Debsweb: January 2006

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Great Minds Think Alike

Or, more likely, it was such a great line that nobody in their right mind would miss it.

Didn't See It Coming, Again - New York Times: "The State of the Union is a non-event. But Bob Woodruff and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, being blown up by a roadside bomb has forced the media to focus on what the Bushies try to hide — all the injured and maimed coming home from Iraq.

Mark Landler's Times piece noted that the ABC journalists came to the hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, 'on a military transport plane carrying 31 wounded soldiers — about a normal daily influx for this hospital.'

As Denise Grady wrote in The Times, the survival rate in Iraq is higher than in other wars, but the wounds are multiple and awful: 'combinations of damaged brains and spinal cords, vision and hearing loss, disfigured faces, burns, amputations, mangled limbs, and psychological ills like depression and post-traumatic stress.'

The Oilman in Chief lecturing us last night, after five oblivious years, about being drunk on oil, now that Halliburton and Exxon are swimming in profits — Exxon's revenues were bigger than the gross domestic product of either Saudi Arabia or Indonesia — was rich."

Profits larger than an oil producing nation. Wow, that really puts it into perspective, just in case I didn't feel bad enough about the $1073 per second earnings. And we thought JR was a greedy oilman.

Shut Up and Kwitcherbitchin!

This was not a surprise. You saw it coming. After Harriet Miers "withdrew" her nomination and Samule Alito received his, the left had 3 months to get their act together, mount a unified defense and go for it. Did that happen? Of course not. The spineless jellyfish that are the current members of the party allowed themselves to be distracted. Ooh, Fitgerald was going to deliver on the Plame incident, pfft, into the ether. Katrina has afforded many opportunities to nail the administrations gonads to the wall, pfft, into the ether. Wiretaps, the true conservatives will end up handling that since they seem able to stay focused. For the democrats, pfft, into the ether. Recess appointments of incompetent people, pfft, into the ether. Lobbying scandal that involves a good proportion of the Republican Congress, pfft, into the ether. False reasons for entering the war in Iraq, pfft into the ether. The First Renter and company caught in lie after falsehood, pfft into the ether.

Alito Is Sworn In as Justice After 58-42 Vote to Confirm Him - New York Times: "As expected, Justice Alito's support in the Senate hewed closely to party lines. Among two Republican supporters of abortion rights, Senators Olympia J. Snowe of Maine voted for Justice Alito, while Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island voted no, the only Republican to do so. Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont, an independent, voted against the nomination.

Justice Alito also won the support of four Democrats: Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Kent Conrad of North Dakota.

The vote is also a triumph for the conservative movement, whose adherents have longed to tilt the balance of the court to the right."

Has it occurred to anybody that these wackjobs are going to get another chance before the current First Renter is out of office? How bad does it have to be before the Democrats get their act together? What is their excuse, problem, whatever it is get it under control. Let's start with removing the above four Democrats from office and adding a Democrat in Maine. Just a thought. Quit wringing your hands, monitoring your blood pressure and hiding under the bed. The majority of Americans agree with us, just not our leadership. Or what currently passes for it.

January Tongue In Cheek Award

You would think something unimportant was going to be said during the State of the Union from all the editorials floating around.

The Truth According to Me:
1. First and foremost, while State of the Union speeches belong to the genre of nonfiction, they are inevitably a personal, subjective recounting by the president. (Could FDR really prove that 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself'?) I have made every effort, however, to verify the accuracy of each statement with the assistance of White House staff, in between their duties responding to subpoenas. Some discrepancies are inevitable due to the vagaries of memory, complex accounting standards of the Congressional Budget Office and the poor audio quality of NSA wiretaps.

2. Some errors appear to be innocent mistakes in copy-editing. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has alerted me that the line, 'No person is above the law' should instead be 'One person is above the law.' My comment that 'we have carefully listened to critics of our domestic surveillance program' should have read 'listened in on . . .'

3. The figures cited for wetlands restoration include net gains resulting from new wetlands in areas formerly occupied by the polar icecaps.

You don't say.

6. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I included the Clinton period in calculating the "24 million jobs we have created through the end of 2005." The figures for 2001-05 are smaller. Whether they are smaller by "a lot" or a "whole lot" is open to interpretation.

That was my favorite. Everythiing is open to interpretation, we just don't seem to be able to find the right interpreters.

So, will Iran be nuclear or nukler?

Update: I hear the word for the state of the union drinking game will be "necessary", draw your own conclusions. Fortunately I have to go earn money and have a legitimate reason for missing tonight's standup routine.

Will You Get To The Point?

He must have been bored, this article wanders without every going anywhere or being wrapped up in any logical fashion.

The State Of Our Cynicism: "In State of the Union addresses, the childish events in our civic calendar, presidents list numerous proposals pursuant to the supposed presidential duty to be omnipresent and omniprovident in our lives. Every 48 seconds or so -- last year's address was interrupted by applause 66 times in 53 minutes -- legislators of the president's party erupt with approval, while those of the other party use stolidity to signal disappointment. But if you are a glutton for punishment and tune in tonight, you will at least not hear a reprise of the passage cited above from last year's address.

The success of the terrorist organization Hamas in the Palestinian elections is but the latest proof of what happens when the forms of democracy are severed from what the president, with a cosmopolitan shrug, dismissively called 'our own Western standards of progress.' Now comes wishful thinking, and then cynicism.

And your point was?

Four days after Hamas provided evidence that the United States cannot anticipate, let alone control, events, the New York Times inadvertently suggested this thought: If the Times and the Bush administration each had sufficient self-awareness, they might be mutually mortified by recognizing their similar mentalities regarding America's power. "

There's a mentality?

Tonight, on the 1,050th day of the Iraq war (the 912th day of American participation in World War II was D-Day), the nation needs an adult hour, including a measured meditation on overreaching, from the Middle East to Medicare's prescription drug entitlement. But in State of the Union addresses, rarely is heard a discouraging word.

We must be at home on the range then. Unfortunately for us, it just so happens to be a new Viking and the burners are set to high.

Monday, January 30, 2006

How About A West Coast Tour?

Starting in San Francisco would be nice. I can think of at least two tickets that would be sold.

CNN.com - Lez Zeppelin: A band that�flips the Page - Jan 30, 2006: "The New York-based quartet came together almost three years ago with the express purpose of covering songs by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members Led Zeppelin.

They're among a small but growing number of all-female tribute bands Spin Magazine recently referred to as 'Chicks with Picks,' and include the playfully dubbed AC/DShe, Cheap Chick and The Ramonas.

'It wasn't like we decided just to do an all-girl cover band for the sake of it,' Paynes said in an interview. 'It was strictly me lounging on the couch, listening to a Led Zep album and being in absolute ecstasy over the music. I can't think of anything I'd rather be playing than this.'

Zeppelin's brash amalgam of hard-driving rock, traditional blues and guitar-tinged ballads propelled the sale of millions of albums and made them one of the top bands of the 1970s. It disbanded in 1980 after the death of drummer John Bonham."

One of those moments I remember exactly where I was. Three of us had been planning to stand in line for tickets, rotating shifts as needed. I only wanted to see two big bands live. I am short and once everyone stands up it just becomes a really bad record where the words are changed. I ended up with an absolutely killer (hellow NSA,FBI, you know who) seat for Pink Floyd at the Rose Bowl, but my seat for Page/Plant was a little lacking, to say nothing of the lousy acoustics at the San Diego Convention Center. Reverb city.

It would be really nice to hear a tribute band that is considered to be good. Now, if I could only get those David Gilmour tickets for Easter weekend. I'm willing to compromise on the seats. I'll find some binoculars and an expandable stepstool.

Must Be Time For Another Tax Break

I'm sure they don't want to share the profit.

Bloomberg.com: U.S.: "Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest oil company, said fourth-quarter profit rose 27 percent on surging energy prices to a record $10.7 billion, capping the most profitable year for any company in U.S. history.

Net income climbed to $1.71 a share from $8.42 billion, or $1.44 a share, a year earlier, the Irving, Texas-based company said today in a statement. Excluding a gain from a lawsuit, profit was $1.65 a share, 21 cents higher than the average estimate from 22 analysts in a Thomson Financial survey.

Revenue rose 20 percent to $99.7 billion as rising demand and hurricanes lifted prices for crude oil, natural gas and gasoline. The average U.S. profit on refining crude into gasoline and other fuels widened to a record of almost $11 per barrel processed, based on futures prices.

``Exxon is the most efficient operator in a market characterized by rampant demand and lagging supply growth,'' Derek Vogler, who helps manage $11 billion, including Exxon Mobil shares, at Country Trust Bank in Bloomington, Illinois, said in a Jan. 17 interview."

As the price of gas shoots towards $3 a gallon again, I wonder what it will take for the American people to realize that they have been taken for a very expensive ride, they are far from home and have no way to get back.

Usefulness Factor 0

Interest Factor 1.

Scientists Find Gene That Controls Type of Earwax in People - New York Times: "The dry form, the researchers say, presumably arose later in northern Asia, because they detected it almost universally in their tests of northern Han Chinese and Koreans. The dry form becomes less common in southern Asia, probably because the northerners with the dry earwax gene intermarried with southern Asians carrying the default wet earwax gene. The dry form is quite common in Native Americans, confirming other genetic evidence that their ancestors migrated across the Bering Strait from Siberia 15,000 years ago."

And then it gets interesting.

"But earwax seems to have the very humble role of being no more than biological flypaper, preventing dust and insects from entering the ear. Since it seems unlikely that having wet or dry earwax could have made much difference to an individual's fitness, the earwax gene may have some other, more important function. Dr. Yoshiura and his colleagues suggest that the gene would have been favored because of its role in sweating.

They write that earwax type and armpit odor are correlated, since populations with dry earwax, such as those of East Asia, tend to sweat less and have little or no body odor, while the wet earwax populations of Africa and Europe sweat more and so may have more body odor. Several Asian features, like small nostrils, are conjectured to be adaptations to the cold. Less sweating, the Japanese authors suggest, may be another adaptation to the cold in which the ancestors of East Asian peoples are thought to have lived."

Wow. As fascinating as that was, scientists are just as weird as nonscientists.

Nobody Saw It Coming

Again. How many times is she going to use the same old excuse? Which way does incompetence flow in this administration? From the top down or the bottom up? From Brownie to Ms. Easy Peasy, these guys don't have a clue and are always being surprised by something they hadn't foreseen. 9/11, the levees, results of elections outside this country...

Rice Admits U.S. Underestimated Hamas Strength - New York Times: "'I've asked why nobody saw it coming,' Ms. Rice said, speaking of her own staff. 'It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse.'

Immediately after the election, Bush administration officials said the results reflected a Palestinian desire for change and not necessarily an embrace of Hamas, which the United States, Israel and the European Union consider a terrorist organization sworn to Israel's destruction. But Ms. Rice's comments seemed to reflect a certain second-guessing over how the administration had failed to foresee, or factor into its thinking, the possibility of a Hamas victory.

Indeed, Hamas's victory has set off a debate whether the administration was so wedded to its belief in democracy that it could not see the dangers of holding elections in regions where Islamist groups were strong and democratic institutions weak.

'There is a lot of blame to go around,' said Martin Indyk, a top Middle East negotiator in the Clinton administration, referring to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and his Fatah party. 'But on the American side, the conceptual failure that contributed to disaster was the president's belief that democracy and elections solve everything.'

Ms. Rice pointed out that the election results surprised just about everyone. 'I don't know anyone who wasn't caught off guard by Hamas's strong showing,' she said on her way to London for meetings on the Middle East, Iran and other matters. 'Some say that Hamas itself was caught off guard by its strong showing.'"

Um, no they weren't. It cracks me up that the people who were elected by fixing two elections themselves, don't understand that in other countries sometimes the people get so fed up with things that they turn out en masse to voice their opinion as opposed to us Americans who are given choices between is that all there is and yes, that is all there is and just can't see the point in voting since you aren't listening.

Two Things

Thank goodness this was resolved positively. First, 70 miners trapped underground but since they weren't American it wasn't nearly as important as the 12 from earlier this month. Our news people suck.

CNN.com - Miners rescued after 24 hours trapped - Jan 30, 2006: "Mine officials had originally said they had lost radio contact with 30 of the miners but later found them safe in a refuge room.

Miners at the site reported smoke almost a little more than a half mile (1 kilometer) underground early Sunday morning.

The miners had been pinned in several safe rooms as firefighters battled the blaze and then focused on clearing the smoke from the mine so the workers could be safely evacuated.

Company spokesman Marshall Hamilton said a rescue team had reached the refuge rooms, seen the miners and sealed them back in the safe rooms until the fire was being extinguished.

The fire was finally put out and rescuers began the task of ventilating the mine, a process made slower by the size of the mine, about 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) by 12 miles (20 kilometers).

Hamilton said the miners were trained to seek safety in the refuge stations, specifically built and designed for such incidents.

'In those refuge stations, the workers can seal themselves in and be safe with enough oxygen, food and water to be comfortable for 36 hours at the least,' he said, adding that the families of the trapped miners had been kept informed."

Second, why don't we have these safe rooms in our mines? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Unless, we are just cogs in the wheel of corporate profit and our real purpose is to produce for our betters and then die before we can collect benefits supposedly earned by all that hard work. The real Dharma initiative.

Rocking In The Free World

Downloading Battlestar Galactica to Itunes and then watching it on my schedule works for me.

Steve Jobs controls your living room - Jan. 27, 2006: "On Wednesday night, Gene Munster was thinking about going to the movies; but he did something else instead. He spent $1.99 to watch a campy 1960s TV show on his laptop. The first season of the Munsters -- a comedy about a family of monsters and their struggles to lead an all-American life -- was available for download on iTunes. Munster, for obvious reasons, couldn't resist.

The experience reaffirmed something for Piper Jaffray's Apple Computer analyst as he pondered the impact of Disney's plans to buy Pixar (Research) -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs' other company: Most investors think there is a battle raging for control of the digital home, pitting the cable companies, the phone companies, Google, Apple, Yahoo (Research), Microsoft (Research) and the entire consumer electronics industry against one another in a fight to the death. They're wrong. In Munster's view, Apple has already won.

It already is the defacto front end for our digital music experience, making it easy to listen on our iPod, computer speakers and increasingly our home stereo. Now, he says, with the access Apple will no doubt get to Disney (Research)'s vast library of movies and TV shows, iTunes is about to get a huge boost toward becoming the front end for our digital TV and movie experience too."

Maybe, Emil and the Detectives will be available or In Search of the Castaways so I can see that ridiculous wave from nowhere again. Technology rocks!

When used in small doses and at your convenience.

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Joke of the Day 1/29/06

Supposedly found on the bathroom walls.

If voting could really change things, it would be illegal.
Revolution Books, NY

Friends don't let friends take home ugly men.
Women's rest-room
Starboard, Dewey Beach, DE

If pro is opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress? Congress!
Men's rest-room House of Representatives,
Washington, DC

Express Lane: Five beers or less
Sign over one of the urinals
Ed Debevic's, Phoenix, AZ

You're too good for him.
Sign over mirror in Women's rest-room
Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills, C A.

No wonder you always go home alone.
Sign over mirror in Men's rest-room,
Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills, C A

Beauty is only a light switch away.
Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, N C

If life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life, then let's all get wasted together and have the time of our lives.
Armand's Pizza, Washington, DC

Remember, it's not, "How high are you?" it's "Hi, how are you?"
Rest stop off Route 81, West Virginia

A Woman's Rule of Thumb:
If it has tires or testicles, you're going to have trouble with it.
Women's rest-room, Dick's Last Resort, Dallas, T X

No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her .
Men's Room, Linda's Bar and Grill, Chapel Hill, N C

At the feast of ego everyone leaves hungry.
Bentley's House of Coffee and Tea, Tucson, AZ

It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere.
Written in the dust on the back of a bus, Wickenburg, AZ

Make love, not war. Hell, do both, GET MARRIED!
Women's rest-room, The Filling Station, Bozeman, MT

Direct To Debbie

By way of Paul. A journalistic catfight, so let's get ready to ruuuummble!

A False Balance - New York Times: "So Mr. Abramoff is a movement conservative whose lobbying career was based on his connections with other movement conservatives. His big coup was persuading gullible Indian tribes to hire him as an adviser; his advice was to give less money to Democrats and more to Republicans. There's nothing bipartisan about this tale, which is all about the use and abuse of Republican connections.

Yet over the past few weeks a number of journalists, ranging from The Washington Post's ombudsman to the 'Today' show's Katie Couric, have declared that Mr. Abramoff gave money to both parties. In each case the journalists or their news organization, when challenged, grudgingly conceded that Mr. Abramoff himself hasn't given a penny to Democrats. But in each case they claimed that this is only a technical point, because Mr. Abramoff's clients — those Indian tribes — gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans, money the news organizations say he 'directed' to Democrats.

But the tribes were already giving money to Democrats before Mr. Abramoff entered the picture; he persuaded them to reduce those Democratic donations, while giving much more money to Republicans. A study commissioned by The American Prospect shows that the tribes' donations to Democrats fell by 9 percent after they hired Mr. Abramoff, while their contributions to Republicans more than doubled. So in any normal sense of the word 'directed,' Mr. Abramoff directed funds away from Democrats, not toward them."

Well, that was direct and in your face. This wasn't written by an angry wacko commenter, this is written by a peer who thinks that you can't do basic math without a calculator. All those years of experience don't seem to have done you any good or garnered you any respect with your colleagues, are you and Brady going to continue to whine? A little Limburger to go along with that, maybe it will cover up the stink of corruption.

The State of the Empire

Is not good, but it seems that the sleeping giants are awake. And hungry.

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps - New York Times: "Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. 'President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why,' he told Republican officials. 'Some important Democrats clearly disagree.'"

They don't quite call him a used car salesman.

Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

Checks and balances. What an arcane concept. Who needs balance?

War changes everything. Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the authority to do anything he wanted when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan. There is simply nothing in the record to support this ridiculous argument.

The administration also says that the vote was the start of a war against terrorism and that the spying operation is what Mr. Cheney calls a "wartime measure." That just doesn't hold up. The Constitution does suggest expanded presidential powers in a time of war. But the men who wrote it had in mind wars with a beginning and an end. The war Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney keep trying to sell to Americans goes on forever and excuses everything.

The Forever War.We must fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them here. Because you are weak and spineless and you need me to take care of you, make all your decisions for you and then nothing bad will happen to me.

Isn't it time we grew up, stood up for ourselves and say "we aren't going to take this anymore"? Or wait just a little bit longer so we can look around at the destruction of our liberties and say "what the hell happened"?

Black, White and Red All Over

Is beginning to take on an entirely new meaning in this conflict. My condolences to his friends, family and coworkers.

6abc.com: ABC Anchor Hurt in Iraq: "Woodruff and Vogt both suffered head injuries and are being treated. They are listed in serious condition after being flown to the Balad Air Base, which is about a 15 minute flight. Woodruff is still undergoing surgery.

Officials have told ABC News that Woodruff and Vogt were wearing body armor, ballistic glasses and helmets in an effort to protect themselves."

And from ABC,

Both men suffered head injuries. Woodruff sustained shrapnel wounds and Vogt was hit by shrapnel in the head and suffered a broken shoulder.

They were probably wearing the most up to date models, and doesn't seem to have helped as much as one would have hoped. On so many levels this will present problems. Number one is the severity of his injuries. A head wound with all that protection on is not good, and as an anchor he can't afford to have a serious face wound. Number two is the relatively high visibility of Woodruff. The administration had been hoping to avoid a Cronkite moment. Number three this could be construed as unsafe for the press (war kills everyone and isn't always fair about it) and even less news will be presented to the American public. Number four, unfortunately ABC (whose article reads like an obituary) will have to rethink it's new news strategy, or look for an immediate replacement. Those are a few of the ramifications and I'm sure that there are more out there.

I hope things are not quality of life threatening to him and his family. Good luck and good surgeons.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

And Now, a Word from Alfred E. Neuman

Or someone who used to resemble him 20 years ago.

And Now, a Word for Our Demographic - New York Times: "Simply stated, no audience is perceived to be clamoring for foreign news, the exceptions being wars in their early months that involve American troops, acts of terrorism and, for a couple of weeks or so, natural disasters of truly epic proportions. "

And I thought I was a cynic. So Ted, why'd you keep your bat in reserve? Once the defecation is enroute to the rotary oscillator it is a little too late to look for cover. While it was just us liberals who were screaming that the sky was falling nobody thought it was important. Now that people are being hit with falling chunks everybody is jumping up and screaming "aarrgh!"

The accusation that television news has a political agenda misses the point. Right now, the main agenda is to give people what they want. It is not partisanship but profitability that shapes what you see.

Money. Something that the little people and the truth have very little of.

Now, television news should not become a sort of intellectual broccoli to be jammed down our viewers' unwilling throats. We are obliged to make our offerings as palatable as possible. But there are too many important things happening in the world today to allow the diet to be determined to such a degree by the popular tastes of a relatively narrow and apparently uninterested demographic.

We might as well go back to three channels, it would save time flipping through the remote, and we could have the news in red, blue or white, depending on the station.

Lost In The Shuffle

With their name used in vain, the Indians would like to point out few items that have been overlooked.

American Indians and the Abramoff Scandal / You don't know Jack: "Now that I think about it, as long as the Justice Department is investigating what happened to all of Abramoff's money, maybe they could investigate what happened to all the treaty promises that have been broken. Why is it, for instance, that despite the promise of doctors and hospitals in exchange for our land, the government, according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, spends more than twice as much on average for prisoner health care than for Indian health care?"

Extremely valid question. But aren't you guys rich?

Enter Jack Abramoff. Along with his friends and associates, he targeted a handful -- six, to be exact -- of Indian tribes to finance his empire on the Potomac. What, exactly, happened? As far as I can tell, the Abramoff crew took advantage of the Indian tribes' goodwill and bankrolls to the tune of $82 million in order to pay for their own mansions, exotic trips and think tanks -- you get the picture. Which is: A few Indian tribes get scammed, a bunch of lobbyists and congressmen and staff get greedy (and later nailed), some promises get made and a casino gets shut down, and then Congress starts falling over itself to enact lobbying reform. Meanwhile, nearly all federal Indian health care, education, housing, water, energy, heating and roads programs are getting cut.

I thought when I lost all that money in the casinos (instead of Nevada) that I was helping you out.

Let me be the first to say: We were cheated. Maybe if Indian tribes were remotely benefiting from Abramoff's schemes, then those beating their chests about the taint of tribal casino money might have a leg to stand on. The fundamental mistake they are making, however, is that Indian tribes are somehow running around waving fistfuls of cash in the air. Sure, there are some wealthy tribes out there. But only 20 percent of Indian casinos are doing really well, according to Indian Country Today; the rest are only marginally profitable. The reality, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, is that Native Americans still live in poverty at a rate more than twice the national average. We have the same economic disparity problems that we had before Abramoff, and I bet we are going to have the same problems after Abramoff.

Hopefully your problems won't get much worse, but as a powerless and mostly forgotten segment of today's society, scraps from the scraps won't be of much help.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Wasn't That The Point?

It has been almost 6 months since Katrina and the truth is just starting to sink in, that these lives cannot return to any semblance of what was. Even if that sucked.

Study: New Orleans could lose 80 percent of black population - Boston.com: "Blacks and the poor were disproportionately affected by Katrina, according to the study led by Brown Professor John R. Logan. The analysis concludes that the difficulty in moving back to the city could mean a massive loss of population, overwhelmingly among blacks.

New Orleans was more than 65 percent black before Katrina hit in August, but it appears most of the estimated 135,000 residents who have been able to return are white. Mayor Ray Nagin recently apologized for saying New Orleans would remain a 'chocolate city' as he tried to allay fears that blacks would not return.

The study found that if New Orleans' returning population was limited to the neighborhoods undamaged by Katrina, about half the white population would not return and 80 percent of its black population would not.

'There's very good reason for people to be concerned that the future New Orleans will not be a place for the people who used to live there, that there won't be room in New Orleans for large segments of the population that used to call it home,' said Logan, who studies urban areas."

So I'm looking through my archive to find a certain post and found my original Katrina post.

I'm still trying to figure out why everybody is so surprised. The writing was on the wall, so to speak. There were plenty of bloggers who pointed out the discrepancy between words and actions, but it was like shouting down a well. This country is undergoing a change, one with a plan that only a few know about. Consolidation of power, displacement of the populace, lying, cheating and stealing for the benefit of a chosen few and isolation of the elite, are some of the examples.

Now that the heat is ratcheting up again, I wonder what the next big destruction/distraction will be?

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Backhanded Compliment

So Democrats are useful.

Political opposites aligned against Bush wiretaps: "Norquist is not a party to either suit, but he has been outspoken in criticizing his party's leader. He said that he had brushed aside concerns that he was harming the president or being disloyal at a critical time.

'You need someone who is a Republican to call the president on this,' he said.

Norquist said, ironically, he was particularly concerned about the problem because the Democrats appeared to be so weak.

'For 40 years we always assumed the left would take care of our civil liberties,' he said. 'If there were problems, the Democrats were the ones who would push back. But now with a Republican Congress and a Republican in the White House, the ACLU can't get their calls returned.'

Referring to what some see as a conflict between fighting vicious terrorists and upholding all civil liberties, Norquist said: 'It's not either/or. If the president thinks he needs different tools, pass a law to get them. Don't break the existing laws.'"

Checks and balances are what the Founding Fathers intended and a paranoid despot should not be allowed or enabled to change the system. You wanted a government you could drown in a bathtub and now that it looks like it is circling the drain you realize that it wasn't what you really wanted. Hindsight is so 20/20.

Eloquent and Poignant

Georgia10 has written how we feel.

Daily Kos: On Saving This Government: "When Lincoln said that, it was a Civil War which threatened to divide our country. Today, there isn't a war between citizen and citizen, but between citizen and government. Why? Because the Bush administration has attacked the interests of the American people, squandered its fortune, and caused so many to die in war. Today's divide is not between north and south, but between the people and its government, a government which has proved over the last few years that it is created by and for the powerful rather than the citizenry of these United States.

There are times when a certain form of governance becomes toxic, where those in the public trust act not as civil servants, but as self-serving politicos. We are living in such a time.

The Congress no longer belongs to ordinary Americans; it belongs to the lobbyist who can cut the largest check. The Presidency no longer leads, but misleads. And the Judiciary (specifically the Supreme Court) is set to belong to the most vile, extreme, and un-American element of our society.

Democrats can either surrender this government to a party which seeks to destroy it, or we can take Lincoln's advice and play our available cards. To those who say filibusters--judicial, patriot act, etc--are too politically costly, I say that failure to filibuster is conceding that this nation isn't worth fighting for. Instead of worrying that we will be labeled 'obstructionist,' I say we filibuster Alito, filibuster the Patriot Act, filibuster time and time again until this crazy government comes to a screeching halt. Enough is enough. The list of scandals is overshadowed only by the list of names of the 2,190 whose deaths have yet to be honored by this administration."

She pulls no punches while capturing my sentiments perfectly. Please read the rest because whether Repub or Dem, it does make sense.

Jellyfish Don't Have Spines

Now that the end is near some papers are finally starting to scream in panic.

Senators in Need of a Spine - New York Times: "But portraying the Alito nomination as just another volley in the culture wars vastly underestimates its significance. The judge's record strongly suggests that he is an eager lieutenant in the ranks of the conservative theorists who ignore our system of checks and balances, elevating the presidency over everything else. He has expressed little enthusiasm for restrictions on presidential power and has espoused the peculiar argument that a president's intent in signing a bill is just as important as the intent of Congress in writing it. This would be worrisome at any time, but it takes on far more significance now, when the Bush administration seems determined to use the cover of the 'war on terror' and presidential privilege to ignore every restraint, from the Constitution to Congressional demands for information.

There was nothing that Judge Alito said in his hearings that gave any comfort to those of us who wonder whether the new Roberts court will follow precedent and continue to affirm, for instance, that a man the president labels an 'unlawful enemy combatant' has the basic right to challenge the government's ability to hold him in detention forever without explanation. His much-quoted statement that the president is not above the law is meaningless unless he also believes that the law requires the chief executive to defer to Congress and the courts.

Judge Alito's refusal to even pretend to sound like a moderate was telling because it would have cost him so little. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who was far more skillful at appearing mainstream at the hearings, has already given indications that whatever he said about the limits of executive power when he was questioned by the Senate has little practical impact on how he will rule now that he has a lifetime appointment."

Noticed that did you? Doing some indepth reporting a little earlier might have averted this situation. Waiting until you see the whites of their eyes is a little late to begin shooting. And over at Buzzflash they could barely contain themselves, they were so aggravated that they got the date wrong.

If Harry Reid doesn't start acting like a minority leader and get the Salazars, Landrieus, Bidens and Feinsteins to support one, then he should step down as minority leader.

This isn't a "vote of conscience" concerning a filibuster; it's a vote to save democracy. And if Reid can't cajole and bluster 41 Democrats into saving democracy, he should resign his position.

Period.

snip

For some reason, instead of becoming outraged, the Democratic Senators act puzzled. This is why the so-called "middle Americans" don't trust the Dems on national security. The average Joe or Jill knows that if someone is threatening to beat you up, you don't hand him a bat.

I agree.

BuzzFlash has interviewed Harry Reid and found him candid and highly critical of Bush. But talk is cheap. What the Democrats need is a passion to save democracy and the leadership to get their stragglers in line.

As we noted, in 2003, John Kerry, who would like to be president, promised to lead a filibuster on a nominee that fits Sam Alito to a "T." Then, lead, John Kerry, lead, or be a hypocrite and get trounced in the Iowa primaries. If you don't have the 41 votes, get them. If you want to be president, you better be able to secure the backing of your party caucus, because if you can't lead the Democrats, you can't lead the nation.

Yowza! Don't hold back, tell us what you really think.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Jokes of the Day 1/25/06

I really should check my email more often.

A man enters a bar and orders a drink. The bar has a robot bartender. The robot serves him a perfectly prepared cocktail, and then asks him, "What's your IQ?" The man replies "150" and the robot proceeds to make conversation about global warming factors, quantum physics and spirituality, biomimicry, environmental interconnectedness, string theory, nano-technology, and sexual proclivities. The customer is very impressed and thinks, "This is really cool." He decides to test the robot.

He walks out of the bar, turns around, and comes back in for another drink. Again, the robot serves him the perfectly prepared drink and asks him, "What's your IQ?" The man responds, "about 100." Immediately the robot starts talking, but this time, about football, NASCAR,baseball, supermodels, favorite fast foods, guns, and women's breasts. Really impressed, the man leaves the bar and decides to give the robot one more test.

He heads out and returns, the robot serves him another perfectly prepared drink and asks, "What's your IQ?" The man replies, "Er, 50, I think." And the robot says... real slowly, "So.......... ya gonna vote for Bush again?"

Going a little further back:

WINTER CLASSES FOR MEN AT THE LEARNING CENTER FOR ADULTS

NOTE: DUE TO THE COMPLEXITY AND DIFFICULTY LEVEL
OF THEIR CONTENTS, CLASS SIZES WILL BE LIMITED TO 8 PARTICIPANTS MAXIMUM.

Class 1
How To Fill Up The Ice Cube Trays --- Step by Step, with Slide Presentation.
Meets 4 weeks, Monday and Wednesday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM.

Class 2
The Toilet Paper Roll --- Does It Change Itself? Round Table Discussion.
Meets 2 weeks, Saturday 12:00 for 2 hours.

Class 3
Is It Possible To Urinate Using The Technique Of Lifting The Seat and Avoiding The Floor, Walls and Nearby Bathtub? --- Group Practice.
Meets 4 weeks, Saturday 10:00 PM for 2 hours.

Class 4
Fundamental Differences Between The Laundry Hamper and The Floor --- Pictures and Explanatory Graphics.
Meets Saturdays at 2:00 PM for 3 weeks.

Class 5
After Dinner Dishes --- Can They Levitate and Fly Into The Kitchen Sink? Examples on Video.
Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM

Class 6
Loss Of Identity --- Losing The Remote To Your Significant Other. Help Line Support and Support Groups.
Meets 4 Weeks, Friday and Sunday 7:00 PM

Class 7
Learning How To Find Things --- Starting With Looking In The Right Places And Not Turning The House Upside Down While Screaming.
Open Forum. Monday at 8:00 PM, 2 hours.

Class 8
Health Watch --- Bringing Her Flowers Is Not Harmful To Your Health. Graphics and Audio Tapes.
Three nights; Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 PM for 2 hours.

Class 9
Real Men Ask For Directions When Lost --- Real Life Testimonials.
Tuesdays at 6:00 PM Location to be determined.

Class 10
Is It Genetically Impossible To Sit Quietly While She Parallel Parks? Driving Simulations.
4 weeks, Saturday's noon, 2 hours.

Class 11
Learning to Live --- Basic Differences Between Mother and Wife. Online Classes and role-playing .
Tuesdays at 7:00 PM, location to be determined

Class 12
How to be the Ideal Shopping Companion, Relaxation Exercises, Meditation and Breathing Techniques.
Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM.

Class 13
How to Fight Cerebral Atrophy --- Remembering Birthdays, Anniversaries and Other Important Dates and Calling When You're Going To Be Late. Cerebral Shock Therapy Sessions and Full Lobotomies Offered.
Three nights; Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 PM for 2 hours.

Class 14
The Stove/Oven --- What It Is and How It Is Used. Live Demonstration.
Tuesdays at 6:00 PM, location to be determined.

Upon completion of any of the above courses, diplomas will be issued to the survivors. Send this to all the guys that you think can stand the heat, and to all the ladies for the best chuckle of their day

I haven't done a lawyer joke in a while.

A woman and her little girl were visiting the grave of the little girl's grandmother. On their way through the cemetery back to the car, the little girl asked, "Mommy, do they ever bury two people in the same grave?"

"Of course not, dear," replied the mother, "Why would you think that?"

"The tombstone back there said... 'Here lies a lawyer and an honest man.'"

And for the final jokes of the day

I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor's permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.

--- Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman: "And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?" the reporter asked. She simply replied, "No peer pressure."

--- The nice thing about being senile is you can hide your own Easter eggs.

--- Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, "How old was your husband?" "98," she replied. "Two years older than me." "So you're 96," the undertaker commented. She responded, "Hardly worth going home, is it?

--- I've sure gotten old.! I've had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement, new knees. Fought prostate cancer and diabetes. I'm half blind, can't hear anything quieter than a jet engine, take 40 different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. Have bouts with dementia. Have poor circulation; hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. Can't remember i f I'm 85 or 92. Have lost all my friends. But, thank God, I still have my driver's license

--- An elderly woman decided to prepare her will and told her preacher she had two final requests. First, she wanted to be cremated, and second, she wanted her ashes scattered over Walmart. "Walmart?" the preacher exclaimed. "Why Walmart?" "Then I'll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week."

---My memory's not as sharp as it used to be. Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.

--- Know how to prevent sagging? Just eat till the wrinkles fill out.

---I'm getting into swing dancing. Not on purpose. Some parts of my body are just prone to swinging.

---It's scary when you start making the same noises as your coffee maker

---These days about half the stuff in my shopping cart says, "For fast relief."

---Don't think of it as getting hot flashes. Think of it as your inner child playing with matches.

---Don't let aging get you down. It's too hard to get back up.!

--- Remember: You don' t stop laughing because you grow old, You grow old because you stop laughing.

- --THE SENILITY PRAYER : Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

Now, I think you're supposed to send this to 5 or 6, maybe 10. Oh heck, send it to a bunch of your friends if you can remember who they are.

Disconnected From Reality

And they don't even realize it and never will. Retention is up because of stop/loss and fraudulent reenlistment practices. Only people who haven't served would think that things were going well.

Rumsfeld Says Military Not Overextended: "Rumsfeld said that 'retention is up' and that recruitment levels must meet higher goals, ones raised because of the operations on the ground.

At the same time, Rumsfeld added: 'There is no question if a country is in a conflict and we are in the global war on terror, it requires our forces to do something other than what they do in peacetime.'

'The force is not broken,' Rumsfeld said, suggesting such an implication was 'almost backward.'

'The world saw the United States military go halfway around the world in a matter of weeks, throw the Al Qaida and Taliban out of Afghanistan, in a landlocked country thousands and thousands of miles away. They saw what the United States military did in Iraq.

'And the message from that is not that this armed force is broken, but that this armed force is enormously capable,' Rumsfeld said.

The Army fell more than 6,600 recruits short of its goal of enlisting 80,000 troops last year, the first time it missed its annual target since 1999 and the largest shortfall in 26 years."

He uses examples that are years old, what have we done lately? The report is about the future and how the military is strained to the breaking point, not that they didn't do their jobs in the past.

This administration has no compunction against comparing apples to rockets.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Of State, seems to be the motto of the current First Renter. He's making the Nixon White House look like gossip central.

White House Declines to Provide Storm Papers - New York Times: "'There has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do,' Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said at Tuesday's hearing of the Senate committee investigating the response. His spokeswoman said he would ask for a subpoena for documents and testimony if the White House did not comply.

In response to questions later from a reporter, the deputy White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said the administration had declined requests to provide testimony by Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; Mr. Card's deputy, Joe Hagin; Frances Fragos Townsend, the domestic security adviser; and her deputy, Ken Rapuano.

Mr. Duffy said the administration had also declined to provide storm-related e-mail correspondence and other communications involving White House staff members. Mr. Rapuano has given briefings to the committees, but the sessions were closed to the public and were not considered formal testimony.

'The White House and the administration are cooperating with both the House and Senate,' Mr. Duffy said. 'But we have also maintained the president's ability to get advice and have conversations with his top advisers that remain confidential.'

Yet even Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, objected when administration officials who were not part of the president's staff said they could not testify about communications with the White House."

They can't afford to have the truth come out. That once again they used a disaster to further their own agenda. It never ceases to amaze me how clueless people are pretending to be. It has been obvious to little old me (sitting in my apartment in Santa Clara with nothing but the internet, mass media and common sense to guide me) that there has been a concerted effort by this administration to change the balance of power in this country. I'm not just talking about the emasculated and corrupt Congress or the compromised Supreme Court. I'm talking about the power of the people.

It does seem that there might be something in their water. Every time I hear War by Edwin Starr I can see the difference a generation makes. Without the draft there has been no unrest in the younger generation, we don't really know how the undertaker is doing since that aspect of the war only makes the news if it's local, and it seems this isn't the first time that "we must fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" has been used to manipulate the citizens. America keeps swallowing the garbage, refusing to acknowledge that their lives have changed and not for the better. It has been difficult to watch the changes as the people abdicate their responsiblity like frightened children and put all their faith in someone who smiles in their face as he slides the knife in to remove the vital organs that run the country.

The prevailing opinion of the average citizens I talk to is that it will be alright, there is nothing we can do about it and how much damage can it be anyway? It's only three more years. They are just as uninformed as before the Iraq war, some of them are still thinking that we will find WMDs. There has been little to no diversity in the news, incorrect reporting has become the norm and corrections nil. As long as American Idol is on, the populace is occupied and their world is ok.

This goes a long way towards explaining the recent elections and even more frightening, these same people sit on juries.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Coffee with Steve Clemons

Fascinating afternoon in San Francisco. Five of us met him at a coffee house in North Beach and he was most gracious with us. Certain bloggers from Berkley visited him at his hotel so he was a little late, but he stayed with us until the very last moment and then had to run off to be late for his speech.

I guess the conversation was interesting because one guy came over and asked if he could join us, he was a political science major and was writing a thesis on something that escapes me, and another guy pretended to work at his laptop for the whole hour and a half, leaving directly after Steve.

It was really nice to have the opportunity to physically meet someone who makes a difference.

What, She Said

Delusion and Illusion Worthy of Dickens - New York Times: "The bumbling Bush team that ignored the warning 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States' also ignored one that went something like: 'Katrina Determined to Attack New Orleans.' And now the White House is trying to inhibit Congressional questions on Katrina, just as it did for the 9/11 inquiries.

The administration's p.r. offensive on warrantless - and questionably effective - snooping is so aggressive that it has even risked exposing the president to an occasional unscripted, but still not tough, question. So he rambles on about steering clear of 'Brokeback Mountain' and the therapeutic value of mountain biking. And he calls Barney, the Scottish terrier, 'the son I never had.' (Barney's dad is all bark and no bite.)"

Barney doesn't obey him any more than Jenna (where is she?) and not Jenna do. Bush admitted on camera to Al Roker that he kisses his dog, which some people (non-doglovers) might find disgusting, but I find to be the First Renter's only redeeming feature.

She must be suffering from the same ennui as me because she wasn't as witty as usual.

Weren't They Sort of Interchangeable Anyway?

I could never remember which channel to set and would end up taping the WB when I wanted to tape Enterprise.
CW network to replace WB, UPN - Jan. 24, 2006

"This new network will serve the public with high-quality programming and maintain our ongoing commitment to our diverse audience," said Les Moonves, the chairman of CBS, in a statement.

Prime time programming will target the profitable 18-34 age group, officials of Warner and CBS said.

The new network will broadcast such UPN shows as "America's Next Top Model" and "Veronica Mars," as well as WB programs "Beauty and the Geek" and "Smallville."

UPN and the WB have struggled to attract viewers from the four established networks since they were launched in the mid-1990s. But each has its strengths.

The WB has had some hits throughout its history, particularly with younger audiences, having done well lately with shows such as "Smallville" and "Gilmore Girls."

UPN has recently gained some critical acclaim and strong ratings for its sitcom "Everybody Hates Chris," which airs on Thursday nights and fared well against shows such as NBC's "Joey" and Fox's "The O.C."

Both networks will cease operations in September, broadcasting their respective network schedules independently until then.

At the beginning of the season I thought I would have a 5 show trainwreck on Wednesday nights at 9. Veronica Mars and Lost were the winners in that competition. Now with one less channel in the fall we will either get better programming on one channel, or more of the same boring stuff on all of them.

The unspoken part of this is all of the people who become unemployed. Maybe they can find work in the car industry or finance or programming.

Technorati Tags: WB, UPN, Veronica Mars,

AC/DC Said it best

I like big balls.

Size Does Matter in Bats' Evolution

Pitnick's team looked at 334 species of bats and found a convincing contrast in testes size. In species with monogamous females, males had testes starting at 0.11 percent of their body weight and ranging up to 1.4 percent. But in species where the females had a large number of mates, Pitnick found testes ranged from 0.6 percent to 8.5 percent of the males' mass (in the Rafinesque's big-eared bat).

"If female bats mate with more than one male, a sperm competition begins," Pitnick said. "The male who ejaculates the greatest number of sperm wins the game, and hence many bats have evolved outrageously big testes."

Promiscuity is known to make a difference in testicle size in some other mammals. For example, chimpanzees are promiscuous and have testicles that are many times larger than those of gorillas, in which a single dominant male has exclusive access to a harem of females.

Large brains, meanwhile, are metabolically costly to develop and maintain. Pitnick's research suggested that in those bat species with promiscuous females, the male's body used more of its energy to enhance the testes — giving it the greater adaptive advantage — and lacked the energy it needed to further develop the brain.

It does cut down on the intelligent conversation though.

Snicker.

Technorati Tags: testicles, balls, bats, evolution

Monday, January 23, 2006

Champagne Sundays On The Patio

At the Sagebrush Cantina were so much fun and bring back fond memories. As a former smoker with asthma, I move away from smokers or just make sure I don't spend too much time in the area. Sort of like radiation. I don't appreciate it when they are huddled by the front door and I am forced to smell it on the way in or out. That being said, unless society is willing to treat them for the addiction that most of them have, making them smoke in dark alleys and back rooms will not make them stop. I find perfume to be much more offensive. Extremely offensive as a matter of fact. Most of them, which people wear in waaay too much abundance, cause my lungs to seize up and breathing becomes the focus of my life. Cigarettes don't do that to me. Political correctness and self involvement have caused society to run amok.

California City Bans Even Outdoor Smoking | JoinTogether.org: "
The city has banned smoking in outdoor public spaces when other people are present. Nonsmokers who ask smokers to put out their cigarettes but are refused can file a complaint with the city attorney's office.

'Everything is forbidden here,' said Tal Genin, a smoker. 'No skateboarding, no rollerblading; you can't swim in the lake. It's like 'The Truman Show': Everything looks really nice, but you can't live life.'

Mayor Barry Groveman defended the law, saying he hoped it would prompt restaurants, malls, and other businesses with outdoor public spaces to create separate outdoor smoking 'outposts.'"

Where? Out in the parking lot that doesn't have enough room for all the cars? What will be the next habit to be declared offensive? Eating ice cream cones in public because it might have sexual connotations? Ever since the Sambos (I've eaten at the original and the food rocks!) decision people have lost all sense of perspective.

No Excuses to Hide Behind

More and more it looks as if the Katrina debacle was engineered. Not the storm itself, but the preparation and response were not just inadequate, they were criminal.

New Docs Show Gov't Forewarned on Katrina: "An Aug. 28 report by the department's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center concluded that a Category 4 or 5 hurricane would cause severe damage in the city, including power outages and a direct economic hit of up to $10 billion for the first week.

'Overall, the impacts described herein are conservative,' stated the report, which was sent to Homeland Security's office for infrastructure protection.

'Any storm rated Category 4 or greater ... will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching, leaving the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months,' said the report, which was released by a Senate panel examining the government's breakdown in responding to Katrina.

The documents are the latest indication that the federal government knew beforehand of the catastrophic damage that a storm of Katrina's magnitude could cause."

There is no excuse, this was deliberate incompetence. If New Orleans had been Florida this would never have happened.

Kind of makes me wonder what other disaster they have turned to their benefit? I won't put a link up, because we all know which one and how it is exploited whenever politically necessary.

They're Just Numbers

Actually, to their families they are irreplaceable.

USATODAY.com - Attacks in Iraq jumped in 2005: "Insurgents are widening their attacks to include the expanding Iraqi forces engaged in the fighting, said Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, a coalition spokesman.

He added, 'It tells me the coalition and the Iraqi forces have been very aggressive in taking the fight to the enemy.'

The number of trained and equipped Iraqi security forces has grown to 227,000. They outnumber U.S. forces in Iraq. They are often more exposed and are taking a more visible role in fighting the insurgency.

'They're easier targets,' said Andrew Krepinevich, a counterinsurgency expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based defense think tank.

In 2005, 2,713 Iraqi police and military were killed, according to the Brookings Institute, a Washington-based think tank. Similar numbers for 2004 were not available, and Iraq's government has not released comprehensive casualty numbers for Iraqi security forces. Thousands of Iraqi civilians have also been killed, but no precise tally is available.

U.S. forces have become more effective at protecting against attacks. In 2004, 714 U.S. troops were killed in action and 673 last year, despite the increase in attacks. The number of wounded dropped 26%, from 7,990 to 5,939 during the same period.

The U.S. military attributes that to an increase in effectiveness in protecting its forces against roadside bombs and other attacks. Maj. Gen. William Webster said recently that 10% of the attacks against U.S. forces cause casualties, down from about 25%-30% a year ago."

I am so confused. If the Iraqi army has 227,000 trained troops, how can they have only one "trained" brigade? If we can spy on Americans at home, why can't we figure out how many Iraqi civilians have been killed? Can't someone just total up the numbers on the front pages and give us a rough estimate? Instead they get blown off every year, the civilians aren't that important, if they were they would have moved to another country by now.

When are we going to give up and come home? Because we are going to come home, eventually. Why not make it sooner rather than later?

Sunday, January 22, 2006

She Just Doesn't Get It

And I doubt if she ever will. Her mind is closed, completely wrapped in the blanket of righteousness and unwilling to understand, that at the heart of the lobbying scandal is not that he directed Indian tribes (who he obviously didn't respect and was using for another purpose) to give money to both parties, but what he expected in return. Who benefited? That is what the firestorm is really about, but let's not worry our little heads over that detail.

The Firestorm Over My Column: "I wrote that he gave campaign money to both parties and their members of Congress. He didn't. I should have said he directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.

My mistake set off a firestorm. I heard that I was lying, that Democrats never got a penny of Abramoff-tainted money, that I was trying to say it was a bipartisan scandal, as some Republicans claim. I didn't say that. It's not a bipartisan scandal; it's a Republican scandal, and that's why the Republicans are scurrying around trying to enact lobbying reforms.

But there is no doubt about the campaign contributions that were directed to lawmakers of both parties. Records from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Public Integrity show that Abramoff's Indian clients contributed money to 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats between 1999 and 2004. The Post also has copies of lists sent to tribes by Abramoff with his personal directions on which members were to receive what amounts.

Michael Crowley of the New Republic said in his blog that 'while for all practical purposes this is indisputably a Republican scandal, the narrow liberal-blogger definition of whether any Democrats took money 'from Abramoff' -- which neatly excludes contributions he directed his clients to make -- amounts to foolish semantics.''

These facts have been reported many times in The Post and elsewhere. So why would it cause me to be called a 'right-wing whore' and much worse?"

Whore, a person who prostitutes and it doesn't have to be for sex. The ombudsman can no longer be trusted to correct misinformation. The WaaPoo will remain an information source, but one that forces you to suspend belief and has to be checked, sort of like the National Enquirer.

Off with a bang!

Frank Rich is off to write a book, but before he left, he wrote this little gem.

Truthiness 101: From Frey to Alito - New York Times: "This isn't just a slippery slope. It's a toboggan into chaos, or at least war. As everyone knows now - except for the 22 percent, according to a recent Harris poll, who still believe that Saddam helped plan 9/11 - it's the truthiness of all those imminent mushroom clouds that sold the invasion of Iraq. What's remarkable is how much fictionalization plays a role in almost every national debate. Even after a big humbug is exposed as blatantly as Professor Marvel in 'The Wizard of Oz' - FEMA's heck of a job in New Orleans, for instance - we remain ready and eager to be duped by the next tall tale. It's as if the country is living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief.

Democrats who go berserk at their every political defeat still don't understand this. They fault the public for not listening to their facts and arguments, as though facts and arguments would make a difference, even if the Democrats were coherent. It's the power of the story that always counts first, and the selling of it that comes second. Accuracy is optional. The Frey-like genius of the right is its ability to dissemble with a straight face while simultaneously mustering the slick media machinery and expertise to push the goods. It not only has the White House propaganda operation at its disposal, but also an intricate network of P.R. outfits and fake-news outlets that are far more effective than their often hapless liberal counterparts."

Who can compete with this level of writing? Gore Vidal likes to sling big words around, but he isn't as funny.

The selling of Samuel Alito is a perfect illustration of how our world works. From the moment Judge Alito emerged from Harriet Miers's penumbra, his supporters' story line was clear: he'd be presented as a humble exemplar of American values too mainstream to be labeled "out of the mainstream" by his opponents. In his first courtesy calls on Capitol Hill in November, we learned, Judge Alito often cited his father as a proud immigrant who instilled in him empathy for minorities and the poor - an empathy not remotely apparent in the judge's legal record. A particularly poignant anecdote had it that his father had once defended a black basketball player from discrimination in college.

Yet David Kirkpatrick of The Times reported then that "some colleagues and friends of the elder Mr. Alito, who died in 1987, said they had never heard some of the stories his son has recounted, including the episode about his support for the black student and the fact that his father immigrated from Italy as a child." No matter. If such questions couldn't stop an Oprah Book Club selection, they certainly wouldn't stop a nominee to the Supreme Court. Ouch! Then he tells it like is with the Democrats. For shame, for shame. There was only one problem with the Democrats' fictional story line: it had been exposed as fake on the front page of The Times weeks before Mr. Kennedy presented it to the nation. Mr. Kirkpatrick reported that he had examined the same papers Mr. Kennedy was threatening to subpoena - as well as some others at Princeton's own library - and found no trace of Judge Alito's involvement with CAP as either an active participant or a major donor. When the Senate committee did Mr. Kennedy's bidding and looked at those documents yet again, it found exactly what The Times had in November, calling the senator's bluff and ending any remote chance the Democrats had for keeping Judge Alito off the court. It says everything about the Democrats' ineptitude that when they spin fiction, they are incapable of meeting even the low threshold of truthiness needed to make it fly in this lax cultural environment.

THE Republicans would never have been so sloppy. Indeed, hardly had Mr. Kennedy's melodramatic stunt blown up in his face than they came up with a new story line prompted by the other dramatic incident in the hearings: the departure of Martha-Ann Alito from the committee room in tears. She fled while a Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, was mocking the Democrats, not when the eminently mockable Democrats were mounting their lame assault. Whatever. As Time magazine later reported, a P.R. outfit called Creative Response Concepts immediately pumped up the media volume of her supposed martyrdom, breathlessly producing a former Alito clerk to provide eyewitness testimony of her suffering at the hands of those Democratic brutes.

He was nice and didn't refer to her wardrobe. Then he wraps it up with this:

If Karl Rove's White House propaganda factory is the NBC Universal or Time Warner of G.O.P. fictionalization, then the Miramax and Focus Features of the right are such nominally "independent" satellites as Cybercast News, the Lincoln Group (which places fake news stories in Iraqi newspapers), the Rendon Group (which helped manufacture the heroic image of Ahmad Chalabi) and the now-dormant Talon News (the fake Republican-staffed news site whose fake White House correspondent, Jeff Gannon, was unmasked last year).

Fittingly enough against this backdrop, last week brought the re-emergence of Clifford Irving, the author of the fake 1972 autobiography of Howard Hughes that bamboozled the world long before fraudulent autobiographies and biographies were cool. He announced that he was removing his name from "The Hoax," a coming Hollywood movie recounting his exploits, because of what he judged its lack of fidelity to "the truth of what happened." That Mr. Irving can return like Rip van Winkle after all these years to take the moral high ground in defense of truthfulness is a sign of just how low into truthiness we have sunk.

I remember the original scandal. Telling the truth was a big deal back then, Nixon lost his job because of it. That and a little too much arrogance.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

What do those letters mean?

Have you ever wondered why A, B, C, D, DD, E, F,
G, and H are the letters used to define bra sizes?

If you have wondered why, but couldn't figure
out what the letters stood for, it is about time you
became informed!

(A}...... Almost Boobs...
{B} ......Barely there.
{C} ......Can't Complain!
{D} ......Dang!
{DD} .....Double dang!
{E} ......Enormous!
{F}.......Fake!
{G} ......Get a Reduction.
{H} ......Help me, I've fallen & I can't get up!

Send this to all that will appreciate it!

They forgot the German bra.

Holtzemfromfloppen!

Wrinkled Was Not One of the Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up..!

Man, I really like submissions. :)

Why Can't Jane and Johnny Read?

Unfortunately, this helps to explain why the "good looking guy" becomes president.

CNN.com - Study: College students�lack literacy for complex tasks - Jan 20, 2006: "The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

Without 'proficient' skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

'It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things,' said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.

Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills. That means they can do moderately challenging tasks, such as identifying a location on a map.

There was brighter news.

Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education."

No Child Left Behind doesn't seem to be working. Dude, like, RU4 real, doesn't seem to help with critical thinking either. Remember those great commercials that used to say "reading is fundamental"? Have too many videos, games, and parents scheduling every ascpect of their lives prevented these kids from developing the ability to put two and two together?

Friday, January 20, 2006

Joke of the Day 1/20/06

Sent in by a reader, just had to post this. Thanks Rick.

This is a true story, indicating how fascinating the mind of a six year old is. They think so logically.

A teacher was reading the story of the Three Little Pigs to her class. She came to the part of the story where the first pig was trying to gather the building materials for his home. She read, " and so the pig went up to the man with the wheelbarrow full of straw and said: 'Pardon me sir, but may I have some of that straw to build my house? "

The teacher paused......then asked the class: "And what do you think the man said?"

One little boy raised his hand and said very matter-of-factly "I think the man would have said: "Well, fuck me! A talking pig! "

The teacher was unable to teach for the next 10 minutes.

Turn, Turn, Turn

So that you can spin in place. I've submitted a question to the WaaahPoo online chat in the futile hope that Jim Brady will explain why Ms. Howell is allowed to "report" inaccurate information (more than once). She has done as good a job as ombudsman as Brown did with FEMA.

Whatever happened to a good work ethic? Fast, sloppy and inaccurate seem to have replaced pride, attention to detail and respect for your good name.

Update: In response to a question from Wayne, Pa, Mr. Brady foolishly reprinted Ms. Howell's "clarification", as if that isn't going to set people off again. With an intro line of "in case you missed it". Are these guys that clueless? Sheesh!

Update 2: Pick me, pick me! Since it doesn't look like my questions will get answered in the live chat, maybe I can be one of those bloggers who might be consulted. Please?

Update 3: What a colossal waste of time. Arrogant responses to people he considered to be stupid.

Jim Brady: I'm not sure how you personally attack a political party, which is not an individual. But on that note, it's time to go personally attack a turkey sandwich, so thanks for the questions. We'll keep working to get comments back up on post.blog.

How appropriate. Turkey for turkey. Definitely not on the same planet with those he considers to be the unwashed masses.

Political Math

Found over at Wild Sects. Isn't it cute?

At least Nixon opened up China which enabled me to make a living practicing Acupuncture, at least until Bush assumed the throne.

A Whale of a Good Story

Really.

BBC NEWS | UK | England | London | Whale spotted in central London: "But at 0830 GMT on Friday, a man on a train called in to say he might have been hallucinating, but he had just seen a whale in the Thames.

Alison Shaw of the Marine and Freshwater Conservation Programme at London Zoo, said the northern bottle-nosed whale was usually found in groups of three to 10 and there had been sightings of another two.

She told the BBC News website: 'This is extremely rare in British waters as they are normally found in deep waters in the North Atlantic.

'It is about 16-18ft long, so is relatively mature

'It is a very long way from home and we don't know why it has ended up here'."

Big Ben? Fish and chips? Curiosity is not limited to humans.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

The WaPoo Cries Uncle

What a bunch of wimps. WaPoo couldn't take the heat, so they decided to get out of the kitchen. Welcome to the blogosphere. We spend time that is not monetarily compensated to research what we post on, I guess that was a little too much work for their ombudsman. I have to take their word for the personal attacks (which I don't doubt occurred, but not in that great a number) but she has been caught several weeks running with her hand in the Republican cookie jar and since my parents and teachers expected me to tell the truth, I expect the same. I never got to send a letter though.

washingtonpost.blog - The Editors Talk About Site Policies, Design and Goals: "But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being. It's a shame that it's come to this. Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about."

We have been called lefty moonbats in polite conversation and other things I won't repeat in not so polite conversations, welcome to the Jerry Springer world of blogging. I got called names on a conservative site that I respected, I mean they were not polite, accused me of wanting to punish little brown people (obviously not capable of reading my profile) and other things I couldn't believe. I still check in on the site, I just don't read the comments.

It would have sorted itself out after a while, or they could have done what the rest of us did and made it a little more difficult to post a comment. They just thought they were so right and weren't prepared for a reality check. Which is why I refer to them as the WaPoo, until they clean up their act.

Times, They Are a'Changing

My comments are in parentheses at the appropriate area that captured my attention.

FT.com / World / US - ‘Political hijack’ fear over US aid shake-up: The Bush administration on Thursday appointed (no recess?) Randall Tobias, a retired pharmaceuticals executive, to the powerful new position of director of foreign assistance, in a move officials said would subordinate US overseas aid programmes to the broader policy objectives of government.

Mr Tobias, a big donor (surprise!) to the Republican party who heads the US global anti-HIV/Aids campaign, will run a combined $19bn (€16bn, £11bn) budget and also replace Andrew Natsios as head of USAID, the US agency for international development.

“The resources we commit must empower developing countries to strengthen security, to consolidate democracy, to increase trade and investment, and to improve the lives of their people, (according to our terms and conditions)” Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said in announcing the overhaul of how the US runs its aid bureaucracy.

Mr Tobias’s appointment requires Senate approval (should be no problem with the eunuchs who currently occupy it). He will have a rank equivalent to deputy secretary of state and report to Ms Rice, who is driving what she calls “transformational diplomacy” with the aim of changing the world (into what?).

But development organisations are concerned that USAID, created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, will lose its independence and that development assistance will become hijacked by a short-term political agenda driven by the “war on terror” (I'd be worried too!).

James Bishop, a director at InterAction, an alliance of development non-governmental organisations, said it was too early to tell how policies would evolve and he looked forward to the Senate confirmation hearings (why?).

Two senior State Department officials, explaining the reorganisation, denied that USAID was being “merged” into the department, as critics fear. The two agencies were becoming “aligned”, they said, and the move had the support of Mr Natsios (If it is anything like corporate alignments, this agency is toast, and burnt at that).

The current aid system was a legacy of the cold war and had spawned 18 separate accounts in the State Department and USAID. Mr Tobias would have authority and oversight over all these different accounts and bureaux, including the administration’s programme to promote democracy in the broader Middle East, the officials said (oh I see, Halliburton needs more money).

One official pointed out that when Ms Rice first came to the State Department a year ago and asked how much the US was spending on democracy promotion, it was not easy to give an answer because of a proliferation of programmes, budgets and bureaux (maybe because if it isn't a pie chart it strains their brain cells?).

A former CEO of Eli Lilly, the pharmaceuticals group, and with little background in public health, Mr Tobias spearheaded the administration’s sometimes controversial anti-Aids campaign that has been criticised for overemphasising abstinence and fidelity, rather than condoms. While at Eli Lilly, Mr Tobias lobbied for stronger intellectual property rights to protect expensive drugs (not a surprise).

Ms Rice was impressed by Mr Tobias’s management and leadership abilities, the State Department officials said (she does seem to have a thing for domination).

The next battle for Ms Rice will be to take further control of the aid budget by attempting to diminish the powers of the Senate to “earmark” funds – attaching money to specific projects. (another attempt to make an end run around the Constitution, that pesky piece of paper).

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