Power to the Pandas !

RIP Molly Ivins

2007-01-31T19:27:00.000-05:00

A gifted writer, who will be missed.

Web Notes, Blog Finds ...

2007-01-31T18:19:00.000-05:00

For those (like me) addicted to fonts comes a Top 100 font list from Germany (I would have ranked Kabel, which is beautiful, much higher) and a post from the Snog Blog chock full of links to freebies & font info
Via TPMMuckraker, a link to a neat site called LegiStorm which tracks congressional staff salaries
Via the lovely & talented TBogg, meet Banksy
Filed under "Just when you think you've seen everything ..." comes Condi Couture, by way of the wonderful Princess Sparkle Pony Blog
Waldenswimmer:

I'm not so sure in W's case, although this may simply result from Bush's position outside the bell curve of normal human stupid-variation. He's always talked nonsense about Iraq. "It's the central front in the war on terror," "we fight them there so we don't have to fight them here," and so on. Always, always I get the sense that Bush, confined as he is to the emotional age he achieved before descending to the bottom of countless whiskey bottles, thinks like a 9 year old, and not like a precocious 9 year old. More precisely, like a 9 year old cribbing a social studies paper on Iraq from the I-J volume of the World Book Encyclopedia, circa 1955. What distinguishes the truly simple mind from the discerning mind is the inability of the former to think in terms of simultaneous complex variables, and the tendency of the simpleton to use "concepts" instead of "facts." Facts are hard to deal with, because you have to read, think and synthesize them into a pattern with other facts you have learned the same way. This is what really smart people instinctively know, and always do. They know there are never any shortcuts to understanding anything. Bush doesn't do things like that. He grabs at the broadest generalities he can find and settles there, permanently.

Giant Panda News

2007-01-18T08:38:00.000-05:00

Chuang Chuang & Lin Hui (photo from China Daily)

From China Daily:

Bangkok - Chuang Chuang the Panda is just too heavy to have sex. Thai authorities have put him on a strict diet as part of a long-running campaign to get him to mate with female partner Lin Hui at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand.
"Chuang Chuang is gaining weight too fast and we found Lin Hui is no longer comfortable with having sex with him," said the zoo's chief veterinarian, Kanika Limtrakul, adding that Chuang Chuang weighed 331 pounds while Lin Hui is only 253 pounds.
As a result, zoo authorities are cutting out bamboo shoots in the daily meal for Chuang Chuang and giving the obese bear only bamboo leaves, Kanika said.
The diet plan is the latest in an unsuccessful and often strange campaign by zoo officials to get the two bears to mate.
They have held a mock wedding, announced plans to separate the two to spark a little romance and even talked of introducing panda porn, videos of other pandas mating, to get the pair in the mood.
Thailand rented Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui from China for $250,000 in October 2003 for 10 years. They are expected to generate millions of dollars in revenues from Thai and foreign tourists.
There are as few as 1,600 giant pandas in the mountain forests of central China, according to the zoo. An additional 120 are in Chinese breeding facilities and zoos, and about 20 live in zoos outside China.
Pandas are threatened by loss of habitat, poaching and a low reproduction rate. Females in the wild normally have a cub once every two to three years.

At Least Bush Got Saddam's Gun

2007-01-05T04:46:00.000-05:00

Naturally there is no question that justice and justice alone was behind the totally legal execution of Saddam Hussein.

KUWAIT CITY: A well-known Kuwaiti businessman is negotiating hard to own the noose which hung ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to death.

Reliable sources say the businessman's representatives have asked the Iraqi Ministry of Interior Affairs to sell the rope to them.

The businessman is apparently ready to pay any amount of money for the noose. According to sources, it is with Shiite leader Muqtada Al-Sadr and the businessman's representatives are negotiating with him.

The businessman had earlier purchased the vandalized statue of Saddam Hussein which stood at Al-Firdous Square in Baghdad. Sources say he obtained the statue through American representatives and exhibits the head of the statue in his diwaniya (sitting room).

New Presidential Website?

2007-01-02T17:21:00.000-05:00

W's personal page, perhaps? (NOT WORK FRIENDLY!!)

Does John Waters Know?

2006-12-24T06:07:00.000-05:00

The pink flamingo is endangered.

Turns Out, You Have To Worry About More Than Going Blind

2006-12-21T11:21:00.000-05:00

Flora the dragon is going to have a bunch of little dragons.

She looks awful pleased with herself, doesn't she?

Come on kids, clap your hands

2006-12-19T23:59:00.000-05:00

Does Bush have any credibility whatsoever with anyone? Anyone reality-based & sane, I mean?

From the Washington Post:

President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists.
As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning."
...
Asked yesterday about his "absolutely, we're winning" comment at an Oct. 25 news conference, the president recast it as a prediction rather than an assessment. "Yes, that was an indication of my belief we're going to win," he said. [emphasis in original]

I'm surprised anyone in the media bothered to ask the question in the first place but not at all surprised that Bush "recast" his previous remarks to mean something different from what he said.

There's a big difference between "absolutely, we've won the lottery" and "my belief is we're going to win."

Maybe someone should tell President Tinkerbell.

As NH Goes, So Goes the Nation

2006-11-08T14:56:00.000-05:00

In 2004, New Hampshire was the only state to change its color from red to blue in the presidential election. Of course, NH is a small state in terms of both size and population, but we've been a political bellwether since before the United States existed. I'm delighted to say that my personal disenfranchisement, categorized by having Jeb Bradley be my "representative" officially came to an end last night, with Bradley's defeat at the hands of Carol Porter-Shea.

Given what happened in yesterday's elections here in New Hampshire, I would say notice has been served: we are a state of stubborn, traditional moderates to conservatives; very few of us would call ourselves liberal. We're also mad as hell and fed up with the infantile pabulum being fed us by the current Republican regime.

I can only hope that my state's senators, neither of whom was up for re-election yesterday, will take the notice that has been served them.

Robocalling

2006-11-06T18:15:00.000-05:00

Shameless dirty tricks from the Republicans.

Disgusting.

I hope New Hampshire voters turn out & vote Democrat tomorrow. I know I shall be doing so.

My cat says "Go ahead MAKE MY DAY!"

2006-10-24T13:17:00.000-04:00

What a terrific idea!

Iraq

2006-09-24T20:06:00.000-04:00

From today New York Times:

In the real Iraq, armed Shiite and Kurdish parties have divided up the eastern two-thirds of the country, leaving Sunni insurgents and American marines to fight over the rest. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his “national unity cabinet” stretch out their arms to like-thinking allies like Iran and Hezbollah, but barely lift a finger to rein in the sectarian militias and death squads spreading terror across Baghdad and the Shiite south.

The civilian death toll is now running at roughly 100 a day, with many of the victims gruesomely tortured with power tools or acid. Over the summer, more Iraqi civilians died violent deaths each month than the number of Americans lost to terrorism on Sept. 11. Meanwhile, the electricity remains off, oil production depressed, unemployment pervasive and basic services hard to find.

Iraq is today a broken, war-torn country. Outside the relatively stable Kurdish northeast, virtually every family — Sunni or Shiite, rich or poor, powerful or powerless — must cope with fear and physical insecurity on an almost daily basis. The courts, when they function at all, are subject to political interference; street-corner justice is filling the vacuum. Religious courts are asserting their power over family life. Women’s rights are in retreat.

I know there are a lot of deluded people out there who think Dubya & his regime are doing a bang up job of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Little somethings like facts aren't going to get in their way of their worship of their hero. This never was about bringing democracy to the poor huddled masses (hint: you can't force a democracy at gunpoint on anybody, it's kinda counter to what democracy is all about). It's always been about oil. For that oil, the United States of America has willingly abrogated its own Constitution and its place as the moral leader of the world. A person like me has no representation whatsoever, despite those fancy words put to parchment by brave men a long time ago. In their stead have come other men (& Condi), who are neither brave nor honorable but who are instead venal and morally repugnant: people who, if there were any justice in this world, would be sitting in dock at the Hague. The destruction of an entire sovereign nation, the forced and dangerous instability of an entire region, the death of God knows how many people, most of them innocent of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. All for the oil. And now we're getting ready to place the cherry on top of this noxious dessert & make torture legal.

All for the oil.

Is it really worth it?

Global Warming & how it hits home

2006-09-24T20:04:00.000-04:00

From the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

That Coming Anniversary ...

2006-09-08T13:17:00.000-04:00

Ellen Goodman at the Boston Globe writes about how far we've come in the five years since 9/11:

But here is something I never imagined five years ago: that America would lose our status as the good guy in the struggle against terrorism. I didn't imagine that our government would squander the righteous role won for us the hard way by victims falling from the Twin Towers and firefighters racing to their deaths.

Al Qaeda was a uniter, not a divider. After the attacks, the whole world seemed to be on our side, with the single, memorable exception of Palestinians dancing in the streets. Some 200,000 Germans marched in solidarity. Flowers arrived at our embassies. Even the reflexively anti-American newspaper Le Monde proclaimed, ``We Are All Americans."

When we went into Afghanistan in hot pursuit, the world stayed with us. But then we swung from a just war to a preemptive war, from a war on terror to a war of choice, from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein.

``When we crossed the [Iraq] border, there was another great pause, then a transfer of sympathy," an American intelligence officer told Newsweek. ``The entire Islamic world took a step to the right." The Bush administration imagined flowers and rose water, shock and awe, mission accomplished. It failed to imagine civil war, and that step to the right.
We went from the Twin Towers to Abu Ghraib, from civil defense to civil war, from innocent passengers to soldiers in Haditha. We blew it all on Iraq. [emphasis mine -- zhak] In one poll, Europeans now find us more of a threat to world stability than even Iran. In a survey of 14 countries, none of them believe that removing Saddam made the world safer. And in Iraq itself, only 2 percent of the people now believe we invaded to liberate them from tyranny while 76 percent think we did it ``to control Iraqi oil."

Bullies tend to pick on the weak. The bullies who are "leading" this country felt that invading Iraq, a country weakened by UN Sanctions and despotic rule, would be as near a walkover as made no difference and a win-win proposition: show all those Muslims the US is super tough and super strong, and gosh golly gee whiz, all that lovely black gold just there for the taking. The bullies leading this country knew they possessed no valid reason to invade a sovereign state, but felt that quick victory would come and pesky questions silenced. History most often lies in the hands of the victors, after all. In the ramp up to the invasion, I can recall having a discussion with a dear friend who bought the Bush regime spin hook, line and sinker. I pointed out my view, which was that we can't just go around invading countries. (I supported the offensive against Afghanistan. I would still be supporting it if I felt that the Bush regime were capable of actually conducting a war properly -- namely, go in, defeat the enemy and any specific objectives (Osama, anyone?), keep civilian casualties to a minimum while you're doing that, and then clean up the mess you've made.) I said to my friend that while there could well be WMD in Iraq, we simply had no right to invade them, because they had not attacked us. The United States of America should not attack first. We're supposed to be the good guys. And my friend said to me, "let me ask you this, would you rather fight them over there, or over here?" My response was that I didn't want to fight them in either place, unless it was absolutely inescapable.

The invasion of Iraq was supposed to show the rest of the world that the bully-boys who are "running" this country are tough & have big brass ones & not to mess around with the red, white & blue. North Korea & Iran were supposed to see this display of might & shock & awe and be sufficiently shocked to be scared to death henceforth that they would be next.

But you cannot force a country to accept democracy at gunpoint. The idea that anyone should even think such a thing is possible is ludicrous. Democracy is all about choice, isn't it?

And North Korea & Iran, far from being shocked&awed, are instead well aware that the mightier they are, they less the likelihood that the bully-boys will go after them, however much they really really want to. I fully expect the Bush regime to continue their bullying and to continue messing up everything they touch. They are literally incapable of doing anything right because they cannot learn from past mistakes -- or even admit to past mistakes. The only real question at this point is whether the bully-boys can be contained somewhat (here's hoping the American people recognize what is going on in this country & vote Democrat in November) and thus whether the damage to this nation and the world might also be contained.

Are we smart enough to do that?

Who Does Your Representative Represent?

2006-08-29T17:56:00.000-04:00

I was already aware that my representative didn't represent me or most people I know and talk to around this part of the country. The needs of the people in this state are largely seen to at the town level, rarely but sometimes at the state level, and almost never at the federal level.

All this "by the people" and "for the people" stuff is so yesterday, don't you know? Besides, the current breed of Republican (who currently have Lincoln spinning like a top in his grave, I have no doubt) pays no attention whatsoever to things like the Constitution or individual rights. Those documents created when the United States was shiny and new are, like the Geneva Conventions, quaint. Where have I heard that before?

So who does my representative represent?

My representative is Jeb Bradley and apparently he represents ... Jeb Bradley.

Free Fall

2006-08-29T16:56:00.000-04:00

This hasn't been a good summer to be a New England baseball fan, especially not over the past month, which has left we of the Nation feeling like we'd been taken out behind Gate D and worked over with a sock full of Mannies.

Or something. Even the clever metaphors fail us now.

Usually around this stage of the fold, you start hearing the axe being sharpened and readied for the hapless manager's neck. The tumbrels might well have started rumbling long about the time of Boston Massacre '06, when the Yanks came thru and took five straight -- but interestingly, the Sox Faithful seem quite willing to cut Our Man Francoma a lot more slack than lesser men in the same position have earned over the years. Even the Boston Globe, which ordinarily would be rattling around the kitchen drawer looking for just the right knife, has acknowledged it's not Tito's fault the whole team has fallen apart. As Nick Cafardo points out in today's issue, the blame can be found upstairs.

Francona didn't get dumb this season. He manages and prepares the same way he always did. Instead of writing in Damon's name, he puts down Coco Crisp, a player who can barely throw the ball back to the infield. Instead of trotting out Pedro Martínez or Derek Lowe every fifth day, it's been Jon Lester, a 22-year-old rookie who went on the disabled list yesterday, and Kyle Snyder and Jason Johnson and Kason Gabbard. Yikes.

Management let Francona down, and he hasn't made a peep about it.

So, Theo, how about it? Making plans for this winter? 'Cause you're sure gonna have a boring fall.

Kelly Macdonald's a Winner ...

2006-08-28T10:38:00.000-04:00

The lovely & talented Ms Macdonald, proving there is at least some slight justice in the world. (Wireimage photo)

... and so is The Girl in the Café. I really loved that movie (& have been a staunch admirer of Kelly Macdonald's for years) and was thrilled to see it win for best made for TV movie. It's sort of a little movie that could, given that though the backdrop is global in scope, it's a very intimate story of romance between two lonely people. And it's marvelous. Richard Curtis crafted a lovely script and the leads ran with it all the way to the finish line without taking the slightest mis-step. Bill Nighy (who should have been nominated -- and should have won) and Kelly Macdonald created a wonderful & unique chemistry in their portrayals of two lonely souls who meet by chance, and find some emotional kinship even as they lack any common ground whatsoever.

Macdonald was up for Best Supporting Actress in a miniseries or movie, though by rights she should have been up for Best Actress. I hadn't given her a chance in hell of winning, because she was up against a formidable array of talent (3 Oscar winners and an Oscar nominee). I was so very pleased that she won. (Even if she herself was not, saying afterward that she'd hoped someone else would win because it's all so "nervewracking.") For ten years, this woman has given a series of terrific performances, several standout performances (including her first role, as Diane in Trainspotting, and in the under-appreciated but absolutely charming Two Family House, amongst many others), and one absolute knockout performance (Stella Does Tricks). It's high time that she got a bit of acknowledgement for it.

In case you don't know, Macdonald is a petite Scottish actor from Glasgow who landed her first part via an open casting call. Playing Ewan McGregor's club pickup who turns out to be a schoolgirl, she has very little screen time in Trainspotting but gives such a remarkable performance that she's one of the things you remember most about the movie after the fact (her & the Worst Toilet in Scotland ... hmm ... well, anyway ...). She turned 20 the day the movie opened & has a talent for not just giving exceptional performances but also for choosing exceptional material, often very quirky material (the charming House! springs to mind), that ends up becoming a compelling finished project: A Cock & Bull Story, Tube Tales, Some Voices, Gosford Park, the superb television drama State of Play, to name just a handful.

Friday Dragonfly Blogging

2006-08-04T21:12:00.000-04:00

This poor little fellow was trying to beat the scorching heat here in the Northeast Wednesday by non-stop obelisking. Given the stiff breeze it wasn't always easy.

A Calico Pennant (male) taken with a Canon Elph series camera.

From The Grassroots...

2006-08-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

Forget the big-time national pundits -- the real opposition to The Decider can be found at the grassroots, in the small towns and cities where more and more eyes are (finally) opening. This column in one of my local papers is a prime example.

Best quote --

Quite apart from what Bush’s actions say about the hypocrisy of his bombastic Christianity — a man who would “save” a bunch of useless cells as if they were human lives while green-lighting the “only democracy in the Middle East” to kill some 500 civilians, create 800,000 refugees, and destroy much of the infrastructure of an embattled nation caught in history’s crosshairs — Bush’s refusal to seek an early ceasefire has, once again, strengthened our enemies, weakened our friends, and made the US, if such is possible, even more disliked and distrusted by both friend and foe.

The big-timers couldn't have said it any better.

Friday Dragonfly Blogging

2006-07-28T17:24:00.000-04:00

I think this is a female Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis). Blue Dashers are very common hereabouts & this particular one seems to frequent the same post office I do.

(Photo taken with a Canon Elph series camera.)

A couple of things

2006-07-28T17:08:00.000-04:00

Condi in Diplomatic Disneyland by Tony Karon, about how the US is managing the impossible and making things even worse in the war between Israel and Lebanon:

The problem with boycotting regimes you deem unacceptable is that if they are able to influence events, you're forced to respond to their initiatives, often in dangerous crisis moments. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were implacable foes who knew they could not resolve their differences, yet they maintained communication and developed understandings that allowed them to manage those differences in the interests of global stability. It is time for Bush the Younger to grow up.

Bush the Younger is sixty years old. At this point, it might be time to accept that he's a real world Peter Pan (only Peter had moments of selflessness & was at heart a good person) and is, alas, as grown up as he'll get, which is extremely bad news for anyone who cares anything about the United States or the world.

We now know, however, what happens when the USA is "led" by a man with all the psychological earmarks of a ten-year-old schoolyard bully whose parents never said no to him. A fascinating experiment, no doubt, only it's a shame it has to accomplished at such a high cost, isn't it?

The always entertaining & articulate Gore Vidal, interviewed by The Progressive.

Q: In 2002, long before Bush’s current travails, you wrote, “Mark my words, he will leave office the most unpopular President in history.” How did you know that then?

Gore Vidal: I know these people. I don’t say that as though I know them personally. I know the types. I was brought up in Washington. When you are brought up in a zoo, you know what’s going on in the monkey house. You see a couple of monkeys loose and one is President and one is Vice President, you know it’s trouble. Monkeys make trouble.

Q: Bush’s ratings have been at personal lows. Cheney has had an 18 percent approval rating.

Vidal: Well, he deserves it.

Q: Yet the wars go on. It’s almost as if the people don’t matter.

Vidal: The people don’t matter to this gang. They pay no attention. They think in totalitarian terms. They’ve got the troops. They’ve got the army. They’ve got Congress. They’ve got the judiciary. Why should they worry? Let the chattering classes chatter. Bush is a thug. I think there is something really wrong with him.

The Immigration Problem...

2006-06-11T10:54:00.000-04:00

... is that it brings out all the loons.

People who take a hard line on immigration have to get into bed with folks like this, which is one heckuva unappealing thought.

New England Flooding May 2006

2006-05-27T17:58:00.000-04:00

Here.

After the Rains Came & Went

2006-05-16T20:13:00.000-04:00

Sounds Like A Plan!

2006-05-16T18:29:00.000-04:00

Froomkin:

Stratton of the Orlando Sentinel summarizes Bush's comments on the upcoming hurricane season: "Bush said he worried about the thousands of Gulf Coast residents now living in trailers. 'Let's just pray,' he said, 'there is no hurricane heading that way.'"

A Couple of Things

2006-03-27T17:06:00.000-05:00

From the Boston Globe (by James Carroll) comes some insight on the caliber of great minds who hold the reins of power:

The disaster in Iraq both recapitulates American mistakes of the past and worsens them immeasurably.
Let's begin with Rumsfeld himself. In 1975, he was Gerald Ford's secretary of defense when the USS Mayaguez was seized off Cambodia by the newly empowered Khmer Rouge, whose ascendance followed the destabilizing US ''incursion." The American crew of 38 was captured.

Rumsfeld shaped the response -- which was to ignore diplomacy, begin bombing a Cambodian port city, and dispatch a large force of Marines to rescue the crew. Bad moves based on bad intelligence. While untold Cambodian civilians were bombed, 40 American rescuers were killed in an attack on an island where the crew was thought to be held. In fact, the American sailors had already been released unharmed and set adrift on a Thai fishing vessel. The Mayaguez affair was a dress rehearsal for Rumsfeld's war in Iraq.

How did this man ever get the job of Secretary of War anyway? (Yes, I know it's Secretary of Defense, but it doesn't apply in this administration, with its focus on "pre-emptive" strikes against "enemies" that are made of straw, but bleed like you and me.)

And from the NYT comes this unsurprising news:

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, [Bush] made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.
"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

And this guy still says indignantly that naturally war was the last thing he wanted.

I don't believe him. And I don't see how anyone could at this juncture. As much as I'd like to at least accept the validity of the opinions of the right-wing in this country, what I've found in the last three to four years as things spiral ever more out of control and democracy itself as its meant to be has been abolished in the USA, I find I cannot even begin to understand how anyone can defend the positions of the people who currently hold office (my contempt for elected officials extends to a good many Democrats too, fwiw).

How did we ever get this far out of control?

Jerry Stahl knows a thing or two

2006-01-29T22:26:00.000-05:00

In this piece for LA Weekly, he writes about James Frey.

(Jerry Stahl is my all-time favorite CSI scenarist. He writes the most twisted episodes the series can boast, bless his heart.)

The 50 Most Loathsome Americans

2006-01-25T15:47:00.000-05:00

The Beast makes several good points. (disclaimer: I don't fully agree with the Beast, but he makes some good points; also, the Beast is obviously a Red Sox fan)

Of Cats and Cameras

2006-01-17T16:12:00.000-05:00

I owe someone a tip of the link for this, but I've no idea who (sorry).

Sing it with me --

2006-01-01T23:24:00.000-05:00

"there's got to be ..." "... a morning af-ter ..."

Happy New Year.

And may God help us all ...

2005-12-31T13:36:00.000-05:00

NYT headline: In A Quiet Vacation, the President Readies for an Ambitious Agenda.

According to Stephen Hadley the regime has "listened to our critics and are already pursuing many of their proposals" which would be more reassuring if Bush's weekly radio address had not included delusions like this:

after the Dec. 15 Iraqi election, whose results are still in flux, the country was on its way to "an inclusive, unified and lasting democracy."

The truth is, we've replaced a secular government with a theocracy of religious extremists who hate our guts. Way to go, there. You can almost smell the crude oil they want to give us for all our good deeds, can't you?

On the economic front he insisted that, even with tax cuts, his government was "staying on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009," but he made no mention of the fact that his Treasury secretary, John W. Snow, asked Congress on Thursday to raise the debt limit again, the fourth time in Mr. Bush's presidency, so that the government can borrow more money, largely for increases in military and entitlement programs.

Speaking on a strictly personal level here, as I try my damnedest to stay afloat as a member of the lower middle class (but find myself sinking steadily under a rising tide of increased prices without anything extra coming in), I would not trust these people to oversee a piggy bank. & what they're doing to our economy should be considered as criminal, in its own way, as their war crimes against Iraq.

But hey, at least there isn't anything about eviscerating Social Security on his current agenda ...

I, Spy

2005-12-28T06:42:00.000-05:00

(well, no, not me, but the regime holding the reins of power in my country, yes, they spy)

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Government records show that the Bush administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's approval.
A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

Gosh, that's kind of a bad sign when you can't get a rubber-stamp court to give you permission. I doubt they ever asked themselves why this was, of course. Stay the course & all that...

Wonder how come it was so tough to get those warrants?

President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show. Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency's campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote.

Oh.

(Raw Story link via DU. Saddest part is, the story isn't even new.)

Friday Cat Bloggin'

2005-11-18T12:06:00.000-05:00

Miss Keesa.

The Lighter Side

2005-11-18T10:57:00.000-05:00

"you think you're so tough 'cause you're bigger than me! I'll show you!"
Dali's Persistence of Vision, rendered in Silly Putty: Persistence of Putty
Panda Cam!!!

Third World Nation Watch

2005-11-18T08:36:00.000-05:00

Our government continues to cover itself with glory in its handling of the aftermath of Katrina.

(See also this and this, which can surely be filed under "conservatism, compassionate.")

Jumpin' Cats!

2005-11-12T08:42:00.000-05:00

As the subject line says ...

The cat Jessica, my own feline companion, says that these cats are show-offs, obviously suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. She also says that she could do that sort of thing if she wanted to, but she doesn't, so that's that.

Worst. President. Ever.

2005-11-12T08:38:00.000-05:00

This chap in the Australian has some pithy words.

George's response to 9/II? He invades Afghanistan to terminate with extreme prejudice bin Laden and punish the Taliban. Bin who? He hasn't bin seen lately. The Taliban? They've withdrawn a few kilometres and the war lords, whose brutality and corruption made the Taliban welcome in the first place, are now back in the saddle. They're showing their gratitude to George by once more producing 80 per cent of the world's heroin.
Confusing Iraq with Iran (or possibly Syria) and confusing Saddam Hussein with bin Laden, George demolishes pretty much an entire nation. In further confusion, he mistakes palm trees for nuclear missiles and camels and donkeys for biological and chemical weapons. This leads to the deaths of 100,000 innocent Iraqis who had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center. George's war also involves the deaths of 2000 young Americans and tips the Iraqis into a civil war that will go on and bloodily on for decades. George further destabilises the world's most dangerous region and persuades a new generation to choose suicide bombing as a career.

Via The Smirking Chimp.

Backing In

2005-10-02T17:55:00.000-04:00

So it's off to the post-season for another year, but somehow it doesn't seem like quite that big a deal. The fact that the Sox not only make it to the playoffs via the wildcard, but also that it didn't matter what they did today once the Indians lost leaves me with a sort of "yeahhhhhh, so what" feeling.

Frankly, they don't deserve to be in the playoffs this year. With a few exceptions (Ortiz, Wakefield, Manny when he feels like it), they've played indifferently for much of the season, they've thrown away games that the kids playing kickball over at the playground could have won, and there have been too many moments where Terry Francona seems to have been posessed body and soul by the malignant spectre of Grady Little.

Bleah.

So the baseball season winds down, and once the post-season is over, we'll have to figure out something else to do with ourselves in the evening besides watching the games and making snarky comments about the quality of play via AIM. I dont watch football, myself, since I don't really understand what's happening -- but since Ms Zhakora has pointed out that certain members of the Patriots posess outstanding gluteal development, I may be forced to reconsider.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in the Washington Post

2005-09-25T20:39:00.000-04:00

Chavez doesn't exactly mince words:

This [the Bush] administration invaded Iraq. According to Pope John Paul II, it is an illegal war, an immoral war, a terrorist war. The U.S. has bombarded entire cities, used chemical weapons and napalm, killed women, children and thousands of soldiers. That's terrorism.

In Venezuela they fostered a coup d'etat [in 2002] manufactured by the CIA . . . Recently,ReverendRobertson called for my assassination. This is a terrorist attack, according to international law. In Miami, on a daily basis, people on TV shows are calling for my assassination. This is terrorism.

This [present U.S.] government is a threat to humanity. I have confidence that the American people will save humanity from this government -- they will not allow it to [continue to] violate human rights and to invade countries.

It's a very damning interview.

SAG news

2005-09-25T08:50:00.000-04:00

Alan Rosenberg has been elected president of the Screen Actors Guild. He is married to one of my favorite actors, Marg Helgenberger (under-utilized but still fantastic on the monster hit CSI, but who absolutely shone on the shamefully under-appreciated China Beach). Good for him, I hope he does well.

The Signs, They're A'Changin'

2005-09-25T08:49:00.000-04:00

Antiwar protest sign: Make Levees, Not War.

Just a blog post

2005-09-23T13:37:00.000-04:00

It's been nearly impossible to post lately, for a lot of reasons (many of them related to a lass named Katrina, but not limited thereto).
I shall be ordering oil today, since the big oil people will be once again using natural disaster in the gulf region to kill off the middle class by price gouging. As Hurricane Rita does her thing down in Louisiana and Texas, the big oil people will be wreaking even more damage across the rest of the land. We have this to look forward to. Bush will be leading the vanguard from his position on the front lines – Northern Command in Colorado Springs.
Rumor has it that he's back on the bottle, due to the grief he feels over every death in Iraq, etc etc. The idea that he feels grief is certainly a novel one, and not one that holds up under any sort of scrutiny. If it is grief he feels, however, I would say it is the grief, coupled with frustration, felt toward his tanking poll numbers & the growing intransigence of even his own party members. My God, how dare they? Don't they know he must cement his place in American history as the best of the best? Eviscerating Social Security is a tough job, he can't do it alone. Don't they realize that? Since he is not someone who takes being thwarted well, toddler tantrums are waiting in the wings, most recently evidenced by his linking the Osama crowd (those nasty BAD terrorists) with the even-more-devastating Hurricane Katrina (nasty BAD weather). Both BAD, you see. BAD BAD. To the mind of a 4 year old, this is all the link necessary. (This also can easily explain away the illegal invasion of Iraq in terms that might more accurately convey why we're doing what we're doing, than whatever the current justification for the invasion is this week.)

Friday Cat Bloggin'

2005-09-23T13:32:00.000-04:00

Go ahead. Make my day...

Saturday Kitty Blogging

2005-08-20T13:49:00.000-04:00

Miss Keesa, the magnificent.

Cat Bloggin'

2005-08-20T13:46:00.000-04:00

Prettiest darn catamaran I ever saw ...

The other half

2005-08-19T15:21:00.000-04:00

Via Salon's Daou Report, I'd like to recommend two links. I admit that I have a very hard time understanding the rationales & thought processes of the right wing. And, to my shame, I find that the more intolerance I see from their end, the more intolerant I become of them, and I don't like it. It shames me deeply to realize that these people, under the guise of a warped patriotism, are racist, bigoted and generally mis-informed on every issue that comes to mind. These people are my fellow Americans. They are supporting a war criminal who has hijacked the highest office in this country. They are vengeful and bloodthirsty. It shames me that my country could produce people like that. The sooner that China takes its rightful place atop the heap (it's actually already there, aided strongly by the inept and criminally incompetent current regime), and the sooner America is marginalized as a former world power without teeth or claws, the better. Thanks to people like this and this, we deserve nothing else.

the concept that Iraq only became a terrorist haven after our liberation of the country is a rather idiotic leftwing talking point

keep killing 'em W - it's why I voted for u!!!

Deep down inside, when most Americans saw this reported in the news, we were like — so what? We lost hundreds and made fun of a few prisoners. Sure, it was wrong, sure, it dramatically hurts our cause, but until captured we were trying to kill these same prisoners. Now we’re supposed to wring our hands because a few were humiliated?

Our compassion is tempered with the vivid memories of our own people killed, mutilated and burnt amongst a joyous crowd of celebrating Fallujahans.

If you want an apology from this American, you’re going to have a long wait!

This is America? What happened to the United States of the World War II years? The greatest generation has spawned this? God help us all.

Kitty Bloggin'

2005-08-18T22:23:00.000-04:00

Kitty Pride.

Meet Winston, et al.

Size Matters (to these people, anyway)

2005-08-18T21:29:00.000-04:00

A link about how to accurately measure penis length (caution: explicit).

Goodness gracious. You can find anything on the internet, though not necessarily what you set out to find ...

[Update: Jude Law's slight image problem.]

Another Fractal

2005-08-15T19:38:00.000-04:00

Sunrise.

Eat Your Heart Out George

2005-08-15T13:12:00.000-04:00

The Red Sox lead the Yankees on the web too.

Last week, the sports publisher Street & Smith's released its ranking of professional sports Web sites, and in the baseball category the Red Sox led the major leagues while the Yankees were near the cellar - in 27th place among 30 teams.

We are all created equal

2005-08-14T16:45:00.000-04:00

Via the excellent Digby at Hullabaloo, comes a link to this article:

President Bush ... on Saturday defended his decision not to meet with the grieving mom of a soldier killed in Iraq. [...]
"... whether it be here or in Washington or anywhere else, there's somebody who has got something to say to the president, that's part of the job," Bush said on the ranch. "And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say."

"But," he added, "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life."

This is just a wild guess on my part, but I'm thinking that it was important to Casey Sheehan to go on with his life, too. At least he can now rest easy knowing that he has sacrificed his life in the noble cause of bringing Iraq & Iran together.

It's just beyond insensitive that Mrs. Sheehan doesn't see how much she's bothering Bush by upsetting his vacation like this. The man has his life to get on with:

The comments came prior to a bike ride on the ranch with journalists and aides. [...]
In addition to the two-hour bike ride, Bush's Saturday schedule included an evening Little League Baseball playoff game, a lunch meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a nap, some fishing and some reading.

It is obvious that fitting in Mrs. Sheehan into his busy schedule was too much to ask.

"I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy," he said when asked about bike riding while a grieving mom wanted to speak with him.

It'd sure make a nice change to have a president that makes good decisions. For instance, if Bush had made the decision to meet with Mrs. Sheehan when she first showed up in Crawford, then all the subsequent hoohaa simply would not have happened. Mrs. Sheehan would have asked her questions, gotten the usual delusional blather about noble causes and making the US safer. She would have been dis-satisfied with these answers (everyone but the right-wing cultists blinded by their ideology and the neutered American media would be dis-satisfied with these answers) but honor would have been served. And it all would have gone away. That Bush cannot do this speaks very poorly of him as a "leader," a "thinker" and even more poorly of his non-existent personal courage.

"What did you do in the war Daddy?"

"I hid out on the ranch and went fishing. Um. I took naps. I went to ball games. I read My Pet Goat ... it was hard work..."

More pictures

2005-08-13T13:42:00.000-04:00

Big Brother Alert

2005-08-13T13:36:00.000-04:00

From the EFF.

Why does this not surprise me?

Pictures of the day

2005-08-13T13:32:00.000-04:00

The Big Raspberry

2005-08-11T02:31:00.000-04:00

I doubt this news will get the coverage it deserves in the United States, but at least there is a detailed (if alarming) article in the UK's Guardian. The first three grafs:

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

Dubya gives the world another raspberry (by his stubborn, misguided disregard for this problem) but it looks like the world's got a bigger raspberry in store for him. Too bad the rest of us have to be impacted too.

One Soldier's Story

2005-08-10T09:53:00.000-04:00

Talking Wounded by Peter Carlson.

"I don't want anything to do with him [Bush]," he explains. "My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason -- just his ego and his reputation. If we really wanted to, we could pull out of Iraq. Maybe not completely but enough that we wouldn't be losing people -- at least not at this rate. So I think he himself is responsible for quite a few American deaths."

Only in America

2005-08-08T01:00:00.000-04:00

They say a picture is worth a thousand words...

Coming home from the festival this past weekend, I came across this rolling monument to tastelessness in Waldoboro, Maine. (Note the nifty support the troops magnet thingy -- never forget, folks, we're a country at war, dammit! And that means, we buy them little magnet thingies & stick 'em on our gas guzzlers!)

The World Famous Rockland Maine Lobster Festival

2005-08-08T00:47:00.000-04:00

That's right, it's that time of year again.

I was too squeamish to take any photos of the world's largest lobster pot (brimming with crustacean sacrifices at the time) but I did gather my courage & photograph the great, the amazing, the astonishing ... Don Rickles. (See previous post.)

And here are a couple more:

Big crowds and bright lights ...

... the view shortly before sunset, just beyond the food tent at the festival ...

... the US Navy on hand, glimpsed through the masts of pleasure craft in the harbor.

Don Rickles Blogging

2005-08-08T00:42:00.000-04:00

For The Kids

2005-08-02T17:12:00.000-04:00

Every summer, my town gets a visit from the Navy.

A ship pulls into harbor and hundreds of sailors swarm up into the streets for shoreleave -- spilling out of bars and restaurants, filling the sidewalks, turning up everywhere you look. And it's startling how much they stand out.

We don't see uniforms much anymore around here -- not even with a Coast Guard base right in town and a Naval Air Station just an hour's drive down the highway. Even though we've been at war for two years, to actually *see* a member of the Armed Forces, in person, is something of an oddity.

Out of sight, out of mind, in other words. And I think that's probably true of most of the rest of the country. Most of us don't serve, don't have friends or relatives serving, and the only time we ever really think about the Armed Forces is when we flick thru the news channels or browse the newspaper and see one of those head-shot photos they run over the obituaries of the latest casualties.

I stopped into a local pub tonight to grab a quick supper -- and was surrounded by kids in white. Angular, lanky young men and slender, wiry young women, all in crisp, knife-creased uniforms. And each and every one of them was a *kid.*

Oh, occasionally you might see a grownup -- a craggy, salty old CPO with an arm full of hashmarks -- but all I saw tonight were kids. Not one of them out of their early twenties, and the waitresses were on standing orders that every one of them had to show ID before being served drinks.

Kids.

The kind of kids who joined the service right out of high school, looking for a chance to improve their lot, a chance to make something of themselves, a chance to pick up some skills, a chance to get away from whatever two-bit towns they came from. Kids who were the right age to be *my* kids.

That's who fights wars, you know. Those fresh-faced, laughing kids. We pack them up, send them off, and some of them don't come home again. And aside from their families, the rest of us never give them a thought.

I watched those kids, and I thought about this war, and I thought about how the people responsible for it have gone out of their way to avoid living up to their responsibilities to those kids and their families. That's Republican family values for you. That's the sort of two-bit phony patriotism that thinks its perfectly fine for other people's children to fight and die for a trumped-up cause.

I ate my supper. But I didn't have much appetite.

Choosing to be gay?

2005-08-01T11:00:00.000-04:00

A very moving blog entry from someone who clearly made the right "choice."

Screening for Psychopaths in the Workplace

2005-07-29T14:50:00.000-04:00

Canadian criminal psychologist Robert Hare came up with the Psycopathy Checklist evaluation that is the standard tool in determining whether a person falls into the one percent of all people who lack any sort of conscience.

He said that the recent corporate scandals could have been prevented if CEOs were screened for psychopathic behavior. "Why wouldn't we want to screen them?" he asked. "We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?"

The very interesting article describes psychopathic behavior this way:

Psychopaths have a profound lack of empathy. They use other people callously and remorselessly for their own ends. They seduce victims with a hypnotic charm that masks their true nature as pathological liars, master con artists, and heartless manipulators. Easily bored, they crave constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life "games" they can win -- and take pleasure from their power over other people.

Though the article is about corporate psychopathy, after the reading the above, I couldn't help but think that any future presidential aspirants here in the US might also be screened. Imagine what we could have spared the world had a screening mechanism been in place prior to the 2000 election.

(toth: the Sideshow)

The Yankees Better Not Try Something Like This

2005-07-28T10:50:00.000-04:00

A rugby team during a match in New Zealand was helped along by a PA announcement that the Pope had died in a car accident, throwing off a player so badly that he missed a penalty kick.

This is what comes of a country whose population hangs onto the world upside down, by their fingernails ...

(er .. don't they?)

It was every Catholic's worst nightmare – and a hardy Wairarapa footy player's: the Pope's death announced as the kicker prepared his run-up in the last minutes of a semifinal.

The ground announcer's quip in the Wairarapa-Bush club rugby semifinal might have helped cost Marist a place in the final.

Marist's Paddy Rimene was lining up a penalty kick in front of the posts – aiming to give Marist a victory over Gladstone. The score was 10-10.

Moments before his run-up, a voice over the loudspeaker declared the Pope had died in a car accident. As Rimene's kick bounced off the post, the loudspeaker announced the Pope was in fact fine and the accident was only a fender bender.

Gladstone won 13-10, with a penalty conversion in extra time.
Mr Rimene – who usually nails his kicks – admitted being "really annoyed" by the comments.

Cold Mountain redux

2005-07-27T13:33:00.000-04:00

Coming on the heels of the tremendous critical success of The English Patient, Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain seemed to have found critics suffering from a surfeit of Miramax "special" movies and the film didn't do as well as (I think) it should have. One objection to the story line that was often raised by critics was that the lovers Ada & Inman simply didn't know each other that well, and thus the journeys both face (in very different ways) to be reunited lacked the resonance that it would otherwise have. Have none of these critics read Romeo & Juliet? Or maybe seen one of the more or less faithful adaptations thereof? It's not the quantity, folks, it's the quality. I had seen this movie back after its initial release, but recently re-watched it and realized that it's a very good movie indeed.

Yes, it is. Really.

(I'm a sucker for those female-bonding flicks anyway ...)

The box office returns this year have been pretty putrid -- Hollywood is fatuously blaming things like dvd rentals and so forth for the slump, rather than taking a good long look at the disastrous effect the Bush regime's foreign policies are having here in the States (& especially at the gas pumps). When you start to feel that you can't afford to buy gas, things like going to the movies tend to fall by the wayside. A domino effect that I can see gathering much momentum in the coming months, especially as winter starts to take its toll in the north. I'm disgusted with what's been allowed to happen to democracy in this country and only see a grim outlook for the future.

Amos 'n' Andy revisited

2005-07-27T13:23:00.000-04:00

My blogmate and best buddy has a book out. Please give it a look.

A Top Ten List

2005-07-27T10:54:00.000-04:00

This came via that high-hopping kangaroo, Skippy, who needs two million hits. (Congrats to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo on passing the one million mark.)

top 10 reasons dorothy was greeted as a liberator ...and our army wasn't

10. the wicked witch of the east actually had weapons of mass destruction.

9. rebuilding contracts awarded locally to lullaby league and lollipop guild.

8. dorothy apologized.

7. evil oppressor legally verified as "really most sincerely dead" rather than "maybe dead."

6. dorothy got it that she wasn't in kansas any more.

5. did not install toto as interim governor of munchkinland.

4. went home as soon as possible.

3. no interest in munchkinland's natural resources.

2. dorothy wasn't taking orders from the one with no brain.

1. no collateral damage.

Frank Rich on Bush and the Plame outing

2005-07-24T10:04:00.000-04:00

I haven't seen this idea put forth by anyone else, but it makes perfect sense.

From today's NY Times:

But the scandal has metastasized so much at this point that the forgotten man Mr. Bush did not nominate to the Supreme Court is as much a window into the White House's panic and stonewalling as its haste to put forward the man he did. When the president decided not to replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a woman, why did he pick a white guy and not nominate the first Hispanic justice, his friend Alberto Gonzales? Mr. Bush was surely not scared off by Gonzales critics on the right (who find him soft on abortion) or left (who find him soft on the Geneva Conventions). It's Mr. Gonzales's proximity to this scandal that inspires real fear.

As White House counsel, he was the one first notified that the Justice Department, at the request of the C.I.A., had opened an investigation into the outing of Joseph Wilson's wife. That notification came at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2003, but it took Mr. Gonzales 12 more hours to inform the White House staff that it must "preserve all materials" relevant to the investigation. This 12-hour delay, he has said, was sanctioned by the Justice Department, but since the department was then run by John Ashcroft, a Bush loyalist who refused to recuse himself from the Plame case, inquiring Senate Democrats would examine this 12-hour delay as closely as an 18½-minute tape gap. "Every good prosecutor knows that any delay could give a culprit time to destroy the evidence," said Senator Charles Schumer, correctly, back when the missing 12 hours was first revealed almost two years ago. A new Gonzales confirmation process now would have quickly devolved into a neo-Watergate hearing. Mr. Gonzales was in the thick of the Plame investigation, all told, for 16 months.
Thus is Mr. Gonzales's Supreme Court aspiration the first White House casualty of this affair.

Hilarious Blog Post

2005-07-23T12:50:00.000-04:00

Via Mahablog, comes a link. The funniest thing I've seen in some time: Revenge of the Sith, or Backstroke of the West. George Lucas better watch out.

From Today's Washington Post

2005-07-23T08:24:00.000-04:00

Fighting terror, with terror.

The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual.

Vice President Cheney met Thursday evening with three senior Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee to press the administration's case that legislation on these matters would usurp the president's authority and -- in the words of a White House official -- interfere with his ability "to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack."

Compassionate conservatism at its finest.

From the Washington Post

2005-07-21T07:38:00.000-04:00

E.J. Dionne Jr tackles the new supreme court nominee.

(fwiw, Roberts scares me silly. The scales of justice aren't meant to be tipped, folks, whatever the folks on the right might desire.)

Chipmunk Blog

2005-06-22T09:35:00.000-04:00

"And would it kill you to add some nuts here? Eh?"

From the National Geographic

2005-06-21T10:35:00.000-04:00

My best bud (& blog-mate) gets interviewed. (& oh yeah, there's some stuff about the radio War of the Worlds which caused such a "panic" back before we all got so jaded.)

Link of the Day

2005-06-21T10:33:00.000-04:00

Sports: you've come a long way, baby. (Warning: adult (sort of) content.)

From Today's Washington Post

2005-06-21T10:27:00.000-04:00

A scary piece by EJ Dionne, Jr. addresses the idea that it wasn't so much venal underhandedness but outright delusion that led the current regime to throw away 1700 (& counting) American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives for what a British politician refers to as Bush's "grudge" against Saddam.

Way to go, boys.

...in some ways more devastating are other recently disclosed documents in which British officials warned that "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." The British worried at the time that "U.S. military plans are virtually silent" on the fact that "a postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise."
The most damaging document supporting this claim is not secret, and remains one of the most important artifacts of the prewar debate. It is the transcript of "Meet the Press" from March 16, 2003, in which Vice President Cheney gave voice to the administration's optimistic assumptions that have now been laid low by reality.

Host Tim Russert asked whether "we would have to have several hundred thousand troops there" in Iraq "for several years in order to maintain stability." Cheney replied: "I disagree." He wouldn't say how many troops were needed, but he added that "to suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations cease, after the conflict ends, I don't think is accurate. I think that's an overstatement."

Russert asked: "If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?"

Cheney would have none of it. "Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. . . . The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want [is to] get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."

Blog Link

2005-06-16T20:27:00.000-04:00

From the aptly named Lethal Thought.

Chipmunk Blog

2005-06-06T10:41:00.000-04:00

Because rodentia deserve equal rights too...

Kitty Blog

2005-06-03T13:04:00.000-04:00

Miss Jess catches a few rays.

More pictures

2005-06-02T08:27:00.000-04:00

"What part of 'no, you can't take my picture' do you not understand?"

Photos taken on a recent trip to Lasdon Park in Somers, New York.

Obeying the Law of the Land

2005-06-02T08:04:00.000-04:00

We live in a dangerous time. A time when revisionism or downright wrong-headedness can lead to people like G. Gordon Liddy, Pat Buchanan and Charles Colson impugning the integrity of "Deep Throat" for, basically, putting his loyalty to his country and the laws that govern it over his loyalty to elected officials that were, after all, elected in the belief that they would uphold the law, not break it. (I know that Felt's motives are unlikely to be anything like that pure or cut & dried, but in the end, the choice he made was the right one for his country.) I've read about how we desperately need a new improved Deep Throat to help bring down the current elected officials (& others) engaged in illegal acts.

This boy is not Deep Throat. But he has done something remarkable just the same. He has stood up for the law of the land over the illegal dictates of the current regime.

From an essay by Pablo Paredes:

The moment we first sentenced German service members for not disobeying orders that they “should have known were illegal” we accepted that the responsibility to determine which orders are legal and which illegal rests in the conscience of the service member.
It also, therefore, holds true that to punish service members who acted on their conscience-with plausible backing from documents and prominent figures in international law-is not only unjustifiable and an injustice to those individuals, but sends a dangerous message to our military: that when given an order they believe to be illegal they are in a catch-22- they can be prosecuted if they obey; and they can be prosecuted if they don’t.

Do we really mean to have the armed foot soldier obey orders blindly in our name…..and be the fall-guy too?

Pablo Paredes refused to obey orders to deploy with his ship, obeying instead his conscience and the law of the land. And he has faced a court martial for doing so.But something rather remarkable happened during his trial.

Highlights from the article by Lynn Gonzales:

The prosecution's decision to call a Navy "lifer" (29 years in) and student at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law was another such occurrence. This witness, after learning that Pablo and his lawyer would appear at a school event, had taken it upon himself to contact Trial Services on base, ask for Pablo's prosecutors, and offer to take notes at the event. Wholly unimpressive as a witness, when asked if he believed in free speech, he answered, "well....yes, at certain times and under certain circumstances" (one can only hope that such blatant ignorance of the fundamentals of democracy bodes badly on his capacity to pass the bar.)

While his testimony proved unimportant, the fact that he had been called was pivotal for it all but ensured the defense's right to call Marjorie Cohn to rebut. Dr. Cohn was not only present at the event in question, but is a renowned international law expert and a fierce opponent of the war in Iraq.

What did Dr. Cohn do?

Judge Klant kept a tight rein on the Defense's questioning of Marjorie Cohn; allowing only that which spoke to the reasonableness of Pablo's belief that the Iraq war is illegal. But when the attorney for the government began his cross-examination, the judge gave him plenty of rope with which to hang himself - and hang himself he did.

First he carefully elicited from Marjorie the legal basis, grounded in both international and domestic law, of her conclusion that not only is the war in Iraq illegal and Pablo's conclusions to that effect thereby reasonable, but that Pablo was actually duty bound to refuse to board his ship. Next he extrapolated out to "any seaman recruit's" ability to draw the same conclusions. Clearly of the belief that Marjorie's agreement was conjuring up visions of mass mutiny in the judge's mind, and assuming that such visions would convince the judge that harsher, rather than lighter, sentencing was in order; the prosecutor did not stop with the example of Iraq. He triumphantly referenced other published works of Marjorie's concerning the illegality of the wars on Afghanistan and Yugoslavia and again demanded that she specify if she believed that any seaman recruit would be justified in refusing orders due to his/her belief that these wars were illegal as well. In all three cases, Marjorie complied with a detailed explanation of why the war in question was illegal and why the seaman recruit would be obligated to refuse to participate in them once he found them as such.

After a 20-30 minute eternity that left us all in a stupor of disbelief that the war's legality had just been debated in a military court, on the record, and had lost, badly, the attorney for the prosecution sat down.

And then the judge said, "I believe the government has just successfully proved that any seaman recruit has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal."

(emphasis mine)

Picture of the day

2005-06-02T06:36:00.000-04:00

Amesbury MA. A proud mama & a large brood of ducklings.

Picture of the day

2005-05-28T16:55:00.000-04:00

I (unfortunately) disturbed this very large fellow in Amesbury MA recently.

Pictures of the day

2005-05-28T16:54:00.000-04:00

Both pictures were taken today in New Hampshire. It's been a terribly cold and rainy spring in this area and today was the first really decent day in a long time.

Link to Kitty Blog

2005-05-22T09:42:00.000-04:00

The adult looks a lot like my feline companion, Miss Jessica, but I think she'd draw the line at being photographed with a little kitten.

(toth: Kevin Drum)

Shake it, baby!

2005-05-20T12:39:00.000-04:00

If you like cats ...

(toth: Boingboing, which has a kitty roundup, and also the gosh-darnedest Star Wars-related link I've ever seen.)

I See London, I See France...

2005-05-20T12:11:00.000-04:00

Forget about oil, forget the evil-dictator thing, forget about the intricacies of middle-east politics. All you have to do is take one look at the Saddam In His Tighty Whities photos to see exactly why Bush has such a problem with him. "Who do you think you are, Mister Big Stuff?"

Personally, I think he's packing. Which wouldn't be surprising, since Bush is the sort who'd be intimidated even by a rolled up sock.

From Think Progress

2005-05-20T11:05:00.000-04:00

An excellent (& for today's senate, unusually eloquent) rebuttal from Max Baucus regarding Santorum's puzzling & historically inaccurate rhetoric on the senate floor yesterday comparing the Democrats to Hitler. (Comments below the post worth reading too.)

Santorum is stupid. I would suggest he try a history primer, but I rather suspect some of the concepts and big words would defeat him.

A Must Read

2005-05-13T14:17:00.000-04:00

Molly Bingham, freshly home from Iraq, gives a speech.

Pictures of the day

2005-05-11T05:48:00.000-04:00

History Repeats Itself

2005-05-10T11:32:00.000-04:00

Steve Clemons at the Washington Note has been doing a great job keeping interested observers up to date on the John Bolton nomination. Excerpts from a recent post:

In the Fall of 2004, John Bolton was given the task of communicating U.S. admninistration policy on Iran -- and commenting on the prospect and process of European negotiations with Iran -- at a Washington meeting of certain G8 principals.

...Bolton simply "quickly stated administration policy and that was it. He stopped. No more discussion. He gave 'one read' of the policy and refused to do more."
In other words -- and I have confirmed this bizarre incident -- John Bolton read the administration's policy from a prepared text, but he refused to distribute that text -- and he refused to read the statement again.

He had read the statement once, fast -- and would not read it again.

Excerpts from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer:

... the Germans had drawn up proposals and Ribbentrop [Joachim Ribbentrop, German Foreign minister, later found guilty and hung for war crimes after the first Nuremberg International Military Tribunal] now proceeded to read them.

He read them in German "at top speed, or rather gabbled to me as fast as he could, in a tone of utmost annoyance," Henderson [Sir Nevile Henderson, British ambassador to Germany in 1939] reported.

[Henderson continues:]

"Of the sixteen articles I was able to gather the gist of six or seven, but it would have been quite impossible to guarantee even the exact accuracy of these without a careful study of the text itself. When he had finished I accordingly asked him to let me see it. Ribbentrop refused categorically, threw the document with a contemptuous gesture on the table ..."

It's worth pointing out, I think, that Bolton was "conferring" with allies.

Kitty Blog

2005-05-03T19:13:00.000-04:00

Miss Keesa, Living On The Edge...

Support the Troops

2005-05-03T16:00:00.000-04:00

Last week, Donald Rumsfield kicked off the "America Supports You" campaign, unveiling the latest strategy for support of stressed-out, overworked US troops sadly depleted in armor and other provisions.

“This is about supporting the troops who are supporting our country all across the world,” Rumsfeld said. “I present to you – Spiderman!”

Talk about non-sequiturs.

Spiderman did have a snappy, if ill-advised, new salute for the troops:

So how is the US government showing their support of the troops?

Well, there was a vote in the senate a few days ago where an additional 213 million dollars was set aside for the manufacture of (properly) armored humvees. The vote breakdown was 61 yeas, 39 nays. The 39 nays were 1 democrat and 38 republicans. (Including, I'm ashamed to say, both senators from New Hampshire. And, oh yeah, presidential hopeful Bill Frist, kitty-killer kompassionate konservative.)

Picture of the day

2005-05-03T15:26:00.000-04:00

Stumbled across this unusual take on the Mandelbrot lake.

On Social Security

2005-05-03T13:33:00.000-04:00

From the Washington Post, an excellent piece by E.J. Dionne Jr.

The Hyprocrisy Might Be The Worst Thing Of All...

2005-05-03T13:16:00.000-04:00

From AMERICAblog comes the touching story of a "family values" politician and his rage when his little "something on the side" is a bit late.

Um ... ???

Shameless self-promotion

2005-05-02T19:11:00.000-04:00

This will have to do until Elizabeth's book is out (real soon now!).

It's a 16.5 meg music video, wmv format.

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting ...

2005-05-02T17:03:00.000-04:00

Funnest and most entertaining movie I've seen in ages: Kung Fu Hustle.

The Elizabethan half of this blog was initiated into the club of those who've seen the light (and the flick) yesterday and wrote me this afterward:

I have never seen anything like that, and I don't imagine I ever will

again.

It came across to me very much like the director must've watched nine

straight hours of Tex Avery cartoons, eaten an enormous Szechwan dinner,

and then went to bed to have deeply disturbing dreams. And that was the

genesis of the script.

Picture of the day

2005-05-02T16:59:00.000-04:00

This young lady has been nesting in the window sill of my office. I've been playing Ella Fitzgerald, Mozart & the Beatles for her family's cultural edification while they stare at me, bemused & aghast. Sadly, her hatchling has not survived, poor little thing. (It didn't have anything to do with the music, though.)

A Couple of Blogs

2005-05-02T15:48:00.000-04:00

This one has the coolest name ever: My Karma Just Ran Over Your Dogma.

And this one is the blog of a fellow Apophysis / graphics enthusiast: She Dreams in Digital.

From the New York Times

2005-05-02T11:40:00.000-04:00

I've lost a lot of respect for the New York Times, especially over the last few years (though it goes back much further than that, since I was involved in a story in 1981 that they mis-reported badly, so I already knew they were far from perfect). Their op-ed page is still pretty good, and today there are two pieces that are worth reading: Paul Krugman debunks the latest plan for "saving" Social Security, and Bob Herbert writes about the ugliest Americans, currently representing the US in Iraq.

From the Herbert piece:

Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.

He said he believes that the absence of any real understanding of Arab or Muslim culture by most G.I.'s, combined with a lack of proper training and the unrelieved tension of life in a war zone, contributes to levels of fear and rage that lead to frequent instances of unnecessary violence.

In November 2003, after several months in Nasiriya in southern Iraq, the 320th was redeployed to Abu Ghraib. The violence there was sickening, Mr. Delgado said. Some inmates were beaten nearly to death. The G.I.'s at Abu Ghraib lived in cells while most of the detainees were housed in large overcrowded tents set up in outdoor compounds that were vulnerable to mortars fired by insurgents. The Army acknowledges that at least 32 Abu Ghraib detainees were killed by mortar fire.

Mr. Delgado, who eventually got conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged last January, recalled a disturbance that occurred while he was working in the Abu Ghraib motor pool. Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death.

Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. "I asked him," said Mr. Delgado, "if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn't get mad at all. He was, like, 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' "

The Few, The Proud, The Illegal

2005-05-02T11:28:00.000-04:00

No, not the marines, actually, but the army's got them recruitin' blues. They also have ways around them recruitin' blues.