Chocolate Dog Goes Mexican By Nite, Newtown

Corn chip in cheese dipI love that you can find tasty food in the most unusual of places in Sydney. Like a spicy chocolate mole sauce in a Newtown corner eatery. By day The Chocolate Dog is your typical Aussie eggs and bacon cafe. At night, the site is sub-let to another restauranteur who offers a completely different menu: Mexican fajitas and tamales, burritos and chocolate mole.It's a cosy and

When the tabloids reported on Clinton, the MSM picked it up

Yet they've been curiously silent about the persistent reports in the tabs about Captain Codpiece being back on the sauce again and Laura headed for a hotel, if she's not already there.

E! Online is hardly more than a shade above the National Enquirer, if that, but gossipmonger Ted Casablancas has now picked it up:

This distresses me quite a bit. You know how I adore Prez Dubya so. Yes, you do—as I’ve utterly applauded his actions in Iraq for eons. Just love how he’s got us over there killing people (them and us), occupying a country we have no biz being in. But, alas, this is a goss column, people want to laugh and point fingers, I keep forgetting.
So, let’s aim a few digits at ol’ Georgey-Porgey himself! This too-fun-fer e-words begins with the following quote:

“She's staying at the Hay-Adams. I don't know how many people know...but it's probably not many.”

That’s my Desk DeeCee, hard at busybody work, informing me further of what this column has more than hinted at before: that the U.S. Chief of Grief, George W. Bush, has a wife (by the name of Laura, ‘course) who’s so damn put out by the teetotaling Texan’s return to drinking that she had to get outta the White House. Woo-hoo! That be first-class First Lady dish there, my darlin’ goss lovers!

“She just couldn’t take it anymore,” whispered a former White House staffer who remains superclose to Miz Bush. “She’s had it.”
Like most of the rest of Bush’s constituents haven’t?

Kinda weird, though, as Laura-doll reportedly used to smoke fags, ya know. But whatev, guess she got squeaky clean and expects her hub-unit to do likewise (would it mean he’d get us the hell outta Iraq, already?). You go, barely elected girlfriend!

Oh, for the official record, neither the president’s press office nor the president’s wife’s press office would comment. Which I find damn insulting, as I help pay those persnickety peep’s salaries!

Paparazzi P.S.: Hate to blow Laura’s cover ‘n’ all, but look, you stalkers of all things Hollywood—if you want an exclusive snap of L.B., she’s not exactly using the posh inn's front door, ka-peesh?

Now perhaps you think a Very Serious Site(® me) like this one shouldn't stoop to gossipmongering. But when the state of the Clintons' marriage is fair game for the New York Times, shouldn't the mainstream media be picking it up when rumors of our dry drunk president being back on the bottle and our family values president's Stepford wife hightailing it to a hotel are this persistent?

As Jim Henley notes:

But if the man who has the authority to launch nuclear weapons all on his say-so is an alcoholic who has gone back on the sauce because of the pressure of his job, that seems to me to be fucking news! The public has the right to know that. And from what I can tell this seems to be the open secret among journalists that some people claimed Valerie Plame’s real job was, something “everybody knows” but nobody is saying. A president who has claimed absolute power based on a couple of stray clauses in the Constitution and a couple of dodgy recent laws is an addict who has fallen back into his habit.

That seems important.

Where is it written that the internets are a boys-only club?

The He-Man Woman-Haters Club and a few girls who have the temerity to think they should be allowed into the clubhouse

What is it about the internet that brings out the worst in some men? Is it the shield of relative anonymity? And if so, does this mean that the kind of vicious misogyny we're seeing in cyberspace is just a revelation of what most men walk around thinking most of the time?

A female freelance writer who blogged about the pornography industry was threatened with rape. A single mother who blogged about "the daily ins and outs of being a mom" was threatened by a cyber-stalker who claimed that she beat her son and that he had her under surveillance. Kathy Sierra, who won a large following by blogging about designing software that makes people happy, became a target of anonymous online attacks that included photos of her with a noose around her neck and a muzzle over her mouth.

As women gain visibility in the blogosphere, they are targets of sexual harassment and threats. Men are harassed too, and lack of civility is an abiding problem on the Web. But women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms -- a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, experts and bloggers said.

A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males. A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the proportion of Internet users who took part in chats and discussion groups plunged from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005, entirely because of the exodus of women. The study attributed the trend to "sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms."

Joan Walsh, editor in chief of the online magazine Salon, said that since the letters section of her site was automated a year and a half ago, "it's been hard to ignore that the criticisms of women writers are much more brutal and vicious than those about men."

Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post site is among the most prominent of blogs founded by women, said anonymity online has allowed "a lot of those dark prejudices towards women to surface." Her site takes a "zero tolerance" policy toward abusive and excessively foul language, and employs moderators "24/7" to filter the comments, she said.

Sierra, whose recent case has attracted international attention, has suspended blogging. Other women have censored themselves, turned to private forums or closed comments on blogs. Many use gender-neutral pseudonyms. Some just gut it out. But the effect of repeated harassment, bloggers and experts interviewed said, is to make women reluctant to participate online -- undercutting the promise of the Internet as an egalitarian forum.

Robert Scoble, a technology blogger who took a week off in solidarity with Sierra, said women have told him that harassment is a "disincentive" to participate online. That, he said, will affect their job prospects in the male-dominated tech industry. "If women aren't willing to show up for networking events, either offline or online, then they're never going to be included in the industry," he said.

[snip]

Two factors can contribute to the vitriol, experts said: blogging in a male-dominated field, such as technology, and achieving a degree of prominence.

Susan Herring, a professor of information science at Indiana University, said each new online venue has been greeted with optimism because the early adopters tend to be educated, socially conscious people who think the form engenders community. Even as recently as 2003, she said, it was relatively rare to find negativity on blogs.

Now, she said, blogs risk becoming "nastified," at least in the comment zones.

Kathleen Cooper, the single mother, said she began to experience harassment about five years ago after she posted a retort on a friend's blog to a random blogger's threat against a friend. The harasser began posting defamatory accusations on Cooper's site, on his blog and then on a site that purports to track "bad businesses." He said that he could not be responsible for what "his minions" might do to her, she said.

Cooper, 37, who lives in Sarasota, Fla., has tried password-protecting her site. She and five other women have asked the man's Web site server to shut him down, but he revives his site with another server. Law enforcement officials laugh it off, she said, "like 'Oh, it's not a big deal. It's just online talk. Nobody's going to come get you.' "

Is that really true, when just about everyone has a Google footprint?

This article focuses primarily on technology bloggers, but touches on political bloggers as well in the form of Michelle Malkin. Why the author didn't talk to Amanda and Melissa, whom have received far more threats from Malkin's Minions than the other way around is anyone's guess. But the point remains: threats of physical and sexual violence are being used to silence women online.

I've been fortunate in that the closest thing I've had to a threat came from a woman. With all the wingnuts that have visited this site because of the occasional links from Memeorandum and Real Clear Politics, I've thankfully been the target of none of this kind of threatening behavior. Of course, my little rantings are of so little consequence to even the feminist blogoshpere that I didn't even know that Saturday was Take Back the Blog Day. Sometimes irrelevance is a blessing.

So who are the women who are targeted? Those who have been threatened for their political views tend to skew young, whereas I have made no secret of the fact that I am on the shady side of 50, the shorter side of five feet tall, and the horizontal side of Lucy Van Pelt. Kathy Sierra, the unlikely target of some of the most explicit and vicious virtual violence, is only two years younger than I am, but she is tall, slender and blonde. This brings up the question of whether perceived "fuckability", whether by age or by physical appearance, is the variant here. Are women whose photographs are online more at risk? Does knowing what a woman looks like somehow make her more "real" to men seeking a target for their hatred?

In considering the kind of threats of rape and violence to which some women are subject online, I keep getting the image in my head of Cho Seung-Hui brandishing his guns -- another nerdy would-be tough guy who stalked women and became enraged when rejected. Then I wonder how many Virginia Tech massacres are going to happen because some nerdy guy gets rejected by women he thinks owe it to him to fuck him -- and no one took seriously the threats he makes to women online.

Remember "What's good for General Motors is what's good for the country"?

In 1952, Charles Wilson, the head of General Motors and later Dwight D. Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense, uttered the famous quote "What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country." This quote inspired cartoonist Al Capp to create General Bullmoose, a parody of the ruthless character. One of Bullmoose's favorite quotes is, fittingly for the Bush years, "Don't do anything crooked unless it's legal."

Ever since working Americans decided to buy the promise of supply-side economics without stopping to consider the metaphorical implications of a policy known as "trickle down", they have been waiting for the largesse given to corporate executives to result in higher compensation for them. Instead, no matter how much the fear of outsourcing and downsizing has spurred Americans to be more productive, that productivity never seems to retult in more jobs and more wages.

Krugman:

Last fall Edward Lazear, the Bush administration’s top economist, explained that what’s good for corporations is good for America. “Profits,” he declared, “provide the incentive for physical capital investment, and physical capital growth contributes to productivity growth. Thus profits are important not only for investors but also for the workers who benefit from the growth in productivity.”

[snip]

Unfortunately, these days none of what Mr. Lazear said seems to be true. In the Bush years high profits haven’t led to high investment, and rising productivity hasn’t led to rising wages.

The second of those two disconnects has gotten a lot of attention because of its political consequences. The administration and its allies whine that they aren’t getting credit for a great economy, but because wages have been stagnant — the median worker’s earnings, adjusted for inflation, haven’t gone up at all since the current economic expansion began in 2001 — the economy feels anything but great to most Americans.

Less attention, however, has been given to the first disconnect: the failure of high profits to produce an investment boom.

Since President Bush took office, the combination of rising productivity and stagnant wages — workers are producing more, but they aren’t getting paid more — has led to a veritable profit gusher, with corporate profits more than doubling since 2000. Last year, profits as a share of national income were at the highest level ever recorded.

You might have expected this gusher of profits, which surely owes something to the Bush administration’s pro-corporate, anti-labor tilt, to produce a corresponding gusher of business investment. But the reality has been more of a trickle. Nonresidential investment — that is, investment other than housing construction — has grown very slowly by historical standards. As a share of G.D.P., nonresidential investment remains far below its levels of the late 1990s, and it has been declining for the last two quarters.

Why aren’t corporations investing, and what does the lack of business investment mean for the economy?

It’s possible that sluggish business investment reflects lack of confidence in the economic outlook — a lack of confidence that’s understandable given the bursting of the housing bubble, which has already caused G.D.P. growth to slow to a crawl.

But as Floyd Norris recently reported in The Times, there is a more disturbing possibility. Instead of investing in physical capital, many companies are using profits to buy back their own stock. And cynics suggest that the purpose of these buybacks is to produce a temporary rise in stock prices that increases the value of executives’ stock options, even if it’s against the long-term interests of investors.

It’s not a far-fetched idea. Researchers at the Federal Reserve have found evidence that company decisions about stock buybacks are strongly influenced by “agency conflicts,” a genteel term for self-dealing by corporate insiders. In the 1990s that kind of self-dealing often led to excessive investment, which at least left a tangible legacy behind. But today the self-interest of management may be standing in the way of productive investment.

Whatever the reasons, we now have an economy with incredibly high profits and surprisingly low investment. This raises some immediate, short-run concerns: with housing still in free fall and consumers ever more stretched, optimistic projections for the economy depend on vigorous growth in business investment. And that doesn’t seem to be happening.

[snip]

In any case, next time someone tells you that any action that might reduce corporate profits a bit — like actually enforcing health and safety regulations or making it easier for workers to organize — will reduce business investment, bear in mind that today’s record profits aren’t being invested. Instead, they’re being used to enrich executives and a few lucky stock owners.

And this will not change as long as Americans continue to allow Republicans to point at illegal immigrants, saying "Look over there!" -- DOWN the economic ladder, instead of at the corporate fatcat -- the General Bullmoose -- picking their pockets from above. This will not change as long as Americans continue to believe the discredited promises of whatever variation of supply-side economics that's fashionable today. And this will not change as long as Americans continue to elect representatives from both parties who do the corporations' bidding instead of that of the voters.

Grab Your Fork: Hot Blog, SMH Icon 30/04/07

Grab Your Fork makes it as one of Seamus Byrne's Hot Blogs in his Webwatch section of today's Sydney Morning Herald. He writes:"This is one woman (and family and friends) on a tour of the food of Sydney and surrounds. No matter where she chooses to eat, Helen writes up the food with care and photographs it all with the precision of a catalogue shoot. Follow along on her road trips and get ready

Your pet's food has been spiked with melamine for years

Everyone has lost a pet to kidney failure at some point. In 2000, we lost both of our cats within three weeks of each other. Both were 15, both succumbed to kidney failure, though Oliver had been battling hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure for a year. Most of us have pretty much taken for granted that at some point the kidneys go.

But is that necessarily the case? Or have we been unwittingly feeding our cats poison for years?

The International Herald Tribume reports in its Asia and Europe editions today that melamine spiking has been going on for a long time. Interestingly, the article is not available in the online edition, but it's a front-page story in the Asia and Europe editions.

Itchmo snagged the text before IHT shitcanned the article from its online version:

Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is used to create plastics and fertilizer.

But the leftover melamine scrap, small acorn-sized chunks of white rock, is then being sold to local entrepreneurs, who say they secretly mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to artificially enhance the protein level.

The melamine powder has been dubbed "fake protein" and is used to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that provides higher nutrition value.

"It just saves money," says a manager at an animal feed factory here. "Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein level."

The practice is widespread in China. For years animal feed sellers have been able to cheat buyers by blending the powder into feed with little regulatory supervision, according to interviews with melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

But now, melamine is at the center of a massive, multinational pet food recall after it was linked earlier this month to the deaths and injuries of thousands of cats and dogs in the United States and South Africa.

No one knows exactly how melamine - which had not been believed to be particularly toxic - became so fatal in pet food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal.

U.S. regulators are now headed to China to figure out why pet food ingredients imported from here, including wheat gluten, were contaminated with high levels of the chemical.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned imports of wheat gluten from China and ordered the recall of over 60 million packages of pet food. And last week, the agency opened a criminal investigation in the case and searched the offices of at least one pet food supplier.

[snip]

The huge pet food recall is raising questions in the United States about regulatory controls at a time when food supplies are increasingly being sourced globally. Some experts complain that the FDA is understaffed and underfunded, making it incapable of safeguarding America's food supply.

"They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. "Until China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional."

The pet food case is also putting China's agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country's dubious food safety record and history of excessive antibiotic and pesticide use.

In recent years, for instance, China's food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair, to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

China's government disputes any suggestion that melamine from the country could have killed pets. But Friday, regulators here banned the use of melamine in vegetable proteins made for export or for use in domestic food supplies.

Yet it is clear from visiting this region of northern China is that for years melamine has been quietly mixed into Chinese animal feed and then sold to unsuspecting farmers as protein-rich pig, poultry and fish feed.

Many animal feed operators advertise on the Internet seeking to purchase melamine scrap. And melamine scrap producers and traders said in recent interviews that they often sell to animal feed makers.

"Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed," says Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company. "I don't know if there's a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says 'don't do it,' so everyone's doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren't they? If there's no accident, there won't be any regulation."

[snip]

Most local feed companies do not admit that they use melamine. But last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, a pair of animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine, whose chemical properties give a bag of animal feed an inflated protein level under standard tests.

Melamine is the new scam of choice, they say, because urea - another nitrogen-rich chemical that works similarly - is illegal for use in pig and poultry feed and can be easily tested for in China as well as the United States.

"If you add it in small quantities, it won't hurt the animals," said one animal feed entrepreneur whose name is being withheld to protect him from prosecution.

The man - who works in a small animal feed operation that consists of a handful of storage and mixing areas - said he has mixed melamine into animal feed for years.

He said he was not currently using melamine, which is actually made from urea. But he then pulled out a plastic bag containing what he said was melamine powder and said he could dye it any color.

Asked whether he could create an animal feed and melamine brew, he said yes, he has access to huge supplies of melamine. Using melamine-spiked pet food ingredient was not a problem, he said, even thought the product would be weak in protein.

"Pets are not like pigs or chickens," he said casually, explaining that cheating them on protein won't matter. "They don't need to grow fast."

The feed seller makes a heftier profit because the substitute melamine scrap is much cheaper than purchasing soy, wheat or corn protein.

Goldy at (I've always wanted to say this) HorsesAss.org has more including the horrific fact that livestock in the U.S. (that's OUR food supply) has probably been contaminated for as long as pet food has.

UPDATE: The New York Times has picked this up as its lead story today.

Gary Hart smacks Rudy Giuliani around

...and asks the question anyone who is seriously considering voting for this poseur in November 2008 ought to be thinking about:

Where were you on terrorism between January 31, 2001, and September 11th?

The first date was when the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century issued its final report warning, as did its previous reports, of the danger of terrorist attacks on America. The George W. Bush administration did nothing about these warnings and we lost 3,000 American lives. What did you do during those critical eight months? Where were you? Were you on the defensive, or were you even paying attention?

Before you qualify to criticize Democrats, Mr. Giuliani, you must account for your preparation of your city for these clearly predicted attacks. Tell us, please, what steps you took to make your city safer.

Until you do, then I strongly suggest you should keep your mouth shut about Democrats and terrorism.

Kicking ass and taking names

Oh, this is going to get good.

(If ABC is willing to blow the whistle on a scandal that could involve top White House officials, does that mean that the network which brought us The Path to 9/11 and recently hired Glenn Beck has had a change of heart?)

Sunday Music Blogging

Because some things are just timeless (like Gene. Fucking. Krupa):

Hound Dog the way it's supposed to be sung. (Yes, that's Buddy Guy on guitar). From 1965:

Hi-dee-ho this, bitchez:

(So much for the idea that no one got high before 1967.)

The fabulous Josephine:

Bavarian Bier Cafe on O'Connell, Sydney

Giant schnitzel and schnapps challenge $15.00I can never resist a food challenge.Get schnitfaced, implores the Bavarian Bier Cafe website.So we did.The Bavarian Bier Cafe on O'Connell Street is housed in an elegant art deco building that was once a bank. We have a table booked at the back of the room, a Japanese-style long wooden table with benches either side.Spaten Munchen $9.90

And yet AGAIN, it comes down to this: Is it malice or incompetence?

This is what happens when you give no-bid, no-accountability contracts to cronies and contributors:

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly.

The inspections ranged geographically from northern to southern Iraq and covered projects as varied as a maternity hospital, barracks for an Iraqi special forces unit and a power station for Baghdad International Airport.

At the airport, crucially important for the functioning of the country, inspectors found that while $11.8 million had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6 million worth were no longer functioning.

At the maternity hospital, a rehabilitation project in the northern city of Erbil, an expensive incinerator for medical waste was padlocked — Iraqis at the hospital could not find the key when inspectors asked to see the equipment — and partly as a result, medical waste including syringes, used bandages and empty drug vials were clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating the water system.

The newly built water purification system was not functioning either.

The Administration is spinning this as being caused by Iraqis not maintaining the facilities properly. Funny how they want to have it both ways, isn't it? They want to pat themselves on the back for their efforts to bring Jeffersonian democracy to a Middle Eastern country, but then in the next breath paint them as savages for not maintaining the wonderful facilities that we in our magnanimity have built for them. Sounds sort of like the way Republicans have talked about inner city America for generations, doesn't it?

Funny how under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a country in which things actually worked but now we're supposed to believe that this educated population has turned into blithering idiots. Perhaps the Iraqis can't maintain these facilities because they were built on the cheap:

Curiously, most of the problems seemed unrelated to sabotage stemming from Iraq’s parlous security situation, but instead were the product of poor initial construction, petty looting, a lack of any maintenance and simple neglect.

A case in point was the $5.2 million project undertaken by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build the special forces barracks in Baghdad. The project was completed in September 2005, but by the time inspectors visited last month, there were numerous problems caused by faulty plumbing throughout the buildings, and four large electrical generators, each costing $50,000, were no longer operating.

The problems with the generators were seemingly minor: missing batteries, a failure to maintain adequate oil levels in the engines, fuel lines that had been pilfered or broken. That kind of neglect is typical of rebuilding programs in developing countries when local nationals are not closely involved in planning efforts, said Rick Barton, co-director of the postconflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization in Washington.

So we built all these facilities without involving the Iraqis at all, then didn't train them, and then wonder why they can't operate them? Granted, part of the problem is that because of the sectarian violence DIRECTLY UNLEASHED by George Bush's Iraqi Adventure, much of the education population who CAN leave, has already left. But there is a strong whiff of colonialism about the whole enterprise.

Back before the 2000 election, illustrator Bruce McCall had a cartoon in The New Yorker that was a parody cover of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s George magazine, the parody cover being about George W. Bush. The "lead story" headlined on the cover: "Iran, Iraq, well, which one is it?" It seemed funny at the time, but that level of ignorance about Iraqi society is what has led us to this point. And now this Administration wants us to continue to pour America's future, both in terms of its youth and its financial security, into this black hole that he has created.

When a drunk wants to get behind the wheel, you take away the keys. It's time to take the keys away from this president

Once again, it comes down to this: Is it malice or incompetence?

I don't know why anyone thought a man who had botched everything he ever touched would make a good president. Perhaps the appeal of someone who promised to "run government like a business" seemed attractive after six years of prosperity. Too bad no one looked at the businesses he'd run.

Today's Washington Post features an appalling story of how millions of dollars in foreign aid for Hurricane Katrina victims was either never collected or "lost". At any rate, little was used to actually help those displaced by the storm and its aftermath:

As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide.

Titled "Echo-Chamber Message" -- a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again -- the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans "practical help and moral support" and "highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving."

Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina's victims.

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

In addition, valuable supplies and services -- such as cellphone systems, medicine and cruise ships -- were delayed or declined because the government could not handle them. In some cases, supplies were wasted.

The struggle to apply foreign aid in the aftermath of the hurricane, which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $125 billion so far, is another reminder of the federal government's difficulty leading the recovery. Reports of government waste and delays or denials of assistance have surfaced repeatedly since hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

Administration officials acknowledged in February 2006 that they were ill prepared to coordinate and distribute foreign aid and that only about half the $126 million received had been put to use. Now, 20 months after Katrina, newly released documents and interviews make clear the magnitude of the troubles.

More than 10,000 pages of cables, telegraphs and e-mails from U.S. diplomats around the globe -- released piecemeal since last fall under the Freedom of Information Act -- provide a fuller account of problems that, at times, mystified generous allies and left U.S. representatives at a loss for an explanation. The documents were obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a public interest group, which provided them to The Washington Post.

In one exchange, State Department officials anguished over whether to tell Italy that its shipments of medicine, gauze and other medical supplies spoiled in the elements for weeks after Katrina's landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, and were destroyed. "Tell them we blew it," one disgusted official wrote. But she hedged: "The flip side is just to dispose of it and not come clean. I could be persuaded."

In another instance, the Department of Homeland Security accepted an offer from Greece on Sept. 3, 2005, to dispatch two cruise ships that could be used free as hotels or hospitals for displaced residents. The deal was rescinded Sept. 15 after it became clear a ship would not arrive before Oct. 10. The U.S. eventually paid $249 million to use Carnival Cruise Lines vessels.

And while television sets worldwide showed images of New Orleans residents begging to be rescued from rooftops as floodwaters rose, U.S. officials turned down countless offers of allied troops and search-and-rescue teams. The most common responses: "sent letter of thanks" and "will keep offer on hand," the new documents show.

Overall, the United States declined 54 of 77 recorded aid offers from three of its staunchest allies: Canada, Britain and Israel, according to a 40-page State Department table of the offers that had been received as of January 2006.

I don't know what's more appalling here -- that while people were dying and scattered to the four winds, many of them never to return home again, Karen Hughes was still talking about the "echo chamber message", or that`while people were dying and scattered to the four winds, the Bush Administration was declining 2/3 of the offers of assistance.

I do not for one minute believe that if the primary beneficiaries of said aid were weathy Republican owners of beachfront property, such offers of aid (were they offered) would be refused. Every day, even nearly two years later, it appears more and more that the Administration deliberately and with malice aforethought allowed the part of an American city that doesn't attract tourists to just die. And the only possible rebuttal they have if they wish to deny that is that they are just plainly not up to the job of governing.

So let me see if I have this right: When they're right wing American nuts, they aren't terrorists?

Funny how Rudy Giuliani isn't talking about guys like these:

Simultaneous raids carried out in four Alabama counties Thursday turned up truckloads of explosives and weapons, including 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition belonging to the small, but mightily armed, Alabama Free Militia.

Six alleged members of the Free Militia also were arrested by federal authorities and are being held without bond.

Investigators said the DeKalb County-based group had not made any specific threats or devised any plots, but was targeted for swift dismantling because of its heavy firepower. The militia, which called itself the Naval Militia at one point, had enough armament to outfit a small army.

"We classify these groups as violent and anti-government," said Jim Cavanaugh, who supervises the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operations in portions of the South. "They stockpile things and live off a fear, a paranoia they're going to need weapons and explosives because some event is going to happen when they will need them."

"Any time you have a self-appointed colonel or a self-appointed major and they've got weapons and explosives, it is a recipe for tragedy," Cavanaugh said.

Uh....duh? While the government has spent the last five years monitoring Quakers and peace groups, the wingnut militias have been amassing weaponry like this?

And of course, because the Administration worships Teh BAYBEEEEEZ (® Amanda), guys like this aren't regarded as terrorists either.

I guess you have to be dark-skinned, Muslim, and Really Really Scary-Looking to qualify as a terrorist in the eyes of this bunch. If the Bush Administration had spent half the energy going after these people over the last five years as they've spent monitoring Moveon.org members, perhaps we wouldn't have guys in the Deep South accumulating rocket launchers.

Does this mean Future Marc may soon be real?

Wait till I tell Mr. Brilliant that soon he'll be able to have TWO of me yammering incessantly about politics.

On the other hand, it means more help around the house....

Now what to do about the leathery skin....

And here I'd just gotten used to schmearing with SPF30 all the time:

For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries — and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.

But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.

Those trying to brand contaminants as the key factor behind cancer in the West are "looking for a bogeyman that doesn't exist," argues Reinhold Vieth, professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and one of the world's top vitamin D experts. Instead, he says, the critical factor "is more likely a lack of vitamin D."

What's more, researchers are linking low vitamin D status to a host of other serious ailments, including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly.

Sayeth pudentilla over at Skippy's place: "your mother was right. go outside and play."

Either that or take Os-Cal.

The times they are a-changin'

Last night while watching the amazing premiere of the new Bill Moyers Journal (and if you missed it, find out when it will be run again here), it struck me that if the fawning coverage of the Bush Administration in its rah-rah rush to war and the cozy relationship the mainstream press has had with the Administration didn't put the final nail in the coffin of the notion of a press unfettered by government control, the fact that the politically-motivated firing of U.S. prosecutors as a way of disenfranchising Americans was ignored by said press until a blogger noticed that something was just off about these firings should.

Last night Moyers' show featured the future of American news: Jon Stewart -- a stand-up comic who now hosts a fake news show whose viewers are more informed than those who get their news from mainstream media, and Josh Marshall, a blogger without whom Karl Rove would be well on his way to stealing another elections for Republicans.

Stewart continues to display the required modesty about what he's doing, but when a so-called news network like Fox is running stories from parody sites as real news becauee it fits in with their agenda, it's no accident that viewers of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, better informed than those who get their information from Fox News.

If you saw Watching the War on Wednesday night (video here), you witnessed the appalliing spectacle of Tim Russert, one of the most influential so-called journalists in Washington, dance around his role in allowing the Administration to push its lies and fabrications out over the airwaves:

BILL MOYERS: Was it just a coincidence in your mind that Cheney came on your show and others went on the other Sunday shows, the very morning that that story appeared?

TIM RUSSERT: I don't know. The NEW YORK TIMES is a better judge of that than I am.

BILL MOYERS: No one tipped you that it was going to happen?

TIM RUSSERT: No, no. I mean-

BILL MOYERS: The-- the Cheney-- office didn't make any-- didn't leak to you that there's gonna be a big story?

TIM RUSSERT: No. No. I mean, I don't-- I don't have the-- this is, you know, on MEET THE PRESS, people come on and there are no ground rules. We can ask any question we want. I did not know about the aluminum-tube story until I read it in the NEW YORK TIMES.

BILL MOYERS: Critics point to September eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable.

Someone in the administration plants a dramatic story in the NEW YORK TIMES And then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the NEW YORK TIMES. It's a circular, self-confirming leak.

TIM RUSSERT: I don't know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the NEW YORK TIMES. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that.

TIM RUSSERT: What my concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.

If you didn't see it, watch it here.

But with the conventional media reduced to being Whores for Bush and then sitting around congratulating themselves on how tastefully they covered the Virginia Tech massacre (video and coverage by -- who else? -- Jon Stewart at C&L, here), where else are people supposed to find out what's real?

Journalists who actually do their job are routinesly punished by their corporate masters. Greg Palast doesn't work for a U.S. outlet, now, does he? And remember this woman?

You don't see her around much anymore, now, do you, not like you see Paula Zahn and the parade of lightweight Blondes for Bush. It's easy to forget what really happened and chalk Ashleigh Banfield up to being the Second Coming of Arthur Kent -- except that as Digby reports, Banfield was the Real Deal who was fired from MSNBC for the unforgivable crime of telling the truth.

When the reward for actual reporting the news is termination, when David Broder calls Harry Reid "an embarrassment" for saying the Iraq War is lost at the same time as 57% of Americans now favor either immediate withdrawal or a timeline for withdrawal, when the mainstream media are STILL, Keith Olbermann notwithstanding, shilling for Republicans in general and the Bush Administration in particular, where else would people be going to find the truth but a stand-up comic on a fake news show and a blogger who went after William Jefferson with as much fervor as he goes after Republicans?

UPDATE: Hey, Greenwald! I was here first! Régardez la timestamp.

Mission accomplished

Riverbend is an Iraqi blogger whose heartbreaking first-person accounts of the impact of the Iraq war on the very real people who live there have been must-reading for the last few years. Now she is throwing in the towel on the country that she has called home all her life:

The Great Wall of Segregation is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It's a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest 'Sunni' area in Baghdad -- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will 'protect' A'adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn't empty of Sunnis.

The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look -- we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here -- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.

The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently -- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer -- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas."

I always hear the Iraqi pro-war crowd interviewed on television from foreign capitals (they can only appear on television from the safety of foreign capitals because I defy anyone to be publicly pro-war in Iraq). They refuse to believe that their religiously inclined, sectarian political parties fueled this whole Sunni/Shia conflict. They refuse to acknowledge that this situation is a direct result of the war and occupation. They go on and on about Iraq's history and how Sunnis and Shia were always in conflict and I hate that. I hate that a handful of expats who haven't been to the country in decades pretend to know more about it than people actually living there.

I remember Baghdad before the war -- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were -- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it -- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.

On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively, because it was just a preposterous idea -- leaving one's home and extended family -- leaving one's country -- and to what? To where?

Since last summer, we had been discussing it more and more. It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion -- a last-case scenario -- soon took on solidity and developed into a plan. For the last couple of months, it has only been a matter of logistics. Plane or car? Jordan or Syria? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?

After Jordan or Syria -- where then? Obviously, either of those countries is going to be a transit to something else. They are both overflowing with Iraqi refugees, and every single Iraqi living in either country is complaining of the fact that work is difficult to come by, and getting a residency is even more difficult. There is also the little problem of being turned back at the border. Thousands of Iraqis aren't being let into Syria or Jordan -- and there are no definite criteria for entry, the decision is based on the whim of the border patrol guard checking your passport.

[snip]

On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else -- as yet unknown -- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it's the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?

The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends ... And to what?

Doesn't this sound eerily like something one of the tens of thousands of displaced residents of New Orleans might write? As I've spent time every evening and on weekends working to return our basement to pre-nor'easter condition, I've often thought about the people of New Orleans and of the many thousands of people now leaving Iraq and realized how fortunate I am. For the minor inconvenience of having to throw away a few possessions and strip the floor down to the concrete are really insignificant compared to the upheaval and the uncertainty these two populations, now exiled into diaspora in the aftermath of Bush administration botched policy, are enduring.

Imagine leaving everything you know, everything you've ever owned, everything that makes your home a home, and going someplace where you have no idea if you'll be welcomed, if you'll be safe. Imagine turning your back on your entire life for an uncertain future.

Aside from the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties that have resulted directly from the Bush Administration's misbegotten Iraq adventure, an adventure that will go down in history as one of the most heinous international crimes of our lifetime, there are other casualties as well -- casualties like Riverbend, who have chronicled the reality of what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld hath wrought in their country and who potentially face ostracism and distrust everywhere they go.

Their tribulations are on all of our consciences.

Another sanctimonious Republican can't keep it in his own pants

And of course this was done as part of the Friday news dump:

Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation.

Tobias, 65, director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), had previously served as the ambassador for the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief.

A State Department press release late Friday afternoon said only he was leaving for "personal reasons."

On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the "Pamela Martin and Associates" escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages.

It's astounding that these guys are still using the "massages but no sex" excuse. These are the same people who railed against an impending collapse of the Republic because Bill Clinton said he didn't have sex with Monica Lewinsky, when "sex" had already been defined for the purpose of the case at hand as intercourse.

Why don't these Republicans know that if what you want is a massage, there are spas all over the country, many of them in reputable fitness clubs, where you can get a massage without going to an "escort service"?

Tobias was yet another Bush crony appointment, a former chair of Eli Lilly who had little knowledge about AIDS when he was tapped to be the U.S. global AIDS coordinator in 2003.

Here's how Tobias himself described his "credentials" for the job:

I had been in the pharmaceutical business for some years, and so I was certainly aware of the disease here in the United States, but I really didn't understand the impact globally, nor did I understand the changing nature of the population that it is affecting. So it's mostly happened since I've been in this job.

And here's what Tobias had to say about abstinence and condoms in the fight against AIDS in Africa (from the same source):

Well, the heart of our prevention programs is what's known as ABC: abstinence, be faithful, and the correct and consistent use of condoms when appropriate. This is not an American invention; this is something that President [Yoweri] Museveni in Uganda figured out over time when he recognized that there was an enormous problem in Uganda.

And it's also not "ABC: Take your pick." It's abstinence really focused heavily on young people and getting them to understand that the best way to keep from getting infected is to be abstinent and not engage in sexual activity until they are old enough and mature enough and get into a committed relationship, such as a marriage. B is being faithful within that committed relationship. And A and B, those two things together clearly had a huge impact in bringing the infection rates down in Uganda.

C recognizes the fact that there are individuals in high-risk circumstances who either by choice or by coercion are going to find themselves unable to follow A and B, and therefore they need to have access to condoms, and they need to understand the correct and consistent use of condoms. I think more and more of the experts, the people who really understand the prevention requirements with HIV/AIDS, have come to endorse ABC in a very balanced way as the appropriate prevention centerpiece.

But I would also add that as important as ABC is, the fact is that this is a disease where 50 percent of the people infected in the world are women. When I cite those numbers to people here in the United States, I find most people are astonished. They just have no idea about that. In some countries in Africa, it's well above 50 percent that are women and girls. In many cases this is driven by cultural factors, where young girls are having sex with older men and [are] coerced to do that, where women aren't regarded as equal citizens with men. So there are lots of things that need to be done addressing those kinds of cultural issues also.

So I guess we're supposed to believe that Tobias' commitment to abstinence kept him from having sex with the women he hired from a call-girl service to give him "massages". Uh-huh. And I am Marie of Rumania.

Tony Roma's, Sydney

Tony Roma's Red Hots $30.00 full slabwith corn and baked potatoBarbecue ribs must be the closest thing to the pleasures of chicken feet that your average Joe Blow will ever experience. It's not that far a leap really. It's messy and primeval, extricating flesh from bone with nibbling teeth, vigorous sucking and all-too-loud sighs of pleasure.Complimentary warm baguette with herb butterThis is our

Reagan's Assistant General Counsel Speaks Out on the theocratization of the United States Military

Just go read it.

You've got to be kidding

Rudy Giuliani, twice-divorced, a man who paraded around with his mistress and then brought her to Gracie Mansion while his wife was still living there, now paints himself as the Defender of Marriage:

In a startling departure from his previously stated position on civil unions, Mayor Giuliani came out to The New York Sun yesterday evening in opposition to the civil union law just passed by the New Hampshire state Senate.

"Mayor Giuliani believes marriage is between one man and one woman. Domestic partnerships are the appropriate way to ensure that people are treated fairly," the Giuliani campaign said in a written response to a question from the Sun. "In this specific case the law states same sex civil unions are the equivalent of marriage and recognizes same sex unions from outside states. This goes too far and Mayor Giuliani does not support it."

I for one would like to see him clarify that he means "one man and one woman at a time." Or perhaps even openly invoke the IOKIYAR rule.

Is anyone actually going to buy this buffoon as a presidential candidate? Does he honestly believe that his own sleazy marriage history makes his union with the equally sleazy Judith Nathan somehow more sacred than that of ModFab and Mr. ModFab, or that of my hairdresser and his partner, who have lived and worked together for over 30 years?

I'm sick and tired of this goddamn Republican sanctimony about morality. I am sick and tired of these people hiding behind Jesus, or the Pope, or whatever authority figure they worship and using it as a justification for their own moral turpitude while they judge others. It is high time the Democrats stopped this bullshit about "respecting faith" and forcing "people of faith" to recognize when they are being fed a line of crap. Note to Democrats: The Christofascist Zombie Brigade is NOT going to vote for you. Ever. So don't even bother to grovel before them the way you seem so tempted to. And as for the so-called "spiritual progressives", the liberal Christians who have allowed these people to speak for you? Well, it's time to start defending your faith. Because with your silence, you have allowed these scumbags to hijack your religion just as Islamist terrorists have hijacked the Muslim religion.

(via Raw Story and Americablog)

Melamine-tainted grain in the food supply is OK with the FDA, but vegetable juice is a drug?

In case you needed any further proof that the FDA is ALL about protecting Big Food and Big Pharma, here you go. Among the provisions of the latest attempts at regulation by the very same people who think there's low to no risk to humans with melamine from tainted pet food having gotten into the human food supply because hog farms bought feed on the cheap:

An analysis:

A Guidance Document open for public comments over at the FDA came to my attention this morning. The comment period ends April 30, 2007 and I strongly encourage my readers to take a few moments today to submit comments along with some additional follow-up.

Why?

Draft Guidance for Industry on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, Docket No. 2006D-0480 is as detailed and vague as it gets. It seeks to "tie up loose ends" many feel exist in current regulation around approaches used in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) by establishing guidance for industry about communicating benefits of a "wide array of healthcare practices, products and therapies that are distinct from practices, products, and therapies used in 'conventional' or 'allopathic' medicine."

The critical issues to think about:

1. The guidance document, if finalized as written, will regulate virtually all herbs and supplements as drugs if they actually benefit a medical condition unless it is "generally recognized, among experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of drugs, as safe and effective for use under the conditions prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the labeling."

Not only that, but also...

2. The document, if finalized as written, is extremely vague as to the extent of regulatory reach. For example, the document states, as an example, that vegetable juice (yes, vegetable juice) "absent any claims that would make the juice subject to the drug definition, the juice would be a 'food' under section 201 (f) of the Act because it is used for food or drink for man."

Now earlier in the document, in an attempt to define how vegetable juice might be defined as a drug, it is stated, "This means, for example, if a person decides to produce and sell raw vegetable juice for use in juice therapy to promote optimal health, that product is a food subject to the requirements for food in the Act and FDA regulations...If the juice therapy is intended for use as part of a disease treatment regimen instead of for the general wellness, the vegetable juice would be subject to regulation as a drug under the Act."

The FDA defines a drug as "...(B) articles intended for the use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease in man or other animals; and (C) articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals..."

So, with that, any person (or product) that states "drink some vegetable juice to prevent [insert disease]" is making a drug claim; and if vegetable juice is not recognized by the FDA as a legally available drug in the United States, the person (or company) making the claim is now subject to prosecution if they are not a medical professional licensed to practice medicine.

Vegetable juice, a drug?

Not only that, but also...

While it may seem unthinkable, consider this, as another blog highlighted, "[i]ts very specificity makes manifest fundamental inconsistencies and absurdities in the DSHEA law. If you substitute "water" for "cranberry tablets" and "severe dehydration" for "urinary tract infection," as found on Page 12, then you've turned water into a drug according to these guidelines. Obviously, the FDA would never turn water into a drug, but the guidelines allow them the option to do so. That "flexibility" alone makes the guidelines dangerous. In reality, what the guidelines do is extend the FDAs authority to arbitrarily decide when to enforce their will."

Not only that, but also...

The most alarming thing to me is the use of language throughout the document - the FDA sets the stage that anyone who is not a licensed healthcare professional (physician, nurse, DO, etc.) will be subject to prosecution for practicing medicine without a license because the terms used, "medicine" rather than modality, "treatment" rather than therapy. This is because of already established regulations and laws in all 50 states as to whom may "treat" medical conditions; these new regulations will specifically limit whom is able to communicate options to consumers to those holding a professional license. Any practitioner - homeopathic, naturopathic, reflexologist, Chinese or Ayruvedc practitioners, nutritionists, etc. - will all be at risk for practicing medicine without a license if they even suggest something like vegetable juice may prevent, treat or mitigate the symptoms of a disease.

Which brings us back to the vague nature of the document...the specific language - everything termed as medicine and treatment - leaves the very real potential that any and all substances - vitamins, minerals, herbs, co-factors, probiotics, etc - could be classed drugs, new drugs, or medical devices if they are being recommended to prevent, treat, mitigate or cure disease states (remember water cures dehydration).

While the media is silent on this, the FDA quietly awaits comments that few know are open.

Well, now you know and now you can let the FDA know what you think - because if we do not comment we'll have no one to blame when we lose access to the vast options available to us right now.

Here is what you can do to let your voice be heard:

1. Submit comments online. Be sure you include the Docket No 2006D-0480 with your comments.

2. You can also send comments via snail mail to:

Dockets Management Branch (HFA-305)
5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061
Rockville, MD 20852

3. You can call and chat up the following people and let them know what you think:

Sheryl Lard-Whiteford at 301-827-0379
Daniel Nguyen at 301-827-8971
Ted Stevens at 301-594-1184
Wayne Amchin at 301-827-6739

4. In addition to the above comment submissions, write or call your representatives and senators! You can find the contact information for your representatives in the House and Senate here.

With more people every day becoming frustrated by the limitations of conventional medicine and feeling vulnerable to inadequately-tested drugs that are then taken off the market after people have been killed or suffered permanent damage, alternative treatments are becoming more popular. Obviously, the FDA cannot let this stand. If this were about making sure that supplements were pure and unadulterated and that demonstrably false claims cannot be made, it could be applauded. But this is clearly about placing obstacles in the path of herbals, botanicals, and other treatments not patented by Big Pharma so as to limit their availability. After all, Big Pharma's bidding will be done. They paid for it.

Sydney Kopitiam Malaysian Cafe, Ultimo

Food should always be social.

It's even better when it means you can order more food.



Four of us indulged in a communal lunch of dishes at Sydney Kopitiam Malaysian Cafe. It's not particularly busy the day we visit, this popular hawker-style eatery on Harris Street, down near Hannah's Pies and the Powerhouse Museum.



It's been a year since I last had a meal here and I'm more than ready to

The grit of Roger Ebert

While going through old VHS tapes the other day I found a tape I'd made of a special memorial program broadcast after Gene Siskel died in 1999. In some circles, it was Siskel who was regarded as the "real film critic" of the Siskel and Ebert duo, while Ebert was just a hack.

Of course, these are the people who gave me fits during my seven years of reviewing movies; the kind of cinéastes who don't like any movie that isn't made in the Czech Republic or by Lars Von Trier and isn't 4 hours long. People used to tell me I was a good reviewer, but mostly all I did was write about movies and tell people what I thought. I never professed to have any kind of great knowledge of the Art of Cinema. I wrote because I wanted to write, and that was all.

To those in the know, "film critics" are people like Jonathan Rosenbaum, David Denby, Armond White, and of course the Doyenne of All Film Criticism, Pauline Kael. But just as Beverly Sills made opera accessible to those who don't like opera, Roger Eberg has made film reviews accessible to people who just like movies and don't know a gaffer from a key grip.

When you strip movies of all the mystique, what you end up with are "honest stories of working people as told by rich Hollywood stars." This is something that Roger Ebert has always understood. The reason that Ebert's reviews have always been mandatory reading is that Ebert always evaluates a movie within the context of its genre and what it's trying to do, rather than judging an action shoot-em-up by how it stands up against Dancer in the Dark.

Yet Ebert has never been the kind of quote whore whose blurbs are usually the earmark of a movie you should be sure to skip. For while he has never been guilty of taking movies too seriously, perhaps no one else has been a bigger booster of creative filmmaking. And no one's image has been as iconic in its association with film criticism. And so it's hard to underestimate the courage it took for Ebert to appear Wednesday night at the Overlooked Film Festival, which he created.

The recent cancer announcements of Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow caused a nationwide epidemic of discomfort, as Americans faced the prospect of having to look cancer right in the face. Well, Elizabeth Edwards was right there at the Democratic candidates debate last night, and Tony Snow plans to return to work on Monday despite a dire prognosis. Roger Ebert has been rendered unrecognizable by surgery to remove part of his jaw as part of treatment for salivary gland cancer last June. He wrote about it earlier this week:

I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the Festival. I’m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out.

So let’s talk turkey. What will I look like? To paraphrase a line from “Raging Bull,” I ain’t a pretty boy no more. (Not that I ever was. The original appeal of Siskel & Ebert was that we didn’t look like we belonged on TV.)

What happened was, cancer of the salivary gland spread to my right lower jaw. A segment of the mandible was removed. Two operations to replace the missing segment were unsuccessful, both leading to unanticipated bleeding.

A tracheostomy was necessary so, for the time being, I cannot speak. I make do with written notes and a lot of hand waving and eye-rolling. The doctors now plan an approach that does not involve the risk of unplanned bleeding. If all goes well, my speech will be restored.

So when I turn up in Urbana, I will be wearing a gauze bandage around my neck, and my mouth will be seen to droop. So it goes.

I was told photos of me in this condition would attract the gossip papers. So what? I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers.

Although months in bed after the bleeding episodes caused a lack of strength and co-ordination, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago restored my ability to walk on my own, climb stairs, etc. I no longer use a walker much and the wheelchair is more for occasional speed and comfort than need. Just today we went for a long stroll in Lincoln Park.

We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to
miss my Festival.

Why do I want to go? Above all, to see the movies. Then to meet old friends and great directors and personally thank all the loyal audience members who continue to support the Festival. At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is “overlooked,” or why I wrote “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”

Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you’re sick. I wouldn’t miss the Festival for anything!

If we had not recently seen Katie Couric attack Elizabeth Edwards on 60 Minutes for not having the decency to go home, die quietly, and not subject us to having to watch her condition slowly deteriorate, we might think that Eberts' friends concerns about bad press coverage to be misguided. But with cancer still the disease we dread most, it's inspiring to see high-profile people battling the disease refusing to just go away and hide. Roger Ebert loves movies, and for him to not attend this festival even if he had to be carried in on a sedan chair is unthinkable. And while there may yet be unfavorable coverage, so far what most papers are recounting is the standing ovation he received and the love the attendees have for this man who has arguably done more for the movies than anyone else in his field.

For those of us who have been admirers of Roger Ebert's work, the idea of a man who has made his living and his reputation through language being unable to speak is unspeakably cruel. And yet Ebert is right -- as long as he can think and type, he can still do his work. And so Roger Ebert joins Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow to form an unlikely trifecta of courage in the face of disease -- and show us how important it is to refuse to go quietly.

Payback's a bitch

George Tenet, who received a Medal of Freedom, presumably in return for keeping silent about the Bush Administration's determination to invade Iraq and the hell with the consequences, is silent no more:

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

A copy of the book was purchased at retail price in advance of publication by a reporter for The New York Times. Mr. Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of “Meet the Press” last September in which Mr. Cheney twice referred to Mr. Tenet’s “slam dunk” remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.

“I remember watching and thinking, ‘As if you needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ ” Mr. Tenet writes.

As violence in Iraq spiraled beginning in late 2003, Mr. Tenet writes, “rather than acknowledge responsibility, the administration’s message was: Don’t blame us. George Tenet and the C.I.A. got us into this mess.”

Mr. Tenet takes blame for the flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs, calling the episode “one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure.” He expresses regret that the document was not more nuanced, but says there was no doubt in his mind at the time that Saddam Hussein possessed unconventional weapons. “In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible,” he writes.

Yet even Tenet is still in the same kind of codpiece-worshipping manlove that has characterized pundits from Chris Matthews to G. Gordon Liddy when talking about the diminutive Drunk-in-Chief:

Despite such sweeping indictments, Mr. Bush, who in 2004 awarded Mr. Tenet a Presidential Medal of Freedom, is portrayed personally in a largely positive light, with particular praise for the his leadership after the 2001 attacks. “He was absolutely in charge, determined, and directed,” Mr. Tenet writes of the president, whom he describes as a blunt-spoken kindred spirit.

I have never understood the appeal of this notion of "in charge, determined, and directed" to which at least 30% of Americans have also been in thrall for the last five years. A strong leader is a positive, especially after a national trauma, but it's troubling that Americans from the least-informed to the former head of the CIA succumbed to this kind of phony macho posturing that was always more about emulating movie tough guys than about real leadership. When you think about Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose demeanor was never that of a tough guy, disability or no, standing up and saying "We have nothing to fear but fear itself", Americans looked at their families and said, "YOu know what? He's right. We'll get through this." But George W. Bush painted himself as the all-potent daddy-protector, but instead of being a nurturing father who puts a child's fear at ease, he played on those primal fears to gain support for consolidation of power.

It's almost too easy to make Cheney the lightning rod for everything that's gone wrong with the Iraq war. His ice-cold demeanor, the snarl which curls every time the man opens his mouth, the utter sang-froid that gives the impression that he could order a bombing that would wipe out an entire population of a medium-size country and then devour a couple of racks of ribs without pausing for breath, make him the perfect embodiment of Darth Vader. But is it really right to let Bush off the hook? Does anyone still believe that given what we know about Bush's issues with his father, that Iraq would have been handled one iota differently if Cheney weren't around?

OK, now that it isn't just pet food, will people finally start paying attention?

While Rudy Giuliani talks about how only Republicans can keep you safe from terrorists, American corporate terrorists are not only putting your pets' lives at risk, now it's YOUR life as well:

Several hundred of the 6,000 hogs that may have eaten contaminated pet food are believed to have entered the food supply for humans, the government said Thursday. The potential risk to human health was said to be very low.

And we should believe anything this Administration says....why?

The government told the three states involved it would not allow meat from any of the hogs that ate the feed to enter the food supply.

No more than 345 hogs from farms in California, New York and South Carolina are involved, according to the Agriculture Department. It appears the large majority of the hogs that may have been exposed are still on the farms where they are being raised, spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said.

Salvaged pet food from companies known or suspected of using a tainted ingredient was shipped to hog farms in seven states for use as feed.

The government will compensate farmers if they kill those hogs, said Kenneth Peterson of department's Food Safety and Inspection Service. The department knew of no countries moving to suspend imports of U.S. pork products.

Also, a poultry feed mill in an eighth state, Missouri, also received possibly contaminated pet food scraps left over from production. The fate of the feed made from that waste was under investigation.

The pet food sent to the farms later was discovered to have an ingredient, rice protein concentrate, imported from China that was tainted by an industrial chemical, melamine. Testing also revealed other related and similarly banned compounds, including cyanuric acid. Food and Drug Administration inspectors were preparing to visit China as part of the agency's investigation.

Melamine is not considered a human health concern. But there is no scientific data on the health effects of melamine combined with the other compounds, said David Elder, director of enforcement for the FDA.

Still, the FDA and Agriculture Department believe the likelihood of someone becoming ill after eating pork from hogs fed contaminated feed is very low. Meanwhile, the University of California, Davis, is developing a test to measure melamine levels in tissue, Andrews said.

And they base this belief on....what? Faith in Jesus? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? A game of rock paper scissors? What? Note also how the government plans to reimburse these hog farmers who bought hog feed on the cheap, while flood-stricken New Jerseyans waited a week and a half for just the northern half of the state to be declared a disaster area.

It's all well and good to talk about terrorism, but the kind of fearmongering that has become entrenched in Republican rhetoric is completely disingenuous when this same Republican party is perfectly willing to allow corporations to put not just your pets' lives, but your own, at risk in the name of profit.

Mother Chu's Taiwanese Gourmet

Chinese tea $1.50It's always an experience eating at Mother Chu's. Packed with students, weary shoppers and the constant chatter of friends, there's a constant thoroughfare of diners in this quick eats dumpling and noodle house.You're quickly steered to a table by an efficient-looking waitress, a menu thrust towards you, and then roughly thirty seconds later she appears again, notepad in hand,

Malay Chinese Takeaway, Sydney

Assam laksa $8.50The last time we'd been at Malay Chinese Takeaway, Mango Man had confided he'd yet to find a good assam laksa in Sydney. My ears had pricked up immediately at this foodie challenge, and off onto the internet I'd went.Bingo. I found the places, and I made a list. We made grand plans. We would strike them off one by one. Jimmy's Recipe, To's Malaysian Gourmet and maybe Temasek out

Around the blogroll and elsewhere

...because I'm feeling uninspired today. I've got a bad case of spring fever, I'm tired all the time, I'm sick of prying up floor tiles in the basement, I still have tons of crap to move out of there before the floor guys come next week, and somewhere I have to find a way in the midst of setting up four studies to take yet another day off so the plumber can come and finally replace the upstairs toilet and vanity. Not that I'm complaining; being swamped with work means having a job, and that's a GOOD thing. But my brain has too much buzzing around to write anything coherent, so while I make MP3 files out of old cassette tapes of the long-lost American Radio Company (which was the short-lived, New York-based, edgier version of A Prairie Home Companion and featured the fabulous Ivy Austin), why not take a spin around the outskirts of Blogtopia (® Skippy), where the air is cleaner, there's less traffic, and fewer assholes on the road?

In the wake of the disgusting smears by a United States military officer against Pat Tillman's family, ShakesSis writes about "clean-slate Christianity" and points us to this terrific post at The Thinkery (who joins our blogroll today) about fundamentalism and contempt for life.

Mad Kane has some thoughts on Laura Bush's assertion that no one -- not the Iraqis whose country has been blown to smithereens for no reasons, not the families of those soldiers who have died, not the returning soldiers looking ahead to lives without limbs, without eyesight, and with permanent nightmares -- suffers more than she and Captain Codpiece do about the Iraq war.

The much-missed Sam Seder has an appalling video by someone who fancies herself a Serious Conservative Thinker.

Melina, who can string together seemingly unrelated topics better than anyone else in the known universe, writes about the Loss of the Bees -- and about the New York Times' self-styled Queen Bee. And also about parrots.

Tata gets metaphysical.

And while we're in the realm of bees and the metaphysical, Lynn puts it all together.

Read about the link between homophobia and school shooters at The Republic of T here and here.

ShortWoman has had quite enough of Washington Mutual, thank you very much.

This may not be of interest to anyone outside of New Jersey's Fifth District, but Matt Fretz has a must-read post for anyone still cleaning out the basement about the incongruity between Rep. Ernie Scott Garrett visiting people in his district promising flood help while he has consistently voted against projects that might have helped prevent this very kind of flooding that we saw a week and a half ago. (And just as an aside, it doesn't look like George Bush plans to declare the flood-ravaged areas as disaster areas, so all those good loyal Republican voters in NJ-5 might want to think about a government that will screw over a district to punish its residents for not voting for them).

The other Jill, at Feministe, has a post you must read on the "women as mere vessel" mindset of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade.

In the Rovian model, governing is ALL about maintaining political power

As the pet food recall continues and expands (the latest recall is Drs. Foster and Smith Dry Lite dog and cat foods), melamine-tainted grains have found their way into the human food supply, and American chocolate manufacturers, obviously feeling strapped by the expense of increasing the cacao content of dark chocolate, want to pass off artificial sweeteners, milk substitutes and trans fats for actual sugar, milk, and cocoa butter; we now find out that federal agencies have been run as extensions of the RNC during the Bush years:

White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday.

The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what now appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees in government agencies on which seats Republican candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect the success of administration policies, the officials said.

The existence of one such briefing, at the headquarters of the General Services Administration in January, came to light last month, and the Office of Special Counsel began an investigation into whether the officials at the briefing felt coerced into steering federal activities to favor those Republican candidates cited as vulnerable.

Such coercion is prohibited under a federal law, known as the Hatch Act, meant to insulate virtually all federal workers from partisan politics. In addition to forbidding workplace pressures meant to influence an election outcome, the law bars the use of federal resources -- including office buildings, phones and computers -- for partisan purposes.

The administration maintains that the previously undisclosed meetings were appropriate. Those discussing the briefings on the record yesterday uniformly described them as merely "informational briefings about the political landscape." But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who has been investigating the GSA briefing, said, "Politicization of departments and agencies is a serious issue. We need to know more about these and other briefings."

In the GSA briefing -- conducted like all the others by a deputy to chief White House political adviser Karl Rove -- two slides were presented showing 20 House Democrats targeted for defeat and several dozen vulnerable Republicans.

At its completion, GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan asked how GSA projects could be used to help "our candidates," according to half a dozen witnesses. The briefer, J. Scott Jennings, said that topic should be discussed "off-line," the witnesses said. Doan then replied, "Oh, good, at least as long as we are going to follow up," according to an account given by former GSA chief acquisition officer Emily Murphy to House investigators, according to a copy of the transcript.

Federal agencies used to help Republican candidates. A Justice Department built around disenfranchising potential Democratic voters. A Congress rubberstamping the Bush Administration's most flagrant attempts to circumvent the United States Constitution. This has been our government for the last six years until George W. Bush overplayed his Iraq hand, George Allen had his macaca moment and Congress was finally turned over to people who will hold this bunch of criminals to account.

The question is this: Will voters in 2008 remember the last eight years when they vote? Or will they succumb to the "vote Republican or die" rhetoric of Rudy Giuliani?

Welcome back, Keith

It took a scumbucket like Rudy Giuliani, taking a page from the Cheney playbook by saying "Vote for me or die in a terrorist attack", to get Keith Olbermann going again. But Olbermann lost friends in the 9/11 attacks, and he remembers how Giuliani fatigue had set in among New Yorkers until the deaths of almost 3000 people and the disastrous performance of a chickenshit president turned him into the hero of 9/11 -- simply because he showed up.

But enough from me. Keith does it much better:

(Special thanks to our good friend and fellow Jamaicophile Hoffmania for uploading this amazing-quality video.)

Meanwhile, the New York Times, still in thrall to the self-proclaimed Hero of 9/11 just because he showed up for work, writes about this disgusting charge that Democrats = Death as "broadening his message on terrorism."