Matilda
Quote of the Day
"I wouldn't exactly put it that way." — President Bush, when asked today if he agrees with House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who claims that Democrats "are more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people."
Yessir, that’s my (enormous) baby!
Marie Michel holds her newborn baby Stephon Hendrix Louis-Jean at Backus Hospital in Norwich, Conn., Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2006. Stephon was born weighing 14 pounds 13 ounces. (AP Photo/Norwich Bulletin, Aaron Flaum)
Full story here.
Too Little, Too Late Award of the Year
Hell, this may be the Award of the Decade.
Kerry: I'm Prepared to Kick Swift Boat's Ass
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) doesn't believe that Hillary Clinton has the inside track on the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and says he would vigorously defend himself against new attacks by the Swift Boat team, according to an interview with The Examiner.Oooh, tough talk. Glad you're getting all ballsy and ready to defend yourself now, you know, when you're not running for President and no one gives a shit.
"I’m prepared to kick their ass from one end of America to the other," said Kerry, in a strong hint that he intends to run for president once again.
There was a lot working against Kerry in the election, but a huge factor working against him was the Swift Boating. My parents, not Bush fans in the slightest, were not all that keen about voting for Kerry for exactly that reason. When I explained to them that the Swift Boat claims were so much bullshit; sending them tons of links and articles, the doubt still remained. And that's all that was needed, a little nagging doubt in the minds of voters.
Oh, and no thank you. One presidential run for you was enough.
Tip 'o the Energy Dome to Pam.
(Flat top... stares straight ahead... cross-posts... blockhead!)
Supreme pontiff infuriates Muslim world
The mea culpa season continues: Pope Benedict fans the flames of World War III by making harsh remarks about Islam. Muslim leaders and media across Europe and the Middle East are predictably enraged. The Vatican scrambled to issue a clarification-cum-apology:
As the criticisms gathered force, the Vatican worked quickly to quell a potentially damaging confrontation with Muslims. It issued a statement saying that the church seeks to “cultivate an attitude of respect and dialogue toward other religions and cultures and obviously also toward Islam.” [...]“It was certainly not the intention of the Holy Father to do an in-depth study of jihad and Muslim thinking in this field and still less so to hurt the feelings of Muslim believers.”
Mea maxima culpa!
Let's pare it down to the highlights:
“I do not think any good will come from the visit to the Muslim world of a person who has such ideas about Islam’s prophet,” Ali Bardakoglu, a cleric who is head of the Turkish government’s directorate of religious affairs, said in a television interview there. “He should first of all replace the grudge in his heart with moral values and respect for the other.” [...]“I don’t think the church should point a finger at extremist activities in other religions, Aiman Mazyek, president of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, recalling the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Vatican’s relations with Nazi Germany. [...]
The French Council for the Muslim Religion demanded that Benedict “clarify” his remarks. “We hope that the Church will very quickly give us its opinion and clarify its position so that it does not confuse Islam, which is a revealed religion, with Islamism, which is not a religion but a political ideology,” Dalil Boubakeur, the council’s president, told Agence France-Presse. [...]
In Kuwait, the leader of the Islamic Nation Party, Haken al-Mutairi, demanded an apology for what he called “unaccustomed and unprecedented” remarks.
“I call on all Arab and Islamic states to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican and expel those from the Vatican until the pope says he is sorry for the wrong done to the prophet and to Islam, which preaches peace, tolerance, justice and equality,” Mr. Mutairi told Agence France-Presse. [...]
The criticism from Mr. Bardakoglu, the Islamic leader in Turkey, was especially strong, and carries with it particular embarrassment if Benedict is forced to cancel or delay his visit to Turkey. Many Turks are already critical of Benedict, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had in 2004 opposed Turkey’s entry into the European Union.
The official, Mr. Bardakoglu, demanded an apology, saying that the remarks “reflect the hatred in his heart — it is a statement full of enmity and grudge.” [...]
In Morocco, the newspaper Aujourd’hui questioned whether Benedict’s call for a real dialogue between religions was made in good faith.
“Pope Benedict XVI has a strange approach to the dialogue between religions,” the paper wrote in an editorial. “He is being provocative.”
Religion. It heals the world.
(Cross-posted.)
Nothing we do matters if we don’t have fair elections
UPDATE: This will stay at the top of the page for most of the day. Newer posts are below.
BradBlog got exclusive access to a Princeton study on electronic voting systems and now reports on the findings: “Malicious Code Can Be Easily Inserted into Voting Machine, Spread from One System to the Next, Resulting in Flipped Votes, and Stolen Elections…All Without a Trace Being Left Behind—Study Also Confirms that Voter Access Cards Can Be Created At Home to Defeat Security Protocols, Allowing Voters to Vote Multiple Times in a Single Election.”
"We've demonstrated that malicious code can spread like a virus from one voting machine to another," said [team leader Edward W. Felten, a professor at Princeton's Department of Computer Science] in an exclusive interview, "which means that a bad guy who can get access to a few machines — or only one — can infect one machine, which could infect another, stealing a few votes on each in order to steal an entire election."Go read the whole thing. Below is a video demonstration of their findings, which I sincerely recommend watching. (Via Get In Their Face.) Spread it far and wide. Write to your Senators and Representatives, direct them to the video, and ask for legislation to guarantee fair and honest elections now before the November midterms.
…The Princeton study is the first such extensive, independent, publicly-released investigation of the hardware, software, and firmware of a Diebold AccuVote DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) system of the type used in Maryland, Florida, Georgia and many other states. In all, such touch-screen voting systems made by Diebold, will be in use in nearly 40 states across the country this November.
The study, which also reveals a number of other troubling vulnerabilities – including the confirmation that voter access cards used on Diebold systems may be created inexpensively on a personal laptop computer, allowing a voter to vote as many times as they wish – was released this morning in full on Princeton University's website along with video demonstrations of some of the most disturbing revelations of the report.
Well, Whattaya Know
I guess some Republicans aren't as torture thirsty as Bush and Cheney.
Senate Panel Rejects Bush Military Tribunals Plan
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US Senate panel rejected President George W. Bush's plan to relax standards on treatment of terror suspects, instead backing a substitute plan offering greater rights protections to "war on terror" detainees.
In a stinging rebuke to the US president, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 15 to nine in favor of a bill drafted by Republican chairman John Warner.
The outlines of the president's plan, which would allow tougher questioning of detainees while protecting US interrogators from being prosecuted for warcrimes, were approved Wednesday by a US House of Representatives panel.
But the legislation has received a chilly reception in the Senate, where the bill drafted by Warner -- usually a staunch Bush ally -- prevailed.
More here. I'm not going to jump for joy about this until I get a better idea of what Warner's bill is like, but it's good to see Bush's "Torture ruuuuuullllzzz" plan go down in flames.
Oh, and it was very good to see the Democrats being so vocal on this issue.
*Ahem*
hairy snark
No lifejackets needed here, this post is all about the shallow. But funny! From Radar, we get: Capitol Domes, a post about congressional hairstyles.
November is election time. And with at least 15 Republican seats up for grabs, it will no doubt be a wonderful season filled with irrepressible hypocrisy and spirited rivalries. Slurs will be hurled. Accusations slurred. No longer content merely to kiss babies, candidates will actually deep-throat their heads.
In the end, however, the pivotal decisions Americans face may all come down to hair. "It's one of the first things voters notice," says political image consultant Sherry Maysonave, president of Austin, Texas-based Empowerment Enterprises, who has masterminded the appearance of congressional and presidential candidates from both parties. "Hair is a strong indicator of a candidate's position and politics. If it's distracting in any way, it can seriously reduce the power of the message." To avoid such dips in rhetorical potency, Maysonave eradicates frizz ("perceived as instability"), stamps out comb-overs ("not trustable"), and tries her best to wean male Conservatives, a group only slightly less conformist than teenage girls, of their dependence on poorly-parted helmet hair. "An overly low side-part," she warns, "can make you look as if you're not even living in this decade."
A few examples:
Trend One
DEAD ANIMAL HAIR
Though all three deny it, these congressmen are clearly perpetrating the ultimate hair lie: the not-even-slightly-plausible toupee.
Senators Trent Lott, Byron Dorgan, and Rep. John Mica are on the chopping block for that one.
Trend Three
CRAZY-OLD-WHITE-GUY HAIR
Also known as "hospital bed-head," this rumpled, erratic style is trendy among our elder statesmen. Why comb and primp, it says, when one's status as a respected, nearly-dead person allows one to simply unravel? On Rep. Hastert, a former high school wrestling coach who famously suggested that post-Katrina New Orleans be "bulldozed over" as an elegant alternative to pricey rebuilding, the look is choppy and insouciant, as if several hairy Post-It notes have been slapped onto his skull.
Sensenbrenner and Carl Levin are the other two mentioned in this category.
Trend Four
CHILDLIKE HAIR
Feeney, 48, a close ally of the religious right who considers yoga a threat to our country and has been accused of commissioning an electronic voting computer program that could rig an election, faces a slightly different issue. His hair looks, well, pubic. As in seventh grade discussions of "secondary sexual characteristics" pubic. He's not necessarily doomed, however, to resemble an adolescent groin, says Maysonave: "He could do a few things to convey more experience. Add a little gray to his temples. Maybe wear some subtle, wire-framed glasses."
That's Rep. Tom Feeney with the pube hair. Reps. Jeb Hensarling and Adam Putnam are also in this one.
Trend Six
MANGY HAIR
Rep. Chabot, proud owner of the Worst Comb-over in Congress, rabidly opposes abortion in every corner of our nation except on his own head, where he's clearly failed to carry his hair to term.
Besides Chabot, Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. David Price get the mange.
Check 'em all out, there are eight categories in all.
(hat tip to Becky, one of the well-coiffed folks at preemptive karma)
"Life is a video game, you've got to die sometime"
Nope, nothing to worry about here
The conservative in me (yeah, I've got one, and you do too) wonders if we should contact the authorities whenever we run across the web postings of malcontents with online handles like "MassMurderer," "SociopathNextDoor," or "ColumbineFan." Maybe it's not such a bad idea.
The Montreal Gazette and the French-language Journal de Montreal said Gill, from the Montreal suburb of Laval, had published an online gallery of more than 50 photos depicting himself in various poses, holding a Berretta CX4 Storm semi-automatic rifle and wearing a long black trench coat and combat boots. [...]Gill's online identifier was Fatality666, according to the Star.
No warning signs here, eh?
In a detailed user profile, asked how he wants to die, he wrote in prescient foreshadowing of yesterday's bloody events in Montreal: "Like Romeo and Juliet — or in a hail of gunfire." [...]Writing in the third person, Gill described himself to fellow Goths as someone "you will come to know as Trench," a chilling reference that was cited again and again by witnesses who described the man that shot at them yesterday.
"He is male. He is 25 years of age. He lives in Quebec. He finds that it is an okay place to live. He is not a people person. He has met a handful of people in his life who are decent.
But he finds the vast majority to be worthless, no good, conniving, betraying, lieing (sic), deceptive, mother-------.
"Work sucks ... school sucks ... life sucks ... what else can I say?
"Metal and Goth kick ass. Life is a video game, you've got to die sometime.''
There are almost too many signifiers to count here, surely enough to raise red flags at any police station or social services agency...assuming that anyone there actually knew of Gill's existence. The likelihood of that is, of course, extremely slim. Gill was just one of many nihilistic time bombs in an expanding crowd of online personae. Nobody who frequents VampireFreaks.com seemed suficiently alarmed by his postings to send up a flare to authorities - and given the attraction of Goth culture to the alienated and disaffected, would we expect someone there to do so? Perhaps we should: this essay at ReligiousTolerance.org states that Goths "tend to be non-violent, pacifistic, passive, and tolerant," certainly not the kind of people who would advocate the kind of murderous intent admitted by Gill. Perhaps it's the same with Goths as with any other community: it's easy to overlook or to downplay a threat to others, easy to believe that someone wouldn't actually act out that intent.
And for those who point to the Jeremy Steinke murder case (also connected to VampireFreaks.com) as a brief against Goth culture in particular, you need only look at crimes connected with other social networking sites such as MySpace to see that this negative potential isn't confined to just one community.
Sociopathy and psychopathy predate the Web by a considerable timespan. However, the phenomenon of online culture provides a window to potential threats that didn't exist before, and one that should be explored. You do have to ask if it's either feasible or desirable to have law enforcement devote significant resources to trawling the Web, prowling social networking sites, looking for the next mass murderer. This would be the liberal in me, no doubt, the same personality that opposes excesses of authority by, say, the National Security Agency. It's one thing to oppose excess and intrusion, however, and another to balance privacy against potential threats. There's a place for intelligence gathering when it comes to national security, and the victims of Kimveer Gill - those who are still alive - would likely tell you that there's a lawful and proper place for oversight when it comes to sociopaths closer to home.
It's somethiing to consider, anyway.
(Cross-posted.)
More Drums
“They have taken the bridge and the second hall. We have
barred the gates but cannot hold them for long. The ground
shakes. Drums. Drums fill the deep. We cannot get out.
The shadow moves in the dark. It is coming…”
Compare and Contrast. Oy.
The Return of B3
Big Brass Blog is reborn! And it’s all-new and all-improved, thanks (so many, many, many thanks) to The Dark Wraith.
There are all kinds of cool new features, including the Forum, about which the Dark Wraith says: “Feel free to use the permanent open forum to post links to articles, offer opinions, or just blow off a little steam about the stupidity of the neo-cons. The thread will sunset postings on a regular basis to keep the forum from overrunning the database. Disrespectful, vexatious, or otherwise flatulent trolls will be shot and then given a degrading wedgie. As my Kentucky ancestors would have said, ‘Ain't no season on varmint... ain't no bag limit, neither.’” Snap!
Along with The Dark Wraith, Pam, and myself, there are other bloggers in the line-up (some of whose names will be very familiar to Shakers—ahem, Minstrel Boy), and more will be added in short order.
Head on over and check it out when you’ve got some time. The Dark Wraith has done an amazing job.
(Stay tuned for the rebirth of the Big Brass Alliance!)
Zoinks
Things are getting hairy for Gary Weddle:
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Gary Weddle followed the news so closely he forgot to shave. After a week he decided not to shave until Osama bin Laden was caught or killed.
Nor has Weddle, 46, who expected the al Qaeda leader to be caught within a month or so, trimmed his facial hair in the succeeding five years as he went from substitute teacher to science instructor at Ephrata Middle School.
…He said he would keep the beard, untrimmed, as long as bin Laden remains at large -- "even if I get buried with it."
Talk about a picture worth 1,000 words.
RIP Ann Richards
Former Texas Governor Ann Richards has died at age 73. There have been few other political obituaries I’ve posted that make me as sad as this one.
The silver-haired, silver-tongued Richards said she entered politics to help others — especially women and minorities who were often ignored by Texas' male-dominated establishment.That would be George Bush, our current president—who managed to defeat a popular incumbent with a 60% approval rating by starting a whisper campaign that she was a lesbian.
"I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone,'" Richards said shortly before leaving office in January 1995.
…Two years before she was elected governor of Texas, Ann Richards electrified the 1988 Democratic National Convention with a keynote speech in which she joked that the Republican presidential nominee, George H.W. Bush, had been "born with a silver foot in his mouth."
A longtime champion of women and minorities in government who was serving at the time as Texas state treasurer, she won cheers when she reminded delegates that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, "only backwards and in high heels."
As governor, Richards appointed the first black University of Texas regent, the first crime victim on the state Criminal Justice Board, the first disabled person on the human services board and the first teacher to lead the State Board of Education. Under Richards, the fabled Texas Rangers pinned stars on their first black and female officers.
…Throughout her years in office, her popularity remained high. One poll put it at over 60 percent the year she lost her re-election bid to Bush.
Ann Richards was a classic. I wish we had more Dems just like her.
Question of the Day
Recently at the Meeting of the Shakers, I brought up this little segment from Sesame Street, "The King of Eight." It's a fantastic little jazzy stop-motion animated segment. I used to love this as a kid, but at the very end of it, there's this absolutely horrifying jester thing that gets right up in the camera, screeching and gibbering. I remember I would sit with my hand on the volume control, enjoying the segment, and when he would come on, I'd turn the volume down all the way and look away from the television until I was sure he was gone.
So Shakers, what weird, innocent things scared the bejeezus out of you when you were a kid?
Caption this photo
Y'see, my current plan is to condense all my bullshit
into a pill about this big, so it's easier for 'mericans to swaller.
Edward R. Murrow weeps bloody tears
August 14: Katie Couric chats with Howard Kurtz.
Couric: It's not going to be smiley-face happy news.
September 12: I chat with my wife M.
M: Katie Couric was doing a story about lifespans in different cities yesterday. She used a map that put smiley faces on the cities where lifespans were longer, and frowny faces on cities where lifespans were shorter.Me: (pause) No, she didn't.
M: (smiling) Yes. She did.
Also tormenting the spirits of ancient journalists: Meredith Vieira.
Vieira: I'm going to be the broad in broadcasting.
My advice: Use your television to watch only football and House, and you'll be okay.
(Cross-posted.)it's a miracle!
KEPALA BATAS: It sounds unbelievable. But it’s true. And thousands of people are making a beeline for the village of Kampung Paya here to see it for themselves.
The trunk of a pinang (betel nut) tree has sprouted a human-like face.
The curves on the five-metre high tree clearly resemble human eyes, teeth and a nose.
And it's....NOT JESUS! Or even Mary. No, it's just a plain old human-looking face, so the villagers have started calling it "ghost-tree".
Those nutty Malaysians. Don't they know that when something vaguely human-like appears in unlikely places that it's Jesus?
