A. Hitler, Artist

There was a third-rate comic book artist who killed his girlfriend because she said he wasn't as good a lover as the other guy she was fucking but otherwise I cannot think of any other frustrated artist who, frustrated, became a dictator and global threat. Anyway....

Link.

Product Of The Day; Why We Defeated The Soviets And All The World's Commies (Except Cuba)

If this isn't the freaking scariest thing this side of The Saint's flip-flopping....

Socialism cannot create this. Only unbridled capitalist greed could, blessed with a completely unhindered free market.

We always thought that there was something... not quite normal about good ol' SpongeBob.

Now imagine growing up, knowing that when sick, they shoved a SpongeBob thermometer up your ass (and forget how obsolete they are in our modern times so there's no need for one -- unless Junior saw it on the store shelf and just had to have one). Think, think, think... yuck!

Link.

Why Our Allies Help Us In The Total War Against Terror

It's obviously the respect for freedom of expression.

I mean, when you're fighting Islamofascist terrorists for American, you have to acquiesce to them. (Don't think about the contradiction too hard -- God forbid anything's done to appear to not to be enabling Islam, you know? It makes a scintilla of sense but the Pakis fully understand it and can work with it.)

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered ISPs in the country to block access to a popular video-sharing website, youtube.com, all over the country on Friday.

According to an official notification sent out by the PTA to major ISPs, the ban was supposed to be imposed on a specific URL, featuring a 04:58-minute-long trailer from Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ controversial anti-Islam movie. The video had been uploaded to the website on January 28, 2008, and had remained largely unnoticed by the internet-savvy community in Pakistan.

Local ISPs went a step ahead, however, and blocked the entire youtube.com domain. The delayed PTA response to the January 28 video, coupled with the domain block, and the fact that everything else related to Geert Wilders is still available all over the internet, sparked speculation on mailing lists and blogs, and people wondered whether the youtube.com blackout was connected to some other videos that had been uploaded to the site on Thursday. These videos implicated a certain political party in “election rigging” and showed party activists stamping ballot papers en masse.

ISPs have however, denied these reports, and in emails sent out to subscribers, officials from these companies have stuck with the PTA’s version of events. Some have even asked users to write to the youtube.com administrators to “remove the objectionable web content/movies because this removal would enable the authorities to order un-blocking of this website.”

Link.

The Last Automat

What can I say? This brings me back to my youth. The Horn & Hardart at 42nd Street and Third Avenue....



And a tribute is here.

The Saint Flip-Flops Again, This Time Pissing On The Campaign Finance Rules He Got Passed

So one of the saint's accomplishments is campaign finance reform. But now that he's a candidate, he can't respect his own law.

So let's see what kind of straight talk we got the past couple of days.

The past (present and future?) adulterer ("wife-cheater") fucked a lobbyist? Maybe so, maybe no. But she did get what she wanted for her client. And the saint -- well, his people -- went into major denial mode i.e. lied.

Articles all over the place about what a complete, unprincipled whore he is. (Really, we've all known for years that just about his only principle was self-promotion by any means. Daddy money was part of the reason he started fucking his present wife; daddy's money and connections.)

And shitting on his own campaign reform. If he can't respect that, the saint is a complete nothing.

Maybe you consider the Vicki Iseman controversy to be a big deal, or maybe you’re underwhelmed by it and think the NYT shouldn’t have pulled the trigger on it. I guess we’ll be able to say more about it once some of the follow-up reporting adds some details and nails down some of the loose ends.

But either way, let’s not lose sight of John McCain’s other controversy of the week — the senator’s efforts to game the public financing system.

To review briefly: in December, McCain, who’d earlier opted in to the public financing system, needed cash. The FEC had already certified that he was owed $5.8 million in public matching funds — but he wouldn’t be getting that money until March. And he didn’t want to absolutely commit yet to using that system, because it would limit his campaign to spending only $54 million through the end of August. And FEC rules say that using public matching funds as collateral locks a candidate into the system.

So McCain struck a deal with the bank: he promised to only commit to using the system if he lost the primary. If he won, he would opt out of the program, and he’d be more than able to pay the bank back, because the funds would come flowing. McCain’s lawyers were evidently very pleased with the canniness of this arrangement.

Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason isn’t nearly as impressed, and is sharp enough to know a candidate trying to pull a con when he sees one.

This story is a little harder to get than, say, whether McCain had an affair with a lobbyist for whom he was doing favors. But it’s still pretty important.

Hilzoy had a great item on this.

Campaign finance laws ask candidates to make a choice: either you take federal money, in which case you are subject to a number of restrictions, or else you don’t take it, in which case you are not. Getting a loan by using the matching funds you have not yet received as collateral is a way of trying to have it both ways: essentially, you get to spend your matching funds now, but because the money did not literally come from the government, you can delay a decision about whether or not to accept the restrictions that go with them until later. If you can leverage the money into enough wins to generate contributions, you can pay back the loan and duck the restrictions; if not, you’ve lost anyways, so you might as well abide by them. That’s exactly what campaign finance laws do not want candidates to be able to do.

McCain tried to be tricky about this: he didn’t use the matching funds he had qualified for as collateral, but he did use the fact that he could qualify for them at any time. That’s why he had to give away his legal right to withdraw from the campaign if he lost: to satisfy his lenders, he had to promise to stay in long enough to actually get the matching funds he qualified for, and to give them first dibs on those funds. Whether or not this violates the law — a law McCain authored — I have no idea, but it is certainly an attempt to wriggle out of its requirements, and it ought to put paid, once and for all, to the idea of McCain as a straight-talking man of principle.

Josh Marshall also summarized what happened quite nicely.

Back in August McCain opted into the public financing system for the primaries. Then in December he needed to come up with some cash quickly. Well, no problem. He was already guaranteed over $5 million from the feds. So all he needed to do was put that guarantee down as collateral for the loan.

Only McCain didn’t want to do that because once he formally made the federally-guaranteed money collateral then he gave up his right to later opt back out of the system.

But, he really, really needed the money. So McCain, along with his campaign finance lawyer Trevor Potter (whom I’ve met and is a very sharp guy) came up with a workaround. It went like this. McCain wouldn’t make the guarantee collateral. But he promised that if his campaign tanked he would opt out of the system and then opt back in. This would mean remaining a candidate even after he knew he wasn’t really in the race in order to a) get back the public money to pay his creditors and b) assure he could sign the original loan note with the de facto collateral while nonetheless maintaining his ability to once again opt out of the public financing system at any one of many possible future junctures at which his campaign might pop back from life support and it would be in his interest to go back to raising money from donors.

Of course, McCain’s campaign did come off the mat. And since he now wants to raise and spend as much as possible before the end of the summer, earlier this month he did actually opt back out. The FEC, the outfit that enforces the campaign finance laws, says McCain’s not allowed to opt out. But whatever, he opted out anyway.

Why McCain feels justified going after Obama over his commitment to the public financing system is a mystery.

What happens next in this story? The FEC’s Mason — who’s a Republican, by the way — has told McCain he can’t drop out of the primary election’s public financing system. McCain’s lawyers have effectively told Mason, “Watch us.” And because of a dispute between Bush and Congress, the FEC only has two members right now, two fewer than is necessary to take any actions at all.

Link.

See How Serbs Protest Independence For Kosovo: By Looting

Beloved Leader

From somewhere on Flickr....

Dilbert's Words Of Wisdom

Guys, remember this strip!

Link.

What We Have Wrought In Iraq

Link.

A Life

Amy Goodman:

Nearing 87 years old, Yuri Kochiyama lives in a small room in an Oakland, Calif., senior living facility. Her walls are adorned with photos, posters, postcards and mementos detailing a living history of the revolutionary struggles of the 20th century. She is quiet, humble and small, and has trouble at times retrieving the right word. Yet, with a sparkle in her eyes, she has no trouble recalling that incredible history--not from books, not from documentaries, but from living it, on the front lines.

February marks a coincidence of anniversaries in Kochiyama’s incredible life: 66 years ago, on Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the mass internment of Japanese-Americans. Then there is Feb. 21, 1965, the day Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City.

Kochiyama was a young woman living with her parents in San Pedro, Calif., when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Within hours, her father was arrested by the FBI. She recalled:

“[The FBI agents] said, ‘Is there a Seichi Nakahara living here?’ I said, ‘He just came home from ulcer surgery.’ And they went in and got him—it was done so quickly, it didn’t even take a half of a minute, I don’t think. And I didn’t dare ask a question. They were going out the door immediately. And then, I just called my mother, who was right down the street to say, ‘Come home quick. The FBI just came and took Pop.’ ”

He was taken to the San Pedro Hospital, where U.S. sailors and Marines who had been injured in the Japanese attacks were also being treated. Kochiyama’s father was the only person of Japanese descent in the hospital. They put him in a bed behind a sheet marked “Prisoner of War.” Kochiyama recalled what her mother said: “When she saw the reaction of all the American [patients] who were just brought in from Wake Island, she didn’t think he was going to last. And so, she asked the head of that hospital, could he be given a room by himself, and then when he was feeling better, could they take him ... to the prison, because that hospital, she said, was probably worse than prison, because here were all these Americans who had been injured.”

He was released six weeks later, returned home in a state of extreme illness. Kochiyama recalls: “He came home, it was around dinnertime, 5:30. And they had a nurse come with him. And by the next morning, she woke us up and said, ‘He’s gone.’ ” Her father had died.

Yuri and the rest of her family were rounded up and sent to Rohwer Camp in Arkansas as part of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Nearly 70,000 of them were U.S. citizens. She spent more than two years imprisoned there. She married after her release, and she and her family eventually moved to Harlem, N.Y.

Yuri was a changed woman. Her experience made her aware of the lack of justice suffered not only by Asian-Americans, but by African-Americans and Latinos as well. She met Malcolm X in 1963. They became friends and allies. He sent her postcards from his transformative trip to Africa. She was in the audience at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem when he was shot.

She ran up onto the stage: “Malcolm had fallen straight back, and he was on his back. And so I just went there and picked up his head and just put it on my lap. People ask, ‘What did he say?’ He didn’t say anything. He was just having a difficult time breathing. I said, ‘Please, Malcolm, please, Malcolm, stay alive.’ But he was hit so many times.”

Malcolm X’s assassination propelled Kochiyama further into a life committed to the struggle for social justice, human rights, racial equality and prisoner rights. She is a staunch supporter of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has lived on death row in Pennsylvania for a quarter of a century.

As the Bush administration asserts its authority to detain “enemy combatants” without charge, and zealots in Congress hatch plans to round up 12 million people accused of being “illegal aliens” (100 times the number of Japanese-Americans interned), we all have timely lessons to learn from Yuri Kochiyama.

The Huck's (Other) Nicknames

Radar:

1. Huck

2. Two Buck Huck

3. Sucka-bee

4. Huckaboom

5. Huckleberry Thin

6. Huckleberry Hound

7. Huck-a-behave

8. Daddy

9. The Biggest Loser

10. Huckmaster General

11. Mitt's Master Mike

12. The Honorable Governor Michael Dale Huckabee

13. Guv'nor

14. Mother Hucker

15. Princess

16. Huck Wild

17. Con the Baptist

18. Sir Hucksalot

19. Huckazoom

20. That Guy Who Pardoned That Rapist Who Immediately Went Out and Raped Like Five People

21. Huck-stop

22. Good Luck Huck

23. Mrs. Chuck Norris

24. Huck the Hick

25. Yippie Ka-Yay Mother Hucker

26. Mike Check

27. The Huckster

28. Huck Up

29. Huck and Cover

30. Huck Me in the Ass and Call Me Sally

31. A Man Called Huck

32. The Thin Man

33. Huckabuck

34. Inner Fattie

35. Lady Huck

36. Lucky Huck

37. Double-Wide

38. The Dog Killer's Daddy

39. Huckapoo

40. Mr. Jesus

41. The Footwashing Candidate

42. The Trailer Park Fairy Tale

43. Arkansas Slim

44. The Marathon Man

45. Huck-Huck Goose

46. The Fightin' Fundamentalist

47. Karl Rove's Karma

48. The Squirrel Eaters' Candidate

49. The Bouncing Baptist

50. Huck on You

The Huck's (Other

Check This Out

I once took an introductory flying lesson and was amazed that I landed the plane. I was and remain amazed how a plane can be placed right there, at the end of a unway, not overshooting it nor crashing into the ground.

Then you see this and it's min-boggling scary.....

Who Loves The Saint?

Via Raw Story:

As John McCain's reputation as a family man and a politician with a clean ethical record came under attack on Thursday, one man's voice was heard most loudly: top political adviser Charles R. Black, Jr..

"We’re going to go to war with them now,” Black bluntly told the Politico on Thursday, referring to the New York Times.

Black was front and center in several media accounts about the Times' allegations regarding McCain's relationship with lobbyist Vicky Iseman, assailing the paper for lowering its standards and "smearing" the senator.

For Black, it must have seemed like just another day at the office. The lobbying firm he leads, BKSH & Associates, is a specialist in helping its corporate clients put out fires in Washington. And for the second time in this election season, Black was connected to a major campaign-related controversy. The last time, his firm helped prepare private military contractor giant Blackwater Worldwide for a congressional probe of the killing of 17 civilians by its guards in Baghdad.

In the process of coaching Blackwater, BKSH inadvertently drew Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign into a lengthy controversy over the private career of its top political strategist, Mark Penn. In addition to guiding Clinton's campaign, Penn heads up Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations company with many clients whose interests often seem to clash with a variety of Democratic political goals. BKSH is a subsidiary of Penn's firm.

A former BKSH employee, Robert Tappan, had brought Blackwater to BKSH as a client. The ex-State Department official has since left Black's firm, and Blackwater is no longer a client. Still, the Times' revelations on Thursday are likely to focus more attention on the clients and company that McCain supporters like Black have been known to keep.

It's not clear whether Black's firm's work for Blackwater has had any effect on Senator McCain's policy positions relating to the use of private military contractors. Black would insist it has not.

"I not only do not lobby him [McCain], but if an issue comes up that I have a client on, I will tell him that and stay out of the discussion," he told the Washington Post on Friday.

Still, although McCain is the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, he has not been particularly vocal on the use of rented security personnel in Iraq and other locations around the world.

When Blackwater has come up, McCain has not addressed the issue directly. In an October appearance on CNN when the company's role in Iraq was being most deeply probed, McCain would only say that the failure of President Bush and ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to deploy enough troops in Iraq had made the use of contractors necessary.

Independent of Black, it's possible that McCain has developed some grudging respect for the private security contractors the US employs in Iraq. The senator has made many visits to the war-torn country, and congressional delegations are often guarded by contractors like Blackwater.

During the fall 2007 House hearings, Republican congress members praised the company for having a perfect protection record in the country.

"Blackwater has protected dozens if not hundreds of members of Congress, including myself and members of this committee, when they travel to Afghanistan and Iraq," said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) in an October hearing of the House Oversight Committee. "I for one am grateful for their services. Not one single member of Congress has been injured nor killed under Blackwater protection, and for that I am grateful."

The Saint Of Honesty

Of course, screwing a lobbyist to whom he isn't married is not just essentially unproveable, but it's really besides the point. (And it's old news that he was doing the woman who became his current wife while married to his first wife.)

The point, for the abuse or the delusional wingnut, is this:

In late 1998, Senator John McCain sent an unusually blunt letter to the head of the Federal Communications Commission, warning that he would try to overhaul the agency if it closed a broadcast ownership loophole.

The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist. The provision enabled one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies, Sinclair, to use a marketing agreement with Glencairn, a far smaller broadcaster, to get around a restriction barring single ownership of two television stations in the same city.

At a news conference on Thursday, Mr. McCain denounced an article in The New York Times that described concerns by top advisers a decade ago about his ties to Ms. Iseman, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay. He said he never had any discussions with his advisers about Ms. Iseman and never did any favors for any lobbyist.

One of the McCain campaign’s statements about his dealings with Ms. Iseman was challenged by news accounts on Friday. In discussing letters he wrote regulators about a deal involving another of Ms. Iseman’s clients, Lowell W. Paxson, the campaign had said the senator had never spoken to her or anyone from the company. But Mr. McCain acknowledged in a 2002 deposition that he had sent the letters after meeting with Mr. Paxson.

On Glencairn, the campaign said Mr. McCain’s efforts to retain the loophole were not done at Ms. Iseman’s request. It said Mr. McCain was merely directing the commission to “not act in a manner contradictory to Congressional intent.” Mr. McCain wrote in the letters that a 1996 law, the telecommunications act, required the loophole; a legal opinion by the staff of the commission took the opposite view.

A review of the record, including agency records now at the National Archives and interviews with participants, shows that Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, played a significant role in killing the plan to eliminate the loophole. His actions followed requests by Ms. Iseman and lobbyists at other broadcasting companies, according to lobbying records and Congressional aides.

[more]

Something I don't Understand But Is Mildly Diverting And Amusing For A Few Moments

Go here and keep hitting reload.

Image Of The Day

At the end of the day, this will outlive the Cuban revolution, okay? And certainly Election 2008. And even the wingnuts destroying our nation.

Link. And the explanation of the image.

Our Freedom Loving Allies, In This Case, One From Our Leaders Take Orders

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.
In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

'Undefined' crime

The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih's conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.

Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

The confession which the defendant was forced to fingerprint was not even read out to her, the group says.

Also Ms Falih and her representatives were not allowed to attend most of the hearings.

When an appeal court decided she should not be executed, the law courts imposed the death sentence again, arguing that it would be in the public interest.

Link.

RIAA Training Film

A clip:



(And more about it.)

Download the whole damn thing -- as a torrent (how else?).

Entertainment, After A Fashion