« April 2007 | Main | June 2007 »
The Republican Party in a nutshell:
Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you've got to cap with a number.
The rest of the exchange and video at the link.
.
...for these subhumans:
The American Red Cross has warned military families to beware of a scam in which callers tell family members their service member has been injured in Iraq, with the apparent goal of getting the service member’s Social Security number and date of birth.[...]
Red Cross officials said that in one case described to them, a young-sounding woman with an American accent called a military spouse and identified herself as a representative of the American Red Cross. She told the spouse her husband has been hurt while on duty in Iraq, and was medically evacuated to a hospital in Germany.
The caller told the spouse they couldn’t start treatment until paperwork was completed. In order to start the paperwork, she claimed, they wanted the spouse to verify her husband’s Social Security number and date of birth. This spouse caught on quickly and did not provide the information —which can be used to steal a person’s identity. Among other things, thieves can set up credit card accounts and run up high bills without the family’s knowledge.
No comment necessary.
[Via Think Progress.]
.
To return to the case of the carrier of drug-resistant tuberculosis, Rob in comments passes along this:
Dr. Robert Cooksey, who works in the CDC's Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, confirmed to FOX News that he is the father-in-law of Andrew Speaker, a personal-injury lawyer who practices in his father's law firm in Atlanta.Asked by FOX News whether it was possible that he had passed along the dangerous strain to his son-in-law, Cooksey said, "Absolutely not." He added that he "works in the lab" and "is not authorized to talk about that."
Okay, this officially has become weird. It's the sort of coincidence that makes me want to reach for a handy tinfoil chapeau.
The carrier, Andrew Speaker, has been transferred to Denver for treatment. It turns out he's a personal injury lawyer in Atlanta and:
His father, Ted Speaker, unsuccessfully ran for a Fulton County Superior Court judgeship in 2004, the same year his son was admitted into the Georgia Bar.Andrew Speaker recently moved from an upscale condominium complex in anticipation of his wedding, former neighbors said. He also wrote in an application to become a board member of his condo association that he was going to Vietnam for five weeks as part of the Rotary club to act as an ambassador.
This bears watching.
.
Karl Rove goes grocery shopping:
I then looked at what he bought and it was an entire shopping cart of toilet paper, Barq's root beer, and Land o' Lakes butter. That's it. No food whatsoever.
No wonder he's so doughy.
Read the whole thing and see the pictures at the link.
.
The Associated Press today reports on a new video allegedly showing the so-called Loch Ness Monster.
This jumped out at me:
More recently, there have been more than 4,000 purported Nessie sightings since she was first caught on camera by a surgeon on vacation in the 1930s.
This refers to the infamous "Surgeon's Photo" taken in 1934:
It took 0.30 seconds for me to find a plethora of web pages showing this picture to be a hoax.
Even George W. Bush claims to know how to use The Google.
What does it say that AP reporters aren't as bright as George?
(And as for the video, I haven't seen it. Given all the research done in that enclosed if very deep body of water I very much doubt that any "monster" exists.)
.
If this post by Holden is true then were in for a world of trouble.
Well, we already are in a world of trouble but you get my point.
.
...could take the tubercular jackass and use the case to whip up fear about terrorism.
That some people get their information from FAUXNews boggles the mind.
.
It would appear that the tie is again cutting off the flow of oxygen to George Fwill's brain as he tries to explain the virtues of "conservatism":
Today conservatives tend to favor freedom, and consequently are inclined to be somewhat sanguine about inequalities of outcomes. Liberals are more concerned with equality, understood, they insist, primarily as equality of opportunity, not of outcome.
However, what you do in the privacy of your own home must be monitored and regulated. And you must be willing to give up a little freedom for a little security. And you must accept that the government can snatch you off the street and send you to a "Black Site." Oh, and you shouldn't have the freedom to seek legal redress.
Today's "conservatives" favor freedom for big money and little else.
Hence liberals' hostility to school choice programs that challenge public education's semimonopoly. Hence hostility to private accounts funded by a portion of each individual's Social Security taxes. Hence their fear of health savings accounts (individuals who buy high-deductible health insurance become eligible for tax-preferred savings accounts from which they pay their routine medical expenses -- just as car owners do not buy insurance to cover oil changes). Hence liberals' advocacy of government responsibility for -- and, inevitably, rationing of -- health care, which is 16 percent of the economy and rising.
Apparently Fwill has some gold-plated health coverage because he hasn't yet learned that there's already health-care rationing. And that's only if you can afford to have health coverage at all.
Here is the core of a conservative appeal, without dwelling on "social issues" that should be, as much as possible, left to "moral federalism" -- debates within the states. On foreign policy, conservatism begins, and very nearly ends, by eschewing abroad the fatal conceit that has been liberalism's undoing domestically -- hubris about controlling what cannot, and should not, be controlled.
I do believe we're seeing the emergence of a new meme - that George W. Bush is a liberal. Fwill, in a moment of sanity, opposes the war so the reference above is likely to refer to Iraq. And he ascribes it to "liberalism." The rightists consider Bush's immigration plan to be "liberal." And Useful Idiot Richard Cohen yesterday tried to make the case that George is a liberal.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on Fwill. After all, I've argued that actual conservatives need to save the Republican Party from the radicals that now dominate it. But calling BushCo™ "liberal" is pure idiocy. As much as he tries to dishonestly make the case, liberalism isn't authoritarian. And that's what BushCheney is.
.
Are there any Repubs not running for president?
Thompson's entry will have an immediate impact on the battle for the GOP nomination, adding a fourth candidate to the field's top tier, which includes former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Attaturk has an exclusive preview of Thompson's campaign strategy.
.
George vows to double AIDS funding:
President Bush's call for a doubling of the U.S. commitment to battling the global AIDS crisis was met yesterday with broad support uncommon in Washington. International aid organizations, advocacy groups and members of Congress from both parties offered praise for the proposal -- even if some argued that the proposed increase is insufficient.Speaking in the Rose Garden yesterday, Bush called on Congress to increase the funding for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to $30 billion over five years, beginning in October 2008. In his State of the Union address in 2003, the president promised $15 billion to fight AIDS over the five years ending in September 2008 -- then the largest financial commitment by a nation to battling a disease.
[...]
Though many advocates praise PEPFAR, they have criticized the program because nearly 7 percent of the money is tied to abstinence education. They call it ineffective and have said they will seek a change when the program is reauthorized by Congress. Also, some have been critical that only a fraction of the money supports multinational efforts to battle AIDS.
And there's the rub: Doubling funding is meaningless if it's going to spent on abstinence "education" or other Dobsonite nonsense. So, to whom will the money go? And most importantly, what sort of oversight will there be?
Considering the current crew in the White House, skepticism, if not outright dismissal, is called for.
.
...more about the creep with drug-resistant TB who went flying all over the place:
The Atlanta man with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis who sparked an international health alarm by flying to Europe and back for his wedding twice ignored requests to stay put and not travel, officials said yesterday.He apparently also shortened his honeymoon -- which included stays in both Greece and Italy -- and returned home early in order to avoid the complicated procedure being put together to get him back to the United States in a way that would not expose other people to his dangerous microbe.
[...]
"There is some indication of deceitfulness on the part of the individual," said Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which was in the process of putting the patient's name on a "no-fly list" last Thursday when it learned he was already on a plane headed for Montreal.
So far this idiot's identity hasn't been revealed but I'm guessing - and obviously I could be wrong - he's some sort of self-entitled jackass, upwardly mobile, and drives a big-ass SUV.
He seems the type.
Oh, and if he transmitted TB to anyone else he ought to be sued to the point that he's forced to live in a cardboard box.
.
Funding the war? Not so popular:
U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire faced blistering criticism last night over his support for tens of billions of dollars in funding for the Iraq war."The Democrats were put into office on the 7th of November to make a change, not to follow the Republicans," Ed Quinn of Richland told Mr. Altmire during a town hall meeting at the Shaler municipal building.
Elizabeth Donohoe of Forest Hills stood in the back of the crowded room holding a sign: "How many more will you sacrifice?"
[...]
"I resent the fact that you said I caved in to Republicans," Mr. Altmire said yesterday. "I really think it's irresponsible to just pick up and leave today. I am never going to vote to cut funding for our troops when they are on the field of battle."
In March, Mr. Altmire voted for a bill that would have started pulling U.S. troops from Iraq within a year. He also voted to override President Bush's veto of a similar bill.
Altmire is taking the now-standard line of "wait until September."
We'll see.
.
...I present this:
Justice Department investigators have again widened their probe of the firing of nine U.S. attorneys to include an examination of hiring practices in additional parts of the sprawling agency, including the troubled civil rights division and programs for beginning lawyers, officials said today."We have expanded the scope of our investigation to include allegations regarding improper political or other considerations in hiring decisions within the Department of Justice," Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, wrote in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee today.
I'm passed the point of thinking that all of these investigations are actually going to lead to changes (impeachments, resignations, jail time, &c. &c. &c.) but there it is anyway.
.
The only question left is just how irrelevant can they get?
Also, Britney Spears, she's blogging -- that's what they do these days, the celebrities -- about her trip to rehab, about hitting rock bottom, and about what she really thinks her troubles are. It's certainly not alcohol and depression, she says.And joining us to talk more about that this morning is Lola Ogunnaike.
Welcome, by the way, to the team.
LOLA OGUNNAIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.
CHETRY: You're going to be covering things like Britney, as well as the Michael Jackson memorabilia.
OGUNNAIKE: Yes, I've got the Britney, Lindsay, Michael Jackson memorabilia beat.
CHETRY: Do you get to cover any normal people?
OGUNNAIKE: Yes, actually. But just not this week.
CHETRY: Well, we are so thrilled that you're with us.
OGUNNAIKE: Thank you.
CHETRY: And we're going to check in with you a little later, Lola.
OGUNNAIKE: Can't wait.
CHETRY: Thanks.
Nothing I write can add to the idiocy displayed above.
[Via Think Progress.]
.
CNN reports that Lieberman is on an unannounced "surprise" visit to Baghdad. Paula Hancocks followed Lieberman around. She talked to Lieberman and reported, "He said he was happy with the progress. He was devastated by the fact that May was turning in to the deadliest month since November 2004. But he said he did believe that this surge eventually would pay off and it would start to break the insurgency."
Video, if you can stand it, at the link.
.
Filmmaker Robert Greenwald and Democracy for America bring us impeachgonzales.org.
Watch the video then sign the petition!
.
Another story I've been meaning to get to for a while is Abu Gonzales' proposal to create thought police:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.
The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007 would bring us the following:
* Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright. Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place. The IPPA would eliminate that requirement. (The Justice Department's summary of the legislation says: "It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.")* Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.
* Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations. Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are "attempting" to infringe copyrights.
* Allow computers to be seized more readily. Specifically, property such as a PC "intended to be used in any manner" to commit a copyright crime would be subject to forfeiture, including civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture has become popular among police agencies in drug cases as a way to gain additional revenue, and it is problematic and controversial.
* Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anticircumvention regulations. Criminal violations are currently punished by jail times of up to 10 years and fines of up to $1 million. The IPPA would add forfeiture penalties.
* Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes. Certain copyright crimes currently require someone to commit the "distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period of at least 10 copies" valued at more than $2,500. The IPPA would insert a new prohibition: actions that were "intended to consist of" distribution.
* Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America. That would happen when CDs with "unauthorized fixations of the sounds, or sounds and images, of a live musical performance" are attempted to be imported. Neither the Motion Picture Association of America nor the Business Software Alliance (nor any other copyright holder, such as photographers, playwrights or news organizations, for that matter) would qualify for this kind of special treatment.
So pirating software is a worse crime than rape and even murder. WTF? And the Ministry of Homeland Security is to be put in the service of the entertainment industry.
Just how insane is our country becoming?
First off, what this legislation is really about: The Homeland Security department getting carte blanche authorization to fish through your computer and tap your phones with impunity, whenever they want, so long as they argue that they think you might have ever tried to download even a single song via Limewire or some of other music-sharing software, or have ever copied a photo off the Internet, or even watched a single clip from any TV show on YouTube. They're going to use this legislation to hunt for terrorists, and won't need search warrants, etc. That's what this is about.Now to the specifics.
1. Why change the law to an "attempt" to infringe? Copyright law has been fine until now, why change it?
2. As mentioned above, they can wiretap anyone who may be "attempting" to infringe on copyright. That means if they suspect that you may have saved a copy on your computer of one of my orchid photos they can tap your phones, without a warrant I suspect. They can also tap your phone if they think your teenage daughter may be "attempting" to download a song online. They could also tap the phones of every YouTube user who has ever posted a clip from any TV show. Think about that.
3. They can seize your computer, forever, if you "intend" to copy even one song or one photo from the Internet. Not if you DO copy it. Just if you even just plan on it in your mind. And the religious right has a problem with hate crime laws? At least with hate crime laws you actually have to have committed a violent crime like murder or aggravated assault. And Bush is threatening a veto of that bill. But he has no problem with a bill that throws you in jail for just thinking of maybe downloading music or a photo or posting a copy of a Washington Post article to your blog or putting a clip from the Daily Show or South Park on YouTube (that too would permit Bush to tap your phones).
And finally, if Homeland Security doesn't have enough work to do already, and has the time to set up a hotline to the Record Industry Association every time little Suzie downloads a Christina Aguilera song, well, then we might as well just pack it in and put up a big welcome sign for Osama to hit us again.
(Sorry for the extended copy-and-paste but I think Aravosis gets it exactly right.)
The copyright, trademark, and patent regimes have become seriously out of whack. That's not an especially new development. But if I've learned one thing over the last 6+ years it's too never assume that things can't become more absurd.
As far as copyrights go perhaps it's time to toss all the laws out and return to the original 14 year period. Time-Warner and Disney would squawk but screw 'em. The law as it stands now is double-plus ungood.
.
No, of course not. The rightists are impervious to facts. (As Stephen Colbert put it some years ago, "Facts have a well-know liberal bias.") Nonetheless, here's yet another confirmation:
In new court filings, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy: Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts, was a “covert” CIA officer who repeatedly traveled overseas using a “cover identity” in order to disguise her relationship with the agency.Fitzgerald cites Wilson’s covert status as part of his argument—advanced in two strongly worded memos filed in recent days—that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, should be sentenced to up to three years in prison.
The defenders and useful idiots (hello, WaPo editorial board!) of the BushCheney regime have insisted from the beginning the Plame was nothing more than a desk-jockey Whoops!
“It was clear from very early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the relevant statute”—the Intelligence Identities act— “as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press,” Fitzgerald wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed late last Friday night.
What's more:
In the “unclassified summary” of his memom which was based on information cleared by the CIA and became publicly available Tuesday, Fitzgerald provided new details about Wilson’s previously classified activities at the agency. In January, 2002, she was working for the agency “as an operations officer” in the Directorate of Operations’s Counterproliferation Division (CPD) and serving as “chief” of a unit with responsibility for weapons proliferation issues related to Iraq. In that capacity, he added, she traveled overseas in an undercover capacity.“She traveled at least seven times to more than 10 countries,” the document states. “When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity….At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson’s employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employe for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.”
Counterproliferation. In other words, Plame was working on WMD. Thanks to BushCo™ she's no longer working on WMD and who knows what intelligence networks were destroyed as a result of her exposure.
To put it bluntly: The administration actively took steps to weaken national security.
And, finally, an unintentionally funny comment:
One of Libby’s most ardent defenders, Richard Carlson, a former chief of the Voice of America who serves as a member of a defense trust set up for Libby, reacted harshly to Fitzgerald’s latest filings. “I think it’s certainly unseemly that he is kicking him while he’s down,” Carlson said. “For Fitzgerald, to get on his high horse, it’s disgusting and he should be ashamed of himself.”
Such sensitivity! And Richard Carlson is the father of the bow-tied twerp Tucker.
Unfortunately, Irving's criminal cover-up worked. The real author of the little bit of treason is still sitting safely in the Vice-President's Mansion.
.
Well well well:
A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states.[...]
"The latest filings make clear that the administration has been destroying documents and entering into secret agreements in violation of the law," said Anne Weismann, CREW's chief counsel.
[...]
The letter regarding the vice president's residence was in addition to an agreement quietly signed between the White House and the Secret Service a year ago when questions were raised about visits to the executive compound by convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff.
That agreement, which didn't surface publicly until late last year, said White House entry and exit logs were presidential records not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
And yet Congressional Dems can't find any impeachable acts.
.
It's a relief, I suppose: It's not Poodle Blair, it's not MC KatKillah Frist, it's Robert Zoellick:
U.S. President George W. Bush has chosen Robert Zoellick, a former U.S. Trade Representative, as the new president for the World Bank to replace Paul Wolfowitz, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.[...]
Bush had said he wanted an American to succeed Wolfowitz, despite increasing calls from World Bank member countries and some U.S. lawmakers to throw the process open to a global pool of candidates.
A non-American? Like that's going to happen.
Still, it could have been worse. Which isn't saying much.
.
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.
[...]
A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it.
The ruling was to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal -- effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.
Y'see, I have always been told that the essence of Capitalism™ is competition. If a company comes up with a more successful idea and it's competitors don't or won't match it they will perish. It has something to do with Free Markets™.
Now, here we have an administration that is using the government to crush a small company in order to benefit larger companies. That sounds like Government Intervention™ which is antithetical to Capitalism™ and Free Markets™. It almost makes me think that BushCo™ are lying when they talk about the wisdom of the Marketplace™. But they wouldn't do that, would they?
[Via Holden.]
.
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."[...]
The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.
I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.
[...]
This is my resignation letter as the "face" of the American anti-war movement. This is not my "Checkers" moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.
Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.
It’s up to you now.
.
I've been meaning to get to this for the last week. It would seem that George, with little notice, recently gave himself explicitly dictatorial powers:
In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency.”Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”He laid this all out in a document entitled “National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51” and “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20.”
The White House released it on May 9.
Well, isn't this just dandy? You'd think that the Liberal Media would be all over this. Oh, that's right, the media isn't liberal.
Anyway, let's have a look-see:
[§2](d) "Continuity of Operations," or "COOP," means an effort within individual executive departments and agencies to ensure that Primary Mission-Essential Functions continue to be performed during a wide range of emergencies, including localized acts of nature, accidents, and technological or attack-related emergencies;
Notice the non-specific wording here; also notice "localized acts of nature." the is means earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and what have you. In other words, anything the president deems a sufficient emergency.
This leads us to:
[§2](e) "Enduring Constitutional Government," or "ECG," means a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers among the branches, to preserve the constitutional framework under which the Nation is governed and the capability of all three branches of government to execute constitutional responsibilities and provide for orderly succession, appropriate transition of leadership, and interoperability and support of the National Essential Functions during a catastrophic emergency;
The key phrase here is "coordinated by the president." This puts the legislative and judicial branches under presidential control. How long would the last?
[§11](a) The continuation of the performance of ["Primary Mission Essential Functions"] during any emergency must be for a period up to 30 days or until normal operations can be resumed, and the capability to be fully operational at alternate sites as soon as possible after the occurrence of an emergency, but not later than 12 hours after ["Continuity of Operations"] activation;
"Or until normal operations can be resumed." Again, as determined by the president.
So if this were to come to pass what would your legal recourse be? Need you ask?
[§21](c) Is not intended to, and does not, create any rights or benefits, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
Under just about any other president this wouldn't be so alarming but given that George already claims the power to strip citizens of their Constitutional rights whenever he feels like it I can't help but think that this directive is a Very Bad Thing. Even Jerry "Swift Boat Slime" Corsi sees this for what it is.
And given that there are 601 days left for this increasingly isolated and desperate administration to do what they want this should be, but won't be, big news.
[Via Pam at Pandagon.]
.
Elephant robs motorists in India
"The tusker then inserts its trunk inside the vehicle and sniffs for food," local resident Prabodh Mohanty, who has come across the elephant twice, was quoted as saying."If you are carrying vegetables and banana inside your vehicle, then it will gulp them and allow you to go."
.
Here we go again:
Poland's conservative government took its drive to curb what it sees as homosexual propaganda to the small screen on Monday, taking aim at Tinky Winky and the other Teletubbies.Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog, told a local magazine published on Monday she was concerned the popular BBC children's show promoted homosexuality.
She said she would ask psychologists to advise if this was the case.
[...]
"At first I thought the purse would be a burden for this Teletubby ... Later I learned that this may have a homosexual undertone."
[...]
But in a sign that the government wants to distance itself from Sowinska's comments, Parliamentary Speaker Ludwig Dorn said he had warned her against making public comments "that may turn her department into a laughing stock."
Laughingstock, indeed.
.
At least eight U.S. soldiers were killed in restive Diyala province north of Baghdad on Memorial Day, two of the victims in a helicopter that went down, the military reported Tuesday.[...]
The latest casualties raised the U.S. military death toll to at least 114 this month, making May the deadliest for 2007.
.
While the cadets at West Point may have been enthusiastic about George and Dick's War, those who are actually fighting and dying aren't real thrilled:
“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” [Staff Sgt. David Safstrom] said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
[...]
A small minority of Delta Company soldiers — the younger, more recent enlistees in particular — seem to still wholeheartedly support the war. Others are ambivalent, torn between fear of losing more friends in battle, longing for their families and a desire to complete their mission.
With few reliable surveys of soldiers’ attitudes, it is impossible to simply extrapolate from the small number of soldiers in the company. But in interviews with more than a dozen soldiers in this 83-man unit over a one-week period, most said they were disillusioned by repeated deployments, by what they saw as the abysmal performance of Iraqi security forces and by a conflict that they considered a civil war, one they had no ability to stop.
Soldiers and Marines, and all of us, will be paying for George's Folly for decades to come.
.
None of this would have happened without you:
The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.[...]
Last week, the Lebanese Army found itself in a furious battle against a militant group, Fatah al Islam, whose ranks included as many as 50 veterans of the war in Iraq, according to General Rifi. More than 30 Lebanese soldiers were killed fighting the group at a refugee camp near Tripoli.
None of this is surprising since DeFib Dick continues to demonstrate to the world that he's a delusional madman:
“We’re fighting a war over there because the enemy attacked us first,” Cheney said. “These are men who glorify murder and suicide. Terrorists are defined entirely by their hatreds.”The terrorism fight now centers on Iraq, the vice president said, because that is where the enemy has massed. “The security of this nation depends on the outcome,” Cheney said.
They weren't there before you got your war on, jackass.
While it comes as no surprise to those of us who have been paying attention, on Saturday The Dick openly stated contempt for our laws and Constitution:
As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. [...]
Remember: A terrorist is anyone who George labels a terrorist, including you and me.
20 January, 2009 can't come soon enough.
.
It's not enough that Big Media so dominates our national discourse; now they've hatched a plan to eliminate the remaining independent voices:
THE COST OF getting magazines into your mailbox will shoot up July 15. How much? It depends.Magazine publishers are facing a radical postage rate restructuring that favors those with large circulations and transfers costs to small- and mid-circulation publications.
Teresa Stack, president of The Nation, and Jack Fowler, publisher of the National Review, explain:
Past increases to periodical postage were applied fairly equally across all publications. But this time, things are drastically different — and potentially damaging to the diversity of voices that our founders strove to foster when they created the national postal system.[...]
For this latest round of rate hikes, the U.S. Postal Service proposed a 12% increase that would have affected magazines more or less equitably. Then, in an unprecedented move, that plan was rejected by the Postal Regulatory Commission, the body responsible for setting rates. Instead, it approved a complicated pricing system based on a proposal by Time Warner Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the country. Rather than base rates on total weight and total number of pieces mailed, the new, complex formula is full of incentives that take into account packaging, shape, distance traveled and more.
It adds up to this: discounts for some periodicals; as far as we can see, mostly the huge-circulation titles associated with firms like Time Warner. At smaller magazines like ours, rates will go up 15% to 25%. Research by McGraw-Hill Cos. concludes that the rate increases for some small-circulation publications could hit 30%.
The authors estimate that their respective magazines will have to come up with an additional $500,000 per year to pay for the increased postal rates. This translates into increased cover and subscription prices, staff cuts, and fewer pages, all of which drive away readers. And if you planned on starting a new magazine you might as well just forget it.
Should this be allowed to stand before long there's a real possibility that your periodical reading choices will be limited to Time, Dog Fancy, People, and such.
Megacorps like Time-Warner already control the airwaves and cable. Don't let them control what you read as well.
---
ADDED: Sign the petition to stop the rate-hikes. (Thanks to reader nobozos for the link.)
.
...for various member of BushCo™:
Japan's Agriculture Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka has died in hospital after reportedly committing suicide.The 62-year-old was found hanged in his Tokyo apartment hours before he was to face questions in parliament over his links to a political funding scandal.
Give it some thought, Loyal Bushies.
.
From my visit Friday to Pittsburgh's Phipps Conservatory and it's exhibit of Chihuly works in glass:
More of Chilhuly's work can be seen at his website.
.
Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich, a former Army officer, Vietnam vet, and Iraq War critic, writes about his son's death in this never-ending war:
Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.
[...]
Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.
This, I can now see, was an illusion.
[...]
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
The vast majority of us will never understand - truly understand - any of this; the war is too remote, involves too few Americans, and is increasingly underreported.
But for some the war is very real.. And very devastating.
.
Employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm under contract to the State Department, opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days last week, and one of the incidents provoked a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.A Blackwater guard shot and killed an Iraqi driver Thursday near the Interior Ministry, according to three U.S. officials and one Iraqi official who were briefed on the incident but spoke on condition of anonymity because of a pending investigation. On Wednesday, a Blackwater-protected convoy was ambushed in downtown Baghdad, triggering a furious battle in which the security contractors, U.S. and Iraqi troops and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters were firing in a congested area.
Blackwater confirmed that its employees were involved in two shootings but could neither confirm nor deny that there had been any casualties, according to a company official who declined to be identified because of the firm's policy of not addressing incidents publicly.
As I've written before, mercenaries are scum and Blackwater USA are the worst we can offer.
.
Light posting through this helliday weekend. You should out playing on a nice day like this. Anyway, I'm tired:
.
First it was rumored to be Tony Blair, now comes this:
The Wall Street Journal reports today on a shortlist of contenders for the job; topping that list is former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a loyal administration ally who retired from the Senate last year amid speculation that he would run for president, which he declined to do after his political fortunes fell with those of the administration.Frist doesn't have much of a financial background; he was a respected heart surgeon before coming to the Senate. But while there, politics sometimes clouded even his medical judgment. During the controversy over Terri Schiavo, Frist reviewed a tape of Schiavo and said her doctors were wrong, that she was not in a persistent vegetative state. An autopsy after Schiavo's death showed that it was Frist who was wrong.
Nothing surprises me anymore.
.
Joe "Jokeline" Klein confirms Steve Clemons' report that DeFib Dick and the AEI are conspiring with Israel to attack Iran and adds a bit more.
Given that it's Joe Klein you might want to take this with a grain of salt.
.
Almost 200 passengers found themselves stranded at Bournemouth Airport for 11 hours after their plane turned back after flying into a swarm of bees.[...]
But after flying into the swarm the pilot experienced an engine surge an hour later and returned the aircraft to the UK for checks.
Engineers ruled it was unsafe to fly and another plane took off at 1915 BST.
[...]
The incident happened just two days after a swarm of 20,000 bees descended on Bournemouth Pier.
This certainly explains the recent disappearances of bee colonies; they were massing for their attack!
.
As executive pay has surged in most American companies, attention has focused on the growing gap between the earnings of top executives and the average wage of workers in cubicles or on the shop floor. Little noticed, though, is how much the gap has also widened between the summit and the next few echelons down.[...]
Few are deprived in corporate suites, of course. But the widening disparities in business, which show up in a variety of other ways, reflect a dynamic that is taking hold across the economy: the growing concentration of wealth and income among a select group at the pinnacle of success, leaving many others with similar talents and experience well behind.
In the 1960s and ’70s, chief executives running the nation’s biggest companies earned 80 percent more, on average, than the third-highest-paid executives, according to a recent study by Carola Frydman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Raven E. Saks at the Federal Reserve. By the early part of this decade, the gap in the executive suite between No. 1 and No. 3 had swollen to 260 percent.
[...]
This even more skewed pattern at and near the top of the income ladder has become a sort of national standard. From 1985 to 2005, the incomes of taxpayers in the top 10th of earnings rose about 54 percent after inflation, to an average of $207,200, according to Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley.
But among the top 1 percent of taxpayers it increased 128 percent, to $812,500. And among the top 0.01 percent it nearly quadrupled, to $14 million on average.
Before too long those at the very top will be living behind their walls, checking the balance in their offshore accounts, and ever-ready to jump on their Gulfstreams and skedaddle when the economy goes sour.
And for this lot Robert Reich has a solution.
(New York Times graphic.)
.
Ethically challenged would-have-been chief of the Consumer Product Safety Commission Michael Baroody defends his "honor":
Much has been made, and made up, of reports about my severance agreement with the National Association of Manufacturers ["Nominee to Head Consumer Product Agency Withdraws," In the Loop, May 24]. It is important to note that such reports could be written in the first place only because, despite promised confidentiality, a copy of my ethics agreement "was provided by a Democratic Congressional aide," according to a May 16 news story in the New York Times.I disclosed the anticipated severance payment in confidential filings on the basis of which the director of the Office of Government Ethics wrote the Senate Commerce Committee that "we believe that Mr. Baroody is in compliance with applicable laws and regulations governing conflicts of interest."
Further, the agreement was originally signed in January 2006, six months before any vacancy occurred at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, 10 months before discussions began and 14 months before the nomination itself. As I told senators who inquired, the agreement had two essential elements: a dollar amount and a date certain for leaving NAM. As the date certain in January 2007 approached, the agreement was amended to allow for a later date. The severance amount was not changed, however, and according to that amended agreement, since January of this year I have been in unpaid status at NAM, though continuing to receive employee benefits for which I will reimburse NAM the employee portion of cost.
The Post reported "outrage stemming from news reports" about this agreement. Outrage should be directed at the leak, which breached not just my reasonable expectation of confidentiality and proper privacy safeguards but the explicit promise of same -- offering yet another regrettably chilling example that will cause potential future nominees for posts in government to think twice, or maybe three times, before taking the risk.
MICHAEL E. BAROODY
Executive Vice President
National Association of Manufacturers
Washington
Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right. Anyway, we're talking about a regulatory agency here; Given Baroody's current position and his vehement opposition to regulation he shouldn't have even been considered for the job. Of course, his conflict of interest made him a practically perfect BushCo™ nominee.
And it's interesting to note that rather acknowledge this conflict of interest he directs his ire at being exposed. It's reminiscent of Field Marshal von Rumsfeld's anger at cell phone cameras rather than the abuse at Abu Graib.
Baroody aside, that such information is considered confidential is an abomination. There's another change that needs to be made, although I don't expect Democrats to be any better on this issue.
.
Everyone else who was listening Wednesday had to be flabbergasted as Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee -- apparently having been struck deaf and blind -- lobbed softball after softball at witness Monica Goodling. This was after Goodling had already 'fessed up to applying a political litmus test for career Justice employees. I repeat: career employees, not political appointees. Only loyal Republicans should bother to apply.The deaf and blind Republicans on the committee apparently missed that part of her opening statement. They also missed the part when she accused Gonzales's former deputy, Paul McNulty, of telling untruths to Congress -- and, in the process, hanging Goodling out to dry. Those dogged GOP interrogators did, however, manage to elicit from Goodling the startling disclosure that she believes she is a good person and also the revelation that while she might have broken a few laws, she didn't set out to do anything illegal.
[...]
Did all this fly over the heads of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee? Of course not. But House Republicans evidently have made the cynical political calculation that to acknowledge reality would be to grant the Democrats some sort of victory. This, apparently, must be avoided at all costs.
Of course the they're cynical; the only thing the modern Republican Party cares about is power. Authoritarians to the core, they subscribe whole-heartedly to a strange code:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Normal people call this "delusional."
Whether cynical or delusional, or both, the failure to recognize reality (real reality) alone should disqualify the Republican Party (in it's current form) from holding any position of power. Sane Republicans (if such an animal still exists) should either reform their party or quit and create a new conservative party.
.
St. John votes!
It was McCain's first vote in six weeks, after 46 straight roll calls in which the Arizonan opted for presidential campaign duties instead of casting a vote in the Senate. Capitol Briefing has kept tabs all year on the presidential candidates and the attention they've paid to their congressional duties, paying particular attention to McCain's abandonment of the chamber.[...]
Asked by the cable producer about missing six consecutive weeks of votes, he deadpanned: "Oh my god, is that right? ... It's a nice day, the weather's nice."
Love that flippant attitude, jackass.
.
Eventually, people outgrow their hubris. Nuance and humility supplant dogmatism as virtues to live by. If we're lucky, we're able to admit to ourselves and others that we don't know everything, and that we may be ignorant about most things. As we grow older, most of us bristle at being considered evil.There is one notable exception, though.
Read the whole thing to find out who the exception is.
(As if you can't guess.)
.
Congress sent President Bush a new Iraq funding bill yesterday that lacked troop withdrawal deadlines demanded by liberal Democrats, but party leaders vowed it was only a temporary setback in their efforts to bring home American troops.
Apparently I missed a memo. It appears that the term "liberal Democrats" refers to the large majority of Americans:
Most Americans support a timetable for withdrawal. Sixty-three percent say the United States should set a date for withdrawing troops from Iraq sometime in 2008.
If I've learned only one thing in this life it's to never believe that, in the end, the Democrats have a spine.
.
Five U.S. soldiers killed in separate Iraq attacks"
Al-Sadr makes public appearance in Iraq
Somewhere (in an undisclosed location) DeFib Dick is smiling.
.
On bin Laden:
"He's not out there traipsing around. He's not leading many parades [.]"
Thanks for informing us, Einstein.
Come to think of it, George isn't out there traipsing around much anymore. Except for hand-picked audiences, natch.
.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has a
