October 2006 Archives

I should keep a print-out of this article in my camera bag. Clear up any potential misunderstandings, or at least have retorts at the ready. Often the security guard is so drunk on their own power they don't listen well.

USATODAY.com - New digital camera? Know how, where you can use it : Let's get the easy stuff out of the way. Aside from sensitive government buildings (e.g., military bases), if you're on public property you can photograph anything you like, including private property. There are some limits — using a zoom lens to shoot someone who has a reasonable expectation of privacy isn't covered — but no one can come charging out of a business and tell you not to take photos of the building, period.
Further, they cannot demand your camera or your digital media or film. Well, they can demand it, but you are under no obligation to give it to them. In fact, only an officer of the law or court can take it from you, and then only with a court order. And if they try or threaten you? They can be charged with theft or coercion, and you may even have civil recourse. Cool. (For details, see “The Photographer's Right.”)

It gets better.

You can take photos any place that's open to the public, whether or not it's private property. A mall, for example, is open to the public. So are most office buildings (at least the lobbies). You don't need permission; if you have permission to enter, you have permission to shoot.

In fact, there are very few limits to what you're allowed to photograph. Separately, there are few limits to what you're allowed to publish. And the fact that they're separate issues — shooting and publishing — is important. We'll get to that in a moment.

via Earnshavian

Technorati Tags: censorship, Free_Speech, photography

Apparently, in Beaumont, Texas, Democrats need not even run for office, as the election machines are pre-programmed for Republican victory.

KFDM-TV Channel Six News : Jefferson County Voters Continue To Raise Concerns About Voting Machines

KFDM continues to get complaints from Jefferson County voters who say the electronic voting machines are not registering their votes correctly.
Friday night, KFDM reported about people who had cast straight Democratic ticket ballots, but the touch-screen machines indicated they had voted a straight Republican ticket.
Some of those voters including Lamar University professor, Dr. Bruce Drury, believe the problem is a programming error.
Saturday, KFDM spoke to another voter who says it's not just happening with straight ticket voting, he says it's happening on individual races as well, Jerry Stopher told us when he voted for a Democrat, the Republican's name was highlighted.
Stopher said, “There's something in these machines, in this equipment, that's showing Republican votes when you vote for Democrats, and I know Ms. Guidry's a nice lady, and she's working hard, but her theory that my fingernail was somehow over the Republican button is just unrealistic, my fingernail was not. The equipment is not working properly as far as I can tell.”

Technorati Tags: election

Cool.

Pitchfork: Sonic Youth Unveil Rarities Comp Tracklist

Sonic Youth Unveil Rarities Comp Tracklist

Sonic Youth's previously reported rarities compilation, The Destroyed Room: B-sides and Rarities, comes out December 12 on Geffen. And now, it has a tracklist. Three of the 12 tracks are previously unreleased, and most of them are culled from their 21st Century output, including the 2001 Noho Furniture Sessions.

Tags: Sonic_Youth

Hype doesn't necessarily equal sales, or even benefit.

News Analysis: Everything Old Is New: 'Health' Drinks Flood Market : In the early 1800s, pharmacists took carbonated water and added fruit extracts, herbs and medicinal ingredients for flavor as well as health benefits. Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Sodas (re-named 7 Up), for example, included lithium; Coca-Cola had cocaine.

Beverage makers are still looking to the same formula (sans the illegal drugs), one that gives users something more than just refreshment. More than a dozen drinks promising weight loss, cell damage-reducing antioxidants and natural energy are scheduled to hit shelves in 2007, with many more in the pipeline.
...
Americans drank 19 billion gallons of milk, water, sports and energy drinks in 2005. Next year, new choices will abound as Pepsi alone has at least 12 entrants on the way for health conscious consumers, including Pepsi Natural and Sierra Mist Essence (both with natural sugars), Tava (with chromium, which is tied to weight loss) and Tropicana Essentials with Omega-3 fatty acids.

“We're in the business of giving consumers what they're looking for,” said Chris Kempczinski, vp-non-carbonated beverages at Pepsi-Cola North America, Purchase, N.Y.

Coming from Coca-Cola: Enviga, a sparkling green tea that burns calories, and H2Odwalla enhanced water. BusinessWeek also described “nutraceutical versions of Diet Coke” and “new juices designed to help women with skincare, weight management and detoxification.”

Glacéau Vitaminwater Triple X and Snapple Out of the Blueberry, both loaded with anti-oxidants, are also due.
...
Of course, the cola giants can just buy somewhat established brands. Pepsi last month paid a reported $75 million for Izze Beverage, Boulder, Colo., maker of all-natural, sparkling fruit juices. Izze's “magic formula” is pretty much what pharmacists were whipping up 200 years ago—carbonated water with fruit juice. “It's come full circle,” said Kempczinski.

I'll stick with my established beverages: martinis, beer, wine, coffee and tea, thanks. Though, I've enjoyed a cold Izze with vodka on occasion. I'll pass on the nutraceutical version of Diet Coke - that stuff is toxic.

Technorati Tags: advertising, drinking

so photos will have to suffice

Swank umm, no comment.

Horse Riders in the sky partially finished building, West Loop.

Horse Riders in the sky partially finished building, West Loop.

One Step Beyond Discarded doorway on W. Randolph

Salmon on Randolph companion building to the Horse Riders in the Sky building (same owner - a Greek and/or Turkish septuagenarian, doing all the refurbishing himself, on a very, very slow timetable.)

Human Cannonball Blues Turret, West Loop. I liked it better sideways.

a quickr pickr post

Tags: architecture, /West_Loop

• NME.COM - News - Pixies to begin work on new album
  Cool. Pixies are set to begin work on their first studio album in 15 years. Singer Frank Black has confirmed the band will start work in January on their first record since 1991's 'Trompe Le Monde'.
  (tags: music rock_snob)
• How to embed Flickr slideshows - Lifehacker
  “Blogger Paul Stamatiou details how to embed the default Flickr slideshows on your own web page or blog.”
  (tags: flash flickr photography tutorial)
• The YouTube Party's Over
  “YouTube.com -- purchased by Google last month for $1.6 billion -- Comedy Central has forced it to remove thousands of clips from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report, and South Park”
  (tags: Youtube DRM copyright television)
• Greenhouse gas emissions rising
  “data shows industrialised countries' greenhouse gas emissions rising overall, despite cuts by some nations.”
  (tags: energy environment climate_change Global_Warming)
• Be careful what you write online
  no duh! “survey by CareerBuilder, one in four managers now 'Google' potential employees and 51% of applications were rejected because of what was found”
  (tags: Business Technology Google Free_speech)
• A Random Page
  random is the new black “This site will use a randomized Google I'm Feeling Lucky search to take you to a random page.”
  (tags: Google internet fun randomizer)
• Lobbyists Won't Like What Pelosi Has in Mind
  frack lobbyists! “Odds are that lobbying in the House of Representatives is about to get harder.”
  (tags: 2006 congress corruption)
• What Was Cheney Thinking?
  “The one question an unusually dogged White House press corps on Friday demanded that Vice President Cheney address remains unanswered: If he wasn't talking about waterboarding, what did he mean by a ”dunk in the water“?”
  (tags: torture terrorism Cheney)
• Make your own map with National Geographic's Map Machine - Lifehacker
  I love maps. “You can use the National Geographic Map Machine to make your very own ”theme“ map.”
  (tags: map tools)
• SEXE-AKA: OCTOPUSSY : TENTACLES OF DESIRE
  Not safe for work, but still fun, if you like bio-diversity and porn
  (tags: Arts porn)
• Kevin Federline's Concerts Being Canceled Due To “Lack Of Interest”...
  “SHOCKINGLY enough, no one in New York wants to hear Kevin Federline rap. Our spies at Webster Hall say that so few $20 tickets have been sold for Federline's Nov. 4 show that ”we may just cancel it.“
  (tags: music)
• The Ninth Circle on Flickr!
  Kevin Federline Chicago marquee
  (tags: photography sign humor)
• Homemade headless Marie Antoinette costume
  ”Nicemag entered this freaking awesome headless Marie Antoinette costume in the MAKE CRAFT contest“
  (tags: cool tutorial)
• Congressman on Boarding Pass Generator guy: Uh... oops?
  ”Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) called for the arrest of Christopher Soghoian, and the takedown of his “Boarding Pass Generator” website which illustrated an airline security hole documented on the web for several years“
  (tags: terrorism Technology FBI Free_speech)
• Wired News: Techie Faces Orrin Hatch Nov. 7
  ”Hatch, the entertainment industry-affiliated Republican who made it a federal crime to play a DVD on a Linux computer and tried to enable copyright holders to destroy the computers of suspected copyright infringers“
  (tags: Politics DRM)
• Irish Times Article - Gore is enlisted to lobby US on climate change
  ”British government has hired former US vice president Al Gore as a lobbyist to convince the American public that action must be taken urgently to combat the “disastrous” threat of global warming.“
  (tags: Global_Warming Al_Gore climate_change)
• Meanwhile, Amy Sullivan Attacks Jesus Christ as an Intolerant Secular Liberal...
  Christian dorks like Amy Sullivan really, really annoy me.
  (tags: Religion intolerance)

I'm even not on any drugs (at the moment), and I thought this a very cool animation (with sound).

whitney music box var. 7 - harmonics - 120 tines, reversed

or view on a page by itself

17 variations available on the right of the screen.

via ogged

Parenthetical autobiographic note: when I was a freshman physics student at UT, instead of working on my term project (a light ray refraction simulator or something equally as tedious having to do with Cavendish), late at night, I often went to the subterranean physics computer lab (accessible only via combo lock), and worked on similar programs as displayed above. If I recall correctly, I worked out 25-30 different sub-routines, which were selected randomly to run for a short period of time.

No doubt super simple code, compiled in a version of BASIC, though once the grad student who ran the lab walked in as I was testing some sub-routine, and he suggested, “you should really do something” with the program.

If I had been less self-aware, I might have worked my code into a commercially available screen saver, which was an unknown program at the time (at least to me, in 1986), and made hundreds of dollars, or more. Instead, I loaded my program onto all 8 of the lab machines, turned off the lights, and self-hypnotized and self-medicated. Err, something like that.

Tags: software, /Technology

part the who-can-even-count-anymore.

Mark Cuban republished an anonymous source's behind-the-scenes email about YouTube, Google, and copyright infringement liabilities. Interesting reading, this sentence jumped out (my emphasis):

Some intimate details on the Google YouTube Deal The media companies smelled a transaction when Youtube radically changed their initial 'revenue sharing' offer to one laden with cash. But even they didn't predict Google would pay such an exorbitant amount for Youtube so when Youtube started talking in multiples of tens of millions of dollars the media companies believed this to be fair and would lock in a nice Q3/Q4. [Note to self: Buy calls on media companies just prior to Q3/Q4 earnings calls.] The major labels got wind that their counterparts were in heated discussions so they used a now common trick a “most favored nation” clause to assure that if if a comparable company negotiated a better deal that they would also receive that benefit. It's a clever ploy to avoid anti-trust issues and gives them the benefit of securing the best negotiating company. They negotiated about 50 million for each major media company to be paid from the Google buyout monies. The media companies had their typical challenges. Specifically, how to get money from Youtube without being required to give any to the talent (musicians and actors)? If monies were received as part of a license to Youtube then they would contractually obligated to share a substantial portion of the proceeds with others. For example most record label contracts call for artists to get 50% of all license deals. It was decided the media companies would receive an equity position as an investor in Youtube which Google would buy from them. This shelters all the up front monies from any royalty demands by allowing them to classify it as gains from an investment position. A few savvy agents might complain about receiving nothing and get a token amount, but most will be unaware of what transpired.

Jes' lovely. Screw the talent, screw the YouTube users, collude with just enough winks to avoid anti-trust concerns, and deposit the checks on the down low.

Cubes has more on my favorite Do Some Evil company.

Tags: Google, /YouTube

Bob Herbert was apparently cafe/bar hopping in Chicago recently, chatting up folk. I'd like to buy him a coffee, and shake his hand for all the fine work he's done over the years.

Anyway, no shite the political system is broken. Washington is a corrupt and corrupting place, whose denizens sole purpose seems to be to line the pockets of corporate donors. There are a few politicians who might be worth sparing, but I'd throw 90% of them into a duck pond without hesitation.

The System’s Broken - Bob Herbert ,,,The system is broken. Most politicians would rather sacrifice their first born than tell voters the honest truth about tough issues. Big money and gerrymandering have placed government out of the reach of most Americans. ... If you pay close attention to the news and then go out and talk to ordinary people, it’s hard not to come away with the feeling that the system of politics and government in the U.S. is broken. I spent the past week talking to residents in Chicago, southern Michigan and Indiana. No one was happy about the direction the country has taken, but not even the most faithful voters were confident that their ballot would make any substantial difference.

“I vote,” said Angela Buehl, who lives in a suburb of Indianapolis, “but I don’t think anybody in Washington is listening to me.” She mimicked talking into a telephone: “Hello ... Hello ...?”

The politicians, special interests and the media are in a state of high excitement over next week’s midterm elections. They are addicted to the blood sport of politics, and this is a championship encounter. But that excitement contrasts with what seems to be an increasing sense of disenchantment and unease that ordinary Americans are feeling when it comes to national politics and government. For far too many of them, the government in Washington is remote, unresponsive and ineffective.

Voters and nonvoters alike expressed frustration with the fact that we are stuck in a war in Iraq that hardly anyone still supports but no one in government knows how to end.

Several people mentioned that their families were struggling financially at a time when the stock market had soared to all-time highs and the Bush administration was crowing about how well the economy was doing.

Tags: 2006_Election, /Bob_Herbert

Krugman wonders about the housing market. Our neighbor is considering moving, her agent priced her place at $x, which seemed low by x+y, y being the (perceived) value of having a penthouse. We are sort of looking to relocate, but after seeing a few dozen properties, maybe not. Is it a good time to buy? or should we rent out our place, and move into a yurt.

Anyway, I don't think Greenspan will be buying Krugman lunch anytime soon....

Paul Krugman: Bursting Bubble Blues

How much pain will the bursting housing bubble inflict?

Here are the five stages of housing grief:

1. Housing bubble? What housing bubble? “A national severe price distortion [in housing] seems most unlikely in the United States.” (Alan Greenspan, October 2004)

2. “There’s a little froth in this market,” but “we don’t perceive that there is a national bubble.” (Alan Greenspan, May 2005)

3. Housing is slumping, but “despite what you hear from some of the Eeyores in the analytical community, a recession is not visible on the horizon.” (Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, August 2006)

4. Well, that was a lousy quarter, but “I feel good about the U.S. economy, I really do.” (Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, last Friday)

5. Insert expletive here.

We’ve now reached stage 4. Will we move on to stage 5?

Tags: Paul_Krugman

• EASTERN SYMBOLS   Eastern religion
  The Enso (Japanese for 'circle') is a Zen symbol of the absolute, the true nature of existence and enlightenment. It is a symbol that combines the visible and the hidden, the simple and the profound, the empty and the full. As an expression of infinit
  (tags: Religion zen symbol)

Selena Roberts writes about a topic I've complained about bitterly since I attended one of those schools with two kinds of students: athletes and everyone else. Just pay 'em above the table, and stop the charade already! I don't begrudge folks their entertainment choices, but stop pretending the student athlete exists when less than a quarter of the team ever graduates. Not saying athletes are retards, all of them anyway, but they have a different function in universities - winning sports contests.

Selena Roberts: Big-Time College Sports May Be Due for an Audit How does the luxurious splendor of high-end college football square with the purpose of higher education? The Tax Man wants to know.

It was a five-star slumber party. By 7:30 p.m. Friday, Florida Gator players were wandering the hallways of the Sawgrass Marriott Resort and Spa with pillows tucked under their arms.

They weren’t wearing their pj’s but identical blue warm-ups. They weren’t painting each other’s toenails, but, and this is unknown, the fellas might have indulged in an oxygen facial to polish up their game face.

As it was, the lugs were lying on the floor of a hotel ballroom for a players-only movie, stretching out after feasting on endless silver platters of man food in the ballroom next door.

It beats the dorm and Domino’s. What’s an expense budget when more than $1.2 million a season is dedicated to the team’s travel? The University of Florida is located only 80 minutes from Alltel Stadium — where the team held off Georgia, 21-14, in yesterday’s annual border scrum — but the Gators rode the extra mile a day before the game to relax a half-hour away in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

The team effectively turned a school day into a spa day.

How does the luxurious splendor of high-end college football square with the purpose of higher education?

The Tax Man wants to know. In what amounts to a moral audit, Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, recently sent a letter to the money-grab artists at the nonprofit N.C.A.A., asking it to justify its tax-exempt status with some barbed questions:

Tags: Football

Once we settle upon a logo for the freethinkers, I'll add it to this site's header, or somewhere prominent.

A logo for the godless: an impossible assignment? Norwegianity has put out a request to design an appropriate logo for all of us godless heathen bloggers. There's a certain religious deathcult that uses an instrument of torture as its immediately recognizable logo—it's very simple, clean, easy to draw, and they've made it their own. You see one of those things on a website or on a necklace and you instantly know to a very rough approximation the predilections of the owner. Why can't we have something like that?

plenty of possibles have been suggested. Check 'em out.

Tags: atheism, /religion

Speaking of crony capitalism (even though this doesn't exactly fit the definition)

Businesses Seek Protection on Legal Front - New York Times Frustrated with laws and regulations that have made companies and accounting firms more open to lawsuits from investors and the government, corporate America — with the encouragement of the Bush administration — is preparing to fight back.

Now that corruption cases like Enron and WorldCom are falling out of the news, two influential industry groups with close ties to administration officials are hoping to swing the regulatory pendulum in the opposite direction. The groups are drafting proposals to provide broad new protections to corporations and accounting firms from criminal cases brought by federal and state prosecutors as well as a stronger shield against civil lawsuits from investors.

Although the details are still being worked out, the groups’ proposals aim to limit the liability of accounting firms for the work they do on behalf of clients, to force prosecutors to target individual wrongdoers rather than entire companies, and to scale back shareholder lawsuits.

The groups hope to reduce what they see as some burdens imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, landmark post-Enron legislation adopted in 2002. The law, which placed significant new auditing and governance requirements on companies, gave broad discretion for interpretation to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The groups are also interested in rolling back rules and policies that have been on the books for decades.

To alleviate concerns that the new Congress may not adopt the proposals — regardless of which party holds power in the legislative branch next year — many are being tailored so that they could be adopted through rulemaking by the S.E.C. and enforcement policy changes at the Justice Department.

The proposals will begin to be laid out in public shortly after Election Day, members of the groups said in recent interviews. One of the committees was formed by the United States Chamber of Commerce and until recently was headed by Robert K. Steel.

..
Their critics, however, see the effort as part of a plan to cater to the most well-heeled constituents of the administration and insulate politically connected companies from prosecution at the expense of investors.

Let us all pray to the Noodly Appendages for a return of the Robber Baron era, right? Eliminate all rules and regulations which might impede corporations in their quest to suck up all the available capital, with any means necessary.

The proposed policies would emphasize the prosecution of culpable individuals rather than corporations and auditing firms. That shift could prove difficult for prosecutors because it is often harder to find sufficient evidence to show that specific people at a company were the ones who knowingly violated a law.

One proposal would recommend that the Justice Department sharply curtail its policy of forcing companies under investigation to withhold paying the legal fees of executives suspected of violating the law. Another one would require some investor lawsuits to be handled by arbitration panels, which are traditionally friendlier to defendants.

...“This is an escalation of the culture war against regulation,” said James D. Cox, a securities and corporate law professor at Duke Law School. He said many of the proposals, if adopted, “would be a dark day for investors.”

Professor Cox, who has studied 600 class action lawsuits over the last decade, said it was difficult to find “abusive or malicious” cases, particularly in light of new laws and court decisions that had made it more difficult to file such suits.

The number of securities class action lawsuits has dropped substantially in each of the last two years, he noted, arguing that the impact of the proposals from the business groups would be that “very few people would be prosecuted.”

People involved in the committees said that the timing of the proposals was being dictated by the political calendar: closely following Election Day and as far away as possible from the 2008 elections.

...But other securities law experts warned that such a move would extinguish a fundamental check on corporate malfeasance.

“It would be a shocking turning back to say only the commission can bring fraud cases,” said Harvey J. Goldschmid, a former S.E.C. commissioner and law professor at Columbia University. “Private enforcement is a necessary supplement to the work that the S.E.C. does. It is also a safety valve against the potential capture of the agency by industry.”

And following up on this point (and this):

But the politics of changing the rules do not break cleanly along party lines. While some prominent Democrats would surely attack the pro-business efforts, there are others who in the past have been sympathetic.

Tags: 2006_Election, /corruption, /ethics

I'd long suspected this to be the case, but apparently, not all product mentions are created equally. For the record, the only corporate 'donations' to this blog's proprietors are - a box of chocolate bars from Blommers, and a t-shirt from Fat Tire Ale.

Credibility is the main issue, of course.

Advertising Age - Want to Build Up Blog Buzz? Start Writing Checks for $8

Over the course of one month, Lynn Terry watched her PayPal account balloon to nearly $500 for simply blogging.

“It's the easiest money I've ever made,” Ms. Terry said. But to earn it, she couldn't just write about her life as a single mother of two living in Tennessee. She had to essentially shill for advertisers, from Epson inkjet printers to the software product Camtasia.

In that month, Ms. Terry took 55 “opps” (opportunities) for an average of $8 each via the website PayPerPost.com, defined by its 30-year-old founder and CEO Ted Murphy as the “consumer-generated advertising network.” By Ms. Terry's math, if she expanded to five active blogs and took the maximum three opps per day, her monthly take would jump to nearly $3,600, or $43,200 a year. “That's a full-time income,” she added enthusiastically.

...Mr. Murphy's outfit, based in Orlando, Fla., makes its money by paying an $5 fee per opp placed on the site, or a listing fee; the site makes 25% for every opp a blogger takes. Mr. Murphy declined to disclose revenues but said: “We are doing great,” before laughing heartily. The company has raised $3 million in venture-capital funds.

Certainly PayPerPost is paving new ground, but the question is whether it is distinctly different from P&G paying a novelist to include references to its Cover Girl products or Coca-Cola paying “American Idol” to get Paula Abdul to sip from a Coke-branded cup during a show. Of course, it's done by everyday people. And then there's the thorny issue of disclosure.

“This could undermine the entire social fabric of social networks,” said Patrick Rooney, president of Expand Communications, a word-of-mouth-marketing firm in Chicago, whose clients include Sony Ericsson and Sergeant's Pet Care Products. “While people are reading blogs, will they begin to question the truth about what is written?” Mr. Rooney plans to advise his clients against using PayPerPost. “Paying for reviews will certainly come back to bite you in the butt because it will get out that you did.”
...
“It's kind of a funny issue,” Ms. Terry said, before admitting she does not disclose every post and often will cloak her affiliate links. “You get a higher conversion rate,” she said. “It just confuses people who are not familiar with it.” (Some PayPerPost bloggers are using the abbreviation PPP to tip off readers.)

“We are betting on the ethics and morals of the bloggers themselves,” Mr. Murphy said. “If someone really hates a product, to make $5, will they say something positive? It really comes down to the blogger being honest with its audience.”

Sensitive to the criticism on disclosure, though, he's developed DisclosurePolicy.org to give bloggers an easy tool to integrate a disclosure policy into their blogs. A blue graphic or “badge” with a check box and the words “I disclose” can be downloaded that links to a disclosure policy generated easily on the site, such as: “This blog is a sponsored blog created or supported by a company, organization or group of organizations.”

Ironically, to get the 6,000 bloggers on PayPerPost to use it, Mr. Murphy plans on paying $10 to each to adopt it.

If you knew certain sites were just poorly disguised advertising blurbs, why would you visit? Unless the topics were things that already interested you, I suppose, but even then, I'd be a little skeptical as to the long term success of such a venture.

Tags: Advertising, /blogosphere, /Business

Good for a laugh.

U.S. Investigates Voting Machines’ Venezuela Ties - New York Times The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.

The inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said.

The inquiry on the eve of the midterm elections is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, the same panel of 12 government agencies that reviewed the abortive attempt by a company in Dubai to take over operations at six American ports earlier this year.

The committee’s formal inquiry into Smartmatic and its subsidiary, Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., was first reported Saturday in The Miami Herald.

Nobody in Washington seemed to care when well known Republicans owned the voting machine companies, but now, they've apparently got their knickers in a twist over the possibility that Socialists might be the ones installing voting fraud programs.

But the role of the young Venezuelan engineers who founded Smartmatic has become less visible in public documents as the company has been restructured into an elaborate web of offshore companies and foreign trusts.

“The government should know who owns our voting machines; that is a national security concern,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, who asked the Bush administration in May to review the Sequoia takeover.

“There seems to have been an obvious effort to obscure the ownership of the company,” Ms. Maloney said of Smartmatic in a telephone interview yesterday. “The Cfius process, if it is moving forward, can determine that.”

The concern over Smartmatic’s purchase of Sequoia comes amid rising unease about the security of touch-screen voting machines and other electronic elections systems.

Tags: Diebold, /fraud, /Venezuela

Bush is really, really doing his best to turn the US into a third world country. Destroying the Constitution, bankrupting the Treasury, encouraging crony capitalism at its most base urges, and other evil acts. 2008 cannot come soon enough.

Editorial: Future Tax Shock The president and his supporters have laid the groundwork for higher taxes and hamstrung government, no matter who is in office in the months and years to come.

One of President Bush’s be-very-afraid lines this campaign season is that Democrats, if elected, will raise taxes. What he doesn’t say is that if you are one of tens of millions of Americans who make between $75,000 and $500,000 a year, your taxes are already scheduled to rise starting next year — because of laws that Mr. Bush championed and other actions he failed to take.

The higher taxes stem from the alternative minimum tax, a levy that is supposed to snare multimillionaires who would otherwise get away with using excessive tax shelters to wipe out their tax bills. But these days, the alternative tax is snaring many upper-middle-income filers.

Mr. Bush set the trap in 2001 — and in 2003, 2004 and 2006. In each of those years, he flogged for new tax cuts without requiring corresponding long-term changes in the existing rules for the alternative tax. It was well known that failure to update the alternative tax would create perverse interactions with the new tax cuts, causing filers’ tax bills to drop because of the cuts, only to shoot back up again from the alternative levy.

Mr. Bush said he would vanquish the problem through tax reform. Didn’t happen... The truth is, the president and lawmakers are paralyzed. To fix the alternative tax while keeping the Bush tax cuts on the books would result in the loss of some $800 billion in revenue over 10 years, blowing a hole in the federal budget and exposing how utterly unaffordable the tax cuts of the last five years really are.
...
But stopgaps do little to protect the families already being unfairly clobbered by the alternative tax. And they make the nation’s underlying budget problems worse. Like the Bush tax cuts themselves, they result in less tax revenue than is needed, requiring the government to borrow heavily. The mounting debt of the Bush years — all of which must be paid back with interest — makes tax increases or budget cuts, or both, inevitable.

The president wants to push off the day of reckoning until he leaves the White House, while whipping up voter fear of future tax increases. But the reality is that he and his supporters have laid the groundwork for higher taxes and hamstrung government, no matter who is in office in the months and years to come.

Tags: 2008_election, /tax

• Chicagoist: Natarus Says: No More Fun
  ummm, yes, my photo/scan, used without credit
  (tags: Chicago republished)
• Don't Get Up Until You're Numb
  I've never done it Marriage is an important part of getting ahead. It lets people know you're not a homo. A married guy seems more stable. People see the ring, they think, "at least somebody can stand the son of a bitch." Ladies see the ring, they know
  (tags: marriage humor)

We thought this would happen, even if the WSJ didn't.

Democrats Get Late Donations From Business Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democrats.

Lobbyists, some of whom had fallen out of the habit of attending Democratic events, are even talking about making their way to the Sonnenalp Resort in Vail, Colo., where Representative Nancy Pelosi of California is holding a Speaker’s Club ski getaway on Jan. 3. It is an annual affair, but the gathering’s title could be especially apt for Ms. Pelosi, the House minority leader, who will be on hand to accept $15,000 checks, and could, if everything breaks her way, become the first woman to be House speaker.

“Attendance will be high,” said Steve Elmendorf, a former Democratic Congressional aide who has a long list of business lobbying clients. “All Democratic events will see a big increase next year, no question.”

There are certainly a few distinct differences between Dems and Rethuglicans, but doing the bidding of corporate masters is not one of these differences.

...Even before the election, many new contributions were funneled toward open races, like the Eighth Congressional District in Arizona. The Democratic candidate, Gabrielle Giffords, received checks of $5,000 each from the political action committees of United Parcel Service and Union Pacific. Lockheed Martin split the difference, donating $3,000 to Ms. Giffords and sending the same amount to her Republican rival, Randall Graf.

Until October, Lockheed Martin, the giant military contractor, had been following its pattern from recent elections of giving about 70 percent of contributions from its political action committee to Republicans. But Lockheed Martin’s generosity shifted in the first half of October, with Democrats receiving 60 percent of donations, or $127,000.

While Republicans and Democrats are feverishly soliciting contributions until Election Day, campaign finance reports filed this week provide a window into the final days of a raucous midterm election campaign. The analysis of 288 corporate political action committees, which have contributed more than $100,000 this election cycle, found that at least 65 committees had increased their ratio of contributions to Democrats by at least 15 percentage points, including Sprint, United Parcel Service and Hewlett-Packard.

A notable exception to the flurry of last-minute giving is Wal-Mart.

“We had a two-year strategy to build up relationships with Democrats,” said Lee Culpepper, the vice president for federal government relations at Wal-Mart. “This wasn’t something that we decided in August that we needed to do and we ran out helter-skelter to try to do it.”

Democrats who are not in tight races — or even standing for re-election in some cases — have seen their contributions increase more than some of those facing the most competitive contests. That is an easy way, lobbyists say, for political action committees to increase the share of their Democratic contributions, a percentage that is carefully tracked by party leaders when they reach the majority.

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, who leads a coalition of centrist Democrats, said he has detected a friendlier relationship with the business community in recent months, a welcome change from years of Republican rule when “Democrats were basically frozen out in every way.”

“I hope that the new Democratic majority will take a more open and cooperative approach,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “I hope there won’t be a sense of, ‘Oh, you gave too much money to Republicans, so we’re not going to talk to you.’

Public financing for elections, anyone?

Tags: 2006_Election, /Business, /election

Three favorites of the GOP. MoDo continues:

Maureen Dowd: ‘Brothels, Sex Kittens, Pedophilia?’ :
Republicans panicking is not a pretty sight.

Candidates around the country have been race-baiting, gay-baiting, Michael J. Fox-baiting and Hispanic-baiting. But now it has come to this: Republicans are novel-baiting.

Still trying to recover his balance, after slipping on a macaca and admitting he was a Jewish bubba, one criticized for using racist language, displaying a Confederate flag at home and keeping a hangman’s noose at his old law office, Senator George Allen of Virginia unleashed a vicious attack on Jim Webb Thursday night. He called him a fiction writer.

Technorati Tags: Dowd

Wouldn't it be fun if Harry Waxman was allowed to hold war profiteering hearings in Congress?

Report Says Iraq Contractor Is Hiding Data From U.S. A Halliburton subsidiary that has been subjected to numerous investigations for billions of dollars in contracts it received for work in Iraq has systematically misused federal rules to withhold basic information on its practices from American officials, a federal oversight agency said yesterday. The contracts awarded to the company, KBR, formerly named Kellogg Brown & Root, are for housing, food, fuel and other necessities for American troops and government officials in Iraq, and for restoring that country’s crucial oil infrastructure. The contracts total about $20 billion.

Proprietary information is protected by the so-called federal acquisition regulations, known as FAR. But the agency said KBR routinely stamped nearly all of the data it collects on its work as proprietary, impeding not only the investigations into the company’s activities but also things as simple as managerial oversight of the work.

“The use of proprietary data markings on reports and information submitted by KBR to the government is an abuse of the FAR and the procurement system,” says a memo released yesterday by the special inspector general.

As a result, the memo said, “KBR is not protecting its own data, but is in many instances inappropriately restricting the government’s use of information that KBR is required to gather for the government.”

The specific examples cited by the inspector general are taken from an $18 billion contract called the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, informally known as Logcap, under which KBR provides food, fuel, housing, recreational facilities and laundry and other services to American troops, government officials and other contractors in Iraq.

and Diamond Dick Cheney seems to have boosted his old company's bottom line pretty well:

Halliburton stock was weak early ... in 2001. The stock bottomed out at $4.30 in early 2002 and rose sharply thereafter, eventually peaking at $41.98 this April as the oil services industry benefited from increased oil exploration and as the Iraq war continued [stay the course\.

It dropped as low as $26.33 earlier this month, as oil prices fell. It closed yesterday at $32.15.

Tags: Cheney, /corruption

Sheryl Gay Stolberg notes:

G.O.P. Moves Fast to Reignite Issue of Gay Marriage

President Bush and Republicans across the country tried to use a court ruling in New Jersey to rally dispirited conservatives to the polls.

Are the evangelicals sheep? Err, don't answer.

I guess this is Karl Rove's October surprise, surprise surprise. I'm not surprised, btw. What would be surprising is if the Taliban-vangelicals fall for the same old song and dance again.

For conservatives, the debate brings back memories of 2004, when they rallied in opposition to a Massachusetts court ruling that same sex couples had a right to marry. The issue proved central in places like South Dakota, where Senator John Thune, a Republican, railed against activist judges in his successful campaign to oust Tom Daschle, then the Senate Democratic leader.

This year, by contrast, conservatives have felt frustrated that the debate over gay marriage and the judiciary is no longer front and center.

“I think they’ve been a little sedate,” Mr. Cella said. But in the wake of the New Jersey ruling, he said, conservatives “are really getting motivated, and this is a shot in the arm to propel that.”

Bleh.

Tags: repression, /Republicans

• The Corpus Callosum - Hummus
  I'm going to try this. Love hummus, it doesn't love me. The crushed ice keeps the mixture cool while processing and allows less oil to be used.
  (tags: food recipe)
• Freedom From Religion Foundation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  I'm joining. "Freedom From Religion Foundation is an American Freethought organization based in Madison, Wisconsin. Its purposes, as stated in its bylaws, are to promote the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, and to educate the pu
  (tags: Religion civil_liberties)
• HDR Tutorial: How to create ‘High Dynamic Range’ images using Photomatix
  HDR is sort of fun. I tend to make more MDR (Medium Dynamic Range) photos though because I don't carry a tripod.
  (tags: photography Photoshop tutorial)
• Bush: Stay the Course in Colombia | Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)
  Stay the course, into the ditch President Bush never tires of spending our tax dollars losing not winning various wars. Now he wants to give Colombia another $600 million
  (tags: drugs War DEA)
• CocktailDB: The Internet Cocktail Database | Rory O'more
  Mmmm, drinking one now. Stir in mixing glass with ice & strain: 1 3/4 oz Irish whiskey and 3/4 oz sweet vermouth (2 cl, 3/16 gills)
  (tags: drink recipe cocktails)
• Colorado Yurt Company - Yurts for Sale
  ragnaranch property seems like a good candidate for a yurt. The lots are 75x155 feet.
  (tags: Green Austin architecture)
• Netflix Prize: Forum / Miss Congeniality
  I love statistics
  (tags: DVD netflix statistics)

No duh.

The Minimalist: The Well-Dressed Salad Wears Only Homemade

But taking two minutes to combine extra virgin olive oil, vinegar and a couple of real seasonings is an enlightening experience, one that can make you vow to leave the mass-produced concoctions of cheap oil, water (more water than oil, if it’s low-fat), dried spices and hideously unnatural chemicals on the supermarket shelf.

Amazing to me - many otherwise gourmet eaters don't take the time to whip up their own dressings. Such a simple, yet satisfying addition to a meal. Buy or save a bottle, mix up a big batch, and keep it in the refrigerator: replenishing as needed.

The simplest dressing, vinaigrette, is this: around three parts oil to one part vinegar or lemon juice, salt and pepper, and maybe some added flavor. This may be an herb (a pinch of dried tarragon is good, fresh chives better) or a condiment (Dijon mustard is classic, and a splash of soy sauce is amazing). There might be a bit of onion, garlic (easy on this), scallion or shallot. Combine them with a fork for a “broken” dressing, or with a whisk or a blender for a lovely, creamy emulsion. Presto.

I tend to make my dressing with:
fresh tarragon, fresh oregano, a clove of garlic, Braggs or soy sauce, flax oil, sesame oil, olive oil, rice wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, and water (reverse osmosis, but that's just us). Fresh ginger if I have it. Oh, and fresh squeezed lemon juice. Other herbs sometimes: especially better if the concoction sits in the refrigerator shelf for a few hours: essential oils get extracted.

Will have to try the mysterious Japanese carrot miso dressing - I have a food processor somewhere, and all the ingredients already.

Tags: Food, /recipe

The $2,000,000,000 700 mile fence is more of a political prop than it is anything useful and/or practical. Experts agree!

Experts see U.S. border fence plan as impractical | US News | Reuters.com Building a fence to try to secure the U.S. border with Mexico is impractical and would simply lead illegal immigrants to cross elsewhere, according to former Customs and Border Protection agents and other experts.

Another former U.S. Customs special agent, who declined to be named, said the fencing would also struggle to bridge hundreds of creek beds spanning the Arizona-Sonora border, which are prone to flash floods from May through October.

“You are going to have to build hundreds of culverts big enough for debris the size of brush and small trees to float through the length of the border,” said the former agent.

“If it is wide enough for bushes to get through, then people can get through.”
...
But analysts warned it would have a limited impact on security.

“It may work to curtail crossings in the immediate area it has been built, but it won't stop illegal immigration,” said Doris Meissner, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

“Experience has shown that traffic will shift to other parts of the border” where there is less vigilance, added Meissner, a former commissioner at the now defunct U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

She cited previous policing operations in the 1990s which secured heavily crossed urban stretches of the border in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California, but drove determined migrants out into remote desert areas to cross.

“The draw for illegal immigrants is the availability of employment in the United States, and that is not being addressed by this fence,” she said.

No, simply a foam boulder prop to be used in political television commericals. Can we have a serious political party running the country yet?

(link via TalkLeft)

oh, and by the time every governmental contractor and crony gets a taste the $1,2000,000,000 Star Trek rock will become $2,000,000,000,000 of spending, mark my words.

Tags: immigration

While looking for a name for the cocktail I've been drinking this week and this evening, (apparently called Rory O'More, but without bitters because I don't have any), I discovered the Cocktail database, a sure-to-be-useful reference tool, and this lovely essay, on a subject near and dear to my heart - randomness. I've written at length on the subject of random and pseudo-random events, but am currently too snockered to find my previously blathering, so instead, read the following eloquent essay, which begins...

Mixilator Advanced Notes : People spend their lives obsessed with probabilities. Why shouldn’t they? To conquer probability by finding a way to predict it is a window into the future. Perhaps that’s why the idea of randomness has always been so fascinating. That which is random cannot be predicted. It is ultimately elusive and it is human nature to want, or be smitten with, that which cannot be grasped; that which cannot be held. We constantly try and find ways to beat it.

Digging into a hat full of paper scraps is our cultural vision of randomness… that, and lightning. The latter is naturally random, the former applied randomness. We excel at channeling the inscrutable nature of the random act into an energy we can harness. We make games from it. We invent dice and roll them. We invent cards and shuffle them. We draw tiny scraps of paper from the soft felt depths of a hat.

Random generations –strings of things put together without thought or weight- are another sort of game. The old game of Mad Libs installs a random word –corresponding to a part of speech- into a prewritten narrative to humorous effect. The word is random because the person generating the word does not know the context of the narrative into which it will be installed. Most random generators on the Web (and there are many) have a basis not unlike Mad Libs, which are now themselves on the Internet. It all feeds our fascination with the serendipity of randomness that suddenly, inexplicably, makes sense. The theoretical chestnut that monkeys typing randomly on typewriters – if given enough time, would reproduce the works of William Shakespeare is fulfilled. In point of fact, there is a website with a virtual contest derived from that theory, complete with virtual monkeys.

Actually, because of how they operate, computers have a tough time being random. A specific instruction fetches a specific response every time. If not, it's considered an error. All random generators on computers –and therefore on the internet- have at their base a random number generator. Insofar as the core language of all computers is binary (ones and zeros) it is evident numbers would be the building blocks not only of predictable results, but of entertaining random processes as well. A random number ends up equaling a random ingredient in a random generation.

Ted Haigh continues on, but then veers into David Embury and theories about proper mixology leading to creation of the 'perfect drink randomizer', aka the Mixilator. Unfortunately, the first several 'random' drinks I mixed up all include ingredients I don't have, and most included ingredients I've never even heard of.

Oh well. Pour me another Rory O'More, will ya? I'm headed out the door in 30 minutes, and I can still see the seams in my shirt.

Technorati Tags: drinking, recipe

update:
photos here

RagnaRanch aka Frostpocket Redux aka South Pocket Ranch is closer to reality.

Location. 17899 Westlake Dr, Dripping Springs, TX 78620 - Google Maps :

New family-related development is developing. 8 plots have already been taken, and my parents and myself to purchase another 4, if our offer is accepted. A while ago, was owned by some California survivalists who now are selling it. My aunt Honoria has a few details on her blog, and also here (and elsewhere)

I'm guessing my share to be about 1.5 acres - going to plop a yurt on the spot, and spark up the campfire. I do miss living near my family clan, owning a piece of property would certainly encourage visits, especially in fall and spring.

Here are some photos a different aunt took a few months ago

Tags: Austin

Froomkin shakes his head at the Imbecile-in-Chief.

Dan Froomkin: Most Ridiculous Moment? - washingtonpost.com It may go down as one of the most ridiculous -- and ridiculed -- utterances of the Bush presidency

In an interview with ABC News broadcast on Sunday, President Bush gamely suggested that “we've never been 'stay the course'” when it comes to Iraq.

With mid-term elections just around the bend -- and with public opinion starkly and unhappily focused on Iraq -- it's understandable that Bush might want to rewrite history. But his attempt failed miserably.

Less than a week later, there are 96 and counting entries on YouTube making a lie of his assertion, trumpeting videotaped examples of Bush using that particular phrase to describe his Iraq strategy -- over and over again.

Bush is so used to making unquestioned proclamations, he thought nobody would notice this one.

Read more here

Tags: Worst_President, /YouTube

I'm looking forward to reading (parts) of this transcript too. I'd like to shake Patrick Fitzgerald's hand, just for doing his job in a competent manner.

Memories Turns out that there was a hearing on potential expert witness testimony in the Libby trial yesterday — and word is that Patrick Fitzgerald took the witness apart with her own research, footnote by footnote, assumption by assumption.  So much so that, at times, members of the audience were shaking their heads…for nearly three hours of cross-examination.

Tags: Frog March, /liars, /Libby

• On the alert for bloggers
  Apparently google news now scours blogs too. Cool. "If you're anything like me, you like to pick and choose what posts you read on any given blog. You may only want to read a post about a topic of your interest, or perhaps you only want to read blog posts
  (tags: Google Technology blogs)
• Photography and Exercise - a year later
  "decided to begin walking for exercise during my lunch hour. It wasn’t until recently that I abandoned the idea of limiting myself to only 24 photos per walk and started taking the Canon A80."
  (tags: photography Chicago)
• allmusic ((( Jens Lekman > Overview )))
  Like what I've heard "Sweden's Jens Lekman emerged from relative obscurity to quickly establish himself as the darling of the global indie pop set, winning widespread acclaim from fans and critics for his uncommonly witty and well-crafted pop songs. "
  (tags: music)
• White Bread, Cinammon Toast
  "All Republican political figures are gay, especially the men. When President Bush insists on kissing one bald head after another, the psychosexual symbolism speaks for itself. He's planting his lips on big uncircumcised Kojak peckers."
  (tags: sexuality Republicans repression)
• Bush defines marriage as man and woman - Boston.com
  What a maroon. "President Bush said the "sacred institution" of marriage between a man and a woman must be defended against what he called activist court rulings."
  (tags: Republican repression sexuality)
• Line Rider - beta by *fsk on deviantART
  "Its not a game, its a toy. What i mean is there are no goals to archive and there is no score."
  (tags: time_waster flash application cartoon humor)
• Battlestar Galactica Moving To NBC - iTunes Confirms The Move?
  "got an email from Apple's iTunes support about my season pass to Battlestar Galactica was being trimmed by 5 episodes due to a change in the number of episodes the network (SciFi) was planning to air. Besides the latest insider rumors, this is the most s
  (tags: iTunes sciFi television)

This is a short animated introduction to Nevada's Question 7, an initiative on the November 2006 ballot that would tax and regulate marijuana, removing penalties for adults 21 and over to possess marijuana. Check out the full website at: http://www.regulatemarijuana.org/

(direct link here)

States Rights? What are those?

Tags: drugs, /marijuana, /YouTube

No comment.

Exxon's Profit Tops $10 Billion

Exxon Mobil reported earnings of $10.49 billion, up 5.7% from a year earlier and its second largest profit ever, though revenue slipped back under $100 billion.

• Lin Wang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Don't remember why, if you're asking. "Lin Wang (Chinese: 林旺 pinyin: Lín Wàng) (1917 – February 26, 2003) was a famous Asian elephant that served with the Chinese Expeditionary Force during the second Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and later
  (tags: animal elephant Chinese)
• List of Homer Simpson's jobs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  long list
  (tags: Simpson's television humor)

The Republican revolution seems to have won the hearts and minds of the most important demographic of all: corporate boardrooms. Are Democrats really going to suddenly transform into socialists, or worse, Greens? No, I doubt it. The Democrats are quite willing participants in American corporate/crony capitalism as well - does anyone remember the Go-go 90s? The 1996 Telecommunication Deregulation Act? Yet apparently, the corporate world, especially pharmaceutical and energy companies, fear the Democrats. How many Senators (R and D) are millionaires? All of them, right?

Fearing a Democratic Victory, Drug Makers Fund Key Races - WSJ.com Few businesses have more at stake in next month's congressional elections than pharmaceutical makers. Assailed by Democrats, drug companies are pouring millions of dollars into close races, giving some Republicans a financial edge. In the process, the industry is becoming not just a campaign backer, but also a campaign issue.

Here's some insight into how Congress works: corporate donors get priority over all else. The Public Good is simply a marketing term, trotted out during election time. The reality is much sleazier.

Companies and business groups have long thrown money at candidates to further their interests. But with a Democratic victory increasingly likely, few recent elections have been so critical, particularly for the drug industry. On the campaign trail, Democrats frequently lump “Big Pharma” with “Big Oil” in attacking Republican ties to industry. Within the first 100 hours of taking over the House, promises House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democrats will rewrite the prescription-drug benefit to take away most of the advantages it handed to pharmaceutical companies.

“It'll take five minutes” to make the biggest change of all -- the proposal to let the government negotiate prices, Ms. Pelosi told a group of about 100 retirees in Sunrise, Fla., earlier this month. She said the benefit was a product of “corruption, putting pharmaceutical companies and HMOs first at the expense of America's seniors.”

Congressional Democrats propose lifting a ban on the broad-scale reimporting of inexpensive drugs and could toughen the drug-approval process. They've talked, too, of holding hearings into conflicts of interest among Republicans now working for the industry.

Through early September, drug-company political action committees had given about $8.7 million to campaigns, compared with $7 million for all of 2002, the last midterm election, according to CRP. Employee contributions are up, too, rising to about $5 million from $3.3 million four years ago. About 69% of the industry's campaign contributions are going to Republicans.

...Congressional Republican leaders prevented Medicare from negotiating prices with the industry. They also killed a proposal that would have allowed the government to offer its own coverage in competition with those sold by private companies. The industry successfully argued that the government's clout would mess up prices and stifle innovation.

Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri benefited from $900,000 in ads this year touting his role in the prescription-drug benefit, according to a tally by Americans United for Change, a liberal advocacy group with close ties to congressional Democrats. Mr. Talent made a similar pitch in two TV ads as well as in a recent debate with his Democratic challenger, Claire McCaskill.

Ms. McCaskill attacked the drug companies -- and by extension Mr. Talent -- in a recent ad, saying, “it's a senator's job to always put our seniors before big drug companies and Washington special interests.”

and not just Big Pharma either:

Other industries are also pouring money into races in the hopes of protecting their favored candidates. Oil and gas interests worry about a Democratic Congress axing subsidies and have spent $13.6 million on the campaign so far, of which 83% has gone to Republicans. For all of 2002, they and their employees contributed $14.8 million in hard-money donations. Montana's troubled Republican Sen. Conrad Burns is the second-biggest recipient of oil money, according to CRP. He supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and sits on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Electric utilities, fearing tougher environmental rules, have contributed $11.9 million, with 66% going to Republicans, compared with $12.8 million in 2002. Commercial banks, bracing for tighter lending standards, account for $19.2 million, 63% of which is going to Republicans. That's already more than 2002's $16.5 million.

Despite campaign-finance laws designed to limit the influence of big business and unions, the 2006 midterm elections are on track to be the most expensive ever, costing about $2.6 billion, according to a new study by CRP. That compares with about $2.2 billion in 2002. Business interests account for about three-quarters of this year's contributions.

The Republican-controlled Congress has been kind to drug makers. As the prescription-drugs benefit was crafted, Republicans battled not just Democratic critics but also fiscal conservatives in their own party who opposed creating the expensive government program.

Tags: 2006_Election, /Business, /Oil, /Pharmaceuticals, /regulation

• Essential Jonathan
  "Rosenbaum has long been a tireless champion of world cinema and has undoubtedly wielded a lot of influence in the Chicago film world"
  (tags: film_snob film film_history netflix)
• Obama: Of Parties, Branding and Rock Stars
  "bama does not persuade on the few things he has taken stands on. For example, when talking about religion and the Democratic Party, not only did Obama place Democrats in a false light, calling them, in essence anti-religion, he merely lectured Dems,
  (tags: Obama Democrats 2008 Religion)
• Caprica: A TV series prequel to Battlestar Galactica
  had heard of this previously, but here's more details
  (tags: television sciFi)
• Brother of N.F.L. Star Posts Antiwar Essay
  "Kevin Tillman, who was in the same Army Ranger unit as his brother, Pat Tillman, when he was killed in Afghanistan, called the war in Iraq “an illegal invasion.”"
  (tags: Iraq War)
• moleskinerie: U.S. and Canada CITY NOTEBOOKS Intro Stores
  "Here's a list of participating stores in the introduction of the Moleskine City Notebooks to the U.S. and Canada. The books will be shipped by the end of October and will probably be available in stores November 1st"
  (tags: Kottke GTD moleskin)
• Idling Your Car
  turn your damn car/truck off!! "If you are going to be parked for more than 30 seconds, turn off the engine. Ten seconds of idling can use more fuel than turning off the engine and restarting it. And when you start your engine, don't step down on the acce
  (tags: automotive environment Global_Warming)
• Chef Is Not Allowed To Read This Post at Faux Real Tho!
  I said One Meat Ball. "If one were to torture you in your workplace with 80 minutes of aural hell, what would that mix include?"
  (tags: music rock_snob)
• D'y'ever Hear the C.O.W. Joke?
  "They created this carry-around piece of "See me, feel me, Touch me, Pay for Me" piece of throwaway box for the inexpensive price of US $3,800.00 a unit."
  (tags: humor Bush)
• 35,000 in Bush's secret prisons -- 5% may be related to terrorism
  Deja Vu! chicago dyke is busting out all over!!
  (tags: terrorism Boing_Boing republished)

The New York Times catches up on a story we noted several weeks ago. We would never suspect any governmental agency to use political motivation as a reason to confiscate a traveler's laptop, like say the carry-on bag of an ACLU member, or an anti-war activist, or an atheist. Never, never, in a thousand milliseconds.

On the Road: At U.S. Borders, Laptops Have No Right to Privacy

Employers have a new worry — that business travelers’ laptops will be seized at United States customs and immigration checkpoints.

Although much of the evidence for the confiscations remains anecdotal, it’s a hot topic this week among more than 1,000 corporate travel managers and travel industry officials meeting in Barcelona at a conference of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.

Last week, an informal survey by the association, which has about 2,500 members worldwide, indicated that almost 90 percent of its members were not aware that customs officials have the authority to scrutinize the contents of travelers’ laptops and even confiscate laptops for a period of time, without giving a reason.

“One member who responded to our survey said she has been waiting for a year to get her laptop and its contents back,” said Susan Gurley, the group’s executive director. “She said it was randomly seized. And since she hasn’t been arrested, I assume she was just a regular business traveler, not a criminal.”

“We need to be able to better inform our business travelers what the processes are if their laptops and data are seized — what happens to it, how do you get it back,” Ms. Gurley said.
...
She added: “The issue is what happens to the proprietary business information that might be on a laptop. Is information copied? Is it returned? We understand that the U.S. government needs to protect its borders. But we want to have transparent information so business travelers know what to do. Should they leave business proprietary information at home?”

Besides the possibility for misuse of proprietary information, travel executives are also concerned that a seized computer, and the information it holds, is unavailable to its owner for a time. One remedy some companies are considering is telling travelers coming back into the country with sensitive information to encrypt it and e-mail it to themselves, which at least protects access to the data, if not its privacy.

Like our blog-buddy chicago dyke said: have two machines, with one very, very empty. Alternatively, have two hard disks, and switch em out before crossing the border. Sort of a pain, but better than losing your laptop for a year. And don't put your Swiss bank account numbers on your laptop at all.

Tags: civil_liberties, /corporate_privacy

A large portion of my photographs have as a subject an exploration of light. Here are three more.

Nothing Shakin but the Leaves well, and maybe the photographer's hand. Still, such a celebration of yellowness...

(title stolen from Eddie Fontaine)

Since 1938... an eternity in America.

1408 W. Madison, but I didn't get to eat there (D, my walking partner, nixed the idea).

Sunshine Can Get You Down Elmhurst, before the “incident”.

(click to embiggen photos)

Tags: light, /West_Loop

• Dean W. Armstrong: What they did to Jose Padilla
  Just wrong "..., an American, while being incarcerated without any ability to talk to his lawyer, to challenge his detention, to access any of his God-given rights at all"
  (tags: civil_liberties Republicans terrorism)
• Wouldn't it be funny if those who DIDN'T smoke marijuana had the memory loss?
  "most outrageous aspects of the federal government's war on medical marijuana -- their refusal to fund or allow research while claiming that there isn't enough research to support marijuana's medical claims."
  (tags: DEA drugs marijuana Science)
• 35,000 in Secret Prisons!!!
  Shite! "Wilkerson, Powell’s old chief of staff, believes that the correct number of victims in secret Bush prisons is 35,000, only %5 of which “may” have to do with terrorism. "
  (tags: terrorism nascent_fascists Republicans)
• YouTube gave user data to Paramount lawyers
  More copywrongs "YouTube promptly handed over the data to Paramount, which on June 16 sued the creator of the 12-minute clip, New York City-based filmmaker Chris Moukarbel, for copyright infringement, in federal court in Washington."
  (tags: Youtube DMCA fair_use)
• Shameless
  "embryonic stem cell research is a big issue in the McCaskill-Talent senatorial campaign in Missouri. The Democrat, McCaskill, is fer it, and the Republican, Talent, is agin’ it."
  (tags: Science)

Tobacco illegal, hemp subsidized; this would be my vote.

Statewide smoking ban debated

As more than 30 Illinois municipalities have adopted their own smoking bans, state legislators are considering a statewide smoking ban to replace the existing patchwork.

On Monday, the Senate Executive Committee heard testimony from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health advocates, smokers rights groups and businesses on the pros and cons of a statewide ban on smoking in restaurants, bars and workplaces.

A bill has been introduced that mirrors Chicago's smoking ban, but sponsor Sen. Terry Link (D-Vernon Hills) said that bill was intended to jump-start discussions on which direction the state should go. Although Link said he supports a comprehensive smoking ban, he said no decisions have been made on possible exemptions, and changes likely would be made to the current proposal.

Seventeen states already have strong statewide bans on smoking, according to Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights.

In Illinois, 34 communities have passed bans of some sort—some with phased-in exemptions for bars, some with no exemptions. But the approach is creating problems as some businesses complain that competitors in towns without smoking bans are profiting at their expense.

Or alternatively, allow smoking of any substance legally, only in private. I have nothing really against tobacco, the plant, I'll smoke an unfiltered cigarette now and again when I am 'in my cups', but cannot say I like the stale smell of tobacco on my clothes after a night out, whether or not I smoke myself.

Tags: regulation

Am guessing this building has some relation to Oprah Winfrey, as it is a couple blocks from her Harpo Studio location.

Obviously tone mapped and manipulated in Photoshop.

82,000+ sq feet on 1201 W. Washington for sale. On my holiday wish list....over 82,000 square feet of loft space, ready for my music studio, my painting studio, my dark room, my horticulture, yadda yadda. Can somebody buy it for me?

Tags: West_Loop

Netflix seems to be doing well

Netflix's Net Surges on New Customers Netflix's profit nearly doubled as the company said the number of subscribers to its online DVD rental service rose 58% to 5.7 million.

Netflix added 493,000 net new customers in the quarter, ending September with about 5.7 million. The company expects it will end the year with at least 6.3 million subscribers.

The company said the cost of acquiring a subscriber, a closely-watched metric, rose 35% to $45.32 from $36.33 a year earlier. About 4.2% of Netflix's customers canceled the service during the second quarter, down slightly from 4.3% during the year-ago quarter.

Strange how the performances of companies such as Netflix becomes almost personal. We own no stock, don't count Netflix as a client (though we've tried a couple times), really have no connection except as (mostly satisfied) customers, but still register an uptick of positive emotion when the company does well. Same with Apple Computer, Nikon, Fender, yadda yadda. Don't want the company to fold, I suppose. There are plenty of companies whose products are in our house/office who I could care less about, HP, Panasonic, 3M, etc. Brand loyalty is a name for it, but one that doesn't quite capture the emotional aspect.

Perhaps I should lay off the opium for the night....

Tags: Netflix

“What It Is! Funky Soul And Rare Grooves (1967-1977)” (Various Artists)

Various Artists: What It Is!: Pitchfork Record Review It's rather nice to have one, well-documented place to go for such a huge range of funk and soul tracks, and Rhino has taken advantage of it, consolidating things even further to compile what amounts to, as Oliver Wang says in his lead-in essay, a “shadow history of funk.” These aren't the songs that blew up the charts, though you may have heard a few of them-- Curtis Mayfield's “(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below We're All Gonna Go” or Wilson Pickett's “Engine Number 9”, for instance. ... There are names that pop up throughout the generous track notes, and two of the most common are the twin giants of New Orleans r&b: Allen Toussaint and the Meters, who often worked as Toussaint's house band. Both are represented with their own tracks, but Toussaint penned a further seven, and at least a couple of Meters turn up on six tracks credited to other artist. The best of these is a full-on Meters romp, Cyrille Neville's 1970 killer “Gossip”, The song opens with a towering “coral sitar” guitar riff from Leo Nocentelli that injects a heavy does of psychedelia to accent the rock-hard beat.

A few tracks later, you get a real sitar, courtesy of Ananda Shankar's cover of “Jumpin' Jack Flash”. Shankar was nephew to Ravi, and sold a truckload of LPs grafting virtuoso sitar playing onto psychedelic pop; “Metamorphosis” is the funkiest track from his self-titled LP, but “Jumpin' Jack Flash” is more immediate. On the less frivolous end of things is “Headless Heroes” by Eugene McDaniels, from his political funk opus Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse, a record Spiro Agnew personally requested be withdrawn in spite of the fact that almost nobody heard it. When McDaniels refers to us all as “racial pawns in the master game” and asserts that “the player who controls the board sees them all as the same/ Basically cannon fodder,” you know he means it.

Paranoia rears its head on the dark funk of Baby Huey & the Babysitters' “Hard Times”, an icy ghetto soul track with a chilling, guitar-soaked intro and lyrics about being held up by someone you thought you trusted. Baby Huey is one of many artists here worth investigating further-- including the Meters, Curtis Mayfield, Wilson Pickett, Harlem River Drive, Mongo Santamaria, Fred Wesley, King Curtis, and Bobby Byrd. There are, however, a number of artists for whom further investigation is damn near impossible. More than a quarter of the bands included here never released a full-length album, so the Houseguests' “What So Never the Dance” is pretty much it. This is where the value of a set like this really comes into sharp relief-- Tony Alvon & the Belairs' groover “Sexy Coffee Pot” has never been easier to come by than it is with this on the shelves.

and from the Amazon listing:

Too many reissue compilations are content to merely slice 'n' dice familiar catalog choices in not particularly original ways. But this four-disc, 91-track trove of obscure '70s R&B and funk from Warner-distributed labels great and small argues there's still treasure to be gleaned from studio vaults--a five-hour groove-fest that's as interested in shaking booty as in opening ears. Even the genre's groundbreaking usual suspects (Wilson Pickett, the Bar-Kays, Curtis Mayfield, Earth, Wind & Fire, et al) are represented by selections that aren't immediately familiar, while Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin serves up a radically different, previously unreleased take of “Rock Steady.” Still other stars contribute their sonic touches to some of the lesser-known cuts, as witnessed by the patent trippiness of Sly Stone alter-egos 6ix and Stanga on “I'm Just Like You” and “Little Sister,” respectively; the stark, party-not-so-hearty contrast of the Mayfield-written-and-produced “Hard Times” by Baby Huey & Baby Sisters; and the Meters' version of “Tampin',” released under the moniker of the Rhine Oaks.

Sequenced in rough chronological order, it's a savvy window into a musical evolution as well, with the rhythmic guitars, organ swells, and horn flourishes of traditional '60s R&B giving way to sinewy synths and increasingly chunky bass lines as the decade grooves on. While savvy hip-hoppers will note that many of the rarities here have already been repurposed by shrewd mixers, it's a revelation to hear them in their original form. A compelling deconstruction of an often clichéd and too-narrowly-defined genre, this is an anthology that showcases music that has influenced such contemporary artists as Tupac, the Beastie Boys, Snoop Dogg, and Kanye West, annotated by many of the original musicians who set the dance floor in motion.

• 34 Scandals From Bush's First Year of Presidency
  "After four years of Bush's presidency, the entire nation should be suffering from utter scandal exhaustion."
  (tags: Bush Politics Republican corruption)
• First Draft - Dear Senator Obama
  Frack Obama "yet another Not Bill Clinton, another guy who thinks the reason Clinton won was because he gave pretty speeches, another guy who thinks the most pressing issue of our day is "the tone in Washington" and that people without jobs really give a
  (tags: Obama Democrats 2008)
• WTF? nearly $400,000 in unitemized petty cash in Lieberman primary campaign
  I wish I had that much petty cash to throw about.
  (tags: Lieberman corruption)
• Saxophone Colossus Strides Into a New Life
  "Facing down many changes since the death of his wife, Sonny Rollins, an elder statesman of jazz, releases his strongest studio album in a decade and goes digital."
  (tags: Music Jazz)
• Matt Stoller: Joe Lieberman's Slush Fund Problem
  "Joe Lieberman just reported on his FEC form $387,000 in petty cash disbursements for the last eight days of the primary campaign against Ned Lamont. That's 8% of the total amount he spent, and an incredibly high number. It's also illegal; "
  (tags: corruption Lieberman elections)
• Rove's call nets cash for Lieberman
  "Karl Rove made to Connnecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman as he was losing his party's primary for reelection this year has kindled more than good feelings -- the Democrat's campaign treasury is flush with cash from leading Republican supporters of President
  (tags: Rove Lieberman culture_of_corruption)

Simply outrageous. Outrageous is an overused word, here, and elsewhere, but the callousness of our government, and the majority of our media, is despicable. If an invader killed 7.5 million Americans in three years of occupation, would we be throwing rose petals or bombs at their feet?

Eric Alterman: 655,000 Dead: Reporting the Reporting | The Huffington Post According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, George Bush's lies have killed not 30,000 innocent Iraqis, as the president not long ago estimated, but nearly 22 times that amount, or 655,000. Neither the Pentagon, nor much of the mainstream media have made much attempt to make their own counts -- it's just not that important to anyone.

So how has the U.S. media reported on these shocking-albeit-necessarily-imprecise findings, based on door-to-door surveys in 18 provinces, by the experts trained in this kind of thing? The actual methods included obtaining data by eight Iraqi physicians during a survey of 1,849 Iraqi families -- 12,801 people -- in 47 neighborhoods of 18 regions across the country. The researchers based the selection of geographical areas on population size, not on the level of violence. How strict were their standards? They asked for death certificates to prove claims -- and got them in 92 percent of the cases. Even so, the authors say that the number could be anywhere from 426,000 to 800,000.

Dr. Alterman continues...

Somehow, this just doesn't sound like a good idea.

Pilot-Fatigue Test Lands JetBlue In Hot Water - WSJ.com : EMBARGOED!Last year, thousands of JetBlue Airways passengers became unwitting participants in a highly unusual test of pilot fatigue.

Without seeking approval from Federal Aviation Administration headquarters, consultants for JetBlue outfitted a small number of pilots with devices to measure alertness. Operating on a green light from lower-level FAA officials, management assigned the crews to work longer shifts in the cockpit -- as many as 10 to 11 hours a day -- than the eight hours the government allows. Their hope: Showing that pilots could safely fly far longer without exhibiting ill effects from fatigue.

The results of the test haven't yet been made public -- they are expected to be published by the end of the year -- and JetBlue executives say even they don't know the findings. But the experiment has landed JetBlue in hot water while fueling a fierce debate within the airline industry about how long pilots should be allowed to stay at the controls.

...
It has been nearly 18 months since the novel experiment, but the test -- along with the FAA's ultimate conclusion that it amounted to a backdoor effort to skirt safety rules -- continues to roil parts of the aviation world. Senior FAA officials, angered by the move, privately say the airline's approach has backfired. Because of heightened emotions about the test, proposals to extend the workday for commercial pilots have been pushed even further down the list of priorities at the FAA, they say.

FAA headquarters heard about the test from pilot-union officials and their supporters. When the head office “became aware that JetBlue operated some domestic flights outside the standard rules, we immediately investigated and took corrective action,” said James Ballough, head of flight standards for the agency. Mr. Ballough says officials are “confident that JetBlue's pilots are flying to the FAA's rules” now.

Another high-ranking FAA policy maker expressed his displeasure more bluntly: “We don't allow experiments with passengers on board, period.”

The airline says it never intended to mislead anyone at the FAA, and the JetBlue spokeswoman chalked the situation up to “a miscommunication,” though, she says, in retrospect the company understands “we have to widen the circle of consultation.” JetBlue said: “Safety is our bedrock value. It is the fundamental promise we make, and keep, to our customers and crew members.”

The spokeswoman says there were no in-flight emergencies during the test period, and safety was never compromised because a third pilot was always on board to take the controls if needed. The JetBlue pilots who participated in the experiment volunteered for the assignment.

The concept of measuring second-by-second reactions of JetBlue pilots in everyday flight conditions was championed by Mark Rosekind, a well-known sleep researcher who previously has worked as a consultant for a number of large U.S. and foreign carriers.

st

Could be fun, could suck. Worth note, in any case.

Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts news | Vivaldi, the sex-obsessed rock star A biopic based on the early years of Antonio Vivaldi's life is set to do for the baroque composer what Milos Forman's Amadeus achieved for Mozart more than two decades ago. Joseph Fiennes [never heard of 'em] plays the lead in Vivaldi, which starts filming next April, alongside Gerard Depardieu, Jacqueline Bisset and Malcolm McDowell.

...Vivaldi's plot begins with the composer entering the clergy. Fiennes' character soon realises he is not suited to the profession and is moved to a school for abandoned illegitimate daughters of Venetian courtesans, based on the Pio Ospedale della Pieta in the Italian city, which still exists today as a hotel.

In the school's prime in the early 18th century, boys there were taught a trade, and the girls received a musical education. The most talented female musicians stayed and became members of the Ospedale's renowned orchestra and choir. The film sees Fiennes' character battle with debilitating bouts of asthma, as well as 'the dogma of the Catholic church', according to Damast. He ultimately wins the trust of the orphans and goes on to organise a historic concert for the pope.

...Damast claimed that Vivaldi pioneered the practice of girls playing the cello with the instrument placed between their legs, which was considered risqué at the time.

Tags: music

Kudos for keeping the moral high ground.

Israel admits phosphorous bombing

Israel admits for the first time it used controversial phosphorous bombs during fighting in Lebanon.

Phosphorus weapons cause chemical burns and the Red Cross and human rights groups say they should be treated as chemical weapons.

The Geneva Conventions ban the use of white phosphorous as an incendiary weapon against civilian populations and in air attacks against military forces in civilian areas.

Lebanon had accused Israel of using the weapons but at the time Israeli officials said they were only for marking.

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said in late July: “According to the Geneva Convention, when they use phosphorous bombs and laser bombs, is that allowed against civilians and children?”

Doctors in hospitals in southern Lebanon had said they suspected some of the burns they were seeing were being caused by phosphorous bombs.

Tags: Israel

Frank Rich discusses the topic de jour: Barack Obama. I think Obama is getting entirely too much attention - he's not even certain if he's going to run in 2008. Would I vote for Obama? Certainly not in a primary, unless he has a change of personality.

Frank Rich: Obama Is Not a Miracle Elixir
Barack Obama will have to step up and change the party before the party of terminal timidity and equivocation changes him. ... Enter Barack Obama. To understand the hysteria about a Democratic senator who has not yet served two years and is mainly known for a single speech at the 2004 convention, you have to appreciate just how desperate the Democrats are for a panacea for all their ills. In the many glossy cover articles about Obamamania, the only real suspense is whether a Jack or Bobby Kennedy analogy will be made in the second paragraph or the fifth. Men’s Vogue (cover by Annie Leibovitz) went so far as to say that the Illinois senator “alone has the potential to one day be mentioned in the same breath” as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Why not throw in Mark Twain and Sammy Davis Jr.?

This is a lot to put on the shoulders of anyone, even someone as impressive as Mr. Obama. Though he remains a modest and self-effacing guy from all appearances, he is encouraging the speculation about seeking higher office — and not as a coy Colin Powell-style maneuver to sell his new book, “The Audacity of Hope.” Mr. Obama hasn’t been turning up in Iowa for the corn dogs. He consistently concedes he’s entertaining the prospect of a presidential run.

There’s no reason to rush that decision now, but it’s a no-brainer. Of course he should run, assuming his family is on the same page. He’s 45, not 30, and his slender résumé in public office (which also includes seven years as a state senator) should be no more of an impediment to him than it was to the White House’s current occupant. As his Illinois colleague Dick Durbin told The Chicago Tribune last week, “I said to him, ‘Do you really think sticking around the Senate for four more years and casting a thousand more votes will make you more qualified for president?’ ” Instead, such added experience is more likely to transform an unusually eloquent writer, speaker and public servant into another windbag like Joe Biden.

The more important issue is not whether Mr. Obama will seek the presidency, but what kind of candidate he would be. If the Democratic Party is to be more than a throw-out-Bush party, it can’t settle for yet again repackaging its well-worn ideas, however worthy, with a new slogan containing the word “New.” It needs a major infusion of steadfast leadership. That’s the one lesson it should learn from George Bush. Call him arrogant or misguided or foolish, this president has been a leader. He had a controversial agenda — enacting big tax cuts, privatizing Social Security, waging “pre-emptive” war, packing the courts with judges who support his elisions of constitutional rights — and he didn’t fudge it. He didn’t care if half the country despised him along the way.

And there's no earthly reason to think that Mr. Rich ever stumbled upon this blog, but we've been saying similar thoughts since 2004:

...What little criticism Mr. Obama has received is from those in his own camp who find him cautious to a fault, especially on issues that might cause controversy. The sum of all his terrific parts, this theory goes, may be less than the whole: another Democrat who won’t tell you what day it is before calling a consultant, another human weather vane who waits to see which way the wind is blowing before taking a stand.

About the only thing going for Obama is that he isn't quite as craven as Ms. Clinton, which is fairly weak praise. The real problem is that there isn't really any better candidates hiding out. Recently read (re-read?) an article (in Katha Pollitt's Virginity or Death) about the John Ashcroft nomination, and Feingold's disappointing “fawning and vacuous” questioning of Ashcroft.

...That’s why it’s important to remember that on one true test for his party, Iraq, he was consistent from the start. On the long trail to a hotly competitive senatorial primary in Illinois, he repeatedly questioned the rationale for the war before it began, finally to protest it at a large rally in Chicago on the eve of the invasion. He judged Saddam to pose no immediate threat to America and argued for containment over a war he would soon label “dumb” and “political-driven.” He hasn’t changed. In his new book, he gives a specific date (the end of this year) for beginning “a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops” and doesn’t seem to care who calls it “cut and run.”

Contrast this with Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, who last week said that failed American policy in Iraq should be revisited if there’s no improvement in “maybe 60 to 90 days.” This might qualify as leadership, even at this late date, if only John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, hadn’t proposed exactly the same time frame for a re-evaluation of the war almost a week before she did.

Bleh.

Tags: 2008_election, /Barrack_Obama, /Frank_Rich

Almost enough for a CD mix (had to add two songs, but then I don't own Saved)

• 
  
  Rolling Stone : Listen to a Playlist of Bob Dylan Masterpieces You May Never Knew Existed
  
  
  “What if the best Bob Dylan songs you've never heard were simply tucked away on below-the-radar discs with ”nice price“ stickers on them”
  
  
  (tags: Music Dylan)
  
  

• GPS Visualizer map input form
  "GPS Visualizer has a number of different map input forms that will import your data for various purposes."
  (tags: map Technology tools web)
• Feministe » So Sue Me.
  Ann Bartow is a real bitch. "So you file suit. Now you have to serve me in another state, which presents certain practical problems since you don’t know my home address. You could try to serve me at work, but security doesn’t let just anybody into the
  (tags: litigation Free_speech)
• Basketbawful - Dwayne Wade is whining again
  " need to buy a few hundred tubes of Vagisil and send it to American Airlines Arena...and fast. Because the real problem has nothing to do with fatigue, it has to do with Wade being an enormous, heaving, itching vagina"
  (tags: Miami_Heat NBA Basketball humor)
• Making the case for optical filters in the age of digital
  "three optical filters that he believes ... photographers should be using to improve their outdoor images, even when they're shooting digital: neutral density, polarizer and gold-n-blue polarizer."
  (tags: photography digital)
• Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  my Haplogroup
  (tags: DNA Wiki genographic)

“Townes Van Zandt - Be Here to Love Me” (Margaret Brown (II))

One of the few regrets I have in my life is that I never saw Townes Van Zandt (spottily sourced wikipedia entry) perform while he was alive. I moved to Austin in 1981, and lived there until 1994: Townes Van Zandt performed in Austin probably every year, multiple times probably, until his death on New Years Day, 1997. Larry Monroe, a DJ for KUT whose musical taste I've usually respected, always seemed to be announcing a Townes Van Zandt performance on one of his radio shows. Unfortunately, not until after a drunken conversation with some house painter (friend of a friend) on Martha's Vineyard in 2003 did I really listen to Townes Van Zandt, and by that time he was dead.

Tom Tomorrow suggested the above documentary directed by Margaret Brown a while ago, and I just got around to watching it tonight. Wow. Perhaps slightly more resonance to me specifically since my biological-father-who-abandoned-me (Bruce Anderson) was also diagnosed with manic-depression, and given shock therapy when I was young. Maybe not, maybe just Townes Van Zandt's melancholy music strikes a resonant chord because of its poignancy.

Steve Earle, Willie Nelson, Steve Shelley (of Sonic Youth), Emmylou Harris, and many others of the alt-country scene and the Austin folk scene make an appearance.

You might have never heard of Townes Van Zandt. You might not even know his songs. But this Texan's music was profoundly influential on his peers--so much so that some of the folks interviewed for Be Here to Love Me, a documentary about Van Zandt's work and difficult life, call him one of the best songwriters, maybe even the best, in American history. That's a stretch, but there's no doubting the man's talent; his two best-known tunes, “Pancho and Lefty” (popularized by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard) and “If I Needed You” (a beautiful Emmylou Harris-Don Williams duet), by themselves guarantee him a spot in a few Halls of Fame. But the Van Zandt chronicled in director Margaret Brown's 100-minute film was his own worst enemy. Born in 1944, he was a troubled young man who played Russian roulette for kicks, deliberately fell off a fourth-floor balcony, and was placed in a mental home, where shock treatments robbed him of significant parts of his memory and personality. Married three times, he was also wedded to the bottle, which ultimately destroyed him (he died of a heart attack in 1997). Be Here to Love Me details these events through various interviews with Van Zandt himself, as well as Nelson, Harris, Steve Earle, Nanci Griffith, and other notables. But whereas a fellow tippler like singer Guy Clark fondly remembers the good times, Van Zandt's family tells a different story: “Bummer,” replies one ex-wife when asked to describe living with him, while his eldest son, JT, betrays a good deal of bitterness about a dad who couldn't control his own life, wasn't much of a family man, and died young and unfulfilled. DVD extras include several Van Zandt performances (in addition to clips throughout the main program), which is a good thing; were it not for his soulful, affecting songs, there wouldn't be a lot to admire about this guy.

Strongly recommended for anyone who likes folk music, or Lightnin' Hopkins, or wonders what choosing the rough life of a musician is all about.

For a little while, TVZ's first song written is available as MP3 (right click to save), below.

Tags: Netflix, /rock_snob

Finally remembered the source of this speech:

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

quoted by a character (Chief) on a recent Battlestar Galactica episode....

original version spoken by here on the UC Berkley Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964.

(direct link to video here)

And seems sort of familiar, doesn't it?

In 2004, it was revealed that Mario was the subject of a massive FBI surveillance program even after he left the Free Speech Movement. The FBI trailed Mario Savio for more than a decade after he left UC Berkeley, and bureau officials plotted to “neutralize” him politically, even though there was no evidence he broke any federal law. [1] According to hundreds of pages of FBI files, the bureau: Collected, without court order, personal information about Savio from schools, telephone companies, utility firms and banks and compiled information about his marriage and divorce. Monitored his day-to-day activities by using informants planted in political groups, covertly contacting his neighbors, landlords and employers, and having agents pose as professors, journalists and activists to interview him and his wife. Obtained his tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service in violation of federal rules, mischaracterized him as a threat to the president and arranged for the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies to investigate him when he and his family traveled in Europe. Put him on an unauthorized list of people to be detained without judicial warrant in event of a national emergency, and designated him as a “Key Activist” whose political activities should be “disrupted” and “neutralized” under the bureau's extralegal counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO.

“The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (South End Press Classics Series)” (Ward Churchill, Jim Vander Wall)

more from the SFGate

Technorati Tags: civil_liberties, Free_Speech, repression, YouTube

I think Mr. Friedman is star struck. Arnold is a putz, not a maker of history. If California becomes a greener place by government fiat (by passing Prop 87 and forcing oil companies to pay market rates for oil extraction from public lands), I wouldn't think the Gropen-fueher will be the cause. If Prop 87 fails, it won't be due to Schwarzenegger's opposition either.

Thomas Friedman: Make History, Arnold! No one will forget you for spurring America to realize the dream of a clean, independent energy economy.

Governors don’t often get a chance to make big-time history, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has that opportunity now — if he’s ready to get off the fence. With one move, Governor Schwarzenegger could make California America’s hub for developing “green” clean-power technologies — which are going to be the growth industry of the 21st century — and do something that President Bush has only paid lip service to: really help to end America’s oil addiction.

Do it, Arnold. C’mon, just do it.

Here’s the basic story: This Nov. 7, Californians will be asked to vote yes or no on Proposition 87, a ballot initiative that would impose a higher extraction fee on oil pumped in California. (Up to now, oil companies in California have paid a very low extraction fee compared with those in other states — a rip-off they want to keep.)

The new funds raised by Prop 87, explained The San Francisco Chronicle, “would be used to finance research and development of alternative fuels in universities; education campaigns; and subsidies to consumers who buy vehicles that use alternative fuels and businesses that produce and distribute alternative fuels. ... Oil companies would be taxed between 1.5 percent and 6 percent on oil production depending on the price of oil per barrel. The tax would end by 2017 or when the tax generates $4 billion, whichever occurs first.”

Tags: environment, /fraud, /Thomas_Friedman

Get a rope! White collar crime actually affects us, the citizens, more than say, petty drug offences. I'd rather drug users were ignored, and the police focused on sending Ken Lay and his spiritual buddies to Attica.

Krugman has more, though he's a little more sanguine.

Paul Krugman: Incentives for the Dead

I don’t know about you, but I need a break from political scandals. So let’s talk about private-sector scandals instead — specifically, the growing scandal involving backdated stock options, which this week led to the resignation of William McGuire, the chief executive of UnitedHealth Group.

To understand the issue, we need to go back to the original ideological justification for giant executive paychecks.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, C.E.O.’s of the largest firms were paid, on average, about 40 times as much as the average worker. But executives wanted more — and professors at business schools provided a theory that justified much higher pay.

They argued that a chief executive who expects to receive the same salary if his company is highly profitable that he will receive if it just muddles along won’t be willing to take risks and make hard decisions. “Corporate America,” declared an influential 1990 article by Michael Jensen of the Harvard Business School and Kevin Murphy of the University of Southern California, “pays its most important leaders like bureaucrats. Is it any wonder then that so many C.E.O.’s act like bureaucrats?”

The claim, then, was that executives had to be given more of a stake in their companies’ success. And so corporate boards began giving C.E.O.’s lots of stock options — the right to purchase a share of the company’s stocks at a fixed price, usually the market price on the day the option was issued. If the stock went up, these options would pay off; if the stock went down, they would lose their value. And so, the theory went, executives would have the incentive to do whatever it took to push the stock price up.

In the 1990’s, executive stock options proliferated — and executive pay soared, rising to 367 times the average worker’s pay by the early years of this decade.

But the truth was that in many — perhaps most — cases, executive pay still had little to do with performance. For one thing, the great bull market of the 1990’s meant that even companies that didn’t do especially well saw their stock prices rise.

Tags: crime, /Paul_Krugman

Train I Don't Rides (sic) In retrospect, not as dire as during 'first blush'. I wasn't really arrested, my life wasn't in danger, just made my adrenaline flow.

Do Not Hump Conrail Elmhurst. Converted to B&W.

Original, slightly out of focus, whatcha gonna do?

(details of my run in with suburban cops here)

Tags: trains

Out in the 'burbs, with 30 minutes to kill. Decide to get coffee, and perhaps photo stroll for a second. A freight train rolls through, impeding my path to the coffee shops. I decide to take a photo of it, just in case something interesting happens. The train is a long, long train, full of cars containing vegetable oil, hydrochloric acid, steel beams, coal, empty cattle cars, ADM cars, Cargill cars, etc. Takes at least 15 minutes before it passes. However, within 2 minutes, an Elmhurst cop rolls up, and parks in the middle of the street. He doesn't get out of the car, but he's furiously writing things down, giving me the evil eye, probably loosening his gun buckle.

I'm wearing a suit coat and jeans, but like I mentioned yesterday, I am sort of a swarthy Celt, and I haven't shaved since the weekend, so maybe I fit some profile? Pasta-damn, what kind of a country do we live in? The Union Pacific company (and/or their corporate predecessors ) stole the train land from taxpayers, apparently taking photos of graffiti-ridden freight cars while sitting on public property is anathema.

Bleh. Photos later, once I get home and shower to remove the stench of Patriot Act-esque dog shit from my shoe.

I guess it could be worse, much worse, but had I followed my first impulse, and strolled over to the police officer to take his photo as a sort of fuck you gesture, I might not be able to be writing this at all, and would have missed my meeting while I gave a statement to the Elmhurst police.

(update: photos here. I'm spoiled, living in America. I expect cops to be leave me alone unless I need them. I don't expect to be 'a person of interest' by just walking down the street with a camera. If I'm at a rally, sure. In a normal situation, no, it reminds me too much that '9/11 changed everything', and that even American citizens can be locked away without trial these days, these dark days. Also, Chicago city cops have better things to do, like catching real criminals, but suburban cops are usually the worst: I guess they are bored, and want to show off a little. I jay-walk in the city all the time, in front of squad cars, don't even think twice. If I was to jay-walk in Elmhurst, I'd probably get arrested.)

Tags: censorship, /Patriot_Act, /patriotism

If I was a Democratic Senator, or if I was Obama, pasta-forbid, I would not take any advice from Republican activists like David Brooks. Especially when the reasons are so weakly argued.

David Brooks: Run, Barack, Run Whether you're liberal or conservative, you should hope Senator Barack Obama runs for president.

Well, I'm liberal (a godless liberal at that, as well as a card carrying member of the ACLU), and I don't lay awake nights wishing Obama would run for president. Do we really need yet another mealy-mouthed Nixonian Democrat? (ie, a politician who would have been right at home as a member of Nixon's party, sometimes known as a Rockefeller Republican. The political climate has shifted so far to the right these are interchangeable terms in my mind). Obama has been in only one election campaign, and it was against an Illinois Republican party in disarray, in a very Democratic state. In other words, Obama has yet to be tested by a real campaign.

Tags: 2008_election, /Barrack_Obama, /David_Brooks

Coffee and a spliff, not just for breakfast anymore....

Marijuana may cut risk of Alzheimer's - The Boston Globe Marijuana may help reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease by reducing inflammation in the brain, researchers reported yesterday.

Tests on rats indicated that a compound found in marijuana stopped the loss of brain cells caused by inflammation and improved the animals' memories.

The findings, presented to a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Atlanta, may help explain some studies that suggest people who regularly smoked marijuana in the 1960s and '70s are now less likely than others the same age to develop Alzheimer's.

Caffeine may have similar effects, said Gary Wenk, of Ohio State University.

Good news, as getting Alzheimer's is one of my greatest fears. If I cannot think clearly, I'd rather be dead. Not sure if my living will is formal enough, but it says the same thing.

Tags: Alzheimer's, /drugs

Sometime in 2023, a similar sort of trial and counter-reaction is going to happen in the U.S., if we still exist as a democracy, that is. Could just be an International War Crimes Tribunal, with minimal involvement by America.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger was probably the last sane thing Chris Hitchens wrote, but the movie was better.

“The Trials of Henry Kissinger” (Eugene Jarecki)

'Dirty War' rears its ugly head

The disappearance of a witness in the trial of a former Argentine police chief has raised bad memories of the 1970s.

There have been demonstrations in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires over the disappearance of Julio Lopez , a bricklayer who went missing after testifying in court that he had been tortured during the country's military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Where is Julio Lopez?” is the question hanging over Argentina.

It is on banners and posters on buildings across the country, it has been texted to every mobile phone user and President Nestor Kirchner has taken a personal interest in the case, meeting the family.

The 77-year-old former laborer was last seen on 18 September. There has been no trace of him since.

...It was the first major trial of the leaders of that military government since the Argentine Supreme Court last year overturned amnesty laws that had allowed them to walk free.
...

Mr Lopez was one of 30,000 people detained and tortured under the junta

Now those ageing generals and police officers fear they may be following Miguel Etchecolatz back to prison.

After the disappearance of Julio Lopez, it came to light that other witnesses in the trial had been threatened - tape recordings of people being tortured were sent to some.

The judges in the case, the lawyers, journalists and human right activists also received menacing letters and e-mails.

It seems as though “The Dirty War” - as the period of military repression became known - is not yet over.

Tags: Argentina, /terrorism

For some reason, I never noticed the upper portion of the woman's face [ Marie-Thérèse Walte] is composed of a semi-flacid penis. Now I can't look at this wonderful painting without seeing the prick.

U.S. casino magnate gives Picasso's dream the elbow - Yahoo! News Picasso's famed “Dream” painting turned into a nightmare for Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn when he accidentally gave the multimillion dollar canvas an elbow.

Wynn had just finalized a $139 million sale to another collector of his painting, called “Le Reve” (The Dream), when he poked a finger-sized hole in the artwork while showing it to friends at his Las Vegas office a couple of weeks ago.

The New Yorker has more.

Tags: painting

• Arcadia Green brings green technology to Evanston
  "Arcadia Green, an eight-unit Evanston condo development that uses the latest in “green" technology to supply 92 percent of the heating, cooling and domestic hot water in the building"
  (tags: Chicago Green environment)
• Russian site goes on media offensive to deny violating copyright laws
  "The company has been unfairly characterized as a pirate Web site," Vadim Mamotin, AllofMP3.com's director general, said through a translator. "Nothing could be further from the truth." AllofMP3.com typically charges under $1 for an entire album and just
  (tags: music Technology)
• Bush followers outraged over the political use of homosexuality and sex -- seriously
  "entire political movement over the last 20 years has been fueled by sleazy sexual innuendo; dragging private sexual behavior into the public arena for fun, profit and political gain; and exploiting the gay issue to drive people to vote for them"
  (tags: Clinton Bush Republican sexuality repression)
• Blog-Sothoth: Netflix A Taste of Cherry
  "The protagonist of A Taste of Cherry drives around a desolate desert community looking for someone to do a well-paying menial job."
  (tags: film netflix)
• Why has CNN devoted 50 times as much coverage to Harry Reid's land deal as Dennis Hastert's?
  good fracking question. Denny the Menace's deal looks a lot more like corruption than Harry Reids
  (tags: Republicans Corporate_Media corruption)
• No-Fly lists even dumber than suspected
  " gargantuan lists have to be widely circulated, the CIA won't allow the names of actual terrorist suspects to be added to them -- in other words, the No Fly lists only contain the names of people who aren't under any serious suspicion."
  (tags: terrorism idiots TSA)
• Gilbert Arenas: "I'm Not Quirky." - Wizards Insider
  "Gilbert Arenas had something he needed to get off of his chest: He is getting sick and tired of being labeled, "quirky" and he wanted to talk to me about it - with every player in the locker room serving as the audience."
  (tags: NBA Washington_Wizards)

Today has been a perfect day for Gnawa music. Folk music from the desert as counterpoint to a dreary October day.

“World of Gnawa” (Various Artists)

Gnawa music has existed for more than five centuries in Morocco and has come to the point where in the words of Gnawa musician Abdenbi Binizi, “you can find Gnawa all over the world.” Presented here is a collection that takes the listener into the history of the Gnawa, and Africa itself for that matter - into Islam with songs dedicated to praise of Allah and the Prophet Muhammad and finally to mluk, the djinn that inhabit the world of smoke and at times the world of humans.

“Gift of the Gnawa” (Hassan Hakmoun With Adam Rudolph)

and the first Gnawa album I purchased (no cover apparently available)

“The Rough Guide to the Music of the Sahara” (Various Artists)

Traveling across Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Western Sahara, The Rough Guide To The Music Of The Sahara encompasses the hauntingly beautiful and dramatically different sounds of the desert. Compiled by Saharan music expert Andy Morgan, this album features driving desert rock and roll, Moorish traditions and remarkable guitar music. Including the magnificent desert blues of BBC award-winners Tinariwen and the funky traditional sound of Kel Tin Lokiene among other outstanding performers, this album celebrates the diversity of Saharan musical culture.

from the wiki entry:

In the context of music, Gnawa musicians generally refers to people who also practice healing rituals, with apparent ties to pre-Islamic African animism rites. In Moroccan popular culture, Gnawas, through their ceremonies, are considered to be experts in the magical treatment of scorpion stings and psychic disorders. They heal diseases by the use of colors, condensed cultural imagery, perfumes and fright.

Gnawas play deeply hypnotic trance music, marked by low-toned, rhythmic sintir melodies, call-and-response singing, hand clapping and cymbals called krakebs. Gnawa ceremonies use music and dance to evoke ancestral saints who can drive out evil, cure psychological ills, or remedy scorpion stings.

...
While adopting Islam, Gnawa continued to celebrate ritual possession during rituals where they are devoted to the practice of the dances of possession and fright. This rite of possession is called Derdba (Arabic: دردبة), and proceeds the night (lila, Arabic: ليلة) that is animated jointly by a Master musician (maâlem, Arabic: معلم) accompanied by his troop. Gnawa music fused mix classical Islamic Sufism with pre-Islamic African traditions, whether local or sub-Saharan.
Many modern Western scholars see parallels between Gnawa music and the associated Sufi tariqa and Black Americans music such as the blues that is rooted in Black American slave songs, as well as with other spiritual sub-Saharan origin black groups in Africa such as the Bori in Nigeria, the Stambouli in Tunisia, the Sambani in Libya, the Bilali in Algeria, and those outside Africa, such the Voodoo religion. These similarities in the artistic and scriptural representations are seen by such scholars as reflecting a shared experience of many African diasporic groups.

The mythologic remembrance of the desert is part of my DNA, by predisposition if not by my genetic record. I have swarthy skin for a Celt, so who knows.

For a little while, MP3 available, below.

Tags: gnawa

• Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog
  "BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology; no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It’s so easy to use even a child can operate it. Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere, even sitting in an
  (tags: humor books)
• Google To Run Headquarters Partly On Solar Power...
  good for Google. "Google Inc. is converting its renowned headquarters to run partly on solar power, hoping to set an example for corporate America."
  (tags: solar energy environment Google)
• Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts features | Of gods and monarchs
  I wanna go to London..."Velázquez started out as a street painter and grew into a great philosopher-artist - as the National Gallery's new blockbuster exhibition shows. "
  (tags: Arts England)
• The Beachwood Reporter: CBGB and Lounge Ax
  I loved the Lounge Ax, frequently stumbled out of there after hearing great music. "CBGB's closing, of course, is a replay of that dismal day nearly seven years ago when Lounge Ax gave up the ghost as Jon Langford belted out a few choice Johnny Cash cover
  (tags: rock_snob Chicago)
• Trivia for The Wicker Man (1973)
  review forthcoming. "It is rumored that the original negative of the full length version was used as landfill in the M3 motorway in England. Actor Christopher Lee has said that this was apparently done on purpose, because of Michael Deeley's dislike of th
  (tags: film_snob film_history movies Religion)

Again, looks like IPG is about to fire a bunch of folk. Hope nobody that we know.

Interpublic Plans to Reorganize Its Media-Buying Unit Again - WSJ.com Interpublic Group of Cos. plans to reorganize its struggling media-buying operations for the second time in 17 months. As part of that effort, Interpublic is expected to align its Initiative media-buying unit with its ad and marketing agency Draft FCB, company executives say.

Such a move could be the first step in what could be a complete dismantling of IPG Media, an umbrella division created last year to house all of Interpublic's media-buying and media-services units, including Magna Global, Universal McCann as well as Initiative.

Technorati Tags: advertising

I've had at least 5 common-law marriages, possibly more, if one defines the period of cohabitation necessary to qualify to less than 2 years. I'm 'shacking up' now, for fracks sake. If any state, county, jurisdiction, district ever enacts a shacking-up ban, I'm going apeshit insane.

A 'shacking up ban?'... “There’s several state ballots right now, like there were a few years ago, related to gay marriage bans,’’ a reporter noted in a question for Snow on Monday. ”Some of them extend to equal benefits for domestic partners in civil unions. What is the White House's position on those two issues?’’...

“Well,’’ the reporter asked [today], ”it's the legal reasoning the administration uses for gay marriage bans -- repeatedly says that the president believes in the sanctity of marriage and that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Well, my question is that this legal status is -- protection under the law is given to unmarried men and women as long as they live together --

[idiot Tony Snow answers:] “I guess -- the reason it hasn't come up is that I'm not sure there have been any shacking up bans,’’ Snow said, leaving this question of sanctity and common law unresolved. ”But when they arise, it might be time for an official opinion.’’

Tags: religion, /repression

In advance of the midterm election, Stephen Colbert presents a metaphor of Republican scandals...

direct link here

Tags: Republicans, /YouTube

In case you want some actual information about the slow and inexorable process of North Korea's nuclear armament, and not some BS Republican talking point about it being Clinton's fault, the Mahablog has an overview, timeline and several links to further discussion.

The Mahablog » News That Isn’t News ... In contrast to uranium, plutonium is nearly plug-and-play, so to speak. That’s why plutonium is a bigger worry than uranium. That’s why the 1994 Agreed Framework was negotiated — to get North Korea to freeze its plutonium program. And North Korea kept this agreement until the Bush Administration trashed it.

Shorter version, North Korea achieving nuclear weapons is yet another failure which can be directly attributed to The Dauphin's incompetence.

Read it here

Tags: nuclear, /North_Korea

Seems as if ignorance is an essential job requirement to work for the Bush assministration, or in the War on Terrah.

Jeff Stein: Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite? : FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”

A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want?

After all, wouldn’t British counterterrorism officials responsible for Northern Ireland know the difference between Catholics and Protestants? In a remotely similar but far more lethal vein, the 1,400-year Sunni-Shiite rivalry is playing out in the streets of Baghdad, raising the specter of a breakup of Iraq into antagonistic states, one backed by Shiite Iran and the other by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states.

...
But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?

My curiosity about our policymakers’ grasp of Islam’s two major branches was piqued in 2005, when Jon Stewart and other TV comedians made hash out of depositions, taken in a whistleblower case, in which top F.B.I. officials drew blanks when asked basic questions about Islam. One of the bemused officials was Gary Bald, then the bureau’s counterterrorism chief. Such expertise, Mr. Bald maintained, wasn’t as important as being a good manager
...

Take Representative Terry Everett, a seven-term Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence.

“Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” I asked him a few weeks ago.

Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: “One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.”

To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni. “Now that you’ve explained it to me,” he replied, “what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.”

Representative Jo Ann Davis, a Virginia Republican who heads a House intelligence subcommittee charged with overseeing the C.I.A.’s performance in recruiting Islamic spies and analyzing information, was similarly dumbfounded when I asked her if she knew the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

“Do I?” she asked me. A look of concentration came over her face. “You know, I should.” She took a stab at it: “It’s a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it’s the Sunnis who’re more radical than the Shia.”

Did she know which branch Al Qaeda’s leaders follow?

“Al Qaeda is the one that’s most radical, so I think they’re Sunni,” she replied. “I may be wrong, but I think that’s right.”

Did she think that it was important, I asked, for members of Congress charged with oversight of the intelligence agencies, to know the answer to such questions, so they can cut through officials’ puffery when they came up to the Hill?

“Oh, I think it’s very important,” said Ms. Davis, “because Al Qaeda’s whole reason for being is based on their beliefs. And you’ve got to understand, and to know your enemy.”

Read the sad tale in its entirety here. Hey, but I bet all of the Congress critters and staff Mr. Stein interviewed all could name their top 100 corporate campaign contributors.

Technorati Tags: religion, terrorism

Tom Tomorrow has the unmitigated pleasure of hearing Ms. Malkin proclaim:

This Modern World » Blog Archive » Wow : Malkin: It’s not just Oprah and the View that are dominated by liberals, but you have liberal women’s magazines too. You know, the question for us is, who represents us, who is giving voice to us, you know, we like fashion and beauty tips, we like to talk about celebrities too, and we don’t want to have Frank Rich rammed down our throat at three in the afternoon.

Yes, ok, Malkin doesn't want Frank Rich's spunk to be jammed in her throat, at least in the afternoon. Got it. She prefers choads anyway.

Speaking of winning hearts and minds...

`What is my crime?' | Chicago Tribune Nasrat Khan wears the long gray beard of an Afghan village elder. He estimates he is 78 or 79, and he has trouble seeing and hearing. Since suffering a stroke about 15 years ago, he needs crutches or a walker to get around. He doesn't fit the common image of a terrorist, but for much of the last 3 1/2 years, the United States imprisoned Khan at its detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Accused of links to a warlord and questioned about his son's possession of hundreds of weapons, he was designated an “enemy combatant” and a terrorist threat--until August, when he was no longer deemed a threat and released quietly, he and his U.S. lawyer say.

Now back in his family compound, surrounded by relatives and friends, Khan says he still is confused about why he was detained and flown halfway around the world.

“I asked them, `What is my crime?'” said Khan, his swollen legs splayed before him, sitting by the red walker he said U.S. officials gave him in Cuba. “They didn't say anything. No one would tell me what my crime was and why I was there.”

While the details of Khan's Guantanamo experience are hard to verify, his complaints raise questions about who has been sent to the detention facility and how thoroughly the charges against them are investigated, just as a law approved by Congress late last month sets up military tribunals to try some of the detainees. President Bush is scheduled to sign the bill into law Tuesday.

Khan and his lawyer complain that the allegations never were made clear to them and that the U.S. military never contacted defense witnesses whose names Khan and his son provided to a judge at Guantanamo, despite the military's pledges to do so.

Tracked down in Afghanistan, two of the witnesses told the Tribune they never were contacted. One was a government official whose phone number was provided to the Tribune after one call to the Afghan Defense Ministry.
...
“We really couldn't understand why Khan was there,” Ryan said. “He really couldn't walk. He had a stroke. . . . He had difficulty hearing. He kept saying over and over again, `Why have they sent me here? Please tell the world I am here. I don't want to die here.'”

When the Taliban came to power, Khan and his son initially opposed the harsh regime but later supported it, they said. In Afghanistan, such shifting alliances are not unusual, and merely being loyal to one side or the other has not necessarily been a ticket to Guantanamo.

Tags: Afghanistan, /Taliban, /terrorism

I am no 'fan' of Harry Reid, I think he is a racist, and not a very effective Democratic leader, but the dead tree edition of the Tribune is trying to create the perception that the corruption of Harry Reid is equivalent to the corruption of Republicans like Curt Weldon.

On page 3, this story

Reid Used Campaign Money for Bonuses

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has been using campaign donations instead of his personal money to pay Christmas bonuses for the support staff at the Ritz-Carlton where he lives in an upscale condominium. Federal election law bars candidates from converting political donations for personal use.

is on the same page as this story:

FBI raids have GOP tie-in

FBI agents conducted raids in two states Monday as part of an investigation into whether Rep. Curt Weldon used his influence to steer business to a lobbying firm owned by his daughter and a one-time campaign aide, Justice Department officials and others familiar with the probe said.

Except Harry Reid is accused of misusing $3,300...

Questioned about the campaign expenditures by The Associated Press, Reid's office said Monday his lawyers had approved them but he nonetheless was personally reimbursing his campaign for the $3,300 he had directed to the staff holiday fund at his residence.

and Curt Weldon of misdirecting $1,000,000

Federal investigators are trying to determine whether the Pennsylvania Republican helped secure almost $1 million in contracts for Solutions North America, run by his daughter, Karen, and a Philadelphia-area Republican, Charles Sexton, who once served as Weldon's campaign finance chief.

Not quite the same. Crime is crime, but stealing a bottle of Lancers from a convenience store is not the same as recruiting Patty Hearst to rob the Hibernia National Bank.

Or worse

update 6pm
Josh Marshall has more

Tags: Congress, /corruption, /crime, /media

• David Kuo's New Book on Evangelicals being used by the Rethuglicans
  "would be hard pressed to find a more cynical group than political operatives. Forget what they talk about in public and on the cable news shows, these folks are all about manipulation. "
  (tags: Republicans Religion corruption)
• Simpsons Maps
  "Springfield, in map form. A great way to catch up on all the puns you may have missed."
  (tags: humor map)
• Call Me Fishmeal.: Flame: My birthday present to me
  ""Larry Bodine", who is apparently on the advisory board of "Law Technology News" (e.g., he's a technology advisor) and is also a law firm marketing consultant, has written a piece where describes, using no small amount of factual errors, fallacies, and o
  (tags: Apple humor Mac OSX Microsoft Windows_sucks)
• Find local network devices using ping
  "Have you ever "lost" a device on your local network? Learn how to find it again using the Unix ping command."
  (tags: unix Macintosh OSX tutorial)
• U.S. Growers Fear Biotech Rice
  "Small amounts of experimental strains of genetically engineered rice are discovered in storage facilities with food crops. The Japanese and European rice markets react, and farmers sue a German company responsible for the mistake."
  (tags: genetic_modification food rice)
• Chicagoist: Focus, People, Focus
  woot "Each week, we’ll pick our favorite and feature it here in Focus, People, Focus. October Snow Shower via swanksalot"
  (tags: Swanksalot Photos snow republished)

Mmmm-mmmm, mercury. It's what's for dinner /dulcet tones. Wired has a thing for mercury.

And of course, reducing power usage is simply un-American. Don't forget that alternative energy sources are the devil's own playthings. Ole Daddy Coal is king, worthy of music video, no less.

Wired News: Eco Concern: Coal Plant Boom A building boom that would add scores of new coal-fired power plants to the nation's power grid is creating a new dilemma for politicians, environmentalists and utility companies across the United States.

Should power companies be permitted to build new plants that pollute more but are reliable and less expensive? Or should regulators push utilities toward cleaner burning coal plants, even if it means they will cost more and are based on newer, yet still unproven, technology?

How those questions are answered will have huge implications over the next few decades. It could determine how Americans light, heat and cool their homes and business, the rate of return on utility investments and the potential environmental impact of the new plants.

Nowhere do these competing interests play out with such force as in Texas, where 16 new coal-fired plants are proposed -- 11 of them by Dallas-based TXU, the state's biggest power company.

Some 154 new coal-fired plants are on the drawing board in 42 states. Texas and Illinois are the only states where 10 or more plants are planned, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Critics, however, counter the company is driven by profits and is rushing to beat more stringent federal restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions in an era of escalating concerns over global warming. Texas already produces more carbon dioxide than any other state, a fact that worries big city mayors downwind of the proposed plants.

The debate soon could end up in federal court. Dallas attorney Rick Addison recently announced plans to sue TXU, alleging potential violations of the federal Clean Air Act.

“It's remarkable and unnecessary the amount of pollutants they are going to put in the air,” said Addison, a member of the Houston-based Locke Liddell and Sapp law firm. “The only way to get these issues resolved is at the highest level and reviewed under the appropriate law.”

The battle lines were drawn April 20, when TXU Chief Executive John Wilder announced the company's plans shortly after much of Texas underwent a rolling power blackout. Since then, each side has assembled a team of backers comprised of affected residents, lawmakers, and lawyers.

But Dallas Mayor Laura Miller and Houston Mayor Bill White recently formed a coalition of 17 mayors opposing the TXU's 11 proposed plants and five others being considered by other Texas companies. The group has lined up law firms statewide bracing for a courtroom battle.

Miller recently spent a week visiting existing TXU plants, as well as a coal gasification plant in Tampa, Florida, that turns coal into gas and removes the pollutants before the fuel is burned.

Coal gasification plants can cost up to 20 percent more to build than a conventional plant. But they also can be more efficient to operate and save utilities the hassle and expense of adding pollution-control devices.

Tags: Energy, /environment

Every action this President acts upon seems to have a dire consequence upon the future. Denigration of pollution controls shouldn't be a knee jerk Republican response, everyone benefits from having a cleaner environment, even our End-of-Times-believing schmuck of a leader.

An end run on ethanol
Rules for producing `clean' fuel may be relaxed, add pollution

As President Bush promotes ethanol as a green alternative to gasoline, his administration is quietly relaxing environmental rules for dozens of new corn-to-fuel refineries sprouting up across the nation.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is planning to change the way ethanol plants are treated under the Clean Air Act, a move critics say could make it easier for the burgeoning industry to evade controls that dramatically reduce toxic air pollution.

The shift in policy would give a break to agricultural conglomerates and newcomers seeking to cash in quickly on the nation's growing thirst for renewable fuel. More than 40 new ethanol plants are expected to be built during the next year, boosting U.S. production by 30 percent.

...Critics note that the ethanol industry has been growing rapidly despite existing environmental regulations. The number of corn-to-fuel refineries has increased to 101 this year from 50 in 1997, according to industry statistics.

The proposed rule, which need only be published in the Federal Register to take effect, comes less than four years after the Bush administration brokered a series of legal agreements promising deep cuts in air pollution from leading players in the industry.
...
EPA regulators had decided to take a closer look at the refineries after complaints about noxious odors coming from several ethanol plants in the Midwest. The agency discovered many were emitting carbon monoxide, methanol and cancer-causing chemicals at levels far greater than owners had reported.

“Those facilities were prosecuted under the exact law they're proposing to weaken,” said John Walke, director of the Natural Resource Defense Council's clean air project. “They're cutting corners now so the wave of new ethanol plants can be bigger, cheaper and dirtier.”

But whether ethanol is good for the environment is being questioned.

The fuel additive releases somewhat less carbon dioxide than gasoline--reducing the amount of greenhouse gases that are making the planet hotter.

But the EPA recently reported that pumping more ethanol into cars and trucks is expected to increase levels of other chemicals that create smog, which can aggravate respiratory ailments.

Existing clean-air rules consider ethanol plants as major sources of air pollution if they emit more than 100 tons of toxic chemicals a year. Those that do must go through an intensive--and time-consuming--permit process.

They also must install equipment that burns off most of the emissions.

Under the proposed changes, ethanol plants wouldn't be subject to the stringent federal requirements unless they spewed more than 250 tons of air pollution per year. Most of the new refineries are expected to emit a few tons less than that.

The difference in emissions could be substantial, in part because the control equipment must reduce pollution levels by up to 95 percent.
...
Some state regulators worry that the projected increases in air pollution could make it more difficult for Chicago and other urban areas to meet federal health standards intended to protect people suffering from asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

“If anything, we need to be paying closer attention to these operations, not looking the other way,” said William Becker, executive director of two associations that represent state air pollution regulators.

especially since the alleged costs of creating clean air aren't really as burdensome as some thought they would be:

Doyal said the Minnesota producers made the same arguments four years ago that the EPA is using today to justify changing the rules.

But installing pollution controls at Al-Corn's plant turned out to be less expensive than the company thought, Doyal said. And heat generated by the thermal oxidizers helped cut the company's energy costs.

“It works really well,” he said. “And our emissions are next to nothing.”

update: per Flickr comments, see also Consumer Reports, and Car and Driver

Tags: Energy, /environment, /EPA

If you have to ask if it is spam, it probably is.

Defending a Blurred Line: Is It Spam or Just a Company Marketing by E-Mail? E-mail marketers are mounting a fierce challenge to blacklists, lists created by online spam fighters to help filter out the worst senders of unwanted e-mail.

In the interest of full disclosure, we know a bit about this industry, at least we did in the dot-boom days (1999-2001) before the company we represented was bought up by DoubleClick. Companies that don't use double opt in (you have to ask to be included on a mailing list, and then confirm you indeed want to receive email) are just asking for trouble. The trouble with SpamHaus is there doesn't really seem to be procedures to get your name off, if you are in fact not a spammer, and just a opt out mailer (your company automatically adds your name to a mailing list if you purchase something, for instance). Opt out is irritating, but isn't really spam.

Spamhaus, which was formed in 1998 and is operated by 25 volunteers around the world, is one of many spam-busters that emerged around the same time to aid Internet service providers and businesses desperate to filter out spam before it reached consumers. Their mission is to offer antispam protection for Internet networks to stave off an onslaught of unsolicited bulk e-mail, which is how they define spam. But international authorities have yet to agree precisely on the definition of spam, leaving antispam groups vulnerable to challenges.

Most European countries require prior consent from recipients before a sender can transmit bulk e-mail messages to them. The United States and Japan favor a freedom-of-commerce approach that does not require advance consent but does offer a choice to unsubscribe from mass mailings.

...
In the United States, the Can-Spam Act of 2003 permits bulk e-mailing as long as messages are marked as advertising and include a way for the recipient to decline them. Mr. Linhardt says that when he sends out bulk mailings for clients, like BargainDepot.net, his company sends messages only to people who have signed up for e-mail alerts on that Web site.

Spamhaus scoffs at his claims, saying it has collected samples of Mr. Linhardt’s e-mail messages sent to some of the group’s own investigators, along with examples sent in by Internet users who said they never agreed to accept such material.

The U.S. should adopt the European model, but there are too many Fortune 500 companies who want to grow their mailing lists by any means necessary, for some stupid reason.

Tags: spam

• Jobs Talks With Newsweek
  Jobs, on Zune: "you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put
  (tags: Apple OSX Microsoft Windows_sucks)
• Q&A: Jobs on iPod’s Cultural Impact - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com
  "Steve Jobs: The way you can tell that you're onto something interesting is if everybody who knows about the project wants one themselves, if they can't wait to go open their wallets"
  (tags: Apple interview iPod Mac)
• Quote of the Day
  amen. "How can we make it clearer that our objection to Bush's domestic spying program isn't that it spies on terrorists, but that it wastes significant resources and violates the Constitution by spying on the rest of us?"
  (tags: terrorism torture civil_liberties)
• Bad Ideas
  "Hillary Clinton told the New York Daily News editorial board that "she approved of torture in limited circumstances."
  (tags: torture civil_liberties)

Live at the Fillmore

“Live at the Fillmore East” (Neil Young)

from Billboard:

Neil Young is finally ready to roll out releases from his long-rumored “Archives Performance” series. First up is “Live at the Fillmore East 1970,” due Nov. 14 via Reprise. The album features six as-yet-unannounced selections from Crazy Horse's March 6-7 runs at the New York venue, at a time when late guitarist Danny Whitten was still a member of the band.

“Fillmore” will also be available in a CD/DVD edition featuring a high-resolution audio mix, photos from the show, Young's handwritten song lyrics and press articles from the era.

In addition to core members Whitten, Billy Talbot (bass) and Ralph Molina (drums), the four shows found Crazy Horse augmented by producer Jack Nitzsche on electric piano. Among the songs featured in the set lists were “On the Way Home,” “Broken Arrow,” “Cinnamon Girl,” “Cowgirl in the Sand” and “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.”

Rolling Stone has more on what the future (allegedly) will bring from Mr. Young's extensive vaults.

After nearly fifteen years of promises, Neil Young is now confident that a slew of material from his vaults will begin to see the light of day in 2006. ...the rock legend is planning several eight-disc sets packed with outtakes, home recordings, album tracks, live cuts and DVDs. “It starts with my earliest recordings in 1963,” says Young. “Then several recordings with a group called the Squires, into the earliest Buffalo Springfield stuff. Then there's a live record culled from a week's worth of performances at the Riverboat in Toronto.”

Fans can expect a 1970 show at Toronto's Massey Hall, featuring material from Harvest a year before its release, as well as Crazy Horse live at the Fillmore East. “It's got a sixteen-minute 'Cowgirl in the Sand,'” Young says of the Fillmore gig, “and a super-long 'Down by the River.'”

One live performance, the rock vet is convinced, trumps the original recording: the entirety of Tonight's the Night, recorded live at London's Rainbow Theatre. Says Young, “It's better than the record.”

Still no word on a re-release of Time Fades Away

Tags: music

One shouldn't dial while catnipped.

Well, kittens don't really like catnip, so I think they're naturally high.

Love during wartime girders supporting El tracks, stylized in Photoshop.

Sounds of the Suburbs remnants of a tree, intersected by Tesla's creation, run amuck. Electricity comes from other planets.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents

This House Is Not For Sale

...But Make me an Offer Anyway MoFo

3933 Ravenswood

“bad” photo, but still makes me smirk.

Nearby, a former firehouse, now a loft conversion, is on the market for $1,275,000. 3933 Ravenswood was not in pristine shape, on the exterior anyway. In my mental movie theater, I imagine sitting on the porch, and watching folk walk on my lawn, trampling my flowers, to 'make an offer for the lot' several thousand times until in frustration I make this sign. However, the sign is so small, you don't really notice it until you are right up on it.

Tags: Chicago

smirk. Teh gay, and the GOP, joined at the hips.

Frank Rich: The Gay Old Party Comes Out The political party fond of demonizing homosexuals is as well-stocked with trusted gay leaders as virtually every other power center in America.

Paging Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council: Here’s a gay Republican story you probably did not hear last week. On Tuesday a card-carrying homosexual, Mark Dybul, was sworn into office at the State Department with his partner holding the Bible. Dr. Dybul, the administration’s new global AIDS coordinator, was flanked by Laura Bush and Condi Rice. In her official remarks, the secretary of state referred to the mother of Dr. Dybul’'s partner as his “mother-in-law.”

Could wedding bells be far behind? It was all on display, photo included, on www.state.gov. And while you’re cruising the Internet, a little creative Googling will yield a long list of who else is gay, openly and not, in the highest ranks of both the Bush administration and the Republican hierarchy. The openly gay range from Steve Herbits, the prescient right-hand consultant to Donald Rumsfeld who foresees disaster in Iraq in Bob Woodward’'s book “State of Denial,” to Israel Hernandez, the former Bush personal aide and current Commerce Department official whom the president nicknamed “Altoid boy.” (Let’s not go there.)

If anything good has come out of the Foley scandal, it is surely this: The revelation that the political party fond of demonizing homosexuals each election year is as well-stocked with trusted and accomplished gay leaders as virtually every other power center in America. “What you’re really seeing is the Republican Party on the Hill,” says Rich Tafel, the former leader of the gay Log Cabin Republicans whom George W. Bush refused to meet with during the 2000 campaign. “Across the board gay people are in leadership positions.” Yet it is this same party’'s Congressional leadership that in 2006 did almost nothing about government spending, Iraq, immigration or ethics reform, but did drop everything to focus on a doomed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Tags: Frank_Rich

• The Corpus Callosum - Thoughts on LSD Treatment for Alcoholism
  read about this study 10-15 years ago. "journal article (‘Hitting Highs at Rock Bottom’: LSD Treatment for Alcoholism, 1950–1970) on the use of LSD for treatment of alcoholism."
  (tags: LSD alcohol)

Surprisingly good Australian version of a “Western”, written by Nick Cave.

“The Proposition” (John Hillcoat)

The Proposition

Aussie director John Hillcoat helmed this gripping, epic-scale Western set in the thick of the 1880s outback. When no-nonsense lawman Capt. Stanley (Ray Winstone) apprehends the notorious Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) and his younger sibling, Mikey (Richard Wilson), Stanley makes Charlie an unsavory proposition: If he murders his outlaw brother, Arthur (Danny Huston), Mikey will escape the hangman's noose. Emily Watson plays Stanley's genteel wife.

I have a basic grasp of Australian history, but no claim to a deep understanding of Aboriginal-Anglo relations. Not really a political film, even though that's a strand, as much as a meditation on sunsets, impotence and rage.

Nick Cave should write more screenplays.

Tags: Film, /Netflix

If either McCain or Senator Clinton are elected to the Presidency in 2008, I'd be quite surprised. Can they just be locked away in the Yucca Mountain site until 2009?

MoDo has more details on the petulance of both.

Maureen Dowd: Is Chivalry Shivved? John McCain must be wary as he figures out how to push Hillary Clinton around.

Hillary Clinton became a senator because men abused her. Her husband humiliated her in public and her opponent, Rick Lazio, hounded her in a debate. She was a sympathetic figure to many voters only after she went from pushy to pushed around.

So John McCain must be wary as he figures out how to push her around. He must slide in the shiv chivalrously.

This week, he managed to attack her three ways in one sentence: as a senator, as a wife and as a future opponent. This raises the question: Is it a smart move, pleasing a base that cringes at stories of these celebrity senators palling around, knocking back drinks on an overseas trip? Or is it a misstep, making Mr. McCain look like a sexist bully for pointedly blaming his fellow senator for her husband’s old policies — and calling her “Mrs. Clinton” just to rub it in?

On a trip to Detroit to campaign for a Republican Senate candidate, Mr. McCain singled out Hillary for a shellacking on North Korea. “I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush administration policies that the framework agreement her husband’s administration negotiated was a failure,” he said.

The next morning on CBS’s “The Early Show,” he was asked why he would blame the Clintons for North Korea’s batty behavior.

It’s clear, after all, that the North Koreans are acting immaturely in response to W. acting immaturely. They want attention because the Bush administration inexplicably refuses to talk to them. And they know, in the pre-emptive world ordained by nutty Dick Cheney, that the best way to protect themselves from the fate of Saddam Hussein is to actually go nuclear, rather than merely fantasizing and boasting about it.

But the Republicans love to blame Bill Clinton for everything, from the radioactive Congressional page explosion to the radioactive North Korean explosion.

Mr. McCain told Hannah Storm that he “was responding to attacks made on President Bush by Mrs. Clinton, Senator Kerry, Senator Reid and other Democrats.” Hillary advisers noted that she was called “Mrs.” while the others were called “Senator.”

Tags: 2008_election, /Clinton, /Dowd

Poor Ed Rosenthal. You'd think he advocated something so dire that entire Federal government is after him. Oh right, he supports giving cancer patients reefer and other crimes against the state.

Seriously, can these charges be any more trumped up?

Medical Marijuana Advocate Faces New U.S. Indictment

A leading medical marijuana advocate who successfully appealed his federal conviction this year has been indicted on new criminal charges.

...The man, Ed Rosenthal, a well-known spokesman for the movement to legalize marijuana, was already facing a retrial on federal charges of growing marijuana for medical use. He is to be arraigned Monday in Federal District Court here on the new indictment, unsealed late Thursday.

It accuses Mr. Rosenthal, 61, of 14 felony charges that include cultivating marijuana plants; laundering $1,850, which the government says he got from selling the plants to medical dispensaries; and tax evasion. His tax returns, prosecutors said, omitted income from the sale of the plants.

Reached Friday at his home in Oakland, Mr. Rosenthal said he thought the efforts to prosecute him were part of a campaign to shutter medical marijuana sites in California and to subvert the state law allowing them.

“They want to shut me up,” he said. “They are vindictive. They don’t like anybody beating them, and they will go after you again and again until they wear you down.”

The state and the federal government have been locked in a legal and cultural battle over the medicinal merits of marijuana since 1996, when California voters approved a ballot measure giving seriously ill patients the right to buy and use the drug with a doctor’s prescription.

Aren't there more important crimes to solve, and criminals to find than Ed Rosenthal?

The new charges against Mr. Rosenthal are similar to those in a 2002 federal indictment. At the time, Mr. Rosenthal worked for the City of Oakland and was sanctioned under city and state laws to grow marijuana plants and sell them to dispensaries. He was convicted by a jury, but a federal appeals court overturned the decision, citing juror misconduct. He was granted a new trial, and prosecutors were moving forward, but the new federal indictment supersedes the earlier one.

Tags: DEA, /drugs

Keep meaning to watch this seminal film as part of my quest to see every movie on the IMDb top 250 list.

“The Battle of Algiers - Criterion Collection” (Gillo Pontecorvo)

Gillo Pontecorvo, 86, Director of ‘Battle of Algiers,’ Dies The Italian filmmaker explored terrorism and torture in colonial Algeria in the influential 1965 classic.

but for some reason, haven't.

Tags: obituary

We've written about this previously (also here, and here), and haven't changed our mind since. Have mastered the art of a two egg omelette in a stainless steel pan (instead of scrambled poached, I'm afraid), so what need do we have for possible death dealing teflon pans?

Shortcuts: Teflon Is Great for Politicians, but Is It Safe for Regular People?

The government says nonstick pans pose no health threat, but not everyone is so sure.

...
Just last year, lawyers for consumers in numerous states, including New York, filed separate class-action lawsuits based on state consumer laws on behalf of millions of Teflon cookware users.

The lawsuits have been consolidated into one class action, which is now pending in Federal District Court in Des Moines.

All of this is weighing on consumers like Penny Resnick, a dentist from New Rochelle, N.Y., who was examining cookware at a local Home Goods store recently. She said she threw away her Teflon frying pans a few years ago, after hearing about the possible dangers on a talk radio show.

...
One issue that can be confusing is the potential environmental and health dangers posed by chemicals used in manufacturing versus the risk possibly created when Teflon cookware is heated and fumes might be emitted.

Of particular concern is perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA, also known as C-8, which is a crucial ingredient in the making of Teflon.

In 2004, DuPont agreed to pay more than $100 million to settle another class-action lawsuit brought by Ohio and West Virginia residents who contended that releases of PFOA from a plant in West Virginia contaminated supplies of drinking water.

A similar lawsuit was filed this year on behalf of additional West Virginia residents who were not included in the original lawsuit, but whose drinking water was later found to be contaminated.

This year, DuPont, seven other manufacturers and the Environmental Protection Agency announced a voluntary program to virtually eliminate the release of PFOA into the environment by 2015.

The class-action lawsuit filed last year focused not on the manufacturing process but on the cookware itself; the lawsuit does not claim personal injuries, but said that for decades DuPont failed to warn consumers of hazards from using its nonstick cookware.

The suit contended that the pots and pans, when heated to very high temperatures, release toxic particles, including PFOA. The goal is to have DuPont stop making and selling Teflon cookware.

...the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) says research has shown that Teflon cookware can harm birds and cause flu-like symptoms in humans by emitting toxic fumes when heated at high temperatures.

“Unfortunately, there is more that we don’t know than we do,” said Lauren Sucher, a spokeswoman for the environmental group.

PFOA is found at a very low level in the blood of most Americans, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and studies have shown it can cause health problems in laboratory animals.

But the agency does not know exactly how people are being exposed to the chemical, nor how dangerous it is in the human body.

Ms. Sucher said her organization recommended avoiding nonstick cookware. After all, she said, the old-fashioned kind “was good enough for our grandmothers.”

The group, she said, is more concerned about other ways material containing PFOA is used and released into the environment: to make clothes and carpets stain-resistant, for example, or to ensure that food packaging like fast-food bags or the lining of some microwave popcorn bags is grease-resistant.

For those who still want the convenience, or the option to cook with less fat, she and others suggest never heating an empty pan. In general, she said, cook on low to medium temperatures rather than high settings.

Robert L. Wolke, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh and author of “What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained” (W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), said he did not believe that nonstick coating posed a hazard, but recommended that in general, it was a good idea to use a ventilation hood to disperse fumes.

Also, do not use sharp utensils with Teflon coating, and throw out the pan if it is peeling.
...

And keep pet birds out of the kitchen.

This may sound strange. But a new round of Teflon concerns rocketed around the country last year when “Bob in Atlanta” wrote to the Dear Abby column that he lost his beloved Amazon parrot of 26 years when the bird inhaled fumes from an empty Teflon pan left burning on the stove.

Tags: environment, /EPA, /Teflon

I'm of two minds about the impending death of the movie studio.

Wall Street Woos Film Producers, Skirting Studios Investors are bypassing studio bosses and dealing directly with producers to gain more control.

One the one hand, breaking free of 'gatekeepers' is usually a good thing. Studio heads have very specific ideas as to what gets produced, and frequently, their choices are not choices which resonate with me.

On the other hand, studio heads sometimes chose to make art movies, realizing full well the movie may not break box office records. Having Wall Street as the sole dictator of the 'green light' might be even worse:

A result for moviegoers is that they could begin to see even more thrillers, comedies and horror movies at the multiplex — the types of movies Wall Street favors, because of their more predictable payoff.

Tags: film_snob, /money

• The flying spaghetti monster | Salon Books
  excellent interview with Richard Dawkins
  (tags: Religion atheism interview Intelligent_Design)
• Penelope - MozillaWiki
  "The "Penelope" project's intention is to join the Eudora® user experience with the Mozilla platform. We intend to produce a version of Eudora that is open source and based on mozilla and Thunderbird. It's *not* our intention to compete with Thunderbird;
  (tags: email internet OSX Mac software open-source)
• Interview with co-author of Lancet study of Iraqi deaths
  In re: Iraqi death Lancet survey "cluster survey approach, is the standard way of measuring mortality in very poor countries where the government isn’t very functional or in times of war."
  (tags: Iraq statistics straw_man)

I need to wash my eyes with soap: somebody looking for a David Irving T shirt landed on my page. Bleh. Free speech is fine, just keep it to yourself.

IP Address 74.116.162.249

Country : United States

Operating System Microsoft WinXP

Browser Opera 9.01

Opera/9.01 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)

Referring URL http://www.google.co...ra&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Search Engine google.com

Search Words david irving t-shirt

leading to this post.

Tags: civil_liberties, /free_speech

Everyone's favorite six monther, Thomas Friedman, has an interesting (note to self: buy a fracking thesaurus damn it!) column about energy independence. In the abstract, yeah, sure, go for it, potential vote seekers. Just don't forget to pressure the auto industry as well as energy companies. All part of the same problem, should be part of the solution. Color me skeptical though that any blow dried political campaigner is actually going to criticize corporate America.

Friedman writes:

The Energy Mandate - New York Times

James Carville, the legendary Clinton campaign adviser who coined the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” knows a gut issue when he sees one. So when Mr. Carville contacted me the other day to tell me about the newest gut issue his polling was turning up for candidates in the 2006 elections, I was all ears.

“Energy independence,” he said. “It’s now the No. 1 national security issue. ... It’s become kind of a joke with us, because no matter how we ask the question, that’s what comes up.”

So, for instance, the Democracy Corps, a Democratic strategy group spearheaded by Mr. Carville and the former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg, asked the following question in an Aug. 27 survey of likely voters: “Which of the following would you say should be the two most important national security priorities for the administration and Congress over the next few years?”

Coming in No. 1, with 42 percent, was “reducing dependence on foreign oil.” Coming in a distant second at 26 percent was “combating terrorism.” Coming in third at 25 percent was “the war in Iraq,” and tied at 21 percent were “securing our ports, nuclear plants and chemical factories” and “addressing dangerous countries like Iran and North Korea.” “Strengthening America’s military” drew 12 percent. Mr. Carville also noted that because their polls are of “likely voters,” they have a slight Republican bias — i.e., they aren’t just polling a bunch of liberal greens.

Tags: Energy, /Thomas_Friedman

“The Big Lebowski” (Joel Coen)

The Big Lebowski Phonetic Alphabet-- A Grupthink Topic The Big Lebowski Phonetic Alphabet

I find myself in a line of work where where I need to communicate long strings of letters over the telephone very precisely.... And frankly, this NATO Phonetic Alphabet business just isn't cutting it anymore:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_pho...ic_alphabet

I propose that we here on Grupthink create a new system - A BETTER system - Using _only_ characters, phrases, places, and objects that are featured in the cinematic classic The Big Lebowski.

I voted, did you?

Tags: film_snob

I'd like to shake Mr. Dawkins' hand (metaphorically anyway) for this comment.

The flying spaghetti monster | Salon Books In the roiling debate between science and religion, it would be hard to exaggerate the enormous influence of Richard Dawkins. The British scientist is religion's chief prosecutor -- “Darwin's rottweiler,” as one magazine called him -- and quite likely the world's most famous atheist. Speaking to the American Humanist Association, Dawkins once said, “I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.”

Right on!

“The God Delusion” (Richard Dawkins)

...Dawkins' outspoken atheism is a relatively recent turn in his public career. He first made his name 30 years ago with his groundbreaking book “The Selfish Gene,” which reshaped the field of evolutionary biology by arguing that evolution played out at the level of the gene itself, not the individual animal. Dawkins now holds a chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Thanks to his tremendous talent for clear and graceful writing, he's done more to popularize evolutionary biology than any other scientist, with the possible exception of Stephen Jay Gould. Dawkins has a gift for explaining science through brilliant metaphors. Phrases like “the selfish gene” and “the blind watchmaker” didn't only crystallize certain scientific ideas; they entered the English vernacular. And his concept of “memes” -- ideas themselves evolving like genes -- spawned a new way of thinking about cultural evolution.

Dawkins' latest book turns to his more recent passions. In “The God Delusion,” Dawkins fulminates against religious moderates as well as fundamentalists. He argues that the existence of God is itself a scientific conjecture, one that doesn't hold up to the evidence. And he dismisses the entire discipline of theology: I have yet to see any good reason to suppose that theology (as opposed to biblical history, literature, etc.) is a subject at all.“

read entire, interesting interview here

”The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author “ (Richard Dawkins)

Tags: religion

Truer words have probably been spoken, but still....

Karen Elizabeth Gordon


“Either I've been missing something or nothing has been going on.”

“The Disheveled Dictionary: A Curious Caper Through Our Sumptuous Lexicon” (Karen Elizabeth Gordon)

• Chicagoist: CTA To Close Washington Red Line Stop for Two Years
  used my photo. " a CTA press release that says starting at midnight on Monday, October 23, the station will be closed for up to two years. "
  (tags: CTA train photograph swanksalot)
• TPMmuckraker: Government using LSD to interrogate
  Freaky, they are bringing back all the old guys from the Cold War (Operation MK-Ultra anyone?) "In a new court filing on behalf of alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla, his lawyers allege that government interrogators forced him to take LSD, Gerstein reporte
  (tags: drugs torture MK_Ultra LSD)
• Find The Atheist Politician Contest! | Unscrewing The Inscrutable
  too funny. Bet anyone found won't be high up the food chain. " Secular Coalition for America (SCA) will award one thousand dollars ($1,000) to the person who identifies the highest level atheist, humanist, freethinker or other nontheist currently holding
  (tags: Religion atheism)
• Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness: I'm Waiting For "Blogging For Dummies For Superdummies"
  groupthink tis so much fun
  (tags: blogs blogofascism humor)
• Did Christopher Hitchens admit that he and other reporters sandbagged Howard Dean?
  Snitchens thinks himself more powerful than reality would admit
  (tags: Republican nutjob)
• Esquire - The Pathology of Gilbert Arenas
  Gilbert Arenas is cool, and wacky, or some blend "Other guys will be out, the steak house, the clubs, just rollin'. Me, I'm fine. Time is falling off. Sun's coming up. I'm doing more sit-ups than the night before. I'll watch three or four movies. I'll wat
  (tags: NBA Basketball Washington odd)

Oh yeah, this worked so well during the Cold War.

Al Qaeda Suspect: U.S. Government Gave Me LSD - October 11, 2006 - The New York Sun ... “He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution,” the chief federal defender in Miami, Michael Caruso, wrote. “Additionally, Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.”

MK-Ultra wiki, if you had never heard of it.

I've read about MK-Ultra and the CIA's explorations of weaponizing drugs in both of these quite fascinating books:

“Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond” (Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain)

“Storming Heaven: Lsd and the American Dream” (Jay Stevens)

(head nod to TPM Muckraker, twice)

Tags: CIA, /civil_liberties, /drugs, /torture

Already dissipating, but seems a little early to have snow.

snow shower

West Loop.

Even though I was born in Canada, I lived long enough in Texas that snow still brings out my inner child: I want to go outside and play in the flakes, and expect school to have been cancelled.

Tags: snow

• Eudora is going Open Source
  We still have 3 machines/users that run Eudora Pro. " QUALCOMM and the Mozilla Foundation today announced that future versions of Eudora® will be based upon the same technology platform as the open source Mozilla"
  (tags: open-source OSX software)
• Merlin’s top 5 super-obvious, “no-duh” ways to immediately improve your life | 43 Folders
  " share the original draft of what I came up with, because it’s sufficient as a cocktail-napkin version of what I think 43 Folders has to say to people."
  (tags: tips GTD)
• Network newscasts comply with White House declaration that "[n]othing more will come from" resignation of Susan Ralston, a Bush aide with ties to Abramoff
  "Ralston, formerly an administrative assistant to Abramoff, who was sentenced to more than five years in prison in March after pleading guilty to fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials, stepped down from her position as special assis
  (tags: culture_of_corruption corruption Republicans Rove)
• the mighty mjd sports blog » Rasheed Wallace Could Have A Record Year
  agreed. Least favorite part of the NBA is the whining. "The NBA has adopted a new “zero-tolerance” policy for bitching at officials, and that’s the best damn news I’ve heard all day."
  (tags: NBA Basketball)
• Geek to Live: Make your own font - Lifehacker
  "Fontifier, a webapp that creates a TrueType font from your handwriting"
  (tags: fonts software)
• Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4: Email notification doesn't get sent after fax is received
  "In Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 or later, you can set Print & Fax preferences to email a notification whenever your computer receives a fax. However, if you don't have a static IP address from your ISP, you might not get the email, even though the fax arrives
  (tags: Macintosh OSX tips)
• R D659 brings contemporary architecture to empty nesters
  "With the West Loop being more trendy, having more art galleries and nightlife, we felt it was the right place to go for a very contemporary building that would be differentiated from most of the other stuff that’s out there"
  (tags: West_Loop architecture)
• Message in a bottle
  "From now until November 8, Yahoo! users around the world can contribute their photos, words, video, and audio to the Yahoo! Time Capsule."
  (tags: cool photography)

There is a green god, but her name cannot be mentioned over the internet tubes for fear of the DEA.

Ummm, yeah, happy to hear that President Bill Moyers has a new show on.

Fundamental Views of Global Warming | CorrenteWire In a segment of Moyers on America, Bill Moyers takes a look at evangelicals who differ from The Party Line on the subject of global warming in a series titled Is God Green?: A new holy war is growing within the conservative evangelical community, with implications for both the global environment and American politics. For years liberal Christians and others have made protection of the environment a moral commitment. Now a number of conservative evangelicals are joining the fight, arguing that man’s stewardship of the planet is a biblical imperative and calling for action to stop global warming.

just added a season pass to my TiVo.

Tags: environment, /religion, /television

Facts are dangerous tools, part the who-remembers-anymore-but-it-is-a-large number.

Water for millions at risk as glaciers melt away Crisis threatens South America and Asia as glaciers melt away.

he world's glaciers and ice caps are now in terminal decline because of global warming, scientists have discovered. A survey has revealed that the rate of melting across the world has sharply accelerated in recent years, placing even previously stable glaciers in jeopardy. The loss of glaciers in South America and Asia will threaten the water supplies of millions of people within a few decades, the experts warn.
Georg Kaser, a glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, who led the research, said: “The glaciers are going to melt and melt until they are all gone. There are not any glaciers getting bigger any more.”

Loss of land-based ice is one of the clearest signals of global temperature rise, and the state of glaciers has become a key argument in the debate over climate change. Last year, New Scientist magazine published a letter from the television botanist David Bellamy, a renowned climate sceptic, which claimed that 555 of 625 glaciers measured by the World Glacier Monitoring Service have been growing since 1980. His claim was quickly discredited, but the perception that glaciers are both growing and shrinking remains.

Dr Kaser said that “99.99% of all glaciers” were now shrinking. Increased winter snowfall meant that a few, most notably in New Zealand and Norway, got bigger during the 1990s, he said, but a succession of very warm summers since then had reversed the trend. His team combined different sets of measurements which used stakes and holes drilled into the ice to record the change in mass of more than 300 glaciers since the 1940s. They extrapolated these results to cover thousands of smaller and remote glaciers not directly surveyed.

The results revealed that the world's glaciers and ice caps - defined as all land-based ice except the mighty Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets - began to shrink far more quickly in 2001. On average, the world's glaciers and ice caps lost enough water between 1961 and 1990 to raise global sea levels by 0.35-0.4 mm each year. For 2001-2004, the figure rose to 0.8-1mm each year.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists say: “Late 20th century glacier wastage is essentially a response to post-1970 global warming.” Dr Kaser said: “There is very, very strong evidence that this is down to human-caused changes in the atmosphere.”

Are we screwed or what? Is it too early to make a martini? (parenthetical note: have re-discovered a love for martinis, made the old fashioned way, with gin and sweet vermouth)

Tags: global_warming, /water

Another data point for our potential move to Europe. The United States is entirely too lenient on chemical manufacturers.

EU Panel Strengthens Landmark Chemical Bill - WSJ.com In a setback for global industry, a European Parliament panel strengthened a landmark bill that would more tightly regulate chemicals in the European Union before sending it toward final passage.

The petrochemical industry had been trying to reduce the estimated $6.3 billion cost of complying with the new law over the next decade by asking the EU to accept chemical-safety and environmental data already submitted to other regulatory bodies. That would have reduced the number of expensive new tests.

The EU Parliament's environmental committee rejected an amendment from a conservative Dutch lawmaker that would have required the EU to accept data prepared for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, of Paris, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other chemical regulators.

The text of the law -- dubbed Reach for “registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals” -- already encourages the EU to make use of OECD data. The National Petrochemical Refiners Association, based in Washington, had lobbied in Brussels to remove any ambiguity about whether such data would meet EU standards.
...
On one of the most hard-fought points, the environmental panel also voted to require companies to substitute safer chemicals whenever possible in manufacturing processes. “It is an incentive [for companies] to look at more possible substitutes and ecofriendly alternatives,” said Guido Sacconi, the Italian Socialist shepherding the legislation through Parliament.

Tags: environment, /pollution, /regulation

Good thing we have (faux) Christians running things. Seems to have helped send plenty of people to their death early.

Iraqi Death Toll Exceeds 600,000, Study Estimates - WSJ.com A new study asserts that roughly 600,000 Iraqis have died from violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, a figure many times higher than any previous estimate.

..The study, to be published Saturday in the British medical journal the Lancet, was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health by sending teams of Iraqi doctors across Iraq from May through July. The findings are sure to draw fire from skeptics and could color the debate over the war ahead of congressional elections next month.

The Johns Hopkins team conducted its study using a methodology known as “cluster sampling.” That involved randomly picking 47 clusters of households for a total 1,849 households, scattered across Iraq. Team members interviewed each household about any deaths in the family during the 40 months since the invasion, as well as in the year before the invasion. The team says it reviewed death certificates for 92% of all deaths reported. Based on those figures, it tabulated national mortality rates for various periods before and after the start of the war. The mortality rate last year was nearly four times the preinvasion rate, the study found.

“Since March 2003, an additional 2.5% of Iraq's population has died above what would have occurred without conflict,” the report said. The country's population is roughly 24 million people.

Human Rights Watch has estimated Saddam Hussein's regime killed 250,000 to 290,000 people over 20 years.

Disgusting. Such senseless death and destruction. No doubt the researchers are about to be personally attacked, and their methodology ridiculed by the mouth-breathing minions. Appears soundly researched to me.

Paul Bolton, a public-health researcher at Boston University who has reviewed the study, called the methodology “excellent” and said it was standard procedure in a wide range of studies he has worked on. “You can't be sure of the exact number, but you can be quite sure that you are in the right ballpark,” he said.

A similar, smaller study by the same team in 2004 put the number of deaths at the time at 9,000 to 194,000. That report drew fire for the breadth of its estimate. In part to offset such criticism, the researchers said they picked the largest sample possible for this survey, after considering the high level of danger involved in sending teams door-to-door in Iraq.

The study's lead researchers, Gilbert Burnham and Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins, have done studies in the Congo, Rwanda and other war zones. “This is a standard methodology that the U.S. government and others have encouraged groups to use in developing countries,” said Mr. Burnham, who defended the study as “a scientifically extremely strong paper.”

This study, “The Human Cost of the War in Iraq,” puts civilian fatalities at 426,369 to 793,663 but gives a 95% certainty to the figure of 601,027.

Hamit Dardagan, co-founder of Iraq Body Count, a London-based human-rights group, called the Lancet study's figures “pretty shockingly high.” His group tabulates the civilian death toll based on media reports augmented by local hospital and morgue records. His group says it has accumulated reports of as many as 48,693 civilian deaths caused by the U.S. intervention.

Mr. Burnham said the disparity between his survey and tabulations like Iraq Body Count are largely because of the heavy media and government focus on Baghdad and a few other cities. “What our data show is that the level of violence is going on throughout the country,” he said.

Tags: Impeachment, /Iraq

If one ever wondered why public approval of Congress is so low, look no further. Don't forget Denny Hastert either

Seat in Congress Helps Mr. Taylor Help His Business - WSJ.com Charles Taylor, wealthy businessman and banker, owns at least 14,000 acres of prime land in western North Carolina. He's also the local congressman. So when he steers federal dollars to his district, sometimes he helps himself, too.

Last year, Mr. Taylor added $11.4 million to a big federal transportation bill to widen U.S. Highway 19, the main road through Maggie Valley, a rural resort town in the Great Smoky Mountains. His companies own thousands of acres near the highway there and had already developed a subdivision called Maggie Valley Leisure Estates.

Mr. Taylor also got $3.8 million in federal funds for a park now being built in downtown Asheville with fountains, tree-shaded terraces and an open-air stage. It's directly in front of the Blue Ridge Savings Bank, flagship of his financial empire. He is among the richest congressmen with assets of at least $72 million, records show.

The Republican lawmaker is one of at least a half-dozen House members whose public actions in directing special-interest spending known as earmarks have also benefited their private interests or those of business partners, according to congressional, corporate and real-estate records. Among them is a senior Democrat, Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia.

...But the growth of earmarks and the secrecy that shrouds the practice inevitably raises questions of self-dealing. Earmarking has been at the center of the influence-peddling and corruption probes that have shaken public confidence in Congress this year. The practice also played a central role in the case against former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham. The California Republican was imprisoned after pleading guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense firms in exchange for earmarks and other favors....

Earmarks are different because lawmakers can directly insert them into spending bills, often without public scrutiny. Many lobbyists and corporations have discovered in recent years that one of the fastest ways to get the spending they desire is to approach an individual lawmaker of either party on the House or Senate appropriation panel about an earmark. That has fed the growth in earmarks to an estimated $47.4 billion last year from $19.5 billion a decade earlier, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Earmarks range from pet projects -- such as Mr. Taylor's $500,000 earmark to help build a Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C. -- to billion-dollar cargo-aircraft contracts that weren't sought by the Pentagon but are funded to keep jobs in a lawmaker's district. In California, Rep. Gary Miller steered $1.28 million to widen a road near an upscale shopping center he helped develop. The center is expected to include a Target store and 120 residential units. His business partner was Lewis Group, one of the nation's largest builders and a big contributor to his political campaign.

Federal prosecutors in Washington, Los Angeles and San Diego are looking closely at earmarking in the wake of the Cunningham case. At least four congressmen, including Rep. Jerry Lewis, a Republican from California who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, are being investigated for their role in earmarking or ties to lobbyists specializing in earmarks, people close to the inquiries say. Each lawmaker has denied impropriety. Mr. Taylor isn't known to be a target of any investigation.

Prosecuting these cases will be difficult because an earmark only becomes illegal if the legislator is clearly acting in exchange for money or to promote his private business interests. Under the prevailing interpretation of the constitutional separation of powers, most congressional correspondence and deliberations are out of reach of prosecutors.

Tags: Congress, /corruption

MoDo interviews Ms. Fiorina, or at least reads

Tough Choices

This quote sort of bothers me though:

Neenu Sharma, an M.B.A. student in the new Columbia program, says the moral of the story is that leadership works best with both sexes involved. “You need the woman there to know what’s actually going on, but you need the man there to deal with the critical emotions at the time.”

I don't buy it. Some men are just as emotional as women are alleged to be. One only needs to look at our Resident's emotional response to Saddam Hussein's supposed assassination attempt on Bush the Smarter.

How Carly Lost Her Gender Groove - Maureen Dowd Carly Fiorina prided herself on being adept at succeeding in a man’s world without whining about sexism.
In her new memoir, “Tough Choices,” the expelled C.E.O. of Hewlett-Packard — the first female head of a Fortune 20 company — describes how she insisted on going along to a business meeting at a Washington strip club when she started out as an ambitious young woman at AT&T.
“I was scared to death,” she writes, adding that she wore her most conservative dress-for-success business suit and little bow tie, carried her briefcase like “a shield of honor,” and repeated the mantra, “I am a professional woman,” even when her cabdriver asked her if she was the new act for the club, where babes in see-through negligees danced on tables.
“In a show of empathy that brings tears to my eyes still,” she recounts, “each woman who approached the table would look the situation over and say: ‘Sorry, gentlemen. Not till the lady leaves.’ ”

Tags: Dowd

• Pebkac - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  "PEBKAC is an acronym which stands for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair"
  (tags: language Technology Wiki)
• Bacteria waiting for their movie
  I can foresee a Sci-Fi plot being written from some of the tenets
  (tags: film script idea)
• Charley Rosen: NBA - What transpires at training camp
  Tex "Winter (who was in his late 70s at the time) jumped on to the court and suddenly assumed a defensive stance in front of the surprised Shaq, who executed a swift and precise cross-over."
  (tags: NBA Basketball)
• Amazing Photoshop Brush Resource Site!
  170 Photoshop brushes
  (tags: photoshop)
• Will Battlestar Galactica make a jump to NBC? - TV Squad
  Of course, publicists are paid to lie. "However, a little phone call over to NBC Universal shoots down that rumor. Jessica Nevarez in the publicity department tells us, "It is an online rumor that someone started and it is absolutely false."
  (tags: sciFi television)
• Talking Points Memo: John McCain
  McCain is a putz "John McCain seems to have some difficulties with physics and the historical record in his attempt to blame Bill Clinton for the latest crisis on the Korean Peninsula."
  (tags: Republicans liars Korea North_Korea)

Can I do the opposite, and get 80% more caffeine in my tea?

Cut 80% of the caffeine from your tea Web site Tea Time World Wide has posted a handy tip cutting down on the caffeine content of your favorite teas without switching to decaf.

Oh, guess not. Stupid tip then. Well, I could seep two batches of tea, one only for 30 seconds, and then mix 'em, but sounds like a lot of work, and a waste of good tea.

Tags: tea

Copyright thugs are ruining America.

OregonLive.com : Everything Oregon A performance of the Jimi Hendrix classic, “The Wind Cries Mary,” may cost Michael Dorr his restaurant. Dorr, the 37-year-old owner of Imbibe on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, has been slapped with a federal lawsuit by companies that own the rights to a trio of popular classics that were performed at Dorr's restaurant in 2005. The songs at the center of the suit?

Other than the Hendrix song, the music companies say Stevie Wonder's “That Girl,” and a 1971 tune, “Slippin' into Darkness.”

Dorr says a rep from the American Society of Musicians and Publishers paid an unannounced visit to his restaurant one night and heard covers of the songs performed by local band “Black Notes.”

Because his place features local musicians and covers are rare, he didn't think he had to pay the musicians and publishers group an estimated $2,000 to cover performances of copyrighted tunes.

But the owners of the songs, including Wonder and Hendrix's estate, say he does.

Now they're suing Dorr for copyright infringement - and they're seeking payment of between $750 and $30,000 for each song, along with attorney fees.

Just is not right. I have extreme sympathy for Mr. Dorr. Running a restaurant is difficult enough without copywrong thugs smashing up your place with their subpoenas.

When I waited tables at the Mag South, periodically a weasel faced rep from ASCAP and/or BMI would come and harass Kent Cole, the owner of the cafe, because of the music being piped over the speakers. I wonder if he ever got in real trouble? They did switch from allowing staff to program music (me being a prime suspect) to simply playing the radio, with annoying commercials and all.

Tags: Austin, /copyright

This anecdote is only funny if it didn't happen to you, but it didn't happen to me, so I'm recounting it for your amusment. D was on the phone with a real estate broker this morning, when the broker says (paraphrased), “Oh, I'm getting pulled over”. About an hour later, the broker called back and recounted that: she was driving from her house to a nearby Verizon store to pick up a replacement cell phone headset, was pulled over by a cop for talking on her cellphone while driving*, did not have her drivers license on her person, thus was arrested and taken down to jail. A friend bailed her out. Yikes.

*recent press coverage of a the lack of enforcement of the ban against using cell phone while driving, especially since a young man was killed has some relevance, no doubt.

A motorcyclist was killed Saturday in an accident caused by a driver talking on her cell phone, Chicago police said.

Rodney Hadley, 23, of the 1800 block of South Homan Avenue, was struck by a vehicle in the 3400 block of West Ogden Avenue, according to a spokesman with the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Karen Watson, 20, of the 12300 block of South Emerald Avenue, was cited with failure to yield the right of way while making a left turn, failure to produce a driver's license, use of a mobile telephone while driving and no valid state registration, Officer JoAnn Taylor said.

I've been in several near-accidents due to careless cell phone yammers, I say, enforce the law, damn it! We have a bluetooth enabled connection always on in our car, which means if D and I are both in the car, I have to listen to her conversations.

Tags: arrested, /Telephone

Danger! Sound Horn Remnant of the late Industrial Age.

that's a lot of chicken wings.

over-saturated, and yet...

Land of a thousand stories afternoon sunlight reflections on the Social Security Administration building, 600 W Madison

Police Training Grounds - Keep Dogs off Grass They aren't kidding either. No 'poop' grass allowed.

Solve Not sure if we can solve the Belushi problem. Err, the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed problem. I think it might be a Separated-At-Birth art project.

Tags: architecture, /Chicago

Apparently, fictionalizing the assassination of a sitting president is controversial for some reason.

Guardian UK:

Two of America's biggest cinema chains, Regal and Cinemark, have refused to screen the controversial UK-produced Death of a President when it is released later this month.

Terrell Falk, a spokesperson for Cinemark, told the Guardian: “The assassination of a sitting president is problematic subject matter.”

Gabriel Range's film, originally commissioned for television by Channel 4 and screened on More4 last night, uses a faux-documentary style to depict the assassination of George W Bush in October 2007.

The Music Box on Southport is apparently going to show it

(official site which separates reviews into two categories: have seen the film, and have not seen the film)

Hope I can get tickets - only playing one week.

Tags: assassination, /Film

• First Draft - Hey, Fuck You, Nora
  " Just who are the "liberal punsters on television". Somehow I missed Molly Ivins hosting Meet the Press and Jim Hightower empaneled on This Week."
  (tags: media Foley)
• Why isn't the Ken Mehlman lie a bigger story?
  "extremely important incident that occurred late in the day last Friday, when events typically get lost in the news cycle. As Think Progress documented, at some point during the day on Friday, the GOP decided to go on television and tell an outright lie"
  (tags: Republicans corruption liars)
• True Hoop: NBA Honcho David Stern: "We Have Wet Both Balls"
  "rare to see any public figure stand before the microphones and say "we have wet both balls."
  (tags: humor NBA Basketball)
• Boing Boing: Video testimony of vote machine whistleblower
  frack me. "In the video, Curtis testifies that Feeney asked him to write a program for touchscreen voting machines that could undetectably "flip the vote 51-49 to whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win.""
  (tags: Bush Diebold elections fraud Republicans)
• Urban Legends Reference Pages: Critter Country (Spot the Devil)
  John Ashcroft and calico cats
  (tags: religion repression Republicans)

Computer Programmer testifies that Tom Feeney (Speaker of the Houe of Florida at the time, currently US Representative) tried to pay him to rig election vote counts.

direct link here

via BoingBoing

Here's video of Clint Curtis, a former programmer for Yang Enterprises (YEI) in Florida, testifying under oath that Representative Tom Feeney asked him to write a voting machine program to rig elections. Feeney is Republican Congressman who was the Speaker of the House of Florida at the time, as well as a lobbyist for Yang Enterprises, and Yang Enterprises' corporate attorney. (Feeney was also named one of the “20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress” by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington).

In the video, Curtis testifies that Feeney asked him to write a program for touchscreen voting machines that could undetectably “flip the vote 51-49 to whoever you wanted

Tags: Diebold, /election, /fraud

as rumored....

Google Agrees to Buy YouTube Google agreed to buy video-sharing site YouTube in an all-stock deal worth about $1.65 billion, marking the largest acquisition in Google's history. Both firms reached licensing deals with media companies to carry videos online.

... The companies said they expect to close the transaction in the fourth quarter.

“We are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers,'' said Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive officer, in a press release. The price makes YouTube, a still-unprofitable startup, the most expensive purchase made by Google.

YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley said: ”By joining forces with Google, we can benefit from its global reach and technology leadership to deliver a more comprehensive entertainment experience for our users and to create new opportunities for our partners.“

The two companies separately today announced a series of deals to license content from music companies for their video services, and YouTube announced a content partnership and ad revenue-sharing deal with CBS Corp.

An agreement by Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group to make available thousands of videos on YouTube is particularly significant, since Universal Music Chief Executive Doug Morris last month told investors that YouTube violates copyright laws by allowing users to post music videos and other content. Universal Music has considered taking legal action against YouTube over that issue, say people familiar with the matter.

The YouTube deal is the largest acquisition in the eight year history of Google, Mountain View, Calif. It combines Google's global technical infrastructure and system for serving up advertisements from hundreds of thousands of advertisers with YouTube's leading position in serving up videos to users on the Web.

Hope Mark Cuban wasn't right (that now the copyright thugs are going to sue the flesh off of YouTube's new owners)
(Cuban's original post, The coming dramatic decline of youtube, and follow up Riddle me this copyright gurus), because I enjoy linking video content on my blog.

Some analysts and industry executives have warned that any acquirer of YouTube could face copyright headaches, including lawsuits by some content owners who are already concerned that their copyright video and music is available without their permission through YouTube. YouTube, which says it removes any videos with infringing content when notified, already faces one lawsuit related to this issue. Its agreements announced today with Universal Music, Sony BMG and the other content owners could potentially reduce any concerns about further lawsuits against YouTube for videos and music uploaded to its site by users without the copyright holders' permission.

Tags: copyright, /YouTube

“Coney Island Baby” (Lou Reed)

I do own a copy of Metal Machine Music, forever branding myself as a either a sucker for buying it, or a pretentious twit for sometimes liking to hear the squall. Or even trying to make my own version of a Metal Machine-esque song, albeit as filtered through Sonic Youth.

Lou Reed's oeuvre is complicated: a few magnificent albums, a few albums with a couple of great songs and the rest filler, and some real duds. Haven't heard Coney Island Baby in many, many years, maybe the distance will have done us both some good.

Lou Reed: Coney Island Baby: Pitchfork Record Review
...Thirty years ago, this is where Lou Reed went to bottom out and cash in his chips. Even if he wasn't dead, his career pretty much was: While hindsight has granted 1975's electronic-noise experiment Metal Machine Music (Amazon link) a contrarian classic-- celebrated more as a symbolic “fuck you” than as a musical composition-- the reality was it forced him into a precarious financial position where he was being sued by his ex-manager and living day-to-day in the Gramercy Park Hotel, with the bill footed by a sympathetic RCA boss who forced Reed to, in his own words, “go in and make a rock record.” But when he did, creating what was to become Coney Island Baby, instead of referring to his usual inspirations-- transvestites, junkies, the underclass-- Reed exposed a far more shadowy, fascinating entity: his heart.

By 1976, we had already heard Reed do pretty much everything that could be done in a pop song: shoot heroin, suck on a ding-dong, kiss shiny boots of leather. And yet nothing he had done was quite as shocking as the revelation on Coney Island Baby's devastating title track that he always “wanted to play football for the coach.”

Tags: rock_snob

Sunday night finally got to watch the season premier of the 3rd season to Battlestar Galactica. Good stuff, and a show which potentially could get corporatized and sanitized by NBC, if this rumor is true.

BattleStar Galactica News and Spoilers Word has begun to circulate that NBC's acquisition of 'Battlestar Galactica' is in the “waiting for the ink to dry” phase at this moment, and an official announcement could be days away. ... The question is:  will NBC be tolerant of the quasi-political themes that BSG seems to take from the most controversial page of world events?   In recent episodes, BSG has examined the flip side of insurgency, terrorists as freedom-fighters, and any number of edgy themes.  In the small arena of cable, it is easy to get away with forays into these troubled waters;  cable shows are expected to push the envelope to maintain any kind of viewership.

“Battlestar Galactica - Season 2.5 (Episodes 11-20)” (Universal Studios)

(update: or not)

Tags: sciFi, /television

I had a similar reaction to Hastert's claim as Paul Krugman - namely, whuh???!! George Soros is a convenient metaphor for wealthy liberal( ie, a demon for Hastert and his ilk) and I wish Soros would purchase Diebold and other electronic voting companies, but I seriously doubt he would give any thought to releasing Congressman Foley's own words to the public. Also ironic is the role of ABC news in Foley's Folly, the same ABC that was the network that broadcast the craptacular 9/11 hit job movie

Paul Krugman: The Paranoid Style - New York Times Last week Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, explained the real cause of the Foley scandal. “The people who want to see this thing blow up,” he said, “are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros.”

Most news reports, to the extent they mentioned Mr. Hastert’s claim at all, seemed to treat it as a momentary aberration. But it wasn’t his first outburst along these lines. Back in 2004, Mr. Hastert said: “You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where — if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from.”

Does Mr. Hastert really believe that George Soros and his operatives, conspiring with the evil news media, are responsible for the Foley scandal? Yes, he probably does. For one thing, demonization of Mr. Soros is widespread in right-wing circles. One can only imagine what people like Mr. Hastert or Tony Blankley, the editorial page editor of The Washington Times, who once described Mr. Soros as “a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust,” say behind closed doors.

More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics.”

“The Paranoid Style in American Politics: And Other Essays” (Richard Hofstadter)

Hofstadter’s essay introducing the term was inspired by his observations of the radical right-wingers who seized control of the Republican Party in 1964. Today, the movement that nominated Barry Goldwater controls both Congress and the White House.

Tags: 2006_Election, /Paul_Krugman, /Republicans

• ESPN.com: Page 2 : Road trippin' with Tru Wariers
  Ron Artest: quote machine. "At one point, [the Maloofs] had to go to the bathroom, but there ain't no bathrooms in the ghetto. So they went into a pissy elevator, knocked on a random door, and went in someone's apartment. How many owners do that? That's c
  (tags: NBA Sacramento_Kings)
• Media Matters - Altercation by Eric Alterman
  "The Dow is not "at an all time high," for God's sake, as virtually every idiotic news outlet is reporting. It is down 17 percent from its peak, here. Numbers that do not take inflation into account are meaningless -- worse than meaningless, purposely mis
  (tags: economics)
• Take a bad day and make it better
  "following picture, which depicts Michael Jordan taking part in one of the most horrific threeways of all time. "
  (tags: NBA Chicago Bulls)
• Trivia for Blade Runner (1982)
  Dustin Hoffman as Deckard?
  (tags: film_snob film sciFi)
• BLADE RUNNER Frequently Asked Questions
  "replicants' eyes glow, however Ridley Scott has stressed that this is merely a cinematic technique, and the glow can't be seen by the characters in the story, only by the audience."
  (tags: film film_snob sciFi)
• Italian Blogs for Darfur » Appeal to RAI, Mediaset and LA7 for Darfur
  "300 thousand dead, 2 million homeless, 200 thousand refugees. A tragedy consumed over 3 years. But the dead in Darfur don’t make headlines."
  (tags: Darfur)
• DARFUR Dying for Heroes: >> JOIN RESCUE-DARFUR-FAST-TILL-IT-STOPS
  "HUNGER STIKE since July 4: 54 days water only, 3 breaks as of 9/12. "
  (tags: Darfur)
• Yahoo editor fired - not enough porn, too much programming at work
  just like me. "Munk was hired for categorization and review of links to pornographic websites for Yahoo's Erotica department. He allegedly spent more time programming perl-scripts than looking for porn."
  (tags: porn humor)
• Pharyngula: There is no separation of church and state
  No shite! I've been suggesting this solution for years. "I say we should revoke the tax-exempt status of all religious organizations."
  (tags: Religion tax IRS)
• Cheney to Bob Woodward: "That's bullshit!" [click]
  Cheney doesn't like to hear contradictory information, from any source, even Bush sycophant, Bob Woodward.
  (tags: Cheney asshole Woodward)

David Rakoff appears on The Daily Show to promote his book,

Don't Get Too Comfortable

direct link here

Jon Stewart was obviously quite amused by Mr. Rakoff's wit, especially his line about the resiliency of the vagina.

Tags: Jon_Stewart, /YouTube

We were just discussing this topic. I think all the exemptions and exceptions that religious organizations - mostly Christian: I don't think the so-called fringe religions get as much lassitude- should be revoked. Welcome to the 21st century C.E.!

As Exemptions Grow, Religion Outweighs Regulation - New York Times ... In recent years, many politicians and commentators have cited what they consider a nationwide “war on religion” that exposes religious organizations to hostility and discrimination. But such organizations — from mainline Presbyterian and Methodist churches to mosques to synagogues to Hindu temples — enjoy an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes. And the number is multiplying rapidly.

At any moment, state inspectors can step uninvited into one of the three child care centers that Ethel White runs in Auburn, Ala., to make sure they meet state requirements intended to ensure that the children are safe. There must be continuing training for the staff. Her nurseries must have two sinks, one exclusively for food preparation. All cabinets must have safety locks. Medications for the children must be kept under lock and key, and refrigerated.

The Rev. Ray Fuson of the Harvest Temple Church of God in Montgomery, Ala., does not have to worry about unannounced state inspections at the day care center his church runs. Alabama exempts church day care programs from state licensing requirements, which were tightened after almost a dozen children died in licensed and unlicensed day care centers in the state in two years.

The differences do not end there. As an employer, Ms. White must comply with the civil rights laws; if employees feel mistreated, they can take the center to court. Religious organizations, including Pastor Fuson’s, are protected by the courts from almost all lawsuits filed by their ministers or other religious staff members, no matter how unfairly those employees think they have been treated.

And if you are curious about how Ms. White’s nonprofit center uses its public grants and donations, read the financial statements she is required to file each year with the Internal Revenue Service. There are no I.R.S. reports from Harvest Temple. Federal law does not require churches to file them.

Tags: religion, /tax

Intriguing article by Paul Salopek, which begins:

Jailed for 34 days, Tribune reporter writes of: My time in Darfur | Chicago Tribune One cloudless Sunday morning in early August, while traveling on a desert road in the remote Darfur region of western Sudan, a teenager sporting dreadlocks and an AK-47 rifle stopped my vehicle. My translator, Suleiman Abakar Moussa, stepped out and offered the youth a cigarette--standard etiquette in African war zones. But Moussa immediately returned to the car, frowning.

In this incidental way, I learned that we had just lost our freedom.

The young gunman belonged to a pro-government militia. And his patrol, after beating us and stealing our car and equipment, handed us over to Sudanese military intelligence. Moussa, my driver, Idriss Abdulrahman Anu, and I spent the next 34 days behind bars in Darfur, ending up hostage to a regime accused of mass murder. The government in Khartoum charged us with espionage, spreading “false news” and entering Africa's latest killing field without a visa.

It was hard not to feel, however, that our real crime was unspoken: reporting on a humanitarian catastrophe that is largely invisible to the outside world, and that is poised to grow worse in the weeks ahead.

Thousands of villagers will likely die soon in Darfur, the arid homeland of millions of farmers and herders who have been targeted in a ruthless civil war that some call genocide. Their torched huts, seen from the air, look like cigarette burns on a torture victim's skin.

Tags: media, /Darfur

Couldn't let Jill Zuckerman's assertion pass unremarked.

House GOP's party over? | Chicago Tribune After 50 years in the wilderness, Republicans swept to power in 1994 with big ideas about reining in big government, a revolutionary zeal and a moral compass that Democrats seemed to have lost. With the charismatic Newt Gingrich at the helm, they moved swiftly to impose their view of the world on Congress and the country with lower taxes, less spending, restrictions on abortion and other conservative priorities

Less spending? In what alternative universe? Moral compass? Yes, all these Republican scandals of corruption, sexual exploitation, and illegal wars really point to a moral compass, a sleaze compass that is. I suppose marketing is more important than fact.

The article continues, making this valid point:

This year, Republicans have borne the brunt of what seem to be never-ending scandals involving too-close relationships with lobbyists amid a constant quest for money.

Four members of the House, including Foley, have resigned under ethics clouds. Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) has gone to prison for taking bribes. Former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) pleaded guilty to corruption and bribery charges and also will go to prison. One-time House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) is under indictment in Texas for alleged campaign finance violations, and he faces investigation in Washington for his relationship with Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist whose dealings have tainted many in the GOP.

Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Foley episode may be the tipping point that fuels voters' discontent.

“People in charge are not grappling seriously with the issues that matter to us and, to top it off, they are out of touch, imperious and corrupt,” said Ornstein, co-author of “The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America.” “There is a level of arrogance and a sense that they were immune to any public reaction.”

When they took control of the House, Republican leaders exercised power with a ruthless effectiveness the likes of which had not been seen since 1911, when Rep. Joe Cannon (R-Ill.) was speaker. They shut out the minority Democrats, handpicked committee chairmen, oversaw the writing of legislation and refused to allow bills to go to the floor unless they had the support of a majority of House Republicans.

Tags: media, /Republicans

I only have a 70 mm zoom lens currently, so this is a little hard to see, but it looks like a giant Virgin Mary statue is being set up to glare across the street towards a family planning clinic on 659 W Washington. By the looks of the police barricades, I'd say a bevy of protesters is going to greet any woman unlucky enough to have an appointment today. I'd go over and get a closer shot, but I'd probably get into a fist fight with the fundies. Birth control is apparently their next target, btw.

Tags: abortion, /West_Loop

• Bloggasm: Was it good for you? » Your chances of getting laid through Craigslist: A Bloggasm case study
  people are way too gullible about personal info
  (tags: sexuality culture)
• Reluctant Nomad: Insults - they just don't make them as they used to
  ""I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." Groucho Marx"
  (tags: humor language lists Kottke)

Bell of the Ball Alley wall art, West Loop

No More Number 3 alley wall, West Loop

Fall Colors Sears Tower and foliage, West Loop

Camera and Video meta, meta meta

(embiggening is jes' a click or two away)

Tags: architecture, /West_Loop

• Mad nostalgia for NBA on NBC
  No kidding. "nothing matches the old NBA on NBC days. "
  (tags: NBA Basketball ESPN_sucks)
• PocketMac Releases New Blackberry Software
  3.x version kinda sucked. "PocketMac released the latest version of its Blackberry for Macintosh software, version 4.0. The software is available at no cost to Blackberry owners, paid for by Research in Motion (RIM), the firm that makes the Blackberry dev
  (tags: BB crackberry Blackberry)
• Bagged Cat
  "This, however, is genuinely funny. [ bagged-cat.jpg] Before you freak out and get all PeTA on me, I have nothing to do with the making of the picture, swanksalot took it"
  (tags: humor Pope cat Photos)
• Three New Safari 3.0 Tricks Are Producing Leopard Lust
  "discovering Safari 3.0 has left me with an insatiable desire to work in Leopard full-time. There are three standout features that I really miss when I “degrade gracefully” to other modern web browsers"
  (tags: OSX Safari Leopard)
• Got blog? Will ping.
  Google ping service for new content
  (tags: Google blog)
• Top 10 Lies told to Naive Artists and Designers
  Wow, our biggest problem is how to avoid 'working on spec', ie sending info before agreeing on compensation. ""Do this one cheap (or free) and we'll make it up on the next one." No reputable business person would first give away their work and time or me
  (tags: Advertising advice Reference)
• 9.27.06: Atheist Fundamentalism
  David Byrne's notes on a religious themed lecture
  (tags: Religion)

Cool. I've heard of this project, but didn't hear of any details.

West Loop, Chicago | Sundance Kid to Rise in West Loop? : Wrinkly legend Robert Redford is planning to bring his start-up movie chain project to the former Fannie May site in the Near West Side, according to an article in Crain's.

Sundance Cinemas was launched last year and has already signed theater deals in Madison, WI and San Francisco, CA. They could provide much needed credibility to the retail project on a two-block site at Jackson and Racine, acquired by developers IBT Group LLC two years ago. Called Metro Center 290, to spotlight the location along I-290, plans for the project also include a specialty grocery store and a health club.

Crain's Chicago has more.

Sundance Cinemas LLC is close to signing a letter of intent to open a six- to eight-screen theater in a 266,000-square-foot, multistory development proposed for the site just north of the Eisenhower Expressway and east of Racine Avenue, according to people familiar with the negotiations. A Chicago location would be a key step in a planned nationwide rollout of movie theaters featuring the artsy independent films and brainy documentaries that have gained wider popularity thanks in part to Mr. Redford's non-profit Sundance Film Festival.

We'd rent out our loft to Mr. Redford while the project is being completed (walking/stumbling distance away)....

Tags: Film, /West_Loop

Yesterday spent thusly:
1. Early morning, crawling around doing IT work, discovering dust bunnies the size of Denny Hastert's spleen (eww!), tracking down a problem with our overnight backup network server (fixed! yay!).

2. Late morning, yelling at building's elevator maintenance guys (elevator shut down since yesterday, someone stuck in it Saturday night, sporadic problems for months now), and walking up and down 7 flights of stairs. (not fixed! boo!)

3. Early afternoon, looking at real estate: we may move our office, we may sell our place and move our office, or we may just flee the jurisdiction and start touring with the Grateful Dead. Errr, well, guess that option is out, perhaps just move to Vansterdam and become street poets. We were going to rent a 2,000 sq ft office in our building, but apparently oral contracts are not worth much more than Republican ethics. Or something. Feeling metaphorically challenged this morning. Anyway, after we thought we had made a deal to rent for 6 months, then explore a purchase, the owner changed his mind, I think, and rented to someone else right before going to Thailand for a month.

This lovely door from our almost new office.

4. Early evening: long walk in the West Loop, partially looking at rental office space, partially stretching our legs. Photos later.

Note: no blogging time available. I don't have as good of an excuse as Geoff, but c'est la la. Smell ya later.

• Blotter | chicagocrime.org
  "Chicago Journal's publications focus only on the South Loop, Near West, West Loop, Bucktown, Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village and West Town neighborhoods, so synopses are only available for those parts of the city."
  (tags: Chicago crime)

• TPMmuckraker Prez, Funders Gobble Protected Fish!
  " The Chilean sea bass is a threatened species. Is it appropriate fare for a Presidential event?" umm, no, but it is delicious.
  (tags: food endangered Bush)
• The Best: Public Domain Movies
  other than bandwidth costs, that is. "list of must-see movies you don't have to pay a cent for."
  (tags: lists movies film film_history)
• The underreported Woodward claim
  "Woodward told the White House his questions in advance, giving the president all the time he needed to construct and memorize the best possible answer, and the president still wouldn't meet with him as he did for the previous two books. Even knowing the
  (tags: Dauphin Bush media liar)
• Robert Anton Wilson Needs Our Help
  hmm, maybe. "Which is at least part of the reason why I’m sending what I can to support cosmic thinking patriarch Robert Anton Wilson, whose infirmity and depleted finances have put him in the precarious position of not being able to meet next month’s
  (tags: sciFi rock_snob drugs books)
• The Media Equation: A Reporter Who Scoops His Own Paper
  Woodward is a hack, redux: "Bob Woodward works for The Washington Post but does as he pleases, husbanding his most lustrous scoops for his books"
  (tags: media)
• Beelzebabs: Satanic Motifs in Streisand’s Discography
  umm, OK? "A harrowing look at Satanic motifs in the canon of Barbra Streisand"
  (tags: music Religion)
• Kissing Suzy Kolber: The Bill Simmons Rant - Mature, Thoughtful Version
  "Disney picked up ESPN, and suddenly SportsCenter was turned into a 60-minute pile of cross-promoting, self-involved drivel. It wasn't a show anymore. It was a brand platform."
  (tags: ESPN_sucks sports)
• Kissing Suzy Kolber: Bill Simmons - The Kurt Warner Of Boston Sports/Reality Show Writing
  "We rip on our favorite athletes all the time. I don't understand why ripping on broadcasters and sportswriters is any different. "
  (tags: media ESPN_sucks sports)
• Courts are asked to crack down on bloggers, websites
  Good thing we're nice to everyone...."Milum became the first blogger in the USA to lose a libel suit, according to the Media Law Resource Center in New York, which tracks litigation involving bloggers. Milum was ordered to pay Banks $50,000"
  (tags: blogs legal libel)

The wind-up Bush-bot says the Democrats are soft for terror...

Bush: Dems are 'soft' on terror ... Bush said at a fundraiser here Tuesday. “The Democrats are the party of cut and run. Ours is a party that has a clear vision… Time and time again, the Democrats want to have it both ways. They talk tough on terror, but when the votes are counted, they are soft.''

...but the party of Foley, Duke Cunningham, and Bush is hard for terror. Real, real hard, but let's not talk about it anymore, or even attempt to measure it, again.

(link here)

Tags: 2006_Election, /Rethuglicans, /sex

From David Pogue:
Pogue’s Posts- A Whole New Meaning for ‘Ego Googling’

(larger version here)

Go here to create yer' own (Yahoo or Google option, though Yahoo seems to be broken - I tried to type: “He peed on the Dude's rug”, but was thwarted. Phrase too big for Google to display)

Tags: Google

The dirty side of corporate America, and by extension, the U.S. military: its ability to convince a significant percentage of the population of anything, even fighting in an immoral war.

How National Guard Is Fighting Attrition Despite the continuing unpopularity of the war in Iraq, the Air National Guard may be reversing a downturn in recruitment, according to documents obtained by Brandweek.

The turnaround follows a course-change in positioning for the Air and Army National Guards after the advent of the Iraq war. A CNN poll last week showed 39% of Americans surveyed said they had no clear idea what the U.S. was fighting for in Iraq and 65% believed Iraq is engaged in a civil war.

Given such sentiment and a relatively low national unemployment rate, which means young people have a range of career options, it's no secret that the Pentagon's marketers have had an increasingly difficult time meeting their recruitment goals. The total Pentagon ad-spend went up 10.5% in 2005, to $276 million, after news that the Army and the Marines were not meeting their goals in some months in 2005. In the first six months of 2006, that spend ballooned to $177 million, putting the Pentagon on course for $345 million spent for the full year, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

...
The Pentagon's marketing papers show the military knew early on that the Iraq war was making young people resistant to military service.

The documents—which describe internal market research memos, e-mails and PowerPoint presentations—offer an inside look at how Pentagon marketers saw consumer sentiment change, and they confirm that as the war progressed, particularly around 2004, their job got harder and harder.

That year, the Air National Guard saw recruitment struggle.

“It was the second year in a row where the ANG gained fewer than 10,000 members,” a memo titled Strategic Advertising Plan said.

...That message, however, also described the Guard's main problem with its target market: the real possibility of getting killed in Iraq was putting a significant damper on its marketing efforts.

In other words, soldiers are just numbers to be crunched, figuratively, and literally.

...Hurricane Katrina in September 2005 was actually good news for the Guard, the slides show, because it allowed recruiters to focus on the force's domestic duties as a crisis cop.

Wow. Not sure how to respond to such cynicism.

Tags: Advertising, /military

received a sort of strange email yesterday

I wanted to give you a heads up that your blog has a link from Time.com's web site, powered by Sphere. To see your featured post, go to www.time.com and look within the story: “The G.O.P.'s Secret Weapon.” Then, look for the orange sphere it! logo and click on it. You should see your post in the first two pages of results.

Sphere is working with Time and other publishers to get great blogs like yours in front of more people. We think this is pretty cool and a great way for people to discover blogs as well as introduce a broader, more mainstream audience to great blog content like yours. If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to contact me at [redacted].

We'd like to offer you a Sphere featured blogger badge. You can choose one here:
http://www.sphere.com/

Keep on blogging!

Sure enough, Time Magazine, in sort of a roundabout way, has linked here to this post. Here's Sphere's info on me, generated through some sort of technorati competition.

Again, no money exchanged, though not sure I would want to be affiliated with Andrew Sullivan, Ann Marie Cox, et al, unless the cash was so massive I could quit my day job and move to the Bahamas and beach-blog. My mom does has a subscription to the print edition of Time Magazine, I believe. The funny thing is that particular post was sort of a throwaway/quicky, mostly borrowing WSJ content. Oh well, traffic is traffic.

Tags: media, /Technology

John Tierney is a little cynical about Congress. That said, we've employed an intern several times, and made them do grunt work. However, they've always been college aged, and we never tried to seduce them, and we paid them a real living wage salary ($14/hour), not with taxpayer money.

John Tierney: Your Page, M'Lord

Yet Congress sees nothing strange about dragging teenagers from their families and schools to become pages, one step below a squire in the feudal food chain. They’re not being forced to wear Prince Valiant haircuts, but they have to do scut work that’s probably even less useful than what they could learn at Nike or Wal-Mart.

Congressional pages spend much of their time hand-delivering documents, a job that’s done electronically in most 21st-century institutions. When educators talk about preparing youth for jobs in the Information Age, they’re not talking about training messengers.

The justification for the page program is that it gives teenagers an insider’s glimpse of how Congress works. But why disillusion them at such a tender age? If they stayed in school, they could maintain their innocence by reading the old step-by-step textbook version of how a bill becomes law. By going to Capitol Hill, they see how the process has changed:

1. A bill is introduced to build highways.

2. A congressman receives a donation from a constituent who wants to open a go-kart track.

3. The congressman persuades his committee chairman to slip in a $350 million “earmark” for an “alternative sustainable transportation research facility” in his district.

4. The chairman quietly adds similar earmarks for all members of the committee.

5. The bill is passed unanimously.

6. The president complains about the “wasteful spending” but signs it into law anyway.

7. The congressman attends a fund-raiser at the new go-kart track.

What lesson has the page learned? That Congress is the closest thing in modern America to a medieval court: an enclave governed by arcane ancient rules of seniority, a gathering of nobles who spend their days accepting praise and dispensing favors to supplicants.

They’re so secure in their jobs, and so used to being surrounded by groveling minions, that they assume the privileges of feudal lords when dealing with pages and other lieges. Which is why, on occasion, they try to exercise the droit du seigneur.

Tags: Congress, /John_Tierney

Oh, what's a few hundred thousand dollars after all? Worth more than the respect of readers, right? Pay-to-play is the new black.

Miami Herald Publisher Resigns Jesus Diaz Jr. said he resigned Tuesday as president of the Miami Herald Media Co. and publisher of the Miami Herald and its Spanish-language sister paper.

Diaz said his decision to leave was crystallized by the recent revelation that some El Nuevo Herald journalists were paid for appearing on U.S.-government broadcasts aimed at promoting democracy in Cuba.

“While we are sorry to see [The] Jesus leave [obligatory Big Lebowski reference for Aunt Pat, some trivia here], we couldn't be happier about having such a talented and experienced leader perfectly poised to step into this important job,” said Gary Pruitt, McClatchy president and CEO.
...
In a letter to readers, Mr. Diaz said the company would rehire two El Nuevo Herald reporters and a freelance contributor that he dismissed last month for getting paid by Radio Marti and TV Marti. He said six others who took payments wouldn't be disciplined.

He said he believed the acceptance of payments “was a breach of widely accepted principles of journalistic ethics.” But he added “our policies prohibiting such behavior may have been ambiguously communicated, inconsistently applied and widely misunderstood over many years in the El Nuevo Herald newsroom.”

He said no one would be allowed in the future to accept money from the U.S. government-run broadcasters, and conflict-of-interest policies would be strengthened.

America's Cuban policy is wack, and has gotten worse since the Dauphin took office. More on that topic later....

Tags: Cuba, /media

Still could never foresee myself living in the 'burbs, but good for Northbrook nonetheless. More cities should follow their lead.

Wind now runs suburb's water plant

By signing an electricity contract last month the village [of Northbrook] became the first municipality in Illinois, and one of the first in the country, to purchase enough wind-generated energy to run an entire municipal utility, its water plant.

...
Before entering the agreement, Northbrook had been buying 155 megawatt hours of electricity each year. On Sept. 1, that soared to 4,500 megawatt hours per year, enough to power a facility that annually pumps 2.2 billion gallons of water through the faucets and garden hoses of the village's 34,000 residents.

The contract, approved by the Village Board, is expected to add $4 to $5 to an average residential water bill each year, according to Northbrook officials.

“And it's equivalent to taking 738 cars off the road,” said Village President Gene Marks.

Considered a “clean and green” form of alternative energy because it creates electricity with no combustion, smoke or waste, wind-generated power slowly has been increasing in popularity since cities such as Eugene, Ore., first began using the technology in the late 1990s.

Seven years after offering its customers the option of dedicating all or part of their electrical payments to buy wind-generated electricity, Eugene officials voted in July to double the amount the city purchases annually to 50 megawatt hours. That will meet the energy needs of 5,000 single-family homes.

Several other cities, including Madison, Wis., Denver and Seattle, also are integrating wind energy into their power grids. Electricity companies in Florida and Oklahoma have statewide programs that use wind-generated power.
...
Northbrook recently has taken steps to aid the environment, including buying cleaner-burning fuels and better emission systems for its vehicles, as well as equipping traffic signals with energy-efficient LEDs. Increasing its reliance on wind power was a no-brainer, Marks said.

“It was an easy thing for us to do,” said Marks, who has heard no complaints from residents about the slight increase in energy bills. “We'd like to power even more things with wind in the future.”

By jumping on the wind-blown bandwagon, Northbrook stands alongside Naperville as two of the state's pioneers in employing alternative energy sources. In 2005 Naperville allowed its energy customers the option of purchasing environmentally friendly electricity, including power from wind farms.

When the program began, the city's goal was to have 5 percent of its 55,000 homes involved by the end of 2006. That figure was met this summer, according to Naperville city engineer Cyrus Ashrafi.

“The program has been a big success,” he said.

Naperville annually purchases about 800 megawatt hours of wind-generated power.

Tags: Chicago, /Energy, /environment

• Basketball Player Development and Human Performance Enhancement: A Cure for Ankle Sprains; searching for Arnie Kander
  "Cucumbers, carrots, pumpkin seeds and celery."Grind it up in a juicer, and you've got an unbelievable detoxifier," said Kander, in his 14th season with the Pistons"
  (tags: NBA Detroit_Pistons health)
• Burdock - Burdock Root Information and Recipes
  love Burdock in soup. " burdock is quite edible, cooked or raw. The leaves and flowers can be steamed as vegetables, or served with oil and vinegar as a salad. Generally, burdock stems are prepared by carefully peeling away the tough, bitter tasting outer
  (tags: food health herb)
• LifePixel Digital Camera Infrared IR Conversion And Modification Services. Frequently Asked Questions.
  Hmm, if I get the D80, I could convert my D70 to Infrared. Very interesting.....
  (tags: infrared IR photography Nikon D80 D70)

I'm in no way religious, but D was raised Jewish Orthodox, so today (יום כיפור) turned out to be a day of contemplation, with some sneaking of inebrients along the way. Don't tell Yahweh (יהוה), he tends to get pissed off easily.

Here's yesterday's fun....

A passionate play, in three brief acts.

Act 1: the Transgression

New kitten, Pippin, wants to meet and greet The Pope (Tampopo) who is the undisputed Queen of the Loft since her older sister, Cleo, passed away last August.

Act 2: the Whuppin

which lasts several seconds, longer if you are Pippin. Unfortunately, my Nikon was downstairs, so only have one photo of the Whuppin'. If you wish to add sound effects, The Pope is uttering a low, murmuring growl, punctuated by several hisses (like a high hat, for accent).

Act 3: the Aftermath

Pippin retreats to his cat grass, Tampopo practically smirks with her victory. No blood, no foul, right?

a quickr pickr post

Tags: cat, /humor

• G.O.P. Aides Knew in Late ’05 of E-Mail
  Hastert should resign
  (tags: Republican perverts)
• Vigilius Haufniensis Werner Herzog quote
  "His speech is clumsy, with a toadlike indolence, long winded, pedantic, choppy. The words tumble from his mouth in sentence fragments, which he holds back as much as possible, as if they were earning interest. It takes forever and a day for him to push o
  (tags: film_snob language)
• Matthew Yglesias / proudly eponymous since 2002
  Woodward is a hack. "Why were the earlier books so different? Did he somehow not notice this stuff before? It's a serious problem for the most prominent people in the journalism world to be merely lagging indicators, praising leaders when they're popular
  (tags: Republican media)
• Ezra Klein: GM Makes Good Business Decisions (ha)
  GM has a death wish: "GM just made Sean Hannity their spokesman. Their new ad campaign is the "You're A Great American!" giveaway, and who better to kick that one off than the guy who said a Kerry win -- which 48 percent of the country voted for -- would
  (tags: GM Republicans)

I wanna grow up to be a film maker in the David Lynch school of weirdness.

David Lynch Returns: Expect Moody Conditions, With Surreal Gusts

David Lynch takes a giant leap into the post-celluloid future with “Inland Empire,” his 10th feature overall over all and the first to be shot on the humble medium of digital video.

Tags: Film

Frank Rich is right, the Dems are wasting time yammering about a six month old report with contents already understood by everyone.

Frank Rich: So You Call This Breaking News? Against the ominous reality in Iraq, the debate over the National Intelligence Estimate is but a sideshow. ... Democrats are huffily demanding that the White House release more than a few scraps of the 30-page-plus N.I.E., a debating point with no payoff. The N.I.E. is already six months out of date, and Americans can guess most of it, classified or not. In this war at this late stage, the devil can be found everywhere, not merely in the details. ...

If your head hurts from listening to the Washington furor over the latest National Intelligence Estimate, by all means tune it out. The entire debate is meaningless except as a damning election-year indicator of just how madly our leaders are fiddling while Iraq burns.

The supposedly shocking key finding in the N.I.E. — that the Iraq war is a boon to terrorism — isn’'t remotely news. It first turned up in a classified C.I.A. report leaked to the press in June 2005. It’s also long been visible to the naked eye. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted before any revelations from the N.I.E., found that nearly half the country believes that the Iraq war is increasing the terrorist threat against America and only 12 percent thinks the war is decreasing that threat. Americans don’t have to pore over leaked intelligence documents to learn this. They just have to turn on the television.

Tonight on “60 Minutes,” Bob Woodward will spill another supposedly shocking intelligence finding revealed in his new book: a secret government prediction that the insurgency will grow worse next year. Who’'d have thunk it? Given that the insurgency is growing worse every day right now — last week suicide bombings hit a record high in Baghdad — the real surprise would be if the government predicted an armistice. A poll released last week by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that about 6 in 10 Iraqis approved of attacks on American forces. Tardy investigative reporting is hardly needed to figure out that the insurgency is thriving.

Tags: Frank_Rich

• Balkinization
  "Democrats give up the chance at filibustering one of the worst bills in recent memory because they were afraid that the President would paint them as soft on terrorism. After the bill passes, the President plans to paint them as soft on terrorism."
  (tags: Democrats terrorism wimps)
• The Perfect Martini
  Mmmm, martinis...."An important thing to understand about Vermouth and its relationship with the Martini, is that for quite a while the only Vermouth that was used for cocktails was Italian Vermouth"
  (tags: food recipe alcohol cocktails drinks)
• Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall September 30, 2006 01:20 PM
  "fact that most of the Republican House leadership has apparently known about this for almost a year and yet did nothing. I don't think cover-up is too strong a word since there was apparently an active effort to keep the allegations from the only Democra
  (tags: Republican perverts repression)
• Firedoglake - Putting GOP Interests Over Child Safety Is NOT Acceptable
  "House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hasert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert ass
  (tags: Republican perverts)
• TPMmuckraker Why Wasn't Foley Stopped by GOP leadership?
  "AP brings new details about how senior Republicans received the news months ago that one of their own appeared to be soliciting a minor, and apparently did little to intervene."
  (tags: Republicans perverts sexuality repression)
• This Modern World » Pity The Election Year Democrats, For They Know Not What They Do
  the pro-torture Dems profiled. Half are running for re-election, but not really. Well, perhaps about to switch parties.
  (tags: Democrats torture terrorism thugs)
• German police told to target Scientologists
  "Germans are being warned of the 'danger' of Scientology amid growing concerns over the numbers of after-school tutoring programmes springing up across the country."
  (tags: Religion)
• The Observer Outcast anti-Semite Mel sells his film the hard way
  "Now the eccentric film-maker has embarked on a remarkable marketing campaign to promote Apocalypto to audiences in America's heartland, skipping the usual media channels and going direct to the public. 'This is not the time to release a Mel Gibson film.
  (tags: Religion Republicans Jewish media)