Roland Burris is Inherently Funny

He Really IsSo I wasn't really blogging anywhere when the Roland Burris circus of fun was going on. It was honestly a depressing scene. Here you had an obvious toady of a corrupt governor (he's a lobbyist, campaign contributor and business associate of Blago's, though he thought it was clever enough to do much of that through Blago's wife) being appointed to the same Senate seat that Blago had been caught trying to sell on tape by the FBI.

Yet, most liberal blogs defended the appointment. It looked bad, you see, to block him from being seated... because a bunch of all white Senators would be keeping out the one black Senator, who was replacing the previous black senator, our new black President.

Burris even made sure to get himself photographed in a silly little tableau outside the Capitol, to try and fashion himself into a new Civil Rights icon or some such.

I agree, of course, that the way Harry Reid handled this mess was stupid. The way he handles EVERYTHING is stupid. It's a wonder the man doesn't walk around all day with his fly open.

Reid prevented a special election in Illinois that would have prevented all this. Heckuva job, Reidy. Thus, Blago got his foot, and his lackey, in the door, and...

Here we are this week! Burris was caught lying to the Illinois legislature's impeachment inquiry. Under oath. By the FBI, as it happened. See, he'd said, under oath, he had no contact with Blago's people prior to being seated.

Only it came out, actually before the committee, to whom he had given a written affadavit before speaking, he had met with Blago's best pal/probable extortion cutout/other lobbyist, a man named Lon Monk.

But, technically, he didn't work for Blago, so that was ok. Right?

Ahem. Turns out this week the FBI had at least one tape of Burris meeting... with Blago's brother. So Burris rushes to put out an amendment to his testimony under oath. It goes from "I didn't meet with any blago people" to "I met with 4 Blago people, including his brother, Rob Blagojevich". See, there's a one letter difference in their names. That's how you can tell they're not at all related. Oh wait a second..

But this was ok too! Because he'd turned down the offer to bribe Blago with a campaign fundraiser! Right?

Well, today he had to amend his amended testimony. Turns out, he didn't turn Blago's brother down.. He just couldn't raise the money.

Oops.

So, this is like perjury squared, or if you count the Monk lies, cubed, now.

Meanwhile, Burris' many former.. not exactly defenders, but... damnit, I wish the Right hadn't ruined the term 'appeaser'.. the Burris apologists on the Left, are almost eerily silent.

You got a lot of excuses for why we should let an obvious criminal into the Senate. Typically these ran to one of a few forms:

1: Ted Stevens was a criminal and nobody stopped him! He was corrupt!
My Response: Very true. Stevens was a Republican, and the GOP protected him. The rest of the Senate largely did too. Is that the kind of government we really want?
In addition, I would note that Stevens' crimes, while heinous, didn't actually involve buying a Senate seat. He was elected to the Senate, legitimately, on more than one occasion.

2: The 'optics' of keeping Burris out look bad! It looks racist on cable news (especially Fox)!
My Response: Of course the 'optics' look bad. Blago and Burris wanted them to look bad. You know what will look worse? When he's expelled from the Senate to start his term in a federal prison.

On another note, for the love of god, can we stop using the mealymouthed, ham-fisted, barely-even-English verbal cudgel of 'optics', please?

It's an assault on the language centers of the brain, I swear. Not everything needs to be discussed as if we're all soulless cogs in some marketing machine.

3: There's no established LEGAL mechanism to stop him being seated!
My Response: This one's a classic. While Al Franken dutifully beat back every petty legal challenge in Minnesota to get the seat he rightfully won, we couldn't put up a single roadblock for Burris, who is trying to steal one with the help of a legendarily corrupt governor. Ok...

Thanks to Often-Wrong Reid, it's true, our legal options were somewhat limited. But the DNC and Obama could have made it very clear to Burris that if he takes this job, he's a dead man walking, politically. No committee appointments in the Senate, no one legitimate will work for him in DC, no campaign support, and in 2010, a vicious primary that will break him into little bitty pieces.

Burris is an operator. He'd take the hint.


Instead... nothing was done. Thanks Reid. Thanks to you too, President Obama.

(I also love the legal 'analysis' here that suggests that you should be allowed to profit from a crime, i.e. the purchase of a Senate seat, merely because the Constitution forgot to mention buying an appointment as a disqualification. Right, right. The fact that, in the end, Burris purchased it for a fundraiser that never occurred only makes him a better criminal.)

Well, ok, fine, fine.

Just out of curiosity.... how does the Burris thing look now, to all the people who thought it best to let him in and be done with it?

Heh. I love being right.

War on Cursing and Other Randomess

Also, 'Cuss' Isn't a Word, You Ignorant Half-Wits

Curses!
So there's a town in California that really, really wants to feel my wrath, assuming I ever get any.

What the @$%#? This community on the edge of Los Angeles has become a cuss-free zone.

So if you're headed to South Pasadena this week, be sure to turn down the volume on that Snoop Dogg CD, and, if the little old lady from Pasadena cuts you off in traffic, don't even think about flipping her the bird.

Not that police will slap cuffs on you and haul your sorry, er, butt off to jail in light of the proclamation passed Wednesday by the City Council. But you could be shamed into better behavior by the unsettling glares of residents who take their reputation for civility seriously.

Define 'better'. Is it better to use the non-word 'cuss' than to curse, an integral part of the English language since before there WAS a proper English language?

What kind of numbskull would think that this intrusion, meaningless as it is, of government into private speech is a good idea? What sort of slope-foreheaded nitwit would waste public time and money with this tripe? What kind of inbred, demi-human, chromosomally deficient mental defective?

Oh, this one.

"That's one of the purposes of this," Mayor Michael Cacciotti said of his city's proclamation designating the first week of March as No Cussing Week. "It provides us a reminder to be more civil, to elevate the level of discourse."

The proclamation will be in effect until Friday, and then the first week of every March hereafter.

Ahh, public officials.

Sometimes they make you long for a brutal autocracy, just to teach people the value of liberty.

Speaking of people who need time to learn, we have a whole slew of these whackos. The leader in South Pasadena, in particular, should pay more attention in school.

South Pasadena, a tranquil city of tree-shaded cottages at the base of a mountain range eight miles north of downtown Los Angeles, isn't the first to try to rein in potty mouths. Earlier this year, the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, Mo., proposed banning swearing in bars. Last year, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons called for an industrywide ban on racially and sexually charged epithets.

But what's different about the latest push to stop saying in public the words that Jane Fonda and Diane Keaton recently discovered we still can't say on television is that it was proposed by a 14-year-old boy.

"My mom and dad always taught me good morals, good values, and not cussing was one of them," said McKay Hatch, the founder of South Pasadena High School's No Cussing Club, during a recent break between study hall and tennis practice.

"I've cussed before, I'm not gonna lie to you," Hatch quickly added. "But I try not to cuss any more."

I'm not gonna lie to you, kid. You're a goddamned retard.

He was in junior high school when he became fed up with all the blue language around him.

He understood why his friends use foul language: "They just want to fit in like everybody else and they don't know how. They figure if they cuss maybe it's an easy way to do that."

But it wasn't for him.

"I finally told my friends, `I don't cuss.' And I said, `If you want to hang out with me, you don't cuss.'"

It took a couple of years, but enough friends finally came around that Hatch formed a 50-member club, handed out fliers and called the group's first meeting, held June 1.

Nine months later, the No Cussing Club has a Web site, claims a membership of 10,000 and boasts chapters in several states and countries. Hatch considers his greatest achievement, though, to be getting his hometown of 25,000 to become a cuss-free zone.

Cacciotti, the mayor, isn't surprised that South Pasadena started the movement. He noted that the city broke off from its much bigger neighbor 120 years ago when residents unhappy with the saloon trade in downtown Pasadena voted 85-25 to go their own way.

This is how temperance movements start, folks. Some kid with no friends starts a movement for other kids with no friends and no lives and the next thing you know, the Mob's running Chicago because the rest of us aren't legally allowed to have a good time.

For his part, Hatch hopes his No Cussing Club will lead to cuss-free zones in other cities. He believes it could be a quality-of-life issue, and that there may be less violence if people behave better.

"You have to start with the little things," he said.

Yep. Prohibition typically brings about a reduction in violence. That's why prohibiting alcohol lead to the Golden Age, and the War on Drugs brought about the earthly nirvana we see today.

Oh, wait a second.

FUCK NO!

Source: Raw Story

Oh God, Here We Go
So the governmental body that pays out damages to people injured by vaccines has cut a check to one girl's family, after a vaccine apparently triggered a pre-existing metabolic condition and ruined her brain.

Autism anti-vaccine fanatics start raving in 3, 2, 1...

Government health officials have conceded that childhood vaccines worsened a rare, underlying disorder that ultimately led to autism-like symptoms in a Georgia girl, and that she should be paid from a federal vaccine-injury fund.

Medical and legal experts say the narrow wording and circumstances probably make the case an exception — not a precedent for thousands of other pending claims.

The government "has not conceded that vaccines cause autism," said Linda Renzi, the lawyer representing federal officials, who have consistently maintained that childhood shots are safe.

Oh, it doesn't matter what the FACTS are, Renzi. They'll say you did anyway.

Studies repeatedly have discounted any link between thimerosal and autism, but legal challenges continue. The issue even cropped up in the presidential campaign, with Republican John McCain asserting on Friday that "there's strong evidence" autism is connected to the preservative.

The girl has a disorder involving her mitochondria, the energy factories of cells. The disorder — which can be present at birth from an inherited gene or acquired later in life — impairs cells' ability to use nutrients, and often causes problems in brain functioning. It can lead to delays in walking and talking.

Federal officials say the law bars them from discussing the case or releasing documents without the family's permission. However, The Associated Press obtained a copy of the concession by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials.

According to the document, five vaccines the girl received on one day in 2000 aggravated her mitochondrial condition, predisposing her to metabolic problems that manifested as worsening brain function "with features of autism spectrum disorder." In the 1990s, the definition of autism was expanded to take in a group of milder, related conditions, which are known as autism spectrum disorders.

So the girl had some crippling condition with her mitochondria, and vaccines that are harmless to healthy people triggered them to malfunction.

Tragic. But that doesn't make the vaccines the cause of autism unless all autistic kids have this exceedingly rare condition, and even then, they're not really the cause, any more than sugar causes diabetic comas; rather, it TRIGGERS a malfunctioning system that's already in place.

The Health Resources and Services Administration, which is in charge of the fund, said: "HRSA has maintained and continues to maintain the position that vaccines do not cause autism."

A Portuguese study suggested that 7 percent of autistic children might also have the mitochondrial disorder, versus one in 5,000 people — or 0.02 percent — in the general population, said Dr. Marvin Natowicz, a Cleveland Clinic geneticist.

So what this really says is that, maybe, 7% of autistic kids aren't really autistic; they have a mitochondiral disorder. And perhaps, MAYBE, vaccines contribute to that disorder worsening.

Maybe.

The other 93%? Completely unrelated.

This is why disease definitions getting overly broad can be such a nuisance.

Reported cases of autism have been rising in the U.S., even after thimerosal was removed from most childhood vaccines. However, some experts believe the rise is due to an expansion of the definition of autism and related conditions, and a desire to diagnose children so they qualify for special services and aid.

Enough said.

Source: Raw Story

And With Strange Aeons, Even Death May Die
This story's been around a lot the last week, but for posterity:

BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) - The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that "all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish."

It added: "Offenders will be severely punished."

The really sad thing is, this officially ends the old legal riddle, 'What is the only crime for which there is no punishment?'. Until now, suicide worked as the answer.

But thanks to a small town in France, there's an exception.

Source: Yahoo News

Eat Circuitry
Nom nom.

Death of English Culture
Yes, that greatest symbol of England is under attack.

No, not the Queen.

According to the British Beer and Pubs Association, 27 pubs a week closed in 2007 – seven times faster than the previous year and 14 times faster than 2005. This means that four pubs a day are closing.

The figures have been released a week before The Budget. The Government has run out of money, and the pub industry is anxious that the Government does not put up beer taxes. "Beer sales in pubs – the backbone of the trade – are now at their lowest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s," says the BBPA. "

IT CANNOT BE!

Apparently white wine and health consciousness are doing what the Gerrys could not.

Pubs without the room to provide an attractive outside areas for smokers, and those that are not big on food have faced particular difficulties. The move towards spirits and wine has hit the beery pub. Research shows that there has been a marked trend in the rise of "pre-loading", where drinkers, young adults mostly, buy booze from a shop and down it at home before groggily wandering off to a pub or bar, thereby spending less money on binge drinking.

But perhaps the clincher is that we seem to be drinking less overall, not just in pubs but everywhere from the park bench to the House of Commons. Although the Office for National Statistics cannot be sure that people are being truthful about how much they say they drink, it thinks alcohol consumption peaked in 2000 and has fallen every year since. According to the BBPA, average consumption is down 15 per cent on 2000.

What a sad, sad state of affairs.

What is the Government doing?

With heavy drinking placing a burden on the police and hospitals, there is no early prospect of a "save our pubs" campaign from Downing Street.

Curse you, Governmental Inaction!

It's time to promote heavy beer drinking once more!

Source: The Independent

Duhhh

A message sent to all Defense Department bases and installations around the country late last week told officials to not allow the popular mapping Web site from taking panoramic views inside the facilities.

Michael Kucharek, spokesman for U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the decision was made after crews were allowed access to at least one base. He said military officials were concerned that allowing the 360-degree, street-level video could provide sensitive information to potential adversaries and endanger base personnel.

His comments came just a few days after published reports suggested that protesters used Google Earth to help plot their access to the roof of the Parliament building in London.

Yeah. You guys didn't see this coming?

Source: Raw Story

No Heat, No Justice
The hiliarious tale of what happens when getting design accolades for a building matters more than anything else.

Thomas Mayne’s new George H.W. Bush Federal Building now looms over midtown San Francisco. While people have sharply divergent reactions to its unique exterior design -- I happen to like it -- the verdict on the structure’s function as a office space for federal employees is nearly unanimous: it is a disaster.

Not that architectural critics care. Bedazzled by unusual design features and its focus on energy conservation, reviews of Mayne’s latest work seem to ignore whether it fulfills its functional role as a federal office building.

Based on what I have been told, it clearly does not.

The first fact about the building that may cause surprise is its lack of air conditioning or heat. According to Mayne, “a bike rack and air conditioning get you the same point. I’d much rather see BTU and CO2 requirements and let the professional community solve the problem.”

I apparently lack sufficient understanding of green technology, as it does not seem that a bike rack would “get you to the same point” in terms of keeping workers cool. In the real world on the 15th floor of the Federal Building, workers seek to relieve the heat by opening windows, which not only sends papers flying, but, depending on their proximity to the opening, makes creating a stable temperature for all workers near impossible.

When I spoke with a Labor Department worker at the building (who noted that she is encountering the type of bad work conditions that her agency is supposed to enforce against), she confirmed what might have been an urban legend: that some employees must use umbrellas to keep the sun out of their cubicles.

The lack of internal climate controls has left some workers too cold and others too hot. A happy medium has proved elusive. And while the managers’ offices do have heat and air conditioning -- a two-tiered approach fitting in a building named for Bush -- the “green” design apparently has messed with the effectiveness of these systems, leaving these top staff as physically uncomfortable as the line workers.

So you see, they knew it would suck. They just thought that the peons could in turn suck it up.

Riiiiight. Only managers need to have a comfortable work environment!

According to my source, architect Mayne has stated that federal office workers do not get enough exercise. To address this, he installed elevators in the building that only stop at every third floor. This requires employees to walk up or down one or two flights of metal stairs.

Persons with physical disabilities who cannot use stairs can use a separate elevator that stops at every floor. The foreseeable result is that employees seeking to avoid stairs use the disabled access elevator, leaving this car crammed with people and making the ride to the top extremely slow.

I am told that when the freight elevator is out of service, deliveries must use the disabled access elevator. It seems only a matter of time until a disabled worker sues the General Services Administration for providing inadequate disabled elevator access in the building.

Yes, that's right. He intentionally broke the elevators. To force people to use the stairs.

Instead of course, they use the elevator for the handicapped. Screwing them over royally.

I'm not sure why this idiot thinks that people should be getting their daily exercise in suits and ties in the stairwells at work anyway. That's hardly ideal clothing or timing.

Source: Beyond Chron

Waaaahmbulance!
Poor little China feels bullied by all those non-violent Tibetan Buddhists. Again.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's top official in Tibet on Friday accused the Himalayan region's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of seeking to sabotage the Beijing Olympics.


The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Communist rule, told Britain's ITV network in January that during the Games Tibet supporters should protest peacefully in China against Beijing's rule.

...

Zhang's lieutenant, Qiangba Puncog, the top government official in Tibet, said the activities of the Dalai Lama "clique were the main factors of instability in Tibet."

"They will not succeed. We are fully prepared and have full confidence. We will definitely ensure the Olympics and Olympic-related events in Tibet proceed smoothly," Qiangba Puncog said, apparently referring to the Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay that is due to scale Mount Everest.

...

Critics say China continues to repress Tibetans' religious aspirations, especially their veneration for the Dalai Lama, who won Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Periodic rioting by monks has been brutally crushed.

Also, a neologism, or odd translation, out of China:

"The Beijing Olympics is the focus of world attention and the people are exalted ... but even a grand gathering like this, he is engaging in sabotage and threatening to cause trouble," Zhang Qingli, Communist Party boss of Tibet, said without elaborating.

"How can this not be called engaging in splittism?" Zhang told a news conference on the sidelines of parliament when asked by Reuters why China will not believe the Dalai Lama does not advocate independence and what he needs to do to convince China.

Easy. That's not a word. It's hard to be accused of something that doesn't exist.

Do you mean 'agitation'? 'Disruption'? 'Anarchy'? 'Chaos'? 'Insurgency'? Or perhaps the grand bugaboo of our times, 'terrorism'?

Source: Raw Story

Pirate Day
Speaking of the Beijing Olympics, it turns out that they stole content for their website from a Flash game designer.

Flash game theft is nothing new. I’m actually quite used to having my games taken without my permission, and without receiving compensation. The difference here is that this is not some crappy no-name portal. This is The Olympics.

I’d also like to point out that this is not just a clone of my game. They didn’t see my game and set out to make a similar game. They actually stole my game. I’ll say it again:
The Olympics stole my game.
They downloaded the swf file from my site, decompiled it, swapped out the little guy for the Fuwa characters, took my name off of it and republished it as their own. I can tell this is what happened because they are still using some of my original art from Snow Day (the clouds and the ice cube are exactly the same). I also took the liberty of decompiling their game and actually found it still contains the sound files from Snow Day, even though they aren’t being used in the Olympic version. It even still has the splash sound effect from The Lake (I used the engine from The Lake to make Snow Day and must have forgot to delete this file).

...

The Beijing Olympic Committee has also not been lenient with copyright infringers. Back in October the director of the State Intellectual Property Office, Tian Lipu, pledged to prevent Olympic piracy. Indeed, the Olympic web site even has a page set up where you can report infringement of intellectual property rights. Evidently, they are slightly less concerned when The Olympics infringes on the rights of others.

Well, duh. It's the Chinese government after all.

On the other hand, they HATE to be embarassed, especially in relation to the Olympics. They'll throw someone under the bus for sure if this story catches on. Maybe even execute them.

Of course, it may or may not be someone who was even involved.

Source: The Pencil Farm

Take-Down
So, under the odious DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), you can mail out so-called 'Takedown Notices' to anyone you suspect of infringing your copyright, and they have to take down the offending content or they're in trouble.

Of course, these notices are very, very frequently abused to harass critics and stifle Fair Use of copywritten materials.

Sometimes though, it just gets bizarre.

It's cyber war! Lawyers representing the Air Force's elite electronic warriors have sent YouTube a DMCA takedown notice demanding the removal of the 30-second spot the Air Force created to promote its nascent Cyber Command. We'd uploaded the video to share with THREAT LEVEL readers.

How quickly alliances shift in the murky new world of Cyberarmageddon. It was just last month that the Air Force sent us the ad, and thanked THREAT LEVEL for agreeing to run it. The spot shows earnest airmen deftly thwarting a hacker attack on the Pentagon using Minority Report-type touch-and-drag screens. I'm certain hundreds, if not thousands, of geeks have already enlisted as a result of our patriotic shilling for the Air Force.

Now, though, it seems we're just another cyber enemy to be squashed like so many Chinese DDoSers or unsanctioned blogs. Was it something I said?

But Air Force marketing chief Keith Lebling, who sent us the spot in the first place, says any intellectual property claim should have gone through his office, and none did.

U.S. Government works aren't even copyrightable. YouTube doesn't know that -- presumably because it has no lawyers -- and it's taken down the video. A spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the Google-owned service has no choice but to comply with DMCA notices. That's not quite right, though. YouTube has no legal obligation to remove non-infringing content.

Oops.

The right hand literally does not know what the left is doing.

Update: YouTube has sent along the DMCA notice (.pdf). It's signed by Meredith Pikser, an attorney with international law firm Reed Smith LLP, on behalf of the Air Force.

Kurt Opsahl at EFF notes that, notwithstanding Pikster's sworn statement, the Air Force website promoting the video contains this language in its privacy policy: "Information presented on the Air Force Recruiting website is considered public information and may be distributed or copied."

So, there you have it. Bizarrely, an ad that the Air Force sent out to media outlets, thanked them for putting up on Youtube and discussing, has now been the subject of an anti-infringement campaign, unauthorized, that it isn't even legally eligible for, and even if it had been, they already waived any rights to it in writing on their website.

Yeah. Wow.

Source: Wired (Threat Level)

Government

Done To, Rather than By, For

Blown
A page of what happens if you speak out about government incompetence and corruption.

Typically? Nothing good.

Source: Mother Jones

Coppers

Cops charged in Halloween prank on teen

Associated Press
Mar. 4, 2008 07:44 PM
NEW YORK - Two police officers pleaded not guilty Tuesday to handcuffing a 14-year-old boy, kicking and hitting him, and abandoning him in his boxer shorts on isolated road as payback for a Halloween prank.

Officers Thomas Elliassen, 28, and Richard Danese, 29, were indicted on 33 counts Monday, some of them felonies. They were released without bail.

The officers were arrested last fall on charges of unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of Rayshawn Moreno.

Prosecutors say the officers were trying to teach the boy a lesson after he supposedly threw eggs at a car near their Staten Island precinct. But Moreno's attorney said the boy was throwing eggs at a friend.

The officers handcuffed Moreno and drove him to a remote area, then kicked and hit him while he lay facedown on a road, stripped to his boxer shorts, the indictment said. The officers then left the boy to find his way back, it said.

That's not a prank, lazy writers. Don't conflate the egg-throwing with the cops.

What the cops (allegedly) did was assault and battery on a child. Disgusting.

Source: AZ Central

Lapdogs
It's been bad enough watching Jon Stewart pull his punches on McCain, or fawn over him to Democratic guests, but this is a whole other level of bad.

Brian Williams: You know what I thought was unsaid ---they took their position Chris, we're seeing the replay --- they end up in this spot and the sun is coming is just from the side and there in the shadow is John McCain's buckled, concave shoulder. It's a part of his body the suit doesn't fill out because of his war injuries. Again you wouldn't spot it unless you knew to look for it. He doesn't give the same full chested profile as the president standing next to him. Talk about a warrior...

Chris Matthews: You know, when he was a prisoner all those years, as you know, in isolation from his fellows, I do believe, uhm, and machiavelli had this right --- it's not sentimental, it's factual --- the more you give to something, the more you become committed to it. That's true of marriage and children and everything we've committed to in our lives. He committed to his country over there. He made an investment in America, alone in that cell, when he was being tortured and afraid of being put to death at any moment -- and turning down a chance to come home.

Those are non-political facts which I think do work for him. When it gets close this November, which I do believe, and you likely agree, will be a very close contest between him and whoever wins the Democratic fight. And I think people will look at that fact, that here's a man who has invested deeply, and physically and personally in his country.

Williams: Absolutely, Couldn't agree more. Of course the son of a Navy Admiral, a product of Annapolis who couldn't wait to become a Navy aviator...

He's a Warrior. He's the most committed American alive -- the FACTS say so!

Yeesh. Gimme a goddamned break. Get these guys a cold shower already.

Source: Hullabaloo (Digby)

Olbermann'ed
Alternately, we could just let Keith deal with his colleagues whenever they get all weepy. He seems to hold them in thinly-veiled contempt much of the time to begin with.

Check out his backhand to Chris Matthews, famed hater of all things Hillary.

Summary: During MSNBC's coverage of the Democratic presidential primaries, referring to Tina Fey's statement on the February 23 edition of Saturday Night Live that " 'bitch' is the new black," Chris Matthews asked: "Dare we repeat what Tina Fey said was the new black?" Keith Olbermann responded: "There's another word that begins with the same letter as 'black' does. Let's distance ourselves -- especially you. Distance yourself as far as you can from that."

Burn.

Source: Media Matters

Goverment: Injuns Don't Need Money!
That seems to be the argument.

Well, that, and 'Math is Hard'

A federal judge said Wednesday he wants to resolve a 12-year lawsuit over government mismanagement of American Indian lands this June.

In a January decision, U.S. District Judge James Robertson said Interior Department accounting for billions of dollars owed to American Indian landholders has been "unreasonably delayed" and is ultimately impossible.

...

Lawyers for the government disagreed with Robertson at the hearing, saying the Interior Department's complicated methods of accounting are not impossible. Those efforts have already cost the government $127 million

We didn't intentionally hide money! It's just that math is hard!

So very hard. Much like piles of gold.

Source: Raw Story

Whiny Ass Titty Babies
Boeing's various flunkies are not happy that they lost out to those filthy Eurocommies on the new fuel tanker plane.

Nonetheless, the uproar continued. Boeing supporters and union officials criticized the decision and Boeing said its interpretation of the bidding criteria was different from the Air Force's.

Jim Albaugh, head of Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems unit, said Boeing offered its 767 aircraft because the company thought that plane offered the size and flexibility the Air Force wanted.

"We didn't think they wanted a bigger plane," Albaugh said at a conference of defense analysts in New York. "We were discouraged from offering the 777," a larger model.

...

Air Force officials have said the larger size of the KC-30 tanker offered by EADS and Northrop Grumman helped tip the balance in its favor because the tanker's larger size will enable it to carry more fuel, cargo or personnel.

Wynne, the Air Force secretary, told senators the planes were judged on nine key criteria and "across the spectrum, all evaluated, the Northrop Grumman airplane was clearly a better performer."

In addition, he said the Boeing proposal was judged to be more risky and more expensive.

Silly Americans. Size isn't the only way you lost out.

Though that's probably demeaning.

Seriously, Airbus is widely known to make better planes than Boeing. This only comes as a jolting surprise to Americans, Boeing (who surely thought they bought more goodwill with their bribes and so forth), and people who haven't paid attention to Europe's rising military star in the last decade.

Source: Raw Story

Torture Playlist

NEWS: Music has been used in American military prisons and on bases to induce sleep deprivation, "prolong capture shock," disorient detainees during interrogations—and also drown out screams. Based on a leaked interrogation log, news reports, and the accounts of soldiers and detainees, here are some of the songs that guards and interrogators chose.

Oddly, I don't see a lot of country on there.

Lead balloon. Ok.

In all seriousness, the musicians should sue. I'm fairly sure that their ASCAP licenses don't cover torture.

Source: Mother Jones

Overreach

Steve Marshall is an English travel agent. He lives in Spain, and he sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government.

The sites, in English, French and Spanish, had been online since 1998. Some, like www.cuba-hemingway.com, were literary. Others, like www.cuba-havanacity.com, discussed Cuban history and culture. Still others — www.ciaocuba.com and www.bonjourcuba.com — were purely commercial sites aimed at Italian and French tourists.

“I came to work in the morning, and we had no reservations at all,” Mr. Marshall said on the phone from the Canary Islands. “We thought it was a technical problem.”

It turned out, though, that Mr. Marshall’s Web sites had been put on a Treasury Department blacklist and, as a consequence, his American domain name registrar, eNom Inc., had disabled them. Mr. Marshall said eNom told him it did so after a call from the Treasury Department; the company, based in Bellevue, Wash., says it learned that the sites were on the blacklist through a blog.

Either way, there is no dispute that eNom shut down Mr. Marshall’s sites without notifying him and has refused to release the domain names to him. In effect, Mr. Marshall said, eNom has taken his property and interfered with his business. He has slowly rebuilt his Web business over the last several months, and now many of the same sites operate with the suffix .net rather than .com, through a European registrar. His servers, he said, have been in the Bahamas all along.

Mr. Marshall said he did not understand “how Web sites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by U.S. law.” Worse, he said, “these days not even a judge is required for the U.S. government to censor online materials.”

It's time for the US to stop meddling with the interwebs.

I'd say we should hand control over to the EU, but Germany and France have little love for free speech when it suits them.

Sigh.

Source: The New York Times

Lolz

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen from the chief fund-raising arm of House Republicans, according to party officials who described the findings of emergency internal audits.

The financial records of the group, the National Republican Congressional Committee, may also have been falsified for several years, Republican officials said. The campaign committees of several Republican lawmakers may also have been victims of a scam that is now under criminal investigation by the F.B.I.

The audits were ordered after the abrupt departure several weeks ago of Christopher J. Ward, who had been treasurer of the committee. Lawmakers said that Mr. Ward, who served a similar role for dozens of individual members of Congress and their political committees, is the focus of the F.B.I.’s criminal investigation.

The committee has acknowledged publicly that it was aware of “irregularities in our financial audit process” and that it had called in the F.B.I. in February because “these irregularities may include fraud.”

But until now the committee has not acknowledged that any money was missing from its bank accounts or that the financial irregularities might extend beyond the national committee to the campaign funds of individual Republican lawmakers who also worked with Mr. Ward, a longtime party operative.

Republicans have such sticky fingers. Tsk, tsk.

Source: The New York Times

Comcast Owns Your Government

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Comcast Corp. on Tuesday acknowledged hiring people to fill seats before the start of a contentious federal hearing on how the company manages its broadband network, allowing its employees to take those seats when the filled-to-capacity hearing started.

Many people were turned away before Monday's Federal Communications Commission hearing at Harvard Law School, leading critics to accuse Comcast of stifling debate over the company's practice of favoring some forms of Internet traffic over others.

Comcast said it hired people to hold seats only after an advocacy group called Free Press urged its backers to attend.

That makes it all better, doesn't it! How dare people agitate against their Corporate Feudal Lords!

Source: Boston.com (Boston Globe)

American Civilization

An Excellent Idea

Bleg
Yes, this is a post about a bleg. (Begging on a Blog == Bleg). Yes, there are about a thousand of these and most of them have worthy causes.

I think this is indicative of a far larger problem though.

She was only 14 years old when she was an eighth grader, a cheerleader, a young, vibrant girl with her whole life ahead of her. She was only 14 years old, when she enjoyed her last year of life as a normal, healthy girl.

She was only 15 years old, when she started chemotherapy for Ewing's Sarcoma, a rare form of childhood cancer that attacks the bones. She lost her hair, had the cancerous bone in her pelvis removed, and then her lungs started to deteriorate.

She lived through her 16th year with an oxygen bottle her closest companion, as her lung function approached a mere 20% of normal capacity.

In May of 2007, she was only 17 years old, when she finally had a double lung transplant, to replace lungs killed by interstices lung disease, brought on by the chemotherapy which saved her from the bone cancer.

When her health insurance is canceled later this year, it will be canceled with the simple explanation that she has reached her "lifetime maximum benefits."

Maximum Lifetime Benefits, another of the charming euphemisms come up with by our healthcare for profit system.

It might as well be called 'Maximum Lifespan Benefits'.

UPDATE II - Insurance companies are constantly canceling insurance for the people who need it most, like Brittani. And then the insurance they are able to get to replace their canceled policy is usually terrible, restricting care, curtailing choice, and ultimately subject to cancellation, or "rescission," to use the industry term, once the insured person starts to make actual use of the policy.

"Blue Cross is one of several California insurers that have come under fire for issuing policies without checking applications and then canceling coverage after individuals incur major medical costs. The practice of canceling coverage, known in the industry as rescission, is under scrutiny by state regulators, lawmakers and the courts.
. . . .

Victims of cancer and other serious medical problems often are unable to get new coverage once their insurance has been rescinded and they may go without treatment when they need it most. Suddenly swamped by medical debt, some people have lost homes and businesses. -- Source, L.A. Times"

Honestly, why couldn't we have a Democrat with a spine, who would simply go out on stage at a debate and say, "You want to know a difference between myself and my opponents? I'm going to kill private health insurance. That's right. I'm going to make a single payer system and nationalize Aetna, Blue Cross, etc. There's not a damn thing they can do about it."

People hate their health insurance providers so much, that mythical candidate with a backbone would win by 30 points, guaranteed.

I guess the lobbyist checkbooks are just too hefty.

Source: Justice For None

A Shocker
This one shocked me, that's for sure. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously, on the side of workers -- and the Bush administration wanted it that way.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that individual participants in the most common type of retirement plan can sue under a pension protection law to recover their losses.

The unanimous decision has implications for 50 million workers with $2.7 trillion invested in 401(k) retirement plans.

James LaRue of Southlake, Texas, said the value of his stock market holdings plunged $150,000 when administrators at his retirement plan failed to follow his instructions to switch to safer investments.

The issue in the LaRue case was whether the Employee Retirement Income Security Act permits an individual account holder to sue plan administrators for breaching their fiduciary duties.

The language of the law refers to recovering money for the "plan" rather than for an individual, raising the question of whether a participant can sue solely for himself.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in his opinion for the court, said that such lawsuits are allowed. "Fiduciary misconduct need not threaten the solvency of the entire plan to reduce benefits below the amount that participants would otherwise receive," Stevens said.

In other words, if someone is negligent with your money, you can sue to recover it. SHOCKING

Employers were of course opposed to this, but, eh, who cares.

Source: Yahoo News

Military-Idiot Complex, the Moron Triangle
So the Seattle Times has been doing some stories about how, gee, campaign contributions lead to disgusting political favors.

Big surprise there.

Heath and military affairs specialist Hal Bernton found a disturbing trend in awards that representatives in the Pacific Northwest were handing out: Money was going towards manufacturing products that would never be used, or that nobody asked for to begin with.

One such product was Microvision Corporation's "Nomad," a helmet with a mounted computer display, meant to flash maps and relevant data to a soldier in combat. In 2001, Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), who would later join Microvision's board, earmarked $8 million for the development of the "Nomad."

Democratic Senator Patty Murray, his successor, would appropriate a total of $11.5 million more to buy the helmets.

"Junk," one Army commander called the helmets, which have never seen combat; a contractor called Rockwell Collins was awarded the contract instead, but Senator Murray awarded Microvision $6 million for the purchase of their product anyway.

Ahh, bipartisanship! It sure gets things done.

Source: Raw Story

Florida Sucks
Seriously. They still qualify as a state?

A small fire took out the electrical grid for most of the state, including several nuclear reactors!

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Florida authorities are investigating how a small fire and a switch failure at an electrical substation outside Miami triggered a power failure that affected millions of people.

When a nuclear power plant sensed the disruption, it shut down. In turn, the state's power grid triggered rolling blackouts Tuesday across the state.

More than 2 million people lost power at the peak of the outages, but electricity quickly was restored to most parts of the state.

Authorities said no injuries were reported.

Morons!

Olivera said Turkey Point's two nuclear reactors and a natural gas-powered generation unit automatically shut down when the plant's systems detected a fluctuation in the power grid.

"In a fraction of a second, the demand was far greater than the power plants that were online generating electricity could handle," he said. "When you have that kind of imbalance, we have a system that kicks in and it starts turning people's lights off, essentially balancing the demand with what's available."

So the official Floridian solution to demand exceeding supply (because a short is dumping all the current on a small line into the ground) is to CUT PRODUCTION, THUS CAUSING A BIGGER DEFICIT IN SUPPLY, THUS CAUSING THEM TO CUT SUPPLY, THUS CAUSING A BIGGER DEFICIT...

Yeesh. We're lucky this process didn't continue all the way back through time, until they were hunting and gathering for berries.

Source: CNN.com

More Mad Cow
It's baaaaaaaaack....

Canadian officials confirmed a new case of mad cow disease Tuesday, the second such case in two months and the 12th since the disease was first discovered in Canada in 2003.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said no part of the carcass entered the human food or animal feed chains. The cow was detected in Alberta under a national monitoring program that targets cattle most at risk for the disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

...


U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner said Canada's latest case would not affect trade with the U.S. "This is no cause for concern," Conner said.

Right, unless you really want to AVOID dying in one of the most horrifying manners imaginable.

Source: Raw Story

Papal Induglence

Pope Sideous appeared via telecast at a massive gay-hating rally in Spain, where people were getting all huffy over gay people getting rights and married people being able to get easier divorces.

Benedict Arnold, err, Pope Sideous, went on to explain that the traditional family, with its union of man and woman, was key to world peace.

Then he turned off the video link and retired to the company of his attractive male secretary in the midst of a cloistered, all male secret compound the size of a small city, filled with art, wine and fine clothing to delight the senses, and nary a child to be found disturbing the peace.

The Marquis de Sade would be so proud.

Source: Page One Q

I've Got Those Sunday Morning News Blues

My baby left me... something about a train..... 

Let's make this rapid-fire so I can clear out my Opera tabs, shall we?

There's a Right Way and a Wrong Way To Do Almost Anything
El Presidente sends out Christmas cards with a staunch religious message and an extensive bible quote.

Asks Walters: "Does this also go to agnostics, and atheists, and Muslims?"

"Don't you think it's a little interesting," Walters also asks, "that the president of all the people is sending out a religious Christmas card?"

I think it's a little offensive that the President sends out Christmas cards through the White House, actually. I don't care if he wants to do it as a private individual, but since when is it the place of government to tell us about Jesus?

There are, of course, alternatives, if you want to do something more fun and less preachy.

Sources: Raw Story
Slashfilm.com

Al Sharpton, Legal Eagle
So it turns out there's an FBI tape from 2003 where Al Sharpton asks for $50,000 to be donated to his political campaign with the promise that he'll land the donor a cushy contract if he does so.

Sharpton claims that this is not illegal, because he was only a candidate for office, not an elected official. If he's right and that loophole exists, then... just wow. Amazing.

Source: Philly.com

Mackris v. O'Reilly
Turns out that an enterprising soul has made an opera out of the sexual harassment case against Bill O'Reilly, he of War on Christmas fame. A sample has been posted to Youtube, and it is astonishingly funny.

Source: Jesus' General

Department of I Can't Help But Gawk
I really don't want to be the guy who slows down at a car accident to see the carnage, here (leave that for the esteemed Mr. Carlin), but you really have to see some things to believe them. You might have read or seen an article about the little girl in India born with four extra limbs, thought by some to be an incarnation of an eight-limbed Hindu goddess of wealth. Well, they performed a successful surgery to remove the extra appendages and she's apparently doing well. The reason I link this particular article is most of the way down the page, they include an x-ray of the girl pre-surgery.

Wowsa.

Apparently she didn't so much have extra limbs as a headless, torso-less conjoined twin growing out of her pelvis. Those were its arms and legs, not hers, that they cut out.

Ewww.

Here's hoping she does well in the future.

Source: BBC News

Department of Another Bad Idea
So it seems there's not actually any law governing how much money a charity has to spend out of what it collects on, you know, charity.

Seriously.

This has led, in turn, to a raft of less than scrupulous 'charity' organizations that take in money, supposedly for Iraq war veterans, and then siphon huge amounts off the top. Things like half-million a year salaries, for instance.

Lovely.

On the other hand, you have charities like Fisher House, which spend 90% of what they take in directly on charitable work. They don't do much in the way of advertising, so they rely on word of mouth and so forth to get the dollars. Jeffrey Rowland of Overcompensating and Wigu had a shirt on sale to benefit them for a while but unfortunately that option is no longer available. The roommate has one and I shall have to post a picture sometime. At any rate, if you're going to give money, make sure you check out who it's going to.

And if you want to give to vets, the Fisher House people are apparently a good place to send the checks.

Sources: Fisher House
The Washington Post

RIP, Julia Carson
Finally on a sad note, Julia Carson, long-time public servant and Indiana congresswoman, just died from complications of a long fight with lung cancer. Carson was a remarkable figure in Indiana politics, a black woman hated with visceral fury by the Republicans and the right wing, who used people power as a political machine and created a small Democratic empire out of the city of Indianapolis. By all accounts honest, hard working, ingenious and dedicated, she spent her life helping other people and fighting the sort of entitled idiots who have driven this country to the brink of self-destruction. She will be missed.

My own most vivid memory about Carson was the vicious campaign against her one election year when I was still a kid growing up half-time on the south side. The Republicans thought that doctoring up a photograph of Carson, using the old Nazi propaganda techniques (lighting from below, high contrasts, etc) so that she looked like a crack addict would play well in their advertising. It was one of the most baldly racist, ugly things I've ever seen in a political campaign, and a real harbinger of events to come, where in future elections Republicans would insinuate that black candidates were out to get your white women, or that Max Cleland, who lost 3 limbs serving his country, was in league with Osama Bin Laden.

Carson won the election, handily as usual. It takes guts to stand up to abuse like that. I always admired her for it.

Source: IndyStar.com

Women in Iraq

There has been a lot of news coverage devoted over the last few days to the ghoulish story of an employee of KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root), a former subsidiary of Halliburton (Dick Cheney's private empire), and her vicious gang rape and imprisonment by her fellow colleagues.

As horrible as this story is, it's only the latest in a raft of stories about the catastrophic decline of the rights of women in Iraq. For all the rhetoric about liberating the Iraqi people, all the blase Bush administration propaganda about 'rape rooms' under Saddam, the endless litany of human rights abuses recited during the war, after our WMD excuse fell through, what does it say about the grand military experiment by the greatest power in the world when we sit by and allow this slide into the dark ages to occur?

Nothing good, that's for sure.

First, it's worth noting that since the United States took power, of a sort, in Iraq, women have been under ever-increasing pressure from the theocratic thugs who are seizing the reins of government.

The government under Saddam was a mostly secular dictatorship. It had little interest, in particular, in abusing or oppressing women. I mean, it had a great deal of interest in abusing and oppressing, well, everyone. And a definite focus on genocide against certain ethnic groups (say, the Kurds, Mash Arabs, etc).

Despite what your Neo-Conservatives might claim, it does not diminish these terrible crimes to note that under Saddam, Iraqi women had it better than they do today. The United States shares no small part of the blame for this sad state of affairs.

As the Shiite theocratic parties take control, women are being subjected to a reign of terror. Notably starting in the Shiite stronghold of Basra, in Iraq's south, but having spread north as society crumbles, women are targeted for torture, mutilation and death. Their crimes? Wearing makeup. Not wearing a veil. Seeking basic human rights and dignity.

BASRA, Iraq, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Women in Iraq's southern city of Basra are living in fear. More than 40 have been killed and their bodies dumped in the streets in the past five months for behaviour deemed un-Islamic, the city's police chief says.

A warning scrawled in red on a wall threatens any woman who wears makeup or appears in public without an Islamic headscarf with dire punishment.

"Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message," it says.

Good to know they have God on their side; just like every other lunatic killer in the world.

Funny how God never tells people to get along and respect civil rights, huh.

A group of tribal Shi'ite leaders told Reuters in October that Shi'ite Islamist political parties were imposing strict Islamic rules in southern provinces and using their armed followers to create a state of fear.

The sheikhs, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the conservative attitudes meant that only religious music was now allowed to be played in public places and dancing was forbidden, as was drinking alcohol.

You know the news is depressing when it reads like The Handmaid's Tale.

The United States meanwhile stands by and does nothing to stop this erosion of rights; hell, we even set the example, as with the recent KBR scandal.

The Kellogg Brown and Root scandal serves to illustrate both the complete lawlessness we have devised in Iraq and the low regard we hold, not just Iraqi women, but our own, when outside of the civilizing legal framework at home.  

The story is as simple as it is ghastly.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

Her co-workers raped her; her company decided to imprison her and try to shut her up. They held her against her will in a box, a literal god damned box, for being a rape victim. Because it was bad PR.

In the end, it took a minor miracle to even get out of this abduction alive.

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.

That's right; we had to send the State Department to rescue a kidnapped rape victim from an American company. It sounds like the plot to bad movie, doesn

But this really happened.

Will the men who raped her face prosecution? Well, that's unlikely for two reasons. One is the fact that US military contractors in Iraq are exempt from Iraqi and US law, a legacy of Paul Bremer, Viceroy of Iraq.

The other is the fact that the Army ensured that the evidence of her rape would be conveniently disappeared.

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

They handed over the evidence of a crime. To the criminals.

Gee Mr. Corleone, could you hold on to this pistol for us? We'd be EVER so grateful!

Even as we allow our contractors to run rampant, we let our 'allies' in the Iraqi government disarm and segregate women, driving them out of professional work and literally leaving them helpless second-class citizens.

BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi government has ordered all policewomen to hand in their guns for redistribution to men or face having their pay withheld, thwarting a U.S. initiative to bring women into the nation's police force.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, issued the order late last month, according to ministry documents, U.S. officials and several of the women. It affects all officers who have earned the title "policewoman" by graduating from the police academy. It does not apply to men in the same type of jobs.

Of course it doesn't.

We've spent 800 billion dollars on this experiment in government by explosion, and what do we get for it? A LESS democratic, more violent, more religiously hostile society? Gee, what a value.

Critics say the move is the latest sign of the religious and cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's ouster ushered in a government dominated by Shiite Muslims. Now, that tendency is hampering efforts to bring stability to Iraq by driving women from the force, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, who has led the effort to recruit female officers.

Even better of course is the fact that this will end up getting more of our soldiers killed.

Without policewomen, Phillips said, there will be no officers to give pat-down searches to female suspects, even though women have joined the ranks of suicide bombers in Iraq. Last week, a female bomber killed at least 16 people north of Baghdad, at least the fifth such attack in Iraq this year.

Oh good, we had too much security going on. 

It's not so hot for the Iraqi women either, naturally.

Another U.S. advisor noted that forcing out female officers will hamper investigation of crimes such as rape, which stigmatizes women in Iraq, because few victims feel comfortable reporting it to policemen.

This of course assumes that you want such crimes prosecuted in the first place.

What about the women who have taken our side and taken up arms, literally, to try and put their shattered country back together?

Well guess what. It's not good to be a US ally in the Middle East (Israel excepted of course) -- just ask the Kurds.

Policewomen say the decree also will leave them unable to protect themselves at work or off duty. Scores of police employees, both officers and administrative workers, have been killed by insurgents. Men and women have traditionally been allowed to carry their Glock pistols with them after hours for security.

"We are considered policewomen. We face kidnapping. We could be assassinated. If anyone knew where we worked, of course they would try to do something to us," said a 27-year-old interviewed Sunday.

"How can I be a policewoman without a weapon?" she asked incredulously as three female colleagues nodded in agreement.

Well, you're not supposed to be one. That's the point. You're supposed to stay at home, wear a veil, shut up and pop out kids. If you get out of line, there's a Mahdi militia man ready to teach you the error of your ways.

With a power drill.

Phillips, who works closely with Interior Ministry officials, said he got wind of the latest move to rein in female officers last month. When he questioned the plan, Phillips said, he was told by one ministry official: "Females are taken care of by men in this country. They are not out there being police officers."

Oh, they're getting taken care of, all right. That's the whole frikkin problem.

What does out esteemed occupying Army have to say about this?

Phillips, though, said U.S. officials have limited options.

"It's a sovereign nation. We turned over the running of their own police force to them," he said. "We don't have a veto."

OH, SO **NOW** THEY ARE A SOVEREIGN NATION. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO KNOW FIVE YEARS AGO.

I... wow... I think I need to go lay down. I'm about to blow a blood vessel here.



Sources: ABC News
                The LA Times
                Reuters
                

News of the Day (Monday Commute Edition)

Driving down the highway, try not to read this news.

A motley collection today.

The State Security Apparatus Thanks You for Giving Up Your Sense of Humor

I haven't actually seen Superbad, but I know an element of the plot is that a character gets a fake id with the obviously fraudulent name 'McLovin' in order to purchase booze, what with being underage and all. The DVD release of Superbad includes a replica of this ID as one of those 'bonus' freebies that usually are pretty lame. Lamer than this at least.

The license is an obvious forgery, much as it was in the movie itself. It doesn't look anything like an actual Hawaii license, it has a lenticular picture for the driver's photo (showing the movie character and his erstwhile disguise when you tilt the id to different angles, etc). You would have to be blind to confuse it with ANY Hawaii ID, let alone one that applies to whoever would be using it, who would look like neither one of the two separate photos on the card.

Some people, however, think that if it happens in the movies, it can happen here.

We're very pleased that Wal-Mart has taken prompt, corrective measures to comply with the City's request to protect the integrity of our driver's license. It was foolish of the movie studio to include this prop in the DVD, particularly because it could be used by unscrupulous people to deceive others who are unfamiliar with our driver's license. For example, those who saw 'Superbad' know the underage teenager used his fake Hawaii license to buy liquor," Mayor Hannemann said in a statement.

Wow. Being mayor of Honolulu must require you to live with your head permanently up your ass. Amazing.

Source: The Consumerist (make sure to check out the photos of the fake ID and a real sample ID for educational purposes)

Drink Away the Pain Edition
Some lucky bastard with a lot of money bought a very, very old bottle of Macallan scotch for $54,000 dollars, or about 13 and a half euros at the going rate. (A joke, folks. It has to be at least 25).

That would be just the thing to kill off the lingering sense of Kafka-esque horror upon learning that the Democratic leadership did nothing to stop torture for five long years under the Bush administration. Alas, beyond my price range. I shall settle, perhaps, for videogame violence, my standard, and far cheaper, catharsis.

Department of Nidoking Might Want to Start Eating At Home

So a guy had a hard time getting an order properly made at a Burger King, and it seems they slipped an unwrapped, possibly used, condom into his burger because he was deemed too demanding by the surly wait staff. The manager laughed off his complaint about, you know, getting a condom in his burger.

Uggh. Yeah.

Source: The Rutland Herald

Mike Huckabee is the Craziest Motherfucker Alive
I mean, it's bad enough he pressured a pardon board to release a convicted rapist over the pleas of his victims, who warned him that the man would kill and rape again, because the woman he had raped and been convicted of raping was related to Bill Clinton, distantly, and so the whole trial just HAD to be a conspiracy.

Really, that's bad enough.

But it turns out that he also supported....... camps of some sort.... for people with HIV.

Highlighting the new scrutiny of Mr. Huckabee’s record, The Associated Press revealed yesterday that as a candidate for the United States Senate in 1992, Mr. Huckabee said in a response in a 229-question survey that he believed that AIDS patients should be isolated from the public and that homosexuality was an “aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle” that posed a “dangerous public risk.”

Fears of AIDS spreading widely in the United States were common in the mid-1980s, as doctors struggled to learn about how the virus that causes the disease was transmitted. But by the time Mr. Huckabee answered the A.P. survey, it was well established that the virus could not be spread through casual contact.

Right up there with Margaret Thatcher, he is. Can't someone PLEASE, PLEASE find the inevitable stash of photos he's taken with little boys (he was a conservative minister after all) before the primaries are over? I'm already sick to death of this chump's smarmy voice.

Source: FireDogLake
Source: Jesus' General

Torquemada

Not much to add to this. Apparently the Dem leadership has been aware of Bush's torture practices since 2002. Only one of the notified individuals, then ranking Dem on the House Intel Committee, Rep. Jane Harman, objected in any way.

She later lost that position in what was widely seen as a public spat with Pelosi, who did not object to torture. Technically Harman was supposed to rotate out of that job, but it's easy to see another motive for getting her out of Intel oversight before she could, you know, do something about the torture with the new Democratic majority. Pelosi had to make sure her own bloody hands stayed out of public view.

What a lovely world we live in.

Source: The Washington Post
FireDogLake

Mitt Romney Hates America

Also, he's a member of a lunatic cult. But that applies to most Americans, so it's hardly a specific criticism.

Facing the continued 'ick' factor that so many in his party feel about Mormons, Mitt Romney felt a need to make a JFK-style speech on religion.

In case you weren't clear that this was his intent, he gave the speech in Texas, not far from where JFK assured the nation that he was not, in fact, a papist spy.

Which was a good thing to know, I suppose.

Romney, on the other hand, wants to assure you that he'll be a double agent for ANY religious cause. So long as it's a Christian one.. well, at least if you consider Mormons Christian. Which many don't, which is, in fact, the crux of his problem with the 'Values Voters'.

Some highlights:

America is a Christian Nation, The Constitution is Quaint

"There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adams' words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people.'

This is true, in the same way that our prisons are made for immoral and dangerous people; to CONTROL them. Remember, students of history, the Founders feared and to some degree despised the common American of that period, who was, admittedly, prone to anarchy, rabble rousing and militant insurrection. After all, that was how *they* got into power in the first place, exploiting those traits.

But I digress.

You Can't Be Free Without Church. Also, Freedom is Slavery

Try not to drink anything when you read this lest it come out your nose:

"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

See, this assumes that the only purpose of Freedom is to go churchin'. Me, I think freedom is great for reading books, seeing movies, and hating jackasses like Mitt Romney. So we clearly have a difference of opinion here.

Also, since when has religion perished in the absence of freedom? Anyone remember the Dark Ages? How about the Wahabbists today? I don't recall a lot of civil rights amongst the Aztec either, but they did all right for centuries, human sacrifice and all notwithstanding.

Everything Good in History Ever Came from God

Another choice Romney quote:
"It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

Because all churches were in favor of abolition. Or civil rights. And none of them support the death penalty.

Firedoglake calls bullshit on this:

For all Romney says about history in this speech, this paragraph is proof that his knowledge is shallow indeed. Abolition of slavery, for instance, divided families, congregations, and entire denominations. The Presbyterians split in 1861, and didn't reunite until 1983, for crying out loud.

It's also proof of a subtle religious bigotry. Despite his claim of a "common course" based on "great moral principles," there continues to be great division among religious people over all kinds of issues. Committed Roman Catholics, for instance, interpret "right to life" to mean opposition to the death penalty; evangelical fundamentalists see the death penalty as a completely separate issue. Some religious groups embrace GLBTs, while others do not. Yet Romney, trying to reach the evangelicals who are moving toward Huckabee, blithely says in essence, "all religious folks have the same moral beliefs." Sorry, Governor, but your moral beliefs are much different than mine, and also much different from a lot of evangelicals.

Shove It, Unbelieving Scum

Romney the Conspiracy Nut:

But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

That is most easily countered with a quote from Atrios:

This kind of intolerant horseshit is basically gibberish, but since words mean things let's try to figure out the implications of what Mitt's saying.


It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.



Really it would just be crazy if anyone tried to start a new religion in America... oh, wait.

Heh... teh funny.

But what about individual secularists?

Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me.

The rest of you pagans can go fornicate with an iron stick.

Europe Looks So Good When He Describes It

I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired ... so grand ... so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too 'enlightened' to venture inside and kneel in prayer. The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe's churches. And though you will find many people of strong faith there, the churches themselves seem to be withering away.

Woo! Party time in Europe! I'll bring the beads, you bring the sinning!

Seriously, what a horrible world, a place where people spend their lives outside the imposing, ossified edifice of ancient, organized religion. Oh, the calamity!

Don't Worry, Mitt Hasn't Forgotten the Scary Brown People

"Infinitely worse is the other extreme, the creed of conversion by conquest: violent Jihad, murder as martyrdom... killing Christians, Jews, and Muslims with equal indifference. These radical Islamists do their preaching not by reason or example, but in the coercion of minds and the shedding of blood. We face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny, and the boundless suffering these states and groups could inflict if given the chance.

INFINITELY worse. BOUNDLESS suffering. Mathematicians in the audience have probably felt their heads explode at this abuse of quantification.

Also, note: theocratic tyranny only comes in one flavor: Muslim. Nice to know that the Mormons don't, you know, oppress and control people or anything.

Argh. Stuff like this makes me want to drink. Drink a lot.

Afterword/Go Ahead and Try Us, Mitt

Just a bit of a positive note from Digby to help wash down this swill.

Update II: Here are some very interesting takes on Mitt's speech at BeliefNet.

Steve Waldman:


About three percent of the population are atheists or agnostics, according to a study by the Pew Religious Forum. Another 7.5% are “secularists” who have no religious affiliation and few or no religious beliefs or practices.

That means there are four or five times as many non-believers as there are Mormons.

Yeah. Bring it, God-boy.

Sources:
Eschaton
Firedoglake
The New York Times
Wikipedia (Wahabbism)
Hullabaloo

Thursday News

News news news


Department of Fatherland^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hHomeland Insecurity

So it turns out that the Bush Administration's biggest and most lasting contribution to National Security, the formation of the DHS, has...... well, not so much worked out, as catastrophically failed. If this was a photo blog, you'd now be seeing a picture of a bus, comically submerged, and the words 'Epic Fail!' pasted over it.

Where, oh where lord, to begin.

Failure By Design

First, a study done by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has concluded that the DHS is full of massive, catastrophic waste.

Shocking, I know.

In its report, CREW documents billions of dollars in taxpayer money that was lost on poorly conceived or never-implemented DHS programs, including $1.3 billion on an immigration program aimed at tracking people coming to and leaving the US. The program "has never worked as Congress intended," CREW alleges, naming US-VISIT the top "Failed Program" in its report.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was widely charged with failing New Orleans' residents after Hurricane Katrina, was awarded the dubious distinction as "most troubled DHS component." And the US Customs and Border Protection agency was "most criminal," according to CREW, because of the number of officials charged with protecting the border who have subsequently be charged with aiding illegal immigrants.

“The Department of Homeland Security is an embarrassment that would be comical if only our national security were not at stake," Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said in a news release. "The agency and its leadership must be held accountable for its failures and pushed to do better.”

Source: Raw Story

Republican Graft Sinks Ships

My personal favorite aspect of the failure of the DHS has to be the complete and spectacular blowout of the Coast Guard's Five Year Plan to upgrade its aging, creaky and overtaxed fleet.

It was a grand plan too. An entirely new set of ships, a massive upgrade to existing vessels, a state of the art, custom made intelligence gathering and surveillance system... the works.

But of course, being the Bush Administration, it had to flame out, and take your precious tax dollars down the drain with it.

First, being Bushies, they outsourced the entirety of design to private defense contractors and left it, unsupervised, in their 'capable' hands. Predictably, this was a very, very bad idea. The new flagship vessels turned out to have serious security flaws and be built out of components that, well, can't take the cold, despite being specced to withstand -40 below. Oops.

Then they started retrofitting the old vessels, according to plan. Only out of the first batch, 8 of them were so unseaworthy they had to be thrown away. They wouldn't actually, you know, float. At least, not for long, since they immediately started cracking apart. Another ship design is so heavy it's useless, and has been described as a 'brick'.

You know you want to have bricks instead of ships. Lolz.

The Coast Guard has since had to beg the Navy for ships to make up for these losses, and the program is SEVEN BILLION over-budget. The Coast Guard is now actually less effective than it was before.

Lovely, huh?

Source: The Economist
Source: CREW (Note: PDF)

Gutsy Move Department

I was impressed with Morales when I saw him on The Daily Show, and I'm even more impressed now.

Morales has apparently been in something of a power struggle with his political opposition, and he has a simple solution: Let the people decide. Right here, right now. The opposition holds the provincial governments, he holds the national one. So Morales has quite literally dared his opponents to hold a referendum, right now, to retain their offices, alongside himself, naturally.

That's just unheard of. It's like Russian Roulette with a vote.

Source: The Associated Press

Department of "Duhhh"

Results are in on the Bush Administration's anti-science, anti-reason, anti-education approach to sex and social policy.

Teen pregnancy is up! For the first time in 14 years!

The birth rate had been dropping since 1991. The decline had slowed in recent years, but government statisticians said Wednesday it jumped 3 percent from 2005 to 2006.

Wow. Lovely.

Source: Raw Story

Artistic Anarchy

So a world-famous graffiti artist has plastered a security wall designed to divide up, well, let's face it, Palestinian land from the pesky natives with some subversive art. It's hilarious stuff too. Not to mention, err, some security you have there. It probably takes less time to punch a small hole in a concrete wall than to paint an entire series of graffiti pictures.

Source: Raw Story

News Update

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Pineapple Conspiracy but were afraid to ask.

Ok, so nothing on the PC; it's too dangerous. Instead, have some news.

Scientology is Bad for You, Mmmkay?

A German official is pushing to have Scientology, which is already considered a for-profit enterprise and swindle machine in the country, banned. Presumably from the country. Initially that strikes me as being a bit much, but then again, we ban the Mafia and other criminal organizations that have killed innocent people for money.

Source: The Associated Press

Brains, the Other White Meat

So a mysterious neurological illness is sweeping the employees at a meat processing plant who, until recently, were charged with removing the brains of pigs with compressed air guns. A lovely task I'm sure. Doctors are baffled, but the symptoms match a more or less incurable autoimmune disorder; the patients seem to recover, which leads them to conclude it isn't likely a prion disease like Mad Cow (though I think it's a bit soon, really; the proper incubation period on some of those prion diseases is several years, so these people might all drop dead half a decade from now).

Of course, the plant is still operating and selling to the public. Because, you know, we can't take any proactive health measures whatsoever. Mystery plague in a meat packing plant? No positive ID on cause? Could be a contagion wending its way through the food supply? NO PROBLEMS!

God.

Source: AP Features/Raw Story

Golden Compass Movie Removes Troublesome Atheism

So the author of the Golden Compass and its two sequels is a public Atheist. His books are full of bitter religious critique, against Christianity in particular. Hollywood wants to make them into a Narnia style blockbuster. The solution: remove all his ideas on religion!

Yeah. Ok. That doesn't smack of crass conformism at all. Meanwhile we have Dominionist whackos who scream bloody murder if they can't put their nativity scene on the courthouse lawn, and who fret endlessly about there being enough Christ in Christmas.

Gag me. Not the way Pullman's being gagged, but gag me nonetheless.

PS: Note the way CNN sells this story. Golden Compass Selling Atheism to Kids? GASP. SOMEONE MIGHT SELL AN INTANGIBLE BELIEF TO YOUR CHILDREN. IT IS AKIN TO AMPHETAMINES. ATHEISM IS THE METH OF THE MASSES
Source: CNN.com

Middle East Roundup

Let's see. Helen Thomas took Dana Peroxide to task a few days ago, and the video has been making the blog rounds. Basically Thomas had the gall to ask our Press Secretary if we'll ever be out of IraqIranWherever, and it led to a nasty spat. Thomas got off the best line by far of course, a simple statement about the Administration's supposed regret over civilian casualties:

'Your regret doesn't bring back a life'

That should go on bumper stickers.

Source: RawStory

In other news, a reporter covering Lebanon for The National Review Online, a right wing lunatic site attached to a right wing lunatic magazine, has been outed as a fabulist and hoaxer after a series of his wild stories were debunked or came into question. Amongst the questionable items? That Hezbollah had developed a 'delayed-acid' bomb that when detonated would make a car's chassis melt in half and the back fall off, Loony Tunes style.

Seriously. They published this.

Sources:

The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post (Specifics on the Acid Bomb)
Jesus' General

Finally, Harry Reid is supposedly considering yet another vote on Iraq, presumably to force El Presidente yet again to dash the hopes of everyone in uniform right before Christmas. This is the right track; I'd say, in fact, don't hold votes on anything else. Just Iraq, every day, all through December and January. People are sick of this insanity, and if they're reminded of it often enough, they just might do something about it. Now's the ideal time, the pro-GOP media conglomerates are running out of TV shows to dull the collective wit.

Source: The Hill

Yet Another Reason to Turn Off Your Phone

Technological developments to make the Stasi drool!

The Washington Post has an excellent, though disturbing, article on a new practice by our liberty-hating governmental overlords -- the warrantless tracking of an individual's movement and location. How might they do this, you ask? Simple! By abusing, blatantly and cynically, the 911 system built into newer cellular phones!

See, the feds required a while ago that cell phone companies upgrade to a system that tells them, within about 30 feet, where you are in case of a 911 call. It uses GPS so it's not exactly pinpoint. This was generally thought to be good; I wasn't opposed, certainly, to the idea of a paramedic being able to find me if I called 911 from my phone.

Ahh, but that was a younger and less cynical me. Given a few years, they've managed to turn a life-saving innovation into an electronic tracking collar. Which you pay for and can buy cute little faceplates to adorn!

*breaks into a rousing chorus of God Bless America*

So you might want to leave the phone in the car. Or turn it off. Or even turn it off and remove the battery, when not in use, in case it's being sneaky and operating in a low power spy-mode.

Or just vote for a better government next November. I don't know about you people, but I'm a bit tired of living in an Orwellian farce.

Source: The Washington Post