Breaking News - Hostages taken at Clinton HQ in NH

By Libby

Hostages taken at Hillary Clinton HQ in Rochester, NH. Details are sketchy but initial reports indicate a middle aged man with a bomb strapped to his chest is demanding to talk to Hillary. Local TV station WMUR is streaming live from the scene.

Cernig has more links and reports the Freepers are cheering.

Update: I've been watching the live stream for an hour. The finally held the press conference. The police captain said essentially nothing. My guess is either they don't know if there's any more hostages in the building, or they think they may be. They won't confirm. I get the impression that there may possibly be volunteers unaccounted for. Fox News has already fingered a suspect. I wouldn't trust that necessarily, but the googlers are ferreting out details of about this person.

I've cruised a few blogs. Someone said that the named suspect has a record of disorderly conduct. WMUR aired an interview with a waitress at a nearby restaurant receptionist at a local inn who says she spoke to the guy's stepson and he indicated the man is mentally unstable and has been drinking for the last 72 hours, after his wife told him she wanted a divorce. Word has it, this was not a political act and the man just wanted to get some attention.

Meanwhile, the place is crawling with cops, press and local gawkers. It's looks like it's not going to be resolved soon. WMUR is speculating that the police are currently in communication with the suspect. At the moment, the only thing new is that it's getting very dark in Rochester.

As it's the end of the work day I'm signing off and leave you to follow the story on your own.

Update two: Just clicked into the live stream again. It appears as I suspected that Fox ID'ed the wrong person. The local website, Fosters Daily Democrat has identified a different person. It also appears that my hunch was right and there were more hostages. One other person seems to have been released.

WMUR just aired an interview with another volunteer who has been in cell phone contact with the hostages. Everybody is okay and the suspect seems to be treated them well and assures them he doesn't want to hurt them. It appears there's one young man still being held.

Meanwhile, Malkin already published the name and address information for the wrongly identified suspect and a list of prior charges against him. How completely irresponsible.

Update three: It's over. No one appears to have been hurt, including the suspect. I just saw the guy get arrested. The local PD did a good job. Remarkably, the cops were able to take him into custody without roughing him up or tasering him. It was very orderly. A refreshing change from the stream of reports lately about cops tasering people in wheelchairs and pregnant women.

Waiting with John Cole

By Libby

We're now in day two of the great fluffer-nutter, who asked the questions at the CNN YouTube debate? Cernig and Shamanic have covered this at Newshoggers, and I posted on it at the Detroit News, but John Cole has three posts up of his own asking for a simple explanation from the outraged blog mob on what specifically they thought was wrong with the questions themselves.

One of his posts had over 350 comments last I looked and still not one meaningful response from the fringer brigade and I know they read him regularly. The obvious conclusion is that they have no good explanation for hurling themselves onto the fainting couch. As John points out, while the debate was going on, they were praising the questions as reasonably fair. It wasn't until the next morning when they found out who the questioners were, that the questions suddenly became objectionable.

It doesn't seem to matter why as long as they all agree they should be outraged. It doesn't even occur to them how silly it sounds to be bitching about American citizens being allowed to ask questions of presidential candidates without 'being vetted.' Of course in that crowd, freedom of speech is just another word. For the budding authoritarians, freedom is only free if you agree. I guess one might admire their 'message discipline' but really, what a pathetic bunch of lemmings.

Excess hoggage -- What God Wants Edition

By Libby

Song in my head. I saw him do this live in Atlanta a long time ago.

I'm on a Giuliani kick these days. I can't believe this guy is a frontrunner. My latest find is on Rudy's real terrorist connections. Apparently, there's only two degrees of seperation between Rudy and the 9/11 bombers.

I also figured out why scandals don't stick to Rudy. It's a Reagan thing.

And I'm doing a series on Rudy's lies at the Detroit News. The links don't seem to be working at the moment, but you can check the index later. They'll fix it eventually.

I caught McCain on drugs and Obama on medical marijuana. Neither impressed me much but Obama was better.

Dodd continues to impress me. It's good to remember that he was one of the few who voted against the Credit Card Industry Welfare Act, otherwise known as bankruptcy 'reform.'

I posted on immigration myths and surprisingly got no feedback. According to the stats, undocumented immigrants aren't really taking more out of the system than they put in. In fact they're propping up Social Security.

Good news on the FISA front. A federal judge ordered the White House to produce documents about government-telecom communications, as requested by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Not so good news. Domestic surveillance using unmanned drones, which has only been used until now by the military, is about to go local with Miami being the first city to use the flying spies. Hard to imagine how they would work better than helicopters in ordinary law enforcement. Not so hard to imagine how useful they would be in crowd control if the government felt the need to say -- 'manage' the angry masses.

Even worse, the Senate is about to pass another bait and switch bill that's purportedly designed to fight terrorists but is written in such broad language that it could ultimately be used to criminally charge political activists for publicly expressing dissent.


Meanwhile the Virginia GOP is demanding voters sign a loyalty pledge before they'll give them a primary ballot. The NYT picked up this post and cited me by name. Without scare quotes. That was pretty cool.

But we surely can't count on the legacy media to save us, as this debacle with Joe Klein at Time clearly illustrates.

On the bright side, most of the creative types who are coming up with the best ideas to counter the MSM malpractice seem to be progressives. I think we're making progress.

Rescue democracy first

By Libby

Truthout posts a good interview with Robert Reich, who offers some sage advice to progressives.

Stop trying to get corporations to be socially responsible. Stop trying to achieve any particular social objective like global warming or a national healthcare system ... Put all of our efforts into a citizen's movement for democracy. That would include the public financing of campaigns and would require any network, any broadcaster using the public airwaves to provide advertising for all candidates.

It's a long piece that arises out of Reich's new book on supercapitalism. He floats a lot of ideas including setting up blind trusts for political donations so the candidates don't know where the money comes from, eliminating the quid pro quo factor and analyzes where we went off track.

Yes, but look again at what I talk about as the not quite golden age, the period 1945 to 1975, when 35 percent of Americans were unionized in the work force - you had industrywide bargaining, you had pluralist interest groups and regulatory agencies. You had political parties that were not just sump pumps for campaign financing but were political organizations that reached down to the community level. In those days corporate investors were not kings, consumers were not kings. The power was divided in a way that gave us much more say as citizens.

However, the most valuable exchange for progressive activists was this:

TM: I've been saying since the 2004 election that we need a Restore Democracy Trifecta: media reform for a more informed democracy - stop (and reverse if possible) media consolidation, offer less false balance (i.e., global warming skeptics are equal to global warming scientists) and more statements of fact. Campaign reform - public financing, free TV time. Election reform - transparent, accurate, inclusive and verifiable.

RR: Absolutely. I keep telling progressives who have particular issues they want to advance [that] nothing is going to happen on your issue or any other progressive issue unless you get together with everybody else who wants change and rescue democracy first.

I've often thought that was the problem with the big tent progressive movement. We're in the majority but we tend to be fractured in where we spend our energies and overwhelm the public dialogue with such a multitude of views that in a way, it impedes our progress. Maybe we could learn something from the message discipline of the GOP.

I'm not saying we should agree on everything, but I wonder if we wouldn't be more effective in changing the system if we could band together around a couple of core issues at a time and thus move our agenda forward incrementally. Media and elections reform seem like a good place to start to me.

The false 'humanity' of the anti-choicers

By Libby
Updated below

The reason I try to avoid reading The Corner is that when I read crap like this, I get all 'Geraldo Rivera' and feel like spitting at KLo.

The year before it passed, the federal government had financed 300,000 abortions for low-income women. Afterward, this number dropped essentially to zero — the women either found another way to pay for their abortions or chose life for their unborn children. The National Right to Life Committee has estimated, conservatively, that the Hyde Amendment has prevented at least one million abortions. That’s one million Americans who are alive today because of Henry Hyde.

Yeah, that would the same million Americans who are hungry, cold, without health insurance and work in dead end jobs -- when they can get work -- because people like KLo spend all their waking hours trying to derail social programs that would allow them a decent quality of life.

Nonetheless, rest in peace Mr. Hyde. Far be from me to speak ill of the dead.

Update: Hart Williams has the eulogy.

Ignore the man behind the curtain

By Capt. Fogg

How anyone can think that anyone in the latest TV blabberfest is presidential material is beyond me. The latest nausea inducing exhibition featured Bible waving and professions of faith and idiotic declarations like Fabulous Fred Thompson's "A nation that cannot and will not defend its own borders will not forever remain a sovereign nation." Isn't anyone tired of xenophobia as a crucial issue at a time when we face economic disaster and another war without end? Funny that we were a sovereign nation for most of our history of unguarded borders and that New York was a sanctuary city for the forbears of just about everybody listening to the actors on stage in St Petersburg.

Funny too, that the media isn't making much of the polls showing a preference for Ron Paul's arguments other to mention that McCain told us Paul's policies are the type that facilitated Hitler's rise to power. And here I thought it was the Germans who elected him. Not only is it getting harder to ignore Paul, it's requiring that once again, Fox News ignore it's own numbers. The nervous laugh and the near hysteria of Hannity's declarations of disbelief are music to my ears.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Winnie the Prophet

By Capt. Fogg

You may have gathered that I'm no fan of fundamentalism and that I see moderate religion as a potential petri dish in which crazy religion can bloom faster than staphylococcus on steroids when conditions are right. Consequently when I read of things like Gillian Gibbons' arrest for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Mohammad, I don't feel superior, or feel that my country is superior to those where religion is protected from "insult" by law. It could happen here and many would welcome it. Even Rudy Giuliani the self proclaimed terrorist fighter, once attempted to shut down the Brooklyn Museum for "Blasphemy" and where I live "denying Christ" is seen by some as another form of treason.

Likewise I see laws against "hate crime" as a dangerous precedent. The promoters of hate crime legislation share the loathing I feel toward certain groups and certain actions, but does granting the Federal Government the power to tell us what constitutes hate crime protect us from a government gone wild, or worse a government infiltrated by religious crazies like that of Sudan? Would calling a stuffed animal by a racist or religiously cynical name constitute hate crime? The definition would be up to people you may not agree with.

No, we're not the Sudan. We don't consider calling a stuffed bear by one of that nation's most popular names either insulting to religion or a hate crime. Even though Ms. Gibbons was simply following the choice of her high school students in naming a class mascot something that half their brothers and uncles and fathers are named, the remote possibility that there was disrespect for religion was enough to get her arrested and she now faces the possibility of 40 lashes, a year in a hell hole jail and a fine. Thus demands their Sharia infested constitution. I'm betting that she will get off lightly and probably will be deported, but as I said, I'm not taking delight in illustrating the kind of horror state that every "faith" I can think of has perpetrated at one time or another.

I don't expect the Spanish Inquisition in America any time soon. I expect that all I would get for refusing to parrot the Eisenhower pledge is some social ostracism and if I were to attach a Jesus Sucks bumper sticker to my car, I'd better be sure my insurance was up to date, but let's be aware: It's not Islam; it's not Christianity; it's not any particular religion -- it's religion in general that has to protect itself by infiltrating government or becoming government.

Cross posted at Human Voices

The seventh level wipe

By Libby

I'm getting a late start today because I seem to coming down with a bug of some kind and I have to go out for a couple of hours right now, so read this and tell me what you think.

Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch's agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006.

At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management's inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination.

Here's the really interesting part:

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

The guy calls in Geeks R Us and has them do a "seven-level" wipe on his hard drive making it nearly impossible to retreive the lost data. He also had them scrub two laptops that were used by his associates. He claims it was to get rid of a virus.

Now, I'm not much of a computer geek but that sounds a little extreme to me just to get rid of a virus. Anybody else thinking the guy was really trying to wipe out all evidence of his own malfeasance in covering up the malfeasance of those he was allegedly investigating?

Inside North Korea

By Libby

Long time reader Lester has made it a mission to keep me informed on the latest right wing publications and often drops the odd link into comments. I don't have a lot to say about this one, except that it's a fascinating travelogue on North Korea by Peter Hitchens. It's longish, but here's one graf to tempt to you click in.

You can gaze on the gargantuan housing estates, made up of scores of apartment blocks, a great festival of concrete outdoing even Soviet Moscow in its gigantism. You may admire the Juche Tower, which symbolizes North Korea’s supposed self-reliance. The tower is a column three feet taller than the Washington Monument, weirdly topped by a great simulated red flame, like a much larger version of the World War I Memorial in Kansas City, but only when there is enough power to keep it aglow. That is not always. Voltage is a problem in Pyongyang. The streetlamps are never switched on, and there is a strange interval between sundown and total darkness, before the lights start to come on in the windows of all the apartments. There is also a wonderful quiet, since Pyongyang has hardly any motor traffic by day and even less at night. Human voices can be heard from astonishing distances, as if you were in a tranquil lakeside resort rather than in the center of a grandiose metropolis. The electric current in homes and offices seems suspiciously feeble and shuts down abruptly when the government thinks bedtime has arrived. The authorities also have views on when you ought to wake up. A siren rouses the sluggards at 7 each morning, though light sleepers will already have been alerted to the approach of the working day by ghostly plinking, plonking music drifting from loudspeakers at 5 and 6 o’clock. The sensation of living in an enormous institution, part boarding school, part concentration camp, is greatly enhanced by the sound of these mass alarms.

Much more like that at the link.

Hitchens came away from his trip inside the forbidden territory thinking that we should pity North Korea more than fear it. He doubts that the boasts of nuclear capability are credible. As compellingly as he makes his case, I'm not sure I share that view. It seems just as likely to me that they could be pouring all their resources into such a program at the expense of their own people but either way, it's well worth reading for the inside glimpse of the last relic of pure "Marxism-Leninism" left on the planet.

Fringeroots fail to deliver

By Libby

Via John Cole, I see that the NRCC is running a contest. Chris Bowers has the details.

Five weeks ago, the NRCC launched a project to get supporters to create their own campaign videos attacking Democrats. If successful, this project would defy a pattern where Republican grassroots activists never take action into their own hands.

Advising them to "be creative and have fun," the entrants were asked to submit YouTube ads illustrating the theme, “Has the Democratic Congress Worked For You?”

The contest is now closed and the judging panel will "select the top five videos [to] be hosted on NRCC.org and voted on by the general public." Selecting the finalists is going to be an easy job. They only received a total of five entries. I completely agree with Chris, that this one is the best.

In fact, with the general public voting, I'm pretty sure that this video will win easily, thus earning the $500 Apple Gift Card, a press release distributed to political news outlets across the country, and an on-camera interview to be aired and distributed on NRCC TV.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find anyplace on the NRCC website where you can cast a ballot yet and this site that's promoting the contest doesn't seem to have any further information either, but they are already pitching a new Christmas ad contest that Hugh Hewitt is sponsoring with a $500 prize and this caveat.

Negative ads accepted, though of course only the 527s will run ads showing Hillary in a sleigh loaded with a huge pile of coal etc.

Chris thinks the fringers lack creativity and became mere zombies unable to think for themselves. I'm not sure that's true. They're pretty creative when it comes to meaness and mockery, so I'm kind of surprised the NRCC didn't get more entrants when they were soliciting negative ads. But I doubt Hugh will get many positive ones. For that they would need some positive accomplishments to point to.

[cross-posted to The Reaction]

Muslims need not apply

By Capt. Fogg

I haven't yet stooped to using any candidate's religious affiliation against him and I operate under the assumption that most will not let such things interfere with their professional lives or their oath of office. Of course since so many of the Republican tribe have been espousing Christian Supremacy and confusing Church teachings with the law, it's sometimes hard to refrain.

I continue to think it has nothing to do with his being a Mormon, but Mitt Romney may have crossed a boundary and it may be time to ask what kind of prejudices he has or is pandering to.

"…based on the numbers of American Muslims in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

said Mr. Romney to the Christian Science Monitor. I presume that by "lower levels" he refers to something more than waxing the presidential limo but this, I feel, is a revealing position and shows us as did his snubbing of the man in the wheelchair that there is something less under the tailored suit than is advertised. Would it be too much to consider an appointee's knowledge and skills rather than what ethnic pigeonhole you can stuff him into?

In choosing a candidate, I'm not necessarily put off by suggestions that a cabinet "look like America" but I'm not looking for tokens, I'm looking for competence and that's something sadly lacking in recent years.

"More ironic, that Islamic heritage is what qualifies them to best engage America's Arab and Muslim communities and to help deter Islamist threats"

says Mansoor Ijaz writing for the Monitor and I agree. Would that the idiot George had been able to listen to an adviser who knew the difference between Sunni and Shia and the tensions between them. Ijaz, by the way, is substantially responsible for exposing A.Q. Khan, who had been selling Pakistani nuclear technology on the black market and he did so at some personal risk. Nice to know that Mitt would disqualify him for reasons of ethnic purity.

What I'm looking for in a president is a man who will look for the best and won't preclude anyone on the basis of religion or race or his feelings about abortion or gay marriage or the war in Iraq. That's not Mitt, obviously. I don't care what the president's advisers look like or what ethnicity he thinks they should represent and by automatically relegating people who identify with Islam to lower positions by virtue of that identification, Mitt further disqualifies himself from consideration.

Perhaps he's pandering to what he perceives as an anti-Muslim bias in America or perhaps he really means it. In either event I don't think he belongs anywhere but on the cover of some Men's wear catalog where looking good and holding the pose isn't an act of dishonesty.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Why I started reading Atrios again

By Libby

He just reminded me that Larry Flynt still hasn't delivered that promised sex scandal about a prominent, probably GOP, senator.

He was supposed to deliver in two weeks. It's been a month. I hate a tease.

Iraq forever

By Libby

Spencer Ackerman unpacks a joint declaration of "principles" for "friendship and cooperation" jointly released this morning by Bush and Maliki. He kindly translates the Bushspeak and finds the hidden agenda.

In other words, we're staying in Iraq [forever] to defend Nouri al-Maliki against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The negotiation process is transparently timed to make it extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for the next administration to end the occupation which as I recall, Bush once admitted in an unguarded moment, was his main goal in Iraq. Some might call this a foreign policy strategy. Me, I call it a corporate crony protection plan. Bush wants to make certain that the reckless spending doesn't end when his term does.

Oh, and remember those permanent military bases that we're definitely not building? Never mind. Bush was only kidding. Of course we'll need those to perfect the plan.

Looking under the covers

By Libby

I've always been fascinated by manhole covers and other mysterious cast iron circles embedded in sidewalks. I often photograph them on my travels when I find a particularly interesting example of this sort of unintended urban art. But I've never really considered the process of making them. Now I know.

Good Lord. Nearly all of Manhattan's covers come from places like this. It seems like another good reason to bring back the old Buy American programs. Even Sam Walton understood the sense in that. Too bad his heirs didn't inherit his conscience along with with his money.

Show us the money

By Libby

Paul Krugman looks at the latest Gallup poll and explains to perplexed GOPers why the average working Jake isn't too excited about our expanding economy. I can break it down to even simpler terms myself.

Unemployment rates don't mean squat when the major job growth in in minimum wage service postions that don't include health and retirement benefits. And they can cook the books anyway they want but there just ain't no money in our piggy banks.

The GDP is meaningless to most Americans. They judge economic security by what's in their wallet and in the last seven years, most of us have watched an explosion in high end consumer goods while we're going into debt just trying to fill the gas tank and keep food on the table.

Update: As Fogg points out in comments, when thousands show up to apply for a few hundred stinking Walmart jobs, those low unemployment figures begin to look rather suspect.

Lott's lot

By Fogg

Well whaddaya know - Trent Lott is going to resign from Congress today, cheap wig and all -- or so the news is being told. Is it because, as he says, he wants to spend more time with the family or is he scurrying down the dock lines like a bilge rat before he's outed or indicted? Or is it just so that he can escape new and improved ethics laws that would require him to wait two years before getting on the Washington lobbyist gravy train? Maybe it's all of the above, but it's definitely good riddance.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Success is just around the corner

By Libby

I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn that the Bush administration has once again moved the goalposts on defining the sucess of the surge. Remember all those benchmarks the Iraqis had to reach or else we were leaving in six months? Well, forget those. We've got new ones. All they really have to do is promise not to kick us out before Bush leaves office so he can leave his godawful mess for the next president. Oh, and our new diplomatic mission is to 'help' the Iraqi government pass a budget. Which is pretty funny when you consider the GOP left office without passing one here.

Meanwhile, the success of the surge is becoming more difficult to sell. It didn't result in the promised political reconciliation. After causing an increase of violence with the escalation, they managed to reduce violence back to the levels it was when everyone was saying Iraq was lost. And even as Iraqi refugees are being forced to return home, the lull is already being broken with several major bombings in the last few days. As Thomas Ricks of the WaPo cautions, "Don't celebrate the turnaround in Iraq just yet.

Somehow it all reminds me of this.

I am not afraid

By Capt. Fogg

"There's no question in my mind that horror at militant Islam and fear of Muslim immigration lie behind at least some of the current vogue for atheism--you don't make the bestseller list by excoriating the evils of Lutheranism or Buddhism."

Well at least she qualified the statement to limit it to events in her mind. Katha Pollitt, writing An Atheists Dilemma in The Nation is indulging in a bit of solipsism and she needs it to limit the scope of her sweeping generalities, because in the world outside her mind, it makes no sense.

Atheism or something arbitrarily close to it, seems to be the norm in Western Europe and was so before 9/11 changed nothing. Europe has been wracked by centuries of bloody war over the evils of Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism and other systems of religious certainty. Although American religious apologists, even the moderate ones, seem to look upon Christianity through pastel lenses as something that only a person with a malignant and ulterior motive would criticize, Europeans have too much horrible history to be covered with syrupy faith a la mode Americain. Buddhism of course, isn't about gods although Buddhists and Hindus have been going at it in bloody fashion as well.

"Even if you are a ferocious Sam Harris-style atheist who thinks religion is completely stupid--the province of shysters and fools--you have to admit it would be quite astonishing if that view persuaded the devout anytime soon"

I would be astonished if the average IQ suddenly elevated itself by 50 points too, but it would be a hell of a good idea. But at any rate her assertion that fear of Islam is behind this hard to establish fad for Atheism is even harder to establish. I think there's enough information to show that religiosity declines with education and even more so with intelligence and while that sounds provocative and even smug, I can reply that your religion requires as much suspension (or lack) of cognitive function as any other - if not more.

I see no evil in Islam that I have not seen at one time or another in Christianity and God's Jewish warriors differ only by being a smaller group; and while we're on the subject of Brother Martin, he was a bloody handed son of a bitch and probably schizophrenic; a perfect argument for establishing that you don't have to go abroad to find the septic heart of all faiths and a good foundation for disbelief.

Of course the word "ferocious" wasn't chosen without some thought. It implies fanaticism of the religious sort and distracts from the validity of the distaste the non-believer, heretic or infidel has acquired from uncountable centuries of persecution. It's another version of the pathetic " you're wrong because you're angry" argument common to Bush supporters and other idiots.

If books such as Dawkins' The God Delusion or Hitchens' God is not Great make the top of the best seller list, it hardly indicates a mass exodus from America's fugue state. What it indicates is that amongst the minority of Americans that read, some are willing to part with $24.95 to hear someone brave enough to say what they wish they could say in the presence of mine enemies. It doesn't have a damned thing to do with Islam other than as another example of the madness of religion in general.

If you want to believe something, believe that admitting you don't share the visions or see the portents or believe the fiction is a ticket to ostracism. People won't let their children near you and your job performance rating will fail to glow the way it used to. If there is any dilemma this atheist sees, it isn't the one Pollitt has patched together. It's the same one my ancestors have had to face since Emperor Constantine. Lie and get by, tell the truth and die.

Thompson says Fox News unfair

By Libby

Fred Thompson, ironically while appearing on Fox this morning, complained the station's coverage of his campaign was biased. Well, welcome to the real world Fred. I don't why he expected it to be otherwise.

He pissed a lot of people off when he fired former Fox News producer Jim Mills, a couple of weeks after he wooed him away from a secure career at Fox and besides, everybody knows Fox has a hard on for Giuliani and has been working behind the scenes to set Rudy up for the win for a very long time.

Excess Hoggage - End of the World Edition

By Libby

Song in my head.

How to fix elections. A couple of ideas.

Should you be worried about checks and balances. I am. So is Noami Wolf. Not everyone shares our concerns.

Of course, if the Dems keep this up, fixing the electoral system won't be so pressing.

Don't tell a Libertarian that small farmers don't have a free market and you think it can be fixed with better regs. It pisses them off.

If only there was a simple answer, but Iraq is so complicated. How the hell is anyone supposed to measure progress?

Still trying to define tyranny.

Are Democrats really the party of the rich? Nah, but the GOP would love you to believe it.

Your cell phone is ratting you out to the government.

And to end a lighter note, a 100 man CRW stack is an awesome sight to behold.

What if Jesus is an illegal immigrant?

By Libby

This is a sort of a serious question. I think most of the fundies who believe in the second coming of Christ are pretty much in the 'blame the illegals for everything' camp. I suppose they assume the son of God will arrive with angels and trumpets but what if he shows up unannounced? Thinking back on my Bible reading days, it seems plausible that he would come back as a hated minority and chances are the God-fearing 'Christians' would treat him badly, just as in this story about Jesus Manuel Cordova.

PHOENIX - A 9-year-old boy looking for help after his mother crashed their van in the southern Arizona desert was rescued by a man entering the U.S. illegally, who stayed with him until help arrived the next day, an official said.

This happened in the wilderness where the boy and his mom were camping.

The van vaulted into a canyon and landed 300 feet from the road, he said. The woman, from Rimrock, north of Phoenix, survived the impact but was pinned inside, Estrada said.

Her son, unhurt but disoriented, crawled out to get help and was found about two hours later by Jesus Manuel Cordova, 26, of Magdalena de Kino in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. Unable to pull the mother out, he comforted the boy while they waited for help.

The woman died a short time later.

"He stayed with him, told him that everything was going to be all right," Estrada said.

As temperatures dropped, he gave him a jacket, built a bonfire and stayed with him until about 8 a.m. Friday, when hunters passed by and called authorities, Estrada said. The boy was flown to University Medical Center in Tucson as a precaution but appeared unhurt.

Think about that. Jesus was entering the US illegally and had to know he would be arrested. He could have just kept walking. Or he could have built a fire and walked away. He could have fled at any time to avoid facing the authorities but he stayed to comfort and protect a child until help came. Which is more than we can say for the hunters who were presumably legal residents.

For his humanitarian efforts, he's now in jail awaiting deportation. What a sad commentary on the politics of hate that has so poisoned America, that we would penalize another human being for such a selfless act of kindness. Surely in this case, an exception to the rules could and should be made.

Aftermath - 11-03-04

By Libby

Remember how you felt the day after the 04 election? This is what I posted at the Detroit News blog.

I wake up this morning to a nation divided. The wedge that was lodged in the heart of America in 2000 has been driven clear through this country using the maul of deception and rent us asunder in 2004. With such record turnouts, the results should have been more clear. Instead, the only thing Bush managed to do in four years, is to polarize us further.

I'm not a person who cares much about winning. I would rather everyone had fun playing the game. But this time we were playing for life or death stakes and I'm shocked and saddened that apparently fully half of America does not understand the danger in allowing this administration to continue its current destructive agenda. I fear for our future and I will take no comfort if it turns out I'm right, because we will all still lose.

Can I accept the results? Sure. Can I now put aside my differences with wrongheaded policy and simply support Bush if he is declared the winner? No, and my guess is neither will the half of the country that voted for Kerry. Our concerns run too deep and the issues are too important to simply put aside for the next four years.

I'll have more to say on what I think this means in the days to come. For the moment all I can do is thank you in Michigan for upholding my belief that middle America could and would see through the smoke and mirrors of the Bush campaign and vote for the better man.

I felt shell-shocked. I couldn't believe it was true. As we came to find out, it probably wasn't. The evidence of vote tampering that emerged far too late to do any good is compelling. We should remember that as 08 approaches. The same people still own the machines. Let's not forget we still don't have a verifiable voting system.

A new verb for Blogtopia

By Libby

I love the way new words get invented on the poliblogs and eventually become part of the lexicon. Like swiftboating for instance. Time was that would have meant you owned a cigarette boat but now it's an code word for falsely smearing. Kevin Drum discovers the newest term that has orginated in Israel. The literal translation is to Condoleezza and its appropriate usage:

The long buildup to Annapolis, together with Ms. Rice's many trips to the region, have given birth to a new verb in Israeli government circles: "lecondel," meaning, to come and go for meetings that produce few results.

I hope it catches on. It has nice ring to it.

Sorry soldier, you don't count

By Libby

I'd like to say to I was shocked to discover the Pentagon has been lying about the number of wounded Iraq veterans with head trauma injuries, but we're talking the Bush administration here. Instead I'm inclined to check my Bush countdown ticker -- seems to be stuck in the 400s -- and see how many days of deceit we have left to endure. The extent to which they've underestimated the toll is truly awesome however.

At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.

Of course they have their reasons.

Soldiers and Marines whose wounds were discovered after they left Iraq are not added to the official casualty list, says Army Col. Robert Labutta, a neurologist and brain injury consultant for the Pentagon.

"We are working to do a better job of reflecting accurate data in the official casualty table," Labutta says.

Oh I just bet they are, but at least one person thinks the numbers may be much worse. Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., founder of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force says, "More than 150,000 troops may have suffered head injuries in combat."

To be fair, I can understand how they might miss an injury like this on the battlefield but once it's diagnosed, an honest recordkeeper would add them to the war wounded rolls. Especially for an administration so fond of making lists. Of course, we are talking about the Pentagon here. It seems clear to me that keeping them off the accounting is just one more backdoor method to deny them necessary treatment once they get home and to keep the public in the dark about the human cost of the occupation.

Four Freedoms

by Capt. Fogg

Thanksgiving - another festival of myth and self-delusion; a day when we overeat and tell ourselves we're thankful to some supernatural entity who has favored us with liberty. I'm often less thankful for friends and family on such days than I otherwise would be and certainly on those times when I reflect on Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms rendered forever into kitsch by Norman Rockwell, I'm more fearful than thankful for how they are being taken away and given to the unaccountable and powerful.

Freedom of speech isn't something something I feel grateful for as much as something I demand and am guaranteed as my birthright. We still have it, but the ability of the ruling corporations to bury our words under an ocean of propaganda increases.

Freedom of every person to worship in his own way, has always been conditional although guaranteed and every person who adheres to an unpopular religion or no religion at all knows it. It isn't the government, even this government, leading the crusade for Christian supremacy, but the private agents of that government: corporate religion. Year after year, it seems that our ability to resist acknowledging a god we don't believe in declines and the fight to incorporate religious taboos into our laws continues.

Freedom from want isn't something guaranteed us, it's something we may or may not have and it's something our government has fought to excuse itself of providing for, whether it's want of food and shelter, medical care or enough income to support us if we're too old or sick to work.

Freedom from fear in a culture of fear is a personal thing. One can choose to ignore the panic pushers and fear mongers in the government. One can choose not to be afraid of the bottomless corruption, incompetence and dishonesty of our government; of the swashbuckling information gatherers who tap your phones, read your mail and track your movements and your finances and your purchases electronically almost at will. It gets harder every day. Many of us live in dread of injury or sickness, knowing they can't pay the increasingly huge costs of treatment and medicine; knowing that they may not even have the benefit of bankruptcy protection in a land where the laws are written by the credit card companies and the corporate hospitals and drug producers. Many of us fear that the wanton borrowing, reckless warfare and corporate welfare and shifting of the tax burden will erase any freedom from want our grandchildren might have.

We don't have the freedom of being able to elect a government that considers itself answerable or accountable, we don't have the freedom to be left alone in our homes or in our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness in the expectation that we're not constant suspects for crimes yet to be committed. We have an increasingly disdainful government of which we are increasingly afraid.

We don't have the freedom of information we used to. We don't have a government that feels obligated to allow us to know their mistakes, failures or crimes. We have a government that will ignore us and the courts and refuse to tell us who is making policy. We have a growing possibility that the government can declare us outlaw without telling anyone why; to make us disappear without a trace, to be tortured and imprisoned indefinitely. We don't have the freedom from reckless and extravagant government expenditures or hand-overs of our property. We don't have the benefit of knowing that the people who are supposed to watch over us are accountable to us and our courts and not to private and perhaps secret organizations, whether those people be police, jailers, soldiers or intelligence agents. The more cynical of use have begun to doubt that we even have the freedom to elect people to at least pretend to be public employees and not representatives of vast corporate interests. The more paranoid fear that next November we will be told to be thankful that George will remain in office to protect us from fear and want and terrorists.

Cross posted from Human Voices

It's always the throwaway post...

By Libby

Word up friends. Do not compare Chavez to George Bush unless you want to spend a lot of time defending your position. It happens every time I post about Hugo and yet I'm always surprised that people don't see how a tin horn despot like Chavez is acting less criminally than our own president. I keep waiting for horrified realization, but I get indignation. Go figure.

On the bright side, it's been an interesting debate.

Media Bytes - Calling All Angels Edition

By Libby

I'm off soon for Thanksgiving dinner so here's some quick bytes to keep you amused while I'm gone.

Song in my head.

Caption this turkey and if you need some inspiration, try this trip down memory lane.

Or maybe you prefer a star on the yellow brick road.

If the Big Apple is your destination this holiday season, Carl has the ultimate tourist's guide to Manhattan.

This is what happens when Barbie and Ken forget the condom.

Meanwhile, all the beautiful people are on Hollywood Blvd.

Keeping with the holiday theme, Avedon finds some lovely Christmas Belles.

She also figured out where all the women bloggers went.

And if you like a little schadenfreude with your turkey, John Bolton doth protest too much and Fredo Gonzales may be raking in the big bucks for his speaking engagements, but the hecklers are making sure he doesn't enjoy it.

Excess Hoggage - Humans from Earth Edition

By Libby

Song in my head.

You can put away the champagne. Scotty McCellan isn't really going to out Bush. It was just a cheap publicity trick.

The warmongers want to spin the return of Iraqis to Baghdad from exile in Syria as proof the surge worked. The real story is more complicated.

Our cops are no longer keepers of the peace. They're paramilitary enforcers run amok.

Injured Iraq vet Jordan Fox won't have to give back his signing bonus after all. He wants to know what about all the other soldiers who have also been dunned by the DoD.

Interesting debate in comments between myself and Zenpundit on the trouble with Libertarians.

It's time to knock off no-knock warrants before another innocent American dies.

Deconstructing signs of progress in Iraq. I would love to wear those rose colored glasses but everything's relative.

And more reasons, travelers are avoiding America. Oddly, most tourists prefer not to be subjected to fascist tactics.

Thank a soldier

By Libby

Before you settle down in a trypto haze for the football games, I'd ask that you remember the troops who will be far from family gatherings. No matter how you feel about the war occupation, the folks who are stuck fighting it deserve a little extra cheer and Captain Ed points us to an easy way to send a message of support.

The major cell carriers have agreed to participate in The Giving Thanks Campaign, which asks Americans to text a message of support that will get delivered to men and women all over the world wearing the US uniform. All you have to do is send a text message from your cellphone to 89279 to brighten someone's day -- and it won't cost a penny.

If you're wondering what to say, Ed also has a widget on his post that shows the messages as they're being sent. Me, I still haven't figured out how to send a text and my attempts at answering one were rather dismal, so I'm just going to try to send a simple "Thanks."

Best wishes

I hope everyone has a warm and wonderful holiday and thanks to all of you dear readers for your support and company over the years.

Graphic kindly provided by a dear old friend who happens to be the best photograher I've ever known, John W. Farrell.

The terrorists are coming...

By Libby

Bruce Kesler is pretty excited to have a found the perfect website to convince all us clueless liberals that we all should be hiding under our beds because the terrorists are coming and ZOMG - we're all gonna die.

You have to see it to believe it, and I really mean to believe it: The world is a very dangerous place.

There’s nothing I’ve ever experienced – short of actually experiencing war or terrorist incidents --that so brings the message home, literally, right to your computer, and so comprehensively, about the need to be vigilant.

Now to be fair, the interactive map is actually very cool. It's got lots of fun stuff to play with and presumably refreshes every seven minutes with new 'terrorist events.' I only checked out the US strikes so I didn't stay long enough to verify that, but the list of 'terrorist events' was rather amusing.

My favorite were the two Romanians who overstayed their visa and racked up $3000 worth of phone calls on a stolen cell. Probably calling home. The pipe bomb outside of the Home Depot sounded a little more serious but there didn't seem to be any AQ connection. In fact, everything I read about was the sort of run of the mill crime that has been occurring in this country since well before '9/11 changed everything."

I've been thinking about that phrase lately. In terms of terrorism, 9/11 didn't change a thing. We're in no more danger from terrorists than we ever were, well outside of the fact that there's more of them since Bush started his recruiting drive a/k/a the 'war on terror.' But what did change is that it created a whole new social class of Americans who now cringe in fear every time a car backfires and are convinced that every single ordinary criminal is really a secret terrorist agent who is going to make them wear a burka and immediately assume anything out of the ordinary, like say spilled flour in a parking lot, is a terrorist attack.

If it wasn't so sad, it would be funny.

What Happened

by Capt. Fogg

What a revelation! Scott McClellan, the guy who used to stand in front of reporters and the minority of Americans not watching Britney and Anna Nicole and "da game" and spout lies, has now revealed that he told us a lie - unwittingly, of course. It wasn't his fault that he failed to check the facts. He wasn't paid to question; he was paid to sneer dismissively at reporters who did.

Scott has a book coming out in April, titled What Happened.

"So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. There was one problem. It was not true. "

And guess what Scott, you didn't win the Kyrgyzstan Lottery either and the guy trying to get his millions out of Nigeria isn't any more honest than your ex-boss - and of course there's been a lot of blood under the bridge because of the crime family you covered up for. I don't mean to be cruel, but it's your turn to be sneered at. I really hope you don't make any more money from it than OJ did from If I Did It and I hope you soon get to hear the current mouthpiece defame you with the same sneer and condescension as you used from the same podium you told your lies from.

Cross posted from Human Voices

DoD demands injured vets pay back bonuses

By Libby

In their desperation to meet quotas, the military gave out enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 to get kids to sign up. Now, in some perverse twist on the Pottery Barn rule, if the soldiers were so broken by war injuries that they can't complete their full term of service, the DoD is demanding they give the money back. We're talking about thousands of soldiers who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and brain function.

Jordan Fox is one of them. He lost all vision in his right eye and suffered a back injury three months short of his contract and will be unable to return to active duty. His mother started a care package program for soldiers in Iraq, "Operation Pittsburgh Pride which has sent approximately 4,000 care packages." Bush met with her personally to thank her and sent her a note expressing concern when Jordan was injured. Then Jordan got a letter from DoD asking for $3,000 of his $10,000 signing bonus back.

Words can't begin to describe my outrage at this callous treatment of those who served and sacrificed their future for the neo-con folly. But this is just one injustice among many betrayals our injured Iraq vets are suffering. Bush's budget proposal wants to cut the federal deficit on the missing limbs of our war wounded. His proposed budget would decrease veterans healthcare spending in 2008 -- and continue the cutting in successive years, just as the returning troops are going to need the most care.

There is a time when incompetence becomes sociopathic, and I think we've reached it in this administration. They have used the troops as props and pawns in their power ploys and they don't even have the human decency to look after those who survived their war games while they take great care to pad the pockets of their corporate cronies? These people should be rotting in jail, not running the country.

[cross-posted to The Reaction]

Media Bytes - In My Life Edition

By Libby

Song in my head.

Via Avedon, "David from the Art of Mental Warfare teamed up with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails to present 'Warning.' I also thought it was a powerful video. Can't wait for part two.

She also points us to Bill Moyers show on Kevin Martin's cheap tricks as head of the FCC. Martin apparently thinks the media monopoly isn't big enough yet.

If you're tracking sex scandals, Agitprop is the place to be.

Meanwhile, here's a scandalous look for Condi. It kind of reminds me of her first day on the job.

On a lighter note, this is the funniest bumper sticker I've seen a long time.

And finally, I spent way too long cruising around Flickr looking for a shots of Tulum. I don't think this is my old cabana but it was a lot like this one. And the view was just like this from the front stoop. I realized as I got deeper in the old archives that the reason nobody has shots of the place is because the hurricane way back when probably destroyed all those little cabana places but I think this shot may be old enough to have been of the place I stayed at. The shack on the left would have been where the snorkeling outfit had their business.

I spent almost a month there. No electricity. No phones. The worst communal bathrooms I've ever endured. It was one of the happiest times in my life.

First you break up the media monopoly...

By Libby

This ties into a post I just put up at Newshoggers on the mythical free market. Walter Shapiro spends some time listening to Dodd on the campaign trail and highlights some great responses to Hillary's rhetoric, but the money quote in the piece is this by Shapiro himself.

A Sunday morning hunch: This is the first time that you are encountering these Dodd quotes. Calling Dodd a voice in the wilderness understates the loneliness of his underdog campaign.

This so underscores what's wrong with political coverage today. Shapiro dismisses Dodd even as he praises him. But Dodd shouldn't be a voice in the wilderness. He's a legitimate candidate and would probably be a better president that any of the frontrunners but the reason he's so undervalued is that the media are too busy plying horserace coverage and wallowing in inane minutia about the candidates they themselves have anointed as frontrunners, to bother to fairly cover all the candidates.

If the candidates were given equal space and time to make their case to the people, then the people instead of the media elites would decide the frontrunners. As it stands, it seems pretty clear that the candiates that get the bulk of the free coverage are the ones who have the most to spend on paid ads.

It's more apparent every day that if we're ever to reclaim our government, we need repossess our media first. It seems to me the easiest way to do that is to break up the defacto cabal that currently holds a monopoly on it. Unless we do that, we can agitate all we like but we're all just howling into the wind.

Media Bytes - What's Good Edition

By Libby

Song in my head.

Via Radley, the natural world is a strange place in which resides many strange things.

Humans will do anything to get high but remember, "Frogs with long tails and no legs are snakes. Don't lick snakes."

Could you bring yourself to eat this. I don't think I could take a bite.

I think the more unpopular you are, the more you need a posse.

The government wants to protect us from terrorists but who will protect us from our government?

Not everyone is amused but I thought these were funny. That is all.

Give Iraq back

By Libby

I had to work this morning, so I'm just getting to the news. Cernig flags an underreported aspect of what's holding up any chance of political reconcilation in Iraq.

That's the rift between nationalists - those Iraqis who, like most of their countrymen, oppose the presence of foreign troops on the ground, the wholesale privatization of Iraq's natural resources and the division of their country into ethnic and sectarian fiefdoms, and Iraqi separatists who at least tolerate the occupation - if not support it - and favor a loose sectarian/ethnic-based federation of semiautonomous states held together by a minimal central government in Baghdad. [...]

The key ingredient to understand is this: The Iraqi executive branch - the cabinet and the presidency - are completely controlled by separatists (including Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and secular politicians). But the parliament is controlled by nationalists - nationalists from every major ethnic and sectarian group in the country - who enjoy a small but crucially important majority in the only elected body in the Iraqi government.

The Bush administration, aided and abetted by some our Congresslizards are trying to do an end run around the Parliament and the UN appears to be willing to allow them to do it. Am I the only one who remembers that we allegedly turned over sovereignty to the Iraqis years ago? I cringe every time I hear a US politician making pronouncements on the appropriate agenda for the Iraqi government. Either we just spent our blood and treasure for the last five years to give them a democracy or we should admit that we're an occupying force that is dictating their policy. As the linked piece puts it:

It's time to force the issue: The Iraqi parliament, the only body elected by the Iraqi people, wants some say over the continuing presence of foreign troops on its soil, and a majority of its lawmakers, like a majority of both Americans and Iraqis, wants a timetable for ending the occupation.

Really, if all those purple fingers meant anything more than a photo-op for Bush, then it's time to let Iraqis decide what should happen to Iraq. The only ones being fooled by the current machinations between the Bush administration and their toady Maliki are Americans. The truth is glaringly apparent to the rest of the world.

[cross-posted to The Reaction]

If it's good, it's bad

by Capt. Fogg

And speaking of moronic marijuana policies, BBC News is eager to point out that the non-toxic alternative to the toxic chemotherapy used to fight breast cancer doesn't make you feel good. That's of course because it's a chemical found in Cannabis, which is also not toxic and does make you feel good.

Feeling good is obviously something suspicious to prohibition-minded, ban-obsessed, authoritarian morality mongers, or in other words the sort of people who populate governments. It's not hard to observe that the people who cackle about "if it feels good, do it" morality are really against anything that feels good unless it makes you feel good by making you feel bad.

The fact that it has no side effects, that it isn't toxic and that it works would never be enough to allow acceptance by the moral parasites who plague the practice of medicine if it helped a patient feel better or more optimistic or less nauseated and more able to take nourishment.

It's best to use something that can kill you and that makes you feel like the originally sinful, foul and damned creature that you are.

Excess Hoggage - Where the Time Goes Edition

By Libby

Song in my head.

My annual harvest rant on moronic marijuana policies.

I think Bush is deliberating screwing the world up out of petty revenge.

I see a trend and it's not pretty. That you can't get into the Taj Mahal with US currency only further convinces me we're in trouble.

Patriot Act abuse horrifies me.

That Reid refused to recess gave me a little hope.

High school students learn a big lesson about the black market. It's not what you expect.

And today I posted part two of what's turning into a series in Detroit, on why Iran is not a threat. Once again, I'd planned to do national health insurance, but Cernig's killer post on the flawed coverage of the IAEA report was more timely.

Kos v. Rove

By Libby

I think Kos is winning in the battle of wits although I do have a little quibble with this graf.

Democrats, on the other hand, believe government can be a resource for promoting the common good and thus are invested from the beginning in governing competently, efficiently and fairly. Their ideology demands it. And what better way for Democratic candidates to illustrate this contrast than by running against the Republican trifecta—the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court—that governed throughout most of Bush's eight years in office?

I might suggest the better way is to act on their ideology now that they're in power and start actually governing to reflect the will of the people and promote the public good instead of protecting their purse strings and party power. Democrats and Independents aren't so easily fooled by mere rhetoric. We want results.

Meanwhile, Rove gives a pathetic little pep talk to the GOP and advises they run on bigger lies, better fearmongering and to do it "authentically" meaning, I guess, that they should start cultivating a Bushesque 'oh gosh' personality and to pretend to give a flying leap about the poor and the working class.

Meanwhile, I have to say Newsweek's strategy in initiating this faceoff seems to be a good one. I haven't found the publication so interesting in years.

Dataming America

By Libby

Via Radley, a good piece on telecom immunity at St. Petersburg Times. It's all about keeping the lie alive.

Make no mistake, telecom immunity is about keeping a flagrantly illegal program from public scrutiny and maintaining the illusion that the president ordered a small, precision surveillance program, when the opposite is true.

As Robyn Blumner notes, we are all suspects now. This point from whistleblower Howie Klein can't be repeated enough.

In 2003, Klein was assigned to oversee AT&T Internet operations at a company facility in San Francisco. Klein says that there was a secret NSA room into which flowed a copy of all Internet traffic - vast amounts of which were purely domestic - including all e-mails, documents, pictures, Web browsing and Voice-Over-Internet phone conversations. Klein says it was he who connected the circuits carrying Internet data to optical "splitters" that made a copy of the traffic and sent it to the NSA room.

According to Klein, going through this "splitter" were AT&T's links to other Internet providers, such as Sprint, Qwest and many others, meaning that the wholesale surveillance scooped up customers of these entities as well.

In conversations with other technicians, Klein says he was told of other secret NSA rooms in Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego, and he has an AT&T document that mentions Atlanta. The document also implies that there are other such rooms across the country.

I didn't realize until now that the surveillance was able to pick up data from other providers, so the big point here is that even though Qwest refused to co-operate, their data was still compromised.

I'm sure I don't need to point out to the readers here that this massive amount of data is useless in tracking down terrorists but it certainly would come in handy if someone wanted to say, declare martial law and round up the domestic 'dissidents.'

What's the matter with Boston

By Libby

Under the heading, incomprehensibly stupid ideas, the Boston police department has decided that if warrantless searches are good enough for our Imperial Leader, they're good enough for them. It's difficult to believe that this sort of local level constitutional breach could happen in Massachusetts.

Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children's bedrooms. [...]

In the next two weeks, Boston police officers who are assigned to schools will begin going to homes where they believe teenagers might have guns. The officers will travel in groups of three, dress in plainclothes to avoid attracting negative attention, and ask the teenager's parent or legal guardian for permission to search. If the parents say no, police said, the officers will leave.

Right. Three burly men show up at the door and ask to search the kid's rooms and people will feel free to say no? I'm sure the cops will be careful to mention it's voluntary --not.

But what's worse is I'm certain there will be a substantial element among the fearful Bostonians who think this is a good idea as long as it targets only the populations they're afraid of and loathe. I'm reasonably sure you won't ever see these cops on Beacon Hill.

Excess Hoggage - And the Beat Goes On edition

By Libby

Bush says our dollar policy is strong. The dollar itself, not so much if you can't use it to get into the Taj Mahal.

I probably mentioned Kos got a gig at Newsweek. They hired Rove to balance him, which makes me chuckle every time I think of it. They balance a blogger with a professional hit man. Leftopia has come a long way.

Speaking of Kos, I thought his first op-ed was quite good. Maybe he'll be able to get through to the Dems. Heaven knows they don't listen to me.

Speaking of the Dems, Reid finally did something smart. He's going to keep Senate in session over Thanksgiving to prevent recess appointments. Too bad he didn't think of that before they confirmed Mukasey but still it's applaudable.

I'm less hopeful about the new FISA bill. It managed to get through both houses so far without teleco immunity but as the world's greatest pundit once said, it ain't over till it's over. I'm not holding my breath that this will turn out well.

I'm really tired of being disappointed by Dems who deliver big talk and no action.

I didn't watch the 242nd debate, but I have a feeling this soldier's remarks to the candidates was probably the high point.

On a more disturbing note, a professional dominatrix who wrote a tell-all book describing some uncomfortable kinks in Bush's past sexual history has disappeared. I hope it's a publicity stunt but it doesn't look good. Somehow I doubt she'll get the Lacy Peterson treatment in the press.

I stole three important items from Avedon, the most important is that it appears the White House is already laying the framework for occupying Iran and Syria.

And somehow, I just can't seem to get to a followup on national health insurance over at Detroit News. I keep getting distracted. It seemed time to start pushing against the propaganda on Iran.

I will get to the health insurance eventually. The draft keeps expanding. It's likely to be a two parter.

Random thought

By Libby

I would probably get a lot more blogging done if I didn't spend so much time hanging out in John Cole's comment section. I can't quite put my finger on it but there's something I love about the community over there. It reminds me in a way of what Rob Smith's comment section was like at Gut Rumbles, only the Balloon Juicers are more academic and less redneck and mostly a whole lot more liberal.

But somehow it has that family feel that I've been missing since Rob died and besides, those folks over at JC's are very welcoming to newcomers and funny as hell. I'm thinking of it as sort of auditing a class on snark. God knows I could use the help. I'm only funny when I'm trying to be serious. My best laugh lines have always been inadvertent.

Save BuzzFlash

By Libby

I remember when I first discovered BuzzFlash, I almost wanted to keep it a secret because it was so valuable an aggregator for blogging. Somehow, day after day, week after week, with months slipping into years, they assemble the best collection of underreported news known to man. As a new blogger trying to break into the big time, I was tempted to keep that edge for myself. But my natural inclination to share and the impossibility of keeping up with the content on a daily basis soon caused me to pass its link on far and wide.

I never knew much about them though until they posted this appeal for funds today. They've been at this since 2000 and survived on donations, the sale of premiums and the support of their founders who had other employment and were able to underwrite much of the expenses. Unfortunately, even they are feeling the pinch of the Bushenomic bust and the founders now find themselves without the funds necessary to keep BuzzFlash going on their own and they need to raise substantial cash to keep this vital resource going.

If you don't feel you can make an outright donation, they have a huge selection of books and other items at a fair price that would make great presents during this holiday season. Please consider doing what you can to help. Losing BuzzFlash would greatly dim our ability to keep an eye on the corrupt establishment that threatens to destroy civil society as we know it.

If you're black, go back

by Capt. Fogg

There's no bronze statue, no stainless steel arch; there's really nothing to show that the stretch of Florida's Atlantic coast from Jupiter up to the St. Lucie inlet is a gateway for the huddled masses arriving regularly from the Bahamas in small boats. Most have set out from Cuba or from Haiti, having paid smugglers to make the 60 mile run from Grand Bahama Island's West End. It's been a smuggler's route since the Civil war and many a case of rum entered Florida in mahogany speed boats during the prohibition era. Only the cargo has changed.

It's common for smugglers to avoid coming too close to the shore. The tricky sandbars and the surf make it dangerous and so they urge or push the illegal immigrants overboard. Some drown and are washed up on the beaches miles away, some make it ashore in places like Jupiter Island where they are rapidly picked up and there's where the strangeness of our immigration laws begins. Haitians are summarily deported and it's unusual for any of them to convince ICE that they fled Haiti in fear of their lives and qualify for asylum. Cubans get to call their Florida relatives to come and pick them up, while the men they paid to transport them will go to jail if caught. I can't think of any other circumstance under which paying someone to commit a crime is not a crime.

You don't hear much about this from Lou Dobbs and not only is there no discussion of building an Atlantic Wall, small craft come ashore by the thousands with very little oversight from the Coast Guard. No one has ever stopped my boat to see who might be lurking below in the cabin, but I've spent an hour waiting to drive into the US from Mexico, and they don't wave you through when coming from Canada any more.

All in all, the Cubans are more likely to take your job than Haitians or Mexicans or Guatemalans; just as likely to be unsavory characters and not much more likely to be fluent in English. Why the preferential treatment? Why will we fight to keep undocumented Cubans from returning but no one else? Why did we continue this practice while Castro cleared out his jails and sent them all north?

There are a variety of reasons for treating Cuban immigrants differently. None that I've heard have been good reasons, nor has this practice done anything to weaken Fidel Castro's regime or to dispel the perception of the US as a racist, hysterical, xenophobic country obsessed with Communism but completely unconcerned by decency or human values.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Out of the car, long hair!

by Capt. Fogg

That phrase still makes me cringe. Although my hair is short and gray, I still remember when hair not much longer than President Carter later wore in the White House could get you into trouble and sometimes big trouble. In the day of H.R. Haldeman style brush cuts, hair was the enemy of the state and righteous right wing Republicans for social conformity were all for establishing legal limits for male hair length. Even Disney refused entry into fantasy parks to anyone whose hair suggested psychedelic subversiveness. It wasn't even an infrequent thing for a young business executive in a brand new 1969 Brooks Brothers suit and neatly trimmed moustache to be sneered and snickered at and told to "get a job" while walking down Chicago's LaSalle Street.

That was then. Today it's about young slackers wearing enormous clown pants so low their butt cracks and boxer shorts peek nauseatingly at anyone following in their wake. Of course such sartorial protests against conformity are in themselves an equal and opposite conformity and yet advocates of each polarity never seem to understand the futility. Yes, this affectation has already lasted longer than hippie hair or tail fins or Nehru shirts or shoulder pads and seems to be associated more with sociopathic criminality than with hallucinatory enlightenment and world peace, but the US is moving inexorably toward a rabble-driven culture. Language, music and clothing are all part of it. Wearing your hat backwards or exposing your ass to sunburn above a tent of baggy cloth bigger than a central Asiatic Yurt is a social statement as impenetrable to me as M theory or support for George Bush, but legislating against it as a way to make society "the way it used to be" is equally as stupid and contemptuous of freedom.

Riviera Beach, Florida Mayor Thomas Masters is old enough but not smart enough to know better. He wants to make baggy pants illegal and he wants to do it by putting a referendum on the ballot next year. Although the courts have regularly shot down efforts by city councils to legislate clothing and hair length, Masters thinks he can get away with it if the law results from"the will of the voters." The ACLU thinks otherwise. "A referendum doesn't trump the Constitution," says James Green, attorney from the Palm Beach chapter.

Masters (who's also a preacher) and his committee think it's about bringing morality back to the community, although like the Republicans, he thinks morality is another word for the nostalgic authoritarian fantasies of bible pounders. Morality, under this adventure, would be served by jail sentences of up to 60 days for fashion crimes, just as morality undoubtedly has been served by the swing back to shorter hair.

Sorry Tom, what would be served is gang membership, as the folks the young baggy pants offenders will meet in jail aren't going to steer them toward careers in investment banking even if the prison environment does lead them to pull their pants up a little higher.

"what you in for kid?" "Um . . . baggy pants."

I expect that any such exchange is not going to lead toward the prissy church lady morality Masters has in mind, but if there's any point to this at all, it's that nobody ever learns and fixing stupid is as hopeless as it ever was.

America drops out of the race

By Libby

I have to work this afternoon so I won't be back until later this evening, but
here's something I just picked up out of the Balloon Juice comment section from the incomparable Onion.

WASHINGTON—Citing exhaustion, an overcrowded field of candidates, and little hope of making a difference in 2008, roughly 300 million Americans announced Tuesday that they will be leaving the presidential race behind.

The U.S. populace, which has participated in every national election since 1789, said that while the decision to abandon next year's race was difficult, recent events, such as disappointing victories by both Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani in regional straw polls, left them with no real choice.

"We gave it our best shot, and for a while it seemed like the American people actually had a chance of coming out on top," Weare, NH resident Mark Simmons said at a press conference in front of his suburban home. "Unfortunately, as much as we'd like to remain optimistic, it's become clear that this just isn't our year."

Read the whole thing at the link. It's the kind of funny that hurts because it's so true.

The theory of everything

I love physics. The love the terminology. Who wouldn't love quarks and string theories? I adore physics geeks. I love that they try to explain the universe and this is just the coolest breakthrough ever.

An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.

Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).

In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month."

The guy has literally discovered the theory of everything and it was created with simple mathematics. Of course, mathematically challenged as I am, I don't have a clue what they're talking about when it gets down the specifics but the picture of what's it's built on just knocks me out.

Look at that thing. It's the cosmic eyeball. Perfectly symmetric, all seeing, all knowing and completely arbitrary. Best explanation I've seen so far. [via]

Media Bytes - Progressive's Progress Edition

By Libby

TBogg, comes up with the ultimate America primer for those unfortunate constitutionally challenged souls among us.

The Center for American Progress delivers the perfect antitoxin to neocon propaganda. They've produced a series of ads on the theme of proud to be a progressive. I think they're all great. I don't really have a favorite.

Via my pal Tits, a giant naked man balloon. Which goes perfectly with this little condom PSA from India.

And finally I think this one is making the rounds but if you haven't seen The Drunken Elephants, it's really very funny

Excess Hoggage - Rain on the roof Edition

By Libby

I slacked off yesterday because it was gorgeous and I went outside to play. It's freezing today and the rain just stopped so I'm madly composing but here's the stuff you missed if you don't follow me around the uberbahn.

Thanks to new commenter Andrew at Prospect Park Project for this pointer to Nixon on Health Care. I had forgotten how the roots of our current health insurance morass started in the sludge of the HMO Act. It's a great blog but I wish he would get rid of the audio background.

I'm sure you've heard that it's now treason to mention you didn't vote for Bush. At least when you do it at a Bridge tournament.

Kevin Hayden has just been on fire and I riff off his post with more thoughts on the 60s and the lessons learned -- or not.

Speaking of Kevin, he's hit some hard times and is facing homelessness in December. If you have anything to spare, please hit his tip jar.

JurassicPork had a brilliant post up on Hillary that I used as springboard to bitch out the Dems -- again.

Meanwhile, over in the Motor City, I don't why John LaPlante insists on taking me on with lame ass posts. I think I pretty much skewered him with my response to my post on the Bushenomic crash and raised the ante with Warren Buffet wanting to keep the estate tax, plunging a knife into the heart of one LaPlante's pet hobbyhorses.

I await his countermove, but I don't see that he has any cards left to play. The comment section, except for the usual deadenders, is mostly supporting me on this one.