This might be the most insane news article ever.

House conservatives criticized President Bush, accused the Senate of fouling the air, said prisoners rather than illegal farm workers should pick America's crops and denounced the use of Mexican flags by protesters Thursday in a vehement attack on legislation to liberalize U.S. immigration laws.

Note, it's not even about taking jobs away from Americans anymore. Now it's about preventing slave prison laborers from being forced to do stoop labor.

This is how stupid conservatives are. Can you even imagine the logistics of prisoners being used to replace the millions of migrant laborers who come in each year? The complete and total impracticality and stupidity of this suggestion? How retarded are these people? Then again, it was Dana Rohrabacher of California who is widely acknowledged as the stupidest man in congress.

I love this headline:

"Former DeLay aide pleads guilty to fraud charges"

Rudy, a top DeLay aide while the Texas lawmaker served as House Majority Leader, took payments from Abramoff in 2000, then helped stop an Internet gambling bill opposed by Abramoff's clients, papers filed in U.S. District Court in Washington said.

Later, while working as a lobbyist, Rudy also was extensively involved in arranging a golf trip to Scotland for Rep. Bob Ney and congressional staffers, the court papers said.

However, I don't understand how a staffer can "help stop" a gambling bill. Doesn't this imply that Delay himself was bought as part of this package? If this guy did this using the authority of the majority leader's office, doesn't that mean Delay was ultimately responsible?

Despite being widely acknowledged as "Republican Lite," Lieberman enjoys a great advantage over his primary challenger Ned Lamont because of his long incumbency. However, I think it's time the Democrats of Connecticut decide the guy who felt getting a bj was an impeachable offense, and violating FISA wasn't, doesn't deserve to be sent back to Washington.

It sounds like Connecticut Democrats might be starting to agree.

Lieberman became Obama's mentor when Obama was sworn into the Senate in 2005. They stayed close at Thursday night's event, too, entering the room together and working the crowd in tandem.

Despite the camaraderie between the two, the crowd was clearly more receptive to Obama's remarks than Lieberman's speech about party unity and the potential for Democratic victories at the ballot box this fall.

In fact, scattered boos greeted Lieberman when he took the podium, and he had to stop three times during his remarks to shush the crowd so he could deliver key points.

Lieberman gets booed by Democrats and cheered by Republicans. Maybe that's a sign that he is a Republican.

Okay guys, just because George Mason University hires some right-wing zealots and wins some basketball games, it doesn't mean that the school is any good. I'm seeing a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal doing everything possible to promote this mediocre school because it suits the Journal's wacked political opinions.

Check this out--a search for "George Mason University" on the Wall Street Journal produces five results just for today!

03/31/06
WSJ
George Mason Shoots Namesake to Fame
03/31/06
WSJ
Rodney Dangerfield University
03/31/06
WSJ
A Fever in the Blood
03/31/06
WSJ
TV Shrink's Second Chance
03/31/06
WSJ
No Rocket for This Trial
03/30/06
WSJ
Ask.Com's New Look Scores Big Points
03/30/06
WSJ
For George Mason, an Educational Slam Dunk?
03/30/06
WSJ
Wrangling Names for Big Numbers
03/29/06
Law Blog
George Mason’s Law Students Are Partying Like . . . Well, Law Students
03/29/06
WSJ
Duke, North Carolina Advance
03/27/06
Law Blog
A Great Week For Quattrone, Though He Ain’t Out of the Woods
03/27/06
WSJ
Freedom Cannot Be Traded for Economic 'Security'
03/27/06
WSJ
A Basket Case
03/25/06
WSJ
Who's Your Daddy?
03/25/06
WSJ
Classy Economist
03/24/06
WSJ
Extrasensory Reception
03/23/06
Law Blog
More Good News For March-Madness Cinderella-Story George Mason

Okay, GMU professor Vernon Smith did get a Nobel for Economics (FWIW, there is really no such thing as a Nobel in economics). But remember, this is the school that:

• Has hired all sorts of crackpot professors to get close to the administration, and basically looks the other way at their bogus scholarship. Case in point, the Enron-Supported Mercatus Center.


• Was denied by Phi Beta Kappa because GMU didn't want Michael Moore to speak on campus.


• Charged one of its own students with disorderly conduct and trespassing for protesting against military recruitment. The student was an Air Force Veteran.

I'm sorry, but even with the greatest basketball players, that is not a track record of excellence.

Unless you want your loved ones to die.

In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

Congrats to Kos, and talking points for helping expose the bullshit of Kaloogian (the Republican liar running for the Dukester's former seat). Apparently, this guy thought he would show the true peacful nature of Baghdad under Bush that the press refuses to show.

Since that Baghdad doesn't exist, he just posted this picture of a street corner in Turkey.



Umm, notice none of the signs are even written in the correct language much? That looks like a roman script to me and everyone else with a friggin brain.

What a jackass.

**Update** Fark has pointed me to this collection of images suggesting the new picture that Kaloogian posted as a replacement for the Turkey picture is also not a very good example of a peaceful Iraq, as the building shown in the middle has since been blown up.

I don't quite understand the shots that are shown though, are they talking about the big blue building in the middle or one right by it being blown up?

Maryland has approved a fund for ES cell research in the state.

So the trend continues, blue states move forward with science, and will reap the benefits of top-tier universities, discovery of novel and patentable technologies and attracting the best and brightest from the country, while the red states will continue to attract creationists.

To them, I say, study this chart:

So, the Boston Herald finally Published the shot There is little question that it was indeed, the Italian gesture for fuck off.

"It's inaccurate and deceptive of him to say there was no vulgarity in the moment," said Peter Smith, the Boston University assistant photojournalism professor who made the shot.
Despite Scalia's insistence that the Sicilian gesture was not offensive and had been incorrectly characterized by the Herald as obscene, the photographer said the newspaper "got the story right."
Smith said the jurist "immediately knew he'd made a mistake, and said, 'You're not going to print that, are you?' "
...
"The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, 'To my critics, I say, 'Vaffanculo,' " punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.
The Italian phrase means "(expletive) you."

And here is the picture of fuck-off goodness.

The title of the editorial says it all, "Part "D" for "Defective" -- The Medicare Drug-Benefit Chaos".

It's a pretty good dissection of the disaster of the new Bush administration drug-benefit. Just think Katrina meets healthcare.

In many cases, the program worsened patients' situations, with a particularly heavy burden falling on indigent Medicaid enrollees. Before the new entitlement, most had virtually all their medications covered fully by the states. But on January 1, 6.2 million of these vulnerable elderly were reassigned to one of the private insurance companies designated by Medicare to run its program. Word of these arrangements didn't always reach the patients, insurers, or pharmacies accurately, and tens of thousands of indigent patients were told to get prior authorization, pay a large initial deductible, or make substantial copayments for regularly used medicines they previously received at no cost.[2] Thousands discovered that the drugs they had been taking for years were not covered by their new insurers. Clinical crises ensued, and 37 states had to provide emergency payments for frail citizens.[3]

Despite its youth, the Medicare drug benefit is already chronically ill. But with extensive rehabilitation, it could go on for years, albeit with impaired functional capacity. Debate continues over whether its early spasticity was caused by inept management of its birth or a genetic disorder present at its creation.
...
As with other nature-versus-nurture debates, the correct answer to the question of causation is "both." The drug benefit was defective from its conception and then malnurtured at birth. Its legislative history was marked by heavy input from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, with predictable results.
...
The new law prohibited the government from negotiating with pharmaceutical manufacturers for lower costs, though nearly every country that guarantees drug coverage to its citizens does so. Lobbyists argued that it wouldn't be fair for drug companies to have to negotiate prices with such a powerful buyer. Yet Medicare has different rules for less influential vendors: it sets the prices it pays physicians, hospitals, laboratories, nursing homes, and essentially every other recipient of Medicare funds.

The lesson is simple, with powerful enough lobbyists congress will make laws that benefit you, even if fundamentally unfair, or inconsistent with laws that apply to other people. Sorry, I guess that was obvious. But then, NEJM suggests the Give UP model will correct the problem:

Medicare Part D lives on, responding semiappropriately to noxious stimuli by flailing its limbs as best it can. It even shows some limited capacity for learning, and one important learning opportunity is just seven months away. Elderly citizens vote in droves, and many of them will have hit their "doughnut hole" by early November. At that point, they will let their legislators know how they feel about the program.

Long live Arrested Development.

The word is, the creator is no longer interested in the series and believes it reached an appropriate conclusion. Despite interest from Showtime and ABC, Arrested Development will not return.

Wired reports this interview with Tom Okarma, CEO of Geron which is starting a major trial using cells derived from embryonic stem cells to help reverse damage from spinal cord injury.

It sounds interesting, and Okarma sounds cautious and very consciuos of the importance of getting this first major trial right. For every trial that fails because it was rushed, the field will be more and more difficult to fund and fight for.

We recognize that the world's spotlights are going to be on this. So we want to structure out as much subjective stuff as we possibly can. That's the first point. The second point, again to your point of safety, is that the initial patients in the trial a) will get a very low dose of cells, which is always done with a new therapy. They just start with less than the therapeutic range because you want to be sure there's no toxicity associated with this.

How are we going to monitor for toxicity in a patient that has a complete thoracic injury, that has no sensation below the point of injury? Well, if we start with a T3 lesion (an injury at the third vertebra in the thoracic region of the spinal cord), the question will be: Do we see evidence of an ascending paralysis? In other words, changing patients' physiology from a T3 lesion to a T2 or a T1, ascending toxicity.

We start with complete patients because they have no hope of recovery and we want to offer them something. We're starting with thoracic lesions because there's no significant impact for the patient should we see toxicity go from, say, a T3 to a T2 lesion. If we had started with cervical complete lesions and went from C4 to C2, that would be significant because we would reduce respiratory drive.

We're turning every single stone over that we can to reduce -- if not eliminate -- the risk to these patients who volunteer to get the cells for the first time. Once we go through the initial safety cohorts ... then we start looking at incomplete lesions. For all these patients, the efficacy is based on three simple principles: Do we restore sensation in any way or conversely reduce neuritic plan? Do we change bowel or bladder control? Do we see patients enjoying some degree of local motor recovery?

I don't even know what to do about this

I mean really, Joe Scarborough convening a conference about the "War on Christians" in this country? Are they kidding me? And saying that Tom Delay was driven from office for being a Christian? Like 99% of congress isn't Christian?

"It doesn't rise to the level of persecution that we would see in China or North Korea," said Tristan Emmanuel, a Canadian activist. "But let's not pretend that it's okay."

Among the conference's speakers were former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) as well as conservative Christian leaders Phyllis Schlafly, Rod Parsley, Gary Bauer, Janet Parshall and Alan Keyes.

To many of the 400 evangelicals packed into a small ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, it was a hard but necessary look at moral relativism, hedonism and Christophobia, or fear of Christ, to pick just a few terms offered by various speakers referring to the enemy.

So, let me get this straight. America's war on Christianity is composed of the 15% of the population in this country not acting Christian enough. Ok. They consider an absence of complete christian domination of the populace to be a war against them, and these war crimes consist of people having different moral values and a dislike for Christ? What is it about there being more than one religion in this world that they don't understand?

If they keep this up someone is going to get fed up and show them what a real war on a religion is. Maybe we should send them to Iraq for a reminder, or Afghanistan to get them prosecuted for apostasy.

Anyway, this guy gets it about right:

"This is a skirmish over religious pluralism, and the inclination to see it as a war against Christianity strikes me as a spoiled-brat response by Christians who have always enjoyed the privileges of a majority position," said the Rev. Robert M. Franklin, a minister in the Church of God in Christ and professor of social ethics at Emory University.

Then there is the componenet of this that might actually be seen as a war, that is, a war on Christian intolerance.

The Rev. Tom Crouse, pastor of a Congregational Church in Holland, Mass., said that after hearing about a gay beauty pageant in California, he decided to hold a "Mr. Heterosexual Contest" in Worcester, Mass., on Feb. 18.

"It was just an event to proclaim the truth that God created us all heterosexual," he said. But to his surprise, he said, he received anonymous death threats, local officials condemned the contest, and "even Bible-believing churches were not on board. They said it wasn't loving."

If it is a war when people stand up to your bigotry, then maybe, yeah, there is a war against you. But only against your bigotry, not against your religion.

What a bunch of whiny bitches.

Yeah yeah yeah, Andy Card is out big whoop. Isn't anyone else disturbed that he will be replaced by budget director Joshua Bolten?

Think about it, Bush's budget director. He's got to be the most incompetent guy in the entire administration.

Speaking of deregulation, think about what a disaster Direct To Consumer Advertising (DTCA) for prescription drugs has been. The only countries in the world stupid enough to allow drug companies direct access to consumers are the US and New Zealand (which is now working to re-ban DTCA), and our drug costs and spending on prescription drugs have skyrocketed compared to costs in the rest of the world. There is an interesting, and accessible free article this month in PLoS medicine on the subject. Here are some highlights:

DTCA is limited to drugs that are profitable to advertise: mostly expensive, new drugs for long-term use for common indications. Such advertising increases premature rapid uptake and overuse of new drugs before flaws, including safety problems, have been discovered and communicated to health professionals [21,23,24]. Many new drugs are inferior to older treatments, and over two-thirds are no better but are often more expensive [25]. Increased use of new drugs stimulated by DTCA can lead to adverse events directly (for example, cardiovascular events associated with COX-2 selective inhibitors, which were heavily advertised to the US public) [23,26,27] or indirectly, by diverting resources from more cost-effective interventions.
...
DTCA aims to persuade rather than to inform, and there is evidence that it is effective at persuasion [12,21]. Content analyses of DTCA have found that the information provided is usually flawed and incomplete [28-32]. Examples include a study of 320 drug advertisements in popular US magazines that found that the advertisements rarely provided information about success rates of treatment or alternative treatments [32], and a study of 23 US television advertisements for prescription drugs that found that the majority gave more time to benefits than to risks [28].

Such advertising can lead some people to falsely believe they are well informed, so it reduces their motivation to search for more reliable information. Finding reliable information is already difficult (like finding a needle in a haystack) and the "noise" of DTCA just makes the haystack larger.
...
DTCA rarely focuses on, and tends to drown out, high-priority public health messages about diet, exercise, addictions, social involvement, equity, pollution, climate change, and appropriate use of older drugs. Older drugs are less profitable to advertise because a share of the sales stimulated goes to generic competition. Consequently, DTCA for any currently advertised drug will become less profitable after expiry of patent protection from competition.When DTCA no longer provides competitive return on investment, it is stopped. Consequently, if there are any benefits from current DTCA (such as stimulating new requests for statins after a myocardial infarction), those benefits will be for a limited time only.

Pretty damning article if you ask me, it dismisses every single positive argument for DTCA as being overwhelmed by negative consequences. Why do we allow drug companies to make their bullshit commercials again? You know, commercial speech is not protected like other speech. It is acceptable to limit, regulate or even ban it, especially if it is deceptive at which point it is no longer speech and is instead called fraud.

In all the hubbub over Scalia's obscene hand gestures, I almost forgot about the real interesting nugget in those stories. Apparently, he's been talking about cases that are about to appear before the court, a big ethical no-no. See this WP story on the backlash against Scalia for this ethical violation.

So, what do you think the odds are that Scalia will do the right thing and recuse himself? I place them at about 10000:1.

Donald Rumsfeld offered some useful information explaining why the US is failing to win the hearts and minds of the world, apparently it is our poor communication skills:

The United States is faring poorly in its effort to counter ideological support for terrorism, in part because the government does not communicate effectively, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.

Rumsfeld then raised his hands into his trademark "samarai duck" stance and composed a haiku on the necessity of knowing unknown unknowns.



In later questioning he demonstrated how to pluck out a terrorist's eye with your bare hands.



I think we know the source of our problem.

In a church no less.

**Update** CNN reports it wasn't the finger but rather the hand-under-the-chin "fuck-off" gesture. I guess that makes it better, he only pulled a Cheney.

And in other random news I was glad to hear that people south of the border are rejecting the privatization myth as well.

I would like this myth of private enterprise being better than public to be studied and conclusively debunked, because I know that in a side-by-side comparison between government and private industry on regulation of major utilities, government is going to do a better job. Again and again government-run utilities, or (highly regulated and licensed private companies) perform better because they have accountability measures, no motivation for price-gouging (or it is hampered by regulation), and no stockholders to enrich. Utilities always end up resembling monopolies in the areas they serve because they own the pipes, cables, wires etc., and when they're handed over to businesses, it's like giving them permission to violate anti-trust laws. They never end up innovating and creating the infrastructure that would allow the competition they always promise, and what you end up with instead is the same old system for 5 times as much.

Enough of this privatization crap already. The argument about "self-regulation" and the "invisible hand of the market" is over. Free market utilies haven't worked anywhere they've been tried, and instead have created widespread consumer dissatisfaction (like in MD, VA etc.) and the biggest corporate scandals in history (Enron). Let's go back to public utilities and well-regulated private utilities, at least those worked and didn't rip everyone off.

**Update**
In Tuesday's post there is this article describing efforts by Marylanders to seize control of their public utilities from business interests. It is well known that the deregulation campaign in Maryland has been disastrous, and the remaining regulatory committee is a joke.

Want proof? The protestors demanding control of their public utilities have lost all power to their tanning beds.

The NYT had an article this weekend entitled, Why Is Michael Steele a Republican Candidate?

This is a good question. It is also a wonder that this guy is so freaking clueless. Take for example, the first freaking paragraph of the article:

It was last spring when Karl Rove called Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor of Maryland, to sell him on running for the Senate, and to close the deal, Rove paused to put President Bush on the phone. As Steele recalls it, the president's adviser said, "Here, the boss wants to talk to you." Steele froze, then demurred. "I went, 'No, no thank you.' I was so stunned that he was going to hand the phone to the president. I said, 'That's all right, we'll have that call later.' I couldn't believe it." Other top Republicans called. Senator Elizabeth Dole. Ken Mehlman, the party chairman. One day Steele's cellphone rang, and Vice President Dick Cheney was on the other end.

Luckily a Republican consultant gives us an answer to the question in the same article, that also provides me with a new political vocabulary term:

Don't be an "outreach pawn," Steele's friend Curt Anderson, a political consultant, warned him. By that, Anderson, former political director of the Republican National Committee, meant, Don't get into the race just so the party can say it is fielding a black candidate or so it can appear to be softening its image. "I have a dim view of the typical Republican outreach," Anderson told me. "It's like: Yeah, look, we have a black guy. We have a Hispanic guy. Look over there, we have a Jewish guy. It's surface. It never bears fruit. I told him: Don't do it for the Republican Party. Don't do it for the president. Do it for yourself. He had to ask himself, Can I win? Everything else is silly."

How could he be anything less? Ehrlich's Governorship is an unmitigated failure. Everyone agrees, right and left, he has accomplished nothing, and was completely incapable of generating anything resembling consensus. Why would Steele, who's only accomplishment is being elected with Ehrlich considered a candidate by Republicans? Hmmm, "outreach pawn" sounds about right.

That, and there is his ridiculous persecution complex about being black and Republican. Like the Oreo cookie-throwing incident he fabricated to sound like he's just a poor oppressed minority black Republican trying to make his way in a cruel liberal world. For a more complete debunking of the Steele Oreo myth check out this post.

Anyway, a pathetic candidate for a pathetic party and their efforts to get "outreach pawns."

Remember, tomorrow is the day of the Abramoff sentencing, and it should be the day we find out about all the people he's bringing down with him. He's already damaging Ralph Reed's chances for GA lt. Governor as even fellow conservatives attack Reed for his role in the casino lobbying.

Then there's these fake charities he created that existed only to funnel money to specific candidates, and enrich members of Tom Delay's staff (and their wives).

It promises to be an interesting day I think.

**Update**

Apparently Abramoffukah is to be celebrated tomorrow. I didn't realize it would no longer be the 28th. So, look forward to Abramoffukah on Wednesday the 29th!

So, anyone following the news this weekend saw the Iraq Civil War has really accelerated.

30 bodies were found beheaded and dumped on a highway and US soldiers engaged Moqtada Sadr's shiite militia.

Bad news for the Iraqis and our effort there, but who is surprised. Certainly not the authors of Operation Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. It turns out, remember how Bush said the generals got everything they requested for the invasion? Well, that apparently didn't include the first Cavalry, which they apparently wanted, and planned for, then good old Rummy cut out. They were on NPR this morning. Basically, Rummy screwed us royally in failing to make plans, and often sabotaging existing plans for post-war reconstruction. In his mind, it wasn't going to happen, so no need to plan for it.

Rummy reminds me of Gaius from the new Battlestar Galactica series. It seems like his whole goal in life is to just screw everything up for humanity. Everyone thinks he's smart, but he's just an egotistical lunatic who will ruin us all.

Nature brings us an excellent paper this week on creating embryonic stem cell-like cultures from adult mouse testes. Here is a lay article on the findings.

This paper is great. To sum up:
1. Spermatogonial cells were purified from mouse seminiferous tubules by digesting with enzymes, then culturing with or without MEF's and LIF (aka mouse ESC medium) to make embryonic stem cell like lines. Take home message: this is a very simple technique.
2. Cells were shown in vitro in embryoid body experiments to be pluripotent. Take home message: these cells are capable of making any type of adult cell.
3. Cells were injected into mouse blastocysts to make chimeras, which were then capable of germ line transmission of the original stem cell genotype. Take home message: this is the ultimate totipotency experiment. These are truly a powerful cell line capable of making all kinds of adult tissues and even transmission of genotype to successive generations of animals.

This is the first paper I've seen that truly bypasses embryonic stem cell ethical limitations. That bullshit about limiting ES cell potential based on making lines that lacked the ability to make embryos was just sophistry to appease those who believe in ensoulment at conception. Finally, here is a technique for making embryonic stem cells, from adults, that are syngenic with the host they come from, without destruction of embryos. Maybe we can shut the damn right-wingers up now and get ES cell research rolling in this country, but only if we can repeat this result using cells from human testicular biopsy or cadaverous donation.

Now, the downside of course, is that the ES cells are made from testicular spermatogenic cells. So, the ladies are definitely not winning out here. However, it is likely that enough ES lines could be made that most immunologic problems could be bypassed by creating lines representing all possible combinations of histocompatability, rather than making them from every single individual that needs them.

What do my fellow scientists think? Is this a good paper or what?

**update** I wrote a Diary over at Daily Kos on the paper.

Tales of Neil Bush's BS software company have been shooting about the internet in the last few days. No one is quite sure what is up with this company, called Ignite, that for some reason investors from all around the world are dumping their money into. You know, like, the House of Saud.

Well, now we know. Apparently the company exists to bilk money out of charities. The best part? Neil's mom, old Barb, even earmarked charitable contributions to go only to her son's company. If that isn't crooked, I don't know what is. It's like giving money to your kid, then writing it off as a tax deduction.

Disgusting. People who steal money for themselves in the name of charity really need their own circle of hell.

I think Ben Domenech of Redstate just had the shortest tenure at the Washington Post of anyone ever. As of 1:17EST today, he has resigned while an investigation into plagiarism claims is underway.

Wow, the vast right wing dishonesty continues. I guess we should be shocked that a 24-year-old college dropout former Bush employee is anything but a crook.

I also hear that over at Redstate they are actively censoring discussion on poor Ben and banning new members. That's a winning strategy, jackasses. I'd love to see what they think of my maps over there at "Redstate."

The good news? It will be after we're all dead.

Yes, in a hundred years we may see a 5-10 meter rise in ocean levels. Maybe it's time to reconsider this global warming doesn't exist crap.

The apparent sensitivity of ice sheets to a warmer world could prove disastrous. The greenhouse gases that people are spewing into the atmosphere this century might guarantee enough warming to destroy the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, says Oppenheimer, possibly as quickly as within several centuries. That would drive up sea level 5 to 10 meters at rates not seen since the end of the last ice age. New Orleans would flood, for good, as would most of South Florida and much of the Netherlands. Rising seas would push half a billion people inland. "This is not an experiment you get to run twice," says Oppenheimer. "I find this all very disturbing."
...
In another approach to estimating mass balance, researchers sketch the changing shape and therefore volume of the ice sheet. In a paper just out in the Journal of Glaciology, glaciologist Jay Zwally of GSFC and colleagues use satellite radars to measure the height of the Greenland Ice Sheet's broad plateau and airborne laser altimeters to monitor the height of glaciers draining to the coast, which are too small for satellite radars to see reliably. "We have strong evidence the ice sheet was near balance [during] the last decade of the 20th century," says Zwally. "Our measures show a slight positive gain of 11 [cubic kilometers] per year" between 1992 and 2002.

Global warming contrarians have already taken up Zwally's result as evidence that nothing much is happening with the ice sheet, so there's nothing to worry about. Zwally disagrees. "There's no question there's been an acceleration of some of Greenland's glaciers over the last 5 years," after his surveys were completed, he says. "I would say that right now the current loss is 30 to 40 [cubic kilometers] per year," he says, based on his gut feeling about the most recent radar and laser observations.

That's getting close to the mass loss reported last fall using a third approach: repeatedly weighing the ice sheet. Geophysicists Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr of the University of Colorado, Boulder, reported in Geophysical Research Letters how the two satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), flying in tandem, gauge the mass beneath them. They precisely measure the changing distance between them caused by the gravitational pull of the passing ice. Between 2002 and 2004, GRACE found a loss of about 82 cubic kilometers of ice per year.

Goodbye Florida, hello beachfront property in Charlotteville.

**Update**
In related news, Glacier National Park needs a new name.

We all know that companies violate their privacy statements all the time. Well, Eliot Spitzer, the New York Attorney General is doing what any good state AG should do, sue the bastards.

This is the way to fight spam, by forcing companies that gather email addresses for legitimate purposes to obey their own damn privacy statements. Anything else is fraud perpetrated against millions of consumers. I hope he sues these people out of business.

I say, Spitzer for NY Governor in the next cycle (Pataki is out and Spitzer is killing in the polls), then president in 2012.

Beyond just being a ridiculous jackass, the new "conservative blogger" at the post, Ben Domenech of Redstate shame, is apparently a plagiarist.

What is amusing is that they brought him on to balance out supposedly liberal reporting by Dan Froomkin. This is the level they need to stoop to at the post to bring on a conservative? They have to recruit a racist(attacking Coretta Scott King on the day of her funeral was pretty low) and a plagiarist?

Alternatively, was this an example of choosing a conservative that would be an easy target? Maybe they hired a pathetic conservative just to make it easier to dismiss his stupidity?

Are you ready for Snakes on a Plane?

I haven't been so excited to see a movie since LOTR.

Boingboing brings us news that the South Dakota Oglala Sioux are planning to offer access to clinics on their sovereign land. This is a very interesting new mechanism for the Give Up enterprise. You might not even have to leave the state, just the country to get an abortion.

Second, by popular demand, the Cato Institute paper on why DRM (digital rights management) sucks. Finally, a conservative argument from conservatives. I like it a lot. Not only because I hate cripple-ware that prevents you from truly owning your music, inconveniences lawful buyers of music, and wastes time and energy (literally, DRM'd music uses 16% more battery power than regular mp3's because the players must expend power decrypting the music). I like it because it is a conservative making a conservative argument, not just being a hack for whatever industry is paying them.

It is also a pretty good argument. Basically, it shouldn't be the government's job to ensure the profitablity of a single industry's business model. Therefore, fuck the DMCA, which is bad for consumers and wouldn't stop piracy, but probably would increase certain companies' market share.

I dunno about what's up with Nature's headline selections.

Lets stop and have a talk about Nature and what is up with these freaking British people. First of all, why did it take them years to adopt citation tracking functions for their journal. Second of all, why do they insist on using the letter "s" when a "z" or "zed" as those freaks call it, would be more appropriate. Finally, how do they get away with titling a news story, "Wonky breasts signal cancer risk."

Did someone get confused and think they were writing for the Weekly World News? I don't want to be too hard on them, in the end I find it mostly funny. But "wonky?" I mean, really. That's a hell of an adjective to use on breasts, like women don't have enough to be self-conscious about, you've now got millions of women looking at their breasts and worrying about wonkiness. Finally, has wonkette been informed?

In case you haven't heard about the president of Turkmenistan yet, he is totally nuts.

I've heard stories about this guy over the years, about his 100-ft-high golden rotating statue of himself, his banning of Tolkien books etc. Now he's claiming to be some sort of new Muslim prophet (dangerous considering Mohammed was supposed to be the seal of the prophets).

Turkmenistan's president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov announced on state television that anyone reading his philosophical work three times would be assured a place in heaven.

"Anyone who reads the Rukhnama three times will find spiritual wealth, will become more intelligent, will recognise the divine being and will go straight to heaven," Niyazov said Monday.

The Turkmen leader said he had "called on Allah" while working on the two-volume book to ensure that enthusiastic readers would be given quicker access to heaven.

Now, lately I've been talking about Bush's cult of personality, and I'm not trying to compare these two, this Niyazov guy is really in another league. However, that "called on Allah" quote really sticks in my mind. Doesn't that sound a little bit like how Bush says he thinks his presidency is by the will of god and how he consulted with a "higher father" rather than his own dad before starting the Iraq war?

I dunno, I guess I just had a moment of clarity. Bush really does have a god complex.

Part of Giving Up is realizing that a lot of the ideas that we are fighting for on the left are really mainstream ideas that can stand to be attacked because it will bring people to our side. Like the idea that women should not be forced to maintain a pregnancy by their government. People take these rights, like reproductive rights, for granted until the Republicans screw with them. That's when the shit hits the fan.

So, tell me guys, what do you think this polling trend in South Dakota indicates? Could it be anything other than the ban? We'll keep an eye on the progress of this trend, but can you call the ban anything other than political suicide?

These guys are making the biggest political mistakes of their lives. Don't get too upset here, these changes will only last until the electorate smashes Republicans in the coming two elections for screwing with the majority. This issue was only a loser for Democrats as long as people could vote Republican and tell themselves that reproductive freedoms weren't really under any serious kind of threat. Well, those people won't be able to do that any more.

In a highly unusual move, a former Army major general who was responsible for training the Iraqi military, has written an op-ed for the NYT describing Rumsfeld as horrifically incompetent and called for his resignation.

In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.
...
Only Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff when President Bush was elected, had the courage to challenge the downsizing plans. So Mr. Rumsfeld retaliated by naming General Shinseki's successor more than a year before his scheduled retirement, effectively undercutting his authority. The rest of the senior brass got the message, and nobody has complained since.
...
Last, you don't expect a secretary of defense to be criticized for tactical ineptness. Normally, tactics are the domain of the soldier on the ground. But in this case we all felt what L. Paul Bremer, the former viceroy in Iraq, has called the "8,000-mile screwdriver" reaching from the Pentagon. Commanders in the field had their discretionary financing for things like rebuilding hospitals and providing police uniforms randomly cut; money to pay Iraqi construction firms to build barracks was withheld; contracts we made for purchasing military equipment for the new Iraqi Army were rewritten back in Washington.

Donald Rumsfeld demands more than loyalty. He wants fealty. And he has hired men who give it. Consider the new secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, who when faced with the compelling need to increase the service's size has refused to do so. He is instead relying on the shell game of hiring civilians to do jobs that had previously been done by soldiers, and thus keeping the force strength static on paper. This tactic may help for a bit, but it will likely fall apart in the next budget cycle, with those positions swiftly eliminated.

This type of attack on former civilian commanders by a retired general is somewhat extraordinary. I suggest everyone read it, it is a damning indictment of Rumsfeld's incompetent management of the Dept of Defense. Finally note the bolded sentence. Yet another example of why there are certain things that should never be privatized. Army operations are clearly one of them. At great expense these jackasses are outsourcing military operations to crooks like Halliburton (and KBR), just so they can make it look like they are doing their job on paper. If you ask me that's just fraud.

It would be Superman!

For proof, see here, here, and here.

It's all from the first one. Quite amusing - Superman taking on slum lords, lobbyists, and pesky bureaucrats...

Well, aside from those members of the right wing that are deeply imbedded in the Bush cult of personality, there are quite a few stories about non-cultist right wingers showing disatisfaction with Bush's performance. Meanwhile, the Iraqis have more or less started calling it a civil war.

In terms of domestic failures of the Republicans it looks like Kanye West was right Republicans (and Bush) hate black people. All that anti-welfare crap in the 90s seems to have created just about the worst case of racial divergence in history. I think this is more evidence that affirmative action is still needed to fight institutionalized racism in this country.

Finally, more evidence of incompetence in the Gulf Region. When are we going to learn that private companies are not more efficient than government? This myth of businesses being more efficient than government has never been shown to my satisfaction, and seems to be disproved every single day. From the cost of administrating Medicare (before Bush) compared to private insurance, to the criminal gouging of consumers from energy deregulation (Enron) in California and now Maryland, to the costs associated with having Halliburton mismanage the rebuilding of Iraq, when are we going to learn that this privatization myth is ruining our country?

I'm starting to think about tactics for how to deal with people that still stick up for Bush, since at this point, it indicates a complete detachment from reality. Take as an example, Cheney says the insurgency is in its death throes. All these successful bombings and strife mean they're on the outs, that death rattle the administration was talking about two years ago is still continuing, in the most drawn out death scene ever.

How does any rational human being believe these jackasses?

The answer is that none do. I'm not saying the Bushbots are fundamentally irrational people, they are capable of dressing themselves, going to work etc. The problem is that they have unwittingly become members of a cult. Bush supporters, and I distinguish them from conservatives as a whole who are abandoning Bush left and right (George Will, William F. Buckley Jr., Francis Fukuyama, and now Kevin Phillips of "The Emerging Republican Majority"), are fundamentally irrational members of Bush's Cult of Personality. It's no longer about ideology, differing views of government, social policy or economics, it is now solely about whether or not you agree with Bush. If you don't agree with Bush, you are a liberal pinko traitor. Bush is their "dear leader" and nothing else needs to be said, he is right, right or wrong.

So, the question I put out to the believers of Give Up is this: how do we deprogram these cult members?

Part of the reason I believe in the philosopy of Giving Up is that it is impossible to argue with irrational people. You might as well try to convince a raving schizophrenic that the FBI hasn't implanted a microchip in his brain. Given that it is impossible to convince irrational people of a problem if they are not predisposed to listening to you, what then is your strategy? Mine has been, simply, to Give Up. Republicans have to experience for themselves the train wreck that is the modern Republican party, we can't talk them out of it. At this point it seems we're as close as we ever have been to destroying the party once and for all, because the incompetence of Republicanism has never been more in the spotlight. But what do we do about the remaining 30% of the country that are members of Bush's cult of personality? They will follow him no matter how wrong it is, no matter how much of the outside world, science, news and media they have to ignore. He is their dear leader, and their confidence in him is absolute.

Do we have to let them hit absolute rock-bottom before they'll realize they've been had by a cult leader? Will referring to Bush as "dear leader" (The leader is good, the leader is great, we surrender our will as of this date! na na na na na na na na leader!) have any effect? Is there a way we can speed up the give up process so we don't actually have to experience a worldwide depression from our 9 trillion dollar debt?

I'm worried the answer to all of these is no. Give Up is an ok defense mechanism against these cultists, but it's not exactly a proposition to save the world.

This is a strange way to hear about this, but apparently 26 new episodes of Futurama have been ordered according to Billy West.

Kick ass! What was your favorite Futurama? I was partial to Tales of Interest.

You've watched it...you can't un-watch it!

via /.

** Update **

Billy lied!

Why is he doing this to us? Why must he taunt us with promises of more Futurama?

Anyway, it sounds like they're not making new episodes but they are planning on making several movie-length Futurama's. As long as I get my Bender fix I'll be ok.

In response to a letter demanding an end to seal killing in Canada by a prospective American tourist, a Canadian MP responded to the Americans by demanding an end to Iraqi killing (and the death penalty, and widespread gun sales etc.) Anyway, read it for yourself.

Coming to the defense of Canada's seal hunt, a Liberal senator has lashed out at the United States' foreign policy, the Iraq war, the death penalty and the country's gun culture in an

email to an American family considering cancelling a vacation because they are opposed to the "horrific" annual cull.

"What I find 'horrific' about your country is the daily killing of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of mainly black prisoners in U.S., the massive sale of guns to U.S. citizens every day, the destabilization of the whole world by the aggressive foreign policy of U.S. government, etc.," Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette wrote in an email response to the McLellan family of Minnesota.

Via Fark.

Remember everybody, we don't torture.

Also, in lighter news, try playing the Patriot Act Game where he who retains their civil liberties longest, wins!

Back to serious news, Scientific American is reporting that hotter global temps are making hurricanes more severe.

Finally in absolutely hysterical news, some retarded Somali pirates attacked a US guided missile cruiser and a destroyer. How stupid do you have to be? I can just imagine the scene on the decks of those ships as the Americans scratched their heads and wondered which of the weapons at their disposal would be the most fun to use against these pirates. Would the admiral be mad if we blew up their speedboat with a $500k piece of ordinance?

There's a bunch of interesting Science news in Science Magazine and NEJM this week.

First, truly wonderful, fantastic, kick-ass anti-corporation news as the Data Quality Act has been struck down by a federal court. From the article:

In May 2003, the Salt Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a DQA petition to obtain unpublished data from DASH-Sodium, a study funded partly by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) (Science, 30 May 2003, p. 1350). The study found that eating less salt lowered participants' blood pressure, and NHLBI has cited these findings in recommending that all Americans lower their salt intake. But DASH researchers had failed to break down the data for subgroups (such as white men under age 45 without hypertension), argued the industry group, which demanded that NHLBI release these data for independent analysis. After NHLBI rejected the request, the groups sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NHLBI's parent agency.
...
In November 2004, a Virginia federal district court turned down the suit, a decision upheld on 6 March by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Alexandria, Virginia. The panel of three judges found that the DQA "does not create any legal right to information or its correctness," and for that reason, the plaintiffs lacked legal "standing" to pursue their case.

The DQA has been a terrible law, pointed out by many opposing the Republican War on Science as a evil tool to suppress public-interest government funded research by industries who profit from human misery. If this law had existed for the last 50 years, there still would be no publicly accepted health policy on cigarettes because Phillip-Morris would just challenge every governmental agency who studied it so no reports on the ill effects of tobacco would ever be known. Ding Dong the DQA is dead!

There is also an interesting article on the rapidly approaching $1000 genome. I'm rooting for 454 Life Sciences.

In geek science news there are new methods for generating artificial muscle fibers and tricorders. One day we will have robots, and tricorders, and robot tricorders. I promise.

Finally, a free full-text from NEJM on how black or white, rich or poor, our health care universally sucks. I would like to see a similar study done on other countries so we can finally put this "american medical care is the best in the world" shit to rest. So what if you can't get an MRI on demand in Canada, I'd rather have free primary care and preventative medicine! You'll need those things more than you'll ever need an MRI. Anyway, just another nail in the coffin of the free-market medical system that is rapidly draining the United States of all of it's money via entitlement programs.

At the same time Evangelicals are demanding Republicans be more conservative you see wonderful quotes like this one:

"Right now, I wouldn't vote Democratic if Jesus Christ was running." Judy Deats, a Texas Republican, who is standing by Rep. Tom DeLay in his re-election bid despite the fact that his association with lobbyist Jack Abramoff has made him vulnerable to political opposition for the first time in more than 20 years.

Looks like some people will always just hate Democrats no matter what, but hey, politics has always been like that. Voting against Jesus is a little bit extreme though.

I assume that this would also fall under your rule of 'inefficient protest'?

That's Bush's response to a questioner in Maryland who demanded he answer her query about how seniors should figure out his catastrophically defective health benefit. So, our future of taking care of our parents includes not only fixing their computers during our periodic visits, but also figuring out their medicare. It's a good thing that all old people have access to their children to solve theses problems for them.

I was reading Fark and I ran across this bizarre story.

WASHINGTON - A West Virginia man allegedly attacked a guard on the grounds of the CIA, sources tell WTOP.

The bizarre incident happened March 10 when the man, identified as Jeffrey Anderson, went to Langley and told a guard, "God told him to apply for a job."

The guard reportedly told Anderson that's not how people get hired and ordered him to leave.

Anderson began to walk away but then dropped his jacket and assumed a fighting position, sources say.

The guard told him not to do that. Anderson allegedly took a few swings at the guard, who wasn't hurt.

Why does this remind me of Ralph (Giovanni Ribisi) from My Name is Earl?

The story of the failure of the Democrats to rally behind Feingold gets worse. It turns out, if the Democrats had looked at the polls that seem to have replaced their spines, they might have backed the measure.

Do you favor or oppose the United States Senate passing a resolution censuring President George W. Bush for authorizing wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining court orders?
3/15/06	Favor	Oppose	Undecided
All Adults	46%	44%	10%
Voters	48%	43%	9%
Republicans (33%)	29%	57%	14%
Democrats (37%)	70%	26%	4%
Independents (30%)	42%	47%	11%
Based on 1,100 completed telephone interviews among a random sample of adults nationwide March 13-15, 2006. The theoretical margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, 95% of the time.

Wow, Democrats blew this one really badly, so did Republicans if you think about it.

File this under the "fool me once" category. The CNN headline of the day - Bush reaffirms first-strike war doctrine

What the hell? Since it worked so well last time? Since we're bogged down in a land war in Asia? And he mentions Iran?

On the positive side, the proposed "retards from Texas" summit has been canceled.

If you thought Sandra Day O'Connor was overreacting last week when she suggested a more serious societal problem behind attacks on the judiciary, check out this SF Gate article on O'Connor and Ginsberg's problems with death threats.

Security concerns among judges have been growing.

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter joked earlier this year that Justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned. Over the past few months O'Connor has complained that criticism, mainly by Republicans, has threatened judicial independence to deal with difficult issues like gay marriage.

Worry is not limited to the Supreme Court. Three quarters of the nation's 2,200 federal judges have asked for government-paid home security systems, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said this week.

Ginsburg said the Web threat was apparently prompted by proposals in Congress, filed by Republicans, that tell judges to stop relying on foreign laws or court decisions.

"It is disquieting that they have attracted sizable support. And one not-so-small concern - they fuel the irrational fringe," she said in a speech posted online by the court earlier this month and first reported Wednesday by LegalTimes.com.

According to Ginsburg, someone in a Web site chat room wrote: "Okay commandoes, here is your first patriotic assignment ... an easy one. Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg and O'Connor have publicly stated that they use (foreign) laws and rulings to decide how to rule on American cases. This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom. ... If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week."

Hmmm.

Slate has a great article which suggests the shoplifting by Claude Allen is just an extension of Bushonomics. They have a point. If people are willing to steal billions from taxpayers, why should we be surprised when they then go to stores and think they don't have to pay?

It was like premature ejaculation. Feingold proposes an resolution to censure Bush, and, of course, Democrats fled from him like he had the plague, and right-wingers are using it to motivate their base.

The speed with which Democrats distanced themselves from Feingold's ballsy proposal was embarrassing for two reasons. One, it showed that Democrats have no balls, if they had showed some stones Republicans wouldn't have been so fast to jump on this as a campaign issue, instead they smell weakness and have pounced. Two, it shows Feingold might be incompetent as a political leader. How could he have proposed such a radical initiative against the president without securing any support? Was it just to embarrass the Democrats? To expose the fractures within the party?

Either way, it was something of a major give-up violation. Bush is well on his way towards impeaching himself with his outrageous incompetence. Feingold blew his wad way too early on this one. While I did cheer Feingold for his moxy, it wasn't hard to predict this outcome. Just as we said about 2 days ago.

Realistically though, can we expect this to do anything other than labelling Feingold as an extermist? Isn't he worried this will ruin his chances at winning a national election?

I don't want to sound like some Democratic strategist always counseling the party to act like a bunch of wimps, but this is a futile effort that will likely only generate backlash in the future.

The secret is just to point out incompetence and let the voters decide. Attacks on Bush like this just make the idiots who voted for him feel as though they are under attack. Seriously, a little patience wouldn't hurt here. We'll destroy these guys in the fall if Democrats can just hold themselves together, and not fall apart at the seams, like they did in this case.

It has been our view that there is no greater way to undo the Republicans than to simply remind the American people in all the ways they are incompetent (see maps to left). Well, it seems to be paying off. According to the latest Pew poll

Bush's personal image also has weakened noticeably, which is reflected in people's one-word descriptions of the president. Honesty had been the single trait most closely associated with Bush, but in the current survey "incompetent" is the descriptor used most frequently (See pp. 7-8).

The Gallup polling is also showing the backlash we predicted against this incompetence.

The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds the Democratic Party leading the Republican Party 55% to 39% among registered voters in the generic congressional ballot. Gallup asks this question to get a sense of how people will vote in this year's elections for the U.S. House of Representatives.

The great thing is, because the Republicans are fundamentally incompetent, this trend should only continue until the elections in November. And remember, it's registered voters in this poll, so it's not just general discontent, but discontent among people who actually turn out.

Down with Republicans!

In related incompetence news, Salon has all the remaining Abu Ghraib evidence posted.

Certainly there is no end in sight for the national debt as the US current account deficit has hit a new record.

Certainly there is no end in sight for this civil war in Iraq as between 72 and 86 people were executed yesterday in Baghdad alone.

However, Bush seems to think we want to hear we are leaving this civil war to be fought by the Iraqis, so apparently the Iraqi army will be in control of Iraq by the end of the year.

Considering news reports that no single unit of the Iraqi army is combat ready, and that they are divided into what are really 3 separate armies, one Kurdish, one Shiite, one Sunni, this also seems unlikely. Also considering he hasn't told the truth once in 6 years, I'm not predisposed to believe him on this, as much as I'd like it to be true.

Oh well, at least some guy in Pennsylvania is standing up for my right to give the finger to people. In my case it's Hummer drivers, but in his, Pennsylvania construction workers. I can't blame him, I used to live in Pennsylvania for a time. I gotta say, there is something seriously wrong with the boys over in PennDOT. They are either the most crooked bunch of jackasses in the road construction business or the laziest, or possibly the most incompetent. I could tell stories.

Pat Robertson is being criticized for what are seen as anti-Islamic comments. The question is, despite his penchant for jackassery, are these comments that bad? I don't think these are even as bad as the assassinate Chavez comments from a year ago.

He remarked that the outpouring of rage elicited by cartoons "just shows the kind of people we're dealing with. These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it's motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it's time we recognize what we're dealing with."
...
Robertson also said that "the goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, is world domination."
...
In a statement later Monday, Robertson said he was referring specifically to terrorists who want to bomb innocent people as being motivated by Satan. In the news story, he noted, radical Muslims were shown screaming: "May Allah bomb you! May Osama Bin Laden bomb you!"

I don't know, I was with him until he got to the whole demon/Satan/world domination thing. Yes, the people who kill over a cartoon are crazed fanatics. Then he starts complaining about world domination, as if it isn't the goal of Christians to proselytize until they are the only religion in the world, and the goal of his organization to destroy the wall between church and state. However, if you believe that Satan is a real entity and is influencing world events (I admit that is crazy) is it more or less crazy to believe such an embodiment of evil wouldn't be behind the fanatical craziness of people who kill over drawings?

I realize that Robertson has already earned a label of total crazy wackjob for a million statements in the past, but is this most recent one really that bad? I'm not particularly upset about it. If I believed in Satan, I might think he'd be the type to encourage people to kill over a cartoon.

Slavoj Zizek, writing for the NYT, asks us to reconsider atheism as the only real source of morality.

For centuries, we have been told that without religion we are no more than egotistic animals fighting for our share, our only morality that of a pack of wolves; only religion, it is said, can elevate us to a higher spiritual level. Today, when religion is emerging as the wellspring of murderous violence around the world, assurances that Christian or Muslim or Hindu fundamentalists are only abusing and perverting the noble spiritual messages of their creeds ring increasingly hollow. What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?
...
This argument couldn't have been more wrong: the lesson of today's terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted — at least to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and considerations. In short, fundamentalists have become no different than the "godless" Stalinist Communists, to whom everything was permitted since they perceived themselves as direct instruments of their divinity, the Historical Necessity of Progress Toward Communism.
...
Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume, a believer, made this point in a very poignant way, when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence.

Discuss. I've felt for a long time that the bible could be used to justify nearly any behavior, while atheism requires a more rigorous form of morality. Rather than just referring to an outdated, and often inappropriate book, one actually has to think about the benefit and rational for one's actions in the context of the real world. Theologic philosophers used to do this, but with the rise of protestantism, and loss of dogmatic control of religious and moral messages especially in the Middle East and the US, an intellectual approach to theologic morality is now nonexistent. Religious and moral teaching based upon the bible (or Q'uran) is now just a chaotic free-for-all where any jackass can hijack any religion for whatever crazy-as-shit proposition one could dream up while jacked on peyote and crystal meth. Just look at Fred Phelps.

Feingold has called for a censure of president Bush over the wiretapping scandal. Despite this being politically impossible, I salute the effort. In terms of breaking the law, lying about a blowjob vs. violating FISA to spy on Americans, the spying is a lot worse. Feingold explains his motivations:

"What I'm interested in is my colleagues acknowledging that we as a Congress have to stand up to a president who acts as if the Bill of Rights and the Constitution were repealed on September 11," he said. "We didn't enact martial law on September 11. We still have a constitutional form of government, and if the Congress of the United States does not stand up for that authority at this point, it will be an historic failure of our system of government."

Realistically though, can we expect this to do anything other than labelling Feingold as an extermist? Isn't he worried this will ruin his chances at winning a national election?

I don't want to sound like some Democratic strategist always counseling the party to act like a bunch of wimps, but this is a futile effort that will likely only generate backlash in the future. It may help him in the primaries, but in a general election, this might be used against him.

So say the analysts of the violence in Iraq.

When will the Bush administration admit their colossal failure? My guess, never.

Sandra Day O'Connor has warned the US is risking becoming a dictatorship. The reason? The strongarming of judges by right-wingers.

She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."
...
After the decision last March that ordered a brain-dead woman in Florida, Terri Schiavo, removed from life support, Mr DeLay said: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behaviour."

Mr DeLay later called for the impeachment of judges involved in the Schiavo case, and called for more scrutiny of "an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president".

Such threats, Ms O'Connor said, "pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedom", and she told the lawyers in her audience: "I want you to tune your ears to these attacks ... You have an obligation to speak up.
...
She noted death threats against judges were on the rise and added that the situation was not helped by a senior senator's suggestion that there might be a connection between the violence against judges and the decisions they make.

The senator she was referring to was John Cornyn, a Bush loyalist from Texas, who made his remarks last April, soon after a judge was shot dead in an Atlanta courtroom and the family of a federal judge was murdered in Illinois.

Wow. It makes you wonder why she retired under this administration if she really felt this way.

I was overjoyed to see the headline of this article in the WaPo today: "Electricity Deregulation: High Cost, Unmet Promises; Competition a 'Myth' as Prices Spiral Upward"

What exactly about the Enron debacle is still lost on the people of this country? Of course opening your markets to greedy energy traders will increase costs, are you kidding me?

Under the old system, the price of electricity was strictly based on what it cost the power company to produce it. Now, prices are based on what several hundred highly sophisticated power suppliers and traders believe the market will bear, prices that can have only nominal relation to cost.
...
Enron Corp. envisioned a world in which power nationally would become a commodity, much like oil, and it could profit by being a supplier and trader of that commodity. Enron lobbied heavily in states, including Maryland, for deregulation. A little less than half the states embraced some form of deregulation in the late 1990s.

And where is all this money going from these increased bills?

Constellation Energy Group Inc.'s revenue has nearly doubled in two years, to $17.1 billion in 2005. Chief executive Mayo A. Shattuck III's cash compensation was nearly $5 million in 2004, up more than 176 percent from 2002. And shareholders are being rewarded with an $11 billion merger deal with a Florida power company.

Just think, your power bills are higher, service isn't better, competition hasn't arrived, and the excess cost is going to line the pockets of CEOs. Thanks a lot Enron.

So, are we saying that capitalism doesn't work? Of course not. Only that capitalism is most efficient when regulated, because actors in a capitalist system will try to swing things to their advantage by blocking competition. When you let jackasses like Enron make the rules, you don't get a market system, you get price-gouging. And de-regulation doesn't bring more competition, it just brings Enron.

"We were sold a myth called competition," said Del. Patrick L. McDonough (R-Baltimore County). "We will find Jimmy Hoffa in Maryland before we find competition."

Finally, you remember how a few years ago after the NYC blackout everyone was interested in improving the power grid as a national security concern?

Deregulation was also supposed to encourage development of a national grid system. Utilities and their would-be competitors could buy from the lowest-cost producer, no matter where the producer resided. Pepco could, in theory, buy power from a plant in Oklahoma using cheap natural gas. But the national grid hasn't been improved because power producers -- the most logical source of capital to improve the system -- don't want the competition a robust national grid would allow. Today it is nearly impossible to move large amounts of electricity over long distances.

This is one of the great myths of American capitalism, that regulation stifles innovation. Innovation is actually improved by regulation because regulation presents a necessity to parties that would stagnate in terms of developing their product as long as it remained profitable. If we were to tell the power companies they had to develop a grid in 10 years, we'd have a grid.

This story is just too bizarre. Bush's former domestic policy advisor, Claude Allen, is apparently a cleptomaniac.

The scam allegedly involved Mr Allen claiming refunds for merchandise that he did not buy.

Mr Allen was arrested on Thursday by police in Montgomery County, Maryland, following an investigation into an alleged incident at the Target store in Gaithersburg, Maryland on 2 January.
...
Mr Allen, a lawyer born in Philadelphia, was promoted to White House domestic policy adviser in early 2005, having been the No 2 official at the health and human services department.

Mr Bush had nominated him in 2003 for a seat on the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia, but withdrew him because of political opposition.
...
Mr Allen resigned suddenly on 9 February, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family.

WaPo coverage here which includes this nugget.

Snyder said he feels confident that Allen will be able to prove that the incidents were "a series of misunderstandings."

Yeah right, "a series of misunderstandings." I'm sure all 25 documented instances are just misunderstandings. Once is a misunderstanding, twice is pushing it, and 25 is a compulsion.

Just think, Bush was about to appoint a compulsive thief to the federal bench, except somehow the Democrats got their shit together enough to oppose it. It's amazing though, Bush is really some judge of character.

Then consider these beautiful demonstrations of his religious conservatism.

Allen is a self-described born-again Christian who got his start in politics working for Jesse Helms (R), the conservative former North Carolina senator.

Allen stirred controversy as Helms's campaign spokesman in 1984 by telling a reporter that then-Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. -- Helms's opponent -- was politically vulnerable because of his links to the "queers." He later explained that he used the word not to denigrate anyone but as a synonym for "odd and unusual."

Before that, Allen worked for the Virginia state attorney general's office and as state health and human resources secretary. In that job, he earned a reputation as a staunch conservative; once he kept Medicaid funds from an impoverished rape victim who wanted an abortion.

Is anyone surprised anymore when these holier-than-thou types that punish the poor and the unfortunate turn out to be nothing more than worthless thieves.

Also note, that Gail Norton recently pulled the "more time with my family" shit. Maybe, just maybe, it is due to some form of similar criminal involvement with Jack Abramoff funding her bullshit environmental charity. Just think about it, an environmental charity founded by Gail Norton and Grover Norquist, and funded by Jack Abramoff, how could it not be totally fucking crooked. I mean, really. How could we have missed this?

Checking out boingboing today I noticed this little story about a guy who rips apart a credit card application he received in the mail, then sends it in to the credit card company. Guess what? They sent him a shiny new credit card.

Now, I wasn't going to be able to check my mailbox for a few weeks, so I marked this little checkbox and CHANGED MY ADDRESS to my parent's address, who are blessed with a very secure mailbox.

I wanted the BRAND NEW CARD to go to a DIFFERENT ADDRESS.

Also, I used my CELL PHONE NUMBER on the application. I'm not always at home, so I didn't want to have to call from my real home to authorize the card.
...
YES! The Chase Mastercard had arrived! It was really shiny, and new, with its very own account number!

Hooray!

I used my cell phone to activate the card. It was incredibly convenient for me to get a card without having to actually be in my house!

Read the whole thing, it's hysterical. And the best part is this guy is clearly acquainted with the BS arguments that credit cards use for justifying this reckless instant credit system they have created, such as it is "convenient" and "good for the consumer."

All instant-credit is good for is bankrupting people who are bad with money, and enriching identity thieves. It is not convenient to receive hundreds and hundreds of solicitations in the mail every year, and to have to shred them (not tear them up) so that some thief doesn't ruin your reputation and finances. This is not convenience, this is criminal negligence.

Always remember you can opt out by calling 1-888-567-8688 or going to optoutprescreen.com. Yes the opt-out site is a real site. They purposefully make it look cheesy so people are reluctant to use it. However, I must say, in my experience, banks I have never done business with continue to send me credit card applications unsolicited even years after opting out permanently. Fucking criminals.

News stories like this are why I could never support a Hilary campaign. If she ever wins the nomination I'll just hold my nose and vote, but I wouldn't be able to bring myself to advocate for her as a candidate.

Clinton, Lieberman propose CDC investigate games

Democrats Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Hillary Clinton of New York, and Dick Durbin of Illinois persuaded a Senate committee to approve a sweeping study of the "impact of electronic media use" to be organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.

Even though the legislation--called the Children and Media Research Advancement Act--does not include restrictions, it appears to be intended as a way to justify them. That's because a string of court decisions have been striking down antigaming laws because of a lack of hard evidence that minors are harmed by violence in video games.

If they take away my Grand Theft Auto I'm voting Republican for life.

I might be celebrating a little bit early, but the unraveling of this administration is occuring at a startling pace, and there are signs that fellow Republicans are jumping ship.

Take, for instance, the Senate Budget Committee has struck tax cuts from Bush's budget. Then there is this story about the massive Republican rejection of the Dubai ports deal. Remember how Bush said he was going to spend political capital in 2005? Well, turns out, the money never got transferred to his account.

"He has no political capital," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster. "Slowly but surely it's been unraveling. There's been a direct correlation between the trajectory of his approval numbers and the -- I don't want to call it disloyalty -- the independence on the part of the Republicans in Congress."

It is of note now that Bush's poll numbers no longer reflect a majority of people regarding him positive in any way whatsoever. People no longer see him as capable of handling terrorism, foreign affairs, telling the truth, running the economy, etc. He has no positive poll numbers.

But should we be surprised? No, because people who have given up know that eventually, when Americans actually experienced undiluted Republicanism, they would reject it. Republicanism is bad for everybody, and the chickens are coming home to roost.

Also, signs of further trouble, David S. Kris, an ex-justice lawyer for the administration has has openly attacked the legality of Bush's spying program. And if you thought the Republicans would start behaving in the wake of the Abramhoff/Cunningham ethics troubles, you didn't take into account that fetus-fondler Santorum.

After saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week.
...
But in the month since his announcement, Santorum has held two meetings attended by the same core group of lobbyists, and has used the sessions to appeal for campaign aid, according to participants. Both of those meetings were convened at the same time as the previous meetings -- 8:30 a.m. -- on the same day of the week -- Tuesday -- and they lasted for about as long as the earlier meetings -- one hour.

Instead of being held in the Capitol, however, the recent meetings were conducted nearby. The first was held about three blocks away, at the headquarters of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the second was held around the corner from that building, at the Heritage Foundation.
...
One lobbyist called the attendees "the usual suspects," and said they were among the city's best-known lobbyists whose firms represent financial services, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, oil production and tobacco companies.

It's like an addiction. He couldn't keep off the lobbyist junk for even a month.

John Hodgman had a great quote on the Daily last night. I nearly plotzed.

India is a melting pot, it has 23 official languages, 500 different styles of field hockey, and its many religious traditions worship some 23 thousand deities encompassing some 8.5 million heads and arms plus at least one baby with an elephant trunk. So you can see the point that with so many gods, the hate is diluted.

I don't know why I found it so ridiculously funny. That guy is just magical. I'm going to have to get his book, if only for the hobo names.

This incredibly interesting story in the WaPo this morning indicates that the supposedly "reasonable" or "revised" death rates from the recent civil unrest in Iraq have been a fabrication.

Days after the bombing of a Shiite shrine unleashed a wave of retaliatory killings of Sunnis, the leading Shiite party in Iraq's governing coalition directed the Health Ministry to stop tabulating execution-style shootings, according to a ministry official familiar with the recording of deaths.

The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared for his safety, said a representative of the Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, ordered that government hospitals and morgues catalogue deaths caused by bombings or clashes with insurgents, but not by execution-style shootings.
...
Abductions and killings of Sunni Arab men, usually by gunshots to the back of the head, have occurred with increasing frequency over the past year and are widely blamed on government-allied Shiite religious militias and death squads alleged to be operating from inside the SCIRI-dominated Interior Ministry.
...
On Sunday, as a Washington Post reporter briefly visited the morgue office, five bodies were brought in from a town just outside Baghdad. All were neatly dressed men, all had their hands bound, and all had been shot in the back of the head. Morgue officials took the bodies to one of the refrigerated trailers. No mention of the five appeared in news reports.

So, the Iraqis are learning from us on how a government should disseminate information. Anyway, it looks like if you want to kill someone in Iraq, make it an execution. Apparently, that doesn't count.

Looks like Allen will have some competition.

I liked the Allen campaign's response to former Reagan Navy Secretary James Webb's entry into the race as a Democrat:

Dick Waddams, Allen's chief political adviser, said, "We welcome Jim Webb to the race and know there will a spirited contest in the Democratic primary between two wealthy liberals."

Ha! It just goes to show, liberal these days just means you oppose Republicans and/or Bush. Webb has never voted Democrat in his life before and was a member of the Reagan administration. He's probably the exact opposite of a Democrat or a liberal, but if you oppose Republicans, they'll label you liberal right of the bat.

I guess if it works...

Anyway, I would worry this guy is another Virgil Goode as one might see running as a Democrat now to be to his advantage, riding the tide of criticism against Bush to the winning side. We'll see. I guess if Democrats can't win by nominating Democrats they can always start nominating Republicans, but as long as they are anti-Bush, I'm kind of ok with it.

**Update**
I just saw Webb on the Colbert Report, apparently he was a Democrat before he was a Republican. Hopefully Allen won't construe that as flip-flopping.

He came across very well however, my enthusiasm is increasing. He sounds like one of those guys who is just interested in what is right and good for the country. I guess that means he'll never win.

Vanity Fair has a spread on Jack Abramhoff that prominently features him in photos with people who have denied ever meeting him.

The deniers include many major Republican leaders and insiders (Mehlmen, Hastert, McCain, Gingrich, Bush etc.) The spread has pictures of Abramhoff with many of these individuals and in the article he describes he was actually quite friendly with many of these sudden amnesiacs, including Bush.

I can't wait for the sentencing. The Republicans that are most in trouble are Ney, Burns, Hastert, Doolittle and Cochran. Anyway here are some real nuggets:

Abramhoff the Don:

"It was like Frank Sinatra," recalls Monty Warner, a Republican media strategist who remains friendly with Abramoff. "I can remember Ney coming up and groveling, saying how much he enjoyed a golf outing or skybox or ball game, and really appreciated Jack's support."

Abramhoff on his clients:

...he called his Indian clients "troglodytes" and "morons" and "monkeys," "the stupidest idiots in the land." In one particularly damning e-mail he counseled Scanlon, "The key thing to remember with all these clients is that they are annoying, but that the annoying losers are the only ones which have this kind of money and part with it so quickly. So, we have to put up with this stuff."

Abramhoff on old buddies:

Tom DeLay, who once called Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends," no longer talks to him.
...
Ralph Reed's race for lieutenant governor of Georgia has foundered since it was disclosed that Reed, who says he opposes gambling, accepted gambling money from
Abramoff on a lobbying job, then insisted he hadn't known about it. The two are now
estranged; when Norquist got married last year, Reed steered clumsily clear of Abramoff's table. And, Abramoff says, Newt Gingrich sneered at him.

Poor baby.

While Dan Savage is addressing his "impeach the motherfucker already" (ITMFA) campaign in this week's column Harold Myerson of the WP has posted a more mainstream article more or less suggesting the same thing although he concludes it's too soon.

I'm usually loathe to talk about op-ed's from either side unless they say something particularly interesting, after all, part of giving up is not giving a shit what other people think. However, I'm heartened to see that the idea of Bush as "worst...president...ever" is catching on in the MSM.

History, I'll wager, will find Bush as inept as James Buchanan, on whose watch the Union broke up. It will find him as divisive, as eager to polarize the nation to his political advantage, no matter the costs, as Richard Nixon. (Indeed, if the administration does seek to prosecute the reporters who followed up leaks to break the news of its scandals, I suspect the genesis of this campaign will be less the intelligence community's concern for secrets and more Karl Rove's desperate need for an enemy within as midterm elections loom.) But does any or all of this rise to the level of an impeachable offense, or is it merely the kind of thing that lands a president on eternal sizzle in one of Dante's lower loops?

I'm thoroughly enjoying this new debate. Which president is worse? Buchanan or Bush? Now please notice, that is no longer even whether Bush is worse than Harding. We used to compare him to Harding as a similarly incompetent, probably being screwed by his friends type of guy. Now, the debate is no longer whether he is just a more or less harmless bumbling idiot type of president, but whether he is actively malevolent in his incompetence (like Buchanan), and likely to bring the entire nation into a crisis or risk the very survival of the US. Given the threats of fiscal collapse, environmental catastrophy/global climate change, civil war in the mid-east, etc., this guy's damage to this country may take decades to reverse. That puts him at about Buchanan level.

This is a story from back in April that I think is more and more prescient. Remember the Santorum fetus story? No? Here's a reminder:

In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.

Upon their son's death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen's parents' home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.

"That's my little guy," Santorum says, pointing to the photo of Gabriel, in which his tiny physique is framed by his father's hand. The senator often speaks of his late son in the present tense. It is a rare instance in which he talks softly.

Ah, the pro-life world of the future, where we must even treat dead fetuses like children. How touching.

Makes me glad Santorum is in trouble this year, and faces a major threat from Casey in Pennsylvania who is leading by over 10 points in the polls.

The JCI has an intresting book review this month of Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science.

In particular I liked the history and strategy of attacks on science highlighted in the review. Doesn't this sound familiar?

In his important and alarming indictment, The Republican war on science, Chris Mooney tells how, beginning in the 1970s, the consensus of the scientific community ran afoul of corporate interests. To neutralize the influence of academic scientists, corporate-funded "think tanks" and "institutes" proliferated to produce "experts" who would offer what later became labeled by their Congressional supporters as "sound science" to counter the "junk science" of university-based scientists and expert panels of scientific organizations.
...
An infamous 1960s Brown & Williamson memo states, "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also a means of establishing controversy." The formula is to amplify uncertainties, cherry-pick experts, attack individual scientists, marginalize the traditional role of distinguished scientific bodies and get the media to report "both sides" of a manufactured controversy. The formula has been successfully applied to missile defense, acid rain, the ozone layer, global warming, mercury in fish, sugar and obesity, evolution, sex education, contraception, AIDS prevention, and stem cell research.

It seems to be a successful strategy since we keep coming up against it again, and again. Not just in science either. Just ask people who work for public interest firms, you see the exact same thing. Industry creates some bullshit public interest, usually with the words, "consumer", "choice" or "freedom" in the name which then proceeds to spew the industry screed in every possible venue on the behalf of the some imaginary group of citizens.

Someone should create a master list of all these fake public interests and "think tanks" and they should be summarily dismissed from contributing to newspapers, journals, or any other literature. A master blacklist for industry-sponsored propaganda sources. I would if I had the time.

Alex at Wonkette points out an interesting fact, the nanny-ware the military uses to censor websites seems to selectively filter out left-wing sites, and allows right-wing sites.

1. Wonkette - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion."
   
2. Bill O’Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) - OK
   
3. Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) - "Forbidden, this page http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion."
   
4. Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) - OK
   
5. ABC News "The Note" - OK
   
6. Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, politics/Opinion."
   
7. G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) - OK
   
8. Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies."

Maybe thats why so many of the troops still think Saddam was behind 9/11?

March 29th, be ready for the Abramhoff sentencing. Both sides of the case have been trying to delay it, the prosecution so they can avoid compromising current investigations, and the defense, because, well, every day until they name his co-conspirators they can hope Bush's and the Republicans' poll numbers might recover. The judge, however, refused their pleas and we will find out the depth of Abramhoff's sleazy ties to the Republicans (and exclusively Republicans, don't let anyone tell you different).

Also, SD has effectively banned abortion aka the "forced pregnancy bill." I am curious to see how they will treat still births and anencephaly. Will the law force women to carry anencephalic children and still-births to term?

An analysis of parental notification laws appears to show they do little or nothing to reduce abortions.

For instance, in Tennessee, the abortion rate went down when a federal court suspended a parental consent requirement, then rose when the law went back into effect. In Texas, the rate fell after a notification law went into effect, but not as fast as it did in the years before the law. In Virginia, the rate barely moved when the state introduced a notification law in 1998, but it fell sharply after the requirement was changed to parental consent in 2003.

It appears other factors are probably tied into decreasing numbers of abortions. I have an idea! Let's teach kids about contraception, safe sex, and the benefits of not getting knocked up in high school, maybe that would work! Revolutionary, no?

It's sad, but we really do know how to decrease unwanted pregnancies, only the retards in charge would rather have abstinence education (proven not to decrease sexual activity, and may actually increase it) than honest and effective education that would lower the number of unwanted pregnancies in young girls. So much hypocrisy, oh well. We're likely to hear more retarded statements from right-wingers like this in the future:

"It's one of the few areas that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed states to legislate, so it's become a key for lowering the abortion rate," said Mary Spaulding Balch, director of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee. "My opinion, the laws have a significant impact on the number of abortions minors have."

But of course...

Yet the Times analysis of the states that enacted laws between 1995 and 2004 -- most of which had low abortion rates to begin with -- found no evidence that the laws had a significant impact on the number of minors who got pregnant, or, once pregnant, the number who had abortions.

If you told these guys the sky was blue they'd probably deny it. And then, there is the Give Up effect:

Of the remaining decline in teenage abortion rates in the Times study, Joyce said some of it might be attributed to minors going out of state for abortions. The health departments in these states do not track data on such abortions, but in three previous studies of states where such data were available, completed before 1991, two found that any drop in minors' abortions was matched by an increase in minors getting abortions out of state.

That's the future right there.

In this NYT article on possible Democratic strategies in the upcoming election the authors talk to Dr. Charles Jones of the University of Wisconsin, and I must take exception to this comment in the strongest possible terms:

"If you're going to run a national campaign," as the Republicans did in 1994, Dr. Jones said, "it's helpful to have a message, not just 'The other guys don't know what they are doing.' If Democrats are using that strategy, I haven't heard that message yet."

What is this guy talking about? "The other guys don't know what they are doing" is the perfect message! And it has the benefit of being true! Since when is pointing out that your opponent is an incompetent moron with the IQ of a toy bulldozer a bad strategy? Granted it didn't work in the last couple of elections, but that was before we had such excellent evidence for their incompetence (Americans will never accept warnings, they must experience the incompetence before they'll believe you). After all, this administration lost a major American city, they lost a stupid and expensive war, they lost the entire budget surplus, they have bankrupted us with retarded policies increasing spending while lowering taxes. If you ask me, the best possible strategy is to say that the Republicans are so incompetent, that anyone, and I mean anyone, could do a better job. LaRouche could do a better job than these jackasses.

The Democrats, instead of creating a new Contract for America, should instead create something like "competent leadership for America" or "elect the non-retarded." I think competence is an excellent platform to run on, after all, at this point ideologically I could care less who is elected, as long as no more US cities are destroyed by ineffectual management.

It would look something like this. This NYT piece is interesting (WaPo also), because while they clearly have some serious anti-American terrorist types at Gitmo, they mostly seem to have guys like this:

"I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan," he protested to American military officers at Guantanamo. "My name is Abdur Sayed Rahman. Abdur Zahid Rahman was the deputy foreign minister of the Taliban."

And the reports of exchanges during the "hearings" are sometimes downright hysterical.

Consider the exchange over a Belgian detainee, captured in Afghanistan. One allegation, read in court, was that he was a member of the Theological Commission of the GICM.

"What is GICM?" asked the detainee, who was not identified.

The tribunal president asked a clerk, "Could you explain what GICM is? I have the same question."

The clerk said he was not sure, either. Another accusation was read: that GICM is associated with Al Qaeda. The detainee answered again, "I don't know this group."

The tribunal president announced a short break so the clerk could "find out, for everyone's benefit, What GICM stands for." When the tribunal reconvened, the clerk announced that GICM stood for Groupe Islamiste Combatant du Maroc, or the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group.

To which the detainee responded, "I never before heard of all this."

Could you imagine someone being arraigned in front of a judge for a criminal conviction and no one had any evidence that a crime had been committed, and worse, what the crime even was? These people aren't firing on all cylinders here.

Then there is, of course, evidence that suggests Bush wasn't being honest when he said, "We don't torture."

The files are replete with retractions. Detainees who had confessed to having ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban or terrorism frequently told the tribunals that they had only made those admissions to stop beatings or torture by their captors.

"The only reason for my original statements is because I was tortured when I was captured," said a former mechanical engineering student from Saudi Arabia who was accused of training at a Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. "In Kabul, an Afghan interrogator beat me and told me they would kill me if I didn't talk. They shot and killed someone in front of me and said they would do the same if I didn't cooperate."

Finally, there is this intriguing reason one captive gave for being in Afghanistan. I never would accept this as an excuse:

Then why the long, arduous journey to Afghanistan, a tribunal officer asked. "I wanted to go to Afghanistan to find a wife and get married and stay there," Mr. Abdah answered through a personal representative.

Why not find a wife in Syria?

"It is very expensive to find a wife," Mr. Abdah explained. "The price is at least $3,000. I might work for years and still not be able to collect that much money. In Afghanistan, it is very cheap. The most is $300."

Cheap Afghani wives are apparently a draw to the country. I never would have thought that. Anyway, in related news, the United states and the "Coalition of the Willing" apparently have about 14,000 people in custody, many are being held without access to family, lawyers, a trial, charges, etc.

AAP will be happy to see that the LA Times has picked up the Kinkade story. However, this article has even more juicy, crazy stuff. It almost makes me like the guy.

It's not just Kinkade's business practices that have been called into question. Former gallery owners, ex-employees and others say his personal behavior also belies the wholesome image on which he's built his empire.

In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.

And then there is Kinkade's proclivity for "ritual territory marking," as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

"This one's for you, Walt," the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade's company, in an interview.

Ha! Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Crap, Grabber of Breasts, Marker of Territory, and Heckler of Gays!

The legislature of the state of Georgia, tired already of the gay-bashing so prevalent in state legislatures these days, decided to get down to some real nitty-gritty governing. They're about to designate an official state dirt. So what kind of dirt is it? Is it the kind that can grow Georgia's official state crop? Nope. Is it used in the preparation of the state's official prepared food? Naw. Does it play a role in Georgia's official "State life play"? (Entitled "Swamp Gravy", whatever that may be). Well, perhaps.


The General Assembly wants to make red clay into Georgia's official state dirt. As someone who grew up in Georgia, I can tell you that red clay is damn near useless - can't grow anything with it, can't dig in it, and it's not much fun to play with. And it doesn't come out of anything.

It seems that three Israelis, not content with the conflict between the Muslims and the Jews, thought that Christians in Israel needed some antagonism. They did this by carting a baby carriage full of fireworks into the middle of a service at the Church of the Annunciation and setting them off.

The Christians present, in typical Christian fashion, failed to turn the other cheek and instead tried to lynch the three jackasses with the fireworks, and then proceeded to go apeshit on the police who came to rescue the (mentally ill?) attackers.

Ok, I'm jumping up and down I'm so happy about this one. Kos points us to information that two of our least favorite politicians, Katherine Harris (the painted hag from the 2000 elections), and our very own scumbag turncoat Virgil Goode are now in a bind over illegal contributions to their campaigns from military contractor MZM a la the Dukester.

Last Friday, Mitchell Wade, the former president of the defense contractor MZM and one of the two who so impressively and repeatedly bribed Duke Cunningham, pled guilty. He admitted, among other things, that he illegally contributed to two Congressional campaigns. They've since been identified as Harris' and Rep. Virgil Goode's (R-VA).
...
But in both cases, Wade approached the Member of Congress after having delivered the contributions and asked if they wouldn't be so kind as to throw an appropriation his way. In Goode's case, that resulted in a $9M MZM facility in Goode's district.

Now it's coming out that Harris followed through too. And she's been lying, breaking promises, and doing her best to cover up her involvement with Wade....

Oh please let this pan out. I'd love nothing better than seeing Goode perp-walked. Talk about a piece of crap, he actually ran as a Democrat almost a decade ago, then he showed his true colors. He was a Republican double-agent, switched parties after a term as an "independent" and became one of the most conservative members of congress. Anti-gay, anti-civil rights, pro-war and pro-Bush he's been a dificult-to-dislodge incumbent in what should be a fairly liberal district in Virginia. If he's caught with his hand in the cookie jar I'll do a dance for joy, and maybe now we can get Al Weed in here.

Our own VA town of Wise is embroiled in controversy. It appears that a group of people decided to take over the city council. Once they gained power everything went amok.

Prosecutors say once the schemers took power, the police department engaged in drug trafficking, and money and personal possessions were illegally seized from residents.
To make sure they won the election in 2004, prosecutors say the defendants offered town residents cigarettes, alcohol, and even pork rinds for their votes.

A special prosecutor says Mayor Ben Cooper -- who is also town manager and runs the police department -- faces "more time than he could possibly serve."

Pork rinds? This sounds like something I would expect from East Tennessee. I guess Wise is close enough.

Update: The linked story is incorrect, the town is Appalachia, VA not Wise. This story is much better than the original.

It looks like King George is going to fulfill his promise (in the form of an executive signing statement) that he won't obey any laws he doesn't like. He has now said Gitmo is exempt from McCain's torture bill. Hopefully he will be challenged on this outright unconstitutional seizure of power.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said in a hearing yesterday that she found allegations of aggressive U.S. military tactics used to break the detainee hunger strike "extremely disturbing" and possibly against U.S. and international law. But Justice Department lawyers argued that even if the tactics were considered in violation of McCain's language, detainees at Guantanamo would have no recourse to challenge them in court.

SFGate asks the question, is Bush in charge and confident or just incompetent and uninquisitive. By their fruits you shall know them.

Congressional Republicans have killed an effort to create an ethics office. Now there's a big surprise.

There is new evidence that global warming is accelerating. A study of antarctic ice sheets show they are losing mass at an alarming rate.

Finally, fallout from the Dukester is spreading. Now that we've found out about his bribery menu it's time to find out who was ordering the entrees. It looks like there's a lot of money to follow, and will likely lead to a few more indictments.

It seems the government is now winning the war on Wonkette. Hooray for freedom! After all if our troops get to read a blog featuring dirty-mouthed panda-lovers, then the terrorists have won.

Apparently there has been some confusion on this point, but let's clear this up once and for all. Jerry Falwell does not believe Jews can get into heaven. Now, to all those out there who think that he said or believed Judaism is an alternate pathway to god, sorry, you are wrong. Falwell just wants to reiterate, Jews go to hell, they do not go to heaven. Don't get him wrong on this very important point.

Thank you.

Continuing my saga of insensitivity towards hostage-taking, I will direct you all to this story. Apparently one of the American hostages has been released by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Nigerian Delta. Of his capture he has said:

"I had a warm Sprite this morning but I'm looking forward to a hot shower with some shampoo, some underarm deodorant and a razor," he said, adding that he bore his captors no ill will.

"I have no animosity toward them at all," he said. "I've seen their little villages. They're dirt poor - poor as field mice."

So is this a case of Stockholm syndrome or legitimate sympathy for Nigerians who have been screwed by oil companies?

In other news, Mississippi is following South Dakota in banning abortion. So were the anti-Bush pro-choicers merely Chicken Littles or has the prediction that Bush would be the end of legal abortion an example of foresight? Remember everybody, these days we have medical abortion, a slew of pro-choice groups that will ease the pain of red state victims (in other words people who will give rides to out-of-state girls in trouble), and a bunch of blue states willing to protect the right of women to decide whether or not they wish to give birth.

It is the ultimate privacy right. The right for women to decide for themselves whether or not they must give birth to an unwanted child. Blue states respect it, red states don't, which do you think will suffer for the disparity?

There is probably no need to blog this story,also here, but many papers are reporting on this new video from August 29th 2005 showing Bush being briefed about Katrina, being warned about the failure of the levees, and generally destroying all of his alibis about not knowing that the hurricane could have caused so much damage.

We have already mentioned this problem. It is too tiresome to try to track all the times Bush has lied, it is easier to track the minority of times he has been truthful, then just assume everything else he says is a lie.

Everyone in the blogosphere is having a collective fit of apoplexy over this new story, but in all honesty they can't claim to be surprised. The only surprise is that the administration failed to bury this evidence completely.

Seriously, everybody, save some time and energy and just focus on when Bush is being honest. It will spare you hours and hours of labor and research.

The MSM has been making hay over the news that Americans are better at naming the Simpsons than they are at naming their 5 first amendment rights. Now this is silly. I read this and immediately thought of 4 of the 5 rights, I then, like everyone else in the damn country, couldn't remember the 5th--Redress of grievances. No one remembers redress of grievances! Sheesh. Don't give us crap about that. Speech, assembly, religion, press, those are easy. But how many of us think of sending letters to congressmen as a constitutional right rather than a waste of time?

However, now I will always remember it because I will now read the First Amendment as endorsing the celebration of Festivus!

Festivus for the restofus!

Molly, of Molly Saves the Day has posted online a HOWTO for setting up an illegal abortion clinic, including how to obtain the instruments, sterilize them and perform the procedure. She did this in honor of South Dakota's recent decision to ban all abortion.

Now this is interesting, because we are facing abortion bans in a completely different era with all sorts of new tools available to people like the internets and what not. However, while I admire this girl's moxie, I would suggest instead that you just publish an online protocol for administration of mifepristone/misoprostol and start a black market trade in the drug. It's 98% effective at inducing abortion and extremely safe, and even can be done at home. When the abortion is incomplete (about 2% of the time), it would be indistinguishable from spontaneous miscarriage, so a hospital visit to complete the procedure would not lead to criminal investigation (could you imagine every miscarriage resulting in a criminal investigation when 10% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage?).

It may be hard to keep illegal abortion clinics from operating post Roe but it has been shown to be completely impossible to prevent the sale of blackmarket drugs. If these bans become widespread, I'm sure that will happen.

Via boingboing.

For several years, a storefront in Charlottesville served as a gallery for Thomas Kinkade prints (as well as some delightfully horrible stuff from other artists). They closed shop a couple of years ago, amid swirls of bad feelings and nasty words between the gallery owners and the parent company. It seemed like the Kinkade company was undercutting national gallery owners by selling the prints at huge discounts at places like Tuesday Morning and the local malls, and using the customer lists from the galleries to send direct mailings to the suckers customers offering them these great deals.

So the gallery owners have sued, and just won big.


The former owners of Charlottesville's Thomas Kinkade art gallery have won $860,000 from the "Painter of Light's" company, having successfully argued that the Christian-themed firm committed fraud against its dealers.
Palmyra resident Jeff Spinello and his ex-wife, Karen Hazlewood, are the first to defeat Kinkade's company in arbitration. Including legal fees, they stand to receive up to $3.5 million, said the couple's attorney, Norman Yatooma.
...
Spinello and his ex-wife argued that the company forced them to buy copies of paintings that ultimately did not sell well. And dealers could not offer discounts, Yatooma said.

In 2002, Kinkade's company sent out mailers to previous customers about a sale at Tuesday Morning discount stores, the lawyer said. The prices were 90 percent lower than retail, and significantly less than what Hazlewood and Spinello, as dealers, paid for the images, Yatooma added.


Huzzah!

It's not being widely reported in the US MSM but the Guardian is reporting on Bush's poll numbers in depth. Bush is polling badly:

A poll published by CBS News yesterday, found only 36% of Americans said the war is going well, and 30% thought Mr Bush was doing a good job of handling the conflict. Even fewer believed the results of the war were worth the cost. Those concerns have dragged Mr Bush's overall approval ratings down to levels comparable with Richard Nixon's at a similar point in his second term. Now, only 34% of the country approves of the way Mr Bush is handling his job and only 29% has a favourable view of him as a person.

Bush of course then follows it up with a typical idiotic "I don't look at polls" response:

"If I worried about polls, I wouldn't be doing my job," he said. Recalling his 2004 re-election, Mr Bush said: "I've got ample capital and I'm using it to spread freedom and to protect the American people, plus we've got a strong agenda to keep this economy growing."

The only one worse off is Cheney who is polling at 18%. Finally, the reason I find this article particularly interesting is the discussion of polling among the troops.

It is clear that if it were up to the troops, the US would be out of Iraq by the end of the year. In a poll of troops in Iraqi bases, conducted by Zogby International, 72% said the US should withdraw in 2006; more than a third of those said the troops should leave immediately. Just over one in five agreed with the president that they should stay in Iraq "as long as needed".

Another striking element of the poll was the opinion of US soldiers over why they were there.

Only a quarter thought their role was establishing a democracy "that can be a model for the Arab world".

Nearly 86% said it was "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks", a role proved to have been non-existent.

Just wait until they get home and find out why they've really been fighting. C'mon, 9/11 attacks? Who the hell is responsible for delivering newspapers to these guys? It makes you wonder if Stars and Stripes is reporting Saddam is still in power and blowing up American cities with suitcase bombs. You would think the troops, of all people, would have some idea why they are there, but maybe that's naive.