The gall of promoting a CD rather than answering tough but fair questions about his fight with Detroit fans suggested a raw ignorance to the seriousness of the matter. But therein may be the source of the public's dislike for the NBA.
Or perhaps that alleged role model just learns from the alleged role models in the White House & Capitol.
A comment from Prof. DeLong's weblog that I found worth repeating, from a post on the subject of the administration's difficulties in hiring replacement members of their economic team:
This just in from the wires:
>>In a surprise announcement, President George W. Bush today nominated Berkeley economist J. Bradford DeLong to be his new Secretary of the Treasury. In prepared remarks, the President complimented Professor DeLong on his intelligence, his integrity and his devotion to family.
In the brief question-and-answer session that followed, reporters peppered the President with insolent and childish inquiries, harping on Dr. DeLong’s being not only a Democrat from a Blue State but one who calls the economic policy making of the Bush Administration "a clown show” and the war in Iraq "a disaster" (Professor DeLong has indeed reportedly gone so far as to call on more than one occasion for the President’s impeachment – Ed.).
Out of pity, the President explained the obvious to the White press corps:
“You have to have dissent if you want to crush dissent. If I filled the cabinet with yes men or folks with neutral positions, I wouldn’t have the fun of crushing the life and spirit out them…and when I say “I” I mean me and the Vice President, of course.”DeLong, who refused to appear alongside the President at the press conference announcing his appointment, issued a cryptic message to readers of his Internet-based thought crime experiment or “weblog”:
“Help, the Secret Service has already surrounded the building! They have built some sort of barrier around the perimeter out of printed copies of the 2003 and 2004 budgets. There is no way out. If anyone knows or is related to a member of the Senate, tell them I will not come to the hearing. I will not answer questions--even by email. Wait, a car is pulling up. Someone is being taken out of the car. Oh, God! It’s John Taylor. They seem to be holding him at gunpoint. I…I can’t quite make out what he is saying but he looks very agitated and I do not think it’s about the yuan peg. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no! They’ve [Error 404]” <<
(note: Sporkeypost)
How on earth do we counter the right wing fanaticals? We should stop reacting to them and start to spar with them. They are good Christians, at least, their church tells them so, and they voted not for Bush, but for God.
It is sad that this is their way of thinking. But it can be countered. We can't igore them, because the powerful will get their way by selling the souls of their flocks. And I am angry that so many people don't discuss God, or their beliefs, because that only reinforces their notion that "Democrats" and "Liberals" are "godless".
About the only way we'll do that is to use the most powerful and influential book in our arsenal: the Bible.
This may seem pretty bad to an atheist or an agnostic, but to tell you the truth, wouldn't it be fun to watch the heads expolde if a "Homo" says, "But didn't Jesus say that you should love the sinner, but hate the sin?" or someone who doesn't believe in God say, "Well, the bible also says that women should be sequestered in a room, given her food and drink there by other female family members, during her period." or, better yet, "Didn't Jesus tell us the parable of the man who made clear to his congragation that he was fasting, and of the man who kept himself clean and did not make a show of it?"
We need people to throw Jesus into their face. They've been propping up the cardboard cutout of the Savior and have actually convinced people that it's really Jesus. Not only am I scared, but I find it morally repugnant (repeat those words often, and make an icky face) that they would think a vote for Bush is a vote for God. And no amount of "saving" is going to help them...they are sinners. It's the commandment of Moses: "I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods but me." And by voting because someone who says that God talks to them told them to, or that they believe that Bush is godly, or by pledging faith in Bush, they've just broken that commandment. And God is a jealous God; his wrath will crush them. You are only to have faith in God, and His son Jesus, and if you're placing the faith of that kind elsewhere, you're being idolatrous. That will get them to think. Do they really like Bush that much so that they go to hell for Him? It may take some convicing, but I think they'll get the point.
Another point: The parable of the goats and sheep. "For whatever you didn't do for the least of my brethern, you did not do for me." Which means that if you don't take care of the needy, then you'll end up in hell, or at least flames licking your ankles as demons poke at you. Remind them of the parable and ask, "Are you a sheep who's helped your neighbor? Your friends? The poor people at the shelter or in prison? Or are you a goat, stepping over the homeless on the way to buy yourself a new car?" That's as simple as it gets... goats or sheep. (I'd say also to use the very famous example of "The Good Samaritan"... the guy who had helped a man who lay in ditch bleeding after being robbed and passed by by a priest and a merchant... but most people don't understand what was known at the time of Jesus: Samaritans were considered horrible people, they wouldn't help someone unless it was to their wallet. So Jesus' tale of the "bad" person helping the injured man instead of the "good" people helping him had more of an impact. We can, however, update that parable so that modern day people can truly understand it....)
There are many examples, and this with me just writing off of the top of my head. And these are ideals rooted in religion that benefit everyone. And I'm quite sure that the Koran has words like these in it somewhere. The famous Sporkey, giving a speech at which thousands clawed their way just to get into the auditorium, said, "There are many people who contend that Islam is the opposite of Christianity. Some people even go so far as to say that Judaism is the opposite of both Christianity and Islam. I don't really agree with that. There's many names for our respective deities: Yahweh, Jehova, Lord, Allah -- but they are all one God. When I look around me today at all of the faces, at all of the colors, at all of the faiths and beliefs, I am reminded of Genesis, Chapter 1: 'God created man in His image'. God truly must be a sight to behold, a being of great proportions. To include all of us, even those who don't believe in God -- I tell you, it makes my faith so strong I want to hug the world with open arms, regardless of the world's belief. That is my God, a God who understood through Jesus that we are merely mortals and imperfect. It just takes my breath away. I do apologize to non-Christians for this outburst, but I do offer you this: If I believe that God loves you and respects you even though you don't believe in God, and I try my hardest to follow the words of God, would you rather speak with me or with someone who believes that God is vengeful, angry bigot? I can only offer myself as a person, and if you are only so kind, you will excuse my emotional outburst...."
Seriously. We need to combat the "Moral Majority".
"Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power." -- Salaman Rushdie
(note: Sporkeypost)
Forget "Liberal".
Let's start really screwing with the wingnut's heads. How about "socialist"?
First, we need to change the meaning of the word. And repeat it, reapeat it, reapeat it.
Religion?
"No, I'm not a Liberal. I'm a Neosocialist. I believe in God, but the real, true God, and I believe in Jesus, the real, true and everlasting words of Jesus. 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Is that such a horrible rule to live by? Decency? Respect? Love? I don't think so. And every American, both Christian and non-Christian, can abide by those simple words of Jesus. 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.' I don't put myself above God, nor do I claim to know what God will do. To do so puts you on God's level, and weren't the first man and woman booted out of Eden for that? I'm not God and to tell the world that I am, or to know God's will, well, that just is plain sinful. You're an idol then, and God doesn't want that. And the people who believe you are...well, they're just as sinful. We've all committed sins, and we'll pay our price for them. That's not my department...that's God's. To judge someone as God does is asking for the Lord to judge you the same way. And by the way, let's not forget 'What you do for the least of my brethern, you do for me.' So, in that vein, I believe in socal programs that truly uplift those in poverty, like funding education so that no child goes through life illiterate, or programs that actually can help the sick and needy. Homosexuals and abortions? I'm not going to pretend that those are truly that important. Joe America's being played for a fool, and rich are winning."
Class Warfare?
"I'm a Neosocialist. Yes, there is class warfare. Joe America may not realize the depth of it. The rich control the media, and Joe hears he needs this, he needs that, and above all, don't pay attention to the rich laughing at him. All Joe America wants is to feed his family. And the rich are stealing his money...he pays far more taxes than the rich. Of course, it's in the rich's interest that Joe America votes for candidate who wants tax cuts...it benefits them. Joe may get a few more pennies that, if he puts them in a jar for the next four years, may buy him a gumball. They tell Joe that it's the poor people's fault because they're on welfare, scamming him, and that's why his paycheck doesn't cover all of his bills. That's just a load of hooey. The real reason Joe can't pay his bills? The rich want to be richer. They want to be so rich that they can roll around in money, fill swimming pools with their pocket change, and would rather Joe be a slave so that they can eat caviar and drink champagne and laugh at him. Frankly, I'm sick at millionaires laughing at everyone else, like we're completely stupid. Aren't you?"
Tax and Spend?
"Well, think of it like this: I go a to job, I get paid for my work, and that money goes to my bills. That's what taxes are like. We need a military, a good military, and to fund it, because we as a people need it, we tax. It benefits everyone to have a military. Same with schools. Same with a lot of things. I mean, how many fighter craft can you really shoot down with a hunting rifle? And would you rather have someone recieve money to go to school, so that you don't have to come home to find your house robbed of everything? And would you like the police to show up if they did?"
Well, that's all I can think of now. I'm sure I'll come up with something more.
All around us, it was as if the Universe were holding its breath, waiting.
All of life can be broken down into moments of transition, or moments of revelation. This had the feeling of both.
G'quon wrote: "There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos, and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender." The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us; we know only that it is always born in pain.
I believe regular blogging will resume again soon, with a couple of rather longish posts of my own material (no blockquotes!). Not tonight, though, but probably Monday at the latest.
Liberals unanimously believed that Bush was not up to the intellectual challenges of the job. But fearful of re-enforcing a stereotype of left-wing elitism, they time and again shied away from pressing the argument....
Three-plus years later we know better, or at least we should. Intelligence matters. The job of the president of the United States is not to love his wife; it’s to manage a wide range of complicated issues. That requires character, yes, but not the kind of character measured by private virtues like fidelity to spouse and frequency of quotations from Scripture. Yet it also requires intelligence. It requires intellectual curiosity, an ability to familiarize oneself with a broad range of views, the capacity -- yes -- to grasp nuances, to foresee the potential ramifications of one’s decisions, and, simply, to think things through. Four years ago, these were not considered necessary pieces of presidential equipment. Today, they have to be....
Reviewing Clinton’s My Life in the June 24, 2004, Los Angeles Times, neoconservative Max Boot happily concluded that “conservatives like character, liberals like cleverness.” He’s right. But to state what should be obvious, the president is not your father, your husband, your drinking buddy, or your minister. These are important roles, but they are not the president’s. He has a job to do, and it’s a difficult one, involving a wide array of complicated issues. His responsibility to manage these issues is a public one, and the capacity to do so in a competent and moral manner is fundamentally unrelated to the private virtues of family, friendship, fidelity, charity, compassion, and all the rest....
But Bush’s bungling has gotten people killed in Iraq, saddled the nation with enormous debts, and created long-term security problems with which the country has not yet begun to grapple....
And if we are to [succeed], the question of intelligence must be put back on the table. The issue is not “cleverness” -- some kind of parlor trick or showy mastery of trivia -- but a basic ability to make sense of a complicated, fast-changing world and decide how to confront it. Any leader will depend on the work of his subordinates, but counting on advisers to do the president’s heavy lifting for him simply will not do. Unless the chief executive can understand what people are telling him and follow the complicated arguments they may need to make, he will find himself paralyzed at every point of disagreement, or he will adopt the views of the slickest salesman rather than the one who’s gotten things right.
The price to be paid for such errors is a high one -- it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Already we’ve paid too much, and the problems confronting the country are growing harder with time. Unless the media, the electorate, and the political culture at large can shift their focus off of trivia and on to things that actually matter, it’s a price we may pay again and again.
I wrote a rather lengthy comment over at the former Calpundit's Washington Monthly, and thought it was worth copying over to here (slightly edited):
Robear wrote: I believe that when we look back at how petroleum was used the 20th and early 21st century the greatest shame will be that we burned most of it, considering the other uses that hydrocarbons could have been put to: plastics, medicines, fertilizers and the like.
After wading through more than half the posts [in that thread], I was starting to think I'd have to bring this point up here, but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one here thinking of it. Nonetheless, indulge me while I expand on this slightly:
Doing my own extrapolation of curves (hyperbolic functions and such, in keeping with my blog name), I'm much more concerned about what happens when we start running out of oil, than what happens when it isn't cheap anymore. I'm guessing 2040-2070ish for this (ob grain of salt warning here). Remember that oil is used for more than just private transportation fuel and electrical generation. Aircraft fuel, shipping fuel, lubrication of just about everything, and the plastics, medicines, and fertilizers Robear mentioned. A hypothetical alternative fuel source might do for shipping, but many of them would be useless for the speedy jet aircraft travel we've become accustomed to. Hybrid technology and other increases of efficiency are even more useless; a ship doesn't do much stopping and starting during a transoceanic voyage, and I dare you to bring a jet to a complete stop in flight.
It's even worse for the other products, for which petroleum is a raw material rather than 'just' an energy source. There are many other possible/conceivable sources of energy which are relatively easily interchangeable, but synthesizing these from scratch would be terribly cost-prohibitive.
If we do find an alternative energy source, or improve efficiency of petroleum-burning remarkably, we might be in the odd case of finding the costs of these petroleum-as-raw-material good rising, because if there are less and less oil wells and refineries running, economies of scales will be lost, and these goods will have to bear most of the cost of extraction of each barrel of oil, instead of being indirectly 'subsidized' by the money gained from the part of the crude useful for gasoline and fuel oil. I'd guess we'd feel the impact of this most in the prices of lubricants, plastics (which are in just about everything these days, of course), and perhaps fertilizer (I'm rather unknowledgeable about its use in fertilizers). Even if we're running all electrical motors or something like that (leaving the source of the electricity as an exercise for the reader), those motors still need to be lubricated by something, and the wires have to be insulated, and what will you make the tires out of? These cost increases would impact almost every segment of the economy, in much the way that fuel price increases do now.
And, also much like what Robear said, I fear that sometime after that point, our grandkids will be cursing us for having burned up all that wonderful raw material into the atmosphere, when it could have been turned into durable goods or used sparingly for lubrication, when all we really needed was the energy from it, which (I hope from their point of view) is so freely available from so many other sources.
The real irony would be if we burned up the last few drops of cheap, easy oil for energy before we managed to find some other source of energy. After all, research into new energy sources takes energy itself, and usually plastics and lubricants too. If we got to that point and hadn't found a seriously long-term solution by then (fusion, or 50%-plus efficient solar, or something similarly SFish), that's when we'd really be screwed, society would collapse (assuming it'd survived the peak), and it would be time for those grandkids to seriously curse us.
You know, I thought we were going to find stockpiles [of WMDs or chemical weapons, context not clear], everybody did....
I didn't think so. As I am, indeed, a subset of "everybody", therefore Bush lied (probably again). And I strongly suspect there were others who did not think so, e.g. after a certain date, one Hans Blix.
Cheney also charged that Kerry's pattern of "hesitation and uncertainty" makes him an unacceptable choice for the White House in November.
Hesitation and uncertaintly? How about sitting around reading "My/The Pet Goat" with the kiddies for seven minutes after being told the nation is under attack? Does that qualify as "hesitation and uncertainty" in Mr. Dick Cheney's book? If not, I'd very much like to know specifics as to just what Mr. Kerry has done that's so egregiously worse than that.
"We don't want to turn that responsibility over to somebody who doesn't have deeply held convictions about right and wrong," Cheney told a town hall meeting in Joplin.
Oh, I see. What Cheney really means is that that guy doesn't necessarily try to impose his religious views on the rest of the country. Cheney just wants to disguise it under the cover of talking about "hesitation and uncertainty". Well, gee, that uncertain bastard.
Appearing with her husband, Cheney's wife, Lynne, also went after Kerry's comment to a minority journalists' convention last week that he could fight a "more sensitive war on terror."
"With all due respect to the senator, it just sounded so foolish," she said. "I can't imagine that al Qaeda will be impressed by sensitivity."
Oh, I'm so sorry, I must have missed the part where al Qaeda was part of your constituency now. Yeah, of course Kerry must have meant sensitivity towards al Qaeda. He couldn't possibly be concerned with sensitivity towards, say, citizens of the United States, could he? After all, he "doesn't have deeply held convictions about right and wrong." Nogoodnik agnostic-leaning bastard!
Been offline due to power supply problems at home since Wednesday morning. And now I'm off for the weekend, at which time I'll probably be spending something like six hours just catching up with everything. Ç'est la vie.
This is a suggestion I originally had with Gen. Clark in mind, but I'd dearly love to see Kerry take it up now.
I feel that a campaign promise to take the oath "to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth"¹ before delivering each State of the Union Address would be an excellent move. I realize that this may make him vulnerable to impeachment if he were ever misinformed prior to a SotU address, but think of the distinction it would make between him and the incumbent with his infamous "sixteen words".
And after the acceptance speech, which included these excerpts, it could easily be tied in with existing themes:
"We have it in our power to change the world again. But only if we're true to our ideals – and that starts by telling the truth to the American people. That is my first pledge to you tonight. As President, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House."
"As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system – so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics."
"We need a President who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers."
"As President, I will not evade or equivocate;..."
The State of the Union address is only very vaguely defined in the Constitution, and almost all of what we consider essential to it is precedent and tradition. Here's what the Constitution itself has to say about it:
Article IISo, much like we now consider it to be standard that "from time to time" means once a year, and usually during the last week in January (unless you want to time it to steal the opposition's thunder), John Kerry, if elected President, could set a precedent for years, or even centuries, to come, by taking that oath before each Address. That might be a legacy worth leaving in and of itself.
Section 3
[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient....
And of course, consider the contrast this would give with recent history. While President Clinton's evasion about Monica Lewinsky was impeachable because (and only because) he was under oath, President Bush could get away with those "sixteen words" in his 2003 State of the Union Address without fear of impeachment, because he was not under any oath to tell any part of the truth. If John Kerry made a promise to take the oath before each Address, it would be an excellent way to emphasize his intent to "restore trust and credibility to the White House," and to differentiate himself from his opponent.
1) Due to national security considerations, he probably couldn't swear "to tell the whole truth." However, it may be that the legal interpretation of the phrase is loose enough to let him say that. Not being a lawyer, I don't know just how it's interpreted in court.
Iraqis visiting on a civil rights tour were barred from city hall after the city council chairman said it was too dangerous to let them in.
The seven Iraqi civic and community leaders are in the midst of a three-week American tour, sponsored by the State Department to learn more about the process of government. The trip also includes stops in Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The Iraqis were scheduled to meet with a city council member, but Joe Brown, the council chair, said he feared the group was dangerous.
"We don't know exactly what's going on. Who knows about the delegation, and has the FBI been informed?" Brown said. "We must secure and protect all the employees in that building."
Elisabeth Silverman, the group's host and head of the Memphis Council for International Visitors, said Brown told her he would "evacuate the building and bring in the bomb squads" if the group entered.
"They are in charge of setting up processes in their country. They have to educate themselves about how it works in this country," Silverman said.
Silverman did not immediately respond to a message Tuesday seeking comment, and it was not clear whether the group had run into trouble elsewhere on their tour.
But the delegates seemed in good spirits Monday, after they were able meet with Carol Chumney, the city council member, elsewhere. Shahla Waliy, a 31-year-old native of Baghdad, said she was intrigued by the city's civil rights history.
"I heard there was a kind of majority-minority conflict in Memphis, especially in history," she said. "We have these smaller provinces, and we have majority-minority conflicts in these places."
That'll teach 'em about civil rights, and how to run a proper democracy!
Al-Hayat: Marines have arrested Dr. Muthanna Harith al-Dhari, son of the leader of the Board of Muslim Clergy, a fundamentalist Sunni organization. Muthanna was interviewed on the Lebanese Broadcasting Co. harshly critiquing the way the delegates were chosen for the national congress to be held in mid-August. He later discovered 5 humvees heading toward his living quarters at the Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad. He was taken into custody.
If Muthanna committed a crime, for which he was being arrested, it should have been announced to the press. Otherwise, the Allawi government looks as though it is sending the rather thug-like signal that political figures who refuse to cooperate in the national congress and who are critical of him will be arrested. If that is what is going on, it is sad to see the US Marines deployed for the purpose of these political arrests. It is also a shame that the US ban on the military arresting civilians hasn't been extended to Iraq.
It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.
When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.
This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent. Mr. Gumbel's full-length report, printed in Los Angeles City Beat, makes hair-raising reading not just because it reinforces concerns about touch-screen voting, but also because it shows how easily officials can stonewall after a suspect election.
Some states, worried about the potential for abuse with voting machines that leave no paper trail, have banned their use this November. But Florida, which may well decide the presidential race, is not among those states, and last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity. A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush accused those seeking audits of trying to "undermine voters' confidence," and declared, "The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections...."
After first denying any systematic problem, state officials declared it an innocent mistake. They told Accenture to match a list of registered voters to a list of felons, flagging anyone whose name, date of birth and race was the same on both lists. They didn't realize, they said, that this would automatically miss felons who identified themselves as Hispanic because that category exists on voter rolls but not in state criminal records.
But employees of a company that prepared earlier felon lists say that they repeatedly warned state election officials about that very problem.
Let's not be coy. Jeb Bush says he won't allow an independent examination of voting machines because he has "every confidence" in his handpicked election officials. Yet those officials have a history of slipshod performance on other matters related to voting and somehow their errors always end up favoring Republicans. Why should anyone trust their verdict on the integrity of voting machines, when another convenient mistake could deliver a Republican victory in a high-stakes national election?
This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Think about what a tainted election would do to America's sense of itself, and its role in the world. In the face of official stonewalling, doubters probably wouldn't be able to prove one way or the other whether the vote count was distorted - but if the result looked suspicious, most of the world and many Americans would believe the worst. I'll write soon about what can be done in the few weeks that remain, but here's a first step: if Governor Bush cares at all about the future of the nation, as well as his family's political fortunes, he will allow that independent audit.
President Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the Sept. 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin....
For their first study, Solomon, Greenberg and colleagues asked students to think about either their own death or a neutral topic.
They then read the campaign statements of three hypothetical candidates for governor, each with a different leadership style. One was charismatic, said Solomon.
"That was a person who declared our country to be great and the people in it to be special," Solomon, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.
The others were task-oriented -- focusing on the job to be done -- or relationship-oriented -- with a "let's get it done together" style, Solomon said.
The students who thought about death were much more likely to choose the charismatic leader, they found. Only four out of about 100 chose that imaginary leader when thinking about exams, but 30 did after thinking about death.
Greenberg, Solomon and colleagues then decided to test the idea further and set up four separate studies at different universities.
"In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV," Solomon said. "What we found was staggering."
When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq. But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.
"They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq," Solomon said.
Solomon, a social psychologist who specializes in terrorism, said it was very rare for a person's opinions to differ so strongly depending on the situation.
Another study focused directly on Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person's political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.
"I think this should concern anybody," Solomon said. "If I was speaking lightly, I would say that people in their, quote, right minds, unquote, don't care much for President Bush and his policies in Iraq."
Ohio resident Bob Stewart says of President Bush: "He's been a world-class polarizer. I don't know if I can stomach four more years with him as president. He misled us into the war in Iraq and has mismanaged everything since."
A raging Democrat? No, Stewart is a Republican, one of an unknown number of such voters who plan to back John Kerry, out of despair over the war in Iraq and disappointment over budget deficits and social policies....
Stewart, 44, an insurance agent from Anderson Township near Cincinnati, voted for Bush in 2000 and is a registered Republican.
"I just have a gut feeling that Kerry can be trusted to make the right courageous decisions and will make a good president. He showed that with his heroism in Vietnam," he says.
Bush is "supposed to be a conservative and yet he's run up the biggest federal deficit in history. One thing that really turned me (away from Bush) as a lifelong Catholic ... was to see Bush go to the Vatican and try to get the pope to come down hard on Kerry for his stand on abortion. That is absolutely appalling."
In Michigan, Dan Martin has run for local office as a Republican. He says his biggest disappointment is that Bush's reputation as a "compassionate, conservative" governor of Texas hasn't proven true in the White House.
"The foreign policy is a mess. The offensive in Iraq is reckless and built on bad decision making. On the domestic front I understand that terrorism has struck and he's occupied but any real progress on a domestic agenda has ground to a halt," added Martin, 32, a customer service manager at a health maintenance organization who lives in Rochester Hills.
In Tennessee, Brian Boland, a young music company manager shopping at a market near Nashville, said: "I've always voted Republican and my folks will just kill me if they find out I'm switching to Kerry this year (should've gone anon. - ed.) ... but I am just frustrated with the way Bush has mishandled everything. All the untruths."
His wife said she too was switching. The Republicans carried Tennessee in 2000, even though it was the home state of Democratic nominee Al Gore.
At the same market Ron King, a black Vietnam Veteran, said: "I always voted Republican before but I'm against Bush ever since I found out that he doesn't love this country. His so-called military record is a sham. And the worst part is that he lies so much. He lied about weapons of mass destruction."
Lloyd Huff, 64, retired director of the Dayton Research Institute in Ohio, says he has "voted for a Republican in every presidential election I can remember" but it will be Kerry this time because "the Bush administration has been the most deceitful, duplicitous, secretive administration this country has ever had."
"Going to war in Iraq was a horrible, horrible mistake," he said. He accused Bush of "an arrogant, swaggering cowboy mentality ... he has done more than anyone to inflame the Muslim world by his words and actions."
I'm starting to feel vaguely hopeful.... Perhaps I won't have to decide whether to flee the country in November.
A campaign worker for President Bush said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.
"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.
Well, there you go then. Now I know what to do for the next four years if he's re-(s)elected.
Jesus' General may be a rather unreliable source, since he tends to be rather tongue-in-cheek. But I saw mention of this one other place, where it also seemed maybe for real, maybe not: Jerry Falwell may be delivering the Republican National Convention opening prayer. He's got a lovely selection of quotes from pastor there, to truly capture the spirit of the Convention we can look forward to.
I'm not sure how seriously to take this. I don't know the nature of this "AMERICAblog" he links to, and for its part, it claims the ultimate source is Jerry Falwell himself, rather than the GOP. It seems too ridiculous to be true—isn't it?
OK, I know everyone else is already on the Obama bandwagon now, but just in case anyone out there isn't already aware of him, check out his speech from the Democratic National Convention tonight. I'm collecting links in different formats, for the benefit of those of us who might have the nerve to use something other than Windows.
| Barack Obama | ||
|---|---|---|
| Washington Post | RealMedia | some other format? |
| C-Span | RealMedia | |
| Bill Clinton | ||
| C-Span | RealMedia | |
| Jimmy Carter | ||
| C-Span | RealMedia | |
| Ron Reagan Jr. | ||
| C-Span | RealMedia | |
| Teresa Heinz-Kerry | ||
| C-Span | RealMedia | |
| Tammy Baldwin | ||
| C-Span | RealMedia | RealMedia interview |
| C-Span Tuesday | ||
| RealMedia 1 | RealMedia 2 | RealMedia 3 |
Federal charges were filed against Adam McGaughey, creator of the popular SG1Archive.com website - a fan website devoted to the MGM-owned television show Stargate SG-1. The charges allege that the website engaged in Criminal Copyright Infringement and Trafficking in Counterfeit Services. The charges were the culmination of a three-year FBI investigation, set in motion by a complaint from the Motion Picture Association (MPAA) regarding the content of the SG1Archive.com website....
Adam was first tipped off about the investigation when the FBI raided his and his fiancee's apartment in May of 2002 and seized thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment. Adam later received a copy of the affidavit filed in support of the search warrant, and was shocked to discover that this document, prepared by the FBI, contained significant amounts of erroneous and misleading information. For example, two social security numbers were listed for Adam, one of which is not his. References were made to a cease and desist letter sent by the MPAA to an email address that did not exist. His online friendship with other Stargate fans across the globe was portrayed as an international conspiracy against the MPAA. And perhaps most disturbing of all, it was later revealed that the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. The FBI's abuse of its powers did not stop there. When they seized Adam's computer equipment, he was given written documentation stating that it would be returned within 60 days. The equipment that they did return did not arrive until more than 8 months later, and only then after much prodding from his lawyer. Much of it was damaged beyond repair - one laptop had a shattered LCD screen, an empty tape backup drive was ripped apart for no apparent reason, his fiancee's iBook was badly damaged when it was pried apart with a screwdriver. The FBI's computer crimes staff is either incompetent (at least when it comes to Macintosh computer equipment) or else they just don't give a damn.
From comments at the Slashdot article where I picked up on this, it sounds as though the presumed defendant-to-be may not be such a nice & innocent guy as he makes himself out to be. He might have been providing some copyright-infringing downloads, or not. But either way, a terrorist against whom we must invoke the PATRIOT Act? I hardly think so.
You know how I'm kind of trying (albeit weakly) to go for a "right-wing style"? And I express concern that "it may take me a while to become as extreme in my style as I'm shooting for"? Ann Coulter seems to be trying real hard to raise the bar for that style.
Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazoned with the "F-word" are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling....
As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it's because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the U.N. Security Council's approval. Plus, it's no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars. My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie-chick pie wagons they call "women" at the Democratic National Convention.
As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."
Two excellent recent summaries by the Angry Bear:
Jerry Bailey is precisely the kind of taxpayer President Bush had hoped to bestow his tax cuts on: an entrepreneur brew-pub owner, a job provider, not overly rich by Washington area standards but well off enough to pay a hefty sum to the federal government each year.
But after three tax cuts in three years, the part-owner of Loudoun County's Old Dominion Brewing Co. is not exactly celebrating his gains. Sure, his federal tax bill was trimmed, by a healthy $5,600, according to a rough calculation by Clint Stretch, director of tax policy at the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.
But other factors having nothing to do with federal taxes have clouded Bailey's situation. This year, the property tax bill on his Bethesda home will reach $6,725, a $950 increase over his payment four years ago. The annual cost of his 56-mile-a-day commute has jumped more than $300 since 2001, and the long, slow decline of business profits these past four years has left Bailey far behind, no matter what his federal tax payment may be.
"I'm not paying any taxes at all because we're not making any money," Bailey said with a sigh. "I loved paying taxes. It meant we were doing all right...."
But many Americans feel they have lost ground since 2001, and a solid 71 percent are convinced they have received no tax cuts at all. A poll by CBS News and the New York Times in March found that only 22 percent believe the policies of the Bush administration made their taxes go down; 25 percent said their taxes actually went up.
You found your way here somehow, right? Ergo, I probably don't need to spell out the point of this item for you, n'est çe pas?
Some 145,000 poor children were dropped from a U.S. federal-state health insurance plan in the second half of 2003, with more than half the cuts made by Texas, a health-care research foundation said on Friday.
"The drop in (the) State Children's Health Insurance Program is a major setback when millions of uninsured children are eligible but not yet enrolled," said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
Net enrollment in the program, which mainly benefits working families, fell last year for the first time since it was launched in 1998, the Washington, D.C.-based Kaiser Commission said in a report....
A total of 11 states sliced enrollment, with "noteworthy" cuts made in Florida, Colorado and South Carolina, the report said.
The number of needy children who got this health insurance peaked in June 2003 at 3.964 million. Though 37 states added children to the program in the second half of last year, the total number still fell by 37,000 children, the report added.
In some cases, the number of children fell because they were shifted to Medicaid, which provides health care for more impoverished children and adults, the report noted.
Still, that was not the case in some of the states that clipped enrollment, including Texas. That state stopped covering "a broad range of services," including glasses, eye and teeth exams, and services by chiropractors, hospices and skilled nursing centers, the report said.
Is "trickle-down" just a fancy way of talking about what always rolls downhill?
Payroll records related to President Bush's service in the Air National Guard three decades ago that the Pentagon said earlier this month were accidentally destroyed now have been located, defense officials said on Friday.
Bush's whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue, with some Democrats accusing him of shirking his duty.
Defense Finance and Accounting Service spokesman Bryan Hubbard said the microfilm payroll records were found in Denver, and blamed a clerical error for the Pentagon's previous failure to find the records.
No word yet on what the records show. But I'm sure we should find out soon, assuming there isn't a second oopsie, and that this wasn't all a ploy to give "them" enough time to doctor the records.
President Bush told African-Americans on Friday he wanted their vote and acknowledged his Republican Party had "a lot of work to do" to win the support of blacks, who rejected Bush in 2000 by a margin of more than 9 to 1.
Two weeks after he rebuffed an invitation to speak at a gathering of the nation's oldest civil rights organization, the NAACP, Bush struck a chord with some blacks when he urged them not to allow the Democratic Party to take their support for granted in the November presidential election.
But he appeared to face a tougher sell when he asked members of National Urban League, a group focused on civil rights and economic issues affecting blacks, to consider whether his policies might better serve their interests than those of the Democratic Party.
"I'm here to ask for your vote," he told the attendees, who numbered about 1,200. "I know, I know, I know," he said, when the blunt appeal appeared to catch many off guard.
"The Republican Party's got a lot of work to do. I understand that," Bush said.
But apparently, for some reason, he can't even get some actual, live black people to sit with him for a picture this time.
THE PRESIDENT: ...So, anyway, raising taxes. And so let me say something to you, so you hear -- in the campaign, you'll hear, we're going only to tax the rich. That's what you'll hear. Now, this is from a fellow who has promised about $2 trillion of new spending thus far. And only taxing the rich, first of all, creates a huge tax gap, which means buyer beware. You see, if you can't raise enough by taxing the rich, guess who gets to pay next? Yes, the not-rich. (Laughter.) That's all of us.
Yep, he's just one of the regular, bottom-tax-bracket kind of guys, isn't he, the little darling?
[local businessman] MR. BLOOMHALL: Well, we've got 124 employees worldwide. They're the best and the brightest, because as we can save taxes and reinvest it in our business, in capital, in the equipment to automate our manufacturing line, in science -- we hire PhD's, real good-paying jobs -- and we can grow jobs and investment in our country better than the government can by collecting taxes. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: I didn't tell him to say that. (Laughter and applause.) But I couldn't have said it any better myself. John said, investment. One of the things in the tax relief plan that we passed, it says to small businesses, we'll encourage you to invest by allowing you what they call bonus depreciation. These are fancy tax words. I'm trying to simplify it. It says, you invest in planned equipment, you get a tax break for doing so.
So, Mr. Bloomhall, if we were to REALLY slash your taxes, how well do you suppose your business would be faring without roads, without water & sewage, without police protection? How many jobs do you think you'd be creating then, even for "the best and the brightest"? (I beg to differ, I'm not working for him.)
There's more to taxation benefiting job creation than just the people that work directly for the government. Dumbass. Dumbasses.
Are you going to invest, you think, this year?
MR. BLOOMHALL: Yes, we're investing about $1.3 million this year.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. What do you -- when you say, invest, what does that mean? Are you buying things?
MR. BLOOMHALL: Primarily capital investment in our plant and equipment.
THE PRESIDENT: Like what kind of plant and equipment?
MR. BLOOMHALL: Automation equipment so that our employees are not doing the manual jobs, they're doing the thinking jobs. They create greater value to us, we can pay them more, and everybody wins.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Now, this is a very interesting lesson here—
Cut his mike! Yes, it is a very interesting lesson. The automation equipment means the employees won't be doing the manual jobs. That means he won't be needing so many workers, to turn out the same amount of product. Invest in the machinery once, and all it needs thereafter is electricity and a little bit of maintenance now and then. More money goes into Mr. Bloomhall's pockets, less into his workers' (though they may be averaging more per capita, once the manual worker 'dead weight' is trimmed'), the rich get richer, the workers get poorer and feel lucky for it because at least they have jobs.
Presidential Determination
No. 2004-40MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE
SUBJECT: Eligibility of Iraq to Receive Defense Articles
and Services Under the Foreign Assistance Act of
1961, as Amended, and the Arms Export Control Act,
as Amended
Pursuant to the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 503(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, and section 3(a)(1) of the Arms Export Control Act, as amended, I hereby find that the furnishing of defense articles and services to Iraq will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace.
You are authorized and directed to report this finding to the Congress and to publish it in the Federal Register.
GEORGE W. BUSH
In other words, they can go ahead and buy a lot more of our dangerous goodies now.
Added: Reuters caught the story here.
Florida elections officials knew before they bought the first touch screen voting machine that the devices had a history of problems.
The machines recorded cases in which no vote was cast, known as undervotes, at a higher rate than some other machines.
But election officials bought them anyway, partly because they didn't think undervotes would become a major problem.
Now, undervotes are at the center of the latest controversy surrounding Florida's troubled elections process....
But a leading expert on voting machines says undervotes are nothing to worry about.
"A small but significant number of voters in every election intentionally undervote," said Dan Tokaji, an Ohio State College (Diebold Election Systems is located in Ohio. -ed.) law professor and the author of a recent report to the Election Assistance Commission on touch screen machines. "Why would somebody do that? I'm not sure if anyone has a clear answer to that question."
Still, undervoting seems peculiar in elections with only one issue on a ballot. Why would anyone take the time to go to a polling place, get a ballot and not vote? Yet that's exactly what happened in March. In Pinellas, for example, 211 voters cast blank ballots in the March primary in precincts that had just one race.
Remember those US citizens caught in Kabul holding people imprisoned, claiming that the prisoners were terrorists & Taliban?
A US citizen arrested in Kabul over an alleged freelance counter-terrorism operation says he was working with the knowledge of the US defence secretary.
Speaking before the start of his trial, Jonathan K Idema said he had been abandoned by the US government.
Mr Idema was arrested with two others Americans for allegedly running a private jail.
But the US State Department said they were mercenaries operating outside Washington's command.
Mr Idema claims to have helped prevent several attempted terrorist attacks and said he had regular e-mail, phone and fax contact with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office and other senior Pentagon officials.
Among the charges he is expected to face in the trial, which is under way in a Kabul courtroom, is hostage taking.
Time to play name-that-quote: "If you are captured, the secretary will disavow all knowledge."
Voting across party lines, the House yesterday soundly approved a measure that would override accounting standards-setters and require companies to expense stock options only for their five top executives.
The House passed the bill, pushed aggressively by high-tech companies that rely on issuing options to executives and employees, by a vote of 312 to 111 after two hours of sometimes contentious debate. The House bill would derail a broader proposal by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, an independent group that is moving to force companies to treat stock options for all of their employees as an expense.
The House measure directs regulators to study the consequences of expensing stock options, which give workers a chance to buy company shares at a set price and within a particular time frame. It also instructs companies to use a method for valuing stock options that critics argue is prone to manipulation.
Another one from the Concentration of Wealth department.
Plans for the Jumeira Islands development, a luxury residential project being built here, include acres of lush landscaping. But how can such greenery bloom in the sandy soil of this arid desert climate? To address that problem, developers are turning to an unlikely solution: the technology used in disposable diapers.
Disposable diapers are made of superabsorbent polymers, or hydrogels, that retain moisture. In the early 1980's, chemical manufacturers discovered that the same technology, with modifications, could be applied to products designed to improve soil irrigation. At that time, the discovery was hailed as a possible aid to poor farmers in the developing world who were seeking to grow crops in dry climates. But it never caught on; the products were too expensive, and their effectiveness was not proved.
But manufacturers are now finding their market growing, as worldwide demand increases for ways to stretch scarce water supplies.
Just interesting to notice, this sounds an awful lot like the "dew collectors" used in Frank Herbert's Dune, written and published back in the 1970s.
Yes, sir, this [Hinesville, GA] is Bush country: Real pit barbecues, yellow ribbons on church doors, wild boar in the woods. Fort Stewart 10 minutes away. And one preteen party loyalist greeting guests for his mother's Party for the President, on National Party for the President Day, a boy with impeccable manners who, when peppered with questions by the adults in the living room, blurts out things such as "Condi Rice speaks, like, three languages!"
So why does hostess Michele Bourque sound as defensive as if she were living in Berkeley?
"There's just so much negativity around," she says, explaining her decision to host this party. "There's not a lot of positive affirmation about why George W. Bush should be president. We just want to let people know, he's not as bad as people think."...
"Kerry, Kerry, Kerry," says one of the guests, Stacie Young. "These young guys in the squad say, 'I'm voting for Kerry,'" she says, meaning the guys who serve with her husband. "And I say, 'Why would you do that? Vote for your kids! Vote for your security!'"
Voting for security, and for your kids, to my mind, and apparently to a number of these soldiers, means voting NOT FOR BUSH. If this lady can't even consider the possibility that Bush is not, by definition, your security and your kids' benefit....
To her husband, John, a sergeant who fought with the 11th Engineers, the view of Iraq in the media is unrecognizable. In the stories he tells at the party, Iraq is a place where soldiers throw candies to children and drink sweet tea. It's where he saw a sergeant get shot in the neck to save his platoon, where for the first time he felt a sense of purpose. Where "we felt like celebrities, we would march around and the people would chant, 'Saddam bad, Bush good.'"
Gee, imagine that. People who've been conditioned for two decades that people who speak out against a dictator "disappear", chanting how they love the "liberator." Obviously a completely spontaneous and honest outpouring of love for Our Glorious Leader.
A high-profile congressional hearing into the safety of antidepressant medicines was abruptly canceled on Sunday afternoon by a House panel whose chairman is weighing a top job at a trade group representing the biotech and pharmaceutical industries.
Rep. James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.) is reported to be considering an offer to become president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include most of the pharmaceutical companies that were to send representatives to testify at the hearing.
In a statement -- an e-mail attachment titled "retirement.doc" -- the moderate Republican said he has been reviewing an opportunity and will shortly announce his decision. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) told reporters that Greenwood will be leaving Congress but did not say what his new job would be.
The outgoing president of the biotech trade organization, Carl B. Feldbaum, said the group has not talked with Greenwood about the antidepressant issue.
Patients rights advocates voiced outrage at the turn of events. "What this shows is that things are so corrupt," said Vera Hassner Sharav, a patient rights advocate, after learning that the hearing had been canceled. Sharav said that in calling a hearing into the issue, Greenwood had exploited the families harmed by the medicines. "We now suspect the whole investigation was done to up his price," she said.
Hm. Another odd coincidence. Right?
President Bush, chatting with reporters Monday about Iran's alleged aid to the 9/11 terrorists, said: "I have long expressed my concerns about Iran. After all, it's a totalitarian society where free people are not allowed to, you know, exercise the -- their rights as human beings."
Hmm . . . But here's Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, telling a colleague of ours in February 2003: "The axis of evil was a valid comment, [but ] I would note there's one dramatic difference between Iran and the other two axes of evil, and that would be it's a democracy. [And] you approach a democracy differently."
So it's a totalitarian democracy?
New York to Appeal Ruling Limiting Searches of Protesters
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that the city would appeal a federal court ruling restricting searches and other police tactics during protests at the Republican National Convention next month.
City officials could not say if they would seek an expedited appeal to ensure a decision before the convention, or which elements of the ruling would be appealed. The ruling, by Judge Robert W. Sweet of Federal District Court in Manhattan, bars general searches of protesters' bags at the convention and the use of closed four-sided pens to contain the demonstrators, but Mr. Bloomberg's comments indicated that it was the Police Department's ability to conduct general searches that was most at issue.
He told reporters at a news conference that he objected to limiting "the ability to search backpacks, not just for this event but for New Year's Eve and other times," and faulted the prohibition of searches "at big gatherings where common sense says if somebody wanted to be a terrorist they might very well show up."
Can't have people actually exercizing those Bill of Rights rights during a political event, can we?
I didn't mention this here, since it was during my latest long-term hiatus, but a few weeks ago, there was something going around about our liaisons with Pakistan and/or Afghanistan telling their government people that we'd really like to see some HVTs (High Value Targets) captured or killed before November, especially Osama bin Laden, and doing it around the time of the Democratic National Convention would be nice. (I'll dig out a link later tonight.)
Well, the DNC is next week, and look what I found in the news today:
Thousands of Afghan refugees have been forced from their homes in the border areas of Pakistan as the Pakistani Army, backed by United States intelligence and surveillance, has intensified its operations against supporters of Al Qaeda taking shelter in the mountainous region.Wow, the amazing world of coincidence.
Some 25,000 people have poured into Afghanistan in the last few weeks from the tribal agency of South Waziristan where Pakistani forces, with American help, are battling a major concentration of foreign fighters and sympathetic local tribesmen, refugee officials said.
The Pakistani army, at the behest of the United States, has pushed into the normally autonomous tribal areas over the last five months, in an attempt to capture or kill an estimated 500 foreign fighters, and search for the Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, and his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, often rumored to be sheltering in the area.
A proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw the burning of the American flag won the approval Tuesday of a Senate Judiciary Committee split largely along party lines.
Raised by some Republicans as a mark of patriotism this election year, the measure passed on a 11-7 vote and was sent to the full Senate for final congressional approval. While the Senate has repeatedly rejected such measures in the past, both sides predict a razor-close vote this time.
The Judiciary Committee's vote came a week after a divided Senate blocked a White House-backed bid to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, another issue Democrats have accused Republicans of pushing merely to rally their conservative base for the November elections.
In other words: "Damn, the gay marriage thing didn't divide the nation enough! It even kind of embarassed our control of the Senate. Quick! To the Flagmobile!"
"I know you're busy," one of [Indianapolis 500 winner Buddy] Rice's crew members told Bush, who had just left an Oval Office meeting with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
"Not busy enough to say hello to the champ," Bush said.
Does he ever realize that he's saying the exact opposite of what he means? Or did he really decide he couldn't possibly say hello to Rice?
"Postponing an election in the aftermath of a terrorist attack would demonstrate weakness, not strength, and would be interpreted as a victory for the terrorists," the resolution [stating that election day should never be postponed due to terrorism] says.
Great idea, but just a little quibble with the way people seem to be thinking these days, and how it's expressed in such bills as this: When can we quit worrying about whether we seem weak or strong, and go back to considering what's wrong or right to do? This near-obsession with "strength", and especially the appearance of strength, seems unhealthy to me. Almost like the country were compensating for something, like, say, not being right about various things.
And won't somebody think of the children?
They're actually letting people sell sex toys in Texas, and call them sex toys:
A Texas woman charged with violating obscenity laws for selling a sexual toy and explaining to her customer how to use it has had the case against her dismissed, court officials said on Monday.I think we need a Federal Sex Toy Amendment passed by our Republican friends in the Senate, if you know who I mean, pronto.
Joanne Webb, a mother of three and a former schoolteacher in the town of Burleson near Forth Worth, was facing up to a year in jail after she sold a vibrator at a private party to two undercover police officers posing as a married couple.
The case received national attention because it touched off a debate on whether a person should be jailed for selling vibrators to adults.
Nice footnote, too:
According to reports in local media and residents of Burleson close to the issue who asked not to be identified, a few prominent citizens with strong Christian beliefs were angered by Webb and her activities. They asked police to investigate.I didn't remember the commandment about "Thou shalt rat out thy neighbour's every naughty doing."
"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job."-- statement attributed to President Bush in the Lancaster (Pa.) New Era from a private meeting with Amish families on July 9. The White House said Bush said no such thing.
Two more, both from the Washington Post's White House Briefing:
"Coleman compared Bush's allegiance to Cheney, who some have called a drag on the ticket, with Abraham Lincoln's faith in Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant.
"'He was rough at times. He didn't look so hot in his uniform. He sometimes used a cuss word,' Coleman said of Grant. But he said Lincoln countered critics with, 'He fights.'"
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft "compared Bush to Abraham Lincoln and introduced him as 'a leader who has called us to an understanding of freedom, not as America's gift to the world, but as the Almighty's gift to humanity.'"I guess this must be the Bush campaign meme du jour, Bush and Lincoln. Whatever happened to Churchill?
Just heard that Halliburton is being subpoenaed about its Cayman Islands division's dealing with Iran, in light of Iran coming up in connection with September 11 recently. Don't have a link yet, heard it on radio; I'll edit a link in here when I find one online.
Here's some linky goodness: Halliburton Subpoenaed Over Unit's Iran Work
Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post:
Ah, but the earnest chin-pullers are not amused. Cheney's demonstration of earthy authenticity (You know what he means. -ed.) in a chamber in which authenticity of any kind is to be valued has occasioned anguished meditations on the loss of civility in American politics. Liberals in particular have expressed deep concern about this breach of decorum.
Odd. The day before first reports of Cheney's alleged indiscretion, his Democratic predecessor, Al Gore, delivered a public speech in which he spoke of the administration's establishing a "Bush gulag" around the world and using "digital brown shirts" to intimidate the media. The former vice president of the United States compared the current president to both Hitler and Stalin in the same speech -- a first not just in hyperbole but in calumny -- and nary a complaint is heard about a breach of civility.
I think he's writing about me, no doubt about it.
A caller on the BBC radio service bragged about how he walked up to an election registration center here and, without showing any identification, received a voter card. He claimed to have immediately shuttled to another registration site where he was swiftly awarded another card, again without question. A local newspaper article told of people selling their voter registration cards — not card — to political parties for $150 a piece. When I visit one of these sites, an old man shoves me aside and asks me where the free food is. After a confusing exchange, I decipher the miscommunication: he believes his voter registration card is a coupon for free wheat. "Voting," he asks, visibly irritated. "For what? What's an election?"
Great to see what a great job we're doing instilling democracy over there, isn't it? Love that follow-through.
I just wanna say, yeah, it's some decent ideas and all that, but, I dunno, it's just not rude like the Rude Pundit ought to be.
No, really. I mean it. A rather slow news day. About the only thing worth commenting on would be the revelation of what kind of a fellow we've replaced Saddam with. But of course, you've already heard about that, right?
That is all.
I've been wondering if Vice-President (President of Vice?) Cheney's use of "go fuck yourself!" on the Senate floor might have been brought on by listening to Eric Idle's 'FCC Song' one too many times. An excerpt:
So fuck you Dick-head Mr. Cheney too,
Fuck you and fuck everything you do.
Your pacemaker must be a fake,
you haven't got a heart,
As far as I'm concerned you're just a pasty-faced old fart.
Might explain a lot, mightn't it?
An online conversation from Tuesday the 13th:
(00:36:17) John: Have you been using Blogger recently? (00:36:29) Sporkey: no (00:37:41) John: Sez here, "Google said it formed a partnership in May with Picasa, which is based in Pasadena, Calif. That deal allowed users of Google's Blogger service, a site where people can publish personal journals, to post photos using Picasa's software." I wonder if that means Picasa's software is on the server, and any blogger can use it, or if it means you have to buy Picasa, and then you can use it. (00:38:47) Sporkey: don't know (00:39:28) John: I haven't noticed anything on Blogger that would seem to be for posting photos. I definitely like that they've added built-in comments.
And lo and behold, when I got home last night, there was a new interface on Blogger, with a tab that lets you compose without messing with the raw HTML (which I'll probably never use), and—wait for it!—an "Upload Image/File" button. So, I'm going to try that out now, with the side benefit of giving myself an XML logo to put up with the site feed over to the right. (You do know about the site feed, right?)
That should be it right above, I think, if I've guessed their intent correctly. Otherwise, you might get nothing there. If it does work, then it goes into the template as well.
Added: Well, I guess it isn't working after all. And now, if I click that button which brought up a dialogue for uploading an image before, instead I get a window saying you can't upload directly, unless you have one of the special packages or something. So I guess I'll have to give up on doing it that way, for now.
The post is kind of scary. U.S. Senator Santorum is making some rather extreme radical conservative hyperbole. But the first comment beneath the post is downright terrifying. When I read it, my blood ran cold, because it just might be true. Go read it....
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Do we really, in this 21st century, have people deciding governmental policy based on fear that September 11 was just a foretaste of the United States getting the Sodom & Gommorah treatment? I am terribly disturbed by this idea.
Among Blair's most egregious errors was to claim that Iraq could launch a WMD attack on "Europe" "within 45 minutes." That was always ridiculous, and it was was [sic] based on a misunderstanding by Blair, a misunderstanding that is inexcusable. His military told him that Iraq could mobilize its WMD on the battlefield in 45 minutes. Blair somehow interpreted that to mean that the Iraqis could mount it on missiles in 45 minutes. Even then the Iraqis could not have hit Europe.
Is that what the 45 minutes BS was all about? A simple failure to communicate & comprehend? What qualifies these people to run nations?!?
Bank of America Corp. (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , the No. 3 U.S. bank, on Wednesday said quarterly profit rose 41 percent, helped by the purchase of FleetBoston Financial Corp. and higher consumer and commercial lending.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company said second-quarter net income rose to $3.85 billion, or $1.86 per share, from $2.74 billion, or $1.80 per share, a year earlier.
Results included pre-tax charges of $125 million, or 4 cents per share, tied to the bank's $48 billion purchase of Fleet, which closed on April 1.
Analysts polled by Reuters Estimates on average forecast profit of $1.74 per share, excluding items. Profit included $795 million of one-time gains as the bank sold bonds, expecting interest rates to rise.
This is one of my economics things, a la Marshall Brain's Concentration of Wealth. Sure, the stock is up $1.74 a share. But every household in America (assuming for the moment that the vast majority of profit came from the United States; hey, look at their name, after all!) coughed up over $35 so they could make that profit. In just the second quarter. Over a year, that means we'd be giving up about $150 per household, just for Bank of America. And according to this, they're only the third largest bank in the U.S.
If you want to see more about why this kind of thing gets on my tits so, check out Marshall Brain's Concentration of Wealth, like I said (plug, plug).
Comedian Whoopi Goldberg will no longer appear in ads for diet aid maker Slim-Fast following her lewd riff on President Bush's name at a fund-raiser last week, the company said on Wednesday.
Florida-based Slim-Fast said it was "disappointed" in Goldberg's remarks at last Thursday's $7.5 million star-studded fund-raiser at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
"Ads featuring Ms. Goldberg will no longer be on the air," Slim-Fast General Manager Terry Olson said in a statement, adding that the company regrets that Goldberg's remarks offended some customers.
Of course, we all know it's absolutely not in any way anything like censorship, right?
In February 2003, a month before the United States and coalition forces invaded Iraq, British intelligence received reports that Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi was establishing sleeper cells in Baghdad that would attack U.S. forces after they occupied the city, according a report on British prewar intelligence released yesterday in London.
In a prediction that has proved deadly accurate, the British Joint Intelligence Committee in March 2003 wrote, "These cells apparently intend to attack U.S. targets using car bombs and other weapons," according to yesterday's report by the Butler Commission. In the past year, Zarqawi has publicly claimed to have put together an Iraqi network that has committed dozens of bombings and killings, including the beheading of a Bulgarian truck driver that was revealed yesterday.
The March 12, 2003, JIC report also warned that "al Qaeda-associated terrorists continued to arrive in Baghdad in early March." Summarizing this information, the Butler panel noted that the JIC "did warn of the possibility of terrorist attacks on coalition forces in Baghdad."
A senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday that the CIA was made aware of the reporting "simultaneously." The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency passed on warnings to Bush administration policymakers that U.S. forces would probably be attacked by "stay behind" Iraqi forces and Islamic terrorists who would be drawn to Iraq by the invasion, officials said.
How could they have been told of this and still expected that open arms & flowers horsecrap?
While I was sleeping:
The issue may still resurface in the House this year. A House panel was considering today a legislative proposal that its authors said could prevent federal judges from overturning the existing federal law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, though critics said they doubted the new proposal could survive a court test.How the hell do you get a law forbidding judges from overturning another law? I mean, short of a Constitutional amendment, which is what just got voted down!?
Defending his decision to invade Iraq, Bush said, "Although we haven't found the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction." Saddam Hussein "could have passed that capability to terrorists."Yeah, he makes it sound so funny. Wasn't that the vow about not eating sweets while our soldiers are in danger over in Iraq? Nothing important, just a little something to make light of while another car bomb goes off, another Iraqi governor is assassinated, and you're feeling a little peckish.
An hour into his tour Bush's convoy came to a halt in West Bend, Wis., where he shook hands and then bounded into Mick's Candyman. "I'm looking for a few calories," said Bush, with daughter Barbara in tow. Bush paid $5.28 for four caramel bear claws. Asked about his vow to quit sweets several months ago Bush said "well, not when your [sic] confronted with such excellent sweets."
"Members of Congress should not vote to send troops into battle and then vote against funding them, and then brag about it," Bush said during Tuesday's trip to Marquette in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and to Duluth, Minn., two Midwest states that Bush lost to Gore in 2000.You mean like Bush is cutting all those veterans' benefits, and then boasting about how he's the soldiers' bestest friend? Oh, that's right, that's all different, because it's all better when you lie about it to their faces.
President Bush asked Americans on Wednesday to give him four more years in November's election to finish the job in Iraq and Afghanistan and make the world a safer place....I guess he really is an optimist. He does think he can complete the subversion of democracy in just four years. I'm afraid I'm starting to lose my doubts on that point.
"I need four more years to complete the work. There's more to do to make America a safer place. There's more work to do to make the world a more peaceful place. We will finish the work of democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq," Bush told a forum here.
Reflecting the tough stand he has taken in his war against international terrorism, he said he would not negotiate with Islamic militants, whom he called cold-blooded killers. "Therapy is not going to work with them," he said.Ha. Ha. Ha.
"Although we haven't found the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq, and America is safer today because we did," Bush said.Yeah, yellow alerts, orange alerts, talk of postponing the election, watch out for people wearing "unseasonal clothing" over the Fourth of July weekend....
A total of 22 U.S. electric utilities could be sued for harmful emissions from aging coal-fired plants if the Bush administration pursues cases recommended by Environmental Protection Agency staff, according to an internal EPA list obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.Hey, bright boy, here's a proposition for you: Maybe you could try just complying before they get around to slapping a lawsuit on you? That might be even faster!
The EPA has forwarded 14 cases to the U.S. Justice Department, and could send another eight cases within 30 days, the list said.
The Justice Department has not yet committed to pursue the cases, many of which have likely sat idle since 2001, when the Clinton-era department finished filing cases against nine utilities for violating the Clean Air Act. Many of the original cases are still unresolved....
The Justice Department has not filed the cases in court, but the action indicates EPA enforcement staff's intent to pursue the cases....
"A case-by-case approach is more costly and less effective in reducing emissions," said Frank Maisano at the group. "A cap-and-trade approach would get reductions from all sites rather than this notoriously slow lawsuit-driven approach."
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson wrote in a letter to lawmakers that the government stood firm on its policy that taxpayers who oppose destroying human embryos should not be forced to pay for it.Cool. Can I cite him on that when I ask for my Gulf War III tax refund, and my faith-based initiatives tax refund?
[Bush campaign policy director] Tim Adams, you will remember, is the guy who when asked why he hadn't mentioned that a low unemployment claims number was the result of a change in the timing of the auto model year changeover, responded with, "We're not an economic-reporting firm, we're a campaign." It violates truth-in-labeling laws to call it a policy shop. And there is not a single economist on board the Bush campaign whom Adams thinks important enough to get Weisman to print his or her name. The Bush campaign has no--or next to no--real economists visible....Why Are We Ruled by These Liars? (Budget Edition)
The stunning contrast between the enthusiasm with which economists--lots of economists--lots of very good economists--are donating their time to Kerry and the extraordinary silence on the Bush side is, to my way of thinking, the most interesting thing that emerges from Weisman's article. So, of course, it is not something he talks about. Weisman seems to think that there is something wrong with having lots of very smart and industrious people wanting to work for you for free: his lead paragraph closes by talking about how Kerry is finding it "difficult to manage" an "increasingly unwieldy policy apparatus...."
John Kerry is not Bill Clinton, but John Kerry's economic policies could still be very good for America. It will be our job--Sarah Bianchi's and Jason Furman's, George Akerlof's and Lael Brainerd's, Harry Holzer's and David Cutler's, Alan Auerbach's and Ceci Rice's, Larry Katz's and Roger Altman's, Gene Sperling's and Alan Blinder's, Laura D'Andrea Tyson's and Bob Rubin's, and mine and all the rest of our's--to help him make it so. Who will George W. Bush have to help him? Tim Adams? John Snow?
We also wanted to wish you a happy anniversary. As we are sure you and the attorneys representing the President, Vice-President and other White House officials are aware, today marks one year since Administration sources leaked the identity of a covert CIA agent to Bob Novak in an effort to retaliate against a critic of the Administration.Warms my heart, it does.
In light of the fact that the Administration began gutting the laws protecting the nation’s forests yesterday, we hope you will accept the paper on which this letter is written as an anniversary gift. (The one year anniversary is known as the “paper anniversary.”)
A divided U.S. House of Representatives committee on Wednesday backed the Bush administration's pending overtime rules for white-collar workers that a new report warned could cost at least six million Americans extra pay.Line up for your pay cuts now.
On a party-line vote of 29-31, the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee defeated a Democratic amendment to a Labor Department spending bill aimed at blocking implementation of the overtime rules, set to take effect on Aug. 23.
"This is simply an amendment that tries to protect the 40-hour work week," said Rep. David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who introduced the measure....
"Under the new rules, workers who earn as little as $23,660 per year -- about $5,000 above the poverty line for a family of four -- can expect to see their jobs reclassified as ineligible for overtime pay," the report said.
Electoral news from the Sunshine State and elsewhere indicates that [Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission]Mr. Soaries and his commission haven't achieved much progress in their assigned task. Clearly they've had even bigger problems on their minds. Recently Mr. Soaries sent a letter to Tom Ridge, the Secretary of Homeland Security, expressing concern that no federal agency is empowered to cancel a national election in the event of a terrorist attack. According to Newsweek, Mr. Soaries asked Mr. Ridge to seek "emergency" legislation authorizing his bipartisan commission to make that decision.Somehow, I don't like where this is going. At all.
The reverend's qualifications for this heavy responsibility aren't immediately obvious. He is currently the pastor of a large Christian congregation, with a sideline in various other business enterprises. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2002 against Representative Rush Holt, the New Jersey Democrat who is seeking to require that computerized voting machines also create a paper record. (Yay for him!- ed.) He served as New Jersey's Secretary of State when Christie Whitman was Governor. He first won the admiration of Republican leaders when he co-chaired a group supporting the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas.
Serving on the four-member commission with Mr. Soaries are a pair of little-known Democrats and a conservative Republican named Paul DeGregorio, whose qualifications are perhaps too obvious. A Missourian who has long been associated politically with Attorney General John Ashcroft, he formerly served as an election commissioner in St. Louis. In November 2000, at the urgent behest of the Bush-Cheney campaign, Mr. DeGregorio rushed southward to help oversee the post-election recount in Broward County, Fla.
It's the telecom equivalent of post-game analysis. When a landline phone network suffers a serious outage, the company involved has to tell federal regulators what happened and how it can be avoided next time.Personal/professional note here: I know darn well they'd love to do away with those reporting requirements. Very often, when I've worked with a telco partner, I'd call up with a customer's problem, the telco partner worker would say, "we'll check it out," the problem *ahem* miraculously fixes itself, and the worker calls back and says they found no problems, and everything seems fine now.
The Federal Communications Commission believes the public outage reports, required since the early 1990s, have helped to dramatically improve network quality. But the rule applies only to landline companies, an anachronistic loophole in this age of wireless phones and voice service from the cable company.
So it would make sense to expand the rule to other communications companies, right?
Not so fast.
The FCC's proposal to make that change has met with strong opposition, not only from phone companies but also from the Department of Homeland Security, which contends that the outage reports could serve as blueprints for terrorists bent on wrecking U.S. communications systems.
Homeland Security wants future reports to be filed with one of its own infrastructure-monitoring bodies, the Information Sharing and Analysis Center in the National Coordinating Center for Telecommunications, and kept from public analysis.
That appears to put Homeland Security at odds with New York City's telecommunications department, the National League of Cities and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, which have endorsed the FCC's plan.
Of course, Homeland Security's objections have been eagerly echoed by dozens of phone companies and industry groups that have multiple beefs with the outage reporting rules. The industry's main complaint is that the reports should be voluntary, not mandatory....
"What 9/11 produced for them is a windfall opportunity to rebake all of their old bogus arguments as to why we shouldn't have any of these (outage reports)," Moir said. "They've morphed all of their comments into post-9/11-ese."
"The Register reports that Odeon Cinemas, a British theater chain, has ordered a takedown of a copycat version of its site that was made by a disability activist. The original didn't work outside of IE on Windows and was in violation of the Disability Discrimination Act; the activist-recoded one worked on everything. Odeon has flip-flopped on the issue, too; they liked it when it was first up, and now they don't."By the way, I really hate sites that even claim to be IE only, much less the ones that actually are unreadable on other browsers. It's the Internet, not Bill Gates' personal playground, you hear?
The bishops' assault on pro-choice politicians--who say that abortion is a private and personal matter and not a matter for the state--fails to address the devastating consequences of government policies that adopt the church's religious position that life begins at conception. The case of Angela Carder is one example.
In 1989 Carder, a Maryland resident, was 25 weeks pregnant, critically ill and in George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. She and her family and her doctors all agreed to keep her alive for as long as possible. Echoing the Catholic argument that a fetus has a right to life, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia ordered that Carder undergo a Caesarean section to save the fetus. Over the objections of the pregnant woman, her family and her attending physicians, the surgery was performed. The fetus was born alive but survived for only two hours. Carder died two days later with the C-section listed as a contributing factor.
After Angela Carder's death, her Catholic family appealed the court's decision because they did not want any other family to suffer the same kind of brutal intrusion. (Courts often decline to hear moot cases, such as when it is too late to intervene, but this case was considered an exception because the order could influence treatment of other pregnant women at the same at hospital.)
The Carder family had extraordinary support for reversing the decision. The American Medical Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Public Health Association, American Society of Law and Medicine and the United Church of Christ Office for Church in Society were among 118 groups and individuals who joined friend-of-the court briefs urging that the lower court decision be overturned.
Only two groups defended the court ordered surgery that resulted in Angela Carder's death.: the Chicago-based Americans United for Life, and the D.C.-based United States Catholic Conference--now known as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the group that issued the statement on communion.
Whew. Not much left now....
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