Weekend Watchdog

Get a sack.

Put it over your head.

Seder on Sundays in less than 2 days!

normal in Baghdad... how bad is that? Idiots. The Administration of Liars.

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello Bill Scher... insomniac
:)
...assuming you are on the East Coast

-M the a-c

Oh, wait.. He posted that message quite a while ago.

Where the hell is everyone? Does anyone post messages here?

-M the a-c

Just kidding.

They're having a party on one of the open mic threads.

I'm not in the mood for a party.

?

are on a different thread btw...

I saw that Bob, a poster here, was going through some difficult stuff. I can empathize. The situation on space station Earth is looking pretty grim. Hope he's alright.

Not to get preachy, (you know what comes next) but I think when someone is in pain, the best thing you can do is empathize with them. Telling them that the universe is an ocean of love, and if they could just open themselves up to it, it would solve all their problems, is just adding insult to injury. It's not spiritual, it's empty words.

That said, I'm sure everyone means well. I just can't stomach that new age attitude.

"What are you in the mood for then, dada?"

Posting here in the room next door to the party works for me.

The sound of Alan Holdsworth floating in from the other room is just right.

the ripples rippled across the rain speckled puddle sailing a peanut shell the captain with a chicken for a hat in hockey skates and lip stick, fishing for birds with his flash light "tar she blows"

is that he blurted that statement out, then didn't respond...

most are relaxing in the boob tube room!

the carrot cake is a few minutes away from frosting!

The most trifling Actions of a Man, in my Opinion, as well as the smallest Features and Lineaments of the Face, give a nice Observer some Notion of his Mind. Methought he rapp'd in such a peculiar Manner, as seem'd of itself to express, there was One who deserv'd as well as desir'd Admission. He appear'd in the plainest Country Garb; his Great Coat was coarse and looked old and thread-bare; his Linnen was homespun; his Beard perhaps of Seven Days Growth, his Shoes thick and heavy, and every Part of his Dress corresponding. Why was this Man receiv'd with such concurring Respect from every Person in the Room, even from those who had never known him or seen him before? It was not an exquisite Form of Person, or Grandeur of Dress that struck us with Admiration. I believe long Habits of Virtue have a sensible Effect on the Countenance: There was something in the Air of his Face that manifested the true Greatness of his Mind; which likewise appear'd in all he said, and in every Part of his Behaviour, obliging us to regard him with a Kind of Veneration. His Aspect is sweetned with Humanity and Benevolence, and at the same Time emboldned with Resolution, equally free from a diffident Bashfulness and an unbecoming Assurance. The Consciousness of his own innate Worth and unshaken Integrity renders him calm and undaunted in the Presence of the most Great and Powerful, and upon the most extraordinary Occasions. His strict Justice and known Impartiality make him the Arbitrator and Decider of all Differences that arise for many Miles around him, without putting his Neighbours to the Charge, Perplexity and Uncertainty of Law-Suits. He always speaks the Thing he means, which he is never afraid or asham'd to do, because he knows he always means well; and therefore is never oblig'd to blush and feel the Confusion of finding himself detected in the Meanness of a Falshood. He never contrives Ill against his Neighbour, and therefore is never seen with a lowring suspicious Aspect. A mixture of Innocence and Wisdom makes him ever seriously chearful. His generous Hospitality to Strangers according to his Ability, his Goodness, his Charity, his Courage in the Cause of the Oppressed, his Fidelity in Friendship, his Humility, his Honesty and Sincerity, his Moderation and his Loyalty to the Government, his Piety, his Temperance, his Love to Mankind, his Magnanimity, his Publick-spiritedness, and in fine, his Consummate Virtue, make him justly deserve to be esteem'd the Glory of his Country.

http://www.historycarper.com/resources/twobf2/bb3.htm

A little Ben Franklin for you.

thank you, anonymous..

;-) ... Just trying to write LA Times to "bitch" about "The Uneven Balance being drawn between the Democrats and the Republicans. "yawn".

Iraq's Askari shrine, one of the holiest sites for Shia Muslims, was attacked Wednesday morning. The once-golden minarets of the shrine were completely destroyed in the bomb blasts.

It is the second attack on the 100-year-old shrine. In February 2006, assailants wearing uniforms detonated two bombs inside the shrine, destroying the top of its landmark dome and spawning mass protests and reprisal attacks against dozens of Sunni mosques.

According to Al-Jazeera, the latest attack against the heavily fortified shrine was the work of infiltrators in the Ministry of Interior team charged with its protection. A new security team had recently arrived from Baghdad to replace the existing guards. Witnesses claim members of the new team then bombed the shrine.

The Interior Ministry has been frequently criticised by Iraqis for allowing death squads to operate within its security forces.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/849/fr4.htm

So for those keeping score, -B was banned between the bombings.

has multiple disorders.

real torture for him, i've followed his episodes up and down.

sorta a roller coaster between 11 year old bob and 30 year old bob.

the swoops scare and frustrate the shit out of the poor dude.

by the feds:

http://www.caedefensefund.org/

Legal costs!

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Coming Back Home to Earth

http://www.dadalux.com/hometoearth.mp3

Last song off of the album Visions of the Emerald Beyond.

I have known the One and His secret Play,
And passed beyond the sea of Ignorance-Dream.
In tune with Him, I sport and sing;
I own the golden Eye of the Supreme.

Drunk deep of Immortality,
I am the root and boughs of a teeming vast.
My Form I have known and realised.
The Supreme and I are one; all we outlast.

That's nice, isn't it.

For experimental art, political art, tactical media, and independent media in the U.S. (and to some degree in other nations), the implications of Steven Kurtz' arrest are profound. The repressive forces of the state are directly targeting producers of cultural interventionist work. In past decades, policymakers have often leaned on political artwork through financial penalties such as rescinding artist's grants, folding federal arts programs, and economically squeezing out the spaces that exhibit subversive work.** Now, these attacks on civil grounds have undergone a horrific paradigm shift, and individual artists are being charged with criminal activity. The persecution works slowly and insidiously, through silencing artists, looting their work and their research, and constraining their movement. We are no longer seeing cultural conflict in action, but a proto-fascist attack upon free expression itself.

stacks plied high leaned to and fro, the trick being to stay underneath and not over compensate, best not to over concentrate, I'am vain its true but I do have to admit this song is probably not about me

Critical Art Ensemble is great stuff. Smart words I really enjoy reading. If I weren't so broke, I'd help out.

Wait up with that shiznit. Are we talking about War Dog or Sam Seder?

I can hear/feel the lap dogs of the elite typing tomorrows propaganda as we sit here. Can't you?

Like little rats scurrying through subway tunnels. If they scurry fast enough, maybe they'll get a bit of the cheese.

Hey it's my metaphor, I'll do what I want with it.

i could care less, other than opposing it as a matter of course i slip around it much the way i'd step around a pile of horse shit.

occasionally i wade through it when i'm mucking out the barn.

they're incredibly vulnerable ya know...

Here's what you face if you're a real journalist. Not some hack from the NYTimes or what have you.

Just one week before Iraqi journalists marked the 138th anniversary of the founding of Al-Zawra', the nation's first newspaper, Sahar Al-Haidari, a reporter who worked for the Voices of Iraq news agency, was shot dead on Thursday as she waited for a taxi in the northern city of Mosul. Al-Haidari, 45, a mother of four who covered political and cultural news, was the second employee from the independent news service to be killed in little more than a week.

With Al-Haidari's tragic death, the toll of Iraqi journalists killed following the 2003 US-led invasion rose to 185. According to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders this number is more than double the number of journalists killed in the 20 years of war in Vietnam, which recorded only 63 deaths of journalists between 1955 and 1975. Furthermore, this by far surpasses the number of journalists killed in civil wars anywhere else in the world.

Journalism is said to be the profession of those who are looking for trouble, but the alarming number of journalists killed in the violence-ravaged nation, indicates that journalism in today's Iraq has become a life-threatening vocation.

With the spiralling sectarian violence, Iraq has become an increasingly dangerous place as Iraqi intellectuals, doctors, engineers, university professors and even teachers, more and more become the targets of a widespread and often ethnically-driven campaign of murder. But the large numbers of journalists and other media workers coming under fire raise serious questions as to whether they are being specifically targeted because of their profession.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/849/re202.htm

... Furthermore, independent journalists have no access to accurate information and they often have to fight the tight controls imposed on the flow of the news by the US troops, Iraqi government sources, the insurgents and the militias.

Perhaps the worst thing about such repression and intimidation is that it has deprived the world of accurate and independent coverage of one of the most important news stories as most journalists are unable to leave their offices in the heavily fortified compounds in and around the Green Zone.

Reporting by foreign journalists is based to a large degree on handouts from US officials, or material gained while embedded with US military units, and is supplemented by on-the-spot accounts and interviews obtained by Iraqi "stringers", who risk their lives for a fraction of the salary paid to their Western counterparts.

In the course of this work, many Iraqi stringers have also been killed, imprisoned or subjected to violent attacks and threats. According to accounts by press watchdogs most of the real reporting in Iraq is now made by these "stringers".

Despite the substantial dangers, there are still many dedicated Iraqi journalists who continue to brave the risks in order to inform the world about the continuing tragedy in their war-torn country.

is knowing the difference between the two.

sure have lost a shit load of good journalists in the last three years we been keeping track.

"i could care less, other than opposing it as a matter of course i slip around it much the way i'd step around a pile of horse shit."

They're out there right now, typing away.

http://www.geocities.com/jswortham/fable.html

The Fable of the Bees

In 1705, an anonymous pamphlet titled The Grumbling Hive was circulated in England. It contained a set of satirical fables written both to entertain and to expose the hypocrisy and greed of society. In 1723, a new edition of the pamphlet was published under the title The Fable of the Bees. This time the author revealed his name. It was the essayist Bernard Mandeville. Everyone who read these fables had an opinion about them. The result was a lot of argument and discussion.

After she learned to read English, Émilie du Châtelet enjoyed reading Mandeville's fables, too. She decided to translate them from English into French so more people could read and learn from them.

When she had finished this difficult task, Émilie wrote an essay to explain to the reader why and how she had made her translation. In it, she included an impassioned plea for the rights of women. Émilie believed women, like men, should be encouraged to develop their natural talents and improve their minds. She recognized the importance of education in preparing women to trade their roles as decorative observers of worldly affairs into active and creative participants. Her words were written in 1735.

*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand

"knowing the difference between the two."

Yep.

Difference is some people have integrity, and some people are self-indoctrinated over educated shitheads.

got a dam good book waiting and the rest of the pack is falling asleep in front of the tube.

dogs just got done with the last Power Pupper Rocket Dog 30 lap race a few minutes ago and look like they've been sedated now.

love ya all! Cya in the AM!

Sorry Jim. I like to think before I type sometimes. Guess its a contemplative mood I get in now and then.

the story of Exodus is an extended metaphor.

The bondage is the bondage of flesh, of our everyday life, of pursuit of things. The Pharaoh, call him Satan, or Consumer spirit, demands from us to make more and more bricks, to earn more money, so we will forget about God. Every day we sacrifice some time of our children (“turn them into bricks”) for instead of attending to them we work more to pay mortgage, this is the quota of bricks, to repay for the car credit, and what not.

An ordinary Jew takes this metaphor literally; he thinks this is a story of his physical ancestors who were enslaved in the land of pyramids and escaped into the Promised Land. An ordinary Jew thinks that God actually killed the first-born of Egypt and empowered Joshua to kill the natives of Canaan in order to provide his family with a valuable seaside real estate. He thinks that the Promised Land of the Bible is a physical real land, Palestine, that this is a story of liberation from national slavery and conquest of a country. By such interpretation, he debases this great message of its spiritual and universal meaning; he privatises the story and robs others and himself of its true meaning.

---

And that goes double for you New Testament literalists. The insistence that Jesus is historical stunts ones development.

Now Hiram Abiff, on the other hand, he's real. He's a professor at Hogwarts. Teaches architecture.

The founder of Negativeland will be on the radio in a few:
http://www.kboo.fm/

.

.

Psychogeography was originally developed by the Lettrist International in the journal Potlach, but its praxis was clarified through a concept known as Unitary Urbanism, in a bid to demand a revolutionary approach to architecture. At a conference in Scotland, the Letterists joined the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus – led by Asger Jorn, Potlatch contributor and, later, Situationist – to set a proper definition to the idea of Unitary Urbanism as “incorporating arts and technology…created in accordance with new values of life, values which it is henceforth necessary to distinguish and disseminate” [1]; it demanded the rejection of functional, Euclidean values in architecture, as well as the separation between art and its surroundings. The combination of these two negations seems paradoxical in that creating abstraction, one creates art, which, in turn, creates a point of distinction that Unitary Urbanism insists must be nullified. This confusion is also fundamental to the execution of Unitary Urbanism as it corrupts one’s ability to identify where “function” ends and “play” (the “ludic”) begins, resulting in what the LI and SI believed to be a utopia where one was constantly exploring, free of determining factors.

http://www.pipsworks.com/contact/provflux.html

KBOO

Ludic derives from Latin ludus, "play." Ludicrous, "amusing or laughable," shares the same root.

guess they never heard of Feng Shui Niky.

Watch for Cramped Spaces and Narrow Corridors
The 2 important things to look out for in interior feng shui are dark corners and cramped spaces in the home. This is where stagnant chi can accumulate, creating stale energy that can cause illness, exhaustion, low energy and general lack of interest. Cramped spaces suggest life does not flow smoothly.

Could that paragraph on Unitary Urbanism be any mor cramped and dense?

Scooter Libby Needs No Enemies

Can't Paul Wolfowitz do anything right?

Sidney Blumenthal in Salon describes the letter Wolfowitz wrote to US Distict Judge Reggie Walton as a character reference for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Walton was about to sentence Libby after the vice-presidential aide's conviction for perjury and obstruction of the investigation of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Wolfowitz's letter is a prosecutor's dream, providing evidence that Libby knew that Plame would be in danger if her cover was blown, and that blowing her cover would in fact be a crime, notwithstanding Libby's protestations of ignorance in the trial.

Quoth Blumenthal:

According to Wolfowitz's account, Libby was an indispensable man in ending the Cold War, winning the Gulf War and waging the "global war on terror." But he was also, Wolfowitz writes, of "service to individuals."
The leading example he offers is a stunning revelation, which does not reflect on Libby's charity, compassion and sympathy as Wolfowitz might imagine. The story about Libby "involves his effort to persuade a newspaper not to publish information that would have endangered the life of a covert CIA agent working overseas. Late into the evening, long after most others had left the matter to be dealt with the next day, Mr. Libby worked to collect the information that was needed to persuade the editor not to run the story."

Unintentionally and foolishly, Wolfowitz has hanged the guilty man again. Wolfowitz's defense of Libby is composed with the same care and skill that Wolfowitz brought to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, creating the opposite effects of what he desired. In this bizarre disclosure, rather than exculpating Libby, Wolfowitz incriminates him; for this story is damning evidence of Libby's state of mind — that he knew he was engaged in wrongdoing in leaking the identity of a CIA covert operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, to two reporters, Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine, and in vouchsafing it to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer for the purpose of his leaking it to the press, which he promptly did. ...

If Wolfowitz remembers the story, and it's credible, so Libby must recall it too. Therefore, he must also have known that his defense was based on false premises contrary to what he understood to be right and how he had acted in the past. He sent his attorneys to court to make a case he consciously knew was wrong from his own prior experience of having protected a national security asset from exposure. One can only wonder if Libby ever told his lawyers the story that Wolfowitz has recounted or whether he misled them, too.

In science fiction fandom, we call this sort of thing "Gerberization," after Les Gerber, a fan active in the 1950s and 60s:

In his early teens, in the pages of CRY OF THE NAMELESS, Les defended someone so ineptly and to such excess that "to Gerberize" became the fannish verb defining this practice while "to be Gerberized" meant having the practice performed on you.
Poor Scooter Libby: Paul Wolfowitz thoroughly Gerberized him. With a friend like that, who needs enemies?

http://www.spicejar.org/asiplease/archives/000609.html

Foreclosure Rate Hits Historic High

By Dina ElBoghdady and Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 15, 2007; D01

The percentage of U.S. mortgages entering foreclosure in the first three months of the year was the highest in more than 50 years, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

As the association released its numbers, the Federal Reserve held a hearing to determine whether regulators could do anything to crack down on abusive lending practices, which have exacerbated the problem

The problems arose last year as the housing market softened, driving down home prices and making it more difficult for cash-strapped borrowers to sell their homes or refinance their way out of trouble.

The most dramatic fallout took place in the subprime market, which caters to people with blemished credit or other factors that make them a risk to lenders.

Those borrowers entered foreclosure at a rate of 2.43 percent, up from 2 percent the previous quarter. The percentages seem small, but they are far above norms, particularly in a healthy economy. The concern is that the mortgage industry's troubles could damage the economy if they are not contained.

For more credit-worthy, prime borrowers, foreclosures rose slightly, to 0.25 percent, in the first quarter from 0.24 percent in the previous one.

New foreclosures for prime and subprime borrowers combined hit record highs. They rose to 0.58 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, compared with 0.54 percent in the previous quarter and 0.41 percent a year earlier.

The high translates into about 254,591 mortgages, or or one in 172 loans, the association said.

The problems weren't uniformly spread around the country. Doug Duncan, chief economist for the mortgage bankers group, said the rate of new foreclosures would have dropped had it not been for big jumps in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona. He said high rates in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana also drove up the overall percentage of loans in foreclosure.

Some who track the industry say the worst is yet to come.

"We think we're just starting to see the tip of the iceberg," said Karen Weaver, global head of securitization research at Deutsche Bank Securities. "We believe more and more [subprime borrowers] will default, and that's a process that we think will happen over two years."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR200706...

out near fenway park:

C&L
We’ve covered the misconduct hearings of GSA Administrator, Lurita Doan, but left out this portion of the hearing from earlier this week and thought it was worth posting. Henry Waxman runs through the laundry list of Doan’s unethical and illegal actions, then tells her point blank that she should resign.(h/t Sestakastan)
Link
.

France Pushes To Make Blair New President Of European Union »

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Financial Times | George Parker in Brussels, John Thornhill in Paris and James Blitz in London | June 15, 2007 11:41 PM

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, could end up swapping Downing Street for a job as the first full-time European Union president, under a plan being actively touted by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.

Mr Sarkozy is understood to have discussed the idea with other EU leaders ahead of next week's European summit, Mr Blair's last major international event as prime minister.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2bc60e12-1b72-11dc-bc55-000b5df10621.html

June 16, 2007
Iran Strategy Stirs Debate at White House
By HELENE COOPER and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, June 15 — A year after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran’s nuclear program, according to senior administration officials.

The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

In the year since Ms. Rice announced the new strategy for the United States to join forces with Europe, Russia and China to press Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, Iran has installed more than a thousand centrifuges to enrich uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency predicts that 8,000 or so could be spinning by the end of the year, if Iran surmounts its technical problems.

Those hard numbers are at the core of the debate within the administration over whether Mr. Bush should warn Iran’s leaders that he will not allow them to get beyond some yet-undefined milestones, leaving the implication that a military strike on the country’s facilities is still an option.

Even beyond its nuclear program, Iran is emerging as an increasing source of trouble for the Bush administration by inflaming the insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and in Gaza, where it has provided military and financial support to the militant Islamic group Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip.

Even so, friends and associates of Ms. Rice who have talked with her recently say she has increasingly moved toward the European position that the diplomatic path she has laid out is the only real option for Mr. Bush, even though it has so far failed to deter Iran from enriching uranium, and that a military strike would be disastrous.

The accounts were provided by officials at the State Department, White House and the Pentagon who are on both sides of the debate, as well as people who have spoken with members of Mr. Cheney’s staff and with Ms. Rice. The officials said they were willing to explain the thinking behind their positions, but would do so only on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Bush has publicly vowed that he would never “tolerate” a nuclear Iran, and the question at the core of the debate within the administration is when and whether it makes sense to shift course.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/washington/16diplo.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnn...

Later bloggers!

Could that paragraph on Unitary Urbanism be any mor[e] cramped and dense?

Perhaps not. Unitary urbanism is largely about creating comditions and preparing for revolutionary upheavals. Does feng shui have any such components?

resulting in ... a utopia where one was constantly exploring, free of determining factors.

Feng shui does have political components - Wikipedia says "It is inseparable from understanding politics in premodern China." I would love to study more about it.

William Hochul. Remember that name. William Hochul. William Hochul..

Liberation through ludic activities.

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature" - Tom Robbins"

experimental rats to the US/Israel Mengele:
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=13076&sectionID=107

The Palestinians have done more to advance psycho-biological science than all the rats of the world put together. A good million Palestinians know from experience that if you occupy them militarily, coop them up in 360 square kilometers, destroy and loot their houses, cut off electricity and drinking water, regularly bomb them, make them see they have no future and if finally you blockade their economy and arm the leaders, then the very least that will happen is that they set about shooting at one another.

It took a while to get through (I'm slo)...And I still don't understand most of it. I was especially confused by toniD's use of the term "Gerberize". But after reading that three times, I finally figured out there is a difference between being "Gerberize" and being "Gerbilized" albeit minute.

"doh" So am I too late to play? I got lost on the internet "fog".
It was the daylight that "cleared" my way back. The meet is bloody well getting closer. "eye roll"

Now I have to read all what you folk wrote ... and of course there is something about experimenting on or with RATS. Human RATS! ::Silent Scream::

Conyers and Nadler Call for Cheney Recusal from Libby Pardon Discussions

On June 7 Rep. Conters sends a letter to V. P. Dick Cheney

But out Dick

I meant no comment on the ludic nature of Unitary Urbanism.(Thanks for the [e] in your quote : ) ]

AT the hour of the post, 2:30am PDT, I was just reaching the state of mind where details blur and only other high points become evident.

When looking up the derivation of "ludic," I somehow found the feng shui link which talked of chi being restricted in dense areas of the home.

Your quote, viewed as a word sculpture, is dense. If you have observations "about creating conditions and preparing for revolutionary upheavals," I would be most interested in reading about what you have gleaned..

[could I most humbly request that you create an open mic on the subject ?]

Good post on the Dover trial related to teaching science or religion in USA News today. A little circular logic in places and long but pretty interesting all the same.

Submitted by Bill.Scher on Fri, 06/15/2007 - 11:34pm.
Here are some related questions that should be asked:
1. A professor at the U.S. Naval War College recently said in the LA Times (via Daily Kos) that, "the war itself was a catastrophic mistake. It was a faulty grand strategy, not poor implementation."
-------------------------------------------------------------
I disagree with the professor, not to put too fine of a point on it.

I believe that the war itself was (is) a tremendous mistake and that it is a flimflam foisted on the U.S. citizenry by an opportunistic Neocon cabal having predetermined plans and goals.

That said, the ill-advised war could have been implemented more expertly and could have enjoyed better results. Worse results are difficult to imagine. Better results are not.

So...the existence of the war is the result of a wrong-headed decision made by incompetent leadership, and the failures throughout the execution of the war are the result of wrong-headed decisions made by incompetent leadership.

That's oh-fer-two if you are keeping score.

NYT - Artist draws chalk line around Bronks showing a modest sea rise impact. The video is slow but I got more out of it.

Morning Bloggi!

Watch Tim Griffin like a hawk. This chickenshit greasebag is starting to talk too much and it will be interesting to see what bone the Reublican Fraud Machine will place in front of him to keep him from chewing the furniture and waking up the neighborhood. My guess: Fred Thompson's campaign if Conyers doesn't scorch what's left of his career first.

What Griffin Didn't Say

Greg Palast is simply the SHIT!!

Randi Rhodes Hunts Bush’s Vultures
with BBC’s Greg Palast

Part 2

CONYERS HUNTS BUSH’S VULTURES

I'm sorry if this is days-old news, but I've been out.

Crank Bait on Sat, 06/16/2007

an oh-fer-oh-fer-two-fer ?

Chairman Conyers Supports Federal Shield Law

For Immediate Release June 14, 2007 Contact: Jonathan Godfrey(202) 226-6888 - Melanie Roussell(202) 226-5543

Chairman John Conyers, Jr. gave the following statement at the House Judiciary Committee Legislative Hearing on H.R. 2102, the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007:

I believe this cornerstone freedom is under siege today. There are many causes of this attack on the press: an increasingly consolidated and corporate media, intimidation of the press by those in power, and the treatment of journalists as an investigative tool of the government.

12:12

cronyism and witness tampering replaces golf and hunting

NO END IN SIGHT: The American Occupation of Iraq

a new Sundance prize-winning documentary, "No End in Sight," which exposes what it calls "a chain of critical errors, denial, and incompetence that has galvanized a violent quagmire."

this is a bit old, but i missed it back in march....

Operation First Casualty

of Norman Finkelstein

John Halle

For those of us in the academy, among the most important stories of the week was a successful smear campaign waged by Alan Dershowitz and the Zionist lobby resulting in noted scholar and author Norman Finkelstein being denied tenure at DePaul University. The distinguished historian Raul Hilberg spoke for many in admitting to “a sinking feeling about the damage this will do to academic freedom.”

One might think that this story would be a natural for inclusion in “McCarthy Watch”, a regular weekly feature on the Progressive Magazine website presided over by Progressive editor Matt Rothschild.

It won’t be. That’s because of the minor but not insignificant role which Rothschild and Progressive columnist Ruth Coniff played in fueling the witch hunt.

A year ago, Finkelstein’s name came up on a Madison talk show where Coniff was appearing as a guest. Coniff shocked many listeners by describing Finkelstein as “a Holocaust denier” and a “celebrity in a certain, a pretty ugly anti-semitic group in the country.” Finkelstein protested demanding a retraction from Coniff’s editor, fearing that a respected publication’s denigration of his character could influence his upcoming tenure decision. Rothschild responded by reasserting the correctness of Coniff’s charges, citing in support canards circulated by Finkelstein’s chief antagonist, Dershowitz.

Since the DePaul administration’s deliberations were conducted in secret, it is not known whether Finkelstein’s fears materialized. It is not unreasonable to assume that Coniff’s slanders and Rothschild’s defense of them sent a clear signal that Finkelstein was fair game who could not count on the support even on the left fringes of the mainstream.

And indeed, there was one organ of progressive opinion which was silent on the Finkelstein case this week. Rothschild is fond of citing Martin Niemoller’s adage of what happens when we don’t speak up when they come for others.

Like too many liberals, both now and in the Weimar Republic, one can always count on Rothschild and the Progressive for a howl of outrage. Except when it matters.

John Halle is Director of Studies in Music Theory and Practice at Bard College. He can be reached at:
halle@bard.edu

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20070608/capt.c694bcec8b554336b13bcff...

Volunteers Needed to Staff Table at Festival for the Eno
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 06/16/2007 - 06:26.
::

Please help us staff the table at the upcoming Festival for the Eno in Durham. The Festival is three days, as follows:

Wednesday, July the 4th; 10:00 a.m. — 6:00 p.m.

Saturday, July the 7th; 10:00 a.m. — 6:00 p.m.

Sunday, July the 8th; 10:00 a.m. — 6:00 p.m.

Consider working a one or two hour shift. Please contact Jim Lindsley (jim@spirinco.com) who is acting as shift coordinator for this event.

The Festival for the Eno is located at West Point on the Eno City Park on Roxboro Road in Durham, North Carolina [map] For more information about the Festival for the Eno please visit http://www.enoriver.org/Festival/index.html.

The glory which is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant incumbrance. How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. –Mark Twain

what did we do to you? Now I have to have a beer or something.

Out enjoying the day? Ususally there are so many post to read that it makes my head spin.

Gina

just reading,

occasionally popping up the blog.

thinking about getting out to the shop for a bit.

(insert witty comment here)

World News

As of 2:01 p.m. CDT

• U.S. finds IDs of 2 GIs missing in Iraq
• U.S. plans end to Palestinian embargo
• N. Korea invites UN nuclear inspectors
• NATO image problem: civilian deaths
• U.S. launches new offensive in Baghdad
• U.S. study program in Iran sees struggle
• Laos plot evokes memories among Hmong
• U.S. Open ·MLB ·NBA Finals ·Tennis ·NFL ·Soccer

http://news.yahoo.com/i/721

Why only 11 posts on last nights thread??

That is quite anemic posting y'all.

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 06/16/2007 - 3:12pm.

Why only 11 posts on last nights thread??

That is quite anemic posting y'all.

Maybe the usual posting alcoholics/druggies were quite drunk or very high. 8-/

I spent a while howling with the dog in the back yard. It really confused her.

Fernando;

You want permission, an invitation, or a cold IPA across yer mug?

to get that awful sight out of my mind. Condi is a monster.

Yikes...although her own face is scarier!

Gina

Actually, yeah
Submitted by Fernando on Sat, 06/16/2007 - 3:45pm.
I spent a while howling with the dog in the back yard. It really confused her.

David Berkowitz smiles knowingly.

http://counterpunch.org/halle06162007.html

-snip

"Like too many liberals, both now and in the Weimar Republic, one can always count on Rothschild and the Progressive for a howl of outrage.

Except when it matters."

---
if anyone did see the above discussed on liberal websites - i.e. dkos, the most popular (rolling eyes) awardwinning "HuffPost," Mydd, Atrios etc. ... please comment and post link if possible.

A LOT OF FOOD FOR THOUGHT BEFORE THE PRIMARIES - don't miss

---------

Obama's Siren Song

By GLEN FORD

Barack Obama is the antithesis of Black Power, a man who promises with every word he speaks, with every nuance of phrase and body language, and through his voting record as a U.S. Senator, that he personifies the definitive end of Black organized struggle in the United States - a unilateral surrender to white racism. This is his appeal to the white masses: that they will no longer be challenged to confront history, or to relinquish privilege in the present.

Obama's siren song to African Americans is of an entirely different nature. He does not have to sing it; we provide the music, ourselves. The lyrics and melody are actually alien to Obama, but he has heard them off and on in his strange sojourn through life, and senses their power to sway us. He understands that most of us will demand nothing from him - not even elemental allegiance. His "Black" flank, he knows, is covered, while his white "progressive" flank is neutralized and ...

read on
http://www.counterpunch.org/ford06132007.html

----
P.S. Message to anyone who missed it the first time:
If You Got your knickers in a twist right now and expect a disclaimer - You don't know me.

The Wages of Corruption and Occupation

Welcome to "Palestine"

By ROBERT FISK

"How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East. ...."

read on
http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk06162007.html

Submitted by Fernando on Sat, 06/16/2007 - 3:45pm.
I spent a while howling with the dog in the back yard. It really confused her.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your accent threw her off.

HERE

Not sure why she looked at me funny Bait. I think it was affecting the timing of her own howling.

in the teeth again:

Looks like The Sopranos is the TV show of choice for Mafia/Psycho stuff addicted TV pundits of "substance," like Keith Olbermann.
You couldn't pay me enough ...

------
Was Tony Soprano the Teacher or the Taught?

The Psychopathology of Shrinks

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

"Summer’s hot breath draws closer and the psychoanalysts of New York and Boston prepare their patients for the difficult two or three weeks of holiday separation. Traditionally, many Boston shrinks take their seaside weeks on Cape Cod, around Truro, sunning and gossiping while their patients muster on their beach towels a few hundred yards away. The touching scene is duplicated further south around the Hamptons on Long Island.

Undoubtedly beach chat among both analysts and analysands will ripple over the June excitements of the psychoanalytic trade ..."

read on

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06162007.html

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/motorsport/story/0,,2105008,00.html

Live (which it is) lap-by-lap (which it isn't) report

Le Mans 24-hour race: as it happened 2pm-10pm (including Ask The Expert with Mr Petrol)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above link is some crazy Limey who uses his own version of Gonzo journalism. I just wanted some Le Mans race information and I got the British ghost of Hunter Thompson instead, mate.

I think of Pluto ;-)

http://images.google.com/images?q=pluto+the+dog&hl=en&um=1&sa=X&oi=image...

"Do you notice that the US government (and US media--they always follow along) refers to the Lebanese government as "the democratically-elected government of Fu'ad Sanyuah" although it never refers to the Palestinian government as "the democratically-elected government of Isma`il Haniyyah"?"

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/

switched the channels yesterday and came across Christiane Amanpour on CNN discuss Hamas, Gaza, the West Bank, the whole story .... and what a difference it was to hear her reports and opinions again ./. MSNBC et al. She is still the very best IMO.

Gave up on CNN cause couldn't stand Blitzer et al anymore but CA alone is worth it to go back ...

byebye
happy weekend :)

gimme summin a lil bushie

would you please

"yeah, whatever"

"the system is working"

Just got home from work. The water park was packed. No space in the parking lot. The reason....it was 97 here today!

Hot, hot, hot!! and humid.

my i-ran alarm clock

will soon sound off

to compose this bullshit post...

and shift the washing machine for 1

to hop into my leave it to beaver shower

then drag a comb across my head

((bang)) CRASH!! into the fucking door

(when did that get there) -- FUCK!!

and wait for ma' mer'm to pick me up

in her big ol' soccer mom pick-up truck

"load me in the back momma, fer arm yer hog-boy son"

to watch my 9 y.o. neph play foo'z-ball

(ripping me away from my you-tubes)

NBC’s Tim Russert on presidential candidates refusing to have Fox News sponsor their debates: “It’s a TV show. If you can’t handle TV questions, how are you going to stand up to Iran, and North Korea, and the rest of the world?”

Steve Benen and Arlen Parsa explain why Russert is wrong. Atrios also highlights this exchange:

Hannity: I think the Democrats have gone further left than anybody would have anticipated. I think these bloggers have really gotten to them. I think they’re really positioning themselves that they’re gonna have a very difficult time moving center. Do you see that?”

Russert: Absolutely…

it was a chilly 1.1°C (34°F) here

jesus, joseph & mary

//I think these bloggers have really gotten to them//

they're aiming at the bloggers...

the bloggers are having an impact

hmmm...

*(turn the heat up)*

I'm Coming Out,
So You Better Get This Party Started.
Get This Party Started,
On A Saturday Night ;)
(if not tonight, then soon -- all should follow Sun Jim's advice :D

One More Time !
Submitted by MMRules on Sat, 06/16/2007
HOT Pink!

air-ono come back ;)

(ugh!)

no

boo

*sniff*

ciao

Private contractors in Iraq stage “parallel surge.” “Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.”

While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. […]

The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, in part because of bureaucratic delays and corruption in the Iraqi government licensing process, according to U.S. officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR200706...

Special Counsel Probe Into Rove’s Politicization Of Government Advances
The Office of Special Counsel, which has already recommended that GSA chief Lurita Doan be suspended or fired for participating in partisan activities while on the job, is now moving forward with its investigation of nearly 20 other administration agencies.

Eighteen agencies have been asked by the Office of Special Counsel to preserve electronic information dating back to January 2001 as part of its governmentwide investigation into alleged violations of the law that limits political activity in federal agencies.

The OSC task force investigating the claims has asked agencies, including the General Services Administration, to preserve all e-mail records, calendar information, phone logs and hard drives going back to the beginning of the Bush administration. The task force is headed by deputy OSC special counsel James Byrne.

The White House has admitted that roughly 20 agencies have received a PowerPoint briefing created by Karl Rove’s office “that included slides listing Democratic and Republican seats the White House viewed as vulnerable in 2008, a map of contested Senate seats and other information on 2008 election strategy.”

Politicization of the federal government has been illegal for decades. The 1939 Hatch Act specifically prohibits partisan campaign or electoral activities on federal government property, including federal agencies. But in 2005, Ken Mehlman, formerly one of Bush’s top political advisers, outlined the White House’s strategy of utilizing government resources for partisan gain:

One of the things that can happen in Washington when you work in an agency is that you forget who sent you there. And it’s important to remind people that you’re George Bush people. … If there’s one empire I want built, it’s the George Bush empire. [One Party Country, p. 102]

With that imperial partisanship in mind, the Bush White House has engaged in an unprecedented quest to politicize the federal government, giving briefings and PowerPoint presentations everywhere from the Interior Department to NASA on how to secure Republican victories. Said one Interior Department manager, “We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results” (One Party Country, p. 103). Bush loyalists in federal agencies have also helped generate millions for favored political candidates.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/16/counsel-hatch-probe/

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=alerts_recalls&id=5396717

Twins sick from counterfeit Colgate? A set of young twins became ill after using toothpaste

(Staten Island - WABC, June 15, 2007) - Two Staten Island youngsters were hospitalized after they became ill, possibly from brushing their teeth with counterfeit Colgate toothpaste that has since been recalled. Now, they are speaking out...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---Bait News Service---

Colgategate Intensifies

NYT: Bush 'strangely quiet' on 'Attorneygate' subpoenas RAW STORY
Published: Saturday June 16, 2007

Two former White House officials will face subpoenas for their involvement in the firing of 8 US Attorneys earlier this year, as Michael Roston reported for RAW STORY Wednesday.

House Judiciary Committee investigators issued a subpoena for Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel and one-time Bush Supreme Court nominee, and the Senate issued one for Sara Taylor, a former top aide to Karl Rove. Both committees also sought a variety of documents from the White House.

In a column slated for Sunday's New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg notes that "President Bush was strangely quiet last week," even though he "had been quite vocal, and perfectly clear, back in March when Democrats first delivered their subpoena threat."

Bush had said, "I will oppose any attempts to subpoena White House officials," and added that he was "absolutely" willing to fight over subpoenas in court.

"But when the subpoenas actually arrived on Wednesday, for Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, the former White House political director, Bush said nothing," Stolberg observes. "The current White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding -- who recently beefed up his staff by hiring additional lawyers to handle the growing demands for documents and testimony -- has yet to offer a response."

Stolberg continues, "Those sounds of silence suggest that the White House is grappling with a dilemma. If Bush reaches an accommodation with lawmakers on testimony from Miers and Taylor, Democrats will inevitably demand similar terms for Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser. The last thing Bush wants is Rove going up to Capitol Hill to submit to questions from Democrats."

Developing...

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/NYT_Bush_strangely_quiet_on_Attorneygate_0...

US administration debates new Iran strategy: report
Published: Friday June 15, 2007

An internal debate is underway in the administration of US President George W. Bush on whether the current diplomatic approach toward Iran has any hope of halting the country's nuclear program, The New York Times reported on its website Friday.

Citing unnamed senior administration officials, the newspaper said the debate has pitted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her deputies against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in the office of Vice President Richard Cheney.

Cheney's aides are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, the report said.

One year ago, Rice spokes in favor of the United States joining forces with Europe, Russia and China to press Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.

But since then, Iran has installed more than a thousand centrifuges to enrich uranium, and the International Atomic Energy Agency predicted that 8,000 or so could be spinning by the end of the year.

Those numbers are at the core of the debate over whether Bush should warn Iran’s leaders that he will not allow them to get beyond some yet-undefined milestones, leaving the implication that a military strike on the country’s facilities is still an option, the paper said.

Friends and associates of Rice say she has increasingly moved toward the European position that the diplomatic path she has laid out is the only real option for Bush, The Times said.

But conservatives inside the administration have continued in private to press for a tougher line, making arguments that their allies outside government are voicing publicly, the report said.

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_administration_debates_new_Iran__0615200...

BAGHDAD (AP) - Security forces in Baghdad have full control in only 40 percent of the city five months into the pacification campaign, a top American general said Saturday as U.S. troops began an offensive against two al-Qaida strongholds on the capital's southern outskirts.

The military, meanwhile, reported that paratroopers had found the ID cards of two missing U.S. soldiers at an al-Qaida safe house 100 miles north of where they were captured last month, but there was no sign of the men. The house contained computers, video equipment and weapons.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said American troops launched the offensive in Baghdad's Arab Jabour and Salman Pac neighborhoods Friday night. It was the first time in three years that U.S. soldiers entered those areas, where al-Qaida militants build car bombs and launch Katyusha rockets at American bases and Shiite Muslim neighborhoods.

The overall commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, said during a news conference with visiting Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the operation would put troops into key al-Qaida-held areas surrounding Baghdad.

Odierno said there was a long way to go in retaking the city from Shiite Muslim militias, Sunni Arab insurgents and al-Qaida terrorists. He said only about "40 percent is really very safe on a routine basis" - with about 30 percent lacking control and a further 30 percent suffering "a high level of violence."

The U.S. ground forces commander discussed the new offensive and the security situation in an interview with two reporters as he visited an American outpost near the main market in the capital's southern Dora district, a major Sunni Arab stronghold.

http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fapnews.myway.co...

Countdown: Hot DOJ-On-DOJ Action
By: Logan Murphy on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 9:31 AM - PDT On Friday night’s “Countdown” Alison Stewart brings in the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to break down the latest DOJ investigation into AG Alberto Gonzales and whether he tried to shape the testimony of then White House liaison Monica Goodling. They also touched on a TPM Muckraker story, involving an anonymous DOJ memo which stated that Bradley Schlozman, the former U.S. Attorney for Kansas City and controversial deputy head at the Civil Rights Division, had been targeting black, female attorneys and replacing them with “good Americans.” Translation; White Christian Men.

Download (1298) | Play (1407) Download (547) | Play (829)

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/06/16/countdown-hot-doj-on-doj-action...

Submitted by WiccanDruid on Sat, 06/16/2007 - 6:54pm.

Again? Next time give me two or three days to get ready. The last one was just a quick hack job for fun. Those things are better if there is also a Republican debate or something we can tease about.