforce:
So all you faithful, tree-hugging progressives out there, let's be sure to sign up with Cingular when your cell phone contract comes up for renewal. Be proactive!
| ....Since July 2005, the Communications Workers of America has unionized 16,500 former AT&T Wireless workers at Cingular Wireless retail stores and call centers nationwide — a move that runs counter to the longstanding trend in the telecommunications industry and American workplaces in general. And many of those Cingular shops are in the South, where unionizing efforts have been difficult historically. Cingular's wireless competitors have fought, at times fiercely, against unionization, arguing that an organized labor force would hobble their ability to move workers, cut costs and make changes necessary to compete in a high-tech industry. They often assert that unions ultimately hurt the workers they claim to protect. But the growth of Cingular into the nation's largest wireless carrier — with a nearly fully unionized labor force — has challenged those assumptions and given a new spark to organized labor, said Harry C. Katz, dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. "The fact Cingular does well even in the face of unionization helps rebut the argument that unions aren't viable in a technologically sophisticated and dynamic industry," Mr. Katz said. That said, he noted that the union's success remained particular to Cingular. "It has not contributed to a noticeable rebirth more broadly," Mr. Katz said. "Whether there will be a larger resurgence — that remains to be seen." From the union's perspective, the success at Cingular shows what it can accomplish when it tries to organize at a company that is not averse to organized labor.... |
So all you faithful, tree-hugging progressives out there, let's be sure to sign up with Cingular when your cell phone contract comes up for renewal. Be proactive!
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February 20, 2006
Reader D. Carr brought this new line of shirts, mugs, etc. to my attention:
"Duck 'when' Hunting With Dick Cheney
[click for larger image]
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February 19, 2006
Long gone are the days of reasonable expectations in the world of American government. Thus, it can no longer seem surprising when something like this happens:
I've been saying for years now that "it's the electronic voting machines, stupid". The devious, lawless Republican operatives that control the voting in this country are going to make sure that just enough selected districts will have the software fixed in the close elections so that the party in power stays in power. It started in Florida in 2000, and it will end only when our skeleton of a democracy has been pulverized and fed to the dogs of corporate hegemony, leaving us real American citizens fitfully trying to remember what it was like to have any control at all over our destiny.
| In one of those moves that make you wonder how much Diebold has contributed to his campaign for election this fall, California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, who was appointed to the job by Arnold Schwarzenegger as a good government Republican after Democrat Kevin Shelley made enough ethical mistakes to warrant his departure, waited until late Friday to announce that he was letting Diebold back into the state for this year’s elections. This came after McPherson had earlier bounced Diebold equipment because of security lapses in other states, and after he had sent the issue to the federal government for Diebold to demonstrate its compliance with the security provisions of the Help America Vote Act. McPherson didn’t wait to hear back from the federal Independent Testing Authority on whether or not Diebold addressed the security concerns before he recertified them for use by counties. The machines that McPherson is allowing back into California are the same machines that have been hacked and yanked out of Florida, and have been flagged as failing security tests by university researchers. Furthermore, McPherson’s decision is undermined by the security analysis he himself issued, and flies in the face of his own requirement that the federal ITA review and approve the technology, which has to this day not happened yet. California State Senator Debra Bowen, who is running against McPherson this fall has blasted McPherson’s decision, and will be making a large issue of this decision and McPherson’s motives behind it. There will be a public hearing on March 1 to take public commentary, yet McPherson’s office has yet to release any test reports so that members of the public can attend and demand an explanation of why McPherson violated state law in his decision. |
I've been saying for years now that "it's the electronic voting machines, stupid". The devious, lawless Republican operatives that control the voting in this country are going to make sure that just enough selected districts will have the software fixed in the close elections so that the party in power stays in power. It started in Florida in 2000, and it will end only when our skeleton of a democracy has been pulverized and fed to the dogs of corporate hegemony, leaving us real American citizens fitfully trying to remember what it was like to have any control at all over our destiny.
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February 18, 2006
Paradox reviews the current century:
Sorry, Paradox, but it aint gonna happen with our current Democratic Party. Only a revolution will save us now.
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Sorry, Paradox, but it aint gonna happen with our current Democratic Party. Only a revolution will save us now.
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February 17, 2006
Excerpt from: What Happened To My Country? by Steve Osborn:
Addressing Activists - - - by Namo Collective
Anyone ready for a revolution yet? I am. Anybody know where to sign up?
| "....Now I live in an America I don’t dare leave for fear of being spat upon, shot, bombed or kidnaped. I am looked upon as a citizen of a rogue nation that has no concept or respect for any law except bullying and strength. I need a passport even to visit Canada, which was to be our sister nation with open borders forever. I must expect to be required to show my “papers” at any time, to any official. I must accept that the government can break into my house and rifle my belongings and papers any time it wishes on the thinnest of excuses and it is not even required to let me know it has violated my home and my privacy. I must accept the fact that the government can listen in to my private conversations, my phone, my e-mail, can probably read my snail mail if they wish and can put a gag order on anyone who has information on me so I may not even be made aware that I am being spied upon. George Orwell’s absolute dictatorship has crept in to my home and my life and thrown out my beloved Constitution and Bill of Rights. The difference between the United States, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is steadily and inexorably diminishing and the people are letting it happen while they remain paralyzed with fear. Fear incited by the gang that runs the White House and their cronies in the propaganda ministry that used to be our last bulwark against tyranny; our once free press...." |
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| We keep reading and hearing that due to the United States' behaviors the world is in dire straits. Our government is corrupt, the war is wrong, the environment is being destroyed, Bush is an awful liar, our liberties and freedoms are jeopardized. However, we see no critical dialogue on the topic of intervening and attempting to stop these atrocities. We'd like to start a conversation about effective action, using the war in Iraq as a focus. For an action to be considered effective it must get in the way, prevent, or stop an injustice from occurring. We'd like to state a few things we don't consider to be effective action. First, the time for marches and protests has passed. We've attended all of the anti-war, anti-globalization, anti-Bush, anti-anti marches in the last several years. Frankly, we're a bit discouraged. As fun as the marches are, with all the powerful speakers and awesome artists, we see no indication that the military onslaught has been slowed or that our government has been dissuaded from any of its atrocious behaviors. The president in office was elected on a platform that clearly stated his desire to make war and destroy the world. Public opinion, no matter how many people gather to express it, will not derail the destruction. Stating dislike for something is not action. Marches have become mere symbols of resistance, and promoting them as ways to stop the war is misleading. These government-sanctioned peace parades, entirely permitted and in bounds, will continue to be ignored by those who wield power in the political arena. Bush-bashing is clearly not an action. We're not claiming Bush is a great guy, but we didn't get to where we are as a result of this particular administration. The Senate and House voted to give Bush power to start this war and they continue to vote, often unanimously, to fund the war. The road has been paved by Democrats and Republicans alike. None of the advertised activist groups are engaged in activities that meet our basic definition of effective action. The primary focus of these groups seems to be education, potlucks, lobbying, and campaigning; events that have no direct link to stopping the war. It's quite apparent that many people, perhaps the majority of Americans, are unhappy with the way the United States engages with the world. Education and awareness-raising are no longer effective actions. People need instructions on what to do based on this information, not more information. Yard signs and bumper stickers. Come on, "No Iraq War." This is denial and is of no use. Again, simply stating disapproval accomplishes nothing. In order to move forward in this discussion we need to abandon all hope that marches, political theater, potlucks, education, lobbying, e-petitions, and campaigning are useful. The only possibility of stopping this current military action is to engage in strategies and tactics that severely disrupt the war machine, the US economy, and the overall functioning of US society. We must begin with the realization that any and all tactics and strategies must be considered. Once this matter has been examined there is only one question remaining: Will each of us become involved and use whatever tactics and strategies are necessary, or will we refuse and continue to engage solely in conduct that serves little purpose other than making people feel better about themselves? Here are some general guidelines to determine if specific actions are effective. These guidelines are by no means complete; specific actions will begin to manifest only when we turn our energies away from ego-serving endeavors. An effective action will do at least one of the following: -disrupt the flow of commerce and the functioning of the US economy -directly disrupt the lives of the legislators who are making more funding available for the war -directly disrupt the lives of military recruiters -directly disrupt the lives of the people working for companies who are supporting the war -cause the US military to deploy troops domestically, pulling soldiers away from the war -create an atmosphere that does not support US troops who are serving The war we wish to stop is intense and disruptive to the lives of those involved. Stopping it will require equally intense actions that will be disruptive to our comfortable lives. If this war is to some large extent about oil, then why don't we hear anything about a boycott of oil? Is it because we are unwilling to give up driving, and to suggest to others to do the same? Would it be too inconvenient? Effective actions will be met with great resistance; even from those we would presume to be our allies. Or perhaps we wait until the 2008 elections with the hope that some Democrat will miraculously get elected and save us? |
Anyone ready for a revolution yet? I am. Anybody know where to sign up?
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Late Week Bits
- "Hunting Crashers" (video)
- Bush-war's next hit-list item: our national parks
- Abu Ghraib, Part II (note: disturbing photos)
- Ask Ann Coulter (humor site; a little slow-loading)
- The increasing threat of antibiotic-resistant microbes in soil.
- So, tell me, would you try to get a job at a company that, as policy, hires criminals and drug addicts?
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Friday Fun
- Letterfu (create letters to mail without envelopes)
- Red Square (game; caution: addicting)
- Computer built with Legos
- Not-so-tasteful meat package labeling
- A washing machine that also dries AND irons
- Jumping through hoops (video)
- Make your own flying pigs
- Dinobot (video)
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February 15, 2006
[source] [click image for larger size]
Midweek Bits
- The high cost of integrity: retaliation against whistleblowers
- The myth of the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq
- New Game: Dick "Shooter" Cheney quail hunting game
- UN: Close Gitmo NOW
- "Quails one, America zero" (subscr. req.)
- Here come those pesky, fuel-efficient Japanese subcompacts (again)
- Humanoid Robot reported missing
- Letters from the grassroots (scroll down to "Comments")
- New form of hybrid vehicle from Ford will leave Toyota Prius in the dust?
- World Press Photo Award Winners of 2005
- The undisputable winners of the Iraqi War
- CIA’s top counter-terrorism official fired for opposing torture
- Democratic Party grassroots: more myth than reality?
[source] [click image for larger size]
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| "Congressional 'oversight' in this Republican Congress doesn't include hindsight, only foresight--only forward-looking tunnel vision with a singular purpose: covering up for the most corrupt administration in history. "Look at your party, Republicans. Look at your civil servants, all you logic-minded conservatives out there. Look at your legislative bimbos, your lemmings in Congress. Look at how they serve only the interests of an Executive drunk with power. Your representatives are about to give the ok to the President unilaterally erasing the 4th Amendment from the Bill of Rights. Your so-called 'conservatives' don't dare conserve jack, not the separation of powers, not any sense of fairness, and certainly not your rights. "It's party over principle. Party over justice. Party over civil rights. They just keep shredding up that Constitution and feeding it to that goddamn Elephant, because they have to anything and everything to keep that damn Elephant alive and fat and happy, right? Members of Congress, my ass. Every one of them took their oath of office with their fingers crossed behind their back. Every one of them pledged to uphold and defend the Constitution, with a huge asterisk (*) that when the President's ass needs saving, well, that Constitution just has to step out of the way. "....And as for history...history will never forgive this Republican Congress, who too many times has given this Nixonian President a pardon from his crimes. - - - Georgia10 |
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February 14, 2006
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Scarcely Imaginable Treason
Juan Cole reiterates (of course much more eloquently) what I said yesterday about the ramifications of Cheney's office outing Valeri Plame (excerpt):
| So between disrupting the work of Plame Wilson's unit at the CIA and letting the Iranians know about the broken codes, the pro-war party managed to make Iran's actual progress on nuclear research opaque to the US government. It was necessary that it be opaque if there was to be a war. Iran is actually a decade or two away from having a bomb even if everything went well. But US intelligence agencies must be less confident they know what is going on in Iran now than before the Neocons destroyed so much of the effort against Iranian proliferation. It was the US withdrawal of inspectors from Ira[q] in 1998 that created the uncertainties that allowed Bush to invade Iraq. For warmongers, good intelligence on the enemy's capabilities is undesirable if that intelligence would get in the way of launching a war. Still, it is just speculation. If the speculation were true, the scale of treason emanating from Rove and Cheney and his staff is scarcely imaginable. Even if they did not set out to create a more plausible cause for war, Rove, Cheney, Libby and the others have either through duplicity or cupidity or stupidity set the stage for even more loss of life and violent conflict. |
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| "Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of the colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." --- Robert F. Kennedy |
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February 13, 2006
Forget Peak Oil and Oil for Euros... This is more serious
Here's a story that's just starting to develop. Apparently Valerie Plame was deeply involved in monitoring Iran's involvement in the acquisition of uranium, and that her illegal outing by Vice President Dick Cheney's office in 2003 has seriously compromised our intelligence on the current issues surrounding Iran's controversial nuclear power program.
So imagine, for a moment, how the Plame Affair could ultimately lead (due to now-compromised intelligence) to an increasingly likey war by the US and Israel against Iran, with the definite possiblility of the use of nuclear bombs. I don't give a rat's ass if Cheney shot a fellow Republican in the face while shooting caged birds, but I do care that his attempt to discredit Joe Wilson by destroying his (Wilson's) wife's career could possibly lead to a nuclear holocaust in the Mideast. Why doesn't the press care? Why don't our Democrat Party leaders care? Why don't you care?
Let's just go back to our couches and watch the Olympics and American Idol, and forget about the continuing unraveling of our civilization. At least that's more pleasant than putting our heads back into the sand, no?
Also, the other side of the story.
So imagine, for a moment, how the Plame Affair could ultimately lead (due to now-compromised intelligence) to an increasingly likey war by the US and Israel against Iran, with the definite possiblility of the use of nuclear bombs. I don't give a rat's ass if Cheney shot a fellow Republican in the face while shooting caged birds, but I do care that his attempt to discredit Joe Wilson by destroying his (Wilson's) wife's career could possibly lead to a nuclear holocaust in the Mideast. Why doesn't the press care? Why don't our Democrat Party leaders care? Why don't you care?
Let's just go back to our couches and watch the Olympics and American Idol, and forget about the continuing unraveling of our civilization. At least that's more pleasant than putting our heads back into the sand, no?
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"The vice president is well-known for preferring to operate in secret....Some secrecy, especially when it comes to the executing the duties of president or vice president, is understandable and expected by Americans. |
| "If Cheney was shooting at a bird and he loses sight of it because a hunter was standing between him and the bird, you have to have your head up your ass to pull the trigger." - - - Taylor Marsh |
Also, the other side of the story.
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February 12, 2006
Exactly how terrific has the employment market been during the five year Bush-war Administration?
"....The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is “the envy of the world.” Communications equipment lost 43% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced a 7% shrinkage in jobs. The knowledge jobs that were supposed to take the place of lost manufacturing jobs in the globalized “new economy” never appeared. The information sector lost 17% of its jobs, with the telecommunications work force declining by 25%. Even wholesale and retail trade lost jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley, accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%. Computer systems design and related lost 9% of its jobs. Today there are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago...." |
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February 10, 2006
Oops. Looks like the Bush cabal let that one get away...
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"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war. [The administration] went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized." - - - Paul R. Pillar, CIA national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 |
Oops. Looks like the Bush cabal let that one get away...
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FRIDAY FUN
- Rush Limbaugh Bedpan
- Fish School testimonials
- Company email gone awry
- Search and repress: iRepress (animation)
- Knife Throw (game)
- Panexa (tell your doctor to get this drug for you)
- An Alternate End to the Universe
- Falling Sand (game) Also THIS version
- Create your own Simpsons character
- Get nagged about the subject of your choice
- James Lipton reads PopoZow (video)
- How to eat a 100-patty hamburger
- iPod underwear
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February 9, 2006
| "You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. "Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’ "And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have. "But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait. "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. "And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way. "You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined. "Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. "What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know." - - - Milton Mayer |
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Please move on. No Global Warming to see here...
The Bush-war Administration is fitting the muzzle tightly on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Excerpt:
S.O.P. for the neocons.
| ....According to The New York Times, officials at the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (nasa) have attempted to discourage its chief climate scientist, James Hansen, from speaking out on global warming. The same thing may be happening to scientists at noaa. Francesca Grifo, the head of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says a noaa scientist complained last year of "being what we now call Hansenized." Emanuel, who regularly talks with noaa scientists, says, "Scientists who don't toe the party line are being intimidated from talking to the press. I think it is a very sad situation. I know quite a few people who are frightened, but they beg me not to use their name." The main instrument of suppression seems to be noaa's policy on contact with the press. Since June 2004, noaa, which is part of the Department of Commerce, has had a policy that its employees have to notify a public affairs officer if a member of the press contacts them for an interview. But the policy was often ignored. Then, on September 29, in the midst of growing public debate over hurricanes and global warming, public affairs official Jim Teet issued a memo requiring that "any request for an interview with a national media outlet/reporter must now receive prior approval by DOC [Department of Commerce]." Noaa Public Affairs Director Jordan St. John insists that Teet's memo merely restated the existing policy, but, by requiring approval and not merely notification, Teet's order--first publicized by reporter Larisa Alexandrovna of "The Raw Story"--erected an entirely new hurdle in the face of noaa scientists who want to talk to the press. Noaa employees, speaking on background, described the policy to me as "strange" and "unfortunate." Georgia Tech's Curry, who also serves as a noaa adviser on its Climate Working Group, thinks that what is happening at the organization is an "absolute disgrace." Curry knows of noaa scientists who disagree with noaa's position on hurricanes and global warming but are being told not to talk to the press. "They are being muzzled," she says. Curry also says that officials have been trying to prevent certain scientists at the National Climactic Data Center from even working on the problem of hurricanes and global warming. "You hear about Hansen, but nasa is not really that bad. Noaa is really, really bad," she says. Perhaps the most telling indictment of noaa comes from Jerry Mahlman. Mahlman joined noaa in 1970, the year it was established, and served from 1984 to 2000 as the director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Retired from noaa, he is now a senior research associate at ncar in Boulder, Colorado. Mahlman, who has continued contact with noaa scientists, says that dissenting scientists are being intimidated from talking to the press and that their papers are being withheld from publication. Mahlman tells me, "I know a lot of people who would love to talk to you, but they don't dare. They are worried about getting fired." According to Mahlman, the architect of noaa's policy on global warming and hurricanes is its director, Lautenbacher, not underlings like Mayfield and Bell. Lautenbacher, a former naval officer with a Ph.D. in applied mathematics whom Bush nominated to head noaa in September 2001, has been an administration point man on global warming at international conferences, where he justifies the administration's rejection of the Kyoto treaty. At a U.N. climate conference in Milan in December 2003, Lautenbacher declared, "I do believe we need more scientific info before we commit to a process like Kyoto." Lautenbacher's predecessors regularly voiced their opinions on scientific subjects, but they usually tried to steer clear of politics, and they didn't pretend to be presenting an official position on a scientific controversy. But, under Lautenbacher, noaa has been plunged into Bush administration politics. With the issue of hurricanes and global warming, the organization has entered the even murkier realm of scientific censorship. Noaa, which once exemplified the constructive relationship between science and government, has become an instrument of what author Chris Mooney calls "the Republican war on science." And, in this war, the public is the real casualty. |
S.O.P. for the neocons.
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Be sure to visit the DailyKos auction and help raise some money for a good cause while buying some unususal crap. My favorite... the Rush Limbaugh Bedpan.
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Midweek Bits
- Bush-war Administration awards Halliburton subsidiary KBR a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to build concentration camps.
- Congressional Ethics Hall of Shame
- Deconstructing the American two-party political system
- Indicted, corrupt Republican Representative is given chair in House Appropriations Committee, a chair formerly held by convicted, scandal-plagued Republican Representative
- They could not believe what they had supported.
- Bush-war, Katrina and Black Americans
- In case you missed it, Bush-war's privatization of Social Security IS BACK
- Isn't it about time for another "election" in Iraq? In the two months since the last one, nothing's happened
- Looking for right-wing racism? You can find it all right here!
- Grapes prolong life?
- Confessions of a Former Dittohead
- "You Call THIS Supporting Our Troops???"
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February 8, 2006
| "One of the fundamental tenets of a democratic society is the freedom of elected officials to express sentiments on behalf of their constituents. And I believe the sentiments expressed in this resolution are widely held by the voters of San Francisco." - - - President Aaron Peskin, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, regarding a resolution calling for the "full investigation, impeachment or resignation'' of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney |
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| FROM THE OFFICE OF LINDA T. SÁNCHEZ Representing California’s 39th District For Immediate Release - February 7, 2006 Washington, DC- Congresswoman Linda T. Sánchez (CA-39) released the following statement after President Bush released his budget proposal for 2007 on Monday. “The budget President Bush released yesterday reflects misplaced priorities that aren’t in sync with everyday Americans. This budget imposes harmful cuts to important services and programs for average Americans, while protecting giveaways for special interests and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Seniors, children and working families are the ones that will bear the heaviest burden from this budget. Last week, the GOP budget reconciliation bill cost California $3.1 billion. Yesterday’s release of the President’s budget carries more bad news for Californians. The bottom line is, the President’s budget is just more of the same--fiscal recklessness that leaves our children and grandchildren with debt for many years to come. Democrats will fight against these cuts and fight for a budget that restores fiscal responsibility and brings real prosperity to hard working Americans--economic prosperity, affordable healthcare and energy, and strong public schools. .... President Bush has again broken his promises. It is unconscionable, but while President Bush is cutting programs that are critical to America’s working families, he will squander the savings from these cuts on $1.5 trillion in permanent tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and increase the national debt to $423 billion.” |
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| There are roughly 25 million people in Iraq. Yesterday, the cost for invading and occupying Iraq raced past the $300 billion mark. Per capita costs in Iraq from America's efforts $12,000.00. This doesn't include wounded and dead Americans, wounded and dead Iraqis, shattered families, ill will, and future "blowback". It also does not include the leverage America has lost in global affairs -- failing to put out of business North Korea's nuclear program, creating an atmosphere in which Iran felt emboldened to push forward its nuclear pretensions, failure of the President of the United States to secure run-of-the-mill economic deals in Latin America and China, and collapse of American moral credibility in global affairs. $12,000 per person -- in a nation where per capita income is about $2,000 and most people live realistically at about $500 a year. Lawrence Lindsey was more right than his White House foes about the financial costs -- but even he missed the costs incurred for the entire world seeing America at its limits, when enemies have incentives to move their agendas and allies won't count on us as much. --- Steve Clemons |
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| "In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms." - - - Stephen Jay Gould, US author, naturalist, paleontologist, & popularizer of science (1941 - 2002) |
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Bindairdundat has some great poetry at his brand new blog. For example:
(After “The Tyger” by William Blake) “White House, White House, burning bright in the scandals of the night, what secret hand or snooping eye has put me in this misery? “Where’s Tom the Hammer, Karl my Brain? Will Dick and Rummy still remain? Is it safe for Hastert or for Frist now they’re ’on the “suspected’ list? “Who bugged the White House Iraq Group? What loudmouth gave the Feds the poop? Did Scooter Libby spill the beans? Someone from State? Some maimed marines? “When the facts were in Fitzgerald’s grasp, and he held indictments in his clasp? Did he then smile his work to see? Will he who’s after Rove hunt me? “What fall guy’s left for me to blame? What usual suspects can I name? The CIA? The Liberal Bench? Katrina? Terrorists? The French? “White House, White House, burning bright amidst cries of ‘“Indict, Indict!” What secret hand or snooping eye has put me in this misery?” |
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February 7, 2006
Watch Bush-war get royally dissed at Coretta Scott King's funeral.
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Decision Already Made To Attack Iran "....'We just don't know when, but it's going to happen,' Scott Ritter said to a crowd of about 150 at the James A. Little Theater on Sunday night.
Ritter described how the U.S. government might justify war with Iran in a scenario similar to the buildup to the Iraq invasion. He also argued that Iran wants a nuclear energy program, and not nuclear weapons. But the Bush administration, he said, refuses to believe Iran is telling the truth.
He predicted the matter will wind up before the U.N. Security Council, which will determine there is no evidence of a weapons program. Then, he said, John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, 'will deliver a speech that has already been written. It says America cannot allow Iran to threaten the United States and we must unilaterally defend ourselves.'
'How do I know this? I've talked to Bolton's speechwriter,' Ritter said. Ritter also predicted the military strategy for war with Iran. First, American forces will bomb Iran. If Iranians don't overthrow the current government, as Bush hopes they will, Iran will probably attack Israel. Then, Ritter said, the United States will drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.
The only way to prevent a war with Iran is to elect a Democratically controlled Congress in November, said Ritter, a lifelong Republican. He later said he wasn't worried his advice would be seen as partisan because, 'It's a partisan issue.' He said the problem is one party government and if Democrats controlled the presidency and Congress, he would advise people to elect Republicans...."
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Test Post
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| Sarah Vowell |
SARAH VOWELL: Best-selling author, radio storyteller, and social observer. Oh yeah, she was also the voice of Violet in The Incredibles. |
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| Well the weight of the world is FALLING And on my back I've been CRAWLING The state of affairs is APPALLING And the 6 o'clock news keeps CALLING Well I've been trying to see the world through their eyes Where black is white and day is night Left is Right Left is Right Left is Right, For me Well negotiations keep STALLING The United Nations keeps CALLING The Skeletons you're HAULING Won't hold when you're FALLING Put your head in the sand and you'll never know What's waiting for you in the depths below (below) Don't believe everything that you read Take what you want and keep what you need TWISTED NIXON |
CHICK HEARN, THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL THE MEMORIES.
