Reframing The Propaganda

From the formerly reliable newswire service now owned by Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Second Coming of the Messiah:

WASHINGTON, April 30 (UPI) -- Republican leaders say they're planning a new effort to revive the party's image and rebuild after the loss of Sen. Arlen Specter to the Democratic Party.

The new initiative, to be called the National Council for a New America, will involve an outreach by GOP officials including John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former national GOP chairman, CNN reported.

Others on the "panel of experts" will include former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, younger brother of former President George W. Bush; Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Things that make you go "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm," indeed.

Draw the battle lines, and Katie, bar the door, the Republican Civil War has formally begun!

This could be a doozy, since both sides have deep pockets and both sides have deeply dogmatic beliefs about the direction the Republican Party needs to go in.

Unlike the Democrats, who underwent their soul-searching change thirty years ago when the deep divide between liberals and moderates coalesced after Jimmy Carter's defeat in 1980 (and look how long that lasted and that was a polite falling out!), this one has all the earmarks of being rancorous and nasty.

One the one side, you have Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and all the other numbnuts and yahoos whose only claim to fame is a loud voice and someone dumb enough to pay them to speak (Richard Mellon Scaife).

On the other, the line up is pretty impressive, and is clearly an attempt to staunch the bleeding that is likely to occur now that Arlen Specter has jumped ship. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Richard Lugar will be targeted by the more conservative wing of the party for dismantling, and could follow suit. Included in the list noted above is the force majeure of the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain.

McCain's candidacy, as pathetic as it was, almost singlehandedly saved the Publicans from instant obscurity, attracting independents and even some moderate Democrats (PUMAs, mostly) to his cause. Based strictly on numbers, McCain should have done much worse, and any other Publican would like have been crushed under Obama's wheels.

This is a problem the GOP has had coming for decades. The strident and aggressive attitude and enforcement (Remember Tom "The Hammer" DeLay?) has bubbled up ever since they caught a lucky wave in the timing of the Reagan presidency, and have taken credit for the policies that dealt long-term damage to the American economy.

Thirty year old ideas, which is all the Publicans have been able to dish up for, well, thirty years, have holes in them. The world moves past them quickly. You need to catch up.

I'm not sure who to root for, to be honest. Part of me sees a chance to have a Democratic hegemony for the bulk of this century and thinks that's a good thing, so wants the Rushians to win. Part of me remembers that thirty year old ideas get stale for both sides and that Bill Clinton was most successful when he co-opted some obscure Publican ideas and gave them his own spin, so I'd like to see McCain wrest the party back.

Either way, we're witnessing the end of conservatism.

Hump Day Humour Blogging

Candle 2: Nostradamus's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation)

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Idiots Write The News

Today's example: Whistling Past The Graveyard

You keep believing that, Count of Mounting Crisco. After voters have had a taste of national healthcare and a revivified economy, the GOP will be lucky to maintain 30 seats in the Senate.

H1N1, Anyone?

I've deliberately stayed away from the swine flu story this week because frankly, apart from the Mexico crisis, it doesn't seem to be that virulent.

Already, 70 cases have been reported in the US, with the first death in Texas, a toddler, the typical fatality in a flu epidemic.

Although the WHO and the US are taking steps to treat this as a pandemic, and there's evidence to believe that while they are being cautious, they are not being alarmist, there are reasons to think that this is being blown a little out of proportion by the global media.

For one thing, this is not the first swine flu outbreak in the US. And like that epidemic, there are strains of the avian flu mixed in the virus. It will be bad (I had that flu) but it should be a fairly short-lived matter, perhaps two or three months for it to work its course.

So of course, I urge you to stay healthy, wash your hands frequently, and if you know someone from California or Mexico or New York City (or live there), be extra careful in keeping yourself from catching anything.

And cross your fingers.

Healthcare: A God Given Right

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Framers of the Constitution relied heavily on their own prior declarative thoughts when devising the laws of our land, yet were curiously silent with regard to the "life" portion of our rights.

We ought to fix that.

We have guarantees that, no matter how destitute you are, your liberties will be protected. We have an army and police forces that will protect, serve, and defend your property, no matter how meager. We guarantee you access to an attorney should you run afoul of the law or your neighbor.

We don't provide the same protection for your life, however. We don't guarantee you a doctor. If we guarantee you any care, it's emergency room care and the hospital will still sue you for money until they've bled you dry.

Why?

I could get into the whole "well, you know, back in those days the doctor was the local chap who applied leeches and leeches were free" argument, and accept that the Founders were men without vision.

Not impossible. Just unlikely.

I don't think the Founders, as they could not with the Second Amendment, could foresee a day when we'd have advanced diagnostic tools, nuclear medicine, the ability to delay death for decades.

In the 1700s, you were lucky to live until forty if you were a man and fifty if you were a woman. Why worry about maintaining your health if all it would do is give you a few weeks?

They didn't have antiseptics (Joseph Lister wasn't born until the 1820s). They had pain-killers after a fashion...basically, rum... microscopes were a relatively new thing as was the concept of microbiology and bacteria and viruses causing human diseases (remember the whole "leech" thing?). Antibiotics weren't even on the horizon. Sterilization and pasteurization were half a century in the future.

Who needed healthcare coverage?

Well, now we do. And as the Delcaration of Independence requires government "to secure these rights," the only solution to this perplexing problem is the most obvious and simplest one. As well as the most patriotic.

National health care.

A Dream Realized

It's too early to open the champagne or to even assess the package, but we've taken a big step as a nation:

Late last week President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders agreed to use "budget reconciliation" if necessary to jam a massive health-care bill through Congress.

Most Americans probably greeted this news with the glazed eyes and yawns that should rightfully accompany any discussion of "the federal budget process" longer than 30 seconds. But this decision is a deeply troublesome attempt to circumvent the normal and customary workings of American democracy.

It's a radical departure from congressional precedent, in which budget rules have been designed and used to reduce deficits, not expand the size of government. And it promises bitter divisiveness under an administration that has made repeated promises to reach across the partisan divide.

If we can ignore Sununu's posturing and calling for a whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance, on balance what this means is that some form of national health coverage will be in place within the next few weeks.

Undoubtedly, it will piss everyone off, which means either it is stellar piece of legislation or a complete bonehead bill.

National health care is long overdue in this nation. For too long, health insurance and healthcare has been both overpriced and underservicing the needs of the people of this country, unless you were rich enough (or worked for or with a large enough organization, which is diametrically opposed to American capitalism) to afford premium coverage.

Health insurers knew they have a captive audience and treated us all monopolistically. You went to work for an employer: take it or leave it.

Healthcare decisions effectively became the domain of your employer, who picked and chose coverage not based on what was best for you, but for his or her bottom line. By extension, your health care plan was next determined by the actuaries and bean counters at the insurer, not the doctor you saw. Their decisions guided not only his courses of treatments, but in some cases even forced him to tailor his diagnosis to get you out of his office faster, not necessarily healthier.

Doctors are not innocent in this scam, to be sure, although their guilt is not one of conspirator but of expeditor. The doctor or hospital must look to their own bottom line, knowing that their revenue stream is determined by two factors: limited time (who can work 25 hours a day?) and limited reimbursements.

Therefore, the faster they can churn patients out, the more money they can earn. This is not conducive to good healthcare, much less preventive healthcare. What doctor is going to waste precious revenue-earning time with you, discussing diet alternatives or recommending a good heart monitor? "You're fat, lose weight, next?"

Sununu's problem is two-fold: one, he sees national healthcare as socialized medicine (as if somehow our free enterprise model is helping anybody), and two, he's watching a parliamentarian trick used against his party.

Here's how that works: normally in the Senate, a bill must pull a supermajority. Sounds stupid and it is, but because of the filibuster rule, a simple majority is no longer sufficient to determine the will of the people.

The filibuster is the subject of a very long post in its own right, and I can't do justice to it here. Suffice it to say I feel it is necessary when something as controversial as committing the resources of this nation to a foreign objective is at stake, but quite unnecessary when 51 Senators determine, after 218 Representatives, that something as fundamental to the "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" of the American people is at stake.

And there's the rub. Rather than letting health insurance stand or fall on its own merits, in the conference to resolve discrepancies in the annual budget Democrats can slip it in as a budget resolution, and it passes with a simple majority.

Tricky, to be sure, but whatever it takes, this is necessary. To delay this vital need of the nation a year longer or more until even the most hard-headed conservative "gets it" is both deadly and economically dangerous.

So John?

Shut up.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Apple has been criticized by app developers in the past for how tightly they regulate both the platform distribution and apps, as well as the long slow process of approving apps for its computers and especially the iPhone. This is what happens when Apple listens to a bunch of mealymouthed babies.

2) "The Party Of No". I like it! It sums up the patrician attitude of the GOP to a T.

3) Just when you thought bird flu might be the problem...

4) Myrtle Beach is burning. And it's not even Spring Break. I get the sense there is going to be a massive drought along the eastern seaboard this summer.

5) The infighting on the marginalized right wing is ramping up. When you have the acknowledged pioneer rightwing kook calling another rightwing kook(ier) a "Eurofascist", all hell is breaking loose. (WARNING: right wing link)

6) Randi Rhodes returns. Ladies, bounce your boobies!

7) If I had written a novel about a major political party so marginalizing themselves, they ended up battling just to stay on the ballot in all fifty states, I would definitely include this chapter.

8) But I would ABSOLUTELY include this!

9) Hey, look...good babysitters ain't cheap, you know!

10) It looks more and more like we are not alone.

Red Parrot

bonaire2006 - 74.jpg
Originally uploaded by actor212

Because we all need a little parrot in our lives.

The Rest Of The Iceberg

It should come as no surprise to anyone who's read my pieces for even as little as a year that the real economic crisis is still to come: credit card debt:

“The administration — which scheduled the meeting at the request of some issuers — has promised to address credit card practices that Summers recently blamed for coaxing consumers ‘into paying extraordinarily high rates that they wouldn't have paid if they knew what they were getting themselves into.’”

The trouble is this. People ran up their credit cards, secure in two pieces of information. First, they could always get a home equity loan to pay off the credit cards, which would also allow them to deduct mortgage interest. Second, the price of houses would always go up, so there would always be more room to refinance the house, and gather in more cash to pay off bigger credit card balances.

Keep in mind that a lot of the problem with the mortgage industry was that people who simply shouldn't have had mortgages got mortgages because banks wanted to throw money at them.

Why? It's not just the interest income, you see, but the fees a bank can charge. Late with a payment? We'll tack on $50. Missed a payment? That's $100.

And then they tightened the rules about when a payment was late and when it was missed. It used to be, if your payment was postmarked before the due date (like when you file your taxes, still) you were presumed to have made a payment to an agent of the company (e.g. the post office).

Now, payments have to physically be received in the office of the lender, and usually by some arbitrary time (say, 2 PM). Doesn't matter if your payment is in the office, so long as they haven't recorded it, they didn't receive it.

You can imagine what that's created.

And that was mortgages. For credit cards, it gets even worse.

A decade or so ago, I held a Fleet Bank Mastercard. I had a really nice rate, 4.9%, and made payments faithfully. One day, I dunno, it was raining or maybe we had a blackout, anyway, my payment was delayed in the mail and was late.

My 4.9% rate climbed up to 26.99%! Now, I was lucky. I had a good record, good credit history, and was able to point out it was a one time occurence, so they dropped my rate. The only reason I noticed it, to be honest, was that on my next statement the late payment fee was charged and as I was disputing that, I looked at the rate information.

Now, banks can do that to me even if my payment record is perfect. Even if ALL my payments to all my cards and on all my loans is perfect.

How? I could be late paying my phone bill. Or electricity. Or cable, even.

Here's a pro economic tip: when a bank starts tacking on fees like there's a sale on them, you can bet your boots that sector of their business is hurting badly. Which means credit card defaults are alarming the hell out of the guys in the pinstriped suits.

There's roughly $1 trillion in credit card debt out there. There's $6.5 trillion or so of mortgage debt.

The rub is, the $6.5 trillion is secured by a house. A piece of property. Something of value. The total losses if every loan collapsed might be something on the order of $500 billion (assuming all the houses eventually get sold).

That $1 trillion in credit card debt is unsecured. If every credit card suddenly became a bad debt, that's a trillion bucks out the door.

You see the problem, I'm sure. In fact, credit cards are even riskier than mortgages because every and any damned fool was offered one, even college kids.

The banks will not give this up easily, and certainly not without a fight.

Happy Earth Day

blossoms06 - 11
Originally uploaded by actor212

A time for renewal.

The Big Question

Photo from NASA via NatGeo

I suppose every generation believes two things about itself:

1) It is the culmination of all generations preceding it, and

2) It will be the last generation on this planet.

I'm not sure why humanity has this fatalistic obsession with finality. Perhaps it is our mortality. Perhaps we just don't want to miss the parties that will take place after we're gone. Or perhaps we truly are that monstrously egoistic that we believe nothing and no one could possibly top us.

Like the one immediately preceding this, our generation has the option to end things. Unlike the generation before this, we have the awareness that things actually can end and without a mushroom cloud.

This week, today, we celebrate Earth Day. Earth Day, like Christmas, is the one day every year people get to remind themselves that they should behave nicely. And others. Nevermind that the other 364 days, most will likely litter to their hearts' content, today, people will take the extra two steps to the trash can.

Yippee! Now, what will we do tomorrow?

I've been involved in environmental concerns since the early 70s, since I was a Boy Scout and involved in setting up the first recycling program in NYC. It was fun. It felt good. As nasty as some of the things we had to do were, like cleaning up an empty lot that had turned into a dog run for the neighborhood, somehow we managed to have a sense of satisfaction from it.

Mother Earth is sick. She's running a fever and all kinds of toxins are rampant in her veins and arteries. And it's our fault. If you want an idea of just how painful birthing the race of man has been for her, I suggest you watch the series Life After People. Watch how the remnants of our civilization crumble as no one is around to maintain them.

The Second Law Of Thermodynamics in action. Entropy is the natural state of things. It is only man in his hubris that tries to circumvent the law as if it was a speed limit and we were in a hurry to go nowhere.

I'm not suggesting a Ludditic existence, or that we abandon clothing and housing and live off the land in caves. What I am suggesting is that each of us can slow down a little. Drive 55 instead of 65, even if the speed limit allows. Walk more. Buy local produce when possible. Wash clothes only when the laundry bag is full. Wash dishes by hand or only when the washer is full.

Buy a water bottle instead of bottled water. Use a canvas bag.

The list goes on and on of ways to cut back even just a little without inconveniencing yourself too much.

And this is a good time to practice these habits, in a time when belts are being tightened anyway, since many of these practices will save you money on your energy costs.

We only get this one Mother Earth, despite what astronomers are discovering daily it seems. She's sick. She needs our help.

She's provided for and carried you for all your life. Give a little bit back, please.

Do Ya Feel Lucky, Punk?

nyc041909 - 5.jpg
Originally uploaded by actor212

Well....do ya?

Someone Needs To Check Their Facts

Talk about Epic Fails:

In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.

I'm guessing the American standard of living, according to the Wall Street Journal, now hovers somewhere around the wages Nike pays in Indonesia.

Now, I'm sure there is a small number of people who can actually be prolific enough and charismatic enough to make a go of blogging full-time. You can sell ad space, after all, and its possible the statistics the WSJ includes in their article are skewed by revenues people make who sell their own shit on their websites like their own books and stuff.

But nearly every blog I visit, and I visit many of the largest ones, right and left, is practically begging for donations. Even The Corner, which is sponsored and funded in part by the odious "National Review" magazine, has had to hold two online fundraisers to defray costs.

And Pajamas Media, which was supposed to be the Life Magazine of blogging right-wingers, only without the pictures...or intellect...or snappy prose...or, hell, not even the Life Magazine of the dung pile!...folded unceremoniously.

So I think, WSJ, you messed up here.

Hanoi Hilton

Y'know, I was all set to let this go when I first read about some bizarre contretemps at the Miss USA pageant this weekend.

I figured one stupid insignificant person asking another stupid insignificant person a loaded question on a stupid insignificant made-for-TV event (produced by Donald Trump, the king of all things false and plastic) was nothing to care about.

And then I saw this on the Today Show:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Uh. Yea. Suddenly I gave a crap.

I found myself in the odd position of feeling empathy for the person whose views I found more odious.

Both people are in the wrong here, but it's Perez Hilton....um, who?...who has gotten my dander up the more.

Carrie Prejean carried herself admirably and so far has carried herself admirably in what has to be a particularly uncomfortable instant. Nobody expects a beauty pageant...a beauty pageant!...to turn into a political debate.

I'm surprised Tom Brokaw didn't appear and grab a judge's mic and turn into Instant Moderator.

She spoke her heart and as offensive as her opinion is to me, it was refreshing to hear someone put on the defensive on national television not hem and haw and calculate an answer, altho she clearly gave herself enough time to decide that was what she had to do, altho she admits later that she had prepared for that question.

As Voltaire said, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." And having been in front of large audiences and live on national TV, I can assure you, no matter how much preparation you do, when you know the moment you dread is coming, you can guarantee your answer won't be as smooth as you rehearsed it.

She did this likely knowing full well her answer would cost her one judge's vote and therefore, the title. Kudos for balls, babe.

Now, onto Perez (who?) Hilton.

There was a time when confrontational activism in the pursuit of gay rights was called for, a time when getting in the face of ordinary people to wake them up to oppression.

That time is long past. As your own question demonstrates, four states have already passed a gay marriage law. Another two states have one in or ready for the legislative hopper.

Gay marriage is progressing.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger had been on that stage, your question would have been appropriate. If Rick Warren, the odious pastor who gave the invocation at Obama's inauguration had been up on stage, your question would have been appropriate.

Hell, if Obama, who opposes gay marriage, had been on that stage, your question would have been appropriate.

But to single out some poor kid from California?

Ms. Hilton, the self-proclaimed "queen of all media", you set the cause of gay rights back about a decade.

Fucking idjit. Fucking FUCKING idjit! The idea is to make homosexuality plausible to the large number of Americans who pretend they don't know a gay man or a lesbian.

The idea is ACCEPTANCE & TOLERANCE, you fucking idjit, and that means it HAS to work both ways. And if you can't deal with the fact that a significant number of Americans are uncomfortable with who you are, well, get the fuck out of this nation, son, because it's going to be long after both you and I are dead before gay marriage is not only accepted, but commonplace.

To bully some kid just because you have the spotlight is idi-fucking-otic! The "all about me" trope is something Republicans engage in. Our side is better than that. Or maybe you're not really on our side? There's an awful lot of Bible-thumping red state right winger in you, isn't there?

Then to go on and call her a "dumb bitch," just because she didn't recognize the magnificence that is Ms. Hilton? (Hilton goes on later to apologize, altho my suspicion is the apology ran along the lines of the famed Republican "If I hurt her feelings, I'm sorry" kind)

Ms. Hilton, your fifteen minutes are calling. They're up.

Transciency

nyc041909 - 1.jpg
Originally uploaded by actor212

These tulips will likely be gone before the end of the week, such is the nature of New York City weather.

Columbination

No doubt you have heard by now that this is the tenth anniversary of the day when two self-indulgent, twisted, infantile right-wing psychopaths shot up a high school in Colorado.

Much has been written over the weekend with respect to the lessons learned from the Columbine massacre. How can American culture produce this kind of behavior on a regular basis?

Much of it, from both the left (guns!) and right (culture!) has been both simplistic and flat out wrong.

It goes far deeper than that, I fear. It goes all the way to our national psyche.

For example, Canada has a comparable number of guns per household to the USA. It also has as its national sport one of the most physical, violent games played, ice hockey. Guns. Culture. Yet...

You don't hear about Canadians shooting up busloads of people as regularly as you hear about Americans doing it. Why?

The words of the former Premier of the province of Alberta will speak volumes to you:

A few years ago, former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed astonished us by denouncing what he called “the decline of collectivity” in Canada. “We are becoming increasingly Americanized,” he warned, “and this imposes an un-Canadian individualism on our ethic.”

Individualism.

It says so much about this nation.

People only mature when they are exposed to other people on a regular basis, when they can learn to empathize with the plight of others, when the culture around them demands that attention be paid.

If this isn't learned from an early age, immaturity sets in, and you have the fertile grounds for the self-indulgence that sees everything from mass killings to subprime mortgage markets, all in the pursuit of the Material Me.

We used to teach Civics in school, but budget cuts imposed by the Republicans, the very fount of self-indulgence and immaturity, have forced schools to decide whether to raise citizens or drones.

We used to teach ethics & compassion in society, but the greedy bastards who decided that the Fairness Doctrine was unprofitable saw to it that we raised a culture where your opinion doesn't count because you can't raise the money for it to be heard, to ennumerate just one of many hits to ethics we've witnessed in my lifetime.

We used to teach community in our cities and towns, but that was before the word was modified with the adjective "gated".

We used to have neighbors, and now we have co-tenants.

We used to invite the world to our doors, now we make them stand behind fences, gazing in on us, and when we do allow them to enter, we make them jump through so many hoops while dangling the dream of prosperity in their faces, so is it any wonder that after all that effort and time, folks get a little upset when they aren't lottery winners?

We encourage individuality, unless you want to have sex or be married, which is the very essence of individuality. And heaven forbid you need to have an abortion! There, you have to conform!

What the hell do we expect when we insist on conformity in others' behaviors but demand individuality when it comes to our own useless peccadilloes?

Freedom isn't free. It comes with its own long list of demands in exchange for releasing you from captivity. Among these are the responsibilities inherent in any free society best summed up by the saying, "If one man is not free, then I am not free."

Collectivism, in this area, is individuality. If you take care of others, you will be free to be whom you want, whom you need to be, because the responsibility is on them to help you when you need it.

Won't work, you say. True. This is America, and no one trusts anyone else. THe Colonial motto should have been, "I got mine, Jack, now you go get yours," instead of "Don't tread on me."

Which means we have to change America, or we will not survive. No man is an island, and that goes double for a nation of wannabe islands. We have to learn to give a damn about everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, else.

We fake it. We pay attention when Madonna falls off a horse. We geet into a tizzy when some woman in Arizona has fourteen children. We throw a fit when our President tries to fix the problems of this nation.

And we spend trillions on a war in a land where people hate us, where most of us will never visit, and will soon be useless to us for any potential natural resources, but to spend a few thousand here to bail out a neighbor who is losing his house?

And there's the rub.

Happy Orthodox Easter!

Hope, Faith, & Gluttony, Incorporated
Originally uploaded by actor212

This is an actual sign on my morning walk. It's for a commercial bakery that relocated from Red Bank, NJ.

But face facts, that sign as a frontispiece for the power plant in the background? That sums up America in a nutshell.

Youth In Flower

orchidshow2009 - 43.jpg
Originally uploaded by actor212

OK, it was hard to resist this shot.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) In fairness, her blowdryer DID look like a gun.

 

2) Rush Limbaugh. Like a fruitcake, he's the gift that keeps on giving, even tho you really don't want it.

 

3) I'm sorry, did I say "like a fruitcake"? He IS a fruitcake! Just ask any of his two, err, three, errr, four, errr, five? Four...four wives!

 

4) JammieWearingFool lives up to the last part of his name. Maybe he ought to buy a suit and get a job? Quoting a blind item about NBC worrying about being Obama's opposition network in the NY Post then claiming Fox News is the opposition network-- when the Post is OWNED by News Corp. and clearly this blind item was made up out of whole shit-- is like me quoting the Democratic Underground about, well, right wing terrorism. Or worse, me quoting Paris Hilton about how awful Obama's tax hikes will be.

 

5) One final funny note on the Teabagging on Wednesday: The DC protestors forgot to secure permits to dump a million teabags in the DC park they were authorized to protest in, thus missing the opportunity to have at least a decent visual for the nightly news. Instead, a conservative think tank funded in large part by the RNC offered the use of their conference room. On the twelfth floor. Of a building with tiny elevators. Meaning it took two people a few dozen trips up and down to take all those tea bags up, dump them in the conference room, take some pictures, then leave them for the non-union undocmented cleaning crew to cart out later that night!

 

6) One final UNfunny note on the Teabagging on Wednesday: If ur calling a President wif a 60% approval rating "fascist" on th' nashunal teevee, ur doin it wrong!

 

7) You are one of two major league baseball teams in the largest city in America, both opening a brand new stadium in the middle of the worst depression since World War II. Your stadium was paid in large part with public funds and one of the two team's field is named after a de-facto bankrupt multinational bank. Who do you get to sing your national anthem? A legendary singer associated with New York City, like Billy Joel (who has played both former stadiums), or Paul Simon, maybe even Tony Bennett? No. A legendary opera singer, like Renee Fleming or Placido Domingo? No. A famous Broadway performer like Sutton Foster or even Glenn Close who lives here and is a big baseball fan? No.

 

You get the ensemble cast of a failed revival of West Side Story or a near-washed up former American Idol winner.

 

Excuse me? YOU'RE FUCKING NEW YORK TEAMS! Why in the hell are you humping a Broadway show done worse than a high school production and a barely-tolerable singer humping her new album??? This is Yankee Stadium! This is the new home of the Mets! It's no wonder karma bit you both on the ass and made you embarass yourselves in the home openers!

 

8) Obituary of the week

 

9) It's just pork and beans!

 

10) Mr. President, it's not just about turning the page. It's about justice and human rights. If we truly want "Never Again," we have to make sure it happens never again, no matter what the cause or reason.

Spring Sprung

Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out!

From the "Who Gives A Shit?" file:

AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax "tea party" Wednesday with his stance against the federal government and for states' rights as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, "Secede!"

An animated Perry told the crowd at Austin City Hall -- one of three tea parties he was attending across the state -- that officials in Washington have abandoned the country's founding principles of limited government. He said the federal government is strangling Americans with taxation, spending and debt.

Perry repeated his running theme that Texas' economy is in relatively good shape compared with other states and with the "federal budget mess." Many in the crowd held signs deriding President Barack Obama and the $786 billion federal economic stimulus package.

Sounds like yet another Texasshole is gearing up to take a run for the Presidency, apparently not having learned the lessons of the Bush years, which were "All hat, no cattle, makes Jack a lousy president".

 

They grow 'em big in Texas, including blowhards. Texans might do well to remember that the United States bailed their sorry asses out when Mexico had bankrupted the Republic by continuing a war of economic and violent attrition and Texans were practically begging for our protection.

 

So, Rick, ol' boy, here's your ten gallon hat. Stick it over your five cent brain and take your two-bit state and shove it where the sun don't shine: Del Rio.

To Be Or Not To Be

Item 1:

CONCORD, N.H. — A committee of the New Hampshire State Senate plunged Wednesday into the escalating debate over same-sex marriage, hearing hours of discordant testimony on whether the state should become the fifth to allow it.

The state's House of Representatives narrowly approved a bill last month that would legalize marriage for same-sex couples, and the public hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee came on the heels of victories for same-sex marriage in Iowa and Vermont. But with the full Senate preparing to vote on the measure as soon as next week, its chances remain uncertain.

Item 2:

With Gov. David A. Paterson set to introduce a same-sex marriage bill to state lawmakers Thursday, activists differ on whether the effort from an unpopular executive will help the cause of marriage equality.

The issue will hinge on whether Paterson and his allies can win the votes of enough Republican state senators to offset opposition from conservative Democrats such as Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx.

Alan Van Cappelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay-rights group, didn't directly answer questions about whether failure in the Senate following Paterson's high-profile support would constitute a setback for the same-sex marriage movement. "We are closer than people think, but we're not there yet," Van Cappelle said.

After Vermont and Iowa legalized gay marriage this month, New York could add to the momentum or halt it, said Suffolk County Legis. Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor).

"It doesn't make sense to bring it to a vote and have it fail," said Cooper, who has plans to marry his longtime partner in Connecticut on April 29. "It could potentially have national implications - the opponents of same-sex marriage could say even in liberal New York, this couldn't pass."

Make no mistake, Legislator Cooper. New York is not as liberal as you would like to believe. Parts of upstate and the North Country are redder than the reddest parts of Alabama.

 

I have long supported gay marriage on the theory that misery loves company, and why should gays have all the fun? Indeed, I suspect once gay marriage is legalized across the nation, the descriptor will be changed to "miserable" (insert Victor Hugo joke here).

 

In a nation ruled by law, as the United States claims to be and certainly as the Founding Fathers intended, gay marriage has its place. There is no good legal reason why marriage should be limited to anything beyond two consenting adults. Period. End of discussion.

 

One could, on a very conservative platform, make a moral issue with respect to marriage, but so what? Laws are made not to enforce morality and behavior, but to protect people from other people. Period. Two men or two women marrying impacts no one outside of their families.

It is not my business. It is not your business. It is not society's business. It is the business of the two adults, men, women, man & woman, and that's the end of it.

 

And if it were as simple as that, the issue would be resolved. Here's where it gets sticky.

 

Laws may be objective and impartial, and justice may be blind, but lawmakers are not, and there's the rub. You see, this isn't about the law itself. Any Constitutional lawyer (and the Congress and the state houses are packed to the brim with ConLawyers) will tell you that gay marriage ought to be legal.

 

The problem is, they have to be elected and that's where things get dicey. In order for gay marriage to obtain legal status, politicians must be able to override the fear of being ousted by their constituents, who don't always want to listen to reasoned legal arguments, who's opinion can be summed up as "they are fags and abominations", who's own fears are preyed upon daily by talk show hosts and televangelists and absurd manipulative hatemongers who, having lost the ability to stir up hate against racial and ethnic minorities (altho they still try, trust me), have shifted their focus on to less identifiable, more ephemeral biases: gays, liberals, Muslims.

 

Substitute "negroes, Commies, Jews" and you can see how the entire monologue of the haters isn't new, it's just been repackaged.

 

The way I see it, it's going to take one of two things to make gay marriage acceptable in this atmosphere: either a slow change in the atmosphere, or a radical event that presents a rationale that makes opposition to gay marriage pale in comparison.

 

Likely it will take a little of both, altho more evolution than revolution: after all, if Jackie Robinson (who broke the baseball color barrier 62 years ago yesterday) hadn't been Jackie Robinson, the Civil Rights Act couldn't have followed 17 years later. That's a combination of breakthrough and evolution, and that's what it is going to take.

 

There's an awful lot of fear surrounding this issue: an awful lot of the "ick factor" surrounding gays (sorry, but there's no other way to frame part of the trouble many people have in accepting gay marriage), and an awful lot of fear on the part of gays to be out and proud about who they are.

 

The fortunate signs are, both of these fears seem to be melting away, glacially. Certainly, more gay men and lesbians can come out into the sunshine now, and that four states have overcome the fears of married men and married women is a positive step.

 

Amen for both of those. We need more courage these days.

Sunshine Superman

More beautiful than you can imagine.

Liveblogging The Tax Day Tea Party

7:00 PM This is Actor212, speaking to you live from City Hall Park near the site of the World Trade Center, where literally ones of people turned out today in support of the nationwide "Tea Bag Parties," protesting President Obama's plan to raise taxes on the fat and lazy rich.

 

7:05 PM I see over there on the corner a handful of former Lehman brokers, looking spiffy in their Brooks Brothers suits...even if it's been a few days since they've bathed, and haven't bothered to change clothes since Veteran's Day, shuffling around like they were about to board the trains to a Michelle malkin Internment camp, asking for spare stock tips, panhandling at Harry's Of Hanover Street, leaping off tall curbs trying to commit suicide, and then showing up in droves mobs small groups of one or less to protest the patent unfairness of Obama's tax policy.

 

7:06 PM One protestor I interviewed, a Richie McRich, talked about how Obama had his nerve asking the ultrawealthy to pitch in and help, when they have houses on small tropical islands to support and landscape.

7:07 PM OK, we've got a little action here. Apparently, one of the protestors, a lawyer from the looks of it, has spilled his Perrier all over one of the brokers, and accidentally washed a small patch of his suit clean.

 

7:15 PM So far, just a lot of speaking, squawking really, about "taxes", "flat", and "screwed". Sounds more like a union meeting at an unpopular Vegas strip club, but maybe they're just getting warmed up.

 

7:20 PM Is that Michelle Malkin? The cameras converge. Much anticipation of some violent and self-ignorant outburst....

 

7:21 PM Nope. Just a homeless Filipino collecting deposit bottles after losing his job at Citibank.

 

7:25 PM I'm surrounded by literally dozens of pigeons, scrambling for the crumbs left by a couple of protestors who bought a sack of Big Macs to feed the ensemble.

 

7:30 PM A couple of signs being held up...uh oh, the crowd suspects something about these protestors...they're conferring in a phone booth...I can't quite make out what...oh. OHHHHHHHHHHHH! Apparently some liberal infiltrators from ACORN have intruded! The tip-off was the fact that their signs were spelled correctly!

 

7:31 PM Someone is trying to show a video...it's hard to see the screen of the cellphone from this far away...I'm about one-deep in the throng of five....

 

7:35 PM OK, I manage to elbow my way past the dude who thought we were having a free sex show, and the homeless guy who thought this was City Harvest...the video is from Chicago where apparently, a conservative comedy team is putting on a show for a handful of people and some Cubs fans staggering by..."Crocs & Stretch Pants" is the name of the group.

 

7:40 PM People are looking around at each other in embarassed silence.

 

7:45 PM The Lehman brokers are looking at people like they were giant hot dogs, drooling.

 

7:50 PM Uh oh, there's a few cops on the outskirts of the group, about a foot away from the podium, moving in closer, checking their watches. It must either be time to wrap this up, or a new batch of Krispy Kremes is baking and they want to see if they can beat the rush...

 

7:51 PM OK, I see something...it looks like a nightstick raised up! Could we be seeing The Man oppressing our lowly taxpaying brethr-- Oh. No. Sorry. Jonah Goldberg showed up, carrying a salami and baguette.

 

8:00 PM It's starting to rain again; it's—the rain had slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it just enough to keep it from— It's burst into flames! It burst into flames, and it's falling, it's crashing! Watch it! Watch it! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It's fire—and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames; and the—and it's falling on the mooring-mast.This is terrible! This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh my President! It's flames... Crashing, oh! Four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it—it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It's smoke, and it's flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring-mast. Oh! The humanity! And all the passengers screaming around here. I told you; it—I can't even talk to people. Their friends are on there! Ah! It's—it—it's a—ah! I—I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it's just laying there, mass of smoking wreckage!

 

8:05 PM OK, I made that up, but it's FUCKING BORING HERE!!!!!!! Oh god, I could be home poking my eyes out with knitting needles!!!!! What have I done to deserve this fate?????

 

8:11 PM Now people are milling around, which is really funny to watch since there's maybe a dozen people here, four if you subtract the Fox News reporters. Try to organize four people to mill, it looks like a game of musical chairs.

 

8:15 PM It's agreed. No one wants to pay taxes and everyone would rather be home watching the Law and Order repeat. Even the Fox News reporters think we should go to a titty bar. Meeting adjourned!

Havana Wonderful Time, Wish You Were Here

I think I speak for anyone with a lick of sense when I say, at last!:

HAVANA, April 15 (Xinhua) -- The decision by the U.S. government to change its strategy and lift some restrictions on Cuba have aroused multiple reactions in the island, among which there are hopes of a start to the end of the decades-old economic blockade.

    On Easter Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on travel and money transfers to Cuba, opening a crack in a 47-year-old embargo against Havana.

    Obama also authorized U.S. telecommunication firms to open up investments in Cuba, as well as to hire radio and television satellite services for people in the Caribbean nation.

    The new measures overturned the policy imposed in 2004 by the Bush White House. The "Transition Plan toward a Free Cuba," also know as Plan Bush, limited money remittances from Cuban Americans to their families to 300 U.S. dollars every quarter, and visits to the island once every three years with each lasting no longer than14 days.

The blockade and embargo of Cuba made sense when it was a close ally and satellite of the long-defunct Soviet Union. After all, it was only 90 miles from the shores of America, and the Soviets had already shown a propensity for dangling that fact in front of our faces. Even the retention of a foothold on the island (Guantanamo Bay) has become a bit of an anachronism and even a sore spot for American foreign policy.

 

I've flown over Cuba. Looking down from 35,000 feet, it looks absolutely beautiful, unlike nearly every other Caribbean island I've ever been to or flown over. Hardly like this massive threat to American security and interests that Republicans and Cuban-American partisans have painted it to be.

 

Which highlights the narrowness of American policy towards Cuba. A lot of what we've done recently has been to placate a bunch of people who are 50 years beyond ownership of land and property on the island, whose families now have stronger ties to Nebraska than to Havana. The pitiful "reforms" accomplished under Plan Bush were nearly meaningless and paid lip service to the greatest weapon America has in transforming Cuba back to our greatest ally: economic strength and generosity.

 

You say you want a revolution? Free the minds of the people. Right now, every European nation has visa exchanges with Cuba, including our strongest allies. The average Cuban gets American culture second- or third-hand. Why not give it to them, straight up?

 

Once Cubans see images that aren't Elian Gonzalez-ised, once they see that America is a great and good land filled with great and good people, once they see that the vast majority of Americans would love nothing more than to point a boat south and hit the tropics rather than stand around government offices in Miami, shouting "Death To Castro", they'll get it.

 

They'll see us. We'll see them. And we'll understand that these people, these resilient and stoic people who for fifty years have lived in fear and hatred of a nation that truly means them no harm-- save for a bunch of arrogant assholes and their political operatives who have all been marginalized now-- have much to teach us.

 

After all, they've lived in a northern umbra of fear and hatred and assumed it was universally shared in the lands above them on the globe. We need to free these people, both of their fears of us, but also of their fears of freedom. This will not require guns or weapons or armies or even money.

 

It will require me with a camera, and you with a passport, and him with some scuba equipment, and her with a phrasebook. Shiny happy people. Real Americans.

 

Wherever I go in the islands, I am struck by how negative the image is of Americans "except for you guys, of course". It could be the Caymans or Bahamas or Bonaire or Aruba or Jamaica. It doesn't matter. There is this amorphous image of Americans as fat, lazy, stupid and arrogant people.

 

Here, in Cuba, we have a chance to work with a fresh slate. In the course of this rollback of the embargo and blockade, I urge President Obama to encourage Americans to become involved in Cuba and with Cuban lives. We're all of us responsible for the tragic policies of the past fifty years, even if at times they were deemed necessary evils.

 

We have voices. We did not use them. We let others with an agenda speak for us, and they said the wrong things in our names.

 

We need to show the Cuban people that we want to help bring them up to speed, to enjoy the bounties of our friendship and good relations with among neighbors.

 

After all, there's only so many Cuban cigars I can smoke! You guys are going to have to help pick up the slack a bit.

Porno For Tyros

There was a time, in the dark recesses of the 70s and into the early 80s, when porn was cool.

 

There was a time, before AIDS (then known as the Gay Cancer), before even herpes, when porn was about as mainstream as professional wrestling or professional bass fishing. Perhaps even moreso, since anyone could participate and often did.

 

There was a time when birth control and abortion made sexual liberation and exploration inevitable and even palatable.

 

There was a time when the forces of morality...you know, the guys who later exposed themselves as serial adulterers and pedophiles...were waned behind the onslaught of popularity some porn produced.

 

I'm reminded of this by this sad story on the wires today:

Marilyn Chambers, the angelic-looking, blue-eyed blond who symbolized purity while selling laundry detergent then went on to become one of the first mainstream porn superstars, died Sunday in her Los Angeles home. She was 56.

The Westport, Conn.-born actress was found by her 17-year-old daughter, McKenna Marie Taylor.

An autopsy will be done but no foul play is suspected.

This is Marilyn Chambers. This is not a fake.

 

She was a mainstream model and actress, even appearing briefly in the Barbra Streisand film, The Owl And The Pussycat.

 

Her big break, so to speak, was a film called Behind The Green Door, the first porn film released to mainstream theatres. It paved the way for later films like Deep Throat, and actresses from Linda Lovelace to Tracy Lords to Jenna Jameson to have legitimate superstar credentials both in porn and in Hollywood.

 

In fact, so big an impact had she had in American culture that the city of San Francisco declared a "Marilyn Chambers Day" in 1998, some 25 years after her film.

 

I knew her indirectly. Al Goldstein of Screw Magazine lived in my neighborhood, and we'd speak on occasion (the man wouldn't stop talking, in point of fact, so it was more me listening), and her name came up in conversation a few times, always with respect for what she did for his industry.

 

Marilyn Chambers represented a difficult crossroads for the burgeoning feminist movement of the 70s. On the one hand, some feminists thought all porn was to be shunned as exploitive. On the other, here was a woman who was taking control of her career in porn, who was strong and could dictate how and where her body was to be used, who was also exploring the First Amendment boundaries, very strong feminist values.

 

I do not judge the woman beyond this: she lived her life as she saw fit, and made her way as best as she could. She broke ground and whether we are the better for it is for history to judge. But she was a human being and for that, accorded my respect and compassion.

 

Godspeed, Marilyn. Godspeed.

A Brief Lesson For Conservatives

This is your President:

 

 

This is your President with balls:

 

 

Any questions?

 

 

The Beauty Of Truth

This is a tarpon. He's about six feet long. He is unafraid of humans

Grand Central Terminal

Yes, it really is as busy as the saying goes!

Nobody Asked Me, But...

In case you missed it, yesterday was the Blessing Of The Sun, a holy day in the Jewish calendar that occurs every 28 years, and celebrates the moment when the Sun returns to the exact position it was created. Question: how do they know?

 

And today, of course, is Good Friday. In honor of this, I thought I'd run the Stations Of The Cross for today's post. Please don't infer any parallels between the events and the life of Our Lord:

 

1) Two Tibetans were sentenced to death in a Chinese court for setting a fire which killed seven people and burned five shops in Lhasa to the ground.

 

2) Apparently, Florida for Spring Break is not universally appealing. But we all have our crosses to bear.

 

3) His first Falls.

 

4) Meeting his mother, always an emotional moment.

 

5) Simon picks up the cross...with Garfunkel! I'm guessing there's a way to work in troubled waters, too...

 

6) Veronica wipes the sweat off his brow.

 

7) He falls again. The weight is too much to bear.

 

8) He meets the daughters of Jerusalem.

 

9) Falls a third time. Very weak now.

 

10) He is stripped of his clothes.

 

11) Crucified.

 

12) Dies a martyr.

 

13) Is lamented.

 

14) And is laid to rest.

 

Peace be with you.

The Seagull

These guys are all around me most times I'm out shooting

A Message Of Hope

Y'know, it's pretty depressing out there.

 

It seems like the world is heading to hell in a handbasket, and I'm tired. I get a new perspective on the Great Depression. It wasn't so much economic as it was psychologic.

 

At least this week, the news is mixed on the economic front: jobless claims were surprisingly low last week, Wells Fargo, universally acknowledged as one of the few strong banks out there, reported good earnings, new home mortgages are rising, and the trade deficit is collapsing. On the other hand, retail sales are still in the toilet, meaning consumers aren't shopping, the auto industry is still on very shaky ground, and gas prices will begin their inexorable summer climb this weekend as people get their cars out of the garage and start the summer driving season early.

 

Nevermind the news page, the business section is enough to make people depressed! That's before the piracy in Somalia, the North Korean missile test, earthquakes in Italy, the Twitter uprising in Moldova...it's enough to raise the dead!

 

What's really depressing is to read blogs and watch television, and everyone is looking for someone to blame. If it's not God, it's the President. Or liberals. Or Muslims. Or immigrants. Or Hollywood.

 

I have a better solution: it's you!

 

Now, I realize the way of the world is to make our problems somebody else's. Both sides of the political fence claim the other scapegoats. The right claims we liberals are trying to build a nanny state. The left believes the right wants to deny and deflect their personal responsibility towards their fellow citizens.

 

Guess what? Both sides have a point (altho you'd be hard pressed to prove to me at this point in time how government is doing too much for us).

 

So the old saw is shown to be true: if everyone else is wrong, it really is your problem.

 

For the past thirty years, this entire nation-- heck, the entire world, when you realize that France has McDonald's on the Champs Elysee and Wrangler jeans are hot sellers in Abu Dhabi-- has spent its days, nights, lives in pursuit of the Material Me. Even so-called "radical lefty tree huggers" have to be seen hugging the right tree.

 

We have the latest, newest, greatest, biggest...and ultimately, most useless...junk on the planet.

 

Just. Stop.

 

Focus on the things that really matter: your health, your weight, your family, your friends, your life. The problems of the world will start to melt away if we all just "stick to our knitting".

 

Want to solve the health insurance crisis? Walk. Exercise. Pay a co-pay and see a doctor before you get sick. Eat healthier. Sleep better. Skip every other drink or every other cigarette. Lose weight.

 

Want to help solve the banking crisis? Spend less, save more. Take twenty percent of your paycheck and bank it. Put your loose change at the end of the day in a jar, then take it to the bank and deposit it each month.

 

Want to prevent a war? Talk to people. Don't argue, don't judge them. Just listen to them. Sit in a coffee shop and make a point of truly understanding someone.

 

Want to be happier with your friends? Be happier about yourself. The weather's getting nicer, take a walk. Take a camera with you. Take pictures of the kids out playing. Do something that has meaning to you but doesn't cost an arm and leg, not because it's "material," but because you don't have to sit there with part of you adding up the total money you just spent.

 

Search for beauty in an unbeautiful world.

 

You have a material home. Create a spiritual one. A place where your mind can rest and your spirit can play.

 

You have a material home that makes you unhappy. You have spent your life pursuing it, because this is what you were told to pursue, and eveeryone else is doing it. That's a powerful influence, that "everyone else". Marketing firms have made entire fortunes on the backs of you and your neighbors, convincing you to buy this gadget or that SUV.

 

You have the power to quit them. Use that energy, now exhausted, now spent, on yourself. You have a window full of stuff, but a house devoid of what you need. You have things, but no love, because you cannot love a thing. It cannot love you back. You have glee, but no joy. Glee comes from knowing you've bought the new toy. Joy comes from living with what you have. Glee is a drug. It requires constant reinforcement. Joy is everlasting. it grows on its own if you just give it room.

 

Give room to your joy. Shun your glee. Don't you have enough? Do you have all that you need? Most of us do and are unaware of it. And besides, everything is on loan here. It can be taken from you in the wink of an eye, but the one thing that will always be with you is you.

 

Give to people. Give your time. Give your love. Give your joy, because the best soil for joy to grow in is soil that two people tend. Don't worry, it grows quickly!

 

Give your things, too. A gift given gives twice, or so the saying goes.

 

The damnable trap of the past thirty years is that we have taken, but we haven't taken from others...well, not much. As others have taken from us, however-- and that has happened-- we have also taken from ourselves and our futures. We borrowed money we didn't have to buy things that might not even be around now that the bill has come due.

 

By allowing others to take from us, we have robbed ourselves of our humanity, our dignity, and our individuality. By buying the iPod or the car or the Britney Spears CD or the Disney DVD, we have allowed others to take "us" in exchange for making us more like everyone else. We have fuller closets and emptier hearts, prettier clothes and uglier bodies, bigger cars and smaller minds.

 

But when you give, you maintain who you are. You become who you need to be. You keep what and who you want in your life, and you stop pushing aside the important things in life.

 

Yes, the world is troubled. Yes, you will be buffetted and affected and maybe even harmed for decisions you've made in the past.

 

But you can be the future, too, and that is where you will live. Do the things you need to do now to make that a better life.

American Hangup

The yellow makes this picture work for me

Ghosts In The Machine

Two stories surfaced while you were sleeping that ought to help open your eyes as you stumble around for a cup of coffee:

 

Item 1:

The FBI is investigating whether counterfeit routers and computer hardware from China installed in U.S. government computer networks might provide a secret gateway for hackers to tap into secure government databases.

Sources told ABC News the counterfeit hardware could represent a major breach to national security. An FBI PowerPoint presentation, which somehow ended up on a Web site, lays out the concerns and the breadth of what has been a far-reaching investigation.

Friday afternoon a somewhat miffed FBI released a statement that read: "At the request of another federal government agency, on Jan. 11, 2008, the FBI's Cyber Division provided an unclassified PowerPoint presentation and briefing on efforts to counter the production and distribution of counterfeit network hardware," said FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director James Finch. "This unclassified briefing was never intended for broad distribution or posting to the Internet."

Finch goes on to talk about Operation Cisco Raider, which "targeted illegal distributors of counterfeit network hardware manufactured in China and included 15 investigations across nine FBI field offices and the execution of 39 search warrants."

According to Finch, the FBI "disrupted a large distribution network and recovered approximately 3,500 counterfeit network components with an estimated retail value of over $3.5 million."

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, outsourcing!

 

Item 2:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls, the newspaper said, citing current and former U.S. national security officials.

[...] Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

Ahhhh, nostalgia! Hearken back to a time when Boris and Natasha...and now Li and Guangmei... would drop microfilm canisters off in a tree stump on the Appalachian Trail....

 

Granted, these are nations with means and resources (and in the former instance, incredibly easy access, bordering on the treasonous) to implant the software necessary to spy on and perhaps disrupt American society.

 

It may not sound like much, to hit our electrical system or our water and particularly our sewer systems, until you realize just what would happen: we've had regional blackouts, one as recently as August 2003, that crippled half the country and affected the rest with flight delays, food shortages, and so on. Imagine that on a national scale.

 

Imagine turning on the tap in any location where water is distributed and pumped mechanically or electronically, meaning basically every place west of the Rockies and south of Oregon and most of the Midwest and farm country.

 

Now add to that a massive sewage backup (since treatment plants would be the likely target of a cyber attack), and murky brown water that begins to spurt out of your drains.

 

Yea. That bad. With no place for all that crap to go, because storm drains would be the first to back up.

 

You want a disheartened nation? Tell 330 million people they have to shovel shit for a few days, nevermind weeks. In the dark. Without fresh water to bathe in, even if they could clear enough of their drains for the waste water to flow down. Probably in the middle of winter, just make things really horrid.

 

I can almost hear Limbaugh now: "My friends! Shoveling shit builds character! Why, it's no worse than spreading manure on your gardens! I shovel shit every day and look at me! I'm filthy rich for it!"

 

I say Limbaugh will support this because quite simply, the Russians and Chinese aren't going to do this on Barack Obama's watch, but should some idiot Republican (and it always seems to be them, don't it?) get us into another useless war, even a cold one, with Russia AND China, they won't hesitate. They'll trigger the "S" bomb.

 

Sorry for ruining your breakfast!

Coming Soon To A Calendar Near You

Summer

The Future Is Now

One wonders if GM really did need a bailout?

US carmaker General Motors is joining with scooter maker Segway to make a new type of two-seat electric vehicle.

The prototype, which will be debuted in New York, is aimed at urban driving. GM aims to start making them by 2012.

The vehicle, named Puma, can go as far as 35 miles on a single charge. It will use lithium-ion batteries.

See guys? If you had started on this path thirty years ago, even using just one percent of your annual revenues, you could have been poised to corner the market on this kind of vehicle. Instead, you find yourself piggybacking on someone else's idea.

 

There had been rumours in the tech press for months that Segway was poised to announce a new product that would complement its futuristic  Segway Personal Transporter, which failed to capture much more than the imagination of people nationwide, likely because of its cost ($5,000) and its niche marketing ("Is it for sidewalks or streets?").

 

The P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility) would essentially be a scooter with a top speed of 35 miles per hour, but far cleaner and far safer, with a nav system and a sensor array that would identify obstacles and steer around them, essentially driving itself.

 

It would also be far cheaper, about the third of the cost of a car (let's say $10,000), and ideal for uses on college campuses and for traffic enforcement agents (you know, meter maids?). It would eventually find its way to suburban homes as station cars, and even into the city as a day-to-day vehicle that can be crammed into tiny parking spaces.

 

The first and most obvious market for this vehicle is the Asian market, where cars haven't penetrated yet to the extent they have in the west and where cities the size of Chicago seem to pop up overnight. We'll see them here eventually now that the national attention has been focused on green technology and improving the national infrastructure.

There are few things as damaging to the infrastructure and environment as the internal combustion engine, with its thousands of mini-explosions for each trip it takes. This vehicle weighs 300 lbs. A car weighs 6 times that. You do the math.

 

The PUMA can be put into production immediately, as the technology is off-the-shelf for Segway. The only question would be how quickly can a dinosaur like GM ramp up its production lines to make this machine.

 

Aye, there's the rub and has been for Detroit for a long time. Flexibility has never been a key component in the US auto industry and to be sure, the dinosaurs who sit on the boards of directors haven't been strident in their advocacy of becoming more nimble, with the effective result being a dinosaur who can rollerskate a little.

 

That's sad for a nation that has always prided itself on invention.

Space Aliens Are Real!

alienvisitor
Originally uploaded by actor212

I see this little feller staring at me nearly every morning on my way to work....watching...waiting...he knows we'll make a mistake one day...

Gunnin' For The Bottom

After only the second mass murder by a non-white American, perhaps now a legitimate dialogue about gun control can take place in this country:

As the nation gets a clearer picture of two killers who have made headlines in recent days -- one near Pittsburgh, one in Binghamton, N.Y. -- some are wondering whether Americans have too much access to guns.

 

[...] As the gunman, identified as 41-year-old Jiverly Voong, blasted his way through the American Civic Association, DeLucia, 61, stayed on the phone for 38 minutes, guiding police and trying to provide them with information to prevent more people from being shot. Voong killed 13 people before turning the gun on himself.

 

[...] On Saturday, one day after the Binghamton shootings, three Pittsburgh-area police officers were gunned down after responding to what they thought was a domestic disturbance call. Richard Poplawski, 23, the alleged shooter, was shot several times in the leg.

I suspect there's a small number of gun nuts out there now, reading about this story and realizing that yet another exclusive domain of whites, and particularly, white males, is being outsourced to lower-wage criminals: spectacular mass murder.

 

Sort of takes the fun out of killing people to make a political point, like the militias of Montana and Michigan would be wont to do, or the Oklahoma City terrorists when they might just as easily fire back.

 

A point I've always stressed in any gun discussion here is that there is a definite need for some guns in America, and Binghamton is on the cusp of an area where guns might be needed.

 

But certainly not automatic weapons.

 

Binghamton is a fairly large town, a city even, at the intersection of three interstate highways: NYS Route 17 (soon to be Federal Interstate Highway 86) and Interstates 81 & 88. I've walked the banks of the Susquehana there, and had a draft or two in some of the bars there. Indeed, I've even visited during the gay pride weekend.

 

Yes, it's that evolved a town.

 

Drive 90 minutes in any direction, and you are in the middle of the wilderness: a forest, a nature preserve, a state park. Up there, it's bear country, even puma country. You can't always call the cops and expect them to show up in the same hour, although they try their hardest. So yea, a long barrel gun is a necessity and since it's not likely you'd get a second shot quickly, even these don't have to be semi-automatic. And handguns? Forget it. You ain't taking down a bear or even a deer with a .44, sorry.

 

Those are guns I can support. I cannot support a gun that a man can walk into a building with and take out a dozen people in an urban setting (or suburban school or a rural church). That's just patently ludicrous and anyone who defends them should not be taken seriously.

 

When police departments nationwide, departments made up of people like any other average American and without any "liberal" agenda at all, can warn against the ease of purchase of guns, it's time we took the issue to heart.

 

Maybe now, the extremist gun owners on the far right lunatic fringe will sit down and seriously reconsider their knee-jerk reaction to even the most reasonable of controls on guns and gun ownership: licensing, registration, and criminal background checks on all gun sales. We require insurance to own a car, even the most minimal insurance. We can surely require *something* that minimizes the likelihood that we'll have to watch mass funeral services for innocent people ever again.