One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State

In regards to Py's earlier post on the "beginning" of the election campaign, it's nice to see how things have changed.

Remember this picture?


Well, it seems that some things are, ahem, a little different now:

And while I agree with Py that the 2008 election is far from decided right now, that blue picture shore duz warm my heart.

Another Bad Idea

There are so many bad ideas in our current society that I can be called "petty" for being upset about this, but I'm against this idea:

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- For the first time Tuesday, baseball general managers recommended instant replay be used to help umpires make difficult decisions.

The recommendation, by a 25-5 vote, was limited to boundary calls -- whether potential home runs are fair or foul, whether balls go over fences or hit the top and bounce back, and whether fans interfere with possible homers.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AuhD4G5t2tyKykgQoeipLGgRvLYF?slug=ap-instantreplay&prov=ap&type=lgns

I've been a baseball fan since I was a small child, and played for decades, so maybe I'm a traditionalist. But a part of the beauty of the game is the human factor of the umpires. In the course of the long season, bad calls even out. And they give us fans something to argue about. Instant replay will only slow the game down, while removing some of the inherent emotion.
Then again, I still oppose the designated hitter rule.

52 Weeks

Today we are 52 weeks away from the election, so it's now truly campaign season (yeah, I know the campaigns started a long time ago, but I consider that "pre-season"). Now we'll get to see who's got the best arm when slinging the mud. We'll watch the media spin the images to fit the pre-planned narrative. By the time the actual votes are cast, the average voter will be disgusted with the entire process. They'll be voting for whoever they hate the least.
Brilliant prognostication, right? Not really. Just the observations of a political junkie who's been involved in every election since 1968.
The consensus amongst the pundits seems to be that the Dems are a shoe in, in the wake of the disaster that is shrub. I don't buy it. There is plenty of time for slime.
Likewise, the punditocracy has chosen Hillary as the winning Dem. I remain unconvinced. While she has great name recognition, she's not that popular with the general public. The question is whether Obama/Edwards/Other can take advantage of the opening.
On the rethuglican side...agh, I'm not going there (I would rather retain my lunch). Suffice to say that the eventual nominee will be a white guy who the media will portray as strong and manly. The talking heads will swoon over him while blathering for hours on any petty flaw they can find on the Democratic nominee.
Thanks to the flurry of early primaries, the nominees will probably be chosen by February, leaving plenty of time for a long mud slinging season. But there is a real possibility that all the early primaries will split between candidates, creating an intense political playoff lasting into March. We'll see.
The bottom line is that we will not get the person who would be the best President, but rather the person with the best mud slinging and dodging talent. It's a strange, sad system.

Pakistan

I have been trying to write a "smart" post on Pakistan, but it keeps falling apart. Basically, "what a fucking mess" is not a profound insight. The best insight I've come to is the old axiom "there are no national allies, only national interests".

General Musharraf is engaging in a power consolidation. He's suspended the courts, arrested the opposition, and is now dealing with rioting lawyers. It has nothing to do with terrorism, as Musharraf has basically taken the appeasement route with the islamist factions, ceding a fair amount of autonomy to the tribal regions in the northeast.

Shrub and Condi are calling for a return to "democracy" and elections. But you can tell that they really don't want it. Musharraf has been our guy, and they don't want to risk the possibility that Pakistan would end up with a leader less friendly to America.

And there are the nukes.

For real analysis, I suggest Barnett Rubin at Informed Comment: Global Affairs

Added: Shrub adds his own brand of ... well...whatever he adds:

on Secretary Rice's recent phone call with President Musharraf. I asked the Secretary to call him to convey this message: that we expect there to be elections as soon as possible, and that the President should remove his military uniform.

So he told Condi to tell Musharraf to "get naked"? That's just weird.

(sorry. the writers guild is on strike.)

Inflating Value

Yesterday I jokingly posted the results of "what is your blog worth?". I found some amusement that somehow this blog could have a dollar value, since it produces nothing tangible or marketable.
But it got me thinking about the inflating value that markets place on assets that have no intrinsic worth. As Citibank is reporting a loss of $11 billion dollars in what are basically unregulated markets that are based purely on speculation, I'm wondering where the next shoe will drop. I look at the stock market which currently operates like a giant casino, as opposed to an actual investment in solid business practices. Google is now the fifth most "valuable" corporation, based on stock prices. This makes no sense. I mean, Google is a wonderful thing, but what do they actually produce? Advertisements to sell products that others produce.
I'm no economist, but I wonder how much of our financial system is really one big ponzi scheme? The real estate bubble assumed that there would always be someone who would pay more for the house in the future. The stock market assumes that someone will be willing to pay more for the stock tomorrow. And the federal budget assumes that other countries will continue to buy our debt.
How many of these "assets" have any more intrinsic value than this blog?

Story Time

Over at Jones Town our dear friend Dcup of PoliTits has written a masterful piece of short fiction. I strongly suggest that you go read. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but suffice to say that it's quite timely and it fits with some of the feelings of paranoia that occur as a result of our current political climate.

Pygalgia Sells Out

I decided to plug Pygalgia into "how much is your blog worth?" and got this as a result:

Your blog, http://www.pygalgia.blogspot.com/, is worth
$19,758.90

My blog is worth $19,758.90.
How much is your blog worth?

So Pygalgia is now up for sale. Heck, I'll settle for the straight $19K, never mind the change.

Salt River Pic

Some friends came by last night, and we had a great visit. "D" makes wonderful mead. Just plain delicious. However, I am now reminded that mead can cause hangovers (not bad, but slightly foggy). The pic is from a trip that said friends and I were on this past spring.

Changing Times

Tonight, most of you get to set your clocks back. Not me. I get to change time zones. I get to move from Pacific time to Central time without even getting out of bed. That's one advantage to living here. When I lived in other states, I hated the disruption of time changes. I have a very stable bio-rhythm which takes about 2 weeks to adjust to changes.

So, does the time change mess with you, or is it no big deal?

He Vetoed What?

OK, this is mind numbingly stupid. Shrub vetoed the water resources development act, even though it passed congress with enough support to override the veto?

President Bush has yet to be truly challenged on any of his vetoes of Democratic bills this year.

But with his Friday veto of the water resources development act, known by the acronym WRDA, Bush may have finally found something that unifies Congress against the veto pen.

The WRDA bill passed both chambers of Congress with much more than the two-thirds margin required to override a veto, but the White House has decided to create a confrontation over spending in the bill because $9 billion was added to the measure, which funds water infrastructure projects around the nation. The legislation's total cost is about $23 billion, and it has won such widespread support in Congress because it would help with hurricane protection, flood mitigation and wetlands restoration.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/1107/Bush_veto_of_water_bill_may_be_nixed.html

In light of the water crisis in Georgia, and pending water shortages around the country, the WRDA bill is actually way too little, too late. But this might be the stupidest veto I've seen in my lifetime. Shrub is a lame duck, so he has nothing to lose. But the country does. Earlier this week, he was bitching about congress not getting appropriations bills to his desk. Now he vetoes another one.

We deserve better.

Masked Boobie

It's Friday. Here's a masked Boobie, hoping to make you smile.

An Interesting Plan

Well, this doesn't fit with shrub's anti-Iranian rhetoric. Our friend Saudi Arabia is offering nuclear cooperation with Iran:

U.S.-allied Gulf states are willing to set up a body to provide enriched uranium to Iran to defuse Tehran's stand-off with the West over its nuclear plan, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister told a newspaper on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries -- Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- share Western concerns that Iran's nuclear energy program will lead to it acquiring atomic bombs, a claim Tehran denies.

"We have proposed a solution, which is to create a consortium for all users of enriched uranium in the Middle East," foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED).

"(We will) do it in a collective manner through a consortium that will distribute according to needs, give each plant its own necessary amount, and ensure no use of this enriched uranium for atomic weapons," he said, according to MEED's Web site.

Prince Saud said Iran was considering the offer, which envisages building a plant in a neutral country.

"We believe it should be in a neutral country -- Switzerland, for instance," said Prince Saud. "Any plant in the Middle East that needs enriched uranium would get its quota. I don't think other Arab states would refuse. In fact ... other Arab countries have expressed a desire to be part of the proposal."

"They (Iran) have responded that it is an interesting idea and they will come back to us. We hope the Iranians will accept this proposal. We continue to talk to them and urge them not only to look at the issue from the perspective of the needs of Iran for energy, but also in the interests of the security of the region."

The six Gulf Arab states have announced plans to start their own nuclear energy program, raising concern over an arms race in the world's top oil exporting region.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071101/ts_nm/iran_nuclear_saudi_dc_2&printer=1;_ylt=AkZyB4yZ9zLZiBEdZZVPpxtg.3QA

It's actually a very rational idea, and coupled with Russia's nuclear offer to Iran, could allow Iran to have nuclear energy with a much lower risk of nuclear weapons.

Of course, this would remove one of shrub's justifications for a war with Iran. By offering to work with Iran, Prince Saud has changed the whole Middle East dynamic.

Cheney is probably drop kicking kittens as he reads this.

Shanker Tackles Uranium

One of the major environmental issues in this region is the contamination left from uranium mining. When the mines shut down in the late 80's, there was no clean up of the radioactive tailing's, and the result has been an estimated 3500 deaths from lung disease. Now, Howard Shanker (http://www.howardshankerforcongress.com/) is trying to get congress to act:

Many of you have read about the testimony in recent Congressional hearings presented to Rep. Henry Waxman, Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, regarding the legacy of uranium contamination on Navajo land. For decades, the Navajo Nation and many grass roots organizations have been trying to address this human tragedy in real terms -- with only marginal success.

Hopefully, one of the defining moments of this struggle took place last week. As one of the attorneys representing the Navajo Nation on the uranium contamination issue, I had the privilege of working with the Navajo delegation to help prepare them for this hearing. I was also honored to attend the hearing in Washington, D.C. and to monitor the testimony and questions first hand. In spite of ongoing discussions with the Bureau of Indian Affairs ("BIA"), the Department of Energy ("DOE"), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA"), and limited clean up of specific areas, this was the first sense I had that something meaningful may actually be accomplished-that this tragic legacy of contamination may eventually be addressed on a large scale.

An L.A. Times article from November 2006 first alerted Chairman Waxman to the plight of the Navajo - not the fact that the federal government had utterly failed to
address this mess for decades. As outlined in the L.A. Times article, "from 1944 to 1986, 3.9 million tons of uranium ore were chiseled and blasted from the mountains and plains. The mines provided uranium for the Manhattan project, the top-secret effort to develop an atomic bomb . . . private companies operated the mines, but the U.S. government was the sole customer. . . . As the Cold War threat gradually diminished over the next two decades, more than 1,000 mines and four processing mills on tribal land shut down." The radioactive waste and debris from these operations, however, largely remains. People live in and around uranium-contaminated areas. Livestock grazes and children play amongst radioactive waste and debris. There is a palpable threat of radioactive contamination to the ground water in many areas.

At the hearing, Edith Hood, while choking back tears, talked about the mining waste near her home in the Church Rock area, and the sickness and illnesses that plagued her and her family. These sentiments were echoed by Larry King and Ray Manygoats. Phil Harrison, although a Navajo Nation Council Delegate, testified as to his personal experience with uranium contamination. George Arthur, also a Council
Delegate, testified in his capacity as the Chairman of the Navajo Natural Resources Committee. Mr. Arthur made it clear to the Committee that enough study has been done. It was now time for the federal government to take action to address this ongoing human tragedy. Stephen Etsity, the head of the Navajo EPA, managed to bring Navajo soil (from the Tuba City area) into the hearing chambers, where he used a device to demonstrate the existence of gamma radiation.

It was, however, the Committee's questioning of government officials following the Navajo testimony that truly shed light on the process. Chairman Waxman led the charge, berating officials from EPA, DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ("NRC"), Indian Health Services ("IHS"), and BIA. Waxman asked what these agencies needed to make this situation right. He also commanded that the parties come back before the Committee on December 12 to discuss what, if any, progress has been made. I must add, however, that I was also impressed with the passion and questioning of Congressman Udall from New Mexico -- as he pressed the head of the BIA as to his understanding of the government's trust responsibility to the tribes. Congresswoman McCollum from Minnesota was also among the representatives who presented a strong showing of support for the Navajo Nation.

Although skepticism in matters such as these is usually the rule, I left the hearing with a feeling of hope. I am hopeful that Congress will follow through on the journey it has apparently committed to beginning. As a candidate for Arizona's Congressional District 1, not just an attorney helping to represent the Navajo Nation, one of my priorities has been and will continue to be to address this ongoing human tragedy on the Navajo Nation.

Regular readers know that I'm supporting Mr. Shanker here in AZ-01, both because of his stance on a wide variety of issues and his overall integrity, and I'm glad he's standing up for the Navajo Nation on the uranium issue. In light of the current push for increased nuclear power, it's important to address the problems from past uranium mining to ensure that we don't repeat past mistakes.
I am once again reminded why I think Howard would be a damn good representative in congress.

The AG Quandary

I've been thinking about the Mukasy for attorney general nomination and the "waterboarding" issue. Many smarter blogs have pointed out that if Mukasy admitted that waterboarding is torture, he would then be obligated to prosecute members of the CIA and others for their acts.
And this got me thinking of the essential quandary facing congress regarding the next attorney general. If the AG is to uphold the constitution, they must prosecute members of the administration. Shrub is not going to nominate anyone who will prosecute his people. Therefore, any shrub nominee is going to be constitutionally unacceptable.
I believe that congress should reject Mukasy, and most probably any other shrub nominee, but that leads to another problem. How long can the justice department, and the country, operate without an attorney general? Given that the administration won't prosecute itself, congress is the last line of defense.
The constitutional answer would be impeachment. But congress lacks the strength to impeach.
It's a huge dilemma, with no good answer in sight.

Morality and Sexuality

Zymurgian and I were talking, and he brought up a woman that I was having an affair with a few years ago. He cooked one fine dinner, so I was ready to tell the story: It was all about the sex. She is a very nice lady, but not the kind of woman I would want to spend my life with. Her husband is in a very high paying field, and they live the "good life". She liked the lifestyle. The only problem in their relationship is that he doesn't like sex. He told her it's "unsanitary". She is a normal woman (well, more enthusiastic than average).
So we had an affair. A very sexual affair. She spent a river trip with me (on which we had a hell of a lot of fun), and several other trysts.
Zymurgian asked if her husband knew. I've spent time with her husband, and I think he knew but really didn't care.
Was our sexual relationship moral or immoral? I know that I thought it was moral, but some have told me I'm wrong.

Halloween

I'm not doing anything special for Halloween, but I was amused by a local NPR news story that Halloween generally marks the end of the Tarantula mating season here in Arizona. That's right, Tarantulas have a mating season. Late summer to early fall:

Male tarantulas mature when they are 10 to 12 years of age, at which time they leave their burrows in search of females. Upon finding the burrow of a mature female—she’s usually at least 10 years old—the male will announce himself by stroking the silk at the top of the burrow and tapping particular sequences that the female responds to. During mating, the male must reach under the female to insert his pedipalp into her gonopore to deposit sperm. He is particularly vulnerable to predation by the female when mating. The male’s first pair of legs has a “spur”located behind the knee which he uses to hold the female above him during copulation. After copulation the male makes a hasty retreat. The female lays her eggs in a burrow, sometimes staying with them. The young remain in the burrow until they disperse.

http://www.desertmuseum.org/books/nhsd_tarantula.php

They're a pretty common sight around here, but they might give some city folk a good Halloween scare.

I would have worn a costume if I could have found a "flying zombie vampire pig" disguise, but, alas, none were available.

Added: But this picture is pretty scary:

(found somewhere on the web)

Some Thoughts on the Debate

I watched last nights debate (yeah, masochistic behavior of a political junkie), and here are a few of my thoughts:
The "lightning round" format sucks. Giving each candidate 30 seconds to answer policy questions? Impossible to do. There is no serious policy question that can be answered in 30 seconds. All you can do is spew out a "talking point" or a "sound bite". It's a fine format for a game show, but not a real, important debate. Unfortunately, our media treats the campaign for president as one big game show. Entertainment trumps substance.
Brian Williams was bad, but Tim Russert was absolutely horrible in asking "gotcha" questions. The whole debate was a series of Republican based attack points, designed to provoke fights, mud slinging, or other embarrassments. Russert oozed a slimy contempt toward everybody.
Everybody is running against Hillary Clinton, whom the media have already crowned. It was the "6 guys vs. Clinton" food fight that Russert/Williams were trying to provoke, and they were mostly successful.
Clinton handled it fairly well, appearing confident and unflappable while basically saying nothing (or contradicting herself). She's good at selling an image, but carefully avoided any substance. I hate this type of politics, but it will be tough to beat. She's slick, and no one landed a major blow against her. If the debate were a game show, she won.
Barack Obama came off poorly, looking rather tired and uninspired. His message, which seemed to be "can't we all just get along" while throwing in some subtle digs at Clinton, got mixed results. He was much better at handling questions on policy, and it was clear that he would prefer to discuss substantive ideas over playing "gotcha", but he got sucked into the game. Overall, he was fairly flat.
John Edwards looked good, and he was able to make some arguments with substance while attacking Hillary. In a "real" debate, he did very well. In this "food fight", Hillary was able to duck everything he threw.
Chris Dodd continues to be a fiery constitutionalist. In a true intellectual debate, he would have been tough to beat. In the "game show" debate, he never had a chance.
Bill Richardson continues to be Bill Richardson: calm, intelligent, extremely experienced, and (unfortunately) completely uninspiring. In a serious campaign to choose the person most qualified to be president, he would be a serious contender. In the media circus, he doesn't stand a chance.
Dennis Kucinich...what can you say? The guy makes a lot of sense, but ends up looking goofy at the same time. Let's face it, the media finds him an easy target to make fun of because he's an easy target. Kucinich has some really good policy positions which are completely ignored, as Russert would much rather ask him about UFO's. It's a sad reality.
Joe Biden is verbose. Experienced and knowledgeable, therefore almost invisible, the format of the debate made him irrelevant.
Is Clinton inevitable? No. But she does have a large advantage thanks to the media. For either Edwards or Obama to defeat her, they will need a "blockbuster" performance.
That is the current sad state of politics in America. The person who ends up holding the most powerful office on the planet will be chosen by a process similar to "American Idol".

Safety

Our shrub likes to claim he's makin' us safer. That's why he needs all kinds of secret authority to ignore the constitution.
The latest example of shrub keepin' us safer comes from the Consumer Product SAFETY Commission:

But as it turns out, Bush’s appointed chief of the CPSC wants less money, a smaller staff, and weaker rules for product safety.

The nation’s top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation intended to strengthen the agency, which polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.

On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistle-blowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.

That's right; less inspection and enforcement of product safety is GOOD for you!
We deserve better.

Dam Problems

As if Iraq wasn't enough of a disaster, Mosul could be wiped out if this dam goes:

AT THE MOSUL DAM, Iraq -- The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. officials.

Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. "The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability," in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/29/AR2007102902193.html

Of course, we're trying to fix it...right?

At the same time, a U.S. reconstruction project to help shore up the dam in northern Iraq has been marred by incompetence and mismanagement, according to Iraqi officials and a report by a U.S. oversight agency to be released Tuesday. The reconstruction project, worth at least $27 million, was not intended to be a permanent solution to the dam's deficiencies.

"In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world," the Army Corps concluded in September 2006, according to the report to be released Tuesday. "If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely."

The effort to prevent a failure of the dam has been complicated by behind-the-scenes wrangling between Iraqi and U.S. officials over the severity of the problem and how much money should be allocated to fix it. The Army Corps has recommended building a second dam downstream as a fail-safe measure, but Iraqi officials have rejected the proposal, arguing that it is unnecessary and too expensive.

...

Almost immediately after the dam was completed in the early 1980s, engineers began injecting the dam with grout, a liquefied mixture of cement and other additives. More than 50,000 tons of material have been pumped into the dam since then in a continual effort to prevent the structure, which can hold up to 3 trillion gallons of water, from collapsing.

And then we have more mind numbing stupidity from the administration:

The debate has taken place largely out of public view because both Iraqi and U.S. Embassy officials have refused to discuss the details of safety studies -- commissioned by the U.S. government for at least $6 million -- so as not to frighten Iraqi citizens. Portions of the draft report were read to The Washington Post by an Army Corps official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The Post also reviewed an Army Corps PowerPoint presentation on the dam.

How patronizing is this? We don't want to frighten the Iraqi's, so we won't tell them about the risk? First, many people in Iraq can read the WaPo. Second, a good evacuation plan could save many thousands of lives in the event of a collapse.

Is there anything in Iraq that we haven't screwed up?

A National Shame

The U.N. takes a look at shrubs "war on ..." practices, and is not pleased:

Martin Scheinin, the U.N.'s independent investigator on human rights in the fight against terrorism, said in a report released Monday that he's concerned about U.S. detention practices, military courts and interrogation techniques.

He urged the U.S. government to end the CIA practice of extraordinary rendition, in which terrorism suspects are taken to foreign countries for interrogation.

...

Scheinin, a law professor from Finland appointed by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, issued a preliminary report after visiting the United States in May. His final report was issued on Monday, coinciding with the report to the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2007/10/un_try_or_release_enemy_combat.php

That would be the human rights commission that the U.S. was kicked off of a few years back. It's a sad time for America, once the beacon of human rights, is now in violation of international law:

In the report, Scheinin called for the abolition of the military commissions which were established in 2001 by President and declared unlawful by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006 because they were not authorized by Congress. Congress responded by passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Scheinin said the offenses in the 2006 law — including terrorism, wrongfully aiding the enemy, spying and conspiracy — "go beyond offenses under the laws of war." He argued that the offense did not apply at the time of the alleged acts by detainees, and maintained that the commissions are applying criminal law retroactively in violation of international law.

Due to various concerns, Scheinin recommended the abolition of the commissions. "Wherever possible, ordinary civilian courts should be used to try terrorist suspects," he said.

Scheinin also recommended that the U.S. government abandon "the categorization of persons as `unlawful enemy combatants,'" calling it a "a term of convenience without legal effect."

The report called on the "United States to release or to put on trial those persons detained under that categorization."

While acknowledging the need to bring those accused of war crimes to justice, Scheinin emphasized that "the chance of ensuring a fair trial diminishes over time." He added that "the detention of persons for a period of several years without charge fundamentally undermines the right of fair trial."

Scheinin called on the U.S. to lift restrictions that prohibit Guantanamo Bay detainees to seek "full judicial review of their combatant status." The U.S. prohibition violates the International Covenant's prohibitions on arbitrary detention, the right to a judicial review which could grant freedom, and the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time, he said.

How did it come to this? Do we have any legitimacy left when we condemn human rights abuses in other countries? If our own congress lacks the will to end this type of abuse, how much of an impact can the U.N. have?

We deserve better.

Studs!

Studs Terkel cranks out an Op-Ed for the NYTimes today, and it's a very good one on history and surveillance:

EARLIER this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet interceptions of the electronic communications of people in the United States. They also agreed to “immunize” American telephone companies from lawsuits charging that after 9/11 some companies collaborated with the government to violate the Constitution and
existing federal law. I am a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, and I hope Congress thinks carefully before denying me, and millions of other Americans, our day in court.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29terkel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

At 95 years old, Studs is a cultural icon with a long and fiesty history. His perspective:

During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that politically active Americans view their relationship with government. In 1920, during my youth, I recall the Palmer raids in which more than 10,000 people were rounded up, most because they were members of particular labor unions or belonged to groups that advocated change in American domestic or foreign policy. Unrestrained surveillance was used to further the investigations leading to these detentions, and the Bureau of Investigation — the forerunner to the F.B.I. — eventually created a database on the activities of individuals. This activity continued through the Red Scare of the period.

In the 1950s, during the sad period known as the McCarthy era, one’s political beliefs again served as a rationale for government monitoring. Individual corporations and entire industries were coerced by government leaders into informing on individuals and barring their ability to earn a living.

I was among those blacklisted for my political beliefs. My crime? I had signed petitions. Lots of them. I had signed on in opposition to Jim Crow laws and poll taxes and in favor of rent control and pacifism. Because the petitions were thought to be Communist-inspired, I lost my ability to work in television and radio after refusing to say that I had been “duped” into signing my name to these causes.

By the 1960s, the inequities in civil rights and the debate over the Vietnam war spurred social justice movements. The government’s response? More surveillance. In the name of national security, the F.B.I. conducted warrantless wiretaps of political activists, journalists, former White House staff members and even a member of Congress.

Terkel is a great writer, and a true giant in American cultural history, chronicling the people and times in ways that both outrage and inspire the reader. This column has both:

Compounding these wrongs, Congress is moving in a haphazard fashion to provide a “get out of jail free card” to the telephone companies that violated the rights of their subscribers. Some in Congress argue that this law-breaking is forgivable because it was done to help the government in a time of crisis. But it’s impossible for Congress to know the motivations of these companies or to know how the government will use the private information it received from them.

And it is not as though the telecommunications companies did not know that their actions were illegal. Judge Vaughn Walker of federal district court in San Francisco, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, noted that in an opinion in one of the immunity provision lawsuits the “very action in question has previously been held unlawful.”

I have observed and written about American life for some time. In truth, nothing much surprises me anymore. But I always feel uplifted by this: Given the facts and an opportunity to act, the body politic generally does the right thing. By revealing the truth in a public forum, the American people will have the facts to play their historic, heroic role in putting our nation back on the path toward freedom. That is why we deserve our day in court.

Studs Terkel is the author of the forthcoming “Touch and Go: A Memoir.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29terkel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Keep fighting the good fight, Mr. Terkel. I wish I had his optimism, but it improved my mood just by having his wisdom for part of my morning reading.

Tonights Joke

For a while this evening, one corner of the brewery was "Pygalgia". Sweaterman, Zymurgian, Gandhisxmas, and I were all together for a beer. And 3 dozen unwritten posts were debated. Bottom line: we're a pretty lazy group of bloggers.

But we can tell jokes.

My contribution:

Two early Cavemen, Ugh and Thak, are sitting by a fire.
Ugh is really good at naming things. He named "rock" and "tree", then he even found the word "wet". Thak was impressed.So, while sitting by the fire, Ugh looks at his hand and tells Thak " I use this hand to throw rock. I use this hand to cut meat. I'll call this hand the 'right hand', because it is the 'right' hand to use".
Thak has to ask him "what will you call the one that's left?".

Please feel free to put your joke in the comments.

Added: The joke is funnier when acted out.

Saturday Time Wasters

A couple of perfectly good wastes of time for a Saturday. First, from Bing at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes, you can find out what you did in a past life . Here's mine:

Your past life diagnosis:

---

I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Italy around the year 575. Your profession was that of a librarian, priest or keeper of tribal relics.

---

Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Seeker of truth and wisdom. You could have seen your future lives.
Others perceived you as an idealist illuminating path to future.

---

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
Your lesson is to develop a kind attitude towards people, and to acquire the gift of understanding and compassion.

---

Do you remember now?

Another minor entertainment: Virtual Bubble Wrap:

Sometimes we miss stupid things when we move into a more green lifestyle. Yes, one of the things I most miss is the easily-reusable, but non-biodegradable, petro-chemical-based packing material, bubble wrap.

I don't miss using it...no...I miss destroying it. Turning it from a useful product into a sheet of pure trash. And while I know that popping bubble wrap is no good for anyone, that doesn't stop me from wanting to do it.

Which is why I'm so happy that I've found a way to artificially pop bubble wrap in the virtual world. Check it out, and don't forget to go into manic mode.

Hope that someone's Saturday isn't totally wasted.

Added: And Aliens in the news:

A GOVERNMENT investigation into a series of unexplained fires in fridges, televisions and mobile phones in an Italian village has concluded that the responsibility lies with "aliens testing secret weapons".

In scenes similar to the drama series The X-Files, Canneto di Caronia on Sicily was the centre of world attention three years ago after residents reported everyday household objects - electrical appliances, a pile of wedding presents and furniture - bursting into flames.

Dozens of experts including scientists, electrical engineers and military experts, arrived in the village, in the north of the island, to investigate. One amazed scientist reported seeing an unplugged electrical cable burst into flames.

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1714062007&format=print

No word on the legal status of the aliens.

Signs for our Times

A couple of pics found on the 'net that seem to explain our current world.

A Boobie from Palmyra

This Friday's boobie came from a story on NPR. More here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15323690

Stupid Sanctions

Shrub had Condi announce a new round of sanctions against Iran. I'll let Prof. Cole explain why it's a bad idea:

The Bush administration announced wideranging new sanctions on Iran on Thursday, which target three Iranian banks, nine companies associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and several individuals, as well as the IRGC (roughly analogous to the National Guard in the US, i.e. a populist adjunct to the formal Iranian army).

These unilateral sanctions clearly reflect frustration on the part of Bush/Cheney that they have not been able to convince the UN Security Council to apply international sanctions. (Iran has not been demonstrated to be doing anything that is illegal in international law.)

The sanctions may work but may not. The Dutch Shell corporation is thinking seriously of bucking the US and helping develop Iranian oil and gas production. China is negotiating a big deal with Iran. The world is energy hungry. Iran has energy. The US is a debtor nation, and has gone even more deeply into debt under Bush. It may just not be able to stand in the way of the development of Iranians energy.

The hypocrisy of the Bush case is obvious when it complains about Iran supporting Hizbullah and Hamas. The Kurds based in American Iraq have done much worse things to Turkey in the past month than Hizbullah did to Israel in June of 2006. Yet when Israel launched a brutal and wideranging war on all of Lebanon, destroying precious infrastructure and dumping enormous amounts of oil into the Mediterranean, damaging Beirut airport, destroying essential bridges in Christian areas, and then releasing a million cluster bomblets on civilian areas in the last 3 days of the war-- when Israel did all that, Bush and Cheney applauded and argued against a 'premature' cease-fire! Yet they are trying to convince Turkey just to put up stoically with the PKK terrorists who have killed dozens of Turkish troops recently and kidnapped 8 (again, more than the number of Iraeli troops that were kidnapped). Bush's coddling of the PKK in Iraq is not different from Iran's support for Hizbullah, except that the PKK is a more dangerous and brutal organization than Hizbullah.

Not to mention the US-backed Kurdish front against Iran itself, as Farideh Farhi
explains.

Among the more fantastic charges that Bush made against Iran was that its government was actively arming and helping the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban are extremist Sunnis who hate, and have killed large numbers of Shiites. Shiite Iran is unlikely to support them. The neo-Taliban are a threat to the Karzai government, which represents the Northern Alliance (Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks) along with non-Taliban Pushtuns. The Hazara are Shiite clients of Iran, and both the Tajiks and the Uzbeks are close to Tehran. The neo-Taliban are being supported by Pakistan, which resents the Northern Alliance, not by Iran, which favors it.

That Iran is trying to destabilize the Shiite government in Baghdad is absurd. The Bush administration charge that Iran is the source of explosively formed projectiles is based on very little evidence and flies in the face of common sense; in fact these bombs are probably made in Iraq itself or perhaps come from Hizbullah in
Lebanon.

The charges are frankly ridiculous, and certainly are so if proportionality is taken into account. That is, if one bomb was sold by an Iranian arms dealer to the Taliban for profit, a hundred bombs were given to the Taliban by Pakistan for tactical reasons. Likewise, the Shiite militias in Iraq have killed very few American troops when the US troops have left the Shiites alone; most attacks on the US come from Sunni Arabs.

The Senate Kyl-Lieberman resolution helped legitimize this new Bush policy, which is why the senators should not have voted for it. It took us one more step down the
road to war with Iran.

http://www.juancole.com/

Why, oh why, are they so committed to an adversarial relationship with Iran? We need more allies, not more wars.

Strange Search Results

I'm sometimes amused by the searches that bring people here, but I got a real chuckle from one this morning. Searching for:
"Sex With Miners"
OK, I'll try to help you out. While I have never had sex with a miner, I don't think that there's anything wrong with it. As long as the miner is consenting, go for it.
But I would avoid doing it at the workplace.
Added: Thanks to Bing at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes, here's the truth:
"Sex with miners"

That's One Long List

The "terrorist watch list" is now at 755,000 names. And you may have wondered why the government wants more wiretaps? Silly you, there are 3/4 of a million terrorists to worry about:

WASHINGTON — The government's terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list's effectiveness.

The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.

"It undermines the authority of the list," says Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies. "There's just no rational, reasonable estimate that there's anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists."

The exact number of people on the list, compiled after 9/11 to help government agents keep terrorists out of the country, is unclear, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Some people may be on the list more than once because they are listed under multiple spellings.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who plans a hearing on the report today, says "serious hurdles remain if (the list) is to be as effective as we need it to be. Some of the concerns stem from its rapid growth, which could call into question the quality of the list itself."

About 53,000 people on the list were questioned since 2004, according to the GAO, which says the Homeland Security Department doesn't keep records on how many were denied entry or allowed into the country after questioning. Most were apparently released and allowed to enter, the GAO says.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-23-Watchlist_N.htm

Of course, none of these people are on the list for political reasons. The government would never do that, right?

And check out the growth rate:

The number of terror watch-list records [1] more than quadrupled over roughly a three-year period:

June 2004	158,374
May 2005	287,982
June 2006	515,906
May 2007	754,960

[1]: One record reflects one name but not necessarily one person.

Source: Julie Snider, USA TODAY; Government Accountability
Office

At this rate, we'll all be on the watch list in a few years. Or maybe we already are...

On Torture

I cannot believe I'm hearing this debate in America. Now it's Rudy G., echoing AG nominee Mukasey on "waterboarding":

Linda Gustitus, who is the president of a group called the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, began her question by saying that President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey (who happens to be an old friend of Mr. Giuliani’s) had “fudged” on the question of whether waterboarding is torture.

“I wanted to ask you two questions,’’ she said. “One, do you think waterboarding is torture? And two, do you think the president can order something like waterboarding even though it’s against U.S. and international law?’’

Mr. Giuliani responded: “Okay. First of all, I don’t believe the attorney general designate in any way was unclear on torture. I think Democrats said that; I don’t think he was.’’

Ms. Gustitus said: “He said he didn’t know if waterboarding is torture.”

Mr. Giuliani said: “Well, I’m not sure it is either. I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/in-his-own-words-giuliani-on-torture/

This should be simple: torture is wrong (and it doesn't work). America is better that this.

While I oppose torture, I'm willing to allow an exception. Anyone who claims that "waterboarding" isn't torture (such as Mukasy and Giuliani) should subject themselves to being "waterboarded" on national TV. If you are willing to subject other people to such treatment, you must undergo such treatment yourself first.

Whirlled Series

So, Rocks or Sox? I have a lot of Sox fans in my family, but I'm a western liberal. So I'm leaning Rocks, but if I were betting my money would be on the Sox.

800

For our 800th post, here's a picture of Slickhorn Canyon on the San Juan river. Getting to 800 posts is more than I would have imagined when the blog started, and I really want to thank Sweaterman, Gandhisxmas, and Zymurgian for their contributions. Also, a BIG thanks to readers and commenter's, whose encouragement has made this project worthwhile.

"Benefits"

So the White House scrubs the CDC report on the health risks associated with global warming. Then it gets weird:

Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before a Senate panel yesterday on the impact of climate change on public health, but the White House altered her testimony before it was delivered. References to potential health risks were removed; one CDC official said Gerberding’s draft “was eviscerated”; and details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming were deleted.

This afternoon, reporters asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino to explain what happened.

Q: On the CDC testimony, you said this morning on Dr. G’s testimony was not “watered down.” Can you tell us why it was altered to leave out any discussion of serious health effects related to global warming, and to leave out her original comment, that “CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern”?

PERINO: I haven’t seen the specific edits…. As I understand it, in the draft there was broad characterizations about climate-change science that didn’t align with the IPCC. And we have experts and scientists across this administration that can take a look at that testimony and say, “This is an error,” or, “This doesn’t make sense.” And so the decision was made on behalf of CDC to focus that testimony on public health benefits.

Well, there are public health benefits to climate change, as well, both benefits and concerns, that someone line Dr. Gerberding, who is the expert in the field, could address. And so that’s the testimony she provided yesterday….

“Public health benefits.” Seriously. The White House touched up the director of the CDC’s Senate testimony, coincidentally taking out the information the Bush gang finds politically inconvenient, and the president’s press secretary is left talking about the silver lining of global warming.

Too bad she didn’t get into specifics; I’d love to know what these “public health benefits” might be. Less hypothermia? Fewer instances of frostbite? A steep decline in the number of snowball-fight-related injuries?

Lest anyone think it was a slip of the tongue, Perino referenced these benefits three times in today’s briefing.

Q: So, why wasn’t the Senate committee able to hear Dr. Gerberding’s full opinion? Why were 10 pages of 14 taken out.

PERINO: I disagree, Peter…. We believe climate change is real; we believe that humans are largely responsible; we are working on a way to solve the problem. And in the meantime, we are working with experts, like Julie Gerberding, to figure out what are going to be the health benefits and the health concerns of climate change, of which there are many.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13351.html#more-13351

Note that last detail: 10 of 14 pages were removed from the report about health risks. Instead, we only get vague words about the "benefits". Some days, I think we've gone so far beyond Orwell that only Lewis Carroll could make sense of it.

A Problem on the Fireline

As the tragic fires in Southern California continue to (understandably) dominate the news, here's a pice of the story that is important:

SAN DIEGO -- As this county burned, firefighters confronted a familiar reality: too few resources and not enough personnel to effectively make a stand.

San Diego officials say fire conditions Monday would have overwhelmed even a larger, better equipped firefighting force. They point to progress made in the four years since the devastating Cedar and Paradise fires, including a better communications system, more air support and an automated evacuation call system.

But little else has changed. Just one new city fire station has been built since 2003, and many of the area's chronically underfunded fire departments still fall short of national standards.

Once again, firefighters here found themselves outrun by fast-moving fires that
hopscotched the county. And the logistical challenge of moving at least 233,000 households out of harm's way proved daunting.

"We're stretched about as thin as we could possibly be," said San Diego Fire Chief Tracy Jarman.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prepare23oct23,0,5020072,print.story?coll=la-home-center

Coupled with the lack of National Guard units available (they're busy bringing freedom to Iraq), who are supposed to be the first responders in case of disaster, it's another example of our misplaced priorities. We have gutted the nations infrastructure for the sake of tax cuts and wars. With each disaster or crisis, I'm reminded of the reasons for government and the result of our neglect. We deserve better.

Shrub is Getting More Delusional

Our shrub is using Iran as a justification for the missle defense shield, but to me it sounds like the delusional ravings of a paranoid schizophrenic:

Our intelligence community assesses that, with continued foreign assistance, Iran could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States and all of Europe before 2015. If it chooses to do so, and the international community does not take steps to prevent it, it is possible Iran could have this capability. And we need to take it seriously -- now.

Today, we have no way to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat, so we must deploy a missile defense system there that can.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071023-3.html

The various nutcase ravings about the "need to attack Iran" are getting crazier with each passing week, but this one is just plain insane. The missle defense shield doesn't work, so we must use it to defend ourselves from weapons that don't exist, because Iran might someday attack us? What's next? Iran might develop flying zombie vampire pigs someday, so we must attack them now?

Sounds Fair

With all kinds of big news to ignore, I found this story about an air base deal with Ecuador amusing:

NAPLES (Reuters) - Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to keep using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.
Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air base, set to expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.
"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami -- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.
"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

The U.S. embassy to Ecuador says on its Web site that anti-narcotics flights from Manta gathered information behind more than 60 percent of illegal drug seizures on the high seas of the Eastern Pacific last year.

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.russian/browse_thread/thread/412860cf5bf8a6bd/307ec49139613ba4

Hey, that sound reasonable. After all, maybe the Ecuadorian Air Force would be an ally in the war on (some) drugs.

Kurdistan

I haven't posted about the Turkish-Kurdish escalation because I'm waiting to see how it will play out (I suspect badly), but I hope that this map will help explain some of the tensions. When the Ottoman empire was carved up, creating the current map of the Middle East, the Kurds got screwed. Now, Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq all have Kurdish minorities who do not identify themselves with their national governments.

And they have oil.

Thinking About Iraq

As I was reading Riverbend, I found myself thinking "how would we handle it if that happened here?"
Here are some simple parameters for this game:
Prior to the invasion, Iraq had roughly 25 million people.
4.5 million people are now refugees, either internally or externally.
At least 1 million are dead.
Look around your friends, your family, your community. Take out 1 of 6. Randomly.
(No, you don't get to choose which 1/6 you'll lose.)
That's a simple way to understand Iraq. 1 out of 6 people are gone. They are either dead or refugees.
How would YOU respond if that were the reality around you?.

Don't Tell Zymurgian

Because I like my kitchen, I don't want Zymurgian to click on this link.

Flickr user Cog_nate got into the Hallowe'en spirit by using a pumpkin as a
brewing vessel, documenting the process in a Flickr set. Link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cog_nate/sets/72157602400060222/

But I did post it anyway.

Human Views on Iraq

Riverbend Has a new post up , and it's about as tragic as you'd expect. On Iraqi's adjusting to life in Syria:

It is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria today. I believe it. Walking down the streets of Damascus, you can hear the Iraqi accent everywhere. There are areas like Geramana and Qudsiya that are packed full of Iraqi refugees.

...

We live in an apartment building where two other Iraqis are renting. The people in the floor above us are a Christian family from northern Iraq who got chased out of their village by Peshmerga and the family on our floor is a Kurdish family who lost their home in Baghdad to militias and were waiting for immigration to Sweden or Switzerland or some such European refugee haven.

The first evening we arrived, exhausted, dragging suitcases behind us, morale a little bit bruised, the Kurdish family sent over their representative – a 9 year old boy missing two front teeth, holding a lopsided cake, “We’re Abu Mohammed’s house- across from you- mama says if you need anything, just ask- this is our number. Abu Dalia’s family live upstairs, this is their number. We’re all Iraqi too... Welcome to the building.”

I cried that night because for the first time in a long time, so far away from home, I felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

At the same time, here's a piece by NPR's Tom Bullock, who's ending his time as their Baghdad correspondent. It, too, reflects the human tragedy of Iraq:

At a pizza parlor not far from where we use to live there was a piano and an Iraqi-Armenian who had an amazing ear for music. You'd walk in and he'd hand you a dog eared copy of the songs he could play and demand you make a request. He spoke almost no English and the song titles showed it. "Fly Me to the Moon" became "Fling Me at the Moon." Whatever the name, the guy could play – and the pizza was great.

On a regular basis American troops would show up there to buy dozens of pies to go, then throw them in the back of their armored vehicles and drive them back to their base — basically the world's most heavily protected pizza delivery service.

That world was brilliant, brief, and, is no more.

As the violence increased everything in Baghdad changed. The Americans became isolated behind barriers in the Green Zone and U.S. bases. All of Baghdad turned into 12-foot high concrete blast walls and razor wire that spread through the city like kudzu.

Our reporting changed too. Dominated by stories of car bombs, insurgent attacks and then civil war, millions of Iraqis fleeing and thousands dying as Shiites and Sunnis cleansed neighborhoods and bombed markets.

Kidnappings became commonplace.

I became a prisoner in our bureau. To go out meant putting not only my own life at risk, but the lives of my translators and drivers as well. So we taught the Iraqis we work with our trade, and they became journalists.

Our entire Iraqi staff is now made up of refugees. Each one has been forced to flee his or her home and seek safety in another neighborhood. Not because they work with us, but because they prayed slightly differently than the militia on their street.

...

Working in Baghdad is a strange thing. You get accustomed to the long days and constant work. You learn to live with having no where to let off steam. The cycle is simple: wake up, work, repeat.

You weed through press releases and sit through press conferences, which seem at odds with the reality we — living the Red Zone, the real world — know all too well.

Some of my favorites: a series of statements from the Iraqi government saying reconciliation is at hand. Read the fine print and make some phone calls, and you found out there's been a meeting to agree on a more important meeting on some unknown day in Iraq's very unknowable future.

Or, the US military saying Iraqi forces will be able to take over security in the country in 12 to 18 months. I've been told that regularly for the last three plus years.

Some press releases are just plain strange: U.S. troops defuse an explosive device strapped to a donkey. I'm pleased to report the donkey was unharmed by the way.

Have I been harmed? I've come close. But after 21 tours my body and mind seem to have held up OK.

...

My last view of Baghdad will be of the city by air. I will leave frustrated at that death of that golden era of pizza parlors and barber shops; frustrated with Iraqi's I've talked to who proudly say "we are all brothers," then take up arms against each other; frustrated with American military and civilian officials who stand up and say everything in Iraq is working, then when they leave write books about how everything in Iraq has failed and its not their fault.

And I'm pained by the number of people I've personally known who've been killed here: journalists, Iraqis and American soldiers.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15503707

There is nothing left to "win" in Iraq. The longer we stay, the worse it will get. We can't put Humpty-Dumpty back together.

Added: And airstrikes don't make the situation better:

Bombs targeted Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least seven people and wounding two dozen, while Iraqi police reported that a woman and her daughter were wounded in an American airstrike against the Shiite enclave of Sadr City.

The airstrike leveled a small shop selling engine oil, wounding a woman and her daughter who were in their house nearby, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The U.S. military said it was checking on the report.

The number killed in Baghdad's main Shiite enclave was one of the highest tolls for a single operation since President Bush declared an end to active combat in 2003.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071022/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&printer=1;_ylt=AkttyMBp8VviKKIWCB9tGXQUewgF

I've read a lot of speculation about what will happen if we leave Iraq. But look what is happening now as we stay. When we are conducting airstrikes on civilians, we are committing war crimes. Is this what we have achieved?

A Post You Can Ignore

I'm going to ramble here, so please feel free to ignore this post.
Cheney and Obama are 8th cousins? Well, my sister (a christian republican) took over the family genealogy research after my father passed, and she found that we are 5th cousins to our shrub. She announced this with pride. I'm with Obama: "Every family has its black sheep". But as long as we're related, I want to say "Hey shrub, can I get one of those no bid contracts? I can do almost nothing for a ton of money as well as the next guy".
I went to the brewery to watch game seven of the ALCS. Unfortunately, a redneck sat down next to me. I love a good political debate, but this guy wanted to complain about "Liberals" during the GAME. Idiot. So I decided to watch at home. I'm writing this during commercials (I hate commercials), with no rednecks yelling in my ear.
One of my housemates (well, OK, all of them) has a minor sanity deficiency. We call him the "attack hamster", because he's small but ferocious. But now he's taken to sleeping in a hammock in the back yard on any night that will get below freezing. That's right: Below freezing. This old hippie believes in letting everybody do their own thing, but it's really cold out there. Just looking at that hammock sends me to grab another blanket.

Added: While I'm watching the game, there is a commercial for a medication for bipolar disorder. Psychiatric medication being advertised? WTF?