Fiat Lux

I have to think long and hard about whether the new "Spirit of America" program is one worth supporting. On the face of it, the idea has merit. Ordinary Americans set aside their differences on the war's merits and send Iraqis things to help rebuild their lives - items such as laptop computers, baseballs, and power tools. What's not to like? Iraqis learn that Americans are not all evil and Americans get to help the Iraqi society rebuild.

The problem is, nothing is ever that simple.

If the issue was sending food to people who were starving - life and death issues - that would be different. Jewish law requires that you help people in genuine need. But someone whose main need is a toy is not someone in danger of starving to death. In cases like that, other considerations can come into play.

Here's a what-if for you: What if 'Spirit of America' manages to make a significant improvement in Iraq between now and November? Enough so that swing voters who have been soured on Bush due to the war decide that they can still comfortably vote for Bush? We get 4 more years of liars who think laws don't apply to them running our country and ruining our economy.

Is 4 more years of Bush a price worth paying to send Iraqis 2 tons of Frisbees?

Maybe I'm selfish. Maybe I'm cynical. But I am not going to join the chorus on this one just yet.

Accprding to Brighthand, Sony is getting out of the PDA business.

I had trouble understanding why Sony felt the need to push so many new Clie models out the door so quickly, so I'm not surprised by the rumors of flat profitability. I'm sure there's lessons to be learned for other PDA manufacturers. But it's tough to spin this as even remotely a Good Thing for
the Palm Economy.

It's also a bummer for me & Scott. We've owned 3 Clie models over the past few years, and I loved my 760C so much that I bought a second one when the original was stolen.

To follow up to my earlier post on more Administration lies and how the Washington Post is calling them on it, blogger Joel Carris deconstructs the responding spin.

Bush's campaign released this statement on Monday rebutting the Washington Post article. It's absolutely brilliant. What the campaign does here is they take multiple assertions from the article and meticulously show through a series of quotes and references how the Washington Post was exactly right in calling the statements misleading.

Hang on to your aspirin bottle, because there's a torrent of minutia involved in the deconstruction. The long and the short of it is, the Post was right. The Administration lied their butts off and not even a mountain of spin can get them out of it.

Taking a break from politics, here's a neat news item: Prayer does not help you get pregnant after all.

It was a miracle that created headlines around the world. Doctors at one of the world's top medical schools claimed to have scientifically proved the power of prayer.

Many Americans took the Columbia University research - announced in October 2001 after the terror attacks on New York and Washington - as a sign from God. It seemed to prove that praying helped infertile women to conceive.

But The Observer can reveal a story of fraud and cover-up behind the research. One of the study's authors is a conman obsessed with the paranormal who has admitted to a multi-million-dollar scam.

Now, I am not even remotely a scientist, but there does seem to be something slightly hinky with the numbers in the study. If you look at Table II, the NIP group (not prayed for), had 28 preembryos implanted, of which 21 resulted in successful pregnancies. This is a success rate of 75%. The IP group (prayed for) had 62 preembryos implanted, of which 44 resulted in successful pregnancies. This is a success rate of 70% - a figure lower than the not prayed for group. So how did the authors come up with the original claim of a 100% improvement in implantation success? Or am I just a moron that can't read the numbers correctly?

The Journal of Reproductive Medicine is apparently a reputable organization. Why they decided to publish this in the first place is a mystery to me. My guess is they didn't know how to vet pseudo-science like the power of prayer and didn't want to seem politically incorrect by outright refusing to print the study. Less likely - perhaps some misguided believers on the staff were so thrilled to see a study 'proving' their beliefs that the standard review procedure was skipped.

Either way, it's another example of the pervasive influence of religion in America today and why it's a problem.

The trailer for Fahrenheit 9/11 is out.

I am not a complete admirer of Michael Moore. In fact, I couldn't get through "Stupid White Men", it annoyed me too much. I prefer Bill Maher or Al Franken; they make anger funnier. But I'll go see this one when it comes out.

I didn't have much to add to the noise about George Tenet's retirement, but the news that a second senior CIA official is leaving makes you wonder what the heck is really going on...

James Pavitt, deputy director for operations, has announced his retirement. Apparently he was the guy in charge of human intelligence (AKA spies).

The repor insists that there's no coincidences here, that this was all planned in advance, but I have got to wonder - why these two? Why now? What's really going on here?

Courtesy of Kevin Drum:

CLANCY ON WOLFOWITZ....From ... Deborah Norville's segment with Anthony Zinni and Tom Clancy last night:

Deborah Norville: What's your impression of Paul Wolfowitz?

Tom Clancy: Is he working for our side?

As they say, ouch.

Update: Further reading of the Washington Monthly commentary on this item brought out that lovely (not!) meme, the "Jews Have Dual Loyalty" canard. Now I do not particularly like Wolfowitz, but I really hate it when people suggest that because someone is a Jew that their loyalties are questionable.

Despite this, I still think the original comment was funny in a snarky kind of way.

John Dean, of all people, ought to know a thing or two about Presidents who break the law. So when he writes an article about the serious implications of President Bush's consultation with a criminal defense attorney, it's time to sit up and take notice.

Here's the money quote:

Undoubtedly, those from the White House have been asked if they spoke with the president about the leak. It appears that one or more of them may indeed have done so.

Dean's take on the situation is that if the President did not know anything about the leak, he wouldn't need to call in outside counsel. The fact that he did so strongly suggests that he knew about the leak (emphasis added).

On this subject, I spoke with an experienced former federal prosecutor who works in Washington, specializing in white collar criminal defense (but who does not know Sharp). That attorney told me that he is baffled by Bush's move - unless Bush has knowledge of the leak. "It would not seem that the President needs to consult personal counsel, thereby preserving the attorney-client privilege, if he has no knowledge about the leak," he told me.

The question that remains to be answered is, in those immortal words: "What did he know and when did he know it?".

The other important question that needs an answer: is the Plame investigation going to get anywhere significant before November?

I finally got around to adding the obligatory archive of pet pictures here. Feel free to ignore if you're not a cat person.

I voted against Ronald Reagan. I vigorously disagreed with many of his philosophies and was disgusted by Iran-Contra. But I did respect him and his passing lessens America.

Rest in peace, Mr President.

A whiff of anti-Semitism seems to be in the wind these days. Kevin Drumm has more on the smearing of George Soros.

On a more positive note, I decided to answer the haters another way. I went and stood with SF Voices For Israel and waved a big Israeli flag at demonstrators for several hours yesterday. I'm sunburned but it was worth it. It feels like too many people these days know what they're against, but not too many people know what they're for. It felt good to go stand for something - in this case, Israel.

Most unexpected note from the rally: At one point a contingent of Soviet Jewish émigrés started singing the Russian national anthem (which I only recognized because it was sung in The Hunt For Red October). I have no idea why they were singing it and it didn't seem to quite fit into the proceedings, but it was touching in its own way.

Most personally uncomfortable note: About 20 or so Freeper types showed up with American flags, Bush bumper stickers and "Vote Arnold" t-shirts, and mostly anti-communist signs. I felt a little weird standing next to them, knowing that on just about every other issue we completely disagree.

Party platforms are supposed to spell out the guidelines within which members of the party operate on a policy basis. That's nowhere near the same thing as actually getting laws on the books, of course, but it's a clear indicator of which way a party wants to go. So when I read the new party platform the Texas Republican Party has adopted, I was more than a little concerned.

Here's three of the scariest items:

A plank in a section titled "Promoting Individual Freedom and Personal Safety" proclaims the United States a "Christian nation."

"We therefore oppose any governmental action to restrict, prohibit or remove public display of the Decalogue or other religious symbols."

[The platform] refers to "the myth of the separation of church and state."

Considering that the Republican party currently controls the Texas legislature and the governor's mansion, one wonders exactly how far they will push the envelope trying to put these party planks into the law books.

Not too long ago, it was not uncommon to see signs that said "Whites Only" in the South. You'd think that after all this time they would know better than to hang a sign on the state of Texas that says 'Jews Not Welcome'. Apparently not.

Tip of the hat to Atrios for the link. Kevin Drumm also has a longer assessment of the platform.

My father has developed the endearing(?) habit of labeling things "Commie Pinko" if he doesn't agree with them. As in, "That commie pinko rag the New York Times". Mom and I have both reminded him that he really need to come up with something a little more timely than "commie" but whatever, it makes him happy.

He still likes the Wall Street Journal, although today's edition might have gotten him mumbling a bit. You need to be a subscriber to get access to their website but here's a reprint (hopefully a legit one): Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture.

It looks to me that the lawyers who wrote this document took a conclusion and found whatever they could to try and justify it, without looking at whether their baseline assumptions were in fact correct. And their conclusions are worthy of Orwell, or maybe even Kafka.

For example:

Foremost, the lawyers rely on the "commander-in-chief authority," concluding that "without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority" to wage war.

Now, I am not a lawyer, but if I read that right, it seems to say that unless something is explicitly illegal, the President can do it or order it to be done. That makes me a little nervous but whether that's the actual intent of the Constitution is something I'll leave to people who actually went to law school. Let's just say the point is arguable and move on.

And we come to the heart of the matter. Torture is illegal under both US law and international law that the US has signed onto, most notably the UN's Convention Against Torture. Ratified by the US in 1994, the Convention Against Torture states that

"no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture," and that orders from superiors "may not be invoked as a justification of torture."

Pretty straightforward, you'd think. But for 100 pages, the Bush administration lawyers tried to find their way around it, and of course came to the conclusion that despite the fact that torture is flat-out illegal there was a way out.

1) Torture should be redefined so that the US can do more to prisoners without actually having to call it torture:

"The infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture," the report advises. Such suffering must be "severe," the lawyers advise, and they rely on a dictionary definition to suggest it "must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure."

2) Even if it is actual torture, it's OK to do it if the President says so. See above, plus

Likewise, the lawyers found that "constitutional principles" make it impossible to "punish officials for aiding the president in exercising his exclusive constitutional authorities" and neither Congress nor the courts could "require or implement the prosecution of such an individual."

My father would probably say, "You're damn right it's OK!". Just because you really, really want to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Put the shoe on the other foot. Is it OK if Croatia adopts the same policy? What about Iran or North Korea? If we expect our people to be treated well, if we expect America to maintain respect in the world community, we have to follow the same set of rules we expect of others.

Now some might say that terrorists don't follow rules, so why should we? To which I say, we need to, because otherwise we lose the right to say we're any better than them. Just look at the quagmire of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Any time Israel has given in to its worse instincts, it gets creamed in the court of world opinion. The Bush administration has already started down that path. Of course, some might suggest that the administration doesn't care, because they can't envision a situation where they themselves will ever personally be at risk. I just wish I had a better way to say how wrong they are.

There's an excellent analysis of the legal issues here over at Intel Dump. Whiskey Bar also has a good take on the subject.

John Ashcroft today issued a classic non-denial denial in front of a pissed-off (and rightfully so) Senate Judiciary Committee today.

Responding to questions about the paper, Ashcroft said, “The president of the United States has not ordered any conduct that would violate the Constitution of the United States, that would violate not one of the laws enacted by the Congress or that would violate any of the various treaties.”

Ashcroft would not comment directly on the 2002 departmental memo that laid out a rationale in which the president was not necessarily bound by anti-torture laws or treaties because of his authority as commander in chief to protect national security.

As I said, a classic - especially the use of circular logic. He comes out with a nice strong soundbite yet avoids saying anything about the actual issue at hand. Since the policy paper in question lays out a rationale by which the Administration is not breaking any laws, Ashcroft can say that no laws are being broken. Bah.

November can't come soon enough. I want these liars out of office so bad I can taste it.

More analysis of the Torture Memo that hit the news yesterday, this time by noted legal scholar Michael Froomkin. It's well worth a read.

His conclusion is straightforward:

everyone who wrote or signed [the memo] strikes me as morally unfit to serve the United States.

If anyone in the higher levels of government acted in reliance on this advice, those persons should be impeached. If they authorized torture, it may be that they have committed, and should be tried for, war crimes. And, as we learned at Nuremberg, “I was just following orders” is NOT (and should not be) a defense.

And that's just what he has to say about the first 56 pages.

At the risk of overload on the torture issue, one more post on it.

Tonight I read Digby's take on it and was struck by how well he gets to the heart of the matter. There's been a lot of anger, outrage, and disgust (and deservedly so) about this issue. Digby has transcended these responses and his eloquence is moving.

Do read what he has to say.

Have had the blahs the last day or so, maybe I'm a bit blogged out. Here's a bit of good news to those of us with multi-TiVo households:

TiVo has cut their monthly rates for the 2nd through 5th TiVo in the household. That's $72 less I have to pay them.

My feeling?

The best quote from the Ronald Reagan funeral - perhaps from the entire week - belonged to Ron Reagan Jr today:

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.

Thanks Kevin Drum and the Washington Post for the pointers to a transcript.

Mikhail Gorbachev got off a good shot at George W Bush tonight on Nightline. It's too soon for a transcript, but roughly here's what he said:

The desire to bring democracy to countries that have other customs and traditions ... it's a very primative form of thinking, like what the old-line Bolsheviks would do.

In other words, Gorbachev called W a commie.

I'll update tomorrow when a transcript is available.

Can anyone prove one way or the other whether Capitol Hill Blue is to be considered a reliable source or not?

If it turns out that it's just clever satire or wishful thinking, that's OK. I just want to know.

I let slide the recent report that the GOP is trying to get churches in PA more actively involved in politics, but taken together with this report about Bush's trip to the Vatican it's a disturbing trend.

It's no secret that regular church-goers are significantly more likely to vote Republican. And as the Times pointed out, African-American churches are frequently strongly involved in 'get out the vote' efforts for the Democrats. So in that sense, why should this matter?

It matters because this administration has tried in numerous ways to blur the line between religion and politics. And as a member of a minority religion I find that profoundly threatening. The more talk I hear about Jesus in the public sphere and from elected officials, the less I feel like this is my America too.

I finally got around to watching The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara yesterday.

All I can say is, wow. Anyone who doesn't think our situation in Iraq today is not similar to the situation in Vietnam needs to see this. It's oh so clear that the people running this country have not learned a damn thing in the ensuing 40 years. Some of the things LBJ said in 1964 (according to the movie) could just have easily come out of GW Bush's mouth. I've blogged previously about how Rumsfeld has channeled McNamara.

One point McNamara made that stands out in my memory was about the huge culture gap between the US and Vietnam, and its resulting problems. He more or less said, "we though we were fighting the Cold War. They (the Vietnamese) thought they were fighting a civil war". This was contrasted sharply in the movie with how the Cuban Missile Crisis was handled, where McNamara describes how the US players put themselves into the Soviet shoes and thought through how to resolve the crisis and save face on both sides.

With Vietnam, LBJ is quoted as saying they didn't know what was going on in Vietnam as they got into the war, except that they knew they had to win the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese. "We need to be able to guarantee their security" was another phrase I jotted down as I watched. The parallels with today are so obvious it's not even funny.

McNamara paints himself now as someone who had grave reservations about Vietnam but ran the war as best he could out of loyalty, until finally he found himself disagreeing with LBJ so strongly he had to go. Whether that's really how it was, I don't know. And although he was pushed rather strongly by the filmmakers, he refused to say whether he regretted what he did as Secretary of Defense or explain why, if he felt the war was wrong, he would not speak out against it after he left government service. he sys he has his reasons, but doesn't say what they are.

All in all, for history or political buffs, it's well worth renting. In the additional materials on the DVD are several clips not included in the movie. One was the famous 1964 'girl with dasies/nuclear bomb' commercial LBJ used. I'd read about it many times but never seen it. I sat there slackjawed as it played out - it is amazingly powerful.

The Washington Post has published a copy of a second memo that says torture's OK, this one a DOJ product, and Froomkin's at it again. His summary says it all:

In the views of the author(s), there’s basically nothing Congress can do to constrain the President’s exercise of the war power. The Geneva Conventions are, by inevitable implications, not binding on the President, nor is any other international agreement if it impedes the war effort. I’m sure our allies will be just thrilled to hear that. And, although the memo nowhere treats this issue, presumably, also, the same applies in reverse, and our adversaries should feel unconstrained by any treaties against poison gas, torture, land mines, or anything else? Or is ignoring treaties a unique prerogative of the USA?

What I find particularly repellant is this (from the WaPo):

The 2002 memo, for example, included the interpretation that "it is difficult to take a specific act out of context and conclude that the act in isolation would constitute torture." The memo named seven techniques that courts have considered torture, including severe beatings with truncheons and clubs, threats of imminent death, burning with cigarettes, electric shocks to genitalia, rape or sexual assault, and forcing a prisoner to watch the torture of another person.

"While we cannot say with certainty that acts falling short of these seven would not constitute torture," the memo advised, ". . . we believe that interrogation techniques would have to be similar to these in their extreme nature and in the type of harm caused to violate law."

In other words, anything that's not part of the Seven Illegal Techniques is OK.

I can't find any new words to express my disgust.

SF Gate columnist Carol Lloyd does an interesting article on Burning Man from a city planning perspective.

One factoid that stuck out:

the nonprofit organization that sponsors the event has 20 full-time employees, a Department of Public Works, a DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles), a tech department, a media department, an infirmary and an airport.

No wonder tickets have gotten so expensive.

I've been meaning to do this for a while now, but with the recent increase in my site's traffic this is a good time to finally post about some coffee that people I know are helping to bring to the USA.

The company is called Cafe Cosa. According to the website, their Q'Tal Tarrazu coffee is 100% single-origin Tarrazu coffee from Costa Rica. I'm by no means a coffee expert, but it's good stuff. Strong but not bitter. Worth a try.

Check out their website and give the coffee a try!

Here's an idea worth considering: Replace the Pledge of Allegance with the Preamble of the Consitution.

The Preamble, which I like many others of my generation memorized thanks to Schoolhouse Rock, is not written as a stand-alone piece of langauge and doesn't have the same patriotic 'punch' that the Pleage does. But looking at it as an alternative to the debate over "under God" is a very good idea and I hope it changes the argument some.

What does it say about America that Newt Gingrich is now considered a wingnut that we can live with? Or so Ezra at Pandagon thinks:

So what do you do when you take on the throne and lose? Well some, like Lucifer, found a realm of eternal damnation and torture others for eternity. Others read a lot of spy novels and review so obsessively they crack Amazon's Top 500. Newt Gingrich is the latter.

As an addendum on Gingrich, he's an interesting case in the discussion Matt Stolelr and I have been having. As radical and poisonous as anyone our polity has ever been, he also presided over a GOP obsessed with policy. While the current group (DeLay, et al) have his bile they possess none of his wonkishness nor relative honesty about their agenda. To say this shows how far we've fallen, but Newt was the sort of wingnut I could live with. At least he stood for something beyond partisan politics and attempted to engage legislation in a meaningful way.

I checked Newt's review list on Amazon - the man has pretty lousy taste in spy novels.

It's been years since I regularly read the Village Voice, but there's a recent article that makes a point I've been saying for some time now. In looking at the last few years of my career, I've had to say, "I guessed wrong when I chose a career doing technology marketing. I thought the sector wouldn't fall as hard as it did, or even if it did fall, I had enough connections and a good enough resume to keep employed." I guessed wrong and paid the price. And now the Voice is looking at this same issue:

Choosing a career path is a high-stakes gamble on where the jobs are likely to be two or four years down the road. Guess wrong and you could end up at a dead-end retail or fast-food job, slowly climbing out of a deep, dank hole of debt. Guess right, and you'll enter a job market that offers less security than ever.

I'm older than the people the author highlights as examples, but he has profiled my life too, down to the choices I made when my career crumbled and I needed to take a job - any job - to keep it together. I try hard not to wallow in self-pity over what happened. I certainly don't think the world owes me a career. But it's damn hard to build a life when the career choices you make go so swiftly from right to wrong.

Here's a look at the future:

May marked the nation's third straight month of job growth, but the long-range view is mixed. For the best handicapping, you want the job market equivalent of a Las Vegas line-maker, the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C. Every couple of years officials there release the mother of all occupational outlooks, the 10-year employment projections. The most recent one, published in February, projected 21.3 million net new jobs through 2012. Construction jobs should keep growing (expect to see a million more by 2012). The strongest service-sector bets are in education, health care, and state and local government. The single best choice may be to join the ranks of registered nurses (623,000 new jobs).

But here's the depressing news: Of the top 10 occupations with the rosiest projections, seven are by and large poorly paid McJobs: retail (596,000 new jobs by 2012), customer service (460,000), food preparation (454,000), cashiers (454,000), janitors (414,000), waiters and waitresses (367,000), and nursing aides (343,000). And the BLS admits its numbers don't distinguish between full-time jobs with benefits and part-time or temp work. In other words, there will be plenty of jobs, but far fewer careers.

I have been giving a lot of thought recently to going back to school and finally getting a Master's degree. According to this, I should be looking at nursing school if I want some career stability and even then, who knows what will happen 5 years from now.

My Depression-era grandparents would probably tell me that work is not meant to be something you like, so go to nursing school. But I have no interest whatsoever in doing it. Perhaps I'm like one of the out of work buggy whip makers who were unable to let go of the career they used to have - except that technology and marketing are neither of them going away. Hence my thought that what I really need is an MBA. Of course, getting one would mean even more debt and more time off the job market. A scary thought given our financial situation. But is staying still even an option anymore?

Tip of the hat to Whoviating for the link.

Sometimes it feels like the Teflon coating so famously ascribed to Ronald Reagan sticks itself to every Republican administration. Per Atrios today:

I'm starting to wonder when the Bush administration will start receiving the label, "scandal plagued," as the Clinton administration does and did, even though most of those scandals were just made up scandals and not real ones.

How many CIA agents have to have their covers blown?

Maybe it's just that the Congress is also Republican led, hence no pesky panels of inquiry, special prosecutors, or impeachment articles.

Generally speaking I am highly skeptical of conspiracy theories unless there's some serious paper trail to back them up. But the one thing that the latest Al Qaeda beheading shows is that there may in fact be some truth to the rumors that the Nick Berg beheading is a little ... well ... suspicious.

Now, I must admit I did not actually watch the Berg video, but I did see some of the still photos. I wasn't planning on viewing the Paul Johnson photos but Drudge put them directly on his site instead of linking to them. And it struck me right off ... that is a lot of blood. Blood that is definitely missing from the Berg footage.

Something's not right here. It could be as simple as Berg's captors didn't have the nerve to behead a living man and killed him first. Or it could be much more complex. I don't know and I doubt the truth will come out any time in the near future.

This site has a pretty comprehensive list of the issues related to Nick Berg's death.

Or at least they're trying to. Senator Orrin Hatch has introduced a bill to the Senate which is worded in such a way that it would not only make Kazaa illegal, but also TiVo, the CD burner in your computer, and even VCRs and cassette recorders illegal.

News.com reports that:

The proposal, called the Induce Act, says "whoever intentionally induces any violation" of copyright law would be legally liable for those violations, a prohibition that would effectively ban file-swapping networks like Kazaa and Morpheus. In the draft bill seen by CNET News.com, inducement is defined as "aids, abets, induces, counsels, or procures" and can be punished with civil fines and, in some circumstances, lengthy prison terms.

"Induce" stands for "Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation," making this yet another example of cloaking wildly restrictive legistation in the mantle of "save the children!". Because of course, it's all about keeping kids away from porn. Never mind that adults would have to throw away every recording device in their homes to make it work.

The good news? Even if this lame excuse for a bill were to actually pass both houses and be signed into law, I doubt it would stand, becasue the Supreme Court said in 1984 that VCRs are legal devices. But still, it's annoying to have to fight the same battles over and over again.

I find myself using the term 'Orwellian' more and more lately when it comes to the Bush administration. The latest spluttering over the 9/11 Commission is another good example of this. And over at the Whiskey Bar, Billmon has a great rundown of it. Here's one of the high points:

The panel has become "a tool for partisan politics," Rep. Eric I. Cantor (Va.), a member of the House Republican leadership, charged in an interview last week. "With the latest commission finding coming out that there were allegedly no ties between Hussein and al Qaeda, I think they are totally off their mission, and I think that's indicative of the political partisanship."

The RNC talking points on this must have gone out earlier last week, because Porter Goss, the intelligence committee chairman in our Chamber of People's Deputies, and Dennis Miller, the anti-intelligence chairman of late night television, have both been yammering about that same basic theme. But Cantor's quote is such a gem of non-logic, I'd like to look at it again more closely.

The 9/11 commission, Cantor argues, is partisan. Why? Because it went "off mission" by questioning the alleged relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

Now since the 9/11 commission was specifically instructed by Congress to "make a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the [9/11] attacks," and to "investigate relevant facts and circumstances ... including intelligence agencies ... diplomacy ... the flow of assets to terrorist organizations ... and other areas of the public and private sectors determined relevant by the commission," it's fairly ridiculous to argue the commission exceeded its mandate by reviewing the evidence regarding Bin Ladin's alleged contacts with Iraq. What Cantor is really arguing is that the commission went "off mission" by arriving at conclusions that were extremely embarrassing to the administration, and possibly damaging to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Emphasis added. And let us remember that the 9/11 Commission was created with an even split of Democrats and Republicans and is chaired by a Republican former governor picked by the White House. Not exactly a raving bunch of left-leaning wing nuts. But they came up with a conclusion that Bush/Cheney doesn't like, so they ipso facto must be partisan, and on the wrong side too.

It would be laughable if it weren't the Vice-President of the United States doing all this lying.

Transcript, CNBC’s “Capital Report,” June 17, 2004

Gloria Borger: “Well, let’s get to Mohammed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was quote, “pretty well confirmed.”

Vice President Cheney: No, I never said that.

BORGER: OK.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Never said that.

BORGER: I think that is...

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Absolutely not.

Transcript, NBC’s “Meet the Press,” December 9, 2001.

Vice-President Cheney: “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April.”

Courtesy of MSNBC. And a tip of the hat to Atrios for the link.

I voted for Camejo in the CA recall last fall, but if Nader's people think getting Camejo to agree to be his VP is going to get me to vote Nader, they have another think coming.

I thought about voting for Nader in 2000 but opted to vote for Gore. After what happened in 2000, there is no way in hell that I would vote for Nader. Camejo or not.

If anything, this lowers my opinion of Camejo and the Greens, that they would consider attaching their party to Nader's self-serving blather.

Recently I've come to the conclusion that my oldest cat, Tina, has gone deaf.

Over the past year or so, I'd noticed some behavioral changes that puzzled me. She wouldn't come running when I put out fresh food. She's pretty old, so I thought that was understandable. But there were other signs too. Her meow seemed to be getting louder. She would walk with me towards the kitchen, but she would stop every few paces to see if I were coming along with her - something she never used to do. She'd seem startled when people came up to her.

And one day it dawned on me - could she be having trouble hearing? I finally decided to do some basic tests. Each time, I would clap loudly and watch to see if she turns her head or otherwise notices the sound. She doesn't. I'm not sure if she's completely deaf or just mostly deaf, but taken all in all, it seems quite obvious that her hearing is seriously impacted.

Tina is 17 - very old for a cat. I know that there are a lot worse things that could happen to her than deafness. I know that she's not in any pain and that cats tolerate disabilities much better than humans do. And she's an indoor-only cat, so it's not like she's going to get outside and not hear a car coming. Still - I often talk to her when she's cuddled up on my lap; I tell her what a good girl she is and how much I love her. I know she doesn't understand the words but she understands the tone of voice. Now she can't hear that, and it's sad.

I have never liked Howard Stern. I thought his show was full of sexist crap and fart jokes, and so I chose not to listen to him. That doesn't mean I think he should be legislated off the air though.

Well, shame on me for not doing anything about it, but it might actually happen with the new indecency legislation that has now passed the House and Senate. Up to $3 million in fines a day can be levied if the FCC decides something said on the air is "indecent".

How did the Senate pass it? They attached it to a defense appropriations bill so that if you voted against it, you could be smeared as 'not supporting the troops'. Pretty nasty. Kudos to Sen. John Breaux, D-LA for having the balls to be the one vote against it. (And once the President signs this into law, you won't be able to say "having the balls" on the air anymore). Where was John Kerry?

Tip of the hat to Buzz Machine for the link.

AOL engineer with his head up his butt sells 92 million AOL screen names to spammers. More info here.

The only good news is at least somebody got caught. Too bad for the customers, whose addresses have probably been sold and resold a whole bunch of times since then.

Ugh. I know the CA budget is in need of help but this is just too much for me:

Schwarzenegger Wants Stray Animals Killed In 72 Hours

Basically, he wants to revert back to an older standard where shelters would be allowed to kill dogs and cats after holding them for 72 hours, regardless of whether the shelters are open to the public during those three days. The 72-hour rule was changed to a 6-day hold in 1998 under a law called the Hayden Act.

Another thing that bothers me is that one of the changes Schwarzenegger is asking for allows shelters to not check for microchipping on a dog or cat before destroying it. Scanning for a microchip takes literally 15 seconds to do and if there's an active chip then the animal's owner can be immediately identified. There is no reason I can think of other than idiocy why this should not be done.

And how much is the state going to save by all this animal killing? $14 million dollars.

"Terminator" indeed.

I caught a midday showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 down at the Metreon today. I walked in knowing Moore's trying to get you to walk out feeling a certain way, and in that regard, the movie was pretty much what I expected it to be.

The first section deals with 9/11 and the Bush / Saudi / Bin Laden connection. I could definitely have done without the footage of 9/11 itself. As I've said before 9/11 is a very painful topic for me so I prefer to not be reminded of exactly how painful that day was. I suppose Moore wanted to get some emotional punch in before drawing all the lines between the Bushes, the Bin Ladens, and the Saudis, but it felt a little too much like I was being manipulated to feel bad.

After that, Moore deals with the various responses to 9/11 -Afghanistan and the Patriot Act mostly. And here's what I didn't expect. I laughed. Several parts of the middle section - particularly when two Marine recruiters in full dress uniforms are walking around a parking lot in Flint, MI looking to sign up new recruits - are quite funny in a snarky sort of way.

Moore also sidetracks into one of his bete noires - how African Americans get screwed in America. It's a valid point that most of the kids in the armed forces are from poor backgrounds, but I think he's stretching a point by implying that they're all black. The issue is class not skin color. Even Moore's own footage of Iraq shows more white faces in uniform than anything else.

And speaking of the Iraq footage - I have no idea how he got the stuff but it's very raw and powerful. In a way I felt that this section of the movie was the most original, in that it's something that nobody is actually showing to us here right now. It's not easy to watch soldiers crying out in pain right after being attacked, burned bodies being dragged through streets, or soldiers putting hoods on prisoners' heads and cracking jokes about erections. These are images that show us what is really going on in our name, though, and we need to understand exactly what price we're paying.

It's been widely reported that the story of Lila Lipscombe and how she loses her son in Iraq is the emotional heart of the film. It is sad, but somehow it didn't affect me as deeply. What did make me cry? A little earlier in the film, Moore overlaid the theme song from notable 80s TV flop "The Greatest American Hero" on top of footage of Bush's trip to an aircraft carrier to declare combat operations "over". It's a cheesy song but for whatever reason I have always liked it. The juxtaposition of a song I like over pictures of President Bush surrounded by happy troops was a somewhat surreal combination. And then at the line in the song that goes "Should have been somebody else" I started to cry, thinking we should have had Gore as president instead of this loser.

Yes, I'm probably weird for crying at that point instead of when Lila Lipscombe's son dies. But that's how it happened.

I'm glad I saw the film. I don't think it's going to change many - if any - minds, mostly because the people who most need to see it (hello Dad, are you reading this?) won't bother going. And honestly, I don't see why it got the Palme d'Or at Cannes except as a way of expressing support for the political views in the film. Unlike previous winners with a war theme, like "The Pianist" or "Apocalypse Now", I don't see people watching Fahrenheit 9/11 10 years from now. It's a move for 2004, not for the ages.

All that said, it says a lot about America that despite all the problems our nation has, a film like this can be made and distributed and people can go see it without fear of reprisal. And it's a film worth seeing.

After a massive public outcry, Governer Schwarzenegger quickly backtracked on his plan to overturn the revised animal welfare code (aka the Hayden Act). $14 million back in the budget, hundreds of thousands of dogs and cats saved.

I'll give this to the Governator, unlike some other Republicans in high office, he knows when to admit he made a mistake.

This article from the Washington Post is almost a week old but it's well worth a read, especially if you read it alongside the excellent work Back to Iraq is doing.

The long and the short of it? It's not just the radical anti-war Left or Iraqi extremists that think our invasion of Iraq has been a miserable failure.

The American occupation of Iraq will formally end this month having failed to fulfill many of its goals and stated promises intended to transform the country into a stable democracy, according to a detailed examination drawing upon interviews with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and internal documents of the occupation authority

There's blame aplenty to go around. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority blames the military. The military blames the CPA. The Iraqis blame us. We blame them. And around it goes. Then, another interesting fact.

Attacks on U.S.-led forces and foreign civilians now average more than 40 a day, a threefold increase since January.

Small wonder so-called "Green Zone," where the CPA and related US personnel live, is a fortress that few set foot beyond unless they're surrounded by security forces. And what are we getting for that attack rate, and for the 800+ American soldiers dead?

In an interview last week, Bremer maintained that "Iraq has been fundamentally changed for the better" by the occupation. The CPA, he said, has put Iraq on a path toward a democratic government and an open economy after more than three decades of a brutal socialist dictatorship. Among his biggest accomplishments, he said, were the lowering of Iraq's tax rate, the liberalization of foreign-investment laws and the reduction of import duties.

Emphasis added.

Let me get this right. We invaded a country 3,000 miles away from us, one that posed no clear threat to America. The country is a mess - the Post article goes into great detail on that point. Just one of many examples is that even in Baghdad itself, electrical power is available only 9 hours out of 24. It seems likely that the new Iraqi government will impose martial law after the June 30 handover. To name just one potential keg of worms, nobody seems to have any idea how the Kurds and the Shiites are going to resolve their differences. And Paul Bremer thinks it's an accomplishment that Iraqi taxes have been lowered.

Small wonder they hate us.

Tip of the hat to Fuzzy Puppy for the Post link.

I have a hard time viewing the US transfer of power to Iraq and Bremer's hasty departure as anything other than an admission that the situation is a big mess. I'm wondering how soon the current administration will start to spin it as a sign of success that they could hand over sovereignty two days early.

Enough teasing everyone that you know something the rest of us don't about the forged Niger uranium documents.

If you've got the story, run with it. If you don't, stop hinting that you do. In short, as the old saying goes, shit or get off the pot.

Crossposted from the All Spin Zone:

ASZ's "DOUBLE BURN" Campaign

What if "word of mouth" and repeat viewings of Fahrenheit 9/11 literally blew the doors off over July 4 weekend? Right at this moment, it's hard to say if distribution will expand this week, but given all the sellouts, it wouldn't be a surprise to see the movie hit a lot more screens.

Now, we realize that Spiderman 2 is coming out this weekend, and realistically, there is simply no way that F9/11 beats out S2 at the box office. We may be liberal pollyannas, but we're not dopes.

But what if F9/11 came in a barnburning second, and made the $22 million box office from this past weekend look like chump change?

ASZ is proud to announce the DOUBLE BURN campaign. All you have to do to participate is see Fahrenheit 9/11 this coming Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday (July 2, 3, 4 or 5).

I like it.

Call me a pessimist. Call me gun-shy after watching Howard Dean go from hero to zero inside of a month. You may be right. But still, I'm a little concerned this day, wondering whether the tides are swinging in Kerry's favor too soon.

As Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. points out,

How this election turns out will depend a great deal on how the situation in Iraq looks to voters on Election Day, and how many middle-class and blue-collar voters feel the economic recovery in their own lives by then.

The fact that Fahrenheit 9/11 did boffo box office not just in liberal enclaves, but nationwide, is a hopeful sign. Pollsters have been saying for some time now that the race is tight and could even be tipping in Kerry's favor. But this is a dangerous time too.

People are not happy with the way the country is going right now, but that doesn't necessarily translate to people thinking Kerry is the man to lead a change. Or so says the NY Times:

45 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Bush himself, again the most negative measure the Times/CBS Poll has found since he took office. And 57 percent say the country is going in the wrong direction, another measure used by pollsters as a barometer of discontent with an incumbent.

Yet the survey found little evidence that Mr. Kerry has been able to take advantage of the president's difficulties, even though Mr. Kerry has spent $60 million on television advertising over the past three months.

My feeling is, it's going to be a long slog to November, and the results are no means certain.

Well, it's easy to see what the military has decided to use as its next "honest it's really not torture" persuader of unwilling detainees.

Taser Wins $1.8 Million Stun Gun Contract

The company did not disclose Wednesday which branch of the military would be using the approximately 1,000 stun guns and accessories in the new order, said Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle.

We can guess though.

On June 10 2004, the IRS

sent a strongly worded letter to both the Republican and Democratic national committees, reminding them that tax-exempt charitable groups "are prohibited from directly or indirectly participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office."

So what does the Bush campaign do? They send out a detailed 22-point plan to volunteers about how to bring their chruch members into the Bush fold.

The instruction sheet circulated by the Bush-Cheney campaign to religious volunteers lists 22 "duties" to be performed by specific dates. By July 31, for example, volunteers are to "send your Church Directory to your State Bush-Cheney '04 Headquarters or give [it] to a BC04 Field Rep" and "Talk to your Pastor about holding a Citizenship Sunday and Voter Registration Drive."

By Aug. 15, they are to "talk to your Church's seniors or 20-30 something group about Bush/Cheney '04" and "recruit 5 more people in your church to volunteer for the Bush Cheney campaign."

By Sept. 17, they are to host at least two campaign-related potluck dinners with church members, and in October they are to "finish calling all Pro-Bush members of your church," "finish distributing Voter Guides in your church" and place notices on church bulletin boards or in Sunday programs "about all Christian citizens needing to vote."

Why don't they just take our ads that say, "Jesus wants Bush re-elected" and be done with it?

Source: Yahoo! News.