The Bone that is FISH ... Skankin to the beat

No politics today ... just muppets with attitude

Diggin in my musical closet ... yet again

As election time approachs

I'm reminded of this lovely picture. Now some two years later and its time for a mid-term possible hand over of the house and senate. Can it be any different now?

That smell is Fox News

Only FOX, I swear. While the video of Olbermann a few weeks back was taken down by Google Video because they had squirreled out that I was not the creator of the content, YouTube had let me use news videos from various sources with no problems.

So imagine my surprise when I check my email today and see the following.

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Fox News Network, LLC claiming that this material is infringing:

And this message popped up when I tried to visit the video’s page:

This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Fox News Network, LLC because its content was used without permission

Again, keep in mind that I have CNN and MSNBC videos up as well, some with mild popularity. But of course a few days later FOX comes after me and complains. Now, I don’t have a problem with copyrighted material being prevented from spreading for free. That’s fine. But it only makes sense in the case where its circulation determines the creator’s income.

News, ideally, should be free to spread. News organizations should not have a problem with old news circulating freely. You’ll pay for a movie to watch it a few times, you’ll buy a ticket to a movie that came out last year. You’ll turn to a TV show that you’ve already seen just because you like it.

But that’s not why you turn to news stations. You turn on FOX or CNN to see things you haven’t before. That’s the point of news. You want to see what’s going on NOW. The purpose of news is to have it circulated. This video is an interview, would they have told me to remove the transcript from my site had I uploaded that? Same information, but now you have to read it instead of watch it.

Generally, news organizations don’t really have the time to replay old episodes, and this 30 minute interview of which half I had uploaded will never be seen in its entirety on FOX ever again. It’s not like they’re relying on rerun ratings.

There are only two reasons for a news organization to want that video taken down, because they plan on selling it or because they don’t want people to see it. I doubt heavily that this interview will ever be sold because of how bad it makes them look. Can I assume that they want it down so no one will see how much of a smackdown Clinton gave Wallace? The transcript is there, but it’s different in text than in video.

Curiously, digging around on FOX’s site itself doesn’t yield the full interview either. You can get bits and pieces, but not the full thing. It’s gone AWOL. And the one bit you can get starts right off with Clinton on the offense, forgetting the full lead-in.

You can search for the video on YouTube yourself. Click on any of the results, you’ll see the same message. FOX hasn’t done this with the O’Reilly clips, none of the other bits from FOX that litter YouTube. They went through and reported every single instance of this video being circulated. It’s as if they’re trying to erase the actuality of it in order to facilitate their talking heads’ distorting it.

So, I say this with all objectivity: fuck you, FOX.

(above story from Hanlon's Razor .... the title of this story is the link.)

Late Night Lust

Is this Love?

Possibly the strangest commercial I've ever seen

What would happen if David Lynch directed Commericals .... hmmmmm maybe its something like this.

Iraq For Sale

Anyone care to do the Safety Dance with me?

TAMPA - MacDill Air Force Base officials are investigating why security personnel did not stop two teenagers in a stolen car from barreling through the main entrance to one of the nation's most important military installations.

The breach, which occurred early Wednesday morning, has raised questions about how well-protected MacDill is and what further steps might be taken to seal the nearly 5,800-acre base from outsiders.

Tampa police were tracking Davaraye Mungin and Damia Bowie, both 16, as they sped south on Dale Mabry Highway toward MacDill in a 2000 Chrysler Cirrus.

A police dispatcher phoned the base to alert security officials about the speeding car because police and the base do not share a radio frequency.

Police thought the call went through seconds before the vehicle passed through the gate at Dale Mabry Highway, but Air Force 1st Lt. Larry van der Oord, a base spokesman, said the call came after the car was on the base.

Van der Oord said two enlisted members of the 6th Security Forces Squadron were guarding the entrance when the teens plowed through before 3 a.m. Because of the time of day, the gate had been shut down to one lane.

There was no immediate explanation for why the guards did not stop the vehicle. The guards are authorized to use deadly force if the threat warrants such action, van der Oord said.

"There's an investigation to find out what happened," he said. "Any time there's an incident, it's an issue that has to be taken seriously and be looked at very carefully."

The vehicle did not get far, van der Oord said. The pair drove down Boundary Drive to Hangar Loop Drive - roughly two miles - before crashing into two police cruisers near U.S. Central Command's main headquarters building at 2:48 a.m., van der Oord and police said.

Security at MacDill's entry points was being strengthened in response to the incident, van der Oord added.

Mungin and Bowie are charged with felony auto theft and felony auto burglary. Mungin also is charged with fleeing and eluding, aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence, police said.

There is more of this story located here but the point is this. Security and all of the Boogey men that this administration has been throwing at us is a JOKE. We are NO safer today than we were 5 years ago. Just think if the people driving that car were say extremists and had a car bomb set to detonate as soon as they hit the grounds of the base instead of joy-riding teenies. Every American should feel like they're watching David Copperfield about now, because ladies and gentlemen, this is an ILLUSION.

My last post of the day

And this is just sad:

WASHINGTON - There is so much political corruption on Capitol Hill that the FBI has had to triple the number of squads investigating lobbyists, lawmakers and influence peddlers, the Daily News has learned.

For decades, only one squad in Washington handled corruption cases because the crimes were seen as local offenses handled by FBI field offices in lawmakers' home districts.

But in recent years, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and other abuses of power and privilege have prompted the FBI to assign 37 agents full-time to three new squads in an office near Capitol Hill.

FBI Assistant Director Chip Burrus told The News yesterday that he wants to detail even more agents to the Washington field office for a fourth corruption squad because so much wrongdoing is being uncovered.

"Traditionally, a congressional bribery case might be conducted on Main Street U.S.A., but a lot of the stuff we're finding these days is here in Washington," said Burrus, who heads the FBI's criminal division.

He said typical crimes involve lawmakers' illegal interactions with lobbyists and "people who have a lot of savvy about how the congressional process works and appropriations."

Plus, the electronic and legislative paper trail that winds up as evidence is in Washington, as Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and ex-Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-Calif.) can attest.

Ney has agreed to plead guilty to corruption charges. Cunningham was sentenced to eight years in the slammer for taking bribes.

Two years ago, only 400 agents worked on public corruption cases. Now, 615 agents nationwide - including 30 in New York - are trying to nail public servants for betraying the public trust in 2,200 ongoing cases.

A recent FBI search of the Alaska Statehouse was a first of its kind.

In Washington, agents conducted unprecedented searches of the offices of the CIA's third-ranking executive and the House office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.).

Both stemmed from bribery allegations.

Burrus wouldn't speculate about why there is so much graft, but said, "We have to pull the whole weed up or it's just going to grow back again."

The Cult of Christ

This is the future ... be afraid. Be VERY afraid. Listen for a comment made about who wants to be among those that would die for Christ? Chilling stuff.

More troubles for Diebold

Like other computer scientists who have studied Diebold voting machines, we were surprised at the apparent carelessness of Diebold’s security design. It can be hard to convey this to nonexperts, because the examples are technical. To security practitioners, the use of a fixed, unchangeable encryption key and the blind acceptance of every software update offered on removable storage are rookie mistakes; but nonexperts have trouble appreciating this. Here is an example that anybody, expert or not, can appreciate:

The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet.

On Wednesday we did a live demo for our Princeton Computer Science colleagues of the vote-stealing software described in our paper and video. Afterward, Chris Tengi, a technical staff member, asked to look at the key that came with the voting machine. He noticed an alphanumeric code printed on the key, and remarked that he had a key at home with the same code on it. The next day he brought in his key and sure enough it opened the voting machine.

This seemed like a freakish coincidence — until we learned how common these keys are.

Chris’s key was left over from a previous job, maybe fifteen years ago. He said the key had opened either a file cabinet or the access panel on an old VAX computer. A little research revealed that the exact same key is used widely in office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and hotel minibars. It’s a standard part, and like most standard parts it’s easily purchased on the Internet. We bought several keys from an office furniture key shop — they open the voting machine too. We ordered another key on eBay from a jukebox supply shop. The keys can be purchased from many online merchants.

Using such a standard key doesn’t provide much security, but it does allow Diebold to assert that their design uses a lock and key. Experts will recognize the same problem in Diebold’s use of encryption — they can say they use encryption, but they use it in a way that neutralizes its security benefits.

The bad guys don’t care whether you use encryption; they care whether they can read and modify your data. They don’t care whether your door has a lock on it; they care whether they can get it open. The checkbox approach to security works in press releases, but it doesn’t work in the field.

(Also note, Keith Olbermann did a commentary last night on GWB that I will hopefully be posting sometime today, if not, its on Crooks and Liars.

More music from my archive

Problems forseen in upcoming election

An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat -- this time on a national scale -- of last week's Election Day debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines, and a third of all precincts this year are using the technology for the first time. The changes are part of a national wave, prompted by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 and numerous revisions of state laws, that led to the replacement of outdated voting machines with computer-based electronic machines, along with centralized databases of registered voters and other steps to refine the administration of elections.

But in Maryland last Tuesday, a combination of human blunders and technological glitches caused long lines and delays in vote-counting. The problems, which followed ones earlier this year in Ohio, Illinois and several other states, have contributed to doubts among some experts about whether the new systems are reliable and whether election officials are adequately prepared to use them.

In a polarized political climate, in which elections are routinely marked by litigation and allegations of incompetent administration or outright tampering, some worry that voting problems could cast a Florida-style shadow over this fall's midterm elections.

"We could see that control of Congress is going to be decided by races in recount situations that might not be determined for several weeks," said Paul S. DeGregorio, chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, although he added that he does not expect problems of this magnitude.

"It's hard to put a factor on how ill-prepared we are," said former Ohio governor Richard F. Celeste, a Democrat who recently co-chaired a study of new machines with Republican Richard L. Thornburgh, former governor of Pennsylvania, for the National Research Council. They advised local election officials to prepare backup plans for November.

"What we know is, these technologies require significant testing and debugging to make them work," added Celeste, now president of Colorado College. "Our concern -- particularly as we look to the November election, when there is a lot of pressure on -- is that election officials consider what kinds of fallbacks they can put in place."

The main focus is on whether people know how to properly use the machines, particularly the large army of volunteers who staff the polls at most precincts.

"We know the equipment works because it's been qualified to federal standards," said Kevin J. Kennedy, executive director of the Wisconsin State Elections Board and president of the National Association of State Election Directors. "The real challenge is to make sure our poll workers are trained and make sure voters have been educated so that we don't have an experience like Maryland had."

What is clear is that a national effort to improve election procedures six years ago -- after the presidential election ended with ambiguous ballots and allegations of miscounted votes and partisan favoritism in Florida -- has failed to restore broad public confidence that the system is fair.

To the contrary, litigation is on the rise. Rick Hasen, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and the author of Election Law Blog, found that the number of election challenges filed in court had risen sharply from 2000 to 2004 -- from 197 per year to 361. "Parties have become more willing to go to court," Hasen said.

In 2004, some Democrats alleged widespread voting irregularities in Ohio, including questionable vote-counting and problems with machines in Democratic-leaning precincts. Nonpartisan election experts have said the problems were not so severe to call President Bush's victory, by about 119,000 votes, into question.

This year, there are debates over standards for keeping voter registration rolls up to date; for the handling of "provisional ballots" used by people who do not show up on those rolls but believe they are legally qualified to vote; and for assuring the validity of electronic vote counts through the use of paper trails for all electronic machines. State legislation requiring state or federal identification for all voters has been challenged in courts.

One reason many issues are coming to a head this year is that the Help America Vote Act set the start of 2006 as the deadline for states to comply fully with its regulations.

Help America Vote does not mandate electronic voting, but it has greatly accelerated that trend. The law banned lever machines and punch cards to end debates about ambiguous "hanging chads" of the sort that occurred in Florida in 2000. What is clear is that electronic machines have their own imponderables.

In Montgomery County, the breakdown came when election officials failed to provide precinct workers with the access cards needed to operate electronic voting machines. In Prince George's County, computers misidentified some voters' party affiliation and failed to transmit data to the central election office. At least nine other states have had trouble this year with new voting technology.

During Illinois's March primary, poll workers in Cook County (Chicago) experienced problems at hundreds of sites with new voting technology, delaying results in a crucial vote for the county's board.

In Ohio, results from the May primary election were delayed for nearly a week in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) when thousands of absentee ballots were incorrectly formatted for electronic scanners and had to be counted by hand.

Twenty-seven states require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail available for auditing during a recount, but an analysis of Cuyahoga County's paper trail by the nonpartisan Election Science Institute showed that a tenth of the receipts were uncountable.

So far, none of these problems has prompted lingering legal challenges. But experts say turnout in general elections is much higher than in primaries and will put new stresses on the election system.

Although Help America Vote imposed national standards, it did not impose a uniform system. There are different styles and brands of equipment in use, with the potential for different bugs. The main systems are optical-scan machines and touch-screen machines. The potential problems election officials cite include machines breaking down or paper ballots not being read by optical-scan machines.

Beyond technical bugs, questions remain about whether the machines are vulnerable to vote fraud by hackers.

For several years, prominent computer scientists have taken aim at the electronic voting machines, which in essence are computers. In analyses of the software that runs widely used models of the machines, and in tests on specific brands, the scientists have shown how they could manipulate the machine to report a vote total that differed from the actual total cast by voters.

Machine vendors and some election officials have said that, while changing vote totals may be possible for someone with sophisticated technical knowledge in a controlled experiment, it is highly unlikely in a real election, given the security and oversight.

In the wake of Help America Vote, Congress has appropriated more than $3 billion to states to upgrade equipment, and Vermont Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said many states have met all of Help America Vote's requirements. Backers credit the law with making voting easier for the disabled and people for whom English is not a primary language. And they say that when machines and databases work properly, they make voting more accurate.

As Election Day nears, however, states remain embroiled in legal disputes growing out of Help America Vote's requirements for centralized voter databases and for some first-time voters to show identification at the polls. The Justice Department has sued New York state for failing to comply with Help America Vote requirements, such as upgrading machines and building a central voter database.

Democrats and Republicans remain at odds over voter registration rolls. The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal advocacy group, recently showed that properly registered voters in Florida, New Jersey and Kentucky were being removed from voter databases through electronic purges.

"Voter suppression doesn't happen with intimidation on Election Day, but rather through silent and sometimes secret government actions in the weeks leading up to an election," said Michael Waldman, the center's executive director.

Republicans have pressed for laws requiring voters to show a state or federal identification card -- a requirement Democrats say could disenfranchise low-income and minority voters.

A handful of states have passed expansive laws requiring voters to show state or federal ID at the polls. On Thursday, a circuit court judge in Missouri struck down as unconstitutional that state's ID requirement. That ruling followed a similar decision by a court in Georgia. A court in Indiana, however, upheld the requirement.

Further clouding the election process is the fact that, in many states, the administration of elections remains in political hands -- run by secretaries of state or other officials who run for office with partisan affiliations and who often have designs on higher office.

Robert Pastor, director of a commission on election reform organized by American University and headed by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James A. Baker III, said this tradition should be abandoned.

"The Carter-Baker commission identified 87 steps that need to be undertaken," he said. "Regrettably, almost none of them are being done right now. I would start by establishing statewide, nonpartisan election administratio

AND

Since we're talking about the internet(s.) We can't forget Senator Ted Stevens.

Net Neutrality

Because I have no faith

The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found Republicans and Democrats equally capable of protecting the country in the eyes of those surveyed. If the House elections were held today, Democrats have a 14-point edge among likely voters, 53% to 39%, in the generic congressional ballot. While still a large gap, this is somewhat narrower than last month.

Meanwhile, Pew Research finds voters "are expressing strong and consistent anti-Republican attitudes. The GOP lags well behind the Democratic Party on nearly all major issues, including the economy, Iraq, education, health care, the environment and the budget deficit."

In the generic congressional ballot, Pew finds Democrats leading 50% to 39%.

Now lets see how fast the democrats can piss away this lead. I'm still waiting for the "counter" message. You know, the one in which democrats tell me what they can offer me besides NOT being republican.

Report on Iran by the US is labeled "dishonest."

A recent House of Representatives committee report on Iran's nuclear capability is "outrageous and dishonest" in trying to make a case that Tehran's program is geared toward making weapons, a senior official of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has said.

The letter, obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday outside a 35-nation board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says the report is false in saying Iran is making weapons-grade uranium at an experimental enrichment site, when it has in fact produced material only in small quantities that is far below the level that can be used in nuclear arms.

The letter, which was first reported on by The Washington Post, also says the report erroneously says that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei removed a senior nuclear inspector from the team investigating Iran's nuclear program "for concluding that the purpose of Iran's nuclear program is to construct weapons."

In fact, the inspector was sidelined on Tehran's request, and the Islamic republic had a right to ask for a replacement under agreements that govern all states relationships with the agency, said the letter, calling the report's version "incorrect and misleading."

"In addition," says the letter, "the report contains an outrageous and dishonest suggestion that such removal might have been for 'not having adhered to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear program.'"

Dated Aug. 12, the letter was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It was signed by Vilmos Cserveny, a senior director of the Vienna-based agency.

An IAEA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the letter, said it was written "to set the record straight."

Jamal Ware, a spokesman for the House committee, confirmed they had received the letter and said the chairman had referred it to Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Rep. Rush Hold, D-N.J. They will review it and issue a formal response if necessary, he said.

"All IAEA complains about is a photo caption. If you read the report, it's very clear that what it is saying is that Iran is working to develop the capability to enrich uranium to weapons grade, not that they have done so," Ware said. "They use a string of adjectives, while not pointing to any substantive criticism of the report. There are areas where we would disagree with them. A disagreement does not make what we say erroneous."

The dispute was reminiscent of the clashes between the IAEA and Washington over whether Saddam Hussein was trying to make weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms. American arguments that Saddam had such covert arms programs were given as the chief reason for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam.

ElBaradei's criticism of the U.S. standpoint on Iraq and subsequent perceptions that he was soft on Iran in his staff's investigation of suspicions Tehran's nuclear activities may be a cover for a weapons program led to a failed attempt last year by Washington to prevent his re-election.

Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine

Be warned .... this is a long video (9:29) but very important to watch.

Nancy Grace ... why is she not on Fox? The trifecta would be complete.

Neil Cavuto is my saviour

(And according to this from one of his guests, maybe George W IS his favourite son.)

During a discussion of how the recent attack on the U.S. Embassy in Syria will affect the stock market, on the September 12 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, Fox News senior business correspondent Brenda Buttner asserted that "Wall Street is very insular" and "the market's going to go down" if a terror attack occurs in the United States. Buttner then claimed: "Thank God and thank President Bush it hasn't happened here yet," adding that "they've [terrorists] been trying and President Bush has been trying to stop them despite the opposition of some very misled people." Fox News touts Your World as "the No.1 business news show on cable."

From the September 12 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto:

NEIL CAVUTO (host): Brenda?

BUTTNER: These despicable militants are trying to hit us over there. They're trying to do it over here. They just haven't been -- been successful today. Just as [Fortune magazine senior writer] Adam [Lashinsky] said, they will try to do it again tomorrow; and Wall Street is very insular -- they don't see anything except what's right in front of their face. And if it happens here, the market's going to go down. Thank God and thank President Bush it hasn't happened here yet. But they've been trying and President Bush has been trying to stop them despite the opposition of some very misled people.

Seriously .... what planet are these people on? Does anyone actually get information from the media anymore? There is a movie called "Why We Fight," and one of the most chilling descriptions of modern "political punditry" is that all people on the political "stage" now are just actors. If thats true, do we have years of crappy re-runs ahead of us? Or is it going to be like Sam Peckinpah and they'll just be bloody, spaghetti westerns until we reclaim our country? Are you one of the misled? I know that I'm not. I'm going to be posting a story later today about how Princeton was able to create a virus and hack into an electronic voting machine, with the video. Stay tuned ......

Konsumer Kulture Khaos

Republican to outspend Democrats 5 times

This is the first paragraph of an article I read today:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) will spend its entire bank account, $60 million or more, helping Republicans try to retain control of Congress in the midterm elections.

So lets just put this in simple terms. It doesnt matter what the message is. We all know "Money talks bullshit walks," so the question remains. What is the best form of government that you can buy? Just something to ponder.

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Bush

And lastly tonight a Special Comment on why we are here. Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space.
And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.
And all the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and — as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul — two more in the Towers.
And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.
I belabor this to emphasize that, for me… this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.
And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft", or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here — is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante — and at worst, an idiot — whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.
However. Of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds… none of us could have predicted… this.
Five years later this space… is still empty.
Five years later there is no Memorial to the dead.
Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
Five years later this country’s wound is still open.
Five years… later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.
Five years later… this is still… just a background for a photo-op.
It is beyond shameful.
—
At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field, Mr. Lincoln said "we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.
Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We can nto dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground." So we won’t.
Instead they bicker and buck-pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing — instead of doing any job at all.
Five years later, Mr. Bush… we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir — on these 16 empty acres, the terrorists… are clearly, still winning.
And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
—
And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation.
There is, its symbolism — of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.
The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it… was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.
Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.
Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.
History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government, by its critics.
It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
The President — and those around him — did that.
They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."
They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did.
The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11, is "lying by implication."
The impolite phrase, is "impeachable offense."
Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space… and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.
Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.
Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible — for anything — in his own administration.
Yet what is happening this very night?
A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.
The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.
How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death… after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections… how dare you or those around you… ever "spin" 9/11.
—
Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero…
So too have they succeeded, and are still succeeding — as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.
This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.
And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."
In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm.
Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on.
As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced.
An "alien" is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help.
The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials areseen, manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves."
And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight.
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men.
"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn."
—
When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…
When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.

( I recommend clicking on the link to go watch the video ) Watch the video here

When you have that moment of silence today .... just remember

Torture may get a new definition

To many of President George W. Bush's allies, it is time to free intelligence officials from "legislative purgatory" and get the CIA back in the business of effective interrogations of suspected terrorists.

That chance could come this week if the Senates takes up a White House proposal limiting the punishable offenses that CIA interrogators may face when questioning "high-value" terrorist suspects. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican of Tennessee, is expected to begin debate on the bill as early as Tuesday.

Through omissions and legal definitions, the proposal could authorize harsh techniques that critics contend potentially violate the Geneva Conventions, which govern the treatment of war prisoners. These methods include hypothermia, stress positions and "waterboarding," a practice of simulated drowning.

The bill would keep in law prohibitions on war crimes such as rape and torture that are widely accepted as illegal.

The proposal would apply back to 2001 the Bush administration's standards for treatment of detainees. That would shield CIA personnel from liability under a 1996 law intended to uphold the Geneva Conventions, since the fight against terrorism began and harsher interrogation methods were approved.

Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has developed his own plan to address concerns he has related to the military commissions that would prosecute terrorism detainees. According to a draft copy of the bill, his legislation also may amend that 1996 law, the War Crimes Act.

President Bush sent his plan to Capitol Hill last Wednesday, the same day the Pentagon issued rules forbidding military personnel from using those same harsh techniques.

"The net effect is that at least some of the alternative techniques are rendered, in effect, lawful" for the CIA, said Martin Lederman, a Georgetown law professor and former legal adviser at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration.

Lederman and other legal experts, along with human rights activists, say the White House proposal would undermine the 1949 Geneva Conventions by providing a more narrow definition of objectionable treatment.

"I think that's the bombshell ... because no other country has done that," said Elisa Massimino, the Washington director for Human Rights First. "And once we do, we lower the floor and the whole structure could crumble."

But according to conservatives, the move was necessary to repair damage done to the White House's intelligence program since a Supreme Court ruling in June. The court ruled against Bush's claim that interrogators did not have to comply with the Geneva Conventions when dealing with members of al-Qaida.

The court's decision to grant suspected terrorists certain rights potentially exposed Americans to prosecution under the War Crimes Act. The result, conservatives say, was a profound cooling effect on the CIA interrogation program.

"We're interviewing, not interrogating," said Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Roberts, a Kansas Republican, said in a recent interview that he believes intelligence officials are frozen in a type of "legislative purgatory." He said that keeps them from wanting to "walk up to the line, as has been the case before where we got 50 percent of our intelligence on what the terrorists were doing."

Tom Crispell, a CIA spokesman, declined comment on the agency's program.

According to recent public opinion polls, Roberts is not alone with his concerns. In an August poll conducted by Time, 55 percent of those surveyed said they support the harsh interrogation methods sometimes used to obtain information from prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a separate poll also by Time, 15 percent of respondents favored torture, even though it is against the law.

Such a willingness to be tough on terrorists could help Bush push a hard line on his legislation. At the same the president is asking Congress to amend the War Crimes Act and establish military tribunals to try detainees, he also wants lawmakers to approve the National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance program.

The effort is seen by many critics as an election-season push to expand his authorities to monitor suspected terrorists at a time when lawmakers from both parties are selling themselves as tough on terrorism.

A true musical Genius

An afternoon with the Residents

Proof .... No links between Saddam, Al-Qaida links ... Connect THESE dots

WASHINGTON - There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaida, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence that Democrats say undercuts President Bush's justification for invading Iraq.

Bush administration officials have insisted on a link between the Iraqi regime and terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Intelligence agencies, however, concluded there was none.

Republicans countered that there was little new in the report and Democrats were trying to score election-year points with it.

The declassified document released Friday by the intelligence committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.

It concludes that postwar findings do not support a 2002 intelligence community report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or ever developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents.

The 400-page report comes at a time when Bush is emphasizing the need to prevail in Iraq to win the war on terrorism while Democrats are seeking to make that policy an issue in the midterm elections.

It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates."

Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaida. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June this year.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the report was "nothing new."

"In 2002 and 2003, members of both parties got a good look at the intelligence we had and they came to the very same conclusions about what was going on," Snow said. That was "one of the reasons you had overwhelming majorities in the United States Senate and the House for taking action against Saddam Hussein," he said.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the committee, said the long-awaited report was "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts" to link Saddam to al-Qaida.

The administration, said Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., top Democrat on the committee, "exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe — contrary to the intelligence assessments at the time — that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attacks."

The chairman of the committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said it has long been known that prewar assessments of Iraq "were a tragic intelligence failure."

But he said the Democratic interpretations expressed in the report "are little more than a vehicle to advance election-year political charges." He said Democrats "continue to use the committee to try and rewrite history, insisting that they were deliberately duped into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime."

The panel report is Phase II of an analysis of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The first phase, issued in July 2004, focused on the CIA's failings in its estimates of Iraq's weapons program.

The second phase has been delayed as Republicans and Democrats fought over what information should be declassified and how much the committee should delve into the question of how policymakers may have manipulated intelligence to make the case for war.

The committee is still considering three other issues as part of its Phase II analysis, including statements of policymakers in the run up to the war.

The Microsoft Experiment

PHILADELPHIA - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has famously called high schools "obsolete" and warned about their effect on U.S. competitiveness. Now, his company has a chance to prove that it can help fix the woes of public education.

After three years of planning, the Microsoft-designed "School of the Future" opened its doors Thursday, a gleaming white modernistic facility looking out of place amid rows of ramshackle homes in a working-class West Philadelphia neighborhood.

The school is being touted as unlike any in the world, with not only a high-tech building - students have digital lockers and teachers use interactive "smart boards" - but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques.

"Philadelphia came to us ... and asked us to design a school," said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft. "We're going to take our best shot."

The company didn't pay the $63 million cost - that was borne by the Philadelphia School District - but shared its personnel and management skills. About 170 teens, nearly all black and mainly low-income, were chosen by lottery to make up the freshman class. The school eventually plans to enroll up to 750 students.

Sabria Johnson, a 14-year-old from West Philadelphia, said she is excited to be attending the school.

"We're getting a chance to do something new," said the freshman, who hopes one day to go to Harvard or to the London College of Fashion. "We don't get a lot of opportunities like the suburban kids."

Mundie said companies have long been concerned that schools aren't churning out graduates with the skills and know-how that businesses require in employees to compete globally - and mental acuity is especially critical to Microsoft.

"Our raw material is smart people," he said.

School district CEO Paul Vallas said he was impressed by more than just the company's technology.

"I was also taken by their culture," Vallas said. "They created a culture within which ideas can be generated and acted upon."

At the 162,000-square-foot high school, which sits on nearly eight acres, the day starts at 9:15 a.m. and ends at 4:19 p.m., simulating the typical work day. Officials said studies show students do better when they start later in the day.

Students - who are called "learners" - use smart cards to register attendance, open their digital lockers and track calories they consume. They carry laptops, not books, and the entire campus has wireless Internet access.

Teachers, or "educators," rather than using blackboards, have interactive "smart boards" that allow teachers to zoom in and out, write or draw, and even link to the Internet.

There's no library, but an "interactive learning center" where information is all digital and a "multimedia specialist" will help out students.

Instead of a cafeteria, there's a food court with restaurant-style seating. The performance center - where two sections rotate close to create a smaller space - replaces the typical auditorium.

"This is completely different from any Philadelphia school I've ever seen," said Tramelle Hicks, 39, of West Philadelphia, whose 15-year-old daughter Kierra is going to the school. She said she believes her daughter would benefit from learning strategic and organizational skills from Microsoft.

The high school will use an "education competency wheel," patterned after a set of desirable traits Microsoft encourages among its employees. Officials, teachers and students are to be trained in dozens of skills, including organizing and planning, negotiating, dealing with ambiguity and managing relationships.

Students have scheduled appointments with teachers, typed into their online calendars, instead of being limited to structured times for classes. Their laptops carry software that assesses how quickly they're learning the lesson. If they get it, they'll dive deeper into the subject. If not, they get remedial help.

Lessons will have more incorporation of current events to teach subjects. For instance, a question of whether Philadelphia is safe from the avian flu will teach students about geography, science and history.

"Learning is not just going to school," said Shirley Grover, the school's energetic principal who came from the American School in Milan, Italy. "Learning is equal to life."

In addition, students at the school must apply to college in order to get a diploma.

This new approach to education has sparked the interest of Doug Lynch, vice dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Two things are quite intriguing - the willingness of the district and Microsoft to try something different," Lynch said. He cautioned, however, that while trying new methods may be valuable "we have to be careful because you're messing with kids' lives."


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I'll be posting my thoughts on this later ... and trust me .... thats a WHOLE post.

Calling Dr. Doolittle

SEP. 7 12:08 P.M. ET The owner of DataUSA Inc., a company that conducted political polls for the campaigns of President Bush, Sen. Joe Lieberman and other candidates, pleaded guilty to fraud for making up survey and poll results.

Tracy Costin pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Costin, 46, faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when she is sentenced Nov. 30.

As part of her plea agreement, Costin agreed to repay $82,732 to the unidentified clients for 11 jobs between June 2002 and May 2004. DataUSA is now known as Viewpoint USA.

According to a federal indictment, Costin told employees to alter poll data, and managers at the company told employees to "talk to cats and dogs" when instructing them to fabricate the surveys.

FBI Special Agent Jeff Rovelli said 50 percent of information compiled by DataUSA and transmitted to Bush's campaign was falsified, the Connecticut Post reported Thursday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Chang said on several occasions when the company was running up against a deadline to complete a job, results were falsified. Sometimes, the respondent's gender or political affiliation were changed to meet a quota, other times all survey answers were fabricated.

Keith Olbermann comments on Bush

It is to our deep national shame—and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret—that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies—or even question their effectiveness or execution—to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 -- without ever actually saying so—the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”

Make no mistake here—the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word—“media”—the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.

We will not drink again.

And the President’s re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.

“In the 1920’s a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews,” President Bush said today, “the world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price.”

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek—a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick” is an awful and cynical thing.

And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Authoritarian and Conservative linked?

The abstract is located here

Authoritarianism is a personality trait operationally defined in terms of:
1) a high degree of compliance with socially-accepted authorities;
2) aggressiveness toward persons that is believed to be sanctioned by established authorities;
3) a high degree of adherence to social conventions believed to be favored by society and established authority (Altemeyer, 1996).

Authoritarian personality characteristics:
1) are less likely than most people to demonstrate self-awareness (Altemeyer, 1999) and
2) are more likely to favor religious beliefs over scientific data when the two appear to be in conflict (Westman et al., 2000).
3) exhibit more self-reported fear than the general population (Eigenberger, 1999),
4) tend to be prepared to cut low-status offenders more slack than high status offenders (Feather, 2002).
5) correlate with security values such as national strength and order, religiosity, and propriety in dress and manners (Heaven, 2001),
6) and individuals with high RWA scores tend to indicate negative attitudes toward homosexuality than the high SDO-scale (Whitley, et al., 2001).
7) individuals with high RWA scores may have greater trouble remembering what they read and making correct inferences (Wegmann, M.F. 1992).

Lets All Pray

You're a pervert and you didnt even know it! Too bad this post is real ... thanks to the lovely citizens of Columbus Ohio.

COLUMBUS - An Ohio legislative panel yesterday rubber-stamped an unprecedented process that would allow sex offenders to be publicly identified and tracked even if they've never been charged with a crime.

No one in attendance voiced opposition to rules submitted by Attorney General Jim Petro's office to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, consisting of members of the Ohio House and Senate.

The committee's decision not to interfere with the rules puts Ohio in a position to become the first state to test a "civil registry."

The concept was offered by Roman Catholic bishops as an alternative to opening a one-time window for the filing of civil lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse that occurred as long as 35 years ago.

A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit.

The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law.

The person's name, address, and photograph would be placed on a new Internet database and the person would be subjected to the same registration and community notification requirements and restrictions on where he could live.

A civilly declared offender, however, could petition the court to have the person's name removed from the new list after six years if there have been no new problems and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again.

The attorney general's office said it continues to hold discussions with a group representing day care operators about one of the rules pertaining to what such facilities would do with information they might receive pertaining to someone on the registry if that person is living nearby.

From Wikipedia (on Civil Registry):
Civil registration is the system with which a government records the vital events of its citizens. The primary purpose of civil registration is to create legal documents that are used to establish and protect the civil rights of individuals. A secondary purpose is to create a data source for the compilation of vital statistics.

The United Nations defines civil registration as "the continuous, permanent, compulsory and universal recording of the occurrence and characteristics of vital events pertaining to the population as provided through decree or regulation in accordance with the legal requirements of a country. Civil registration is carried out primarily for the purpose of establishing the legal documents provided by the law. These records are also a main source of vital statistics. Complete coverage, accuracy and timeliness of civil registration are essential for quality vital statistics.

Vital events that are typically recorded include live birth, death, foetal death, marriage, divorce, annulment of marriage, judicial separation of marriage, adoption, legitimization and recognition. Among the legal documents that are derived from civil registration are birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage certificates.