Wednesday, 28 January 2004

Off to San Francisco

I'm heading to SF for the rest of the week. Blogging will resume sometime Sunday or Monday or whenever the hell I feel like it.

I leave you with the ad CBS is too chickenshit to show this Sunday. Enjoy.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 28, 2004 at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Flight Attendant on jet that hit 1st tower

From the Chicago Tribune:

The tape of Betty Ong's voice Tuesday, alive and urgent yet
amazingly calm, describing how hijackers had stabbed two of her fellow
flight attendants and taken over the first plane that slammed in the
World Trade Center, silenced the congressional hearing room.
"The cockpit is not answering the phone. Someone's coming. Another one
[passenger] got stabbed. Our first class gal's stabbed, our purser has
been stabbed. We can't get inside the cockpit," Ong told an American
Airlines reservations specialist in a call from the rear phone aboard
doomed Flight 11.
[...]
While her conversation was the most dramatic new revelation at the
hearing, 9/11 commission investigators also released a nine-page report
Tuesday that said the hijackers probably sprayed Mace around the
cockpit area on all four flights, apparently to keep passengers away,
and that they persuaded passengers to sit quietly on at least one of
the flights by announcing over the intercom that there was a bomb on
board.
Investigators believe the hijackers also may have used autopilot and a
GPS global positioning system to target the Trade Center and the
Pentagon. The report said the flight data recorder found buried in the
rubble of the Pentagon indicated the pilot "had input autopilot
instructions for a route to Reagan National Airport."
On Ong's flight, the hijackers appeared to have killed at least one
passenger, and possibly two, before taking over the aircraft.
The tape recording picks up midsentence after an unidentified--and
somewhat impatient--reservations specialist had answered the phone.
"The cockpit's not answering the phone," Ong tells the man. "Somebody's
been stabbed in business class, and, um, I think there's Mace and we
can't breathe and I don't know, I think we're getting hijacked."
The man replies, "What seat are you in?" apparently unaware that Ong is
a flight attendant.
"Ma'am, are you there?"
"Yes," Ong says, who was having trouble hearing the man.
"What seat are you in?" the man asks, and then again forcefully,
"Ma'am, what seat are you in?"
We're bound "for Boston, we're up in the air. The cockpit is not
answering the phone," Ong says urgently.
The man replies, "What seat are you in?"
After a pause, Ong says, "I'm in my jump seat right now."
At that point the man seems to realize she is a flight attendant. He
pauses and then asks, "What is your name?"
"OK, my name is Betty Ong. I'm an employee on Flight 11. The cockpit is
not answering their phone. There is somebody stabbed in business. We
can't breathe in business class. I think they have Mace or something.
Somebody's coming back. Can you hold on for one second? Somebody's
coming back.
"OK, our number one [flight attendant] got stabbed. Our purser is
stabbed. There is no air in business class. No one can breathe. Our
first class gal and our purser has been stabbed. We can't get into the
cockpit. The door won't open."
After a long pause, Ong says, "Hello?"
The man responds, "Yeah. I'm taking it down, all the information. "
About a minute later the man's boss, Nydia Gonzalez, takes over the
phone call.
Commission investigators on Tuesday credited Gonzalez and Ong for
relaying as much information as they did, largely by way of a
three-party conversation with the American Airlines emergency
operations center in Dallas.
Attendant noted seat numbers
In a staff report to committee members, investigators said it was
because of Ong's call that they learned about the Mace, which they said
they also discovered among the belongings left in the suitcase of
hijacker Mohamed Atta, who piloted Ong's plane.
Ong reported to Gonzalez that they had moved all the passengers out of
first class and business class, but that many passengers in the rear of
the plane didn't know what was going on.
She was also the first person to alert authorities to who the hijackers
were, saying she believed there were three or four hijackers and giving
authorities the men's seat numbers.
Ong's voice is absent from the second part of the tape as Gonzalez
communicates with the emergency center in one ear, and listens to Ong
in the other.
Ong told Gonzalez no doctors were on board to treat the flight
attendants--one of whom she suspected was dead and the other who was
breathing with the aid of oxygen administered by the other flight
attendants.
The aircraft was flying erratically, Ong reported. Gonzalez relayed to
the center that the flight attendant suspected the airlines' pilots
were not flying the airplane.
Twenty-three minutes later, the line went dead.

9/11 Commission Says It Needs More Time to Complete Inquiry, Republicans vow fight
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror
attacks announced on Tuesday that it was seeking an extension of its
deadline to complete the investigation until at least July, raising the
prospect of a public fight with the White House and a final report
delivered in the heat of the presidential campaign.
The White House and Republican Congressional leaders have said they see
no need to extend the congressionally mandated deadline, now set for
May 27, and a spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said Tuesday that
Mr. Hastert would oppose any legislation to grant the extension.
But commission officials said there was no way to finish their work on
time, a situation they attribute in part to delays by the Bush
administration in turning over documents and other evidence.

Ong's relatives listen as the tape of her phone call from Flight 11 is played Tuesday during the 9/11 commission hearing. (Photo: CBS)

Posted by flow Frazao on January 28, 2004 at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sperm whale explodes in Taiwan

Holy smokes:

A dead sperm whale being transported through Tainan City on
its way to a research station suddenly exploded yesterday, splattering
cars and shops with blood and guts. Certified by authorities as the
largest beached whale on record in Taiwan, the 17-meter 50-ton carcass
was being transported by a flat-bed trailer-truck to a special research
location after National Cheng Kung University officials and security
guards refused to allow the whale on campus.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 28, 2004 at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 27 January 2004

CBS vs. MoveOn.org

CBS has received nearly 350,000 e-mails protesting their decision to
ban Moveon.Org's contest winning ad from running during the Superbowl.
Apply pressure here.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 27, 2004 at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Power Rangers

An excellent piece by Josh Marshall in next month's New Yorker:

Why did the British imperium come to an end? The standard
histories tell us about great-power rivalries, a diminishing
technological gap between overlords and subjects, growing independence
movements among the colonized. Some conservative scholars have
suggested, however, that the British Empire fell apart because of
war-induced impoverishment and national fatigue. Finally, they say, the
Brits just lacked will. But in 2002 America had will in abundance, and
more money and guns than the British had ever had. Ferguson was
challenging us simply to face up to what we already were. In the
closing pages of his book, he wrote, �Americans have taken our old
role without yet facing the fact that an empire comes with it.� We
were, in his view, an empire �that dare not speak its name . . . an
empire in denial.�

Posted by flow Frazao on January 27, 2004 at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bush administration retreats on Iraq weapons claim

I am Jack's complete and total lack of surprise:

The White House retreated Monday from its once-confident
claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Democrats swiftly
sought to turn the about-face into an election-year issue against
President Bush. The administration's switch came after retired chief
U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said he had concluded, after nine
months of searching, that Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of
forbidden weapons. Asked about Kay's remarks, White House spokesman
Scott McClellan refused to repeat oft-stated assertions that prohibited
weapons eventually would be found

Posted by flow Frazao on January 27, 2004 at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Flower-Power to the rescue

If this isn't the best news I've heard all week then I don't know what is:

A Danish biotech company has developed a genetically
modified flower that could help detect land mines and it hopes to have
a prototype ready for use within a few years.
"We are really excited about this, even though it's early days. It has
considerable potential," Simon Oestergaard, chief executive of
developing company Aresa Biodetection, told Reuters in an interview on
Tuesday. The genetically modified weed has been coded to change color
when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) evaporating
from explosives buried in soil. Within three to six weeks from being
sowed over land mine infested areas the small plant, a Thale Cress,
will turn a warning red whenever close to a land mine.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 27, 2004 at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Witness Tells How Teen Was Gunned Down

Here's a story that's been unfolding in the Washington DC area over the past few days:

A witness has given police an account of the terror that
unfolded Friday night when a gunman entered a townhouse in Northwest
Washington and fired seven shots into a 14-year-old girl,
authorities revealed in charging papers yesterday. The gunfire killed
Jahkema Princess Hansen, who was targeted because she was thought to be
a witness to a homicide, authorities said. The girl, known as Princess,
was hit in the neck and chest while in a neighbor's home in the 1100
block of First Terrace, in the Sursum Corda Cooperative complex, where
she was watching television with a 12-year-old friend, according to
police and charging documents. The documents were filed against
Franklin Thompson, 22, who is accused of first-degree murder in
Princess's killing. Thompson was ordered held without bond after a
hearing yesterday in D.C. Superior Court. He shook his head in apparent
dismay as the charge against him was read. According to the charging
papers, investigators are relying on the account of the unidentified
witness who claimed to have seen Thompson enter the home, his face
shrouded and his hand in a pocket as if gripping a gun. The witness
described to investigators what happened next in the home: Sensing that
Thompson was there to make trouble, the witness told of taking cover.
The witness then heard several shots ring out and heard the 12-year-old
victim cry out in pain, according to the papers. After the gunfire, the
witness heard the front door close and looked around. Seeing that
Thompson was gone, the witness then noticed that the 12-year-old girl
had been shot in the leg and that Princess had been shot dead, the
documents say.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 27, 2004 at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 26 January 2004

Parrot's oratory stuns scientists

Pretty incredible:

The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power
to communicate with people has brought scientists up short. The bird, a
captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and
shows signs of a sense of humour. He invents his own words and phrases
if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire
cannot cope - just as a human child would do. N'kisi's remarkable
abilities, which are said to include telepathy, feature in the latest
BBC Wildlife Magazine. N'kisi is believed to be one of the most
advanced users of human language in the animal world. About 100 words
are needed for half of all reading in English, so if N'kisi could read
he would be able to cope witha wide range of material. Polished
wordsmith He uses words in context, with past, present and future
tenses, and is often inventive. One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew",
and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils
used by his owner, an artist based in New York. When he first met Dr
Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a
picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

School's in: He is a willing learner

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung
upside down from its perch, he commented: "You got to put this bird on
the camera." Dr Goodall says N'kisi's verbal fireworks are an
"outstanding example of interspecies communication". In an experiment,
the bird and his owner were put in separate rooms and filmed as the
artist opened random envelopes containing picture cards. Analysis
showed the parrot had used appropriate keywords three times more often
than would be likely by chance. Captives' frustrations This was despite
the researchers discounting responses like "What ya doing on the
phone?" when N'kisi saw a card of a man with a telephone, and "Can I
give you a hug?" with one of a couple embracing. Professor Donald
Broom, of the University of Cambridge's School of Veterinary Medicine,
said: "The more we look at the cognitive abilities of animals, the more
advanced they appear, and the biggest leap of all has been with
parrots." Alison Hales, of the World Parrot Trust, told BBC News
Online: "N'kisi's amazing vocabulary and sense of humour should make
everyone who has a pet parrot consider whether they are meeting its
needs. "They may not be able to ask directly, but parrots are
long-lived, and a bit of research now could mean an improved quality of
life for years."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 26, 2004 at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yet another argument for my "Everyone is Insane" theory

Found here:

Hello, and welcome to my homepage. My name is Ulrich
Haarb�rste and I like to write stories about Roy Orbison being
wrapped up in cling-film. If you have written any stories about Roy
being completely wrapped in clingfilm please send them to me and I may
put them up on the site. If you have a site with stories about other
pop stars being wrapped in cling-film mail me and we can exchange links.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 26, 2004 at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 23 January 2004

Would somebody please tell Dick Cheney

Ex-U.S. Arms Hunter Says No WMD Stockpiles in Iraq:

David Kay stepped down as leader of the U.S. hunt for
banned weapons in Iraq on Friday and said he did not believe the
country had any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons. In
a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which says its invasion
of Iraq was justified by the presence of illicit arms, Kay told Reuters
in a telephone interview he had concluded there were no Iraqi
stockpiles to be found. "I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What
everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the
last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale
production program in the '90s," he said.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 23, 2004 at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Georgia on my mind

Here's some serious fodder for the tinfoil hat posse:

Short Version:

• The Adjaran Government (on the SW border of Georgia) is claiming to have uncovered a secret Georgian plot to seize the republic and it's capitol city of Batumi

• The Head of Emergency Situations Department of Adjara was shot in the head by an unknown gunman five days ago.

• An intrinsic part of today�s oil transport network is the Batumi Oil Transport Facility.

• Both Anadarko and Chevron have been "long time users" of the Batumi Oil Transport Facility in Adjara.

• Condoleeza Rice was on the Board of Directors for Chevron.

• Bush created/served as a consultant to Anadarko.

• This weekend, Colin Powell is heading to Georgia to offer the new president a "symbolic stamp of U.S. approval."

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell congratulates Chairman and CEO Dave O'Reilly after naming ChevronTexaco one of this year's two recipients of the Award for Corporate Excellence.

Long Version:

Colin Powell's trip to Georgia may mark start of civil war:

Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to attend the
inauguration of Georgia's new president, Mikhail Saakashvilli, this
weekend, offering Saakashvilli a symbolic stamp of U.S. approval. In
addition to the planned festivities of singers, acrobats, dancing bears
and a military parade, Powell may be stepping into the beginning of a
civil war set off by the new president. Sources close to the president
of a small Georgian republic, the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, say the Adjarans have uncovered a secret plot by Saakashvilli to seize the republic and its port capitol of Batumi
in the aftermath of Sunday�s inaugural celebration. Adjarans believe
that as soon as Powell leaves Georgia the new president intends to
strike against them. The Adjarans, 400,000 citizens with no army but
many guns, this week encouraged their police, customs and border
guards, about 5,000 in all, to repel what they fear will be an
invasion. A friend of the Adjaran president, a former U.S. intelligence
officer with wide international connections, Chet Nagle, flew from
Istanbul, Turkey, this week and delivered a letter yesterday from
Adjaran President Aslan Abashidze to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asking
for his support to �prevent the tragedy of civil war.� Georgia has
an army of some 30,000 troops, lots of equipment, and U.S. military
trainers and equipment, including some advanced attack helicopters.

Head of Emergency Situations Department at Georgia�s autonomous Black Sea region of Adjara was shot to death on Jan. 18
in Batumi, Georgia�s on-line magazine Civil Georgia reported. Temur
Inaishvili was shot in the head by unknown gunmen and the reason for
his murder is not clear yet, Adjara�s Interior Minister, Jemal
Gogitidze said. Gogitidze added that this was the second attack on
Inaishvili. The first incident caused the death of his mother.

For more than 100 years, the Port of Batumi in Adjara has been central to the east-west trade in petroleum.
An intrinsic part of today�s oil transport network is the Batumi Oil
Transport Facility. It�s modern storage tanks which connect with the
railroad network and the modern oil handling capabilities of the port,
provide a cost efficient and flexible system for it�s customers. American oil companies, including Chevron and Anadarko, have been long time users of this complex.

When President Bush served as a director of an energy
company 12 years ago, he approved the creation of an off-balance-sheet
partnership that reduced the company's debts and improved earnings in a
transaction similar to those that led to the collapse of Enron Corp.
As a director of Harken Energy Corp. in 1990, Bush, who had sold his
own oil business to Harken and was retained as a consultant, made the
motion at a board meeting to negotiate the transfer of struggling
Harken assets into a partnership with Harvard University's investment
arm, Harvard Management Co. Inc.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 23, 2004 at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 22 January 2004

Very Presidential

Unedited - straight from the White House web site:

11:25 A.M. MST THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs. Q Mr.
President, how are you? THE PRESIDENT: I'm hungry and I'm going to
order some ribs. Q What would you like? THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you
think I'd like. Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you
simply haven't spent enough to keep the country secure. THE PRESIDENT:
My job is to secure the homeland and that's exactly what we're going to
do. But I'm here to take somebody's order. That would be you, Stretch
-- what would you like? Put some of your high-priced money right here
to try to help the local economy. You get paid a lot of money, you
ought to be buying some food here. It's part of how the economy grows.
You've got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it
drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat? Q Right
behind you, whatever you order. THE PRESIDENT: I'm ordering ribs.
David, do you need a rib? Q But Mr. President -- THE PRESIDENT:
Stretch, thank you, this is not a press conference. This is my chance
to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the
economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady's
business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So
instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some
food? Q Yes. THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. What would you like? Q Ribs.
THE PRESIDENT: Ribs? Good. Let's order up some ribs. Q What do you
think of the democratic field, sir? THE PRESIDENT: See, his job is to
ask questions, he thinks my job is to answer every question he asks.
I'm here to help this restaurant by buying some food. Terry, would you
like something? Q An answer. Q Can we buy some questions? THE
PRESIDENT: Obviously these people -- they make a lot of money and
they're not going to spend much. I'm not saying they're overpaid,
they're just not spending any money. Q Do you think it's all going to
come down to national security, sir, this election? THE PRESIDENT: One
of the things David does, he asks a lot of questions, and they're good,
generally. END 11:29 A.M. MST

Posted by flow Frazao on January 22, 2004 at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

100 Days in the Slammer for Janklow

Meteor blades has an excellent essay up on what's happening with Senator Janklow over at Daily Kos. Here's the first paragraph:

So the Honorable �Wild Bill� Tough-on-Crime Janklow
gets 100 days in jail for second-degree manslaughter. Plus a few
thousand dollars in fines and no driving for three years. Not even an
apology to the family of the man whose death ended this reckless,
recidivist scofflaw's political career. It�s doubtful we�ll be
hearing Republicans, Fox News or rightwing pundits crying about how
this sentence reflects a soft-hearted, criminal-coddling legal system.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 22, 2004 at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Public Service Announcement

Blogging will be light today. Lots of work to do.
Also, I've implemented an automatic page refresh in order to gather
more accurate statistics. This page should reload every seven minutes
or so. If it's annoying just let me know and I'll get rid of it.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 22, 2004 at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 21 January 2004

Palestinians easily scale Israel's $1.9 billion security fence

Have they been eating retard sandwiches for lunch at the Knesset or
what? The whole wall thing has been done before. They tried it in a
city called Berlin and it sucked. It's not gonna work in Israel either, you morons:

Palestinian infiltrators have succeeded in breaching Israel's new security fence and barrier system.

Israeli security sources said Palestinian infiltrators have scaled the four-meter high concrete fence by using a simple ladder.
The Israeli project calls for the establishing of a 730-kilometer fence
at a cost of $1.9 billion. Most of the project consists of a concrete
wall or chain-link fence with sensors, cameras and military patrols.
In one case, the sources said, Arab infiltrators brought a ladder to
the fence in the northeastern West Bank. They quickly scaled the fence
and entered a waiting car that took them to Israeli Arab villages. The
infiltrators were deemed as Palestinians looking for work.

Patrol : An Israeli border guard patrols the Palestinian side of
Israel's controversial 'security' barrier, separating the West Bank
village of Abu Dis from Jerusalem. (AFP/Gali Tibbon)

Posted by flow Frazao on January 21, 2004 at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Report Says Internet Voting System Is Too Insecure to Use

Hasn't the "Electronic Voting Movement" been thoroughly discredited by now?

A new $22 million system to allow soldiers and other
Americans overseas to vote via the Internet is inherently insecure and
should be abandoned, according to members of a panel of computer
security experts asked by the government to review the program. The
system, Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE,
was developed with financing from the Department of Defense and will
first be used in this year's primaries and general election.
The authors of the new report noted that computer security experts had
already voiced increasingly strong warnings about the reliability of
electronic voting systems, but they said the new voting program, which
allows people overseas to vote from their personal computers over the
Internet, raised the ante on such systems' risks.
The system, they wrote, "has numerous other fundamental security
problems that leave it vulnerable to a variety of well-known cyber
attacks, any one of which could be catastrophic." Any system for voting
over the Internet with common personal computers, they noted, would
suffer from the same risks.
The trojans, viruses and other attacks that complicate modern life and
allow such crimes as online snooping and identity theft could enable
hackers to disrupt or even alter the course of elections, the report
concluded. Such attacks "could have a devastating effect on public
confidence in elections," the report's authors wrote, and so "the best
course to take is not to field the SERVE system at all."

Absolutely none:

A spokesman for the Department of Defense said the critique
overstated the importance of the security risks in online voting. "The
Department of Defense stands by the SERVE program," the spokesman,
Glenn Flood, said. "We feel it's right on, at this point, and we're
going to use it."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 21, 2004 at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

That's a lot of boots

Five hundred combat boots in formation, representing the over five hundred American soldiers killed to date in Iraq, line Chicago's Federal Plaza, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2004. The boots were placed in the plaza along with a list of all the names of the soldiers who died by the American Friends Service Committee to protest the war in Iraq. (AP Photo/Brian Kersey)

Posted by flow Frazao on January 21, 2004 at 03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Media Roundup

OK, I've had about 14 hours to cool down from the State of the Union
address. I will now present a fair and balanced roundup of critiques
from various online sources:
First, a scathing editorial in today's New York Times. A definite must-read:

When the president delivers his State of the Union address,
we like to listen respectfully and respond politely. It is always easy
to find things worth applauding. Last night, for instance, President
Bush mentioned job retraining, immigration law reform and programs to
help newly released prisoners re-enter society. The impulse is always
to split the difference — to decry the ideas we disagree with and
then note the ones we like. This time, such evenhandedness seems
impossible. The president's domestic policy comes down to one
disastrous fact: his insistence on huge tax cuts for the wealthy has
robbed the country of the money it needs to address its problems and
has threatened its long-term economic security. Everything else is
beside the point.
[...]
It is actually a cruel hoax to pretend that Washington can afford to do
anything new, even with the modest grab bag of small new initiatives
and familiar retreads suggested by the president. In that context, his
decision last night to re-endorse the Social Security overhaul plan
from his last campaign was terrifying.

Mr. Bush offered deserved tribute to the sacrifices of U.S.
servicemen and servicewomen in Iraq. But he provided no accounting of
his mistaken or exaggerated allegations about Iraq's weapons in his
State of the Union address one year ago. Instead he tried to cover the
gap between what he described and what has been found with a brief and
tortured reference to "weapons-of-mass-destruction-related program
activities." He underlined his intention to transfer sovereignty to an
Iraqi administration by the end of June, but he failed to explain how
he will overcome political obstacles to that plan or how many troops
and how much spending may be needed in Iraq beyond this year. In the
face of record deficits, a costly new prescription drug program, and
mounting costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was as breathtaking as it
was unsurprising that Mr. Bush repeated his call to make the tax cuts
permanent. We would welcome a responsible national debate about putting
Social Security on a sustainable financial path, but Mr. Bush's breezy
revival of his 2000 campaign push for private accounts failed to
confront the complexities and costs of such a change. He devoted twice
as much time to rallying professional athletes to "get rid of steroids
now" as he did to Social Security reform.

• He promised to help create new jobs but didn't mention that 2.3 million jobs have been lost during his tenure.

• He promised that Iraq will govern itself. He didn't add that
  he's working feverishly to overcome Iraqi objections so he can salvage
  his goal of ending the occupation by July 1.
• He promised to cut the federal budget deficit � expected
  to be a record $500 billion this year � in half over five years. He
  didn't say that his tax cuts and spending contributed to the deficit
  and infuriated some conservative supporters. But the small price tags
  on new initiatives suggested that he feels boxed in by the deficit.
  
• Bush's assertion that marriage is the union of a man and a
  woman was for conservatives. About 4 million evangelical Christians,
  many of whom support a constitutional ban on gay marriage, didn't vote
  in 2000. He needs them this year.
  
• His plan to give $120 million to community colleges to train
  workers is an appeal to people in manufacturing states who have lost
  their jobs or worry that they soon will. Those states, including Ohio
  and Michigan, are vital to Bush's re-election strategy.
  
• The revival of Bush's proposal to allow some workers to
  invest some of their Social Security withholdings in the stock market
  is meant to appeal to younger voters who might otherwise be attracted
  to Democratic candidates.
  
• Giving tax credits to people who buy "catastrophic care"
  health insurance is supposed to win support from seniors � critical
  voters in Florida, Iowa and other closely contested states.
  
• Proposals to spend $300 million over four years helping
  former prisoners find jobs and to increase funding for school drug
  testing by $23 million are meant to showcase his compassion. Target
  voters: suburban mothers and moderates.

Update
Here's a point-by-point analysis of Bush's campaign speech.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 21, 2004 at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 20 January 2004

Clap Tracks in the State of the Union

From the Harford Courant:

Tonight, after President Bush delivers the 2004 State of
the Union, commentators will go through the ritual of tallying the
applause and ovations. As well they should, because at one of the most
orchestrated political events there is, a clap is more than just a
clap, especially when it's written into the speech.
"You write applause lines," said Paul Glastris, a speechwriter for
President Clinton who helped craft two State of the Union addresses. "A
good applause line was one that followed the policy explanation and
added a moral justification." [...]
Speechwriters aren't the only ones who plan out these plaudits. Now,
because transcripts are often handed out to Congress hours before the
speech, the audience can anticipate when to offer - or withhold - its
approval.

(thanks to atrios)

Posted by flow Frazao on January 20, 2004 at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Something tells me Bush would love this...

Ladies and gentlemen, The State of the Union Address Drinking Game.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 20, 2004 at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

This just in...

...George Bush has won the Iowa Republican Caucus.

In case you were wondering.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 20, 2004 at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hubble, we hardly knew ye

Thanks to Bush's visionary "Send Halliburton to Mars" space plan, NASA will be sending the Hubble Space Telescope to a premature grave:

The Hubble Space Telescope will be allowed to degrade and
eventually become useless, as NASA changes focus to President Bush's
plans to send humans to the moon, Mars and beyond, officials said
Friday. NASA canceled all space shuttle servicing missions to the
Hubble, which has revolutionized the study of astronomy with its
striking images of the universe. The Hubble has revolutionized
astronomy. Using images from the craft, scientists have determined the
age of the universe, about 13.7 billion years, and discovered that a
mysterious energy, called the dark force, is causing all of the objects
in the universe to move apart at an accelerating rate. This force is
still poorly understood. Images from the Hubble glimpsed galaxies back
to a point just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, thought
to be the explosive beginning of the universe. Astronomers have found
that galaxies and clusters of galaxies formed much earlier that
theorists had expected. This suggests that planets where life was
possible could have formed as early as about 12 billion years ago. The
solar system, which includes the sun and Earth, is much younger, about
5 billion years old.

Eerie, dramatic pictures from the Hubble telescope show newborn stars
emerging from "eggs" ? not the barnyard variety ? but rather, dense,
compact pockets of interstellar gas called evaporating gaseous globules
(EGGs). Hubble found the "EGGs," appropriately enough, in the Eagle
nebula, a nearby star-forming region 7,000 light-years from Earth in
the constellation Serpens.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 20, 2004 at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

George W. Bush - Following in his Father's Footsteps

Following on the heels of yesterday's CBS News/NYTimes poll, George Bush's approval rating continues it's downward spiral in this Washington Post survey:

• Bush finds himself in a statistical dead heat with
  the opposition nine months before the election. When matched against a
  generic Democratic presidential candidate -- the party held its first
  nominating contest last night in Iowa -- Bush narrowly wins, 48 percent
  to 46 percent. On the question of who is trusted to handle the nation's
  major problems, Bush is roughly even with Democrats, ahead 45 percent
  to 44 percent -- down from an 18-point advantage Bush enjoyed nine
  months ago.
  
• The number of people who strongly disapprove of his
  presidency reached 30 percent. That's the highest level of strong
  disapproval ever recorded in his presidency, and a clear sign of the
  intensifying dislike for Bush among his political opponents.
  
• By 58 percent to 39 percent, they rate the economy and not
  terrorism as the bigger problem facing the country. And when asked who
  they would prefer handling the nation's economy, more Americans favored
  Democrats in Congress (50 percent) than preferred Bush (43 percent),
  the first time in more than two years that Bush has failed to best the
  Democrats on this key issue.
  
• 54 percent were generally positive when asked how they felt
  about Bush's policies, only 12 percent said they were enthusiastic
  about them, and 43 percent described themselves as "satisfied but not
  enthusiastic." An additional 15 percent said Bush made them "angry." Even among Republicans, fewer than one in four -- 24 percent -- said they were enthusiastic about Bush's policies.

Trust to Handle the Country’s Main Problems
DATE	BUSH	DEMOCRATS
1/27/02	62%	31%
7/15/02	53	37
9/26/02	54	38
4/30/03	55	37
1/18/04	45	44
Trust to Handle the Issues
TRUST TO HANDLE …	BUSH	DEMOCRATS	BUSH NET
Nation's Main Problems	45%	44%	+1
War on Terrorism	60	31	+29
Situation in Iraq	56	36	+20
Education	43	44	-1
Taxes	43	46	-3
Immigration Issues	38	44	-6
Economy	43	50	-7
Prescription Drug Benefits	35	51	-16
Federal Budget Deficit	36	52	-16
Medicare	35	53	-18
Health Insurance Issues	33	52	-19

Posted by flow Frazao on January 20, 2004 at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Man dies from Cannabis OD

The first documented case of a death from marijuana overdose in history:

A man of 36 is believed to have become the first person in
Britain to die directly from cannabis poisoning.
Lee Maisey smoked six cannabis cigarettes a day for 11 years, an
inquest heard. His death, which was registered as having been caused by
cannabis toxicity, led to new warnings about the drug, which is due to
be reclassified this month as a less dangerous one.
"This type of death is extremely rare," Prof John Henry, a toxicologist
at Imperial College, London, said after the inquest at Haverfordwest,
west Wales.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 20, 2004 at 07:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 19 January 2004

Break out the tinfoil hats

More crazy conspiracy theories from those liberal wackos over at the Washington Post:

As an example of private industry's hunger for a Mars
mission, Steve Streich, a veteran Halliburton scientific adviser, was
among the authors of an article in Oil & Gas Journal in 2000 titled
"Drilling Technology for Mars Research Useful for Oil, Gas Industries."
The article called a Mars exploration program "an unprecedented
opportunity for both investigating the possibility of life on Mars and
for improving our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth,"
because technology developed for the mission could be used on this
planet. [...]
Halliburton's interest in Mars was first pointed out yesterday by the
Progress Report, a daily publication of the liberal Center for American
Progress. Administration officials scoffed at the idea that Halliburton
had anything to do with the development of the space policy, which was
headed by Bush's domestic policy adviser, Margaret Spellings, and
Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser. Another
administration official said Cheney did not take a lead role in the
interagency work on the space policy but gauged support on Capitol Hill
and served in an advisory capacity. An industry official who spoke on
the condition of anonymity said the
oil and gas industry, including Halliburton, would benefit considerably
from technology that was developed for drilling on Mars, including the tools, the miniaturization, the drilling mechanism, the robotic systems and the control systems.

Foreign Policy Hurt by Intelligence Failures
The Bush administration's inability to find weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq -- after public statements declaring an imminent threat posed
by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein -- has begun to harm the credibility
abroad of the United States and of American intelligence, according to
foreign policy experts in both parties.
In last year's State of the Union address, President Bush used stark
imagery to make the case that military action was necessary. Among
other claims, Bush said that Hussein had enough anthrax to "kill
several million people," enough botulinum toxin to "subject millions of
people to death by respiratory failure" and enough chemical agents to
"kill untold thousands."
A range of foreign policy experts, including supporters of the war,
said the long-term consequences of the administration's rhetoric could
be severe overseas -- especially because the war was waged without the
backing of the United Nations and was opposed by large majorities, even
in countries run by leaders that supported the invasion. "The foreign
policy blow-back is pretty serious," said Kenneth Adelman, a member of
the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Board and a supporter of the war. He
said the gaps between the administration's rhetoric and the postwar
findings threaten Bush's doctrine of "preemption," which envisions
attacking a nation because it is an imminent threat. The doctrine
"rests not just on solid intelligence," Adelman said, but "also on the
credibility that the intelligence is solid." Already, in the crisis
over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, China has rejected U.S.
intelligence that North Korea has a secret program to enrich uranium
for use in weapons. China is a key player in resolving the North Korean
standoff, but its refusal to embrace the U.S. intelligence has
disappointed U.S. officials and could complicate negotiations to
eliminate North Korea's weapons programs.

And how about a side order of crazy to round it out:

Bush Halts 9/11 Commission
President Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have
decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission
investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, virtually guaranteeing that
the panel will have to complete its work by the end of May, officials
said last week.
A growing number of commission members had concluded that the panel
needs more time to prepare a thorough and credible accounting of
missteps leading to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon. But the White House and leading Republicans have informed
the panel that they oppose any delay, which raises the possibility that
Sept. 11-related controversies could emerge during the heat of the
presidential campaign, sources said.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 19, 2004 at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Bush's Approval Sinking

According to a CBS News/NY Times
poll, Bush's approval rating is hovering at around 50%. Karl Rove knows
that as soon as it dips into the 40s, the media will smell blood in the
water and if that happens it's all over. The SOTU address tomorrow will
probably give Bush a bump that'll last a couple of weeks, but it's a
looooong way until the Republican National Convention in August.
Hopefully this trend will continue:

After rising in public support following the capture of
Saddam Hussein, the President gives his State of the Union message next
week with a decidedly less positive audience. His approval rating of
50% matches his lowest approval ratings ever, and the largest number
ever � 45% - disapprove.
This decline (from 60% approval the week after Saddam�s capture)
comes after former Treasury Secretary Paul O�Neill�s criticisms of
the Administration in a book and in interviews, and after continuing
attacks on American troops in Iraq. And there is other bad news for the
President.

• Less than half now approve of how he is handling the situation in Iraq. 51% say the war was not worth the costs.

• Two of the President�s just-launched initiatives have met
  with negative public assessment. Most Americans oppose temporary work
  permits for illegal immigrants and don�t think a permanent space
  station on the moon is worth it.
• Just 41% say the President has the same priorities on the issues they do.

• Only 30% say he is more interested in protecting the interests
  of ordinary Americans than in protecting the interests of large
  corporations. Just 39% -- fewer than before -- have confidence in his
  ability to make the right economic decisions.

CBS News/NYT 1/17
Approve: 50 (-10)
Disapprove: 45 (+12)

Posted by flow Frazao on January 19, 2004 at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 18 January 2004

Cheney and Scalia sittin in a tree

H-U-N-T-I-N-G:

Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting at a private camp
in southern Louisiana, three weeks after the Supreme Court had agreed
to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of
the administration's energy task force. While Scalia and Cheney are
avid hunters and longtime friends, several legal ethics specialists
questioned the timing of their trip, and said it raised doubts about
Scalia's ability to judge the case impartially.
Scalia said Friday: "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be
questioned."
Federal law says: "Any justice or judge shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be questioned."
For almost three years, Cheney has been fighting demands that he reveal
whether he met with energy industry officials, including the chairman
of Enron at the time, Kenneth L. Lay, when Cheney was formulating the
president's energy policy.
A lower court has ruled that Cheney must turn over documents detailing
who met with his task force, but on Dec. 15, the Supreme Court
announced it would hear an appeal. The justices are due to hear
arguments in April "in re Richard B. Cheney."
[...]
The code of conduct for federal judges sets guidelines for members of
the judiciary, but it does not set clear-cut rules. "A judge should . .
. act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the
integrity and impartiality of the judiciary," it says. "A judge should
not allow family, social or other relationships to influence judicial
conduct or judgments . . . or permit others to convey the impression
that they are in a special position to influence the judge."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 18, 2004 at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 17 January 2004

A sick coincidence

U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Reaches 500...

A powerful bomb exploded under a U.S. armored vehicle in
the cane fields north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing three American
soldiers and pushing the U.S. death toll in the Iraq conflict to 500.
The deaths raised to 500 the number of American service members who
have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq started March 20. Of
those, 346 died as a result of hostile action and 154 of non-hostile
causes, according to Defense Department figures.
Most of the deaths have occurred since President Bush declared an end
to major fighting on May 1. The death toll from the Gulf War, when an
American-led coalition drove Saddam Hussein's invaders from Kuwait in
1991, was 315.
In Afghanistan, 100 Americans have been killed, less than a third of
them from hostile fire.
Reaching the 500 threshold could again raise questions among the
American public about Bush's Iraq policy as the U.S. presidential
campaign picks up, analysts said.
"I think it's symbolic in the sense that maybe a lot of people who have
not paid attention in recent weeks ... will say 'I thought that we were
in much better shape than this,' and 'What's going on?'" said Lawrence
J. Korb, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations and
assistant secretary of defense under former President Ronald Reagan.

As Americans, we are led by the power of our conscience and
the history of our country to defend and promote the dignity and rights
of all people. Each person, however frail or defenseless, has a place
and a purpose in this world. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, we
celebrate the gift of life and our commitment to building a society of
compassion and humanity. Today, the principles of human dignity
enshrined in the Declaration of Independence -- that all persons are
created equal and possess the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness -- continue to guide us. In November, I signed
into law the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, reaffirming our
commitment to protecting innocent life and to a basic standard of
humanity -- the duty of the strong to defend the weak. My
Administration encourages adoption and supports abstinence education,
crisis pregnancy programs, parental notification laws, and other
measures to help us continue to build a culture of life. By working
together, we will provide hope to the weakest among us and achieve a
more compassionate and merciful world. NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W.
BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the
authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United
States, do hereby proclaim Sunday, January 18, 2004, as National
Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon all Americans to recognize this
day with appropriate ceremonies in our homes and places of worship and
to reaffirm our commitment to respecting the life and dignity of every
human being.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 17, 2004 at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 16 January 2004

Iran earthquake death toll exceeds 41,000

Holy crap:

The death toll from the massive earthquake that leveled the
city of Bam has risen to more than 41,000, a senior official said
Friday.
The final toll from the Dec. 26 earthquake may reach 45,000, said
Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, a close aide to Iran's supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 16, 2004 at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

OK, we get it - you hate the UN

But come on:

White House Opposes UN Report on Obesity
The Bush administration is challenging a World Health Organization
report that outlines steps for nations to take to reduce obesity. In a
letter to the United Nations agency that is meeting next week, Health
and Human Services official William Steiger questioned the
organization's findings, said they were based on faulty science, and
called for changes to the report. The WHO report recommends eating more
fruits and vegetables and limiting fats and salt. It also suggests
governments limit food advertising aimed at children and encourage
their citizens to eat healthier foods. Taxes and subsidies could be
used to reduce the price of healthy food and make them more attractive
to consumers, the report said. The International Obesity Task Force
estimates that 300 million people worldwide are obese and 750 million
more are overweight, including 22 million children under age 5. Steiger
said in his letter that the WHO report did not adequately address an
individual's responsibility to balance one's diet with one's physical
activities, and objected to singling out specific types of foods, such
as those high in fat and sugar.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 16, 2004 at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

You've got to be kidding me

It is currently warmer on MARS than it is at my parents' house in New England:

Temperatures in Farenheight:

Gusev crater, Mars 12
Providence, R.I. 9
Scranton Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 8
Hartford, Conn. 7
Buffalo, N.Y. 7
Rochester, N.Y. 3
Ithaca, N.Y. 3
Albany, N.Y. -2
Binghamton, N.Y. -2
Concord, N.H. -3
Syracuse, N.Y. -4
Burlington, Vt. -10
Montpelier, Vt. -12
Caribou, Maine -13
Mount Washington, N.H. -36

Posted by flow Frazao on January 16, 2004 at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Venezuela May Decriminalize Theft for the Hungry

Well, that's one way to do it:

The poor, oil-rich nation is considering decriminalizing
the theft of food and medicine in cases where a thief is motivated by
extreme hunger or need.
Supreme Court Judge Alejandro Angulo Fontiveros told Reuters on
Wednesday that the so-called "famine theft" clause should be part of a
broad penal code reform measure for humanitarian reasons.
"This is a guide for judges to avoid injustice," said Fontiveros, who
is in charge of drafting the reforms. "They lock up for years a poor
person who lives in atrocious misery and what they need is medicine."
Under Fontiveros' proposal to the Supreme Court, those who take food,
medicine or inexpensive goods without using violence to ease hunger
caused by prolonged, extreme poverty would not be punished.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 16, 2004 at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 15 January 2004

WWWD?

"On the way to a fundraiser", George Bush stopped to lay a wreath at the grave of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this afternoon. There to meet him were throngs of adoring fans:

As hundreds of protesters shouted objections, President
Bush laid a wreath Thursday at the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr. on a
visit to mark what would have been the 75th birthday of the slain civil
rights leader.
The president bowed his head in respect at the tomb as police worked to
block protesters who pushed past barricades. Two people were arrested.
Bush, arriving from New Orleans on a day devoted to building support
among black voters, was greeted by hundreds of demonstrators. They were
beating drums, chanting "Go home, Bush" and waving signs saying, "War
is not the answer" and "Bush no more in 2004."

Bush, in New Orleans, had pressed his plan to let
religious charities compete for more federal dollars. He said "the
miracle of salvation" is the key to solving some of society's most
intractable problems.
Bush used himself as an example of the good that religion can do,
referring to his decision to stop drinking at age 40 "because I changed
my heart."
At Union Bethel, in a speech laced with religious references - and at a
meeting with community leaders - Bush promoted his desire to open more
federal spending on social programs to religious groups.
Bush has sought legislation to give religious groups access to federal
funds as long as their services are available to anyone, but without
requiring them to make fundamental changes in their approach. The
proposal got a cold reception in Congress, and lawmakers put forward
instead a package of tax incentives for charitable giving.
While that measure awaits approval, Bush has used executive orders and
new regulations to remove many of the barriers - such as being required
to ban all religious activities and adjust hiring practices - that have
kept religious groups from competing for grants. Bush announced
Thursday that the Justice Department had finalized just such
regulations affecting $3.7 billion in funding, primarily for programs
that help crime victims, prevent child victimization and promote safe
schools.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 15, 2004 at 06:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

File under "Not Funny"

Soldier shot in Iraq - Armor a joke:

Revelations that a British soldier had to hand back his
body armor shortly before he was killed in Iraq has prompted calls for
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon to quit. Sergeant Steve Roberts, 33, was
shot in the chest and killed in an attack in Iraq last March. His widow
Samantha revealed Thursday that he left an audio diary in which he
called supplies to soldiers a 'joke.'
[...]
A pathologist's report found that the bullet would have been stopped by
a specialist body vest, which had ceramic plates to cover the heart and
aorta. Roberts had been ordered to give up the vest to a soldier deemed
more at risk, and he was left with standard armor.
Mrs. Roberts, 32, has called for Hoon to resign over the affair. "It's
only by the luck of the gods that more men have not died through a lack
of equipment," she told The Associated Press.
[...]
A transcript of the [audio] tapes was published in the Yorkshire
Evening Post on Wednesday. On one of them he said: "We are now back
into one of the camps to up-armor, which again is a bit of a joke in
itself because they are running out of the frontal armor. "It will be
interesting to see what armor I actually get. I will keep you posted,"
he added. Sgt. Roberts's final words to his wife were: "I love you
lots. Sleep tight, babe. Bye."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 15, 2004 at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What media responsibility?

Lead headline on CNN.com US edition

'Extremely dangerous' cold grips northeast U.S.Forecasters
warned of "extremely dangerous" wind chills tonight -- as low as 45
degrees below zero -- for the northeastern U.S. "These values can
produce frostbite in under 15 minutes," a National Weather Service
advisory said.

Time's running out, N. Korea warnsA private American
delegation that visited North Korea in recent days was shown the
nuclear spent fuel storage pond at Yongbyon and found it empty,
reinforcing North Korea's claims to have reprocessed the fuel into
bomb-grade plutonium.
Delegate and former ambassador Jack Pritchard said the message to the
U.S. from Pyongyang was "time is not on your side."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 15, 2004 at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Underreported Conflict Deaths

Believe it or not, there are actually other things going on the world besides the War on Terra and the "Extremely Dangerous Cold Weather":

Local militias killed at least 18 migrants in Ivory Coast last week.

10 died and at least 13 were wounded in Kashmir violence yesterday.

Rebels in Chechnya killed 11 Russian soldiers today.

18 were killed in three separate massacres in Colombia last Thursday. The attacks were blamed on rebels. 2 FARC rebels were killed last Friday, while 5 were killed and 5 wounded in an attack in a bar yesterday.

The army killed 23 Lord's Resistance Army rebels in Uganda last Friday and at least 16 cattle thiefs in a gunbattle on Monday.

Rebels claim bombing campaign killed 45 in Sudan on Monday.

At least 21 died Monday in an inter-clan dispute over grazing rights in Somalia.

At least 7 killed in firefights in Liberia today.

6 Aceh rebels killed in last two days in Indonesia, 4 killed last Friday.

3 rebels and 4 soldiers killed Saturday in a rebel attack on a power plant in the Philippines. 4 killed and 3 injured in bomb attack on karaoke bar in the Philippines Saturday.

11 killed Monday in Burundi.

22 killed since Friday in ethnic fighting in Nigeria.

2 killed and 35 wounded in Bangladesh bombing.

57 killed in recent fighting in SW Ethiopia.

17 Maoist rebels and 4 policemen killed in the last two days in separate incidents in Nepal. Also, 10 rebels and 2 policemen killed in clashes over the weekend.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 15, 2004 at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 14 January 2004

Thanks a lot, Britney

Astonishing, but true:

Bush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Marriage
Administration officials say they are planning an extensive
election-year initiative to promote marriage, especially among
low-income couples, and they are weighing whether President Bush should
promote the plan next week in his State of the Union address.
For months, administration officials have worked with conservative
groups on the proposal, which would provide at least $1.5 billion for
training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain
"healthy marriages."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 14, 2004 at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nice one

Photos of the foil-wrapped apartment.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 14, 2004 at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wishful thinking

(thanks to Fight the Bear)

Posted by flow Frazao on January 14, 2004 at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Drip, drip, drip

Leaky ship:

President Bush ordered the Pentagon to explore the
possibility of a ground invasion of Iraq well before the United States
was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, an official told ABCNEWS, confirming
the account former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill gives in his new
book.
The official, who asked not to be identified, was present in the same
National Security Council meetings as O'Neill immediately after Bush's
inauguration in January and February of 2001. "The president told his
Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use of
ground forces," the official told ABCNEWS. "That went beyond the
Clinton administration's halfhearted attempts to overthrow Hussein
without force."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 14, 2004 at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Bush Administration's assault on science continues

From Calpundit:
Congress mandates that HHS produce an annual report on healthcare
disparities related to race and poverty. The most recent version was
released a month ago, but it turns out that the final version released
by the political troops was dramatically different from the initial
draft written by HHS scientists. Upon learning of this, Bush heckler-in
chief Henry Waxman commissioned a report comparing the scientists' draft with the final draft. Here's my favorite part:

The scientists� draft concluded that �disparities come
at a personal and societal price,� including lost productivity,
needless disability, and early death. The final version drops this
conclusion and replaces it with the finding that �some �priority
populations� do as well or better than the general population in some
aspects of health care.� As an example, the executive summary
highlights that �American Indians/Alaska Natives have a lower death
rate from all cancers.�

Posted by flow Frazao on January 14, 2004 at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 13 January 2004

Now I get it...

If you're wondering what's behind Bush's recent push to Mars, take a look at this article from Petroleum News:

NASA Ames Center looks at problem of drilling on Mars
If there is life on Mars, it would probably be microorganisms in water
deep below the surface of the planet. Dr. Geoffrey Briggs, director,
Center for Mars Exploration at the NASA Ames Center, told ?Meet Alaska?
that NASA is looking at ways to drill on Mars to look for water ? and
the life it might contain. Briggs said NASA has been working with
Halliburton, Shell, Baker-Hughes and the Los Alamos National Laboratory
to identify drilling technologies that might work on Mars.
[...]
Halliburton and Baker-Hughes are working on some very advanced systems,
Briggs said, some so advanced they aren?t willing to talk much about
them. He said the NASA Ames Center relies on working with people in the
industry who ?really understand the problems and make us face up to the
realities ? ?We do appreciate,? he said, ?that this is a non-trivial
activity."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 13, 2004 at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Irony at it's finest

GOP Urges Investigation of Voting Machine Performance:

Fairfax County Republicans are urging the county to
investigate the what they call the poor performance of high-tech voting
machines last November.
A report from the county G-O-P committee calls the touch-screen voting
machines used in local elections "a failure," and says and county
officials weren't prepared to deal with the problems.
The party is also recommending state regulations that would require
localities with the new equipment to follow stringent procedures.
The machines were supposed to speed up the reporting process, but
instead they produced one of the slowest vote counts in recent history.
Republicans are also angry that election officials took ten machines
that crashed to the county government center for repairs.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 13, 2004 at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A busy day in court

A couple of decisions from the Supreme Court today:

• The Supreme Court held Tuesday that police may set up roadblocks
  to collect tips about unsolved crimes.
  The court overturned a decision by the Illinois Supreme Court, which
  ruled that officers may solicit information from motorists only in an
  emergency. The case involved a man arrested for drunken driving at a
  Lombard, Ill., checkpoint set up to get information about an unrelated
  fatal hit-and-run accident.
  Three justices expressed concerns the ruling could open up motorists to
  police interference without yielding useful information about crimes.
  "There is a valid and important distinction" between seizing a person
  to determine whether he or she has committed a crime and seizing a
  person to ask whether that person "has any information about an unknown
  person who committed a crime a week earlier," wrote Justice John Paul
  Stevens, joined by Justices David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
  The case was a follow-up to a 2000 Supreme Court ruling that roadblocks
  intended for drug searches are an unreasonable invasion of privacy
  under the Constitution.
  
• The Supreme Court voted unanimously to restrict when consumers can sue
  over bad telephone service, a victory for regional phone companies.
  In the ruling released Tuesday, the justices held that consumers cannot
  use federal antitrust laws in suits claiming that regional phone
  companies provide substandard service to rivals, which hurts customers
  of those rivals.
  The Bush administration had sought that outcome, arguing that a ruling
  otherwise would open courts to multiple lawsuits accusing the regional
  phone companies of failing to assist their rivals and "could threaten
  substantial disruption of the telecommunications industry."
  

Posted by flow Frazao on January 13, 2004 at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tragic

$4B in Oil Revenue Said Missing in Angola:

More than $4 billion in oil revenue disappeared from
Angolan state coffers between 1997 and 2002, even as the country was
struggling to recover from 27 years of civil war, Human Rights Watch
said in a report Tuesday.
State oil revenues surged after international companies such as BP,
ExxonMobil and Total expanded their Angolan operations in the late
1990s, totaling $17.8 billion from 1997 to 2002 - about 85 percent of
government income - according to the Human Rights Watch report.
A total of $4.22 billion of that money, representing about 9.25 percent
of gross domestic product annually, is unaccounted for, according to
the group's analysis of figures from the International Monetary Fund.
Meanwhile, an estimated 900,000 Angolans remain displaced, millions
have almost no access to schools and hospitals, and nearly half the
country's 7.4 million children suffer from malnutrition, according to
U.N. figures.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 13, 2004 at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

OK, but what color was the bomb?

US Park Police fail to notice decoy bomb at Washington Monument:

In broad daylight on Sept. 11, 2003, somebody deposited
what could have been a "dirty bomb" at the Washington Monument. U.S.
Park Police never noticed.
It wasn't a real bomb, just a suspicious-looking black plastic bag
stuffed with garbage. And the culprits weren't terrorists, but
investigators from the Interior Department's Office of Inspector
General, out to demonstrate the monument's vulnerability on that
infamous anniversary. As documented in photos and a memo obtained by
The Reliable Source, the feds left the bag at the rear of the obelisk
for 20 minutes, then moved it near a security checkpoint where tourists
lined up to enter the landmark. "Again, the unidentified bag sat there,
undisrupted and unnoticed, for roughly 15 minutes," wrote Inspector
General Earl E. Devaney in the memo, citing his "grave concerns for the
security and public safety at these facilities." No Park Police could
be seen on patrol, except for one in an unmarked car who "appeared to be sound asleep,"
Devaney wrote. The memo, now in the hands of the House Select Committee
on Homeland Security, has some staffers in stitches. But Rep. Jim
Turner (D-Tex.), ranking committee member, is outraged. "Without a
doubt, if there had been a terrorist attack on the Washington Monument
on Sept. 11, 2003, hundreds of tourists could have been killed," Turner
told us yesterday. "Usually when we say someone was asleep at the
wheel, it is just an expression, but this time, the Park Police were
literally asleep at the wheel. . . . Someone needs to be held
accountable for this."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 13, 2004 at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 12 January 2004

Damn that liberal media

Nice job, Reuters. Keep up the good work.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 12, 2004 at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Second Annual Dubya Quote Quiz

Take it here.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 12, 2004 at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Whoops

They're slippery little suckers, aren't they:

The United States Air Force says it is investigating how
one of its fighter jets dropped an unarmed bomb on the Yorkshire
countryside last week.
There were no injuries and only "limited property damage" in the
incident which happened around 5:15 p.m. last Thursday, a USAF
spokesman said. The 25 lb practice bomb was dropped by a F-15E Strike
Eagle on a routine training run from a base at RAF Lakenheath in
Suffolk, eastern England. The bomb landed in a "sparsely-populated
area" near the town of Market Weighton in Yorkshire, the spokesman
added. "Trained and experienced base personnel including Ministry of
Defence, and local constabulary authorities responded to the scene and
an investigation team is determining the cause the incident," the
spokesman said.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 12, 2004 at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Verified Voting Gains Momentum: Contact Your Senator!

Step 1: Find your senators here.

Step 2: Copy the following into the body of an email:

"Dear Senator,
I am a constituent who cares deeply about security and trust in
elections, and I urge you to cosponsor the Voter Confidence and
Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (S.1980). As touchscreen voting
(e-voting) technology is adopted across America, it's absolutely vital
that these new systems meet basic standards of accountability and
openness. I am particularly concerned that many systems do not use
openly reviewed software and cannot provide a voter verifiable paper
audit trail. Unless a paper record is generated by publicly reviewed
software, verified by the voter and retained for potential recounts, I
believe that this technology is unacceptable for use in our elections.
The public should be allowed to review the software that runs these
machines in order to confirm that they act in the way that the
manufacturer claims. Right now, however, the leading technologies are
not only proprietary, they are covered by trade secret claims. This
kind of closed source, or 'black box,' software lacks sufficient
quality assurance. In fact, two recent analyses of one company's
software revealed gaping security holes that could be exploited by
anyone from a technically proficient insider to an average voter with a
few dollars worth of technology in his or her pocket. This underscores
how important open source software is for our elections. S.1980 would
require voting machines to use publicly reviewed software.
S.1980 would also mandate voter verifiable paper audit trails for all
e-voting machines, a prerequisite for accountability and accuracy. The
2000 presidential election was a painful lesson in the failings of
current voting technology, but at least there was a back-up system that
allowed a manual recount when evidence emerged that the regular voting
process was flawed. Without a paper audit trail, a compromised e-voting
system could not provide even the cold comfort of Florida's manual
recount. Luckily, adding this protection to the machines is not hard
and does not have to add a significant amount to the cost of each unit.
S.1980's House companion - H.R.2239 - already has 94 cosponsors. Major
newspapers like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times have endorsed
the principles that I've mentioned above. As a constituent, I strongly
urge you to cosponsor S.1980 and ensure that all new e-voting machines
provide a voter-verifiable paper audit trail and use publicly reviewed
software. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,

Step 4: Click 'Send'

I'd do it myself, but I'm from DC and don't have any Congressional representation.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 12, 2004 at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

There cold and then there's cold

Fishermen sit under plastics during ice fishing in Kazakh capital Astana. The temperature in Asatana is minus 20 degrees celsius.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 12, 2004 at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 10 January 2004

Fucking brilliant

This pretty much sums it up.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 10, 2004 at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 09 January 2004

Former Treasury Sec. Paints Bush as 'Blind Man'

Ouch:

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill likened
President Bush at Cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of
deaf people," according to excerpts on Friday from a CBS interview.
O'Neill, who was fired by Bush in December 2002, also said the
president did not ask him a single question during their first
one-on-one meeting, which lasted an hour.
"As I recall it was just a monologue," he told CBS' "60 Minutes," which
will broadcast the entire interview on Sunday.
In making the blind man analogy, O'Neill told CBS his ex-boss did not
encourage a free flow of ideas or open debate.
"There is no discernible connection," CBS quoted O'Neill as saying. The
president's lack of engagement left his advisers with "little more than
hunches about what the president might think," O'Neill said, according
to the program.
CBS said much of O'Neill's criticisms of Bush are included in "The
Price of Loyalty," an upcoming book by former Wall Street Journal
reporter Ron Suskind.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 9, 2004 at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Al Franken goes to Baghdad

Nice one, Al:

Franken discussed his USO tour with CNN's Paula Zahn. ZAHN:
Let's tell our audience a little bit about what you had the pleasure of
doing. You've lighted Hanukkah candles in one of Saddam's palaces. Is
that something you thought you'd be doing someday when you were growing
up? FRANKEN: No. Oddly enough, no. The second night of Hanukkah, we
were in Baghdad -- oh, there's a picture of it, great. ZAHN: That's
you. FRANKEN: That's my brother with me. And we were in one of Saddam's
palaces in Baghdad. And lit the Hanukkah candles. ... He has in one of
his palaces, he has a big -- I think it's in a palace or it might be a
central command center -- has a big mural of Scud [missiles] going and
destroying Israel. So I thought this would be fun.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 9, 2004 at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A quick note on Bush's immigration proposal

Bush has recently suggested giving broad new legal rights to illegal
workers. Personally, I think the migrant worker situation in this
country is a disgrace and ought to be addressed as soon as possible.
But more importantly, it amazes me that more people haven't pointed out
what's really going on here.
Karl Rove has thrown down the gauntlet with this one. It's a
frustratingly brilliant move on his part. By making this a core issue
in the election, the only Republican base that Bush will be pissing off
is the ultra-conservative faction that's going to vote for him no
matter what. The other two groups that will be affected by this policy
(not that Bush would ever actually implement
it) are the Hispanic population and the labor unions. Obviously, these
are both consistently Democratic sectors, and Dean (or whomever) will
be forced to pick which one he's going to alienate.
It would seem to me that the only angle the Dems have on this one would
be to point out that given the context of Bush's record, the
immigration proposal would be nothing but another empty promise.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 9, 2004 at 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 08 January 2004

Please pass the dioxin

The EPA has just released a study describing how farmed salmon is
loaded with chemicals:

Farmed salmon contains far more toxic chemicals than wild
salmon -- high enough to suggest that fish-eaters limit how much they
eat, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
They looked for 13 different chemicals known to build up in the flesh
of fish, including polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, dioxins,
toxaphene, dieldrin, hexachlorobenzene, lindane, heptachlor epoxide,
cis-nonachlor, trans-nonachlor, gamma-chlordane, alpha-chlordane,
Mirex, endrin and DDT.
Farmed salmon taken from markets in Frankfurt, Edinburgh, Paris,
London, Oslo, Boston, San Francisco, and Toronto had the highest
levels, and the researchers said consumers should eat no more than
one-half to one meal of salmon per month. A meal was eight ounces
(one-quarter of a kg) of uncooked meat.
Farmed salmon from supermarkets in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C.,
Seattle, Chicago, New York and Vancouver had toxins high enough to
suggest that people eat no more than two salmon meals a month, based on
Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) standards. In
contrast, it would be safe to eat up to eight meals a month of wild
salmon, they said. Other groups note that walnuts, flaxseeds and other
non-fish sources are rich in omega-3s.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 8, 2004 at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 07 January 2004

Wow

A guy from my hometown was killed by a mortar in Iraq. I can't believe it. I remember seeing him at parties (he was this enormous basketball player).

On the off chance that any of his friends or family ever reads this, I'm really really sorry.

Wow.

Capt. Eric Thomas Paliwoda had a busy year ahead of him.
There was a wedding to plan, a master's degree to earn and a teaching
position awaiting him after his return from Iraq.
"He was very excited. He'd be a wonderful teacher; he had a very
commanding presence," said his mother, Mary Paliwoda, from her home in
Goodyear, a western suburb of Phoenix.
He had been scheduled to return from Iraq this spring, but Paliwoda
died Friday when his command post came under a mortar attack in Balad,
about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad, according to the military.
The 28-year-old had been in Iraq for nine months and was scheduled to
return from the Middle East in April.
He and his fiance, Wendy Rosen, planned a June wedding, said his
father, Alfred Paliwoda. Rosen, who lives in New York, and Paliwoda's
mother were in contact regularly, talking on the phone about plans for
the wedding.
Once he was back, Paliwoda also planned to go into teaching, like his
mother, who works for a nearby school district. The soldier was going
to earn his master's degree and then teach at his alma mater, West
Point, Mary Paliwoda said.
"He was a very intelligent, outgoing, happy, life of the party kind of
guy," she said.
Paliwoda grew up in Farmington, Conn., and was a standout basketball
player at Conard High School in West Hartford, said his parents, who
now split their time between homes in Sedona and Goodyear.
Many universities sought the 6-foot-7 player, and he chose to attend
West Point, said Mary Paliwoda.
An avid outdoorsman who enjoyed fishing, play tennis, golfing and
hiking, Paliwoda combined his interests by majoring in environmental
studies and minoring in engineering.
At the prestigious military college, Paliwoda also excelled in
basketball and, like his father, was a hammer thrower, Mary Paliwoda
said.
"Originally, he did go there to play basketball. But he was always
willing to devote himself for our country," Mary Paliwoda said.
Paliwoda graduated from West Point in 1997 and was later stationed at
Fort Hood in Texas. He arrived at Fort Carson in Colorado in April 2001
and was assigned to the 4th Engineer Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat
Team, 4th Infantry Division, said post spokeswoman Sgt. Doraine McNutt.
In an effort to better understand his new surroundings and the people
in it, he asked his parents to mail him books about Iraqi culture, Mary
Paliwoda said. An engineer for the Army, Paliwoda spent time
negotiating with Iraqi tribal leaders.
"At one point he said he felt like the mayor of the town," she said.
The attack in which he died happened when insurgents hit a U.S. base
with shells. Six people were detained for questioning, the Army said.
He is the 34th soldier attached to Fort Carson to be killed in Iraq,
officials said.
In addition to his parents, Paliwoda is survived by a sister, Allison
Choka.
Services were scheduled for Monday at Old Cadet Chapel in West Point,
where he will be buried.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 7, 2004 at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

GIs in Iraq Scoff at Re-Enlistment Bonus

Looks like Bush's little bribe isn't going over as well as he'd hoped:

At a checkpoint on the barren plain east of Baqouba, word
of a new U.S. Army plan to pay soldiers up to $10,000 to re-enlist
evoked laughter from a few bored-looking troopers. "Man, they can't pay
me enough to stay here," said a 23-year-old specialist from the Army's
4th Infantry Division as he manned the checkpoint with Iraqi police
outside this city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
...
Staff Sgt. Julian Guerrero, 38, who runs a re-enlistment program for a
battalion in the 4th ID based in Tikrit, said only 10 of the
battalion's 80 eligible soldiers have taken the deal so far. At Pope
Air Force Base in North Carolina, a few soldiers from the 82nd Airborne
Division preparing to ship out to Iraq seemed evenly split over whether
the Army was offering enough money. "For three years, that's kind of
cheap," said Spc. Derek Gay, 24, of Tampa, Fla. "Some people would
re-enlist anyway, but there's more incentive for a good chunk of
money."
...
At the checkpoint outside Baqouba, the 23-year-old specialist, who
refused to give his name saying he feared retribution from military
higher-ups, stubbed out a cigarette on the side of a Humvee. As he
began to speak, he was interrupted by the blast of a Kalashnikov rifle
a few yards up the road. An Iraqi policeman fired the rounds in a mound
of dirt for no apparent reason. "You see what I have to put up with?"
asked the soldier. With two months left in a 12-month tour, "there's
not enough money in the world to make me stay a month longer."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 7, 2004 at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper

This story should be all over the news, but instead we're being treated to a running commentary on who won the fucking lottery.

[I]nvestigators have found no support for the two main
fears expressed in London and Washington before the war: that Iraq had
a hidden arsenal of old weapons and built advanced programs for new
ones. In public statements and unauthorized interviews, investigators
said they have discovered no work on former germ-warfare agents such as
anthrax bacteria, and no work on a new designer pathogen -- combining
pox virus and snake venom -- that led U.S. scientists on a highly
classified hunt for several months. The investigators assess that Iraq
did not, as charged in London and Washington, resume production of its
most lethal nerve agent, VX, or learn to make it last longer in
storage. And they have found the former nuclear weapons program,
described as a "grave and gathering danger" by President Bush and a
"mortal threat" by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered
state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s. A review of available
evidence, including some not known to coalition investigators and some
they have not made public, portrays a nonconventional arms
establishment that was far less capable than U.S. analysts judged
before the war. Leading figures in Iraqi science and industry,
supported by observations on the ground, described factories and
institutes that were thoroughly beaten down by 12 years of conflict,
arms embargo and strangling economic sanctions. The remnants of Iraq's
biological, chemical and missile infrastructures were riven by internal
strife, bled by schemes for personal gain and handicapped by deceit up
and down lines of command. The broad picture emerging from the
investigation to date suggests that, whatever its desire, Iraq did not
possess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything like
the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

These are some of Modher Sadeq-Saba Tamimi's secret
sketches for two illegal long-range missiles, one using two engines and
one using five boosters.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 7, 2004 at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Unelectable, My Ass!

Arianna Huffington on Howard Dean:

The folks besmirching the good doctor's Election Day
viability are the very people who have driven the Democratic Party into
irrelevance; who spearheaded the party's resounding 2002 mid-term
defeats; and who kinda, sorta, but not really disagreed with President
Bush as he led us down the path of preemptive war with Iraq,
irresponsible tax cuts and an unprecedented deficit. Dean is electable
precisely because he's making a decisive break with the spinelessness
and pussyfooting that have become the hallmark of the Democratic Party.
[...]
There is a historical parallel to Dean's candidacy, but it's not
McGovern in 1972, as the DLC-paranoiacs would like us to believe �
it's Bobby Kennedy in 1968. Like Kennedy, Dean's campaign was initially
fueled by his anti-war outrage. Like Kennedy, Dean has found himself
fighting not just to represent the Democratic Party but to remake it.
Like Kennedy, Dean is offering an alternative moral vision for America,
not just an alternative political platform. And like Kennedy, Dean has
come under withering attack from his critics for the very attributes
that his supporters find most attractive. "He could be intemperate and
impulsive... the image of wrath � his forefinger pointing, his fist
pounding his palm, his eyes ablaze." Sean Hannity on Howard Dean? No,
Theodore White on Bobby Kennedy in "The Making of the President 1968."

Posted by flow Frazao on January 7, 2004 at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Family keeps hope in U.S. human mad cow case

From CNN.com:

Charlene is the only person living in the United States
with the human form of mad cow disease, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. (Her parents don't want the family's
last name revealed for reasons of privacy.) Her case has taken on
renewed interest since the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed the
first appearance of mad cow disease in the United States last month,
sparking concerns about the nation's beef supply.

Charlene receives constant care from her family, who do everything from feeding her to taking her to doctors.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 7, 2004 at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

White House Seeks Secrecy on Detainee

What a surprise. The Administration is trying to keep everything
pertaining to an immigrant's treatment during the 9/11 roundup :under wraps and out of the public eye. Hopefully they won't get away with it:

In an extraordinary request, the Bush administration asked
the Supreme Court on Monday to let it keep its arguments secret in a
case involving an immigrant's challenge of his treatment after the
Sept. 11 terror attacks. Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel wants the high court
to consider whether the government acted improperly by secretly jailing
him after the attacks and keeping his court fight private. He is
supported by more than 20 journalism organizations and media companies.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson told justices in a one-paragraph
filing that "this matter pertains to information that is required to be
kept under seal."
Justices sometimes are asked to keep parts of cases private because of
information sensitive for national security or other reasons, but it's
unusual for an entire filing to be kept secret.

Bellahouel, an Algerian who worked as a waiter in South
Florida, came under FBI scrutiny because hijackers Mohamed Atta and
Marwan al Shehhi dined where he worked in the weeks before the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 7, 2004 at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 06 January 2004

Tubby Tubby Two by Four...

Posted by flow Frazao on January 6, 2004 at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What if you waged a war and nobody came?

Many Troops Dissatisfied, Iraq Poll Finds, Washington Post, October 16, 2003:

A broad survey of U.S. troops in Iraq by a Pentagon-funded
newspaper found that half of those questioned described their unit's
morale as low and their training as insufficient, and said they do not
plan to reenlist.
The survey, conducted by the Stars and Stripes newspaper, also recorded
about a third of the respondents complaining that their mission lacks
clear definition and characterizing the war in Iraq as of little or no
value. Fully 40 percent said the jobs they were doing had little or
nothing to do with their training. The findings, drawn from 1,935
questionnaires presented to U.S. service members throughout Iraq,
conflict with statements by military commanders and Bush administration
officials that portray the deployed troops as high-spirited and
generally well-prepared. Though not obtained through scientific
methods, the survey results suggest that a combination of difficult
conditions, complex missions and prolonged tours in Iraq is wearing
down a significant portion of the U.S. force and threatening to provoke
a sizable exodus from military service.

Despite a year of constant combat casualties and long,
grinding overseas tours, men and women in uniform strongly back
President Bush and his policies in Iraq, according to a Military Times
Poll.
But the poll indicates support for administration policy in Iraq is not
much higher in the military than among U.S. civilians. Both military
members and civilians, poll results show, are more likely to voice
approval for the president�s overall performance than for his Iraq
policies.
The poll also found overwhelming sentiment that more than two years of
combat have stretched the military so thin that its effectiveness has
eroded.

When asked if "[t]he nation's civilian leadership [h]as my best interest at heart," the responses broke down as follows:

Strongly agree -- 5%

Agree -- 38%

Disagree -- 35%

Strongly disagree -- 5%

No opinion -- 16%

Army Trying to Keep Troops From Leaving, AP News, Mon Jan 5, 2003:

About 7,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan
who were planning to retire or otherwise leave the service in the next
few months are getting new marching orders: Stay put.
The Army is expanding what it calls a "stop loss" order to keep
soldiers in uniform � even those who have met their contractual
service obligation or are scheduled to retire � during a rotation of
tens of thousands of troops that begins this month and is scheduled to
finish in May.
...
Prior to the war in Afghanistan, "stop loss" authority had rarely been
used; it is seen by many as being in conflict with the principle of an
all-volunteer military in which enlisted personnel sign contracts for a
specific period of service. It was first used in the 1991 Gulf War.

Strained U.S. Army Offers Fat Re-Enlistment Bonuses, Reuters, Tue Jan 6, 2003:

The U.S. Army, stressed by global deployments, is offering
re-enlistment bonuses of up to $10,000 to soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Kuwait, Army officials said on Monday.
Soldiers currently in those countries -- and others headed there in the
coming three months to replace them -- could receive lump payments of
between $5,000 and $10,000 for enlisting for at least three years of
additional Army service, the officials told reporters.

Congressional Democrats are also fighting against the Bush
administration's attempts to cut veteran's benefits and services.
Earlier this year, House Republicans voted to cut veteran's health care
services by $28 billion over 10 years. Democrats forced the Pentagon to
abandon its plan to cut the pay of troops serving in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Two-hundred thousand lower income military families were
left out of the child tax credit so that Bush could give a tax cut to
the wealthy. President Bush cut access to health care benefits for
160,000 middle-income veterans and proposed closing seven VA hospitals
in New York, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, California and Texas.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 6, 2004 at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I guess that's why they call it the Labor Department

Compassionate conservatism at work:

While touting the $895 million in increased wages it says
those workers would be guaranteed from the changes, the Labor
Department is suggesting ways employers can keep their labor costs from
going up. Among the options: cut workers' hourly wages and add the
overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new
$22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible. The department says
it is merely listing well-known choices available to employers, even
under current law. "We're not saying anybody should do any of this,"
said Labor Department spokesman Ed Frank.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 6, 2004 at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Consumer Debt More Than Doubles in Decade

This is pretty incredible:

Consumer debt hit a record $1.98 trillion in October 2003,
according to the most recent figures from the Federal Reserve. That
debt � which includes credit cards and car loans, but not mortgages
� translates to some $18,700 per U.S. household. At the same time,
the government says the nation's savings rate dropped to just 2 percent
of after-tax income in the first half of the year. That means many
people lack the means to deal with financial emergencies, much less
their eventual retirement.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 6, 2004 at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Friday, 02 January 2004

Worst environmental exploits of the year

Sierra Club readers have ranked Bush's 2003 attacks on the environment:

1. MERCURY RISING - Issued public health warnings to
pregnant women and children about mercury after announcing policy
changes to triple amount of mercury pollution allowed from power
plants. 2. SUPER DUPED - Became first administration to support
shifting burden of Superfund toxic waste cleanups from polluters to
taxpayers.
3. SOOTY SANTA - Dismantled provision of Clean Air Act that requires
oldest, dirtiest power plants and refineries to curb soot and smog
pollution.
4. BACK IN BLACKOUT - Proposed a national Energy Bill that did nothing
to reduce dependence on foreign oil, repair or address antiquated
electricity grid, or protect special places from oil and gas drilling.
5. DRILLING WILDERNESS - Opened nearly 9 million pristine acres in
Northwest Alaska to the oil and gas industry for exploration and
drilling.
6. STONEWALLING, BIG TIME (tied)- Continued to withhold documents from
secret meetings between Bush/Cheney Energy Task Force and energy
industry lobbyists.
6. DON'T AX, DON'T TELL (tied) - Promoted a wildfire policy that
expanded commercial logging in the backcountry but did little to
protect people where they live.
7. NEXT STOP, SHINOLA - Allowed untreated sewage to be blended with
treated sewage, cut funding for local sewage treatment, and didn't
require health officials to warn public about sewage in water.
8. CRITICAL CONDITION - Obliterated the process of critical habitat
designation for imperiled wildlife under the Endangered Species Act.
9. COP OFF - Continued pattern of willful negligence for enforcement of
even basic clean water and clean air laws.
10. POST 9/11 LIES - Discovered by EPA Inspector General to have lied
about post 9/11 environmental health hazards near Ground Zero.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 2, 2004 at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

What killed a U.S. tank?

You've got to see this:

On Aug. 28, 2003, an unknown munition, thought to be no
wider than a pencil, pierced the side of an M1A1 Abrams tank on patrol
in Baghdad. The round crippled the 69-ton vehicle and slightly injured
its commander and gunner. It was the second Abrams knocked out of
commission by the enemy in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now Army officials
are trying to figure out what kind of mystery projectile could pierce
the Abrams armor and disable it.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 2, 2004 at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Oh dear

Where the hell are my keys?

The Energy Department is conducting a widespread review of
security at America's nuclear weapons laboratories after reports of
hundreds of missing keys, some of which could allow access to sensitive
areas. Sources tell CBS News that lock and key experts will begin
visiting all U.S. nuclear labs next month to assess the problem of
missing keys and apparent security lapses, reports CBS News
Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. The review follows reports last summer
that a government facility known by its World War II code name "Y-12"
had reported "a number" of keys missing. In fact, 200 keys were
missing. Located in Tennessee, Y-12 was part of the Manhattan Project
where uranium was processed for the first atomic bomb and is today
considered the Fort Knox of highly enriched uranium -- the kind
terrorists could use for a devastating bomb. Some of the missing keys,
according to one source, "provide possible access to sensitive areas"
at the Y-12 facility. At Sandia National Labs in New Mexico, a set of
master keys went missing for more than a week, including keys that
could get someone as far as the glass doors leading to the nuclear
reactors. At the time, nobody bothered to change the locks or report
the security breach as required.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 2, 2004 at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack