corrente

Terri’s dead. Sad, but not uncommon. I’ve been around long enough to bury a lot of my friends, relatives, even a son, and surely all of you have dealt with this somehow too. People die. Okay, let’s get down to it, then. This isn’t an “us” versus “them” issue unless we let it be. Death and taxes, all that—it will happen. Granted, any power to frame this discussion is limited, but I contend that most people in this world are faced with similar issues all the time, usually on a scale that eludes the Kens and Barbies on the news, at least on-air.

I’m talking about end of life, quality of life issues. Philosophically, it’s thorny ground, lying in the realm of ethics and debated for a very long time: utilitarianism is but one example, Bentham’s mummy, theories of the afterlife being trotted out and so forth.

If real power is the power to choose, then who gets to decide to make end of life decisions? The individual? Well, what about individuals who can’t decide? Living wills? Frank discussions? Okay, then what about people who literally can’t decide? People who were born with, or developed, cognitive ability so limited they can’t decide? Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters then decide? And what of those who would laugh at the problem, since all around them people are dying from diseases that could be easily prevented or cured, with the money and access to the means? Have we decided that universal health care is the answer after all? I mean, there are people dying all around the world as I write this, and many are dying from a lack of clean food and water, a lack of access to basic medical care. Nursing homes? Extraordinary measures? Ha! Not an option. Who decides for them? The World Bank? The IMF? Big Pharma?

And then there’s the issue of what makes life worth living, anyway. I like to eat, sleep, screw, drink, write, paint, play music and lots of other things (not necessarily in that order). If I couldn’t do any of those things, should I be allowed to die? Frankly, I’d say yes, I should be; I don’t think lying in a bed attached to tubes is anything close to life as I know it, and the thought of becoming worm’s food sounds pretty natural to me. I have a document that lays this out. But that’s me. What about others, especially those whose ideas—or their caretaker’s ideas—of what makes life worth living differ from any “norm”? And what if their means allow them to keep these folks alive indefinitely, whether they would want it or not, no matter the expense?

I can’t help but think of a mother somewhere in Africa watching her baby die of diarrhea caused by bad water, knowing there’s nothing to do. Or Nazis emptying hospitals and killing undesirables, while lying all the while about why. What decision? Seems obvious, but think of how it will be pitched by Rove. I shudder.

Still, it’s coming at us, folks. And it’s as good a time as any to think about it. You can bet the one-dimensional machine of destruction is thinking about how they can use this issue even further to prop their agenda. Which, by the way and obviously, has nothing to do with life but more with greed and fear.

Sorry to be a bummer, but sometimes that’s…

I wasn't going to cross-post this, but in light of the day's events, and given that NPR is doing a piece on it as I type this, I thought it was important to give it a wider audience. Regardless of how you feel about the Schiavo case, if you haven't thought about making a living will, you need to. With the government making a beeline toward ever more invasive legislation to limit your options, it has become an important issue for many people. And because of that, having a living will drafted and executed, ready to be adjusted over time according to one's changing needs or perspective, can be an essential safeguard to peace of mind and an infinite kindness to the people you love.

The first thing you must do decide what it is you want. Explore the many scenarios that could happen, and ask yourself how you would want to be treated in those circumstances. For comprehensive info, turn to the American Bar Association's Consumer Toolkit, which includes tests to help users establish criteria for treatment or non-treatment. Also helpful is The Living Will: A Guide To Health Care Decision Making, which takes a broad overview and divides it into easily comprehensible steps. Elder Options of Texas, also offers definitions of advanced directives, DNRs, living wills, and durable power of attorney.

When you know what kind of care you would want under most possible circumstances, you'll need to choose a document in which to memorialize your wishes. These can include a Do Not Resusitate order and/or an advanced directive (a/k/a living will). A sample living will can be found here, at Free Legal Forms, and another here, at The People's Lawyer. A simple example of a DNR order can be found here. Remember: each state may have different laws as applied to these forms, and you must do the legwork to be sure of being in compliance.

The next step is to sit down with the people who will have to carry out your wishes if the worst happens, and tell them what you want. This includes your physician and your loved ones, and any person you may choose to act on your behalf as a health care proxy or with power of attorney. Don't just throw out a casual comment and expect that it will be remembered or will hold up in court.

We know how that works out.

Terri Schiavo is gone; she has finally been allowed to enter fully into that peace that surpasses all understanding.

MSNBC is still with us, like a Biblical plague: you can choose which one strikes you as most apposite from this list of the ten plagues about to be featured prominently in Passover seders across the country.

In the ll:OOAM EST hour of MSNBC, Bob Kur, standing in front of the White House and discussing what impact Terri Schiavo's death might have on the President politically, reports that said President has deeply felt moral and religious beliefs about what was the right course of action in this case, and even though polls don't show a majority of Americans saw the issue the same way, Republican strategists are sure those same Americans will respect the President for his steadfast adherence to his own set of moral values. He then goes on to point out there were two sides to the question of her death; was it really a mercy killing, or was it, as the President believed, something much worse?

Huh?

I have not been able to replicate Kur's exact words, except for "mercy killing," which was the term he clearly affixed to the opinion held by 65 to 85% of Americans who felt that the Florida court system had fairly and rightly adjudicated the conflicting claims by Terri's husband and her birth family, and that the intrusion into a private family matter by the executive and legislative branches of both the state and the Federal government had crossed a line that shouldn't be crossed in a democratic republic like ours.

Euthanasia is illegal in every state of these United States, including Florida; Oregon, please remember, has a PAS law, which is not euthanasia. But that is how Bob Kur framed the issue - that those Americans who were ready to accept that the Florida judiciary had carried out its duty correctly in adjudicating what Terri's wishes were in regards to being kept alive by medical means in a state similar to the one she has been languishing in for fifteen years now, were, in fact, in favor of offing Terri by means of a mercy killing.

As Bob Somerby so often and so incomparable says, try and make yourself believe that a major media White House correspondent can be that dumb and that lacking in knowledge of the basic facts of the issue he's talking about; oh, that's right, it's not that hard, is it? Not if you've been paying attention to the way big media operates, and has been for the last several decades.

I agree completely with Xan here, and what she says about Tom DeLay is just as true about what the right wing has revealed about itself in the Schiavo case. Liberals and Democrats should not let them run away from the implications of their own stance, and should not be afraid to frame this, and the corresponding issues of the right to choose and judicial activism, as issues on which a majority of Americans share our views.

To be continued

Followup on border vigilantes. That’s what they are. The reincarnation of the railroad cops of the 30’s. These are the people who have all of the “stop the invasion” posters up along the border. Neo-Birchers, America Firsters, nativists of every stripe, skinheads and so forth are welcome. Scary, scary people. And the government allows them to form this mob. Their first partei aktion in tomorrow. I won't help them with a link, but this is from their website:

The Minuteman Project is a grassroots effort to bring Americans to the defense of their homeland, similar to the way the original Minutemen from Massachusetts (and other U. S. colonies) did in the late 1700s. Like them, we want to bring to this effort only what few personal possessions we can carry...plus our heart, mind and spirit.

This call for volunteers is not a call to arms, but a call to voices seeking a peaceful and respectable resolve to the chaotic neglect by members of our local, state and federal governments charged with applying U.S. immigration law. It is a call to peacefully assemble at the Arizona-Mexico border to bring national awareness to the decades-long careless disregard of effective U.S. immigration law enforcement. It is a reminder to Americans that our nation was founded as a nation governed by the "rule of law", not by the whims of mobs of ILLEGAL aliens who endlessly stream across U.S. borders. Accordingly, the men and women volunteering for this mission are those who are willing to sacrifice their time, and the comforts of a cozy home, to muster for something much more important than acquiring more "toys" to play with while their nation is devoured and plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens.

Not a call to arms, eh? What then? Anyway, that’s the alleged agenda, and it’s bad enough, complete with faux history and lofty if poorly written and reasoned rhetoric. Now, the real agenda:

Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious "melting pot."

The result: political, economic and social mayhem. Historians will write about how a lax America let its unique and coveted form of government and society sink into a quagmire of mutual acrimony among the various sub-nations that will comprise the new self-destructing America.

A-ha. Now we see their stripes. Let’s play connect the dots. And a picture forms of... could that be a brownshirted mob?

And once again I must plug the November Coalition since the Keillor Liberal Litmus Question sticks in my mind: What is the actual effect of this action on the lives of real people?

What, indeed? Bankruptcy reform, cuts in social programs, vigilantes and walls on the border, wars on everything from the poor to drugs to Afghanistan to iWaq…look! over there! a tit!

Oy.

Atrios sends us over to this telling article about Tom DeLay by one of the more tiresome of the "conventional wisdom" pundits, Howard Fineman. The A man is right in that when Fineman starts writing your epitaph you're probably done but it was this paragraph that caught my eye:

There’s a certain logic to the enterprise: don’t take on the Texas president, who remains popular, especially as commander-in-chief. Take on another Texas, who comes from Houston, who is close to the Oil Boys, and who can be made to stand for the GOP’s never-ending vulnerability, which is that they are too close to corporate power, especially the kind that sells gas for $2.50 a gallon.

Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.

Since when did a president with an approval rating in the low to mid 40s become popular?

WTF is up with that?

Are you kidding me?

The low 40s is popular?

If Bill Clinton had ratings like that at this point in his presidency folks like Mr. Fineman would've been wondering aloud when congress was going to impeach him for unpopularity, a la Gray Davis.

And, within a few weeks, the punditocracy would've been demanding Clinton's impeachment.

Am I wrong?

Terri Schiavo died 5 minutes ago, according to NPR, who just broadcast a brief live report from outside the hospice. Thank God she can finally rest.

As we're now due for the inevitable bloviating over the Terri Schiavo Burial Arrangements Hysteria for a few days [anybody wanna guess how long it takes before some newsreader concludes his/her pontifications with "Remains to be seen"?], other subjects may be pushed aside in some news outlets....which of course is why you come to Corrente for all your information needs.

So let us stick to important things here, like a meditation on the statement often attributed to Lyndon Johnson but certainly older than that: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." We speak here of Tyrannical Tom (the Bugman) DeLay, and the role he has to play in both capacities.

The wisest words I have seen on the matter come from a party known as Barry Champlain over on an Atrios comment thread:

Now listen to me carefully:

Do NOT allow DeLay to "step down to spend more time with his family".

Do NOT allow the Rethugs to make him just go away like he never happened... only to be replaced by his puppets in the Congress, while he yanks their chains from either K Street or Sugar Land, nice 'n' safe 'n' out of the spotlight.

He has to stay right where he is, for as long as we can make it happen.

An injured, scandalized DeLay is the only defense this country has against him. Providing him shelter and camouflage by virtue of the temporary masturbatory liberal high of forcing him to resign is really fucking short-sighted!

We pointy-headed libruls obviously have not learned the lesson of "WWKD?" That's K, as in Karl. I just don't see Karl helping the Dems purge themselves of their embarassments. You think, perhaps, he might actually like having "embarassments" in the enemy camp, getting daily shitty headlines?

There's a "Save DeLay's Hide" committee? Get the website URL. Post the link. Send money.

Okay, I don't know if there really is such a website, nor would I consider sending them money even if I had any as the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has what appears to be more than enough for their needs. Way more in fact. But Barry's point is still good: DeLay does us more good twisting in the wind, leaving a trail of slime so foul it nearly glows in the dark which makes it easier to follow, emitting a stench that attaches itself to every cause, every unindicted co-conspirator person, every issue he touches.

The Plagarism Basement Tapes !!!!!
Many of you will remember JD "Meat Cannon" Gannon's controversial first major full exposure CD release titled "Blue Moves; Crossing the Red State Line," which of course contained the number one chartbuster coast to coast monster hit "White House Meat Cannon" and the haunting ballad "Scotty Got a Pretty Mouth."


Most of you probably have a copy of that punk-n-bugger classic shoved up, I mean inserted in, I mean spinning on, I mean lying over and over and over again... I mean, oh just forget it.

Playing!, yes, playing, that's it, playing itself out on your groovy CD pop and skip recording player machine right now as I write. Kick out the jams motherfuckers!

Anyway, "Blue Moves" was a major label release (as those things go) and became a cult classic with not only the methamphetamine gobbling glue sniffers loitering in front of slop shoots like Little Mean Footlickers but also with the Anti-Idyllitarian RottLiar mutts and the wavy-dooed elitist Claremonte Institute fellows, buddies, lawyers, and high priced sky-box glory hole seekers from such altars to feculent nasalized greed as Power Swine dot something or other. Power Swine, by the way, being Time magazine's corporate elitist GOP whore-dog-blog of the year award winner. Just in case you were wondering who walked away with last year's Time magazine wavy-dooed nasal voiced media lap-dog clown and pony show blogging honor.

Many of you will also recognize some of Jeff "JD" Guckert Gannon's previous efforts. "Mal4Male" for instance. Which was genuine Gannon/Guckert. However, for the most part, almost all of Gannon's material has been lifted directly from the lyric sheets of those who actually wrote the original tunes. Although, several rare outtakes may have been actually written entirely by Gannon/Guckert himself. Including "Park Bench Problem Personality" and "Pedophile Scandal," which dates back to 1989. And then there is the eerily titled "Johnny Gosch, Iowa Paperboy" for which reamins a mystery to this day.

Many of the recent "political period" garage band "chop shop" cut-n-paste singles and hits were produced right in Bobby Eberle's famous "plagarism factory". Or, "The Factory," as all the Kool-Aid guzzling RepubliCons like to call it. -- But, be careful Redneck Rose, don't drink too much of the "Purple Kristol!" It'll give ya two faced babies that grow up to be four feet tall adults and the next dang thing ya'll know you'll be living in Manhattan and calling people doll and whisking the little ones off to Gay Head for summer vacations! Fancy that.

Anyway. Off we go...

Now, as an exclusive offer, we have made available dozens of Jeff "JD" Gannon's most endearing hits. Hits that he stole word for word from someone else at some point in time! Where else could you find a deal like that? Surely you will all fondly recall such memorable jots as "One of the slain" and "Roads leading to Tikrit" originally written and performed by the Associated Press but later adapted by Jeff Gannon's Talon News Playboys.

How about "Medicine for the mentally ill" by the USA Today? As well as everyone's rockin' favorites: "A two-day celebration", "The nation's largest daily", "Patriotism to promote", and "Those who spoke out", --- all originally by Dockendorf but completely ripped off by Jeff Gannon and re-recorded for your "Factory" manufactured listening pleasure!

And of course there was Jeff's heart rending performance of the old time gospel tunes: "Antiquated tax", "Statewide lottery" and "The raising of [the] taxes." - All originally penned and performed by Bob Allen and the Associate Baptist Press Cowbell and Kingdom Come Kazoo Band.

Yes, my friends, you too can now make these amazing historic plagarized hits your very own cherished possessions! Plagarism performed by the very con-artist that the National Press Club in Warshington DC recently praised as an important news maker! Or something important. Important enough to invite this very plagarist (the celebrated Jeff Gannon) to the National Press Club's next pow-wow on journalistic ethics and blogging and hemming and hawing and eating shit at buffet tables along with other high priests and priestesses of the blogging glitterati. A regualar Delphic oracle. Even Mr. P-Niss has reconsidered and may attend, assuming he will be allowed to tell penis jokes and bring along the sacred stone omphalos, navel to the world. So...

Roll out the bunting, book the high school marching band, chill the Chateau St. Michelle, and line up the gaggers along the service bar! Kick out the jams motherfuckers!

Yes, it's all true. But, forget all that excitment for now. What's important now is that all these hits can be yours today for absolutely no money down and nothing more than the simple click of a mouse key. And these hits and many more are all contained on the Jeff Guckert Gannon Talon News Collection of "Greatest Plagarism Hits; Volume Ongoing!" Many produced by the great Bobby Eberle of GOPUSA fame which includes the live boggie-woogie duet of Jeff Gannon and Bobby "the Eagle List" Eberle himself collaborating and performing their show stopping cage rattler "threw down the guntlet," which they ripped off from some honky tonk press release or wire service caterwauler somewhere down the road at some dusty god forsaken crossroads or another. Who knows. Whats important is that it's all recorded for you to enjoy - all this and more - and it can be all yours at the low low price of $0. Thats right! $0! Nothing. Nada. Not one guckert fucking dollar vowel or dime!

And that's the beauty of it. Just pry open your beautiful minds and it's all free for the takin'! I know, it's hard to believe, but please - let Ron at Why Are We Back In Iraq tell you more about this amazing generous offer: GO! - HURRY - DON'T MISS OUT ON THE PLAGARISM FUN!

Or, to visit the most recent resources available on the Jeff Gannon collectors edition offer, see the following recent reviews:

Jeff Gannon Likes To Plagiarize The Associated Press (AP ApeMan - Live Monkey Bidness!)

Jeff Gannon The Plagiarist (Dockendorf sessions)

Somebody Stop Him (Still palgarizing after all these years!)

Big News To Come !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*

From the BBC:

"The top US general in Iraq authorised interrogation techniques including the use of dogs, stress positions and disorientation, a memo has shown...
The September 2003 document is signed by the then commander of US forces in Iraq, Gen Ricardo Sanchez...
The memo authorised techniques including putting prisoners in stressful positions, using loud music and light control, and changing sleeping patterns.
It also authorised the presence of muzzled military working dogs to, as the memo puts it, "exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations"... "Gen Sanchez authorised interrogation techniques that were in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and the army's own standards," ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said in the union's statement."

Not that we haven't already had proof enough of high-level culpability for the approval of torture and policies leading to torture, what with the Bush memo. But the extent of the cover-up is finally beginning to be grasped:

"Army investigations have generally found that, where proven, abuses were not the result of policy set by senior leaders."

Sanchez himself denied granting permission for the abuses that took place in Abu Ghraib. Now that this has come out, no doubt Bush will give him a Medal of Freedom and promote him to head of the Joint Chiefs.

(cross-posted at my own site.)

Move away from the cameras, put down the signage and that oh-so-media-savvy styrofoam spoon and listen, please:

"Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper," wrote Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., one of the members of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "While the members of her family and the members of Congress have acted in a way that is both fervent and sincere, the time has come for dispassionate discharge of duty."

The judge went on to deliver a scathing attack on politicians who got involved in the case, saying the White House and lawmakers "have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people - our Constitution."

"If sacrifices to the independence of the judiciary are permitted today, precedent is established for the constitutional transgressions of tomorrow," said Birch, an appointee of former President Bush.
(via AP)

Indeed.

Since of course as Responsible Lefty Bloggers we condemn acts of violence, even ones of the harmless if not downright symbolic nature:

(via Indianapolis Star)

A pie in the face didn't silence conservative pundit William Kristol during a speech at Earlham College.
A man who later was identified as a student at the private Quaker college jumped onto the stage and splattered Kristol with the pie Tuesday night about 30 minutes into a speech about U.S. foreign policy.

No record as to whether Mr. Kristol executed evasive maneuvers as well on spike heels as mAnn Coulter did during a similarly vicious attack last fall.

So, Sunday night a week ago, March 20th, the President cuts short his vacation at the family ranch in Texas and rushes back to the White House so he can demonstrate his sense of urgency and committment to life by being awakened and affixing, in his pjs, his signature to Terri's law, although the paperwork could, as easily, have been sent to him in Texas.

My first thought upon hearing on that Sunday evening of the President's planned rush back to Washington was of another occasion, in August 2001, when, upon being told by his National Security Advisor that Ben Ladin was intent on striking this country on its own soil, he didn't rush back to Washington from his six week Texas vacation, not to have any meetings, or talk to any administration officials working on terrorism issues, nor did he make any calls to anyone in his administration to make sure Al Queda was being tracked, nor did he request his National Security Advisor to do anything specific in resonse to the threat, nor did he ask for a review of what was being done on the Al Queda front, no, he did none of those things, or any variation of them. What he did do was nothing, absolutely nothing.

However, on Monday, March 21st, the day after Bush's rush back to Washington to sign legislation that affects only one American family, a different tragic event occurs that supplies us with another contrast in Presidential behavior. On that day, the worst school shooting since Columbine takes place at Red Lake High School among the Red Lake Band of the Chippewa nation. Jeff Weise, another of those deeply disturbed students we've come to know about too late, opens fire and manages to kill a security guard, a teacher, seven students, and to wound fourteen other people, and then to turn the gun on himself in a successful suicide.

The President's response is not to rush anywhere, neither back, nor forth. Instead, he sticks to his planned schedule and does another installment of Bush community Kabuki theatre on his Bamboozlapalooza tour to kill Social Security as we know and love it; important stuff, I know; in addition, he takes advantage of the occasion to refer to his own rush back to Washington to sign that legislation, which placed the Federal government squarely in the middle of one family's agonizing dispute about a crucial end of life question, and, which he holds up as an exemplar of his committment to what he identifies as a "culture of life."

What this President does not do is to manage to issue even a pro forma statement of shock, or dismay at the deaths of school children shot by another of their classmates, an all-too-familiar community trauma that one would have thought worthy of at least a word of sympathy. I guess the National Rifle Association wouldn't have liked their President to shed any light on another of those embarrassing examples of what can happen when an angst-ridden teenager has easy access to guns, even though in this case, it appears the guns were properly owned by his law-officer grandfather. (As Riggsveda notes today, the NRA is ready to take note of the Red Lake tragedy and to analyze what the real problem is: not too easy access to guns, but not enough guns and not enough access.)

The President continues to say nothing for the next four days.

It is not until he is jabbed in the ribs, rhetorically speaking, by some Native Americans who'd noticed his total silence that the President gets around to noticing what had happened. To be fair, the President must have been doing some thinking about Native Americans, because the 100 million dollars plus worth of cuts in their develoment programs by Bush's proposed budget are sufficiently specific to suggest the expenditure of time and attention, although the result was not generally applauded by Indian activists.

Chester Carl, chairman of NAIHC and the Navajo Housing Authority, noted that national security funding is vital for all Americans and noted the high percentage of American Indians in the military services, but pointed out that infrastructure needs in Indian country are greater than those in Iraq.

Chairman Carl's juxtaposition of Iraq and Indian country couldn't be more apt.This administration's total lack of familarity with the important body of knowledge that underlies Federal block grants for local development is reflected not merely in the deep cuts his budget makes in those programs across the country, it is nowhere better reflected in that on-going disaster which, from the beginning, has constituted this administration's reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Getting money and jobs to the grass roots local level immediately after the fall of Baghdad should have been the second most important item on the occupying army's agenda, right after the number one item, securing Iraq against the predictable looting of public buildings and public and private arms stashes, and the predictable penetration of Iraq's borders by Jihadists, in other words the immediate establishment of some sort of civil order. As we know now know, neither item was on anyone's agenda. And this president is just as heedless of what is necessary to keep available a decent "middle-class" life to those citizens of this country who are not in the top five percent of earners as he was of what would be necessary to keep Iraq from falling into chaos and insurgency.

It is not in the mindset of George Bush to be able to concieve of what it means to be President of these United States of America. He only knows how to be President of those people he concieves of as being on his side. The rest of America be damned, and why not since none of them are going to heaven either. And those of us who did not vote for him, and do care about it when something like the shootings at Red Lake happen would like to formally not thank him for being such an utter and total prick.

One of the first places I look when I need some information on something happening on the Native American front is that remarkable blog, WAMPUM. Eric did not disappoint. He reminds us here that Red Lake existed before Monday, March 21st, and he tells us about "PS 280 And Red Lake," and if you don't know what PS 280 references, you should go and read EW's explanation:

Red Lake exists in a legal historical context. In 1953 termination was the oficial policy of the United States, and P.L. 280 ushered in the termination phase of tribal jurisdiction in federal Indian affairs. It gave Wisconsin, Oregon, California, Minnesota and Nebraska (the so-called "mandatory states") criminal and civil jurisdiction in Indian Country and provided a mechanism by which the states could assume permanent jurisdiction over Indian nations. The law applied to most of the Indian land within the boundaries of those five states except the Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota and the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon.

When he signed it into law, even President Eisenhower expressed misgivings about the lack of tribal consent and urged immediate amendment of the law to require tribal referenda - no such amendment passed Congress until 1968.

The criterion for applying P.L. 280 was whether or not the United States judged that certain Indian nations were capable of handling their own affairs.

If you know anything about the history of Indian nations and the federal government that last statement shouldn't require any further response than "oy." Let Eric tell you the rest of the story here, which includes a surprise appearance by Richard M. Nixon.

Also courtesy of Wampum, I was directed to the Red Lake community's own website, Red Lake Net News, where you can find a link that allows you to send condolences and/or a contribution to a memorial fund. I choose the later because I couldn't conceive of what to say that might not feel like an intrusion. I do think it's important to let the people of the Red Lake band know that the rest of America cares about what happened there.

An important aspect of caring is the desire to understand, and I have found no better guide to Red Lake, (again thanks to Wampum), than Kent Nurland of Kent's Blog; Norland is a former teacher at Red Lake High School, and an historian who is also a writer, with quite a few books that I'm anxious to read based on the evidence of his blog, and who has a new book coming out in November, "Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy." I can't wait. I would suggest you read everything Kent has to say about Red Lake, but be sure not to miss, in particular, "Red Lake Redux: They Are All Our Children," here,"Silent City, Silent Cries," here, and "The Red Lake Shootings - The Media Recedes," here

P.S. As you may have guessed, this post was scheduled for publication last Friday, P-Niss blogging day here at Corrente, but was kept from being so by bloggerference. Seeing the reappearance today of the indefatigable Mr. P-Niss, I took the opportunity to post it. For any reader who missed last Friday's regularly scheduled P-Niss appearance, which included important new information about his status as a media mogul, including his hitherto unknown tie to The Washington Chestnut, you can find it by clicking here.

via The Invaluable Froomkin at WaPo

And where does the White House find all those agreeable, coachable people to appear on stage with Bush [at the Paid-By-Tax-Money Private Privatization Part-ehhh's]?

Warren Vieth profiles one of them in the Los Angeles Times: Leanne Abdnor.

"She is the leader of two groups that are prominent in the Social Security debate: For Our Grandchildren, and Women for a Social Security Choice. Both have advisory boards, individual donors and websites, but no rank-and-file members.

"She appeared on stage with the president three times this month, in Florida, Colorado and Arizona, dispensing facts and figures to buttress Bush's arguments. . . .

"Abdnor is a focal point for critics who say she is part of a pro-privatization coalition financed by wealthy conservatives and business interests who try to create the appearance of broad support without building genuine grass-roots constituencies."

See a lesson here? Mayhaps we need to start a similar program. Each and every one of us needs to create a group, or at least a Cool Name For A Group. Then whenever we write Letters to Editors we sign it as President of the Cool Group, Inc. Never mind that Cool Group Inc has a membership of exactly one; we can all be board members for each other just the way the forces of darkness do.

Pudetilla hits it from another angle, one which would be prosecutable if we had a Justice Department that concerned itself with prosecuting crimes rather than enabling them:

Yesterday we noted that il Ducetto's crew had forcibly removed citizens from attendance at one of his little "let's destroy social security" pep rallies. Scorpio, on his part, was outraged that citizens were being denied access to tax payer funded events on issues of national policy simply because they appeared not to share il Ducetto's opinion. Josh Marshall, citing a dKos diary's account, suggests that the Republican organizers of these events don't actually use Secret Service agents to boot citizens who have not drunk the kool-aid:

It seems the planners of these taxpayer-funded events hire rent-a-cops, dress them up to look like Secret Service agents and then have them boot people who don't seem Bush-true.

But that surely can't be true. Oh, there may be no remedy for the decision of the current administration to supress the rights of citizens to assemble and hear political debate (whether or not they agree with it), but dressing up and acting like a Secret Service agent is a felony - so there may well indeed be a remedy here. It is very much against the law to impersonate a federal officer or employee. The statute (18 U.S.C. § 912 (1994)) provides:


Section 912. Officer or employee of the United States

Whoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States or any department, agency or officer thereof, and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. (emphasis supplied)

So, someone who dresses up like a Secret Service agent, and acting like a Secret Service agent forcibly removes a person who is excercising his/her right of lawful assembly, could be looking at some serious time in the pokey. And the folks who paid the imposter to engage in the charade, as conspirators, would, we assume, face similar liability.

Of course, we can't say we're suprised that they're crooks. But maybe those who are unlawfully booted from these events should be talking to the F.B.I., and maybe all of us should be asking to see i.d. the next time a republican tries to piss on our constitutional rights.

I admire Pudentilla's idealism in hoping that the FBI still contains enough patriots in the rank and file that such an appeal would do any good. Meanwhile, don't wade in yellow puddles.

Go read both links if you've got time; Froomkin is on fire today. Telling the truth right out loud in fact. My stars and garters, as Grandma used to say.

To piggyback on farmer's previous post about the Gannon/Guckert flap, I saw that Editor and Publisher reported Maria Recio (co-chair of the National Press Club panel that is set to include Guckert, along with other serious journalists such as Wonkette), said:

"...the inclusion of Gannon had caused "a flurry." She also said she had questioned whether to include Gannon when the panel was first organized: "I raised the issue of 'is he a journalist?' The consensus was that he was someone in the news."

So there you have it. The National Press Club's criterion for being a journalist is "someone in the news."

Who else can meet these stringent guidelines? Michael Jackson? The Pope? The guy who ripped off "The Great Velcro"? Or how about these rogue sea lice?

Maybe some of you folks out there might want to apply for your press pass now, to avoid the rush.

I see where Laura Bush Takes Quick Trip to Afghanistan . Hm. Maybe her stash was getting low?

Meanwhile, if you thought I was exaggerating the increasing militarism along the border with Old Mexico, it’s just going to get worse: 500 Agents to Be Added to Arizona Border And the vigilantes are expanding, too, with support from the Birchers. Vicente Fox asked for the wall to be torn down. It really is just like the Israeli security wall. But it ain’t gonna happen. It’s gonna get longer and taller. They’ve gotta keep those brown people out, by gum. Why, most of them don’t even want to learn to speak American reel gud like Tancredo or aWol, the famous C student.

A friend asked me over coffee this morning the following riddle: “Why does Bush think it’s a bad role model to children to admit having smoked marijuana, but that it’s a good role model to children to brag about being a C student?” The answer, clearly, is national priorities—just look at the proposed budget. Plenty of $ for the War on Drugs that fills prisons with brown people, but slashes in public education.

As Garrison Keillor says in Home Grown Democrat,

We Democrats are at our worst when we lose touch with our principles—the protection of the powerless, paying attention to real consequences in the lives of real people and not flying on slogans or glib phrases—and we try to emulate Republicans as we did in signing onto the “war” on drugs that has ruined so many young lives. In our nation’s capital, nearly 50% of black men between 18 and 35 are either in prison or on probation or parole—nationally, it’s a human disaster: 6.6 million Americans in prison, nearly half of whom are black men. The cruelty of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 [!] is stark indeed, and of sentencing guidelines that impose mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug possession… no rational person can defend this, it is a Dostoevskian nightmare and it exists only because politicians fled in the face of danger. That includes Bill Clinton, under whose administration the prosecution of Americans for marijuana went up hugely so that now there are more folks in prison for marijuana than for violent crimes. More than for manslaughter or rape. This only makes sense in the fantasy world of Washington, where perception (X is “soft on drugs”) counts for more than reality. To an old Democrat, who takes a ground view of politics—What is the actual effect of this action on the lives of real people?—it is a foul tragedy that makes you feel guilty about enjoying your freedom.

And the ones who get out of prison with a felony rap can’t vote to change the system that sent them there, either. Meanwhile, fuggedabout going to college, pal, or finishing high school, because education spending is getting slashed, especially at tribal colleges where revenue is already a perennial issue.

So, let’s summarize the nightmare: (1) don’t let “them” in the country; (2) bust “them” for nonviolent consensual crimes and make them felonies so “they” go to prison and have a felony record; (3) disenfranchise “them” for having that record; (4) make it harder for “them” to get an education and a job by slashing social and educational programs; oh, and (5) make sure you and your buddies don’t do time—or even get caught—for doing the same damn thing.

It’s little wonder that in a Poll: Most American Adults Sleep Poorly except the ones lacking a conscience, the lying hypocritical dickheads! (apologies there to Mr. P-Niss)

In the "Stranger Than Fiction" category, the National Rifle Association demonstrates once more why they are America's favorite family-friendly special interest:

"All options should be considered to prevent rampages like the Minnesota school shooting that took 10 lives — including making guns available to teachers, a top National Rifle Association leader said Friday.
"I'm not saying that that means every teacher should have a gun or not, but what I am saying is we need to look at all the options at what will truly protect the students," the NRA's first vice president, Sandra S. Froman, told The Associated Press."

Well, sure. The NRA's long-standing solution to the carnage wrought by weapons usually includes an even wider distribution of weapons. And they can also be relied on to throw up their munitions-clutching hands in helpless frustration at the idea that any sort of controls could be successfully put on those weapons:

"Gun-control restrictions would not have prevented Jeff Weise, 16, from killing nine people and himself Monday at Red Lake High School near Bemidji, Minn.", said Froman, an attorney expected next month to be elected president of the NRA, which claims 4 million members.
The presence of an unarmed guard at the school failed to stop the siege, she noted.
"No gun law, no policy that you could implement now or that was already implemented, I think, could possibly prevent someone so intent on destruction", she said. "I think everything's on the table as far as looking at what we need to do to make our schools safe for our students."

Everything, that is, except the obvious.

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE!!!! STATEMENT FROM MR P-NISS FOLLOWS!!! MUST CREDIT MR P-NISS!!!

Try to guess where this came from:

GANNONGUCKERT TALKING POINTS!!!! WONKETTE EXCLUSIVE!!!! MUST CREDIT WONKETTE!!!

We have obtained the TOP SECRET, MIRACULOUSLY DISSEMINATED talking points for next week's National Press Club "Blogger or Journalist" panel. As has been speculated elsewhere, this is CLEAR PROOF that the National "Whore" Press Club is a RIGHT WING CLOWN SHOW!!!!!! The talking points are as follows:

1. JEFF GANNON IS A REAL REPORTER. (Repeat until true.)

2. BLOGGERS GET THINGS WRONG AND ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED. They are good for penis jokes and for passing time in the news room when not taking dictation from the White House.

3. THIS PANEL IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT. What we decide here could seal the fate of mainstream media for GENERATIONS to come.

4. A REACHAROUND IS ALWAYS APPRECIATED.

Give up? Well, nevermind, it doesn't really matter. What's important is that Mr. P-Niss is finally getting the recognition he deserves from the National Press Club in Washington DC. Mr. P-Niss is engorged with pride. Mr P-Niss would gladly accept an invitation to appear at next weeks National Press Club Blogging Invitational conference on blogging - especially since the theme of the program seems to have something to do with stupid ugly cartoonish dickheads. And, even more especially, Mr P-Niss would be delighted to spend an exciting penetrating evening rubbing himself against - I mean with! - I mean rubbing shoulders with! - with the lovely and delightful Anna Marie Cox. Yes. Whew...hoo boy.

But, sadly, Mr. P-Niss has other penetrating engagements he must attend to. For instance: today Mr. P-Niss will be in Phoenix Arizona charming the pants off the loser.... I mean loom - loom-inaries, yes, assembled luminaries, and dignitaries, and honorable members of the Phoenix City Council. And next week Mr. P-Niss will be very busy stroking his putter at this years True P-Niss Suck-n-Bang Putt Putt Theocracy Invitational in Scottsdale. So, as you can see, Mr P-Niss is a very busy P.


In any event Mr P-Niss would like to extend a warm thank you to National Press Club for recognizing the contribution Mr. P-Niss has made to blogging over the last fifteen years. Or at least it seems like fifteen years. As you can see Mr. P-Niss has finally come to the conclusion that blogging amounts to little more than some lonely frustrated juvenile exercise in shameless self gratification.

On the other hand (hee hee), I'll bet none of you jerk-offs at the National Press Club have a golf tournament named after you - now do you? Heh heh.

Once again, thanks a bunch NPC, and as we like to say around the ball washer at the Suck-n-Bang Country Club - keep it clean and don't let your meat loaf!

*

Via the Agonist:

An Open Letter To The National Press Club

Members of The National Press Club,

We, the undersigned bloggers, are very concerned about how liberal political bloggers are being systematically under-represented and belittled in the mainstream media, academic settings and media forums. By being intentionally excluded away from these venues, we are effectively pushed out of the discourse of opinion-leaders. The result is that the conventional wisdom about blogging, politics and journalism, as it concerns liberal blogs, becomes a feedback loop framed by the Conservatives and their media allies.

More on topic including full letter.

Feedback via Romenesko/Poynter.org

Keep Guckert/Gannon away from the press club
3/29/2005 4:17:28 PM

From GEORGE HENSON: The problems and questions that arose as a result of the James Guckert affair are many. Mainly, the White House facilitated a fake journalist’s entry into the White House and, by doing so, perpetrated a fraud against the American people. And since that time has participated in a cover-up. The National Press Club, by not taking a stronger and more vocal position in the matter acted as an accomplice after the fact. Their latest action can only be described as pandering, in the truest sense of the word, i.e. pimping.

James Guckert continues to pose as a journalist. He feels no shame, no remorse and no sense of obligation to journalistic ethics or standards. Now, the National Press Club has given him a new forum from which to assert his self-awarded "journalistic credentials." He is using the invitation to defend the delusional claim that he is a journalist.

Inviting James Guckert to participate in a panel whose purported objective is to dissect the charade that Guckert carried out is tantamount to allowing a defendant to sit in on jury deliberations. A panel of reputable journalists and bloggers can easily examine the fall-out from the Guckert affair without giving Guckert a public platform from which to ply his paphian trade.

I guess Karen Ryan was unavailable.

*

Dead today of a brain tumor at 67. He came a long way from the kid in Louisiana whose great-grandparents were slaves, and whose grandfather was a sharecropper. Love him or hate, you have to admit the man could make some drama. Yes, he got OJ Simpson off, but he also won an $8 million+ verdict for Abner Louima, who was tortured by NYC cops, was a great civil rights advocate and philanthropist, and inspired the Jackie Chiles character on Seinfeld.

Oyez.

Well, no, because that could interfere with the operation of The Holy Earpiece. Anyhow:

President Bush said the differences "will be resolved through debate and persuasion instead of force and intimidation."
(via AP)

Right.

Oh, He's talking about Iraq.

That's alright, then.

You have been deselected. Next "selective service" window please:

...A retired U.S. Marine officer and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense says America's armed services are not like the civilian world, where everyone should be given an equal opportunity to participate. In fact, he contends, there are thousands of reasons why the military uses the phrase "selective service." As the U.S. armed forces continue to try to win the war against Islamofascism abroad, the Pentagon is continuing to deal with what some critics view as the liberal social engineering agenda in Washington, DC. But despite what many of the equality proponents protest, Colonel (Ret.) Ronald Ray points out that there is no inherent right to serve in the military, and many things can disqualify people from eligibility to serve. For example, he notes, "Today if you have three speeding tickets, they view that as an indication of your lack of subordination. They can keep you out of the Marine Corps. And obviously you don't have blind pilots, obviously you don't have disabilities -- flat feet, hernia." Although equal opportunity may work well in academia and in terms of civilian employment, the colonel asserts, "in the military, all service is selective service -- even the draft was called the 'Selective Service Act.' There is no right to serve your country in peacetime or in war time." The military has standards, Ray adds, and in a time of war, he feels they should go up rather than down. [Chad Groening]

Muslim Menace bewitches Christian Republic! Well, thank gawd the commie "International Jew" consipracy has given up on the project:

...An author and terrorism expert hopes his new book will be a wake-up call to all Americans. Investigative journalist Paul Sperry claims Washington, DC, has allowed radical Muslims to penetrate the U.S. military, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security. Sperry is a media fellow at the Hoover Institution. His book is called Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington. The author believes political correctness has allowed Muslims to gain access to all of the major U.S. security agencies. "They've penetrated our institutions, but we have not penetrated theirs -- and that is a scary proposition," he says. "This book is a wake-up call to Americans across the country. We've been played for suckers about this Islamic threat. We've been lulled into a false sense of security." Sperry says his book will make readers "hustle-proof," providing them with "cold, hard, politically incorrect facts and truths you have not heard since 9-11, and you deserve to hear without the PC spin out of Washington." Another area of concern Sperry points out is America's prison system, which he says has become the top recruiting ground for al Qaeda. And now, the author warns, terrorist recruiters have worked their way into U.S. public schools as well. [Chad Groening]

Brains drained at the schoolhouse door! Gasp!:

...Evangelist Ray Comfort is encouraging parents to weigh the pros and cons of sending their children to public schools. In his new book, How to Bring Your Children to Christ, Comfort says parents have a biblical mandate to teach their children about God; however, he asserts that too many mothers and fathers are abdicating that responsibility by sending their children to secular schools. "Parents need to think twice about who they're letting [teach] the children," the author says. "Even some Christian schools seem to lack some depth nowadays, so we need to be prayerful about who we allow to raise our children." As an alternative to a secular or substandard education, Comfort encourages parents to consider home schooling their children, not only to ensure their spiritual growth but to prepare them for what they may face in a secular university setting. "I preach open air and I witness a lot," the evangelist says, "and the most antagonistic and proud and self-righteous people are university students. I mean there's a brain drain -- their brains are getting drained as they get in the door. There are more atheists in universities than there are in secular society." Comfort urges parents to consider home education as the best opportunity for children to receive a solid, biblical foundation and Christian understanding of the world. [Allie Martin]

Fabulous! - scientific discoveries from the bone pickers at AiG:

...Scientists with Answers in Genesis (AiG) say a recently discovered dinosaur bone has dealt a stunning blow to the scientific establishment's "age-old" claims about fossil dating and the evolution belief system. Nevertheless, the biblical creationist group doubts that mainstream scientists will discard their entrenched beliefs in light of this new fossil evidence. A few years ago, a Tyrannosaurus rex bone was unearthed containing soft, fibrous tissue and complete blood vessels -- including red blood cells and tissues that should have dissolved millions of years ago according to the evolutionists' timescale. According to AiG, the remarkable discovery by evolutionist Dr. Mary Schweitzer of the University of Montana strongly supports the idea that dinosaur fossils are not millions of years old at all, but were mostly fossilized under catastrophic conditions a few thousand years ago at most.

Please pass through the magical language machine, ignore the beautiful mosaics, and step directly into the melting pot:

...An Iowa congressman has introduced a bill that would make English the official language of the United States. Republican Steve King is calling it the "English Language Unity Act of 2005." The legislation would require the U.S. government to conduct business in English, but would not put restrictions on languages spoken in the private sector. King says too many immigrants are being told that they do not have to learn English to live in the United States. "And the message that they get -- mostly from the most extreme liberals -- says 'you don't need to learn this language, we can accommodate your culture; just come here and create your own enclave -- that's America, this beautiful, multi-cultural mosaic rather than a melting pot.'

More slackjawed boing-eyed whoop and holler via: Commentary & News Briefs March 28, 2005| Compiled by Jenni Parker (Agape Press)

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Via The Wall of Separation:

March 28, 2005
Ohio Restoration Project: Bringing Theocracy To The Heartland

A fundamentalist congregation in Ohio is spearheading a right-wing Christian drive to dominate politics in the Buckeye State. Fairfield Christian Church of Lancaster has an ambition so great that it caught the attention of The New York Times, which recently reported that the church and its allies are "mounting a campaign to win control of local government posts and Republican organizations, starting with the 2006 governor's race."

The March 27 Times piece focused on the "Ohio Restoration Project," which entails efforts to mobilize thousands of like-minded religious leaders - dubbed "Patriot Pastors" - to help register at least "half a million new voters, enlist activists, train candidates and endorse conservative causes in the next year."

Church leaders say they are fed up with the Ohio Republican Party. According to the church's senior pastor, Russell Johnson, the party is not doing near enough to cultivate its Christian supporters. Johnson told the Times that his state's GOP "is out of touch with its base" and "acts as if it lives in Boston, Mass."

So what does Johnson plan to do about Ohio's GOP? He plans to work hard to yank moderate Republicans from public office and replace them with "godly" politicians who will undermine reproductive rights, stifle civil rights of gays, bring organized prayer to the public schools and teach creationism in science courses.

[...]

"There is a warfare for the heart and soul of America," Johnson continues. "This is a battle between the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell. Millions of souls weigh in the balances and the church stands at the Critical Crossroads of history!"

Yankers! God's Own Party horde devouring it's own "ungodly" assholes?

Let em eat tail.

*

10 moments of silence:

"And here, in silence, are seven more."
That is how Jim Lehrer has ended many of his News Hour broadcasts during the last two years. The reference is to American military men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan; their names, faces, ranks, hometowns, and service branches are presented, one by one. There is no background music or commentary. Only the mournful numbers vary.

As the war enters its third year and casualties continue, the question will not go away: What will it take to end the silence, to rouse the public from its torpor?

Disclosures about systematic torture of Iraqi prisoners by American military and CIA interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison, along with physical and psychological abuses of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba?

Silence.

Silence continues... via Common Dreams.org: Nation in a Persistent Torpid State, by David Rossie

Meanwhile, from the C-NoNews network: Look, over there, Michael Jackson fondling a grifter!

*

Late at night. Rain. In a funk. Awakened by a nightmare. God’s own drunk. Fuzzy tongue and moldy brain. So, reach over in the gloom and find the “on” switch for the radio, hoping for late night jazz. And behold! What voice through yonder three-inch speaker breaks?

Why, it’s Arundhati Roy, of course. No mistaking that soothing voice.

And no mistaking that, behind that calm voice, is a fearless recipe for global unity on the issues nearest and dearest our hearts.

First, they replayed an old favorite: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free)

Then, they played her Sydney Peace Prize speech: Suman's Realm " Arundhati Roy in Sydney

Basically, Arundhati’s recipe for fighting the one-dimensional machine of destruction is an auld one, but one proven effective time and time again over the centuries: Direct Action Brings Satisfaction. (Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

First, she points out how easy it is for her and me, and others who comparatively have it made, to avoid direct action. She points out that typically, people only resort to direct action (occupying corporate/government offices, boycotts, strikes, etc.) when they are desperate and fearless. When they have nothing to lose. Corrente has frequently noted the phenomenon of the frog warming in the pan, unaware of its own imminent demise in a boil. Religion and teevee are the opiates of the people, and all that. Then she points out that that much of the population of the planet is in exactly that position—nothing to lose. Hence the tactics they employ. She rejects armed revolt, and points out that demonstrations and rhetoric that have no financial consequences for the one-dimensional machine of destruction are of limited value, and fearlessly suggests that only by bringing the system to its knees financially can success be achieved. Then, she goes so far as to suggest three shocking things:

It CAN be done.
And those champions of peace and justice in the wealthiest nations are best positioned to do it through direct action.
We don’t have to wait until the pan is boiling and we are scalded.

I fell back to sleep with that sweetly-accented voice, sprinkled with the passion for justice of Emma Goldman, murmuring in my ear through the weak signal from our beloved public radio station, and when I awoke this morning I realized I had to start taking this direct action thing more seriously. I’m going to start, as she suggested, with a simple first move: inventory all of the shit lying about the farm here that in one way or another supports the corporations that are strangling the planet, and find a way to do without them. Maybe I can start trying to brew my own ethanol for the truck. How hard could it be? It's basically Everclear. I dunno. It’s a beginning. There has to be more action to take. You know, that whole act locally, think globally thing.

If you haven’t heard these speeches, take a look. Better to hear her speak them, but reading them will do. If you have heard them, you know what I mean. First time I heard “Instant Mix Democracy,” I was glued to the seat of the truck in front of the café; couldn’t leave until it was over.

The fools is up doin' it again. Maybe you'd hope you'd heard the last of Congress on the Schiavo debacle. Maybe you believed them when they said the bill they passed was narrowly tailored only for her specific case. Maybe you'd better check your bullshit detector.

In the NYTimes today, I rise to see this:

"Congress Ready to Again Debate End-of-Life Issues"

Not content to let this dying dog lie in peace, the motley fools on the hill are dragging it off its deathbed and dressing it up like an organ grinder's monkey, in preparation for taking it to the debutante's ball, where they will all take turns whisking its moldering corpse around the dance floor in the ghoulish hope of re-election points from the audience:

"After a string of fruitless legal and legislative efforts, the central question in the Terri Schiavo case - Who makes end-of-life decisions when the patient's wishes are disputed? - is headed back to Capitol Hill, where debate over broader legislation has already begun.
On Sunday, lawmakers of both parties agreed that Congress has a role to play in such cases and should contemplate legislation that would give added legal recourse to patients like Ms. Schiavo. While it is difficult to predict whether such a measure could pass, the Schiavo case has clearly pushed thorny questions about end-of-life care to the fore on Capitol Hill, as well as in state legislatures around the nation.
The Republican-controlled House already passed a bill that would allow the federal courts to review cases like Ms. Schiavo's, in which the patient has left no written instructions, the family is at odds and state courts have ordered a feeding tube to be withdrawn. That bill evolved into one that was narrowly tailored to Ms. Schiavo.
Now some Democrats, prodded by advocates for the disabled, say Congress should consider whether such a law is needed."

No, it wasn't enough that we were all treated to one tragic circus. We need to get our noses in where they don't belong and make everyone's end-of-life decisions for them. And why? Because a few disability rights groups and religious conservatives think the average American can't tell the difference between someone in a wheelchair who wants to live, and a pathetic brainstem wearing a nightgown. So off they go:

"Already, the Senate health committee has scheduled a hearing next week to debate the Schiavo case and discuss "the urgent need for Congress to examine current health care practices used in the care of non-ambulatory individuals," according to a statement by the chairman, Senator Michael B. Enzi, Republican of Wyoming.
The hearing was initially scheduled for Monday; in a fruitless effort to keep Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube from being withdrawn, Mr. Enzi called Ms. Schiavo and her husband, Michael, as witnesses, noting pointedly that it was a federal crime for anyone to impede their testimony. Later, when Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube was withdrawn, Mr. Enzi postponed the hearing until April 6."

Enzi already has a finely-tuned sense of humor, doesn't he, subpoenaing a woman whose cortex has liquified to speak before the Senate? (Not that they would have noticed a problem.) And that "urgent need to examine current healthcare practices" might make better sense to some if they thought to deal with the urgent needs of the 45 million uninsured. But why quibble? Personally, I can't think of a better boon to my quality of life than the state forcing itself between me and my doctor while it lets my uninsured daughter flounder without the medical attention she needs.

But don't worry. The decision to spend money and resources on people who don't want them will only be made for those with the ability to pay, and can be fiscally balanced by keeping poor people off the tubes. And once the Republicans get their malpractice caps passed, that will include a lot more of us.

Drop-kick the moron Reynolds into the duck pit!

"Mr. Annan, by contrast, is a trimmer and temporizer who has stood up for tyrants far more than he has stood up to them." ~ Glenn Reynolds (see Riggsveda's post below)

Commander Make Believe and President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan:

The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.

[...]

Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death. ~ back here

Rumsfeld and Karimov:





More tyrants? again, back here

*

This op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds says it all:

"Things are going badly for Kofi Annan. The Oil for Food scandal has revealed U.N. behavior regarding Saddam Hussein's Iraq that ranges from criminally inept to outright corrupt. Rape and pedophilia by U.N. peacekeepers haven't gotten the kind of attention they'd get if American troops were involved, but the scandals have begun to take their toll. And the U.N.'s ability to serve its crowning purpose--the "never again" treatment of genocide that was vowed after the Holocaust, and re-vowed after Cambodia and Rwanda--is looking less and less credible in the wake of its response to ongoing genocide in Darfur. "

Less credible as opposed to the strong presence the US has made in Sudan; its continuing containment of the atrocities in the Congo; the key role it played in stopping the genocide in Rwanda; and the countless lives saved by its intervention in the killing fields of Cambodia. Yes, we here in the States have built up an impressive human rights record over the last 45 years, and we can stand on the Segway of righteous indignation along with George Bush himself and say, "Shame! Shame on you Kofi Annan! You see where this multilateral world cooperation thing gets you?"

Glenn goes on to the next damning observation:

"Mr. Annan, by contrast, is a trimmer and temporizer who has stood up for tyrants far more than he has stood up to them."

Yes, he certainly looks bad when compared to our own leaders: Nixon in Cambodia and Chile, the Phillipines and Iran; Reagan in Nicaragua, South Africa, Panama and El Salvador; the support of the School of the Americas and the funneling of military aid to Iraq; Bush I in Indonesia; Bush II in Uzbekistan, Egypt, and Pakistan. And of course, the home-grown humanitarian abuse and murders of prisoners across the American gulag.

But Glenn pulls out his best rapier and thrusts it, thusly:

"The U.N. is losing what shreds of moral legitimacy remain, even among those who were once sympathetic, as the extent of its corruption becomes too obvious to ignore. There's talk of replacing--or, more diplomatically, supplementing--the U.N. with a Community of Democracies that would draw its support from legitimate governments, not thugs and kleptocrats. At the very least, it seems likely that the U.N. will soon come under enormous pressure to reform. "

Kleptocrats! Did you hear that? Why, we here in the states would know nothing of the stealing of an election, would we? And thugs? Preposterous!

I'm convinced, Glennikins. Oust the bastard. Let's let Georgie's minions, moral paragons that they are, pick a suitable successor.

and why you might be interested in finding out:

The "American Center for Voting Rights"? Oh gee... why it's another GOP disinformation bubble machine. GOPhigger.

Via The Brad Blog:

Help Counter the ACVR/GOP Disinformation Campaign!
Take Action Now! The entirely and purposefully misleading 31-page report on Election Problems in Ohio that was produced by the fake "voting rights" group calling themselves the "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR) is now serving it's purpose by being propigated on Rightwing blogs and Internet sites who either don't bother to look into something before posting it, or (perhaps more likely) look, but don't care.

You are now needed to counter this dis-info!

A Google search for "American Center for Voting Rights" will produce several sites which are now running this report and which refer to this group as "non-partisan" (which all BRAD BLOG readers should know by now is a scam...See this, this, this and this if you don't already know that!)

Please, continue reading HERE on that.

REFRESH:

And while we're at it...(remember this?) What do Tom Freeney (R-FL), voterigging software, and Chinese espionage agents have in common? Updates...

Also via The Brad Blog:

On December 6th, 2004 , The BRAD BLOG (www.bradblog.com) published a sworn affidavit by Florida software programmer Clint Curtis. In his affidavit and videotaped sworn testimony presented before members of the U.S. House Judiciary committee, Curtis claims to have been asked by U.S. Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) to design a "vote-rigging software prototype". This request took place in October 2000 during a meeting at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), a computer consulting firm in Oviedo, Florida.

[...]

Curtis also reported in his affidavit and to the Florida State Inspector General that YEI was employing an illegal Chinese alien by the name of Hai Lin "Henry" Nee who was inserting "wire-tapping modules" into sensitive database programs which YEI had built for NASA and other companies. Curtis also alleged that the brother of Mrs. Li-Woan Yang, the YEI CEO, had been a deported Chinese spy.

Since the time of Curtis' allegations, Hai Lin "Henry" Nee has been indicted, and pleaded guilty to charges of espionage related to attempting to send chips used in Hellfire anti-tank missile systems to China. The arrest was the result of a four year sting operation by the Homeland Security Office's Immigration and Customs Export (ICE) bureau. Although Nee admitted in his pleading to have sent such chips "ten to twenty times in the past year" to China, he was sentenced (10/2004) to just three years probation and a $100 fine!

[...]

...LOCAL MEDIA GETS ON THE STORY...

Even though this scandal links a powerful Republican Congressman to Chinese espionage, the national media has largely ignored the story so far. But in Florida , several local newspapers have jumped on the story, including the Seminole Chronicle, Oviedo Voice, St. Petersburg Times, and New Times Broward Palm-Beach. While some reports have been more responsible than others, all largely confirm the bulk of items reported by The BRAD BLOG and many of the claims by Curtis' himself.

A summary of links to previous article and info on this story appears up-top The Brad Blog page (www.bradblog.com).

Thanks to Ron at Why Are we Back In Iraq for the heads up.

*

"President Bush's New Public Face: Confident, Comfortable and 'Impishly Fun'".

From Lizzie's Diary:

Note to self: Make sure to check kneepads carefully after Judy's been using them.

Funny how Izvestia on the Hudson can't manage to run a story about Bush's Partei rallies where he only appears before supporters, and where the supposedly spontaneous "conversations" are rehearsed, multiple times, the night before. Froomkin's been all over that one, but what do we get from The Times? Well, we get nothing, unless watching Lizzie clean Inerrant Boy's knob counts as not nothing. Sheesh, you'd think she had a bald head!

So, in other Easter news, the Michigan Legislature is considering a bill that will allow the denial of medical treatment to gays—under the banner of "religious freedom," of course.

Nice. Could there be any clearer evidence that today's Fundamentalists have nothing to do with Christ or Christianity?

Allow me to quote Jesus (Luke 10:25-37):

25: And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"
26: He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read?"
27: And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
28: And he said to him, "You have answered right; do this, and you will live."
29: But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
30: Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
31: Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.
32: So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33: But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion,
34: and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35: And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, `Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.'
36: Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?"
37: He said, "The one who showed mercy on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Class, who are the robbers in this story? (Why, that would be the Republicans!)

And class, who are the priest and Levites who rode by? (Why, that would be the Fundamentalists!)

So, class ... Who are the good Samaritans? Hmmm???

And isn't it interesting that here Jesus identifies "life" ("Do this, and you will live") with taking the actions that really help your neighbor?

Fundamentalism in the vernacular: Fuck the Good Samaritan and the donkey he rode on.

Lynne Cheney at the White House Easter Egg Roll (via Kos)

And Lynn is shilling reading her very own book, too: "America: A Patriotic Primer."

Of course, I do see her point: after all, only The White Race is capable of understanding true patriotism, so including The Others would only be wasting everyone's time. It's really quite charitable, in its own way...

Preternaturally alert reader MJS channels The Good Doctor once again:

As the moon rises over the Yellow Rose of Texas, a cerebral cortex liquifies against a darkened sky. Across the spinal fluid lagoon, the Bad Magician does the back stroke and finds the deep end covered with the skin of Tom DéLay. The Bad Magician fashions a kayak out of the skin, climbs inside, and floats upstream into a spurting artery of America. His epidermis lost, Tom DéLay crawls onto the shore, clutching his throat as millipedes devour his hands. The last light of the dying moon spills white poison into a spoon: the Bad Magician feeds DéLay 10,000 lies in liquid form. The Bad Magician learns how to make a wall out of Tom DéLay, but it falls and crumbles like leaves born too soon.

Tom Délay awakens from the dream and blames the Children for the tic in his eye. The Children turn and run.

Yikes. Where's th-that ibogaine?

OK, now that Riggsveda has handled the positive stuff (and brilliantly, I might add), back to your irregularly scheduled de-programming!

Actually, the headline wrote itself; I just had to look around for the story. And there are so damn dratted many of them. This one's good, though. From WaPo:



So, just thinking through the checklist here, MBNA's covered with the Credit bill; but Morgan Stanley, Price Waterhouse, and Merrill Lynch—the Social Security phase-outs for them, isn't it?

Actually, the sweetest part of all in this story is contrast between the editors and the technical people (or whoever names the stories and the images at Pravda on the Potomac).

The headline: "Biggest Donors to Bush and the GOP"

The URL:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/graphics/investors_032705.html,

Reiforced by the GIF:

investors_032705.gif

Gee, investors, huh? It's almost like they're saying Bush is owned, isn't it? I guess that's what He means by the ownership society!

Guess that whole flip-flopping thing was just another little bit of WPS (Winger Projection Syndrome), eh?

He flew halfway across the country in a vain effort to save her life, but in the week since, President Bush has retreated back to his ranch and remained largely out of sight as the nation wrestled with the great moral issues surrounding the fate of Terri Schiavo.

The president has said nothing publicly about the bitterly contested case since Wednesday, when reporters asked about it and he said he had exhausted his powers to intervene. On Saturday, as he used his weekly radio address to express condolences to the victims of a school shooting in Minnesota and extol a "culture that affirms life," he did not mention the most prominent culture-of-life issue in the public eye.
(via WaPo)

Breaking the law and trashing the Constitution never bothered Bush up 'til now, and as for fluffing the base, why, that's what he's best at! So why hasn't Bush sent in Federal marshalls? They're not in Iraq! Or why not have the Department of Homeland Security handle it? Why hasn't our famously decisive and deeply principled Dear Leader done anything? It's a complete mystery to me—especially since we know He doesn't read the papers, or make decisions based on polling data....

NOTE: I love it how the wingers, with an eye to the upcoming battles over Bush's latest crop of extremist judges, are trying to frame this as a battle over an "out of control" judiciary, when it's exactly the fact that the judges aren't under their political control that bugs them so badly...

Not one one negative thing will I post today.

Today I am sick of myself and my gloomy, fault-finding, "everything is so fucked up" tirades. Today embodies human acknowledgement of the eternal cycle of life, and I'm on that bus.

For Christians, it's Easter. For pagans, its Ostara. It's the Vernal Equinox, however you look at it, and it marks the rebirth of life and the resurrection of what was only temporarily dead.

Easter and the rites of spring are rife with fertility symbols: eggs, rabbits, leavened risen breads. In the myths, Persephone is returned to her mother, Demeter, who celebrates by raising life from the very ground again. The celtic crone, the Calliach, having slept through the dead winter, awakens restored to maidenhood as the Bride.


The cycle of life and death eats its tail, like the cosmic Worm Ourobouros, and there is no end or beginning, only the infinite continuity in which death is merely a station platform where you wait for the next train.

Eostre, the goddess of Spring, is breathing new life into everything. The outrages of the past few weeks, with their emphasis on clinging to this little piece of the world at all costs, symbolize what we have forgotten about the universe: that nothing is ever lost. Life serves death, which then returns the favor.

Carl Sagan used to say "We are made of star stuff!" in that almost breathless voice of his. And it's true. Our component physical elements will eventually come apart and dissolve into the greater cosmos, and re-meld into the world in preparation for being once more incorporated into the bodies of new people, animals, and stars. Even without going into the controversial issue of the human soul, we can safely say that we will live on through eternity, and even if we did no good in this life, maybe we will in another.

So Happy Easter, Happy Ostara, Happy Vernal Equinox to you all. Enjoy your rebirth, in this life and the next.

Welcome terreplein dwellers. In the immortal words of the cosmic pilot Criswell:

Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future.

WWMJ ask?:

America: Why are there so few gay astronauts?

The responses nearly write themselves. Larry Summers will either face censure from the academic community or be hailed as its martyred prince for speaking the un-PC truth that homosexuals have a genetic aversion to space travel. Kevin Drum, after a severe upbraiding from the gay astronaut community, will contritely admit that there are more gay astronauts than he had previously thought and wish them well. Maureen Dowd will pen a piece in which she states that gay astronauts don't want to date her because her success and self-reliance are too intimidating for them. Susan Estrich will state that she hopes her children will grow up in a world where gay astronauts travel freely through the cosmos. One of the RenewAmerica chuds will point to the presence of homosexuals in the space program as evidence that Rapture is nearly upon us. John Derbyshire will propose a constitutional amendment outlawing gay astronauts from the space program; Eugene Volokh will state that while he doesn't see the immediate necessity for such an amendment, he won't definitively state his opposition to it. Boifromtroy will claim a gay astronaut came onto him at Here. Wall Street Journal will admonish the left that if they ever want to see gay astronauts up in space, they better line up behind President Bush's Purple Mountains Majesty Act that allows the strip-mining of national parks. Cathy Seipp will bitch that her perspective as a freelancing single mother makes her the obvious go-to person for gay astronaut punditry, but the elite media's long-standing bias against Cathy Seipp prevents her from getting published.

Forsooth: Celebrate... Resurrection...

homo gallacticus: Dr Smith. Remember. "Lost In Space". Stick with me here... "The Ruler" Bunny Breckenridge. No? Yes? Well...

Imagine: Andrew Sullivan orbiting Venus.

Born of Chaos at the moment of Mother Earth. Google these words 2005 years from now - time flys - it'll be here before you know it. Really:

Colonel Tom Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?

Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots.

Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster.

Eros: No, you hold on. First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite.

Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, there's no such thing.

[...listen...]

Colonel Tom Edwards: You speak of Solaranite. But just what is it?

Eros: Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it.

Recall the immortal chilling words of the "Gravedigger":

I don't like hearing noises, especially when there ain't supposed to be any.

"The Greatest Story Ever Told." meets "The worst movie ever made."

Bake a ham for Jesus.

*

God knows I try. But it's never enough!

CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy unfolding in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal -- without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the raging debate outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.

The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family standing vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman -- U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and a ventilator, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay.

Then, freshly re-elected to a third term in the House, DeLay waited all but helpless for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to champion political intervention the Schaivo case. He pushed emergency legislation through congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And he is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.
(The Not-the-New-York-naturally-but-the-Los-Angeles Times via Kos)

Um.

Well.

That was different, because, well, um.

Apparently, a lot of Republicans are asking Delay ('Why did you put us through this?'

Why indeed? Maybe a little WPS (Winger Projection Syndrome) going on here?

And, naturally, they want Kenneth Blackwell elected Governor:

In a manifesto that is being circulated among church leaders and on the Internet, the group, which is called the Ohio Restoration Project, is planning to mobilize 2,000 evangelical, Baptist, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic leaders in a network of so-called Patriot Pastors to register half a million new voters, enlist activists, train candidates and endorse conservative causes in the next year.

"Endorse conservative causes," eh? And these guys are tax exempt why, exactly?

The initial goal is to elect Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a conservative Republican, governor in 2006. The group hopes to build grass-roots organizations in Ohio's 88 counties and take control of local Republican organizations.

"The establishment of the Ohio Republican Party is out of touch with its base," said Russell Johnson, the pastor of the Fairfield Christian Church and the principal organizer of the project. "It acts as if it lives in Boston, Mass."
(via Times)

Sweet Jeebus.

"We're very confused that you have a Republican Party platform, and yet people running for higher office pay no attention to it," said Phil Burress, the leader of the Issue 1 [anti-gay marriage] campaign, who is also helping organize the Restoration Project. "Why don't they just become Democrats?" he asked.

By all means. In my Father's house are many mansions.

Andrew Cohen, the CBS legal analyst who has been a beacon of sanity in the Schiavo case, writes in the LA Times:

I don't blame the Schindlers and their lawyers for coming up with any and every argument they could think of. Grief expresses itself in many ways. By refusing to accept the Florida court decisions, Congress and the White House enabled this grief, falsely encouraged it and then used it, and the Schindlers, for political purposes. The federal courts, on the other hand, by refusing to change the Constitution for one family, acknowledged this grief and tried to deal with it as humanely as possible while still providing the finality that our legal system provides and that our society needs.

Memo to the wingers: "Get over it." We were right. Also moral.

Of course, it's unlikely that the wingers will devote themselves to getting over it. What they will do is devote themselves to payback.

And since the wingers can never admit to themselves how they've been used by their putative allies, all of whom are now backtracking from this fiasco as fast as they can, the payback will target the judicial system. And us. Let's just hope the wingers don't target judges with snipers the way they've targetted doctors.

UPDATE Or maybe not. Jebbie still has a few appeals going. It would be funny if he wins one, just as all the Republicans are saying "Terri who?"

The Schindlers are still holding out hope for an unlikely intervention by Gov. Jeb Bush, who has said he has done everything in his power to take custody of Schiavo.

The governor still had several legal appeals pending on a state request to let the social services agency take emergency custody of Schiavo, but he had no plans for new action, Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre said.
(AP)

UPDATE What Andrew Sullivan (!!) said:

Screw the science. Screw the court system. Screw the law. I disagree with Jonah that this is a minor spat with no long-term consequences. We are looking directly at the real face of contemporary Republicanism. Sane, moderate, thoughtful people are watching this circus and will not soon forget it.
(Daily Dish)

UPDATEA Hal Turner goes even more nuts.

Sir, what about the ongoing problem of an exit strategy for Iraq?

I would have to say Terri Schiavo.

Okay. What about the investigation of the Plame leak?

Terri Schiavo, again, of course.

And the question of how Mr. Guckert/Gannon got his press creds?

Have I mentioned Terri Schiavo?

Your approval ratings are dropping into the basement. What plans do you have to get them up?

I’m going to Terri Schiavo.

What about the lies regarding WMD’s in Iraq?

Terri, Terri, Terri.

What about the fake news stories that government agencies and corporations are circulating?

Those will be Schiavoed.

Securing shipping containers?

Schiavo, Terri.

And Halliburton, et al’s, continued gouging of taxpayers? And the mounting deficit? Cuts to important social programs in the proposed budget?

Um, let’s focus on Terri Schiavo?

And the question of how best to deal with North Korea and Iran?

More Schiavo.

Okay, fine. What about when the hapless poster child dies, and her public humiliation ends?

Mr. Rove is working on that. For now, let’s all just Terri Schiavo.

American Progress Report has a number of Easter eggs in this week's basket, including this on the willing collusion of medical personnel in the application of torture and abuse by the Army:

"The first rule of medical ethics is as clear as day: Do no harm. It's no wonder, then, that alarms went off when the recent Church report on detainee abuse noted a "growing trend in the global war on terror" for military psychiatrists and psychologists to take part in interrogations. According to Time magazine report, the practice has been ongoing for quite some time. Army investigators have already found that military-intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib "had psychiatrists review their 'interrogation plans' for Iraqi detainees," and the Army surgeon general is currently investigating "whether some doctors helped direct what amounts to psychological torture." Not all mental health professionals find this acceptable. An Army psychiatrist told Time, "We should not be using our abilities to make things difficult for a person," but admitted there has been some "blurring of the boundaries." Wonder what he's referring to?"

Back in November on my own site, I noted the evidence turned up by the Red Cross on "flagrant violations of medical ethics" by doctors and medical personnel down in Guantanamo (scroll down). Part of the story contained this:

"Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometimes directly, but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or B.S.C.T. The team, known informally as Biscuit, is composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators, the report said."

Biscuit. So cute. This would be the same "Biscuit" whose helpful memos turned up heavily redacted in the recent response to the ACLU's FOIA request for information on torture and interrogations. The same "Biscuit" Neil Lewis was referring to on PBS when he said:

"They would meet with the medical staff. They would meet with other people who knew about the detainees and make recommendations on how they could successfully be coerced into talking.
So... and the other part of the medical staff, the medical files were open. And this... this is an interesting issue because medical files between you, let's say, and your doctor, you assume are confidential. I'm not sure we expect them to be confidential at Guantanamo, although some of the ethicists say it should be, but I mean, this is Guantanamo; it's not Kaiser Permanente or some HMO."

I mean, let's not put too fine a point on it, shall we, guys and gals? We'd never go so far as to compare the slow degradation of our medical establishment with that of the Third Reich's, would we?

Not me.

Update: In retrospect, I'm feeling a touch bad about seeming to come down so hard on docs the last couple days. And just for clarification, I don't think, nor do I mean to insinuate, that all docs are reckless ethical monsters. If they were, they wouldn't be held in the godlike regard they are by so many millions. What I do believe, and have seen evidence of in the course of the real-life work I do, is that when serious ethical violations do crop up, the protective screen put up by their colleagues is so thick that it almost requires being a serial killer to have one's license revoked. As alert reader Rebecca noted, those guilty of the above incidents should have licenses pulled. But this is unlikely to happen, not just because the government is loathe to investigate, but also because the AMA, APA, and other like bodies won't be looking too closely either.

Nothing like a little eliminationist rhetoric, is there? Heed the words of The Messiah:

There's no hope now for Terri Schiavo, not unless one of the worms turn.

Just who all the worms are is not yet clear. Michael Schiavo, the errant husband, has never been this close to sending Terri into eternity. His behavior in this drama has been worm-like.

Or maybe the judges are the worms. The justices of the Florida and federal courts, who ordinarily revel in their ability to make up laws when they can't find one in the law books to suit their purposes of the moment, have decreed that there's no legal way to save Terri from the death by starvation and dehydration that convicted serial killers, murderers of children and others on death row would be spared.
(via Wasington Times)

Lovely.

What do you do with worms? Stamp them. Funny how the pro-lifers are so willing to "err on the side of" killing those who disagree with them (back)

Of course, we all knew "the tyranny of unelected judges" line was coming. Never mind that Judge Greer is elected (65%), a Baptist, and a Republican; the delusional wingers have never been ones to let the facts stand in the way of propagating a good meme.

Support the troops...by secretly gathering information about their family members.

Via DarkSyd:

"Rebecca Boettcher's son, a former Marine, was serving in Iraq when Baghdad fell. Her niece remains deployed there with the Missouri National Guard.

The 57-year-old Indialantic grandmother said she considers herself patriotic -- and was upset to learn the Brevard County Sheriff's Office targeted her as a "person of interest" in connection with an anti-President Bush rally Jan. 20 at Melbourne City Hall. Officials secretly gathered information about her."

More: The Sunshine Police State



*

Internationally renowned crazy person and self declared true-daddy of mankind, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, has apparently worked his messianic true-self into something of a true-lather over disclosure of his potential plans to auction off the Wash Times. Via John Gorenfeld:

Apparently alarmed that Rev. Moon's threat to sell the Washington Times appeared on this blog [http://www.iapprovethismessiah.com/], Jenkins, Esq., is now prefacing Moon speeches with this disclaimer:

THIS MESSAGE IS CONFIDENTIAL AND INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO WHICH IT IS ADDRESSED ANY DISCLOSURE TO OR USE BY ANYONE ELSE IS PROHIBITED. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution,forwarding, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited.

Gulp.

Kinda coincidental too since only earlier today the True P-Niss threatened to lower the boom at the Washington Chestnut unless everyone got right with the program. Heh, well, small world as they say.

Meanwhile, appears to be some kind of cosmic regal affair slated for 2012:

There remains the final 8-year course from now until the year 2012 and the kingship of the physical and spiritual world.

Perhaps the True P-Niss will finally be intiated into the Great Hall of Love Organs! Anyway, you can find out more about this stuff mentioned above by going right here: Preacher clamps down on leaks after Moon threatens sale of Times.

*

Jebbie, appalled by the forces he and the rest of the Republicans have unleased in the base ("You mean they actually believe this stuff?") appeals for calm:

Gov. Jeb Bush was alarmed enough to call for calm.

"There have been some reports that people are making threatening declarations if this process doesn't go their way," he said. "I urge all who want to help Terri Schiavo to honor her by remaining calm and acting peacefully, even though we are all very distressed by what's happening."

"Even though we may disagree with the courts," he added, "there is no justification for violent acts."
(via Daily News)

Gee, sounds like Jebbie's telling the Christian [cough] loons to "Get over it," doens't it?

Same deal with Little Green Footballs:

In an email, I’ve now been called a Nazi and told that I have a “kill the innocent campaign.”
(LGF)

Surprise!

Right. Now LGF wants to act all "responsible" (but not accountable! Oh no, no, no. They must be entertainers, just like Rush.) A little late in the day, wouldn't you say?

CNN

Meanwhile, FBI agents have arrested a North Carolina man on suspicion of soliciting offers over the internet to kill Michael Schiavo and Greer. Richard Alan Meywes of Fairview is accused of offering $250,000 for the killing of Schiavo and another $50,000 for the "the elimination of the judge who ruled against Terry."

Meywes was arrested without incident at his home around 5 p.m. Friday on charges of solicitation of murder and transmission of a threatening communication via interstate commerce, authorities said.

If convicted, Meywes could face up to 15 years in prison and up to $500,000 in fines. He is expected to make an initial court appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in Asheville, North Carolina.

Greer has been under 24-hour protection by two U.S. marshals due to increased threats against his life by those unhappy with his handling of the Schiavo case.

Looking more and more like '30s Germany, isn't it? But maybe, just maybe, with a much stronger foundation of Constitutional governance than Germany had, we can pull back from the abysss... And Reid's judo-like move of using the enemy's strength to destroy him is looking better all the time. The rock that's covered the Republican base is really being lifted for the first time, and people don't like the critters they see.

It will be interesting to see the coverage this story gets on the weekend. A real good test for "that liberal media," eh?

I love it when the joke comes first, and reality follows after. It's like, like, life imitating art, or something. So, farmer makes the joke in comments, and Bingo! On the very same day comes the story!

Another small chapter in the endless book of corporate thievery under The Money Power:

[Thomas Coughlin,] high-profile Wal-Mart Stores Inc. board member resigned Friday after an internal probe turned up evidence of financial improprieties of up to half-a-million dollars. Three Wal-Mart employees, including a company officer, also lost their jobs.
(via AP)

"But—but—they got the bad guys!" I hear you say.

"No, the smart bad guys heaved the stupid bad guy over the side so they could preserve their ill-gotten gains," say I.

Let's do the math: $500,000, you say... How trivial compared to hundreds of millions for Halliburton and trillions in our payroll taxes moved into the pockets of the uber-rich!

Then gain... The minimum wage is $5.15 an hour (before taxes). So this guy cheerfully appropriate oh, around 97,000 hours of work at WalMart. That's 2425 40 hour weeks, or 46 years of work. At WalMart.

Gee, it's almost like these guys think the people who work for them are slaves, or something. Whip 'em whenever they don't hop to it, and then take everything that they earn.

And that kind of "entitlement" is the real problem in America today, isn't it.

"Paulie Wal-Mart!"

UPDATE Interestingly, Thomas Coughlin is big on RFID. Not that these guys would do literally anything for a buck, like subcutaneous injection... Please refer all that crazy stuff to The Department of No! They Would Never Do That!

And whaddaya know! The same source tells us that Coughlin is on the board of ChoicePoint, the same company that helped Jebbie steal Florida 2000 for W by purging legitimate voters from the rolls.

Thieves like us, huh? Guy steals from his company, guy steals an election. Same deal. The fish really does rot from the head, doesn't it?

There's a poll at MSNBC about ANWR. If you're so inclined, here's the link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7065544/

Probably doesn't do any good, but it couldn't hurt, either.

I have absolutely no reason to be posting this picture except that it's so damned weird it's hypnotic. If anyone out there reads Japanese, I'd love to know what the governator is selling.

"If I had ever had a chance to meet [H]im face to face, I would have been moved to tears," she said. "We really believed that wherever [H]e went, flowers bloomed.
(via Times)

Poor deluded souls ....

I have no way of verifying this VILE RUMOR:

BREAKING NEWS

(Washington, DC, March 25, 2005) Lawyers for George H.W. and Barbara Bush took the case of their son, George W. Bush, to federal court today in an attempt to force doctors to remove the feeding tube that ties him to his guardian, Karl Rove. The tube was inserted many years ago when doctors realized that Mr. Bush could not function in an acceptable manner in society, or make decisions, even bad ones, without it.

The younger Bush, who has been force-fed reactionary tripe since birth, was declared to be in a persistent sociopathic state by a panel of doctors and the only thing they could do to make him seem capable of functioning in society was to run a feeding tube from Mr. Rove’s brain directly to the skull of Mr. Bush, through a special pump attached to his back. This tube has enabled him to function with at least a human appearance in front of pre-selected audiences with a minimum of symptoms.

The parents however, recently stated that their son had told them many years ago that he never wanted to be kept functional if he lost his ability to empathize, and they claim that the feeding tube is inhumane. However, they concede that without the tube, their son would probably recede into a complete sociopathic catatonia, with occasional fits of rage, unable to lead a normal life.

Others contend that the parents are only seeking to have the tube removed so that the family can be spared further embarrassment as the condition of their son deteriorates.

Seems they aren't going to politicize Good Friday like they did Palm Sunday. Thank God (literally, right?)

Officials announced that a House hearing set for Good Friday at Schiavo's Pinellas Park hospice was postponed. Schiavo and husband Michael had been subpoenaed to appear.
(via Orlando Sun Sentinel)

Guess they read the polls, just like Bush did. Of course, if the House Republicans had any balls actual principles other than holding onto power by any means necessary, they'd hold the hearings regardless.

Or maybe they're scared of all the loonies with guns they've riled up.

Just asking.


AP (via Oliver Willis.

That's what tends to happen when your cortex gets filled with cerebro-spinal fluid, and all your neurons go.

So, can we please stop the hysterical coverage that she's dying when, in every meaningful sense, she's been dead a long time?

For Christ's sake.

Literally.

but that does seem to have been the effect, hasn't it?

He has assumed a very high profile in this polarizing case just as Republicans are contemplating the void that will be left when President Bush begins his walk off the stage in two years or so. At a time when many of the most frequently mentioned possibilities to lead the party are moderates like John McCain and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the governor now certainly has a place, if he wants it, as a prime contender in what is shaping up as a fight to represent a conservative wing that has proved increasingly dominant.

"He has strongly identified himself with the Christian conservative movement," said Matthew Corrigan, a political science professor at the University of North Florida. "If the Republican Party is looking for someone with good ties with the Christian conservative movement, he is the one who is going to have them."
(via NY Times)

Of course, The Bush Power would never use the corpse of a brain-dead woman as a political football, not even to position themselves for 2008, any more than they would start a war to help them out in a mid-term election... Oh, wait...

Now they're making a big to-do over "progressive indexation", the most exciting new way of screwing the public since "personal accounts". I'm sick of this:

"Progressive indexation involves reducing the growth in benefits for people with middle and higher incomes, but letting the benefits keep rising for low-income retirees in future generations."

Sounds fair at first, no? But as is usually the case in infomercial con jobs, there's more! In this latest scheme, people in the lowest 30% of income earners would get slighly higher benefits than they would as SS stands today, but would be tied to rises in prices instead of wages, making a decline in one's standard of living likely.

"People in the middle third of incomes would see the combined benefits from Social Security and their private accounts slip to about 80 percent of the amounts promised today.
For people who earn more than $90,000 a year in today's dollars, the estimated benefits would be reduced by about one-third."

Do you hear a death-knell? Poor Social Security, it sure was good to know ya:

"Critics say the plan would gradually hurt public support for Social Security because it would cut into benefits for middle-income workers without reducing their taxes.
Jason Furman, an economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said high-income workers who contribute more in payroll taxes would eventually receive no more in Social Security benefits than workers at the bottom.
"This raises the question of whether broad political support for Social Security can be sustained if workers pay very different amounts of payroll taxes but most workers receive the same level of benefits," Mr. Furman wrote in a research note on Monday."

And it wouldn't eliminate the anticipated shortfall anymore than converting to "personal accounts" will, a fact readily admitted by Bush and the Republicans, so we'll still have that to deal with.

Can things become any plainer than this? For those who've kept their eyes and ears open, like William Greider of The Nation, the whole Social Security fluff-up has been nothing more than the assault to dismantle the program that has been planned and promised for years. SS was never meant to be anything but an insurance policy, guaranteeing a minimum level of income to keep people out of poverty, and conceived as a way for each generation to support the next. In that way, it has been one of the few ideas to come out of the founding of the republic that actually recognized the impact of the present on the far future, and took seriously the debt each preceding generation owes to the one that came before it. Any argument about its fate that digresses from this fact threatens to dissolve into the putrid river of disingenuous excuses the administration keeps spewing forth to drown the truth.

Greetings feeble minded mortal children of Republicanism. The True P-Niss demands your upright attention!


Stand erect and face the True P-Niss you simpering pussies! Listen:



(Fun stuff indeed. I hope that tugboat cracker Hal Lindsey isn't in the market for a cheap sheet. That's all I need. Heh. Just forget I said that please.)

Well, anyway, it has come to the attention of the True P-Niss, messianic father of humanity and savoir son of The Great Big Toe (sole creator of the vast cosmos and other stuff), that many conservative Republicans continue to resist the beckon of my righteous message. I say to you who resist the True P-Niss Calling to beware of such disregard for your oversight of The True P-Niss and the ways of the P-Nissification Church. Do not fondle this warning lightly! For the True P-Niss holds your sweaty quivering nuts in his firm grip and will crush them like garden snails if you do not heed his bidding.

I say to you this: I offer you a challenge which you will meet or I shall be forced to throttle your voices in your throats and make you silent and cast you into the viper jaws of effeminate liberalism where you will be forced to labor for eternity as hog tied bitches and mincing toothless eunichs slobbering like whelps in the pimply lap of SATAN!



I command you to write for me CORRECT ARTICLES which will deliver my message of truth to the peoples of world and shepherd them to glorious unity with the True P-Niss and the Higher Law and the humanitarian love mission of the P-Nissification Org.

Hear me, I have sheltered you, I have given to you my organ, my newspapers, my media panoply, to cloak you in the bitter cold of conservatism's winter, and to allow you to warm at my hearth asking only that you call attention to my sacred mission and the greater glories of The Great Big Toe who has sent me to you, to lead the people, on the path to True salvation and global happiness. The CAUSE of Toeism. Yet, obstinately, some of you still challenge me with your wavering silence! No more! No more I say to you NO MORE! I challenge you now! Do NOT diddle with my organ in such a manner or the I will strike your tongues mute, throw-up a demon seed into the plams of your hands, cut off your crooked keyborad typing fingers, and shove each one straight up your blasphemous collective ass one bloody twitching stub at a time!

I will saw down my 'Chestnut' as one gnashing beaver might down a sapling to construct a new dam. I will dissolve your dreams with my poisonous sting! And I will suck the precious bodily fluids from your wretched cavity the way a scorpion sucks the liquidated innards from a cockroach! And I will leave you behind a dry and lifeless shell.

Hear me fetchlings! You are nothing without the Higher Love of his holiness the True P-Niss. Do you understand what I am saying to you? You'd better, if you know what's good for you. Ok then. Report to the Great Hall of Cockrings and Coronations. Your GOP Congressman will meet you there and you will be escorted smiling to your next assignment.

Thank you for your attention; for the True P-Niss loves you as his cherished children and only asks for your blessings.

Yours in Toe,
- The Rev. Sum Dum Loon (The True P-Niss)

Pictured at left: The Great Big Toe, creator of the cosmos and other stuff.


Elsewhere in the News:

Amazing revelations about one man's quest to turn stoners into anti-drug zombies using Abu Ghraib-like methods -- and how he's been rewarded by the Bush family as a hero.Melvin Sembler, U.S. Ambassador to Italy

*

Now that Bush has wussed out, why hasn't the Republican candidate in 2008 sent in the cops, the Guard, or Wackenhut so he can pump more nutrients into Terri Schiavo's living corpse? (Hey, sounds kinda like the Bush policy on oil, but I digress.)

If the Bush Brothers had the courage of their convictions, that's exactly what they'd do.

So, how long before the fundy billionaires behind the VRWC—Scaife, Coors, and the usual suspects—go absolutely bananas, dump the Bushes, and go for someone even wackier? FTF...

Does anyone know how to touch hearts and minds like Georgie? Up in Minnesota he has been conspicuous by the absence of his sentiments:

"Native Americans across the country -- including tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence...
"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."

Well, I guess it all depends on whose children it is hanging on to life in the hospital. For instance, some people's children may be worth more, political-capital speaking, than others:

""The fact that Bush preempted his vacation to say something about Ms. Schiavo and here you have 10 native people gunned down and he can't take time to speak is very telling," said David Wilkins, interim chairman of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the North Carolina-based Lumbee tribe.
"He has not been real visible in Indian country," said former senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.). "He's got a lot of irons in the fire, but this is important."

Campbell must be such a comfort to his people, don't you think? Can you say "apple"?

I know, two in one day, but it's a good day for science!

Octopuses, known for using camouflage to avoid predators, have been observed apparently trying to sneak away by walking on two arms while pretending to be a bunch of algae. Two kinds of octopus were seen to use different ways of walking along the sea floor, researchers were reporting in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
(via AP)

"Walking on two arms while pretending to be a bunch of algae..."

Remind you of anything?

How about Bush tiptoeing and crawfishing his bad flippety-floppety self away from the Schiavo case, now that Karl 'n' Karen read him the numbers and he's figured out the issue's a loser?

Because, as Tom points put (back) if Bush had any balls was capable of standing on any principle other than pandering to the base without actually delivering, he would have sent in the National Guard by now....

I hate to think what that move would do to Army recruitment efforts, but heck, why not "err on the side of life"? After all, the kulturkampf is at stake!

Way way down at the end of WaPo's coverage:

Law enforcement officers and an attorney for Morton Plant Hospital, where Schiavo's tube was to be reinserted, told Felos and his legal team that the governor's office had notified them that agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were preparing to take custody of Schiavo and drive her to the hospital. Those phone calls prompted Felos to ask Greer to issue the order that was handed down late Wednesday afternoon blocking the state from taking custody and authorizing "each and every" sheriff's deputy in the state to stop any attempt to remove Schiavo from the hospice.
(via WaPo)

So, the unsung heroes, "law enforcement officers and an attorney" dropped a dime on Jebbies plans. Excellent.

Throughout the Bush Ascendancy's attempts to convert the rule of law into the personal will of the executive, and convert who have sworn oaths to uphold the law and serve their country into political operatives, whistleblowers and people of integrity have tried to stop them.

Unsung heroes: The Army JAGs who opposed Gitmo. Joseph Darby, who blew the whistle on Abu Ghraib.

And now these guys. They won't get a medal from Bush, any more than Joseph Darby did, but they have the knowledge that they did the right thing. And if they helped Terri Schiavo finally die with some shreds of dignity, that's enough.

Lately I know it's been hard to concentrate on the issues that are really hurting us, what with all this necrophilia in the air, but the court battles are winding down, Terri's no closer to getting up and walking, and the whole thing has been like waking up after a bad drunk: you thought you were going to be able to forget the whole mess, but when you come back to your senses your problems are still there, and you feel even worse than when it all started.


Who's buying the next round?

I've said it before, I'll say it again:

There is exactly one acceptable exit strategy for Republicans from Bush's plan to phase out social security: Complete capitulation, followed by prolonged grovelling.

And a little whimpering, and some tearful gestures of fealty to FDR's social compact would not go amiss.

Why then, would Dems want to be "responsible" and "bi-partisan" and deal with Social Security solvency? Because you just know anything halfway acceptable to the Dems is going to go into conference committee and come out as a Social Security phase-out.

The nuclear option is looking pretty good right now. In fact, letting the Republicans do whatever they want is looking like the nuclear option to me—far better to shut the place down. (Could this be another ingenious strategy by Harry Reid?)

The operational definition of "responsible" for Dems is doing everything possible to cripple Bush in 2006 and defeat his Republican spawn in 2008, before they complete their program of wreckage.

UPDATE And speaking of the nuclear option:

Elliot Mincberg of People for The American Way said Thursday he hoped fallout from the Schiavo case would hamper GOP efforts to change Senate rules and speed confirmation of controversial Bush court appointees.

Speaking of Republicans who are undecided on the rules change, he said, "When they look at the Schiavo case and look at where leadership led them and look at the fact that 70 percent of the people are against them, we'd hope they'd think two, three or four times before plunging over the cliff."
(AP)

Elliot, Elliot, Elliot.

The Republicans plunge over a cliff—what's not to like?

Of course, it's amazing that all this could happen in the 6,000 years it took to create the Earth, but let that pass:

First light seen from alien planets
In the new data, however, Spitzer directly observed the warm glows of infrared radiation from the two "hot Jupiters," as they are called. Hot Jupiters are extrasolar gas giants that zip closely around their parent stars, enough to heat their atmospheres to more than 1,340 degrees Fahrenheit.
(via Technology News)

What's even more amazing is that we have gas giants right here on earth—and some of them are even on the radio!

And God, how I wish they were extra-solar ...

Dogen Hannah over at a Knight Ridder paper in Contra Costa has an interesting one about the Army failing to make its recruiting goals for two months in a row:

The recruiting problems won't immediately hurt the Army's fighting capabilities, but they're another sign of how hard it's become to recruit new soldiers, military analysts said.

"The failure to meet recruiting goals can't really come as a big shocker to anybody," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a conservative think tank. "The war is unpopular, and the Army is bearing the brunt of the fighting.

"People who viewed the Army as a career move are probably finding that option less attractive as the war drags on," Thompson said. The Army's recruiting difficulties also suggest that "maybe the all-volunteer force only works well when we're not at war," he said.

Harvey [US Army] dismissed the possibility that the Army's manpower woes would revive interest in a draft. "The `D' word is the farthest thing from my thoughts. ... The all-volunteer force has proven its value."
The Army secretary said he's pushed the Army to come up with innovative ways of finding volunteers.

"We're going to be ... very proactive to pointing out to recruits and their parents the value of serving the country," Harvey said.

Charles Pena, the director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian policy organization in Washington, said he's skeptical such appeals will make a big difference. They might persuade people already inclined to enlist, he said, but otherwise fall on deaf ears.

"We're a very divided country on whether this is a war that matters," Pena said. "Iraq is not clearly a war of U.S. national survival. As long as it's not perceived that way, you're going to have a hard time with the patriotic appeal."

Okay, let’s see if I got this straight: There is no need for a draft because appealing to “patriotism” will make people want to enlist and go to fight a pointless war and we don’t need that many soldiers anyway, because the volunteer army is a great success, people are joining in droves, but just not right now because there’s a chance they’ll have to fight in a pointless war and maybe get killed or mutilated.

Do I have this straight?

via Army to use patriotic appeal to meet goal

Showing he has absolutely no sense of separation of powers, Bill Bennett says Governor Bush should just send in the troops:

In theoretical terms, this is a conflict between the separate powers of Florida government, as the judicial and executive branches have different opinions about what the Florida constitution requires. But in practical terms, Terri's life hangs in the balance: If the Florida supreme court prevails, she dies. If Governor Bush prevails, she lives. It is a mistake to believe that the courts have the ultimate say as to what a constitution means. Every governor is bound by oath to uphold and protect his state constitution. In the case of Florida, the constitution Mr. Bush pledged to defend declares that, "All natural persons, female and male alike, are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life and liberty..." If the governor believes that he and the Florida legislature possess the constitutional authority and duty to save Terri's life, then he is bound by his oath of office to do so.

James Madison remarked in the 51st Federalist that "auxiliary precautions" — constitutional mechanisms such as separation of powers and checks and balances — are necessary for limiting the power of government, a means for the end of protecting rights. But, Madison also reminded us, "a dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government." The Florida constitution echoes Madison when it states in Section 1 that, "All political power is inherent in the people."

The "auxiliary precautions" of Florida government — in this case the Florida supreme court — have failed Terri Schiavo. It is time, therefore, for Governor Bush to execute the law and protect her rights, and, in turn, he should take responsibility for his actions. Using the state police powers, Governor Bush can order the feeding tube reinserted. His defense will be that he and a majority of the Florida legislature believe the Florida Constitution requires nothing less. Some will argue that Governor Bush will be violating the law. We think he will not be violating the law, but if he is judged to have done so, it will be in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., who answered to a higher law than a judge's opinion. In so doing, King showed respect for the man-made law by willingly going to jail (on a Good Friday); Governor Bush may have to face impeachment because of his decision.

In taking these extraordinary steps to save an innocent life, Governor Bush should be judged not by the opinion of the Florida supreme court, a co-equal branch of the Florida government, but by the opinions of his political superiors, the people of Florida. If they disagree with their governor, they are indeed free to act through their elected representatives and impeach him. Or they can vindicate him if they think he is right. But he should not be cowed into inaction — he should not allow an innocent woman to be starved to death — because of an opinion of a court he believes to be wrong and unconstitutional.

Governor Jeb Bush may find it difficult to protect Terri's rights without risking impeachment. But in the great American experiment in republican government, much is demanded of those who are charged with protecting the rights of the people. Governor Bush pledged to uphold the Florida constitution as he understands it, not as it is understood by some Florida judges. He is the rightful representative of the people of Florida and he is the chief executive, in whom the power is vested to execute the law and protect the rights of citizens. He should use that power to protect Terri's natural right to live, and he should do so now.
(via, yuck, NRO)

Hear that, everyone? Bennett has just made a case for every executive from now on to just do what he damn-well pleases.

Now let's ponder this one for a minute. What if Governor Bush thought that the state of Florida should shut down all $500-a pull slot machines? What would our virtuous Mr. Bennett say about that? I'm sure he would insist that the governor was overstepping his authority.

Given the revelations of the past couple of years about Mr. Bennett, I'd venture a guess that no one today would believe he was making the argument because of his strong belief in limiting the power of government but because he likes to play slots -- a lot. Heck, he likes to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars per night playing slots apparently.

But, really folks, who's going to believe what Bill "High Roller" Bennett says from now on?

Better yet, after the events of the last four years, why does anybody believe anything any Republican says these days?

Who wrote this in a "policy planning study" in 1948?

"We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population. . . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. . . . To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. . . . We should cease to talk about vague and . . . unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

It's all at Policy Planning Study 23

It was Kennan, of course, the "architect of cold war policy." One of his more (in)famous pieces, quoted by Brad DeLong and Noam Chomsky and others as evidence of the imperial plan, pre- PNAC. It was prepared for Harry Truman.

What strikes me, though, is that the only thing that has been added since is the Rove touch: Deal in "immediate national objectives" and "straight power concepts" to preserve American corporate wealth and hegemony (as if it can be maintained forever on a shrinking planet), AND talk about vague objectives like "democracy" and "human rights" while throwing red meat to the talibornagains (gay marriage, Terri Schiavo, etc.) to keep everyone looking the other way.

Oh, and hey--what's the latest word on when the extraction, mining and chemical companies get to go to Mars? Is it in the budget? I mean, we've pretty much panned out Earth.

The problems for Terri Schiavo began with a misdiagnosis and failure to warn that led to a malpractice suit, an award of about $700,000 for her future care, and about $300,000 for loss of consortium to her husband. This is about $50,000 more than the anti-malpractice politicos would have given him, on account of how frivolous and inflated all those lawsuits are, you know.

So you can imagine how cheered I was to read this story in the NY Daily News on a woman who only wanted a nose job:

"An apparently healthy 42-year-old woman died last week following a nose job and face-lift by (Michael Sachs) a Manhattan plastic surgeon with the state's worst malpractice record."

After going into cardiac arrest in the doctor's office, she was taken to the hospital and pronounced brain-dead. She had learned of the good doctor via a news write-up, which

"...did not mention that Sachs has for years been one of the most sued doctors in New York, as first revealed by the Daily News five years ago.
Current records show Sachs' malpractice standing hasn't improved. His official physician profile shows he has made 33 malpractice payments during the past decade, more than any other doctor in the state, according to a News analysis ofthe National Practitioner Data Bank public file.
Additionally, there are two malpractice suits pending against Sachs alleging breathing difficulties stemming from botched nose jobs.
Kelly said the article Cregan saw also didn't note that state health officials, citing negligence, last year banned Sachs from ever performing complex nasal procedures without the supervision of another doctor."

Now here's my question: if Bush and the AMA are so determined to eliminate frivolous lawsuits, why do they allow oily shits like this to continue to hold a license? Because as long as they refuse to police their own ranks and place the protection of patients above their own circle-the-wagons mentality, these kinds of tragedies will go on, and the grounds on which they build their arguments against malpractice will keep washing away.

Thanks to the folks at The Airing of Grievances for the heads-up.

Heh.

(via TBogg)

You'd think with a column called "Liberties" she'd have picked up on this before, but we'll take what we can get!

Re: The Schiavo case:

My God, we really are in a theocracy.

Are the Republicans so obsessed with maintaining control over all branches of government, and are the Democrats so emasculated about not having any power, that they are willing to turn the nation into a wholly owned subsidiary of the church?
(via NY Times)

Um, is that a rhetorical question? (But see below)

As the Bush White House desperately maneuvers in Iraq to prevent the new government from being run according to the dictates of religious fundamentalists, it desperately maneuvers here to pander to religious fundamentalists who want to dictate how the government should be run.

Yes, Maureen, fundamentalists everywhere are the enemy. FTF.

Maybe President Bush should spend less time preaching about spreading democracy around the world and more time worrying about our deteriorating democracy.

Yep. (Actually, I'd rather Bush left our democracy alone. Not only have the Republicans done enough damage by stealing election 2000, whenever Bush actually does anything, it turns into either a giveaway to the corporations and the uber-rich, a clusterfuck, or both.)

And she finishes with a nice shot at Delay:

Mr. DeLay made his personal stake clear at a conference last Friday organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. He said that God had brought Terri Schiavo's struggle to the forefront "to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America." He defined that as "attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others."

So it's not about her crisis at all. It's about his crisis.

Shows you how much I know—I would have thought "theocracy" has too many syllables to catch on as a meme. But it seems to be spreading. More like this, please!

NOTE I'm coming round to the view that Reid did the right thing by giving the Republicans exactly what they wanted on the Schiavo case. Now we're seeing, up close and personal, what these people are like, and the lengths they will go to, to keep and maintain power. Reid allowed this object lesson to take place, and it seems to be working out for the best.

This site (Cost of Iraq War) is worth a visit, if your blood pressure medication has been adjusted. It shows comparisons of how much is spent on King George’s splendid little war in iWaq to what could be spent on lots of issues. For example, health insurance for kids: around 95 million kids could be insured for what iWaq is costing us. Or global hunger: we could have funded global hunger programs for 6 years for what iWaq is costing. Or, we could have ensured that every child in the world was given basic immunizations for 52 years for what iWaq is costing us.

There are also cool links to charts and graphs you can use in your communities, showing the local costs of the war, and ALSO the budget priorities of the GOP and how their proposed spending will impact your local community. I mean, if you’re laying the groundwork for coalition-building, or for GOTV and candidates in ’06, which I sure hope you are, these are great tools to use in letters, posters, flyers, etc.

See Local Cost Of Iraq War and The President's Budget: Impact on the States

There’s your culture of life, Bubba.

Via an advertisement at the essential Juan Cole, I came across the fascinating BAGnewsNotes ("Getting between the point and the view").

Check out their analysis the iconography of the Schiavo case. In fact, read the whole site. It's terrific.

So the Supremes have decided:

"The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a request from the parents of brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo for an emergency order allowing her feeding tube to be reinserted...
The Supreme Court's action marked the fourth time since January that it has refused to intervene in the emotional right-to-die case, in which Christian activists have supported the parents against Terri Schiavo's husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo."

This, in spite of the amicus brief filed by that old kitten-lover Bill Frist and his attendant ghouls, Santorum and Martinez (R-what else?).

This has all been just sad. Being a parent myself, I can't hate Terri Schiavo's parents for their determination. But at some point it seems that their own selfish desire to hang on to a memory of their child overtook the reality with which they were confronted, and what is left of Terri has been sacrificed to maintaining that fantasy. Even a dog would have been allowed a better death.

When you think of all the need medical care being denied in this country to those too impoverished to afford it, this scenario has been more than pitiful. It's been an outrage.

Our own Dali Llama, alert reader MJS, throws the following over the transom:

The Bad Magician imagines the President's brain as having a hatch. The Bad Magician climbs inside the President's head. The Bad Magician paints shadows in the folds of the President's cerebellum. The Bad Magician crouches down, leaps up and swings from the President's brain stem. A piece breaks off, turns into a salamander, and runs into the speech center, causing a ruckus. The Bad Magician lights a torch to see in the darkness, and singes away the President's smirk. The Bad Magician invents a door and puts it in the back of the President's fears. He opens the door and monsters crawl inside. The Bad Magician dances around the fire that burns inside the President's head. The Bad Magician looks at his watch and sees that it is late: he makes use of fish hooks and thick rope to rappel his way out of the President's rocky northern slope.

The dream ends. The President sees the shadows and screams.

That MJS! What an imagination!

Battered women's advocates and domestic violence workers in Ohio are finally being heard, as the state's new ban on gay marriage begins to work its magic. What magic is that? Why, the fallout effect on gay and non-gay couples alike, such as the elimination of the protection of the state's domestic violence law for non-married couples:

" Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Stuart Friedman changed a felony domestic violence charge against Frederick Burk to a misdemeanor assault charge.
Prosecutors immediately appealed.
Judges and others across the country have been waiting for a ruling on how the gay marriage ban, among the nation's broadest, would affect Ohio's 25-year-old domestic violence law, which previously wasn't limited to married people.
Burk, 42, is accused of slapping and pushing his live-in girlfriend during a January argument over a pack of cigarettes.
His public defender, David Magee, had asked the judge to throw out the charge because of the new wording in Ohio's constitution that prohibits any state or local law that would "create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals."
Before the amendment, courts applied the domestic violence law by defining a family as including an unmarried couple living together as would a husband and wife, the judge said. The gay marriage amendment no longer allows that. "

It's been a long road for the victims of domestic violence, fighting decades of indifference, judgementalism, and legal inequities. The fact is that domestic violence is a women's issue, no matter how it's framed to try to make it sound gender-neutral, and the fact that women have been the primary targets of battering and abuse has made it easy to sideline, despite the heroic struggles of the DV movement over the last 35 years.

Burk, as is usual in cases like this, has a history:

" Because Burk had a prior domestic violence conviction, the latest charge was a felony that could have resulted in an 18-month jail term; a misdemeanor assault carries a maximum sentence of six months.
"This case is a good example of why we need a domestic violence law. A misdemeanor assault doesn't carry with it a significant enough penalty for repeat domestic violence abusers," said Matt Meyer, an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor.
Some opponents of the amendment have said they hope the conflict over the domestic violence law would result in the gay marriage ban being repealed.
Seventeen states have constitutional language defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Ohio's is regarded as the broadest marriage amendment of those passed by 11 states Nov. 2 because it bans civil unions and legal status to all unmarried couples and gay marriages. "

There's your Christian mercy. Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out.

Can't remember where exactly I was when I took this picture, didn't write it down, but it was somewhere in southeastern Ohio.

I always think it's kind of touching and funny when a media whore like George Will or David "I'm writing as bad as I can" Brooks professes concern for the Democratic Party.

But when Bush does? Wow, that's just surreal. Get a load of this:

Flanked by Republican Sens. Pete V. Domenici (N.M.) and John McCain (Ariz.), Bush invited Democrats "to come to the table" to help devise a solution to shore up Social Security's finances. "I believe there will be bad political consequences for people who are unwilling to sit down and talk about the issue," he said.
(via WaPo)

Max Cleland "came to the table" on tax cuts, compromised with the Republicans, and what happened?

The Republicans ate him alive.

And now they want us to try it again? I don't think so.

Say, if the political consequences for opposing Bush's Social Security phase-out are so great, then why does Bush restrict Partei rallies only to the true believers? Why not let any citizen in? If the true believers are in the majority, well find out, right? Oh, wait...

Just asking.

Just asking.

Just asking.

Just asking.

Just asking.

This whole Schiavo thing is enough to give [cough] Christians a bad name:

'And during this week, as we look to Good Friday, He [Jesus] was condemned by unjust courts the same way Terri Schiavo is being condemned to die by court order,'' O'Donnell said. ``We pray that this modern-day crucifixion will not happen.''
(via San Jose Mercury News)

Well, no. Here's the condition Schiavo is in, according to Wikipedia:

Most of Schiavo's cerebral cortex has been completely destroyed, replaced by cerebrospinal fluid; Dr. Ron Cranford, a neurologist at the University of Minnesota assessed Schiavo's brain function in 2001 as part of a court-ordered assessment. He was quoted in Florida Today as saying "[Schiavo] has no electrical activity in her cerebral cortex on an EEG (electroencephalogram), and a CT (computerized tomography) scan showed massive atrophy in that region." [10] (http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html) [11]

It's immoral to turn a living corpse, which is what Schiavo is, into a political football, which is what the [cough] Christians have done.

It's even worse theology to compare Schiavo to Christ. I'm no longer a believing Christian—stumbled on the problem of evil, don't you know, a problem that every day under the Bush heel makes more acute—but one thing I do know: Christ knew what he has doing when he sacrificed himself for us. He was entirely aware of what was going to happen to him, and he went ahead and did it anyhow, on our behalf. There is no indication whatever that this is what Schiavo did or had in mind to do. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. We will all die, some of us badly. That makes us human, not Christ-like. Suffering, pace Gibson's The Passion, is not in itself Christ-like. The suffering has to be sacrificial, consciously chosen with eyes open.

Or are the [cough] Christians suggesting that Christ didn't know what he was doing? Are they suggesting that when he hung on the cross, Christ's cortex had been replaced by cerebrospinal fluid?

What a sick farce. I have to give 'em credit, though—the cups of water are a terrific propaganda ploy. So why don't they shut the fuck up and get busy saving Social Security, as part of honoring their fathers and mothers, and letting them live out their lives, and then die with the kind of dignity they are so anxious to deny Schiavo? Of course, that wouldn't get them on TV....

NOTE The truly alert readers will have noticed that when mentioning Christ in the third person, I did not capitalize the "h" in "He." That is because Corrente house style is to capitalize third person references to Bush, seeing as how He's so Godly, and I didn't want to confuse the two usages. Please consider not classing Christ with Bush as a mark of profound respect to Christ.

I mean, you know the Social Security actuaries must have been under tremendous pressure to cook the books to support Bush's plan to phase out Social Security, and all they can come up with is one lousy year?

The "crisis" is now going to happen in 2041 not 2042.

I'll get right on that...

NOTE Of course, the AP article is also riddled with, um, "errors."

Another worthy cause is underway. If you are a member of one of these groups, let your voice be heard in support. If you’re not a card-carrying member of the ACLU, it makes a great gift for one you love…

Because over at Associated Press they report that

Conservative and liberal groups normally at each other's throats over the direction of government are finding common cause in wanting to gut major provisions of the government's premier anti-terrorism law.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform and the Free Congress Foundation are among several groups that formed a coalition — Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances — to lobby Congress to repeal three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

Having people from all sides of the political spectrum working together will keep politicians from calling Patriot Act opponents un-American or willing to help terrorists, which happened during the original debate over the law, the groups said.

The lunacy of Bushco is becoming apparent to all, and perhaps the revolution is afoot. See also Lambert's post, below. Maybe the rats are beginning to jump, leaving only the lunatic band of theocrats at the helm as the ship glides toward the rocks...

Even the Republicans are starting to get it!

"My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing," said Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of five House Republicans who voted against the bill. "This couldn't be a more classic case of a state responsibility."

"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," [Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut] said.
(via Sun Sentinel)

Um, Chris? If I may call you Chris. What makes you think it's your party? In fact, the Republican Party has long since been bought and paid for by theocrats like Coors, Scaife, and the dominionists. Dance with whoever brung ya, Chris!

Or cross the aisle.

E.J. Dionne makes two good points:

According to the Census Bureau's July 2004 population estimates, the 44 Democratic senators represent 148,026,027 people; the 55 Republican senators 144,765,157. Vermont's Jim Jeffords, an independent who usually votes with the Democrats, represents 310,697. (In these calculations, I evenly divided the population of states with split Senate delegations.) What does majority rule really mean in this context?

1. Bottom line: the majority of the people have no effective representation at all. It's just like the "Slave Power" before the Civil War, isn't it?

If the Republicans pushing against the filibuster love majority rule so much, they should propose getting rid of the Senate altogether. But doing so would mean acknowledging what's really going on here: regime change disguised as a narrow rules fight. We could choose to institute a British-style parliamentary system in which majorities get almost everything they want. But advocates of such a radical departure should be honest enough to propose amending the Constitution first.
(via WaPo)

2. Honest? The Republicans? [Pause for hysterical laughter] But seriously, I remember Barney Frank making the same argument during the Clinton impeachment hearings; essentially, the whole ginned up scandal was the equivalent of a "no confidence" vote in the Parliamentary system.

So, as usual, it seems like the Republicans are even more radical than we thought. In the name of majoritarianism, they propose to rule without a majority, while relying on the tiny margins that the Rove political machine is able to provide them.

And, apparently, they think they can pull this coup off and keep it stable—that's the implications of the Partei rallies where only those who are "with us" are considered true citizens, and thus allowed to attend.

It's a drizzly morning, and my last day to spend doing public service away from the computer. Till I return, there's just time for a quick overview of some newsbits. Hope to be more of a presence tomorrow.

But the inevitable hammer finally came down on Title IX, as the US Commission on Civil Rights knew it would when they issued their now-buried report last year. This law was single-handedly responsible for the explosion in women's sports over the past 30 years. Bush to women: enough of that shit.

The appeals court turned down the appeal made by Terri Schiavo's parents' because there was "no federal issue". It will be interesting to see whether the Supremes step on their own prior opinions on this and take the case. After Bush v Gore, what's to stop them?

Speaking of which, James Ridgeway over at The Village Voice muses that the Schiavo case has given the theocrats new life, and the most likely to benefit is Tom DeLay. Well, sure. Don't the flies always appear after the carcass rots?

And back in the real world, the LATimes has this headline: "Bush Urges an End to Attacks on Plan", meaning his bollux of Social Security. Which would make more sense if indeed he had ever offered a plan in the first place.

And finally, in the "Nothing to see here, move along" Dept.,Editor and Publisher reports that the Pentagon is back on message, refusing to reopen a case involving the detention and abuse of 3 freelance journalists by US troops, who then released them without charge. Go figure.

If you don't like this photo you're unAmerican: No, not the one above. This one here: NTodd

I dunno know why exactly, but so far, that is my favorite NTodd photo. I just really like it. It's a good photo. At least I think so. And I wouldn't have happened upon it unless I'd happened upon this place: Winding Roads Visual Arts; The Gallery of Vermont Photographer NTodd Pritsky and his friends Eli Cates and Aaron Kimball.

So take a look; see for yourself.

BTW: the photo displayed above is a photo I took of The Mighty Corrente Regional Branch Office in the great state of XXXXX where I spend most of my shiftless summer afternoons. Reading, blogging, bashing the brains out of angry greenhead-flys, with a rolled up copy of the National Review, which I also use to ...uh, well, nevermind...

No, not really. Actually I took that picture in Maine. Mount Desert Island to be exact. Where I lived for a short shiftless while many years ago. So, if you - whoever you are - recognize the "branch office" location above you can rest easy. I'm long gone, have been for years (you betcha), and you don't have to worry about me sneaking around in your yard any more. No siree by gawd.

In fact. I have my very own cozy branch office now. With my very own flys. Big ugly shit-eating flys. And a big stack of NY Posts and Weekly Standards which I use to, uh, well...nevermind again. That's a picture I don't think we need to develop any further.

*

And all Bush can say is, "He's hiding"...

The document, provided to The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the unidentified detainee "assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora." It is the first definitive statement from the Pentagon (news - web sites) that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and evaded U.S. pursuers.
(AP via Buzzflash)

I guess privatizing capturing OBL by handing the job over to Afghan warlords didn't work out all that well. Who'd a thunk it? And you go to war with the warlords you have...

Look! Over there! Terri Schiavo!

Not that I'm a blogger triumphalist, but this reality-based post on Schiavo from corndog at Kos exemplfies what the blogosphere can and should be.

Yeah, that's right:

Six employees of a company that processed federal tax returns were indicted Tuesday on charges they hid and later destroyed about 80,000 returns and $1 billion in payments to make it appear employees had met a deadline.

The employees faced charges of conspiracy and theft for the activities at Mellon Financial in the spring of 2001, during the peak tax-return processing period.
(via AP)

Of course, in the grand Bush tradition of taking a bad idea and making it much, much worse, Bush has already further privatized tax collection. The beneficiaries? Why, none other than major Republican Party donor Delay crony Diversified Collection services, already indicted for money laundering and illegal campaign contributions:

When Reps. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) teamed up in September to get the House to pass an amendment blocking the use of private companies to collect back taxes from delinquent taxpayers, it seemed the Bush administration plan might be doomed for at least a year.

But in the final hours of drafting a 3,300-page spending bill last month, House and Senate negotiators eliminated Capito's and Van Hollen's handiwork, clearing the way for the Internal Revenue Service to hire commercial debt collectors.

One company that lobbied for the change is California-based Diversified Collection Services Inc., one of eight companies indicted in September by a Texas grand jury, along with three Republican fundraisers for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), on charges of alleged money laundering and illegal corporate campaign contributions.

The company has contributed about $435,000 to Republican Party organizations since 1999, Federal Election Commission records show.
(via WaPo)

Gee, there are several life lessons here, aren't there?

1. For Capito (R) and Hollen (D), bi-partisanship meant nothing, because the Republicans just undid all the compromising in commmittee. And how much you want to bet Rove now percieves Hollen as weak, and targets him for elimination in the next election?

The obvious corrolary here is that bipartisanship on Social Security is worse than useless—it's dangerous, because as soon as the Dems give the Republicans any cover at all, they'll have different bills passed in the House and Senate, and then "reconcile" them in Committee, in secret, and where Dems have no voice or control, and any compromise will get thrown out there too, and we'll end up with a backdoor Social Security phase out.

2. When you see Delay frothing and stamping on the tube, think of this bill. What does Delay mean by "the culture of life"? Harassing phone calls from the IRS, apparently.... Some life!

Well, that would be the CNN headline anyway:

Canadians are giving Prime Minister Paul Martin an overwhelming thumbs up for his refusal to join the U.S. missile defence project, a new poll suggests.

The numbers offer some vindication for Mr. Martin as he heads into a meeting Wednesday with U.S. President George W. Bush armed with Canadian public sentiment on his side.

The Prime Minister angered the White House and drew scorn from critics at home, but two-thirds of poll respondents — 57 per cent compared to 26 per cent — supported him, according to the survey by Decima Inc. ...

The Decima poll indicates Mr. Martin would have flown into a public opinion hurricane had he decided to take part in Mr. Bush's missile program.

Virtually every constituency in the country approved of Canada's stand — from teenagers to senior citizens, men and women, urban and rural dwellers, and a majority of respondents in every single province.
(via The Globe and Mail)

To be fair, the Globe and Mail, which editorially criticized Martin over the decision, had its own, CNN-worthy head: "Martin move on missiles politically correct".

It's called political accountability, guys. If you don't want it, I can think of a neighbor who could desperately use some.

Alert reader Steve Duncan throws the following over the transom:

President Bush complained today that Democrats were not offering ideas to ease the nation's oil dependency. Bush has been touring the nation for months pushing his "Oil from Mars" initiative to little success or enthusiasm. The public and his political opposition don't yet agree America's resources should be employed drilling for oil on the Red Planet and bringing it back to Earth. "We have a disaster that's going to happen in the future, and that's America running out of oil. We must get oil from Mars and soon. Democrats in Congress want to obstruct this effort and have offered no ideas in response to my initiative. America will move forward and get that oil with or without input from the liberal elites!" said Bush in a Rose Garden appearance.

Many Democrats in Congress are beginning to feel they must at least devise an alternate drilling policy on Mars in order to appear involved in fixing what all agree will be a problem 20 to 30 years down the road. "I think rocket ships are real neat and just might do the trick." said Joe Leiberman. He continued, "As Democrats we must put forward our own oil from Mars initiative or we risk ceding the issue to the Republicans."

One issue yet to be resolved in all of this is where Bush plans to get the 42 trillion dollars it will take to explore, extract and ferry the oil to Earth. "I'm not going to get in a debate with myself on the details, that's for Congress to do. You see, I'm an ideas man, I like ideas, I'm a leader and leaders lead. We'll get that oil with or without the help of the Democrats," said Bush.

Will Democrats join in the nation's search for more oil on Mars?

Okay, everybody repeat after me: “We saw THIS one coming.” Headline at AP and Yahoo, to be viewed by millions:

Judge in Schiavo case a Clinton appointee

Of course, giving the lie to the headline, the story goes on to note that

Whittemore, appointed to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1999, is not known to display any political leanings.

Naturally, the judge rules with the other judges, thus allowing Bushco to scream, “See, those activist liberal judges hate our culture of life!”

And then they can try to kill the filibuster rule and pack the courts.

And then nobody will be surprised by the nominees to join the Supremes.

What the hell makes this the headline of this story?

I’m tellin ya, this is just to scapegoat the judicial system, the final prize in the eyes of the talibornagain.

People are starting to notice the fakery. The Amazin' Froomkin sums up a lot of local coverage this way:

Today's stories capture not so much what Bush says but what is most remarkable about these events: the stagecraft that goes into them and the exclusion of the general public in favor of screened supporters.
(via WaPo)

And Froomkin makes the following very interesting point:

The biggest danger to Bush may be if his bubble prevents him from realizing that he's lost [the battle to phase out Social Security] and taking appropriate action.

Of course, Bush has built the bubble all by himself. The Partei rallies are the way they are because he wants them that way, and He's surrounded himself with yes-persons and enablers because he only wants to hear good news (or should I say, Good News).

So, long may Bush remain in ignorance. Protesters, put down those signs! When your enemies drowning, throw him an anvil!

While the GOP spews out more and more hypocritical horseshit (sorry, horses, no offense intended) there are those critics, pointing out that the Chimperor and his flock of bleating hypocritical sycophants is morally nekkid:

Bush said he stepped into the Schiavo case because the United States should have "a presumption in favor of life," but there were 152 executions in Texas during his administration, including some in which the convict's guilt was in doubt, critics said.

In Texas, Critics Question Bush's 'Life' Culture

And in the Bangor Daily News, Katherine Heidinger rakes over some other, um, glaring disparities between words and reality:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said this: "The president believes that our society should be based on a culture of life. And in a society that is based on life, that means we should protect and defend and welcome life at all stages, and that includes people with disabilities."

Oh, if it were just so.

The second story focused on a report by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan calling for changes to the U.N. so it can tackle conflicts and terrorism, fight poverty and put human rights at the forefront of its work.

The report said the Security Council's decisions on whether to use force should be guided by a set of clear principles, and it urged all states to accept that in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, there is a "responsibility to protect" that requires collective action.

Additionally, the report calls on developing countries to cut extreme poverty in half, ensure primary education for all children, improve health care, and halt and reverse the AIDS pandemic.

Oh, if it were so.

On the editorial page were the memorable words written by a Harrington letter writer, Brian Stewart, who told of a project in Washington and Hancock counties that remembers soldiers from the United States who have lost their lives in Iraq. To mark the second anniversary of the Iraqi war, Stewart said, cedar shingles memorializing the country's war dead have been put on telephone poles along a 100-mile stretch of Down East highways.

Not to mention the 100,000 plus Iraqi dead.

He wrote: "As we pass the miles of placards mourning our dead, let us see as well the tens of thousands of Iraqis, the hundreds of thousands of children at risk, the many thousands maimed - and let us with all godspeed and humble heart search for ways beyond war."

Oh, if it were so.

'Culture of life' hard to reconcile with world events

Let us recall Chief Joseph again:

"I have heard talk and talk, but nothing is done. Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men. Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and broken promises.”

As the good chief also said, “It doesn’t take many words to speak the truth.”

And the truth is, by their fruits shall we judge them. The fruit lately is stinking of death and greed. May the stench rise into the nostrils of everyone who voted for these hypocritical thieving pseudo-righteous fearmongers and awaken them to action in 2006, if not sooner and more directly via impeachment. Lord knows there's enough pots boiling--Plame, Guckert, etc etc...

.. what's with the big discussion about no women in the blogosphere?

Leah, Xan, and now Riggsveda have their own corner offices in The Mighty Corrente Building. Maybe Amy 'n' Kevin should send some readers our way?

The essential Juan Cole note:

The cynical use by the US Republican Party of the Terri Schiavo case repeats, whether deliberately or accidentally [it's not accidental. See the UPDATE below], the tactics of Muslim fundamentalists and theocrats in places like Egypt and Pakistan.

The Muslim fundamentalists use a provision of Islamic law called "bringing to account" (hisba). As Al-Ahram weekly notes, "Hisba signifies a case filed by an individual on behalf of society when the plaintiff feels that great harm has been done to religion." Hisba is a medieval idea that had all be lapsed when the fundamentalists brought it back in the 1970s and 1980s.

In this practice, any individual can use the courts to intervene in the private lives of others. Among the more famous cases of such interference is that of Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid in Egypt. A respected modern scholar of Koranic studies, Abu Zaid argued that, contrary to medieval interpretations of Islamic law, women and men should receive equal inheritance shares. (Medieval Islamic law granted women only half the inheritance shares of their brothers). Abu Zaid was accused of sacrilege. Then the allegation of sacrilege was used as a basis on which the fundamentalists sought to have the courts forcibly divorce him from his wife.

Wouldn't be interesting if this tactic was used to remove Michael Schiavo from his guardianship?

One of the most objectionable features of this fundamentalist tactic is that persons without standing can interfere in private affairs. Perfect strangers can file a case about your marriage, because they represent themselves as defending a public interest (the upholding of religion and morality).

But the most frightening thing about the entire affair is that public figures like congressmen inserted themselves into the case in order to uphold religious strictures. The lawyer arguing against the husband let the cat out of the bag, as reported by the NYT: ' The lawyer, David Gibbs, also said Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water. "We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul," Mr. Gibbs said. '

In other words, the United States Congress acted in part on behalf of the Roman Catholic church. Both of these public bodies interfered in the private affairs of the Schiavos, just as the fundamentalist Egyptian, Nabih El-Wahsh, tried to interfere in the marriage of Nawal El Saadawi.
(via Informed Consent)

As always, FTF. Because, as we've said (back) the fundamentalists at home and the fundamentalists abroad are just two sides of the same coin, and one is just as much a threat to the Constitution and our way of life—and yes, morals, and values—as the other.

UPDATE Why, one wonders, is the question never asked: Who's funding these people? For example, who's funding the fundamentalist trial lawyer, Schindler?

Why, surprise! It turns out it's the usual suspects: Scaife, Coors, the whole gang. The same guys that fund the VRWC, the same guys that sponsored the coup against Clinton. The same guys who fund the dominionists.

It's not surprising that they're out to trash the Constitution. That is, in fact, their ultimate goal, and has been all along. You can't have the Constitution and theocracy at the same time, and theocracy is what these guys want.

Once again I'll be engaged in non-computer related business today, so here's a little compendium of news to get you to the next post. Adieu, ma petites choux!

No court hearings for Moussaoui.
He can still walk and talk. But once our Cerebrus-headed detention system gets done interrogating him, he may meet the Schiavo test, and Bush will fly right back from his jerk-off session to sign a special bill for him.

Meanwhile, our life-loving culture is still holding its nose at the idea of controlling deadly weaponry. You see, it's not the beings here and now in front of us who can engage us in conversation and look into our eyes and force us to see them, whom we want to protect. It's the formless, the lifeless, those who can't see us or hear us, it's those whom we don't have to see as anything but mirrors of ourselves, it's those on whom we lavish our care and concern, because they don't ask anything of us.

And what cavalcade of clowns would be complete without a visit to the President's Council on Bioethics? Where this week we find that one of Bush's advisors, Diana Schaub, tells him that she knows stem cell research is evil because Star Trek told her so, and compares embryonic stem cell research to slavery:

"Like slaves, Schaub says, embryos have few natural advocates. It is easy for people to treat embryos as inferior beings available for economic or scientific gain."

Well, yes. How damnable of me to think embryos are "inferior beings" that may not be the exact equivalent of my 86-year old mother-in-law! Is it any wonder the whole Legislative branch is tripping over itself to make brownie points off a dying woman's body, with fools like this setting the government's morality parameters?

And yes. Peggy Noonan is still an idiot.

Why do I need to write copy when I can't even dream of topping this? (Thanks to Tinfoil Hat Boy for the link that led to these revelations.) In the spirit of the current God-infested climate, I give you:

A North Carolina man is selling a brick that appears to feature the face of Jesus, according to Local 6 News report. Ditto Dalcher said he was sitting in his home and noticed the face above his fireplace. "It was actually about two years ago, I'm just sitting in here and I saw it," Dalcher said. "Actually I use this room -- just saw it up there on the fireplace and it just sort of fooled me when I first saw it. It was pretty shocking." Dalcher noticed how much money people were making off of the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich and Jesus in a skillet and decided to share what he found, according to the report. The bids on eBay were at $500 early Monday. The auction ends on Friday.




Families in Texas are traveling to pray around a tree at a home that appears to show the image of the Virgin Mary and the finger of God pointing to the sky, according to a Local 6 News report. The image was found on a tree that has been at the Kilburnfamily's Harris County, Tx., since they moved in nine years ago, Local 6 News reported. "We were going out to church, my husband backs up and I say, 'honey, there's a woman on the tree,'" Pat Kilburn said. Kilburn said the image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the tree. Kilburn said the same image that appears to be the face of Virgin Mary also appears to be God's finger pointing to Heaven. Kilburn and many of her neighbors are convinced the tree is God's way of showing people he is always near, Local 6 News reported.



An Indiana pet store owner says a turtle that was the only animal to survive a fire at the shop has developed an image of Satan's face on its shell. Bryan Dora's pet store in Frankfort burned down last October. The red-ear slider turtle named Lucky is the only survivor of about 150 animals. Dora said after the fire, an image appeared on Lucky's shell that appears to be the face of a devil. He said the turtle is not possessed but is very tame. He believes that in every fire the devil leaves his mark somewhere, and that Lucky was touched. Dora said many other people also say they have seen the image on the turtle, and get scared away.

And, in keeping with the rites of spring, thousands of Humboldt squid are snuffing it on Newport Beach. None stayed alive long enough to comment. Authorities are searching for evidence of religious iconograpy to explain this suicidal pilgrimage.

I know that some have questioned the location, the size, even the existence of The Mighty Corrente Building. But The Mighty Corrente Building is real.

And we have photographic proof.

Here, for example, is a photograph of one of the Mushroom Cellars, sunk far under the earth in the living granite bedrock under Rittenhouse Square....

Priceless.

(via DC Inside Scoop)

OK, I know this is way, way too easy... Readers?

UPDATE Alert reader Cupajoe suggests:

E pluribus barnum

Here it is:

I know that neither of you agree with me on the Bush administration - tho neither of you seemed to hear my comments of comparing Bush with Kerry and a tort lawyer.

However, I thought you would be interested in my reaction to what I feel is an almost fascist act by Christian Wrong-abetted republicans, apparently allowed to proceed by Bush. This is, in my opinion, unconscionable meddling by a political party/group in our courts, our private lives and the way this country works.

I have to correct an address error on my voters' card; when I do that, I am changing my registration to Independent - I have been a registered Republican for over 40 years. I have also always been more afraid of the self-righteous right (currently the Christian Wrong) than the incompetent left. This is a self-righteous, "I'll impose by beliefs on all of you because I am holy Christian and God is on my right hand", nonsense but, worse, it isn't what this country was made of and from - and it is damaging to the fabric of our political system and, I believe, to our social system as well.

The backlash will probably be equally as bad, but the Democrats are so inept at this point, the backlash may be muted. The country will survive, it always has, but the process is and will be more painful than at other times. This is a sad day, in my mind.

You know, I have this vague memory of another case, in Florida, where a decision by a state court got federalized, but, not to worry, no precedent was set...

What could it be...

Why, Bush v. Gore, of course!

One consequence of the extra-Constitutional intervention in the Schiavo case is that the Republicans have trashed the Constution by holding a "trial by legislature" and writing a law that targets an individual. (If some future Congress wants to try the Santorums for child abuse and abusing a corpse by having their kids—readers, I'm not making this up—pass a dead fetus around the kitchen table, the Republican have now opened the door.)

But that's for the long-term.

For the short term, by their actions, the Republicans have set the precedent that Congress can now intervene in any case in the State courts, on an entirely arbitrary basis, whenever they don't like the outcome.

So, if there is a Florida-style debacle in 2006 or 2008, and the election is appealed in the state courts, the Republicans can now Federalize it whenever they like.

So much for Bush v. Gore not being a precedent, eh? The Republicans have just, retrospectively, "legitimated" [cough] that case. Just one of many examples to come of why "trial by legislature" is a really, really bad idea.

So, we lose the Constitution in the short term; and we lose any "close" elections in the short term. Not that the Republicans would ever, you know, throw an election into the courts they control just to win a seat or anything....

You've all heard the gruesome medical details on the Schiavo case:

Much of Schiavo's cerebral cortex has been completely destroyed, replaced by spinal fluid.
(via Wikipedia)

But there are some medical details you may not have heard:

Most of the Republican Party's cerebral cortex has been completely destroyed, replaced by fecal matter.

And the even more horrific:

Most of the Democratic Party's testicles have been completely destroyed, replaced by ...

Ugh, I can't even say it, it wouldn't contribute to the new civility in American political discourse. Readers?

I still recall vividly an afternoon about 10 years ago, sitting at the table with my mother, each of us reading a section of the paper. My mother, a fervent, very conservative Christian, was reading about a right-to-die case involving a woman on life support.

I can't recall the case. What I do recall was my mother suddenly putting down the paper and pointing to the story, telling me, "Tresy, if you children ever ever put me in a situation like this, I swear, I will haunt you from my grave."

Used to my mother's penchant for drama, I made a noncommittal grunt and tried to go back to reading the paper. Mom was not done.

"Tresy, look at me. I am not kidding. Look me in the eye and promise me that you will never, ever let them do to me what they are doing to that poor woman. Who are we to play God like this? I am ready to meet my Lord any time He wants me. And when He calls for me, I will go, happily, because I know He will be waiting for me. There is nothing in this fallen world worth what is happening to this woman. She is being sacrificed to the idea that Man, rather than God, determines when we die. And that is a sin: the sin of Pride. Promise me you won't let them do this to me."

That was about the last time we ever agreed on anything.

The other day, appropos of our family's move to Canada, Mom told my spouse, "I just don't understand why Tresy hates George Bush so much."

Perhaps now she's getting an idea.

I'm away from my ether fix for an unknown time today, don't know when I'll get back, and I'm not going down that long lousy road on the Schiavo bus. Instead, we will keep our heads up. We will not look into the abyss. We will meditate on higher things, transcendent things, things that elevate our discourse and avoid exploitation of the poor, the abused, and the unfortunate.

Like..John Delorean, inventor of the car everyone laughed at, and philosohical godfather to Robert Zemekis.

Like...Demi Moore. Pregnant again? Or not? Only (eeew) Ashton Kutcher knows for sure. She says, "The rumors are just that, rumors", but wait a minute! Isn't Rumor the name of one of her daughters? A subtle coded message?

Like...Ashley Judd becoming a sports reporter.

Like...caffeine may cause diabetes. Except for the times when other studies say it prevents it.

Like...women's fashion still sucks.

Like...they've got Rice in China! Go figure.

Oh, I could go on, but you get the idea. What absurd, harmless, utterly inane items can you find today? Why, they're just laying around out there like pearls, waiting to make your day.

Go get 'em, tigers and tigresses.

The vote for the Schiavo bill of attainder 202 for, with 42 Dems voting, shamefully, in favor.

A quorum was 218 (back). The CNN headline says "Motion to suspend the rules and pass." WTF?

How fitting the Republicans shitcan the Constitution, under a motion to suspend the rules, in the darkest hour of the night.

How shameful that any Dem would help them do it.

NOTE This article, by CBS legal correspondent Andrew Cohen, is essential reading on "trial by legislation". Read it now to see what's really at stake.

Just go read it.

I'm too disgusted about it to comment further.

This has been, ironically enough for Palm Sunday and the first day of Spring, a day in which we obsessed with the subject of death. It's not something Americans like to deal with very much, so we tend to do it very badly when it can't be avoided.

Finding the efforts to be grim in the extreme I spent the day with a better class of dead folk. John Key for one. Andrew Jackson Murphey and Capt. Thomas Belew and his wife Elizabeth and a number of their children. The Johnsons and the Bennetts and several whose names are not known, their lives marked only with rough rectangular reddish rocks of unknown origin.

You see, I have a cemetery in my back yard. Okay, not technically in the yard, but the first headstone is less than 30 feet from my property line. Before the acre on which we live was carved out of the woods, this old multi-family plot was pretty well hopelessly lost atop this little rise.

We bought the land not knowing this little burying ground was back there. When we discovered it we were, as you might expect, deeply affected--but not for the reason you might expect. You see, the graveyard holds the remains of some of the earliest white settlers in this region, people who migrated west out of the Carolinas in the 1840s or so. Their farms and smithies and other enterprises were flourishing nicely when the War of the Rebellion broke upon the land.

At least four of the residents of the Bennett-Belew Cemetery, the most peaceful neighbors you can imagine, took part in that conflict on one side or another.

Did I mention we run a Civil War magazine? Yup. Go figure. What are the odds?

Anyway, the cemetery is horribly overgrown, completely untended for decades at least. Stones tipped, stones broken, stones eroded to illegibility, almost stones entirely missing at the moment because they lie under fallen trees. The layout of the rows in the sections of the various families suggest at least a couple of Belews and possibly some Tosh relatives have suffered this indignity.

We came to Tennessee six years ago this month, and every year one damn thing or another has kept us from working on the cemetery. Wait too long and you get into tornado season, then heat, humidity, poison ivy and oak, snakes and most especially ticks. (I have no idea why it is so but this area is just loaded with the damn things and they creep me out beyond toleration. Not unlike my feelings about Tom DeLay, our own dear Sen. Bill the Cat-Killer Frist and their ilk, now that I think about it.)

Anyway, we've been raking, lopping vines, chopping and chipping away at those fallen trees, and generally busting our butts to make this a nice place for dead people to live in. Going off to do some research tomorrow if the Gordon Browning Library in McKenzie is open, so posting may continue to be sparse. Just wanted to bring up to date my weak and feeble excuses for absence of late.

Oh, and anybody with knowledge of the care and feeding of old cemeteries is cordially invited to share same in comments. Customs with regard to burial of non-immediate-family members (slaves, hired servants, farm hands, casually adopted children, etc.) and methods of marking such burials particularly welcome.

See? We got through a whole post with a headline like this and hardly mentioned either that poor not-quite-dead woman in Florida or Jerry Garcia's old band. The dead are really quite agreeable to be around as long as you don't hound them with a lot of media crap.

Even if, at 11PM, it's a little too close to the 1AM when the legislation—or, should I say, the putative legislation—gets passed in the House.

And even if it's only on CNN. Jeffey Toobin:

Well, I think it's really unusual and, you know, there's actually even a provision in the Constitution called a bill of attainder. And what that means is under the Constitution, the Congress is not allowed to pass a law directed at a specific person. That was dealt with in the American Revolution because the British Parliament had, you know, passed laws saying John Adams, for example, is a criminal. Under our Constitution, we can't make laws about specific people. So, that would be an issue in the challenge to this law, if it became effect.
(via CNN)

I guess I'll take the Constitution over the "culture of [cough] life" any day. Especially when the life seems to involve a lot of lying, endless grandstanding by Republicans, heavy duty Pharisee-ism, plenty of whipping and scourging, lots of executions, and, oh yeah, a crusade in Iraq against the ungodly.

"Culture of life"?

Give.

Me.

A.

Fucking.

Break.

Please, can we have separation of church and state now? Like we used to, when the country was governed Constitutionally by Presidents who were actually elected?

Everybody's read this memo by now, but it bears repeating:

The Washington Post published a memo it said had been circulated to GOP senators. ''This is an important moral issue,'' the memo said, ``and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important.''

That memo appeared to target Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida's top Democrat, saying, ``This is a great political issue because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.''
(via Miami Herald)

Doesn't the Bible have something to say about this?

What could it be? Just let me think...

Oh, yeah! "Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy."

Leave it to the Republicans to turn the living corpse of a brain dead woman into a political football on Palm Sunday. And then claim it's all about morals.

Could anything be more vile and disgusting?

UPDATE Of course, on Palm Sunday, Jesus did enter Jerusalem riding an ass. So the Delay connection is now quite clear.

Good for them.

A little awkwardly, Bobby Schindler and Rep. James P. Moran, D-Va., shook hands.

As reporters and photographers gathered, he handed Moran a CD and urged him to consider footage of his sister.

"I am happy to take a look at that," Moran replied. "But my greater concern is not with the immediate facts of this case as much as it is the precedent, of overruling the state courts, of politicizing a tragic family situation."

The encounter took place after House GOP leaders were rebuffed by Democrats in their initial effort to rush the legislation through in the early afternoon. The House was returning later to consider the measure under less restrictive rules, aiming for a vote early Monday on the bill that was passed by the Senate late Sunday afternoon.
(via AP)

Good for Moran. That took courage. And of course the Republicans are just changing the rules when they lose. Don't they always?

A vote early Monday? Funny how this all blew up on a weekend, and when Harry Reid was out of town. Of course, I can see how the Republicans would want to use Palm Sunday for political purposes, God love 'em, but the timing does seem a little odd, doesn't it? Almost as if they wanted the Sunday talk shows to, um, Change the Subject.

NOTE For the reality based community, the facts on Schiavo from wikipedia (a tip of the ol' Corrente Hat to alert reader Nancy).

Michael Schiavo's no plaster saint (like the rest of us). But, as Moran points out, that's not the issue at all.

The Constitution is more important than one human life—as every soldier knows when they take the oath. The Constitution is why they give their lives. Too bad more Dems aren't rallying to defend the Constitution like Moran is.

UPDATE That morning vote? Here are the details from The Miami Herald:

The tactical decision, which came amid charges of cynical political maneuvering, sharply abbreviated an extraordinary Palm Sunday session.

Not that the Republicans would ever, ever politicize Palm Sunday. Not even to fluff the base.

Republicans are expected to convene at 9 p.m. for debate and then vote on the measure around 1 a.m. Monday.

Under arcane House rules, approval could have come today only by unanimous voice vote of those present, and several Democrats had vowed to block that.

There is, at least, some honor among Democrats.

Now, Republicans must assemble a quorum of at least 218 members -- and then win a two-thirds majority of those present.

''It will be a challenge,'' said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. ``Phone calls started to go out as early as two days ago to alert members that on Sunday and Monday, they might be called to a vote.

And, oh yeah, about the "compromise." CNN:

Members of Congress said Saturday they had agreed on a compromise bill that was limited to the Schiavo case rather than a broader bill that Republicans wanted.

That's what makes it "trial by legislature" and a bill of attainder, you idiots!

My daughter, the former zoo docent, has been telling me how the sexual habits of squid and kangaroos are similar, in that in both species the male delivers sperm packets into the waiting room of the female, who later decides, based on her own timeline, when to break the packet and release the sperm to become pregnant.


Three things occurred to me as we were having this conversation: first, that juxtaposing squid and kangaroos is an odd proposition at best; second, that this is not a bad paradigm for humans to aim for, given the problems it could solve; and third, it puts me in the mind of grocery shopping---picking up one of those packets of the new StarKist tuna-in-a-pouch and taking it home, putting it on the shelf till I'm hungry, and then opening it when I feel like it and not before.

The lesson we can take from all this is that good sex is like a hemetically sealed bag of fish: there for you when you need it, but waiting patiently during those times that you don't. And, so long as we don't break the packet prematurely, as fresh and delightful as the first day of spring.

Which it is. Happy Vernal Equinox!

WASHINGTON - The level of insurgency in postwar Iraq (news - web sites) wouldn't be so high if the U.S.-led coalition had been able to invade from the north, through Turkey, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.

Rumsfeld told "Fox News Sunday" that if the United States had able to get its 4th Infantry Division into northern Iraq through Turkey, more of Saddam's Baathist regime would have been captured or killed, diminishing the insurgency.
(via AP)

Oh yeah, it's the Turks' fault that Iraq is a disaster.

You've got to be kidding me, right?

Do these folks take responsibility for anything -- ever?

Does this remind you of anything? Andrew Cohen of CBS (via the ever essential Atrios)

that there are probably some smart folks on Capitol Hill who are supporting this legislation knowing that ultimately the courts will strike it down. That way, being the politicians that they are, they will be able to blame the heartless judiciary for the result and still will be able to say to their constituents that they tried their best. It is the politics of cynicism at its very best (or very worst).

Wise fools.

This reminds me, at least, of the smart folks in Germany who let Hitler into the government on the assumption that they could control him, and that in six months the Nazis would be defunct. That worked out great, didn't it?

Amazing, amazing, amazing that we're depending on the Rehnquist Court to save us from the end of our 200 year experiment with Constiutional government. Guess those of us who called the Clinton impeachment saga through the theft of election 2000 a slow-moving, media-fuelled rightwing coup were right on the money, eh?

Here's the [cough] "compromise" the Republicans are trying to pass (and that the Dems shamefully are lying down for):

The draft legislation passed around Saturday evening, the "compromise" that legislators say they will enact and then present to the President, starts off with the words "for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo." The bill would give the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida jurisdiction "to hear, determine, and render judgment on a suit or claim by or on behalf of Theresa Marie Schiavo for the alleged violation of any right... under the Constitution or laws of the United States relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life." But it would specifically not "confer additional jurisdiction" on courts to hear disputes about assisted suicide or "create substantive rights not otherwise secured" already in federal or state law.

The proposed law also gives Terri Schiavo's parents procedural help. It gives them standing to start a case on behalf of their daughter in the Middle District of Florida and it requires the federal trial judge to determine "de novo any claim of a violation of any right" Terri Schiavo may have. It also requires the federal courts to push the case to the front of the litigation line and requires the federal courts to issue "such declaratory and injunctive relief as may be necessary to protect the rights of" Schiavo." The law gives Schiavo's parents, or "any other person who was a party to State court proceedings relating" to the case, to file a lawsuit within 30 day.
(via CBS)

That's a bill of attainder—a law that has to do with persons, instead of general legal principles. (See FindLaw)

Here's what the Consitution says:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. (Article I, section 9)

What does this mean? FindLaw:

The phrase ''bill of attainder,'' as used in this clause and in clause 1 of Sec. 10, applies to bills of pains and penalties as well as to the traditional bills of attainder. 1702

The prohibition embodied in this clause is not to be strictly and narrowly construed in the context of traditional forms but is to be interpreted in accordance with the designs of the framers so as to preclude trial by legislature, a violation of the separation of powers concept. 1703


The clause thus prohibits all legislative acts, ''no matter what their form, that apply either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial. . . .''1704

(The persons being punished in this case being Terry Schiavo herself, kept as a living corpse against her own express wishes, as well as her husband.)

James Madison tells us why bills of attainder and trial by legislature are bad ideas, in the Federalist papers #44:

Bills of attainder, ex-post-facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. The two former are expressly prohibited by the declarations prefixed to some of the State constitutions, and all of them are prohibited by the spirit and scope of these fundamental charters. Our own experience has taught us, nevertheless, that additional fences against these dangers ought not to be omitted. Very properly, therefore, have the convention added this constitutional bulwark in favor of personal security and private rights; and I am much deceived if they have not, in so doing, as faithfully consulted the genuine sentiments as the undoubted interests of their constituents. The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and lessinformed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding. They very rightly infer, therefore, that some thorough reform is wanting, which will banish speculations on public measures, inspire a general prudence and industry, and give a regular course to the business of society.

Make no mistake. The "compromise" the Republicans, and, to their shame, the Beltway Dems are pushing in this case means "trial by legislature."

That means that the law, and the Constitition, mean whatever the party in power in Congress says that they mean.

And that means the end of Constitutional—i.e., legitimate—government in the United States.

So I imagine Bush will sign the bill with relish. Funny how we're relying on the Rehnquist court to save our Constitution, isn't it? God must be an ironist.

Here's an important article in WaPo by Carrie Johson. She's been covering all the business fraud trials: Enron, HealthSouth, Adelphia, WorldCom, and so on, and she's come to some interesting conclusions. First, the thieves and crooks at the top of the greasy pole had plenty of helpers:

The sheer number of subordinates who face criminal charges for these accounting frauds belies the myth that some of the biggest schemes of the past decade were carried out by a small group of devious executives. Rather, as the employees themselves recount under oath, dozens of people colluded to hide misdeeds from auditors and investors. At Enron Corp., nearly 30 face criminal charges. At HealthSouth Corp., prosecutors have indicted 18 individuals who allegedly misstated their companies' finances using computer software systems, prepared phony documents and made improper entries on corporate accounting ledgers. Without their help, the frauds probably could not have taken place.

Testimony at the various trials has shed light on a particularly vexing problem for corporate governance experts, prosecutors and investor advocates who want to break the back of corporate fraud: Why would highly motivated workers take part in schemes that jeopardized their careers, their marriages, their standing in the community, and call into question their most basic ethics?

[T]heir biographies offer some clues. Many grew up in or near the towns where the company and its founders reigned supreme. Working at the area's most prominent business conferred instant status in towns such as Coudersport, Pa., the former headquarters of the cable TV giant Adelphia Communications Corp. (whose 79-year-old founder was convicted last year of fraud); Birmingham, home to Scrushy's HealthSouth Corp., and the Jackson, Miss., offices of Ebbers's WorldCom.

Red states all... Now, money paragraph #1:

The words and actions of a surprising number of these subordinates suggest that in many of the companies where fraud began to flourish, workers vowed loyalty not to ethical business practices or even to the company, but to the charismatic leaders who came to personify their businesses.

That is, exactly, fuhrerprinzip. (As translated into American-ese by a myriad of business consultants, "leadership" seminar weasels, and the Harvard Business Review.) And money paragraph #2

The details of these late 1990s frauds vary from company to company, but the general theme is remarkably similar. Someone at the top level, worried about lagging revenues or sagging profits, would ask accounting wizards to find creative ways to meet targeted goals. The process of "hitting the numbers," "making the numbers" or "helping the numbers" (the preferred euphemisms for accounting malfeasance, according to testimony thus far) usually would start as a temporary, if troubling, one-shot deal. Tinkering with the books for just one quarter, however, often morphed into a years-long project as gaps between actual revenue and reported sales snowballed beyond the control of top executives and subordinates in the accounting and finance units.

Um, does this "general theme" remind you of anything? Like Republican budgetary practices? Moving the major expenses, like Iraq, off the books? Rosy revenue projections? Shortening projections so major costs don't appear?

And does the requirement for "loyalty" remind you of anything? Like everybody who was wrong on Iraq getting promoted, and everyone who was right getting shitcanned? Like DiIulio and Wean retracting critical statements days after they made them (and after finding a horse's head in their bed?) Like Bush only appearing at Partei rallies with people who've signed a loyalty oath?

Fuhrerprinzip doesn't work for corporations, does it? (Correction: It works for a short time, and it works for the chieftains who loot the system and stash their millions where justice can't reach them. But it doesn't work for anyone else. Especially it doens't work for the people who help them commit the frauds, or the workers who get left holding the bag, with no job and no pension.)

And since we already know Fuhrerprinzip doesn't work for corporations, why has half the country decided to try it again on the national level? Truly, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result.

I realize The Department of Changing the Subject has done a masterly job in moving the topic of the day from Bush's debacle on Social Security to the Schiavo cause celebre— but the Republican plan to phase out Social Security is a win for us—that is, a win for the kind of country we want, and the kind of life we want to lead—and so we shouldn't let it drop.

The long excerpt that follows is the only cogent discussion I've seen about Bush's plan to phase out Social Security from the 20-something perspective. It shows, quite clearly, why Bush hasn't been able to divide and conquer in that demographic, either.

Naturally, work like this is not to be found in Pravda on the Potomac or Izvestia on the Hudson, but in the Metro, the freebie I read every day on the train. J. Edward Conway writes:

I do have one request of Chicken Little: You may speak to me about Social Security all that you want, but please do not speak for me.

In a recent radio address, the president claimed his privatization plan to be “a better deal for younger workers,” and in an early February release from the White House, the president speaks of a young worker’s desire for “ownership and control.” In this same release, titled, “Strengthening Social Security in the 21st Century,” in two separate bulletpoints he claims that a personal account is good because it allows younger workers to “watch it grow over time.”

Watch it grow over time? Here is a short history of my observations of the stock market:

•1983, age 1: Stock market boom due to home computer sales and biotechnology firms. My parents buy their first house.
• 1987, age 5: Black Monday. Stock market crashes and recession begins. Dad is laid off.
• 1999, age 17: Height of dot-com era. Dad is paid mostly in stock options.
• 2001, age 19: Bubble bursts.

Dad’s stock trades in the high 70s one day, trades at around $10 a few months later. Stock options worthless, salary is cut in half, Dad quits and spends next 2 years jumping from sinking dot-com ship to sinking dot-com ship. Mom decides to get full-time job. I take out student loan to help pay for college.

• 2004, age 22: Feds investigate Mom’s company. Stock plummets.
• 2005, age 22: Bush thinks young workers want a personal account vested in Wall Street so that they can “watch it grow over time.”

What it all comes down to is risk. If I really want to be risky, I can play with Wall Street straight-up and take my chances. If I want minimal risk (which is the way the President promotes privatization), I can work with my 401(k). If I want no risk, I can stay with Social Security as it stands today — guaranteed payoffs upon retirement. An entirely separate editorial could be about why privatization doesn’t actually even solve the projected Social Security deficits in the first place. But, even if privatization was a possible solution, the young workers will never buy into it. Our 401(k) fills our need to play the market with minimal risk — Social Security today fills our void for no risk and I like no risk — President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood that in 1935 (during the Depression!) when he made Social Security guaranteed. It baffles me why the same promise cannot be made today.
(via Metro)

Case closed. No wonder the Repubublicans don't want to talk about phasing out Social Security anymore.

Well, Terri Schiavo's body is all the rage amongst fashionable Republican vitalists today (see definition below). In February I posted some thoughts on the issue of euthanasia at The American Street, and because it seems even more relevant now, I'm reproducing it here, to supplement the important pieces my blog-siblings have posted below. There is no question that the whole thing has taken on the flavor of a real old-fashioned freak show, so let's join with the bipartisan spirit of political opportunism amuck in the land, and pile on!

Physician-assisted suicide has been on the Right's mind since Oregon passed its Death and Dignity Act. Although John Ashcroft was unsuccessful in bringing the state to heel during his reign, the Bush administration is using "activist judges" (that conservative bugaboo) to try again. We will hear the result soon, amidst the usual overheated rhetoric of slippery slopes and miracle recoveries. In the February 2005 edition of Harper's, the Episcopal minister and teacher Garret Keizer has written an article wrestling with problem, and he knows the slippery slope argument is a red herring:

"...we are free to try it (PAS) out. We are free to take a step in that direction and then to rescind or expand the step. We are in fact free to do almost anything we wish--except to avoid the issue or deny the freedom...We can sniff out our otions and pick and choose among them, a birthright generally less appreciated by a dogmatists than by a dog."

But Keizer's is not the voice one hears in the daily media. In a February 5 NYTimes article on the recovering pope (now in archives), Ian Fisher asked:

"Can a suffering, 84-year-old man continue to lead an institution representing a billion people? Pope John Paul II and the people around him say yes, and have, in fact, built an explicit case that his very sickness transmits a series of powerful messages - ones that would seem, for now, to close off the possibility of his retirement.
Those messages range from one of inspiration for the millions around the world now living longer, to a physical expression of his often contentious views on the sanctity of human life, from the womb to the frailties of old age. Abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia are all abominations to him - repudiated by his own public struggle with death.
"What he is saying is that life is worth living until its natural end," one Vatican official said this week during the latest scare over his health. "It is an important witness, and I am sure he is conscious of it - that there is no kind of life which humanly speaking can be terminated because it seems not to be worth living..."
"Christianity exists precisely to give significance to suffering," said Vittorio Messori, an Italian writer who spent time with John Paul during their collaboration on the pope's 1994 book "Crossing the Threshold of Hope."

This is the note repeatedly hit by the anti-choice movement: that life per se is intrinsically sacred, no matter what form it takes, and if that life is burdened with agony, it's God's will and must be borne---in fact, must be borne because suffering gives meaning to life and tempers the soul as fire tempers the blade. (Quibbling aside: never mind the long history of convenient dissonance on the value of life: theology being twisted even today into an unrecognizable satire of Christ's teachings in order to inflict upon the world state-mandated executions, the impoverishment of childern, poisoned environmental policies, war upon illegal war, ad nauseum. If these religionists ever actually stood by their trumpeted values, would we not have a society bearing more resemblance to that of the Jains?)

And not only does suffering make Christians closer to God by breaking down the sufferer's stubborn egoism, it also serves to act as a kind of billboard advertising God's love for all. The sufferer, in accepting and living through his or her misery, refusing to opt for the "easy out" of suicide or pain-killing addiction, exemplifies Christ's willingness to endure pain in order to demonstrate God's love. Peggy Noonan, overcome with breathless hyperbole at the sight of the Pope's recent agonies, takes comfort in Michael Novak's channeling of the College of Cardinals:

"John Paul stands for life, for all of life. He wants to honor what the world does not honor.
But why, I said, does God allow this man he must so love to be dragged through the world in pain? He could have taken him years ago. Maybe, said Mr. Novak, God wants to show us how much he loves us, and he is doing it right now by letting the pope show us how much he loves us. Christ couldn't take it anymore during his passion, and yet he kept going."

Of course, the distinction that is lost here is that there is a difference between choosing to endure one's pain, for whatever reason, and being prevented from choosing to end it because someone who doesn't even know who you are thinks you should bear your burden. No one who has ever been in extremis would argue that such challenges can mold one's character for the better. The acts of struggling to find an escape from a seemingly insurmountable morass, or finding a reason to go on in the depths of blackest misery or physical pain, can be life-changing experiences. But those circumstances also break many people who simply haven't the strength or help to cope, or who are confronted by tasks beyond their abilities. And making the choice to control one's death can be one of the greatest life-affirming decisions anyone can make in this world of high tech machinery and sterile, anonymous hospital wards. Those who make broad-brush statements about the value of those difficulties are too often using the miseries of others to vindicate their own views of the world as a place where pleasure, ease, and even happiness are of the devil.

Keizer has a somewhat different take. It's not life that the anti-choice people hold dear; it's pain:

"The right talks about protecting life and tradition, but on some level--the level, let's say, where someone like Dr. Thompson (a physician who helped a terminal patient die) is held up for derision--it is mostly interested in protecting pain. For two reasons... the belief that pain holds the meaning of life...and the belief that pain is fundamental to justice...if justice is conceived as nothing more than a system of punishments and rewards. The essence of punishment is pain. Whoever owns pain owns power.
The suicide, the mystic, the woman who seeks an abortion, the cancer patient who smokes a joint...--all are roundly condemned for their escape from "responsibility", but truly feared for their escape from jurisdiction."

And he points out the innate contradictions often held by the Right regarding the sacredness of life:

"What I find especially interesting is the way in which the cold-blooded calculation that launches an invasion in which thousands of children suffer and die is imaginatively transferred to decisions seldom undertaken without struggle and seldom concluded without remorse."

Meaning that too often those who think nothing of supporting a war of terrible casualties assume that others, faced with slightly different choices of life and death, would take the same easy, thoughtless route. The Right projects its own callous disregard for life onto people struggling to choose the right course, and pronounces them immoral.

The definition of life has been tossed back and forth by the Right and Left for decades in a war to gain the high moral ground, but I think Keizer has identified the key elements for making that definition. He begins by reducing the Right's own defintion as

"...vitalism, which holds that if it's alive, it's a life. No scurrilously rationalist defintion of a human being as an 'upright featherless biped'...was ever so reductive...Man may be a little lower than the angels, but his capacity for pain is reckoned as only a little higher than that of raw meat."

But for him, it becomes more complex:

"The defining quality of human life, as I understand it, is relationship. If there is any idea under the sun that is certifiably 'Judeo-Christian', that is it. To be authentically pro-life means something more than protecting a life or my life. It means cherishing the lives of those who come after me, or who, in the event of a degenerative illness, will need to take care of me: my wife, my kid, my friends, persons whose lives are likely to be shortened by the stresses of prolonging mine."

As extremists on the right codify their way toward the theft of our most intimate and private decisions, we need to begin to have this dialogue.

An unsigned one-page memo, distributed to Republican senators, said the debate over Schiavo would appeal to the party's base, or core, supporters. The memo singled out Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who is up for reelection next year and is potentially vulnerable in a state President Bush won last year.

"This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," said the memo, which was reported by ABC News and later given to The Washington Post. "This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats."
(via WaPo)

There it is folks.

This isn't about life.

This isn't about principles.

They're dragging this family through this in order to win a Senate seat in Florida.

I'm speechless.

Do DeLay, his supporters in Congress, and those Men of God so conspicuously on display down in Florida really propose to picket every intensive care unit, nursing home, and hospice in America to ensure that no family facing Schiavo's situation is allowed to let their loved one die? Is Congress really going to legislatively ban natural death so long as some theoretical means is available to continue it? Oh no, says James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and DeLay's prime enabler in this weekend's grandstand play: the "emergency" legislation is "narrowly targeted" and not designed to set a precedent.

In other words, this is pure political exploitation of a private family conflict that's become a media sensation, even though it involves a very common, if, for the people involved, agonizing event.

As such, the GOP's Schiavo intervention is of a piece with other cynical efforts by Bush and his supporters to signal support for a "culture of life" without much regard for logic and consistency. It's a whole lot like the Bush position on human embryo research, as a matter of fact. Many thousands of human embryos are created each year in fertility clinics; it's only when it is proposed that these certain-to-be-discarded embryos be used for life-saving research that the Hammer comes down and Congress is asked to take a stand for life. Wouldn't want to inconvenience or embarass possible Republican voters utlilizing those fertility clinics, right?

But this time, I suspect the transparent cynicism of the we're-absolutists-on-life-if-it's-in-the-news posture of the GOP may backfire. It is very hard to pose as a pro-family, pro-states-rights, anti-Washington political party when you call Congress into an "emergency session" to interfere with the laws of Florida and the prerogatives of one poor husband trying to respect his wife's wishes. If, as we are told, George W. Bush is about to lend his authority and signature to this disgraceful exhibit of overweening government power, the persistant media idea that he's just a genial well-meaning man who happens to preside over a party of loony extremists and corrupt hacks needs to die a natural death.
(via Talking Points Memo)

Indeed.

God, why doesn't somebody cut the Pentagon's feeding tube? And big oil and MBNA's, while we're at it? Oh, you think people aren't dying for those reasons? You don't think that? Why on earth not? Puh-leeze.

Steroids weren't enough of a distraction, so now Terry Schiavo. Utterly shameless and disgusting. Delay's kinda like a drunken stranger showing up at a funeral, making a loud speech, and then vomiting into the cold cuts before collapsing into a corner. Anyone in the family know who that guy is? No, didn't think do.

Of course, from a purely political standpoint, you've gotta give the Partei credit. They have an eye for the main chance like no political machine in the history of thhe world. Most Americans don't know who Delay is, and this is how he's going to introduce himself to them. As a defender of "life."

"Culture of life," my sweet Aunt Fanny. Tell that to the 250 death row inmates Bush had killed with sloppy memos written by Alberto Gonzales. Tell that to the 3000 WTC dead who might be alive today if Condi had read the 200 memos Clarke sent her on Al Qaeda. Tell that to the 1500 American dead in Iraq. Tell that to the 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Tell that to the working poor, the sick, the old, the homeless who are going to die, with no Good Samaritan to defend them, while the money that could prolong their days and give them dignity gets pissed away in tax cuts for those who already have so much they don't know what to do with it.

And for some reason, the Dems—the gutless, feckless Beltway Dems—they're letting Delay use them as a shovel to dig himself out of a jam. Worse, they're letting Delay use the living corpse of a braindead woman to dig himself out of a jam.

Fine, politically this is all brutal: An unstoppable train. Do the Dems actually have to get on board? Do they have to ask the engineer if they can sit in his lap, wear his hat for a minute, and maybe blow the whistle once? WTF?

I'm not asking for Harry Reid to speak out; I'm just asking him to be silent, and be smart enough to have a surrogate say something like: "I'm sure Congressman Delay's recent legal and ethical troubles have nothing to do with this." Or "I'm sure the collapse of Bush's plans to phase out Social Security would never lead him to change the subject in this way." Or "The Constitution, if Congressman Delay will study it for a moment, forbids making laws directed at individuals." Et cetera. Or maybe, just maybe, talk about life as it should be. Eh?

Yet the gutless, feckless, craven, enabling—oh, I'm sorry, "responsible"—Beltway Dems bend over once again, and ask the Republicans "Please sir, may I have some more?"

All when 80% of Americans, were they in Terry Schiavo's position, a living corpse, would to die with dignity, a dignity Delay has grossly, obscenely violated, all for a momentary bump in the polls.

Good lord almighty. Have they no decency? At long last, have they no decency?

UPDATE

The Senate session Saturday evening was convened to formally give necessary permission for the House to meet Sunday, when it otherwise would be in recess under a previously passed Easter recess resolution.

The plan is for the House to act on the two-page bill Sunday, or just after midnight Monday morning if someone objects to the bill being taken up on an expedited basis Sunday.

Gee, Sunday. Well, at least they had the decency not to wait 'til Easter Sunday. I guess that would have been too much, even for these guys.

Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., issued a statement late Saturday saying he will object to the unanimous consent request.
(ABC

Good for Wexler. Does Reid have his back? Surely you jest:

At a news conference after the Senate session Saturday, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, thanked the Democratic leadership for cooperating on an expedited procedure to consider the legislation. He singled out Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Carl Levin of Michigan as two who had reservations about the bill, but agreed not to use Senate rules or traditions to block its consideration.

"Please sir, may I some more?" Again, if it's unstoppable, fine. But be silent! Don't let the enemy pat you on the head! Like Harkin, for example:

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, appeared at the news conference with Santorum and others in support of the compromise.

Right down that yellow streak in the middle of the road. Because you know one thing that makes "life" here in the US good? The Constitution. Which, of course, the Republicans have no respect for, indeed no knowledge of. Think that's over the top?

GOP Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the measure was "narrowly targeted" and did not set a precedent.

Right, doesn't set a precedent... What does that remind me of? Wait a minute... Oh, Bush v. Gore! But it's worse. What Sensenbrenner doesn't understand is that it's exactly the bill's narrow drawing that makes it a bill of attainder—a law in which the legislature usurps the judicial function by targeting a single individual.

Why is that bad? Well, let's do a little thought experiment. We all remember this heartwarming story about Senator Santorum:

Their fourth baby died ... two hours after an emergency delivery. The [Santorums] took [the] body home to let their three young children see and hold the [dead] baby before burying him, according to Karen Santorum’s book of the ordeal, "Letters to Gabriel."

So, look. The Republicans, no matter what they say, have just set a precedent where laws can be passed targetting individuals; again, that's a bill of attainder, forbidden by the Constitution.

So, could Congress pass a law putting the Santorums, personally, in jail for abusing a corpse? Yes, they could. In fact, when you think about it, that's exactly what the Republicans are doing to Terry Schiavo right now.

And, could Congress pass a law targetting you because you didn't bring your dead child home for your living children to touch? Sure. That's the precedent they've set.

All dignity, all honesty, all pretence at fairness or decency, all gone. The Constitution, gone. All so Tom Delay doesn't get indicted, Santorum holds his seat, and Bush gets a bump in the polls, and maybe gets to gut Social Security after all.

Unbelievable. Maybe if half the country had any representation in Washington... Oh, but I dream, don't I. Night, all.

You'd think Republicans would get tired of violating the separation of powers in the Constitution, wouldn't you?

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - As a deal in Congress was worked out to have federal courts decide Terri Schiavo's fate, emotions swelled outside the brain-damaged woman's hospice room Saturday, with protesters arrested after they symbolically tried to smuggle in bread and water on her second day without a feeding tube.

President Bush (news - web sites) changed his schedule to return to Washington from his Texas ranch on Sunday to be on hand to sign the legislation.

As supporters maintained a vigil outside the hospice, Schiavo's mother pleaded for the 41-year-old woman's life.

"We laugh together, we cry together, we smile together, we talk together," Mary Schindler told reporters. "Please, please, please save my little girl."

Congressional leaders announced a compromise between Senate and House Republicans that would allow the brain-damaged woman's case to be reviewed by federal courts that could restore her feeding tube.

The Senate convened briefly Saturday evening to give formal permission for the House to meet Sunday, when it otherwise would be adjourned for the Easter recess.

The plan is for the House to act on the two-page bill Sunday or just after midnight Monday morning. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said the Senate then would act on the House legislation, assuming it passes the House as envisioned, and rush the bill to the president for signature into law.

"We should investigate every avenue before we take the life of a living human being," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. "That's the very least we can do for her."
(via AP)

Oh yeah, Tom. I remember how you were such an incredible advocate of preserving life a couple of years ago. You really busted your ass trying to find a peaceful solution prior to IraqWar Part II -- a conflict that has now killed tens of thousands.

Am I remembering something wrong? This isn't all just shameless political grandstanding designed to distract the public from W's 45% approval rating, is it?

I'm so disgusted I don't know quite what to say.

Had me a vision where a angel, no shit—a honest to Yahweh angel—came a-swoopin outta heaven (or somewhere UP there) and started grabbin the backstabbers and syndicators and swindlers and litterbugs and fascist sycophants, yeah! you know, the willfully ignorant, jes grabbin em right out of their SUVs and their fat verandas and their BMWs and their high rise office buildins and their boardrooms and plush bedrooms, yankin em outta their oval offices and pulpits, snatchin em off their gummint-subsidized tractors an outta their swimmin pools like they was sacks a taters, stuffin em into a bigger sack marked “deader’n shit” an haulin em off to a court like they used to describe to me in Hebrew school, a long hall at the end of which, way up higher’n they could really see, on a bench, where some white-haired ol crone looks inna book an sez, sorta low and grumbly like:

—Well?

Well, I did everything I could to kill queers an make them see the error of their ways. Voted for godly men and, even though I think their place is in the home, women. Watched Bill O’Reilly and the 700 Club.

—Um.

And I, uh, gave lots of money to the religion of my choice, AND their chosen political party. And I made LOTSA money, so y’know, wink wink nudge nudge.

—Uh-huh.

I, ah, protested against abortion. Even killed me a baby-killer. Even though that’s a secret. I spread the true Word of God everywhere I went.

—I see alla that inna book here. So?

Well, um…can I come in, then? I believed in a culture of life.

—And there’s laughin and hollerin from up on the bench like you never heard, a packa hyenas couldn’t make so much eerie noise, and a ol white-bearded fella starts readin the list of charges, and the folks down there, they commence to looking at their feet, right down at their shiny loafers an pumps that was jes’ shined this mornin by a ol fella at the office lobby and saying

But we never knew…

—And that leads to more knee-slappin and guffawin…Stop, stop, the folks up on the bench are beggin, you’re killin us, oooh, ha ha, he he he…

---

Well, maybe it was just a dream. Seeing’s how I’m a godless socialist, secular humanist-type and have been for, lo! these many years. And I did fall asleep in the chair listening to the Brandenburg Concertos. And I have had a few—okay, lots of—snorts out of the ol kickapoo joy juice.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

I almost broke my code of nonviolent resistance today, when a big old SUV covered with yellow and red, white and blue magneto ribbons, and a Viva! Bush sticker passed me on a mountain curve, threw a bunch of McDonald’s trash out the window, and took off.

I watched as the burger wrappers, ketchup packs and soda cups rolled down the steep slope, toward the trout stream somewhere far below, where it would be damn near impossible to retrieve them, and, I must confess, thoughts of a high speed chase followed by violence crossed my mind.

Only now, safely wrapped around a couple of stiff drinks, am I beginning to calm down. I think until my outrage-o-meter gets out of the red, I better stay home. Or start looking at my WWMLKD? bracelet more often. Even now, I toy with the idea of perhaps meeting this same SUV in a parking lot somewhere with a head full of dangerous ideas and a broken beer bottle.

Small thing, I guess, but it was the straw, y’know…

...Eric Alterman is revising his blogroll; this is something he does every so often, to make sure that each coveted spot is filled by worthy blogs that have maintained their worthiness.

Since many of our alert readers are also alert bloggers as well, this is notification for you, in part.

As in times past, the proceedings are being handled by Jeralyn Merritt, the proprietress of TalkLeft, and the sainted legal pundit all three cable news networks call to be the lone liberal voice usually facing off against two conservative prosecutors and one libertarian law professor, and who've you doubtless often seen being the sole/soul defender of the enlightment, our constitution, and the humanistic values of western civilization as we once knew it.

Now, for the other part; if any of you think that Corrente might be worthy of a place on the estimable Dr. Alterman's blogroll, please feel free to let Jeralyn know. You can submit more than one nomination, including a nomination for your own blog; it is customary, I hear, to say a few lines about the reason for your choice.

Suggestions can be sent by email to alterlinks@aol.com, and you can read about the whole thing yourself here. They announced this Thursday, so you should probably be quick.

Well, uh, like...that wasn't so bad, was it?

Just asking.

Alert readers:

As you know, here at Corrente we've worked tirelessly to bring a new civility to American political discourse....

But one of the principles of being civil is not to stay where you're not wanted.

And because the demon spawn good folks at blogger keep not letting us post reliably, clearly we're not wanted here.

So, we have to move on. That means a new URI. And www.corrente.com and www.corrente.net are both taken.

Suggestions for a new URI please!

Decisions by the judges are, of course, entirely dependent on the quantity of mai tais consumed when the names are picked out of the ol' Corrente hat. And there's nothing in it for you other than the happiness that comes from doing good deeds in a naughty world.

That said, have at it!

NOTE OK, the demotic "URL" not the technically accurate "URI".

Do tell!

FWIW, I reprint the following item from this week's Bell Curve in City Paper (since it's not available on line):

Prostitute-turned-White House reporter "Jeff Gannon" used to play on the Woody's softball team in the '80s. And nobody made it from first to third like that guy.

I don't know whether this item is a fact, or a factoid (i.e., merely fact-esque). However, the Bell Curve editorial formula starts with the factual setup, and ends with the punchline.

So, readers... Did "Jeff Gannon" pitch, or catch? And did he bring his own glove? And did anyone else, now a married man in D.C., play on the Woody's team?

If you have read my own blog or my American Street work, you may know I'm a fan of Mr. Fish, whose work has been picked up by the Harper's website. His piece this week muses on the key job requirement for those nominated for office by the Dear Leader:


And just in time for Easter, here's his take on modern Christianity, as seen through the eyes of the military-industrial theocracy:


You can see more of his work at his own site, here.

Good news for Pete the Deer:

But the Spanish team found a direct link between the length and complexity of a buck's horns and the quality of its sperm.

Long, multi-pointed antlers on a buck signal that it is a potent mate and females might seek out such males for this reason, said Montserrat Gomendio, a biologist at Madrid's Museum of National Sciences who is part of the team that did the research.

Hunters measure deer antlers meticulously, have a system for evaluating them in terms of size and number of points, and award prizes for good sets.

"What this means is that what we value from an aesthetic standpoint has a biological foundation, in the sense that it transmits information on the quality of that male," Gomendio said in an interview.

Horns on male deer are known as secondary sexual characters, which were believed to lack any kind of information on reproductive capacity.

But the Spanish findings suggest otherwise and might be applied when studying other mammals — male elephants with ivory tusks or primates with large incisors — to see if they also say something about the specimen other than its ability to fight, Gomendio said.
(via AP)

Damn mai tais...

I learned how to post on CivicSpace, do some basic administration, assess our requirements, while waiting for blogger to let me past the dashboard to post. (And a big tip of the ol' Corrente hat to Xan and farmer for the various hookups to let me get this done.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm no whiz at this stuff—I did have a whole hour to wait before blogger gave me a connection...

I've been giving a lot of thought as to whether or not to weigh in on the blogpile controversy over Eugene Volokh's recent peaen (being updated like mad) to the catharsis of public executions. You've probably heard of it, if not actually read it: his hearty endorsement of the killing of an Iranian found guilty of murdering a number of children; the preliminary 100 lashes (if you don't know what this does to a human body, I recommend reading Mutiny on the Bounty for the scene in which one of the sailors, flogged 100 strokes, has his back laid open to the bone and dies of the shock); and finally, the noose around the neck and death by slow strangulation while hanging from a crane (which was a popular prop for executions with the Taliban, too) in front of an enormous hooting crowd.

Eugene--feeling particularly bloodthirsty, or just damned pissed off--on seeing this, launched into a great tirade on the ineffable justice and righteousness of the whole thing, and it's been non-stop verbal saturnalia ever since. Digby, and Yglesias (love your Dad, Matt!), and The Editors have all been taking a scalpel to the good professor's post, but I thought Mithras over at Fables of the Reconstruction (call me chauvinistic, it's a Philly blog) touched on all the right elements with the acid tongue it deserves:

"I think part of the problem is that people who would be perfectly fine blowing someone away for cutting them off in traffic - if they could get away with it - feel queasy when similar punishments are inflicted en masse. As a people, Americans are sadists with delicate sensibilities. The American way is to hire others do the torture and hide it, so we don't sully our beautiful minds with such images. Prison walls don't just keep the guilty in; they also block them from our sight. If that's not good enough, there's always extraordinary rendition. The crime of Abu Grahib was not the humiliations or the dogs or the beatings - it was the pictures. Damned sloppy of them. Similarly, Eugene's sin is being too honest, rather than couching his language in the balancing tests and learned utilitarianism of the libertarian lawyer."

Would it be too obvious to say that those who indulge their vengeance coarsen themselves and become the very things that they hate? Or that we lose what moral superiority we may like to think we have over murderers and sadists if we do? One thing we would not lose is our humanity, which encompasses the very worst (as well as the best) that any of us is capable of.

Those of you familiar with David Neiwert's discussions on lynching will recognize the illustrative principle at work in the top of the post.

The ACLU has published a study that states the obvious:

"Drug convictions have caused the number of women behind bars to explode, leaving in the rubble displaced children and overburdened families," the document says.

The number of imprisoned women is increasing at a much faster rate than the number of men, mostly because of tougher drug laws. There were 101,000 women in state and federal prisons in 2003, an eight-fold increase since 1980; roughly one-third were drug offenders, compared to about one-fifth of male inmates.

via ACLU: U.S. war on drugs hurting women

Might be time to pay a visit to the November Coalition if you never have. Sip a Mai Tai while you do, using riggsveda’s recipe (below). That is, while Mai Tai’s are still a legal high.

Showing they have no sense of decency, prominent Republicans in the U.S. Congress have insinuated themselves into the Schiavo case. Trying to use congressional subpoenas in the fashion they're using them has got to be a new low in constitutional interpretation or lack thereof. Put simply, Congress cannot act as part of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches all at the same time -- which is what they're trying to do. Furthermore, we keep hearing about how all of this is coming from the U.S. House. It's not, these subpoenas are coming from the crazy leadership of one House and one Senate committee.

I guess I'd feel differently about all of this if I really thought these folks were doing this because they thought it was the right thing to do, not because they hoped their demagoguery would distract us all from the scandal that is currently engulfing Tom DeLay or Bush's low 40s approval ratings or Bush's DOA Social Security Destruction Plan.

And judging from what I'm hearing on CNN, it certainly is cranking up the fundies and creating a lot of sound and fury with the knuckle-dragging crowd. If these folks really cared about life, they wouldn't have all so blithely signed on to this disaster in Iraq that has probably already killed more than 100,000 people, including more than 1,500 American soldiers.

For the recipe, go here.

When the news ceases to send chills of horror up your back, you will have had enough.


::

Over at Common Dreams, Mary Turck discusses the Colombian “Peace Communities” and their brave and tragic story. There was a symposium on these communities I heard about up in Denver, I think, and now I wish I’d gone.

It seems that the U.S. (Republican) backed government of Uribe doesn’t like the idea that certain communities in his country have declared themselves weapons-free zones. People in these communities are turning up dead, murdered.

These communities don’t allow the U.S. funded Colombian Army in their towns, and they don’t allow the FARC in, either. The Colombian Army (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pentagon and CIA) insists they have the right to enter at any time. FARC, of course, goes where they want.

This love of peace and human rights makes the peace communities unpopular, you see, on both sides. Kind of like Martin Luther King felt when he was accused of being too soft, or not soft enough.

What are these peace communities like? Well, Bill Weinberg tells us…

San José has declared itself a peace community, which rejects the violence of all sides in Colombia’s civil war. "Our neutrality means we will not participate with any armed actors," says Maria Brigida. "But we will denounce human rights abuses by any side."

Maria Brigida is one of eight members of San José’s community council (including three women) who have been elected every year since 1997, when the community declared its neutrality in a civil war that had claimed many local lives.

Every San José resident over 12 can vote in council elections. By consensus, the young men of the community do not serve in the army, despite official conscription. By not serving, they lose the right to work and to education, but in a remote and largely self-sufficient campesino community, this makes little difference. "If we had a legitimate army, perhaps they would serve," says Maria Brigida. "But not with this army that attacks the civil population and assassinates children."

There’s a lot more at Common Dreams: Trail of Blood Leads from Colombia to US and at: americas.org - Peace Communities

Maybe it’s time to begin some peace communities right here in the USA. It’s certainly time to support the brothers and sisters who have the guts to create ones in Colombia. I’m looking into how best to do that. Writing congresscritters seems fruitless on this front, but it’s a place to start. I’m wondering if there isn’t a more direct way to help…?

Once past the triple-headed guardian of the Salon gates (this week it's Target) you can read a couple very incisive pieces on the curious development that has become the Wolfowitz in World Bank Wonderland fairy tale.

The first is Mr. Magoo goes to the World Bank, a very funny bit by Michael Lind that starts off with this:

"Wolfowitz is the Mr. Magoo of American foreign policy. Like the myopic cartoon character, Wolfowitz stumbles onward blindly and serenely, leaving wreckage and confusion behind.
Critics are wrong to portray Wolfowitz as a malevolent genius. In fact, he's friendly, soft-spoken, well meaning and thoughtful. He would be the model of a scholar and a statesman but for one fact: He is completely inept. His three-decade career in U.S. foreign policy can be summed up by the term that President Bush coined to describe the war in Iraq that Wolfowitz promoted and helped to oversee: a "catastrophic success."
Even the greatest statesman makes some mistakes. But Wolfowitz is perfectly incompetent. He is the Mozart of ineptitude, the Einstein of incapacity. To be sure, he has his virtues, the foremost of which is consistency. He has been consistently wrong about foreign policy for 30 years."

Joe Conason's aptly named Head Scratcher hits the same note, but in a more sober assessment of Wolfie's financial acumen as applied to overseeing the Pentagon's use of funds:

"Two months ago the GAO again singled out the Pentagon for harsh criticism, reporting that it operates eight of the 25 worst-run government programs. Comptroller General David Walker said that the cost is reckoned "in billions of dollars in waste each year and inadequate accountability to the Congress and the American taxpayer." The failures, which have persisted for many years, relate to financial and contract management, the operation of military infrastructure, and the modernization of Pentagon information technology -- which, in short, are a total mess."

He ties this in to the huge corruption pit which Iraq is fast becoming:

"A newly released report from Transparency International, the Berlin-based organization that monitors corrupt practices around the world, warns that Iraqi contracting may soon become "the biggest corruption scandal in history." The group blames the United States for providing "a poor role model" in contracting and auditing. (They've likely heard about Halliburton.)
Waste, fraud and corruption, those perennial government buzzwords, are indeed the most pressing problems for the World Bank as it seeks to reform development aid. So it is difficult to understand why the president -- or any truly compassionate conservative -- would entrust those enormous concerns to someone with Wolfowitz's grim and blemished record."

Hard to believe Paul still hasn't reached the ultimate level of his incompetence. Bush evidently has faith that he will.

And of course, Bush should know.

So George Kennan has died.
For those who may not know who he was, or remember him, he was (among many other things) one-time ambassador to the Soviet Union and creator of the CIA, who almost single-handedly engineered the policies that became known as the "Cold War"; that combination of fear-propagandizing, military-industrial build-up, and black ops that sent a generation scrambling around their backyards digging bomb shelters and helped make Boeing and Lockheed Martin what they are today.
When all the neo-cons and wingnuts were beatifying Reagan during the long, putrid week of boo-hooing after his death, you heard over and over how it was Reagan's hard-nosed dealings with the Soviets that brought down their empire. But Howard Zinn writes in his People's History of the United States that it was these policies, and the entire conduct of the Cold War, that actually delayed the breakup of the USSR, and he cites Kennan's own words:

"...the general effect of cold war extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union by the end of the 1980s."

The entire period of time from the end of World War II until 1989 was a grand shadow play made possible by the collusion of both political parties and the corporate profiteers who kept the Pentagon's bottomless maw filled with ever more outre weaponry and the paranoia to motivate taxpayers to permit themselves to be robbed for the purpose of funding it. George Kennan was a major player in all of it. You can read more about it here.

It's so good to have first RDF and then riggsveda back. It was getting quiet in here...

After all, that's our oil under their jungle!

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez charged last month that the United States was developing plans to assassinate him, the U.S. State Department rejected the accusation as "wild."

Last week, Felix Rodriguez, a former CIA operative and prominent Bush supporter in south Florida, told Channel 22 in Miami that he had information about the administration's plans to "bring about a change" in Venezuela, possibly through "military measures."

Rodriguez's remarks cannot be dismissed as bombast. He is well known in Latin America for his role advising a Bolivian military unit that captured and executed Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara in 1967. He is well-connected with the Bush family. The memory of various White House-approved, CIA-sponsored conspiracies to assassinate Fidel Castro in the 1960s may have faded in Washington but they have not been forgotten in Havana or Caracas.
(via WaPo)

Please refer all messages using the words "tinfoil hat" to The Department of No! They would Never Do That!

After all, we only torture people. We don't assassinate them. Right?

After all, that's our oil under their jungle!

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez charged last month that the United States was developing plans to assassinate him, the U.S. State Department rejected the accusation as "wild."

Last week, Felix Rodriguez, a former CIA operative and prominent Bush supporter in south Florida, told Channel 22 in Miami that he had information about the administration's plans to "bring about a change" in Venezuela, possibly through "military measures."

Rodriguez's remarks cannot be dismissed as bombast. He is well known in Latin America for his role advising a Bolivian military unit that captured and executed Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara in 1967. He is well-connected with the Bush family. The memory of various White House-approved, CIA-sponsored conspiracies to assassinate Fidel Castro in the 1960s may have faded in Washington but they have not been forgotten in Havana or Caracas.
(via WaPo)

Please refer all messages using the words "tinfoil hat" to The Department of No! They would Never Do That!

After all, we only torture people. We don't assassinate them. Right?

After all, that's our oil under their jungle!

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez charged last month that the United States was developing plans to assassinate him, the U.S. State Department rejected the accusation as "wild."

Last week, Felix Rodriguez, a former CIA operative and prominent Bush supporter in south Florida, told Channel 22 in Miami that he had information about the administration's plans to "bring about a change" in Venezuela, possibly through "military measures."

Rodriguez's remarks cannot be dismissed as bombast. He is well known in Latin America for his role advising a Bolivian military unit that captured and executed Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara in 1967. He is well-connected with the Bush family. The memory of various White House-approved, CIA-sponsored conspiracies to assassinate Fidel Castro in the 1960s may have faded in Washington but they have not been forgotten in Havana or Caracas.
(via WaPo)

Please refer all messages using the words "tinfoil hat" to The Department of No! They would Never Do That!

After all, we only torture people. We don't assassinate them. Right?

Then the Republican could hold hearings about that!

Alert reader chica toxica asks what the story is on Stephen L. Johnson, Bushco’s choice to be the new head of the EPA. All I’ve found so far is this over at Online Journal:

EPA administrator nominee supports testing of chemicals on human subjects

It seems that the guy (the increasingly whorish) NPR was gushing over as a great choice (a fine scientist, will never let politics or industry affect his science-based decisions) is into letting industry test their chemicals (including pesticides) on humans. In other words, another nominee whose concern for human rights ranks right up there with their concern for wearing matching socks.

Here’s a taste:

During President Clinton's administration, the EPA would not consider the results of controversial trials that tested pesticides on people. But after Bush took over the White House, Johnson changed the policy to permit consideration, saying, "We are willing to consider that such studies can be useful." However, a panel of scientists and ethicists convened by the EPA in 1998 determined that these types of trials were unethical and scientifically unsuitable to estimate the safety of chemicals.

In 2001, the trials considered by the agency gave paid subjects doses of pesticides hundreds of times greater than levels that EPA officials considered safe for the general public. The agency evaluated three studies that year from Dow Chemicals, Bayer Corporation, and the Gowan Company. The Bayer and Gowan studies were conducted in Third World countries, where volunteers were more readily available, while Dow conducted their study in Nebraska.

In the Dow study, human subjects were given doses four times the level that the EPA knew produced adverse effects in animals. Subjects suffered numbness, headaches, nausea, vomiting and stomach cramps. Dow's doctors determined that these symptoms were "possibly" or "probably" related to the chemical. But in the final analysis of the study, Dow concluded that the pesticide did not produce any symptoms. And the EPA accepted it.

It's wasn't surprising then that in October of last year, Johnson strongly supported a study in which infants will be monitored for health impacts as they undergo exposure to toxic chemicals for a two-year period. The Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS), will analyze how chemicals can be ingested, inhaled, or absorbed by children ranging from infants to three-year olds. The study will analyze 60 children in Duval County, Florida who are routinely exposed to pesticides in their homes. Yet the EPA acknowledges that pesticide exposure is a risk factor for childhood cancer and the early onset of asthma.

Charming, huh? Maybe when he gets together with Gonzales, Chertoff, and Negroponte they can mutually figure out a way to use pesticides as an instrument of acceptable torture. Maybe Scalia can figure a way to get the Supremes to reverse their decision on juvenile executions to at least allow for juveniles to participate in pesticide trials while they’re in prison.

Yeesh. I feel like there’s a boulder on my shoulder.

Via Loaded Mouth:

Darfur Action: "100 Hours of Conscience"
In conjunction Save Darfur's "100 Hours of Conscience" letter writing campaign to the President and Congress, which I urge you to participate in, I also urge you to send a letter to the New York Times about their lack of Darfur coverage.

Tas has provided a letter that you can send to the New York Times in one easy click.

Visit permalink above or Loaded Mouth homepage for additional information.

*

According to the LA Times, researchers in Texas have found a possible link between autism and mercury in the air and water.

Study finds possible mercury-autism link

The number of children diagnosed with autism in America is continuing to increase at a rate of more than 20% a year, according to the latest figures published by the US Department of Health.

The link between mercury and autism as well as other health issues, especially in children, is well known, of course:

Autistic Society >> Mercury >> Mercury risk rising

But it’s okay. I will sleep much better tonight knowing that Bushco (a wholly owned subsidiary of Rove-Goebbels, Inc.) is putting mercury emissions controls in the gentle, caring and compassionate hands of capitalist industry. These kind and concerned folks will no doubt put kids ahead of profit. No need for cumbersome air pollution laws and regulations.

Today might be a good day to join the Sierra Club. Membership in any number of environmental organizations helps them fund lawsuits and lobbyists. A nice birthday, anniversary, bar/bat mitzvah or St. Patrick’s Day gift, too.

Richard Cohen:

Bush's town meetings are town meetings only if the town is Pyongyang.
(via WaPo)

Nice snark!

Hey, why do they call it a "conversation" when it's all scripted, anyhow?

UPDATE
Say it once, why say it again

Now that blogger is online again, I've removed the extra three posts that blogger's massive suckitude caused to appear, and also the two drafts. I've already shared my feelings at "A blogger's curse on the marketing weasels" at Google.

I go away for a couple days and what do I have to come back to?

1) Karen "You-Don't-Get-Feet-That-Big-From-Walking-All-Over-Karl-Rove" Hughes, of all blessed people, is named Undersecretary for State for Foreign Affairs? Let me let Condi describe this kickback fest as only she can:

"Today, I am pleased to announce that President Bush intends to nominate Karen P. Hughes as the State Department's new Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy. Karen will have the rank of ambassador and, if confirmed, she will undertake a broad review and restructuring of our public diplomacy efforts. I can think of no individual more suited nor more suited for this task of telling America's story to the world, of nurturing America's dialogue with the world and advancing universal values for the world than Karen Hughes."

Do you think she writes this stuff herself? Can anyone tell me one single thing in Hughes' bag of tricks that makes her qualified to bridge the gap between the shit-kickers in Bush's base and the gaily-clad Thracians of the Eurasian subcontinent? Why, she can't even work that magic on me, and I speak the language (except that I don't talk in code and when I say something I actually mean it.)

2.) Paul Wolfowitz, previously named as a possible head of the World Bank, is back on the short list again? Didn't we go through this once already? What happened to Carly Fiorina, former head of Hewlitt-Packard, who was proposed after Wolfowitz? I don't know that a rich corporate diva would have been a better choice than a rich corporo-utopian fascist, but...Paul Wolfowitz, for Christ sake?

3) ANWR. Well, we saw that coming, didn't we? Was there any question that, once the Republicans got their last tentacle around the voting bloc in the Senate that this, and much worse, would be coming?

4) Bush not only admits running his own Pravda, but he's proud of it. "Nyah, nyah, nyah nyah, nyah," he says in his best grade school playground voice.

"There is a Justice Department opinion that says these -- these pieces -- are within the law, so long as they're based upon facts, not advocacy," the president told a news conference."

And that would be the same Justice Department that got behind detentions of unspecified length without charge, and jettisoning that whole habeas corpus thing, right?

5) The entire weight of the sober body of the U.S. Congress is thrown behind hearings on---wait for it---steroids in baseball!! Is this a matter of national security? No. Is this an issue of public health or safety? No. Is this a chance for a bunch of overpaid, power-driven moral midgets to grandstand on a matter that, despite having no relevance to the work they are being paid to do, is a great gosh-gee opportunity to rub elbows with ballplayers while at the same time geting on the front pages and pretending to work? Damn straight!

6) Rob Portman from Ohio gets the nomination to replace Robert "Fuzzy" Zoellar as U.S. Trade Rep. This guy is anybody's nightmare on any issue you care to name, but his appointment can't do much worse to the working poor of the world than Zoellar's did.

7) And finally we have this: a political dogpile on the tragic Schiavo case by those vultures in the House of Representatives who like to portray themselves as being "the party of less government". Well, I guess it depends on whose government we're talking about. For instance, if you mean the government of gun-selling shitheels who scream like gutted women at the idea they might be required to take responsibility for the murders they cause with their "anyone with the cash" sales philosphy, or if you mean the rich fucks holding forth in their McMansions about the horror of their hard-invested money being taxed to feed poor children, then I suppose they are the party of less government.
But when it comes to families making intimate, heart-rending decisions affecting no one but themselves, why then by God, let's bring out the full weight of the U.S. Congress (when they're not too busy getting baseball autographs) and squash those decisions flat like bugs! Your sex, your body, your life is not your own, people. But if the government won't let you have a humane death, maybe you can get your hands on a gun (provided your hands still work). No one will dare stand in your way, then.

Why is it that the first thing the privatizers ask for, when converting a public program into a source of profit for themselves personally, is a subsidy from taxpayers like you and me for "transition costs"? It happened when Medicare pharmaceuticals were privatized, it's part of the game plan for the Social Security phase-out, and it's going to happen if the wingers kill Amtrak, too.

You'd think—call me crazy—that the wingers think taxpayer dollars are a big pile of cash that we left them for them, so they could stuff their pants with it just as fast as they can.

Looting—after lying, it's what the wingers do best!

Funny how nobody's bringing up those conflict of interest stories about Wolfie right now, isn't it?

And if that stuff below wasn’t enough, consider that the struggle to protect wild and sacred areas extends to places other than ANWR as well, often places not so far from our homes.

Flagstaff, Arizona has decided to expand its ski area on the San Francisco peaks, a mountain area that all of the local tribes consider a sacred place. They will make the ski area bigger and use wastewater for snowmaking. All of this over the objections of the local tribes, mostly Hopi and Navajo:

Despite receiving nearly 10,000, mostly negative comments on a proposal to expand the Arizona Snowbowl and use reclaimed wastewater for artificial snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, Coconino National Forest Supervisor Nora Rasure gave the go-ahead to proceed Tuesday during a noon press conference. It was probably the most difficult decision of her career, Rasure said. "While I must carefully consider impacts to traditional values, I am also charged to make decisions about uses of the national forest that meet other needs of the American public.

Again, it’s about greed. Why do it? Because we want the cash. And the cost?

Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, Hopi Cultural Preservation Office director, said, "In a time when the Hopi Katsina Spirits have answered our prayers for rain and happiness, Coconino has placed a dagger in the Hopis' spirituality. "It is not just a breach of the forest service's trust responsibility for the tribe, but a breach of the Hopi people's trust in Coconino National Forest," Kuwanwisiwma said. "The Peaks are the home of the Katsinam (spirit messengers) and the focus of our prayers for rain and snow. The use of reclaimed water on such a sacred site can only be described as sacrilegious."

[Navajo Nation President Joe] Shirley asked, "What happened to that First Amendment right in the world of Native Americans? We're also supposed to be citizens of the great superpower of the U.S. government. What happened to our rights?" He questioned whether it was going to take a "million man and a million woman march on 'Washingdoon' to be heard. I think that's one of the things we need to look at…”

And the load gets heavier… remember that the original invasion of illegal immigrants beginning in 1492 was what eventually displaced the tribes from their sacred peaks in the first place. Maybe if the tribes had built a giant steel wall around the sacred peaks, hired thousands of armed border agents…?

Snowbowl receives green light; Forest Service decision angers Native leaders

Well, we all knew it was coming, but let’s take a minute to mourn, anyway…

Senate votes to allow Arctic oil drilling

And let’s mourn the continuing slow death of American media as well…

Bush to name Kevin Martin new FCC chair

And after mourning, back to direct action. But there’s always that nagging feeling after each new outrage. What is that feeling? An accumulation of defeats and miseries that sits on the shoulders, growing heavier and heavier, making it feel like resistance is futile? I’ve been feeling it a lot since I got back with visions of border injustice heavy on my visual cortex, and now, catching up on the news and the posts since, I feel the weight growing. (Did aWol really name KaWen Hughes to be the Middle East peacemaker? Really?) Maybe it's a constant sorrow... time to start wearing black like Johnny Cash... after four more years of this shit, we're ALL gonna need treatment for PTSD...

But, never surrender, never give up! What's the next battle?

First, an apology.

My long ANWR post of yesterday was filled with typos and bad links. Please accept my regrets. Nor, ordinarily, would I have let it run to such length, and instead, would have discussed the idiocy of Kristof in a separate post. Although it is far too easy to blame all things on Blogger, yesterday was an especially bad Blogger day which made it impossible to have control of what got put up on the blog.

I further apologize for not knowing the structure of Roman Numerials as well as I probably ought to, but I would also point out that the extreme and inaccurate form I used was also meant to be a visual joke.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging to announce with great sadness and even greater anger that the Cantwell amendment was rejected by the Senate mere minutes ago, 51 to 49.

The overwhelming majority of Republicans voted against the amendment, and in favor of allowing the sale of leases for the purpose of drilling for oil in a protected Wildlife Refuge. Democrats picked up a few Republicans, and we were betrayed, to their eternal shame, by Mary Landrieu, who apparently decided that her state's oil and gas interests were more important than our American heritage, as well as by both Senators from Hawaii, Messrs. Akaka and Inouye; what on earth is that all about? Anyone with an answer please let us know in comments are by email. I don't yet have the exact breakdown of the votes; I was watching the vote on C-Span but couldn't hear every vote.

This doesn't have to be the end of this issue. It's going to take a long time before leases are made available, the big oil companies aren't anxious to go in there, we can make it even more unattractive for them. ANWR, if handled correctly, can also become part of a nexus of issues upon which Democrats can mount a national campaign in 2006 for a return of control of congress to the Democratic party.

This just in: The NYTimes has the breakdown of votes and some additional information, including the fact that another vote will be required to directly authorize drilling here: The three Democrats noted above were the only Democrats who jumped ship; joining the rest of the Democrats were Jim Jeffords and six Republicans: McCain, Norm Coleman, Mike DeWine, Chaffee, Gordon Smith, and both of the lady Senators from Maine.

We probably need a couple of days to mourn, but then it's more than ever organization time. The obvious next target is the gas and coal industry, to inform them that if they thought the Valdez spill was a PR nightmare, they can't imagine what we're prepared to do, within the law, to blacken their reputation if they bid on any leases, up to including organizing a human barrier ready to meet their heavy equipment when they try to exercise their so-called right to drill in ANWR. This is just the first battle in what is clearly a war.

Here's a thought for some theraputic action to take the place of sitting shiva, (a Jewish way of mourning that incorporates long periods of mopping). Why not send a friendly letter to Nick Kristof thanking him for choosing to write, on the eve of the vote on ANWR, about what wusses environmentalists are, instead of writing about the madness of King George W. and his Republican courtiers in insisting on opening up ANWR for drilling when the oil and gas industries don't really want to go in there. Or any other message that is appropriately polite, yet snarky. As far as I can see there's no way to email columnists. But you can certainly drop a line to Kristof c/o The New York Times,229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036.

All for now, while I take some time to mope.

I’m back. Leah requested a travelogue, but this is the best I can do for now…

Went down to Old Mexico last week on a business-pleasure trip. The pleasure was to accompany a friend and once again enjoy the little town he’s from and his family; the business was his (no, not dope or maquilas). If he wasn’t a native of Old Mexico, this trip would have been even worse, I’m sure. I hadn’t been down since 9/11, and I was wondering if things were worse now. (And they were plenty bad before, mind you, going all the way back to Operation Intercept back long ago, which just happened to coincide with my first trip below the border.)

First, you get stopped at least two times in the last two hundred miles to the border by underpaid, overworked and nervous US Border Patrol agents. Especially if you’re in a van or truck. They search your vehicle (perfectly legal to bust you for anything they find that’s illegal, too, even though there was no overt reason to stop you), they check your papers, and then go double check everything again on their radio. With any luck, you don’t resemble anyone who’s wanted for anything, because if you do then it’s a long ride to the office while there’s more checking.

Then you get closer to the border. First thing you notice coming in are the signs on the private property outside of the US border town—“STOP THE INVASION,” “SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POSSE,” “DRUGS AND WETBACKS ARE THE SAME PROBLEM” and so forth. You hope you don’t run into any of these people, and you hope that the people crossing tonight don’t either. Closer, over the hill looking down, looking ahead to the actual border, is a thing that looks like an arroyo or a ditch. You get closer, you realize it’s a steel wall. It’s gotten bigger in the last three years. There’s a goddam steel wall about twelve feet high there, and now it’s running for MILES in each direction. You briefly wonder where Israel got the idea, or was it the other way around? Every so often, there’s a camera mounted on a tall pole, pointed at you. You wait in line, but not too long. Nobody’s too worried about what’s going IN to Mexico. Show ID. Why are you going? Where are you going? When will you be back? That’s about it.

Once you’re in Mexico, there used to be usually nobody to wave you in on the other side, just the usual warning signs (no guns allowed, e.g.). But now, even at the tiny crossing we went to, there were two guys who asked the same questions. They didn’t look very happy.

Old Mexico is still the same. Immediately, you’re hit by the contrast in wealth. An artificial line across the desert, with a steel wall, separating poverty from wealth. In the border towns, desperate unhappy people hanging around wherever they can, waiting for a run across. Bars. Drugstores. Vendors. Usually, the bars and drugstores are swept clear of the poor so that Nortamericanos will shop there. Once you’re past those, it becomes much clearer.

Folks will tell you that it’s dangerous. I guess in some ways it is, especially in some places. But it’s all about poverty and corrupt cops. But once you get past the border towns, most of the people I’ve met are friendly and helpful. They invite you in to eat or drink. They don’t laugh at your Spanish (much). They tell you they’d rather stay in their town or village instead of going to the north or to the cities. But then they tell you there’s not much choice. Is any of this sounding familiar to inner-city dwellers in America?

Tom Tancredo and his ilk make me want to puke. What’s the solution to an artificial border drawn in the sand after military conquest? A line now drawn with a huge steel wall, and patrolled by armed police and private agents? More agents, more guns, higher and wider walls? Coming back across the border was a real trip. More on that later.

Call me naïve, but it might be time to start rethinking the existence of the line, and how it separates the haves from the have-nots. It’s completely unjust. And more on that later, too.

Berlusconi to The Coalition of The Willing: Arrivederci .

Guess Negroponte's bodyguards shouldn't have shot that Italian intelligence agent, huh?

... of this snappy one-liner:

[Y]ou can't help come away with the conclusion that the reason the U.S., and Great Britain, are greeted with such ambivalence and hostility in the Middle East is that the West's policy can be summed up in one simple idea: "That's our oil under your sand." That's not exactly a policy grounded in Christian, let alone Democratic, values.

Or, as Leah points out, under your snow.

Oh, the source? Those card-carrying liberals at Business Week.

Put these guys on the blacklist! No Partei rallies for them!

Well, for one thing, liberals are burdened by schmuck-pundits like Nick Kristof who are so often identified as liberals, and aren't happy about it; having the courage of no convictions except the conviction his own career is at the center of the moral universe, Kristof regularly engages in liberal-bashing to insure his status as an independent thinker. Of course, before you can be considered an independent thinker, your work has to be recognizable as the work of someone who is able to think.

Okay, I'm mad as hell and I have little prospect of being able to not have to take it anymore, which doesn't mean I don't believe in trying. So, I'm stating my bias - outraged fury in defense of some form of the truth.

Now then, you tell me what mental process on the part of Mr. Kristof produced these paragraphs, and if it can fairly be described as "thinking?"

When environmentalists are writing tracts like "The Death of Environmentalism," you know the movement is in deep trouble.

That essay by two young environmentalists has been whirling around the Internet since last fall, provoking a civil war among tree-huggers for its assertion that "modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live." Sadly, the authors, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, are right.

The U.S. environmental movement is unable to win on even its very top priorities, even though it has the advantage of mostly being right. Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may be approved soon, and there's been no progress whatsoever in the U.S. on what may be the single most important issue to Earth in the long run: climate change.

How can a movement whose assumptions are unexamined, whose concepts are outdated, and whose strategies are exhausted be mostly right?

"A civil war among tree-huggers?" Does it ever occur to someone like Kristof that the use of an entirely inaccurate and misleading cliche like "tree-hugger" is a bigger problem than anything else for the great majority of Americans who are worried about envionmental issues but find themselves increasingly divided from one another and marginalized by a signficantly smaller number of Americans who view the natural environment as appropriately subject to the gospel of growth, expansion, development and best preserved through the discipline of market as opposed to natural forces?

That essay Kristof mentions and the ruckus it's kicked up is worth several posts on their own, so I'll skip if for the time being. (Any alert readers who'd like to take a crack at it, let me know. Rob, where are you?)

Kristof's own analysis of what ails the environmental movement, which you can find here, is as thoughtless and unexamined as the output of most of our so-called liberal pundits, tired cliche after tired cliche, the same usual suspects summoned for blame.

No, not Paul Erlich again. Alarmism, you see, is the curse of the enivornmental movement. They've been wrong so many times, they've lost credibility. In paranthesis, Kristof allows that business interests are often alarmist about the results of environmental regulation, but he doesn't venture to think upon why those business interests haven't lost their credibility, but environmentalists have. After all, Rachel Carson was clearly an alarmist, and she was treated as such when "The Silent Spring" was first published. But what she has to say resonated with the experience of the huge majority of Americans who made her book a giant best seller.

Altbough acknowledging that environmentalism has made environmentalists of us all, Kristof cites a poll cited in "The Death of Environemntalism" that shows a majority of American consider "environmental activists" to be extremists. Gee, I wonder how that happened? Oh, that's right, environmentalists did it to themselves, by being such alarmists and then being proved wrong. Is that really the story? No, but the real story is the one story Kristof, and almost every other mainstream pundit won't talk about - the story of a counter movement financed by special interests and tied increasingly to the Republican party whose aim it has been, through a concerted campaign of propoganda, to discredit environmentalism by calling anyone who doesn't want off-shore drilling or doesn't understand that any worries about asbestos contamination are frivolous, are extremists. In this amalysis, the battle is not against that counter alliance, nor is the conflict between environmentalists and the Bush administration. No, the conflict is an inner conflict that environmentalists ignore at their peril.

Hold on, here's Kristof's dizzying conclusion:

The loss of credibility is tragic because reasonable environmentalists - without alarmism or exaggerations - are urgently needed.

Given the uncertainties and trade-offs, priority should go to avoiding environmental damage that is irreversible, like extinctions, climate change and loss of wilderness. And irreversible changes are precisely what are at stake with the Bush administration's plans to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge, to allow roads in virgin wilderness and to do essentially nothing on global warming. That's an agenda that will disgrace us before our grandchildren.

I couldn't agree more that those are the priorities. But it is precisely those priorities, like legislation protecting endangered species, protecting wilderness, and worries about climate change for which environmentalists are most persistently attacked. Hasn't Kristof ever heard of the Spotted Owl?

Can you believe this guy has the nerve to mention ANWR without talking about who it is that is threatening it? And, by the way, it isn't those nasty energy companies anymore. That's what is so stunning about the Bush administration's obsession with bringing up the issue again, and trying to get it attached to the budget, insuring thereby that extended debate in the Senate can't defeat it again.

Time to move to ACTION ALERT mode. This is from Feb 21st edition of the NYTimes, (it's disappeared behind the paid archive wall, so you'll have to trust me to give you the gist)

George W. Bush first proposed drilling for oil in a small part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska in 2000, after oil industry experts helped his presidential campaign develop an energy plan. Five years later, he is pushing the proposal again, saying the nation urgently needs to increase domestic production.

But if Mr. Bush's drilling plan passes in Congress after what is expected to be a fierce fight, it may prove to be a triumph of politics over geology.

Once allied, the administration and the oil industry are now far apart on the issue. The major oil companies are largely uninterested in drilling in the refuge, skeptical about the potential there. Even the plan's most optimistic backers agree that any oil from the refuge would meet only a tiny fraction of America's needs.

While Democrats have repeatedly blocked the drilling plan, many legislators believe it has its best chance of passage this year, because of a Republican-led White House and Congress and tighter energy supplies. Though the oil industry is on the sidelines, the president still has plenty of allies. The Alaska Congressional delegation is eager for the revenue and jobs drilling could provide. Other legislators favor exploring the refuge because more promising prospects, like drilling off the coasts of Florida or California, are not politically palatable. And many Republicans hope to claim opening the refuge to exploration as a victory in the long-running conflict between development interests and environmentalists.

The refuge is a symbol of that larger debate, said Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who is a major supporter of drilling. Opponents agree. ''This is the No. 1 environmental battle of the decade,'' said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Whether that battle will be worthwhile, though, is not clear. Neither advocates nor critics can answer a crucial question: how much oil lies beneath the wilderness where the administration wants to permit drilling?

Advocates cite a 1998 government study that estimated the part of the refuge proposed for drilling might hold 10 billion barrels of oil. But only one test well has been drilled, in the 1980's, and its results are one of the industry's most closely guarded secrets.

A Bush adviser says the major oil companies have a dimmer view of the refuge's prospects than the administration does. ''If the government gave them the leases for free they wouldn't take them,'' said the adviser, who would speak only anonymously because of his position. ''No oil company really cares about ANWR,'' the adviser said, using an acronym for the refuge, pronounced ''an-war.''

Wayne Kelley, who worked in Alaska as a petroleum engineer for Halliburton, the oil services corporation, and is now managing director of RSK, an oil consulting company, said the refuge's potential could ''only be determined by drilling.''

''The enthusiasm of government officials about ANWR exceeds that of industry because oil companies are driven by market forces, investing resources in direct proportion to the economic potential, and the evidence so far about ANWR is not promising,'' Mr. Kelley said.

The project has long been on Mr. Bush's agenda.

So what's going on here? What is that larger battle? Think California, think the Gulf of Mexico, think the Oregon and Washington coastlines. And as exhausting is the list of Bush administration hypocricies, let us not forget that Bush allowed Florida to buy back the leases that would have allowed drilling off of Florida's shores, a wildly unpopular prospect among Jed Bush's constituents.

There is no limit to the shamelessness of George W. Bush and his minions. No limits on them, endless limits on the lives of the two thirds of Americans who don't view the world the way this President does. Yes, he managed to get the votes of half of the electorate, but his true base is no larger than a third of voting Americans.

It may be that Bush's shameless qualities will prove his undoing, because it can make it easier for opponents to link issues.

The budget process itself should be an issue. It's an unbelievable budget, shamelessly dishonest in its numbers, shamelessly brutal in its treatment of vulnerable Americans. Check out The Progress Report on this subject, and note that ANRW has a special place in all that awfulness.

The budget includes over a billion dollars in revenue from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), even though Congress hasn't authorized such drilling and has rejected President Bush's proposal to open ANWR to oil exploration for the last four years. Budget Director Josh Bolten defended the move, claiming, "the budget is the right place to present the entirety of the president's policies, so all of his proposals are reflected in there." Really? The Bush budget excludes all funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the administration's $2 trillion Social Security package.

I know, it makes one reel. And it's meant to. That's part of the game. Present so many targets, the opposition becomes dazed by the sheer fecundity of this administration's bad faith.

MoveOn is taking on the Budget process itself, trying to slow down the push to report it out before there's adequate debate. Admirable and necessary.

I think today, though, the focus has to be on ANWR. (Back Here, and Here for more on why ANWR matters)

There isn't a lot of time. Maria Cantwell has an amendment to the budget that will take ANWR off the budgetary table. The vote will be sometime within the next 24 to 48 hours. Lots of different sources can make it easy for you to do something. I'm offering this one, via John Kerry.

We have only 24 to 48 hours to try and save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Republicans are trying to sneak legislation through the Senate approving oil drilling and they are incredibly close to winning. We have to stop them.

I am joining with Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) in offering a critical amendment to stop this sneak attack on our environment. We will fight on the floor of the Senate, but we need you by our side.

There are seven key Republican Senators whose votes will decide the future of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Before they vote, we need to make sure they know that their constituents are watching, and that they will not be able to support drilling without anybody noticing.

Here are two critical steps we can take together to support our amendment to protect this National Wildlife Refuge:

1. Join the Citizens' Roll Call
First of all, take part in a massive fast-moving display of citizen support for the Arctic Refuge. Sign our Cantwell-Kerry Citizens' Roll Call now.

http://www.johnkerry.com/RollCall

To make our Citizens' Roll Call impossible to ignore, we have alerted the media, environmental advocates and my fellow Senators to a scrolling display of the names and home towns of the roll call signers. It is posted on our johnkerry.com website, where we hope to soon add your name and a running tally of the number of citizens on our Citizens' Roll Call.

2. Bring the fight to the home states of the seven senators
We need to launch emergency online advertising campaigns in the home states of those seven critical senators: Senator Coleman (MN), Senator Smith (OR), Senator Specter (PA), Senator Martinez (FL), Senator Lugar (IN), and Senators Gregg and Sununu (NH).

Kerry is looking for contributions fto do that. I have no position on that. But what I think does matter is to call those Senators. If you're from their state say so. If not, call anyway. Plus, call your own Senators. Call ten of your friends and get them to call, and to get ten more of their friends to call. Visit Kerry's website before you do; he has lots of stuff including talking points.

You can find all numbers for any Senator here.

This is a big one, guys. Bush got the bankruptcy bill and his tort reform, if he gets this he looks like he's on a roll, even though he's only at 50 % overall approval rate. We've seen how he uses his ability to get legislation through a Republican congress to cause the What Liberal Media? to drop to their knees in awe.

Be a proud tree hugger. Imagine inviting one of those Arctic caribou to lunch. Fuck Bush. Fuck Nick Kristof. (Not to put too fine a point on one's arguments, and don't you hate when that happens, but given the present state of both our politics and our media makes how would it be possible to employ fine points in any capacity, except at the end of a poisen arrow? Speaking metaphorically, of course.)

If you need more inspiration, Althippo has been doing wonderful work on this subject, so check in there, even if you think you don't.

Darfur.

Does the mere clasp of eyes on that word produce a small, involuntary groan? I completely understand if it does. Doesn't it sometimes feel as though that word and that horror will always be with us, until there are simply no more human beings left there to worry about?

Rwanda was an international crises on steroids; a complicated political situation disguising a long-simmering ethnic conflict which right before our eyes bulked up at super-human speed into an massive genocide, carried out not by a secretive ministry of death as in the Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany, carried out by ordinary people against their neighbors, a collective madness that took mere weeks to rack up a killing score in the hundreds of thousands, and leave behind a landscape of corpses to decay in heaps where they'd been slaughtered.

Darfur seems almost an opposite phenomenon - an immense human catastrophe, a million plus people driven by violent means from their homes and land, and thus deprived of any ability to live a normal life, unable to provide for themselves the most basic necessities required to survive, an on-going humanitarian crises that almost seems to be happening in slow motion.

For all the talk that we can't let this happen, not again, among ordinary citizens like those of us who read and write blogs, at the UN, by NGOs, by reporters and by heads of state, the tragedy continues to unfold, the most vulnerable humans, old people, children continue to die, mothers, fathers, whole families are under threat both of famine and of all the diseases that come with huge numbers of refugees living in make-shift camps, without adequate sanitary facilities, without potable water.

A new blog "Coalition for Darfur" is not content to let any of us just sit and watch. Here's how the two founders of the blog explain its purpose:

A Southern conservative and a Northern liberal have teamed up to raise awareness about the genocide in Darfur, Sudan and money for a worthy organization doing vital work there: Save the Children.

Drawn together by their love/hate relationship with federal judicial nominee William Pryor (Feddie of Southern Appeal loves him, Eugene Oregon of Demagogue hates him) the two have found common ground on the issue of Sudan.

For nearly two years, the government of Sudan and Arab militias known as the Janjaweed have rampaged through Darfur, raping women, killing thousands, destroying hundreds of villages as well as the agricultural economy and displacing more than 2 million people. Hundreds of thousands of people are in dire need of food, shelter, and medical care, but a lack of security is making it nearly impossible for international organizations to reach those most in need.

In addition to raising money for "Save The Children" it is the purpose of the Coalition to try and harness both political halves of the blogisphere to keep the reality of what is happening to the people of Darfur front and center in the conscience of all of us, to focus on the needs of the refugees, and to keep that focus until that hard political work is done that will allow to return to their homes and reclaim their land.

Corrente is priviledged to be part of the coalition. At least once a week we will be offering either a link to or publishing at Corrente a post from the Coalition For Darfur website, and we'll soon be adding a link to the blog in our sidebar. For now, you can find the blog by clicking here, and this week's post by clicking here.

Please make the small journey from here to there, and while you're there, please consider making a small contribution to Save The Children. If enough people would give $10 a month, that would feed and care for a lot of people who have no way right now to fend for themselves.

In the lamentable literature of mass disaster, there is one overwhelming theme that occurs over and over again - the need for those to whom the disaster is happening to have some sense that the world is paying attention to their agony, and that the world cares. To know that, to feel it, gives to victims an expanded sense of their own humanity, a sense that they are still part of the world. We owe it to the people of Darfur to know what is happening to them, and to care.

Via PRWatch.org:

The Center for Media and Democracy is working with Free Press to gather a quarter million signatures on our petition mobilizing the American public to fight fake news and government propaganda. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that at least 20 federal agencies have made and distributed pre-packaged, ready-to-serve television news segments to promote President Bush's policies and initiatives. Congress' Government Accountability Office determined that these "video news releases" were illegal "covert propaganda" and told federal agencies to stop. But last Friday, the White House ordered all agencies to disregard Congress' directive. The Bush administration is using hundreds of millions of your tax dollars to manipulate public opinion. Here's how to stop them.

sign petition

*

Transcript of yesterday's Democracy Now segment with John Stauber of P.R. Watch:

State Propaganda: How Government Agencies Produce Hundreds of Pre-Packaged TV Segments the Media Runs as News

REPORTER: The televised images from Baghdad prompted celebrations from Iraqi Americans all across the United States. They seemed to revel in the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, as much as they did in Baghdad. In suburban Detroit, hundreds of Iraqi Americans marched triumphantly through the streets. The community of Dearborn is home to America's largest Arab community. On Warren Avenue people chanted, "No more Saddam," as they honked horns and waved Iraqi and American flags.

IRAQI AMERICAN 1: We love the United States! We love America! They help us!

IRAQI AMERICAN 2: Yes!

REPORTER: In this Kansas City cafe, Iraqi Americans watch the historic events on TV.

IRAQI AMERICAN 3: I'm very, very happy. I said, thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A. I love Bush, I love U.S.A., because they do that for Iraqi people’s freedom.

This rosy scenario was brought to by your cheery friends at the State Department. Except we don't tell you that part.

Full program transcript

*

Max Blumenthal at the National Religious Broadcasters' convention; Anaheim Convention Center, February 11-16, 2005:

Air Jesus: With The Evangelical Air Force

The Christian Right's dominionist intentions, a theme of the convention, were particularly in evidence at a seminar called, "Taking Over Cities For Christ: The Thousand Day Plan."

The seminar was led by Raul Justiniano, the Bolivian president of the Confederation of Ibero-American Communicators (COICOM), NRB's Latin American counterpart. Like a counter-revolutionary version of Che Guevara, the goateed Justiniano laid out his three-year plan to "invade" Latin American cities one by one by establishing cells in local churches and spreading outwards to "take possession of all parts of the city."

Don't resist reading the full article. Many of your favorite goosesteppers for Jesus were on hand for the event.

*

Outtakes:

Excerpts From Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Here are excerpts from San Francisco Judge Richard Kramer's ruling that California's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional:

- "It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners."

- "The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional."

- "One does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to be married. Thus, no legitimate state interest to justify the preclusion of same-sex marriage can be found."

- "The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts - separate but equal."

- "The parade of horrible social ills envisioned by the opponents of same-sex marriage is not a necessary result from recognizing that there is a fundamental right to choose who one wants to marry."

*

Ralph Reed dupes Dobson in "special interest" flim flam; hired by casino to block casino...

Million Dollar Baby: Ralph Reed Recruited Dobson Into High-Stakes Casino Game.

Reed, who once called gambling "a cancer on the American body politic," was hired by the Coushatta's lobbyists to help out by rousing Religious Right opposition to the expansion of gambling in the state. According to the Post article, Reed has "quietly received as much as $4 million" for his efforts.

*

Bobo Brooks wets himself in his high-chair, throws a little snit, and pitches his bowl of porridge to the floor:
See Bobo's tantrum (no login required)

Mr Krugman sees Bobo's tantrum and shakes his head in disappointment:
See adult reaction (no login required)

*

More good news:

Barely a third of the public approves of the way President Bush is dealing with Social Security and a majority says the more they hear about Bush's plan to reform the giant retirement system, the less they like it, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
(via WaPo)

The exit strategy for the Republicans on this one? How about complete capitulation, followed by massive and prolonged grovelling?

Not that there aren't [cough] liberals and Beltway Dems who, for some reason, don't see that exit strategy as a completely acceptable, indeed the optimal, outcome. WTF?

Read Body and Soul (via Washington Monthly)

If torture isn't evil, what is? (And then filming it?!)

The Constitution has a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment for good reason: The Founders understood human nature—better than the evil clowns who are running the country now (back).


And remember: The tendency toward evil is a natural tendency all humans share. None of us are immune. It's exactly to protect ourselves from each other that we have laws, Constitutions, social compacts. Everything that the malAdministration is industriously trying to destroy (here)

I can't imagine why they're such destructionists—unless they simply find it fun. Like the fun Bush had as a boy, blowing up frogs. The child is father to the man...

Right here:

Fifty-six journalists around the world were killed in 2004 because of their jobs, the deadliest 12 months for reporters in a decade, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported Monday.

Of the 56, the committee said, 36 were targeted for murder, continuing a long-term trend in annual surveys of the safety of journalists.

"The majority of them are murdered," said Ann Cooper, executive director of the committee, in an interview with AP Radio. "Local journalists such as eight killed in the Philippines. They were hunted down and killed."
(via AP)

Oh, wait.

Damn. I spoke too soon. Those aren't the Federalist Society operatives like F/Buckhead, safe in their bathrobes in their basement. Or part of the Potemkin Press like that metawhore, "Jeff Gannon." Or the freepers.

These are actual journalists, risking their lives to bring the story home.

In all our clamor about the state of the SCLM in this country, we do forget the courage that real journalists continually show. Of course, being reality-based means confronting reality—and often, people who like reality just the way it is, thank you, want to silence you, punish you... Or kill you.

For the kind of risks real journalists take, check out (once again) Philadelphia's treasure, Trudy Rubin (back).

Bush moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform:

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have documented, for the first time, that laughter is in fact good for the heart because it makes blood vessels work more efficiently. The study results, and those of an accompanying research paper reporting that depression can increase the risk of heart failure, were presented last week at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

Lead researcher, Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology at the university in Baltimore, said laughter should not supplant exercise, which also increases blood flow, but should be added to one's daily routine. He suggested 15 minutes of laughter daily and 30 minutes of exercise three times a week to improve heart health.

The researchers specifically analyzed the lining of the blood vessels, called the endothelium, which is the first place where hardening of the arteries, a common form of heart disease is evident. They believe the relaxing of the endothelium was prompted by the release of nitric oxide. The compound relaxes blood vessels much like endorphins do during exercise.

"When you laugh, you have less wear on your joints and you don't have to worry about calories from chocolate," Dr. Millers said at the Orlando meeting.
(via Bangor Daily News)

See, it's all part of His Plan.

If the Bush and the Republicans give us as many opportunities for laughter in the next four years as they have in the last, we're all going to laugh our way to good health! It's kinda like an invisible hand type of thing—one policy pratfall after another, and Presto! No need for universal health insurance!

Send in the clowns! They're good, and good for you!

I knew there was something I forgot to explain about The Mighty Corrente Building; it's so vast it's easy to leave things out, and since riggsveda is new, I feel a duty to explain. I always get hung up when I mention the wet bar or the mushroom cellars and lose the damn thread.

Anyhow, The Mighty Corrente has a profusion of departments. They're listed in more or less alphabetical order on a seemingly numberless series of highly polished brass plates in the Great Hall, on your left as you enter the building. In fact, there are so many departments that the typesize used on the plates is extremely small, so for your convenience, there are several magnifying glasses hanging from the wall.... Or you can just ask one of the uniformed doormen for directions.

These are some of the Departments. In no particular order:

• Department of How Stupid Do They Think We Are?
• Department of Changing The Subject
• Department of No! They Would Never Do That!
• Department of No Shit, Sherlock
• Department of One Hardly Knows What to Say
• Department of Cheap Little Ironies
• Department of Closing the Barn Door After The Horse is Gone
• Department of "Oh, come on. Can they be serious?"
• Department of Translation
• Department of Vile Rumors (My Pet Goat)
• Department of "They Made My Head Explode Again"

As it turns out, I don't know where in the builing most of these departments are (again, ask a doorman). I know the Department of Changing the Subject is on the 13th floor (take any elevator), and there's a vile rumor going around that they're going to replace the wet bar with The Department of No! They Would Never Do That! The Department of How Stupid Do They Think We Are? isn't really in The Mighty Corrente Building at all; it's in a satellite office way the hell over in Camden, the one with the neon sign on the roof of a dog listening for His Master's Voice. Ask any receptionist for a map; tell 'em Lambert sent you.

But you know, I'm looking over those Department names, and there's a tone to them... Could it be that they're snarky? Heaven forfend! I can't imagine how that came to happen; I've always tried so hard to avoid snark and be civil.

Readers, do we need to cultivate a more variegated and positive outlook? If so, how on earth are we to do it?

We all remember the scene, right, in "History of the World Part I" where Moses (played far more convincingly by Mel Brooks than he ever was by Charlton Heston, although Mel starts out with the unfair advantage of being, like, Jewish) is coming down Mt. Sinai with the three stone tablets, until he shouts to the mob of calf-worshipping, jewelry-melting, bacon-eating, mother-raping, father-stabbing, father raping...oops, wrong movie, anyway, the generally badly-behaving Hebrews, "I bring you the fifteen.." at which point one of the tablets slips out of his hands and shatters on the mountainside...."the Ten Commandments!"

Haven't you always wondered what those Missing Five would have been? A guy name of David Hampton from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger explains it all to you:

"Gabriel! Gabriel! What is all of this flap about my 10 Commandments?"

"It's the Americans again, Lord. They are fighting about where their government can post the commandments. It's gone all the way to their Supreme Court."

"Didn't I make it clear that the important thing is to obey them? I know I put them on stone tablets, but that was only to help Moses out. They should be written on the heart. Didn't I say that?"

"Yes, Lord, but now politics has gotten involved in it and. . ."

"Politics. Nothing political ever comes from heaven. Politics comes from the other place. I guess I should have left that commandment in about separation of church and state. I thought they were smart enough to figure that out."

We make the obligatory snip here to avoid getting spanked by the copyright quibblers, and to prompt a few folks to reward the C-L with a few hits for being brave enough to run stuff like this. We return for the Grand Finale...

"No. 14. Thou shalt not pander. I hate pandering. It's like bribery or lying. Oh, we did get lying in the first 10 didn't we?"

"Yes, Lord."

"No. 15. Thou shalt not take the Lord, thy God's name in vain."

"That's in first 10, too, Lord."

"I know. I want to underline it. They obviously didn't understand it if they are passing laws to use my commandments for political purposes. That'll do for now."

"Yes, Lord. Want me to put them on the tablets and light up another bush?"

"No. E-mail them. Priority 1."

Heh. Now if you live in a state where they're pushing this Rock Worshipping crap, quit humming "Alice's Restaurant" for long enough to email this column to those who need to read it.

Yes, they've got their own blog now: "Buzz".

God.

So next time blogger goes down for a whole day, feel free to share your feelings with them, since of course blogger status is only updated in very unreal time, and the only answer you get from support comes from a bot.

Say, how much you want to bet that when your blog is down, their blog is up? But on the off chance that they are actually using the tools we have to, here are their sites. Put 'em up on the fridge, since of course when blogger goes down again, I won't be able to post:

• Biz Stone
• Eric Case
• Jason Shellen
• danah boyd
• Jason Goldman
• Graham Waldon
• Steve Jenson
• Chris Wetherell

(via Buzz)

God. "Biz." Breezy little fuckhead. "Good news everyone!" Gag me with a spoon. Billion dollar corporation can't manage a server farm.


Because blogger has proven, so very, very amply, that it has no respect for its users whatever, and companies like that deserve the discipline of the marketplace.

Oh yeah, Biz is the one who linked to Tech Central Station as a form of blogger triumphalism. What a whore.

OK, I feel much better now.

Over at The American Street, Rox Populi is musing on the belated awakening of some of her more conservative Bush-voting family and friends to the gigantic mess that is Iraq. She asks, reasonably enough, how this awakening distrust of Bush's admin can be best exploited:

"To cut to the chase, they’ve all got “buyer’s remorse.” And it isn’t because of the bankruptcy bill, social security reform or the rise of the influence of the religious Right.
Perhaps ironically, they believe Iraq is FUBAR. And they started thinking that right after the elections there.
I bring this up because I believe we have an opportunity if we play our hand deftly. When the “buyer’s remorse” crowd makes their anxieties more public, how shall we react? It’s a serious question that demands a better answer than “I told you so.” "

The reasonable, mature adult inside of me knows this is an important question. But the pissed-off crank inside is winning the battle. Herewith, my comment in response to her post:

"Count on a judicious silence from me. I’m so sick of playing canary in the coalmine that I really have stopped caring what the people who put him office think. Isn’t this the age of “personal responsiblity”, as that end of the political spectrum likes to endlessly babble? Well, then, fuck it. Let them feel some personal responsibility for it. After all the hard work I did before the election to try to make a difference, only to see the whole thing sink into a quagmire of ecstatic marginalizing the day of the coronation, I’m not interested in soothing anybody’s worried brow. Let them start thinking up ways to fix the mess they made. In fact, I think it behooves us to demand they get to work to make amends for the clusterfuck they helped create. Let them be the ones to sweat it for awhile."

What do you think?

Partial answer: A few individual members unafraid of looking at events from a liberal perspective are blogging.

Case in point: A journalist from Memphis, who, in addition to writing for a local paper, who blogs under the charmingly apt name of "PeskyFly" at his own site, The Flypaper Theory, has got wind of a potential story - evidence that someone representing him/herself as a federal agent of sorts was calling local emporiums with windows near enough to the path of Bush's Bamboozapalooza Tour scheduled to stop in Memphis, to inform them that no negative signs aimed at Bush should appear in said windows. (This is courtesy of Atrios, who, as we've come to know, reads everything, God love him, and I have it on the best authority that all of the Gods do.)

Go read, and don't miss the long comments thread. Some excellent stuff there, and more information from the Pesky Fly himself, who is following up to get more details about what now appears to involve more than just the original complaint.

As some commentators note, it could be a hoax, it could be an excessively loyal Bush fan, or it could be the work one of those Republican front groups we're just beginning to figure out have reciprocal ties that run forward and backward to the RNC and to various Bush contributors.

The question remains, where is that not very pesky MSM with it's relentless liberal bias we hear about endlessly? Yes, it's accepted by most Washington reporters with big enough names to appear on cable news that Bush's town hall meetings are stage-managed to within an inch of being Kabuki theatre, but where are the obvious questions that arise from that set of facts?

Who is paying for these elaborate appearances which criss-cross the nation? If it's the taxpayers, how is it right that Bush & co get to decide who gets in, who gets to ask questions? What kind of strong leader, as the President and his party like to portray him, is afraid of appearing before groups of American citizens unless said citizens have been pre-screened to insure that only those who can demonstrate abject personal loyalty to the President will be present.

Why is so little being made of the fact that this President is using campaign tactics to convince the American people he's right about a huge policy decision, rather than communicating his vision of what needs to be done through more democratic means, i.e., talking to the press, talking to the congress, and talking to all of the American people? Remember, in the first months of the Clinton administration, when Clinton continued town meetings on behalf of his own policies, meetings that were much less stage-managed than this President's, the cry went up from Republicans that Clinton was in campaign mode, which must mean that he wasn't in a governing mode, and that was BAAAAAD. In mere seconds it seemed, the SCLM picked up the charge and ran with it, until Clinton stopped having town meetings.

And what about using government agencies as if they are partisan vehicles whose responsibility it is to serve as propaganda tools for the President? It's one thing to have members of his cabinet hawk private accounts for SS, or insist that there is a looming financial crises, it's quite another when members of the SS administration start becoming mouthpieces for the President. And don't get me started on Alan Greenspan.

It's truly stunning how deeply into the tank that SCLM is for this President. And that's part of the program. To keep us so stunned by what Bush's propagandists like to call his "boldness," but which, in the neighborhood I grew up would have been called "crust," that we can't think straight, and when we finally do, to make it difficult for us to call what's happening to the attention of our fellow citizens because what we're saying sounds so off the wall. It wouldn't sound that way if more of the SCLM would start doing their job.

But until that happens, we need all the pesky flies we can get. And that doesn't just mean bloggers who are already journalists. There's a place for citizen journalists, citizens who are willing and able to document what's going on locally that fits a larger national pattern. This is a subject that we at Corrente will be returning to when we've completed our renovation of the mightily Corrente building.

So bravo PeskyFly, and heartfelt thanks as well; I'll be following your blog to see what happens in this instance, and what's happening generally in your neck of the American woods.

I suppose one of the nice things about a Hillary run in 2008 would be that the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" quote would be endlessly replayed, and the Dems would finally be forced to put up or shut up on the issue. It would really put an end to business as usual.

And since the existence of the VRWC is quite obvious—whenever a rock is lifted in DC, or in Baghdad, a VRWC operative, on the payroll, scuttles off into the darkness—we could win on the issue.

The whole VRWC is so obviously rancid, it's ripe for the taking. If Dean can write the Dem equivalent of the Contract with America, and put it over, that is.

Ah, the lonely burdens of command. Yes, running a torture mill is hard work... And a man needs solace...

As if the situation at Guantanamo isn't messy enough, there is now a sex scandal involving senior military officers who were running the prison, reports CBS National Security Correspondent David Martin.

The colonel in charge of prison operations, a Lt. colonel who commanded the military police guarding the prisoners, and another lieutenant colonel who commanded the soldiers responsible for base security have all been relieved of duty. They are accused of committing adultery with a female Navy Lt. and a number of female civilian contractors.

An Army general who was the deputy commander of the task force which runs Guantanamo is also under investigation for adultery, which is a violation of military law, Martin reports. That case has been turned over to the Army's inspector general at the Pentagon since it involves such a high ranking officer.

The investigation began after a soldier -- who himself had been disciplined for adultery -- blew the whistle on the officers. Once the investigation began, it turned up e-mails in which the officers were exchanging information about the women they were having sex with.

Although the conduct involves private behavior off duty, Martin notes, it involves four of the most senior officers at the camp. And it raises questions about the quality and discipline of the officers running the prison there.
(via CBS)

Sounds like Gitmo is as demoralized—in every sense of the word—as Abu Ghraib. Of course, the real guilty parties, the true perpetrators of evil, are the civilians who are turning our officers and troops into torturers. Oddly, or not, they never pay any penalty for what they do...

Yes, Bush has lured yet another one of his female enablers out of "retirement" (as if she was ever) and back into the Wëst Wing: Karen Hughes. Ostenibly, she's going to be working on "public diplomacy." Which is certainly a weird use of her time, since Bush is tanking on His Social Security phase-out, not our image abroad (as if they cared). Oh, wait, maybe they're just lying about her job description. Anyhow:

Hughes, 48, who has been one of President Bush's closest advisers since his tenure as Texas governor, plans to return to Washington soon to rejoin the president's team after a three-year absence and set up shop at the State Department, where she will work with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to reinvigorate the campaign for hearts and minds overseas.

The public diplomacy campaign aims to promote American values of democracy, tolerance and pluralism abroad while combating negative images propagated in many parts of the world.
(via WaPo)

Oh, come on.

All over the world, people are going the refer this one, instantly, to The Department of How Stupid Do They Think We Are?

Sweet suffering Jeebus. What does Bush know about democracy, after stealing election 2000 and suppressing the vote in 2004?

And what does Bubble Boy know about tolerance and pluralism? Or care? Nothing, and not at all. Think back to campaign 2004:

Here's Bush smirking while a protester gets beaten up by thugs at a Partei rally (back).



Here's Bush saying and doing nothing while the beating goes on:



Since He does and says nothing, it's OK with Him, right?

Those photos and this slideshow tell the world all it needs to know about the Bush administration's commitment to tolerance and pluralism.

As if Abu Ghraib didn't do that already.

Funny how the malAdministration thinks all of its problems are public relations problems, isn't it?

OK, OK. Maybe Montana isn't the strongest base to launch a campaign from. But still:

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has touched off a political fight with Montana Republicans after calling for the return of National Guard troops serving in Iraq to help out in what many fear will be a record-setting wildfire season.

Mr. Schweitzer, a newly elected Democrat, infuriated Republican lawmakers who see his request as a way to criticize the Bush administration over Iraq.

[W]eather experts say a seven-year drought and a severely reduced snowpack could lead to a devastating summer of wildfires.

They also worry that limited resources stretched thinner by the National Guard's service overseas could make it hard to combat the kind of huge blazes that engulfed the state in 2000, when some 2,400 wildfires burned nearly 950,000 acres of mostly public land.

Governor Schweitzer said Montana would disproportionately suffer the pain of proposed cuts in the federal budget, with money allocated for firefighting cut in half.

As fire season approaches, about 1,500 of Montana's 3,500 National Guard troops have been deployed on federal active duty, said a Montana Guard spokesman, Maj. Scott Smith.

The bulk of the Guard's helicopters - critical in shuttling fire crews and equipment to blazes - are unavailable, either because they are in Iraq or their aviation officers are absent.
(via Times)

Smooth move. The only thing that really infuriates Republicans is when a Democrat does something smart. More like this, please.

Governor Rendell?

Yesterday's Funeral March for Social Security in downtown Philadelphia went off very nicely. Philly For Change joined with people from a number of other groups, including NOW, Billionaires for Bush, and The Coalition to Defend Social Security, to march (with a police escort!) down to Santorum's office. Here's a shot of Howard's brother, Jim Dean, helping to carry the casket, and a few other shots from the march itself:





Too windy for the candles, though. Afterward, I joined the group, of whom my husband is a part, for drinks at the Independence Brew Pub, and talked with Jim himself, as well as Chris Bowers of MyDD and Steve (Spindentist) of The All Spin Zone. Dean let us know that Democracy for America is very interested in supporting not only candidates in the larger races, but the small stuff, like school board races, too. He exudes a sweet kind of openness I was not expecting in a political operative, and he wanted to let us know that he would be available to offer help and feedback as needed. We stood around for an hour being buffetted by Flower Show patrons and cruising twenty-somethings, unable to get seated (big surprise!) till someone remembered a reservation had been made at Fergie's Pub, and we duly trucked over there for dinner and further drinking and discussion. As you can see, we took it seriously:




Much fun had by all, and I'm too burnt to go any further.


Happy weekend!

A little "frat hazing" over in Afghanistan:

"Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.
One soldier, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with manslaughter in a closed hearing last month in Texas in connection with one of the deaths, another Army document shows. Private Brand, who acknowledged striking a detainee named Dilawar 37 times, was accused of having maimed and killed him over a five-day period by "destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes."
The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said, citing a medical examiner."

I guess we can put that right up there with being forced to wear beanies and carrying seniors' books, can't we, Rush? (I'd link you to his actual website page, but the coward bars the average reader from it, much like Rush's Brave Leader bars actual citizens from sitting in his audiences.)

Let me introduce you to few other college pranks:







Ah, those golden days of carefree youth!

No, cancel that. I'm, um, staying up late...

Mr. P-Niss Reports:


Mr P-Niss has been searching our nations celebrated historical yesteryears for profound examples of God, government, and good plain spoken business instincts working in a graceful synergy to help make America a saner, more prosperous, God-fearin', common sense hospitable kind of public square place for eveyone who agrees to behave properly in it. Just like it used to be before you know who (those hat-hating liberals for instance) ruined everything. So then, Mr. P-Niss believes, he has found the perfect example of this synergy in graceful prior action. Once upon a bygone time in America... in Wilkes Barre PA, to be exact:

Those who like to go hatless in Winter may find this city inhospitable to their whim should the city council pass a resolution submitted by Mayor Hart, who thinks that not to wear a hat in Winter is an insult to the intelligence of "God-fearing citizens." So Mayor Hart, admitting he wants to stimulate the sale of hats here, as well as rid the town of a "new species of lunatics," has drafted a resolution to the council which declares that "those who insist on going hatless in Winter weather be declared insane and placed behind the walls of asylums."

Above item: as reported by the Associated Press, 1930.

And in other historical news -- John J. Boggan, observant resident of The Yellowhammer state, delivers an early global warming warning broadcast, including its causes and consequences, via the Birmingham Post, Birmingham Alabama, circa 1930:

We are having unusual weather, and if it continues awhile longer there is no telling what will develop in the way of sickness. I have good reason to believe that all this disturbance is caused by radio broadcasting and, in my judgment, it is not at its worst. I would like to explain my reasons to some good minister of the gospel and I believe he will agree with me. I will do this at any time or place. I believe it so strong that I warn all people in lowlands to hunt hills before next Spring. Last Spring was nothing to what they can look for this coming Spring. - John J. Boggan, Pratt City, Ala.

In 1930 Sinclair Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature; for his novel Babbitt.

On a personal note: Mr. P-Niss has just noticed that the little white cat pictured in the post below is wearing Mr. P-Niss's favorite winter hat and Mr. P-Niss would like to know how that cat got that hat. Mr. P-Niss wants the hat back from the cat! Because Mr. P-Niss doesn't want to be heaved into an insane asylum. Not even for a minute. Especially an insane asylum in Wilkes Barre, PA. Wherever that is.

*

T

oday is cat blogging Friday, again, as you well know. Earlier this week the nation was stunned to learn of a proposal in the state of Wisconsin to add "free roaming, domestic feral cats" - (are there any other kind?) - to the list of cool stuff you can blow away to kingdom come with a Marlin 336 "Spike Horn" 30/30 or your trusty gas operated Kel-Tec SU-16B with "M-16 breech locking and feeding system." Or whatever other trusty field artillery you may happen to have laying around the family spread.

The plan was apparently proposed by some daring action oriented citizen named Mark Smith of La Crosse, Wisconsin, who, it would seem, has either been clobbered on the head one too many times with a la crosse stick, or, has worked himself into something of a pepperpot at the mere notion that somewhere, someplace, lurking among the wood violets and sugar maple stands of the badger state pastorale, there may be some "free roaming domestic feral" meance answering to the name of Sparky or Buttercup or Mr. Nippers - each with a common sinister agenda - in this case: to snatch a robin from a dewy spring lawn or bury a fresh turd among Mrs. Smith's crocus bulbs. Gulp. Can't have it.

And Mark, god bless his la crosse stick battered cranium, is willing to step forth into the fray and blast the head off any Buttercup that steps one free roaming paw over the threshold of domesticality and into the black good evening of free roaming ferality.

The cat hunting proposal had its origin with Mark Smith of La Crosse, Wisconsin, who could not be reached for comment. He said in an interview published in the La Crosse Tribune recently that he was not anti-feline but "If you open the door and kick your cat out at night you've changed its status."

Yeah, I'd be in hiding too you dumb bastard. If it's one thing you don't want to do, ever, it's get the kitty cat fanciers all riled up and hot under the hood. Noooo-sir. Personally I'd rather take my chances locked in the back of a panel van with a half dozen rabid bats in the final stages of the furies. But... this isn't about my personal chances...

Now, in defense of cat control efforts, I can see how there can sometimes be a problem with kitty cats gone feral. I've seen this kind of thing myself in the past and it can get out of hand pretty quick if you let it. Barn cats come to mind in some cases as well as cats that have been dropped off in the country by any variety of morons (ie: dip-shit college students) who suddenly decide that they are "allergic" to kitty cats or who decide to secure new lodging on premises which strictly prohibit the harboring and or propagation of kitty cats.

So, these morons drive kitty cat to a remote location and shove kitty cat out the back door somewhere along the side of the road (usually within the immediate viewable vicinity of a quaint rustic barn) where surely a nice friendly farm family with fresh baked pies on the windowsill will discover kitty cat and provide a nice rural retirement in the country forevermore. Oh sure. That kind of cat dumping thing does happen, sorry to say, on too many instances. But it's usually taken care of (the horned owls will git em) without resorting to the kind of state sponsored feline free-fire zone liquidation fiasco being proposed by the likes of Mark Smith.

Likewise, suggesting that anyone who happens to open their door one evening and perchance allow Mr. Muffins to wander off into the gloaming, unfettered, should therefore be reconciled to the grim reality that Mr. Muffins, by virtue of his transgression, has now officially changed status, and is therefore automatically fair game for some kind of fugitive bounty hunt - or whatever kind of pigsticking death squad hootenanny might ensue - strikes me as not a little bit idiotic on the face of it.

Afterall, what is this Smith dolt thinking? Nocturnal patrols? Spending his evenings stalking kitty cats around cul-de sacs or through cornfields with night vision goggles and coon dogs? Christ almighty. Where do they find these nuts anyway.

Solutions
So enter some guy named Bauknecht "who works at MadCat Pet Supplies in Madison, Wisconsin:

"But we're not taking any chances," he said. "When this is resolved we're going to pursue trying to build a statewide network for cat spaying trap-and-releases. We want to use this as a jumping off point.

That makes a lot more sense to me. And there's nothing like a jumping off point to get everyone flingin' themselves into the action on behalf of a more humane, sensible, kitty cat wanderlust tolerant world. And that's why I'm also volunteering to do my part for the great state of Wisconsin and errant kitty cats everywhere by introducing the Cat'chum Alive 2005 Runaway Kitty Trap Hive (tm).





As you can see the Cat'chum Alive 2005 is essentially nothing more than a small chest of drawers which can easily be located where large numbers of free ranging, domestic backslider, kitty cats have been known to gather and mill about aimlessly. Like in Wisconsin. Apparently. In any case, the Cat'chum Alive 2005 requires little maintenance, is easy to operate, clean, and can be reused later as a suitable addition to any home or office. Makes a great conversation starter too!

The Cat'chum 2005 operates upon the simple principal that no domestic feral kitty cat can resist the snuggly coziness of your basic chest of bedroom drawers. Especially a chest of sock drawers filled with fuzzy warm socks and other things that people keep in sock drawers. Which means that you will need to carefully bait your Cat'chum 2005 with the proper tempting items for maximum efficiency and live trapping action.

That's why I always bait my Cat'chum 2005's with the following common sock drawer items as identified in the illustration above.



No kitty can resist the lure of this specially formulated combination of sensational delights. As my vigorous test trials have demonstrated again and again and again. You have my word on it! Cat'chum Alive 2005 really catches kitties!

Simply set your Cat'chum Alive 2005 in a cow pasture or backyard or abandoned factory parking lot or other similar suitable location, bait, and leave for 24-36 hours. When you return you should find one to three, perhaps four or more, kitty cats living inside your Cat'chum Alive hive. Then you can remove your catch and take them somewhere else. Wherever else that is. Like to your neighbors Cat'chum Alive 2005 Runaway Kitty Trap Hive (tm).

There ya have it. There really is no need for parties of armed nimrods to be careening around your suburban neighborhood in Polaris Ranger 6x6's or perched motionless for hours in the branches of your lilac bush on the off chance that Noodles or Old Weezer might happen to get a wild hair up his or her ass and leap off the porch into the crosshairs of infamy.

Not when you can Cat'chum Alive in 2005!

For further details, including purchasing information and pricing, on all Cat'chum Alive Runaway Kitty Trap Hive Systems, write to: catchumaliverunawaykittytraphive@feraldomesticalities.cmon

*

Nice work, Junior! Just like William Randolph Hearst—"I'll supply the war."

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Co. and publisher of the company's flagship newspaper, received $2.35 million in compensation from the company last year, up from $1.74 million a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing made Friday.
(via AP)

Junior's going to be able to give Judy Miller a lot of kneepads!

Beautiful!

"There is a benefit in being involved in something that puts more fiscal discipline in the lives of individuals," said Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska. "My opinion from the very beginning has been: you support the president when the president is right, you oppose when you need to and, in every case you can, you look for compromise."
(via NY Times)

Um, remember Max Cleland? The instant he showed signs of weakness, the wolves were on him.

Bend over, Ben!

Will God forgive me for not only not caring about this old man's pain, but actually enjoying it?

"A suspected (81 yr. old) Ku Klux Klansman who faces trial on murder charges next month for the notorious 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers is in serious condition in a Mississippi hospital after a falling tree crushed both his legs, officials said on Friday...
An avid woodsman and ordained Baptist minister, Killen was arrested two months ago in connection with the murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, who were shot on a remote road outside this town 41 years ago."

Even if he is innocent, as he claims, he has a lifetime of hatred and oppression to make up for. I'm having a hard time pitying his good walk spoiled.

Oh, this is rich:



"The president was interrupted four times by people yelling protests of his Social Security plans. Outside the arena, protesters shouted "No more lies, don't privatize!" and some held signs that read "Hands off my Social Security."
At a propaganda-fest in Louisville, KY. Security must be getting sloppy.

Via Stars and Stripes Online.

Those "few bad apples" bob back to the surface as the Defense Department and Congress turn their backs, join hands and sing Kumbayah:

"A top investigator ordered by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to look into abuses at Abu Ghraib and other military detention facilities laid blame at the feet of individual troops and their commanders, but not top-level officials and policy-makers."

Note: No officials were hurt in the investigation of these crimes.

Hmmm. Over at The Hill, they report that a goodly number of the House members about to take up the Barririers to Bankruptcy Bill have their own little debt issues:

"More than 40 members of the House reported carrying at least $10,000 in credit-card or charge-card debt in 2003 and parts of 2004, according to a survey of financial disclosure reports conducted by The Hill...
Opponents of the bill drew hope from the data, suggesting that lawmakers who nurse high-interest debt might be more likely to sympathize with indebted consumers. High credit-card debt is often a factor in the decision to file for bankruptcy, although the root cause is usually related to a life-altering event such as a divorce, illness or the loss of a job, experts said."

Hopeful signs of humanity, or more fodder for hypocritical legislating?

I suppose it would foolish to hope...

The government has gotten quite facile in sidestepping accusations of war crimes lately...and why not? They've had plenty of opportunity for practice. From the Afghanistan massacre to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, they've been up to their eyeballs in deniablity.

When our daughter was going through her most obnoxious phase, we caught her smoking, and when we confronted her she tossed the cigarette onto the street and flatly denied having one, even though she knew that we saw it. This kind of brazen, give-a-shit lying is what Bushco does best, as Alberto Gonzales and Scott McClellan continue to prove almost daily.

But occasionally they get a little help from the other two branches of the dying tree of democracy. Yesterday, thanks to US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein, we now know that the deliberate application of deadly poisons like Agent Orange to vast swaths of a nation's countryside is not a war crime, no matter how many millions of soldiers and civilians it cripples, maims and kills, and no matter that the VA recognizes the 50 or so diseases caused by it, including numerous varied cancers and birth defects ("some babies were born without eyes or arms, or were missing internal organs"), and no matter that Vietnam vets successfully petitioned for recompense for exposure after the effects became so overwhelmingly obvious even the White House was having a hard time ignoring it.

In a decision that took him less than a month and a half to make, Weinstein ruled against millions of Vietnamese suffering from exposure to the dioxins in Agent Orange who brought suit against Monsanto, Hercules, and Dow. He said (no doubt blithely):

"No treaty or agreement, express or implied, of the United States, operated to make use of herbicides in Vietnam a violation of the laws of war or any other form of international law until at the earliest April of 1975."

No one ever actually mentioned Agent Orange, so it's not covered, got that? Which should give a shot of inspiration to the folks at DARPA to come up with plenty of new horrors to use in the future, none of which will have ever been named as prohibited.

Just in case you thought Bushco was having any second thoughts on that whole torture thing, they throw a big "fuck you" to the world and those of us pansies who have problems with violations of due process and the Geneva Accord:

"The United States has withdrawn from an international agreement that gives the International Court of Justice the right to adjudicate violations of the Vienna Convention regarding the incarceration of non-U.S. citizens, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said Thursday.

And by God, let's have a little Mexican blood to whet our appetite, just to let 'em know we mean business:

"Last week, President Bush asked the state of Texas to order new hearings for 51 death row inmates from Mexico, as the ICJ had ordered.
"The decision the ICJ handed down is a decision we don't agree with," said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli in Washington. "Yet, in respect of the optional protocol and our international commitment, the president has determined that the United States will comply and our state courts will review the cases."
"But we're also saying in the future we're going to find other ways to resolve disputes under the Vienna Convention other than the ICJ," he said."

Yeah? Like what? That modern-day inquisition down in Cuba? This crowd has no interest in resolving anything, unless it ends with frog-marching some poor schmuck into the gas chamber.

It's what they do best. It's his "style".

Faithful readers and mystified passersby may know that yesterday we experienced something of a meltdown here at corrente, and were unable to post for the larger part of the day. Why? Because we like you.

No, that must have been some other reason. Theories vary, but it's certain that heads must roll, actions will be taken, days will be rued. In the meantime, please enjoy the rest of the day's offerings, as we work to make your blog--dipping experience an enjoyable one.

Carry on.

It's really grotesque to watch Bush "assuring Seniors that their benefits are safe" (Reuters).

What's the ethical basis of Bubble Boy's "assurance"? The essence of modern Republicanism: Screw you Jack, I've got mine.

What he's really telling seniors is that, since their own benefits are safe (as if), they can forget about the next generation's.

In other words, the Republicans goal is as it has been: To destroy Social Security as an intergenerational compact. That's the subtext of Bush's "assurance."

P.S. The protestors had the wrong slogan on their signs. It shouldn't be "Don't privatize my Social Security," but "Don't privatize our Social Security."

Here's a weird little vignette from Louisville, Kentucky:

Inside, opponents interrupted the president four times. Each time, they were drowned out by Bush or supporters in the crowd.
(via AP)

1. How'd they get in there? Is the quality of Rove's advance work slipping, or are they deliberately letting protesters in, now?

2. And what's with the "drowned out by Bush" thing? He's shouting them down, or what?

Please do not adjust your set, while we deal with this outrage.

Get a load of this. From Millersville, MD:

A ninth-grader is protesting his school's decision to broadcast the Pledge of Allegiance in foreign languages as part of National Foreign Language Week.

Patrick Linton said he and other students at Old Mill High School sat down rather than stand Wednesday when the Pledge was read over the school's public address system in Russian. Linton's teacher told him if he had a problem he should leave the room.

He did, and did not plan to return this week.

"This is America, and we got soldiers at war," the 15-year-old said. "When you're saying the Pledge in a different language which nobody understands, that's not OK."

Patrick, we need to use our indoor voice! And study our grammar, too!

Charles Linton, Patrick's father, said the use of other languages is disrespectful to the country. "It's like wearing a cross upside down in a church," he said.
(via AP)

Mencken would be proud. Hey, maybe Dear Leader will invite our young Nativist to the White House.

At 10 a.m. this morning those of you in the 91 FM WHYY listening area with access to a radio may want to tune in to Marty Moss-Coane's Radio Times, where the first guest will be Harper's Magazine editor, Lewis Lapham, speaking about his new book, "Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy." Lapham is a personal hero of mine. His style is old-fashioned oratory, and his eloquence is unmatched. He and his magazine were among the first voices lifted against Bush's propaganda effort to wage war on Iraq. I've seen him in interviews before (on Bill Moyers' NOW he was especially good) so this should be gratifying.

If you can't hear it this a.m. on the wireless, you can go to the link above and listen to it in archives through your computer later.

The Village Voice has a nice little buffet of news stories every week in a single-page, easy to digest format, but one of the most consistently tasty morsels is The Bush Beat by Ward Harkavy. He makes an interesting comparison between the passage of the Barriers to Bankruptcy Bill with its heartless squeeze on the little people, and the ease with which Dick Cheney's Halliburton made use of the more corporate-friendly bankruptcy laws to divest itself of billions of dollars of asbestos lawsuits, even as it sat flush with billions more in government contracts.

Over at the front page of the NYTimes (yes, I'm lazy) we find Bush's Dirty Lies initiative, which proposed to clean up pollution by shifting it to the skies of more unfortunate states via "emissions credits", appears to be mired in "partisan intransigence", and destined to die an early, well-deserved death.

Next to the above good news we find more: Senate Republicans are putting the reins to Bush's planned $100 billion tax cuts. Democrats are still hung up on that boring old issue of cutting entitlements and programs for the poor, of course. It goes on:

"Yet Congress has failed to adopt a budget for two of the last three years; at a time when Mr. Bush is emphasizing fiscal responsibility, failure to do so this year would be an embarrassment for both the White House and the Republican leadership."

Is it possible for this administration to feel embarassment?

And on the government watchdog front, the GAO told Congress yesterday that privatizing Social Security will not make it more fiscally sound, and could even kill it, and the GOP's own polls show a decided lack of entusiam for the whole idea.

No matter how you try to skew it, things are not looking as rosy as they once did for the old Lame Duck. Here's hoping this thought starts your day off better. Keep all those chins up.

I'd like to work on my tan, but using the little candle in my tiny room under the stairs, it takes a long time.... [Martyred sigh]

In this week's New Yorker, Calvin Trillin about the death of Brian Slavenas, from DeKalb County Illinois, a National Guardsman, one of the 1500 Americans Bush killed in his war of choice in Iraq. Go buy it on the newsstands so they can keep paying Seymour Hersh.

It's the details that get you:

[Brian's mother, Rosemarie Slavenas] is still waiting for an answer from her own letter to the President, a letter that said, in part, "My beloved son Brian died for your red herring in the sand. He did not give his life. It was cruelly taken from him by your rush to war.

Still waiting for an answer...But from inside the Bubble, nothing.

What a coward Bush is.

I mean, at least Rummy would have had the decency to send her a form letter signed by a machine!

Once again, thanks to Project for the Old American Century.

WaPo's EJ Dionne sums it up:

Where does this leave [Bush]? Dropping his call for private accounts carved out of Social Security would allow [H]im to win bipartisan approval for moderate fixes to make the retirement system solvent for decades. Alternatively, [H]e could put forward a serious and detailed plan for private accounts and invite an honest and instructive philosophical face-off with the Democrats on the future of social insurance. The lesson of the first round of the Social Security debate is that the public won't bet on Bush's ideas until he reveals the cards he's holding back.
(via WaPo)

Except we already know what the cards are. The reason Bush can't put his cards face down on the table is that he's got a losing hand. The incomparable Daily Howler explains the stakes (even better than Krugman did with "Bait and Switch", back):

[In 1983,] when the payroll tax was so vastly increased, baby-boomers were told that they were submitting those extra taxes to pre-pay the cost of their eventual retirement. If politicians decide the trust fund is a mirage, then those voters were massively scammed in one of human history’s biggest financial swindles.

(See Alan "Why Is My Nose Brown?" Greenspan's "Heist of the century", back)
But why would the Bushwingers do such a thing? Surely, ideology and pure meanness aren't enough to explain overturning a Social Compact that's lasted for almost 80 years?

Why? The short answer is this: Follow the money. Remember when Bush said "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base"? Let's see why the elites might want Social Security privatized. From one elite insider:

A bit about me: I am in my late 30's, a resident of New York City, and the founder and president of a Manhattan-based asset management firm. I have a BA from a top-ten university and an Ivy League MBA. I'm a lifelong conservative with a strong independent streak. ...

This week, I spoke to an executive at a large publicly-traded technology firm. ... This executive sees one shining beacon in the fog of increasingly strict accounting standards and a difficult business environment: The prospect of Social Security reform. He told me that he and many of this colleagues at other companies favor the creation of private accounts, because a new source of demand for his stock will help compensate for the increasing unattractiveness of his company from an investment perspective. This executive also made it completely clear (albeit in casual, friendly terms--which is perhaps the only way he would have voiced this sentiment at all) that he looked forward to private accounts "picking up the slack" that the new accounting rules and increasingly difficult business conditions in general will create. ...

This executive wants private accounts that invest in the stock market and his stock in particular. He sees private accounts as transferring risk from him to the public--risk, he surely knows, that is already being transferred through instruments such as IRA's, 401K's, and the explosion of mutual funds over the past decade.

He's profited handsomely from that transfer of risk. From a corporate perspective he wants that transfer to continue, and from a personal one he needs it to continue to support his lifestyle. ... This week I also spoke to a former co-worker of mine, who works at one of the largest investment banks in the world. We had a brief conversation about the private accounts issue. Predictably, there was no beating around the bush here; executives of investment banks and brokerages are known for direct, often crass language. He said: "I want that dumb public money coming across my desk."
(via TPM from the cunning realist

So, let me get this clear:

The Bushwingers want our Social Security money to (a) prop up the stock market and (b) maintain their personal lifestyles. When Alan "Why Is My Nose Brown" Greenspan talks about "bolstering the nation's low savings rate", that's code for doing those two things.

So, taking money out of my pocket and putting it into the pockets of those who already have more than enough is good why, exactly?

In Round One, we set that argument up. In Round Two, let's use it to score a knockout.

NOTE Apparently, Cheney thinks Bush has a mandate for a social security phaseout. You'd think, what with that crazy baldhead "Gigi" "Gannon," that he'd want to avoid that term. The wingers never learn, do they?

RDF is off to Old Mexico for a few days on bizness and pleasure. I only say this to my fellow correntians because I won't be around anyplace I can get Internet access and don't want vile rumors about my sudden death to arise when I don't post for a week or so, depending... it just seemed the polite thing to do, anyway, to let everyone know. I know the pot will be kept boiling in my absence. Of course, if I don't reappear in a week or so, those rumors may be true... c'est la vie.

(via Nashville Tennessean)

Bill to ban gay adoption amended, drops reference to homosexuals

Via good old Buzzflash, The UK's Telegraph reports that the FBI is still doing its part to protect us against terrorism, in a way that the National Rifle Association can get behind:

"Terrorist suspects in the United States are buying firearms with the knowledge and approval of the security forces, a congressional report revealed yesterday.
Those acquiring the weaponry included Islamists, radical militiamen and others with ties to groups with a history of using violence to advance their aims."

Why? Because unlike those with criminal records or a history of mental illness, terrorist suspects are free to purchase all the weaponry they want! That's right...the government can toss suspected terrorists into their black holes of detention with no communication with the outside world and no habeas corpus, but they won't touch thier right to wield deadly weapons. The FBI justs smiles sheepishly, shrugs its mighty shoulders, and sighs:

""We're in a tough position,'' an FBI agent told the New York Times. "Obviously we want to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists, but we also have to be mindful of privacy and civil rights concerns, and we can't do anything beyond what the law allows us to do."
Critics of the Bush administration have said that it has put the interests of gun owners before the advice of counter-terrorist officers because of an inbuilt sympathy for weapons enthusiasts. In particular, they pointed out that the former attorney general, John Ashcroft, had for many months prevented the FBI from matching its terrorist watch list against lists of gun buyers on civil liberties grounds."

Of course, a quick perusal of the venerable NRA's website fails to reveal any concerns on this issue at all, despite all their law and order blather about crime. But not to worry. Ashcroft's Patriot Act is still keeping us safe from dangerous readers at the library.

Go read this: If Programmers Were As Smart As Longshoremen:

I’ve often said that if programmers were as smart as longshoremen, they’d have a contract as good as longshoremen. They don’t, in part because they’re proud of their weakness. They’re proud that they don’t stoop to organizing. Nosiree, these are libertarians, who would not consider acting as a group. That, after all, would hurt the super-rich scumbags they work for. And since everyone expects one day to be in the position of the exploiter, they certainly don’t want to restrict the exploiter’s actions now. Even if they’re currently the exploited.

You see what I mean about intelligence. Certainly some libertarians believe in liberty and democracy, and don’t base their ideology on money. There are true libertarians, who are not solely concerned about how much they pay in taxes; but not many. ...

continued at link above

*

...looking for attention any way he can get it.



Hal Turner does some "ribbing" at the expense of Judge Lefkow. Because, ya know, someones family being murdered is simply an occasion for yucks and cheap "gotcha" gags if you happen to be some white supremacist neo-nazi ass-crack radio squawk. The General has more.

And apparently Hal (Harold) and Sean Hannity had kinda a thing going a while back. Seems sweet Sean thought well of Hal and his "agenda". Well enough to endorse Hal's Republican run for congress in 2000.

In August 1998 Turner called into Hannity's WABC show and said that if it weren't for the white man, that blacks "would still be swinging from the trees in Africa." This comment drew no rebuke from Hannity, himself a racial antagonist who even calls Turner at home and plugged his campaign on his show, but rather Hannity continued to race-bait with Turner around a number of political issues. In fact, Turner has said on his radio show, and to us that Hannity had become fast friends. Hannity even invited Turner to sit in on a taping on Hannity and Colmes. Turner told us, however that as Hannity star began to shine a bit more he stopped talking to Turner. ~ cached One Peoples project page

Turner has oozed to the surface most recently in relation to the Lefkow murders in Chicago. Harold, or Hal, or whatever he calls himself, is now seeking names and addresses and personal information on different federal judges. Internet Author Says He Has Addresses Of More Federal Judges A request he has apprently posted to his website.

Turner has apparently pulled a similar stunt in the past:

Turner BS is all over the web and it pretty much damns him as the racist he once tried to deny he was. In one instance he has threatened to incite people to "dispense revenge" on Federal Judge Maryanne Trump Barry and New Jersey NAACP officials and their attorneys after a fire in North Bergen claimed the lives of four people in 1998. Turner charged the NAACP with the deaths because they filed an anti-discrimination lawsuit against the local fire department. Barry was the judge who presided and imposed a hiring freeze on the department until the matter was resolved. After the fire, Turner, a real estate agent with access to the names and addresses of virtually everyone who lives in the state, wrote a letter that appeared on deja.com (now Google) that said that he was going to release the names and addresses of Barry, the NAACP officials, and their lawyers to the families of the fire victims. "It would be interesting to see how those families dispense revenge on those who are really responsible for the deaths of their loved ones, he wrote." Turner was only recently called on the threat by the Daily Targum, the Rutgers University student newspaper, and stood by the letter. cached One Peoples project page

More on Harold C. Turner, of Bergen, New Jersey, who worked for Pat Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign:

Just when some thought that the modern white supremacist movement had adopted the calmer language of scientific racism, along came Hal Turner. A belligerent, foul-mouthed talk show host, Turner is the maestro of radio hate — a man who rants about a "Portable Nigger Lyncher" machine, "faggots," "savage Negro beasts," "bull-dyke lesbians" and "lazy-ass Latinos ... slithering across the border." And that is just the beginning.

[...]

Turner got involved in politics as well, serving as a Republican committeeman in Hudson County, the North Jersey coordinator for white nationalist Pat Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign, and manager of the 1997 gubernatorial campaign of Libertarian Murray Sabrin.

[...]

"I don't think killing a federal judge in these circumstances would be wrong," he said, referring to the judge's ruling against Hale's group in a copyright dispute over its name. "It may be illegal, but it wouldn't be wrong."

[...]

In recent months, however, Turner has repeatedly told his listeners he was gravely ill and begged for donations to pay his creditors. But he has never said what his disease was, and his many skeptics have noted that his "illness" seems to worsen when bills come due at month's end. ~ SPLCenter

Yeah, he's ill alright. Although he seemed a chipper sort last evening when he popped up on MSNBC to be questioned by Dan Abrams. Hey, maybe MSNBC will sign him up to co-host with Joe Scarborough. Somehow that doesn't seem so implausible these days.

*

Via Faithful Progressive, [see: Conservative Evangelicals Issue New Manifesto], a link through to this news from The American Prospect magazine, March 02, 2005...

National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) convention; March 09, 2005...

A key event during the convention will be the release of a 12-page statement of principles meant to serve as guidelines for unprecedented political engagement by U.S. evangelicals. Called For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility, this manifesto for a Bible-based public policy calls on evangelical Christians to recognize that it is their religious obligation to advocate for government policies that support their religious beliefs."

[...]

The preamble to the document quickly makes clear that the group is not looking to influence policy on the margins but to become a major voice in the political process: "Evangelical Christians in America face a historic opportunity. We make up fully one quarter of all voters in the most powerful nation in history. Never before has God given American evangelicals such an awesome opportunity to shape public policy in ways that could contribute to the well-being of the entire world. Disengagement is not an option. We must seek God’s face for biblical faithfulness and abundant wisdom to rise to this unique challenge." ~ American Prospect

That might help explain Marvin Olasky's recent signal flare reminder to his flock to brush up on their Schaeffer.

Also, I should note, as the TAP article points out, that the NAE is a broad based group representing a broad spectrum of evangelical churches. So this convention in no way represents a pow-wow for Dominionist or far right Christian fundamentalist advocates alone. In any case it will be interesting to see where this one goes, and to what extent, if any, the "Christian Nation" agenda is further ballyhooed.

Meanwhile:

Kansas natives is acting crackers again. But not all of em:

Not all Kansans are embracing the evangelical agenda. Both Democrats and many life-long Republicans say the efforts to curtail abortion and homosexual rights are regressive, divisive and discriminatory.

"We're trying to become the laughingstock of the world," said Bill Franklin, a former mayor of Prairie Village, Kansas, who describes himself as a moderate Republican. ~ reuters

GOPod people cultivate a new talking media-cabbage. Says producer: "This kid would piss himself if he went to Iraq." (via Steve Gilliard)

John "archy" McKay in Belgrade... and on Rush Limbaugh and the Yugoslavization of America

*

I love Philly, but the rats in my neighborhood are getting just a little overbold. I swear one of them gave me the finger when I threw a rock at it... And there, in the shadows, some of them seemed to be carrying little tools...

Here are the Dems who voted against cloture, thereby greasing the skids for the Loansharking Protection and Advocacy Act (via TPM:

Senators Tom Carper (D-Delaware), Joe Biden (D-Delaware), Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) and Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota) all voted for cloture. Long-time fence-sitters Senators Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas) also got in the act, as did someone we thought was a Consumer Champion: Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL).

You rememnber this one? The one where your grandmother loses her house to pay for the medical bills, while the rich fucks shelter their mansions in Florida? Of course you do. But, oh yeah, if you firebomb an abortion clinic, and declare bankruptcy to avoid the fines, no problemo!

Say, does MBNA let any of its cards be used to pay for abortions? That would make them baby killers too, wouldn't it? Especially after they collect the interest, right? Hey, just asking (and a tip of the ol' Corrente hat to chica toxic).

(farmer update): Tinfoil Hat Boy (in comments) points out some names missing from the list above.

Byrd (D-WV)
Conrad (D-ND)
Kohl (D-WI)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Pryor (D-AR)
Salazar (D-CO)
Stabenow (D-MI)

Hans Bethe died today. Helped make the bomb, said “O shit, what have we done?!” and then spent the rest of his life fighting to control the unleashed genie.

Worth a visit in his honor: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists although the Doomsday Clock is still at seven to midnight. (How can that be?)

And, in a relative vein, following up on our previous discussion of whether or not covert ops were behind the “opposition street protests” in Beirut, we now have to deal with the “anti-opposition street protests” in Beirut, coordinated by…?

I heard on NPR that the mood in Lebanon is such that everyone wants to avoid another civil war, but what of that? My crystal ball tells me that iWaq is headed that way—how can it be avoided? Now Lebanon? And there’ve been political assassinations in Israel and Palestine for years. Now the Gaza pullout and Palestinian infighting make continued, and hotter, war there a very real possibility. Saudi Arabia is unstable as hell.

If the idea was to stabilize the region, Bushco is sure pulling that one off brilliantly, eh? What does the future hold in a region that has been made all the more unstable by Bushco policies, and with nukes bristling, our soldiers in the middle of it, mercenaries prowling about, and billions in oil revenue as the kitty, what good can come of it?

Isn’t part of the pre-Rapture supposed to be a war in the Middle East? A fiery one? Maybe they can’t wait.

PNAC: Blundering the way toward Armageddon, a secular, all-inclusive event.

And finally, happy International Women’s Day. Don’t read this linked article if you have a weak stomach. I began reading, became more and more incredulous at the author’s idiocy and gloating, and finally it sent me sobbing off to the nearest stiff drink. Found it (the article, not the drink) Googling for sources on the resolution. Elaine Donnelly on Women for Reagan on National Review Online

No. On second thought, read it. Perhaps it’ll stir you to action other than drunkenness. For me, it’s too late tonight.

At the risk of interrupting the flow of today's posts as they confront the central matter of living worthy lives in in a decent, self-governing society, let me take a moment to recommend a visit to The Heretik, a recent occasional guest in our comments section, who, in addition, has one terrific website of his own.

Let me simultaneously disclose and disclaim: my enthusiasm for The Heretik is in no way connected to the fact that he was kind enough to link to a post of mine as part of one of his current...series/obsessions, "Uppity Women," which refers, by and large, to his on-going riff on the strong women who make up the community of female bloggers.

I say "by and large" because words in the hands of The Heretik are both precise and elastic, and always to be played with, as in TheEstrogenatedElite, another heading he uses for specific examples of feminine excellencies, while "Uppity Women" is used also to shelter the story of Sophie Scholl, she of The White Rose, the symbol of non-violent resistence in Nazi Germany; Sophie's execution at the age of twenty-two may be considered tragic, but her story can never be, as long as human memory keeps it alive, which, with help from his bud, Badtux, the Snarky Penguin, the Heretik is doing by sort of falling in love with Sophie, or perhaps the idea of Sophie, but who amongst us would object to having the idea of ourselves last beyond the confines of the life of the body?

I suspect that The Heretik, as he insists on referring to himself, like The Moose, usually in the third person, is a poet. (I don't know if this third person blogging is a trend, but I don't mean to minimize the contrast between the tone of the admirable "Moose," and that of the more radical "Heretik," whose own conceit it is that he is blogging from the mouth of hell>)

My evidence for this supposition is to be found mainly in The Heretik's language, the delight and playfulness therein, plus the fact that one of his recomendations in his sidebar is a book of poems by Billy Collins, a poet not nearly well known enough except among other poets and avid poetry readers, among whom I count myself, this despite having been our Poet Laureate for a spell,(the only good appointment made under Bush-fils so far as I can tell).

There is also an actual poem, several in fact, all quite good, posted by someone with the same name as whoever it is that reminds us on the site's main page that the content therein is copyrighted material. In fact, "tm"s appear through-out the blog, not meant as jokes, I think, but surely meant to amuse, as they do. Here's one example:

The Heretik Presents SHOWTIME FOR SCHADENFREUDE (sic)AND OTHER McKRAP tm Updated Throughout The Day

The Heretik has a wordsmith's way with fractured catch phrases, i.e., "Misinformed Sources," and "Minister of Proper Gander;" he also has an admirable on-going interest in "Malcolm," for just one example, here, (c'mon you know who I mean, not that twit in the middle, there's only one Malcolm, the one with the X after his name), and then there's a real reportorial exclusive, occasional excerpts from a diary kept by Condi herself.

If that doesn't whet your appetite, check your pulse, you might be dead. This is a fairly new blog, so there's only a month and a half of archives; my recommendation, start at the beginning and enjoy it all.

PLEASE NOTE: Edited for an egregious error of diction.

The Loansharking Protection and Advocacy Act is rolling down the pike:

In the first abortion-related test of the new Congress, the Republican-controlled Senate turned back a Democratic effort Tuesday to bar violent protesters from using bankruptcy to avoid payment of court judgments.

The 53-46 vote cleared one of the few remaining obstacles to passage of major bankruptcy legislation that is high on the GOP legislative agenda.
(via CNN)

Guess I'll be moving to a cash-free, barter economy quite soon...

UPDATE Krugman has this to say about the Loansharking Protection Act:

But the bill also fits into the broader context of what Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, calls "risk privatization": a steady erosion of the protection the government provides against personal misfortune, even as ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity.

A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.

To the extent that there is significant abuse of the system, it's concentrated among the wealthy

the underlying economic trends have been reinforced by an ideologically driven effort to strip away the protections the government used to provide. For example, long-term unemployment has become much more common, but unemployment benefits expire sooner. Health insurance coverage is declining, but new initiatives like health savings accounts (introduced in the 2003 Medicare bill), rather than discouraging that trend, further undermine the incentives of employers to provide coverage.

Above all, of course, at a time when ever-fewer workers can count on pensions from their employers, the current administration wants to phase out Social Security.

The bankruptcy bill fits right into this picture.
Warren Buffett recently made headlines by saying America is more likely to turn into a "sharecroppers' society" than an "ownership society." But I think the right term is a "debt peonage" society - after the system, prevalent in the post-Civil War South, in which debtors were forced to work for their creditors. The bankruptcy bill won't get us back to those bad old days all by itself, but it's a significant step in that direction.
(Times

Fuckheads. If only I could get their attention... If only the Czar knew...

Here's what Fat Tony thinks about the mandate of heaven. Funny, you know I thought the "mandate of heaven" was for old-fashioned empires or something, like China. Richard Cohen writes:

Not only did [Scalia] find the Ten Commandments to be religious, he asserted that they were "a symbol of the fact that government derives its authority from God." Oh yeah, Who says?
(via WaPo)

If I believed that, I'd have to believe that God was in the White House—not just in it, like being everywhere, but actually running it—and then I'd have to believe God thought torture was good. And lying. Lots of lying. And screwing the poor.

I'd have a problem with that.

Why don't any of these so-called Christians?

Pass the ol' Imperial Margarine, eh?


UPDATE Nice exchange between riggsveda and chica toxica:

[RIGGSVEDA] We'd be better off having our major legal issues decided by some hoary old guy in a robe with a bowl of animal innards and some bones.

[CHICA TOXICA] Well, I'd certainly trust said hoary old guy a lot more at this point.

I think they've got it right...

Frederick Clarkson asks: "Who is America's Top Theocrat?" See blog post for Saturday, March 05, 2005

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the biggest theocrat of all? There sure are a lot of candidates for top theocrat these days.

Clarkson offers up Tom DeLay and star chamber judicature Anton Scalia as potential victors.

I have another candidate. Marvin Olaskey told me about him a few days ago. His name is George W. Bush. Or at least that's in part the implication. This is what Marv told me:

Who's the major figure behind the election and re-election of George W. Bush? On one level, the visionary Karl Rove. At a deeper level, a theologian most Americans have never heard of: Francis Schaeffer, who 50 years ago this month founded an evangelistic haven in Switzerland, L'Abri. ~ Link

Francis Schaeffer ay? Talk about dropping code word bread crumbs around the park for the pigeons to peck at. (For more on the topic of coded language and George W. Bush's inaugural address - as well as dominionist language contained in textbooks - check out the Yurica Report.

What's so interesting about Olasky's citation of Schaeffer is the well known recognition among Christian Reconstructionist and Dominion theology adherents of Schaeffer's role as a kind of founding "philosopher" emissary extraordinaire to the modern Dominionist movement and worldview.

Olasky doesn't come right out and specifically state that Schaeffer is or has ever been a personal guiding light for Bush but the implications are interesting nonetheless. And I'd be surprised if Bush wasn't familiar with Schaeffer especially considering his previous close working ties to Olasky and the Christian Right in general. The suggestion Olasky is making is that - "at a deeper level" - those who helped put George W. Bush into office are latter day champions of Francis Schaeffer's writings and teachings. Connection implied: Francis Schaeffer and George W. Bush share a common philosophical, ideological, and practical base of support. And, George W. Bush, and the Republican party better not forget it.

"Jesus Feaks" and Dominion Theology

Who is Francis Schaeffer? Sara Diamond writes:


In addition see: Sects and Schisms, by Sara Diamond.

Schaeffer also made a great impression on such individuals as appocalyptic end time howler Tim LaHaye (co-author of the Left Behind series), who, like so many others, parrots Schaeffer's boo-scare stories about secular humanism and liberals and homosexuals and and the usual checklist of right-wing and Religious Right cult-warrior scapegoats:

In 1980 Tim LaHaye published a book, The Battle for the Mind, which amplified on the conservative Christian evangelical critique of secular humanism articulated by popular theologian Francis A. Schaeffer. The LaHaye book is dedicated to Schaeffer ~ Source: Public Eye; see link below.

More on Schaeffer's influence on LaHaye, and others, from Public Eye.

Schaeffer himself may have remained publically aloof from the strict Reconstructionist and Dominionist movements but his philosphical influence on these groups and their evangelical leaders working today is no secret among true believers. And Olasky knows this too. Convieniently he omits any mention of Schaeffer's influence on dominionist thinking and goes to great lengths to distance him from such matters. Which comes off as none to little disingenous considering the historical and currently operational realities.

In any case, any mention from someone like Olasky, pointing to Francis Schaeffer's influence on the election of George W. Bush sends a pretty clear message of support to those among the Theocratic Right who are familiar with, and understand this ideological wink, and the importance of Schaeffer's relationship to the Dominionist cause. Implied communication: "the truth" is stealthily marching on under the banner of George W. Bush's re-election. Or it damned well better be if ya know what's good fer ya, GOP. So, don't forget to acknowledge the "truth" each night before beddy-bye time. Nighty night. And so forth.

Schaeffer (and his son Franky) influenced many of today's theocratic right activists, including Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and John W. Whitehead, who have gone off in several theological and political directions, but all adhere to the notion that the Scriptures have given dominion over the Earth to Christians, who thus owe it to God to seize the reins of secular society. ~ Source: Public Eye

For a little more on Schaeffer and his ideological relationship to the Kingdom theology, Reconstructionist, and Dominionist movements you can read this article written by Alan Torres for something called Biblicist.or:

The idea of taking dominion over secular society gained widespread acceptance with the 1981 publication of evangelical philosopher Francis Schaeffer's book "A Christian Manifesto." Schaeffer, who died in 1984, ran a Christian retreat/training center in Switzerland during the 1960's and 1970's. He and his wife worked with young people who were searching for spiritual answers to life, faith and God . They came from all over to study the Bible and learn how to apply Schaeffer's evangelical methodology, which included his version of Dominion Theology, to their cultures back home.

Rule the world for God.
Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.
Hide your strength.

Advice contained in a memo offered by Pat Robertson, "distributing at an Iowa Republican County caucus..." and titled "How to participate in a Political Party."

Meanwhile: Dr. Bruce Prescott, "Host of "Religious Talk" on KREF radio and "Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists," offers another candidate for top tier theocrat honors: Senator James Inhofe

*

(Cross-posted from my own site. I just can't share enough of the joy!)

Which is that the Senate voted down Kennedy's minimum wage amendment yesterday.

Now The Good News

Which is that the Senate also voted down Santorum's horrible amendement which would have divested more than 8 million workers of their right to a minimum wage, among other outrages.

Now For The Best News

Charles Schumer will sponsor an amendment to prevent abortion protesters from creating havoc and then avoiding fines by declaring bankruptcy, a cyncial practice that even the most conservative lawmaker would be hard-pressed not to define as "bankruptcy abuse". This little molotov cocktail is expected to set off a regular firestorm in the Senate. And it could stop the bill in its tracks:

"But unable to sand off the bill's rough edges, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to offer an amendment barring anti-abortion protesters from using bankruptcy to shield themselves from judgments for illegally blocking access to clinic entrances. The amendment is a poison pill. If approved it would kill Republican support and the bill. Republicans aren't likely to let that happen, but death is the fate the bill deserves".

Keep your fingers crossed.

I was going to call this "What If They Gave A War And Nobody (Black) Came"? but my interest in this subject is not racially based, unless you extende the term to "human race." My interest in the subject is aged 16, has an IQ in the neighborhood of 140, good eyesight, nearly perfect health, and is of heterosexual orientation. I live in fear of bad influencers...

(via Fredericksburg VA Free Lance-Star)

THE ARMY'S wartime recruiting challenge is aggravated by a sharp drop in black enlistments over the past four years, which internal Army and Pentagon polls trace to the unpopular war in Iraq and concerns among blacks with Bush administration policies.

The Army strains to meet recruiting goals in part because black volunteers have fallen 41 percent--from 23.5 percent of recruits in fiscal 2000 to 13.9 percent in the first four months of fiscal 2005.

"It's alarming," said Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, commanding general of the Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Ky.

No single factor explains the drop, he added, but the propensity of black youth to enlist is clearly affected by the war and increasingly by the views of parents, teachers, coaches, clergy and other "influencers."

Officer recruiting is hit, too--down 36 percent since 2001 among blacks in the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps.

The Marine Corps also reports a drop in black recruits, but its racial data is suspect due to a government policy that allows recruits and all new federal workers to decline to identify their race.

Rep. Charles B. Rangel, a Democrat whose New York City district includes Harlem, wasn't surprised by the Army data.

"I have not found a black person in support of this war in my district," he said. "The fact that every member of the Congressional Black Caucus--emotionally, politically and vigorously--opposes this war is an indication of what black folks think throughout this country."

Because blacks are 14 percent of all recruit-age youth, their recruiting numbers remain "acceptable," proportional to blacks in society, Rochelle said. But the steep drop in black recruits overall does hurt plans "to grow the Army," he conceded. Congress has ordered a 30,000-person increase in the number of active-duty soldiers by October 2009.

Rochelle worries that black youth now "are depriving themselves of pretty substantial opportunities.

"If we were able to tell the Army story in a very balanced way to more young African-Americans, as well as to their influencers, then clearly the numbers would grow," he said. "I'm convinced of that."

Tell ya what, Gen. Rochelle--how about you do a little research at places like Free Republic and Little Green Tomatoes. Do a search (if they have such capabilities; I sure as shit ain't going there myself to find out) for the term "sand nigger." Then do a bit of deep thinking on where the White Feather Brigade of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders might have come up with such a term. It might help you get a handle on part of your problem.

The rest of your recruiting difficulties--particularly in, oh let's say small, poor, very rural schools in West Tennessee--that's me. I'm out there "influencing" my ass off, because you'll take me off to thy Wrack before you take my kid, or any others I get to first.

In honor of riggsveda's first day, and for those of you who can't visit Philly, here's a brief tour of The Mighty Corrente Building. I've cribbed most of it from the guide's spiel on The Philly Phlash, our municipal tourist bus, for which The Mighty Corrente Building is, of course, a stop (two stops, actually, because of its vast size and variegated features). At left is an image of one one of The Building's lesser wings.

While climbing the marble steps up to TMCB, you will pass between two monumental chained weasels, sculpted in Vermont marble by Philadelphia's own Alexander Calder IV. Swinging open the Rodin-esque bronze doors, you will enter The Great Hall, whose vaulted deep blue ceiling is a veritable firmanent of glittering stars, each a blinking point of light that represents a writer or an alert reader in Corrente's globe-girdling network of correspondents.

Mounting the marble stairs to the executive cloakroom, be sure to admire the brightly burnished solid gold Louis Quinze taps on the wet bar——

Dammit, my pen ran out of ink, and I couldn't take any more notes. "Underground bunkers" .... "wine cellars" ... "mushroom farm" ... "rooftop Zen garden" ... "sunken pools with nymphs" ... And something about a nut case under the stairs.

Well, you see what I mean. It takes a heap o' living...

Still not a pretty sight. But the image is a lot uglier than the one AP chose to show:

The White House credentialing process came under scrutiny after a flap over James Guckert, who used the alias Jeff Gannon. For two years he was granted daily passes to White House briefings as Washington bureau chief for Talon News, a conservative online news outlet associated with another Web site, GOPUSA. At a news conference last month, he asked Bush how he could work on Social Security and other domestic initiatives with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

That attracted scrutiny from liberal bloggers, who linked Guckert with Web sites containing gay pornography. Guckert resigned from Talon News.
(AP via the Post Intelligencer)

Now, there are two words I don't see in that story. They are:

gay escort.

I wonder why?

After all, it's simply not plausible that Rove's famously disciplined White House operation—the same operation that can get Democrats blacklisted for a Partei rally in Fargo, North Dakota—did not know exactly who, and what "Gannon" was.

So the essential question remains, and the SCLM just won't ask it:

Who was "Gannon"'s protector? Who got "Gannon" the pass?

Hey, maybe the blogger who just got a press pass can ask that question? I mean, it can't be that hard to find out. There's paperwork, right? Letting Gannon in? With a signature on it?

Should be an interesting gaggle!

And how, exactly, does taking softball questions from a male escort fit either with family values, or with the idea that the Republicans are the Daddy party? Quite some Dad, huh?

The New Yorker's invaluable Hendrik Herzberg points out:

Well, if each of every state’s two senators is taken to represent half that state’s population, then the Senate’s fifty-five Republicans represent 131 million people, while its forty-four Democrats represent 161 million. Looked at another way, the present Senate is the product of three elections, those of 2000, 2002, and 2004. In those elections, the total vote for Democratic senatorial candidates, winning and losing, was 99.7 million; for Republicans it was 97.3 million. The forty-four-person Senate Democratic minority, therefore, represents a two-million-plus popular majority—a circumstance that, unless acres trump people, is at variance with common-sense notions of democracy. So Democrats, as democrats, need not feel too terribly guilty about engaging in a spot of filibustering from time to time.

A majority that, since the Republicans have trampled on the Constitution to produce a parliamentary style government, where the "minority" (at least in terms of seats) has not procedural rights whatever, is no effective representation whatever.

So, bring on the nuclear option. So what if the Senate grinds to a halt? It's bring a halt to the craziness the Republicans are trying to pull. As Harry Reid says, what's wrong with obstructing destructionists?

What is this horseshit?

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday the United States would never send terrorism suspects to countries where they would be tortured but admitted once they have been dispatched to nations like Saudi Arabia or Egypt the U.S. government has little control. "

As Sigourney Weaver said in Aliens, "Did IQs suddenly drop sharply while I was out of the room?" It was just yesterday I was reading in the NYTimes how the CIA had gotten approval from the White House in a classified memo from Bush himself to airmail suspects and quasi-suspects around the world to selected destinations (like Syria and Saudi Arabia) for "detention". But Gonzales has this covered. You can practically hear the squelching as he oozes his way into a verbal loophole, leaving a trail of slime like a slug:

"Gonzales would not say how many prisoners had been dispatched to other countries but he said in cases such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt which have poor rights records, "additional assurances" of proper treatment were sought.
After that, he admitted, the United States had little control. He also said he could not say whether any prisoners who been sent to other countries have been abused.
"Once someone is rendered we can't fully control what that country might do," Gonzales said. "If you're asking me, has a country always complied? I don't know the answer to that."

If you're asking me, is Gonzales human? I don't know the answer to that. But I do know that better reporting on these things than the MSM has done can be found at sites like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, where they'll be happy to answer the questions Gonzales pretends ignorance of.

Maybe now that there's a blogger in the gaggle, the question can finally be asked:

"Mr. President, do you believe that the earth is only 6000 years old?"

Because we've just found something four million years old:

The fossilised skeleton of a four million-year-old human ancestor able to walk on two legs could provide clues as to how humans' upright walk evolved. The remains, found in north-east Ethiopia, are the oldest yet discovered of an upright hominid, scientists told a press conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Saturday.

"This skeleton helps us to understand what happened in the joints, how walking upright occurred - what we never had before," says Bruce Latimer of the Natural History Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, who made the discovery together with Yohannes Haile Selassie of the National Museum in Addis Ababa.
(via New Scientist)

Look, I know you can see this curveball coming, but I have to throw it anyhow...

We already know why walking upright occurred—it's too damned painful to drag your knuckles on the ground!

A lesson that today's wingers have not, apparently learned....

And while we're at it, maybe someone can answer me this one:

If Intelligent Design is true, why is there a Republican Party?

Had to pass this one along. I was on the road and stopped at one of my favorite little cafes to eat supper. Place is down south. Best green chile stew I ever ate. Overheard this conversation inna booth behind me:

I see in the paper where the chile crop is gonna be bad this year.

Yeah, all this rain. A lot of folks won’t be able to get a crop in.

Who do we blame for that?

You can’t blame anybody for the weather, man.

Ah. Who, indeed? I’d read the same article. Chile crop’s in trouble. But it’s not a GLOBAL phenom or anything (Kyoto). Nothing to see here (Kyoto). So, I hope everyone stocked their freezer real good last fall. Those of you as is chile eaters, I mean. Myself, I got to have my green chiles. Glad I put 50 lbs., roasted and peeled, in the freezer.

And in related news, although I’m not sure related how exactly, I read in the same fishwrapper that the New Mexico legislature passed a loan shark reform act. About time. But. Ah, but… These bloodsuckers prey on the poor, often Native folk: car title loans, payday loans, personal loans up to $500. Legislature decided that they couldn’t roll over the loans anymore, but that the 600% interest rate was okay. 600% interest is okay? WTF?

More “reform.” Haven’t kept up on the doings in Denver, but I imagine they’re just as bad as Santa Fe. Although medical marijuana might make it this year in Santa Fe.

And in the same damn paper, a column by Diana West, who truly is a leaky bag of rancid phlegm & smegma-filled doughnut holes, arguing that HST is actually “mainstream MSM.” She says “…the gonzo sensibility has infused our culture to the point where it’s no longer a relic of the old counter-culture, but is an innate characteristic of the establishment today.” I hope HST’s ghost comes clanking into her dreams and rips her a new one four ways.

Oh, and it’s almost time to paint that damn shed. But blue isn’t gonna cut it. So, what? HST triumphantly holding aloft the snaky head of Diana West? Maybe instead of painting it myself, I’ll just pull someone out of one of those loan shark joints and pay ‘em $500 to do the job. My idea of reform. Now, if only I had $500…

Via Project for the Old American Century




And that goes double for the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Now, really, speaking as a Pennsylvanian to Pennsylvanians--why do you keep putting th
is horrible putz back in office?

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.

Don't you love that sly little dollop of humor they ladle over the rest of the title: "Consumer Protection"? This is what has famously become known throughout the blogosphere (or at least on the pages I frequent) as the "Barriers to Bankruptcy Bill". But of course, the barriers are only aimed at consumers, hence the amusing bon mot, "Consumer Protection". You think Chuck Grassley thought that one up all by himself, or did Hatch or Sununu help? Or maybe it was that little tax cheat and energetic homophobe, freshman senator Jim DeMint, though I doubt his sense of humor is up to it. Well, regardless of who's responsible for this atrocity, much time and good effort has gone into dissecting it for general consumption across the internet, and there are a lot of good sources for info, some from these hallowed pages via RDF and Leah, and some elsewhere, like the roundup put together by eRobin of Fact-esque. But what I found to be a diverting time-waster was to sit down with a hard copy of the bill's history and an Avery highlighter and note what amendments were being put forward to it, and then how they were voted on. Come. Laugh along with me:


We'll have to wait to find out what happens to S.AMDT 44, Kennedy's attempt to increase the minimum wage, and S.AMDT 52, Dodd's attempt to prohibit extending credit to minors (Christ, first they won't let us kill them, then they want to take away our constitutional right to impoverish them) since those amendments are still under consideration.

Anyone up for taking bets?

Piggybacking on Lambert's post from last night on the inability of the Pentagon to provide basic protection for its soldiers, the NYTimes also had this to say:

"American military commanders and Pentagon officials now concede that they consistently misjudged the strength and ingenuity of the insurgency in Iraq, which has grown more sophisticated in its tactics. Because commanders failed to take that force into account, the Army's procurement machine could never catch up, no matter how hard it tried...
Others say that the Pentagon's longstanding preference for billion-dollar weaponry has made it less prepared to deliver the basic tools needed by soldiers on the ground.
"We've never been very good at equipping people in a simple, straightforward fashion," said Thomas E. White, who resigned as secretary of the Army in April 2003 after a falling out with Mr. Rumsfeld."

Maybe that might explain this, via CNN:

"The Army in February, for the first time in nearly five years, failed to achieve its monthly recruiting goal. It is in danger of missing its annual recruiting target for the first time since 1999.
Recruiting for the Army's reserve component -- the National Guard and Army Reserve -- is suffering even more as the Pentagon relies heavily on these part-time soldiers to maintain troop levels in Iraq. The regular Army is 6 percent behind its year-to-date recruiting target, the Reserve is 10 percent behind, and the Guard is 26 percent short...
In January and February, the Marines missed their goal for signing up new recruits -- the first such shortfall in nearly a decade..."

And yet, we can still read things like this, from Democratic Underground's Top Ten Conservative Idiots:

"Those Republican majorities voted last week to "impose an enrollment fee of at least $230 a year on 2.4 million veterans - one of every three now eligible for Veterans Affairs Administration health care," according to Military.com. Apparently half of those 2.4 million veterans used the VA health system last year."

But that's okay, because the sales of magnetic yellow ribbons are off the charts.

Support the troops, folks!

(P.S. Did I tell you've I've signed on here at The Mighty Corrente Building? I'm still waiting for the combat pay, though. Hey. Lambert!!)

Via Bob's News Wire:

Buffett complains that the trade deficit is leading to an alarming transfer of US assets into foreign ownership.

"Americans end up owning a reduced portion of our country while non-Americans own a greater part," he writes. "This force-feeding of American wealth to the rest of the world is now proceeding at the rate of $1.8bn daily."

"Consequently, other countries and their citizens now own a net of about $3 trillion of the US. A decade ago their net ownership was negligible."

He warns of dangerous consequences if these trends continue. He says that within a decade, the US would be compelled to deliver "3 per cent of its annual output to the rest of the world simply as tribute for the overindulgences of the past".

He adds: "This annual royalty paid the world... would undoubtedly produce significant political unrest in the US.

"A country that is now aspiring to an 'ownership society will not find happiness... in a 'sharecropper's society' " But he says that just such a demeaning outcome is "where our trade policies, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, are taking us."

See: [Warren] "Buffett condemns 'force-feeding' of US wealth to the rest of the world", By Robert Peston - Telegraph (UK)

speaking of 'sharecroppers'...

Another American Enterprise Institute favorite delivers up a happy story courtesy of that derned liberal media op-ed page at the New York Times; which gushes:

The Little Guys Are O.K., by Bruce Gardner.
NYTimes (login not required)

The Times cheerily informs us that: "Bruce Gardner, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland, is the author of "American Agriculture in the 20th Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost."

They don't happen to mention that Gardener was also Assistant Secretary of Agriculture -as well as USDA Chief Economist - on the Mom and Poppy Bush plantation, 1989-1992. He's also something of a favorite with the American Enterprise Institute (go figger), who have published his work in the past.

*

I'm still waiting for Bush to issue that executive commending the parents who bought their children in Iraq body armor, and commending the Chambers of Commerce who built armor for the HumVees. Commending them, and reimbursing them. Say, it would be nice if some Dem introduced a bill to that effect, eh?

Anyhow, The Times actually does some excellent reporting on Bush's farcical inability to get the troops armored for his war of choice in Whack.

Body armor was given the same status as socks:

In the case of body armor, the Pentagon gave a contract for thousands of the ceramic plate inserts that make the vests bulletproof to a former Army researcher who had never mass-produced anything. He struggled for a year, then gave up entirely. At the same time, in shipping plates from other companies, the Army's equipment manager effectively reduced the armor's priority to the status of socks, a confidential report by the Army's inspector general shows. Some 10,000 plates were lost along the way, and the rest arrived late.

And the vehicles still aren't armored:

Soldiers are still jury-rigging protection for their trucks and Humvees

It still goes on... Two years and 1500 deaths in. Unbelievable? All too believable.

I can't help but make the connection between Bush's failure to protect the troops in Iraq, with his failure to protect citizens here at home. After all, what are Social Security, the minimum wage, bankruptcy protection from high medical bills, and the New Deal safety net, but armor—armor against the shocks that life can give any and all of us?

I keep trying to think of a catchy name for the party of Lincoln, who must be spinning in his grave, and the one I keep coming back to is...

The Four-H club. The party of

1. Hypocrisy
2. Hysteria
3. Hate
4. ...

And I keep not being able to come up with the fourth H. Readers, ideas? Better ideas for renaming The Partei?

Why is it that Republicans are always going "You first?" It's what Jonah "White Feather" Goldberg says to the troops, and now it's what Senator Chuck Hagel is saying to you. Get a load of this:

Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel's plan would raise the age that retirees could receive full benefits, beginning in 2023. "We are living longer," Hagel said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "So when you look at the total universe of this, I think that makes some sense to extend the age."
(via AP)

It makes sense, eh?

Just so I get this straight:

I should give another year of my working life to The Man, so Hagel's super-rich buddies can keep their tax cuts?

And so the wage cap for payroll taxes isn't raised from $90,000 up to the well-above-average $140,000?

I don't think so. Me first? No, you first!

That would "make sense" how, exactly? Sounds like this proposal needs to be referred to The Department of How Stupid Do They Think We Are?

Are they down for everybody, or is it just me? I wanted to see how my personal favorite ("Navy aircraft carrier the U.S.S Billy Jean King") was doing, but got an error message.

We have some polls we need to run, so it would be great to have the polling technology for it. Does anyone have an alternatives to suggest?

I needed an excuse to print farmer's wonderful portrait of Alan "Why is my nose brown?" Greenspan again—and happily, Whiney Joe gives me the chance!

Other Democrats distanced themselves from Reid's comment [back, that Greenspan is a political hack]. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said on CNN that Greenspan is "sometimes very mistaken," but he is an "above-average human.".
(via AP)

WTF? Whiney Joe must think DC is Lake Wobegone!

And way to hang tough with your leader, there, Beltway Dems!

And maybe someone can tell me how stealing trillions of dollars in already paid worker's retirement money, and handing it over to the super-rich in the form of tax cuts, makes Greenspan an "above average" human being on any scale that takes ethics or morality into account? (Krugman, back, on the Heist of the century")

Greenspan to The Duck Pit!

Lieberman to The Duck Pit!

Somehow, I have the feeling that Kansas is going to have a very hard time with the loansharking Bankruptcy Bill (Kos)

(You know, the Republican bill that treats debt from medical bills the same as debt from too much shopping, and lets the billionaires shield their mansions in Florida at the same time your Mom loses her house.)

Except, maybe, for the Kansans who work in call centers.

I can see why the Senators from MBNA (Carper, Biden) would vote for the bill, but why on earth would Nelson (Nebraska) and Johnson (North Dakota) vote for it? Call centers in their states?

There's probably a story to be written about Red State call centers doing some collecting the vigoris from Blue state debtors...

You know, back when I was growing up, way back in the '50s, the Man Of The House was supposed to be able to manage the family budget. In fact, my Dad would sit at the kitchen table and balance the checkbook.

You can tell Bush has never had to do that, never even thought of doing it. Like Dean says" the Republicans can't handle money."

Take the 2005 budget (please!):

President Bush's budget would keep federal deficits over $200 billion annually over the next decade, Congress' top budget analyst said Friday in a report raising doubts about White House efforts to contain the shortfalls.

The analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Bush's plans for spending and taxes would yield deficits through the decade ending in 2015 totaling $2.58 trillion. That is $1.6 trillion worse than they would be if none of the president's fiscal plans become law, the budget office said, the chief factor being [H]is plan to make already enacted tax cuts permanent.
(via AP)

And look what Bush left out!

The congressional analyst noted that Bush's budget [1] omitted the costs of overhauling Social Security, which some analysts expect to exceed $1 trillion for the first decade.

Bush's budget [2] also omits any new funds for U.S. military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2006. The congressional analyst said keeping next year's military operations at this year's levels would probably add about $40 billion to the 2006 shortfall, pushing it to perhaps $375 billion.

Obviously, the press is being really, really kind to Inerrant Boy here, what a surprise! "Raising doubts?" The Republicans are barely going through the motions of enacting a budget, let alone balancing one. What kind of a budget is it that leaves all the biggest items out? And all the press can do is write He said, She said stories.

Let's imagine Bush The Bad Dad sitting roung the kitchen table, doing the checkbook, and try to follow his reasoning:

1. OK, the paycheck got slashed cause I banged in late one too many times. Sweet Jesus, nothing adds up now! [making the tax cuts for the rich permanent]

2. But I've just gotta have a good chunk of change for Casino Night down at the church [privatizing social security]. And then there's my running tab for liquor down at Don's Package [Iraq, Afghanistan]...

3. Well, shit, let's just leave that stuff out. Good thing I keep these books in pencil, or Leadfoot would really go nukular. (Starts erasing)

4. OK, on the income side, let's just leave the paycheck like it was. I'll suck up to those tight asses in the front office, and next month I'll be right back in clover. Ya know, I don't even need to suck up to ol' Alan, I've got those photographs from the Christmas Party [the usual Rovian black ops] (scribbles some more) Heck, let's say I got a raise! (Writes in new salary) [Rosy revenue projections]

5. Then I'll put off the mortage for a month. Just a month. Well, maybe two [Postpone any and all problems]

6. Damn, that's closer, but it's still not looking good. How much was that bill for little Jenna's rehab? Cain't lay my hand on it, dammmit ...

7. Now, where's that stack from the credit card companies (gets out pencil again and starts erasing)

Bush the Bad Dad!

Maybe somebody can tell me how this crap about the Republicans being the daddy party got started again?

...would like to have his way with you. I mean, a word!, a word with you... heh heh...oh-boy...


update: PUSSY - For a really good time!: send your cat to Kevin Drum so he can stick it in his sock drawer:

I don't know what it is about this drawer, but he goes into ecstatic spasms of purring and rolling and smooching once he gets in. This is about as close as it gets to cat heaven.

She can stay there for hours, alternating between making work difficult by sitting in front of the screen and making it impossible by aggressively smooching the mouse.

Jeezis huh? Supposedly a grown man wrote this twaddle. Smooching the mouse? Yeah, well, ok, then put the slobbering thing in the sock drawer for christ's sake will ya. It can smooch itself into a state of paradisiacal delight in there from the sounds of it.

Somehow the very notion of associating Kevin Drum's sock drawer (and whatever else might be in there), with purring, smooching, rolling about, and/or spasms of any sort, be they estatic or heavenly approximate, or even palsied for that matter, in general, makes me uneasy on so many levels I can't even begin to explain it. I just don't want to know what kind of cloying hedonistic orgies take place in Kevin Drum's sock drawer. Period. Especially if they involve a overheated cat in Kev's drawers.

I don't care if the cat belonged to Isis or likes to fall asleep at the feet of Liberty. I don't want to hear about any of it.

Unless Drum slams his penis in the sock drawer by accident and the cat starts chewing on it or something like that. That would be interesting to hear about; maybe. But, anyway, if I ever write down some ghastly saccharine gibberish about cat heaven or cat smooching or estatic spasm rolling cats or etc... I want one of you to come to my front door, stuff me into a nylon feed bag, and fling me off a bridge into a river.

meanwhile ...this is CAT BLOGGING

Although, I'll admit, it looks like these cats live in a bus station restroom. At least from the looks of the tile on the wall. But, then again, they probably don't live in a bus station restroom. Not really. And I don't mean to interject my own disturbing life experiences into the story so just forget it. Ok?

Verily,
Angry Mr. P. Niss,
Catskill Game Farm, March 6, 2005.

update - farmer note: Mr. P-Niss isn't supposed to to post here until next Friday. But there was nothing I could do about it. And I really don't want to have anything to do with a bent angry penis going off half-cocked at 5am. So please send your complaints, if you dare, to Leah.

*

Back in the day, when we were very young and responsible, some tender souls shared their views about "The Duck Pit". They felt that there some sort of moral equivalence between the barrage of eliminationist rhetoric from the wingers, and our comparatively light-hearted use of the term "Duck Pit." So we stopped using the term. But as Lou Reed sings, Those were different times.

So I say it's time to bring back The Duck Pit!

And I have my first candidate for The Duck Pit: Alan Greenspan.

Readers! Is the Duck Pit just too, too uncivil? And would Alan Greenspan be your first choice?

Aux duck pits, citoyens!

NOTE Corrente is shortly to become the blog of eight. Bolder bolds! Shriller shrills! More reality than you ever dreamed of! Watch the skies...

Because every day can't be P-niss blogging day, or it would cease to be so special.

But just to ease you into our return to our regularly scheduled programing, think of this one as another of those There And Back Again, Again recommended reading thingees.

Here's a thoroughly pleasurable instance of a politician and office-holder daring to stand up to Condi and ask a few pointed questions; unfortunately, it's a Canadian former politician and former office-holder, but this open letter to our Secretary of State, whom I heard described this evening on that hotbed of critical analysis, "Washington Week In Review," as being on a role roll," an open letter signed by Lloyd Axworthy, (no, I didn't make up that name),currently the President of the University of Winnipeg and former Canadian foreign minister one that I think you'll find immensely satisfying. (Note: I saw this link in some comments thread,I think, but can't remember where, hence am unable to give credit where credit is due)

I love it when bloggers do stuff like this, document the atrocity; granted, in a world where Darfurs continue, atrocity might be a bit thick as a label for what Michael at "Here's What's Left," does, but if truth-telling is still a value, and deliberate lies, i.e., slander, still a sin, if not an easily proved civil crime, then atrocity fits the bill, and this kind of documenting of it is damned brilliant blogging. What think you? (BTW, while there, don't miss this Friday Night Wicket Blogging (Jeff Gannon edition)," dangerously close to P-Nuss blogging, though it is)

RDF left a link to an appreciation of Hunter Thompson by George McGovern, and just to make it easier for all of you to access it, I thought I'd move it here, the better for you to click on it. It's a delight, and well worth that simple gesture. (I'll have more to say about McGovern over the weekend, so check back.) On the same subject, but employing an entirely different tone, William Rivers Pitt says goodbye to HST and reinspires, all in the same fine piece of writing at Truth-Out.

And finally, from The Raw Story, this story of increasing Republican evil madness, and this one of Democrats actually starting to get a clue.

Well, that should see you through your morning coffee. Have a nice day. I have this strong feeling that next week is going to be a whole lot better.

As someone who writes about popular culture in the nineteenth century, nothing is more bizarre than examining current popular culture. I have been absolutely appalled at the events of the last week.

Last Sunday, nothing was stranger than watching CNN spend hours on the purses and dresses of the actresses at the Academy Awards while running the news of the deadliest terrorist attack in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in the crawler at the bottom of the screen.

Holy cow, is that really all that such an important event merits? It's an afterthought in comparison the earthshattering importance of Hilary Swank's cleavage? And the folks at CNN wonder why their ratings are dropping? Are you kidding me?

And then there was the surreal experience last night of watching the hours of live coverage of Martha Stewart's release from federal prison. Surely there's something more important, right? Hell, I can't think of few things that are more important than that non-story!!!

Now, don't get me wrong, I think Martha may have gotten a raw deal in a world in which Ken Lay still wanders the earth free and unencumbered. Martha's story is really not that bloody important in the grand scheme of things. I mean, hell folks, if there's ever a nuclear attack it will be the roaches and Martha Stewart that will still be with us.

Have we really reached the point that purses, dresses, and Martha are more important than genuine news stories these days?

I suspect our children will judge us rather harshly when looking back at this time period. Our media mavens slept while so many important things (the collapse of Iraq, the hijacking of Social Security, the Halliburton scandal) were happening.

I no longer wonder why and how the Vietnam War happened. Judging from what I'm seeing in the media I'm just amazed that we didn't all perish in an enormous mushroom cloud about September of 1958.

Farmer raises an interesting... No, wrong connotation.

It's hard to imagine ... Nope, wrong connotations there, too.

The point of it ... Putting up stiff opposition ... Coming to grips with ... Taking these matters in hand ... Bringing to a head ... Penetrating insight ... The thrust of my remarks ... Swing states ... Hanging, um, chads ...

It's like walking through a minefield! At any moment, something might explode ... Oh, dammit.

Look. I've got sympathy for farmer in his travails and especially for Pete the Deer, but I've got troubles of my own. The tiny room under the stairs is tiny relative to something, know what I mean?

Well, it turns out Bush had no plan to win the peace in Afghanistan either—except to turn the country over to narcotics dealing warlords.

More than three years after installing a pro-U.S. government, Afghanistan (news - web sites) has been unable to contain opium poppy production and is on the verge of becoming a narcotics state, a presidential report said Friday.

The report said the area in Afghanistan devoted to poppy cultivation last year set a record of more than 510,000 acres, more than triple the figure for 2003. Opium poppy is the raw material for heroin.
(via AP)

Let's just hope the CIA isn't selling heroin to the troops in Iraq, like they did in VietNam.

Via, of all places, the New York Post—I found a copy tonight on the train; please don't think I bought it—we get this, from the sober grey pages of the Toronto Globe and Mail. The reporter, Paul William Roberts, writes:

Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn't always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He'd been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: "They're gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards think . . ."

And there they leave us hanging! The rest of the story is available to subscribers only....

But the Post does give us a few details on why Thompson's suicide might be an apparent suicide. To begin with, can anyone really imagine The Good Doctor not leaving a note? But there's more:

And in his report, Deputy Ron Ryan noted the semi-automatic Smith & Wesson 645 found next to Thompson's body was in an unusual condition. There was a spent shell casing, but although there were six bullets left in the gun's clip, there was no bullet in the firing chamber, as there should have been under normal circumstances.

Nicht and Nabel? Of course, they would never do that, but it would be nice to put the story to rest....

Readers!

I'd love to be able to post fair use excerpts from the rest of the Globe and Mail story. Any Canadians among us with an "Insider Edition" subscription?

and two if by Sea?" Yeah..

and I on the opposite shore shall be,
ready to ride to give the alarm to every Middlesex village and farm....

...okay, I'll stop now. A shame the age of heroic poetry (which told a story, and inspired the heart, and illuminated good examples of virtuous behavior, and which goddam rhymed so it was easily read aloud and memorized, even by children) has passed from current fashion, because we may be needing it again very soon.

Or spirituals--"Follow the Drinkin' Gourd" for instance contains explicit instructions on escaping hostile territory to safer ground in the north. From the same time period we have examples of codes built into quilts, or even color codes for laundry hung out to dry which a fugitive could "read" to find safe havens and avoid dangers. Hobos in more recent periods had an elaborate system of markings to indicate who would give a handout to a man down on his luck, who would feed you in exchange for some chores, and who would greet you with a shotgun.

This discussion of amateur, handcrafted, homemade codecraft brought to you as a leadin to this interesting bit of cutting-edge socio/techno repression:

(via NYT if yer already registered or
NYT RSS if not:

For many China watchers, the holding of a National People's Congress beginning this weekend is an ideal occasion for gleaning the inner workings of this country's closed political system. For specialists in China's Internet controls, though, the gathering of legislators and top political leaders offers a chance to measure the state of the art of Web censorship.

The authorities set the tone earlier this week, summoning the managers of the country's main Internet providers, major portals and Internet cafe chains and warning them against allowing "subversive content" to appear online.

"Some messages on the Internet are sent by those with ulterior motives," Qin Rui, the deputy director of the Public Information and Internet Security Supervision Bureau, was quoted as saying in The Shanghai Daily.

Stern instructions like those are in keeping with a trend aimed at assigning greater responsibility to Internet providers to assist the government and its army of as many as 50,000 Internet police, who enforce limits on what can be seen and said.

According to Amnesty International, arrests for the dissemination of information or beliefs via the Internet have been increasing rapidly in China, snaring students, political dissidents and practitioners of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, but also many writers, lawyers, teachers and ordinary workers.

Newer technologies allow the authorities to search e-mail messages in real time, trawling through the body of a message for sensitive material and instantaneously blocking delivery or pinpointing the offender. Other technologies sometimes redirect Internet searches from companies like Google to copycat sites operated by the government, serving up sanitized search results.

[snip]As with the policing efforts, the evasion techniques range from the sly and simple - aliases and deliberate misspellings to trick key-word monitors and thinly veiled sarcastic praise of abhorrent acts by the government on Web forums that seem to confound the censors - to so-called proxy servers, encryption and burying of sensitive comments in image files, which for now elude real-time searches.

"Burying information in image files" eh? I'm picturing a quilt for some reason.

O, shit. Another one to add to the list:

In a case with implications for the freedom to blog, a San Jose judge tentatively ruled Thursday that Apple Computer can force three online publishers to surrender the names of confidential sources who disclosed information about the company's upcoming products… Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg refused to extend to the Web sites a protection that shields journalists from revealing the names of unidentified sources or turning over unpublished material…The case raises issues about whether those who write for online publications are entitled to the same constitutional protections as their counterparts in more traditional print and broadcast news organizations.

via Apple wins victory in blogger sources dispute

I'm working on a draft letter to send. What did I forget to add to the lists? (Alert reader desertswine noted my lack of environmental concerns; that is now fixed by adding #9. Thank you. Alert reader Bob McGuire notices I left out NCLB and related foolishness; fixed that with #10. Thanks. Damn thing's turning into a manifesto.)

Dear (congresscritter):

I am writing today to let you know that I am watching very closely how you vote during this session.

If you vote for, support or remain "neutral" on any of the following:

1. The credit card company/corporate giveaway currently posing as a bankruptcy bill

2. Judicial appointees whose track record indicates that they will make decisions that erode civil rights, liberty and justice for all

3. Ruining social security under the guise of “reform”

4. Foreign policy that costs lives for no purpose

5. Any extensions of the “PATRIOT” act

6. Cutting social programs in favor of military programs

7. Continuing to fund corporate giveaway contracts (e.g., Halliburton in Iraq)

8. Making ruinous tax cuts for the rich permanent

9. Bills or orders that promote the spoiling of our land, water and air and those that live on them (especially if in the guise of "energy needs")

10. Continuation of the de-souling of the educational process in America through NCLB, vouchers and suchlike

I will make it my personal pet project to do the following:

1. Let everyone I can know how you voted and what the probable consequences are

2. See to it that you are defeated should you have the temerity to run for reelection

3. Mount and/or join protests and demonstrations that name you as a supporter of these measures in your (city, district, state)

Very sincerely,

(outraged citizen)

Unsurprisingly, Krugman takes on Greenspan, and with that wonderful clarity and passion that has become Krugman's standard, (I've never understood how anyone who is literate could ever call his columns "shrill") he exposes the man's withered balls, heart, mind, and conscience.

Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt.

On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable future, leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt. But he counseled against reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Does anyone still take Mr. Greenspan's pose as a nonpartisan font of wisdom seriously?

There it is, most everything you need to know in three paragraphs.

Somewhat more surprising, but increasingly less so as we are once again taught a lesson we should stop forgetting but probably won't, the size of a man's balls have nothing to do with the softness of his voice, or the mildness of his demeanor, Harry Reid also takes on Greenspan, with similar results.

Reid ripped Greenspan during an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics." He said the Fed chairman has given President Bush a pass on deficits that have built up in the past four years and should be challenging Republicans on their fiscal policies, rather than promoting Bush's plan to introduce personal accounts into Social Security.

Not bad, eh? Let Harry and your own Senators and Representatives know that, please Sir, we'd like some more. Here's a website that makes doing that easy; bookmark it if you haven't already.

Go read the rest of both and become energized. There's a lot of work to be done.

(If I sound like I'm trying to sound ballsy, I am, so please don't take offense, just sort of...uh...roll with it?)

Turns out those of us who grew up proudly in the sixties were more right than anyone has ever allowed.

To those of you who are tempted to shrug off the Farmer's meditation below, as personal and possibly drug-induced, take a gander at what our President is actually saying when he brings his masculine persona to American venues, large and small, hither and yon.

I've touched it. I touched it in 2000, when I campaigned here and around the country; I touched it in 2004; and I really touched it at the State of the Union, because I believe we have a problem. And I want to talk to you about the problem.

Now who really believes that he's talking about touching that third rail of American politics, Social Security reform? At best, it's a multi-layered message. Or a double-entendred layered message. It's even clearer when you listen to him

And this morning, somewhere in New Jersey, in the midst of one of those potemkin village town meetings of Rove's, I heard the Prez acknowledge that Social Security has been an important safety net for Seniors, but that the safety net has "a hole" in it, followed by a smirking chuckle. Ask yourself what that "hole" imagery is all about.

I ain't just kidding around, folks. The clearest way to take this guy down is to metaphorically, and please remember I said metaphorically, to neuter him. Democrats need to show that they can stop him cold. Wear that damn cloak of obstructionist proudly. Twirl it in his face. This President has hooked his balls to the notion of being "effective." Getting things done. No matter that they may be terrible things that hurt the vast majority of Americans. Castrate the bastard, damnit. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Boy what a shitty fucking week this has been. I'm glad it's Friday. What is it that they say? TGIFF, "thank god its fucking friday?" Yeah, I think that's it. Anyway, it's also Cat Blogging Friday. Or Feline Curiosa Friday. Or whatever it's called. But you all knew that anyway didn't you?


Which begs the question "Who needs cat blogging anyway?" Who the fuck cares. Furthermore, who needs a cat for christ's sake? Especially if you have a penis! Please, let me explain:

I don't need a cat because I have a penis. I know many of you don't have a penis and that's ok too, you probably can't help yourselves, and that is why you have a cat. But, if I were you, I'd get a penis instead. If that is within your means. And no, this isn't about sex or anything alarming like that. It's about "friendship". Or "companionship". Or just having some jerkoff to fuck around with. Or some variety of oversold petshop claptrap like that.

First of all having a penis is a lot like having a cat. I have a penis. Most of you probably suspected so much. You are a highly observant bunch who know a dick - i mean a penis! - a penis, when you see one. And you know what? I've had a penis a lot longer than I ever had a cat. Yes, I used to have a cat until it died and I buried her beneath a carpet of flowering forget-me-nots aside a shady woodlot, and you can read all about it right here if you really have any interest this kind of thing.

But I really want to talk to you about my Penis, if you don't mind, since it is Penis Blogging Friday, and because having a Penis is a lot like having a pussy. I mean a cat! Forgive me...

For instance: My Penis just lays around in my lap just like a kitty cat would do. No problem. I can pet Penis whenever I like and Penis won't even get up and run away. Actually Penis can't run away, thank god, if ya know what I mean.

Mostly my Penis will just lay right there in my lap purring happily away in fantasyland day after day after day. Even if I buy Penis one of those racy NASCAR magazines with pictures of wild country chicks in spandex and sunglasses and high heels wearing one of those vinyl jackets advertising Valvoline motor oil products and leaning against a tatooed Sharpie Ford Taurus my Penis won't scamper out of my lap and cack up a gooey hairball on the cover of the magazine the way kitty cat would. Never happen. And I wouldn't let it happen because both I and Penis have traditional conservative "red state" value respect for pussy, i mean women! I mean...oh boy, lets just move along...

Sure, sometimes Penis will wake up at funny hours and want to take a pee. But that's no problem. I just walk Penis out the back door and let him pee on a shrub, or that stupid annoying yard work thing that you wind a garden hose up in, and then I come right back inside. Its not like Penis is going to break free and chase a passing car up the road or go bounding into the underbrush after a June bug or anything like that. And there is no smelly stinking sandbox to change and maintain with Penis. Penis gave up playing in the sandbox a long time ago. Unlike kitty cats who insist on splashing around in boxes of sand until they inhale their last dying dusty litter-choked breath.

And Penis is loyal and doesn't ask for much attention. Sometimes Penis will simply wake up, stretch out, give me that faraway pleading look as if to say, "I'm here if you need me," or to simply make sure I'm still there for him if he ever needs me. Or something like that. In any case I will give him a gentle pat on the head as a fond reminder of our friendship and he will go back to sleep. Never fails.

Having your own penis is much less traumatic than having a cat. Your Penis won't filet the arm of your favorite sofa or nibble at stuff that you leave lying around on the utility sink in the basement. Or spend hours sitting in a corner of the dining room with some crazy look in it's eye staring at some poor doomed thing caught in a spider web. Kinda like how Alan Colmes does that too... you know... Or sit perched on a counter behaving in a sinister fashion while staring at you as if you were a large brainless snack. Your penis won't throw up all over the top of your VCR either. Unless your penis is a real fucking weirdo or something. But in most cases penises are pretty lazy and stupid and satisfied with just laying around in your lap waiting and hoping for a painless bloated death or one last shot at some long lost and mostly forgotten thrill which for the most part would probably at best cost a lot of money and at the least land Penis in a penal colony. But mostly, as I mentioned earlier, Penis just requires that you take him out to pee when needed. Unless you can afford to hire someone to take Penis out to pee. Now we're talking. Unfortunately most of us can't afford such domestic "help." So forget it.

Your penis won't run around batting holiday ornaments off your Christmas tree either. Well, maybe, occasionally, but I don't want to get into it if you don't mind. Years ago Mrs farmer would even take penis out for some frisky excursions and other interesting "family" occasions. As I said, once upon a time. Back when Mrs farmer gave a flying fuck about such things. Mrs farmer would even kiss penis goodnight on the head and tell him stories about how much he reminded her of "Mr. Snake" or on special occasions let him stay up late and play "charm the cobra" with Mrs pussy. Mrs farmer had a pussy. I mean a cat. In case you were wondering about that. That was before Mrs farmer ran off with SOME FUCKING DICKHEAD SON-OF-A-BITCH FROM.....oh, holy shit, sorry, I'm getting a little excited... Just forget that part too.

Where was I? Oh yeah, my Penis. My Penis pretty much follows me around wherever I go, and, unlike nervous kitty cats, doesn't mind riding in cars. Although occasionally, on torpid summer evenings, when the wind is calm and the mist hangs heavy on the night air and the rumble of a distant train can be heard in the valley, Penis thinks back to those days when Penis couldn't wait to leap like a wild peckerwood into the back seat of a town and country station wagon with imitation vinyl roof to flounce around with a bouncy pom-pom and behave in a generally uruly way. Them were the days. Sure beats sitting in the front seat on a late February afternoon listening to Neal Conan on NPR. Lemme tell ya.

I could take a picture of my Penis for you right now and post it here and call it Penis blogging Friday. But that would be disturbing wouldn't it? No? It wouldn't? Well in that case.... assuming I can wake Penis up... would you prefer a picture of Penis relaxing on a terricloth robe? Penis curled up in a furry ball on the sofa? Penis in the yard stalking a wiley titmouse? Penis riding on the back of Kitty Deer? Ooo yeah baby. Just don't tell Pete about that. Or Rick Santorum! Pleeeeze! I don't need that kind of trouble. I'm already in trouble for taking promiscuous photos of my friend Harry Woodpeckers old lady as she bent over to snatch a sunflower seed from the window box buffet. Really. I'm not kidding. I had to beg em both not to flee to Connecticut after that one. Yeesh.

And fortunately, unlike kitty cat, Penis isn't much stirred to homicidal passions by the sight of my friend Harry Woodpecker's partner Mrs Harry Woodpecker. Which, to be frank (whoever he is), comes as a great relief to both Harry and Mrs Harry Woodpecker. As a matter of fact I'd be willing to bet'cha that I could wake Penis up right now, sling a little ball of peanut butter and oats and rendered suet around his shaft, I mean neck!, sorry, and have him stand outside in the snow like a frozen popsicle and before you could say "kweek kweek kweek iik iik iik" Harry Woodpecker and Mrs Harry Woodpecker and the crazy Nuthatch twins would be all over him like a Screech Owl on a one legged dew drunk shrew.

Well, its time to go now. This conversation has been very refreshing. At least for me. Many of you are probably less refreshed. Perhaps you even feel a little slimy. Can't say I don't blame you for that but it's probably because you have a pussy, I mean a cat! A nice friendly little pussy cat. Sure. In any event - I have to go take a shower with Penis now.

Hey, that's another thing. Try to take a shower with your damned cat! Ha ha, yeah sure.... let me know how that fiasco turns out. Take a picture for me will ya, post it to your blog. Assuming you can get a shot off before you bleed to death on the bathroom floor like a shredded mackerel!

Like I said, its been a rough week. But I hope Penis Blogging Friday becomes a cherished blogosphere family tradition. Possibly outliving other such cherished traditions as the St Patrick's Day Parade and Easter egg hunts and killer Spring tornadoes. TGIPBF!

WTF?

*

1500 dead, and Whack drops off the front pages. Did the purple fingers make it all worthwhile?

Following up on Leah’s great post below, I post these snips from Molly Ivins, who manages, as usual, to put this bankruptcy bill (read "corporate giveaway") in terms even Bobo can understand. And she mentions Prof. Warren’s testimony before congress, too:

Gross! How to take a horrible bill and make it genuinely loathsome. Look at this -- look at what they are doing with this bankruptcy bill…

…So, who are these feckless, irresponsible moochers using bankruptcy to avoid paying legitimate debts? Why, look at this: The New York Times reports "legal specialists say the proposed law leaves open an increasingly popular loophole that lets wealthy people protect substantial assets from creditors even after filing for bankruptcy."

…What, our Republican Congress passing a bill that favors rich people at the expense of "honest Americans who play by the rules and have to foot the bill"? If you have a lot of money (most people filing for bankruptcy don't have this problem), you just put it in an asset protection trust and walk away. You don't even have to set up the trust offshore anymore -- five states have made it legal to set them up in their borders, and you don't even have to live in any of the five to do it...

…Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor, pointed out in testimony before Congress that the bill assumes everyone is in bankruptcy because they're spendthrifts. "A family driven to bankruptcy by the increased cost of caring for an elderly parent with Alzheimer's disease is treated the same as someone who maxed out his credit cards at a casino. A person who had a heart attack is treated the same as someone who had a spending spree at the shopping mall. A mother who works two jobs and who cannot manage the prescription drugs needed for a child with diabetes is treated the same as someone who charged a bunch of credit cards with only a vague intent to repay."

The whole thing’s over at Bad to worse courtesy of Working for Change. Share it with your friends who are drowning in credit card debt. Maybe it’ll stir them to action.

Well, I don't know how big it was, but I'm starting to think it's smaller now.

The slowly-but-surely more impressive Harry Reid had this to say (AP buried it under the headline "Republicans Trying to Get on Same Social Security Page; Democrats Target Ads"):

Appearing on CNN's "Inside Politics," Reid denounced Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who on Wednesday endorsed the private retirement accounts [speaking, as a Kossack, but not AP, notes, as a private citizen, not Fed chair] and pressed Congress to address the looming shortages in programs for the elderly.

"I'm not a big Greenspan fan. I voted against him the last two times," Reid said. "I think [Greenspan]'s one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington."
(via AP)

Is nothing sacred?!

As the Zen masters ask: What is the sound of a lame duck quacking? For Bush, it's his tanking numbers on Social Security and winger feverdreams.

Ditto for Greenspan—except the numbers he has to worry about are the Asian bondholders. If they haven't dumped their holdings now, it's because they know that Greenspan's plan to default on the Social Security bonds and screw the Asian widows and orphans who bought them will never, ever happen.

Can't we impeach Greenspan now? What's the remedy when the supposedly independent Federal Reserve chair acts like a partisan hack? Besides trying to orchestrate the heist of the century? (Krugman explains the ol' bait and switch)

UPDATE Damn, I never understood bonds. Can somebody besides alert reader CMike straighten me out on that part of this rant? I can't understand what he's saying either. Thanks!