I *still* don't understand why the Democrats aren't gearing up for impeachment

It must be that them media is right and, in general, Democrats are gutless.

By the way, can you imagine a President Kucinich committing even one of these crimes?

Tiger's wife is pregnant

Any child of this couple will run the risk of exploding because it will be sooooooo good-looking.

There are things in this that I just can't believe that I'm reading

You may need a Bugmenot password to see this.

"...granting access to the machines would "result in destroying or at least gutting the protections afforded those who own the trade secrets'' associated with the equipment." WHAT??? Their profits are more important than a fair election? More important that justice??? Jesus fucking Christ why is no one down at the court house screaming for this ass's robe?

"Republicans were bitter about the result for years." Well, boo-fucking-hoo. This kind of subtlty is supposed to scare Democrats, I suppose. I want them to be bitter. The bastards that are going around talking about how important bipartisanship is are traitors to the Constitution of the United States. Working with these people is treason.

The *real* problem with the environment

The real problem is that not enough people will read this article and even if we could make everybody read it, the *vast* majority wouldn't understand what it says, much less what it means.

We're doomed.

The Bush administration doesn't think that science is cool

In fact, they want to ignore it.

I'm almost certain that my sex life will never be discussed in this blog

Apparently that was not the case for some and then it got out of control.

Why do dead presidents get turned into saints?

Though that's not the question that Timothy Noah asks here, it's definately a part of the "oh, wasn't Ford just the greatest kind of guy and wasn't his pardon of Nixon ever so much the right thing to do?"

You all thought I was dead, didn't you?

Today is a bad day...

...to be a rapacious oil company, which is a really, really strange thing.

It was also a bad day to be a murderer doing anything he could to get out from under.

A really amazing piece of furniture

Greg found this. And here are some more.

An exceptionally cool astrophotograph of the day

And you can see it (them) right here.

This would be one of those science fiction universes where they're running out of resources

Oh.

Here.

What you do to the least of them...

Sometimes I don't want to be a human being.

A political blogger answers the question "Why do I blog?"

And she answers it very well.

A commentor on a Frank Rich column is pretty accurate, I think

This is the complete comment by "daveminnj" on this Frank Rich column:


an obscene sense of entitlement,

an unconscious sense of shame at being a prvileged nobody who oozed
out of vietnam on family strings,

a simultaneous rage against and guilt-induced worship of an absent
father

the delusional sense of destiny brought on by a shallow midlife
born-again experience into the meanest sect in christianity,

a burned-out brain from decades of
substance abuse,

a nixonian resentment against the "others" who looked down on him and didn't show him the deference he thinks he deserves,

the overwhelming panic as he realizes that everybody was right
about him, that he's just a fratboy
fuckup,
i could go on but my wrists are getting sore from so much typing. and i haven't even touched on his mommy issues.



ITMFA

Eleanor Clift understands Jim Webb and the Dear and Glorious Leader

I don't understand why anybody would think that a different kind of etiquette applies to the President than to anybody else. Sure, you call you don't just mouth off the President anytime you want but you don't give him a free ride on boorishness. "That's not what I asked you, " indeed. Seems to me Webb should have Cheneyed him -- which means either tell him to go fuck himself or shoot him in the fact.

Those of us who know Oswald didn't kill JFK feel the same as Darren

I had never stopped to consider that cryptozoology was probably as frowned on among zoologists as JFK conspiracy theory is among historians.

Science is cool

So is stuff that sorta like science. I'm gonna try this. If it ever snows here again.

The Navy needs a whole new fleet

I've always been one of those armchair military theorists who believes that the successful defense of the US can only be accomplished with a powerful Navy. I'm sure that most people would agree.

So, it seems that there's going to be a whole new ocean that's going to need patrolling, particularly since Russia and Canada have both expressed the opinion that it belongs solely to them. I don't think we'll be able to leave the Northwest Passage unpatrolled by US Naval vessels. That means a new fleet. Gosh. This global warming stuff has pocketbook impact. Who would have thought?

I would make an extremely small black hole

I suspect that you would, too.

The problem with the Dear and Glorious Leader is that he's a prick

It seems that simple dinner party courtesy is beyond him.

We sorta don't live in a science fiction universe

I've never read a science fiction story where there were so many dwarf stars in the immediate neighborhood of the earth. I wish I could think of a neat, Asimov-esque plot to make use of them.

Th question is not "Can a Mormon be President?". The question is "How on earth do they plan to explain Mormonism and not get run out of the country?"

Mitt Romney is a Mormon. If he believes in the things that the LDS teaches, then he is batshit insane.

Am I the only one who thinks it is complete and utter madness for the GOP to even consider someone who beleives that God has a physical body and lives on a planet orbiting the star Kobol? Someone who believes that you have to wear magic underwear all the time? Someone who believed, until 1978, that black were not fully human? Someone who beleives that the American Indians were descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel? Someone who beleives that God visits his office in Salt Lake City to talk to the LDS leaders from time to time? Joshua Crust.

LDS teaches those things. Teaches them as truth. Do not let this sort of lunatic enter into the public discourse.

Also, don't remind me that Harry Reid is a Mormon, too. I'm just trying to block that out of my mind.

My part in an experiment

It seems that Acephalous is attempting to measure the propogation rate of the web. I link to his site and ask my readers who blog to do the same and he tracks the results through Technocrati. so, if you want to play, link to http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/11/measuring_the_s.html.

This has been a public service announcement.

Looks like faithful coach driver Netley to me

It seems that some Brits have cobbled up a recreation of the face of the Ripper. Feh. Seems to be aimed at drumming up rating for a British teevee show. I don't seem to recall any eye witnesses whom it could determined had actually seen the murderer.

But, I'm sure our local Ripperologist will chime in momentarily with the facts.

Y'know that famous statue of the she-wolf and the twins?

Seems that it isn't Etruscan after all. Gosh.

Education and the achievement gap

This article* confirms what my intuition has told me for the last 20-something years: the problem is that kids in poverty are given a different kind of upbringing. It also suggests that anything we do to eliminate the achivement gap will make it worse: our best methods will work best with those children who already have the foundations for learning. It's like what Goethe said about good teaching: it only works on those who don't need it.

Colleges of education foster the idea that the problems are insurmountable; I've seen this and heard it first hand. Serious research, with real mathematics and real neurobiology scares the bejeezus out of education academics. They don't want simple answers that are pointed to by numbers. They will reject it out of hand as "simplistic" or "unrealistic." And, yes, I meant for those quote marks to be interpreted literally. Education academics are the academy's most insecure members. Mostly because they know that they are pretty much frauds. They know *nothing* about how learning takes place and they can't understand the statistics that show them what's happening. All their papers quote the papers of other education academics and so they engage in tail-chasing and thesis padding.

In my many years of association with public educaiton, I've seen innumerable "programs" put in place that, in the end, only accomplished the enrichment of the program creator. *Nothing* works for every kid. *Nothing* works at every site. *Nothing* will be implemented the same at a different location, at a different time, by different people. The variables tend to swamp the data, obscuring the real information.

We need to rely on neurologists, anthropologists, and statisticians to tell us what happens when kids learn and what the real influcences are. Then we can create schools that might be able to reach the broad base of the student population.




*Oh, the link to the article may require a password. You can steal one at www.bugmenot.com.

Rugby is just weird

And apparently Welsh and/or New Zealander rugby is weirder than most.

We live in a science fiction universe -- Part 43,715

Greg and Chuck probably know all about this stuff. Greg probably has a couple of new game machines but this is pretty close to the "data glove" that I want to operate my PC with.

Not all cultures are of equal value, particularly Ethiopian culture

This is lunatic. Do they not know where baby lions come from?

On the other hand, I suspect that the zoo is not accredited by any international zoo accrediting outfits so no real zoo in the West can/will take the cubs from them.

Arming the Iraqis as little as possible

Never forget that the war is for the purposes of the war profiteers.

But there are also good tactical and strategic reasons for not giving the Iraqis a lot of modern weapons and some of them are alluded to in the article. But mostly, the level of corruption that exists in Iraq, like the 3rd world hellhole it is, is such that if we weren't arming them with weapons that they don't want, a good portion of the weapons would wind up in the hands of the militias. Those are the militias that we refuse to dis-arm because it would require a much larger occupation force and heavy casualties for a few days.

Mind you, I'm not being callous about the loss of American lives in Iraq. But I believe that, in the long run, it would save more lives to dis-arm the militias and put guys like Muqtada al-Sadr out of the private army business.

What one of those sorta decent conservatives has to say

It seems that Paul Craig Roberts can see the administration of the Dear and Glorious Leader for what it is: a fascisitic police state.



ITMFA

Houston janitors settle strike

So they get a 68% raise in hourly pay, a 33% increase in the number of hours they work, and they'll still be taking home less money if they take the health insurance.

But they'll have health insurance, which is something. Of course, if they take the family health insurance option, they'll go broke. How do employers justify this kind of shit? Do they go home and look at their kids and think, "Boy, I'm glad I'm not a janitor,"?

It will be this kind of chicanery that will eventually get us decent health care that we can all afford because we'll all be helping to pay for it, like decent, compassionate human beings. Y'know, like the kind of people Jesus said we should be?

Conyers's single-payer health care system won't pass anytime soon

But the time will come. And it will be the first step in actually reforming the economy of the US.

Other than the lack of profits for insurance companies, why would anybody oppose this?

Justice is suing Maine for trying to enforce Maine state law

It seems that the Justice Department can't read the Constitution. But, that comes as no surprise. I encourage everyone to write a letter to your telephone provider and ask if they are cooperating with the NSA on electronic eavesdropping. And then follow the course of Mr. Cowie and sue in state court. I plan to write Cingular today.

When it stats hitting their pocketbooks, they pay attention

Do you know how hard it was to find a translation of this LeMonde article?

Anyway, macroeconomists are including climate data in their models and saying that we are doomed. If there is a 30% drop in agricultural production in the Sahel, millions of people will starve to death. I talking about so many that the living won't be able to bury them all. Oog, as they say in the Okeefenokee.

The 9-11 evacuation of the Saudis

I love it when the worm turns. The administration of the Dear and Glorious Leader is going to have to explain what happened and why in regard to the evacuation of the Saudi royal family and the bin Ladens in the US on 9-11. Very sweet.

I am shocked -- shocked -- to find that this Administration would ignore science

It seems, no matter how astonishing you may find it, that the administration of the Dear and Glorious Leader hasn't checked the science of their absitenance-only sex ed programs.

I've said it before, almost as bad as their rape of the Constitution is their denegration of science.

Remember, remember 22 November...

...with gunpowder, treason, and plot.
I know no reason why 22 November
Should ever be forgot.

If one exams the evidence in the assassination of JFK as an historian, evaluating the evidence and being taken by that evidence to a conclusion, one must conclude that JFK's murder was accomplished by a conspiracy and there was a conspiracy to occlude the facts of the case. Note that those do not have to be the same conspiracy and may overlap very, very little.

By the evidence, I mean, not the report of the Warren Commission or the report of the House Committee but the actual documents that they used. Examination of the documentary evidence strongly indicates that Lee Oswald was an agent of Naval Intelligence, sent to the Soviet Union as a false defector. The evidence demands that at least 4 shots were fired at the presidential limousine, which precludes the use of the weapon that Oswald was alleged to have used. The evidence is incontrovertible that the CIA concealed their knowledge of Oswald's alleged visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassys in Mexico City -- the Agency states that straight out -- and supplied false information regarding those visits to the Warren Commission. The evidence is incontrovertible that the FBI did not report credible threats on the life of the president in the weeks leading up to 22 November 1963 to the Secret Service, as they were required to do by Bureau policy and by law.

These facts alone lead the open-minded to conclude that there was at least one, and probably two, conspiracies.

The number of people who have examined the evidence and concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin is vanishingly small. Clearly, somebody was lying about something.

It doesn't require an enormous conspiracy and the cover-up of Oswald's intelligence connections doesn't even require much in the way of malicious intent, just your usual bureaucratic urge to cover the collective asses. Would you want it bandied around that your intelligence operative was involved somehow in killing the president? No. The FBI's role is a lot more sinister but, again, that is quite possibly just a product of Hoover's hatred of the Kennedys and his own personality.

The JFK assassination does not have to be a mirror held up to American society. You do not have to draw grand theories of murderous cabals masterminding the fate of America for fun and profit. You do not have to envision scores of operatives carrying out a plan of intricate detail. You just have to look at the evidence for yourself and draw your own conclusions. But you must look at the original documentary evidence, not the sanitized, twisted, contextualized versions that are attempting to sell you a pig in a poke. And you have to play historian: evaluate the evidence.

Which is more likely to have a kernel of truth, a first day interview with a witness or that witnesses testimony, 4 months later? Do you accept the evidence of physics or the assumption of an investigator? If an official military record says one thing and a Warren Commission investigator tells you something different, who do you think is more credible? If every Selective Service card you can locate (and the statements of everybody that ever carried one) shows that SS cards did not have photographs on them and you are shown Oswald's card and it has a picture on it and that photograph is the same one that appears on his Soviet internal passport but that picture was made at a portrait studio in Dallas after Oswald's return from Russia, what do you conclude about the card and the passport, that they were authentic?

I could go on and on and on about the evidence and will if there is an interest on the part of readers of this blog. But never forget 22 November.

Never forget what the war is really for

Profits.

Iraqi pipeline to Turkey "useless"

So it seems that the famous oil fields of Kirkuk are now unavailable to anybody. Can anybody tell me anything that has gone right in this escapade? Well, okay, Saddam was overthrown and, in a perfect world, that would be a good thing. Of course, some American company is eventually going to get the contract to rebuild this pipeline so money will be made by rich Americans and that is the point of US foreign policy at present so I guess it's not so bad.



ITMFA

Top under-reported stories of the year

This is always an interesting list. I don't think any of this was completely new to me. God bless the internet.

Little Rock Zoo

Here's another picture of the Little Rock Zoo's first baby gorilla. This would also be a good time to contribute to the Zoo, even if you don't live in Little Rock and have never visited.

I'm getting over my zoo ethics problems. I've considered zoo's as conservation efforts and when you think about the state of the habitats of lowland gorillas, it's a pretty good idea that we have some and that we're taking care of them. Gorillas, I mean.

Day Break

I don't know from pop culture. My daugher had to tell me who Taye Diggs is.

But.

Despite some pretty awful dialog and some "wild-eyed animal" acting I found the central conceit of this show to be compelling. I watched with a little smile on my face because I knew that the details we were being shown in every shot were going to be coming up over and over for the rest of the series. I must say that the police hq has the biggest damned elevator I've ever seen and I don't see how people can stand it being lit from the bottom.

And if Detective Hopper continues to keep his injuries from the previous "day" when he wakes up every morning, there's probably not going to be a whole helluva lot of his left at the end of the series. He's taking beatings and getting shot and it doesn't go away when he has to start over. Which will probably be a big clue in the "uber-mystery" of how in the hell this can be happening.

Oh, and it made for two "Firefly" alumni in two weeks on ABC.

Last night's premiere episode can be watched at ABC's website.

Torture memoes

I've long maintained that, like them or not, the professionals in the intelligence community are vital to our political process. They can keep the executive honest.

And it seems that they are stepping up to the plate. Not swinging, mind you, just making sure that the President knows that they hold a memo that can end his presidency.

Impeach the mother-fucker already.

Why is impeachment "off the table"?

Pelosi and Reid have said that they are not going to impeach the Dear and Glorious Leader. It seems to me that if they are going to be faithful to their own oaths of office, they are forced to it.

I mean, look at this. Here we have the agents of the President saying that they will violate the Constitution as they see fit. This is the very sort of stuff that we fought the Revolution against.

Mind you, this isn't exactly what impeachment was designed for because it never occurred to the Founders that a President would attempt to usurp the perogatives and powers of the other branches and would publically proclaim that the Constitution was irrelevant. And brag about it. They just thought that they would need to have a way to remove a bad President.

It would be hard to get articles of impeachment approved by the House without Pelosi's cooperation. Now, once the articles were approved by the House, Reid doesn't have the power to stop a Senate trial. I think I'm going to count on my boy Dennis Kucinich to start a'howlin'.

What will the Democrats do for the environment?

I've been too busy to blog for the last few days but I thought this was a nice, cheery way to come back. Oh, that's a NYT article so you may need to get a password at bugmenot.

Will the Democrats act fast enough to save the only planet we have? Is it too late?

No such thing as vampires?

And we're supposed to believe that coming from a guy named "Costas Efthimiou"? How vampiric does a name have to be before it's a give-away?

Excuse-a me while I speak-a da-comics

Alan Moore is going to be on an episode of "The Simpsons." I'm already giggling.

Tillman's death was just one out of thousands...

...and yet it makes a terribly interesting story and can probably be used as a micro-study of how the propaganda war works.

Know anything about longlining?

It's just one more those ridiculously vile things we do in order to make lots and lots of money.

Did you know that a big tuna can bring as much as $60,000 American in Japan? Why would anybody be willing to pay $60,000 for a fish? That's just so monumentally stupid that I can't even begin to understand it.

Investigation and impeachment -- man, I like the sound of that

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110106K.shtml

Bush's contribution to nuclear proliferation

You recall that last week the administration posted a-bomb making plans in Arabic because they didn't know what it was, don't you? Did you know that immediately thereafter, 6 Arab countries announced they were going to develop a bomb? Why aren't we down at the courthouse, with torches and pitchforks?

Read this.

Poll worker chokes voter

But was he a Republican or a Democratic voter?!??

It's true -- a weapon can't be more concealed than that

Can you imagine being one of the cops?

Watch my tongue turn to ashes as I say, "Pat Buchanon is right."

This is Buchanon's latest isolationist editorial. And he's right. Every word. Sigh.

It's a pretty revolting torture technique when it makes somebody watching it commit suicide

Suicides have always been a part of the military but, naturally, they are downplayed or concealed. Makes you proud to be an American, don't it?

Let's make "war profiteer" an ugly name again

During the Civil War and WWI, you could start a fight with somebody by calling them a "war profiteer." It seemed more than indecent to make a profit from war; it seemed evil. Wicked. Sinful.

WWII? Not so much.

And after WWII? Why, making a profit from war became the American Way. And need I point out that the only goddamned things we make anymore are weapons?

The GOP and their christian posturing should take a long hard look at how Christ-like it is to make money from things that kill people.

Oh, here's an article that doesn't go far enough.

Sometimes I HATE knowing things

And I don't even like chocolate that much but now I've got to try to wean my family from it. Sigh.

National Defense Authorization Act of 2007

If you want to read the damn thing, it's here.

As you are probably aware, the military has to be re-authorized biennially. Except for the Navy, which is different. The language in the Constitution is different: Congress can raise an army but it can't keep it for more than two years. The Navy doesn't have that stipulation. The implication is that the Founders could easily envision not having an army but we had to have unfettered access to Europe, therefore, a navy.

Anyway. That's what this is: the every-two-years re-authorization of the army (and air force).

It is also the blueprint for the end of democracy and the permanent ascendancy of the Dear Leader and the Lesser Leader.

Buried deep, in a bill signed without a ceremony, is the following:

"(a) Use of Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies- (1) The President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to--

`(A) restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that--

`(i) domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; and

`(ii) such violence results in a condition described in paragraph (2); or

`(B) suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2).

`(2) A condition described in this paragraph is a condition that--

`(A) so hinders the execution of the laws of a State or possession, as applicable, and of the United States within that State or possession, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State or possession are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or

`(B) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.

`(3) In any situation covered by paragraph (1)(B), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution."

So. We've given the president the authority to use the military of the United States against US citizens without the approval of the governor or legislature of the state where they will be deployed. Read the part about the National Guard again -- he can take command of the National Guard away from the governor without permission. This is all new.

Plus there's $500,000 authorized as organizational money for this sort of use.

Did you know that the US Army Corps of Engineers awarded Kellogg, Brown and Root (a Halliburton subsidiary) a contract worth $385 million to build detention centers in the US? Detention centers? Y'know, for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs" (emphasis is mine). How do you think they plan to get people in those detention centers (which, by the way, have secret locations)? I don't think they plan to use INS. The "black prisons" in Europe have gotten a little press but it turns out that we're building secret prisons in the US. Let me say that again: WE ARE BUILDING SECRET PRISONS IN THE UNITED STATES.

And we torture prisoners.

And the president can name anybody he wants an enemy combatant.

And enemy combatants are denied any legal redress. They are prisoners at the whim of the president.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not wild-eyed conspiracy stuff. This is not lunatic ravings. These are just simple, documented facts. It all suggests to me that they do not plan to give up power. Ever.

Are you prepared to do your duty? Are you prepared to take the same oath that President Bush and Vice-President Chaney took: "I do solemly swear that I will . . . to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”?


Don't forget Father Niemoller:

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews, I did not speak out; I was not a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.


Don't forget Thomas Jefferson:

From time to time the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of tyrrants and patriots.

I try not to think about the looming economic/financial crisis

Partly because I don't know enough economics to make cogent conversation. Partly because it scares the shit out of me.

This guy isn't a great writer. His article meanders a lot. But he tries.

Oh, and his concluding remarks aren't very well developed. OPEC is trying to move to denominating oil in euros.

Doom-ed.

Darren Naish's zoology blog is just way cool

I wish I was a good science writer. Darren is. See?

The bee genome

Science remains ever cool. Read the comments, too; some of them have some really interesting stuff.

Something completely different

Free-fall without the falling part? Hmmmm.

What I hate the most about the current administration

They think that corruption is something that can be done right out in front of everybody and as strict authoritation personalities and social dominators, they feel no guilt whatsoever.

Some thoughts on the ugly facts

I've been thinking about Iraq.

We don't have a clear mission. Support the new democracy? Okay, how? We haven't disarmed the militias. Until that happens, they don't have a democracy. It's too dangerous, you say. Well, I think that's where we come to the rub. Yep, we would take a lot of casualties for a few weeks as we disarmed the neighborhoods. Lots of casualties. Unacceptable to the American people numbers. Or so says the conventional wisdom.

We would also have to re-introduce the draft because we would have to send another 750,000 troops to Iraq to pacify the countryside. What's that you say? It didn't work in Vietnam? Sure it did. You're buying into anti-war propaganda. After the Tet offensive, there was no Viet Cong and the countryside was pacified. We still took casualties but they were along the Cambodian and Laotian borders and up near the DMZ where we were in contact with NV regulars. We quit when America lost the will to continue.

Should we have stayed? Well, that depends on where you fall on the nationalism spectrum. We promised the South Vietnamese that we would protect them from the North. We didn't. I'm of the opinion that we failed several thousand Vietnamese who were executed by the North. Should we have been there in the first place? Hmm. Way different question.

Communist dictatorships are defined, in American politics, as bad. Stalin, sure. Krushchev, much less so. Brezhnev, went a long way back to the bad old days. Pol Pot, of course. Murderers are bad. The domino theory had a lot of geopolitical truth but it was premised on a falsehood: the Soviet Union would bankroll world-wide revolution. They did until they couldn't afford it anymore. We would probably have hastened their collapse by letting them run riot for a few years. Of course, that would have resulted in a lot of deaths. Containment resulted in a lot of deaths, too.

Isolationism? Let the world go the way it will? We can't do that until we get off the oil tit. Oh, and the Japanese electronics tit. And the Latin American and Southeast Asian textiles tit. And the Japanese car tit. And the Chinese "whatever else we buy because we don't make anything in the US" tit. So isolationism isn't an option and we have to play international politics and that means we have to put the interests of the US ahead of the interests of other nations because if we don't there's no reason to play.

Now game theory says that cooperation is always better than competition in a zero sum game. And when veiwed in a large enough context, we've been in a zero sum game since we came down out of the trees. So, by cooperating with other nations we improve our chances of success, satisfying our requirement that US interests be addressed.

Now, as I said, I've been thinking about Iraq.

If we "cut and run," Iraq goes to shit. Three regions: Kurds in the north, with oil. Shi'a in the south, with oil. Sunni in the middle with nothing but desert, no oil, no farms, no olive trees, no water, no nothing. Sunnis don't like the sound of that "no nothing" talk. Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Syria don't like that "Kurds with money" part because it is the avowed goal of these people to create a Greater Kurdistan. Saudi Arabia and Egypt don't like the sound of "Shi'a with anything" because it strengthens Iran's hand. What are the US interests in this? Get the oil flowing but keep our allies happy in case we need to use them as a base to invade something. Hmm. Who are our allies? Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia.

"Stay the course doesn't work." We're bleeding to death for nothing. No oil, no way out, no increase in national prestige.

National prestige in this instance doesn't just mean that everybody hates us because we're a terrible, wicked, imperialist aggressor. We don't care about that because we're putting our interests first, remember? What we care about is the fact that we have committed the national treasure and the national army to Iraq. And therefore cannot rattle a fucking sabre anywhere else? Iran and North Korea have decided to go nuclear and there's fuckall we can do about it because every manjack of us is in Iraq. Not that invading either of those countries is really an option but we could at least have blustered seven or eight years ago and we would have been taken seriously. Now? Kyrgyzistan and Burkin Faso could imprison our ambassadors and we'd have to ask them kindly to let them go because we don't have Marines to spare for a parachute drop. THAT'S what's really wrong with this adventure in empire building. You can't do it without conscripts.

And in order to get the Iraq we want, we have to have more boots on the ground. Lots more boots. Enough that we can walk into Sadr City and announce that we expect all the weapons and explosives to be deposited in the square in front of the main mosque by dark and have it mean something. Sure, when we start something like this there will be a lot of people flee into the desert. Let them. We just need to hold the cities and the roads between them and the pipelines. And we can do that if we're willing to let the world see us doing what the Israelis have done in the West Bank and Gaza: bulldoze neighborhoods that contain people we don't like.

Empire is dirty work. But necessary when you manufacture nothing but weapons and you owe more than the gross national product to foreign govenments. And when the lifeblood of the world's economy can mainly be found "over there."

There is another way to do this. We could flat out hire a few other countries to do the occupying for us. That's what the Romans did when it got to the point that they couldn't go it alone anymore. An army of Mexicans would solve a couple of the problems that the GOP would like us to think are vital to the national interests. Six years of service in the Iraq Occupation Force and you get to be a voting US citizen.

Not a very progressive position I've taken, is it? Suppose that you fall on the other end of the nationalism spectrum and consider yourself a human ahead of being an American. We can't cut and run because the Sunni region is not viable. And the Turks would start killing Kurds. We can't stay the course because it's stupid. What's left? A real occupation with a disarmament of the militias. This is a very unpleasant situation.

It doesn't do us any good to holler that we shouldn't have been there in the first place. We shouldn't have but there's nothing we can do about that now. Oh, we can, and should impeach Dear Leader and the Lesser Leader but that's domestic politics and doesn't cast any light on the current discussion.

A solution is needed and I don't see one other that what I've described above. Anybody else got a magic wand they want to wave?

And here's the problem with news stories about the economy

Even the people writing the stories don't know what the problem is.

What will happen if we keep on our current course? Why, there'll be a disaster. What kind of disaster? Why, an economic one. What will happen? Weren't you listening, boy, I said "a disaster."

Social Security is solvent for the next hundred years or so. And it could be made infinitely solvent by raising the age at which you can start collecting benefits by 2 years. So let's just take SS out of the picture.

Medicare is doom-ed. Because the insurance industry will continue to rape the public on health care costs. The solution to the Medicare problem is to put an end to health care for profit. We need a generation of political leaders who will take this issue by the throat and shake.

Are we going to continue to have the most expensive, Third World medical care system in the world? Sure we will until the peasants have had enough and decide to let blood run in the streets.

Hey! You can't have electronic voting machines that will vote *against* the GOP!

I guess this sort of investigation could do some good. I guess. For somebody. Maybe.

The US media continue to serve as the administration's lap dogs

Oh, they're standing up to Dear Leader on some stuff but we still have no idea what does on in Iraq because they don't report it. There was a time when war was the kind of story that all reporters wanted to cover and all newscasts led with. Now, eh. They aren't allowed to go where the war is and it's *dangerous* and they're not so much reporters as "media personalities."

Link provided by Daniel.

Math and music and colors and gosh!

Gill sent this and it is mesmerizing.

Another good exciting thing to contemplate with a Democratic majority in the House

Dennis Kucinich will be the chair of the House Government Oversite Committee's subcommittee on International Relations, National Security, and Emerging Threats.

Support Dennis here.

Rush Limbaugh is the scum of the earth

Where does this drug addict get off saying shit like this? If this wasn't their normal behavior, I'd say that the right-wing talking heads were desperate.

Oh, jesus christ!

Are we going to let them get away with this? It's just going to be one thing after another for the next two weeks. Rather than one plan, they'll use a jillion different ideas so that the conspiracy to subvert the Constitution and the will of the people is obscured. And when the low-level conspirators start to rat them out, they'll just laugh and say that the Democrats shouldn't have counted their chickens, etc etc etc

Conyers as chair of the House Judiciary Committee is just one of the many reasons we need a Democratic majority

This is the introduction to this book. Conyers's drone-y little voice can get on my nerves but I wouldn't mind hearing it asking "What did the President know and when did he know it?" for a couple of years.


ITMFA

The Dear Leader has no shame

The arrogance of an appointment like this is hard to comprehend. For a position devoted to mine safety, in a year when we've had a lot of mining deaths, he appoints a big-coal executive that HAS BEEN TURNED DOWN TWICE BY HIS OWN SENATE!!!!!

Jesus.


ITMFA

Trudeau profile

I don't talk about comics here very often. In general, there are plenty of people blogging about comics and a lot of them do it better than I ever could. I blog about politics because I think the more screaming the more likely someone might here.

This piece is about art and comics and politics and sanity. All near and dear to me. I've always had this image of Trudeau as some sort of hateful, self-centered recluse. I'm going to assume, based on this profile, that I was wrong.

I remember the day that the "B.D. is wounded" sequence began. I thought that Trudeau had killed him. And I was hurt. I probably e-mailed a lot of you about it. I found my chest tightening over the death of a fictional character. And it turned out not to be the case anyway but it was one of the most powerful comic strips I'd ever read. And two of the four panels were black.

Trudeau should be rated with Herriman, Seegar, and Kelly. He has made the comic strip into art and has sustained it over decades. And kept a measure of popularity that Herriman never achieved. That is exceedingly rare.

From www.truthdig.com

After Pat's Birthday
By Kevin Tillman
Truthdig
Thursday 19 October 2006
Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2000, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier leaves us without a voice… until we get out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.

The great Iraqi oil reserves

Somebody is full of shit. And I don't know if it's this guy or the oil industry or just who it is.

So he says that Iraq has proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of oil. Hmmm. And that Iraq has a production potential of 8 billion barrels a day.

The US's DAILY consumption is 20,030,000. The top five oil consuming countries consume 37,476,000 barrels a DAY. The world consumes 80,727,430 barrels per DAY.

Okay. That means that Iraq's reserves would last (if it was the only country producing, which I know it is not) , uhm 3 1/2 years. Gosh. Maybe the mean British billions. That would mean 35 years. Hmmm. No, I checked the CIA Fact Book and they mean American billions -- 1 thousand million.

So. We've killed maybe 650,000 Iraqi civilians in order to take away from them the only goddamned thing they've got that's worth anything and it will only last for 3 1/2 years? That we continue to allow these vile theives to run this country makes me sick and ashamed.

Impeach the Mother Fucker Already. Failing that, remember that the Tree of Liberty must, from time to time, be refreshed by the blood of tyrrants and of patriots. Look for me in Gitmo.

Coup on Iraq?

There's been talk about a possible coup in Iraq. I also heard it mentioned on NPR's "All Things Considered" yesterday.

How could that possibly happen with our conivance? We have the largest military force in the country. The government lives in the Green Zone, that fortified area that we guard. The generals who would stage such a coup are under the orders of American generals for the duration. Is the Dear Leader getting ready to perpetrate another one of his lies? Are we suddenly going to find ouselves dealing with a Sunni strongman that "just happened" to have staged a coup and "oh, how terrible. oh, well"?

Have you noticed that the Sunni insurgents were referred to last week by Rumseld as an "honorable resistance" to what they percieve as an "occupation"? Not one mention of the "die-hard Baathist supporters of Saddam." Orwell didn't know how close he was coming to nailing the future right on the nose.

Coup. Coming to an occupied country near you. If your in the Middle East.

Careful with your produce

So, this woman found a black widow spider in some grapes she bought at a California grocery store. Well, things happen. No reason to get all spun up, right?

Then we hear what the spokeswoman for the chain had to say: "Mona Golub, Price Chopper spokeswoman, said the grocery chain confirmed the incident and removed the grapes as a precaution. She said they came from California. Golub called the incident "rare" saying the supermarket chain has had only a few such cases over the past 20 years."

"A few such cases"? Joshua Crust, how many times do you have to find black widows in grocery stores before you start to wonder what the hell is going on? Once, sure, that's not odd. Twice? Gosh, what a coincidence. Three times? Wow. We might oughta check into this. How many does it take to constitiute a few? More than three? Lordy, lordy, stay away from Price Chopper!!

Of course, she might not have meant incidents with black widows in particular. They might have had rattlesnakes or kissing bugs or rabid vampire bats. Jeez.

Election fraud

This is enough stuff to choke a whale. And do not imagine that even if they fail to steal the election that they will give up power easily. Sure, we've always had peaceful turnover even in disputed elections (see 1876 and 2000) but that was back when the Constitution meant something to our leaders. Remember that this is the bunch that has proclaimed that the President can lock up ANYBODY he chooses and never charge them and never release them and torture them if he wants to and no court in the land has any authority to do anything about it.

Read that previous sentence again. That's not my spin. That's not some Democratic propaganda. That's not some subtle mis-statement of fact. That is the way the law is written. Could you have imagined such a thing 10 years ago?

We may have to go to the mattresses to get rid of these people.

And if I disappear, look for me in Gitmo.

The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of tyrrants and patriots.

Execute them

There are certain crimes that cause my progressive, liberal attitudes and politics to evaporate.

What do you do with worthless fucks like these? If you let them live, they will father children. The most serious mistake the US ever made in human rights policy was to enshrine the right to reproduce in the UN charter.

I suppose that instead of executing them we could sterilize them. While that would stop the perpetuation of their genetics to the next generation, it wouldn't keep them from committing this same kind of crime. Nor would it prevent them from raising someone else's child to be like them.

And keep in mind that they cannot be reformed. How could they be? Surely if they were ever well enough to recognize the heinousness of the crime they had committed, they would commit suicide, no?

Keep in mind that I'm trying to persuade you, dear reader, to agree that execution is what they should get. I accepted a long time ago that there would always be crimes for which I think the criminals should die.

A question for the masses

The "official" death toll for the World Trade Center attacks is 2749. How was that number determined?

Something about Oklahoma makes them strange

Maybe it's that constant wind that causes the howling in their heads that makes them think stuff like this is a good idea.

A Google map

Don't nuke it! It will only grow stronger!!!

Earth without people -- a fine, fine article

It has a very powerful lyricism to it.

Ah, fungi science

Fungi are just weird. When we were in grade school they told us they were non-photsynthesizing plants.

Web sites for House candidates we need to support

These are Democrats who are running competitive races but where it is currently leaning toward the GOP. Go through, pick out 4 or 5 and give them $10 each (I've hot-linked to their websites). Don't just talk about doing that or think about doing that, do it. Do it now. If you can afford $100 each, do that. If you can only afford $5 each, do that. This is important. Vitally important. I am not engaging in hyperbole when I say that I think the future of our constitutionally-governed republic rests on restoring the checks and balances that our country was founded on.

AZ-05 Harry Mitchell
CA-04 Charlies Brown
CA-11 John McNerney
CO-04 Angie Paccione
KY-02 Mike Weaver
KY-03 John Yarmuth
NV-02 Jill Derby
NV-03 Tess Hafen
NH-02 Paul Hodes
NJ-07 Linda Stender
NY-20 Kirstin Gillibrand
NY-29 Louise Slaughter
PA-08 Patrick Murphy

There is another seat that is leaning Republican but I haven't the faintest idea what you should do. It is TX-23 and they're having a special election and seem to have a handful of Democrats and I don't know enough today to advise you on which one to support but I would hate to split the resources for this district.

So there. Don't just talk about it. Do something.

LR Zoo's new baby

Our new baby gorilla. The first gorilla born in Little Rock. Isn't he just darling?

They're going to have a contest to name him but they are going to make sure they get a dignified name.

Dear Leader wants to know what people are saying about him

Do you honestly beleive that they will only use this to look at foreign publications? Will we ever wake up and throw these bastards to the fucking wolves? They've arrogated for themselves the right to seize enemy combatants and hold them indefinately without trial. They've already said that an enemy combatant is anybody that poses a threat to the US. And then they say that negative opinions of the US government pose a threat to the US. It isn't a strained leap to imagine American publishers, editors, reporters, or writers of opinion of all stripes Gitmoed.

Have you noticed how much Dear Leader has been using words like "intolerable" and "unacceptable" lately, regarding foreign policy matters? Notice how his political opponents are characterized as sympathizing with the terrorists and trying to protect them?

Do not for a second imagine that these monsters won't use the power they've seized. A gun on the matle in the first act must be fired in the third. I'm frightened for the future of my country and ashamed of myself and my countrymen for not being down at the federal building right now, weapons in hand, demanding redress of our grievances.



Impeach the Mother Fucker Already

The Ohio governor's race

Perhaps you haven't kept up with the Kenneth Blackwell. He's the black, fundamentalist christian, Republican secretary of state in Ohio. He's the one who gave Ohio to the Bush in '04. He's running for governor.

His Democratic opponent is Ted Strickland, a congressman from the Appalachians.

There is a third, far left candidate in the race who had to qualify for the ballot by petition. Those petitions were certified by...Kenneth Blackwell, the secretary of state. Hmm. I wonder if a left-wing candidate would hurt the candidacy of a Democrat?

Further, it seems that a group of Republicans are challenging Strickland's eligibility as a candidate. It seems that he is registered to vote at with an apartment address but, aparently, he lives in a condominium elsewhere. Ohio law allows folks with two residences to register to vote at either one. But, in any event, this group is claiming that since Strickland doesn't live at his voter registration address, he isn't a legal voter and therefore he isn't a legal candidate. Did I mention that Strickland is currently leading Blackwell by 25%?

So the group's complaint went to the county election commission which had a vote on whether or not to investigate the claim. They split along party lines, 2-2. A tie vote means that the question of voter legitimacy is passed along to...the secretary of state's office.

Blackwell has said that he will recuse himself and let his deputy, hired by him, fireable by him, decide the matter. These people have no conscience. I'll bet cash that Strickland will have to go to court to stay on the ballot.

Oh, and then there's this little bit of electoral magic, if all else fails.

UPDATE: The Diebold magic has already been used. These people do not intend to give up power.

An al-Qaida letter

This is just fascinating, for a lot of reasons. It gives some neat insight into US operations in Iraq. It gives some neat insight into al-Qaida operations in Iraq. And mostly it shows that the Dear Leader and the terrorists have the same idea: STAY THE COURSE!!





ITMFA

The real score in Iraq

* Saddam: 31,250 deaths a year (750,000 divided by 24)
* The Dear Leader's Administration: 87,500 deaths a year (350,000 divided by four)

Hmmm. Things aren't better than they were under Saddam. Imagine that.


ITMFA

Greg wonders how the rich live with themselves

This prompted his wonderment.

The availability of cheap Chinese labor has had a lot to do with the growth of the plutocracy in this country. I suspect that the Chinese would like to harvest for themselves the fruit of their labor.

Yes, yes, they've trampled on the Constitution but they're also trying to destroy science

This is hard to get laymen to appreciate.

Top 50 restaurants

I've never eaten at any of these places. Hmpf.

Keith Olbermann looks at habeus corpus and our Constitution

Make everybody you can watch this video. I understand that some browsers won't play video on the MSNBC site so you can watch it Crooks and Liars if you have to.

Hmmm. I think I believe in the 4% Panic

Juxtapose this and this. You'll have to watch a short ad to read the second one; it's from Salon.

I think the facts of the first caused press flaks to get to work and cause the second to be written. Maybe we are going to see an end to the tyrrany of the religious right in this country.

Chuck supplied me with the link to the first, btw.

Josie, 1985 -- 2006, RIP

One of my most vivid mental images of her has her lying on the front porch in the hot part of the summer, sprawled out on her side, eyes just barely slitted open, but the tip of her tail flicking back and forth...back and forth...back and forth...just daring birds or chipmunks to get close to her.

She was a good hunter. Caught a bat once, or at least she puked up a bat wing once. Caught more than her share of chipmunks and once brought a baby rabbit, still hairless and its eyes not open, into the house. I know that's not a great feat of capture, but it's a pretty great feat of discovery, I think. She could fight when she had to and hold her own. We had to take her to the vet once for a swollen paw from which he removed a tooth that was not hers. She liked my chili, even in the last year when I thought she had lost her sense of smell.

There was a while when if she was in the house when you opened the door, she went out -- ZING! And when you opened the door if she was on the porch or patio, she came back in -- GNIZ!

Her favorite vocalization, when she was younger, was "Herrm?" I called her Herm quite a lot. In the last few years, her vocalizations were very seldom but they resembled those of a clutch of crows we raised when I was a kid: "Craawwk. Craawwk. Craawwk."

For last couple of years, I greeted her every morning, expecting her to have died in the night, with a cheery "Arigato, Kitty!" She would lift her head and turn her poor old blind eyes toward me. I scratch her head and she'd go back to sleep. She didn't get up out of her heated bed much, except to go to the litter box but some evenings she would come into the dining room and want some attention.

She never was much of a lap kitty but she was always affectionate with adults. Not always so much with kids but she was already six years old before we had kids around much. She never liked Ojo. She was old when he came to live with us and he was far, far too exuberant for an old lady. She bowled him over with a forepaw slash (no claws, though, she knew he was a puppy) on his first day and then ignored him for the rest of her life.

She was never a clown, always dignified but never a snob. Ariane phographed her a lot and she was the subject of much of Ariane's art. Right now, that stuff is painful to look at but I know I'll be grateful for it later when it will bring her mind.

I loved her and will miss her.

Children's rights and our backward, fundamentalist Christian-controlled country

Did you know that only two countries in the world have failed to ratify the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)? Somalia and...the United States of America. Makes you sick, doesn't it?

By the way, the text of the treaty is here. It's Article 2, Paragraph 2 that causes the problem for those who are oh-so-concerned about "the family."

Terribly interesting article on the origins of the dog

I love science.

A former Reagan under-secretary doesn't much care for the Dear Leader

It seems that there are Republicans who can count.

I hadn't considered the ongoing costs of veterans medical bills. I knew that the job growth numbers were horeshit, though.






Impeach the Mother Fucker Already

Part Two of the NYT series on government accomodation of religion

You can read it here.

I wrestled with this for a few minutes and then concluded that if a church hires somebody, then they have to play by the same rules as all other employers and I don't care if that results in a minister in the pulpit because a court ordered that he be there. It seems to me that if a church was robbed by its treasurer, they'd want a court to be invloved, by god. Churches want the protections of the law but not the responsiblities.

They can practise their religion any way they want to as long as they don't enter into a contract with somebody and then expect that they can abrogate the contract on whim. Those churches that use lay preachers who are unpaid can send 'em packing whenever they please. If you weren't getting paid, you can't argue that you were hurt by being dismssed on whim.

Or, at least that's the way I'm seeing it this afternoon.

The words "US policy" and "unilateral" appear close together a lot more than they use to

Seems that in addition to many of our other treaty obligations, the administration has decided that the various space treaties are to be thrown out the window.

I wrote a paper on the militarization of space several years ago that probably needs to be updated.

In the equation of the chance of us surviving, population is in the denominator

This is just one more in a sad litany of sadnesses.

Excuse me while I sing the Doom Song.

Our only hope really lies with the professionals in intelligence and the military

These will be the guys who restore democracy and the supremacy of the Constitution. It certainly won't be the spineless Congress or the Republican-appointed courts.

It will take blood. And I expect it. Sooner, rather than later.



Impeach the Mother Fucker Already

The Navy knows who decides if ships get built

And therefore they punish this guy for doing his job and for being good at it.

Gill thought you should see it.

What separation of church and state?

Read this. All of it.

This right-wing nut idea that somehow Christians are being persecuted is one of their more difficult to understand lunacies. They control the White House, the Congress, the federal courts, and the military. Who is persecuting them? Academics?

Our Dear Leader

That's Foley on the left.

I don't think I need to add a punch line.

The things we can do

How is it that we can do things like this, and we can't take care of the planet any better than we do?

Amazing monkeys we are.

The things we can do

How is it that we can do things like this, and we can't take care of the planet any better than we do?

Amazing monkeys we are.

I've been thinking about poverty

The poverty rate for 2005 was 12.6 percent. 'Bout the same as the year before. And it's been steadily increasing for the last 5 years. The poverty threshhold is set in the same manner as it was in 1967: three times a nutrionally adequate food budget scaled for family size. No rent, no health care, no transportation expenses. No taxes, no insurance, education expenses. No credit card interest.

In 2004 spending by the poorest 1/5 of Americans exceeded their income by a staggering 95%. The poor get poorer. And there are concerns that are established for the purpose of separating the poor from their money. Pay day lending operations routinely charge $15 or so as a "finance charge" and then they charge 390+% APR. Jesus. Legal theft. The original 1874 Arkansas constitution forbade charging more than 10% APR on any loan. That's why your parents didn't have credit cards. They were almost impossible to get from Arkansas banks. In 1982 we passed Amendment 60 that was so goofily worded it had to have interpretation by the state Supreme Court. They ruled that banks in Arkansas could charge 5% above the federal discount rate. In 1994 Congress gave out-of-state lenders the right to charge their home state interest rate if they chose. You can see how Arkansas bankers would have been a bit pissed. So in 1999 the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act was passed. It was written specifically to affect Arkansas only. It allowed in-state lenders to charge the same interest that out-of-state lenders were charging. So the idea of "usury (17% in Arkansas)" lost any importance in Arkansas law and nearly every bank in Arkansas began to make enough money to be snatched up by the big east coast banking concerns. All of that was banking legislation. In 2000 Congress fixed it so that non-bank lenders could charge the same ridiculously high rates. The goal of all this legislative work was supposedly to give Aranksas banks a chance to make the same money as out-of-state banks. Such bullshit was actually swallowed by some. The goal of all this legislation was to increase bank profits. Any impact this might have on local economies was gravy.

So. We've got 1 in 8 (or so) Americans living below the federal poverty threshhold ($19, 350 for a family of 4 in 2005). That's something approaching 37 million people. Note that if you are working full-time for minimum wage (as say, a janitor, a food service person, a data entry clerk, etc) you will make $10, 712 (calculated using a year-round employment figure of 2,080 hours). Note that if you are working as construction labor, for instance, you won't have year-round work; there'll be rain out days and such. And the minimum wage hasn't been raised since 1997, a record long stagnation.

Next, premiums for employer-based health insurance rose by 9.2 percent in 2005, the fifth consecutive year of increases over 9 percent. All types of health plans -- HMOs, PPOs, and point-of-service plans (POS) -- all went up. The average employee contribution to company-provided health insurance has increased more than 143 percent since 2000.The annual premiums for family-of-four coverage is about $10,800, higher than the total earnings of a full-time, minimum-wage worker. So, obviously, minimum wage employees don't have family health care insurance. I realize that most employers don't pass all the rises in insurance costs on to their employees but they certainly don't absorb it all, either. And it is not a vanishingly small number of companies that are no longer offering health care insurance; insurance costs are seriously eating into their profits.

Profits. That's the money that they get to take home and spend on their own families.

Anyway. You can work full-time and make half of the poverty level. Anybody paying minimum wage to people trying to make a living ought to be ashamed. The employers are stealing food from the mouths of children. Any employer who isn't doing everything he can to make sure that his employees have the same health care coverage that he has is a monster, tending to the health of his children at the expense of his employees' children.

It is conventional wisdom in political circles that nobody ever lost an election by saying "Fuck the poor." But, as we move away from Republic and on to Empire, I'd like to remind the powers-that-be that peasant revolutions are always very, very bloody for the non-peasants.

Olberman continues to malign the president

And, of course, every bit of it is deserved.

Rumors are swirling that Olberman is going to be fired for his anti-Bush rhetoric. Think back to the anti-Clinton pundits and the horrible, horrible things they said about Bill and Hillary and then look at Olberman's simple (but admittedly angry) recitation of facts.

Do not imagine that we will be free of Cheney, Bush, & Co. in January '09. There's plenty that can happen between now and then and if you think this outifit wouldn't declare martial law and postpone the elections, then you are living in a fantasy world. They made plans for it in '04.

But, most likely, they won't need to postpone the elections because they'll know the results before the votes are cast. Electronic voting machines will spell the end of elective democracy in this country. If Jeb wants to be elected president in '08, it's his now, for the asking. Oh, and for the buying. Musn't forget that this is not about politics, this is about money.

The only way this evil will be ended will be if the people end it. We will have to go to the federal buildings, with weapons and words and sufficient numbers, and demand that our grievances be redressed. I firmly believe that it will take violence or the threat of violence to remove these people. They've spit on the Constitution; it means nothing to them. They are capable of any evil.

Impeach the Mother Fucker Already.

Parents kidnap bride

If the rest of us really knew what goes on in Mormons' minds, we'd run 'em out of town and make 'em live in a desert or something.

Foley's attempt to blame somebody else

I don't think blaming priests will help. At least I hope it doesn't. First they tried to claim that it was just harmless flirtation. Then the messages about "spanking it" showed up. Then they tried floating the rumor that he was drunk but then they found a message sent from the House floor and that didn't look good. So now it was because he was molested by a priest. When he was 15. Jesus. These people are the worst of the worst.

And, never let it be forgotten, Hastert and Reynolds knew a year ago and did nothing. Protect your own, at all costs, regardless of hypocracy, regardless of propriety, regardless of legality. Protect your own.

They make me sick.

Rice is stone-cold liar

So it seems that not only did they have a briefing paper in August that warned of al-Qaida attacks in early September but it seems that Tenet met with Rice in July and told her to her face that there was credible evidence of a serious threat. Now it doesn't surprise anybody, by now, to find out that the members of this administration will lie about anything but I just want to make sure that we never forget that these bastards have lied to us over and over and over and when they're caught, first they deny it, and then they say that it wasn't exactly reported right, and then they say it wouldn't have mattered anyway and then they say that we have to keep fighting "the war on terror. Shit.

And another thing about Condi: have you ever noticed the implicit racism in the way she used to be praised to high heaven for her intellect? I haven't seen anything to make me think that she's any brighter than normal other than her over-articulation.



Impeach the Mother Fucker Already.

Constitution of the United States 2.0

I am amuse-ed. And saddened. And angered.

A new Hubble picture

Uranus. The dark smear in the box is a storm of some sort. About 2/3 the size of the US.

A new bio of George W Bush

Our beloved president.

The promo materials are pretty damned funny.

Foley's scandal should be the downfall of the House GOP leadership

I mean, the guy sent an IM to a 16-year old boy discussing masturbation. You can't spin that away. So Foley has to go. So he goes.

Then we find out that Reynolds and Hastert knew about Foley's interest in pages a year ago and did nothing? How can that be spun to a positive? Can you imagine the exchange?

Reynolds: Uhm, we've got evidence that Foley's an internet pedophile, preying on children that we've brought to Washington.

Hastert: Is that a safe seat?

Seems to me that Reynolds and Hastert both have to give up their leadership positions. How can it be handled otherwise? The party needs the scandal to end right now. They can't afford to have it drag on for the rest of the month, running right up to the election.

Don't you just know that Pat and Jerry and Co., are squiriming right now?

What I've always loved about the GOP is their shining hypocracy. 50-year old "Family values" Senators marry their 25-year old staffers. "Save our children from internet predators" representatives tell 16-year old boys about their erections. And "wag-the-dog, he's lying about his blowjobs" national leaders claim anybody who questions illegal wiretapping or no habeus corpus imprisonments is a traitor and terrorist symp.

But never underestimate these sorry, sorry bastards. They've stolen elections before. It ain't nothing to them to re-program a view touch-screen voting machines.

Hiëronymus Bosch action figures

You know you're some kind of freaky geek when you want a full set of these.

So. Is Frist an idiot or what?

Is there some deep thinking that I'm not following here or is he stone cold stupid?

A well-written piece about the Military Commissions Act

This guy said it better than I could. But even at that, I'm not sure that he's hysterical enough.

These evil bastards will not go gently into that good night. To believe that they will respect the outcome of elections is to have forgotten how they came to power. To believe that they will lay down the reins of power that they worked so hard to get is to be more than naive, it is to be their stooge.

One of the central tenets of fascism is that you have to come to power through the normal process (cheat if you have to) and *then* you dismantle the rule of law. No revolution is necessary. If you do it right, the people welcome you with open arms. But you never give up willingly. No fascist government has ever voluntarily surrendered power. This one won't be any different.


Impeach the mother fucker already.

It all started to go bad with the election of Reagan

We could have had this man for another four years.

Some of you may be aware that my master's thesis is going to be on the intersection of the ultra-right groups and religion in Arkansas.

After reading the Mother Jones article, come back here and buy the book.

Hurrah!! The miracle arrives!

If they'll put this in Coca Cola, I'm saved!!!!

Sometimes you just aren't allowed to call a spade a spade

Seems the Bushies stole the Florida election in 2000. How can this be??!?

After you read it come back here and buy the book.

Sometimes you just aren't allowed to call a spade a spade

Seems the Bushies stole the Florida election in 2000. How can this be??!?

After you read it come back here and buy the book.

Something that has always bothered me

Why is it that whenever somebody gets jammed up for pedophilia, it turns out that they are the chairman of a group that wants to protect children from pedophiles? Self-loathing? Hide in plain sight? What?

Greg complains about corporate radio

A few weeks ago the local radio station that broadcasts the baseball games started adding a 10-second delay, making it impossible to listen to the play by play while at the game. I wrote and complained (that complaint is at the bottom, the last paragraph of which I redacted before I forwarded this with an expression of my outrage to my useless right-wing congressional delegation). The announcers said the delay was because of HD radio, but that's not quite right. Read their reply...

Greg


-----Original Message-----
From: KRLD Web Site [mailto:KRLDWebSite@cbs.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 3:50 PM
To: girkin@[redacted for privacy]
Subject: RE: Contact Us

Greg
Thanks for the email. Recently because of the increase in fines by the FCC (to $325,000 per offense) CBS corporate in New York has decided that all stations must broadcast with a 10 second delay at all times...even during baseball. So every CBS station in the country that broadcasts any kind of sports now must run in a delay just in case an offensive word would be said we could dump it so nobody would hear it.
I am very sorry for this and believe me you are not alone. I am gathering all the emails and phone calls to send to CBS so we can get this changed.

Thank you,
Ryan McCredden

-----Original Message-----
From: krld@intertechmedia.com [mailto:krld@intertechmedia.com]
Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 3:40 PM
To: KRLD Web Site
Subject: Contact Us


Contact Us

1. Your Name:: Greg Girkin

2. Your Email:: girkin@[redacted for the same reason as above]

3. Company::

4. Comments:: Your 10 second delay on ball games has caused me to do two
things: stop carrying my radio to the game and stop listening to the radio commentary (as I used to do) when I'm watching on TV. I know on-air guys said this would not change back, but surely this will kill your ratings. I mean, you're doing all this to satisfy all 14 people who have HD radio? Come on!

One actual benefit of the delay is that now I don't accidentally turn on my radio after a game and hear the right-wing nutjobs who make up the rest of your programming day. My radio just won't be on that station any more.

5. Where would you like your information sent:: News/Programming

6. Would you like to receive emails from KRLD about upcoming events, contests and breaking news?: No