World's first animated porn???
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
I Love New York!
My city, why I love it....
More than one in four New Yorkers were infected with genital herpes, a sexually transmitted disease that can cause sores and increase the spread of HIV, as of 2004, according to the city's first measurement of the virus.Link (-- which comes from our mayor!!!).
About 26 percent of New Yorkers carried the virus compared with the national average of 19 percent, the New York City Health Department said today in a statement. The rate was higher among women than men -- 36 percent versus 19 percent, and higher among blacks than whites -- 49 percent versus 14 percent, the city said.
More Pandering From President McCain
Whoring for telecoms; that's leadership:
If you've been wondering where all the telecom lobbyists went to lick their wounds after the House rejected retroactive immunity for wiretapping, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says it's found a bunch of them smack dab in the middle of John McCain's presidential campaign organization.Link.
The group suggested Friday that the swell of current and former telecom lobbyists in the McCain camp might have something to do with the candidate's recent reversal on the legality of warrantless wiretapping. His most recent position "reads a lot like the talking points that a telecom lobbyist might employ," writes EFF senior staff attorney Kurt Opsahl.
McCain has long supported amnesty for telecoms who cooperated with Bush's warrantless domestic spying, but until recently questioned the legality of the program. After zig-zagging on the issue over the last few weeks, he eventually settled on a position nearly identical to President Bush's -- that presidential war-making powers trump the law when it comes to warrantless wiretapping.
That position further bolsters the phone companies' arguments for amnesty, since they could argue that they only helped out in a completely lawful surveillance.
The EFF is suing AT&T for its alleged cooperation in warrantless spying, in one of about 40 privacy lawsuits stemming from the surveillance program. EFF looked at the lobbyists who worked on a bill that would have given those companies immunity. Among the lobbyist connections the EFF found:Charlie Black, a top McCain political adviser, worked for lobbying firm BKSH until March of this year. AT&T paid the firm $120,000 for the first three months of 2008, in part to lobby for the FISA amendments. Black was listed as one of AT&T's lobbyists.When asked about the ties, McCain's campaign declined to comment, though did say the senator would be providing comment on the matter to cable news channels Friday afternoon. But no remarks seemed to have been carried by the networks.
The influential Wayne Berman, one of McCain's national finance co-chairs, works for Ogilvy, a prestigious lobbying firm which represents AT&T on FISA. Berman was listed in the first quarter of 2008 as having lobbied for the company.
John Green, also from Oglivy, lobbied on wiretap bills and amnesty for AT&T. He now reportedly works as a full-time liaison to Congress for the McCain campaign.
Dan Coats, a member of the McCain's Justice Advisory Committee, formerly lobbies for Sprint on FISA reform.
In remarks to reporters Friday, McCain called the legality of the program "ambiguous," but did not want to dwell on it, according to MSNBC.
Patrick Hynes, the campaign's online outreach coordinator, repeatedly declined to explain why McCain's position on warrantless wiretapping has changed, finally stating that McCain's "position on this issue has been consistent," despite stories from the conservative National Review Online, The New York Times and the liberal online magazine Salon to the contrary.
Reporter Charlie Savage -- who as a Boston Globe reporter pressed presidential contenders about their view of executive power in the fall -- added to the controversy Friday with a front page New York Times story.
Savage noted the discrepancy in what McCain said to him in December, and what his campaign told the National Review Online last Monday.
McCain oversees the telecom industry in Congress as a member of the Senate Commerce Committee.
The McCain campaign's apparent embrace of the Bush administration's legal rationale for evading court scrutiny of U.S.-based wiretaps has given fodder to Democrats' attempts to tie McCain to the unpopular president.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) poked at the issue on cable news Friday, while Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware) issued his own written statement.
"In 1978, I helped draft the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which made clear the exclusive legal steps the President must take in order to conduct national security surveillance," Biden's statement reads. "Senator McCain has now not only joined the company of President Bush -- but also President Nixon -– in taking the position that as President he would consider himself above the law."
The EFF's post is not the first time that the McCain campaigns ties to telecom lobbyists have been noted.
In March, USA Today reported that "people who lobbied for telecom companies on those issues include McCain's campaign manager, his deputy manager, his finance chief, his top unpaid political adviser and his Senate chief of staff. Telecom companies have paid the lobbying firms that employed those top five McCain advisers more than $4.4 million since 1999, lobbying records show."
Victory In Hanoi?
What 55,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries and ruined lives have wrought? This is what we were fighting to prevent?
Hanoi crazy night traffic from v!Nc3sl4s on Vimeo.
Hanoi crazy night traffic from v!Nc3sl4s on Vimeo.
First Notes Of The Death Knell Of Micro$oft?
Kidding; the first was Ballmer's "Developers" "dance" (or "fit"); next are these....
Evolution: Witnessed!
True believers of course, smart as they might be, are capable of denying scientific fact, but the truth is here.
35 Of Beloved Leader's Sins
Well, his and the rest of Our Leaders'.... See them here. Way to go, Bushie!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Insight Into Christofascism
Of course, ultimately it's a religion based on forced conversion. And if that requires lies, well, the ends always justify the means. (That, opposed to morality, where a principle is a principle.)
So see them lie....
So see them lie....
Monday, June 09, 2008
Wiiiiiiiiiiii!!! What Our Leaders Have Wrought: Finally Succeeding In Making America Second Rate
Me, I always thought the GOP's ideal of America was to be a banana republic, a nation with a non-democratic government, shall we say, ran for the exclusive benefit of an oligarchy.
Along those lines, there's this recent success of Our Leaders':
Along those lines, there's this recent success of Our Leaders':
[Nintendo] also is shrewdly maximizing its profit by sending four times as many [Wii] units to Europe, reaping the benefits of the strong euro, said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities.Link.
Pachter estimated that Nintendo shipped just 500,000 copies of the game in North America but as many as 2 million units to Europe.
"The shortage demonstrates one consequence of the weak dollar. We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere," Pachter said.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Leadership, Beloved Leader-Style
Is it possible to sink even lower?Link.
Remember this?Bush, December 28, 2007:This was the bill that Bush claimed he was pocket vetoing, but really couldn't, because Congress was still in session.I am withholding my approval of H.R. 1585, the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008," because it would imperil billions of dollars of Iraqi assets at a crucial juncture in that nation's reconstruction efforts and because it would undermine the foreign policy and commercial interests of the United States.
But the important thing to remember is that he was vetoing a bill that:1. contained a pay raise for the troops, and;Bush was willing to endure the horrible optics of both of those things (as though the Vestigial Media could ever be counted on to actually notice and present those optics) in order to protect those Iraqi assets he considered so critical to that country's "reconstruction." Well, that and the fact that it would have put his "administration" in the position of having to admit that people were entitled to compensation for being tortured.
2. enabled American veterans of the first Gulf War who actually won court judgments against the Iraqi government for having been captured and tortured by the Saddam Hussein regime to recover against frozen Iraqi assets in this country.
Fast forward to today:The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.Yep. The same money that was so critical to long term Iraqi and regional stability one Friedman Unit ago that it couldn't even be used to compensate American soldiers who had been tortured by Saddam Hussein. Same money, now being held hostage by Bush to force the Iraqis to accept a perpetual American military presence in their country, all arranged without Senate approval by calling this treaty by another name: a "Status of Forces Agreement."
US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.
Iraq's foreign reserves are currently protected by a presidential order giving them immunity from judicial attachment but the US side in the talks has suggested that if the UN mandate, under which the money is held, lapses and is not replaced by the new agreement, then Iraq's funds would lose this immunity.
And what an "agreement," at that!
Moral Issue Of The Day
A mean, nasty, stupid person, through good fortune and absolutely no more, comes into a fairly large sum of money. Is this person who was previously pretty much worthless as a human being (yeah, yeah, pun intended), suddenly other than the same worthless wretch they were before their stroke of good fortune.
I say no.
But then again, I believe this (from one of my very favorite comic book stories ever!):
Link.
I say no.
But then again, I believe this (from one of my very favorite comic book stories ever!):
Link.
The Genius Of Beloved Leader
Who says he's so stupid?
Bush admits to Engel that going to war was a decision based on his personal instinct and not on any long-range strategy for the Mideast:Link.
“I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were, but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act.”
***
And he says that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is an obstacle to peace in the region:
“The problem is Olmert. This is a man who came to power on a promise that he was going to unilaterally define a Palestinian state. You can’t pressure democracies.”
***
“We can have meetings. Talking is not the problem. We can talk to Iran. But Iran wants nuclear weapons and I’m not going to let that happen. Not on my watch. We tried to have dialogue with Syria, right after the war, didn’t get much. * * "
What This Nation Needs; Another Drop Down The Slippery Slope Towards The Inevitable Christofascist State
First, in answer to the unasked question: Yes, it will be no good and an insult to everything this country's about. Everything.
So. Carolina's House & Senate have unanimously passed a bill allowing the creation of the faith plate. The license will feature a cross against a stained glass window with the words "I Believe" at the bottom. The ACLU, among others, is threatening suit.
A Pol One Can Almost Be Proud Of
And permit me to say, I would honestly be shocked to find this kind of honesty and lucidity amongst the GOP. Link.
Hey, wait a second! Here's the GOP's latest superstar/exemplar.
Hey, wait a second! Here's the GOP's latest superstar/exemplar.
Sad, Sad, Sad; Another Failure Of Big Media
By lying to us or failing to properly address what needs to be addressed, they alienate us and then cry about losing audience to the web, etc. Well, make yourself irrelevant....
This is kind of pathetic.
And, really, inexcusable.
As she points out, the truth was out there to be seen by anybody with open eyes.
Yet the professionals were blind or unwilling to see and acknowledge reality. And of what value are journalists like that?
None.
This is kind of pathetic.
And, really, inexcusable.
As she points out, the truth was out there to be seen by anybody with open eyes.
Yet the professionals were blind or unwilling to see and acknowledge reality. And of what value are journalists like that?
None.
When I first heard about Scott McClellan's charges that the Bush administration had lied and deceived Americans during the months and years leading up to the war, I burst into tears of happiness. No, nothing he wrote was new. And even if he still seems like a sleazy public relations expert in obfuscation, an insider was finally telling the truth, in one book.Link.
My story is different from those who felt seriously constrained about raising questions about the administration's obvious lies. I worked as an editorial writer at The San Francisco Chronicle, where a liberal editorial board raised serious objections to the war. And yet, in the years following 9/11, I felt editorial restraints that never allowed us to tell the whole truth about the lies and deception that led to America's most catastrophic foreign policy disaster.
Others in the mainstream media felt far greater restraints. Jessica Yellin, a CNN journalist, for example, says she felt pressured by corporate executives at her previous network to support the Iraq War. To Anderson Cooper, she described how she and others were "under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings." On the Today Show, Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and Charles Gibson also admitted feeling pressure from the Bush administration to support the war, MSNBC reported. Couric even recounted a threat from the White House Press Secretary to "block access to [the network] during the war" if she did not change the tone of her interviewing style."
So what did I experience? An editor and an editorial board who felt that, in the absence of inside sources, we could not counter the administration's lies.
Let me give you some examples. I was raised in a Republican family, but schooled by the great iconoclastic journalist I.F. Stone, who taught me that you can find the truth without inside sources, if only you're willing to see beyond patriotic fervor and examine voices in the public domain that are marginalized, So, I would read national security experts who countered Donald Rumfeld's ridiculous predictions; I would read the British, Canadian, Italian and French press; I would read the writings of experts in resource wars and weapons of mass destruction.
No, I didn't know I was right. But I was sure that the administration was lying. And, I knew that at the very least that our editorials should be asking why Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al should be believed when I had found strong evidence that they were cherry picking intelligence, and setting up their own office in the Pentagon, and acting in complete secrecy.
The rush to war drove me crazy. In the days that led up to the war, I went to my editor and told him I needed a few days unpaid leave to accept the fact that we were, in fact, going to war. In my mind's eye, I saw a baby tied to the railroad tracks and saw the train rapidly moving toward the helpless child. I saw years of quagmire, bloodshed, and tens of thousands of deaths. I needed a few days to accept that reality before I could return to writing. He understood and allowed me to regain my professional composure.
To its credit, the editorial board raised some of the toughest questions in the mainstream media. And yet....I was the only one who didn't believe Colin Powell's shameful presentation at the United Nations. Why? Not because I had special insider knowledge, but like I.F. Stone, I had found credible people who could dissect his speech and found it unconvincing and unpersuasive.
When I heard Bush's inaugural address, I heard two major lies embedded within his speech. But somehow that still wasn't enough to accuse him of plagiarism and deception.
The truth is, even a liberal newspaper, blessed with a liberal editorial board, did not engage in truth telling. We raised some good questions, wrote about supporting the troops, but failed to describe the deception that led to the catastrophe that was unfolding right before our eyes.
While I was writing editorials, I was also publishing two weekly political columns on the op-ed page. I also felt constrained as a columnist. If I wanted to discuss this country's desire to gain control and access over oil, I had to bump up against the accusation that I was a vulgar Marxist, rather than conversant with the reality of resource wars.
Finally, I am an historian, and I knew Iraq's history. I also knew that the war would end in a disastrous occupation, not a liberation, and that no country, including our own, will ever tolerate occupation by a foreign nation.
This week, I sat with a former colleague from the editorial board in a café, rather than in the room where we used to make our editorial decisions. He admitted that I had been right, but even more, that even in a liberal paper, the editor and most of the board, had felt restrained, afraid of seeming unpatriotic, afraid of saying the emperor wore no clothes, afraid of not giving the President the benefit of the doubt, afraid of truth telling without access to inside sources.
You may say, "Ho Hum, even the Senate has now, after five years, come out with a report that describes (oh, so tepidly) the years of deception.
But for me, the tears flowed because I remembered all those years when I felt passionate about telling the public the truth, but was unable to do so in a mainstream, liberal, newspaper.
The Moral Corruption Of Our Leaders And Their Enablers
Maybe it has to do with amoral greed or something... the mise en scene seems to be the loss of a moral balance or something.
Anyway.
A practically current case study, as it were.
Apologies: a major moral failing that Joe Lieberman has failed to bring to light. So if Joe hasn'r ragged on it, I guess I must be wrong.
Anyway.
A practically current case study, as it were.
Apologies: a major moral failing that Joe Lieberman has failed to bring to light. So if Joe hasn'r ragged on it, I guess I must be wrong.
The World's Greatest Leaders
Chapter MDCXLIII of "Our Leaders' Belief In Government As A Source Of Funds To Re-Distribute For Their Benefit And The Benefit Of Their Big Wealth Supporters":
Federal prosecutors are aiming to block the sale of the home of Christopher J. Ward, former treasurer of the National Republican Congressional Committee, over allegations that he shifted over $500,000 from Senate Republicans into his personal accounts over a four-year period to make mortgage payments and fund remodeling jobs.Link.
According to the Department of Justice and an internal NRCC audit stemming from its accusations against Ward in March, he began embezzling in 2003. $198,841 in particular has been isolated by investigators, $95,000 of which is said to be from the 2006 President's Dinner, to pay for work done on Ward's house. Also diverted, say court documents, was $72,000 to make mortgage payments.
Ward, under investigation by the FBI, has been relieved of his duties with the NRCC but has yet to be charged criminally. Five GOP-connected organizations so far have implicated Ward in the misappropriation of at least $47,000, a far cry from what could have gone missing from the NRCC; an internal audit there suggests a figure of up to $600,000, but that audit is still in progress, said Karen Hanretty, NRCC's communications director.
Ward worked for the NRCC starting in November of 1995, taking on the role of treasurer in 2003. He stepped down in July of 2007 but stayed on as a consultant until January 28, 2008, when it was discovered that he was not auditing NRCC's 2006 finances as previously believed. An internal investigation by Chairman Tom Cole revealed that the last calendar year successfully audited was 2001, with Ward fabricating reports for 2002 through 2006.
How President McCain Will Get Elected: Lies, Lies, Lies
If truth be told, however, Obama earned his Ivy League degrees the hard way, while the child of privilege in this year’s presidential contest is John McCain. McCain obtained his appointment to the U.S. Navy Academy because his father and grandfather had been there, and McCain’s path to the Senate was made easy because his predecessor, Barry Goldwater, liked his father, Admiral Jack McCain.Link.
Yet McCain always passes over his privileged history, while making much of the fact that he finished at the bottom of his class at Annapolis to establish his bona fides as a regular guy. In addition, McCain invokes his laudable Vietnam POW experience as evidence of his physical toughness and stamina, qualities to which regular guys can easily aspire.
***
Overall, the Times’ report suggests that to get elected president today the candidate must “make an emotional connection [with average American voters]” which helps to win their “trust and confidence” – which are essential. Trust and confidence are not won by academic pedigree or prestigious educational success. To the contrary, for (too) many voters, it is necessary to shed such accomplishments to win this kind of loyalty. Ivy League degrees are considered by many as indicia of arrogance and privilege (whether such qualities belong to the degreeholder or not).
***
Dr. Westen also addressed the emotionally-loaded question of race in passing in The Political Brain. He explains that Obama, like every African-American candidate for Senate or President in the near future, needs to study the effectively-orchestrated Republican campaign run against Congressman Harold Ford (also an African-American), when he sought to win a Senate seat in Tennessee in 2006. It was a “psychologically sophisticated” undertaking built on racism. It worked. And Republicans got away with it, paying no price for their underhanded tactics, but rather winning a Senate seat.
The Democrats were fearful of talking about race in the Ford campaign, Westen observes. This was a mistake. They failed to call attention to the racist campaign being waged against them, and they did not call the GOP on its morally reprehensive decision to play to people’s prejudice. The same kid of racist campaign has already started with Obama, and if the Obama campaign and his supporters do not call attention to it, John McCain will gain an easy victory, only to bring us the third term of the Bush/Cheney Administration.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Scientific Breakthrough Of The Day; New Over-The-Counter Drug To Abuse
I was going to be coy about it but I can't: Preparation H. More here.
Friday, June 06, 2008
What Else Is New? Beloved Leader Gives Money To Corrupt Saudi BFF
The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.Link.
The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.
Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush's first business venture, Arbusto Energy.
A spokesman for the FBI said Pharaon was not wanted in connection with the French report, but confirmed he was still sought by the US Justice Department.
"Ghaith Pharaon is an FBI fugitive indicted in both the BCCI and CENTRUST case," said Richard Kolko, a spokesman for the FBI. "If anyone has information on his location, they are requested to contact the FBI or the US Embassy."
The US military purchases jet fuel from Attock through the contractor Supreme Fuels, according to a US government website. The $80 million contract for 2008 was posted this week on a US government website . Attock supplied the US military more than $40 million in jet fuel in 2007, according to another spreadsheet posted on the site.
An official at Attock, who did not wish to be named, confirmed the refinery was supplying thousands of tons of jet fuel to the US base at Bagram Air Base every month.
Suspicious Quote Of The Day
I mean, you think maybe he's not asking how to get away with tampering? You know, simply, What should I not do? What should I be careful about?
"I am one of the Republican Party Precinct Chairs in Harris County, Texas. Since in 2006 Republican Rick Perry won the Governor's race in my precinct I will be the head election judge at my polling station this November. (My Democratic counterpart will be assistant election judge.) I have read with interest the stories about voting machine hacking, and I want advice from those of you who are experts on what to watch for to make sure there is no fraudulant activity at my precinct during the election. What activities should I look for? Keep in mind my restrictions" I will be at a table in the front of the room with the voter rolls signing people in, I can only approach the voting machines if a voter asks a question or if I have strong reason to believe there is fraudulant activity, the last thing I need is for someone to say the Republicans are trying to keep people from voting! And finally, although each station and voter will be visible from my seat each machine has 'blinders' around it so I will most likely not be able to see the hands of each voter while they are at the station. Thank you in advance for all suggestions."Link.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
How My Mind Sort Of Works
What you may not have realized is that perceiving sarcasm, the smirking put-down that buries its barb by stating the opposite, requires a nifty mental trick that lies at the heart of social relations: figuring out what others are thinking. Those who lose the ability, whether through a head injury or the frontotemporal dementias afflicting the patients in Dr. Rankin’s study, just do not get it when someone says during a hurricane, “Nice weather we’re having.”Link.
“A lot of the social cognition we take for granted and learn through childhood, the ability to appreciate that someone else is being ironic or sarcastic or angry — the so-called theory of mind that allows us to get inside someone else’s head — is characteristically lost very early in the course of frontotemporal dementia,” said Dr. Bradley F. Boeve, a behavioral neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
“It’s very disturbing for family members, but neurologists haven’t had good tools for measuring it,” he went on. “That’s why I found this study by Kate Rankin and her group so fascinating.”
Dr. Rankin, a neuropsychologist and assistant professor in the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, used an innovative test developed in 2002, the Awareness of Social Inference Test, or Tasit. It incorporates videotaped examples of exchanges in which a person’s words seem straightforward enough on paper, but are delivered in a sarcastic style so ridiculously obvious to the able-brained that they seem lifted from a sitcom.
“I was testing people’s ability to detect sarcasm based entirely on paralinguistic cues, the manner of expression,” Dr. Rankin said.
In one videotaped exchange, a man walks into the room of a colleague named Ruth to tell her that he cannot take a class of hers that he had previously promised to take. “Don’t be silly, you shouldn’t feel bad about it,” she replies, hitting the kind of high and low registers of a voice usually reserved for talking to toddlers. “I know you’re busy — it probably wasn’t fair to expect you to squeeze it in,” she says, her lips curled in derision.
Although people with mild Alzheimer’s disease perceived the sarcasm as well as anyone, it went over the heads of many of those with semantic dementia, a progressive brain disease in which people forget words and their meanings.
“You would think that because they lose language, they would pay close attention to the paralinguistic elements of the communication,” Dr. Rankin said.
To her surprise, though, the magnetic resonance scans revealed that the part of the brain lost among those who failed to perceive sarcasm was not in the left hemisphere of the brain, which specializes in language and social interactions, but in a part of the right hemisphere previously identified as important only to detecting contextual background changes in visual tests.
“The right parahippocampal gyrus must be involved in detecting more than just visual context — it perceives social context as well,” Dr. Rankin said.
The discovery fits with an increasingly nuanced view of the right hemisphere’s role, said Dr. Anjan Chatterjee, an associate professor in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania.
“The left hemisphere does language in the narrow sense, understanding of individual words and sentences,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “But it’s now thought that the appreciation of humor and language that is not literal, puns and jokes, requires the right hemisphere.”
Dr. Boeve, at the Mayo Clinic, said that beyond the curiosity factor of mapping the cognitive tasks of the brain’s ridges and furrows, the study offered hope that a test like Tasit could help in the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.
“These people normally do perfectly well on traditional neuropsychological tests early in the course of their disease,” he said. “The family will say the person has changed dramatically, but even neurologists will often just shrug them off as having a midlife crisis.”
Freedom To Vote Without It Necessarily Counting In New Jersey
Today is primary election day in New Jersey, for all races except U.S. President. (The presidential primary was Feb. 5.) Here’s a roundup of the voting-machine-related issues.Link and photos.
First, Union County found that Sequoia voting machines had difficulty reporting results for a candidate named Carlos Cedeño, reportedly because it couldn’t handle the n-with-tilde character in his last name. According to the Star-Ledger, Sequoia says that election results will be correct but there will be some kind of omission on the result tape printed by the voting machine.
Second, the voting machines in my polling place are fitted with a clear-plastic shield over the operator panel, which only allows certain buttons on the panel to be pressed. Recall that some Sequoia machines reported discrepancies in the presidential primary on Feb. 5, and Sequoia said that these happened when poll workers accidentally pressed buttons on the operator panel that were supposed to be unused. This could only have been caused by a design problem in the machines, which probably was in the software. To my knowledge, Sequoia hasn’t fixed the design problem (nor have they offered an explanation that is consistent with all of the evidence — but that’s another story), so there was likely an ongoing risk of trouble in today’s election. The plastic shield looks like a kludgy but probably workable temporary fix.
Third, voting machines were left unguarded all over Princeton, as usual. On Sunday and Monday evenings, I visited six polling places in Princeton and found unguarded voting machines in all of them — 18 machines in all. The machines were sitting in school cafeteria/gyms, entry hallways, and even in a loading dock area. In no case were there any locks or barriers stopping people from entering and walking right up to the machines. In no case did I see any other people. (This was in the evening, roughly between 8:00 and 9:00 PM). There were even handy signs posted on the street pointing the way to the polling place, showing which door to enter, and so on.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
The New President's Advisers
Beyond the rhetoric, disturbing news emerging over the weekend about substance of McCain‘s approach to foreign policy and whether it might actually benefit those who wish harm to us and to Israel. At the heart of it, McCain‘s top economic adviser, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. As we revealed here on COUNTDOWN last week, Gramm on the payroll of the giant Swiss bank UBS, helping to defeat US legislation that would give relief to Americans facing foreclosure and at the same time writing McCain‘s economic policies.[more]
Now, “Newsweek Magazine” reporting that Gramm‘s bank is under investigation for alleged use of overseas tax havens to hide assets of the wealthy from U.S. authorities. On September 20th, 2001, the “New York Times” reported that a single senator had blocked legislation that would have helped the U.S. investigators track Osama bin Laden‘s financial network before 9/11. It was Phil Gramm, who still defended these tax havens after 9/11, whose bank was still lobbying Congress on behalf of tax havens as recently as last year, including lobbying done by this man, UBS senior lobbyist John Savercool, formerly a legislative assistant to Senator Phil Gramm.
President McCain Is His Own Man, Will Set His Own Policy, Will Not Follow Beloved Leader
If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.Link.
***[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]***
We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.
McCain's new position plainly contradicts statements he made in a December 20, 2007 interview with the Boston Globe where he implicitly criticized Bush's five-year secret end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
"I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is," McCain said.
The Globe's Charlie Savage pushed further, asking , "So is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?" To which McCain answered, "I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law."
McCain's embrace of extrajudicial domestic wiretapping is effectively a bounce-back from Fish's comments, made at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Connecticut last month. When liberal blogs picked up the story that McCain had moved to the left on wiretapping, the McCain campaign issued a letter insisting that he still supported unconditional immunity, as well as new rules that would expand the nation's spy powers.
The campaign's response was consistent with McCain's past positions and votes. But it riled Andrew McCarthy at the conservative National Review Online, who read the campaign's position as a disavowal of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, and a wimpy surrender of executive power to Congress.
"What does it mean when he says Sen. McCain does not want the telecoms put into this position again?" McCarthy asked. "Is he saying that in a time of national crisis, the president should not be permitted to ask the telecoms for assistance that is arguably beyond what is prescribed in a statute?"
That's when the campaign issued the letter explaining McCain's new views of executive power, and revealing that McCain would, in certain future circumstances, rely on the same theory of executive power in wartime.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Rant Du Jour
I liked this.
Super-star NYT Op-Ed columnist Billy Kristol shot one off today that outslimed even his own epic levels of sliminess.Link.
The doughty Vietnam non-vet took Senator Obama to task for giving a commencement address at Wesleyan this weekend in which he didn't remind his "elite" audience that military service was one kind of public service they might consider.
Just as back in 1970 young Billy, then a draftable little chickadee of 18 summers, fresh from elite Collegiate School in Manhattan, considered military service in the only war he could have qualified for. And said to his heroic inner man...hellllll nooooo. I'm serving my country at...Harvard.
Just like er, well, er, Obama.
Except there wasn't a war on when Obama was 18.
But pointing out a trivial omission in a list of public service choices wasn't Billy's true intent. He was actually parroting in that inimitably intellectual and slimy way, the current troglo-right theme that Obama can't be trusted with the world's largest military. Why? Because Obama didn't fight in one of the wars he could have qualified for. Like say, our glorious 3-day victory over Grenada in 1983, when he was 22. Code-named as you may proudly recall Operation Urgent Fury.
Of course Billy phrased his smear, with his trademark brilliance, so that it could refer either to Obama's omission in his commencement address or to his omitting to put himself in harms way:
"It can't be that the possibility of military service as an admirable form of public service didn't occur to Obama."
But...nor did military service occur apparently to any of the other late lamented candidates for the Presidency to whit: John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich or even our brave Iranocidal Boadicea, Hillary Clinton; nor, more to the point to: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback or Tom Tancredo (who received his get-out-of- Vietnam-free card for "stress-related anxiety")
So why did one of the nation's pre-eminent draft-dodgers pick Obama as the one candidate to slime? Could it be the reflexive racism that drives all neo-conservatives; it's because Obama is, you know, African-American? And 'military service as an admirable form of public service' ought to occur to all African-Americans, male or female, before any other career choice?
Dammit, why the hell didn't Michelle volunteer for Operation Urgent Fury? She was 19 -- the perfect age to earn her spurs blowing away a shovel-wielding Cuban construction worker. Why didn't she volunteer for our glorious victory over Panama in 1989 when she was a mere 25? Firebomb a few pesky Canal-thieves? Why didn't Obama? He was only 28. What's wrong with these people? How could any patriotic African-American not be stirred to his or her very core by a war codenamed Operation Just Cause?
Billy was. To his very core. His fat little yellow belly used to go all fluttery with butterflies at the thought of hunky Marines locking and loading. And not just black Marines -- any Marines. And the wonderful thing is, that lovely vision of vicarious violence never stales. Not for Billy nor for any his fellow cowards too craven to have ever put themselves in harms way.
Which is why we're in Iraq.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Why The RIAA Is Wrong
Well, partly wrong....
On June 1, 1908, 100 years ago today, the US Supreme Court decided Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus, a case that established what would become known as the “first sale doctrine”. This doctrine, now codified as part of the US Copyright Act, says that in general the owners of books or other copyrighted works have the right to dispose of them as they see fit (such as by reselling them, giving them away, or lending them out). The copyright holder can still control the right to make copies, make public performances, or other derivative works. But once a reader has bought a book, they can pass it along as they see fit. (Or keep it, or fold it into little origami shapes for their own amusement. They own it, after all.)Link.
This right exists even in the presence of notices to the buyer that claim to conditionally license the work, rather than sell it. Indeed, those kinds of licenses, familiar now to most computer users, were also at issue in the Bobbs-Merrill case. (For historical background, including some examples of old-time “end user license agreements”, see a post of mine from a few months ago, “The right to read, circa 1906.”)
Despite attempts by many software, music, and ebook publishers to extend control over their products to their buyers, the first sale doctrine is still salient today. Just last month, for example, a federal judge cited the first sale doctrine to uphold the right of an eBay merchant to resell used software. An article in Ars Technica has a link to the decision, and an excellent explanation of the case and the importance of the principles it upholds. Ultimately, as the article points out, the first sale doctrine is what “makes libraries and used book stores possible” without needing the permission of publishers to exist or carry out their missions.
The free access to literature that libraries provide, and the freedom to provide access to literature that the first sale doctrine provides, promote the literacy and education of all our citizens. So this is an anniversary well worth remembering for its contribution to society. Happy First Sale Day!
A Milestone In Narcissism And Self-Absorption
Guy obsesses with his own life, and from it extrapolates for the masses... but I dunno, he can be on to something....
Sunday, June 01, 2008
How President McCain Will Get Elected
John Dean says, and I agree fully: Appeals to the heart beat appeals to the mind.
Just Example Of Big Media Journalism Making Itself Ever More Irrelevant
I can't even begin to summarize this crap... but, you know, in an anti-intellectual, toadying environment, Big Media's not going to work very hard to actually, you know, report accurately. And, more likely than not, the money lost by audience loss and erosion is less than what is at risk by failing to suck up to Our leaders. So there's your answer to crap like this....
What happens when someone lobs a missile at the credibility of NBC Nightly News? The program tries to ignore it.Link.
Yesterday, White House counselor and longtime Republican hit man Ed Gillespie fired off a furious letter to NBC News president Steve Capus, alleging that the president's interview with chief NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel about his speech before the Israeli Knesset was "deceptively edited."
Last night, NBC anchor Brian Williams reported the existence of the letter—but he gave no hint about the substance of the charges from the White House. He also offered no defense against them. Instead, he merely directed viewers to an unedited version of the interview on the Web, a suggestion that many members of Nightly's aging audience probably found completely unhelpful.
Williams' approach was unfortunate, and not just because it was so uninformative. The truth is, Engel's interview was appropriately (and refreshingly) tough, and the White House attack on him was completely unfounded. But anyone relying on Nightly News for their information would have no way of knowing that.
Engel said to the president, "You said that negotiating with Iran is pointless, and then you went further. You said that it was appeasement. Were you referring to Senator Barack Obama?" Here is the disputed paragraph from the president's response, with the parts NBC left out in italics:
"You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has. People need to read the speech. You didn't get it exactly right, either. What I said was is that we need to take the words of people seriously. And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously. And if you don't take them seriously, then it hearkens back to a day when we didn't take other words seriously. It was fitting that I talked about not taking the words of Adolph Hitler seriously on the floor of the Knesset. But I also talked about the need to defend Israel, the need to not negotiate with the likes of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas. And the need to make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon."
Abbreviated, to be sure, but I don't see any harm done to the truth by NBC's editing. Gillespie disagreed, partly because he believed that the full version of the quote "corrects the inaccurate premise of Engel's question by putting the 'appeasement' line in the proper context of taking the words of leaders seriously, not 'negotiating with Iran.'"
In other words, even though John McCain immediately inserted Barack Obama's name into the empty space in Bush's speech, the White House was now pretending that Obama had never been his target.
Last night, Keith Olbermann explained the problem with that assertion: "As to his promise that, quote, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has, and its implicit denial that his appeasement comment at the Knesset was directed at Senator Obama, the president has yet to explain why, if he was not referring to Senator Obama, his White House aides were busy telling the media that his Knesset speech would raise eyebrows and make news, as there was certainly nothing else in it that was out of the ordinary." Other reporters agreed that White House aides had made it clear, off the record, that Obama was the president's target.
THE INTERVIEW IN QUESTION Engel chats with President Bush
Immediately after Gillespie's attack, NBC issued this statement: "Richard Engel's interview with President Bush has been available, unedited, in its entirety, for the past day, on our website. Our reporting accurately reflects the interview. Just as the White House does not participate in the editorial process at the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, NBC News, as part of a free press in a free society, makes its own editorial decisions."
And yesterday, in a letter responding to the White House, NBC News president Steve Capus said, "Let me assure you, there was no effort to be 'deceptive,' as you suggest. Furthermore, the notion this was 'deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline' is a gross misrepresentation of the facts." But again, as of this afternoon, none of Nightly's viewers had heard that. Perhaps Williams will correct the record in tonight's broadcast.
Another complaint from Gillespie concerned NBC's characterization of Iraq as a civil war: "Please allow me to take this opportunity to ask if your network has reconsidered its position that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, especially in light of the fact that the unity government in Baghdad recently rooted out illegal, extremist groups in Basra and reclaimed the port there for the people of Iraq, among other significant signs of progress."
That's a lovely insight into the way the non-reality-based White House continues to view the war, but NBC News president Capus refused to comment on that at all. "I think it wise to discuss those matters in a more appropriate forum," Capus wrote.
This was the second time in a month that Nightly News has come under attack, and Williams tried to ignore it. The first time was the New York Times story describing a huge Pentagon propaganda scandal, in which retired military officers alternated between spouting the Bush administration line on all of the major TV networks and collecting inside information for the military contractors who employed them so they could get more contracts connected to the war. The nightly newscasts of NBC, CBS, and ABC all ignored that attack, although, after some prodding, Williams eventually gave an unsatisfactory reply in his own blog.
Yesterday, Williams and a NBC News spokesman both refused to comment about any of this to Full Court Press, and Williams was apparently dodging other press inquiries as well.
Beloved Leader Explains Why He Does What He Does
Unbelievable: This guy "lead" us for eight years....
Meet President McCain's Whacko Economics Advisor
John McCain's go-to economics adviser isn't holding up very well under close scrutiny.Link.
Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator and economist, is taking a lot of heat after reports that up until April 18 he was a registered lobbyist for UBS, the Swiss bank that is the world's largest manager of private wealth.
A former economics professor at Texas A&M, Gramm has long advocated for tax cuts, supply-side economics and less government regulation. But as David Corn over at Mother Jones reports in "Foreclosure Phil?" Gramm also played an integral role in the financial scandal commonly known as the "subprime meltdown."
Gramm took to the Senate floor on Dec. 15, 2000 -- just two days after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Bush v. Gore decision -- and inserted a 262-page measure into a massive budget bill.The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the [SEC] nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps--and would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century."If your eyes tend to glaze over at the details of complex financial markets, Corn spells out the mechanics in simple terms.
Bottom line is the free-for-all in credit-default swaps during the past seven years added greatly to the financial markets' instability, as investment banks began laying out cash like, Corn says, "bookies trading bets."
Gramm remains the vice chairman of the UBS investment arm, and he appears to have benefited from his close ties to the financial industry since leaving the Senate a few years ago.Whether or not Gramm had bothered to ponder the potential downsides of his commodities legislation, having helped set off an industry free-for-all, he reaped the rewards. In 2003, he left the Senate to take a highly lucrative job at [UBS], Switzerland's largest bank, which had been able to acquire investment house PaineWebber due to his banking deregulation bill. He would soon be lobbying Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury Department for [UBS] on banking and mortgage matters.Corn spells out how long and intimate Gramm's relationship with McCain has been:Gramm's record as a reckless deregulator has not affected his rating as a Republican economic expert. Sen. John McCain has relied on him for policy advice, especially, according to the campaign, on housing matters. The two have been buddies ever since they served together in the House in the 1980s; in 1996, McCain chaired Gramm's flop of a presidential campaign. (Gramm spent $21 million and earned only 10 delegates during the GOP primaries.) In 2005, McCain told a Wall Street Journal columnist that Gramm was his economic guru. Two years later, Gramm wrote a piece for the Journal extolling McCain as a modern-day Abraham Lincoln, and he's hailed McCain's love of tax cuts and free trade. Media accounts have identified Gramm as a contender for the top slot at the Treasury Department if McCain reaches the White House. "If McCain gets in," frets Lynn Turner, a former chief SEC accountant, "we'll have more of the same deregulatory mess. I like John McCain, but given what I know about Phil Gramm, I wouldn't vote for McCain."Gramm recently told a reporter "I don't have a scarlet 'L' burned onto my chest," referring to the dread lobbyists McCain has been trying to rid his campaign of.
About The Michigan And Florida Delegates
If you care, this is just about the best piece I read.
Apparently, a lot of voters see this as some sort of disenfranchisement issue.
I don't think so. They knew the rules, they knowingly broke them and for better or worse they were penalized. Doing a do over is not an option, nor is there any fair way to replicate any fabricated yet fair distribution of the delegates.
Ditto for Hilary: When the other candidates passed on these two primaries, she was only too glad to take advantage.
Apparently, a lot of voters see this as some sort of disenfranchisement issue.
I don't think so. They knew the rules, they knowingly broke them and for better or worse they were penalized. Doing a do over is not an option, nor is there any fair way to replicate any fabricated yet fair distribution of the delegates.
Ditto for Hilary: When the other candidates passed on these two primaries, she was only too glad to take advantage.
Where Homeland Security $$$ Go
There is nothing to add to this. It is so typical of the corruption of Our Leaders.
Colorado Springs-based Ramblin Express, which shuttles gamblers to mountain-town casinos, including Cripple Creek, has received $382,000 in anti-terrorism grants.[more]
Scott McClennan's Greatest Lies
It is kind of hard to get the two pieces to fit: Lie like a bitch in heat (or something like that) and then to write what he wrote....
Idiocy Of The Day
See for yourself
Actually, double idiocy: Spewing this crap and being on O'Reilly....
Actually, double idiocy: Spewing this crap and being on O'Reilly....
Another Triumph Of The Whacko Wingnuts
They were right and here's the proof!!
Link.
The full story is here... actually maybe more than you need to know....
And this may be the last word....
Link.The full story is here... actually maybe more than you need to know....
And this may be the last word....
The Corporatist State Is Noticed....
If only this actually leads to anything good....
Prof. Scott's prepared testimony is here.
There is a fundamental problem these days with economic policy - US corporations have run amok. No longer do they act in the national interest or even give a pretense of being good national corporate citizens. It's all about profits, maximizing profits. In fact, we are told that is a corporation's only responsibility. But is that really the case or have we been spun a lie so long and often we believe it to be true without question? How does the United States align it's Corporations to the interests of the nation?Link.
In a recent House Science Subcommittee hearing, American Decline or Renewal? – Globalizing Jobs and Technology, some these fundamental questions of corporate governance were addressed.it has gradually become clear to me that much of a nation’s economic strategy is embedded in the institutions through which that particular nation is governed, and that the existence of institutions imply a certain strategy- Dr. Bruce R. Scott, testimony before the Investigations and Oversight House Science Subcommittee.
From Dr. Margaret Blair, a law professor and economist, opening statement:I want to speak to you today on a question about the fiduciary obligations that corporate directors have, by law, in this country. In particular, I want to address a claim often made in the financial press, and by members of what a Delaware Court judge has recently called the “corporate governance industry.” This is the claim that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize share value.Dr. Margaret M. Blair even wrote a book about it, Ownership and Control: Rethinking Corporate Governance for the Twenty-First Century .
What I hope you will take from my testimony today is that this claim is, at best, a misleading overstatement. At worst, this claim is simply false, but is often asserted as a weapon to try to persuade corporate managers and directors that they should take actions that benefit particular shareholders of a given corporation, regardless of whether those actions may impose high costs on creditors, employees, the communities where corporations have their operations, or other stakeholders, or sometimes even on the long run ability of the corporation itself to compete effectively for market share, or to develop the next technology
So, is everyone getting that? In order to sustain the United States as a Democracy versus a haven for multinational corporations akin to the No Man's Land of Oklahoma where outlaws were under no jurisdiction, had no consequence, we must make corporate entities accountable to the citizenry of the United States. We must realize not only can we do precisely that, we must do precisely that. We must hold and make these US based corporations responsible and responsive to the United States national interest.
Ralph Gomory said:We need to realize that the interests of the American global corporation, whose interest is profit, and the interests of most Americans, who want a higher standard of living, have been diverging.In other words, globalization is putting America at greater and greater risk by the very corporations it spawned.
So maybe this is a little hard to digest. Why are they bothering with such esoteric concepts? Well, after some pondering, it dawned on me that to enact dramatic, strategic trade and economic policy change, one must directly confront this false assumption that corporations must be like glorified Ferengi.
In order to convince lawmakers to pass legislation and enact policy we desperately need and also to console legislators, to assure such new legislation and policy would not be overturned in the courts, we must address these fundamental definitions of corporate history and governance.
Bruce Scott (read his entire testimony, watch the video) noted:Today’s global economy is much like the US in the later 19 centuryDr. Scott is pointing out today we are living in a corporate bandit outlaw haven. We're in No Man's Land with the multinational globalization corporate cartel, running amok, thumbing their nose at what is actually good for America.
In today’s economy, nations and states charter firms to compete in a global common, but no chartering authority exists that wields the political power to impose rules on these global markets. While there are rules for trade, the chartering of financial firms in particular invites a race to the bottom to escape taxes as well as regulations. At the same time, some countries are imposing conditions on foreign firms as a condition for doing business in their countries. This issue is particularly important in the case of a few very large countries, notably China.
These countries, with priorities that favor rapid growth, are using national power to partner with US firms on the condition that the latter move some of their activities to China. These countries are behaving much the way New Jersey did in an earlier era, taking advantage of an inadequately regulated common
And the kicker, Dr. Scott recommends:you consider reopening the question of a federal charter or license for US firms as a way to specify certain requirements for behavior
Prof. Scott's prepared testimony is here.
A Threat From The East
From this piece, it looks like China is trying to hack American systems like 24/7. It reminds me when we were in Shanghai Summer 2007. We were taken on a tour of an elite public elementary school. And what was a class of first graders (IIRC) doing? Programming. I mean simple games, but it does set one wondering why, and What were the older kids doing in class? Hacking the Pentagon, I wondered. And maybe I was right....
More Progress In Iraq
Jews were once a wealthy and politically active part of the spectrum of Iraq. In a fading red volume of the Iraq Directory of 1936, the “Israelite community,” then numbering about 120,000, is listed along with Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Muslims, Christians, Yazidis and Sabeans. Rescued from a Baghdad library, this book lists Hebrew among the six languages of Iraq and describes a country in which “the mosque stands beside the church and the synagogue.”[more] (Emphasis added.)
However, the directory predates decades of trauma: the 1941 Farhud pogrom in which more than 130 Jews were killed during the Feast of Shavuot, World War II, the Holocaust, the anti-Zionism of Saddam Hussein and the post-2003 rise of Islamic militants.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Fair And Balanced: A Quote From A Conservative With Which I Agree
Well, OK, only pretty much. But first....
My arguement or dispute is this is pretty much focused on the cashing out thing. (Which is not true; McClellan's advance was quite small.) And it doesn't address the possibility that this is a sincere change of heart since leaving the White House.
But I completely agree with the general thrust that the time to argue is while in power, not after the fact, after leaving the position of power.
Link.There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don't have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique...That's from an e-mail sent by former Sen. Bob Dole to former White House press secretary Scott McClellan. The one-time Republican presidential nominee's e-mail was obtained by the Politico.
No doubt you will "clean up" as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, "Biting The Hand That Fed Me." Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years...
You're a hot ticket now but don't you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?
My arguement or dispute is this is pretty much focused on the cashing out thing. (Which is not true; McClellan's advance was quite small.) And it doesn't address the possibility that this is a sincere change of heart since leaving the White House.
But I completely agree with the general thrust that the time to argue is while in power, not after the fact, after leaving the position of power.
Friday, May 30, 2008
President McCain's Prior Pronouncements On The Iraq Fandango
How would American troops be greeted?: "I believe… that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators." (March 20, 2003)Link.
Did Saddam Hussein have a nuclear program that posed an imminent threat to the United States?: "Saddam Hussein is on a crash course to construct a nuclear weapon." (October 10, 2002)
Will a war with Iraq be long or short?: "This conflict is… going to be relatively short." (March 23, 2003)
How is the war going?: "I would argue that the next three to six months will be critical." (September 10, 2003)
How is it going (almost two months later, from the war's "greatest critic")? "I think the initial phases of [the war] were so spectacularly successful that it took us all by surprise." (October 31, 2003)
Is this war really necessary?: "Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war." (August 30, 2004)
How is it going? (Recurring question for the war's "greatest critic"): "We will probably see significant progress in the next six months to a year." (December 4, 2005)
Will the President's "surge" of troops into Baghdad and surrounding areas that the senator had been calling for finally make the difference?: "We can know fairly well [whether the surge is working] in a few months." (February 4, 2007)
Newsflash!
On a day when Washington was abuzz with the news that former White House spokesperson Scott McClellan had published a tell-all memoir, President George W. Bush offered his personal reason for not reading it.Link.
“I have no intention of reading Scott McClellan’s book,” Mr. Bush told reporters, “because it’s a book.”
Mr. Bush said he was “surprised” that Mr. McClellan had written a book to criticize him because “if you’re trying to communicate some criticism to me, a book is pretty much the last place you’d put it.”
The president said that he thought the chances of his someday reading Mr. McClellan’s book were “zero,” adding, “If I didn’t read the Iraq Study Group’s report, I really don’t think I’m about to read Scott McClellan’s little book.”
Presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota observed that if Mr. McClellan honestly expected his memoir to somehow reach Mr. Bush’s nightstand, “that demonstrates just how little he knows George W. Bush.”
“Scott McClellan would have had a much better shot if he had put his memoir in Xbox 360 format and then slipped it into a package labeled ‘Grand Theft Auto 5,’” he said.
For his part, Mr. Bush said that there was in fact a book published this week that had caught his eye: the new James Bond thrilled entitled “Devil May Care.”
“Now, that book looks like it could be good,” he said. “Maybe I’ll have Laura read it to me.”
How One Guy Thinks We Got Here
1. Limited areas available for offshore drilling;Link.
2. Stopped the rise of CAFE standards for automobiles;
3. Restricted nuclear power generation of Electrical;
4. Federal Reserve policies since 2001 led to a very weak US dollar (raising Oil prices);
5. Energy conservation policies? None
6. Iraq and Afghanistan wars contributing to Middle East tensions
7. No major United States funding for R&D on energy;
8. Kept CAFE standards for light trucks/SUVs much lower than autos;
9. Failed to raise efficiency standards for appliances for decades;
10. Provided no tax incentives for consumer purchases of hybrid automobiles;
11. Suburban Sprawl: Americans, on average, live further from where they work than Europeans do;
12. Mass transit system not a high priority;
13. Allowed tax credits for residential solar power to expire;
14. No special capital gains treatment for VC alt.energy investment
15. Ridiculous corn ethanol policy helped drive food prices higher also;
16. Amongst the lowest gasoline taxes in the developed world;
17. No special capital gains tax treatment for clean energy technology development;
18. Created a tax incentive (ADCS) that encouraged purchases of large inefficient vehicles;
19. Game changing breakthroughs over the past decades in solar, battery, or energy generation technologies? None
20. Exempted light trucks, SUVs, and pickups from gas-guzzler tax;
21. Discouraged clean coal, including gas liquification from coal;
22. Limited (or non-existent) state tax incentives for building energy efficient homes;
23. Failed to aggressively promote compact fluorescent light bulb;
24. Limited hydro-electric power generation;
25. Aggressive tax incentives for battery technology development? None
26. Failed to aggressively promote efficiency improvements for residential energy use, transmission of power, or consumption;
27. No new oil refineries built in the USA over the past 25 years.
Big Media Journos: Not Journalism; Government Propagandists
JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.[more]
And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.
I think, over time...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?
YELLIN: Not in that exact -- they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.
See it all here.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
In Case You Forgot Joe Lieberman Is A Total Wanker And The Worst Kind Of Hypocrite
Senator Joseph Lieberman is scheduled to headline Pastor John Hagee's 2008 Christians United For Israel Washington-Israel Summit this July 22. In accepting Hagee's invitation, Lieberman became the most senior elected representative confirmed to appear at the annual gala. Last year, when Lieberman spoke at Hagee's summit, he compared the Texas televangelist to the biblical prophet Moses, dubbing him "an Ish Elochim," or "a man of God." Unless he rescinds his pledge to appear at this year's summit, Lieberman can be expected to deliver another soul-stirring tribute.[more]
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
A Reminder Not Just For Memorial Day....
This Memorial Day remembering Marine Lance Cpl. Jeff Lucey who was lost to his family, friends and the rest of us fighting the war that stayed in him after Iraq. The anguish, pain and suffering resulting from this war continues to afflict 300,000 veterans every day. One hundred twenty take their own lives every week. To a very great degree vets are left to their own devices to cope with this and related illnesses. These American patriots need to be put at the top of the list, shown the way out of PTSD to the mental health services they desperately need. Jeff’s pain was unrelenting, although hidden. He did relate his stories in letters. He claimed to have been ordered to shoot two Iraqi soldiers at point blank range. He anguished over their age and the moral depravity of war. He took their dog tags and wore them himself. He took his own life June 22, 2004.Link.
Life In These Here United States
Great moments in advertising, tolerance, etc.:
["Did you know that there are people in this country who want prayer out of schools, "Under God" out of the Pledge, and "In God We Trust" to be taken off our money?"]The story is here. http://www.mediafire.com/?g1f492lbruy">The audio is here.
"But did you know that 86% of Americans say they believe in God? Since we all know that 86 out of every 100 of us are Christians, who believe in God, we at Kieffe & Sons Ford wonder why we don't tell the other 14% to sit down and shut up. I guess I just offended 14% of the people who are listening to this message. Well, if that is the case then I say that's tough, this is America folks, it's called free speech. None of us at Kieffe & Sons Ford is afraid to speak out. Kieffe & Sons Ford on Sierra Highway in Mojave and Rosamond, if we don't see you today, by the grace of God, we'll be here tomorrow."
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