And, yes, I DO take it personally: 08/07/2005

Make note of the time... It's part of a must-see Sunday...

lest we forget the first time around, where they featured bill-the-ex-majority-leader frist, we have an encore performance...

Example

with all the usual suspects... look at those smiles... and they have a token black man and two token females as well... is this a great country or what...?

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Invading Iran...? It's "on the table..." [UPDATE] Let's ban sauerkraut...

in the most dispassionate sense, it's fun to sit back and watch as bushco moves their chess pieces to set things up for yet another illegal war... if iraq hadn't turned into such a disaster, you can bet we'd be there already... even given that, the bushco ship of fools continues to advance their game...

President George W. Bush refused to rule out the use of force against Iran over the Islamic Republic's resumption of nuclear activities, in an interview aired on Israeli television.

When asked if the use of force was an alternative to faltering diplomatic efforts, Bush said: "All options are on the table."

"The use of force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in the recent past to secure our country," he said in a clear reference to Iraq, which the United States invaded in March 2003.

george gives new meaning to the term "pathological liar..."

[UPDATE]

but, guess what...? deutschland doesn't think it's such a hot idea...

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has warned the US to back away from the possibility of military action against Iran over its nuclear programme.

[...]

Mr Schroeder directly challenged Mr Bush's comment that "all options are on the table" over the Iran crisis.

"Let's take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn't work," Mr Schroeder told Social Democrats at the rally in Hanover, to rapturous applause from the crowd.

Mr Schroeder said it remained important that Iran did not gain atomic weapons, and a strong negotiating position was important.

"The Europeans and the Americans are united in this goal," he said. "Up to now we were also united in the way to pursue this."

way to go, george, you nitwit... let's keep dividing the world... let's keep making sure we're friendless in our rush to insanity... let's make sure we don't pay the slightest bit of attention to what anyone else says... then, when nobody else wants to sign up, let's demonize them... let's ban sauerkraut, bratwurst, and schnitzel...

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Iraq: a frightening perspective from someone who oughta know

(thanks to atrios...)

"It's a race against time because by the end of this coming summer we can no longer sustain the presence we have now," said retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who visited Iraq most recently in May and briefed Cheney, Rice and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This thing, the wheels are coming off it."

obligatory disclosure for righties reading this blog: yes, i clearly hate my country... i'm a fountain of negativity toward the u.s... i only wish for disaster in iraq... i support the insurgents... i think al qaeda is peachy-keen... i support hillary and gay marriage... i'd love to have a beer with michael moore... ~rolls eyes~

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Google "failure" and whaddaya get...? Bush, of course...!

oh, this is just t-o-o-o-o-oo delicious... thanks to mike at the world according to turner for pointing out that googling "failure" produces george w. bush as the first result out of 78,400,000 entries... no. 2...? michael moore...

Example

i don't have anything against michael moore... he does seem to inspire nearly as much vitriol as hillary and howard dean, however... my take on why the two men is that neither bat an eyelash at saying precisely what they think and that annoys the hell out of some people, particularly when it's 90% true... hillary...? i have another take... she's a very strong woman and most of the reaction i've seen is from males, metaphorically holding their crotches... most of these testosterone-overloaded folks just can't tolerate a woman that shows the kind of strength that hillary does... now, if she appeared more of a dominatrix like condi rice, hey...! it might be different...!

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Ford Motors: Clean out your desk and come with me...

(thanks to raw story...)

Ford Motor Co., for the first time in generations, has resorted to firing employees and immediately escorting them from corporate buildings...

[...]

[N]ot nearly enough people have come off Ford's payroll to meet its initial goal of cutting 2,750 of its 35,000 North American white-collar workers.

[...]

That means Ford is getting tough about cutting people loose. The company wouldn't say Thursday how many people it has fired in recent weeks, but Bill Ford acknowledged the bold new measures in an e-mail to employees on Monday.

"Some have asked me why we have had to ask employees to depart immediately," he wrote. "Well, the management team has discussed this and concluded that it's kinder to make our separations in this fashion, rather than have the employee remain in a difficult situation. Frankly, there's no easy way to do this."

[...]

Ford's firings reflect the cold reality facing today's employees, workforce experts said.

"It used to be that if there was a downsizing, it would happen in a way that would show that you're taking care of us, that you're being a caring employer," Ellen Kossek, a professor of human resource management at Michigan State University, said Thursday. "Ford is not going out of its way to not be a nice employer. They are just making the difficult choices."

kinder...? KINDER...?? for fucking WHOM, i'd like to know...!

treating long term (or even short term) employees in this manner is cruel and unusual punishment... they're right, there IS no easy way to do this but this type of human-resources-strategy-from-
hell, straight from catbert's manual of diabolic hr practices, is part and parcel of the money-over-people, gotta-satisfy-the-
analysts-and-stockholders-above-all, soulless, and downright mean-spirited practices embodied in the modern corporation that pass under the ridiculously euphemistic banner of "making difficult choices..."

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Maybe Fitzgerald will be able to continue his investigation unmolested... (and maybe not...)

joe at americablog comes up with this tidbit...

This is an interesting development. Last week, Newsweek had reported that an old college pal of Bush's would be heading the Plame leak investigation. Apparently, there are some people at the Department of Justice who are concerned about the rule of law:

David Margolis, a lawyer at the Justice Department for 40 years, was named Friday to oversee a special prosecutor's investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer.

hmmmmm... joe opines that fitzgerald will now continue his work "without any changes..." until i see indictments, real indictments of the ones who are really at the bottom of the mess, i ain't holding my breath... i don't trust this bunch as far as i can throw 'em...

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Intelligent design = evolution... Why...? Fox news host says so...

this is what happens when the media comes under the virtual ownership of the government and its dominant political party... it becomes a tool for manipulating the masses...

In his August 12 nationally syndicated column, Fox News host Tony Snow equated evolutionary theory to "intelligent design" (commonly referred to as ID), claiming that "[e]volutionary theory, like ID, isn't verifiable or testable. It's pure hypothesis." Specifically, he falsely asserted that no fossil evidence exists in support of evolutionary theory.

now, add the number of people who read mr. snow's bullshit column who will form their ideas of the truth about evolution on what he wrote... then add THAT number to the number of people who will hear the comment from a friend, colleague or loved one that a fox news host wrote in his column that evolution is a bogus theory because "no fossil evidence exists..." then add THAT number, etc., etc... (you can subtract the small number of people who will either do their own due diligence or who have already done so...)

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WaPo "mentions" Abramoff/Delay connection...

in the 10th and 11th paragraphs on page a-8, the wapo gets around to mentioning tom delay in connection with abramoff's indictment... we certainly wouldn't want to make it seem like we're coming on too strong, now would we...?

Ahough Abramoff was close to many members of Congress, the friendship that has garnered the most attention was the one with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.

The Florida fraud case and the Washington influence-peddling investigation now has a key figure who could provide an investigative bridge between the two inquiries.

no duh...

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More on Argentina's "disappeareds..."

let's not forget... uruguay had their own part in argentina's "dirty war..." it wasn't restricted to argentina... although it's now been over 20 years, the details continue to emerge...

She was 19 and pregnant when she was abducted in Argentina in 1976 along with her husband, a leftist activist, who was killed two months later. After she was taken to neighbouring Uruguay, she was held in a clandestine torture centre until giving birth, after which she was never seen or heard from again.

Her baby was given to a police officer's family in Uruguay, who raised her as their own daughter.

Although between 10,000 and 30,000 - depending on the source of the estimate - people were ”disappeared” by Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship, the case of María Claudia García de Gelman has drawn international attention because of the intense campaign mounted by her father-in-law, renowned Argentine poet Juan Gelman.

Through his own in-depth investigation, Gelman was able to locate his missing granddaughter, Macarena, in 2000.

On Tuesday, 20 years after the restoration of democracy in Uruguay, excavations began in an army garrison near the capital, in search of María Claudia García's remains.

That is where the young ”disappeared” woman's body was buried, according to the first official military report on the ”dirty war” waged by Uruguay's 1973-1985 dictatorship.

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Abramoff indictment... Are the sharks are circling Tommy-boy...?

this can't be good news for delay... or hastert... or the rest of the slimey bunch...

Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a business partner were indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, charged with five counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy in their purchase of a fleet of Florida gambling boats from a businessman who was later killed in a gangland-style hit.

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Conscientious objector jailed on false charge

(thanks to alternet...)

[Editor's Note: On Tuesday, Amnesty International declared Kevin Benderman a "prisoner of conscience" and is seeking his immediate release.]

I have learned from first hand experience that war is the destroyer of everything that is good in the world, it turns our young into soulless killers and we tell them that they are heroes when they master the "art" of killing.

- Kevin Benderman

I cannot tell anyone else how to live his or her life but I have determined how I want to live mine -- by not participating in war any longer...

- Monica Benderman

Dear Sirs:

As I am certain you are all aware, my husband, Sgt. Kevin Benderman, was sentenced to 15 months confinement, loss of rank, forfeiture of pay and a dishonorable discharge last week, the charge being "Missing Movement" or failure to get on a plane.

In actuality, the charge was "filing a Conscientious Objector packet against the recommendation of his commander, who had no intention of allowing my husband to follow his conscience, and therefore serving notice to the rest of our military that they should not follow suit."

I need to assure you that I do not make this statement out of anger, but rather by simply pointing to the facts. Not only did my husband's commander address this in a public comment to the media, the prosecutor used this in his closing statements, and the military representative was adamant about this in his public comments to the media immediately following my husband's court martial.

[...]

Even in my husband's court martial, he was not allowed to discuss his beliefs, his reasons, or the fact that he has given 10 years of honorable service to his country, including a combat tour in Iraq, for which he received two Army commendation medals for meritorious service.

My husband's case for Conscientious Objection was brushed aside and mishandled so that his entire career of service came down to a meeting with his Command Sgt. Major that lasted less than one hour. My husband's testimony regarding this meeting has remained unchanged, as has my witness to that meeting. The Command Sgt. Major's testimony was re-written and sworn to on at least 5 separate occasions, each testimony contradicting another, even as they were presented in my husband's court martial.

In fairness to each of you, to the U.S. Army, to the people of this country and mostly to my husband, who is paying the price for being falsely charged, I am respectfully requesting that the appeal process for his case be allowed to proceed without delay, and that he be given fair treatment not only in a re-presentation of the facts surrounding his court martial, but that he also be given the opportunity to have his application for Conscientious Objector status reconsidered as well.

these are the sad and unconscionable times we are living in... please go here to read the rest of the story...

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My son is dead, Mr. President... Do you have time to talk to me...?

Mid-August 2005 may be remembered as a moment in U.S. history when the president could no longer get away with the media trick of solemnly patting death on its head.

for the sake of all that's sacred and right, let's hope so... george bush is one of the biggest embarrassments and walking disasters the u.s. has ever had to cope with... example: i stopped by the tourist office in neuquen, argentina, tuesday night, inquiring about a place to stay... i ended up in a 30-minute conversation with juan, one of the very friendly assistants behind the counter, who couldn't stop talking about how incredible he found it that the american people actually elected this man... he was also amazed and delighted to find himself talking to an actual american who felt the same way... sad, isn't it...

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Toys run amok

for those, like me, who thought that the ford f-350 superduty, 4wd, cummins diesel 4-door, extended cab pick-up and the hummer h2 were the epitome of O-M-G, i've been sadly mistaken...

Example

International's CXT pickup truck is built on the
same platform as the company's snowplows.

The new CXT from International is hu-freakin-mongous. This bad boy is nine feet tall. It's got thigh-high tires, and two running boards up to the cab, and door handles you have to stretch for. When the bed gate folds down it's about as high as a mantelpiece. The truck is built on the same platform used for snowplows and dump trucks. It carries six tons -- some three times what a normal pickup would tote -- tows up to 22 tons, and comfortably seats five people, even with embarrassing body mass indexes.

International sees several potential markets: small-business people such as landscapers; dealers who may want to use it for its promotional value; high-profile people who need showy Bigfoot-type rides; large companies like Coca-Cola, which is using the truck to promote its new Vault energy drink; and outdoorsmen who might have boats to haul or duck blinds to cart around.

The CXT was designed as a promotional tool, says David Wrobel of International's marketing wing. Coca-Cola has bought a few; so has Irwin Tools. No surprise, some celebrities have taken a shine to it, too. Demi Moore's paramour, Ashton Kutcher, has one. So does the NBA's Jalen Rose. The company has sold 250. Each one retails for $120,000. A tow hitch costs extra.

this is what happens when the richest country in the world keeps raising the bar on what "over-the-top" really means - you get something so obscene and so nauseating in terms of the "you-HAVE-GOT-TO-BE-KIDDING-me" factor, it beggars desecription... is this what it means to live in america...? god, i hope not...

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Does Bush have pigs on the ranch at Crawford...?

hmmm... probably not...

Three years ago, President Bush went to war against congressional pork. His official 2003 budget even featured a color photo of a wind-powered ice sled -- an example of the pet projects and alleged boondoggles he said he would no longer tolerate.

Yesterday, Bush effectively signed a cease-fire -- critics called it more like a surrender -- in his war on pork. He signed into law a $286 billion transportation measure that contains a record 6,371 pet projects inserted by members of Congress from both parties.

just add eliminating pork to the long, long list of shit he's said but has had no intention of doing...

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Bush creating a legacy by making wise appointments...? What are you smoking...?

(the nyt suggests a course of action for bush in filling four appointments to the federal election commission...)

But Mr. Bush has a chance at a true political legacy by naming figures of proved integrity, not party wheel horses.

the naivete of the nyt is truly touching... suggesting that bush is interested in a legacy other than leaving absolute power in the hands of the super-rich and the fundie christian ideologists is either grossly naive or massively disingenuous... take your pick...

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Cnooc and Unocal - creating your own reality

When Cnooc, the Chinese government-owned oil company, dropped its bid to buy Unocal this month, it said political opposition in Washington had scuttled the plan. The question oil companies now face is whether they might suffer similar political retribution in their own dealings with foreign governments.

question... if the shoe had been on the other foot and political opposition in china scuttled an offer by a u.s. company for a chinese oil company, do you think the united states would engage in retribution...? second question... does a bear shit in the woods...?

(the nyt gives its opinion...)

When analysts and economic historians look back, this summer may well prove to be the turning point in Chinese-American relations, the time when America chose short-range paranoia over rational behavior.

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Roberts - let's have a little furor

An advertisement that a leading abortion-rights organization began running on national television on Wednesday, opposing the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. as one "whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans," quickly became the first flashpoint in the three-week-old confirmation process.

this is good... things have been way too cozy for this guy... 'bout time some heated debate got going... i've been missing all the finger-pointing...

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The redhead's back and Maureen's all rested up

looks like a little time away hasn't blunted her edge either...

W. can't get no satisfaction on Iraq.

There's an angry mother of a dead soldier camping outside his Crawford ranch, demanding to see a president who prefers his sympathy to be carefully choreographed.

A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now think that going to war was a mistake and that the war has made the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. So fighting them there means it's more likely we'll have to fight them here?

Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran to Iraq.

And the Rolling Stones have taken a rare break from sex odes to record an antiwar song called "Sweet Neo Con," chiding Condi Rice and Mr. Bush. "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite," Mick Jagger sings.

The N.F.L. put out a press release on Monday announcing that it's teaming up with the Stones and ABC to promote "Monday Night Football." The flag-waving N.F.L. could still back out if there's pressure, but the mood seems to have shifted since Madonna chickened out of showing an antiwar music video in 2003. The White House used to be able to tamp down criticism by saying it hurt our troops, but more people are asking the White House to explain how it plans to stop our troops from getting hurt.

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Absolutely incredible...!

or, as they say in castellano, increible...!! the drive from neuquen to bariloche today, about 4 hours (400 km, after 12 hrs and 1400km the day before) passed through scenery that rose on the 1-10 gorgeous scale from a 6 to a completely over-the-top 15...!!! from piedra del aguila on, it was beyond description and by the time we arrived in bariloche, i was awestruck in the extreme... to top it off, after settling in to the cabin, we drove up to cerro catedral ski area... that topped it off... the clouds had cleared completely leaving a deep blue sky, and with the craggy peaks and snow, it was really something else... besides being enormous, argentina is a truly beautiful country...

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Cindy calls George's bullshit

you go, girl...

President Bush has refused to ask the nation to sacrifice in any way, so the sacrifice gap has never been greater. A few families, like Ms. Sheehan's, have paid the ultimate price. Many more, including National Guard families, are bearing enormous burdens, struggling to get by while a parent, a child or a spouse serves in Iraq. But the rest of the nation is spending its tax cuts and guzzling gas as if there were no war.

Mr. Bush obviously failed to comfort Ms. Sheehan when he met with her and her family. More important, he has not helped the nation give fallen soldiers like Casey Sheehan the honor they deserve. The administration seems reluctant to have the president take part in events that would direct widespread attention to soldiers' funerals or to the thousands who have returned with serious injuries.

Perhaps most troubling, Mr. Bush is not leveling about where things stand with the war. He continues to stay on message, as he did with the platitude he offered last week: "We will stay the course; we will complete the job in Iraq." The public knows that things in Iraq are not going well on any number of levels, and deserves a fuller, more honest discussion led by the commander in chief.

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Road trip...!

off again...! today begins my first jaunt outside of buenos aires... i'm driving sw to a mountain town in the lake district near the chilean border, bariloche... it's the height of the argentine ski season... the -2C in bariloche will be quite a dramatic change from the 40C in skopje just last week... (it's been running about 15-16C in the daytime here in buenos aires...) the drive will take nearly 20 hours and only encompasses the middle third of the country... argentina's HUGE...! 7th largest country in the world, as i found out the other day, adding yet more trivia to an already greatly overcrowded mental storage bin...

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Let's use more oil and gas... Oh, and btw, let's pay a LOT MORE for it too...

On a day when oil and gasoline prices hit record highs, President Bush on Monday signed into law a bill that encourages increased domestic oil and gas production and the building of new nuclear power plants.

~buttons on shirt snap as chest bursts with pride~

ah...! that's MY president, attacking the root of problems head-on...! bush 41 had problems with the "vision thing..." bush 43 doesn't even have the word in his (limited) vocabulary...

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Bush is a cold fish

i think we all know that but it takes something like this from novelist e.l. doctorow to put it all in perspective...

(thanks to the martian anthropologist...)

I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.

thank you, mr. doctorow, for an eloquent and terribly sad assessment...

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U.S. to resume landmine production (and, presumably, landmine use)

oh, man... i just HATE to read stories like this... large areas of the world are already tattooed with unexploded landmines left over from one deadly conflict or another... afghanistan is full of 'em, vietnam is too... they're ugly, vicious, nightmarish killing devices... when i was in vietnam, they were using one device that, when detonated, sprayed tiny metal needles and razor shards for hundreds of feet in all directions, the objective being to clear the entire area, hence the name, "antipersonnel mine..." yes, just what we need more of...

The George W. Bush administration may soon resume production of antipersonnel land mines in a move that is at odds with both the international community and previous U.S. policy on the weapons, says a leading human rights organisation.

[...]

The U.S. has not used antipersonnel land mines since the 1991 Gulf War, when it scattered over 100,000 land mines from planes in Iraq and Kuwait...

[...]

In 1994 the U.S. called for the ”eventual elimination” of all such mines and in 1996, Pres. Bill Clinton said the U.S. would ”seek a worldwide agreement as soon as possible to end the use of all antipersonnel mines.” The U.S. produced its last antipersonnel land mine in 1997.

It has also been the stated objective of the U.S. government that it would someday join the 145 countries party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which bans the use, production, exporting, and stockpiling of antipersonnel land mines.

However, the Bush administration made an about-face in U.S. antipersonnel land mine policy in February 2004, when it abandoned any pretense of joining the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Convention.

”The United States will not join the Ottawa Convention because its terms would have required us to give up a needed military capability,” the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs said in a statement in February 2004, summing up the administration's new policy.

”Landmines still have a valid and essential role protecting United States forces in military operations... No other weapon currently exists that provides all the capabilities provided by landmines.”

"all the capabilities provided by landmines..." terrible, terrible, terrible...

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An apology due to Novak...? Puh-leeeeze...

ohfercryinoutloud... has widdle wobert had his feewings hurt...? cry me a river, build me a bridge and get over it... then go sit in the corner and wear the dunce cap that you should have been wearing long, long ago...

The members of the liberal press pack owe Mr. Novak an apology, not vice versa.

(from the wsj via raw story...)

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Looking at the dollar from Argentina

the argentine government is struggling with rising inflation rates (12% is projected for the full year 2005) and a falling dollar exchange rate with the argentine peso... they would like to have the dollar at a 3-to-1 exchange but the markets are saying no thanks... here's a view from an editorial in today's buenos aires herald...

Even record Central Bank purchases of 172 million dollars on Wednesday proved wholly inadequate for defending the 2.90-peso mark (never mind the government target of three pesos at the start of the year) — even 2.85 is starting to look ambitious. It is too often assumed that the dollar’s value is determined here rather than by Washington but in neither place are trends helping the greenback. While little or nothing is being done against mammoth fiscal and trade deficits in the United States, the greenback is losing all scarcity value as a low exchange rate brings in export dollars while the US currency is being scorned on the local bond market (only 20 million dollars worth could be issued on Tuesday).

argentina ain't the only place this is happening, btw...

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An increasingly domesticated military focus

what i want to know is under exactly what conditions can martial law be declared cuz you realize, i hope, that's precisely what this is setting the stage for...

The U.S. military has devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, envisioning 15 potential crisis scenarios and anticipating several simultaneous strikes around the country, according to officers who drafted the plans.

[...]

The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement.

[...]

Civil liberties groups have warned that the military's expanded involvement in homeland defense could bump up against the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which restricts the use of troops in domestic law enforcement.

i'm not in the least bit comforted...

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A Supreme comments on the death penalty

even before we start talking about the issue of socially-sanctioned murder, there are other, equally ethical concerns, as justice stevens points out...

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens issued an unusually stinging criticism of capital punishment Saturday evening, telling the American Bar Association that he is disturbed by "serious flaws."

Stevens stopped short of calling for an end to the death penalty, but he said there are many problems in the way it is used.

Stevens said DNA evidence has shown "that a substantial number of death sentences have been imposed erroneously. . . . It indicates that there must be serious flaws in our administration of criminal justice," he said.

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Accountability for prisoner abuse and torture

with the continuous revelations of prisoner torture and abuse, most recently coming out of bagram, there's a perspective that shouldn't be missed...

military personnel, from the chairman of the joint chiefs on down, report to the civilian commander-in-chief and his delegatee, the civilian secretary of defense... officers craft strategy and tactics under the directives of the civilians at the top of the chain-of-comand... the military has a system of accountability second-to-none but the civilians who call the shots have expressly and purposefully short-circuited that system... why...? because the moment higher-level military personnel start coming under the spotlight, there will be no escaping bushco's ultimate accountability... it's a grievous mistake to think that bush or rumsfeld sees sidestepping accountability in the military as a problem... it's not a problem in their eyes, it's the solution... it's not bush's lessons on accountability that have been learned well and emulated, it's his orders that have been followed well, very well... this in no way excuses the military, of course... we all are ultimately responsible and accountable for our own actions... but it is important to understand that military commanders do not see themselves as independent actors...

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A Christian speaks on Cindy Sheehan

good lord... this has to qualify as the most petty, cold thing i've read in quite a while... i don't usually blog on other bloggers but this grinds my ass...

Today, the top story on AOL News is some lady who lost her son in Iraq and showed up at the ranch with 50 friends demanding to see the president. That's the top story of the day? Did anyone at AOL notice the little item about the Russian sub that was rescued, or perhaps Netanyahu resigning from the Isreali cabinet?

[...]

C'mon AOL, this isn't big news, certainly not big enough to make your top headline of the day. I could find bigger stories in about 5 minutes of surfing the web. Maybe you guys ought to check my blog for some ideas.

how about checking inside your ass... you might find your head in there... "some lady who lost her son in iraq...?" i'm seething...

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Fitzgerald to get new boss...

O-H M-Y G-O-D...! i can almost hear the machinery of the valerie plame leak investigation grinding to a halt... un-fuckingly-believable...

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff will splash a story in tomorrow's Newsweek which reveals that the boss of CIA leak probe prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is likely to be replaced by a former Bush classmate at Yale.

(thanks to raw story...)

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Privacy in the U.S...? Don't be silly...! Of COURSE not...!

gee, why are we not surprised...?

American companies including financial services giants like Bank of America, Citigroup and MasterCard, and national retailers like DSW shoes and Ralph Lauren Polo, have announced data compromises. All told, the personal information of more than 50 million consumers has been lost, stolen and even sold to thieves.

Why is this happening here, and not, say, in Britain, Germany or France? One reason may be that every other Western country has a comprehensive set of national privacy laws and an office of data protection, led by a privacy commissioner.

The United States, by contrast, has a patchwork of state and federal laws and agencies responsible for data protection.

"In Europe, the question has been settled: citizens have strong legal rights," said Joel R. Reidenberg, a Fordham University law professor who is an expert on international data privacy rules. "In the United States, we basically have a mess, and we are still trying to sort it out."

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Colorado's boom and bust cycle - now it's uranium (again!)

the last big boom, oil shale on colorado's western slope, pushed the towns of parachute and rifle into unprecedented growth, straining all public services... the inevitable bust left today's deserted housing developments and a large tab to be picked up by colorado taxpayers... as a colorado native, i have seen first-hand the remnants of this disgusting rape-it-and-leave-it methodology of the so-called "extractive industries" all over the state... gee... now, here we go again...

Soaring demand with restricted supply is the classic formula for a seller's market, and the major uranium-producing nations -- Canada, Australia, Russia and the United States -- are all moving to reactivate mines that were closed after the uranium bust of the 1980s.

The point has not been lost on the veteran miners who live on the hardscrabble high desert country where southern Colorado and Utah meet.

This region, a scattered collection of dusty villages separated by endless stretches of two-lane mountain roads, is known to geologists as the Uravan Mineral Belt. Both uranium and another industrial mineral, vanadium, are found in the red cliffs that tower 1,000 feet above the valley of the San Miguel River.

Even before it supplied the Manhattan Project and the World War II bombs, the Uravan played a key role in nuclear history. Nobel Laureate Marie Curie came to Colorado to collect radium for her pioneering experiments. When this town was incorporated in 1904, it proudly took the name "Nucla" to reflect its role in the new science of nuclear physics. During the boom years, Nucla had a Uranium Cafe and a movie theater called the Uranium Drive In.

[...]

"There could be hundreds of mines operating around here in a year or two," says Ernie Anderson, a veteran mining industry geologist.

[...]

Like many miners, Chiles [Clifford Chiles, whose family has been mining uranium in Colorado for decades] complains that regulatory and environmental restrictions make uranium mining a much tougher business than it used to be.

[...]

"The problem with a boom is, you get a bust on the backside," Chiles says, reflecting a common viewpoint. "Yeah, you make money if everything goes okay. But if it ends, that puts a lot of hurting on people."

One thing the locals are not worried about is the potential health or environmental risk from mining radioactive fuel. "There is nobody here who is anti-uranium," said Roger Culver, editor of the San Miguel Basin Forum, Nucla's newspaper.

The more serious question for Nucla and the neighboring towns is whether they are being lulled into one more cycle of boom and bust. "All the global indicators tell us that uranium demand and prices are going to keep rising steadily," says Cotter, the Energy Department analyst. "And that's what we're telling our miners. But of course, they've heard it all before."

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Don't let al Qaeda doom the internet

In the snow-draped mountains near Jalalabad in November 2001, as the Taliban collapsed and al Qaeda lost its Afghan sanctuary, Osama bin Laden biographer Hamid Mir watched "every second al Qaeda member carrying a laptop computer along with a Kalashnikov" as they prepared to scatter into hiding and exile. On the screens were photographs of Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta.

Nearly four years later, al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace. With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood Internet cafes, young code-writing jihadists have sought to replicate the training, communication, planning and preaching facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on the Internet.

this story disturbs me and i'll tell ya why... it's precisely this that provides bushco the ammunition for clamping down on the most effective vehicle for information-sharing and person-to-person communication the world has ever known... with the amount of traveling i do, i would be totally lost without the internet... right now, i can be almost literally anywhere in the world and still be connected to friends, family and business associates... yesterday, for instance, i talked to a colleague in cairo from here in buenos aires for well over an hour, via the internet, for free and the connection was good enough that he might as well have been in the same room... that's not something i want to lose...

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A tribute to Ibrahim Ferrer

The veteran Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer has died in a Havana hospital, aged 78.

[...]

He was a master of the son and bolero styles, but was in obscurity when US guitarist Ry Cooder recruited him for the Buena Vista Social Club.

The 1997 record of the same name gave him an international reputation in his seventies, and led to numerous tours.

awww... what a huge loss to the music world... i had the privilege of watching him perform live in skopje, macedonia, last year with his traveling entourage of musicians, singers and dancers... besides being a sell-out and a fantastic show, every one of the performers was stellar, they went non-stop for well over 2 1/2 hours, and ibrahim himself, at the age of 77, was on stage for all but two sets... watching macedonians get down to salsa was an added treat in addition to watching them mob the stage getting ibrahim and the others to sign a cuban flag...

back story: in the former yugoslavia (macedonia was one of the 8 yugoslav republics), tito led the formation of the non-aligned nations group of which cuba was one and macedonians still feel a special affinity for cuba...

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