Labels: classic animation

I just subjected myself to a few minutes of a radio conversation between hate talk radio loon Laura Ingraham and religionist charlatan and highway robber Jimmy Dobson, two self-satisfied hypocrites celebrating their foul and reactionary vision for America. And they couch it all in the moral superiority the religionists and the Nazis always use to establish themselves as somehow superior to everyone else.

[snip]

...no one mentioned today's Republican Elected Official of the Day, Ted Klaudt, 49 year old former South Dakota state representative and, like Ingraham and Dobson, right-wing hate-monger.

Like so many tightly wound repressed and mentally ill Republicans, Klaudt was preaching the moral superiority of the far right while he was abusing molesting children-- his own foster daughters and 2 state legislative pages! He "faces a long list of charges: eight counts of rape, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, two counts of witness tampering, sexual contact with a person under 16, and stalking."

Court documents mention five possible victims. Three were foster children between the ages of 15 and 19 who lived with Klaudt's family. One is a cousin of one of those girls, and the fifth is a friend of Klaudt's daughter.

In the most disturbing accusation, the girls say Klaudt had them convinced they could earn up to $20,000 by donating their eggs to a fertility clinic. And even though he has no medical training, the girls say Klaudt did all the supposed "exams" and "procedures" himself.

Klaudt fancied himself a radical right Republican (and an evangelical) and in 2005 was a leader against the formation of the South Dakota Mainstream Coalition, meant to turn Republicans back towards mainstream conservatism.


He was arrested Friday and was in handcuffs and chains during his court appearance in Pierre. He refused to comment on the charges and was represented by another lunatic wingnut, South Dakota House Speaker Thomas Deadrick, R-Platte, a close friend. A written affidavit filed in court said Klaudt initially denied that he performed any "tests" on the girls, but he later changed his story after investigators confronted him with some e-mails he sent to them. Then he admitted that "maybe I did some things I shouldn't have." Maybe.

Klaudt was term-limited out of the legislature last year and ran for Senate and was defeated because of his radical right-wing record by Democrat Ryan Maher.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, hypocrisy, wingnuttia

Greg Palast...The prosecutor firings were 100% about influencing elections -- not about loyalty to Bush, which is what The New York Times wrote. The administration team couldn’t tolerate appointees who wouldn’t go along with crime. In the book I present the evidence that Karl Rove directed a guy named Tim Griffin to target suppressing the votes of African American students, homeless men, and soldiers. Nice guy. They actually challenged the votes and successfully removed tens of thousands of legal voters from the voter rolls, same as they did in 2000. But instead of calling them felons, they said that they had suspect addresses.

BuzzFlash: In which election cycle?

Greg Palast: 2004. And in 2006 and 2004, they challenged tens of thousands of black soldiers. They stopped their votes from being counted when they were mailed in from Baghdad. Go to Baghdad and lose your vote -- mission accomplished.

BuzzFlash: How did they do that?

Greg Palast: By sending letters to the homes of soldiers, marked "do not forward." When they came back undelivered, they said: Aha! Illegal voter registered from a false address. And when their ballot came in from Fallujah, it was challenged. The soldier didn’t know it. Their vote was lost. Over half a million votes were challenged and lost by the Republicans -- absentee ballots. Three million voters who went to the polls found themselves challenged by the Republicans. This was not a small operation. It was a multi-million dollar, wholesale theft operation.

They’re right that I’m a British reporter, because I put this story on British TV, not on American TV, which won’t touch it. [BuzzFlash note: Palast writes for British papers and reports on the BBC, but he is a product of the San Fernando Valley and the University of Chicago, 100% American.] But our election was a complete, total fraud. This is grand theft -- no question. It’s not a dirty trick; it’s a felony crime.

I’m working with Bobby Kennedy, who is a voting rights attorney. He said, “This is not just an icky, horrible thing that people do wearing white sheets. This is a felony crime.” [paraphrase] And the guy they put in charge of this criminal ring to knock out voters is a guy named Tim Griffin. Today, Tim Griffin is -- badda-bing -- U.S. Attorney for Arkansas. When they fired the honest guys, they put in the Rove-bots to fix the 2008 election. That’s what I’m saying -- it’s already being stolen, as we speak. Tim Griffin is the perpetrator who’s become the prosecutor, and that’s what’s going down right now.

BuzzFlash: You have been questioned about prosecutor-gate and about the theft of the election of 2008. But these replacement prosecutors are still in place, not to mention the ones who have cooperated with Bush. Gonzales has basically told the House Judiciary Committee, make my day. I’m staying on. It’s over with. You asked me questions. I didn’t give you answers, but you don’t have the courage to impeach me, so I’m staying.

Greg Palast: That’s the game, too. Congress is shooting at the glove puppet. I shoot at the puppeteers. It’s not Gonzales. He’s meaningless. He’s a nothing. He should go because he allowed it to happen, and that’s a crime. When I was a racketeering investigator, we used to call it “willful failure to know.” He can’t just say to his staff, I know what Rove is doing, but don’t tell me about it. He would still be liable for criminal conspiracy of obstruction of justice. That’s why Monica Goodling took the Fifth. Not knowing doesn’t mean you’re not guilty, especially when you went out of your way not to know.

Gonzales should be read his rights and carted away. But it’s the puppeteers behind him -- Rove and Harriet Miers -- who were deeply involved in the prosecutor hits. No one’s talking about her. This is the woman who went from head of the Texas State Lottery to nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by George Bush, and no one asked how that happened. They said: Harriet who? But they didn’t ask how that happened. They said, oh, she’s loyal to Bush. She’s the one who did the payoffs to cover up the fact that George Senior got George Junior out of the war in Vietnam. Do you think that that was done just by daddy making a call? Money had to be paid -- lots and lots of money to keep people quiet -- $23 million. That is something I reported on BBC Television and in the Guardian newspaper. We’ve given them plenty of time to challenge that story about the payoffs. We’ve never gotten a peep from these guys. And unlike CBS, the BBC has not withdrawn the story that the fix was put in to get Chicken George out of Vietnam. No one has challenged our story, nor have we withdrawn a comment on our story that the payoffs were made to keep it quiet.

Labels: 2008 election, corruption, Prosecutorgate, Republic Party

IT DOESN'T much matter whether President Bush was the one who phoned Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's hospital room before the Wednesday Night Ambush in 2004. It matters enormously, however, whether the president was willing to have his White House aides try to strong-arm the gravely ill attorney general into overruling the Justice Department's legal views. It matters enormously whether the president, once that mission failed, was willing nonetheless to proceed with a program whose legality had been called into question by the Justice Department. That is why Mr. Bush's response to questions about the program yesterday was so inadequate.

"I'm not going to talk about it," Mr. Bush told reporters at a news conference with departing British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "It's a very sensitive program. I will tell you that, one, the program is necessary to protect the American people, and it's still necessary because there's still an enemy that wants to do us harm."

No one is asking Mr. Bush to talk about classified information, and no one is discounting the terrorist threat. But there is a serious question here about how far Mr. Bush went to pressure his lawyers to implement his view of the law. There is an even more serious question about the president's willingness, that effort having failed, to go beyond the bounds of what his own Justice Department found permissible.

Yes, Mr. Bush backed down in the face of the threat of mass resignations, Mr. Ashcroft's included, and he apparently agreed to whatever more limited program the department was willing to approve. In the interim, however, the president authorized the program the Justice lawyers had refused to certify as legally permissible, and it continued for a few weeks more, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey's careful testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under the Constitution, the president has the final authority in the executive branch to say what the law is. But as a matter of presidential practice, this is breathtaking.

These are important topics for public discussion, and if anyone doubts that they can safely be discussed in public, they need look no further than Mr. Comey's testimony. Instead of doing so, Mr. Bush wants to short-circuit that discussion by invoking the continuing danger of al-Qaeda.

"And so we will put in place programs to protect the American people that honor the civil liberties of our people, and programs that we constantly brief to Congress," Mr. Bush assured the country yesterday, as he brushed off requests for a more detailed account. But this is exactly the point of contention. The administration, it appears from Mr. Comey's testimony, was willing to go forward, against legal advice, with a program that the Justice Department had concluded did not "honor the civil liberties of our people." Nor is it clear that Congress was adequately informed. The president would like to make this unpleasant controversy disappear behind the national security curtain. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Labels: George W. Bush

government has lost control of vast areas to powerful local factions and the country is on the verge of collapse and fragmentation, a leading British think-tank said on Thursday.

Chatham House also said there was not one civil war in Iraq, but "several civil wars" between rival communities, and accused Iraq's main neighbors -- Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- of having reasons "for seeing the instability there continue."

"It can be argued that Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation," it said in a report.

The Iraqi government is not able to exert authority evenly or effectively over the country. Across huge swathes of territory, it is largely irrelevant in terms of ordering social, economic and political life."

The report also said that a U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad launched in February has failed to reduce overall violence across the country, as insurgent groups have just shifted their activities outside the capital.

While cautioning that Iraq might not ultimately exist as a united entity, the 12-page report said a draft law to distribute Iraq's oil wealth equitably among Sunni Arabs, Shi'ites and ethnic Kurds was "the key to ensuring Iraq's survival."

"It will be oil revenue that keeps the state together rather than any attempt to build a coherent national project in the short term," the influential think-tank said.

Labels: FUBAR, Iraq

Earlier this year, the Bush administration deployed a second Navy group carrier into the Persian Gulf. Vice President Cheney referred to the move as an attempt to send a “strong signal” about the administration’s commitment to confronting Iran.

In February, Newsweek reported that the Bush administration was planning to ratchet up the pressure even further by deploying a third carrier group into the Gulf. Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs, warned that some Bush advisers secretly wanted an excuse to attack Iran. “They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for,” she told Newsweek.

IPS reported yesterday that the administration’s attempt to send the third carrier group was vetoed by the new head of the U.S. Central Command Admiral William Fallon:

Admiral William Fallon, then President George W. Bush’s nominee to head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition in February to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM.

Fallon’s resistance to the proposed deployment of a third aircraft carrier was followed by a shift in the Bush administration’s Iran policy in February and March away from increased military threats and toward diplomatic engagement with Iran. That shift, for which no credible explanation has been offered by administration officials, suggests that Fallon’s resistance to a crucial deployment was a major factor in the intra-administration struggle over policy toward Iran.

One source said Fallon sent a memo that “insisted there was no military requirement for” for an additional carrier. Fallon private conveyed around the time of his confirmation hearing that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch.” IPS notes, “Fallon’s refusal to support a further naval buildup in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it.”

Labels: Iran

The negotiations over Mr. Wolfowitz’s possible exit unfolded quickly on Wednesday, officials said. As recently as late on Tuesday night, they said that a last-minute appeal by Mr. Wolfowitz to deny the charges against him and to demand a fair process in which he could stay on the job seemed to backfire. Especially galling to bank board members, officials said, was Mr. Wolfowitz’s request that the 24-member board reject the conclusions of its seven-member subcommittee charging him with violating several codes of conduct and trying to cover up his involvement in Ms. Riza’s salary and promotion.

By the next morning, a flurry of second thoughts and back-channel conversations spread through the bank, officials said, in large part because of the signal from the White House on Tuesday. Previously the administration had rebuffed suggestions that he could not lead the bank, as both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney declared their confidence in his abilities.

In the morning, some bank officials said they were worried that the White House signal was a feint aimed at getting Mr. Wolfowitz to stay. They said they wanted Mr. Wolfowitz to put in writing his promise to resign under the right circumstances.

The events of the day added up, in any case, to a hairpin turn in the fortunes of the beleaguered bank president, who over his two-year tenure has alienated virtually all segments of the bank, and a fair number of economic ministries around the world. In the last few weeks, he has reinforced their anger by dismissing the charges of misconduct against him as a “smear campaign.”

The saga seemed to be playing out according to a time-honored Washington formula: confrontation, impasse and crisis, followed by sudden negotiations to avert a possible breakdown of the institution.

"If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."

Labels: Paul Wolfowitz

Senate Democrats, spurred by revelations that then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pressured hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004 to approve a secret spying program, are stepping up a probe of the Justice Department.

Lawmakers today moved to challenge Gonzales on several fronts, including demanding the Justice Department turn over e- mails from White House political adviser Karl Rove. Also, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska joined about half a dozen Republicans in urging Gonzales to step down as attorney general.

``Alberto Gonzales puts his blind loyalty to the president above the rule of law,'' said Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York. ``The Justice Department seems to reek of politicization'' beyond the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

[snip]

In a related development, the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded the Justice Department turn over any e-mails from Rove that concern the firing of the U.S. attorneys.

Two Days to Respond

Senators Patrick Leahy, the panel's chairman, and Arlen Specter, the senior Republican, gave the department two days to respond. The committee earlier subpoenaed the documents, and yesterday's deadline passed with no response from the agency, the senators said.

``You ignored the subpoena'' and ``did not even offer an explanation for your noncompliance,'' the senators wrote in a latter last night to Gonzales. ``The committee intends to get to the truth.''

Leahy, of Vermont, and Specter, of Pennsylvania, told Gonzales the Justice Department at least should have provided the committee with a written response explaining its refusal to comply.

The subpoena, issued by Leahy May 2, demanded all of Rove's e-mails in the Justice Department's possession that relate to the probe.

Labels: Bush Administration

Loyalty has always been the alpha and omega of George W. Bush's presidency. But all the forms of allegiance that have bound together his administration -- political, ideological and personal -- are being shredded, leaving only blind loyalty. Bush has surrounded himself with loyalists, who fervently pledged their fealty, enforced the loyalty of others and sought to make loyal converts. Now Bush's long downfall is descending into a series of revenge tragedies in which the characters are helpless against the furies of their misplaced loyalties and betrayals. The stage is being strewn with hacked corpses -- on Monday, former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; imminently, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz; tomorrow, whoever remains trapped on the ghost ship of state. As the individual tragedies unfold, Bush's royal robes unravel.

Loyalty to Bush is the ultimate royal principle of the imperial presidency. The ruler must be unquestioned and those around him unquestioning. Allegiance to Bush's idea of himself as the "war president," "the decider" and "the commander guy" is paramount. But the notion that the ruler is loyal to those loyal to him is no longer necessarily true. While he must be beheld as the absolute incarnation of kingly virtue, his sense of obligation to those paying homage has become perilously relative.

Those who feel compelled to tell the truth rather than stick to the cover story are cast in the dust, like McNulty. Those Bush defends as an extension of his authority but who become too expensive become expendable, like Wolfowitz. And those who exist solely as Bush's creations and whose survival is crucial to his own are shielded, like Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Labels: Bush family

Labels: NSA wiretapping

Iran should be attacked before it develops nuclear weapons, America's former ambassador to the United Nations said yesterday.


John Bolton, who still has close links to the Bush administration, told The Daily Telegraph that the European Union had to "get more serious" about Iran and recognise that its diplomatic attempts to halt Iran's enrichment programme had failed.

Iran has "clearly mastered the enrichment technology now...they're not stopping, they're making progress and our time is limited", he said. Economic sanctions "with pain" had to be the next step, followed by attempting to overthrow the theocratic regime and, ultimately, military action to destroy nuclear sites.

[snip]

But Mr Bolton conceded that military action had many disadvantages and might not succeed. "It's very risky for the price of oil, risky because you could, let's say, take out their enrichment capabilities at Natanz, and they may have enrichment capabilities elsewhere you don't know about."

Such a strike would only be a "last option" after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed but the risks of using military force, he indicated, would be less than those of tolerating a nuclear Iran. "Imagine what it would be like with a nuclear Iran. Imagine the influence Iran could have over the entire region. It's already pushing its influence in Iraq through the financing of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizbollah."

Labels: insanity, Iran, John Bolton

0 minutes. Fox News opens its debate by introducing each of the 10 GOP presidential candidates with an info-graphic. But there is only so much space on the screen, so choices must be made. For instance, next to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the graphic mentions his wife and kids, but does not mention the fact that his kids don't like his wife, or him. Next to John McCain it says "Episcopalian." Next to Texas Rep. Ron Paul it says "Protestant." Next to Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney it says "Mormon." That's right. Mormon.

1 minute. Host Brit Hume says all the candidates have expressed condolences over the passing of Jerry Falwell. So now no one has to talk about him.

10 minutes. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback is asked a tough question. "You said that you wanted to find a way for Republicans and Democrats to work together," asks Fox's Chris Wallace. "Is that any way to fight and win a war, to look for consensus among the politicians in Washington?" Brownback does the only reasonable thing, attack Democrats. "I condemn the statements of Harry Reid, the majority leader of the Senate, saying we've already lost," says Brownback, assuring GOP voters that he is, in fact, not very bipartisan after all.

[snip]

22 minutes. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will not let McCain be the funniest guy in the room. "We've had a Congress that's spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop," he says. The crowd loves it. The laughter is louder. Huckabee wins the joke contest

38 minutes. Wallace turns the questions to Giuliani, unleashes the rhetorical equivalent of a Gatling-gun blast. "You're pro-choice, you're pro-gay rights, you're pro-gun control. You supported Mario Cuomo for governor over a Republican. Are those the stands of a conservative?" Giuliani takes the question in stride, and does the only logical thing. He attacks Hillary Clinton. "We're looking at a race here in which the leading Democratic candidate for president of the United States has said that the unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America." Can that be true? It doesn't really matter. This is a Republican crowd. If Giuliani claimed Clinton was born on the planet Zorg, no one would bat an eye.

53 minutes. Tancredo gets a question about whether the other candidates are soft on immigration. This is his issue. He is ready to answer. But just as he does, something goes wrong with one of the Fox cameras. The screen gets a red haze over it. With his pasty face, the red light makes Tancredo look for a moment like Satan. Then the camera cuts away.

[snip]

64 minutes. Giuliani suddenly springs to life, staking out his turf as censor-in-chief. He interrupts [Ron] Paul, who has been explaining that al-Qaida attacked New York and Washington in part because U.S. military forces were based in the Middle East. "That's really an extraordinary statement," Giuliani interrupts. "That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq." The crowd loves it, starts applauding. "I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that." Paul does no such thing.

74 minutes. We're back. "The questions in this round will be premised on a fiction," says Hume. No news there. Hume wants to do a role-playing game. Three shopping centers near American cities have been hit by suicide bombers. Hundreds are dead, thousands injured. A fourth attacker is apprehended and may have information about more attacks to come. The question goes to McCain. "How aggressively would you interrogate those being held at Guantanamo Bay for information about where the next attack might be?"

75 minutes. McCain answers emotionally, convincingly. "We do not torture people. When I was in Vietnam, one of the things that sustained us as we underwent torture ourselves is the knowledge that if we had our positions reversed and we were the captors, we would not impose that kind of treatment on them."

76 minutes. Giuliani tries to appear tougher than McCain. "I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of. Shouldn't be torture, but every method they can think of." It's unclear what he means, but it sounds a lot like torture. The crowd likes it. Applause.

77 minutes. Now Romney tries to appear tougher than McCain. "I don't want them on our soil. I want them in Guantanamo where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when they're on our soil. I don't want them in our prisons. I want them there," he says. "Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo." More applause. Habeas corpus sucks!

Labels: 2008 election, fascism, fearmongering, idiocy, insanity, Republic Party

A senior lobbyist at the National Association of Manufacturers nominated by President Bush to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission will receive a $150,000 departing payment from the association when he takes his new government job, which involves enforcing consumer laws against members of the association.

The lobbyist, Michael E. Baroody, wrote recently to the commission’s general counsel that the severance was an “extraordinary payment” under a federal ethics rule, requiring him to remove himself from agency matters involving the association for two years. Under the rule, a payment is “extraordinary” if an employer grants it after learning that the employee is being considered for a government position and it is not part of an established compensation or benefits program.

Mr. Baroody said in the letter that the payment would not prevent him from considering matters involving individual companies that are members of the manufacturers’ association, many of whom are defendants in agency proceedings over defective products or have other business before the commission. Nor would it preclude him from involvement with smaller trade groups like those representing makers of home appliances and children’s products that have alliances with the association.

As chairman of the commission, Mr. Baroody’s salary would be $154,600. With the severance payment and an additional lump sum of $44,571 for unused leave time, Mr. Baroody would receive $349,171 this year. That amount, which excludes Mr. Baroody’s pension and retirement payments, nearly matches the $344,607 salary that Mr. Baroody earned as the second-highest-paid executive at the association last year.

The nomination of Mr. Baroody, executive vice president at the association, has provoked heavy criticism from Democrats and consumer groups. He is the latest in a line of industry officials and lobbyists to be given senior jobs by Mr. Bush at federal safety agencies that oversee matters like workplace and mine safety and transportation as the administration has sought to roll back hundreds of regulations that businesses viewed as excessive.

As a major trade organization for the largest companies in the country, the National Association of Manufacturers often has issues before the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It recently prevailed on the agency, for instance, to relax the requirements for when companies must notify the agency about defective products. The White House, Mr. Baroody and the commission would not make available the letter that Mr. Baroody wrote describing the $150,000 payment. A copy was provided by a Democratic Congressional aide who found it in Mr. Baroody’s nomination file in the Senate.

A spokeswoman for the White House, Emily Lawrimore, said the administration was satisfied that Mr. Baroody “has taken the steps necessary to avoid any conflict of interest in the event he is confirmed.”

Labels: corporatism, corruption, Cronyism, greed

In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity, he said.

Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, idiocy, insanity, Pope Benedict

Yau didn’t think Dreamz was a wild card though. He thought he was a person like him. Because it’s hard to imagine people NOT being like you.

[snip]

I think knowing where our next meal is coming from and where our next night of bed-rest will take place, gives us the time and the security to project ourselves into the future. Where we can see how something immediately gratifying might have long term ramifications. I see that maybe we take for granted the socialization and the education that teaches how a little self-sacrifice can have a tremendous long term benefit. That teaches good will, integrity and a guilt-free conscience are worth A LOT -- to the folks you are dealing with and to one’s self.

Most of us didn’t grow up on the streets. Maybe if we had -- with few long term opportunities, learning to seize the few chances right before our eyes, we might have done what Dreamz did too. He probably earned 20,000 dollars more than Yau in the game. And he got the truck. That ain’t chicken feed. We might have taken the immediate gains too, unaware of (or willing to endure) the hatred and nausea that would follow us.

But the problem for me is, it makes me kind of tired and sad and angry, really. I think his kind of thinking is why, in the real world, so many people find themselves in jail or on the streets. Because of their own short-sightedness. And by extension, the shortsightedness of the system that cannot help them see a long-term future of hope and health. I don’t know how to fix that system. I don’t know anything except personal responsibility. Dreamz was lucky/smart/special enough to get on Survivor – he’s now rich and (in)famous. Most folks from his former situation don’t get that break. He played it as best he could, I guess, but I resent his way of thinking. Or rather, the way of thinking, he is emblematic of. And even if I can understand it objectively, (if I do) I don’t like it.

Honestly, it scares me. Not Dreamz, of course, but what his actions say to me.

[snip]

Yes, all this from a f’ing game show.

I had no idea people actually still say out loud stuff like “the Asians are smart” and “the blacks are lazy” and “I’m not racist. I have black friends.” That’s so… 90s. It sounds like something from one of those ‘lesson’ episodes on Diff’rent Strokes...

And for the record, there is nothing child-like about Yau Man. The dude is 50 something and he has a degree from MIT. He is the director of Info Systems at Cal Berkeley. The DIRECTOR. From the neck up Yau Man is one of the most powerful players the game has ever seen. He’s one of the most active thinkers and most cognizant of his surroundings of anyone that’s played. He doesn’t deserve to be patronized as being ‘noble’ and ‘child-like’.

And make no mistake: Yau made the truck offer not out of goodwill but for GAME ADVANTAGE. He was trying to manipulate Dreamz for personal game advantage—which is what you’re supposed to do. He said himself that you can’t take promises seriously in this game.

It was a calculated risk and he got burned. He offered Dre the truck in exchange for immunity. That was a declaration of war and it was apparent to Dre. When is the last time someone voluntarily gave up immunity anyway?!?!? If Dre had done that, I can only imagine the “Dre is dumb and therefore all black people are dumb, except the 3 good blacks that I work with” threads that would be popping up all over the place.

Nothing Dre has done suggests that he’d keep his word, so who’s fault is it that he didn’t do it here? If dog bites you once, shame on dog. If dog bites you twice, shame on you… Yes, it was despicable that Dreamz did what he did but let’s not canonize Yau just yet, they’re 2 separate issues. Yau was making a game move, just like when he made a fake idol. This happened to make him look noble and generous (which I believe he is) while the fake idol thing makes him look devious and cunning (which I believe he is). And Dre lying for personal advantage was bad, real bad. But as ‘noble’ as Colby and Ian’s symbolic gestures were, they were also dumb.

Labels: Survivor

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, Jerry Falwell

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.

"To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be kept updated," Gonzales said during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Monday.

The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with pre-release piracy.

Here's our podcast on the topic.

The IPPA would, for instance:

* Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright. Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place. The IPPA would eliminate that requirement. (The Justice Department's summary of the legislation says: "It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.")

* Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.

* Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations. Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are "attempting" to infringe copyrights.

* Allow computers to be seized more readily. Specifically, property such as a PC "intended to be used in any manner" to commit a copyright crime would be subject to forfeiture, including civil asset forfeiture. Civil asset forfeiture has become popular among police agencies in drug cases as a way to gain additional revenue, and is problematic and controversial.

* Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention regulations. Currently criminal violations are currently punished by jail times of up to 10 years and fines of up to $1 million. The IPPA would add forfeiture penalties too.

* Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes. Currently certain copyright crimes require someone to commit the "distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies" valued at over $2,500. The IPPA would insert a new prohibition: actions that were "intended to consist of" distribution.

* Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America. That would happen when compact discs with "unauthorized fixations of the sounds or sounds and images of a live musical performance" are attempted to be imported. Neither the Motion Picture Association of America nor the Business Software Alliance (nor any other copyright holder such as photographers, playwrights, or news organizations, for that matter) would qualify for this kind of special treatment.

A representative of the Motion Picture Association of America told us: "We appreciate the department's commitment to intellectual property protection and look forward to working with both the department and Congress as the process moves ahead."

What's still unclear is the kind of reception this legislation might encounter on Capitol Hill. Gonzales may not be terribly popular, but Democrats do tend to be more closely aligned with Hollywood and the recording industry than the GOP. (A few years ago, Republicans even savaged fellow conservatives for allying themselves too closely with copyright holders.)

A spokeswoman for Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat who heads the House Judiciary subcommittee that focuses on intellectual property, said the congressman is reviewing proposals from the attorney general and from others. The aide said the Hollywood politician plans to introduce his own intellectual property enforcement bill later this year but said his office is not prepared to discuss any details yet.

Labels: Alberto Gonzales, bloggers, utter horseshit

Labels: Katie Couric, Television News

In a written response, Wolfowitz maintained that he acted in good faith in seeking to resolve an obvious conflict of interest. He accused the bank's ethics committee of forcing him to oversee the raise for his longtime companion, Shaha Riza, as compensation for her transfer to a different job. The ethics panel was afraid to confront her, Wolfowitz said, because its members knew she was "extremely angry and upset."

The ethics committee told Wolfowitz he could not directly supervise Riza, who also worked at the bank, after he arrived in 2005. He said, however, that the panel declined to oversee her job transfer and compensation, instead ordering him to handle those tasks.

"Its members did not want to deal with a very angry Ms. Riza, whose career was being damaged as a result of their decision," Wolfowitz said in his response to the investigating committee's report. "It would only be human nature for them to want to steer clear of her."

Wolfowitz added that the chairman of the ethics panel thought that "due to my personal relationship with Ms. Riza, I was in the best position to persuade her to take out-placement and thereby achieve the 'pragmatic solution' the committee desired."

Wolfowitz effectively blamed Riza for his predicament as well, saying that her "intractable position" in demanding a salary increase as compensation for her career disruption forced him to grant one to pre-empt a lawsuit. He is scheduled to appear before the board this afternoon. The board is expected to begin deliberating on how to respond as soon as tonight. Board members are inclined to issue a resolution expressing a lack of confidence in Wolfowitz's leadership, senior bank officials said.

Labels: Paul Wolfowitz

Labels: tainted pet food scandal

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) is never going to win any popularity contests among his party's liberal base -- a fact he seems decidedly unconcerned about despite his 2006 Democratic primary loss to Ned Lamont.

Not only has Lieberman endorsed Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.) -- one of Democrats' biggest targets in the 2008 cycle -- but he's planning to co-host a fundraiser for her on June 21 in Washington, D.C.

The event, which will be held in a Capitol Hill location still to be determined, will feature Lieberman and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) -- a very rare bipartisan fundraiser. Attendees are being asked to raise $3,000; $2,000 would come in the form of a political action committee donation while the other $1,000 would be a personal contribution, according to an electronic invite for the fundraiser obtained today by The Fix.

"Let's try to make this a bi-partisan tour de force," reads the invite.

"Senator Specter approached Senator Collins with the idea of doing a joint fundraising event with Senator Lieberman," said Collins spokeswoman Jen Burita. "Both senators are colleagues with whom she works well and good friends, so we thought it was a great idea."

Lieberman's willingness to work openly for Collins's reelection will surely not sit well with Democratic strategists who want Rep. Tom Allen (D) to oust the two-term incumbent. For Lieberman, his support of Collins is payback. She was one of a handful of senators who campaigned for him in the general election following his loss in the Democratic primary to Lamont. (He ran for and won reelection as an independent.) Lieberman and Collins also serve together as the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the Senate.

Labels: Joe Lieberman

Lionel was awful. Not just awful in the ways I expected - I hate the "independent thinker" schtick which suggests everyone else isn't - but truly awful radio period. Who the hell would want to listen to that?

oy

Dear Jeebus, it is absolutely awful. I listened to over 2 hours (2 hours of my life that I will never get back, unfortunately) and couldn't take it anymore. I'd say I heard about 2 minutes of political discussion. Well over an hour was devoted to some shock jock controversy that I really couldn't give a fuck about, and it was just repetitive and extremely boring.

That they would replace the great Sam Seder with this imbicile, this ninny, is beyond comprehension.

That's it for me.

I realize that the venture was screwed by greedy weasels even before it left the gate, but since then the programming decisions have run the gamut from wobbly to weird, and very little the station has done has made sense in either the short or the long term. Very sad.

Oh my god. I am listening to Lionel. First time. And, I am already dozing off. Terrible.

Labels: Air America

JoAnn Falletta was doing what a conductor should — concentrating on the orchestra in front of her. No wonder it took her a few seconds on Sunday to realize someone behind her was motioning for a try. President Bush.

"Smiling at me kind of devilishly," Falletta said.

She gave him her baton and stepped aside.

Gesturing exuberantly, the president led the orchestra during part of its performance of "Stars and Stripes Forever."

"We didn't expect him to know the score so well," Falletta said afterward. "He was not shy about conducting at all. He conducted with a great deal of panache."

That was the music played for Bush's exit after his speech at a ceremony commemorating the founding 400 years ago of Jamestown, America's first permanent English settlement.

Just before the music ended, Bush turned to Falletta, who stood on a step below him, kissed the top of her head and left without saying a word.

Labels: George W. Bush

"I must admit, I can't imagine anything more awful than polygamy."

Labels: Mitt Romney

Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

“We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation,” he said

Labels: idiocy

An examination of Mr. Giuliani’s handling of the extraordinary recovery operation during his last months in office shows that he seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies. In doing that, according to some experts and many of those who worked in the trade center’s ruins, Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack.

Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in a lawsuit against New York City, along with more than two dozen interviews with people involved in the events of the last four months of Mr. Giuliani’s administration, show that while the city had a safety plan for workers, it never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators.

At the same time, the administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed. And according to public hearing transcripts and unpublished administration records, officials also on some occasions gave flawed public representations of the nature of the health threat, even as they privately worried about exposure to lawsuits by sickened workers.

“The city ran a generally slipshod, haphazard, uncoordinated, unfocused response to environmental concerns,” said David Newman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a labor group.

City officials and a range of medical experts are now convinced that the dust and toxic materials in the air around the site were a menace. More than 2,000 New York City firefighters have been treated for serious respiratory problems. Seventy percent of nearly 10,000 recovery workers screened at Mount Sinai Medical Center have trouble breathing. City officials estimate that health care costs related to the air at ground zero have already run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one knows whether other illnesses, like cancers, will emerge.

The question of who, if anyone, is to blame for not adequately protecting the workers could finally be decided in United States District Court in Manhattan, where thousands of firefighters, police officers and other recovery workers are suing the city for negligence.

City officials have always maintained that they acted in good faith to protect everyone at the site but that many workers chose not to wear available safety equipment, for a variety of reasons.

Mr. Giuliani has said very little publicly about how his leadership might have influenced the behavior of the men and women who worked at ground zero. Mr. Giuliani, whose image as a 9/11 hero has been a focus of his run for president, declined to be interviewed for this article. His representatives did not respond to specific questions about the pace of the cleanup, the hazards at the site and Mr. Giuliani’s reticence about the workers’ illnesses.

[snip]

Much has been said and written about Christie Whitman, then the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, and her statement a week after the towers fell that the air in New York was safe. But even then, the air above the debris pile was known to be more dangerous than the air in the rest of Lower Manhattan.

In those first days after 9/11, Mr. Giuliani made it clear that workers needed to wear masks at ground zero because it was more contaminated than elsewhere. But as time went on, and workers failed to heed the warnings, the record indicates that his administration sometimes said otherwise.

Even after the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health found that workers were “unnecessarily exposed” to health hazards, officials played down the danger.

Robert Adams, director of environmental health and safety services at the Design and Construction Department, told the City Council’s environmental committee in early November that even unprotected ground zero workers would not experience long-term health risks. In an interview last week, Mr. Adams, now working for a consulting firm in Princeton, N.J., said that he still believed that based on the information available at the time, the right decisions were made.

Whatever they were saying publicly about the safety of the air, Mr. Giuliani and his staff were privately worried. A memo to Deputy Mayor Robert M. Harding from his assistant in early October said that the city faced as many as 10,000 liability claims connected to 9/11, “including toxic tort cases that might arise in the next few decades.”

The warning did not lead to a crackdown on workers without respirators. Rather, a month later, Mr. Giuliani wrote to members of the city’s Congressional delegation urging passage of a bill that capped the city’s liability at $350 million. And two years after Mr. Giuliani left office, FEMA appropriated $1 billion for a special insurance company to defend the city against 9/11 lawsuits.

Some experts and critics have suggested that the only way the respirator rules could have been enforced after rescue operations ended would have been to temporarily shut down the site and lay down the law: No respirator, no work. And they say the only person who could have done so was Mr. Giuliani.

Labels: Rudy Giuliani

Staying in Iraq, Morris continued, "gives (Al Qaeda) the opportunity to kill more Americans which they really like." Morris made the dubious assertion that it's better to have Americans stay in Iraq because it's easier for terrorists to kill them there. "They don't have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans… And convenience is a big factor when you're a terrorist."

An al Qaida-led group said on Sunday it was holding "crusader" soldiers after a clash with a patrol in Iraq on Saturday.

The Islamic State in Iraq has posted the claim on an Islamic Web site, but has offered no proof.

Thousands of U.S. troops backed by helicopters have been searching for three American soldiers who went missing in an al-Qaida stronghold near Baghdad after an ambush that killed four other U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi army interpreter.

Labels: idiocy, Iraq

Labels: bloggers

Gilly is NOT doing well. He backslid last week, just as an overzealous (and cost-conscious) hospital was trying to push him out of the ICU and in to rehab well before he was ready.
He could barely move his "good" arm and coudln't close his left hand, which would both be mandatory for him to feed himself. In addition, he just wasn't ready to sit upright for hours at a time yet.
On top of that, his hospital was trying to farm him out to other centers if he wasn't going to go into rehab immediatley. Again, I offered all assistance to his Mom, but I can't force anything on her.
Then...one night about 4 nights ago, he had complications with an infection--very serious stuff; that's all I'll say for now. When I got to finally see him-now back in the full bunnysuit ICU, he looked and WAS worse than ever before. He's not going anywhere for a while. He's suffering from a system-wide infection, heavily sedated, and hooked up to more tubes than a plumbing supply store carries.
In short, a full recovery is pretty much out of the question. Getting out of the hospital PERIOD is an unknown percentage also, one that can't be ignored.
I don't know any other way to say this.:
He may not make it.
I hope that one day he laughs at me for even positing this. But the day when he'll be anywhere near communicative, nevermind near a computer, is very far off.

Labels: bloggers, health care

Labels: Bush, Cheney