Recently in Current Events Category

From the NY Times:

AGE OF RICHES

$6 Million for the Co-op, Then Start to Renovate

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Julia Kim rapped her spiked Gucci heels along the floor of a Midtown furniture showroom earlier this year as she approached a $30,000 custom wraparound couch that will be the centerpiece of the Manhattan co-op apartment she plans to share with her fiancé, Stephen Rushmore.

With advice from Mr. Rushmore and their decorator, John Barman, Ms. Kim deliberated for more than half an hour over details like the density of the cushions, the number of pillows and the height of the seating.

This purchase was just one of many steps in the journey that began more than a year ago when Mr. Rushmore, a consultant, and Ms. Kim, a former banker who left her job to concentrate full time on renovating the new apartment, decided to buy a duplex just off Park Avenue for $6 million.

Indeed, even after paying top dollar for a luxury apartment, most buyers see the need for more work. Like Mr. Rushmore and Ms. Kim, they often embark on costly and lengthy renovations intended to reflect not only their own taste but also their ambitions to find a perch in the social and economic swirl of today's Gilded Age.

Here's the rest of the article if you can stand to read it.

Next up from McSweeneys:

A FEW YEARS AFTER THE COMPLETE COLLAPSE OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, A CONSUMER REPORTER REVIEWS THE IPHONE. BY MATTHEW DUVERNE HUTCHINSON

Apple iPhone (8-gigabyte model)

Features

Much has been made of how the iPhone is really more than just a phone. And the point bears repeating, especially now that all communication networks have been destroyed in the Great Food Wars. But even in our post-apocalyptic agrarian wasteland, this technological marvel still boasts an impressive set of functions, a partial list of which includes:

• Walnut cracker
• Canned-goods smasher
• Slingshot projectile for hunting small woodland game
• Pestle for grinding wheat into flour (and flattening pemmican)
• Nonporous preparation surface for mixing blow-dart poisons
• Reflective signal mirror for coordinating attacks on rival scavenging tribes

  Sure, there are existing products that can already handle each of these tasks individually, but the iPhone really brings them all together into one easy and fun-to-use device.

  Design

  Apple has always had a reputation for sleek, state-of-the-art design, and the iPhone is no exception. For several weeks, I was being tracked by a pack of feral, parentless children with no sense of right or wrong. Cornered in an old boxcar, I removed the iPhone from my tattered loincloth waistband and held it out to them in an act of pure desperation. The sounds of their hissing grew quiet as the savages became entranced by its smooth, shiny surfaces and glossy, mirrored finish. Fearing me as some sort of deity, these former predators now serve as my pawns in the brutal chess match for our territory's remaining petroleum.

  Sound Quality

  Though I have not had a real conversation on my iPhone since the de-facto fall of mankind, I've had many, many imaginary conversations to stave off madness. Whether I'm speaking to my long-deceased stockbroker in an act of heartbreaking denial, or just verbally expressing the confused rage and fear I've lived with for the past seven years, the voice that responds in my head is always crystal clear and compassionate.

  Summary

  There's a good chance no one will read this, as I'm scrawling it onto the remote ruins of an old condominium building with a stick of charred wood. Nonetheless, the Apple iPhone has really changed the rules of how we communicate and survive in a constantly evolving world. I was a little disappointed that a protective carrying case is not included in the purchase price. But, overall, it's safe to say that Apple has hit yet another home run with this engaging, innovative device.

'nuff said ...

(click on image for larger version)

From a recent UNICEF study: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries

The United Kingdom and the United States find themselves in the bottom third of the rankings for five of the six dimensions reviewed.

Among the most appaling statistics is how low the US ranks in infant mortality. This while spending significantly more of its Gross Domestic Product on health care:

Health spending as percent of GDP, 2004:

United States: 15.2%
Switzerland: 11.5%
Cambodia: 10.9%
Canada: 9.9%
Japan: 7.9%
Mexico: 6.2%
Africa: 6.1%
China: 5.6%
Russia: 5.6%
India: 4.8%
Pakistan: 2.4%
Congo: 2.0%

(click pic for larger image)

This is on Salon's front page. In the article itself they change the word "uppity" to "smug".

This is really shameful.

Update - at about 8 PM they changed "uppity" to "smug" on the home page.

Columnist Molly Ivins died this week at 62 of breast cancer.

Dahlia Lithwick, herself a very good columnist on legal matters, writes a great remembrance of Ivins in her What I learned from Molly Ivins and therin relays a illustrative Ivins bon mot:

Ivins once described her job as "to provide regular instruction in the science of how to keep laughing, even though you've considered all the facts"

… which helps me put into perspective my last post on the anger I feel about Bush.

I'll miss having the opportunity to read Molly Ivins' work and I will endeavor to keep laughing.

Browsing the web today I came across this story Bush voices support for abortion rights opponents:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush marked the 34th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision Monday, telling thousands of abortion foes he shares their goal of seeing "the day when every child is welcomed in life and protected into law."

Nothing special, just another day. Just another example of his manipulation and hypocracy. As he always does, he didn't show up for the event, but phoned it in, so he could avoid being photographed there. I felt, as I usual, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, when I looked at Bush's smirking visage during yet another encounter with the on-going experience of being exposed to this man and his stupendously negative and horifying effect on this country and the world.

It occured to me, as it frequently does, that the anger that I feel, about him and his associates, that whatever apparently impotent actions I may take against them is natural and instinctive but in the long run not very healthy. But what can one do?

Then I recalled and looked up some passages in Orwell's 1984 about the Two Minutes Hate:

The next moment a hideous, grinding screech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.

…

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

Now, the metaphor is not perfect, but the experience I and many others have gone through over the past six years is like the conditioning that those poor souls in 1984, fictional though they may be, had to endure.

And so, it occured to me that what might be healthy would be for me and others in my boat to institue a practice that we could call the "Two Minutes Revulsion" and take a brief time out to project our anger towards Bush & Co., get it out of our system and then move on for the rest of the day.

Worth a try anyway …

From Jesus' General, this great insight:

Funny in a way, but so true.

This reminds me of a post I did in September 2005 showing the correlation between states that voted for Bush vs. Kerry and slave vs. free states in Civil War America.

Interesting, no ?

From Faux News, found on Digby:

From The Washington Monthly:

Frances Fragos Townsend, assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, was on CNN yesterday discussing the war in Iraq, Saddam's pending execution, and the Middle East, but CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry had the temerity to ask about the terrorist behind 9/11.

Officials from this White House are known for some bizarre comments, but Townsend's response has to go in the Hall of Fame.

HENRY: You know, going back to September 2001, the president said, dead or alive, we're going to get him. Still don't have him. I know you are saying there's successes on the war on terror, and there have been. That's a failure.

TOWNSEND: Well, I'm not sure -- it's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.

And I may yet be the King of England, but I'm just not, right now.

Mary Cheney Expecting Baby With Her Partner - New York Times

Mary Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, is expecting a baby with her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, Mr. Cheney’s office said today.

…

Focus on the Family, an influential Christian group that has provided crucial political support to President Bush, released a statement that criticized child rearing by same-sex couples.

“Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for children,” the group’s director of issues analysis, Carrie Gordon Earll, said in a statement. “Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean it’s the best for the child. Love can’t replace a mom or a dad.”

Of course we all remember the furor during the 2004 presidential campaign when Kerry mentioned that Cheney's daughter was (gasp!) a lesbian! What a laff riot these people are.

The erudite, snide (in the best sense of the word) and let's face it verbose, trickster Michael Berube brings us this touching bit of Americana.

Just listen to this clip in which our fellow Americans express their opinions on the danger that "Barack Obama" poses to us all.

Berube, as usual, has the right take on this:

There is no hope, people, and that is why I urge you to join the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now Party. Only the WAAGNFNP has an adequate understanding of our historical moment -- and of the threat Obama poses.

Truly, I believe, there is no hope other than to join the party

This story forwarded from my friend Mark in Wonder Valley:

Truthdig - Reports - Marie Cocco: The USDA’s Awkward Timing

It hasn’t the zesty political punch of that Reagan-era effort to turn ketchup into a vegetable. But really, could there be a more unfortunate time for the Agriculture Department to banish the word “hunger” from its description of people who are, well, hungry?

Just a week before most of America sits down for that excessive meal we call the Thanksgiving feast (second- and third-day snacking while watching football is optional) came a new definition for the millions among us who are more likely to turn up at a food pantry than at a well-set dining table. They are now to be known as people with “very low food security.’’ They were previously known as “food insecure, with hunger.’’ Those who had some, but not much, more to eat were known as “food insecure, without hunger.’’ Now they’re just suffering from “low food security.’’

From the respected Southern Poverty Law Center, documentation of active hate groups in the US.

Click on the link, then click on your state, and then remember where you live.

From the NYT Nuclear Deal With India Wins Senate Backing:

The Senate gave overwhelming approval late Thursday to President Bush’s deal for nuclear cooperation with India, a vote expressing that a goal of nurturing India as an ally outweighed concerns over the risks of spreading nuclear skills and bomb-making materials.

By a vote of 85 to 12, senators agreed to a program that would allow the United States to send nuclear fuel and technology to India, which has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.The agreement, negotiated by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India in March, calls for the United States to end a long moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components. For its part, India would divide its reactor facilities into civilian and military nuclear programs, with civilian facilities open to international inspections.

Critics have been unwavering in arguing that the pact would rally nations like North Korea and Iran to press ahead with nuclear weapons programs despite international complaints and threats. Opponents of the measure also warned that the deal would allow India to build more bombs with its limited stockpile of radioactive material, and could spur a regional nuclear arms race with Pakistan and China.

Doesn't look like the Dems are going to put up much of a fight.

Appalling.

Lieberman: Call me a Democrat

Sen. Joe Lieberman, who won re-election as an independent, has a message for his Senate colleagues in the next Congress: Call me a Democrat.

The three-term Connecticut lawmaker defied party leaders when he launched his independent bid after losing to Democrat Ned Lamont in the August primary.

So he loses the Democratic primary, foils the attempt of the real Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont, to win the election, and now Joe is going to be a Democrat again, retaining his seniority.

That stinks.

P.S. When I heard that Rumsfeld had "resigned" on Wednesday morning, I thought that it might be possible that Bush would appoint him Secretary of Defense, allowing the governor of Connecticut to appoint a Republican in his place, thus keeping the Dems from having a majority in the Senate. Didn't happen, but it was not outside their diabolical ways.

Actually I’m overjoyed, ecstatic, etc., etc., …

But I think that an article in the Onion puts the whole think into the right perspective:

WASHINGTON, DC—After months of aggressive campaigning and with nearly 99 percent of ballots counted, politicians were the big winners in Tuesday's midterm election, taking all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, retaining a majority with 100 out of 100 seats in the Senate, and pushing political candidates to victory in each of the 36 gubernatorial races up for grabs.

…

Despite fears that the dozens of campaign-finance violations, soft-money misappropriations, infidelity charges, hidden drunk-driving records, and protracted congressional cover-ups leaked just days before the election would hurt their chances, politicians were still elected over non-politicians in every single race.
…

Some voters, however, such as Arkansas native Patrick Bunter, who first voted for a politician—Harry Truman—in 1948, are calling this latest victory "politics as usual."

"Over the years, I grew disappointed with the job the politicians were doing, yet I kept on voting for them out of loyalty," Bunter said. "This time around, I swore I'd go with someone else, but frankly, looking at the ballot, I didn't see any other choice."

This would be funny if it wasn’t part of the pattern of people in charge going too far again …

From USATODAY.com via Attytood:

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.
The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

Wake me when its over.

From Bush’s press conference today:

The enemy still wants to strike us. The enemy still wants to achieve safe haven from which to plot and plan. The enemy would like to have weapons of mass destruction in order to attack us. These are lethal, cold-blooded killers. And we must do everything we can to protect the American people, including questioning detainees, or listening to their phone calls from outside the country to inside the country. And there was -- as you know, there was some recent votes on that issue. And the Democrats voted against giving our professionals the skill -- the tools necessary to protect the American people.

“The Democrats” have never “voted against giving our professionals the skill -- the tools necessary to protect the American people”. The issue at hand has always been to require the President to follow the law and have the authorization for wiretapping to be approved by the FISA court.

The press never asks him to justify why he is ignoring and violating the law.

This makes me crazy.

From The Register:

The US has claimed "dibs" on the Universe with its new space policy. The document, signed by President Bush, was released on a Friday, just before a long weekend in the States. This, in itself has caused a bit of a stir, but not more so than the tone and content of the document.

In it, the US government allocates itself rights to access and use space without anyone else getting in its way. It also sets security at the heart of the space agenda, frequently citing its right to use space as part of its national defence.

Significantly, however, it does not commit to restrict, or even to join talks about restricting the development of space-based weapons. This is despite a UN vote last year in which 160 nations voted in favour of such talks.

The first bullet point outlining the principles of the programme sets the tone for the rest of the document:

"The United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space by all nations for peaceful purposes, and for the benefit of all humanity. Consistent with this principle, 'peaceful purposes' allow US defence and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national interests."

In other words: "Everyone has to use space peacefully, except us. We can do what we like, cos we were here first. And anyway, if you try to stop us, it won't stay peaceful for long, which would spoil the first part of our principle."

Manifest Destiny redux, I guess ...

From Professor Juan Cole’s Informed Comment today.

Year One of the Empire Bush: Resistance is Illogical

Bush and a supine, cowardly Congress shredded the US Constitution on Tuesday, abolishing the right of a court review (habeas corpus) for some classes of suspect. Suspect, mind you, not proven criminal.

In other words, we have to be confident that George W. Bush is so competent, all-knowing, and inherently just that we can just trust him. If he says someone is an enemy combatant, then he or she is. No need to check with a judge about why he or she is being held. And then Bush can have the suspect tortured to make him confess, and can convict him on the basis of the coerced confession, all in secret.

This law creates two classes of persons inside the United States, citizens with rights and non-citizens (12 million persons? Equivalent to the entire state of Michigan!) without rights.

Basically, Bush can issue them what the French kings used to call lettres de cachet.:

' In French history, lettres de cachet were letters signed by the king of France, countersigned by one of his ministers, and closed with the royal seal, or cachet. They contained orders directly from the king, often to enforce arbitrary actions and judgements that could not be appealed. . .'

We Americans made a revolution against such arbitrary practices of the French and other Empires.

Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution says, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

I look out my window. I don't see a general Rebellion or an invasion by a foreign power. The conditions, under which the right of the imprisoned to demand that a court establish whether there are genuine grounds to hold him is suspended, are absent.

The law is unconstitutional.Moreover, our founding documents did not admit of a distinction among human beings with regard to rights. The Declaration of Independence says:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

All men here means all human beings. It says they are all created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. All of them. Not some of them.

Of course we have had these periods of neo-Monarchy and temporary insanity before in our history. There was the Alien and Sedition Act, and the Red Scare after World War I, etc.

King George came on O'Reilly and said that it is "illogical" to disagree with his policies in Iraq and branded arguments that he is drifting along without a plan "propaganda."

Bush sounds more and more like the Borg every day. I swear to God, next we are going to get up in the morning and hear him proclaim, "Resistance is futile!"

So of course eventually Bush-think will lead to attempts to cure those of us who are critical of him of our illogicality, and to suppress our "propaganda." We'll all be right-thinking non-propagandists after a little water-boarding. You say we don't have to worry about that because we are citizens? But what is to stop Bush from declaring you an enemy combatant and stripping you of your citizenship? And then keeping you away from any civil court where those letters of cachet can be challenged?

The Republic is Dead, Long Live the Republic.

You want a resurrection of the Republic?

Read this sobering article Truthdig - Reports - Chris Hedges: Bush‘s Nuclear Apocalypse:

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran.  The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month.  It may be a bluff.  It may be a feint.  It may be a simple show of American power.  But I doubt it. 

War with Iran - a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East - is probable by the end of the Bush administration.  It could begin in as little as three weeks.  This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.“ They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran.  Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council.  He knew nothing about Central America.  He knows nothing about the Middle East.  He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light.  And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.

These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war, a doctrine which, as William R. Polk points out, is a slight corruption of Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution. These two revolutionary doctrines serve the same function, to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to silence domestic critics who challenge leaders in a time of national crisis. It works. The citizens of the United States, slowly being stripped of their civil liberties, are being herded sheep-like, once again, over a cliff.

From St. Paul Pioneer Press via Cruel Site of the Day:

MADISON — A congressional candidate from northwestern Wisconsin says airport security screeners should search all Muslim males. Paul Nelson, a Woodville Republican, issued a statement Monday calling for a "no-nonsense" plan for airport security. "Racial profiling is one way that we can cut down on security risks," Nelson said in an interview with WIXK Radio in New Richmond. Part of the interview was posted on Wisconsin Radio Network's Web site. "It's time to stop being politically correct here and be serious and tough on the war on terror." When asked how to tell what a Muslim male looks like, Nelson replied: "Well, you know, if he comes in wearing a turban and his name is Muhammed, that's a good start."

The American Way at its finest!

Recently I posted that Bush stated "… we have given our officials the tools they need to protect our people".

It however seems more important that we retain our "moral purity" by keeping gays out of the military, than retaining badly needed Arabic language skills.

The U.S. Army recently discharged a highly regarded Arabic linguist who was the target of an anonymous email “outing” campaign. Former Sergeant Bleu Copas was stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., and was a member of the prestigious 82nd Airborne Division. A decorated Sergeant who received impressive performance reviews, Copas also performed in the 82nd Airborne Chorus. His dismissal, under the federal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual personnel, brings the total number of Arabic language specialists dismissed under the ban to at least 55. Neither Copas nor his command know who was the source of the email campaign.

Credit Truthdig.

Following Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic senatorial primary, the GOP posted the following image on the front page of their website.

Follow this link and you can clearly see that the party whose leader campaigned for President as being a "uniter, not a divider", initially posted the image with the photo of Democratic party leader Howard Dean manipulated so that he would appear with a Hitlerian mustache. After they were caught, they modified the photograph to remove the "enhancement".

Lovely folks, huh?

From Steven Berlin Johnson's blog on the argument that anti-Iraq-war advocates, specifically the Democrats should be making:

This plot demonstrates the seriousness of the threat posed against us, and, if all the early indications prove to be right, the continuing existence of the Al Qaeda network. It also demonstrates that top-notch law enforcement work, coupled with international collaboration -- and, yes, some wire-tapping -- can truly make us safer. If we had been in charge after 9/11, we would have devoted our military and law enforcement resources exclusively to tracking down Islamic terror networks, with the highest priority given to hunting down Osama Bin Laden. We wouldn't have introduced the huge distraction of Iraq, which has both been a terrible drain on resources and lives, and made us many new enemies in regions where we need more friends. If you elect us this fall, we promise a renewed focus on the enemies that actually threaten us directly. While we can't immediately withdraw from Iraq, we propose a steady re-allocation of manpower and money from Iraq to the immediate threats on American lives. We believe in the war on terror just as firmly as the Republicans do. We just think it should concentrate on capturing terrorists, not rebuilding the electrical grid in Bagdhad.

Couldn't agree more.

Yep, but it could all be over on August 22.

Better cancel those holidays. We now have a date for Armageddon, and it's a week on Tuesday - August 22.

This information comes from no lesser source than the Wall Street Journal, where Bernard Lewis, President Bush's favourite historian, provides the details.

"In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity," the professor writes, "there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time - Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long-awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined.

"Mr Ahmadinejad [the Iranian president] and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the US about nuclear development by August 22. This was at first reported as 'by the end of August', but Mr Ahmadinejad's statement was more precise."

Lewis continues: "What is the significance of August 22? This year, August 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque', usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (cf, Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world."

From Bush's statement today on this morning's regarding the discovery of the plot to blow up airplanes:

This country is safer than it was prior to 9/11. We've taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously, we're still not completely safe, because there are people that still plot and people who want to harm us for what we believe in. It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America. And that is why we have given our officials the tools they need to protect our people.

I emphasize his statement: "It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America." … who exactly is it that is saying that there is not a threat posed by terrorists? No one of course. Yet again Bush makes a straw man argument to try and make people believe that his approach is infallible and the only one true course of action, and the comment passes through the media with no challenge or comment. I've posted on this tendency before.

It is great that the powers that be in Britain are "on the case" and have apparently thwarted this plot. They are doing their jobs, and any responsible government would be doing the same. And it deserves attention in the news. But really now, where is the perspective. I have looked at CNN and MSNBC this morning and it appears to be the only news that is happening in the world. This is a disturbing and all too familiar phenomenon. Just like the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah has pushed the civil war in Iraq (which was already sorely under-reported) out of the media's attention, now today's event has pushed everything else out of view.

Brilliant! Click the link for more.

Amnesty International in Switzerland broke a new outdoor campaign May 29th that was created by Walker Werbeagentur Zuerich. The campaign uses the tagline "It's not happening here but it's happening now", in various languages, from French to German. Using the transparent billboards, the campaign aims to show people what is going on in the world, even if it's not happening in front of them at the bus stop. The ads portray issues in countries like Iraq, China, and Sudan.

I suppose that the issue of illegal immigration is "important", but I really doubt that it is truly timely and in any case it seems to me that it is more about an ugly xenophobia rather than about real problems. If I were to list the most important issues that we as a nation should be addressing, illegal immigration would not rise to anywhere near the top of the list. Global warming, universal health care, nuclear proliferation, the war in Iraq, homelessness, hunger ... I could go on and on before I would reach the immigration issue. But Bush and his ilk are way down in the polls and they is grasping at straws to pander to "the base" in hopes that the 2006 mid-term elections and I suppose his legacy are not a disaster. Too late for that methinks.

This post by David Corn, Good Fences and Lousy Reading Comprehension, speaks well to the the cheapness of the debate and points out that the frequent mentions of the phrase "good fences make good neighbors" abuse the sense that the line as it is used in Robert Frost's poem, "The Mending Wall":

… I doubt he had the US-Mexico border in mind when he penned these lines. But he was clearly wondering about a fellow who clings so solidly to the idea of a wall. Frost's "good fences make good neighbors" line was no policy prescription. It was an illumination of the human tendency to embrace and then stick with a simple and comforting thought.

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.'

I just really, really like the tile of this article,
Americans don't like President Bush personally much anymore, either

WASHINGTON - It's not just the way he's doing his job. Americans apparently don't like President Bush personally much anymore, either.

A drop in his personal popularity, as measured by several public polls, has shadowed the decline in Bush's job-approval ratings and weakened his political armor when he and his party need it most.

Following from last week's revelations that virtually all telephone calls are being logged, for "national security data mining" purposes, Billmon blogs on the ever more apparent, evolving police state that we are living under in his tour de force, or should I say a justifiable tour de paranoia, titled Leviathan:

Leviathan, in other words, is almost free of any restraint, save the arbitrary limits - such as they may be - set by the Cheney administration or, perhaps more importantly, by custom and habit. The creature doesn't know all the things it can do, but only because it hasn't tried to do them yet. But it's starting to figure this out, and it's going to take more than an election and a few corruption probes to make it back down. Having entrusted their security and their liberties to the beast, Leviathan's subjects will be lucky not to wind up like Jonah, lodged in its belly.

He ends by citing polling data that shows that a very large chunk of the populace would rather be "protected":

Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center, said in repeated polls taken since Sept. 11, 2001, "a solid plurality, around 50 percent" continues to say they would rather the government went too far in restricting civil liberties than not going far enough in protecting the country.

"There's a concern about terrorism that continues to this day. And, on balance, people are saying, `protect us,'" said Doherty.

Neil Young's latest album is, to me, in the tradition of Tom Paine's pamphlets in railing against tyranny ... in this case, the war in Iraq and Bush and his gang. The music is energetic and the lyrics speak right to the point. Song titles include Let's Impeach The President, Looking For A Leader. The record closes with a 100 voice choir singing, somewhat cheesily in my mind, but effectively to make a point, America The Beautiful.

Its encouraging to see that many musicians are making records that speak to the dire straights we are in today. Young, acting as the elder statesman that he has become, continuing his tradition of speaking out that started with "Ohio"; remember "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming ... Four dead in O-hi-o". While he lapsed in the '80s in professing support for Reagan ... I am willing to forgive him for that. If nothing else, Neil Young is sincere.

The preznit in an interview with Germany's largest mass-circulation newspapers, Bild-Zeitung, displays his grasp (not) of history, his self-absorbtion and sense of personal manifest destiny. While giving a tour of the Oval Office to the reporter he says:

That's George Washington, the first President, of course. The interesting thing about him is that I read three -- three or four books about him last year. Isn't that interesting? People say, so what? Well, here's the "so what." You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you're gone. If they're still analyzing the presidency of George Washington -- (laughter.) So Presidents shouldn't worry about the history. You just can't. You do what you think is right, and if you're thinking big enough, that history will eventually prove you right or wrong. But you won't know in the short-term.

You can read the whole car crash, which is painful to read but very instructive here.

From Reversing The Sexual Revolution in The Washington Monthly:

Since 1996, thanks to the Republican addition of Section 912 to that year's welfare reform bill, the federal government has spent over a billion dollars funding "abstinence only" sex education programs for teens. Recently, however, the Bush administration rewrote the rules so that programs can only get funding if they promote avoidance of sex at any age until you're safely ensconced in a traditional marriage of one man and one woman.

That's ONE BILLION DOLLARS, folks ... IN YOUR COUNTRY, to promote, and they hope (hopelessly, I hope), enforce this stupidity.

My dentist, who I have been going to for twenty years is in Burbank. I call him the "Dentist To The Stars" because his offices are near many movie and television studios and there are frequently "persons of note" who use his services. Not too long ago I ran into Smokey Robinson in the hallway! "Hey" to Smoke, if you're out there in the blogosphere!

Being the office of the DTTS, the accommodations are deluxe and each dental chair has a flat screen television attached to it with full cable access. I could have watched anything but this morning at 7:30 AM, after I showed up for my appointment to repair a filling, and filling in the time that the DTTS was seeing other patients (i.e., late for mine!) I was presented with President Bush's news conference.

Here's an excerpt from today's press conference where the now not so secret but illegal NSA wiretaps are questioned:

Q …. On the subject of the terrorist surveillance program --

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q -- not to change the tone from all this emphasis on bipartisanship, but there have been now three sponsors to a measure to censure you for the Implementation of that program. The primary sponsor, Russ Feingold, has suggested that impeachment is not out of the question. And on Sunday, the number two Democrat in the Senate refused to rule that out pending an investigation. What, sir, do you think the impact of the discussion of Impeachment and censure does to you and this office, and to the nation during a time of war, and in the context of the election?

THE PRESIDENT: I think during these difficult times -- and they are difficult when we're at war -- he American people expect there to be a honest and open debate without needless partisanship. And that's how I view it. I did notice that nobody from the Democrat Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program. You know, if that's what they believe, if people in the party believe that, then they ought to stand up and say it. They ought to stand up and say the tools we're using to protect the American people shouldn't be used. They ought to take their message to the people and say, vote for me, I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program. That's what they ought to be doing. That's part of what is an open and honest debate.

OK, so one would reasonably expect a follow up question calling Bush on the fact the no Democrat has called for "getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program", but they are calling him on breaking the oversight law in conducting surveillance. But no ... no follow-up. And since I was sitting in the chair for so long, will no impending drilling, I got to flip over to a cable news channel. The issue of Bush being asked about Feingold's censure motion was mentioned, but they passed over the the fact that Bush didn't address the real issue and that the reporters at the press conference let him slide. Maddening!

There was an excellent story that came over the AP last Saturday that called Bush on his use of "straw-man" statements:

"Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," President Bush said recently.

Another time he said, "Some say that if you're Muslim you can't be free."

"There are some really decent people," the president said earlier this year, "who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care ... for all people."

Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made such assertions.

When the president starts a sentence with "some say" or offers up what "some in Washington" believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.

The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position.

He typically then says he "strongly disagrees" — conveniently knocking down a straw man of his own making.

By the way, my mouth is still numb.

As reported by NPR today and transcribed by Raw Story former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gives some straight talk about the trend towards attacking our judiciary:

I, said O'Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O'Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

Recently after a flight in Australia, seminal punk rock pioneer and spoken word artist Henry Rollins received a letter from a bureaucrat who had been reviewing citizen's reports from the "National Security Hotline to report terrorists" informing him that a fellow passenger "nominated (him) as a possible threat", because Rollins was seen reading Jihad: The Rise Of Militant Islam In Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid, published by Yale University Press.

Rollins, true to himself responded to the letter:

I was reading a book called Jihad by Ahmed Rashid which is a history of Central Asia. I didn't speak to the man next to me past how do you do. I think Ahmed Rashid is published by Yale University Press. Bush's alma mater. Please tell your government and everyone in your office to go fuck themselves. Tell them twice. If your boss is looking for something to do, you can tell him I suggest he go fuck himself. Baghdad's safer than my hometown and your PM is a sissy. You have a nice night.

This incident recalled this passage from Orwell's 1984:

The quacking voice from the next table, temporarily silenced during the Ministry's announcement, had started up again, as loud as ever. For some reason Winston found himself thinking of Mrs. Parsons, with her wispy hair and the dust in the creases in her face. Within two years those children would be reporting her to the Thought Police. Mrs. Parsons would be vaporized.

Just a reminder everyone ... watch your step. Our "leaders" are training the populace well.

A new blog has appeared over the past few months, written by constitutional attorney Glenn Greenwald, called Unclaimed Territory. Recently he has been focusing on the NSA surveillance scandal, and his posts are comprehensive, rigorous and enlightening. Being an attorney (and believe me I've known my share of them) Mr. Greenwald is frequently quite verbose but never superfluous. This is not meant so much as a criticism, but as a caveat to my recommendation to his blog which requires the reader to be prepared in engage in reading his fully reasoned posts.

A good example of his posts is The Long Hard Slog which reasons that the