Dave's Big Beef

Awww, geez! Are you f-in' kidding me?

2006-05-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

So much for those vaunted claims by California's Sec. of State Bruce McPherson and his partners at Diebold, Inc. about increased security surrounding the physical access to electronic voting machines in light of newly revealed vulnerabilities to easy tampering.

A tip received by The BRAD BLOG on Monday reveals that Temp Workers are currently being sought in San Francisco for California's upcoming primary election to "assist in dropping off election voting machines and picking these machines up when voting is complete," as the says.

A classified ad seeking the workers is currently posted on the Internet at Monster.com by Kelly Services. (A screenshot of the complete ad is posted at the end of this article.) The salary offered to temp workers hired for the job -- who will have private unsupervised access to the state's voting machines before and after election day -- is $11.99/hour according to the posting.

Just go read the whole thing.

This morning….

2006-05-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

This morning….

This morning while driving to the train station, I saw a beat up maroon Buick LeSabre. It was all saggy looking, like it just sorta got tired. On the rear bumper it had this sticker:

USH
HENEY ‘04

Like the owner started to peel it off, and it tore, and he was just all – “ahh, fuck it…”

How ya liking that $3 gas, dude? Yeah, having an oil man in the White House really worked out well, didn’t it? Buddies with Prince Bandar, holding hands and kissing even. You know, the Bush and Saud families go waaaay back. Oh yeah, and Iraq, that was gonna pay for itself and guaran-godamn-tee us some cheap oil. Not like those godamn hippie Democrats with their conservation and alternative energy and diplomacy pussy-ass bullshit. Hell no!

Yeah, be proud man! Wear that sticker with pride! You know, a REAL man never, ever admits he made a mistake, and never, ever, apologizes, no matter how big of an asshole he’s been.

But, maroon IS kind of a faggy color for a car, you know.

Woo hoo! Friday!

2006-05-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

First, I'd like to thank everybody for their expressions of sympathy regarding my toe. It was doing better, but then I managed to jam it again last night tripping over one of my son's toys. Now he copies me and goes around howling when he grazes his foot on anything. At least I didn't teach him any swear words when I did it.

By my lack of posting this week, you’d think that I type with my toes. Well, actually, I’ve been pretty busy at work.

Anyhoo, the big news today is that Porter Goss, the head of the CIA resigned today, effective immediately. This is huge, considering that he didn’t even cite “personal matters.” Hmmm. Makes ya wonder what he’s been up to. Perhaps some connection with the growing Duke Cunningham hookergate scandal?

What a week! Between Stephen Colbert giving Bush and the press a good smackdown on Saturday, and this resignation today, trouble is a brewing for the Republican criminal class.

Yeah, yeah, I’m too damn lazy right now to embed links into my post. Just Google the news, or go ahead and check out the links to other blogs on the sidebar, they’ve been covering all this stuff.

I've got so many half-written posts, it's ridiculous! I've gotta get on top of this. The news moves too fast.

Arrrgh!!! @#%$&*!!!!!!

2006-04-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

Man! I stubbed my toe yesterday looking for my glasses. I did a real number on it, too. Geez, it looks nasty this morning. Found my glasses, though.

She may not look like much..

2006-04-25T13:27:00.001-07:00

..but she gets 38 MPG on the highway.

Yep, gas prices just keep going up, and every news station in the country is doing spots showing outraged regular folks at the pumps. The blogosphere is humming with talk about Peak Oil, Big Oil, Iran, Bush's laughable speech about investigatin' to see if there's price gouging going on, etc. etc.

But let's not kid ourselves. We've been setting ourselves up for this for a long time. For the last ten years, the American car buyer seems to have been intent on using as much gasoline as possible to run errands or commute to work. Huge sections of the population have convinced themselves that, since they have 2 kids, they absolutely NEED a 3 ton vehicle with a V8 engine. Back in the 80s, a small sedan like Mazda 626 was considered a family size car, now a frickin' GMC Yukon is. Back in the 80s 23 MPG on the highway was considered shitty mileage, now it's considered pretty good.

When SUVs first hit the streets in the 90s, they were for the dude who went into the mountains or back country on the weekends to go hiking, skiing, or fishing. And, hey, since he was going to be on some dirt roads or snow, he needed 4 wheel drive; and since his buddies were tired of doing rock-paper-scissors to see who had to ride in the way back, it was nice to have something with a full-size back row of seats. It was a type of vehicle that had its niche.

But, people found that they liked the feeling of driving something massive. Everybody started buying them. An arms race of sorts ensued, culminating in monstrosities like the Escalade, and of course, the Hummer. SUVs became bloated, lumbering, ugly behemoths. They would never see a dirt road, never drive into the wilderness. They became nothing more than station wagons on steroids. If the early SUVs were sleek but powerful wildebeests, the recent ones are flabby cattle fattened up in feed lots.

Now that the price of gas is through the roof, people have the nerve to complain about how much it costs to fill up their Chevy Suburban. So, excuse me if I say boo-fucking-hoo! Suckers. Y'all brought it on yourselves. Not that SUVs are the only culprits, there are a lot of suspiciously shiny pickup trucks that I'm sure haven't hauled anything ever, as well as smaller cars with powerful but gas-guzzling engines. Nobody forced people to buy vehicles with shitty mileage, but they did,
and now everybody's paying for it!

That Damn Spam!

2006-04-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

Alright, so, everyday I come into work and check my email, and there’s always something like an 8 to 1 spam to real email ratio. I know that that’s just the way it is these days. But, really, someone’s gotta fucking do something about this. Last week I got a spam that, according to the header, I sent to myself! That’s just wrong!

I got another one today offering “Best Financial Market Trader Picks” from a Mr. Rusty Butts. Who the fuck would take financial advice from some one with a name like Rusty Butts, fer crissakes!?!?

Then there’s the people selling Viagra and dick enlargers and all that shit. These have really gone downhill. They used to come on to you all sexy like, “impress your gal with your new stamina, blah blah, etc.” Then, they started getting all weird, saying stuff like “Scare the bitches with your HUUUGE frightening cock!” Ugh. Now, the latest sales pitch seeks to belittle you “Ashamed of your tiny little limp dick?” Now, why the fuck would ANYONE buy something from someone who’s making fun of your problems. Geeze, the old – “Hey big boy, wanna be even bigger?” ones used to bother me, but I’d take them over the current shit they’re sending these days.

I mean, really, put some fucking effort into it, goddamn, it! There was a time when spam was carefully crafted to look like real email: a plausible name, an enticing subject line, a beginning sentence that made it sound like it was from a business associate, a long lost friend, or maybe that chick at the bar the other week whose name you didn’t get. Not now, nope. They just slap ‘em together and send ‘em out. That’s outsourcing for ya. You just know that most of the spam coming in is from overseas cybersweatshops; it shows in the inferior quality. Back when Clinton was president you didn't have this shit happening! Fucking Bush, he fucks up everything. And Wal-Mart. I just know Wal-Mart has something to do with this.

On the other hand, the Nigerian bank scam faxes coming into the office have been getting better. They have a real-looking Bank of Africa logo on ‘em, good spelling, a nice font, professional sounding language. It’s good to see some real craftsmanship out there. It gives me hope for the future.

Random Wednesday

2006-04-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

Well, it's a busy day at work today, but I can always find a little bit of time to find some interesting stuff.

I guess the big news is that Scott McClellan is resigning as Bush's Press Secretary. The reason, anyone, anyone? That's right, to spend more time with his family. Must get hard to not play the blame game and not comment on ongoing investigations all the time. Anyhoo...

I found this next link at A Perfectly Cromulent Blog. If anyone out there was a comics nerd back in the 1980s, you probably read the Marvel Universe's Secret Wars miniseries. Well, here's a funny video about it.

Finally, at Pharyngula, there's a post up about a fossil snake with well-developed hind legs.

More ranting coming soon, check back.

Radio Sucks

2006-04-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

One reason I don't listen to commercial radio much is, well, the commercials. Now I've got the melody to Achy Breaky Heart running through my brain with lyrics about how great Applebee's is...

Kourtesy Karma Kop

2006-04-14T21:24:00.000-07:00

It’s Good Friday, a big travel weekend, and I’m taking my usual commute train. Check this out: the way the train is laid out, on some places in each car there are two pairs of seats facing each other with a table in between each pair of seats. This woman sitting across from me is effectively taking up three seats. She is sitting in the one closest to the window with her feet stretched out so that anyone sitting in the seat opposite her won’t have any room for their feet, and she has her bags in the seat next to her. I’m sitting in the seat diagonal to her, across from her bags, which makes me look like an asshole, because I’m blocking off the inside seat, which I am forced to do because of her feet.

Not only that, I can’t stretch out my legs because she has a bouquet of flowers on the floor across from my feet. Big mistake, lady. If my station is before hers, I am seriously going to stomp the fuck out of that bouquet on my way out. Just watch me. Fucking discourteous bitch!

That’s right. Here I am, right near you typing this with a neutral expression on my face, but I am filled with righteous rage, and I. Am. Taking. You. Down.

You cannot take up three fucking spaces on a crowded train with no repercussions. Hell no! Oh yeah, the conductors walk by, like they don’t see what your doing. But they do. They just want to get through their shifts with no drama. Well, if they won’t enforce the rules, I will.

I’m a badass motherfuckin’ manners vigilante, bitch. You know that urban legend about the guy who shows up in the emergency room with a cell phone up his ass? It was my motherfuckin’ disciple who pulled that one off, motherfucker.

If you take a parking space that I was dutifully waiting for, having exchanged eye contact and gestures with the driver who was pulling out, yer ass has better be prepared to deal with four flat tires when you come back from your errand. Oh, not slashed, that’d be wrong; just deflated.

And in the express lane at the grocery store, you’d better not have more than the allotted number of items, and DON’T YOU DARE get all fuckin’ complicated at the end with coupons and exchanges and writin’ checks and taken ten goddamn minutes to figure out what fuckin’ cigarettes you want and argue about the price on every goddamn item. Not in the express lane! I’ve got fuckin’ ice cream here, and it ain’t getting any colder!

And to the asshole that peels out his car every time he goes around my corner, you are lucky I haven’t finished my electromagnetic pulse cannon yet, ‘cause I’d fry every circuit in your car as you went by. I’m gonna hunt you down as soon as you get a license plate on that piece of shit manhood compensator you drive around.

You see, you ain’t any more important than anyone else here, and you’d best learn that as quickly as possible, because courtesy toward others is the basis of civilization. If there’s one thing that Jesus and Buddah and any other philosopher worth anything taught, it was that you need to think of others in how you behave in this world.

And I ain’t waitin’ for no cosmic karma to take care of shit, ‘cause karma never does. I take action, I enforce causality consciously. You reap what you sow, what goes around comes around, an’ all that shit.

Peace. Happy Easter, everybody.

Jesus Joke

2006-04-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

Good Friday just isn't complete without a little blasphemous humor. I just heard this one:

Jesus gave his friends wine, and it turned out to be his blood.
He gave his friends bread, and it turned out to be his flesh.
All I'm sayin' is, be careful if he offers you a glass of milk.

Suckuhz!

2006-04-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

OK, so judging by yesterday’s traffic, immigration is SOOO last week. I guess ya can’t really compete with impending nookyoolur war, can ya? Distraction accomplished. All of you who didn't read my immigration post are playing right into BushCo's hands, I tell ya!

Well, now the emerging opinion seems to be that Bush will go ahead and attack Iran with conventional weapons, after talking up the threat of a nuke attack. Clever strategy, that. Sort of a compromise, I guess. Classic bargaining strategy: ask for waaay more than you really want, so that when a compromise is struck, you get at least what you really wanted in the first place.

Moon Fish

2006-04-12T20:38:00.000-07:00

Today, driving home from the train station, I heard an interview on the radio with someone from the Chicago Tribune about a story they published on Rev. Moon and the fresh fish industry. Moon came up with a plan in the 70s to make the fresh fish business a big part of his economic base and has been working on it since 1980 and now runs a huge fishing empire - supplying fresh fish to just about every sushi restaurant in the country. So when you're out eating sushi, you're probably giving a little bit of money to the Unification Church. That guy sure knows how to run a racket. He's got hustle, I'll give him that.

2006-04-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

Woahhh!

I came across this at the apostropher. It's a late 1800's kitten taxidermy diorama. Man, the stuff people did before TV, huh? And plastic.

Damn Immigrants!

2006-04-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

As a native born Californian, I really resent all these immigrants invading my state. They come here, put their kids into our already overcrowded schools, strain our health care system, drive up the cost of housing, take all the good jobs, and crowd our freeways. They don’t even have the decency to adapt to our culture, insisting on bringing their culture with them. Look, if the place where you’re from is crappy, take a stand there and try to make it better. Don’t just flee to my state!

And the worst part of it all is that there’s nothing I can do about it... It's a free country! That’s right: I’m talking about people moving to California from the rest of the United States. I blame all the bastards moving here from Ohio and Minnesota and Buttcrack, Indiana for the declining quality of life in California. They come here and crowd our schools with a buncha mewling brats, crowd our freeways with their oversized trucks and SUVs and strain our healthcare system with their high-fat eatin’, drunk drivin’, tobacco-smoking selves.

And the jobs! Didja know that you can get guys from Oklahoma to do what used to be decent-paying office or IT jobs for a fraction of what they used to pay?!? The Mexicans didn’t take any of those jobs away, or drive the wages down. And, it sure as shit wasn’t the Mexicans that drove the median price for a home in California to over half a million dollars!

And, finally, you used to be able to get spicy Mexican food here. All these guys from out of state put an end to that. After years of having their white customers turning red and gasping about how HOT the food was, begging for glass after glass of water, all the Mexican restaurants have cut WAAAY back on their chili peppers. It’s ridiculous! If ya can’t stand the heat, get out of the state! By the way, water doesn’t do nothin’ for it, you need fat (milk) or alcohol (beer) to wash away the heat, dumbasses!

Anyway, to all you guys across the USA looking for a better life in California, stay the fuck out! We’re full. And if you do move here, don’t bitch about all the brown people speaking Spanish. It’s fucking California, fer chrissakes! Notice how just about every city here starts with “San” or “Santa.” That should be a fucking clue.

Enough with the Rain, Already!

2006-04-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

Ohhh, Christ! It's raining AGAIN. It just keeps raining. This is really getting ridiculous. If I wanted to live in a place with this much rain, I woulda moved to Oregon, where the housing is cheaper. This is really insane. However, I am one of the fortunate ones. Sure, I live about a quarter of a mile away from a levy, and, sure the river's running really high. But, so far, I'm not one of the guys on the news standing in front of a soggy house, showing people a pile of muddy garbage that used to be photo albums and a wedding dress, or wading through waist-high water, carrying a TV to the back of a pickup truck, or talking about how we never knew there were so many old buried septic tanks around here...

But, really, enough's enough. One thing, though...

There's a place on Highway one out on the coast here in California called Devil's Slide. This part of the highway is closed indefinitely because, guess what? it's sliding into the Pacific Ocean. Now, a few years ago, during another heavy rainy season, a similar thing occured at the same spot. The residents of a nearby little town were upset at two things. One, that Caltrans hadn't fixed the road yet, even as it continued to slide at a rate of a couple of inches a day and the rain kept coming. And two, that Caltrans wanted to build an inland bypass that would avoid the problem section of the coast altogether. The residents of this little town wailed that it would spell the death of their wide spot in the road that depends on traffic down Highway 1 for its economy.

My sympathies. However, it's called DEVIL'S SLIDE, fer chrissakes!! Not Happy Fun Slide, or Butterscotch Caramel Fudge Slide, or Butterfly Rainbow Slide. It's Devil's Slide. Unlike just about every other place on the California Coast, they made sure it was named in English - just so everyone driving down the California Coast from all around the country would know what they were dealing with. El Diapositiva del Diablo just doesn't quite have the same ring, does it? Look. If the only access to your town is through a place called Devil's Slide, its days are pretty much numbered.

Anyway, the bypass never got built, and now, SURPRISE! Devil's Slide is once again sliding into the sea. I feel that in some way the whole situation is an example in miniature of how humans behave in general.

Wasting time at work...

2006-04-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, so here's a few links I came across today.

First, there's this one from Canadian Cynic: Whoa, That'll get your attention!

Next, we have this one from Blondesense: Assicons

Finally, possibly the best thing I've read on the whole immigration issue: Stand Up And Be Proud

Anyway, gotta get back to work!

Right Wing Bumper Sticker

2006-04-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

The other week when I was driving to the store, I saw this bumber sticker:

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, ABORTION CLINICS KILL PEOPLE

The guy didn't have the balls to actually stick it on the bumper, it was taped onto the inside back windshield. Fuckin' pussy-ass way to display a bumper sticker for anybody, if you ask me. Which you didn't - but you're reading my blog, so you're entitled to my opinion anyway.

Anyway, a couple of things occured to me:

The conflation of two typical right wing sentiments, Pro-Gun and Anti-Choice into one slogan really struck me as almost a parody of right wing inconsistancy. Also, whoever thought of the sticker must have really chuckled to himself ('cause you KNOW it had to be a man that came up with that one) at how damned clever he was! In fact, he thought he was soooo clever that he had to have 'em printed up. And, of course, the asshole who put it up in his car thought it was clever enough to go driving around with it on display for everyone to see how clever it was.

OK - First off - Pro Gun rights is one separate fucking subject from abortion, OK? One fucking subject per sticker, OK? One gun sticker, one abortion sticker. Responsible gun ownership is fine by me - but I do think that it's too damn easy for nutcases and criminals to get them, and I think some places - especially urban areas - are well within their rights to impose pretty tight restrictions on firearms. Gun laundering (where someone non-eligible for a gun uses a proxy to get one) is way too fucking easy in this country. And, let's face it, the gun manufacturers don't care who buys 'em. In fact, the more criminals are out there with guns, the more threatened the average law-abiding citizen feels, and voila! more gun sales all around! The gun manufacturers have ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in public safety.

Now - Abortion. Real simple. If you are male, shut the fuck up! If you are female and against abortion, don't get one. I'm not saying that it isn't a tough moral choice for some people, but the fact is that most people in the country, and California in particular support a woman's right to choose.

So, here's my bumper sticker in response:

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, UNWANTED CHILDREN GROW UP TO KILL PEOPLE

Anyway, I ended up passing the guy, 'cause I just HAD to see what the fuck he looked like. Ok, he was a young white dude in his early twenties, with a gelled-up-on-top, short-on the-sides haircut (by the way, I've never met anyone with that style of haircut that wasn't a total dick!) and a hands-free earpiece in.

I thought to myself, "HA! This guy's gonna change his tune REAL fast when he ends up knocking up some girl, probably one of his date rape victims!"

Iran Stuff

2006-04-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I go to work yesterday to make up some of the hours that I missed earlier in the week when I was rather ill, and I come upon this post on Americablog and this one at Hullabaloo. They are both about an article by The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh about how Bush has already decided to go to war with Iran, and they are considering using nukes.

Since the commentary is flying fast and furious about this, I'd like to focus in on one part of it:
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

Now, while Iran is a country that cannot be ignored, these guys in charge at the White House really have demonstrated that they have absolutely no grasp on psychology or human nature, as well as military strategy, and are totally unqualified to deal with..well..anything. Mostly because they refuse to acknowledge facts that contradict their preconceptions.

Look, there is NO WAY that an attack on Iran will do anything but rally the people behind their government. When people are threatened or attacked by an outside aggressor, they will put aside their internal disputes and turn their anger on the guy flinging the bombs at them. People will take security over freedom. Hell, they did it here, right? Land of the Free, where you shouldn't be worried about surveillance because a good citizen has nothing to hide, right? Where due process is a luxury for only when we are not under threat by anyone.

There is a post up at The Dark Wraith Forums that gives a really good analysis of the whole situation. It's really worth reading. There's also this one at Sadly,No!, which is a repost of a post from a Canadian who asks:
Speaking as a Canadian who is fond of judicious language, I feel that this situation deserves careful and measured thought. So let me just open with:

Is your entire f*cking country on crack???

To which I answer: No, the entire fucking country is on meth.

Well, well, well...

2006-04-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

Lookie here.

President George W. Bush was the one who authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case. The papers quoted Vice-President Dick Cheney's former top aid, Lewis Libby.

Before his indictment, Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame leak that Cheney told him to pass on the information and that it was Bush who had authorized the leak, the court papers say.

Not that this is a surprise. I guess the only surprise is that Bush himself actually makes decisions now and then. Of course, you'll hear:
1) This is all a non-story because she really wasn't REALLY undercover.
2) This is just a partisan attack.
3) It's all some arcane technicality, not a real crime.
4) Clinton got a BJ!
5) Michael Moore is fat.
6) The only reason anyone is concerned is because they have an irrational hatred of W.
7) Libby's a confessed criminal, how can you believe anything he says?

Did I leave anything out?

Back at Work

2006-04-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

Hoo boy! Missing two days of work really sucks. There is so much catching up to do, it's not even funny. Then there's the stuff (some oddly misshipped merchandise that everyone's forgotten about) that sits around for literally a year, and the one day it comes up, is the day that the only one who knows the story on it (me) is out of the office. It never fails.

Then there's the stuff that sold 3 months worth on one order, so it looks like I haven't been paying attention and let the stock run down.

Oh, well.

I'll be throwing up an interesting post this evening after work. No time to goof off and post from work. (Well, ahem, except for this one...)

If I only had enough traffic to post an Open Thread, and actually get comments.....

Sick TV

2006-04-05T15:32:00.000-07:00

Man, I had to take a second sick day, and man, it sucks to call in sick when you're actually sick. Must be a sign of aging... Anyway, I spent some time on the couch today watching TV, and Sylvia Browne was on Montel. Her scam is so transparent to me, but you can really see how these people really, really want to believe in spirits & such. Part of her success seems to be not being too eager to please the audience members. My favorite is this kind of exchange:

Audience member: I've always felt that I had a spirit animal guide.
Browne: You do, It's a squirrel.
Audience member: You sure it's not a wolf or an eagle?
Browne: Nope, it's a squirrel.
Audience member: I've always felt an affinity for wolves...
Browne: It's a squirrel honey.
Audience member: Bear?
Browne: Squirrel.

That stuff cracks me up. Or maybe it's just the Robitussen.

Verrry Interesting...

2006-04-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Americablog since just after it's inception and really enjoyed it for the most part. I don't agree with everything John Aravosis writes, of course, but lately I've been less interested in the site, maybe I've been getting burnt out on it. But, there have been some disturbing developments lately:

First - John went to some conference and talked about how nice Katherine Harris is in person

then, he got all defensive about making money and hobnobbing with politicos

3 Bulls came up with this little gem

then he had a little rant about how a black Congresswomen was overreacting to being hassled by security

Now, it turns out that he's started deleting inconvenient questions.

And, I've noticed more punctuation and spelling errors in his posts lately - a sign of the Dark Side.

hmmm... What's happening to John Aravosis?

Sick n' Tired

2006-04-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

Oh man, I've had a cold for a couple of weeks now. No fever, just congestion and coughing. I'm so tired of it. Now, with the time change, I'm getting up at my body clock's hour of 4:30 AM to go to work. Sucky...

Well, for your amusement, here's a couple of cool history lessons from Retardo Montalbon at Elementropy:

Retardo's Skeptic's Guide To American Presidents:

part I

part II

part III

These should be required reading for every high school and college student.

WTFDLKDTHF?!?!

2006-04-01T13:51:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine overseas asked me and the Wyfe to adopt his piano while he’s out of the country. The piano had been couch surfing for a while and had run out of places to stay. Not wanting it to fall into a seedy existence in dive bars and reality porn, we decided to give it a foster home in our house.

It moved in on Thursday and was immediately a charming addition to our family. Last night I stayed up with a little wine and the piano and had a wonderful time murdering The Girl From Ipanema. (Any cops monitoring this blog, please don’t take that last phrase out of context.)

Anyway, afterwards, I caught Conan O’Brien for the first time in ages, and after that, I started flipping around for something interesting. I turned it to Dinner for 5 on IFC. It was an episode from 2004, with Kevin Pollack, Jeff Ross, Hector Elizondo, and Laura Kightlinger.

What the fuck did Laura Kightlinger do to her face? She was sporting a botox/plastic surgery rictus. It really kind of freaked me out and destroyed the image I had of her.

At this point, I must say that Laura Kightlinger, along with Janeane Garofalo were two women that really should have hooked up with me in the 90s when I was single. They really don’t know what they missed. I was totally attracted to them because they were sassy, smart, funny, irreverent, attractive women. I thought Janeane was totally hot when she was a little chubby. Rowwr! And Laura, oh Laura, I would watch that one standup thing they kept showing on Comedy Central whenever it came on. The one where she talks about the Bob’s Big Boy statue with rusty water coming out of its butt, and compares it to weeping Mary statues ‘n shit like that. When I heard that Laura had married Jack Black, I was disappointed because, I like Jack, but I knew that they would both be happier if I was married to Laura, and he was my comedy collaborator.

Though I think it looks horrible, I expect the grotesque plastic surgery from aging actresses like Melanie Griffith, Meg Ryan, and Nicole Kidman, trying to get a few more roles in their careers, and from weird B list, celebrities like Kathy Griffin and Joan Rivers. And have you seen Janine Turner lately? She had some sort of chin implant and fish lip job. Ugh.

But not Laura Kightlinger and Janeane Garofalo! (Janeane has the botox paralyzed maxilla thing going on now, probably because she started to get smoker’s wrinkles around her upper lip.) No, they were supposed to be too independent and self-assured to bow to the pressures of the entertainment machine. They weren’t supposed to be so shallow.

They really should have hooked up with me back in the 90s. I would have been good for them. On the other hand, Dweezil Zappa wasn’t able to keep Lisa Loeb from carving her face up. Me and Dweezil should hang out some time.

Red America’s Little Problem

2006-03-31T18:02:00.000-08:00

In the 10 months that I didn’t post here, my research team and I conducted many studies and experiments. After collecting and analyzing many different data sets, we have come up with some interesting findings. The following is one of them.

There is an inverse relationship between vehicular size/power and genital size/function in the American male.

Now, this may sound like an obvious statement. We’ve all heard the jokes about men in fast cars or large trucks “compensating for something,” but, until now, it had remained conventional wisdom, a truism. Now, thanks to the diligent efforts of my research team, we have established not just correlation, but causation and extended effects of this phenomenon.

There is a complex feedback cycle that we have identified involving environmental pollutants, industry, government, and society, and their effect on the psychological and physiological development of the American male.

The cycle starts in the womb. A male fetus is exposed to hormone disrupting pollutants, such as pesticides and other chemicals from his father’s immaculate lawn, phlalates from his mother’s Tammy Faye Bakker makeup job and the ubiquitous plastics in the packaging of the processed food in the average American diet. Furthermore, there are plenty of these chemicals in the drinking water. The effect of this prenatal exposure is that the male is born with small genitalia.

As the male grows up, his small penis affects him psychologically. To compensate for his tiny genitals, he develops a love of fast cars, large trucks, and more often than not, guns. He has anger issues, especially toward women, after some psychologically scarring early sexual experiences. (He cannot get the image of the girls in high school holding up their little fingers and giggling as he walks by out of his mind.) He finds homosexuals threatening because they undermine his strict worldview of what constitutes being a man. He embraces an ideology with rigid, well-defined gender roles.

He is drawn to politicians, and their mouthpieces on the radio and on television, that appeal (sometimes subtly, often overtly) to his superiority due to the fact that he is male (it’s the fact that he has a penis, not its size that matters). Invariably these politicians are conservative, often highly religious, Republicans. These Republicans use various tactics to dissuade him from voting for anyone else, telling him that the other party will take away his guns, make him drive an electric car, and lose his rightful place as the king of his castle. In order to keep him from wising up, they convince him from an early age that intellectual pursuits and challenging the status quo are “faggy.”

He votes for these Republicans, who in turn, proceed to dismantle whatever environmental regulations there are. The water gets more polluted, more unregulated chemicals are allowed into foodstuffs, packaging, and other products. Eventually, despite his low sperm count, he manages to reproduce, and the cycle continues in the next generation.

In summary, the predominantly Republican states get more polluted, the pollution causes the males born there to have smaller penises, the Republican politicians appeal to their insecurity and convince them to vote for them, which keeps the states polluted, and thus ensures a supply of angry, pinky-penised men to keep them in power.

In conclusion, women are advised of the following:

1) Men from liberal areas are less likely to have been exposed to penis shrinking chemicals. (You know what that means, ladies!)

2) Women are advised to not have sex with men who drive large trucks or powerful cars. If you want a good lay, pick a guy with a small Honda or Toyota. (He’s got nothing to prove, if you know what I mean.)

Please take this advice, as many of our female researchers are still pretty creeped out by some of the things they had to do to gather this data. If you wish to help them in their recovery, please send Irish whiskey or Vicodin. We are currently working on getting them their medical marijuana cards. Please don’t let their sacrifices have been in vain.

Human Nature: Skepticism and Gullibility

2006-03-29T18:01:00.000-08:00

It’s funny, but skepticism and gullibility are often the flip sides of each other. One person’s skepticism is another’s gullibility. Case in point: I had a roommate once who couldn’t see how anyone could possibly believe that astronauts landed on the moon. I, of course, thought that he was gullible about the “it-was-all-done-on-a-sound-stage” conspiracy theory, and he thought that I was gullible to believe the “official story”. He thought that he was the skeptical one for questioning the government/media/historical evidence, and I thought that I was skeptical one for disbelieving the conspiracy theory.

This phenomenon extends across all social and political persuasions, and seems to fulfill a need that people have to feel that they are in the know and others are deluded, or have been fooled. Hey, who doesn’t want to feel like they know more than someone else, especially someone outside your group?

You have Holocaust deniers – believing themselves to be skeptical about the historical record regarding the slaughter of the Jews and other minorities by the Nazis, but being gullible to a lunatic with a book, a website, and a few bad calculations. (Incidentally, you never hear about neo-Nazis that insist that Hitler killed more Jews than claimed “6 million Jews? Hell! He did better than that! It was 20 million, easily!” Why is that?)

There are the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. (I’ve got an extended post on this coming up.) While I don’t believe the official story in its entirety, I also don’t believe that it was done with pre-planted, controlled detonations, radio controlled planes, switched planes, etc. One even insists a low-yield hydrogen bomb brought the towers down! Why go through all the trouble with the planes if you could just set off a nuke in Manhattan? Christ! That would’ve been enough.

Then there is the evolution/creation conflict. The creationists are totally skeptical about the physical evidence in biology, paleontology, genetics, cosmology, and geology, but are totally gullible regarding a few pages in some text written by ignorant desert dwellers a few thousand years ago, before there was even the most rudimentary scientific knowledge about the world. That’s all the evidence they need. Intelligent Design is the sneaky incarnation of this, where they try to convince the gullible that, no, really, now it’s a science!

The Chariots of the Gods/Ancient Astronauts folks are also interesting. These people are extremely skeptical that humans (especially non-white humans, it seems) could figure out mathematics and build huge monuments. However, they have no problem believing that ancient aliens manipulated human societies in the past, but have left us alone in recent centuries. (However, I do give them credit for inspiring Stargate.)

Medicine is an interesting area; some people are totally skeptical of Big Pharma and modern medicine, but are totally willing to give up their hard-earned money to quacks and “traditional” healers for treatments that have been shown to be ineffective. (Funny how it never occurs to them that, yes, Big Pharma is profit-driven, but so is your local herbalist!) On the other hand, you have people totally believing that there is a pill or a surgery out there that will take care of their problems, without having to do any work on themselves, such as lifestyle changes or self-examination.

Another aspect of the skepticism/gullibility phenomenon is a manifestation of the need to believe that there is some kind of intelligent cause behind everything; that shit doesn’t just happen. This falls into two categories: humans did it, and God did it:

Humans did It: Examples: the idea that the US caused the Indonesian Tsunami by setting off an atomic bomb (in order to kill Muslims, of course); or that AIDS must be a genetically engineered disease; or that the Gulf Coast hurricanes were caused by some nefarious organization by manipulating the weather through scalar waves.

God did it: God caused the tsunami in order to punish people for their sins (either Muslims, or vacationing gays, or tolerating heathen vacationing Australians and Swedes); that God sent AIDS to kill the homosexuals (and presumably promiscuous, though heterosexual Africans); or that God sent the Gulf Coast hurricanes to punish people for gambling, prostitution, and, of course, tolerating homosexuality. (Of course, suggest that Poseidon caused the tsunami for poisoning the oceans and no one will take you seriously.)

Believers of both of these points of view think the other is gullible to believe such outlandish tripe, but both of them are also skeptical of the truth that is that sometimes, shit just happens. Nature is a motherfucker. Plate tectonics explain tsunamis. The geologic and historical records provide rock solid evidence of previous events. Human history is full of diseases and plagues. Only in this relatively recent age of vaccines and antibiotics have we begun to expect to survive many illnesses, or to not get them in the first place. Right now, there are new diseases evolving. Hurricanes have always happened, and always will. Geologic time scales are long, humans have short memories and build things quickly, especially on coastlines, it seems. Sooner or later, a big ass asteroid or comet is gonna come smacking down, and it won’t be God or humans that did it. It’ll just be because the orbits of the rock we call Earch and that of some chunk of rock or ice crossed. We overestimate our importance in the Universe.

So, how can we tell what is true and what isn’t? Evidence can help us sort out what is real and what isn’t, but people tend to ignore or discredit evidence that refutes their point of view, and emphasize evidence that reinforces it. Astrologers and psychics are still in business because of this tendency. Tell people ten things about themselves and they’ll remember the one or two things that apply, and forget the rest.

Here are some sites about science and skepticism to get you started. I’ve added them to the Daves Big Links section in the sidebar.

Bad Astronomy

Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit

The Crackpot Index

Good Math, Bad Math

James Randi Educational Foundation

The Panda’s Thumb

Respectful Insolence

Skeptico

The Skeptic’s Dictionary

Snopes.com

Talk.Origins

Criminalizing Fun

2006-03-29T13:09:00.000-08:00

This country has had a long history of making things that are fun illegal. Usually the argument is because it supposedly harms people. And, granted, there often is some truth to that. Was it coincidence that Prohibition happened right after women got the right to vote? Perhaps women who were tired of having their drunken husbands slapping them and their kids around, and forcing themselves upon them thought, “hey, without booze, maybe he’d be a nicer guy!” But, all that happened was crime exploded and prohibition didn’t work. What has worked in recent years is prosecution of domestic violence cases, and the change in attitude towards women. Even conservatives these days talk about marriage as a partnership and not as ownership of a woman by a man.

Some things, however, which are fun, don't harm anybody. For example, sex toys. Sex toys have probably saved a lot more marriages than they’ve damaged. But, for some (presumably religiously driven) reason, several states have a ban on sex toys. Last Thursday, Mississippi’s Supreme Court upheld a state law prohibiting the sale of sex toys.

This is just re-goddamn-diculous! I suppose they’ll ban the sale of cucumbers next. Look, the reason sex toys are banned is simply because they think sexual pleasure is evil, plain and simple. That, somehow, having orgasms is damaging to one’s mental health. Maybe the men of Mississippi see vibrators as competition, not as potentially valuable friends and partners in pleasing their wives.

Also, from the great state of Texas, cops have been arresting people for being drunk, in bars! That’s right, you cannot get drunk in a bar in Texas. They say it’s to prevent people from drinking and driving, but some of the people they arrested were in the HOTEL BARS they were staying at! This is nothing more than lording it over people for indulging in a little vice.

If the idea is to prevent accidents and crime, then why don’t they just lock everybody in their own homes all the time?

Why is it happening now? Because controlling, moralizing, sanctimonious forces are emboldened now, with wingnut conservatives running things. They feel like they can get away with this crap.

The funny thing is, conservatives are always accusing liberals with wanting to control people through the government. Being a “Nanny State,” they call it. You know, preventing people from exercising their rights to starve, breathe crappy air, drink poison laden water and eat contaminated food. That kind of stuff. Then, they claim that the liberals are going to take away everybody’s guns to really scare people. Meanwhile, all of your rights are slowly being taken away.

I'd rather have a "Nanny State", than a "Big Scary Daddy State" that locks me in the basement and monitors my phone calls.

Updated Blogroll

2006-03-28T08:36:00.000-08:00

I've made some changes to my Dave's Big Links section. I took down a couple of links (really, Atrios and Markos don't need any more links from 2 bit blogs) and added a few. I'm too lazy to embed the links in this post, so click on the sidebar to go visit them.
Check 'em out. Bottle Of Blog has some really funny rants about life and politics. Sadly, No! and World o' Crap bring back nuggets from the wingnutosphere and amusingly dissect them for you, Tbogg has some good snark, and Pharyngula has stuff about science, evolution, and anti-religious fundamentalist stuff.

Anyway, waste some time at work. They are all worth checking out.

Dave Lenihan and Condi Rice – What I Think

2006-03-27T14:34:00.000-08:00

I do think that Dave Lenihan, the DJ who had a slip of the tongue and called Condoleezza Rice a “coon” on his radio show should have been fired, as he was. However, I also agree that what he said was an honest-to-god slip of the tongue, with no Freudian underpinnings.

As an NFL fan, I think he should have been fired for actually saying that Condoleezza Rice would make a good commissioner of the NFL. I mean, WFT was he thinking? What a dumbass.

A Look Back

2006-03-27T11:48:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been about ten months since I last posted here, and a lot of stuff that’s been bad for Bush and congressional republicans has happened in that time.
Social Security reform stalled (although the White House did sneak it into their budget)
Medicare Prescription Benefit costs exploded (of course, they lied about how much it was going to cost in the first place, in order to get it through Congress)
Gas prices creeping up (it started happening before the hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast, if you remember)
Harriet Miers’ nomination and withdrawal
Tom Delay’s indictment
Katrina (and Rita and Wilma) – “Heckuva job, Brownie” – And no, nobody thinks Bush caused the weather – but the response (or, rather, lack thereof) was a crime.
High heating costs this winter
Scooter Libby’s indictment
Jack Abramhoff ( Which is, by the way, a wholly Republican scandal, despite the spin) –
Dick Cheney’s drunken shooting accident. (“I had one beer at lunch!” - Suuure! – cops hear that one all the time. – for the record, the conversion is: “not a drop” = 1-3, “one, with food” = 4-8, “a couple” = 9 + up.
Bush’s old buddies from Enron’s trial FINALLY getting going – (we’ll see how that plays out)
Illegal warrantless electronic eavesdropping (and NOW Gonzales asserts that the Congressional authorization of use of force in the war on terror applies to warrantless physical searches as well.)
The Dubai ports deal – (smooth move, Ex-Lax)
No bid contract to a Chinese firm to scan incoming containers for nukes. (whaa?)
And, Oh yeah – a civil war in Iraq – well, not officially, but, you know, the administration is a little slow at acknowledging reality.

The president and congressional GOP’s poll numbers have been in a steady slide.
Yet, still, the Democrats (with a few exceptions – Feingold, for example.) can’t seem to get it together.

And I’m sure I left a bunch of stuff out.

Of course, Bush did get two conservative justices on the Supreme Court, which has touched off an abortion ban in South Dakota, and emboldened nutcases who consider not just plan B to be murder, but ANY form of contraception. (Hope all you pro-choice Republican’s enjoyed your tax cut – dumbasses! Didn’t think they’d actually do it, didja?)

Interesting times, I tell ya.

DAVE RETURNS THIS WEEK!!

2006-03-27T08:18:00.000-08:00

DAVE'S BIG BEEF RETURNING.....

2006-03-23T18:53:00.001-08:00

Stay tuned!

Second Choice Vanity Plates

2005-06-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve been noticing that with all the cars on the road, many vanity plates are obviously not the driver’s first choice. Here’re some that I’ve seen lately.

BYOFUEL – on a Mercedes station wagon. I’m assuming that it’s fueled by biodesiel or straight vegetable oil. Obviously, they wanted BIO FUEL, but it must have been taken. What they have looks like it means, “Bring Your Own Fuel.”

XNXIRIE – I read this as “Xanax Irie” meaning that the driver’s irie feeling was much improved by a prescription anti-anxiety drug. What kind of poseur Rasta would take Xanax instead of ganja? Ironically, the car had a Trinidad and Tobago bumper sticker as well. Look, calypso ain’t exactly reggae, mon. I guess INI (“I an’ I”)was taken.

SOSOSWT – I guess this means “So So Sweet”, but at first glance, I translated it as “So So Sweat.” I can just see the succession of choices that led to it. The dude wanted SWEET, but that was taken, so he tried SWEEET and maybe even SWEEEET. All taken. So then he tried SOSWEET. Nope. So, he finally had to go with SOSOSWT. By the way, the car wasn’t that impressive. But, hey, who am I to judge?

PHD DAD – on a Miata convertible with a roll bar. This one isn’t really a second choice, just pathetic. Hey, buddy, could you possibly scream “mid-life crisis!” any louder?

Deep Throat, Morality, and Loyalty

2005-06-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

Deep Throat has been revealed as former FBI official, W. Mark Felt. He was promptly called a traitor by the right. A traitor to whom? Certainly not the American people. A traitor to a gang of criminals who had hijacked this country? Sure. But to you and me? No. He was an American who helped expose corruption and abuse of power at the highest level of our government.

These conservatives have been working overtime trying to demonize Felt. They have used two approaches. First, they are characterizing his actions as immoral. That he had acted treacherously and dishonorably. That he had betrayed those two whom he owed his loyalty, that his actions were shameful. Second, they are also attacking his motivation; that he was just sore about being passed up for a high-level position. The implication, of course, is that he did not act out of any sense of higher loyalty to the public. Both of these, of course, ignore the facts of Nixon’s dirty doings. A lot of bad people quite rightly went to prison for the crimes that they committed.

The morality of Pat Buchanan and the other right wing attack dogs is a Mafia morality. It is also that of an abusive, addicted family. In the Mafia morality, the worst thing you can do is expose the organization. In the abusive family morality, the worst thing that you can do is declare that there is a problem, to say “Dad drinks too much and hits my mom!” or “Dad makes me suck his dick!” The child is called a liar by her own mother, or called a little slut and is ostracized for daring to bring the problem out into the open. The blame gets placed at the feet of the one who would dare expose the crime, not the criminal.

This is the same twisted morality that compelled the Catholic Church to cover up child molesting priests for decades. The exposure of the crimes would cause the Church embarrassment and standing, not to mention possible criminal and financial penalties. So, they quietly paid out hush money to the parents of the victims, they transferred priests around from parish to parish, knowingly supplying them with more victims. And those who refused to acknowledge wrongdoing by the church were rewarded. Cardinal Bernard Law has a job at the Vatican now. The current pope was the author of a directive in covering up church records about known pedophile priests.

They are so warped by their criminal allegiance that they actually discouraged people from suing the Church because it would force them to cut back on programs for the poor. So, they blamed the victims for pursuing justice, and completely missed the point, which is that they facilitated and covered up for the raping of children.

In this code of ethics, loyalty to the organization is considered more important than stopping the crimes being committed. This kind of loyalty only permits the criminals to continue committing crimes. Not exactly what we, as the citizens of this country want in our FBI officials, is it? Luckily, with Felt, we had a good guy.

One’s true loyalty must be to the greater good of the general public, not to a criminal organization, be it the Republican party, the Catholic Church. Or, in the case of abuse, one must not be loyal to the abuser and allow the abuse to continue.

Whatever his motivations, Felt did a great service to this country by getting information to Woodward and Bernstein. He betrayed a gang of criminals, which is simply loyalty to the American people. Criminality and corruption thrive in darkness. They can only be gotten rid of by exposure to sunlight.

In the 1970’s the press was willing to perform this task. In fact, this is the reason for a free press in this country: to ferret out and expose corruption in government and powerful business interests. To protect the public from those who would abuse their power. The free press is supposed to serve as the eyes and ears (and nose) of the public.

Felt knew that if he had proceeded with just a special investigation that the whole matter would disappear. That’s why he went to the press. Only the press could get the attention of the American people properly focused on the criminals running their government. Don’t let anybody tell you that he didn’t do the right thing.

Hey! I have a life, OK?!?

2005-05-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

Damn! I've got tons of half-written stuff on 3 different computers. I'll get it together and start posting again soon. hooboy.
By the way, anybody know how to change an alternator in an '84 Honda Civic DX with an automatic transmission and no A/C?

I'm still alive

2005-05-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

More posts coming soon. Putting in a new bamboo floor, had jury duty, had car trouble (alternator), working today (Saturday) to catch up on work missed because of jury duty.
Sheesh!
Oh yeah, and I've got to get my sunflowers planted.

It seems that every time I get some reader interest, things get busy and I end up not posting for a week or so... Oh well. Please keep checking in.

Food Pyramid Answer

2005-04-29T23:05:00.000-07:00

Thanks for playing, everybody!
The Original Food Pyramid came out in 1992.
Michael got it right! A round of applause for Michael, everyone.

As for myself, I thought I remembered the pyramid from back when I was kid in the late 70s. (I'm 33 now.)
But, no, I grew up with the four food groups. I completely had a false memory. Only when reminded of the 4 food groups did I remember them. From asking people I know and the comments here, it's a pretty common memory thing. Something to keep in mind...
Anyway, I googled the four foods groups to see when that came out and found this article on the history of Nutritional Guidelines in the USA. (Woo hoo! Friday!!) It turns out that it's a pretty complicated history:

1894 - USDA first dietary standards - 5 food groups
1933 - family food plans - 12 food groups
1941 - first RDA
1942 - 7 - food groups
1946 - Recommended daily servings established
1956 - Basic 4
1977 - Dietary Goals established
1979 - 5th group added (foods to avoid or moderate)
1980 - Dietary Guidelines published
(Guidelines revised every 5 years until:)
1992 - Food Guide Pyramid
1996 - Revised Pyramid
2005 - New Pyramid

Well, goodnight all.

Food Pyramid Question

2005-04-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

The original food pyramid has just been replaced. My question to you:
Without looking up, or Googling anything, just pull out what's in your brain,
When did the original food pyramid come out?

The Media and the Nuclear Option

2005-04-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, lots of us realize that the MSM (mainstream media) has been less than vigilant when it comes to fact-checking in recent years. Often, the excuse is that there's so much pressure to be first with a story that they get things wrong. The most recent examples of this were the premature announcement that the Pope was dead, and the premature announcement of white smoke indicating that a new Pope had been chosen.

However, this "too much pressure to be first" does not apply when an inaccuracy is repeated over and over again. Clearly, despite what the right-wingers rant about the "liberal media" there is active cooperation with the Administration to adopt its spin on events.

The most recent example of this is the use of the term "nuclear option". This term was coined by Republican Trent Lott. That didn't poll well, so now the Republicans are using the term "constitutional option". This change of vocabulary in itself is not that bad, remember "private accounts" to "personal accounts"?

The really bad part of this is that now the term "nuclear option" has been attributed to the Democrats by the Republicans, and the MSM has picked up on this and repeated it, despite the fact that the MSM originally had rightly attributed it to the Republicans.

Media Matters has documented the whole thing.

Liberal media? MY ASS!

True Story (you can tell ‘cause it’s kind of boring)

2005-04-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I’m in the local home improvement superstore the other week, buying some linoleum flooring for my finished basement. As the clerk is measuring out my linoleum, a guy asks her, “is this stuff like liquid nail?” pointing to a bucket of carpet adhesive.

The clerk, looking perplexed, asks him, “what?”

The guy says. “Is this stuff the same as liquid nail?”

The clerk says “Well… it’s an adhesive.” At this point, I was wondering, what the fellow was driving at.

Then, the guy says “I’m doing a job on a commercial building, and I want to put a texture on the siding. Will this stuff work?”

“You mean, on the outside?”

“Yeah.”

At this point, the situation became clear: This fellow has evidently used liquid nail as some kind of ultra hard stucco-like texturing, and is realizing that it’s gonna get expensive using all that liquid nail to finish his job. He saw the buckets of carpet adhesive that were much cheaper and thought, “Hey, there’s something I can use.”

The clerk said, “uhh…well…That’s not what it’s for. It’s for sticking carpet to floors. I don’t know if it will hold up outside.”

The clerk and I exchanged a glance, saying to each other “this fucker is definitely not all there, and he’s probably not dangerous, but let’s not laugh out loud until he’s safely out of this aisle.”

Anyway, the guy loads up a couple of buckets of the carpet adhesive onto his cart, apparently to go apply as texturing to an exterior wall.

After he left, the clerk apologized to me for the delay. I said “it’s okay. It was amusing.” We laughed and talked a bit about it, saying that he’d be coming back in a couple of months saying how the crumbling wall was the store’s fault. Perhaps there’d be smokers stuck against the wall after leaning against it on a rainy day. Maybe chunks will fall off every time the door closes.

I can imagine what the owner of the building must be like, taking the lowest bid from this clown, thinking he’s saving money, when all he’s gonna be getting is a big-ass headache.

So, dear readers, what is the moral of this story?

Corazon

2005-04-18T14:28:00.000-07:00

The spanish word for "heart". I play a game with myself as I walk through the warehouse, as the radio station that is usually on is one of the spanish language stations. The word "corazon" is in EVERY SINGLE song played on pop spanish language radio. Every one. The game I play is to guess how long it will be before the song I'm listening to gets around to the word corazon. And, so far, corazon has been in every song. (I realize it's got an accent over the second "o", but I can't figure out how to do it.)

Sometimes I wonder if there's some latino guy in a warehouse somewhere waiting for the word "baby" or "yeah" to come out of the radio. Or maybe he's just seeing if anyone in english language pop has ever rhymed "walk" with something other than "talk".

Posts worth reading

2005-04-12T09:39:00.001-07:00

Another massively busy week has struck, and so, here's a little interesting reading from other blogs.

The first is from The Talent Show about health care: Sometimes The Grass Really is Greener

The next is from Unscrewing the Inscrutable about the science/antiscience/politics debate. Science and Politics: Smacking Down Bushco? My favorite bit:

There are two reasons why I think science could act as a wedge issue helping those of us who oppose BushCo, and evolution Vs creationism could be the sharp edge of that sword: It's useful, and we don't lose anything.

Young Earthers form the bulk of support for Intelligent Design Creationism, despite the fact that most of the Discovery Institute's top shills will profess being old earthers if you corner them and berate them long enough. Young Earthers deny pretty much every field of natural science. That means geology (Energy), astronomy (Space), biology (Pharmaceutical, biotech, and health care workers), and physics (Defense technology). Yes, BushCo will use them without shame, but the industry captains and senior managers understand quite well that science is their breath of life. Make it a big enough stink so that the Neo-Christain right flips out and starts raving against science, and you force the BushCos to either loudly denounce creationism, or loudly support it. And believe me, they absolutely do not want to do either, because they understand the danger.

Also, Adam Felber at Fanatical Apathy has a couple of good posts about the Schiavo memo and the Schiavo case.

Incompetence Foils Both Sides
and
Apologies in Advance

WTF?

2005-04-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

From AP:
Shuttle arrives at launch pad after delays

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space shuttle Discovery completed a 10½-hour trip to the launch pad early Thursday after a brief delay caused by the discovery of a crack in the external fuel tank’s foam insulation. NASA later said the crack was no reason for concern.

Well, what can you say? What kind of remark could possibly convey the institutional idiocy apparent here? Couldn't they at least slap a little duct tape or something on it?
Well, good luck.

NAV4GOD

2005-04-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

That was the vanity plate on a white Licoln Navigator on the freeway yesterday. What kind of interpretation of the teachings of Christ would make somebody think that it's OK to buy a big-ass, gas guzzling SUV for one's own self, and then get plates that say that it's for God? In what way is it for God? Maybe getting a van and driving orphans around would be for God. But to declare one's piety on VANITY plates for a vehicle that is for yourself is, well, taking the Lord's name in vain, in the most literal sense possible.

Cheapest Gas In your Area?

2005-04-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

$2.36 Arco by the train station
$2.38 Valero by my house

How ‘bout you?

Comparison of Liberal vs Osama vs NeoCon attitudes

2005-04-01T13:52:00.000-08:00

Thoughtcrimes has a chart comparing Liberal, Osama's, and Neoconservative stances on a variety of issues. Guess who agrees more?

Those Evil, Terrorist Loving "Libruls"

Things people had time to do before TV

2005-03-31T11:47:00.000-08:00

This is amazing. This guy built working acoustic musical instruments out of matchsticks.

The Matchstick Man

...He used the burnt wooden matchsticks to build musical instruments. Yes, you did read that correctly. He used those dinky little burnt things to build guitars, banjos, and the like.

This ingenious man's name was Jack Hall. Back in the 1930’s, Jack was a sailor aboard the tramp steamer Eastwick and found himself with just a little bit too much time on his hands. Bored out of his mind, Jack just started messing around with the discarded wooden matchsticks that his fellow sailors had left behind, eventually gluing them together into ever increasingly complex and fascinating patterns.

It was the offhand comment made by a fellow sailor that he should “make a fiddle and strike up a tune”, however, that sent Jack off into the world of matchstick music. Jack's curiosity had gotten the better of him and he was determined to make that fiddle a reality. But Jack lacked some key skills to pull this trick off. First, he was not a musician. He couldn't read or play a single note. Even worse, Jack did not have any of the construction skills needed to produce an instrument.

...For the next six months, Jack devoted five hours per day to creating the fiddle. He used little more than a sharp knife, a razor blade, some sandpaper, a file, and glue. Each matchstick was soaked in water so that it could be molded into the proper shape. Bricks and other things were used to hold the matchsticks in place while the glue set.

Some 14,000 matchsticks later, Jack produced a working violin, bow and all.

The link has the full article and a picture gallery.

Don't buy 2 for 1 strawberries

2005-03-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

They're probably already old and there's no way you're gonna finish them in time.

My Thoughts on Schiavo

2005-03-28T21:17:00.000-08:00

I’ve been away from the blog for several days now, and I appreciate the comments. I really haven’t articulated my thoughts on the whole Schiavo story/spectacle/event, so I’m writing this entry to respond to some of the comments and get my own thoughts out.

First, Terri Schiavo should have been treated for bulimia. In fact, that’s what Michael Schiavo won the malpractice suit over: her doctor should have diagnosed her condition before it progressed to the point where she was in danger. Now, it can be debated whether the doctor was responsible or not, or Terri’s husband or parents or friends, or coworkers, or whoever; somebody should have helped her. Didn’t happen.

Second, tragic though it is, Terri’s mind died that day. Let’s make no mistake, her mind is gone. Not just damaged, not just disabled. Gone. Her cerebral cortex is no more. The part of her brain that in each of us makes us who we are was destroyed by a lack of oxygen. It is only because the more primitive parts of the brain are less susceptible to anoxic damage that she was able to be revived at all.

There is a spectrum of brain damage that can result from instances where the brain is deprived of oxygen. Some people come back with no brain damage, some with less damage than Terri, some with more, and a lot of people die. If she was more brain damaged, so that she could not breathe on her own and was comatose, we wouldn’t be having this national discussion. If she was slightly less brain damaged, and could demonstrate some kind of awareness and motivation or intent, then we could somehow find out what she wants, or at least have the hope of some degree of recovery.

Now, people can have opinions on this, but everybody in the medical community who has closely examined this case has come to the same conclusion: she ain’t home and she ain’t gonna get any better. I, not being a medical professional, will defer to those many people who have examined her over the years, and accept the diagnosis of a Persistent Vegetative State. We’re not talking about a person in a motorized wheelchair, here. We’re not talking about Timmy from South Park. We’re talking, sadly, about just a body with sleep and wake cycles. That’s it. Time has certainly shown that she hasn’t made any progress. Certain people have appeared on TV, asserting that she has been misdiagnosed. They, of course, have not actually performed any tests and, in most cases, did not even see her in person. Furthermore, their motives and qualifications are rather questionable, in my opinion.

Before the advent of the feeding tube, cases like Terri were allowed to waste away. Doctors would say, “there’s no hope of recovery” and people would accept the natural course/symptoms of dying. Some people draw a distinction between respirator life support and feeding tubes. But how different is it? If withdrawing the feeding tube is tantamount to starving her, then turning off a respirator is the same as suffocating someone. Ceasing feeding to someone who can’t feel hunger or thirst, is not causing them any suffering.

But that isn’t the point. I don’t propose to draw the line for anyone. We have to go with what Terri would have wanted. And how do we determine that? Well, that brings us to the courts.

Third, there have been no less than 34 legal proceedings. Terri’s condition and wishes have been addressed and revisited many times. Every argument coming out in the press in the last couple of weeks has been raised again and again in court over the last decade and a half. To assert that things haven’t been looked at closely and thoughtfully is to reject our entire legal process. The reason we have a judicial system is so that a disinterested party can make tough decisions. The decisions have been made, over and over, every time with the same outcome: Terri Schiavo would not want to live in the state she is in. It’s not like it went one way, and then was appealed and was overturned and then turned back. It’s been the same outcome every time. At some point, you have to say, enough’s enough.

Finally, these are difficult and personal decisions that families have to deal with every day. The fact that it’s got to the point where politicians have become involved is entirely distasteful, and a waste of taxpayers’ money and focus. There are many more people dying every day from other causes. On the part of the politicians, it is a move calculated to erode the constitutional separation of powers, and to get the government involved in the most personal of decisions of its citizens. During this time of war, health care crisis, environmental degradation, and possible impending economic collapse, one family’s private struggle is not where we should focus our energies, as a government, or as a people.

Schiavo's brain

2005-03-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a blog with a picture of Schiavo's brain.

Alas, a blog

Schiavo's dad unplugged his mom

2005-03-23T10:58:00.000-08:00

More stuff they don't tell us here in the States. Terri's dad had his mom unplugged after a week.
From the Guardian Unlimited (UK):

But, given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong Terri's life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time, and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out. "I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I asked, 'If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of surviving, of coming out of this thing?'" Robert says. "I was very angry with God because I didn't want to make those decisions."

(The Robert refered to is Robert Schindler, Terri's father.)

Still Cribbing

2005-03-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

Putting up links is better than no posts at all....
Here's an excellent read about the state of the media in the USA.
Dumb media
If the link doesn't take you to the right post, it's the one called "Dumb Media" with the time stamp of 17:21 GMT, dated Sunday March 20th.

Schiavo Timeline

2005-03-22T09:14:00.000-08:00

Here is an informative link that shows the timeline of the case:

Key Events in the Case of Theresa Marie Schiavo

Schiavo

2005-03-21T08:40:00.000-08:00

Very busy lately. Have stuff that I'm working on. But, in the meantime, here's something from Digby: (emphasis added)

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.

Wednesday Reading

2005-03-16T09:24:00.000-08:00

I'll be putting up links as I come across interesting things.

Unscrewing the Instrutable has a great essay on how our national debt has compromised our position in the world, especially with respect to China. Great reading. Here's the link:
NEVER FORGET, STAY OUT OF DEBT

Freedom part I: Freedom and 9/11

2005-03-15T21:37:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of talk these days about freedom, and there is an underlying assumption that freedom is the natural, number one desire of humans. We all like to think so. But is freedom really the number one concern of people?

The events and aftermath of 9/11 showed that in this country, the Land of the Free & the Home of the Brave, people are willing to give up freedom in exchange for security. As soon as people felt threatened and scared for their safety, concern for civil liberties and rights went right out the window. Of course, some people were concerned right off the bat about the erosion of rights, but they were widely dismissed as, at best, misguided and naïve, and at worst, aiding the terrorists.

We were reminded of Ben Franklin’s saying “those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor safety” but nobody really paid attention. “Irrelevent” they cried, “the world changed on 9/11!”

The USA PATRIOT act was passed without having been read, people were swept up and detained without charges, and there was little outcry. Domestic spying was considered a necessary step in the fight against terrorists. The Administration told us that they needed to keep secrets from us for our safety. Over the next few years, more erosion of civil liberties and rights occurred. Barbed wire cages, miles from the political conventions and WTO meetings were set up and called “free speech zones” in the name of security. And the American people said “do anything you have to, to protect us!”

We invaded Afghanistan and killed many innocent civilians in the process. This was seen as regrettable, but we didn’t mean to kill them, unlike the people who killed our civilians. I am sure that made all the difference to the man burying his family in Kandahar. We captured many, but not Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar. Rights and treaties were deemed inapplicable or “quaint” and it was anything goes, as long as it was said to be in the interests of protecting Americans.

Now, at this point, many said “those are the fuckers who attacked us, you can’t torture them enough!” I can understand that sentiment. However, how do we know that they’re guilty? Many of the people caught up in the sweeps in Afghanistan were in the wrong place at the wrong time (like their homes). There were bounties offered on any Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighters. And, guess what happened? People started turning people in for a few dollars, whether or not they actually had anything to do with those organizations. We were told that the worst of the worst were the only ones being detained, but that turned out not to be the case. Due process was devised exactly because this is the sort of thing that happens.

Then, the White House started telling us what a grave and imminent threat Iraq was, and the refrain from the American people was “do anything you need to, to keep us safe!” Then, we invaded Iraq. More prisoners were taken. Abu Ghraib was reopened under new management, and it was filled to the brim with all kinds: some criminals, some terrorists, and a whole lot of innocent people. Torture was used widely (don’t believe the “few bad apples” crap, it’s bullshit), children were stripped and degraded in front of their parents, and there were many other abuses, the full depravity of which we have not been told.

“For shame!” some people cried. But all moral arguments fell on deaf ears. The only argument that got any traction was, “if we torture our prisoners, then they’ll torture theirs.” To this, the reply was, “they’d do it anyway.” Then, it was explained that what we were doing wasn’t really torture, and if some people went overboard, it wasn’t our policy and the guilty parties would be punished. Everyone felt better then. Everyone back home in the USA, that is.

Now, lest anybody think that I’m a pacifist, I think we should’ve taken out the Taliban when they were getting ready to blow up the big stone Buddhas. (Fuckers!) We also should have taken out bin Laden when Clinton wanted to, but the cry from the Republicans at the time was “it’s ‘Wag the Dog’! No war for Monica!” They didn’t want to do anything that Clinton did, and that included fighting Al-Qaeda when they got the hand-off in January 2001.

So, we are happy to give up freedom if it means safety. The difficulty is… freedom is really hard to get back.

Homework Assignment – Senate Bankruptcy Bill

2005-03-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I’m a little late. The vote was in the latter half of last week, and I didn’t get this post up. But in case you haven’t heard:

The US Senate just handed your asses to the credit card companies. It is expected to pass in the House and Bush said he will sign it. This bill not only makes it harder regular folks to declare bankruptcy, it protects the assets of millionaires who run into financial trouble. It’s totally unfair. In fact, it’s so fucked up that even Feinstein and Lieberman voted against it! Poke around at the Senate site that shows the rejected amendments and you can really see how this is really aimed at us regular folks. (One of the rejected amendments proposed capping credit card interest rates at 30% and was defeated, you know because those poor credit card companies are barely scraping by.)Here’s how the Senators voted:

BAD DEMOCRATS
On the Democratic side, there were 18 Democratic Senators who voted “Yea” on the bill:

Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Byrd (D-WV)
Carper (D-DE)
Conrad (D-ND)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reid (D-NV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Stabenow (D-MI)

Remember these guys when they come up for reelection. If one of these guys is in your home state, your homework assignment is to send them a “thanks for nothing” note.

DEMOCRATS WITH SOME GOOD IN THEM
The “Nays” – note: no Republicans voted Nay
Akaka (D-HI)
Boxer (D-CA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Wyden (D-OR)

If your Senator is on this list, send them a thank you note, especially if your Senator is generally in need of guidance.

HILLARY CLINTON DIDN’T VOTE
Hillary couldn’t bring herself to vote, even though she was in Washington, and not with Bill undergoing surgery.

As a side note, here are the states with the highest bankruptcy rates. Just for fun, I put their Senators’ votes up there, too.

Utah: Bennett R - Y, Hatch R – Y
Tennessee: Alexander R – Y, Frist R – Y
Georgia: Chambliss R – Y, Isakson R – Y
Nevada: Ensign R – Y, Reid R – Y
Indiana: Bayh D – Y, Lugar R – Y
Alabama: Sessions R – Y, Shelby R-Y
Arkansas: Lincoln D – Y, Pryor D - Y
Ohio: DeWine R- Y, Voinovich R - Y
Mississippi: Cochran R- Y, Lott R-Y
Idaho: Craig R- Y, Crapo R –Y

Interesting pattern. Did any of these guys run on bankruptcy reform as part of their campaigns? I’m betting they didn’t.

Still too damn busy

2005-03-14T12:26:00.000-08:00

If you ever feel like having the shit scared out of you in regards to the creeping fascism that's taking over this country, check out Orcinus. Orcinus specializes on keeping tabs on neo-Nazis and their ilk. Scary, scary shit.

What a weekend

2005-03-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

Spent all weekend working on the house. Muscles very sore. Monday work very busy. I'll post something tonight.

Haloscan's up

2005-03-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Unfortunately, all previous Blogger comments have been erased. My girlfriend will repost what she can to get some of them back up. I've had a big increase in traffic in the last 24 hours and I'll bet a lot of people wanted to leave comments and couldn't.

Thanks for reading.

Rural America’s dirty little secret

2005-03-09T21:36:00.000-08:00

There’s something going on in rural America that they don’t like to talk about. Crank. Speed. Meth. Yup, lots of folks out there in the heartland are speed freaks. They’re wired, hopped up, spun, tweakin’.

The signs are there, if you care to look. The guy who spends every free moment under his pickup truck, but never actually gets it put back together and running. The collection of old appliances and vehicles in the yard, as if in some fit of mania there was some grand plan for it all, now long-forgotten. Light creeping out from under the garage door at 3:00 am. Unfinished additions to the house. Tarps everywhere.

You know, most speed labs are found in rural areas. Some years ago, I read an article about finding speed labs in rural California. They’d fly over and look for sheds with corrugated metal roofs. The ones with speed labs had premature corrosion on the part of the roof that was over the chemicals. It was like a big rusty bull’s eye.

There are aspects to crank that are attractive to heartland values:

Crank is the extra-value meal/all you can eat buffet of drugs: cheap, long-lasting. What do you get with crack, a 20 minute high? Crack is for suckers. Speed is a bargain. And folks in the heartland love bargains. Furthermore, it’s versatile: You can snort it, swallow it, smoke it, or shoot it.

Speed is a common man's drug. It ain’t that hoity-toity Hollywood powdered cocaine. It ain’t all hippy dippy like acid. It ain’t for lazy city degenerates, like heroin.

It’s the perfect drug for hard-workin’ people. You hear tales of people in the heartland working 2 or 3 jobs. Nobody can do that for any length of time without chemical aid, and the coffee in the flyover states is abysmally weak. Pot makes you lazy and easy-going, but speed keeps you on the job, and ready to kick ass and take names at a moment’s notice. Speed lets you work on that car or that home improvement project non-stop.

In fact, the enterprising self-reliant types can make their own. In Idaho, when they put the Sudafed behind the counter, speed lab busts fell 90 percent. Does that mean they stopped doing speed in Idaho? Hell, no! They just import it now.

Rural America on crank also explains a lot about aspects of American rural culture and psychology:

The fascination with engines and motor sports. Look, in the city, if a guy has an engine block on his coffee table and parts all over the living room, you know he’s a tweaker. But out in the country, it’s not considered suspicious? Gimme a break! And who the hell else but a tweaker could watch cars going around and around in an oval for 6 hours and stay excited the whole time? And monster trucks are definitely the product of a meth-addled brain.

Look at two of the mainstays of rural America: truckers and country music. Many truckers, especially long haul truckers, are long-known to be on amphetamines. To their credit, country singers like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings have talked frankly about speed use in the music industry. It was Standard Operating Procedure for country acts on tour.

Pro wrestling. Who but a crankster could get that worked up over a scripted, choreographed spectacle, and seriously believe that it was a real sport?

Now we get to the real ugly stuff:

The angry paranoid delusions: The constant feeling that their way of life is being threatened by people thousands of miles away. One example is the over response to potential terrorism. While the citizens of New York City were dealing with the aftermath of an actual terrorist attack, people in the middle of Kansas were duct taping their windows shut, as if they were more of a target than the heavily populated coastal cities. Another example is the idea that what a couple of guys are doing in their bedroom in San Francisco is what’s hurting their marriages in Wyoming. And don’t get them started on the French!

Then there’s the real psychotic delusions, like their willingness to believe that the earth is only 6000 years old and all of science and the rest of the world is engaged in a big conspiracy against them. Even the rocks are lying, man! They’ve got no problem with a leader who hears voices in his head that tell him what to do.

The weird self-contradictory world view is a tweaker’s mindset. How else could one seriously think that Islamofascists and liberal feminist pro-gay rights activists are working together?

They can be simultaneously easily distracted and obsessive. They can’t see who’s really turning the screws on them, convinced that it’s college professors and tattooed baristas and not the corporate elite. I mean, you’ve got to be brain damaged to think that Rush and O’Reilly are coherent. I mean, come on!

Accusing others of the very things that you are doing is a classic addict behavior, such as calling city dwellers in the blue states freeloaders while being subsidized by the government far more than any urban dweller.

And you probably thought I was gonna say something about their fucked up teeth, huh?

Raw Story interview with Rep. Conyers

2005-03-09T17:12:00.000-08:00

Raw story has an interview with Rep. Conyers, who first was elected to the House in 1964. It's well worth reading.

Time To Go, Joe

2005-03-09T12:35:00.000-08:00

Here's a site dedicated to getting Joe Lieberman, a Democrat In Name Only, out of his Senate seat.

www.timetogojoe.com

Spelling Cop

2005-03-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've come across this too many damn times recently to let it slide again.

"lose" as in something becoming lost is spelled L-O-S-E
"loose" as in something not bound is spelled L-O-O-S-E

Let's try to keep it straight, folks.

Time Machine for sale on eBay

2005-03-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

I came across this via Hoffmania.

eBay item 5563490518

Canada's Former Foreign Minister's Letter to Condi

2005-03-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

Now, of course there are plenty of people here who don't care what anybody in any other country has to say. I'll probably get some dismissive comments about Canada, as happened in my last post about our neighbor to the north. That's OK. I like comments. It lets me know people are reading.

Anyhoo... The Winnepeg Free Press published an open letter to Condaleeza Rice from Lloyd Axworthy, the former foreign minister. The link is here (subscription only)

Missile Counter-Attack
Axworthy fires back at U.S. -- and Canadian -- critics of our BMD decision in An Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005

By LLOYD AXWORTHY

Dear Condi, I'm glad you've decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbour. It's a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.

I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.

But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.

As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.

Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.

Just chalk that up to a different sense of priorities about what a national government's role should be when there isn't a prevailing mood of manifest destiny.

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such a missile defence can be made openly.

You might also notice that it's a system in which the governing party's caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don't want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada's continental co-inhabitant. And that this leader actually listens to such representations.

Your boss did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defence in front of a highly controlled, pre-selected audience.

Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire.

If you want to have us consider your proposals and positions, present them in a proper way, through serious discussion across the table in our cabinet room, as your previous president did when he visited Ottawa. And don't embarrass our prime minister by lobbing a verbal missile at him while he sits on a public stage, with no chance to respond.

Now, I understand that there may have been some miscalculations in Washington based on faulty advice from your resident governor of the "northern territories," Ambassador Cellucci. But you should know by now that he hasn't really won the hearts and minds of most Canadians through his attempts to browbeat and command our allegiance to U.S. policies.

Sadly, Mr. Cellucci has been far too closeted with exclusive groups of 'experts' from Calgary think-tanks and neo-con lobbyists at cross-border conferences to remotely grasp a cross-section of Canadian attitudes (nor American ones, for that matter).

I invite you to expand the narrow perspective that seems to inform your opinions of Canada by ranging far wider in your reach of contacts and discussions. You would find that what is rising in Canada is not so much anti-Americanism, as claimed by your and our right-wing commentators, but fundamental disagreements with certain policies of your government. You would see that rather than just reacting to events by drawing on old conventional wisdoms, many Canadians are trying to think our way through to some ideas that can be helpful in building a more secure world.

These Canadians believe that security can be achieved through well-modulated efforts to protect the rights of people, not just nation-states.

To encourage and advance international co-operation on managing the risk of climate change, they believe that we need agreements like Kyoto.

To protect people against international crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing, they support new institutions like the International Criminal Court -- which, by the way, you might strongly consider using to hold accountable those committing atrocities today in Darfur, Sudan.

And these Canadians believe that the United Nations should indeed be reformed -- beginning with an agreement to get rid of the veto held by the major powers over humanitarian interventions to stop violence and predatory practices.

On this score, you might want to explore the concept of the 'Responsibility to Protect' while you're in Ottawa. It's a Canadian idea born out of the recent experience of Kosovo and informed by the many horrific examples of inhumanity over the last half-century. Many Canadians feel it has a lot more relevance to providing real human security in the world than missile defence ever will.

This is not just some quirky notion concocted in our long winter nights, by the way. It seems to have appeal for many in your own country, if not the editorialists at the Wall Street Journal or Rush Limbaugh. As I discovered recently while giving a series of lectures in southern California, there is keen interest in how the U.S. can offer real leadership in managing global challenges of disease, natural calamities and conflict, other than by military means.

There is also a very strong awareness on both sides of the border of how vital Canada is to the U.S. as a partner in North America. We supply copious amounts of oil and natural gas to your country, our respective trade is the world's largest in volume, and we are increasingly bound together by common concerns over depletion of resources, especially very scarce fresh water.

Why not discuss these issues with Canadians who understand them, and seek out ways to better cooperate in areas where we agree -- and agree to respect each other's views when we disagree.

Above all, ignore the Cassandras who deride the state of our relations because of one missile-defence decision. Accept that, as a friend on your border, we will offer a different, independent point of view. And that there are times when truth must speak to power.

In friendship, Lloyd Axworthy

Lazy Posting - throwing up links

2005-03-07T11:44:00.000-08:00

I've come across a couple of things today that are worth reading:

One is from Digby:
Just Say No. The comments are worth reading, as well.

Another is from Science Blog:
Tobacco industry pays scientists to challenge secondhand smoke's link to SIDS

Bankruptcy Bill Bad News

2005-03-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

There is a bankruptcy bill in the Senate right now that will make it harder for average people to declare bankruptcy. They make no exceptions for victims of identity theft, military personnel, or medical-related debts. It keeps loopholes open for the wealthy, and does nothing about predatory lending practices.

Write your senators and urge them to vote "NO" on this bill. It is a giveaway to credit card companies, who already are have too much power. Remember "universal default?"

UPDATE: The Rude Pundit has a post about this bill in his own inimitable style.

The 30 Commandments

2005-03-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

There's a lotta talk out there about how the 10 Commandments are the basis of our legal system. They're not. Anything I could write about the primitive, cultish nature of Biblical laws has been done already by Frank R. Zindler.

It becomes apparent when looking at Biblical laws and what is considered moral, that our evolving ethics have informed our religion, not the other way around.

Crazy Week

2005-03-07T08:10:00.000-08:00

Whew! What a week! I haven't posted for a while because of a bunch of stuff. It's been too busy at work to post from there, my laptop got a virus and I ended up having to format the hard drive, and my home computer isn't set up while we move the study into a different room. More posts coming soon.

Republicans Hate the Troops

2005-03-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

The Republicans' contempt for our soldiers is painfully obvious to anyone who looks beyond their lip service and examines their policies. Canadian Cynic has summed up the latest abuse at the hands of the Republicans nicely.

Republicans to troops: Fuck off and drop dead.

Please, before commenting, follow the link and read it.

Censorship Alert! - GOP wants to censor pay TV and radio

2005-03-02T10:06:00.000-08:00

OK, this is getting regodamndiculous! According to this Reuters story, two GOP lawmakers want to apply the same decency standards that apply to broadcast TV and radio to cable and satellite. Apparently, HBO's Real Sex series, Showtime's The L Word and Queer as Folk, and Cinemax's unconvincing mime sex are just too much for these guys.

Now, for those of you who might not know this, the FCC regulates broadcast media. That is, media that are free and use the public's airwaves (yes they are our's, even though you need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars for a broadcast license). The FCC does NOT have the power to regulate subscription pay services, such as cable and satellite TV and radio. Besides, with the V-chip and parental lockout controls, the kids are protected already. They want to keep adults from viewing adult material.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two top U.S. Republican lawmakers on Tuesday said they want to apply broadcast decency standards to cable television and satellite television and radio to protect children from explicit content.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said he would push legislation this year to accomplish that goal and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton said he would back it if it does not violate free speech rights.

"Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area," Stevens, from Alaska, told the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents hundreds of local television and radio affiliates. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air" broadcasters.

"There has to be some standard of decency," he said, but noted that "no one wants censorship."

This is the very definition of censorship! The government telling you what you can't see, hear, or read.

You know, in Canada, a nation of adults, they broadcast movies over the public airwaves unedited, with no bleeps, and they don't freak out about it. They also have adult strength beer.

Has it really been that long since my last post?

2005-03-02T09:17:00.000-08:00

Had to put something up. Been busy. Suffering from information overload. Need a break. I'll have something soon.

Hannidate

2005-02-26T08:07:00.000-08:00

Yes, Sean Hannity, a man whose emotions run the gamut all the way from angry to derisive, has a dating service. I read a couple of years ago that something DID happen at the turn of the millenium: Reality overtook satire, and satire has been trying to catch up ever since. Here is an example.

More Creationism Arguments happening

2005-02-25T11:17:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of relevant discussions on the matter:

One is at The Iron Mouth: Creationism and Rational Argument

The other is at Screwing the Inscrutable: If I Were a Christian

Please note, the opinions expressed in these links to not necessarily reflect my opinions, I just found them interesting.

Another Featured Blog: Thoughts from Kansas

2005-02-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

Thoughts from Kansas is a blog I came across earlier this week, and it has been particularly relevant to issues I've been posting about this week. Check it out. It's also on the Progressive Blog Alliance down the right side of this page, but sorta disappears in that long, long list.

Reproductive Rights Alert! - Kansas

2005-02-24T12:35:00.000-08:00

From a Green Bay, WI ABC affiliate :

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kansas attorney general seeking records of women who had late-term abortions

WICHITA, Kan. The attorney general of Kansas wants to know the detailed history of the sex lives of nearly 90 women who received late-term abortions.

Court documents show that Phill Kline wants to search the documents for evidence of crimes under laws that limit late-term abortions and require mandatory reporting of suspected child sexual abuse.

Under the order signed by a judge, the attorney general would get records that would include each patient's name, medical history, details of her sex life, birth control practices and psychological profile.

The Wichita Eagle says two medical clinics have asked the Kansas Supreme Court to intercede.

Worth Reading

2005-02-24T10:29:00.000-08:00

A Gag Reflex is a great blog about a woman's attempt to find out who her real father is and to sort out her dead, drug-addict, pathological liar, mom's past. It's a helluva read, and it looks like we are about to find out who her biological dad is. If you haven't been following it, the posts are arranged numerically, so you can start at #1 and read all the way through to the current post.

Someone really oughtta publish it in book form.

Biden, Biden, Biden…

2005-02-24T10:28:00.000-08:00

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

On Real Time with Bill Maher last week, Biden said, in reference to the Gannon/Guckert affair:

How could the FBI – for 17 years, I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the ranking member; I read more FBI reports than I ever wanted to know – how could that happen, and no one had any idea who this guy was? Forget everything else. Assume he went in there and he was a saint. How could that be? We should know that. There should be – the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate should be investigating it. The House Judiciary Committee should be investigating it. And if it were the other party in charge, it would be investigated.

Then, Sen. Durbin circulated a letter around the Senate offices calling for an investigation. Guess who wouldn’t sign it? That’s right, Sen. Biden.

His reason? He wasn’t given enough time to read it. Yes, a one page letter. This is a guy who signed off on the PATRIOT Act without reading it.

Anonymous - I am responding to your Response

2005-02-21T11:31:00.000-08:00

Anonymous posted a response to my assertion that there are no scientific arguments against evolution. He posted the following on his page:

Evolution And Fallacies

Below is a short essay I wrote with some of the problems with evolutionary theory as it stands now. This is not meant to start a war of sorts over the issue, I am simply responding to some guy who claimed that there is no one that could make a scientific challenge to evolution. [His post]

Chemistry:

Life requires many polymers, large molecules made from monomers. Polymerization requires bifunctional monomers, and is stopped by a small fraction of unifuntional monomers (they can combine with only one other monomer, thus blocking the continuation of the chain). All prebiotic simulations produce five times as many unifunctional monomers than bifunctional monomers.

But another problem exists at the level of the very structure. Many of life's chemicals come in two forms, left-handed and right-handed. Life requires building blocks that all have the same handedness, (called homochirality). Proteins have only left-handed amino-acids, while DNA and RNA have only right-handed sugars. Living organisms have special mechanisms to produce homochirality, but ordinary undirected chemistry, as in the hypothetical primordial soup, would produce equal mixtures of left and right-handed molecules, called racemates. This little block stops enzymes form forming the right shape, DNA from helixing and RNA from replicating.

Yet the problems aren't over. Polymerization reactions release water, and by the well-known law of mass action, excess water breaks up polymers. The long years conceived by evolutionists just makes the problem worse, allowing more time for the water to act on the polymers.

Phosphate is necessary for DNA, RNA, ATP and many other organic molecules, but abundant calcium ions in the ocean would make phosphate unavailable for chemical evolution, (thus why washing with soap in hard water is so.... hard).

Biology:

Prokaryotic and Eukaryotics differ greatly. The former has loose DNA strands and no organelles, the latter has a nucleus and organelles. But there is no in between. If the latter really did come from the former, why are there no intermediate stages? If this is how the line of evolution really went, and we have samples of both, why nothing in between?

Paleontology:

Paleontology is the field that provides what is probably the most convincing evidence for evolution from an observers point of view, but the least convincing evidence from the scientific point of view. If the physics and chemistry are impossible, does it matter that the fossils show progression? No. But still, Paleontology holds its own problems. For example, a lack of intermediate species. A lack of a way to explain how in certain fossil records which contain hundreds of animals, no plants are found. For millions of years. How did the animals get by? A lack of pretty much anything but a gallery of different shapes.

Astronomy:

The moon has this nasty habit of causing tides here on earth. This nasty habit happens the make the mass of the earth oscillate slightly, and the net result of this: The moon moves away from the earth at 4cm per second, and the length of the day on earth increases by 0.0016 seconds per century.

Now, assuming that the moon has always had this nasty habit of causing tides, and assuming that gravity has always existed, going backwards shows that aproximately 1.3 billion years ago the moon should be touching the surface of the earth.

This simply won't do, as we have found moon rocks to be roughly 4.5 billion years old, and the process by which the moon was created, a Mars sized planet colliding with the earth, would certainly have made the earth pre-cambrian inhabitants perturbed.

But the most interesting thing about this, is perhaps the irony of who discovered it: George Darwin, Charles Darwin's father.

More problems exist though. The next one within the Sun.

We estimate by measuring the Sun's mass and energy output and such, that the Sun has a lifespan of about 10 billion years, or that it has enough materials to produce for 10 billion years. At around 5 billion years old, the Sun should have used nearly half it's potential lifetime.

During these years, the sun would not have remained static; the sun would have gradually changed. The conversion of hydrogen into helium in the solar core would have altered it's composition, which would have resulted in the sun's core slowly shrinking in size and increasing in temperature. This would have increased the fusion rate and hence, brightened the sun. Because of this, the sun must be about 40% brighter today than when it allegedly formed, and the sun ought to be 30% brighter than when life first formed.

The change in energy output would have cause an increase in average global temperature of about 16-18 C. Since the current average temperature is about 15 C, this would have put the temperature of the prebiotic earth below freezing.

Just a few of the problems, but I think I've made my point. Just because you believe something to be true doesn't make everyone who disagrees an idiot.

You got served. (Always wanted to say that. ^_^)

Here is my response:

The funniest thing about your post is that you seem to assume that no scientists have looked into your claims. A little bit of web searching on a slow work morning shows that all of your claims are being addressed by scientists.

Chemistry:
First off, the origin of life is a separate issue from subsequent evolution. While we are nowhere near knowing how life started, there has been a lot of progress made, and progress is encouraging. Many ideas have been put forth since the “primordial soup” days, and many of them are quite compelling.

Secondly, it is unlikely that the first prebiotic self-replicating molecules were the same ones being used by living organisms today. Scientists have proposed different hypotheses as to whether chirality arose before self-replication or was selected for later, or whether proteins came before nucleic acids. One thing’s for sure, the very first self-replicating molecules are long gone, and it will take much research to determine plausible chemistries.

A lot of the current thinking has been along the lines of minerals serving as substrates and catalysts. For example iron-sulfide containing small bubbles in rocks around undersea vents seem to be able to catalyze molecules essential for life. There is plenty of evidence showing that various molecules essential for life can be generated through natural processes. Further research is certain to provide more pieces of the puzzle, and I strongly suspect that the polymerization and chirality problems will be solved with further research, and the answer won’t be “because God is left-handed.”

Regarding calcium and phosphates, you seem to have gotten this from the Institution for Creation Research,
which I’m pretty sure isn’t an accredited institution. Without going into detail, much of the calcium was likely busy forming calcium carbonate.

Rather than showing that the chemistry and physics are impossible, you have simply demonstrated a lack of imagination and intellectual curiosity.

Biology:

Intermediate stages between prokaryotes and eukaryotes are unlikely to have survived to the present day, and would not have been preserved in the fossil record. The fact that mitochondria have their own DNA suggests that they are prokaryotes who took up residence inside a primitive eukaryote and formed a symbiotic relationship. Other organelles, such as chloroplasts in plants appear to have arisen in the same manner.

See: Endosymbiosis and The Origin of Eukaryotes

Paleontology:

The fossil record is very fragmentary. It is very rare for a life form to be preserved as a fossil. A specimen must be covered very quickly and not disturbed until the present day. The fossil record is also biased towards hard items like teeth and large bones, and away from small, delicate, and soft structures. The current thinking regarding speciation is that it happens among small isolated populations, and also that species are stable for a while and then change rapidly until they hit another stable point. This happens in a geological eye blink and in a small area, and is unlikely to be preserved as a fossil. Furthermore, it is a very large planet and we have only been looking for fossils for a short time. Also, we can only dig where rock is exposed. Who knows what is preserved under present day vegetation, topsoil, pavement, glaciers, and submerged ancient coastlines?

The lack of plants preserved with bones in certain fossil beds does not at all mean that there weren’t any plants, for the reasons cited above.

Finally, there are plenty of intermediate fossils, Archaeopteryx is the quintessential one.

Astronomy:

The Moon is moving away from earth at the rate of about 4 centimeters a YEAR not per second. Look it up. Your calculation is way off.

Furthermore, the formation of the moon by the collision of the Earth with a Mars sized body is proposed to have taken place about 4.5 billion years ago, well before the formation of life.

In regards to the dim young sun, you are assuming that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses were the same as the present day. Scientists believe that the CO2 levels were at least 100 times what they are presently, providing a much stronger greenhouse effect. In fact, there is evidence of worldwide glaciations between 1 billion and 600 million years ago, due to fluctuations in the atmospheric concentrations of CO2, so yes, the earth did get rather cold from time to time. As the sun has gotten brighter, our CO2 levels have fallen into almost trace amounts, still providing a little insulation, but not nearly as much as in the distant past.

Do some reading.

Guardian Article on Gannongate and US Media in General

2005-02-20T00:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a good article by the Guardian, a British publication on the Gannon/Guckert affair and the state of media in the US in general. Of course, many people in the US don't give shit about the way anyone else in the world sees anything, so they won't read the article. I found it to be quite interesting. An excerpt:

The Gannon case is a prime illustration. If, during the Clinton administration, a fake reporter from a Democrat front organisation, using a false name, had been exposed as attending White House press conferences it would have been a national scandal. If he had then been shown to be a gay prostitute, the scandal could have threatened a Democrat presidency. With 'Gannon' and Bush there has been no such outcry. The mainstream media has approached the story warily, while right-wing organisations such as Fox News have largely ignored it.

Here's the rest of the article.

Sticker Shock

2005-02-19T23:44:00.000-08:00

A couple of days after the post about Intelligent Design, I came across this column in the February issue of Scientific American.

Sticker Shock
In the beginning was the cautionary advisory
By Steve Mirsky

Brushfires are raging all across America over the teaching of evolution, as various antievolution interests attempt to give religiously based views equal footing in science classes. These fires are fueled by so-called creation scientists, who allege that they have scientific evidence against evolution. (They don’t.) Their co-conspirators, the “intelligent design” crowd, go with the full-blown intellectual surrender strategy – they say that life on earth is so complex that the only way to explain it is through the intercession of an intelligent superbeing. (They don’t mention you-know-who by name as the designer, but you know who you-know-who is, and it isn’t Brahma.)

One little blaze can be found in Cobb County, Ga. As this issue of Scientific American went to press, a federal judge in Atlanta was in the process of deciding whether biology textbooks in the county could continue to sport a warning sticker that read “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.”

Maybe that last sentence should be stamped into every textbook (and some other books I can think of). And maybe they could rewrite the advisory so that it’s accurate. Perhaps something like, “Variation coupled with natural selection is the most widely accepted theory that explains evolution. Evidence for evolution itself is so overwhelming that those who deny its reality can do so only through nonscientific arguments. They have every right to hold such views. They just can’t teach them as science in this science class.”

But why pick on evolution in the first place when there’s so much to be offended by in virtually any science class? I propose that Cobb County-style stickers be places in numerous other textbooks. Here are some suggestions:

Sticker in Introduction to Cosmology:
“Astronomers estimate the age of the universe to be approximately 13 billion years. If evolution ticks you off because you believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old, cosmology should really make smoke come out of your ears. There’s a fire extinguisher next to the telescope.”

Sticker in Geography for Today:
“Some people believe that the earth is flat. An ant probably thinks that the beach ball he’s walking on is flat, too. Anyway, this book says the earth is more like an oblate spheroid. Now go find Moldova on a map.”

Sticker in Earth Sciences:
“You are free to exercise your First Amendment rights in this class and to identify all stratigraphic layers as being 6,000 years old. We are free to flunk you.”

Sticker in Collegiate Chemistry:
“Electrons. They’re like little tiny ball bearings that fly around the atomic nucleus like planets orbit the sun. Except that they’re actually waves. Only what they really are are probability waves. But they do make your MP3 player run, seriously.”

Sticker in Our Solar System:
“Remember they said in chemistry class that electrons fly around the nucleus like planets orbit the sun? Some people think the sun and the other planets go around the earth. You’ll have a much easier time with the math if you just let everybody go around the sun, trust me.”

Sticker in Physics for Freshmen:
“We know that a lot of what’s in this book is wrong, and with any luck they’ll eventually find out that even more of it is wrong. But it’s not so far off, it took some real geniuses to get us this close, and it’s way better than nothing.”

Sticker in Creationism for Dummies:
“Religious beliefs rest on a foundation of faith. Seeking empirical evidence for support of one’s faith-based beliefs therefore could be considered pointless. Or even blasphemous.”

Sticker in Modern Optics:
“CAUTION! Dark ages in mirror may be closer than they appear.”

Well, that last post generated a lot of interest.

2005-02-19T23:40:00.000-08:00

Look, you can believe in science and evolution and still believe in God, as the Catholic Church, and just about every other church in and out of the United States says, by the way. The antievolution movement is, by and large, peculiar to the USA.

The track record of religion in explaining the natural world has not been good over the long haul. Galileo and Copernicus come to mind. The thing about science is that all knowledge is provisional. Things can be revised, and, this is key here, scientific assertions are formulated so that they can be falsified. That is, theoretically, if such-and-such evidence were found, that would invalidate a particular hypothesis. Supernatural explanations, such as “God did it” are not testable, and therefore not falsifiable, even in theory, and are therefore, not scientific. Science cannot answer the question of why are we here, but it has made a lot of progress in explaining how we got here. It is science’s constant checking of itself against reality that has allowed it to make the progress it has.

The real problem is when the vast body of physical evidence is ignored in favor of a literal interpretation of some ancient myth. For example, the vast age of the Universe and the Earth, as demonstrated in all of the geological, cosmological, radiological, and astronomical evidence, is indisputable. The exact age is not known, but the margin of error has gotten smaller and smaller as measurements have gotten better. When all of this is flung aside by declaring that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and God just made everything look old to test our faith, we are on the path to the Dark Ages.

By the way, I saw a documentary once, where Tibetan and Catholic monks hung out together for a while and discussed their experiences and attitudes toward the divine, and the Tibetan monk said that they were basically the same, except for one difference: he said the Christians believe that the Universe was created, while the Buddhists believe that the Universe is self-creating.

The ID plan

2005-02-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

There is a nice rundown here on the the religious right's plan on getting creationism in our science curriculum.

I've found that those who don't believe in evolution don't have any understanding of what it is. They also really don't understand what science is, or how the scientific method works.

The more you study science, the more sense it makes, and the more you study religion, the less sense it makes.

This is Weird

2005-02-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

Check out these two links:

The Smoking Scalp

The Teenager in Chief

What the hell?

Whore in the White House Press Corps

2005-02-16T08:20:00.000-08:00

Digby has a great post about the lack of mainstream media coverage on this:

Moral Hazards

The Rude Pundit has some great commentary on the matter:

Why Gannon/Guckert Matters

And Americablog has been bustin' this whole thing wide open. They've got the whole story over there.

AmericaBlog

In summary, a guy with no real press credentials or journalistic experience, got access to White House press briefings using temporary day passes, for two years. This is after he was denied press credentials for Capitol Hill, because Congress said he wasn't a real journalist. He lobbed softball questions at both Scott McClellen and the President during press conferences. He touted that he had been given CIA documents and may be involved in the outing of an undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame. He didn't use his real name, and apparently didn't go through the same kind of background check that EVERY OTHER White House reporter went through, because if he had, they would have found out that he is A GAY MALE PROSTITUTE!

There's nothing wrong with being gay, but prostitution is illegal in 49 states, and highly regulated in Nevada.

Somehow, though the mainstream media has been dismissive of the whole thing, trying to play it off as liberal bloggers attacking a conservative reporter.

Bush Administration Screwing Our Troops Again.

2005-02-15T11:55:00.000-08:00

Man, it's just neverending, huh? Somebody please explain how this man "supports our troops."

From the LA Times:

...The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

...Many of the pilots were tortured in the same Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers abused Iraqis 15 months ago. Those Iraqi victims, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, deserve compensation from the United States.

But the American victims of Iraqi torturers are not entitled to similar payments from Iraq, the U.S. government says.

..."No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of this very brutal regime and at the hands of Saddam Hussein," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters when asked about the case in November 2003.

Government lawyers have insisted, literally, on "no amount of money" going to the Gulf War POWs. "These resources are required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq," McClellan said.

The case also tests a key provision of the Geneva Convention, the international law that governs the treatment of prisoners of war. The United States and other signers pledged never to "absolve" a state of "any liability" for the torture of POWs.

What can I say, except: Fuckers!
Oh, wait. lemme guess. It's Clinton's fault, right?

I have magical powers

2005-02-15T08:13:00.000-08:00

Anybody can make traffic behind them move slower, but I can make traffic ahead of me move slower, simply by moving into the lane that I want to slow down.

I have recently discovered that I can do the same thing standing in line at the store.

D'OH!

2005-02-14T12:25:00.000-08:00

So, in an twist of supreme irony (from the Washington Post):

When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say...

...Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.

Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran.

And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline.

Unintended consequences sure seem to be the rule rather than the exception these days. Remember when the US trained Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan? Remember how that ended up turning out? Remember when the US backed Saddam Hussein in the '80s and sold him anthrax and the means of making chemical weapons? Who'da thought that we wouldn't always be on friendly terms? I mean, Saddam and Rumsfeld looked so chummy in the '80s. Remember how the Iraq Army was disbanded, but then weapons weren't restricted, and how the ammo depots weren't secured?

Remember how much has been forgotten?

Sorry 'bout the light posting

2005-02-12T22:40:00.000-08:00

Things've been pretty busy in non bloggy life - will post lots soon. Promise.
Been thinkin' a lot lately. 'bout freedom 'n shit. You know. human nature.

Question:
How badly do you need to feel safe?

Medicare Projected Drug Costs Double

2005-02-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

Remember when Bush pushed his Medicare prescription drug plan through Congress last year? At the time, they gave a projected 10 year cost of $400 billion dollars. After it passed, it was revealed that the actual projected cost was $534 billion. The actuary who wanted to tell Congress the real cost was threatened with termination (I hope that only means getting fired) if he didn't keep his mouth shut. There were a lot of Republican representatives who said that they would have voted against it if they knew that it was going to cost that much.

Of course, there are the other problems with it. For example:

*The government was specifically banned from negotiating drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.

*Medicare recipients had to choose one of twenty-six different drug discount cards and had to keep it for a year, but the pharmaceutical companies could raise their prices at any time.

These alone should have been reason enough to defeat the legislation. I mean, how could the government and the people not get ripped off with a set-up like that?

Now, it comes out that it's going to cost more than $1.2 trillion! They are saying that it is because the old projection included years 2004 and 2005 (the years with the discount cards), for years 2004-2013, and the new projection is 2006-2015. Since the discount card years are less expensive for the government (more expensive for Mr. & Ms. Jones), the initial 10 year projection was low, because the full benefits weren't in place for years 2004 and 2005.

The thing is, is that in an NPR report I heard this moring, they made no mention of the initial lie to Congress ($534 billion vs. $400 billion) and made it sound like it was all due to an innocent little accounting change in the years included in the projection. They didn't mention that the administration has consistently lied to Congress about the costs of everything they have proposed.

Now, I know a lot of people out there think that NPR is some kind of crazy liberal media, but they're not. They are as close to straight down the middle reporting as you can find, but they are still following the rest of the media's tendency to parrot the adminstration's line uncritically and forget what was said previously. It is up to us as citizens to remember what was said last week, last month, and last year, and compare it to what is being said now. You aren't going to get any help from the radio or television.

Our Changing Language

2005-02-09T08:40:00.000-08:00

I've noticed a couple of words changing their definitions lately.

Eco-terrorism During the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein dumped a bunch of oil into the Red Sea. This was decried as an act of "eco-terrorism" at the time. In 1991, eco-terrorism meant an act of wanton destruction of the environment. Eco-terrorism was distinguished from humans' usual mode of environmental destruction in it was not for any use (i.e. growing food, mining minerals, harvesting lumber, etc.).

Today, eco-terrorism is used to refer to the violent tactics (usually limited to destruction of property, not people, by the way)of pro-environmental groups like the Earth Liberation Front. ELF has claimed credit for firebombing various housing developments across Northern California. I believe that ELF's tactics are counterproductive for environmental causes, but they are not terrorism. They are arson. A housing development in Maryland was set on fire a couple of months ago, and it was called an act of eco-terrorism when they thought an environmental group did it. When authorities discovered that it was gang-related, it was called arson. Why is one terrorism and the other simply arson?

I predict that we will see non-violent, pro-ecology actions, such as tree-sitting, labeled eco-terrorism. That is, if it hasn't already happened.

Lame Duck A lame duck presidency historically has referred to the period of time between losing re-election in November and the inaugeration of the new president in January. It has also been used to refer to a president's last year or so of his second term, especially if Congress is controlled by the opposing party.

I have heard it used by ABC and pundits on NPR lately (and I'm sure it has been said in other media as well), in reference to Bush's entire second term. This is ridiculous! We have a Republican president, with Republican cotnrol of both houses of Congress, and many conservative judicial appointees, and we're supposed to believe that he is a lame duck, with no hope of getting anyone to listen to him.

Why? Is it simply igorance on the part of the media, or is it planned? Some will say that it it the liberal media trying to undermine Bush's authority as president. But, it is pretty clear that the media has been more than happy to adopt the administration's vocabulary for quite some time. The latest example is referring to Social Security "personal accounts" instead of "private accounts" when the latter term didn't poll well.

I believe it is part of a strategy with two purposes. One, when the shit really starts to hit the fan due to Bush's failed policies of the last four years, he can shift the blame to Congress. "See, I'm a lame duck! I wasn't in control for my whole second term. It's not my fault!" Two, they can start angling for a repeal of the twenty-second amendment. "If you want the president to be effective, you can't cut him off at the knees four years in! He must have an unlimited ability to continue to run for re-election. If he's not doing a good job, then the people won't re-elect him!" (Of course, Diebold might.)

Some advice from an Old-Fashioned Patriot

2005-01-29T01:33:00.000-08:00

I came across this late Friday night on Old Fashioned Patriot
...After 9/11 when Bush's popularity soared to 90%, I was one of the 10%.

When 60% of Americans fell for Bush's, Cheney's, Rice's, and Powell's lies about WMD in Iraq, I was one of the 40%...

I was one of the 10% and I was one of the 40% not because I was smarter, not because I had access to classified information, not because of ESP. It is simpler that that. I doubted the conventional wisdom because I don't trust Bush. At all. Not one iota.

I will now reveal my secret plan for making the world a better place.
Everybody, Democrat or Republican, American or not, rich or poor, religious or not must do one simple thing.

Stop believing anything George W. Bush says.

Hear, hear, brother.

Republican Pedophile News

2005-01-28T23:05:00.000-08:00

www.politicalamazon.com

Senator Feinstein's Reply

2005-01-25T13:22:00.000-08:00

Here's what Senator Feinstein's office sent me in response to my letter last week.

January 21, 2005

Dear Mr. XXX:

Thank you for writing me regarding the future of Iraq. I
appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

Throughout the majority of Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein
has been defeated and removed from power. Despite our success in
freeing the Iraqi people, our military continues to encounter resistance
throughout the country and must maintain a presence until an interim
authority can be established to restore order and begin helping the Iraqi
people reconstitute their basic social services.

So, as the fighting stops and as the remnants of the regime are
removed, we must take the lead in rebuilding the Iraqi nation, in
stabilizing its new government, in providing interim security to prevent
the emergence of tribal hostilities and to see that Iraq is no longer a
producer of weapons of mass destruction.

I am hopeful that all Iraqis of every ethnic and faith group, large
and small, will be engaged in the process to establish a new Iraq. I
firmly believe that the U.S. should work closely with the United Nations
and our allies in the reconstruction of Iraq.

It is essential to demonstrate to Muslims everywhere that the
United States, while a powerful nation, is motivated by a sincere desire
to one day see the entire world safe, prosperous, and free.

Again, thank you for writing. I hope you will continue to keep
me informed of your views and concerns. If you should have any further
questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington,
D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.

Sincerely yours,

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

http://feinstein.senate.gov

Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the
Nation are available at my website http://feinstein.senate.gov. You can also
receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list at
http://feinstein.senate.gov/issue.html.

The really funny thing about this is that her propaganda hasn't even been updated in what must be over a year. Well, just goes to show you, she's beyond hope. She's a Democrat In Name Only.

The Chinese Own Our Asses

2005-01-24T11:53:00.000-08:00

Told ya, Steve:

Dollar at Mercy of Central Banks
In 2003, the most recent year with full international statistics, central banks financed 83 per cent of the US current account deficit, with Asian central banks accounting for 86 per cent of flows.

A similar picture is emerging for 2004. Despite a good start to the year, when the private sector was a large net purchaser of dollar assets, central banks came to the rescue again. The People's Bank of China has let it be known that China increased dollar reserves by $207bn (€159bn) in 2004, financing nearly a third of the US current account deficit, estimated at $650bn.

…If new official flows to the US were to be curtailed, the dollar would plunge, creating a huge hole in the accounts of central banks holding dollars.

…In November, Alan Greenspan, US Federal Reserve chairman, suggested foreign investors would reach a limit in their desire to finance the US current account deficit and diversify into other currencies or demand higher US interest rates, "elevating the cost of financing" the deficit and "rendering it increasingly less tenable".

(emphasis added)

Of course, who’s gonna listen to some crazy liberal like Greenspan when it comes to economics. What does he know?

Rumsfeld Has Secret Spy Agency

2005-01-24T11:45:00.000-08:00

From The Washington Post. Apparently, those hippies at the CIA and in Congress can’t be trusted with this kind of stuff.

Go read the whole article.

The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.

Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name...

…A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.

…Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article.

…Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA.

…The new unit's performance in the field -- and its latest commander, reserve Army Col. George Waldroup -- are controversial among those involved in the closely held program. Pentagon officials acknowledged that Waldroup and many of those brought quickly into his service lack the experience and training typical of intelligence officers and special operators. In his civilian career as a federal manager, according to a Justice Department inspector general's report, Waldroup was at the center of a 1996 probe into alleged deception of Congress concerning staffing problems at Miami International Airport.

(emphasis added)

Just a new super-secret spy agency hidden from the CIA and Congress, headed by an unqualified guy who lied to congress. Nothing to worry about. Just defending freedom, ya know.

All Current Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Contaminated

2005-01-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

Remember back when Bush made his Solomonic decree regarding embryonic stem cell research? He said that there were 60 established embryonic stem cell lines and that was enough. Well, it turned out that there were really somewhere around 19 lines. Furthermore, lots of scientists said that those might be contaminated. Well..

Oops.

Currently available lines of human embryonic stem cells have been contaminated with a non-human molecule that compromises their potential therapeutic use in human subjects, according to research by investigators at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.

Now, mind you, there are THOUSANDS of frozen blastocysts (early stage embryos) in fertility clinics all over the country that will never be used. Right now, when a couple has a successful implantation of an embryo or embyos, the remaining ones are frozen for a while, then flushed. Even if the couple wants to donate them for research, institutions won't take them because then they would lose their federal funding.

Bumper Stickers

2005-01-24T08:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple I've seen recently that I liked:

I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway

and

Sure you can trust the government, just ask an Indian

Here's the Proof, Bush Is the Anti-Christ

2005-01-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

courtesy of Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The Pope thinks so, too.