Priorities
Fencing contractors in the Southwest are very happy this morning.
FYI, the length of the U.S.-Mexico border is 1951 miles.
Labels: immigration, politics
Talkin' trash to the garbage around me.
Fencing contractors in the Southwest are very happy this morning.
Labels: immigration, politics
L'il wobs is on the rebound after a rough night. I can't begin to tell you how indescribably bad you feel telling your child he can't have water, which he desperately wants, because he'll throw it back up in 15 minutes. It was especially difficult when he refused his Pedialyte (it tastes bad, although I do hear the popsicles taste better). Additionally, this went on all night, so by the morning, I was dead tired and a little frazzled.
The l'il wobs is sick - can't keep anything in his poor little stomach, and he's really thirsty. We've got him sipping on pedialyte, but it ain't satisfying his need for water. He's unhappy.
Labels: l'il wobs
When there was money to be made writing hagiographies about the "war preznit," Bob Woodward was there.
Labels: Bob Woodward, BushCo, media
So certain events have got me down.
Crazy Dave posts letters from his readers responding to the "routine betrayal of our country's secrets," readers who may be just as crazy as he is!
I`ve been a member of the Intelligence Community (IC) for just under 30 years. I too noticed the fact that individuals from the IC put their personal political views before the oath they took when the were hired.Now I have no idea whether this person actually works for any sort of intelligence agency, but using the term "member of the Intelligence Community (IC)" a) sounds really dorky and b) is suspiciously vague. For all we know, this person's membership in the "IC" consists of a subscription to Soldier of Fortune magazine.
From 1993 through 2001, there were issues I was aware of that might have been embarrassing had they come to light. I did not feel compelled to find a reporter (but then again (facetiously)where might I have gone?) and it no one else did.It's a huge step to go from "embarrassing" to "unconsitutional" and "harming national security," as the latest leaks allege. It's not just politically embarrassing to the Bush administration that the war in Iraq is creating more terrorists - it obliterates one of the (many) pretenses for invading Iraq and shows that George W. Bush is demonstrably making this country less safe. It's not about scoring political points, it's about exposing a massive dereliction of duty.
Were I D/CIA General Hayden, I'd take a page from the Left`s book and conduct a rather exhaustive purge.Only "the Left" conducts purges, eh? Must be news to General Hayden's predecessor and right-wing ideologue Peter Goss who conducted his own purge upon arriving at his post (scroll down) after Tenet was sacked (and subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor). But then, I tend to pay attention to nasty little things called "facts."
I think there are large segments of the CIA that cannot see the threats our country faces, primarily because of their left wing and I dare say, anti-American bias.I'm willing to bet a hefty sum of money that Horowitz's reader is going to turn around and rah-rah the
These biases are carefully concealed in intelligence publications, but they show up in discussion databases. Perhaps the most telling way to gauge the bias is by what reports are not written i.e. which subjects are taboo to address.
I`m not surprised that our fighting Islamist terrorists has made us more enemies. Seems to me that Islam`s 11 September 2001 attack on the United States brought a lot of fighters to our country`s side. If the pinnacle of the IC`s analysis is trumpeting discovery that our fighting Islamists creates more enemies, perhaps it`s time to find some better analysts.Really? Because Americans were sold on Iraq because it would be a key piece in achieving victory in the War on Terror™. If achieving victory means creating more terrorists, well then, I have no argument for you. However, for those who expected a right and just war to bring more people to our side (the Iraq War didn't) and reduce the number of terrorists (the Iraq War is apparently creating them faster than Bushco can "eliminate" them), Iraq has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster.
One thing does perturb me (and a friend who is in the process of deserting the Left) is that no one on the Conservative side (in politics)is articulating the extent of the threatterror (suicide and remote-controlled) bombings, continued "random" murders by "disturbed" Muslims, and culmination in a (series?) of WMD attacks in the United States and how we should deal with it. We should not be waiting for these attacks to come to have a dialogue on how we should respond.This person should be concerned. The vaunted Bushco was set to handover port security to (the vapors!) a company owned by a foreign - nay, Arabic! - government. And we've seen the conservative response plan for a catastrophe in its response to Hurricane Katrina. Conservatives have fucked up just about everything having to do with the security of Americans. Maybe the friend who is in the process of leaving "the Left" (what the fuck does that even mean?) should reconsider.
Labels: David Horowitz, Iraq, terrorism, torture, wingnuts
Let's try a little thought experiment here. Remember Screech?
Everyone who remembers Diamond as a lovable putz is in for a shock once they see a 40-minute video in which he engages in a kinky three-way with two women, sources tell us.May it haunt you as it's haunted me. And to top it all off:
We can't get too graphic here, but word is that the action includes some bodily functions and an act known as a "Dirty Sanchez."
The sex vid's working title is "Saved by the Smell."Now it's just a matter of sitting back and counting the hits from people Googling "three-way" and "Dirty Sanchez." Pervs.
Labels: pop culture, Screech
I'm not a big fan of Hillary! as a politician, but I do like hearing her say this:
In unusually blunt terms, Senator Clinton questioned the current administration’s response to an intelligence briefing President Bush received about a month before the 9/11 attacks. It mentioned that Al Qaeda was intent on striking the United States using hijacked planes.An example, indeed. We don't have to take the GOP's bullshit.
“I’m certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,’ he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team,” she said during an appearance on Capitol Hill.
>snip<
In her remarks, Senator Clinton also suggested that Bill Clinton’s animated defense of his own national security record as president, delivered only a few days earlier, provided a powerful example for Democrats, whom Republicans have sought to portray in recent national elections as too weak to lead the country in such perilous times.
Labels: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, politics, terrorism
From the WaPo:
President Bush on Tuesday said it is naive and a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, disputing a national intelligence assessment by his own administration.Naïve and a mistake?
Labels: BushCo, foreign affairs, George W. Bush, Iraq, terrorism
In honor of that odd hazing ritual known as "moshing." Or, the way in which my parents still describe it, "slam dancing."
Labels: Punk Rock Monday
I've found myself wondering what inner workings compel David Horowitz to act like Pat Buchanan on acid. Perhaps the psychological torment of seeing his beatnik parents, reciting bon mots from Mao's Little Red Book, in carnal embrace? I sometimes feel bad that he is so completely and utterly disconnected from any semblance of reality.
Nearly thirty years after the onset of the AIDS epidemic and several hundred thousand mainly needless deaths, the US government is finally adopting a testing policy, which would have provided a frontline defense against the spread of the disease. Testing is the standard and proven way to fight epidemics and contain them. Testing for AIDS is especially important because the retrovirus lurks in the body without visible symptoms for long periods of time. Hence an AIDS infected person will not know they have the disease and can infect others. According to the NY Times report on the new testing policy, more than 50 percent of new AIDS carriers don't know they have the disease. That's 250,000 individuals, mainly Hispanic and Black. And that's mroe [sic] than 25 years after the first cases were identified and despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on AIDS "education."So now we're supposed to believe that culture warrior David Horowitz is standing up for the health of fornicating sodomites because "the Left" let them down? (Apparently, we are.)
The hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths that have occurred since the onset of the epidemic were not accidents. They were caused by a political campaign mounted by the left to prevent standard public health policies -- testing most prominent among them -- from being implemented. In the name of political correctness the left has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of mainly young, mainly gay men. The left's argument -- testing will stigmatize AIDS victims and the government will put them in concentration camps -- was as hysterical and insane then as its its argument that the Bush Administration has created the terrorists and if we give them what they want they will go home. But it was persuasive enough to liberals and the Democratic Party and public officials like C. Everett Koop, that hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted on education campaigns that didn't work,and unsuspecting gays were left to die.
The consequences of the left's murderous propaganda and policy demands were known at the time. Peter Collier and I sounded an alarm in 1983. Michael Fumento and other conservatives followed in an attempt to counter the left's campaign to disarm the gay community in the face of this threat with reasoned argument and evidence. But to no avail. The leftwing juggernaut was too powerful, and the grim result is now there for anyone with eyes to see. Let's hope that the left's current campaign to disarm America in the face of the Islamic threat will not succeed the way this one did.
Labels: David Horowitz, gay rights, HIV, public health, wingnuts
If Iraq really is part of the "Global War on Terror™," then we're losing, badly.
I was ashamed before. Now I'm angry. Sitting around waiting for the GOP to "tear itself apart" over the issue of
Around midnight, I saw two men hunkering down in front of the Labor Ready. One, at least, had a sleeping bag. The other sat with his back against the wall, head cushioned by the hood of a white, puffy jacket.
Labels: human rights, labor, sociology
Keith Richards gives up the drugs because - get this - they're "too weak" to get him off.
Labels: Keith Richards, pop culture, Willie Nelson
In no particular order:
Labels: Flotsam and Jetsam, Screech
There's nothing like a day of organizing to get you feeling good about yourself (especially when the balance of said day involved twice picking over a spreadsheet with 1148 names in order to make sure everything was on the up and up). Uncle's got the numbers. A few observations from one day:
Because who else are you going to showcase on your birthday? I give you the Ramones:
Labels: Punk Rock Monday
I can name at least 3500 things I'd rather have done on my day off than go into work and (as the quantoid sociologists euphemistically say) "clean data." That said, I got my spreadsheet up and running after 6 grueling hours of clicking, cutting, and pasting.
via feministing
Two leading scientists - both men - say male IQs are 3.63 points higher than females.Comparing mean or median scores is, of course, the same logic used by the geniuses who wrote The Bell Curve and ignores the remarkably similar distributions of IQ scores between the sexes.
Psychologist John Philippe Rushton said this explains the "glass ceiling" phenomenon why men get promoted over women.
He said the study proves more men reach the top of their careers because they are smarter - and not because of sex discrimination.
But the study was slammed by top psychologist Prof Alan Smithers.That's right, ladies, you choose to be losers! Social science proves it!
He said: "Intelligence is hard to measure. The fact women have not progressed so far in their careers is down to lifestyle choices. I strongly disagree with Prof Rushton's conclusions - he is reading wrongly and too far into the figures."
Prof Rushton, professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, admitted his research had come up with "unpopular conclusions". But he added: "People should not be made to feel afraid to study controversial issues.Like I'm sure Professor Rushton did - because looking at purely demographic variables constitutes the known universe of what may affect any individual's chances in life. I'm willing to bet Professor Rushton, or anyone else, for that matter, that if you included an individual's IQ in the panopoly of variables used in trying to explain the difference between male and female earnings, it wouldn't matter a lick in explaining that difference.
"We have to find the truth about the normal distribution in society.
"It's not right to simply say: 'It must be discrimination and don't dare say anything else'. One should really look at the facts."
From the NYT:
The CIA believed it was operating lawfully in detaining and interrogating 96 suspected terrorists at locations from Thailand to Europe, until the Supreme Court this summer demolished that legal foundation.Two things: You're a despicable human being if you engage in torture. "Lawful" or not.
The CIA is now squarely in the middle of election-year politics as Congress tries to write new definitions that could reshape the intelligence agency's program.
"At the end of the day, the director -- any director -- of the CIA must be confident that what he has asked an agency officer to do under this program is lawful," CIA Director Michael Hayden wrote employees on Thursday.
President Bush was more blunt: "They don't want to be tried as war criminals," he said at a news conference Friday.
The label for this claims it is brewed in accordance with the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516. If that's the case, I'm guessing that law doesn't make it illegal for a beer to taste really bad.
Ho. Lee. Shit:
One of a rare breed. Rick Santorum is straight, blunt, ethical, brave. Out there in the battle against militant Islam and wrestling with an out of control, nuclear armed Islamic Republic of Iran, his courage to take a firm stand has left him vulnerable in his upcoming Senatorial race.Does Pamela bother to get news from anywhere other than the right-wing wurlitzer? The man is still hawking the myths that the military has turned up WMDs in Iraq and that the president is actually doing a decent job leading the fight against islamonaziwhatever. And the Democratic smear machine? Takes one to know one. I'll let y'all make the joke about the Santorum smear... ew.
He is a thorn in the eye of the far left and has been targeted by George Soros and his Shadow-party-usurp-American sovereignty machine. He’s facing an uphill race for re-election in 2006 against Democrat Bob Casey Jr and frankly I don't know how Santorum battles a guy who doesn't show up. Casey hides - thats his strategy. That and the Democratic smear machine.
This ranks right up there with "Co-Stanza [By Mennen]!" From the comments attached to this dKos diary:
KATRINAIt does summarize the GOP quite pithily.
OSAMA
PAYOLA
MACACA
It's catchy, and it tells you all you need to know.
Michael Savage has always fascinated me - he stands out as one of the most retrograde and bigoted members of the right-wing punditry, but chooses to live in "one of the bastions of lawlessness in this country," San Francisco. I dunno.
SAVAGE: Well I got news for you, [caller], I'm the first to have said it, but I'm not the last to have said it. I said it a year ago. Maybe we should bring back Saddam, a Sunni, because he knows how to control the Shia.I'll let your head stop spinning for a moment. Done yet? Okay, I'll wait.
CALLER: Yeah. Could be. And you got Syria --
SAVAGE: No. You can laugh all you want. He knew how to control them; he knew how to keep these maniacs under control. And he was also a counterbalance to Iran. This is a gigantic mistake. Something is wrong.
Weren't we told before Barbara Boxer became a U.S. senator, before Dianne Feinstein became a U.S. senator, before Hillary Clinton became a U.S. senator, that when women became senators, we'd have a kinder, gentler Senate, a more compassionate Senate? Well, I think the results are quite clear. The Senate is not kinder and gentler or more compassionate. In fact, it's more vicious and more histrionic than ever, specifically because women have been injected into the Senate.I don't suppose anyone pointed out to Señor Savage that the increased viciousness and histrionics of the Senate can be traced back to GOP ascendency? No? People like Rick Santorum? Nothing?
Labels: Profiles in Douchebaggery
A lot's been going on in my head as of late, but I don't really have much to write about. We're prepping for the fury of Orientation Week at work, and at home, I'm temporarily forsaking the internets for a good, old-fashioned bound book - I'm reading Simon Winchester's stilted prose about Krakatoa. I love a good explosion.
So I'm a day late. Punk rock Monday will be featured on its normal day next week. In the meantime, have a heapin' spoonful of some Transmissions era Flaming Lips performing "Mountainside". Ah, back in the day...
Labels: Punk Rock Monday
That sound you hear is our children's future and our peers' lives being flushed down the toilet:
The Senate agreed Thursday to spend an additional $63 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as it passed a bill to finance military spending.$500 billion.
>snip<
The bill now totals $469.7 billion. It grew more than $16 billion during a debate that began in July and was suspended during lawmakers’ four-week August recess.
Lawmakers expect $7 billion to be added during House-Senate talks on a compromise bill. The House passed its version of the Pentagon budget bill in June.
With the latest infusion of money, Congress will have approved about $500 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other antiterrorism efforts in the five years since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the Congressional Research Service.
I have no idea why I do these - but seeing as how I've got a touch of the writer's block, I'll post one up (yeah, content for content's sake) and hope it primes the creative pump.
The gang over at The Bellman is on the lookout for who is going to fill the gargantuan cultural hole to be vacated by William Shatner when his appointed time comes. But that time is not upon us, no siree, not by a long shot, so please enjoy the wisdom of the (still of this mortal coil) Shat:
I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me.Grok that shit.
Heh - two posts having to do with sociology on one day. Some part of me must be having pangs of regret. Or the lived annual cycle of academia just revs up that part of my brain this time of year.
The venerable Monthly Review must have been doing some market research on its target audience (i.e. uh... us), because they published this gem of a review of Richard Lloyd's Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Post-Industrial City. When I was in love with sociology, when I thought I was reading really earth-shattering work, it was when I was delving into the workplace ethnography. Starting with Braverman, with lots of Burawoy, and following the labor process literature as it recognized the shear breadth of experiences that constitute "the workplace." It's fucking fascinating stuff. And it looks like this book follows nicely in that tradition.
The understanding Lloyd’s interviewees have of themselves in the world of work is not without its blind spots and tensions, however. Many of the people Lloyd interviews fail to see that the life of risk and instability they take themselves to have freely chosen is a life they (and most Americans) are more or less forced to choose. As Lloyd explains, with several decades of deindustrialization and the decline of Fordism has come the dominance of a new, “flexible” mode of capitalist accumulation, which generates insecure jobs in the very sectors Wicker Park’s artist types find employment. The artists in Wicker Park are like their bohemian predecessors in “insist[ing] upon their opposition to an imagined mainstream,” but they rely on an “imago of the mainstream [that] is anachronistic, as the old promises of career and social security under the terms of the Fordist corporation and the welfare state have increasingly evaporated.”The book is now on my "when-I-have-disposable-income" wish list. A point of [cultural] production analysis of hipsterdom? That's the sort of shit that would've kept me in academia!
>snip<
Far from mounting resistance to capitalism in its neoliberal incarnation, Wicker Park’s neo-bohemians, precisely because they are bohemian, contribute to its reproduction. What counts as the artist lifestyle nowadays, Lloyd argues, has been deeply influenced by the legacy of bohemia, and bohemia has always been associated with urban spaces. With most artists being bohemian and all bohemians living in densely populated urban areas, spaces like Wicker Park become home to a reserve army of labor that the service and design industries benefit from having flexible access to. However, Chicago’s neo-bohemia does more than just concentrate an ample source of so-called creative labor in one area. As Lloyd points out time and again, it also fosters dispositions and attitudes particularly useful to capitalist accumulation in its post-Fordist form. For example, like bohemians in the past, Wicker Park’s artists take pride in tolerating material scarcity, thus constituting a pool of labor particularly well adapted to the needs of the neighborhood’s design firms, whose hiring (and firing) fluctuates in accordance with the volume of piece work they happen to have contracted out to them by corporate clients.
I'm embarrassed that this douchebag is a sociologist, although he definitely reminds me of some of the smarmier and more idiotic ones that I've encountered. At any rate, his botched takedown attempt of Michael Bérubé is pretty cute.
Random notes from a weekend of camping:
via atrios
I wasn't sure what to expect, but this is a fantastic facility. It speaks to your leadership, and the leadership and the importance of your union. And so, here on Labor Day, I say to the union members who are here, happy Labor Day, and thanks for supporting leadership that is progressive, smart, capable, and has your best interests at heart. (Applause.)Huh. The progressive leadership referred to is one Michael Sacco, president of the SIU and a VP of the Maritime Trades division at the AFofL-CIO. That's right, say it with me, "brother." He introduced the president with these remarks:
The Seafarers International Union and our affiliated training center are tremendously honored to welcome President Bush for Labor Day. President Bush and his administration consistently have recognized the value of the U.S. Merchant Marine to America’s national and economic security. His leadership has created thousands of jobs in the U.S.-flag fleet.Bush's brief remarks are unremarkable and indistinguishable from any of his other economic speeches. What's the key to good paying jobs like those in the Merchant Marines? You start off with low, low taxes so you can keep more of what you make! And you end with a big ole helpin' of neo-liberalism!:
And finally, one of the ways to make sure that we're a competitive nation is to continue opening up markets for U.S. products. If I was somebody who was driving a ship, or an engineer on a ship, I'd want to hear a President say, we want you to be selling U.S. products -- transporting U.S. products around the world. See, we got 5 percent of the world's people here in the United States, which means 95 percent are potential customers. And therefore, it's important for us to be aggressive about opening up markets.I think that last sentence may have been a little more on-the-money than W. intended.
There is precious little in the way of documentation of the Buzzcocks with Howard Devoto fronting the band. Enjoy what you have here, in a somewhat contrived reunion of sorts at the unfortunately named Manchester Lesser Free Trades Hall - "I Can't Control Myself":
Labels: Punk Rock Monday
From Kevin Drum:
But al-Qaeda won't be beaten by fighting a bunch of aimless proxy wars in the general vicinity of the Middle East. It will, eventually, be beaten when the non-terrorist population of the region decides to turn against al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies and deny them the support and shelter they need in order to function. Encouraging that to happen is the biggest foreign policy challenge of the 21st century...Have a nice holiday weekend, y'all.