"Worst ever security flaw found in Diebold voting machine"

PRESS RELEASE -- JULY 31, 2006


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Subject: WORST EVER SECURITY FLAW FOUND IN DIEBOLD TS VOTING MACHINE

Contact: Alan Dechert

Reference: PICTURES
(Click on thumbnail. Click again on lower half of picture for high resolution)

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA -- “This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines,” says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.

“Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant,” according to Dechert. “If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver.” This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter’s choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.

Open Voting Foundation is releasing 22 high-resolution close up pictures of the system. This picture, in particular, shows a “BOOT AREA CONFIGURATION” chart painted on the system board.

The most serious issue is the ability to choose between "EPROM" and "FLASH" boot configurations. Both of these memory sources are present. All of the switches in question (JP2, JP3, JP8, SW2 and SW4) are physically present on the board. It is clear that this system can ship with live boot profiles in two locations, and switching back and forth could change literally everything regarding how the machine works and counts votes. This could be done before or after the so-called "Logic And Accuracy Tests".

A third possible profile could be field-added in minutes and selected in the "external flash" memory location, the interface for which is present on the motherboard.

This is not a minor variation from the previously documented attack point on the newer Diebold TSx. To its credit, the TSx can only contain one boot profile at a time. Diebold has ensured that it is extremely difficult to confirm what code is in a TSx (or TS) at any one time but it is at least theoretically possible to do so. But in the TS, a completely legal and certified set of files can be instantly overridden and illegal uncertified code be made dominant in the system, and then this situation can be reversed leaving the legal code dominant again in a matter of minutes.

“These findings underscore the need for open testing and certification. There is no way such a security vulnerability should be allowed. These systems should be recalled”

OPEN VOTING FOUNDATION is a nonprofit non stock California corporation dedicated to demonstrating the need for and benefits of voting technology that can be publicly scrutinized.

###

So what does this mean to the layman? Well, you know those little "flash drives" that you use to copy files from one PC to another? If you don't, they are mini-hard drives housed in a casing about the length and width of a tongue depressor cut in half. They plug into the USB port of your PC and become just another drive that you can look at in Windows Explorer. What this means is that by opening up the PC that houses the voting machine software and flipping a switch, you can set the voting machine to boot from the internally-configured drive to an external flash drive instead. So someone could very easily plug in a flash drive and reboot the PC after the polls close to manipulate the totals, then shut it down and walk away.

This is not "vulnerability to hacking." This is "open to rigging" -- and Diebold isn't even trying very hard to hide the fact that their machines can be rigged, and that they are DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY for this purpose. Diebold makes most of the ATMs in this country, and I don't know about you, but I have never once had to deal with an ATM error. So it isn't that Diebold doesn't know how to make a secure machine running secure software.

This machine was developed EXACTLY according to spec. Now who gave them the specs?

I always did forget anniversaries

Yesterday, July 30, was B@B's two-year blogiversary.

How time flies.

I was a young and cute thing of 49 when I started doing this...look at me now.

Jamaicans of Mass Destruction

That seems to be the attitude of the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, anyway:

The United States Embassy in Kingston has denied visitors’ visas to several Jamaican students who were scheduled to travel to Florida to participate in Culturama 2006 on Sunday.
The annual performance festival, which was to celebrate Jamaica's 44th year of independence, has since been cancelled.

RJR News has been informed that Jamaica's 50 top middle and high school dancers from the annual Mello-Go-Round competition were scheduled to perform in Florida.

However when they went to the Embassy on Thursday all the visa requests were denied.

The US Embassy has provided no reason for the decision.

The performance, scheduled for the Coral Springs Centre for the Arts, would have marked the event's 14th year.

Organisers expected the event, featuring live Jamaican music, poetry and traditional dance, to draw 1,500 patrons as it did last year.

This particular tidbit comes to us courtesy of Hoffmania, who is arguably even more of a Jamaicophile than Mr. Brilliant and I are.

This decision makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and only serves to turn Jamaica into yet another country in the world that hates Americans.

This year we are going to celebrate our 20th anniversary here. Looks like I'll have to pack my "American Traveler Apology T-Shirt".

Pier 26, Darling Harbour

Love is dangerous. The more attached you become to something, the greater the risk that one day it will let you down. It may be a petty mistake. A slight transgression. But it causes you to rethink your relationship. Question everything you held true. You ponder. You stress. You fret. You over-analyse.But then you step back and think over the good times. Put things in perspective. Lighten up a

Pier 26, Darling Harbour

Love is dangerous. The more attached you become to something, the greater the risk that one day it will let you down. It may be a petty mistake. A slight transgression. But it causes you to rethink your relationship. Question everything you held true. You ponder. You stress. You fret. You over-analyse.But then you step back and think over the good times. Put things in perspective. Lighten up a

Presidential hopes and delusions do not equal reality

...real people die.

On the heels of the report from the Jerusalem Post on which I blogged yesterday that the U.S. is hoping for Israel to attack Syria, it becomes clearer every day that the Administration is using Israel to fight a proxy war with Iran. David J. Rothkopf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace agrees:

"It's really a proxy war between the United States and Iran," said David J. Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of "Running the World," a book on U.S. foreign policy. "When viewed in that context, it puts everything in a different light."

This is a dangerous game the Administration is playing, encouraging a highly paranoid ally (however understandable that paranoia might be) to do Whatever Is Necessary to stop a threat. Yesterday, Whatever is Necessary turned out to be the bombing deaths of 60 Lebanese, many of them children.

This is not a situation where you want either power-mad neocons (Cheney) or apocalyptic nutcases (Bush) pulling the strings of a nation they ultimately cannot control.

And Bush continues to get up and offer pipe dreams of hope, just has he's done in Iraq, completely ignoring the reality on the ground:

The president hopes the crisis will ultimately help him rally world leaders against Iran's nuclear program. Even as the U.N. Security Council today considers a peacekeeping force for Lebanon, it may vote on a U.S.-backed resolution to threaten sanctions if Iran does not suspend uranium enrichment in August.

"There's no question that this is going to stiffen up in the long run the resolve of the Europeans in dealing with Iran," said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department official who teaches at Lehigh University. "Even if they don't like what Israel is doing," he said, they will recognize that Iran "is a menace."

Others are not so hopeful. Outside the White House, the mood among many foreign policy veterans in Washington is strikingly pessimistic, especially as leaders of Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, traditional rivals based in different Islamic sects, began calling for followers to take the fight to the enemy.

Richard Haass, a former Bush aide and current head of the Council of Foreign Relations, is quick to burst Bush's bubble:

"An opportunity?" Haass said with an incredulous tone. "Lord, spare me. I don't laugh a lot. That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what's Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?"

The Administration's obsession with Iran, as with Iraq, had to do with nuclear weapons. However, just as the Bushistas are once again looking to go to war with a nation that currently has none, they're facilitating another Muslim country, one whose government is one lunatic bullet away from being an unstable Islamic theocracy, to be able to produce up to 50 nuclear weapons a year:

Over the past few years, Pakistan has been hard at work building a powerful new plutonium reactor that when completed will be able to produce enough fuel to make 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year.

This is happening at the same time that the Bush administration is pushing hard for final Congressional approval of a nonmilitary nuclear cooperation deal with Pakistan’s rival, India, that would in fact enhance India’s bomb-making capacity. The deal would enable India to free up its own stocks of nuclear fuel to the extent that it could expand its nuclear weapons production from about seven warheads a year to perhaps 50.

Yes, Virginia, the world is going mad.

Pakistan’s initiative, which in a few years could increase its bomb-making capacity twentyfold, was first reported last week by The Washington Post. Experts at the Institute for Science and International Security, after analyzing the program, concluded that “South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons or, at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material.”

[snip]

Common sense should tell you that thundering along the road to ever more nuclear weapons in ever shakier hands is madness, the global equivalent to driving drunk at ever higher speeds. Does anyone think China will sit quietly by as India and Pakistan develop the capacity to outpace it in the production of nukes?

Does anyone doubt that at some point, if the spread of nuclear weapons is not vigorously suppressed, a bomb will end up in the hands of a freak who has no other intention in the world than to use it?

And meanwhile, the Administration spinmeisters continue to make up stories that sound lovely but are in no way based in reality:

Jon B. Alterman, a Middle East specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, outlined "not even the worst-case scenario, but a bad-case scenario: South Lebanon is in shambles, Hezbollah gets credit for rebuilding it with Iranian money, Hezbollah grows stronger in Lebanon and it's not brought to heel. The reaction of surrounding states weakens them, radicalism rises, and they respond with more repression. None of this is especially far-fetched. And in all of this, the U.S. is seen as a fundamentally hostile party."

All of this is far too gloomy for administration officials, who see such dire forecasts as the predictable reactions of a foreign policy establishment that has produced decades of meaningless talks, paper peace agreements and unenforced U.N. resolutions that have not solved underlying issues in the Middle East.

"Some of the overheated rhetoric about how the United States can't work with anybody, we've lost our leadership in the world, is just completely ridiculous, and this crisis proves it," said the senior administration official involved in the crisis. "We are really indispensable to solving this crisis, and you're not going to solve this problem merely by passing another resolution."

While the diplomats work, the Pentagon is studying the possible impact on an already-stretched U.S. military. Commanders have diverted the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group from a training mission in Jordan where they were available as reserves for Iraq. Now they are on ships in the Mediterranean Sea to help with humanitarian efforts, and another unit has been put on alert as backup for Iraq.

The Pentagon has done contingency planning for U.S. troops participating in a multinational peacekeeping mission, but Bush aides have all but ruled out such a scenario. A more likely option, officials said, would have the United States provide command-and-control and logistics assistance.

Peter W. Rodman, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, said that officials are studying the possibility of putting troops in Lebanon but that it is too early to comment on what such a force would look like. "The concept is still under development, and discussion of any potential U.S. participation would be premature."

These guys had better wake up and realize this is the economy they voted for

I wonder how many of these guys voted for George W. Bush:

Alan Beggerow has stopped looking for work. Laid off as a steelworker at 48, he taught math for a while at a community college. But when that ended, he could not find a job that, in his view, was neither demeaning nor underpaid.

So instead of heading to work, Mr. Beggerow, now 53, fills his days with diversions: playing the piano, reading histories and biographies, writing unpublished Western potboilers in the Louis L’Amour style — all activities once relegated to spare time. He often stays up late and sleeps until 11 a.m.

“I have come to realize that my free time is worth a lot to me,” he said. To make ends meet, he has tapped the equity in his home through a $30,000 second mortgage, and he is drawing down the family’s savings, at the rate of $7,500 a year. About $60,000 is left. His wife’s income helps them scrape by. “If things really get tight,” Mr. Beggerow said, “I might have to take a low-wage job, but I don’t want to do that.”

Millions of men like Mr. Beggerow — men in the prime of their lives, between 30 and 55 — have dropped out of regular work. They are turning down jobs they think beneath them or are unable to find work for which they are qualified, even as an expanding economy offers opportunities to work.

About 13 percent of American men in this age group are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960’s. The difference represents 4 million men who would be working today if the employment rate had remained where it was in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Most of these missing men are, like Mr. Beggerow, former blue-collar workers with no more than a high school education. But their ranks are growing at all education and income levels. Refugees of failed Internet businesses have spent years out of work during their 30’s, while former managers in their late 40’s are trying to stretch severance packages and savings all the way to retirement.

Accumulated savings can make dropping out more affordable at the upper end than it is for Mr. Beggerow, but the dynamic is often the same — the loss of a career and of a sense that one’s work is valued.

Maybe that's because politicians have decided that the work Americans do is NOT valued, and that's why they've made it so easy to outsource jobs to low-wage countries, essentially turning high-paid jobs here into sweatshop jobs overseas.

I'm not solely blaming the Bush Administration; the exodus of high-paying jobs began with the sainted Bill Clinton, who triangulated his way into NAFTA and really got the ball rolling. But it has been Republican rule over the last six years that has accelerated the trend towards less opportunity, less pay, and fewer benefits.

But there's an issue of culture shock here too, for it seems women -- the very same women that Republicans and their Christofascist minions would like to see out of the work force -- have a better sense of Doing What Has To Be Done. For all of the residue of Reagan's "welfare queen" speeches during the 1980's, it's women who are out there working menial jobs, sometimes more than one, in order to feed the kids and keep a roof over their heads:

Even as more men are dropping out of the work force, more women are entering it. This change has occurred partly because employment has shrunk in industries where men predominated, like manufacturing, while fields where women are far more common, like teaching, health care and retailing, have grown. Today, about 73 percent of women between 30 and 54 have a job, compared with 45 percent in the mid-1960’s, according to an analysis of Census data by researchers at Queens College. Many women without jobs are raising children at home, while men who are out of a job tend to be doing neither family work nor paid work.

And while Bush loves to crow about the low unemployment rate, the numbers do not take these guys into account:

Despite their great numbers, many of the men not working are missing from the nation’s best-known statistic on unemployment. The jobless rate is now a low 4.6 percent, yet that number excludes most of the missing men, because they have stopped looking for work and are therefore not considered officially unemployed. That makes the unemployment rate a far less useful measure of the country’s well-being than it once was.

Indeed, a larger share of working-age men are not working today than at almost any point in the last half-century, which raises the question of how they will get by as they age. They may be forced back to work after years of absence, they may fall into poverty, or they may be rescued by the government. This same trend is evident in other industrialized countries. In the European Union, 14 percent of men between 25 and 54 were not working last year, up from 7 percent in 1975, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Over the same period in Japan, the proportion of such men rose to 8 percent from 4 percent.

Of course, we are also living in a country where businesses largely put their workers out to pasture around age 50, so where the jobs for these guys are is an open question.

Perhaps it's because men have always defined themselves by what they do for a living, and have devalued hobbies and other nonpaid pursuits. I'm not sure that's changed all that much over the years. So perhaps being out of work, and not being able to find work, frees these guys to do things they've never felt free to do before. The problem is that our society is more unforgiving than every of those who can't pay their bills, as evidenced by the punitive bankruptcy legislation passed by Congress last year and signed into law as a means of protecting the credit card industry against just the kind of contracting job market we're seeing now.

Here in New Jersey, we've seen some job growth, but it is modest, it's expected to remain that way through the end of the decade, and the growth that does occur is expected in low-wage industries, such as education, health, hospitality and restaurants, and other leisure activities -- which means that an ever-growing sector of working poor will be providing the leisure fun for the wealthy.

Men like the one that opens this article may be able to get away with tapping home equity for a while, but with a falling real estate market, these guys may find themselves tapped out for more than their houses are worth:

the number of unsold homes is at the highest level ever. Housing starts are starting to fall, but remain at a high level by historical standards. If sales do not pick up this summer, when sales are usually seasonally strong, it could be a sign that prices are going to come under pressure and lead to a much larger decline in housing starts.

The accompanying charts show year-over-year changes in sales of existing single-family homes and apartments, using six-month moving averages to smooth out monthly fluctuations. The latest figures show sales of single-family homes down 4.4 percent, the largest dip since 1995, and apartment sales off 6.6 percent. Statistics on apartment sales are only available back to 1999, but that is the worst showing in that period.

Meanwhile, the number of existing single-family homes on the market is up 33 percent year-over-year, measured the same way. Figures from the National Association of Realtors, going back to 1983, show no comparable increase in homes for sale. The number of condominiums and cooperative apartments for sale is up 61 percent.

The picture is consistent with demand for homes suddenly drying up, while sellers are reluctant to cut prices.

If men continue to shun jobs that aren't "good enough" for them, while their wives swallow their pride and become grocery cashiers, fast food service workers, and other menial workers, there's going to be a poverty problem among the elderly in about 20 years that's going to be monstrous.

Perhaps this is why the president wants to revive privatization of Social Security.

Our country is being run by madmen

Does Dick Cheney actually believe that there will be anything left worth presiding over after he gets his dream of global thermonuclear war?

The neocons want Israel to be their proxy in invading Syria:

The IDF is also concerned about a possible Syrian attack on Israel in response to the ongoing IDF operations in Lebanon. It is also known that Syria has increased its alert along the border out of fear in Damascus that Israel might attack Syria.

Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

This is just insanity. Cheney may think his hands are clean if Israel attacks Syria, but the whole world will know just who's pulling the strings. And if Syria is attacked, then Iran gets into the game, and then all bets are off.

When your Republican friends say this is part of the war on terror, ask them if they think their children can survive global thermonuclear war -- and if a post-nuclear world is what they want their children to live in.

And this is the Administration Joe Lieberman supports wholeheartedly.

Same story, two reports

Two reports on the cancellation of Condoleeza Rice's "diplomatic" visit to Lebanon.

The domestic spin, from the New York Times:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday she is ''deeply saddened by the terrible loss of innocent life'' from Israel's attack on a Lebanese village, but she held firm to the internationally unpopular position that a quick cease-fire won't solve the crisis.

Israel's early morning missile strike sparked protests in Beirut and forced Rice to cancel an expected visit Sunday with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. She planned to remain in Jerusalem instead, where she said she had work to do to end the fighting.

The international coveage, this one from Australia:

LEBANON told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today it could not meet with her before a ceasefire ends a 19-day-old Israeli offensive.
Lebanese officials said Dr Rice, who was due in Beirut later in the day, was told of the Lebanese position after an Israeli air strike killed at least 51 civilians in southern Lebanon.
They said Dr Rice's visit to Beirut had been cancelled.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the deadly raids as a "war crime", vowing there was no place for talks until Israel ceased its attacks.

"There is no place on this sad morning for any discussion other than an immediate and unconditional ceasefire as well as an international investigation into the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," Mr Siniora said at a press conference.

At least 51 people, including 22 children, were killed in blistering raids on the village of Qana in southern Lebanon, the civil defence chief in the region said today.

The bodies of men, women and children retrieved from under the rubble of dozens of buildings which collapsed after the bombardment, Salam Daher said.

Israel rejected responsibility for civilian deaths in the Lebanese village of Qana Sunday, where at least 51 people were killed in Israeli air strikes, saying Hezbollah was to blame.

Nope. No global warming here. Nothing to worry about. Now let's gas up the SUV and go driving around

Sixty percent of the US is experiencing abnormal drought:

More than 60 percent of the United States now has abnormally dry or drought conditions, stretching from Georgia to Arizona and across the north through the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist for the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

An area stretching from south central North Dakota to central South Dakota is the most drought-stricken region in the nation, Svoboda said.

"It's the epicenter," he said. "It's just like a wasteland in north central South Dakota."

Conditions aren't much better a little farther north. Paul Smokov and his wife, Betty, raise several hundred cattle on their 1,750-acre ranch north of Steele, a town of about 760 people.


Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this dry summer will never end up as pasta, bread or beer. What is left of the stifled crops has been salvaged to feed livestock struggling on pastures where hot winds blow clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds.

Some ranchers have been forced to sell their entire herds, and others are either moving their cattle to greener pastures or buying more already-costly feed. Hundreds of acres of grasslands have been blackened by fires sparked by lightning or farm equipment.

"These 100-degree days for weeks steady have been burning everything up," said Steele Mayor Walter Johnson, who added that he'd prefer 2 feet of snow over this weather.

North Dakota's all-time high temperature was set here in July 1936, at 121. Smokov, now 81, remembers that time and believes conditions this summer probably are worse.

Maybe higher prices for beer will make people wake up. God knows nothing else has. The latter half of this decade really IS going to be the new 1920's....I wonder who's going to be Dorothea Lange this time?

This is huge

Wow. The New York Times has endorsed Ned Lamont for Senate in Connecticut -- and they get what the issue with Lieberman is:

As Mr. Lieberman sees it, this is a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party — his moderate fair-mindedness against a partisan radicalism that alienates most Americans. “What kind of Democratic Party are we going to have?” he asked in an interview with New York magazine. “You’ve got to agree 100 percent, or you’re not a good Democrat?”

That’s far from the issue. Mr. Lieberman is not just a senator who works well with members of the other party. And there is a reason that while other Democrats supported the war, he has become the only target. In his effort to appear above the partisan fray, he has become one of the Bush administration’s most useful allies as the president tries to turn the war on terror into an excuse for radical changes in how this country operates.

Citing national security, Mr. Bush continually tries to undermine restraints on the executive branch: the system of checks and balances, international accords on the treatment of prisoners, the nation’s longtime principles of justice. His administration has depicted any questions or criticism of his policies as giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. And Mr. Lieberman has helped that effort. He once denounced Democrats who were “more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq” than on supporting the war’s progress.

At this moment, with a Republican president intent on drastically expanding his powers with the support of the Republican House and Senate, it is critical that the minority party serve as a responsible, but vigorous, watchdog. That does not require shrillness or absolutism. But this is no time for a man with Mr. Lieberman’s ability to command Republicans’ attention to become their enabler, and embrace a role as the president’s defender.

Mr. Lieberman prides himself on being a legal thinker and a champion of civil liberties. But he appointed himself defender of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the administration’s policy of holding hundreds of foreign citizens in prison without any due process. He seconded Mr. Gonzales’s sneering reference to the “quaint” provisions of the Geneva Conventions. He has shown no interest in prodding his Republican friends into investigating how the administration misled the nation about Iraq’s weapons. There is no use having a senator famous for getting along with Republicans if he never challenges them on issues of profound importance.

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.

Mr. Lamont, a wealthy businessman from Greenwich, seems smart and moderate, and he showed spine in challenging the senator while other Democrats groused privately. He does not have his opponent’s grasp of policy yet. But this primary is not about Mr. Lieberman’s legislative record. Instead it has become a referendum on his warped version of bipartisanship, in which the never-ending war on terror becomes an excuse for silence and inaction. We endorse Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Senate in Connecticut.

As Emeril Lagasse might say, "BAM!"

And what's to keep them from deciding that all dissidents are terrorists?

Now we know why the Bush Administration wants to monitor all phone and internet activity of all Americans:

U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.

A 32-page draft measure is intended to authorize the Pentagon's tribunal system, established shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks to detain and prosecute detainees captured in the war on terror. The tribunal system was thrown out last month by the Supreme Court.

Administration officials, who declined to comment on the draft, said the proposal was still under discussion and no final decisions had been made.

Senior officials are expected to discuss a final proposal before the Senate Armed Services Committee next Wednesday.

According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute."

Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda.

"That's the big question ... the definition of who can be detained," said Martin Lederman, a law professor at Georgetown University who posted a copy of the bill to a Web blog.

Scott L. Silliman, a retired Air Force Judge Advocate, said the broad definition of enemy combatants is alarming because a U.S. citizen loosely suspected of terror ties would lose access to a civilian court — and all the rights that come with it. Administration officials have said they want to establish a secret court to try enemy combatants that factor in realities of the battlefield and would protect classified information.

The administration's proposal, as considered at one point during discussions, would toss out several legal rights common in civilian and military courts, including barring hearsay evidence, guaranteeing "speedy trials" and granting a defendant access to evidence. The proposal also would allow defendants to be barred from their own trial and likely allow the submission of coerced testimony.

Essentially, this gives the Adminsitration carte blanche to decide who is a terrorist, and strip anyone they want of their citizenship and rights under the Constitution -- a tactic more closely identified with the old Soviet Union than with the United States of America as it used to exist before the Bush Junta took over.

The other interesting thing to note about this is it shows the Administration's willingness to tell the Supreme Court to go fuck itself when it issues decisions with which the Administration doesn't agree.

Checks and balances? We don' need no es-teenking checks and balances.

This is what happens when religion doesn't stay in its place

As soon as you start with "faith-based" government initiatives and "courting evangelicals", the anti-Jewish maggots start crawling out from under the rocks and the pogroms begin -- and not just in the Bible belt, either:

Wilmington, Delaware:

After her family moved to this small town 30 years ago, Mona Dobrich grew up as the only Jew in school. Mrs. Dobrich, 39, married a local man, bought the house behind her parents’ home and brought up her two children as Jews.

For years, she and her daughter, Samantha, listened to Christian prayers at public school potlucks, award dinners and parent-teacher group meetings, she said. But at Samantha’s high school graduation in June 2004, a minister’s prayer proclaiming Jesus as the only way to the truth nudged Mrs. Dobrich to act.

“It was as if no matter how much hard work, no matter how good a person you are, the only way you’ll ever be anything is through Jesus Christ,” Mrs. Dobrich said. “He said those words, and I saw Sam’s head snap and her start looking around, like, ‘Where’s my mom? Where’s my mom?’ And all I wanted to do was run up and take her in my arms.”

After the graduation, Mrs. Dobrich asked the Indian River district school board to consider prayers that were more generic and, she said, less exclusionary. As news of her request spread, many local Christians saw it as an effort to limit their free exercise of religion, residents said. Anger spilled on to talk radio, in letters to the editor and at school board meetings attended by hundreds of people carrying signs praising Jesus.

“What people here are saying is, ‘Stop interfering with our traditions, stop interfering with our faith and leave our country the way we knew it to be,’ ” said Dan Gaffney, a host at WGMD, a talk radio station in Rehoboth, and a supporter of prayer in the school district.

After receiving several threats, Mrs. Dobrich took her son, Alex, to Wilmington in the fall of 2004, planning to stay until the controversy blew over. It never has.

The Dobriches eventually sued the Indian River School District, challenging what they asserted was the pervasiveness of religion in the schools and seeking financial damages. They have been joined by “the Does,” a family still in the school district who have remained anonymous because of the response against the Dobriches.

Meanwhile, a Muslim family in another school district here in Sussex County has filed suit, alleging proselytizing in the schools and the harassment of their daughters.

[snip]

Mrs. Dobrich, who is Orthodox, said that when she was a girl, Christians here had treated her faith with respectful interest. Now, she said, her son was ridiculed in school for wearing his yarmulke. She described a classmate of his drawing a picture of a pathway to heaven for everyone except “Alex the Jew.”

Meanwhile, the Israel/Lebanon crisis comes to our shores. Seattle, Washington:

Five people were injured and one was killed Friday afternoon when a man who expressed anger toward Jews opened fire in the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, the authorities said.

The Seattle Police did not identify the suspect. They said he was arrested 12 minutes after the first report came in to emergency dispatchers. At 4:03 p.m., according to Assistant Chief Nick Metz, dispatchers received a call saying people had been shot and hostages taken at the offices of the federation, a fund-raising and planning organization at the edge of downtown.

Two minutes later, 911 dispatchers were on the phone with the suspect, said Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske of the Seattle Police, at a news conference Friday night.

Because of what the suspect said in that conversation, which the chief would not disclose, the shootings are being treated as a hate crime, he said. Chief Kerlikowske said the suspect was Muslim.

The authorities said they did not think the suspect was acting as part of a terrorist group.

“We believe at this point that it’s just a lone individual acting out some kind of antagonism toward this particular organization,” said David Gomez, the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who heads its counterterrorism unit in Seattle.

Mr. Gomez said his agency had been “monitoring” both Jewish and Muslim organizations, and reaching out to their leaders “for the last couple of weeks, since the beginning of hostilities in the Middle East.”

Frederick Dutt, an F.B.I. agent, said the agency had issued two bulletins, on July 21 and on Wednesday, urging “vigilance” at organizations and religious locations in light of the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in the Middle East. “Not specific targets because we didn’t have that information, to be honest,” he said.

Mr. Dutt noted there was an attack on a mosque in Seattle after Sept. 11, 2001. And the F.B.I. investigated two mosques for ties to Al Qaeda.

Marla Meislin-Dietrich, who works in the federation’s development department but was not in the office at the time of the shooting, said a colleague told her that one shooting victim said she had heard the gunman say “that he was a Muslim-American and that he was angry at Israel.”

"Anger at Israel" easily morphs into specific targeting of Jews, as do political endorsements of any kind of Christianity, including "reaching out to Evangelicals." (Mr. Obama, I'm talking to you.)

As soon as you start giving credence to ANY religious tradition that has as part of its tradition and history the forced conversion and/or elimination of the other, you open the door to these sorts of incidents. I suspect we will be seeing more of both of these as the Middle East conflict continues and as the Bush Administration continues to embrace the Christofascists.

UPDATE: Mel Gibson gets in on the action too. Apparently he was arrested for driving under the influence early Friday with a blood alcohol content of 0.12. The arrest report is here. Scroll down to page 2, and note in the center of the page:

S/Gibson almost continually threatened me saying he "owns Malibu." And will [unintelligible] "get even" with me. S/Gibson blurted out a barrage of anti-Semitic remarks about "Fucking Jew". S/Gibson yelled out, "The Jews are responsible for all the war in the world." S/Gibson then asked, "Are you a Jew?"

S/Gibson's conduct concerned and frightened me to a point, I called ahead to the station requesting a sergeant meet the arrival of my patrol car in the station parking lot.

Want to know who the anti-Semites are? Wait till Apocalypto shows up at your multiplex and see who goes to see it. He could deny it with Get A Stiffy Watching a Jew Get Flogged For Three Hours", but now his mask has fallen and we get a good look at the gargoyle inside.

Disgusting Greedy Bastards

I'm referring, of course, to Congressional Republicans, who are willing to allow a minimum wage increase, but only if it's coupled with a tax cut on multimillion dollar estates:

Republican leaders are willing to allow the first minimum wage increase in a decade but only if it's coupled with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates, lawmakers said Friday.

The House appeared headed for a session stretching past midnight and a close vote. But even if the plan passed the House, it seemed likely to die in the Senate, keeping the minimum wage frozen at $5.15 per hour as it has been for a decade.

Republicans saw this as their best chance to date of winning permanent cuts to the estate tax, which comes in response to a powerful lobbying campaign by farmers and small businessmen — and super-wealthy families such as the Walton family, heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune.

"I think it will become law," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., as he left a closed-door meeting of Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., however, pledged to kill the hybrid minimum wage-tax cut bill — and its $310 billion cost — if it got to the Senate.

"The Senate has rejected fiscally irresponsible estate tax giveaways before and will reject them again," Reid said. "Blackmailing working families will not change that outcome."

The move would also put Democrats in the uncomfortable position of voting against the minimum wage increase and the estate tax cut — and an accompanying bipartisan package of popular tax breaks, including a research and development credit for businesses and deductions for college tuition and state sales taxes.

But there was GOP discontent, too. Some conservative in the House were unhappy about the minimum wage vote, while moderates in the party were restive about its being tied to cuts in the estate tax.

The GOP package would increase the wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, phased in over the next three years.

It would also exempt $5 million of an individual's estate, and $10 million of a couple's, from estate taxes by 2015. Estates worth up to $25 million would be taxed at capital gains rates, currently 15 percent and scheduled to rise to 20 percent. Tax rates on the remainder of larger estates would fall to 30 percent by 2015.

The maneuver was aimed at defusing the wage hike as a campaign issue for Democrats while using the popularity of the increase to achieve the Republican Party's longtime goal of permanently cutting estate taxes.

Yes, let's tie a meager minimum wage hike that would bring the wages of low-income workers up to a real value of $5.35 when adjusted for inflation -- to a tax cut for the already-wealthy. I'd like to see how long the Walton kids would last in a minimum wage job.

Disgusting. It's time to throw these fuckwads out.

And so the American Decline begins

For the entire duration of the Bush years, with a flat stock market, a horrific bond market, skyrocketing fuel prices only now trickling down to other products, stagnant-to-dropping wages, continued outsourcing of high-wage jobs with the only job growth in the U.S. being in the low-wage sector, the economy has been propped up by the housing sector, as homeowners cash out the paper equity generated by skyrocketing home prices to keep themselves in consumer goods.

It's been an orgy of consumption based on illusory money, but the party's over. Here in my town, there are 47 houses on the market. Many of them have been sitting for months. In the last five years, about 1/4 of the houses in my neighborhood have been either torn down and replaced with McMansions, or have had huge additions done so that they emulate McMansions, or new kitchens. And I'd wager most of it was paid for with home equity loans. A friend of mine in a town with 80 houses on the market has cut her price by $50K after her house has been sitting for four months, and has had barely a nibble.

The housing market doesn't have to collapse completely for the overall economy to take a huge hit; a softening to the point that consumer spending comes to a screeching halt will do it. Well, folks, put on a helmet and fasten your seat belts, folks, because it's not going to be pretty:

The housing industry — which largely carried the American economy through the tribulations of the 2000 stock-market crash, a recession and climbing oil prices — has lost its vigor in recent months and now has begun to bog down the broader economy, which slowed to a modest 2.5 percent growth rate this spring.

That was a sharp comedown from the 5.6 percent growth rate of the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported yesterday, caused in part by the third consecutive quarterly decline in spending on houses and apartment buildings, after several years of rapid growth.

“It hasn’t slowed down a little bit — it has slowed down a lot,” said Doug McCraw, a developer who has scrapped his plans for a 205-unit condominium tower in a neighborhood just north of downtown Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “Anybody who did not have a shovel in the dirt has chosen to wait till the market settles.”

The housing slowdown is perhaps the clearest effect of the Federal Reserve’s two-year campaign of raising interest rates in a bid to tap the brakes on the economy and reduce inflation. That campaign has been largely successful, with the decline happening gradually while other parts of the economy, mainly the corporate sector, pick up much of the slack.

“Housing is going from being far and away the most important contributor to growth to being a measurable drag, and it’s happening gracefully so far,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, a research company. “But there’s now a growing and measurable risk that things don’t go according to plan.”

The biggest risk, economists say, is that the optimism that fed the real-estate boom will reverse dramatically. The number of homes for sale has surged in recent months, particularly in once-hot markets, like the Northeast, Florida, California and parts of the Southwest. As builders delay land acquisition and construction it could reduce employment and spending in the coming months.

More broadly, just as rising housing prices during the boom added to Americans’ sense of wealth and well-being — encouraging them to spend more on a variety of goods and services — the reverse could dampen sentiment and lead consumers to pull back on their purchases.

While the fate of housing prices has received far more attention recently than real estate’s role as an engine of job growth, the sector has also become one of the country’s most important industries. Residential construction and all the activity that swirls around it — mortgage lending, renovations and the like — account for roughly 16 percent of the economy, making it the largest single sector, slightly bigger than health care.

It seems to me that with much of the inflation that is driving the Fed's rate increases being caused not by wage growth but by huge increases in fuel prices, that the Fed continues to respond as if it were wage pressures shows either an unwillingness to break from tradition even if that tradition is no longer valid given current conditions, or else it's just another part of the plan to eviscerate the middle class.

According to the New York Times article excerpted above, the housing sector added 1.1 million jobs between 2001 and early last year, while the rest of the economy dropped 1.2 million jobs, which adds yet another dimension to the impact the housing slowdown is going to have on the overall economy.

Increased unemployment in the housing sector, dropping prices, homeowners leveraged up to the peak-price hilt living in what are now overimproved houses, paying adjustable-rate and interest-only mortgages that are getting ready to adjust -- I think you're going to see a lot of Americans losing everything in the next few years.

Oh, and just as an aside? Another oil company, Chevron, posted its second-quarter results yesterday. Profits came in at a record $4.4 billion -- a 19% jump from last quarter. And in the fucked-up world that is Wall Street, the stock dropped $1.68 anyway -- because other companies' profits were higher.

Friday Cat Blogging - Part 3

Of course you know THIS:



is the last straw!

This man lied us into war, ignored warnings of a terrorist attack that ended up killing almost 3000 people, he's destroyed the American economy for generations to come -- but this is just too much.

Another reason why we still miss Paul Wellstone

Ew:

A report in this morning's Roll Call shows that Norm Coleman, Sr., the father of Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman, was arrested after he was caught having sex in public in St. Paul, Minnesota, RAW STORY has learned.

Coleman's father was arrested for lewd and disorderly conduct after he was found having sex outside a pizzeria with 38-year old Patrizia Marie Schrag. Norm Coleman, Sr., is 81-years old.

Senator Coleman released a statement declaring “I love my father dearly. I do not condone his actions or behavior, and I am deeply disturbed by what I have learned. He clearly has some issues that need to be dealt with, and I will encourage him to seek the necessary help.”

Coleman, Sr., was a constant presence during his son's 2002 Senate campaign, in which he ran neck and neck with Democrat Paul Wellstone until the incumbent died in a plane crash. A November 3, 2002 article in Minnesota's Star Tribune reported "Coleman's father, Norman Sr., travels with his son these days, campaigning. The mayor holds him up as a hero, a veteran of the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. "He's the smartest man I know," Coleman said."

(Hat tip: Pam)

Must-read post of the day

If every parent was like Michael Berubé, the world would be a much better place -- and in all likelihood we would not have a sociopath as president.

Avocado Shake: the green iced mother

It's Sugar High Friday, the theme is ice and thanks to Sarah, I've had a certain song spinning around in my head for the past fortnight.Inspired by my first ever venture into the land of sweet avocado, I got out the blender to recreate the rich creamy green concoction known as the Avocado Shake at home.Avocado with condensed milk sounds bizarre to the uninitiated, but if you like avocado, trust

Avocado Shake: the green iced mother

It's Sugar High Friday, the theme is ice and thanks to Sarah, I've had a certain song spinning around in my head for the past fortnight.Inspired by my first ever venture into the land of sweet avocado, I got out the blender to recreate the rich creamy green concoction known as the Avocado Shake at home.Avocado with condensed milk sounds bizarre to the uninitiated, but if you like avocado, trust

Friday Cat Blogging, Part II

OK, now this is just fucking creepy:




And that last one? That's just a cat about to have a hairball.

Sometimes I wish YouTube had never been invented. Just what I didn't need -- entirely new ways of wasting time. Marc Maron explains how it all works, about 55 seconds into the video:

Friday Cat Blogging

OK, it's not my cat. But You have to admit, it's really freakin' cute:

Howard Dean deserves an apology

Howard Dean was right all along about Iraq -- right down to the consequences. It's high time to stop with the "Dean Scream" bullshit and offer the man an apology.

Glenn Greenwald reminds us of what Dean said about the Iraq war two months before George W. Bush invaded a country that never did anything to us:

I believe that the President too often employs a reckless, go-it-alone approach that drives us away from some of our longest-standing and most important allies, when what we need is to pull the world community together in common action against the imminent threat of terrorism.

I believe that the President undercuts our long-term national security interests and the established international order when he seeks to replace decades of bipartisan consensus on the use of American force with a new doctrine justifying preemptive attacks against other nation states - not because of their current action or imminent threat, but to preempt a threat that could arise in the future.

I believe that the President must do more on the most important front in the war on terrorism - our home front - through strengthened and well-funded first responders and effective security measures that go beyond calls to purchase plastic sheeting and duct tape.

And I firmly believe that the President is focusing our diplomats, our military, our intelligence agencies, and even our people on the wrong war, at the wrong time, when our energy and our resources should be marshaled for the greatest threats we face. Yes, Saddam Hussein is evil. But Osama bin Laden is also evil, and he has attacked the United States, and he is preparing now to attack us again.

What happened to the war against al Qaeda?

Why has this Administration taken us so far off track?

I believe it is my patriotic duty to urge a different path to protecting America's security: To focus on al Qaeda, which is an imminent threat, and to use our resources to improve and strengthen the security and safety of our home front and our people while working with the other nations of the world to contain Saddam Hussein.

Had I been a member of the Senate, I would have voted against the resolution that authorized the President to use unilateral force against Iraq - unlike others in that body now seeking the presidency.

I do not believe the President should have been given a green light to drive our nation into conflict without the case having first been made to Congress and the American people for why this war is necessary, and without a requirement that we at least try first to work through the United Nations.

That the President was given open-ended authority to go to war in Iraq resulted from a failure of too many in my party in Washington who were worried about political positioning for the presidential election.

To this day, the President has not made a case that war against Iraq, now, is necessary to defend American territory, our citizens, our allies, or our essential interests.

Nor has the Administration prepared sufficiently for the possible retaliatory attacks on our home front that even the President's CIA Director has stated are likely to occur. It has always been important, before going to war, for our troops to be well-trained, well-equipped, and well-protected. In this new era, it is as important that our people on the home front also be well-protected.

The Administration has not explained how a lasting peace, and lasting security, will be achieved in Iraq once Saddam Hussein is toppled.

And the Administration has approached the United Nations more as an afterthought than as the international institution created to deal with precisely such a situation as we face in Iraq. From the outset, the Administration has seemed oblivious to the simple fact that it clearly would be in our interests for any war with Iraq to occur with UN authorization and cooperation and not without it.

The Administration's reckless bluster with our allies over Iraq has caused what could be lasting friction in important relationships and has injured our standing in the world community. When rhetoric by subordinates in the Administration alienates our long-standing allies, it should be met with reprimand and not condoned by the President.

[snip]

Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.

Iran and Turkey each have interests in Iraq they will be tempted to protect with or without our approval.

If the war lasts more than a few weeks, the danger of humanitarian disaster is high, because many Iraqis depend on their government for food, and during war it would be difficult for us to get all the necessary aid to the Iraqi people.

There is a risk of environmental disaster, caused by damage to Iraq's oil fields.

And, perhaps most importantly, there is a very real danger that war in Iraq will fuel the fires of international terror.

Anti-American feelings will surely be inflamed among the misguided who choose to see an assault on Iraq as an attack on Islam, or as a means of controlling Iraqi oil.

And last week's tape by Osama bin Laden tells us that our enemies will seek relentlessly to transform a war into a tool for inspiring and recruiting more terrorists.

[snip]

We must remember, though, that Iraq is not the greatest danger we face today. Consider, to begin with, North Korea.

The Administration says it is wrong to draw a parallel between the situations in Iraq and North Korea, because those situations are quite different. I agree.

Iraq has let UN inspectors back in. North Korea has kicked them out.

Saddam Hussein does not have a clear path to acquiring nuclear weapons. North Korea may already have them - and is on a clear path to acquiring more.

Saddam Hussein has missiles that can go 40 miles farther than the 90-mile range allowed by the UN. North Korea has tested a three-stage intercontinental ballistic missile that might be able to reach California, Oregon, and Washington.

I marvel at the discipline of this Administration in sticking to its message -that Saddam is the greatest danger - regardless of world developments.

We have the most dangerous situation in East Asia in a decade - perhaps in five decades, and the Administration is treating it as a sideshow. The reason is that North Korea doesn't fit into any of the Administration's preconceived little boxes.

They haven't wanted to talk to North Korea because a solution requires negotiation - and sitting at the bargaining table is something Bill Clinton used to do. They do not see themselves as negotiators; they see themselves as pre-emptors. But preemption on the Korean Peninsula is a much different proposition than it is in the Persian Gulf.

In Korea, the Communist military forces are concentrated along the border with the South, less than forty miles from Seoul. Rockets and missiles, bombs and troops could strike with little or no notice. Even in the best case, a war, once begun, could take thousands of lives and seriously endanger the 37,000 American troops deployed on the Peninsula.

How did we get into this mess?

A decade ago, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons program in return for our help in building civilian nuclear power plants.

As a result, 8,000 fuel rods containing reprocessed plutonium were sealed up and maintained under international inspection. That's enough plutonium to make half a dozen nuclear bombs.

In recent weeks, it has become clear that the North Koreans have broken the agreement. They have begun moving the fuel rods to a new location, and threatening to unseal them. They could also re-start their reactor and produce more and more plutonium.

Within months, North Korea could become a confirmed nuclear power. Unlike Iraq, it has an advanced missile program, which would make its possession of nuclear arms even more dangerous.

The result would be the certainty of heightened tensions throughout East Asia, the likelihood of nuclear blackmail, the risk of a regional arms race, and the chance that the nuclear materials will be put up for sale to the highest bidder.

The Administration's response to all this has been to say that "every option is on the table."

Now, I have been in public service for quite awhile, and I'll let you in on a little secret.

When government officials say, "every option is on the table," it's because they haven't got a clue what they intend to do.

It would be unfair for me to suggest that negotiating with North Korea is a simple matter. By all accounts, it is extremely difficult. No one can guarantee a successful outcome.

But you can guarantee failure if you do not even try. And this administration has not tried.

Instead of a serious policy, they have wasted time, alienated our allies and engaged in a pointless war of words with Pyongyang.

Even now, the Administration seems to want to avoid anything that would shift the world spotlight from the dangers of the Persian Gulf to the even greater perils of the Korean Peninsula.

I think we can do better.

We do not want to risk war. But neither do we want to run the risk of doing nothing in the face of North Korea's provocative and dangerous behavior.

A serious policy toward North Korea would be based on four principles. First, it must result in a verifiably nuclear free Korean Peninsula. Second, it must be carried out in full coordination with our allies in Seoul and Tokyo and close cooperation with Moscow, Beijing and the European Union. Third, it must include a willingness to engage in direct talks with North Korea, not as some kind of reward to Pyongyang, but as a means of doing what is necessary to prevent proliferation and the risk of war. Finally, it must be implemented now.

You would not know it from the Administration's approach, but time is not on our side.

North Korea will be far easier to contend with as a threatening power than as a declared nuclear power.

And plutonium, once it is produced, has a half-life of more than 24,000 years. It is almost impossible to get rid of.

Given the history, it will take months, if not years, to reach a comprehensive understanding with North Korea on all issues. What we need now is an interim arrangement that will contain the crisis until we can end it.

Together with our allies, and others in the region, we should challenge Pyongyang to return the fuel rods to their previous location, and allow international authorities to inspect and re-seal them. North Korea must also continue its moratorium - secured by President Clinton, I might add - on tests of long-range missiles.

In return, the U.S. can pledge to take no military action against the North and agree to resume direct, high-level talks. Both sides should agree to maintain these pledges as long as talks are ongoing. The discussions should be wide-ranging and designed to give North Korea a chance to reduce its isolation and begin moving in the direction of a normal society.

North Korea is a far greater danger to world peace than Iraq.

As this disaster has played out, the outcome has shown Dean was absolutely, 100% correct on everything he said at Drake University on February 17, 2003.

It's time for the Bush cultists to admit it.

Jack Cafferty injects a dose of reality into the conversation

I remember when Jack Cafferty was a conservative curmudgeon. Now he's a rare voice of reality:

Another day, another tape from al Qaeda. So what? What exactly is the world supposed to do because some al Qaeda dirtbag releases a tape saying he’s going to support Hezbollah? Should we all get under the bed now? The fact is, these morons have been sending out tapes for years and
threatening all kinds of dire things, but as far as we know, the leadership of what’s left of this organization is still scurrying around from cave to cave in
Afghanistan trying to keep their cooking fires lit so they can roast their goats.

It’s far more likely that they’re starved for attention. Between the war in Iraq, the war in Gaza, the war in Lebanon, the crazies in North Korea
and Iran, the world doesn’t have time to pay attention to these worms anymore. So, like spoiled little brats who throw a fit in a department store because
their mother is busy shopping and not paying attention to them, these idiots rush out another videotape so they can get their name in the paper.

And then the Bush Administration uses these tapes to whip people into a frenzy of fear so that they will continue to be soft and pliant and accept the Administration's power grab -- these incursions on Americans' freedom that do NOTHING about terrorism, but do a lot towards the entrenchment of the Bush family dictatorship.

Your tax dollars at work watch for Friday, July 28, 2006

Remember all those much-touted hospitals and schools in Iraq so beloved of wingnut radio gasbags as they try vainly to justify the Administration's war? Remember all the wonderful projects to improve the lives of Iraqis?

Not so fast. Just as with Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, these projects are rife with delays and cost overruns:

The United States is dropping Bechtel, the American construction giant, from a project to build a high-tech children’s hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after the project fell nearly a year behind schedule and exceeded its expected cost by as much as 150 percent.

Called the Basra Children’s Hospital, the project has been consistently championed by the first lady, Laura Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and was designed to house sophisticated equipment for treating childhood cancer.

Now it becomes the latest in a series of American taxpayer-financed health projects in Iraq to face overruns, delays and cancellations. Earlier this year, the Army Corps of Engineers canceled more than $300 million in contracts held by Parsons, another American contractor, to build and refurbish hospitals and clinics across Iraq.

American and Iraqi government officials described the move to drop Bechtel in interviews on Thursday, and Ammar al-Saffar, a deputy health minister in Baghdad, allowed a reporter to take notes on briefing papers on the subject he said he had recently been given by the State Department.

The United States will “disengage Bechtel and transfer program and project management” to the Army Corps of Engineers, the papers say. Bechtel, the State Department agency in charge of the work and the Health Department in Basra all confirmed that the company would be leaving the project, but the reasons are a matter of deep disagreement.

The Iraqis assert that management blunders by the company have caused the project to teeter on the verge of collapse; the American government says Bechtel did the best it could as it faced everything from worsening security to difficult soil conditions.

A senior company official said Thursday that for its part Bechtel recommended that the work be mothballed and in essence volunteered to leave the project because the security problems had become intolerable. He also disputed the American government’s calculation of cost overruns, saying that accounting rules had recently been changed in a way that inflated the figures.

The official, Cliff Mumm, who is president of the Bechtel infrastructure division, predicted that the project would fail if the government pressed ahead, as the briefing papers indicate that it would. Because of the rise of sectarian militias in southern Iraq, Mr. Mumm said, “it is not a good use of the government’s money” to try to finish the project.

“And we do not think it can be finished,” he said.

Beyond the consequences for health care in southern Iraq, abandoning the project could be tricky politically because of the high-profile support from Mrs. Bush and Ms Rice. Congress allocated $50 million to the Basra Children’s Hospital in late 2003 as part of an $18.4 billion reconstruction package for Iraq. Now the government estimates that the cost overruns are so great that the project will cost as much as $120 million to complete and will not be finished before September 2007, nearly a year later than planned. Some other estimates put the overruns even higher.

This debacle is a question of "name your poison." Either Bechtel is guilty of colossal mismanagement of the project, and therefore wasting the huge amounts of government cash it was given without any accountability required, or the situation on the ground in Iraq is so completely FUBAR that nothing can be accomplished in terms of rebuilding. Either way, it's time, particularly now that George Bush is reviving his Social Security privatization plan, to ask how much money we want to continue to shovel into the black hole that he has created in Iraq.

Mission accomplished

The Bush Administration has encouraged Israel to do whatever the hell it wants in Lebanon. And now, like everything else the Bush Administration touches, this policy of "bomb the hell out of everyone" has turned public opinion in even those Arab countries who at one time decried the tactics of Hezbollah into supporters:

At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.

An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a “new Middle East” that they say has led only to violence and repression.

Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.

Mouin Rabbani, a senior Middle East analyst in Amman, Jordan, with the International Crisis Group, said, “The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the most potent issue in this part of the world.”

Distinctive changes in tone are audible throughout the Sunni world. This week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt emphasized his attempts to arrange a cease-fire to protect all sects in Lebanon, while the Jordanian king announced that his country was dispatching medical teams “for the victims of Israeli aggression.” Both countries have peace treaties with Israel.

The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan — offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — could well perish.

“If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance,” it said, “then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire.”

The Saudis were putting the West on notice that they would not exert pressure on anyone in the Arab world until Washington did something to halt the destruction of Lebanon, Saudi commentators said.

American officials say that while the Arab leaders need to take a harder line publicly for domestic political reasons, what matters more is what they tell the United States in private, which the Americans still see as a wink and a nod.

There are evident concerns among Arab governments that a victory for Hezbollah — and it has already achieved something of a victory by holding out this long — would further nourish the Islamist tide engulfing the region and challenge their authority. Hence their first priority is to cool simmering public opinion.

But perhaps not since President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt made his emotional outpourings about Arab unity in the 1960’s, before the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, has the public been so electrified by a confrontation with Israel, played out repeatedly on satellite television stations with horrific images from Lebanon of wounded children and distraught women fleeing their homes.

American officials may be saying that they're being told a different story, but keep in mind that these are the same American officials who said that we would be welcomed to Iraq with flowers, candy, and dancing in the streets; who have said for the last year that the insurgency is in its last throes, and that we knew exactly where the WMD are. Do YOU trust anything they say?

Would this be shown today?

This parody of "Schoolhouse Rock" actually ran on Saturday Night Live in 1998. Somehow I don't think anything like this would be broadcast today.

I guess the oil companies need another tax cut -- at the expense of your retirement, your kids' schools, your health care.....

Where your $3.00/gallon is going:

Exxon/Mobil: $10.4 billion in profits for the second quarter -- up 36% from the previous quarter.

Royal Dutch Shell: $7.32 billion in profits for the second quarter -- up 40% from the previous quarter.

Conoco/Phillips: More than $5 billion in profits for the second quarter -- up 65% from the previous quarter:

Revenue rose only 12.6 percent, to $47.1 billion, highlighting how staggeringly high profit margins for oil, gasoline and other fuels accounted for the bulk of ConocoPhillips' second-quarter bonanza.

Sounds like an industry that's going to get another tax cut.

When George W. Bush starts talking again about how Social Security needs to be privatize, think about how well his buddies in the energy industry are doing as the increased price of energy starts filtering down to every part of the economy -- including your job.

I know all about "If it bleeds, it leads", but the Book of Revelation is not be a news source

Media Matters:

For the second time in three days, CNN featured a segment on the potential coming of the Apocalypse, as indicated by current conflicts in the Middle East. The July 26 edition of CNN's Live From ... featured a nine-minute segment in which anchor Kyra Phillips discussed the Apocalypse and the Middle East with Christian authors Jerry Jenkins and Joel C. Rosenberg -- who share the view that the Rapture is nigh. At one point in the discussion, Phillips asked Rosenberg whether she needed "to start taking care of unfinished business and telling people that I love them and I'm sorry for all the evil things I've done," to which Rosenberg replied: "Well, that would be a good start." Throughout the segment, the onscreen text read: "Apocalypse Now?"

As Media Matters for America documented, the July 24 edition of CNN's Paula Zahn Now featured a segment examining what "the Book of Revelation tell[s] us about what's happening right now in the Middle East." CNN re-aired this segment the next day. Media Matters also noted that Rosenberg is just one of several conservative media figures who have identified and expounded upon the purported signs of the Apocalypse to be found in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. During his appearance on Live From ..., Rosenberg claimed that he had been invited to the White House, Capitol Hill, and the CIA to discuss the Rapture and the Middle East, and noted -- several times -- that the apocalyptic events described in his novels keep coming true.

Jenkins is co-author, with conservative activist Tim LaHaye, of the Left Behind series of books, which uses the Book of Revelation as a "framework" to tell a story of the End Times. According to a January 28, 2004, Rolling Stone article, LaHaye "prodded the Rev. Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority" and co-founded the Council for National Policy, "a secretive group of wealthy donors that has funneled billions of dollars to right-wing Christian activists." LaHaye's wife, Beverly LaHaye, founded the conservative group Concerned Women for America.

One would expect Fox News to invite apolcalyptic Christian preachers on and identify them as "Middle East Analysis", and indeed they have not disappointed. But sorry, folks, this is not hard news.

I guess there are no pretty missing white women to report on, and Christie Brinkley's divorce isn't worth expending any more ink on; after all, she IS 52, not 18.

Another reason to hate the Atlanta Braves

In case their continued insistence on using racial stereotypes and their reign of terror over the National League East for over a decade, one in which they invariably choke in the playoffs, here's another reason to hope that the New York Mets, who are the only real threat to end the madness, kick the crap out of these guys in their series in Atlanta this weekend:

After the final at-bat of Thursday's game between the Atlanta Braves and Florida Marlins, the stadium seats will turn into pews.
That's because it's "Faith Day" at Atlanta's Turner Field. No, the hot-dog vendors won't preach John 3:16. But churchgoing fans - with, promoters hope, their non-Christian friends in tow - will assemble after the game to hear Braves star pitcher John Smoltz share how his life changed by believing in Christ.

From prayer circles after football games to Bible readings before NASCAR races, spirituality in sports is as common as carbonation in Coke. But the explicit marketing of a religious event by a major-league sports team brings the relationship to an unusually intimate level.

To many fans, the arrival of evangelism in the outfield is a natural evolution. Baseball has a spiritual rhythm, they say, with long stretches conducive to chatting Scripture. Others worry about using the national pastime to market religion as casually as an " '80s night." Promoters call the event "intentional ministry" - a way for evangelicals to connect with others looking for life purpose. Critics worry that events like Smoltz's pitch for faith amount to a conversion curveball.

"In the South, [Faith Day] makes sense because of the very strong historic evangelical culture, but the fact is that [evangelical game-night promotions] are spreading and moving out into other corners of the country," says Christopher Hodge Evans, author of "The Faith of 50 Million: Baseball, Religion and American Culture."

Part evangelism, part marketing, all baseball, the Faith Day movement began in baseball's minor leagues after 9/11, capturing the mood of a country that began singing "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch. "Faith does coalesce with sports in a more substantial way today than [in the past]," says Andy Overman, a former athlete and minister who teaches classics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.

But rarely has that intersection been so explicit. During and after the game on its "Faith Nights," the Nashville Sounds minor league team also hands out bobblehead Noahs and camouflage Bibles instead of free T-shirts and bats.

Minor league teams from Buffalo, N.Y., to Huntsville, Ala., are holding similar promotions. The effect on ticket-sales is often dramatic. Faith Nights in Nashville regularly increase ticket sales by 60 percent. The Las Vegas Gladiators, the arena football team, had its highest Sunday attendance ever during a Faith Day event this spring.

Results like those captured the attention of big-league promoters, who are determined to bring the phenomenon - without the flashiness of camo Bibles - to "The Show." After the Braves hold their major league-first Faith Day Thursday - which includes a post-game Christian music concert - the Arizona Diamondbacks will hold its first Faith Day later this season. The Florida Marlins will try one next season.

As if the big mega-churches that dot the south aren't enough, now the Christofascist Zombie Brigade wants to use the built-in audience that fills baseball stadiums to further their quest to remake America as a Christian dominion.

Unfortunately, there aren't even any establishment issues in terms of financing here. Turner field was paid for with $325 million in private financing from the Atlanta Commmittee for the Olympic Games, and Dolphin Stadium, where the Marlins play, was also built with private funds. But as someone who has hated the Braves for the last 20 years, this is just another reason to hope that when the Lord grabs a beer and a hotdog and sits down to watch the Braves play the Mets this weekend, flush off the excitement of "Faith Night", he says "Enough is enough, ya greedy bastids. I'm sick of your piety and your constant nagging me to make you win" and then the Mets knock them entirely out of any hope of contention.

Baked Alaska [2004 Election]

What are Republican election officials in Alaska trying to hide about the 2004 election?

Bradblog:

As readers of The BRAD BLOG know, Diebold and the State of Alaska have been doing all they can to keep the State Democratic Party from looking at the data from the machines used by the voters to register their choices and by the local officials to tally the votes. The BRAD BLOG has reported that questions began to arise about results from the 2004 election, including the reported revelation that "district-by-district vote totals add up to 292,267 votes for President Bush, but his official total was only 190,889." The Democrats asked for election data from the Diebold machines and the state has 'flip-flopped' on whether they would release it or not. This resulted in claims by the state that any data they released would be proprietary and would belong to Diebold Elections Systems Inc. (DESI).

The above led the state Democratic party to file a lawsuit to get the data they have been requesting.

The following is from an email from Rich McClear:

The State of Alaska website shows 16 of 40 house districts with more than 200% voter turnout, Also, if you add up the vote totals from each district they come to more than 100,000 votes for state wide candidates than the summary reports show.

More than 7 months ago the Democrats asked for an explanation. The state said it could not release the data files because they were proprietary to Diebold.

Diebold gave the state permission to release the files.

The state still refused. The Democrats went to court, the state asked for extension after extension. Their final extension expired Thursday and they replied to the Court, in a 200 page document, that since it is a month from the primary election, they can't release the database without compromising the primary. There is not enough time to rebuild the central tabulator file if they release the data before the election.

The Democrats have to respond to the court Monday. To respond to a 200 page document would usually require the Democrats to ask for an extension but they are working throughout the weekend to get the filing in Monday. Right now I have the Democratic Spokesperson scheduled for my show Monday Morning.

The State stalled for 7 months and when they ran out the legal clock they claim it is too late to release the information because it is too close to the primary. I find it interesting that this has not been picked up by the local press yet, save KUDO.

So the state and Diebold have stalled, flip-flopped, obfuscated and misled while they kept the Democrats from proving that there were huge problems with the election results in 2004. One can only hope that the court will decide that the stall needs to stop now, but it might be best not to hold your breath.

We're not talking about something that would have made the difference in the 2004 presidential election; not like, say, the vote-rigging and suppression done in Florida and Ohio. But I don't care how much you want to think that DRE voting is reliable. When you're talking about returns showing a 200% voter turnout, something is very, very wrong -- and it can't be explained away by turning the clock back to 1960 Chicago and screaming, "Buh...buh...buh...KENNEDY....."

Superbowl on Goulburn, Haymarket, Chinatown

EDIT: Superbowl has now been replaced by Super Meal.Sometimes there are days when you've had enough of rich heavy oily foods and you just want fat-free plain plain plain. That's when congee comes to the rescue.Non-Asian colleagues don't seem to understand the allure of rice porridge. "Watery rice?", they ask with a nervous tremor. An eyebrow is raised and the question mark hanging in the air says

Superbowl on Goulburn, Haymarket, Chinatown

EDIT: Superbowl has now been replaced by Super Meal.Sometimes there are days when you've had enough of rich heavy oily foods and you just want fat-free plain plain plain. That's when congee comes to the rescue.Non-Asian colleagues don't seem to understand the allure of rice porridge. "Watery rice?", they ask with a nervous tremor. An eyebrow is raised and the question mark hanging in the air says

The other shoe is getting ready to drop

The Bush Administration, growing tired of feeding kids into the Iraq meatgrinder, now may want a change of scene:

There's much discussion of putting a multinational, NATO-led force in southern Lebanon as part of a ceasefire agreement in the Israel–Lebanon conflict, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to a story in the Washington Post, has said that she does “not think that it is anticipated that U.S. ground forces . . . are expected for that force.” However, a well-connected former CIA officer has told me that the Bush Administration is in fact considering exactly such a deployment.

The officer, who had broad experience in the Middle East while at the CIA, noted that NATO and European countries, including England, have made clear that they are either unwilling or extremely reluctant to participate in an international force. Given other nations' lack of commitment, any “robust” force—between 10,000 and 30,000 troops, according to estimates being discussed in the media—would by definition require major U.S. participation. According to the former official, Israel and the United States are currently discussing a large American role in exactly such a “multinational” deployment, and some top administration officials, along with senior civilians at the Pentagon, are receptive to the idea.

The uniformed military, however, is ardently opposed to sending American soldiers to the region, according to my source. “They are saying 'What the fuck?'” he told me. “Most of our combat-ready divisions are in Iraq or Afghanistan, or on their way, or coming back. The generals don't like it because we're already way overstretched.”

Sending American soldiers is at this point simply an option and by is no means a certainty, but if the administration decides to move forward, my source said, “It would be viewed in the Arab world as the United States picking up a combat role on behalf of Israel.” And as Mahan Abedin, Director of Research at the Centre for the Study Of Terrorism in London, noted in an email he sent me yesterday, any deployment of peacekeepers to southern Lebanon “would require the acquiescence of Hezbollah. There are no indications [that] this will be forthcoming, not least because such a force could potentially lay the groundwork for Hezbollah's disarmament.”

The former CIA officer said that the Bush Administration seems not to understand Hezbollah's deep roots and broad support among Lebanon's Shiites, the country's largest single ethnic bloc. “A U.S. force is going to end up making, not keeping, peace with Hezbollah. Once you start fighting in a place like that you’re basically at war with the Shiite population. That means that our soldiers are going to be getting shot at by Hezbollah. This would be a sheer disaster for us.”

The scenario of an American deployment appears to come straight out of the neoconservative playbook: send U.S. forces into the Middle East, regardless of what our own military leaders suggest, in order to “stabilize” the region. The chances of success, as we have seen in Iraq, are remote. So what should be done? My source said the situation is so volatile at the moment that the only smart policy is to get an immediate ceasefire and worry about the terms of a lasting truce afterwards.

And that has worked so well in Afghanistan and Iraq, right? Hamid Karzai is little more than the Mayor of Kabul, and Nouri al-Maliki seems not even to be in control of Baghdad. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are resurgent and the insurgency in Iraq continues unabated. So the Administration, growing bored with the blood in those two countries, now seeks to get off on blood in Lebanon.

If your name is something like "Goldstein", and this Administration sends ground troops to Lebanon, you might consider changing your name -- not that it's going to help you in the long run, but it may buy you some time.

This should have been our first clue -- and our second

Exhibit A


Exhibit B

Whatever made anyone think that a man who would sit for seven minutes in an elementary school classroom during a terrorist attack was the guy to handle a complex conflict in the Middle East?

Bob Herbert:

Imagine a surgeon who is completely clueless, who has no idea what he or she is doing.

Imagine a pilot who is equally incompetent.

Now imagine a president.

The Middle East is in flames. Iraq has become a charnel house, a crucible of horror with no end to the agony in sight. Lebanon is in danger of going down for the count. And the crazies in Iran, empowered by the actions of their enemies, are salivating like vultures. They can’t wait to feast on the remains of U.S. policies and tactics spawned by a sophomoric neoconservative fantasy — that democracy imposed at gunpoint in Iraq would spread peace and freedom, like the flowers of spring, throughout the Middle East.

If a Democratic president had pursued exactly the same policies, and achieved exactly the same tragic results as George W. Bush, that president would have been the target of a ferocious drive for impeachment by the G.O.P.

Mr. Bush spent a fair amount of time this week with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. There was plenty to talk about, nearly all of it hideous. Over the past couple of months Iraqi civilians have been getting blown away at the stunning rate of four or five an hour. Even Karl Rove had a tough time drawing a smiley face on that picture.

“Obviously the violence in Baghdad is still terrible,” said Mr. Bush, “and therefore there needs to be more troops.”

One did not get the sense, listening to this assessment from the commander in chief, that things would soon be well in hand. There was, instead, a disturbing sense of déjà vu. A sense of the president at a complete loss, not really knowing what to do. I recalled the image of Mr. Bush sitting in a Sarasota, Fla., classroom after being informed of the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead of reacting instantly, commandingly, he just sat there for long wasted moments, with a bewildered look on his face, holding a second-grade story called “The Pet Goat.”

And then there was the famous picture of Mr. Bush, on his way back from a monthlong vacation, looking out the window of Air Force One as it flew low over the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. “It’s devastating,” Mr. Bush was quoted as saying. “It’s got to be doubly devastating on the ground.”

I’ll tell you what’s devastating. The monumental and mind-numbing toll of Mr. Bush’s war in Iraq, which is being documented in a series of important books, the latest being Thomas Ricks’s “Fiasco.” Mr. Ricks gives us more disturbing details about the administration’s “flawed plan for war” and “worse approach to occupation.”

Near the end of his book, he writes:

“In January 2005, the C.I.A.’s internal think tank, the National Intelligence Council, concluded that Iraq had replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for a new generation of jihadist terrorists. The country had become ‘a magnet for international terrorist activity,’ said the council’s chairman, Robert Hutchings.”

Saddled with one failure after another, the administration seems paralyzed, completely unable to shape the big issues facing the U.S. and the world today. Condoleezza Rice is in charge of the diplomatic effort regarding Lebanon. She’s been about as effective at that as the president was in his response to Katrina.

This is what happens when you elect someone you'd like as a beer buddy as president. Barney Gumble may be a funny character on The Simpsons, but that doesn't mean I want him to be president.